Renewing Judaism
An
introduction to the Jewish Renewal movement
By Debra Nussbaum
Cohen
The following article
provides an introduction to the Jewish Renewal movement, an informal network of
individuals (including rabbis), synagogues and havurot (many of which have
formal affiliations with ALEPH: the Alliance for Jewish Renewal) that share an
affiliation with the philosophies and practices of Reb Zalman
Schachter-Shalomi. (It should be noted that since this article was published in
2000, ALEPH’s ordination program no longer leads to ordination from
Schachter-Shalomi but through the ALEPH Rabbinic Program, a non-denominational,
decentralized seminary. The program requires students to master Jewish text and
traditional modalities of learning and prayer, and encourages the exploration
of new forms of ritual, art, music and prayer.)This article is reprinted with
permission from The Jewish Week.
Like a cross between the voice of God and a vintage radio
broadcast full of pop and hiss, the disembodied sound of Rabbi Zalman
Schachter-Shalomi filled the sanctuary of Congregation B’nai Jeshurun.
It was a Shabbat celebration of the 75th birthday
of Schachter-Shalomi, the rebbe of the Jewish Renewal movement, who is nearly
universally known as Reb Zalman. For four decades, he has been considered by
many to be a marginal figure but has, in fact, also breathed a spark of spirit
into the inner life of mainstream Judaism.
He was supposed to have been on the Upper West Side that
Saturday, surrounded by his students and followers. But instead, on April 8 he
was home in Boulder, Colorado, recuperating from a hospitalization a week
earlier when what should have been a routine angiogram led to an emergency
surgery to remove a blood clot.
So Reb Zalman was hooked up to the proceedings by telephone,
his thin, faintly accented voice amplified by speakers hidden above the Upper
West Side synagogue’s soaring ark and its rafters. He was able to participate
in the celebration and speak to his followers about the holiness of Shabbat and
their mission by using technology, which departs from traditional observance’s
prohibition against using electricity on the day of rest. It was a fitting
illustration of the Jewish Renewal approach.
The celebratory Shabbat came as the Jewish Renewal
movement—the network of roughly 50 congregations and havurahs (including one in
Manhattan), 60 rabbis and several retreat centers—is trying to grow from a
group of iconoclastic dissidents into a rooted, well-funded, established
organization.
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Elat
Chayyim, the retreat center, that is a major center of the Jewish Renewal
movement. Photo credit: Elat Chayyim
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Three decades after Reb Zalman began reaching out to
disenfranchised Jews with a hands-on, mystically inflected, radically egalitarian,
liturgically inventive, neo-chasidic approach, many of the techniques he
pioneered--from meditation to describing God in new terms--are widely employed
in mainstream settings.
“The impact of Jewish Renewal is spreading,” said
Schachter-Shalomi, in a brief telephone interview. “When people see something
is done with aliveness, it really touches them. And it keeps on spreading.”
Today Jewish Renewal has the institutional shape of a
movement, headquartered in Philadelphia in ALEPH: The Alliance for Jewish
Renewal, with a loosely structured rabbinic training program culminating in
ordination from Schachter-Shalomi.
ALEPH funds several projects including the Institute for
Contemporary Midrash and the Spiritual Eldering Project. It publishes the
journal New Menorah and several prayer books, and both is connected with the
retreat center Elat Chayyim, which is in the Catskill mountains, and runs the
biannual Aleph Kallah, a summer gathering.
But while Jewish Renewal’s approach to Judaism is gaining
increased acceptance from mainstream groups, the movement is not being
recognized as the source. In the minds of the establishment, Jewish Renewal
remains a marginal group, say Renewal leaders.
“The greatest weakness of the movement is our internalized
sense of rejection,” says Rabbi Jeff Roth, executive director of the Elat
Chayyim retreat center. “We feel like pariahs in the Jewish world, which then
reifies itself into staying left out.”
There’s “a psychological barrier” to acceptance, “and part
of that comes from us,” agreed Rabbi Daniel Siegel, rabbinical director of
ALEPH. “A lot of us who formed Jewish Renewal formed it in a very conscious
rebellion against the Jewish establishment. There was an accusatory tone in the
earliest stages of this, all the way through the 1970s. We were saying, ‘Your
synagogues are empty, your synagogues are boring.’ ”
The earliest Jewish Renewalists, Rabbi Siegel said, “were
rebels and dissatisfied people, people without money, people who didn’t fit
into the neat boxes of community of that time, people who weren’t getting
married, people who are single parents, people who were gay and lesbian.”
Jewish Renewal is now trying to complete its transition into
an entity which can continue influencing Jewish life after its rebbe dies.
“Our influence is penetrating much deeper into the
mainstream, but without acknowledgement,” said Rabbi Siegel. “There is still a
lot of ignorance and prejudice toward us in other movements.”
At the same time, “We’re growing very, very fast. But what should
our role be in this scenario? Part of this moment is deciding that.”
