Rabbi Nancy Wechsler-Azen
October 7th 2011
Kol Nidrei: Reform Judaism 2011

When you have a garden you care about, do you wonder whether or not you'll choose to tend it? When you have a family you love, do you ask yourself if you have a choice to care about it? When you have a pursuit you are passionate about, would you choose to abandon it? If your health, G-d forbid, is imperiled, would you leave the doctor's orders to convenience?

We all know that we have a light within, a soul, or in Hebrew, neshama. Regardless of what we call it, knowing we've got something inside that is uniquely ours, would we want to neglect it or leave its' care to whim?

On this sacred night of Kol Nidrei, I'd like to begin a conversation about the possibility that being a serious Reform Jews at this moment in history is no longer about putting "convenience" at the forefront of our practice, but instead, making a commitment to humble exploration of the spiritual potential in the ancient, contemporary and yet to be discovered paths Judaism has carved out for us.

Here in California, in what was once called the Wild West, we know what it means to stake a claim. This evening I want us to consider the possibility of allowing Judaism to stake a claim on each of us, and what it might do for our lives. The word "claimed" has something of a negative connotation, but I'd like to think about it in a positive and powerful way, such as being claimed by something or someone beloved.

We treasure being claimed as someone's trusted friend where, through the grace of time we have earned the privilege of being a confidant. We treasure being claimed by a partner; a beloved as no other. When our little ones ran straight toward us, with open arms, calling out Momma or Dada after a morning at day care, there was nothing like that moment of being claimed. In fact, to be claimed in these ways, inspires us to stretch higher, to be more generous and loving.

On Erev Rosh Hashana I spoke with you about faith and the invitation to discover your own Bar of Gold. The parable of the Bar of Gold taught that having an enduring faith helps us cope with the volatility of life. Having faith may not change an outcome, but gives us the tools to live with dignity and courage. Having faith permits us to walk through the valley of the shadow because G-d's rod and staff comfort us. Faith is our inheritance, faith deepens the quality of our life, and helps us to stay present throughout this amazing journey.

The question is how do we nurture that kind of faith? How can we remember to stay conscious of G-d through the myriad of chaos that bombards our waking and sleeping hours? Tonight I want to share with you how, for me, faith is tended and why it matters to the quality of living.

About eight years ago, I started tilling the soil of my soul in some new ways. It was something like planting a few seeds, and watering them to see what might grow. It began with the seed of a question about why there was so much difference among Jews. Why some Jewish people were deeply observant and others found what they did, absolutely archaic. In some cases there was a hostile divide between those who did and those who did not. Why?

I also began thinking about the term we are called throughout the Torah, "Am Segula", a treasured people and what kind of claim that lofty title had on me. So, I started to gather information and discovered that there were beautiful practices built right into Judaism that made sense to me as a path to feeling closer to G-d. As I tried them on, I did feel more grounded, G-d centered and confident in being Jewish.

Honestly I am not sure what came first, loving G-d or as one of our children used to call G-d, "G-dy." "I love G-dy" she'd say, to which I'd reply, "me too!" or mtizvot. Did the love come first that prompted me toward mitzvot, or was it doing the mitzvot that created more room to love G-d? I am not sure, but slowly, with a growing sense of being claimed by Judaism, I have found myself quietly building a more observant Jewish life. The practices enrich my life and while I don't quite have the language yet for explaining it, they give me a sense that there is something more enduring than the years I've been given in this lifetime.

If there was any single concern I've had in my journey exploring Jewish practices and more traditional beliefs, it was whether choosing to become more observant would distance me from the Reform movement.

After all, we keep a kosher home - meat dishes, cutlery, and dairy dishes, cutlery etc. We don't seek to eat traif outside our home either. Our children have learned to ask before setting the table, "meat or dairy?" That "meat or dairy" question is meaningful to us because it suggests - that there is thought process going on about eating and that they know that we are eating in a particularly Jewish way.

We say a blessing before eating and drinking. I figure it all tastes better with G-d. I kiss the mezuzah when I enter the synagogue or a house and when I leave. Truly, I cannot remember when our last words before sleep were not Sh'ma Yisrael and I awaken each morning with Modeh Ani, thanking G-d that I am still here.

Judaism teaches that when we go to sleep at night, our soul actually leaves our body and carouses in places I can only imagine. The fact that our soul finds its' way back to the right body, is a reason to say thank you.

Going to sleep this way and waking up this way, makes me feel connected with something Greater and that is a very comforting feeling.

It may sound like a riddle, but what am I? All those prayers, long skirts, baking challah on Fridays, chanting in Hebrew, shutting down computer and television during Shabbat, chanting M'chayeh ha-maytim during the Amida prayer, and returning to Jerusalem to study. And even watching my speech. That one, watching out for l'shon harah, gossip, become a mitzvah with our beloved Jenny Jeffrey.

