As a 30-something rabbi, I've noticed that denominational labels were much more important for our parents' and grandparents' generations than they are for us. Today's 20- and 30-year-olds are searching for meaning in religion and are not very concerned with the names of movements or synagogues.
Rabbi Naftali Rothenberg, an Orthodox rabbi, recently wrote an Op-Ed in The New York Jewish Week entitled "Time To End The Reform-Orthodox Wars." He was responding to Israeli chief rabbi Shlomo Amar's attack on Reform Jews and his pressure on the Israeli government to prevent involvement of non-Orthodox movements in state and religion affairs.
I was pleased to read Rothenberg's perspective that it is time for Orthodox Jews to "build bridges of cooperation [to Reform and Conservative Jews] for the sake of the entire people of Israel and its future" without compromising principles or "fidelity to a life of Torah and mitzvoth."
My own sense is that despite some animosity toward other denominations of Judaism, which is often bred on ignorance, there is actually much tolerance and understanding among fellow Jews. We are moving toward a Jewish community in which the borders that separate the denominations are becoming blurred.
Rothenberg recognizes the need to bridge the vast abyss between his brand of Orthodoxy and the more progressive streams of modern Judaism, but he remains concerned that the depths of antipathy will make this too difficult. I disagree.
We live in a time when a Jewish person's Facebook profile identifies her religion as "Recon-newel-ortho-conserva-form." This combination of religious denominations does not demonstrate confusion or haziness, but rather the realization that there is "meaning" to be made from the various pathways to Torah.
I knew when I decided to become a rabbi that the Conservative Movement's Jewish Theological Seminary would be the right place for my training. I had been raised in Conservative Judaism, studying at Hillel Day School of Metropolitan Detroit, and honing my leadership skills in United Synagogue Youth, the movement's youth program. However, it was in rabbinical school that I came into contact with the other "flavors" of Judaism, praying each Shabbat at an Orthodox shul, engaging in Torah study with a Reconstructionist rabbi and training as a hospital chaplain with a Reform rabbinical student.
My first job after graduating rabbinical school was at the University of Michigan Hillel Foundation, an institution that offers five different Shabbat service options. On any given Friday evening I could find myself in a Reform havurah, a Conservative minyan, an egalitarian gathering with separate seating or a traditional Orthodox service. From week to week, I saw many students sampling the various options, less concerned with ideological labels than with finding a comfort level that spoke to them spiritually, intellectually and communally. They were in search of meaning, not a denominational brand.
Last year, I traveled to New York City several times to be part of a fellowship with rabbinic colleagues spanning the denominations. We gathered every few months to study Torah together, to pray together and to dialogue about the important issues of the day. As part of Clal's Rabbis Without Borders program, we found a safe space to share our distinct viewpoints on a host of topics -- from faith perspectives on healing to the economy's effect on religion to the role of music in prayer. We might not have all agreed on how the Torah was revealed to the Jewish people in the desert thousands of years ago, but we each managed to share our Jewish wisdom through the medium of Torah.
Denominational labels are becoming far less important in the 21st century as the borders have blurred. While I may be a card-carrying Conservative rabbi, I work for Tamarack Camps, a Jewish camping agency that serves the entire community, from the unaffiliated to the religious. I lead a Reconstructionist synagogue, Congregation T'chiyah, in which my more traditional practices and beliefs are not compromised, but are respected and admired. I teach teens on Monday nights at Temple Israel, one of the largest Reform congregations in the world. I run a kosher certification business in which I demand the highest levels of kashruth compliance to meet the requirements of our faith and the needs of our community.
Looking beyond the borders that divide our Jewish community is not always easy or comfortable. After all, there are real differences that set us apart. There are always going to be political and ideological conflicts that keep us from praying together or eating together. But we must always seek to dialogue with civility and come together over the issues on which we can agree. A Reform Passover seder may differ greatly from an Orthodox one, but the context is the same: We are all recalling the days our people spent in slavery. Neither Pharaoh nor Hitler differentiated between Reform, Conservative or Orthodox Jews.
Rabbi Jason Miller is a blogger (http://blog.rabbijason.com), kosher supervisor (http://koshermichigan.com) and Jewish educational entrepreneur. He is the rabbi of Tamarack Camps and the spiritual leader of Congregation T'chiyah, both located in Michigan.
Follow Rabbi Jason Miller on Twitter: www.twitter.com/rabbijason
Jewish views on religious pluralism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Welcome | RABBIS WITHOUT BORDERS
Rabbis Without Borders | Facebook
U.S. Jewish leaders: Jewish pluralism is in crisis - Haaretz Daily ...
