c. 1997 Religion News Service

DALLAS _ Leaders of the Reform movement, America’s largest Jewish denomination, are urging their congregants to focus on issues of spiritual development at home and to rally around the cause of establishing liberal Judaism’s legitimacy in Israel.

Anger about the movement’s lack of official standing in Israel was high on the agenda of the 64th Biennial General Assembly of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, which ended Sunday (Nov. 2).

But so was concern about the movement’s lack of religious seriousness, a lack leaders said could spell the movement’s death.

But much of the anger came from the podium and some delegates said there wasn’t a lot of passion about the Reform and Conservative movement’s effort to break Orthodox Judaism hegemony on religious matters in Israel.

That struggle has led to a series of political confrontations, legal court cases and legislative proposal that have created turmoil for the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“I’m perturbed by the attacks by the Orthodox rabbis in Israel on us, but it’s not a subject of much concern in my congregation,”said one delegate from North Carolina who asked not to be identified.

The Reform movement estimates it has 1.5 million members in 875 temples and synagogues throughout North America.

The movement, which began in 19th-century Germany as a rejection of Orthodoxy, has historically focused on a theology stressing inclusivity, individual autonomy and social justice motivated by Judaism’s prophetic ideals.

Though the movement has long had a presence _ albeit small _ in Israel, only earlier this year did it embrace the Zionist ideal of immigration to Israel.

In Israel, there has been an apparent impasse in negotiations between a committee of Orthodox, Conservative and Reform leaders charged with finding a way to resolve the matter. The non-Orthodox movements’ are demanding they be officially recognized and permitted to perform conversions and marriages in Israel. The Orthodox political parties’ are demanding the long-standing policy of allowing only Orthodox rabbis control over matters of personal status.

Reform leaders meeting here used strong language _ perhaps to rouse their apathetic troops _ pledging to fight until they win.”Make no mistake: We are in Israel to stay,”said Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the UAHC, in his Sabbath morning sermon.”We are not going to let the fanatics burn us out, desecrate us, vilify us out, or vandalize us out _ and neither will they legislate us out.” An estimated 85 percent of U.S. Jews identifying with a religious denomination say they are Conservative or Reform, and just over 10 percent are Orthodox. But in Israel, there is little understanding of the liberal movements.

While Yoffie used part of his sermon to discuss the movement’s situation in Israel, most if it was devoted to matters of the soul and the necessity of Reform adherents to learn about the Jewish aspects of Reform Judaism.”Never in our history has the gap between the serious Reform Jew and the non-serious Reform Jew been so great,”he said.”Alongside those who take seriously the reality of God and God’s immanence in Torah are those for whom the vision of the sacred has all but died in their soul.” And, in a remarkable admission, he added:”They are the majority, even in our synagogues.” He proposed a five-step plan to increase Jewish literacy among Reform Jews, including having congregants learn to chant Torah in Hebrew, a role in Reform Judaism historically left to the rabbi though in Conservative and Orthodox synagogues it is just as likely to be done by non-clergy.

Yoffie also urged the delegates to read four serious Jewish books a year and to discuss them at temple meetings. He said he wants congregational leaders to include the study of Jewish text at each meeting of temple committees, and during each Sabbath service.

Yoffie also proposed that the eve of Shavuot next year, May 30, traditionally devoted to all night study of relevant biblical text, be celebrated in that manner by Reform Jews, too.

But this turn toward traditionalism _ evident in workshops as well as speeches _ is not without controversy inside the movement.

Some members, for example, fear its traditional agendas of social activism and inclusivity are being lost in a pursuit of what they consider to be neo-Orthodoxy.”The pursuit of justice remains so central, so essential, to us,”said Leonard Fein, the director of the denomination’s Commission on Social Action.”Jewish knowledge is a tool,”he said,”not only to have, but to do. Some hear the call to return to Torah as an invitation to retreat from our work in the world,”he said in his major address.”But that’s not Judaism. In the end it is not the services we attend which will sustain us, but the services we will perform.” MJP END STRAUSS