Toward a Reform Jewish narrative myth

I foreshadowed this post quite a while ago:

Egalitarianism = halacha l'Moshe miSinai, and electricity = kitniyot; or, the other "Jewish continuity" (continuity of Judaism, not of Jews): toward resolving the contradictions between (ethnic) Reform Jewry and (ideological) Reform Judaism

This post follows on a number of previous posts that have addressed issues of Reform Jewish ideology and identity, including one that started to lay out some of the ideas in this post.

Ultimately the motivation for this post is personal. As I have mentioned here before, I am a fifth-generation Reform Jew (the one whom the "Jewish continuity" hawks claim doesn't exist), and descended from three distinguished Reform rabbis on three different sides of my family (i.e. none of the three are/were related to the others by blood). I say this not to boast about my lineage, but to explain where I'm coming from. Many people in situations similar to mine (who grew up in Reform settings and are now in Jewish communities that are not labeled as Reform), regardless of their ideologies and practices, no longer identify as Reform. For me, again regardless of ideology and practice, Reform is an important component of my ethnic heritage: I am descended from generations of Reform Jews, just as I am descended from American Jews and from German Jews (and of course there is overlap among these). As Rabbi Leon Morris said recently, Reform Jewry is my edah, analogous to Ashkenazi Jewry, Sephardi Jewry, etc.

Furthermore, while some people who went from a Reform background into non-Reform-affiliated communities (whether Orthodox, progressive nondenominational, or anything else) have a "ba'al teshuvah" mentality (some even using that term to describe themselves), signifying a sense of a clean break from their past. I do not share this mentality. There is an unbroken line from where I (and my family) came from to where I am now (even if I've ended up in a different place from some of my ancestors), and if it weren't for the Jewish upbringing I got from my family, I wouldn't be here writing this blog. Therefore, as I try to place my practices into a coherent ideology, one of the constraints (what we in the physics world would call boundary conditions) on this ideology, and therefore on the further evolution of my own practices, is that my ancestors' practices (as biqoret writes, "REAL PARENTS, not imagined eastern-european forebearers") are/were legitimate. (This is in fundamental opposition to the concept of "chazarah bitshuvah".) If this seems questionable, the mishnayot below from Masechet Zevachim will show that the rabbis did the same thing.

This post will not establish a complete and consistent Reform Jewish ideology, but is intended to raise some of the relevant issues and begin a conversation.

***

When we talk about Reform Judaism and Reform Jewish identity, we're really talking about at least three distinct elements that comprise this identity:

• Halachah. Reform Judaism doesn't see halachah as a uniform fixed body of law (nor, arguably, does any denomination). There is no one "Reform halachah". (CCAR responsa do not have binding authority.) However, there are Reform meta-halachic principles, including informed autonomy (there is no living human authority with the power to establish religious law that is binding on others; rather, individuals are responsible for paskening for themselves), and the progressive reinterpretation of Torah in each generation (we can learn from each previous generation's Torah and add our own layer to Torah).
  
• Aggadah. The underlying values that drive halachic development. In Reform Judaism these include but are not limited to tikkun olam (which I know has had many meanings over the years; I'm referring in particular to the social justice definition, which has had a prominent place in Reform Judaism), active engagement with the broader world outside the Jewish community, and seeing all humans as created in God's image.
  
• Minhag. This is Reform "ethnicity", not derivable solely from first principles, but deriving from historical continuity with the set of people who have called themselves Reform Jews. These are the sorts of practices that some have labeled "path-dependent". Examples include the specific liturgical variations found in Reform siddurim, the observance of one day of yom tov (everywhere, not just in Israel), and the various musical genres associated with Reform Jewish prayer. While these minhagim are consistent with Reform halachah and aggadah, other equally consistent minhagim could have arisen if history had gone a different way.

In addition, there are at least two more things that people mean when they say "Reform", which I'll mention but dismiss as irrelevant:

• Institutions. The Reform movement encompasses a number of institutions, including the URJ, CCAR, and HUC-JIR in North America, and their counterparts worldwide. These institutions do important things. But, like all institutions, they are created and run by fallible humans, and have no religious authority in their own right. Judaism does not have a concept of "The Church", established by the Holy Spirit. Therefore, a Jewish religious ideology cannot be defined based on the policies of an institution; rather, the institution, if it is devoted to a particular ideology, should set its policies based on that ideology. This means that for any definition of Reform Jewish ideology, it is possible that individuals will pursue this ideology outside of Reform institutions, and it is possible that Reform denoninational institutions will take actions that are not in accordance with this ideology
  
• "I'm very Reform." The word "Reform" has picked up a colloquial meaning of "not Jewishly active". This is reinforced not only by adherents of other Jewish denominations who use "Reform" to mean the opposite of what their own denomination stands for, but also by Jews who self-identify as "Reform" based on this definition. How many people respond "Reform" to Jewish population surveys not based on adherence to (or even awareness of) the halachah, aggadah, and minhag discussed above, or affiliation with a Reform congregation, but because they consider themselves "less observant"? While individuals may be "less observant" within the framework of observance that they see as normative, there cannot be a religious ideology or a religious movement dedicated to being "less observant" (any more than there can be a political party dedicated to not voting). Rather, each religious ideology sets its own approach to observance. So this definition of "Reform" has no value in any meaningful discourse about Reform Judaism.
  

Reform Jewish identity may encompass various permutations of these 5 elements, but I'm just going to focus on the first 3 as significant. Even within those 3 elements, it is possible for someone to have one or two without the other(s):

• Halachah and Aggadah without Minhag: This includes many of the people I have encountered through the National Havurah Committee and other progressive nondenominational milieux. They engage in informed autonomy about halachah, and are committed to progressive Jewish values, but have not inherited Reform minhag (and generally do not self-identify as Reform). I have written about how old-line havurot and newer Reform communities have evolved convergently in some ways, but remain different due to path-dependence. An interesting case study, if someone wants to take it on, would be a detailed comparison between Siddur Eit Ratzon and Mishkan T'filah.
  
• Aggadah and Minhag without Halachah: This includes many rank-and-file Reform members, who are committed to progressive Jewish values and uphold Reform minhagim, but are not committed to informed autonomy or evolving halachah. They may in fact be hostile to the exercise of informed autonomy, and may prefer more uniformity of practice in accordance with the way things have been done in their community.
  
• Halachah without Aggadah: This is mostly a straw-man position, but is important as an intellectual exercise. Sometimes the objection is raised "If you say the mitzvah of tzitzit is open to autonomous interpretation, then can't you say that the mitzvah of 'do not steal' is open to autonomous interpretation?". And I would respond that the answer is yes, if you're only looking at halachah without aggadah. There are obviously problems with saying that someone might legitimately reinterpret "do not steal" in a way that weakens the prohibition, but these problems are substantive, not procedural. Thus this objection does not defeat the idea of informed autonomy, but highlights the point that halachah must be steered by aggadah. Another example might be a Reform congregation deciding to hold non-egalitarian services and defending it as an autonomous choice. Again, potentially compatible with Reform (meta-)halachah, but incompatible with Reform aggadah.
  
• Minhag without Aggadah: There are some members of Reform congregations who identify as Reform and uphold Reform minhagim, but are not particularly committed to social justice, and may have even supported the Bush administration, or may have rejected the longstanding Reform principle of engagement with the broader society in favor of a narrow Jewish ethnocentrism.

In fact, combining all three may actually be difficult. Combining aggadah with the others isn't a problem, since aggadah should be steering the direction of halachah, and minhagim that conflict with aggadah should be tossed out. The issue is combining Reform halachah and Reform minhag. Beyond the practical difficulties (the communities that best actualize Reform halachah are not the ones with Reform minhag, and vice versa, and attempting this without a compatible community can feel like a solitary endeavor), there can be philosophical contradictions.

Reform halachah is inherently progressive; Reform minhag (like any other minhag) is inherently (small-c) conservative (and, for once, I don't necessarily mean that as a bad thing). Reform halachah emphasizes evolution and creativity, and any minhag that we do because it's minhag is about preservation. If we were governed only by minhag, then our practice would be fixed in place, with no capacity for change from what has been done before; this is presumably the last thing our Reform ancestors would have wanted. (Neo-Classical Reformers are confused when they think that Reform minhagim are progressive by nature.) If we were governed only by Reform halachah, then we would have to derive our practice anew in each generation. This impermanence would have counterintuitively conservative results, because we would fail to leave a lasting legacy, so the next generation would have to rely only on earlier generations (rather than on more recent generations).

So there can be a tension between maintaining established Reform minhag and adopting new practices in accordance with Reform halachic principles. So this is an internal Reform-vs.-Reform tension, which comes down to Reform Jewry as ethnicity vs. Reform Judaism as ideology. And it's not the stereotypical "tradition and change" dialectic; one example of a practice based on minhag might be praying in English, while a practice based on informed autonomy might be praying in Hebrew.

Another source of tension is that engaging in Reform halachah (more so than halachah as defined by other movements) demands knowledge and active participation, while some Reform minhagim assume the opposite (as I have discussed in Hilchot Pluralism Part IV). In such a case, do our inherited minhagim still have a claim on us, or are they to be abandoned in the face of changing circumstances? (Yes, it's the same question asked at the beginning of the Reform movement, but now applied to the subsequent years of Reform Jewish history.)

