“Integrationist” Reform weakened by ritual?

In an oddball pre-Thanksgiving op-ed piece in The Forward, Rabbi Jacob Neusner tells the story of his beginnings as a Reform Jew, his rabbinical education and career as a Conservative Jew, and his eventual return to the Reform fold.

It’s an interesting story, which you can read in full here.

Here at The Shuckle, we’ll look at a few of his more bizarre statements about Reform Judaism.

First of all, you have to understand Neusner’s dichotomy (false? jury is out on that…) of Jewish life. He declares that American Jewish life is composed of self-segregationist and integrationist elements. He places Conservative, Modern Orthodox, Reconstructionist and Reform streams in the integrationist camp, meaning that they seek to be integrated into broader society and that they find their truths in many places, including in the Torah.

The self-segregationist group, according to Neusner is composed of “Orthodox groupings such as Hasidism and yeshivish or Mitnagdic Judaism,” who find truth only in Jewish traditional learning. OK. Fine. Without giving it too much thought, this seems like a fairly apt dichotomy, though I might argue that most dichotomies of religion fail at some point. But that’s for another blog post.

Neusner is fairly “triumphalist” about Reform Judaism, as Rabbi Andy Bachman noted in a brief Facebook wall post about this today. And triumphalist he is:

Today, however, I have returned to the convictions (if not to the cuisine) of my youth — not because they are expedient but because they are compelling. After a half-century of apostasy, I affirm Reform Judaism as the American Judaism both of my personal choice and of our communal necessity. Indeed, I have come to believe that if Reform Judaism did not exist today, American Jews would have to invent it.

He then goes on to decry “The sorry state of Conservative Judaism.” I’d argue that the Conservative movement has actually been the more bold of the two lately. Just compare their Hekhsher Tzedek with the URJ’s new “Let’s eat less red meat, but not acknowledge that mindful eating is a Jewish tradition” initiative.

But then he gets to the bit that really gets me upset:

Over the past half-century, however, the integrationist Judaisms have sometimes seemed to lose sight of their convictions. Modern Orthodoxy has been under siege from its right flank, while even Reform Judaism has chosen to re-adopt some traditional rites. The outcome of this reversion to tradition has been to effectively present the integrationist Judaisms as less authentically Jewish than Orthodoxy.

He’s so close to being on the nose that it hurts me to read it.

Have “integrationist Judaisms” been seen recently as “less authentically Jewish than Orthodoxy”? Yes. But is that recent phenomenon only? I’m not sure. Is it because the Reform movement has realized that people like ritual? No.

Neusner incorrectly identifies increased ritual observances as Reform’s true plight. In my eyes, as any regular reader of this blog will know, that is the Reform intellectual community’s latest triumph! What has led to us being seen as “less authentic” is an obliviousness to or an unwillingness to thing about framing and branding, as any reader of BZ will know.

Ironically, if you buy into BZ’s reading of this situation (and I do), you will see that Neusner is guilty of the very thing that has led to the sense of diminished authenticity he’s upset about. “Reform Judaism has chosen to re-adopt some traditional rites.” Here he buys into the framing of the word “traditional” offered up by the right. He agrees with them, implying, “If it’s a ritual more common on the right, it is something truly worthy of the word traditional.”

I reject that. I’m a Jew of tradition and of Reform and there is no contradiction in terms in saying so.

Spot the error–or, Arutz Sheva can’t read the Bible

Crossposted to Jewschool.

Arurtz Sheva, the news service of the West Bank’s settlers says:

In a powerful echo of the Biblical story of the patriarch Abraham, a Mumbai doctor smashed his father’s idols and eventually decided to become a Jew in the Land of Israel.

Abraham was born Vagirds Frads to a Hindu cleric who worshipped idols, and a mother who prepared food for them. As did the Biblical Abraham, young Vagirds could not understand how his father could honor a man-made statue, nor why his mother would cook for them. “Sometimes I eat it in secret,” he confided…

What’s wrong with this? Special Thanksgiving Turkey points to the first person who gets it right.

The full article is here. Hat-tip: Yid By Choice.

To stand or not to stand?

