Crazy, Hazy and Lazy – Sarah's Musings on Denominations of Judaism Today and her Reform Judaism

Written by Sarah Grabiner

Having been on Machon for nearly 3 months now, I have learnt a lot about my own Judaism as well as other denominations. Not only has this led me to further understand, criticize and respect other ways in which people choose to practice their religion, but it has also led me to some understandings about my own choices and customs.

I maintain my Reform perspective and attitudes. However, I have decided that up until now my practices have not actually been true to my ideology. We throw around terms like \"informed decision making\" and \"personal autonomy\" and I am usually the first to defend Reform Judaism as more than just non-observance. I would claim that it is not a lesser way of practicing, just a different one; that I am not subscribing to an inactive, thoughtless, unreligious variety of Judaism but that on the contrast, I believe Reform Judaism to be more authentically \"Jewish\" in the sense of debate, thought and discussion contributing to the way we practice. I label myself as a religious Reform Jew but am I true to myself? Do I actually practice what I claim? Or is it hypocrisy to claim to be more than just the Progressive stereotype of \"lazy\" Jews who just d

on\'t really feel like/want to/have time to carry out the "real" Judaism of the Orthodox world.

I am on a plight to bring back "real" Reform Judaism… it's about thinking about what we are doing and why. I am not advocating an increased religiousity necessarily – just that we are mindful of our decisions and think about why we are doing (or not doing) what we are doing (or not doing). For example, for a Reform Jew who decides to eat non-kosher meat out of the house, this is completely acceptable to a Reform Jewish ideology as long as the person has thought about why they choose to modify and interpret the law this way. They may have decided that the concept of kashrut is not how they wish to be reminded of their Judaism in everyday life, or that they do not agree with the concept of separating the Jewish community in this way and prefer to integrate into the modern world and be able to go out for meals with non-Jewish friends. Alternatively they may have decided that to them eating organic farming and free range meat is their way of keeping kosher as in their mind it is all about being conscious of what you put in your mouth and eating ethically.

For me, one particular point that has struck me recently is the issue of prayer. On Shnat I have felt very unfulfilled by the lack of prayer in my life for various reasons (mainly that weekends are the only time off and therefore mainly taken up by traveling around the country and so not always being around a shul for Shabbat). I miss the prayer in my life and miss that special, separate, thoughtful, quiet time and connection to God. I don’t want to surrender my exciting weekends as this is a lot of what my year is about – exploring and taking initiative to go to different places, see different things and have authentic personal experiences. I feel no reason why I should not pray during the week and so I have decided to try and make an effort to pray once a day, at whatever time I can fit it in. In this way I am not tied to being near a shul on Shabbat, but still can maintain my relationship with prayer and hopefully deepen my personal connection with the liturgy, meaning of prayer and possibilities within prayer.

I implore you to think about what your Judaism could mean to you; how you could deepen the thought behind what you do and why; and which bits of our tradition are truly \"Reform\" ways of approaching Judaism and which bits are laziness or disregarded gems in which we could find true spiritual enlightenment and fulfillment …?

ALMA:
Sarah, I'm so glad shnat is prompting these intelligent, interesting and eloquently expressed thoughts in you. It\'s a pleasure to be let into someone else\'s journey like this.

In terms of Reform Judaism I thought I\'d share some of my thoughts - I think a truly informed decision from a Reform perspective takes more than considering what something means to me and what I think is right. I think it requires source study - going back to the original texts, and trying to make sense of what motivated the law-makers to create the laws as they are. I don\'t think that rules out making decision based on modern ethical thinking, and I think we should be honest when we are doing this. But I think that as Reform Jews part of our project is to look for the ethical imperatives lurking within or behind some of the traditional laws, and to think about how to best fulfill some of these inspiring ethical ideals.

I guess I think there is a difference between trying to make Judaism a more meaningful part of life, and trying to make a Reform Jewish decision. I think attempting to make truly Reform Jewish decisions will always enrich a person\'s Jewish life, but trying to do what offers more personal meaning, is not necessarily a specifically Reform thing....

I think most Jewish movements have an idea version of Jewish life, which very few people ever live up to, but the more actively we strive towards it, the more true to our Judaism we will be.

You\'ve inspired me to try and think about another area of my Jewish life and to live like I preach. I\'m going to try and spend some time in the next couple of weeks studying and making another good Reform Jewish decision!

DEBZ:
Hey you, firstly can I just say you rock and I agree with you pretty much 100% but I also see a big challenge in this argument and I think Alma also touches on it and I’d like to know what you (both) think.

This idea of being really actively reform, studying and engaging with Judaism and texts at its roots is what drove me to go to yeshiva. For me though this presents a huge tension and makes me feel really frustrated with the reform movement we are a part of because it’s pretty hard to find this kind of learning in the UK unless you want to be a professional Jew. I feel like somewhere along the line, the idea of limmud lishma got a bit lost. When we teach or learn it always feels like it’s to reinforce a point rather than to explore, it feels like we look for justification to NOT do things, rather than richness and meaning in the rituals and underlying values in the text.

Take for example Shabbat, growing up I feel like I was bombarded with arguments from the progressive movement that see Shabbat as a wealth of restrictions and limitations on our lives. Then when I studied a lot more, immersed myself in it I found a lot of richness in the notion of Shabbat. Taking not just basic Talmudic ideas but reading (in I guess what could be called a very progressive way) more modern philosophical understandings of what the Sabbath is made me more sure that Shabbat is important and I’d even go as far as saying that rather than seeing the halacha in Shabbat as restrictive, I think I see that level of ability to switch off from the world as aspirational rather than something to distance myself from....

