Redefining Reform Judaism

Thursday, April 08, 1999

Redefining Reform Judaism

As their leaders ponder new principles, more movement members embrace rituals, traditional dress and diet

Not so long ago, kippot — the Jewish skull caps also known as yarmulkes — were forbidden in the temples of Reform Judaism, and congregants rarely observed ancient Jewish dietary laws. The customs, along with many others, were rejected in the early days of a movement designed to bring Judaism into the modern age.

At Reform services today, some congregants wear not only kippot but also tallisim, or prayer shawls, and some keep kosher in their kitchens at home and participate in ritual baths. Delegates at national meetings who used to pack political marches now flock to standing-room-only Torah study sessions, where attendees sing and sway as they pray.

The changes reflect a shift toward traditional practices by many within the Reform movement, which has its American roots in late 19th-century Cincinnati. Now the movement must decide how to redefine itself in light of these changes, how to balance the traditionalism that many Reform Jews are embracing with the freedom to choose that has always been the movement's hallmark.

REFORM HISTORY

Reform Judaism has adopted three previous declarations of principles in its history. Leaders are now writing a fourth statement, trying to define the beliefs and aims of North America's largest Jewish denomination.
• The first declaration, adopted in 1885 in Pittsburgh, stressed Judaism's compatibility with science and rejected religious laws on diet and dress. It also rejected a return of the Jewish people to Palestine.
• The 1937 platform, passed in Columbus after Hitler's rise to power in Germany, voiced support for the construction of Jewish homes in Palestine. It also emphasized social justice and ethics, peace and prayer.
• The 1976 Centenary Perspective, adopted in San Francisco, reflected on the two main events in Jewish history since 1937: the Holocaust and the establishment of the state of Israel. The statement encouraged immigration to Israel and stressed the unique identity of the Jewish people.

Fifteen Reform leaders — three of them from Cincinnati — are working to articulate the purposes and beliefs that will guide the movement into the new millennium. At a time when many religious denominations are struggling to define themselves, the process within Reform Judaism is provoking particularly spirited debate among its members. The effort marks only the fourth time in Reform's history that the movement has set out to create a set of guiding principles.

“The question today is, who are we and what do we believe and what makes us us, and is it possible to come up with a persuasive, compelling vision of Reform?” says Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman, president of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, the rabbinical seminary of the Reform movement.

Reform Judaism must help its members “have a genuine encounter with the rich tradition and meaning of Jewishness, at the same time preserving those things which helped bring this movement into being — primacy of ethics, the modern aesthetic, that studying Judaism involves modern critical scholarship.”

The 10 principles
The current debate had percolated in rabbinical circles for some time, but it arrived movement-wide with the winter issue of Reform Judaism magazine. In it, Rabbi Richard Levy, president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, called for an official platform that urged Sabbath observance, ritual baths, ancient dietary laws and prayer in Hebrew.

Some Jewsread Rabbi Levy's 10 Principles and saw themselves on the pages. John Morse, who wears a kippah and a homemade tallit when he attends services at Isaac M. Wise Temple in Amberley Village, liked what he saw in the Levy proposal.

“Little by little, people are able to stand up for (traditional elements) now. You're not branded as "one of them' anymore. They're confident enough in the movement that they don't reject or accept something just because that's the way things are,” says Mr. Morse, 43, a Hamilton County librarian.

“This search (within the Reform movement) coincides with where I am now. I don't reject things out of hand because they're too traditional or old-fashioned. When I studied, I saw what some of these symbols are supposed to mean.”

But other Jews, while welcoming individuals who choose traditional practices, worried that a statement codifying them goes against the essence of Reform Judaism. The magazine's Web site filled with passionate responses, many of them critical of the proposal.

“If somebody wants to wear a kippah and tallit and wants to put tefillin (scriptural passages in leather cases worn on the head and arm) on and go to services every day, that's fine. I'll defend that person's right to the death. But don't let that person say I have to live that way,” says Robert Chaiken, an accountant from Amberley Village and vice chair of the Union of American Hebrew Congregation's board of trustees.

“This could be very divisive. I have friends who are classical Reformists saying, "Wait a minute.' They don't like what's going on. They don't think it's necessary to have all of these trappings of traditionalism, kippot and tallisim and the gesturing. They don't like that.”

Still others see some problems that the early Reform movement created, with its rejection of any and all tradition. But they believe emphasizing ritual and symbolism can exact a price as well.

“The Classical Reform movement was such a theoretical movement. The children of these people weren't taught anything. They had no knowledge of the holidays or the rituals, and their children became so assimilated. A lot of the old Cincinnati Jewish families don't exist anymore,” says Polly Stein, 64, of Amberley Village, a longtime member of Wise Temple.

“It's a great problem in Reform Judaism, to have more freedom but not to lose Jews as Jews. ... (But) keeping kosher doesn't make you Jewish. Wearing a yarmulke doesn't make you Jewish. It's important to keep a balance between symbolism and what the symbols mean, so you don't let the symbols destroy the meaning behind them.”

A search for meaning
Reform Judaism arrived at its present crossroads for a number of reasons, and concern about assimilation is only one of them. Anti-Semitism has abated, and predominantly Jewish neighborhoods are disappearing. Many Jews are looking for new and positive reasons for their Jewish identity.

