Rabbi's Corner

PESACH 5768

By Rabbi Steven Saltzman

Today, I want to talk to you about what it means to be a Conservative Jew because I think a lot of us understand it in superficial terms.

 Rabbi Harold Kushner, in his lecture here at the Adath Israel Congregation, suggested that if you ask an orthodox Jew what Orthodoxy stands for, he will answer in 2 words: Torah UMitzvot…Torah and the Commandments.

Ask a Reform Jew what Reform stands for and she will answer you in 2 words: Tikkun Olam…Social Justice.

Ask a Conservative Jew what Conservative Judaism stands for and he will hand you a 48 page brochure.

My friends, there is no single definition of what it means to be a Conservative Jew and anyone who would proffer one idea that fits all is misguided.  With this in mind, I will propose to you, this morning, my personal ideas about what I think it means to be a Conservative Jew in Canada here in the Adath Israel Congregation.

My formula for Conservative Judaism can be expressed not in two words as with Orthodoxy and Reform, but in 3 words—after all, being a Conservative Jew is more complicated than being Orthodox or Reform.

Data BeMoaH PatuaH.  Data is the Aramaic Feminine Form of Din meaning Law, Jewish Law, religious law.  Data BeMoaH PatuaH means “Jewish law with an open mind.”  In other words to be a Conservative Jew, to my way of thinking, is to be what I call, a traditional non-fundamentalist Jew.

By traditional, I mean that we are committed to Jewish law and the practice of Judaism in accordance with that corpus of law that goes back in a chain of thought and practice for more than 3000 years, back to the time of the Torah itself.

By non-fundamentalist, I mean that when we study that law or any sacred text, we are intellectually free to bring every discipline of thought that we can to bear on our understanding and interpretation of the law: from history and philosophy, to literature, music and art.

The 18th century, Rabbi Nahman of Breslov (1722-1810) wrote: Pharaoh is King of Mitsrayim, the King of Egypt. He rules over the Maytzarim, the narrow places—the constrictions of the mind, the limitations of awareness.

And finally, the 21st century, Rabbi Art Green wrote “our own innermost liberation is our coming out of Egypt; our own moment of truth is our standing before God at Sinai,” where God gave the Law to Israel.” Now combine the centuries, Rabbi Horowitz’s freedom to think with Rabbi Green’s implied obligation to practice Jewish law and the result is traditional non-fundamentalist, Conservative Judaism.

All my adult life, I have been a Conservative Jew practicing Halakhic Judaism with an open mind to the world around me and today more than ever I affirm my Conservative Judaism, in the spirit of Solomon Schechter.  I could not imagine an intellectual life in any other movement of Judaism other than the Conservative Movement.

My ordination is from the rabbinical school of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTSA).  My doctorate is in Jewish Law and Talmud and is also from the graduate school of the JTSA, and for more than 20 years I have been a sitting member of the High Court of Justice of the Rabbinical Assembly and JTSA. Every posting that I have ever had as a congregational rabbi has been in a Conservative Shul affiliated with the Unite Synagogue of Conservative Judaism (USCJ) or its international arm the Masorati Olami.

I used to be a believer in the big tent theory of Conservative Judaism; a tent large enough to cover both the students of Rabbi Mordechai Kaplan on the left and the students of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel on the right; a tent conceived in freedom and dedicated to the propositions of mutual respect, support and kindness; what we call pluralism. But over the last number of years that tent has shrunk and tolerance for divergent definitions of what it means to be a Conservative Jew has shrunk with it. No longer do we find the loving acceptance of other possibilities and a respect for divergent beliefs. As Rabbi Avinoam Sharon, a prominent Conservative rabbi, recently commented: “We are not the big tent. We should be. But whenever the phrase comes up...it is in a context that proves that we are really a circle of outward facing lean-tos.”

