Religious leader

[liv]

Oh. My. Life! It's the middle of the High Holy Days, right, I'm up to my eyes preparing half a dozen major events in 3 weeks. And term started yesterday and I have a new PhD student, so work is fairly overwhelming too. So the day before the New Year, I get an urgent message from an old friend in Sweden asking me to come and run the Progressive Jewish community's big annual showcase event, because the person who was supposed to be doing it has pulled out for overriding personal reasons. And obviously every Jewish professional is massively busy at this season, and apparently they remember me fondly from 5 years back...

I mean, I can do a full weekend of activities with a mix of social, liturgy and Jewish study. I can even do it at short notice, if I have to. I can liaise with a bunch of people in a different country who have strong views about how they want to run things and haven't necessarily come to a consensus before consulting me. But to do this when the two weeks between hearing about it and it actually happening contain Rosh haShana and Yom Kippur and the start of term, that's a big ask. To cap it off, I am walking into two politically fraught situations, both at the national politics level (Sweden has just had national elections with a massive swing to the far-right party), and at the community politics level (the broader community just sacked their rabbi because he was too successful at his brief of attracting young people to synagogue and making things more dynamic, and it turns out the old stalwarts don't like change.) And again, I can handle politically fraught, but only if I have really plenty of time to prepare, not just intellectually but talking to people and sounding out what the issues are and where I need to tread carefully.

Also, would you believe that the theme for the weekend is "how to deal with legitimate criticism of Israel in a climate of anti-semitism". Um. That is waaaaaay the hell outside my comfort zone, very hard to teach in a text-based way, and likely to provoke some really passionate and potentially conflicting responses.

I should note, "climate of anti-semitism" in the Swedish context does not mean unpleasant posts on Facebook and Tumblr, or even tactless newspaper articles and cartoons, thought goodness knows there's been plenty of those especially over the summer. It means literal violence, people getting beaten up for wearing visible Jewish symbols in public, vandalism of Jewish cemeteries, synagogues and institutions including a primary school. Not to mention the ugly anti-immigrant politics which is becoming scarily mainstream, (and some people on the political left are trying to blame the Jews for this). I don't think that as an outsider, vaguely following this stuff via Swedish friends on FB, I want to blunder in and tell people who are actually living in fear of ethnic violence what to think.

I'm a little bit nervous of posting about this here, but do you have any suggestions of how best to run this weekend event? I don't at all want to get into any kind of debate about whether Israel's actions, recent or historical, are justified, that's not the point. I'm taking it as a given that there is such a thing as legitimate, non-racist criticism of Israel, and I'm taking it as a given that primary school kids in Europe do not deserve to be subjected to violence because of any given bad thing Israel is believed to have done. Basically if you're not Jewish and would like to comment, please try to be tactful. I've already written about what I personally think of anti-semitism vs Israel criticism and I don't want to get into a flame war about it. If things get nasty I'll lock the post, I need advice and support here, not political debate, please.

I think what I mainly want to do is to let the community talk, given them a forum to express their fears and ask them to tell me about what things are like on the ground in Sweden right now. But moderate heavily so it doesn't slip into any anti-Arab or Islamophobic nastiness. I may also talk about Shmita, the year of release which is just starting, cos that's pertinent to the relationship between Israel and the Diaspora, and it gives me the opportunity to learn some Torah in among the politics. But I don't know, this feels like a hugely scary brief to be handed, especially in these circumstances!

In addition to that stuff, I have to do a baby-blessing where there is some anxiety about the parents being in a mixed marriage, and nobody has bothered to tell me the genders of anyone involved, so I don't know whether the birth parent is the Jewish one (nor whether they identify as female, which the liturgy tends to assume). Oh, and a session for three kids I've never met who are hoping to celebrate their bar mitzvahs in spring, and who for various reasons have been let down by the person who was supposed to be teaching them. So currently they're only learning how to read their Torah portions and I'm supposed to provide a two-hour session to encourage them to take their BM as a personal journey into adulthood, not just a hoop to jump through. It might be the only teaching worthy of the name they get.

In short, you might say I'm bricking it. Much as I'm excited to get this opportunity to go back to Sweden and hopefully catch up with some of my Swedish friends, even in weird circumstances. Though I haven't exactly got a lot of time in the next two weeks to sort out the logistics.

