Too Late for Pluralism—or Too Early?

Benay Lappe

A Response to What Happened to Jewish Pluralism? by Yehuda Kurtzer (Sources, Spring 2021)

We’ve all watched enough hospital shows on TV to know that when an accident victim is wheeled into the emergency room and goes into cardiac arrest, the ER doc immediately gathers the team to get the patient’s heart beating again. Imagine that the doctor had instead casually noted the cardiac arrest and then moved on to evaluate the patient for other, more minor, injuries—broken bones? lacerations? contusions? The patient would certainly die and the doctor sanctioned for malpractice.

Yehuda Kurtzer’s treatment of pluralism is thought-provoking and a valuable beginning to an important communal reckoning. Yet his approach to pluralism seems to suffer from a tendency to view its pros and cons as a list of items of equal value, rather than the reality that what we call “pluralism” may very well offer a selection of positives on one side of the ledger that are outweighed by cardiac arrest on the other. Kurtzer makes reference to Rebecca Traister’s and others’ power critique of pluralism—that pluralist spaces tend to privilege those with the most power (Jewishly well-educated, Orthodox, white, heterosexual, cisgender, able-bodied, Ashkenazi, male) at the expense of everyone downstream, even if this is unintentional—which is precisely at the center of what’s wrong with pluralist spaces. This intersectional critique is and should be fatal to pluralism as it has been understood in the Jewish community. If pluralist spaces harbor those who deny or fail to see the full personhood of others in their space, then this is hardly a pluralism that can be expected to—or should—survive.

A pluralism that looks and feels enchanting to someone in the center of the power bullseye is alienating and oppressive to everyone else. Many Hillels think that pluralism means having a building in which women can sometimes lead the kiddush. But for many of us, the notion that this is even a question is so alienating that it feels like erasure. And while everyone in a pluralist space signs on knowing there will be some discomfort, to compare the discomfort that a straight Orthodox cis man feels when a woman leads the kiddush with the discomfort that a woman or other gender-marginalized folks might feel in that space is to fail to understand the cost of pluralism or to appreciate with whose bodies it is being paid. It is precisely this kind of impoverished pluralism that has begotten its equally problematic offspring —“inclusion”—which is destined to fail for the same reasons.

“Pluralism can and should create radical educational environments,” Kurtzer claims. But pluralism can’t create these radical educational environments; it requires them. For pluralism to be healthy, it requires a surrounding ecosystem of affinity spaces where the thick, powerful Torah that will enrich us all can be developed, and then brought back into future coalition spaces to be shared, refined, and sharpened.

Dan Libenson, founder and president of the Institute for the Next Jewish Future, has often reminded me that after the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, Yavneh was likely a coalition space that thrived only because its members also had their own yeshivas—in essence their own affinity spaces—at Lod, Sepphoris, Tiberias, Bnei Brak, Peki'in, and elsewhere. Today, in this not-quite-Yavneh moment in Jewish history, our focus should be not so much on our coming-together spaces just yet, nor in prematurely resuscitating what will inevitably continue to be an oppressive pluralism, but on investing in the affinity spaces from which the rich Torah that comes out will be brought to these coalition spaces of the future.

Those of us who felt erased in pluralist spaces (and that’s the vast majority of the Jewish community!) have moved on. We no longer need to settle. We’ve found one another, gathered in numbers, and are now creating new centers. We are regrouping in affinity spaces which are growing at an exponential rate, spaces where we have strengthened our voices and gained the confidence and expertise to transform the insights of our lived life experiences into the Torah that we all actually need. Unlike the pseudo-pluralist spaces which succumbed to those fatal cardiac arrests, and in many ways thanks to their demise, these spaces are about something, stand for something, are clear and transparent about their values, and are spaces around which compelling, exciting, and inspiring Jewish communities have formed.

Standing as I do in the midst of one of these spaces at SVARA, a traditionally radical yeshiva dedicated to the serious study of Talmud through the lens of queer experiences, I can attest to their power and the extent to which the Jewish future will be—and is already being—shaped by its members. Somewhere between one-third and one-half of Gen Z identify as queer. With compelling queer-inflected Jewish spaces available to them in the new center, there is one thing we can already say about the Jewish future: if the next generation is going to show up for it—and it will only survive if they do—then that Jewish future is going to be very queer. It will center uncompromising values of feminism, Black liberation, disability justice, gender justice, rejecting heteronormativity, and a culture and worldview that do not negotiate on their commitments to equity, justice, and the undermining of oppressive systems.

We have already formed a vibrant (if still loose) coalition of Jewish spaces and communities that align in deep ways. Whether we are learning Talmud, farming, singing, meditating, davening, or protesting as our primary Jewish spiritual practices, we are aligned in laying down the foundation stones of Judaism 3.0. Again, it will be a Judaism that is founded on feminism, Black liberation, disability justice, gender justice, rejecting heteronormativity, and a culture and worldview that do not negotiate on their commitments to equity, justice, and the undermining of oppressive systems. And it will be shaped by those committed to what was always at the very healthy heart of pluralism: a willingness to hold our truths lightly.

Rabbi Benay Lappe is founder and Rosh Yeshiva of SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva.