March 20, 2013 | 11:26 pm

General Conference and The Forward’s top rabbis

Posted by Mark Paredes

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In just over two weeks, Mormons around the world will gather for the church’s semiannual General Conference, broadcast around the world via satellite from Salt Lake City. During five two-hour sessions over two days, top LDS leaders will teach and inspire members with spiritual sermons. On the Saturday prior to the conference, a worldwide broadcast will be made of the general meeting of the Relief Society, the world’s largest women’s organization (all LDS women 18 and over are members). Relief Society leaders will speak on topics of interest to women and families, and they’ll be joined by one of the church’s top three leaders. In addition, leaders in the youth and Sunday School programs hold annual training meetings that are webcast for use by local leaders throughout the world.

These conferences are repeated at the local level, where leaders hold semiannual stake conferences that allow members to hear from and come to know their regional leaders. Bishops (heads of congregations) are also required to hold ward conferences once a year. In this way Mormons become very familiar with their local, regional, and general leaders, and are able to hear from them directly on a regular basis.

I thought of these conferences while reading The Forward’s current list of “America’s Most Inspiring Rabbis.” I have met only one of the rabbis on the list (Rabbi Lisa Edwards, head of one of the most friendly synagogues in town), and would certainly welcome the opportunity to learn from the others as well. Instead of simply listing names with accompanying testimonials, in the future The Forward may want to provide links to audio clips, video clips, or even the texts of inspiring sermons given by these rabbis so that we could all learn from these gifted teachers.

I think that it’s important for the Jewish community and the world to be exposed on a regular basis to contemporary rabbinic thought. If it were up to me, there would be a website for rabbis and other figures in the Jewish community to upload their speeches, writings and presentations on a regular basis, possibly following publication in other media. 

A website devoted to the writings and speeches of contemporary rabbis is long overdue. The Jewish exposition of ethical monotheism is sorely needed in today’s society, and I’m pretty sure that some thoughtful rabbis aren’t getting enough exposure. In addition to the educational benefit of such a website, it would have an important practical one: the relative ease of drafting future lists of influential rabbis.