Tue Feb 03, 2009 at 02:17:17 AM EST
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| Two weeks ago i had the priviledge of spending a bit more than two hours with twenty of so "top Jewish thinkers, activists and journalists." I'm not sure if I was there as a thinker or an activist. Maybe both? For sure I am not a journalist. Anyway, the session was part of an ambitious effort, led by The Jewish Week and JInsider.com, "to collectively design the potential of our Imagined Community." In other words, the Jewish community has problems so let's imagine our ideal community and then figure out how to get there. JInsider put together a one page summary (pdf) of our two hours together. You can see me in the picture (I'm wearing a blue shirt and sitting between Michael Jesselson and Edith Everett). There have been a good number of conversations like this in recent years. Gary Rosenblatt, the editor of The Jewish Week, has been responsible for many of them through his annual weekend of open space for Jewish leaders called The Conversation. I think what JInsider is trying to do here, while admirable, is too ambitious. And in its ambition, it is missing out on some good food for thought. The one page summary more or less acurately pulls together the various strands of thought in the room that day. But once together, they don't form a clear, unified message. Lots of big ideas, some not so big ideas; all together they form a mush. Yet with that many "top Jewish thinkers, activists and journalists" in the room, there were bound to be some provocative ideas. And there were. Exploring, probing, debating those ideas could lead to some breakthroughs. For example, |
| Mik Moore :: Imagining Our Community (in two hours) |
| one participant suggested that an impediment to realizing our ideal Jewish community was the rabbinate. It has become, in this person's opinion, timid, cowed by synagogue boards. Rabbis are largely unwilling to challenge congregants and the community, despite their authority as teachers and moral leaders. If this is true, then perhaps there is something to be said for, say, a program that trains rabbinical students to see their future work a little differently. An issue I raised, which I would like to see discussed at greater length, is the need to democratize our institutions. It was a long time ago, but the American Jewish Congress was founded as a democratic counterbalance to the American Jewish Committee. It would seem logical for Jewish organizations that claim to represent Jews to actually give those Jews some say over their agendas, their operations, their work. This is not only a problem among more elite, conservative organizations; too few liberal groups have figured out how to give their constituents some level of ownership. This is not, of course, a challenge faced by the Jewish community alone. With the decline in unions and the high cost of elections, there are fewer and fewer institutions where regular folks can make their voices heard. And as those of us on the left know well, democracy within non-profit organizations comes with a price; it may or may not be a price worth paying, but it would be nice to at least consider it. Neither reforming the rabbinate nor democratizing our institutions are particularly brilliant ideas. But they do challenge the existing order in interesting ways. Probing them, and other ideas, more deeply could lead to some real breakthroughs. |
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