A JOURNAL of Jeilylsh Responslblllty Castor Oil Judaism
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m 251493 A JOURNAL OF JEIlYlSH RESPONSlBlLlTY April 28, 1995 28 Nisan 5755 Sh'ma Cekhuting 25 yeun of &vmiiy and dialogrre REfOrM judaism: a call to the center CliffordE. Librach Questions of After a long period (some forty years) nity. For despite the sometimes heroic during which the political passions and ideological and philosophical straw houses religious identity priorities of two dominating personalities which have been built by Reform Juda- (Rabbis Maurice Eisendrath and Alexander ism's most conscientious thinkers, includ- animate much of Schindler) were regnant in Reform Juda- ing Jakob J. Petuchowski, z "I, and Eugene ism, the torch is about to be passed not Borowitz, autonomy--cut in the street to the Jewish world only to a new generation, but to a new the principle that "you" are more impor- ideology as well. With the expected eleva- tant than anything else--is having its re- today. Not just tion of Rabbi Eric Yoffie to the presidency venge. "Covenant theology" has been of the Union of American Hebrew Con- unable to stand up against the Big Bad gregations the question beckons: what Wolf of popular fashion, political seduc- individuals, but shall be the character of the new ideology? tion and cultural conformity. To be sure, the mere matter of style movements as will set a new tone. Rabbi Yoffie will not Castor Oil Judaism remind people of Rabbis Schindler or Ask any Hillel director what happens Well, Eisendrath. No less committed to the when "Reform kids" are assembled for the political "social action" agenda of his purpose of "connecting" them to the cen- Herein, an inter= predecessors, Rabbi Yoffie's presidency tral core of Jewish behavior, tradition and will nevertheless display a reduced swag- practice. Here's the common answer: dialogue over ger and a lessened desire to stroke (or, at they seek to recreate the location- and least, to stroke those who stroke) the time-specific ruach of camp and conclave, the future of Rem levers of real political power. the neo-chassidic kitsch which their mem- form Judaism, ory records as the only Judaism they When Our Best Efforts Fail know. Realizing that camp was what they But what of the "Judaism" of Reform did as little kids, they discover the old Judaism? There, in calibrating the swing lesson: you can't go home again. Frus- back to the vital center, will be for Eric Yoffie the pith in the pendulum. Rabbi Schindler used to claim that "we are the Judaism of the future", showing then-current demographic data revealing Conservative Judaism to be a one-genera- tion affair. It was true that Conservative Judaism was our upstream feeder. It is also true that we have been the river's mouth, spiIling the Jewish people into the vast and empty ocean of drifting moder- published by CLAL - The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership trated because they are unskilled, Uninitiated, and intimi- It should come home to the vital center of the Jewish dated by those who know only slightly more than they, people, and stop concentrating on the religious and these "Reform kiils" slink away. cultural marginalia, those on the edge of the mainstream. Why, you might ask, don't these "Reform kids" reach In American culture, it is the white male who has felt left back instead to their respective synagogue experiences? out and marginalized by his own culture. In Reform The answer is simple: our synagogues have become Judaism, the juggernaut of outreach has, quite simply, centers of yet another Judaism: Pediatric Judaism, or marginalized the core. And the incessant feminist attacks what Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman calls "Castor Oil (which are in fact misdirected, intellectually intended for Judaism"--a Judaism that you take until you realize that an otherwise distant Orthodoxy) have not yielded a more your parents get dong fine without the same medicine. enlightened theology or intense spirituality. Rather, they Yes, there are wonderful anecdotal vignettes about have tended to politicize every single synagogue service synagogue-based Shabbat morning Torah study and family and every pass at traditional texts. education kallut. But the unvarnished fact will out: our synagogues have, by and large, become High Holy Day Return To Skills And Discipline pulpits and Bar Mitzvah mills. It should come home to the liturgical center, restoring the Amidah the center of the prayer experience, restoring Return To The Core as the full character and text of Sh 'ma yisrael, and restoring The Reform rabbinic response to this condition of Jewish the linchpin dynamic of public/private, worship/prayer, malaise should not be the demeaning and self-defeating unisodalone creative tension which has accounted for the behavior of the rudef, mindlessly chasing the peripheral and vanishing