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BY PRESIDENT DAVID M. GORDIS Building bridges. It's a useful metaphor for understanding both the range of programs offered by Hebrew College and what the institution as a whole aspires to bring to the Jewish community. More than a decade ago, we set out to reshape our proud and respected institution to assume a new role for a rapidly changing world. One of the challenges we sought to address was fragmentation—both within the Jewish community and in the larger world. Relationships within the community were becoming increasingly strident; conversation among components of the community were increasingly mean-spirited and difficult; attitudes toward those of different persuasion, both within and outside Jewish life, more confrontational and harsh.
Jews are excellent witnesses to the tragic pathologies engendered by the catastrophic ways people have found to deal with the "otherness" of the other. Difference has been taken as challenge; diversity has been seen as a threat. At Hebrew College, we attempt to transform that perception: to make difference a source of growth and enhancement, not by attempting to homogenize the community into an undifferentiated mass, but by appreciating the growth in ourselves that can result from our sympathetic understanding of how others, differing from us, navigate the challenges of life in their own ways. It is this approach that informed the establishment of our transdenominational Rabbinical School and Cantor-Educator program and our Me'ah program. It is also central to our long-existing programs, such as Prozdor, the Shoolman Graduate School of Jewish Education and Camp Yavneh, which encompass diverse denominational and ideological backgrounds. In all of these programs, diversity is viewed as a blessing rather than a challenge. We bridge religious and secular, intellectual and spiritual, traditional and innovative, reaching across real and perceived barriers to foster a community that respects and honors diversity and transcends barriers of animosity and distrust. We bridge religious and secular, intellectual and spiritual, traditional and innovative, reaching across real and perceived barriers to foster a community. This approach is also fundamental to the extraordinary ties that have developed between Hebrew College and our neighbors on the Hill, Andover Newton Theological School. No less committed than we to the perpetuation of our respective traditions and to the training of leadership for our respective communities, under the leadership of my dear friend and colleague, the visionary president of ANTS, the Reverend Nick Carter, our neighboring institution has begun a rethinking of ministerial training in many ways paralleling our own rethinking of rabbinic and cantorial training. We share the sense that the world is torn apart, and we each in our own way are committed to training a generation of leaders who will help repair the fabric of the world. It is a blessing that while maintaining our clear and absolute faith in our respective traditions, we have found ways to work together in our calling. Our students have established Journeys on the Hill, a program of fellowship, study and joint exploration. Our faculties study and reflect together, and we have begun to introduce joint courses taught by members of the two faculties. President Carter and I meet regularly to reflect on our progress and to dream together about what might be. His friendship has been an extraordinary blessing in my life. We have undertaken a great experiment of potentially far-reaching importance. Can two communities, devoted to their historic and traditional missions, reach out to each other in new ways and model the kind of interrelationship that can help heal a tragically wounded world? We are working hard to ensure that the experiment succeeds, and we are hopeful that some day, looking back on this experiment on the Hill, observers will note that the Jewish world, the Christian world and the larger world have been profoundly enhanced by what we have undertaken.
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Building on Hebrew College's tradition as an institution of klal Yisrael—the total Jewish community—we have developed multifaceted programs in an attempt to bring people together, not by effacing real differences, but by effecting respectful discourse among people of disparate beliefs and attitudes.