MARK J. PELAVIN
REMARKS ON ACCEPTING THE
THE JEWISH CHAUTAUQUA SOCIETY’S
2005 ALFRED E. AND GENEVIEVE WEIL MEDALLION AWARD.
UNION FOR REFORM JUDAISM BIENNIAL GENERAL ASSEMBLY

NOVEMBER 18, 2005
HOUSTON, TX

I am at the point in my life where I am very much aware of the inspiration I draw from my parents and from my children. My father is no longer with us, but both he and my mother were activists, Jewish community leaders, and leaders in the larger community as well. Today my children, Jordan and Daniel, challenge me – in all the usual ways to be sure (I do, after all, have a 13-year-old daughter) – but also by forcing me to think about so many things from a different perspective. And I am ever grateful to my wife Lori for so much: for her sense of passion, her impatience with inequity, her commitment to our family, and her willingness – even after 15 years together – to laugh at my jokes.

I am indebted to the remarkable co-chairs of the Commission on Interreligious Affairs, Judith Hertz and Rabbi Michael Signer. They are a wonderful team, combining (forgive me, Judy!) decades of experience fostering interreligious conversations literally across the globe and a deep, rich understanding of the history, theological implications, and import of this work. I am not sure how many within the Movement understand the significant role that they both play on the international stage, and what honor they bring to us through their work.

In my nearly ten years on the Union staff, I have worked with, and learned from, four chairs of the Commission on Social Action. I know that my colleagues would be jealous of the chance to have worked closely with any one of them. Evely Laser Shlensky taught me that one can be passionate without raising one’s voice; David Davidson taught me about the importance of both mastering the subject matter and bringing a sense of humility to the table; Bob Heller taught me so much about leadership and building for the future; and our current Chair, Jane Wishner, teaches me – among scores of other things – that one need not be humorless to be serious. I owe so much to each of them.

In my mind, I stand here today as a proud representative of the Union staff and all who work professionally for this great Movement. There is nothing that has meant more to me over the past few days than how many of them – many far more deserving of recognition than I – stopped to offer their congratulations. I am delighted to be their colleague.

Certainly, I owe so much to those who share my professional home – the Religious Action Center. I believe my work is important, and that is important to me; but my work is fun as well, and that is due to the RAC staff. To a person, they inspire me; to a person, they serve all of you so very well. Working with the RAC’s Eisendrath Legislative Assistants (who come to us on a one-year postgraduate fellowship) is, candidly, the best part of my job. Their energy, intelligence, passion, and creativity are the fuel on which the RAC runs.

And, I must admit, that I have never been prouder than when I overheard a delegate talking about an upcoming program and saying, “we should get one of those Social Action guys – you know – Vorspan, Saperstein or Pelavin.” What an honor to even be considered alongside those two! You all hear a great deal about David – thanking him seems to be mandatory for plenary speakers – but none of them, none, know what I know about what an inspirational boss, a patient (yes, patient) mentor, and trusted friend he has been to me and those who lives he has touched.

The “Why” of Interreligious Engagement
I relish this work because I believe that for religious communities, learning to understand and interact with one another – not just to tolerate each other, not just to stay a safe distance from one another – is absolutely critical in building the type of nation I am confident that we all aspire to live in.

In the Jewish community, attention to interreligious affairs is cyclical. We can go a generation without paying much attention to building our interreligious relationships only to find that when we need them they have, like unused muscle, simply atrophied. To be sure, in recent years we have been challenged quite regularly and we have had our share, more than our share, of crisis; but even absent a crisis, perhaps especially absent a crisis, relations between faith communities are crucial.

Why?

There are, perhaps, as many answers to that question as there are people in this room. There are practical reasons about living in predominantly non-Jewish communities. There are political reasons about the need to build coalitions if we want to make progress on our own goals. But this afternoon I want to spend a few moments on the religious reasons for interreligious engagement. Put simply, serious engagement with other faiths can provide the stone upon which we sharpen our own faith. When we approach interfaith dialogue, as we too often do, simply for practical or political reasons, we miss a powerful religious opportunity.