Jenny and I kept hand sanitizer in our offices, and when it looked as though our words might be on the verse of l'shon harah, the Hebrew phrase for negative speech, even a hint of negative speech, we'd open palms and give a squirt of hand sanitizer. That little reminder to watch our speech as well as the other observances over the year have made me feel more in sinc with who I want to be.

Given the list of these observances that are now part of my life, it might seem that I've taken flight from Reform Judaism.

At the same time, if Jewish observances, from a place of joyfully accepting the yoke of mitzvot, bring a sense of peace and alignment with G-d, then what makes them negative in any way?

I am entering some new places of learning and practice and at the same time, I am so proud to be a Reform Jew, in particular for the contribution our movement has made through Social Action. Ours is the movement that made the Kabbalistic terms, Tikkun Olam, Healing the World, almost a household name for social action. The ethics of our movement reflect my values so I know that I am in the correct place.

This summer at the rabbinic seminar in Jerusalem, there were over a hundred rabbis from many Jewish denominations. When asked what I was most excited about in my rabbinical life, I told them about ACT, Area Congregations Together, the social advocacy interfaith group we are part of.

I told them about the Emancipation Shower we hold in the spring for Foster Youth reaching the last years of government supported foster care subsidies. I told them about strength that came from researching policy on Foster Youth.

When I told them that we held the well attended Action in our Sanctuary and that our voices were part of getting a bill AB12 passed which improved the lives of thousands Foster Youth throughout California, they were blown away. That is Reform Judaism in action, working on the behalf of innocent folk who fall beneath most radars.

When we hold our November Good Neighbors' Dinner for the apartment complex next door for the sake of Shalom Bayit, peace in our greater house, I am proud to be a Reform Jew.

And on February 12th when we at Congregation Beth Shalom host Anat Hoffman, the director of the Israel Action Center in Jerusalem, the founder of the Women of the Wall, who annually is arrested for praying with a Torah at the Wall because she believes in a Judaism that is egalitarian, I am proud to be a Reform Jew and part of that historical struggle.

At the same time, what fuels the Social Justice? To be truly effective, it needs to be more than an impulse, more than emotional temperature to fight for the rights of the oppressed. Our tradition says, "Love your neighbor as yourself for remember you were once slaves in the land of Egypt." And the High Holiday Torah readings are all about social justice, but sometimes we forget that this is the essence of our religion.

At this point in my life, social justice work longs to be grounded in G-d and a faith that says this is what I am called to do. That faith muscle needs to be kept strong; one way is through living Jewish with more daily reminders, another term for observance.

When attending rabbinic conferences both in the United States and in Israel, I have come to see that how I feel is not so far off the mark of 21st century Reform Judaism. Reform is the name of our movement, not Reformed.

Reform means that we are in motion, more verb than noun with an understanding that our Judaism continues to grow. Those who suggest we should stay the same, sing the same tunes, act the same, observe the same rituals the way we always have, may be seeking comfort, and at the same time are mistaking Reform for reformed.

A dear friend and Reform Rabbi, Leon Morris wrote how he sees change afoot in American Reform Judaism. Rabbi Morris suggests that Reform is crying out for an ideological reorientation and that there is one thing we need to retire once and for all - and that is the phrase, "Personal Choice" as a definer of Reform Judaism. I am aware that bringing up the phrase "Personal Choice" as a negative statement is tricky as "choice" in reproductive rights is something that I and our movement support.

However, as a defining statement of who we are as a movement to say, "Reform is all about doing whatever fits, whatever you want, it's your choice" has the reverse affect our founders envisioned. The problem really has to do with the words "personal choice."

If personal choice is about passionate choices to deepen faith, then it is the choice I exercise to delve more deeply into Jewish observance. However, if personal choice means making a lazy choice to avoid commitment, then that is something that desperately needs to be replaced or at least turned around.

Instead of becoming a strong rational people steeped in tradition and making educated, modern decisions, our movement has sadly become synonymous for being defining 'choice' as lazy and hence our movement has been equated as dumbed down and diluted "Oh, we don't do that, we're Reform" as though being a member of the Reform Movement is license for not learning, or showing up or practicing and in its' place perpetuating generation after generation a weaker echo of our incredible tradition and people.

Reform Judaism was created in part to help our people blend into the non-Jewish world so that the next generation of children could attend public schools, college, own property and develop professions. Reform Judaism was created to provide what our German leaders called "Weishenshaft des Judentums", the scientific study of Judaism.

Reform Judaism was created to reduce the particularity of Judaism and enlarge the universalistic values found in Western culture and part of that meant making Social Action a cornerstone piece. Reform Judaism was created to be an egalitarian expression of our faith and enhance services with instrumental music as well as edit the non-rational liturgical pieces. And perhaps undeclared, Reform was created to finally be able to pass in whatever host country as not too Jewish.

