Imagining the Jewish Future: Essays and Responses

299 Pages·1992·48.501 MB·English

by  David A. Teutsch

J!nagining
the
Jewish
Future
Essays
and
Responses
Edited by
David A. Teutsch
Imagining the Jewish Future
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Imagining the Jewish Future
Essays and Responses
Edited by David A. Teutsch
STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS
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Published by
State University of New York Press, Albany
© 1992 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Production by Cathleen Collins
Marketing by Bernadette LaManna
No part of this book may be used or reproduced
in any manner whatsoever without written permission
except in the case of brief quotations embodied in
critical articles and reviews.
For information, address State University of New York
Press, State University Plaza, Albany. N.Y., 12246
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Imagining the Jewish future : essays and responses I edited by David
A. Teutsch.
p. em.
ISBN 0-7914-1167-2 - ISBN 0-7914-1168-0 (pbk).
I. Judaism- United States- Forecasting-Congresses. 2. Jews
United States-Intellectual life-Forecasting-Congresses.
3. Jews-United States-Attitudes toward Israel-Forecasting
Congresses. 4. Israel and the Diaspora- Forecasting-Congresses.
5. Jews- United States-Social conditions- Forecasting-Congresses.
I. Teutsch, David A., 1950-
BM225.142 1992
296' .0973'01-dc20 91-36445
CIP
10987654321
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Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction David A. Teutsch I
Section I. Religion and Theology
1. God, Prayer, and Religious Language
Essay: Arthur Green 13
Response: Judith Plaskow 29
2. Tradition and Religious Practice
Essay: Deborah E. Lipstadt 35
Responses: Michael Paley 45
Everett Gendler 52
Section /1. Culture and Education
3. Jewish Education: Crisis and Vision
Essay: Jonathan Woocher 61
Responses: Kathy Green 74
Joseph Reimer 78
4. Creativity and Community: The Jewish Artist's Experience
Essay: Marcia Falk 83
Responses: Richard A. Siegel 93
Omus Hirshbein 99
5. Jewish Literacy: Will More and More Be Known
by Fewer and Fewer?
Essay: Hillel Levine 103
Response: Rela Geffen Monson 113
Section Ill. Israel and World Jewry
6. Are American and Israeli Jews Drifting Apart?
Essay: Steven M. Cohen 119
Response: Martin J Raffel 134
7. Facing the Jewish Future
Essay: Philip M. Klutznick 139
v
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vi Contents
Section Jv. Family, Community, and Morality
8. Jewish Family Ethics in a Post-halakhic Age
Essay: Martha A Ackelsberg 149
Responses: Esther Ticktin 165
Elliot N. Dorff 169
9. The Coming Reformation in American Jewish Identity
Essay: Egon Mayer 175
Responses: Richard 1 Israel 191
Deborah Dash Moore 197
10. Social Justice: Reenvisioning Our Vision
Essay: Arthur Waskow 201
Response: David A Wortman 212
11. The Synagogue and Caring Community
Essay: Lawrence Kushner 219
Responses: Burt Jacobson 232
Lee Friedlander 239
Section V. An Integrated Vision
12. Theology and Community
Essay: Arnold Eisen 247
Response: Jacob 1 Staub 261
Notes 269
Authors' Biographies 277
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Acknowledgments
T his book arose out of discussions sponsored by the Reconstructionist Rab
binical College, at a conference coordinated by the most able Barbara Nuss
baum. She was assisted by Susan Kitty, Gail Gibbs, Cindy Krassenstein, Geri
Marcus, and Joan Marie Somers.
The conference was made possible by generous support from the SamuelS.
Fels Fund, Mandel Family Philanthropic Fund, Myer and Rosalie Feinstein
Foundation, and Canadian Friends of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College.
It also received support from Charlene and Howard Gelber, Paul Hitlin, Herman
Levin, and Harry Stern. Robert Kritz, then RRC's vice president for develop
ment, worked with the funders.
The planning committee chaired by the editor helped to give shape to the
conference and this volume. The ongoing support of Arthur Green, the president
of RRC, and of Jacob Staub, the dean of RRC, have been invaluable in com
pleting this book. Muriel Weiss, Gail Gibbs, and Evelyn Gechman were thor
ough and uncomplaining in their typing of the manuscript. Reena Spicehandler
helped with copy editing. Lillian Kaplan and Joseph Blair did proofreading.
Rosalie Robertson of SUNY Press was unfailingly helpful and cheerful in
seeing the book through to publication.
My wife Betsy and children Zachary and Nomi have uncomplainingly
cleared space for me to finish this book. Their constancy and caring are the staff
on which I lean; their presence is my greatest joy.
The views expressed are those of each essay's author. While I am grateful
for the helpful advice of many people in shaping this volume, the final respon
sibility for it is mine alone.
vii
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Introduction
David A. Teutsch
Dreaming and planning strike most of us as inimical to each other. Planning
the focused action of applying what we know and what we can do to what we
want to achieve-seems so concrete. Dreaming, by contrast, seems soft. Imag
ination-images that are the product of fantasy-seems far removed from the
calculated measures that can affect the future. Yet I believe that dreaming and
planning go hand in hand.
