Faith Leaders on Martin Luther King Jr.'s Religious Legacy

This past April 4th marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the religious legacy of the civil rights leader was the subject of an article published on April 2nd in the Deseret News, which identifies itself as, "first news organization and the longest continuously-operating business in the state of Utah," and is owned by the Mormon Church. What does this have to do with Congregation Adas Emuno of Bergen County, New Jersey, you may ask? The answer is clear enough: Rabbi Barry L. Schwartz, our spiritual leader.

The article, entitled, Faith leaders Reflect on Martin Luther King Jr.'s Religious Legacy, and written by Kelsey Dallas, begins with the pastor of a Baptist Church in Salt Lake City:

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. is a silent participant in every meeting held in Calvary Baptist Church's conference room. He stares down at those gathered from three of the room's four walls.

The Rev. France Davis, Calvary's longtime pastor, chose this repetitive decor, in part, to honor the Rev. King's role in his life. His ministry career, which spans more than four decades, grew out of his experiences fighting for a better world alongside the Rev. King.

"That's what I've been doing all my life: trying to change laws, to make sure all people are treated equally," the Rev. Davis said.

But the portraits and pictures of the pastor and civil rights leader in the conference room don't just acknowledge the past. They remind church members to dream big dreams for the future, presenting the Rev. King as a symbol of what's possible when faith is put into action.

"He's an example of how to bring about positive change," the Rev. Davis said.

It's not just religious Americans who see the Rev. King this way. Fifty years after his assassination on April 4, 1968, he's hailed as an American hero, held up as someone whom all political activists should emulate.

The Rev. King's broad appeal sometimes troubles the faith leaders who knew him and continue to draw inspiration from him. They see his quotes used to support secular political goals or hear his voice during a truck commercial and worry Americans are forgetting the deep faith that anchored his activism.

This is where Rabbi Schwartz is first mentioned:

"It's legitimate to quote him in the most general of ways, but I don't think we should forget that he was an example of religious faith at its best," said Rabbi Barry Schwartz, author of Path of Prophets: The Ethics-Driven Life, which was published on March 1.

A nice plug for our rabbi's new book!

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The article now returns to Reverend Davis:

The Rev. King brought the Bible alive for participants in the civil rights movement, never ceasing to be a pastor even as he took on other roles, the Rev. Davis said.

"He was trying to get people to put feet to their beliefs, to make their beliefs practical in terms of the way they went about their daily lives," he said.

The Rev. Davis first heard about the Rev. King's work when he was 15 or 16. He knew Christians were called to serve their neighbors, but his energy was lacking.

"I understood that to be the need, but I didn't feel empowered to do it," said the Rev. Davis, who grew up in rural Georgia.

The Rev. King's impassioned speeches brought about a change of heart. The Rev. Davis began to see his belief in God as a reason to take action, not just to pray and sit in church on Sunday.

"They were inspirational in every way. They caused those who heard them, me included, to want to act," the Rev. Davis said.

At this point, the article moves into a new topic, the social gospel, which parallels our own emphasis on social justice and tikkun olam:

The Rev. King wasn't preaching something new. He was continuing the work of others who'd emphasized the social gospel, or the belief that people of faith should try to build a more just society, not just save people's souls, said Clayborne Carson, founding director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University.

"The social gospel really had its roots in the United States … in the late 19th and early 20th century," he said.

Members of the early social gospel movement sought to protect workers during the rapid industrialization of the U.S. They fought for better working conditions and fair pay, turning to the Bible for spiritual nourishment and the motivation to act.

The Rev. King carried the spirit of this activism into the civil rights movement, presenting the fight for racial equality as a deeply spiritual pursuit. He faced pushback for this approach, including from within the National Baptist Convention, which his grandfather helped found, Carson said.

"The elected leader of the National Baptist Convention opposed King and felt that the role of the pastor is to try to achieve salvation for members of the congregation and that the church shouldn't really be focused on social issues," he said.

