By Shira Botzum
The Opening Conference was a whirlwind week of setting the foundations for so many of the conversations we were going to have over the course of the semester. We were just beginning to get to know each other and to fully appreciate the scope of how diverse our cohort is. As the largest Nachshon Project cohort thus far, we truly run the spectrum of Jewish practices, beliefs, and communities. The task of building a meaningful pluralistic community for the semester is certainly daunting, and while we had started having some of those conversations on an individual basis over the first couple days, we hadn’t yet had them on the larger communal level. So many of us have been deeply shaped by our respective Jewish movements and their camps and institutions, and in order to build a truly pluralistic cohort, we have to understand where the other fellows are coming from and what has shaped them as Jewish leaders.
To begin this process, Rabbi Zeff taught us a session on the different movements within Judaism and their respective theologies about Torah. We walked into the room to see it lined with posters, each one containing a different statement about the relationship between God and Torah. Without knowing specifically which ones corresponded to which movement, we were asked to stand by the one that most closely described our own relationship with these concepts. After a few angst-filled minutes, most of us were sitting somewhere along the wall with a few people in the middle of the room who just couldn’t choose between the options. Rabbi Zeff then gave us source sheets with a large organized table showing which statements went with which movements and what those views of God and Torah meant more broadly in terms of how each denomination views the role of Jewish law.
Even for those who previously felt familiar with some of these ideas, seeing it laid out in such a systematic way was helpful for visualizing how these ideas map out onto the larger Jewish world and create some of its diversity.
The conversation we had around these sources was interesting and at times confusing and challenging for many of us. As Rabbi Zeff pointed out towards the beginning of the session, many of us might not actually know the theology of our movement that well or at least think about it on a regular basis, and the beliefs that we have on this issue might not actually correspond to the community we most identify with.
I think that this dissonance for many of the fellows sparked important conversations about Jewish identity. Looking at denominational differences from the particular lens of the divinity of Torah highlighted for many of us just how much our practices are actually based on things other than those beliefs. This was a useful jumping off point for thinking about just how multi-layered Jewish identity is and for beginning to appreciate the complex mix of cultures, practices, theologies, and traditions that make up the identities of our Nachshon community and the larger Jewish world. As we move forward through our semester together, I’m excited to continue learning about the richness of the Jewish world as a cohort and using it to learn from each other.
