Rosh Hashanah Day 2 - 5769/2008
Mikol m’lamdai hiskalti, says the Book of Psalms. From all who have taught me, I have learned. I agree. And as a teacher myself, both here and in the Rabbinical School of the Jewish Theological Seminary, I also subscribe to the notion that, as often as not, we learn as much from our students as we do from our teachers.
Last spring, I had the honor to welcome to my JTS seminar on religious leadership the new Chancellor of the Seminary, Prof. Arnold Eisen. He shared not only his vision for the future of the Seminary, but also his scholarly understanding of the origins of what we call the “modern era” of Judaism, going back as far as the late 18th century in Europe and the beginnings of our emancipation and empowerment as a people.
After Dr. Eisen had spoken of the contributions of Buber, Heschel, and Rosenzweig, what happened next took both him and me by surprise. One of the students raised his hand and asked “Do you think modernity was a mistake for the Jews?” It reminded me vaguely of that scene at the beginning of “Oliver” when the young Oliver in the orphanage asks “Please, sir, can I have some more?” Stunned silence.
Wow, I thought to myself. A senior clergy student asking the Chancellor of the Seminary, an expert and believer in the American Jewish community, whether modernity was a greater threat to Judaism than an asset. Or, to put it more clearly so as to intensify the force of the question… is modern Judaism a failure?
As you might imagine, the Chancellor was not thrilled by the question and its implications, and put on a spirited defense of modernity. But still, the fact that a senior clergy student at the Jewish Theological Seminary, one of the great bastions of modern Jewish life and scholarship, could ask that question of its leader, was sobering at best, unsettling at worst.
If you’re wondering what led the student to ask his question, then it might be time to take a closer look at the Jewish community in America. Outside of the Orthodox world, which is flourishing for a number of reasons that I’ll reference later, non-Orthodox Judaism- particularly our movement- is severely challenged. Our numbers are smaller than they were, many of our synagogues are smaller, our older generation with roots in the traditional forms of pre-war Europe is aging out, our younger generation seems all too often to be alienated either from religion entirely or from our synagogues… It’s not a particularly pretty picture.
I don’t bring this up this morning to depress you. Actually, I agree with the Chancellor. Whatever our problems are as a movement, I think they are solvable. Some of them are institutional, and have to do with the organizations that are our infrastructure and desperately need fixing. They are not my concern this morning. Other problems, like large population changes in our neighborhood, have a lot to do with demographic trends that are also beyond our control, as well as fluctuations in the real estate market.
But some of these “modernity” problems, of course, have everything to do with us, and it is to them that I wish to address myself this morning. What I want to do is put a few issues on the communal table, in the hope that, throughout the course of this coming new year, we can more honestly and effectively understand how we can be partners in the renewal of our movement. I don’t expect you all to love everything that I’m going to say, or necessarily to agree, nor do I pretend that there aren’t compelling reasons why things are as they are. But these issues are, to me, the critical ones, and need our attention.
Issue #1: We Conservative Jews need to get over our fear of being what Lenny Bruce might call “too Jewish,” and once and for all commit to the core observances that define Judaism- Shabbat, kashrut, and regular prayer.
I once heard a colleague of mine give a speech in which he referred to many in our movement as Hovevei Mitzvot- Lovers of mitzvoth- as opposed to Shomrei Mitzvot- observers of mitzvoth. Now being a Hovev mitzvoth is not at all a terrible thing, or a negative quality. It means that you carry within you a deep and abiding appreciation of the power and majesty of our tradition, perhaps even a love of that tradition, a sense that you want to share it with those closest to you, pass it on to your children and grandchildren, you love our ethnic foods and holiday rituals…. All of the above. But- you aren’t necessarily committed to practicing those mitzvoth in some kind of regular regimen that speaks to a sense of obligation. It’s more along the line of “I enjoy it when I do it, but I do it when I can, and not necessarily regularly.”
I try hard to understand this phenomenon, most especially because it describes so many people whom I love, and whom I am charged with serving. Sometimes when I look at it, it reminds me of the stereotypical male who likes the woman, maybe even loves the woman, but can’t pull the trigger on committing because….. he doesn’t see himself as the “committed type.” Not his self-image. Too many strings, too much responsibility, loss of autonomy.
I understand those feelings well enough. But here’s the thing about relationships without true and sincere commitment: they tend not to last. They don’t endure. Love of Jewish tradition and practice is a sweet and wonderful thing, but passing it on to a next generation is incredibly difficult in our open society, and predicated on genuine commitment to regular practice regardless of circumstance or inclination at any given moment.
