Sunday, December 8, 2024

Parshat V'yetsei - Population Explosion, Population Contraction - Betsy Teutsch

Parshat V’yeitsei - Population Growth, Population Contraction Dec 7, 2024

This is a parshah of fertility and population explosion. God promised Avraham that his progeny would be like the stars of the sky and the sands of the seashore. In today’s Parshah, God similarly promises Jacob that


וְהָיָ֤ה זַרְעֲךָ֙ כַּעֲפַ֣ר הָאָ֔רֶץ וּפָרַצְתָּ֛ יָ֥מָּה וָקֵ֖דְמָה וְצָפֹ֣נָה וָנֶ֑גְבָּה וְנִבְרְכ֥וּ בְךָ֛ כׇּל־מִשְׁפְּחֹ֥ת הָאֲדָמָ֖ה וּבְזַרְעֶֽךָ׃

“Your descendants shall be as the dust of the earth; you shall spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south.” 


Laban famously agrees to give Rachel to Jacob in marriage, but substitutes Leah. While second fiddle to beloved Rachel, Leah bears Jacob six sons and a daughter. Plus Bilhah and Zilpah bear Jacob sons, and ultimately Rachel bears two. Jacob’s tribe is off to the races.


Through ingenious breeding, Jacob also expands his flocks and wealth.


The explosive growth of this generation is clearly seen as positive, a great blessing.


But, the Rabbis did not consider Jacob’s 13 children a norm. Jacob’s family is mythic, not a paradigm. Infant mortality was too high for most of human history for people to rear Jacob-size families.


Jewish tradition considers children not only a blessing, but also an obligation. The Torah tells us that God blessed Adam and Eve and commanded them to Peru U’rvu: “Be fertile and increase, פְּר֥וּ וּרְב֛וּ”. 


The Talmud determines that Jews fulfill this commandment when they replicate themselves, bearing a son and daughter. Two girls or two boys also suffice, because when they grow up and partner, it will average out. Of course, infertility is beyond the control of couples, so this is not a commandment all can fill. Interestingly, the rabbis must have realized that some families did not want more children, or they wouldn’t have bothered to set a minimum. 


When David and I were married by Rabbi David Feldman, he presented us with a copy of his then new book, Birth Control and Jewish Law, which he assured us was descriptive, not prescriptive. It is a deep dive into ancient contraceptive practices.


For most of Jewish history, population growth was fairly flat, given violence, assimilation, high infant mortality, and short life spans. Jewish population started growing faster about 200 years ago and increased rapidly until WWII. Think of your own families: my great-grandmother bore 12 children, six of whom lived. My grandmother birthed six, all of whom survived.


Post-Holocaust, with the murder of two-thirds of European Jewry, survival of the Jewish people became a paramount concern. But, even before The Pill, non-Orthodox Jewish families were small. 


A Conservative movement leader, Rabbi Kassel Abelson z”l (who died last year at 99) long promoted the idea that Jewish couples should have a 3rd “mitzvah child”, to replace souls lost in WWII; this was part of his standard pre-marital interviews.  I read that as time passed, many couples enjoyed introducing their Mitzvah Children to Rabbi Abelson.


The idea was also encouraged in the 80s by UJA Young Leadership. I remember it as a community campaign, and via FB others have corroborated my recollection.


In 2007, Rabbi Abelson and Rabbi Elliot Dorff (mechutanim with our own Rabbi Avruhm Addison) successfully introduced a Rabbinical Assembly Responsum entitled Mitzvah Children. https://www.rabbinicalassembly.org/sites/default/files/public/halakhah/teshuvot/20052010/mitzvah_children.pdf 


The Responsum expresses great compassion for couples challenged with infertility, not infrequently a result of delayed childbearing. The Committee takes pains not to guilt people for whom a third pregnancy is far-fetched, while encouraging third children for whom it is possible. They also call on the Jewish community to assist with matchmaking, subsidize the expenses of raising and educating Jewish children, and to make Jewish spaces more kid-friendly. 


So, what happened? It’s impossible to count the number of Mitzvah children, but we know that in general, global birth rates have been declining at jaw-dropping rates, and the Jewish community has been no exception. Even in Israel, which has a high birth rate for a high income country, the average number of births continues to drop even with ultra-Orthodox families placing no limits on their childbearing.


