Bryan S.:           Whenever something new comes into the scene it's going to be experienced as a disruptor, it's going to be experienced as a threat, and people are going to have to adjust to make room for that, and that's exactly what happened with us.

Bryan S.:           From the recording studios of Reconstructing Judaism, this is Trending Jewish with Rachel Burgess

Rachel Burgess:      And Bryan Schwartzman.

Bryan S.:           This is going to be really hard to jump into because we've been here for 10 minutes talking about everything from the Babylonian gods aspect of Ghostbusters to whether Dragon Bruce Lee's story was true. We got sidetracked into zombies, but we're going to have to bring it back because we've got listeners now and we're here to talk about evolving Jewish communities and new expressions of congregations and non-congregations and what congregations can learn from experimental organizations. How do we bring it back?

Rachel Burgess:      I think the only way we're going to do it is just to kind of dive right in. Because I don't think you can go from the Babylonian gods of Ghostbusters and zombies and dragons into Jewish synagogues.

Sam Wachs:          I should have been recording all that.

Bryan S.:           Was that the voice of Sam?

Rachel Burgess:      Sam did say that...

Bryan S.:           That's our producer Sam Wachs.

Rachel Burgess:      He said that we would keep these fond thoughts in our memories to be drawn upon in dark times.

Bryan S.:           And then that got us on a little tangent of a hidden deleted scene from the first Bruce Lee feature.

Rachel Burgess:      Look at that, we did get it back.

Bryan S.:           We did.

Rachel Burgess:      It came back. It's really interesting. I think one of the things that I hear a lot when I'm out in the world, I'm not sure how much you hear about this, but there's this big worry about people, especially after the 2013 Pew report that came out about American Jews and how they react with Judaism. And still here we are five years later and we're still talking about it, because we're finding that more and more people don't want to be affiliated with a traditional synagogue. A lot of synagogues and a lot of movements, ours included, have been trying to figure out okay, well what does the Jewish community of today look like now? And are we equipped to handle that or do we need to change our models? What is it about the traditional synagogue that isn't quite striking people the same way it used to, even not that long ago.

Bryan S.:           It's been a while since I looked at the Pew. I know on the other hand it showed a tremendous majority of respondents expressed pride in being Jewish and maybe some interest in connecting. It also showed an overwhelming majority of 25 to 40 year olds who were getting married are entering intermarriages, which brings us a little bit to our topic because some of what Judaism Your Way, an organization in Denver does and some of its beginnings was really rooted in serving intermarried families that at least were perceived not being served elsewhere. 

Rachel Burgess:      And this program also evolved into something much bigger. The person that we're talking to is Rabbi Brian Field and one of the things that he'll go into is basically how he just kind of did this listening process where he actually sat down and talked to people to find out what does Judaism mean to you? What do you need from a Jewish community? And they shaped their entire community based on how do you want to interact with Judaism, which is very different from a lot of synagogue models that we're familiar with. 

Bryan S.:           I think we're going to leave it to Rabbi Field to really explain what Judaism Your Way is and what it does. I think an open question which I think we raise in this interview is to what extent congregations learn from what Judaism Your Way is doing and to what extent is it really its own entity. 

Bryan S.:           We are thrilled to have Rabbi Brian Field join us on the program. Rabbi Brian Field is the founding rabbi of Judaism Your Way in Denver, Colorado. Rabbi Field graduated from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in 1994. Before moving to Denver in 2004, he served congregations in Chatham, New Jersey and Madison, Wisconsin. Bryan also worked as a hospital chaplain in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and he declares his vision of Judaism as a maximally inclusive Judaism that plays a robust role in the healing of the planet and the liberation of all human beings.

Rachel Burgess:      With that, welcome Rabbi Brian Field, it's such a pleasure to have you and to get a chance to talk to you about your really ground-shaking work.

Rabbi Field:        Happy to be part of the conversation.

Bryan S.:           Awesome, great. Welcome Rabbi Brian Field, this is a pleasure to have you on our show. How are things in Denver today?

Rabbi Field:        Things are beautiful. Couple of days ago we had a lot of snow and it was cold, and now it's beautiful and sunny and its supposed to get up to 70.

Bryan S.:           And I'm realizing as I'm asking you this that this'll probably be eight weeks before this airs.

Rabbi Field:        Okay so I can start again, how are things in Denver? Things are great in Denver.

