שבה אתי/Stay with Me

Hi friends,

This is a poem I wrote over the last few days. (not during Yom Tov, obviously.) It is in Hebrew, so I am providing an English translation which isn't as good as the original. As a non-native speaker, I welcome any thoughts about grammatical errors, typos, or ways to improve the Hebrew.

שְׁבָה אִתִּי
אוֹחִיל תָּמִיד לְחֶמְדָּתִי
קְרַב אֵלַי בִּיחִידוּתִּי
אֹהֲבִי

בְּאָפְלְךָ
אֲנִי מְצַפֶּה אֶל מַרְאֵךָ
מִדַּד עֶרֶב אָכֵן הִנְךָ
רוּחֲךָ

שׁוֹב תָּשׁוּב
אֵלַי כַּמַפָּח יוֹם אֲהוּב
אַךְ דַּרְכֶּנוּ הוּא צָעַד עֲצוּב
הַכָּל כָּתוּב

בְּשִׁמְךָ
אֶשְׁכָּן בֶּטַח בָּדָד אִתְּךָ
נְעִימִים יָמָי בִּכְנָפֶיךָ
חִיוּכְךָ

נוּחַ אִתִּי
אַשְׂחֶה עָרְפְּךָ בְּדִיעְמָתִי
אֶפֶס אֶשְׁבֹּת מִימֵי מְגוּרִי
חֲבֵרִי

Stay with me
I will wait always for my precious one
Come close to me in my solitude
My friend

In your dark
I watch for the sight of you
The night drags on yet you are here
Your breath

You will surely return
to me at the break of a beloved day
Though our path be a painful footstep
All is written

In your name
I will dwell secure alone with you
Pleasant are my days in your wings
Your smile

Rest with me
I drench your neck with my tears
Nevertheless I will cease from the days of my sojourning
My companion

The Song of the Wave

The Song of the Wave
by Michael Gilboa

I stand by the sea on the seventh day
the crashing waves freeze like stairs
climbing to the blank horizon
and beyond it – the coming world
glowing dimly I dream of home.

The wave dances past my feet
my friends escape me all around
like horses broken in empty terror
but the sand in my toes stays true
though its loyalty makes me stumble.

What holds back this old salty tomb
hungry to devour my new salvation?
Is it the sacrifice of this hopeless sand
galaxies of once-noble hills and boulders
defending their selfish brothers above?

Or maybe it’s the charging sandpipers
hovering without fear on legs unseen by men
heedless of the cold and timeless haze
rushing madly at the watery breach
daring Ocean to challenge their strength.

Or maybe it’s the feigning foreign Moon
the Celestial Dictator lingering by us all
sculpting the water’s will like a mindless potter
immune to whips and scorpions and the cry of men
a bloody claw and fetid oxbow, without form and void.

Or just maybe, Wave… maybe we are brothers
an infinitude of nothing bound up for a moment
searching for hope or comfort or just a little peace
in each forgotten sound and vanishing footstep
desperate to really breathe before we crash.

One thing I ask, this alone do I pray.
When the spirit steams out of my throat
and the fiery starlight leaves my eyes
give me not ten more years without strength
or infinity in paradise without meaning.

But give me a moment more with my brother
the crashing of the staircase before me
like the galloping of footfalls behind me
the rusted glimmer of timbrels in the Deep
calling out “Return, you children of men.”

And if the sea will not split for me
then surely he will teach me to swim
and we will whisper all that could be
and if it isn’t perfect and it isn’t good
we will together smile, and it is enough.

Is Michael Culp Gilboa a Zionist?

Am I a Zionist? I know I used to think of myself as one. I know I was disparagingly called one in college. Plus I’m studying to be a rabbi, so you would imagine that somewhere along the way I picked up a little love and tenderness for the Jewish state. But lately it would seem that the borders of acceptable Zionism have contracted and I don't honestly know if I qualify anymore. What’s worse, my attendance at rabbinical school might be evidence of my own anti-Zionism. According to Rabbi Daniel Gordis, writing from Jerusalem:

You don’t have to spend that much time listening to rabbinical students in New York, Los Angeles, Boston or Jerusalem to hear these stories. Often, a few students ask to meet privately. And almost invariably, regardless of the school in which they’re enrolled or the movement to which they’re committed, what they want to discuss is the profound loneliness they feel as unabashedly Zionist and pro-Israel rabbis-in-the-making.

