BY EVELYN HERWITZ
Photos © Paula Lerner 2003
Graduate photo by George McLean

Like Jacob's struggle with an angel—or his own demons—at the River Jabbok, which earned him the name Israel, the search for Jewish identity is a lone, wrenching, yet uplifting pursuit of personal truth. It is a search illuminated by Jewish texts and traditions explored from many vantage points, strengthened by debate with other seekers, best guided by learned mentors who value probing questions more than definitive answers. It is a journey vivified by transdenominational Jewish education.

An academic environment that models Jewish community is an ideal to strive for and a life-transforming experience.

On a frigid February morning at the New Jewish High School, the day after President Bush's press conference on probable war with Iraq, as students return from a memorial service for a Haifa teen slaughtered in a bus bombing, Jonathan Golden MJEd'97, greets his American history class with a question: Imagine you are waiting for a different war to start—it is America in the 1930s and you are a leader in the American Jewish community. You are aware of the perilous situation of German Jews. What do you do? Debating different options that were championed by Jewish organizations of that era with divergent social, political and religious agendas, the students engage in a lively discussion. Clearly, this is an issue that cuts across ideology. At stake are Jewish lives and basic human rights. The only question for these teens is which alternative—boycotting German goods, lobbying for increased immigration quotas, encouraging immigration to Palestine—is most likely to succeed.

In a classroom at Hebrew College, graduate students in the cantorial arts certificate program are examining the opening brachot of the Shacharit service. Why, they wonder, did the traditional morning liturgy express thanks to God "Who did not make me a woman"? And why, in the Conservative prayerbook, was the language changed to a blessing of thanks for being made in God's image? If there is a question of gender bias in the liturgy, does this alternative really resolve it? Dr. Scott M. Sokol, himself a Conservative cantor and director of the Jewish Music Institute, explains the reference to biblical text in Genesis 1:27—"And God created man in His image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them." More questions follow. What does it mean to be created in God's image? What is the intention of the bracha? the source text?

In a second-year Me'ah class at the Worcester Jewish Community Center, adult learners studying modern Jewish history consider the essay "Wisdom of Women," recollections of conversations between the author, Barukh Epstein, and his aunt, Rayna Batya, the wife of R. Netziv of Volozhin. At the heart of the dialogue is Epstein's struggle with his strongly held belief that women—his aunt in particular—should not abandon the home for the male domain of Jewish study, and his realization that his criticisms pain his aunt—augmenting her despair that the very texts she pursues with such passion condemn her for neglecting her family. The dispute is eventually resolved by a silent agreement between Epstein and Rayna Batya not to discuss their differences, explains Dr. Don Seeman, a lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. For the class, this raises a salient issue: How do you hold two diametrically opposed positions and still accept one another? And how do you create a community that enables you to maintain strongly held beliefs and still maintain a sense of cohesiveness?

The answer to that question is found in each of these classrooms. Though the venues and subjects vary, all three classes unite teachers and learners of diverse Jewish backgrounds in a common pursuit: a quest for Jewish identity within an academic setting that respects the Jewish ideological continuum. Here, the encounter with text and topic demands that students question and challenge, leaving the final interpretation to each individual. Teachers guide, and opinions are valued. In turn, the respect and understanding forged in the classroom—pride in a people and heritage that is larger than the sum of its parts, reverence for shared sacred texts and language, valuing a culture that at its best can agree to disagree—lay the foundation for k'lal Yisrael.

A guiding principle for Hebrew College since its 1921 founding on the crest of the American Hebraist movement, this transdenominational approach to texts and tradition is prized as the best means to empower each individual to define his or her place in the Jewish world. For students, faculty and Hebrew College alumni teaching in Jewish institutions, an academic environment that models Jewish community is an ideal to strive for and a life-transforming experience.

Jonathan Golden knows firsthand what a difference learning and living in a transdenominational setting can make. Now the chair of the history department at the pluralistic Gann Academy—New Jewish High School of Greater Boston (NJHS) in Waltham, Mass., Golden first encountered the power of a k'lal Yisrael environment at Camp Yavneh. A camper and counselor for 13 years, Golden still refers back to that experience as "the model I draw on most. There was something about Yavneh that took Judaism beyond an academic exercise, beyond attendance at synagogue. There was an organic sense of 24/7 living a certain lifestyle for two months. It was very powerful."

