Where is God in The Reform Movement? Rosh Hashanah 5774 Prepared by Rabbi Philip Bazeley

During my junior year as a student at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst I decided to preemptively plan for getting “senioritis.” I knew it was going to happen so on this assumption I enrolled in extra classes. That way when “senioritis” was going to strike, I would only have to take classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Now because of the rigorous course load I had already enrolled in I decided that it would be all right if I signed up for just one “easy A” class. I spent days scanning the course register looking for the perfect candidate, and then I found it: Introduction to Forestry. The course description included phrases like, “Learn how to find nature everywhere,” and “regular nature walks are available for extra credit.” How hard could this possibly be? Well, after the first week I had my answer when my mind went numb trying to determine the ph level of various soils. I had to do this in an attempt to select the soil sample that had the greatest probability at being the most viable for a Maple Tree sapling. To be honest with you I’m not sure if that last statement actually made real scientific sense, but it’s how I remember it. At the end of this two week endeavor the professor walked over to me at the end of class and asked me what my major was. After I told him legal studies he sighed a great breath of relief and said, “Good, that makes more sense, you probably want to think about switching courses before the add/drop period expires.” And so I did. Instead I enrolled in Jewish Studies 101: Intro to the Jewish People. I kept my mouth shut about an emerging desire to apply to Rabbinical School or the fact that I went to a Hebrew Day School from 3rd through 8th Grade in Flatbush, Brooklyn. I certainly didn’t mention that there I studied Chumash with a Lubavich Rabbi, gained a grounding in , and knew more about the ins and outs of and wrapping tefilin than any of my friends. While I did manage to squeak out an A in the class, it wasn’t because the course was easy, because it wasn’t, it was because I was fascinated by what I was learning. In fact, all of my previous knowledge was irrelevant. Never before had I studied Judaism like we had that semester. We studied the Bible not for spiritual enlightenment, but rather for academic

1 enlightenment. Instead of searching our texts for sacred “Truths” we took a literary approach to how this document served as a basis for a people’s foundation. While it was an interesting class, it felt like it was missing something. It was lacking spirit, soul - it was lacking God. We spent the entire semester talking about the Jewish people and Judaism’s growth and development, but not once did we talk about God. At least not about God in any sort of theological manner. As far as the course was concerned God was just another character, an important one of course, but really no different from Moses or Maimonidies. Now, Fast-forward a couple of years and I’m getting ready for my final year at the Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Theology. It was the fall semester of 2011 and in a few months my thesis will be due and I’ll be boarding a plane to Cincinatti for a fateful first meeting with Rabbi Miller. I know that with my thesis and preparing for placement that I’ll be very busy, so why not register for an “easy A course.” And as I scanned the course guide I found the perfect one: “What is Reform Judaism?” “Perfect,” I thought, “I’m about to get ordained, how hard could this course possibly be?” Well, just like Intro to Forestry, we were all thrown for a loop. Our first assignment was, as a group, to formulate a statement answering the question: what is Reform Judaism? Well after about 3 weeks of going back and forth and word smithing, and argueing and debating and debating the debating we finally reached a concensus. We showed it to our Professor, Dr. Rabbi Carole Balin. She looked at it and then looked at us and smirked and said, “I think you left something out. I’ll give you a hint: It’s three letters long and begins with the letter ‘G’ and ends with the letter ‘D’ and if you’re dyslexic you might accidentally say, ‘In Dog we trust.’” Oops. Here we were a bunch or rabbinical students about to get ordained and we forgot about God. The truth is we didn’t really forget about God. We just had no idea how to define God in a way that was precise enough but also vague enough to encompass how Reform Jews think about God. I’m sure that if I took a poll of everyone in this room and asked you to share what you think about God, not one of you would have the same vision. There would be some overlap I’m sure, for example the notion of one God, but there would probably be more differences than similarities. The truth is that it is hard to talk about God in a Reform setting, because you need to consider all of the various visions we might have of God and we have a broad range of belief. On one end we have the vision of God we find in the Unetaneh Tokef

