The consensus view of the appointment of Stanford Professor Arnold Eisen — whose “Rethinking Modern Judaism: Ritual, Commandment, Community” won a National Jewish Book Award in 1999 — as the new chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary seems to be that he is a “bold choice” (since he is not a rabbi), intended to re-invigorate a movement under challenge from the left by the Reform Movement and from the right by Modern Orthodoxy.
Both Rabbi David Ellenson (head of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion) and Michael Berenbaum of the University of Judaism used those words to describe the appointment. I think Eisen is an excellent choice, but I have a slightly different take on what it all means.
The New York Jewish Week’s story on the appointment reported that:
Unlike the other candidates for chancellor — who in addition to Rabbi [Gordon] Tucker have included JTS Provost Jack Wertheimer; Rabbi David Wolpe, a Los Angeles pulpit rabbi; and Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson, who is dean of the rabbinical school at Los Angeles’ University of Judaism — Eisen has no publicly entrenched ideological views on the issues currently occupying the Conservative movement.
“Arnie is a personality who can transcend many of the intra-Conservative boundaries and transcend Conservative and non-Conservative boundaries,” said Steven M. Cohen, a fellow academic who co-authored the book with Eisen, “The Jew Within: Self, Family and Continuity in America.”
. . .
Eisen said he had done some fundraising for the Stanford Hillel, and that professionals had told him it “involves getting people excited about a vision, and matching their passions and your excitement. I am looking forward to this responsibility.”
One goal will be to “re-energize the synagogues,” which Eisen noted “have nowhere to go but up,” in part because “we are wasting our laity and there is no [sense of] community.” . . . Another is “to inspire Jewish leadership.”
Transcending boundaries, getting people excited about a vision, re-energizing the synagogues, utilizing the laity, and inspiring Jewish leadership.
Sounds good, but — like a Chinese meal — an hour later you can’t quite remember it. What is the vision we were going to get excited about? How were we going to re-energize the synagogues and use the laity? Inspire Jewish leadership to do what? What boundaries were we transcending?
I’m not sure this is going to “re-invigorate” the Conservative Movement. But permit me to suggest that the death of the Conservative Movement has been greatly exaggerated, and that Arnie Eisen’s appointment actually proves my point.
The challenge the Conservative Movement has experienced is a result of movements by both sides around it. Reform has moved toward tradition. Orthodoxy has moved toward modernity. Both of them have been moving toward the juncture where the Conservative Movement has been all along.
The Conservative Movement was a reaction to both a perceived rigidity of religion on its right and, on its left, one with few rules at all. The new movement was based on a belief that the ideal place was a combination of ancient wisdom and modern knowledge, acknowledging both tradition and change as necessary parts of life, with issues to be struggled with by a free people bound by a heritage, not to be buried under absolutely rigid rules nor decided by reference to individual taste.
A movement that has in it Gordon Tucker, Jack Wertheimer, David Wolpe and Bradley Shavit Artson is the opposite of a movement in crisis. It is one that has attracted some of the most brilliant intellects of its generation.
Now it has persuaded one of the brightest and most engaging academics in the nation to move across the country to lead it. Arnie Eisen will be successful for the same reasons the above individuals have succeeded — he brings a combination of personality and intellect, an ability to communicate an excitement about Judaism and to articulate its relevance to the questions with which we deal every day. Expect both Reform and Orthodoxy to move even closer, and all three movements to flourish.