Rabbi Gordis paints an odd picture of life at rabbinical school. Before I came here I had a notion that we were going to sit around and talk about the big ideas, like God, Torah and Israel. But so far I’ve mostly talked about my Hebrew homework and occasionally swordfish. This isn’t to say that we don’t talk about the big things, but our daily lives are filled with the grind of any grad school program. We are all too busy to ostracize each other, not to mention that the school is too small even to try that. We don’t divide into cliques based on Israel. I’m not even sure what most of my classmates think about Israel.

Nonetheless, I can only speak for my own school. Perhaps things are different elsewhere. What evidence does Rabbi Gordis provide for the massive anti-Zionist cabal present at America's rabbinical schools?

Item: Not long ago, a student at one of America’s recognized rabbinic schools sent a note to the school’s e-mail list saying that it was time to buy a new tallit. Seeking advice about what to buy and where to get it, the student noted that there was only one stipulation – the tallit could not be made in Israel.

Item: After that e-mail went out, a rather energetic discussion unfolded. As the conversation became increasingly heated, students were told that e-mail conversations about Israel were now off limits. You can discuss politics, the economy, sex and theology, but not Israel.

Item: Also not long ago, other rabbinical students were discussing how to add relevance to their observance of Tisha Be’av. They began to compile a list of other moments in history that should be mourned. One suggested that 1948 be added. Because of the Nakba? No, actually. It was time, this student said, to mourn the creation of the State of Israel.

Item: A rabbinical student in Jerusalem for the year chose to celebrate his birthday in Ramallah, accompanied by fellow students. There they sat at the bar, with posters (which they either did or didn’t understand) extolling violence against the Jewish state on the wall behind them, downing their drinks and feeling utterly comfortable. Photographs of the celebration got posted online.

Sadly, the items Rabbi Gordis describes are maddeningly vague. For instance, in the midst of the heated listserv discussion on Israel and Zionism, did anyone have any good tallit recommendations? I hate it when listservs go off-topic.

On a more serious note: mourning the creation of the state of Israel on Tisha B’av? That sounds pretty bizarre. So bizarre, in fact, that I would like to hear more about it. What sort of discussion was this? Was the student making a political point or a theological point? I am pretty confident that I won’t be adding that particular kavannah to my Tisha B’av experience, but I’m sure this one-line caricature does a grave injustice to the nuance of this student’s idea.

I was most surprised to learn that having a drink in Ramallah is all it takes these days to be thought of as anti-Zionist. Not since the Treif Banquet of 1883 has there been such a fuss over a few Jews getting together in a restaurant. Perhaps one day the history books will speak of the Ramallah Birthday Bash of 2011. In the here and now, I am still trying to pin down exactly what the problem is with this shindig.

You might think it’s a geographic problem. But then, ask yourself this: would these students be thought of as anti-Zionist if they had gotten shikker in the nearby settlement of Beit El? Or if (as some of my friends did) they spent Sukkot in Hebron with a group trying to make the city of 165,000 Arabs and 500 Jews a permanent part of the state of Israel? Surely the incorporation of that many Palestinians into the civic life of Israel would be disastrous for Israel’s precarious Jewish/democratic system. So is hanging out with these quixotic dreamers not worthy of the term “anti-Zionist”? Yet somehow those friends of mine weren't included in Rabbi Gordis’s items. Maybe the problem with this birthday jaunt to the Wild Wild West Bank is that the rabbinical students paid their tab and left instead of setting up some caravans in the bar’s parking lot.

Or maybe it was the quality of the company they keep that makes these students anti-Zionists. I suspect that the kinds of Palestinians who will hang out with Jews in a bar are not the radicalist of the radicals. Nonetheless, I’ve been told that the war will never end because the Palestinians are irredeemably anti-Semitic and they embrace a culture of death. One solution to this problem would be to keep the powder dry, but isn’t it another solution to reach out to the Palestinians one at a time and make personal connections that could overcome prejudice and hatred? If to be a Zionist means to love Israel and wish for its peace and prosperity, perhaps having a birthday party in Ramallah is one of the most Zionist acts possible. I’m not saying that this strategy of “love your neighbor” is going to work (though I do try to follow the advice of that phrase’s author) but is it anti-Zionist to try it?

