Post by Rabbi Neil on Sept 30, 2017 0:49:31 GMT
On the first Shabbat in his new Temple, the Rabbi couldn’t help but notice an interesting custom that he had never seen before. When the scroll was paraded around the Sanctuary, the magbiah (the person carrying the scroll) would walk normally, but when he got to the very back of the Sanctuary, he would bend his legs, walk a few paces, stand up and continue walking. After the service, the Rabbi asked the magbiah why he did that. “I don’t know,” came the reply, “we’ve always done that.” So the Rabbi asked the shames who helped organize the services where that custom came from. “I don’t know,” the shames said, “we’ve always done that.” The Rabbi spoke to his predecessor. “I don’t know,” said the Rabbi, “we’ve always done that. Ever since we were in the old building.” “The old building?” asked the new Rabbi. “Yes, the beautiful one with the gorgeous low-hanging chandelier at the back of the Sanctuary...”
I love that joke because it so totally exemplifies the balance between rational and emotional Judaism, a balance which is important for us to consider this evening. To explore it, let me ask a similar question about our scrolls. At the start of our service, we brought out the scrolls from the ark and kept them with us while we sang Kol Nidre. But why? What is the reason for taking the scrolls out of the ark during Kol Nidre? The original custom was to take three scrolls out of the ark to act as a beit din, which is basically a court. The scrolls act as three witnesses for us as we cancel all previous vows through the kol nidre prayer, which is quite an extraordinary idea. I feel confident in saying that many people here tonight would not have known that that was the reason for removing the scrolls, and yet if we didn’t do that custom – if we just opened the ark for Kol Nidre without removing the scrolls – I feel confident in saying that many people might have felt uncomfortable. That’s because sometimes our Judaism is based on emotional responses to the past and present, and not on sound rational reasoning. I would go so far as to say that most - if not all - ritual itself transcends rational explanation because it is deliberately designed to mark moments in time, to sanctify them, and to connect us to past, present and future generations of Jews. And while that can be described in words, it cannot be explained rationally. That doesn’t mean that ritual doesn’t have value … indeed, I think ritual’s very transcendence of rational explanation is exactly its strength because part of the wonder of human beings is that we are not just rational, but also emotional, spiritual and more.
One of the great tensions of Reform Judaism is the balance between rational and emotional. Early Reformers tended very strongly towards the rational, and if something no longer had a rational explanation then it was discarded. The kol nidre prayer was removed from the American Reform machzor for over 100 years – from 1844 to 1961 – and replaced by Psalm 130, which is at least totally in keeping with the rest of the Yom Kippur liturgy. Rationally, the replacement made sense, but emotionally, people couldn’t tolerate an erev yom kippur service without the kol nidre prayer. And opposition to kol nidre isn’t just modern. Amram’s siddur, written around the year 870, includes the rubric for the communal annulment of vows, but he himself forbids its recitation and calls it a minhag sh’tut, a foolish custom! Within two hundred years, it had gained such popularity among the people that the text was reworked by later Geonim (the Rabbis of that time) to transform it away from a pseudo-magical formula into a series of statements of religious aspiration. Despite the efforts of many Rabbis over the generations, kol nidre remains in our service, an Aramaic declaration of the annulment of vows. How did it remain? Because of the tune. Because of the way it stirs the emotions. Because of The Jazz Singer. Because of memories of our childhood. Because to start the Erev Yom Kippur service without Kol Nidre would be totally unthinkable for some people, regardless of whether or not they actually agree with the words. And therein lies the challenge for Reform Judaism, which prides itself on intellectual rigour – can we defend preserving ancient elements just because they make people feel good? Sure, there are some elements of Judaism that we can easily say are contrary to the modern ethic, such as the veneration of the sacrificial cult. Those things we can expunge quickly and without controversy from contemporary Jewish life. But what about the things that are increasingly challenging for some people but which hold enormous emotional power due to their tradition? Take, for example, the four-lettered name of God, yud hay vav hay. We know that when the Temple was destroyed and the correct way of pronouncing this was forgotten, the Rabbis, who could only think in patriarchal terms, gave it a new pronunciation, Adonai. There’s no way that that Name was origingally pronounced Adonai since there is no letter dalet and no nun in it, but that was the pronunciation they gave and that has been the pronunciation of that word for 2000 years. The increasing problem with that, though, is how masculine it is, since Adonai means “my lord.” Why can’t we start pronouncing it in a different way? Because of 2000 years of emotional connection. Some progressive movements have rewritten their liturgy around this – instead of baruch atah Adonai (blessed are You, Lord), they’ll write b’rucha at Yah (blessed are You (feminine form), Yah). And that kind of creativity is great but what they don’t do is suggest a new pronunciation of yud-hay-vav-hay because there are emotional limits. Logically speaking, a new pronunciation would be fine for many Jews but then you hit a problem, which is that it would be a huge issue for other Jews. Many Reform Jews have no issue with the pronunciation Adonai – indeed, they find it comforting. The problem with emotional limits is that they’re impossible to agree upon because everyone has differing limits.
