Shelter Rock Jewish Center

Dear Friends,

I spent the first few days this week in Washington at the annual convention of the Rabbinical Assembly, the international organization of Conservative rabbis. It was, as these things always are, a stimulating experience, and I thought I'd write this week to tell you all a bit about it.

The most touching moment of the convention is always the annual Memorial Service, always held on the Wednesday morning of the convention, at which colleagues and colleagues' spouses who passed away in the last year are eulogized. I was there Wednesday morning and, as always, I was moved by the simplicity and elegance of the ceremony. Hearing the life stories of some of these rabbis, many of whom (this year, at least) lived very, very long and distinguished lives, was inspiring...and also just a bit intimidating. We all live our lives out as best we can, but the experience of knowing that one day someone will sum it all up one way or the other is sobering...and the corollary experience of wondering what exactly whoever it is who does the writing will say about you...not in a volume, but in a page or two...that thought is both worrisome and yet, in its own odd way, also exhilarating and challenging. I don't know why I thought to begin on such a dour note, but it is always, as I said, the high point for me. (When I said this to a colleague last night, he laughed, assuming I was making a joke. But it's actually true. I wish you could all be there with me one year. It's quite something.)

Other things on the agenda were also very interesting. I heard a long discussion of the whole hekhsher tzedek initiative, something I haven't brought that to your attention yet or written about it. I will, though, and sooner rather than later. In brief, the initiative is an effort to impose some sort of ethical standards on the way animals are slaughtered for the kosher market and the way workers, mostly very low paid immigrant labor, are treated in those abattoirs. Apparently, many of the techniques used in kosher slaughter houses, although not precisely infractions of the law, result in unnecessary pain and sometimes extreme suffering on the part of the animals...and the conditions under which many of the workers are obliged to labor are also, at least in some places, horrific. You may have read about this initiative in the newspapers or elsewhere, as had I, but I was struck this time by the nobility of the effort to bring a moral code to slaughter along side the legal one. The whole thing is just a bit quixotic, but it is also endlessly noble. To say the least, the notion that meat cannot be kosher if it comes out of a context of cruelty to animals or contempt for the workers who process the meat is at least intriguing to me. I want to learn more about all this, and I will. And then I'll write to you all about it and we can discuss it together.

I also attended a session about the effort to impose some sort of world-wide standardization on the process of conversion to Judaism within the movement, and to create a register of converts. There was a lot of very passionate discussion, some of which surprised me both in terms of its content and its ferocity. The RA has just published a new book of guidelines for rabbis who do conversions, and I am looking forward to reading it and forming my own opinion. I'll write to you all about that too as soon as I can.

Most interesting, I thought, was the long debate about how precisely to respond to the Pope's approval of a new version of the Latin mass that includes a line specifically directing Catholics to pray for the conversion of Jews to Christianity. This is a long story, and one that has been going on for a very long time. The pope, perhaps because of his boyhood association with the Hitler Youth, has been generally very careful in his relation to Jews and has not done anything too far out of sync with the initiative Pope John XXIII began in the 1960s to think of Jews as, to use the pope's own words, "elder brothers" of Christians.  And so, precisely because this new development seems so far out of character, the Assembly voted formally to request a formal explanation of what this new liturgy means in terms  the future of Jewish-Catholic relations.  I found it very instructive to listen to my colleagues taking this all very seriously as they attempted to formulate a reasonable response to what is either nothing of importance...or the beginning of a sea change that we would be well advised to take seriously. I'll keep you all informed about that as well.

On the whole, it was a great convention. I'm always very pleased to see my colleagues, many of whom I've known for more than thirty years. And it's always interesting to learn about new issues, and about new initiatives both in the movement and in the larger Jewish world. As the weeks pass, I'll tell you more about many of these issues. Gastronomically, it was not a great convention. (Of course, in that regard, nothing will ever compare to the conventions of the 1980s and 1990s at the Concord. But, even absent the Catskills angle, the meals were still dismal.) Still, intellectually and in terms of the pleasure I always derive from seeing my colleagues and learning from them, it was a terrific experience. Our convention next year is in Jerusalem. I think I'll go!

Sincerely,