Categories
Conservative Judaism Education

Is a Day School’s Closing a Wake Up Call for the Conservative Movement?

With the recent closing of the Metropolitan Schechter Academy, a Solomon Schechter High School in New Jersey, questions are arising about the state of Conservative Jewish day schools in our country.

The Metro Schechter Academy was the result of a merger between the Schechter High School of New York and the Schechter Regional High School in Teaneck, New Jersey in 2005. The Manhattan-based high school began in 1992 at the Jewish Theological Seminary with the support of then Chancellor Ismar Schorsch. I remember how nice it was seeing the Schechter high school students in the Seminary halls on a daily basis when I began rabbinical school at JTS during the 1998-99 school year (and enjoying their annual theater productions each year in Feinberg Auditorium). The school moved to a Central Park West location in 2000.

As part of a Solomon Schechter Day School fellowship through the William Davidson Graduate School at JTS, I had the opportunity to work at the Schechter High School in Manhattan during the 2001-02 school year. I spent my time working with the admissions office and re-creating the school’s website. I was very impressed with the school and surprised that the enrollment was not higher. Situated in New York City, however, this school had significant competition from other private Jewish day high schools (Ramaz, SAR, and the new Heschel High School).

It’s a shame that the merged Schechter high school wasn’t able to open for the currrent academic year. However, I must disagree with the New York Jewish Week article that this school closure might be a “wake up call” for Jewish education in the Conservative Movement. This case is clearly an anomaly due to financial issues that were beyond the school leaders’ control.

Jewish day school education is growing in our country. My wife taught at the Schechter high school in West Orange, New Jersey and came home each day impressed by the high level of academics. In Michigan, the Frankel Jewish Academy of Metropolitan Detroit has grown significantly each year since its founding in 2000 with 34 students. While it is a non-denominational Jewish high school, the majority of its more than 210 students are from Conservative Jewish households and many are graduates of Detroit’s Solomon Schechter-affiliated Hillel Day School, which is celebrating its 50th year. Other Conservative day schools around the country are also growing in enrollment.

With the support of the new Seminary Chancellor Arnie Eisen and the Davidson School’s dean Rabbi Steve Brown (both quoted in the NJ Jewish Week article), Jewish day schools in the country will continue to grow.

(c) Rabbi Jason Miller | http://blog.rabbijason.com | Twitter: @RabbiJason | facebook.com/rabbijasonmiller
Categories
Conservative Judaism Interfaith Medicine Orthodox Judaism Pluralism

Noah Feldman-Gate

Now that Barry Bonds has tied Hank Aaron’s home run record and everyone will be talking about what the reaction will be when he actually breaks the record, perhaps the debate over the Noah Feldman NY Times Magazine article will die down!

It’s now been two weeks since Noah Feldman’s “Orthodox Paradox” diatribe was published and just about every rabbi has given a response to it either in print or in speech. Every Jewish newspaper editor and blogger has sufficiently analyzed it. The Orthodox Union is even calling Noah Feldman “the Jewish Jayson Blair” and calling on the New York Times to apologize for publishing Feldman’s article.

Noah Feldman - Orthodox ParadoxIt is somewhat humorous that what has made Noah Feldman a household name and the water cooler conversation is not any of his impressive career accomplishments, but rather his frank bashing of modern Orthodoxy.

Here are some interesting responses to Noah’s article (pro, con, and everywhere in between) with some quotes or my comments (in italics):

Gary Rosenblatt, Editor of The Jewish Week – New York
“Poor Noah, one may think on first read. How primitive and unfair for his former yeshiva to refuse to publicly acknowledge his successes. But as one continues to read Feldman’s essay, we see he is the one being unfair in expecting to be lauded by a community whose values he has rejected and in crafting an intellectually dishonest case for himself. Still, the implicit and more lasting question raised by the essay is how should the Jewish community in general, and the Orthodox community in particular, deal with Jews who have married out?”

