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:

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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."

The Holiness of the Unexpected

“If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life

he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”

- Henry David Thoreau

This quote from Thoreau aptly describes the juncture in life that Ya'akov finds himself in as he begins his exile from family and home. "Va'yetzei Ya'akov - Ya'akov leaves," on his journey away from the quickly

unraveling family dynamics at home. Rashi comments on this verse to tell us that the reason why it includes both the language of "va'yeitze" and "va'yeleikh" is to inform us of the tremendous impact a righteous person has on a place, and, when they leave, the place they have left becomes notably worse. The language of "va'yeitzei" can mean more than just going away; va'yeitzei is indicative of the immediacy and necessity of the departure. He is not only going towards, "va'yeleikh," Haran, he is exiting Be'er Sheva. While the note by Rashi is certainly true, the inclusion of the language of "va'yeitze" hints at the abrupt and unexpectedness of this move. Ya'akov was suddenly thrust away from the safety and comfort of his known world and now finds himself on the road, by himself.

It is precisely in this moment of tension and disjointedness that Ya'akov experiences transcendence. "Va'yifgah ba'Makom - And he encounters the place." Rashi informs us that this "place" is none other than The Place - Mount Moriah, the foundation stone of the world and the place where Heaven and Earth meet. It is in encountering this place that Ya'akov comes to encounter God. Furthermore, this specific encounter becomes the paradigm for the Divine encounter we as a community experience every day, that of the evening tefillah. It is paramount that we take a moment and probe deeper into the word that defines this moment. This moment is encapsulated in the phrase "va'yifgah," an encounter or a meeting. The language of pegiah comes up in a few other places in Tanakh. In both Joshua 16:7 and 19:11 we find the term being used in the allocation of portions of the Land of Israel to the tribes. The usage of a word that has been defined by Hazal, our Sages, to be a prayerful word, in what appears to be a wholly mundane activity of allocating land is very telling. The term also comes up in Jeremiah 7:16 in the midst of a rebuke of the Jewish people for their departure from the ways of Torah.

The theme that unites both the Joshua texts and the narrative in our Parsha is experiencing a Divine encounter when you least expect it. One might consider the division of lands and the setting up of borders to be an act totally devoid of holiness. One can imagine a terrified Ya'akov, alone for the first time, fearing the revenge of his brother and the disappointment of his father not expecting to experience Divine transcendence at that moment. What is most striking is the rebuke that Jeremiah offers the people in chapter seven is for their transgressions against one another; in their acts of theft, oppression, murder and other violations against their fellow person. Jeremiah rails against the false separation between those acts which are a violation against God and those against other people. All misdeeds impact on our ability to encounter God. The opposite is of course also true. All actions we perform that help others impact positively our encounter with God. Whether the action we are speaking about is the proper division of land or refraining from stealing both fall within the prayerful category of pegiah.

May we strive to encounter God not only in shul but in every area of our lives.

Shabbat Shalom.

International Rabbinic Fellowship

International Rabbinic Fellowship

347 West 34th Street New York, NY 10001

Press Release

Contact: Rabbi Jason Herman, Executive Director Phone: 917.751.5265 Email: jlherman@jlherman.net

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 9 A.M. EDT, November 20, 2009

NEW ORTHODOX RABBINICAL GROUP ESTABLISHED

Rabbis from across the United States, Canada, South America, Israel and Hong Kong came together last week to officially establish a new and long awaited organization of Orthodox Rabbis. The International Rabbinic Fellowship (IRF), several years in the making, is the brainchild of Rabbi Avraham Weiss of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale in Riverdale, the Bronx, New York, and founder of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School, and Rabbi Marc D. Angel, Rabbi Emeritus of New York’s oldest Jewish congregation, Shearith Israel, and director of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals.

