According to Rabbi Ben Spratt, if you look around the American Jewish landscape, some organizations and institutions seem stuck, petrified of making big and needed changes. On the horizon, he views an American Jewish future that is able to break this stagnation as he places Jewish educators and Jewish education at the center of this seismic and necessary shift. What led Rabbi Spratt to this revelation? Why are Jewish educators uniquely suited for this moment? Listen to find out.
According to Rabbi Ben Spratt, if you look around the American Jewish landscape, some organizations and institutions seem stuck, petrified of making big and needed changes. On the horizon, he views an American Jewish future that is able to break this stagnation as he places Jewish educators and Jewish education at the center of this seismic and necessary shift. What led Rabbi Spratt to this revelation? Why are Jewish educators uniquely suited for this moment? Listen to find out.
Check out Rabbi Spratt's new book, Awakenings: American Jewish Transformations in Identity, Leadership, and Belonging, co-authored with Rabbi Joshua Stanton.
This episode was produced by Dina Nusnbaum and Gabriel Weinstein. The show’s executive producers are David Bryfman, Karen Cummins, and Nessa Liben. This episode was engineered and edited by Nathan J. Vaughan of NJV Media. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a 5-star rating on Apple Podcasts or even better, share it with a friend. Be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts and be the first to know when new episodes are released.
To learn more about The Jewish Education Project visit jewishedproject.org where you can find links to our Jewish Educator Portal and learn more about our mission, history, and staff. We are a proud partner of UJA-Federation of New York.
[00:00:00.160] - David Bryfman
Hello everybody. Its the beginning of September 2022 and we're recording today's session with Rabbi Ben Spratt from Rodeph Shoalom Congregation here in New York City. I met Ben on a webinar meeting a couple of months ago and I was really, really intrigued by what he had to say. And when I heard that he was writing a book called Awakenings, I needed to read it and then knew straight away that I had to bring him to all of you. Ben is a really thoughtful rabbi who leading a couple of Jewish educational institutions. But the messages that he brings about the stagnation, what he calls the petrification of the Jewish community over so many decades, he believes it's actually leading to the downfall in many ways of the Jewish community and Jewish Education as well. And what might seem as a pessimistic, a really, really downward way of looking at what's happening in the Jewish world. He flips it and he flips it in a really interesting way, which I think provides the inspiration for today's call that if we acknowledge where we've come from, we're able to turn it around because the Jewish people out there are yearning for something different.
[00:00:58.410] - David Bryfman
Look, he puts out a real challenge to all of us, all of us who care so deeply about the Jewish community in Jewish education. This is one of those episodes where it's a real wake up call to the Jewish world which basically says that if we let it go as is, the downward spiral is inevitable. And yet we do have the capacity to turn it around if we want to. So please listen in and enjoy today's conversation as much as I do and you'll be inspired, I think, at the end of it, to really be part of the turning around and the future of the Jewish community.
[00:01:26.810] - David Bryfman
This is Adapting: The Future of Jewish Education, a podcast from The Jewish Education Project where we explore the big questions, challenges and successes that define Jewish education. I'm David Bryfman.
[00:01:43.090] - David Bryfman
Hi everybody, and welcome to today's episode of Adapting. It's great to be here with my guest, Rabbi Benjamin Spratt, and we're going to have a really interesting conversation, partly based on a book that he has written, partly based on some of the other wonderful things that he is doing in his life. Rabbi Spratt is the senior rabbi of Congregation Rodeph Sholom here in New York City and is the co-author of this new book, awakenings American Jewish Transformations in Identity, Leadership and Belonging, which he coauthored with Rabbi Joshua Stanton.
[00:02:10.800] - David Bryfman
In the book, they analyze a whole lot of forces that have caused American Jewish institutions to do what they do today and also propose new ways for them to be working in the future. It's one of the reasons why I really wanted to have Ben on today's program, because I think this is one of the situations that I referred to early on in this series where you can look at American Jewish life today as being half full or half empty and this book sort of does a bit of both. And now we're going to try and get beyond the cover and the title of Awakenings to have a look at what's going on in Ben's mind as he wrote this book with his co author. So welcome to today's episode, Ben.