In contrast to the campaign for more Jewish babies, there have also been aggressive campaigns to lower birth rates. In some low income countries, these took the form of draconian sterilizations, and the notorious Chinese one-child policy with forced abortions and surveillance of couples of childbearing age.


Paul Ehrlich’s best selling book, The Population Bomb, published in 1968 with graphic descriptions of the disasters of over-population, predicts mass starvation and global collapse. He popularized the concept of ZPG, zero population growth, which became a rallying cry. 


Birth rates were already declining rapidly, and Ehrlich’s predictions have not proven accurate, but his framing of the environmental cost of overpopulation really took off. In my circles, people with more than 2 children were looked at with some suspicion and eco-judgement. It’s impossible to quantify the impact of Ehrlich’s ideas; his cry for controlling explosive population growth may have simply reinforced trends already taking place, since it coincided with the kick-off of the modern environmental movement, 2nd wave feminism, and The Pill.


The Zionist movement took up the idea, turned it on its head, calling it ZPG, Zionist Population Growth. 


Fast forward - we are living through an extraordinary time in world population history: the era of depopulation. This summary is from Our World in Data, headed by Max Roser, an Oxford economist.


Human population grew very slowly until 200 years ago. We reached one billion in 1800 and doubled that in 123 years, by the 1920s.  The biggest increase has been in the last 50 years, a quadrupling of the world’s population, to at present 8+ billion. It’s a hockey stick curve.

But! Population growth rates peaked in 1963 when the average birth rate per woman was 5+. (Birth rate is the number of offspring women produce. The growthrate is the numbers for total population.)

Birth rates are now about half of that, 2.418. Since then the increase in the world population has slowed DRAMATICALLY, but it is not because of the birthrate, which is 50% lower now. The world is experiencing a massive demographic transition - population increase is primarily from people’s expanding life spans. At present life expectancy in the USA is 79. It’s up to 85 in Hong Kong. Societies around the world will be comprised of an ever higher percentage of elders.

The total global population is predicted to peak at 10+ billion later in the 21st century, when the birthrate drops to ZPG or below. Total population will start contracting. 


What’s happened? We have lived through it!


In the pre-modern era, fertility rates were 4.5 to 7 children per woman. The very high levels of infant and child mortality mortality kept population growth low.


There are three major reasons cited for the rapid decline in the global fertility rate, in both high income (this happened first) and but then also low income countries:

  • the empowerment of women — increased access to education and labor market participation

  • declining rates of child mortality and improved healthcare. When people expect their kids to survive, they have fewer.

  • rising costs of bringing up children, due to increased expectations and higher status of kids, along with the decline of child labor (related to urbanization) - kids are now perceived as economic liabilities, not assets.

Some additional factors:

  • Availability of effective contraception and the decoupling of sex and reproduction, resulting in far fewer unintended pregnancies.

  • The contraction of extended families who typically helped with child rearing.

  • The decline of marriage and a corresponding increase in single-person households. This suppresses childbearing, sometimes beyond when it is achievable.


These factors are intensified in the Jewish community, as Jewish women are among the best-educated of any American ethnic group, performing demanding jobs that leave less time for child rearing.

 

Jews reflect others in their socio-economic bracket, and higher incomes correlate with lower fertility. They are also more mobile, often moving far from their families of origin.


Many governments consider low birthrates and depopulation a crisis. It will cause many problems, as our societies become older and older. Pensions based on young people paying in while elders withdraw funds will obviously need to be redesigned.


Migration and immigration of young labor (African populations are growing much faster than other continents) will be essential for elderly countries. 


Efforts to encourage more births, as many countries try, seem to be wholly ineffective. In Scandinavia, despite generous benefits, long parental leave, and free day care, birth rates are in the 1.5 range. But they’re doing great compared to prosperous South Korea, with a birth rate of .75.


But, there are also likely to be many creative responses. Seniors will have long retirements [we already do!]; societies will need to deploy them better as resources, not just service/resource recipients. My Aunt Ruth was retired for 42 years. When she was in her 90s, she reflected that had she realized she would live so long, she would have done something more meaningful than playing cards and mah jongg.


Jewish communities will look very different. Jewish continuity has always been based in family life. At present, about a third of Jewish households are comprised of one person; how will that work? As people outlive partners, that number will only grow.


