Reform Judaism

Im ein kemach, ein Havdalah? I'm unconvinced.

2009-02-18T17:49:47Z

By David A.M. Wilensky
(Originally posted on The Reform Shuckle)
A debate has raged this week at iWorship, the URJ's listserve for synagogue Ritual or Worship Committee members, regarding the timing of Havdalah.

In this late stage of halachic development, I'm a little amused and taken aback that such a debate could rage at all. Certainly, the timeframe for Havdalah is well established. It must be done after dark, once three or more stars are visible. Simple, right?

Nonetheless, the following query was brought before the list earlier this week:

After many years of only observing B'Nei Mitzvah at Shabbat Morning Services, our Ritual Committee and Congregation determined a few years ago that Shabbat Minchah B'Nei Mitzvah would be an alternative available to each family.
The start time of our Shabbat afternoon B'Nei Mitzvah is 5:30 p.m. (The service concludes with Havdalah.) In recent months, three families have asked that the start time be made later, up to an hour later. The requests have related to spring and fall B'Nei Mitzvah, when the sun sets later. Until now, we have denied those requests. Our Ritual Committee now plans to take up this issue.
So, my question is really directed at those whose congregations already hold Shabbat Minchah B'Nei Mitzvah. What time do they start and is there any flexibility regarding the start time?

List members reported, without variation, that, no, in their congregation there was no variance in the start time of Shabbat Mincha B'Nei Mitzvah.

I was shocked, though perhaps I shouldn't have been. Growing up in the Reform world, I'm used to the mentality that Kab Shab must begin at the same time every week, or else the sky will fall. I don't like it, but I'm used to it. Yet, in the synagogue I grew up, where Havdalah was not a weekly occurrence, when it did happen, it happened after dark, regardless of the time of year.

In Reform, we all agree that we can exempt ourselves from halachah when we so choose. But we do not do so at whim. We do it for reasons, I hope. Yet no one could seem to give a reason, a Jewish reason, as to why Havdalah should begin in broad daylight.

One rather eloquent iWorship member, one whom I usually agree with, brought up the principle of "Im ein kemach, ein Torah." It means, "With no bread, there is no Torah." The idea behind the saying is that being a Torah scholar is great, but if you do at the expense of your material needs, that's a problem. It's a principle meant to keep us from venerating impoverished scholars.

The thought behind bringing up "Im ein kemach" in this discussion was that (I think, I'm still not totally clear on the point!) if synagogues aren't Bar Mitzvah factories, bowing to every whim of Bar Mitzvah families, and if synagogues don't have everything start at easy to remember, inflexible times, all of their members will leave and take their money (kemach, bread) with them. I fail to see how this argument plays out logically.

This same list member asked me, on the list, "Who said everything has to make sense?"

If we look back at Reform history, we'll find that "Does it make sense?" is one of our central questions. Does it make sense to keep kosher? I don't think so, therefore I don't. Does it make sense to wear tzitzit? I think it does, so I do. Does it make sense to begin Havdalah, a ritual about darkness and steeped deeply in the symbolism of light and dark, when the sun is up? No. So what's the deal folks.

This conversation on iWorship shows us that ritual decisions are being made in synagogues acorss America with no thought being given to their meaning. And I feel like a lone voice crying out in the wilderness.

When we don't think about our religion as a religion, when we turn it into a customer service department, we are doing ourselves a grand disservice and we are spitting at our tradition. We're saying that we think our tradition is pretty, but that it doesn't deserve any real thought.

And in the end, I'm just not convinced that publishing a different start time every week is going to turn Ritual Committee members into starving scholars.

Bicentennial man

2009-02-12T21:27:48Z

By Arielle Gingold
(First posted on the RACblog)

Today we celebrate the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin. Unfortunately, with a debate between evolution and intelligent design rife in our country, staggering new polling data finding only 4 in 10 Americans believe in evolution, and the ever-present push to teach creationism in public schools, we can't quite call this the happiest of birthdays.

As Rabbi Ana Bonnheim reminded us, Judaism and science are not at odds. Indeed, many clergy and scientists alike are speaking out against the naysayers who seek to place evolution and faith at odds, including the Catholic Church. Intelligent design and evolution will be discussed at a conference in March that marks the 150th anniversary of Darwin's "On the Origin of Species," but officials made clear "intelligent design would be treated only as a cultural phenomenon, not as science." Indeed, "Church teaching holds that Catholicism and evolutionary theory are not necessarily at odds," and in Pope Benedict's time, "The Vatican...has been trying to stress its belief that there is no incompatibility between faith and reason." To a similar end, the National Academy of Sciences, the most celebrated scientific bodies in the U.S., recently wrote a pamphlet on this very topic stating: "Science and religion address separate aspects of human experience. Many scientists have written eloquently about how their scientific studies of biological evolution have enhanced rather than lessened their religious faith. And many religious people and denominations accept the scientific evidence for evolution."

Furthermore, even Charles Darwin himself did not seek to remove God from the process entirely. Although, "Darwin had a slam-dunk in his explanation of the evolution of species, including humans, and every modern test of evolutionary theory has only strengthened his conclusions...he also knew there is plenty of room for God at the top, upstream of the business of biology."

At a Center for American Progress forum on these issues yesterday, Rev. Dr. Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite emphasized the importance of "progressives in science and progressives in religion" engaging society and speaking out in the public square on this issue for a few reasons. First, she said, "it is imperative that religious people understand...it is not a belief system, evolution is happening whether you like it or not," and second, religious leaders can play a key role in exposing intelligent design as the unscientific theology that it is.

This weekend, we celebrate Charles Darwin and promote discussion on the compatibility of religion and evolution through Evolution Weekend. If your congregation is one of the 986 congregations in 14 countries participating, please send us an email and let us know how it went, and if you don't already have something planned, it's not too late to get involved! Rabbis- this is a great topic for a sermon; educators and youth directors- this is a great time for a discussion in Sunday school or at a youth group events; everyone else- have a conversation with your friends, your parents, your colleagues. There is no forum too big or too small.

Though evolution may not have all the answers to our many questions about the nature of human life, and while in some areas we might find points of conflict between our faith and empirical scientific findings, science classrooms, especially in public schools, are not the place for this discussion-- our Sunday schools, around our kitchen tables, and with our rabbis are the appropriate and constitutional venues. Evolution is science, creationism is theology, and intelligent design is merely a wolf masquerading in a sheep's lab coat.

Getting Yourself Organized for the Real World

2009-02-06T15:54:10Z

By Jake Adler
(First posted on the Kesher blog)
Jake Adler shares his struggles to find balance in religious ritual, time management, and ultimately, life.

My family has never been particularly big on routines. We rarely ever lit Shabbat candles or had Shabbat dinner together in my home. It was never part of our schedule. As the mood took us, we would have Chinese, French, sushi, or my mom's favorite, the local steakhouse. This novel indecisiveness could be thrilling, but at times it was also confusing. With so many options available, it's sometimes difficult to narrow down your options. As a result, I often had trouble knowing when to stop putting things on my plate.

In high school and college, I had to learn to balance coursework, social time, extracurriculars, and personal time. But whereas in high school I had the structure of the school day and the gentle nudging of my parents to keep my schedule in check, in college I could join as many clubs as I wanted to, stay up as late as I wanted, and had no one to answer to but myself. The lack of boundaries made it too easy to over commit, and my freshman year, I burned out on all of the choices. I became the president of the Jewish Student Union, became a DJ for the campus radio station, sang in the choir, had the lead role in a play, edited the school newspaper, and stayed up late shooting the bull with friends. Eventually, I learned to balance my schedule. By my senior year, I was a master at iCal. My weeks were packed, and color-coded, a cornucopia of different activities that led me to spend time with a variety of colorful personalities.

After graduation, I found myself "in the real world," a renaissance man. A jack-of-all-trades, master of none. I had lots of interests, but I struggled to identify my passions. Although in college I had drifted slightly from my high school ambition of becoming a rabbi, it returned after I graduated. I got a summer job running the high ropes course at Olin-Sang-Ruby, the original URJ summer camp in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin. I interned at the URJ, helping with the 2007 Biennial. When that ended, I was hired as the administrative assistant for the URJ's Social Action Department.

A full-time job brings another set of time management issues. It was easy to break up my college day into 2 or 3 hour chunks of class time, or hour-long meetings, but another thing entirely to have a job where the most accurate way to represent my day on the calendar is an 8 hour block labeled "Work." The chaos of having unpredictable work can be frustrating and frightening. Additionally, becoming financially independent (particularly in New York City) involves a fair amount of self-discipline (and is another cause of stress).

But I have found comfort in ritual. I go to services and am reminded of familiar words, thoughts, ideas. Shabbat dinners have become a (more) regular part of my life, thanks in large part to the support of friends. I learn new old traditions, and am able to proceed at my own comfort level, without feeling nervous or incompetent. The burden of choice is also a blessing, and we as Reform Jews must never forget that. From Adam and Eve to Abraham to Jacob to Nachshon, we make choices, make mistakes, wrestle with our past, our future, the holy and the mundane, but we always grow. Adult life is a reminder that things are always changing. Staying abreast of the changes helps me to only put what I can handle on my plate.

Jake Adler is the administrative assistant for the URJ's Commission on Social Action. He graduated from Earlham College in 2007.

Finding God in the New York Times

2009-02-05T15:45:06Z

By Gardening Grandma
The juxtaposition of three stories in this morning's New York Times made me stop and realize I've been spending far too much time thinking about what's happening to me in my very small footprint in time and far too little time appreciating the great flow of history and God's creation.

On page 1 we learn that Dr. Death, Aribert Ferdinand Heim, never atoned for the atrocities he performed at Buchenwald. Writing from his haven in Egypt, perhaps as recently as 1979, he wrote that it was Simon Weisenthal who invented the atrocities he performed, and he decried the possibility of anti-Semitism because most Jews were not Semitic in ethnic origin.

On the top of the page, we read of President Obama's attempts to limit the gross pay inequity of today's U.S. robber barons. In an article on the same subject, the Wall Street Journal reports "fewer than 4,000 of Citigroup's more than 300,000 employees earned more than $500,000 in 2008." (Anyone reading this work for a company where more than 10 percent of the employees are in that income bracket?)

But then I turn to page 7, where I learn of the discovery of the fossil remains of a 60- million-year-old, 42-foot snake, whose existence will help today's scientists solve the problems of global warming.

And it is then that I realize how I need to step back, take a deep breath, and look around me. I need to be like Jacob, awaking from sleep, and realizing

Surely God is present in this place, and I, I did not know it. (Genesis 28:16)

Out of the Narrow Places

2009-02-04T16:37:18Z

By Marge Eiseman
I wonder why the conversations I've been having lately seem to have the same underlying theme - I can talk to people in different cities, from various parts of my life, and we are all exploring the same thing. Change, creativity and trying to move out of the stuck places are the dominant themes.

One of my friends calls this "living in Torah time", and sees the conversations of the mundane as actually our sacred journey played out beyond the temporal bounds of time. The current story we are learning, Parashat B'Shallach, where we collect Joseph's bones and finally face the moment of crossing the Sea with all the attendant miracles and wonders, is an amazing meta-story for us to look at in our culture and our personal lives.

We have been stuck, many of us, in fear and anxiety. When the panic rises, we cling to the known, even when it isn't useful or appropriate. This is what our ancestors did, when they cry, "Weren't there enough graves in Egypt? You should have left us serving Pharaoh. We warned you before we left..." and the fear rose up as strong as a wall keeping them from moving forward. The text calls it a cloud that obscures the daylight, but we feel its thickness even now. When Moses finally answered them, and said "The Egyptians you see now you will never see again. God will deliver you but you must calm down and still yourselves," it was foreshadowing what I find myself doing in this time of extreme fear - exuding calm, enthusiasm and trust.

In one of my conversations today, Rabbi Harley Karz-Wagman from Wilmington, NC quoted Rabbi Ed Friedman, who talked about this role for the rabbi as being the non-anxious presence in the congregation. I was telling him about a book I just picked up, The Path of Least Resistance by Robert Fritz. Fritz writes about how we must change the underlying structures in our lives to create changes that we want. He talks about how our life is like a river, and like water, we follow the path of least resistance. So when God wants us to leave the fear and depression of slavery, God actually cuts a new channel - opens the pathway for us to flow through!

The lessons of living in Torah time are huge. We can echo our ancestors' fears or choose to step up and hear the resonance of the voices of faith and calm. Let us decide to create the structures that support us and help us find our much-needed way out of the narrow places and into the expanse of the future!

Sibling Rivalry: Can't Kill 'em so Try to Love 'em

2009-02-02T15:50:47Z

By Rabbi Paul Kipnes
(Originally posted on Or Am I?)
I have three siblings: an older sister, and two younger brothers. Our relationships with each other have, like the sides of an accordion, sometimes drawn closer and sometimes moved farther apart. At times distance (east-west coast, California-Israel) has made my heart grow fonder; occasionally the distance provides an easy excuse to ignore them. While we may argue over who is our parents' favorite ("my son, the rabbi"..., kind of hard to beat that), we so often turn to each other when the going gets really tough.

A seven-year-old girl, discussing her younger sister and herself, once said: "I think that God is having one big experiment. God put two people who are very different in one house to live and wants to see what happens." Truth be told: my brothers and I had some knock-down, drag-outs in our day, and we all did a lot of kvetching - complaining - about each other too. But in various ways, my siblings are the people who consume much of the space in my heart. Our relationships are intense, complex and deeply cherished.

Torah Truth 1: Sibling Relationships are Challenging
In truth, many sibling relationships are challenging, for the children and for the parents too. These problems reach as far back as our Biblical past. Torah, in its brutally honest way, bares the truth about siblings for all to see. Rather than whitewashing our founding families, Genesis details the fratricide of Cain and Abel, the supplanting of Ishmael by Isaac, the outright disdain and deceit between Jacob and Esau, jealousies between Leah and Rachel, and the parental favoritism, egotism (and attempted fratricide) between Joseph and his brothers.

No doubt Biblical parents helped fuel these sibling rivalries: Abraham's willingness to send Hagar and Ishmael into the desert, Laban's deceiving of Jacob with Leah, and Jacob's fawning over Joseph. How much do our actions (or inactions) as parents influence the relationships our children develop?

Torah Truth 2: Not All Sibling Relationships are Toxic
While the fratricidal Cain and Abel are perhaps the Torah's best-known brothers, there is also the example of Joseph's sons, Ephraim and Menasha, who learn to live in harmony to benefit the Jewish people and have become models to emulate through the generations. In fact, each Friday evening, Jewish parents worldwide bless their sons, "May you be like Ephraim and Menashe." These two young men have become a model for boys on how they should get on with each other.

By the end of the Torah, we see a very different picture of sibling relationships. Sandy Littman, of the London School of Jewish Studies, argues that "you have situations where each sibling's role is complementary and their characters mesh with each other to function in a harmonious way. The Torah gives us the negative picture first." Jacob and Esau, for example, could have had a partnership. Two brothers who were so different had something to make the world complete, bring some good to the world. But instead of forming a partnership, they went off in different ways.

Yet brothers Moses and Aaron combine their talents to free the Israelites. Aaron, the high priest, and Moses, the leader, complement each other's talents. They completed each other. One wonders, suggest scholar Littman, whether Aaron and Moses worked so well together "because they had a big sister to look after them."

Tips for Family Flow Rather than Friction

Encourage your kids to work as a team. Suggest they make pizza together every Sunday night, or put them in charge of recycling bottles and deciding how the return money is spent.

Step back and allow your children to create their own relationships apart from you. Catch yourself if you tend to micromanage their interaction.

When kids begin to squabble, don't become the referee. Come up with ways they can work out their own spats. One mother does more than just send fighting kids to their rooms. She asks them to stand in their bedroom doorways and talk out the problem. They aren't to return downstairs until they have worked it out. Standing in the doorway staring at each other leads to lots of interesting solutions -- all without parental input.

Disagreements and irritation are part of any relationship. Accept that negative feelings will surface and try to develop a built-in structure for dealing with them.

Don't expect automatic "brotherly love." It lessens the guilt associated with "Well, he's your brother: You should love him."

Spend one-on-one time with each child. This communicates, "Yes, we are a team, but you are special!" We all want to be loved for our unique selves.

Take the time to truly observe each of your children to discover their temperament and approach to the world. What makes their spirit sing? · Strive to meet a child's individual need when it arises. When one child is sick, he may need chicken soup and a back massage. That doesn't mean it's unfair that his brother doesn't get the special treatment. His turn will come.

It's our job to care for our children, not an older sister's or brother's. (Cain resented having to be his brother's keeper, and we know how that turned out.)

Remember that no family is perfect. Even the Bible illustrates some pretty messy family dramas! (Adapted from Beliefnet)

Talkback
Are you (or did you) struggle to stimulate healthy relationships amongst your children or grandchildren? Become part of our Or Ami Center for Jewish Parenting exploration of these central relationships. Share Your Parenting Tips: Let us know what has worked for you to mellow the monsters (er, to stimulate healthy relationships). Share your answers on the blog.

Mine and Ours

2009-01-29T19:11:39Z

by dcc
Back when I prayed, during the silent prayer I would always look at my feet taking note of the floor or ground and how it was different from the other places I had prayed. I would wonder who else had looked at this piece of earth while in prayer. I would get lost in the fact that an Omnipotent God can hear in any place. Be it in a summer camp chapel overlooking the Pacific in a once cold, lifeless conference room filled with ruach (spirit) of thousands of teens or in ridged pew of a temple, I would look to the ground to see where I was standing.

But I don't do that anymore.

There is very little value in such a selfish act.

I am ashamed to say that I agree with a recent David Brooks' op-ed. He writes about institutions and the decline of institutional memory. Because this generation has pushed the ideal of individuality over that of the common identity, we have lost values and ethics and that is really to blame for the current crisis, he says in so many words. While unbelievably smug in his delivery, Brooks does have a point. The individual has taken precedent over the common good.

Look no further than Madoff or Sptizer or any of the other poor decision-making All Stars. They didn't let the institutional norms inform their lives; they ignored the values and the ethics and the common good in favor of the personal gain. It is important to be your own person and shake off the shackles of injustice, but stealing from Hadassah or using government money to pay for sex does not free you from your mental fetters.

Last Friday night, Abby and I went to services at our temple for Shabbat Unplugged. This service is for the 20s-30s crowd and was filled with music and clapping and, very importantly, a sushi oneg. There were over 100 people in the low-ceiling-white-walled-basement room of our congregation. There were people I had not seen for more than two years, a co-worker who was checking out the congregation with her fiancée, HUC Students and other members of young Jewish elite of New York. There was a healthy mix of temple members and community members. People had a good time taking in Shabbat together.

But in the two minutes of silent prayer, something was off for me.

Over the past few years, I have moved away from some of my peers and have been pulled toward traditional temple membership. I like the idea of responsibility to the community, beyond just bringing something to pot luck. (Don't get me wrong, I love me some vegan-gluten-free-chulent, but that a community does not make.)

While my "prayer needs" were met with singing and being part of a cohesive group of people, others' needs were met by the silent prayer. Regardless, I believe the service was a resounding success because we were all paying attention to the common good.

My needs aren't met by myself anymore so I didn't notice the floor where I pray. But I tend to look around a lot more.

The Rethinking Reform Think Tank

2009-01-28T19:49:19Z

By David A.M. Wilensky
(First posted on The Reform Shuckle)
The most personal and most moving session I attended at LimmudNY 2009 was called Rethinking Reform and was advertised as being led by members of the so-called Rethinking Reform Think Tank. I do not know who else is in this group, but those leading the session were Skirball Center for Adult Jewish Learning Executive Director Rabbi Leon Morris, HUC rabbinical student Jill Cozen-Harel and former HUC student, current Ziegler rabbinical student, blogger and one of my many teachers, David Singer.

One year prior to this session, at LimmudNY 2008, the three of them came together for the first time from a place of frustration, loneliness, and excitement to create what they now refer to as The Reform Think Tank. I'll let them speak for themselves in the following, their missions statement:

The "Rethinking Reform" think-tank is comprised of a group of rabbis and rabbinical students who engage in study and sahring on issues of observance, obligation, mitzvah and halakhah in a liberal context. W sek to deepen the discourse within Reform Judaism and beyond with regard to what it means to be commanded, moving beyond a simple dichotomy of unbridled personal autonomy, on the one hand, and Orthodoxy, on the other.
Our discussions are aimed at effecting our own personal thinking on these topics, as well as influencing the Reform movement toward a warmer and unequivocal embrace of observance and away from marginalizing those who are drawn toward a greater traditional observance. The group is engaging these issues intellectually as well as personally, and is open to using this group as an experimental "community" that may determine some standards for itself.

Some of us currently identify as Reform. Others do not. Some have grown up in the Reform movment. Others have adopted the movement later in life. Some attend or have graduated from HUC. Others, in part because of these issues, have chosen different rabbinical schools. We come together out of a sincere desire to learn from one another and to begin to clearly articulate a way of being Reform Jews in the 21 st century that is more deeply grounded in Torah and mitzvot.

David, Leon and Jill began by sharing their personal stories of growing up Reform, feeling often far more observant than their peers. Because of that, then all mentioned ferquently feeling lonely and misunderstood within the movement. Internally, I reacted to this very emotionally. Though they are all cosiderably older than me and farther along in life than I, I felt a visceral association with that feeling of loneliness in the Reform movement.

The mix of people in the session was interesting. There was me, quite a few Conservative movement refugees, several more HUC students who are not involved with the think tank, and a few others. Amongst the others were a young woman who grew up Orthodox and cited her opposite struggle to gain further autonomy within her community.

Another, an older woman, a Reform Jew in the pew, asked the first question of the session, rather aggressively suggesting that the purpose of this group is to influence or co-opt the Reform movement for their more observant ends. Though Leon quickly shot this idea down as a misunderstanding of the group's purpose, his later words in the session seemed to betray him, not to mention the mission statement above. The mission statement says "Our discussions are aimed at [...] influencing the Reform movement toward a warmer and unequivocal embrace of observance."

Leon also said later in the session, and here I paraphrase greatly, that as the movement stands, to be observant, one must justify the observance. For instance, I am constantly called upon to justify why on Earth, I, a Reform Jew, wear tzitzit. Leon experessed a desire to see the movement shift toward justifying non-observance. For instance, I would call on Reform Jews who do not wear tzitzit to explain why they choose not to. This desire of Leon's dovetails with my constant struggle to systemtaize my own informed choice, but Leon runs in a conservative direction that I am hesitant to run in. I see that direction as conservative, by the way, in both the capital-C and lower case-c meanings of the word.

And here, it seems, is the biggest question I left the session with: Can the Reform tent be big enough for us on the fringe and wearing the fringe and big enough for members of factions like The Society for Classical Reform Judaism and the American Council for Judaism at the same time?

The tent seems to be getting bigger all the time, and I still regularly feel like I'm being pushed out of it. I sense that I share that feeling with members of the think tank, but question what their end goals are. I also question why this is an elite rabbi and rabbinical students-only club. Despite my deep respect for and friendship with David Singer, I question why those who have clearly exited the movement are involved with this project, especially this line from the mission statement: "Some of us currently identify as Reform. Others do not." What then, can the stake of those who do not identify as Reform be in this group?

I invite Jill, David, Leon, and any other members of the think tank to comment here and clarify, or expand on any of this.

(There are also comments on this entry on The Reform Shuckle, where it was originally posted.)

Blessings for Today: A New Day in America

2009-01-21T15:34:00Z

By JanetheWriter
We Jews have blessings for all occasions: for bread, for wine, for joyous times, for sad times, upon seeing a rainbow, for flowers and herbs, for social action... the list goes on.

Each morning we thank God for returning our souls to our bodies and for a host of other daily miracles: enabling us to distinguish day from night, opening our eyes, freeing the captive, lifting the fallen, and so on.

In our minyan this morning, we added three more blessings for the day:

Baruch atah Adonai, asher sam chelki b'medinah chofesheet v'democratit.
Praised are You, Adonai, Who has allowed me to live in a free and democratic country.

Baruch atah Adonai, asher tzivanu lirdof acharei ha'tzedek tokh milui chovoteinu ha'ezrahiyyot.
Praised are You, Adonai, Who commands us to pursue justice through the fulfillment of our civic obligations.

Baruch atah Adonai, asher tzivanu la'asok b'ma'asei tikkun ha'olam.
Praised are You, Adonai, Who commands us to engage in acts of repairing the world.

I would add a fourth:

Baruch atah Adonai eloheinu melech ha'olam shecheyanu v'kiy'manu v'higyanu lazman hazeh.
Praised are You, Adonai, Sovereign of the universe, for giving us life, for sustaining us, and for enabling us to reach this time of joy.

Amen.

Strengthening Reform: 20. Jewish Ethics and Patriarchy

2009-01-12T14:51:27Z

by William Berkson
Ecclesiastes was wrong: there is something new under sun. Our world has three crucial differences from the worlds of the Torah and the Talmud: science, democracy, and women's equality.

As I argued in the last post in this series, modern science means that we need to look not only to our sacred texts for personal guidance, but also to insights of modern science, including psychology and sociology. Thus if we are going to understand what God wants of us ethically, the ethical mitzvot, we need to apply our improved understanding of ourselves and of society, and synthesize that with what we learn from our sacred texts.

Since the advent of modern psychology, liberal clerics of all religions have dropped the ball in giving guidance for modern life, and have been replaced by therapists--or else simply follow the therapists' lead. Traditionalists have continued to urge traditional ethical directives, while therapists themselves address modern life, but more or less ignore the ethical dimension of relationships.

None of these routes is good enough to meet the challenges of modern life. The traditionalists don't take into account the changed conditions of modern life. And the therapists have studiously avoided ethical issues that are the heart of the traditional guidance. Ethical guidelines are, in fact, in every wisdom tradition--ancient Greek, Confucian, Buddhist, Jewish. And they all view good relationships as built on ethical behavior. When people are ethical they can cooperate; we have peace, productivity, and prosperity. When they are unethical we have strife, war and poverty. Are all these traditional insights silly? Of course not. We need to synthesize the wisdom of the ages with the modern insights.

This new synthesis is particularly important for Reform Judaism, because the greatest strength of Judaism has been in its detailed examination of the ethical life, and the strengthening of the ethical life by spiritual elevation, by a sense of holiness. If Reform Judaism is to deliver that combination of ethical guidance and spiritual elevation for today's society, it needs to make that synthesis.

As it is today, Reform Judaism is too wishy-washy and marginal to the lives of modern Jews to inspire the passionate commitment it needs to be truly vital and thriving for the future. Reform needs Reform.

One of the two key areas where Reform needs new insights in ethics is in relationships in marriage and family. The key modern change here is women's equality. It means not just a change in standards, but a fundamental change in the 'ecology' of marriage and family. Gone is the ideal of patriarchy--the ideal that the husband rules the wife and family. In its place are companionate marriage and a family that raises children to deal with changing relationships, and to make autonomous decisions as adults.

In companionate marriage, the ideal of equal power of husband and wife in decisions affecting the marriage and family. This means that husband and wife have the new responsibility of discussing and deciding jointly on important issues involving the couple. And this is difficult where there is disagreement and both have a big emotional stake in the outcome.

But let me start first with the change in parenting. In the Talmud it says that a son should not contradict his father. But in modern life discussing disagreements, including between parents and children is the very skill that children will need as adults, both in marriage and in work. Spelling out the obligations of parents and children to one another, as Jewish traditions does, is not less important today. And the overarching principles of kindness, justice and humility are still valid.

My experience has been that many parents are confused about parental authority, in the light of the change in the family. They want to be moral leaders to their children, but they don't want to be in the patriarchal model of just telling children what to do, and punishing them if they don't do it.

As I wrote in Reform Judaism Magazine some years ago (you can access it here), we can be moral leaders to our children, as well as being compassionate parents. The key is to separate three different types of issue between parents and children: developmental issues, relationship issues, and moral issues. On developmental issues, the parent plays the role of a patient coach. On relationship issues, the best option changes. With very small children we just set limits. As they grow we give explanations of reasons for the limits. Then as they grow into teens, it is instructional, as well as fair to do problem-solving discussions of limits. However, on moral issues, such as lying or stealing, parents do need to be the authorities, and punish offenses. And above all this is of course setting a good example, which is more important than anything else.

These guidelines are an example of what I have in mind: something that integrates traditional Jewish ethics, but takes advantage of the modern insights of psychology on communication and problem-solving skills. Next I'll start looking at the most important issue, marriage.

Siblings of People with Special Needs: Next Steps in Disability Awareness Outreach

2009-01-06T19:10:15Z

By Rabbi Paul J. Kipnes
Our Congregation Or Ami (in Calabasas, CA), like so many Reform Jewish congregations, spends significant time and energy embracing and supporting families with children with special needs. We are proactively welcoming, because our tradition teaches us that we all were created b'tzelem Elohim, in God's image.

Taking our lead from the Union for Reform Judaism's Disability Awareness initiatives, we have come to understand that "with special needs children, there are two values being played out, simultaneously. Working with one child, Brandon Kaplan, for instance, we saw that Brandon is a kid like any other kid created in the image of God, worthy of love. But Brandon is also a special kid and there is an honor and joy to the congregation that he participates to the fullness of his abilities. So he's normal and special, but here's the secret: so is every other kid."

Often though we focus on the needs of the person with special needs, or on the struggles of being his/her parent. We welcome special needs children into our education programs and kvell as they become B'nai Mitzvah. Our Or Ami Center for Jewish Parenting sponsors a support group for people with special needs.

Now comes the New York Times reporting on NPR's poignant account of the experiences of the sister of a boy with autism. The article, and story, Coping with an Autistic Brother: A Teenager's Take, is powerful listening. It reminds us that the constellation of those touched by disabilities is far wider than we often consider. It goads us to explore more deeply how we reach out - really reach out - to all those affected.

The New York Times' Well blog reviews the story:

The piece focuses on 15-year-old Marissa Skillings, whose 11-year-old brother Andrew has Asperger's syndrome, a form of autism. Marissa talks about the challenges of living with a brother on the autism spectrum.
He talks nonstop; talking and talking and talking. He'll tell anybody information about any animal whether they want to hear it or not. People can tell Andrew has a disability....When he gets nervous he moves his hands back and forth.
Having a brother with autism takes a toll on Marissa's relationship with her parents. Her brother often interrupts and makes it difficult for her to receive attention. Sometimes she stays out as late as her curfew allows so she can avoid time at home.
I come home and deal with it when I have to, and when I don't have to deal with it, I make sure I don't.
She and her brother tell the story of the time a neighborhood boy picked on Andrew. She chased the bully down the street, cornered the boy and slapped him.
I don't hate my brother. I'd kill for him. But I could kill him too.

Read/hear the NPR story (and see pictures of Marissa and Andrew here.

I was astounded after listening to this story. With all the good work we do, here is another important area in our outreach to families of people with special needs that we haven't really focused on yet. Although our tradition teaches "lo alecha ham'lacha ligmor - it is not up to us to complete the task," we do need to explore each challenge as we become aware of it. So this story has led me to ponder three questions (perhaps you can help me learn and respond):

(1) What would congregational support of the siblings of people with special needs look like?
(2) Do any siblings have any suggestions for us?
(3) Are any synagogues doing this already?

Finding Words of Hope

2009-01-05T17:56:22Z

by Gardening Grandma
I've always resonated to the writings of the late Rabbi Chaim Stern, editor of Gates of Prayer and Gates of Repentance. But it wasn't until I read a post by his widow, Lea Lane, on The Huffington Post blog that I realized how his words can be of comfort and encouragement during these difficult days.

The passages quoted are from Day by Day, and include this:

May I be among those who are hard to provoke and easy to appease. May I be a friend of peace at home and at work, and everywhere I go. When I am angry let me reflect whether my anger is proportionate to its cause and appropriate in its expression.

