Reconstructionist Rabbinical College

ABSTRACT Louis Newman’s book Repentance: The Meaning and Practice of Teshuvah (2010) is compared to and contrasted with Danya Ruttenberg’s On Repentance and Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World. Newman masterfully summarizes Jewish tradition’s views on teshuvah in a way that clarifies the spiritual tasks involved and provides the reader with direction for undertaking teshuvah. Ruttenberg draws on some of the same traditional texts but applies them to contemporary social and political situations. Where the traditional model does not provide solutions, Ruttenberg suggests her own with mixed success. She draws on reparations and reconciliation processes in ways that move well beyond the Teshuvah paradigm.

It is a great privilege to provide this tribute to open the collection of papers in honor of my mentor and friend Rabbi David Teutsch, PhD, adapted from a rich conference organized in his honor by the Levin-Lieber Family Program of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College's Center for Jewish Ethics, under the direction of Rabbi Mira Wasserman, Ph.D. David's leadership of the Reconstructionist movement and his contributions to the wider world are staggeringly impressive and have helped to transform institutions, fields, and individual lives.David headed the Reconstructionist congregational union, then known as the Federation of Reconstructionist Congregations and Havurot, during a period of significant congregational expansion, and moved on to serve as the Wiener Professor of Contemporary Jewish Civilization and ultimately president of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, establishing the Center for Jewish Ethics as founding director and also welcoming Kolot: The Center for Jewish Women's and Gender Studies. He has helped to shape the field of Jewish ethics as a scholar, promulgator of values-based decision-making, and primary author and editor of the award- winning Guide to Jewish Practice, which provides a comprehensive, multivocal exploration of religious and ethical practice from a post-halakhic, pluralist perspective. David draws on this expertise to serve as a counselor to hundreds of rabbis from the Reconstructionist movement and beyond, and as consultant to myriad organizations. Equally as influential are his contributions to Jewish liturgy through the editorship of the Kol Haneshamah prayer book series, which translated Reconstructionist theological and communal commitments into practice at the turn of the twenty-first century and influenced the work of other movements through its integration of poetry and commentary and multiple modes of accessibility. Complementing his overarching editorial vision are his thoughtful, nuanced commentaries that are woven through the volumes.David's leadership style is modeled after the Israeli military—akharai, “after me.” He never asks anyone to do something that he himself would not do, from monumental undertakings to the smallest tasks. His fierce vision and formidable accomplishments are matched by his warmth and concern for every individual he encounters. David is a true communitarian who understands that every community is comprised of individuals with needs and aspirations worthy of attention. He is an ethical leader highly worthy of emulation and I am lucky to know him and learn from him.

Negative rhetoric can clear a space in discourse for cultural and intellectual transformation. By saying no to prevailing orthodoxies, negative gestures, as Budick and Iser describe them, have a way of ‘allowing the unsayable to speak for itself’ (xi). This aspect of negative rhetoric was especially important for Walt Whitman, as C. Carroll Hollis has shown in characterizing what he calls Whitman’s “platform poetry” of the first three editions (125–26, 136–145). Whitman’s democratic poetics endeavors to equalize that which Western culture has tended to regard as antithetical: body and soul, self and others, the many and the one, God and humanity. He creates an argumentative context for these radical claims through rhetorical negation: I have said that the soul is not more than the body And I have said that the body is not more than the soul, And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one’s self is.1