rhsermon5770

First Day Rosh Hashanah Sermon 5770

Rabbi Charles L. Arian

Beth Jacob Synagogue, Norwich, CT

A few months before we moved to Norwich, Keleigh and I attended the Bat Mitzvah of my cousin's daughter in a Reform temple in suburban Philadelphia. The rabbi and the cantor wore robes, most of the service was in English, and there was an organ playing. At one point Keleigh turned to me and whispered "it's just like a church." I responded that it wasn't, and Keleigh said, "yes it is." I said "no it's not" and Keleigh gave me a look. "Charles, I know. I grew up being taken by my Granna and Granddaddy to church. It's just like a church."

To which I responded "no, it's not. A church has better music."

As someone who was raised in a Reform temple and was originally ordained as a Reform rabbi, I am sensitive to this kind of thing. When I was growing up, most of my closest friends were members of the Conservative synagogue down the street from my Reform temple, and they or their parents would routinely make snide comments about my "church." It annoyed me to no end, especially when my family went to services every Friday night, I went to a Jewish summer camp, and I avoided pork, shellfish, and obvious mixtures of milk and meat. I was, in fact, more observant than many of my Conservative friends.

Having said that, there is a kernel of historical truth in the comparison of Reform services to church services. Reform Judaism started in Germany in the early 1800s primarily as liturgical, stylistic reform. In other words, the main thing the early Reformers wanted to change was the synagogue service. As the walls between Jews and Christians broke down in Germany, Christians began to ask their Jewish friends if they could come to services to see what they were like. But the Jews were often embarrassed to bring them.

The famous British diarist Samuel Pepys described a visit to a London synagogue in his diary entry of October 14, 1663, and it is worth quoting at some length:

"Thence home and after dinner my wife and I, by Mr. Rawlinson’s conduct, to the Jewish Synagogue: where the men and boys in their vayles, and the women behind a lattice out of sight; and some things stand up, which I believe is their Law, in a press to which all coming in do bow; and at the putting on their vayles do say something, to which others that hear him do cry Amen, and the party do kiss his vayle. Their service all in a singing way, and in Hebrew. And anon their Laws that they take out of the press are carried by several men, four or five several burthens in all, and they do relieve one another; and whether it is that every one desires to have the carrying of it, I cannot tell, thus they carried it round about the room while such a service is singing. And in the end they had a prayer for the King, which they pronounced his name in Portugall; but the prayer, like the rest, in Hebrew. But, Lord! to see the disorder, laughing, sporting, and no attention, but confusion in all their service, more like brutes than people knowing the true God, would make a man forswear ever seeing them more and indeed I never did see so much, or could have imagined there had been any religion in the whole world so absurdly performed as this."

Now of course from Pepys' description it's pretty clear that whether he knew it or not, he was observing the Simchat Torah service, which can indeed be a bit raucous and undisciplined. But even a typical Orthodox Shabbat service would probably have seemed strange to European Christian eyes. And so when German Jews, and later Jews in other countries, began to have Christian friends, they sought a style of worship that would seem less strange and exotic to their neighbors. They introduced prayers and a sermon in the language of the country. They shortened the service a bit, turned the reader's desk around so he was facing the congregation rather than the ark, used an organ to accompany the service, and introduced decorum. Everyone was to be on the same page, everyone was to stand at the same time or sit at the same time, and congregants were not supposed to be walking around and chatting during the services. Of course, if these elements make a synagogue just like a church, then Conservative synagogues are also just like churches. Which makes sense, bearing in mind that Conservative Judaism is not, as many believe, a split off from Orthodoxy. It is a split off from Reform, lead by rabbis who supported moderate changes but felt that the Reform leadership had gone too far.

It's fair to say that at the time the two movements separated, the Reform leadership had gone too far. The straw that broke the camel's back in the United States was the famous Treife Banquet of 1883. This legendary meal celebrated the first ordination of rabbis from the Hebrew Union College, and oysters, frog's legs, and shrimp were presented at a dinner to which many prominent American rabbis had been invited. Many of them hastily left in disgust, and the Jewish Theological Seminary, the fountainhead of Conservative Judaism, was founded later that same year.

The Treife Banquet, many historians believe, was actually planned without the knowledge of Hebrew Union College's founder and president, Isaac Mayer Wise. You may note that the school he founded was called Hebrew Union College and the congregational arm he founded was called the Union of American Hebrew Congregations. Wise was a moderate Reformer and he hoped to keep the different groups within American Judaism united in one larger body. But radical Reformers thought he was too conciliatory and wanted to force the traditionalists out, which they succeeded in doing with the Treife Banquet.