And now, the article brings Rabbi Schwartz back into the conversation, and Congregation Adas Emuno with him:

However, many others, including Jews and other non-Christians, were receptive to his message. The Rev. King energized old teachings, inspiring believers like the Rev. Davis to live out their faith in new ways.

For some Jewish leaders, this meant proclaiming God's calls for justice all the way to jail, said Rabbi Schwartz, who leads Congregation Adas Emuno in Leonia, New Jersey. His own rabbi was one of 16 arrested in St. Augustine, Florida, in 1964 after joining the Rev. King there to rally for racial equality.

"There was a history of activism" in many religious traditions, he said. "But King was the singular figure who could galvanize their social-justice work."

And speaking of the relationship of rabbis to Dr. King, it is not surprising to see the name of Heschel come up:

The Rev. King drew on the Old and New Testaments in his sermons and public addresses, which helped him unite Jews and Christians, said Susannah Heschel, a professor of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College.

"If you look at his major speeches, he quotes (the prophet) Amos more often than Jesus," she said.

He learned this approach in the black churches of his childhood, she added. African-Americans took comfort in and felt empowered by the Old Testament stories of prophets seeking justice and the Israelites escaping slavery in Egypt.

Heschel's father, Rabbi Abraham Heschel, also influenced the Rev. King's biblical engagement. The Rev. King carried a copy of Rabbi Heschel's book, The Prophets, in his pocket during marches, and it gave him strength to bring a prophetic voice to racial conflict.

"The prophets remind us of the moral state of a people: Few are guilty, but all are responsible," Rabbi Heschel wrote. "To a person endowed with prophetic sight, everyone else appears blind."

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The article now returns to Reverend Davis and a Christian emphasis:

The Rev. King wed the prophets' radical acts of service with Jesus Christ's teachings in the New Testament, the Rev. Davis said.

"His message was clearly one about love based on New Testament theology and teachings, but his examples of showing love were from the Old Testament," he said. "He was masterful in weaving the two."

But this mastery often goes unnoticed in contemporary celebrations of the Rev. King, the Rev. Davis added. People are content to applaud his charisma, rather than understand the theological and historical claims anchoring his speeches.

"We gravitate toward the rhythm and the sound as opposed to the message being communicated," he said.

For example, most Americans are familiar with the Rev. King's dreams in his "I have a dream" speech from the March on Washington. He dreams that his children will be judged for their characters, not the color of their skin. He dreams that white children and black children will one day be able to join hands in Alabama.

Fewer people can recall earlier parts of the speech, when the Rev. King recounted unfulfilled promises made to black Americans when the country was founded and assured his followers that "unearned suffering is redemptive."

"With 'I have a dream,' everybody knows the last part of that speech, but earlier is where the meat is," the Rev. Davis said.

And now back to Rabbi Schwartz one more time:

To truly understand the Rev. King's revolutionary work, you have to grasp how central the Bible was to his activism, Rabbi Schwartz said.

"He was motivated by general ideas of justice, but, at the same time, he was coming from a Judeo-Christian perspective," he said.

Rabbi Schwartz is followed by a testimony from Susannah Heschel:

Heschel was active in the Jewish community throughout her childhood, attending Hebrew school classes and learning to interpret the Bible. Like the Rev. Davis, she knew what she was supposed to be doing, but she wasn't particularly excited to be doing it.

“I didn’t like Hebrew school. I found the way the Bible was taught to us to be very dull," she said.

The Rev. King's friendship with her father changed everything. He brought the words of the biblical prophets alive, showing Heschel the value of learning them.

“King changed my life and gave me a love of the Hebrew Bible and a love of the prophets," she said, crediting the Rev. King with inspiring her to become a professor of religion.