Control, God and the University of Miami

2008-12-31T22:53:01Z

by dcc
There was a very interesting piece in the New York Times Science section this week about religion. A researcher from the University of Miami found that true believers have better self-control. In keeping with the findings of this study, I will not re-write the article but only give you a taste; I am controlling my bombastic desire to be bearer of news and information.

[The researcher's] interest arose from a desire to understand why religion evolved and why it seems to help so many people. Researchers around the world have repeatedly found that devoutly religious people tend to do better in school, live longer, have more satisfying marriages and be generally happier.

These results have been ascribed to the rules imposed on believers and to the social support they receive from fellow worshipers, but these external factors didn't account for all the benefits. In the new paper, the Miami psychologists surveyed the literature to test the proposition that religion gives people internal strength.

"We simply asked if there was good evidence that people who are more religious have more self-control," Dr. McCullough. "For a long time it wasn't cool for social scientists to study religion, but some researchers were quietly chugging along for decades. When you add it all up, it turns out there are remarkably consistent findings that religiosity correlates with higher self-control."

If you ask me it is pretty cool. Read the rest here.

What Kind of Jew am I?

2008-12-31T22:43:05Z

by Chaim
I have been struggling lately about where I fit in the Jewish world and thought the RJ Blog would be a good place to discuss this. I think the reason I have been struggling is because I seem to sort of float between Orthodox and Reform in my religious practice and understanding of Torah. I basically believe the Torah was given to Moses at Sinai by G-d, but not dictated 'word for word'. But rather the ideas and methods in which to connect to G-d were given to (or discovered by) Moses, passed down through the generations, and eventually written down as the Torah we know today. I believe the Torah to be sort of a 'mystical code' of sorts written in simple language to convey deeper metaphysical ideas and concepts.

Thus, we perform the mitzvot, not because 'G-d commanded them' (the Orthodox view) nor should we abstain (if we want to) because the Torah is simply human-made (the Reform view). But rather the mitzvot are ways in which we can connect to G-d, or more specifically, they are designed to correct certain 'flaws' in us that prohibit us from drawing closer to G-d. So there may be certain aspects of my existence that are already 'corrected' and therefore I don't 'need' to perform the mitzvah geared towards corrrecting that particular 'flaw', but I may have other areas that 'need work' and so I will need to perform the mitzvot designed to correct those flaws. Does that make sense?

I think if we take a severe liberal point of view, we could fall in danger of succumbing to the thought - why be Jewish at all? What does Judaism offer that is different from other spiritual paths if it completely originated in humans? I can be ethical without identifying with Judaism. I might as well meditate in an ashram somewhere. However, neither can I accept the Torah word for word in the fundamentalist sense because by default I will need to enter into the world of 'black-hat' Orthdoxy. Does this make sense?

So right now I can't subscribe to a complete Reform point of view because honestly, I don't agree with all of it. But neither can I subscribe to Orthodox for the same reasons. Thus, my struggle.

Remembering a Giant: Arnold Jacob Wolf

2008-12-31T08:56:45Z

by Rabbi Elliott A. Kleinman
Chief Program Officer, Union for Reform Judaism
(First published on the RACblog)
When I learned of Rabbi Arnold Wolf's death on Wednesday evening, I was overwhelmed by the loss. Arnold was my rabbi. My parents were founders of Congregation Solel in Highland Park, IL, and Arnold has been a part of every moment of my life. It was Arnold who inspired me to be a rabbi and challenged me to be a Jew, and it was Arnold who taught me how to do both.

Some of my earliest memories are of Arnold berating our congregation or our religious school class or the board of the congregation for not doing enough in the pursuit of justice. What I remember most is that we loved every moment of it. God was real and I "had better pay attention" he would remind us. "I am Adonai your God" was not a promise but a challenged to be lived up to every moment in every action.

I remember one such moment in religious school. Our class of fourth or fifth graders was creating our own midrashim for stories about Abraham and Rabbi Wolf walked in. He asked about a couple of the midrashim and then, in response to one, startled us all saying, "Nope, that's not what God was saying." We were crushed. But just as quickly he reminded us that the Torah was ours to own and understand, saying, "You're not listening hard enough. If you listen very carefully, you'll hear what God was saying." Wow - even I, a kid, could hear what God was saying to us. The world was never the same.

In the end though, it was Arnold's smile that gave it all away. The twinkle in his eye that reminded us that he believed in us, hoped for us and was always there to be supportive is us as we journeyed through life.

A review of the daily report from the Union's Development Department on the day of Arnold's death reminded me again of what kind of rabbi Arnold was. The second to last name on the report was Arnold's for having made a donation to the Union's Nothing But Nets campaign. It is only fitting that we were reminded of his many acts of tzedakah on that day.

Arnold and I spoke periodically. We would talk about issues of the day, my work at the Union and our families. Whenever we spoke he asked the same question, "Kleinman, you still Jewish?" If I answered yes he would ask if I could prove it. Over time I learned that, for Arnold, the right response was, "I'm still trying." That answer would appease him and continue to challenge me. Just what he wanted.

Even at this season of light, the world is a bit darker now. I'm still trying, but it is harder now without Arnold's wisdom, advice, humor and vision. The world will never be the same but always be better because of Arnold Jacob Wolf.

(A note: President-elect Barack Obama sent a powerful letter about Arnold that was read at the funeral. You can find it here.)

Shamor v'zachor - Observe and Remember

2008-12-30T00:08:26Z

by Daniel Crane
First-year rabbinical student at HUC-JIR
Originally written for blogHUC and Daniel's blog Journaling in Jerusalem

I've been involved with interfaith dialogue since my first year of college. So when I signed up for Rav Siach, an interdenominational rabbinical student discussion group in Jerusalem, I expected an interesting and smooth experience. The past two months have definitely been interesting, but I could hardly call them smooth!

For the past eight weeks, four fellow HUC rabbinical students and I have been traveling to Melitz, a pluralistic education center in Jerusalem, to meet a handful of our future colleagues from other denominations. There are about a dozen participants with three facilitators, and we come from Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, "orthodox," and non-denominational backgrounds. Thus, we come to the table not only with our personal perspectives but also with the weight of our "movements" on our shoulders. And all that weight has made for some very heavy conversations. We discuss and debate issues like commandedness, the role of the rabbi, and denominational distinctions, and we strive to keep our minds open while attempting to understand the thoughts of the others. This can be a significant challenge, but our mutual respect gives us the motivation to try our hardest.

One of the most intense components of Rav Siach has been our recent Shabbaton, which began when we departed from Jerusalem at 7:15 am on a Friday morning for the Arbel. The Arbel is a plateau overlooking Lake Kinneret, Sfat, Tiberias, and the coastal plain. From so high up, one can see for miles in any direction, and the views were simply stunning.

The wife of one of our facilitators is a tour guide in the Arbel, and she led us through paths down the side of the Arbel and around the face of the cliff. We rested in the abandoned caves that had been inhabited by the last remnants of the Hasmonean Dynasty that had gained control of the land of Israel following the events commemorated by Hanukkah, and we read the historical account of their eventual defeat in these very hills. Afterward, we climbed back up the cliff, gripping iron handholds and stealing final glimpses of the plains and hills laid out before us. When we reached the top, we ate our packed lunches and headed to the hostel/conference center where we'd be spending the night.

The actual hours of Shabbat were fascinating on many levels. First of all, there were a number of interesting lessons offered by our peers. Some of the topics included a comparison of the parsha with a selection from Homer's Odyssey, Reform Responsa (religious/legal decisions in the Reform movement), and the recent ruling in the Conservative movement to allow for the ordination of openly gay rabbis. We walked on Saturday afternoon to the Kinneret Cemetery, where several influential figures in early Israeli history, including the poet Rachel, the songwriter Naomi Shemer, and the Zionist labor leader Berl Katznelson are buried. And, of course, the food was plentiful and terrific!

Two particular events especially defined the scope and depth of the Shabbaton for me. The first occurred on Friday night, when we walked to our assigned room to pray together. Upon arrival, we discovered that the light was off, and to turn it on would be a violation of the rules of Shabbat in the eyes of our observant participants. As this value isn't part of my own Shabbat practice, I thought I could fix the situation by simply turning on the light in the room. I knew that it was unacceptable to ask someone to turn a light on for you, so I quickly walked to the room and flipped the switch on without saying a word. What followed was a wholly unique experience.

Immediately, the group had transformed. Everyone was in shock. What had I done? Although I didn't know this at the time, it's additionally not allowed for one who observes strict laws of Shabbat to make use of the result of a fellow Jew's breaking those laws. In other words, though I had tried to make the room suitable for our use, I had actually made it entirely unkosher.

I've come head-to-head with halacha before, but this was the first time that I had really affected people that I cared about. Words were exchanged, apologies were made, and discussion ensued. This certainly serves of an example of the principle that being told something doesn't make up for experiencing it firsthand. Never before had I felt so much access to the world of halacha as when I entered that world and shattered it for others. It was a painful lesson but an important one, and certainly the most important to me over the course of the Shabbaton.

On the other side of the spectrum, the spiritual high for me came on Shabbat morning. Our non-denominational rabbinical student led us in meditative morning blessings, and the combination of singing and silence launched me into a spiritual experience. While our voices had been in debate and discussion, not until this moment were they in harmony. I felt our small community coalesce into a praying body, and I was proud and delighted to be a part of it.

In my eyes, the Shabbaton was a terrific success and showed that pluralistic Shabbat experiences may not be easy but they can absolutely be transformative. Many of the Rav Siach participants now feel a renewed interest in such programs, and I believe that we're all better equipped to lead and learn in pluralistic environments in the future. While I'm disappointed that our official group will be coming to a close in a few weeks, I look forward to continuing my relationship with these future colleagues and continuing to learn from them for years to come.

The Candle of Contemplation

2008-12-27T01:18:33Z

by Rabbi Paul J. Kipnes
A Story
(learned from Rabbi Cheryl Peretz)
There is wonderful Hasidic story, told of a conversation between the rabbi and a member of his community. The man once asked: "Rabbi, what is a Jew's task in this world?" The rabbi answered: "A Jew is a lamp-lighter on the streets of the world. In olden days, there was a person in every town who would light the gas street lamps with a light he carried on the end of a long pole. On the street corners, the lamps sat, ready to be lit. A lamp-lighter has a pole with a flame supplied by the town. He knows that the fire is not his own and he goes around lighting the lamps on his route." The man then asked: "But what if the lamp is in a desolate wilderness?" The rabbi responded: "Then, too, one must light it. Let it be noted that there is a wilderness and let the wilderness be shamed by the light." Not satisfied, the man asked: "But what if the lamp is in the middle of the sea?" The rabbi responded: "Then one must take off one's clothes, jump into the water, and light it there!"

"And that is the Jew's mission?" asked the man. The rabbi thought for a long moment and finally responded: "Yes, that is a Jew's calling." The man continues - "But rabbi, I see no lamps." The rabbi responds: "That is because you are not yet a lamp-lighter."

So, the man inquires: "How does one become a lamplighter?" The rabbi's answer this time? One must begin by preparing oneself, cleansing oneself, becoming more spiritually refined, then one is able to see the other as a source of light, waiting to be ignited. When, heaven forbid, one is crude, then one sees but crudeness; but, when one is spiritually noble, one sees the nobility everywhere."

How can We Prepare Ourselves to be Lamp-lighters?

First, see the candles for what they may represent:
Rabbi Dan Ehrenkrantz teaches:

Traditional Chanukah lights had three elements: oil, wick and fire. The fire ignites the wick, and the oil (or, today, the wax candle) provides fuel for a continuous flame.

To succeed in any endeavor, we need the same three elements: The creative spark (the flame) , that must be given form (the wick), and the form must be given sustenance (the oil or wax). The Hebrew words for flame, wick and oil are נר (ner), פתיל (petil) and שמן (shemen).
Taken together, the first letters of each word--נ (nun), פ (phey) and ש (shin)--form the Hebrew word נפש (nefesh), or soul.

A candle is a symbol of the soul. To prepare ourselves, let us pay attention to each element as we kindle the Chanukah lights: the creative spark of the flame, the wick that gives form to the flame, and the oil that keeps the flame alive.

Next, Be Attentive to the Soul Within
Rabbi Jonathan Slater teaches:

The miracle of Chanukah - according to the Talmud, and as emphasized by Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev - was that the single cruse of oil lasted for eight days. Those ancient Maccabees looked at the container of oil and, based on their previous experience, decided that it was sufficient for only one day. They decided that there the container did not have the capacity to keep the flame burning for more than one day. Then they experienced its persistence as a miracle. They learned of the power of the Holy One in that manner.

Similarly, we look at ourselves (and others) and, based on previous experience - based on personal preference, fear, bias, hope, anxiety, or need - we determine what we (or they) can or cannot do. Then, something else happens, beyond what had been expected, and we learn of God's power.

Similarly, when we light a candle, we expect it to stay lit as it burns, and we expect that it will finally burn out. What we often fail to notice is that in each moment that it is burning, something is actually happening. We note the beginning and the end, and say "Well, we lit it and now it's done" yet we miss the middle, the time when its existence, when the interaction of wax, wick and flame produce light and heat, demonstrates God's sustaining, enlivening power. And, so too do we miss so much in our lives.

Take Time to Contemplate

Tonight, take some time after you light the candles to examine then. Use this time to notice each miraculous moment of their existence. Hold your attention in them as they burn. Attend each moment. Notice each flicker, each crackle, each plume of smoke. Then open yourself to the possibility that there are miraculous moments within your own existence as well. In this way, you become your own lamp-lighter.

This Chanukah, may your soul shine brightly in all the in-between moments. This Chanukah, may your life become a candle that illuminates the miraculous in your world.

Chag Chanukah Samay-ach * Happy Chanukah.

A Buoyant Spirit

2008-12-24T21:58:58Z

By Marge Eiseman
I haven't yet seen the movie "Yes Man" (and I probably won't, since Jim Carrey's energy is a bit much for me!), but it got me thinking about how we present ourselves to the world, and what factors into our essential nature.

I know people who are ruled by fear, who worry about things beyond their control and don't expect the best in any situation. Their default setting is "No!" They don't seek new experiences, and they don't see life as a blessing, or have a sense of how they could bring blessing into the world.

The Torah stories about Joseph and his brothers that we are reading now, and even into Exodus, show us people who say, "Gam zu l'tovah" (this too is for good). They encounter life as the unknown and unpredictable, and when they look back, even Joseph says to his brothers, you had to send me down into the pits so that I could rise to be in the position to save the whole family. Talk about being able to put a positive spin on it!

Or look at the people gathered at the foot of the mountain, who said, "We will do and we will understand." I know the midrash says they were being threatened with the mountain over their heads, but still, that's a pretty strong response of embracing the future.

I know I am blessed. I greet each day with thanks that I am still able to act for good in the world, to make a small difference and to connect with people. If I need reminders, they come at just the right moment! Fifty one years ago, my mom wrote in my baby book that I was born with a pleasant disposition, and just yesterday, someone told me that I have a buoyant spirit. You know what I say to that? Yes!!!

Confirming the Diversity within Our Reform Movement

2008-12-23T20:35:44Z

by Rabbi Paul Kipnes
Congregation Or Ami
Question: What do you get when you take four most thoughtful, compassionate, committed Jewish teens, with whom I have studied Judaism for eight to twelve years, and put them together up on the bimah at Erev Shabbat services?

Answer: A very moving Confirmation Class service.

Congregation Or Ami's service last night was deeply meaningful. Our Confirmands - Alex Krasnoff, Ross Meyer, Jonny Wixen, and Sarah Wolfson - led the prayers and in between, offered their reflections on a series of questions:

If asked by a non-Jewish person what you cherish about Judaism, what would you say?
What do you believe or think about God?
Having studied Judaism for 10-13 years, what ideas or parts of Judaism are most significant or meaningful for you?
What has Judaism taught you that will help you later in life?
How do you feel connected to Israel?
When have you felt the most Jewish and why?

Some of their responses, a picture of the diversity within our Reform Movement, include:

If asked by a non-Jewish person what you cherish about Judaism, what would you say? I would talk about Tikkun Olam, or fixing the world. What is most important to me about Judaism is that Jews care about more than just our community but also the world. At every Jewish camp or temple I have ever attended, there has always been an emphasis on community service. Community service is something that I love and my passion for helping others is influenced heavily by the Jewish community and Judaism. It is great to be a member of a faith that is comprised of a community that cares about others.

If asked by a non-Jewish person what you cherish about Judaism, what would you say? I cherish Judaism because it provides me with a moral code about how to live my life. Judaism teaches that if I follow its laws, then I will live a productive and happy life. Judaism also allows me complete spiritual freedom. I do not have to be spiritual to be Jewish. I do not have to believe in that the biblical times were historical, and yet I still am able to gain so much from Judaism. Judaism has not taught me one particular thing that will help me later in life. Judaism has shaped HOW I live my life. Many of my most defining characteristics are either due to Jewish teachings or from my experiences in my Jewish community. I live a Jewish life. I learned many of my morals and beliefs through Jewish teachings, and I strive to life my life as Judaism teaches me.

One of the most meaningful things I have learned throughout my studies it to be accepting of others. It is important to accept other people for who they are and what they believe in. Not only does it help to prevent problems, by not dwelling on peoples differences, but also you might become friends with them. Another thing I have learned it to help those in need. One of the reasons helping those in need is important is because if you were in need, you would want someone to help you. The reason I like to help those in need is the wonderful feeling I receive from helping someone else.

What has Judaism taught you that will help you later in life? Judaism is full of life changing ideas and lessons. I know that I will use my studies later in life to help me make large decisions and live a fulfilling life. Judaism teaches us to be patient with one another, which I feel is really important if I want to go far and be happy. The idea of repentance on Rosh Hashana is an extremely important idea to me. I feel that it is crucial to reflect, but not regret, and then in a healthy way move on. If I can live these values, which Judaism has taught me, I know I will go far.

Having studied Judaism for 10-13 years, what ideas of Judaism are most meaningful for you? Judaism, at least Reform Judaism, has adapted to modern times. We are not forced to follow traditions just because that is how it has always been done, when those rituals have no relative meaning to modern times. Also, Judaism allows me to choose what I believe in and yet still provides a way to live my life to its fullest. This is what I love about Judaism the most, that Judaism instructs on how to live a successful Jewish life, yet does not require you to believe in every aspect of Judaism.

Rabbi Kipnes teaches that the strength of Judaism is its teaching that every aspect our Torah and tradition is open to questioning and challenge. Even the existence of God...

What do you believe or think about God? I do not believe that God exists. I prefer to believe that in a society as advanced as ours, people can be weaned off of the opiate of the masses. I do think that there is a place for religion without God. I think that religion is a great place to build a safe community, and to teach valuable morals and lessons. It is not that I ever lost my faith in God. It is that I never had it. To be frank, I think that science makes a much more logical and compelling case for creation. I believe that history makes a better case than the bible, although I think that neither science nor history account for life's little unexplainable miracles.

What do you believe or think about God? Deism is the belief that God created the world but has no business in it today. I do not believe that God is someone that directly controls our daily lives. I believe more in free will instead than destiny. My understanding of God is slightly different from the God in which most people seem to believe. I believe that God is what you make for yourself.

In what ways do you feel connected to Israel? I wish I had a stronger relationship with Israel, the Holy Land. I feel connected in the sense that it is our ancestor's land and that I have read and been taught many wonderful things about it. But I have never been. I want to go to Israel very soon. If I am fortunate enough, I will go on my birthright trip within the next few years to deepen my connection.

In what ways do you feel connected to Israel? I never really felt a connection to Israel until I visited Israel with Congregation Or Ami's first Family Trip two winters ago. I found Israel to be a magical, beautiful place. I developed a connection to Israel the more I thought about how Israel was a nation that had risen from a horrible tragedy, existing among unfriendly neighbors. There is something very powerful about having a Jewish state in such an unfriendly and extremist area. I think that Israel is something that we need to protect for not only historical reasons but also because regardless of its past, today it is a Jewish state with Jewish families, people who have made their lives there. That right to exist must be protected. It is in that cause that I feel most connected to Israel.

I feel connected to Israel not only through the fact that I am Jewish but also through the friends I made that live in Israel. The first time I went to Israel I was too young to really appreciate it. Then in the 6th grade, I went back to Israel to visit my Great Grandmother and it was so meaningful that I do not know how to explain what I felt when I was there. Then last summer I was a counselor at my summer camp and became friends with a group of Israelis. Now I am trying to find time to go back to Israel so I can visit them and see the sights once more.

When have you felt the most Jewish and why? I felt most Jewish a few summers ago as I stood before a row of cribs in South-east Vietnam. I had traveled there with my parents and other Or Ami members on Or Ami's Humanitarian Mission to the Orphanages in Vietnam. I felt most Jewish not just because I was with a group from the temple, but because of the emotions that I felt during those three weeks. I knew that being there was crucial to my growth and development as a boy becoming a man. That experience showed me that there are so many things to be thankful for and that it is our duty to give back whatever and whenever. It illuminated for me the Jewish ideal of Mitzvot, that we all have the responsibility because of our good fortunate to give back to others.

When have you felt the most Jewish and why? I felt most Jewish when I hosted a foreign exchange student from Spain and she attend a High Holy Day service with me. Before the service, I had to explain Judaism to her. Although I do not believe in God, I found in explaining Judaism to her, that I do have an extraordinary connection to the community and the lessons of our religion.

Color Me Jewish

2008-12-21T21:47:35Z

By JanetheWriter
For as long as I can remember I've been fascinated by colors and the words that bring them to life. Even today, among my most treasured possessions in a storage box high on a closet shelf is my childhood box of 64 Crayola crayons (circa 1967). Included in that well worn green and yellow cardboard holder with the flip top and the built-in sharpener are equally well worn sticks of colored wax, each with a name to go with it--"magenta" (my personal favorite), "cornflower," "yellow green" and "green yellow," as well as the most un-PC and now-retired "flesh" and "Indian red." Back then who knew from "wild blue yonder," "outrageous orange" or "razzle dazzle rose?"

Not surprisingly, the children's book Hailstones and Halibut Bones: Adventures in Color, the literary equivalent of that box of Crayolas was my favorite in that same era. Like the crayons, the book--with its worn binding and weathered pages, one of which is affixed with an upside-down bookplate on which I'd neatly printed my name--remains among my most treasured possessions. On each two-page spread, author Mary O'Neill and artist Leonard Weisgard query readers about a particular color before providing a poetic and wonderfully illustrated answer that, even in a young child, evoked deep emotion. On page 15 we read: "What is Gold? Gold is a metal/Gold is a ring/Gold is a most beautiful thing./Gold is the sunshine/Light and thin/Warm as a muffin/On your skin..." First published in 1961, the words and pictures represent a simpler time: "What is Brown? Brown is the color of a country road/Back of a turtle/Back of a toad./Brown is cinnamon/And morning toast/And the good smell of The Sunday roast. What is Purple What is Orange? What is Red? What is White? And so on...

Last week, the Jewish equivalent of Hailstones and Halibut Bones crossed my desk:

What color is the Sh'ma?

Is it purple, the color of God's majesty?
Is it red as Akiva's martyred blood?
What color is the Sh'ma?
Is it orange, for faith that burns eternal?
Is it yellow, the light to which we rise in the morning?
Is it blue, the night sky under which we lie down, the color of tzitzit?
Or is it all of these together,
the spectrum shot through a prism,
all colors fused into a single beam?
"Look, O Israel!"--one bright white ray points back to the Source.
Author unknown

Indeed, my reaction to this poem (already a treasured possession upon my heart) is best summed up by Mary O'Neill in the final stanza of Hailstones and Halibut Bones:

The Colors live
Between black and white
In a land that we
Know best by sight.
But knowing best
Isn't everything,
For colors dance
And colors sing,
And colors laugh
And colors cry--
Turn off the light
And colors die,
And they make you feel
Every feeling there is
From the grumpiest grump
To the fizziest fizz.
And you and you and I
Know well
Each has a taste
And each has a smell
And each has a wonderful
Story to tell....

Time to Cherish

2008-12-16T08:28:01Z

by Marge Eiseman
I guess it always matters where we start telling our stories - does my personal story begin at my conception? Birth? First memory?

Last night, I called one of my best friends, and I was hoping that I would reach her 17 year old daughter. I just wanted to check in with her, because, in addition to the normal stress of high school seniors who are waiting to see where they will be accepted for next year, we are all dealing with her mom's new diagnosis of breast cancer.

That is a lot to handle, but last year, we dealt with her sister's anorexia, and the year before that, my son's sudden death (and they were very close, like siblings), and somewhere in this time, her beloved grandfather died of lung cancer.

How do we gauge the cumulative effect of traumatic life events? Where do we start? Sometimes, it's a dangerous conversation, that leads us to think there are more bad than good things in our lives. That's a conclusion I can't live with, even though I have had what feels like more than my share of difficulties.

My young friend sees that keeping a positive attitude helps. It makes her feel better, and she is able to smile and laugh and be supportive rather than feeling sorry for herself.

I think she has learned something that many of us haven't gotten: life is best lived when you are present in the moment. We hope and pray that the current situation will be resolved for good, with as little pain as possible. Right now is not the time for tears. The present is a time to cherish!

"Here I am-Your Partner-Let's Dialogue."

2008-12-11T21:55:28Z

by Sybil Schwartz
Member of Congregation Beth Emeth, Wilmington, DE
Rabbi Bloom's article "What God Can Learn From Us" published in the Winter Edition of Reform Judaism seems to take the approach of considering God's relationship to humans and our relationship to God as evolutionary in development. Intellectually we know that we are but a complicated composite of simple atoms all interconnected in a mortal body with a mind that can learn, conceptualize, create and feel. We have the capacity to master many tasks-the hardest may be the formulation of a mature relationship with God.

Maybe for each person our relationship with God is more like a blind date in which the parties try to determine if there is even a connection beyond their first exploratory encounter. And from that first momentary encounter of our ancestors reaching out to the God, we continue to explore that relationship-one that seems to be shrouded in awe and mystery so much of the time.

In reflecting upon Rabbi Bloom's essay I wonder if one of the most important spiritual developmental tasks of the maturing adult is to first chose to connect. For lack of a better term maybe this is the period of "discovery of the nature of the divine in the adolescence of adult years."

As in the tumultuous teen years when core beliefs and values are questioned and re-formulated, the covenantal tasks of the adult are to re-engage or discover their spiritual foundation and seek to define their understanding of the Divine. This task requires the creation of sacred space over time.

It seems only through years of prayer and study does one even begin to acquire the intellectual and initiative insights to wrestle with the poignant questions of fate, faith and God's existence. And ultimately is it not individual's responsibility to initiate and nurture the conversation, commitment, and covenant with the Divine to whisper the words of the heart, "Here I am-Your Partner-Let's Dialogue?" Maybe then the relationship can start to mature.

The Ghosts of Christmas Past

2008-12-11T01:45:26Z

by Andi Rosenthal
This article was originally published on InterfaithFamily.com
In the midst of packing up the apartment where I've lived for the past seven years, I found them right where I knew they would be, in a box at the very back of the hall closet.

Sighing, I opened it. There they were, bells and angels, stars and glass balls, shimmering in every color of the rainbow, shining out of the depths of the cardboard darkness. My Christmas ornaments, every single one with its own story, its own memory. I picked one up--a goofy orange ceramic lobster my sister had brought from Maine--and gazed at it, remembering my final Christmas tree in 2001, the year before I converted.

"Throw them out," said my friend Chrissy, as she folded up the clothes I would be donating to a local charity. "It's not like you're going to use them ever again."

"No," I replied, a note of stubbornness coming into my voice. "I want to keep them."

"But why? You're Jewish, you haven't had a tree for years."

"I don't know," I said lamely. "Maybe I'll decorate a sukkah (wooden hut) with them someday."

"You're going to decorate your sukkah with a lobster (nonkosher food)?" she asked, raising her eyebrows. I didn't answer, but I smiled as I taped up the box and put it aside, to take with me to my new home.

***

Last year, for an article about how the December holidays impact Interfaith families, I was asked by JTA reporter Joe Berkofsky how, as a new convert to Judaism, I would be spending the Christmas holidays with my Catholic family. I had felt honored to be interviewed, and answered Joe's questions almost breezily. I remember telling him how easy it had been to give up my Christmas tree, and predicted that it would be a wonderful, happy challenge to celebrate "my" holiday of Hanukkah in the midst of my family's Christmas celebrations.

What I didn't know last year was that my little travel menorah, brought over to my parents' house for our traditional Christmas Eve family party, would look so small and forlorn in the midst of the lights and wreaths and holly. Even though Christmas Eve coincided with the sixth night of Hanukkah, and my family joined me in the candle blessings, the menorah seemed so out of place that not even those steadfast candle flames were of any comfort. Small and forlorn was exactly how I felt. It was then that I realized, in spite of my cheery holiday prediction, something was indeed wrong.

I also didn't know that as part of my boyfriend's holiday traditions, he would want to watch Midnight Mass on TV that night. As a young journalist, Claude had interviewed the late John Cardinal O'Connor for one of his stories, and later that year, the Cardinal had invited him to attend Christmas Eve Mass at Saint Patrick's Cathedral in New York City. Ever since then, Claude, though deeply proud of and committed to Judaism, had a soft spot for the Midnight Mass, with all of its pageantry and loveliness. But for me, the Mass was another reminder of everything I was not anymore.

Sitting together in the darkness of the living room, listening to the Gospel and its message of "peace on earth, goodwill towards men," I realized that I still knew all of those ancient prayers, still knew the words to the hymns and the carols. I felt a tightness in my throat and a strange stinging in my eyes. By 12:30, I was in the bedroom reading with the door closed, so that I wouldn't hear the music.

I also didn't know that by Christmas morning, it would all be too much for me to handle. Any pretense of breezy holiday celebrations had faded with the headache that greeted me as I woke up. All I could think about were the years of Christmas mornings that my sister had jumped on my bed to wake me up, and how together we had raced each other down the stairs to see what Santa had brought for us. My mom and dad would already be making cups of tea in the kitchen, emerging with resigned smiles as they encountered the detritus of torn wrapping paper and frantically untied bows.

Claude and I drove to my parents' house, where my sister, her husband, and my two small nephews were waiting for us so that we could open presents. My headache was threatening to explode into a migraine, and I couldn't keep the tremor out of my voice as I watched my nephews re-enact the chaos that my sister and I had crazily carried out for so many years. I opened my own gifts with a heavy heart, feeling as if I was doing something wrong. I'm not supposed to be doing this, I kept thinking. I'm Jewish now. This isn't my holiday.

A few hours later, Claude and I packed up the car with our gifts and headed out for a movie and Chinese food--we had laughingly told one another that we would celebrate Christmas the traditional Jewish way. As I pulled the car door closed, the tears started. And they didn't stop.

I cried through two movies. I cried all through dinner. When Claude tried to comfort me, I couldn't respond. I cried out of some mixed-up sense that everything was wrong, that I was sitting over an untouched plate of chicken with snow peas when I should have been somewhere feasting on turkey with cranberries. I cried because, for the first time, I wondered if converting was perhaps the worst thing I ever could have done to my family, because Christmas with them didn't belong to me anymore, and it never would again. I cried because I felt stupid, because I missed having a Christmas tree, and I was afraid I had reneged on my commitment to being Jewish because I had opened presents on Christmas Day.

And I cried because this was happening to me. I had fought so hard, waited so long, wanted so much to convert to Judaism, and the day of my conversion had been one of the happiest of my life. On that sunny August afternoon, I had chanted "Sh'ma Yisrael--Hear, O Israel!" with a heart full of pride, love, and humility. I loved Judaism with every breath of my being. But I suddenly felt betrayed by my decision. I belatedly realized that even as I had joyfully converted, I had never acknowledged the loss of my Christian heritage and identity. But here it was, coming back to visit me like a ghost of Christmas past. I had never envisioned myself becoming a casualty of the December dilemma. But it had happened just the same.

