Monica

Fascinating. According to this article (tweeted by R' Gil Student), Neshama Carlebach, daughter of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach and a singer of whom I'm fond, went to the URJ biennial last week and decided (on the spot?) to join the Reform movement. Given her Orthodox background that's a bit of a surprise, though I always did wonder how she reconciled Orthodoxy's prohibitions on women singing in front of men with her career.

Perhaps ironically, while she feels drawn in by the Reform movement, I've been feeling pushed away from it in recent years. I could imagine the possibility of ending up Orthodox someday. I know of two factors at play right now, one in each direction, that prevent my serious consideration of the idea. And neither of them is theology.

What keeps me in the Reform movement and, specifically, my congregation, is my absolutely wonderful rabbi (and by the way our Shabbat morning minyan, which he leads, but not just that). Despite all the other problems that sometimes come up -- "entitlement" services that are more about performance than about worship, the disregard by many congregants for those of us who actually are observant, lowest-common-denominator practice, and others -- I, have a spiritual and learning home there, at least so long as my rabbi is leading things.

And what keeps me out of the Orthodox movements (there's more than one) is not theology but the limitations I would experience as a woman. Being told that I can never represent the community, never lead prayers nor read from the torah, never fully engage spiritually except in women-only groups -- I can't go there. So the article about Neshama Carlebach and the challenges she faced in that community struck rather close to home for me.

Someone I respect a great deal once told me he wouldn't be surprised if someday I leave the Reform movement for Orthodoxy. I don't think so; my beliefs (i.e. the dox part) align more with Reform, even though my practice does not. I'm used to being one of the most observant Reform Jews I know, and I'm used to working around some of the hurdles that come with that. (Why no, even though it's great that all the local Reform congregations got together for a joint festival service, no I'm not going ten miles to Monroeville for it, sorry.)

But every time something like the to'evah (abomination -- and yes, I understand the strength of that word) of this past Friday's service happens, a tiny little voice speaks up in the back of my mind saying "you know, this could be a lot easier on you...". It's frustrating. If it weren't for the excellent relationships I've formed in my congregation, including both of our rabbis, I sometimes wonder...

So, this Shabbat the Reform movement celebrated its sisterhood's 100th anniversary (movement-wide, not just us). Cool -- sisterhood has never, ever spoken to me (and in fact I believe its existence violates a core principle of Reform theology, but that's a different post), but I can understand the desire to celebrate that milestone and all their accomplishments, honor their leaders, and so on. The international president of the sisterhood umbrella organization happens to be a member of my congregation, so clearly we were going to do something. So Friday's service was led by sisterhood leaders from a siddur produced by a committee of that umbrella organization.

They wrote a "creative" service. Cue ominous music here.

So what we got was an evening service that ran almost two hours (!) and still managed to omit half the amidah and all the brachot around the sh'ma except one (there was a song for hashkiveinu). Also all of kabbalat shabbat except L'cha Dodi, but we never get a complete kabbalat shabbat unless I'm running it, so that's noteworthy in degree but not in type (we usually do more than this, though not all). Are they kidding me? Who thought this was ok? Rabbis and cantors on the committee, apparently, so part of me is glad I don't know their identities as my opinion of them has just gone way down. (My rabbi tried to salvage some of the omissions during the service; I don't know if he had had a chance to vet this service beforehand or if he had trusted his colleagues.)

What did they fill all that time with? Lots of poetry, lots of "women are great" readings, lots of sisterhood self-congratulations, half a dozen "how sisterhood changed my life" testimonials incorrectly labeled as a d'var torah in the program... all sorts of stuff that would be more appropriate at a celebratory dinner than at a Shabbat service. Shabbat, and God, got short shrift -- at a Shabbat service.

(There was also a short torah service (we do that on Friday nights about half the time), with group aliyot. The last one of the three was for anyone who belongs to sisterhood; I didn't go up because they said "belongs", not "pays dues to"; I've never felt I belonged but as a board member I'm required to be a member on paper.)

When I got there and saw the service booklet I considered turning around and leaving. In retrospect I should have, perhaps visibly. Instead I ignored their service at times and picked up our regular siddur instead so I could have a valid Shabbat service. (My rabbi noticed.) But after the mourner's kaddish I saw that there were still a couple more pages of readings and stuff, plus they were going to teach a new closing song, and at that point I just said dayeinu and left. Ugh.

If they had wanted to have a special additional service that would be one thing. But this displaced the regular community service. In that regard it was even worse than a typical Reform bar mitzvah, and I hadn't realized that was possible. It is possible to honor people while preserving community norms, but that isn't a strong-enough guiding principle in the Reform movement. I alternate between being sad and saying "how dare they?".

When I got home I set aside what I had been planning to talk about in Saturday morning's d'var torah (it was my turn) and mentally assembled something else instead. That'll be forthcoming, but in case you wonder when you see it, yes there's a connection.

Well well well, this should be good!

The Union for Reform Judaism publishes a weekly mailing called "Eilu v'Eilu". Each month they pose an intended-to-be-controversial question to two rabbis/scholars/etc who are supposed to argue different sides. (Sometimes that last part breaks down and they violently agree with each other, but not usually.) In week 1 you get the presentations, week 2 the rebuttals, week 3 the counter-rebuttals, and week 4 the questions from the audience.

This month's question: "What are the standards for Reform Jews?"