American Jew into every alley of popular style and whim. It should be to return, with the slow deliberation of a tall ship, to the Jewish function of the exploration and elevation of transcendence, to a Judaism resolved to tor Nina Beth Cardin inspire awe (not ephemeral political enthusiasm) in its believers and instill dignity in their lives. Ours is a system of mitzvut, of privileges and particular opportunities to do God's will in the midst of an imperfect world. Its meta- phoric pantheon of chosenness, of revelation, of Torah and of the celebration of rabbinic disputation is the foundation of its integrity. Calendar, family, continuity, morality, sacred inheritance and discipline all should unite in the discrete circle of Judaism's character, whether Reform or Orthodox. The purpose of our lives remains the awesome question as we face the yawning abyss. It is God-centered Judaism which has and can continue to provide the whiff of an answer. Thus should Reform Judaism come home to the center. In order to be an ideology which adherents can embrace with passion, it must become one which enemies can reject with respect. It cannot strive to please all parts of a world which, in some quarters, barely hides its con- tempt. It should come home to the political center, and stop its ever-awkward lurch to the increasingly peripheral left. You do not have to be liberal to be Jewish, and feelings (along with slogans and burhper stickers) do not a defensi- ble political philosophy make. I............ I............ ,........................*..........-.~................-...-........................ CLIFFORD E. LIBRACH is Rabbi of Temple SInaD in Sharon, MA. 2 Sh'ma 251493 historic power of the synagogue experience, and which vative on the fence, and Orthodox on the barricades? Reform has by-and-large abandoned. Some, I am certain, will see the demise of Jewish de- It should come home to the center of religious educa- nominationalism as a threat of frightening consequences. tion, where synagogue behavior is frankly acknowledged Old religious bureaucracies never die, they just fade to be a skill, to be learned and mastered; where adults are away. If Reform Judaism indeed returns to capture the peeled off to learn as adults and not just as parents of center, and there, sometime in the next century, collapses children; where the hearts of children are drawn to with Conservative Judaism into a loose non-Orthodox Judaism by the curiosity, intensity and attraction of their confederation, a broad amalgam of nearly autonomous parents, and not the other way around (which, as a serious congregational affiliations, the bureaucracies will whine idea, has failed). and suffer. But I will sing with Am Yisrael: Glory, It should come home to mitzvot, to obligation, to glory, halleluyah! ought-ness. It is a privilege to be a rabbi, not a right. We And so the tall ship of Reform, corrected mid-course should expect exemplary conduct, not only in terms from its lure to the siren song of political fashion, can defined by secular standards of "clergy" behavior, but in return to its port and its flock, now surely smaller, but terms of historic Judaism. just as surely hoping not to be abandoned. For the It should acknowledge, through its rabbinical conduits, remnant of its people, it can yet be the ballast against the that Judaism is ultimately counter-cultural, and that a "feel breakers, navigating by dint of commitment and faith, good" religion of convenience, constantly conforming to sailing--even against the tide--toward the distant mythic that which is culturally normative and acceptable, is a shores of redemption. CI religion in the last stages of its life. For it is American culture and our own passive acceptance of the image of the order of descending intensity (from Orthodox to Reform) which has put Reform on the edge of insignifi- cance. For our own constituency of affiliates, we have become a vacuous, no-demand, no-standards, no-require- ments, no-guilt do-good enterprise of sloppy sentimental- forth ity: a liberal Protestant Christianity without Jesus. Evely Laser Shlensky A Re-centering Of Israel Old centers of American Jewish life have frayed and new ones are still forming. The lot of the liberal Jew ever will be Finally, it should come home to Israel, which must be the to contend with frayed centers on the reforming path. The object of a new paradigm. The antique of Zionism, espe- contending is both a nuisance and essential to the creative, cially an American Zionism dominated by an attitude of liberal response. It be also a blessing. charity for the poor cousins whose purse strings we must can Amidst the re-ordering, Rabbi Clifford E. Librach notices control for its own good: that Zionism is dead. In its place currents in Reform Judaism that cause to yearn for a must emerge a new symbiosis in which Israel is our educa- him ship to steer us back to the center.