The active and experimental approach to the Jewish Future, the rationale for our Split Rock Strategies, is based on the following strategic directions or starting points:
Judaism is Ethnotherapy for Future Shock
Future Shock: Observing the amount of and rate of change in the America of the 1960’s, Alvin Toffler coined the term “Future Shock” to describe the impact of such rapid change on our human psyche and physical health. The impact of COVID-19 on our lives has yet to be fully understood, but it certainly has rapidly changed our lives already.
Judaism: When historical processes churned with novelty, Judaism fashioned new forms: When they threatened the traditional notions of God, Judaism discovered that the last word about God had not been communicated to Moses or the prophets. (Ellis Rivkin)
Ethnotherapy is the proactive structuring of Jewish traditional teachings as self-discovery experiences leading toward spiritual well-being and on-going personal creativity
Split Rock Thinking – Lessons from a problem solving people
“Just as the hammer splits the rock into many pieces, so a problem can be approached from many points of view, strategies and methods” (paraphrase of a Talmudic passage)
Split Rock Thinking is a fundamental creative strategy that supports for a myriad of methods we can use to understand our Jewish Historical experience, i.e. Words, poetry, music, photography, film, dance drama, structured fantasy/imagery, dream and body work.
Split Rock Thinking interweaves traditional interpretation technique with experiential methods to both better understand aspects of the Jewish people’s life coping skills and explore one’s own life.
Our survival on Spaceship Earth is dependent on three things, Creativity, Innovation and Transformation.
In 1969 R. Buckminster Fuller wrote “Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth” urging us to contemplate our being passengers on Spaceship Earth and what we need to be proactive participants of life on the one planet.
Covid-19 and its rapid spread brings home to us this notion of being on Spaceship Earth with our interdependence on all other “passengers”.
Jewish tradition’s stance that all the world depends on Torah, Avodah, and Gemilut Chasadim has a current and future expression as creativity, innovation and transformation. Torah teaching and interpretation yields an appreciation of creative thinking. Avodah or Jewish worship must be fresh and innovative or it patterns after idol worship. Gemilut Chasadim as taught by tradition are acts of loving kindness, and have been taught in our day as Tikkun Olam, betterment of the world and its inhabitants. Transformation is a more appropriate expression of the process of making ourselves response-able citizens of spaceship earth.
Supporting Israel through its commerce and art
With the establishment of the State of Israel, American Jews became partners in the survival and well being of our brethren in Israel. For decades this partnership has been expressed in charitable fundraising, and an almost sacrosanct support of the political state.
In the 2020’s a more appropriate approach to this partnership is to support the commercial business ventures of Israeli companies, and to explore the Jewish art scene, past and present, both in Israel and around the world.
As a technology powerhouse, our legacy as a problem-solving people has jumped from the pages of the Talmud to the inventors and innovators of Israel’s technical community.
In Israel, the United States and around the planet, Jewish artists and their patrons have created a new form of Midrash exploration of meaning in the various media from lyrics to environmental and performance art.