January 2012 / Tevet 5772
Jointly authored by Rabbi Aaron Bisno and Rabbi Michael Werbow
Both Rodef Shalom Congregation and Beth Shalom Congregation, respectively, were established to ensure the vitality of Jewish life through an intellectually honest engagement with tradition and in keeping with the realities of the day.
Today, even as Beth Shalom and Rodef Shalom Congregations remain committed to creating a Jewish community infused with vitality and meaning, we acknowledge that due to recent patterns in Jewish demography and affiliation, to say nothing of prevailing current economic realities, assumptions upon which both congregations have relied since their foundings are now suspect and under assault.
Specifically, this is due to the fact that in a search for relevance and meaningful self-expression, a new generation of Jews with vastly different expectations than that of earlier generations is all but leaving the established Jewish community behind; fewer Jews are affiliating with congregations, and those that are doing so remain members for shorter periods of time; there are today more and varied options for Jews to create community over and above the synagogue; the cost of communal engagement is far greater today than it once was; and in the 21st Century, identity-formation is a product of individual choice to a degree heretofore unknown in the annals of Jewish history.
As Rabbi David Ellenson, President of the Reform Jewish Movement’s Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, has noted, “More and more American Jews are indifferent to denominational labels ...[and] will not hesitate to move among movements and individual rabbis as they engage their own personal religious and communal quests.”
And as Dr. Arnold Eisen, Chancellor of the Conservative Movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary has written, “the ‘default position’ among Jews right now should be partnership. It no longer makes sense to do most things on parallel tracks, duplicating efforts and squandering resources.”
Bottom line: We live in difficult and challenging times, and where the desire to create pluralistic and intellectually-honest Jewish communities of vitality and meaning are concerned, we are all in this together.
No single congregation is immune from present-day realities, nor can any single congregation solve these challenges alone.
Therefore, appreciating our respective histories as well as our denominational loyalties and uniqueness, the rabbis of Rodef Shalom and Beth Shalom, resolve to collaborate in common purpose to respond to the new realities before us. To accomplish this important goal, we pledge to create meaningful Jewish experiences for those individuals and families who identify with our shared communal mores and values.
Examples of collaborative endeavors in which our two congregations will work as partners to bring value and vitality to our own member families, as well as to Pittsburgh’s larger Jewish community as a whole, will include, but not be limited to: educational opportunities for both children and adults; cultural, religious and social experiences appropriate for every demographic within our number; and an ongoing exploration and evaluation of what will best serve the interests going forward of the widest cross-section of Pittsburgh’s Reform and Conservative Jewish communities, not least of which are those who have fallen away from congregational membership or are otherwise unaffiliated.
Our goal, simply, is to work collaboratively to address, anticipate and meet the needs of those who will identify themselves with the Jewish community in future generations.
Click here for a PDF of this historic document.
Click here to read a timely article in "The Jewish Chronicle" regarding this historic statement.
