Monica

Recently I've found myself in several unrelated conversations about observance levels and attitudes toward halacha. I'm now going to try to wrestle assorted thoughts on the subject into a coherent whole.

( Read more... )

Today was the last morning of the siddur pilot. They handed out evaluation forms and asked us to bring them back next week. The questions that the CCAR did, and didn't, ask gave me a little insight into their goals. More about the evaluation in a separate entry, later.

At Torah study we talked about the question: why do we need a rabbi to lead services? We don't, of course; any somewhat-educated person who meets the (straightforward) halachic requirements can lead. In most Orthodox and some Conservative congregations, in fact, the rabbi doesn't lead services -- other congregants do. But in the Reform movement, by and large, the rabbi leads, unless you're such a small congregation that you don't have a rabbi.

( Aside: what do rabbis do? )

My theory (which I wasn't fast enough to articulate this morning) is that this is a product of our culture. People (Americans specifically? people in general?) tend to want access to the expert. We don't want to settle for the physician's assistant to treat our illness, even if that person is perfectly qualified because it's only the flu and the flu is a well-understood problem; we hold out for the doctor. We don't want the apprentice electrician even though it's only a light switch; we want the experienced one. We only consider the "lesser" positions if we can save money, for the most part. (Yes, of course I'm over-generalizing.) So I think it's the same with rabbis and services; people want the rabbi, who they know will do everything right, and not the qualified layman who has no credentials, even though it's only a regular Shabbat service and that person has seen this hundreds or thousands of times. I've already seen this with respect to music; the Reform congregations I'm familiar with want the professional singers, even if they're not Jewish, and not the ameteurs from within the congregation.

Why is this a more common attitude in Reform than in other movements? Two factors, I think: first, we're more assimilated into the surrounding culture and second, we're (overall) less educated.

Assimilation means, in this case, that we are more inclined to imitate what we see or hear about from other parts of Americana, like church services. That organ at services isn't a coincidence, after all. The Reform community is more outward-focused, while the Orthodox community is more inward-focused (or so it appears from the outside). We're more likely to have had diverse worship experiences, and the ideas rub off. (Remember that most Orthodox would not set food in a church at all, and some of them will not set foot in non-Orthodox Jewish services.) I'm not trying to say that they're shutting the world out; it's not nearly that active. But they will have fewer chance encounters, and therefore fewer opportunities to pick up foreign ideas about "how things are done". Combine this with the fact that most Reform Jews do not attend services regularly, and you get a community that's more in tune with the outside world than with its own traditions and history.

And then there's the education factor. In the Orthodox community, it is pretty much presumed -- correctly -- that almost any adult male present is capable of leading services. He's been davening daily for most of his life, after all, so he knows the drill and can probably read the Hebrew correctly. Maybe he doesn't have a good voice, but that's not so important. I see this dynamic in play in the morning minyan at the Conservative shul I frequent, by the way; at least half the regulars can step in to lead services if the regular guy isn't there. (By the way, I am not yet one of those people. I am in the bottom third of that group for liturgical skill. I have most of the knowledge, but am just not fast enough with the Hebrew yet. Ironically, I am in the top half or third for pronoucing the Hebrew correctly -- I'm just too slow.)

Most Orthodox and many Conservative Jews of my generation have had significant Jewish educations -- day school, or at least a daily after-school program, and maybe Yeshiva, and maybe something beyond that. They also attend services regularly, so the Hebrew component of that is reinforced on a regular basis. But there's more to it than just the Hebrew; they learn halacha, study Talmud, study Torah in some depth, and so on. Most of my traditional friends can quote relevant sources off the tops of their heads, and know how to look up most of the rest. And they're just regular people -- lawyers and accountants and programmers and shopkeepers, not rabbis.

Most Reform Jews of my generation have not had a similar education, and are not seeing that their children get that kind of education. They send their kids to Hebrew school, which meets after school one day a week and on Sunday mornings, until bar mitzvah. A smaller number continue on through high school. They are studying a broader range of topics (after all, the Reform movement's focus isn't on traditional halacha), and they are spending less time on it, so of course their knowledge isn't as deep. Hebrew is not a large part of it, judging from what I've heard when the various classes lead services; they just don't read well, for the most part. I'm not dissing the kids; they read better than I probably would have at that age, and some of them read better than I do now. But most of them do not read well, do not maintain the skill past the bar mitzvah, and are not going to emphasize it with their eventual kids.

So, all told, the average person at a Reform service probably isn't capable of leading it. (Some of those could if they had time to practice.) So if you suggest to the average Reform Jew that someone other than the rabbi can lead the service, his thinking will probably go something like this: "Well, I can't do it, and I'm pretty normal, so why should I assume that David there can? He hasn't had any more schooling than I have; he's just a regular guy. No, he'll probably screw something up. We should stick with the rabbi; he's an expert." And if they've never actually heard David lead services, how are they to know that he's actually capable of doing it?

