Union of American Hebrew Congregations 
Union of American Hebrew Congregations
During my very first year as a rabbi, I was invited by the Methodist minister of a neighboring town to speak to his teenagers about Judaism. I told them about Shabbat, the holidays, and the life cycle, and offered to answer questions. Immediately a hand went up, and then the question: "Why do all Jews have beards?" I remember stroking my clean-shaven face for a few seconds, trying to elicit a laugh, but they were all looking at me, waiting for an answer. Not one of those Methodist kids, I later discovered, had ever known a Jew, but their town lay astride Route 17, the road from New York City to the Catskills. Every day dozens of cars passed through their town carrying Jewish families to the "Borscht Belt." Some of those cars carried Chasidic or other Orthodox families, and many of the riders were bearded. It was those people whom they recognized clearly as Jews, and the stereotype extended to us all.
I can understand why those Methodist teenagers regarded the beard as an identifying characteristic of the Jew, but what about us? Don't many North American Reform Jews similarly see bearded men in black caftans and women wearing sheitels (wigs) as somehow more authentically Jewish? And if they pray rapidly in a sing-song Hebrew, pore over the Talmud in segregated yeshivot, buy their meat and fowl from glatt kosher butchers (ostensibly a higher degree of kashrut), and generally reject modernity, don't many of us identify them with our "sainted" immigrant bubbes and zeydes or with the martyrs of the Holocaust? And is that possibly the reason why so many Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist, and secular Jews today find it impossible to say no when solicited for donations by Chasidic and ultra-Orthodox institutions?
Who are the real Jews? What are the attributes of an authentic Jew? What are the real indicators of Jewish identity? Are they the time-hallowed practices of kashrut (the dietary laws), the wearing of the yarmulke and the garb of the pre-modern shtetl, the use of such traditional documents as the ketubah (marriage contract) and the get (divorce document), or a yeshiva education? Can one be a truly authentic Jew while rejecting, questioning, or modifying these commonly cited criteria of Jewishness? My answer is an emphatic yes.
Last December I flew with a delegation of American Jewish leaders to Israel on El Al Airlines to attend the thirty-day memorial for the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Before dinner, one of the flight attendants approached me, carrying a wrapped package. "Are you Rabbi Maslin?" she asked. "Yes," I replied. "This is for you, glatt kosher," she said. I told her that I had not ordered a glatt kosher meal, nor would I accept one; El Al's ordinary kosher food was quite good enough for me. She shrugged and went away, but my seat partner asked why I would not accept a glatt kosher meal. I explained that when one orders a glatt kosher meal, the clear implication is that the ordinary kosher meal is not really kosher. How can a reasonable person be anything but repelled by the need of so many Orthodox and Chasidic Jews to out-pietize each other? You may be kosher, but I eat only glatt kosher. You may be glatt kosher, but my rabbi does not accept the kashrut of your butcher. You may have two sinks in your kitchen, but I have two kitchens, one for dairy and one for meat.
The conceit that motivates various Orthodox communities and rabbis to demand more and more rigorous degrees of kashrut ultimately undermines the entire institution. Why should a Jew take on kashrut as a religious obligation when other Jews, claiming to be more pious, continually up the ante? Food is either kosher or non-kosher. And serious-minded Jews may adopt a kosher lifestyle for reasons other than ancient biblical law.
While the classical and medieval rabbis accepted the dietary laws as God-given and not in need of any human rationale, many of them-most notably Maimonides-defended them as hygienic and moral: "These ordinances seek to train us in the mastery of our appetites. They accustom us to restrain both the growth of desire and the disposition to consider the pleasure of eating as the end of man's existence." [Guide for the Perplexed 3:48] In the same passage, Maimonides opined that those foods forbidden by the Torah "have some bad and damaging effect on the body."
