Getting Invited

Non-Profits need to have a reckoning of their accomplishments each year.  They also need to take notice of their volunteer and contributors.  Some of this clusters in June, after the universities send their new grads into the world but before the families send their younger ones off to camp for the summer.  As much as I had hoped for a travel day in the coming week, PM invitations that I could not ignore fill the entire mid-week.  

My synagogue holds its annual meeting on Tuesday.  Relations with the leadership are mixed, but they offered me a spot on their Board of Governors, which I accepted.  There is perfunctory business, voting on the slate, renewal of a non-controversial contract, and sale of a real estate asset that is more useful as cash than as property.  This one takes place by Zoom.  It is primarily a business meeting.  There are advantages to in-person meetings which allow for better community building or at least getting to know other members, to say nothing of better give and take as people express their thoughts on the three agenda items.  But mainly this meeting is obligatory by by-laws.  Expediency rules the day.  I have skipped it, but as one given a spot going forward by a Nominating Committee that has often received my skeptical comments, I really need to sign on to the electronic forum that evening.  I suppose I can still take SEPTA to some Philly attractions and get home in time.

The following night comes the reception that I most want to attend.  For a few years, I have scored scholarship applications and critiqued the application process for the Delaware Community Foundation, a non-profit that distributes funds on behalf of local philanthropists.  They host a semi-annual reception for staff and volunteers that I always try to attend.  I invariably encounter a mixture of familiar and new people while I sip something with alcohol and sample some nibbles from a buffet.  The people, some staff, some community, are mostly more interesting folks with unique personal stories.  I find it easy to bond.  It's one of those wouldn't miss this events.

Then came an invitation that I did not expect.  My charitable giving goes to places that I think do important work.  While United Way and Federation have each earned a share of my scorn, the communal work they support still has to be done. The DuPont Company aligned with United Way, shaking down its employees, including my wife, for as much as they could coerce.  It made a mostly worthy, even essential effort something of a charitable cliché.  In retirement, I have a contribution for them each summer, as does my wife independently.  Unknown to me, if you donate above a certain threshold you get invited to their June reception.  While both my wife's and my individual donations fell beneath that amount, the staff elected to combine the household contribution, which got us one ticket.  For logistical reasons, I am the recipient.  Ordinarily, I do not engage in social climbing, but it has been years since I was invited to a place where everyone who's anyone will be on site.  Why not attend?

That gives me a busy week, one in which I have a few other ongoing projects to complete, including slides for an upcoming presentation.  But maintaining social interactions, particularly with people unfamiliar to me and likely more accomplished than me, has its own importance.  

Rabbis Going Forward

Commencement season.  Campus turmoil on our screens, on our news feeds.  They are joined by the most provocative of commencement speakers, those with messages to generate the most resentment, which keeps us from exiting one social media site in favor of another.  Those graduates who created a certain mayhem when not really responsible for much beyond completion of their studies, will find jobs that require a certain measure of obedience to those with authority.  Yet their value to their employers also includes exporting what they learned at the university.  We can expect our corporations, civil service, and non-profits to adapt to what the people with those upper-tier university degrees bring to their employers, both technical knowledge and ideology.  At present, our companies still produce efficiently, our civil service serves its constituencies with mostly thoughtful protocols consistently applied, and our non-profits pursue their defined missions with the talent they are able to hire.

America's religious institutions have not achieved parallel stability.  Church attendance has faltered for a lot of reasons. Data over about thirty years from mostly Christian sources show a downward drift in participation with no meaningful upticks. From my Jewish lenses, there are indeed more people studying Talmud today than at any other time in Jewish history.  American Jews are embedded in every element of America's culture and productivity.  Institutions that tend to the needs of Jewish Americans, our commitments to Israel, and more global philanthropy still raise funds needed to invest in the human talent that moves the various agendas forward.  Yet a certain decline, measurable in a variety of ways, appears in many surveys.  The core institution for centuries has been the local synagogue and the individual Rabbi chosen by the membership as its focal individual.  

