TOR-CH, of Blessed Memory

In the previous decade, my mornings in the hospital seeing consults, would be interspersed with use of the hospital computers for other than its intended purpose, though never challenged.  While now my marketplace for ideas has become SERMO, a comments site devoted to physicians for which medical licensure is required for participation, in that decade the diversion from work though not quite the time sink that SERMO can be, went to a list-serv operated by the Jewish Theological Seminary known as TOR-CH.  I never learned what the acronym stood for, but not only was I a regular contributor but its founder graced AKSE with a guest presentation on establishing the relatively nascient internet as a forum for exchanging Jewish opinions.  The forum was intended to be a source of moderated though relatively unrestricted commentary on Conservative Judaism as Conservative Jews lived it.  Subscribers filled a polyglot of the self-declared Conservative Jewish adult population, nearly all of us in our professional prime.  There were a few Rabbis who seemed to be taking the pulse of their constituents but were pretty careful not to use their professional status to leverage other posters, a few who had agendas to float by, but they were few.  There were the usual organization loyalists and defenders, some defectors like me who had never really altered their ideology but got fed up enough with their local experience to deep six it in favor of a more observant milleau than the local USCJ affiliate could provide.  There were those like me who had adverse experience and defensible contempt for a large fraction of the leadership.  And there were trolls, not the Arab disruptive sloganeers who invite a click of the IGNORE option on more open sites, but a few mainstream Modern Orthodox men trying to tell the audience why they offer more than the Conservatives do, much like a return to the Debate Nights of the 1950-60's era when Orthodox and Conservative Synagogue representatives would meet to convince newcomers to the growing suburban communities that their synagogue was the best affiliation option.  Those few people were highly moderated as some of the comments could come across as insulting, while I could pretty much post what I wanted, as critical as I wanted of the Rabbinical Assembly, which deserved it as a deterrent to learned lay participation in the movement.  I did have to be polite, if sometimes not fully respectful, and I was.



You get to know some of the people and their special skills, both Jewish and professional.  While private messages were discouraged, a few contacts asked me how to get the most out of their doctors and I quizzed some organization mavens about how to get some synagogue issue properly considered.  There were a few people proficient with the computer, a few Federation types.  Since I never was really a part of the Conservative Movement during my participation though very much a person who transplanted a Conservative mindset upward, if not just elsewhere, I did not get to meet any of the participants panim el panim except for two, on by invitation, the other by chance, yet became a Facebook friend to another.  While the intent of the project had a business purpose and perhaps one of the best opportunities for people in charge to gauge what the semi-loyal base of Conservative Jews might find meaningful, its reality became more the type of Kehillah that the Movement now seeks, though without the dues payment that it expects its kehillot to provide.  There weren't a lot of young people posting, mostly folks my age in the prime of their careers with tuition payments and mortgages to meet, people who liked to grapple with a question that had no real answer, whether of Talmud origin or synagogue branch point origin.  Every day I could expect to find something from somebody else that I would very much like to think about and respond.

Yet for all intents and purposes, it is no more.  The environmentalist Rabbi still sends an occasional insight.  Every winter the Hilchos Christmas spoof gets recycled.  But the candor about the Conservative Jewish experience, the type of comments and proposed interventions needed to stem its more widespread decline, these are no more.  My last post a couple of years ago got zero response.  If I might hazard a guess at its turning point, it would be the effective disinviting the three Orthodox missionaries to their cause.  They are the conversation makers, the disruptive innovators in a movement that too often shields itself from critique, even internal critique.  It allows those who remain to tell each other how wonderful they all are as mediocrity infuses inward.  I've not found a replacement peer forum anywhere else in Judaism of comparable quality and ongoing potential.  I miss the electronic conversation, something so readily available and vibrant medically through SERMO which in many ways has become the next destination, that TOR-CH like analog where all minds are welcome, restrained only by Derech Eretz. 

