The Movement for Reform Judaism

I have a work supervisor.

Some of you may raise your eyebrows but being a rabbi is quite an exacting job and skilled, detached supervision is really indispensable. ‘What, even at your stage, Tony?’ Just because someone has been playing the violin for 30 years, doesn’t mean that they don’t still need to practise. If the metaphor for orthodoxy is a fixed blueprint, the metaphor for reform is a journey. The scenery on the journey is always changing. You’re never in the same place.

Anyway, my work supervisor gets me to keep an e-journal and then feeds back via little electronic boxes. He’s a pukka management consultant but he’s also psychoanalytically trained, so I never quite know what apparently innocent phrase he’s suddenly going to focus on and deem deeply significant, as analysts are so prone to do.

Some months ago, I was writing about something relatively inconsequential and used as a throw-away line: “What’s it all about, Alfie?” Philip pounced on this and emailed me almost by return with the complete words of the song.

Enter my son’s girlfriend, whose grandfather was a survivor of Terezin and Auschwitz, went back to Prague after the war and became Czech television’s Barry Norman, full of arcane knowledge about film, knowledge that Lisa has inherited genetically. “Alfie”, she says, “a 1966 film, based on Bill Naughton’s stage play, starring Michael Caine as an amoral exploiter of women who meanders meaninglessly through life. ‘What’s it all about, Alfie?’ – hit song sung by Cilla Black which only featured in the credits of the film”.

And that was months before the release of the appalling remake, sanitised in New York and starring Jude Law which is universally recognised as a total cop-out.

What’s it all about, Alfie? What’s life about? What’s it for? What’s its meaning and purpose? I stared in horror at Philip’s email:

Is it just for the moment we live?
What’s it all about when you sort it out, Alfie?
Are we meant to take more than we give
or are we meant to be kind?
And if only fools are kind, Alfie,
then I guess it’s wise to be cruel.
And if life belongs only to the strong, Alfie,
what will you lend on an old golden rule?
As sure as I believe there’s a heaven above, Alfie,
I know there’s something much more,
something even non-believers can believe in.
I believe in love, Alfie
Without true love we just exist, Alfie.
Until you find the love you’ve missed you’re nothing, Alfie.
When you walk let your heart lead the way
and you’ll find love any day, Alfie, Alfie.

I emailed back: “The answer’s a bit simplistic”, I objected. “It isn’t very Jewish. I don’t buy this ‘all you need is love’ stuff as the meaning and purpose of life, Philip”. But I couldn’t dismiss the question he had highlighted, even if I didn’t go a bundle on the answer.

What’s it all about, Almighty? This life of ours. I’d be surprised if there are many people here who haven’t asked the question and struggled with the answer. Although, I suspect, the question unpacks in almost as many ways as there are people who ask it, you all know what I am talking about. The resonances, the situations, the personal experiences that it brings to mind will be different yet similar in their weight, in their difficulty and often in their pain.

I also have a hunch that they will fall into two broad groups. The first is to do with the apparent randomness and downright injustice that is so apparent in life – why is it so often pointlessly painful, what meaning can there possibly be in the harsh reality of existence and what meaning is there to the concept of God in the context of what so frequently happens to decent people?

The second set of resonances will, so my hunch goes on, have to do with the purpose of life – what’s it for and how are we supposed to use it? Is it, as Cilla blasts, killer-driller out from her 1960s number one about loving and being loved or is it about self-realisation or is it about pleasure or is there some other purpose – maybe wrestling with the values with which we need to engage society and repair the world? Pursuing the good?

What’s it all about, Alfie? Questions of meaning and questions of purpose. Why is life like it is and what is life for?

Some months later, having reminded me of a 1960s pop song I had long forgotten, Philip, my work consultant, threw me an extraordinary phrase and then told me not to forget Michael Caine, Jude Law and Cilla Black. The phrase, which I think he’d cooked up with another of his rabbinic clients Jeffrey Newman, is ‘ministering to the struggle’. I made the mistake of using the phrase at a recent Assembly of Rabbis meeting and got roundly trounced by people deeply offended with the whole minister, ministering bit. “It’s so un-Jewish”, someone said. “I’m not a minister, I’m a rabbi and I don’t minister, I teach”. I realised immediately my faux pas though the word minister, meaning to support, meet the needs of, serve, is a pretty fair translation of the Hebrew verb l’shareit which the priests in the mishkan, the sanctuary in the wilderness were doing all the time.

But the operative word is not ministering or rabbi-ing, it’s “struggle”.

It points to the central task of the Reform rabbi in 5765, at the beginning of the 21st Century. We are familiar with the rabbi as the officiant, as the leader of services. We are familiar with the rabbi as the purveyor of hatch ‘em, match ‘em and dispatch ‘em services. We are familiar with the rabbi as educator. We are still familiar with the rabbi as the supplier of halakhic rulings. All very important. But isn’t it apparent that huge numbers of Jews – in this respect we are no different from huge numbers of other people in the post-modern Western world – are struggling with the big issues of meaning and purpose, what’s it all about, Almighty and what’s it all for, Almighty? What I find alarming is how little the contemporary synagogue explicitly supports people in that struggle for meaning and purpose and how unaware we are, rabbis as well as congregants, that the real focus of our ministry or our rabbinate has to be that struggle – if religion is really to engage Jews where they actually are. Questions of meaning – why is life as it is? – questions of purpose – what are the values which give purpose to our lives and enable us to engage with society and the world? – isn’t that what religion is about?

I’ve known Paul and Vanessa for more years than either of us would care to mention in public. I’ve known them since they were both undergraduates and came to the Satmah – my bad pun – the Students at the Manor House programme at The Sternberg Centre before it was named The Sternberg Centre. I’ve watched their development. I’ve watched them as they were forced to engage with the struggle in a very challenging form. If anyone has the strength, insight and courage to minister to the struggle, Paul has.

I’ve known this community even longer than I’ve known Paul and Vanessa. I can remember back even before Barry Hyman mentioned it in every edition of RSGB’s newsletter to the days when, according to Rolf Roseman, it was his personal fiefdom. I can remember when it was a tiny community seemingly at the outer edges of London Jewish life and watched it grow into a flagship community at the heart of Herts and Jewish demographic growth. If ever a community has the quality of lay leadership, typified by Helen Janes, and the pedigree provided by a remarkable and illustrious list of rabbis from Colin Eimer, Sammy Pereira, through Barbara Borts to the peerless Alexandra Wright – the quality and pedigree to take on the task of ministering to the struggle, it’s Radlett & Bushey.

Rabbi Paul Freedman, Radlett & Bushey Reform Synagogue. It promises to be a wise and creative partnership, one eminently suited to taking the community forward to face head on the real challenges of 5765 and the 21st century. Chazak Chazak ve’yitchazek.

Thank you Philip. Work supervisors do have their value. Cue Cilla Black. “What’s it all about, Alfie?” And don’t you cop-out like the remake has!

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