The Movement for Reform Judaism

“Where is the next World Union Conference?” I asked. “Moscow”, was the reply. I was hit by an unexpected wave of conflicting emotions. Both discomfort – amounting almost to panic – and excitement, all at the same time.

I learned Russian at school – when it was quite an unusual thing to do – and, at eighteen, was going to the theatre to watch 'Uncle Vanya' and 'The Cherry Orchard' po russki . But my Russian went the way of so many things and now I can’t even remember how I used to stammer my pride in the latest Soviet five year plan or parrot my hopes for peaceful coexistence. How stupid, how lazy of me to let it go.

Actually, even though they may have had something to do with my linguistic frustrations, the feelings of discomfort and panic were, are really about a much deeper sense of failure – at not having engaged sufficiently with what we used to call Soviet Jewry and of not having fulfilled one of the great religious obligations – pidyon shevuyim – of our time. In more than 30 years I’ve scarcely done anything of substance for Russian Jewry. The mere mention of the word Moscow fills me with guilt and regret.

Yet two literary fragments surface repeatedly. The first comes from Elie Wiesel’s revelatory account of discrimination and fear, ‘The Jews of Silence’, written 40 years ago:

‘A dark-haired and vivacious girl stood in the middle of a circle, leading a chorus of voices in a series of questions and answers.
“Who are we?”
“Jews!”
“What are we?”
“Jews!”
“What shall we remain?”
“Jews!”
They laughed as they chanted their responses. Someone translated the dialogue for me, urged me to join in the laughter and hand-clapping. It was a splendid joke. The Kremlin was ten minutes away, and the echoes of the Jewish celebration reached to the tomb of Stalin. “It’s too crowded here!” a boy cried. “Next year we celebrate in Red Square!” His audience burst into applause.
“Who are we?” asked the dark-haired girl.
“Jews!” 1

The staggering, indominatable spirit of Jewish identity persists here against all the odds.

The second fragment comes from a much more obscure book written by a Christian, Michael Bourdeaux, in 1990 at the time of Gorbachev and glastnost 2. Bourdeaux came across the word miloserdiye in the Soviet dictionary. Miloserdiye means dear-heartedness, compassion, chesed in Hebrew. It’s the root, the well-spring that gives rise to acts of altruism, to acts of loving kindness and compassion, to gemilut chasadim . The dictionary marked the word with the symbol for ‘obsolete’.

Obsolete. It underlines the context and the challenge. Redeemed from the slavery of 70 years of Wiesel’s world of fear and oppression, Russian Jewry still found itself in an arid wilderness, in a cultural environment which had rendered religion and altruism, faith, prayer and compassion obsolete.

In April this year, the journal MANNA published an article by Rabbi Michael Farbman from St Petersburg 3. The article was headlined: ‘My Shul Has No Volunteers’. Rabbi Farbman observed that voluntary leadership had become an alien concept. Hence the defiant miracle of the volunteers who are here. Miloserdiye . Obsolete.

Some months ago, I was asked to give this sermon. I thought I’d better show due respect, so I asked Joel and Ruth what the sidra would be. Back came the response: Korach. I sniggered. Korach is, of course, the great rabbinic comfort- blanket in our endless struggles over leadership. After all, Moses is Moshe Rabbeinu – Moses our rabbi, Korach symbolises those who oppose us; and Moses, under challenge, works wonders – a pit which swallows the opposition alive and consigns them to oblivion, to Sheol.

But after the snigger came a sense of disappointment. To tell you the truth, it isn’t that I’ve never met opposition and it isn’t that there aren’t people whom I would love to be able to have swallowed up but, actually, I don’t quite know what to make of the whole Korach episode. However many times I try to preach on the subject, I remain puzzled and disconnected.

Contemporary scholars say either that it has its roots in anti-Levite feeling and priestly power struggles or it represents the sour grapes of the tribe of Reuben 4, sadly diminished since the days of its early glory. The classical commentators give all sorts of explanations of Korach’s offence, some of which are alluded to in Jonathan Magonet’s witty insertion in the British Reform Movement’s Siddur , his ‘Prayer for Committee Meetings’ in which we ask that none of our controversies rise up like those of Korach, from ambition and self-seeking 5. Which I understand and yet …

… the whole episode doesn’t quite resonate with me and I wonder whether I may not, at this point at least, be a kindred spirit to the ordinary Hebrew, the Israelite foot- soldier slogging her or his way through that fearsome wilderness of scorpions and scorching sand, wondering what on earth Moses and Korach were on about. At least until the miracle of the pit settled the score between them. Wonder working must be a great leadership asset.

