Download I Am a Reform Jew Because - Westchester Reform Temple

I Am a Reform Jew Because
Westchester Reform Temple
B’har/B’Chukotai
May 18, 2012/Iyar 27 5772
In many sanctuaries, including this one, I have overheard someone say a
variation of, “I love that reading” in reference to a poetic, almost prophetic statement
written between the world wars by Edmond Fleg, a French Jew who felt impelled to
proclaim “I am Jew because the faith of Israel demands no abdication of my mind”. The
rest is commentary and you should have received a copy of it as you entered this holy
space. The words “I am a Jew because” by Edmond Fleg may speak to us, but he
cannot speak for us. Edmond Fleg captures our imaginations and inspires us because
there is something powerful and valuable about being able to say why you are who you
are, to express one’s “identity” with integrity.
The first Jew to do that was the person we claim to be the first Jew, Avraham
avinu, Abraham our father. He needed to bury his wife Sarah, so he turned to the native
inhabitants in the land we now know as Israel, the Hittites, and said ger v’toshav anochi
imachem – I am a stranger and a resident among you. Ever since Abraham the
challenge of Jewish life has been much the same, i.e., to decide when to be a stranger
and when to be a resident, when to assert our uniqueness as Jews and when to assert
our universality as human beings. Jewish life hangs in that delicate, precarious balance.
If we are too different we run the risk of being isolated and rejected by the society that
surrounds us. If we are too alike we run the risk of disappearing into the society that
surrounds us. There are ominous signs that we Jews are still searching for a healthy
balance between our separateness and our sameness, our uniqueness and our
universality.
1
I am a Reform Jew because the Judaism that I know and love has always been
reforming. I am a Reform Jew because Reform Judaism is willing to sacrifice uniformity
and conformity on the altar of creativity and inclusiveness. I am a Reform Jew because I
embrace ambiguity. I am a Reform Jew because I am prepared to accept the
consequences for my Jewish choices. I am a Reform Jew because as much as I
respect the rigor of Jewish law, I feel inspired by it more than bound by it. I am a Reform
Jew because I believe that Reform Judaism began when Judaism began and that in
order to stay alive, Judaism must strive to balance tradition and innovation, authenticity
and creativity. Perhaps above all, I am a Reform Jew because I can only speak for
myself. I cannot Jew for you and you cannot Jew for me. There is no vicarious
atonement and no vicarious fulfillment in Judaism. Each one of us, through our words
and our deeds, completes the sentence “I am a Reform Jew because”.
How would you complete the following sentence: I am a Reform Jew
because…? That is not just a sentence for rabbis or cantors or educators or executive
directors. Nor is it a sentence completion exercise for congregational presidents or
officers or board members. That is a sentence everyone who becomes Bar or Bat
Mitzvah in the Reform Movement should be able to complete. For the past two years, I
served as a member of a think tank that sought to articulate and share a compelling
vision for the future of Reform Judaism. On the obverse side of the sheet with Edmond
Fleg’s declamation is the FINAL DRAFT VISION STATEMENT for North American
Reform Judaism
“Reform Judaism is the living expression of Torah and tradition in our modern
2
lives. Reform Judaism welcomes all who seek Jewish connection to pursue the fullness
of a life inspired by compassion and our Divine mission to do what is right and just.
In our sacred communities, Reform Jews make thoughtful and informed choices
about how we put our values into action. We explore our spirituality, and we engage in
reflection, critical study and sacred acts, in order to renew our living covenant with God
and the Jewish people.
The organizations of the Reform Movement exist in partnership with one another
to nurture individual Jews, to sustain our innovative and diverse communities, and to
shape our shared destiny with Israel and fellow Jews around the world.” - March 22,
2012, Boston.
Note that this vision statement refers to ‘communities’ instead of ‘congregations’
and ‘individuals’ as well as ‘organizations’. Reform Judaism is changing, thank God.
