A RABBI’S SEARCH FOR BALANCE
In 2015, Timoner relocated her family from Los Angeles, where she served as associate rabbi of Leo Baeck Temple, to take a position as senior rabbi at Congregation Beth Elohim, a Reform Jewish congregation that traces its roots to the late 19th century and, since 1910, has gathered on the corner of Garfield Place and Eighth Avenue. In her brief time in Brooklyn, the long-time progressive activist and grassroots organizer has become a central force in not only the spiritual but political life of Park Slope, making headlines for her arrest protesting President Trump’s travel ban in February of 2017 and kindling the resistance movement #GetOrganizedBrooklyn with councilmember Brad Lander, among many other actions both within the congregation and in the wider community.
As we sat in her cozy, book-filled office tucked behind CBE’s sanctuary, the rabbi engaged with off the cuff eloquence about relocating from the west coast, following the teachings of the Torah, and what to do about millennials. A theme of our conversation was the complexity of the human experience, and how challenging it can be to not only live with but try to embrace contradiction.
Perhaps we can look to Timoner as a model for such duality. She is commanding yet compassionate, emotional and intellectual. She is endlessly active, yet — this struck me most of all — she listens, carefully, thoughtfully. When you speak with Rabbi Timoner, you feel heard. Understood. Though this writer’s spiritual search continues, I left my conversation with the rabbi — as I did last time we spoke about her work — emboldened by another dialectic: spurred on to action and anchored by the great wisdom that exists in our own backyard.
What makes your congregation such a unique and special place, one that would draw you to Park Slope all the way from California?
There’s a question right now in the Jewish world about what the future of the synagogue is going to look like. A lot of a lot of young Jews think about the synagogue as something that their parents or their grandparents were part of, and there’s a question of like, can and will the synagogue reinvent itself? And how? This congregation has been engaged in that for some time and really is open to experimentation. To engaging the larger neighborhood, not just the Jewish community. To being right there and relevant on whatever the pressing questions are at the time. And that’s the kind of congregation that I most wanted to serve. One where we could be talking about what’s most important in our society and in our lives. And one where we are having a really open boundary, like just really open to the rest of the community and looking actively for partnerships across lines of race, across lines of faith. And also one that is willing to be bold, and willing to try new things and willing even to fail in the pursuit of the kind of change that meets people where they are.
It seems that a huge part of your life is defined by your commitment to social justice. Do you ever feel that there’s tension between that role and your role as a rabbi? Or does anyone from the congregation ever give you the idea that there might be tension there?
In any congregation this big, we have like 900-something households, there’s diversity there. And there are a lot of people who really prize the role that we’re playing around social justice. It’s one of their primary points of connection. And there are other people who don’t want to see that here. Who feel like a synagogue should be mostly a place that feels calm and peaceful, where we don’t really talk about political questions. Where we don’t talk about things that are upsetting. There are people who feel that way. Or who feel like the direction our country is going in is OK, there are those. It’s a very small minority of people here, but there are some people who feel that way. So, the way that I feel about that is when I am aware of somebody being uncomfortable with the direction we’re taking, I really want them to know that I want to hear from them and I want to sit with them. I want to hear what’s been uncomfortable and want to hear, you know, I want to hear their perspective. And it doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m not going to do what I’m doing or that I’m not going to lead the way I’m leading because I do feel like this moment requires that of us. I actually feel, beyond this moment, I feel that Torah and Judaism requires of us that we take a stand on the moral questions of our time. And then we take the political questions. Torah is actually a political text. It’s about society. It’s about how to create a just society. That’s what Torah is. So in my eyes, if I were to be silent or inactive on the injustices of our time, I would be betraying Torah. In order to fulfill Torah and be true to it, I have to speak. I don’t have a choice.
