Zvika Klein
Jerusalem Post, Apr. 20, 2022
“The issue of streams in Judaism isn’t relevant anymore,” Yeshiva University president Rabbi Dr. Ari Berman told me in an interview in a Jerusalem hotel lobby, days before Passover.
Berman informed me that the terms I’ve been using aren’t relevant to modern Jewish life in the Diaspora. “I don’t really do the whole streams thing. I think the world is shifting and there’s a much bigger way of thinking about American Judaism or the shifts in denominations.”
OK, so what is this shift?
Meaning, we’re looking at the trends and things are shifting. We’re not stuck in the same kinds of denominationalism that you know, one has seen from the 19th century into the 20th century. The demographics are shifting and there’s a lot of room in the centrists camp to grow and it’s not the same denominations in the same narrow boxes in that socio way.
In a way this sounds like a piece that my friend Liel Leibovitz wrote in Tablet Magazine, “Us and Them”; meaning that there is the pro-Israel, pro-tradition group in American Judaism and there is the progressive camp.
One hundred percent. I’m saying Liel Leibovitz is an amazing Israeli American. He’s an example: he was secular in Israel and now is religious in the United States. All of these categories don’t really describe the future. And we need to be preparing for a different way of defining Judaism.
“So in the upcoming years, I would be looking at the demographics of the next 20 to 30 to 40 years. It’s clear that, at the moment, Orthodoxy is growing. Forty years from now, the largest denomination in the US will be Orthodoxy. And that means we need to be thinking about that. We need to be thinking about the implications of that for our policies in terms of trying to bring in the next generation of children who don’t identify with Orthodoxy.
Berman noted, “I’ve been thinking about them in terms of the centrist’s camp to polish our jewels. Like how do we invest in those in our center group to be leaders, to bridge the Jewish people together?”
What is this centrist group?
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