This book is about imagining the Jewish future because only imagina
tion can inspire the images, ideas, and feelings from which can emerge the mo
tivating vision needed to shape our future. Every student of political science
knows the power of "creating facts." Things that are unthinkable before they
are done become the basis for reorienting everything else thereafter. This is true
of the effe.cts of wars and inventions no more than of new ideas. When the
U.S. Supreme Court struck down the "separate but equal" doctrine in Brown v.
Board of Education, the once unthinkable process of integration began in Amer
ica's schools.
Visions and dreams can also change history. When in reaction to the Holo
caust and a variety of post-World War II events the United Nations voted for
partition and allowed the creation of the State of Israel, the prime cause was a
2,000-year-old dream. Thus imagination, ideas and hopes can do much more
than shape plans; they can motivate the planners to fulfill them. The goal of this
book is not to plan based on what we know. It is to take the time for imagining
the Jewish future as we wish it would be.
We cannot know what the future will bring. Yet most efforts at preparing
for the future assume a certain knowledge, as if to place odds on what will be.
That assumption is the basis for strategic planning, which attempts to anticipate
problems and devise ways to overcome those new difficulties and challenges.
Though the goal is to help us keep up in a world changing with increasing speed,
planning often fails to predict many key changes with which we have to cope.
Forty years ago who would have predicted the impact of television, com
puters, and jet travel on the average American's life-style? And who would have
predicted the enormous economic influence of Japan, the emergence of Islamic
fundamentalism in Iran, or the move away from communism in the Soviet Union
and Eastern Europe? Efforts to predict the technological and political future
I
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2 David A Teutsch
rarely meet with much success. The way that cultures regenerate themselves is
just as difficult to anticipate. At the time of the destruction of the Second Tem
ple, who would have predicted that I ,000 years later rabbinic Judaism would be
flourishing? And who 100 years ago would have thought plausible the existence
of a Jewish state where Hebrew is the daily language and Jerusalem is the cap
ital? Nor did most Jewish leaders realize 40 years ago the full extent to which the
Holocaust had seared the European and American Jewish psyche. Or how the
existence of Israel would shape the identity of every American Jew. Equally un
predicted is the renewed desire for Jewish belonging and spiritual sustenance,
which is steadily becoming more common today. These examples should lead us
to distrust the perennial cry of each generation that its successor is more degen
erate, dissolute, and destructive of society than any before in history. The future
seems obvious only when it has become the past.
This book is not about prediction. Instead, the writers are together attempt
ing to imagine the Jewish future. Imagining here means conjuring up images of
what we wish the Jewish world were like right now. This kind of dreaming is
critical to a different kind of planning-normative planning, or idealized design,
an approach discussed by Russell Ackoff in Creating the Corporate Future. Nor
mative planning requires us to agree on a picture of what we would like to be
come and to acknowledge the seriousness of the problems we face. The gap
between the current situation and the one we wish we were in is the planning
gap. Filling it requires us to describe the impediments to living our vision. Such
impediments may be political, economic, sociotechnical, or scientific. Once the
impediments have been identified, we can determine what it will take to over
come them and construct a plan with the means to do so. At that point the vision
may need to be adjusted slightly to fit what we are capable of accomplishing.
The resulting plan gives us a way of approaching the future that contains the
t:h::menls uf transformation.
We can consciously shape our tomorrows only if we know what we want
them to be. That is why it is so important to imagine the Jewish future as we
wish it would be, face the impediments to our visions, and energize the leaders
of the Jewish community so that they plan to live in the light of our shared
visions. Intended to aid in that process, the essays in this volume were prepared
for a conference sponsored by the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in
December 1988, which laid the groundwork for the planned launching of RRC's
Institute for the Jewish Future. Through policy studies, conferences, and con
sulting for Jewish organizations, the institute hopes to suggest new approaches
to the moral, cultural, political, and religious issues confronting the American
Jewish community.
Each of the essays included here addresses issues relevant to the institute
and to anyone interested in the future of American Jewry. Together they portray
a critical reality about the Jewish experience-the interrelatedness of all of the
aspects of Jewish experience and culture. It is obvious that American Jewry has
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