I have heard Reform Jews give many different reasons for observing all or part of the traditional dietary laws. Some avoid pork products and/or shellfish for historic reasons; i.e., because communities of Jews were willing to die rather than eat those foods. Some will not mix milk and meat as a means of identifying with k'lal Yisrael, the total Jewish community. And others will proudly declare that kosher slaughter (shechitah) is more sensitive to the pain of animals than is ordinary slaughter.
It is worth taking a good hard look at this last rationale. Actually, chapter 48 of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's "Humane Methods of Livestock Slaughter Act" exempts kosher slaughter from the normal definition of humane slaughter, which requires that "animals are rendered insensible to pain" before slaughter. Advocates of kosher slaughter have always claimed that shechitah is the least painful method of slaughter. That seems no longer to be the case, now that the government requires "humane" slaughter. One might have expected that Orthodox authorities would re-examine and even amend the ancient and medieval requirements of shechitah in order to adhere to the principle of causing the least possible pain to animals, but that would call into question the very definition of Orthodoxy, bound to the laws of antiquity.
One might also have expected that Orthodox authorities would declare veal and goose liver to be non-kosher because of the way that calves and geese are tortured before slaughter. They are deprived of movement and are force fed in order to produce tender, fat, and succulent meats. The producers of veal and pate' knowingly inflict pain and misery on calves and geese throughout their lives, yet their products can be certified as kosher. Are the guardians of kashrut unaware that the producers of veal and pate' violate one of the most basic Jewish prohibitions-tzaar baalei chayim (pain caused to living creatures)? How can anyone sensitive to Jewish values certify veal or goose pate' as kosher?
All Jews, kosher or not, should be concerned about taking life for food and the way animals are treated before slaughter. For some this might mean humane rather than kosher slaughter. Others might define kashrut as abstaining from mammal meat entirely and subsisting on fish, fowl, grain, and vegetables. Still others might choose pure vegetarianism. Indeed, a growing number of Reform Jews are opting to keep kosher, not because they are so commanded, but as a constant reminder of God's bounty, to make it possible for all Jews to eat at their tables, or for a variety of other Jewish affirming reasons.
Why, though, must we cede the determination of what is and isn't kosher to competing groups of Orthodox, ultra-Orthodox, and Chasidic rabbis, each contemptuous of the other and all bound by the 16th-century Shulchan Aruch (Code of Jewish Law)? Are Jews who require a more painful method of slaughter because they adhere to the methods of antiquity more authentic than Jews who, having studied the tradition and infused its spirit, have opted for a culinary regimen more consonant with contemporary understandings of a humane diet? Aren't Jews who decide to focus their personal faith on ethics and spirituality rather than diet as authentically Jewish as Jews who often evidence little or no commitment to social justice?
What about the authenticity of Jews who relegate women to inferior status? Is it truly Jewish to be utterly insensitive to the dignity and status of half of our people?
Just a few months ago I conducted a premarital interview with a young couple, both intelligent professionals who agreed that every aspect of their marriage ceremony should be egalitarian. In the course of our discussion, I showed them the ketubah that I usually use at weddings. They, in turn, showed me a photo of a beautifully illuminated ketubah they intended to purchase from an artist.
I recognized their ketubah as the traditional Aramaic marriage document, which is actually a contract between the groom and the father of the bride guaranteeing, among other things, the amount of money due to the bride in case of a divorce. (A virgin, according to the Talmud, receives more than a non-virgin.) I explained that the ketubah was originally conceived by the rabbis of antiquity to protect the bride: "so that he shall not regard it as easy to divorce her" (Talmud, Ketubot 11a). Ironically, what was once a progressive document is today a sexist anachronism. The couple gratefully agreed to use a beautifully illuminated egalitarian ketubah instead.
While both the ketubah and kashrut laws reflected enlightened ideas in antiquity, unqualified adherence to them today subverts their original purposes. Reform Judaism does not necessarily prescribe the abandonment of either of them. Both the ketubah, rewritten to reflect the egalitarian and spiritual contract between bride and groom, and kashrut (as discussed above) can be beautiful, meaningful elements in one's contemporary Jewish life. But the Orthodox need to adhere to the letter of ancient codes, parts of which subvert the very purposes for which they were conceived and so often demean women, is far from admirable. Surely the get is a case in point.