Bryan S.:           Sometimes we let bloopers go on purpose, but generally we [crosstalk 00:06:36]. Okay. 

Rachel Burgess:      All right, well I guess this is it.

Bryan S.:           We're really interested in hearing about Judaism Your Way. It's a major force in Denver, but I think around the country and world our listeners might not be as familiar. I think to get this going and to sink our teeth into it, I was wondering if you could really lay out for us -- just start telling us what it is and how it's unique in the Denver ecosystem.

Rabbi Field:        Judaism Your Way is not a congregation. We do from time to time invite people to congregate together, and I'll be happy to say more about the ways in which we do that. We're a non-profit dedicated to Jewish outreach. We've been around since 2003 and basically we're formed as a response to a 1997 Denver area Jewish demographic study, which showed that maybe 30-some-odd-percent of Jews were affiliated with congregations or other Jewish organizations and that over 50% of Jews were in intermarriages. This is similar to demographic studies throughout the country, and the concern was how to respond. 

Rabbi Field:        An interfaith couple who had long been philanthropists in the local Jewish community decided that a response would be to hire a rabbi who would serve the Jewish community and be open to officiating at interfaith weddings. They approached the Jewish Federation and said that they would fund such a position and the Federation declined. They also approached the Jewish Community Center and got a similar response. It was too controversial, it would offend more of the traditional funders. 

Rabbi Field:        Because they had the means, they decided to fund an independent organization, which initially was called Kol HaLev which was Hebrew for voice of the heart. And had a few trials and errors, and by the year 2004 actually advertised for a full-time rabbi in many places including in the Reconstructionist movement's placement bulletin and that's where I heard about it. I followed up and by August of 2004 I was moving to Denver, so we've been here ever since figuring out how to create and how to build an organization dedicated to outreach, dedicated to reaching and serving either Jews and their loved ones who are not affiliated, not connected to the organized Jewish community or Jews who are, but want something for example such as an interfaith wedding that most of the organized Jewish community isn't able or willing or prepared to offer.

Bryan S.:           I'm just wondering, can you take us back to that moment, that time in your life and your rabbinate, why this really upstart idea would have appealed to you, would have had you pick up and move your family? I believe you were living in Ohio, is that-

Rabbi Field:        I was actually living in Madison, Wisconsin at the time.

Bryan S.:           Okay.

Rabbi Field:        And at the time, I was working as a hospital chaplain both in Madison and in Milwaukee. Prior to that I had served the Reconstructionist congregation in Madison, Shaarei Shamayim, as their first resident rabbi between the years 1996 and 2002. 

Rabbi Field:        At the time that I heard about this opportunity I was actually working as a chaplain, as I said, both in Madison and Milwaukee. And one of the really interesting things about being a chaplain is that you're working as a rabbi but you're providing spiritual care to people of all faith traditions. And that was really interesting to me. Learning how to serve people from whatever spiritual or faith perspective they were coming from, and doing it within my own integrity as a rabbi, but putting their needs front and center. And I realized in the process of doing that, that was actually interesting and a source of a lot of creativity for me. 

Rabbi Field:        At the same time in my work as the rabbi for Shaareiy Shamayim in Madison, a lot of the congregants were people who had challenged relationships with institutional Judaism. And a lot of the congregants were intermarried, a lot of them were gay and intermarried, and their request or the demand of Judaism was that Judaism be more responsive to them and the integrity of who they were. And as I was working with them, working with people who kind of had one foot in and one foot out of institutional Judaism, I discovered that that's where I really came alive personally in my rabbinate. That kind of creative work, solving those kinds of challenges was very stimulating for me. 

Rabbi Field:        When the opportunity to do this full-time arose, I said, "I need to find out more about this," and that was 14 years ago.

Rachel Burgess:      Packed up your bags and went from one snowy winter to another?

Rabbi Field:        In Madison the winters, once they land on you they kind of stick. In Denver they come and go.

Rachel Burgess:      Oh so you just didn't know what to expect.

Rabbi Field:        Nope.

Rachel Burgess:      In the weather, in your career, in this community, it's just nothing but surprise.

Rabbi Field:        Well that's a big part of at least what's kind of evolved for me in my work and in the organization itself is kind of a sense, and I know this is something a lot of people are saying in terms of spiritual practice, but embracing the not knowing. Part of our approach at Judaism Your Way is when somebody comes in to talk with us, we don't know. We don't know where they're coming from, we actually don't know what their way is. 

