The Movement for Reform Judaism

This week's sedra is Korach. During this period the leadership of the Children of Israel by Moses and Aaron was well established, and the laws by which they governed were the laws of God given in the Torah.

Korach was rebellious and continually questioned the rule of law. His motives were to undermine the establishment and make a play for the leadership and, of course that meant that, politically, he had to be dealt with. Perhaps in other circumstances, he would have been given the chance to raise his issues in a reasonable debate.

He might have been ancient equivalent of the reform movement challenging the orthodoxy (although I would say that our motives are not so Machiavellian). He asks Moses,

• why, if his followers garments are made in the right colour blue, only by adding fringes on each corner are they considered ritually correct?
• Similarly, if a house is filled with the books of the Torah why is the house only ok to enter if it has a Mezuzah?
• If you are lucky enough to have a cow and donkey, why can't you have your ox and your ass plough the field together?
• If you have bag of mixed seeds from the sale at the garden centre why can't you sow the field with mingled seeds?  

Moses's answer was pretty straightforward  - "because it says so!"  - and that was the end of it.

The modern questions would be

• Is it better to drive to shul if you live too far away to walk there rather than to not go at all?
• Why can't I sit next to my wife when we come to shul?
• Do I have to have kosher caterers to do my simcha (at 5 x the cost to have the Rabbi officially pass the water!)?
• Can I record the football whilst attending the service?

So for some people things are black and white. A right way and a wrong way. Whilst to other people things aren't so simple and what we read in the Torah is not always to be taken so literally. A code to live by - in terms of modern jargon  - "principal based  regulation" with the written word to be taken as  "guidance notes" only. The interpretation is up to you, but if  the Regulator disagrees with your interpretation you will be dealt with harshly.

I recently went on a Jewish Journey which was my first trip to Israel. The trip was sub-titled "Hugging and Wrestling" because the object was to get to grips with some of the difficult issues, spiritually, culturally and politically.  I of course had my pre-conceptions. I thought that it would be black and white. This is where all the frummers go isn't it? The Woody Allen film running in my head was that I would be dressed in my jeans and a white T shirt on the El Al flight whilst all the other passengers would be in black coats and fur hats with wives wearing sheitals and 10 kids each. Well, I was only partially right! And the flight only lasted 5 hours which zooms by with the help of a Hugh Grant movie or a 2 hour lecture from Al Gore on global warming caused by the over use of air travel (what can you do to help that cause when you are 25,000ft up over Thessalonica?)

The first place we went to was Jerusalem and a walk around the Old City quickly re-enforced my preconceptions. The Rabbinical authorities have control of the Western Wall, and what they say goes. That was somewhat challenging, because although my lineage and pedigree shows that I have as much right to pray at the wall as "they" do, I had the feeling that I was an observer looking at "them" Jews and they were running the show. They owned Judaism. Women have small section to pray at, well away from the men and if you want to be radical and hold a "mixed minyan" you have to go a few hundred yards south to a section of the Western Wall where the holier ones (strangely) don't go.

My thoughts were mixed. Look beyond the hat, I told myself. We likely came from the same village in the Ukraine just a hundred years ago. Even today, I have cousins like that in Stamford Hill. But all I can see is the hat and the payers. I can't engage with them by reason of my lack of Ivrit and the cultural barriers they have built up by re-creating their own ghetto in Yerushalyim. In fact just as I suspected they were taking literal interpretation of the Torah to the ultimate extreme. Just as the Torah told them to do (and as we ourselves sing just before we take the scroll from the ark) "For out of Zion shall  go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem" (Ci mitzion taitsai torah oodevar adoinay yirushalayim).

Well, I managed to make my own space at the wall. When I stood there, my mind went "beyond the hat" and I made the connection with my past. I felt a powerful electrical force as I slowly went to touch the wall: a bit like the image in the South Bank show titles where they show the Michaelangelo painting "Creation of Adam" and the graphic artists have added a spark between Adam's finger and God's finger. A powerful and uniquely personal moment for me as I plugged into generations thousands of years ago.

But after the big high there was a sense of disappointment - a sort of anti-climax. One of the big plusses for me going to Israel was to experience for the first time in my life the feeling of being in a Jewish majority. But already I was challenged because I could immediately see that it was going to be more complex than that. Was Israel not just going to be Edgware on a national scale? The Jewish jokes, borscht, salt beef. The Jewish attitude to DIY (Don't Involve Yourself).

Then everything changed - we went to Tel Aviv. Just 40 miles away but suddenly a very different view of the land and the society. Not a black hat or a beard to be seen anywhere. In fact, I was in the middle of a major financial world city with sky scrapers, banks, shops and people being busy dealing with their routine, working lives. In the evening, beautiful young Israeli kids would go out to bars, restaurants and clubs just like they would in GB (but without the binge drinking and rowdiness of course).

