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Overdue or overdone? Two scholars hope to secure the legacy of ‘Jewish Renewal’
(JTA) — Rabbi Arthur Green gave the commencement address last week at the Jewish Theological Seminary, the Conservative flagship where he was ordained 56 years earlier.
His talk was mostly a response to political turmoil in Israel, but he also urged the graduates to pioneer a “new Judaism.”
“I had the good fortune, as a young seeker, to run into the Jewish mystical tradition, especially the writings of the early Hasidic masters,” said Green, who taught Jewish mysticism and Hasidic theology at Brandeis, the University of Pennsylvania and Hebrew College. “I have been working for half a century to articulate what could simply be called a Judaism for adults living in freedom. I am now near the end of my creative course. But you young people are just at the beginning of yours. We need you to enroll — however you can — in the task of the generations, that of re-creating Judaism.”
That is the language of Jewish Renewal, with which Green, 82, is deeply identified. Renewal isn’t a denomination, really, but a movement that was born in and reflects the 1960s and 1970s counterculture. Baby boomer Jews disillusioned with the large suburban synagogues that they considered soulless embraced Jewish practice that was spiritual, egalitarian, environmentally conscious and largely lay-led.
Baby boomer Jews disillusioned with the large suburban synagogues that they considered soulless embraced Jewish practice that was spiritual, egalitarian, environmentally conscious and largely lay-led. Renewal’s signature institution was the havurah — intimate prayer, study and social fellowships. Its soundtrack were the liturgical melodies composed by the hippy-ish, “neo-Hasidic” Orthodox rabbi, Shlomo Carlebach. And its rebbe — to the degree that an egalitarian movement had a central figure — was Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi (1924-2014), a refugee from Hitler’s Europe and former Lubavitcher Hasid whose Judaism channeled the spiritual “New Age” of the 1970s.
These ideas and approaches may be familiar to you even if you’ve never heard of “Renewal.” Rare is the synagogue that doesn’t try to offer a more intimate spiritual experience for its worshippers, to shrink the distance between pulpit and pew, to incorporate new Jewish music and, in non-Orthodox and a number of Modern Orthodox synagogues, to increase the participation of women in prayer and study.
Those prayer shawls with rainbow stripes? That was a Schachter-Shalomi innovation.
How a counterculture movement came to be absorbed by the mainstream is the subject of a paper in a new collection, “The Future of American Judaism,” edited by Mark Silk and Jerome Chanes. Chanes is the co-author, with Shaul Magid, of the chapter on “Renewal” that claims it as one of the most influential if not defining Jewish movements of the last 50 years.
“While Jewish Renewal has never boasted a large number of members, its influence on the larger American Jewish community has been significant, in terms of its liturgical experimentation, its revisions of ritual and its overall metaphysics,” they write. “It has also served as an ongoing conduit of information and inspiration from its own past — the havurah movement, radical politics, feminism — to the next generation.”
I came to the paper after giving a lecture at my own synagogue on “The Crisis of the American Synagogue.” I spoke of declining affiliation rates, plunging enrollment in supplementary schools, the shrinking number of non-Orthodox synagogues. Most of my adult life has been spent in synagogues, havurot and institutions heavily influenced by Renewal. If the Jewish Renewal movement revitalized synagogue life in the last century, could it also be blamed for its struggles in this one?
Magid, a fellow in Jewish studies at Dartmouth College, and Chanes, an adjunct professor of Jewish Studies at Baruch College, presented their chapter at a conference dedicated to the release of the book, held Tuesday and Wednesday at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. Magid made the claim — considered bold, at this small gathering of Jewish historians — that the three most important Jewish figures of the 20th century were Mordecai Kaplan, Menachem Mendel Schneerson and Shachter-Shalomi.
Kaplan, the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism, downplayed the supernatural element of Judaism and instead called it a “civilization” defined by its people and culture. Schneerson, the Lubavitcher rebbe, turned an insular Orthodox sect into an outreach movement that promotes ritual practice among secular Jews.
Rabbi Arthur Green delivers the commencement address at the Jewish Theological Seminary in Manhattan, May 18, 2023. (Courtesy JTS)
Schachter-Shalomi combined their visions and imagined a Judaism, said Magid, that “is no longer used as a tool for Jewish survival, but rather as a project for Jews to become part of the global community, to contribute to the global community.” Environmental awareness became a hallmark of Renewal, as did absorbing influences from other religions, especially Eastern ones. “He really did take Schneerson’s teaching about bringing Judaism to the streets and expanded it further to bring Judaism to the mosque, to bring Judaism to the monastery, to create another way of being Jewish which was not afraid of the world.”
