On My Mind

Answering the Call

May 28, 2020

This spring, alumni from all of JTS’s schools, like countless other professional and lay leaders in America and elsewhere, are being tested as never before. I want to share the stories of four alumni whose innovative work in response to the COVID-19 pandemic has especially inspired me.

Corona Diary: Week Five

Apr 23, 2020

A letter arrived for my Dad the other day. “URGENT ACCOUNT NOTICE,” the envelope declared in bold red capitals. “Don’t let your membership slip away!” And on the back, in bigger letters still, “Please do not discard!” It’s been over eleven years since my father (who never lived at our address) slipped away, taken by a pneumonia that I think he decided at some point not to fight. My thoughts upon seeing the envelope went immediately to the families who received similar letters this week, addressed to loved ones who just a short time ago would have been at home to open them, but had since fallen victim to Covid-19. Others, thanks to selfless hospital staff and access to medical equipment that is still in shockingly short supply, would yet make it home to open letters like the one staring at me on the table, and savor the gift of answering or discarding them.

A Purim Drained of Laughter

Mar 04, 2020

I’ll be celebrating Purim with a lot less enthusiasm than usual this year. The holiday will as always involve fun and laughter for kids and grownups, too: food and drink aplenty, festive meals in costume, raucous noise-making to drown out the sound of the wicked Haman’s name, and—the part I like best—satirical performances of the Purim story that make pointed reference to contemporary characters and events. It’s a remarkable holiday in many ways, not least because the book of Esther is truly funny at certain points. But the story it tells is not for me, not this year. In times as dark as these, even humor as dark as Purim’s falls flat.

Address at 2020 Rabbinical Convocation Ceremony

Feb 03, 2020

It’s a great honor for me, and a source of special pleasure, to address the rabbinical convocation ceremony one last time as Chancellor of JTS and to do so here in the physical expression of JTS’s renaissance. The architects call this atrium a “light court”—hatzer ha-or—and I want to take this opportunity to thank the extraordinary group of rabbis that JTS is honoring today for the light of Torah that you’ve carried and shared over the past 25 years and more. You have served our people and our tradition on at least five continents, by my count, and have done so in a host of different roles, united in your devotion to a cause that JTS and I personally hold very dear, almost as dear as life itself. For this we are grateful to you beyond words.

Jews at the Border

Nov 15, 2019

I joined a group of about 20 Jewish clergy on a trip to El Paso, Texas, and Juarez, Mexico last week to see firsthand how current U.S. immigration policy is affecting the individuals seeking entry to America and changing the border communities through which they pass. When people asked me why I was making the journey, the answer I wanted to give was simple: “Because I am a Jew.”

Mourning Jewish Martyrs in Pittsburgh

Nov 01, 2019

Last Sunday, watching a color guard move solemnly down the aisle of Pittsburgh’s Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Hall, I reflected on the significance of mourning Jewish martyrs, killed in synagogue on a Shabbat morning in these United States.

Kol Nidre 2019

Oct 10, 2019

I would like to focus my remarks this evening on a passage that stands at the very center of the Yom Kippur service—one that has been on my mind even more than usual as I approached this High Holiday season, my last as the chancellor of JTS.

When the Building Is Almost Done—and the Real Work Begins and Continues

Aug 29, 2019

As I personally prepare for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur this year, and consider the special meaning of the 2019 High Holiday season for the extended JTS family, I cannot help but reflect on the state of the new-and-renewed campus rising just outside my office window. What does it mean to have the completion of a major project in sight, but know you have a way to go before the goal is reached? How do we reckon with the realization that when the work is finally done, other work—the real work—begins and continues?

“Fiddler” and the Fourth

Jul 01, 2019

When the Fourth of July coincided with a minor fast day of the Jewish calendar one summer in the late 19th century, a leading Reform rabbi used the occasion to pose the question of identity that still preoccupies many 21st century American Jews. Should the holiday be devoted to “wailing over Jerusalem’s sad fate,” he asked, or “given over to joy and thanksgiving?” Were Jews more closely bound to the Holy Land where the ancient Temple had once stood or to the “Holy Land of Freedom and Human Rights” in which they now lived?

I was reminded of these questions as the curtain came down one evening last week on the haunting production of the Yiddish-language Fiddler on the Roof now playing on Broadway.

The Truth—and Nothing but the Truth

May 23, 2019

Commencement Address 2019

It’s a particular pleasure for me to address our graduates this year, the 50th since my high school commencement ceremony. I confess I remember absolutely nothing of that day and am not sure that you or your families will remember very much about this ceremony, years from now. But I am quite certain you will remember the tumultuous time we are all living through: the special anxiety that attaches to being a citizen of the United States these days, or a steward of planet Earth, or—not the least cause of concern in 2019—a Jew, who must now worry about resurgent anti-Semitism and routinely has to pass through metal detectors or perhaps armed guards in order to set foot in a synagogue or other Jewish institution.

