This is Where Ideas Come to Die

She sits there, looking at me with a blank stare, and then finally answers.

"I can't sit around all day studying everything there is to know about Shabbat and then make educated choices about what I believe is right. In the end we all just conform to the community's standards!"

In two sentences, the woman on the other end of the room said so much. She said that she is unobservant and, for the most part, has little interest in changing that. She said she belongs to a non-observant community, and is fine with that. She's OK with the status quo. She's OK with how things are. She's OK with what is.

Given, she's the student here, and I'm the teacher. She chooses to come learn with, or from, me each week. It just so happens that this week and last and next and maybe five more we're discussing Shabbat, but so quickly the conversations are hitting walls, being rerouted by mental fences.

Because as much as these students can talk about what's "nice" or what is "supposed to be," they are unable, literally unable, and maybe also unwilling to see Shabbat as an experience, a time, a castle, that actually exists today, in Brooklyn, on their streets, in their lives. When they speak about Shabbat "happening," it is always either in reference to Israel or the Orthodox world.

Out here in Liberal land, their speech patterns lead one to believe, we are practicing an experiment in convenience and inauthenticity. And we don't really care, nor should we. We're Americans, after all. And in America, we don't have Shabbat, we have the weekend.

So it's here, in a nicely carpeted study on the streets of Brooklyn, where Reform theology dies. We gave the people the power to make educated decisions for themselves. But the reality is they don't want to. RamBam was right, and so was Kravitz, and so was Streisand. We can be smart and intellectual and philosophize about the true nature of God and life and the world.

But people are people, and people need law.

And without the conviction or the ability to formulate how we are going to wake up and act Jewish and save the world each day, I find myself hating the very community I try to serve. Because Judaism is about a passion, about drive - about a need to see the world differently.

It is!

All we need is an army of fighters, people willing to show the way, to inspire the masses to see the beauty, to see God, to see the history of our people, our stories and the wide body of laws and customs that have come together over the millenia to help us make meaning.

Time to move on. Time to start another day. Time to go out there and change the world.

Come on baby. Light my fire.

Comments

[David A.M. Wilensky]

All I see when I read, "I can't sit around all day studying everything there is to know about Shabbat and then make educated choices about what I believe is right. In the end we all just conform to the community's standards!" is COP OUT. That doesn't even make sense to me.

[David]

Yes, but isn't that the reality of most of the Jews in our communities? Either they believe there's a certain "proper" way to act and don't do it except for when (on occasion) they are in synagogue (most of the Conservative Movement), or they choose to not act at all because it's too hard, seems weird or is uninteresting and use "Reform" as their basis for apathy, or they disassociate entirely.

How can we fix it?

[BZ]

Plenty of "Reform" Jews are in the former category as well (even if their standard of "proper" is different from that of the "Conservative" Jews).

[Harold]

I think you are being too hard on the student and the community. I know several Reform Jews, who, after study--perhaps on their own or perhaps in a Basic Judaism or other class--have made some positive choices about treating Shabbat in some special (but clearly not Orthodox) way. Some won't do their daily 9 to 5 work on Shabbat. Others, make a point of studying on Shabbat--perhaps with the congregation's Torah study group rather than going to brunch with the neighbors. Have these people studied all aspects of traditional Shabbat observance and made decisions on each? Certainly not. But they have taken the step to learn some things and make some decisions based on that.

Sometimes you have to meet people where they are, not where you would like them to be. Perhaps you could have responded to this student by saying that she doesn't have to learn everything. She can start by learning a few things and make decisions based on that.

Her comment about adhering to community standards makes me want to respond with the traditional parental rejoinder: "If Johnny and Susie jump off the bridge, are you going to jump too?" But remember that one of the goals of the early leaders of the Reform Judaism was to blend in to the community and still retain one's Judaism. Perhaps this student should be reminded of that and be encouraged to find ways of blending into the community (rather than adhering to it) while finding ways to adhere to some aspects of Judaism that speak to her.

Having said all that, one of my pet peeves is the statement I hear all too often, "We don't because we're Reform." But if those people could be met in a different way or a different place, perhaps some would learn some new things and make some new decisions.

[David]

Mr. Wilensky (such an honor!),

I live my life by meeting people where they are - that's what brings me to teach this class, not to mention organize and run Brooklyn Jews - our express goal and purpose is to meet the community where it is and where it wants to be. Fine.

But I use this student as an example through which I can examine the failure of an ideology.

If there truly is such a thing as "choice through knowledge," then no, she doesn't get to just study some aspects of Shabbat, she has to study ALL of it before any educated decisions can be made.

I'm left believing that in theory this is great, but, in practice, it assumes to much on the part of the masses' ability. I can buy that as a modern woman she has all the autonomy in the world, but have to realize that her ability to relate to Shabbat is fundamentally handicapped unless I begin by giving her guideposts of what she "should" or "ought" to do.

No?

[BZ]

she has to study ALL of it before any educated decisions can be made.

What's "ALL of it"? I'm taking a Hilchot Shabbat class right now, and there's a dizzying amount of reading each week, and we're barely scratching the surface. Does "ALL of it" mean studying all 157 dapim of Masechet Shabbat, with Rashi, Tosafot, all of the other commentaries, and the commentaries on the commentaries, ad sof ha'olam? Ideally, yes, we'd all do that, but it's going to take a while (if we ever get there), and in the meantime, we have to make some provisional decisions about how to observe Shabbat in the meantime.

Which is part of your point. But (speaking as part of "the masses") I think those provisional decisions can still be made autonomously based on partial knowledge, especially since EVERYONE's knowledge is partial -- I would wager that you haven't (yet) studied "ALL of it" either, and yet you feel qualified to make educated decisions, and I think that's fine.