And the article gives Reverend Davis the last word:

The Rev. Davis offered similar praise, explaining that he's modeled his ministry after the Rev. King's work. Each week in his sermon at Calvary Baptist, he urges his congregation to go out into the world and improve it. He preaches on the importance of serving others and tries to lead by example, promoting policies like fair housing and Medicaid expansion.

"I'm one of his disciples in that sense," he said.

When the Rev. Davis learned of the Rev. King's assassination, he knew there were plenty of people like himself to continue proclaiming the Rev. King's prophetic message. However, he worried about the loss of a man who encapsulated the entire struggle for civil rights. The movement would persist in pieces, rather than a unified whole.

"I was concerned that it was piecemeal—one person talking about this and one person talking about that," the Rev. Davis said.

Reflecting on the state of faith-based activism today, the Rev. Davis said he's come to appreciate this piecemeal approach. He likes that some houses of worship specialize in feeding the hungry while others expertly lobby legislators for fairer policies.

The Rev. King's legacy is alive in many places at once, he said.

"When (this activism) was done by one person, it was localized to a particular area. … With a number of different people, it can be in several places," he said.

The Rev. Davis wants visitors to know that Calvary Baptist is one of those places, so he put a small model of the Rev. King's Washington, D.C., memorial on the church's reception desk. Arms crossed, the miniature Rev. King stares sternly out at new arrivals from under a large green plant.

"With Dr. King, you knew you were in the presence of greatness," the Rev. Davis said.

It is certainly an honor to have our rabbi, and our congregation, included in an interfaith article on so important a topic, published all the way out in Salt Lake City, Utah!

Spring 2018 Religious School News

From the pages of Kadima, the Newsletter of Congregation Adas Emuno:

Religious School News 

     from


Cantor Sandy Horowitz

Religious School Director

The joy and silliness of Purim having just ended, we now look ahead to Passover at the end of this month. As in previous years we will be putting together a school Passover Seder program with student contributions of music, skits and presentations. We need help from parents with food, setup and cleanup—please check out the Parent Volunteer link and sign up if you can help:

http://www.signupgenius.com/go/10c0845a9 aa2caafe3-class

The next Family Service on March 23 will be led by our youngest students from Grade 1-2- 3. Come on out and support them as they lead us in songs and prayers, and provide us with their take on the 10 Plagues!

The April 27 Family Service in celebration of Israel’s 70th birthday will include contributions from each class, as they share sets of 7 facts (one for each decade!) on different aspects of Israel’s life and history. This promises to be an inspiring and enjoyable celebration.

But wait, there’s more! Jordana Marcus is celebrating becoming Bat Mitzvah on Saturday, March 10th. B’nei mitzvah services at Adas Emuno are open to everyone. Our students work hard and we are so proud of them—go Jordana!

Please make a note of these upcoming dates in March and April for our students & families!

Saturday, March 10 
10:00 AM–Bat Mitzvah of Jordana Marcus

Sunday, March 11
Confirmation Class followed by Youth Group activity

Friday, March 23 
7:30 PM—Shabbat Family Service featuring Grades 1-2-3

Sunday, March 25— Religious School Passover Seder

Sunday, April 1 No School

Friday, April 27 
7:30 PM—Shabbat Family Service in celebration of Israel’s 70th Birthday

Sunday, April 8
10:30-12 Confirmation Class with Guest Author Joan Arnay Halperin who will discuss her book, My Sister’s Eyes: A Family Chronicle of Rescue and Loss During World War II. Open to the Congregation.


 School Sundays at 9:15 AM Mommy/Daddy ‘n Me!

Character Matters, The Prophets Say

Our friend Joanne Palmer, editor of the Jewish Standard, published an article on this year's Sweet Tastes of Torah that is worth noting here on the congregational blog of Adas Emuno. 

The title of the article is Character Matters, The Prophets Say. The subtitle of the article, which was published in the January 19th issue, is "This year’s Sweet Tastes of Torah includes a talk on prophetic literature; also havdalah, dessert, and dancing," and here's how it begins:

In some ways, everything is different this year.

