Our Year’s Topic: Challenging Times for North American Jewry

In a past bulletin article and again during the High Holy Days you have already read or heard me mentioning a question, a challenge, that in my opinion no rabbi or Jewish leader in North America could escape in the near future, namely of ‘How To Promote Jewish Identity In An Age of Choice?’

            To set in motion the discussion on this serious topic, I wish to lay this time only the background for this question.  My suggestions for some answers should follow as we continue to address this topic in future bulletins.  At the same time, we could also deal with this issue at adult education if there is the interest, and I would encourage any of you to contribute and share your own thoughts on this subject.

            Many, if not all of us, have seen these two contrasting, coexisting trends: While a good number of Jews are leading more intensive Jewish lives than their parents or grandparents, many others are abandoning their relationship to Judaism either due to intermarriage that carries with it no Jewish education to their children, or by assimilation, or simply due to boredom, apathy, and disinterest.

            In fairness, it needs to be recognized that part of the problem is connected to the circumstances of modernity itself: In the pre-modern world, Jews considered themselves less as independent individuals than as members of a well-defined community.  They had far less control over their own lives, and they conducted all aspects of their lives – including who they married, what occupations they held, what they ate, how they dressed, prayed, etc. – in a similar way to that of other Jews around them.  Institutions were taken for granted, and what characterized that society was a much higher degree of certainty compared to that of modern society.  In short, the “fate” of birth and community ruled their lives.

            For Jews, the world of choice opened up as anti-Jewish barriers came down during the emancipation in Europe beginning in the 19^th century.  Soon after, in the free society of North America , Jews found that for the first time being Jewish was indeed a matter of choice, not fated birth, and that one could actually choose to be “in” or “out”.  The modern Jew must choose on a daily basis, and this necessity of choosing reaches as well into the areas of beliefs, values, and worldviews.  As a reaction, some have suggested that nowadays assimilation poses no less a danger, and perhaps a far greater danger, to Jewish identification than anti-Semitism.  Someone even came up with the saying that “The free society of North America is killing the Jews with kindness.”

            I believe, however, that this saying goes a bit too far.  In North America of today, we are actually witnessing two opposing forces simultaneously at work: continuity on one hand, disintegration of certainty on the other.  For some people, Jewish identity is a fairly constant reality, but for others, perhaps many Jews in North America , the quality or intensity of one’s Jewish identification is subject to considerable change.  Some people may move in and out of Jewish identification depending on their ages, their children’s ages, their stages in their life cycle, their professional and family situations, and so on.  We know, for example, that many unaffiliated, non-practicing Jews “come back” to Judaism when the question of their own or their relatives’ burial is concerned.  In addition, local and even international events, both positive and negative, might awaken the sense of belonging and might have powerful impact on Jewish identity as we know, for example from reactions to Israel’s victory in the Six-Day war or to anti-Semitic demonstrations in France.

It’s hard to determine whether this situation or other conditions have brought about another paradox: In the public sphere, we as Jews are secure and assertive.  Few constraints limit our capacity to advance Jewish communal interests, and we are represented in virtually every sector of Canadian and American society.  In contrast, in the private domain we, as Jews, often exhibit serious weaknesses, because we have yet to address the basic subject of Jewish identity in the modern, post-emancipation world, of why be Jewish at all in an open society that guarantees equal rights, freedom of mobility, and freedom of choice in the religious, cultural, educational, commercial, social, and political arenas?

            For Jews who are interested in the continuity of Judaism and in strengthening it, for a People that has survived and maintained a 3,500-year history, and yet a People that today numbers only about 13 million members, with declining membership, this, obviously, cannot be a trivial question.

            Next time we will attempt to tackle this question, beginning with education.

TEMPLE SHALOM’S NEW STUDENT RABBI

URI BARNEA

Uri Barnea is my name, and I am very pleased to introduce myself to you, albeit in a somewhat impersonal and abbreviated way, as your new student rabbi beginning this fall.  As you read on, it will become clear that I belong to a slightly atypical group of student rabbis, a small group of Reform Jews who entered the rabbinate as their second or even third career.  My background is also different than that of most student rabbis in North America .

My late parents were Holocaust survivors from Germany who arrived in Palestine by an “illegal” immigration.  Of their three children, I was the first to be born.  My brother and his family, cousins and other relatives live in Israel and my sister and her family live in northern Indiana .  I grew up in Israel, served in the Israeli army for ten years as a lieutenant, and later received a B. Music degree from the Rubin Academy in Jerusalem in conjunction with a program of Jewish studies at the Hebrew University  (In addition to conducting, I am also a violinist, violist and composer.)  For most of my military years I served on the Syrian border and then on the Golan Heights , including the Six-Day War of 1967.  Later that summer I became a music counselor at Camp Ramah in Wisconsin and managed to visit, among other cities in America and Europe , the City of Montreal .

In 1971 I was chosen as Music Director of the JCC in Minneapolis and within a few years completed my M.A. and Ph.D. degrees at the University of Minnesota , where I also continued my education in Jewish and Middle Eastern studies.  Subsequently I served for several years as Assistant Professor at Knox College ( Galesburg , Illinois ) and as Music Director of the Knox-Galesburg Symphony.  In 1984 I moved with my wife Liz (a Minnesota native whom I met in the Twin Cities) to Billings , Montana , where I served as Music Director of the Billings Symphony Society until last year.  In addition, I have retained a part-time position as Music Director of the Montana Ballet Company.  In 1989, while on a guest conducting engagement in Ontario with my wife and our then 3-year-old daughter, we visited a number of Canadian cities, including your own, beautiful city of Winnipeg .

Throughout my musical career, however, I have also maintained my interest in Judaism.  I have conducted many lay services and even a few funerals, served as a cantor, taught at religious schools, and served as a member of our synagogue Board.

My wife and I have two children: a daughter (Avital) who is a college student in Colorado , and a son (Jonathan) who will be a freshman in high school.  My wife and son still live in Billings while I attend the rabbinical school at HUC, Cincinnati , commuting back and forth a few times during the year. 

I will be happy to share with you more about my life story when we meet, and by the same token I am anxious to learn much about you as individuals and as a congregation.  I have already heard many good things about your congregation from your former student rabbi Asher Knight, and I very much look forward to serving Temple Shalom in Winnipeg in the coming year.

B’Shalom,

Uri Barnea

P.S. Both my names are Hebrew and Biblical.  “Uri” means “my light”, and “Barnea” is the second half of the name of a place in the desert (the full name is Kadesh Barnea) where the Israelites stopped on their way to the Promised Land.