Paradigms for Contemporary Reconstructionism BY RICHARD HIRSH This article is dedicated to my current and mitment to a vision of history that former students at the Reconstructionist culminated in the arrival of the Mes- Rabbinical College, whose probing ques- siah. As the credibility of each of these tions, perceptive analyses, and principled mythic components was called in to positions have helped me to define and question in the open society of Amer- refine the paradigms under discussion. ica, the taken-for-granted affirmation of traditional Judaism was diminished. hen Mordecai Kaplan set And one consequence among many was out to write Judaism as a that patterns of common Jewish ritual W Civilization, he wanted behavior soon dissolved. to create a contemporary rationale for Jewish identification, commitment and Kaplan’s Context, and Ours continuity. Like many Jewish thinkers of the modern period, Kaplan assumed Reconstructionism as defined by that the fundamental issue was one of Kaplan was a response to a specific ideology or concept, i.e., that without community (the American Jewish something credible to replace the community) at a specific time (the supernatural assumptions of the pre- 1920s-1930s) and a specific profile modern tradition, there would be no (immigrants to a degree, but even more basis on which to build a contemporary so to first- and second-generation Jews Jewish life. born in the United States). When we The pre-modern Jewish myth of look at the 21st-century Jewish com- origins included: a conception of a munity, comprised now primarily of creator God with whom personal inter- third, fourth and even fifth genera- action was possible; an understanding tion American Jews, and increasingly of the Jewish people as God’s chosen populated by non-Jews married to or community, whose origins and as- partnered with Jews, we find that the sured continuity came through divine questions, concerns and needs are quite intervention; a faith in the Torah and different than those of the audience halakha as being divinely revealed, for whom Kaplan wrote Judaism as a authoritative and binding; and a com- Civilization. Rabbi Richard Hirsh is the Executive Director of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association, and was Editor of The Reconstructionist from 1996-2006. The views expressed here are the personal views of the author and do not represent the RRA. The Reconstructionist Spring 006 • 5 Adaptations prior to Kaplan were as they try to integrate, often for the largely cosmetic: on the analogy of a first time, Jewish practices into their home, some thought you could simply spiritual lives. It is not so much an redecorate (classical Reform’s adaptation ideology of Judaism that they seek as an of Protestant civility for what soon be- approach to maneuvering through the came known as “worship”); or move the rich but complex resources of Jewish furniture around (korbanot [sacrifices] tradition that can avoid the “all-or- to the basement, the prophets to the nothing” polarities of secularism and front parlor); some thought adding on a Orthodoxy. room would help (political Zionism). We in the Reconstructionist move- Only Kaplan got it right, because ment, and especially Reconstructionist he was the only one who realized that rabbis, have an opportunity to contrib- the problem was not in the paint or ute something unique to this process, wallpaper, in the furniture, or in reno- because our approach to ritual decision vations. He saw that the problem was making stands apart from both the the foundation. Unless the foundation Reform and Conservative options. But got repaired or rebuilt, anything resting we rarely articulate how we differ. Even on top would not be sustained. more crucially, we rarely take enough steps back to get the bigger picture, Building on the Foundation and see the context within which we are engaged in the reconstruction of Part of rebuilding the foundation for Judaism. Kaplan was the creation of a naturalistic In this article, therefore, I want to paradigm to replace the inadequate and analyze the moment in Jewish history implausible supernatural paradigm of where we find ourselves, and to seek pre-modern Judaism. That work having analogies from the past that can guide been done by the early generations of us through the present. I then want to Reconstructionist leaders, our task is propose specific ways of approaching different. Building on Kaplan’s foun- tradition that can be responsive to cur- dation, the challenge for our time is to rent needs within that context. While create pragmatic paradigms of Jewish much of what is under discussion here living that are rooted in conceptual applies specifically to the work of Re- consistency. constructionist rabbis, the paradigms Kaplan sought to create an ideol- described are relevant to the work of ogy that would sustain and support the movement as a