This commencement season, some of our flagship seminaries publish their commencement programs.  Each newly ordained graduate can expect a career of about thirty years, invested in an assortment of possibilities.  Each spring for the past few years, I have read selected seminary commencement programs published online.  These include The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, American Jewish University, Hebrew Union College in its three American campuses, Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, and Hebrew College.

All but the Hebrew College are affiliated with denominations.  Chovevei educates and ordains only men, while the others have students of each gender.  Chovevei, as a small institution, updates the activities of previous graduates on its website.  Some very raw data:

So each site has about a dozen students, half women.  If about 80 graduates a year, that means 2400 mainstream secular rabbis accumulated over about thirty years assuming indefinite comparable enrollment and that none of these places have to close for financial or enrollment shortfalls over the next generation.  I have no crystal ball to project how many will serve as congregational clergy, or even how many congregations will have the means to hire one or more Rabbi's over the coming generation.  I do know from having read these programs for a few years that enrollment has followed a downward drift.  And one seminary honors its 50-year alumni, alive and deceased, by publishing their names.  That class, all men, was considerably larger than current ordination numbers at the same school.

The more difficult assessment might be how well these 80 new entrants reflect the denominations they represent.  And do they need to?  Invariably the congregational Rabbi maintains the Jewish traditions more fastidiously than the congregants.  Kosher diets are the norm.  Shabbat and Holy Days bring the Rabbi to Shul, though there are some leniencies in how they get there.  All Rabbi's make a personal effort, if not a congregational one, to enhance their Jewish knowledge with some regularity, though congregants attend their classes in small fractions of the composite congregation.  

 

And what are the congregants like?  I can speak for my own, and have a good sense of those of the other denominations in my town.  We are invariably older. Our children are older than those graduates.  We have nearly all had traditional marriages that endure a lifetime.  Divorces are rare.  Same sex marriages are rare.  Interfaith marriages are common at the other two congregations, rare at mine.  People have careers.  Relocations are few, though children graduating and pursuing their own careers elsewhere are the norm.  We bought houses that we maintained until sometimes downsizing as empty nesters.  And we have few political outliers, no anti-Zionists but no overt racists either.  While a fraction think it OK to leverage their power, even intimidate, most are committed to being cordial and kind.

With only 80 graduates and with their sponsoring institutions providing biographies of their graduates, it is not hard to add a Google Search to learn a little about nearly all of them.  Few of them really come across as people our Search Committees will sponsor with enthusiasm.  Few have taken the usual career trajectories of ourselves or our children who graduated college, maybe took a gap year or two, then sought either a professional degree or accepted employment.  Very few of this cohort went from college to seminary.  Many did community organizing.  Others worked for non-profits or taught at Day Schools.  And when organizing or agency work, the sponsor would invariably fall in the far left progressive part of the political spectrum.  Gay marriages were common.  Use of neutral pronouns in the bios made some of the bios hard to read.  Some had no clear post-degree destination specified in the bio or by a Google Search.  Reconstructionist graduates seemed the most off-center.  Hebrew College seemed dominated by people leaving their original career to find a second.  Chovevei men, were all very traditional.  They were not particularly attracted to pulpits, drifting toward chaplaincy, teaching, or advocacy careers.  And a few accepted assistant Rabbi positions in metro areas, a small number senior Rabbi positions with smaller congregations in university towns or other places with stable but small Jewish populations.

Other than Chovevei, which updates its entire alumni cohort each year, I cannot really track career paths of recent graduates, prarticularly RRC and Hebrew College which ordain the most non-traditional classes.  Chovevei generates few congregational Rabbi's though some now head large mainstream OU affiliates.  And while we are all ever more sensitive to the spectrum of gender and non-traditional families, our current clergy are all people easy to identify with.  All college graduates, all as literate as their congregants with elite university degrees, all dressing professionally, and none with outlandish hairdo's or skin art.  But also none of our clergy really push the envelope, either in scholarly pursuits, political statements, or even eccentric hobbies.  They are careerists, just like the congregants.  Dependable, reliable, centrist.  Surprisingly few of the ordination class of 2024 left a parallel impression.

