Centering Judaism, Part II: We Have the Meats!
The value of the Conservative movement as the center of American Judaism. Rosh HaShanah 5785, Day 2.
Way back in the ‘90s, before I was a rabbi, and still working for a huge engineering/construction firm in Houston, I met an Israeli senior colleague, a fellow chemical engineer who had spent many years building and managing the oil refinery in Ashdod. He belonged to one of the Modern Orthodox synagogues in Houston, and when I identified myself to him as Jewish, he asked me where I davened. I told him that I belonged to a Conservative synagogue. He responded with a smile, saying, “Ah, yes! The intellectuals.”
I had no idea at the time what he meant. I also had no idea that in a few years I would myself be heavily invested in learning the foundational texts and ideas of the Conservative movement. But I did know that as a lifelong Conservative Jew, I was proud of the tradition in which I had grown up, and, intellectual or not, my Conservative congregation was my community.
Occasionally, I hear some wise guy make a sideways remark about Conservative Jews or Reform Jews which goes something like this: “There are no 3rd generation Conservative Jews.” And I am happy to say that this gives me the opportunity to state proudly and for the record that I myself am a third-generation Conservative Jew, and my children are 4th-generation Conservative Jews. Some of you may know that we have members of this congregation who are 5th-generation members of Beth Shalom, so that makes them 5th-generation Conservative Jews.
But of course, let’s face it: we, meaning the Conservative movement, are new to the party. Judaism, the way that we understand it today, is a tradition of rituals and texts going back at least 2,000 years, and the Israelite religion from which it emerged is at least another thousand years older.
The contemporary movements, including Orthodoxy, Hasidism, Reform, Reconstructionism, and us, are rooted for the most part in the 19th century, when Jews were first allowed into universities in Europe. In Jewish terms, that is pretty new. There are of course contemporary critics who say that these movements are on their way out.
But an idea that will never go away, thanks to the Enlightenment, is that there is an ideological center to the Jewish world. And right now, I am confident as a lifelong Conservative Jew that we occupy that space.
Growing up in mostly-rural Western Massachusetts in the ‘70s and ‘80s, there were two things about our Conservative synagogue that my family could identify that made us different from Orthodoxy. The first was that my mother could lead services and serve as a regular gabba’it, the person who calls people to the Torah. We were egalitarian - that is, we treated men and women equally with respect to halakhah, Jewish law.
The other thing of which I was aware is that the Conservative movement officially permitted driving to synagogue on Shabbat if you did not live within walking distance, even though driving a car clearly violates the principles of Shabbat. Now, given that we lived about 20 miles away from our Conservative synagogue, it was a good thing that we felt we could drive without being judged by our rabbi and congregation as being somehow in violation.
But of course there was much more of which we were unaware. SO much more. Conservative Judaism, including our approach to ritual, prayer, halakhah/Jewish law, customs, lifecycle events, holidays, and even Jewish learning, is shaped by Jewish history, Jewish philosophy, contemporary and innovative interpretation of Jewish text, and of course by external sources - Western literature and culture. Yes, the depth and richness of how we came into being cannot be captured in a single volume of history, let alone a sermon. But I am going to take a few moments to remind us of some of the key reasons that we are located here at the center of Judaism, and why Jewish life needs the Conservative movement at its center.
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There is a moment in the book of Bemidbar/Numbers, Parashat Beha’alotekha, when - no big surprise here - the Israelites are complaining about being out in the desert, with no good food like they had back when they were slaves in Egypt: the meat, the cucumbers and melons and onions and all manner of tasty, filling things. Moshe is agonizing over what to do, and you can almost hear him holding his head in his hands in frustration as he says the following (Bemidbar 11:13):
מֵאַ֤יִן לִי֙ בָּשָׂ֔ר לָתֵ֖ת לְכׇל־הָעָ֣ם הַזֶּ֑ה כִּֽי־יִבְכּ֤וּ עָלַי֙ לֵאמֹ֔ר תְּנָה־לָּ֥נוּ בָשָׂ֖ר וְנֹאכֵֽלָה׃
“Where am I to get meat to give to all these people, when they whine before me and say, ‘Give us meat to eat!’”
The 16th-century Italian commentator, Rabbi Ovadiah Seforno, describes Moshe’s subtext as follows: “They are accusing me not about the meat, but about failing to fulfill their desires.” That is, they are not really talking about the food. Seforno is actually psychoanalyzing the Israelites here. They are unsatisfied with what they have, and the lack of meat and potatoes is merely a convenient target for a much larger problem.
I stumbled upon this gem from Seforno this past summer, and for reasons unknown an advertising slogan from a fast-food chain popped into my head. Now, I do not eat fast food, and I have never eaten in this place in my life, and, as you all know, I’m a vegetarian, but the slogan is, “We have the meats.”
