Yom Kippur Sermon 5768 – Kol Nidre

Beth Jacob Synagogue, Norwich, CT

Rabbi Charles L. Arian

            How would you define Conservative Judaism?

            A number of years ago I served as Scholar-in-Residence at a convention for the Seaboard Region of United Synagogue Youth. USY is the high school program of Conservative Judaism and it is a good assumption that if a young man or woman wants to attend a USY convention, they have a stronger than average level of Jewish knowledge and identity. The theme of the convention was something along the lines of exploring what it means to be a Conservative Jew, so to get the conversation rolling I asked the staff members to circulate among the kids and ask them for their definition of Conservative Judaism. But in order to make the question a little tougher I added the proviso that the answer could not include the words “Orthodox” or “Reform.”

            As I predicted, doing this left most of the teens uncharacteristically tongue-tied. Most of them would have defined Conservative Judaism as “not Orthodox and not Reform” or “halfway between Orthodox and Reform” or “less religious than Orthodox but more religious than Reform.” A few of the students tried to be clever by using synonyms like Liberal or Progressive instead of Reform and strict or traditional instead of Orthodox, but since it was my exercise I ruled that out of order.

            A couple of the students did try to define Conservative Judaism without using the terms Orthodox or Reform and came up with something along the lines of “that branch of Judaism which encourages you to observe only those practices you find meaningful and to not observe what you don’t find meaningful.” This is actually a very good definition, but there’s one problem – it’s actually a definition of Reform Judaism, not Conservative.

            The September issue of Commentary magazine contains a long article called “The Perplexities of Conservative Judaism” by Prof. Jack Wertheimer, who I am told was a Scholar-in-Residence here at Beth Jacob a number of years ago. The bulk of the article demonstrates something that I suspect most of us already sense, namely, that at least numerically Conservative Judaism is on the decline. But nevertheless I think it’s worth taking a couple of minutes to go through some of the statistics he cites. Why? Because I want us to understand that Beth Jacob is not unique in the problems it is facing.

            One measure, but only one, of a religious movement’s well-being is the number of actual members it has. Public opinion surveys tend to overestimate the adherents of a particular denomination because in America belonging to a congregation is the respectable thing to do, and many people will tell polltakers – or their neighbors – that they are members when in fact it somehow slipped their mind to actually join and send in their dues. At its height in the 1950s, about 900,000 people were dues-paying members of United Synagogue affiliated congregations. Today, the number is about 600,000, so we’ve lost about a third of our members – which by the way is roughly how much smaller Beth Jacob is now compared to twenty years ago.

            In the 1950s, as Jews moved en masse from the cities to the suburbs, it was not unusual for 100 new Conservative synagogues to be founded in a single year. By contrast, there are about 100 fewer Conservative synagogues now than there were a decade ago. Some have merged and some have simply folded; others, like our neighbors in both Colchester and Willimantic have changed their affiliation – Willimantic is now Reconstructionist whereas the Colchester synagogue still calls itself Conservative and generally follows Conservative practice but is not a member of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism.

            Where are former Conservative Jews going? Those who are not disappearing are going mostly to Reform temples. According to the most recent available figures from the National Jewish Population Study, fully one third of Reform temple members claim to have been raised Conservative. At the same time, about ten percent of Orthodox synagogue members also claim to have been raised Conservative.

            I believe that the reasons we lose members both to our left and to our right are similar. It is the inability to articulate the teachings of the movement in ways which lead our members to want to integrate them more fully into their lives.

            There has been an ongoing debate in Conservative Judaism over the last few years about whether we are or are not a halachic movement. I addressed this in a Rabbi’s Message in the Voice within the past several months and there’s no need to rehash it now. I heard the new Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, Prof. Arnold Eisen, say in Jerusalem this past summer that he views this debate as pointless and unproductive, and he is probably right. So whether or not we are actually halachic, that is to say, governed by Jewish law, Conservative Judaism does teach that we are obligated to follow the mitzvot. And mitzvah means commandment, it does not mean simply “a good deed.”

            And so as a movement and as a synagogue, we uphold certain mitzvot. For example, food served in the synagogue must be kosher. Furthermore, most Conservative rabbis will not attend an off-site Bar Mitzvah or wedding reception unless the food is  kosher – not just the food served to the rabbi and his or her spouse, but all the food. We insist that a child reach his or her 13^th birthday according to the Hebrew calendar before a Bar or Bat Mitzvah can be held, even if it would be more convenient to schedule the ceremony some weeks earlier. We have restrictions about the use of musical instruments on the Sabbath, about what time a Saturday night reception can start, about who can have an aliyah or other Torah honor. We do not consider the child of a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother fully Jewish without a formal conversion ceremony, though we attempt to make it relatively easy to convert such a child. And Conservative synagogues require more hours and more years of religious school attendance than Reform temples usually do.