Rabbi Field:        Part of the message that we're trying to send with the name that we gave to our organization was that people would get the sense that we were actually interested and we were actually going to begin with who they were, where they were coming from, and then the potential of our conversation of every meeting was that the people who worked for Judaism Your Way were going to use whatever Jewish tools we knew to support them on whatever their way was. Every conversation begins with that sense of not knowing and that sense of openness, that curiosity, and that question, "How can we be helpful?"

Bryan S.:           So somebody comes in and says, "I'm really interested in nature and spirituality and the environment." Just as an example, what would you do with them? I guess what would you do with them? How would you help direct them on their journey, there we go.

Rabbi Field:        First of all I'd ask them to tell me more about their connection to nature and where they found where nature has been ... What their spiritual experiences with nature have been. And hearing their stories. Then I'd find out what brought you here and I'd learn more about their connection to Judaism. We'd take those two pieces then take the next step. And I'd be waiting and watching them to see if something clicked for them or more aliveness and more of a spark came into their eyes, and then I'd know we were taking a step in the right direction, and if not we'd keep it open.

Rabbi Field:        One of the things that when people come in is I just basically say, "What would you like to walk out of here with? We're going to spend maybe an half an hour, an hour together, what would you like to walk out with?" Then when its time for them to leave, just ask them if they can articulate what they actually experienced, if they're walking away with any answers or any more questions or if they have a thought about a next step.

Rabbi Field:        The challenge I think for people in any kind of position of expertise, so I would include rabbis in that position, is that we come with a lot of answers in our quiver. It's very easy for us to think that we know, so the idea ... We set up the name of our organization, Judaism Your Way, as kind of a reminder, as kind of a check on that impulse or inclination to hold onto claim that place of knowing, and to balance that with a sense of not knowing, a sense of curiosity and openness and willingness to be surprised and to learn something new. 

Rachel Burgess:      I'm curious about what your role is like, because you don't have this traditional what we think of as the traditional rabbi who leads the same services, does the same thing every Shabbat and I'm also trying to understand what it means with Judaism Your Way, which first of all I love the name because it already sets an environment saying, "Okay you can come here and you're not going to be judged for being whatever place you're in in your Jewish journey." What does this organization actually look like? What does your role look like in this?

Rabbi Field:        We began with the mission of working with individuals, couples or families who in one form or another kind of have one foot in, one foot out of organized Judaism in one form or another. The initial picture was counseling, was teaching, was helping people with life events, particularly people like interfaith couples or families for whom the standard Jewish ritual might not meet all of their needs. That was the original picture. But then quickly arose, "Well how do we get the word out? And how do we let people know that there's actually a Judaism behind the work that we're doing?" 

Rabbi Field:        One of the first things that we did was we began offering High Holy Day services. Free open High Holy Day services. Our first year we did it in a conference room at the University of Denver, maybe about 20 people came. During that first year we said, "We want to hold High Holy Day services in an unusual place," so we found out about the Park Gardens in a suburb of Denver that had large tents in which they held concerts and weddings and things like that. We decided to rent that and rent High Holy Days, and the next year we got about 120 people. And over the next several years, the numbers grew until we outgrew that place and six years ago we moved to the Denver Botanic Gardens where we hold High Holy Day services. First they have a tent that seats 1000 people, and after a couple of years we filled that, so by this time we'd hired a second rabbi, so now we are conducting services in two locations, one indoors and one outdoors at the Denver Botanic Gardens. And a lot of people come. We fill both venues. 

Rabbi Field:        We also offer services for families with very young children, and the first time we did this back in the suburban gardens we had about 40 or 50 people. This past year there were 700 people at our children's service. 

Rabbi Field:        What we're doing with the High Holy Day services is clearly we're not just reaching people who are intermarried or people who are not affiliated. At the basis kind of behind those two services is a vision of Judaism, what we call a maximally inclusive Judaism that a lot of people are responding to. When you kind of stand, when the ground upon which you're standing is a commitment to a maximally inclusive Judaism, you express that in terms of the High Holy Day services that we offer in the gardens or the community Passover seder that we offer or the occasional Shabbat services that we are now offering or some of the other holiday events that we offer. And everything is informed by the challenge to offer something on a group level that will be as inclusive as possible. I could talk more about how we do that, but over the years we gradually began to realize that we actually had a Torah to teach. And we call that the Torah of inclusion. 