[00:02:45.220] - Rabbi Benjamin Spratt
Wonderful. Thank you so much David. Such an honor and a gift and very grateful for your leadership.
[00:02:49.570] - David Bryfman
Thank you. And let's just talk about the origins of this book. So what would motivate a rabbi who's got a really nice comfortable job to do something which is sort of like disrupt the status quo a bit and coauthored a book called Awakenings?
[00:03:01.660] - Rabbi Benjamin Spratt
So it may be point, I guess, to a little bit of my own idiocy, but I will say the nature of this actually comes from some learning that's naturally bubbled up over the years. So Josh Stanton and I have been hevruta partners, have been learning partners and dear friends for many years. We've had the chance to be building things on the side that centered around listening to the needs of others. About ten years ago we started listening to people coming back from college, 20 something year olds who are here in New York City and hearing the pain and the struggle they had finding place of belonging. And that led us to bring some curiosity. As we started to hear more about their needs. It let us see the mismatch between the needs of this rising generation and what our jobs and our professions were actually offering and that actually planted the seed for what would end up growing, I think with COVID and suddenly the veil being ripped away, we got to see some of the inefficiency of the American Jewish world saying that pretty much every synagogue and every rabbi that looks and sounds like me were pretty much doing the same thing.
[00:04:00.330] - Rabbi Benjamin Spratt
And that really finally propelled us to say, you know what, maybe we need to dig a little deeper, maybe we need to see what else is going on right now and see if we could tell the story of this time of change.
[00:04:09.520] - David Bryfman
So it's an interesting concept in terms of we've been speaking about it quite a lot here at work and also on the podcast that the pandemic sucked. It was just really bad for everybody. Yet in terms of the Jewish ecosystem, it didn't really create new problems. It might have just given us time to pause, think and reflect, maybe even exacerbate problems which were preexisting before. And now maybe we have a breath of fresh air, literally and figuratively to come out doing things differently. Although I've got a suspicion that you might be hinting at that if we don't consciously or intentionally do something differently, we're going to revert exactly back to the way things were, which may not have been so great in that place to be as well.
[00:04:45.780] - Rabbi Benjamin Spratt
Exactly. I think we get to see illustrations of this all over the place. But we tend to, in the American Jewish world be quite obsessed with our lack of most telling of Jewish history. You know, the perpetual death, destruction, being on the brink of annihilation. And by the way, for good reason. For anyone who has studied a little bit of Jewish history, however, the way that it drums up supports today is in some ways really problematic. Nothing fills the synagogue like a horrific act of antisemitism. And I think some of that is because it really triggers this Jewish psyche that we have a strong survival mechanism in our spirits. It's part of why we can look 4000 years later and see through all of those challenges, through all of those moments of being on the brink we've always survived. But there's a bigger and more complex story and I think that's some of what is maybe starting to come to the fore is we're starting to see that synagogues like mine that have been blessed with great stability, have really sat worshiping nostalgia. I get that. I think change is hard. And I think when we look at a place of comfort, it's a place where we come to expect a sense of familiarity.
[00:05:48.790] - Rabbi Benjamin Spratt
And when we don't feel that, we don't feel a sense of belonging. And so the resistance to the Jewish world is because fundamentally what most synagogues have been doing is, I think, delivering the sense that in a world that is often oppositional, often frightening and terrifying, this can be the bastion of security and identity. And therefore we create a sense of continuity. When we worship continuity and when we say that that continuity is our primary driving purpose and any shift away from that is a sense of threat, then unfortunately what we end up doing is we miss the mark of why these institutions were created in the first place. And that really was to serve the needs of people. And I think to zero in, in a way that maybe you can relate to given your leadership and your work. Often when we look at Jewish education, I will speak for my own upbringing and things. Much of what that focus was on was about injecting into my own brain enough information and a sense of identity that matched up with a prior generation's understanding of what's the knowledge and the identity that's necessary. And that's good for the narrative of continuity.