A recent discussion on iWorship, a listserve for Reform congregational ritual committee members and other interested parties, has thankfully inspired me to go back for the post to this blog’s real purpose and strong suit: ritual and liturgy.

The discussion surrounds the issue of whether to sit or stand for the Shma and was started in reaction to a moment in Shabbat worship at the recent URJ Biennial when the service leader asked the Jews in the pews to remain seated for the Shma.

For someone who has spent most of their prayer life in a typical Reform settings, such a request is quite jarring. Indeed, I found it jarring the first time a service leader in NFTY suggested that remaining seated was a legitimate possibility, during the Shma. Remember that the Shma is not the two-line credo that Reform Jews often think of when they use the term “Shma.” It begins with that statement of faith and continues on with several lengthy paragraphs about the nature of divine reward and punishment, acceptance of commandments, and a brief review of several important mitzvot.

It is long, and until relatively, was not seen as central to the service. The center of the service was The Amidah. For me, the Amidah still is the most central litrugical “rubric,” as Larry Hoffman often puts it. So that perceived centrality will certainly color my opinion on this and how this post unfolds. Standing for The Amidah is thus a no-brainer. Standing for an additional, lengthy section is unnecessary.

The Reform movement did a few things to change this. By asserting in early Reform thought the centrality of what they called “ethical monotheism,” the Shma would, of course, come to the forefront of the liturgy. All the more so because, at the same, all but the opening line and the first and final paragraphs of what had been the Shma were excised from most Reform liturgies. This makes the Shma even more focused on what looks like ethical monotheism. For instance, a lenghty section on wearing tzitzit got tossed out along with divine reward and punishment, leaving a much more “ethical” sounding bulk about teaching mitzvot to your childern and about being mindful “in your home and on your way, when you lie down and when you wake up.”

At the same time, The Amidah was robbed of its integrity and much of it began to be recited sitting down. So the Shma replaced it as central and we began to rise for the Shma, but only the first line of it, which was seen as a sort of analog to Christians rising to recite The Nicene Creed.

So here we are. Reform Jews have abridged the Shma and placed a new emphasis on it, which makes it perfect for standing. And that’s by and large what we do. We’ve been at this for a while, and there is little sign of change. This instance at the URJ Biennial and many instances in NFTY and at our camps are grand exceptions, which may well become the rule rather than the exception during my lifetime.

Here’s why I sit during the Shma:

- It’s long. I say the longest version of the Shma, rather than the abridged Gates of Prayer or the less abridged Shabbat morning Mishkan T’filah verion. So given the choice between standing for a long time and sitting for a long time, I’ll go with sitting.

- I don’t look to it as central. Certainly, as someone who has made tzitzit a sort of personal ritual crusade, it’s important to me on the level that it has a lengthy bit about tzitzit, but it’s not the most important thing in the world.

- To me, The Amidah is paramount and of utmost centrality. If there’s going to be one long bout of standing in the service to place emphasis, I’d much rather have it be The Amidah (which after all means “The Standing”).

- When I was first introduced to the idea of sitting, it was explained that you should try not to change your position during a single prayer. Rather, spaces between prayers are the appropriate time to stand or sit, unless there’s some good reason to do otherwise. So if the Shma and V’ahavta, treated often by Reform Jews as two separate things, are really the same prayer, it would be undesirable to stand for the first line (Shma) and then sit back down for the V’ahavta (the other two paragraphs of the Shma that Reform liturgy retains). This made a lot of sense to me and influences my decisions to sit stand and bow at all times.

What do you think? What happens in your community? Do you go along with that or do you defy it, sitting in a place where most stand, or standing in a place where most sit?

The URJ on blogging: “Yay blogging! We almost get it!”

3,000-some-odd URJ Jews are in Toronto this weekend for the URJ Biennial. I’m following along on twitter (#urjbiennial).

Every biennial, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, the president of the Union, make his “State of the Union” sermon from atop the mega-pulpit erected for the convention on Shabbat morning. In this sermon, Yoffie announces the Union’s newest biennial initiatives. Last time, he unveiled the “Shabbat” initiative–how creative, Jews celebrating Shabbat!–and this time he’s unveiled something called the Embracing Technology initiative.

