translations, ritual, and why Reform?

[cellio]

Someone wrote, on the Reform movement's worship mailing list, about some liturgical issues he would like to see us do differently. Someone posted a very critical response. This is (most of) my reply. I'll summarize, not quote, the other poster here.

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[About a mis-translation of Hebrew into English.]

If [teaching a certain principle] is the goal in the siddur text, then we should change the Hebrew. I think what bothers the original poster, and what certainly bothers me, is the disconnect. If we mean it when we make a change to the liturgy, we should make the change completely -- Hebrew and English. But changing the English without changing the Hebrew sends the message that (1) we don't think anyone will be sufficiently skilled in Hebrew to notice, and (2) it doesn't really matter what we say in the Hebrew. If that's the case, then you may as well ditch the Hebrew entirely; it would be more honest than what we do now. (I am not advocating that. Hebrew is our sacred language and I would not like to see it decrease in our services. But it can be frustrating to be completely unable to rely on the siddur to tell me what the Hebrew says. Mishkan T'filah does a much better job of this, which I applaud.)

[Summary: my issues are important; yours are trivial matters of ritual]

In your opinion. Some of the matters that you dismiss, such as kashrut, are every bit as important to some of our congregants as the matters you consider important are to you. The Reform movement isn't just about being free to "not do"; it is also about being free to "do". And it's perfectly reasonable for members to expect some minimal support when they decide to "do", like not being served meat-milk mixtures at congregational dinners and like finding the restroom lights already turned on on Shabbat.

[Go back to the Conservative shul you were raised in; don't expect us to adjust to what you prefer]

I am not the original poster, but as someone who seriously considered a Conservative congregation before signing up with Reform, I will tell you why I am a Reform Jew and why people like me are not going to just go away. The differences are much more important than choosing a congregation or praying a certain way.

I am a Reform Jew for theological and philosophical reasons. I am a fairly observant Jew because my study of our texts and our tradition tells me that these mitzvot are important, to us and to God, but I would be completely out of place in a Conservative or Orthodox congregation because of how I got to that state. You, of course, may come to different conclusions; Reform is fundamentally about personal autonomy (with study), while the other movements are not. But as I said above, sometimes the answer, after study and consideration, is to keep, not reject, mitzvot, whether this be keeping kosher or not kindling fire on Shabbat or praying daily or whatever. I do not expect my fellow Reform Jews to come to the same conclusions I've come to; their practice is not my concern. I do, however, expect to be able to participate in a Reform congregation without compromising my own values -- otherwise, the congregation does not really support that personal autonomy that is central to the movement. Reform ideology requires tolerance of observance.

Now this means that there are things I have to refrain from doing, but that's my problem. Throughout most of the year I can't accept an offer to light candles on Friday night, because our services start at 8pm year-round. If I attend a congregational dinner, I'll stick to vegetarian/dairy dishes, because the meat won't be kosher. If the congregation were to pick up and move five miles down the road, I would reluctantly attend elsewhere on Shabbat. And so on. And if I want to pray daily in a minyan, I should expect to go elsewhere; most Reform congregations can't support a daily minyan. That's ok.

Just as those who keep mitzvot have to accept responsibility for working around hurdles, those who do not must also try to avoid placing stumbling-blocks. I do not ask you to observe mitzvot you don't find compelling -- but I do ask that you be sensitive to others' equally-valid decisions to observe. This is not "expecting the temple to adjust to what you prefer"; rather, it is expecting the temple to be sensitive to what you need, to the extent this is feasible. It is also expecting the temple to stand behind the fundamental principles of our movement.

Kol tuv,
Monica

Comments

[aliza250.livejournal.com]

Which leads me to ask: if the Reform precept is individual autonomy, then wouldn't that mean that the community has a positive obligation to accept the choices of all individuals? (Well, a smoother solution would be to create a congregation of mitzva-observant Reform Jews - but I suspect no one community has the critical mass for that. However, there are communities where (as a parallel example) egalitarian and non-egalitarian Conservative synagogues both thrive.)

Unfortunately, too many people simply choose their denomination by typical level of observance/tradition (Orthodox=high, Conservative=medium, Reform=low, Reconstructionist=NewAgey) and don't bother understanding their theological underpinnings.

