DECISION MAKING in PROGRESSIVE JUDAISM John D

D 602 DECISION MAKING IN PROGRESSIVE JUDAISM John D. Rayner Encounter with Modernity There is only a limited extent to which we are called upon to make decisions, since most were made for us before we arrived on the scene, and we simply go along with them. Of course, the extent varies from person to person. Some people are more inclined than others to question past assumptions and rules of behaviour. It also varies from period to period. There are times in history when the conditions of life change so drastically that they require a paradigm shift in previously accepted ways of fhinking and acting. In the history of Judaism, one such time was the first century, which saw the destruction of the Temple, the end of the Second Commonwealth, the dispersion of our people, and the rise of Christianity. Since then there have been other major upheavals, but none as significant for our purpose as the Emancipation: not only because it changed the political and social conditions of Jewish life but also, and chiefly, because it brought us face to face with modern European culture. European culture, we have to remember, had undergone a huge transformation in consequence of the Renaissance, the Reformation, the rise of Humanism, of Secularism, and of Modern Science, particularly cosmology, biology and history, including biblical history. For the sake of simplicity, let us call this modern European culture ‘modemity’ and speak of our delayed encounter with it: delayed because the three centuries during which the transformation took place correspond to the Ghetto period of Jewish history Responses to Modernity To this delayed encounter with modernity Jews could and did respond in seven different ways. One way was to reject modernity. That was and is the way of ultra-Orthodoxy, whose founding father was the Chatam Sofer (1762-1839) and whose motto may be said to be his famous pun mm 10 "non mm, that "anything new is forbidden by the Torah”. Another way was to say yes to modernity, but on the understanding that Judaism had nothing to learn from it and hence no cause to allow itself to be modified by it; in other words, to keep Judaism and modernity in wggerfight comparjcments. That was and is the way of Modern Orthodoxy, founded by SQJp§on RaphaeyI-Iirsch (1808-1888) with his ‘ motto, rm 11": up rmn. A third way was to allow Judaism to become modified by modernity, but as little as possible and in far as only so the impersonal‘lforces 95 hjsmry brought change about, as it were, of their own accord. That was the‘way pf the “positive—historical school', founded by Zacharias Frankel (1801-1875), and is today the way of Conservative and Masorti Judaism. A fourth way was to take positive steps to bring about an integration of Judaism with modernity. That was and is the way of Progressive Judaism, to which we shall return. A fifth way was to side-step the problem by retreating into Academia, where Judaism was an object of study rather than a way of life, and therefore no practical decisions needed to be made. That is still the way of many Jewish academics who, in their ivory towers, keep aloof from Jewish communal life. A sixth way was to turn from Judaism as a religion to a mostly secular Hebrew or Yiddish national culture, in short Haskalah, and ultimately to Zionism. In the State of Israel individuals can think and do what they like about modernity, without either their Israeli citizenship or their Jewish identity being affected. A final way, in more senses than one, was to abandon Judaism altogether and embrace Christianity or some secular ideology such as Marxism. So these are the seven possible responses to modernity: rejection, co-existence, adualism,‘integration, academicism, Zionism, and apostasy. It is the way of integration that we need to explore. Evaluation of Modernity The early Reformers evidently saw modernity - or, more precisely, modernity minus Christianity u as something wholly to be welcomed. They embraced it uncritically. In retrospect, that was a mistake. For not everything about modernity is to be applauded. Among other things, it brought forth Romanticism, Fascism, Materialism, Marxism, and Colonialism. Paradoxically, therefore, it produced both an individualism that devalued the community and a collectivism that devalued the individual. Positively, however, modernity meant above all a spirit of free inquiry; placing truth above tradition and conscience above dogma; individual autonomy; toleration of diversity; democracy; equal rights for citizens of different races and religions, and for men and women; and social justice. And to be fair to the Reformers, it was chiefly these positive values inherent in modernity that they espoused and sought to integrate with their Judaism: values which, moreover, are to some extent rooted in Judaism itself. There is, for instance, freedom of speculation in Jewish tradition on its aggadic side. There is a democratic impulse discernible in the Prophets’ critique of monarchy, in