Money Talks

This nicely written essay appeared in The Forward as an opinion piece by Jay Ruderman, head of his family's charitable foundation.  As a young physician more than thirty years ago, new to town and to synagogue, word got out that a new couple of young professionals with obvious dedication to Jewish life and with traditional observance had latched on to the Conservative shul. Invitations to join the Federation's Young Leadership program followed shortly.  It did not take too many sessions of attendance to realize that the local leaders who addressed us valued our potential future income a lot more than they valued the intellect and dedication that had gotten us to our entry point with them.  Attrition from the program was high, respect for leadership of that type a lot less than it could have been, and ability to withstand strains that inevitably arise over decades, basically non-existent.  They went for the money over the people and got what they sought but at an enormous and likely irreversible consequence. 

Jay Ruderman in The Forward.  Me  

 I don’t presume to know all the positive attributes that define true leadership in our age, but I can confidently tell you what does not, by itself, constitute a good Jewish leader: money.

Reb Tevye on Broadway challenged this "If I were a Rich Man" lyrics when he observed, "if you're rich they thing you really know."

Financial capacity to donate to an organization or a cause is not the same as leadership — and yet, all too frequently, Jewish organizations treat their funders as leaders. As a result, they end up with a lack of authentic visionaries.

It’s not hard to see why such a “leadership” culture has emerged in the Jewish community. Every organization is looking to expand funding in a fickle marketplace. In order to raise dollars, organizations identify the wealthiest people in the community, recruit them and cultivate their giving over time.

Not content just to give money to a good cause, many donors demand an outsized role in decision making, and organizations that want to keep them happy comply, fawningly.

They cultivate more than their giving.  In effect, they are often made proportionate share holders much like a corporation would, with elements of authority that go with it.  For self-made wealth, experience with assembling professional teams to carry out articulated missions may be part of what these people already do successfully.  For inherited wealth it is probably not.

Even when donors do not initially demand a leadership role, organizations often seek to empower them because they know they are more likely to clinch the donors’ gifts, turn them into loyal supporters and raise more funds from their friends. In effect, Jewish organizations have developed a wealthy cheerleader system that is optimally designed for raising money but not necessarily for accomplishing their mission.

But accomplishing the mission goes more easily when the funds are secure.

It’s understandable that wealthy people have a voice — even a disproportionate voice — in organizational life. The problem arises when that voice drowns out everyone else’s, completely obscuring the democratic ethos of Jewish civic life.

I'm not sure Jewish civic life was traditionally democratic.  Tanach is replete with hierarchy, mostly merit based until you get to Kings when the inherited nature of the position makes worthiness more hit and miss.  While Moshe was sensitive to the kvetch's of the rank and file, later on others would sell vulnerable people down the river for a pair of shoes.  In more modern times it would not be the Rabbi's son selected from the community to serve in the Czar's Army but an orphan who was deemed expendable.  The idea of everybody being a contributor, one man-one vote, is a very Western one that had infused itself into American life in all its facets, including Judaism.  Thus the great outcry in my former congregation when three machers got together, pooled their ample funds and took it upon themselves to overcompensate the Rabbi with a deal he could not refuse so that the rest of us would not have the opportunity to engage in a divisive discussion over contract renewal.  This is very real, and for those who are not nurtured into the organization, it invites attrition Pew Research style.

This dynamic undoubtedly exists in secular philanthropic circles as well, but it is decidedly more pronounced in the Jewish community. My experience is that in secular philanthropy there is often a much brighter line between giving and leadership. There is frequently an active group of donors who finance the organization’s work, and a set of leaders who provide vision, direction and insight. Sometimes there is overlap and sometimes there isn’t.

Much depends on the organization.  If you have a university, symphony or humanitarian organization, nothing would happen without relatively scarce talent being offered a chance to perform.  I could probably say the same about JTS or the Joint Distribution Community in the Jewish world where use of the funds is defined and Rabbis or humanitarian professionals need the freedom to implement what the organization does.  Not so for Federations whose purpose is to raise money or even synagogues, or churches for that matter, where the professional talent is not as scarce and does not need to be quite in the upper tier.

