I have a bit of a confession to make, this Erev Rosh Hashanah. Actually, like most of us, there are probably many confessions I should make, but for now I will offer one.
I did not choose to become a Reform Jew. In fact, it was entirely by accident that I fell into the movement. I could have ended up Conservative, Reconstructionist, maybe even Orthodox. My first synagogue was, actually, an Orthodox one— Congregation Beth Tikvah Ahavat Shalom of Dollard des Ormeaux. Instead, I accidentally became Reform.
Being from Montreal, Judaism kind of permeated life around me. Jewish life in Montreal is as culturally omnipresent as Jewish life in New York. We didn’t need synagogues to feel Jewish. Friends, delis, and pork-free wonton soup were all we needed. My mother grew up in this environment, sans synagogue, and my father, an émigré from the Soviet Union where public practices of religion were banned, knew Judaism as something that happened primarily at home.
I might have been accidentally Reform, but I was certainly not accidentally Jewish. I loved Judaism. I loved sharing Rosh HaShanah honey cake with my family. I looked forward to sitting around the ḥanukiah on those cold Montreal winter nights, absorbing the warmth of those tiny candles, my father strumming a few songs out of the Jewish Kids Catalogue.
Jewish life was holidays at home, cultural celebrations in the community, and religious school. I didn’t know Orthodox, Conservative, or Reform. And I certainly didn’t give thought to why I did things. First of all, I was too little, but second, we behaved Jewishly because we were Jewish. We practiced because it felt right, and we left other elements out just because. I wasn’t part of a synagogue, I wasn’t really affiliated, but I was happy, and actively Jewish.
Then came the great upheaval of my childhood. My dad was hired by a company in Hamilton, Ontario, a whole six hours away by car, and we moved. Not to nearby Toronto, a hub favoured by ex-pat Montrealers, but to Mississauga, a town of 300,000 and very few Jews. Though we still had family, the communal reinforcement so pervasive in Montreal vanished, leaving not a wisp of nostalgia in the air, and my parents soon realized that to find community we would have to join the local synagogue, which just so happened to be Reform. And so, at the age of seven, I accidentally became Reform.
It must have been b’sheret, because this community, Solel Congregation, also began as accidentally Reform. It came together in the 1970s when a local Jewish postman noticed that a fair number of homes in his delivery area had m’zuzot on their doorposts.
Now most of these Jews had grown up Conservative, so when the time came for the community to hire a student rabbi, they applied to JTS— the Conservative seminary. Fortunately, JTS never got back to them, and after a few months, these Jews applied again, not to JTS, but to Hebrew Union College— our Reform seminary. They received my rabbi, the soon-to-be-Rabbi Lawrence A. Englander, who many of you met at my installation last year. Rabbi Englander helped them to build a vibrant Reform congregation, and as far as I know, no one looked back, wishing that JTS had responded to that initial application. Solel accidentally became Reform, but under Larry’s leadership, they soon became Reform-by-choice. Likewise, though I was initially an accidental Reform Jew, more and more, as I grew up I became Reform-by-choice.
My Reform Judaism came to me in my high school years, as I learned about traditions and began to carve out my own personal practice. My synagogue looked to a diverse array of customs from the many traditions of our people, including Indian melodies for prayer, a Moroccan memunah to celebrate the end of Passover, Ashkenazi standards for keeping kosher, and Reform lengths for our holidays, and so too did I look to a diverse array of practices for my Judaism. I learned that I could pray on my own, I could study Kabbalah and bring some of its elements into my life. I felt compelled by kosher eating and I chose to wear a kippah regularly.
One could say that this resembled a person’s path to Orthodoxy. The difference was, however, that I knew that I was autonomously making these choices— a process that is distinctly Reform. These practices I observed were not things I was required to do by a potentially-punitive God— they were paths, proven time and time again by our people as effective ways to reach God and the rest of the Jewish community. I chose to follow those paths, just as there were other paths I left untraversed.I may be going out on a limb, but I think that all forms of Jewish practice today are inherently Reform. I am not alone in this perspective. Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf z’l once said, “there is no Judaism but Orthodoxy and all Jews are Reform.” I’ll repeat the statement so we can look at it closely. “There is no Judaism but Orthodoxy and all Jews are Reform” (Moffic, Evan. “A progressive Judaism.” Jewish Theology in our Time. Ed. Elliot Cosgrove. Woodstock: Jewish Lights, 2010. 56).
