31. Shul isn’t camp;
spirituality isn’t clapping hands. Shul
is a place for personal and communal transformation, a place where the self and
selfish give way to the Self and selfless. This requires four things: stirring
poetry, transcendent music, deep dialogue, and silent contemplation. If these
aren’t the building blocks of your services, you are building the Tower of
Babel.
32. Being Jewish
isn’t the point. The point is to be a blessing to all the families of the
earth (Genesis 12:3). Being Jewish is the way to achieve the point. If you’re
not teaching people how to be a blessing, what you are teaching them is a waste
of time.
33. Tevye is dead. Fiddling lasts forever.
Fiddling on the roof is a metaphor for living creatively, even joyously, with
uncertainty. This is the existential reality Judaism must address. To focus on
dead fiddlers is idolatry. Jews make a fetish of the past; Judaism is all about
living justly in the present.
34. Don’t make
Judaism relevant. Judaism—doing
justly, loving kindly, walking humbly—is
relevant. If you have to make it relevant, whatever “it” is isn’t Judaism.
35. Don’t mistake
praying in Hebrew for praying. Just because people can pronounce the Hebrew
words in a siddur doesn’t make those
words meaningful. Just because they can say the prayers doesn’t mean they are
praying. Prayer is an act of transformation, moving from self to Self, from me
to we, from taking to giving to sharing. Teach your people to pray and not just
how to read the script.
36. Stop reading
responsively. Stop reading in unison. Stop reading. Pray.
37. Don’t turn
Judaism into ancestor worship. God told Abraham and Sarah to get away from
their land, their kin, and their parents’ house so that God might show them
where to live and be a blessing (Genesis 12: 1–3). If you are teaching an
imitative Judaism based on land, kin, and parents, you are undermining the very
core of God’s call.
38. Don’t deify
Debbie. Debbie Friedman (z”l) was
good, but over using her music is making it kitsch.
39. Got ecstasy?
Ecstasy—being lifted beyond the self to the Self, beyond the finite to the
infinite—is the goal of worship. Music is vital to this enterprise, but not all
music. Think Ode to Joy; Gospel;
Klezmer; Ravi Shankar and Yehudi Menuhin; Shlomo Carlebach; Yofiyah; and Shefa
Gold. Don’t rely on camp songs and sing–alongs; make music that soars.
40. Sell the shul.
I don’t mean market your synagogue; I mean put your synagogue on the market.
Survey after survey shows that people find spirituality in nature not in
concrete shells. Sell your building, rent office and classroom space, and hold
services in the wild. Or rent the local planetarium: there is nothing like
praising the Creator of the Universe while sitting in a plush recliner in a
dark air–conditioned room at the center of the universe.
41. Tell your people
the truth. Religion is made up. God is made up. Tradition is made up. Torah
is made up. Talmud is made up. Knowing Judaism is all made up frees you and
them to make it up better.
42. Have faith in
doubt. Faith fills you up; doubt empties you out. When you are full of
faith there is no room to grow. When you are rooted in doubt you are always
ready to bloom.
43. Add Jesus to your
Yahrzeit list on “Good Shabbos.” Don’t
let Christians rob us of one of the most famous Jews who ever lived. Reclaim
Jesus as a first century God–intoxicated Jewish mystic.
44. Add Spinoza to
your Yahrzeit list (he died on February
21, 1677). Don’t let the Orthodox rob us of one of the few Jews of the past who
might still speak to Jews today.
45. Stop trying to apply
Bronze Age mores to Digital Age lives. You wouldn’t go to a doctor who
practiced Bronze Age medicine, why expect your congregants to come to a rabbi
who promotes Bronze Age religion?
46. If science disproves your faith, change
your faith. If your faith has to hide from science, chances are your faith
is weak and your knowledge of science even weaker.
47. When
participating on an interfaith panel, ask your fellow panelists if they think
you’re going to Hell. Rather than
nod politely as your fellow panelists pretend that religion isn’t the problem,
ask them if their God will let you into their Heaven when you die. This will bring
the conversation to a quick close, and you can get home in time to do something
more interesting.
48. Stop pretending
there is only one God. When asked if Jews, Christians, and Muslims believe
in the same God, be honest and say “no.” HaShem and Allah have no kids (OK,
maybe HaShem has a daughter, see Proverbs 8:22, but Allah is definitely childless),
while God the Father is a father because he has a Son. Neither Allah nor HaShem
ever sent Jesus to earth to die for anyone’s sins, and neither HaShem nor
Jesus’ Dad revealed the Qur’an to Muhammad. There is nothing wrong with us believing
in different Gods. There is something wrong in denying that we do so.
49. Stop stressing
over the future of Jews and Judaism. If Judaism dies out it’s because Jews
stopped caring about it. If Jews stop caring about it it’s because it isn’t
worth preserving. If you don’t want Judaism and Jews to die out tomorrow, make
being Jewish and living Judaism of value today.
50. Never let your
congregants see you in shorts. They have a hard enough time taking you
seriously as it is.
6 comments:
Hurried here to read "the rest of the story."
Truth - Love It.
-g-
Rami, you're spot on. Jeff told this was great...and he too was spot on. Kol haKvod.
Steph
Great series! What you say is amazingly comparable to what's happening among Christians as well. I forwarded your advice to some of my friends who are pastors. I know Protestant and Catholic pretty well, but your posts gave me some enlightenment. In the first post I had to google siddur and Oneg Shabbat. In this last post I had to google Debbie Friedman. Everything else I could immediately relate to, and the google diversions were a great education as well.
“Stop pretending there is only one God.” My initial reaction was to disagree with this one spiritually, but I re-read it and the item 41 and I have to agree that one should accept there are multiple religious manifestations of the “God entity”, if one must belief in any. However, sadly, it leads to my “God entity” is better than yours.
You pretty much said it all. I laughed until I started coughing.
About Shul as Camp and the singing...
this is the same thing as the preschooler comment...
There are people who just can't stand meditating. It seems to forced and taking the time to make it work just seems like wasting Time. For them, there needs to be a place where they learn to connect to something that gives them that same outer/inner body connection. The same is said of that unison reading: Just hearing all those voices connected together can do the same thing. It's taking the form of a modern Niggun.
Classical music isn't always the answer. With its mathematical patterns and configurations classical music can make someone very tense instead of making them calm, If the purpose is to feel calm, so you are relaxed enough to think or just be, then for them Debbie Friedman or Pete Seeger or even Black Sabbath does the trick. There are more than one way to skin a cat and that's what is offered in our houses of worship these days. A teacher learns to stretch her methods to fit the learning styles of the audience she is with. If you are really there to help yourself and others with their jouneys then you modify your teaching.
I think the thing a teacher needs to learn is when to quit trying to be something she isn't. What's more important is that students need to learn what being a good student is. Keep moving on, asking questions and finding information along the way. For the student, never mistake your Rabbi for your God. Both of you will wind up damaged and bruised. Everyone is on a journey. We meet people along the way who help us and then move on.
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