If American Jewry has anybody even close to playing the role of “chief rabbi,” or at least being a rabbi whose job is to take the broadest possible view of Judaism’s existence in this country, one could argue that person is Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman.
Zimmerman, who will be scholar-in-residence and the Sanford J. Ettinger Memorial Lecture speaker at Congregation Shalom Dec. 3-5, is vice president of Jewish Renaissance and Renewal for the United Jewish Communities, the umbrella organization of the Jewish federations of North America.
In that position, as he explained in a recent telephone interview, Zimmerman and his staff members work on “anything to do with Jewish identity formation,” including formal and informal Jewish education; Israel experience programming for all age groups; and many other efforts to get Jews to engage with the Jewish people and Judaism.
And his department does this work in collaboration with people throughout the Jewish religious spectrum, Zimmerman said.
“There is no other place in the country where you have representatives at a common table from the [Orthodox] Aish HaTorah to the most humanist forms of Judaism,” he said. “Even rabbis who will not sit with others on a board of rabbis will sit at our table together because we are about communal concerns and have a communal agenda.”
It is a position from which a rabbi might be able to perceive challenges facing the whole of American Jewry today. Zimmerman discerns several.
“We are seeing two things happening in national Jewish life at the same time,” he said. “We have pockets of renewal and great excitement and energy and Jewish commitment emerging.
“At the same time, we have a large group that is disinterested and uninvolved, who are going the other way, just opting out. That’s one major challenge.”
A second challenge, he said, is the finding in the most recent national Jewish population study, sponsored by the UJC, showing that “there is a diminishing commitment to Israel and Jewish peoplehood in the 35 and under population. That is a very dangerous finding.”
Geographic ‘repositioning’
Another challenge has to do with “the need to create some form of outreach to the many interfaith families now part of our community,” he said. “How you do that without compromising principles and what you stand for is a real challenge.”
Then there’s the question of how to work with “emerging communities.” Zimmerman said the UJC’s population study found that American Jewry is “repositioning itself geographically,” with Jews leaving the Northeast and Midwest for sections of the country extending from California across the Southwest and Gulf of Mexico and along Florida’s eastern coast, with some additional growth in places like Las Vegas.
These often-new communities “lack the historical structures that most of the Midwest and Northeast communities have had,” Zimmerman said. Las Vegas Jewry, for example, has jumped in the last 20 years from 15,000 to 20,000 people to some 80,000 today.
“How do you work with a community that lacks infrastructure and relationships, lacks the professional and volunteer leadership necessary to build a strong community?” Zimmerman said.
Moreover, some of these are “sprawled communities” that have Jews living “all over the place” with no “central addresses or neighborhoods,” he said. “How do you help people who get lost in that?”
In fact, the Jewish community seems to be participating in a general trend. “Like politics, all religion is local,” Zimmerman said. “People identify not with a national anything, but with their synagogue, their JCC, even their own friendship circle.”
“And this is a national phenomenon,” he continued, as individuals seek and develop a “highly personalized, privatized identity.” So “how do you connect people to something beyond their private lives?”
This writer noticed that Zimmerman left out of his list of challenges the growing divisions and tensions between the various Jewish religious movements. Zimmerman acknowledged the omission, saying that “we’re building this shared table” and “proceeding carefully and cautiously” to create “a place where all the different segments of the community can come together and voice concerns and discuss those issues.”
“I believe we are on that journey,” he said.
Zimmerman is a Reform rabbi who has been past president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis and of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.
He and Rabbi Ronald Shapiro, senior rabbi of Shalom, have known each other as colleagues for many years. Shapiro told The Chronicle that Zimmerman is a “well-learned scholar of Judaism in many spheres,” a “warm and engaging person” and a “captivating speaker” who can “blend intellectual manner with human warmth and love.”
Zimmerman will speak on Friday, Dec. 3, 7:30 p.m., on the topic, “The New Jewish Renaissance: Engaging the Various Generations in Jewish Life.” He will lead morning Torah study on Dec. 4; and on Dec. 5 at 10 a.m. will discuss “Reflections and Visions of American Judaism: 350 Years of History and ___ Years of Future.”
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