This leaves Reform Judaism with a profound challenge. In Orthodoxy, the liturgy is the liturgy, with only local regional variants, so there’s no discussion of rights and wrongs in terms of the appropriateness of the liturgy. In Reform Judaism, though, it’s much harder. Our spiritual practices are far wider specifically because Reform Temples encourage members to explore differing paths of Jewish spirituality. One response, as I mentioned last Shabbat, is to hold the prayers up as a mirror, sometimes showing us something we don’t like, and then have them challenge us. But not everyone likes their prayers to challenge, sometimes people want to be held and comforted by what is in the siddur. So, another response is to provide alternate texts throughout the machzor so that if anyone would rather be reading something else, then we provide them with options. Of course, it’s possible that the same reader isn’t keen on those passages either, but there is a limit to how filled a machzor can be with alternate readings!
We’re all here tonight because we have an emotional connection to our tradition, an emotional connection that was usually, although not always fostered within us by parents, by teachers, sometimes by partners or friends. In the past, Judaism was transferred onto the next generation as a result of this intense emotional connection that held the Jewish people together in opposition to the rest of the world. Nowadays, though, when Jews have been assimilated in contemporary society, as we should because we’re human beings too who are entitled to the same rights as everyone else, the emotional connection diminishes. Ritual practice diminishes. Each generation knows less about Judaism than the one that came before. Each generation cares less about Judaism than the one that came before. Ask anyone who has worked in Reform Judaism for at least the last twenty years and I believe they’ll tell you the same. A weekend Sunday school for a couple of hours, or a Wednesday boost to the education, isn’t enough. There’s only so much information a child can retain if they don’t have an emotional connection to the tradition. Last Pesach, only 3 of the 8 students in one of the classes at our Religious School that year even attended a Seder. How can I expect them to remember or care about anything I teach them about the Seder when they don’t even attend one, when what I teach is totally academic? And how can we possibly expect our kids to pass on any emotional connection to the next generation when they don’t even see the rituals in order to create their own emotional connection? But I’m not just singling out the parents of one class. The reason that we have a communal Seder at TBS is because we understand that so many of our kids from all classes won’t get to see a Seder otherwise. So instead we’re left trying to form the emotional connection while also trying to teach the facts. But it’s much harder to create an emotional connection with a seder in the Social Hall than it is sitting round a dinner table with family. One of the earliest memories I have as a child is the seder at my grandparents’ house. At the time, I hated the seder service itself because it went on for so long and I hated having to dress up in smart clothes, but I loved seeing my family and I loved spending time particularly with my grandfather who died only a few years later. Every time I sit at a seder table for the rest of my life, I will have an immediate emotional connection to my him through that ritual. And even if I weren’t a Rabbi and knew nothing about the seder, the positive feeling that that generates would then lead me to want those who follow me to have the same connection with me.
This is not just something for parents to consider, though. One of the reasons I’m a Rabbi is because I formed an emotional connection to Shabbat services and one of the main reasons for that is because there were members of the Temple who attended services extremely regularly. I admired them, I learned from their behaviour. They looked forward to seeing me, they were excited when I walked into the Sanctuary. They supported me when I started reading in services, they encouraged me when I started giving sermons. My love of Judaism was fostered because others showed me their love of Judaism – my emotional connection was because I saw the joy of the emotional connection for others.
For Judaism to survive into the next generation, and the next one after that, we all need to commit to fostering the emotional connections in those younger than ourselves. We need to be present for them, we need to be there to encourage them, to share sacred moments with them. Then when we teach them as a community, they will actually care about what we teach. Once we develop a strong emotional connection to liturgy, then and only then can we have a rational discussion about how to develop it. Tonight and tomorrow, then, I encourage you to not interrogate the liturgy with a rational mind, but to try to form an emotional connection to it… love it. Love it for its wondrous moments and love it for its faults, love it for the mood it puts you in when you agree with it and love it for the mood it puts you in when it challenges you. The machzor is not a book that tells you what to do, it’s a friend on a life journey.
