Rabbi Arnold I Sher
Response to Robert M Heller

I salute Bob Heller for all the contributions he has made to our Reform Movement. His leadership as chairman of the Union for Reform Judaism is but one such role. He has been vitally involved in the work of the College-Institute, as well as devoting time and thought to important issues of the CCAR. He is a wonderful model for what the Reform Movement can produce at its best. From his teen years at the Union’s Eisner camp, to his involvement at Central Synagogue in New York City, to chairing the URJ, he and his family live as committed Reform Jews.

Bob truly knows the challenges we face as a liberal religious movement in the twenty-first century.  He framed it well in his farewell address at the San Diego Biennial last December. Looking at our successes, he pointed to our failures as well. “Far too many Jews remain outside our doors, uninspired or turned off by what we offer them.”  Unfortunately, I need to add that there are many inside our doors who are equally uninspired or turned off by what we offer them!

I am not sure the solution is better technical tools for our congregations. The internet and other communication devices may help us stay in contact with each other, but do not address the true problems we face when attempting to turn our congregations into communities. Despite initiatives that foster new ways of thinking and redesign our worship spaces, few congregations have filled the pews on Shabbat, and fewer still are able to maintain a congregational daily minyan. Our attempts to recapture Shabbat have led to 6 p.m. services in many of our synagogues. Laudable as this may be, the goal to have families home for dinner and Shabbat rituals may not have been realized. However, I do know that many Reform Jews now feel that words of Torah, ethical mandates and challenging issues coming from their religious leaders are missing from well thought out and delivered sermons on erev Shabbat. It is difficult to feel connected when many Shabbat morning services have become b’nei mitzvah services, and the so-called “regular” worshippers feel like guests in their own synagogues and estranged from what is happening. How can we speak of emotional connections when mourners cannot find a Reform congregational service available during the week in order to recite Kaddish?

The truth is—we are not a worshipping community. If the synagogue is to become central in our lives, we need to not only open ourselves to different experiences of worship, we also need to focus on other areas to create and maintain a connection that in time may encourage a sense of true community. Of the three pillars of the synagogue— beit t’filah (house of prayer),  beit k‘neset (house of assembly)  and beit midrash (house of study), it is the last where I see the most possibilities to regain and transform synagogue life.

We have the resources, the talent and hopefully the funds to create meaningful learning centers in all our congregations. While we as a Movement have been able to create a national system of Jewish camping that has influenced the lives of thousands of our young people in the most positive ways, we have not done similarly in formal Jewish education. Reform Jewish day schools need to become a higher priority. Adult education programs need to be higher on the agenda and the budget of our congregations. Our members are well educated, except when it comes to Jewish thought, ideas and history. They thirst for quality Jewish education. Religious school education needs to reflect the same seriousness of purpose, creativity, excellence and competence as our members expect from their children’s secular education.

The turned off can become turned on, the outsiders can realize the possibilities of spiritual growth through serious learning and will return to the synagogue. Those already in our midst may rediscover the importance of not only a learning community but a worshipping community as well.

Robert M Heller
Response to Arnold I Sher

Rabbi Sher and I are in almost complete agreement when it comes to the nature of the challenges faced by liberal North American Jewry.  Even our seeming difference—I rose to the bait in seeking to frame a meta-challenge, while he declined—disappears when you consider the action items and contemporary challenges that he and I describe. I pose the issue in terms of building compelling communities of meaning that will engage our members and attract the unaffiliated. He expresses the need, given the diversity of our Movement, to be more overt in expressing our common core values and beliefs.

In effect, we are looking through different sides of the same prism. Building communities of meaning requires that we understand and be confident about our shared identity as Reform Jews.  That is especially important today, because we have successfully attracted many people to Reform Judaism who grew up as Conservative or Orthodox Jews, in other faith traditions or with no religious background. Even those of us who are Reform Jews by birth must recognize that the Reform Judaism we practice today is not the late-nineteenth century Reform Judaism of our founder, Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise. It is not even our parents’ Reform Judaism. Our core values remain intact. But the Reform religious mainstream in the 1950s and 1960s, when my father served on the Union Board, was different in ritual and in some of its emphasis—before patrilineal descent, before outreach, before gender-neutral prayer, before the ordination of women—from today’s mainstream.

As Rabbi Sher implies, the Union Prayer Book illustrates one way to build shared identity. We would all benefit if all our congregations choose to use the new CCAR prayer book, Mishkan T’Filah.  Since the 1960s, with their creative services on ditto paper, many congregations have developed their own services and siddurim, continuing a creative process that never ends. But we should not be unconnected, unrelated, isolated. By making Mishkan T’Filah available in our pews along with prayer books our congregation may have created, we are connecting to the Movement. Doing that says to our visitors, we are family; and we, our children and grandchildren will feel at home when our travels bring us to congregations far from home.   

Similarly, the more congregations that use the Union’s CHAI  religious school curriculum and Mitkadem Hebrew curriculum in their supplementary schools, the more likely our next generation will come to maturity with a strong Reform Jewish identity and a connection to each other built on shared learning experiences, even if they grew up a continent apart. Our congregational and national youth groups, Israel and, above all, camping experiences are important for the same reason. 

Those are just a few of myriad ways we are addressing the challenge of shared identity rooted in our very success. Fundamentally, we must understand that we Reform Jews are heirs to a rich tradition. The rhetoric these days about our living in a post-denominational age should not obscure this basic truth: “Reform” in our name stands for something theologically, philosophically and practically.  For example:

Halachah: We respect halachah, Jewish legal tradition, but give it a voice, not a veto, interpreting it in light of modernity and the realities of human experience;

Egalitarian: We insist upon equal religious rights, obligations and opportunities for women and men; 

Inclusion: We draw lines to bring people in, not to isolate them or leave them out; 

Pluralism: We recognize that each of us is made b’tzelem Elohim, in the image of God, that there are many roads to Sinai, that no one holds a monopoly on ultimate truth;

Lay/professional partnership: We value our educated volunteers who work in partnership with professionals to create community, bound by covenants of mutual respect and purpose, not simply by employer-employee contracts;

Emphasis on the prophetic voice: Tikkun olam, social justice is a core principle for us, and social action is or should be part of the life of all our congregations. 

Understanding who we are is a crucial first step as we build the Reform community of tomorrow.