And, OK, so it’s not kosher. But it’s the truth! We, the Conservative movement, we have the meats! We have what you desire: a thoughtful, contemporary approach to Judaism which reflects who we are today and what we face when we leave the synagogue. Ours is not a lightweight tradition - it is occasionally tough and requires some figurative chewing. But it is savory, complex, and heavily textured. We wrestle with tradition and text in a way that is meaningful and satisfying.
Being Jewish today is very different from how it was in medieval times, and even for our great-grandparents. While for much of our history, most Jewish people would have more familiarity with Jewish text than with secular subjects, today the opposite is true. Most of the adults in the room have studied at university, and many of us have letters attached to the names on our resumes like MD, JD, PhD, etc. We know a lot about a lot of things, not just the material that we have received from our tradition. And so we filter our Jewish experience and understanding through Western philosophy and American history and culture.
Given that, I believe that there are three essential principles which guide us here in the center of Judaism:
Tradition
First, we are committed to tradition. What we have received from our ancestors guides us: the words of liturgy/prayer that they crafted, the holy collections of wisdom which they handed down to us, the customs and rituals and holiday foods and sometimes curious activities which they valued. We are “conservative” because we conserve these things; we do not easily let go of our tradition. And we practice these rituals and customs; they are not simply gathering dust in a museum.
History
Second, we have a historical view that enables us to see how our traditions have developed. That was one of the features of the 19th-century Enlightenment: Jews began to learn about our tradition using the external tools of modern scholarship. So we began to understand that the Mishnah uses Greek words because its authors spoke Greek and lived in a Hellenistic context. And we learned that the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible, can be analyzed as a human work which displays literary seams and linguistic hints at schools of authorship. And we learned that contemporary philosophy can help us in understanding ourselves and our relationship with God.
Change
Third, we are zealously committed to keeping Judaism in line with who we are and how we live today. Judaism has never existed in a vacuum. We acknowledge that Jewish practice has always changed throughout our history and must continue to do so. So, while women were not thought of as equal to men during the rabbinic period, today they certainly are, and in the Conservative movement we have worked within the traditional halakhic system to enable full egalitarian participation in Jewish life. The slogan coined by Rabbi Mordecai Waxman in the 1960s (actually, I’m told that it’s his wife Ruth who came up with the term) is “Tradition and Change.” It’s still a good slogan.
We consider our Judaism carefully and thoughtfully, and we are firmly based in our historical tradition. We have the meats!
So just to give a few examples of how these principles - tradition, history and change - play out in what we do here at Beth Shalom, consider the following:
Prayer / tefillah:
I already mentioned being egalitarian - counting women and men as equals. But here is something you may not be aware of. Check out p. 37 for a moment, and look at the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th berakhot on the page:
בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה' אֱ-להֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעולָם שֶׁעָשנִי בְּצָלמוֹ.
בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה' אֱ-להֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעולָם שֶׁעָשנִי יִשרָאֵל.
בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה' אֱ-לֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם שֶׁעָשַׂנִי בּן-(בַּת-) חוֹרין.
Praised are You, God, who has made me in His image.
…, who has made me an Israelite.
…, who has made me a free person.
These are among the list of berakhot, the morning statements of gratitude which we recite every morning; we said them first thing at 9 AM today here (in case you missed it!).
In an Orthodox siddur, they are phrased in the negative, based on language found in the Talmud (Menaḥot 43b):
… who has not made me a gentile.
… who has not made me a slave.
… who has not made me a woman.
These berakhot were crafted to acknowledge in ascending order the different levels of commandedness in the ancient world: non-Jews are obligated to very few mitzvot; Jewish slaves somewhat more, free Jewish women a few more, and free Jewish men all 613.
And it is easy to see that in a current context, the wording of these traditional berakhot is insulting.
So in 1946, the language of those berakhot was changed to reflect who we are, rather than who we are not. Rabbi Morris Silverman “positivized” all three, based on a traditional formulation found elsewhere in the Talmud.
And so, in a bold statement of positivity, we in the center of Judaism begin each day by saying I am proud to be a free Jewish person, made in the image of God.
And when I recite these words in prayer every morning, I am also grateful that we uphold tradition and also account for where and who we are today, that my movement made this subtle, yet impactful change. Words of prayer count, and what we say matters.
Complexity
I’ll never forget a very special moment I had as both a parent and a rabbi. It was when my daughter was in 1st grade, and we were walking home from school together. When I picked her up, she clearly had something on her mind.
“Abba,” she said, “I don’t think I can be Jewish when I grow up.”