What would our synagogues look like if our classes had the same standards as 1974?  Exclusion of half the graduates as women would leave a shortage, for sure.  Where have the men gone?  What have alumni from the feeders from the youth groups of the different dominations that used to go directly from college to seminary opted to pursue instead?  An essay in The Atlantic tries to grapple with the reality of Jewish seminaries' paucity of traditional sources of students.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/02/american-rabbi-shortage-synagogues-denominations/677423/  

There are declines in enrollment.  There are shifting skills of the new Rabbi's reflected in what they pursued during their gaps between college and seminary.  Eventually these people will take their places in our synagogues, schools, and sponsored agencies.  Whether the institutions will become more like them or they will become more like the institutions as their tenure accrues may be one of the big question marks on American Judaism's future.  For now, the new Rabbinical Class of '24 does not fully reflect the very centrist presence of our congregations and institutions.

Expensive Supermarket

Weekly supermarket expedition.  Credit card charged a bit over $116.  Filled all the reusable bags I brought with me.  Expect to eat well in the coming week.  No department skipped.  Many individual items skipped, usually from unwillingness to accept price, occasionally from lack of availability.

As a Kosher consumer, my principal loyalty has been to the store that stocks Kosher meat, though I rarely buy more than one or two items each trip.  Their weekly ad arrives in the mail midweek.  I take it to my desk where I create a list as I read each page of the colored print circular.  On the front, I jot down the definite will gets, either because of discount or need.  On the back, I note everything I might consider purchasing, again driven by a lower price than what I usually encounter there.  Must list always short, Might list usually exceeds a full column on a rather long note sheet.

On Sundays, the coupons become downloadable on the store's web site.  There being no penalty for downloading items I end up not purchasing, I designate anything attractive.  

List available, pen in pocket, and about five reusable bags in car's trunk, I set out for the store one morning, usually mid-week when not very crowded and when I am not pressured for an upcoming appointment someplace else.  Then department by department, aisle by aisle, matching wits with the various managers and psych majors who think they can entice me to fill my cart with items that bring the highest margins.

By the time I reach checkout, the contents of my basket will fill all the reusable bags that I put into my cart when I arrived.  Ample food.  Nutritious food.  And some storage bags, household paper, and sunscreen.

While it's easy to tabulate what I purchased, as the register tape does that with each scan, what I declined to buy may be more telling.  It likely will have indirect political implications at the highest levels, as my experience gets replicated by nearly every other American voter of every region and financial circumstance with often distressing regularity.  Due to cumulative good fortune and deferred gratification, I enter my retirement years with ample pension income and considerable wealth.  I need not deny myself any supermarket product based on price.  But I do.  And in every aisle.  It makes no difference if one brand of pickle captures the essence of dill better than another, the less desirable discounted that week goes into the cart.  Same with cookies.  Kosher meat is expensive, but subject to economizing.  Parsley or potatoes, more than I want to pay, I can create satisfying menus with something else.  However, there are some staples.  Flour, sugar, coffee, bread, some form of cheese cannot be avoided.  Many items are rejected by price.  I buy only the discounted cereal, pasta, peanut butter even though I might find a competing form more satisfying to eat.  And that's from the perspective of somebody who when analyzed rationally has enough income to buy the preferred items.  

The perspective of somebody with serious budget constraints will differ, defaulting to not buying irrespective of desire, or making the purchase and assigning blame for the high price.  And as all Presidents from Truman onward well know, The Buck Stops Here.  The ability to use earnings for the things you most want drives some blend of satisfaction and resentment.  Wanting that cereal and not purchasing it, filling the gas tank to a fixed dollar amount instead of to the top, compromising on a preferred hotel room all generate some disappointment and for many an anger target, whether conspiracies of the wealthy or a political party that is insensitive to what is happening or beholden to the wrong groups.

