Authority in Contemporary Times
DAVID ELLENSON & SHARON BROUS
SHMA.COM
Dear Sharon,
Ifeel privileged to write to you regarding is- sues of authority and directions in the North American Jewish community today. You are
surely one of the most serious and innovative
young Jewish leaders of our time, and the community you have forged in Los Angeles at IKAR
offers one of the great rays of hope for the ability of Judaism to engage this and future generations in meaningful ways.
I am of a different generation than you. I
am now 62 years old, and my own Jewish path
has wandered in many directions during my
lifetime — from an Orthodox childhood in a
small city in Virginia, to life on a Hashomer
Hatzair kibbutz in Israel, to participation in the
then “counter-establishment” culture of the
New York Havurah, to rabbinical and graduate
school at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish
Institute of Religion and Columbia University,
to a career as an academic, and to service as
president of HUC-JIR. My life has traversed
many Jewish boundaries and I have tried to
adapt and guide — in some small way — the
course of modern Jewish life through the education of religious leaders like you.
As an academic focusing on the modern
Jewish experience, I have often analyzed the
conditions that led to the transformation of
Jewish life in the modern setting. I have analyzed how the modern world brought about the
collapse of the political structure of the premodern Jewish community and, with it, an attendant loss of the traditional boundaries that
framed the community and the “coercive legal
authority” that the rabbi formerly exercised
within it. This does not mean that the contemporary community has no borders, nor does it
indicate that the modern rabbi has no authority.
However, it does mean that our modern community is a voluntary one and that the rabbi
now can exercise “influential authority” alone.
Suasion, not coercion, is the operative word of
our time. I do not lament these changes even
as I am not totally sanguine about them. As the
Yamim Noraim approach with their invitation
to reflection both personal and communal, I
would like to offer some of my own thoughts
regarding Jewish life and authority.
I recognize that the contemporaneous
challenges that confront our people require
fresh vision. The era of “ethnic Judaism” that
accompanied my immigrant forebears to this
country and that forged me and gave rise to the
different organizations that dominate modern
day Jewish life is surely past, and the nature of
denominational and communal commitments
on the part of your generation is surely different
than it was for mine. Intermarriage is com-
monplace. Commitment to the State of Israel is
affected by intellectual currents that sway
young Jews in new and — in my view — often
ominous ways. Technology allows us to com-
municate in ever-expanding ways, yet may sig-
nificantly alter and arguably undermine the
nature of Jewish communal borders and au-
thority as I have known them. I look forward
to our exchange.
In friendship and respect,
•••
David,
It is an honor to be in this conversation with you.
Over the years, my admiration and respect for you
have only grown as you lead our community with
passion, vision, and moral courage.
Like you, I studied at Columbia University, but
my background was High Reform (my synagogue
was known as the Church on the Hill) in suburban
Jersey and it took only a few weeks in college for
me to realize that for all of my interminable hours
in Hebrew school, I was functionally illiterate as a
Jew. Wounded and embarrassed by this realiza-tion, I fled from the organized Jewish community.
Eventually, I was drawn back to Judaism, learning
initially in chevruta with a young Orthodox woman.
One week we came to the narrative of Rebecca
and Isaac meeting and falling in love, and my
chevruta partner pointed out that, according to
Rashi, Rebecca was only three years old at the
time. “That’s absurd!” I said. “Based on the text,
she is clearly a grown woman.” “But Rashi says
that she was only three; that’s the way the rabbis
have always read it,” she insisted. “I don’t know
who Rashi is,” I said, “but he’s clearly wrong!”
And then we both devolved into tears. I cried from
embarrassment: How could it be that I had never
heard of Rashi, a Jewish voice so important that
even when his opinion defied reason it had the
power to instantaneously silence thoughtful discussion? And I cried from confusion: Did being a
good Jew require acceding to irrational viewpoints, just because they have persisted for
1,000 years? My chevruta partner cried because
Sharon Brous is the founding
rabbi of IKAR ( www.ikar-la.org),
a spiritual community
dedicated to reanimating
Jewish life through soulful
religious practice that is rooted
in a deep commitment to
social justice. She lives in Los
Angeles with her husband,
David, and their three children,
Eva, Sami, and Levi.
Rabbi David Ellenson is
president of the Hebrew Union
College–Jewish Institute of
Religion. His publications
include Rabbi Esriel
Hildesheimer and the Creation
of a Modern Jewish Orthodoxy
and After Emancipation:
Jewish Religious Responses to
Modernity, which won the
2005 National Jewish Book
Award, specifically receiving
the Dorot Foundation Award as
the most outstanding book on
modern Jewish thought and
experience. Ellenson and
Rabbi Daniel Gordis have just
completed a book-length
manuscript on Orthodox Jewish
legal writings on conversion in
the modern era, entitled, The
Politics of Jewish Identity –
Conversion, Law, and Policy-Making in 19th and 20th
Century Orthodox Responsa.