Not all intermarried Jews are snubbed by the Orthodox (The Jewish Week NY)
Wait a second here. Aren’t there several Orthodox organizations out there that honor and glorify intermarried Jews? The answer is yes — especially if they are celebrities and/or wealthy. This article explains that while institutions like Aish HaTorah and Chabad might be opposed to intermarriage, they have no qualms about honoring intermarried Jews like Kirk Douglas, Barbra Streisand, Henry Kissinger or Ari Fleischer. Weren’t King Solomon and Queen Esther intermarried Jews? There are some very interesting quotes in this article by my teacher Rabbi Irwin Kula of CLAL who explains his organization’s decision to appoint an intermarried lay-leader as its new chairman. And while most Conservative synagogues wouldn’t publicly acknowledge an intermarriage, this article mentions a Modern Orthodox shul in NYC that invites the non-Jewish spouse to the bimah for life-cycle events.

Photo wasn’t cropped after all (The Jewish Week – NY)
Uh oh. Turns out that the Maimonides School didn’t actually crop or Photoshop Noah and his Korean gentile girlfriend (now his wife Jeannie Suk) from the group photo at the alumni event. In actuality, several people were left out of the published photo because there were too many faces to fit into one photo. But does it really matter? Noah still made his point.

Avi Shafran on Noah Feldman and Shmuley Boteach (Jerusalem Post)
“To my lights, it doesn’t seem extreme in the least for a Jewish school to make clear to an intermarried alumnus that, despite his secular accomplishments, it feels no pride in him for his choice to intermarry. I wouldn’t expect an American Cancer Society gathering to smile politely at a chain smoking attendee either. It is painful, no doubt, to be spurned by one’s community. It is painful, too, for a community to feel compelled to express its censure. Sometimes, though, in personal and communal life no less than in weightlifting, only pain can offer – in the larger, longer picture – hope of gain.

An Open Letter to Noah Feldman by Rabbi Norman Lamm of Yeshiva University (The Forward)
“True, we no longer ‘sit shivah’ for a relative who married out. But all of us experience poignant anguish when a brilliant and once fully committed son of our people, who earnestly believes he is not rejecting his upbringing, effectively does just that in justifying his transgression and holding us up to ridicule.”

Rabbi Benjamin Blech (Aish.com)
“Responding with no condemnation, the Jewish world would in effect be condoning. If we cherish Jewish survival, in this instance, that is an impossible alternative.”

“[Noah Feldman’s] words bring to mind Solomon Schechter’s pithy response to a plea for religious moderation: “It reminds me of the American juror who said ‘I am willing to give up some, and if necessary all, of the Constitution to preserve the remainder.”

Shira Dicker rips Noah Feldman (“Bungalow Babe in the Big City” blog)
Shira Dicker, married to Columbia University prof and author Ari Goldman, is a writer and publicist who handles the PR for the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly.

“By the end of the magazine piece, any sympathy I might have had for him had evaporated and in its place was sheer disgust. Reading postings on the blogosphere, I know that I am hardly alone.

Oh, Noah, you meander through childhood memories that are hardly unique to anyone who attended Orthodox Jewish day school. So the Maimonides School had to cloak their obligatory sex ed in the prohibitions of negiah, hauling out the philosophy of Feinstein in a multi-volume set to suppress your teenage hard-on. Big freaking deal. So you got reprimanded for holding hands with a girl? Been there, done that. So, your rebbes said stupid, parochial things about…goyim? Wow. I never heard of that happening.

There is a Talmudic debate about saving the life of a non-Jew on Shabbat? How fascinating that this took place so many centuries ago! Of course it is as dated as most of the discussions in the Talmud about women. Isn’t the proof of the pudding in the fact that Jewish doctors are a worldwide institution, saving the lives of Jews and non-Jews without discrimination on Shabbat, on Yom Kippur, on every day of the week????

Do you hope to reveal some ugly, hidden face of Judaism to your shocked readers who previously had such a positive view of Jews? A pile of gentile corpses outside of Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, all the unlucky goyim in Upper Manhattan who had the misfortune to get sick on Shabbos?

Which readership are you writing for, anyway? The subscribers to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion?[Ouch!]