As a result of those efforts, there has been success in the arena of fitting into the non-Jewish world. At the same time there has been a depreciation in being a learned, skilled and confident Jewish people.

Hence the countless times I have heard the sentence, "I didn't have much of a Jewish upbringing - we were Reform", as though being raised as Reform is synonymous with knowing little and doing little. My reaction in hearing our movement downgraded to watered down grape juice, is beginning to shift. Instead of just shutting down in sorrow, I am beginning to hear what is truly being said underneath the self-deprecation which is, "I really feel helpless and embarrassed in all I don't know about Judaism and I don't know where to start."

What they may be looking for, is a spiritually vital Jewish life line thrown to them in the ocean of the secular.

The problem or better said, opportunity, is that we have to awaken the thirst, the desire to have a connection with something Greater than Ourselves. Jewish observance is our pedagogy for how to walk with G-d.

Trying on new things, or practices our parents or even grandparents disregarded is a little humbling, but that's okay.

I think about Franz Rosenzweig, an influential German Jewish existentialist thinker (1886-1929). Rosenzweig belonged to an assimilated Jewish family with little attachment to Judaism or Jewish life. He himself, although extremely well educated in general German culture and especially proficient in the classics of philosophy, had, at first, hardly any Jewish knowledge. A cousin of his who had become a Christian urged Rosenzweig to take the same step. The story has often been told of how Rosenzweig felt that if he was to be converted to Christianity he ought to do so at least as a more knowledgeable Jewish person, so he attended a traditional synagogue in Berlin on Yom Kippur. While not understanding much of the Hebrew, there he was so profoundly overcome by the devotion of the worshippers as they sought forgiveness from the G-d of their ancestors that he realized there was no need for him to find his salvation outside his ancestral faith. Judaism was all that he needed.

Rosenzweig's approach was subjective also in connection with the mitzvot, Jewish observances. As a fully assimilated German, he believed in the gradual approach in which the observances slowly made their impact by "ringing a bell" for him.

Typical of this approach is Rosenzweig's answer to someone who asked him whether he had taken on a specific Jewish practice, like wearing a Tallis. "Not yet," he replied. Not yet.

The risk of feeling awkward by trying something new can create new realms of positive Jewish self esteem and authenticity that we've never quite experienced before.

For starters, what might happen if more of us said, "Sh'ma Yisrael" every night before going to sleep? What would happen if all of us lit candles every Shabbat and said blessings before eating and drinking? What if we avoided the grocery store and malls on Shabbat and Holy Days just to give retail therapy a break? If the kids do sports, bring grape juice and challah to the bleachers. What if we made a plan to learn Torah on Shabbat Morning not because it might be fun, but because studying Torah is what leads us to G-d and spiritual health? What if we made a commitment not to gossip? What might happen if we all put up mezuzahs on our doorposts and gave them a kiss before entering to remind ourselves to bring G-d with us?

And, what might happen if we practiced eating more Jewishly by not mixing meat and milk and not eating pig or shellfish for no other reason really, than the claim of Judaism calls us to avoid them and we are claimed by that Jewish religion.

A recent book by Rabbi David Hartman, founder of the Hartman Institute in Jerusalem is called The G-d who hates Lies. Hartman confronts the reader, asking us to consider what we do or don't do Jewishly and why.

Rabbi Hartman, a deeply rational observant Jew who is devoted to experiencing G-d in his life, turns 90 this year, and believes that the reason he prays daily and puts on t'fillin, watches his speech and keeps kosher is for one thing and one thing alone. It by living a Jewishly observant life that he continues to grow his faith.

Seeing himself as claimed by Judaism, and in love with G-d, Rabbi Hartman is enters a place of G-d consciousness, which in his book calls, G-d Intoxicated, not accessible by any other portal. The years still pass all too quickly yet instead of experiencing Judaism like a person blithely skimming flat stones across the water, we might try on the metaphor of calmly and deliberately planting seeds deep into rich soil.

A garden isn't grown in one day. It takes time, thought, love and discipline. But mostly it requires a feeling like the invitation to live Jewish is meant for us personally.

I know that in our synagogue family, some have become curious and have tried on more observance while increasing their Jewish learning. My prayer is that we at Congregation Beth Shalom will become known as the Reform synagogue where exploring Jewish practice is welcome and expanding the boundaries what we've always done before, is encouraged.

Age, and generation need not limit our ability to grow. When we move the definition of "choice as convenience" away from center stage of the Reform mission statement, other more worthy and urgent values come into focus. In fact, when solid faith fuels our commitment to Social Action, we can move mountains.

May this be a year of deepening our personal Jewish observance, uplifting the Reform Movement through our re-engagement with tikkun olam, healing the world as well as time proven Jewish spiritual practices. Let's move beyond the limitations of what we think "Reform" means and taste evermore the sweetness of G-d.

Amen