This is part of Marc H. Ellis’s “Exile and the Prophetic” feature for Mondoweiss. To read the entire series visit the archive page.
Rabbi Brant Rosen’s resignation from his position as leader of the Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation is big news within the Jewish community. Yesterday the Jewish Daily Forward reported on the matter. The news even reached Israel’s Haaretz.
The take on Rosen’s resignation is similar in both articles. Here is the Forward’s understanding:
The congregation struggled to bridge the divides by encouraging members to organize events, but those, too, quickly broke down into a left-right divide. Some 20 members of the congregation accompanied Rosen on a trip to visit Palestinian activists in the West Bank. Others, including longtime members, began to circulate letters and emails criticizing Rosen. Some left the congregation altogether, citing Rosen’s views on Israel as the cause.
Throughout, the board stood behind Rosen.
Then, in June, Rosen traveled to Detroit with members of Jewish Voice for Peace to encourage the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to pass a resolution on divesting from three companies that do business with Israeli security services in the West Bank. When the conflict in Gaza began, he marched in pro-Palestinian solidarity rallies in Chicago.
Those were, Rosen says, “the final straws.” Yet another letter circulated, this one accusing Rosen of neglecting his duties to the congregation. Rosen said the emotional toll, and the awareness of the pain his views were causing members, became too much.
Haaretz has it this way:
Rosen’s personal tipping point came in May, when congregants from about 25 member households sent a letter to the entire congregation saying that his pro-Palestine activism was interfering with his work as their rabbi.
A congregant told the Chicago Tribune this week that “Rabbi Rosen’s public and extreme political views divided the congregation when he should have brought the congregation together for respectful discussion.”
Rosen heard about the planned letter “when it was brewing,” he said. “It took me by surprise,” he told Haaretz. There was a board meeting about it open to the entire congregation, where some angry congregants aired their views. The board acknowledged the concerns but stood by Rosen, saying as long as he was fulfilling his professional duties they had no reason to censure him.
The war in Gaza this summer only heightened things further, Tabak said. “Obviously the situation in Gaza just accentuated all those emotions. Ultimately it brought a lot of simmering issues to the fore.”
Rosen’s resignation surely had a variety of causes and though he cites Board support for him, the political winds in his synagogue and the broader Jewish community were shifting. Rosen might simply have had enough. No doubt he saw the congregational handwriting on the wall. A rabbi as prophet couldn’t make it through this, the darkest of Jewish nights, alive.
Meanwhile a conversation with synagogue members will be held Sunday morning. Here’s Rabbi Rosen’s latest text:
Just three days have passed since I shared the news that I had decided to resign my position as JRC’s rabbi. I fully understand the many emotions my announcement must have unleashed; I am feeling many of them myself. While there is no set timetable for us to process these kinds of feelings, I am at least grateful that I will be with JRC through the next several months to do what I can to help our community through them.
I am grateful to all who have reached out to me over the last few days. Your kindness and support means a great deal to me. While I am deeply touched by those who asked the Board to reject my resignation, I need to stress that I came to this painful decision on my own and know it is the right thing for my family and me. While I am saddened at the prospect of leaving JRC and feel pain over the circumstances that precipitated my resignation, please accept that my decision is final and that I am at peace with it.
I know we will have the opportunity for more conversation in the weeks and months ahead.
And from the President of JRC:
I know for many of JRC members, Brant’s decision came as a shock. The Board was only notified of his decision less than two hours before our letters went out. Many people feel they have not been heard and we fully respect their right to be heard. Towards that end, Brant and I will be available at the President’s Brunch this Sunday from 9:30 am – 12:30 pm. This will be a time of quiet conversations.
Brant’s resignation is the latest in a series of events that has fractured our spiritual home and we will need to work through this difficult and painful time together. To that end, we are actively seeking a facilitator for a congregational meeting next week or the week after. As soon as we confirm the facilitator’s availability, we will send you the particulars for that meeting. This meeting will be the first of a number of opportunities for us to come together, express our pain, to learn from the mistakes of the past and to come to an agreement of how we can civilly discuss difficult topics in the future.
Again, I understand the pain you are feeling at this moment. I pray we all have patience and compassion as we all feel our way forward to the High Holidays and beyond.
What to make of this situation as it unfolds? Here are some possible takeaways so far:
1. Some would like to professionalize Rabbi Rosen’s resignation – which means Rabbi Rosen should go out quietly and be allowed to leave without fanfare. He and others shouldn’t burn his bridges to the Jewish community. They’re hoping there’s a rabbinic comeback in Rabbi Rosen’s future.
2. Kudos to the JRC Board – by all accounts they have stood by Rabbi Rosen. Perhaps the board should be seen as a model in Jewish life, a board that stands up to a minority faction that doesn’t want Israel’s slaughter of the innocent to interfere with the peace of affluent congregational life. Maybe after Rosen leaves the pulpit the minority faction should be asked to find another congregational address where, at best, Jewish ethics is optional.
3. Even the prophets have a personal life. The prophetic isn’t only about the public declarations of justice on behalf of others and too often against one’s own community. The prophetic has a deeply internal dimension that most supporters and detractors don’t think much about. Either they support folks like Rabbi Rosen or vilify them. Rarely do people stop and think about the cost of the prophetic.