***

To begin making sense of these tensions and these questions, we need to establish a myth to put contemporary Reform Judaism into a continuous narrative with the rest of Jewish history. And here (unlike here), I'm not using the word "myth" to mean "not factually accurate", but to mean a narrative, true or false, that has a foundational value for a community.

Plenty of foundational narratives already exist for the Jewish people as a whole, and for each of the modern denominations. The pan-Jewish narratives include the Exodus from Egypt and the exile from the land of Israel (though these have been given different meanings in different times and places). Classical Reform had its founding myth, forming the backbone of the Pittsburgh Platform: "We recognize in the Mosaic legislation a system of training the Jewish people for its mission during its national life in Palestine," but now that we're "in the modern era of universal culture of heart and intellect," we can transcend the particularistic ritual laws and focus on "the establishment of the reign of truth and righteousness among men." Some strains of Orthodoxy have the myth that the Judaism that they observe today is essentially the same Judaism that has been observed since Sinai. The Conservative founding myth includes the colorful episode of the "treyfe banquet", with the message that the Reformers had gone too far and a new movement arose to "conserve" Jewish tradition. Judaism as a Civilization, a founding text of Reconstructionist Judaism, divides the history of Jewish civilization into three stages (henotheistic, theocratic, and other-worldly), and concludes that "Judaism is now on the threshold of a fourth stage in its development."

One of my favorites comes from the Mishnah, from the last chapter of Masechet Zevachim. The existence of Masechet Zevachim is remarkable enough on its own: It deals with the laws of sacrifices, yet the Mishnah was redacted 150 years after the destruction of the Temple (when these laws became inoperative), and includes halachic disagreements among rabbis who lived significantly after the destruction. Not only that, but there is Gemara for the entire tractate, completed another 300 years later. The party line is that this exists because one day the Temple will be rebuilt so we'll need to know these laws again. Fine. Whatever. Either you buy that or you don't. But that explanation doesn't cover the material in the last chapter, which (by its own admission) will never again become operative:

יד,ד עד שלא הוקם המשכן--היו הבמות מותרות, ועבודה בבכורות; משהוקם המשכן--נאסרו הבמות, ועבודה בכוהנים. קודשי קודשים, נאכלים לפנים מן הקלעים; קודשים קלים, בכל מחנה ישראל.

יד,ה באו לגלגל, הותרו הבמות. קודשי קודשים, נאכלים לפנים מן הקלעים; קודשים קלים, בכל מקום.

יד,ו באו לשילה, נאסרו הבמות. ולא היה שם תקרה, אלא בית של אבנים מלמטן יריעות מלמעלן; והיא הייתה מנוחה. קודשי קודשים, נאכלים לפנים מן הקלעים; קודשים קלים ומעשר שני, בכל הרואה.

יד,ז באו לנוב ולגבעון, הותרו הבמות. קודשי קודשים, נאכלים לפנים מן הקלעים; קודשים קלים, בכל ערי ישראל.

יד,ח באו לירושלים--נאסרו הבמות, ולא היה להן עוד היתר, והיא הייתה נחלה. קודשי קודשים, נאכלים לפנים מן הקלעים; קודשים קלים ומעשר שני, לפנים מן החומה.

יד,ט כל הקודשים שהקדישן בשעת איסור הבמות, והקריבן בשעת איסור הבמות בחוץ--הרי אלו בעשה ולא תעשה, וחייבין עליהן כרת. הקדישן בשעת היתר במות, והקריבן בשעת איסור במות--הרי אלו בעשה ולא תעשה, ואין חייבין עליהן כרת. הקדישן בשעת איסור במות, והקריבן בשעת היתר במות--הרי אלו בעשה, ואין בהן בלא תעשה.

14:4 Before the Tabernacle [in the desert] was put up, the bamot ["high places", i.e. private sacrifices outside the central worship location] were permitted, and sacrifice was performed by the first-born. After the Tabernacle was put up, the bamot were forbidden, and sacrifice was performed by the priests. Kodshei kodashim ["holy of holies" - sacrifices with a stricter status] could be eaten within the walls [of the Tabernacle courtyard], kodashim kalim [sacrifices with a less strict status] could be eaten anywhere in the camp of Israel.

14:5 When they came to Gilgal [and entered the land of Israel], the bamot were permitted. Kodshei kodashim could be eaten within the walls, kodashim kalim could be eaten anywhere.

14:6 When they came to Shiloh [home of the Tabernacle], the bamot were forbidden. ... Kodshei kodashim could be eaten within the walls, kodashim kalim and ma'aseir sheini could be eaten anywhere in sight of it.

14:7 When they came to Nov and Giv'on [other sites for the Tabernacle after Shiloh was destroyed], the bamot were permitted. Kodshei kodashim could be eaten within the walls, kodashim kalim could be eaten in all the cities of Israel.

14:8 When they came to Jerusalem [and built the Temple], the bamot were forbidden, and they would not be permitted further [i.e. even after the Temple was destroyed]. ... Kodshei kodashim could be eaten within the walls [of the Temple courtyard], kodashim kalim and ma'aseir sheini could be eaten within the wall [of Jerusalem].

14:9 All sacrifices that one sanctified at a time when bamot were forbidden, and offered outside at a time when bamot were forbidden, are [violations] of a positive commandment [offer sacrifices in the central location] and a negative commandment [don't offer sacrifices elsewhere], and one is subject to kareit because of them. If one sanctified them at a time when bamot were permitted, and offered them at a time when bamot were forbidden, they are [violations] of a positive commandment and a negative commandment, and one is not subject to kareit because of them. If one sanctified them at a time when bamot were forbidden, and offered them at a time when bamot were permitted, they are [violations] of a positive commandment but not of a negative commandment.

If the rabbis were only talking about what could be relevant in the time of the Temple and later (i.e. their present, their future, and at least as far back into their past as anyone could remember), then they wouldn't need to define the rules for all 7 of these stages of history. The law would be simple: No sacrifices outside the Temple (whether or not the Temple is standing). If you do, here are the mitzvot you're violating, and here's the punishment. But that's not what they do. Instead, they define the rules applying to every period of Jewish/Israelite history all the way back to the first year of wandering in the desert, and retroject their rabbinic halachic categories back into those times. The last mishnah is particularly amazing in this regard: they go beyond generalities to rule on case law which (other than the first clause) last could have applied if one set aside a sacrifice before Solomon completed the Temple -- over 1000 years before the beginning of the rabbinic period! -- and will never apply again. Unlike much of the rest of the Mishnah, there is no possible way that this was an actual case that one of the rabbis ruled on.

So why are they doing this? I think they're trying to place themselves into a historical continuity with their ancestors. They have their halachic categories through which they view the world, but they know that their ancestors were not operating in ways consistent with those categories, yet they understand that their ancestors' practices were legitimate in their ancestors' own time. So they extend their categories into the past, but add conditions so as to get a continuous solution to the boundary value problem that includes both their ancestors and themselves.

Likewise, we need to tell a story that places us in continuity with the past, and includes the possibility of game-changing events, so that even apparent discontinuities are part of this continuity: entering the land of Israel, the destruction of the Temple, the Emancipation, the birth of the State of Israel, etc. (And it's ok if the way we relate to game-changing events in the past depends on 20/20 hindsight and has no predictive power; as you can see, the rabbis did the same thing.) We need to be able to tell a single narrative that encompasses the earlier and the later periods, while recognizing the differences between those periods. We need to be able to use the same terminology to discuss our ancestors (both Reform and pre-denominational) and ourselves, even if it's not the terminology that our ancestors would have used (you can be sure that all of the terminology in that excerpt from Zevachim is completely anachronistic). This continuous story can cover our journeys from the desert to Gilgal to Shiloh to Jerusalem to Yavneh to Tiberias to Sura & Pumbedita to Stuttgart to Youngstown, Ohio, to now.

***

I'm not going to come up with that narrative myth in this post (that's left to the reader as an exercise), but I want to begin sketching some broad outlines, and a few specific applications.

As Reform Jews (who either have Reform ancestors ourselves, or identify as part of a community with a Reform lineage, or both), we understand that our practices are different from other Jews' practices. But we began to diverge 200 years ago and continued on divergent paths (albeit with continued cross-pollination); we don't rewind and diverge anew at each point in history. So if our ancestors changed something from how it was done previously, we're not necessarily bound by that change forever, but that change has indeed been made and has become a part (one part among many) of our inherited tradition. We can explain why our ancestors changed it, but we aren't necessarily subject to a burden of proof for why we maintain that change. We have historical precedent for either maintaining our immediate ancestors' practices or for reverting to more distant ancestors' practices.