On Erev Rosh Hashanah, I spoke about our communal narrative and the liturgy is one obvious expression of that narrative. But another crucial aspect of that narrative is the social narrative of our community, the narrative formed by our social connections with each other, including this evening. May we strengthen that narrative, and our emotional connection to our tradition, and our community, this evening and into the coming year, and let us say, Amen.
I love that joke because it so totally exemplifies the balance between rational and emotional Judaism, a balance which is important for us to consider this evening. To explore it, let me ask a similar question about our scrolls. At the start of our service, we brought out the scrolls from the ark and kept them with us while we sang Kol Nidre. But why? What is the reason for taking the scrolls out of the ark during Kol Nidre? The original custom was to take three scrolls out of the ark to act as a beit din, which is basically a court. The scrolls act as three witnesses for us as we cancel all previous vows through the kol nidre prayer, which is quite an extraordinary idea. I feel confident in saying that many people here tonight would not have known that that was the reason for removing the scrolls, and yet if we didn’t do that custom – if we just opened the ark for Kol Nidre without removing the scrolls – I feel confident in saying that many people might have felt uncomfortable. That’s because sometimes our Judaism is based on emotional responses to the past and present, and not on sound rational reasoning. I would go so far as to say that most - if not all - ritual itself transcends rational explanation because it is deliberately designed to mark moments in time, to sanctify them, and to connect us to past, present and future generations of Jews. And while that can be described in words, it cannot be explained rationally. That doesn’t mean that ritual doesn’t have value … indeed, I think ritual’s very transcendence of rational explanation is exactly its strength because part of the wonder of human beings is that we are not just rational, but also emotional, spiritual and more.
One of the great tensions of Reform Judaism is the balance between rational and emotional. Early Reformers tended very strongly towards the rational, and if something no longer had a rational explanation then it was discarded. The kol nidre prayer was removed from the American Reform machzor for over 100 years – from 1844 to 1961 – and replaced by Psalm 130, which is at least totally in keeping with the rest of the Yom Kippur liturgy. Rationally, the replacement made sense, but emotionally, people couldn’t tolerate an erev yom kippur service without the kol nidre prayer. And opposition to kol nidre isn’t just modern. Amram’s siddur, written around the year 870, includes the rubric for the communal annulment of vows, but he himself forbids its recitation and calls it a minhag sh’tut, a foolish custom! Within two hundred years, it had gained such popularity among the people that the text was reworked by later Geonim (the Rabbis of that time) to transform it away from a pseudo-magical formula into a series of statements of religious aspiration. Despite the efforts of many Rabbis over the generations, kol nidre remains in our service, an Aramaic declaration of the annulment of vows. How did it remain? Because of the tune. Because of the way it stirs the emotions. Because of The Jazz Singer. Because of memories of our childhood. Because to start the Erev Yom Kippur service without Kol Nidre would be totally unthinkable for some people, regardless of whether or not they actually agree with the words. And therein lies the challenge for Reform Judaism, which prides itself on intellectual rigour – can we defend preserving ancient elements just because they make people feel good? Sure, there are some elements of Judaism that we can easily say are contrary to the modern ethic, such as the veneration of the sacrificial cult. Those things we can expunge quickly and without controversy from contemporary Jewish life. But what about the things that are increasingly challenging for some people but which hold enormous emotional power due to their tradition? Take, for example, the four-lettered name of God, yud hay vav hay. We know that when the Temple was destroyed and the correct way of pronouncing this was forgotten, the Rabbis, who could only think in patriarchal terms, gave it a new pronunciation, Adonai. There’s no way that that Name was origingally pronounced Adonai since there is no letter dalet and no nun in it, but that was the pronunciation they gave and that has been the pronunciation of that word for 2000 years. The increasing problem with that, though, is how masculine it is, since Adonai means “my lord.” Why can’t we start pronouncing it in a different way? Because of 2000 years of emotional connection. Some progressive movements have rewritten their liturgy around this – instead of baruch atah Adonai (blessed are You, Lord), they’ll write b’rucha at Yah (blessed are You (feminine form), Yah). And that kind of creativity is great but what they don’t do is suggest a new pronunciation of yud-hay-vav-hay because there are emotional limits. Logically speaking, a new pronunciation would be fine for many Jews but then you hit a problem, which is that it would be a huge issue for other Jews. Many Reform Jews have no issue with the pronunciation Adonai – indeed, they find it comforting. The problem with emotional limits is that they’re impossible to agree upon because everyone has differing limits.