Oh, and in other news the university has invited me as a special guest to attend a lecture by former Archbishop The Rt Rev & Rt Hon Lord Rowan Williams. I assume because they wanted to showcase interfaith diversity, but it's weird that I've ended up as someone the university trots out to meet VIPs. The lecture is public, but I get to attend a formal dinner as well. I'm kind of excited about this, but also I could do without it being 24 hours before the start of Yom Kippur.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I bet you are scared.

Good Skill.

Southernwood

[karen2205]

I suppose I'd start with the question of whether or not you actually *want* to run this weekend, because it's sounding to me, like something that's being imposed on you/that you don't perhaps feel you've got a real choice about whether you accept or not, even if it does give you an opportunity to go back to Sweden and see people there.

Assuming you do want to do it, is it possible/reasonable to say "subject too complicated, going to change theme to $less complex for an outsider to the community to run"?

If not, can you recruit useful helpers to make it less stressful? If it's difficult to teach in a text based way, is it possible to teach it in a different way and/or to do a mixture of text based teaching and discussion (?) based teaching or teaching based on something other than text. [If they're wanting text based teaching of something, rather than teaching tailored to this topic maybe it's really not a good theme for the weekend] Is it something where you could have moderated small group discussions about different aspects of the topic (hence useful helpers)?

[kaberett]

First up, in a slightly less transient medium than query: I have every confidence that you can do this, and that you can do it well enough: good enough is good enough. It is evident that you have the good will of the community, and I can't imagine they won't give you plenty of leeway for knowing you've come in at the last moment.

It seems to me that - as you say - your main role here is to act as a facilitator and maintainer of safer space; you are tactful (yes, really!) and compassionate and people will know they are putting you in a difficult position and therefore quite possibly respond better to you than they would to someone more a member of the community in the present.

I think me getting any more specific than that would involve knowing what plans were already in place and how comfortable you were with adapting them to your own purposes; and probably also having significantly greater liturgical awareness than I do! But: I believe you can do this thing, and do it well.

[vatine]

I have ideas. They are all uniformed and therefore assumed to be at best poor and at worst abysmal...

Ensure that you start with "it has been a long while since I lived here..."
Talk to some of the agreeable-to-converse members of the congregation in advance, to get a rough idea how bad shit is.
Feel free to invoke gentiles like myself, who happen to find the Jewish cemetery just off the tube station at Kungsholmen the most serene and contemplative place in Stockholm (and I have tried to contemplate in more than a few spots).
And, don't worry, you are excellent people.

[davidgillon]

That sounds like a situation where grabbing a few old contacts over the phone to find out a) how things are in detail in the community and b) how they might react to your proposed tack is absolutely vital. On the actual how to do it front, could you defuse some of the immediate local tension/fear by looking at the wider situation around criticism of Israel Europe-wide/worldwide rather than looking specifically at Sweden? Maybe look at how other Jewish communities are trying to address the issue?

[sfred]

Wow, that's a lot of stuff. Fear sounds like an appropriate first reaction.

Your approach of letting the community talk sounds like a good one to me (in a generic "conference in which I am a bit of an outsider" context: I have no familiarity with these circumstances).

[kerrypolka]

Yeah, it's acceptable to say no to things even if you feel like You're The Only One Who Could Possibly Do It (which I doubt is true? and even so?) - "It's the High Holy Days, I'm the only service leader in my community so I have a disproportionate amount of work to do, I haven't been part of that community for a decade and it's an extremely complicated and sensitive subject and given my other obligations I simply won't be able to do it appropriately even though in other circs I could" is one of the most acceptable reasons to politely decline something I can think of!

You say "this feels like a hugely scary brief to be handed" but it is a choice to accept the brief or not! And if you do choose to, that's also a totally valid decision but it just seems in this post that you're thinking of it as an assignment you've received, rather than a major project you're deciding whether or not to take on. It might be worth revisiting the fact that you do have agency about whether or not you do this.

[wychwood]

That sounds like more than enough to intimidate anyone, frankly. Good luck with it all!

[liv]

Thank you!

[liv]

This is a really fair point. I do want to do it, I did consider saying no as the timing is really hopeless. But in fact I had already committed to the event before I made this "argh, scared!" post. They did offer me the opportunity to change the theme to something easier, and I've compromised on talking about Shmita as well as Israel and anti-semitism.

I think my attitude is that it's actually important for the community to have some space to talk about this; they're really scared right now and need someone who will listen to their fears non-judgementally, at least. I don't like it when religious activities shy away from tackling "serious" topics, because then religion that's just fluffy let's all be nice to eachother stuff doesn't have much point.

