Tuesday, September 23, 2008

ONE DAY ONLY! Part 1b: Reform

This is a continuation of Part 1a in this series on one-day versus two-day yom tov, still looking at Reform opinions on the issue. After looking at the most recent CCAR teshuva that has dealt comprehensively with the main issue, we'll look next at some views on a side issue: Torah reading. While the 1999 CCAR teshuva looked at the issue from all sides and considered the possibility of observing two days of yom tov, the voices in this post assume that Reform Jews observe 1 day of yom tov, full stop, but come to differing views about the side question of Torah reading.

We'll start with a teshuva by Rabbi Solomon Freehof, published in Current Reform Responsa in 1969. (As a side note, there is a shockingly large number of Reform responsa collections with instantly dated names, as if each new volume thought it was going to be the last: Contemporary American Reform Responsa, Recent Reform Responsa, Today's Reform Responsa, New Reform Responsa, etc. Hasn't anyone learned any lessons from New College? But the most laughable title, without question, is Teshuvot for the Nineties. Even though it's West Asia to the other titles' Middle East.)

It's not available online, and it's short, so I'll just post the text here.

The question is:

Since the Reform practice as to the length of the festivals is the same as the biblical and the Israeli, which Torah reading shall be used on the Sabbath of what would be the eighth day of Passover? What is the practice of Reform congregations in America?


The answer:

This question has been asked a number of times, and answered by the writer as Chairman of the C.C.A.R. Committee on Responsa, so the answer may be deemed official, or as nearly official as any Conference responsum is. That is to say, it is meant for guidance and not for strict governance. Yet in general, it represents a fairly universal practice among our congregations.

The actual problem is this: On the holidays, the regular sequence of weekly readings (the Sedras) is suspended and a special holiday Torah reading is provided. When the holiday is over, the regular sequence of Torah Sedras resumes on the first Saturday after the holiday.

But if, as happens fairly often, the eighth day of Passover is on a Saturday, then in Israel, which considers the eighth day a regular non-festival Sabbath, the regular cycle of Torah reading resumes. Therefore Israel is one week ahead of the rest of the Jewish world in the Torah cycle. But not for long! Israel continues ahead until they come to the first double portion. On Pesach, which usually takes place on the Sedra Tzav, the dislocation continues for only two weeks, when the double portion Sazria-Mezoro comes. That week Israel just reads Sazria separately, and the next week Mezoro separately, and thus the rest of world Jewry catches up with them.

Rabbi Freehof gets major props for the transliteration "Sazria". Explanation: The letters בגדכפת get a dageish kal when they are at the beginning of a word, but not if the previous word (within the same phrase) ends in a vowel letter. Since this Torah portion begins (after the standard intro) אשה כי תזריע, the tav in "tazria" loses its dageish. (This is, of course, irrelevant to those of us who pronounce tav the same with or without a dageish, but Ashkenazi pronunciation of Hebrew was standard in the US Jewish community (and not just in frum and Yiddishist enclaves) before 1967.) See also: Vayakheil-Fekudei.

But I'm not sure this is an accurate description of Israeli practice. Or perhaps there are multiple practices in Israel (though that's a little bit hard to believe, with the pervasiveness of the Jewish calendar there), or the practice has changed. In my post on single and double Torah portions, I wrote (based on Israeli calendars) that in this case, Israelis read Behar and Bechukotai separately (not Tazria and Metzora), even though that's not the next opportunity to get everyone back in sync. I don't know why that is, but it seems to be supported by empirical evidence. Can anyone shed light on this?

In leap years (when all of these portions are already read separately), the two calendars are out of sync for substantially longer, for about 3 months until we get to Matot and Mas'ei. This last happened in 1995, and the next time will be in 2016. It also happened in 1965, which may or may not have been the year that this question was posed to the CCAR Responsa Committee. (There is no date on the teshuva. The "8th day of Pesach" also fell on Shabbat in 1961 and 1964, which were not leap years.)
This problem does not arise with regard to the ninth day of Succos because that cannot be on Sabbath.
Here I assume he's referring to the second day of Shemini Atzeret, or the day colloquially known as "Simchat Torah". But there is some precedent for calling it "the ninth day" -- the Talmud does so at Sukkah 46b.

The second day of Rosh Hashanah cannot fall on Shabbat either.

However, the second day of Shavuot can fall on Shabbat, and does slightly more frequently than the eighth day of Pesach (and much more frequently in recent years -- 5 of the last 10 years, in contrast to 0 of the last 10 years for Pesach, though this trend will soon reverse itself).

