A-Z OF JEWISH VALUES

A-Z OF JEWISH VALUES -

A IS FOR ATMOSPHERE

Everyone should have an ‘ology according to Maureen Lipman. To get on in life, you have to have some ‘ology or other as your speciality.

I want to start 2005 with an ‘ology which you may or may not have heard of: Axiology. Axiology means the study of values. And I want to introduce to you Jewish Axiology and more particularly, Reform Jewish Axiology. Let me explain.

There is a great need to define where we stand as Reform Jews on all important issues. To explain – to ourselves and to others, what makes us Reform. Reform is all too often defined negatively – in terms of what we don’t believe and don’t do. This creates a negative image. Values – what we value, what we consider good or bad – what principles we maintain – if we could set these out in a way we can all remember and absorb and repeat – this would give us a positive self-definition as Reform Jews.

This was given to me as a project a couple of years ago, by the AOR, when this booklet: ‘What is Reform Judaism’ was launched. It’s very good, it’s a handy introduction. What it needs is a philosophy behind it. It has been sent to every member some months ago, just in case you did not receive one, we’ve given some out with weekly notices. There is also Faith and Practice by Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain; it covers a wide range of subjects and explains the differences between Reform and Orthodox on them all.

If our form of Judaism is to be successful we need to be well informed. It’s not easy to uphold a religious position. It takes a lot of knowledge and thought, even if you’ve been involved in it for many years.

I’ve set myself a project. To define Reform Jewish values from A-Z (probably also from Alef-Tav) I would like to invite all of you to be involved in this project too. And I want to find every conceivable way of getting the message out there, beyond the walls of this schule.

So where shall we begin? A is for so many things:

Action, (not just belief but action) the opposite of which is apathy;

Another A: acculturation- to what extent is it good or bad to assimilate our Judaism to the ways of our surrounding English culture;

Abstinence (should we give up things); atonement is a value to which this might apply;

Aesthetics - the value of making Judaism beautiful, art;

Autonomy & Authority: these are big issues which we must address: who decides what I should do as a Reform Jew?

These and others can be dealt with under the heading of other letters of the Alphabet, (like R for rabbis and D for Democracy).

Whilst we’re in the A’s: shouldn’t we also look at agnosticism, even atheism?
Please give me your responses. What I’m asking you is for you to give me your questions and your responses; your suggestions for topics; and ways of discussing them. In the coming weeks and months, I’ll be using my weekly message, the Torah and Haftarah Commentaries, and the Study passage. I’d also like you to join me in dialogue through study sessions, and the columns of Hadashot, our Shul magazine. And I want to find ways of reaching the Jewish press and radio.

I want to focus on one word beginning with A – and deal with others another time.

The word is simply AIR. Maybe it’s not strictly a value, though we can’t do without it.

Air – or if you prefer ‘atmosphere’. The Hebrew word for it begins with an Aleph: Avirah.

As Reform Jews we place a high value on the atmosphere, the ambience we create. It is extremely important, it’s enough to decide whether one keeps up an association with a shul community or not. Issues of aesthetics and art are associated with it.

The opposite of creating atmosphere is acting automatically. Mouthing prayers mechanically.

And there’s Accessibility – being able to follow. Announcement – of page numbers, and so on…

It would be wrong to claim that Atmosphere is a particularly Reform thing. Orthodox shuls set great store by the Chazzan the cantor. Our booklet states:

‘the musical tradition of the British Reform is largely a choral one though there is a renewed interest in some communities in cantorial music, hazanut.’

This updates what Rabbi Romain writes in Faith and Practice (p.102) where it says “The demise of the chazzan has not been a deliberate policy….

There will undoubtedly be varying views concerning values. It would be pointless if all we were to do is list a load of things which we can agree to like love and motherhood. There will be conflicting values.

There are some values we could give more weight to, for example: we all agree that children’s education is a Good Thing.

But the alphabet begins with A and A is for adult, and children’s commitment follows that of the adults they admire. Children are the future of course, and the future begins now with the present and the present is Us.

In a plane you are told that if the air pressure suddenly drops, don’t worry, oxygen masks will come down to every passenger. If there is a child travelling with you, who should receive the mask first? Not the child. The adult. Place the mask over your face first and then attend to the child. If you can’t breathe you can’t help the child. That’s the rule. Similarly, make Torah teaching like the air you breathe and then pass it on to the next generation.

What makes for a Reform atmosphere? Togetherness. Boys and girls, men and women together. Not just sitting together. Saying and singing the prayers together.

It actually goes further. A is for affection. There is a strict prohibition against kissing in schule (in front of the Ark) – and that goes for brides and grooms under the chuppah and adults kissing children. The reason is precisely to do with axiology, with values.

Torah is a higher value than family – so you mustn’t put family above Torah.

You kiss the mezuzah, you kiss the Torah, you kiss the fringes of your tallit during the 3^rd paragraph of the Shemah (all of these I would endorse though some Reformers think it’s all excessive outward show of religiosity.) But if you’re truly orthodox you don’t kiss loved ones in schule (or at least not in the same room as the Aron Kodesh the Ark.)

[With regard to the wedding service the reasoning is that marriage is strongly associated with the continuity of the people of Israel. Associated with that is the land and the Temple. In the Shevah Berochos and the breaking of the glass this is remembered and the key verse is ‘Im eshkachech Yerushalayim tishkach yemini’ – ‘if I forget you O Jerurasalem, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth – if I set not Jerusalem above my chief joy’. It’s higher even than your loved one – so you don’t kiss, or at least you can be told that you shouldn’t.]

Here’s an example of where Reform clashes with Orthodox. Do we place a higher value on Affection in the family than on Attachment to the Torah?

I would say emphatically no!

We place an equally high value on both! Affection for each other and Attachment to the Torah should be intertwined. For us the two values should go together and one leads to the other.

So that when you hear at the end of the service, a buzz of male and female voices intermingled: Shabbat Shalom, Shabbat Shalom, kiss kiss kiss, you know you’re in a Reform shul.

Maybe this is an overstatement because perhaps the Orthodox rule is more honoured in the breach thereof. And, to be fair, we Reform are generally not aware of the rule either! The majority of Jews are Reform in everything but name.

To put it in a nutshell, the Reform starting point for values is different from the Orthodox. We start from the People and Orthodox start from the Book. The values of laws and beliefs stems from our human situation in Reform; the human situation has to be adapted to go by the book in Orthodox. Putting it another way our values are anthropocentric and theirs are bibliocentric. Or we start from A and they start from B. Or if you prefer the Hebrew alphabet we start from ‘Adam’ and they start from ‘Torah’. We go from Aleph to Tav and they go from Tav to Aleph. And hopefully we meet in the middle.