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Coco the Clown, Humanistic Judaism, and Online Community
Lisa’s second essay about adopting Judaism (her first can be read here) discusses Coco the Clown, Humanistic Judaism, and Online Religious Communities.
Lisa writes…
About 4 years ago, I was blissfully cruising through the internet letting my imagination guide me through the rich resources when something caught my eye. Sarasota, Florida. Sarasota, home of the Ringling Bros. Barnum and Bailey circus popped up on a vacation ad. I love Florida. I had the unique opportunity in my life to know Michael Polakovs, THE Coco the Clown. He was a lead man for Ringling Bros. for many years and was the first national Ronald McDonald. For whatever reason, out of all the beautiful United States, Mr. Polakovs lived in Catlettsburg, Ky. Why he came to Appalachia, I’ll never know but I was quite used to seeing him out and about. That strange little connection led me to explore Sarasota online. It seemed like a nice community. Mr. Polakovs was Jewish and so I Googled Humanistic Judaism. Pop! Up came the Congregation of Humanistic Judaism in Sarasota. I went to their website and reveled in the information available there. I spoke via computer to a member who asked about local groups up here. I only knew those listed by the Society of Humanistic Judaism and so there were none in Ohio. This lady advised me that she had heard of a beautiful Congregation outside of Cincinnati. I was on it!
Timing is everything, as they say. Beth Adam was just firing up an online community, OurJewishCommunity.org. I began to frequent the site. I wrote to Beth Adam to ask if there were out- of- area memberships. They were the closest Humanistic Judaism Congregation for me. Next is 8 hours away in Washington, DC or 10 hours away in North Carolina. The website offered a lot of practical information, wonderful sermons and fascinating insights into Humanistic Judaism. The most outstanding feature was this wonderfully intelligent, highly articulate and open and approachable team of Rabbis that had “dreamed the dream” and thus made this community possible. They were reachable by phone (I have spoken to them several times). They are reachable by Email (we have had some rich discussions here as well).
It’s funny; a lot of people have a really tough time with the idea of an online community. I never have. I grew up in Eastern Kentucky and my Aunt Erma was disabled. She was pretty much homebound but was very religious. She LIVED for this one weekly TV preacher. She knew all the peoples names on the broadcast. She sent money, talked on the phone to them, participated faithfully in services and talked to young or new members to encourage them. It was the center point of her week. Her church community was completely real to us. We didn’t for a second think it wasn’t a real community just because she hadn’t sat down with that preacher. She had already learned to achieve her goals in life without the cooperation of her body. She lived more in a mental/ spiritual world. To have the preachers body present while he ministered wasn’t necessary to her. He just had to be connected mentally. So I was prepared already for the online community experience. It is as real to me as if I were to walk into a synagogue and sit down. With OurJewishCommunity.org, I walk into that synagogue almost daily and anytime of the day or night. I have access that is unprecedented. My Aunt Erma would’ve burned this website up if she had lived until the computer age! People just need to think outside the body! OJC is an out of body experience, I guess you could say!
The Judaism of the future must continue to evolve. The use of technology does not hinder, it enables us to have greater access. I know how much I seek the wisdom, knowledge and sense of community at OJC. I know others too are seeking solace and joy in our community. I love Friday evenings, the peace of participating in lighting the Shabbat candles and sharing in services. I recently changed jobs because it was becoming more and more important to me to spend my Friday evening observing Shabbat. Judaism has profoundly affected my life. It is one of my greatest joys. OurJewishCommunity.org has given me the tool to have this experience. I will forever be grateful to Rabbi Baum and Rabbi Barr for making this available to us. I will forever honor them for their wisdom and for reaching out a hand into the land of the internet and pulling me through.
Synagogue Dues – A Thing of the Past?
An interesting case study about a synagogue scrapping its dues structure intrigued me this week. This is certainly a concept I know at least a few other congregations use and one that Rabbi Barr and I discuss often. What would it mean if Congregation Beth Adam, our bricks-and-mortar congregation, eliminated dues?
We’ve not made that leap yet, but the reality is that at Beth Adam, we already do things differently than most congregations. First of all, we do not have tickets for the High Holidays – we never have. Anyone who wants to attend is welcome. Second, we do not generally publicly recognize donors here. We have one donor wall that lists people who gave to our building fund, although there is no way to know how much each person gave, and that is it. No named libraries, no names on the backs of chairs, no lists of donors printed in our newsletter. We recognize different people contribute in lots of diverse ways to congregations (including giving time, money, and other resources) and that some people have more resources to share than others. We want everyone to know this is their congregation, whether they can afford to make a $10 donation or a $100,000 donation.