With all of this going on, I’m left with a bit of a problem. Zionism has become such a slippery term that I just don’t know if it works for me anymore. I believe a lot of things about Israel and about life in general. When they are all summed up, can I fit my ideas into the rubric of Zionism? I suppose I could just ask Rabbi Gordis to give me the thumbs up or thumbs down, Gladiator-style, but since I would have been at that birthday party I know I’m already in trouble. So I am reduced to asking all of you: Is Mike a Zionist? Click on this link to take part in a Facebook poll. For your benefit, I will lay out the facts below. Please feel free to read them before you vote, though for the purpose of this exercise it might be better for you to judge me before you get too many facts.

Item: I have visited Israel twice. The first time was as a participant on a Birthright trip. The second time was as a staff member on a Birthright trip, after which I stayed in Jerusalem for a couple months and learned Hebrew at an ulpan. I would not have been able to begin at Ziegler without the Hebrew immersion that Israel makes possible.

Item: The Israeli government thinks that I am Jewish enough to make aliyah but once I arrive I’m not a Jew anymore. I cannot get married in Israel and if I were to die in Israel, even if serving in the IDF, I wouldn’t be buried in a Jewish cemetery.

Item: I never say the traditional blessing for the State of Israel in my prayers, whether public or private. I wish that the founding of Israel did represent the first flowering of our redemption, but I haven’t seen any actual evidence that this is the case. I do see something divine in the continuous unfolding of Jewish history, but God is in charge of the redemption and I’m going to wait until God tells us that it is flowering.

Item: I once seriously considered making aliyah. I was very inspired by Israel as a country and what the people there have managed to accomplish and I had visions of growing avocadoes on a dusty kibbutz. These days, I am convinced that my own path as a rabbi is going to keep me in the United States. I am also convinced that a vibrant Diaspora is essential for Judaism and that God does not want all of us to live in Israel.

Item: I am convinced that the best solution to the problem of anti-Semitism is the creation and preservation of vibrant democracy, rule of law and liberal society in every country on earth. After that, the second-best solution is to make sure that if the anti-Semites have some guns, the Jews have some too.

Item: One of my most profound spiritual moments took place in the Judean desert, where somehow I knew that I was re-tracing the footsteps of David as he escaped from King Saul. I never read the Psalms the same way again.

Item: I am a Conservative Jew who believes deeply in the spiritual imperative of egalitarianism. The state of Israel quite self-consciously denies me the right to worship God in the manner I see fit when I visit Judaism’s holiest sites. I am also aware of the fact that my ability to visit these sites at all is protected by the state of Israel.

Item: When I read the newspaper, I almost never skip an article about Israel.

Item: I own an autographed copy of Meir Kahane’s book Never Again.

Item: I would be heartbroken to see Israel disappear. I would also be heartbroken to see Israel conquer and occupy all the way to the maximalist borders that its extremists dream of. I do not feel the need to rank these two heartbreaks in any order.

Item: I believe that every human being has the right to live in the place of their birth. I believe that throwing people out of their well-established homes is a measure of last resort and should only be done by governments which are accountable to those same people. I believe that applying any religious or ethnic test to citizenship, residence or immigration is repugnant.

Item: I do not go out of my way to buy Israeli products or to avoid them. I have absolutely no idea what country my tallit was made in.

So, am I a Zionist? Vote now!

The City Gate

Dedicated to the memory of Mike Smith

There was a tall city, white like the snow and built like a mountain rooted in the sky. Its seven white spires reached up toward the highest heavens, and around it all was a white wall with a single shining white gate. Outside the gate the bare land had itself turned white, as if not daring to challenge the purity of this city.

A shepherd of almost no stature walked up to the gate leading his flock, each sheep dustier and darker than the next. The watchman at the gate examined each sheep carefully, fearful lest some of their ashy dust sully his garments. One by one he looked over each sheep. One by one he sent them away. They were too dirty, too dusty and too matted for the white city.

The shepherd began his slow journey away from the city. There was one sheep, however, who stood out. He was a crimson black, and his wool was covered with burrs and scabs. The watchman hadn't looked at him and hadn't inspected him. He didn't even point the sheep away with the others. So manifest were this animal's shortcomings that the watchman didn't even bother. He couldn't even be troubled to look at this poor sheep, so disgusting was it.

So as all the animals rejected by the watchman turned away from the gate, this poor solitary sheep stood expectantly, waiting. Soon the other sheep had traveled beyond the horizon, but this one remained. He watched truthfully at the gate, while the watchman stood confused and unsure what to do. The sheep tilted his head at a ridiculous angle, his matted wool twisting and tearing. He stared up at the majesty of the white city's spires. He beheld the city stones riding on the clouds, and he gazed faithfully.

