Rabbi Irwin Kula no longer focuses on teaching the wisdom of Judaism to Jews alone.
The well-known Jewish leader who will speak in Milwaukee on Wednesday, Nov. 15, as part of the Harry & Rose Samson Family Jewish Community Center’s Jewish Book & Culture Fair, said in a recent interview that he is now reaching out to a larger audience.
Through a Public Broadcasting Television series called “Simple Wisdom” and a new book, “Yearnings: Embracing the Sacred Messiness of Life (Hyperion, $23.95) he is trying to bring Judaism’s answers to the most basic and important human needs to all Americans.
“For me there are no more Jewish questions. There are only human questions,” he said in a recent telephone interview.
Kula, who lives and works in New York City, came to this view, he said, after the terror of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in which he lost two family friends. That event, together with the extreme polarization of Jewish, American and world religious societies, has changed his perceptions.
“After 9/11 I made a decision that I would never teach Torah just to the group [i.e. Jews] again,” said Kula, who is president of CLAL — The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership and a frequent lecturer and commentator.
Referring to the polarization of the modern world, Kula said that both the fundamentalist quest for God, and the new age quest for self are full of arrogance.
“And the language we use to describe the quest is changing,” he said, making it difficult for the two groups to speak to one another and making them afraid of each other.
But both groups and all great wisdom traditions have partial truths and “I’m trying to have both sides hear each other. I’m trying to create a third way,” he said.
“The real goal, Kula said “is to make human beings better: wiser, more self-aware or conscious and more compassionate.“ And understanding the multiplicity of partial truths can help achieve that.
Adding value
Kula is concerned about whether Judaism’s wisdom actually helps us, he said.
Judaism and all great wisdom traditions are a means, not a goal in themselves, and they should offer answers to our human needs, he said.
Referring to his lineage as an eighth generation rabbi and to his yeshiva education, Kula said that he is comfortable and secure in his Judaism.
“I don’t need to be more Jewish,” he said. “I need to understand how being Jewish helps me be more deeply human.”
And this he said is the challenge for rabbis.
Today, for most Jews, Judaism is not the Torah. It’s just a group you belong to, he said.
Pointing to the fact that most American Jews say they are proud to be Jewish, but less than 40 percent affiliate with Jewish institutions, Kula notes that for the first time we have “symbolic ethnicity” — people who feel psychologically identified but who actually have little or no connection to the group.
For most Jewish leaders, Kula said, the goal is survival of the tribe, a goal that was appropriate in the post-Holocaust world but not one that speaks to young people today.
“Young people want more than just survival. They want to know: Is there wisdom here that makes us more compassionate? How do I stay in love? How do I really find happiness?”
Now, Kula believes, “there is no outside authority [deciding who we all are]. Being anything is one’s psychological right.” Therefore, he said, we have to answer the question: Does Judaism add value to our lives?
Jewish teaching must focus not on making us feel more connected to the group, but on making us wiser, more self aware and more compassionate, he said.
During its winter pledge drive, Nov. 26 through Dec. 15, PBS will air a special program based on “Yearnings,” his new book.
Kula will speak on Wednesday, Nov. 15, 7 p.m., at Congregation Shalom. The Jewish Book and Culture Fair is a program of the JCC in partnership with Harry W. Schwartz Bookshops and in association with the Jewish Book Council.
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