Rabbi Field:        What is the commanding voice of the Torah of inclusion? What are the stories in Torah that speak to that voice? And what is the midrash, what are the interpretations of the Torah that can support Judaism to boldly become more and more open?

Rabbi Field:        I kind of told you a long story in response to your question as to what do I do and what does it actually look like. What we actually do at Judaism Your Way is a combination of our initial mission, which is to work with people one-on-one, work with an individual, work with a family, work with a couple. We teach classes, we work with groups, we're the only organization in Denver that offers a series of classes for interfaith couples to kind of figure stuff out together, and at the same time we're also doing High Holy Day services and other kinds of holiday events in which anyone can come, and it's both a way for people to experience what at least our version of a maximally inclusive Judaism might look like, at least as best as we can imagine and articulate it at this stage of our development. But also it's an opportunity for people to check us out and see if we might be a gateway into Judaism that might serve them.

Bryan S.:           This is a lot for me to wrap my head around and I've been following this stuff. You're not a congregation, but in some ways you're probably bigger than a lot of congregations, saying this in a positive way, in a disruptive way. If you're not a congregation, are you a community? And if so-

Rachel Burgess:      What are you?

Bryan S.:           ... What kind of community? We're really interested in questions of community and how that can look different.

Rabbi Field:        Okay. I want to kind of respond to your question in a couple of ways.

Bryan S.:           It was an unfair compound question I admit.

Rabbi Field:        No that's great. In some ways we don't actually have vocabulary for the direction that we're going. One of the things that we kind of established from the get-go was that we would not be an organization characterized by membership. There would be no dues, people would not become members of Judaism Your Way. Now that doesn't stop many people from saying that they're members of Judaism Your Way because they make donations to us or because they participate to us or because we have become their Jewish home. One of the reasons for that, as we were thinking of all of the reasons, at least as many as we could think of for Jews to not want to affiliate, and one of the reasons that we've discovered is that for all sorts of historical and sociological reasons, some of which have to do with anti-Semitism, many Jews kind of developed an allergy to belonging and kind of connected their Judaism to a feeling of not belonging.

Rabbi Field:        If someone approaches a congregation, it's possible that some people might have some ambivalence about needing to join or become a member of a congregation or at the very beginning their first interaction with this organization is going to be from a place of not belonging. That will kind of stimulate, that will push that not belonging button for them, and that won't necessarily feel good. 

Rabbi Field:        We decided to take that barrier, that perhaps psychological barrier to remove that, so to make it as barrier-free as possible for someone to show up without feeling whether they belonged or not. That's a way in which we're not like a congregation. We don't have memberships, we don't have dues. 

Rabbi Field:        The other things about congregations, and this is based on both my experience as a member of congregations and having been a pulpit rabbi, is that congregations tend over time to become relatively conservative institutions. They develop traditions. These are the ways that we do things, and the longer you've been a congregation, the harder it is to make significant changes in the way you do things. Our structure is such that we are more free to try new things, to experiment. Every year our machzor changes by 15% to 20%. Every year our Haggadah changes from 20% to 50% depending on the theme of the Seder that we offer. Do people have their favorite things that they like to do? Of course. That we like to do? Of course. We've tried to set things up so we are freer to experiment to find ways of reaching niches in the Jewish population that we haven't figured out yet how to reach. And that requires a flexibility of freedom to experiment and try new things.

Rabbi Field:        That's another thing that makes us kind of different. But for a lot of people who belong to congregations and only come to High Holy Days, there's really no difference between them coming to only High Holy Days at a congregation to which they're affiliated and only coming to High Holy Days that we host as Judaism Your Way. In that sense, it could be exactly the same for their experience.

Rachel Burgess:      I wonder, because a challenge that I think you would have in creating these communal settings, because I think about with synagogues, and you have a lot of this one-on-one interaction with people to create a synagogue or to create a Judaism Your Way. But once you start getting people together, you do run this risk of how do you create an environment that recognizes a bunch of individual paths to Judaism, and not creating an environment that says, "This is the Judaism that we're doing for this ... This is a Judaism my way just to get us through this communal event." How do you balance that?

Rabbi Field:        Well I think that's a great question. I think it's a bigger question than just a Judaism Your Way question, I think that's kind of one of the core spiritual questions of our time. We live in a very much "I want it my way: kind of time and we live in many ways in a very selfish culture. I think we're all struggling with how you balance meeting people where they are with helping people connect on a more global scale. I'm just going to cite a couple of pieces of, again, what I like to call the Torah of inclusion. 

