Sunday, July 31, 2011

[Shefa] Jerusalem Report: "Ethiopian Dreams, Israeli Realities"

 

Jerusalem Report: 

Ethiopian Dreams, Israeli Realities

An Ethiopian who became a Conservative rabbi struggles to make a difference in a community harmed by the flawed reception offered by Israeli authorities.

Rabbi-nurse Yefet Alamo 
Photo by: SARAH LEVIN
RABBI YEFET ALAMO SAYS that he is, and always has been, a dreamer. 
He had to be a dreamer, he smiles, to survive. Almo, 52, emigrated from Ethiopia, an agrarian society, to Israel, a post-industrial society, at the age of 22. His dreams, he says, helped him face anti-Semitism in Ethiopia. They guided him as he made the terrible journey from Gondar through the Sudan, suffering thirst, hunger and fear, walking for weeks, escaping the threats to his family's life and his own. They aided him when he arrived in the Jewish homeland, only to find that Israel rejected his Judaism. And those same dreams for a better society have given him comfort as he continues to struggle religiously, serving as Israeli's only Ethiopian Conservative rabbi.

He speaks like a man who believes in his dreams, his tone upbeat even when talking about the difficulties. Today he lives in the settlement of Adam in the West Bank, just north of Jerusalem. The two daughters who were born in Ethiopia are married – to Israeli Ashkenazim, he emphasizes, and his son, born in Israel, is about to finish his military service. He has one Sabra (Israeli-born) grandchild and another on the way. Finding that he was unable to make a living as a rabbi, he works as a practical nurse in Hadassah Hospital in Ein Kerem; his wife is also a nurse at another Jerusalem hospital. "I refuse to depend on anyone or any project for my living," he says passionately, but adds that he insists on "working for the community, for acceptance of our ancient traditions and for the respect that our people deserve."

Alamo recalls the many challenges he faced growing up in Ethiopia. "As a young boy, I suffered a lot from the non-Jewish Ethiopians – they cursed me, they bothered me," he says. In Ethiopia, his religiously observant parents destined him to be a kes, a revered community spiritual leader. From his early teens, he lived in a village near his home with a group of kessim, who taught him Jewish ritual and observance.

But even in Ethiopia, he says with a broad smile, "adolescent troubles can mess up even the best plans." He married at the age of 17, which was young for Ethiopian men; five years later, with two daughters, he decided to come and live in Israel, despite the dangerous journey.

When he arrived in Israel in 1981, he says, "I quickly realized that my suffering was not over. It hurt me to see the situation that my fellow Ethiopians were living in.

Those were the years when the government didn't want to bring the rest of the tribe here – we were disconnected, separated. I joined the few who were protesting, trying to catch the government's attention.

"What hurt us so terribly was to find out that the state was demanding that we Ethiopians, who had kept the most ancient traditions of the Jewish people, abandon those traditions, just as we were fulfilling our most cherished and ancient dream – to come to Jerusalem, to the Holy Land."

Naively, he says, he had thought that the Israeli religious establishment would welcome them because they were the only ones left who still performed ancient Biblical customs.

"But on the contrary," he says, "we were despised, rejected. We were told to renounce our practices, the rituals for which we had endangered our lives. Here, they were considered worthless. This was a terrible blow for the whole Ethiopian community."

They were expected, he says, to renounce their most precious practices in favor of the halakha, which is the compendium of Jewish law and includes Biblical, Talmudic and rabbinic law as well as customs and traditions.

It is observed, in largely identical form, in both the Ashkenazi and Sephardi traditions.

But the Ethiopians, living isolated from the rest of the Jewish world for centuries, had developed their own laws and rituals, based on their interpretations solely of the Bible.

He cites examples. "In Ethiopia, issues of purity were essential. We used 'purifying waters,' as a regular part of our lives – for women after giving birth, after menstruation, for mourners, for anyone suspected of having been in contact with something impure.

A man who went to another city for a length of time would also have to be purified by a kes upon return to his village, in case he had become impure in the city."

Although the State of Israel brought the Ethiopian Jews out, the Israeli rabbinic authorities refused to fully recognize their Judaism. Their kessim were not recognized as rabbis or religious leaders, so they were not permitted to perform marriages or to rule on public religious issues. Furthermore, in order to affirm their Judaism, for purposes of marriage, for instance, the Jews of Ethiopian origin had to undergo a modified conversion procedure, which included symbolic letting of blood (in lieu of circumcision) and immersion in a mikve (ritual bath).

