The next big idea?

The canonist commented recently about Gary Rosenblatt’s recent column, “In Search of the Next Big Jewish Idea.” His main thrust is that there won't be a next big Jewish idea... because there was never a big Jewish idea.
While the Jewish community remains deeply embedded in navel gazing, Jews are exiling themselves from Judaism. I commented briefly on this on Jewschool, pointing out that all the ink spilt, and all the blathering has not yet begun to address the real problem, which is that most Jews are indifferent to Judaism.
It's not that Judaism has nothing to offer, or even that Jews are too intellectually pure to be drawn in by a religion - lots of Jews are attracted to groups like Chabad, which feels authentic and warm, immigrants in Israel and Germany from Russia and former FSU states, are drawn in by fake Jews (i.e J4J etc types) - and if there isn't a stupider version of religion than that, I don't know what is.
No, the problem is that Judaism has gotten stuffy. It's not even the so-called legalism, after all, Reform and Reconstructionist movements don't have to deal with halakha if it isn't working for them, but they too are not succeding in drawing people in. Nope, the problem is that we're snobs.
I don't mean that we're intellectual snobs. The actual problem is that spirituality can't happen in a vacuum. It requires some foundation. In fact, any successful group requires some grounding.
1. There has to be a sense of safety for the participants.
This is a very basic need. If you want to be intimate with a person, you have to trust that they aren't going to betray you. This is true with a group as well; one has to know that when you open yourself to the group, the rules of the group will protect you. In a normal group this can be done in a lot of ways: one can sign a confidentiality agreement; one should make sure that the group starts on time; the moderator should know what the heck they're doing and be able to guide the group towards the ostensible goal.
All this also holds for a spiritual group. If you want people to come and participate, one has to make the space safe. While I don't love to indulge in psychobabble, this is a real problem for us. If it takes faith to open oneself towards another person, or towards a group, how much more it takes to open oneself to the infinite - even to reveal uncynically in this cynical culture we live in that one is willing to take the risk in having relationship with something that many people don't believe in at all - that takes a great risk. And yet, how do our synagogues foster this safety? As far as I can tell we don't.
The groups that - especially in "liberal" movements -come together largely don't know one another. They come to shul to participate in a project that they don't understand, that may not have any meaning for them, with people whom they only see in a setting in which they cannot engage with one another - they might as well be watching a movie for all the interaction they're having with one another. Maybe they'll chat and say hi briefly at the oneg afterwards. If they're lucky, they'll engage over religious school, or some other shul project, but by and large, our congregations don't congregate - we open ourselves to the infinite in a group of strangers, whom we don't know if they will support us, don't know if they even are working towards the same goals.
Moreover, where is our expert moderator? Rabbis in congregations should be willing to undergo that transport to the infinite as well. They should be able to express the emotion proper to the experience, whether it is tears, or laughter, joy or mourning. In truth, though, few of our rabbis do - at least not in any public setting. Our rabbis are trained to be speakers, not leaders. When was the last time you saw your rabbi break down in tears on Yom Kippur or Tisha B'av. And truthfully, deep down many of us don't want our rabbis to have those emotions - because then we might have to have them too. What would it be like to go to a shul where people got "out of control" like that - people laughing and singing with joy; crying, shaking with sorrow? For many of us reared in an intellectual and dry environment of "mumble your words and go home," having one's emotions public would be terribly frightening, and so if we saw a rabbi doing it they would automatically be labelled unprofessional.
I admit it - I wouldn't dare do it myself. Especially as a woman, it would mark me - I wouldn't be able to work, if I worked like that. But let's just suppose I found a congregation in which I was able to cry in front of the kahal and it wasn't the kiss of death. What would that be like? What kind of community might result? What kind of connection to God might we develop?

2. There's another problem, too. The rise of people attracted to what passes for mysticism these days doesn't really come out of a desire for a Jewish experience. As Americans, we're used to being able to act and live purely as individuals with no concern for the spiritual development of others. Chasidut has been, of recent, misread as the Jewish way to do this. It's not true of course, no more than the kabbalah center's magical nonsense has anything to do with kabbalah - or any other Jewish mysticism. Judaism is a challenge to our way of thinking as individuals - it requires us to live not as individuals who have rights, but as communities who have obligations. These living out of obligations have the outcome of giving those "rights," but they aren't the same thing because the emphasis is on my responsibility to see who else is around me and act to ensure that their needs are met, rather than focusing upon myself and demanding that what I am entitled to is provided. There is no entitled in Judaism, there is only obligation. Obligation builds relationship. Relationship opens us to God. Without obligation, we cannot have true Judaism.
So what do we do with the communities we are now building - the independant minyans that form around this age group, or that need, and disband when people are tired of them? Is it possible to redirect our desire to live traditionally and in joy towards a sense of obligation to support the comunity in a relatively traditional way; to support teachers to guide us (rabbis, in other words), to build mikvaot, to write Torahs, and to pay for all the infrastructures that a community needs to exist - and still to build that sense of immediacy and excitement. From where does that momentum come - but equally important, how do we get people to be truly intimate?
True intimacy does not exist where the relationship ends when it ceases to cause anxiety. Dating is fun, the sense of discovery of another; the heart pounding when they indicate their interest in you, too; the newness, the excitement. But high blood pressure only gets you so far - if all that one has is infatuation, it's an immature relationship, and it will end - no marriage will continue to be all highs - people get sick, they get older, they need to earn aliving, sometimes they have children, one needs to live in a world that requires us to be boring sometimes, to learn to tolerate the lack of novelty; part of maturity is to be able both to tolerate regularity and habit, and also to be able to induce excitement and novelty, without destroying the relationship, or going outside it to do so.
This is where we are not so good. We don't need to return to the days of supporting institutions without question, but we should be involved in constant growth, in faithfulness, in the intimacy of the every day. We don't just say brachot on Shabbat - that's not intimacy, it's infatuation.

Finally, we have to also turn our batei knesset into places where the kehila, the congregation, actually congregates. Why should our shuls be models of decorum? I'd rather daven in a shul where people are talking to each other, where the little children are running around yelling -is it hard to concentrate that way? Well, yes, to a certain extent - but if one is a regular, if one knows the service, it becomes less of a problem. And truthfully, a general hubbub can also be a source of quiet mind, if one uses it well.
I would like to see a shul where everything but the Kedushah and the Torah reading is interrupted for a person entering, that a few people will go up and say hello and chat with them, sit with the newcomer, show them more or less where we are in the siddur, offer to explain what that part of the service is about, ask after their kids - whether they know the people or not, whether they've ever been to the shul before or not.
In short, I imagine a shul where we're not so stuffy. Where people use their time there to connect to God, but also to connect to the people around them - even while we're praying.
A shul like that would have plenty of room for God. And more importantly, it would have plenty of room for us.