In other ways, things are the same; we build on successes and learn from missteps. The Sweet Tastes of Torah, the annual program that offers the community workshops with local rabbis, all of them members of the North Jersey Board of Rabbis, has been going strong for almost a decade now. About 18 Conservative and Reform rabbis will teach two sessions of classes on February 3 at the Fair Lawn Jewish Center.

But this year, in response to the increased urgency that many people feel to do something, to understand more about what they can do and to know more about the Jewish context that can nourish their instincts and actions, Sweet Tastes of Torah is reshaping the evening.

It will begin with the usual spirited Havdalah, and it will end with the usual and much-anticipated dessert, as well as Israeli folk dancing (to even out the dessert), but it will include a keynote address, which will provide the focus for all of the first session’s workshops and some of the second.

So far, so good, you may say, but what really makes this year's event different from all other years, you may ask. Well, then, read on!

The keynote speaker is Rabbi Barry Schwartz, who heads Congregation Adas Emuno in Leonia and is the CEO and editor-in-chief of the Jewish Publication Society. In what must have been his abundant spare time (assuming that either he never sleeps and has figured out a 36-hour day), he has written Path of the Prophets. The latest of his books—he wrote a children’s book, Adam’s Animals, that came out in October—looks at some of the prophets—both the obvious ones, like Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel—and biblical figures who were not called prophets but who functioned in that way, characters including Judah, the midwife Shifrah, and Ruth.

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Although Rabbi Schwartz worked on his book for five years, he said, and therefore he began the work well before today’s political situation evolved, “it just so happens that it’s coming out at a time when we are so conscious of the ethical issues that are swirling around the presidency and also the #MeToo movement. This invitation to deliver the keynote came smack at the time when the Harvey Weinstein story was just breaking, and it seemed that every day there was a new story.

Because his book is about prophecy—and about ethical living, which prophecy demands—it seemed absolutely timely, he said, and that is a great sadness. “I thought that I was writing it in order to make my contribution to the conversation about the prophets,” he said. “They inspired me when I was younger, and I wanted to do that for the new generation.

“So many people try to read the prophets, and their eyes glaze over. So much of it is written in high rhetorical style, in a poetical prose that is very hard to digest. I wanted to write a book that makes the prophet’s works, and even their lives, accessible and relevant and compelling.”

He talked about his book’s structure, and how the workshops at Sweet Tastes will mirror that structure.

“The book is divided into three sections—justice, compassion, and faith—reflecting Micah’s admonition to ‘do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God,’” Rabbi Schwartz said.

“Certainly we are seeing ethical crises of leadership, particularly political and sexual in nature; these crises are happening so fast that we can hardly keep up with them. My thesis is that the prophets of ancient Israel brought forth an ethical revolution, and we need to retrieve their often overlooked or forgotten messages today. It will help inform us, perhaps it will help steady the ship.

“Part of what I will raise in the keynote is that it is not enough for us to lament what is going on. It is not enough for us to raise our concerns and then move on. In some ways, that is putting our heads in the sand, and the prophets would say no, that is not enough.

“We very much need to hear the prophetic message that every person has a responsibility to do their part. The prophets didn’t turn their ire just on the leaders, but on the people as well, and in some ways that is even more daring. If the leaders are making a mistake, we need to speak truth to power, but we also need to speak truth to the people, and to understand, as Rabbi Heschel put it, that especially in a democratic society, not all are guilty, but all are responsible.”

Rabbi Heschel, of course, is Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, the 20th century Jewish theologian and political advocate whom Rabbi Schwartz counts as among his inspirations. So, he said, was the rabbi of the shul to which his family belonged when he was growing up, in Croton-on-Hudson in New York. “Rabbi Michael Robinson, of blessed memory, was a disciple of Heschel’s, and one of the dozen Reform rabbis who were arrested with Martin Luther King in St. Augustine,” he said. “He was a true advocate for social justice, and I grew up with him, listening to him quote King and Heschel and the Hebrew prophets.