2 where God ordains who shall live and who shall die. In the metaphorical middle we have an incorporeal God that flows through the universe that gives life to all. And at the other end, no God at all, or perhaps the belief in the lack of God’s existence. Because of this we left God out of our definition of Reform Judaism because we really didn’t want to engage in the debate of “do you need to believe in God to be a Reform Jew?” The truth is that our tent of Reform Judaism is very wide when it comes to allowing in God theologies. So large in fact, that in the Central Conference of American Rabbis’ latest Statement of Reform Judaism, the presence of God is more subtle than it’s ever been in the past. The CCAR is the conference that most if not all Reform Rabbis are associated with and for the last couple of years they have been trying to update our movement’s vision statement. If you take a look at all of our denomination’s statements on God from 1885 till today you will notice something very interesting. First God goes from having a definitive gender to being neutral. And goes from being a definitive concept that has a firm hand in the formation of our world, to being a “God-idea” with very loose definitions of how God acts, if God acts at all. 1 In the latest version, simply titled “Reform Jewish Vision Statement,” do we find something very different. Instead of a section titled, “God,” as pervious ones did, it is simply entitled, “Our Faith.” The phrasing of the God section was chosen specifically to have a very wide tent and the entire section is short and reads as follows: “Reform Judaism maintains faith in the Covenant between God and Israel as expressed over the generations in the teachings of an ever-evolving and tradition. Stirred by the mandate of tikkun olam, Reform Judaism seeks to be the living expression of those teachings. It welcomes all who seek Jewish connection to pursue a life of meaning as inspired by the Divine and proclaimed in the truths grasped by Jewish teachers throughout time.” 2 I like this statement because it addresses the fact that many of us may define our connection to God at times as, “it’s complicated.” What this statement does is change the focus from defining how we see God, to how we enact our relationship with God. But at the heart of it, it acknowledges a holy connection between God and Israel. So it beckons the question, do you need to believe in God to be a Reform Jew?

1 Various platforms adopted by the CCAR which include The Pittsburgh Platform (1885), The Columbus Platform (1937), Reform Judaism: A Centenary Perspective (1976),The Miami Platform (1997), A Statement of Principles for Reform Judaism (1999). 2 Central Conference of American Rabbis, Reform Jewish Vision Statement, 2013

3 Perhaps it’s in the eyes of the beholder. That if you self define as a Reform Jew you are one, but is that true? Is our new statement on what it means to be a Reform Jew postscriptive or prescriptive? Is it defining what Reform Jews believe or what it thinks Reform Jews ought to believe? Do you really need to believe in God? I think that that’s a tough question because I don’t believe that faith in God is a binary yes or no thing. We all go through shades of belief at times. However, despite going through a rough patch in your relationship with God, the relationship is still there and it can change over time. I believe that in order to be a Reform Jew you need to have a relationship with God, even if that relationship is on shaky grounds. Each one of us has a different relationship, one that cannot be broadly defined. We are all praying out of the same prayer book, but the prayers have different meanings for each one of us. For some of us the words in our Machzor are hard fact and truth, for others its allegory, and for others still it is a tool to help peruse an elusive God in an attempt to gain a better understanding of what you believe in. When I went to Hillel Academy, that Hebrew Day School I mentioned earlier, it was easy to speak about God, and nobody questioned God’s existence, at least not out loud. While Hillel Academy was in title a pluralistic school, it really aligned itself with what I call “Classical Conservative Judaism,” which is really how I describe the Conservative Movement from the 70s, 80s, and parts of the 90s rather than what the movement is doing as a whole today. There we spoke about God. We spoke about God a lot. And a lot about what God demands of me. Also with what God cares about. God cares deeply about what I eat and what I wear. God will be angry if I wear leather shoes on the High Holy Days, or if I wear a suit made of and (shatnez as its called is not allowed). As a fourth grader I knew that God would punish me harshly if I broke Passover early or if I did it by accident. My teachers at the day school seemed to know precisely what God cared about. But do we truly know what God cares about? They taught me very firmly that God was a man who sat in a royal throne and directly dictated how the world spun. That when my basement floods during a storm it’s because of what I did during my day or week or because my mezuzah wasn’t hung right. These, by the way were direct quotes from my teachers and I don’t mean to discount that theology either. For some that theology is very powerful, but for me it was harmful and perhaps what was so harmful about it was the fact that it was the only vision of God that I was offered, or that was acknowledged to be