"We had dreamed for generations about the moment that we would arrive here. And after the terrible hazards of the journey, when we finally arrived, we were told that we were not Jewish enough.

"And it was difficult for the kessim, especially the oldest among them, to admit that Jewish life had progressed across the centuries and that the halakha developed in the Jewish world, outside of our lives and traditions," he continues. "In the eyes of the kessim, accepting halakha is a demand that they abandon the rules of the Torah. I believe that, with a little good will, it would have been possible to include the ancient Biblical traditions and values that we had kept for centuries in current reality. What harm would that have done? But the rabbinate had no compassion, no mercy. They acted maliciously.

They needed to have total control over the practice of Judaism, leaving no place for us and our customs."

And almost all children were sent to religious boarding schools, the message being that "at least the second generation would be normatively Jewish."

The Ethiopians have come to recognize, he says, that the Jewish world has progressed beyond the Biblical interpretations of Jewish law and now accept the notion of halakha. "I think that all in all, we were rational, we were those who acted with responsibility – we have accepted the changes. We just didn't want to be considered with such contempt.

We didn't want to stop respecting our spiritual leaders, our kessim, our values."

IT WAS THIS CONTEMPTUOUS attitude that pushed Alamo into the arms of the Conservative movement.

Accepting that in order to be a religious leader he would have to study to become a rabbi, he applied and was accepted to a prestigious Orthodox yeshiva. "The head rabbi told me that he was happy to see me among his students, and then he added, 'You'll see, we'll make good Jews out of you.' As if my fellow Ethiopians and I were not good Jews.

I felt I had always been a good Jew, and the rabbi's comments were crude and rude. And oh, how that hurt me."

He left the yeshiva. "I was willing to accept that I had to fill in the gap between my traditions and developments over the centuries. But I wasn't willing to accept their malicious arrogance."

He studied practical nursing in order to make a living and was active in Ethiopian causes. By chance, he met a group of Conservative rabbis at a demonstration for Ethiopians' rights. "I had no idea that such a movement existed. These people said they were observant, religious Jews, but they didn't look like any of the religious Jews I had met. I discovered another type of Israeli Jew and I felt an irresistible attraction to who they are and what they offer."

What he found irresistible, he explains, was the inclusiveness of the Conservative movement. He understood that the Conservative movement would also demand that he observe halakha and that, as a rabbi, he would have to base his religious decisions on its premises, but "they were not coercive and they accept different people."

The Schechter Institute in Jerusalem accepted him to their rabbinical studies program, even though he had no academic degree. "I had no money, either. But they were outstanding – they decided to give me a chance. They were sincerely interested. I loved studying. I had a tutor who translated into Amharic for me. Those were the best days of my life in Israel."

He seems to have come to a religious balance.

He now views the kessim as part of Jewish spiritual life, but accepts the halakha as that which guides religious life. For this reason, he says, he has had no difficulty in accepting the Conservative movement's interpretations of halakha that include, for example, a large measure of gender equality, which was completely unheard of in Ethiopia.

After his ordination, Alamo attempted to establish a community. "I didn't want to establish a Conservative Ethiopian community.

I wanted to create a Conservative community in which Ethiopian and non- Ethiopian Jews would pray and live together, side by side. Remember, I told you I'm a dreamer. I wanted to create a place with one Torah, one people. But I was alone with my dream. I appealed to many organizations, to the Ministry of Education, but it didn't work.

I guess my dream was too big."

He says that he failed because he was unable to raise the funds to establish the community, although it is clear that Conservative Judaism, with its modern Western roots, may have been far too much of a stretch for the observant Jews of Ethiopian origin to accept. Alamo emphasizes that despite his innovations, he felt that he was well accepted by both his fellow Ethiopians and the kessim, because, he says, "they trust me and know that what I want to do is in the interests of the community. They know I have no intention to pull them apart.

"I was desperate, depressed," he recalls.

And then, again, he found hope when he was accepted to the Mandel School for Educational Leadership, a Jerusalem-based, multi-year program. "Once again, it was a great period," he recalls.

Having given up the idea of serving as a community rabbi, Alamo continued his practical nursing to earn a living and is active as aJewish educator. He has a regular television program on the Amharic cable channel, where he discuss the weekly portions and uses these homilies to emphasize the importance of education for the Ethiopian community. He relates that he receives hundreds of letters from viewers, many asking for his advice. In addition, he serves on the board of the Ethiopian National Project, a multi-year program intended to implement broad-based policies for the betterment of the Ethiopian Jews.