The growing acceptance of the techniques and approaches
first taught by Reb Zalman and his students is visible in many things. It is
visible in the frequent appearance of the P’nai
Or tallit [P’nai Or was the predecessor to ALEPH] on worshippers’ shoulders
in Reform and Conservative as well as Reconstructionist and havurah settings,
often worn by people who have no idea that it was designed by Reb Zalman in the
1960s so that each of the colored stripes would represent a different
mystically interpreted aspect of God.
The acceptance is visible in the fact that Rabbi Elliot
Dorff, rector of Los Angeles’ University of Judaism, which is a Conservative
rabbinical seminary, and Rabbi Sue Levi Elwell, who works for the Reform
movement’s Union of American Hebrew Congregations, both wrote articles for the
current issue of New Menorah, which is devoted to gay and lesbian marriage.
It is visible in the fact that Rabbi Michael Paley, one of
Reb Zalman’s early ordinees, has an important job at the epicenter of the
Jewish establishment, as executive director of synagogue and community affairs
for UJA-Federation of New York.
Rabbi Paley said that, “the whole nomenclature of Jewish
Renewal has become part of the federation world over the last 10 years,
especially the last three to four years,” in the way things are discussed in
continuity commissions and other departments.
Jewish Renewal’s impact is also visible in the fact that the
Reform movement held a meditation retreat in Arizona in early April--the
denomination’s first--and it was oversubscribed.
And it is visible in the current vogue, in liberal settings,
for exploring new God-language as an alternative from the masculine wording of
the traditional prayer book. Reb Zalman was one of the first to explore
feminine language to describe God. He also broke away from standard modes of
prayer, employing liturgical creativity that pairs off worshippers, with one
person closing their eyes while the other recites a Psalm from memory.
Yet at the same time, in many quarters there has also been a
strong resistance to the movement’s innovations.
One of those which hasn’t widely caught on is substituting
the breath sound “Yah” in prayers, replacing “Adonai” or “Lord.” Another is
addressing people with the title “Reb,” a term expressing warm respect, but one
which, especially when used to address a woman, can sound more like affectation
than affection.
There is also widespread suspicion of the validity of the
ordination conferred by Reb Zalman, who works with each student to create an
individual program.
He has done things which other movement leaders would not:
One of the rabbis he ordained, Tirzah Firestone, was at the time married to a
Christian minister.
The Reform and Conservative rabbinical organizations don’t
admit Schachter-Shalomi’s rabbis.
“There is a sense that what is happening in that community
is a watering down of tradition to meet individual needs, that it is
market-driven,” said Rabbi Joel Meyers, executive vice president of the 1,500
member Conservative-movement Rabbinical Assembly. “It’s viewed with very mixed
to negative reviews.”
“Quickie ordinations, ordinations done without people going
through an in-depth period of study and learning, weaken the rabbinate and
weaken Jewish life,” said Rabbi Meyers.
Jewish Renewal is sometimes criticized as New Age,
touchy-feely and stuck in the 1960s. And indeed, that was visible in the groovy
Grateful Dead-head-style dancing a couple of women did at the edges of the
sanctuary during a song at the recent Shabbaton at B’nai Jeshurun. It was
audible in terminology coined by Reb Zalman and used by others such as
“davvenology” and talk of a “vibrant spiritual experience.”
Still, Renewal continues to attract people, touching one
soul at a time. Many are those, who have felt, like Renewal's founders, on the
margins of mainstream Judaism.
Donna Zerner is a freelance book editor who was raised a
Conservative Jew and spent her 20s exploring Buddhist, Native American, and New
Age practices. When she first began attending services at the Jewish Renewal
Community of Boulder, Colorado, the approach felt to her like “Judaism lite,”
she said.
“There was a lot of holding hands, dancing, and looking deep
into each other’s eyes. It was just like getting high, without being grounded
in anything. I almost could have gotten that Sufi dancing,” she said.
“Jewish Renewal tends to attract people who have very little
background in Judaism. Many have no idea what kashrut or Shabbat or the holidays are about. Most people come to
our once a month Friday night services. There isn’t a lot of discipline and
understanding of the structure that I think is important to Judaism.”
Zerner has stayed with it, though, because in Jewish Renewal
she finds a spirited joy that she hasn’t found anywhere else in Jewish worship.
“When I found Jewish Renewal, it was a wake-up call. It
showed me that Judaism can be inspiring and spiritual, rather than irrelevant.”
“Jewish Renewal is lively. It’s a lot more fun. It’s more
egalitarian and there’s more creativity. I like sitting in a circle when we
daven, rather than have the rabbi on the bimah
[a raised platform]. I like praying outside, acknowledging nature, and
practicing eco-kashrut.”
“It’s a way,” she said, “for me to feel positive about being
Jewish.”
Debra Nussbaum Cohen
is a staff writer for The Jewish Week.
