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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.
—
The post Overdue or overdone? Two scholars hope to secure the legacy of ‘Jewish Renewal’ appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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He may be country music royalty, but his heart belongs to Leonard Cohen
From the beginning of his career, Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter Rodney Crowell has been solidly ensconced in country music. He won a Grammy for Best Country Song for “After All This Time” in 1989, and one for Best Americana Album for Old Yellow Moon, a duet album recorded with his then ex-wife, Emmylou Harris, in 2014. And when Crowell married Rosanne Cash in 1979, he became a part of country music aristocracy; Rosanne’s father was the legendary country icon Johnny Cash, whose then-wife was June Carter of the “First Family of Country Music.”
The Carter family is widely regarded as having invented modern country music. Crowell brought his own considerable country-music bona fides along with him, and he and Rosanne Cash were considered the up-and-coming power couple of country over the course of their 13-year-marriage, which ended in divorce in 1992.
While strongly based in the country music tradition, Crowell was drawn to the alternative or “outlaw” country movement of the 1970s and 1980s, in which songwriters steered away from country music cliches and aspired more to the literate, poetic, confessional songwriting of folk- and pop-influenced writers like Bob Dylan and James Taylor. And with his latest single, “If I Could Speak to Leonard,” Crowell outs himself as a devotee of Canadian-Jewish singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen.
The new song will be included in Then Again — an album Crowell first recorded 20 years ago in 2006 but never released. The long-shelved project will finally be commercially available on June 26 from New West Records, featuring a newly recorded version of “If I Could Speak to Leonard,” which was originally written and recorded while Cohen was still alive.
The original album featured an all-star supporting cast of singers and musicians including Emmylou Harris, Lyle Lovett, Benmont Tench, and the late Guy Clark. By the time Crowell had recorded Then Again, which was intended to have been the third in a trilogy of albums, the singer-songwriter and Texas native had decided he was already moving on musically in other directions, and so he put it aside and with time it was nearly forgotten — until now.
“Who more than the rabbi poet, Buddhist monk, and sage,” sings Crowell, “defines the deep and holy text and song upon the page? ‘Be still,’ my comprehension cries, ‘there’s so much more than this,’ I’d love to speak to Leonard, could you put me on the list?”
“I’ve always acknowledged Leonard Cohen’s early work as a songwriter, particularly ‘Bird on a Wire’ and ‘Chelsea Hotel,’” Crowell told Magnet Magazine. “But once I heard the live version of ‘Waiting for the Miracle’ and the next few albums he’d release — especially Old Ideas and You Want It Darker — I came to believe he was the most important songwriter of our time. And I say that with all due respect for Bob Dylan and Tom Waits. Seeing him in concert after coming down from the mountain in California, I was convinced he was the most generous performer I’d ever witnessed.”
Throughout his career, Crowell has worked closely with many Jewish musicians and producers in the Nashville and New York scenes, including drummer Hal Blaine, singer-songwriter Marc Cohn, producer-guitarist John Leventhal, and Mickey Raphael, Willie Nelson’s harmonica player. Leventhal is married to Crowell’s ex-wife, Rosanne Cash. Crowell and Leventhal have frequently worked together on projects involving Cash, and Crowell has spoken warmly of their professional and personal relationship.
Much like Cohen’s, Crowell’s later work blurs the line between spiritual yearning and earthly, often gritty reality. Crowell’s ability to weave religious imagery with world-weariness is a direct reflection of the “Zen-monk-in-a-suit” archetype that Cohen perfected.
Crowell’s first big break came in 1975, when Emmylou Harris hired him to play rhythm guitar in her backup band, the Hot Band. In August 1978, Crowell released his debut album, Ain’t Living Long Like This. Crowell has recorded and performed several Bob Dylan songs over the years, including “Girl from the North Country,” “Like a Rolling Stone,” “Shelter from the Storm,” and “Simple Twist of Fate.”