Like the ketubah, the get (Jewish document of divorce) was instituted by the ancient rabbis to protect women. In most early societies (Attic, Roman, and Teutonic, among others), a husband had the right to expel his wife at will. The get required a Jewish husband to fulfill the terms of his wife's ketubah and to free her for remarriage. Neither the ketubah nor the get provided the ancient Jewish wife with equal rights, as both are the products of a patriarchal society, but they did bestow upon women a degree of protection, far more than most other communities of antiquity.
But who today has not heard the horror stories involving spiteful Orthodox men who refuse to grant their wives gitten (plural of get) after civil divorces? According to halachah (Jewish law), a divorced or abandoned woman who has not received a get cannot remarry; she becomes an agunah (literally a "chained" woman) with virtually no recourse within Orthodoxy. It does not help to hear from Rabbi Morris Tendler, a Yeshiva University law professor, that "the problem here is not the halachah but the evil in men's hearts" (Jewish Monthly, January 1996). The fact remains that there are many hundreds of women who are today the victims of former husbands who have twisted ancient Jewish law for purposes of blackmail, requiring their wives to pay tens of thousands of dollars for their freedom.
It is unfortunately true that ancient Jewish law does not regard women as the equals of men. But does that mean that Jews today should perpetuate that injustice? One of the guiding principles of Reform Judaism is gender equality. The Reform movement considers women, along with men, parties to the covenant between God and Israel. That equality is reflected by such new ceremonies as b'rit la-bat-a covenant ceremony for girls parallel to the b'rit milah (covenant of circumcision) for boys. Reform Judaism pioneered in the ordination of women as rabbis and then the investiture of women as cantors. Reform scholars today are devoting great effort to create gender-sensitive liturgies. How ironic that, with liturgical revolutions going on in Conservative, Reconstructionist, and Reform Judaism, the Orthodox prayerbook not only ignores the matriarchs but still prescribes prayers for the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem "where we shall perform the sacrifices that are obligatory, the daily sacrifices according to their order" (Orthodox Mussaf service, and elsewhere in the traditional siddur). Is it authentically Jewish to pray, at the dawn of the 21st century, for the reestablishment of the sacrificial cult?
While it may be authentically Jewish to dress with modesty, there is no basis whatsoever in Jewish tradition for such Chasidic garb as the long black kapote (caftan) or the shtreimel, the round fur hat worn on the Sabbath and festive occasions. And while there are traditional texts that forbid the use of a razor on parts of the male face, nowhere does Jewish law prescribe long beards and side curls (payes). These contemporary Chasidic and ultra-Orthodox adornments emerged in imitation of styles worn by the Polish nobility of the 17th and 18th centuries. How ironic that today's Chasidim preserve through their manner of dress and their coiffure the memory of virulent anti-Semites.
Another purported criterion of Jewish authenticity is the yarmulke, or kipah in Hebrew. Hundreds of scholarly papers have been written either defending the requirement of the male head covering or dismissing it as a late custom without biblical or even classic rabbinic sanction. It probably derived from the Mid-Eastern custom, preserved by Moslems today, of covering the head (with tarboosh, fez, turban, or kefiyah) as a symbol of reverence and dignity. No matter, though, how inconsequential the origins of the kipah, by the 18th century it had achieved virtual universality among Jews. The Jew today who wants to be identified publicly as a Jew will often wear a kipah. In fact, more and more Reform Jews are returning to this custom, and that is certainly their right. But surely symbolic dress does not in and of itself confer righteousness or piety on its bearer.
Ads have appeared as recently as last April in The New York Times proclaiming the Lubavitcher Rebbe as the Moshiach (messiah). One might have hoped that this un-Jewish idolatry would have ended with Rabbi Schneerson's death, but we are still assaulted by bold headlines encouraging all Americans "To declare the Rebbe as King Moshiach and to pray for his immediate revelation."
