From The Rabbi's Study
Globalization and the Jewish Question
June 2004

I have taken to appending the following passage to my electronic signature. It is an excerpt from EHYEH: A Kabbalah for Tomorrow by my teacher Rabbi Arthur Green. Green has long been thoughtfully engaged in provoking rabbis, students, and Jewish leaders to consider the Jewish future, while learning from and treasuring the insights of the past:

The great Creator has put us into the world, given us the gift of an instant of life within the vast stretch of eternity, and called upon each of us to respond by creating something of value with it. The privilege of living is great, but the demand is overwhelming, fearsome. Blessed is the One who confronts us and addresses us with that demand.

With this new blessing, Green brings the challenge to its most personal level. Each of us can, and must stake our claim in Creation, and do so on multiple levels.

Globalization demands multiple identities from us. To all of the ways we see ourselves, we must also add “global citizen.” We are confronted daily by the most intimate needs, joys and sorrows of the global village – our own, and those of family, friends, colleagues, and neighbors, and those of people and peoples vastly differently from ourselves.

Globalization and the Jews might seem an unlikely pairing to come up in everyday conversation, but it’s not much of a stretch to see a connection. The phrase comes from the title of an article from the Jerusalem Post Online by Einat Wilf. In it, the Reconstructionist notion of Judaism as an evolving religious civilization is used to challenge the reader regarding technology and the Jewish communal agenda.

What indeed is our value, and mission, in the world today? In our local communities? How do we act as Jews in the face of such rapid and dramatic global alterations in the way we communicate?

I want us to talk about this in the coming months and years, and in a way that is meaningful, personal, and useful. Our Shabbat service conversations in the Jewish new year will include a series of talks and dialogues that will endeavor to turn the phrase “values based decision making” into something more than an arcane Reconstructionist-speak phrase.

For “values based decision making” to have meaning, it must translate into a usable and familiar tool for addressing a wide range of personal and communal decisions. Here’s one you might have faced in a school or family context: is downloading music files from the internet ever acceptable? Does it become a cutting-edge change in the use of technology – a factor in globalization – or is it a form of theft? What if “everyone” is doing it?

Whether or not Wilf knows about values based decision making, or has read the writings of Mordecai M. Kaplan’s, the creator of Reconstructionist philosophy, they are echoed in these passages:

“The secret of Jewish survival has always been a remarkable combination of consistency and adaptability. Throughout history the Jewish people retained a core of beliefs, an attachment to the Bible, a set of values, and a sense of community. But they always found a way of adapting to the changing times, responding to the challenges of every new historical age.”

Wilf goes on to assert that globalization also demands adaptation, and begins to link the issue with Judaism as follows:

“Young Jews growing up in the world today are instinctively global. They take their mobility and easy communications for granted. They work for multinational corporations and are members of global movements fighting for human rights, peace, and a better environment. They have close friends in different countries…They know that their actions have consequences for the wider world and that there are fewer and fewer problems that are strictly local and concern only themselves.”

Wilf then challenges us to fill in the gaps in the Jewish communal agenda by providing young Jews with tools to incorporate their belonging and identity with the fluid, rapidly changing global environment.

I write these words today in the shadow of shock and sorrow, not a personal one, but one that has come to touch me precisely because of technological change and globalization. We receive information at such a rapid pace these days that by the time you read this, the news that I am about to refer to will most certainly have receded from prominence.

Today, the image of a young Jewish man from West Chester, Pennsylvania, is circulating around the globe in print and pixels, shocking us with the news of his horrific death at the hands of unknown killers in Iraq. The Jerusalem Post article’s passages took on a new coloring as I read them in the light of Nicholas Berg’s murder, praying for his family and my friend their rabbi, who will officiate at the funeral. When such remote, horrid events get this close, we must acknowledge more that the benign potential in the linkage of young Jews and globalization alluded to above.

The article goes on to challenge Jewish leaders to provide our young people with pathways to address globalization, communication, and the development and implementation of our communal agenda. Nicholas Berg’s father told the US government, in April, that he had gone to Iraq to "pursue business opportunities." Would that all the Jewish teaching in the world could have protected his life.

May all of us use our gifts fully, and fully grapple with the challenge of being Jewish in the world today.