The Movement for Reform Judaism

The great rabbi seemed fast asleep. Near him sat his admiring disciples, whispering together so as not to wake him.
‘Such a pious man,’ said one, ‘you won’t find another like him anywhere.’
‘Such a charitable man,’ murmured another, ‘he gives with such an open hand.’
‘And such a sweet temper! Has anyone heard him raise his voice?’ whispered a third.
‘And such learning!’ said a fourth, ‘He’s a second Rashi!’
At that they fell silent. Whereupon the Rabbi slowly opened one eye, regarded them with an injured expression and said,
‘And about my modesty you say nothing?’

The title of rabbi, which is so new to me personally, is a venerable one. It first appeared in Ancient Palestine around the first century of the Common Era. Then it was given to someone of exceptional learning and expertise in Jewish Law. Some centuries later the related term ‘rav’ emerged in Babylon. ‘Rav’ was the title given to a learned sage, who was particularly honoured for his mastery of the Torah. These earliest generations of Rabbis and sages — ‘the Rabbis’ — are the creators of Rabbinic Judaism. They created the Mishnah, and the Talmud. Their interpretations of the Hebrew Bible came together to form our Midrashic literature. Through midrash they drew out the moral, spiritual and legal significance of Scripture. It continues to inform our own interpretations even today.

In the case of many of them, their personal qualities made them legendary. They are remembered as the spiritual giants of Judaism.
Well, for all the respect they have generously shown me in the past year of my student placement with them, and for the honour Bromley Synagogue has shown me in inviting me to be their rabbi, this community, mercifully, has rather more realistic ideas about what kind of rabbi they are appointing.

While not so ancient and venerable as those first generations of Sages, today’s rabbis can nevertheless, - and with due modesty!- trace their antecedents through a very long tradition. And at some very early periods we find surprisingly close precedents for some of the issues that we still face today when we think of the relationship between rabbi and community.

The pious rabbi, so proud of his modesty in my story, by the way is, in Jewish terms, a relatively recent character. He is an apocryphal Hasidic wonder worker or tzaddik of the late 18th or 19th century. That, in Jewish terms, is recent!

What might be seen as the beginnings of a professional rabbinate, the beginnings of something more like the contemporary rabbinate, can be traced to medieval times. Though its actual origins remain quite obscure.

First a definition. The scholar Simchah Assaf in his study of the subject defines the traditional rabbi as:

‘A scholar with authority over the Jewish community to adjudicate, to teach and to direct its religious life.’

This raises an important question. How did this ‘authority over’ the Jewish community come about? On the one hand, it is a historical question: ‘when did this authority come about in the medieval period, and how did rabbis claim that authority?’

But it is also a contemporary question. ‘What is the basis of rabbinic authority in our communities today?’ And particularly, ‘What is its basis in progressive communities such as ours? Does it derive at all from the same principles now as it did in the past?’

The story of the chassidic rabbi and his disciples in fact points up the question quite neatly.

Clearly the personal and scholarly qualities of the Rabbi are what give him authority in the eyes of his disciples, or, in other words, of his community.

But equally his sensitivity to their judgment of him suggests his dependence on them. What if they find fault in him? What becomes then of his authority?

In the earliest periods, it seems that rabbis viewed their role and status as neither deriving from, nor depending on, the Jewish community. They mostly earned their livings in ways quite unrelated to their religious functions. In this way they maintained a high degree of independence.

Moreover, their Torah knowledge was often seen as conferring on them special, even magical powers. Their fellow Jews turned to their rabbis for the protective and even redemptive power their special knowledge was thought to give them.

But as early as the twelfth century the role of the rabbi came to be embedded in the Jewish community. In various ways the rabbi’s role became more dependent on the community.

By the 12th century, in both Christian and Muslim countries the rabbi was increasingly called upon to interpret Judaism in the context of changing conditions of Jewish life in the Diaspora. Rabbis tended to become more closely associated with specific congregations and synagogues. They also became the representatives of the Jewish communities in their dealings with the non-Jewish world.

Around the 14th to 15th centuries, Rabbis became more dependent on the synagogues economically. They received tax exemptions and salaries from the communities they served. They supplemented their incomes by payments for weddings and divorces and civil litigation.
At the same time the conferring of the title rabbi by a rabbi on a worthy student became more institutionalised. Already in the 15th century the Sephardic rabbi Isaac Abrabanel was criticising the Ashkenazi practice of conferring rabbinic diplomas. He didn’t like the parallel with the Christian university degree.