In that moment, the gates of the city opened and a figure came exploding through them. The lord of the city ran toward the sheep, and the sheep smiled widely. The sheep's smiling face was matched by the lord's, whose eyes glistened at the joy of this homecoming. As he sprinted by, the fluttering of the lord's luminous white robes almost knocked over the watchman. At every bursting step, the light of his robe met the sapphire of his sandals, and his footwear shone such a blue that he seemed to run on the sky. The sheep bounded toward him with rapturous abandon, and when they met the lord picked up his blackened and battered friend and he held him in his breast.

The lord carried the sheep through the gates and into the center of the city, holding him close all the while. He did not stop for even a moment to acknowledge the watchman, who looked on with horror. The lord ran his hands through the sheep's wool, shaking off the dust and gently pulling out the burrs. A cloud of dust gathered around them, but no dust would collect on the lord's shining white robes. The watchman stood silently as the gate closed. His heart sank further as he looked out on the distant horizon. He could see the shepherd returning with his precious battered flock.

The Expansion of the 405

The Expansion of the 405

The Chumash Indians had a name for you
…have a name still, probably.
I could find out what it is
but I’ve never met any Chumash.

I went on Google Earth and looked
but there was no name listed.
I asked a geographer who told me
that you probably don’t have a name.

That doesn’t seem very likely to me.
Every stump and root has a name.
The name to describe your heart,
and the name to conquer your scalp.

On my ancestors’ stumpy island
we would have measured you a mountain.
But on this overeager continent
you’re probably known as a hill.

I’m sorry I don’t know your name.
But I’ve seen your face everyday.
Each morning when the traffic comes
I indulge myself in an unnatural glance.

I should have introduced myself sooner.
I’m sure you could tell me something
about my anxious adopted home
and all you’ve seen over this pass.

You were the refuge of exiles
the quiet comfort of shamans
You were host to the hunter
when he became the poet hunted

You stood guard over peoples
protecting them from the wilds
You were the vantage of conquers
aching for the next valley

You were the last escape
a sad someone’s rock and redeemer
You were the center of the universe
for those hopeless outlaw lovers

Then they came to take
The ones who take everything

They took your coyotes and bears
They took your deer and wolves
They took your shamans and poets
And now they take your souls

There is a valley and a hill,
you see, with too much hill
and not enough valley. The answer
the foreman says is the bulldozer.

Cartoonish wheels climb
flattening your slopes
punching you with gutters
the perfect lines mocking you

Soon the pavement will come
Concrete, the true spear of Rome
A road to our seven cities
And a wall to keep out your revenge

Your whispering spirits dance no more
The holy empty is now filled
The taboo is broken forever
on our way to the Galleria

Can a hill be made low
if a valley be not exalted?
Can the rough places be made plain
if the crooked be not straight?

Still they will sacrifice to their god
They shall conquer death and traffic
They shall be washed in the blood
by offering up the mountain

the icy men who separated
heaven from the air and sky
on the same day they burned
their first lump of coal

I’m sorry to meet you this like,
trampled body and naked dignity.
Please tell me your name.
I cannot kill what has a name.

Maybe after they are done,
after the artillery and air strikes,
when they forget the word “Sepulveda,”
you and I can sit still together

Will I dance with your souls?
Will the whispers hearten me?
Will the bear strength return
to the empty-bannered men?

Your rebirth is assured
More than ours anyway
The stone outlives the builders
Until the shadows flee away

Firstborn of the plate tectonics
You shall conquer death and highways
Your peak shall be exalted
Unconquerable Mountain

Thoughts on Being Fleishig

For some large amount of my life, I have been a vegetarian. I cannot put a number on it exactly, because the rules of my game kept shifting. At one point I was not eating red meat but I still ate fowl. At another point I wouldn't eat fowl but I would eat fish. At yet another point, I wouldn't eat meat in my home but I would eat it outside. And there were the times when I was keeping kosher in parts of the world with very little kosher meat, which made me a functional vegetarian. Throughout all of these periods, I was occasionally "relapsing" and breaking my own rules.

