A Heterodox Rabbi Who Gets It

Yeshiva University - where Modern Orthodox rabbis are trained

I’m not sure if you’ve heard, but there is a massive shortage of non-Orthodox rabbis.

These are the words of Joshua Rabin – one such non-Orthodox rabbi. Which is yet another nail in the coffin of Reform and Conservative Judaism. I say this with no ill intent. I say it simply as the undisputed fact it appears to be about the once powerhouse movements considered to be the future of Judaism in America a few short decades ago.

Calling it a crisis, Rabbi Rabin adds:

With a generation of rabbis nearing retirement and fewer students entering non-Orthodox rabbinic programs, the situation will likely worsen in the coming years, perhaps decades.

I don’t think there is any doubt about that. It is a story of an American Jewish experience devoid of actual Jewish content.  Attending afternoon Hebrew schools like the one he attended - were once part and parcel of the American Jewish experience Every synagogue had one. But by now they have just about disappeared.  

That’s because very few parents of students attending those schools had any personal investment in the Judaism being taught there. If you don’t see it at home, learning about it in school is not going to motivate change that might seem odd by American cultural standards. Becoming a rabbi raised in circumstances like that - as did Rabbi Rabin is an anomaly.

What makes this essay somewhat different from other treatments of this problem is that he gets it. Rabbi Rabin understands exactly what is missing from those movements and suggests changes that have a proven track record of success. Here is what he said:

We can’t anticipate when someone will deepen their commitment to Jewish life; kal va’homer, all the more so, if and when they decide to enter the rabbinate. But the longer a person goes without Jewish engagement, the less likely they are to start.

For over three decades, however, the Jewish institutional world systematically neglected the very institutions we need to thrive to maximize our chances of richly educating the most significant number of Jews such that they might choose the rabbinate... 

In Bava Batra 21a, our Sages credit Joshua ben Gamla with ensuring the vibrancy of Torah learning when he decreed that Jewish children should begin their studies at age six... over time, this decision to start requiring education at an early age is what allowed the Jewish people to become “a small population of highly literate people, who continued to search for opportunities to reap returns from their investment in literacy.”

Non-Orthodox Judaism operates in an environment (of) institutional decay coupled with a Jewish populace largely deficient in Jewish literacy. Like in Joshua ben Gamla’s era, we will not innovate our way out of this problem, because the problem is not about innovation — it’s about our collective negligence of the institutions whose success or failure holds the key to whether or not we will find a solution.

Indeed. Couldn’t have said it better myself. My only quibble is, ‘Why re-invent the wheel?’ If Rabbi Rabin is serious about the cure for what ails American Jewry (and I think he is) let him turn his attention to the schools that already exist. Orthodox Jewish day schools and high schools exist in spades. Why not utilize what’s already there instead of investing time and huge sums of money to build new schools with new budgets to run them?

It's true that Orthodox schools cannot possibly handle the overload of children being sent to them by unaffiliated Jews if they all decided to suddenly do it all at once. (If only that were the problem.) But getting American Jewry en masse to become committed enough to send their children to our day schools will not happen overnight. It will very likely be a gradual process that schools will be able to handle and grow at an equivalent pace.

Based on his article, my impression of Rabbi Rabin is that he is a sincere Jew who wants to see the Jewish people flourish. And that nothing would  please him more than if one of his secular congregants became more observant. Committed rabbis like this far prefer becoming more religious than going the other way. If one of their members goes from being non observant to becoming Orthodox, they consider it a victory!

Imagine the possibilities if we could convince the ‘Rabbi Rabins’ of Judaism to work with us instead of competing with us.

Pipe dream? Maybe. But if Rabbi Rabin really wants to see more rabbis serving the American Jewish community, why not go this route? There are many modern Orthodox rabbis that would fit quite nicely into this new cohort of Orthodox Jews. My advice: Try it. You might like it.