RRC Annual Report 2008 Layout

Ex panding Our Dialogue Colleagues of Other Faiths “House of Israel” in Ghana Spiritual Searchers in Northern California Also: RRC Launches Mission, Vision, Values Statement 2008 Annual Report A Message From the President By Rabbi Dan Ehrenkrantz uring the time I served as the rabbi for Bnai Keshet in Montclair, NJ, a local Baptist church closed its doors. Our synagogue had just put up a new building, and the church decided to donate some of their cash assets to us. I remember thinking at the time how astounded my ancestors would have D been. I had grown up with family stories of pogroms, with Christian symbols used to incite violence. And now, not so many years later, my synagogue was receiving a large cash gift from, of all places, a church. Yet now, for Reconstructionist Jews, that turn of events may seem fairly natural. In the movement’s foundational years, Mordecai M. Kaplan shaped the ideological basis for a changed relationship with other peoples and other religions: Judaism is not God’s chosen religion, and Jews are not the chosen people. Because we don’t have a monopoly on truth, we should seek to learn from diverse religious traditions and communities. Our special obligations toward the Jewish community should inspire us to work for the betterment of others. And so we actively seek to bring our message—a message of religious tolerance combined with religious passion—to others. We seek to be emissaries for peaceful, creative and engaged coexistence among peoples and religions. And we seek to bring cultural change to the Jewish community by sharing our unique approach to Jewish life. How does RRC train rabbis to reach out to diverse communities? This issue of the annual report will help give you a sense of how we instill in our graduates a commitment to our progressive approach and an obligation to share it, both within the Jewish community and outside of it. In these pages you will read about a professor whose longstanding effort to build bridges to other religious traditions is reaching new heights and achieving a new sophistication; a student who helped bring Jewish knowledge and practice to a unique community in Ghana whose people are passionate about Judaism; and an unconventional outreach project to Jews in the San Francisco Bay area. A brief overview of the activities of our three centers and a roundup of our recent grants fill out the picture of RRC’s work in reaching beyond our walls. An article on RRC’s new mission statement completes this issue. Every day, as we do our work within the College and in the community at large, more stories unfold. To document them all would take many volumes; yet their effects are imprinted wherever people’s lives are changed for the better. I hope these stories will inspire you and demonstrate how we are rising to the challenge of helping religion in general, and Judaism in particular, become a greater force for good. Table of Contents In Interfaith Education, Creating a New Cutting Edge Page 2 Across the Globe, Eager Students Have Something to Teach Page 10 Mission, Vision and Values: How We Got Here Page 17 Unconventional Outreach Attracts Unusual Intellects Page 23 From Our Academic Centers: News in Review Page 27 A Surge in Grants Enhances Our Offerings Page 30 Establishing a Charitable Remainder Trust Page 32 Financial Statements Page 33 Thank You for Your Support Page 34 Endowed Programs Page 38 Faculty, Administration and Staff Page 39 Board of Governors Inside back cover Above: Students Michelle Stern, Derek Rosenbaum and David Katz On the cover: RRC students Jordan Bendat-Appell and Donna Kirshbaum with Philadelphia University students www.rrc.edu 1 In Interfaith Education, Creating a New Cutting Edge RRC has long been a leader in the field. A new program takes future rabbis beyond book knowledge, solidifying their real-world relationships with colleagues of other faiths. By Eileen Fisher n a favorite Hasidic tale, two men walking down the street grant from the Henry Luce Foundation happen to look in a window. Inside, they see people flailing to support its first three years. It clearly their arms and flinging themselves about in a seemingly establishes RRC as a leader in the field. random fashion. The two look at each other with puzzled expressions. “These people must be mad,” they conclude. The spring semester alone saw a flurry of activities. First, there was a new It turns out, the people aren’t crazy; they’re dancing. But format for the Introduction to Islam from outsideI the window, the men can’t hear the music. course, which met in Fuchs-Kreimer’s home and featured six guest teachers “It’s only when you hear the music that you understand,” says Nancy Fuchs- from various Muslim backgrounds. Kreimer, Ph.D., who tells this story to illustrate what is distinctive about the Each student in the course was Religious Studies Program’s approach to multi-faith education. “We want assigned a Muslim graduate student as to teach our students to understand