Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove

As a general rule, declaring one’s ignorance on a given topic is not an advisable tactic when beginning a sermon on that very topic. But this morning, it is in stating my ignorance on a subject, for reasons that will become evident momentarily, where I must begin. The subject is not a “what” but a “who”, Professor Arnold Eisen, the Chancellor designate of the Jewish Theological Seminary. Last week, after an eleven-month search, JTS, the academic and spiritual center of Conservative Judaism worldwide, has announced that Professor Eisen will assume the mantel of leadership upon the retirement of Chancellor Ismar Schorsch.

This is a critical moment for North American Jewry for this appointment will shape the character of the premier American intuition of Jewish studies and the movement itself and define the priorities of American Jewish life in our century. Given the magnitude of the appointment, you should know that many of my rabbinic colleagues have met this news with a combination of curiosity, surprise and, in some corners, to be quite candid, anger and disappointment. After all, who is Arnold Eisen? More directly, why in the world should he be the choice for Chancellor of JTS? As a Conservative Rabbi and doctoral student in Modern Jewish Thought, I make it my business to keep current on our movement. Rabbi Siegel has always made it a priority that our synagogue understands itself in the Seminary’s orbit, Hazzan Mizrahi travels to JTS regularly to lecture at the Cantorial school, Rabbi Burg just came back from the Rabbinical Assembly convention, and yet, when it came to the question of Eisen’s track record as a Conservative Jew, nobody knew anything! My sources of information have been the New York Times, the Forward or the Jewish or academic press. Over Passover, I taught a brief session that involved passing out a one page handout. While I was distributing the single paper, a person who shall remain nameless glanced at it and muttered, “I see you are teaching the collected writings of Dr. Eisen on Conservative Judaism.” And so, if you are confused about the news, then you should find comfort in the unsettling knowledge that you are not alone in your ignorance. I know as much, or more accurately, as little, as you do.

So who is Arnold Eisen? He is the head of the Jewish Studies Department at Stanford University. His academic credentials are impeccable. He holds a Ph.D. in the History of Jewish Thought from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, with degrees from Oxford University and the University of Pennsylvania. He is generally understood to be the premiere academic on the condition of North American Jewry and has published widely on the subject of American Judaism. You may have heard of his most recent publication The Jew Within: Self, Family and Community in America (2000), that examines the meanings of Judaism and Jewish belonging to contemporary American Jews. The thesis of the book is that modern Jews think of religion as being personal and private, explaining, in part, the weakening of loyalty to Jewish communal groups and Israel. I am told, anecdotally, that Eisen participates fully in his Conservative shul in Palo Alto and publicly identifies himself as a Conservative Jew. And, I am told by people who know him personally, that he is a true mensch: kind, witty and compassionate. He is articulate, be it on a one-on-one level, in the classroom or in front of large groups.

And yet, even with all of these credentials, which are available to me and you on the JTS website, I find myself struggling. After all, can you imagine Catholics turning to each other upon the news of the new Pope being forced to say: “I understand he has supported Catholic causes in the past?” Here is a movement in search of an identity: it’s losing numbers, it’s rumored to be about $40 million dollars in the red and it is plagued by divisive issues on the docket like gay ordination and same sex marriage. The character of American Judaism as a whole is changing, and there is a call to the bullpen for the ace to get the team out of this mess, and here comes-Eisen-an academic, a department head from across the continent, far from a “movement man,” not even a Rabbi, for that matter. It is all a bit unsettling how this coup happened. Who is at the helm and what does it bode for the future?

And then, in the midst of it all, I realized that I have heard this story before. It is a story that the intellectual historian Mel Scult dubs “The Coup of ’02,” only this time it was not Arnold Eisen, but Solomon Schechter, who was appointed the Chancellor of JTS in 1902, just over one hundred years ago. In order to appreciate Schechter’s arrival at JTS, you need to know a bit about Schechter and a bit about the Seminary at the turn of the century. First about Schechter. Having arrived in England in 1884, lured by his patron Claude Montefiore, Schechter became the most well-known scholar of rabbinics in his day. Schechter had become famous at Cambridge through his salvaging of the treasure trove of documents called the Cairo Genizah. And while his manuscript work secured his fame, and he was never as prolific as a scholar as he was during those years in Cambridge, he and his wife Mathilde lived a rather isolated Jewish existence in a University town, further troubled by a demeaning and ongoing financial dependence on the charity of others.
JTS at that time was contending with problems of its own. The initial Seminary was in desperate need of reorganization. Two pillars of the Seminary, Sabato Morais and Joseph Blumenthal had just died, leaving it somewhat ideologically rudderless. Financially, it was kept alive only by borrowing money against itself. All the while, American Judaism itself was undergoing a transformation. The influx of Eastern Europeans beginning in the 1880’s resulted in the clumsy and chaotic process by which these immigrants had to learn express their Judaism in a new context: geographically, linguistically and culturally. Simply put, JTS had to bring in a chancellor with the academic credentials and gravitas to wow the public, the lomdus, the traditional learning and faith to be taken seriously by the Eastern Europeans, and the chutzpa to believe that his vision of Jewish life was both relevant and necessary to usher in a vibrant American Judaism into the next century.

