Insider – Outsider: some afterthougthts on The Conversation

About 10 years ago, I wrote an article entitled “The Loneliness of the Short-Distance Davener.” [For those who don’t get the cultural reference, that is a take-off on a short story and subsequent popular film called “The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner.]

In that essay [posted elsewhere on this blog site], I shard some of the sense of feeling out of place everywhere in the New York synagogue scene – or more accurately, not feeling quite at home anywhere. I sensed that my feeling of alienation, or at least “outsider”, was not so unique.

I recalled this essay and feelings last week as I participated in the most recent iteration of The Conversation, an annual gathering of a diverse collection of American Jews, brought together by Gary Rosenblatt of The New York Jewish Week. The “open space” methodology is structured to foster talk – with that being the only ostensible agenda. The ground rules prohibit stating who attended or what any individual may have opined; in these afterthoughts, I shall honor that restriction.

When I was invited to this one, I did a double take. Not that I was so surprised to be invited: so many folks whom I knew, including Mirele, had already participated that at first blush it didn’t seem so out of line. What did surprise me was that this particular gathering was restricted to the New York community.

It is true that I live in New York, and feel very much at home in New York. But I am not affiliated with Jewish communal institutions in New York, other than one board I sit on – and that is a foundation board not based on any affiliation. Even the program I developed at NYU, admittedly a New York institution, teaches philanthropists and foundation professionals from around the world, and is not restricted to or even primarily targeted to New Yorkers. So it seemed to me that I was not really an apt candidate for a three-day meeting conversing about New York Jewry and its communal institutions. The organizers demurred, and essentially dismissed my reticence.

The collection of participants was true to that advertised. It included professionals and volunteers, younger and not so young [although not so many older – see my previous post], those who came from various ethnic and denominational and religious observance backgrounds, those early in their career, and those well established, those who see themselves as leaders and those who don’t.

The conversations covered the broad spectrum of predictable topics in this moment in history. Some topics were clearly very personal and related to how an individual experiences Jewish communal life; some topics were very much extensions of the ethnic diversity of the Jewish communal landscape, and how those ethnic groups experience being a part of or outside of the perceived mainstream; others topics were continuations of the communal agenda of generational involvement, continuity, affordability, innovation, etc. And a few were excursions into particular intellectual or artistic journeys.
“Israel” was not a major or pervasive topic. It wasn’t ignored, but given its centrality in the larger public Jewish discourse, and the intensity of how those discussions typically play out, I, and several others, were surprised by the minor part that it played over these three days. Most of us were glad, and I suspect it was because no one was particularly interested in revisiting the well worn, and too often hostile scripts of that discourse. But it is also true, I imagine, that for most, daily life is more about negotiating the portals and promenades of where one fits or doesn’t fit in the complex life of the world’s largest Jewish urban center.

Which, I came to see, was the consistent theme running through the 3 days. Almost everyone there saw him or herself in some sort of dialectic with being an insider or an outsider, enfranchised or not enfranchised, feeling counted or feeling dismissed. Some in the group had never fully met those who were were so “other” and were surprised to learn that their stereotypes were off base. Some in the group were overt advocates for the uniqueness of their particular group or experience and hoped others would experience it too. Some came with, and probably left with an imaginary “in group” and aspired to be a part of that, but most came away with a sense that there were many “in groups” and at least as many “outsiders” and more important, that those definitions were elusive and evolving.

I myself came to the conclusion that my own sense of feeling like an “outsider” was what put me smack dab in the center and not at the periphery at all. It was exactly in that space that most people felt defined, at least at some time and in some ways.

At the end, though, there was one dynamic which probably defined this group in a very different way than other “Conversations” which were more explicitly national. Lots of participants extended invitations for Sabbath meals, or to visit their organization or to experience their ethnic distinctiveness in person. And I can attest, only a very few days later, some of this has already happened – I am now facebook “friends” with many who were there; we have already had new Sabbath guests, hosted another in another context, and plans to do more, and even received invitations.

Perhaps, then, this is what it means to be a Jewish New Yorker at this moment in history – one can be connected or disconnected all over the place with more choices than one can imagine, experience, or even fully understand, knowing that even more await in the next neighborhood and the next email. If that is so, it isn’t a bad place to be at all.