THE DAIS AND THE PULPIT

DRESNER, SAMUEL

THE DAIS AND THE PULPIT The Tension Between Federation and Synagogue SAMUEL DRESNER A merica is not different. The goal of the American Jewish community is the very same that has stood before...

...The secularity of Federation, which leads it to discriminate against "sectarian" agencies, and the arrogance of Federation, which leads it to define other institutions as "sub-communal," result in significant mis-allocation of Federation dollars...
...The Jewish community's first and foremost objective must be to teach Torah through the subsidization of Jewish education in massive doses from cradle to grave and from the most elementary level to the great academies...
...Yes, there was growth in Federation support of Jewish education during the 1950's and 1960's...
...Some of the areas they have discussed or intend to discuss are: Jewish education, leisure time and recreation, joint programs between Federation agencies and the Synagogue, consultation by professionals of both bodies, prevention of duplication of programs, family and child care, the aged, social action, funerals and burials...
...consequently its priority must be to strengthen the Jewish mind and spirit...
...In view of the basic changes that have been taking place in the Jewish community, in view of the new perception by both Synagogue and Federation that we are now, together, on the verge of an historic opportunity which requires cooperation of us, it is time for the disparity between us to be corrected, for the misunderstandings to be repaired...
...Together with the Federation, however, this monumental advance could be achieved...
...In that struggle, there have been some significant victories...
...But no one listened...
...Federations derive from a tradition of process...
...But the Center seems resolved to meet the needs of both civilizations — the secular American and the Jewish — in one building...
...Perhaps there is even a relationship between this development and the abominable situation we now witness in regard to our near-dead...
...Morton Siegel correctly points out, not to the "communal school" but to the "communal child," every child, regardless of the school he attends...
...Federations have changed of late...
...the Torah is our book, and Judaism is our way of life...
...And, whatever the failings of the Synagogue, the very many, very depressing failings of our houses of worship, they remain the most likely protectors and defenders of Jewish substance...
...Even in its most recent and promising publication, which espouses Jewish identity and survival as top-level concerns and recommends first priority to Jewish education among local allocations, the report of the National Conference of Jewish Communal Service speaks of "identity" and "survival," not of Torah, God or Judaism...
...They are both characteristically ambidextrous...
...Why "yes," for example, to the Yiddish school which dies for lack of students, but "no" to the synagogue school which serves the majority...
...That report has been piously endorsed year after tedious year for two decades now, but the revolution that it called for has yet to take place...
...Without energetic effort towards Jewish goals, without a sense of Jewish aspiration, the Center continues its Americanization program with the third generation American born...
...That, and that alone, gives us warrant...
...a Sacred People...
...5. Jewish Education_ Jewish education should be communally supported...
...But time breeds insensitivity...
...When Jewish big-givers were told that every religious denomination except the Jews had given America one or more colleges and that it was their patriotic duty to do likewise, the response was electric...
...In view of the results of the recent Jewish population survey in which 4 percent of American Jewry affirm a secular identity as against 82 percent who affirm a religious identity, which institution serves only part of the Jewish population and which serves the Jewish population "as a whole," those agencies which seek to establish a secular culture apart from religion or the Synagogue which embraces the faith of Israel...
...Finally, we must understand that in Judaism the way to the universal is often through the parochial...
...T write as a "Synagogue man," and a Synagogue man writes with diffidence...
...If the public schools are free, supported by taxes and not related to user's fees, then why not the schools of Jews, the people of education...
...consequently its priority must be physical defense...
...Federation has a responsibility, Dr...
...Jewish sponsored nonsectarian" was Brandeis's non sequitur calling card to the larger Jewish community...
...if the Synagogue believes it has those words, it must teach them more diligently to those who speak...
...We are a religious people, historically and presently...
...The Center continues, as Marshall Sklare put it, to revolve "around its vision of building a secular Jewish culture . . . splitting the Jewish atom of religion and culture...
...Expression of the Jewish civilization is program-matically peripheral...
...It thus avoids for itself the earnest problem confronting the American Jew: How should the Jew utilize his extracurricular hours of freedom...
...But this is not an essay on blame, nor is it a plea for a restoration of the stature of the Synagogue...