Andrew Silow Carrol, Editor of the New Jersey Jewish News (Jerusalem Post)
I once read an essay by a woman who said she “observes Shabbat.” On Saturday mornings on the Upper West Side, she sat on a park bench with her newspaper and “observed” her friends and neighbors going to shul. Her joke came back to me as I read the now infamous essay on modern Orthodoxy by Harvard law professor Noah Feldman[…]. I’ll leave it to others to debate the Jewish community’s treatment of intermarriage. I was less intrigued by Feldman’s relationship with his wife than I was by his relationship with Judaism.

(c) Rabbi Jason Miller | http://blog.rabbijason.com | Twitter: @RabbiJason | facebook.com/rabbijasonmiller
Categories
Conservative Judaism Globalization International Relations

United Synagogue Moves to New Digs and Gets Some International Neighbors

Rapaport House - 155 Fifth Avenue - Manhattan - Rabbi Jason Miller's BlogIn December 2006, I was one of the first to post about the announced sale of the headquarters building for United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism (USCJ), the congregational arm of Conservative Judaism worldwide. Well, now it has been reported that USCJ sold the Rapaport House (155 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan) for $26.5 million and acquired new headquarters on two floors at 820 Second Avenue. I’m sure this was quite a return on investment for United Synagogue since it acquired 155 Fifth Avenue (pictured) some three decades ago.

USCJ plans to move into its new location in early 2008, but what is most interesting is who its neighbors in the building will be. The article at GlobeSt.com lists both Trinidad & Tobago‘s and Peru‘s permanent missions to the UN as well as the government of Croatia. I did a quick web search, however, and also learned that the permanent missions to the UN for Nepal, Nicaragua, Micronesia, Korea, Liberia, and Madagascar also rent space in this building. And, as if that’s not enough global representation to make things interesting, Syria‘s UN mission is also based in the building. In fact, there have been numerous rallies in front of this building demanding that Syria release Israeli hostage Gilad Shalit.

Furthermore, the United Nations Federal Credit Union now occupies floors 10 and 11 — the two floors that will soon be USCJ’s home, so the UN will become United Synagogue’s temporary tenant until it relocates.

So not only will the international leaders of Conservative Judaism be sharing their elevator rides with the Peruvian ambassador (USY Peru/Israel Pilgrimage anyone?), they will also be the landlord to the United Nations’ Bank. Interesting!

And I hear there’s also a strong possibility that the Syrian Arab Republic can use United Synagogue’s restroom key on all Jewish holidays when USCJ’s offices are closed (sounds like an even trade if Israel can keep the Golan Heights). This could be the first step toward peace in the Middle East. I’d love to be a fly on the wall in that lobby.

(c) Rabbi Jason Miller | http://blog.rabbijason.com | Twitter: @RabbiJason | facebook.com/rabbijasonmiller
Categories
Conservative Judaism Israel JTS Reform Judaism

PM Olmert gives Arnie Eisen Smicha

There was some controversy last year when the president of Israel refused to call Eric Yoffie “Rabbi” when the leader of the Reform movement visited his office. Now, in an effort not to repeat that controversy, the prime minister of Israel seems to be playing it safe and calling every religious leader “Rabbi” — whether they are or not. An article in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz reports that when Arnie Eisen of the Jewish Theological Seminary, David Hartman of the Shalom Hartman Institute, and David Ellenson of Hebrew Union College visited Prime Minister Ehud Olmert this past week, all three men were called “Rabbi” even though Eisen is not an ordained rabbi.

The beginning of the article is quoted below. The complete article is here.

Until ignorance divides us
By Yair Ettinger (Haaretz.com)

Last Friday, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert received three guests in his office, all with the double-barreled title of rabbi and professor: They are well-known scholars among American Jews and fairly well-known in Israel: Rabbi David Hartman, who heads the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem and is associated with liberal Orthodoxy; Rabbi Arnie Eisen, the chancellor of the Conservative movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS); and Rabbi David Ellenson, the president of Hebrew Union College (HUC), the Reform Movement’s rabbinic seminary.