Some excerpts (see the whole thing in the archive):

Rabbi Arnold Gluck: Many Jews believe there are no standards for Reform Jews and that Reform Jews choose to observe as they please. Some who believe this are themselves Reform Jews. Others would say that religious autonomy is a defining characteristic of Reform Judaism and that halachah, a Jewish legal framework, is contrary to the liberal spirit of Reform. There are, in fact, standards for Reform Jews. [...] The time has come for a shift in Reform religious consciousness to place a higher value on Jewish observance as mitzvah, as personal religious obligation. We need to change our approach from “why should I?” to “why shouldn’t I?”

Preach it, Rabbi. :-)

Meanwhile, over in the other corner, we have Rabbi Michael Sternfield: Reform Judaism, on the other hand, readily admits that moral standards can and do change, as does our interpretation of some of the basics. Not all of the basics, but some of them. We are forthright enough to proclaim outright: “Sometimes the Torah can be wrong, because the Torah is the work of well-meaning and inspired teachers who were, nevertheless, deeply influenced by the prevailing views of their times, just as we are influenced by the prevailing views of our times.” When I was serving as the rabbi of a congregation in Durban, South Africa, the local Orthodox rav wrote a newspaper column in which he stated: “Reform rabbis make things up and call it Judaism.” At first, I was highly offended by the tone of his critique. Upon further thought, I said to myself (and others) “Yes, that is exactly what we do. We take into consideration the context, the circumstances, the opinions of others including Orthodox rabbis, and then we make a decision.”

(I do note in passing that both writers recast the question as "are there standards?"; I don't see a lot of "what" here. That's a necessary pre-question, though, so that's fine with me. I find myself having this discussion a lot in my congregation, and that rarely gets as far as "what" either.)

Realistically, I've got at most one shot at a question. But I have a couple of weeks to figure out what it'll be.

This article on mega-church worship style in synagogues discusses some happenings at the just-ended URJ biennial convention. If this is a new trend in Jewish worship, I can't say I'm impressed.

The mega-church influence was felt as well during Friday night prayers, where 6,000 worshipers gathered in a cavernous room on the convention center's ground floor for a choreographed production of sight and sound.

Multiple cameras projected the service on several enormous screens suspended over the hall. A live band buoyed a service that was conducted almost entirely in song.

Now I'm all for music in worship; anyone who's heard me talk about my congregation surely knows that. But I do not attend services seeking "a choreographed production of sight and sound". I attend services to pray in community. Both parts of that, "pray" and "community", are important. Is 6000 people community? I think that's at least 5500 too many for me to have that kind of connection, personally. Maybe I'm societally deficient.

From what I understand (and have caught occasional glimpses of on TV on Sunday mornings), mega-churches are theatre, first and foremost. They are performances, deemed successful if the audience cheers or claps along enthusiastically (and maybe gets up to dance). Can you reach God by making a joyous sound, singing a new song? Of course! Is that what happens in those services? I wonder. Sometimes, for some people, of course -- but is the format an aid or a roadblock?

I don't know. I can ride that sort of wave of spirit in my 30-person Shabbat minyan and in our 300-person monthly musical service. Is 300 different in principle from 3000 or 30,000? It feels like it is. I know almost all of the 30 people and a good proportion of the 300, which probably makes a difference, but that's not all of it. I've been to services where I didn't know anyone and yet felt connected. I think it's also that among 30 or even 300, I can still feel like I matter. Among 3000? Not so much -- at that point I'm just an anonymous face in the crowd, not part of the community. Any face will do to build a crowd, but community happens person to person, soul to soul. Being just a face in the crowd is no different from being alone -- I might as well stay home and pray with fewer distractions. But that's not what I want.

One specific idea originating in mega-churches has come up in discussions a number of times, and I find it particularly revolting: the notion that instead of handing out prayer books, you project the text, perhaps done up in Powerpoint, on big screens. Shoot me now. Quite aside from the issues of doing this on Shabbat (yeah, most Reform Jews don't care, but some of us do), quite aside from how mood-detracting this is, there is the fact that such a format is quite hostile to those of us with vision problems, precisely at a time when movement leaders are telling congregations we need to be more welcoming, friendly, and accessible. If your quest for techno-gimmicks and new, young, hip members comes at the expense of the committed congregants who are already there, what message does that send?

"If the mega-churches can do it, maybe it'll work for us," said one member of Temple Holy Blossom, a large Reform congregation in Toronto. "I'm open to anything. As long as Jews are praying, I'm happy."

The key phrase, treated here as a given, is "as long as Jews are praying". I hope that's what's happening in these kinds of worship services, but I'm not ready to assume it. I would like to hear from people who like this worship style. In what ways does it work for you? Are those benefits unique to this style of worship, or do you also get them through other styles (and if so, which)? What aspects of this worship style have made you struggle, and how have you overcome those difficulties?

More from the velveteenrabbi:

• Madeline Albright
• The crisis in Darfur
• Voting
• Rabbi Marmur on Heschel
• Shabbat ("and on the seventh day, the children of Israel turned off their cell phones and pagers")
• Shabbat; sermon; Kamenetz on dreams
• Wrap-up (this one contains links to all the others)

I've just had one instance too many of thinking I should just write a FAQ, so here goes. If I receive additional questions I'll update this entry.

( Read more... )

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.

---

[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

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!