As a society, we want to move beyond this idea of, “as a Democrat, I could never be friends with a Republican” and vice versa, but it sometimes feels like we’re creating divisions that are insurmountable. But we have to be able to reach across and have a dialogue…
Because we have more in common than we realize. One of the things that we’ve been doing this year, actually for the last two years, is creating a dialogue series here specifically hoping that people will come who don’t agree with each other. This year our focus is Israel. Within the Jewish community, there’s a really big range of feelings about Israel, and within this congregation there are. So we have a 12-part series we’ve been doing this year in which each time we meet, one of the hours is study, where we actually learn some history about Israel and Palestine and Jewish history and get grounded in some knowledge. And then the other hour is dialogues. So we have trained a group of congregants to be facilitators, and we have small groups and people come together and really are encouraged to open up and talk about how they feel and what they think and to disagree with each other. And to grow our capacity to be uncomfortable, to grow our capacity to listen to views we don’t agree with, to take a deep breath, to stay open, to stay curious, to see if there’s something we might learn. None of us has the answers. To develop a humility that, I need you and you need me and we need each other to be able to create a society together. And so I think that what that requires is two parts of the whole. One part is being able to speak and act with clarity on the things we are clear about. You were asking about social justice. So there’s a lot of things that are very clear from Torah about what should happen in a just society. When we see injustice, we must speak about it, we need to protest it, we need to stand for what’s right. Meanwhile, we also have to have the ability to listen to people who don’t agree and to be humble in that conversation and to be open and to be curious and to expect that we might have something we don’t know. And that’s a very challenging combination. Two different modes of being. But I’m trying to make both those modes of being happen here, both myself and my own leadership and for the congregation to have opportunities to do both things at the same time.
It wasn’t that long ago that you joined the rabbinate, receiving s’micha from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 2009. Since then, how have you grown in your spirituality? In your idea of what it means to be a rabbi?
I feel like my growing edge, the part that I’m always learning about is the relationship between spirituality and social justice, between having an active relationship with God, the source of life. Having an active relationship with the aspects of being alive that are more subtle and internal and with the part of my leadership that has to do with crying out for the role that should be. And those in some ways really obviously dovetail with one another and other ways can sometimes feel far apart from each other. Sometimes the work we do, when we are advocating for policies or doing community organizing or protesting things, can feel really secular. Really, really secular. I think that the integration of those two things, always remembering where the motivation comes from. I don’t just care about this as an American. I care about this as a Jew. I care about this as a rabbi. Where does that come from? It comes from Torah. Where in Torah does it come from? And where does Torah come from? Where does that feeling in us that pulls us to say, wait, I believe in us as, as human beings, I believe that we can do better than this. I must speak about this thing that’s wrong. Where does that pull come from deep within us? My feeling is that that comes from something beyond us. It’s also in us, and so just always connecting those two pieces. I feel like it’s possible to be praying and not thinking about the world or be in the world and not be thinking about God, and I’m always wanting to reconnect those two things to each other and integrate them. That is, for me, it has always been a very present challenge for me, and it continues to be.
You also aren’t afraid to put yourself on the front lines of social justice. I know you’ve engaged in civil disobedience and written and spoken about that work. I was struck by something in a piece you wrote about the Muslim ban. You said that civil disobedience is what privilege should be used for. Could you take me back to that moment and elaborate on that sentiment?
There were a group of rabbis, 19 of us, who blocked the road by Trump Tower in Manhattan, the Trump hotel on Central Park West and Columbus Circle. I was aware that night about how safe I felt, sitting in the dark in the middle of the road. I knew that the cars weren’t going to hit me because there were police there blocking them. I knew that the police weren’t going to beat me up. I knew that I wasn’t going to get locked up for days with no one coming to help me. I knew that if there was bail I could pay it. I knew that I wasn’t going to get put in Rikers Island. Given that I was doing something risky, I felt remarkably safe. And that is because of a lot of things. I have white skin. I have lots of contacts, lawyers who could help me. We organized this in a way where we made sure that we had what we needed to be safe. I think one of the interesting dynamics as white people become more and more aware of our privilege and more and more aware of systemic racism is to think about what to do with it. Because it’s not useful to sit around feeling guilty that you’ve gotten a leg up on everyone, all people of color around you, that you’ve gotten advantages that other people haven’t gotten. It doesn’t do anything to feel guilty about that. So, ok, instead, I’ve got this privilege, I’ve benefited from this privilege. I would like to dismantle this system, but in the meantime, what do I do with this privilege and the power that it gives me? If I can put my body on the line in a visible way that gets media attention for people who might be behind bars or might be in detention, or might be at risk of deportation or are being barred from this country because of their religion, et cetera. If I can do that, that is a great way to use my privilege. Whereas if I didn’t have these privileges, taking that risk is something that I still might do, but it would be much riskier. And so I do feel like for those who have privilege, I think one of the questions we ought to ask ourselves is: what is this privilege good for? What can I use it for, given that I have it, and how do I use it with tremendous humility? How do I make sure that I am acting in a way that supports the leadership of people who are targeted and oppressed that never brings attention to myself at their cost or expense, but that is strategic and makes that privilege useful.