So the conflation of leadership with fundraising is not inevitable. What’s more, this perverse concept of leadership hurts the Jewish community in several ways.

First, it hands the keys to people who may have little leadership ability or insight, at least in the sphere of Jewish organizational life. Being a good businessperson does not necessarily make you an effective lay leader.

Second, it blinds organizations to highly talented people in our community who may possess tremendous leadership qualities but not deep pockets. With the need to raise more money, many organizations fill all the seats with big donors and overlook genuinely capable leaders.

Third, it makes us look like an elitist community catering to the few, and pushes away younger Jews who don’t find a donor-dominated establishment the least bit appealing.

And it affects how the upper tier views the others.  An anecdote serves well.  As a young physician in a congregation that did not have that many congregants with serious bimah skills, the one where three guys driving their Jew Canoe took it upon themselves to dispatch the Rabbi, I would read Torah on one of the Yomim Noraim days each year.  Since I could do any day, and did over the course of about a dozen years there, a who's who of the shul's law firm partners, retail moguls and the like would pay a handsome some for their reserved Aliyah each year, virtually all men slightly my senior, though the congregation had been egalitarian for some time.  As the  Olim came and went, they greeted each other with a generous handshake or hug but there were rather few handshakes to me as the Reader or the Gabbaim.  My yasher koach came as I returned to my seat from people who knew that these readings took some effort.  While I did my portion as a service to the shul with no expectation of a reward, the identification of not being one of THEM has remained long after my exit from that shul.  I am the reader again at my current shul, less of an annual Aliyah Recycling Center for big donors, and am greeted very differently by the Olim.  It is notice in ways big and small.

This confusion about leadership can produce abysmal results. Time and again, ideologically driven funders demand that their organizations shun left-of-center voices on Israel that criticize Israeli government policy. Numerous synagogues have invited and then disinvited speakers, such as Peter Beinart, simply because a small group or even a single donor has threatened to cut off financial support. These funders do a disservice to the organizations they support, which end up alienating younger Jews and appearing closed-minded and weak. In the end, the funders unwittingly strengthen the very groups and voices they try to weaken.  

This phenomenon is not necessarily money driven, but sometimes a reflection of authority as in the case of an Orthodox Rabbi who evicted a congregant on shabbat for following the Torah reading in his personal Etz Chaim Chumash.  We have some of that in our congregation where some of our congregants will openly disparage some regional college students at a Board Meeting for taking a lenient position on Middle Eastern affairs.  The irony is that these same guys would probably give their right gonad to have those highly educated, young Jews with good future financial prospects show any interest whatever in becoming part of our congregation as paying members, or even non-paying new courtesy members, especially men with bimah skills.

While it may not be easy, it is possible to say no to these donors. The leadership of the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington, for example, publicly declared that they would not give in to the pressure of outside agitators demanding that the federation defund a local Jewish community center for showing a controversial play about Israel. In an open letter to the community, federation leaders stated, “It is our job to live up to the ideals of Abraham, to create an open tent for all Jews, to demonstrate our love of Israel and the Jewish people everywhere.” That’s rare, but true, leadership.

At other moments, I’ve been struck at how weak-kneed Jewish philanthropists have been in the face of serious challenges. When Israel’s religious affairs minister, David Azoulay, declared that he “cannot allow” himself to say that a Reform Jew is a Jew, there was hardly a peep from anyone but the leaders of the denominations. Where were all the voices of courage, I wondered, to challenge this obvious affront to the interests of the American Jewish community, not to mention Israeli society?

Would it be too much to expect Orthodox Jewish philanthropists or organizational leaders who otherwise dedicate themselves to advancing bilateral ties to speak out against the attack on Reform Judaism?

Sometimes silence says a lot.  I'm sure that organizational leaders promote pluralism within their organizations.  In my relatively small community, interdependence of the denominations is essential though in larger communities the denominations are often more secure and insular.