Far from the discriminating eyes of the ultra-Orthodox, the earth beneath the prime minister’s office did not tremble when Olmert addressed each of his conversants as “rabbi” and devoted time to those who would like to find loopholes in the wall put up by the rabbinic establishment.

The three found in Olmert a favorable view of initiatives to “increase Jewish identity among Jews” in Israel and abroad. They declined to elaborate on the content of the meeting, but a talk with Rabbi Ellenson, one of the most influential leaders among American Jewry, indicated which way the wind is blowing.

During his visit to Israel, Ellenson had a hard time getting over the depressing impression made by senior Israeli figures a few days before his departure from the United States at an international gathering of university presidents. On Saturday night, he related, a rabbi recited havdalahh [marking the conclusion of Shabbat] for all the participants, and Ellenson noticed the Israelis. “One of them, the president of a very large university in Israel, told me he had never seen such a service and never even heard of its existence.”

He was greatly saddened, said Ellenson. “I hate the word ignorance, I prefer to be more gentle, but I know that’s how it is. What does it mean that an intellectual doesn’t know what havdalah is? How would you describe it? And he is not the only one among the Israelis.”

(c) Rabbi Jason Miller | http://blog.rabbijason.com | Twitter: @RabbiJason | facebook.com/rabbijasonmiller
Categories
Conservative Judaism Israel Pluralism

Jewish Agency Prioritizes Acceptance of Reform & Conservative Conversions by Chief Rabbinate

This is an important Op-Ed from the Jerusalem Post about the Jewish Agency for Israel’s (JAFI) new push for the Israeli Chief Rabbinate to finally recognize conversions performed by Reform and Conservative rabbis. The complete article can be accessed here.

Politics hurts religion

The Jewish Agency for Israel, whose Board of Governors is meeting in Jerusalem this week, is expected to consider a resolution calling for official Israeli recognition of non-Orthodox conversions.

Speaking more broadly on the issue of pluralism in a recent interview with The Jerusalem Post, JAFI Chairman Ze’ev Bielski said: “The time has come for the government and the rabbinate to show the millions of people from the Reform and Conservative movements that they are a part of us.

“I don’t think that anyone can take the responsibility for losing out on so many people who might want to come on aliya and be integrated into Israeli society. … There are, after all, so few Jews in the world. We should not all be fighting each other and we should look for common ground.”

Orthodox representatives argue that it is the other streams that have compromised Jewish unity, by changing the standards for observance and conversion to such a degree that there is dwindling agreement over who is a Jew, let alone how to be Jewish.

Whether they are right or not, this response, together with Bielski’s explanation that pluralism is needed to encourage aliya, show that the discussion of the issue continues to miss the point. Israel’s Orthodox establishment has done more to discredit Judaism in the eyes of the non-observant than to advance it.

The Israeli rabbinate jealously guards its sole right to administer marriage and divorce for Israelis, so that even Orthodox rabbis who come from overseas to perform a marriage must stand beside – and pay – a representative of the rabbinate to gain official sanction for the wedding. It also holds the keys to kashrut certification and burial for all Jewish Israelis.

Yet this rabbinate, with its monopoly on life cycle events, expresses next-to-no view and offers little guidance on such deeply Jewish issues as social justice, the minimum wage, redeeming a captive soldier, the ethics of war, individual spirituality and much more besides. Where it isn’t trying to enforce its jurisdiction as an institution, the rabbinate is almost always, tragically, silent. Indeed, the only encounter most Israelis have with Judaism is with a disinterested rabbinate clerk paid by taxpayers to whom he does not see himself accountable.

It would be better, both for Jewish unity and for the advancement of Judaism in Israel, if the Orthodox gave up their official monopoly over religion in Israel. Even better, there should be no official rabbinate to monopolize. Far from compromising the Jewishness of the state, eliminating the rabbinate would enhance it, since rabbis from three streams would be free to serve their own communities in Israel as they do in Diaspora.

But it isn’t enough to call for a separation of religion and state. What’s needed is a specific type of separation.[…]

The mixture of religion and politics has been harmful to Judaism here. For the sake of Jewish unity and the advancement of a religious agenda, the link should be severed.