            All of these make perfect sense to me, because I buy in to the system. Personally, I am glad for their existence because they protect me from undue pressure to perform or countenance actions which are contrary to my beliefs. For example, I would be deeply uncomfortable attending a non-kosher Jewish celebration, where I would most likely be asked to lead those assembled in thanking God for food which I believe God has commanded us not to eat. But if you do not buy into the system, if you do not believe that you are in fact obligated to observe Shabbat or kashrut, if you do not accept the traditional definition of Jewish identity or believe that Jewish obligations begin at age 13, these rules and regulations can seem incredibly burdensome. So unless you have some particular reason to stick with your Conservative congregation – family tradition, friends, you like the rabbi or there isn’t a Reform congregation conveniently located – why not make things easier and go Reform? Particularly since Reform Judaism in recent years has adopted some of the trappings of tradition – kippot, more Hebrew in worship, and so on – and is thus more comfortable than it used to be for those who may not be committed to Conservative ideology but are most familiar with Conservative-style worship.

            While we are losing many of our least traditionally-observant members on the left, we are also losing some of our most traditionally-observant members on our right. While the behavior of most members of Conservative synagogues may not reflect that fact, remember that Conservative Judaism teaches that certain mitzvot are obligatory. For example, we are obligated to observe Kashrut and Shabbat.  The details of these observances are sometimes different than they are in Orthodoxy, to be sure. For example, Conservative practice allows driving to the synagogue on Shabbat or eating vegetarian food in a non-Kosher restaurant. It does not, however, allow for driving to the mall or to your office on Shabbat or for eating meat – even beef or chicken, let alone shrimp or pork – in a non-Kosher restaurant. Regardless of how many members of Conservative congregations in fact do so, these things are mitzvot which Conservative Judaism teaches we are commanded to observe. Conservative Judaism also teaches that we are obligated to pray daily and that male Jews, at least, are supposed to put on tefillin six mornings a week.

            So imagine a young man or woman who has grown up in a Conservative synagogue. They may have graduated from a Solomon Schechter day school, attended USY or Camp Ramah, and gone to a college where there is a strong and vibrant Conservative minyan. They observe Shabbat, they keep kosher, they put on tefillin – all of which, they have been taught that Conservative Jews are supposed to do. Now they have graduated college and are looking for a community to join. If they walk into many typical Conservative shuls, their level of observance will immediately earn them the label “Orthodox.” They will not find too many other congregants whose observance level is similar to theirs. When they have children, how many other Shabbat and kashrut-observant playmates will their kids have?

            Lest you think this is far-fetched, I can tell you that when I lived in Washington, DC, I had a friend who had been a high ranking staff member for Speaker Tip O’Neill and later became a senior White House official. We belonged to the same Conservative synagogue and, since I was single at the time, I often had Shabbat lunch at his home. Both he and his wife had been raised in Conservative synagogues, they sent their kids to a Conservative day school and identified with the ideology of the Conservative movement. But eventually they moved out of DC and into Potomac, MD, where they joined the Young Israel, a modern Orthodox community. When I asked my friend why, he said that while he still considered himself to be a Conservative Jew, there were no kids for his children to play with on Shabbat and he did not want to raise his kids to hate Shabbat. In their new Orthodox shul, there were lots of other Sabbath observant kids and he did not have to worry about his children being given non-Kosher food by a playmate’s parents or being invited to a birthday party on Shabbat.

            In a certain way, I am less troubled by the defections to Orthodoxy than to Reform. I am a Conservative rabbi and a Conservative Jew, but before I am Conservative I am a rabbi and a Jew. When people like the friend I just spoke about leave Conservative Judaism for Orthodoxy, we can be relatively confident that they will stay Jewishly active and give their children Jewish educations. There is a strong likelihood – not a guarantee, but a strong likelihood – that their children will have a Jewish partner and raise a Jewish family. When our members leave us to join the Reform community, the likelihood of them doing all of these things is much smaller. Many of the young people raised in Reform temples grow up to be involved Jews – some of them, like me, grow up to be Conservative rabbis. But as one moves along the Jewish spectrum from Orthodox to Conservative to Reform, the likelihood of any specific Jewish behavior – lighting Shabbat candles, visiting Israel, giving to Jewish causes, having a Jewish partner whether by birth or conversion – decreases.

            Conservative Judaism cannot be all things to everybody, and that should not be its goal. The Rolling Stones did not attempt to write songs that everybody liked; they left that to the Bee Gees. What we need to do, however, is articulate a vision and present it in an attractive and compelling manner.

