Disunion

Is it really a shock that there appear to be a bunch of self-hating, liberal, Anti-Zionists at the Reform seminary? Is it any wonder that you go to most reform temples on a Saturday morning and they are appallingly empty, unless there happens to be a Bar/Bat Mitzvah or if it is the “High Holidays”.

Oh Asher. Let’s not sling mud, brother! Come to our shul on Shabbat. We have hundreds of Jews here and this February, for the third year in a row, twenty-five members of our synagogue are traveling to Israel.

Dear Colleagues:

As director of the Yeshiva University Center for Israel Studies, I am pleased to report that from our medical campus to our law school to our undergraduate colleges and our yeshiva, Yeshiva University– the largest Jewish institution of higher learning outside of Medinat Yisrael, is hugely diverse when it comes to Israel.

Our members associate with the right, left and center of the Israel political spectrum. Together we share a committment to the state of Israel, and to Israel everywhere.

The YU Center for Israel Studies, established in 2007, is an expression of the longstanding relationship between Yeshiva University and the land and State of Israel. The center nurtures excellence in interdisciplinary scholarship and the teaching of Israel throughout history and across disciplines, with a keen focus upon the modern state.

We support research, conferences, publications, museum exhibitions, public programs and educational opportunities that enhance awareness and study of Israel in all of its complexities. In our short history, we have already become a national and an international forum for engagement of the political, social, scientific, economic, historical, religious and cultural significance of Israel in the world community.

I invite those who might not have visited YU in a while to visit our campuses, and to meet our students and faculty. Please explore our website, yu.edu/cis, to learn more about the diversity that is Yeshiva University.

Steven Fine,
Professor of Jewish History,
Director, Center for Israel Studies
Yeshiva University

If preachers–Jewish and otherwise–hadn’t gotten involved in the civil rights movement, it probably wouldn’t have happened and certainly wouldn’t have been relatively peaceful; it would have been a full-out war. I personally know one rabbi from that era who spoke out, in spite of some congregants telling him it wasn’t their fight, don’t make such a shtuss. He said it absolutely was their fight: injustice is everybody’s problem. Preachers should take a stand on important issues, especially when they clearly run counter to major tenets of Judaism. People are free to make up their own minds, change congregations, or talk back.

Just in case that last point wasn’t clear enough, it’s interesting to me how the Reform always get held to a double standard the same way Israel does in international opinion. It’s like we can’t wait to use the same tactics antisemites use against us against other Jews.

Is it really news that the Reform are liberal and their seminary is liberal? If the students who went there felt uncomfortable, boo-f’n-hoo. I went to a college wayyyy to the left of me and survived unscathed. Life is challenging sometimes.

When I was living in Jerusalem a few years back, I got to know American students from all the various seminaries (Reform, Conservative, etc). I don’t recall having many political discussions, but I do recall having the distinct impression that the students from HUC were hands down of the lowest caliber intellectually. They had a very weak grasp of Hebrew, Jewish source material and overall knowledge of Judaism and just weren’t very interesting to engage with. It’s not at all surprising that HUC suffers a from left wing group think.

Here in Fort Lauderdale at Temple Bat Yam we have a very diverse crowd of right, left and centre. Saturday services are not huge but our discussions are my favourite part of Shabbat. We are like it says on the money: E Pluribus Unim! I am a proud moderate zionist Reform Jew,thank you!

It isn’t just the the young and students at HUC that are having a problem. During the Yom Kippur sermon, my Rabbi delivered a political rant. In general, I agree with my rabbi. However, his rant on happenings at the URJ, denouncing prime Minister Netanyahu, and why we should support President Obama was totally inappropriate. There was no inkling of morality or ethics or Torah. It was a direct political assault from the bimah. It wasn’t a reasoned or logical argument but simply a rant and it was clear that that to him anything other than what he head decreed was right wing and wrong. The path to social justice will not be found by following political lines but by following Torah and by attention to what our actions mean to other people.

The Jewish community is moving rightwards towards the political center, while young Reform rabbis seem to be moving ever more to the left. This divide can undermine congregations, as people quickly tire of being told their views on public policy are not just mistaken, but morally wrong.

To take an example from the article, many would questions whether it is really a violation of Jewish ethical mandates to oppose public policies that promote reliance on the government to ‘somehow take care of’ the needy.

Young rabbis need to be trained not just to listen respectfully, but to take seriously the views of others. Rabbi Davidson’s quote ridiculing what “most of the Jewish community” thinks about Muslims sets a very poor example.

Rabbis of all political persuasions need to give thoughtful consideration to the range of potentially valid views on an issue before proclaiming that Jewish morality mandates support for a particular policy approach.