Rabbi Field:        One is the fact that Jacob near the end of his life, for the first time he's able to do something that Isaac was not able to do and Abraham was not able to do. He gathers all of his children and he blesses each one of them individually with their own blessing. Yet they all kind of continue as a connected people. There's another midrash that the rabbis offer about what it was like for the Israelites to cross the Red Sea at the conclusion of Passover, at the culmination of the Exodus, and one of the stories they tell is that each tribe found their own way through the sea. There wasn't just one path through the sea, but there were multiple paths through the sea. And of course there's the very famous midrash that when the Torah was revealed to the Israelites at Mount Sinai that each individual Israelite heard the Torah through their own capacity through their own gifts. From the very beginning we've had this tension between individuality and difference and uniqueness and being together as a community. I just wanted to kind of reframe the question as kind of a perennial Jewish tension and not just as something that our organization and its current iteration is raising for the first time. 

Rabbi Field:        There's actually a couple of things that we work with. One is, and this is something that we began with and that I think we've become more practiced at, and that is the art of welcoming, again, based on the ancient midrash of the open tent of Abraham and Sarah, the idea that they had openings in all four sides of the tent, so whatever direction a traveler was coming from, they knew that they were welcome. So there's that sense of welcome. Whoever you are, wherever you are, regardless of whether you are Jewish or your partner is Jewish or you're an ally or a friend of a Jew. Regardless of who you are, regardless of whether you're religious or secular, you are welcome, there's a space in this open tent. There's that sense of welcome. There's inviting people to hold that sense that this isn't just for you, but that the Torah of Inclusion isn't just coming from the rabbis to the people, but rather it's kind of a commanding voice to all of us that we need to find those places where our level of comfort stops and it's at that place where we have a choice about whether to kind of go back to our own sense of comfort or to reach out and bring somebody else in, to make room for someone else. That's part of the practice. 

Rabbi Field:        We invite people to stretch in that direction as part of the practice of the Torah of inclusion. But the other thing is how do we help people connect to each other? Once they've been welcomed, how do we help people, how do we make the experience stickier once the service has ended or once the life cycle event has ended? How do we get people to feel permission and excitement about reaching out to each other and staying with each other?

Rabbi Field:        We haven't spent as much time doing that, so one of the programs that we started this past year was we've introduced seasonal Shabbat services. As a way to provide the funds to rent the hall, to hire the musicians, that kind of thing, to publicize it, we've been recruiting groups of individuals who are interested in having Shabbat services and people who are interested in connecting to other people, and we've recruited them as cohorts of what we call Shabbat Angels. 

Rabbi Field:        They get together and we support them to celebrate Shabbat together, and we also find things for them to do to help support the functioning of the Shabbat service. They help with the recruiting and they help with the welcoming and they help with the set up, so they're both volunteering for us with each other, and they're also beginning to learn the skills and have the experiences of for example celebrating Shabbat together. We're beginning to start to form these Shabbat cohorts, these havurot. We're going to be finding other ways to do that as well, but this is more of a work in progress. 

Rabbi Field:        Your question is a really insightful question and it's pointing to one of the growing challenges that we're working with.

Bryan S.:           I'm wondering what the organization's relationship has been like with the other synagogues, with the Federation, with the established Jewish community. I mean my sense is that some of the criticisms that have been leveled at Chabad probably have been leveled at you too: that your organization doesn't ask for commitments, it lowers the financial barrier to the point that nobody has a stake. They may even say you siphon people off who would consider going, but why pay $2000 to be a member somewhere when you could have High Holiday services for free. And I think you're offering the bar and bat mitzvahs now too if I'm correct.

Rabbi Field:        Yes.

Bryan S.:           What's that relationship been like? Have you faced some of those criticisms? How have you answered them?

Rabbi Field:        I'll answer that question as it pertains to my organization in just a second, but I just wanted to back up and just kind of broaden the scope of the question. When I first started studying to be a rabbi, my first choice, my initial choice was to go to what was then called the University of Judaism in Los Angeles, which was then the West Coast affiliate of the Jewish Theological Seminary. At that point I thought that the Conservative movement was the right path for me. After a year there I realized that that wasn't the right path for me and that I was deeply attracted to the Reconstructionist vision of Judaism. 