Those that persist in saying women are 2ndary are following Aristotle, not Christ; Aristotle believed men's semen contained ALL of the genetic information necessary for life and women were just a vessel; Aristotle actually believed that female babies were male babies with faulty genes. For this reason, girl babies were set out to die of exposure...
Women WERE priests in the 1st and 2nd as murals in catacombs prove. Research the early catacombs, like that of Priscilla in Rome. You will see female priest in "Franco Panis." And not all paintings of the last supper are devoid of women, either, as this one in Cremona proves. Go to youtube and type in: “A Woman in the Last Supper in Cremona.”
The Kabbalah and its focus on ten energy fields is identical to the chakra system and it has nailed the problem: "Where there is unbalanced force (male and female) there is EVIL." The exaltation of patriarchy instead of egalitarianism cannot be justified with any rationale besides: "We've always done it that way."
There is no Jewish priesthood. Jewish women are not secondary. What do Aristotle and "Christ" have to do with this article? Why are you talking about female Christian priests? And why are you dragging the Kabbalah into it?
Did you just get confused and post comments to the wrong article?
Judaism, like most religions has sects offshoots and some traditional Jewish rites of passage that transcend faith and show through study of past history how faith changes and grows with time or can fade and disintegrate over time, depending on the merits of it's tenets of following.
Tenets of faith can be diverse and quite opposed to each other and yet the adherents of differing Judaic forms need not be separated by these disparities in doctrinal approaches to a goof life of study and prayer that yields a happy person in a balanced relationship with their community.
Judaic forms of worship are quite diverse and the political applications of these forms also differing in their judgments of certain Israeli cultural affinities and feelings about the Palestinians. What can be shared by such disciples of differing dogmas is faith, always faith, which should be reinforced by fellowship, never leading to doubt fear of rejection or a sense of being carried along by a crowd and not feeling individually invested in the articles of faith as delineated by Rabbis.
Human beings who respect every brother and sister no matter their current station in life is the desired result of faith and religion. If religion steers us away from mutual respect for different religions or non religious beliefs we fail to be as God made us creatures of free will.Humans deserve their free will.
You don't have to believe in what the authors of these types of articles do, but when they advocate mutual respect, tolerance, and benevolence, and condemn hatred and hostility between religions and followers of the same religion, I think those attempts at positive change should be encouraged.
(It's also disturbing how many of those attacks are based on misconceptions of the religion that the author follows or that the article focuses on).
The sentence in my post above that many commentators seemed to overlook is: "My own sense is that despite some animosity toward other denominations of Judaism, which is often bred on ignorance, there is actually much tolerance and understanding among fellow Jews."
Most Orthodox Jews who demean, insult and criticize the progressive streams of Judaism are often ignorant of the Jewish laws about which they're criticizing. Or, they are not comfortable in their own skin. In fact, many of them are ba'alei teshuva -- meaning that they were, at one time, not observant and now are. They often display animosity toward fellow, less-observant Jews as a "I'm now holier than thou" mentality.
Those who attack fellow Jews seem to forget such important ethics in Judaism as derekh eretz (kindness), "do unto others....," and the Talmud's concept of "gadol k'vod habriot shedocheh lo ta'aseh shebaTorah"--the principle that human dignity is so important that it can override negative commandments in the Torah.
What are these Rabbis' proofs from the Torah that God wants you to override His Commandments when you personally feel they counter human dignity? Don't you think it is an insult to God that you would think any one of His Commandments is counter to human dignity?
Do you believe yourselves to be more dignified and more concerned about human dignity or the One who revealed the Torah?
http://thewrongmonkey.blogspot.com/
Um...I don't see the author asking that anywhere in this article. So I'd have to say no, he's not.
- Autobiography of Mark Twain
Faith in humanity is better than faith in "............".
Where is the believer who's going to be swayed by that? It seems to me most would be either offended or merely amused.
C'mon, atheists! We can do better!
Now give me 50 squat-thrusts! Down-out-in-up, down-our-in-up, hey-hoo-ho-ho, hey-hoo-ho-ho....
http://thewrongmonkey.blogspot.com/
I find it as a logical point of view that should be addressed.
Maybe the person who flagged this post needs to rethink their own values instead of just flagging.
However, it needs to be stated that aspects of Orthodox "customs observance" are not required: such modes of black on white dress, the various felt type hats, swaying during praying, Yiddish...