In an interview with Magid before the conference, I asked if he and Chanes might be exaggerating Renewal’s influence.
“I’m sure there will be people who will claim that case but I don’t think so, no,” he said. Magid acknowledges that few people regard themselves as direct disciples of Schachter-Shalomi, and yet, like Kaplan, his influence is felt widely and deeply. “Each one of them had a futuristic vision,” he said. “They were able to cultivate a way of thinking about Judaism that was before their time and that eventually came into being in many ways.”
One of those skeptical of Schachter-Shalomi’s influence is Jonathan Sarna, professor of Jewish history at Brandeis, who gave the keynote talk at the conference. In his response to the panel on Renewal, Sarna doubted Schachter-Shalomi was as influential as Carlebach, the Conservative theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel or the Modern Orthodox philosopher Joseph Soloveitchik. “I don’t think we should delude ourselves into thinking that every innovator is a new Moses,” Sarna said.
Benjamin Steiner, a visiting assistant professor in religion at Trinity, also wondered if Renewal had spread “everywhere in the country, or only in large urban areas with critical masses of educated Jewish students.”
Listening to Magid’s response to such caveats, I thought of the quote often attributed to music producer Brian Eno: “The first Velvet Underground album only sold 10,000 copies, but everyone who bought it formed a band.” Renewal’s influence spread beyond its founding havurot because many of their principals went on to important positions in academia and Jewish organizations, including Green, Rabbi Everett Gendler, Sharon Strassfeld, John Ruskay and Rabbi Arthur Waskow.
Small but influential Gen X and millennial institutions also bear Renewal’s fingerprints: the “Jewish Emergent Network” of independent congregations; New York’s Romemu and B’nai Jeshurun synagogues; egalitarian, traditional-style yeshivas like Hadar. Bayit, with a number of principals associated with ALEPH: the Alliance for Jewish Renewal, is an online artist’s collective and publisher of Jewish books, including a forthcoming Shabbat prayer book.
One of its contributors, Rabbi Rachel Barenblat, who was ordained by ALEPH, has argued that the influence of Renewal is felt even within Orthodoxy. “If you look at the Open Orthodoxy movement, if you look at the ordination of women as ‘maharats’ [by Yeshivat Maharat, a women’s seminary], the future of women as rabbinic leaders in Orthodoxy is already here,” she said on an episode of the “Judaism Unbound” podcast. “It’s not everywhere, but someday it will be.”
Magid and Chanes similarly claim a number of leading Jewish feminists as products of Renewal — they mention Paula Hyman, Eva Fogelman and Judith Plaskow — although some in the audience at Trinity insisted they gave Renewal too much credit for a movement by and for women. In there essay in the Silk/Chanes Book, Sylvia Barack Fishman of Brandeis University offers a counter-narrative of Jewish innovation over the past 50 years. In her chapter, she credits the “active partnership” of women in revitalizing American Judaism: Women’s religious expressions, she writes, “create social contexts and are distinguished by a communal dynamic, quite unlike the isolated, personalized Jewish experience, which some have claimed defines contemporary Jewishness.”
I came away convinced that Renewal has had an outsize influence on Jewish life, especially for baby boomers like me. But I also wondered if its outward-facing, syncretic Judaism failed to instill a sense of obligation to Jewish forms, institutions and peoplehood — unlike, by contrast, Orthodoxy in all of its booming present-day manifestations.
I asked Magid in what ways Renewal might have fallen short.
“Part of its failure is that it is very, very anchored to a certain kind of American counterculture that no longer exists. It hasn’t really moved into a 2.0 phase,” he said. “There are students and staff members that are still very tied to [Schachter-Shalomi’s] vision, and then there’s a younger generation, Gen Z, who have read some of his work and they’re influenced by it, but they really are thinking much more about, well, how does this translate into a post-countercultural America?”
Magid also feels the ideas of Renewal will become more important as American Jews’ attachment to Israel wanes, and the living memory of the Holocaust recedes.
If Rabbi Green’s speech at the JTS graduation was any indication, then the ideals of Jewish Renewal still hold their appeal.