Overall, I think it’ll be a good thing. We here in the Reformish corner of the jblogosphere have been straining to be heard for some time so it’s nice to find a new Union site basically devoted to how to get your congregation into the conversation going on out here.

Except, oh wait. It’s not about how to jump into the conversation. It’s about how to start a blog for your congregation. And how to moderate comments. How inspired. The fact that moderating comments is one of the chief concerns of the site is pretty tell-tale.

When stuffy corporations begin blogging or tweeting, it’s a huge change in the way they think, and it’s rarely as quick as you’d want it to be. From Sinai, marketing was a one-way conversation. You’d spread your message and if people liked it and the way your presented it, they’d buy your stuff (or do whatever it is your advertising wanted them to do).

The new way is two-way. You say what you have to say and a conversation starts. If you’re doing it right, it’s an open conversation and it happens in real time. When the blogger or the administrator is away from the computer, the conversation continues because at all times of day or night, people can continue to make their comments on your post. Or, in the case of twitter, they can continue to @reply to you or use #tags that refer to you.

If your blog is moderated, this process grinds to a halt. The open and real exchange of ideas that a blog done right promotes is over when your moderate. The openness can be scary.

You need no more proof of the fact that the Union doesn’t get what we’re doing out here than to check out RJ.org. With a few notable exceptions, the RJ.org blog has become more and more of a URJ cheerleader in it’s year and a half of existence.

So, congregations, if you’re listening, the way to get into the conversation out here on the internet fringe isn’t to do what the Union is telling you. The way to do it is to read some blogs. And when you feel like you get it, start your own. Don’t jump in based on URJ advice alone.

Shabbat Shalom to everyone out there in Biennial-land.

Update! Just found RJ Blogs, where they’ll create a blog for you. With WordPress. Very impressive. *eye roll*

URJ President Yoffie booed at J Street, I smirk

Originally posted to Jewschool.

Maybe there’s some hubris involved when I chime in on the ongoing J Street conference. I’m not even there and we’ve got four or five Jewschoolers there covering it quite capably here and at Twitter. But when Eric Yoffie, the president of the Union for Reform Judaism shows up at J Street and gets booed by a crowd, I’ve got to say something. After all, I’m the self-proclaimed URJ expert here at Jewschool. Indeed, one of our guest posters has already written about this beautiful moment in this post, but I’ll take a very different angle.

To recap the relationship so far between the URJ and J Street, though Yoffie and the Religious Action Center (a DC lobby affiliated with the URJ) were initially quite warm to J Street, Yoffie lost his cool with J Street during the Gaza shit early this year. He disagreed vehemently with J Street’s assessment that Operation Cast Lead was a bad idea in this Forward op-ed. Here is J Street’s response to the piece.

But now, it seems that Yoffie sees that J Street agrees with him on more than it disagrees. And it seems J Street sees the value in having the leader of the largest Jewish religious organization in America present at their inaugural conference.

Here’s the text of his address to the J Street conference yesterday. An excerpt:

This is not the time for a full discussion of the Goldstone report, which in my view was fatally flawed. There are many questions that one might legitimately ask about Israel’s conduct of the war: Why was it necessary for Israeli forces to use so much firepower? How do you carry out a war against a terrorist organization that attacks your citizens and hides amid a civilian population? What risks are Israeli soldiers obligated to take, beyond those inherent in combat, to prevent harm to civilians? The Israelis that I know are asking these questions; it is right for them to do so, and it is right for the government of Israel to deal with these issues.

“This is not the time for a full discussion of the Goldstone report”? Which Yoffie then spends several paragraphs going on about?

Here’s RJ.org’s horn-tooting celebration of the address. An excerpt:

Rabbi Yoffie is widely considered the American Jewish community’s leading “dove.” His address at J Street’s conference underscores both the maturity of the dialogue over Middle East peace and the Reform Movement’s commitment to peace.

And here’s what Tablet had to say about the address. An excerpt:

[...] the 1,500 progressive activists gathered in Washington for this week’s J Street conference really, really agree with each other. The only division we’ve seen on display, in fact, came this afternoon, when Rabbi Eric Yoffie, head of the Union for Reform Judaism, that movement’s organizing body, showed up for a “town hall” discussion with J Street’s founder, Jeremy Ben Ami. [...]

