Visions for a Future Gordon Tucker MY YEARS AS a rabbinical student at Jew- argument for why all of this is crucial for the ish Theological Seminary (1971-1975) coincid- Jewish world and not just an eccentricity of Taube ed, as they did for so many of my contempo- rabbis and others in an inner circle of sorts. New raries, with a “critical awakening,” by which The ideas that follow need urgently to Visions I mean a fi rst serious encounter with what it become part of the agenda of the leaders of New Visions is an means to understand religion historically. For the Conservative Movement. These include opportunity to think those of us (nearly all of us) who had grown up Judith Hauptman’s urging that the comple- imaginatively about with the Hertz Torah commentary, which had mentary relationship of halakhah and aggadah issues of relevance to relentlessly polemicized against any source- be taken seriously and made to have practical the Jewish community. critical approach to the text of the Torah, this effect, Daniel Greyber’s reminder that we are a It is generously encounter brought with it the all-too-natural religious movement that must make the pres- funded by the Taube thrill of tasting the forbidden fruit. In fact, ence of God and the service of God palpable, Foundation for Jewish we were acculturated in those days — if not and Aaron Brusso’s plea for an unapologetic Life and Culture. exactly by design, then certainly as the effect argument for the nobility of belief in the on- of well-worn institutional habits — to revel in going human role in revelation — what I our ability to make committed, traditional hal- would call the “dignity of history,” the stage akhic observance (in those days, the Seminary on which God, after all, chose to create and had only a separate-seating synagogue) coex- place all of us. ist with the cutting-edge and often iconoclastic Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote (in his in- ways of reading sacred texts that we drank up troduction to the second volume of Torah min from our teachers. It was heady and supremely Hashamayim): “Is it really appropriate to say energizing. We never quite put it this way, but ‘all is well with me’ when contempt outside in effect we were smugly asserting superior- the fold and indifference within take their ity over Orthodoxy and Reform. Here was the toll, so that there is no peace? Just look, and brash unspoken logic: we were more authentic you’ll see how powerless we have become to than Reform because we were committed to prevent wholesale loss of faith.” Powerless, traditional Jewish behavioral norms, and we that is, unless we articulate the power that were more authentic than Orthodoxy because our ideas have always had, far beyond the we did not accept, fetish-like, beliefs about the rarefi ed atmosphere of the academy. It is im- text and about revelation that could not stand portant that Conservative Judaism succeed, Gordon Tucker is up to honest historical inquiry. That was our living as we do in a world in which religious Senior Rabbi of Temple own quirky version of the phenomenon of fervor slides all too easily into fundamental- Israel Center in White Conservative Judaism defi ning itself by what isms that deny history, that demote human Plains, NY, Adjunct it was not. It served the self-righteous needs responsibility in favor of divine intervention, Assistant Professor of of young, energetic students eager to explore and that promote linear visions of truth that Jewish Philosophy at new intellectual frontiers (and it always feels ultimately dismiss and even demonize others. the Jewish Theological good to feel superior). But it was quirky none- Heschel sensed this a half century ago, and Seminary, and a long- theless, and it is hardly an enduring formula the hour for exercising the leadership that will time member of the for how to defi ne an approach to Jewish study, focus Conservative Judaism’s powerful ideas Rabbinical Assembly’s observance, and action in the world. and resources (both here and in Israel) is very Committee on Jewish Since healthy religious movements cannot much upon us. Law and Standards. be built on the sorts of things that motivate He recently published a “wiseguy” students, it is no surprise that many translation of Abraham are currently feeling an ebb in Conservative Joshua Heschel’s Judaism’s “biorhythm.” Thus, the common The next page introduces a series of three-volume Hebrew denominators uniting so many of the pieces “Visions for Conservative Judaism” work Torah min offered here and on the Sh’ma website (www. offered by the movement’s rabbis. Hashamayim, titled shma.com): (1) our lamentable failure to put The pieces begin here and continue Heavenly Torah. forward a positive vision of who we are; (2) on our website (www.shma.com), the need to live out such a vision in practice; along with many more essays by February 2006 (3) the need for an aspirational mission for Adar 5766 rabbis and other movement leaders. To subscribe: 877-568-SHMA the future; and (4) the critical necessity of an www.shma.com 17