Evolution is essential to Judaism, CLAL chief says here

"I'm not really very religious."

Rabbi Irwin Kula sat back in his rolling chair and shook his head vigorously as he reminisced about this recent disclaimer delivered by a Virginia ophthalmologist.

"They all start [the conversation] that way," Kula said. "They start saying, 'I'm not religious,' and then they proceed to tell me their Jewish story."

Kula, president of CLAL-National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership in New York, leaned forward, put both hands firmly on the table before him and relayed the ophthalmologist's story during an interview in San Francisco last week.

"This man -- this 'not very religious' man -- told me that he used to travel to the former Soviet Union and give free eye exams to people who needed them."

Banging his fist on the table, Kula continued. "For 1,800 years, men have said the morning Borchu -- 'Praised are you, oh God, who opens up the eyes of the blind.'

"The ophthalmologist gave these people sight," said Kula. "And in his wildest dreams he didn't realize his actions epitomized Judaism."

A leading supporter of Jewish pluralism, the 42-year-old rabbi was ordained by the Conservative movement's Jewish Theological Seminary and also studied with Rabbi Irving "Yitz" Greenberg, founder and president emeritus of CLAL. The Web site of the organization is http://www.clal.org.

Kula, who has appeared on "Oprah," was in the Bay Area to participate in a seminar on security issues.

Turning to one of his own hot-button issues, the rabbi voiced concern about Jews who are lost in the shuffle because of the staunch "definition of Judaism" employed by many religious leaders.

"No one can define your inner world, and yet we [in America] have a Jewish community that tries to define the external image of a Jew," he said. "What makes us Jewish is the life process, not the product -- if our experience acts as a marker of Jewishness to us, then it is a Jewish act."

For instance, if a Jew doesn't eat shrimp but decides to eat pork, it won't make the person "less Jewish," he said. "In fact, it's even more significant because they're making a choice...rather than growing up completely kosher and never making a choice about it."

Kula said CLAL's goal, and his own mission, is to re-imagine Jewish identity as a pluralistic and diverse model that breaks traditional paradigms on what "makes someone Jewish."

"We may be one Jewish people," he said, "but we have many voices. Many, many, many, many, many voices. We have an unbelievable opportunity to help tradition understand itself more deeply through each individual voice and experience."

Judaism, he added, morphs with time and the future of the Jewish people depends on such evolution.

Kula cited Chassidism, Zionism and the Reform movement as examples. All, he said, were at one time seemingly "discontinuous movements." But "in terms of Judaism, they turned out to be central to continuity."

"If we've learned anything," he said," it's that in the face of discontinuity, the most important thing is to promote it."

Shabbat was originally a moon festival that had, over the years, "morphed and reconfigured into what we know it as today," he said.

"Every single Jewish tradition was, at some point, an innovation. We lived without it at some point.

"Tradition grows in an organic way -- you can't stop that," he added. "If you try to stop it, most of the creative people who are Jewish will want to have nothing to do with it. They'll feel there is no compelling reason to stay involved."

Yet many Jews resist change and become insular, because of continued fear of persecution, generated by Jewish history; a fear of erosion, due to intermarriage and assimilation; and a fear that Judaism will fail to transmit to the next generation.

None of these, however, should be seen as threats, he proclaimed with a resounding slap to his forehead.

"Jews are not vulnerable anymore --we are not victims," he said. "We have power, freedom and affluence. We need to move past this victim mentality.

"When the context is fear, you've got to huddle together -- and thank God we did. But, now, when abundance is the context, when freedom is the context, we need to take a deep breath, argue more, experiment and fail more, be creative. Fear constricts the imagination."

Kula criticized those who denounce intermarriage as a leading threat to Judaism. He said that a "dirty secret in American Jewish life" is that intermarried Jews are denounced, while assimilated, married Jews are not. Neither should be, he added.

"When a Jew is intermarried with a non-Jew, they have to ask each other fundamental Jewish questions just by coming from that situation," he said. "They'll have richer, deeper conversations about the meaning of Christmas vs. Chanukah, for example, than two assimilated Jews. Assimilated Jews probably won't ever even have any Jewish questions."

Kula clenched his fists and his teeth, took a deep breath and called the condemnation of intermarried Jews "b______t."

As for transmission to the next generation of Jews, he said: "It's hard for a kid not to want to be like his or her parents. Parents need to give their children the freedom to explore. We do, after all, live in the information age -- let them get as much as they need at this time in their life."

And once this allowance is made, Kula said people will embrace Judaism with all their hearts.

"Is our vision a world of people with wisdom that bring their ideas to a marketplace of ideals or a private family with private ideas, tunes, recipes, obsessed with transmission?" he asked. "It's all a matter of perspective. We can look out and say Judaism is eroding -- but that's a death spiral.

"Or we can look out and realize Judaism is flourishing -- and chill on the obsession with intermarriage, assimilation, transmission and the new Holocaust. That's only one scenario.

"If you want to be an interesting community you need to offer alternative futures."