There are already more people in our community without children than previous generations (10% versus 20%). And that means many people without extended families - no nieces, nephews, or grandkids. Many children will be without uncles, aunts, and cousins.


One mini counter-trend is women having babies independently, and their families pitching in, with grandparents doing a lot of childcare. Three of my friends - though this is what we call “anecdata”! Grandparents are healthier and more active, more inclined to age in place, and increasing their commitment to help out with grandkids, at least here in our community. Also, younger generations are less inclined to move far away, preferring to live closer to grandparents, or moving near their parents with the intention of helping with child rearing. Likewise some grandparents are moving to be near their kids. This was unheard of among our crowd a generation ago. 


Questions:


Q) How do we shift paradigms and embrace contraction, as opposed to assuming the Torah’s growth mindset? 

Q) How might the Jewish community respond to these changes?

Q) How do these trends impact you, your family, or your community/ies?


Tuesday, November 12, 2024

Jennifer Paget - Honoring Your Parents: Interrupting Inherited Patterns of Ancestral Trauma

Yasher koachacheykh, Kudos, to Jennifer Paget on the publication of her Dorshei Derekh davar in Evolve: Groundbreaking Conversations, the Reconstructionist journal of big ideas, edited by our own Jacob Staub.

[Based on the devar Torah delivered by the author at Reconstructionist Minyan Dorshei Derekh in Philadelphia on the occasion of her chanting from the Torah scroll for the first time on Shabbat Nakhamu.]

Honor your father and your mother, as your God יהוה has commanded you, that you may long endure, and that you may fare well, in the land that your God יהוה is assigning to you. (Deuteronomy 5:16)

Second-century Rabbi Shimon Bar Yokhai remarked that the commandment to honor one’s father and mother is the most difficult commandment to observe. For me, it became difficult to honor my father after I left home for college and beyond, when he began drinking heavily and refused our family’s pleas to get help. I needed to stay away and did so for several years. I will come back to that story later.

Addressing the often-difficult relationships between parents and children, various commentaries declare that honoring your parents doesn’t have to require loving them. Caring for them in their old age counts as honoring them, for example. I found a new perspective on honoring your parents this year when, at my daughter’s urging, I took a course called YachatzHealing Jewish Ancestral Trauma. The course centered on the impact of collective traumatic history on American Ashkenazi Jews. Here are two passages from the website, Transcending Jewish Trauma, created by Jo Kent Katz, that describe a key premise of the course.

While the impact of trauma on individuals may vary significantly, the impact of trauma on a group of people with a shared history of navigating systemic oppression can often be tracked collectively. We can refer to this as collective trauma. 

It can be a profound awakening to recognize the depth to which our thoughts, emotions, and actions are impacted by our lived and inherited experiences with trauma and oppression. Originally, these behaviors were brilliantly adaptive responses; acute, refined, definitive attempts at securing the survival of our People. They were often the very tactic that kept us alive, that kept our People alive. We can call them ancestrally proven best practices. By noticing and reflecting on these inherited practices, we can make more conscious decisions about whether they still serve us today.

When we try to understand our parents, there may be reasons for their behavior that can’t be found in their individual stories, but rather in ancestral experiences. Jo Kent Katz created a tool called The Transcending Jewish Trauma Map. It’s a helpful way to explore a wide range of behaviors that result from Ashkenazi ancestral experiences of terror and otherness. Offering a personal example, Jo Kent Katz describes inheriting a pattern of urgency. She feels she is never going fast enough, getting enough done, is always on the move and others are never moving fast enough. She is often impatient with her partner, friends and co-workers, etc.

Her ancestral history sheds light on this urgency. Her grandmother had to flee Russia under great threat after seeing her parents killed by the Cossacks and suffered undiagnosed PTSD for the rest of her life. Katz connects her persistent sense of urgency to her grandmother’s traumatic escape. Urgency enabled her grandmother to survive. And then it was passed down to her mother and herself as a generalized way to live. Noticing and reflecting about the traumatic origins of the generalized urgency that drives her helps her interrupt practices that don’t serve her and may be harmful to the people around her.

Her story resonated with me immediately. I do not have Ashkenazi ancestry, but my husband Mark is 100% Ashkenazi. His Russian-born grandfather experienced a similar trauma. His grandfather saw his father, a rabbi, killed by the Cossacks after declaring that God would protect him.