THE LOSS OF THEIR RELIGIOUS life and the sending of their children to religious boarding schools, combined with the social welfare authorities'misguided approaches, have left the Ethiopian community in a precarious position, Alamo says. "Our spiritual leadership was broken; parents lost their authority over their children.

And the result has been that we have about 5,000 delinquent youth. Social workers, psychologists, people like that who graduated from Western academic schools imposed their Western notions and concepts on us and looked down at us. They didn't understand us – they had no idea about our customs or our ways, and they imposed themselves on us. They destroyed our community, and now the community is closed within itself, living in poor, underprivileged neighborhoods. Our youth are lost – today they are delinquents, tomorrow they will be criminals."

These are, he acknowledges, the same mistakes that were made in the attempts to absorb the immigrants from other non- Western countries. He smiles sadly. "So why did they make the same mistakes all over again? We were so few – there were barely 80,000 of us – why did the authorities try to break our leadership?" Today, Ethiopians are still subjected to different religious requirements than other Jews, which indicate that their Jewishness is still essentially in doubt in the Jewish state.

All Israeli Jews must be married through the rabbinate, since Israel does not recognize civil marriage, but Ethiopians must register with Rabbi Yossef Hadana in Tel Aviv, who has been appointed by the Chief Rabbinate to assess if they are, indeed, Jewish. Alamo says that that Hadana is "strict but fair." But if Hadana does not recognize the applicant's Jewishness, they must be go through a complete conversion procedure.

Only after they have obtained a document attesting to their Jewishness, are they able to marry any other Jew. Most choose a Sephardi rabbi to perform their wedding ceremonies, because, Alamo says, they are more comfortable with the Sephardim, who traditionally are more liberal and tolerant in their interpretations and observances. "There is a whole new generation that has religiously found its place in Israeli society. I have even seen Ethiopians among the Breslover Hasidic groups, singing and dancing in the streets."

But he still recognizes the severe problems the community faces and places his hope in the Ethiopian National Project. "It is the only project that was conceived, programmed and implemented by Ethiopians for Ethiopians, with all the sensitivity and understanding that we need. I believe that only when Ethiopians will take care of themselves and their problems will things really improve."


---
Rabbi Menachem Creditor
Congregation Netivot Shalom  || Bay Area Masorti ||  ShefaNetwork 
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Friday, July 29, 2011

[Shefa] RHR-NA: Is Your Rabbi a Human Rights Hero?

 

RHR-NA: Is Your Rabbi a Human Rights Hero?

Rabbis for Human Rights-North America is searching for rabbis who are human rights heroes.  Is your rabbi the one?  If so, nominate your rabbi as a human rights hero! Active community members from all over North America are invited to nominate their rabbi as a human rights hero. Two rabbis will be selected to be honored in person at the RHR-NA celebration on December 8, 2011 in New York City, as a guest of RHR-NA. Click here for more information and nomination forms.

What does it mean to be a Human Rights Hero? 

Nominated rabbis will be leaders in promoting human rights within their communities in North America and/or Israel and the Palestinian territories.  They are strongly committed to working towards the dignity and worth of every single person in society, consistent with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the Jewish belief that every person is a creation in the divine image.  

Who is eligible to be nominated as a Human Rights Hero?

To be eligible, rabbis should work within a Jewish community setting, such as in a synagogue, school, camp, JCC or other related organization. Rabbis must live and work in North America. Rabbis who work full-time for social justice or human rights organizations are not eligible. Rabbis for Human Rights-North America board members and staff members are not eligible.  The two winners must be available to attend the celebration in New York City on December 8, 2011, as a guest of RHR-NA.

Who is eligible to nominate a rabbi?

Nominators must consider themselves members of the nominated rabbi's community.  A nominator may be a synagogue member, a student, a parent of a student or camper, a JCC member, or someone who participates regularly in activities organized by the rabbi's community. Nominators may not be staff members of the rabbi's community. Self-nominations will not be considered.

How do I nominate my rabbi?

To nominate your rabbi, please fill out the following form and write a brief statement (250-300 words) about why your rabbi is a human rights hero. Please include the names and e-mail addresses for two additional members of your rabbi's community who would be willing to submit supporting recommendation letters. Those individuals will receive an e-mail from RHR-NA inviting them complete an online recommendation form.

Once your nomination has been processed, you will receive a confirmation e-mail.
 

How will rabbis be selected?