But Crowell has never tried to tackle a Leonard Cohen song. The closest he has come is this tribute song. And to his credit, it kind of sounds like a Leonard Cohen song. Somewhere, the Bard of Montreal is looking down and listening and, one imagines, appreciating the recognition of yet another of the many dozens of singer-songwriters who have expressed their admiration for his work.
The post He may be country music royalty, but his heart belongs to Leonard Cohen appeared first on The Forward.
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Amid Jerusalem’s Flag March, police remove activists aiding Palestinians
Left-wing peace activists say they were forcibly removed by Israeli police while attempting to protect Palestinian residents in the Old City of Jerusalem during Israel’s annual Flag March on Thursday.
The march commemorates Jerusalem Day, a holiday marking Israel’s capture of East Jerusalem during the 1967 war. While the holiday has been celebrated in Israel for decades, in recent years, it has become known as a particularly volatile day, with violent confrontations taking place between nationalist Israelis and Palestinian residents.
Peace activists told the Forward that they witnessed Flag March participants — many of them young yeshiva students — chanting slogans such as “May your villages burn” and holding signs calling for territorial expansion. Anton Goodman, Director of Partnerships at Rabbis for Human Rights, said that he saw participants vandalizing Palestinian-owned businesses and homes.
“They went into Palestinian-owned shops, and smashed all the wares up in them, threw everything on the floor, and smashed plates. And whenever there was a Palestinian around, there was abuse.” In one instance, he observed Jewish Israeli students cutting up what appeared to be a prayer rug of a Palestinian resident as their teacher looked on.
Peace activists also noted that the Old City — usually bustling — was largely empty, as Palestinian shopkeepers closed their stores early in anticipation of the march. Merchants there had already been reeling from shutdowns during the Iran War.
Protective presence
This year, around 300 peace activists came to the Old City to informally patrol the area and show support for Palestinian residents, in what they described as a “protective presence.”
Rabbi Jill Jacobs, CEO of New York City-based T’ruah, told the Forward that when her group of eight left-wing activists approached the Damascus Gate — the main entry point for the parade — they were quickly targeted by participants.
“Some teenagers started dumping water on us and throwing their water bottles at us from above,” she said. Others shouted slurs at the group.
According to Jacobs, police responded by forcing the activists out of the area.
“They told us that the area was closed and we couldn’t be there. And we said, ‘What do you mean it’s closed? Obviously, there’s thousands and thousands of people coming in,’ They said, ‘it’s closed. You’re not allowed to be here.’ And they physically pushed us. I mean, we were not going to have a fight, so we were walking. They were escorting us, but they were also physically pushing us from behind.”
She said the group was pushed several blocks away from the area.
“I kept asking, you know, who’s allowed to go in? Who’s allowed to go in? But obviously he wasn’t going to answer, because the answer is obvious.”
In a separate incident, Goodman, with Rabbis for Human Rights, said he tried to help an elderly Palestinian man who was being harassed near Damascus Gate.
“There were groups of teenagers who were harassing residents. And there was an old man who was coming out, and they started spitting on him and screaming obscenities at him and trying to push him. And so I put my arm around him to help him get out.”
He said police then intervened.
“I was pulled aside violently by the border police, who said, you’re causing trouble and that I can’t be here. Then they grabbed hold of my bag, and they pushed me out of the area.”
Goodman said the incident is just one example of a larger pattern in how the Israeli police deal with left-wing activists.
“This is the conversation we always have with the police,” he said. “The police say that there’s a threat to public safety when there are left-wing people or activists around. Why? Because it can lead to the right-wing extremists coming and causing violence.”
Just last month, the Israeli police detained a 53-year-old Jewish man in Modiin for wearing a kippah embroidered with the Israeli and Palestinian flags and proceeded to cut it up.
The incidents come amid broader tensions around the Israeli police, with thousands of Jewish and Arab Israelis taking to the streets in joint protests this February. Demonstrators protested what they described as a failure by police to adequately protect Arab communities, particularly as violent crime has risen sharply in recent years.