The sad fact is that our donor-leader class often remains silent when it shouldn’t, and speaks out when it shouldn’t.

Unfortunately, except in blatant situations, it is not always obvious which situations merit the most vigorous response, nor is it possible to assess consequences of silence or in your face comments accurately.  Again, this is a leadership challenge, hardly unique to large donors.

By handing power to people with money irrespective of their leadership capacity or insight, we are cheating our community of what we all deserve. We can do better.

I'm not convinced it is being handed to them as much as they are assessing their own entitlement and taking the authority that they assess their generosity offers them.  

Lest we think this is unique to Jewish organizations, it is now well ingrained in other aspects of our lives including who we elect to represent us politically with parallel underperformance of public institutions.

My thanks to Mr. Ruderman, who I assume is a member of the donor class, for enabling some feedback from the peasant class.

UTJ

Went to my own shul for the first time this calendar year.  Normally I stare into space from Torah reading onward, which is why I hardly ever go unless I have business to conduct for shabbos, in this case yahrtzeit.  The Rabbi invited his Rabbinic friend to deliver the Dvar Torah, which he did exceptionally well by any standards, not just our own.  After the service I chatted with him briefly about a small part of his sermon, an obscure linguistic one, which he discussed briefly and to the point.  I returned at mincha to try to make a minyan for our Hazzan who had yahrtzeit but with serious snow coming down we fell one man short.  Sitting across from the guest between mincha and maariv, we did some small talk about his home congregation where some of my friends attend.  I learned he is relatively new to our region and had functioned as a both a Rabbi and attorney before marrying and relocating. His current shul is Orthodox but he had no difficulty functioning in our mixed seating sanctuary.  His obvious talent prompted me to find out more of his Jewish background after havdallah.  I expected ties with JTS, which he had as an undergrad, but smicha came from the Union of Traditional Judaism, with which our Rabbi personally affiliates.  I knew very little of the organization though prominent members had been the final pulpit Rabbis of my own Bar Mitzvah congregation and a childhood friend who is both JTS grad and physician gave his allegiance there as well.  Yet when Forward did a recent article on where college talent was pursuing their ordination, UTJ came completely under their reporters radar.  It's probably to the detriment of the Jewish community to suppress real talent, as much as some of the machers and organizational types try, so thought I'd try to figure out where this part of Judaism fits in the American mosaic, particularly since it impacts on my own congregations whose fortunes have been on the decline for some time now.


UTJ keeps a low profile, to say the least.  They have a web site and a Wikipedia entry which seems a good deal more transparent than the web site.  They describe themselves as transdenominational which may be a less emotionally laden way of saying dissatisfied Conservative, yet their origins are only partly devoted to ridding themselves of the mediocrity of much of the Conservative synagogue experience.  What they really seem to set out to do initially was preserve the synagogues of the 1960's, those worthy competitors of suburban debate nights where representatives of the Conservative and Orthodox offerings of a community receiving young families with GI home loans would tell why theirs merits affiliation.  The Conservatives did quite well for a while, building synagogues and related institutional infrastructure.  Definitely worth having something more robust than a USCJ Hebrew School.  But the divide was really not over the quality of experience but over the expanding role of women, making UTJ's hidden face one not of superior learning but of non-egalitarianism.  There were op-eds on the site but few later than two years ago.  They have training programs for clergy but no description of who their graduates are or what they have achieved.  There is no listing of affiliated synagogues.  How could an organization that positions itself as a competitive hashkafa not have a list of communities that promote that ideology?  But there is a very long list of Board Members, though not a hint as to where they are from or where they worship or activities that they promote. 

So while folks like me, imprinted in that environment fifty years back, can recognize the quality that once was a shabbos morning at my childhood synagogue, competitive with any place else in our growing town, the longing for its return does not seem something that a lot of people aspire to.  Even within, as much as the people have to offer, it reads more of a closed shop, developed from within but shielded from people who might be looking for something more traditional and mentally upscale from what they have now but might have a few arrows to sling on gender positions that keep UTJ from making more mainstream inroads than they have.