As a current first-year HUC rabbinical student in Jerusalem, I see a variety of student opinions, openly expressed, but seldom engaged in dialogue together

Interesting article. There was a diversity of political opinions in the classes at the LA campus when I attended there (2003-08) and yes, the majority of students were political liberals in many ways. However, quite a bunch of us were also proud Zionists. The 2002-03 Year in Jerusalem class were all there during the Second Intifada by choice; we had the option of taking that year later (a choice the school has said it will never offer again). But every one of us felt strongly about standing with Israel at a difficult time.

I recall taking a class on American Jewish Institutions with Dr. Steven Windmueller and he did not speak a single ill word about AIPAC, just the contrary! I naively thought all Jews were liberals (like my friends back home), and he made sure that I became acquainted with AIPAC and with publications like Commentary. I’m not sure about his personal political views. I know that I came away well-equipped to speak and listen intelligently in many different circles; my first congregational position was with a congregation where the majority of members were quite a bit to the right of my personal opinions but we could still study Torah together and learn.

A diversity of opinions and views can enrich our learning, provided we don’t disdain the opportunity to learn with those with whom we disagree. If the current student body is passing up those opportunities out of tender feelings or ill manners, that’s really a shame.

Miriam’s point is also an important one: HUC students begin their rabbinical education with the Year in Israel, and we were at a considerable disadvantage in conversation with students from other movements who were years further along in their educations. I remember the students from other schools who took an attitude of disdain that fulfilled their prejudices about Reform, rather than bothering to get to know us. Thank goodness it wasn’t all of them;

For what it’s worth this is what is going on at the largest synagogue (conservative) in my community. The rabbi supports J Street and New Israel Fund. He never mentions Israel. Recently he said that his congregation should focus on supporting gays and lesbians and also to reach out to the local Muslims.
His recent newsletter to his members decried the sharp drop in synagogue attendance and he wondered if introducing musical instruments is what is needed. He is cold and aloof except for the rich among his congregants.
I no longer belong to any local synagogue because none of them have any genuine Jewish spirit. We are steadily dissolving away and almost no one seems to care.
In Jewish history this seems to be the time when Hashem sends real trouble to remind us of the promise that we made at Sinai.

Anti’zionism’ or whatever you want to call it, is the coin of the left. It’s the price of admission to anything calling itself ‘liberal’. I would no more expect the Refor/Liberal/Lefist/Atheist wing of American Judaism to mount even a weak defense of Israel than I would the ‘moderate liberal’ Islamists in Egypt suggest that perhaps Egypt has a future as an open tolerant society. Reform/Leftist Jews are firmly in the “I love you as long as you love Hamas” camp of Jews and there’s nothing that’s going to change that. Their piety is to the people who hate them. And like every similar minded person from Tom Friedman to Jon Stewart, first and foremost they have stand on the throat of Israel, rhetorically speaking, to fool themselves that the Arabs who mock and hate them will at least tolerate them and ask them to the ball.

Let us support balance, as long as it’s from a completely liberal point of view.
I am appalled at how some on the far left are unable to be open to hear let alone value other points of view.

I was closely associated with a Reform congregation for many years both as a congregant and as part of the lay leadership. I found many Israel supportive friends in the congregation, but was continually at odds with the “professional” leadership, who worked hard to earn the wit’s description of Reform Judaism as the chaplaincy of the Democratic party.

Many Liberals say the essence of Judaism is standing for the oppressed, against injustice and tyranny, etc., and they point to their involvement in the civil rights cause and support of the ground zero mosque as proof. This is utter nonsense.

Liberal Jews can be found marching in support of every protest movement in the world except those supporting their own people. Did they march in support of Meir Kahane, who really only preached self defense. Did they support Peter Bergson or Jonathan Pollard or Gilad Shalit? Not likely, but they are there for Rachel Corrie and Jessie Jackson.

In my experience Liberal and Reform are other ways of saying superficial, intolerant of dissent, uninformed, and endlessly fascinated with themselves. Judaism is the misused and misunderstood hook to let them feel good about themselves.

I have very conflicted feelings about politics being preached from the bimah. Should rabbis speak to the issues of the day? Absolutely.

What I have found, however, both at the Reform congregation I attend regularly and others I have visited, is an assumption that all in the room are already in agreement– And anyone who is not is in the wrong place and should just lump it or leave. Even when I agree with what is being said, this disheartens me greatly. I often feel as though politics are not being just preached, but jammed down my throat on the assumption that I agree.

This example is certainly out there, but at one small congregation I visited, the rabbi quite literally said that anyone who did not agree with his position on gun control was an idiot. He didn’t sort of say it– he actually used the words idiot and stupid, amongst others, multiple times. There was no room for dissent, and his assumption seemed to be that his faithful flock would receive his great wisdom and echo it back to him with adoration- which is essentially what happened. That is not the Judaism I want.

