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Photo courtesy Koret Institute Photograph by Kathy Sauber, © University Photography 6 THE 2003 SAMUEL & ALTHEA STROUM LECTURESHIP IN JEWISH STUDIES “Jewish Renewal and the American Spiritual Marketplace”: a summary This year, Chava Weissler, the Philip and Muriel Berman Professor of Jewish civilization in the department of Religion Studies at Lehigh University, presented the Samuel and Althea Stroum Lectures. Her subject was “Jewish Renewal and Chava Weissler the American Spiritual Marketplace.” Weissler’s research on Jewish Renewal emerged from her book about seventeenth- and eighteenthcentury Yiddish devotional prayers, Voices of the Matriarchs: Listening to the Prayers of Early Modern Jewish Women (Boston: Beacon Press, 1998). These prayers were part of a mystical revival in Judaism in which kabbalah became central for a large mass of Jewish people, both men and women, for the first Chava Weissler, Rochelle Roseman and Althea Stroum share greetings during the reception after the lecture. time in history. After completing this book, Weissler turned to the popularization of kabbalah in contemporary American religion and set out to understand its appeal for Jews today, women in particular. For the purposes of fieldwork, Weissler looked for a community that sought to make the esoteric teachings of kabbalah broadly available to anyone interested. She landed upon the Jewish Renewal movement, which draws upon kabbalah as one of its sources and regards women and men as equal partners in Jewish life. Her main focus was Aleph: The Alliance for Jewish Renewal, a network of groups with roots in neo-Hasidism, 1960s counterculture, the ecological and feminist movements, and eastern philosophies. Aleph describes itself as trans-denominational, seeking to infuse the established four denominations (Reform, Reconstructionist, Conservative, and Orthodox) with an experiential relationship with the sacred. Rabbis associated with Renewal have been ordained by each of these four movements. But, Weissler argued in her first lecture, sociologically Renewal looks like a denomination. To explain this, she invoked the sociologist of religion Wade Clark Roof, who describes an American “spiritual marketplace” in which the texts of nearly every religious tradition are widely accessible in book shops in English translations. ”We live in a commodity culture,” Weissler explained, “and consumption is our main means of selfexpression.” ␣ And yet this is paradoxical since spirituality and consumerism might also be seen as opposed. But Renewal fulfills market demands for a certain type of Judaism, she argued, and in that sense, the structure of the American marketplace has converted a “trans-denominational” spiritual movement into one that behaves institutionally like a denomination. Weissler went on to outline seven characteristic features of Renewal: the quest for an experiential relationship with God; a commitment to gender equality; an approach to Jewish traditions (particularly hasidic and mystical ones) as resources rather than inflexible obligations; openness to the spiritual resources of other religious traditions; reliance upon charismatic leadership, in which the rabbi is a vehicle for closeness to God CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 Photograph by Kathy Sauber, © University Photography
SAMUEL & ALTHEA STROUM ANNUAL LECTURE SERIES ~ APRIL 14, 19 & 21, 2004 Professor Susan Handelman will present “Find Yourself a Teacher: The Mentor-Disciple Relation in Jewish Thought and Contemporary Cultural Studies” Susan A. Handelman, Professor of English at Bar-Ilan University, Israel, will deliver the 2004 Samuel and Althea Stroum Lectures. Her topic is “Find Yourself a Teacher: The Mentor-Disciple Relation in Jewish Thought and Con- Susan Handelman temporary Cultural Studies.” The lectures will take place in Kane Hall 220, beginning at 7:30 PM each evening. Professor Handelman is a teacher extraordinaire, named a “Top Ten” teacher at College Park (Diamondback student newspaper) and “Teacher of the Year” (University of Maryland Panhellenic Association). She received the Distinguished Scholar-Teacher Award 1989–1990 (University of Maryland). Professor Handelman has been a professor of English at the University of Maryland and a visiting professor at the “WEISSLER” CONTINUED FROM PAGE 6 (a feature it shares with Hasidism); use of the language of therapeutic culture and acceptance of the centrality of the individual in her spiritual and psychological path; and a commitment to social justice and a left-liberal political stance. In her second lecture, Weissler observed that the preponderant majority of Renewal’s members (although only about half of its leaders) are women. This reflects what historians call the “feminization of American religion” since the nineteenth century: as religion has become associated with the private domain, women have come to predominate in American religious life. Judaism’s public rituals, by contrast, have historically been dominated by men. Because men have more options for Jewish life than women, they may also feel they have more to lose by affiliating with Renewal. Moreover, Renewal is explicit about using feminist and gender-neutral God-language. Since the imagery and language the Western traditions use for God reflect and reinforce certain types of social structures and hierarchies — God was called “King” in biblical times because kings were the most honored and powerful members of society; God was called Father because fathers are the heads of the household — feminist theology argues for non-hierarchical God-language and a democratic social organization. Renewal Jews therefore also turn to kabbalah and its feminine imagery for the Divine. In her third lecture, Weissler described the way Renewal transforms the kabbalistic notion of the Four Worlds from a theory of the cosmos to a teaching about the nature of the self. In the fourteenth century, kabbalists invoked the concept in order to bridge the gap between a transcendent divine and the world of multiplicity and pain. Later, Lurianic kabbalah identified the four worlds with states of meditation at stages of the liturgy, as the mystical adept strove to draw near to the Godhead. In Hasidism, the doctrine became identified with inner aspects of the psyche, in keeping with Hasidism’s tendency to psychologize kabbalistic cosmology. Jewish Renewal even further “psychologized” the four worlds by interpreting them as aspects of human existence. Many renewal liturgies, Institute for Jewish Studies, Hebrew University in Jerusalem. At the graduate level she has taught at the Interdisciplinary Program in Gender Studies: Core Course in Gender in Language and Literature, Literary Theory, and Critical Thought and The Teaching of Literature. She has taught courses on The Old Testament and Literary Criticism, Reading the Bible: Problems of Interpretation, American-Jewish Literature, Women in Jewish Literature, and Literature and Ethics. Her primary research interest is literary criticism and Jewish studies, especially the relation of literature to the philosophy of religion. Professor Naomi Sokoloff Awarded the Samuel and Althea Stroum Chair in Jewish Studies At the pinnacle of university recognition of faculty excellence is the position of endowed chair. These positions publicly acknowledge superior scholarship, and reward the best faculty at the university. In 1985, through the extraordinary generosity of Samuel and Althea Stroum, the only endowed chair at the Jackson School was established. It remains one of only three endowed chairs in the entire Col- Naomi Sokoloff lege of Arts and Sciences. This year, the Stroum Chair has been awarded to Naomi Sokoloff, Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Civilization, Women’s Studies, Hebrew Language and Literature, and The Holocaust. She will hold the chair for three years, using the resources provided by the chair to support her research and her program at UW. In return, she will give public talks and present a colloquium during winter quarter 2004. Other planning is in process. for example, interpret the Sabbath morning liturgy as a “spiritual journey.” Instead of focusing on the divine end of the equation, Renewal emphasizes the self, answering the questions who am I, what is my place in the cosmos, and how can I encounter the Infinite? Renewal’s transformation of the Jewish mystical tradition, Weissler argued, should be understood both as part of a broad set of changes in American religious life and as an extension of the development of Jewish mystical thought. In that sense, Renewal has attempted to create a “Jewish language” in which to express and shape contemporary American spirituality. ~ Marina Rustow HAZEL D. COLE FELLOW, 2002–2003 7
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