[00:06:47.790] - Rabbi Benjamin Spratt
The challenge is that's a very different notion than suggesting well, what is the purpose of Jewish education? To help me see that Jewish education is motivating my own ability to thrive. And if religious school or Jewish education as a whole was knocking it out of the park, I think what we would find actually is no need for The Jewish Education Project. Think what we would find actually is the bloom of many new Jewish organizations that are focused on Jewish learning and wisdom wouldn't be necessary. And the reason why they are is because fundamentally, if our only purpose is simply continuity and survival, then we have taken a dynamic world wisdom and we have reduced it into something that really is just about curating a museum. For me personally, I believe our secret text, I go back to our Torah and our technologies of Jewish learning. These are dynamic tools that can help people become wiser, help build community, and help address some of the deepest challenges of today.
[00:07:40.710] - David Bryfman
So we'll get there. But I don't want to let you off the hook completely because I already hear a whole lot of people who are listening to this podcast already sending me these emails, like, you haven't heard about the Tree of Life and Coleyvillle, like they're out to get us. Like, this is exactly the moment in time where we should be hunkering down, and you're sounding like you're almost dismissing this hatred in this antisemitism in the world, so it's actually not, so it shouldn't be the all encompassing of the powerful motivating force. Am I reading you right or are you acknowledging this is a bit of both happening at the same time?
[00:08:11.190] - Rabbi Benjamin Spratt
I think a bit of both. I think Josh and I are saying that the story is just a little bit more complicated than the way it's often told. There is rising antisemitism. There is very good reason for why here at Rodef Sholom, we spend a tremendous amount of money on security detail and on protocols. And by the way, I think that's a whole conversation we could have about what does it mean that our bastions of sanctuary have had to become fortresses? But the story is a little bit more complicated than simply just more and more people hate us because for the past over 14 years, in the Pew Studies of American Religion, Jews are the most, well like, religious group in America. Now, I don't know any Jewish organizations that are leading with that on the front page. We also just had four Jews run for president in the last presidential election. When we look at all the campaign dollars that were raised in 2020, half of Democratic campaign dollars raised came from American Jews. A quarter of all Republican campaign dollars raised came from American Jews. When we look at some of the driving purpose of American Judaism a century ago, it was about access.
[00:09:11.790] - Rabbi Benjamin Spratt
It was about acceptance, it was about affluence. And when we look at where we are right now, yes, there is rising antisemitism, but also we can't ignore the fact that we have achieved more than prior generations could have ever imagined. So, Josh and I really just inviting us into what happens if we complicate the story a little bit. What if we say that, yes, many people hate us more, and also many people love us more? That when you look at almost every major center of academic learning in the country. There's now a Jewish Studies department. Century ago, there were almost zero Jewish day schools. Now we have almost 800 of them around the country. So for me, this is telling a story that is just more complicated than American Jews and being in decline and everyone seeking to destroy us.
[00:09:53.920] - David Bryfman
In the book and in conversation with you, you talk a lot about Jewish institutions. You've referred to them there. And here you've got this interesting piece in the book where you basically don't really talk much about the existing so called legacy organizations and what they're not doing. But you do spend a lot of time talking about what you perceive to be bright, innovative new organizations on the horizon. So you're sort of like implicitly saying that if legacy institutions remain status quo as they have for the last 500 years future, not so great for them. There's this new startup horizon, it's looking good. And then you come up with the big zinger at the end where you say, hang on a second. This dichotomy between legacy and startup is basically a fallacy anyway, and what's really needed is to bridge these two together. So I want to hear from you when you're talking about legacy institutions, Rodeph Sholom being one, the Jewish Education Project, or The Bureau of Jewish Education really being one, and this whole start up culture in this innovation sector that you're also talking about.
[00:10:52.010] - Rabbi Benjamin Spratt
Absolutely. I think that the oppositional nature here is kind of missing the mark. If we look into other industries, we get to see that other industries have learned that corporate centers of power need to have R & D departments. And some of the most successful examples of those have independent research and development departments. So that the current value proposition isn't leading and guiding actually what is ultimately going to upend what the company's put forward. And so you could look at Intel or you could look at Xerox or countless companies that have done this. And I think part of what we're suggesting is when we look at some of the startups, the startups are almost invariably started by people who are listening to those on the margins, whose needs are not being met by Congregation Rodeph Sholom, or other synagogues around the country. And when we look at the arc of Jewish history, we've seen this pendulum again and again. Wisdom and innovation comes from the margins, comes from the people whose needs aren't being met. And when we are bold enough and when we listen deeply enough, we come to see that actually those who are crying out, those who are not walking into our centers of belonging, actually are the ones who are pointing the way towards what will come next.
