Reform rabbis: Calling them as I see them

In terms of referring to a Reform scholar as “Rabbi,” Shafran likens himself to an orthopedist who hesitates to refer to a chiropractor as “doctor.”

In the name of civility, however, Shafran solves his dilemma by referring to his Reform colleagues as “Reform Rabbi” in the first reference and “Rabbi” thereafter. And his doctor analogy is useful. Neurosurgeons and psychologists call each other “doctor” despite the differences in their training and philosophy. They don’t wage their debates in terms of honorifics.

It’s not clear what debate Israeli President Moshe Katsav is waging by refusing to call Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, “Rabbi.” Is he motivated by political considerations, or legal protocol? He has made statements defending both.

In one interview, he said he hoped to avoid “an argument with the Orthodox rabbis.” In another, he said he won’t call a Reform Jew “Rabbi” until the state allows him to. But Israel already recognizes the status of Reform and Conservative rabbis in the Diaspora (in Israel itself, that’s another story).

It is possible that Katsav won’t call Yoffie “Rabbi” out of deep animus toward Reform Judaism. Katsav gives no indication of this; various bloggers and commentators have not been as circumspect. Wrote one blogger: “I just can’t call someone a Rabbi who officiates in a temple with a non-kosher kitchen and Sabbath parking lot and who supports many of the tenets of the Pittsburgh Platform.” (Which tenets, he doesn’t say. The founding document of American Reform Judaism has been modified repeatedly since 1885, and many of its most radical pronouncements on Zionism [against], universal culture [for], and the mitzvot [indifferent] have been excised.)

One of my colleagues received a letter from an Orthodox rabbi who backed Katsav. “Reform Judaism is a religion unto itself,” he wrote, “and yes, most Israeli Jews, secular though they may be, may not know what Judaism is, but they know what it isn’t.”

Unlike Katsav, these writers make their agenda clear — or do they? Because if Reform is a religion unto itself, at what point do we stop recognizing second-, third-, and fourth-generation practitioners as Jewish? You can get around this by saying that anyone born of a Jewish mother is Jewish, regardless of their beliefs. Or you can take a slightly more condescending tack and refer to committed Reform Jews as “anusim,” or those who were converted against their will. (Katsav tried this a few years back in reference to secular Israelis, before retracting the statement under fire.)

But if you truly feel Reform Judaism is not Judaism, then you owe it to yourself to take the position to its logical conclusion. You should be willing to call a Reform Jew a “meshumad,” someone who voluntarily separates himself or herself from the Jewish people. And while you’re being consistent, you’ll want to bar committed Reform Jews from making up a minyan or moving to Israel under the Law of Return.

This is an extreme argument, and, except on the fringes, there are few who make it. No one wants a schism, not in a rebuilding period only one generation removed from the Holocaust and the birth of Israel. There are few enough Jews as it is, without reading 1.5 million of them out of the fold.

Nor can those most committed to “the Torah’s divinity and Halacha’s unchanging nature” envy the Israeli model, in which a minority adheres to the “official” version of Judaism, and the majority treats the Torah and mitzvot with amused condescension. You wouldn’t know it from the way it is caricaturized, but the Reform movement here and in Israel is trying to promote a culture that takes Judaism seriously. The Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism says in its mission statement that it “seeks to nurture a Jewish way of life in the Jewish society of the State of Israel, as well as a love of Israel and the creation of a culture that rests on Jewish sources.” Its growing network of schools and shuls is trying to find an alternative path into tradition for those Israelis who “may not know what Judaism is.”

In the United States, the movement has been encouraging more exploration among its followers of the mitzvot and Jewish learning. “Exploration” is the word, since its leaders are honest enough, intellectually and otherwise, to admit that most American Jews will not commit themselves to a life of Torah just because their rabbis say so.

There are fundamental differences among the nominations. Reform’s philosophy of autonomy is anathema to those who see Judaism as a path of commandedness. One policy in particular — patrilineality, or accepting as Jewish a child whose only Jewish parent is the father — was to me a compassionate but troubling break with a minimal definition of peoplehood that kept us together as a family despite our beliefs or practices.

But believe me, when Reform rabbis gather, they don’t plot ways to keep kosher foods out of the synagogue kitchens. Instead, they ask how they can increase the Jewish commitment of their congregants, spread the joys of Torah learning, and apply Torah principles like justice and compassion to acts of everyday redemption. Their congregants sit on the boards of major Jewish philanthropies, send their kids to Reform summer camps, and — Katsav should take note — lobby their legislators on Israel’s behalf.

If that horrifies you, then I can see why you would hesitate to call them “rabbis.”