Given all that you do and these different roles you play, how do you not only find time for yourself, but also for your family?
I think that people who aren’t involved in synagogues or churches often don’t have any idea how clergy schedules are.
And I imagine in many cases, people need you, they don’t just want to chat.
Yeah. So my schedule, like I tend to be completely booked, you know, 10 to 12 hours a day without a break. I’m booked six weeks out, for six weeks solid. And then if you go six weeks ahead, you can find that opening. I right now have kind of found my groove. When I started in this job, it was overwhelming to me. When I started in my last job, it was overwhelming to me, but in time you kind of get to know the rhythm, the game of Tetris that is the calendar [laughs]. And in terms of time with my family, I don’t have enough time with my family. I don’t. I just was away with them this weekend and really, really soaked up that time and enjoyed it. But in general, I don’t have as much time with my family as I would like. We make sure to have Shabbat dinner together every Friday night and make sure to have, you know, little snippets here and there late at night and sometimes on the weekends. But it’s part of what I agreed to when I decided to be a rabbi. I took that on, and I hope, I think that my children and my family are getting what they need. But yeah, it’s definitely a lot to balance. In terms of not going crazy or not getting too exhausted, I do keep my eye on that. Like I definitely work hard to find ways that I’m going to get enough rest, have some time when I’m not here, have some time when I have some days off. Because I would love to be doing this work for a really long time.
To make it sustainable. Well, to come full circle, there are various reports that say millennials are less inclined to believe in organized religion. What you make of that? Do you notice that in your own congregation?
Well, one thing that’s incredible here at CBE is that we have this thing called Brooklyn Jews, which is for millennials, and it is thriving. There are hundreds, hundreds, hundreds of people in their twenties and thirties who are coming to things and who are connected to each other and making community. I think the issue is, if it looks like the older generation’s thing, like, who wants to be part of that? If it looks like it’s willing to adapt to meet you where you are, then it starts to become intriguing. Brooklyn Jews has Shabbat services, it has Shabbat dinners, it has holiday parties. It has all kinds of different things out and about in Brooklyn and at CBE. Increasingly we are combining things, with Brooklyn Jews and the general congregation doing things together. And it turns out that a lot of the
people in their twenties and thirties, they really want to be an intergenerational environment, as long as it’s not just that they’re supposed to fit into what the older generation wants. It should be about them also. And we’re ready to do that. And we do that. And it’s really incredible. I would say that the polling data about millennials, I am not seeing that. I think that it’s overstated.
I’m someone who is still figuring out my own path, but we all need community. There also are statistics that people are lonelier than ever and more addicted to substances than ever.
Yes. Yes, I think that millennials are very much looking for community.
And in real time.
Yes, with other people, laughing, talking, eating, singing, being together. You know, I think millennials very much are spiritual. They might not think of themselves as religious, but they’re spiritual. They’re curious about, they’re wanting to engage with questions of meaning and questions of life purpose. I think I’ve talked to a lot of people who feel that they kind of are connected to something larger than themselves, and it’s mysterious, and they don’t know what that is, but they want to be able to pursue that and explore it. And so I don’t think really fundamentally millennials are different than everybody else.
We just have a lot more confusing content to sort through.
Yeah. And our world is… looking at our world right now could lead one to despair. And I think coming of age in this time is harrowing. So having other people to do that with, having people to do that with who will also be willing to talk and think about what makes you hopeful and what we could do together and where we could come together and are willing to laugh. I think everybody needs that.
Emily Gawlak
Emily Gawlak is a writer and editor based in Brooklyn. A proud urban explorer and true cultural connoisseur, from the highest to the lowest brow, you can catch her at Coney Island, Carnegie Hall, or waiting on line for the latest food trend. She’ll be the tall one who’s, in all likelihood, waxing poetic about pizza.