We hope the Jewish Agency’s Assembly and Board of Governors send this message to the Jewish world they represent. And we hope the Orthodox delegates, those who care deeply for the influence of tradition and ancient wisdom on modern Jewish life, courageously stand at the vanguard of this vital initiative.

(c) Rabbi Jason Miller | http://blog.rabbijason.com | Twitter: @RabbiJason | facebook.com/rabbijasonmiller
Categories
Conservative Judaism Detroit Education JTS

Danny Nevins, Heksher Tzedek & Indiana Jew

There’s a nice article in the Detroit News about my rabbi, Danny Nevins. He will become the next dean of the Rabbinical School at the Jewish Theological Seminary this summer.

The sidebar of the article links to his personal website, the teshuvah (responsum) he co-authored on Homosexuality in Judaism, and even a Detroit News audio file of him being interviewed by the Detroit News reporter.

Of course, the author had to provide the requisite pessimism about Conservative Judaism: “Nevins comes to the position at a time when the population of Jews is declining in Metro Detroit and across the country. It also is a time when Conservative Judaism has lost some of its appeal as a logical alternative to the more liberal Reform Judaism and the strict interpretations of Orthodox Judaism.”

Thankfully, Rabbi Nevins countered this sentiment with an optimistic view of the Seminary’s objectives for the future. He said, “Every challenge is an opportunity, [and] I think at the Jewish Theological Seminary we are viewing this as an opportunity to re-examine our message, our structure and also the quality of what we are producing.” This positive outlook is exactly what the new chancellor, Arnie Eisen, has been preaching since accepting the chancellorship.

Perhaps the recent New York Times article about the Conservative Movement’s new Heksher Tzedek was the best news coverage Conservative Judaism has received in years. Kudos to Rabbi Morris Allen for working on making this new certification for food produced in a socially just way a reality.

I wouldn’t call it negative publicity, but I did find it funny that the History Channel‘s Josh Bernstein (“Indiana Jew”) explained that he didn’t go to JTS for rabbinical school because he was turned off by the fluorescent lights. In an article by Suzanne Kurtz on the Hillel website, the star of the hit show “Digging for the Truth” and the author of a book by the same name, describes studying Jewish texts at Pardes in Jerusalem for twelve hours a day.

“So satisfying was the [Pardes] experience, when his year of study was up, Bernstein paid a visit to the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York to see if rabbinical school might be his next move.

‘But the fluorescent lights ruined it for me,’ he explains. ‘I told the rabbis at Pardes I’m going to get my wisdom in the desert.’ Their reply: ‘It was good enough for the Patriarchs.’ “

(c) Rabbi Jason Miller | http://blog.rabbijason.com | Twitter: @RabbiJason | facebook.com/rabbijasonmiller
Categories
Conservative Judaism Kosher

Conservative Movement’s Kosher/Justice Stamp of Approval in New York Times

A great article was published in the NY Times today about the hechsher tzedek of the Conservative Movement. Last month at the Rabbinical Assembly Convention in Boston, the hechsher tzedek received formal endorsement from the RA, the national association of Conservative rabbis. The article can be accessed here.

(c) Rabbi Jason Miller | http://blog.rabbijason.com | Twitter: @RabbiJason | facebook.com/rabbijasonmiller
Categories
Conservative Judaism Orthodox Judaism

Quoted in the Wall Street Journal

I was quoted in the Wall Street Journal today in an article about the mechitza (the physical barrier that separates men and women in an Orthodox synagogue. Like many other times when I’ve been interviewed for a newspaper article, I spoke with this reporter for well over an hour on about three separate occasions only to have a few words actually attributed to me. However, it is a well-written article about an interesting subject. Based on the article, one might think that I had something to do with the decision at Agudas Achim to not use a mechitza, but I arrived on the scene years after that decision was made and the shul decided to affiliate with the Conservative Movement.

