Jeneration
Nov. 30th, 2009 05:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livI saw fliers in shul for an event described as a "Beit Midrash" for "young people", and since it was conveniently within range of Birmingham, decided that would be a good way to reconnect with the young, Progressive world now I'm back in England.
It was indeed an energizing and inspiring gathering of young people who are really engaged in Progressive Judaism. It did indeed include some fantastic discussions and interesting learning. There was indeed a level of Queer consciousness and generally welcoming atmosphere. A little over-programmed, but these events nearly always are. All in all I'm extremely glad I went.
Growing up I pretty much knew all the Reform and most of the Liberal rabbis in the country. I've been away for long enough that that's no longer true, (though at the same time several of my own peers have in fact been ordained in recent years!) so I was intrigued to meet R Rosen Berry, newly appointed at Beit Klal Yisrael. Her sessions ended up being heavy on the post-modernism and the words with way too many slashes, which really isn't my thing, but in spite of that, she did a pretty stellar job of facilitating really intense, wide-ranging discussions and challenging conventional ideas, and I came away realizing I'd learnt a lot even though in the moment it seemed as if she was mostly rambling about whatever came into her head. I can definitely see why she has a following, even if my own inclination is to mistrust intensely charismatic teachers.
We ended up talking about what concepts are unthinkable Jewishly, which got into a bit of how innovative you can afford to be and still have something recognizably Jewish, and a bit into why polytheism seems more threatening that atheism, even though both seem to go against the essential monotheist core principle. And lots of stuff about what Jewish identity actually means, whether it's something that you can choose or whether it just happens to you, and ways of answering the question of "who is a Jew" beyond the classical matrilineal descent model. So some of that was very practical, on the level of discussing the JFS admissions policy case, and some was incredibly personal and intense and invigorating. Also some analogies to gender and queer identity, but not too heavy on that side.
Also learned a bit with R Weiner, who was there as a sort of token Masorti (Conservative) speaker but who is always, always fascinating. He gave really interesting answers to the question of how Con Judaism stands wrt the Rabbinic / Halachic system, and impressed everyone by not doing the thing that some otherwise lovely Masorti folk tend to fall into of trying to poach right-leaning Reform and Progressive people into their movement. His view seemed to be that authority inheres in the texts but not in the people, which is interesting for a start because most people from that end of the Jewish spectrum place a lot of emphasis on the authority of rabbinical courts and individual rabbis as community leaders, and also in following traditions just because that's what people have done for generations even if it isn't textually justified. Plus he very clearly sees the texts as a human creation, which is valuable because it's stood the test of time and creates a common framework in which we can have discussions about our best interpretation of what God wants from us (as opposed to claiming that every word comes directly from God).
He said he'd like to see more textual literacy among the non-Halachic movements, which is fine as far as it goes, but to give him credit he was very open to people pointing out the practical and philosophical problems with that. Most people who are even willing to talk to a non-Orthodox audience claim to be pluralists, but I think it's a lot more genuine with R Weiner. I wasn't mad on his use of evolution and biodiversity metaphors, (not to mention where his audience carried those metaphors!) but he did seem to be genuinely humble about not knowing whether his approach would turn out to be important in the future of Judaism.
But yeah, the "Beit Midrash" did turn out to be quite metaphorical, it was almost all personal and political discussion rather than text study, much less Beit Midrash style text study. I'm not complaining since what there was was extremely good, but it wasn't quite what I was expecting from the title. R Weiner did a little little bit of Pirke Avot (the Talmudic book of philosophical aphorisms), about the five disciples of Yochanan b Zakkai. R Eliezer of Hyrcanos is compared to a well-sealed cistern (and he thinks that the way to righteousness is to have a kindly eye and avoid a grudging eye), whereas R Elazar is compared to a living spring of water (and favours a good heart and avoiding a mean heart). R Weiner explained that these two extremes represent someone who has huge amounts of knowledge but no creativity, and someone who is incredibly creative and full of new ideas but lacks stability. Both came to bad ends; R Eliezer got excommunicated for trying to use miracles to over-rule the majority opinion and for being stubborn about the fact that his interpretation was right (which it was, even God said so) to the exclusion of correct process. R Elazar went off to live with his wife in a beauty spot and expected students to come to him, but by the time they were willing to venture out of the academy and visit him, he had forgotten everything. So the ideal Judaism has the knowledgeable and the creative working together, because neither one is adequate on its own. (Also being arrogant is bad even if you are one of the greatest rabbis in history!)
On the down side, "within range of Birmingham" turned out to be a bit optimistic! I ended up taking most of 2 hours to get a local train across the city and then a taxi from the suburban station to the retreat centre. Partly the problem was a shortage of taxis due to all the Muslim drivers being off for Eid, and on top of that the satnav couldn't find the place which really is in the middle of nowhere. I retrieved the email with driving directions from my shiny phone, and it automatically detected the post-code and opened up a Google map, which helped a lot and made me appreciate technology. The centre at Barnes Close, once we found it, is another Christian Community of Reconciliation, which made me very sad about how much it's not Hengrave. Still, it was a pleasant enough place to spend a weekend although horribly cold.