“It was JPS that published Heschel’s book The Prophets in 1963, and I feel a great kinship as the head of the JPS with Heschel’s work.”

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Rabbi Schwartz begins each of his chapters—each dedicated to one official or unofficial prophet—with a biographical sketch based on the information available in the Bible and fleshed out by his imagination. “I combine biography and theology by taking an episode from their lives that illustrates what their lives were about,” he said. “Sometimes the biographical bits in the text are sparse, but I elaborate on it by what I call creative first-person midrash. I have the prophets themselves speaking in the first person, and I take some poetic license to do it.”

Among the prophets Rabbi Schwartz writes about are Judah, who walks the “path of repentance,” he said. “Judah is the first character in the Bible who undergoes what we think of as repentance, and he changes.” And then there is Caleb the spy, “who had the audacity and the courage to stand up to his fellow spies, and he countered their terribly pessimistic report about the land they were about to enter with a more optimistic report. He was an example of someone whose spirit gave him the ability to stand forward.

“And the prophets are not all doom and gloom,” Rabbi Schwartz continued. “Some of it is about compassion, forgiveness, kindness, and hope. All of this is very much part of the prophetic message. That’s the second group, compassion. And then there’s the third one, walking humbly with your God. That’s the path of joy and faith and humility and wisdom; it’s more about internal characteristics.”

So, will his keynote address at Sweet Tastes of Torah be overtly political? It probably depends on how you define political, and for that matter how you define overt.

“I definitely will reference what is going on today,” Rabbi Schwartz said. “I am going to recall the names of so many people caught up in scandal today, without dwelling on any of the particular individuals or the details of their stories. But I do want to begin by painting a picture of the sordid state of affairs. I certainly will mention political figures and the figures in the worlds of entertainment and the like who have been caught up in political and sexual scandals, without going into detail.

“And then I will move directly to the message of the prophets, which is about not making ethics peripheral. They should be central to our lives.

“Character truly counts. To all those who say that our leaders’ character does not matter, the prophets would say that you can never separate character from the office. It’s reaffirming an old-fashioned message, that leadership is not just about a person’s ability, but about that person’s character. It’s not just about their ability but also their integrity.”

And then, of course, after all the discussion and soul-searching, there always is dessert.

The article also includes a nice picture of Rabbi Schwartz:

And it concludes with the following information: 

Who: The North Jersey Board of Rabbis sponsors

What: Sweet Tastes of Torah

Where: At the Fair Lawn Jewish Center, 10-10 Norma Avenue

When: On Saturday evening, February 3; doors open at 6:30 and Havdalah is at 7.

How much: $15 per person until January 31; $20 at the door

For more information, including a list of breakout sessions and teachers, and to register: Go to sweettastesoftorah.weebly.com or Google “sweet tastes of torah 2018”

We hope to see you there!

 From the pages of Kadima, the newsletter of Congregation Adas Emuno:

A Message From Our President

Dr. Lance Strate

Author, Author!

I have often been struck by the fact that the most sacred object in our sanctuary, the Torah scroll, is a book. Sure, we dress it up nicely with our finest fabrics, decorated with lovely embroidery, and further adorned with silver breast plate and crown, as well as the silver yad or pointer, the silk sash or girdle that binds the scroll and keeps it closed, and the wooden shafts that the scroll is wound around. But it's still a book, a fancy book sure, a sacred book most definitely, but a book nonetheless.

Our worship is centered around the book, as we repeatedly face the Ark that holds the Torah scrolls during our worship services, show our respect by standing whenever the Ark is opened, and show our love by kissing the scrolls when they are carried down to the pews, albeit indirectly by kissing our prayer books. Reading from the Torah is one of our most sacred rituals, and our rite of passage from childhood to adulthood.

