COVER STORY Pt. 3: Rabbis should be role models

One of Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan’s major contributions to modern Jewish identity was to note that Judaism has always placed the emphasis on belonging over believing. By focusing on peoplehood and the notion of belonging to the Jewish People as the normative criteria for defining oneself as a Jew, the founder of the Reconstructionist approach to Judaism was articulating the way most Jews in the modern period self-identify. But more than that, Rabbi Kaplan also captured the traditional uniqueness of Judaism as being more than a religious faith between the individual and God. 


See also:
Do intermarried rabbis have a future?
Intermarried rabbis aren't the answer


Judaism has always been about the creation of a collective identity, of being part of a family, a tribe or, in Rabbi Kaplan’s terms, a civilization, sharing in a culture and way of life. From the very outset, Abraham was not an individual seeker of God – he did not go on his spiritual journey alone. He went together with his wife, Sarah, his nephew Lot… “and the persons they acquired in Haran.” The rabbis understood this (anachronistically) as referring to the converts they had led to embrace the one true God – Abraham converted the men and Sarah the women.

This midrash tells us two things: first, that Judaism was a family affair. The ideal model was for the whole family to share in and be engaged with the project of creating a Jewish way of life. Secondly, it tells us that this family was, from the very beginning, open to the idea of welcoming outsiders to join in and embrace their shared values and goals. It was never merely ethnic, it was always about creating a shared ethic.

The goals of Judaism were traditionally also focused more on the welfare of the collective than on the individual. Unlike other religious systems that focus on the salvation of the individual, in Judaism the individual traditionally found his or her fulfilment in the collective life of the people. Our messianic hopes were always for the return of the collective People of Israel to our homeland, and for the establishment of world peace and universal justice.

The notion that rabbis could or should offer a model of Jewish life that allows for a radically atomized notion of spirituality, creating within their own family a variety of individual choices that might offer the children a non-Jewish option for their personal fulfilment seems to be a shocking, radical break with the very essence of Judaism. 

It indeed seems to be following the trend of our increasingly individualized culture, as described by sociologist Robert Putnam in Bowling Alone: the collapse and revival of American community and psychologist Sherry Turkel in Alone Together: why we expect more from technology and less from each other. Just when Judaism needs most to exercise its traditional role as being counter-cultural, it would be a tragic mistake for a rabbinical school to follow the drift of the wider secular society in which we find ourselves.

While it is true that many Jewish families are making this choice, and we make every effort to reach out to them, welcome them and help them to promote Jewish families when that is their aim, it is quite another thing to claim this is the ideal model. The statistics over the past decades have proven otherwise. 

While it is possible to have some success in having committed Jewish children emerge from interfaith families, the success rate is not high. It is far from the majority of children raised in interfaith families who go on to build strong, committed Jewish families of their own.

Once rabbis are seen as positive models for creating interfaith families, there is no longer any argument to be made for in-marriage, or for encouraging conversion for the sake of promoting a stronger, shared Jewish identity in the family. 

We need rabbis to be models for creating a commitment to building a Jewish way of life that promotes the communitarian ethos of Jewish Peoplehood. We need this not just because it’s in our own tribal interests to do so. We need this as a model for creating a better world for all human beings.

Rabbi Ron Aigen is spiritual leader of Congregation Dorshei Emet, Montreal’s  Reconstructionist synagogue.