Walking With God And Each Other

United Synagogue Partners with the Ziegler School and the RA to Teach About God

by Joanne Palmer

JUNE 2007 - Refining a personal understanding of God, based solidly in tradition and filtered through personal experience, is not an exercise best left to adolescents, but shockingly few otherwise well-educated Jewish adults have the background or the self-confidence to attempt it.

Many Conservative rabbis would greatly appreciate being able to teach about God but lack the time to put together curricula intellectually rigorous and emotionally honest enough to meet the expectations of their smart, secularly well-educated congregants.

United Synagogue has partnered with the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies and the Rabbinical Assembly to provide rabbis with a book that contains 12 units of an adult education course called "Walking With God." Each unit includes a background essay by a well-known scholar, primary texts, a bibliography, and lesson plans and suggestions for facilitators.

The partners, supported by the Held Foundation in memory of Louise Held, plan to send every Conservative pulpit rabbi on United Synagogue's list a copy of the book; it is designed to be easily photocopied and will be available as well in pdf form. The class itself will include both general discussion and chevruta-style partnerships, and students are encouraged to keep journals so they can trace the evolution of their thinking about God and the texts they read. Although "Walking With God" is meant to be used in a group, and is best used that way, it is also possible for readers to read the essays and consider the questions on their own.

The list of 12 rabbi/writers includes Rabbi Dr. David Lieber on God in the Bible; Rabbi Dr. Gail Labovitz on God in the Talmud; Rabbi Daniel Nevins on God in Halakha, and Rabbi Dr. Elliot Dorff on God in Modern Jewish Thought. Subjects are broad and the progression is more or less chronological. Each of the writers has some connection to the Conservative movement.

The primary texts are in Hebrew or Aramaic, and each is accompanied with new translation.

"The essays don't assume much background on the part of the student; at the same time they're pitched intelligently," said project editor Deborah Silver. Ms. Silver, a rabbinical student at Ziegler, continued, "It's aimed at the lay congregant, who is holding down a professional job in the world but who might not necessarily know a great deal of what Judaism has to say about God. The contributors were given a free rein to write in their areas of expertise."

"The aim isn't to indoctrinate but to explore."

That exploration is the goal is clear from the first essay, God: An Introduction, by the Ziegler School's dean, Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson. "I must confess that I have no desire to persuade a belief in God the way I do or for the reasons I do," his essay begins, but he hopes "that through our mutual attempts to internalize or even to reject (after careful thought) each other's theology, we will emerge somewhat wiser, more sophisticated, and better servants of God." The questions at the end of the primary texts demand that the chevruta partners engage actively with them. In the first session, the last questions are as blunt as possible: "Are you persuaded by this text? Why/why not?"

This course is just the first in a planned series; the working title for year's is "Walking With Justice."

Rabbis should expect to receive the books around the end of July, and the course will be available on line later in the summer. For more information, email dsilver@ajula.edu.