These details do not undermine Rabbi Freehof's conclusion; rather, the fact that the calendar disparities are longer and more frequent than the teshuva explicitly mentions makes the motivation for his position even stronger. So I bring these details up to make it clear that, even though I'm aware of these additional facts, I still disagree with the teshuva's conclusion.
Now this solution (of Israel being ahead one week until the next double portion comes) works well because of the fact that the different schedule of readings occurs in different countries

It seems to me that this distinction, between different countries and the same country, was more relevant 40 years ago than it is now. These lines have blurred. People are traveling between Israel and other countries much more frequently now, and the Internet makes communication instantaneous, so that American Jews can now think of Israel as part of "our environment" (see below). I have closer contact with a number of communities in Israel than with the Orthodox shul down the street in New York.

(although even in Israel it is still a problem for visitors who do not come there as permanent settlers, since they must follow their home schedule).
Is this still the case in Israel? I know there are second-day yom tov minyanim for visitors, but are there also minyanim on subsequent Shabbatot that read according to the corresponding Torah reading schedule? More to the point, I'd be interested to know about any such minyanim run by Israelis in the United States.

But the problem remains in the relationship between Reform and non-Reform congregations in America, England, etc. Here we are in the same country, and it is not convenient that for a number of weeks we should be in dislocation as to Torah reading with the rest of American Jewry. We have therefore arrived at the following practical solution: We simply reread on that Sabbath the special reading of the holiday that we read before, and take a Psalm as the supplementary reading, but the service that day is a regular Sabbath service. In this way, on the very next Sabbath we are in accord with all the Jews of our environment.

I assume that "supplementary reading" means "haftarah". A psalm seems like an unusual choice, but that's the least of the problems here.

Is there any chance that there has ever been a single Conservative or Orthodox congregation that considered even for a second that it was "not convenient" that, in certain years, they were reading a different Torah portion from their Reform neighbors, and that therefore it would perhaps be best to read the next regular Shabbat portion rather than the yom tov reading on the 8th day of Pesach or 2nd day of Shavuot, in order to stay in accord with all the Jews of their environment? If not, why not? Perhaps because they take their own practices seriously? And if unity is so important, why isn't Rabbi Freehof's first instinct to ask the other movements to work out a mutually agreeable solution, and why does he say instead that Reform congregations alone should adjust, and twiddle their thumbs for a week while waiting for the other denominations to catch up? It appears to me that he treats Conservative and Orthodox practices with more deference than Reform practices. That's not the way to win respect from others or from oneself, any more than voting for everything Bush asked for helped the congressional Democrats win elections in 2002.

I'll say the same thing that I said about the triennial cycle: "I understand that Kelal Yisrael may be a value that motivates wanting to be in sync with other Jewish communities. But as liberal Jews, our commitment to Kelal Yisrael must not come at the expense of our own independence or sense of authenticity."

Rather, whatever we do in the name of Kelal Yisrael must come from a position of strength. We must first figure out what we would do if we were the only Jews on earth, and let that be our starting point, and then, only after that, determine what (if any) adjustments should be made due to the fact that other Jews exist. This is certainly the way that Orthodox communities operate (at least in the United States; it's hard to imagine the economics of the Israeli haredi sector arising from this approach), and is a major factor in Orthodox Judaism's success. The Reform movement's failure to do this is part of the reason that Reform identities are steamrolled in pluralistic settings. There can be no one-sided "Kelal Yisrael", just as there can be no one-sided "bipartisanship".

It defies all reason to imagine how this teshuva's "practical solution" could be arrived at without making reference to non-Reform Jews and their two-day yom tov observance. In my post on single and double Torah portions, I explained the principles behind each configuration. How does one explain this teshuva's proposed algorithm without making reference to the concept of "the 8th day of Pesach" (a concept that, as this teshuva concedes, does not exist in the Reform calendar)? Here's an attempt: "The cycle of Torah readings on Shabbat is only interrupted by major holidays. When minor holidays, such as Chanukah and Rosh Chodesh, fall on Shabbat, the holiday reading is read in addition to the regular Shabbat portion, and does not replace it. The exception is when 22 Nisan or 7 Sivan, which are not holidays at all, falls on Shabbat, in which case the Shabbat Torah reading cycle is interrupted, and a special Torah reading related to a recently ended holiday is read instead. But if 22 Nisan or 7 Sivan falls on a weekday, then no Torah portion is read at all." Like I said, it defies reason.

Convenient or not, the only self-respecting solution is one that would make sense if everyone else followed it, rather than one that depends on other movements that are implicitly perceived as more authentic.

Again, this debate has nothing to do with the question of how many days of yom tov to observe, because all sides agree that the answer is one. (For Reform congregations that decide to observe two days of yom tov, this question is irrelevant.)