Mark and I relate very differently to time. He runs early. I run late. I often feel rushed by him. He is often frustrated that I am not reliable about time, and he can’t predict when I will be ready.

With Mark’s permission, let me describe his airport practices and compare his airport practices to mine and my father’s. Mark considers his airport practices reasonable and appropriate. From my perspective, he clicks into semi-panic mode at the airport. He urgently works to be as far forward in every line that he can, as if he might lose his spot on the flight. If he doesn’t push forward, other people will take his place.

But there is another dimension to this. He feels responsible to be as efficient as possible, such as when going through security, so that as many people as possible can get through as quickly as possible. In this way he feels himself to be part of a collective and his behavior is for the good of all. Can you imagine how this might have been passed down to him by immigrant grandparents who were forced to flee?

Meanwhile, I am all “Lah-di-da!…It’s okay if I am not all that organized….If I drop something… or it takes a minute to find my license….or if I struggle to take my laptop out…It isn’t a matter of life or death!” I have an underlying unconscious trust that the system likes me, protects me. I am not under threat. There is no need to rush. Sadly, I don’t carry Mark’s sense of responsibility for the collective.

As I grew up, my family’s way of functioning, under my father’s control, was to always be running for the gate. We usually made it on at the last minute, adrenaline pumping.

For my father, getting to the airport early was for the uptight, for the people who didn’t know how to enjoy life. Whatever amount of time you were early was time out of your life, time that other people controlled. Never mind that this caused problems for the people around him. We missed flights, and we made other people miss flights. Furthermore, he demeaned people who tried to be prompt or, God forbid, early. In addition, he expected people to help him out of whatever jams he got into, to bend the rules for him.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I come from a lineage of oppressors. That is, my father’s family came to the U.S. in the 17th century and held slaves until the Civil War. I clearly need a different map. Using the concept, though, I looked for historical context that might shed light on my father’s patterns and my own. I know only a few stories, but they seem to hold clues. Here’s one:

My father’s mother, Louise, lived in Mexico with her parents from about the time she was eight until she was 23, when suddenly they had to flee. We were told there was a train trip in which the only things they took with them were two porcelain pigeons that they carried on their laps. (Like Shabbat candlesticks?) My great grandfather had been an executive at an American copper mining company in Mexico. They were expelled during the Mexican Revolution in about 1914.

They were on the perpetrating side of an oppressive system whose time had run out. Even so, I image this had a traumatic effect on my grandmother.  I wonder how my grandmother may have imposed an undue sense of danger and urgency into ordinary life. Was this the cause my father’s life-long habit of digging in his heels and refusing to be rushed or to acknowledge risk? My grandmother escaped to a safe place where her family was part of the white ruling class. Safe, in a lasting way. I imagine that she didn’t suffer repeated trauma as she resettled in the same way Jewish immigrants did. As a result, my father had the luxury of privilege and safety that allowed him to rebel. Rebellion didn’t come at much of a price. For him, the greater threat was to be controlled, to lose power, to not hold a special status in society.

I have a procrastinating pattern that I think is related to this, coming from ancestors most concerned with maintaining power, on which they considered their survival to depend. People tell me I am a perfectionist. Maybe so, but it is a different kind of perfectionism than people with an Ashkenazi background might have. This is hard to say, but I think it has felt safer to me to delay action than to reveal myself as less than superior, lest I lose the esteem of others, lest I lose status and power. It is a pattern that has been born of privilege and protected and perpetuated by privilege–white privilege of the kind that my ancestors enjoyed and perpetuated.

This all leads me to think my father was afraid of losing power or control to his children. I was the oldest, the first to challenge him at every point of development. If he had lived longer, we might have navigated through that.

When I was 29, I began to fear my father might die soon. He was a life-long smoker as well as a heavy drinker. This pushed me to find a way to reconcile and repair. We began meeting. He would drive to Manhattan from Connecticut, where he had recently moved, to meet me.

We had a series of monthly lunches, from noon to one, my lunch hour, close to where I was working. As I’ve described, this kind of regularity was not his pattern. He was not an on-time or reliable person. I didn’t know he could do it. At the second meeting, he arrived quite late.  (His explanation, ironically, was that he had stopped to buy my brother an alarm clock so that he could get to work on time.) I only had an hour-long lunch break, which left us no more than 15 minutes. As tempted as I was to stay beyond that hour, I couldn’t. He almost couldn’t believe it. He had a good reason for being late, after all! After that, though, he was on time for every lunch.

