After spending a month in Israel this summer in a rabbinical enrichment program, Rabbi Peretz Wolf-Prusan had the chance to share the material he studied much more quickly than he thought he would — or wanted to.
The director of education at San Francisco’s Congregation Emanu-El tackled last month’s terrorist attacks in a recent sermon, utilizing several of the texts he recently studied to point out that extremism exists in all religions.
“It’s very easy to preach about Islam, a religion we barely understand,” he said. “But if we go within our own religion, we can say, ‘Hey, we know these [extremist] voices.'”
Wolf-Prusan noted that one biblical commentator had written that non-Jews studying the Torah are thieves. But the Emanu-El rabbi utilized the writings of Maimonides, an “anti-fundamentalist,” to show how Jews should respond to extremism.
The 12th-century scholar wrote, “It seems to me we should treat resident aliens with the consideration and kindness due to a Jew…” and that everyone has access to God, “not only the tribe of Levi.”
“At Kol Nidre, I had the opportunity to speak to 1,500 people. In my talk, I utilized a good portion of what I had studied this summer from Maimonides in regard to fundamentalism,” said Wolf-Prusan. “Now there’s a direct application. I learned, I came back and I shared.”
Wolf-Prusan and Rabbi Yoel Kahn, scholar-in-residence at San Francisco’s Congregation Sherith Israel, both participated in the new Center for Rabbinic Enrichment program this summer at Jerusalem’s Shalom Hartman Institute, a nondenominational think tank. The Reform rabbis were selected after the S.F.-based Jewish Community Endowment Fund — which has awarded a grant to the Hartman Institute program — sent letters to dozens of Bay Area rabbis.
In addition to studying “shoulder to shoulder” with North American rabbis hailing from all four major movements under the guidance of world-renowned scholar Rabbi David Hartman, starting this fall Kahn and Wolf-Prusan will meet each week for three hours of text study. The pair will also join 16 other rabbis participating in the three-year program for weekly sessions with Hartman via closed-circuit television simulcast.
“We can see him, and he can see all of us. We’ll look like the Brady bunch in little squares,” said Wolf-Prusan with a laugh.
After spending almost all of July in Jerusalem, Kahn said Hartman and other educators at the institute taught him to ask deeper questions about Jewish texts that he thought he already knew well.
“I think one of the things I learned from this study was that our texts are very rarely about what they appear to be on the surface,” said Kahn, a co-founder of Reform Congregation Sha’ar Zahav. “Looking at cases and situations, you learn that Jewish ideas are about much broader social questions.”
Kahn, who teaches a Torah study class in Sherith Israel’s adult education program, said observing the techniques of his instructors has already helped him to become a better teacher.
In addition to a blue ribbon panel of teachers, both Kahn and Wolf-Prusan said the experience was unique because of the diversity of their fellow students.
“It was just different,” said Kahn. “We ran the whole range across the Jewish spectrum from modern Orthodox to the liberal side of Reform, where I always place myself. We had a great deal in common and a great deal of differences.”
Kahn suspected some of his Orthodox colleagues had never before sat down and studied with an openly gay rabbi — or, for that matter, a female rabbi. And Wolf-Prusan pointed out that some of his liberal colleagues had probably never studied with yeshiva bochers.
“That’s a highlight right there. We were all sharing the fruits of different educational programs,” said Wolf-Prusan. “We all got along famously. Any one of us could have studied with anyone else.”
The program may accept as many as 300 North American and European rabbis over the next 10 years.
“The goal is to strengthen the rabbinic community and, in turn, strengthen the Jewish community,” said Mark Reisbaum, director of grants for the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation’s JCEF. “Hopefully, the rabbis will not only have an impact on the institutions they serve but on their peers in the community.”
Reisbaum said program directors are hoping to have “another cadre of rabbis” selected by the beginning of 2002.
Kahn is also thinking about 2002, and beyond.
“I’m looking forward to studying with these people over the next two years.”