The list of Torah readings at the back of the Union Prayer Book Newly Revised follows this solution of the problem.


In contrast, the "Table of Scriptural Readings" at the back of Gates of the House (1977, the companion volume to Gates of Prayer) says: "When, in the Diaspora, the eighth day of Pesach or the second day of Shavuot falls on Shabbat, Reform congregations read the sidra assigned to the following week in the standard religious calendars." This apparently descriptive statement is a rapid reversal from what Freehof describes as a "fairly universal practice among our congregations". Perhaps the reality has been somewhere in between for a while.

Gates of the House goes on: "However, in order to preserve uniformity in the reading of the Torah throughout the entire community, it is suggested that on these occasions, the sidra be spread over two weeks, one portion to be read while traditional congregations are observing the festival, and another portion to be read the following Shabbat."

This solves some of the problems of the Freehof teshuva but not others. The cycle of Shabbat Torah readings is not interrupted for a day (22 Nisan or 7 Sivan) that is not a holiday, and no special Torah readings are inserted that appear to acknowledge the existence of the 8th day of Pesach or the 2nd day of Shavuot (in some years but not others). Spreading one parasha over two weeks is not a practical problem, since (unfortunately) I don't know of any Reform congregations in the United States that read the entire portion each week, or even the "entire" "triennial" portion. In my experience, most select one piece of the parasha to read, so spreading the portion over two weeks would simply mean selecting two pieces.

But it retains the problem of an incoherent calendar algorithm, or a calendar algorithm that only makes sense if it incorporates the concept of "8th day of Pesach"/"2nd day of Shavuot". The algorithm for Torah readings makes special exceptions for years when 22 Nisan or 7 Sivan falls on Shabbat, for no internally defensible reason. This is invisible to most people, since most people (including rabbis) don't know how the calendar is calculated and rely on published calendars. But the need for self-sufficient and coherent Jewish practices still stands even when the lack of self-sufficiency is less blatant.

***

The URJ's online Eilu v'Eilu feature addressed this question in 2006 in a four-part series: week 1, week 2, week 3, and week 4. Rabbi Eric Wisnia takes the position that American Reform congregations should follow the Israeli calendar, and Rabbi Richard Sarason concurs with the various methods of being "in sync with the local community" (his words), though he doesn't express a preference for one of the two methods discussed above.

I would ask Rabbi Sarason why he thinks Reform communities should see local custom as something set in stone to react to, rather than something to influence. In fact, one letter writer does ask that in week 3, and Rabbi Sarason doesn't really answer the question. He punts and says "Ultimately, there is not a lot at stake here. (Indeed, the majority of North American Reform Jews will not care one way or the other about this issue since it doesn’t even register for them.)" Depressingly true, but I would argue that that's precisely what's at stake.

I agree with Rabbi Wisnia's conclusions (obviously) and with many of his arguments, but find his style somewhat grating. Some of it descends into gratuitous Orthodox-bashing: "I was born in Brooklyn. I know these people. Many of them are my relatives. They are all crazy!" The point isn't whether Orthodox Jews are right or wrong, or whether they're crazy or not. The point is that, right or wrong, Reform Jews have chosen a different path, and this issue is a test of whether Reform Jews really believe in that path.

Interestingly, Rabbi Wisnia focuses a lot on the fact that the 1-day yom tov calendar is the Israeli calendar, and argues that Reform Jews are being better Zionists by following this calendar in solidarity with the State of Israel. This approach certainly provides a significant counterpoint to some of the comments on the previous post.

***

Coming up next: the Conservative teshuvot about 1-day vs. 2-day yom tov.

12 comments:

  1. As a Reform rabbi, I have faced this challenge many times, and will do so again this coming year when the "2nd day of Shavuot" is on Shabbat. I disagree with my esteemed colleagues, Rabbi Freehof and Rabbi Sarason, and follow the teaching of my father-in-law, Rabbi A. Stanley Dreyfus, z"l, who authored the section on Torah portions at the back of "Gates of the House."
    I do not believe that we should stretch one parasha into two weeks for the sake of being in sync with our Conservative and Orthodox neighbors. On May 30, 2009, I plan to read Naso along with my Israeli co-religionists. We will be back in sync with the Diaspora 2-day observers when we read Chukat and Balak on separate weeks instead of doubling them up as it says on the calendar from the funeral home.
    I believe that Rabbi Sarason's minhag has been adopted by the Women of Reform Judaism (formerly known as Sisterhoods) in their art calendar, which shows that the movement is not of one mind about this (or many other things!).
    When I chaired the Rabbinic Advisory Committee at OSRUI years ago, I paskened that camp would use the Israeli lectionary in a similar year. I hope that minhag continues.
    Ellen Weinberg Dreyfus

    ReplyDelete
  2. (although even in Israel it is still a problem for visitors who do not come there as permanent settlers, since they must follow their home schedule).
    Is this still the case in Israel? I know there are second-day yom tov minyanim for visitors, but are there also minyanim on subsequent Shabbatot that read according to the corresponding Torah reading schedule? More to the point, I'd be interested to know about any such minyanim run by Israelis in the United States.