HOUSES OF WORSHIP

Prayer Behind the Partition
By LUCETTE LAGNADO
March 23, 2007; Page W13

As a little girl, I was both enamored of the women’s section at the back of my Orthodox synagogue and tormented by it. I lived for Saturday mornings, when my mother and I left our Brooklyn apartment and walked around the corner to sweet, friendly Young Magen David and the cozy partitioned area reserved for women only. It was its own world: intimate, charming, a place that encouraged friendship as well as prayer. Safe at last, I’d think, as I put the rough schoolweek behind me.

I’d take a seat next to my mother behind the wooden filigreed divider with clover-shaped holes. My immigrant congregation, made up of families who came from the Middle East, was so small that it was easy to follow the service from our area, and when the Torah scrolls were passed around you’d see women’s hands poking through the holes to touch the holy scrolls. Yet I also bristled at the divider and longed to escape to the men’s section. The men seemed to have such fun taking part in the sacraments and being counted as part of a “minyan,” or quorum of 10, necessary for the service.

The purpose of a divider — or “mehitzah,” as it is known in Hebrew — is to make sure that men aren’t distracted from their prayers. The custom of separate seating dates back to the Second Temple in Jerusalem, when congregants became so lighthearted at a Jewish festival that it was deemed necessary to segregate the sexes.

Fast-forward to 20th-century America, where the Reform and Conservative movements made a point of allowing families to sit together. The mehitzah all but vanished from their grand new temples sprouting in suburbia. With the rise of the women’s movement, the divider became almost a symbol of female oppression — antiquated and vaguely contemptible. Even some Orthodox shuls did without a formal partition, according to Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb of the Orthodox Union in New York.

They’ve made an odd and tortuous comeback, these dividers, fueled in part by a resurgence of Orthodox Judaism. Some other branches of Judaism, including ones that did much to try to include women, are hurting — while Orthodox Judaism is booming. “People in this crazy world are looking to be anchored…they are looking for greater discipline,” says Rabbi Marc Schneier, who runs the Hampton Synagogue in chic Westhampton Beach.

In the past few years, the Orthodox Union, which oversees hundreds of synagogues in America, formally decreed that any congregation calling itself Orthodox must have a formal divider. The OU’s decision has been convulsive in some places. Congregation Agudas Achim, in Columbus, Ohio, thought of itself as Orthodox, yet didn’t have a mehitzah. When confronted on the issue by the OU it engaged in a passionate debate, according to its rabbi, Jason Miller, and ultimately refused to put in a divider. It even switched to the Conservative movement. These days, says Rabbi Miller, the thriving Agudas Achim is “100% egalitarian.”

Beth Tfiloh in Baltimore went in the other direction. Years back, when it relocated to the suburbs from downtown, the congregation decided on separate seating but no partition. The concern was that a divider might alienate young families lured by synagogues where everyone sat together. But the tide has turned, says Rabbi Mitchell Wohlberg, and a new, more observant, generation would have left if it were not for the partition. At the same time, he adds, congregants “didn’t want to see women move to the back of the bus.” The solution? A “tasteful” mehitzah made of glass, wood and brass.

Rabbi Wohlberg is impatient with complainers. “Many of the people who say they want to sit with their husbands and wives at services, they don’t play golf together, they don’t have weeknights together,” he remarks. “All of a sudden, they can’t live without each other when they come to service?”

The OU’s partition policy calls for women to sit apart from men with a “tangible, physical separation.” But debate rages: Should it be six feet tall, or four? Should it be opaque, or allow for some transparency? Meeting the requirements of Jewish, or Halachic, law, isn’t as daunting as it seems, says Westhampton’s Rabbi Schneier. His mehitzah is so discreet as to barely be noticeable.

Rabbi Raphael Benchimol, of the Manhattan Sephardic Congregation, points out that the partition isn’t only important for men: “Women shouldn’t be distracted either.” Yet I learned early on that dividers did little to stop flirting between the sexes and have often wondered if separation didn’t encourage romance. I mean, what is more desirable than a forbidden object, the person you glimpse beyond a divider?

