c. 1999 Religion News Service
(Rabbi Rudin is the national interreligious affairs director of the American Jewish Committee.)
UNDATED _ At its recent convention in Pittsburgh, the Reform rabbinical organization, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, overwhelmingly adopted a new set of guiding principles that clearly reflects a turn to traditional religious observance and belief.
The principles urge increased use of the Hebrew language in home ceremonies and synagogue services; closer links to Israel, including immigration to the Jewish nation; and a call for Reform Jews to increase Jewish studies and Sabbath observances.
Many Jews and Christians expressed surprise that America’s most liberal rabbis had seemingly abandoned their historic embrace of modernity and contemporary society, and moved instead to an emphasis on rituals and religious tradition. The principles’ leading proponent, Rabbi Richard Levy of Los Angeles, believes Reform Judaism needs to draw less of its spiritual sustenance from the outside environment and turn more to the inner resources of the Jewish religious experience.
Some critics said the CCAR had sold out its”hard-won birthright of rationality”and exchanged it for”the cold porridge of religious sentimentality and nostalgia.”Rabbi Robert Seltzer of Hunter College labeled the new principles”Conservative Judaism Lite.”However, one thing is clear: The Reform Jewish movement has permanently changed.
The vote could not have been a surprise to anyone who has in recent years attended student-led religious services at the Reform seminary, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) in New York. The enormous contrast between today’s services and those of my years at the same rabbinical school helps explain what happened in Pittsburgh.
Back then almost no one, students or faculty, wore a head covering during services. Today almost all of the HUC-JIR students, both men and women, have personal yarmulkes with their Hebrew names knitted on top. Unlike in my day, vividly colored prayer shawls, or”talesim,”are worn at services by most seminarians.
When I was a seminary student, we recited some traditional Hebrew prayers in our usually brief worship period, but English was the primary liturgical language. But at the HUC-JIR service I attended a few weeks ago, the only English was my son-in-law’s excellent sermon and a few announcements. The rest of the 90-minute service was in Hebrew, which was chanted by student cantors and rabbis.
A central focus of my seminary years was social justice with particular emphasis on civil rights. Many biblical and Talmudic verses were employed to provide social justice activities with an appropriate theological basis. Important coalitions and lifetime friendships were formed with like-minded Christian clergy as we struggled together to achieve voting rights and public accommodations for every American.
Historians have correctly noted that the civil rights movement cannot be understood without acknowledging its extraordinary interreligious component.
I happily discovered that today’s HUC-JIR students have not forsaken social justice. It has, however, taken a different turn with an emphasis on such current issues as gun control, economic justice, and opposition to all forms of racism and sexism.
Today’s HUC-JIR students are actively in search of something called”spirituality.”I discovered that the term, today’s hottest religious buzzword, can mean many things including the development of a rich prayer life, the quest for a personal relationship with God, and a host of other worthwhile theological goals.
The buzzword of my student days was Judaism as”a way of life.”This, too, meant many things, but as I recall, it did not emphasize individual prayer or a mystical encounter with God. Instead, we saw our chief rabbinic role as reconciling Judaism with the modern world, traditional religion with philosophical rationalism. We strongly believed such a reconciliation would make the Jewish”way of life”more acceptable to a traumatized post-Auschwitz Jewish community.
Today’s rabbinical students well understand that while many American Jews are thoroughly at home in the rational high-tech world of today, they nonetheless eagerly seek a deeper spiritual meaning in their lives. My generation’s challenge was to make Judaism intellectually respectable. Today’s generation of rabbinical students seeks to make Judaism spiritually meaningful.
My classmates and I eagerly sought a God who made philosophic sense to both us and our congregations. Today’s students ardently pray to the traditional God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of Sarah, Rebecca, Leah and Rachel, and yes, the God of Auschwitz, who may or may not be the metaphysical God of philosophers like Immanuel Kant or Moses Maimonides.
And it is that traditional God who received most of the votes in Pittsburgh.
DEA END RUDIN