And as I had somewhat feared, "young" turned out to mean mostly university students rather than people my age. I mean, nobody had a problem with me being there, but I didn't quite fit in socially and I felt I shouldn't be intruding on their processes of self-discovery and making the transition to thinking of themselves as adults. The other issue was that the event had not been as well advertised as it should have been, with a result that nearly all the participants were personal friends of one particular Cambridge student (and there were only a dozen anyway). It is quite clear that Cambridge non-Orthodox Jewish student life is amazingly vibrant at the moment, so it was very good to connect with those people. The highly organized girl's other contacts are people who have been very heavily involved in the Reform youth movement RSY, and are just reaching the age of growing out of that and wondering what comes next, wanting something more satisfying than just going to Saturday services at the mainstream synagogues. (Lots of them were kids when Screwy was a youth leader, so I had the usual thing of being his less famous sister, but that's ok too.)
Everybody said it would have been better if we'd had a more diverse group (particularly including Liberal/Progressive and Masorti participants to match the Liberal and Masorti leaders). I do agree that would have been a good thing, but in another way it was really good to have an unmixed group of people who are all definitely and committedly Reform and very knowledgeable about that. I'm completely in favour of Jewish pluralism, but with a weekend like that you could spend the whole time agonizing over finding a modus vivendi that all the participants would be comfortable with, and not have any energy left for actual learning. For example, the publicity materials suggested that we would "observe shabbat in public spaces" (which is the Limmud approach), but in fact the conference almost completely ignored the halachic definition of shabbat. We did have a discussion about it, but having concluded that none of the participants were actually bothered we were able to move on; if we'd been trying to do real pluralism that would have been hugely contentious.
There was a wonderful Israeli girl there, someone who is struggling with religious identity having been brought up secular, incredibly intense and passionate and fantastically bright. She isn't really very like![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
darcydodo at all, apart from being a good-looking Ashkenazi, but reminded me of her in a couple of ways: her blazing grin when someone pleased her, her seizing the moment we made havdalah to get out her music for her college choir and practising the alto line for Sunday's Evensong. And she's ridiculously too young for me now, but the age D was when I first fell for her, and somehow I ended up feeling way too intensely heartbroken for something that happened in 2002.
Home in time for tea without incident. Next few weeks are going to be intense since the first years are doing cancer and the second years are doing disability and spinal injury, so I'm being called on to provide input into a lot of the teaching. But it should be lots of fun, anyway.
It was indeed an energizing and inspiring gathering of young people who are really engaged in Progressive Judaism. It did indeed include some fantastic discussions and interesting learning. There was indeed a level of Queer consciousness and generally welcoming atmosphere. A little over-programmed, but these events nearly always are. All in all I'm extremely glad I went.
Growing up I pretty much knew all the Reform and most of the Liberal rabbis in the country. I've been away for long enough that that's no longer true, (though at the same time several of my own peers have in fact been ordained in recent years!) so I was intrigued to meet R Rosen Berry, newly appointed at Beit Klal Yisrael. Her sessions ended up being heavy on the post-modernism and the words with way too many slashes, which really isn't my thing, but in spite of that, she did a pretty stellar job of facilitating really intense, wide-ranging discussions and challenging conventional ideas, and I came away realizing I'd learnt a lot even though in the moment it seemed as if she was mostly rambling about whatever came into her head. I can definitely see why she has a following, even if my own inclination is to mistrust intensely charismatic teachers.
We ended up talking about what concepts are unthinkable Jewishly, which got into a bit of how innovative you can afford to be and still have something recognizably Jewish, and a bit into why polytheism seems more threatening that atheism, even though both seem to go against the essential monotheist core principle. And lots of stuff about what Jewish identity actually means, whether it's something that you can choose or whether it just happens to you, and ways of answering the question of "who is a Jew" beyond the classical matrilineal descent model. So some of that was very practical, on the level of discussing the JFS admissions policy case, and some was incredibly personal and intense and invigorating. Also some analogies to gender and queer identity, but not too heavy on that side.
Also learned a bit with R Weiner, who was there as a sort of token Masorti (Conservative) speaker but who is always, always fascinating. He gave really interesting answers to the question of how Con Judaism stands wrt the Rabbinic / Halachic system, and impressed everyone by not doing the thing that some otherwise lovely Masorti folk tend to fall into of trying to poach right-leaning Reform and Progressive people into their movement. His view seemed to be that authority inheres in the texts but not in the people, which is interesting for a start because most people from that end of the Jewish spectrum place a lot of emphasis on the authority of rabbinical courts and individual rabbis as community leaders, and also in following traditions just because that's what people have done for generations even if it isn't textually justified. Plus he very clearly sees the texts as a human creation, which is valuable because it's stood the test of time and creates a common framework in which we can have discussions about our best interpretation of what God wants from us (as opposed to claiming that every word comes directly from God).