Although he had not expected to teach in a transdenominational Jewish environment—in high school, he had seriously considered becoming a Conservative rabbi; as a Princeton history major, he planned to teach in the public school system—Golden was drawn toward Jewish education in the process of writing his senior thesis about the experience of Russian Jewish immigrants in the Boston public schools. That research, which was also a personal search to learn more about the world of his grandparents, led to a decision to earn a Master of Jewish Education from Hebrew College and the opportunity to help shape and evaluate the Me'ah curriculum. Now a doctoral student at Brandeis, working on his dissertation about the pluralistic Synagogue Council of America, under the direction of Jonathan Sarna P'70, BHL'74, Golden is immersed in his teaching at NJHS and loves helping to create the kind of communal environment he first prized at Yavneh, later at Hebrew College and through his involvement with Me'ah.

"We come together to learn, to study, to question one another without challenging where each is coming from," says Golden. "That's what is most powerful about teaching here. Like Hebrew College and Me'ah, our faculty includes people from across the full spectrum of Jewish life, teachers who are very authentic in what they bring to the table, who aren't simply catering to what people want to hear. Students engage, they grapple with the subjects. I try to foster the kind of dialogue that prepares students to participate in our American democracy—it's a compelling model for transdenominational Jewish education."

For Selena (Luftig) Cousin MJEd, FamEd'99, the same educational principles apply in a denominational setting. Educational director at Congregation B'nai Shalom in Westborough, Mass., for the past four years, Cousin brings a strong text-centered, dialogic approach to the Reform congregation's 460-student, K–12 Hebrew school. "If we're good teachers, we have to let students know that we don't have all the answers," says Cousin, who was valedictorian of her Hebrew College graduating class. "It's risky when teachers say, 'Here's what Judaism says about this'—and it does the students a disservice. I try to help the kids develop their own answers and ask better questions. To me that's more important than having them give me back a perspective, or the perspective."

Cousin introduces primary texts in the fifth grade with Tanakh and builds from there. Students in her ninth-grade class on God and theology study texts from the Bible, Martin Buber and Abraham Joshua Heschel, among others. "When we study the rabbinic period and look at prayer, I bring in prayer books from the different movements," she says. "We look at the Amidah and compare and contrast to find what is the same and what is different. Our goal is to educate Jews to participate in the Jewish community wherever they choose to go."

Growing up in the Sudbury, Mass., Reform Congregation Beth El with Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, and later teaching in Beth El's Hebrew school, Cousin knew from the outset of her master's studies at Hebrew College that she wanted to be an education director, most likely in a Reform congregation. Her sense of belonging to the Reform Movement was reinforced by the open dialogue in her College classes. "Studying with people of all walks forces you to challenge your assumptions," she says. "It pushes you to figure out whether what you think you believe really is what you believe. Once you're in the real world, you become part of a movement. But even when you work in a movement and end up aligning with that movement's values and ideals, you can still bring in a variety of perspectives."

The challenge of integrating multiple perspectives into a lesson on Jewish text, literature or history not only forces students to question their assumptions and values, but faculty as well. Dr. Jacob Meskin, Assistant Professor of Jewish Education, is also a longtime Me'ah instructor. "Many of my Me'ah classes are in Reform or Conservative synagogues," says Meskin. "Often I and other Me'ah instructors find, when we're teaching the modern history segment of the curriculum, that Reform students are almost uniformly uncomfortable with the founders of the Reform Movement, condemning them for being the first wave of assimilators. And I as a Modern Orthodox Jew end up defending the reformers. You can't just condemn the Reform Movement that way—you have to put yourself in their shoes and understand that this was one of several legitimate response to modernity in the 19th century. As a Modern Orthodox Jew I may be sympathetic to their opponents, but you can't dismiss the movement out of hand."

For Meskin, the goal in a transdenominational classroom is to engage students in an authentic dialogue with texts that draw on each individual's experience and ideological beliefs. "You have to reclaim those texts for yourself as a Jew today," he says. "We share that around the table. You've got to let the students go about the process of engaging the text, to be passionate, to debate and, ultimately, to appropriate the tradition for themselves."

