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Reform is the Norm

Written by Rabbi Dr. Tony Bayfield Tuesday, 15 September 2009

Over recent years I have moved towards a coherent theme for my High Holyday sermons.  Or, rather, they share an idea or an experience.  This year is no exception.  All the sermons reflect a fortnight in Israel during August.  They may appear to be repetitive but I hope they are not too much so.  They feel to me to be different perspectives, different thoughts that arise from looking at the same experience from different angles - or asking different questions of the same intriguing experience.

This year I was invited to speak at the induction of Rabbi David Mitchell at Radlett & District Reform Synagogue on the Sunday before Rosh Hashanah.  The cycle of sermons starts here and will be followed by three further sermons - for Erev Rosh Hashanah, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

It was Tu BiShvat, the New Year for Trees, and I’d been asked to do a short session with the reception class at Akiva School.  Before that precipitates claims of discrimination from Clore Shalom, I should explain that it was my grandson Oliver’s class. Reception.

We talked about why trees are so important.  One child explained that trees are important for shade because her mummy didn’t like her to be out in the strong sunshine of an English summer.  I asked them whether they could think of another country where the summers are even hotter and which is very important to the Jewish people.  Back came the instant response, South Africa.  Oliver, as the only child of non-South African origins in the class, was somewhat scornful and replied “Israel, of course”.  My pride knew no bounds.  A third generation Leo Baeck College graduate is just around the corner.

I don’t think it had been decided then but this summer I had the enormous joy of introducing Oli who is 5½ and his older sister Francesca who is 8½ to the land of milk, honey and kosher hotdogs.  My elder daughter Lucy and son-in-law Matthew came too.

I’ve been to Israel many times over the last forty years but it’s been twenty-five years at least since I’ve been as a tourist.  It was a really happy and fulfilling trip – one of the best holidays I can ever remember.  We started off in Tsfat, up in the hills overlooking Kinneret.  We moved round to Ramot for a bat mitzvah which had provided the trigger for the trip.  Then down to the Dead Sea and then to Jerusalem.  The children found it the most natural experience in the world.  For a start, half of Akiva School seemed to be in Israel – they go to South Africa in the winter.  Chessy and Oli met up with friends in Tsfat.  The bat mitzvah was the elder of two sisters – daughters of a colleague of mine who now lives in Brussels.  The children don’t see each other very often but for two or three days they were utterly inseparable.  There were also two Akiva children on Ramot at the same time as us.  We didn’t meet anybody we knew at the Dead Sea but the Isrotel where we stayed is owned by a member of West London Synagogue, a Patron of the Reform Movement.  On Shabbat afternoon in Jerusalem we went to the zoo with its splendid Noah’s ark endangered species centre – with Rosie, a classmate of Francesca’s, whose father, an A&E consultant, was spending a Sabbatical at the Hadassah Hospital.

The details are not simply sermon padding.  I want them to underline the naturalness of the experience.  Swimming in the pool at the foot of King David’s waterfall at Ein Gedi and playing in the hotel pool with Gabi and Ariel; the Genesis Land experience in the Judean hills – riding on a camel to Abraham’s tent and being given hospitality – or telling Harry Liebling-Blitz in Tsfat about driving a golf cart round the twelve kilometres of the Lake Hullah reserve – it was all just natural.  Israel was a seamless extension of Jewish life and experience for two children living fully in the North West London of today.  Friday night at home and Friday night with Ann and Ephraim and their children in Jerusalem was the same familiar experience.

There were only two discordant experiences, experiences of something wholly ‘other’.  The first was in Tiveria, Tiberias if you go with Holy Land Tours.  Tiveria is the place of burial, or alleged burial, of a large number of significant Jews – from sages of the early rabbinic period to Maimonides.  The kids quickly told me what they thought of endless mini-lectures on the people behind the road names.  The Rambam quickly earned the thumbs down.  But one of the sages buried in the hills above Tiveria is Rabbi Akiva and since he’s named after their school, they were enthusiastic about a visit.

They found the visit frightening and intimidating.  The tomb had been turned into a cross between the shrine of a saint and the new section at Carterhatch Lane.  There were knots of charedim both supervising – no women unless your hair is covered; and davening – this mid-afternoon.  One particularly large chasid was immovably placed, shockeling in front of the entrance to the little cave itself.  Though I was allowed to get close enough to read the first half of the Talmudic passage inscribed on one side of the entrance with the account of Akiva’s death at the hands of the Romans, we couldn’t get any closer.  The children were too uncomfortable and frightened to pose for a picture to be taken back to school.

Living in NW11, they are not unfamiliar with charedim and chasidim but they’d never experienced being dispossessed before.  They were shocked by the clear message that Akiva wasn’t theirs, he was the exclusive property of these men and women dressed in the style of late 18th century Poland.

