OUR COMMUNITY

24 | JUNE 16 • 2022 

C

ongregation Shaarey 
Zedek will wel-
come Rabbi Elliot J. 
Cosgrove, Ph.D., head rabbi 
at Park Avenue Synagogue 
in New York City, to the 
annual Rabbi Irwin Groner 
Memorial lecture at 7 p.m. on 
June 23 at the Southfield shul. 
Ordained at the Jewish 
Theological Seminary (JTS)
in 1999, Cosgrove earned his 
doctorate at the University of 
Chicago Divinity School. He 
is the author of 12 collec-
tions of selected sermons, 
including Tree of Life (2019) 
and Bring Them Close (2020). 
He is the editor of Jewish 
Theology in Our Time: A 
New Generation Explores the 
Foundations and Future of 
Jewish Belief. 
His essays and op-eds 
appear frequently in a vari-
ety of Jewish publications, 
including The Jewish Week and 
the Forward.
Cosgrove also sits on the 
Chancellor’s Cabinet of JTS 
and on the Editorial Board 
of Conservative Judaism. 
A member of the executive 
committee of the Rabbinical 
Assembly, he is also an officer 
of the New York Board of 
Rabbis and a member of the 
board of UJA-Federation of 
New York. 
Recently, CSZ Rabbi Aaron 
Starr had the chance to inter-
view Cosgrove in anticipa-
tion of his upcoming visit to 
Metro Detroit. Here are the 
highlights of that conversa-
tion.

Starr: You’ve titled your 
lecture “Not Your Mother’s 
Judaism.” What do you mean 
by that?
Cosgrove: I wanted to 
convey with the title the 
urgent need to ask questions 
on the Jewish docket for our 
moment, not our mother’s, 
not our grandmother’s, not 
our great-grandmother’s 
moment. I think the task of 
Jewish leadership, whether 
lay or professional, is to ask 
what the questions are the 
Jewish community faces 
today.
A great philosopher once 
wrote that we are all destined 
to live in the time into which 
we were born. Meaning none 
of us has the choice that we 
were born into this moment 
where the Israel conversa-
tion is where it is, where the 
intermarriage conversation is 
where it is, where the COVID 
conversation is where it is … 
but these are the cards we’ve 
been dealt. And so, we need 
to have an honest, open con-
versation about what Judaism 

and the Jewish people look 
like today.
Starr: What I’m most 
excited to hear is your vision 
and your thoughts on where 
we’re going as we come out of 
this pandemic period, which 
has just exacerbated, I think, 
everything else going on in 
our world. What innovations 
have you seen in Judaism 
over the last two years? And 
how do you think these inno-
vations might forever change 
Judaism? 
Cosgrove: The pandemic 
was something that none of 
us was counting on. We all 
had to pivot in 2020, and now 
we are kind of taking one step 
forward, two steps back, two 
steps forward, one step back. 
And we’re asking ourselves 
questions about what we’ve 
learned.
For example, we can get 
the same meetings done on 
Zoom that we used to have to 
travel for.
The online opportunities 
led Park Avenue Synagogue 
to have a national and, in 
some cases, international 
presence, right? I’m a shul 
Jew in my kishkas, yet I have 
had enough conversations 
with people for whom we’ve 
been a lifeline to know that 
the Jewish agenda has been 
forwarded by way of our 
efforts. 
However, I also think we 
have to privilege the in-per-
son. That’s actually the most 
active conversation we’re hav-
ing in my synagogue. We’ve 

had a tremendous run with 
our online offerings, but we 
want tuchuses in the pews.
Starr: Are you optimis-
tic or pessimistic about the 
Jewish future? 
Cosgrove: The innova-
tions over the last couple 
years have changed our 
synagogues, our lives, our 
trajectory in many ways. 
Undoubtedly, there are sil-
ver linings, right? I used to 
teach my minyan class, which 
consisted of 10 Jews and bad 
synagogue coffee. Now, there 
are 120 people studying every 
Tuesday morning. That is the 
spread of Torah. And that, I 
have to say, is a good thing. 
My fear is that a robust 
Jewish identity happens by 
way of community engage-
ment, one-to-one contact. 
That’s the secret sauce. Those 
quiet conversations you have 
when you’re collecting your 
books after an adult ed class 
or committee meeting. That 
is where the friendships are 
made. I think we have taken 
a body blow as a community 

Shaarey Zedek to present NYC’s Park Avenue Synagogue 
Rabbi (and U-M alumnus) Elliot Cosgrove on June 23.
‘Not Your Mother’s Judaism’

JN STAFF

Rabbi Elliot J. 
Cosgrove

Rabbi 
Aaron Starr