Our veneration of books extends to our printed prayer books and bibles, and in our tradition whenever one such text is dropped or falls to the floor, the person picking it up also kisses the book. And these books that contain the name of God are never destroyed when their usefulness is at an end, but rather buried as we would a loved one that has passed on.

Judaism is not the only religion that is centered around a sacred text, and in fact it was the Moslems who referred to Jews and Christians alike as people of the book. But there is something unique and special about our relationship to books, so much so that here in the United States, Jews purchase 23% of all hardcover books published, while we constitute only about 2% of the population.

As a people, we are bibliophiles, booklovers. And we are bookmakers, writers, authors. The Torah features Moses, who took dictation from God, and the Tanach ends with Ezra the Scribe. We gave the world the Bible, including the Christian version, which may be considered the all-time bestseller. More recently, of the 110 Nobel Prizes in Literature given out since 1901, 15 have been awarded to Jews including Henri Bergson, Boris Pasternak, Saul Bellow, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Elias Canetti, Joseph Brodsky, Nadine Gordimer, Harold Pinter, Patrick Modiano, and Bob Dylan. (It's often cited that we Jews constitute less than 0.2% of the world's population, while accounting for over 22% of Nobel Prizes awarded in all categories, 11,250% above average.)

It should come as no surprise, then, that we have more than a few published authors among the membership of our Congregation Adas Emuno, not the least of them our own Rabbi Schwartz. As you may know, his new children's book, Adam's Animals, was published this past summer, and his newest book, Paths of the Prophets: The Ethics-Driven Life, is due out this March.

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Have you published a book or article, essay, story, or poem? Let us know, and let us celebrate together!

We express our love of books during services, Saturday morning Torah study, adult education programs, and especially through our religious school. We are the people of the book, and our houses of worship have always been houses of learning as well. The secret of our survival and our success is intimately linked to our religious tradition being wrapped around the Torah scroll, revolving around spirituality and schooling, and a love of books. On Rosh Hashanah we ask God to write our names into the Book of Life, and as readers and writers ourselves, we become authors of our own destiny. For this reason alone, we should never forget to write our shul into own book, the book that we all write, the book of our own lives, and those of our family, friends, and community. May it be so.

Author Steven Hartov to Speak

Author Steven Hartov will be the guest speaker at Congregation Adas Emuno on Sunday, November 12 from 4:00 to 5:30 PM.

Hartov is an American-Israeli author of fiction and non-fiction works, journalist, screenwriter, lecturer in international security affairs and former Editor-in-Chief of Special Operations Report.

 His works include the Israeli espionage trilogy, The Heat of Ramadan, The Nylon Hand of God, and The Devil's Shepherd.

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His non-fiction works include the New York Times bestseller, In the Company of Heroes, co-authored with Michael J. Durant, The Night Stalkers, co-authored with Michael J. Durant and Lt. Col. (ret) Robert L. Johnson, and Afghanistan on the Bounce, co-authored with Robert L. Cunningham.

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His novel, The Heat of Ramadan, was adapted for the feature film, The Point Men.

 

Hartov served in the U.S. Merchant Marine Military Sealift Command and was a volunteer in the Israeli Defense Forces Airborne Corps, serving as a paratrooper and later in a Special Ops branch of Israeli Military Intelligence. His latest work of fiction, The Soul of a Thief, set in occupied France in 1944, is due to be released in May 2018 by Harper Collins.

Open to the Public

Free Admission

 254 Broad Avenue
Leonia, NJ

201-592-1712

www.adasemuno.org

Adam's Animals by Rabbi Schwartz

This past summer, our own Rabbi Schwartz published a new book, a beautifully illustrated children's book entitled Adam's Animals:

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Here's the description:

Meet Adam, and a dazzling array of fascinating and unfamiliar animals from A to Z in this playful alphabet book that retells the story of Adam naming the animals. Beautiful, lush illustrations complement this fun read-aloud.

