Rabbinate and Laity in the Internet Age

Although not its purpose, a recent series of interviews with sixty-one prominent American Jews made clear that the vast majority had only a marginal involvement with Judaism.¹ Why have so many gifted and creative people distanced themselves from an active Jewish life? Why has the synagogue not been a source of meaning for them and why has it failed to engage them at least intellectually if not spiritually?

Synagogue 2000 is a project that for more than a decade has been dedicated to a fundamental reassessment and transformation of synagogue life.² It is a project that is still ongoing and has since been renamed Synagogue 3000.³ This essay will explore an issue of relevance to this project—how to provide a synagogue environment that will make Judaism intellectually attractive for current and prospective synagogue members while strengthening their sense of Jewish identity.

The correspondent Michael Elkins once asked Moshe Dayan, "If you could have any job you wanted in government, which would you choose?" Dayan replied immediately, "Minister of Diaspora Affairs." And when Elkins asked him why that position, the secular Jew answered, "Because I am Jewish to my bones."⁴ In his autobiography, Dayan described his exploration of the floor of an ancient cave in the Negev. The scene was so meaningful to him that he used it to end his autobiography with the following lines: "It was an extraordinary sensation. I crouched on the ancient hearth. It was though the fire had only just died down, and I did not need to close my eyes to conjure up the woman of the house bending over to spark its embers into flame as she prepared the meal for her family. My family."⁵

The family (especially spouse, children, parents, grandparents) plays a critical role in the formation and expression of Jewish identity.⁶ This sense of Jewish identity was fundamental to a person like Moshe Dayan who perceived and experienced it in his bones as extending not just to his immediate family but to a family that stretched back thousands of years. An important educational mission of the rabbinate should be to instill in all Jews within its orbit a strong sense of identity to the Jewish historical family.

Congregational education is indeed the subject of the first book from the Synagogue 2000 project.⁷ The book documents the Experiment in Congregational Education (ECE) designed to transform synagogue culture so as to revitalize the traditional synagogue role as a bet midrash. It was done with the "hope that in every congregation, one type of learning would receive a special emphasis, and that is the study of Torah. Not only in the narrow sense, meaning the Five Books of Moses, but also in the broader sense of the canon of texts that have been essential to the Jewish people—including the remaining thirty-one books of the Bible, the many volumes of biblical commentary, the Talmud and other legal texts, and possibly even great works of Jewish philosophy and literature."⁸

Two recommendations will be made here in connection with the ECE project. The first involves the subject matter that should receive the greatest emphasis in the initial stages and the second involves the role of the rabbinate in helping to make the project a success.

With regard to subject matter, the issue here is not whether Torah should play a central role, but rather how it should be studied. The use of talmudic references to illuminate Torah can no doubt impress and perhaps inspire congregants, but it also can cause them to throw up their hands in despair at ever understanding such a vast and arcane body of work. It is simply too overwhelming for congregants who are still in the early stages of Jewish study. Such congregants would be better served by studying the Torah as part of the larger body of writings in which the Torah is embedded (i.e. the entire Bible), supplemented with relevant biblical commentary and archaeological findings. This would provide insight into the laws that the Israelites followed in biblical times and how the laws...