During those meetings, we laid the past aside and talked only of what was happening in our lives. The conversations were delicate and tender, cautious, but full of love for the fact that they were happening at all.

Key to the healing effect of these meetings for me was his honoring of the structure, timeliness and reliability that I needed. I hadn’t even known I needed them or that I could ask for them.

We only met about six times and then he was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. He was estimated to have 18 months to live, but he caught pneumonia and died soon after. By way of honoring him, I want to acknowledge that for those six meetings, he tamed that instinct to maintain power and found a way to be on time and reliable, and to interrupt the survival pattern that drove him so often in life. Those meetings meant the world to me after he died and have been deeply consoling ever since.

Chanting Torah today was an expression of belonging as a Jew in this community. As I took this step, I was made more aware of how I am different because of my non-Jewish parentage and ancestry. This moment wouldn’t have had a le-dor va-dor (connecting Torah chanting to past and future generations) resonance for my parents were they still alive. And it doesn’t connect me to mysterious, unknown ancestors. But it does connect me to you, this community, to other dear friends who are Jews, to my Jewish children, to a community that has taught me about caring for the collective and trusting the collective.


Monday, September 30, 2024

5785/2024 Tzedakah Gifts from Dorshei Derekh

Thanks, Lynne Jacobs, who heads up this annual practice, along with Jennifer Paget and Betsy Teutsch.

We allocated $3000 from our Treasury, $400 each to 7 grantee organizations and $200 to a local volunteer effort. Our members recommend grantees.

AmericanFriends of Combatants for Peace is a diverse community of U.S. and international activists working in solidarity with CfP to raise awareness and resources, build community, and take direct action to advance the work of CfP for a just peace in Israel and Palestine.

(Several Dorshei members involved with the Philly Chapter.)

Combatants for Peace (CfP) is a joint Palestinian-Israeli community-- guided by the values of nonviolent resistance—that works in solidarity to end the occupation, discrimination, and oppression of all people living on this land.

AmericanFriends of the Parents Circle shares the human side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with the American public to foster a peace and reconciliation process.  (DD Members are supporters).

The Parents Circle – Families Forum is a joint Israeli-Palestinian organization made up of more than 600 bereaved families. Their common bond is that they have lost a close family member to the conflict. But instead of choosing revenge, they have chosen a path of reconciliation.

FamilyPromise works with Philly families in times of crisis to prevent eviction, find shelter, and provide access to safe, affordable housing.  (Many DD/GJC supporters. Led by Rachel Falkove for many years.)

GJC Refugee Welcoming Team c/o Fed. of Neighborhood Centers

For work with 2 refugees from Colombia.  (many DD/GJC volunteers)

Hand inHand: Center for Jewish-Arab Education in Israel  

Fast-growing, integrated social movement, working with thousands of people every day, proving that people can live together as Jews and Arabs, Israelis, and Palestinians. (Dorshei supporters)

Rebuilding Together Philadelphia

Providing free home repairs for low-income homeowners in Philadelphia, with a focus on health, safety, and energy efficiency, allowing for family wealth preservation.  (DD supporters and employees.)

TogetherWomen Rise

A community of women and allies dedicated to achieving global gender equality with hundreds of local chapters across the U.S.  (DD supporters; NW Philly groups started by Betsy Teutsch, but NOT her suggestion.)

+ $200 to GermantownCommunity Fridge

Fights hunger and food insecurity.  Provides free, supplemental food in Germantown, Philadelphia. Stocked by the community, for the community, anyone who needs food is welcome to take it. 