Yoffie drew boos from the crowd for suggesting that Gazans invited their current circumstances by voting for Hamas after Israel withdrew from the territory in 2006, and for defending Israel against accusations, particularly in a recent U.N. report by Richard Goldstone, that it may have committed war crimes in Gaza. [...]

(They all clapped at the end, though.)

This points to what it means to be pro-peace for the URJ and much of its membership. I grew up neck-deep in Reform politics, so I don’t doubt the URJ’s commitment to peace for Israel and the world. Unfortunately, the URJ is constantly treading a fine line where they want to be seen as pro-peace without willing to be as critical of Israel as such a position demands.

This cognitive dissonance is what leads to slight rift between J Street and the URJ. To summarize Yoffie, “The Gazans brought it on themselves. It’s no really Israel’s fault. But we want peace for both sides anyway.” This positions wants to have it too many ways for the positions to stay coherent.

If the URJ has a contribution to make to the pro-Israel pro-peace discussion, shit or get off the pot. Do it or go away. If J Street is right when they claim to represent a majority and if the URJ’s membership is as liberal as anecdotal evidence has proven to me that it is, the URJ should go full throttle for the J Street position if they want to do their members’ justice.

The Koren Soloveitchik Siddur? Sign me up.

I’ve previously written about the Koren Sacks Siddur here. This post uses this JTA article and this Failed Messiah post as sources. This post has been crossposted to Jewschool.

My favorite siddur these days is the Koren Sacks Siddur. Busting ArtScroll’s liturgical monopoly for the first time in a long time, Israeli siddur and Tanach publisher Koren combined the elegant layout and typefaces created by Eliyahu Koren with the clear, concise English commentary and instruction of the British Sacks siddur to create the Hebrew-English Koren Sacks Siddur. The siddur came out this summer and quickly shook up the exciting world of Orthodox American liturgy.

One of the OU’s perennial complaints about the ArtScroll family of siddurim is their refusal to quote or cite modern sources. The OU has long sought to create a siddur that includes the commentary and teachings of the giant of Modern Orthodoxy, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik. Koren loves it and is already working on creating this siddur, which they call the Mesorat HaRav Koren Siddur.

Amen!

Toward an “indigengous Reform vision of halachah”

The other day, I had some nice things to say about this new op-ed in The Forward from fellow jblogger and Jewschooler BZ.

Over the course of the rather active comment thread on the version of that post at Jewschool, BZ shared a great chunk from his original draft of the op-ed that got cut for length. I’ll share it here because I think it just continues to hit the nail on the head.

When intra-Reform discourse touches on the subject of halachah (Jewish law), people on all sides of the issue tend to portray “the halachah” as a static body of law. Whether they are advocating for the position “Reform Judaism is not halachic” or “Reform Judaism should be more open to halachah,” the unspoken assumption is that Orthodox halachah is the normative halachah, and Reform Judaism should either reject it or incorporate elements of it. In other words, Orthodox Judaism is perceived as 100% halachic, and the debate is about whether Reform Judaism should be 0% halachic or somewhere between 0 and 100%. Instead, Reform Jews should steer clear of this linear scale and pursue an indigenous Reform vision of the structure and content of halachah.

Right on, BZ, as always!

Shabbat Shalom, jblogosphere. Selah!

Dr. BZ is in–A prescription for fixing how liberal Jews talk about themselves

Crossposted to Jewschool.

I’m not the first blogger out there to say “Yes!” to Reform and “No!” to the URJ. I’ve learned a lot about how to do this and about how to articulate it from BZ, who blogs at Mah Rabu (his personal, often highly technically-worded blog) and at Jewschool.

One of BZ’s long time trains of thought (and by extension, mine) is the problem of liberal Jews letting those to their religious right of them define themselves. BZ’s new op-ed in The Forward, Reframing Liberal Judaism, addressing the upcoming URJ biennial and USCJ biennial, is his new opus on the topic of terminology and definition in the liberal Jewish world.

