Park City, Utah - A strange thing happened in Utah this week: Some 40 leading Jewish academics, writers, rabbis and professionals descended on the mountains of Park City, where, among other things, they built teepees.
Although the media wasn’t invited to watch the experiment, which was couched as a “team building” exercise by the outdoor company running it, plenty of kvetching could be heard afterward.
“God didn’t put me on earth to build teepees,” one attendee said. “Apart from schlepping these logs, I didn’t have much to do,” another said. And when facilitators voiced disappointment at how long it took participants to complete their task, a third promised to take it up in therapy.
The kvetchers in question, many of whom had traveled from far and wide, were participants in “Why Be Jewish?” a three-day event sponsored by The Samuel Bronfman Foundation. The event is the latest in a growing list of gatherings at which Jewish leaders grapple with notions of “identity” and “continuity,” but it was also a sort of coming-out party for Adam Bronfman, managing director of the foundation and son of mega-philanthropist Edgar Bronfman. Guests were there on the Bronfman dime, all expenses paid, and the marquee was filled with boldface names — including literary critic Leon Wieseltier, philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy, best-selling author Anita Diamant, high-profile rabbis David Wolpe, Avi Weiss and David Ellenson, and more. But, though the Big Names came out to discuss the Big Questions, finding the answers proved — like teepee-building, perhaps — a bit more complicated.
Both Adam Bronfman and his father, who also attended, turned down requests for interviews. Word was that Edgar didn’t want to upstage his son, and Adam, who owns a home in Park City, wanted the conference to speak for itself. Addressing their guests in a dining room of the posh Stein Eriksen Lodge at the Deer Valley Resort, the two spoke of their own paths in Jewish life. Egdar Bronfman explained that he found his place amid those who question and doubt, while his son said that the birth of his children sparked his interest to learn more. Now, Adam said, he promotes “big-tent Judaism,” where everyone is welcome.
Looking out at the crowd, Edgar bemoaned the “deep sexism” in the Orthodox communities and said he couldn’t “possibly believe God wrote the Bible.” These comments, as well as his uncontroversial plug for tikkun olam, were greeted with hearty applause by everyone, the most religious included.
But off the record, participants grumbled about the conference’s disorganization, lack of focus, academic arrogance and moments of sexism. But no one wanted to step on another’s toes, and certainly nobody wanted to step on the Bronfman purse strings.
Rabbi Eliyahu Stern, conference coordinator and director of special projects at The Samuel Bronfman Foundation, clung to his beer late Monday and summed up the conference challenges and tensions this way: “Whenever you have two Jews in a room, you have three opinions. So imagine having 40 in the room. Just do the math.”
The starting-off point Sunday was Talmud study, with the group breaking out into chevrutim, or study groups, to pore over passages. For some, the exercise was familiar and Hebrew rolled off their tongues freely. Others were treading into less comfortable waters.
Conversations that followed highlighted the differences in perspective. While some view Jewish life as an intellectual exercise, for others it’s a spiritual or cultural journey and, for a third contingent, it’s a product to sell. But for all of them, being Jewish was not considered a choice. It was a given, rooted in their cores.
Debby Hirshman, the former executive director of the Jewish Community Center in Manhattan, noted the divergence between the conference participants and the mass of unaffiliated Jews they are hoping to reach. Speaking about the “sense of inadequacy” and insecurity felt by most Jews, she noted, “What concerns me in this room is that we’re 90 steps ahead of people who we really want to be here.”
Monday night, to the surprise of many conference participants, hundreds of Jews from Park City and Salt Lake City poured out to attend the gathering’s one public event. It was a discussion about religion in the age of fundamentalism, featuring Lévy, Wieseltier and Tova Hartman, an Israeli spiritual leader and feminist. But what could have been a golden opportunity to connect with the hungry masses quickly turned into philosophical and theological grandstanding.
“I was sorry and sad for many people who came in good faith and were left to feel foolish and illiterate,” said Maeera Shreiber, who teaches English and Jewish studies at the University of Utah and will serve next spring as a visiting chair at Los Angeles’s Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. “I was sitting next to someone who said, ‘Do you think there’s going to be a test at the end of this?’”
Others, like Rabbi Jennifer Krause — a self-professed “rabbi without borders” — said they saw such conflicts in a broader context. Much like the talmudic rabbis who for hundreds of years debated the virtues of Judaism in the aftermath of the Second Temple’s destruction, Krause said she thinks today’s conversations are similarly pivotal: the start, albeit difficult, of creating something new.
“Change, in an eternal project, doesn’t happen overnight,” she said.
Last Tuesday, The Samuel Bronfman Foundation announced the launching of the Bronfman Vision Forum, a new push to keep this effort going.