the dances of other people. To do that, a partner for hevrutah, or paired text we have to open the windows.” study. Together the pairs also were required to attend a Muslim religious Indeed, the crux of the program to truly collaborate with their peers or cultural event, and to plan and known as Training Rabbis for a Multi- in other religions. Through service teach a class or workshop for a Jewish Faith World is that learning about learning, special programming and audience about Islam or about Jewish- other faiths at a distance—though multifaceted academic offerings, Muslim relations. More broadly, the academic study may be well informed, students in Training Rabbis interact idea behind the pairing was that in even erudite—is not enough. RRC, the directly with Muslim and Christian addition to talking about their faiths, hevrutah partners could have first rabbinical school to include colleagues, getting what Fuchs- conversations about their lives, specific requirements about the study Kreimer calls “the living, breathing developing personal connections that of other faiths, recently established reality” of these other faiths that a might last well beyond the semester. another leading edge: a curriculum post-9.11 world demands. The aimed at developing students’ capacity program won a prestigious $300,000 In March, six distinctive events occurred 2 Ex panding Our Dialogue in a single week. “Women and Gender Testament who has long taught about seminar led by Jewish, Christian and in Judaism and Islam: A Conversation Christianity at RRC. A breakfast for Muslim moderators brought together With Susannah Heschel and Amina Reconstructionist Rabbinical about 40 graduate students and Wadud” created a public dialogue Association members; a faculty seminarians, including 11 students between the renowned Jewish feminist seminar; a public panel cosponsored and five faculty members from RRC, and the groundbreaking Muslim by the Jewish Publication Society; to study each other’s holy texts. The scholar who went on record in 2005 and a breakfast for the Jewish Women’s event attracted professors from the as the first woman to lead a public, Scholars and Writers Circle, which is Jewish Theological Seminary, the mixed-gender Muslim Friday prayer coordinated by Kolot: The Center for Rabbinical School of Hebrew College, service. The conversation was Jewish Women’s and Gender Studies Auburn Theological Seminary and the moderated by Hal Taussig, Ph.D., a of RRC, also focused on interfaith Lutheran Theological Seminary in practicing pastor and professor of New issues. And a Scriptural Reasoning Philadelphia. Student Donna Kirshbaum with study partner Zaenal Muttaqin RRC arrived at this stage in interfaith work over the course of two decades. In 1982, the College moved from its location near the Temple University campus to Wyncote, PA. Initially, rabbinical students had been required to earn a doctorate at a university—preferably at Temple’s Department of Religion. When the College relocated, that external requirement was replaced by an internal one: Students would take at least three courses in religious studies. A new RRC program for the study of other religions was born. Jacob Staub, Ph.D., who was then chair of the curriculum committee, notes that giving students a breadth of knowledge, including an understanding of other religions, always was considered fundamental to the College’s approach. “A basic principle of Reconstructionism is that American Jews live in two civilizations, the American and the Jewish,” he says. “RRC’s founders in 1968 were explicit that our rabbis were to be educated broadly, so as to be ready to lead Jews not only in synagogues, but wherever Jews are found.” Fuchs-Kreimer, who graduated from RRC in ’82, also held a master’s from Yale Divinity School. In the years that followed, as she completed her Ph.D. in religious studies at Temple, she taught part time at RRC in the new program. The first offering was a course on Christianity, and, Fuchs-Kreimer points out, finding the living, breathing experience to accompany that particular academic study was easy. The Lutheran Theological Seminary was nearby; RRC students, who had grown up in a Christian culture, had Christian friends from their undergraduate years and increasingly, as the years went by, some Christian Nancy Fuchs-Kreimer, Ph.D. family members. But the situation with regard to Islam was different. “RRC students who went to college in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s only occasionally had Muslim classmates; most Muslims were still first-generation in the U.S.,” she notes. “When I did graduate school in religion, I learned a little about Islam, which I promptly forgot—because I didn’t know any Muslims.” Recently, when she asked RRC graduates to respond to the question, “What did it mean for you to learn about other religions?” many reported they hadn’t learned what they needed to know in the classroom.

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