Sharon Brous Naomi Levy
SHARON BROUS NAOMI LEVY
While the institutional leaders of Conservative Judaism struggle to find a compelling message and arrest their movement’s decline, a handful of young Conservative-trained rabbis are finding their own ways to revitalize the broad middle of Judaism between Reform and Orthodoxy. We could have chosen some senior rabbis working imaginatively in the traditional synagogue framework, such as Ira Stone in Philadelphia or Gordon Tucker in White Plains, N.Y. But the most exciting developments, it appears, are taking place in startup congregations, like the ones launched in Los Angeles by Rabbis Sharon Brous and Naomi Levy. Brous, 31, who heads the year-old Ikar congregation, headed west after being ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary and working with Rabbi Rolando Matalon at New York’s famed B’nai Jeshurun Congregation. Ikar has tripled its ranks during its inaugural year by combining an emphasis on serious text study with calls to social action. Levy’s congregation, Nashuva, puts spirituality front and center; it meets in a church and encourages non-Jews to join the worship. Levy, 42, was a member of the first class of women ordained at JTS in 1984, then took a traditional pulpit in Los Angeles, but quit to write a best-selling book on spirituality and loss, “To Begin Again.” Both rabbis steer well clear of the dogma and doctrinal debates that tend to dominate among establishment leaders, instead concentrating on positive content that appeals to young seekers. Time will tell whether their congregations can serve as models for Conservative renewal nationwide or whether they are simply local Hollywood success stories.
RICHARD JOEL
When he became president of Yeshiva University two years ago, countless observers questioned how Richard Joel could maneuver between the university’s competing factions. On one hand, the Talmud professors at the affiliated rabbinical seminary protested the selection of a layman without rabbinic ordination to lead the venerable institution. On the other hand, liberals itching to shore up the university’s Modern Orthodox traditions wondered if he had the clout to stand up to the traditionalists. Joel, 55, has relied on the combination of diplomacy and vision that served him so well as international director of Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life. He’s shored up his right flank by consulting regularly with the seminary rabbis. More recently, he launched the Center for the Jewish Future, a think tank that could become a moderate counterweight to the seminary. Joel has also announced an ambitious campaign to expand the university’s undergraduate student body by 1,000, forcing Yeshiva to compete with Ivy League colleges for the top Orthodox high school graduates. If Joel’s track record is any indication — at Hillel, he transformed a struggling institution into a major communal force — Yeshiva’s stock is about to rise. But some detractors see an all-too-familiar tendency for regression to the mean. At Hillel, Joel was sometimes accused of dumbing down Jewish content to boost attendance; now some Yeshiva alums are riled that the university’s long-standing motto — Torah u-Madda, or “Torah and Knowledge” — is being replaced (officials say augmented) by the pareve-sounding “Bring wisdom to life.”
YEHUDA KRINSKY
The continuing growth of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement is one of the wonders of modern Judaism. Eleven years after the death of its charismatic leader, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, Lubavitch has firmly established itself as a full-scale wing of American Judaism and a major force worldwide. This past year saw a rapidly growing acceptance of the movement’s new role by other Jewish groups. In Russia, the Chabad-dominated Federation of Jewish Communities received acknowledgement of its dominant role in Jewish life when the American Jewish Congress signed a formal cooperation agreement. On American college campuses, the national Hillel foundation began encouraging its local chapters to reach out and cooperate with Chabad Houses — Hillel is on about 500 campuses, compared to nearly 200 for Chabad — rather than view them as competitors, or worse, oddballs. Managing it all with a light touch, like the head of a giant franchising corporation, is Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky, the steel-willed administrator once known as the rebbe’s “secretary.” Lubavitchers continue to insist they have no leader since Schneerson died, but Krinsky heads some of their most important institutions, including the crucial Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch, Lubavitch’s educational outreach organization. He sounded uncannily like a leader when he addressed an international convention of Lubavitch rabbis in Brooklyn this past January. “This is the work you do,” Krinsky told the emissaries. “You find the people who do not see, and you guide them and hold their hand as you lead them to safe ground.”
