opinion
Two Scholars Hope to Secure the
Legacy of ‘Jewish Renewal’
Schachter-Shalomi combined their visions
and imagined a Judaism, said Magid, that “is
no longer used as a tool for Jewish survival,
but rather as a project for Jews to become
abbi Arthur Green gave the
part of the global community, to contrib-
commencement address last week
ute to the global community.” Environmental
at the Jewish Theological Seminary,
awareness became a hallmark of Renewal,
the Conservative flagship where he was
as did absorbing influences from other
ordained 56 years earlier.

religions, especially Eastern ones. “He really
His talk was mostly a response to political
did take Schneerson’s teaching about bring-
turmoil in Israel, but he also urged the gradu-
ing Judaism to the streets and expanded it
ates to pioneer a “new Judaism.”
further to bring Judaism to the mosque, to
“I had the good fortune, as a young seeker,
bring Judaism to the monastery, to create
to run into the Jewish mystical tradition,
another way of being Jewish which was not
especially the writings of the early Chasidic
afraid of the world.”
masters,” said Green, who taught Jewish
I asked Magid if he and Chanes might be
mysticism and Chasidic theology at Brandeis
From left: Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, one of the
founders of the Jewish Renewal movement, with his friend
exaggerating Renewal’s influence.

University, the University of Pennsylvania and
Ram Dass, the spiritual teacher and writer born Richard Albert
“I’m sure there will be people who will claim
Hebrew College. “I have been working for
that case but I don’t think so, no,” he said.

half a century to articulate what could simply
How a counterculture movement came to be “Each one of them had a futuristic vision. They were
be called a Judaism for adults living in freedom. I
am now near the end of my creative course. But you absorbed by the mainstream is the subject of a able to cultivate a way of thinking about Judaism that
young people are just at the beginning of yours. We paper in a new collection, “The Future of Judaism in was before their time and that eventually came into
need you to enroll — however you can — in the task America,” edited by Jerome Chanes and Mark Silk. being in many ways.”
One of those skeptical of Schachter-Shalomi’s
Chanes is the co-author, with Shaul Magid, of the
of the generations, that of re-creating Judaism.”
That is the language of Jewish Renewal, with chapter on “Renewal” which claims it as one of the influence is Jonathan Sarna, professor of Jewish
which Green, 82, is deeply identified. Renewal isn’t most influential if not defining Jewish movements of history at Brandeis, who gave the keynote talk at the
conference. In his response to the panel on Renewal,
a denomination, really, but a movement that was the last 50 years.

“While Jewish Renewal has never boasted a large Sarna doubted Schachter-Shalomi was as influential
born in and reflects the 1960s and 1970s countercul-
ture. Baby boomer Jews disillusioned with the large number of members, its influence on the larger as Carlebach, the Conservative theologian Abraham
suburban synagogues that they considered soulless American Jewish community has been significant in Joshua Heschel or the Modern Orthodox philoso-
embraced Jewish practice that was spiritual, egali- terms of its liturgical experimentation, its revisions pher Joseph Soloveitchik. “I don’t think we should
tarian, environmentally conscious and largely lay-led. of ritual and its overall metaphysics,” they write. “It delude ourselves into thinking that every innovator
Renewal’s signature institution was the havurah has also served as an ongoing conduit of informa- is a new Moses,” Sarna said.

Listening to Magid’s response to such caveats,
— intimate prayer, study and social fellowships. Its tion and inspiration from its own past — the havurah
soundtrack was the liturgical melodies composed movement, radical politics, feminism — to the next I thought of the quote often attributed to music
producer Brian Eno: “The first Velvet Underground
by the hippy-ish, “neo-Chasidic” Orthodox rabbi, generation.”
Magid, a fellow in Jewish studies at Dartmouth album only sold 10,000 copies, but everyone who
Shlomo Carlebach. And its rebbe was Rabbi
Zalman Schachter-Shalomi (1924-2014), a refugee College, and Chanes, an adjunct professor of Jewish bought it formed a band.” Renewal’s influence
from Hitler’s Europe and former Lubavitcher Chasid Studies at Baruch College, presented their chapter at spread beyond its founding havurot because many
whose Judaism channeled the spiritual “New Age” a conference dedicated to the release of the book at of its principals went on to important positions in
Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. Magid made academia and Jewish organizations.

of the 1970s.

Rabbi Rachel Barenblat, who was ordained by
These ideas and approaches may be familiar to the claim — considered bold — that the “three most
you even if you’ve never heard of “Renewal.” Rare important Jewish figures in 20th century America ALEPH, has argued that the influence of Renewal is
is the synagogue that doesn’t try to offer a more Judaism” were Mordecai Kaplan, Menachem Mendel felt even within Orthodoxy. “If you look at the Open
Orthodoxy movement, if you look at the ordination
intimate spiritual experience for its worshippers, Schneerson and Shachter-Shalomi.

Kaplan, the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism, of women as ‘maharats’ [by Yeshivat Maharat, a
to shrink the distance between pulpit and pew, to
incorporate new Jewish music and, in non-Orthodox downplayed the supernatural element of Judaism women’s seminary], the future of women as rabbinic
and a number of Modern Orthodox synagogues, to and instead called it a “civilization” defined by its leaders in Orthodoxy is already here,” she said on an
increase the participation of women in prayer and people and culture. Schneerson, the Lubavitcher episode of the “Judaism Unbound” podcast. “It’s not
rebbe, turned an insular Orthodox sect into an everywhere, but someday it will be.”
study. Magid and Chanes similarly claim many leading
Those prayer shawls with rainbow stripes? That outreach movement that promotes ritual practice
Jewish feminists as products of Renewal although
among secular Jews.

was a Schachter-Shalomi innovation.

Andrew Silow-Carroll
12 JUNE 8, 2023 | JEWISH EXPONENT
Photo by Joan Halifax/Wikimedia Commons
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