            The fact that most of our own members don’t know what we stand for, that most Conservative Jews cannot define Conservative Judaism beyond “not Orthodox and not Reform”, is a large part of the problem. There are a lot of reasons why we have had trouble articulating exactly what it is we stand for.

            One reason is that by belief and temperament we are oriented towards K’lal Yisrael, the entire community of Israel. We recognize that Orthodoxy and Reform have many strong points and contribute to the well being of the Jewish community. We do not, therefore, wish to promote ourselves by attacking them.

            Our moderation also engenders an attitude of toleration, of live and let live. We hold out traditional observance as a goal, but we recognize as Scott said on Rosh Hashanah, “the reality is that the synagogue is not the center of our lives.” That Judaism is not an all or nothing proposition. And that all of us, regardless of Jewish knowledge or observance, have something to contribute to the betterment of the synagogue, the community, and the world.

            While Conservative Judaism has consistently affirmed the binding character of mitzvot, we have been less clear on exactly why they are binding. And here, I think that the message that Chancellor Eisen is trying to articulate can be very helpful to us.

            Some Conservative theologians adhere to a fairly traditional theology which says that the mitzvot are binding because they literally represent God’s will. Others are less clear on this point and there is an entire range of positions on this issue. Some view this as a sign of our incoherence, but I view it as a sign of our strength. Chancellor Eisen pledged at his inauguration, which Keleigh and I were privileged to attend, to guide a national and international conversation in the coming year on the topic of mitzvah : “a set of discussions in which (Conservative Jews) speak with one another about mitzvah in all the senses of the word stored up in Written and Oral Torah: what obligates them; what they feel responsible for; what engages them; what they feel they owe to God or their community or their tradition or themselves; what they do because it is commanded; what they do out of sheer love.”

            Elsewhere, Chancellor Eisen has written that commandedness arises out of community. The late journalist and humorist Harry Golden expressed the same idea when he wrote that his father, though an atheist, attended synagogue every Shabbat. When Harry asked him why, he said, “my friend Schwartz goes to shul to talk to God. I go to shul to talk to my friend Schwartz.” Many of us come to shul on the High Holidays to reconnect with God and with our tradition, but we also come to reconnect with each other. And there is nothing wrong with that.

            I am in the midst of reading a book by Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam called Bowling Alone. In it, he describes the decline of what he calls “social capital” in America since the 1950s. We join organizations and clubs less, we volunteer less, and we vote less. It is not uncommon to see articles in the Norwich Bulletin or The Day about the difficulty local towns and cities have in filling seats on boards and commissions. Again, I want us to understand that the problems besetting us are not unique, that many other synagogues but also churches, clubs and even towns are facing similar problems.

            Putnam writes that even when we join an organization we may not feel particularly connected to it. If you are a member of the ACLU, Greenpeace or the NRA, you are not necessarily going to feel connected to other members of the same organization. You may not even know that your next door neighbor, your cousin or your best friend belongs to the same organization as you, because your activity consists primarily of writing an annual check. This is what he calls a “thin” affiliation. But he contrasts this with organizations like Rotary, which are “thick” affiliations. If you are a Rotarian, your connection is not exclusively and not even primarily with the international Rotary headquarters. It is with your local Rotary club and more importantly with your fellow Rotarians. You may have originally joined because you identify with the goals of Rotary, or as a social outlet, or to make connections. But you stay and you participate, you fulfill what is expected of you, because of your ties to the other members of your club. Yes, there are Rotary “mitzvot”, and they do not need to claim divine sanction, because the source of commandedness is ultimately your fellow members.

            As long as synagogue affiliation is “thin”, we will struggle to create thriving communities. When your synagogue asks nothing more of you than to send a check, you have the right not to be chastised for failing to do more, because, in fact, you have done everything you have been asked to do.

            The ancient sages raised the question of how many covenants were enacted at Sinai. One sage said there was one covenant, between God and the People of Israel. Another said, no, there were 600,000, because there was a covenant between each individual Israelite and God. But a third said, no, 600,001 times 600, 001, because each Israelite at Sinai covenanted not only with God, but with every other Israelite as well.

            A covenant is a contract, it is an agreement. It is not top-down, it is mutual. As Jews, we have a covenant with God, but we also have a covenant with each other. But that covenant has become murky and it has become weakened. We need to renew it, and we need to revise it.

            The Torah is called “torat Hayim,” the Torah of life, the living Torah. Our community and our congregation can be a source of life again, if we commit ourselves not only to God, not only to our congregation, but to each other as well. A conversation about mitzvot, about the commandments that tie us to God and to each other, is the way to begin.