...This should not be done through the service of volunteers, but rather with the same sense of professionalism as the hiring of psychiatrists or building contractors, until a synthesis is achieved between Judaism and the particular agency work...
...The goal of the American Jewish community is the very same that has stood before every other Jewish community, in every land, in every age: to become a K'hillah K'doshah...
...2) "to live a holy life under His everpresent Kingship," and (3) "to stand witness to the living God and His word against the idolatries of the world...
...no question that these organizations (i.e., the Synagogue, et al...
...Until now, the pattern has been to offer a token threefold representation to the rabbinate...
...Judaism is not parochial...
...In fact, such support doubled between 1966 and 1972...
...the Synagogue by accepting the Federation as the central administrative agency of the Jewish community and offering full cooperation...
...Federation must come to answer, "We are God's people...
...The possibilities inherent in such discussions are immense and long overdue...
...Surely it will be more challenging, more rewarding, than holding the fort has been...
...the Federation pie grew rapidly, education's slice a bit more rapidly...
...I know, after all, that we are poorly positioned to cast stones, be they the first or the second...
...Of course, this is a vital area of importance...
...If asked, "Who are the Jews...
...But that doubling took place during a period when all Federation allocations for local needs increased by two-thirds...
...Why, if it was "nonsectarian" in program, it should not be equally "nonsectarian" in financial support, or, if it was "Jewish sponsored," Judaism should not play a significant administrative and curricular role, was never explained...
...While it is the task, and the sometime wish, of the American Jewish community to become a K'hillah K'doshah, we are, in fact, something quite different — chaotic, ignorant, often vulgar...
...It is this personal element which makes Israel's social and health care institutions unique...
...now that the Jews have the ear of the world, they have nothing of consequence to say...
...The issue, after all, is not the Synagogue, nor any institution of our community...
...3. The Rabbi and Federation_ If the Federation understands the Jewish community to be a religious community, then the religious leader, the rabbi, must no longer play a peripheral role in Federation...
...In the words of Will Herberg, that goal is (1) "to receive and cherish the Torah of God...
...6. Communal Funeral and Burial The scandal of the Jewish funeral has been well documented...
...But today it is quite another story...
...Thus, homes for the aged may be beautifully built and efficiently run from the central office, hospitals may operate smoothly from the administrative point of view, but why are there so few Jewish nurses or aides...
...While "communal," that is, non-denominational, schools have been funded, synagogue schools have been neglected...
...The rip-offs, the violations of sane Jewish law, the undertaker as "therapy-counselor," usurping the role of the rabbi, have all been taken in stride...
...American Jewry faces an internal enemy of ignorance and assimilation...
...Much as we might wish it otherwise, the Synagogue is not what it should be...
...This is most obvious in the case of the Community Center...
...It will likewise require the training and appointment of those experts who can enable Federation agencies to better achieve Jewish goals...
...And, during the past 10 years, there has developed a very marked tension Hustrotiory Meredith Lightbown between Synagogues and Federation, in no small measure the consequence of the felt displacement of Synagogues from their once more prestigious position...
...as if Synagogue and adult education, religious and Hebrew schools were not struggling for priority within the Jew's leisure moments...
...After all...
...We can no longer be a secular people that politely provides for the religious element in our midst...
...If there is one area of Jewish law where the rabbi's authority would still be accepted, it is the area dealing with death and burial...
...Why is it right for Federation to fund a youth group in a non-religious setting — the Center for example — but not in a religious setting — the Synagogue for example...
...Emphatically, yes...
...Perhaps they will, some day...
...There is marked strategy in the Center's assignment of its own programming to the more casual area of relaxation...
...Prayer, kashrut, or Sabbath, for example, in the hands of trained workers, become the vehicles for dealing with the universal experiences of anxiety, gratitude or bereavement...
...His most recent book is LEVI YITZHAK OF BERDITCHEV, published by Hartmore Press...
...The two major organized forces in our community are the Synagogue and the Federation...
...The past two decades or so have witnessed the marked ascendancy of Federations in Jewish life, to the point where they now claim to be...
...Do we criticize the Federation for being "too secular...
...Every few years a hullabaloo is raised, a flurry of proposals appears, and then all returns to its customary corruptness...