Rabbi Field:        When I told my professors that this is what I wanted to do, they all tried to dissuade me. Not to stay in the Conservative movement, but they said to go what they felt was a legitimate liberal movement which they say was the Reform movement. I guess what I'm saying is that whenever there's a new kid on the block, that kid is always viewed with some sense of suspicion.

Bryan S.:           Interesting. We're glad you didn't listen to your professors. 

Rabbi Field:        I'm glad I didn't listen to them either. Well I listened to them because I remember everything they said, but I just felt sad that that's what they were saying. Whenever something new comes into the scene, it's going to be experienced as a disruptor, it's going to be experienced as a threat, and people are going to have to adjust to make room for that, and that's exactly what happened with us.

Rabbi Field:        Yes, we got all of those criticisms. And over time, and it took time. First of all I made a personal commitment to be at every local board of rabbi's meeting and whenever the board of rabbis did a project that I participated in it so they could experience me personally as being part of the Jewish team. Secondly, one of the services that we provide for people is that when they look at us and see that we're not a congregation, and after having had an experience with us want something more, like they want a building, they want a specific Jewish address, they want a school in which their children can be raised, then we've referred people to every congregation in the seven county area. And at the same time over the years, almost every rabbi in this community has referred people to us. When an interfaith couple for example or a gay couple comes to them and they're not in a position to say yes about officiating their wedding, instead of simply saying no or go to a justice of the peace, they now have a Jewish way of saying yes, they can make a Jewish referral. That feels better for most of them.

Rabbi Field:        Over the years, and it's been 14 years so this didn't happen overnight, but over the years everyone's made their adjustments and now the Jewish community in the seven county area is bigger and more inclusive. I think part of that sense of acceptance came when people started realizing how many people were actually coming to our High Holy Day services and that we actually weren't a fringe organization anymore and that we needed to be taken seriously. 

Rabbi Field:        I think all of those things contributed to the fact that at least publicly, no one is disparaging our organization or seeing our organization as a disruptor, but seeing us as just another player in an evolving Jewish community reaching out to an evolving Jewish population. We've worked hard to develop very collegial and collaborative relationships with the rest of the Jewish community, and my sense is that by and large we're considered with great respect now.

Bryan S.:           I guess I'm wondering, do you think you've developed practices or approaches that congregations might be able to emulate? Or is your vision so radically different that it's inherently a different thing?

Rabbi Field:        I guess it depends on the congregation. One of the questions we ask is, "Who is Judaism for?" And I think every congregation either implicitly or explicitly asks and answers that question. We have asked that question and we've answered it in a maximally inclusive way. Judaism is potentially for everybody. Now could any congregation emulate that? Yes. But I think that would take some time for them to want to come to that and to deal with the costs and benefits of that decision.

Rabbi Field:        Another thing that we've learned over time is if you're offering a Jewish service and you know that a large percentage of the people in your community, you want them to feel like this is for them. But many of them aren't Jewish, they don't know Hebrew, or many of them are Jewish and don't know Hebrew or felt really bad about never learning Hebrew, so Hebrew is kind of one of those buttons that gets pushed that makes people feel negative. A lot of people have never developed a theology that works for them. They'll say that they're cultural Jews and they're not spiritual because they've never figured out a coherent spirituality for themselves. 

Rabbi Field:        How do you lead services? How do you offer prayer? How do you invite people to participate in a Torah service given that all these folks are part of your congregation? And the truth is they're part of almost every congregation. We're very articulate and explicit about naming those people, and explicitly inviting them and figuring out ways to include them. I think any congregation could do that, whether or not they want to do that, whether their cost benefit analysis for doing that is worth it for them, that's really up to the congregation. But that's kind of a choice that we've made.

Rabbi Field:        One of the things that we do, and I actually learned this from a Reformed rabbi by the name of Janet Marder -- this was probably about 20, 25 years ago -- on Yom Kippur, invited all of the non-Jewish spouses of congregational families to come up, and then she talked about their being allies, their being sources of support. Often they're the ones who are driving the kids to religious school, and asked them to come up and she blessed them in front of the whole congregation. When she did that, a lot of congregations said, "We want to do that too." 

Rabbi Field:        One of the things that we made a decision to do, and we're not the only organization that does this, is at the beginning of each High Holy Days service, after a couple of songs and a little bit of kind of warm up, we open with a welcome in which we basically articulate what our organization stands for or a recognition of who we understand to be in the congregation and explicitly welcoming people in many of their different identities. Now we don't do every identity at every service, that would become kind of trite and kind of automatic and people would tune that out, so we need to do that creatively. At every service, one of the things that we say is we know there are people here who are not Jewish who have different faith backgrounds, and this is why it is a blessing that you are here in this Jewish service, this is what it means. That's kind of a faith statement of the Torah of inclusion. 