My own motivations were quite sincere. Not being interested in slitting a cow's throat, I wasn't interested in being the beneficiary of someone else doing it either. I was very moved by the Hindu doctrine of ahimsa (non-violence), a belief which has guided the behaviors of the moral giants of the 20th century, such as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Later in my life Judaism gave this impulse more justification. The Torah teaches us that Adam and Eve were vegetarians. The permission to eat meat was given grudgingly as a concession by God to our baser instincts, and only after God had destroyed all life in the Flood. Isaiah speaks of our messianic future, in which everything, even the wild cats, will be vegetarians. As a progressive religious Jew, I understand the messianic prophecies to be prescriptions more than descriptions. My religious life motivates me toward creating a world which is more messianic than it was yesterday; in effect, being a little bit of the Messiah. Hence, what better way could I bring the Messiah in my daily life than to begin eating the messianic diet?

All of this coalesced for me a couple summers ago, when I working at a camp. I had used the camp's resident goats and chickens to teach 11-year-olds about kashrut, and now I was sitting down to Shabbat dinner: chicken! I just didn't feel like it was worthwhile for me to have killed this chicken, directly or indirectly, just to feed me for an evening. I felt so bad for the chicken and for the violence that I had brought into the world that I told the chef to add to the roster of vegetarians that he prepared special meals for.

So I was a vegetarian. For the first two days I was a pescetarian, but that felt to me somehow inconsistent, so I gave up the fish as well. Things were great for a while. Camp was the closest I ever came to having a personal chef, so I didn't have to worry about the difficulty of vegetarian meals. Not having to remember when I last ate meat was a nice little bonus. And of course, there was the very sincere moral superiority. I genuinely thought that I was doing a really great thing for the world, and it really guided me past all of the hunger and the cravings.

The cracks in my worldview began to appear this past summer. I took a bit of a scenic route from Los Angeles to Iowa, traveling on country highways from New Mexico to Kansas. I happened to be passing through some of America's great pasture country, and I saw for the first time in my life the liberation and joy that is the free-range grass-fed cow. These cows were not locked in barns and fed a gruel of corn and soy, as I am accustomed to back home. They weren't packed in such density as to turn their fields into mud puddles and their lives into filthy shadows. These cows could basically go wherever they want and do whatever they want. I was often the only car on the road, with an ocean of grass spread across the horizon. It looked like a cow's paradise.

It left me thinking. All of this time as a vegetarian, I had continued to eat dairy products. As my motivation was to prevent suffering, I had to wonder, who is suffering more? The dairy cow, locked in a pen and attached to a milking machine for 13 years, or the meat cows I saw lazing on the side of the road, whose last day on earth is going to be a bad one? Would I rather have a bad last day or a bad 13 years? I began to realize that there was a distinct inconsistency in my practice, and resolving it was either going to drive me to veganism or to eating meat.

Considering the fact that I was a hypoglycemic, and that my brother had recently moved away from veganism for health reasons, I knew that it would be difficult to be a vegan. Still, the ethical life is often difficult, and I knew that my principles were pushing me in a very definite direction. But as I pondered, I came across an article in the New York Times. In "The Meat Eaters," Rutgers Philosophy Professor Jeff McMahan argues that humans have an ethical obligation to attempt to prevent all suffering. This includes not only our consumption of animals and their products, but the killing of all animals by other animals. Human ought to, by genetic manipulation or by extinction, cause an end to all carnivores. Either the lions will eat straw or they will be wiped out. That is our moral duty.

We're not in Kansas anymore. Jutting out over our lush prairie I saw a peak, the peak of human hubris. Do I even need to explain the hubris behind Prof. McMahan's claim, that we have a duty to overturn the economy of life? Can we even imagine a situation in which that is possible? Unless we want the world's biomass to transform into a pile of corpses, we would have to retain the scavengers, with their ability to eat dead meat. But what about an animal that is 90% scavenger, 10% hunter? What about the whale, the murderer of precious phytoplankton? What about the cow? The cow? Yes, the cow's rumination, which allows it to eat cellulose. In truth, the cow's digestive system cannot absorb cellulose. That's why the cow's stomach is filled with bacteria which can eat cellulose. The cow then digests those bacteria. The cow is, in effect, a walking bacteria farm/murderer.

But let us say that we conquer all of these challenges. We have produced a world where no animal dies a violent death at the hands of another. Do we have a moral obligation to prevent accidental deaths? Should we build animal bridges over the rivers to prevent drownings? Do we then have a moral obligation to keep animals from dying of old age? Ultimately, it seems that Prof. McMahan is arguing that we are moral failures if we cannot conquer death.