***

When I traveled to Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion last summer to train as a mentor for those in the process of conversion, I heard a story about a woman who, having converted to Judaism, still couldn't bring herself to give up her Christmas tree. She had tried to keep it a secret from her rabbi, but one day, in a fit of despair, confessed to him that she had put up a tree in her house. And he answered, very gently, "Well, maybe someday you might not need it anymore."

That's why I am taking my Christmas ornaments with me. It's not so much that I ever expect to have a tree again. But I know that I still need them, even if they are hidden away in a cardboard box at the back of the closet. Like the ancient, hopeful liturgy of the Midnight Mass, like the sad, sweet songs that herald the holiday season, Christmas remains a part of me still, in a way that perhaps Hanukkah will not be until I have a family of my own.

My history, however, as I seek to balance the new wonders of Jewish life against the loss of a life once celebrated according to a different calendar, is one of the special and unique things that I bring to my Jewish journey. Because for me, the sense of wonder and holiness that I always felt at Christmas is at its heart our very same hope for peace--shalom, and our same desire for the healing and renewal of the world--tikkun olam.

For most of the world, Christmas is a day of birth. But I realize that for me, it is a yahrzeit, anniversary of a death. I hope that, as with any loss, the pain will become gentler with every passing year, and that I will remember what I learned from my old life with a genuine respect and fondness for what I once was. And I hope that as my ornaments gather dust in their cardboard box, my Hanukkah candles will chase away the darkness, illuminating that small, secret place of Christmas sadness in my heart.

Author's note: I wrote this piece for InterfaithFamily.com six years ago, and I find it to be as true for me today as it was then. Even though the ache is somewhat less, and I am now used to living in a home in which there will never again be a Christmas tree, my ornaments remain on the closet shelf, gathering dust: a souvenir of an old identity and of holidays long ago; and perhaps, in some small way, a symbol of just how far my Jewish journey has taken me.

For the Blessings that Have Been Our Common Lot

2008-11-26T21:44:23Z

by JanetheWriter
It seems plausible that Thanksgiving as we know it today derives originally from our tradition's Sukkot. Whether or not this is, in fact, true, in our consumer-driven, must-have-the-latest-greatest-gadget, me-me-me society, this autumnal chag is a wonderful opportunity to step back, to reflect on what really matters and, individually and collectively, to celebrate our many blessings.

In my family, Thanksgiving minhag dictates that someone (usually my mother) reads a poem, prayer or other seasonal passage before we dig in. Last year, a few days before the holiday, Connecticut Governor Wilbur L. Cross' 1936 Thanksgiving proclamation crossed my desk and it was I who read it at our Thanksgiving table.

As my Grandma Hattie was fond of saying about one thing or another, "It bears repeating." And so it is with Governor Cross' proclamation:

Time out of mind at this turn of the seasons when the hardy oak leaves rustle in the wind and the frost gives a tang to the air and the dusk falls early and the friendly evenings lengthen under the heel of Orion, it has seemed good to our people to join together in praising the Creator and Preserver, who has brought us by a way that we did not know to the end of another year. In observance of this custom, I appoint Thursday, the twenty-sixth of November, as a day of

Public Thanksgiving

for the blessings that have been our common lot and have placed our beloved State with the favored regions of earth -- for all the creature comforts: the yield of the soil that has fed us and the richer yield from labor of every kind that has sustained our lives -- and for all those things, as dear as breath to the body, that quicken man's faith in his manhood, that nourish and strengthen his spirit to do the great work still before him: for the brotherly word and act; for honor held above price; for steadfast courage and zeal in the long, long search after truth; for liberty and for justice freely granted by each to his fellow and so as freely enjoyed; and for the crowning glory and mercy of peace upon our land; -- that we may humbly take heart of these blessings as we gather once again with solemn and festive rites to keep our Harvest Home.

For additional Thanksgiving readings and ways that we all can bring the blessing of life to others, visit the Nothing But Nets website.

And now, let us say Amen. Happy Thanksgiving!

Should we invite conversion?

2008-11-20T20:05:51Z

By Gardening Grandma
Three years ago Rabbi Eric Yoffie said it was time for Reform Jews to actively encourage conversion. "It is a mitzvah to help a potential Jew become a Jew-by-choice," he told the Biennial assembly.

Do you agree with Rabbi Yoffie? In the winter edition of Reform Judaism magazine, two Reform rabbis take on the issue. See what Rabbi Stephen Einstein and Rabbi Rosalin Mandelberg, both members of the Joint Commission on Outreach and Membership, have to say.

Conduct Un-becoming

2008-11-18T02:02:46Z

By Andi L. Rosenthal
When I was four years old, I learned how to make the Sign of the Cross. As a pre-kindergarten student at the Immaculate Conception School, I was taught that this was a necessary practice to begin and end any conversation we wished to have with God. We were to use this rite any time we needed to talk to God - to give thanks, to pray for help or healing, or even just to ask a question. I remember clearly how the nuns walked up and down the rows of desks, painstakingly correcting each child as they sought to master the choreography of the ritual - the slight touching of the forehead, then the space right below the heart, first left, then right. As a child, it fascinated me that this tiny ceremony was akin to picking up the phone, or in these days, opening up a text window to send an email. Just ask the question, we were taught, and you will receive an answer.

So it was with great interest and excitement that I read Rabbi Jack Bloom's article in the latest edition of Reform Judaism magazine. Perhaps because I learned from a very young age that the signs and wonders of God's creation were all around us, or perhaps because I was taught to share my desk with a guardian angel, I found Rabbi Bloom's article to be not nearly as controversial as some would perceive.

Even though our Torah depicts God as, in Rabbi Bloom's words, "anything but all-loving," we may still be guilty of basing our expectations of God on God alone, and not on our own, limited human interactions with the limitless world of God's creation. But for me, growing up in Catholic school, with a strong sense of devotion and faith, the blessing of dialogue through ritual with the Holy One, and the notion of an unjust world that we had the power to heal through the works of our hands, God was never very distant, and rarely silent.

It's easy to see why so many people of our generation have rejected the notion of the Divine. Why would we want to be in dialogue with a God who, like any parent, has invested us with all of their foibles and faults, angers and issues, and who continually engages in conduct unbecoming to a deity, much less a human being? And if we as humans are indeed, as Rabbi Bloom suggests, indicators of all God's traits - both the good and the bad, "intolerant of imperfection (our own and others), judgmental, quick to anger when things don't go our way, and prone to act abusively and destructively," then what are our options when reflecting upon the gifts of a humanity that is created in an image that, like a mirror, reflects just as poorly upon God as it does upon us?

It would seem that in order to instruct Rabbi Bloom's "teachable God," our options are few, but essential: first, to measure these behaviors by studying text, engaging in dialogue with our faith community, and evaluating our actions - in essence, choosing as a people which God to we hope to emulate. And second, to reflect and ask ourselves if we, as individual inheritors of these both godly and ungodly traits, can do more to lead God by example. If we do not wish for God to demand the death of the woodcutter, we ourselves should not be so quick to pick up the stones. We must ask ourselves, as Moses pleaded with the Holy One in the wilderness: can we, too, subdue our anger, act with loving-kindness and consideration, judge less, love more? And going further, can we embrace in ourselves and those we love the same powerful and all-encompassing love, fairness and compassion that we demand of God?

In the Yom Kippur liturgy, we reassure ourselves with the prayer that God does not expect perfection from us; is it thus fair, as partners in God's ongoing work of creation, for us to expect perfection from God? To me, the idea of a deity who is only good and noble and reasonable and communicative is simply no more realistic than the notion of a perfect human being. But we can no more uninvent God than God can uninvent creation. No matter how unbecoming the conduct on either side of the equation, neither God, nor we, have the choice to "un-become."

Rejection of the controversial notion of achieving perfection through the violent redemption of sin was one of the reasons I became a Jew. We as Jews do not seek perfection through the sacrificial destruction of the self; nor should we expect a more just world, a world without wrongdoing, or even a more level playing field, by declaring the oblivion of God.

Day by day, face by face, word by word, we see flashes of God's 'humanity' just as often as we see sparks of human 'divinity' in those around us. As custodians of our past, we are often quick to remember the injustices and horrors, but we are also slow to forget that even in the darkest hours of our history, whether it was in Egypt or exile or even in Auschwitz, babies were born, love between husbands and wives endured, tenderness between parents and children was kept alive, friendships were formed and sustained by the will to survive. And above all, our heritage remained a living inheritance which, even after generations of struggling to understand our relationship with God, is never one thing or another, never irreparably broken and never fully whole, never entirely joyful, nor absolutely filled with sorrow and regret.

Our divinity and God's humanity; our covenant with God and God's covenant with us; the ongoing struggle to understand the language of the divine even as God struggles to speak to us - all of these things demand that the conversation continues so long as we count ourselves among those who stood at Sinai. Eternally standing at the foot of that mountain, we must still seek to master the choreography of our own human ritual if we wish to continue the dialogue: if we ask the questions, as we were taught so long ago, then perhaps, we will receive an answer.

On Gods and Mortals

2008-11-17T19:19:09Z

By Larry Kaufman
Rabbi Bloom's provocative view of our relationship with God centers on the God of the Torah, and I respectfully suggest that we 21st century Reform Jews relate to Somebody altogether different.

Taught as we are that we are made b'tzelem Elohim, in the image of God, we are more likely to look in the mirror than in the Torah to develop our picture. I find more truth than poetry in the story of the little boy huddled with his crayons over a sheet of paper, whose mother asks what he is doing. "I'm drawing a picture of God," he replies. "But Sammy," his mother remonstrates, "nobody knows what God looks like." "Of course not," says Sammy. "I'm not done yet."

I connect the Sammy story to the explanation we are given for praying, not to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but rather to the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob - not three Gods, but three different drawings of the same God. This gives implicit permission for each of in succeeding generations to make our own drawings.

As someone not particularly grounded in theology or philosophy, I read Torah as the effort of my ancestors to explain the world around them and to differentiate themselves from their neighbors. I am proud to be descended from folks whose differentiation was to hold themselves to a higher standard and who attributed that choice as a response to a Higher Power.

But a God who would stone the Sabbath violator or permit the Holocaust is not the kind of God in whose image I want to find myself - and therefore I have to look at Rabbi Bloom's God Who was active in history in the time of the Torah as the portrait drawn by our ancestors based on what they understood of their world, and transform that God into the One we know today, who learns from us by mirroring us, learning as we learn.

Thus when Rabbi Bloom discusses our getting in touch with a flawed God, I understand him as telling us to get in touch with our own flaws. (I am uncomfortable with his wounded God, which strikes me as a Christian understanding.) And the flaws - God's? Ours? - seem to relate to self-improvement, rather than to either ethical or ritual behavior. The God of the Torah was understood as concerned with both; the God of Pittsburgh 1885 was perceived, perhaps with an assist from Isaiah, as concerned only with the ethical. What is God concerned with today? In our contemporary picture, what's God wearing? What's God eating? In the audio, what language is God speaking?

In Pirkei Avot, the Chapters of the Fathers, we read Mikol melamdei hiskalti, I have learned from all I have studied with. In studying here with Rabbi Bloom, we seem to be learning that God is studying alongside us, and presumably learning alongside us. And thus this relationship for the sake of Heaven can flourish and the God of the 21st century, who has evolved from the God of the Torah, can be our Partner, our Teacher, and our Student, as we can be God's, in perfecting the work of creation, starting with ourselves. . .

Closed on Shabbat

2008-11-11T21:23:37Z

By JanetheWriter
A recent post on her blog by Rabbi Phyllis Sommer (aka Ima on (and off) the Bima) reminds me that Baruch College could learn a thing or two from Isaac and Moishe Nava, proprietors of La Casa de Isaac, a Jewish-Mexican restaurant in the suburbs of Chicago that's closed on Shabbat.

This week at Baruch, it's time to register for the spring semester and as is the minhag of the school, students, based on the number of credits earned to date, are assigned a specific timeslot in which to complete their online registration. Although I certainly am not shomer Shabbos in the traditional sense, I do enjoy celebrating Shabbat and the holidays in a liberal sort of way. I was dismayed, therefore, to receive an email notifying me that my online registration appointment is this Friday, November 14 at 8:15 p.m.

By assigning me this timeslot (before which the system will not accept my registration), Baruch has very effectively disrupted my plans to shul shop and, in fact, to observe Shabbat in my own, personal way. And, while I might consider waiting until after Shabbat to register for the spring semester, in so doing, I risk being closed out of the specific section and course that I wish to take, one of only two core courses that remain in my curriculum.

So, should I just "suck it up" and register on Friday night? Wait until after Shabbat and risk losing a seat in the course I need? Request a different appointment, knowing that in so doing I may end up with a more undesirable timeslot during the following week? Or, should I register when assigned and then try to contact the appropriate office in the behemoth CUNY system to oppose the Friday night assignment?

At this point, I'm just not sure... What would you do?

Strengthening Reform 18: The Leaky Glass

2008-10-31T01:23:03Z

By William Berkson
In response to several of my posts in critique of the current state of Reform theology, fellow RJ blogger Larry Hoffman has said that he views the glass as 'half full', as opposed to my 'half empty'. So while good changes are always welcome, we are in pretty good shape. In particular, he has pointed to the fact that Reform movement is growing in numbers, while the Conservative movement is shrinking.

This last fact is indeed true, but it masks grave problems. That is because the "glass" is leaking, according to what I have read. Right now I can't put my hand on the sources, but I have read that a significant part of the increase comes from formerly Conservative Jews joining Reform Synagogues. And I believe that if you take away these, the numbers of Reform Jews have actually shrunk. Hopefully someone here can correct me if I got this wrong. But I believe what is happening is that those who are raised in a Conservative synagogue marry either a Reform Jew or intermarry, and then they join a Reform synagogue, where their spouse feels more at home or more welcome.

Now if all these current members had lots of children who join Reform synagogues as adults, there would be less of an issue. But what now happens is this: most Jewish children some time in their teen years cease active association with a synagogue, at age either 13 or 15, and only rejoin when they marry and their youngest child is born, or comes religious school age, at 5 or 6. But meanwhile, during those about 20 or more years, 40-50% will have intermarried, and I believe only about a third of those currently raise their children Jewish.

On top of this come some stunning statistics, at least to me. The first is, from the Jewish Population Survey, that currently only ½ of Jewish women between the ages of 30 and 35 have given birth. As fertility declines more rapidly after 35, this is a serious demographic issue. Most young Jewish women today don't put the first commandment in the Torah--p'ru ur'vu, be fruitful and multiply--first.

The second shocking statistic I just heard at the Mid Atlantic Council Biennial, from Rabbi Richard Address, head of the URJ department of Family Concerns. In the past 10 years the average age of Reform congregants has gone up by 5 years, from 37 to 42. That is a huge change, driven in part, Rabbi Address thinks, by late child bearing and late re-affiliation with a synagogue. And then you have the phenomenon of parents stopping affiliation once all their children are B'nai Mitzvah, or out of the house.

I think what see here is a picture of Judaism becoming increasingly 'pediatric', where membership is driven by the desire to have the children celebrate a bar or bat mitzvah. This picture is really alarming, because it is of an inauthentic Judaism. If parents feel that Judaism has nothing to offer adult Jews beyond getting their children membership in the tribe, then the children are likely to care less about actually living Jewish lives and building Jewish homes themselves, whether they intermarry or not.

"Demography is destiny," as they say, but there is a big question here on what population we are looking at, and what they will do in the future.

In my view, the key issue is not intermarriage, but rather whether children who grew up in a Reform Congregation will want to raise their own children Jewish. That depends, I think, on two things. The first is whether they see Judaism as something that can help them establish and sustain a strong marriage, and to raise good and capable children.

Now I think that Jewish values, lived, promote good marriages and strong families. And these values are supported by home celebrations and--especially for children--enhanced by affiliation with a like-minded community, and activities and religious celebrations with them. That three-fold cord of values, ritual and community can actually deliver what most Jewish young adults want.

However, to make that threefold cord work, for it to be convincing to 18-35 year olds, we need to strengthen Reform both in ideas and institutions. How, I will take up next.

Met any lamed vavniks lately?

2008-10-29T02:03:43Z

By Gardening Grandma
Trying to stretch in a new direction, I'm taking a fiction writing class. This week's assignment: write a character description of a superhero. For me, who never watched Batman or Spiderman and only begrudgingly saw Superman since his alter ego was a reporter, I was at a loss. Who can believe in - let alone imagine - a superhero?

But then I got to thinking about our Jewish tradition, and the role superheroes have played throughout our history. Perhaps the superheroes of 5769 aren't people who fly through the air or lift cars with the flick of the wrist. Maybe today's superheroes are the 36 Lamed Vav Tzadikim - the 36 righteous people who, were it not for them, the world would come to an end.

Tradition tells us no one knows who the lamed vavniks are, but we can all guess who might be. Anyone have any nominations?

Remembering

2008-10-27T22:35:29Z

By JanetheWriter
At last week's Yizkor service, just before the El Malei Rachamim, the rabbi asked people to recite the names of those they were remembering and to say a few words about them. Knowing that my mother would, of course, speak about her parents, I planned to mention two bachelor uncles -- great uncles, really, -- one whom I knew and one whom I did not.

Uncle Irv was my mother's uncle, my grandfather's brother, about whom I've written before on this blog. He was a gardener's gardener. As one who kills houseplants with great regularity, I most certainly did not inherit any of his DNA. In a small plot of soil - indoors or out - Uncle Irv could coax tomatoes, zucchini, peppers, beans, flowers and more to burst forth from the earth, all the while smoking forbidden cigarettes and "hiding" them in his pocket whenever one of us came out in the yard to check on him. It's a wonder he never set himself on fire. He was as loving to all of us -- his nieces and their families -- as he was to his beloved plants, and we miss him terribly.

Uncle Max, too, was my mother's uncle, my grandmother's brother. Although I did not know him, I do know that when my mother was growing up, he and his sister, my Tante Laura, shared an apartment on Second Avenue between Second and Third streets, right next door to Provenzano Lanza Funeral Home on the Lower East Side. I've been told that he was extremely organized and meticulous (and, as anyone who knows me well will tell you, I most certainly did inherit those genes!), and kept scores of bound journals and records, all in German. Included in those volumes were endless lists, writings, calculations, sketches, and more. I've had an opportunity to thumb through some of those pages from time to time, all the while wishing I'd had a chance to know the fellow yekke who created them.

In the end, though, it was neither Uncle Irv nor Uncle Max about whom I spoke that morning. Instead, when the rabbi's eyes met mine, Chaim Glasberg was the name that tumbled from my lips. In the same way that I've written about Uncle Irv on this blog, so too, have I written about him in these pages. But, unlike Uncle Irv, Chaim Glasberg probably doesn't have anyone else to remember him. However, since I randomly plucked his name from among the thousands on the stucco walls of Prague's Pinkas Synagogue more than a year ago, Chaim Glasberg has been with me - just like my grandparents, my Tante Laura, and my bachelor uncles. Last week, though, as his name came forth, it was as though he was sitting right next to me in the pew. And, as with others whose lives give meaning to our own, it was nice to have him there.

Ever hear the one about the Rabbi, the minister and the bagpiper?

2008-10-27T22:03:50Z

By Steve Arnold
I know it sounds like a corny joke, but it's the situation I had to balance recently in finally laying the ashes of my late wife to rest. In a world where more than half of all Jewish marriages are interfaith, finding a way to balance those different cultural demands is something we're all going to face.

My story starts in April when my wife Marg died suddenly. She was a believing, but non-practicing Anglican and I'm Jewish. Her relatives are hard-right Pentacostals. The funeral service and visitation were marred by some serious and bitter conflicts with her relatives over fundamental questions - Marg and I had always talked about cremation, but her relatives were horrified at the idea her body wouldn't be ready for the rapture. I would sit shiva after the funeral, but for the service itself I wanted a dignified Anglican funeral - they wanted their family pastor to preach "hell fire and damnation." Emotions ran high.

Partly because of that conflict, and partly because I wasn't ready to let go, when the funeral home staff brought a small shopping bag to me containing a neatly wrapped little package, I put it in a cabinet surrounded by some of Marg's favourite capodimonte roses and a nice picture of her and waited. Time doesn't heal some wounds, but it does make them less raw. When I realized it would be soon be six months since her death, I finally made the decision to have the cremains buried.

Time had cooled some of the initial anger and I found Marg's sister anxious to help make the final arrangements. She was there when I picked out the grave site, the marker, made all the business arrangements. It was the kind of support family is supposed to give, and because of that I agreed to let their family minister take part in the service I'd asked my own rabbi to lead. At the last minute Marg's sister asked for a piper to acknowledge their Scottish heritage.

On that final day, Rabbi Jordan Cohen read the Jewish burial service for me, Pastor Whittaker prayed to Jesus for the soul of a good Christian, I recited the Kaddish and Marg's sister read poetry. The piper played Amazing Grace and everyone finally felt that tiny bit of peace you're supposed to get from a funeral.

It could have been a real disaster, but in the end we found a way to meet everyone's needs by and respect everyone's tradition.

In the end, the Rabbi, the minister and the bagpiper helped bring a family back together.

Bereshit: New Beginnings

2008-10-26T00:55:50Z

By Andi Rosenthal
This morning, my weekly Torah study group, along with thousands of b'nei mitzvah children all over the world, began the Torah over again. The beginning comes, in my opinion, at the exact perfect moment, when the chill in the air and the gorgeous vibrant leaves and the deep azure of the Sound all bring the beauty of G-d's handiwork into sharp focus. It's as if, no matter what troubles or joys you are facing, you simply have to notice what a beautiful world we live in. And as a writer, very few narratives intrigue me as much as our sacred story of creation. Bereshit bara Elohim et hashamayim v'et ha'aretz - in the beginning, G-d created the heavens and the earth - is one of those perfect first lines - in fact, it is THE perfect first line. And I think any writer worth their keyboard would agree.

Consider how some of the most compelling and intriguing stories begin with lines like: Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were. Or, Lily, the caretaker's daughter, was literally run off her feet. The perfect combination of wanting to know more about the character and the action inherent in the text. From the moment you read it, you're hooked. Face it: you can't let the story go.

When I think about "in the beginning" it always makes me wonder. The beginning, by definition, can only take place once. And yet in life, we are inundated by beginnings, second and third acts, countless chances. The old saw, "You never get a second chance to make a first impression" is a powerful statement, but I'm curious as to whether it is actually true. Our gift of teshuvah, of personal evolution, of the ability to turn and change, and the not-so-unimportant blessing of other people's short term memory gives us that second chance all the time.

Just like with Torah: every year, we begin again. We rarely read it the same way twice. In each reading cycle, we are informed by internal and external circumstances, life changes, personal experience, and the opinions and ideas that other people bring to the table. The fact that we are not supposed to study alone makes that last quality perhaps the most important. Reading about the death of Miriam one year made me consider the justifiable frustration and anger of B'nei Yisrael having been "led on" through the desert, and now facing a crisis of inadequate water and supplies for the journey. A year later, having faced incalculable loss in my own life, all I could see was a distraught and grieving Moses simultaneously struggling to lead a people and mourn for his sister. That point of view had, of course, been at the table the year before - many of those teachers of Torah with whom I share in study every Shabbat had the knowledge way before I did. But it took looking at the text through my own lens of mourning to see it clearly.

Beginning again is also the hallmark of so many aspects of my own life: by definition, the writer is always beginning, whether it is a new book, a new chapter, a new sentence. And as is the case with so many fellow Jews-by-Choice, living life in a new faith and according to a new set of lifecycles accounts for numerous beginnings throughout the learning process of becoming Jewish -- and beyond. Consider the process: taking Intro to Judaism; beginning Hebrew classes. Starting with aleph instead of the letter A. Realizing that your day now starts at sundown rather than sunrise. Even figuring out how to keep kosher (which I still haven't managed to do) or how to conduct that first Seder or bake that first Rosh HaShana apple cake calls for looking at things in a way you've never seen them before, beginning again, over and over. It is certainly no accident that many of us who have trained as URJ Outreach Fellows call our discussion group for Jews-by-Choice "New Beginnings."

As I wrote recently, sometimes being at the beginning again can be scary. It is learning how to mark time and move forward poised between old knowledge and new, between who you've been and whom you've yet to become. Perhaps still reacting to old ghosts and ideas from the past and perhaps fearing what the future holds. It's an odd place to be.

But as my dear friend Reb Marci taught me in our recent online discussion about the death of Moses, Torah does not really allow us to dwell in the past; the story's very momentum commands us to move forward. And before we know it we are back at the table, in awe as our eyes behold the heavens and the earth, the stars in the firmament and every living thing according to its type. And perhaps there is nothing more perfect to say than the Holy One's own words: Ki tov.

Strengthening Reform 17: Reasons for the Mitzvot

2008-10-23T21:49:15Z

By William Berkson
As I wrote in the last post in this series, because in Reform our sacred texts are no longer regarded as authoritative, the "Reasons for the Mitzvot", ta'amei hamitzvot, have moved from being incidental to being central. In Reform, the reasons for the mitzvot become standards for interpreting, accepting, rejecting, and modifying the mitzvot as expressed in our sacred literature.

That is why I have been alarmed by the latest turn in Reform thinking, as seen in the 1999 Pittsburgh Principles and in Rabbi Richard Levy's A Vision of Holiness, which expands on the Principles. For in this discussion, the predominant philosophy seems to be, as I said, Romantic Individualism. We as individuals 'try on' mitzvot to see if they are spiritually uplifting, and as part of our 'dialogue' with God we are moved to practice the mitzvot or not.

I think that in reflecting on the future it is important to appreciate how rational and progressive the Classical Judaism was. Hillel established rules for legitimate interpretation of text, and several generations later, at Yavneh, the sages decided, in the great 'oven of achnai' debate, that divine inspiration--a 'voice from heaven'--would not have authority to decide halacha, but rather discussion of the texts, and a vote by the sages. These historical events put Judaism clearly in the critical tradition started by Socrates--the tradition which sees rational discussion and debate as a path to the truth. And these discussions are recorded in the Talmud, to be taken up in later generations.

It is because rationality is so critical a part of a progressive and liberal tradition that I think the 'romantic individualist' approach to our tradition is such a wrong turn. Our feelings of closeness or oneness with God, are an essential part of our religion, and inspire us. But these feelings do not always give good specific, concrete direction on how to live, either ethically or as to religious practice. That is why the sages wanted inspiration to be mediated by rational engagement with our tradition and sacred texts, with what those who were previously inspired thought and felt, and then were assessed and developed by later generations. And the sages were also willing to look at what would benefit the community in the present day, in rulings called 'tikkun'.

A second key value of the rationalist tradition is that it creates community, in particular a learning community. The most learned may have the most influence in the final decisions, but individuals throughout the community participate in study and critical assessment, and that has been key to high respect that Judaism has had in the eyes of Jews, in spite of being a minority persecuted very often, over thousands of years.

This is why it is key that the rationalist tradition is central to the future development of Reform. Now you might ask, hasn't Reform been rationalist all along?

The answer is that yes, Classical Reform was rationalist, but it had a dogmatic kind of rationalism. As I mentioned earlier, in the Enlightenment, many in the German tradition thought that "Reason" is a mental faculty that can tell us the right answer. And the German Reformers in the 19th century seem to have largely accepted Kant's outlook. As a result, in America, at any rate, we got not a piecemeal building of Reform Judaism but a set of pronouncements: they knew what was right, no arguments needed. It was a 'platform'--the Pittsburgh Platform.

After WWI, the certainties of the high point of 19th century optimism began to crumble. And two different approaches to the reasons for the mitzvot seem to have developed. One of these is represented in the current 'romantic' approach, perhaps influenced by Buber, which I have just discussed. The other is the development of Reform Responsa, a Reform halacha, as summarized in Jewish Living by Rabbi Mark Warshofsky. Here there is a continuation of the process of rational discussion of sources in Torah and Talmud, with the purpose of resolving contemporary issues. Here the change from traditional discussion is such Reform views such as the fallibility of the texts, and the rejection of the restoration of the Temple as goal. This is all to the good. But this literature has two important shortcomings. One is the general neglect of personal ethics as a topic, and dominant focus on issues of ritual. The only areas of ethics that seem to be explored are medical ethics, and the issue of the treatment of homosexuality. The second shortcoming is the lack of consideration of what science has to say on these issues, in particular psychology and sociology. Since Reform at its foundation is an attempt to synthesize the Enlightenment, including the insights of science, and Judaism, this is a serious omission.

In the next post in this series, I will put forward a better basis for ethical mitzvot than either simply the feelings of individuals or only the consideration of past texts. Following that I will put forward a better basis for consideration of ritual mitzvot.

Control

2008-10-20T18:51:36Z

By dcc
Tamar Fox at Mixed Multitudes writes about Y-Love's finding that there are "activists" in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg who are destroying advertisements because the food pictured in these billboards is "excessive and indulgent." These ultra-Orthodox food-pleasure police are defacing property of surrounding businesses because they think photographs of food that is just too tasty will distract people and lead them into a life of crime, mischief and non-Jewish activity. Stop me anytime now, but isn't vandalism criminal, mischievous and non-Jewish?

Outside of the somewhat backwards tactics of resistance, why can't the ultra-Orthodox practice restraint and control?

I suppose this gets at the core of my misunderstanding with a large segment of this particular part of our community. As a Reform Jew I must make choices every day about who I am, what I believe and what I will do to represent the Jewish community. A vast majority of the ultra-Orthodox community never makes a choice when it comes to these aspects of life. I have to control my impulses and desires every day. I must not steal from my neighbor, I need to conserve energy, I cannot forget my heritage and so on. Why then do these radical segments of society need to build up such ridiculous rules that make it impossible for individuals to be responsible for their own actions?

If a person is keeping kosher for any reason, let it be by choice or the feeling that they are commanded by God, why would a picture push them to not keep kosher? If a picture of food is too excessive or indulgent, wouldn't a pious, righteous Jew not partake in such food? Why must it be assumed that a woman is so sexually interesting that a man could not see her while praying and still be able to devout his energy to the prayer? I will respect the differences in opinion that say it is tradition to do such things, but if Judaism is a religion of actions (and inaction in some cases) why can't we be trusted to act (or not act)?

These culinary-control-czars not only make Judaism inaccessible to a vast majority of modern day Jews, they cause those within their own segment of the community to become numb to the idea of choice and responsibility.

"Our Pagan Yom Kippur" from FailedMessiah

2008-10-13T18:58:18Z

By David A.M. Wilensky
(First published on The Reform Shuckle)
Over at the excellent blog FailedMessiah.com, a whistle-blowing blog out to expose far right wing orthodox Judaism as a harmful force in the world (by covering stuff like child molestation and Agriprocessors), there's a really interesting post about the ancient Mesopotamian holiday of Kapuru, held in the Babylonian month of Tashritu. Sound familiar? It's a cool post. Here's an excerpt:

Our ancestors borrowed a great deal from a towering, imperial Mesopotamian culture that for centuries dominated the Fertile Crescent. That we used Babylonian calendar names is widely known. Semitic peoples had used the lunar calendar from time immemorial, but named their months differently. What the (Hebrew-speaking) Canaanites called Aviv, Ziv, Eytanim and Bul, the practical-minded Hebrews first renamed months One, Two, Seven and Eight. The Babylonians called them Nisanu, Ayaru, Tashritu and Archasamnu. In time, our ancestors replaced their numerals with the Babylonian names, many of which are named in honor of Mesopotamian gods.

One of the comments on the post, from Rachel Batya, captures my feelings exactly:

Whether we borrowed from the pagans or they borrowed from us (and probably some of both happened), this kind of information is fascinating to me and enriches my understanding of Judaism. It doesn't detract from it. It reminds me that Judaism has not always been the hermetically sealed culture that some of our more fanatical members seek to make it, but a living, breathing entity capable of co-existing with other cultures while retaining its deepest insights and values.