...serve only certain sections of the Jewish community, i.e., that they are subcommunal rather than communal institutions...
...The issue is whether we can become a Sacred People...
...Let us consider a voucher system whereby each child would receive an amount in accordance with the kind of school he attends (perhaps $200 for one day a week, $500 for three days a week, and $1,200 for the day school child), or a per capita system whereby each school would receive an amount in accordance with its hours and the size of its enrollment...
...The struggle of the past years has been to get Federations onto a more Jewish track...
...Young American Jews have eagerly accepted the responsibility of serving in the Peace Corps or Vista in distant lands or poverty areas...
...And the Jewish community inherits and accepts uncritically the sancta of institutional anachronism...
...4. A Principle for Priorities_ "A program, service, or institution which meets a specifically Jewish need, or which fosters a specifically Jewish value or ideal, deserves the support of the Jewish community as such...
...And) it is precisely the dominant American secular civilization, daily encircling the Jewish child and adult, which finds itself most pronounced in Jewish Center programming...
...He is a member of the Task Force on Federations and Synagogues, a joint venture of the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds and the Synagogue Council of America...
...More than 20 years ago, the Janowsky report concluded that the only justification for the Center is its "Jewish purposes...
...How can we, for example, criticize the occasional vulgarity of the annual Federation campaign, of the inveterate honorees...
...It is time that the Synagogue speak with one voice: Federation's funds must go to the synagogue schools as well as to others...
...But the secular orientation of Federations continues to frame the consciousness of Federation and to inform its decisions...
...the scandal of the Jewish funeral may not be unrelated to the scandal of the Jewish nursing home...
...In other words, those programs, services and institutions which contribute to the expression of Jewish values and needs should take priority over those which do not...
...What of our own withdrawal from control of funeral and burial...
...Nowhere is there a clearer example of tradition as the funded wisdom of the ages, and nowhere is the contrast sharper between equality and exploitation, compassion and rip-off...
...Or to support institutions for the Jewish deaf, except if that institution is a synagogue for the deaf...
...8. The Judaization of Federation Agencies_ If the Federation accepts a religious definition of the Jewish community, then each of its agencies must examine on a regular basis the extent to which Judaism informs the orientation of its workers and the work of the agency itself...
...Each community should now establish such a liaison committee...
...How can we explain the failure to achieve what we must achieve, what so many of us really want to achieve...
...Admittedly, the Jew participates locally in the genus 'man,' as he does sociologically in two civilizations...
...It may seem ungrateful to call Federations to task once again...
...Shabbat, Israel, Kashrut, T'filah, Torah, and Chavurah, the Jewish community, and Jewish education are living campus issues...
...But if the rabbi is a teacher, let him be teacher to the community itself...
...The old foundations of scientism and socialism have been profoundly shaken, and there is a new quest in American Jewish life, a new search for authenticity...
...Yet the Synagogue has abdicated its role here, allowing financial interests to take advantage of the bereaved for the first time in Jewish history...
...Indeed, each rabbi contributes to that scandal each time he officiates...
...The Synagogue should be seen as having a particularly important role to play and cooperation between it and Federation agencies encouraged...
...What a tragedy if...
...There is...
...Too often, when Federation has sought to relate agency work to Judaism, it has been to the parochial aspect of it...
...in fact, criticize, when — after decades of criticism — we continue to permit orgiastic bar mitzvah celebrations, which usurp all normal procedures, which drive regular worshipers from prayer, which distort values and make a mockery of everything we claim to stand for...
...There are any number of reasons for the ascendance of Federations, chief among them the "ownership" by Federation of what has come to be the central symbol of modern Jewish life — the State of Israel...
...We have yet to meet even our more modest objective, that of becoming a vital, viable community...
...For example, what makes a Jewish hospital Jewish...
...7. Jewish Social Service_ We do not have an adequate Jewish social service, that is, a corps of persons who take upon themselves as a mitzvah the care and service of others...
...Which is "communal" and which "subcommunal...
...But they do not define...
...But the time has come for us to stop dealing from weakness, from a sense of empty survivalism, and to start dealing from strength, from the specific strength that inheres in our historic aspiration...
...If Federation presumes to speak for the Jews, it must know the words to say...