There are also public rationalizations by our elected officials.  Prices are high because of the need for higher wages driven by pandemic recovery, transportation supply chain glitches, bad weather someplace else in the world, siphoning my tax money to support the unworthy.  All plausible, but not the consumer's concern.  The response by those holding office would be something to the effect of look how many more people have jobs and how much your 401K has risen.  With traditional unemployment figures of about 5%, the other 95% had jobs all along and will not be tapping into their retirement funds until they retire.  The deprivation is new to them, and it is now.  Communal prosperity data does not change anybody's supermarket, gas station, or housing payments this month.

Who will be left holding the bag politically?  The person that can be blamed.  Does not look good for the current White House occupant, or so my crystal ball hints.

Jewish American Heritage Month

Got a little testy with my professional organization, The Endocrine Society, which I continue to hold in utmost esteem, dedicated its latest issue of Endocrine News to Asian American and Pacific Islander Month.  No challenge to the worthiness of these professional colleagues or to the many contributions that people of that background have made to enhance American life.  Recognition is due, respect is ongoing.  A number of other organizations have posted parallel recognition in print and electronic media.

Concurrently, somebody also designated this Jewish American Heritage Month.  Recognitions are much fewer.  A Google search largely posts recognition to places where Jewish presence is already well established, as in towns or universities with substantial Jewish representation.  An exception might be Notre Dame.  But my medical alma mater gives a thumbs up to Asians but no recognition to Jews.  Same with the Endocrine Society.  

At present, we Jews happen to be the daily besieged.  Asians can walk across campus without threatening gestures from others walking in the opposite direction.  Not true for the Jews this past academic semester.  From time to time a report appears that the parent organization was receptive to recognition but subject to the veto of the DEI infrastructure.   I have no means of confirming these allegations, though they are at least plausible.  Asian achievements, which are many, are perceived to follow diligence.  Jewish achievements, which are many, are perceived to follow privilege.

Jewish history in America has its patchwork of alliances and rejections.  Every major city has a medical center, often an upper-tier destination in the annual Residents Match, with a Biblically derived name.  They exist because the premier academic centers excluded regional Jewish physicians from staff appointments.  We have law firms with Ashkenazi names because white shoe firms once spurned Jewish law grads.  We have experience in dealing with being overlooked.  Whether the snootiness of the first half of the 20th century or exclusion by DEI officers today, we succeed by tenacity and diligence, not privilege.

What disturbs me, though, has been the rejection of the opportunity by my professional organization and my Jesuit alma mater to use the designated ethnic month to affirm that their Jewish members, who are being publicly assailed right now, is simply not compatible with organizational standards.  A month was assigned for recognition of our contributions because there are substantial contributions.  Neither my alma mater nor professional organization is hostile.  But neither displayed boldness when they might have.

Discounted Travel

Senior Discounts have become plentiful.  Most are minor, two or three dollars off admission to a museum or an event.  Some are substantial.  My adjacent state of Pennsylvania offers a big one.  SEPTA , the regional transit system, allows seniors to ride free anywhere within the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.  The nearest station is across the state line in Pennsylvania and my destination is nearly always Philadelphia, so I need only provide four quarters for parking each time I ride.  Once in the city, I need only swipe my card on their subways, els, or buses for another free ride.  It worked rather well.  I visited the Liberty Bell, grabbed a snack at the Reading Terminal Market, walked around a bit through the historical area.  As I did that, I noted other places I might like to sample like the American Jewish History Museum a block or so away.

This good deal has a few limits.  If I take the SEPTA train to Delaware or New Jersey, they charge half-fare, which remains a significant discount.  

As much as I like being a tourist, eager to sample perhaps the Mutter Museum or maybe go to a Penn football game in the fall, this SEPTA pass also serves as my entry to discounted New York City.  I can either catch the Megabus, which departs a short walk from the main train station or I can take SEPTA to Trenton, pay the half fare, then get a half-price train to NYC.  Both the bus and discounted NJ Transit cost about the same, so it seems more a matter of convenience.  I think the bus would be faster than taking SEPTA the additional ride to Trenton, then taking a commuter train, so I'll likely try this first.