On the Subject of Tallit

2008-10-13T02:10:49Z

By Mary Hofmann
I've been on a strange quest for an answer that never comes, so one more college try! I love wrapping myself in my tallit. I feel safe and cozy and experience a sense of balance and oneness with the One that is missing when I don't wear it. When I've asked about why we aren't supposed to wear our tallitot except for morning Torah services, I receive only responses that tell me that the Torah enjoins us to wear it during morning services, not why I SHOULDN'T wear it in the evening. Different question. Am I alone out here in the wilderness on this one, or are there others out there who'd like to add to, not break with, tradition on this subject?

Prostration II

2008-10-10T23:37:47Z

By David A.M. Wilensky
(First published on The Reform Shuckle)
I've posted about prostration before.

Some of the more chazanishly demanding parts of the Yom Kipur liturgy at Chavurat Lamdeinu were tackled this year by one of our members, a guy named Steve. Steve grew up in the Conservative movement and later studied super-amazing-loud-operatic chazanut in a yeshiva. He later served for many years as a chazan at a conservative synagogue here in New Jersey.

Of course, I know that during a particular Aleinu on Yom Kipur, we're supposed to prostrate ourselves. But after years of a Reform synagogue on Austin, HUC in Jerusalem, and, last year, a Reform synagogue in New Brunswick, I've never seen it done. When Steve prostrated himself before the Ark yesterday, I was totally struck by it. The most striking thing to me about Yom Kipur this year was Steve's prostration.

I know we Reform Jews lost this practice while pretending to be protestants in the nineteenth century, but are we really after that look anymore? Let's get back to prostration!

Authentic Judaism

2008-10-07T20:42:39Z

By dcc
In the most recent New Voices, Josh Nathan-Kazis interviews Rabbi Rick Jacobs of Westchester Reform Temple about the threat of Chabad to the Reform Movement. The interview, Rabbi Jacobs's answers and even the questions are worth reading. However I completely dismiss the premiss of this article:

"Chabad constitutes a challenge to the Reform movement. When Chabad's rabbis come to town, the local Reform synagogue faces the risk of appearing less authentic than the competition."

Chabad constitutes a challenge to the Reform movement because they give their services away for free due to the fiduciary flexibility granted by a major annual televised fundraiser. The vapid and demeaning "Torah Judaism" concept is an affront to any committed Jew. The real challenge Reform Judaism faces is its overwhelming lack of education within its ranks.

There are many ways to become educated in the Reform Movement. You can get an email you can read books, you could even comment on this blog to get your Jewish learning on during the year. But in this season of extreme temple attendance I will say to those who feel Chabad Judaism more "real" than Reform Judaism what rabbis won't say during the High Holidays: You don't know enough if you feel Reform Judaism is not authentic.

Quite often the Jewish community bears the burden of its members mistakes. However in this particular case, the community must push its members to take responsiblity for thier actions. So during this new school year, take the time to get your learning on, read some Torah, listen to some sermons and take on the responsiblity to make your Jewish experience within your Jewish community one that is authentic. Chabad is just one path Rabbi Jacobs said in his interivew. More likely than not, if you are reading this post, your right path is within the Reform Movement. Now that you are on the road get the directions for the journey.

May this year be a year of learning.

Strengthening Reform 16: Ethical and Ritual Mitzvot

2008-10-07T00:40:35Z

By William Berkson
In the previous post in this series, I sketched the history of Reform treatment of Mitzvot, concluding with Rabbi Richard Levy's A Vision of Holiness: The Future of Reform Judaism (URJ, 2005). In this book Rabbi Levy, who led the 1999 "Pittsburgh Principles" effort, rejects the traditional Reform distinction in the status of ethical and ritual mitzvot.

As I wrote, I think the abolition of this distinction is a spectacularly bad idea.

Ethical mitzvot even traditionally have priority over ritual practices, in my view and I believe in the view of many past Reform thinkers. However, traditionally ritual practices are indeed also mitzvot, commanded by God to the Jewish people. Classical Reform denied this 'commanded' status of ritual commitments, and said that rituals were to be chosen on the basis of whether they are spiritually elevating. Rituals were to be judged how well they serve us, rather than being seen as the way God demanded at Sinai to be served by us in return for his special protection of us.

To understand Rabbi Levy's new Reform view of mitzvot, it is important to recognize that he doesn't regard them as having the same force as either in Jewish tradition or in Classical Reform. In both, ethical mitzvot are unequivocal commandments from God about how we should behave. Rabbi Levy suggests that we instead we understand a mitzvah not as "'I command you,' but 'this is something very important to Me that you do.' The wisdom of this formulation is that reflects the covenantal aspect of the relationship between God and the Jewish people, rather than an authoritarian one." (p. 50)

But even in traditional Judaism ethical mitzvot are not simply products of the covenant between God and only the Jewish people. The Rabbis explored the Noahide laws, which are primarily ethical commandments, and which apply to non-Jews and Jews alike. And in medieval Jewish philosophy leading thinkers argued that ethical mitzvot are derivable from reason, and applicable to everyone. Only the 'revealed' mitzvot, religious practices, are commanded specifically to the Jewish people, and are binding on us because of our special covenant with God at Sinai, and not binding upon non-Jews.

It is important to understand that from its beginning Reform Judaism put all mitzvot on a different basis than Classical Judaism. For Classical Judaism the basis of the mitzvot is God's word as revealed in the text of the Torah and Talmud. Additional reasons for the mitzvot, ta'amei hamitzvot, were interesting supplementary insights, but the authority lay in the sacred text.

In contrast, Reform has not regarded the text as authoritative, and has looked as well to outside standards of truth: reason and empirical evidence. Philosophically, Reform made a fundamental change. We henceforth would judge religious issues not only by sacred texts but also by the sources of truth raised up by the Enlightenment. And scientific study as a new standard extended even to challenging the sacred texts, using "the science of Judaism"--Wissenschaft des Judentums. Thus, the reasons for the mitzvot, which traditionally were a topic of discussion and not a source of authority, in Reform moved to a central place fundamental sources of authority, along side the text, and sometimes above it.

Now the Reform leaders, through Herman Cohen (1842-1918), felt secure backed up by Kant's philosophy. Kant had seen science as based in "pure reason" and ethics as based in "practical reason", and had famously said, "Two things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more intensely the mind of thought is drawn to them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me." Further, he argued that "God as a guarantor of morality" is a necessary postulate of "practical reason".

With this Kantian backing of "ethical monotheism", I think the leaders of Classical Reform were completely comfortable with the idea of God as the commander of morality to all humanity. But because of their universalist orientation, also following the Enlightenment, they were not comfortable with the idea that the particularistic customs of Judaism were commanded by God. So they looked instead to 'spiritual elevation' as the reason for the ritual customs, now no longer considered as mitzvot.

In reality, Kant's ethics don't in fact hold up under scrutiny; and community has proven to be more important than recognized by the European Enlightenment. The various 'platforms' of Reform during the 20th century have, I think, been an effort to go beyond the Kantian Classical Reform view, and to supply a new basis and vision for Reform. But it is evident to me that the culmination in the 1999 Principles, and especially in Rabbi Levy's book, that is a serious confusion, and not, contrary to the title of his book, a coherent "Vision".

Because for Levy all mitzvot are particularistic (part of the Jewish covenant with God), and we 'try them on' to see if we like them, the obligatory character of ethics is completely drained of any content. We can pray with tefillin on Tuesday, and not on Thursday, seeing whether the mitzvah of tefillin moves us as part of our "dialogue" with God. Even though I'm sure this is not Rabbi Levy's intention, the logical consequence of his view that ethical mitzvot are on the same (weak) basis is that this follows: it is OK for us on Tuesday to murder someone, and on Thursday to refrain from murder, and then see whether to follow that mitzvah or not.

A similar rebuttal of Rabbi Levy's view was given by David Wilenski here, in response to my previous post. And indeed Rabbi Levy quotes Rabbis Lance Sussman and Robert Seltzer as severely criticizing the 1999 Principles, by saying "the priority of ethics is disastrously weakened." And I see that the article by Sussman and Seltzer is part of a Winter 2000 edition of the CCAR Journal commenting, evidently some quite critically, on the "Principles." Thus I think it fair to say that the issue of the status of 'mitzvot' in Reform is far from arriving at any consensus view that either Reform clergy or laity are happy with. Indeed, that is shown in the title of Sussman and Seltzer's article: "Pittsburgh II and the Crisis of Confidence in the Reform Rabbinate."

My inquiry so far into the state of Reform Judaism--and I have yet to get hold of the key issue of the CCAR Journal--leads me to this conclusion: the key issue facing Reform now is, "By what standards are we to judge ethical and ritual mitzvot?" From the answer to this will flow whether and when to adhere to traditional mitzvot, or to modify them and even introduce new ones. That topic I will take up in my next post.

Religulous an empty satire

2008-10-03T07:59:11Z

By Gardening Grandma
Rosh HaShanah had been over for a few hours when I found myself at the Emelin Film Club for a preview showing of Bill Maher's Religulous.

Most of the time Maher, who didn't know about his mother's Jewish faith until he'd already decided to leave Catholicism behind, spends a lot of time on Jesus and Christianity, but gives Islam and Judaism short shrift. And of course, the only people he interviews--regardless of their faith--are those who are on the extreme edge. So there's not a Jew without payes in the movie.

I'd been looking forward to seeing the movie, but I expected more than some laughs - no matter how good they are. I thought there might be some new insights, some hope that the movie would make fanatics think harder about their actions.

Instead, it's Maher doing Maher. He is stuck in his view that organized religion is both absurd and terrifying, and, by ignoring anyone who isn't fanatical about their faith he deprives himself of understanding the role religion plays for the majority of people living in the 21st century.

Rabbi Bachman knocks it out of the park

2008-10-02T19:15:22Z

By David A.M. Wilensky (First published on The Reform Shuckle)
I've said it before and I'll say it again: The man is a genius. Check out a transcript of Rabbi Andy Bachman's erev Rosh Hashanah sermon here. Here' an excerpt:

Surrendering total control is never easy-especially as members of a synagogue community founded on principles that value the intellect over the experiential; the rational over the mysterious; Reform over Tradition. Of course, as we continually need to remind ourselves, the historical circumstances that founded this community in 1861 are quite different from those that demand action in the world today. Our membership, ever growing, comes from all walks of Jewish life-Reform, Conservative and Orthodox and non-Jewish life as well. I find that fewer people have an intellectual ax to grind with Tradition and Reform is not much more than: 1. a commitment to egalitarian values for men, women, gays and lesbians; 2. a rationalist and historical view of the authorship of Torah; and, 3. devotion to the principles of Tikkun Olam, Social Justice and Social Action. But "Reforming Judaism?" I've yet to encounter in my years here a single Jew who truly wants to Reform Judaism. After all, in humility, we could easily spend the next 50 years just figuring out what Judaism IS!

Assimilation and Its Discontents

2008-09-30T01:21:23Z

By Gardening Grandma
In its 40th anniversary issue, New York magazine takes a look at how Jews have been assimilated into New York and how, by doing so, have lost some of their identity.

Contributing writer David Samuels writes:

The ascendancy of the Jews of New York can be viewed as a Hollywood-style triumph, but it can also be read as the tragedy of a group of brilliant outsiders who remade a city in their own image, only to cut themselves off from the roots of their tribal genius, ensuring that the future will belong to the children of the new outsiders--Koreans, Indians, Russians, and Chinese.

I'm not sure I agree that "success has ruined the New York Jew." I rather like feeling at home in the city.

Strengthening Reform 15: The Great Mitzvah Muddle

2008-09-26T23:13:00Z

by William Berkson
The latest expression of the principles of Reform Judaism is the six-page "Pittsburgh Principles" of 1999. The book A Vision of Holiness: The Future of Reform Judaism, by Rabbi Richard Levy, begins with this statement, and expands on it to explain it more fully.

One of the questions that was put to focus groups concerned autonomy and mitzvot: "... It is a given that Jews have the autonomous right to choose what beliefs and practices will inform their lives, but for Reform Jews the hard question is the role of Torah and mitzvot in their lives."

The answer in the 1999 "Pittsburgh Principles" is as follows: "We are committed to the ongoing study of the whole array of mitzvot and to the fulfillment of those that address us as individual and as a community. Some of those mitzvot, sacred obligations, have long been observed by Reform Jews; others, both ancient and modern, demand renewed attention as the result of the unique context of our times."

This is not a principle, but a 'punt'. If those practices are sacred obligations, then not following them was a mistake that we should correct. If they are not sacred obligations, ok, we don't have to follow them. Is this "principle" saying we should revive some old customs? If so, on what basis? No answers. Compared to the bracing clarity and forcefulness of the original Pittsburgh Platform, this is a fog.

Rabbi Levy writes that the arguments over the status of tefilin, tallit, etc., were the most heated in discussions of what to put in the 1999 "Principles." This muddy paragraph I think reveals that in fact no clear conclusion was reached. Rabbi Levy in his book does take a dramatic step to clarify the issue of which mitzvot to observe: he clearly and forcefully rejects the long-standing Reform view that ethical and ritual mitzvot have a different status.

Before addressing Rabbi Levy's solution, let me take a step back and see what has led up to Rabbi Levy's dramatic change. The 1885 Pittsburgh Platform says that while Reform Jews accept traditional moral laws as binding, they maintain only "such ceremonies as elevate and sanctify our lives, but reject all such as are not adapted to the views and habits of modern civilization." The 1937 "Columbus Platform," reaffirms this view, though in less clear terms: "Being the products of historical processes, certain of its laws have lost their binding force with the passing of the conditions that called them forth. ... Each age has the obligation to adapt the teachings of the Torah to its basic needs ..." Note that in this language implicitly some rituals are viewed as obligatory, a change from 1885.

The 1976 "Reform Judaism: Centenary Perspective" represents a more significant shift. First, it clearly labels specific rituals as obligatory: "The past century has taught us that the claims made upon us may begin with our ethical obligations but they extend to many other aspects of Jewish living: [a Jewish home, life-long study, public prayer, daily private prayer, keeping Shabbat and holidays, involvement in synagogue and community, promoting survival of Jewish people.]" But it goes on to qualify or contradict this obligation on all Reform Jews with a concluding message: "Reform Jews ... are called on to exercise their individual autonomy, choosing and creating [religious practice] on the basis of knowledge and commitment." How to reconcile the two messages is not entirely clear, but it seems that individual Reform Jews can contradict the general recommendations on ritual, but only if they do so on a basis of being well informed and still committed as Jews.

We went from an 1885 "Platform" to a 1976 "Perspective," and the changes in title I think indicate an increased tentativeness and nervousness about the direction of Reform. The "Perspective" tries to wrestle with increased diversity of practice within Reform by making a virtue of it: "Reform Jews respond to change in various ways according to the Reform principle of autonomy of the individual. However, Reform Judaism does more than tolerate diversity; it engenders it. In our uncertain historical situation we must expect to have far greater diversity than previous generations knew."

This emphasis on "autonomy" it seems is a post-war idea, and perhaps an influence of the extreme individualism that swept the US in the 1960's, and the resulting diversity. "Diversity within unity" is a brave motto of the "Perspective", but as the conflict between forceful direction on ritual and then big qualification shows, the writers of the "Perspective" were not at all clear how that unity could be maintained.

The 1999 Duties of the Soul: The Role of Commandments in Judaism is a thoughtful volume in which many Reform Rabbis try to resolve the mixed messages of obligation and autonomy that were contained in the 1976 "Perspective." However, I think it fair to say that no clear resolution of the issue emerges from the volume.

Now Rabbi Levy has come in his 2005 Vision of Holiness with his dramatic proposal to cut the 'Gordian Knot' of the mitzvah muddle by declaring no distinction between the ethical and ritual mitzvot. While Rabbi Levy's Vision contains much that is beautiful and touching, I think that abolishing the distinction between ritual and ethical mitzvot is a spectacularly bad idea for Reform Judaism. In my next post I will explain why.

Strengthening Reform: 14. The Idol of Autonomy

2008-09-21T01:39:20Z

By William Berkson
What should Reform congregations do by way of studies for children, for adults? What personal ethics should they espouse? What social reforms should they advocate? What rituals, celebrations, and memorials should they practice? What should the content of the prayer book? What home rituals should they encourage?

And who should make these decisions? The rabbis in each congregation? The Union for Reform Judaism? The Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion? The congregation members? A mixture? In what way?

I recently heard that several older Reform rabbis feel that the new Mishkan T''filah lacks a viewpoint and coherent vision of what Reform should be. I think the new Siddur is an improvement on Gates of Prayer in a number of ways, but I have to agree. Instead of a vision, we have a cafeteria of choices, with little guidance. I think that the founding of the Society for Classical Reform Judaism, which Rabbi Berman has written about here is one sign of that lack of direction, and lack of a compelling vision.

My feeling is that to strengthen Reform we need to evolve a stronger vision, instead of just pushing 'inclusiveness' of all viewpoints. "Inclusiveness" is not a vision that can inspire. There is an obstacle to developing a stronger vision, and that is the devotion to personal 'autonomy' as a supreme value for Reform. Reform has been so devoted to personal autonomy as an ideal that has been unable to develop clear and strong group ideals. But the ideal of personal autonomy is bogus ideal, a false idol; for human beings are not, in fact, autonomous.

Let me explain. This is going to have to go into philosophy, so fasten your seat belts.

The one who made personal autonomy a fundamental value in the West was Immanuel Kant. Kant said that each individual has a faculty of Reason and can judge right and wrong without depending on the views of anyone else. In fact, if you don't decide completely on your own, autonomously, you are being morally irresponsible. Autonomy means being a law unto yourself, or being ruled only by yourself, and Kant believed in an absolute "moral autonomy of the will."

Kant's ethics, in spite of having a lot of interesting insight, never worked practically. And that is because human beings don't have a faculty of "Reason" with a capital "R" that will tell us the right thing to do. That's what Classical Rationalists believed in the Age of Reason, but it doesn't exist. What we do have is a more humble kind of reason: the ability to weigh the pros and cons of different options. But when it comes to a decision, we take the pros and cons into account, our experience, what those we respect have said, and then make a judgment.

That this humble kind of rationality doesn't make an idol of personal autonomy possible we can see from the example of informed consent in medical ethics. There they talk about 'patient autonomy', and what is meant that the patient has full information, so they are not just dependent on one doctor's opinion. They thus gain some independence from any particular doctor's opinion. But they are still dependent on the state of medical ethics--not autonomous of the state of scientific knowledge, or of the ideas of our times.

The same is true in ethics and religion. An example is the changing view of women's status. Traditionally, what a woman earns belongs to her husband, to be controlled by him. This is now viewed as intolerably unjust, but it was once accepted as normal and proper--including in the Talmud. That just shows how much we are dependent on our times and the opinions of others.

Now we can change views of ethics and religion by critical discussion, over time. And that is what we should be doing: rationally weighing the arguments pro and con different ideas for our movement, informed by study of Torah and Talmud, and the ideas of our own time. Then we will make decisions not dictated by the discussion, or the fictitious "Reason," but informed by that rational dialogue.

Instead of engaging in this movement-wide dialogue, what recently we have had is the Romantic individualism I mentioned earlier. Each individual in communing with God will decide what Mitzvot to follow.

In a strong essay of Rabbi Herbert Bronstein, 'Mitzvah and Autonomy', in Duties of the Soul (1999) rightly criticizes autonomy as an "idol", meaning the particularly kind of self-centered, irresponsible view common in the popular media. But when it comes to looking for an alternative, he looks to the 'hermeneutic' tradition going back to Hegel, and including 'post modern' thinkers. Rabbi Borowitz, in wrestling with 'autonomy' also looks to these for ideas.

But the problem is that Hegel and his followers abandoned the critical tradition. So Reform Jewish thinkers turning to Western philosophy for guidance are faced on one hand with a naïve dogmatic rationalism--which Classical Reform followed--and on the other anti-rationalists who do not provide a philosophy that encourages the kind of classic Jewish dialogue in the Talmud, a dialogue that led to Judaism's greatest strength.

There is a Western philosopher who provided a better alternative, a more humble view of reason as guide, and that was my late teacher Karl Popper. Prof. Menachem Fisch has argued in his book Rational Rabbis that the Talmudic debate and decision actually follows Popper's model of critical discussion as a guide.

When I labeled autonomy an "idol" in the title I meant a false ideal--and a confused one. Nobody is contemplating a Reform religious police who will go around and report those who don't--or do--separate milk and meat. The idea that 'autonomy' is such a sacred ideal that we have to have a cafeteria-style Judaism is bogus. Humans are not autonomous, and we can recommend ideals and practices without coercing people to do anything. Furthermore, this is currently being done in Reform Responsa, which don't seem to be encumbered with illusions of autonomy in the same way as some other current Reform literature.

The product of the false ideal of 'autonomy', and where it really hits our current practice in Reform, is what I call "The Great Mitzvah Muddle," which will be my next topic.

Strengthening Reform 13: Mordechai Kaplan and Reform

2008-09-14T06:20:09Z

By William Berkson
In the last post in this series, I looked at the ideas of one important thinker who has had an important influence on Reform Judaism: Martin Buber. Here I will look at another big influence on Reform in the 20th century, Mordechai Kaplan. Here are three key views of Kaplan.

1. Kaplan's religious naturalism.

Classical Reform had been highly theistic, making a traditionally personal God and ethics almost the whole of Judaism. By contrast, Kaplan made God a personal sum of processes in Man that make for salvation, where 'salvation' means a better life both personally and socially--and 'better' means ethically and emotionally.

The problem with Kaplan's conception of God is, as Reform theologian Rabbi Eugene Borowitz has pointed out, that it lacks the unity expressed in the Shema. The feeling of unity with other people, with nature, and with God, is at the core of religious experience. Kaplan recognized that we need the emotional experience of the Presence of God to inspire us to be specifically religious, which is more than being devoted to high ideals. However, Kaplan's fragmented concept of God just does not promote or inspire that feeling of Presence. I think Reform was right not to follow his naturalism.

2. Judaism as a civilization.

Kaplan's overarching idea was that Judaism shouldn't be considered just as a religion, but as a whole civilization, of which religion is but one dimension. There is some truth in this, of course. Judaism is not only a religion, but also the customs of an ethic group that has also traditions outside religious ones, such as in Jewish humor. And traditionally Jews had a sense of belonging to a common nation, and now there is a Jewish state. Classical Reform wanted to reject this idea of common nationality, and Kaplan wanted to re-assert it. And so, for example, he was pro-Zionist at a time when most Reform were anti-Zionist.

However, there is a serious problem with viewing Judaism as a civilization, which is that it's not. Judaism has never been a civilization on its own, but from Abraham on interacted with Western civilization as a whole. Judaism is a sub-culture or tradition within Western civilization, and has been strongly influenced by the larger Western civilization (and influenced it in return) throughout its history.

This is unfortunately not just an academic point, but a very consequential one. The reason is that Kaplan's approach emphasizes 'Jewish identity' as the foundation of Jewish religion, which is a profound mistake. His student Emanuel Gamoran set up Reform Jewish education after WWI, and decided to teach what was ethnically 'distinctive' in his view. So he designed the curriculum on teaching the customs of the holidays, some Hebrew for the prayers, a bit about the land of Israel. (I don't know if Kaplan himself approved of this.) While the curriculum did contain Tzedakah and social action, cut out were any teaching of Jewish views of God and Jewish ethics. This was a largely hollow curriculum, which taught a fragment of the external customs of Judaism, and largely left out the soul. Only in the past twenty five years has this disastrous mistake begun to be corrected, and it has a long way to go.

Religion is the most distinctive and unifying feature of Jews as a people, and to treat it as secondary to 'folk customs' or incidental to a larger 'Jewish civilization' is a huge mistake--a mistake that Reform unfortunately followed.

3. Judaism as a group process.

Kaplan was strongly influenced by sociologist Emil Durkheim, and by American philosopher John Dewey. From sociology, Kaplan viewed Judaism as a group phenomenon. The difference of the group orientation is summarized by a statement of sociologist Erving Goffman: "Not men and their moments, but moments and their men."

Goffman was speaking of the interaction of a group of people in a room, and his point was that everybody was reacting and acting on the group, and that their was not a rigid 'self', but an interaction between the self and the group, which changed both. The whole, in this case the group, is more than the sum of the parts, the individual selves.

From Dewey, Kaplan got the idea of a democratic process in which ideas and decisions evolve from the group process. Kaplan saw the power of this idea, and advocated the future development of Judaism as a democratic group process. This idea has, I think, been wrongly neglected by Reform Judaism, which has been too obsessed with ideal of personal autonomy.

I'll consider Reform's problems with autonomy next post.

Honoring Fallen Soldiers

2008-09-05T22:49:46Z

By Rabbi Eric Yoffie
A rabbinic colleague recently sought my advice. Two congregants whose son had served as a doctor in a war zone had asked her to read from the bimah the names of American soldiers killed that week in Iraq. Should the congregation adopt this practice in conjunction with the recitation of Kaddish on erev Shabbat and Shabbat morning?

Though she was sympathetic to the request, this rabbi feared that the practice might ignite a controversy. While most of her congregants opposed the war, those who supported it might interpret the reading of names as an act of protest against U.S. policy in Iraq. She didn't want the issue to divide the congregation or offend those who had come to say Kaddish for a loved one. What, she asked, would I recommend?

Read the names, I advised, but first share with the congregation and ritual committee your reasons for adopting this practice--which, I informed her, a number of Reform synagogues have been doing for some time.

In my view, while it is each congregation's prerogative to decide whether or not to read the names of fallen soldiers--whether in Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, or elsewhere--honoring them during a worship service is not an act of political protest. It is an act of mourning those lost and remembering their valor.

Perhaps more than any other religious tradition, Judaism has developed elaborate rituals of remembrance. In addition to the Mourner's Kaddish that we say for parents and close relatives, we recite the Yizkor prayer on Yom Kippur--and on the three festivals that follow--in memory of family members, martyrs of our people, and friends. For Jews, memorializing an individual's accomplishments is essential: in the Hebrew Bible the verb "to remember" appears no fewer than 169 times.

And while we can disagree about whether the government acted wisely in sending them to war, we must remember that these men and women died on our behalf, believing that they were protecting our welfare by shielding us from our enemies. While the media frequently reports on the number of soldiers killed, reducing our lost sons and daughters to cold statistics denies their humanity. I believe they are entitled to the dignity of having their names read in a sacred setting, where the enormity of their sacrifice can be acknowledged from the heart.

Reading the names of fallen soldiers as part of the Shabbat service allows us to honor them for their sacrifice, and to call upon God to comfort their families--and us.

(Originally published in Reform Judaism magazine)

Tribalism, Reform Judaism, Rites and Choices

2008-09-05T02:18:48Z

By dcc
Answer this question for me honestly: Do you, as an active Reform Jew, practice a Jewish tradition simply because that is what Jews have always done? Professor Carol Ochs writes in this week's d'var Torah that our portion teaches us that we can't "keep doing something just because we have always done it." I don't observe rituals simply because my parents do (or don't) observe them, but in all honesty my family's observance does inform my personal observance. And for that matter my community's observance plays a significant role in the formation of mine as well. But I can say with no doubt in my mind that I do not follow Jewish tradition simply because it is the way it has always been done.

So why do we continue to practice the brit mila?

In the most recent edition of Reform Judaism magazine Rabbi Mark Washofsky, HUC-JIR professor, Reform responsa scholar and general reference for all things Reform Judaism, wrote that Reform Jews continue this practice simple because that is what Jews do.

I think that the answer to these questions lies largely in the words "ancient tribal rite." For that's what berit milah is. That's why we do it, and, really, it's the only reason we do it.

Circumcision is a tribal rite in the same way that every Jewish ritual observance is a "tribal rite": a means by which the members of our "tribe" express their identity as a people, as a community covenanted with God, through the performance of a "rite" meaningful only within the context of that covenant. Putting it another way, if we seek to explain why we light Shabbat candles, or fast on Yom Kippur, or hold a Passover seder, it would be enough to say simply that "we do these things because we are Jews, because only Jews do them, and because we rehearse our uniquely Jewish identity by means of these uniquely Jewish acts."

I don't buy this at all. Earlier in the article, Washofsky notes that throughout Reform Jewish history boys had been circumcised, but not always by a mohel (or more recently a mohelet). Yet in the past few decades there has been a revival of the practice of the brit milah. So people don't just do it because it was always done, there is a choice that takes place in the mind of parents. They choose to identify with a past. They learn about their history and make the choice to connect to tradition.

There are also those who choose to identify with the past, learn about history and choose not go through with this practice. There has been a growing movement of "intactivists" (clever name I know) are gaining ground, even in some segments of the Jewish community. These folks tend to be young, upwardly-mobile, urban, professional types (there is some clever name for them too) who may or may not be connected the organized Jewish community.

Regardless of this movement or the so-called revival, the same issue is at its center: parents making a choice for their children.

Recently, Rabbi Danny Rich, leader of the Britain's Liberal Judaism, was quoted saying that he holds ethical requirements of Judaism over ritual practice; the article in which he is quoted focused on circumcision. DK, the Kvetcher, has long been harping on this particular issue and it seems that he believes that the brit milah will be gone from all streams of liberal Judaism with in a few generations. He uses Rabbi Rich's statement as proof. I disagree.

As the Reform Movement in North America continues to explore our past as a way to inform our present and build our future, the brit milah revival will continue and so too will the advancement of the intactivists. But the act of circumcision will not disappear from the liberal Jewish world. As long as choice remains a major aspect of liberal thinking and Reform Jewish ideology, people will continue to make the choice to engage with this tradition.

I am curious to hear the reaction of others out there in the Jewish, Reform Jewish and Intactivist worlds. Let me know.

Strengthening Reform: 12. Buber and Reform Judaism

2008-09-03T19:51:06Z

By William Berkson
In the previous post in this series, I described one example of the approach that I think can greatly strengthen Reform Judaism. The key is better to support the sanctity of relationships, and in particular family relationships. And the way to do this is through studying and living the values of Torah and Talmud, supplemented by some of the insights of modern psychology. And the synagogue can be the center of a community that carries out this mission of sacred learning and family support.

My recommendation for Reform to focus on the sanctity of personal relationships of course owes a great deal to the great 20th century Jewish philosopher, Martin Buber. Buber said that a central way we experience holiness is in I-Thou relationships. In these open and honest relationships we are not simply viewing the other person as a means (an I-it relationship), but are encountering them in a relationship in which both egos are to some extent merged in the I-thou interaction, even while keeping their identity. And we also experience a oneness with God in such interactions.

This idea that we directly experience the presence of God through relationships with others and with nature is extremely important and I think a widely accepted, even central idea now in Reform Judaism. It is important because it does not rely on a traditional idea of an interventionist God who rewards and punishes in an afterlife, nor that the words of Torah must be taken literally. But at the same time it affirms a transcendent, religious dimension of our experience as real and important.

Another important feature of it is that it is not fully mystical, though related to mysticism. In mysticism the aim of the individual is to merge his ego into God, or vanish his ego to become one with God. In Buber rather we experience God as a dimension of ordinary relationships and daily life. This is both a traditional aspect of Judaism, and an aspect emphasized in the early Chassidic movement that Buber so admired.

This grounding of religiosity in neither the traditional image of an interventionist God, nor authoritative texts, nor set prayers, has been a very important contribution to Reform Judaism, post Darwin. For it shows us how Jewish religion outside its traditional boundaries of an interventionist God and of halacha can still be a vital force in our lives.

All of this influence has in my view been for the good. However, there is another aspect of Buber's views that has been equally influential, and in my view harmful.

This is what I will call Buber's Romantic Individualism. Buber wanted to have nothing to do with the rational discussion of ethics and Jewish law that is in the Talmud, nor any sense of obligation to perform what is written in sacred texts. For him, all is direct inspiration, the experience of sacred responsibility in I-thou relationship.

Now this romantic individualism, which emphasizes that the individual consult his own intuition and emotion, and downgrades critical discussion, was of course part of a larger Romantic movement in European and American culture in the 19th century, and one influence on Buber. In my view, the acceptance of this romantic individualism by some leading Reform rabbis is an obstacle in the way of strengthening Judaism, for two reasons.