4 acceptable, and because of that I was pushed away from God. That was not a God that I believe in and at the time I didn’t have the ability to find my own voice. Two weeks ago I met with a Bat Mitzvah candidate to talk about the D’var Torah she was writing. In it she wrote God as “G-d” and referred to God as “He” a lot. If she had told me that was her belief I would have left it alone, but from what I knew of this student, I had my doubts if it was. I asked her about it and after we spoke for a few minutes she looked up with me with some hesitation and asked me if it would be alright if she could call God something else. She asked if instead of writing G-d she could write the “Eternal One” because it made more sense to her. “He” certainly didn’t reflect her connection. A masculine God was not one that she believed in. Her D’var Torah by the way was phenomenal and spoke very wonderfully on what it means to keep faith when times are tough as the Israelites were experiencing it. I can’t wait to see the final edition. Being able to refer to God in different ways changes our understanding of who or what God is. Calling God different names changes how we identify with God: Parent; Sovereign; King; Queen; Teacher; Compassionate One; Spirit of The Universe. All of these have been added to our tradition as our understanding of God shifts throughout time. In truth, as our society changes and as how we approach modernity changes, our understanding of God evolves as well. Hence an evolution of God language and a change in how comfortable we are with what we call God. All of this is a reflection on our relationship with God. Over the last year we have had a Kollel program on faith, belief, and doubt. In it we wrestled with what it meant to have a God or God idea that evolved with us over the millennia just as it has over the last century and a half in the Reform movement. But we also asked what our individual vision of God means for each of us. For some of us our faith included a God that precisely dictated our behaviors. For others, our faith included a God that hovered through the world and divinely inspired our texts. For others still, our faith included the lack of God, but focused on the importance of our Jewish texts. All Reform Jews, all with different beliefs, and all with a relationship with God of one kind or another. I am glad that the new Statement speaks of the nature of God in terms of faith and the enactment of it, for it is in faith and how we enact it that we are able to stand together in the same tent. We each have our own image of God that reflects who we are and what we believe. This is our part of our people’s faith, but faith is more than just a belief structure. Faith calls us to

5 action. As Jews we are called to perform mitzvot . For some of us these mitzvot might include things like shatnez and kashrut . For others, as this latest statement includes, a call to tikun olam , social action. Our faith dictates to us action that goes beyond service attendance and listening to rabbis preach. Do you just speak about social equality while you are here around other like- minded individuals or do you petition and lobby your politicians? What do your business practices say about who you are as a Jew? Or how you comfort those in our society that are bereaved? These aren’t just things that we do that are between you and others, God is part of it too. Our faith is filled with teachings where God calls us to action and even if your relationship with God is not on firm ground, these behaviors came from that tradition. Unlike the vision of God that was given to me by Hillel Academy, my vision of God is one of God as a Spirit that hovers through our world and inspires us to be better individuals than we previously were. Therefore, I believe, that when I perform mitzvot in this world and when I perform actions of Tikkun Olam and acts of love and kindness, God is acting in this world through me. What does your understanding of God say about you? What are you driven to do in your life because of your faith? This High Holy Day season I want you to think about God and think about your faith. I want you to look through our program book and find the events and sessions in it that you think will help you wrestle with these questions but also satisfy what your faith asks of you. This year our Kollel program is investigating some interesting ethical issues such as: our tradition’s stance on money, politics, tattoos, torture, and bioethics. We have fascinating speakers from our Keepers of Jewish Excellence and various memorial lectures. All in addition to various social gatherings and our Anshe Emeth Consultation on Conscience. We come home to this building to study and to learn because as our understanding of God and Judaism expands so too does our understanding of how we are to act in this world. It’ll be a year of exploration, discovery, and action. One that I’m greatly interested in and I look forward to experiencing that exploration into our faith together with you. May your relflections on these Days of Awe and Remembrance lead you to a sweet and blessed year. Shannah Tovah

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