Sharing Judaism

Sharing Judaism
Rabbi Dov Gartenberg
January 29, 2006
29 Tevet, 5766

The most innovative feature of Panim Hadashot’s program is the bringing of Shabbat celebrations into people’s homes all around our community. As rabbi of Panim Hadashot, I bring to people’s homes and neighborhoods a beautiful and rich experience of Shabbat around the table. These celebrations are an opportunity for hosts to engage in Jewish hospitality-hachnasat orchim.

The people invited to these feasts cover the map and almost always include some non-Jews of various faiths and cultural traditions. I am completely comfortable with the unpredictable mix, although I have heard some concerns expressed about Panim Hadashot’s approach to outreach.
Some have expressed the opinion to me that our outreach should be more focused on Jews only.

The purpose of any Jewish outreach organization should be on reconnecting Jews to Jewish community and faith and the promotion of endogamy. These same critics have expressed concern that our program is essentially a form of proselytizing of non-Jews to become Jews. The active going out and sharing of Jewish traditions and teachings is crossing the boundary of Jewish outreach.

The practice of Jewish outreach-Keruv-has been made famous by groups such as Chabad. Their focus is on reconnecting Jews to Judaism, and ideally to their form of Hasidic Orthodox Judaism. Other similar organizations within the Orthodox world have focused their efforts on Jews. These keruv efforts are encountering the same thing that I am encountering. The rate of intermarriage and cultural assimilation of American Jews has reached a point where most Jews have non-Jewish family, friends, and social networks. This is especially true in the Pacific Northwestand the West Coast. Any outreach that implicitly or explicitly attempts for the sake of keruv to remove Jews from this multi cultural reality will fail or further alienate Jews who have accepted pluralism and multiculturalism as a positive dimension of American culture. Many Jews embrace American multiculturalism without rejecting their Jewish identity.

The second concern about proselytizing touches a sore point with many Jews. Jews associate proselytizing with Christianity. As committed multiculturalists, Jews find evangelical proselytizing to be offensive and off-putting. Historically we have been more concerned about the freedom to practice our faith rather than seeking to convert others to it. Judaism admits converts but does not seek them-not because it is exclusive but because it does not believe that you have to be Jewish to achieve salvation or a place in the world to come (Sacks p. 115)

Yet I think that our well grounded Jewish distaste for proselytizing prevents us, who now live in the most open and democratic society in history, to positively share the wisdom and beauty of our religious-cultural tradition with others. Jews do not need to worry about proselytizing because of deeply held view of tolerance. Rather we must embrace the commitment to share our tradition with others in a loving and open way. This willingness to share is captured by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the great English rabbi (who is Orthodox), writing in a book I highly recommend, To Heal a Fractured World (126):

“There is all the difference in the world between the attempt to impose your faith on others and the willingness to share it with others. Our faiths are different. Judaism is not Christianity; Christianity is not Islam; the Abrahamic monotheisms are different from Eastern mysticisms on the one hand, scientific humanism on the other. Yet when we bring our respective heritages of wisdom to the public domain, we have no need to wish to convert others. Instead, we are tacitly saying: if this speaks to you, then please take it as our gift. Indeed, it is yours already, for wisdom (unlike revelation) belongs to us all. The willingness non-coercively to share our several traditions of moral insight is, in a religiously plural culture, an essential part of the democratic conversation, indeed of societal beatitude.”

At Panim Hadashot we are cultivating the living a passionate Judaism which can be shared as a gift. We gain from the wisdom of other cultures and other cultures gain from our unique and particular way of life. This sharing of Judaism as a gift is felt powerfully at Shabbat around
Seattle. In marking the Shabbat dinner there is no attempt to water down the rituals or to diminish the Hebrew, for those who join us. The Shabbat we present is a gift. Jewish tradition sees Shabbat as a gift from God-Hemdat Yamim. We should practice Shabbat as a form of gift giving to our loved ones, our friends, Jewish and non-Jewish.

Panim Hadashot then is about more than Keruv-bringing people close to Judaism, but the living of Judaism as a gift. When we regard our religious legacy as a gift, we become capable of sharing it generously and joyfully, with humor and respect for others and their different paths. To share Judaism as a gift with others is both a privilege of living in a tolerant and open society and it is a mitzvah during a time when fear of the other and separateness is not required to live a meaningful and committed Jewish life.