Rabbi Harold Kushner, one of the great thinkers of our day, writing in the latest edition of Conservative Judaism, the intellectual journal of our movement writes: “…Halakhic Judaism is no longer viable.”  In other words, Rabbi Kushner is saying that Halakhic Judaism in the Conservative Movement is no longer an option, it is not viable and by extension those who uphold it are not viable.  What does he propose in its place? He suggests Meta-halakhic Judaism.  Something beyond Halakhic Judaism, beyond the law; a Judaism in which decisions of ritual law and practice are made by how people feel and what people are doing and what they think is right. It sounds good; it sounds democratic; it sounds a lot like Reform Judaism to me. 
Rabbi Neil Gillman, professor of theology at the JTSA and one of the intellectual arbiters of our movement, speaking about Halakhic Conservative Judaism wrote and I paraphrase for clarity: To say that we are Halakhic Jews and that is how we identify ourselves is disingenuous.  According to Gillman: “The whole idea of being Halakhic is subverted by the culture of our movement, by its academic centre and by its implicit theology.” Do you understand what he is saying? He argues that the culture and the theology of the Conservative Movement in the United States subverts, undermines and renders Halakhic Judaism impossible. Instead, Rabbi Gillman suggests that we are all Aggadic Jews, or theological Jews.

Others are even more vitriolic in their criticisms of Traditional Conservative Judaism. Karen G. Reiss Medwed writes and I paraphrase: Any congregation that is not egalitarian is fundamentally unethical and immoral.  Egalitarianism is the defining characteristic of our movement.  That is who we are.  Indeed, 90% of all the Conservative congregations in North America are fully egalitarian.

Rabbi Menachem Creditor, in last weeks Jewish Telegraphic Agency, is quoted as saying that “Purposeful pluralism has its limits and not all options are acceptable. Pluralism can’t come with all options.” In other words, we can only tolerate tolerance so far. Creditor’s supporters feel that it is impossible to coexist with non-egalitarian congregations--as a matter of principle.

These aren’t the words of the big tent. I am not prepared to be threatened nor am I prepared to be told ab initio that Halakhic Conservative Judaism is dead; that I am a dinosaur and will some day go the way of the Dodo bird; that I am an archaic remnant of a bygone era, or that my non-egalitarian position is immoral.  I am insulted when American Conservative Jews tell us that we, Canadians, are a generation behind them and that we should grow up and give it up and join their club. What the Americans don’t understand is that Canada is a sovereign nation and that we, the Jews of Canada are a unique Jewish culture. We are not behind the Americans. We are different than the Americans and not simply an extension of American Judaism.  I am not a post-halakhic Jew, a meta-halakhic Jew, or an aggadic Jew. I am no longer an American Jew. I am a Canadian Conservative Halakhic Jew!!

We have left the USCJ and for the first time in my professional life I am the rabbi of non-USCJ congregation.  I am no less a Conservative rabbi because of it and this congregation is no less a Conservative Congregation for having left it. And, we will continue to be a Conservative Congregation in the future because belonging to the USCJ doesn’t define who is or is not a Conservative Jew and which congregation is or is not a Kosher Conservative congregation.  Beth Shalom is a Conservative Shul and Beth Emeth is a Conservative Shul and they are very successful congregations at that and neither one belongs to the USCJ.

Perhaps, we could have endured the insults and epithets from the leadership of the American Conservative movement and for a nominal fee, remained a member of the USCJ. But the back-breaking issues were really the issues of service for money and the issue of control over our own destiny

This year we received a bill from the USCJ for $93,500.  $93,500, that is approximately three times our adult education budget and twice our youth budget. Other synagogues in Toronto have received similar bills or even higher.  No one really pays these absurd fees because upon receipt of these bills every Conservative Congregation in Toronto behaves as if they were contestants on Let’s Make a Deal.  Oh, yes, the synagogues negotiate secret and private deals with the USCJ to pay less than they should or cook their membership roster to reflect far fewer members than they really have to reduce their assessment.  Strange, especially considering that those congregations who have voted to remain in the USCJ must surely be proud to be members of this organization. Or are they? Let’s see what they have to proud of.

What exactly have we gotten for the almost one million dollars that the Adath Israel Congregation alone has paid in dues over the last 20 years that I have been here in Toronto. What has the USCJ done for us in Toronto, in our own community?