[00:11:55.930] - Rabbi Benjamin Spratt
And when they create this new structure around this need, there inevitably come challenges, challenges of resource, challenges of kind of the backend realities of how you run an organization, staffing up personnel and things like this. What would it be for 180 year old congregation like Rodeph Sholom to look at these startups as being petri dishes? The experiments in which the new ideas of what will define community exist? What if we could provide resource backend infrastructure and they could be the ones to provide some of this experimentation? And as ideas mature, we bring them into the fold and the cycle continues. Who are the voices people are hearing today? A generation ago was only people who looked and sounded like me. And some of the brightest lights of the American Jewish world right now are starting to be a little more diverse than that, bringing new perspective, new identity to the fore. It challenges what we think of as being authentic, but it also blooms with the sense that we're going to do this again. The future of American Jews, I think, is bright.
[00:12:48.330] - David Bryfman
This is why when I'm reading your book, I'm sort of saying to myself, like, what the heck is this guy doing? Right? In some ways you're almost saying that congregations as they currently stand, and I think the standpoint here is important because a lot of congregations sit on a lot of physical property and a lot of real estate value here as well. You're almost saying, like, if you maintain the way you were doing business for the last, I don't know, 100 years, 180 years, and you've got no chance of succeeding, I mean, the numbers are just saying that your decline is inevitable. However, if you read this book and you wake up to the new reality, maybe you've got a chance to turn it around. Are institutions like yours capable of turning it around? Or is there so much inertia or petrification in there that we have to start from scratch?
[00:13:30.870] - Rabbi Benjamin Spratt
So maybe I give too much credit to synagogues, but I actually think that synagogues are poised to be an essential and vital part of the future of the American Jewish ecosystem. And some of how I get there is looking at some of the limitations in the American Jewish ecosystem. A lot of it comes down to economics. When there are fewer people joining synagogues, there are fewer dollars going to hold the synagogues up. The rising cost of infrastructure, of healthcare and myriad other needs to hold the synagogue together means that resources are limited. Rabbis now cost a huge amount of money. And my job, my profession, is predicated on people feeling like I need it necessary for authentic Jewish experience. It's great for my job security, but I think it's actually terrible for the future of American Judaism. We go back 40 years. Over 70% of American Jews belong to a synagogue. Now, that number hovers at just over 30%. At the same time, 94% of American Jews feel proud of being Jewish, which suggests people are finding ways of feeling proud of their Jewish identity and having Jewish experience. They don't require synagogues. So we can one move is synagogues will become a niche market and simply just keep the same melody of Aveinu Malkeinu going on into perpetuity.
[00:14:42.970] - Rabbi Benjamin Spratt
Or it may be that synagogues see themselves as a necessary part of the future ecosystem and see that these organizations were created to meet people's needs. If we listen to the needs and focus on the trends of the time and recenter on the people, I think we've got a right future. And I actually think that many rabbis around the country are very aware of the fact that transformations and changes are underway. Many of them who have had decades of experience under their belt have been able to see that the way that they rabbi has had to change over time. We've also started to see that the assumption of pulpit being the only way to be a rabbi in this country, that is starting to be a little more complicated. People are aware of chaplaincy, pastoral projects. People are aware of running nonprofits. It's far less the idea of rabbi a superhero or rabbi is the one who conveys the essential meaning of The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal or the rabbi who is actually the prophet of justice. And so many colleagues and I think more and more over time are going to see the most important thing we can do is to walk out of our bastions, sit with the people who aren't walking in, hear about their lives and hear what's fulfilling them in their lives and ask the question what could judaic provide to meet those needs, the futures of the Jewish community?