So perhaps it was here, the real Israel. A Jewish country, Jewish people living ordinary lives in freedom and democracy, in a society where the common bond is more cultural than religious. A very secular society where the numbers of Jews going to shul on Shabbat is a bit like the numbers of Christians in Britain who actually go to Church on Sunday (except obviously when they are filming Songs of Praise - when they all go). On Rosh Hashanah, which is a public holiday, they all head for the beach.

Well, had we lost our principals? Is this the society that followed the Korach view of the Law rather than the Moses version? What was going on here? I was lucky enough to have an opportunity to get underneath the skin of the city.

Firstly by visiting a place describing itself as a "Secular Yeshiva". Young students in their 20s studying Talmud and Jewish teachings and following up Jewish values of "Tikkun olam" with projects in the City like ethical staff policies and fairtrade projects. Not a hint of Jewish ceremony, no services or prayers. A strange Jewish experience but enlightening to help me to understand what was going on.

We also saw Tikkun Olam in action by going to the south of the city to a poor suburb where many of the residents are immigrant workers or even "friendly" Arab families who cannot go back to their communities because they are regarded as collaborators. There are funded charitable projects there providing nursery schools, language tuition, and where needed counselling services. Apart from permanent and extremely dedicated Israeli workers, there were gap year kids, including a young man from Finchley Reform! I was impressed that even in a poor area, the facilities were not vandalised or covered in graffiti like I guess they would be here. I was told by a young American gap year girl that she had no problems or fear walking alone at night and there were no drug dealers on street corners.

We also visited a walk-in medical centre run by "Physicians for Human Rights" for those with no rights to the "NHS" equivalent. They also go into the territories to help provide medical facilities to Palestinians. Again people putting in to society just because they wanted to in spirit of Tzedaka and Tikkun Olam (although these phrases never cropped up).

So this old and new Israel was part of my Jewish Journey. The fabric of Israel. The name 'Tel Aviv' itself juxtaposes Old  (Tel meaning an ancient hill) with New (Aviv meaning Spring) and echoes the father of Zionism Theodore Herzl's book from 1902 AltNeuland which set out his vision.

Let me quote from another founding Zionist, Micah Yoseph Berdichewski. Difficult to believe that he wrote this in 1903.  That's well before the holocaust, although clearly inspired by the pogroms at the turn of the century in Eastern Europe

I can't quote it all because it's too long but hopefully this gives you the sense of the Zionist dream of transformation of the Jews out of the state of wandering victim/tribe to a Jewish nation. You may not agree with everything he says but it does help us understand what is going on and how we come to this 'new way' and how our past has shaped the present :-

"This time in which we live in not like yesterday or the day before - it has no counterpart. For all the bases and conditions of our previous existence are now undermined and changed. The "long dark night" is gone and new days, with new circumstances have replaced it. There is reason for the fear in our hearts -it is true that we are no longer standing on a clear road; we have come to a time of two worlds in conflict.

To be or not to be! To be the last of the Jews or the first of the Hebrews.

Jewish scholarship and religion are not the basic values - every man may be as much or as little devoted to them as he wills. But the people of Israel come before them "Israel precedes the Torah"

The world about us, life in all its aspects, the many desires, resolves and dispositions in our hearts -all these concern us as they would any man and affect the integrity of our soul. We can no longer solve the riddles of life in the old ways or live and act as our ancestors did . We are the sons, and sons of sons, of older generations but not their living monuments. We must cease to be the tablets on which the books are transcribed and thoughts handed down to us- always handed down.

Through a basic revision of the very foundations of Israel's inner and outer life, our whole consciousness, our pre-dispositions, thoughts, feelings, desires, our will and aim will be transformed. And we shall live and stand fast.

Such a choice promises us a noble future; the alternative is to remain a straying people following its erring shepherds. A great responsibility rests upon us, for everything lies in our hands.

We are the last Jews - or we are the first of a new nation".

So, I hear you say, how does all this affect us here in Maidenhead. A reform community which in my view reflects the traits that I saw in the modern Israeli nation. We are not just a religious institution here but a community centre offering, in no order of priority -  religious, social, cultural, educational, charitable, in fact whatever you want to get out of it but at the same time putting something of yourself into it. You are free to choose.

It doesn't matter what you do. Remember, those who do nothing, do nothing wrong.
As long as you do something and by participating in this community you are making a difference.

Look beyond the hat!

An article by another participant on the Israel Trip can be read here

Click here to view a gallery of pictures from the Israel Trip.

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