The first is that while empathy for others is a basis for ethics, feelings are not all there is to ethics. You also have to look at the consequences of actions, and in a given society. Then you can see what actions will help or hurt other people. The statements of ethical obligation in the Torah and Talmud are in fact such insights. And in Talmud in particular there is discussion of how to resolve conflicts between two good values, such as justice and peace, and also choices of the lesser of evils.

Now I don't propose to view these statements as infallible and to be followed without any critical assessment. But I do say they are a treasure of insight, and to throw them away and only rely on intuition is to impoverish Judaism and to greatly reduce the help and guidance it can give us in our lives. Rather we should view them as a starting point for our own life decisions, and a starting point for further development of Judaism.

The second problem with Buber's romantic individualism is that it kills the community of learners and scholars that is a core feature of Judaism traditionally, and even now. Traditionally, the ideal was that all Jewish men would study and discuss Talmud. The process of looking at diverse sources on an issue, and resolving the conflicts to see how we should act was a sacred process in Judaism, a form of prayer. Through critical discussion of sacred texts we related to one another in sacred relationships, and in a community where the best of new insights would be incorporated in the tradition as more Torah for the next generation.

Now rather than abandon Talmud Torah, we should expand it to all, so that Jewish women and men, young and old, can be part of one vital, growing sacred community.

Keva, Kavanah, and Back to Keva

2008-08-25T12:17:02Z

By Larry Kaufman
As part of introducing Mishkan T'filah at Beth Emet several months ago, Rabbi Peter Knobel gave us "permission" to wander away from whatever the congregation was reading or singing, and to go anywhere else on the two-page spread that felt more comfortable, or for that matter, wherever our individual thoughts and prayers might lead us. In doing so, he reminded us that in a world where multi-tasking has become commonplace, we might very well be able to join our voices with the community, while our minds were somewhere else.

I thought about this at Shabbat services, less than a year into our use of the new, yet by now taken-for-granted, siddur. We know when and how to follow the liturgy on the printed page; and we know (since we are a worship group of regulars) when we will deviate from the text and follow from memory the lashon (language) and minhag (custom) of our former home-made prayer book.

But my own thoughts yesterday went even further afield - guided in part by our discussion here at RJ.org of the progress in Reform worship, and especially by BZ's reminder that the service doesn't happen only on the bimah. The shlichey tzibur, the messengers of the community, are charged with guiding the keva, leading us through the fixed liturgy. In a departure unparalleled by predecessor siddurim, Mishkan T'filah facilitates the kavanah, the inner meaning and personal understanding the worshipper is expected to bring to the prayer experience, by suggesting alternate interpretations or different understandings, or even by stimulating new pathways to conversation with the Divine.

My own reveries, when my mind drifts away from the printed text, tend to be inchoate and transitory, and I rarely find myself in prayerful mode when I am not in a prayer group setting. (I purposely use the term prayer group rather than minyan, because I am insufficiently halachic to invoke quorum requirements - and I do not consider myself in "prayerful mode" just because the occasion calls for motzi or shehechayanu.) While I cheerfully and somewhat casually compose blog posts, and more carefully but less frequently prepare divrei Torah, the creation of liturgy would not be my thing.

This does not lessen my admiration for folks whose kavanah leads to keva - who write down to preserve and share the meditations of their hearts. I'm not talking here about clergy, where the composition of liturgy may be considered part of the job description, but of laymen, or more accurately, laywomen, since the three practitioners of the art whose names come to mind are female.

As it happens, two of those women are from my congregation. (The third is Ruth Brin, whose work can be found on Page 126 of Mishkan T'filah.) Might it be something in the Beth Emet water? Or the influence of a liturgically-focused rabbi?

Debbie Perlman z"l, whom I did not have the privilege of knowing, was called our Resident Psalmist. Betsy Fuchs, who sits in front of me at services each Shabbat, is the eloquent author of Betsy's Prayers. I differentiate their work from that of people whose writings found their way into siddurim (like poets Katya Molodowsky and Adrienne Rich in MT) but who, when they wrote, were thinking poetry, not liturgy.

I have only once or twice since we began using Mishkan T'filah read the left-hand pages during the silent section of the T'filah. It's not that I don't like what's there; it's that I miss the resonance of the Hebrew prayers on the right-hand pages if I leave them by the wayside. (Side note for bringing kavanah into the keva: lose the sight-reading, and sound out the Hebrew words. It really makes a difference; and I am eternally grateful to Jerry Kaye for this teaching. And yes, I am well aware that this is precisely the kind of disgraceful indecorum that precipitated the birth of German Reform.)

I can hardly wait to read the comments on this blog post from our resident liturgy wonk, David A.M. Wilensky. Without having his scholarship or analytic skills at my disposal, I can only share that I am left-handed, and politically left-wing, but when it comes to Mishkan T'filah, and in fact to liturgy in general, I veer to the right.

COMMENTS PRIOR TO TECH ISSUES

David A.M. Wilensky said:
I wasn't familiar with the word "wonk" until last week. Since learning the word, it has been applied to me multiple times on this very blog!
I'm afraid that I'll have to give a little thought to any sort of interesting response before I post. Hm.
Okay. I've got it.
I, like you, Larry, am right-handed when it comes to Mishkan. In all honesty, while I've been at home in Austin this summer where the congregation I grew up at is using M"T, I haven't been using it at all. I've been playing with a new sidur I just got, Seder haT'filot, the UK Reform sidur. Their liturgy tends to be somewhat more conervative than that M"T, but they do still have a variety of readings.
The readings, however, are in an index in the back of the sidur. In the sidur, next to most prayers, there's a little number printed in blue ink. The number refers to a page in the index where a reading appropriate to the prayer it hand can be found.
I'm quite enjoying Seder haT'filot, or Forms of Prayer as they translate it, and I would recommend it to any liturgically-right wing Reform Jew.
August 25, 2008 4:49 PM

M. B. said:
David:
In the United Kingdom, the more Reform denomination is called Liberal Judaism. Reform congregations there have been more Conservative in many ways which is reflected in the prayer books.
August 25, 2008 10:46 PM

BZ said:
And the Israeli Reform prayerbook is entirely in Hebrew, so by your logic, it's not Reform at all!
August 26, 2008 8:55 PM

Larry Kaufman said:
When we attended our nephew's bar mitzvah at HUC in Jerusalem some 25 years ago, Rabbi Shaul Feinberg pointed out to us that we had just attended the most Reform service anywhere -- because the whole thing was in the vernacular!
Lost in the prattle about about those wonderful Reform services in nineteenth century America, before all that corrupt Hebrew snuck in, is that many of those services were not in English but in German.
August 26, 2008 10:29 PM

David A.M. Wilensky said:
@ M.B.: Thanks. I'm well aware of that fact. Both, however, are under the umbrella of the WUPJ and both represent a level of variance that we tolerate under our singular Reform umbrella here in North America.
@ Larry and BZ: Actually, Haavodah Shebalev is totally up M.B.'s alley, being entirely in the vernacular. Or is it? Much of it is in a very archaic form of Hebrew that is hard for a secualr Israeli to pick up and get immediately. Or maybe, M.B. is all for archaic language. You know, like the Union Prayer Book.
August 27, 2008 3:49 PM

BZ said:
Actually, Haavodah Shebalev is totally up M.B.'s alley, being entirely in the vernacular.
Except the parts in Aramaic (the original vernacular)... for which there is a translation!
August 27, 2008 4:30 PM

M. B. said:
BZ said:
"And the Israeli Reform prayerbook is entirely in Hebrew, so by your logic, it's not Reform at all!"
Just the opposite, BZ. Understanding the prayer is the test. Progressive Reform uses the language of the congregation for prayer, whatever it may be. That means Spanish in Buenos Aires, Portuguese in Rio, French in Paris, and Hebrew in Tel Aviv. Montreal may be either French or English depending on whether the particular congregation is Francophone or Anglophone. When there was a flood of immigrants into the U.S. who couldn't speak good English, they used prayers in the language they understood which is why there were Dutch services, German services, etc. In Germany today, most of the Jews are recent immigrants from the former Soviet Union who may speak Russian or some German, but there is a terrible shortage of rabbis who can minister to them due to the language problem. Israel had early Reform congregations which spoke English and so used an English based prayer book.
My understanding is that during the Reformation, even the traditionalists were unable to find anything in the Bible which prohibited prayer in the vernacular of the congregation. Maybe not even in the Talmud.
The Classical Reform theology presumes an extremely intelligent and knowledgeable God who can understand the prayers of each Jew in their own language. So each person is able to pray directly to the Lord in his or her own language.

August 27, 2008 7:43 PM

David A.M. Wilensky said:
@M.B.: An influx of immigrants to America is not to be blamed for the existence of German language Reform t'filah. The reason for that is that the Reform movement began in pre-WWI Germany where the vernacular was, you guessed it, German.
I'm not sure what you mean when you say Reformation? Are you referring to Martin Luther!?
Okay, obviously I know that you're referring to the creation of the Reform movement, but given that there was no monolithic organization to break away from as there was with the Protestant Reformation, we do not refer to the formation of the Reform movement as the Reformation. There was no single event. Rather, our genesis was a more organic series of different events and small changes over decades across several different synagogues.
August 28, 2008 8:33 PM

Theological Summer Camp

2008-08-19T20:33:48Z

By dcc
David A.M. Wilensky, RJ.org blogger, Kutz Campus regular and liturgy-wonk, was a bit offended by yesterday's post from the Society for Classical Reform Judaism's Executive Director Rabbi Howard A. Berman. His post on the Reform Shuckle outlines and deconstructs the argument that the SCRJ is a vital and important aspect of present day Reform Judaism.

My perusal of the rest of Rabbi Berman's post and of the Principles page of the SCRJ website leads me to believe that beyond [supporting] an increasingly outmoded aesthetic, there are no differences between SCRJ and the mainstream of the movement. Certainly the ideology the SCRJ labels Classical is no more than standard Reform ideology.

While I am not sure which theological camp is right (or more to the point if any camp can be "right"), it does seem a bit out of place to go to the extremes that have often been supported in posts and comments this blog. My hope for the future of Reform Judaism is that we move past these broad stroke definitions and focus on our mandate to be the light onto the nations, have our youth see those vision and do justice while we walk humbly with our God.

Kiev Revisited

2008-08-18T23:53:29Z

By Larry Kaufman
As regular readers of this blog may have noticed through my comments on other people's posts, I've recently returned from a river cruise through Ukraine -- fortunately arriving home before the Georgian crisis erupted -- and want to share some thoughts in three general areas:

Differences between Jewish and secular travel

The changes that appear to have taken place in Ukraine since my prior trip in 2001

Ukrainian roots for American Jews

Differences between Jewish and secular travel
Our trip was organized by Alumni Holidays International, and sponsored by several university alumni associations. Although open seating and general mingling prevailed aboard ship, our busses for shore excursions were organized by school, with passengers from less represented schools assigned arbitrarily to the busses of the dominant institutions, University of Chicago (my alma mater), Cornell, Dartmouth, Tufts, and William & Mary. Substantive content beyond that provided by very good local guides came through two lectures each from three professors, covering history, identity, and language issues. The role of the Jews is integral to talking about Ukrainian history, and was discussed both by the guides and by the academics. My guess is that about 20% of the audience was Jewish, with the percentage probably a little higher on the University of Chicago bus.

My 2001 trip didn't focus on Ukraine, but it did start in Kiev, where this trip ended, and then went on to St. Petersburg and Moscow. That trip was organized as a leadership mission by ARZA World Union, the short-lived combination of the Association of Reform Zionists of America and the World Union for Progressive Judaism - with the expectation that we travelers would return to the U.S. as missionaries for strengthening Progressive Judaism in the Former Soviet Union.

As might be expected, on the ARZA World Union trip, Jewish content was central, although we also got excellent coverage of key tourist sites in Kiev like the Friendship Arch, the Founders monument, and the Great Gate - but no churches. (We did visit churches in Moscow and St. Petersburg.) The first stop in Kiev on the Alumni trip was Babi Yar, where the local guide was open not only about the Nazi round-up but also about the Soviet effort to memorialize the tragedy without reference to Jewish victims. As the guide was concluding the visit with an eloquent recitation of the Yevtushenko poem, I asked those of my traveling companions who wished to join me in reciting Kaddish.

But beyond Babi Yar, the Jewish content in the professors' lectures and guides' commentaries was essentially peripheral, as part of discussing Ukraine's incredibly polyglot history. Nor were we shown any of the Jewish landmarks of Kiev: No Sholom Aleichem statue, no plaque marking Golda Meir's birthplace, no Brodsky synagogue.

The other contrast came in terms of creature comforts. Think dorm rooms and dorm food for the alumni trip; think four and five-star hotels when you travel with the Reform movement. (For a trip I was thinking of organizing, the travel counselor at ARZA's favored trip arranger advised nothing less than four-star hotels - our clientele likes its luxury.) My bottom line on this, as someone who travels three-star when I travel on my own, is that I'll go to France or Italy or the British Isles on a commercial tour, or an alumni tour, but if I'm going to places rich in Jewish history and culture, I'll choose the Jewish tour for its content, and accept the luxury as a bonus.

Changes in Ukraine since 2001
On our first night in Kiev in 2001, we came back to the hotel after Shabbat services at Congregation Hatikvah, and were having dinner in the glassed-in rooftop restaurant when the night skies lit up with fireworks. It turned out we had arrived on the tenth anniversary of Ukrainian independence and the city was alive with excitement and patriotic fervor....but it was still very much a Russian city. Three years after that visit, Kiev became the rallying point for the Orange Revolution, a successful peaceful uprising with its roots in protesting election fraud, but whose outcome placed in power the faction that looks towards Europe, ousting the faction that looks towards Russia.

We sensed a little more prosperity on this trip, but that may have been a matter of what we were shown each time - in 2001, a Joint Distribution Committee soup kitchen, in 2008, the riverside McMansions of the Ukrainian oligarchs. The city has grown about ten percent, to three million, in these seven years, including major expansion on the other side of the river, and the years since the Orange Revolution have seen a new emphasis on tourism. Only in Kiev, among the five Ukrainian cities we visited, did we find restaurants with English menus and with serving personnel who had a little of our language at their command.

As part of the move to identify more with Europe than with Russia, the push is on to grow the use of the Ukrainian language in preference to Russian. Historically, Russian was more prevalent in the cities, Ukrainian in rural areas, especially in the western provinces, farther away from Russia. Both are Slavic languages, with Ukrainian more heavily influenced by Polish and by the Russian dialect of Belarus. Both languages are written in Cyrillic, but there are subtle differences between the Russian and Ukrainian alphabets. (As a side note, I taught myself the pronunciation of the Cyrillic letters by using a siddur that included Hebrew transliterations.)

Whatever growth in affluence the city may have experienced, it has not rubbed off on the Progressive congregation. We visited Hatikvah's new home - which Rabbi Duchovny explained is half the size at twice the rent of the prior facility. Membership has been stable, which apparently is also true of the two Orthodox congregations, one Lubavitch, one not. Kiev has an estimated one hundred thousand Jews, about the same number as before the Nazis and the Soviets - but in the pre-Nazi days that hundred thousand represented about twenty percent of the population; where today it's about three percent. The Progressive movement has a great opportunity in Ukraine, as throughout the former Soviet Union, but only if we North Americans subsidize its development. One change that hasn't taken place in these seven years is the FSU budget of the World Union for Progressive Judaism, approximately $1.5 million compared to Chabad's $70 million. But that's a topic for another day.

Ukrainian roots for American Jews
One of the highlights of our 2001 trip to Kiev was a visit to the residence of the U.S. ambassador, which was decorated with paintings and sculpture by American artists of Ukrainian descent like Louise Nevelson and Andy Warhol. One thing I hadn't realized prior to seeing that art was how many artists I had thought of as Russian were actually Ukrainian.
This shouldn't have surprised me as much as it did. I had always thought of my paternal grandparents as coming to the U.S. from Russia - but actually they were from the outskirts of Kiev. My mother was born in what was then Poland, but is now Belarus. One tends to forget how fluid the borders were, as control of various territory shifted -- one day under the control of the Russians, another day of the Poles or of the Austro-Hungarian empire.

In fact, a story is told of the Jewish couple who were given their preference when the boundary line was being drawn between Poland and Russia - did they want to be in Russia or Poland. When Shmuel immediately opted for Poland, Rivke pointed out that the Poles were arguably more anti-Semitic than the Russians, True, Shmuel responded, but at least if we're on the Polish side of the line, we'll be spared the rigors of the Russian winter!

Looking at the borders as they are drawn today, and as they were in Czarist times, we have to remember that Jews could live only in the so-called Pale of Settlement, which included much of what is today's Ukraine. Whether our individual pictures of European Jewish life are drawn from family memory or from Fiddler on the Roof or similar literary sources, we have to remember that Anatevke/Kasrilevke and the rest of Sholom Aleichem-land lay somewhere between Odessa and Kiev - subject to the Czar, but in Ukraine, not in Russia.

Virtually every couple among our Jewish compatriots on the trip included at least one spouse who talked about a parent or a grandparent who had come to America from Ukraine. However, none mentioned adding an Everything is Illuminated excursion with a shtetl-shlepper in search of their roots. On our 2005 WUPJ trip to Poland, many of our travel companions visited the towns their ancestors had left sixty to a hundred years before.

My wife hopes eventually to visit Kamenetz-Podilsky, in western Ukraine, where her grandparents came from; our children adopted our grandson from Kharkov, in eastern Ukraine. But I have no family nostalgia, no sense of wanting to visit Kobrin or Bershtivke, partly because my grandparents and older aunts and uncles never wanted to talk about "the old country" with its apparently painful memories.

So why do so many of us travel to Warsaw, Cracow, Prague, Budapest, Moscow, St. Petersburg, and especially, I ask myself, why do I keep going back? It's more than the pull of the traveler's desire to see something new, or to see something old for the first time. I think maybe it's to fit a few more pieces into the jigsaw puzzle of who we are and of the forces that shaped us - and to gain an appreciation for our grandparents (or parents, or great-grandparents) who had the foresight and the courage to pull up stakes , bringing with them to America not much more than the treasure of Yiddishkeit.

But there's also some pleasure in seeing the resurgence of Jewish life, slow though it be, in places where so many efforts were made to eradicate it. My congregation in Evanston is Beth Emet, the house of Truth - but my congregation in Kiev is Hatikvah - the house of Hope.

Strengthening Clasical Reform

2008-08-18T23:35:21Z

By Rabbi Howard A. Berman
A number of comments in the current discussion on "Strengthening Reform" have referred to various dimensions of Classical Reform Judaism as an "early historic chapter" of our Movement's development, rather than a vital and viable position within the diverse religious community that the Union embraces today.

As the Executive Director of the newly organized Society for Classical Reform Judaism, I trust that many readers of this blog saw our first full-page advertisement in the current issue of Reform Judaism Magazine, introducing this new alternative voice in the national Reform family. The SCRJ has been founded as a voice of advocacy for the preservation and creative nurturing of the historic progressive principles, rich intellectual foundations, and beloved worship traditions of American Reform Judaism.

We believe that the universalistic ideals and deep personal spirituality of historic Reform liturgy, including it's great musical heritage, continue to offer a meaningful experience of Jewish prayer for many people today. We uphold the Prophetic commitment to the struggle for peace and social justice that has always inspired liberal Judaism. We share with all Jews a commitment to the wellbeing and security of Israel and its people, living in peace and justice with its neighbors - while we also affirm the centrality of the American experience in the shaping of our own Jewish identity and commitment, celebrating the contributions our faith has made to the founding and nurturing of the pluralistic, democratic society of the United States.

An important priority of the SCRJ is an active outreach and warm support for interfaith and multi-cultural families, and all those seeking to become part of the Jewish community, in the belief that the broad, inclusive and universal spiritual values of historic American Reform Judaism, offer an inspiring message for all people. I and other members of the Society's expanding national community will be participating in these important conversations on RJ.org.

We affirm the broad spectrum of belief and practice in our Movement, reflected in the many thoughtful postings on these pages. Our hope and commitment is that the historic tradition of Classical Reform, which embodies its own integrity and enduring significance in the midst of the many rich streams of Jewish experience through the ages, is recognized and honored for its continuing vitality and potential to speak to a new generation of Jews today.

We invite readers to visit our website: www.renewreform.org.

RDS at DNC

2008-08-18T23:05:40Z

By dcc
This weekend Rabbi David Saperstein was asked by the Democratic National Committee to offer the Invocation on the night that Sen. Barak Obama accepts the nomination in Denver. Rabbi Saperstein joins a group of men and women come from across the country and from churches, synagogues, mosques, temples and organizations that are as diverse as the population of the United States. Frank Lockwood, an Evangelical blogger, writes that the "prayer line up that looks, demographically, a lot like America."

To me this is the most interesting aspect of this "prayer line up." Regardless that these men and women of the cloth are leaders, and in some cases pioneers, they look like America. I suppose it is only fitting that when the Democratic Party nominates a man of African and American heritage, hailing from Hawaii via Kansas through New York, Boston and Chicago, rising from poverty into wealth, the people who offer prayers and words of faith during this nomination would also reflect America's growing diversity.

While the Republicans have yet to release their list of names, I hope that the diversity of people who offer words of inspiration and conviction at their convention will again mirror the fabric of the United States.

In many ways the Reform Movement, too, reflects America's diversity. (Yes, I know that's a bit self-serving but work with me.) We take pride in our history but learn from our mistakes in order to grow. We are culturally, socially and ethnically diverse. We also know that not everyone will always agree with us but we are proud of our openness, our values and our undying dream to make our world a bit better for the next generation.

Rabbi Steve Foster of Temple Emanuel in Denver and Rabbi Amy Schwartzman of Temple Rodef Shalom of Falls Church, Virginia will play major roles at an interfaith gathering on the first night of the convention. This event will bring together faith leaders from far and wide, men and women, Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and more to speak truth to power, project a voice of empathy and peace and perhaps most importantly show that religion is not a political party but a way to bring people together to make the world a better place.

Finally, as someone who has worked with Rabbi Saperstein for the past three years, I must say I'm particularly proud that his zealous voice will be heard in Denver. Be prepared to hear passionate but sometimes brutal truth about the injustices that need to be addressed. Get set to be inspired and ready to take action to save the world.

I am a poem

2008-08-15T23:11:59Z

By David A.M. Wilensky
Thursday's 10 Minutes of Torah are all about prayer and this week's by Rabbi Edwin C. Goldberg, was about the left-hand-side-of-the-page (not the mention the left of the ritual spectrum) reading on page 41 of Mishkan T'filah. The reading serves as an alternatative option for what our Reform liturgists have aptly termed Nisim B'chol Yom (daily miracles).

In last week's edition, Rabbi Richard Sarason explained that the purpose of this collection of blessings is to bring a little kodesh (holy) into the chol (mundane) of our morning routines. Each one, with the exception of the three identity prayers, addresses a particular part of our morning, from waking up to putting on clothes all the way to the set of shorter blessings into Asher Yatzar, a prayer for going to the bathroom.

Rabbi Goldberg, in his 10 Minutes of Torah, as well as the reading he addresses ignore the morning routine-centric nature of Nisim B'chol Yom. I actually do like the poem, the "declaration of the early twentieth century poet, Edmond Fleg, 'I am a Jew,'" as Rabbi Goldberg says. It's a fine poem. I simply question its placement in Mishkan as an alternative for Nisim B'chol Yom.

Nisim B'chol Yom, as I've said, is all about waking up and readying ourselves to meet the day. "I am a Jew," on the other hand, is a statement pf Jewish identity.

Lest anyone think that I'm simply glossing over the three identity blessings, which Mishkan places as the first three of the last five of the blessings, I will mention that they might be seen as simply a part of the larger morning routine. If we keep in mind the traditional Ashkenazi order for Nisim B'chol Yom, we will see how that is. In the Ashkenazi order, the first blessing (who gives the rooster the ability to distinguish between day and night), a blessing about waking up, is followed with the three identity blessings.

If we consider this order, we see that the three identity blessings are not the point of Nisim B'chol Yom, but merely a part of the waking up process. Upon awakening, we realize who we are, what our identity is.

Though the expansion on this fraction of Nisim B'chol Yom that "I am a Jew" represents is nice and in no way objectionable in and of itself, it ignores the larger theme reprsented by the other more than three quarters of Nisim B'chol Yom: Waking up and getting ready for another day.

First posted at Reform Shuckle.

Forum on Decorum

2008-08-15T18:50:05Z

By Larry Kaufman
There is no question that the introduction of decorum in religious services was an important motivator in the early stages of Reform Judaism in Europe. (The other key liturgical changes were worship in the vernacular, elimination of repetitions, addition of a sermon, and excision of "unacceptable" content - Messiah, resurrection of the dead, restoration of the Temple.)

But what did the Reformers mean by decorum?

In seeking to answer that question, let's look at the basic requirements for Jewish communal prayer - a minyan, siddurim, a Torah scroll. Note the absence of a requirement that there be a rabbi or a chazzan (cantor) - any Jewish male above the age of thirteen could "daven for der omid" - stand up and lead worship by chanting the opening and then the closing words of each prayer, to maintain a semblance of togetherness as each worshiper read the intermediate text for himself. You can see this to this day at an Orthodox or Conservative minyan - and it's only to the uninitiated that it looks like chaos.

What it doesn't look like, and didn't look like, was a Lutheran service. Decorum meant a service that was led from the pulpit, with clear-cut roles for the officiant and for the participants - I read, we read together, we read responsively, we sing together accompanied by the organ. (Check out the early editions of the Union Prayer Book that called out the text to be read by the Minister.)

You might look at what has elsewhere on this blog been called the Reformation as the Rabbinic Employment Act.

No longer would the rabbi be only the teacher, scholar, and Decider on questions of halachic practice - now he would parallel Christian clergy in leading the congregation in prayer, officiating at life cycle events, preaching (in the vernacular, of course), and rendering pastoral services. Now he would become the star orator for a congregation that was more audience than actors in a performance. Imagine the drama at Temple Sholom in Chicago in the 1930's and into the 1970's when the houselights dimmed, the spotlight shone down on the rabbi, as he pressed a hidden button and the ark door lifted slowly as if by magic. The silence was more than the silence of decorum - it was the silence of Awe.

Probably nothing better demonstrates the dominance the rabbi attained in American Reform than the situation in mid-twentieth century Cleveland, where the two big
Reform temples were frequently identified not by their Hebrew names, Tiferet Israel and Anshe Chesed, heaven forfend, nor even by their formal English names, The Temple and The Euclid Avenue Temple, but by the names of their rabbis. Where do you belong? I belong to Silver's Temple. And you? I belong to Brickner's.

It's a poor pendulum that doesn't swing in both directions. As smart and successful rabbis today practice tzim-tzum (contraction) and empower the laity, the gathering in the sanctuary today changes from a performance to a community happening. We dress less decorously (during these summer months, most of the men at Shabbat morning services at my congregation are wearing shorts or jeans).

When the clergy join us, they sit with the congregation and pray alongside us, not for us. We are cohesive, exuberant, into- the- moment participants - and we would run from the room if someone told us that good Reform Jews practice decorum, and we should put on our suits and ties to listen to the golden words of a silver-tongued orator, rather than to the dvar Torah from a lay person much of the time, but otherwise from a rabbi that we address not as Rabbi and not as Doctor, but by first name.

As I read the posts on this blog from the nostalgists for the Good Old Days of the Pittsburgh Platform and the Union Prayer Book, I'm saddened that they feel alienated by our refusal to be Reformed, and by the Reform mainstream's continuing evolution in the search for spiritual fulfillment. We live and worship against the backdrop of a different environment. We have the confidence to be eclectic and to accept good ideas from many sources.

As our rabbis said in 1885, We recognize in Judaism a progressive religion. And they told us to maintain ceremonies that elevate and sanctify our lives. In a progressive religion, not only can elevation, sanctification, and decorum take new shapes with the passage of time, but in fact, they must.

Strengthening Reform 10: Synagogues and Families

2008-08-14T18:27:11Z

By William Berkson
In the last post in this series, I argued that Classical Reform took a wrong turn in rejecting the Talmud, and that this mistake led to the neglect of a key strength of Jewish tradition: rabbinic ethics.

Fellow blogger Larry Kaufman argued, "I for one do not believe the health of our movement depends on our attitude towards the Talmud, but rather on our attitude towards our congregants."

There is no doubt that good management both by clergy and lay boards are keys to the health of congregations. But there is more: what does the congregation do with and for its members? How does the congregation meet the needs of its members, and potential members?

I think our congregations are missing out on much better serving the vital needs of Jewish families. And part of doing it better begins with a different perspective on what is important in Judaism. And that perspective is indeed connected to Talmud.

Ten years ago, when young American adults were asked about their top priorities in life, 83% of them said that "a close knit family" was a top priority. And that number had increased 15% over the previous ten years. Among Jews I think it is fair to say that it is even higher. By contrast according to the survey reported in The Jew Within only 26% of Jews rate Jewish religion as very important to their lives.

The irony is that if couples and families live according to Jewish values, and reinforce and sustain these by family and community Jewish ritual, they will in fact strongly promote that sense of a close knit family, and of sacred, loving relationships.

However, because of the lack of awareness of the details of Jewish values in Torah and Talmud, Jews do not usually connect 'guidance for good relationships' and 'Judaism'. Furthermore, there is an additional problem: the values in our sacred texts are stated within the context of more traditional societies, particularly with regard to the position of women. Thus if Reform Jews are to get the full benefits of living these values they need to:

Be educated in the full range of values, both Torah and Talmud;
Have the values updated and reformed to meet the needs of contemporary society more fully;
Have the values incorporated into synagogue activities and ceremonies in ways that most help couples and families.

How Talmudic values can help revitalize Reform, and what it will take to do this will be the subject of my upcoming posts. -I had written that I would first do more critique of current Reform ideology, but this would probably better wait until my positive program is clearer.

Strengthening Reform: 9. Reform's Wrong Turn

2008-08-06T21:54:40Z

By William Berkson
Several on this forum have looked back to "Classical Reform" somewhat wistfully, admiring the clear sense of direction and the passion and confidence that Reform Judaism had in that period. And by implication, some feel that that clear direction is lacking now. And I agree. Yet the current muddle I believe has its roots in a fundamental mistake that was made during the Classical Reform period.

The mistake was to throw the Talmud overboard.

Abraham Geiger, the early Reform leader, acknowledged the great contributions of the Talmud to Judaism. However other reformers championed the "religion of the prophets" against Talmudic Judaism. For them, the Talmud was the repository of backward medieval religious customs that needed to be rejected as antithetical to modernity.

Reform Judaism could be built solely on the Torah and the Prophets, with no need for the Talmud. Kaufman Kohler, the dominant leader of Reform in the last part of the 19th and first part of the 20th century accepted this view. He largely wrote the Pittsburgh Platform of 1885 and he was head of the Hebrew Union College for nearly twenty years, until 1921. As a result of the long dominance of this view, neglect of the Talmud became the rule within Reform.
'Throwing out the baby with the bathwater' may be a tired cliché, but it really applies here. Except that more than one baby was thrown out. First of all the study of rabbinic ethics was thrown out. Rabbinic ethics is to me really the crown jewels of Judaism, so ignoring it was a tragic loss. Now you may say, "but we emphasize tikkun olam."

Reform's commitment to the pursuit of social justice is to its great credit. However, social justice is only one side of Jewish ethics, and not the strongest side at that. The great invention of liberal representative democracy by the British and Americans left the ancient monarchies of David and Solomon behind as an ideal. Judaism doesn't have any distinctive viable theory of the state and economy. What it does have legitimately from Abraham, Moses and the other prophets is a passion for social justice. We shouldn't pursue justice any less, but it does mean that there is little current distinctively Jewish contribution to the content of political reform today, and pursuit of social justice is not a distinctively Jewish effort.