[00:15:49.000] - Rabbi Benjamin Spratt
I think it's going to be much more central on educators, to be quite honest. I look at other professions, you know, so if we look at engineering, for example, there's a big difference between a chemical engineer, between a quantum physics engineer, between a civil engineer and those specializations I actually think are really important. They are all fundamentally looking at a similar toolkit but looking at how to manifest it in very different sectors. And I think that actually is kind of the brilliance of the mindset of an educator. An educator today, the best practice of education is not simply looking at how do I inject a pre-subscribed amount of information to a kid's brain, but how do I sit with a child and ask what does it take for this child to grow? How can I help them thrive? How can I give them the tools of curiosity so they can bring inquiry and continue a lifelong path of learning? And that to me is, I think, the exciting future of the rabbinate of the cantorate, is really how do we come more centered on the philosophy of educators and see that maybe, just maybe, that is actually the thing that Judaism can bring most to the challenges and needs of America today.
[00:16:48.190] - David Bryfman
All right, so you're making me feel good. I'm sure you're making many of our listeners feel good here as well. They are all connected to education in some form or another. But here's what I feel over the last two years and beyond, right. Jewish educators are the least valued underpaid, most overworked, stressed out. What you're saying is not reality. You're asking for a shift here. And I guess the question is, how is the shift possible? But I want to contextualize this because it's important for our listeners to know. And I'm not sure if you are unique here. But you're certainly one of very few. If not unique that Rabbi Spratt at Rodeph Sholom has both a day school and a congregational school attached to the institution that he's working for. Which is very unusual in the non-Orthodox world and maybe in the Jewish world at large. So you know education from a broad perspective here. So I'm wondering, are you just, like, throwing us all a bone here as Jewish educators? And what do you think is really possible to bring about the transformation you're talking about?
[00:17:40.950] - Rabbi Benjamin Spratt
No, definitely not just throwing a bone. I think genuinely, when I think about the people that I have learned the most from, especially from the beginning of a bidding school to today, it actually has been master educators. It has been looking at the faculty of our day school and of our religious school and seeing the way in which somehow they naturally are intuitive into the core of what is this all about? That when I see an educator is taking the time, even though they're paid only 10 hours a week for their time, they're taking the time to see a student that's struggling and sit to them and bring curiosity to them and see that this is an opportunity to figure out a new toolkit of how to reach them. That, to me, is the mindset that I actually didn't see much of when I was in rabbinic school, and I don't see much of amongst many of my rabbinic peers. It's not because of any lacking of brilliance or wisdom. It's simply a different orientation. I was raised and trained to see that the purpose of the rabbi was to be the curator, the holder of the sacred wisdom tradition, to keep the continuity of Jewish vibrancy alive.
[00:18:37.140] - Rabbi Benjamin Spratt
But most of the best educators I know are bringing a very different question, which is, what does it take for a person to thrive? And that was a shocking idea for me, is because I thought a good educator should be asking, okay, what's the best pedagogy for teaching? But fundamentally, the best educators are going much more to this universal core idea of my purpose is for this person to have a lifelong journey where professionally and personally, as a civic citizen in the world that they're knitted into other people. I need to help them with values. I need to help them with self identity. I need to help them with intelligence, and knowing how to ask the right questions. So what is missing in the Jewish world today? We have a Jewish organizational world that is largely centered on a purpose that has already been largely met and fulfilled. And I look at educators where it is a purpose that is never going to be fulfilled, because every person is different, and every person needs different tools in order to thrive. So that's where I see really the verdant green landscape ahead.
[00:19:30.580] - David Bryfman
So I'm interested because I use the word thriving a lot in some of our work as well. And can you just drill down for me? Like, when you're walking down the corridors of your building and you see kids in a thriving environment, just describe, what does it look like when you see it actually taking place?
[00:19:44.190] - Rabbi Benjamin Spratt
So, I'll give you a great example. And again, I feel very blessed because both of my children have the opportunity to be educated in our day school here at Rodeph Sholom. So last year, I had the opportunity to go to a lunch room, and there was a group of third graders, and they were enmeshed in a bit of a debate. And I decided to just sit down and listen to this debate. And they were arguing over whether or not the Constitution of the United States was a document that should be changed or simply amended. And some of them were arguing that sacred central text, we should make sure that it's always relevant to the time so that everyone understands what each word actually means. And the others were saying, no, we really should keep that document as it is, but over time, we should make sure that we're putting on additions and glosses. What I appreciate is then getting to ask the deeper question of what inspired this is just because in class they had the opportunity to look at a few lines of the Declaration of Independence. They had some words that they didn't understand, and they were allowed to ask the question, what does this mean?
