Sca Seeks New Executive V.p. and New Sense of Direction

Wanted: one executive vice president to revitalize the Synagogue Council of America, an organization widely believed to have great potential but suffering from chronic institutional inertia.

The interdenominational organization’s executive board has been looking for a top staffer for more than 8 months, since Rabbi Henry Michaelman retired after 11 years in the post.

In the meantime, some say that without a director, the organization created to represent the religious voice of American Jewry is foundering. The office currently consists of two secretaries.

Whoever does decide to accept the job will have his work cut out for him. (There are no women seriously being considered for the job.)

The Synagogue Council is an organization whose goals are widely supported, at least in theory, and has been described as potentially one of the most important Jewish organizations in the United States.

But the organization has had trouble realizing its potential since its founding in 1926 by the same six constituents which comprise the Synagogue Council of America today — mainstream Orthodoxy’s Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America and Rabbinical Council of America, the Conservative movement’s United Synagogue and Rabbinical Assembly, and the Reform movement’s Union of American Hebrew Congregations and Central Conference of American Rabbis.

The fundamental concept is this: to bring together representatives from the congregational and rabbinic bodies of Judaism’s three mainstream religious denominations so that they can represent American Jewry on issues of common concern in a unified religious voice.

Sound simple? It hasn’t been.

In reality, the representatives of the Reform, Conservative and Orthodox movements have found little that they can, or want to, address jointly.

LITTLE COMMON GROUND

Since their agendas differ, and one of the SCA’s ground rules is that nothing of a religious nature can be addressed, the movements have found little common ground on which they can act through the Synagogue Council.

“The basic problem with the SCA is that the logic for such an organization is cooperation, coordination and dialogue in matters that should be of primary concern to its constituents,” said Henry Siegman, who was the group’s executive vice president from 1965 through 1978.

But “any issue that came up on the agenda that smacked of religiosity, like synagogue attendance, the prayerbook or religious observance, was ruled inappropriate,” he said.

As a result, the Synagogue Council has taken on “an agenda really outside their area of concern. These are issues that non-religious organizations could deal with just as well,” said Siegman, now executive vice president of the American Jewish Congress.

The SCA’s president, Reform Rabbi Jerome Davidson, disagrees. “Our role is to reflect, for the Jewish religious community, what its feelings are on social and political issues like religious freedom, and to harmonize and bridge some of the differences that persist between various religious groups,” he said.

But as a result of its inherent limitations, the SCA’s agenda is narrow. It focuses almost exclusively on interreligious affairs, serving as the American secretariat for IJCIC, the International Jewish Committee on Interreligious Consultations, the body that officially represents world Jewry in dialogue with other religious groups.

But it does little in the area of intradenominational Jewish communication and cooperation–leaving a void that desperately needs to be filled, say observers.

“There is a great need for this kind of internal religious dialogue. The problem is that I don’t see that taking place. To deal with the American Jewish community’s religious life is the one thing they won’t deal with,” said Siegman.

It is “the great paradox, and bane of its existence, that in this area of primary concern, the agencies have no dialogue at all,” he said.

INTERRELIGIOUS WORK LEADS TO TOLERANCE

But, said Davidson, interreligious projects have furthered intrareligious understanding.

“In the process of representing the American Jewish religious community to other communities, we build bridges of understanding between the movements. Leaders of the three movements have become more tolerant and sympathetic to the others’ positions over time,” he said.

Because of its limited agenda, however, its own constituents do not find the Synagogue Council useful enough to support wholeheartedly on a direct basis and to solicit their own congregations on its behalf.

“Since the SCA has only concentrated on interreligious affairs for awhile, a lot of constituents said, ‘why pay in if that’s all they’re going to do?’ If the SCA were playing a vital function, they’d have a reason to support it in a more pro-active way,” said one Reform source.

An example of the type of issue on which the SCA should be active is the Jewish identity of college-age youth, said an SCA member.

“The Reform, Orthodox and Conservative can plan strategies to help retain a sense of Jewish identity through youth programming and education,” said Rabbi Gary Bretton-Granatoor, director of interreligious affairs at the Union of American Hebrew Congregations.

The domestic affairs and interreligious affairs committees are the only two of the SCA’s several committees that are currently active.

The domestic affairs committee organized a SCA voter-registration drive last year and was also recently involved with Moslems, Protestants and Catholics in the creation of statements about the crises in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Somalia.

A central issue in the SCA’s interreligious work has been the Orthodox representatives’ inability to delve into anything theological in discussions with other religions — a limitation that has frustrated non-Orthodox members.

Resentment toward the Orthodox from some other SCA members is now largely tied to what is regarded as the Orthodox organizations’ weak financial support of the fiscally troubled SCA.

The SCA asked the three movements each to co-sign a bank loan for $25,000. Only the Reform and Conservative movements reportedly did so. In the end, the search for a new executive vice president may help revitalize the SCA.

“It’s an opportunity to really come back with something much stronger,” said Reform Rabbi Mark Winer, co-chair of the interreligious affairs committee.