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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