Where is Reform Judaism Going From Here?

Where do we go from here? That is the theme these High Holyday sermons explore.

We have Napoleon Bonaparte to thank for the fact that we Jews, especially we Reform Jews, are here. I came across an amazing incident that most Jews, myself included, never heard of:

When the French troops were in Palestine and besieging the city of Acre, Napoleon had already prepared a Proclamation making Palestine an independent Jewish state. [printed and dated the 20th of April 1799]. His unsuccessful attempt to capture Acre prevented it from being issued. The Jews had to wait more than 150 years before their state was proclaimed.

Why did Napoleon do this? On the 10th of November 1816, Dr. Barry O’Meara (who was Napoleon’s personal physician at the time) asked the Emperor point blank as to why he was encouraging and supporting the Jews.

The Emperor Napoleon replied: “My primary desire was to liberate the Jews and make them full citizens. I wanted to confer upon them all the legal rights of equality, liberty and fraternity as was enjoyed by the Catholics and Protestants.

It is my wish that the Jews be treated like brothers as if we were all part of Judaism. As an added benefit, I thought that this would bring to France many riches because the Jews are numerous and they would come in large numbers to our country where they would enjoy more privileges than in any other nation.”

He did everything he could to assure that the Jews were treated on an equal basis as Catholics and Protestants. It was on the 27th of September 1791 that France adopted a decree which accorded the Jews of France full citizenship. [Conference given at International Congress of the International Napoleonic Society, Alessandria, Italy, June 21-26, 1997]

Full citizenship! Emancipation! No longer would the Jews of France, as they did in other countries, have to live as corporate entities in their own special enclaves, speaking their own language, not part of the country in which they lived. Although the reactionary period that followed soon erased many of Napoleon’s decrees, especially the ones where Jews were concerned, the process of Jewish emancipation had begun. In small and halting steps Jews eventually became full citizens.

Those that wanted to, and not all did. There were essentially four responses to the offer of emancipation:

1) The rejectionists. These Hassidic and ultra-Orthodox Jews wanted no part of integration into the larger society, fearing that modernity would corrupt Jewish beliefs and practices.

2) The modern Orthodox. Willing to be part of the larger society economically, they made the necessary compromises in order to do so. At home and in the synagogue they maintained the traditional Jewish rituals and practices.

3) The converts. Apparently now that much of the stigma and hardships of being Jewish had been removed, these people tried to remove whatever might have been left by converting to Christianity in droves.

4) The Reform. Beginning in Germany partly to stem the tide of conversion from Judaism but mostly because these Jews were oriented toward rationality and modernity, they were willing to change traditional customs and ceremonies to bring them more in line with the world in which they lived. The first changes involved worship and quickly spread to matters of philosophy and theology.

Conservative Judaism was added to this list somewhat later.

Some of the reforms seem innocuous to us today, but were the source of much controversy at their inception. Men and women were allowed to sit together in the synagogue. The sermon was given in the vernacular. There was a great deal of prayerbook reform, including shortened services and translations of the Hebrew into the language people spoke in their daily lives. Musical instruments and mixed choirs added a new, artistic dimension to the services.

Gunshots and a number of deaths took place as these new ideas took effect.

In America, Jews were part of a tiny minority that numbered only ten thousand in 1820 and only one hundred fifty thousand on the eve of the Civil war. In our attempts to fit in, American Jews took on many of the trappings of our Gentile neighbors. Some synagogues instituted Sunday morning Sabbath services. Some of the earlier Reform prayerbooks had “minister” rather than “Reader” or “Rabbi.

From these early attempts at Reform grew the ideas that form the liberal Judaism of today. The most important are:

1) Progressive Revelation – If God had given everything there was to know about Judaism to Moses on the top of Mt. Sinai, there was no possibility of change. The reformers taught the idea of Progressive Revelation, the idea that God’s will is  revealed to each generation. Therefore change was not only possible, it was inevitable.

2) The fixed and the changeable – The reformers developed the idea that there were certain core teachings that were not to be changed, the Ten Commandments, for example. But the way those teachings were expressed changed from generation.

3) Conferences – Although Orthodox Rabbis made religious decisions on a case by case basis, the Reform movement undertook a number of Conferences in which Rabbis tried to define the movement as a whole. They formulated positions on God, Torah, Israel, etc.

4) Radical Freedom – No longer bound by strictures and restrictions both without and within, accepting the idea that the Bible was written by human beings and therefore fallible, Reform became the religion of religious freedom. More and more, people chose how they would practice their own Judaism. The Reform movement rejected the binding power of the Talmud, the Codes of Jewish Law, all the other volumes that had provided immutable authority for centuries. Such freedom turned out to be the most difficult reform of all.

Many, many years ago I was invited to speak about Reform Judaism to an adult education group at a Conservative synagogue. When I presented the idea that Reform taught that the former sources of Jewish authority were not binding, the group became very uncomfortable, not too far from becoming a lynch mob.

“What makes someone Jewish?” one asked.

“How can Reform Judaism exist without any requirements?” asked another.

“If there’s no authority, how do you know what to do?” a third wanted to know.

And they were right. This is a profound problem our movement has been dealing with almost from its inception. How do we maintain freedom of choice, how do we accept each of us as the locus of responsibility, and not become “Judaism lite?”

Most Reform Rabbis teach, as I do, that freedom to choose requires knowledge, or our choices might as well be a flip of a coin. Want to keep kosher? Know what Kashrut is, then choose. Don’t want to keep kosher? Same thing. In some ways Reform doesn’t demand less, it demands more.

Fortuitously, a period of prodigious growth in Reform took place at the same time the early labor unions were battling for their existence, and in many cases, their very lives. Instead of the complex ritual practices of the past, the Reform movement threw itself into trying to ameliorate the social problems of the day. Thus was born the social action movement in Judaism.

Social action became the mitzvot, the commandments of Reform Judaism. Israel, Hebrew, tallit, kippah, all were thought of as quaint reminders of a more primitive past.

But this was reformed as well. More and more of the traditional observances and rituals are making their way back into Reform Judaism. Each new class of graduates from the Reform rabbinical and cantorial schools seems more traditionally observant than the one before.

For now, that seems to be where our movement is heading. I hope that the people who find such practice obligatory, and many do, remember the core Reform proviso that we continue to exist with radical freedom. Know what you practice, then practice what you know.

Where is Reform Judaism going after that? Only God knows.