For example, we'll take tefillin, which seems to be a popular example in these discussions. If our parents don't/didn't wear tefillin, then we have a mimetic tradition of not wearing tefillin (from our parents), or a historical tradition of wearing tefillin (going back to earlier ancestors). Or if we'd prefer textual justifications, we can find those supporting either position: we can go with the rabbinic texts that outline hilchot tefillin and take a hyperliteralist reading of Deuteronomy 6:8 (and the other parallel verses), or we can go with the peshat (contextual) reading of these verses and understand it as making "these words" guide our actions and the way we look at the world, or some combination of both. There are two options here, each with solid justification.

Another example is writing on Shabbat. Again, if our parents write/wrote on Shabbat, then we have a mimetic tradition of writing on Shabbat, or an earlier historical tradition of refraining from writing on Shabbat. We can justify refraining from writing on Shabbat because there is an explicit mishnah that lists writing as one of 39 prohibited labors, and subsequent texts and traditions based on this premise. Or we can justify writing on Shabbat by reading this mishnah in its historical context: writing was considered skilled labor at the time; now that everyone can write, and now that nothing professional or permanent is handwritten (other than writing a sefer torah or other calligraphy), jotting something down may not be considered "work" and may not even be considered "writing" as the Mishnah understood it; the contemporary equivalent of the prohibited labor might be printing something on a computer. Whichever way we end up deciding for our own practice, we have to come to terms with the fact that we have inherited a mimetic tradition of writing on Shabbat, and that when we study the Mishnah and Gemara we come across the prohibition on writing on Shabbat. Again, we can go either way.

In contrast to these examples, there are some practices observed by other branches of Judaism that don't appear anywhere in our own history, because these practices arose after the modern denominations diverged. We might choose to adopt these practices, as a cross-cultural borrowing from other Jewish streams, but it is not a "return to tradition" (since it's not a tradition we, or our family tree, or our community's spiritual lineage, ever had before), and those of us who don't adopt these practices need no justification for not adopting them.

One example is refraining from using electricity on Shabbat (or, for that matter, defining "using electricity" as a meaningful category). I would liken electricity to kitniyot. Ashkenazim have a tradition of not eating kitniyot on Pesach. An individual Ashkenazi Jew might decide to maintain these tradition, or might decide to depart from it; there are plenty of justifications in either direction. In contrast, Sephardim eat kitniyot freely during Pesach, and no one would ever ask them to justify this. Sephardim never had a tradition of not eating kitniyot, so they're not departing from any tradition by eating kitniyot. This is because the prohibition on kitniyot in the Ashkenazi world began after the Ashkenazi/Sephardi split. Likewise, the existence of electrical devices (let alone the prohibition on using them on Shabbat) came after the Reform/Orthodox split. So Reform Jews have no lineal historical precedent for refraining from using electricity on Shabbat.

***

The Reform Jewish narrative myth also has to figure out how to incorporate gender egalitarianism. The facts: Our Judaism is egalitarian, our premodern ancestors' Judaism was not, and the transition between them has been more gradual than we would sometimes like to admit, even within the Reform movement (HUC was around for 97 years before they ordained a woman rabbi).

There are multiple ways to address this, and we can find an approximate analogy by looking at the narratives we impose on American history, which has also had a gradual evolution towards various forms of egalitarianism. Do we read "all men are created equal" (in the Declaration of Independence) the way the Founding Fathers did, referring only to men, and not really to all men? Under this reading, women, non-whites, etc., are not inherently equal in American tradition, and do not achieve equality until it is granted to them by constitutional amendments and such. Or do we read "all men are created equal" as referring to all people (not just men)? Under this reading, all people have been inherently equal all along, but it has taken a long time for our society to realize this and put it into practice.

The approach in much of the Conservative movement, and in the pockets of Orthodoxy that are moving in an egalitarian direction, is more like the first reading. In the state of nature, all historically non-egalitarian practices are non-egalitarian. Making each practice egalitarian requires a separate justification, which applies only to that specific issue and has no broader impact. Depending on which of those justifications are accepted, some practices become egalitarian and others don't. Women can lead pesukei dezimrah and read Torah, but can't lead shacharit or count in the minyan. Women can lead all services and count in the minyan, but can't blow shofar. Women can blow shofar, but can't be witnesses. There is no general principle of egalitarianism.

I think this piecemeal approach is not acceptable in the Reform Jewish narrative. Egalitarianism must be an overarching principle. As in the second reading of "all men are created equal" above, we have been moving more and more toward achieving this fundamental ideal. The aggadic basis for this is easy to establish (for example, the Torah says that man and woman were created in God's image), but how do we express this idea in halachic language? One possibility (though not necessarily the only or the best one) is "halachah leMoshe miSinai". This is a category that the rabbis use when they're talking about something that they consider fundamental enough to be at the level of Torah, yet doesn't have a strong textual basis in the Torah. For example, nisuch hamayim (the water libation on Sukkot) isn't found in the Torah, but the rabbis gave it the elevated status of halachah leMoshe miSinai (knowing full well that it wasn't really observed in the time of the Torah, but perhaps it should have been). Likewise, gender egalitarianism isn't found in the classical halachic texts, but we can make the statement that this principle is so fundamental that it is halachah leMoshe miSinai.

***

Again, this post is just the beginning of a conversation. Please add your own ideas to the discussion.

***

In memory of Rabbi A. Stanley Dreyfus (1921-2008), and in honor of Rabbi Ellen Weinberg Dreyfus's installation as president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis.

YOUR HEAD A SPLODE

(Crossposted to Jewschool.)

This Jewish Week article, which LastTrumpet already posted, is making my head explode for all kinds of different reasons. So I’m posting a line-by-line fisking of the article, to attempt to enumerate all the things wrong with it, though I’m probably just scratching the surface. Unlike previous articles I’ve done this for, where the problems were primarily with the frames invoked by the reporter, this article has at least five distinct categories of things wrong with it:

1. Destructive framing by the Jewish Week reporter (inappropriate for a paper supposedly committed to objective journalism)
2. Self-destructive framing by Reform movement personnel quoted in the article (inappropriate for an organization supposedly committed to Reform Judaism)
3. The Jewish Week reporter creating a narrative unsupported by the facts
4. Problematic attitudes and policies by Reform movement personnel
5. Poor tactics by Reform movement personnel demonstrating a complete ignorance of adolescent psychology

I am particularly disturbed because I have written numerous apologetics for Reform Judaism (as I understand it), defending it from ideas that I believe to be misconceptions, and now official voices of the Reform movement are making statements that affirm all of those ideas.

David Kelsey has been posting about how OU/NCSY is pursuing an agenda of recruiting liberal Jewish teenagers to Orthodoxy. When I read articles like this, sometimes I wonder whether URJ/NFTY is stealthily doing the same thing. Maybe they’re not doing it on purpose, but if they were, it’s hard to imagine how they could be doing it more effectively than what they’re doing now: getting kids excited about Judaism, and then when the kids explore different options to build Jewish identities for themselves, responding with frames that affirm Orthodoxy as the standard against which all Jewish movements are defined. Every time a NFTY or UAHC/URJ camp alum ends up in the Orthodox world, it is viewed as an isolated incident (Rabbi Yoffie says “Some people may want to go and become either Conservative or Orthodox. So be it.”), but the numbers are so great that it is time for the Reform movement to do some cheshbon hanefesh about this systemic phenomenon. I have already considered some of the sociological causes in “Profile of an ‘Unaffiliated’ Jew”, and this post points out some of the ideological causes.

A note about framing before we get started: Being careful about the frames we use isn’t just about words; it’s about ideas. It’s rarely just a question of replacing an objectionable word with a less objectionable synonym. For example, it would be offensive if I were to write “The role of chicks in the Reform rabbinate has come a long way since 1972, when Sally Priesand became the first chick to be ordained by HUC-JIR. In recent years, chicks and men have been represented equally among new Reform rabbis.” But the problem could be completely remedied by replacing each instance of “chicks” with “women”, which refers to the same category of people in an unobjectionable way. In contrast, consider this example: “In recent years, many Reform Jews have become more religious, as demonstrated by such practices as wearing kipot, laying tefillin, singing Carlebach melodies, and keeping kosher.” The problem here isn’t only the use of the phrase “more religious” (though this phrase is problematic here, and “more observant” and “more traditional” would be similarly problematic), and the problem wouldn’t be solved by replacing “religious” with a different adjective. The problem is the idea that these four items can be meaningfully grouped into a category that makes sense from a Reform perspective. The assumption that makes this categorization possible is the truly destructive frame, not just the vocabulary used to describe it.

So here we go:

Warwick, N.Y. — The sun was setting at the Reform movement’s teen leadership camp in this picturesque upstate town, and in the dying light of a sweet summer day it was time for the evening prayer service.

In the lakeside pavilion that serves as Kutz Camp’s synagogue, the visiting musician who led the evening service on the Fourth of July, a Wednesday, set the prayers to an easy-listening jazz sound.

It was a musical style, played on an electric keyboard, that almost none of the campers connected with, many said later.

Shocking! Most red-blooded 16-year-olds LOVE “easy-listening jazz”, so if these campers didn’t, then big changes must be afoot in the Reform movement.

But some took their displeasure a step further, doing something unprecedented that night at Kutz that speaks volumes about a generation of Reform teens that is staking a new claim to Jewish ritual and tradition and posing a challenge for movement leaders.