When it comes to personal and communal ethics, it is quite a different story. Talmudic ethics has a rich and deep analysis of human relations. And it is to a great extent Talmudic. In fact, in every area of Judaism--ritual, theology, ethics--most of Judaism is Talmudic, not Biblical. True, the 10% that is Biblical is foundational, but still 90% of the palace of Judaism is Talmudic. In fact, that you can build strikingly different religions on that Biblical foundation is shown by the fact that Christianity and Islam build on the same or similar foundations, and end up with quite different looking structures.

Furthermore, the foundations are changed. In ethics, the Rabbinic ethics is more humane and more devoted to peace. For example, whereas the Torah is full of capital punishment, the Talmud as a practical matter cancels practically all of the harshest punishments. While there are definitely aspects of Talmudic ethics that we should modify, a lot of Biblical ethics is frankly horrifying, even by Talmudic standards, much less modern ones.

When I write that this rich ethical heritage has been largely neglected in Reform, you may think I am exaggerating. But if you read the history of the Reform movement by Michael Meyer, Response to Modernity, you can read on p. 301 that Emanuel Gamoran, founder of modern Reform Jewish education after WWI, believed that there should be less "moralizing" and that "religious and ethical values would emerge naturally in the course of developing a broader loyalty to the living, changing Jewish people."

In my view this made a wrong turn into a disaster. Instead of teaching children to be good Jews, we started teaching "Jewish identity." With the result that religious school gave little incentive to students to be Jewish. That had to come from their families, if at all.

An example of the neglect of ethics is that the brief core ethical text of Judaism, Pirkei Avot, was not taught, even partially, until recently in Reform religious schools. Avot, traditionally included in the prayer book, was, with some abbreviation, included in the Gates of Prayer, but not in the (otherwise much better) new Mishkan T'filah. And in reading Rabbi Richard Levy's current A Vision of Holiness: The Future of Reform Judaism I may be missing something, but I can't find a single word on personal ethics.

Why does this matter? It matters because most Jews today experience holiness in personal relationships, as Martin Buber emphasized, and especially in relationships with family and friends. And such relationships are elevated and sanctified by living the classic values of justice and kindness. And the principles and understanding of conflicts and difficulties that are laid out in the Talmud can greatly help us in this sacred enterprise.

I believe that what Jews want most from Judaism is that daily life, and especially family life, is lifted to a higher plane by Jewish practice. Ritual can certainly help this, but only if the focus is on the ethical core that the ritual should celebrate. Otherwise ritual is hollow.

I have gone over my self-imposed word limit, but I do want to mention in closing the another 'baby' that was thrown out with the Talmudic bath water, and that was the critical tradition. The Talmud, as Menachem Fisch points out in Rational Rabbis, is a remarkably open-minded and critical venture, carried out collaboratively over many generations. And the later students of the Talmud breathed this critical and evolving system of thought. Instead of laity and clergy being engaged in a common enterprise of critically understanding and applying the tradition to our lives, we in Reform have had 'platforms' pronouncing what Reform Judaism is. What we need most is rather a collaborative effort to applying our rich Jewish ethical tradition to the personal relationships of modern life. That is what I will turn to shortly, after a few more notes on the current state of Reform.

Your bloggers will be my bloggers

2008-08-06T01:05:14Z

By David A.M. Wilensky
I just got off the phone with my newest blogosphere friend, Avi Montigny, Project Coordinator of JewsByChoice.org.

JBC, for those who have not yet had the pleasure of visiting the site, is a group blog written by a group of Jews of a variety of denominations, all of whom happen to be converts. The JBC blog has quickly become one of my favorites in a crowded field of Jewish blogs competing for my attention in my RSS reader every day.

But Avi had troubling news for me. Try as he might, he is having trouble finding liberal religious bloggers to contribute to JBC. Avi is particularly interested in keeping a host of diverse bloggers blogging on at JewsByChoice.org.

So Avi came to me looking for help finding some converts to blog with him. So I'm coming to y'all. If you are (or if you know anyone who is) a Reform Jewish convert who might be interested in blogging about issues facing the convert community and the larger Jewish community, about positively defining yourself as a Reform Jew, and about Jewish pluralism, AVI WANTS YOU!

And the size of the audience is pretty good too. Avi tells me that JBC just topped 10,000 page views per month, which is a major milestone for a blog on any topic, especially such a niche topic as JBC has.

So if you're interested, or you think you might be interested, but want to learn more, you can email Avi at jbctalk at gmail dot com or of the JBC Contact Page. Think about it, you gerei tzedek!

And remember the immortal words of Sefer Ruth, "Your bloggers will be my bloggers and your internet will be my internet."

A Newer, Slower Kosher

2008-08-01T21:08:49Z

By dcc
Recently I have been reading Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma, which while partly polemical in its approach to local food consumption as opposed to what Pollan calls "the industrialized food chain," did a lot to reinforce my love of good, tasty, carefully created food.

But it seems that I am not alone in this re-discovery. In the last week or so my local paper has dedicated significant front page real estate and bandwidth (complete with a new "Times Topic Page") to local and natural food movements. Many people are concerned by the number of pesticides, hormones and antibiotics fed to what becomes our food. We are beginning to ask why everything has the same five ingredients and most of the time we can't pronounce them. The inherent ignorance necessary to continue Pollan's industrialized food chain is coming to an end; people have decided they want to know what they are eating.

For most of history, societies have created food rituals to say thank you and pause to recognize what is on the dinner plate. Most Hindus don't eat beef, Muslims follows halal, Roman Catholics popularized the "Friday fish fry" during Lent and the list goes on. But perhaps the most intricate food rituals belong to our people. Kosher laws--outdated and burdensome as they are--force us to take a look at what it is we put into our bodies.

This is where Mr. Pollan's quiet diatribe, the kosher-nostra and Reform Jewish consumption of technically kosher food comes together. In the past few months a huge kosher meat producer has come under national scrutiny. Agriprocessors, the nation's largest kosher meat plant, was raided by the Immigration and Naturalization Services for employing illegal immigrants and treating them like trash, bringing much unwanted attention to the disgusting underbelly of the kosher food industry.

This was after months of Jewish bloggers busting Agriprocessors' chops (sorry couldn't resist) regarding the company's working conditions, treatment of its meat prior to the slaughter and overall poor business practices. JTA's Telegraph blog has been covering these events , FailedMessiah has been all over this for years, and the other usual suspects continue to chime in from time to time.

While this food is technically kosher, its production violates a thousand other Jewish values, and, in my opinion, far more important values than how we salt our meat. One can trick himself to believe that the business of kosher food production is ethical, however if he takes a look at the track record, he will find that many of the major producers of kosher meat stuffs are not following the rules - rules from on High and from a more local source.

It is one's own choice to keep kosher according to Reform traditions. But there are some strong voices within my community pushing for blind adherence to halachic kashrut and consumption of kosher only meat. I have had conversations with Reform clergy and lay leaders who fight for animal rights, immigration reform and unionization all while buying kosher meat from major distributors that get much of their product from Agriprocessors.

These folks enjoy eating this food and feel connected to tradition when they make these choices, they say. I feel as if they are supporting a corrupt monopoly that hides behind faux-piety. How does one enjoy kosher meat and stay true to her liberal Jewish values?

One eats locally.

It might not always be possible to create a complete meal from your own backyard, especially if you, like me, live in an apartment. But there are local farmers markets, co-ops and other choices you can make to decrease your dependence on food producers like Agriprocessors. Granted if you believe that glatt kosher meat is a must this won't work and you may have to trade your values for your brisket. We have the right and obligation to know what is in our food and how it is made so if you are willing to put the extra work into creating a meaningful, holy meal, eating locally is the way to go.

Additionally there are others out there working on changing the kosher food industry for the better. Heksher Tzedek movement (a major achievement of the Conservative Movement that should be applauded by the entire justice-seeking community, especially with this week's announcement of guidelines) is working to improve the conditions of the kosher slaughter houses, for both the livestock and the workers, so to infuse Jewish values in Jewish ritual. Rabbi Morris Allen, a leader of this movement said, "We need to be in a world where we can say that keeping kosher is the way in which I demonstrate not only a concern for my relationship to God and Torah but the Jewish concern for our relationship to the world in which we live."

We have the ability to make the change. Reform Judaism is at its core, a Movement of reasoned change - we stand up for justice and holiness in the face of once hallowed traditions. We protect the environment by turning off the lights even if it is Shabbat; we march for civil rights arm-in-arm with friends from other faith based communities; we stand up to anti-Semitism and anti-Israel sentiment from outside and within our community; so why shouldn't we fight for the purity of something we put into our bodies?

This is both a physical and spiritual fight that people of conscience cannot avoid anymore. Isn't that the point of keeping Kosher?

A Few Minutes More

2008-07-31T19:18:56Z

By David A.M. Wilensky
Yesterday a post by Rabbi Joel R. Schwartzman appeared on this blog titled "Ten More Minutes of Torah." It was a response to Lewis M. Barth's recent Ten Minutes of Torah for Masei, in which Barth argued that the current Haftarah cycle of three haftarot of destruction followed by seven haftarot of consolation suggest that Reform Judaism should reassess its relationship with Tishah B'Av. Rabbi Schwartzman's post expressed strong discomfort with this idea.

Rabbi Schwartzman's first argument is typical of Reform Jews who are uncomfortable with even talking about the Temple in a Reform context. He tells us that, "Given the importance of the Temple in the Conservative and Orthodox movements, whether spiritually or practically, we Reformists would do well to consider exactly what we would be tying onto ourselves were we to adopt Tishah B'Av observances."

"Would this, then, also entail re-instating the tri-fold division of our people into Kohanim, Levi'im and Yisraelim (Priests, Levites and Israelites), as we mourn the loss of the Temples and the sacrificial system it embodied?" asks Rabbi Schwartzman. Once again, certainly not. He is simply laying out a slippery slope for you.

Let me present an argument similar to Rabbi Schwartzman's: "Does mourning the loss of the immense and rich culture of European Jewry that existed before the Shoah mean that we desire to return to a ghettoized, isolationist shtetl lifestyle?" Obviously that's not what is meant when we mourn the loss of that culture. We accept that a Jewish way of life, full of culture, came to an end and we mourn its loss.

At the same time, we are able to see our current way of life for the acceptable and rich way of life that it is. It is the same for the loss of the Temple. Do we want to build the Third Temple and return to a sacrificial system of worship? No, but we mourn the loss of our ancestors' way of life.

Rabbi Schwartzman notes, "There is merit in our knowing the history of the calamities which befell our people on this date in the Jewish calendar." Holidays certainly serve an instructional purpose. The stories of Purim, Chanukah, and Pesach are well known to any Jew who attended just a couple of years of religious school at their childhood synagogue. Could they tell you word one about the destruction of the Temples? I doubt it. If, however, Tishah B'Av were on our Reform radar screens more prominently, we would all learn the story.

Indeed, according to a post today at Jewschool by blogger Aryeh Cohen, Rambam himself would agree that the purpose of Tishah B'Av is instructional. "The point of these fasts, according to Maimonides, is not their historical referent, but rather that their historical referent should cause us to reflect upon the reasons that brought us to catastrophe.

Tisha B'av (the ninth day of Av) is a fast which memorializes the breakdown of the polity, and forces us to confront the radical possibility that an ethical or just polity is itself impossible. For this reason the customs of the day, such as not greeting one another and sitting alone and not engaging in business or even in Torah study--all these are performances of the dissolution of society," says Cohen.

In the final paragraph of his post, Rabbi Schwartzman unintentionally points out a larger issue that is of great concern to me. "We often run the risk as Reform Jews of living as though we are observing our religion through the practices of our co-religionists," he says. God forbid we should do things similarly to our more conservative co-religionists, he seems to suggest! Sometimes we become so wrapped up in hesitant Reform dogma, that we miss out on a beautiful practice, such as reading the poetry of Eichah (Lamentations)!

Come Tishah B'Av you'll be able to find this blogger fasting and reading Eichah, and somehow finding it possible not to re-establish the priestly class.

Ten More Minutes of Torah

2008-07-30T20:44:06Z

By Rabbi Joel R. Schwartzman
In this week's comment on the parashat hashavuah (weekly Torah portion), in Ten Minutes of Torah, Professor Barth suggests that for the sake of the Haftarot that appear this time of year and are centered on Tishe B'Av (the Ninth of Av) that we in the Reform movement might re-consider observing this day as well.

While not a Classical Reformer myself and while I can appreciate the devastation that the destructions of the First and Second Temples meant to the Jewish people, I am not taken with the idea to instate this day into my Reform calendar.

Given the importance of the Temple in the Conservative and Orthodox movements, whether spiritually or practically, we Reformists would do well to consider exactly what we would be tying onto ourselves were we to adopt Tishe B'Av observances. Would this, then, also entail re-instating the tri-fold division of our people into Kohaneem, Levi'eem and Yisraeleem (Priests, Levites and Israelites), as we mourn the loss of the Temples and the sacrificial system it embodied?

Would we next wish to reinvigorate our belief in the coming of a flesh and blood Jewish messiah just as some of us have re-introduced Michayei Hamateem, resurrection, into our liturgy in Mishkan T'fillah's Amidah? How far should we be willing to go in re-adopting what so many of us believe to be antiquated and outmoded observances, beliefs, and rituals? How far ought we be willing to stretch ourselves ideologically when it comes to these concepts which our Reform fore-bearers jettisoned?

While there is merit in our knowing the history of the calamities which befell our people on this date in the Jewish calendar, I believe that asserting and maintaining Reform principles and reasoning takes precedence. Other than a historical understanding of what occurred in 586 B.C.E. (Babylonian) and 70 C.E. (Roman) to the Jerusalem Temples, I have no interest in raising their stature in or claim upon my thinking. Much to the horror of most of us, some within the Jewish world are once again preparing to reinstitute animal sacrifice. This holds no interest for me; neither does glorifying the Priesthood enthuse or attract me.

There are other times in our calendar where we do address calamity, Yom Hashoa - Holocaust commemoration, being one. We often run the risk as Reform Jews of living as though we are observing our religion through the practices of our co-religionists. As we read these Haftarot, we can remind ourselves, as Dr. Barth does so instructively and eloquently, of their placement on the calendar, and we should explain the purposes they have served throughout the centuries. However, we do not have to conduct a fast or read Lamentations for the loss of the Temples in order to grasp their significances.

Kabbal-architecture

2008-07-29T22:44:12Z

By dcc
The most obvious of Kabbalah's modern influences is found in the form of red strings circling the arms of Hollywood celbs. However Alexander Gorlin, FAIA, principal of Alexander Gorlin Architects in New York and member of the Union's Architects Advisory Panel, explains that Kabbalah is a major influence in post-modern architectural styles. He writes in a recent edition of Faith & Form, the premier journal focusing on religion, art and architecture, that he often draws on Kabbalah for inspiration, infusing his synagogue designs with a traditional continuity that has been historically absent in Jewish architecture.

As Jews were often expelled from one place to another, it was difficult for them to establish an authentic style of their own. This lack of a historic tradition of Jewish architecture, apart from Polish wooden synagogues, encouraged me to seek out texts of the Old Testament. Noah's Ark, the Tabernacle in the desert, the Temple of Solomon, and the prophet Ezekiel's Vision of the Temple are all described in great detail, including dimensions and materials. These are, however, literal descriptions, as opposed to the more abstract concepts from the Kabbalah, which are more open to interpretation in a modern sensibility.

The article is very interesting and worth the read.

Strengthening Reform: 8. Is Reform Judaism Better?

2008-07-29T18:25:27Z

By William Berkson
In writing the last post in this series, on the JuBu movement, I looked at the beginning of a video of the Dalai Lama talking about the "four noble truths", the basis of Buddhism. He has an introduction in which he explains his attitude toward other religions. He says that other religions have important truths, and he is not just saying that to be polite. Other religions have truths that can help people to become good people, compassionate people, and that is the main thing. And, he says, he is not expecting the whole world to become Buddhist, which he thinks is unrealistic. Still, he says, "If you ask me, 'What is the best religion for me?' of course I will answer, 'Buddhism'."

In other words, though he is not pushing Buddhism on anybody, but if you ask him he has no hesitation saying that Buddhism is the best religion. And he will tell you his reasons for thinks so, at length.

Needless to say, traditional Christian or Muslims will say even more emphatically that theirs is best. And Orthodox Jews will have no problem with saying that theirs is the true religion.
However, if you say to a group Reform Jews "our religion is superior," you will likely get from some a heated response along these lines: "Reform Judaism is all about tolerance and individual choice. Everyone is entitled to his or her own values and beliefs, and if you say that one is better than another you are just insulting other people and undermining tolerance. Just don't go there."

At any rate, I have had such discussions myself.

The view that the validity of values and beliefs is relative to a group or individual is known as Relativism. Contrary to the widespread belief among Americans, Relativism is actually an intolerant doctrine. The reason is that the tolerance of the Relativist only operates when there is no cooperative effort with those who have different values and beliefs. When you do want to or have to cooperate, then you have to work out disagreements. For the Relativist, there is nothing to talk about, and no way to rationally discuss disagreements, for there are no common standards.

The result is that in practice the only way to resolve disputes is by power plays or violence. Not exactly tolerant.

A better basis for tolerance is what I call a "humble universalism." That is the idea that there is a set of best values for humanity to live by, but we have to have some humility about what they are. That needs to be open to discussion. And when the "humble universalist" disagrees with somebody about values, there is a path to a reasoned discourse about solutions.

What values do we share in common? Where we differ are the consequences of living the different values we are disagreeing about? What social consequences look better us both of us? Are all of value consistent with one another in practice? Are mine? How do we resolve the contradictions? In other words, even where we differ on what values are best, if we are humble, fruitful discussion and better cooperation is possible.

I do think that the values of traditional Judaism and of the European Enlightenment are the best humanity has come up with. And Reform Judaism has tried to put these together. I am sure these ideas have flaws and other systems of belief have insights we can learn from. And I want to learn. But still, I make no apologies in saying these values are better; they will lead to a better way of life for humanity.

I would go further and say that if we are unwilling to say what is better about Judaism, then our Judaism will have nothing compelling to attract our and our children's loyalty and commitment. And the 'better' cannot simply be tolerance and inclusiveness. The Unitarians, the Quakers, the Buddhists and many secular group can do that.

Larry Kaufman has asked in several different posts how we 'brand' ourselves to be attractive. Well, here is my answer: we have to say what is better about us, and it has to be more than tolerance and choice.

For me, the personal and communal ethics of the Torah and Talmud and the peace and holiness they bring to daily life--to love and work--when they are put into practice are our distinctive treasure, and where we are better. And being part of a community committed to living and developing this personal and communal vision of how to life is very worthwhile.
The current weakness of Reform Judaism is that is has not drawn upon this strongest current within our Jewish tradition, and has not made the most of it in modern life.

Where Reform has fallen short in using our ethical heritage, and how to incorporate this source of strength in Reform Judaism will the subject of my upcoming posts.

Strengthening Reform: 7: JuBu is not the way

2008-07-24T19:34:01Z

By William Berkson
I have been exploring what Judaism should be in the future, given that most of us are skeptical about individual Providence--that God rewards and punishes us each according to our deeds, either in this life or the next.

In the previous post, I was critical of 'new age' spirituality as being weak, and out of tune with Jewish tradition because it its lack of an ethical focus. A more serious current version of Judaism without a firm belief in Providence is the "JuBu" movement.

These are Jews who are attracted to Buddhism, and try in various ways to integrate it with Judaism--or they simply become fully Buddhist, and are only culturally Jewish.

Buddhism has a lot to recommend it in attracting the person skeptical about providence, but who hungers for a sense of holiness in life. First, it does not have the interventionist God of the Torah, commanding and judging, so that's not an issue to be dealt with. Second it has a very high-minded ethic, with compassion as the chief value. So that resonates with 'rachamim,' one of the core Jewish values. Finally, and most distinctive, it has a whole philosophy and technology for achieving peace of mind in a troubled world.

In spite of these attractions, Buddhism is at its foundation has critically different views and goals than Judaism. The foundation of Buddhism are the four noble truths, which in brief are:

That life is permeated with suffering.
That the cause of suffering is 'craving', or desiring things for one's self.
The way to cease suffering is to cease craving.
The path to cessation of craving and suffering is the 'eight fold way": right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort right mindfulness, right concentration.

Buddhism, then, is a religion devoted to detachment, detachment from suffering. But Judaism has a quite different approach. It is a religion of commitment: commitments to love, work, marriage, family, and pursuing justice. Being committed and engaged inevitably results in some anxiety. But someone once put it, "worry is the price of love." If we care about the future of our relationships, and about the future of our society, we are going to worry some.

Now I don't want to dismiss the seriousness of the need for peace of mind, and how to do this within a committed Jewish life is a question I will return to later. But we should acknowledge at the outset that Buddhism and Judaism have very different visions of the good life. The Buddhist ideal is of an impoverished monk, detached from worldly cares, meditating on a mountain retreat. The Jewish ideal is of a family, after the week's labors, around the table at Shabbat--praying, discussing matters of family, of Torah, and arguing about how to better the world, all with love.

There are other problematic aspects of Buddhism from a Jewish point of view, but let me mention just one more. Buddhism combines the high minded philosophy that Westerners are attracted to, with polytheistic worship, where the main activity is to try to put luck on your side by praying before the various Buddhist deities. At least this is the style in the Mahayana branch.

There is, of course, a lot more that can be said in comparison of the Judaism and Buddhism. My point here is just the bottom line: while we can learn from Buddhism, and even incorporate some ideas from it in Judaism, we need to be aware that it is a radically different approach to religion, and to life.

Your Place or Mine?

2008-07-21T19:11:22Z

By Larry Kaufman
You all know about the man from Mars who finds himself on Earth in front a deli, wanders in and begins scrutinizing the display case. "What's that?" he asks the counterman, pointing to a ring of dough with a hole in the center. "We call that a bagel," the counterman replies. "And that?" pointing to an orange slab. "That's smoked salmon, colloquially known as lox." "You know what," the Martian says, "I'm going to try some of that lox on a bagel, and why don't you add a shmear of cream cheese."

So what would the man from Mars make of Reform Judaism if he should happen to land on this blog? He would find a chorus singing, "Give me that old-time religion - it was good enough for Einhorn and good enough for Kohler, and it's good enough for me, and should be good enough for you, too - universalistic, minimal Hebrew mumbo-jumbo, no middle-Eastern aspirations, no shtetl accoutrements around our shoulders or coverings on our head," or, as my cousin Miriam used to say, "Ve are vun-hundred pehrcehnt Omericans."

And he would find the counterpoint of the glee club harmonizing a medley of songs of praise for tzitzit, kashrut, Hebrew literacy and liturgy, and "doing Jewish."

Mirabile dictu (amazingly), he would find similar ranges of opinion and practice if he happened to land on a Conservative blog or an Orthodox blog. Why do you suppose there are so many competing Kosher certifying organizations? I was amused the other night to hear an Orthodox woman decry the unreasonable elements in her own world who wouldn't countenance the Orthodox summer camp that allowed boys and girls to swim in the same lake. And I have always delighted in the statement of the prominent Haredi non-Chasidic rabbi who called for tolerance towards Lubovitch Chasidism, because it is the closest religion to Judaism.

Yes, the man from Mars would diagnose us as an opinionated, argumentative, fractious people, with a variety of opinions about what God wants from us, and what we want from God. One of the glories of what I think of as mainstream Reform is that my being right doesn't make you wrong. I think of the Shaker hymn, Simple Gifts:

Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,
'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

How nice to know "where we ought to be," how nice to find ourselves in "the place just right." Are we talking about your place or my place?

I have found a tendency on this blog, more in the comments than in the posts, for "the place just right" to be the place the commentator came from or is at - which may or may not be the same. Or, among the super-tolerant, "We all worship God in our own way - you in your way, I in His."

I had the good fortune to grow up in a household with three Jewish role models, my mother, my father, and my grandmother. My grandmother expressed her Judaism the Modern Orthodox way of the first half of the twentieth century. We ate kosher in our home, although she knew her children and grandchildren ate "treyf" outside; she observed Shabbos strictly, but did not demand that we do the same; and she honored the Jewish choices of her daughter and son-in-law.

My father involved himself in the local community - active in the anti-anti-Semitism organizations like ADL and American Jewish Congress, passionate about the Jewish Big Brothers. My mother was an ardent and active Labor Zionist, who decided at age 70 that it was time to practice what she had been preaching for forty years and made aliyah (moved to Tel Aviv).
From childhood, I observed three different ways of "being a good Jew," with the important sub-text that each of my models honored the others' choices.
Having come down where I ought to be, and having found my own valley of love and delight (different from that of my forebears), I have to beware the temptation to scorn those whose place just right is different from mine, whether elsewhere in the spectrum or Reform, or the broader spectrum of Judaism.

But I think I know where my threshold of impatience begins. I'll accept your place just right as a valid way of being a good Jew, as long as, and only if, you extend the same courtesy to me.

Then we can both sit down together and tell our guest from Mars that it's just not Jewish to have his corned beef on whole wheat with mayo!

Strengthening Reform: 6. "Spirituality" and Self-centeredness

2008-07-15T18:13:33Z

By William Berkson
In the previous post in this series, I advocated a humble theology: God is a unity within or above nature who calls to us act with justice and kindness, and to have a grateful, joyful attitude toward our existence. Beyond these basics our attitude can be one of awe at the mysteries of existence. We don't have to be committed to the idea of God's intervention in our individual lives, or in other words we can be skeptical about Providence. Our sacred literature is an effort to understand God and what God wants of us, but is fallible. We can and should learn from it, but we can reject and revise it with good reason.

I argued that this humble theology is enough to provide a strong basis for liberal Judaism. We can experience some contact with that Unity in loving relationships and the beauty of nature and study. In fact, asking for more certainty about God weakens the foundation.

What is closest to this outlook, but different from it, is something called being "spiritual". Because there is no one definition of 'spiritual', it is a little hard to talk about. But because it is so pervasive, it is important to understand where Judaism may differ from some varieties of "spirituality."

I don't know the history in detail--it is extensive--but as nearly as I can puzzle it out now, what is in the US often called 'spirituality' goes back to the New England 'Transcendentalists,' such as Emerson, who were influenced by Eastern mysticism coming via Germany to the US.

This grew into movements that have in common beliefs in the goodness of humanity (as opposed to Christian original sin), in individuals' access to experiencing the divine Presence and the idea that by right thoughts or attitude we can achieve happiness, success, and the healing of sickness. From this seed evolved a variety of movements, including New Thought and Christian Science , and the latest, New Age spirituality.

The basic problem with this movement from a Jewish point of view is that it is too centered on the self. Its focus is on feeling good, not on doing good. Now Judaism has nothing against the pursuit of happiness. Hillel said "If I am not for myself, who is for me?" (Avot 1:14) and after saying that the grave is extinction, Ecclesiastes concludes, "Go your way, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart; for God has already accepted your activities. Let your garments be always white, and let your head lack no ointment. Live joyfully with the wife whom you love all the days of the life of your vanity" (Eccl. 9:9).

But the main point of religious faith is not so self-centered. Rather it is to "do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with your God" (Micah 6:8). In other words, the focus is on living an ethical life. And this is supposed in fact to lead to happiness. As Proverbs put it, if we follow the ethical wisdom of God, we will find that "Happy is the man who finds wisdom ...Her ways are pleasant ways, and all her paths peaceful. She is a tree of life to those who grasp her, and whoever holds on to her is happy" (Prov. 3:13-18).

The top concern of Judaism is not with "actualizing all your potential" or with "peak experiences"--to use the terminology of Abraham Maslow--though both these are desirable. Rather the concern is with how we treat others in everyday life. If we are committed to love and family, to productive work, and carry out these commitments with compassion and fairness, then we are being good Jews. And our Jewish study and worship and participation in the community guide and strengthen us in these endeavors.

When the prime focus is on mystical experience, the result tends to be a withdrawal from the commitments to work and family. When the prime focus is on success, then ethical conduct tends to get shortchanged. The challenge and joy of a Jewish way of life is integrating and balancing a life that is engaged with worldly concerns on one hand, and, on the other, the higher plane of ethics and experience of holiness.

Some have described this somewhat misleadingly, but with an important element of truth, as an 'everyday mysticism'. We experience holiness by acting in a way and with a consciousness that lifts up our everyday actions, and enables us to experience holiness in our relationships and activites.

This beautiful and characteristically Jewish ideal of holiness in everyday relationships and activities is thus in some respects quite different from the movement that is often characterized as 'spiritual' or 'new age'.

There are several other key differences that I will take up in the next posts.

Foreign prophets, foreign songs

2008-07-14T17:29:56Z

By David A.M. Wilensky
Two summers ago, here at Kutz, a girls' cabin led services one day. As we all entered the tron, they were standing at the front singing and clapping their hands. The song goes like this:

Lord, prepare me
To be a sanctuary
Pure and holy
Tried and true
With thanksgiving
I'll be a living
Sanctuary for you

It's a nice song. The message is fairly basic and unobjectionable. The tune is catchy and sounds slightly gospel. I like it. Since then, I've also heard a variation that incoporates a quote from Torah, "V'asu li Mikdash, v'shachanti b'tocham" ("Build me a sanctuary and I will dwell amongst you"). I like that version even better. When people found out that this verse of song is actually part of a larger song from the wonderful world on contemporary Christian music, they went nuts.

The rest of the song is not explicitly Jesus-centric or anything like that, though it does sound very Christian, talking about being led away from temptation. (Of course one could argue that that's our topic also, but that we've left by the wayside because Christians speak so much about it.)

All week, we were hearing about how upset people were about the use of this songs in a Jewish service. This week also happened to be the week of Parashat Balak. Balak, aside from being one of my absolute favorite Torah portions, details the story of Bilam, a foreign prophet of God hired by a Moabite king, Balak, to ride out to the Israelite encampment and curse them. When he goes to curse them, God changes the words in his mouth into a blessing and out comes a poem of blessing. The first line is familiar to us because it now appears in every morning service: "Mah tovu ohalecha, Ya'akov mishk'notecha, Yisra'el!" ("How good are your tents, Jacob, your dwelling places, Israel!")

This coincidence gets even better. Not only did we have an uproar on camp about the use of a non-Jewish song in services coincide with a Torah portion including a foreign prophet's song that we now use in services, not only did I notice this wonderful coincidence, but I was scheduled to deliver the d'var Torah that week. You can imagine what I spoke about that Shabbat morning.

My point was that if we can take a poem uttered with the intent to curse us and make it into a regular part of a service, we can handle one verse of totally unobjectionable Christian song.

In retrospect, I'm not sure that I was right. I was given the chance to revisit this story this week. Friday evening services were led this week, beautifully, by the songleading major taught by Caryn Roman and Jesse Paikin. They began with "Lord prepare me." If you're paying attention, you know that this last Shabbat was Shabbat Balak once again. You can imagine what was on my mind during services that evening.

I got to thinking not just about this particular issue, but about one of the the popular tunes for Psalm 150, which is actually a Sufi melody (Alah hu, Alah hu, Alah hu, etc.) I thought about the Phish song "Wading in the Velvet Sea" and the Bob Marley song "Redemption Song." In my four summers at Kutz, I've heard both used as tunes for Mi Chamocha. I thought about a half-dozen other secular and non-Jewish melodies used in services. And I wonder if it's okay.

There's no doubt in my mind that the melody itself is not the issue. It's the text. We have the entire Tanach, two Talmuds, and about eight million other Jewish texts out there to choose from. I wonder if we need to go to other traditions to find what we want to say. I wonder if we can't find it somewhere in one of our own texts.

Originally Posted on the Reform Shuckle

A Shehecheyanu Moment

2008-07-09T21:45:51Z

By Gardening Grandma
We ate the first cucumber from my garden this weekend. I brought it into the house, washed it, cut off a large chunk and relished the crisp crunch of a totally delicious and sweet fruit of the vine. A true shehecheyanu moment, I thought, but, even more, I realize now, a moment to simply stop and realize what a blessing it is to have a garden and to be healthy enough to work in it.

