Given that the festival of Purim was only days away, listeners might have expected that Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, would talk about the holiday at the beginning of his presentation.
They might not have expected that he would describe the holiday’s heroine, Esther, as a model of “adaptive 21st century Reform Judaism.”
Jacobs set out his case to the some 100 people or more than heard him at Congregation Emanu-El B’ne Jeshurun on March 13, a few days before the festival began. He said Esther presented an example for several reasons, including:
• She was a woman, embodying how the Reform movement has become “fully inclusive of women in all aspects of Jewish life.”
• She was intermarried, reflecting how in modern Jewish life intermarriage “is a reality like gravity,” and she still maintained loyalty to Jews and Judaism. “I see every day the incredible leadership and power of interfaith families in Jewish life,” Jacobs said.
• She was courageous and willing when necessary to risk “everything, including her life” to save the Jewish people.
• She “kept her Judaism quiet” and fit into the culture around her, but when it was necessary for her to come forward, “she had not a hesitation in the world,” Jacobs said.
Jacobs spent most of the rest of his presentation describing how the Reform movement is embarking on a process of “adaptive change.”
He distinguished between “technical” change and “adaptive” change. An example of the first is taking an antibiotic to cure strep throat. An example of the second is revamping an entire lifestyle after open heart surgery.
The Jewish community, he said, is “at a moment when technical fixes are not going to get us very far… Many of us work with an outdated understanding of who we are.”
Today, the U.S. Reform movement, headed by the URJ, is the largest Jewish religious movement in the country. According to the “Portrait of Jewish Americans” released by the Pew Research Center in 2013, 35 percent of U.S. Jews identify with the movement, compared to 18 percent Conservative and 10 percent Orthodox.
Nevertheless, “there are more Jews outside the walls of our institutions than inside,” said Jacobs. But instead of lamenting this, the situation could be “an incredible adaptive opportunity,” he said.
Jacobs said the Reform movement is working on three key areas:
• “Engaging the next generation.” Jacobs pointed out that some “80 percent of our young people disappear” between the time of their bar or bat mitzvah celebrations and 12th grade.
“From the time kids are born, we need to build a host of on-ramps into Jewish life,” Jacobs said. The movement is reexamining its programs of formal and informal education, camps and Israel program and thinking about “how to knit them all together into a coherent whole.”
One example has to do with changes in the Reform movement’s youth organization, the North American Federation of Temple Youth or NFTY. Sixth graders can now join, and members do not have to belong to a synagogue, Jacobs said.
During this part of his presentation, he acknowledged the presence of Milwaukeean Andrew Keene, the national president of NFTY, saying he is “what we call a first class Jewish leader — smart, creative and unbelievably dedicated.” (See April 2013 Chronicle.)
• “Catalyze congregational change.” The movement is “piloting new ways to organize and fund synagogues,” Jacobs said.
Research is showing that the membership dues and tuition models have not been the only ways synagogues have supported themselves, he said. “We want to learn what is working and what is not.”
One possible new area for synagogues to implement is nursery school programming. Engaging families with very young children is critical, said Jacobs, because “that’s when families are thinking about ‘How should we be Jewish? Should we be Jewish?’”
Bringing a toddler into the synagogue doesn’t just affect the kid, it influences and shapes the whole family, he said.
• “Expand our reach beyond the walls of the synagogue.”
“We have got to figure out how we can work more in partnership with other parts of the Jewish world,” Jacobs said. “Was Esther looking out only for Jewish people just like her? No.”
He described how the Reform movement worked with the Conservative movement on religious pluralism in Israel, such as the establishment of an egalitarian worship space at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, a process still developing.
He also described how NFTY and BBYO will be holding their coming conventions in Atlanta at around the same time and will be doing some activities together.
“In one sentence, what are we trying to do?” Jacobs concluded. “We’re trying to grow and deepen.
“We have to grow larger because there are more of us to bring close. But if we just get larger and thinner and less committed, it’s not going to matter very much.”
Jacobs also went to Madison on March 14 to be the featured speaker at the 75th anniversary celebration of Temple Beth El.
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