And from Kirkus Reviews:

After the creation of Earth, a young man called Adam names all the animals and then meets his partner, Eve. The story opens with the first days of life on Earth as mountains form, plants sprout, and animals arrive. Adam suddenly appears as a young man with brown skin and dark hair. He likes to walk and talk with all the animals and decides he should name every species. The animals form a huge line to receive their monikers, and Adam names them in alphabetical order, from aardvarks to zebras. Some creatures will be familiar to children, but many will be new, such as the dik-dik, the kinkajou, and the matamata. When Adam feels lonely, a female human mysteriously appears and agrees to be Adam's partner. The young woman also has brown skin and long, dark hair that conveniently covers her body, and she doesn't need Adam to name her as she already has her own name, Eve. Pleasant illustrations creatively integrate the disparate creatures (labeled unobtrusively) into congenial groupings, although the animals can't be shown in proper perspective due to space limitations. God and the role of the divine in creation are not mentioned in the text, although that is addressed in an author's note, which names the source of the story as the biblical book of Genesis. A congenial, readable story. (Picture book. 3-7) 

And from Ellen Cole for The Jewish Book Council:

This new picture book builds from one line in Genesis when God decides to have Adam name the animals. The author does a clever job in a situation where content needs to be stretched and most pages consist of many names. His first trick to hold interest through a long alphabetical list is to pair every animal we recognize with a creature we never heard of or barely know. A second tool used is to devote several amusing pages to animal complaints about their names or their sounds. Around these lists the author bookends first a quick but accurate recap of the steps of creation including Adam's and then Eve's arrival. This book embroiders Adam's personality and feelings, but filling in silent Biblical gaps is done by the best of scholars. Eve's arrival is vibrant and imparts the sense of a strong character. The illustrations of the animals are realistic and recognizable. Recommended for ages 4 to 6.

And what's more, the book was featured in an article in the Jewish Standard written by the weekly's editor, Joanne Palmer, and published on October 6th.  Entitled "'Adam's Animals'" with the subtitle, "Leonia Rabbi, JPS Editor in Chief Writes Children’s Book About Genesis I," the article opens with some background about our rabbi:

Rabbi Barry L. Schwartz is the editor in chief and CEO of the venerable Jewish Publication Society, the nonprofit publisher that produces consistently well-respected, often actively invaluable translations and Torah commentaries, as well as other works of Jewish scholarship.

Rabbi Schwartz also is the full-time rabbi of Congregation Adas Emuno, a Reform synagogue that began in Hoboken more than a century ago and now, snug in Leonia, is housed in a charming red-brick building with a lovely, serene, Zen-like garden in the back, always filled with the murmur of little waterfalls, occasionally home to poetry readings.

Oh, and he just published a children’s book, Adam’s Animals, with his longtime publisher, Behrman House, through its new children’s imprint, Apples & Honey Press. The book is about to be sent out to the thousands of families in North America and the United Kingdom who subscribe to PJ Library.

And exactly how does he do all this?

“I have a strong work ethic,” he said. “And I feel very blessed to do the work.”

Rabbi Schwartz was ordained at the Hebrew Union College—Jewish Institute of Religion in New York in the mid-1980s. He has been in Leonia for seven years, and he has headed JPS for eight.

He began his work with the publisher as a board member, he said, and a rarely quiet, often questioning, occasionally obstreperous board member at that. Although he did not think that such a persona would have endeared him to JPS’s leaders, he was wrong; it led to the job offer, which he accepted with gratitude and excitement. But JPS is in Philadelphia. When he began his work in Leonia, he commuted to Philadelphia every week; the next year he went every month, and by now he goes just once a year. Most of his work is done remotely, he said, and by far more meetings happen in New York than in Philadelphia anyway.

