High Holiday Message from Chancellor Eisen

JTS High Holiday services are being held this year in borrowed space at Riverside Church—a graphic reminder, if one were needed, of how this Rosh Hashanah is different from all other Rosh Hashanahs for JTS faculty, students, staff, and extended family. In the final months of 5776 we witnessed the demolition of our 1980s Library building. (The bulldozers are active, outside my window, as I write.) Long before Passover of 5777 we will break ground on construction of our renewed campus, which is set to open in Fall 2019. I want to reflect briefly on the wider significance of these developments. I believe they carry meaning at this season that is both communal and personal.

Gerson Cohen, a renowned chancellor of JTS, expressed the matter eloquently in Fall 1980 at the dedication of the building that is now giving way to new construction:

“It is as if this simple act of digging a hole constitutes the affirmation that we have all been awaiting. We are building—and by so doing have demonstrated our belief in the authenticity of Conservative Judaism, our faith in the future of the American Diaspora, our confidence in our scholars, our schools, our publications, as the sources from which the American Jewish community will draw the strength it needs to guide our institutions into their second century. Those shovels, the blasting, the expanding foundation hole, are doing more for our sense of identity, our acceptance of mission, than all the arguments we marshaled while we debated whether or not to build.”

Cohen’s words resonate with me—as they will with many readers who have resolved to embark on an ambitious path, personal or institutional, after long consideration of the alternatives, and in the face of skeptics who said it couldn’t—or shouldn’t—be done. “Why are you building a new campus,”  I have been asked, “when American Judaism (Orthodoxy excepted) has an uncertain future at best—and may not exist in 50 years?” Or: “Why are you investing in the preparation of leaders for the Conservative movement in particular, when its future is particularly bleak?” I have spoken with Jews who see no point in preserving an institution loyal to the Jewish religious tradition because they are convinced that all religion in America is declining steeply. Others expressed the wish for greater certainty in these troubled times. So much is changing,  and the change is so fast and so far-reaching. Perhaps JTS should hang back and wait a while, until the horizon clears.

I think it’s important to say,  as Cohen did—and never more so than at the High Holidays—that we build in full awareness of the data and the trends. We seize a unique opportunity presented to us at this moment because we are confident of JTS’s future, that of Conservative Judaism,  and that of the Jewish community in North America. We believe it is important—now as much as ever—that the sort of religion for which JTS stands, the sort of Judaism we have maintained and transmitted for over a century,  survive and thrive. The world is increasingly given over to intolerant fundamentalism on the one hand and militant (and no less intolerant) atheism on the other. We urgently need Jewish leaders who are trained to broadcast the opposite message, and help their communities navigate uncharted territory, alongside respected allies from other communities and traditions. JTS will provide these leaders.

We know that Judaism can make a tremendous difference to Jewish lives and communities in North America, because it already does for many hundreds of thousands, offering experiences of Meaning and Community (Capital “M,” Capital “C”) available nowhere else. And the record shows that wise, learned, and inspiring leadership is crucial to the success of this endeavor. That is the “core business of JTS,” one which requires a community of teachers and students committed to the endeavor and a constant flow of people and ideas into and out of that community, enriching conversation at 3080 Broadway and throughout the Jewish world and beyond.

Institutions that have been around for a long time can change dramatically to meet new challenges—just as individuals who have resolved to change at Rosh Hashanahs past, with disappointing results, can undertake teshuvah this year that,  unlike all past attempts, really turns their lives around.  Maimonides urges us in his Laws of Repentance not to heed those who tell us all is determined or decreed, with no “degree of freedom” left to you and me to alter the course of our lives. “This is a great principle, a pillar of Torah and mitzvah, as it is said (Deut. 30:15)  ‘Behold I have set before you this day life and goodness, death and evil…blessing and curse.…’”

That call is sounded for individuals,  this Rosh Hashanah as every other. It applies to the Jewish community in North America as it does in Israel. It holds true for our society, which at this moment seems to be struggling with its very soul. And it holds true for our world—which, if we heed the climate scientists, is in desperate need of our resolve to keep it habitable.

“Wake up!” a broadside issued by JTS declared in 1981. “It is Rosh Hashanah—the birthday of the world. The hungry need to be fed, the illiterate need to be taught. The old as well as the young need to be loved…Wake up. Accept your role as a partner in creation. Rosh Hashanah is the time and wherever you are is the place to begin.”

So much has been invested in us, the Jews of today,  individually and collectively. Returning that investment with interest, for the benefit of those “here with us this day,  as well as those not here with us this day” (Deut. 29:13)  is one of the greatest satisfactions a person can enjoy. May it be yours this Rosh Hashanah, ushering in a year that is good and sweet.