Wednesday, September 25, 2024

Yamim No'raim 2025










On behalf of our amazing High Holy Days Planning Committee—Joyce Silverman, Rabbi Avruhm Addison, Rabbi David Teutsch, and Rabbi Simkha Weintraub—we are pleased to share the schedule for Dorshei Derekh's services. We will meet in person in the Temin Canteen Room and 

Thursday, October 3rd
Rosh Hashanah Day 1
9:30 am
 
Friday, October 4th
Rosh Hashanah Day 2
9:30 am
 
Saturday, October 5th
Shabbat Shuvah
10 am
 
Friday, October 11th
Kol Nidre
6 pm
 
Saturday, October 12th
Yom Kippur
 
Morning @ 9:30 am
 
Afternoon & Evening
Bregman Program @ 3:30 pm
Pre-Ne'ilah Study @ 4:40 pm
Ne'ilah @ 5:45 pm
Tekiya G'dola @ 7:07 pm
 
Before each event, we will share more detailed information, including resource sheets.
 
Shana tovah!

Monday, September 2, 2024

Are We a People Chosen by God? - Parshat Re'eh 2024

Are we a people chosen by God?

Rabbi Robert Tabak

Parashat Re’eh – Aug 31, 2024,  Minyan Dorshei Derekh


Based on RT’s article for T’ruah’s (M)oral Torah series of commentaries) August 2024   https://truah.org/resources/robert-tabak-reeh-moraltorah_2024_/

Other quotations in part from a Late Spring 2023 symposium on “Confronting Chosenness” in the RRA Connection, newsletter of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association and re-posted on Reconstructing Judaism’s Evolve website.  https://evolve.reconstructingjudaism.org/symposium-confronting-chosenness/ 

 _______________

The Torah portion Re’eh includes a famous and troubling line: “For you are a people consecrated to the Eternal your God; the Eternal your God chose you from among all other peoples on earth to be a treasured people.” (Deuteronomy 14:2)

What does it mean to be chosen, treasured by God? Is this poetic image, reinforced at so many places in the Torah and the traditional prayer book, meaningful or harmful? Are Jews "better" than other people? How do we reconcile this special relationship — woven deeply into Jewish texts — with other texts, especially the creation story in Genesis where all humanity is created in the image of God, long before there are different peoples and certainly no Israelites?’

Rabbi Toba Spitzer:
“When I was in my late 20s, before I knew much about Reconstructionist Judaism, I had stopped saying most of the first paragraph of the Aleinu. When attending services, I’d chant “Aleinu l’shabe’akh) … leyotzer bereshit,” then shut my mouth, and pick up again on “Va’anakhnu korim.” I knew enough Hebrew to feel profoundly uncomfortable thanking God for not making me like other people. Imagine my delight when, as I was reading about Mordecai Kaplan and Reconstructionism in preparation for my first visit to the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, I discovered that there was a movement that had completely removed the idea of the Jews being a “chosen” people from the liturgy!” , (RRA Connection, Early Spring, 2023).  

Mordecai Kaplan, founder of Reconstructionist Judaism, delivered forceful critiques of chosenness in the mid-twentieth century. He saw this idea as a historical development, but no longer one that was harmless or served to sustain an oppressed minority. Kaplan stated that belief in being “chosen” leads to claims of Jewish superiority — something untrue and incompatible with a democratic society. He rejected the idea that this idea was necessary for Jewish survival today. “By no kind of dialectics is it possible to remove the odium of comparison from any reinterpretation of an idea which makes invidious distinctions between one people and another.” (The Future of the American Jew, 1948, p. 217. Emphasis in original.)

In the Reconstructionist siddur [prayer book], prayers such as the Friday night kiddush, the blessing before reading the Torah, and the Aleinu prayer are re-worded to drop chosenness. Other prayer books have also made some moves in this direction. The Reform Movement in the United States created a prayer book that includes several alternative readings for Aleinu, as does the Israeli Masorti (Conservative) siddur. The newest Israeli Reform siddur (2021) does not drop the idea of chosenness, but in several places — including the Torah blessings — offers a radical re-working as an alternative: a few letters change to convert the traditional “who has chosen us from all peoples” to “who has chosen us with all peoples.”

Have Reconstructionist alternatives influenced other movements?

A number of Reform and Masorti (Israeli Conservative) siddurim have recently offered alternatives to the first paragraph of the Aleinu[ii], for example — sometimes offering the Reconstructionist-based text as one alternative.[iii] Two Reform siddurim (the British Reform movement Forms of Prayer [2008] and the Israeli Reform Tefilat haAdam [2021]) parallel this Aleinu text with another version including chosenness, though not the traditional wording. The Israeli Masorti (Conservative) siddur includes the traditional Aleinu text as the lead option. The American Conservative movement mentions the Israeli alternative Aleinu text (though not the Reconstructionist version) but does not include it in Hebrew.[iv] The U.S. Reform Mishkan T’filah offers an alternative to the traditional Aleinu.[v] The Reconstructionist Kol Haneshamah (1994) retains the traditional Aleinu text in smaller print below a line, with a disparaging commentary.