By the late Middle Ages the rabbinate had taken on much of the character we associate with it now: supervising ritual; officiating in services; cantorial duties; youth education programmes; representing the community to the outside world; exhorting the community to lead more observant lives.

At the same time, rabbis began to have limited term appointments, and powerful communal leaders began to interfere with their decisions. Plus ça change…as they say…

It is not hard to see that pretty much all that distinguishes the later medieval rabbi as such from any other communal officer, appointed by and salaried by the community, is some kind of special authority which derives from rabbinic learning.

Where Jews accepted, or indeed still do accept, the traditional authority of halakhah, Torah law, as the ultimate and unquestionable divine authority, binding on all Jews, then it is the rabbi’s expertise in interpreting that law, combined ideally with the rabbi’s exemplary adherence to that law, which commands the respect and the ear of the community. Only in successfully maintaining this claim on the authority of divine law does the rabbi preserve his independence. ‘His’, note. Because in this traditional dispensation it always is a ‘he’.

Now it seems to me that this relationship at root has a good deal to recommend it. It provides the framework for a healthy partnership between community and rabbi. Respect for the rabbi’s role is essentially a function of the respect the community has for Jewish law. The rabbi’s authority does not derive from any quasi-magical or shamanistic power, but from divine command, the authority of Torah, to which the rabbi is personally subject, just like every other Jew.

So we might now venture some tentative answers to our first historical questions about the origins and nature of rabbinic authority. That authority derives from the earliest Rabbi’s special learning and their development of a binding Jewish law, halakhah, in which they had expertise, and which they successfully convinced at least a large majority of Jews was divine and unquestionably binding on all.

Despite increasing economic and social dependence on the community, they nevertheless maintained this as their source of rabbinic authority, at least for as long as communities considered themselves ultimately bound by the rabbinically interpreted halakhah.

Now, for the second question, ‘What does this have to say about rabbinic authority today, in a progressive community in particular?’
I think it says that much has changed — but that the essence of the relationship between rabbis and communities has not. The framework of partnership is still at the heart of it.

The great change, of course, has been, since the modern period, that the authority of halakhah has been profoundly questioned and reinterpreted. And particularly by reform and progressive Judaism. It is no longer for us the central focus of rabbinic authority.

In its place, however, we face our contemporary search for meaning.
Now the halakhah was always about giving meaning.

The halakhah effectively imbued significance in all aspects of our life. From how we tied a shoelace to how we bury the dead.

Through it, the Jew was assured that there was divine significance in all our actions from the moment we woke till we lay down at night.
For most of us, I suspect, that source of assurance is not so readily available. Moreover, much of the time we do not so much search for meaning as feel that it is up to us to create meaning. Many of the traditional answers to the question of what is the significance or purpose of leading a Jewish life no longer satisfy. We are exercised by the question itself of what now constitutes leading a Jewish life?
It has often been said that in our times all Jews are, ultimately, Jews by choice. And that choice extends to deciding what we mean by leading a Jewish life. And more than that, there is the underlying question, does it matter if we do or not?

And this question has perhaps the longest rabbinic history.
For the earliest rabbis, living in a time of cataclysmic change, facing the real possibility that Judaism might be lost to the world with the loss of the Temple and of the Jewish homeland, it mattered. They chose to engage in a search for meaning, drawing on what they understood as the evidence of a spiritual covenant between God and humankind.
As teachers, they initiated what has become our long Jewish conversation through time about values, about how best to live, about the spiritual and eternal dimensions of human life.

In the changing circumstances of Jewish life over time, their teachings have been challenged, tested and developed through the life experiences of both their fellow Jews and of those who were not Jews.
But the long Jewish conversation about values, about how best to live, was maintained through all the changes of modernity, because for enough Jews it mattered. And it continues to matter. The spiritual need to find meaning and purpose in life does not go away. It matters that we maintain the search to respond to that sane and authentic need.
And that, quite simply, is what has brought about the partnership that is being marked today. Bromley synagogue has renewed its commitment to continuing its Jewish conversation by appointing its third rabbi.
Already in my year here as a student I have discovered how much I personally have been stimulated and inspired by the warmth and enthusiasm of this community. Bromley synagogue’s commitment to making Judaism matter through learning, through supporting each other individually and as a community, through prayer, discussion and reflection, has inspired me.

In the spirit of a true partnership, may my work here in turn inspire this community, so that together we can achieve more than we could alone, and so that the Judaism we create here is a true blessing to us and to the world beyond our synagogue.

TrackBack URI for this entry

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed