WHERE ARE THE MEN?

ROSH HASHANAH MORNING 5768

What interests me this year about the Akedah story is that it involves only men. We have a father and a son, servant boys, an angel whom the Torah commentators presume to be male and God defined in male terminology. In the male dominated society in which the compilers of the Torah lived, this testosterone-infused morality play would seem quite normal. Women do not have a role to play because revelation came only to men. Sarah is important to this story only because of her absence.

Today, under our modern labor laws, Abraham would have to have hired at least one female servant to accompany him – at equal pay. And the name of the angel would probably have been Michaela, not Michael, in the interests of gender balance. Such are the rules of modern Midrash.

In the liberal movements in Judaism, women have taken their rightful place alongside men at all levels of leadership, lay and professional. It is one of the most important developments in Judaism of the last century. We applaud this development and today it is almost uncontested in the Reform Movement. Our leaders rise to the top based on merit, not on gender, age or sexual orientation. This is how it should be.

Yet with all of the wonderful and positive changes that female clergy have brought to organized Jewish life, there is one gnawing question that the liberal movements have just begun to realize and address: where are the men? As women enter the professional Jewish workforce as rabbis, cantors and educators, the men are leaving. As women enter the Temple Board Rooms, the men are leaving. And as teenage girls become more active in youth groups, the teenage boys are leaving. The exodus of men from positions of leadership in the Jewish world has hurt the Jewish community and we need to find ways to reverse this trend so that both men and women can lead in the Jewish world.

Rabbi Elyse Goldstein has said:

The synagogue is no longer a proving ground for masculinity. Because of that it has also suffered. Many have noticed the “flight” of men from egalitarian synagogues as more and more women take leadership roles. What is this flight about? Is it about the last male bastion being stormed, or about the feeling of not being “needed” anymore, or about a male devaluation of something as soon as it becomes open to women, or about a genuine frustration with the “feminization” of today’s Judaism? These are questions that must be answered by the men who take their Judaism seriously and who wish the next generation of boys to do so as well.

--Fighting the Flight of Men (Doug Barden), p. 12

Here are some sobering statistics: in 2005, 88% of the 9^th Graders at URJ Kutz Camp in New York were girls. Also that year, 71% of the students admitted to the Rabbinical Program at Hebrew Union College were women. 66% of the students admitted to the Jewish Theological Seminary’s Rabbinical School, the flagship institution for Conservative Judaism, were women. And this coming year, Cantor Frommer tells me that the entering Cantorial class at Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem is 100% female – as is the class one year ahead of him. No male Cantors; our Student Cantor may be like the modern-day polar bear, the last of a dying breed. I don’t want his species to become extinct.

It’s no better in the churches. According to the website churchformen.com, the typical US congregation draws a crowd that is 61% female across all age categories. As many at 90% of the boys raised in a church will abandon it by age 20, never to return. And while 90% of men believe in God, only 1 in 3 attend church on any given Sunday; those who do attend do so mainly to appease wives, mothers or girlfriends.

The men have, in large measure, turned away. Religion as a whole – and Judaism in particular – is becoming feminized. The rise of female clergy has not led to increased competition for the spaces in rabbinic and cantorial schools; rather, male applications have decreased dramatically. Jewish education, long dominated by male supervisors and female teachers, is now mainly a women’s field – with devastating results as boys have trouble finding Jewish role models in their classrooms. Without these male role models, religion becomes “woman’s work”, the equivalent of a chick flick in the theater, and boys drop out – which makes it so much more difficult to bring them back as adults. Brotherhoods, long the training ground for synagogue leaders, have withered as men choose not to climb the leadership ladder, perhaps out of fear that a woman will be on the rung above them. Nationally, the Men of Reform Judaism, as the NFTB is now called, is hanging by a thread; in a few years, we may have pockets of strong brotherhoods but the national umbrella organization might disappear. As Rabbi Stephen Pearce of Temple EmanuEl in San Francisco writes in the Spring, 2007 issue of Achim, the publication of Men of Reform Judaism:

The era of the temple brotherhoods and men’s club bowling leagues is long gone, but there must be a way to bring men back, not only into the religious landscape but also into family life and civic discourse.