A board and officers was elected consisting of the next generation of Orthodox Rabbis who have shown themselves to be at the forefront of modern Orthodox leadership. The organization’s 120 or so founding members elected Rabbi Barry Gelman, Rabbi of the United Orthodox Synagogues of Houston, Houston, Texas, as the IRF’s first President, Rabbi Hyim Shafner, Rabbi of Bais Abraham Congregation, St. Louis, Missouri, as Vice President of Education and Communication, Rabbi Nissan Antine, Rabbi of Beth Sholom Congregation and Talmud Torah, Potomac, Maryland, as Vice President for Membership and Conferences, Rabbi Joel Tessler, Rabbi of Beth Sholom Congregation and Talmud Torah, Potomac, Maryland, as Vice President, Rabbi Saul Strosberg, Rabbi of Congregation Sherith Israel, Nashville, Tennessee, as Treasurer, and Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky, Rabbi of Congregation B’nai David-Judea, Los Angeles, California, as Secretary. A code of ethics that will bind the new group was provisionally adopted.

This first conference of the International Rabbinic Fellowship included the voting into reality of several new initiatives that promise to transform the Orthodox community and perhaps the Jewish world. A committee to formulate new procedures for Orthodox conversions, so much in the news in Israel and the United states as of late, was appointed. The committee is tasked with presenting to the IRF a final outline of requirements and processes for Orthodox conversions to be adopted by the membership in June at its annual meeting. The committee’s chairs are Rabbi Dov Linzer, Head of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School in New York City and Rabbi Joel Tessler, Senior Rabbi of Beth Sholom Congregation and Talmud Torah, Potomac, Maryland.

Though Orthodox Judaism does not ordain women as rabbis, several Orthodox women who serve in a handful of Orthodox congregations in rabbinic capacities were present. A long discussion was held at the conference on the question of admitting women acting in a rabbinic capacity as full voting members among the Rabbis. The group voted to task the membership committee with creating criteria for the potential consideration of admission of women. If the IRF votes to admit women, criteria for membership will also be voted on in June. The IRF recognizes that there are highly capable women serving in rabbinic roles and as such the group might benefit from their presence, ideas and guidance. This heralds the first time that an Orthodox rabbinical group has entertained the possibility of admitting women as full members into its ranks.

For more information about the International Rabbinic Fellowship and the proceedings of its seminal inaugural conference held this past Tuesday and Wednesday November 17-18, please contact any of the following members:

Rabbi Barry Gelman, tel. 713.723.3850, email

Rabbi Hyim Shafner, tel. 314.583.4397, email

Rabbi Nissan Antine, tel. 301.279.7010 x 209, email<rabbiantine@gmail.com>

Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky, tel. 310.276.9269, email

Rabbi Marc D. Angel, tel. 212.724.4145, email <mdangel@jewishideas.org>

Rabbi Jason Herman, IRF Executive Director, tel. 917.751.5265, email

Thoughts on the 2009 General Assembly

This past week I attended the General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America (formerly known as the United Jewish Communities) in Washington D.C. Over 3000 people from across North America came to the conference from all walks of life. I found it heartening to see so many Jews actively interested in contributing to the Jewish community. While there were plenty of Jewish professionals in attendance there were also many lay leaders and volunteers who had taken off time from work and spent a significant amount of their own money to attend the General Assembly and their dedication should be honored.

Overall, I left the assembly with a few critiques that I offer for people to consider:

• Disconnect between rhetoric and reality: During the first plenary the new C.E.O. of the Jewish Federations of North America, Jerry Silverman, addressed the urgent need to make Jewish life more affordable. How though could he genuinely address this very important need while utilizing a caterer that charged $16 for a kosher sandwich at the conference? One needs to keep in mind that access to food at all, not to mention kosher food, was very hard to come by at the conference and this caterer (I believe it was Prestige Catering) essentially had a monopoly. How is charging $16 for a sandwich modeling affordable Jewish life?