Rabbi Field:        And of course that's based on the fact that Moses was married to the daughter of a Midianite priest. It's based on the fact that a mixed multitude came out of Egypt with the Israelites. It's based on the fact that when Jacob blessed his two grandsons, Joseph's sons Ephraim and Manasseh, and remember Joseph also married Osnat, the daughter of an Egyptian priest. These two, Ephraim and Manasseh were born in Egypt and they were the children of an intermarriage. And Jacob said, putting his hands on their heads, blessing them, taking them as his own saying, "Through you shall all Israel be blessed." Saying, "May God make you like Ephraim and Manasseh." And the last part of that statement is what many Jewish families at every Shabbat say when they're blessing their sons to this day, "And may God make you like Ephraim and Manasseh." The fact that Jacob said, "Through you may all Israel be blessed," we believe that is a commanding voice of the Torah of inclusion and that our challenge is to look at our intermarried families or our people who have one foot in and one foot out for any reason, the way that Jacob did. And say, "Through you, our people can be blessed." 

Rabbi Field:        So what does Judaism need to look like to make that true? That's kind of what we're reaching for. And I think any congregation can make that choice.

Rachel Burgess:      We are out of time, but I want to thank you so much for first of all sharing your Torah, how rabbinic of you, and also for talking about how you've worked in this organization to create this new hybrid community that allows people to approach Judaism in a way that's inclusive and inviting to them and getting them engaged in the Jewish community around them, this is absolutely fascinating.

Bryan S.:           Yeah, no, I'm just still going over the little d'var at the end there. It's making me think about in different ways. Thank you, this was great. Great way to connect. Thank you for sharing some of your story and a little bit what you're doing. It seems very much like an unfolding story, a work in progress. We look forward to hearing, because it seems like everybody is hopefully searching for answers and we at Reconstructing Judaism definitely appreciate your commitment to inclusion and doing that work on the front lines.

Rachel Burgess:      And also if you're ever in Denver, make sure that you check out Judaism Your Way, see what's going on, see if there's any services. I'm sure Rabbi Brian Field would love to hear from you and find out about your Judaism as well. 

Bryan S.:           Yeah and if anybody hears this, what's the best way for them to make initial contact with your organization?

Rabbi Field:        We have a website-

Bryan S.:           Somebody will hear this.

Rabbi Field:        JudaismYourWay.org. And if people want to learn more about what we're doing and try to see what might be applicable for their communities, we're delighted to consult. We're delighted to have a conversation, and we're delighted to learn what other folks are doing because we're at our best when we're continuing to learn. Every year we learn something new. 

Rachel Burgess:      The learning never stops.

Rabbi Field:        No it never stops.

Rachel Burgess:      Well thank you so much. We're looking forward to hopefully having you back on again and telling us more about what you're learning in this new innovative type of Jewish community.

Rabbi Field:        It's been my pleasure to talk to both of you, thank you.

Bryan S.:           All right, Shabbat Shalom.

Rachel Burgess:      Yeah, Shabbat Shalom.

Rabbi Field:        Shabbat Shalom.

Rachel Burgess:      Thank you so much Rabbi Brian Field. You can find out more information about Judaism Your Way at JudaismYourWay.org, and if you happen to be in Denver, definitely check them out, see if there are any events that you can drop by or feel free to give Brian Field a call. You can find out more information as well on our website at TrendingJewish.Fireside.FM. Follow us on Facebook at Facebook.com/TrendingJewish. You can also subscribe to this podcast. You can listen to it on Google Play, iTunes, Overcast, Castro, most places where you can get podcasts you can definitely download us and take a listen to other episodes. If you like what you're listening to, you can definitely rate us. It helps people find the show and definitely share it with your friends. If you have any questions, comments, ideas, anything you would like us to explore on the show, feel free to go onto our website. Again, that's TrendingJewish.Fireside.FM and send us a message, we always appreciate it. And if you like the work that we're doing here at Reconstructing Judaism, you like our podcast and you like what you're listening to, you can definitely support our work by going to ReconstructingJudaism.org/Support ... Salud.

Bryan S.:           Lehitraot.