So the Reform Jew who is qualified to lead services faces a real up-hill battle -- not necessarily with the rabbi or the administration, but rather with the congregation. And who wants to put up with that kind of grief? Speaking only for myself, why would I want to try to force myself onto people who apparently wouldn't want me? And who am I to go to the rabbi and say "please make a pitch and let me do this"? Unless the rabbi decides that you don't have to be a rabbi to lead services, thus drawing flack from people who will say he's shirking his job responsibilities, it's not going to happen. So at some level, it's all politics.

And that's why, in the Reform movement, you have to be a rabbi to lead services, most of the time. In my opinion, of course.

Some of my attitudes, political and social, have shifted a bit in the past several years. I think some of this is related to religious changes, but only related, not really caused by. I am not and have never been a member of the religious right.

I didn't know the word "libertarian" until sometime during college. It's a pretty good characterization. I've long been offended by the economics of liberals and the "we know best" agendas of conservatives. (Obviously, I am generalizing here.) I have long been annoyed, in particular, by the agenda of liberals on "social issues" like welfare and social security. I believe that as far as governments are concerned, this is a purely private matter. Voluntary charity, not coerced taxes, should fund programs for the poor, and each person should be responsible for his own retirement planning (and will likely do a better job of managing such funds, because it's in his best interest).

( a ramble lies ahead )

( why I hate bar mitzvahs at my shul... )

Saturday afternoon a friend of Dani's, Jessica, visited. (She lives in Ann Arbor, but was in town this weekend visiting family.) She's a law professor, and we got to hear entertaining stories of how she beats first-year students into shape. Among things, she calls on students by name to answer questions, and she has a non-obvious sorting algorithm so she will call on everyone but they won't be able to guess when their turn is likely to come up. After the first few embarrassments she finds that her students are prepared for class. (Apparently, the tendency is to skim or skip readings and not always do the homework.) She seems like a neat person; I'd never met her before. Dani met her on the net ten years ago or so; I'm not sure what newsgroup.

Jessica's specialty is copyright, which apparently is a social hazard. "Everyone" knows about copyright anf fair use and stuff and is happy to pontificate, but "almost everyone" is wrong. A lot of things just plain aren't known, Jessica said. Especially in the areas related to electronic rights (Napster et al), there is not nearly enough case law yet to know. A lot of these suits never get resolved because one party or the other runs out of money before the hearing. And in at least some cases, she said, the record companies don't own the rights they're suing other people over, because their contracts with the artists didn't provide for that possibility lo these many years ago. So the field is just a mess, and will be for a while. I'm glad that it mostly doesn't touch me at all. (Yeah, ok, I've recorded some CDs, but nobody wants to pirate my stuff and I'm not doing anything that violates the permissions I've gotten from other people.)

I'm going to try to gather up some of the other loose ends from my conversation with my rabbi, though I wasn't taking (many) notes and it's now been a few days, so this'll be vague in places.

He recommended that I become familiar with the works of Leopold Zunz, a 19th-century scholar, though I failed to note why. (Presumably related to the whole question of reforms/innovations in halacha, as that was the main topic of conversation.) One of these days I'll get myself a copy of Encyclopedia Judaica so I can look up the bare-bones info on pointers like this.

We talked about how reforms to halacha go all the way back. He believes that the Reform movement follows the process, though because its interpretations are different, when you build on those things can seem to get kind of far afield. An example from me (that we didn't discuss): if you have made a case for egalitarian reforms in most things, as Reform and some Conservative have done, then I have to grant that you can make a case for patrilineal descent. (I still think this is a bad idea, however, as it really divides the Jewish people on the question of who is a Jew, and it's not like children of Jewish fathers and non-Jewish mothers can't convert fairly trivially if they're raised in the religion.) We didn't go very far down this path; I think I disagree with his claim, because at least historically there have been cases where Reform just plain threw out halacha, but maybe he's talking current practice and not history.

Remember, though, that Reform does not believe that the oral law (or, necessarily, the written law, i.e. Torah) came directly from God at Sinai, so this is presumably more about respecting the tradition than anything else. It seems obvious to me that my rabbi respects the halachic tradition far more than average in Reform (probably a lot of why we click so well), but one rabbi does not a movement make.

We drifted into the question of just how a modern Reform Jew goes about making decisions, and we kept ending up on Shabbat topics. We talked about electricity; I said I use timers for lights and the crock pot and am fairly rigid there and more lenient elsewhere (though I try to avoid issues rather than making explicit decisions; I'm a wuss). He asked detailed questions about the crock pot; not sure why. Somewhere in there I said that I don't unscrew the fridge light, though as a practical matter I know where in the fridge the things I'm going to need on Shabbat are, and occasionally (read: at night when the room is otherwise dark) I've been known to close my eyes and just grab the Coke anyway. He thought this was excessive, and this led to a discussion of intent vs. side-effect. He's right; I already believe that side-effects are not transgressions if I didn't want the results anyway. (We also talked about motion-sensor lights in this context. Summary: the (now-hypothetical) neighbor's lights are not my problem. Putting one in myself would be.)