And I couldn’t have said it better myself. The best part:

[...] religiously liberal Jews (Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, nondenominational, etc.) frequently suffer from a deficiency in framing when talking about their Jewish ideologies and practices. Consciously or unconsciously, liberal Jews often invoke frames that implicitly establish Orthodox Judaism as normative and set up their own forms of Judaism in comparison with Orthodoxy.

The remedy is clear: For liberal Judaism to thrive, it must develop frames to see itself as authentic on its own terms. Orthodox Jews aren’t doing anything wrong by viewing Judaism through Orthodox frames, but we as liberal Jews are missing an opportunity by failing to see Judaism through our own liberal Jewish values.

This framing problem manifests itself in subtle ways. When we refer to Jews of other denominations as “more religious” or “more observant,” we undermine our own standards of religious observance, and judge ourselves on a scale external to our own Judaism.

Consider this phrase: “I’m not shomer Shabbat: Every week I light candles after sundown and then drive to synagogue.” The speaker obviously observes Shabbat but is allowing someone else to define what Shabbat observance means.

Furthermore, one version of this frame (problematic even for Orthodox Jews) equates “religious observance” solely with ritual observance. That’s how convicted felon Jack Abramoff can be labeled as an “observant Jew” despite violating many of the Torah’s ethical commandments.

Perhaps the most interesting part of this to me is that BZ is the person The Forward turned to. In advance of the biggest meetings of the two mammoth conglomerations that dominate liberal Jewry in America, that The Forward has gone to someone whose public persona is so defined by having turned his back on the liberal Jewish “Man” is fascinating.

Check out the whole piece here.

Become a Rabbi? Not with that attitude.

Crossposted to Jewschool.

New Voices, which bills itself as the “National Jewish Student Magazine,” is pretty hit-or-miss for me. Mostly, it’s miss. To be clear, for those unfamiliar with me, I’m a college student, so it’s not unfair for me to be critical of their writers, who are also college students. (Why, by the way, would a magazine targeted at college students even bother having a print presence at all in this day and age?)

This recent post, Become a Rabbi?, left me feeling a little off-put, but also a little sad for the author. As someone who is a whopping one year older than the author, but has given significant thought to the issues she raises in the post, I’ve decided to annotate the post.

Have you ever considered what it would be like to be a rabbi?

Yes.

Depending on your religiosity, there are different rules for who can be a rabbi and what that process entails. The first female rabbi ordained in America was not until 1972. Since then, nearly 400 women have been ordained in the United States. It is possible for women to be ordained as a Rabbi in the Reform, Conservative, and Reconstructionist movements. Becoming a rabbi is one of the many professions I have considered.

Depending on your religiosity? Or depending on your denominational preference? I would go with the latter. It’s insulting and sad for me, a Reform Jew, to hear this author, also a Reform Jew, buying into the notion that she has less religiosity than her Orthodox counterparts. As a mere point of interest, Sally Priesand was not ordained until 1972, but the Reform rabbinate have a responsa dating back to 1922, which states “that women cannot justly be denied the privilege of ordination.” Further, women can also be ordained in the Jewish Renewal ALEPH Ordination Program and at non-denomination schools like the Academy for Jewish Religion and Hebrew College. Not to mention the emerging field of Orthodox ordination for women, which stops just short of calling their female rabbis “Rabbi.”

Later today I am going to a presentation and dinner given by the Director of Admissions of the Jewish Theological Seminary at my Hillel. This school is where students go to become a Conservative rabbi; while I am Reform, I still think this will be an informative session.

Some Conservative Jews also go to the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at American Jewish University in LA, which is unaffiliated, but definitely Conservative, if that makes sense. Unfortunately, the author is operating under a notion of a highly segmented Jewish community. Conservative Jews go here. Reform Jews go there. But if I’m any kind of example, Reform Jews don’t have to be Reform Jews under the auspices of the official Reform Jews. For more on that, see this post, in which I declare my continued existence as a Reform Jew, while declaring independence from the URJ. There is a valid precedent for ascribing to a denomination or an ideology, but going elsewhere to study.