• The balance between lecture and discussion: I made an effort to attend as many sessions as I could and having done so I noticed that the conference relied heavily on the frontal, lecture style of presentation. There was one session in particular that even attempted to have a discussion format ("Growing Jewish Education in Challenging Times") but ended up utilizing about three quarters of its time with two frontal lectures. Furthermore, during the last quarter of the session when the audience was invited to have smaller conversations the organizers of the session had people at each table which presented even more in a lecture format rather than facilitating conversation amongst the attendees.

• Quality vs. Quantity: There were lots of sessions to choose from at the General Assembly but I, along with many other educators who attended, found the sessions to be quite underwhelming. The last GA that I attended in 2007 had a scholar-in-residence, Rabbi Dr. J.J. Schachter, who presented sessions for rabbis and educators that were quite thought provoking and rich in content. This year, however, there was no scholar-in-residence and I also noticed there was no "rabbinic cabinet" sessions, which provided a smaller forum for some very engaging learning opportunities.

• Anti-Climactic: During the closing plenary there were two separate events which ended up being very anti-climactic. Firstly, there was a moment of pomp and circumstance when a delegation of high ranking Jewish officers marched an incomplete Torah scroll to the front stage where a scribe was waiting to, what looked like, finish the Torah scroll. It ended up that the scribe only was going to write a couple more letters in the scroll and not finish it. Before this became clear the idea that a scroll was being finished for the Jewish soldiers of the U.S. Army had spread throughout the Jewish Twitterverse and ended up being a major let down. Secondly, for the past three months an intense competition for The Jewish Community Hero of the Year had been occurring on the internet. The winner, out of the five finalists, was chosen at the closing plenary. This should have been a moment of excitement and build up. Rather, the ceremony was done after the keynote speaker, Rahm Emanuel, had addressed the conference and everyone was making their way out of the room. It was done quickly and promptly with no enthusiasm.

There is certainly much excitement about the new name for the organization and its new C.E.O. and this excitement was palpable at the General Assembly. I hope my critiques will help make the next General Assembly in Orlando an even greater opportunity for people to engage with their Jewish community.

A Parshat Vayeira Dvar Torah

This week’s Parsha is rich with both narrative and depth and there is much that could be said on many points within the text. I would like to focus on a couple lines in particular. In 18:17 the Torah records God in the midst of a reflective moment. These reflective moments are not that common as usually the text takes note of God’s communication with people and not the actual private reflections of the Divine. The verse states, “And the Lord said: Shall I conceal from Abraham what I am doing?” The action being contemplated is of course the destruction of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Rashi filling in the picture a bit more states that “לא יפה לי לעשות דבר זה שלא מדעתו – It would not be nice (or pleasant or proper) for me to do this without his [Abraham’s] knowledge.” This one moment of reflection conveys a great deal about the importance of the bilateral relationship between God and humanity. As Heschel famously argued, “God is in search of man as much as man is in search of God.” There is no doubt that the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were overrun with depravity and that if the course of action chosen by God was utter destruction then that was the proper course of action to bring an end to the rampant wickedness. Yet, God wants even a decision of this magnitude and gravity to be in relationship with Abraham.

Perhaps though the most instructive point in this process is what occurs only three verses later: “And the Lord said: Since the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah has become great…” Rashi has a remarkable statement when he mentions, “שעשה כאשר אמר שלא יכסה ממנו – for He [God] did as He said, not to hide it from him.” In these three short verses we have the movement from planning to full completion. It was not going to be an easy dialogue for God to have when He declares to Abraham that the time has come to annihilate two cities. Indeed, Abraham’s response could be seen as challenging and provocative (e.g. “Will the Judge of the entire earth not perform justice?”). However, God demonstrates to us the fundamentally important lesson to not let difficulty or challenge stop us from doing what needs to be done and saying what needs to be said. It is vital that when the time calls for it that we do not shy away from hard conversations with those we care about. To pursue a path of concealment and deception is not healthy nor is it the path put forward for us by God in this week’s Parsha.

May we find strength and encouragement from the model God sets forth for us and do and say what is right even when it is challenging.