For the next 50 or 75 years, Reform Judaism was known largely for what it's adherents didn't do. They didn't keep kosher and they didn't pray in Hebrew and they didn't have Bar Mitzvahs. They didn't wear yarmulkes in their temples and in some temples, if you brought your own, you were asked -- or required -- to take it off. And they didn't support Zionism, feeling that, in the words of the Pittsburgh Platform of 1889, "We consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious community, and therefore expect neither a return to Palestine, nor a sacrificial worship under the sons of Aaron, nor the restoration of any of the laws concerning the Jewish state."

In the late 1930s, with Hitler in power in Germany and the Holocaust on the horizon, Reform Judaism reversed course and began to support Zionism. Soon after, certain traditional practices started reappearing in Reform temples. There was more Hebrew in the service, kippot were no longer fobidden though rarely required, pork and shellfish and meat-dairy mixtures were taken off the menu (though full kashrut was rarely observed), and Bar and Bat Mitzvahs were celebrated. Sometimes there were uneasy compromises. When I attended HUC in the mid-1980s, the cafeteria was not kosher but kosher meat was provided for those students and faculty who wished it. The cafeteria director was from an old-line Cincinnati Reform family and had no use or sympathy for kashrut. On more than one occasion she would tell me that a certain dish had been prepared using kosher meat, but when I went down the cafeteria line the head cook, Johnny Washington, a devout African-American Christian, would warn me not to eat it. Be that as it may, the availability of kosher meat -- and the fact that more and more students wanted it -- was definitely a change over the previous era known as Classical Reform.

In recent years there have been a lot of statements to the effect that there is no longer any difference between Reform and Conservative Judaism, and predicting the imminent demise of the Conservative movement. For example, in 2004, Rabbi Paul Menitoff, at the time the professional head of the Reform rabbinic association, published an article which argued that within several decades Conservative Jews likely will move either to the more liberal Reform movement or to the more traditional Orthodox world. The differences between the two movements will force this exodus, Menitoff argued, including the Conservative movement's opposition to rabbinic officiation at intermarriages; its ban on ordaining homosexual rabbis and on same-sex marriages (both of which have since been changed, by the way); and its opposition to patrilineal descent, all of which the Reform movement supports.

The Conservative movement may continue to attract those for whom Orthodoxy remains "too restrictive" and Reform "too acculturated," but a more likely outcome will be "the demise of the Conservative movement," Menitoff wrote."If the Conservative movement capitulates regarding these core differences between Reform and Conservative Judaism, it will be essentially obliterating the need for its existence," he wrote. "If, alternatively, it stands firm, its congregants will vote with their feet."

In other words, according to Rabbi Menitoff, Conservative Judaism can either become more like Reform, in which case there won't be any need for it; or it can persist in maintaining some of its core positions, in which case there will be no constituency for it. Either way, Rabbi Menitoff wrote, the Conservative movement has no future. He added that what he said was "in no way an attack; it's just a reasonable analysis of how things could work out. I hope I'm wrong," he added. "I'm just looking at the landscape and providing a perspective."

The claim is often made, particularly by those outside the Conservative movement, that whatever the formal teachings of Conservative Judaism, in practice members of Reform and Conservative congregations differ little from each other. Conservative Judaism may teach that we are obligated to keep kosher, but many of our members don't. Conservative Judaism may teach that we are obligated to observe Shabbat, but I would not want to guess what percentage of our members, for example, would wait until three stars are visible in the Saturday night sky before going shopping or to a concert -- even if they were in synagogue that morning. So does it really matter that we are Conservative Jews?

Hebrew College in Boston is a well-respected, ninety year old institution of Jewish learning. It recently started a transdenominational rabbinic school. That means it functions on the assumption that denominational differences, if they matter at all, are not important enough to prevent a single institution from ordaining rabbis who can serve in any movement. Together with the Alban Institute, a Washington think tank for congregational life, it recently published a book called Synagogues In A Time of Change: Fragmentation and Diversity in Jewish Religious Movements. While the book is very worthwhile, as a rabbi who remains dedicated to Conservative Judaism I found the material on the supposed irrelevance of denominations somewhat irksome.

But in this book which generally advances the case that movements are irrelevant, there is a chapter by sociologist Rela Mintz Geffen -- daughter of a Conservative rabbi and once the wife of a Conservative rabbi -- called "Postdenominational American Judaism -- Reality or Illusion?" Dr. Geffen bases her chapter on the 2002 National Jewish Population Study (NJPS), which provides exhaustive data about the attitudes, observances, and affiliations of a cross section of Jews of all types throughout the United States.

One of the criticisms of the NJPS data is that movement affiliation is taken by self-reporting and therefore, it is claimed, doesn't really mean very much. In other words, the survey taker asked you what, if any, denomination you considered yourself and that was your answer -- regardless of whether you actually belonged to a synagogue of that denomination, believed any of its tenets or practiced any of its observances. But Dr. Geffen used that fact in a very interesting way. She took the raw data from the survey and analyzed it herself, finding that, regardless of institutional affiliation or observance, simply calling yourself a member of a particular denomination matters.