At the Flag Day march, far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who oversees the Israeli police, made a controversial appearance at the hilltop compound that includes the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third-holiest site. Raising an Israeli flag, he declared, “the Temple Mount is in our hands,” a reference to a phrase associated with Israel’s capture of East Jerusalem in 1967.
The Israel Police did not respond to a request for comment.
The post Amid Jerusalem’s Flag March, police remove activists aiding Palestinians appeared first on The Forward.
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US Sen. Rand Paul’s Son Apologizes After Drunken Antisemitic Insults Against Catholic Congressman
US Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is trailed by reporters as he arrives for the weekly Senate Republican caucus luncheon at the US Capitol in Washington, US, May 22, 2018. Photo: REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
William Paul, the adult son of frequent Israel critic US Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), has apologized following reports that he made antisemitic and homophobic statements while defending Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) to Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) at a Capitol Hill restaurant on Tuesday evening.
NOTUS reporter Reese Gorman witnessed the encounter at Tune Inn and wrote that the younger Paul, 33, sat a few seats down from Lawler at the bar when he introduced himself and told the congressman that if Massie lost in his upcoming primary, “your people” would be responsible.
Lawler, an Irish Catholic, asked, “My people?”
This prompted Paul to say, “Yeah, you Jews.”
Lawler then clarified his religious background, saying, “Do you think I’m Jewish? I’m not.”
Paul apologized for his error, replying, “Oh wow, I’m so sorry for calling you a Jew.”
Lawler later told reporters the comment was “just a remarkable statement in and of itself,” adding that “at one point, you know, said that he hates Jews and hates gays and doesn’t care if they die. And I think that’s f**king disgusting.”
Lawler told the New York Post that he responded to Paul mistakenly identifying him as a Jew with, “And even if I was, what’s the problem?”
“Then he got into the Middle East,” the lawmaker recounted. “And he was talking about, like, us trying to steal Iran’s land for the Jews and steal the West Bank, and I’m like, ‘What are you talking about?’”
Paul then reportedly proclaimed Jews were “un-American” and more loyal to Israel. Lawler argued back against Paul’s dual-loyalty accusations and accused him of being antisemitic.
“Paul Singer serves Israeli interests, not American interests,” Paul also said during the encounter, referring to the billionaire Republican donor and prominent Jewish supporter of pro-Israel causes.
Singer has supported Ed Gallrein, a retired Navy SEAL challenging Massie in Kentucky’s 4th Congressional District.
A new campaign ad that aired in Kentucky this week and was sponsored by Hold the Line PAC, a group backing Massie, characterized Singer as a “pro-trans billionaire” and featured a rainbow-colored Star of David behind his image while attacking Gallrein’s allies.
Critics condemned the imagery as antisemitic, arguing it invoked longstanding tropes about Jewish financial influence and used Jewish symbolism in a way designed to inflame cultural resentment.
Massie himself has been a fierce critic of Israel, condemning its military operations in Gaza and Lebanon and arguing that the Jewish state has targeted civilian infrastructure and should not receive assistance from the US.
US President Donald Trump has endorsed Gallrein and actively campaigned against Massie, who like Paul’s father is a libertarian-leaning Republican known for frequently breaking with party leadership and advocating an isolationist foreign policy.
During his outburst this week, the younger Paul also urged Lawler to watch far-right podcaster Tucker Carlson more and claimed that Massie and his father were the only legislators who care about America. In multiple postings on X, Paul promoted “Save the Republic Money Bomb” donations for Massie.
In December 2023, Massie sparked condemnation for posting a meme suggesting that Congress was more loyal to Zionism than “American patriotism.”
In recent years, meanwhile, Carlson has emerged as the leading anti-Israel commentator on the American political right, routinely advancing conspiracy theories condemning the Jewish state while heaping praise on Qatar, the longtime supporter of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.
Tuesday’s exchange concluded with Paul performing an obscene gesture.
Lawler responded by asking, “Did you just give me the middle finger?”
Paul replied, “I’m sorry, yeah, I did. I’m just really drunk. I’m going to leave.” He reportedly stumbled on his way leaving the bar.