“We need a new Judaism in America… where we also have the fresh air needed to create it,” he said. “How do we move forward… in articulating a Jewish theology for today that is both intellectually honest and spiritually rewarding?”
The audience of future Jewish leaders and teachers leapt to its feet.
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Michigan Democrats Nominate Lawyer Who Praised Hezbollah for Top University Post
A sign at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Photo: Ken Lund.
The Michigan Democratic Party nominated attorney attorney Amir Makled over incumbent Jewish Regent Jordan Acker on Sunday, drawing fresh scrutiny towards Makled’s defense of international terrorist organizations and anti-Israel posture.
Makled, a Dearborn-based civil rights attorney who has been outspoken in support of divestment from Israel, won the party’s nomination for one of two regent seats up for election this year, defeating Acker, who had become a frequent target of pro-Palestinian activists over his opposition to Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) efforts on campus.
The contest has drawn national attention because of the unusually broad authority held by University of Michigan regents, who are elected statewide and oversee the university’s finances, investments, executive leadership and major institutional policy decisions. The eight-member board plays a central role in decisions ranging from presidential oversight to responses to campus protest movements and demands for divestment.
For months, anti-Israel student activists and progressive organizers had pressed for changes to the board, arguing the university should divest from companies tied to Israel amid the war in Gaza. Acker, one of the board’s most vocal opponents of divestment, became a particular focus of that pressure campaign. In December 2024, pro-Hamas activists targeted Acker’s home with violent demonstrations, breaking his windows and spray-painting his car “Divest Free Palestine.” The vandals also spray-painted an inverted red triangle on Acker’s car, a symbol used to indicate support for the Hamas terrorist group.
Makled, who represented a student arrested during the university’s 2024 anti-Israel encampment protests, had argued publicly that the university should reconsider its investment policies regarding Israel. His nomination, however, also drew scrutiny after resurfaced and later-deleted social media posts in which he appeared to praise Hezbollah and shared antisemitic content. The Michigan chapter of the Service Employees International Union reportedly withdrew its endorsement following the controversy.
An investigation by The Detroit News revealed that Makled was found to have deleted social media posts praising leaders of the Hezbollah terrorist organization. One of the posts referred to slain Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah as a “martyr.” He also reposted antisemitic messages from far-right commentator Candace Owens which referred to Israelis as “demons” who “lie, cheat, murder and blackmail.”
Supporters of Acker have argued the outcome reflects a broader deterioration in support for Israel and tolerance of antisemitism within Democratic politics, particularly among younger and more progressive voters. Some also noted that Paul Brown, Acker’s non-Jewish running mate who had similarly opposed divestment efforts, was renominated while Acker was not, making the result especially symbolic for many Jewish Democrats.
The race underscores how university governance battles have become a new front in national political fights over Israel. While university divestment decisions are often constrained by legal and fiduciary obligations, regents can shape investment policy, institutional messaging and the university’s overall posture toward such campaigns.
With eight regents serving staggered terms and only two seats on the ballot this cycle, a single election does not determine the university’s investment policy outright. But activists on both sides increasingly view these races as critical long-term contests over whether public universities will resist or embrace institutional divestment from Israel.
As the general election approaches, the regent race is likely to remain a closely watched test of how far the Democratic Party’s internal debate over Israel is reshaping not only national politics, but the leadership of major American universities. Recent polls indicate that Democratic constituents have rapidly shifted away from supporting Israel
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Rahm Emanuel joins calls for end to US ‘financial aid’ to Israel
(JTA) — Rahm Emanuel has joined growing calls for the United States to end subsidies tied to its military sales to Israel, arguing that Israel should purchase weapons on the same terms as other U.S. allies.
“The days of taxpayers subsidizing Israel militarily, that’s over,” Emanuel said during an appearance on Bill Maher’s HBO Max show “Real Time.” “No more financial aid.”
Emanuel is the Jewish former mayor of Chicago who is seen as a likely 2028 Democratic presidential candidate. His comments come months after he said that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli government bore responsibility for the starvation of Palestinians in Gaza last summer.
Now, as support for Israel hits a record low among Democrats and party leaders increasingly move away from the United States’ longstanding backing of the country, calls to end U.S. military aid to Israel are gaining traction.
Last week, all but seven Senate Democrats voted to block the sales of certain weapons to Israel, marking a doubling in the number of lawmakers backing similar resolutions in just two years.