How does this make sense? We could argue that this is true, as Orthodoxy essentially means a rigid holding to one basic tenet as Truth— that there’s one way, and only one way. Sometimes we all prefer to be set in our ways, because it’s comfortable. There’s another way of understanding this, though, and this is my preferred reading. We typically think of the Orthodox as those who engage all the mitzvot—the commandments. The thing is that we engage them all as well, albeit in a different way. Judaism cannot be practiced in the absence of mitzvot. Rabbi Wolf and his successor Rabbi Evan Moffic point out, “Judaism cannot be understood outside of a system of commandments, mitzvot, given by God” (p.56). Like it or not, our religious tradition is built upon halachah— Jewish laws and customs. These laws are not only revealed in our Torah, but also in teachings of the rabbis, from 2000 years ago to present day. Every week, we light Shabbat candles, and Chanukah is observed by almost every Jew out there— even those who do almost nothing else, Jewishly-speaking. It may surprise you to know that neither Shabbat candle-lighting nor Chanukah actually come from the Torah. They are both, in fact, from the rabbinic legal tradition. So to make sense of Rabbi Wolf’s statement, if Orthodox Judaism is the sum total of these laws— these mitzvot— then one could indeed argue that all Judaism is Orthodox. Perhaps a less abrasive way of putting it is that we are all working with the same sacred material. When we do something Jewish, we tap into this great wealth of tradition— the mitzvot and all the thought, practices and customs built up around them over the centuries.
Now that we’ve handled the first clause, we can move to the second and more interesting one. “All Jews are Reform Jews—” A thesis I believe to be true in our modern age, and one that might make some non-Reform-Jews a little frustrated. Yes, there may be no Judaism without a legalistic mitzvah system with its requirements and behavioural expectations. And centuries ago, when the idea of the individual person didn’t exist, when you had to behave as your group expected because otherwise you would be ostracized and left on your own, Jews could not be Reform; they were not empowered to make their own decisions. But in the 1800s, with modernity came individual thought and individual autonomy.
Modernity brought with it the notion that we have a say in what happens in our lives. We have a say in where Judaism will hold its influence, and we have a say in when a more modern sensibility will trump an old one. And any time we make this learned, individual choice of whether to participate in Jewish life, we are making a Reform choice. While our tradition understands mitzvot to represent what God wants from us, as Rabbi Moffic points out, “[the mitzvot cannot] be understood without recognizing that the nature of those mitzvot change over time and that we have a choice as to the way to follow them.” Orthodox and Conservative Jews may argue that choice is limited because there are boundaries between what is acceptable and what is not, but the reality is that even when people choose to adopt the whole mitzvah system as seen through an Orthodox or Conservative lens, they are choosing to opt in. Rather than being Orthodox Jews and Conservative Jews, dictated to do so by God, they are Orthodox and Conservative Jews-by-choice, autonomously doing what they believe is commanded.
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Any decision that we make as individuals is autonomous. It is opting in. And in that way, all those who choose today to be Jewish are indeed Reform Jews.
That being said, not all Jews are Reform-by-choice, and not all self-identified Reform Jews are Reform-by-choice. There is a difference, as I have learned and experienced, between being accidentally Reform and being something more.
Theoretically speaking, my family’s choice to opt in to communal life and join our synagogue was a Reform choice. In practicality however, we simply were not thinking this way. We wanted community. We wanted a sense of attachment and sacred living. So we joined a shul, and it happened to be Reform. There were no philosophical thoughts on the value and importance of being a member of a Jewish community. We became Reform Jews by accident and we certainly didn’t understand, at that point, what it meant to be Reform.