We talked some about the get issue, and the Orthodox solution of editing history and how offensive I found that idea. I've mentioned this before.

We didn't really talk about what I describe as "rules hacks" in the halachic system. Another time. (I still have stuff I want to say about this, but haven't gotten it written down yet.)

At the end of the hour he asked whether I wanted to keep studying philosophy or instead begin to tackle talmud, and I opted for the latter. During the Shabbat discussion we had already started into that, so we're going to just start with the 39 melachot (forbidden categories of work) and go from there. Just as soon as the book I ordered comes in and I make a first pass through the first bit on my own to acclimate. Yay! I can't wait!

This might not be of interest to anyone other than me, but hey, it's my journal. :-)

( I warned you. )

Wow, I never thought I'd hear those words come out of the mouth of a Reform rabbi.

It's like this. The one thing that makes me feel very awkward as a Reform Jew isn't a matter of ritual, or halacha, or theology. Sure, I have disagreements there, but my disagreements ae in the Reform spirit of "go and study"; being a fairly-observant Jew who believes that God really did speak to Moshe at Sinai is not inconsistent with Reform, even if it might get me some funny looks at times. No, the area where it appears that we part ways more seriously is that of politics: most Reform Jews I've met, and the Reform party line, are so far to the left that FDR looks like a ruthless hardliner.

So when political discussions come up at shul, I remain quiet. When the gun-control petitions circulate, I ignore them (or, if pressed, politely decline). When the campaigns to raise taxes for social programs that we ought to be voluntarily supporting through tzedakah, not forcibly and inefficiently supporting through taxes, come around, I find other places to be. And so it goes.

So when it became clear that our associate rabbi was going to use the Rosh Hashana pulpit (Monday night) to talk about Israel, the Palestinians, and terrorism, I braced for the worst.

But he didn't go where I expected him to go. He started by saying that he really wanted to believe in the possibility of a peace treaty, and that the Palestinian Authority could negotiate in good faith, and that there existed a solution that resulted in a Palestinian state and a secure Israel. But he went to Israel this summer and, while there, spoke with some Knesset members along with the "civilians" (like the rabbis he went there to see, and folks on kibbutzim, and so on). And he came away with the understanding that Arafat and his subordinates do not want peace with Israel; they want a Palestinian state "from the river to the sea", with Israel gone, and anything else is just an intermediate step on the path to that. (I've believed that for months, with that interview in June with one of Arafat's main people cementing it. He said this was their goal and allowed it to be printed.)

So what should Israel do about it? Are targetted assassinations so bad? Rabbi Freedman didn't come out and say he supports them, but he clearly does. Not because assassination is good, but because it beats the alternatives. (An almost-quote: "What would you do if you knew with certainty that someone was planning a bombing? Stop him before he can act, or wait until he's killed 15 people and maimed dozens and then condemn the act? What would you do?")

He didn't talk directly about the attacks on the US last week, but he did say that we are beginning to understand what Israel faces every single day, and maybe we should look to them for ways of fighting terrorism. (Aside: the counter-argument is that it doesn't seem to be working. Of course, it might work better than anything else. Who knows?)

He said this does not make him a hawk; he's not advocating full-scale war and indiscriminant killing. He'd rather believe that peace is possible -- but in the case of Palestine, giving them what they want in hopes of peace is a bad idea. (He did not actually offer a thought for what Israel should do, beyond what it's currently doing, but that's a very hard problem so I'm not surprised.)

After the service I complimented him, said I had never expected to hear those words from a Reform pulpit, and welcomed him to the moderate right. :-) (I'm not sure how he took that last part.)


This morning the senior rabbi spoke eloquently (in a way that doesn't summarize well) on the themes of prejudice and helping each other. One point was that since any of us could have been on those planes, our lives from last Tuesday forward are gifts and we should think about how we use them.

I spent a little time this afternoon looking over my part for Yom Kippur. (I'm leading part of the mincha service.) Y'know, I can sound out anything in Hebrew if you give me time, but I'm glad I looked this over far enough in advance to do something about the short phrase that was missing its vowels. That's upping the ante. :-) (Doing something consisted of handing it to Dani, who figured it out from context. But you actually have to have a vocabulary for that trick to work.)

Dani says he's willing to answer Hebrew questions from me, so maybe I'll get out that textbook and take another crack at learning the language. I'd like to be able to comprehend and not just pronounce, after all. I'm getting better; I was able to just listen to today's Torah reading and follow it, though of course I knew what it would be going in so it's not like parsing completely-free text. But I have a long way to go. And I still grok only a tiny bit of the grammar.