Paul attempted to apologize on X on Wednesday from his @TastyBrew1776 account, writing, “Last night, I had too much to drink and said some things that don’t represent who I really am. I’m sorry and today I am seeking help for my drinking problem.” He has struggled with his alcohol use before, pleading guilty to a drunk driving charge in 2015.
Rabbi Uri Pilichowski responded to the apology.
“You don’t just have a drinking problem, you have a Jew-hating problem,” he posted. “The Jewish sages taught, ‘Wine goes in, and secrets come out.’ You need some Jewish friends so you can correct your image of Jews.”
Conservative columnist Bethany Mandel, an advocate for Jewish outreach to antisemites, responded with an invitation to Paul, asking him, “Care to come for Shabbat dinner sometime?”
Addressing the admission of excessive drinking, Lawler told reporters, “That’s not an excuse for that type of hatred and vitriol. It’s my fourth year in Washington; that was arguably the most shocking thing I’ve witnessed.”
Lawler explained how he saw the encounter in the context of today’s rising antisemitism.
“But I mean, look, I think it speaks to a larger issue, obviously, in society and what we’re seeing among young people and what we see online,” he said. “And this is the level of hatred and vitriol, frankly, that some of my Jewish colleagues experience, but many of my constituents experience.”
Paul’s father chose not to comment on his son’s antisemitic outburst, saying to reporters on Wednesday only, “I don’t have anything for you.”
He and Massie have both faced substantial criticism for their positions on Israel.
On numerous occasions, Massie voted as the lone Republican in the House opposing bills supporting Israel and denouncing antisemitism. In October 2023, he voted against House Resolution 771, which stated that Congress “stands with Israel as it defends itself against the barbaric war launched by Hamas and other terrorists” and “reaffirms the United States’ commitment to Israel’s security.” In September 2021 he was likewise the sole Republican to oppose the Iron Dome Supplemental Appropriations Act.
In May 2022, Massie earned the distinction of being the only member of Congress to oppose a resolution honoring Jewish Americans’ heritage and denouncing a rise in antisemitic violence. He also distinguished himself further on Nov. 28, 2023, as the only legislator to vote against a resolution reaffirming Israel’s right to exist.
In January 2024, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley condemned Massie as “the most anti-Israel Republican in Congress” and challenged her primary rival Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to denounce his support.
Paul has also faced opposition for his actions against the Jewish state. In November 2018, he blocked two bills to continue military funding of Israel. Then-Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said then that “at a time when Israel faces unprecedented threats, blocking a bipartisan bill that empowers the US to stand with Israel is inexplicable.” Paul claimed that he supported Israel and that his move was intended toward encouraging the Jewish state to support its own defense.
Former Texas Rep. Ron Paul — the father of Rand and grandfather of William — has faced accusations of bigotry for decades, originating in his decision to publish a series of 1980s newsletters bearing his name which promoted racism, antisemitism, homophobia, and conspiracy theories, including one since identified by analysts as disinformation deployed by the KGB accusing the United States of creating the AIDS virus.
According to former Cato President Ed Crane, Ron Paul once told him that “his best source of congressional campaign donations was the mailing list for the Spotlight, the conspiracy-mongering, antisemitic tabloid run by the Holocaust denier Willis Carto.”
Rand has previously spoken fondly about the influence of one of his father’s antisemitic mentors, Murray Rothbard, the founder of the anarcho-capitalist and paleo-libertarian traditions who frequented the Paul family’s dinner table. During his career, Rothbard promoted Holocaust deniers, used antisemitic slurs in private correspondence, called for abolishing the Constitution to return to the Articles of Confederation, and urged Republicans to support former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke.
“I have one of the largest Jewish populations anywhere in the country in my congressional district, and I’m not going to stop standing up for my constituents,” Lawler told reporters. “I’m going to stand up for the Judeo-Christian values that are at the core of our nation, our Constitution, and our rule of law, as I reminded Mr. Paul.”