A selection committee has been formed to review all nominations and pick our two winning rabbis. Five distinguished rabbis make up the selection committee: Rabbi Peter Rubinstein in New York, NY; Rabbi Amy Eilberg in Mendota Heights, Minnesota; Rabbi Will Berkovitz in Seattle, Washington; Rabbi Aaron Levy in Toronto, Canada; and Rabbi Andrea London in Chicago, Illinois. Please do not contact selection committee members regarding this program. We choose to disclose this information so that the selection process is clear; any emails sent to the selection committee members will be deleted without review. Thank you for respecting this request.

All applications, complete with supporting letters, must be received by Wednesday, August 24, 2011, by 7:00pm EST.



---
Rabbi Menachem Creditor
Congregation Netivot Shalom  || Bay Area Masorti ||  ShefaNetwork 
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Conservative Jews.

We belong to the Conservative Movement and commit ourselves to working
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Thursday, July 28, 2011

[Shefa] Measuring Success: "How Do You Create a Data Driven Culture? Step 1: Framing the Issue"

 

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How Do You Create a Data Driven Culture? Step 1: Framing the Issue

Recognizing the value of data is an important first step, but how can nonprofits move beyond this to teach employees at all levels of their organizations to make data-driven decisions, not anecdotal, emotional or knee jerk decisions? 

Last month we introduced you to the 7 Steps to Data Driven Decision Making. Here, we will share detailed insight into the critical first step, Framing the Issue, using examples from our clients' experiences with the process.

Framing the Issue

Nonprofit employees do not need to be statisticians to effectively analyze data and make data-driven decisions. In fact, most of the organizations we work with find the actual analysis of the data to be the most straightforward part of the process. The biggest challenge organizations face is really taking enough time to clearly identify the issues they are trying to understand.

When organizations do not adequately frame the problem, they usually collect the wrong data or incomplete sets of data. This leaves them confused as they try to make sense of their analysis and draw conclusions to enable decision making.

Many concerns pass by the desks of nonprofit professionals each week and there are many potential projects and analyses that they can choose to undertake. When a concern arises, how do leaders know which ones need to be studied and which to devote their limited resources toward understanding better?

We suggest leaders ask the following questions to assign a priority to the issues and to understand what work will be involved in exploring them further:
• How did this issue come to my attention?
• How many people does it impact?
• What proof do I have that this problem exists?
• What else do I need to know in order to evaluate this issue?

Case Study 1: Foundation

Sarah works as a Program Manager for a capacity-building foundation that gives grants to nonprofit organizations. The nonprofits that receive the grants create volunteer engagement in community service projects. Her foundation's mission is to increase the number of volunteers engaged in community service and maximize the percentage of volunteers retained from one year to the next.

How did this issue come to Sarah's attention?
Based on conversations with grantees and anecdotal evidence gathered while visiting offices, Sarah's team felt that its grants were effectively increasing the number of people engaged in service across the state. The team knew that some of the nonprofits that received grants were more successful with volunteer engagement than others. They used volunteer retention to evaluate the effectiveness of their grants. However, Sarah did not understand what factors drove increases or decreases in retention.

The foundation had been collecting a wide range of data related to its grants, but had never analyzed it to understand trends and relationships between the metrics. As the foundation experienced external pressure to report its impact more quantitatively, Sarah was asked to evaluate the portfolio of grants so that the foundation could measure its long-term impact. 

How many people are impacted?
If the foundation disbursed funds to the most effective nonprofits, the number of volunteers serving in the state would increase. The foundation indirectly served over 30,000 clients through its grants at the time and hoped to increase this number. In addition to clients served, hundreds of volunteers worked in the grantee organizations across the state.

What proof is there that this issue exists?
Sarah's data showed that some organizations had low volunteer retention rates. Several of these organizations had been receiving funds from the foundation for years and continued to have low retention rates. 

What else does Sarah need to evaluate this issue?
Sarah collected information contained in the annual grant reports that would help her see which metrics contributed to low retention rates. She hoped that this would help her understand why some grants performed better than others. 

Case Study 2: Private school
John is the principal of an independent school that teaches students from kindergarten through 8th grade. His school seeks to equip its students intellectually and socially for success in high school and beyond. 

How did this issue come to John's attention?
John heard a few complaints from parents that the math program in his school was weak and did not equip the students with the knowledge they needed to be top performers in high school. He did not know if this was just the perception of a few parents or a bigger issue that needed to be addressed. 

How many people are impacted?
The complaints came from parents whose children were students in the middle school, grades 5 through 8. Parents of elementary school students had not complained.