This was a puzzling statement, particularly for a 6-year-old, but I figured I would go with it non-judgmentally. “Why not?” I said.
“Because we learned in school today about the Big Bang. And since that means that God did not create the world, then I can’t believe in the Torah. And so I can’t be Jewish.”
OK, Abba, I thought to myself. You can handle this. She’s only 6, and you have several advanced degrees. But of course I could not launch into a full lecture about Biblical criticism and the fact that the universe being 14 billion years old does not necessarily impact Jewish practice and theology, or that there are shiv’im panim latorah, 70 faces to the Torah. So I managed to eke out something like this:
“The Torah tells us the Jewish story, and your science teacher tells you the science story. Do you think you can live with two different stories, even if they do not agree with each other?”
“I think so,” she said, tentatively.
I recognized for the first time the sense of doubt in her eyes. We went on to talk about other things, and the issue never came up again. But of course she’s still Jewish, and, like the rest of us, she has learned to accept that sometimes we can keep potentially-conflicting ideas in our heads without needing to resolve them.
The tension that we may feel between Jewish observance and text and modernity is completely normal and expected, and we can live in this tension. I would actually go a bit further to say that the tension is a good thing - it keeps us on top of our game. Complexity is healthy.
That is what makes us Conservative Jews. Bring on the meats!
Zionism
There are plenty of other examples which I could give you, but the one other I want to address today is the State of Israel. The Conservative movement is the only movement that was proudly Zionist from its inception, and Beth Shalom has been a Zionist congregation from as far back as 1921. And, given what I have already told you, this also means that we continue to wrestle with what it means to be Zionist.
Being a Zionist does not mean that one must be universally, uncritically supportive of every decision of the Israeli government. It does not mean that one must pick up and move to Israel to be spiritually fulfilled as Jews.
All it means is that we believe zealously in the right of the Jews to self-determination in our historical homeland. And we in the Conservative movement acknowledge that being a Zionist has a range of possibilities, but they do depend on acknowledging that the Jews have a right to live in the State of Israel, and that we are not “colonizers.” We are a people who were exiled from our land by the Romans two millennia ago, and the miraculous return to the land and the establishment of a modern State is something we must continue to support and to struggle with.
The language used by the Conservative movement to refer to the State of Israel in our siddurim is “reishit tzemiḥat ge-ulateinu,” the dawn of the flowering of our redemption. We acknowledge that the human role in fulfilling our ancient Jewish yearning for return to our land is just a foreshadowing of the ultimate Divine redemption, the future time of peace for which we pray at every opportunity.
Lihyot am ḥofshi be-artzeinu, to be a free people in our land, is just a hint of that ultimate peaceful redemption. We will continue to seek peace in that land, and ultimately for the whole world.
***
Ḥevreh, I am proud to be committed to the principles of Conservative Judaism, and even more so to be your rabbi here at Beth Shalom, the center of Conservative Judaism here in Pittsburgh. (You should all kvell for a moment about the community you all have built here.)
But we also have to acknowledge that there is a practical matter that we must deal with if we are to continue to be that flourishing center of Conservative Judaism. We cannot run on momentum; we cannot run on fumes. Rather, we must continue to grill, broil, sous-vide, whatever, to create a banquet offering the meats.
We have to concede that, as successful as our congregation is, the subset of Jewish people who want all the things we offer is continuing to erode, and the landscape has changed. Jews have more options today, including of course the option to opt out entirely from Jewish life. Our congregational umbrella, the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, is contracting; many congregations are not growing; the incoming class of first-year rabbinical students at the Jewish Theological Seminary (my rabbinic alma mater) is 10 people (one of whom is our own Maddie Herrup!) but it should be more like 30.
Nonetheless, there will always be a need for congregations like ours, which feature serious engagement with halakhah and Jewish text alongside a contemporary, egalitarian practice, sensitive and responsive to modernity.
So our task will be, regardless of what is happening elsewhere, to continue to do what we do, to provide the intellectually and ritually rigorous-yet-modern commitment to Jewish life, but to do it better, and smarter, and in a way that is sustainable for generations to come. We cannot allow our Jewish standards, including by the way our commitment to Israel, to dissipate, but we will have to be creative about administration - our building, our potential to share programming and expenses with other local Jewish organizations, and so forth.
What makes this synagogue different from all other synagogues is still our greatest stock in trade, and we must continue to rally around the center of Judaism. And we must also look to the future with a thoughtful approach as to how we do so. We’re still here, and we have the meats.
On the eve of Yom Kippur, Kol Nidrei, we will discuss the role of Israel as the center of the Jewish world. And on Yom Kippur day, “Stuck in the Middle with You: Living a Centered Life.”
Shanah tovah!