The thing about text-based teaching is that it's my preference, not something the community have insisted on particularly. The main reason I prefer text is because it keeps discussions focused on something that has a good chance of being actually educational, without that you can just have everybody airing their opinions. The short notice makes it hard for me to recruit helpers, but I will have interpreters and translators, and people who are not me are doing the practical side like booking rooms and providing food and so on, and there's some musicians and a guy who leads improv workshops who are doing bits of it. If I get loads of people I might well divide them up into small groups, but if it's fewer than about 20 it's probably not worth it.

[liv]

Thank you, this is good advice. I am the only person who can do this, given that everybody who has actual training in this kind of thing is going to be busy with the HHDs. But if I didn't do it, well, the event would just be cancelled, which is sad but not the end of the world. So that's not why I said yes, I said yes because I feel that it's actually important, while the broader community is in transition, and with the scary political and inter-community stuff going on in Sweden right now.

[liv]

You are wonderful and dear and this is the best pep-talk! And yes, facilitator more than informing them, and yes, they like me and will give me leeway for being a last-minute volunteer. You are absolutely right about good enough, good enough to provide some benefit to the community who need it is the goal here, not: as good as it might hypothetically be if I had weeks to prepare.

[liv]

Thank you so much for commenting! I certainly didn't mean to imply that all Swedes have a problem with Jews, (I shouldn't think even most of the SD voters do, they're probably much more bothered about more recent immigrants). But I think it would be very good to talk about positive examples of connections with non-Jewish Swedish neighbours.

And yes, I definitely need to make clear that I know we're talking about their actual experiences, I am an outsider and quite the opposite of an expert. Thank you for reminding me of that. I'm trying to sound out the situation in advance as much as I can, but I'm so pressed for time it's hard.

[liv]

Yes, these are definitely things I would do if I had sensible amounts of time to prepare this. I could really do with getting some insider views of how things are before I just turn up and say, so tell me about the situation? And yeah, looking at the wider context would be a good idea except that I don't really have time to prepare that sort of material. I am going to talk about some of the general principles regarding the relationship of Diaspora Jews to Israel, as well as the Swedish situation specifically. But I can't really talk in detail about Denmark, France and Hungary where things are even scarier, or about Britain and Germany where on the whole it seems to be more positive.

[liv]

Thank you, I think the general principle does hold here. I have a lot of experience of being more facilitator than imparter of Knowledge, so this is an approach that's comfortable for me as well as feeling appropriate.

[liv]

Thanks, I really appreciate the support. It's very nice when I post about angst on DW and get friendly comments, it helps me really a lot.

[ephemera]

I have nothing useful to say, but *virtual tea*

Don't forget to breathe!

[kerrypolka]

That's a very good reason for doing it! I only said so as your post went straight from "this person asked me to do this thing" to "now that I am obliged to do this thing, how do I do it?" and it wasn't clear how intentful that was. I'm afraid I don't have any helpful advice as the sorts of things I tend to facilitate are either hippie sisterhood things or eg Jewdas meetings but good luck! ♥

[lomedet]

From where I sit (across an ocean), your instincts seem spot-on. Definitely give them space to talk about/process what's been going on, and maybe also offer them space, to talk about conflicts they may be feeling between love for/connection to Israel and their own legitimate criticisms. A space where they don't have to be defending against "AHA - all Zionists are Evol!" reactions if they say that they are concerned by, frex, civilian deaths in Gaza this summer.

[ewt]

"That is waaaaaay the hell outside my comfort zone, very hard to teach in a text-based way, and likely to provoke some really passionate and potentially conflicting responses. "

Is it possible to establish some ground rules for a safe discussion at the beginning, and can those ground rules be taught in a text-based way?

No idea if this is feasible given the timescale.

[liv]

Thanks! Unusually for me I did the thinking about whether I actually wanted to take this on before I posted the panic post to DW. As a general principle you're quite right, I should always be willing to consider the option of saying no when communities ask me to pull impossible things out of my hat.

[liv]

Aww, virtual tea! Thank you so much for that, it's really touching when people comment to send me tea. And yes, I'm going to be doing lots of remembering to breathe in the next 5 days...

[liv]

Many thanks for commenting. And yes, that's a really good point, maybe a lot of what they need is safe-ish space to talk about concerns about Israel without feeling like they're betraying the community to anti-semitism, as much as space to talk about how scary things are getting in Sweden right now with the violence and political tendencies.

[liv]

Ground rules for safe discussion that sounds like the kind of thing that a community of mostly young, mostly liberal (politically as well as religiously) Swedish people would really eat up with spoons. Good suggestion, thank you.