    The obligation to provide Torah reading falls on the community not the individual. So if a group of people davening together all agree that it should be a different Torah reading from what shuls in the area do, then they should read that sedra. However, there is no obligation for an individual to seek out a minyan reading that sedra, as opposed to 2nd day Yom Tov where an individual holding/not holding by the general community practice would need to seek out a minyan following his/her practice.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I have to disagree with the previous posting. There is a concept of "al tifrosh min hatzibur", i.e. one should not create groups with separate, contradictory customs. In the town I live in in Israel, there is a synagogue which has predominately an American congregation and they instituted a second day Yom Tov minyan for the relatives of the local members who were visiting from outside Israel. The Chief Rabbi adamantly insisted that they cancel this minyan, which they did. He said it was a disgrace that people who don't live in Israel were openly carrying out customs that showed demonstratively that they don't live in Israel.

    ReplyDelete
  4. It took me until I read this to figure out why I couldn't find the implied second day of Y"T in my "Ten Minutes of Torah". The reason is that the implication was in the designated parashot in the Monday shiurim, which unexpectedly agreed with US Ashkenazic practice instead of Israeli practice.

    ReplyDelete
  5. But... if Rabbi Freehof writes "the double portion Sazria-Mezoro", the word before "Sazria" ends in a consonant, and so he should have written "Tazria".

    ReplyDelete
  6. Regarding your charge for Reform Jews to put their Reforming ahead of their commitment to klal yisrael: Why must Reform Jews do so about each of their reforms? Do you care about including homosexuals in the Jewish community in the same way that you care about eliminating yom tov sheni? Aren't there two kinds of reforms that Reform Judaism does: Those that arise out of a principled objection to an element of the regnant Jewish tradition, and those that a Reform theology/ideology would not object to and therefore you are free to think about pragmatically. Why can't the value of kelal yisrael take precedence over the pragmatic advantages of one day of yom tov?

    This is my general objection to your hilkhot pluralism series. You never answer, or even ask, the most important question: Why should any individual Jew or Jewish community care more about being part of a pluralistic community - or participating in a pluralistic Jewish moment - than about some other Jewish commitment that they have. I care more about my own conception of kashrut, Shabbat, and minhag beit ha-knesset than I do about being part of a pluralistic Jewish moment and therefore your hilkhot pluralism would exclude me from any community that adhered to it.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Regarding your charge for Reform Jews to put their Reforming ahead of their commitment to klal yisrael: Why must Reform Jews do so about each of their reforms? Do you care about including homosexuals in the Jewish community in the same way that you care about eliminating yom tov sheni?

    First of all, eliminating yom tov sheni may have been a "reform" in the 1840s, but 1-day yom tov is now an established practice; no Reform Jews are currently "eliminating yom tov sheni", since it's not there to eliminate.

    Second of all, of course I care about including people of all sexual orientations in the Jewish community, but what would give the impression that I don't? If I haven't blogged as much on that topic, it's because I don't have anything to say about it that hasn't already been said, but that silence should not be interpreted as apathy or opposition.

    Aren't there two kinds of reforms that Reform Judaism does: Those that arise out of a principled objection to an element of the regnant Jewish tradition, and those that a Reform theology/ideology would not object to and therefore you are free to think about pragmatically. Why can't the value of kelal yisrael take precedence over the pragmatic advantages of one day of yom tov?

    I thought I answered this question already. Observing one day of yom tov is not merely about pragmatic advantages (and in the next post I'm going to trash the Conservative teshuvot that seem to think that it is). As the CCAR teshuva said in the previous post, observing any day as yom tov is about defining sacred time, and should not be taken lightly. If an individual or community is going to observe two-day yom tov consistently and fully, for whatever reason, that's one thing. But saying that we have one default practice that we are willing to throw out the window when it comes into conflict with other people's practices has a self-destructive effect because it means that we have no respect for our own practices. To the extent that one can distinguish between practices that are based on principle and those that aren't (which is difficult when "minhag Yisrael" is itself a principle), it is inconceivable that Orthodox communities would be willing to alter their internal practices in the latter category to be more in sync with the Reform movement (the largest organized Jewish movement in the US) and thus with the regnant practices of the rest of American Jewry, and no one would ever ask them to. If only one group is willing to (and expected to) do this, it leads to a lack of self-respect.