This leaves Reform Judaism with a profound challenge. In Orthodoxy, the liturgy is the liturgy, with only local regional variants, so there’s no discussion of rights and wrongs in terms of the appropriateness of the liturgy. In Reform Judaism, though, it’s much harder. Our spiritual practices are far wider specifically because Reform Temples encourage members to explore differing paths of Jewish spirituality. One response, as I mentioned last Shabbat, is to hold the prayers up as a mirror, sometimes showing us something we don’t like, and then have them challenge us. But not everyone likes their prayers to challenge, sometimes people want to be held and comforted by what is in the siddur. So, another response is to provide alternate texts throughout the machzor so that if anyone would rather be reading something else, then we provide them with options. Of course, it’s possible that the same reader isn’t keen on those passages either, but there is a limit to how filled a machzor can be with alternate readings!
We’re all here tonight because we have an emotional connection to our tradition, an emotional connection that was usually, although not always fostered within us by parents, by teachers, sometimes by partners or friends. In the past, Judaism was transferred onto the next generation as a result of this intense emotional connection that held the Jewish people together in opposition to the rest of the world. Nowadays, though, when Jews have been assimilated in contemporary society, as we should because we’re human beings too who are entitled to the same rights as everyone else, the emotional connection diminishes. Ritual practice diminishes. Each generation knows less about Judaism than the one that came before. Each generation cares less about Judaism than the one that came before. Ask anyone who has worked in Reform Judaism for at least the last twenty years and I believe they’ll tell you the same. A weekend Sunday school for a couple of hours, or a Wednesday boost to the education, isn’t enough. There’s only so much information a child can retain if they don’t have an emotional connection to the tradition. Last Pesach, only 3 of the 8 students in one of the classes at our Religious School that year even attended a Seder. How can I expect them to remember or care about anything I teach them about the Seder when they don’t even attend one, when what I teach is totally academic? And how can we possibly expect our kids to pass on any emotional connection to the next generation when they don’t even see the rituals in order to create their own emotional connection? But I’m not just singling out the parents of one class. The reason that we have a communal Seder at TBS is because we understand that so many of our kids from all classes won’t get to see a Seder otherwise. So instead we’re left trying to form the emotional connection while also trying to teach the facts. But it’s much harder to create an emotional connection with a seder in the Social Hall than it is sitting round a dinner table with family. One of the earliest memories I have as a child is the seder at my grandparents’ house. At the time, I hated the seder service itself because it went on for so long and I hated having to dress up in smart clothes, but I loved seeing my family and I loved spending time particularly with my grandfather who died only a few years later. Every time I sit at a seder table for the rest of my life, I will have an immediate emotional connection to my him through that ritual. And even if I weren’t a Rabbi and knew nothing about the seder, the positive feeling that that generates would then lead me to want those who follow me to have the same connection with me.
This is not just something for parents to consider, though. One of the reasons I’m a Rabbi is because I formed an emotional connection to Shabbat services and one of the main reasons for that is because there were members of the Temple who attended services extremely regularly. I admired them, I learned from their behaviour. They looked forward to seeing me, they were excited when I walked into the Sanctuary. They supported me when I started reading in services, they encouraged me when I started giving sermons. My love of Judaism was fostered because others showed me their love of Judaism – my emotional connection was because I saw the joy of the emotional connection for others.
For Judaism to survive into the next generation, and the next one after that, we all need to commit to fostering the emotional connections in those younger than ourselves. We need to be present for them, we need to be there to encourage them, to share sacred moments with them. Then when we teach them as a community, they will actually care about what we teach. Once we develop a strong emotional connection to liturgy, then and only then can we have a rational discussion about how to develop it. Tonight and tomorrow, then, I encourage you to not interrogate the liturgy with a rational mind, but to try to form an emotional connection to it… love it. Love it for its wondrous moments and love it for its faults, love it for the mood it puts you in when you agree with it and love it for the mood it puts you in when it challenges you. The machzor is not a book that tells you what to do, it’s a friend on a life journey.
On Erev Rosh Hashanah, I spoke about our communal narrative and the liturgy is one obvious expression of that narrative. But another crucial aspect of that narrative is the social narrative of our community, the narrative formed by our social connections with each other, including this evening. May we strengthen that narrative, and our emotional connection to our tradition, and our community, this evening and into the coming year, and let us say, Amen.