The Charlotte Jewish News - june-July 2012 - Page 26
The Cp-Ed Eases
Ordaining Cantors is Mostly Good for Congregations
By Dana Evan Kaplan
Kingston, Jamaica (JTA) — Six
graduates of the cantorial program
of the Hebrew Union College-
Jewish Institute of Religion were
ordained Sunday at Temple
Emanu-El in New York. The key
word here is “ordained.”
Since the cantorial school was
established at HUC in 1948, can
tors have been invested rather than
ordained. The difference, as JTA
put it, was more than “a word.” It
is a declaration of independence, a
certification of equality.
In preparation for the change,
the HUC cantorial program
already had been expanded from
four years to five, thus matching
the rabbinic program. A concerted
effort was made to argue that can
tors are full members of the clergy,
with diverse and challenging
duties, and not just “singers” who
show up on Friday nights and
Saturday mornings and disappear
until the following week. The seri
ousness and intensity of the canto
rial program was stressed.
The change was inevitable, so
there is little point in arguing that it
should not have been made. The
Academy for Jewish Religion, a
nondenominational seminary in
New York City, already ordains
cantors; HUC needed to stay com
petitive. While the change is going
to make professional life more dif
ficult for rabbis and deprive them
of certain job opportunities in
smaller communities, it may help
to bring new life to certain mori
bund synagogues, allowing them
to choose from a broader pool of
spiritual leaders.
Synagogues are struggling to
explain to congregants why they
are worth thousands of dollars a
year in dues at a time when there
are so many other ways to be
Jewish. I just completed a CLAL-
sponsored fellowship program
called Rabbis Without Borders in
which one of my colleagues start
ed an online congregation that now
interacts with more than 10,000
people a year from all over the
world. And I just finished a manu
script on Reform Judaism for the
Jewish Publication Society in
which I wrote about rabbis who
train the children of unaffiliated
Jews for their bar and bat mitzvahs
over Skype and take them to the
Grand Canyon or the Colorado
Rockies or even Alaska to mark
their entry into adulthood.
With society changing so rapid
ly, synagogues are desperate to
find formulas that will keep them
functioning. They want as many
options as possible and don’t want
rabbinical organizations — effec
tively labor unions — to dictate to
them.
I’ve seen the breakdown of the
rabbinic placement structure from
a rigid protocol to a very loose sit
uation in which congregational
profiles are posted on password-
protected websites and CVs are
forwarded to search committees
with few restrictions, limitations,
or stipulations. For these commit
tees, what matters is whether can
didates can motivate their congre
gants and draw in unaffiliated Jews
and potential converts. Where they
studied and what their connection
might be to the Reform movement
is of less importance — a triviality,
if we are to be blunt.
For a small congregation, it
makes good sense to hire a cantor
instead of a rabbi. I know of a
small congregation in Florida that
engaged in a lengthy search for a
Reform rabbi but found that
nobody reasonably competent was
interested. With limited resources,
and located in a less attractive part
of the state, the congregation even
tually hired a cantor to become its
spiritual leader. He later was
ordained privately and served with
distinction until his untimely
death.
In contrast, I led Congregation
B’nai Israel in Albany, GA, for 10
years before my move to a historic
synagogue in the Carribean. Not
being blessed with a good voice, I
was reliant on a classically orient
ed choir. When the temple decided
to modernize the music and make
it more participatory, the choir was
resistant. If I had been a cantor, I
could have stepped in and helped
to create a dynamic musical expe
rience that could have enriched the
spiritual experience of our servic
es. All of my scholarship in the
world could not compensate for
sounding like a frog.
The change to ordaining cantors
is not all good. Congregations will
have two types of clergy with the
same level of authority. In an egal
itarian era this is bound to lead to a
tremendous increase in conflict
between rabbis and cantors. While
I see institutions where rabbis and
cantors get along fabulously, even
before ordination I witnessed a
tremendous amount of dissension.
Two examples of major turf bat
tles between rabbis and cantors: In
one congregation, a new rabbi is
appointed to find the cantor has so
much charisma that he feels over
shadowed. People love listening to
her voice and gravitate to her after
services, bypassing the new and
now marginal rabbinical
appointee. In another, the senior
rabbi departs suddenly and the
associate rabbi is promoted. The
cantor refuses to accept his author
ity, arguing that she contributed
more to the synagogue both pro
fessionally and organizationally
and should have been made the
effective CEO rather than the asso
ciate rabbi.
Neither conflict ended well,
either for the individuals or the
institutions.
As revolutionary changes go,
this is relatively minor. It is, how
ever, one more indication that the
American Jewish religious market
place is becoming a more compet
itive environment. Under such cir
cumstances, neither denomination
al labels nor professional creden
tials are going to mean all that
much.
From one perspective, this is a
Rabbi Dana Evan Kaplan
long overdue shaking-out of the
deadwood. From another view
point, we are entering into a
Darwinian phase that may see
increasing numbers of rabbis —
and possibly also cantors — fight
ing for their professional positions
under increasingly adverse condi
tions.
Let us hope and pray that the
consequences will be a more vital
and dynamic Jewish religious
experience. The odds of that hap
pening, unfortunately, are no more
than 50-50. ^
Dana Evan Kaplan is the rabbi
of the United Congregation of
Israelites in Kingston, Jamaica,
and teaches Judaism at the United
Theological College of the
University of the West Indies.