I have come to understand my own Judaism so much more fully as I have learned about it in relationship to others. To put it in context, I have one example. A few weeks ago Rabbi Mark Levin wrote a powerful D’var Torah that the Union distributed as that week’s Torat Hayim on Parasha Noach. Rabbi Levin, citing the work of Umberto Cassuto, examined how Genesis’s version of the flood story differs from other ancient flood stories, of which there are many. He observes that the Torah accepted the flood story, but in doing so “purified and refined it, and harmonized it with its own doctrine,” excising references to the will of the gods or of natural forces and replacing them with a God who possesses control, transcending the will of the natural world. Thus, Cassuto argues, “an amoral epic from Babylonia becomes a moral imperative to humanity.” We see a familiar text take on a new meaning when it is read in relationship to other traditions.

Let me suggest two other metaphors I find helpful in this context. First, photography. When I was young, I used to love to spend time in the darkroom. (Do darkrooms even still exist?) One of the most powerful darkroom techniques is to vary the amount of contrast in a print. The key lesson I drew then, and which I commend to you now, is that photographs without much contrast are boring. They just seem lifeless. Turning up the contrast, though, make images sharper, more evocative, more meaningful. So, too, with religious understandings.

Second, I spent the Sunday before I traveled to Houston at my son’s soccer game. (Did I mention that it was a championship game? And that they won? And that my son the goalie had an amazing save to protect a 2-1 lead with only minutes left?) It was a magnificent day, sunny, not too hot, and the leaves were finally changing color. The soccer field was surrounded by trees, in scores of colors. On my way home, away from the field, I passed a very lovely tree, its leaves a rich, deep orange. I could not help but notice how even the most beautiful tree, standing alone, was nowhere nearly as interesting as the vista of different tress growing all together. So too, I believe, with interreligious understandings. The religious landscape of American is as colorful as it because we can see all the colors. And one more thought. Trees are much safer in groves. An isolated tree is far more likely to, say, be blown down by a storm wind. In a forest, the trees protect each other. So, too, with interreligious understanding.

The “Who” of Interreligious Engagement
I acknowledged a number of people at the beginning of my talk, but I waited until now to express my appreciation to the North American Federation of Temple Brotherhoods and the Jewish Chautauqua Society. I do, indeed, want to offer my appreciation to them not only for the respect they have shown for the Movement’s interreligious work by selecting me to receive this meaningful award (although certainly for that!).

NFTB and the Jewish Chautauqua Society impress me every day by the often-unheralded work that they do in communities across North America. While interest in interreligious affairs within the Jewish community and within our Movement waxed and waned, theirs never faltered. All of the NFTB leaders I have worked with – Steve Breslauer, Irv Schinder, Stewart Aaronson, and now Aaron Bloom, and certainly NFTB’s outstanding Executive Director, Doug Barden – understand that interreligious understanding and relationships are built, not discovered and then suddenly revealed.

NFTB has modeled effective interreligious work in another important way as well. Although rabbis serve as JCS teachers, nearly all its other work is designed by, and run by, knowledgeable lay leaders.

As in some other areas of synagogue life, there is a perhaps natural tendency for lay people to depend too heavily on their rabbi. Too often, they wait for the rabbi – with all the demands on his or her time – to come to them with an idea. They wait to be invited into the synagogue.

I want to be very, very clear: rabbinic leadership, teaching, preaching, and counseling are one of the great blessings of our community. In this room alone I see scores of rabbis who have enriched my life, taught me, and inspired me. At the same time, I was recently reminded that ours is a tradition in which 10 shoemakers make a minyan, but 9 rabbis do not.

So, yes, clergy councils, and personal friendships among clergy, are indispensable to this work. As is rabbinic leadership within our congregations.

Indispensable, but not sufficient. Interreligious engagement is about building relationships, and the laity shares that responsibility with our rabbis. As a lay person working in a field dominated by rabbis, I know that there is tendency on the part of some of us to shy away from engagement. We are often not comfortable holding ourselves out as a representative of Judaism.

But, my friends, long-lasting, stable relationships, relationships that will not come apart in the first storm, require more than one point of connection. A house cannot be held together with only one nail. A floor below us in this ferkackteh convention center Biennial delegates are building a house for a displaced Gulf Coast family. And they are building it the only way you can build a house – with hammer and nail, pounding in nail after nail until the structure is sound. They have direction to be sure, but the work is being done by volunteers.

* * *

As we prepare to ascend to the Shabbat we will spend together, I ask each of you to take that as a goal for the upcoming year, to reach out to someone in your community, to be a point of connection, to pound your own nails, and to contribute to the magnificent house we can build together.

Again, I am humbled by this honor, and thank NFTB/JCS and all of you for the warmth you have shown me.

Shabbat Shalom.

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