As an example, one of the questions asked was "how important is being Jewish in your life today?"The percentage of those saying that being Jewish is very important in their life, were 90% for the Orthodox, 69% for Conservative, 45% for Reform and 33% for secular. Eighty one percent of those self-identifying as Orthodox said that religion was very important, as compared to 41% of Conservative, 24% of Reform and only 14% of those who said they were "secular." Self-identified Conservative Jews are far more likely than self-identified Reform Jews to look to Judaism for guidance in making important life decisions, and to have a high percentage of other Jews in their circle of friends.

The statistics make it pretty clear that by every measure of Jewish identification, Conservative Jews feel more strongly than Reform Jews about being Jewish, and we exhibit more Jewish behaviors.

Statistics, of course, only prove so much. Anyone who uses statistics in their research is familiar with the statement that "correlation does not imply causation." For example, there is a strong correlation between the number of Italian ice vendors on the streets of Manhattan in any given month, and the average temperature of that month. Can we conclude, therefore, that Italian ice vendors cause hot weather?

Perhaps identifying as a Conservative Jew leads to higher levels of Jewish identification and behavior. Or perhaps the reverse is true; that those who have higher levels of Jewish identity and behavior are more likely to call themselves Conservative Jews. I don't know how you would prove it either way, and I am not sure it matters.

What does matter, however, is the fact that Conservative Judaism must remain a vital force on the local as well as the American and world Jewish scenes. I have said before and will say again that I am a Conservative Jew because I believe that Conservative Judaism is the way God wants us to live. Nevertheless, I am happy that the other movements exist. I was raised Reform, and had there not been a Reform temple in our New Jersey town I probably would have received no Jewish education at all. Reform Judaism reminds us of the necessity of making all Jews feel welcome, and of making sure that the struggle for a better world, tikkun olam, is a central part of our Judaism. Orthodox Judaism models for us a community of people who are intensely devoted to Torah, who make observance and study their top priority even when it is expensive or inconvenient or socially awkward. The movements to our right and to our left have their virtues and fill a need. But if Conservative Judaism did not exist, we would have to invent it.

If Conservative Judaism did not exist and the only choices were Orthodoxy and Reform, I do not know what I would do because I do not think I could be either. If I were to find myself on Shabbat in a town with only an Orthodox and a Reform synagogue, without hesitation I would go to services at the Orthodox shul. But my commitment to equal status for men and women, and my commitment to understanding our holy texts in a way consistent with intellectual honesty, would not allow me to feel permanently at home in Orthodoxy. And while I don't believe that Reform Judaism is "just like a church," I do believe that by enshrining personal meaning as the sole criterion by which Jewish observance is to be evaluated, Reform Judaism has contributed to the fact that its adherents score significantly lower than Conservative Jews in their levels of Jewish commitment and practice.

For the past decade or so, Conservative Judaism has felt beleaguered. We have seen Conservative synagogues all over the country fold or merge. Where once we were the largest Jewish denomination in America, the Reform movement has claimed that crown since the 1990 Jewish population study. At the same time, Orthodoxy is also ascendant. Many of the brightest and most dedicated products of USY, Camp Ramah, and Schechter day schools wind up in the Orthodox community, and Chabad houses are sprouting up in places like the Dominican Republic, Cabo San Lucas, Bozeman, Montana, and Jackson, Wyoming.

But Dr. Geffen writes, and I agree with her, that the shrinking of our movement has most likely stopped; most of those who were headed out our door have already left, and we will continue to attract dropouts from Orthodoxy as well as Reform Jews seeking greater authenticity. "It is always difficult," she writes, "to be passionate about moderation. But this is what the Conservative movement must accomplish in order to remain vital." If we understand why our task is so important -- if we take pride in our past and have confidence in our future, and commit ourselves to practicing what we teach and preach -- with God's help, we can still accomplish great things.

So if you take away anything from this sermon today, here is what I would like you to take away. The fact that you are specifically a Conservative Jew matters. If you are a parent, by raising your child in a Conservative congregation you are more likely to instill in him or her a sense of Jewish commitment and making it far more likely that they will choose to maintain a Jewish home when they become an adult. If you are a grandparent, by exposing your grandchildren to the richness of our tradition you are giving them Jewish memories which will last a lifetime and thus guarantee in a sense your own Jewish immortality.

The flourishing of our movement and of our own synagogue is vital to the Jewish world. Take pride in our Conservative movement and our Conservative heritage, and be a part of our revival. Shanah tovah.

This Web Page Created with PageBreeze Free Website Builder