Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Jewish Life Without Jewish Standards

                                                Jewish Life Without Jewish Standards

By Sherwin Pomerantz

Over the last week or so there has been a flurry of commentary resulting from a piece penned by Daniel Kirzane, a Wexner Graduate Fellow and rabbinical student at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York City, where he also earned a master’s degree in Jewish education.

Last October he delivered a sermon at HUC-JIR entitled, “Open the Door: Our Reform Duty to Open HUC-JIR to Applicants and Students with Non-Jewish Partners.” His continued dialogue on this issue has appeared in Reform Judaism Magazine and is forthcoming in Sh’ma: A Journal of Jewish Ideas.  His basic thesis is that the Reform movement should relax its long standing position against admitting people into their rabbinic program when they are married to non-Jewish partners.

In his defense of his position he states:

Rabbis, cantors, and Jewish educators are “symbolic exemplars” of Jewish life. Thus, when we state requirements of entry into these roles, we state what’s most important to us. Sadly, we currently make this statement negatively. You cannot be a rabbi if you have a non-Jewish partner. Instead, let us declare our values positively by stating explicitly which qualities the Reform movement’s preeminent educational institution deems essential to professional Jewish leadership. Perhaps we should require our students to demonstrate (1) a mindful Shabbat practice, (2) an ethical dietary practice, and (3) a sustained commitment to social justice.

This is certainly a strangely illogical sequence of thoughts.  On the one hand he admits that the religious leaders of the community are “symbolic exemplars” of Jewish life.  As such, one would expect that independent of the choice any individual Jews makes regarding his or her significant other, if one chooses to be  a ”religious leader” within Judaism one needs to be an example of basic Jewish values.  So logic would dictate that the profession of rabbi, cantor, or Jewish educator, demands that such people see Jewish marriage as an imperative, for them. 

With an intermarriage rate in the US of over 50% clearly who one marries is not a critical factor for large segments of the Jewish community.  But if someone chooses religious leadership as a profession, it would seem that he or she should also value Jewish tradition by upholding such a basic value as Jewish marriage.

Critics of the non-Orthodox streams of Jewish observance will be quick to point out, of course, that this is a natural progression resulting from the relaxation of other rules and regulations which then allows people like Kirzane to reduce the importance of Jewish marriage to a lower place in the ranking of critical characteristics that contribute to our long term viability as a people.  And they may be right.  

No doubt, we also did our diaspora communities a major disservice as well when we, 40 years ago, began to elect intermarried lay people to positions of leadership in religious organizations. 
  
Nevertheless, if there are no red lines at all, even within Reform; if there really is nothing that cannot be breached in the name of modernity, then we are left with just a shell of a religion.   The Reform movement will be doing Judaism a disservice larger than their decision on patrilineal descent if they accede to this push to de-Judaize the institution of marriage as it applies to its religious leadership.      

It was Abraham Lincoln who said “Important principles may and must be inflexible.”  That is as true today as it was when he said it.   It is sad that the Kirzanes of the world don’t understand that.
 

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