4. Congregants who leave the JRC in despair over Rabbi Rosen’s resignation were hanging on by the skin of their teeth to the possibility of being part of an embracing and steadfast synagogue community. The fact is they have been and are in exile for a long time. Now they will have to accept that fact or wait through the selection of a new rabbi. Should they hope for another rabbinic figure like Rabbi Rosen to secure their place in the failed institutional Jewish world?
5. Even though Rabbi Rosen’s resignation was his decision, rabbis on the hunt for their first job or a job upgrade should think long and hard about applying for his position. Though quite modest and poetic – check out his creative translations of the Psalms – Rabbi Rosen is a symbol of rabbinic integrity. To apply for his position now would be to assume that rabbis are like baseball managers – when they’re hired, they’re one step closer to being replaced. Anyone who applies for Rabbi Rosen’s job is affirming the professionalization of the rabbinate which means rabbis are simply functionaries who assist in the assimilation of Jews to empire values and violence here in America and in Israel. As is true in higher education and other “professions,” professionalization of the rabbinate is a race to the bottom. In large measure, the current rabbinate is a scandal to Jewish history. This is an opportunity for rabbis who have yet to stand up for the Jewish ethical tradition to do so now. They should show their support for Rabbi Rosen’s prophetic stance by refusing to cross the congregational line that says Jewish ethical behavior, or the lack thereof, is something to be discussed rather than insisted upon.
No doubt more to come in discussions at JRC and beyond. At the end of Jewish ethical history, the lessons learned are sobering.
That’s why rabbinic postmortems are important. They tell us a lot about what we as Jews have become.
Bespeaks crisis.
Also, more evidence of the destruction wrought by Zionism and its adherents. Putting Israel ahead of all else in your psyche is wholly bankrupt.
gracie fr was kind enough to inform us of the terrible news that “Since the vigil, Bruce was pushed to resign his position as a Yale Chaplin by the Executive Council of the Board of Directors.”
https://mondoweiss.mystagingwebsite.com/2014/09/benefit-backlash-priests.html
I guess pro- justice Reverends and Rabbis are fair game…not to mention Professors.
Okay, there seems to be a little problem. Aren’t we talking about a Jewish Reconstructionist synagogue here? I believe we are. Isn’t Reconstructionist Judaism basically Zionist, and highly unlikely to change that stance?
So why don’t they just come out and say it?
I know only two “reconstructionists”, Brant Rosen and Richard Silverstein. If they are Zionist, then it is honorable to be a Zionist.
For that matter, the problem with “normal liberal Zionism” is not so much that it is Zionism, or liberal, but that it is utterly hypocritical. “Abnormal liberal Zionism” is less typically observed in web publications, and represents genuine attempt to have principled descriptions and prescriptions. I would not dismiss those people out of hand, as some here are prone to do.
Congregation of Brant Rosen supported him for many years, and he is not a person who changed views yesterdays. They are not throwing him out, clearing his desk and putting his stuff in a cardboard box that he can pick up without entering premises. We should not be hasty with scorn. I do not have time to conjecture sociological model of what have happened, I think that Mark Ellis has a very good idea, but his “prophetic” language requires some context (his previous writings) to understand properly.
I don’t think the congregation is fractured at all, it is just shocked as any congregation is when it loses its rabbi and faces uncertainty in a search for a new one.
The radicals at JRC Evanston are the vocal few. The majority of members are just regular people seeking a low key alternative to heavy duty religion. They have no intense religious agenda. They are secular Jews who want a place to go for high holy day, religious school and significant life events like marriage, birth and death.
We as a congregation are not seeking or embracing a political agenda. Please do not thrust one upon us. Give that back to rabbi Rosen.
Regarding the 5 takeaways, #s 2 & 3 are spot-on. I can attest that over the course of the past three years, the JRC Board has consistently supported Brant in speaking and acting his conscience. A vocal minority of the congregation, representing roughly 5% of member households, could not abide Brant’s evolving P/I politics and, by many accounts (inc. Crankylibrarian’s) resorted to “underhanded, bullying and mean-spirited techniques.” (Some of these folks have recently left JRC.) This is not to say that everyone else agrees with all of Brant’s political views – or even has particularly firm views – and, in fact, Brant used a disclaimer in his external communications that his opinions are his alone and do not represent the opinions of the congregation.
#3 – Yes.
#1 is kind of moot. Brant has said that whatever he moves on to, it will be something other than another pulpit.
#4 – Au contraire. Members either weren’t tuned in to the divisions, didn’t see the divisions as much of a threat given the small minority that was so discontent with Brant’s activism, thought that the divisions had already been addressed adequately, thought that the divisions were in the process of being addressed quickly and adequately enough, or didn’t realize the toll that the divisions were taking on Brant (vis #3). Most of us, including (most?) Board members, were BLINDSIDED. (Heck, Brant himself may have been surprised at the precipitousness of his decision.)
#5 – The jury’s still out. Stay tuned and wish us luck!