EDITOR'S NOTEBOOK
Lighting Our Way
Boston
ou define a Jewish neighborhood by its borders,
language, lifestyle, values and causes.
The ability to energize Jews — bringing neigh-
bors closer together and giving them reason to
grow Jewishly — also is relevant.
. So is the level of commitment to Israel, social justice and
Jewish learning. The length of time people have lived there is
relevant, too.
But whether your surroundings make you feel Jewish is per-
haps most important. And that doesn't just mean living near a
synagogue, a Jewish Community Center, a
Jewish bookstore or a kosher butcher, bakery
or restaurant.
It also requires some personal effort.
For example, parents who keep a Jewish
home — lighting the Shabbat candles, cele-
brating the major holidays, assisting with
Hebrew school homework — contribute
immeasurably to their family feeling Jewish
ROBERT A. where they live as opposed to just at syna-
gogue.
SKLAR
More and more Reform Jews, who once
Editor
drew their spiritual vigor from the synagogue
or not at all, now consider "home" the center
of their spirituality.
This is especially true in metro Detroit.
Rob Weinberg, on staff at the Reform movement's teaching
school, the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of
Religion (HUC-JIR), says Reform Jews are experiencing a
"paradigm shift."
They are moving away from seeing Judaism as "something I
have to go to" to seeing it as "something I live," says
Weinberg, the Los Angeles-based director of the Experiment
and Congregational Education Project of HUC-JIR's Rhea
Hirsch School of Education.
y
Need To Reconnect
I got to thinking about the changing face
of the Jewish neighborhood while covering
the Union of American Hebrew
Congregations' 66th general assembly here
in Boston. The UAHC represents 914
Reform synagogues in North America.
Rabbi Josh Elkin led one of the Shabbat
Rabbi Elkin
study luncheons, on "Recreating the Jewish
Neighborhood, An Opportunity to
Strengthen Our Community."
In many Jewish neighborhoods, said Rabbi Elkin, executive
director of the Boston-based Partnership for Excellence in
Jewish Education, "the sense of being connected has already
worn off" That's increasingly evident in less-observant neigh-
borhoods, where reliance on driving has limited the opportu-
nity to interact with other Jews.
So, the rabbi said, we've got to work harder than ever just to
retrieve what we had before the advent of suburbia — when
our urban neighborhoods "felt" Jewish.
One of Judaism's sharpest pluralistic thinkers is Rabbi
David Hartman, founder of the Shalom Hartman Institute in
Jerusalem and someone Rabbi Elkin likes to cite. In the publi-
cation Contemporary Jewish Thinkers, Rabbi Hartman writes:
"The challenge facing Judaism today is not only whether we
can withstand our enemies, but also whether the light visible
in the marketplace radiates a profound and compelling mes-
sage."
As we celebrate Chanukah, the Festival of Lights and a cele-
bration of religious freedom, I'm reminded of the tradition
requiring us to place the chanukiah "by the door of one's
house on the outside." People who live on an upper level may
place it "at the window closet to the public domain." In this
way, Jews identify their homes for the outside world.
In times of danger, we may place the chanukiah on the
"table in the privacy of one's home." When accepted in a
community, Jews have tried to be active in secular life. When
spurned, we've moved our chanukiot, and our Jewish expres-
sions, to a private spot.
No matter how dark or bleak our road has been, however,
we've persevered. Chanukah lights have always burned as a
beacon for 'the Jewish soul.
More Than A Flicker
After Israel became an independent state in 1948, and ecu-
menism began to spread, the chanukiah
moved to a place on the global windowsill.
But is its glow truly enduring?
Writes Rabbi Hartman: "The major
question, which we must ponder on
Chanukah, is whether the Jewish people
can develop an identity that will enable it
to meet the outside world without feeling
threatened or intimated. The choice,
hopefully, need not be 'ghetto-ization' or
assimilation."
Rabbi Hartman
He then nailed it.
"We can absorb from others without
being smothered," he said, but to do so "requires that we gain
an intelligent appreciation of the basic values of our tradi-
tion."
Our great-grandparents, he said, typically were insulated by
a cultural and physical ghetto. But Jews today must engage "a
personal sense of Jewish self-worth and dignity" as a hedge
against "modern mass culture" and "cultural rhythms of the
larger non-Jewish society."
Thus, "Jewish self-enlightenment is a prerequisite for open-
ing our windows to the marketplace."
His core point: that a weave of Jewish experiences lights the
Jewish neighborhood. These experiences can be spiritual, like
studying together on Rosh Chodesh; cultural, like erecting a
communal sukkah; or social, like grieving together after a ter-
rorist attack.
"We must go beyond the physical light of the chanukiot,"
said Rabbi Elkin, "to a light of message, of values and of
insight."
Only then, he said, can we truly "absorb, as well as propa-
gate, light" in the marketplace of ideas — and recreate some
of the special qualities of a vintage Jewish neighborhood in
the sprawling suburbs.
"Unless we develop a greater sense of communiry, and a
stronger re-creation of neighborhood," Rabbi Elkin said, "we
Jews will not be able to claim this middle ground — namely,
to absorb from others without being smothered."
And the relentless gusts of assimilation will continue to chip
away ar who we are as a people.
For related general assembly coverage: pages 24 26
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