An initial surge of pride and solidarity after Oct. 7, 2023 has been quickly joined, especially since the 2024 U.S. election, by the realization that we do not all see the world the same — that what is a solution to one is a problem to another. Resentment, fear and vulnerability are rising, and congregational rabbis and presidents are feeling the push and pull of these emotional currents (though they are not the only ones) as Jews of different persuasions try to share the same communal space.

We are at a crossroads. We can circle the wagons and live inside ever smaller circles of moral certainty, or we can renew our Jewish commitment to pluralistic community. As Yehuda Kurtzer has written previously, pluralism became the dominant commitment of American Jewish life beginning in the 1980s “as a means for the American Jewish community to address what many perceived then as its existential challenges. … [I]t was grounded in a commitment to radical interpersonal seeing of the other, and … as an instrument to building religious community premised on lovingkindness.” 

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Only by renewing this commitment in concrete ways will new paths be found to address the unprecedented challenges we are facing today. 

A commitment to pluralistic community asks of us deep humility as well as comfort with cognitive and moral uncertainty. It denies absolute certainties, and yet too often it achieves this by suppressing any differences, asking people to homogenize their opinions. 

This is a distortion of the path. Pluralistic communities need to be concerned with justice, not just getting along. They need to matter in our moral life. And they can, if we can stoke a passion for living in actual communities with all their messy and difficult diversity. As Judith Plaskow wrote back in 1991, the place to begin transforming Jewish life so that all Jews feel they belong is to confront and elevate “the place of difference in community.”

To live in pluralistic community is to embrace a moral passion for encountering each and every person, in their equality, uniqueness and infinite value. It involves radical hospitality, as the house of the community belongs to everyone. Moreover, it is to do the work of justice by ensuring that the political, economic, and social conditions exist whereby each and every individual in the community, and by moral extension beyond, can flourish. 

The commitment to pluralistic community still abides. This is particularly true in small towns across America — communities where a single congregation, supported and guided by Center for Small Town Jewish Life, serves Jews of all stripes. 

Leading pluralistic communities calls upon us to open ourselves to the feelings and perspectives of others, even though we ourselves feel vulnerable, and to guide our members through the difficult process of adapting to changing circumstances. To open ourselves to dialogue with another does not mean we agree with their viewpoint. It only asks us to see them as unique and equally valuable beings created b’tzelem Elohim (in the image of the Divine). With humility, we seek to understand our differences, find common ground and turn a dispute into a mahkloket l‘shem shamayim (an argument for the sake of Heaven). 

Many of our congregants, students or donors feel comfortably ensconced in what has been the status quo, yet our institutions need to adapt to changing circumstances to survive and eventually thrive. As Jews, we became a people through the brit (covenant) at Sinai. Today, institutional leaders can offer their community a renewed brit, which provides an inspiring vision, acknowledges the loss that change naturally brings, and sets forth the obligations we have to one another in pluralistic community. The promises we make to one another form the fertile ground upon which the promise of community can be realized. 

Ultimately, it is through the crucible of differences explored, grounded in the commitment to pluralistic community, that we will discover newfound paths to walk together into a vibrant Jewish future.

Having spent five years guiding and supporting leaders of all types from diverse corners of the greater Baltimore Jewish community, I know cultivating leadership committed to pluralistic community, with the requisite skills to realize it, is not easy to achieve. To guide professionals and lay leaders to realize their potential as communal leaders, four things are fundamental, all of which were hallmarks of our leadership cohorts at Na’aleh:

First is the opportunity to retreat from everyday concerns and responsibilities. This gives them time to reframe their understanding of leadership as a practice that requires discipline and continued learning from efforts that have missed the mark. Moreover, many come from the corporate world where they have the authority to control others’ behaviors. This is not the case in our religious and nonprofit Jewish institutions where all we have is the influence of our well-crafted words and personal example to bring forth change. 

Second, leaders need other leaders to support them emotionally to help them reflect and share their own hard-earned, practical wisdom. 

Third, leaders need to see the path ahead. In facilitating leadership cohorts, I have learned how vital it is to shine a light on newfound paths that participants have discovered in their own institutions or that emerge from the conversations among them. 

Finally, in these communal leadership programs, current and potential leaders can experience a taste of pluralistic community and through reflection on their own participation develop the virtues and skills they will need to lead their own institutions forward.

The Talmud (Gittin 55b) shares the story of Kamtza and bar Kamtza to explain why Jerusalem was destroyed. In essence, a certain man instructed his servant to invite his friend Kamtza to a feast, but the servant mistakenly invited the host’s enemy, bar Kamtza, instead. When the host walked into the feast and saw bar Kamtza sitting there, he insisted he leave. So as not to be embarrassed, bar Kamtza offered to pay for the feast as long as he could stay; but the host refused and escorted him out. Later, bar Kamtza, upset that the sages at the feast did not protest the behavior of the host, instigated the Romans to attack the Jewish community.

Imagine an alternative path in which the host exclaims that despite their well-known enmity he is going to extend his hospitality and bar Kamtza in turn publicly accepts, demonstrating his humility. Through embodying core virtues of living in pluralistic community, they could have led the Jewish people toward a revitalized future. 

Today, the future is in our hands. How will we lead?Bill Robinson was the founding executive director of Na’aleh: the Hub for Leadership Learning and is now the director of national leadership initiatives at the Center for Small Town Jewish Life.