He said he'd like to see more textual literacy among the non-Halachic movements, which is fine as far as it goes, but to give him credit he was very open to people pointing out the practical and philosophical problems with that. Most people who are even willing to talk to a non-Orthodox audience claim to be pluralists, but I think it's a lot more genuine with R Weiner. I wasn't mad on his use of evolution and biodiversity metaphors, (not to mention where his audience carried those metaphors!) but he did seem to be genuinely humble about not knowing whether his approach would turn out to be important in the future of Judaism.
But yeah, the "Beit Midrash" did turn out to be quite metaphorical, it was almost all personal and political discussion rather than text study, much less Beit Midrash style text study. I'm not complaining since what there was was extremely good, but it wasn't quite what I was expecting from the title. R Weiner did a little little bit of Pirke Avot (the Talmudic book of philosophical aphorisms), about the five disciples of Yochanan b Zakkai. R Eliezer of Hyrcanos is compared to a well-sealed cistern (and he thinks that the way to righteousness is to have a kindly eye and avoid a grudging eye), whereas R Elazar is compared to a living spring of water (and favours a good heart and avoiding a mean heart). R Weiner explained that these two extremes represent someone who has huge amounts of knowledge but no creativity, and someone who is incredibly creative and full of new ideas but lacks stability. Both came to bad ends; R Eliezer got excommunicated for trying to use miracles to over-rule the majority opinion and for being stubborn about the fact that his interpretation was right (which it was, even God said so) to the exclusion of correct process. R Elazar went off to live with his wife in a beauty spot and expected students to come to him, but by the time they were willing to venture out of the academy and visit him, he had forgotten everything. So the ideal Judaism has the knowledgeable and the creative working together, because neither one is adequate on its own. (Also being arrogant is bad even if you are one of the greatest rabbis in history!)
On the down side, "within range of Birmingham" turned out to be a bit optimistic! I ended up taking most of 2 hours to get a local train across the city and then a taxi from the suburban station to the retreat centre. Partly the problem was a shortage of taxis due to all the Muslim drivers being off for Eid, and on top of that the satnav couldn't find the place which really is in the middle of nowhere. I retrieved the email with driving directions from my shiny phone, and it automatically detected the post-code and opened up a Google map, which helped a lot and made me appreciate technology. The centre at Barnes Close, once we found it, is another Christian Community of Reconciliation, which made me very sad about how much it's not Hengrave. Still, it was a pleasant enough place to spend a weekend although horribly cold.
And as I had somewhat feared, "young" turned out to mean mostly university students rather than people my age. I mean, nobody had a problem with me being there, but I didn't quite fit in socially and I felt I shouldn't be intruding on their processes of self-discovery and making the transition to thinking of themselves as adults. The other issue was that the event had not been as well advertised as it should have been, with a result that nearly all the participants were personal friends of one particular Cambridge student (and there were only a dozen anyway). It is quite clear that Cambridge non-Orthodox Jewish student life is amazingly vibrant at the moment, so it was very good to connect with those people. The highly organized girl's other contacts are people who have been very heavily involved in the Reform youth movement RSY, and are just reaching the age of growing out of that and wondering what comes next, wanting something more satisfying than just going to Saturday services at the mainstream synagogues. (Lots of them were kids when Screwy was a youth leader, so I had the usual thing of being his less famous sister, but that's ok too.)
Everybody said it would have been better if we'd had a more diverse group (particularly including Liberal/Progressive and Masorti participants to match the Liberal and Masorti leaders). I do agree that would have been a good thing, but in another way it was really good to have an unmixed group of people who are all definitely and committedly Reform and very knowledgeable about that. I'm completely in favour of Jewish pluralism, but with a weekend like that you could spend the whole time agonizing over finding a modus vivendi that all the participants would be comfortable with, and not have any energy left for actual learning. For example, the publicity materials suggested that we would "observe shabbat in public spaces" (which is the Limmud approach), but in fact the conference almost completely ignored the halachic definition of shabbat. We did have a discussion about it, but having concluded that none of the participants were actually bothered we were able to move on; if we'd been trying to do real pluralism that would have been hugely contentious.
There was a wonderful Israeli girl there, someone who is struggling with religious identity having been brought up secular, incredibly intense and passionate and fantastically bright. She isn't really very like
darcydodo at all, apart from being a good-looking Ashkenazi, but reminded me of her in a couple of ways: her blazing grin when someone pleased her, her seizing the moment we made havdalah to get out her music for her college choir and practising the alto line for Sunday's Evensong. And she's ridiculously too young for me now, but the age D was when I first fell for her, and somehow I ended up feeling way too intensely heartbroken for something that happened in 2002. Home in time for tea without incident. Next few weeks are going to be intense since the first years are doing cancer and the second years are doing disability and spinal injury, so I'm being called on to provide input into a lot of the teaching. But it should be lots of fun, anyway.
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Date: 2009-12-01 01:30 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-03 02:42 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-03 03:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-03 06:39 pm (UTC)