NEW YORK, Dec. 31 (JTA) — Move over, Iron John — and make way for Rabbi Seymour Rosenbloom. Rosenbloom is one of the people adding a Jewish twist to the Robert Bly-Sam Keen school of male spiritual bonding, made famous earlier this decade when their best-selling books spawned conferences and support groups for those wanting to explore the meaning of manhood at the end of the 20th century. Many men today are still trying to figure out their role in an era when the traditional tasks assigned to them have been radically changed by feminism. Jewish men, no less than any others, feel “a kind of bewilderment,” said Rosenbloom, a Conservative rabbi from Elkins Park, Pa., who is leading a retreat for Jewish men in early February. Like a handful of other rabbis around the country, Rosenbloom has been sponsoring Jewish men’s groups in his area during the past couple of years. “We’re looking for a different definition of masculinity, to find a new male role that gives us more freedom, more ability to be creative and to be ourselves,” said the 53-year-old spiritual leader of Congregation Adath Jeshurun. But instead of pounding the tribal drums, as participants in the Bly-Keen retreats did while they explored ancient myths of manhood, Rosenbloom’s Jewish men will do their bonding around — what else? – – prayer and study. “My ancestors were not beating on drums, they were studying Torah,” said Rabbi Charles Simon, executive director of the Conservative movement’s Federation of Jewish Men’s Clubs, which is promoting the retreat. “The synagogue and Jewish study can be the way we respond” to the current interest in men’s groups. Rosenbloom’s retreat, billed as the “First Jewish Men’s Gathering,” will be held Feb. 7 and 8 outside of Philadelphia. The rabbi is leading the event with Gerald Evans, an ordained Baptist minister and therapist who founded and directs the Men’s Resource Center in Philadelphia. Men will measure their own experiences against Torah’s patriarchal narratives, particularly the archetypal father-and-son story of Isaac and Jacob, which contains both conflicts and blessings, Rosenbloom said. Participants will also explore ritual — including tallit and tefillin, and the traditional blessing of wives and children at the Shabbat dinner table — as a way to enhance their own spirituality. The nascent Jewish men’s movement both draws from the past and taps into today’s new realities. During the past couple of decades, men have gathered together to discuss their feelings, examining the “self” and relationships as they relate to gender is rooted in the feminist encounter groups of the 1970s. The New Age secular men’s groups began to put a 1990s spin on it early in the decade. And, like those building the popular evangelical Christian Promise Keepers’ movement, founders of the Jewish men’s movement say they are concerned about men feeling marginalized within their religious community. Indeed, the movement is very much a response to this increasing sense of alienation felt by men, say those involved. It is also seen as a way to draw in younger men, particularly in Reform and Conservative congregations, and increase membership in the men’s clubs. Until relatively recently the synagogue was — quite literally — the sanctuary of men. Although women still constitute only a small percentage of rabbis, cantors, synagogue presidents and other lay leaders, they are more visible than ever before. This phenomenon has led many men to cede their traditional roles as involved congregants. This is happening, observers say, in part because of resentment, in part because there are others to share the responsibility. “With egalitarianism, the synagogue is increasingly becoming more feminized,” said Rosenbloom. “Men are ceding the playing field to the women. “Whereas once men had the field all to themselves by right, now they’re not so willing to compete for it,” he said. Rabbi Kerry Olitzky, national dean of adult Jewish learning and living at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, travels to many Reform temples in the course of his work. “Men are vanishing from the synagogue,” said Olitzky, whose book “New Psalms for Jewish Men,” will be published next year by the Jewish Publication Society. Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin agrees. “In many synagogues, men have abandoned leadership roles,” said the spiritual leader of The Community Synagogue, a Reform temple in Port Washington, N.Y. Rabbi Moshe Edelman, director of leadership development for the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, said that even 25 years ago, he “feared that the men were going to be emasculated from Judaism.” Today, he said, “men are not necessarily disappearing from the pews, but they spend less time there.” Some Jewish feminists are concerned about where the new Jewish men’s movement could lead. “Women have finally achieved a place in synagogue life, and now the men are whining they’re being left out,” said Francine Klagsbrun, a member of the Conservative movement commission that made the decision to ordain women more than a decade ago. “What women have been looking for is real partnership with the men in Jewish life, not a competition. “There’s legitimacy that men want to bond and explore family, health and work issues, but there’s something that makes me nervous about this,” she said. “I hope it doesn’t again become a way to push women out. I hope it doesn’t turn into an angry, subtle anti-woman thing, and it could. That’s what they, and we, have to watch out for.” Rosenbloom rejected that possibility. Unlike the Promise Keepers, who “seem to be wanting to recreate the good old days, only better, we’re not coming at it that way,” he said. “We don’t want to turn back the clock. We don’t want to negate any of the gains women have made. “We want to reflect on what it means to be a Jewish man today, how it has changed from when we were growing up, how stereotypes have changed and how we fit in today in an egalitarian world.”
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