More people are converting to Judaism, and more Jews by birth are seeing their Jewishness as a faith rather than — or in addition to — an ethnicity. Perhaps most importantly,Jewish communities, like many other American communities, are engaged in a search for meaning and looking to traditional practices for help.

“What's prompting this is in part a response to changes within American society generally, where there are more concerns with the spiritual life of the individual,” said Dr. Michael Meyer, who teaches American Jewish history at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and specializes in the history of the Reform movement.

Dr. Meyer is among the committee of 15 that was assembled to rewrite the 10 Principles. Their work will be presented at the May meeting of the Central Conference of American Rabbis in Pittsburgh, the city where the first Reform platform was adopted in 1885.

The ideas in Rabbi Levy's proposal that provoked the greatest alarm have already disappeared and every word of the statement has been rewritten. But the questions that prompted Rabbi Levy's proposal, and the swift responses, remain:

• How can the movement balance tradition and innovation, emotion and reason, culture and individual faith?

“What is it that holds us together as a group? Is it affiliation? Is it ideology? If it is ideology, do we have a persuasive ideology which we can present to people so we can bring them in?” Rabbi Zimmerman says.

“When they ask people who they are or what they identify as, many will say they are Reform Jews and the identification is a negative one, namely "I'm Reform because I don't do all these things that Conservative or Orthodox Jews do.' That's a very damaging way of self-perception — it's "I am what I don't do.'”

A religion of the spirit
But what Reform Jews don't do was built into the movement's first statement, the 1885 Pittsburgh Platform. The document welcomed a relationship between science and religion, declared Judaism a religion rather than a nation, and stated that regulations on “diet, priestly purity, and dress ... (are)entirely foreign to our present mental and spiritual state.”

“The central message of the Pittsburgh Platform was that we are not medieval Jews but modern Jews, we are not Oriental Jews but Western Jews, and our religion is a religion of the spirit and not a religion of ritual action,” Dr. Meyer says.

Although traditional forms of practice popped up from time to time, many Reform Jewish leaders discouraged or even forbade some ritual garb and observance. Rabbi Alfred Gottschalk, who served as Hebrew Union's president for 25 years before becoming chancellor in 1996, remembers that his predecessor would not allow students to wear head coverings or prayer shawls.

The movement was at the forefront of the social struggles that wracked the country in the 1960s and 1970s. While proud of that tradition, some Jews feel that social action became the center of Reform Judaism, with personal faith an afterthought. It's a criticism many level at mainline Protestant denominations as well.

Reform Judaism “embraced the civil rights movement, anti-Vietnam, anti-Korea, issues of poverty, issues of reproductive freedom, a whole series of issues which also existed particularly in liberal Protestantism. So they pushed it too far in a sense,” Rabbi Gottschalk says.

“They made Judaism almost exclusively, as the traditionalists perceive it, a religion directed to the other rather than the Jewish worshiper or practitioner.”

Today, meetings of Reform organizations, once punctuated by marches, are filled with jam-packed Torah study sessions. Attendees look out to a sea of head coverings and prayer shawls, with people swaying and singing.

“With the comfort level I've always felt with tradition, I feel now it's become a problem in that the ritual expression of Judaism is beginning to obscure the prophetic message of Judaism,” he says. “Just because you put on tefillin and kiss the tzitzit (shawl fringes) and sway and sing "la, la, la' in mystical mode does not make you more pious.”

Avoiding a split
The search for meaning is perhaps most intense at Hebrew Union College, among the students who will assume leadership in the country's Reform congregations in a few years. Fourth-year student Leah Cohen is the only student on the 10 Principles task force, and she finds keen interest in the proposal on campus.

“Most students at the seminary are grappling with issues of how much ritual to observe and how much tradition to take in, grappling with what is God and what does that mean to me,” Ms. Cohen says. “A rabbinical student would say, I could live by these principles but I'm not so sure about my congregation. We don't want to create "thems' and "us-es' or two forms of Reform Judaism.”

Avoiding the creation of two forms is a priority for those sitting on the task force. They also say any new platform must embrace values such as equality of the sexes, the ordination of women, recognition of gays and lesbians and outreach to mixed marriages, that the Reform movement has embraced for years.

The task force has been working on new drafts via conference call. A vote on it could come at the May meeting of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, or they could decide on further discussion and revision.

“I think the point is to give a foundation of principle for belief and for observance,” said Rabbi Lewis Kamrass of Wise Temple, who is also on the task force. “I think the thrust will be more toward a personal Judaism in which people are called to seek in their own faith real meaning — not just because your parents did it this way or not just because you have to teach something to your children, but what does it mean for me?”

In the meantime, the proposal has prompted conversations and reflection on the philosophy and aims of the Reform movement. That alone, many say, is reason enough to thank Rabbi Levy for the controversy his principles started, no matter what the final outcome may be.

“There is a real search on for meaning, a real desire for connection and meaning and soulfulness,” Rabbi Zimmerman said. “Do we need a platform for that, or do we need a period of time in which we create ways to engage our tradition, and see what emerges in significant ways?”



Front Page
Local
Sports
	Bengals
	Reds
	Bearcats
	Xavier
Business
Health
Technology
Weather
Traffic
Back Issues
Photographs
AP Wire
	World
	Nation
	Sports
	Business
	Arts
	Health

Jobs
Autos
General
Obits
Homes

Movies
Dining
Calendars
Weekend

Columns
Borgman

HelpDesk
Feedback
Circulation
Subscribe
Phone #'s
Search