Brickner Fellows Retreat A Success!
Rosalind Gold is Program Director of the Rabbi Balfour Brickner Rabbinic Seminar and Fellow Program.
Mid-November saw the first gathering of this year's Brickner Fellows. The Rabbi Balfour Brickner Rabbinic Seminar and Fellow Program, sponsored jointly by the RAC and CLAL (the National Jewish Center for Leadership and Learning) and funded through a generous endowment by Mr. Al Engelberg, is part of a two-year commitment by a group of rabbis to study and learn together and to gain the tools necessary to do effective, honest social justice advocacy.
The goal of the Brickner program is to empower rabbis from
across denominational lines to discern core Jewish values and to approach
Jewish texts freed of pre-conceived notions of what the text means - to
"de-automate" as our teachers from CLAL have termed it. This approach to study
involves active listening, and developing the ability to understand and even
empathize with positions other than our own. Being open to new possibilities in
a text, the rabbis can then become more effective social activists - being able
to articulate Jewish values with integrity, and engage in constructive dialogue
and debate with those who stand on opposite sides of an issue, capable of
influencing social policy.
The retreat, held at Capital Camps in Pennsylvania, followed an earlier seminar held in Washington, where more than 30 rabbis from the Reform, Conservative, and Reconstructionist movements gathered to study Jewish texts on various topics of social concern, learning from Rabbis Irwin Kula and Tsvi Blanchard of CLAL, Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson of the American Jewish University, Rabbi Lew Barth of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Rabbis Nina Beth Cardin and Fred Scherlinder Dobb of COEJL (the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life), Rabbi Marla Feldman, Director of the URJ Commission on Social Action, Rabbi Jonah Pesner of Just Congregations, and the RAC's own Rabbi David Saperstein, Rabbi Michael Namath, and Mark Pelavin. From this original group, a cohort of 11 rabbis was chosen to become Brickner Fellows, participating in the retreat and in upcoming distance learning calls. Rabbi Tsvi Blanchard, CLAL's Director of Organizational Development, led the 5-day retreat, assisted by Rabbi Michael Namath, Program Director at the RAC and Rabbi Rosalind Gold, Coordinator of the Brickner programs.
The 11 Brickner Fellows will "meet" by conference call for continued study and discussion over the coming months, and meet face-to-face for study and discussion during the Consultation on Conscience in April.
The retreat, held at Capital Camps in Pennsylvania, followed an earlier seminar held in Washington, where more than 30 rabbis from the Reform, Conservative, and Reconstructionist movements gathered to study Jewish texts on various topics of social concern, learning from Rabbis Irwin Kula and Tsvi Blanchard of CLAL, Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson of the American Jewish University, Rabbi Lew Barth of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Rabbis Nina Beth Cardin and Fred Scherlinder Dobb of COEJL (the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life), Rabbi Marla Feldman, Director of the URJ Commission on Social Action, Rabbi Jonah Pesner of Just Congregations, and the RAC's own Rabbi David Saperstein, Rabbi Michael Namath, and Mark Pelavin. From this original group, a cohort of 11 rabbis was chosen to become Brickner Fellows, participating in the retreat and in upcoming distance learning calls. Rabbi Tsvi Blanchard, CLAL's Director of Organizational Development, led the 5-day retreat, assisted by Rabbi Michael Namath, Program Director at the RAC and Rabbi Rosalind Gold, Coordinator of the Brickner programs.
The 11 Brickner Fellows will "meet" by conference call for continued study and discussion over the coming months, and meet face-to-face for study and discussion during the Consultation on Conscience in April.