Rabbi Schwartz loves telling stories, particularly to children, he said. Adam’s Animals is one of them, a story he’d told to the children in Adas Emuno’s Hebrew school. “Every Sunday morning I tell them about the portion of the week, and I began making up stories about the animals in this portion,” he said. “That gave me the idea of writing a whole cycle of stories about animals in the Torah. This is the one I decided to publish.”

Will any of the others be published too? “We’ll see,” he said.

“It’s a very simple story, meant for very young readers,” he continued.

Rabbi Schwartz “has been an environmentalist all my adult life,” he said. “I have done a lot of work in that regard. And this book is a celebration of the biodiversity of God’s creation.”

Adam’s Animals tells the story of creation, as told in the first chapter of Genesis. It focuses on Adam’s task—naming the animals. The animals are presented in alphabetical order, a menagerie of fantastical but real beasts. There are lions and tigers and bears; there also are aardvarks and bandicoots and dik-diks and xenopses and xeruses and yaks and yapoks. There’s an unappealing blobfish and a regal jaguar.

And at the end, there is a human companion for Adam, a companion who he does not get to name, but who comes with her own name. Adam gets to meet Eve.

The illustrator, Steliyana Doneva, has done a wonderful job, Rabbi Schwartz said. He never met her, he added; she is not Jewish, and she lives in Romania. Her English is sketchy at best. But it doesn’t matter. She understands his text completely, he said, and she has brought it to life.

“It was so much fun, from beginning to end,” he added. “Doing the research, writing it, all of it.

“And I found out that the book was going to be published when I was on safari in South Africa, seeing so many animals.”

Not that going on safari is an everyday, or even every-year, experience for him, he added. It was instead the culmination of an environmentalist’s lifelong dream.

In Adam’s Animals, Adam is not white. That is not accidental. “The story was written to express diversity in many different ways, and in ways that appeal to someone who comes from a different faith background, or no faith background at all.

“We are all on this planet together, and we have to figure out how to take better care of it together.

“Environmentalism unites us,” he said.

Congratulations to Rabbi Schwartz!

Jewisih Bibliotherapy

from the pages of Kadima, the newsletter of Congregation Adas Emuno:

From the desk of …                    

 Rabbi Barry Schwartz

    

JEWISH BIBLIOTHERAPY

I recently read an article entitled: Read a Novel: It’s Just What the Doctor Ordered. The piece begins:

   It’s well established science that reading boosts vocabulary, sharpens reason and expands intellectual horizons. But the latest round of research on the benefits of literature focuses on how it improves not our IQ, but our EQ.

The essay goes on to introduce us to “bibliotherapy”–the prescription of books, especially novels, to improve our mental health. A bibliotherapist in London is quoted as saying that, “the right book at the right time of your life can open a door and help you to see something in a new way, or just give you that next leap into new maturity.” Her colleague adds, “inhabiting a novel can be transformative in a way that using a self-help book isn’t.” Clients fill out a long questionnaire about what they like to read and what is going on in their personal lives. After discussion, the bibliotherapist sends them a list of six to eight novels designed to address the challenges in their lives and the reasons for their recommendations. The London practice claims a 99% positive feedback rate.

With that in mind, I am going to become a Jewish bibliotherapist and prescribe a half-dozen of my favorite Jewish novels:

1. As a Driven Leaf (Milton Steinberg)–for a crisis of faith.

  

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2. Goodbye Columbus (Phillip Roth)–for emotional insecurity.

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3. Exodus (Leon Uris)–for apathy to Israel.

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4. The Chosen (Chaim Potok)–for father-son issues.

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5. The Assistant (Bernard Malamud)–for those in need of empathy.

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6. The Slave (Isaac Bashevis Singer)–for overcoming self-pity.

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I have many other books for many other situations. Just give me a call or send me an email.

Unlike the London therapists who charge £100 ($125) an hour, my service is free. My only reward is your reading pleasure! In the words of the medieval sage Judah Ibn Tibbon, quoted in the Jewish Book Month  poster below, “Make books your companions”.