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What do you get when a fool has more money than he can spend? Once one has all his physical and material needs, what remains is the inexhaustible desire for honor and recognition. So the moneyed spend their time making organizations and conferences in the hope of gaining fame and prestige. Not one Jew will be saved for Judaism because of all these worthless Jewish identity conferences, but at least the Bronfmans will rub shoulders with some famous people, will get a newspaper blurb, and some people may even believe they have done something worthwhile for the Jewish people.
Money alone does not create leaders or provide vision.
I would like to have known what the major speakers said which so offended the crowd. I would like to have heard reactions of a number of the people who attended this conference. This article is written more as an opinion- piece pooh- poohing the event, rather than as a comprehensive report of what actually happened there.
Instead of the usual mix of punditry- academics, philanthropists, and rabbis, how about including an average Jew from the street to add his two cents to the solution? It seems that to be a Jewish leader these days, you either have to be a Bronfman, Perelman, Steinhardt, or Lauder. What about those of us who have no money, but only bright ideas?
While The Book says where there is no vision the people perish, modern Judaism has more distinct visions than people to follow them.
While they're in Utah they might want to look at the large Mormon families-and the subsequent huge percentage growth in the Mormon population. And its because of the polygamy Jews unfortunately gave up
Jewishness being: How rich can you get, how much money you can diverts from poor Jews and Holocaust survivors to your pet projects that you don't want to finance with your OWN billions, how many wars can you start to get Israel some oil and disenfranchise the Arabs, how you can be a Zionist but continue living on Martha's Vineyard, and let the other schmucks actually LIVE in Israel?
THE QUESTIOM IS ASSIMALATION.When wealthy Jews see assimilation it is often in their own families.The answer is support for Jewish education and culture and Kosher food banks.This may not be glamorous but when Jews can not afford kosher food,Jewish education and answers to those that try to convert them or reasons to have Jewish spouses and children we will continue to shrink in population.How many Jewish gugenheims,Rothschilds andseligmans are there???The historicly Jewish forunes are less and less Jewish in each generation.
Maybe the following will help the Bronfmans and their heavy hitting friends understand how they unwittingly put stumbling blocks in front of ordinary Jews who deal with issues of identity and and continuity on a daily basis. In reponse to a constituent's request, the Governor of the State of Iowa proclaimed August 4 as Raoul Wallenberg in honor for his work as a huamanitarian and for requesting thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Holocaust. The constituent sent a copy of this proclomation on to a variety of Jewish agencies and organizations. The response was a deafening silence. What is even worse, when a request was sent to Yad Va Shem and the Holocuast Memorial Museum for help in designing a memorial service to be recited before Mussaf at Shabbat Morning services in Cedar Rapids the response was again silence. What do we learn from this? Are the only Jews who count the ones who live in major metropolitan areas? Are the only Jews who count the ones who are major contributors? Is Judaism, in general, and the Holocaust in particular, the private franchises of certain organizations? If the Bronfmans ever visited with Jews in the "Hintertlands" they might find out that there are peoople who are dealing creatively with ways to make Judaism come alive for the simple reasons that we do not have a panoply of professionally run organizations that take of being "Jewish" in large communities. Actually, a little of that Bronfman moral support and a little cash is all some of us need to take it to the next level.
At the end of the day, a Jew is a Jew only because he thinks of himself as a Jew. So-called conferences of this ilk serve no purpose other than as self-regarding expensive junkets for talking heads. Even though many of my co-religionists would not regard me as a genuine member of the tribe (as a non-Hebrew-reading, non-synagogue-attending fellow with no Jewish connections living in the world of the goyim, literally, I myself, perfectly halachically too, claim full membership. That's all that matters!
Yossi says, Edgar, (and it seems most of the attendees) who no doubt has never spent any real time in any truly Orthodox community, has nothing better to do than to bemoan the sexism there and to deny that G-d wrote the Bible. Why doesn't he seek out some of the hundreds of thousands of Orthodox Jews in Chabad/Aish/Bnai Akiva/Lakewood/Boro Park Flatbush/Boston/Baltimore/Haifa/Ra'anana/Great Neck/L.A./ Miami/Yerushalayim.... who love Orthodox Judaism for it's timeless G-d given wisdom, inclusiveness, and true spirituality? Can it be that he and others like him use confabs like these to lessen their personal guilt for having rejected Jewish Tradition and justify the ersatz Judaism they're supporting? Tens of thousands of modern urban Jewish men and women are returning to Torah true Judaism all over the world. They know why they want to be Jewish. Having tasted all that's out there, they're coming home to their own Faith and G-d. The Bankruptcy of the variuos "ism's" of the Twentieth Century and the various new interpretations of Judaism haven't worked. Our people want the real thing. Jews committed to G-d's Torah are marrying Jews, having children, building communities and schools, and making Aliya. It's that simple- authenticity works. Perhaps Edgar and his friends should "check it out".
it is too bad that so many jews think they know more than G.... judaism is a matter of their convenience in getting through life in a non-jewish setting. it would be better if their life was for g....'s convenience. after all if it were not for g....conversation with moses, would they be jews? ed friedman