And so, in a story which Scult tells with journalistic intrigue, a group of the most powerful Jews of the time, Schiff, Sulzberger, Marshall, Guggenheim, Warburg, Lewisohn and others, conspired to do away with the old Seminary and create a new one with Schechter at the head. They created two boards, one for the men of means, literally called “Board A,” and the second composed of Rabbis, namely “Board B.” And Board A soon rendered Board B impotent, legislating that while they held their positions for life, it would be at the will of Board A to fill the slots of board B. Ironically, there was a deep anti-clericalism embedded within the board of a rabbinical school. Sulzberger wrote to Schechter: “I have made it a sine qua non that there should be no government by congregations, which would subject you to the critical powers of the Rabbis and their internecine policies and politics.” And so the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1902 became the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, a new institution, both in charter and spirit, and a few months later welcomed Schechter in to lead it. The choice of Schechter reflected the anti-clerical bias of the new Seminary. After all, while he had received ordination, he was “Dr. Schechter,” the professor, brought in from across the world, independent of the “meddling of rabbis.”

And it was Schechter’s charge to create an English-speaking American rabbinate that helped to Americanize the flood of immigrants inundating American Jewry. Schechter was able to assemble an extraordinary list of scholars in his short tenure before his untimely death in 1913. In those short years, he founded the United Synagogue of America and the Rabbinical Assembly of America that, along with the reorganized Seminary, would carry on his labors into our own time. Most importantly, the force of his personality established an ideological beachhead for Conservative Judaism here in America.

And now, an appreciation of our own moment becomes that much more evident. An outsider is brought in by a powerful board, designating a leader not of rabbinic cloth, and whether conspiratorial or not, it is certainly to the surprise of even the most entrenched participants of the movement. While some of the parallels are easy, it is important to show the limits of drawing the two moments into conversation. With the retirement of Chancellor Schorsch, the Seminary loses its most able and authentic spokesperson for Conservative Judaism, a loss which neither Eisen nor anyone else is positioned to fill. In truth, I have no idea how Eisen was chosen, if he was the first, second or third choice, and while I am taken aback by the decision, I have full confidence that the team of academics, philanthropists and yes, even Rabbis, who made this decision have given it more thought than the time it has taken me to write a sermon.

And finally, it is critical to note that, based on what I know about Eisen and Schechter, I can, with great confidence tell you that Eisen is no Schechter. And you know what, that is a very good thing! Because the context in which Schechter functioned was very different than our present moment. Schechter’s credentials made him the obvious choice for his time, and even knowing as little as I do about Eisen, I want to suggest that maybe, just maybe, Eisen is the right person for American Jewry today. For Schechter, his primary challenge was how to make America speak to the immigrant Jew. For Eisen the question is how to make Judaism speak to the assimilated American Jew. Schechter had to conceptualize a brand of critical scholarship that was compatible with traditional faith commitments. Eisen has to conceptualize a brand of traditional Jewish learning in light of the fact that American Jews with secular educations far exceed that of any previous generation. Schechter operated in a world when Jewish identity or, for that matter, religious identity of any kind, was a distinctive marker defined for you by your community and by the world around you. Eisen has rightly identified our moment as the moment when Americans believe faith to be personal, private and a matter of individual concern. For Schechter, the state of Israel was a dream; for Eisen, the state of Israel is a geo-political reality whose relationship with American Jewry is in desperate need of understanding and attention. If Schechter were alive today, it would be a mistake to hire him. He was the right man for 1902, not 2006. Schechter built the Seminary, the United Synagogue and the Rabbinical Assembly because these institutions reflected the needs of American Jewry at the time. It is incumbent upon Eisen to create the institutions that address the needs of American Judaism today.

So, nu…if you were going to go out and choose a Chancellor, who would you choose? If I were on the search committee, you know what I would do? I would go out and find myself the person who is best positioned to address the condition of American Judaism, who carries the academic bona fides to shape an academic institution, and is enough of an outsider to not get caught up in the internecine politics of a movement. Only an outsider is able to diagnose the movement objectively and to make it swallow whatever bitter pills it needs to, with the hope that it can move forward in health and vigor. And guess what, that is just what the Seminary did – first in 1902 and now again in 2006. I say, Yasher Koach to JTS, Mazel Tov to Chancellor Designate Eisen and his family, and to the rest of us, let’s all hold on for the bumpy ride to come.