...Neither a degree from a school of Jewish studies, nor evidence of some higher Jewish education, of religious or just general Jewish commitment, is a requirement for new Center personnel...
...And so on...
...that is our destiny...
...And there is now hope that we can move towards that goal...
...But if they do, it will almost surely be because the Synagogue will have tenaciously defended the one purpose of Jewish life that makes all the rest of our effort worthwhile...
...While outward conditions may change, from the pagan empires of antiquity to the medieval religious rule of Islam and the Church, to the modern monarchies, tyrannies and democracies, the eternal role of Israel remains the same...
...Why not develop a Jewish social service for young — and old — to serve in the Jewish community here and elsewhere — in hospitals, in homes for the aged, in small communities that have no rabbi or teacher, in newly developing exurbia where young families cannot afford to build the institutions that strengthen the inner community, in synagogues and schools and the Jewish community in general...
...Do we speak here of the 'needs' of a Jew which would include, of course, his needs as a human being, or do we have in mind specific 'Jewish' needs, those which arise by virtue of his identification with Judaism and the Jewish people...
...Jacob Neusner...
...But, whatever the reasons, it is time to consider whether the displacement of the Synagogue is healthy, whether a new partnership based on a new parity, on a new understanding of the historic purposes and possibilities of each of these two major institutions of Jewish life is now required...
...Is it concern for Jewish observances in the hospital...
...and are widely perceived as in fact being, the central address of the American Jewish community...
...I am convinced that the rabbinate simply does not have the courage to do what needs to be done: to assume complete control over funeral and burial, as has always been the custom throughout Jewish history and is indeed the case today in every land but our own...
...The state of Israel faces an external enemy of military force...
...before God...
...Surely it will become us more, and we will become more...
...Federation activists may think they deserve a respite, having withstood the criticism leveled against them in recent years and having actually moved to meet their critics...
...The term 'Jewish needs' is equally amorphous...
...The issue is the substance of Jewish life...
...Furthermore, this statement on the "structure, function and priorities of the organized Jewish community," excellent in many ways, excludes the Synagogue from the so-called organized Jewish community...
...A word about the danger of parochialism...
...of all that we do...
...What they were not told, of course, was that the reason those churches founded colleges in the first place was so that the denominations' faith might find an active place in the college's curriculum and campus life, which was not to be the case at Brandeis...
...2. Local Committees on Synagogue-Federation Relations The Federation established a national task force to explore Synagogue-Federation relations several years ago...
...the Federation honoree is featured but once a year, the Bonds honoree perhaps once a month, but our hypocrisy of featuring a child we will likely not see in the Synagogue again is a weekly affair...
...This will require not only in-service training for staff, but the credentials of Jewish learning and commitment, as well as social work skills, in future hiring...
...Or to finance a nondenominational, that is, "communal," school, but not a synagogue school that is denominational and therefore "subcommu-nal," though its doors may be open to all and appealing to most...
...Or to aid agencies for Russian Jews, except if they want to form a synagogue...
...But is it not, as well, an understanding of pain, of suffering, of impending death, working with the family, encouraging the Synagogue to relate to the patient...
...There is a valuable ingredient in Judaism which, translated into the dealing with human problems, can apply to the non-Jew as well as the Jew...
...These are, admittedly, bold proposals, difficult and controversial...
...But now the growth has slowed considerably, and Jewish education remains in grave financial crisis...
...Each has high goals for the Jewish community, and each sees itself as the central instrument in the achievement of such goals...
...I propose that the combined rabbinate of each community discuss with their local Federations the possibility that together they assume full responsibilities for funerals and burials, with all profits accruing to Jewish education...
...We need to relate the universal teachings of Judaism to human problems, as we have tried to do for over 3,000 years...
...It was no surprise that one of the first campus manifestations of the radical-drug-sex counterculture emerged at Brandeis...
...Accordingly, the following steps should be taken: 1. Declaration of Interdependence of Federation and Synagogue Federation and Synagogue should acknowledge each other as partners in the Jewish community: the Federation by affirming a religious definition of the Jewish people and designating a significant role in their deliberations to the local religious leadership...
...Only) these institutions serving the Jewish population as a whole are Jewish communal services...
