Chana Silberstein has been the Chabad representative to Cornell University, Ithaca College, and surrounding areas since 1984. She has created and implemented Jewish educational programs in a variety of formal and informal settings. She is currently dean of curriculum for the Rohr Jewish Learning Institute. A graduate of Gateshead Jewish Teachers Training College, Chana holds a PhD from Cornell in experimental psychology. Chana is also a proud mother and grandmother. 

Baila Olidort: You've been with the community and on campus in Ithaca for many years, and have, in a way, watched the community grow up. How has Jewish identity there evolved over these two decades?

Chana Silberstein: One of the shocking moments came for me over 25 years ago when we were new here, in a conversation with a Jewish student. He identified as Jewish but he didn’t observe or engage in any Jewish religious practices. In the course of conversation, my husband said to him “but of course you will marry Jewish.”

His response was, “Well, with only a 15-20% Jewish student body on campus, what are the chances that I’m going to meet and fall in love with someone who happens to be Jewish?”

Now, sad as it is to see Jews who were not necessarily planning on marrying Jewish, this wasn’t news to us. But to this student—representative of many Jewish students on campus—marrying Jewish was something to be left to chance. That was hard to assimilate, though in retrospect, not so surprising for someone whose Jewish education had been left to chance.

More recently, however, I have spoken to parents of college-age children who have taken great pains over the years to educate their children Jewishly, nurturing a love of Torah and Israel. Yet they seem to have resigned themselves as well to the possibility that once their children go off to college, there’s a good chance they’ll intermarry. And though they do hope that their children will marry Jewish, they have also braced themselves to support their children’s choices, to accept and love whoever they bring home as a prospective spouse.

These are parents who have been grooming their children since early childhood to get into an Ivy League school. And while they know it is possible that their child may disappoint them, get into trouble or just drop out, they are not preparing themselves to accept this. Of course it’s a possibility, but not a possibility they would accept with equanimity. They are prepared to push hard to make sure their children make the right educational decisions.

And yet, for some reason, when it comes to Judaism, even the most Jewishly-identified parents have given up on expecting that the next generation will share their Jewish values. There is a way in which Jewish parents today have thrown in the towel. They don’t believe they can influence their child’s Jewish future—and maybe they don’t believe they have a right to.

Some of us yet remember a time when intermarriage, even among non-observant Jews, was indeed considered a tragedy, a loss. What do you attribute this change in attitude to?

It is perhaps part of a larger societal phenomenon, where so often parents say, “all I want is for my child to be happy.” So they’ve thrown away the possibility that there’s something more important, or perhaps something that precedes happiness. Happiness is not a cause, it’s an effect.

We haven’t necessarily brought the good life any closer by placing happiness as the first thing on the list. If the goal of everything is happiness, if we can be anything we choose to be, but our happiness depends on our making the right choice, well, we’ve only complicated life because there are way too many possibilities that we have to choose from. With so much to choose from, choosing becomes difficult. Decision fatigue sets in, and people are left with very little energy for pursuing the important things in life. Or they walk away without having made a choice.

What we have is a surfeit of possibilities today, but a deficit of commitment. We are more educated today—we have more information, more Jewish education available to us at our fingertips than at any other time in history. And yet that doesn’t necessarily foster commitment.

Speaking of the great variety of choices, it seems to me that Jewish people today can locate themselves in so many different places—places that were never on the radar of Jewish identity—and still feel that they are legitimately within the parameters of Judaism. What are the dangers in this kind of fluidity?

The phenomenon of divergence from tradition is not new to Judaism. But what’s interesting is the notion that you can take the tradition and not just create an emphasis of your choosing, but feel that you can both break the rules and keep the rules.

Choice is an implication—it represents a commitment to a particular pathway. Jews always struggled with tradition, indeed Jews were the first to promulgate new “isms” of every kind. But when someone chose to reject some aspect of Jewish life, they generally did so fully aware of the consequences. There was a time when people often chose to convert out of Judaism—but they made that decision and committed to its consequences. Down the line they may have decided that it was worth it, or not, but at least they had some kind of clarity as a result of a choice that they made. Today, there’s a notion that we can choose anything and everything. We want to enjoy the benefit of choice but we are not prepared to make the commitment. We don’t want to shut down any of the possibilities.

When Elijah stood before the Jews on Har Carmel and asked them, “How long will you jump back and forth?” and believe in both G-d and the baal, he was telling them that what they were doing was worse than choosing the baal. Because as long as they hadn’t made a commitment, they could not even see the consequences—they had no insight. As long as you straddle both sides of the fence, there’s no opportunity for epiphany.

You are on the board of your local Jewish Federation. You know of course that although proportionally, Jews donate the most dollars to charitable causes, only a tiny percent of their giving goes to Jewish causes. In fact something like a mere six percent of the total dollar figure they give goes to specifically Jewish programs and causes.

Donations are down in Federations all over. People are much less likely to give to an umbrella organization. Instead, they choose the boutique needs of the month, and it’s usually not a Jewish need.

It is tempting to try to woo these donors back by broadening our mission, by giving to causes that are not necessarily Jewish but which are attractive to potential donors.

Yet as one of a small number of exclusively Jewish charities, we must be proud of our commitment to funding Jewish causes, and we must be prepared to speak cogently and convincingly about the importance of Jews supporting these causes.

This does not preclude Jews giving directly to humanitarian causes. But when a small town Federation is pulling in fifty or a hundred thousand dollars a year, and Jewish communities are crying for education, for rejuvenation, for resources to help them inspire their youth in Jewish involvement, why are we afraid to say that we see our first mission as building and forging the Jewish future? Why are we afraid to make this commitment?

I’m not arguing against being aware of what’s going on next door. I’m not arguing against supporting your local disaster relief effort. But we need to be willing to make the argument for Jewish living, and to stand up for its inherent value.

How does your Chabad worldview inform the positions you take whether on the board of your Federation, or with students on campus where standing up for Israel has become so unpopular and politically incorrect.

One of the things the Rebbe highlighted more than anything is having a global view that engenders feelings of responsibility, connection, commitment to the world at large. Being Jewish is not about being partisan and ignoring everyone else. The Rebbe gave us a broad vision of life; he was concerned not just with the inclusion of the entire Jewish people, but of our mandate to inspire all people to observe the Noahide laws.

He shared with us an image of integration— of all people, all generations—from the beginning of time to the end of time: a responsibility to all existence. He taught us that we are working for something larger than ourselves, larger than community, larger than humanity and the world as we know it.

And yet, the Rebbe also taught us that that we can only bring this kind of change if we never lose sight of our personal commitment which is made one step at a time. It starts with personal integrity, an inner wholeness, a clarity about our fundamental values.

Rather than pursuing happiness, we have to know ourselves, make peace with ourselves and pursue integrity. If you love Israel, but you love Israel’s enemies equally, you don’t really love anyone. People who are ready to help the whole world but don’t have time for their own, for their children, have not figured out their values. And if you don’t know what your first values are, you can’t figure out your basic responsibilities and you’re not going to be there for your family. If you haven’t figured out how to be there to your family, you’re giving is skewed.

You are a mother of a large family. How have these thoughts translated into your own parenting?

As parents we are afraid to demand of our children, we are afraid of risking disappointment: theirs and our own. We need to trust in their resilience, in their ability to figure it out, to do amazing things, though sometimes it takes more than one attempt to succeed.

We also need to have to have the confidence in our own parenting to know that we have made mistakes—and we can survive them and our children can survive them. Part of life is dealing with imperfections. If you cushion the surface, a child will never learn to walk, because they have to feel resistance to learn to walk.

I waste very little time on guilt over my parenting. If there’s love, caring and investment, then the other stuff works itself out. Part of our children’s lives is working out the challenges of an imperfect childhood, and we must trust that they are up to it.

After so many years on campus, you seem to have sustained your enthusiasm for your work with students.

It’s always been exciting for me to work with students on campus because they are at the cusp of life. They are passionate and idealistic, so it’s very exciting to engage with them. They have the freedom to explore. They are open to change and have the flexibility to follow through on what they believe in.

I often tell them: Think about how you want to make a mark. If you know what your primary values are, then you’ll find a way to bring unity into the different parts of your life and weave these strands together. And that is deeply satisfying.

The high holidays are a busy time of year for campus shluchim. What are your thoughts as you prepare to bring in the New Year?

In some ways, it is easier to capture the essence of the season while one is involved in community work. We often summarize the theme of the Jewish High Holidays as one of repentance, soul-searching, self-analysis. And that is certainly a part of it, though I have always felt that when we focus exclusively inward, it can be a somewhat depressing time of year. Too much focus on the self can be isolating, and it can be disheartening to realize how little we have really changed over the past twelve months.

But in fact, a major theme of Rosh Hashanah is focused outward. It is a time to reflect on the world around us, and to see how it calls to us to respond. According to Jewish tradition, Rosh Hashanah coincides with the day that humans were created—the day in which Adam and Eve looked around them and saw a world with purpose and meaning—and sought a relationship with the Creator. It is not so much that on Rosh Hashanah we are granted life as that we choose life. We make the decision to pursue that which is right and good.

I am always moved by how we come together on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur as a community. The very fact of our gathering together speaks to strong sense of shared mission. The sound of the shofar is one that cuts to our essence, a pure and simple sound that reminds us that sometimes, doing what we need to do does not have to be complicated.

Baila Olidort is Editor-in-Chief of Lubavitch News Service and Director of Communications at Lubavitch Headquarters.