In an essay first published in Four Centuries of Jewish Women's Spirituality, Rabbi Laura Geller recalls the exhilaration she felt on learning about non-traditional berachot.

I had never learned about all the occasions for a blessing -- new clothes, new fruit, seeing the ocean, seeing a rainbow; being in the presence of a scholar, on hearing good news or even bad news -- I was exhilarated! God is present at every moment; it is up to us to acknowledge God's presence. We do it through saying blessings. Rabbi Kravitz said, "There is no important moment in the lifetime of a Jew for which there is no blessing."

Working in my garden may not be an "important moment," but it is a blessing. I feel tremendously at peace and a hundred miles from the worries and stress that fill most of my waking hours. I treasure the time that I get to spend outside and how I feel using the muscles of my body, not my brain. As I weed, prune and water, I check each plant's progress. Does the dahlia need to be propped up? Are the tomato blossoms turning to fruit? Each small discovery brings me pleasure.

Several years ago the Union published Daily Blessing cards that includes many of the blessings Rabbi Geller refers to, as well as blessings for fruits that grow on trees, vegetables and fruits that grow in the soil, for courage and for travelers. I've had one in my desk drawer for years, but never quite made the leap to use the blessings at the appropriate moment. Somehow I felt uncomfortable blessing God for these moments. My impulse is to thank God for them and the peace they give.

I've pulled it out of my drawer and I've slipped it into my bag. On the train home, I'll read these blessings. And if there's not one there that is right for me, I'll find my own words.

Remembering What's Really Important

2008-07-09T21:44:33Z

By JanetheWriter
In an article in this week's Science Times Michael Bicks recounts the tale of his recent heart attack and how his decision to go straight to the hospital has enabled him to say, "I get to hug my wife and my kids, understand how wonderful my friends are and realize exactly how much I love my life."

Amidst the hassles and demands of everyday living--the missed buses and missed deadlines, the packed lunches left sitting on the kitchen counter, the unrelenting phone calls and emails, the spilled coffee, the winding line in the grocery store--it's too easy to lose sight of the wonders and richness of hugging our spouse, valuing our friends and loving our life.

Lucky for us, our tradition's liturgy provides us with a daily opportunity to focus on the wonders of life--the daily miracles--and to remember that they are what's really important. Don't get me wrong. I don't attend a morning minyan. In fact, I hardly ever attend services. But when I do, I try to let the liturgy speak to me, to listen to it, and to act upon what it has to say.

Baruch atah, Adonai Eloheinu, Melech haolam, who has given the mind the ability to distinguish day from night. Look out the window. Relish the pinks and oranges and greens and blues of the sun as it creeps over the East River and spreads across the dusky sky. Enjoy the colors of the new day. Appreciate the potential that it holds.

Baruch atah, Adonai Eloheinu, Melech haolam, who opens the eyes of the blind. Look around and see what's in front of you. The fluffy hydrangeas abloom in the garden, the blue-green shimmer of the pigeon's wing as the bird pecks at a pizza crust tossed in the gutter, the diverse and colorful stream of rushing New Yorkers, each created b'tzelem Elohim with something special to offer the world.

Baruch atah, Adonai Eloheinu, Melech haolam, who frees the captive. Try not to be a prisoner to the known, to the familiar, to a particular "truth." Take a chance on something new. Climb the alpine tower. Venture to Coney Island on the D train. Just because that woman at the bus stop has tattoo-covered arms and pierced eyebrows, she isn't necessarily a sleaze bag. Smile at the cute guy in the elevator. Download an unfamiliar song to the ipod. Be open to new possibilities.

Baruch atah, Adonai Eloheinu, Melech haolam, who lifts up the fallen. Buy street flowers for the friend who just got dumped. Drop the loose change from the flowers into the ratty paper cup of the guy on the corner or into the tzedakah box in the elevator lobby at the office.

Baruch atah, Adonai Eloheinu, Melech haolam, who stretches the earth over the waters. Revel in the soft grass and quiet shade of the garden on a lazy Sunday, the sun-warmed water of Laurie, Missouri's Lake of the Ozarks and the memory of last summer's glassy green Mediterranean. Use a reusable water bottle, compact fluorescent light bulbs and canvas grocery bags.

Baruch atah, Adonai Eloheinu, Melech haolam, who strengthens our steps. Yesterday, I passed a young woman using crutches because she had only one leg. Thank you, God, for two strong legs, for a healthy heart and bones, for iron-rich blood and for making them all work together.

Baruch atah, Adonai Eloheinu, Melech haolam, who clothes the naked. As much as I dislike the shopping scene, I am grateful, of course, to have warm clothes in the winter and cool clothes in the summer. Let me make purchasing choices that help ensure that others are not exploited by the processes that bring shoes, clothing and other goods to our stores.

Baruch atah, Adonai Eloheinu, Melech haolam, who gives strength to the weary. Even when I'm overwhelmed at work, lacking responses from jdaters, or annoyed with a friend, let me still remember how lucky I am to have this life and the people in it. It is a good life indeed.

Baruch atah, Adonai Eloheinu, Melech haolam, who removes sleep from the eyes, slumber from the eyelids. When it's time to leave this life, I want to drift away into an endless sleep. For now, though--and for a long time to come--I am grateful to awake each day to health and strength, to friends and family, to a rich, full and meaningful existence.

Baruch atah, Adonai Eloheinu, Melech haolam, who made me in the image of God. Let me use the gifts that I have been given, together with God and in some small way, to make my little corner of the world a better place.

Baruch atah, Adonai Eloheinu, Melech haolam, who has made me free. In all realms--as an American, a Reform Jew and an individual--I am free. As I savor this accident of birth, let me remember that others--women in abusive relationships, political prisoners, Third World laborers and countless others--are not free. Until they are free, none of us is free.

Baruch atah, Adonai Eloheinu, Melech haolam, who has made me a Jew. Last summer, I attended mass in St. Patrick's Cathedral with a friend who was in New York from out-of-town. My visit in church reinforced how grateful I am to be she-asani Yisrael, to have been created with a pure soul, and to truly understand what a wonderful number is echad.

Baruch atah, Adonai Eloheinu, Melech haolam, who girds Israel with strength. In fields from science and literature to sports, politics and entertainment, countless Jews have girded Israel with strength--Paul Ehrlich, Selman Waksman, Nadine Gordimer, Sandy Koufax, Saul Bellow, Arlen Specter, Joseph Lieberman, Gilda Radner, William Shatner...the list goes on. Both known and unknown, we enrich the world, and I am proud to be among the people Israel.

Baruch atah, Adonai Eloheinu, Melech haolam, who crowns Israel with splendor. In big ways and small, may Israel continue to be a light unto the nations and may all her people--whatever their lot--comport themselves with a healthy dose of menschlichkeit and find joy in the daily wonders and richness of hugging our spouse, valuing our friends and loving our life.

Strengthening Reform: 5. The Power of a Humble Theology

2008-07-09T19:03:14Z

By William Berkson
So far I have argued that a God who gives meaning and unity to nature and humanity exists, but probably is not the interventionist God of the Torah. The question is, how to we relate to that God, both individually and communally?

The key issue in theology is how we relate to the unknown and probably unknowable. Einstein wrote: "The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science." (From 'The World as I See It.') And, I would add, it is also the emotion that stands at the cradle of true religious belief.

The questions are, "Should we take anything from our experience of the awesome mysteriousness of life? And if so, what?"

First of all it is important to recognize that we can't really avoid the issue of what to make of the mystery of purpose. As the great American philosopher William James wrote in his essay "The Will to Believe," there are many issues on which we can use facts and evidence to make up our mind, in the scientific fashion. And when the facts exist, then we should follow them. However, many questions involve what purposes we should adopt, and what will be the long-term consequences of our actions. On these we don't have the facts and evidence, so faith of some kind must enter.

The point that we need some kind of faith to guide us was made in another way by Isaac Bashevis Singer. In one of his stories a young man has lost his faith in God, and eagerly comes to Warsaw to meet other unbelievers and read their views. He goes into a bookshop and is disappointed to see only a few old dusty books on atheism. When he asks about this, the shop owner says, "Oh people have lost interest in that. They have all set up new idols and are serving them." The idols being, money, pleasure, fame, and so on.

In Judaism the core insight about the unknowable force behind our being is that It calls to us to do justice and love kindness to our fellow creatures. This intuition or conviction is reported from the beginning, when Abraham hears God tell him that He is willing to make a covenant with Abraham because Abraham will raise his children to "keep the way of YHVH, to do what is right and just." (Gen. 18:19, Fox translation.) And we have a continuation of this preoccupation with ethics in Moses, the later prophets, and the rabbinic sages.

In addition to this call to us to be ethical, there are two other fundamentals, it seems to me. One is the unity of God. This is appealing for two reasons. First, it resonates with the mystical experience that is at the root of all religion, and second many Gods can takes different sides in men's quarrels, violating the call to justice. Secondly, although God is even responsible for evil according Isaiah (Is. 45:7), our attitude to God and to our own lives should be of love and gratitude, as is said in the v'ahavtah (Deut. 6:5).

My point of writing these five little essays on theology is that this threefold web of call to an ethical life, appreciation of sacred unity, and commitment to gratitude is a very strong basis for liberal Judaism, even if we no longer accept an interventionist God. We don't have to apologize for our theology, but we can go forward, confident that it is a strong basis that will not be undermined by science or logic.

Now some who have written about the non-interventionist God have made further claims. Mordechai Kaplan has said that God is 'trans-natural' and not supernatural. Lawrence Kushner has said that God sympathizes with our suffering, but can't do much about it. Personally I don't know how much God is immanent or transcendent, trans-natural, super-natural or unnatural. And I don't think Kaplan or anyone else did or does now either. Also I don't know how much God sympathizes, and how much He can or does act in the world. To me this is all behind a veil of mystery, and we have a stronger theology when we just humbly admit our ignorance before the awesome mystery of being.

Now a basic challenge to my argument here has been posed by fellow RJ blogger Dick Israel, who has questioned whether these basic attributes our tradition ascribes to God are all our own creation. He has written: "I still wrestle with the postulate that the god idea is a human invention or creation that our remarkable minds have developed to ease our discomfort with the unknowable..." And "Why does anyone worship an inexplicable concept like god? I know I do it because it pleases me. Why does anyone for any other reason?"

So in conclusion let me answer this serious challenge as best I can. Let me start with something very telling that the great agnostic and anti-religious philosopher Bertrand Russell once said. At the time Positivists were arguing that 'it is wrong' and 'I don't like it' mean essentially the same thing, except that the first is propaganda--a "persuasive definition" to get the other person to go along with what you want. Russell said that in spite of his not being able to controvert the Positivists' arguments (he was a kind of Positivist himself) he said, "I can't believe that the only thing wrong with wanton cruelty is that I don't like it."

This powerful feeling that right and wrong transcend us is not, then, just "what pleases me." It at least pleases most of humanity. Now that admittedly may be a matter of mass delusion or projection. But we do have to consider that we are part of nature. That means that our purposes are natural, and purpose is a part of nature. And the fact is that ethical guidelines are functional in the survival of families and groups of people.

So it is still a leap of faith to say that ethical action is a call to us from God--a mitzvah--but it is not such a radical or ridiculous leap. And it is grounded in the experience of holiness that we have in relationships. We experience the loving kindness between husband and wife, parents and children as sacred. If these aren't sacred, then nothing is. And for me, my experience convinces me these are sacred.

Furthermore, there is a lot more mystery out there than the more unimaginative positivists are willing to admit. For example, my late teacher Karl Popper pointed out there is something he called 'downward causation'. When we learn that a grandchild is born, or that an old friend died, we change our feelings and actions. And it is ideas or information that has changed our actions, and not simply molecules. The whole seems to influence the parts, rather than the other way around. So the idea that a unifying force in nature--God--is influencing and sustaining the whole world is not so far fetched. And we have consciousness. Does consciousness exist from the smallest to the largest particle of nature, as Spinoza and Leibnitz believed? Is God somehow conscious of it all?

In sum, there is reason to believe in a unity in nature that calls us to goodness and gratitude. And that it is not just a whim of mine; it is reinforced by not only my experience of the sacred, but the experiences of millions of others in past ages and today. That's not proof, but it ain't chopped liver either.

Strengthening Reform: 4. The Challenge of a Changed Theology

2008-07-03T19:22:55Z

By William Berkson
In the previous installment in this series, I pointed out that there has been a quiet revolution in theology of liberal Jews. Most Reform Jews, including Rabbis, have rejected an interventionist God, but still accept and find meaningful a God who gives unity and purpose to the universe and to humanity.

The challenge this poses is highlighted in a long and thought-provoking article by Conservative scholar Jack Wertheimer, which has been noted by fellow RJ blogger Larry Kaufman.

Wertheimer points out the key weakness of Reform today: in striving to be "inclusive", it also has weakened its message and self-definition to the point that only a minority Reform Jews really passionately identify with Judaism, and many care little and know little about Judaism. And this weakness begins in religious school, where secondary Jewish education fails to attract the numbers of pre-b'nai mitzvah education, and where it often fails to develop any deep understanding or commitment in students.

As Larry pointed out, the main problem with Wertheimer's analysis is not that he is wrong about Reform, but that the same root problems exist in Conservative synagogues, because most people are mostly in the same place theologically. They manifest themselves a bit differently in the Conservative movement, but the fundamental problem that must be faced if we are to have stronger liberal Judaism is that with a non-interventionist God, communal prayer is no longer a compelling need for most people. Do we are we sure that God doesn't listen to prayers?

No. And we sometimes hope and pray that God will listen and act in the world, as well as strengthen us within. But generally we lack the strong conviction that God is listening and will respond by intervention.

An illustration of reality of this situation is an experience a friend had after 9/11. He was working in lower Manhattan, and saw the towers collapse, killing thousands. And so did almost everyone who worked in lower Manhattan. It was a personal and traumatic experience for everyone there.

My friend had been attending the Shul of New York a "spiritual Judaism" synagogue led by Reform Rabbi Burt Siegel. Rabbi Siegel, together with an amazing group of musicians lead inspiring services, designed in a get-closer-to-God 'Jewish renewal' spirit. That Friday night was strikingly different.

First, the place was packed to overflowing, and my friend saw normally secular and cynical Jews there whom he had never seen in synagogue. The second thing was that all the prayers, which can seem so extreme in their language, seemed to exactly suit what everybody had in their heart. That night, they came for prayer, and their prayers were a "plea for compassion and grace before the Holy Presence," (Avot 2:18).

These fervent prayers were unusual in a Reform synagogue because the whole synagogue--and many who never came before--had come to synagogue not for an emotional uplift, but because they felt a need for prayer. They wanted their prayers to be heard and something done. Doubts about how much God listens and would do were simply put aside.

Now I don't want to exaggerate. Reform Jews do pray with fervor at life cycle events, where the feelings of the occasion overwhelm doubts. But the reality is that a tiny minority of synagogue members regularly attend. The theology is just not there for weekly communal prayer being the center of Jewish life for liberal Jews.

There is, as they say, good news and bad news here. The good news is that most liberal Jews do believe in God, a God who gives unity and purpose to the universe and to our lives. And we experience the Holy Presence in our lives, particularly in intimate relationships, in nature, and in friendship, and for some of us in study. The bad news is that we don't experience God in the synagogue.

This remarkable fact is documented by Steven M. Cohen (of HUC) and Arnold M. Eisen (now President of JTS) in The Jew Within. They quote Jewish writer Cynthia Ozick as saying "The only place I don't feel Jewish is in synagogue." She may have meant it for different reasons (and it may be from another essay by Cohen) that a Reform Jew would, but it makes the point.

The question is then, given that a central ritual of Judaism is no longer as meaningful as it was for traditional Jews, what can Reform do that will make Judaism more compelling and central to the lives of the majority of Reform Jews--children and adults alike?

That I'll take up in my next posts.

Summertime in the Mishkan

2008-07-03T17:35:15Z

By Andi Rosenthal
Since 1948, when my congregation was founded, we've had a tradition of layperson-led Friday night Shabbat services. While some people say that it is a lovely break for our clergy, it's a tradition that means a whole lot more than just a way to give our deserving rabbis and cantor the chance to rest and celebrate Shabbat in the company of family and friends.

Summer services train new leaders, help congregants to strengthen and deepen their connection to liturgy, and in my case, just last Friday night, gave me the opportunity to understand and appreciate the breadth and depth of the new Reform prayer book, Mishkan T'filah.

At Larchmont Temple, where I am a trustee, a member of the Ritual Committee and our congregation's Schindler Outreach Fellow (shout-out to classes of '03 and '04), I also had the great privilege of being on the committee that helped "premiere" our new siddur in a special Service of Dedication this past January.

Having gathered together Reform siddurim from generations past, members of our congregation, ranging from elderly founding members to that Shabbat's b'nei mitzvah, read passages from each book. From a translation from High German in a Reform book from 1907, to the beloved, uniquely American voice of the Union Prayer Book, from the historic echoes Gates of Blue to the evolved, egalitarian Gates of Gray...we followed a path of poetry and prayer that led us directly into our new liturgical home: the Mishkan.

It was a transformative experience and one that resonated with pray-ers of all ages and backgrounds. Our goal as leaders was to demonstrate that Reform prayer has its own unique traditions and qualities, history and evolution: we did not come from nowhere.

Throughout the weeks that followed, our congregants - some grudgingly, some excitedly - began to get used to life in the Mishkan. Though - as befits Bnei Yisrael - there was certainly some kvetching involved ("What page are we on?" "Why is this book is so heavy?") with the help of our wonderful rabbis and cantor, Mishkan T'filah's beautiful language, its thoughtful and thought-provoking meditations, and heartfelt music helped many who attend our Shabbat services to connect to prayer on a deeper level - not only reaching out, but as Rabbi Nachman of Bratislav said, also reaching up, and reaching within.

Leading a Shabbat service with a new siddur as a layperson, however is a very different experience than observing experienced, wise and sensitive clergy navigate the congregation through transition and text.

As a board of trustees and as a ritual committee, we made the difficult decision to enforce the use of Mishkan T'filah as our summer Shabbat service text (rather than get our old copies of Gates of Prayer out of storage!) Some veteran service leaders decided to opt out, intimidated by the new format. My friend Lee and I were up for the challenge as co-leaders, but confused about how best to proceed.

"Was the linear service option the best way to go?" we wondered. Then we thought about incorporating festival worship prayers and meditations to create a more informal, creative service that highlighted the beauty and depth and range of the siddur.

I've been a summer service leader since 2002. During that first service, which took place two weeks before my ceremony of conversion, I couldn't have been more scared or inexperienced. And as I kept reminding myself, I wasn't even Jewish! To make matters even more uncomfortable, my then co-leader, a physician, had to take an emergency call in the middle of the Amidah. I stood by, unable to approach the Torah or continue services without him, until he had responded to his patient.

So for me, switching to a new prayer book was not nearly as frightening as it might have been for some people.

The key to creating a successful service was much like the same qualities that make our new siddur so interesting. Once Lee and I invested the time in looking at many different readings, attuning our ears to the different voices we heard in our new liturgy, and considering the mixed desire for familiarity and creativity among the members of our congregation, we found that by incorporating a mix of traditional prayers, Hebrew, modern poetry and song, we had created a service that spoke to this unique moment - one that reflected both the constancy of Shabbat and the fragility of transition - from clergy to lay-leadership, from the old siddur to the new, and from spring into summer.

As summer continues on, my co-leader and I hope that we inspired others in our congregation to embrace their journey into the Mishkan. Whether it is connecting through text or through song, there is much in our new siddur to be read and recited, savored and shared. Like summer itself, it is full of warmth and light and new tastes to be enjoyed.

Ultimately, we felt that our intent as lay leaders was captured in this meditation - by poet Delmore Schwartz - which can be found on page 559:

As I looked, the poplar rose in the shining air
Like a slender throat,
And there was an exaltation of flowers,
The surf of apple tree delicately foaming.

All winter, the trees had been
Silent soldiers, a vigil of woods,
Their hidden feelings
Scrawled and became
Scores of black vines,
Barbed wire sharp against the ice-white sky.
Who could believe then
In the green, glittering vividness of full-leafed summer?
Who will be able to believe, when winter again begins
After the autumn burns down again, and the day is ashen,
And all returns to winter and winter's ashes,
Wet, white, ice, wooden, dulled and dead, brittle and frozen,
Who will believe or feel in mind and heart
The reality of the spring and of birth,
In the green warm opulence of summer, and the inexhaustible vitality
and immortality of the earth?

Leslie Bass on Reform Judaism

2008-07-02T17:30:33Z

By David A.M. Wilensky
As readers of Reform Judaism magazine will recall, the RJ Magazine's summer 2008 issue included a series of important questions regarding the Reform Movement and their answers as given by 30 adult members of the Reform Movement.

I'm currently at the URJ Kutz Camp with a group of people who will be the future lay and professional leadership of the Reform movement in North America. I'll be featuring many of them as well as many of the younger Kutz staff members this summer in a series of posts here on the RJ.org blog, in which I will be asking Reform high school and college students (and perhaps a few 20-somethings) for their take on Reform Judaism via questions similar to those used in the Magazine.

Leslie Bass hails originally from Austin, Texas. This fall she will be a junior at the University of Denver, where she is a double major in Digital Media Studies and Journalism. This July, she will be travelling to Brisbane, Australia to study abroad at the Queensland University of Technology for five months. In high school, she was an active member of NFTY-TOR and board member of her local TYG. She attended the URJ Kutz Camp in the Summer of 2005 and spent the Summers of 2006 and 2007 as Kutz Camp staff.

Why are you a Reform Jew? "Because my parents are" is a valid answer. If it is because your parents Reform, what has kept you involved in Reform Judaism?
I am a Reform Jew because I believe strongly in choice through knowledge. With Reform Judaism, I have found the flexibility and freedom to ask questions, ask questions of those questions and their answers, and to choose the values, rituals, and prayer schedule that I personally find the most meaningful, thus making my own Jewish experience the most effective and satisfying spiritual life I could have.

What has belonging to a congregation (or a Temple Youth Group or a Kesher group or going to a URJ camp etc.) that is part of the larger Reform Movement meant to you?
Personally, the reason I have continued to return to my home congregation and Kutz, and why I participated in my local TYG and NFTY in high school, was due to the strong sense of community and peer interaction I found there. The camaraderie I found as a member of these groups was not only beneficial to me on a personal and spiritually enlightening level, but it is through these groups that I have been able to find my place in the larger Reform Movement. By giving teens a place to discuss, voice their opinions, pray, and meet other Jews, the Reform Movement not only brought me to a greater self-awareness but also awareness of the community and diversity around me. This has led me to a greater understanding and sense of responsibility and action toward worldwide social issues, like the genocide in Darfur or the war in Iraq. Starting out on such a small scale helps build identity at a small community level, which only helps to build a stronger and more cohesive movement.

What has been your most meaningful (or least meaningful) Jewish holiday experience?
Passover has been my favorite holiday since I was a child, and I was particularly nervous and a little upset that I had to spend Passover away from my large extended family my first year of college. Instead, my two best friends and I went to Hillel.

Although the seder was loud and disorganized, I found that spending the holiday with a new community, and learning this new community's minhag, was particularly enlightening and exciting for me. I think I felt particularly connected to my Judaism that Passover because I was not only forced out of my comfort zone, but was welcomed with open arms into another Jewish community to create a new seder experience as a new community.

Do you believe in God?
Yes. I often used to explain my belief in God by saying, "You know when you really just click with someone else? Or you feel totally calm and grounded and simultaneously alone and full? That's God."

Was the Bible written by God?
No. I look at the Bible as a guide that promotes values I believe in and do my best to live by.

How do you reconcile Torah teachings that may be inconsistent with your beliefs today?
It's easy to reconcile Torah teachings with my modern beliefs if only because I recognize the passage of time and changing cultural, social, and natural environments that, I believe, are an easy answer to the problem of deviation from Torah teachings. The most important thing I find in the Torah are the values found throughout, which are really the Torah's one and only true, enduring message.

Strengthening Reform: 3. God's Providential Care

2008-07-01T17:42:26Z

By William Berkson
In the last post in this series I explained why science will always leave the door open to belief in a God who gives unity and purpose to nature and to humanity, and a God, who, when we experience the sacred, can inspire us. But can God have the qualities of God as portrayed in the Torah and the Talmud?

The most troubled question about God throughout most of Jewish history has been of God's Providence, or caring intervention in the world on behalf of individuals and groups, especially the people Israel. The Torah clearly reports (in Exodus and Deuteronomy) that at Sinai God promised us prosperity--a bountiful harvest--and children if we obey his laws, and horrible punishments if we don't. However, during the revolt of the Maccabees, many devout Jews were killed. This seemed to violate the covenant at Sinai. In reaction to this bitter experience, I have read, the Pharisee branch of ancient Judaism adopted the idea that we can only expect just reward and punishment in a future life after death, olam haba, the world to come.

Even before the Maccabees and Hanukkah, the book of Job--which has no discussion of reward in an afterlife--is a profoundly troubled meditation on the meaning of the sufferings of the innocent.

A further challenge came from the ancient Greek (Stoic) idea of the "cosmos", that the world runs according to orderly laws. This would seem to exclude special intervention by God contrary to natural law, or in other words to exclude miracles. The idea of the cosmos was sufficiently accepted by the Pharisees and Rabbis that a passage in Pirkei Avot tries to reconcile the miracles in the Torah with natural law. The passage (Avot 5:9) says that all the seemingly miraculous events--the magical staff of Moses, the mouth of the talking donkey, etc.--were created in the twilight before Shabbat on the last day of creation.

Classical or rabbinic Judaism basically tried to have it all ways. The idea of the cosmos, orderly nature, was accepted while at the same time to deal with the problem evil diverse concepts of the afterlife and judgment were accepted. One idea was of an 'end of days' at which time bodily resurrection and judgment would take place. -This idea had existed in Persian religion, Zoroastrianism. Another idea, found in Greek thinking, was that the body and soul are separate (an idea not found in the Torah). And the soul will go to heaven while the body is in the grave. A third idea was that a Messiah would help usher in an end of days. As Maimonides pointedly notes, the sages in fact did not agree on what the full picture was. In practice all the different concepts were mixed together.

This lack of a coherent theology did not bother the rabbis for two reasons. First, it did not really matter to Judaism how exactly God's judgment was carried out. The important thing was that God did command and judge. Furthermore we were supposed to serve out of love, rather than fear, and so punishment in an afterlife was a back up idea, but not the main thing. Secondly, with the exception of the Epicureans, nobody doubted that God created the world and was running it in some fashion. The pagans believed in many Gods, not one, but those many Gods also could intervene in human affairs at will. So while there was an issue with God's justice, which the afterlife was supposed to address, few doubted divine intervention in the world.

This general acceptance of divine intervention changed due to three historical events. The first was the success of modern science, beginning with Newton. The Rabbis had accepted that there was a normal order nature, but also that God could influence it somehow. The new Newtonian science seemed to carry with it a 'no exceptions' clause; the laws of nature could run nature without any outside help. Laplace famously expressed this view when Napoleon asked him why he didn't have God in his book on the solar system. He replied, "I don't have need of that hypothesis." This view led to the rise of positivism, the substitution of science for religion.

However, for most people, the marvels of living nature still spoke to the Designer and Creator of nature and humanity. This millennia old acceptance of 'the argument from design' was struck a grievous blow by Darwin. Or to be more exact, it was Darwin plus the idea of genetics, known as 'neo-Darwinism' that struck the blow. For in this combination, the idea arose that life could have evolved by accident, without any purpose in the universe.

This idea of evolution without a purpose was around by the early twentieth century. But this was after Classical Reform was in place. Kaufmann Kohler, who wrote the Pittsburgh Platform (1885), and led the Hebrew Union College until 1920, was a firm believer in both evolution and Providence, God's supervision of the world. Indeed, the idea of purposeless evolution is today only a research program, an aspiration, and not an existing complete theory. And in surveys most people in America believe in both evolution and God. Nonetheless, the possibility that humanity could have evolved without a purpose was basically inconceivable before Darwin, and neo-Darwinism. The conceivability of purposeless evolution gave non-believers a new and powerful argument.

The third blow to the idea of Providence was of course the Holocaust. In theory of course you could answer it with reward in the afterlife. But the whole thing was so massive and monstrous and heinous that it pretty much silences efforts to give a 'providential' answer.
Already in the first part of the twentieth century Mordechai Kaplan tried developing a theology without Providence in it. And recently When Bad Things Happen to Good People by Harold Kushner, which takes a similar approach, is probably the best selling book of Jewish theology. And I dare say that now a majority of Reform rabbis do not believe in an interventionist God.

This quiet rejection of Providence is a huge thing for Judaism. Traditionally, a denier of God was called one who believed that there is "no Judgment and no Judge." Yet that it seems that is where most liberal rabbis--am I am guessing that includes Conservatives--are now, and certainly where the laity is.

So to recapitulate, earlier I argued that: 1. Judaism needs God to inspire us; and 2. Science will always leave the door open to a God who gives unity and purpose to the world. And here I am arguing that most contemporary Jews cannot accept the traditional interventionist God, or in other words God's Providential care of us as individuals.

So the question is, can this non-interventionist God inspire us and guide us concerning ritual, ethics, and community? As Larry Kaufman indicated here on RJ.org, we have to go beyond "don't ask, don't tell" on these issues, if we are to have a strong Reform Judaism in the future.

In the next post I will consider how a non-interventionist God can strongly support and inspire liberal Judaism.

(Note: You can call up my previous posts, and the other posts of any other blogger here, by clicking the person's name.)

Josh Levin on Reform Judaism

2008-06-30T22:17:30Z

By David A.M. Wilensky
As readers of Reform Judaism magazine will recall, the RJ magazine's summer 2008 issue included a series of important questions regarding the Reform Movement and their answers as given by 30 adult members of the Reform Movement.

I'm currently at the URJ Kutz Camp with a group of people who will be the future lay and professional leadership of the Reform movement in North America. I'll be using many of them as well as many of the younger Kutz staff members this summer in a series of posts here on the RJ.org blog, in which I will be asking Reform high school and college students (and perhaps a few 20-somethings) for their take on Reform Judaism via questions similar to those used in the magazine.

Josh Levin lives in Sarasota, Florida. He is a senior in high school. This year Josh will be the Religious and Cultural Vice President for the North American Federation of Temple Youth's Southern Tropical Region. Josh has three summers of experience at the Kutz, NFTY's Campus for Reform Jewish Teens. Next year, he plans to attend the University of Florida.

What is significant about Reform Judaism? What sets us apart from other North American Jewish movements? How does that make us stronger? How does it make us weaker?
As Reform Jews, we need not feel obligated to our religion or yearn to fulfill every commandment (especially those we take moral issue with, see animal sacrifice or stoning). We need only take what connects us to Judaism and the Jewish people in modern times. This makes us stronger as we are forced to think and to choose for ourselves what from our tradition is for us in a modern world and what from our tradition is not, while maintaining that tradition for the next generation.

Why are you a Reform Jew? "Because my parents are" is a valid answer. If it is because your parents Reform, what has kept you involved in Reform Judaism?
My parents are Reform. More specifically, my mom wanted to convert, but not to orthodoxy. Reform was the obvious choice. My ability to choose for myself and life as a modern person while maintaining my Judaism and connection to the Jewish people has kept me Reform.

Do you believe in God?
Yes.

How do you feel about Reform synagogue worship (or worship you've experienced through NFTY or Kesher or here or at other URJ camps) as it's practiced today?
The traditions are varied and widespread. That is one of the incredible parts of the Reform movement: there is no "right" way to conduct a prayer service. The only issue is people not understanding why the tradition is what it is, wherever they are praying.

Is social action central to your identity as a Reform Jew?
Social action is central to my identity as a person. Simply the experience of being a human being means to me that I should support other people. Being a Reform Jew, I feel especially responsible to other Jews. "All Israel is Responsible for One Another" is one of my guiding principles as a Reform Jew.

