The Minhag of Reform Judaism

Is Reform a proper noun or a verb? Is the process of "reforming Judaism" a continuous endeavor that adapts to the needs of the time or was there a great moment of reform and now Reform Jews are left with Reform Judaism?

These are critical questions for the thinkers of Reform Judaism and apparently there are those within their camp that are advocating essentially the halakhic argument of minhag avoteinu b'yadeinu, which literally translates as the custom of our forefathers is in our hands. In other words, we have a received tradition and we can not alter it. According to a recent JTA report an entire organization has been created to promote and advocate for the preservation of Classical Reform Judaism.

What are the central Classical items that these individuals are fighting to preserve? According to the news story: "... its distinctive worship style -- services conducted mainly in English, accompanied by organ music and a choir." In a world that is constantly changing, where cultural and political shifts are happening all around us, it is tremendously comforting to have religion be an anchor amidst turbulent waters. I do not believe it is a coincidence, as the article points out that "the split is largely generational."

I remember when I first had moved to the neighborhood of Washington Heights in New York City. I was so thrilled to attend services at K'hal Adath Jeshurun (KAJ), the German Orthodox synagogue that is the direct heir to the legacy of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch. One of the unique innovations of Rav Hirsch was to increase the meaningfulness, access and relevancy of services to the members of his congregation by instituting a weekly sermon in German and creating a choir. The spirit behind those changes was to continue to seek ways to make Jewish ritual meaningful and inspiring while still staying true to the eternal truth of the Torah. I was very curious to see what the institution that he began in Frankfurt am Main would look like now, over a hundred years later, in New York City.

To my surprise the services looked pretty much like they probably did in Frankfurt during the time of Rav Hirsch. The sermon was in English but other than that, the melodies employed were the same and they still kept with the style of a Hazzan, with the grandiose Hazzan's hat, and a choir. What had happened? The original innovations of Rav Hirsch developed into the status of minhag avoteinu b'yadeinu and thus unalterable.

Perhaps to the chagrin of the new Society for Classical Reform Judaism, in order to preserve a tradition which declared the "Mosaic Law" irrelevant they end up using -- albeit unintentionally -- a principle of the very same Mosaic Law to do so.

The NEW Pop Chanukah Song

From Tablet Magazine and Senator Orrin Hatch:

Eight Days of Hanukkah from Tablet Magazine on Vimeo.

Rabbi tweets Torah 4 Jews on the go

(Courtesy of The Jewish Advocate - Boston's Jewish newspaper. They have a great online subscription plan of only $18 for full access, with PDFs available.)

Rabbi tweets Torah 4 Jews on the go
Harvard chaplain sermonizes in 140 characters or less
By Elise Kigner Advocate Staff

Rabbi Ben Greenberg and his Twitter page.

As he talks about Torah and Twitter, Rabbi Ben Greenberg compares the Internet messaging service to the New York subway system. "The great people equalizer," Greenberg calls it, providing a platform for preachers with and without a realworld platform.

As with everyone else, Twitter gives Harvard's 27-year-old Orthodox Jewish chaplain just 140 characters to express his thoughts on a Torah portion. Greenberg sees the forced brevity as a good thing, especially when it comes to wordy rabbis. He likened the Twitter challenge to a Talmud class he took in rabbinical school, where at the end of each 60- minute session students had to summarize everything they learned in one sentence.

"If the message resonates with people, then it's impactful," Greenberg said. "It has meaning without all the poetry and all the rhetorical tools that rabbis use in sermons, just the meaning itself."

This fall, Greenberg self-published, "Twitter Torah: Thoughts on the Hebrew Bible in 140 Characters or Less," a collection of tweets from himself and four other rabbis, among others. Each chapter includes reflections on a different Torah portion.

He assembled the 53-page paperback despite acknowledging that most people don't have time to read books anymore. So why did he write one about Twitter?

"I think the book exposes a wider audience to the dynamic and vibrant conversations on Torah that happen on the Internet," he said.

He tweets regularly on TorahTweets.org, a site created by Rabbi Shai Gluskin last spring to generate excitement for Shavuot. Citing a book of Torah commentary, Kedushat Levi, Greenberg tweeted, "1st step to success: know that you're capable of succeeding. 1st flaw of Noah: he didn't know his capacity 4 success."

Gluskin, who is also a Web developer, works at the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation in Pennsylvania.

Not everything that Greenberg tweets is an interpretation of holy writings. On Oct. 21 he tweeted, "Cambridge moment: Davening at Hillel, looking out the window and seeing Ben Affleck struggling to get a police belt on outside."

Last month, he attended the inaugural conference of the International Rabbinic Fellowship, an organization of modern Orthodox rabbis from the United States, Canada, South America, Israel and Hong Kong.

At the conference, they debated Orthodox conversions and the question of whether to admit women acting in a rabbinic capacity as full voting members. And Greenberg tweeted his own reflections:

On Nov. 17: "Confirmed in my career choice of rabbi and not lawyer."

And 40 minutes later: "Wouldn't be an irf conference w/o dancing."

Before coming to Harvard, the San Diego native attended rabbinical school in New York at Yeshivat Chevei Torah. He served as a rabbinic intern at the Jewish Center of Teaneck in New Jersey and the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale in New York.

Greenberg said Twitter keeps him in touch with friends and congregants across the country. As of Monday, he had 293 followers on Twitter.

"No matter where you move from, or where you move to, you can stay in a relationship with them," he said.

His wife, Sharon Weiss-Greenberg, Harvard's first Orthodox Jewish female chaplain, recently joined Twitter, using it to campaign in the Jewish Community Heroes contest, sponsored by United Jewish Communities. With more than 8,000 online votes, she was among the 20 finalists.

Rachel Barenblat, a rabbinic student from the western Massachusetts town of Lanesborough, also contributes to Twitter Torah. Barenblat is in the Aleph rabbinic program, which includes online, phone and in-person classes.

A published poet, she said both poetry and Twitter involve "trying to say the most with the fewest words."

Barenblat, who also has a blog called the Velveteen Rabbi, said part of the appeal of Twitter is that people will pay attention regardless of whether you have a title. "Both Twitter and the blogosphere are places where you can make a reputation," she said.

Barenblat has never met Greenberg, but just received an email from him asking whether he could reprint her Torah tweets. "That's part of the joy, that serendipitous connection," she said.

With a baby on the way, she hopes to be ordained by January 2011. When she does become a rabbi, she doesn't expect tweets to replace sermons. Some ideas, she acknowledged, require more than 140 characters.

Still, she said, Twitter, blogs and Facebook provide a convenient way for people to keep up their Torah studies. Rabbis can use Twitter to reach people in their homes, on their computers. "Part of it is going to people where people are," she said.

But Barenblat noted that people who tweet about the Torah do run the risk of making shallow rather than thoughtful commentary.

"I think it probably encourages us to be cute rather than meaningful," she said. "I think that's the challenge, how to say something that's meaningful rather than gimmicky."