I once heard an aphorism for “making sense” of the different movements that really held my attention: “Orthodox crazy, Conservative hazy, and Reform, lazy.” Orthodox crazy, because of the intensity to which every detail of law must be followed. Conservative hazy, because there are so many different legal debates within the movement that it’s sometimes completely unclear of what the movement actually stands for. And of course, Reform lazy, because Reform Jews don’t do anything. Pick and choose Judaism. Whatever works works and whatever doesn’t doesn’t.
These are all gross stereotypes that do not actually reflect reality. We know this first-hand. Reform Judaism is paying serious attention to the different practices of our people, both from Reform’s rich 200 years of history, and our even richer 3000 years of Jewish history. Reform Judaism is struggling with the tradition, figuring out how we can best respond to the mitzvot in our efforts to reach God and each other, along with making this world a better place. It may be that upon learning about a mitzvah, and struggling with it, we decide that it’s not for us and elect to not do it. We might also decide, however, that the mitzvah deepens our spiritual connection and is worthwhile.
A favourite professor at Hebrew Union College, an Orthodox Rabbi who taught at our Reform seminary, told us that being Reform is much harder than being Orthodox. Sure, as an Orthodox Jew, there’s a lot that is required, but there’s no need to thoughtfully consider and struggle with every commandment and ritual. To not practice isn’t an option, and this makes life significantly simpler. To be Reform is much harder, as we have to struggle with the mitzvot at every step of the way: studying, living, trying, experiencing, and experimenting.
The big challenge of moving from accidental Reform living to being Reform by choice is in taking on this thoughtful struggle— what I think of as the ‘reforming’ part of our tradition. It is hard not getting settled into the static “reformed” religious life, where things are comfortable and stable. Rather, we understand that our needs of today are different from those of yesterday, and likely different from those tomorrow. We understand that there is so much out there that still demands our attention. We understand that being Reform is being open to all kinds of experiences, be they new, one hundred, or one thousand years old. Being Reform-by-choice means sampling different texts in our prayerbooks during that silent prayer, or trying out new ways of practicing a festival. Being Reform-by-choice means being ready to reject a practice of past because it doesn’t make sense given our contemporary sensibilities, like the many customs that render women unequal. Being Reform-by-choice is being prepared to try something new and potentially intimidating. To be Reform-by-choice is properly exercising our autonomy as Jewish individuals, and autonomy doesn’t work unless we have a complete and honest understanding of that which we are considering.
The Torah asks us, ועתה ישראל מה ה’ שאל מעמך? “And now, Israel, what does Adonai ask of you?”
As Reform Jews, as Jews, and as those who have put their fate in with klal Yisrael— the Jewish people, we must ask, what is it that is incumbent on us? What is it that we ought to be doing?To ask these questions is to engage in becoming Reform-by-choice, and to engage in this constant process means for us a Judaism that is fresh, meaningful and relevant.
So, I encourage us, as part of this process to choose to be Reform. To do so, this year, let’s try something. With every month of 5774, let’s take on three new challenges. We often sing, על שלושה דברים העולם עומד- on three things the world stands- על התורה על העבודה ועל גמילות חסדים – upon Torah, worship, and acts of loving kindness. Therefore, let us each seriously engage in one each of these acts of study, worship, and social justice every month. Not a huge commitment, but something that will result in 36 new experiences. After this year, we may make some new commitments, and we may feel that some mitzvot just don’t work for us. Either way, we’ll know more than we did before, and we’ll be in a better position to make our Jewish decisions. These experiments may be as simple as checking out a new prayer in our prayerbook during services, or regularly setting aside funds for ẓedakah, or they may be significantly larger in impact. After all, with a tradition so rich, the sky’s the limit.
It is so wonderful that we are all here together, that we have chosen to be part of the Jewish community, and that we have all found a wonderful home in this Reform synagogue known as Temple Emanu-El. May we, with the support of our neighbours, friends, and loved ones, move further on our paths of Reform-by-choice, towards discovering and rediscovering a beautiful tradition and way of life. May this new year of 5774 bring for all of us a whole lot of meaningful struggle and growth. Shana tova um’tukah, a happy and sweet new year to us all.
Delivered at Temple Emanu-El of Edison, NJ on September 4th, 2013, Erev Rosh Hashanah 5774.
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