What proof is there that this issue exists?
In addition to parent comments, middle school standardized test scores were lower than the average compared to other independent schools. 

What else does John need to evaluate this issue?
John needed to collect information from all the parents in his middle school to understand the perceptions of more than just those who complained. 

Why Frame the Issue?
By asking these questions, nonprofit leaders can effectively prioritize the many issues they could potentially explore. This pattern of inquiry also clarifies the nature of each issue and the data that will be required to fully understand them. Framing the Issue sets the foundation for the remainder of the 7 Steps: Hypothesis Development, Data Collection, Data Analysis, Interpretation, Decision-Making and Communication. 

Be sure to check out our newsletter next month, when we will delve into Step 2: Hypothesis Development. 

If you have further questions about this approach or are interested in the Building Data Competency program for your organization, email info@measuring-success.com.

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---
Rabbi Menachem Creditor
Congregation Netivot Shalom  || Bay Area Masorti ||  ShefaNetwork 
Rabbis for Women of the Wall  ||  menachemcreditor.org 
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Movement in an effort to bring a renewed and revitalized perspective to
Conservative Jews.

We belong to the Conservative Movement and commit ourselves to working
towards its revitalization. Be a part of this community of visionary
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[Shefa] Marketing Consevative Judaism

 

Chevre,
 
I saw this from my local paper's small business email and thought it also had a lot to say relevant to marketing CJ today. One thing that struck me as relevant is that they didn't have to change the core message, but rather the perceptions and accessibility, to draw in new supporters.
 
Karla

Why marketing a famous master is like building your customer base

picasso QR

For Bob Tarren, marketing Pablo Picasso meant big money and big pressure.

Tarren, marketing director at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, was charged with creating a $750,000 campaign that would draw a national audience while maximizing local attendance.

Your business may never launch a campaign as big as the VMFA's, but there are plenty of lessons to learn from the museum's campaign, lessons Tarren shared in a July 26 breakfast meeting at the Creative Change Center.

"The evangelists were already on board," Tarren said about the museum's members and longtime supporters. So he focused his efforts on a "younger, tech-savvy crowd" that maybe hadn't ever given the museum a detailed look. He called this crowd the "persuadables."

Because the VFMA carried a slightly stuffy reputation, Tarren said there was a special emphasis on making the exhibit open and friendly. Guards took a more relaxed approach, letting people get as close as they wanted to the art (but not letting them touch it, obviously). The vibe he wanted, Tarren said, was one where people felt comfortable "coming and hanging out. You can't do that when things are really formal."

But the marketing strategy also had to avoid alienating the VMFA "family" of longtime supporters. So Tarren started with traditional ad components, like billboards, street-light hangers and posters.

Then he got creative, striking a partnership with Starbucks that led to posters on the door of each of the coffee giant's stores in Richmond and Williamsburg. These weren't ordinary posters, though. The image of Picasso's face was made entirely of QR codes.

These codes can be scanned by smart phones and send the user to a website – in this case the VMFA's Facebook page about the exhibit. Building an image entirely from QR codes sent a subtle message to "people in the know," Tarren said, primarily the young, tech-savvy "persuadables" he wanted to reach.

Tarren's campaign led to more than 1.2 billion impressions (yes, that's billion with a "b"). And though plenty came through traditional avenues, he said more than 675 million were driven by activity on Facebook and Twitter. The VMFA seeded the social media landscape, then let social networks help carry the torch.

So what's the takeaway for a small business looking to spend $7,500, rather than $750,000? Make sure you keep your loyal evangelists happy, but focus your marketing on those "persuadables," the folks who aren't visiting you now but are open to the right pitch. Find out as much as you can about that group and tailor your advertising to whichever medium they use most. Remember that social media, used correctly, can deliver huge buzz at a low cost.

And if you can display a few pieces by one of the world's most famous artists, that probably wouldn't hurt.


www.workitrichmond.com/2011/07/marketing-picasso-learn-vmfas-lessons/

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Movement in an effort to bring a renewed and revitalized perspective to
Conservative Jews.

We belong to the Conservative Movement and commit ourselves to working
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Wednesday, July 27, 2011

[Shefa] 2d attempt to sent the attachment Prayer for Norway

 

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"Shefa: The Conservative Movement Dreaming from Within" is a forum for
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energy within within the culture and environment of the Conservative
Movement in an effort to bring a renewed and revitalized perspective to
Conservative Jews.

We belong to the Conservative Movement and commit ourselves to working
towards its revitalization. Be a part of this community of visionary
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