As the musician played a jazzy version of the Barchu, a couple of campers got up and walked out. Over the next several minutes, other pairs of high school-age campers, one after another, got up and quietly left. It took awhile for the adults in the room to realize what was happening, but some 40 campers in all, about a quarter of those in attendance, spontaneously got up and left the service. The service was too untraditional, they later said, offensively so.

I wasn’t there and haven’t heard any firsthand accounts of what happened, but here’s my best guess based on my decade-old memories of what it’s like to be a teenager and my experience as a high school teacher: The campers reached a rapid consensus that the music sucked, perhaps using even coarser language (and I probably would have agreed with them). This alone would not have been enough to get most of them to “spontaneously” leave on their own. But once a few had left, this gave the rest of them cover so that they could simultaneously do what they wanted (get out of a service where they didn’t want to be), assert their individuality, and be part of a group. We don’t have enough evidence to judge whether all of the people who left felt that the service was “too untraditional”, or whether this was just the stated opinion of a trendsetting few. But it seems to me that the “untraditional” claim is a red herring — presumably if it had been music that they liked, they would have stayed regardless of how “traditional” it was or wasn’t. (Indeed, the style that has been prevalent at Reform camp services for 35 years, accompanied by acoustic guitar and influenced by American folk music, is no more “traditional” in the unfortunate way that word seems to be defined in this article, but I can’t imagine these campers would have walked out on Debbie Friedman.)

Turns out, it was their own spiritual Independence Day.

Once out of the pavilion, clusters of teens agreed to find different spaces so that they could continue their prayers the way they wanted to. Some ended up forming a minyan in a bathroom.

This is beautiful. Really. To the extent that the camp’s educational mission is about empowering people to create their own Jewish life, this should be viewed as a smashing success. To the extent that the camp’s mission is about training people to be docile members of Reform congregations who won’t challenge the professionals’ decisions, I can see how this behavior represents a threat. But that mission is flawed for a number of reasons, not least that if trends hold up, these campers aren’t likely to join Reform congregations for at least another 15 years (if at all), and they’ll need the tools to get by in the meantime.

If the Kutz administration were going to criticize the campers for anything here, it should have been on hachnasat orechim grounds — the campers were disrespectful to their guest. Turning it into an ideological struggle merely affirms the campers in their sense of righteous indignation, makes them feel that they are being persecuted for their beliefs and practices, and drives them away from the Reform movement. The message should have been “Walking out isn’t nice”, not “Your aesthetic preferences are unacceptable”.

“When the prayers were very nontraditional, they felt botched; the music was so distracting,” said Sarah Wolfson, a 16-year-old from Calabasas, Calif., who is social action vice president of her temple youth group. “It seemed so disrespectful. I’ve become quite attached to saying the prayers the way I was bat mitzvahed with. It’s something I find really powerful,” she continued.

Aha! Now we see what “traditional” actually means to the campers, not what the Jewish Week and Rabbi Yoffie would like it to mean so that they can write a story and make a political point respectively. I don’t know Sarah Wolfson, but we can be reasonably sure that the congregation where she “was bat mitzvahed [sic]” didn’t use Carlebach niggunim or yeshivish speed-davening or easy-listening jazz, but used one of the styles that are standard in the Reform movement. Thus, “nontraditional”, to her, means “not what I’m used to”, and carries no ideological valence. Depending on one’s perspective, this attitude of seeking the familiar might be seen as reverent respect for our heritage, or as narrow-minded inflexibility, but either way, this attitude can be found among people in all Jewish movements (including Classical Reform).

Wolfson was one of the campers who went to a girls’ bathroom to pray. “We were all able to create that connection together in our gathering. It was very moving and empowering.”

No doubt. Harnessing adolescent rebellion toward productive pursuits can be very powerful. A pivotal Jewish experience for me during my NFTY years was a retreat at camp where a small group of us from NFTY joined with a small group from an Orthodox high school for the beginning of Sukkot. On the first night, we had services together, organized by the adults. The services were basically what they would have been if the Orthodox group had been on its own, except that they threw us Reform kids a bone by reading some of the prayers in English, which we found condescending. As a protest, some of the people in my NFTY group stood at the back and started singing the Klepper/Freelander “Shalom Rav” at the end of the silent Amidah. Late that night in the cabin, some people from both groups decided that we were going to run services the following night the way we wanted, rather than let those adults do it for us when they just don’t understand. For several hours, we went through the siddur and found a way to do services that would be acceptable to both groups. The issue of 1-day vs 2-day yom tov wasn’t on our radar, since most of us had never observed even one full day of Sukkot as a full cessation from work (however defined), so this retreat was so far outside our experience that it didn’t occur to us that there was something off about the two-day thing. The issue of gender, which would ordinarily be a major sticking point in this sort of Reform-Orthodox pluralistic dialogue, also didn’t really come up, since the Orthodox group was all male, and there was just one girl in the NFTY group and she was apathetic. So the issues we were working out between us were mostly stylistic (and, in retrospect, superficial), but at the time they seemed important to our Jewish identities. In the end, we were proud of what we had accomplished on our own without the adults, and we felt Jewishly empowered and had our first meaningful experiences with creating pluralistic Jewish communities. The content was less important than that empowerment and that dialogue. And none of this would have happened if we had just accepted what the adults were feeding us and hadn’t rebelled.

These teens are part of what appears to be a growing number of young adults in the denomination more interested in conventional prayer and traditional Jewish observances than their parents are.

“Conventional prayer”? The Reform movement is the largest organized Jewish movement in the country, so there’s nothing more “conventional” than what goes on in Reform synagogues every week, and I don’t think these teens are more interested in the rabbi-cantor-choir services from back home than their parents are. “Traditional Jewish observance”? Oh yes, I remember my great-grandmother telling me about how she and her friends used to put on their tefillin and have a Carlebach minyan in the girls’ bathroom when they were teenagers back in the shtetl.

Rather, these teens are exploring Jewish practices different from what they grew up with, and I think it’s completely healthy for them to engage in this sort of exploration as they think about what it means for them to create their own Jewish experience rather than depending on authority figures to create it for them. And there’s nothing “more” or “less” traditional about that — it’s just a part of growing up.

Kutz Camp, which runs sessions from late June through mid-August, attracts the most-committed Reform teens from around the country and so, while what happens there may not be typical of what’s going on everywhere, it is a seeding ground for new leaders and a place where developing trends are evident.

In addition to demanding more traditional prayer, a small but growing number of campers and young faculty there are wearing yarmulkes or tzitzit, even tefillin along with prayer shawls.

Ok, so teenagers are looking for outward ways to display their Jewish identities. What’s the problem with that? This list might also include Tzahal T-shirts and chai necklaces. I think it’s harmless; it’s the adults who are turning this into an ideological movement, not the teenagers. The adults should stop projecting their own issues onto the campers and go read Erikson.

One of this year’s campers had shuckling — the rhythmic prayer-rocking usually done by fervently Orthodox men — perfected.

“Fervently Orthodox men”??? Here I’m at a loss for words.

For the first time, song leaders taught the chasidic songs of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach alongside more modern Reform tunes.

“More modern”??? Carlebach was writing his now-classic tunes in the ’70s, at the exact same time that Friedman and Klepper were writing theirs. And they were all doing basically the same thing — setting Jewish prayers to simple melodies influenced by an American folk idiom to enable people to join together in spirited musical prayer. Just because Carlebach had a bigger beard than Klepper and sang with an Ashkenazi accent doesn’t mean that his music is any more “traditional” or less “modern”.

There are even “rumblings” of interest in making the camp, which is now kosher-style, really kosher, said Kutz Director Rabbi Eve Rudin. “We first started seeing kids lay tefillin two or three years ago. Certainly we saw it last summer. It’s a handful of kids. Tzitzit are more widespread; quite a few kids are wearing them.”

It’s an ironic shift for Kutz, which has long been a site of creative experimentation, like the jazz service, in Reform worship.

Where’s the irony? These kids didn’t grow up wearing tzitzit or tefillin, so when they try them on at Kutz, it’s in precisely that spirit of “creative experimentation”, and should be encouraged as such.

It also seems to reflect a growing generation gap, with current leaders of the movement’s institutions not always fully ready to embrace the changes that its youngest constituents are calling for.

This sentence could have been written about any movement institutions in any generation.

Several young faculty members at Kutz this summer (where I taught writing during the first session) wanted to gather to sing the traditional Friday evening Psalms at the edge of the lake before camp-wide Kabbalat Shabbat services. Initially, said one faculty member who asked not to be named, they were given tacit permission as long as they didn’t invite camper participation. But then they were told they could not, since singing the Psalms — even though they’re contained in the Reform prayer book — isn’t a conventional Reform practice.

Wait, I’m confused! I thought you just said that the younger generation was more interested in “conventional prayer”!

Anyway, this policy blows my mind. Kutz, “a site of creative experimentation”, is taking the position that anything that isn’t done in most Reform congregations is out of bounds? Unless it involves easy-listening jazz? Is Kutz denying that these psalms are part of the Tanach, or for that matter, of Gates of Prayer?