While an online congregation is different in many ways from a bricks-and-mortar congregation, we have the same values informing our choices here. We do not have “membership” and we do not charge for participation. We have no tickets for the High Holidays – you can all watch online. Of course, it costs a lot of money to create and share OurJewishCommunity.org with all of you so we greatly value donations. That said, we know not everyone can contribute financially. And we do not want to build barriers to participation. Anyone who has access to the Internet can participate in our online community – and we are proud of that.
I recognize that most of the models of institutional Jewish life are models of the past that won’t necessarily work for the future. We’re busy creating new models here and eager to see what the future will bring.
Online Converation with the Rabbis
Tomorrow night (Wednesday, November 30 at 7:30 PM Eastern Time (i.e. New York time)), Rabbi Barr and I will be hosting an online “Evening with the Rabbis.”
We’re very excited about this. It’s an opportunity for all of us to engage in conversation about OurJewishCommunity.org and its philosophy and contemporary Jewish voice. We often receive emails from our participants in our online synagogue who ask a range of thoughtful questions. We’ll address some of those FAQs during the online conversation. You’ll also be able to ask questions live. You can either type them in the chat feature or ask them over video if you have a webcam. If you do choose to use your webcam, please make sure you have the latest version of Adobe Flash Player (available free at www.adobe.com).
To watch and participate in the conversation, join us tomorrow evening at: http://www.ourjewishcommunity.
An archive will also be available for you to watch on-demand if you miss the live stream.
We look forward to seeing you online tomorrow night. If you have questions you already know you’d like to ask, you can post them here and we’ll include them in tomorrow evening’s conversation.
Grilled Cheese, Flip Cams, and Online Jewish Community
I loved this Pogue’s Post “Flipping to Grilled Cheese” in the New York Times last week. It might have had a lot to do with the fact that the punch line of the article was about gourmet grilled cheeses (sounds amazing!) and that a lot of the article was about Flip cameras (we love ours, though it’s not actually a Flip – it’s Kodak).
But it was also a really fun article to read about technology, fast-paced change, and entrepreneurship. Jonathan Kaplan, founder and chief executive of Pure Digital (the company that made Flip cameras and then got purchased by Cisco for $590 million) spoke to a Consumer Tech class that Pogue teaches. So much of Kaplan’s advice resonates for me in the work we’re doing at OurJewishCommunity.org.
He says “it’s not about the hour, day, week; it’s about the month, quarter, year.” For our online community, we’ve had growth since the beginning, and exponential growth as time has gone on. Measuring our success by the hour is fun – but seeing the impact we’ve had in reaching 200,000 people in 155 countries in fewer than 3 years – that’s astounding!
He says “Say thank you.” That’s something that’s so important to us here. We are so grateful to our financial supporters who make what we do possible, and we are also thankful for all of our participants – for people who read and comment and engage in conversation. For this is Our Jewish Community – and it would be no fun to be rabbis just talking to a camera, speaking into a mic, or typing on a keyboard.
Kaplan says “Anything is possible.” When we started our online congregation, many people thought we were crazy (and some still think we are!). They could not get their heads around the idea that community is changing. In order to meet the needs of a 21st century Jewish community, we knew we had to find new tools. We did – and so much more became possible than we even anticipated. All of a sudden we heard from families who have had shared Jewish experiences though separated by geographic distance, we heard from individuals who had been turned off by Judaism before but now feel connected again, we heard from people who have found true friendship and community in our contemporary community that values liberal voices. Anything really is possible!
Kaplan tells us “the product’s name is really important.” We didn’t want to use some Hebrew name that would turn people away and make them feel bad if they didn’t know what it meant. We wanted to use a name that says what we are. We are about people and we’re building this together – it is ours. We are Jewish – and we are truly a community. Thus, we – all of us together – are OurJewishCommunity.org.
I found this article interesting from a business perspective (to see Cisco’s process etc.) and as you see, I saw how it applied to our entrepreneurial work. It was a fun read – and now I think I want a grilled cheese to celebrate. I think I’ll capture the sandwich on my Flip Cam!
Launching the Online Yom Kippur Food Drive
More than 1 billion people around the world are hungry. We can help them through acts of tzedakah (justice/charity).
OurJewishCommunity.org really is a community. Just as many local congregations hold food drives during Yom Kippur as an organized community service project, our online synagogue is hosting a food drive this year.
At this season of reflection, it is a wonderful time of year to help others. Some will choose to fast on Yom Kippur and others will not. Regardless, we all know that there are people who are hungry every day.
Our online food drive is a community service project that has no geographic limitations. We are asking all of you to consider donating locally and posting pictures of the food you are donating (feel free to get in the picture too!). We have created a flickr page for you to upload your photos. You can also share your stories of why you are donating or where you are donating through the flickr page.
To upload your photos and stories, visit www.flickr.com/groups/fooddrive. If you would prefer to email your photos, please email them to me and I will upload them.