Once I started walking toward the peak of human hubris, the whole mountain came into view. I began to realize that I too was seeking to conquer death. I am a product of this earth, one who came into being through its majesty. Yet in my drive to prevent violence at all costs, I had turned my back on my Mother. I had denied my physical self, my carnivorous bodily being. My carb-heavy vegetarian diet had made me hypoglycemic. I self-righteously ate the foreign corn and the soy of my native land, believing that I was doing right by the cow, but I stopped making eye contact with the buffalo.

Death is life. Life is death. That is the economy of our world. Whether it is the plant who eats the soil, the animal who eats the plant, or the soil who eats the animal, we all live in the hand of death, and we all die in the hand of life. Whether it be the lion or the lemon tree, I don't begrudge the thing that will take my body. I only hope it knows sensitivity and compassion, just as I hope that I do.

"God will swallow up death forever." So says my beloved Isaiah. Not humans will swallow up death, but God. The messianic future is one of a fundamentally different economy. We call it the World to Come because it truly is like a different world. Trying to live in the World to Come in this world isn't always going to work. This world is a world of death and dying. If there is to be a final redemption, it will be in the hand of God, and it cannot be hurried.

Vegetarians, I still love you. I am so happy to live in a world where vegetarianism is an active impulse, because I think it makes all of our lives better to be surrounded by such people. But I am slowly returning to the world of meat. Those of you who know me, I hope you will understand that I am not celebrating this return and I am not rushing it. The sadness that surrounds eating an animal life is still with me, perhaps forever. I am also spending my time researching the best way to eat meat ethically, both in terms of the animal's life and the life of our planet. Until I feel more comfortable about that, I won't be eating that much of the factory-farmed kosher meat that is available in Los Angeles.

In the mean time, I suppose I can end this blog with a petition to the One Who Reads All Blogs. Please guide me on this path, please bring about your will for this world through me, and please bring your redemption to all life.

USCJ Districts: An Alternative Vision

Last year the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, as part of its efforts to cut costs and redefine its mission, announced that it would be consolidating its 14 regions into six super-powered districts. Being a bit of a geography dork, I had one question: What are the new districts and what are their borders? So I emailed the USCJ and asked them what their new districts were going to be. I received no response to my email. A few months later I went on the website and saw that, lo and behold, the new districts had been unveiled. They are:

Northeast
Metropolitan New York (METNY)
Mid-Atlantic
Southeast Seaboard
Central
Pacific Southwest
Northern Pacific

Now, I wouldn't be going to rabbinical school if math were really my thing. (I'd be an astronaut.) Nevertheless, even I can tell that the six promised districts have somehow become seven. Also, there is a massive geographical disparity in the size of these districts. So I decided to do a little figuring. Here's the old region map, near as I can tell:


View Old USCJ in a larger map

And here is the new district map:


View New USCJ in a larger map

As you can see, the districts are just the former regions smashed together. While this is definitely the easiest way to consolidate, I am left wondering. The ostensible cause of the redistricting was the contraction and demographic changes that the Conservative movement has experienced. Certainly these changes have not been uniform, yet we are relying on the old borders to be part of the new solution. I am also instinctively uncomfortable with the contrast between the New York City district and my own home state's "Here There Be Dragons" district. This Central region behemoth is just a nightmare of logistics and planning, and it's hard to imagine trying to make the case that Pittsburgh, Denver and San Antonio share the same regional concerns in the same way that Staten Island and the Bronx do. Plus there are seven districts when they promised us six.

(Astute readers will note that I left Canada out of the regional calculations. Recent trends seem to indicate that they are more interested in doing their own thing anyway, and I think Conservative Judaism ought to evolve in its own way in Canada, not having to be the little brother to the U.S. movement. No offense is implied.)

I decided to fight my instincts and ignore geography, instead looking at the numbers behind the districts. According to the USCJ website, here are the number of synagogues in each district:

Northeast: 101
Metropolitan New York: 101
Mid-Atlantic: 105
Southeast Seaboard: 115
Central: 118
Pacific Southwest: 61
Northern Pacific: 29

Total: 630

Aha! This is the reason for the geographic disparity. They are trying to create an equal number of synagogues in each district. (Except for the Northern Pacific district, which really ought to have been incorporated into the Pacific Southwest. I guess that's our mystery seventh district.)