For Rabbi Rudin, the issue was about faculty members separating themselves from the rest of the community in order to do something which “would be seen as ‘more religious,’ or ‘better,’ ” she said.

“We as a faculty are here to enable the experience for the kids, so if the kids see that the faculty are not pleased with the worship, what are they going to think about their own Jewish practice? I want every camper to feel proud of the Jewish choices they are making and not to feel that ‘more is better’ or ‘more traditional is better.’ ”

If the article is accurate that this was going on before (not during) camp-wide Kabbalat Shabbat services, then they’re not actually separating themselves from the rest of the community.

Rabbi Rudin, you are the one labeling these services as “more religious”, by forbidding them on those grounds. The people participating are doing so because they prefer that for themselves, for whatever reason, and are making no statement about what is objectively “better” for everyone. As I got older, one of the things I found frustrating about working at a UAHC camp was that any individually motivated Jewish practice (which someone did because s/he chose to, rather than because it was on the schedule) was viewed with automatic suspicion. If the faculty is pursuing their own prayer experiences to augment the camp-wide services, then the message this sends to the kids is that it’s ok (and perhaps even desirable) to make thoughtful choices about personal Jewish practice, and they have role models for doing this. That was the message I picked up when I was a camper and one of my counselors refused to say Aleinu on ideological grounds. Was his practice “more religious” or “better”? Who cares? That’s not the point. The point was that someone I respected was thinking for himself about what the prayers meant. If camp is supposed to be a laboratory for an ideal Jewish community, then the faculty can be better role models if they are living meaningful Jewish lives than if they are just putting on a show for the campers.

Since the practice of singing these psalms on Friday night dates back to the 16th century, and the rest of the Friday night service is much older, one could easily make the argument that it’s “more traditional” not to sing these psalms. (And as we see above, this is obviously true in the Reform movement’s history as well.) But that shouldn’t matter — including or not including these psalms seems like a morally neutral question that should be subject to individual discretion, regardless of which choice is “more traditional”. Anyway, Rabbi Rudin is falling into the Artscroll trap of identifying “more traditional” with “consonant with contemporary Orthodox practice, regardless of vintage”.

Top Reform leaders are equally concerned that those more inclined to classical Reform Judaism, which is less focused on ritual observance, not feel alienated by those interested in tradition.

Classical Reform Judaism made some strong statements on paper, but in practice, it is just as focused on ritual observance as any other stream of Judaism — you better make sure that the rabbi is wearing a robe, and that everyone stands or sits at the same time, and that everyone listens attentively to the choir, or else. The relevant distinction here is more between communal and individual ritual observance — “top Reform leaders” are concerned that individuals are pursuing ritual observance that is different from the ritual observances mandated by the institutions.

And anyone who bans something because it’s not a “conventional Reform practice” is “interested in tradition”. Congratulations.

Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, heard from many campers about the “botched” jazz service when he came to Kutz for a visit in mid-July. “They were so afraid of offending these kids [the more religiously inclined] that they were too intimidated to proceed in their desire to bring creative approaches to prayer, something we normally do in virtually any youth setting,” Rabbi Yoffie told The Jewish Week.

“The more religiously inclined”??? This was in brackets, so I’m going to blame the Jewish Week for this one, not Rabbi Yoffie. But come on. Anyone with a “desire to bring creative approaches to prayer” sounds pretty “religiously inclined” to me!

Rabbi David Ellenson, president of the movement’s seminary arm, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, said in an interview that “the Reform movement has to be tolerant and embrace classical Reform Jews for whom this embrace of tradition is not something they celebrate. I would hope it would remain sufficiently pluralistic to include both camps.”

I know some Classical Reform Jews, and they’re all about “embrace of tradition” and they can’t understand why what was good enough for 19th-century Germany isn’t good enough for today’s kids. (As I’ve written before, I think some Classical Reform practices “originated in ages and under the influence of ideas entirely foreign to our present mental and spiritual state”. But that’s beside the point.)

Otherwise, kudos to Rabbi Ellenson for his call for pluralism.

Some Kutz teens also viewed unity as the priority.

Grace Klein wrote in the camp newspaper after the jazz service that “as disturbed as I was throughout the service, I as well as everyone else who stayed, chose to place the unity of Kutznikim over personal satisfaction. The choice also had to do with respect” for the musician leading the service.

Ok, fine. I don’t place unity on as high a pedestal, so I think it would have been fine to have two parallel minyanim, one with easy-listening jazz and one without, but I agree that it would have been better to make this decision in advance.

“The fact is that many of us prefer the traditional aspects of Judaism, particularly in worship, more than previous Reform generations did,” she wrote. But “If anything, the schmaltzy, keyboard extravaganza was an experiment … the way to lead the movement towards tradition is not to balk at our predecessors’ choices but to basically keep on doing what we’re doing.”

While the tensions raised by this developing issue may have been more visible at Kutz than in other Reform-affiliated institutions, it is not the only place the interest in traditional observance is being seen.

Many young Reform rabbis are reversing choices made by their older colleagues, some of whom proudly eat shrimp and bacon.

David Singer, 24, is part of this new wave. Entering his fourth year of rabbinical school at HUC-JIR in the Village, he always wears a kipa and tzitzit, keeps kosher and doesn’t ride or use money on Shabbat.

But he does it all from a purely Reform perspective, which emphasizes personal autonomy in religious practice, a principle he regards as among the highest of values, he said in an interview a few weeks ago.

Why is the phrase “traditional observance” being used to refer purely to ritual observance (rather than to mitzvot bein adam la-chaveiro), and purely to ritual observances that weren’t common in the Reform movement a few decades ago?

The spreading interest in traditional observance is creating “a tug of war between pluralism and uniformity” for the movement, said Singer, who was on the Kutz faculty.

“Maybe it’s a fear that ‘God forbid we become more like the Orthodox.’ It’s not about being Orthodox, but the exact opposite because we want to do it in a plurality of ways and are choosing to do it, which is not what Orthodoxy is about. It’s seen as a threat, but it shouldn’t be.”

I agree 100%.

Singer grew up in the Reform movement, in its summer camps and attending a Reform day school in his home city of San Diego, and now lives in Brooklyn.

“I’m definitely one of the more observant people in my [rabbinical school] class,” Singer said. But “I know that as a class we all struggle to find our place within the Reform movement.

Normally I’d take issue with the use of “more observant”, but it’s possible that he also means it in a way that would actually be accurate.

“Do any of us pray in Reform synagogues in New York City aside from small minyanim at Beth Elohim?” the Park Slope Reform synagogue where he works as rabbinic intern. “No. You’re more likely to find us at the independent minyanim” that in recent years have sprouted up around New York City, where the approach to prayer tends to be at once creative and traditional.

Props to Beth Elohim, which may hold a record among synagogues for hosting the most independent minyanim. So it seems like if it weren’t for the independent minyanim, the Reform movement’s future rabbis wouldn’t have anywhere where they want to pray as participants (rather than as leaders).

“We’re looking for things outside the box in which our generation feels comfortable experimenting and expressing our Judaism in ways that haven’t always fit into the established norms of Reform Judaism. At times it is seen as an affront to people who aren’t always ready for it,” Singer said.

This is a much more accurate frame that reflects the internal dynamics of the Reform movement. The Reform movement has “established norms”, and some people are “outside the box”. This makes more sense than the frame prevalent in the rest of the article, which labels practices as “traditional” when Orthodoxy happens to share them and “creative” otherwise, ignoring the motivations behind those practices.

So can these conflicting approaches to Jewish worship and observance be reconciled within the Reform movement?

Only if the Reform movement gives up homogeneity.

It’s a real-world challenge, said Rabbi Yoffie, who in 1999 called for “a Reform revolution” in worship, with more emphasis on lively prayer and text study. “There isn’t a shul in the world that doesn’t struggle to create a worship experience meaningful to everybody.”

Maybe they’d have more success if they weren’t trying to make it “meaningful to everybody”, and instead tried to pick one thing and do it well. “Led Zeppelin didn’t write songs that everyone liked. They left that to the Bee Gees.”

Taking on Jewish observance should be embraced, said Rabbi Yoffie — to a point.

Again, this isn’t in quotes so it’s the Jewish Week’s fault, but “Jewish observance”??? Like loving the stranger, keeping honest weights and measures, and pursuing justice? To a point?

“No aspect of the tradition should be foreign to us. We should be prepared to explore everything. Even things that would have been unthinkable to parents and grandparents,” said Rabbi Yoffie.

Great. (And I hope that includes kabbalat shabbat psalms too, as an example that should be uncontroversial. I also hope it includes “aspect[s] of the tradition” that haven’t been invented yet.)

“Some people may want to go and become either Conservative or Orthodox. So be it.”

Generally that’s a final step, after they feel that they’ve exhausted their options in the Reform community where they came from. Are you interested in pushing people in that direction? Why?

There are limits to what the Reform movement can encompass, he said. “We’re a mitzvah-oriented tradition, not halacha-oriented,” he said, referring to Jewish law. “If you take it all upon yourself as an obligation rather than as a choice, you’ve reached the point at which you’re no longer a Reform Jew.”