Making Sense of Antisemitism

Mar 21, 2019

It’s hard to read the news these days without encountering evidence of a significant rise in antisemitism. What’s going on? We need to step back from the near-daily barrage of incidents and insults, I believe, and think seriously about the renewed and age-old practice of singling out Jews for attack.

After Pittsburgh

Oct 31, 2018

At a time when increasingly loud and aggressive forces are working to sow hatred among us and plant discord, it is more important than ever that we stand with one another and give each other strength—and give our institutions strength—to do the work that needs doing.

Yom Kippur 2018: It’s on Us

Sep 20, 2018

A few weeks ago, I was leafing through the Mahzor Lev Shalem in preparation for the High Holidays, and for some reason my eye wandered to the English translation of the Aleinu prayer. Aleinu is one of the most familiar prayers in Jewish liturgy. It concludes practically every service. I pretty much know it by heart, so I had never bothered to look at the English. You too, if you are a regular shul-goer, have said Aleinu hundreds or even thousands of times, and you probably have not thought very much about the complexities of its message.

This New Year, Let’s Move Beyond “Us vs. Them”

Aug 30, 2018

My wife and I had the privilege of traveling this summer through Scotland and Italy, where we found ourselves face to face with issues of identity and allegiance that have been very much in the news in America lately, and that merit reflection as we approach the High Holidays.

Camp Ramah Up Close and Personal

Aug 30, 2018

I never went to overnight camp as a kid, for reasons that, looking back, I find mysterious. I remember my parents wanting to send me to Ramah Poconos, the natural destination for a Conservative Jew in Philadelphia, and me refusing, summer after summer. I also remember that once I had begun attending the Hebrew High School program at Gratz College, and had joined USY, my circle of friends included a lot of people who had been to Ramah and loved it—at which point I berated my parents for not forcing me to go even if I hadn’t wanted to. Thankfully, I get to visit several Ramah camps every summer as chancellor of JTS and see, close up, the 2018 version of what I missed back in the sixties. Better late than never.

Understanding American Jews

Jun 18, 2018

We knew long before Pew’s “Portrait of Jewish Americans” that a lot needed to change if our tradition and our people are to survive and thrive in conditions that are changing so rapidly and so dramatically that it is hard for any parent, leader, or institution to keep up. After the study, the extent of the communal transformation that is needed, and much of its direction and detail, have come more clearly into view.

The Religious Significance of Israel: A Personal Love Story and Accounting

Apr 25, 2018

Speech to the 2018 Rabbinical Assembly Convention

The minute I realized that I’d be giving this talk three days after Yom Ha’atzma’ut, and three days before flying to Israel for a day-long yom iyyun sponsored jointly by JTS and the Schechter Institute, I knew that my subject this afternoon would be Israel and our relationship to Israel.

Israel: Up Close and Far Away

Feb 15, 2018

The story on the morning news show as I drove to Ben Gurion Airport last week had made headlines throughout my 12-day visit to Israel: the imminent deportation of some 30,000 migrants from Eritrea and Sudan. To the Netanyahu government, they are “infiltrators” who entered the country illegally or have long overstayed the temporary welcome once afforded them. To a growing chorus from Israel and abroad who are opposed to their expulsion, many of the immigrants are “refugees” entitled to asylum. To me, the distinctive terms of the Israeli debate over immigrants furnished another example of longstanding differences between what Jewish identity and Judaism mean in the sovereign Jewish State of Israel and the very different meanings attached to Jewishness and Judaism in the North American Jewish community.

Bridging the Growing Gap between Israeli and North American Jews

Feb 15, 2018

Adapted from the text prepared for delivery at a consultation on this subject sponsored by Shaharit, an Israeli think tank, at Beit Avichai in Jerusalem on January 25, 2018

Let me say at the outset that I will address you today not only as a scholar of modern Judaism whose research has long focused on Jewish thought in North America and Israel, and as the chancellor of JTS, a major institution of Jewish learning and the center of Conservative Judaism for over a century. I will also speak personally, one Jew to others, one member of what President Rivlin has recently called the “fifth tribe” of Israel to members of the other four. I will speak out of personal experiences and longings far more than books or surveys—an approach that I trust will lead to the sort of frank and fruitful conversation that must take place more regularly between our two Jewries, and within them both, if we are to draw closer together and bridge the divides that seem to grow deeper with each passing year.

Partition in the Land of Israel, Then and Now

Nov 29, 2017

Today marks 70 years since the momentous vote by the General Assembly of the United Nations to create two states in Palestine, one Jewish and one Arab. Jews in Palestine and around the world danced in the streets upon hearing of the UN’s decision. Arabs in Palestine rioted, killing seven Jews on the first day of violence. David Ben Gurion, who had reluctantly supported the partition agreement as the best the Jewish people could hope for at that juncture, warned his aides that blood would soon flow. He was right, of course, and the conflict with Palestinians and some of Israel’s Arab neighbors has not ceased from that day to this. Even Ben Gurion could not have foreseen that 70 years after the vote, issues of partition and division would remain at the top of the agenda for Jews in the Land of Israel, in two related but very different forms.

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