So, problem solved, right? Not really. All of this thinking of mine led to more thinking and wondering, and then I realized that I don't know why the USCJ even needs districts. What do they accomplish? What is their purpose? I've been doing a lot of reading, and I'm still not sure. I thought maybe they were to facilitate USY. As a youth organization, they have to plan events with everyone being reasonably nearby. But it turns out that USY has its own districts anyway.

As near as I can tell, the USCJ has districts because it always has had them. What do they provide that couldn't be done from New York? Something I'm sure, but probably not enough to justify maintaining all of these offices. I certainly don't mean any offense against the people who work in those offices. It's just that I've been involved in synagogues in lots of different ways, and I haven't really seen these regional offices playing a role.

It occurred to me, though, that I knew what they COULD be doing. Unfortunately, this was going to involve more math. It's not enough, you see, to make sure there are an equal number of synagogues in each district. There are so many different sizes of synagogues in our movement. In fact, we have five designations for them: very small, small, medium, large, and very large. I decided to plot these out, giving one point to the very small synagogues, and so on, up to five points for the very large. After looking at some maps and doing some addition, I realized that around two-thirds of Conservative Jews live in about a dozen highly-concentrated geographic areas. Outside of those areas, synagogues are few and far between, and almost always "very small."

The purpose of districts, then, ought to be clear. The "Here There Be Dragons" section of the United States is not an obstacle to our map-making; it ought to be the guiding purpose of our organization. Concentrated Jewish communities should be paired with large swaths of land outside of their concentrated area. The inner district should then be communally responsible for building up Jewish life in their outer territory. This is a model I am happy to have borrowed from certain churches who use a diocesan system. In these churches, established diocese are often paired with "missionary diocese" where the church is growing.

Some might point out the immediate problem that Conservative Judaism in fact isn't growing. To me, that's exactly the point! Here I am proposing a model of districts that exist not just to exist, but are part of a larger vision for the future of the movement. Conservative Judaism ought to be planning and preparing itself to be a leading voice for major growth in American Jewish life. We ought to be filling in the map with mitzvah-centered communities which are repairing the world. Either that or we ought to close down.

My proposal calls for 12 districts, 11 of which exist in concentrated areas of Jewish population. Using my point system, I attempted to draw districts of around 80 points. The largest outliers were the San Francisco Bay Area, with 34 points, the Chicago area, with 49 points, and northern New Jersey, with 119 points. I considered scrapping the Bay Area district, but I found that there was no other district in which to comfortably subsume them. Also, with a 2% synagogue affiliation rate for the Jewish population, the Bay Area is uniquely primed for expansion.

The twelfth district, the Expansion District, occupies the rest of the United States. It is geographically the largest by far, but contains only one-third of the American Jewish population. It is mostly inhabited (Jewishly) by isolated communities in mid-sized cities. These synagogues ought to share a district because they share the same challenges. The single Conservative synagogue in Altoona, Pennsylvania shares more in common with the single Conservative synagogue in Bakersfield, California than it does with the many synagogues in nearby Philadelphia. For very small synagogues, size more than geography is their primary common attribute.

The Expansion District is also subdivided among the other 11 districts, relative to each district's size on the point scale. Each district is assigned a section of the Expansion District at a ratio between 45% and 55%. For instance, the New England district, which has 77 points, is assigned a section containing 42 points, or about 54% of the district's size. The 11 districts are tasked with providing material support for the Jews in their section of the Expansion District. In other words, they are responsible in that territory for Conservative Judaism's development and expansion.

For eight of the 11 districts, I drew borders that were primarily concerned with geography. Thus, southern Florida is paired with northern Florida, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. But three of the districts have a special assignment. Metro New York, Long Island, and northern New Jersey are home to the largest and most established Jewish populations in the United States. They are also adjacent to each other and to other large Jewish populations which inhabit the highly urban east coast. Thus they have been assigned portions of the Expansion District which are not contiguous to their territory. These districts are in a special position to offer their support to a wider swath of territory, and their ready access to transportation resources makes geography less of a concern.


View Proposed USCJ in a larger map

I believe that this organization of the synagogues in the USCJ would help to establish a 21st-century purpose for the United Synagogue. It would strengthen ties between the regions, and by giving our more prosperous and larger synagogues a stake in the undeveloped territories of Jewish life, it would encourage a renewed sense of purpose for Conservative Judaism. I welcome any thoughts about this proposal.