[00:20:45.270] - Rabbi Benjamin Spratt
And their teacher invited them into this debate, didn't give them the answer, didn't tell them the end result of how our country is functioning now, but simply raise the question and let them sit in the question. That, to me, is what thriving looks like. It's, how do we give the tools of inquiry so that they become their own generative engine of creativity, and innovation, and exploration.
[00:21:05.040] - David Bryfman
So you didn't actually write a chapter or a piece of the book about education if you were to write one, I know you did think about it. What would be some of the key bullet points that you would put into your chapter about education that you'd want to share with our audience? What would be some of the key features of that chapter?
[00:21:18.090] - Rabbi Benjamin Spratt
I think one would be looking at the notion of Beit Midrash, a House of Learning really being the future centerpiece of the American Jewish organizational landscape. I think the Beit Tefilah, the House of Prayer, Beit Knesset, the House of Gathering has been a very important piece of American Jewish history so far. But when I think about the challenges of America today, when we look at the great divisiveness, when we look at the tremendous ideological divides, I actually think the technologies of machlochet, of Jewish debate is really essential, of how we could look at different perspectives on the same question as an essential piece of how we become wiser. I think that when I look at a Beit Midrash this notion that it is dialogue that is actually conversation across generations, within generations, that centers wisdom and Judaism. That to me, is what America needs more than ever before. When I think about another bullet point, I think it is this notion of chevruta, of learning and fellowship, of how do we seek out a study partner that is most different from us? How do we imagine looking at the ideal of a House of Learning or a congregation like Rodeph Sholom is one where we are bringing in multiple different identities and paths and understandings of truth because it will make us wiser and better that we gain strength not in spite of the differences, but because of them.
[00:22:34.170] - Rabbi Benjamin Spratt
And I think lastly, to look at Jewish education as going back to our sources of what does it mean to see that words are the very sacred source of the universe and that the words that are spoken and the way that we debate over words actually is the bedrock of society, the bedrock of our universe? And how do we reclaim that in a way where instead of a thousand Jewish organizations all making statements that come out every time there's an event in the world, what would it be instead if we looked at how do our words actually knit us together? How do our words actually inspire us to build and create together?
[00:23:07.090] - David Bryfman
So I'm not going to ask this follow up question just deliberately to be obnoxious, because in some ways I wonder, have you raised the bar too high in that response? And how does that actually mesh with where you actually perceive the Jewish people to be today? Because it's increasingly not working for a larger and larger number. So is the type of work you're talking about, is it about depth or is it about breadth? How do you scale those things? Your answer is just like just opens up a whole really rich conversation that needs to be had.
[00:23:36.610] - Rabbi Benjamin Spratt
I mean, for me, isn't it fascinating that there's really nothing new under the heavens? And I say that really not flippantly. But suggesting that I think that points to some of our wisdom tradition is that some of the answers of today have already been written, even as we need to understand them in a new, light and context. For me, I actually think that there is a way where this is coming. Full circle, but with a different twist. I think that the purpose of Jewish education and learning today has to be how do we help people thrive? Not how do we help Jewish people thrive? How do we help Judaism continue, but rather Judaism will continue if it has relevancy in people's lives and feels useful and relevant. So what stops a person from feeling that Judaism is useful and relevant? When people are saying to them, that's not the purpose of it. You just have to know this because that's what it takes to be Jewish. What makes people want to come and drink from the well is when they're sitting in a question or struggling in their life and they're given a tool that happens to be Jewish, and they realize, wow, that's exactly what I was looking for.
[00:24:32.710] - Rabbi Benjamin Spratt
Almost everyone I know right now struggles with some form of loneliness. Almost everyone I know right now is struggling with the ideological divisiveness that exists in our country right now. And some people are throwing up their hands and running away, but there are many who are sitting in questioning curiosity. If we could open up the doors of Beit Midrash, there is the chance for us to offer these tools that actually answer the needs of today. And I actually think that that is the best way that we could have Jewish continuity.