As a young fellow, probably until my early married years, I used to visit NYC frequently, mooching a commuter ride with my father or a neighbor.  Later it became a destination to be planned.  Discounted weekends of my young adult years are long gone.  In recent years, I could get an economical bus from my town, leaving early AM, catching a 6PM return from Manhattan.  I would depend on my wife to transport me to the bus station, which sits in a seedy, not entirely safe part of town.  That bus service has gotten more expensive as well as more difficult to find a return trip with the same carrier.  But travel between Philly and NYC or Trenton and NYC takes place frequently in both directions.  Its fare undercuts my local fare by about two-thirds, so it is something I must arrange to do, perhaps twice this summer.  I need not inconvenience my wife at all.

NYC has sights, as does Philadelphia.  It also has friends, and at one time my children, which Philadelphia does not.  And so low cost that I need only consider convenience and destination, not expense.  A periodic must-do.

Creating Daily Structure

OLLI has suspended for the summer.  A lingering professional albatross lifted at about the same time.  So I enter the summer with considerable liberty and security, more than I have enjoyed in a while.  My OLLI commitments, though, also provided needed structure in retirement.  My class schedule required me to commute from home to the campus most weekdays, then pay attention as the lectures or DVDs were presented.  I would often schedule an errand following class, sometimes supermarket or maybe retrieve a prescription, or even occasionally seek out lunch.  I had to be at a place at a set time.  On most Saturday mornings, shabbos services provided that time structure, at least for the morning.  Without these, I am left with my treadmill schedule as the main source of self appointments, not counting an ongoing commitment to myself to arise each morning at a fixed hour.  In the summer, even on treadmill days, by 9AM there are no places I need to be each day.

A list of what I want to do each day still gets listed the night before and reviewed each morning while I sip my first cup of coffee.  An opportunity to do more of these items without that pesky schedule telling me when I need to get dressed and into the car.  But having to work around those fixed obligations forces me to assign times to do things that have no deadlines.

I must take best advantage of these lazy, hazy days of summer, starting by restoring some of the structure no longer present during OLLI's summer break.  I've scheduled two appointments, one to get a Senior SEPTA Pass which adds to my freedom.  With this I can arrange museum visits, now timed, and a couple of bus trips to NYC over the summer.  I've scheduled a platelet donation.  And I am almost ready to assign some days to drive downstate to the beaches.  Some doctor's appointments have places on my calendar, and a couple more ought to be added.  I have a presentation to give for the synagogue, the lecture having an assigned place and time, though its preparation does not.

More likely, though, I will need to create an artificial time structure.  At a certain time I will write, record, upgrade the house, garden, cook, or shop.  Not too rigid, but time-bound in some short-term way.

OOB

OOB.  Medical jargon.  An abbreviation for Out of Bed, understood by every nurse that a patient needs to be mobilized daily.  Sometimes the doctor specifies frequency or duration but usually that gets determined by nursing protocols, individual judgment, or competing demands on things the nurse must do that shift.  The core message, however, is that person would be harmed by excessive bed time.

I've added that notation to my weekly agenda and daily tasks.  It has a tacit intention.  Bed needs to be restricted to pre-determined sleep hours, one of the core principles of standard sleep hygiene intended to enhance daytime energy.  So OOB starts on arising, which has a set hour, and concludes at a slightly flexible time at night.

My adherence has not been bad, though not entirely complete, as I often like to watch Curiosity Stream or read a book while lying in bed.  Nor is OOB quite the same as stay upright or do not drift off to sleep outside of specified times.  The recliner in My Space often finds me dozing off while watching something on my flat screen.

Still, better regulation of sleep has made some progress as I impose rules that are not so demanding as to invite rejection.  And I do feel better than I did last year.