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. 

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.