Ok, let’s count all the things wrong with this statement.

1. I honestly don’t understand the distinction he’s drawing between “mitzvah-oriented” and “halacha-oriented”. Is it that “mitzvah” refers to 613 imperative statements in the Torah (many of which are not followed today by anyone) and “halacha” refers to the specifics of how to observe them? If so, then how can the mitzvot be observed with no specifics? (That’s right, no specifics. He didn’t say “we disagree with Orthodox halacha”, he didn’t say “we don’t have a single uniform halacha”, he said “not halacha-oriented”.)
2. If the Reform movement is “not halacha-oriented”, then has the CCAR Responsa Committee been informed?
3. Whose official definition does Rabbi Yoffie use for “it all” (referring to Jewish law)? The Rif? Isaac Klein? The Kitzur Shulchan Aruch? The CCAR Responsa Committee? Artscroll? An educated Reform Jew who is interpreting halacha autonomously? In the Orthodox world, only an extremist (and an ignorant one) would say that there is a single set of practices that can be identified as “the halacha”. So how can there be a single version of halacha of which Reform Jews definitionally don’t observe “it all”?
4. The language of “take … upon yourself” implies that there is choice in the matter. The language of “mitzvah” implies obligation. Therefore, for these purposes, it seems that “choice” vs “obligation” is a false dichotomy — I think Rabbi Yoffie would agree that there are situations in which both apply.
5. Are the ethical mitzvot a “choice”?
6. Add your own!

Back at Kutz, as third-session campers arrived, many to participate in community service programs as part of the camp’s “Mitzvah Corps,” Rabbi Rudin reflected on the tensions playing out between those interested in greater observance and those who are not.

“Greater observance”…… I’ve said it all already. :(

“We do want there to be experimentation, and I do think there’s a place here for someone who keeps strictly kosher and to wear tefillin. This is supposed to be a very pluralistic place. But in the end, even though the Reform movement is about being pluralistic, there is a range” of accepted behaviors, she said.

“This is about the Reform movement coming to terms with the fact that there are boundaries, and what those boundaries may be.”

For sure. But why should those boundaries be anywhere in regard to personal ritual practice? I can think of many practices followed in parts of the Orthodox world (you know, the world that the Jewish Week uses as a standard for “religious”, “observant”, and “traditional”) that should be outside appropriate boundaries for the Reform movement (e.g. discriminating against LGBT people, excluding women from leadership roles, supporting West Bank settlements, encouraging all the men in the community to study full-time instead of getting a job), but nothing of the sort is being pursued by the Kutz campers. Of course, the first two would be happening in the Reform movement today if it restricted itself to “conventional Reform practice” as it was known in previous generations.

Limmud NY: Reform halakhah panel: DVD extras

I blogged last fortnight about the panel on "The Role of Halakhah in Reform Judaism" at Limmud NY. Here are some other disconnected (and still somewhat raw and not 100% thought out) thoughts on the topic, which I was either prepared to say on the panel but the discussion never went in that direction, or which were clarified in other conversations over the weekend before and after the panel, particularly with LastTrumpet, ahavatcafe, and Saul.

ONE

None of the people who were actually on the panel would have taken this position, but I had been hoping that someone would say that they concur with the Pittsburgh Platform (which I also concur with on a meta-halakhic level, though not on a halakhic level) and that Reform Judaism means that we follow the ethical mitzvot (bein adam la-chavero) and not the ritual mitzvot (bein adam la-makom). To which I would respond, FINE. If your conception of Judaism doesn't include ritual mitzvot, that's up to you, I don't care. (It's between you and God, one might even say.) But then we could all stand to be more serious about the ethical mitzvot, the ones we all agree are important. Not just "doing a mitzvah", but letting these mitzvot pervade our lives. We should be studying and observing these mitzvot in the realm of halakhah (i.e. specific actions to put into practice) and not only in the realm of aggadah (i.e. more general statements about our values -- which are also extremely important, and which steer the ship of halakhah).

If one is going to make the claim that "Reform Jews are more makpid on the ethical mitzvot, since we're not expending all this energy on ritual mitzvot" (and I've heard various formulations of this claim, going back to the "apt rather to obstruct than to further" clause of the Pittsburgh Platform; I even saw an article that tried to use the rabbinic concept of ha-oseik b'mitzvah patur min ha-mitzvah to argue that Reform Jews are exempt from ritual mitzvot because they're so busy repairing the world that they don't have time to not eat shrimp or something like that, but Google is failing me - can anyone find it?), then this claim should be empirically verifiable. Reform Jews should in fact be more careful about ethical mitzvot than other Jews, and not just talk big. And for sure, the organized Reform movement is doing great things in this area (and it's an easy escape to find some self-identified Orthodox Jews who are violating these mitzvot and lowering the bar for everyone). But why did it take an Orthodox Jew to write this detailed article on calculating your tzedakah obligation? This type of halakhic analysis should be Reform Judaism's bread and butter. And are Reform Jewish businesspeople at the forefront of running their businesses according to ethical mitzvot? Why or why not? Reform Jews should be the ones writing the books on applying these mitzvot to contemporary practical situations, not just Orthodox Jews.

As liberal Jews, instead of just talking about how great we are (and I include myself in this tochecha), let's examine our actions and think about how we could be better at applying our big ideas to the real world. We shouldn't just say "tzedek tzedek tirdof", but we should be specific.

TWO

If Reform Judaism believes that halakhah is interpreted autonomously by each individual, then does Reform Judaism stand for anything? If you and I have different interpretations of halakhah, then do we have anything in common?

Yes. Not halakhah but aggadah. Despite diversity in Jewish practice, Reform/liberal Judaism has expressed a relatively coherent aggadah, so that liberal Jews can agree on Jewish values. (And if aggadah is going to steer halakhah, then this puts some constraints on how halakhah can develop, avoiding the "anything goes" situation that some fear.)

In contrast, perhaps Orthodox Judaism has (relatively) more uniformity in halakhah and less uniformity in aggadah.

THREE

"Patrilineal descent" was in the panel description, but didn't really come up except as a side point in a discussion of CCAR/URJ procedure. But if it had, I was just going to give my stock rant on the topic.

My personal position on the matter is that I (the only person I have any authority over) am Jewish, and if anyone else tells me that s/he is Jewish (and I have no reason to suspect malice), then it's not my place to question him/her -- how do I know his/her definition isn't the right one?

FOUR

"Interfaith marriage" was also in the panel description, but didn't come up either. This is a complicated one, especially if we look at it through a halakhic lens (the topic of the panel) rather than as armchair sociologists or marriage counselors. I can think of reasons why a Jew might want to marry another Jew (preferentially or exclusively), and why a third party might want Jews to marry other Jews, but that's not the question. There are two related halakhic questions here: "Is a Jew permitted to marry a non-Jew?" and "Is a rabbi (or other officiant in a Jewish capacity) permitted to officiate at the marriage of a Jew and a non-Jew?", and the fact that the questions are being asked presupposes that these two people want to get married. Let's also suppose for the sake of argument that the Jew in question has no potential Jewish partners (the alternative is staying single), so that we're assessing this marriage itself rather than its opportunity cost.

Of course, a rabbi (like any other clergyperson) is authorized by the state to perform a civil marriage between any two adults (with many states still imposing restrictions based on the genders of the parties, but not based on religious or ethnic identity). This civil marriage has no status in Jewish law, so it's no more or less permitted than living with a non-Jewish partner without any marriage. Many (most?) rabbis won't perform such a marriage unless both parties are Jewish, presumably because they don't see themselves as justices of the peace, and won't perform a civil marriage in the absence of a Jewish marriage, and won't officiate at a Jewish marriage unless both parties are Jewish.

So we're really not asking the question about civil marriage, but about Jewish marriage. Out of rabbis who won't officiate at this marriage, many probably have reasons based on social policy -- they don't think it's a good idea. Again, we're going to skirt the question of whether it's a good idea. If one comes to the conclusion that it is, is this marriage permitted? Is it valid?

Before we begin to answer the question (and I'm not going to answer it in this post), we have to think about what we as liberal Jews mean by "marriage" and by "Jewish".

Jewish marriage consists of two components: kiddushin and nisuin. Addressing them in reverse order: It's not 100% clear when and how nisuin takes place, but it takes place under the chuppah, symbolizing the home that the two partners create together. We already know that it is possible for a Jew and a non-Jew to create a home together; we have empirical evidence since it happens all the time. Nisuin requires a ketubah. Since this is a legal contract by which both parties agree to be bound, its terms are in effect regardless of whether the parties are Jewish. (It may or may not be enforceable, but the same can be said of a ketubah involving two Jews, if they live in a secular society.)

Kiddushin is more complicated, because what is it??? As liberal Jews, we don't understand it as a man acquiring a woman, but have we replaced it with another understanding (as distinct from nisuin)? Is it a mere "ceremony", or does it effect a real change in status? And what is that change? We have to figure out the big picture of what egalitarian Jewish marriage really means (not just weddings, but marriage) before we can address smaller details like whether it exclusively involves Jews.

