Rabbi Jeret's January 2006 Bulletin Column

Rabbi Jeret's January 2006 Column

Dear Friends:

I write this message only several weeks subsequent to our community's celebration of my formal Installation as Ner Tamid's spiritual leader. The evening and the celebration with the pre-school earlier in the day were among the most memorable occasions that I have ever enjoyed and I am grateful to all of those who worked very hard to make it happen. To Howard Blumberg, Ami Berlin, Navah Becker, Bryan Hawley, Shelly Shapiro, Renee Goldstein, Rabbi Shimon Hirschhorn, and Cantor Radwine, in addition to so many others, I thank you each and all for making the occasion of the Installation all that it should have been for our entire community.

In anticipating the actual ceremony on the eve of the Installation, I gave considerable thought, as one might imagine, to the words that I would share with our community that evening. In this column, I will share with you one of the speeches that I had in mind for that evening that I did not share with you as my message. As it turns out, this message belongs right here, in this column, and it was not what needed to be said on the Shabbat evening of December 9th. I offer these words then as a response to an outcry from various corners of the Conservative Movement, calling for a unique and compelling vision for our Movement. These words will aim to frame an intellectual approach to Conservative Judaism that faces forward and not backward. In next month's Bulletin, I will set forth a sociological approach to Conservative Judaism that faces forward and not backward. In each instance, I recognize that my ideas are likely not unique. To whatever extent they might foster a dialogue about who we are as a Movement and why we ought exist as such, this exercise will prove worthwhile.

When the Conservative Movement was founded formally and officially in the earlier part of the 20th century, it was grounded in two important intellectual assumptions. The first was that there is an authoritative voice of Jewish Law which must speak to each Jew regarding the way in which we ought live our lives. The second was that the greatest truths about our sacred heritage could be uncovered by applying scientific methodology to the historical inquiry of our sacred texts.

The first assumption is relatively clear: Regardless of the degree to which individuals might listen to Jewish Law or seek its guidance, our Movement sought to distinguish itself as one which viewed the message of Judaism, spoken through Jewish Law, as a message which demands our struggle with and adherence to those aspects with which we do not intuitively agree as much as those aspects with which we find ourselves perfectly aligned. To be sure, this new brand of Judaism was also to embrace the traditional mode of change within the system of Jewish Law to allow for Judaism to continue to evolve. In fact, our Movement has made significant and far-reaching advances in this regard, though critics often complain that we have not gone far enough (and, in certain respects, I would agree that this critique has merit).

The second assumption was once very clear. Today, it stands in the way of the necessary evolution of Conservative Ideology far more so than any voice or interpretation of Jewish Law might ever have done so. The Historical study of Judaism and Jewish texts, via the application of scientific methodologies, was an absolute necessity during an age in which historical investigation via scientific inquiry was considered to be the vehicle of choice for determining greater truths in the secular disciplines. As one example, to determine who wrote the various books or narratives of the Bible and when they did so was seen one half century ago as a most important aspect not only of Judaic study but of Judaism itself! To an intellectual elite, the deconstruction of Judaism was a spiritual exercise of sorts. To determine whether Moses existed or not, to find parallel narratives in other ancient Near Eastern mythologies to those in our Torah, or to compare the Dead Sea Scrolls with sections of the Torah was the new norm and pinnacle of Jewish study.

Most unfortunately, there was a flawed conclusion that accompanied this exercise with regard to affiliation patterns among Jews in The United States: Leaders of the Conservative Movement at times associated increased affiliation with the Movement on the part of Jewish laypersons with an imagined affinity on their part for the intellectual ideologies of the Movement. In truth, these ideologies were irrelevant in all likelihood to the vast majority of those who affiliated with the Movement. Jews coming to America needed a social and religious bridge between the Old World and the New World. Because Conservative Judaism was less stringent in its approach to Jewish Law than the more traditional European approaches which soon came to be known as Orthodox Judaism, Jews found Conservative Judaism to be just such a bridge in many cases. This is not to say that none of those affiliating with the Movement found the Movement's ideological assumptions and teachings to be motivating and compelling. Those searching for a brand of Judaism that did not conflict with the Old World in general practice and custom but conformed to the methods and standards for truth of the contemporary academic disciplines of the sciences and historical inquiry found Conservative Judaism to be a perfect fit. In reality, however, most of these individuals were found increasingly among the Rabbinate of the Movement or among its academically inclined, elite laity as the century progressed.

Still, even for those for whom the ideological assumptions of the Movement made sense, something began to happen as the Movement began to crystallize into institutional form. Perhaps, such is the case for most if not all Movements, in Judaism and otherwise. The great idea of Conservative Judaism, the innovation to consciously approach Judaism with the most contemporary intellectual lens available for ascertaining truth was buried beneath the Orthodoxification -- the ideological freeze -- Conservative Judaism. You see, we came to believe that scientific methodology and historical inquiry were the great contributions of our Movement, the enduring pathway to greater religious truth. In fact, we have lost sight as a Movement of our founder's greatest achievements; the understanding that in each age religious and spiritual truth criteria will be influenced by the truth criteria applied in the world at large and that we as Jews need adopt and adapt these new and evolving criteria for understanding ourselves and our heritage for application alongside the methodologies and guiding questions of inquiry that we have learned and employed in eras past.

As an example, over the last 50 years two intellectual disciplines have dominated the discourse of popular and academic dialogue, that of Psychology and that of Meta-Physics. Are we not long overdue for an analysis of our heritage that would look through these lenses to learn more about who we are as Jews and what our spiritual heritage might have to offer to us? And, surely, such an analysis, when conducted organically, in the course of Jewish communal life and Jewish study would constitute the best of Conservative Judaism and not at all constitute a departure from it! The common vernacular is the language through which Conservative Judaism asks us to challenge ourselves to see Judaism anew, even as we balance all that we learn anew with the insight of the approaches and interpretations of our collective Jewish past.

Of course, critics will argue that the former ideological challenge, the challenge to understand Jewish Law as an authoritative instruction for Jews regarding how we ought live our lives, will suffer if an increasingly contemporary lens is brought to Judaism. Perhaps, they may argue, the more distant we grow from our Movement's roots the further we will stray from the Jewish practices that it designed for us. I beg to differ.

In fact, I believe with great conviction that if we are most true to the essence of Conservative Judaism, if we are true to the idea that we must always find new lenses through which to view Judaism while we remind ourselves of approaches past, we will ensure that Jewish practice is as relevant to us and to our lives as Jewish study can be so. This is precisely why we studied together Hasidism last trimester, to accommodate a dialogue of a Meta-Physical parallel of Kabbalah in Judaism and the more Psychologically inclined view of Hasidut to our own interpretation of Judaism. In studying together Maimonides, we will look at Judaism through a more Philosophical lens. Each of us has lenses with which to contribute to this dialogue between past and future that lands us most immediately in the present.

This is the magic of Conservative Judaism. It is only through the magic of communal participation in the discourse of a rich present that each of us can find a lasting meaning in all that Judaism asks of us and affords us in the way of spiritual and ethical growth. This is why we need Conservative Judaism, and it is also why Conservative Judaism needs us.

Rabbi Isaac Jeret

Spiritual Leader