The Movement for Reform Judaism

Cyril Gee will not believe this.  A couple of Friday nights ago I was sitting with my elder daughter and son in law at Alyth Gardens.  On Friday nights, the children's choir provides all the music for the Erev Shabbat service.  For the first time, my granddaughter Francesca, who is six, sang a solo - the ki atah from shalom rav.  Not only did she sing it confidently but she sang it in tune, something that her grandfather has never managed in sixty years. 

Sixty years.  I'm sixty, like you.

Unlike you, I refused to celebrate and tried to shut out my sixtieth birthday.  I was scared.  As so often when we're scared, I retreated into denial.  I was scared of getting old and of the negative aspects of ageing.  And let's face it, there is a downside to getting older since, all things being equal, we're less likely to be fit and healthy than we were when we were twenty-six or sixteen or six.  But I don't think that it was physical ageing - painful and frustrating though it is - that really scared me.

Today's sidrah, as you will soon hear, is Korach.  The biblical text suggests that Korach is a thoroughly unpleasant character whose challenge to Moses and his style of leadership is completely unwarranted.  But the biblical text itself is less than clear about what Korach's challenge to Moses was really all about.  There are many attempts to reconstruct the substance of the disagreement in rabbinic literature.  In some commentaries Korach accuses Moses of being authoritarian, inflexible, of claiming to know all the answers, of being dismissive of the need to share power and the need to encourage new ideas and alternative ways of doing things.

That, say the rabbis, was very harsh and unfair on Moses.  They imply that it said more about Korach than it said about anyone else.  Well, it wasn't very far removed from what worried me about me when I reached my sixtieth birthday last July.  I don't want to get authoritarian and rigid and opposed to change and defensive and convinced that only my way is right and that things that I can't do can't be done.  I don't want to get past my sell by date and not recognise what's happening to me.

But over the last few months I've been thinking about it.  At least recognising that possibility means that it needn't be like that.  I needn't become authoritarian and rigid and opposed to change and convinced that I'm always right.

And, what's more, at sixty I do bring to life and to work some positive qualities.  Experience.  Patience.  A subtlety of approach.  A preparedness to listen to others and recognise the importance of meeting their needs rather than my own.  And, above all, the joy and relief of knowing that I don't need to have all the answers and that I can experience the pleasure of seeing others contribute, flourish and grow.  Life doesn't get any better for a musically challenged sixty year old like me than listening to my granddaughter singing solo and in tune in the synagogue and of having had absolutely nothing to do with it in terms of organisation or genetics whatsoever.

Institutions are not the same as individuals and it would be easy to push my personal metaphor too far.  But there are parallels to be drawn between my fears at hitting sixty and this sixtieth anniversary service.

In terms of the British Reform Movement, Bournemouth Reform Synagogue is one of our older constituents.  Although the first Reform synagogue in Britain - West London synagogue - was founded more than 160 years ago; in 1942, when the Reform Movement was born, we were only six communities in number.  Bournemouth was number nine - we're now forty-two.  Add to that, Bournemouth has long and very understandably been seen as a really attractive place to which to retire.  So I don't feel my years here quite as much as I do when I go, for instance, to our expanding young congregation in Radlett in Hertfordshire.  But that's, as I've come to realise, almost beside the point.

Because if this community has a significant number of people who are my age or even older, we nevertheless have much to celebrate and much to contribute.

We bring experience to the party.  Take this synagogue - both building and community for example.  We know that little is handed to you on a plate and that to go from having nothing to having this splendid building and this warm, supportive community could not have happened without a huge amount of commitment and hard work.  To have formed a community which offers as much as this one does, which holds such an important place in the life of Bournemouth Jewry and the wider society of Bournemouth and to have got there without significant outside help is a testimony to what vision, commitment, hard work and nous can achieve.

We bring patience along with experience.  Neither Rome nor this community was built in a day.  Things take time.  People are human beings not machines and Jews are just like everyone else only more so.  We've learned patience and tolerance of all those people, unlike us, who have their foibles and idiosyncrasies.  We've learned the need to take people with us, even if it takes time. 

We bring a certain subtlety.  Calling a spade a spade is not always a good thing and blessed shovels usually lead to digging a hole for oneself.  Finesse, delicacy of phrase and action, tact, subtlety is an essential quality of leadership.

We've learned that community and community leadership exists not to meet its own needs but to meet the needs of others.  Listening and reaching out are infinitely preferable and always more effective than telling people what to do and expecting people to come running to us.

Above all we've learned something about Korach's enthusiasm for power and his projection on to Moses of his own need to control and have power.  It's such a joy to realise that one doesn't have to have all the answers and that change and renewal are welcome.  At sixty we still have a lot to give - experience, patience, subtlety and preparedness to listen.  But we can derive our biggest joy from sharing with others and seeing what we started and are still an integral part of, grow and flourish, sometimes in ways of which we could never have dreamed.  A Bayfield singing in tune.  A Bournemouth Reform synagogue sixty years young, growing and renewing itself under the leadership of a talented and dynamic young rabbi, meeting the changing needs of Jews and the wider community of Bournemouth now and over the next sixty years.

As we can say of a community but not of an individual, ad meah ve'esrim - to 120 and far, far beyond. 

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