By Joel Magalnick, Editor, JTNews
When Rabbi Dov Gartenberg was in college, the Shabbat dinners he spent with the family of a close friend served as inspiration for his current practice of Judaism.
“The most powerful experiences people have Jewishly—and I’ve asked people this—are around tables,” Gartenberg said. “The intimate experiences were very powerful.”
Using the storytelling model of a seder, Gartenberg, who left Seattle’s Congregation Beth Shalom in July, has formed an organization to take advantage of those moments. Panim Hadashot—New Faces—began in the fall of 2004 in Gartenberg’s North Seattle living room, and has been growing steadily ever since.
His primary goal, whether it’s with Shabbat meals, or with Saturday morning Torah study, or with facilitated discussion groups, is to get people to connect—or reconnect—with Torah and Jewish worship, but in a different way.
“I had experienced the limit of what congregations can do,” said Gartenberg, who spent 16 years on the bima at Beth Shalom. “I also knew from first-hand experience how overextended and overworked and overwrought pulpit rabbis are.”
So as he prepared to leave his pulpit and began to think about his next move, he did a lot of research into local Jewish outreach, analyzing what synagogues do well and where they could improve. When talking to people, he said he “was surprised at how few people mentioned worship as an inspiring dimension. Or if they did, they said they can’t find it anymore.”
So he decided to come up with something different while remaining focused on the celebration of Shabbat. The result is, at its core, a beit midrash—a house of study—as a means to bring people back to Judaism. There is not, however, intent to siphon members from congregations.
“We are a complement,” said Gartenberg, “we are not trying to replace synagogues.”
Though similar to organizations like the Seattle Kollel or Aish HaTorah, Panim Hadashot comes from a a decidedly non-Orthodox viewpoint, which changes the way its programs can be approached.
“The Judaism I present is pluralistic,” said Gartenberg. “We’re going to present liberal Judaism in a positive light, as well as Orthodox.”
There are also differences on a spiritual level.
“We look at the Torah from within the stance of a faith community that wants to discover new meaning, new revelation in this text for the life of the community,” said local author and Jewish educator Mary Potter Engel, who regularly attends the Saturday morning “70 Faces of Torah” study group.
Panim Hadashot has four primary programs, which range from weekly to once a month meetings.
The first is called P’nai Shabbat, the Faces of Shabbat. This Friday night dinner program takes place in a different home each week, in keeping with the organization’s mission to reach out to people in all stages of life, consists of different age and family demographics. The Shabbat blessings and meal are turned into a storytelling session, with discussion and elaboration that varies with the audience.
The second program is a Saturday morning Torah study program. Instead of a full worship service, “we study the text, we study midrash, commentary, and we flesh out the words that we’re reading so that people have a conversation, a very rich conversation,” said Gartenberg.
Though it could be considered the most esoteric of the programs offered, it is also one that has attracted a group of true regulars.
“The deeper you go, the more you get out of it,” said Engel. “It’s really wonderful because it brings the Torah alive. You get to see the richness of it, how different people approach it.”
Engel and her husband Winslow, who is on Panim Hadashot’s standing committee, have been attending events since its inception. She said the weekly study brings her love for Torah to life more than regular Shabbat services.
The third program, Panim el Panim, or Face to Face, is a Saturday afternoon discussion program held in public spaces, organized around specific themes. It is meant as pure outreach, according to Rabbi Gartenberg. “We take themes that we think are of broad interest, and we also bring interesting groups of Jews together,” he said.
One recent forum, called “Why Be Jewish?” brought viewpoints from an Orthodox rabbi, a Reform rabbi, a secular Jew, and a Jew who converted from Christianity to discuss their groundings in Judaism. Another, to be held on March 19, is a round table geared toward families with small children to discuss options in Jewish education.
The fourth program, which occurs two to three times a month, wraps up the other three programs and packages them as an entire weekend program called Shabbat Around Seattle. Because he doesn’t travel on the Sabbath, Rabbi Gartenberg will usually stay at the host’s home, and 30ñ40 people will come to the programs that center around a common theme.