As I said, it’s not always disagreement that bothers me. Like one of the commenters above, my rabbi used his Yom Kippur sermon as an opportunity to deliver a political rant. Although he spoke in animated tones, I was bored to tears because I’d heard it all before. I agreed generally with his sentiment, but I thought it was a horrible, uninspiring and almost areligious sermon. What came from the bimah contributed nothing to the awe of that holy day.

Other occurrences of this type have me almost convinced that it is probably past time to find a new temple, and it may very well not be a Reform temple, sad as that makes me; for I have the utmost respect for Reform Judaism as I believe its founders envisioned it. Yet that vision is vanishing into the clouds of hot air blown ever more vehemently from the pulpit.

Given the age demographics of Reform Judaism (not as bad as Conservative Judaism, but still pretty bad), I wonder why anyone would want to start a career as a Reform rabbi anyway.

I found this article to be incredibly challenging, both because of concerns I had with the comments of my fellow HUC students and because of the way the author turned those comments into a characture of HUC, its students, and the administration.

Overall, I wonder whether it is fair and accurate to make the conclusions that Chandler asks us too, given the limited nature of the comments that the students shared with him.

For a more fully-developed response, please read my blog post from Friday: http://gregweisman.wordpress.com/2011/12/16/what-i-learned-at-huc/

Judaism, as opposed to Protestantism, is based on Mitzvot (laws and commandments). Reform Judaism has taken away this base and they are left with a bunch of blah blah blah comments and ideas that you can see and hear everywhere else and that biol down to “be a nice person”. In short, they have nothing special to offer, and I will be shocked if there is such a thing as Reform Judaism in 50 years.

While HUC claims to be pluralistic, but like all left-wing institutions, they are fascists when it comes to any opinion that isn’t left-wing.

Yeshiva University does not pretend to be anything other than an Orthodox Jewish institution. And, as such, there is a Torah-defined limit to how much bending to left is possible. There are no committees to make up new laws as they see fit.

We should all be careful about the words we use and not throw words like fascist about willy nilly.
Adam Kirsch in his review of Vasily graossman’s book “Life and Fate” refers to a particular paragraph:

“One of the central scenes in the novel is a dialogue between a Gestapo officer, Liss, and a Russian prisoner of war, Mostovskoy, who is an old and loyal Bolshevik. In this dialogue, deliberately patterned after the Grand Inquisitor scene in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, the Nazi tells the Communist that their warring systems are in fact identical: “When we look one another in the face, we’re neither of us just looking at a face we hate—no, we’re gazing into a mirror. That’s the tragedy of our age.”

Quite often, the left or the right goes around a circle and they meet. Much to the detriment of non political citizens.

Like the “Obama hates Isrel” stories, this is mostly ginned up. As a student at HUC Cincinnati in the 90′s, I had a number of prominent professors who were deeply politically conservative. Maybe LA lacks that kind of presence, but that reflects living in LA, not the Reform movement.

As a graduate of the HUC, I found this article quite disturbing, but not for the reasons the author intended.
Despite the author’s own prejudice, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the prevailing mood of HUC being one of social liberalism. Josh Beraha states “The Jewish community needs spiritual leaders who can bring people Torah, they don’t need someone who’s going to read the New York Times and give a sermon about it.” Well, in the Torah that I study there is a great deal of teaching about social justice – you know, all that liberal stuff.
I also wish to point out that it is extremely misleading to label such messages as “political.” Rabbis do not speak about “politics.” They speak about social issues. They do not call for the support of or opposition to Republicans or Democrats. They call for the support of causes which promote true justice and the opposition to that which is harmful or toxic in our society. For the author to label such messages as “political” rather than “social” is to betray the author’s own perspective that there is one political party that cares for such social issues and another that does not, and therefore to address such issues is to engage in politics.
I want to affirm the statement made by Hannah Goldstein – “I think feeling lonely is not the same as being made to feel like an outsider.” With Reform Judaism historically being on the liberal side of social issues, it is not surprising that social conservatives would find themselves in a “lonely” minority in HUC. But there is a vast and important difference between “feeling lonely” and having the institution formally treat one as an “outsider.” The author intentionally attempts to blur that line. Indeed, he even stoops to denying liberal students the right to express their opinions in private conversations with those who are more conservative. It seems that for him, freedom of expression should be limited to those with whom he agrees.

All Judaism, including Reform, speak the language of mitzvot, we just don’t get all weirdly fundamentalist about them, or insist that what was appropriate for the Iron Age makes equal sense today.