whole. patterns of Jewish living and religious observance that could more-or-less be I. First Paradigm: Living in taken for granted in his time. We face “Mishna Time” a different problem, insofar as familiar- ity with such traditional patterns has By way of identifying our context, I dissolved. We work with Jews seeking suggest we are living in times more akin an approach to ritual decision making to those of the Mishna than of the Ge- 6 • Spring 006 The Reconstructionist mara and the later codes of Jewish law. cited in the Gemara reopen discussions This circumscribes our options, defines and even make changes to conclusions our choices, and requires us to assess cited previously. what we can and cannot accomplish Although the short-term resolution under such circumstances. of any number of issues of Jewish law When the second Temple in Je- was a major achievement, what the rusalem was destroyed in 70 CE, an Mishna accomplished was more signifi- already-fractious Jewish community cant than rulings on halakhic questions. was thrown into disarray. The religious The Mishna was able to organize issues, task of the moment was to organize the arrange prior and current opinions, conversations that needed to happen and reconstruct the grammar, vocabu- in order to reconstruct the discourse lary and syntax of the Jewish religious of Jewish religious life — to try and conversation. Put differently, what the make order out of chaos. Many of Mishna reflects is the religious discourse the discussions, debates and decisions of the Jewish people (or, perhaps more that occurred in the first and second narrowly, of the rabbinic leaders) in a centuries of the Common Era found transitional period following a collec- their way into the first authoritative tive trauma, in which the search for written code to emerge after the crisis stability was crucial. of 70 CE — the Mishna. The rabbinic leaders of that time faced the daunting Diversity Dominates tasks of imposing order on chaos, and sifting and sorting conflicting opinions, The period of the Mishna was char- practices and principles. It is not an acterized not only by halakhic but by accident that we speak about the six theological and ideological differences “orders” of the Mishna. as well. Our time is characterized by While in many cases the authori- many of the same kinds of debates. ties cited in the Mishna were able to Since the explosion of Jews into moder- reach consensus on matters of Jewish nity, we have been struggling to make law, including ritual practice, in other order out of chaos. The 19th century cases the discussions were inconclusive, rabbis/scholars thought they could do with differing opinions and procedures that through theological and ritual re- cited when no definitive positions vision as seen in what became Reform emerged. Sometimes the emergence of Judaism and in the wissenschaft move- answers (what in our terms we might ment that incubated what would later call policies or procedures) had to wait emerge as Conservative Judaism. for different and more stable times But even as the Jewish people was and sets of circumstances; hence the trying simultaneously to rethink its Gemara and the later codes. And in collective identity so as to be able to other cases, despite the halakha of a embrace the option of civil enfranchise- given issue seeming to have been settled ment and to rethink its religious ideol- in the Mishna, the rabbinic authorities ogy in support of that effort, circum- The Reconstructionist Spring 006 • 7 stances dictated that stability would be alongside the traumas, we have faced ephemeral. The Dreyfus affair, the rise unprecedented circumstances, includ- of political Zionism, the world wars, ing the creation of the first Jewish the Shoah and the establishment of Me- homeland/political entity in two mil- dinat Yisrael are just a few of the things lennia, and the impact of intermarriage that have kept us in Mishna-time. We within our own North American Jewish continue to live in a period of readjust- community. ment that lacks consensus, and where The first and second centuries of the diversity dominates. Common Era were also similar to our Recognizing and accepting the time in that competing ideologies and larger context in which we are doing strategies for survival were very much our work is essential if we are to have a in play. Jews in the early centuries of realistic sense of what can and cannot the Common Era could choose from a be accomplished in such moments in variety of what we might anachronisti- Jewish history. Rabbis often counsel cally call “denominations.” There were individuals who have suffered a recent the “fundamentalists” (the Sadducees) loss or undergone a major life transition whose reliance on scripture alone made to allow for the necessary time to adjust, them hostile to the emergence of rab- and to avoid dramatic or definitive de- binic halakha.