Clergy Students Learn to Navigate “Toxic Polarization” at Winter Intensive

Just days before the U.S. presidential inauguration, as analysts were continuing to examine post-election data on the polarization within Jewish communities and beyond, it felt like the perfect moment for rabbinical and cantorial students to come together to talk about ways to navigate political divides.

And that's just what happened this month, as clergy students from Hebrew Union College and The Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) came together for a timely and meaningful winter intensive. The course built on a program first held at HUC in Cincinnati two years ago: "Eilu v'Eilu: Leading and Living in Polarized Times."

The Reform and Conservative seminaries teamed up with One America Movement to design the 4-day minimester course. One America Movement is a national nonprofit that works to bring people from different religious and social groups together to promote more productive dialogue and counteract what's become known as "toxic polarization."

"By partnering with the One America Movement for a second Eilu v'Eilu January intensive, we're offering our rabbinical and cantorial students an opportunity to gain valuable insight into toxic polarization and the needed skills to navigate the divisions our communities face," said Rabbi Andrea Weiss, Ph.D., the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Provost at Hebrew Union College. "This educational experience has been enriched by sharing the learning with students at The Jewish Theological Seminary."

The idea for this joint intensive emerged from regular meetings aimed at enhancing collaboration between Hebrew Union College and JTS - an effort that also led to the May 2024 HUC-JTS junior faculty retreat and a combined cantorial choir course. "There is a spirit to help each other advance the field, and share resources as much as possible," said Stephanie Ruskay, Associate Dean of the Rabbinical School at JTS and executive director of the JTS Hendel Center for Ethics and Justice. "So this course seemed like a nice opportunity to spend time together, have our students get to know each other, to learn together, and to learn vital skills in dealing with polarization in American society."

The winter intensive was facilitated by HUC alum Rabbi Fred Reeves, Director of Jewish Programs for the One America Movement. He said that, in his experience, rabbinical and cantorial students do not need to be persuaded that toxic polarization is a problem; rather, they need to become better equipped to handle such divisions. "The clergy that I have worked with, and these students that are here now, are right in the middle of the polarization, so I have to do very little to justify doing it," Reeves said. "When we have the kinds of divisions that we have experienced in our country over the last decade - frankly longer - they have to manage that, so they are right on top of seeing the immediate applicability of this kind of work."

By using Jewish texts and scholarship to give students practical ideas and skills to engage productively across differences, Reeves said, "we're preparing them with the tools they need before they are actually in their pulpits. And so, they're going to go into those pulpits already equipped with a language and a skill set to approach toxic polarization and to be able to interrupt it as it is happening in their communities."

"We began by learning from the organization More in Common that Americans think we are much more divided than we really are," said fifth-year HUC rabbinical student Madeleine Fortney. "We learned that the negative stories we create about people we may disagree with prevent us from giving those people the benefit of the doubt and remaining open to learning about their true stories and values. Ultimately, we practiced conducting conversations about polarizing topics by approaching them from a place of curiosity and with a desire to understand each other's perspectives, which I believe will help us greatly in our work as future clergy."

Other sessions examined the science behind toxic polarization, how social media drives divisions, and how clergy can approach difficult topics in their sermons and classes. Students also engaged in text study, including an exploration of how traditional sources treat the notion of sinat chinam, the "baseless hatred" between Jews cited as the cause of the destruction of the Second Temple.

A JTS fifth-year student described the material as "very practical." In the days following the minimester, she interviewed for several positions and noted that when she referenced the training, employers were "impressed and appreciative of her experience."

The intensive concluded with a session entitled, "American Values, Religious Voices: Speaking Religious Truth to Political Power," in which Provost Weiss shared the campaign she founded with graphic designer Lisa M. Weinberger in the wake of the 2016 election and ran again after the 2020 election. The project brought together a multi-faith cadre of religious studies scholars to write letters to our elected officials in Washington focused on our core American values that are connected to our diverse religious traditions. The initiative led to the publication of American Values, Religious Voices: 100 Days, 100 Letters (University of Cincinnati Press, 2019) and American Values, Religious Voices: Letters of Hope from People of Faith (Vol. 2, 2023).

Ilana Mulcahy, a fourth-year cantorial student at HUC's Debbie Friedman School of Sacred Music, said she appreciated the way the intensive was geared toward future clergy, "and that it talked about what our role can be in navigating these different political divides, even within our own communities, and how we can use some of these tactics to influence people in different ways, toward change."

One of the things the students examined through the study of traditional sources, Mulcahy noted, was the concept of tochecha, or rebuke, "and how we are obligated as Jews to rebuke each other - while asking, how do we need to do that in a way that is respectful and from a place of love, and what are the ways we do it that versus the ways that are not acceptable to do it?"

These questions were also on the mind of JTS's dean Ruskay. She said one challenge that people who decide to become rabbis and cantors face is that they are often people-pleasers. "And when you are a people-pleasing person, it's hard to be an interrupter, to say, 'whatever's happening here is not ok,'" she said. "And so, it's good to come together and develop trusting relationships with other people training for the same field, to talk about where things might get difficult, and how you need to prepare yourself in order to be a person who can interrupt - and take risks."

Morgan Tobey, a fourth-year rabbinical student at Hebrew Union College who worked on this year's intensive as a student intern and who also attended the 2023 Eilu v'Eilu intensive in Cincinnati, said the new element of collaboration with JTS this year was a resounding success. "Every day at lunch, JTS and HUC students sat and intermingled, so they could get to meet new people."

Tobey also said major changes in political circumstances brought a new urgency to the subject of polarization this year that she did not experience during the previous course. "I don't think any of us anticipated that we were going to have yet another highly contentious election, and nobody could have anticipated October 7 and its fallout. It just feels like there's layer upon layer of ways in which we're really struggling to talk to each other and be in community. But we don't have to start with, 'You're evil; I'm done.' It feels like there's maybe a little more hope that we're not going to tear apart, that we can at least try. We're building the tools to try to stick together through it all."

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