When Rabbi Mordechai Liebling graduated from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in 1985, there were “two or three jobs” available for rabbis like himself who wanted to do social justice work, he said.
Today, there are many more such positions, including the one Liebling now holds — director of the relatively new Social Justice Organizing Program at the RRC in Philadelphia.
Speaking at a private home during the evening of Jan. 10 to an audience of about 30 — mostly members of Congregation Shir Hadash, the Milwaukee area’s only Reconstructionist movement synagogue and the sponsor of the event — Liebling said that in the last half dozen years there has been “an amazing proliferation of Jewish social justice organizations.”
One witness of this has been the Jewish Social Justice Roundtable, Liebling said. It had about a half dozen member organizations when it was started in 2009.
According to its website, it now has 25 member organizations plus 21 “allies”, one of which is the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation.
Liebling also said that not only the RRC, but also the Conservative movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary and the Reform Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion are teaching courses in social justice organizing to their rabbinical students.
As a result, there is “a new cadre of a couple of hundred rabbis trained in community organizing work,” he said.
This appears to be happening at just the right time, according to him. Liebling said that the mainstream U.S. Jewish community is not as interested in social justice activism as it used to be.
The mainstream community “is more settled in some ways” than it used to be, and “wealthier people are in charge,” he said. As a result, “the mainstream Jewish community has given up its long history of being a champion of social justice issues.”
Into that vacuum has stepped “a plethora of organizations” that have come “from the grass roots,” Liebling said. The leaders of larger institutions “have been absent,” he said.
And while most synagogues in at least the liberal movements do have social justice committees, they are usually not very effective, he said.
“People do not see their congregations as a place for social justice activities,” he said. “People don’t join them for political reasons.” Moreover, because their memberships are diverse, they don’t want to alienate some members, and that has also led to other organizations forming, Liebling said.
But while it is important for there to be “a Jewish voice on social justice issues,” Liebling acknowledged that trying to make long-term policy changes can be frustrating and tedious work.
Liebling said there are three ways people can “work to change the world.”
The first is to “mitigate the harm of the social-economic system.” This can lead to such “hands on” projects as food pantries. The danger is that such projects “feel good” and provide “instant gratification,” but seldom lead to long term change.
“Judaism says hands on and policy are both important,” Liebling said.
The second is to “create alternative institutions,” to try to make “life as we want it to be,” and thereby “slowly replace” the current institutions.
The third is “change of consciousness,” altering “the paradigm of separation to interconnection,” Liebling said. It is a “delusion” that human life is about “individualization and separation.”
And Judaism recognizes this. “Judaism is about collective good, not individual salvation,” Liebling said. “The assumption is that one is part of a community.”
Each of these three is important, but while “few can do all three at the same time,” everybody can be part of the work, Liebling said.
Liebling, 66, has had a long career in social justice and organized Jewish community work. He was executive director of Jewish Funds for Justice, executive director of the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation and was for 12 years a member of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.
He is a board member of the Faith and Politics Institute and of Rabbis for Human Rights-North America. He has a son, now 23, with Down’s syndrome, and this son’s bar mitzvah was the subject of a documentary film “Praying with Lior” (2007).
Loading ...