Anything else would be antithetical to Reform and to Judaism. Are we becoming more
Orthodox as we adopt and adapt ritual practices ranging from laying tfillin to going to a
mikveh? Are we abandoning Judaism when we ordain and invest gay and lesbian
rabbis and cantors? Are we reverting to tradition when we pray in Hebrew, when we
chant Torah and Haftara, when we study Talmud, when we keep kosher? Are we
rejecting Reform when we make aliyah? Reform Jews are making all of these choices,
and as confusing or as conflicting as they may seem, all of them reflect the prize and
the price of living as a Reform Jew. If you want uniformity, look elsewhere. Here in this
sacred space, we accept, no we celebrate, diversity of opinion and practice. We are
consciously and proudly inclusive and pluralistic. Reform Judaism is not an either/or
3
Judaism, either you are for us or you are against us. Reform Judaism is a both/and
Judaism.
Just over 200 years ago, in 1810, in a small German town named Seesen, a man
named Israel Jacobson initiated reforms in Jewish worship. He had founded a school
mostly for boys from poor families in an effort to enable them to become contributing
members of society. Distinguishing characteristics of “Jacobstempel,” as it became
known, included: an organ that accompanied German as well as Hebrew songs, a
bimah in the front of the sanctuary rather than at its center, a sermon in the vernacular
(German), the reduction or elimination of piyyutim, the poetic embellishments of prayer
and a sense of order and decorum throughout the service. Hardly the stuff of radical
reform, yet these departures from the norm were sufficient for the Reform Movement to
trace our lineage back to “Jacobstempel” in Seesen, even though there were a few
earlier experiments in worship reform. A couple of years ago scholars and leaders of
Reform Judaism went back to reconnect with our historical roots. In the words of Rabbi
Howard Berman, one of the group’s organizers:
“[We] came to appreciate the incredible vision and creative spirit of Israel
Jacobson, the Jewish educator who had established the first modern,
progressive Jewish school there in 1801, and pioneered so many of the ideals
and practices that became the core of Reform Judaism - a broad universalism, a
deep commitment to Jewish-Christian understanding and friendship, a thorough
integration of Jews into their broader society, a renewed Jewish worship service
in the vernacular, with inspiring music and challenging preaching. [Although]
4
there are no Jews living there today, the mayor of the town has dedicated his life
to perpetuating the memory of Jacobson and his temple. The 1810 temple was
destroyed on Kristallnacht (11/09/1938). We held a memorial ceremony and
recited shehecheyanu and Kaddish, which in Germany, must go hand in hand.
He concluded:
After the ceremony, the local Catholic priest came up to me and embraced
me, tearfully expressing, in halting English, both the shame he felt as a German and a
Christian - and yet also his pride in the role that his little town holds in Jewish history.”
The Shehecheyanu and the Kaddish, the prayers of celebration and
commemoration, are the prayers we associate with life and with death, with joy and with
sorrow, with triumph and with tragedy. They are antithetical prayers, and yet they are
both appropriate in reflecting upon the birth of the Reform Movement in Germany. There
are no more Jews in Seesen, Reform or otherwise. Yet arguably, without Jacobstempel,
there would be no Reform Judaism today anywhere. Just like the maror belongs on the
Seder plate, representing slavery at our celebration of freedom, the Kaddish belongs
juxtaposed to the Shehecheyanu as we look back in order to recount the story of
Reform Judaism.
1810 was not only the year of “Jacobstempel”, it was also the year in which the
ideological father of Reform Judaism, Abraham Geiger, was born. Rabbi Abraham
Geiger initiated a course that still influences the direction of the Reform Movement. In
an essay entitled “The Task of the Present” he claimed that Jews have the right to make
changes in the siddur and in synagogue music, that the sermon should be an
5
educational tool for religious understanding and that the essence of Jewish education is
Jewish ethics. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Geiger
threatened the Jewish status quo. Consequently, he was revered by his followers and
reviled by his foes. He believed in religious evolution and tried to steer a centrist course
that was regarded as too radical by those on the religious right and too gradual by those
on the religious left - circumstances not confined to 19th century Germany.