His most recent book is
“Contemporary American
Judaism: Transformation and
Renewal. ” Many of his writings
can be found at www.danaka-
plan.com.)
Moderate Middle Must be Heard on Israel Debate
By Peter A. Joseph
NEW YORK (JTA) — The
intellectual food fight over Israel
that has played out over the Op-Ed
pages of virtually all Jewish and
many mainstream newspapers in
recent weeks may have settled
down, but the passion of the dis
cussion has made one thing very
clear: The boundaries dividing
American Jewish opinion on
Israel, and its policies regarding
Palestinians, have become as con
tentious as the borders between
Israel and the West Bank.
In the American Jewish dia
logue on Israel, extreme polariza
tion reigns. With the most domi
nant voices coming from the far
left and right, the discussion has
become alienating in its endless —
and more importantly, ineffective
— moralizing by both camps. The
vast majority of American Jews is
deeply concerned about Israel’s
security and recognizes the need
for a two-state solution that would
ensure it. But in a world divided
between the antagonistic right and
left, centrists are being shut out of
the conversation.
What is the way forward for
American Jews who want to be
effective advocates for Israel but
not apologists for its continued
presence in the West Bank?
In truth, American Jewish
advocacy, like Israel’s political
realities, is complex and cannot be
addressed effectively through
sound bites. But that is exactly
what voices on the fringes have
offered as their efforts have been
directed at rallying political bases
rather than advancing reasoned
policy concepts. Instead of staking
out principled, nuanced positions
that reflect an understanding of
competing narratives, both sides
have adopted an oversimplified
rhetoric that feeds fierce debate in
the American Jewish community
and shrinks political space for
pragmatic policy.
Ironically, while the American
Jewish left is more vocal than
ever, it also has become more
irrelevant. While correctly pro
moting the idea that there is not
only one way to be pro-Israel, the
left has joined with the right to
fuel a with-us-or-against-us para
digm that has resulted in the high
ly charged debate. The left’s vocal
and consistent condemnation of
the Israeli government, as well as
its lack of sensitivity to Israeli
public opinion, has significantly
undermined its pro-Israel claims.
Consequently, it has never been
more politically expedient for
politicians and community leaders
to disassociate from liberal
Zionists.
The American Jewish right
shares equal blame. It has sought
to capitalize on the left’s failings,
seeking to turn Israel into a parti
san tool that can be wielded
against President Obama and
undermining bipartisan consensus
support for the Jewish state. Faced
with a choice, many organizations,
community leaders and politicians
quite naturally align themselves
with the right, lest they risk alien
ation from a comfort zone of sup
port for Israel. Others are disen
gaging from Israel advocacy alto
gether to avoid the seemingly end
less debates that often resemble a
dog chasing its own tail.
The net result is a ridiculous
and ineffective way for the pro-
Israel community to proceed if it
wants to lobby effectively for
ensuring Israel’s future. The tenor
of the discussion has taken
American Jewry further away
from being able to lobby for a
two-state solution and a secure
Israel. Successful pro-Israel advo
cacy today requires mobilizing the
majority and moving away from
the extremes. This means rejecting
the left-wing notion that peace
will be achieved only by pressur
ing the Jewish state to capitulate to
Arab demands, and the right-wing
notion that Israel must never be
questioned.
Successful pro-Israel, pro-two-
state advocacy requires engaging
the broader American Jewish
community, the democratically
elected government of Israel and
the Israeli public. It also requires
rejecting all efforts to undercut
bipartisan support for Israel based
on the with-us-or-against-us men
tality. To be sure, American Jews
do not need to support everything
that the Israeli government says or
does to be pro-Israel. But just as
knee-jerk support for anything the
Israeli government does is unhelp
ful, so too is knee-jerk condemna
tion.
The past few weeks of mud-
slinging have highlighted how
alienating and polarizing many of
the tired left- and right-wing argu
ments about Israel have become.
Enough already! It is time for the
moderate majority to come togeth
er to form a centrist, pragmatic,
pro-Israel, pro-two-state message
that drowns out the noisemakers
on the fringes and leads to a
secure, realistic and effective path
u
Peter Joseph
forward for Israel to thrive. ^
(Peter A. Joseph is the chair
man of the Israel Policy Forum.)
Monitor Hate Crimes, as
Promised
By Gidon Van Emden
Washington (JTA) - How much
homophobia is there? And how
much anti-Semitism? How many
Muslims are beaten up because of
who they are?
The only accurate answer today
is, “We don’t know.”
Organizations that combat hate
and bigotry do not know how
many crimes were committed
with a hateful motive because
such incidents are not being mon
itored properly.
A recent study by CEJI-A
Jewish Contribution to an
Inclusive Europe shows that most
hate crimes watchdogs in Europe
do not know how many incidents
there are. They are working with
anecdotal data culled from the
media and the occasional phone
call. Such sources, while impor
tant for their illustrative value, are
neither consistent nor usually as
detailed as they should be. (Full
disclosure: I used to work for
CEJI and helped launch this
study.)
Indeed, the 56 participating
states of the Organization for
Security and Cooperation in
Europe, an international organiza
tion of which the United States is
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