Emanuel, whose father was born in Jerusalem and who volunteered as a civilian with the Israeli army during the Gulf War in the 1990s, told Maher that Israel should be able to fund its own military — and implied that it might not meet the United States’ standards for being able to purchase U.S.-made weapons.
“Israel is a very wealthy nation. There should be no more taxpayer support for what they want to do and they get the same deal that any one of our allies do,” Emanuel said. “They have to abide by the laws of the United States if they’re going to buy X weapons, and that’s how it should be constructed.”
In January, Netanyahu said for the first time that he wanted to “taper off” U.S. military aid to Israel over the next decade until it reaches zero. His pledge was quickly met with support from South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, who said at the time, “We need not wait 10 years.”
Speaking of the joint U.S.-Israeli war in Iran, Emanuel said the move amounted to a “violation of a rule Israel’s had for 78 years,” arguing that Israel had long sought to avoid pulling the United States into conflicts with its neighbors.
“The United States should never spill any blood for the state of Israel’s security,” Emanuel said. “What happened here going into Iran with the United States and Israel fighting together, which has never happened in 78 years, is a major change in policy for the State of Israel, which comes with political risk, and now they’re seeing it.”
The post Rahm Emanuel joins calls for end to US ‘financial aid’ to Israel appeared first on The Forward.
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Michigan Democrats nominate Eli Savit, progressive Jewish prosecutor, for state attorney general
(JTA) — A progressive Jewish county prosecutor won the endorsement of Michigan’s state Democratic Party over the weekend in his bid for state attorney general, at a convention that also spotlighted deep divides over Israel within the party.
Eli Savit beat out another county prosecutor for the chance to succeed Dana Nessel, the state’s current AG, who is also a Jewish Democrat. He will be the Democratic nominee on November’s ballot.
Unlike Savit, who remains largely embraced by the left, Nessel has made enemies among the state’s pro-Palestinian activist contingent for her role in aggressively prosecuting University of Michigan encampment protesters.
The 41-year-old Savit has since 2021 been the prosecutor of Washtenaw County, which includes Ann Arbor and the university. A former clerk for Jewish Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, he was endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders and elected in a mini-wave of progressive prosecutors that also included Chesa Boudin in San Francisco.
While Boudin was forced out following a 2022 recall, Savit has remained in Washtenaw’s good graces as he’s pushed progressive proposals including decriminalizing consentual sex work, not seeking prosecutions for psychedelics consumption and curbing cash bail.
Savit has called himself “a bona fide American Jew” and has invoked his identity when opposing policies such as President Trump’s first-term 2019 executive order defining Judaism as a nationality as part of an effort to target BDS movements on college campuses. He has said his father’s family came from “shtetls in Russia, Poland, and the Ukraine,” and that his mother, originally from Iowa, converted to Orthodox Judaism. He also wrote a letter to the Wall Street Journal in 2016 to dispute a column wondering why more Jews don’t vote Republican.
Savit also played a part in prosecuting the university’s pro-Palestinian protesters, although his role was smaller than Nessel’s. In 2024 his office filed felony charges against four protesters for allegedly assaulting police officers during a sit-in at the university president’s house. Some activists accused Savit and his assistant prosecutor of “betraying their constituents” and “doing so to protect the university’s investments in genocide and apartheid.” (Two of the charged were permitted to enter a diversion program for young offenders, while the other two pled down to misdemeanors.)
When it came to the more high-profile charges against some of the school’s encampment participants, Savit allowed Nessel’s statewide office to handle the cases. Nessel was then accused of being “biased,” a charge she labeled as antisemitic; she ultimately dropped the charges against the protesters.
The attorney who defended the protesters, Amir Makled, also won the Democratic Party’s nomination Sunday in his bid to oust a Jewish, pro-Israel member of the University of Michigan’s Board of Regents. Makled won the party’s support despite reports of past social media activity in which he had retweeted antisemitic conspiracy theorist Candace Owens and praised Hezbollah’s assassinated leader.
Savit also unreservedly condemned the Temple Israel attack in Michigan as antisemitic and stated, “There is a lot of grief, a lot of pain from people that may have loved ones, may have relatives who are in the regions, may even have lost loved ones and relatives. But at the end of the day, that certainly does not give license to launch attacks on Jewish community spaces.”
His statements drew a contrast with Michigan U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, also a favorite of the state’s progressive wing, whose own condemnation of the attack had also invoked Israel’s war in Lebanon.
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