I love being part of OurJewishCommunity.org – and I am thrilled we are kicking off our first community-wide social action project!
I’ve already uploaded my photos. Have you?
Update on Masa’s Ad Campaign
I have some updates about my previous blog post – about Masa’s ad campaign aiming toward “lost” Israelis who have moved into the Diaspora – and whom Masa fears will intermarry.
Masa decided to drop the ad campaign (after much negative feedback in the blogosphere and elsewhere). They say that “The main goal of a recently launched ad campaign in Israel was to try to engage an often apathetic Israeli population in MASA and involve them in the key goal of bringing larger numbers of young Jews from around the world on long-term Israel programs.”
I am glad that Masa dropped the ads. However, their chalking this up to “misinterpretation” seems rather lame to me. Just because they have listened to the public response and dropped the ad, have their values changed?
I also want to share with you part of a very disturbing comment I received on that blog post. I did not post the comment because I considered it to be attacking. Here’s part of it:
“Masa is absolutely correct in it’s message that intermarriage is bad for the Jewish community…. Intermarriage is destroying the Jewish community…. You are not a real Rabbi and not even a real Jew!”
This commenter has overstepped the bounds of healthy discourse. There can be no appropriate conversation about the future of the Jewish community if a self-appointed arbiter simply attacks others.
What is most disturbing is his accusation that I am not a real rabbi or a real Jew. It is absolutely astounding to me that there are people who think they can decide whether someone else is Jewish. I am an ordained rabbi – ordained by one of the big three rabbinic seminaries. If this person writing the comment has the audacity to tell me I am not really Jewish, then I can only imagine what he is saying to others. And he claims to be worried about the future of the Jewish people!
So, here’s my response to whomever wrote the comment. It’s not intermarriage that could destroy the Jewish community – it’s this kind of intolerance that will.
Twitcam Shabbat Service – Let’s Make Jewish History!
We live in a whole new world… One with Facebook friends and Twitter followers, one where definitions of community are changing, one where people are increasingly mobile, one that transcends geographic limitations, and one that allows lots of new opportunities… like a whole new kind of Shabbat experience!
Note: We start talking about 2 min and 30 seconds into the clip. Patience pays off.
Rabbi Barr and I are going to be hosting the world’s first Twitcam Shabbat this Friday night (July 31) at 6PM EST (and every Friday following that!). We hope you’ll join us.
We’ll be posting the link here at 5:45 Friday (EST) – so stay tuned for that. If you are on Twitter, you’ll be able to comment directly on the page – and ask us questions.
At OurJewishCommunity.org, we know that there are many people who aren’t members of synagogues – or who can’t (or don’t want to) show up for services at a designated time. We’re bringing services to you – on your computer. They will be short and sweet!
We want your participation. If we get 20 people, we’ll be giving away a great prize. In addition to the gift of a great Shabbat experience, of course!
So join us… have a conversation with us… and you can even pour yourself a cup of wine (we’ll have ours!).
New Media + Judaism = Change
This past Friday night at services I talked about the changing Jewish community. I started more globally and showed the following video which shows how quickly the world is changing… (I can’t vouch for the statistics 100%, but I do think the trends are totally realistic and compelling.)
We watched the video as a context for our discussion of the Jewish community. I also shared some facts about the Jewish community:
• Many Jewish households are struggling financially, and income is strongly correlated to synagogue membership.
• Fewer than half of American Jews are affiliated with congregations; of those who are, around 20% participate monthly or more often.
• More than half of the Jewish population in the US regards itself as secular or somewhat secular in outlook.
• Many young Jews are drawn to educational opportunities, small emergent communities, cultural expressions of Judaism, online media, and social action.
• Of adults married since 1990, only 40% marry a spouse who is also of Jewish origins.
So what do we do with all of this information? Do we continue doing the same things we’ve always done – and getting the same results we’ve always gotten – or do we try something bold and different? What are we seeking from Jewish institutions? What does it mean to be Jewish today – in a world where information is everywhere, where communication happens online and via text messaging as much as it does in person, and where change is rapid?
It seems to me there are a lot of tensions right now in our Jewish world:
• Do we strive to be a uniform or a diverse Jewish community?
• Should we build megasynagogues or more intimate groups (like the chavurah movement)?
• Do we want professionalism or democratization in our synagogues?
• Are we maintaining denominations or moving toward transdenominationalism (which my spell check doesn’t even think is a word!)?
• Do we prefer meeting face-to-face or in virtual settings?
For me, humanism is about embracing tensions – living in a world of gray – rather than black and white. Judaism is about struggle – always asking questions. OurJewishCommunity.org is about engaging in really great conversations. Click “comment” above!