My friend Byron Sherwin would certainly agree with that last sentence. In his latest book: ‘Workers of Wonders’ he advances what he calls a model for effective religious leadership from scripture to today 6. Sherwin argues that we – by which he means clergy and rabbis in particular – have lost our authority and been trapped in institutional roles and then marginalised. Our skills and one-time areas of expertise have been mastered and bettered by other specialists and we have become irrelevant to the power brokers of our communities – like mezuzot , says Sherwin, whom people are happy to see hanging around but ignore, most of the time.

He examines religious leadership within the Jewish community down the ages and concludes that the most successful religious leaders of both past and present are those who were or are believed to be able to work wonders, to perform miracles.

Whether we take him literally or metaphorically, I find it the most daunting of conclusions. Because even in a context as conducive as Britain, we can’t work wonders and we can’t perform miracles. Moshe may be Rabbeinu but emulate him, we can’t.

But if we could, would it cut any ice?

Let’s go back for a moment to the ‘foot-soldiers’, the ordinary Israelite women and men, the nameless people who are numbered in the census but otherwise unrecorded. If you think about it, they don’t come out of the biblical narrative terribly well. They’re portrayed as forever complaining. There’s not enough food. There’s not enough water. It was wonderful back in Egypt. There’s a constant air of muttering, a smell of the edge of mutiny. It’s pressure from these ordinary, unsung Israelites that pushes Aaron into making a Golden Calf only days after the revelation at Sinai. The grass-roots don’t seem too verdant!

But then life in the desert is tough on grass roots. The wilderness seemed without end and I doubt that they ever saw the journey with the clarity of Moses or the hindsight of history. For them everything was uncertain, everything was very uncomfortable, everything was unnerving and challenging and everything was highly problematic.

Is it pure hefkerut to ask for a measure of sympathy? To suggest that leadership struggles would have scarcely touched them, that the appearance of miraculous pits would hardly have impinged upon their outer and inner concerns and that the ministry of the Priests and the Levites in the Tabernacle – l’sharet Sh’mo sham – was scarcely a ministry to their spiritual needs po ? Israel means ‘to struggle’ and the ordinary Israelites were engaged in a struggle to make sense of what was happening to them, to make sense of physical hardship, spiritual turmoil and perpetual uncertainty that leadership contests and distant, blood-sprinkling rites scarcely touched. Where was the ministry to their struggle to find meaning and purpose in what may have been self-evident to others and to history but was not to them?

The struggle to understand this life-enhancing and life-threatening enigma, Jewish identity, to find meaning and purpose in Judaism is a characteristic of our age too. You can see it’s insidious reality wherever Jews engage with the post-modern world - in Israel, in America and in the diaspora. It is challenging enough in Britain. But what, I ask myself, must it be like here in the former Soviet Union – in a context, an environment forged by 70 years of Communist denial of religion, of secularism and atheism and designation of altruism, miloserdiye , as obsolete.

And who is at the cutting edge of the struggle and key to its outcome? The grass- roots, the foot-soldiers, the ordinary women and men in their thousands and tens of thousands scattered through the vast lands of the former Soviet Union. Whether they be sceptical intelligentsia puzzled and disturbed by their Jewish identity or engineers in search of a building to call a synagogue.

And what do they need? Empathy, understanding, support, nourishment – a ministry to their struggle which involves personal contact with and engagement by those for whom the struggle is also a reality but who also have resources of Jewish faith and learning to contribute. They need a leadership committed to personal valuing and acceptance, a leadership that will stay with their questions rather than offer other people’s answers. Formal leadership? Of course. Institutions? Of course. Ministry to the struggle? Most of all.

The discomfort, the guilt and the regret is still there but I have a glimmer of something else as well. I suppose I had thought that it was all over – the redemption of Russian Jewry. But now I am finally here I can see it has only just started. It will need large numbers, this redemption through ministering to the individual struggle. Those who conduct the ministry will need all the support and resources that they can get. If you, like me, feel that what you have done so far is not enough, it may be late but, im ezrat haShem , it isn’t too late. And maybe, just maybe, it will help our leadership here to continue working Byron Sherwin’s wonders.

[1] Elie Wiesel, The Jews of Silence, Signet, New York, 1967 p. 78

[2] Michael Bourdeaux,Gorbachev Glasnost & The Gospel, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1990

[3] MANNA no:87, Spring 2005

[4] Plaut p. 1131.

[5] Forms of Prayer, Volume: 1, RSGB, London 1977, p. 296

[6] Byron L Sherwin, Workers of Wonders: A Model for Effective Religious Leadership from Scripture to Today, Rowman & Littlefield, Maryland, 2004

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