the institution of the Council of Elders, and in the governance of the Synagogue. And there is a clear tendency gradually to raise the status of women. Modernity merely pointed to the need to carry these trends forward towards their logical conclusion. Therefore the integration the Reformers sought was not between two mutually hostile or incompatible value systems but two similar and converging ones. Nor is that surprising when you consider what James Parkes once wrote, that "the Jews were Europeans before the Europeans were Europeans”; in other words, it was Hebraism, albeit largely through Christianity, which made Europe what it became when it ceased to be pagan. The question, then, is how the Reform movement set about this task of integration. Reform in Germany — — As we all know, it was started in Germany as well as other countries by Jewishly educated lay men and women with a single agenda: to modernise Jewish worship in the hope of stemming the drift away from the Synagogue. To this end they took what seemed to them the obvious steps: they shortened the services, conducted them partly in the vernacular, gave regular sermons, likewise in the vernacular, introduced choral singing with organ accompaniment, and allowed men and women to sit together. They instituted these reforms in the belief that the situation demanded them and that they were Jewishly legitimate. Were they Jewishly legitimate? Well, yes, if one disregards the principle of the sovereignty of mm, which could indeed be invoked to prohibit any innovation. But given a reasonably liberal interpretation of the Halachah, it was not difficult to justify in its terms alrl; the reforms so far mentioned. Fpr instance, from the Mishnah until Shneur Zalman of Lyady’s Shulchan Aruch ha-Rav, published posthumously in 1814, halachic literature consistently permitted prayer in the vernacular. And Leopold Zunz (1794-1886), in his Die Gottesdienstlichen Vortrz'ige der laden (1832) had no difficulty in proving that the vernacular semen was merely a revival of an ancient Jewish practice. Indeed, already in 1818 one of the Reformers (Eliezer Liebermann) had elicited from four leading rabbis, including Aaron Chorin (1766-1844) of Hungary, a halachic approbation of their innovations. This was published under the title P137! rm: and confirmed them in their belief that they had acted with ’shining righteousness’, But two things happened to change the situation. One was the publication in 1919 of man ‘13"! m, a volume of responsa in which 22 rabbis of the old school, led by the Chatam Sofer, roundly denounced the reforms, with special reference to the newly founded Hamburg Temple. According to them, it was absolutely forbidden to pray in any language other than Hebrew, to change the text of the liturgy by a single word, or to play a musical instrument on Shabbat. This led to ’The Battle of the Proof Texts’, as Jakob Petuchowski called it (Pruyerbook Reform in Europe, Chapter 5; for a fuller account see Alexander Guttmann, The Struggle over Reform in Rabbinic Literature) in which the Reform leaders, although still only learned laymen, gave as well as they got. The other new factor was the emergence of a new generation of university-educated rabbis who not only, like Aaron Chorin, sympathised with the nascent Reform movement, but actively championed it and took over its leadership: men like Abraham Geiger (1810- 1874), to mention only the greatest of them. These rabbis did two things. First, they compiled prayerbooks. Admittedly, the lay founders of the Hamburg Temple had already done that in 1819 and again in 1841. But now almost every Reform rabbi produced a prayerbook for his own community, and each one involved confronting controversial issues such as the Return to Zion, the ‘ Rebuilding of the Temple, etc. In other words, each one involved decision making. Secondly, they convened rabbinic conferences in which, with like-minded colleagues, they debated a much broader agenda than merely the cosmetic improvement of synagogue services: an agenda which included, for instance, Sabbath and Festival observance, marriage and divorce, burial and mourning. It was at these conferences that many of the decisions of Progressive Judaism were made, and they revealed a broad consensus on the historical, halachic and theological . issues involved. Therefore, to see Progressive Iudaism’s decision-making process at work, one has to read the proceedings of these conferences. It was at the Frankfort Conference in 1845 that a great debate took place about the use of the vernacular. The question was unfortunately worded. If it has been whether prayer in the vernacular was permissible, or whether the continued use of Hebrew was nevertheless desirable, everybody would have agreed. But the question was whether Hebrew was "objectively necessary”; in other words, whether Judaism was totally dependent on it; and this elicited a negative vote which prompted Zacharias Frankel to walk out and found his positive-historical school.

Load more