Author/Educator Rabbi Mike Uram to Speak at Annual Cardin Leadership Symposium

Rabbi Mike Uram: "There’s always been powerful and profound concepts in Judaism -- like Shabbat or shiva -- but we also have the most powerful Jewish concept: favoring complexity over simplicity." (Provided photo)

Rabbi Mike Uram tends to be a big-picture kind of guy. A Cleveland native who now lives in the Philadelphia area, he tells a story about his first visit to Baltimore as a teenager with his older brother. While walking around Fells Point and noticing its wide variety of taverns and alehouses, they were more impressed with the area where famed abolitionist and orator Frederick Douglass once worked as a child slave in the early 19th century.

Today, Rabbi Uram serves as chief vision and education officer for Pardes North America, an organization that promotes Jewish learning within intimate communities. On Monday, Sept. 12, he will be the keynote speaker at the annual Shoshana S. Cardin Leadership Symposium.

The gathering will be held at Chizuk Amuno Congregation, 8100 Stevenson Rd., from 7 to 8:30 p.m. and presented by Na’aleh: The Hub for Leadership Learning, an agency of The Associated: Jewish Federation of Baltimore.

Rabbi Uram, 46, will share his ideas about using Jewish teachings and wisdom to promote civil discourse within families and communities. He is the author of “Next Generation Judaism: How College Students and Hillel can Help Reinvent Jewish Organization” (Jewish Lights), which in 2016 won a National Jewish Book Award.

Jmore recently spoke with Rabbi Uram — who served for more than 16 years as executive director and campus rabbi of the Hillel at the University of Pennsylvania — about his upcoming talk.

Jmore: The divisions in contemporary Jewish life, like American life in general, are profound — politically, spiritually and culturally. How do we bridge that gap?

Rabbi Uram: We see the breakdown in civil discourse, and it starts with the emergence of frustration or anger or loneliness. People feel hopeless when reading about these ‘other people,’ and they feel that no one thinks like they do. There’s a lot of pain, individually. We see this playing out in families and inter-generationally.

There is a lack of understanding between the generations. They’re speaking in different idioms. We see this in families and in the Jewish community, and within our larger nation. We hear about the tensions in the Jewish community about religious denominations, about Israel and about partisan issues. What can a rabbi or community leader say in public? What can a congregation make a public statement about? It all gets really heated now, whether it’s about vaccination issues or Black Lives Matter or political candidates.

What we’re trying to advance is that there’s something else going on. The media and social media often favor the loudest and most extreme voices. But a lot of people are not represented by those voices. Even if we don’t agree with those voices, you can become more afraid of ‘the other’ -– the ‘enemy’ –- and we end up shadowboxing. What we’re trying to do is for people in the middle –- well-meaning, constructive people -– to give them strong anchors to respond and take back a more pragmatic discourse. We want a more muscular middle. For the 85 percent of people who are in the middle, we can have a strong coalition and amplify those voices of hope.

What do you feel is the root of this divisiveness?

The main contribution to the breakdown today is technology. Today, there’s no TV or streaming event that gets a large percentage of the American population and brings it together, like the final episodes of ‘M*A*S*H’ or ‘Seinfeld’ or ‘Friends.’ So we live in a hyper-intensive atmosphere that embraces individuality with our news and our Facebook feeds. Today you get the most audience by being the most extreme, so that’s how we get information and why we’ve become so isolated.

It’s become this perfect storm when a country is going through a great deal of [political] turmoil and the technology promotes a disconnect and fear of ‘the other.’

Can the study of Jewish texts help people find common ground?

One of my approaches to Jewish life is to see Judaism as a technology as well as a tradition. A technology is more focused on what it does for communities. There’s always been powerful and profound concepts in Judaism — like Shabbat or shiva — but we also have the most powerful Jewish concept: favoring complexity over simplicity. No matter what issue the Rabbis are confronted with, no matter how esoteric, they look at it with a complexity. Even the Torah itself was not given to Moses in a clear-cut manner.

When you meet someone you disagree with, it’s natural for a human being to draw a caricature of that person. What the Rabbis teach us here is that you don’t have to see your opponents as evil but as human, as someone you can understand even though you don’t agree with them.

We need to slow down and embrace complexity to understand all of the nuances. This is not meant to be applied to evil or someone who is trying to harm someone else. But the reality is that with a lot of these moments, there’s something else going on under the surface. Instead of approaching with labels and judgments, what is it like to approach with curiosity and humility?

If you can see each other in three dimensions and with complexity, it helps the situation. We have to find a way to see each other through a more complex lens. As things have become more politically tense, we’ve all gotten in the habit of an advocacy mindset with family members and members of our community. There is a place for advocacy, but there needs to be a relational hat to put on as well.

You’ve worked closely with young Jews for decades. How would you characterize the younger generation?

Obviously, we’re in a moment where there is a more pronounced generational gap than in the ‘90s or the early 2000s. A significant portion of those tensions are because we don’t see each other clearly, and the differences are exaggerated by the media culture. There are one-dimensional characterizations of what Baby Boomers are, and Baby Boomers and Gen-Xers do it to Millennials as well.

[Today’s young Jews] are an amazingly smart and tough generation, but it’s sometimes hard to see who you’re talking to because it has been refracted through this media narrative. Young people are going to change things and change the status quo, and when you break it down and what they’re doing, it’s beautiful. They’re trying to build the next steps for a more equitable world.

The young people I’ve met with who are — quote-unquote — anti-Israel, they’re really just struggling to understand Zionism as depicted in a very one-dimensional way. Their frustration is with how they were educated. I don’t think it’s an apathetic generation. They’re idealistic and coming to the question of Jewish peoplehood from a different perspective than even my own generation. A lot of college campus Jews are turned off by the way the Jewish community advocates for Israel, with political divisiveness and fear. You certainly need advocates for Israel because people are trying to demonize Israel, but that shouldn’t be the only way to promote Israel.

Is the ball being dropped by the organized Jewish community when it comes to reaching out to young Jews and others?

The research — and my experience on campus — shows that affiliation is on the decline, but most Jews in America feel very positive about Judaism today. There’s an old Chasidic saying that if you hold up a gold coin to your eye, you can block out the view of a mountain. Money can blind you. We’ve built all these institutions, but 21st-century Judaism operates differently.

Jewish leadership is constantly struggling for building continuity, but there’s so much infrastructure to maintain and sustain. The large percentage of American Jews want Judaism in their lives but they’re just not interested in joining our clubs. So there’s a real gap between the people in organized Jewish life and the 85 percent or so who are not interested in joining a club. What we have to do is find ways to connect people with Judaism and its rituals, not just its affiliations. People want small, micro-community things. We need small, relational events rather than institutional events. That’s what will activate the next generation of Jews.

Do you feel there is a future for the American synagogue?

I think there is. I’m a big believer in synagogues. Synagogues and religion are one of the last places where you can bring people together for a common purpose. But the synagogues have to adapt under different methods of engagement. The future is bright, but they have some hurdles. I know people who work in congregational life work so hard, but they need to do the innovational work as well. It’s hard for legacy organizations to innovate. But you can sustain a legacy model while also investing in an innovation model. There are ways an organization can play on different levels.

Is there a future for denominational Judaism?

I think denominations should support their leaders and organizations. But we shouldn’t just ask people to simply check off a box and push an ideology. That’s not what people want today.

For information about the Shoshana S. Cardin Leadership Symposium, visit naalehbaltimore.org/programs-events/events/annual-shoshana-s-cardin-leadership-symposium-2/.

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