Topping Out

About thirty years ago there was a bestseller written by John C. Molloy entitled Dress for Success in which he explored the world of business attire.  He argued for people at the lesser rungs of commerce to dress more like their senior executives.  Of course, their spendable income was much less so they could not make frequent trips to Brooks Brothers, let alone Saville Row.  In its place, he recommended going to the top stores to look at the finest business clothing, identify what made it different from the stuff most of us buy, then go back to our stores to look for the products that have those basic unique features. 

So this weekend, I treated myself to forays into where the three main branches of Judaism excel, to see what I can bring back to my ordinary experience.  After a wicked week at work, one in which I would have liked nothing better than to plop myself down after Shabbat dinner with a look at Washington Week followed by a visit to my mattress, I instead shlepped with Irene to Beth Emeth.  I never regret the effort to get there.  This Shabbat was special.  It being Shabbat Shira, they traditionally have a special event with Kriyat HaYam by the Hazan.  It happened also to be the week of the passing of Debbie Friedman, the most influential member of the Reform Movement whose music has added to spirituality of every synagogue I have attended since the 1970's when, as a rising star in the world of Jewish Music, she performed at the WashU Hillel.  There were a couple hundred people in attendance, with all three synagogues represented, listening to a somewhat makeshift hybrid choir singing her melodies, trying to get the congregants to sing along much as Debbie would do at her performances, and incorporating the melodies into the kabbalat shabbat liturgy.

My destination for the weekend was the Orthodox Union Convention's Day of Learning, but since I needed some real recreation, I opted to make a weekend of it, seeking out the upper tier of Conservative Judaism. With some exploration on the web and some guidance from Rabbi Satlow, one of the real talents of Conservative Judaism, I opted for shabbat morning at Congregation Beth Sholom in Teaneck NJ, having heard that JTS Faculty and United Synagogue senior honcho's live in the community.  They are having a Shabbat of learning that makes my AKSE Academy look minuscule.  By Kiddush, my concept of the viability of Conservative Judaism had been completely transformed.  It was like a Ramah experience made multigenerational and transplanted from a rural retreat to mainstream sanctuary.  About 200 people attended.  They must have a fair number of transients since only a few recognized me as a visitor, including the Gabbai who offered me Shishi, though I preferred to remain  an observer rather than participant.  Nearly all the men had knitted kippot like mine.  None had a satin Bar Mitzvah souvenir and almost none took a black general synagogue issue one from the box.  Most of the people who brought their own talesim, men and women, wore full orthodox style woolen garments, few had their own silk tallis though a lot of people like me wore the ones from the synagogue.  The sanctuary had been prepared for shabbat, one of my pet peeves with AKSE.  Each place had an Etz Chaim Chumash on the left and a Sim Shalom Siddur on the right.  The congregation does not have a Hazan.  Their web site hinted that they do not need one, as capable congregants were committed to not only showing up to make the minyanim but to make the services happen.  This shabbat the Rabbi did the Pseuke D'Zimra.  A young guy chanted shacharit, incorporating a few of the late Debbie Friedman's melodies into the Kedusha as a memorial, Torah reading was divided three ways, all done very well particularly the last two done by a young woman with lovely voice and impeccable skill.  The very long haftarah was chanted by a rabbi who was not the congregational rabbi.  He did it capably but struggled with some of the less familiar words in the song.  Musaf was done by a middle age man, approximately one of my contemporaries, with a pleasant tenor voice who also incorporated a few Debbie Friedman melodies.  Their liturgy was a complete one with a few variations from AKSE.  Birchat Cholim came after the sixth aliyah.  Their rabbi received a list in advance, read it and invited people to come up.  Few did.  I think it was a mistake for AKSE to change its policy from this. About three women were honored with aliyot as well as peticha, suggesting true egalitarianism rather than squaw work often seen in other Conservative settings and certainly at AKSE.   A prayer for Tzahal and captives was then done in Hebrew by the rabbi.  The prayer for Israel was done in Hebrew at its usual place followed by a prayer for the United States read in English by the Rabbi with an insert for the Armed Forces.  The sermon was delivered after the scrolls returned to the Ark, given by the Gabbai who apparently was also a prominent attorney.  He spoke about different ways to assess census to understand the Exodus and victory over the Canaanites.  At the end, two girls concluded the service.  They did not do Anim Zemirot but instead did the passage that separates Ein Kelokainu from Aleinu followed by Kaddish D'Rabbanan.  They also did the Sabbath Psalm earlier in the service as their Siddur places it.

