Reform Movement

The laws reflect their times but contain many timeless truths.

The Reform Movement stresses retention of the key principles of Judaism.

As for practice, it strongly recommends individual study of the traditional practices.

However, the adherent is free to follow only those practices that increase the sanctity of their relationship with God.

And so it's 200 years in that context.

So it's only just been now 200 years since the first flowerings of the reform movement.

So while much of the fighting happened in the 19th century, and as these things move on, the response to them perhaps changes in some ways because they become different phenomena.

Reform today is not what reform was in the 1850s in many ways, and therefore I don't need to claim that the exact responses that those Rabbanim had are the ones we should use today, and that doesn't mean that they weren't the appropriate ones for back then.

It's not a critique of what they did then, meaning one way you could say it is, oh, they were so harsh on reform then that was a mistake I've heard people say such things and I'm not saying such a thing it's not for me to critique what they were doing in their time because what they were doing in their time was the best they understood to do and I'm not living then and I personally am very opposed to judging other times because I don't think we know those other times well enough to judge what people did that doesn't mean that just because the proper or the accepted rebidding response to reform in 1850 was X that that we necessarily respond to reform in the exact same ways today.

But what I think is continually educative about reading some of those responses, understanding some of those responses and how they were expressed is that, A, they remind us that underlying the reform movement, and the reform movement I don't think has completely changed from what it was.

I think it's changed in many, many ways, and those changes need to be noticed and understood and responded to appropriately.

But underlying reform is still many very problematic assumptions, and that needs to be part of our puzzle as well.

Despite his three formal positions, he thinks of himself as a street rabbi, someone who wants to take Judaism and Jewish practice beyond the walls of the synagogue and the school and bring these practices directly into the lives of Israelis.

The understanding also shapes the way Ezzie thinks about Reform Judaism, the Reform movement in Israel.

He believes its influence reaches well beyond the relatively small number of Israelis who formally identify themselves as Reform Jews.

Reform Judaism, in his view, speaks to a much wider Israeli public, including people who may never join a Reform congregation, but who are looking for meaningful ways to engage seriously with Jewish tradition outside the framework of Orthodoxy.

Uh-huh.

But things have changed, and the school has moved, and today there aren't any families in the school that belong to Kol HaNeshama.

And, uh, most of the families that come to the school, uh, come from, I would say, different families that do not necessarily identify with the Reform movement.

So in the spirit of Reform Judaism really means that we study, you know, a lot of, uh, you know, liberal Judaism.

There are connection-- obviously, there's connections between Jews.

The Reform movement denied any of that, and they said that we're like Christians, that one Christian has nothing to do with the other Christian.

It's just a question of belief or rituals that makes you a Christian.

No.

So from this girl growing up in Tacoma as this strange only Jew in her class to rabbi of one of the most influential pulpits in North America, perhaps the world.

So what made you take that path, you know, become a rabbi? Why did you find a home in the reform movement as opposed to other places? What can you tell us about that?

It sounds almost cliched, but I didn't feel like I had a choice almost.

And I don't you know, we don't use the language of calling in Judaism very often.

And I found myself loving.

only wanting to engage in those kinds of questions, the ones that felt like they were connected to the deepest questions of purpose and meaning in life.

I was like, why would I wanna do anything but that? In terms of like why reform, I think that I am 100% the fortunate product of both the reform movement and the timing of my birth, which was that the reform movement was visionary and courageous in the 1970s saying that we're gonna embrace interfaith families.

That was relatively new in America.

In Aramaic, yam arechta, because it says one long day, it was decided that the Rosh Hashanah would continue to be two days in the land of Israel.

So, universally, pretty much people will celebrate Rosh Hashanah for two days, except for the Reform Movement follows the biblical reading of Rosh Hashanah, and therefore they've reverted to one day.

However, just to complicate things, there are Reform congregations that have gone back to the practice of two days.

So some will read both of these Torah portions, and some will read just one.

When the Reform—in those congregations in the Reform Movement, which celebrate only one day for Rosh Hashanah, they read the second day portion, that would be Genesis chapter 22, the binding of Isaac, and skip the first day portion, which is Genesis chapter 21, which is the birth of Isaac.

Well, that should confuse anyone who doesn't live the life of the Jewish people, uh, because it confuses me on occasion, you know, that the Reform movement for 100 years was pretty consistent.

It had one day, and it read Genesis 22.

Now the Reform synagogues that have two days read Genesis, the creation story on day one, and read Genesis 22 the second day, just to make sure nothing is consistent.

Uh, but she was brought in early on.

Uh, she was asked for her, uh, opinion, but it turned out that she was asked for her rubber stamp, and the rubber stamp was what Anna Wintour and John Galliano, and the Met leadership had gotten from Jonathan Greenblatt at the, uh, ADL, and Rick Jacobs at the Reform Movement, and people who they un- who they had long dealt with, by the way, right? People they had long relationships with and understood they could get, you know, the statement they needed, and that they could then say these people who speak for the Jewish community, especially the Jewish community in New York, said it's okay.

That's what they were looking for.

And Julie Menin was like, "No, I don't agree with that.

I mean, when Zionism emerged, there were a series of critiques, right? There were left critiques from a kind of, you could say, leftist internationalist perspective, right? That the Jew should identify as workers and the Jew should be anti-nationalist, certainly anti-nationalist.

There was also a critique that was strong in the Reform Movement in the United States and in Germany, but broader than that, which said Zionism was a threat to the position of Jews in the countries in which they live, because identifying Jews as a nation with a loyalty to this incipient Zionist project would make Jews look like they weren't good Americans or good German people or good Jewish people.

And then there was a third critique from many Orthodox leaders that was suspicious of Zionism because its leaders were very secular.

I mean, Theodor Herzl didn't circumcise his son when his son was born, which is a pretty big thing in Judaism.