Independent of figuring out what kiddushin really is, one might say that whatever it is, it can only apply to Jews, since it's "kedat Moshe ve-Yisrael", and only Jews are subject to that law. I would respond: As liberal Jews, do we believe that there are laws that are intrinsically binding on all Jews (regardless of what those Jews have to say about the matter) and not on non-Jews? (I'm not sure I do.) And if not, then if we use this argument to exclude non-Jews from kiddushin, then we should also exclude Jews who do not consider themselves bound by Jewish law (in any sense whatsoever -- as widely as you want to define this). But I have never heard of a rabbi who was not willing to officiate at a wedding of two secular Jews, even though (let us stipulate) their relationship to "dat Moshe ve-Yisrael" is no different from a non-Jew's relationship to it. So that can't be the whole picture.

In conclusion, there are some key unanswered questions (from a liberal Jewish standpoint):

• What is kiddushin?
• What is the difference between a Jew and a non-Jew (ceteris paribus)?

Until we answer these questions, any attempts to answer more advanced questions (e.g. "Can there be kiddushin involving a Jew and a non-Jew?") are futile.

Limmud NY: Reform halakhah panel

(Crossposted to Jewschool)

Hi from the Catskills (or should I say, the Catskill)!

On Shabbat afternoon I was on a panel on "The Role of Halakhah in Reform Judaism", moderated by Rabbi Leon Morris of the Skirball Center for Adult Jewish Learning. The other panelists were Rabbi Joan Glazer Farber of the Union for Reform Judaism, and Rabbi Mark Sameth of Pleasantville Community Synagogue. (So yes, I was the token non-rabbi on the panel.)

By request, here is some of the discussion from the panel as best I can recall. I'm mostly just going to post what I said (because I'm not worried about misrepresenting myself, but might misrepresent others), but if other panelists or attendees want to post their recollections, please do so in the comments.

There was no one on the panel representing a "Classical Reform" perspective or a "Reform Judaism isn't halachic" perspective, but the views expressed were far from homogeneous.

Some personal information, since people are wondering whether I belong on the panel: I consider myself a Reform expatriate. I practice what I consider to be Reform Judaism (as an ideology), though I am not currently affiliated with the Reform movement (as a set of institutions). So I focused my remarks on the former, not the latter.

We started by sharing our thoughts on the relationship between Reform Judaism and halakhah. Here's what I said: Often when we get into discussions about identifying one's own movement or other movements as "halakhic" or "not halakhic", these distinctions are about identity and politics and semantics, and not necessarily about substance, since there is not a single agreed-upon definition of what halakhah is, and it's just a question of how you define it. If we define "halakhah" by the Orthodox definition, then Reform Judaism is obviously not halakhic by that definition; if we line the denominations up on a scale from 1 to Orthodox, then of course Reform will come up short. If, on the contrary, we define "halakhah" as binding religious obligations, then all Reform views would agree that there is halakhah in Reform Judaism -- even if you hold like the Pittsburgh Platform of 1885, which held that the ritual commandments in the Torah do not apply in our time, then you still would hold that the Torah's ethical commandments are obligatory.

So we can start from the assumption that there exists Reform halakhah, and that it is different in nature from Orthodox halakhah. I want to point out two significant ways in which the Reform understanding of halakhah is different from halakhah as understood by other movements:

1) There is a concept called yeridat hadorot (descent of the generations) that informs Orthodox halakhah. The idea is that the Written and Oral Torah were revealed at some time in the past, and each successive generation is farther and farther from the original revelation. This impacts halakhah because there is a mishnah in Masechet Eduyot that says that a beit din (Jewish court) cannot overturn a decision of a previous beit din unless the later one is greater than the earlier one in both wisdom and number. Since our generation is farther from revelation than previous generations, we are presumed to have less wisdom, and therefore we cannot supplant earlier halakhic decisions, but can only work within them. In Orthodox halakhah, the transmission of tradition can be compared to a game of Telephone, where the signal gets weaker each time it is passed on. Reform Judaism, in contrast, would compare this transmission to that game where you go around telling a story, and each person adds a word or a sentence. Instead of yeridat hadorot, the operative principle is, in Isaac Newton's words, "standing on the shoulders of giants". By this understanding, we are greater in wisdom than previous generations, because our generation knows everything that they knew, plus everything that we have learned since then. Therefore, the tradition continues to grow and develop. This is a small-p progressive rather than a small-c conservative understanding of halakhah.

2) Authority. All Jewish religious movements would agree that God is the ultimate authority, and would also agree that we cannot communicate directly with God. We have texts that were written (or Written) in the past, but all would agree that there are decisions to be made in the present time about our practice, and the question is about who has the authority to make those decisions. This is a case that challenges the way people typically line the movements up on a spectrum: the Conservative movement is at one extreme and the Reform movement on another, with Orthodox in the middle. (This is about the movement ideologies on paper, not necessarily about how people actually practice.) In the Conservative movement, there is a law committee that makes halakhic decisions for the movement. Even if they come up with multiple answers, they still define the range of options, and the local rabbi selects an option from this range, and the individual is supposed to follow halakhah as determined by this hierarchy. In the Orthodox world, there is no centralized committee, so this authority is more diffuse, but there are rabbis who render halakhic decisions, and individuals follow various rabbis' rulings. In Reform Judaism, the responsibility of interpreting Torah to determine the halakhah that is to be observed is on each individual.

Following up on this, Leon Morris asked a question about autonomy. He said he was talking about autonomy the way it should ideally work, since we all know how it works out in reality. I responded to this throwaway comment, saying that I'm not sure we do know how it works in reality. I don't think that informed autonomy has really been implemented in the Reform movement. One might look at Reform-affiliated Jews and say that they're acting autonomously, perhaps too autonomously, but I say we shouldn't confuse apathy with autonomy. Sure, people are choosing not to do Jewish things much of the time, but when they are doing Jewish things, they are entirely dependent on someone else to tell them what to do and to do things for them. Informed autonomy hasn't been implemented, because most Jews in the Reform movement are neither informed nor autonomous. Before we knock autonomy, first we should try it.

LM said that his view of how autonomy should work in Reform Judaism (and please correct me if I'm misrepresenting this) is that an HUC professor might say to a student "I noticed this morning at davening that you weren't wearing tefillin. Why is that?", and the student would respond with reasons why s/he doesn't wear tefillin. Thus, people should be familiar with the tradition, and autonomously define their relationship to it, and if someone wants to reject an element of it, s/he should have a reason. I disagree with this view of tradition. I said that to treat "The Tradition" as something static and monolithic is to commit an act of Artscrollization. Jewish tradition is something that has always evolved over time, and this tradition includes the last 200 years of Reform Jewish history, which have created their own facts on the ground for us to take into account, and the tradition will continue to evolve and develop into the future, and autonomy means that each of us is an active participant in that development.

We shouldn't assume that in the state of nature everyone is Orthodox, and that any difference from Orthodoxy requires justification. In the state of nature we're wherever we started, and we might change from that point. So for the first n years of my life I didn't wear tefillin, but I didn't have a specific justification for this; it was simply because I grew up not wearing tefillin, so that was the default.

One of the panelists asked me how I would define Kol Zimrah. I said that KZ is not affiliated institutionally with the Reform movement or any other movement, and doesn't identify itself with a movement label. It is the case empirically that people in the KZ community are exercising informed autonomy about their Jewish practice, but Kol Zimrah as an organization doesn't take an ideological stance about this. However, I have found that the independent Jewish communities I am involved in, like Kol Zimrah and the National Havurah Committee, are closer to what I would want in a Reform community (in that there is informed autonomy) than the actual Reform movement is.

LM asked about individuals giving up some of their autonomy for the sake of creating community. He gave the example of a community agreeing to adhere to some practice, even something that isn't when the community is all together, e.g. everyone agrees to daven mincha every day wherever they are, to connect them to the rest of the community.

I said that the Reform model of halakha should be not the Shulchan Aruch (a set of rules), but the Talmud (a conversation, where Rabbi X says this and Rabbi Y says that and they talk about their reasons). I think if the entire community in this example were engaged in a discourse about mincha, that would bring the community together just as effectively as everyone deciding to do it.

One attendee asked what the deal was with Kutz Camp having visiting day on Shabbat. I got to tell my story about visiting my brother at Kutz (both to address this question and illustrate what autonomous Jewish practice could look like), but said that it would have been more convenient if visiting day hadn't been on Shabbat.

Another attendee asked why this conversation was happening at Limmud NY, and not happening at the URJ Biennial. I said that we weren't the ones to answer that!

Someone pointed out the need for education for informed autonomy to be feasible, as well as for Reform Jews to operate in a pluralistic setting with other Jews. I agreed wholeheartedly, and said some of the stuff about education and identity from the end of Hilchot Pluralism Part VI.

That's all for now, since it's time to jam, but in a later post I'll say some of the stuff on this topic that I didn't get to say on the panel.

RK survey results: free response

The multiple-choice results to the Reform rabbis' kids survey have been posted.