Then a visit to a friend recovering in a nursing home in Spring Valley, then some relaxation at the Howard Johnson's in Ramsey, then completion of the weekend at the final day of the OU convention.

We have a board meeting at AKSE this coming week.  The President included a semi-annual summary among the agenda items.  What made Beth Emeth and Beth Sholom Teaneck attractive places to attend may have been the excellence with which they executed what they intended in a way that enhances the experience of being there.  AKSE has more pretense, aspiring to what it is not, guaranteeing that the experience of being there will never measure of to its hype.  There are people there who will demean Beth Sholom Teaneck as inferior based on its USCJ affiliation yet ignore the talent of its members that make the experience of shabbat morning in the sanctuary sparkle while shabbat morning at AKSE parades far less capable participants from the Rabbi to the congregational volunteers offering a couple of hours of mediocrity.

Adopt a Family

Mercy's Endocrine section manager sent me an email that the group was providing Christmas presents for a local family, assigning me a 13 year old boy, who I know nothing about.  This being my first time, I asked the manager what the minghag b-makom, or local custom, happened to be.  I was mostly concerned about amount, eventually learning that my partner sent a check for $50.  While I like to give money as wedding gifts or even Bar Mitzvah presents where the funds can accumulate and the recipient starts out with savings or tuition, for events that will occur again, like birthdays or holidays, I prefer to take the opportunity to think about the recipient and how I might add a some form of more short term pleasure.

I know this fellow's age and that his family is needy.  No other information.  I do not even know if he is Christian and celebrates Christmas, as the West Philly area has a fair number of Muslims, either from an enclave of Bangladesh or African families, or African Americans who discovered Islam in the state or federal correctional facilities and who found the requirement for abstaining from drugs and alcohol useful for their future or maybe who found the doctrine of selective rationalization of violence attractive.  I know nothing about the recipient.

While it was my natural inclination to spend all $50 on a single gift, figuring that he'll never accumulate that sum to spend on himself, my wife, who has done this before, recommended that I divide the total into three gifts.  The office manager concurred with my wife, so I did. 

Several years ago the Jewish Theological Seminary's TOR-CH posting site contained a thread in which two orthodox missionary types electronically heckled the Conservative institutional structure and the mediocrity or less that has accrued from it.  The more capable of the two commented to me privately that he really wanted the Conservative participants to upgrade their Judaism properly which in his mind meant being more like him.  I politely responded that the goal should not be to have them more like him but better reflections of their own aspirations.  Gifts can get into a parallel trap.  I would like this early teen who I know nothing about to be inquisitive, creative, studious, responsible, all the things that I admire and then project upon him, though maybe not what he admires or even fulfills the intent of pleasure.

In the end, I divided the allotment relatively equally, settling for a Phillies sweatshirt where one can never go wrong, a telescope, and a soft-tipped dart board.  It does not fulfill any of the criteria I set ages ago for gifts for my secretary's son, who I do know, which must either make noise, get him suspended from school, or bring him to the ER.  None of these for the anonymous recipient.  Unless maybe if his evolving hormones and id prompt him to use the telescope to forgo looking  at the heavenly bodies in favor of a more earthly body belonging to cute chick in the apartment across the street.