Conservative Movement Gets Tikun Olam Vision

It seems like the Conservative movement is coming to understand the lessons of Tikun Olam, that fixing the world is THE purpose we were put on this earth.

Rosner's Domain: Rabbi Joanna Samuels on the stagnation of the Jewish Conservative movement

Rabbi Joanna Samuels is a teacher, writer, and mother of two small children. A graduate of Barnard College, she was ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary where she was a Wexner Graduate Fellow. Until 2008 she served as the spiritual leader of Congregation Habonim on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. I asked her questions regarding the things she's said at the Jewish Theological Seminary, in an evening dedicated to "Conservative Judaism: The Next Generation."

Rosner: In the "Conservative Judaism" event, you've said (or quoted as saying) this: "We need to do something bigger than ourselves," she told the audience. "My goal is for us to get people out in the world to help heal the world. That's the best kind of Conservative practice." Can you please explain what you mean? What is it that you suggested?

Rabbi Samuels: This quote is taken from a larger discussion of ways that we might engage our constituents. Clearly, synagogues, schools, camps, adult learning programs like the Melton mini-schools are some of the avenues that have been offered to Jewish adults and children who affiliate with the Conservative movement. In some cases, these institutions have worked very well. There are individual synagogues that have been transformative in the lives of their constituents, for instance, and certainly Camp Ramah and the Solomon Schechter schools are strong models in educating and acculturating Jewish children.

I think, though, that we are reaching people in a limited way.

We in the observant world are at risk of modeling a fragmented and actually un-Jewish ideology which says that our communities are places where certain Jewish activity happens -- tefillah and talmud torah, for instance -- but not whole swaths of other Jewish obligations. It was very clear to me in rabbinical school that I was expected to observe and to help others observe certain mitzvot -- Shabbat, tefillah, kashrut, limmud. Rarely if at all did we talk about our obligations to help the poor, to advocate for the defenseless, to give tzedakah in a consistent and conscious way.

In our world, there are two narratives. One is how broken everything is, how much suffering there is, how much violence and poverty and despair. This is a desecration of God and the world that God created. The other narrative is about the people who are actually trying to solve some of these problems in a systemic way -- people like Jeffrey Sachs, Victoria Hale, Paul Farmer, Ruth Messinger, and Wendy Kopp (and if you do not know who these people are, google them, they are heroes). The Jewish people should be actors in the narrative of repair, instead of anguished and passive participants in the narrative of destruction.

The fact is that in every study of civic engagement and concern for the other, Jews rate the highest of any religious group. We should be so proud of this! And we should see the desire to engage in the repair of the world as something authentically Jewish, without any apology. Do we have to explain why the study of Torah is an obligation? So why do we participate in the marginalization of the work of bringing justice to the world? Why do we have to explain why Jews are obligated to this? Why not just go and do it, and bring with us our kosher food, our siddurim, our tefillot -- and see how our Judaism is renewed when, after a long day in service to the other, we daven and say "l'taken olam b'malchut Shaddai"?