No one would call Rachel Brodie indecisive. But most days she finds herself plugged into a 2,000-year-old argument with no resolution in sight.
“My favorite teaching these days is the longstanding talmudic argument between the school of Shammai and the school of Hillel,” explains Brodie, chief Jewish officer at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco. “When the tradition adjudicates between’ them, it says, ‘Hillel is right and Shammai is right … but the law follows Hillel.’”
This seemingly arcane teaching has practical implication. At the JCC, as at similar institutions, decisions must be made about whether a space should be used for a rental group or a Shabbat program, or whether children in the afterschool program can celebrate Valentine’s Day. “When the decision isn’t clear cut and a mission-consonant Jewish values-driven case could be made to support either ‘side’ then how do you decide?” she asks.
So how does one proceed if all answers might be correct?
“We can debate the relative merits of all kinds of opinions,” Brodie says. “But for all its emphasis on dialogue and debate, ultimately Judaism lives outside the realm of the theoretical. We seek guidance on what to do and how to act in the world.
“What I love is that in the ancient legislative process there was an interest in preserving minority opinions. So if a decision is made at work that goes against your idea of how things should be done, it’s profoundly important for me to stress the legitimacy of the opposition,” she explains. “And not just that. We have to ask how, as an institution and a community, we work together so that those who haven’t gotten their way are respected and feel they still want to work toward the larger goal.”
This dance of opinions reminds me of the famous scene in “Fiddler on the Roof,” when two men are arguing and Tevye says they are both right. An onlooker asks, “How can they both be right?” and Tevye says, “You’re also right!”
As the person most responsible for managing the internal Jewish discussion at the JCC, an institution that must balance programs as diverse as a fitness center and Talmud classes, Brodie finds herself navigating the wide middle ground between what is “permissible” and what is not. But part of what she wants to do at the JCC — and in her work as a teacher and writer in the larger Jewish community — is to question our assumptions about what a dichotomy like permissible/not permissible even means in a contemporary Jewish context.
Part of Brodie’s more theoretical work is helping create language that combines the core ideas of Jewish tradition with today’s zeitgeist. For instance, in an article in the journal Sh’ma written with Rabbi Adina Lewittes, Brodie and Lewittes explored how the biblical language of tamay (pure) and tahor (impure) gave way to the rabbinic language of asur (permitted) and mutar (forbidden), and then to — at least in Brodie and Lewittes’ formulation — keva (set structure) and kavanah (intention).
“We live in the age where kavanah, or the spirit of the law, seems to be the primary factor in determining one’s relationship to tradition. But there are ways in which people continue to relate to keva, or the letter of the law, in much the same way that they might value maintaining a disciplined practice for yoga or in playing an instrument.”
Brodie was happy with this pairing until she talked with a mentor who challenged her to replace keva with reshut, or permission. This dichotomy pits a contemporary understanding of the spirit of the law against the right to change the way it has been practiced in the past.
“He was right,” she says. “Even people who delight in renewing traditions based on their understanding of the kavanah behind them still ask, ‘But will it count?’ Count to whom? Under what circumstances? Whose approval are you looking for?”
Was she upset at how quickly her framework was challenged?
“Dichotomies are a shorthand that allow us to function in the world day-to-day,” she says. “So I adjust, let them play out, and then revisit it all again.”
Dan Schifrin is writer-in-residence at the Contemporary Jewish Museum and co-hosts its podcast series, “The Space Between.”