The COVID-19 pandemic was the freeway onramp to an era of unrelenting unprecedented times. We are navigating an endless archipelago of crises, hopping from one earth-shattering piece of news to the next. For the American Jewish community, the past 30 months have been doubly fraught as events in Israel, both beyond our reach and outside our control, packed an emotional punch. This onslaught has only been compounded by the unrelenting trend towards villainizing Israel and the Jew. 

Some responses have been powerfully effective at returning a sense of spiritual and/or political control. The masking tape we placed over our hearts, counting the days until our hostages returned. The organizations formed to amplify a unified cry for humanitarianism and peace to reign. And then there is the Big Jewish Letter: the formulaic public missive masquerading as a positive force for collective change, all too often a clunky, fruitless attempt at organized protest.

This is my sixth year as an officer of the Cantors Assembly, the international organization representing the interests of cantors in the Conservative Movement and beyond. We focus on the wellbeing of cantors and invest in the vitality of sacred Jewish music. Cantors are positioned to be visionary and inspirational leaders. As clergy, we have the privilege and responsibility to cry out against injustice. We have been proud to sign on to letters that defend Israel’s right to exist; call upon the government to stamp out hatred; and fight for the healthy future of our planet. But in many instances, the mechanism of the Big Jewish Letter is falling short of its purpose.

It makes sense that the Big Jewish Letters that come to the desks of our executive director and officers are flavored by the organizations that spearheaded the effort. Often, the vocabulary and phrasing that feels on-mission to one organization reads like dog-whistles and political signaling to readers who aren’t aligned with their perspective. Did they use “Occupied Territories” or “settlements”? Did they say “our president” or “the current leadership of this country”? The membership of the CA is fortunate to include a wide swath of worldviews: We are among the most diversely-populated professional organizations in theAmerican Jewish landscape. CA leadership wrestle with knowing that even one word or phrase in a letter may deeply trouble some of our members. 

A Big Jewish Letter is a blunt instrument: we either sign on, or we don’t. When we hesitate to sign a letter, it’s almost never the case that we disagree with the cause. Rather, we recognize that the tone or wording fails to represent even a small subset of our members who would rightfully be upset to see the CA standing behind words that represent ideas to which they are dogmatically opposed.

With due credit to the leadership of the CA and our sister organization in the Reform Movement, the American Conference of Cantors, cantors are currently positioned with the best seat at the global Jewish table we’ve had in all of modern history. Cantors are seen as clergy and equal partners by our movement heads and global Jewish leaders, but we still struggle for recognition at times. When the CA is an afterthought, we get access to a Big Jewish Letter after many movement partners have signed onto the letter. Rarely are we invited to be part of crafting the message, which means we lack the opportunity to suggest changes that would make the message more palatable for our members. The CA does not consider public policy a tentpole of our work, which means that we are all the more considerate and careful about the messages that we do sign or amplify. When we choose to abstain from signing a Big Jewish Letter on nuanced grounds, we risk the perception that we object to the message outright. 

Even when we receive a letter with a decent window for consideration that is constructed in a way we feel invites proper signing-on, our officer corps is opposed to messaging without associated action. We are allergic to “clicktivism,” the pretense that by signing a letter we are doing nearly enough to effect change. It is rarely the case that letters are accompanied by plans of action or invitations to engage with systemic advocacy or protest. We are disappointed that the Jewish community is so eager to write letters entitled “Call to Action” when we ourselves are rarely mobilizing to act. We are responsible to be like Aharon the high priest: ohev shalom v’rodef shalom — to love peace and to pursue it. Without the latter, we are only serving our anxiety. Our task is to serve the Jewish community and to better the world.

As clergy, we’re calling upon our fellow Jewish leaders to properly redirect energies from wordsmithing to rallying and from petitioning to partnering.

This involves partnership in ideating, not just as signatories. When a troubling issue emerges, gather a roundtable to generate a message so that large group messaging starts from a place of collective agreement as to what is at stake and what the call to action ought to be.

It also means changing the paradigm of institutional reaction to one where the letter is a stated first step. By the time a letter is at the stage for gathering signatures, there should be at least one or two avenues to engage in changemaking beyond the letter itself. Publicize rallies, publish phone numbers of officials who can be contacted, propose new policies and so on. Challenge us to go further than standing together. Let’s do better.

Finally, we must be judicious. We are stuck in a perpetual cycle of letter generation. If every Jewish organization holds itself to a standard of minimizing this particular method of messaging, we can winnow these Big Jewish Letters down to the most valuable ones that deserve circulation.

In these unprecedented times, let’s set a new precedent: a higher standard for using the Big Jewish Letter to express intolerance of the intolerable to focus our energy on being more effective rodfei shalom, pursuers of peace.

Rabbi Cantor Hillary Chorny is the cantor at Temple Beth Am in Los Angeles. Her forthcoming book on ritual (Ben Yehuda Press) explores Jewish ritualcraft through the lens of design thinking.