    This is my general objection to your hilkhot pluralism series. You never answer, or even ask, the most important question: Why should any individual Jew or Jewish community care more about being part of a pluralistic community - or participating in a pluralistic Jewish moment - than about some other Jewish commitment that they have.

    Not only have I not answered this question, I have in fact done the opposite and given a number of reasons why or situations in which a pluralistic solution is impossible or undesirable. I have stated explicitly in the comments that this question is not the goal of the Hilchot Pluralism series (and would be a task for Aggadot Pluralism if someone wants to write it). The series presupposes that a pluralistic community is desired (for whatever reason), and looks at ways of achieving one.

    But I don't see how your objection above is the same as this objection to Hilchot Pluralism. Here we actually seem to be in agreement -- that some other Jewish commitment should take precedence over pluralism or kelal yisrael.

    I care more about my own conception of kashrut, Shabbat, and minhag beit ha-knesset than I do about being part of a pluralistic Jewish moment and therefore your hilkhot pluralism would exclude me from any community that adhered to it.

    If you (and others) come to this conclusion, then the Hilchot Pluralism series has accomplished something. Concluding that pluralism is not possible among a particular group of people on a particular issue is, in my opinion, a far superior outcome to one set of practices being imposed on the community and called "pluralism".

    ReplyDelete
  8. I also want to suggest that a cost-benefit analysis shows that the benefits of being in sync with the 2-day calendar are lower, and the costs are higher, than the supporters of this calendar indicate.

    The benefits:
    Perhaps it would be preferable to have one unified calendar for all Jews in the world. But this isn't going to happen, regardless of what American Reform Jews do, because Israel is still on the 1-day calendar. And in the age of countless Internet divrei torah, the physical borders are less significant; one way or the other, you're going to occasionally read a devar torah online that doesn't match the portion that your community is reading that week. This can't be fixed by any action one way or the other by American Reform communities. Yes, if you're going to different synagogues in different weeks, it's more convenient if they're all reading the same Torah reading, but outside of a few diverse bubbles, how much of the American Jewish community is really made up of interdenominational shulhoppers? (And can you name one Orthodox or Conservative policy designed to make it easier to visit Reform services?)

    The costs:
    I've already written about the costs in loss of authenticity and self-worth when Reform communities are willing to bend without even being asked. Furthermore, any of the mechanisms for achieving this are unpredecented and bizarre. Obviously, reading a yom tov Torah reading on a day that the community doesn't believe to be yom tov is very weird. But even spreading a parsha over two weeks is weird: if you think of this as reading the same parsha two Shabbatot in a row, then this is unprecedented, and if you think of it as splitting the parsha in half (and there's little practical difference when most (all?) American Reform congregations don't read the whole parsha anyway), even if it's technically kosher, creating a new parsha break would be a major departure from the annual cycle of Torah reading that the entire Jewish world has followed for centuries.

    So the fact that anyone would still opt for the "in sync" practice suggests to me that they don't value these costs very highly at all.

    ReplyDelete
  9. That said, I would support one compromise: going back in sync at Tazria-Metzora (as Rabbi Freehof says the Israeli practice is, apparently erroneously) rather than Behar-Bechukotai (which the actual Israeli practice appears to be). This would minimize the period of time when the two calendars are out of sync, with no cost -- Tazria and Metzora can be separated just as easily as Behar and Bechukotai.

    BUT I would only support this if everyone in Israel agreed to it too (and I'm not sure of the mechanism to make that happen). Having 3 calendars (Israeli, Diaspora 2-day yom tov, Diaspora Reform) would be even worse than 2.

    ReplyDelete
  10. I didn't mean to imply that you don't care about gender/sexual orientation issues. I just offered that as an assumed issue that a Reform Jew (or a reforming Jew?) would consider a matter of principle in contrast to yom tov sheni. There are many issues that reforming Orthodox Jews grapple with and struggle over and if we were Reform Jews we might change. I don't think yom tov sheni comes up on our list.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Come on, Ben. Write Part 2 already!

    Looking forward to the read.

    Moadim l'simcha!

    ReplyDelete
  12. I totally should. Other things that have gotten in the way of blogging recently have included (in no particular order) 1) my day job, 2) figuring out my future (details to follow when appropriate), 3) the holiday season, and 4) getting us a new president. But the latter two should be finished soon!

    ReplyDelete