True, the vocabulary of all Jews should include the concept of messianism, the belief that each of us can help create a finer and nobler world. We believe in the possibility of tikkun, of improvement, of repairing the ills of our society so there is more justice and shalom for every child of God, white or black, Jew or Christian, female or male. That is messianism as understood in Reform Judaism.
But to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a worldwide campaign designed to seduce gullible people into the belief that a certain man from Brooklyn-a dead man, at that-will soon reveal himself as the Messiah, that is not Judaism! It is brazen hucksterism.
One of the classical principles of Judaism is to work with and within the community. "Do not separate yourself from the community," Hillel taught us. Yet the Lubavitchers and other ultra-Orthodox Jews regularly flaunt the concept of Jewish unity by turning their backs on boards of rabbis, on community standards of kashrut, on federation campaigns, and on anything else that represents partnership in k'lal Yisrael (the inclusive Jewish community). A recent case in point: last April, when New York's Warsaw Ghetto Resistance Organization announced that its annual Holocaust memorial service would take place at Congregation Emanu-El, a Reform temple, various mainstream Orthodox groups announced that they could not attend.
Unfortunately, it is not only the ultra-Orthodox and the Chasidim who often separate themselves from the American Jewish community. The tragedy of the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin was compounded in America by the refusal of the modern Orthodox National Council of Young Israel (NCYI) to cooperate in the highly publicized Madison Square Garden memorial convocation. After the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations planned the convocation in cooperation with the Israeli government, reluctantly dropping the code words "peace process" from the invitations in order to accommodate the NCYI and the Likud-oriented Zionist Organization of America, these two groups not only withdrew from the community memorial but jointly published a full-page ad in The New York Times condemning the memorial program as "partisan politics."
Are Orthodox Jews who nurture extremism by their claim to exclusive truth the authentic Jews? Scores of American Orthodox rabbis denounced Yitzhak Rabin from their pulpits because he was willing to cede "sacred Jewish land" to non-Jews. "Holier-than-thou" Jews denigrated Rabin's love for the land of Israel as less authentically Jewish than their own because he was willing to trade land for peace and the preservation of life. UAHC President-Elect Rabbi Eric Yoffie reminded us in a recent article that the assassins Baruch Goldstein and Yigal Amir "emerged from the mainstream religious right and from the great Orthodox universities of the United States and Israel." They imbibed the false Torah of the sacredness of land over the sacredness of life from the halachic authorities of "normative" Orthodoxy, an Orthodoxy which, as Yoffie wrote, "did not act vigilantly enough to cut out this spiritual cancer from their midst."
One hesitates to question this aspect of Jewish authenticity because there is so much in it to admire. How I envy the devotion to learning in the Orthodox and Chasidic yeshivas that produces scholars comfortably at home in the vast sea of the Talmud and its myriad commentaries. Plenty of good scholarship exists in the seminaries and day schools of the Reform, Conservative, and Reconstructionist movements; these latter institutions stand head and shoulders above the yeshivot in such disciplines as Jewish history, critical biblical and rabbinic scholarship, philosophy, ethics, women's issues, and modern Hebrew literature. But with a few notable exceptions, we are poor seconds in talmudic and medieval rabbinic studies.
If I have the chutzpah to question the utter dedication to talmudic studies one finds in the Orthodox yeshiva world, it is for two reasons. First, the more Orthodox and pietistic the particular yeshiva, the less likely it is that the students will have any familiarity whatsoever with the historical or social origins of the texts they study. If you were to question most yeshiva students about which sage lived in what century or what the prevailing intellectual or economic currents were that might have given rise to this or that opinion, you would draw a blank. The good yeshiva student may well be able to quote long passages and obscure dicta from the Talmud-an admirable accomplishment-but he is unlikely to understand or even to have thought about the existential situations that produced those passages and dicta. And he will voice contempt for those who allow critical thinking and secular knowledge to enlighten their sacred studies.