[cellio]

Re: "oh, they're Orthodox" -- yes, I hear that sort of thing all the time! The usual argument against someone trying to be a little more observant is "but we're not Orthodox", which completely misses the point. Some of the older folks at my congregation have argued that it is wrong to have even basic rules in our kitchen, like no meat/milk mixtures at congregational dinners, because "you should just go join [local orthodox shul]" if you care. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Now I don't have the shared context; I didn't grow up in a "classical Reform" (or any Reform, or any Jewish) setting. So I try to be very polite, sympathetic, and accommodating -- but it still frustrates me. After all, I'm not asking them to do anything they don't want to do; I'm just asking them to be less accommodating than they're expecting others to be. Mostly I don't try to actually have this discussion, though; I know when I'm not going to get through, and why make them uncomfortable if I can't achieve anything good from it?

Which leads me to ask: if the Reform precept is individual autonomy, then wouldn't that mean that the community has a positive obligation to accept the choices of all individuals?

Yes. Individuals have the right to observe or not observe as they choose. We, as a congregation, should not interfere in either direction. That means we shouldn't hassle the ones who think kashrut is stupid, but that we also shouldn't serve meals that we know will be problematic for those who do keep kosher. It's not like the non-kosher-keeping folks will be harmed by a meal of roast chicken etc that doesn't end in ice cream, after all. And at the other end, we're not going to be able to fully support the strictest of observances; there are going to be some people who won't eat in the shul anyway. We need to find the practical balance point.

(I'm just using kashrut as an example here; the argument applies more broadly.)

Part of the answer may lie in segregation, as you suggest. We try to provide a variety of options within a single congregation, which (I hope) encourages people to "browse". (This mostly applies to worship, I guess.) For some reason, the local trend tends to be toward fewer larger Reform congregations, even though there are many smaller Orthodox ones around, all within easy walking distance of each other. There are no small Reform congregations here.

[sanpaku.livejournal.com]

we also shouldn't serve meals that we know will be problematic for those who do keep kosher.

As I think I have mentioned in another post, when I was at Hebrew Union College on a research fellowship, I have to admit being kinda surprised at the ham sandwiches in the cafeteria. I thought there would be some kind of concession to traditionalism. Then I realized that in some ways that is expecting an incoherence on the part of the people who draw up the ideology.

Which is to say, what you're saying should be correct in theory, but I wonder whether the seminaries and similar sources of ideology are going to really affirm this kind of pluralism -- or, at least, whether it's an ingrained habit in people who grew up conditioned to disparage these things. Wise's condemnation of "a God of the kitchen and the stomach" came from somewhere. Even growing up Conservative I heard plenty of disparagements of orthodoxy as something suitable for nutcakes. In fact a suspicion of those just to the right of you, observance wise, is pretty much a universal tendency among born Jews.

[cellio]

Hmm, I had forgotten about your experiences at HUC. (Oops; I'd been assuming that if I go there this summer, I'd be able to eat. :-) )

In general, the ideology should require support for those who choose to observe and those who choose not to. For example, it would be wrong for them to program the lights in the dorm rooms (with no manual override) on Shabbat, because some people don't follow the halacha of lights and might want the flexibility. (On the flip side, they should of course forbid neither timers nor taped light switches, for those wo do keep this.)

Food is a slightly different case. There is no harm to the eater in eating kosher food; your choices in a cafeteria will always be limited, so you really have no more expectation of a ham sandwich than you do of roast chicken or meatloaf or whatever. On any particular day, there'll be a small number of options. So I don't think the treif eater is harmed by not being presented with ham as an option; he probably goes a week or two at a time without eating ham at home, too. On the other hand, the person who does keep kosher is harmed if there is no kosher option.

Most Reform Jews who keep kosher settle for the "vegetarian when eating out" approach. There is, after all, no requirement to eat meat every day. In addition, some people are vegetarians for reasons having nothing to do with kashrut. So I expect HUC to have a vegetarian option for every meal, which will probably satisfy most people. (It would be good if they could actually support stricter kashrut, even if it's just the airplane meals.) It would be nice if they actually eschewed the ham sandwiches and assumed that people can get those elsewhere; I think the bad PR of the ham sandwich more than outweighs the nod to autonomy in this case. But I can see how they might choose differently.

Now that you mention it, I've heard a fair bit of Orthodox-bashing in the Conservative shul I attend for weekdays. For some, everyone to the right is a fanatic and everyone to the left is a heretic.