A Mystic’s Humanistic Judaism
Editor’s Note: Peter is a participant in OurJewishCommunity.org and submitted this short essay. We hope it will generate great conversation here!
A Mystic’s Humanistic Judaism
by Peter Schogol
As I’m sure is the case with many Jews who’ve abandoned theistic religion in general, synagogue Judaism in particular, I’ve sojourned with a number of different religious communities in search for, well.. whatever it is nontheistic Jews search for that they haven’t found in shul. I’ve spent time with Baha’is, Quakers, Episcopalians, Vedantists, Pure Land Buddhists, Tibetan Buddhists, Humanistic Jews, Reform Jews, and Sect Shintoists. I came to appreciate `Abdu’l-Bahá, Lucretia Mott, Frederick Denison Maurice, Vivekananda, Taitetsu Unno, Pema Chödrön, Yaakov Malkin, Leo Baeck, and Konko Daijin, but with regrets in hand I kept on moving.
I’ve reached the point where moving for its own sake has become enervating and counterproductive. I wish to settle down. I wish to settle down in a community which is a part of the wider world which raised and nurtured me. I wish, for all the heartaches and heartburn, to be a contributing member of the Jewish people.
But I don’t want to bury myself in the part.
Each time I tried to find my place in Jewish life I’ve had to tuck some part of myself in. Either I’ve been too ethnic, too left-wing, too gay; insufficiently theistic, insufficiently Zionistic, insufficiently Holocaust-obsessed. I’ve been, in other words, what I am rather than what the neighbors should think I am.
I’ve been exceptionally fortunate in stumbling across an author, artist, liturgist, and hymnodist who was as curmudgeonly, as opinionated, as narcissistic and as brilliant as I in the person of the late Universalist minister Kenneth Leo Patton. In his many books (all but one out of print), Patton described a “religion of realities” suitable to his spiritual personality as a “mystical humanist.” In prose and poetry, lyrics and images, Patton chronicled a life immersed in the nitty-gritty of the human condition, singing as gloriously as Whitman, snorting as righteously as Clarence Darrow.
I believe in a mystical humanistic Judaism.
It’s not enough to be a rationalist. It’s not enough to be an atheist. It’s too late to be an objectivist. It’s disempowering to expect vicarious righteousness from one’s rabbi. It’s time to experience humanism as a project of the spirit charged with awe and mystery as well as justice and mercy. It’s time to once again cast our liturgies in the first person, owning our searches and our fallings away.
Is there room in communal Judaism for such an aesthetic? Should one have to turn to theistic religion for an appreciation of the mystical? Can Humanistic Judaism contain both rationalists and poets? I hope it can even as I realize that for the vocabulary of mystical humanism to be digestible to rationalists it will need careful unpacking. I for one would be happy to be part of such an undertaking. There is, truly, nothing otherworldly about a reverence for life.
Peter Schogol
Lexington, KY
Congratulations to our Raffle Winner!
Congratulations to Deborah who won a $25 iTunes gift card in our raffle! Everyone who took the survey and sent in an email address was included in the drawing. FYI: I used a random number generator online (what isn’t online?!) and came up with #52 – which was Deborah’s spot on the list.
Deborah was kind enough to share the following information about herself:
How she discovered our online synagogue: In an article in the Forward.
Why she was interested: She felt she could fit in.
How old she is: 61
Deborah wrote, “As I get older I feel the lack of a Jewish upbringing
and community more and more. My family was not observant but maintained a
strong Jewish identity (red diaper baby). I learned more about Jewish
history and religious practice from reading than from home, but always
knew I was a Jewish person. I got a different slant on Jewish identity
from Hashomer Hatzair in the mid-60s. I grew up in New York, but
have lived in California since 1969. I’m married to a non-observant,
unbelieving, once-Christian.”
I have to say, I loved reading a brief chapter from Deborah’s story. One of the great privileges of being a rabbi is meeting and knowing a variety of people. Working at Congregation Beth Adam, I get to interact with a relatively small group of people face-to-face. It is wonderful. Working at OurJewishCommunity.org, I interact with thousands of people from around the world; I am fortunate to meet such diverse individuals through the wonders of technology. It is also wonderful. The web has an amazing way of making the world feel smaller at times.
So, thanks Deborah for sharing your story, and congrats on winning the raffle. For the rest of you out there – thanks for participating in our Jewish community. Please share your stories with us as well. And stay tuned for future surveys and raffles.
Shabbat Shalom!
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- — Watch Video-Streamed Holocaust Panel about bystanders
- — Our Holocaust page is up - including an online panel discussion event on January 27th
- — Baum's Blog on Lisa's Adoption of Judaism
- — Baum's Blog on Coco the Clown, Conversion, and Online Community
- — Barr's Banter on Hypocrisy
- — Join us for streaming Shabbat every Friday at 6 PM Eastern Time