Jewish overnight camps are reporting that significantly more girls than boys are applying to camp. As these children rise through the units and eventually become counselors, the competition for female counselor positions is more intense than for male counselors. So the girls get better counselors – and the cycle continues because they enjoy camp better than the boys, whose counselors – while decent – are not motivating them to take active roles in Jewish living. The male counselors are often the ones who sleep through the Jewish learning activities and relax the rules during worship. The boys see that their male counselors downplay the Jewish aspects of camp and they do likewise. And since the camps are the conduits to the seminaries, it is no surprise that the number of female applicants to HUC has risen as the number of male applicants has fallen. Such is the cycle in which we are in today.

As early as 1998, Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin wrote in Reform Judaism Magazine about the vanishing Jewish male:

Let’s face it. The great, unspoken crisis facing modern Judaism is the disengagement of its men. While no one mourns the exclusive male minyan, men increasingly see Judaism as being the province of women. Men are distancing themselves in ever growing numbers from synagogue life – as worshippers, as students of Torah, and as trustees and committee members….Men constitute only a tiny percentage of converts to Judaism…and every rabbi can testify to the frequent apathy of Jewish men when they join their partners at Introduction to Judaism classes as a prelude to conversion. Temple youth groups are increasingly filled with young Jewish women craning their necks and wondering, in the words of one Long Island teen, ‘Where are all the guys?’

--ibid.

Let me state for the record that the emergence of the female voice in Judaism is a wonderful development. Women have developed meaningful life cycle rituals, for example, that men would never dream of, rituals such as celebrating a girl’s first menstrual period, solemnizing a still-born or infertility, creating Rosh Chodesh celebrations or marking the onset of menopause. Ceremonies at the mikvah are more meaningful and weddings and baby namings have taken on new forms as women have added their creativity to the existing Jewish rituals. Prayer has taken on new meaning as we invoke the matriarchs – Sarah, Rebecca, Leah and Rachel – alongside Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Theology and Bible studies have gone in new directions as women have shed a light on traditionally male domains. There is no turning back to a male-dominated Reform or Conservative Judaism. Nor should we desire it. Nobody wants to exclude women from positions of leadership, lay or clergy; rather the challenge is how to involve men in Jewish life.

Let me also state that this phenomenon is not happening in all congregations. We have a male-dominated leadership, even if our President is a woman. We have many boys involved in CFTY and our Brotherhood is small but vibrant. But we are not exempt from the crisis. We have only two male teachers in our Religious School – and they are team teaching. We have a female educator and support staff. To be sure, I wouldn’t trade Valerie for anyone but we are subtly giving our boys and girls the message that Religious School is by and for girls – and that message will eventually come back to haunt us.

So how do we re-engage men in Jewish living and leadership without driving away the women? Drum circles and wilderness events are not enough. The emphasis on “men’s spirituality”, as opposed to “women’s spirituality”, is probably a non-starter. It’s next to impossible to define the term, much less affix a gender-based meaning to it. Men cannot expect to establish successful parallel groups that are prominent in feminist circles; men must develop their own models. We cannot expect men to attend a male-only kosher yoga class or find solace in a children’s play group. Frankly, men and women are wired differently; men and women will respond to different stimuli.

When we look around and see hordes of disengaged Jewish men – or don’t see Jewish men at all – we have to wonder when it began. Growing up and working professionally in a Reform Jewish setting, I would say that the disengagement begins at a very early age, when Jewish boys begin religious school. As I said earlier, when all of their teachers are women, when their school director is a woman and now, increasingly, when their rabbi is a woman, the boys learn early that Judaism is for and about women, not for and about men. Of course they are mistaken but there are no men around to correct them – they are all off playing softball.

I would propose that, starting in the 3^rd or 4^th Grade, every other Religious School teacher be male. Boys should know that in Grades 4, 6, 8, 10 and 12, for example, they can be in the presence of a man who can effectively teach and model Judaism. This is also good for girls; it gives them hope that there will be Jewishly involved men for them to date and marry when they grow up. There should also be at least one active male youth group advisor at every level of youth programming. Jewish couples actively engaged in youth activities provide a wonderful model of Jewish living to boys and girls alike. We are blessed with such a situation here at Adat Chaverim; perhaps that is why so many of our youth group leaders are boys.

Congregations need to recruit men for committees that are seen as “women’s work”, such as the Caring Congregation, Social Justice or especially the Religious School Committee. Our Religious School Committee has no men. That needs to change. Men need to make hospital visits and offer comfort, prayers and support. Synagogues need to ask men to bake for the Oneg Shabbat, Kiddush luncheons and other food events; the Brotherhood Bagel Brunch is wonderful but why should men be denied the opportunity to bake challah and rugelach? I do not mean this as a novelty act, to trot out the male bakers once a quarter so that we can laugh at their creations; I mean to say that men and women alike need to make the desserts on a regular basis.

We have to start raising our expectations of Jewish men. We have to stop thinking of Jewish men as Homer Simpson and start thinking of them as Ward Cleaver. The Jewish doofus has to return to being the Jewish sage.

And men need to learn again how to talk in a religious language. As Rabbi Pearce wrote:

“How do we help fathers and sons talk about God, faith, and Torah as easily as they do about football or golf. How do we get the message across that men who are drawn to faith are not sissies? How come fathers are present at soccer games but not at temple? How do we put an end to fathers’ drive-by-Judaism…?

Our most recent Bar Mitzvah boy asked the same question in his speech: why can’t we talk about God as easily as we talk about sports?

I don’t have any easy answers.

But I do know that in all faith communities, the responsibility for religious training in the home has long been the province of the mother. Jewish texts extol the role of the Jewish mother – all jokes aside – as the arbiter of what happens in the home. The father traditionally may be the boss at work but the mother is the boss in the house; she determines what is kosher and what is not.

So what happens when the mother is not Jewish? A Christian bride who promises to raise her children as Jews, when she receives little or no support from her Jewish husband, will often decide that no religious training is preferable to her own ignorance and isolation. Christian mothers should not be expected to raise Jewish children – unless the Jewish father is actively participating in the religious life of the family. It is an unfair burden.

Over the years I have often met with non-Jewish women trying to raise Jewish children. They are all sincere in their desire and I give them a lot of credit. I also offer a lot of help. But so often they tell me that the biggest hindrance to home observance is their Jewish husband, who just doesn’t care for these corny rituals or traditions. How hard is it to say HaMotzi at dinner? We Jews find it easy but, coming from the mouth of one who is not Jewish, it is a hollow blessing indeed. And if one is not Jewish, how can we expect her even to know that Jews should recite this prayer?

I would like to sincerely thank all the non-Jewish mothers here today for the wonderful work that they have done in raising Jewish children. The boys and girls whom I have known here at Adat Chaverim are admirable, well-mannered and morally centered. You have done a great job.

And so now, with a sense of gratitude, I hereby release you from the responsibility of raising Jewish children alone. I now place this responsibility upon the shoulders of your Jewish husbands, to take the initiative and to lead. And if both mom and dad are Jewish, I’m not letting these men off the hook either; it should be a joint effort in every household.

So how can we make this happen?

This will happen when men reengage in study and prayer. It is easier said than done. Softball and flag football are wonderful Sunday morning activities – but so is Torah study. Can we find a way to do both?

If we can set the expectation at a very young age that study is expected of Jewish men – and that Bar Mitzvah is a beginning and not an end to Jewish study – than the chances are greater that Jewish men will once again become learned. Once men begin learning again, they will begin to teach and pray again – and then they will lead again. We need to extend every opportunity to Jewish men to learn classical Jewish texts, to learn Hebrew and to learn about ritual; skills many men have lost.

And Jewish men especially need to learn our history. We have forgotten about all the wonderful male Jewish role models of times past, of people like Moses and Joshua, Hillel and Akiva, Maimonides and Luria. We need to encounter Moses Mendelson again and argue with Spinoza and Freud. When we reconnect with our past, we can lay the foundation for our future. It is not enough that men are skilled in finance; men must also be skilled in Torah if they are to be authentic leaders of our people. Throughout our history, the leadership of the Jewish community fell to the most learned; Torah, not financial acumen, is the key to leadership in the Jewish world.

Leadership in the Jewish community is not a male-female competition. Instead, it is a sacred partnership, where the best and brightest become our leaders. It does not matter in the liberal streams if that leader is a man or a woman. But we cannot replace 3,000 years of male-dominated Jewish leadership with a Golden Age of female-dominated leadership and expect to thrive. Instead, we need to replace the male-dominated leadership with quality leadership, male and female, skilled in Torah, so that all voices will be heard and so that we can fulfill our covenant with God, walking together – not to sacrifice our sons – but to help them to become learned and active Jewish leaders. When our Isaacs walk down the mountain, they need to be ready to lead. May there be men waiting at the bottom to guide them. Amen.