1. No USCJ youth programs to speak of.
2.  No USCJ Mikveh.
3.  No Kashrut supervision.
4.  No money for our Joint Hebrew High School of 5 Congregations.
5.  No money for failing Hebrew schools and no ideas about how to resurrect supplementary Jewish education in our congregations.
6.  No money to lobby in Ottawa the way the American USCJ lobbies in Washington, D.C.
7.  No USCJ ongoing adult education program
8. No support for small congregations like the late Sha’arei Hayyim congregation that went bankrupt several years ago. The only support they received from the USCJ was some pamphlets that were sent to them from NYC on how to raise money.
9. No support for USDS when they needed money. The AI and other congregations raised and donated the money to them outside of USCJ auspices.
10. No financial support from the USCJ or any arm of the international Conservative movement for a traditional siddur for the traditional congregations of Toronto. Eventually, the siddur had to be printed privately, supported by money raised in our congregations outside of the USCJ. It is this siddur that we will begin using on the seventh day of Pesah.

IN OTHER WORDS for the millions of dues dollars paid in sum by all the Conservative congregations of Toronto over the last 20 years, we have nothing.

1. The USCJ HAS NO PRESENCE WHATSOEVER IN OUR COMMUNITY and cannot point to a single substantive, enduring accomplishment over this 20 year period.

No wonder the congregations are (to put it kindly) “reticent” about paying their dues.  The international USCJ in NYC keeps 55% of every dollar we collect.  We get to use the balance, which after rent for the office and salaries for the staff leaves no money at all for programming. The very little that is done, as local executive directors of the USCJ have privately reported over the years, has to have the approval of the NY office.  NY controls even the small amount of money we are allowed to keep. They hire and fire the executive director and that person is responsible to NY and issues reports to NY about what goes on here in Toronto.  We have little control and we have no money and they have no vision. That is why we left the USCJ.

How will our leaving affect the very small number of Canadian children should they decide to participate in USY on Wheels or the USY Pilgrimage. Well, any child in the city can pay a nominal fee and belong to any chapter of USY anywhere and without attending a single meeting be eligible to go on these trips.  Our leaving the USCJ doesn’t effect our commitment to Ramah or to USDS, and does not restrict the sisterhood or brotherhood which are independent organizations in the Conservative Movement nor will our exodus effect placement of clergy. 

We are now searching for a cantor. And without utilizing any of the affiliated organizations of the Conservative movement we have attracted 13 candidates, some of whom work in affiliated Conservative congregations and many who don’t. Not one candidate came from or through the USCJ or the Cantor’s Assembly.  And, for rabbis, any RA rabbi can apply to a non-USCJ congregation with the permission of the RA placement commission. 

When we left the USCJ, Dr. Raymond Goldstein the International President of the USCJ and Rabbi Jerome Epstein, the International Executive Vice President wrote a letter which was disseminated to all of the regions of the USCJ and in it they wrote: “We are pained that a few misguided congregations may choose to deprive their members…of this richness (of their organization—my clarification). This decision is both short-sighted and selfish.” 

Yes, my friends when these leaders of the Movement don’t get their way, they are reduced to foot stamping, to name calling and insults. So, let me introduce you to our misguided and short-sighted President and our misguided and short-sighted Board of Governors and allow me to introduce myself, to you. I am your misguided, myopic rabbi. And, I confess; I am also selfish.  If Goldstein and Epstein define selfish as a desire to see Conservative Judaism flourish in Toronto, yes, than I am selfish.  If by selfish, they mean that I don’t want to make a donation of $93,500 to their 1950’s bureaucratic behemoth in NY, then they are correct. I am selfish. If by selfish, they mean that I want to take control of our destiny in Toronto away from the Americans who would impose an ideological hegemony over us, then yes, I am selfish. And if by short-sighted they mean that I can see a local organization, an alliance of Canadian Conservative Shuls, including the Adath Israel Congregation, the Beth Shalom and the Beth Emet, who represent over 4 thousand families, over 10 thousand Conservative Jews, raising money in the Toronto Conservative community, for Toronto Conservative Judaism, run by the Toronto Conservative synagogues free from outside constraints and meddling, where we do not answer to a phone-machine in NY but, to you, our congregants and our boards of governors; if this is what it means to be short-sighted, then yes, I am both selfish and short-sighted.  If by short-sighted they mean that we will direct every dollar, and 100% of each and every dollar collected, not to NY, but to youth programming in Toronto, to combined adult education, to supplementary school revitalization, to Hebrew high school supplementary education here in Toronto, if this is what it means to be short-sighted and selfish, then, yes, they are correct, I am guilty as charged. I am misguided and I am short-sighted and I am very, very selfish.