These days, with no little shul around the corner, and no mother to lead me there, I have the choice to go and pray anywhere. I can go to one of those vast and fashionable egalitarian temples; yet I choose to attend the same type of intimate service I did as a child. I am always on a quest for the ideal women’s section. I may have found it in my little shul, Chabad of Southampton Jewish Center, on Long Island. A few plastic potted plants make up the divider. It’s Halachic, but not intimidating.

When I come in the Rabbi waves hello. I put the rough workweek behind me and begin to pray.

Ms. Lagnado, a Journal reporter, is author of “The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit,” a memoir, to be published in June by Ecco/HarperCollins.

(c) Rabbi Jason Miller | http://blog.rabbijason.com | Twitter: @RabbiJason | facebook.com/rabbijasonmiller
Categories
Conservative Judaism JTS

Rusted Root has Cantorial Roots

In July 2005 I saw one of my favorite bands, Rusted Root, in concert at The House of Blues at the Mandalay Bay hotel in Las Vegas. Following the show, the members of the group signed autographs and met with their fans as they usually do. The first one to come sign autographs was Liz Berlin (in photo), one of the singers of the group.

I spoke to her for a few minutes and she signed a CD insert to “Rabbi Jason.” One might think that signing an autograph for a rabbi would prompt her to mention that her father is a cantor (a Conservative cantor no less).

I only learned that her dad was a cantor after getting a link to an article about her on the PittsburghLive.com website. I received the link in a Google Alert because the words “Jewish Theological Seminary” appeared in the article. Apparently, Liz Berlin’s dad, Rick Berlin, decided to attend cantorial school at the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1996. That means that we must have overlapped by a couple years since I started rabbinical school in 1998. I searched the Web for a photo of Cantor Rick Berlin (in photo) and sure enough… I remember him. He was ordained in 2000.

I’m not sure if Liz Berlin is Jewish or not (mother is Mary), but in the article she is quoted as saying that she realizes her wedding ceremony to her husband, Mike Speranzo, several years after the birth of their child was “not the Christian thing or the religious thing, according to standard religious practices, as far as the dynamics of the family, to do it that way.”

Here’s the section about her dad the cantor:

Before she could pursue music, however, she had to convince her parents it was the right thing to do. That turned out to be surprisingly easy. Rick and Mary Berlin attended the group’s second show — at the Graffiti Rock Challenge in 1991 — and realized Rusted Root was not a whim or indulgence.

“It was the first time we heard the band, and they’d only been together a week or so,” Mary Berlin says. “Sometimes you know something is special. I knew Rusted Root was going to make it. I just knew it. I had that intuition.”

“She was absolutely right in dropping out,” Rick Berlin says.

So inspired was Berlin by his daughter’s success — he calls Liz “my hero” — that he decided to change his career.

“It was because of her willingness to take a chance that I decided to take my risk in 1996,” says Rick Berlin, who shut down a business to attend the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York to become an ordained cantor. “There were risks, and it wasn’t easy, but her success was one of the things that made me take that chance.”

(c) Rabbi Jason Miller | http://blog.rabbijason.com | Twitter: @RabbiJason | facebook.com/rabbijasonmiller
Categories
Conservative Judaism JTS Keshet

Conservative Judaism on PBS

The PBS Religion and Ethics NewsWeekly program did a segment recently on Conservative Judaism and Homosexuality. Rabbi Elliot Dorff (left), Rabbi Joel Roth, rabbinical student Ethan Hammerman (right), and a gay couple with three children were all interviewed.

I was surprised by this quote from JTS Talmud professor Joel Roth: “Jewish law is clearly without ambiguity opposed to any sexual behavior, either between men or between women.” While I understand his argument, I’m not sure that it can be said that the Halacha is clearly without ambiguity with regard to the view on lesbian acts. However, each of these respondents were only given the chance for a quick sound bite, and Rabbis Roth and Dorff have both written and spoken so much on the subject that it is difficult to summarize their view in a sentence or two.

Both the transcript and the video are available on the PBS website.

(c) Rabbi Jason Miller | http://blog.rabbijason.com | Twitter: @RabbiJason | facebook.com/rabbijasonmiller