The new rabbi at Beth Elohim, the reform synagogue on Garfield place, is a thoughtful guy AND he’s blogger. How cool is that? This is from his blog at brooklynjews.com
In Brooklyn, there are a variety of overlapping constituencies who are “seeking” some affiliation and they haven’t fully been able to articulate what it is. On one level, they know what they want: a meaningful prayer experience on their own terms. And right now, they are “taking responsibility for it” by organizing the prayer experiences. But none, as yet, have fully expressed a desire to pay for it. But that’s increasingly become my message to them. Join. Pay. Very uncool–or is it?
The impression of the Inside the Boxers is usually two-fold: these young kids have entitlement and they need to grow up and join; or, we need to open our institutions to them and welcome them in, then they’ll join. The impression of the Outside the Boxers is also usually two-fold: let us in and don’t make us pay; or, let us in please and we’ll give what we can.
What I’m experiencing right now is an organic melding of the two and there is no road map for this but the instincts of the human heart. Stay open and welcoming; know when to push for responsibility.
And we’re beginning to see that as the world continues to spiral into an increasingly uncertain and dangerous place, responsibility is a fairly attractive ethical response.
Put another way, there’s no more “Either-Or” in this initiative of creating new modes in New Jewish Culture.
Today, I left a bar mitzvah and stood on the sidewalk as the kids climbed into a Stretch Hummer to take them to the party, rendering a potentially meaningful understanding of Sukkot’s message about the fragility of our Earthly existence practically meaningless. One struggles to explain, while Inside the Box, the basic principles of Jewish life, hoping to have an impact, only to be sucked into fog of the exhaust pipe of a gas guzzling Hummer, hovering haze-like Outside the Box.
Later in the day, walking up Flatbush Avenue, I looked into the window of American Apparel, which always seems empty–maybe as empty as its sex starved owner, who lures fame seeking women and men into his own mini-porn ads while wrapping himself in the Outside the Box value of “No Sweat Clothing.” God willing five years after the New Jew movement got itself all in a lather about how cool American Apparel is, maybe it’s emptiness in trendy Brooklyn is a sign that we’ve figured out the value is fair labor, not rebranding.
Ah, I’m just as guilty as any of these jokers trying all sorts of cool ways to attract young Jews.
One time, I was at an exclusive gathering in some western mountains, feeding Jewish content to some young hip media types and I had one beer too many, which in the mountains, you never want to do. The only thing that made me feel better, as you might guess, was moving things from inside to outside the box.
I was ashamed; but found comfort in Isaiah’s famous prophecy, read each year eerily close to New Year’s Eve on Parshat Shmot: “But these too are reeling with wine and dazed by liquor: priest and prophet reel with liquor, are besotted with wine and totter in judgement. Yes, every table is covered with vomit and filth, not a place is left clean…Therefore teach them one command and then another, one line and then another, a little here, a little there.”
Torah, Avodah, Gemilut Hasadim.
Learning, Spirituality, Community.
Inside and Outside.
There is no box.
Just one command and another.
One line and then another.