Was the Bible written by God?
No.

How do you reconcile Torah teachings that may be inconsistent with your beliefs today?
Torah is an ancient book fundamental to the survival of the Jewish people. But I have quite a bit of faith in the documentary hypothesis, so it is not a huge issue to me that Torah and the life standards of an ancient time past do not apply today.

Do you believe God hears our prayers?
Yes. But it is up to us to carry out our own goals and dreams we contain in our prayers or we will be doomed to a passive life without any of those prayers being fulfilled.

When do you most experience or feel closest to God?
I feel that by creating good we bring ourselves closer to the divine, as everything God created was supposedly good. So by taking responsibility for my own creation, I feel closest to God.

Is the State of Israel important to you and to your Jewish identity?
It is paramount in both. Most peoples of the world have a state belonging to them. This is true for the Jewish nationality as well. Only thanks to Israel is it easy to understand "Jewish" as a nationality and us, Jews, as a people with a bond stronger than religion.

Looking to the future, what are the most significant challenges we face, as a Movement and as North American Jews?
Not speaking Hebrew, having a poor Jewish history education, and living in America without visiting Israel are the three issues of American Jewry that will connect us less to the Jewish people and more to the American people (or Canadian people). If that trend continues, it will become harder for Jews living in America to identify themselves that way and easier and easier to just be American. Assimilation, for all intents and purposes, is the biggest threat to American Jews.

Comfortable

2008-06-30T18:26:07Z

By Mary Hofmann
I think comfort is based on a perception of competence . . . you can't feel comfortable when you don't understand what's going on and don't know how to act appropriately in a given environment.

People come to Judaism with great trepidation, intimidated by the enormity of what they don't know. Often worse, Jews born to Judaism but raised in a totally secular environment, feel even more intimidated by all they think they should know in their very genetic structure, and don't - so they stay away, embarrassed and defensive. We want to be welcoming, but the sheer amount of knowledge the aspirant lacks might well be forming an insurmountable wall for many.

I'm a teacher, so I'm immersed (sometimes drowning) in a sea of frameworks and standards. For all the shortcomings of current educational philosophy (another whole topic), the idea of developing some sort of framework of the knowledge and skills a competent Reform Jew might aspire to, is intriguing to me. And it might provide a guide for the novice Jew (to say nothing of the rest of us!)

It seems to me that one of Reform Judaism's greatest strengths (and maybe its perceived weakness) is its emphasis on individual choice within an almost transparent framework of acceptable norms--and I mean transparent with all its positive and negative connotations. Could we not, by way of consensual agreement, come up with a framework of those things one might strive towards to feel comfortable and competent as a Reform Jew?

Judaism is SO big and there's so much to learn--the very reason I love it so. I want to be at least conversant in so many areas . . . how such and such came about, how and why we do this or that, how to act appropriately within environments I might never have experienced--of which there are many. And so my life is an ongoing Jewish education that I also use to try to educate others. A succinct frame or guide for focusing would be enormously helpful--and possibly a lifeline for many.

Edie Joseph on Reform Judaism

2008-06-27T20:11:51Z

By David A.M. Wilensky
As readers of Reform Judaism magazine will recall, the RJ magazine's summer 2008 issue included a series of important questions regarding the Reform Movement and their answers as given by 30 adult members of the Reform Movement.

I'm currently at the URJ Kutz Camp with a group of people who will be the future lay and professional leadership of the Reform movement in North America. I'll be using many of them as well as many of the younger Kutz staff members this summer in a series of posts here on the RJ.org blog, in which I will be asking Reform high school and college students (and perhaps a few 20-somethings) for their take on Reform Judaism via questions similar to those used in the magazine.

Edie Joseph currently lives in Gainesville, Florida. She grew up at URJ Camp Harlam, attended Kutz in 2005, and in 2007 received a Bronfman Youth Fellowship in Israel. She will be attending Yale University as a freshman in the fall.

Why are you a Reform Jew? "Because my parents are" is a valid answer. If it is because your parents Reform, what has kept you involved in Reform Judaism?
I initially considered myself a Reform Jew because of my parents; my dad is a Reform rabbi and I grew up very engrained in Reform Judaism. As I have had more and more experience living and praying in pluralistic Jewish communities, however, I have come to define myself as a Reform Jew because of the movement's ability to be all-encompassing in terms of religious observance and commitment.

Jewishly, I want to try new things, to learn new things, and perhaps one day to live a religiously observant lifestyle not commonly chosen among Reform Jews. But because I am a Reform Jew, whatever lifestyle I choose will be because of an educated personal choice, not because of a forced indoctrination or sense of external obligation. Being a Reform Jew means that every religious choice is my own, which makes every choice, in my mind, much holier and more meaningful.

Do you believe God hears our prayers?
My view of prayer has been most shaped by a passage present in Reform siddurim: "Prayer invites God's presence to suffuse our spirits, God's will to prevail in our lives. Prayer might not bring water to parched fields, nor mend a broken bridge, nor rebuild a ruined city. But prayer can water an arid soul, mend a broken heart, rebuild a weakened will." I do not believe that God can hear our prayers in the sense of listening and choosing to intervene in human life. But I do believe that the more selflessly we appeal to a higher power, admit our weaknesses, and open ourselves up to help, the stronger we will become, whether God hears us or not.

Keep the simcha simple

2008-06-27T01:04:24Z

By Mary Hofmann
While I enjoyed reading the many perspectives of the contributors to Reform Judaism this month, I was truly saddened by the plight of Elise Silverfield May and those in her situation (which includes a whole lot of us, on a lot of levels!)--the perceived high price tag of being Jewish (page 61 or online here).

Her particular alarm rang concerning the temple members' expectations around her son's upcoming bar mitzvah, which were terrifyingly grandiose. This concern connects well with Rabbi Yoffie's comments at the Biennial regarding congregants reclaiming Shabbat morning services from the grip of private "parties." If we don't want Reform Judaism to become increasingly about status and wealth, I believe this problem needs to be addressed both in terms of reclaiming both the sanctuary and the sanctity of the event. I guess it has to do with the values established at each congregation--and all of our opportunities (and obligations?) to revision those values regularly.

Sometimes I feel lucky to live in a remote community where Jews with visions of grandeur wouldn't settle. In Merced, California, our first bar mitzvah (my son's, in 1980) was pulled off on a wing and a prayer and a lot of scrambling with the entire community involved in every aspect--from Rob's training and preparation to building the service to putting on a sort of planned potluck luncheon. It was a triumph for all of us--and set a pattern that has continued for nearly 30 years. We've had a few catered, but the norm is homemade from the get-go, the celebration is for everybody, the child not only does the regular mitzvah training, but helps with everything else, the family (and friends) create the service booklet, the child is invited to participate in adult (including board activities), and the party--lunch and something geared for kids--wraps it all up in another hour or so.

Our kids aren't missing anything. I'd guess our kids are as, or more, prepared than most. I find it sad that anybody has to feel such a warm and wonderful family and community event has to be a burden on anybody. I bet you'd all love our celebrations--and wouldn't feel like anybody had to be the envy of anyone to feel warm and fuzzy and accomplished.

God the Creator?

2008-06-26T22:34:17Z

By Richard J. "Dick" Israel
The grand panjandrum of this blog (aka the editor) has decreed that I post or be forever exiled. I must confess that up to now my contribution has been non-existent, but I attribute that to a lifelong (by now that's pretty long) notion I have indulged that those who speak the most have the least to say. That includes yours truly. Nonetheless, in all fairness to those who have been striving to enlarge lay contribution to the evolution of our otherwise clergy heavy Reform Judaism, let me strive to comply by exposing some stray ideas which have drifted through my thoughts recently.

First, I tend to consider Reform Judaism as an association of generally like-minded Jewish people who can share religious worship and religiously derived social service activism with each other. That sharing includes financial as well as personal support to the best of each person's ability. I believe, also, in the utmost freedom of belief. I care not what any fellow Reform Jew believes, so long as we can worship together congenially. I care not what religious observances or practices any such fellow worshipper feels to be obligatory, optional or down-right silly, so long, of course, as that fellow worshipper accords me the same indifference.

I do not believe in any taboos of belief, but I do believe some religious practices to be unacceptable to Reform Jews. For example, I believe that those who call themselves Jews for Jesus, or who otherwise accept Jesus Christ as the Messiah or part of a holy trinity, are Christian and not at all Jewish, let alone Reform Jews. So, I cannot worship with them any more than I would take communion in a Roman Catholic church. Although they are often intertwined, what people believe and what people do in religious life can sometimes be usefully separated. So, I believe that Reform Jews can dialogue with Muslims, even if they do not worship together.

Second, in religious discourse among congenial co-worshippers, no idea should be off-limits. Today's far-fetched notion may well be tomorrow's common-place. In that respect, Judaism generally and Reform Judaism especially are paradigmatic.

I have observed some discussion as to whether or not Reform Jews can or cannot believe in God, and whether those who do not can publicly proclaim it. Let me submit a theological thought for discussion. God did not create the universe and humankind. Human beings created God. It does not seem to me that it would make any difference in our everyday lives if we deflected the God question by acknowledging and accepting the notion that there is a God, whom our ancestors and we have created to explain the inexplicable.

We can continue to worship such a God as embodying a notion of goodness and love and peace and all the blessings we cherish in worship. We can continue to struggle for a covenantal relationship with such a God who continues to embody moral obligations. Religious Reform Jews would continue to be obligated to render social service activism on behalf of all of our fellow humans in need. A benefit we might enjoy could be the freeing of our minds from a load of mystical baggage. We might also more easily come to grips with the lessons of the Holocaust, since the God we have created does not cause genocide in Europe in the Twentieth Century or in Africa in this. Unlike our Humanist co-religionist we would not erase mention of God from our public worship, we would simply reform our notion of divinity among all the other reforms we have found useful.

I recognize how painful it would be for people of strong faith to accept such a far-reaching change of conception. They don't need to. They and the rest of us would recite the same affirmation of faith, but some of us would know that the one God is different for some of us. I am also aware of the more powerful argument against God as a human creation. That is that what humans have created, humans can destroy. But, that is only true of physical things. The Roman conquerors, like the Babylonian can destroy the physical Temple in Jerusalem, but neither of them or their successors through the ages to this very day could destroy the idea of God's place in Jerusalem. Our ancient Israelite ancestors created the notion of human freedom from slavery, which despite the efforts of tyrants to destroy it, lives to this day.

Neo-Classical Reform Judaism

2008-06-26T19:25:45Z

By dcc
I have a conundrum: I consider myself a Classical Reform Jew. I do not view the mitzvot as a to-do (or to-don't) list. I feel connected to ethical regulations, while I have no desire to return to the Temple. I am a Kohen, but have publicly renounced my priesthood. However, I don't eat pork or shellfish at home.

Reform, not Reformed, Judaism is fluid and over the years, the Movement has been in a constant state of flux, being true to this name. Some of our younger members have seen fit to return to traditions long regarded as out of date, while older members of our community remain Classical in their observance. I fall somewhere in between; I suppose I am a neo-Classical Reform Jew.

As a NFTYite I thought I would be "more religious" by wearing a kippah and (sometimes) praying three times a day. When I was on EIE in high school, I started and stopped and started again to wear tzitzi'ot. In college, I said I was just Jewish--in a post-denominational, anti-institutional kind of way. But somewhere between being a revolutionary and noticing that my revolution already had been fought and won, I re-affiliated myself with Reform Judaism.

I worked at Greene Family Camp, where I met my fiancé, moved to New York and started working for the Movement as a Legislative Assistant for the Commission on Social Action. Much of the joy I found in leading services or teaching Jewish content came from the idea that I was helping other people connect to Judaism. God didn't play a role in this feeling for me; personally it was and is people based. So I started to ask myself: Why are you wearing a cloth around your shoulders if you don't feel a connection? Why are you covering your head with a kippah of cloth stitched together by slaves in Southeast Asia? Why are you saying words you disagree with? So I stopped doing those things, but this time I didn't start again.

However, I still had deep connection to kashrut. For much of my life, my dad was a caterer and both of my parents would compete to make the best school lunches for my sister me. (Don't tell my dad, but my mom really nailed the turkey-to-tomato-to-lettuce-to-mustard-to-mayo ratio. She made said sandwiches on that really nice multi-grain bread, but I digress.) In my family, "soul food" is bagels, lox, white fish and chopped liver. Having said that, I love all kinds of ethnic or "soul" foods because of the passion that comes through the taste--along with the salt. Food holds a power over me and it helps me connect to people, my people. And that is why I don't have pork or shellfish in my home.

There is a passage in the original Pittsburgh Platform that has long spoken to me. The seminal Reform document explains that we should keep the ethical commandments and "maintain only such ceremonies as elevate and sanctify our lives." As a questioning and changing Jew, there is one thing that is constant in my life and that is food. I connect to people through food. I connect to family through food. So why shouldn't I elevate the practice of eating?

I readily acknowledge that my practice is not consistent. In pervious manifestations of my Jewish identity I would call myself a hypocrite. But these days, I call myself a neo-Classical Reform Jewish foodie.

Jade Sank on Reform Judaism

2008-06-25T21:26:07Z

Jade Sank is a 17-year-old recent high school graduate. In the fall she will attend Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, New York. Jade was a member of NFTY-GER, serving as the 2007-2008 NFTY-GER Secretary. She attended the URJ Kutz Camp in the summer of 2006 and the Urban Mitzvah Corps in the summer of 2007. This summer, she is hard at work as a member of the Avodah staff of the URJ Kutz Camp.

What has belonging to a congregation (or a Temple Youth Group or a Kesher group or going to a URJ camp etc.) that is part of the larger Reform Movement meant to you?
Belonging to my congregation, my TYG, NFTY, Kutz, and Urban Mitzvah Corps has meant everything to me. My eyes have been opened by the millions of ways that I can get involved and make connections not only on a North American scale but a world scale. By becoming involved in many different ways I have achieved small goals that will eventually help the Reform Movement become stronger. The best part about being part of the larger movement is that through the small things I do, I will see the results on a larger scale.

Do you believe in God?
I used to have a very strong sense of God, but over the past year or so that sense seems to have become quite watered down. I would say that, yes, I do believe in God, but my belief is dwindling.

Do you believe God hears our prayers?
No. I believe that the reason we say prayers is for ourselves. Prayers remind us of our responsibilities to others, ourselves, and our traditions. When we say prayers aloud, or even to ourselves, it is like writing a sticky note to remind us of something important that we may forget in the scramble of everyday life.

Was the Bible written by God?
Absolutely not.

When do you most experience or feel closest to God?
When I am with a tight community of people who I know are experiencing kavanah. When others around me are concentrating and feeling personally spiritual, I feel more comfortable and more connected to the community and God. When people are paying less attention and are not interested or connected I feel awkward and further away from God.

What Jewish ethical teachings do you think are important and should be passed on?
Any teachings that have to do with tolerance, pluralism, understanding, and/or respect should be passed on and practiced regularly.

Is the State of Israel important to you and to your Jewish identity?
Yes. I believe that Israel is extremely important to the overall achievement of a strong Jewish presence in our world today. I think that Israel provides, quite literally, common ground for Jews all over the world.

Strengthening Reform: 2. Science and God

2008-06-25T18:44:22Z

By William Berkson
In the first installment, I argued that Judaism shouldn't try to do without God, because then it will lack the power to inspire us. That raises the question of whether modern science leaves open the door to God, to religion.

There is still a strong movement that says science has superseded religion. This movement, known as "positivism" started with Auguste Comte (1798-1857). Comte had the theory that there were historical three stages in the development of understanding of the world: religious, then metaphysical, then scientific or "positive." Science should sweep aside all religious and metaphysical explanations, and scientific theories of society, in particular, would advance humanity to an ideal condition.

Originally, the idea that the world consists only of "atoms and the void," and lacks any guiding purpose had been championed by the Epicurus (341-270 BCE). The Epicureans were unique in the ancient world in denying Providence--that God, or many gods, had a guiding influence on humanity. For that reason, the Jewish sages condemned them and said, "Know what to answer to an Epicurean." (Avot 2:19) Because there are leading scientists who still champion the idea that science has superseded religion, "knowing what to answer" is still a vital issue.

The problem with the modern Epicureans, or Positivists, is that they treat an aspiration as a fact. And their aspiration is in reality impossible to realize. The aspiration is that science will explain everything important about our world. The great (Jewish) philosopher of science, Émil Meyerson (1859-1933) revealed why this aspiration will never be realized.

According to Meyerson, the great mysteries in the world are change--birth, death, growth, motion, the passage of time--and diversity--why you and I are different, the difference between living and the dead, the riotous diversity of nature. We feel emotionally satisfied when we find unity behind diversity, and what persists through change. This is why the atomic theory has such appeal--what seems to be incomprehensible change is actually the rearrangement of atoms according to strict laws. Both the atoms and the laws endure. But the atomic theory still leaves us wondering about time and atoms. The only thing that can fully satisfy our hunger for unity is the mystic's vision of the world as one, unified timeless entity. However, science is required to explain diversity and change; it can't go the way of the mystic. It has to have some diversity and change in its premises, and these will appear to us as "irrational" and mysterious.

To put this another way, science has to have theories that make predictions which can be checked by observation and experiment. To make such predictions the theories have to be formulated in sentences, or equations, from which deductions of observations can be logically deduced. Thus Newton's famous theory that F=ma; force is equal to mass times acceleration. But we can always ask about the terms or units involved in a sentence. What is force? What is mass? And in 'acceleration' we have time and space. Why is there time and change? Why is one place different from another? Thus we are landed back with the mysteries of change and diversity after all.

Meyerson explained his point in a story. The great rationalist Leibnitz said that if an angel whispered in our ear the secret of the universe, we would say, "How logical, how obvious--why didn't I think of that?" Schopenhauer, the Pessimist, wrote that if such an angel whispered the secret of the universe in our ear, we would not understand it, "lacking the organ for understanding." According to Meyerson's analysis--and my follow up--Schopenhauer had the sounder view.

What is particularly important is the issue of purpose in the world. We know that at least we have purposes, and we are indeed part of nature. But purpose involves thinking about the future, and about time. Hence in thinking about purpose we immediately run into one of the mysteries that science, by its logical and empirical character, can never fully penetrate--the mysteries of time.

Since the Jewish concepts of God fundamentally involve the intuitions of unity and purpose, science by its nature can't shove these concepts of God aside. Those who claim that science will--or already has--superseded God is just not understanding the inherent limits of scientific explanation.

Given that science leaves the door open for some kind of God who gives unity and purpose to the universe, the question is: What idea of God does science allow for? And is that strong enough a basis to build a vital, vibrant Judaism on?

These questions I will address in the next post, next week.

Tallitot Talk with JanetheWriter

2008-06-25T01:30:35Z

By JanetheWriter
In today's Ten Minutes of Torah and in a recent blog post, Dr. Dvora Weisberg--briefly--and Larry Kaufman--more extensively--discuss tallitot. Clearly, they are the topic of the day, reminding me of the first time I observed the commandment to l'hitateif batzitzit--wrap ourselves in the fringes.

Although I was married, gainfully employed in the Jewish world and even an active member of a synagogue, I was thousands of miles from home and family, and often found myself alone--socially, spiritually, and emotionally. Seeking community and acting on an ad I'd seen in the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles, I began to attend "Shabbat Resounds," the once-a-month, student-led Shabbat morning service at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. Held in the lobby of the school's building, the service was filled with joyful worship and music, which, together with the sunbeams, did, indeed, resound into the unique architectural crevices of the space before bouncing back down to us.

Comprised mainly of students and faculty members, the congregation was a tallit- and kippah-wearing crowd and before too long, even though I enjoyed the service and the community, I felt oddly out of place without one or the other. For reasons unknown, I was more inclined to add a tallit than a kippah. But, wanting to do it right and having no idea about how (no, it wasn't part of the bar and bat mitzvah preparation in my congregation), for a number of months, I just didn't.

Home on the East Coast for Passover, I asked the young rabbi in my parents' congregation to show me the ins-and-outs of donning a tallit, and upon returning to the West Coast and to "Shabbat Resounds," I proudly wrapped myself in its fringes. In those fringes, I found comfort in conforming to the minhag of the community. And I found something else, too. In those fringes, I found a spiritual and emotional closeness to God that, perhaps because they were oh-so-missing in my "secular" life, were especially welcome in my "religious" life. For the balance of my time in Los Angeles--spent closing out a chapter of my life--I did wear a tallit, ever grateful for the much needed gifts its fringes and its fabric brought me. Today, my life back on the East Coast is socially, spiritually and emotionally rich and full. And, although I don't wear a tallit nearly as often as I did in Los Angeles, its fringes and its fabric still remind me about being close to God.

Why Talitot

2008-06-23T14:45:40Z

By Larry Kaufman
It's the custom in our congregation for the person who presents the d'var Torah to pose questions for discussion by the kahal, the community. Leading the discussion on Shelach Lecha, I noted that this parashah includes the commandment to wear fringes, a commandment that was essentially negated in Reform Judaism by the Pittsburgh Platform of 1885, the negation remaining in force for well over a hundred years.

Why, I asked, of all the commandments so many of us do not obey, have so many in our kahal chosen to obey this one? And why, on the other hand, have so many chosen not to wear talitot now that it has become unremarkable in Reform Judaism to do so?

Of all the questions I posed, this one got far and away the most attention, from both sides of the apparel spectrum.

Answers from the bare-shouldered ranged from having grown up in the Classic Reform tradition and thus still finding it foreign, to having grown up female in the Orthodox tradition and feeling that to wear a talit would be disrespectful to her grandfather's memory, from finding no spiritual resonance in the wearing to finding physical discomfort in putting it over arthritic shoulders.

Among the talit-clad, one woman equated wearing the talit to feeling wrapped in the shelter of God's wings. A Jew by Choice said that at the time she joined the congregation, only the rabbi was wearing a talit and she assumed it was a privilege reserved for the learned; but after becoming fluent in Hebrew, studying Torah and even Talmud, she came to the point where she felt qualified. My cynical wife has observed that she sometimes feels talit-wearers are making more of a fashion statement than a religious statement. As I have commented elsewhere, I recently returned to wearing the talit (and kipa) I had abandoned perforce when I segued 35 years ago from Conservative to Reform, not to connect to the capricious God of Shelach Lecha who had commanded fringes, but to connect to klal Yisrael, the Jewish community of all streams and all countries.

Does anybody notice the reason for wearing a talit that is conspicuous by its absence?

Nobody in our kahal admitted to wearing fringes because God commanded us to!

What does this tell us about the place of mitzvot in our Reform Judaism? We often hear mitzvah used (misused?) as a synonym for a good deed. Has the mitzvah of wearing fringes become no more than a feel-good deed? (Or, as my wife might say, a look-good deed?)

Unlike some mitzvot which are altogether arbitrary (Do it because I say so!), we are even given a reason for performing this one: lema'an tizkeru v'asitem et kol mitzvotai - that you may remember and do ALL my commandments. We are to wear the talit to remind us of all the other things we're commanded to do. But how effective is the reminder the fringes provide if we don't acknowledge why we're wearing them in the first place?

I'd like to believe that, at some level, we DO feel commanded - whether by history, or by community, or even by God -- but we are reticent to say so publicly, other than by the act of putting on the talit, and hoping that the action speaks for itself.

Taking back "Religious" and "Traditional"

2008-06-20T07:41:53Z

By David Fair
The Reform Movement in America is well over a hundred years old. In that time, our movement has developed and expanded many customs and ways of life that reflect a culture, rich with tradition and background. Yet it's a rare week when I don't hear one of our congregational leaders give a sermon where we are not compared to the more conservative movements of Judaism. What I hear the most is how we are justified in not following the Conservative and Orthodox customs of Kashrut, Shabbat, fasting holidays, and the like.

What is also very interesting is to hear our leaders use the term "traditional" or "religious" when referring to Jews from the more conservative movements (or when referring to customs that the more conservative movements of Judaism embrace). As a member of the Reform Movement, I find using phrasing in this manner to be rather insulting. Reform Judaism has its own traditions and religiosity.

Dating back to the mid 1800's, American Reform Judaism has gone through many practices and changes that have created a rich and expansive set of traditions. For example, traditional Reform Judaism implanted the use of heavily harmonized and complex choral music designed for choirs and organ accompaniment on Shabbat. Other examples include constructing pews, holding services on Sundays, using the title of "Reverend," using instruments (which is actually a ancient Jewish tradition), and entirely English Siddurim. We are a movement with quite a history and "tradition" of observance. By saying that other movements are Judaism are "traditional" or that the members of the more conservative movements are "religious" and not us, devalues Reform Judaism.

The words "traditional" or "religious" should not be terms entirely reserved and owned by members of the more conservative movements of Judaism. I follow the traditions of Reform Judaism. Likewise, I am a religious Jew in the Reform movement. What does that mean?

I maintain a healthy diet and an athletic lifestyle, thus treating my body with dignity (because we are made in the image of God). My Shabbat is a day that I treat very differently from the rest of the week. I do my very best to treat others with Gemilut Chasadim. I am a serious environmentalist (Tikkun Olam). Thus, I consider myself "religious." What makes me religious is that I follow the observances, practices, and laws of my religion - of what I know to be my heart's interpretation of Judaism.

It would seem that we have become a movement that feels that to define ourselves, we must first say how we do not do things like the more conservative movements. By describing the practices of the more conservative movements of Judaism as more "traditional" or "religious," we are demeaning Reform Judaism. We are making it seem to our children as if we are this misfit, young, radical movement that needs to be justified and defensive in our practices.

I would like to see leaders in the Reform Movement try to not use these ambiguous phrases of "traditional" or "religious." I am religious and I follow tradition: the Reform Tradition.

David Fair is the songleader of Temple Sinai in Pittsburgh, PA.

Kashrut cleaning products?

2008-06-20T05:51:18Z

By Bryan Freehling
I began observing kashrut not when I converted to Reform Judaism thirteen years ago, but when I became a vegetarian almost three years ago. Although I considered observing kashrut upon becoming a Jew, my life partner of fifteen years who had kept kosher until he was 21, was not too amiable to that notion. However, after the passing of our beloved canine companion, Bella, both of us chose to become vegetarian.

Our ethical and moral vegetarian odyssey has done much for our spiritual and physical well-being, and it has made us more compassionate Jews. Additionally, our vegetarian lifestyle, since one chooses what to eat, has also helped us become more informed consumers. The challenges and obstacles faced by individuals and families who maintain a kosher lifestyle are often not as discernible to the naked eye as one might think.

A month ago, I learned to my horror that most fabric softeners and dryer sheets contain animal fat, also known as tallow. Although I am not certain, I sincerely doubt that these animals have been slaughtered in a kosher manner. And even if these animals were slaughtered in a kosher manner, I question whether observant Jews are even aware of this disturbing fact. I wonder how many observant Jews have washed and dried milkh plates with dish towels laundered with such fabric softeners. Many ingredients found in detergents and softeners can remain indefinitely in fabrics and garments even after several washings.

Unfortunately, it has wrongly been incumbent upon consumers outside of the mainstream American society to investigate and police these matters. All consumers have the right to know all the ingredients of the products which they purchase. Failure to disclose this information on labels should result in stiff fines for the manufacturers, suppliers, and vendors.

Bryan Freehling is a member of Martha's Vineyard Hebrew Center.

Of Covenantal and Other Special Relationships

2008-06-17T18:46:28Z

By JanetheWriter
Last week, I drafted--and ultimately scraped--a post for this blog because after it was written, I came to realize that not only was it much too personal for the vast world of cyberspace, but also, because I wrote it in anger after someone challenged my belief in the Jews' covenantal relationship with God, I wanted to give myself some time to reflect on what I was saying.

Then I read the article in the New York Times quoting a letter from Abraham Foxman to Pastor John Hagee in which Foxman writes, "We look forward to meeting with you to promote a dialogue between Christians and Jews based on mutual respect, reconciliation and the recognition of God's eternal covenant with the Jewish people." Since Foxman raised the covenantal issue with Hagee, I've reconsidered my scraped post and, after a lot of thinking, I'm giving it another shot:

I love to read the wedding announcements in the Sunday New York Times, taking special note of how the couples met each other, the lives they've lived and, in the case of the Jewish unions, the clergy who officiated at the ceremonies. Bolstered by these weekly vignettes of found love, and ever optimistic that there's a great Jewish guy out there for me too, I've been known to prowl the usual cyberspace venues dedicated to such matters--jdate, match.com, and the yahoo personals, always setting the search criteria to "Jewish" for the latter two.

In a recent email exchange with someone on one of these sites, the issue of "chosen-ness" came up, which got me to thinking about the need to answer for myself the question of why it is so important for me not only to limit my search to "members of the tribe," but also to find someone within the tribe who cherishes and celebrates being Jewish in the same liberal way that I do.

Like Abraham Foxman, I believe in God's eternal covenant with the Jewish people. However, I don't think it's at all about God choosing us. Rather, I think it's all about us--individually, collectively and for all time--choosing God by upholding our end of the covenantal relationship with God that I believe defines us as a religious (not a cultural or an ethnic) people.

So what does this mean for me on the dating scene?

It means that rather than settling for the first culturally or ethnically Jewish guy ("Jewish but not religious" in jdate-speak) who comes along, I will wait for someone for whom being Jewish is more than English sprinkled with Yiddishisms, bagels and lox on Sundays, and reading Philip Roth's latest novel.

It means seeking out a special someone who, although he doesn't necessarily count the omer, kiss the mezuzah or lay tefillin, he does treasure and celebrate being Jewish in a way that consciously marks the passage of Jewish time and ensures that it is personally meaningful to him.

It means finding someone who understands that even if our Friday night plans include nothing more than Chinese take-out and Netflix, the evening will be more special if we start by lighting Shabbat candles.

It means being with someone for whom eggs and pancakes in an all-night diner after a Tikkun Leil Shavuot study session is a great date, and it means finding someone who understands that whether or not we believe that we personally crossed the Red Sea to flee the Egyptians or stood at the foot of Mt. Sinai ourselves, Passover foods (both what we eat and what we don't) remind us that even today, slavery and oppression are rampant in our world and it is our obligation to partner with God to erase them.

And lastly this: It means that although I don't necessarily need my special someone to share my view of the covenantal relationship between God and the Jews, I do need him to possess his own defined and active relationship with Judaism, and be willing to share it with me.

The Universe sent me a Shabbat message

2008-06-16T17:29:13Z

By Wendy Nelson

My daughter graduated from high school Saturday. The weather changed from cold and rainy to a sunny 80 degree day. The plague of cicadas awaited for 17 years and due to arrive by now were yet to emerge from the ground. I arrived early and got a front row seat knowing that I could not miss seeing my beloved child on this special day. It was Shabbat and all was right.

The ceremony began with a chorus of beautiful voices of young men and women and by the second song all eyes turned to the heavens. From a very high set of lights that illuminate the field at night there was a nest with two small heads peeking over. Fledgling Osprey, unnoticed before peered down at the choir from their distant perch... and one began to sing.

Ospreys are not known for their beautiful songs; they have more of a call. But today one inspired baby Osprey sang along canary style with the teenage chorus for two songs and then stopped when they did and both babies disappeared from sight. I cried.

Some speeches followed and the chorus returned for another song. All faces turned up immediately to look for the baby birds and within a few notes two faces peered over the edge of the nest. This time, the inspired Osprey began to sing and then fully spread its small wings and began moving rhythmically appearing to dance.

At the song's finish, the speaker at the podium announced that it was time to read the graduates names and wish them goodbye for the final time. And the baby took flight both literally and symbolically while we parents watched all of our babies take flight. As the names were read it soared back and forth far above our heads eventually landing back in the nest. I was mesmerized by the metaphor, by the connection, by the coincidence?

I don't believe in God...never have. I also am an observant, practicing and diligent Reform Jew who can appreciate Godlike moments. If the universe is sending me a message it certainly has my attention. In moments when it feels like God suspend belief and just feel the beauty and the joy and, if you are me, cry.