Truth be told, it is the USCJ that is selfish and short-sighted. They refuse to reinvent themselves in a Conservative environment in which nearly half of all Conservative adults are age 55 and over making our movement the oldest Jewish movement. Between 1990 and 2000, 255,000 Jews departed the Conservative movement leaving only 660,000 members in the Movement; down from two and a half million Jews only forty years ago. In this ten year period between 1990 and 2000, we have seen the equivalent of a drop off of 2,125 members per month or one very large congregation per month. If the decline in the Conservative Movement continues at this pace, we will fall behind Orthodoxy and become the third largest movement in North American Judaism by 2010.  And this precipitous decline is happening despite all of the ritual innovations, the pandering to what’s in vogue and the compromises that the American Conservative Movement has made.  They may be post-Halakhic, meta-Halakhic or Aggadic Jews, but no one is buying the product. I ask you then, who is short-sighted? We Canadians Jews, who like British, French and Israeli Conservative Jews wish to claim our sovereign right to fashion our own unique Jewish future or they who wish to keep us in organizational servitude to them; we who look to a future filled with growth, or they who are mired in their past glories and their future continued decline. We who want to practice Halakhic, open-minded Conservative Judaism or they who are floundering in a post-modern morass? Who is short-sighted?

Dr. Jacob Ukeles, a consultant for the USCJ wrote after his involvement in a three year effort to design a strategic plan to reorganize the USCJ’s 22 separate departments and 15 regional offices that progress has been “glacially slow.” Scott A. Shay, author of Getting our Groove Back, How to Energize American Jewry writes “that as of 2006, five years have passed since the USCJ first identified the need for institutional reform, yet little has changed. The USCJ bureaucracy makes the US Department of Agriculture appear positively dynamic. To put it bluntly, the leadership of Conservative Judaism is floundering in a bureaucratic quagmire.” My friends, the USCJ needs a new mission statement; they need to understand that it is no longer 1948 but 2008. They need to dismantle their central office, radically downsize it, re-organize it and re-think their relationship with the regions. They need to decentralize the operation and allow the individual regions autonomous control over affairs and funding. But they will never do this, not until more congregations like ours leave this misguided, short-sighted and selfish relic of the past. By the time the USCJ gets the message, by the time they make the changes, there won’t be any Conservative Jews. They will have been absorbed by either the Reform or Modern Orthodox movements or they will have gone over to the Village Shul or Chabad.

Some people want the Adath Israel Congregation to go back to Egypt, to those small places, to the maytzarim, back to an ideologically intolerant group of people who use the words “big tent” and “pluralism” like a mantra, but who don’t practice it; back to a failed organization that no longer represents the interests of its regions; back to an American organization that can’t understand the uniqueness of the Canadian Jewish experience. Some of us are afraid of freedom of thought and freedom to act. These people would have us relinquish control of who and what we are and who and what we want to become and put us back into the hands of the bureaucrats and apparatchiks in New York.  What shall we do? Shall we abandon everything we know to be just and right? Shall we sell out our future and collapse back into the past hoping that somehow everything will turn out right? Shall we wait another ten years and waste another million dollars until the USCJ reinvents itself? Toronto Conservative Jewry cannot wait any longer nor can we waste any more money. We have a new world of Conservative Judaism to build here in our own city, with any Conservative synagogue that chooses to join us, with our own money, with our own talent, with our own vision. We have everything to gain if we work hard and together to make this happen. But, if we capitulate, we stand to loose our identity as Canadian Jews living a uniquely Canadian Jewish life, and capitulate to people who cannot and never will understand the beauty and the uniqueness of being a Canadian Jew.

In closing, allow me the words of Moses, words that he addressed to the Jewish people on the plains of Moah, as they were about to enter into a new land.  He said to them Hiszku VeImtzu, Be strong and be bold, Al Tiru, Don’t be afraid and don’t be frightened, because God is the one going with you.

Hazak VeMatz
AMEN