That the rabbi travels to the people instead of the people traveling to the rabbi is one of Shabbat Around Seattle’s innovations.
“When I told people, they got very excited about the fact that the rabbi will come to their neighborhood rather than the people traveling to the synagogue,” said Gartenberg. “That’s a major-league house call!”
Engel and her family hosted the first weekend event, and subsequent Shabbats have included the home of renowned family psychologists John Gottman and Julie Schwartz Gottman.
Other projects include Sha’arei Tikvah, a holiday worship and networking program for people with disabilities and their families, run in conjunction with Jewish Family Service, and a mentor program that uses an adapted version of the Living the Jewish Year course Gartenberg taught at Beth Shalom. The course, now a more broad-based program covering all branches of Judaism, teaches students about Judaism by following the cycle of holidays on the Jewish calendar.
Gartenberg’s strategy with Panim Hadashot is to address what the organization’s printed materials call the failure of the liberal Jewish community to approach outreach outside of the synagogue.
It appears to be working. A recent Shabbat Around Seattle was filled to capacity, and would-be participants had to be turned away.
Gartenberg stresses that the organization is meant to be “transdenominational,” meaning that Panim Hadashot is open to anyone, Jewish or not, with an interest in religious study, but keeps to the precepts of egalitarianism and the viewpoints of the more liberal branches of Judaism.
While the printed materials are critical of Orthodox outreach, which they say “uphold and often camouflage insular and extremist teachings,” Gartenberg said he has a wish to open lines of discussion that currently don’t exist, and he has a strong appreciation for the community. He is a student of both the Kollel and Aish, and he confides that “Chabad touched me as a college student very deeply. It influenced my own Jewish identity.” He’s also impressed with the way the Orthodox movement has succeeded in outreach, especially in terms of study.
“Whether it’s intentional or not, they’ve created this Jewish context which are outside of the synagogues,” he said. “There’s a warm and sharing and stimulating presentation of Judaism, and people will be very moved, even if they don’t agree with you ideologically.”
Though disagreement with ideology is one reason that has brought many new faces to Panim Hadashot, another is the idea behind the programs themselves.
“When he first presented the idea it sounded exactly like what I was looking for,” said Alcena Plum, of Seattle, “especially someone who’s recently converted and needs to keep learning.”
Plum and her husband Jonathan, whose Jewish education stopped with his Bar Mitzvah, now attend events together. Alcena had been a member of Rabbi Gartenberg’s Living the Jewish Year course at Beth Shalom, and she now sits on the board of Panim Hadashot.
Plum has attended many of the events over the past several months, but she says she gets the most spiritual satisfaction from the Shabbat morning Torah study.
“I love the ritual and the full Torah service,” she said. “What I’ve found is that when I go to synagogue now I miss the learning.”
Plum said that though she has gained a lot from Panim Hadashot, she is disappointed that the program has not attracted many young adult participants.
“I’d like to see more involvement of people our age, in the 20ñ30 something range,” she said. Programs in the near future plan to address that, she added.
Panim Hadashot has sparked interest among area religious leaders as well. Rabbi James Mirel, who along with his position as senior rabbi at Temple B’nai Torah, is also the current president of the Washington Coalition of Rabbis, an organization that encompasses most of the state’s Reform and Conservative rabbis. He said that as both a congregational rabbi and with the coalition, he fully supports Rabbi Gartenberg’s efforts.
“We’re very excited about what he’s doing,” said Mirel. “I certainly would recommend it to members of our congregations as well as the unaffiliated.”
Mirel added that he has offered his support for Panim Hadashot both spiritually and financially because he sees it as a way of bringing people to synagogues and to worship.
Most of Panim Hadashot’s income derives from donations to programs, but Gartenberg said they had just received their Federal tax-exempt status and have begun fundraising efforts.
In the meantime, he and a slew of committed volunteers are working to build recognition of the program, one new face at a time, and they appear to be having success.
“It’s been an interesting process to watch some people realize that this really fits with them,” said Plum. “[They] can’t believe how much they’re learning, or that they’re actually enjoying it.”