ROLANDO MATALON
When community planners talk about “synagogue renewal,” as they often do these days, they usually have in mind an ideal congregation that draws crowds, speaks to the young, gives members a sense of community and leaves worshippers feeling spiritually moved. If pressed, they’re more than likely to name New York’s 1,800-family B’nai Jeshurun Congregation. The trouble is, everybody keeps trying to copy the BJ formula, but nobody has succeeded. That’s probably because nobody has figured out how to clone its moving spirit, Rabbi Jose Rolando Matalon. An Argentine native, Matalon, now 49, began rabbinic studies at a Conservative seminary in Buenos Aires under Rabbi Marshall Meyer, the legendary human rights activist. Ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York in 1986, Matalon went to work as Meyer’s assistant at BJ, then a fading congregation near collapse. They re-imagined the shul as a community of social activism and prayer services filled with music and dancing, and crowds began flocking in. When the shul’s ceiling collapsed in 1991, services were moved to a nearby church; by the time repairs were done, BJ was too big for its own building. Meyer died in 1993 and Matalon recruited an old friend, Rabbi Marcello Bronstein. But the growth hasn’t stopped. Sabbath services are now held in both the church and the shul; on High Holy Days they spill over into Lincoln Center. Matalon, meanwhile, has become a Big Apple fixture, lending his name to a host of liberal causes — often naively, critics say — while tending to BJ’s beehive of havurot, classes and social-action groups.
YAAKOV PERLOW
This past March 1, an estimated 120,000 Orthodox Jews gathered at 70 sites around the world, from Poland to Tel Aviv to New York’s Madison Square Garden, to celebrate the completion of Daf Yomi, the seven-and-a-half year cycle of daily Talmud study. The unprecedented event was not just a testament to the burgeoning of Orthodoxy; it was also a personal triumph for Rabbi Yaakov Perlow, 75, president of the event’s sponsoring organization, Agudath Israel of America. Perlow, grand rabbi of the Novominsker Hasidic dynasty, took over Agudath Israel in 1998 following the death of Rabbi Moshe Sherer, who had led the ultra-Orthodox advocacy group for decades and was widely seen as irreplaceable. Over time Perlow has clearly made his mark. Far less engaged with the non-Orthodox world than his predecessor, he’s also less defensive. In 1999 he publicly praised the new traditionalist platform of Reform Judaism, something that would have been inconceivable under the old regime. The following year, amid a wave of financial scandals that some Orthodox spokesmen saw as a witch-hunt, Perlow openly called for ethical soul-searching. He’s also led efforts to improve treatment of the developmentally disabled; his own son suffers from severe Down’s Syndrome. A native New Yorker, Perlow taught high school before succeeding his father as Novominsker rebbe in 1976. He speaks with considerable religious authority; he holds dual chairs as Agudath Israel’s president and chairman of its Council of Torah Sages. Addressing the crowd on that frigid night at Madison Square Garden, Perlow said: “Snow and ice spread below, and all are vulnerable to its cold, but God issues his command, and they melt; he issues his command, and waters flow.” The crowd melted.
JACK WERTHEIMER
Conservative Judaism, once the community’s most populous denomination, has been locked in an internal debate for close to two decades between liberals pushing for greater inclusiveness and conservatives arguing for a return to basics. Jack Wertheimer, 57, historian, prolific author and provost of the Jewish Theological Seminary, is the most visible and outspoken defender of Conservatism’s conservative wing. On issues ranging from the ordination of gay rabbis to acceptance of intermarried couples, Wertheimer has been unafraid to ruffle feathers, laying out his views in cool, intelligent prose. With the announced retirement next spring of the seminary’s chancellor, Rabbi Ismar Schorsch, the debate about the future of the movement has shifted into high gear, and so has Wertheimer. In recent months he has published essays in the Forward and Commentary arguing for in-marriage, conversion of non-Jewish spouses and a higher Jewish birthrate. Insider speculation is that Wertheimer is a leading candidate to succeed Schorsch as chancellor. His chances are hurt by his lack of rabbinic ordination, and some question whether he has the charisma to fill the chancellor’s secondary role of movement leader. Whoever takes up the reins of American Judaism’s centrist wing, Wertheimer is certain to have a pivotal voice for a long time to come.
ERIC YOFFIE DAVID ELLENSON
Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, has been the unchallenged leader of American Judaism’s largest denomination for more than a decade. Lately, though, he has been sharing the limelight with another charismatic figure: David Ellenson, the bearded, cherubic president of Reform Judaism’s four-campus rabbinic seminary, the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. Yoffie, 58, heads the union of 900-plus Reform congregations, with its 1.5 million members; he sets a tone that emphasizes greater traditionalism in ritual along with Reform’s trademark political liberalism. Ellenson, also 58, is charged with minting the next generation of rabbis and cantors — the future field generals who will ultimately determine the success of Yoffie’s religious revolution. Yoffie was raised in a Reform household in Worcester, Mass., and worked in the movement’s New York headquarters for 16 years before becoming president in 1996. Ellenson was reared in an Orthodox home in Virginia, gravitated to Reform during college and was set on a quiet career as a scholar of Jewish intellectual history before being tapped to head the college in 2001. This month the spotlight will be on Yoffie at the URJ’s biennial convention in Houston, where, if tradition holds, he will launch a new series of congregational initiatives, setting the movement’s political and religious agenda for the next two years. Ellenson’s students will take center stage in the decades to come.
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