...The only truly Jewish hospital in Chicago, for example, is the Lutheran Hospital, which stresses concern for the patient as a person and employs 15 chaplains, including one Jew...
...At the present time 85 percent of Jewish children of high school age and 40 percent of elementary school age receive no Jewish education at all, and most of the rest are poorly instructed...
...But the real issue is this: When will the words "Judaism," "God," and "Torah" find their way into Federation pronouncements, not merely as the respected position of one section of the Jewish community, but as the normative description of the Jews...
...Until those words find a natural place in their vocabulary, the dilemma will remain...
...The blunt fact is that of the $725 million which Federations in this country raised in 1974, $15 million — 2 percent — was allocated to Jewish education...
...The real issue of Jewish life is not an issue between Federation and Synagogue...
...Thus, in one measure, the community could again become a "holy" community, a K'hillah, the Chevra Kadisha could be reestablished in a dignified and proper fashion, the Synagogue could work together with Federation and a frightful scandal would be halted...
...If we were meant to be, and if we want to be, a Sacred People, let us get on with the task...
...Those were the early days...
...it is an issue between the Holy and the Profane, it is about our having the courage to assert from the dais as well as from the pulpit that we are a K'hillah K'doshah, a Sacred People...
...Or, in the words of Harold Schulweis: "Two terms, 'leisure' and 'meeting the needs ol the Jewish Community' are the most frequent root expressions of Center rationale...
...and had something to say to mankind...
...One illustration of this by now established fact: During its early years, Brandeis University was a hotbed of Jewish self-hatred, pinpointing the problem of segregating Jewish students for non-Jewish purposes...
...However, all agreed that it was excellent public relations...
...It has, of course, narrow, specific concerns such as the Hebrew language, kashrut, and the land of Israel...
...Judaism remains, as Abraham Heschel observed, "the least known religion...
...The issue is the meaning of Jewish life...
...One speaks sprawlingly of leisure time as if all of Jewish life were not comprised of choices of activities within leisure time...
...they facilitate, they manage, they plan...
...But it likewise has universal concerns such as work, grief, temptation, the child, the parent...
...Israelis give three years for army duty...
...Life has conquered theory...
...let rabbis serve, on their merits as scholars, as teachers, as devoted Jews, and let them serve in central positions — as chairmen of important Federation committees, indeed as presidents of Federations...
...But satisfying the needs of those clients who keep the Sabbath or the dietary laws is far from exhausting the relevance of Judaism...
...Such thinking is unacceptable...
...The turned-on Jewish students of Brandeis have overcome the neutrality of the administration, and it is the students more than the administration or even the faculty who are responsible for the fact that Judaism and Jewishness now are vital elements of almost every undertaking...
...Secularization affects both the dead and the dying...
...For centuries the Jews, shut up in their ghettos, perfected their souls Samuel Dresner is Rabbi of Beth El Congregation in Highland Park, III...
...Lud-wig Lewisohn went so far as to accuse the school of using a Jewish quota in order to guarantee gentile enrollment...
...Instead of dropping out of college "to travel" or "to find oneself," Jews could spend a year in a Jewish service corps that might lead to a life of Jewish social service, and would certainly aid the Jewish community and give a new dimension of meaning to the lives of the volunteers...
...But those which do hot should not demand our special support, though as citizens of our respective communities we may wish to aid them...
...Is it employing Jewish doctors or treating Jewish patients...
...Yet, for all the change, there is still a misallocation of Federation dollars and of Federation priorities...
...Thus we learn that the gymnasium - leisure time Center and the Christmas-but-not-Chanukah-decorated hospital are Jewish communal agencies, but the one institution which millennially has determined whether or not there was a Jewish community at all, the Synagogue, where the worship of God, the study of His Torah and concern for His people have taken place, is relegated to a "subcommu-nal" level and is not part of the "organized Jewish community...
...It is even conceivable that an agency staffed by Jewishly illiterate or even antagonistic Jews, serving Jewish clients, may in effect be a "non-Jewish" agency (encouraging intermarriage, late abortions, premarital sex, even conversion out of Judaism), while another agency staffed by those who have a sound Jewish orientation but counseling non-Jews may be a "Jewish" agency...

Vol. 1 • December 1975 • No. 5


 
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