"I teach from the received musical liturgical tradition so that students can understand the changes that have sprung from there," says Dr. Scott M. Sokol.

The process is more complex when teaching a subject such as liturgical practice, which by its very nature is denomination-centered. In his cantorial arts classes in the Jewish Music Institute, Dr. Scott M. Sokol uses the Orthodox prayer book as a foundation for comparison. "I tend to teach from the received tradition so that students can understand the changes that have sprung from there," says Sokol, Adjunct Associate Professor of Jewish Music and Educational Psychology, who also serves as hazzan for Kehillath Israel, a Conservative congregation in Brookline, Mass. "You get a much better idea of the deep structure." By tracing the musical and textual evolution of the liturgy, Sokol helps students identify what sections of different services are common across denominations, which melodies are considered sacrosanct—such as the Kol Nidre prayer on Yom Kippur—and those prayers that invite variation—such as Adon Olam. "My goal for the students," he says, "is for them to appreciate the varieties of musical liturgical expression, to understand received traditions and to help them craft authentic worship experiences for their congregants." In practice, he adds, students who understand the evolution of the liturgy often reinsert traditional melodies and prayers into services, to the approval of their congregants.

"So much of what the cantorate is about for me is to remind people of the traditions they've lost," says Sokol, who also brings in faculty from different denominations to present other perspectives on liturgy. "Music provides a layer of interpretation on the text. That's not to say that I don't encourage students to write and use new melodies, but there's a system underlying how melodies should be written, and that's what I teach."

Wrestling with texts and tradition across denominational lines will also be a central component of Hebrew College's new Rabbinical School, scheduled to open this fall. Dr. Arthur Green, Dean of the Rabbinical School, Visiting Professor of Jewish Mysticism at Hebrew College and Philip W. Lown Professor of Jewish Thought at Brandeis University, considers the College's transdenominational philosophy essential to rabbinic training. "In our program, you won't be able to study only with those most like you, those with whom you are most naturally comfortable," says Green. "We hope that future rabbis from diverse points on the spectrum, regarding all matters—religious praxis, theology, personal lifestyle, political views—will challenge one another and cause one another to grow. Students will have to meet and engage in dialogue with all sorts of Jews. This will offer graduates a unique preparation for the rabbinate in our very diverse American Jewish community."

That is not to say, however, that the College promotes a relativistic approach to Jewish ethics. "The fact that we present alternatives doesn't mean alternatives without limits," says President David Gordis. "There are objective criteria for an ethical belief system—respecting dignity of other human beings, not causing hurt or pain. At the same time, we admit that there are not absolute answers. We use culture and religion as a way of seeking meaning. And honoring the question is part of that religious position.

"In Judaism, the classical text is not a catechism, but the Talmud, a dialogue of questions and answers. The Talmud invites its readers to enter the conversation."

Ultimately, seeking the truth is a quest for discovering, through the thrust and parry of text study, what is true for the individual. "In Judaism as a religion, truth means attempting to make the best case—as in academic scholarship—but it means something else as well," says Jacob Meskin. "It's the way rituals and text and community and your own personality somehow flow together, and you feel grabbed ahold of. That's got to be personal. If it's only objective, it's not religion."

"Rather than preaching about one denomination or another, my teachers are giving me the tools I need to decide what kind of Jew I want to be," says Ruthie Strosberg.

Immersed in that search, Ruthie Strosberg, who is completing her MJEd while working as Lower School Director for the Hebrew College Prozdor, hopes to run her own pluralistic Jewish day school someday, convinced by her Prozdor experience that the transdenominational model works. Not only has she seen her teenage students gain a strong sense of their Jewish identity, she is growing through that process herself.

"I'm a day school graduate, and my family belonged to both Conservative and Orthodox shuls. Now that I'm an adult, I have to figure out my own priorities," she reflects. "Hebrew College has been very helpful in that process, because I've been exposed to so many different kinds of Judaism—in the people that I meet, my classmates, in the perspectives that my professors share, in the course content, and in my daily interactions with faculty and staff. Rather than preaching about one denomination or another, they're giving me the tools I need to decide what kind of Jew I want to be."

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