As I still am rather young, I know I do not have to decide what I want to do with my life right away. However, the profession of a rabbi seems to really have its benefits. Besides being able to embrace Judaism and to practice and to teach its principles for a living, there seems to be much more to being a rabbi.

Because it would be impossible “to embrace Judaism” in any other professional context?

Just on the outset, one of the most notable benefits seems to be the flexibility. As a rabbi, it seems you always get to interact with different people in different settings. Whether you are officiating a wedding or a funeral, it seems like you are always helping someone. Being able to teach and to give sermons also makes the profession look intriguing.

Ah, yes. The flexibility. The enormous debt in student loans. The wonderful job market. The well over 40-hour work weeks under a four-year contract at some suburban synagogue. Not that that’s the only thing to do as a Rabbi, but, let’s face it, the majority of rabbis have pulpits.

[...]

Clearly, all rabbis are respected and admired by their congregants. Therefore, it only makes sense that the application and selection process is so selective.

Yes, all rabbis are indeed respected and admired by their congregants. I had a relative (z”l) who used to assert loudly and frequently that all rabbis are ganifs. (Thieves, in Yiddish.) And, yes, HUC is so selective these days. They can’t get men to apply to their rabbinic or cantorial programs to save their lives! They’ll take anyone with a circumcision between their legs that they can get their hands on!

[...]

Additionally, it is unfortunate to mention, but with the poor economy and lack of jobs, I am even more concerned about my future after college. So, a bit of advice—don’t hesitate to be open to attending similar meetings that your campus offers, you may just stumble upon an unknown appealing career!

Again, I’ll refer you to this article at Tablet, which points out that the security if the rabbinic job market is just as screwed up right now as everything else.

Shemini what?

I’ve previously written about Brooklyn’s Conservative Kane Street Synagogue here and here; I’ve written about Hadar here; and I’ve written about B’nai Jeshurun here, here and here.

Shabat Shalom and Chag Sameach, jblogosphites.

I grew up with one-day chag, that being the usual Reform custom. I maintain that custom with intellectual back-up from BZ. Because I only grew up with one day of chag, I grew up with Simchat Torah, but no Shemini Atzeret. BZ again:

Shemini Atzeret is the only yom tov that has no special mitzvot [...] beyond the mitzvot that apply to all festivals

[...] Therefore, to save Shemini Atzeret [...] some Babylonian Jews decided to make this the time when the annual cycle of Torah reading was finished and restarted. Thus, they created the ritual of Simchat Torah. This ritual was created for the holiday of Shemini Atzeret, specifically the second day thereof (since these Babylonian Jews observed two days); it is observed on the single day of Shemini Atzeret in communities that observe one day. There is no holiday of Simchat Torah separate from Shemini Atzeret [...]

With this added ritual, the second day of Shemini Atzeret has, of course, become much more popular than the first. Lots of people observe only the second day (which is d’rabbanan) and not the first day (which is d’oraita). Some communities that generally observe one day of yom tov still have their Simchat Torah celebration on the night of the 23rd of Tishrei (i.e. the night that others consider the 2nd night of Shemini Atzeret), to blend in or something.

What I’m pretty sure I grew up with at Beth Israel in Austin is was what BZ is describing. At CBI, we observed one day of chag, in this case Simchat Torah and not Shemini Atzeret. I’m not sure whether we did it on Tishrei 22 or 23. What I’d like to do at this point in my life is to observe the ritual of Simchat Torah on Shemini Atzeret, as it seems BZ wishes to do as well in the post that the above quotes are from.

To do this, I’d have to find what I imagine is a Reform community doing what I’m suggesting. I assume that non-Reform communities would do both days, waiting until the 23rd for Simchat Torah. So I assumed I’d just observe my one day of chag on the 23rd. I decided to look into three places where I thought I might go tomorrow for Simchat Torah–B’nai Jeshurun, Kehilat Hadar and the Kane Street Synagogue.

BJ and KH both had what I was expecting from them, but KSS is advertising on their website that Simchat Torah is today, the 22nd or Tishrei! This is surprising because KSS is Conservative-affiliated and the Conservative movement does not, as far as I know, advocate only one day of chag.

It’s confusing. And I still haven’t made up my mind about where to go tomorrow.