[00:24:59.460] - David Bryfman
Well, I had a really visceral reaction to what you just said. I remember distinctly in my teenage years sitting in a Jewish learning setting and asking, I believe it was, questions about kashrut, like, "Why? Why?" And he kept on asking, "Why?" And eventually the teacher lost all patience with me and just said, because that's what's written down. That's what it says. And as a 16 year old kid, that's the last thing you want to hear. And I think even more in this saturation of information age, that's the last thing you can tell an adolescent or even a young adult or anybody. The reason you should do something, believe something, think something, is because someone else thought it was important for you to do thousands of years ago. It just didn't gel. But I realized for many people, that actually is important. Like, I'm actually not dismissing that if some persons come to the conclusion that because it's written down natural position that they want to continue, I'm good with that as well. But it does open up a whole lot of educational questions, which you've really exposed and opened up today. And I'm just grateful for this conversation, because, as we said in the pre show little ramble that we had, like, if your book in this conversation stimulates more people to talk about some of the things which have gone unspoken about for so many years, then kudos to you into just writing a book.
[00:26:06.400] - David Bryfman
I think this is a real contribution, but I really want to encourage people to have a look at and to send us feedback and I'm not going to let you get off the hook either because there's one question that we ask all of our guests. Who's an educator in your life that really made a difference to who you are?
[00:26:19.180] - Rabbi Benjamin Spratt
So I'd love to tell you about one of my childhood rabbis, Rabbi Yitzhak Husbands-Hankin. This is in Eugene, Oregon, where I grew up in an age where I actually had become ba'al teshuva and I was in yeshiva studying in the fraud in Israel, my hometown. Being back in Eugene, Oregon, he had started as a cancer, became a rabbi in a formerly Rrenewal and then became Reconstruction Synagogue. And he met me with such love and curiosity and decided to empower me as a teenager. He actually had me running his B'nai Mitzvah training program. I would teach trope, I would teach people how to chant and cantellate from the Torah. And that move of seeing a very different path, of seeing a teen who is trying to find his place in the world and a sense of authenticity and saying, you know what, why don't I help you, give you the tools and you be the ones to put this forward to the next generation. And the result of that choice, I think, to me has been the most profound example of what is a good educator. It is not trying to change or trying to inject.
[00:27:17.550] - Rabbi Benjamin Spratt
It's trying to enable, empower and enhance the things that are exist within them. And so for me, that continues to be the model that I hope I can continue and perpetuate into the people who I get to be around and the next generation that rises up around me.
[00:27:31.160] - David Bryfman
Well, thank you very much for such a really awakening conversation. You've really lifted up my eyes and ears to a whole lot of different ways of looking at it. And I think this is one of those moments where if people are ever feeling down about something in the Jewish community, it doesn't have to be the same. And have a look at the especially the fourth section of the book is like a new optimism that I think you're sharing with all of us. And really thank you for being part of today's conversation.
[00:27:52.120] - Rabbi Benjamin Spratt
Thank you so much, David. It's such a gift and honor. I do want to suggest that when we look at organizations that have changed and transformed, I think you're at the helm of one of them. And I think the way that you have started to point towards new Jewish ecosystems as you look and partner with congregational life, I think that we are starting to see already leaders waking to the fact that we're going to need to do different, we're going to have to operate with each other differently. And thank you for creating a platform that allows these ideas to be shared and connected.
[00:28:17.770] - David Bryfman
Well, I really appreciate that and I really thank you for those warm words. Mando look forward to being able to work with you more in the future. If you haven't already done so, go out and get Rabbi Spratt's new book Awakening American Jewish Transformations and Identity, Leadership and Belonging. As I mentioned before, he coauthored with Rabbi Joshua Stanz. Today's episode was produced by Dina Nusnbaum and Gabriel Weistein. The show's executive producers are myself, Karen Cummins and Nessa Liben. Our show is engineered and edited by Nathan J. Vaughan of NJV Media. If you enjoyed today's episode of Adapting and you enjoyed this season three, please leave us a five star rating on Apple Podcasts. Or even better, share with a friend or a colleague to learn more about The Jewish Education Project that brings to you Adapting every week, find us on www.jewishedproject.org. You can learn more about our mission, our history and the staff that we have here. And as always, we are proud to be a part partner of UJA-Federation of New York. Thanks everyone, for listening today.