Although Ben Dreyfus and I are separated by the miles and the generations, we clearly read the same Torah and derive pretty much the same message from it.   

If we have a difference, it’s his emphasis on the evolution of Reform against a background of American influences, contrasted to mine on the operative influences coming from other paths of Judaism, albeit facilitated by the American change from melting pot to salad bowl. Yes, it’s okay to be the tomato among the lettuce leaves, and to have plucked the tomato from an Orthodox or Conservative garden. 

Might our perspectives differ because Ben was born into Reform, whereas I adopted it in mid-life?  Or because he is a teacher and I a marketer?  Or maybe we’re not so different after all?

In reading that different communities and different individuals will arrive at different legitimate conclusions (italics mine), I infer an affirmation of a pluralistic contemporary Judaism, suggestive that the pluralism is a recent development. Even in the late-nineteenth-century, all American rabbis were neither in Pittsburgh nor in accord with the Reform stream’s Platform. First-century Rabbis Hillel and Shammai may be the exemplars of Jewish pluralism, but were neither its beginning nor its end. 

The question we were both asked to discuss refers only by indirection to the Pittsburgh Platform, but clearly it is the touchstone document against which the return to tradition is benchmarked. A question I might ask—indeed, have asked—is where is today’s spokesman for the Classical Reform Judaism it espoused? Both of the current commentators have referenced their, and the movement’s, ongoing commitment to the ethical and social justice message of the Classic Reformers. Where’s the voice of commitment to the anti-ritual, anti-nationalist tenets of the Platform?

I hope that my own Reform Judaism is “informed by an educated understanding of traditional and modern Jewish sources, and … (is) true to the highest ethical principles of the progressive Jewish tradition.” But I maintain that the Reform Judaism of the synagogues I attend is informed by vox populi vox dei, the voice of the people is the voice of God, and that the voice of the people stems from their sentimentality towards their grandparents’ shtetl Yiddishkeit more than from their own study of the sources. 

Fortunately, we have in our movement rabbis and teachers who build the fences around the Torah and make sure that when we reclaim and return, we are in fact moving forward in accord with the progressive Jewish tradition.

In our opening statements, Larry Kaufman and I looked at the question from different angles. Larry focused more on the actual practices that are and are not common in Reform congregations, while I focused more on the theoretical framework for Reform Jewish practice.

In this response I would like to challenge the binary division of practices into “traditional” and non-traditional. A closer look shows that the picture is far more complex. Throughout history, Jewish practices have varied among different times and places.  Just as it is inaccurate for some Orthodox Jews (such as Artscroll Publications) to treat “the tradition” as a single, well-defined set of practices that must be observed, it is also inaccurate for some Reform Jews to treat “the tradition” as a well-defined set of practices that must not be observed, and even for other Reform Jews to treat “the tradition” as a well-defined set of practices from which we select some and reject others.  We need to look at our practice in terms that make sense for our time and reflect the multilayered nature of Jewish history, rather than comparing our own practice (whether positively or negatively) with what we consider “traditional.”

For example, Larry talks about “kippah and tallit” as a single unit. However, these two articles of clothing have very different stories. Wearing a tallit has roots in the biblical commandment (Numbers 15:38) instructing the Israelites to put fringes on the corners of their garments in order to remember and do the mitzvot. The kippah is much more recent in origin, developing out of a more general custom to cover the head. Reform Jews might choose to wear either, neither, or both of these, and might have different understandings about their purposes, perhaps seeing religious meaning in the kippah or ethnic identification in the tallit. But regardless of what we each choose to wear and why, we should see the different permutations of practice as more complicated than just traditional or non-traditional.

In many parts of my Jewish life, the label of “traditional” doesn’t even make sense. Kol Zimrah, my community in New York, is nondenominational but has many participants from Reform backgrounds. Are Kol Zimrah’s Friday night services more or less “traditional” than typical Reform services? It’s hard to say. Some might see the fact that we do the entire service in Hebrew as evidence of traditionalism. But our use of guitar and percussion accompaniment might make us less traditional (setting us apart from Jewish services older than a generation ago) or more traditional (echoing the Levites’ instrumentation in the ancient Temple in Jerusalem). Add in the act that we strive to incorporate musical influences from a wide range of Jewish and non-Jewish sources and to innovate musically every time, and if “tradition” has connotations of constancy and familiarity, then Kol Zimrah is decidedly less traditional than the typical Reform congregation where the melodies are essentially the same from week to week.

This week I attended the wedding of some friends.  A superficial analysis might have pegged this wedding as “traditional”:  the liturgical language was Hebrew, the groom was wearing a kitel (a white robe associated with the High Holy Days and other solemn occasions), and we concluded the festive meal with the full text of Birkat HaMazon (the grace after meals) and Sheva B’rachot (the seven wedding blessings).  However, focusing on these details would distract us from a more significant element of this wedding:  the couple left out the ritual of kiddushin, which originated in a paradigm in which one partner acquires the other, and instead joined in a b’rit ahuvim, a covenant between equal partners suggested by Prof. Rachel Adler (of HUC-JIR in Los Angeles) and based on rabbinic laws governing business partnerships. Instead of giving rings to one another, they purchased the rings together as joint property, to symbolize the joint venture on which they are embarking. Was this wedding “traditional”? I would suggest that this is the wrong question to ask.

The evolution and diversity of Jewish practices in the past and in our own time makes it difficult to pin down one set of practices as “traditional” or to distinguish traditional from non-traditional. May we be mindful of Rabbi Meir’s teaching that a new vessel may contain old wine and vice versa (Pirkei Avot 4:27), and may we make such categorization even more difficult through our continued innovation.