Here are some selected responses from the optional comments:

• "While I am Jewishly active in a Reform context, I wouldn't go so far as to say I identify as a Reform Jew. I have serious issues with the movement."
• "i am just like my father and have a wonderful relationship with him, except in terms of faith. he was never able to convince me that religion is anything more than a set of arbitrary rules and ideas for the weak-minded. i would have been a lot better served by taking philosophy classes at a young age instead of religious school. at least the breadth of view and critical thinking skills would have served me well."
• "yiddish culture. birthright to czernowitz is what we need."
• "I don't believe in god/religion."
• "i hate jews"
• "I, of course, belong to my father's synagogue, Temple ______ in [city]. however, because of so many Jewish experiences in [city] (even teaching at a modern orthodox day school) I really consider myself 'just jewish' if that is a catagory. My fiance would love to 'shul shop' but that is not necessarily politically correct. for reasons only an RK can understand." [Ed.: Wow. Even as an RK, I never thought about that scenario, since I haven't lived as an adult in the city where I grew up. --BZ]
• "I participate in Jewish Traditions for the sake of quality time with my Family, otherwise I tend to identify more with the practices of Buddhism."
• "I grew up in a Reform congregation and spent many, many summers at Reform summer camp. I am currently in Israel for my 4th visit. I have to say that after growing up strongly identified with Judaism and the Reform movement specifically, my time in college showed me that perhaps Reform is not where I will stay in the future. There are aspects that I love, especially the camp system, but the URJ is in disarray and I don't identify nationally with Reform services/worship. I love the congregation I grew up in, but find myself bored or angered at other Reform services nationally. I suppose things will depend greatly on where I decide to settle when I return to the US."
• "I don't belong to a synagogue, but I consider myself a reform Jew."
• "I am not religious per se, but am invovled in Jewish community although not through any official affliation."
• "I am active in a Conservative synagogue. This is due to my wife's position as the Educational Director of the synagogue. It remains my preference to be affiliated with the Reform movement."
• "i have been on staff at UAHC camps been to Israel for Eisendrath Exchange, taught religious school and do not like services conducted by any one other than my parent"
• "Traditional Egalitarian Minyan - didn't fit into any of the buckets naturally, but a rising trend."
• "I created a film about Israel, but wouldn't call myself a Jewish professional. I do identify strongly as a Reform Jew."
• "I feel much more comfortable in a modern orthodox service than I do in a Reform service."
• "If I had to pick a label, I would probably describe myself as 'traditional egalitarian.' Most of my friends are either Conservative or Orthodox. I prefer to daven in an egalitarian setting, but have little problem in an orthodox setting. On friday nights, we either daven at the conservative shul or orthodox shul. Since most of our friends in our neighborhood are orthodox, we tend to daven with them. I attended a Conservative day school through grade 8, then attended [pluralistic Jewish high school]. I feel comfortable in any Jewish setting, from Reform to Orthodox."
• "I am the daughter of 2 rabbis, the niece of 2, and the granddaughter of 1. 4 of those rabbis are/were in the Reform movement (the other was ordained Reconstructionist but holds a pulpit at a shul that's not affiliated), but I was Bat Mitzva-d in the Conservative movement. I am most comfortable with Conservative liturgy and was involved in the Conservative/egalitarian minyan in college. But my most meaningful Jewish experiences have been in a pluralistic or nondenominational context. I am currently a member of a shul/minyan that's not affiliated with a movement."
• "I have made Aliyah and will be a combat soldier in the summer."

RK survey results: multiple choice

The Reform rabbis' kids survey has been up for just 5 days, but has already gotten 136 responses! Given the small size of the eligible pool (I'm estimating around 600-700 in the world), this is a solid sample size, so I'm ready to publish results.

One reason I did this is that we hear a lot about Jewish demographics and population shifts, but these studies are rarely longitudinal, so we don't hear about what happens to individuals over time. I throw around anecdotal claims, but without statistics about the population. So the focus on Reform rabbis' kids of a particular generation allows us to isolate a group of people who had a relatively similar Jewish upbringing (compared to the general Jewish population), and (as the data confirms) ended up all over the map.

A note about methodology:
I posted the survey here and on Jewschool, sent it to friends and relatives (encouraging them to forward it on), my mother sent it to the HUC alumni list (for rabbis to send to their children, or answer themselves if they're eligible), and a friend sent it to the Bronfman alumni list.

A commenter wrote on Jewschool that this is "an unscientific poll that anyone can fill out". That's true -- the survey relies entirely on the honor system, and there is no way of verifying that the people who answered the survey are actually who they claim to be. There are also some sample biases: posting on Mah Rabu and Jewschool skews the sample towards people who are Jewishly active in some capacity, and posting on the HUC alumni list skews it towards rabbis (who got the email directly, instead of only getting it if their parent forwarded it to them).

With all that in mind, let's look at the results. For now, I'll just post the data, and leave the conclusions up to the readers.

The survey was restricted to people who are children of Reform rabbis (this wasn't defined further, but no one asked for clarification; we can assume that this means people who are HUC graduates and/or CCAR members) and were born between 1966 and 1984 (the younger limit was to restrict the survey primarily to people who are out in the world on their own, and the older limit was mostly arbitrary).

Three questions were asked: year of birth, country of residence, and Jewish self-definition. There was also a space for optional comments, which will go in the next post.

The Jewish self-definition said "Check all that apply about your current Jewish self-definition", and the choices were:

• I am a rabbi, rabbinical student, or other Jewish professional (or Jewish professional student).
• I am Jewishly active in a Reform (affiliated) context.
• I am Jewishly active in an Orthodox context.
• I am Jewishly active in a Conservative (affiliated) context.
• I am Jewishly active in a Reconstructionist (affiliated) context.
• I am Jewishly active in a nondenominational context.
• I am not Jewishly active.
• Other (please specify)

Note that all of the denominational labels specified "affiliated" except Orthodox. This was to reflect an asymmetry among the denominations: Reform, Conservative, and Reconstructionist identities are tied to movement institutions, while Orthodox identity is not (and there is not a centralized "Orthodox movement" parallel to the others).

Among the 136 respondents, 29% reported that they are rabbis or other Jewish professionals. This is a particularly meaningless number, because of the sample biases discussed above. So I separated the data into Jewish professionals and non-professionals, and analyzed the two groups separately.

***

Among the Jewish professionals (N=39):

• 15% checked no other box besides "Jewish professional"
• 67% checked Reform
• 3% checked Orthodox
• 15% checked Conservative
• 5% checked Reconstructionist
• 21% checked nondenominational
• 0% checked "not Jewishly active"

This adds up to more than 100%, because some people checked multiple boxes (in addition to "Jewish professional"). 8 respondents checked two boxes (4 Reform/nondenominational, 2 Reform/Conservative, 1 Conservative/Reconstructionist, 1 Conservative/nondenominational). 1 respondent checked 3 boxes (Reform/Conservative/nondenominational).

"Other" choices (not included in the numbers above):

• "I am a Chabad Lubavitcher Chassid"
• "in an Israeli 'traditional' sense"

***

Among the people who didn't check "Jewish professional" (N=97):

• 40% checked Reform
• 10% checked Orthodox
• 14% checked Conservative
• 4% checked Reconstructionist
• 20% checked nondenominational
• 27% checked "not Jewishly active"

Again, this adds up to more than 100%. 8 respondents checked 2 boxes (2 Reform/nondenominational, 3 Orthodox/nondenominational, 2 Reform/Reconstructionist, 1 Reconstructionist/nondenominational), and 5 respondents checked 3 boxes (2 Orthodox/Conservative/nondenominational, 1 Reform/Conservative/nondenominational, 1 Reform/Reconstructionist/nondenominational, and 1 Reform/Orthodox/Conservative).

"Other" choices (not included in the numbers above):

• "I am active in a cultural context as a writer"
• "Traditional/spiritual"
• "I consider myself a reform Jew, but am not currently active in a temple."
• "I am a member at a conservative Synagogue although it is not affiliated with the movement."
• "Although I celebrate shabbat and observe Jewish holidays with my family." [checked "not Jewishly active"]
  
• "Havurah style/nonafilliated Conservative context"
• "Hillel"

***

I broke the not-Jewish-professional group down further, into two age groups: born 1966-1975, and born 1976-1984.

The most striking result from this division is that all the respondents who checked more than one box were from the younger group. (This is also true in the Jewish professionals group, with one exception.)

Among the Jewish non-professionals born 1966-1975 (N=34):

• 50% checked Reform
• 6% checked Orthodox
• 9% checked Conservative
• 0% checked Reconstructionist
• 3% checked nondenominational
• 26% checked "not Jewishly active"

Among the Jewish non-professionals born 1976-1984 (N=63):

• 35% checked Reform
• 11% checked Orthodox
• 17% checked Conservative
• 6% checked Reconstructionist
• 30% checked nondenominational
• 27% checked "not Jewishly active"

So the active/inactive ratio is constant between the two age groups, and the largest shift is the increase in people who are "Jewishly active in a nondenominational context". There isn't enough information to tell whether this is due to a generational shift or just an age difference, since we don't know what the 1966-1975 crowd was doing 10 years ago.

Otherwise, I'll leave the interpretation of these results to the readers. Go to it!