Second (and for this startling insight into the yeshiva world I am indebted to Harvard's eminent professor of Jewish philosophy, the late Harry A. Wolfson, a product of Lithuania's Slobodka yeshiva), the hundreds of thousands of young men who for centuries have sat poring over their texts in yeshiva study halls-and who still do today-were and are all studying the very same constricted body of traditional legalistic lore. Whether in the yeshivot of Israel's B'nai Brak or Brooklyn's Boro Park, the curriculum consists today, as it did two centuries ago in Poland, of the Talmud, Maimonides' legal treatises, the Shulchan Aruch (Joseph Caro's code of Jewish law), and their commentaries. Such narrowness of focus by entire succeeding generations of minds is without parallel in the history of scholarship. Imagine, literally millions of hours devoted to these same rabbinic texts with an utter disregard for music, literature, medicine, art, history, the natural sciences, and more. The glory of a Maimonides or a Judah Halevi is that they were at home not only in the world of the Talmud but also in medicine, linguistics, poetry, and philosophy. Their memories are revered in yeshiva study halls, but their examples are ignored. I shall never forget attending a Talmud seminar in which Professor Wolfson referred to this arrogant narrow-mindedness as "a crime against the Jewish people."
Who, then, are the authentic Jews? Those Jews who have, by their tribal exclusivism, their obsession with the punctilios of ritual, their contempt for k'lal Yisrael, their manner of dress, their romanticization of the past, and, yes, their fanaticism, separated themselves from the community are certainly not equipped to determine the course of American Jewish life in the 21st century. Who, then, shall?
Two thousand years ago, a determined group of liberal scholars-the Pharisees-convinced the Judean community that the old ways were a dead end. The Sadducees and their following of priests and aristocrats wanted to preserve the old ways; they believed the sacrificial cult and the priestly prerogatives were sacred and eternal, and therefore any compromise with modernity was a desecration. We, the Jewish people, survived because the Pharisees developed a revolutionary type of Judaism which was not centered on the sacrificial cult but rather on the synagogue as a people's house of prayer and study. The Pharisees were able to accomplish this, according to the great British scholar, R. Travers Herford, "because they were the only exponents of Judaism who discovered in it the principle of continuous revelation."
That is what Reform Judaism, also a revolutionary departure from the old ways, is all about-the principle of continuous revelation. Reform Judaism teaches that God is as present to the thoughtful and sensitive seeker today as to the prophets and sages of antiquity. We are building a movement that looks to the past for inspiration and to the future for challenge, a movement dedicated to tikkun olam-to the repair and improvement of our world. We recognize all human beings as children of God, and we accept the divine charge to be "a light unto the nations."
Should we be satisfied with the state of Reform Judaism today? Not by a long shot. Too many of our people are insufficiently devoted to Jewish learning and to a sense of reverence for the traditions of historic Judaism. But ours is a movement of constant reform. We are today establishing day schools and adult study institutes. Torah chavurot (study groups) flourish in scores of Reform congregations each Shabbat morning. Our Union camps are flourishing, and our youth movement sends more teenagers to Israel each summer than any other. But we are sobered by UAHC President Rabbi Alexander M. Schindler's admonition that "we must recapture the sense of totality in Judaism, the life built upon the performance of mitzvot, without surrendering the notion of personal autonomy that we have made our hallmark."
The editors of the old Union Prayer Book put it nicely: "Thou hidest not Thy light from any generation of Thy children that yearn for Thee and seek Thy guidance." That is what Reform Judaism is all about-finding a balance between the sacred traditions of the past and the equally sacred challenges of today and tomorrow. By doing so, we can make a difference in the world. By doing so, we represent authentic Judaism.
Back to Summer 1996
Copyright © 1996, Union of American Hebrew Congregations
Back to UAHC home page