Geiger maintained excellent relations with the German government and was able
to win new political and economic rights for members of the Jewish community.
Ironically, it was the Jews who could not agree to support his reform agenda. Geiger
argued that he was well within the mainstream of Jewish life, that Jewish history was a
history of adaptation to historical and cultural circumstances. Above all, he claimed that
the Jewish community was primarily, if not exclusively, a religious community. He was
prepared to renounce Jewish political and nationalist aspirations and to build a Judaism
based primarily on reason. This quality of compromise was a virtue and a vice, an asset
and a liability. His love of reason, his passion for truth and his rational soul may have
obscured his ability to see the power of emotion, to appreciate the psychology of
religion and to value the significance of the Jews as a people. Ruth the Moabite, the
model proselyte, said it first and best - “Ameikh Ami, v’Elohayikh Elohai - Your people
will be my people and your God will be my God” (Ruth 1:17) The people and the religion
of Israel are inextricably intertwined. To separate them is to separate the body and soul
of Judaism. Of course, hindsight is at least 20/20. To be fair to Geiger, he faced
pressure from the government to divest Judaism of its nationalist tendencies.
6
Nonetheless, in his effort to balance the many facets of Judaism, he leaned towards its
rational, spiritual humanism, and we are his heirs.
Perhaps it is just coincidence, but once again people named Abraham (Geiger)
and Israel (Jacobson) played essential roles in giving birth to a new religious
community, a Judaism that insisted and continues to insist on responding to the
questions and challenges of the day with openness and the willingness to adapt. In the
words of Michael Meyer, the leading historian of Reform Judaism:
[Abraham] Geiger anchored Judaism firmly within history. Judaism, he argued,
had developed from stage to stage: Rabbinic Judaism differed from biblical,
medieval from rabbinic. Each new phase represented religious and moral
progress, each an adjustment to the changing conditions of Jewish life...
Religious reform was not an aberration but tied to the main line of Judaism’s
religious history. (For Reform Judaism, Change Is the Constant, Forward 7/17/10)
We know that the reforms that were instituted 200 years ago in Seesen, Germany or
even the Reform Judaism that was lived here in Scarsdale 50 or even 20 years ago is
not the Reform Judaism that is lived here today. We also know that the Reform Judaism
of today will not be the Reform Judaism of future generations. This is how Judaism has
been and this is how Judaism should be. The Babylonian Talmud recounts a fanciful
legend in which Moses visits the academy of Rabbi Akiva, although they lived nearly
1500 years apart. Moses’s time travel resulted in his bewilderment. He sat in Akiva’s
class and the lesson on Judaism made no sense to him. The Judaism of Akiva was so
different from that of Moses that it was unrecognizable to him. Reform is not new to
Judaism. Rabbinic Judaism was a profound reform from Biblical Judaism. Moses is
7
regarded as the greatest teacher of Torah, Rabbeinu, our teacher par excellence. Akiva
is understood in rabbinic lore, to be second to Moses, and yet the two of them taught
and lived utterly different versions of Judaism. It was not until a student asked Akiva,
“How do you know what you are teaching?” that Moses found meaning. Akiva’s
response to the student was, halacha l’Moshe miSinai, it is a law of Moses from Sinai.
Even though Moses himself did not understand Akiva’s Judaism, he accepted Akiva’s
word that his Judaism derived from Moses. If we believe that there are links between
Moses, Akiva and us then we are legitimate and authentic expressions of Judaism.
How do we complete a sentence that begins with the words, ‘I am a Reform Jew
because’? We can stand on the shoulders of Avraham Avinu and Abraham Geiger,
Israel who wrestled with God and Israel Jacobson and even Edmond Fleg. But we
cannot hide behind them. We each decide where we stand and with whom. I am proud
and honored to stand here and now to proclaim that I am a Reform Jew because
Reform Judaism began when Judaism began and to stay alive, Judaism must strive to
balance tradition and innovation, authenticity and creativity. Here I feel safe and at
home. I hope the same is true for you.
Ani Ma’amin – This I believe
8