The second shock, the only other discordant note, was primarily Francesca’s.  We walked through the Jewish Quarter of the Old City and bought a Maccabi Haifa shirt and a tiny oil lamp from the Maccabean period.  We swigged our bottled water and came out in front of the Western Wall.  Matthew, Oli and I went to the men’s section.  Lucy and Francesca went to the women’s section.  Francesca was clearly shaken.  She was cross at being separated from her father and brother.  She was outraged that the women’s section was so much smaller, insignificant compared to the men’s section.  At 8½ this wasn’t the premature onset of militant feminism.  It was simply that non-egalitarian Judaism is something she had never experienced before.  Her aunt is a rabbi.  She has a solo in the choir at Alyth on Friday nights.  She and Oli are both encouraged to lead kiddush at home.  Gender is not an issue with her parents or her school or her shul.  The children, in terms of Jewish experience, are Reform Jews and it isn’t their Judaism but ultra-orthodox Judaism which was the exotic and suddenly intimidating and shocking intrusion.

When we got back and I got back to work, there were one or two articles for the October issue of our quarterly journal MANNA which needed editing.  One of these was the Barry Hyman interview – always interesting but ever prone to bias towards Radlett & Bushey Reform Synagogue.  True to form, Barry had chosen to feature two of the eight Leo Baeck College graduates for this year – Rabbi Deborah Young-Somers who I believe may have a connection with this shul and, would you believe, Rabbi David Mitchell – the focus of today’s happy celebration.

Despite the outrageous favouritism, Barry, as he always does, got things spot on.  The interview with David charts his journey as a descendent of Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg (who is not buried in Tiberias), through his birth into an orthodox family, through Hasmonean, Chair of Oxford JSoc to the realisation quite some years ago now that he’s a Reform Jew.

David is hugely talented – in terms of depth of knowledge and experience, in terms of intellect, in terms of teaching and leadership qualities and in terms of the depth of his reflective abilities and self-perception.  We are extraordinarily fortunate that David’s personal journey has led him to the Leo Baeck College, to Radlett and to the Reform Movement.

But nowhere in the Barry Hyman interview does David say specifically why he’s a Reform Jew.  Having known him and been taught by him for the last three years, you will already have more than an inkling.  In fact, you will not only know but, being a Jewish community, you will almost certainly know better than him.

But the interview gives us a very strong clue.  Towards the end, David says as follows:

“If we are genuinely to move towards becoming the leading Movement in British Jewry, and by leading I mean in terms of quality of programmes as well as quantity of tuchases on synagogue seats, then we will have to adapt.  In particular, as an educator I can see a great need for us to continue to evolve the ways in which we provide for and edu-tain our youth, students and young adults, thereby offering them both the Jewish knowledge and the Jewish passion to build enduring Jewish structures in this country.  Although these structures, be they schools, chavurot, interfaith centres, meditation cafés, synagogues, may not always resemble those that we are familiar with, they are already in existence, are growing, and appeal to the next generation of Jewish leaders.  We need to be open to change because it is coming whether we like it or not.”

“Open to change”; “continuing to evolve” – those are key phrases.  Engaging with people where they are; being open to the reality of the modern world – those are clear inferences.  And from earlier in the interview, being allowed to question and challenge.  Being deeply respectful of the past but recognising that modernity also has good things to teach us and not every historic value – treating women with less respect than men – has to be defended as right and essential to Judaism.

I want you now to refocus on Chessy (8½) and Oli (5½) seeing Israel for the first time.

Driving round the Hullah nature reserve in a golf buggy, stopping off to pick biblical fruits – wild figs and pomegranates – and discussing how the chalutzim, the pioneers drained the swamps but then caused unforeseen environmental consequences.

At the zoo in Jerusalem watching a short film about endangered species in a huge Noah’s ark.

Being told by Abraham’s servant, Eliezer, at Genesis Land in the Judean hills about the importance of hospitality and already knowing the midrash about Abraham pitching his tent at a crossroad so that he could see and welcome those in need of hospitality from whichever direction they came.  Hakhnasat orechim.

Oli discussing with me on the top of Masada what the result of the match between the Romans and the Jews had been.  And deciding that it had been a goal-less draw since neither side benefited or got what they wanted.

Seen through their Reform Jewish eyes, Judaism here and in Israel is as normal and natural as life itself, both serious and fun, all of a piece and wholly – you can spell that both ways – part of the modern world.  That isn’t to say that the orthodoxy in which Rabbi David Mitchell grew up is to be dismissed or has no value.  Not at all.  It is greatly to be respected.  It isn’t to say that the charedim in Tsfat and Tiveria are terrible people.  They too demand a measure of respect, even if their attempts to monopolise Judaism and claim their way as the only way is outrageous and intensely annoying.  But look at the Jewish world here and in Israel through Chessy’s and Oli’s eyes and you will see Reform Judaism as the natural, enjoyable norm.  Which it already is for so many of us and can be for the majority of the Jewish people.

You already have one of the country’s outstanding rabbis in Rabbi Paul Freedman.  To have Rabbi David Mitchell with his enormous talent and with the benefit of his particular journey, working alongside Paul, is truly tremendous.  The Reform Movement is very fortunate to have this community leading us forward, part of the mainstream which gives new life to Judaism and contributes enthusiastically to the modern world and British society.

To David and to all of you: chazak, chazak v’nitchazek.