When asked if I’m religious I often find myself saying religiously reform (or reformadox as my ever so witty yeshiva classmates would say), rather than trying to remove the parts of Judaism that clash with my life I feel like, for me anyway, progressive Judaism is more about marrying Jewish and modern values and maybe about more of a compromise. This begs the question of course ‘can you be too orthodox to call yourself reform?’ and I think the answer has to be no- but I’m aware this could also be controversial. I’ve been thinking a lot about this in the run up to course hadracha as we are speaking a lot about our informed choices in our Jewish lives and most of them seem to be opt-outs. On one hand you could say that as long as you could back up your choice with values and feel that you aren’t bound by halacha and you have the right to choose, then in theory you could be an active member of an orthodox community and still regard yourself as a progressive Jew. On the other hand there are key values that underpin our identity as progressive Jews, such as egalitarianism that clash with an informed choice to be more observant.

So I’m confused. Is this informed decision making free? Where do I stand if I come to a difficult conclusion? I’d love to hear what you think, and if its the same thing that you think you would have said before you went on machon- where if anywhere do the limits of progressive jewry lie? And what are the implications of this?

YON:
Dear sarah, I\'m very much liking this note you\'ve written. I agree that too often in the progressive spheres people use the excuse of being reform as a blanket reason for which they dont do anything - missing entirely the point of reform judaism. True informed decision making is what progressive jewish life should be all about, exploring our judaism and the reasons behind the laws is the way in which we can bring judaism in line with our lives.

The way I see it is that Judaism is all about debate and discussion, to accept laws blindly is not Jewish, to reject laws blindly is not Jewish, our religion centres around trying to understand and interpret our texts. In our modern world we as jews face an even harder task for many of the values that the rabbi\'s based laws on, that were at the time ethical and forward thinking, are now at odds with our modern set of ethics and ideologies. So our task, as i see it, as reform jews is to not only understand the original reasons behind the laws but find new meanings the touch us in new ways.

As it says in, Pirkey Avot 5:22, “Turn it over and turn it over, for everything is in it”, we must find meaning by turning over our text for we can never truely find out what the reasons or meanings of the authors were (and these reasons may not even hold any meaning for us); as Roland Barthes puts it \' We shall never know, for the good reason that writing is the destruction of every voice, of every point of origin\', we can only interpret the text never interact with the origin of it....

At the end of the day I believe the linking back to text is incredibly important but there are certain aspect in our text that need SO much turning to reach a meaningful clonclusion that it seems almost pointless in trying to bring my modern idea and the text to some for of cohesion. It is here that i must remind myself that this text just like any other is written in a certain time and Ideology that went with that time, and this is what the reform movement is often reacting against; there are just some parts of my religion that even after study I cannot accept as right, but this proccess of studying and trying to understand is and expression of my judaism, that is the informed decission making we so go on about. This also goes hand in hand with the idea of personal autonomy for each interpretation of a text, as long is it has a solid reasoning behind it, is just as valid as another.

So i could keep on writing im sure but i must stop and get back to work. Thank you so much for re invigorating my jewish thought, i dont often get the chance for that kind of stuff down in sussex, :-(. And thanks to debz and alma for their interesting aditions, I wish i had time to properly interact with all you\'ve said. Man do i miss being around jews, literally cant wait for limmud!

Oh and as for praying on shnat, alot of the places your visiting on weekends will have atleast one shul, its a great opportunity when your away on a weekend to visit those shuls and see what jewish religious life is like in different places around israel. It differs SO much, its crazy. You can ask the netzer office to give you a list of progressive community contacts, they may even offer to host you for a friday night meal if you come to the service.

SARAH:
OK – so many interesting thoughts to read, so little time… but I will try and get through everything…

Alma – I definitely agree with your point on the text being of crucial importance to the process of Reform Judaism and perhaps this was an oversight in my original thoughts. At the moment what I am debating within myself is which texts we look at and how – in terms of how lightly or heavily we take each text, how much validity/weight/importance we give to Torah, Tanach, Talmud, the Shulchan Aruch, More modern Jewish thinkers, philosophers and law-makers… where does divine inspiration end and commentary and interpretation begin?
The point of a there being a difference between a decision to make something meaningful and a Reform Jewish decision is interesting… surely the aim of making the right Reform decision for yourself is to create more meaning and purpose to that practice/belief/custom for you?

Debz – I totally agree with your comment on the lack of serious, real text study in the UK Reform movement, and I think this is something we have to pressure the MRJ to improve on. In the way Rabbis are trained, in the way the Reform Jewish world is structured in the UK, text and evaluation and analysis needs to be re-validated as key to the process and method of Reform. Being \"too orthodox\" to be reform is very interesting – if you have made the informed decision to keep completely \"orthodoxly\" shomer Shabbat and kashrut then can you still call yourself a Reform Jew? I am not sure – are there a set of values/standard practices/normal ways to be Reform? Does this undermine the concept of informed decision making and individual determination or does it give a basis/communal framework?

Yon – I just had a very funny flashback to you teaching me what \"personal autonomy meant in our GCSE Jewish Studies class like 4 years ago!!! Also, you should find the Rabbi Ben Bag Bag song (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaRFcy768u8) if you don’t know it that plays on that pirkei avot quite – it is American cheese at its absolute best! In terms of what you write- all I can say is I totally agree, and it is definitely more interesting food for thought… I have been to some great shuls around the country, and I will defs continue my search for more – the problem in finding one comes when camping in the middle of the Jerusalem forest, or cycling round the Kinneret…

Thank you all so much for your incredible thoughts and for making me think and carry on debating even more!
Missing you all very much, and sending lots of Machon-inspired-love XxXxXxXxXxxxx