On the other hand, Orthodox texts in Israel and the diaspora, including modern editions like the Koren siddur, often include the even more exclusivist, “uncensored” text of Aleinu, with the line שֶׁהֵם מִשְׁתַּחֲוִים לְהֶֽבֶל וָרִיק, וּמִתְפַּלְלִים אֶל אֵל לֹא יוֹשִֽׁיעַ, “They bow down to vanity and emptiness and pray to a god who cannot save” — references that many understand as anti-Christian and anti-Muslim.

Elyse Wechterman: “ When we are asked, or ask ourselves, what makes Reconstructionists unique in the ever-widening and flattening denominations and stripes of Jewishness, it is this: the radical notion that all people and peoples are equally beloved of God and have a role to play in the future redemption of our species and planet.

And this idea of radical egalitarianism is more necessary now than we might have thought. The forces of White Christian Nationalism in the United States and virulent Jewish supremacy in Israel (see Menachem Klein’s essay “Israel’s Rule Over the Palestinians Has Created a New Judaism,” in Haaretz, April 8, 2023) make clear what notions of Divine election portend.”(RRA Connection, Early Spring, 2023).  



This discussion is not only about synagogue texts and prayers. Today, especially in Israel, there is much more frequent assertion of “Jewish superiority.” Professor Menachem Klein says, “…The new Judaism — Israeli Judaism it should be said — identifies sovereignty and the rule wielded in its name, with Jewish supremacy and oppression.” (“Israel’s Rule over the Palestinians Has Created a New Judaism,” Haaretz, 8 April 2023.) Rabbi Sharon Brous says, “As painful as it is, we must affirm that Jewish supremacy poses a real and present danger to the Jewish State and to the Jewish people.” (“Tears of Zion,” Feb. 2023). Events since October 7, 2023 have magnified these tendencies.

Yet other texts provide a different framework. Leviticus 19:1 says “You shall be holy…” not “you are already holy. “ Orthodox iconoclast Yeshayahu Leibowitz wrote, “The uniqueness of the people Israel is not a fact; it is a task. The holiness of Israel is not a reality but a role.” (“The Uniqueness of the People Israel”, 1975, in Y. Leibowitz, Emuna, historia, v’erachim 1982, p.117. Ttranslation by R.T.) Like challenges to patriarchy in Judaism, contemporary Jews need to confront the problematic texts in the centuries of biblical, rabbinic, and later works. 

The continuing war in Israel and Gaza, violence against Palestinians by West Bank “religious” Jews, and crises in Israel have accelerated the need for an active role from American Jews who support different views of Judaism.

 Writing before the current war, Rabbi Amy Klein (who lives in the Upper Galilee in Israel and is a leader in protests against policies of the current Israeli government) wrote in 2023 about the aftermath of a pogrom by Jewish settlers against the West Bank Palestinian city of Huwara. “Huwara has legitimized speaking out against racism at demonstrations to save Israel’s democracy,” (RRA Connection, Early Spring, 2023).  

Menachem Klein wrote, “Another possibility, which hasn’t yet been tried, is to find a Jewish theological and historic basis for sharing sovereignty with non-Jews.”  However, Prof. Klein errs in not identifying alternative Jewish visions. Now, in a time of war, need to learn from and add our North American Jewish voices and insights, liberal and traditional, to those Israelis — including those in groups such as Rabbis for Human Rights and Hasmol haemuni [Faithful Left]  — working to strengthen varieties of Judaism based on tzedek (justice), equality, and shalom (peace).   If Jews are to express some sense of being “treasured,” we need new visions of religious perspectives recognizing everyone as created in God’s image.  

Discussion questions:

  1. Does the idea of the “chosen people” mean to you?

  2. How do we wrestle with parts of Jewish tradition (from the Torah onward) that have values or ideas we disagree with?

  3. How do we relate to a Jewish people that includes people –not only a tiny fringe--who assert that Jews are superior to other people and should have more rights than others in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories?