David Minkus
Rabbi at Congregation Rodfei Zedek

A) What qualities make the nominee deserving of the Z3 Bridge Builder Award?

I have built my rabbinate on the conviction of the "Big Tent;" all are welcome so long as they are thoughtful. I have centered my vision on raising the voices of those in my community as well as those who have felt unheard or unwanted (inter-faith, less literate, less observant, non-believers and many others who have been marginalized by the Jewish “mainstream”). This has required being a good, meaningful listener and demonstrating that my leadership is fleshed out by being sensitive to the needs of my community, those that have been articulated and those that have not. It also has required integrity, not jeopardizing my values in order to boost our membership or weakening our community (“our brand”) by seeking anyone to make our tent fuller. This began by elevating our member’s stories and their truth to the pulpit and making them the foundation of our programming. I started a program called This American Shabbat, where three members share their distinct and personal understanding of a Torah portion (where their perspective is raised above all other voices, classical or contemporary) with the community, after having studied it with each other and me. I have launched our own version of ReBar, giving adults the opportunity to survey their Jewish identity in the context of their adulthood and the human they want to be, while being guided by the tradition and communal discussion. These efforts introduced, and then, ultimately, reinforced the idea that each person is valued for who they are and not who the tradition/their family/synagogue think they ought to be. The result has been a community that upholds each other’s voice and the diversity of those perspectives, while empowering young and old to feel their Judaism is authentic. And when I launched Mercaz this past year, this vision was scaled. This may have been epitomized after releasing the podcast “A Leaflet Drops in Shul,” which is a story of bridging divides and differences through leadership and community. Zionists and anti-Zionists, observant and atheist, Jew and non-Jew, can all be found on any given Shabbat or in any program, in discussion with each other. This took hard work, but it has become a sacred value to those who come into our community. But it all began with individual conversations, placing those intimate meetings within the framework of the tradition and the search for a meaningful life. Judaism ought to be a technology that helps to answer that question, and I think we are boldly doing that here. Mercaz, launched this past winter, has broadened these discussions and enabled us to have these conversations on a much bigger scale, and being clear that we believe Judaism has unlocked the technology, and this innovation is simply an update rather something novel (although it is novel that this kind of innovation is coming from a mainstream synagogue).

B) In what ways has the nominee demonstrated exceptional leadership and commitment to their work in bridging divides?

I have prided myself on being authentic, on modeling the kind of person that I want to be a part of the community I lead. I have shared my beliefs and convictions, my ambivalences and fears, which has led to others bravely doing so themselves when I have asked- and I ask often. I have led by demonstrating that I have no monopoly on the pulpit, Torah or truth, nor does anyone else. Vulnerability and sincerity are supreme values and, I have come to learn, non-negotiables for creating true community. This has empowered all who touch our community to share their feelings, beliefs and fears. Whether it is Israel, reproductive rights, Black Lives Matter, religious observance, the volatile years of the Trump Presidency or any other contentious issue, we have handled division not by avoiding the Politics but by demonstrating that Torah is above the fleeting matters of politics, and this pay dividends. We are very politically and socially active, while still maintaining political diversity and meaningfully being a part of our Southside Chicago neighborhood. My podcast “A Leaflet Drops in Shul” is not simply a story about what happens when there are anti-Zionist members of a community, nor is it only a story of the aftermath of 10/7 but it is about the makeup of community and how we get things wrong when we are consumed by fear. It is a story about being nimble in your leadership and how to recognize fear clouding your leadership, and the eternal power of saying, “I was wrong.” This podcast has been downloaded thousands of times and this is relevant because it allowed me to have conversations with other rabbis, Jewish professionals, communal leaders, and concerned Jews about how to meaningfully build a thoughtful and inclusive future. Had I not made the podcast, being willing to literally broadcast my concerns and failures, or even if I did not launch Mercaz, the conversations I have had, and am still having, would not have happened and my impact would be strictly local.

C) How has the nominee's work impacted the Jewish community and beyond?

My work has been widely impactful, in large part because I see leadership as indispensable from the need to empower those I am leading, allowing a plurality of voices to buoy my leadership. True leadership, and true impact must transcend charisma and a cult of personality, and we have achieved that in my synagogue. This philosophy has led to a community that is actively engaged in their search for meaning rather than inactive consumers of a Judaism or a synagogue where their connection can be tenuous, purely nostalgic, or guilt induced. But, to state it in frank economic terms: our synagogue has grown, we have brought in disaffected members of other synagogues, unaffiliated and many Jews by Choice. The empowerment of my community to feel valued and needed by Judaism (not for the bottom line or survival for a conservative continuity but for its evolution and sustaining a tradition that requires on-going interpretation) has led to a flowering of new members and more active participation in ritual offerings. We have moved many people from the periphery to the core, which is measured both in tangible participation and giving but also investment in the shared vision. It has, equally important, increased the level of non-ritual programing and engagement with the synagogue community and our neighborhood, all under the banner of a thick Jewish identity and practice. We actively feed and work to deal with a hunger and poverty crisis in our neighborhood; we created a network to allow recent migrants to cook their native food in our kitchen, while their families used our facilities, with our members, to enjoy a sense of comfort that is elusive, if not unavailable to them otherwise. I did not oversee this or make it happen, but I will say, this level of community involvement did not happen before I came nor did our members look to the synagogue for engaging their Judaism beyond prayer or lifecycles. We have innovated in many areas of the synagogue and not for innovation’s sake but for helping all of those seeking greater connection, to have the pathway widened and safer to walk through.
Lastly and potentially most importantly, in 2024 we launched Mercaz: the center for purposeful living. Mercaz is our start-up to further the kind of programming that is widely popular and engaging yet does not fit neatly into a synagogue’s programming calendar or even vision. I created Mercaz to ask the kinds of questions that do not have a home in or on the pulpit. We have had programs that seek to understand the rabbinic pipeline crisis, issues of funding in the Jewish world, how lay people can better understand the difficulties and limits of Jewish leadership and how various Jewish communities are thinking about the war in Israel and the elections. These programs have been hugely successful not only in attendance, but in bringing in people who would never come into a synagogue, or never have, had we not brought in the speakers or asked the questions we are asking. Mercaz’s aim is, in part, to provide the high-level programming we have always offered but to offer it outside of the typical “shul” offerings, ensuring we are not preaching to the choir or even the converted. Mercaz’s long-term success will depend on continuing to be broadly appealing to unaffiliated Jews without losing our impact on our regular members and those we think can be, and, most importantly, continuing to have a vision for the institution that is not simply about how many people were present. So far, we have far exceeded our expectations in our first year.