Shabbat happens every week regardless of whether it’s convenient. Kashrut is an operative system whether one is at home or on the road. Prayer happens every day, EVERY day, even for Conservative Jews. I sense that when people think of Jews who daven every day, or keep Shabbat religiously (no pun intended), or observe Kashrut carefully, they tend to see Orthodox Jews, because that’s who they think practices Judaism that way. But if that’s true, it’s only because we make it true by failing to commit to those practices ourselves. We cede observant Judaism to the Orthodox, and then wonder why they don’t take us all that seriously.
Why are so many so scared to commit to truly regular practice of those core religious values? Are they scared that their “children will become rabbis,” as I’ve heard some suggest, as if that would be just about the worst thing that could happen? Maybe- just maybe- their children would become observant Jews like them! And their Judaism would survive into the next generation!
Issue #2: This one seems obvious to me, but it doesn’t appear to be obvious to most of the members of our movement. We need to have more children. Let me begin with a few caveats here… I am not referring in these comments to young men and women who are longing- painfully- to meet the right person and just haven’t yet, or God forbid to couples who are struggling with infertility issues and want nothing more than to have children. I would never desultory in any way minimize their pain; one need only look at these Torah readings of Rosh Hashanah to understand the psychic toll of infertility.
But beyond those categories, we Conservative Jews have, for a variety of reasons, largely bought into the greater American trend to marry later, thus putting off childbearing, losing the years of greatest fertility, and severely limiting the possibility of larger families, not to mention making it harder to find a spouse altogether. In no small measure, the great demographic growth of the Orthodox community in America owes as much to its birthrate as it does to the considerable power of its ideas. Their children marry young- yes, sometimes too young- they don’t wait all that long to have children, and they have lots of them. LOTS of them. Outside of Orthodoxy, the average birthrate is under two children per Jewish family.
Do the math…. If there is an intermarriage rate of somewhere between forty and fifty percent among non-Orthodox Jews in America, and there are, more often than not, two children per family, and in addition to the intermarriage rate you factor in all the other possible reasons why a growing adult child might not want to remain in the bosom of the Jewish community… you begin to get the picture. We are slowly creating our own depressing demographic destiny.
My friend and colleague Rabbi Elliot Dorff at the American Jewish University has suggested that every Jewish couple should have one more child than they intended to, as a means of replenishing the Jewish people after the Shoah. My friend and wife Robin of the 70th Avenue Jewish University once observed that many families tend to have N plus 1 children, N being the number of children they can handle. Smart woman.
I know a little bit about large families. They’re hard work, they’re expensive, and they require sacrificing or delaying some of your own dreams to allow for the time and commitment involved. But in addition to the hard work, the expense, and the noble goal of repopulating the Jewish people, we will simply disappear as a movement if we don’t have more children. We should not be making fun of the size of Orthodox families. We should be emulating them.
Last but not least for this morning’s purposes, issue #3: We need to get over our fear of re-inventing ourselves as a movement.
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again; whatever it was that made us a great and successful movement in American Judaism in the decades after the Second World War will not make us a great and successful movement in the 21st century. America is a radically different country, the tapestry of American Judaism is radically different from what it was then, and last but certainly not least, we Jews are different. Our spiritual identities are different, our needs in prayer services are different, our needs in prayer spaces are different, our demographics are different, and most importantly, the younger generation of Conservative Jews- those who buy into our movement in some way, shape or form- they’re different too. Why would we even think that what worked in the 1950’s and 60’s would work for us now?
All living organisms either adapt to changes in their environments, or they die. All businesses need to adapt to changes in the marketplace, or they, too, die. It is almost axiomatic in the business world that a business should re-invent itself every five years in order to stay current with its product and market.
Religion, of course, is not your typical “product;” it is rooted in tradition, and the slow-to-change nature of its forms and ideas is precisely where its appeal to many people is to be found. But how we present that product in our synagogues is not sacrosanct, and it seems pretty obvious to me that our market is talking… some with their feet. It’s high time to re-invent.
So, was modernity a mistake for the Jews? No more that trying to keep Judaism in its pre-modern forms is a mistake. The open societies of todays western civilization pose unprecedented challenges and dangers to Jews, but so did any number of historical circumstances in which our people found themselves through the millennia. Modernity is not a mistake; modernity simply is. It is we who can make mistakes, and we who must work to avoid them. The day is short, the work is great… and the time is now.
