The Law in Conservative Judaism: Criminals and Social Bonds.
Rabbi Robert Tobin
West Orange NJ, B’nai Shalom
Rosh Hashanah 2 - 5778
Shanah Tovah. This morning we are
called to hear the call of the shofar, to examine our deeds and to inaugurate
the 10 days of repentance leading to Yom Kippur. The Shofar blast is the
sound of Mt. Sinai, the cry to battle, and the aching of the human heart. The
Torah does not call today Rosh Hashanah - the New Year. It calls today yom
teru’ah - the day of shofar blasts.
The musaf service today will proclaim that God is not only real
and involved in your life, but is three very important things for us.
First - a king. God is a powerful sovereign, ruling our
universe and our lives. Second, God is the ultimate data base. God
remembers all that we have ever done as a people and as individual people.
Third, God is a social architect. God rallies us to the redemption
of all humanity in peace and harmony, asserting that human fulfillment and
social justice can be achieved.
These three ideas - malkhuyot kingship, zikhronot memory,
and shofarot calls to action - are big promises, and our response to
these ideas will define our lives as Jews. But we have a problem, we
Conservative Jews. Our ability to hear, internalize and express these
ideas has been hampered by a very modern conflict, especially in America.
We generally don’t want a king. We have very selective memory. And
we only want to do what we want to do. We are in charge.
There is a word for an authority, commanding recording and
demanding conformity to its norms. That word is Law. America is one
nation, under law. And in Judaism, in classical mode, God is like the
author of a constitution, and the rabbis have been the supreme court and the
congress, interpreting the meaning of the law and expanding its provisions for
the past two thousand years and more. But with law comes criminality.
With norms comes deviance. No society is immune from the tensions
between citizens and system. If Judaism is indeed a system of law,
then we must understand the lessons of modern criminology to support it.
The Torah, the prophets, the writings of our sacred literature and
two thousand years of rabbinic Judaism are deeply defined by one simple
concept: halakhah - Jewish Law. They declare, cajole and lament
about our adherence to Jewish law, and insist that it has sway over our lives.
Judaism was founded as a people of laws, and has always defined Jewish
life as a complex structure of commanded actions and beliefs. Medieval
law codes have been condensed to simple how-to guides for Jewish living, and
with the internet you can just ask Rabbi Google what you should do and how you
should do it.
The modern world of western enlightenment traditions has
undermined that concept of Jewish Law. Personal freedom and autonomy have
become the essential nature of human society for many, and freedom of religion
is often freedom from religion. So Law, as a religious category, is a
real problem for many Conservative Jews. I say Conservative Jews, because
we live as a spectrum of Jewish behaviors and beliefs in the middle of the
spectrum of American Jewish life. We have Orthodoxy, whose acceptance of
Jewish Law defines the essence of their identity. And we have Reform,
whose rejection of classical modes of Jewish Law defines the essence of their
identity. And we have everyone else in the middle, reflecting broad and
contradictory approaches to Jewish Law.
Conservative Rabbis are trained to be lawyers of halakhah.
We are firmly committed to observance in all of its standard modes, and
we work on the assumption that it is not just rabbis - but the community as a
whole - that should live accordingly. The synagogue, which represents us
all, is shomer shabbat, shomer kashrut, shomer mitzvot, shomer middot.
It is shabbat observant. Kosher observant. Mitzvah observant.
And ethically and morally observant. In synagogue life, the public
standard is set, knowing that the actual people of our synagogue are a
wide variety of observances and beliefs. We embrace that diversity as a
strength. We engage different backgrounds as a call to learning and personal
growth. So what is the Law, if everyone is equal no matter what they do?
Rabbis, as experts in the law, run a grave risk. And that
risk is that by rightfully insisting that Judaism is law, and by setting
community standards accordingly, we unavoidably and subtly define most of our
people as criminals. Some are minor criminals, breaking laws here and
there. Some are career criminals, living contrary to nearly every norm of
the legal system that is being presented.
And all are present here today. How will people respond to a
system that labels them deviants, using negative terms like “unobservant” to
describe them? How do you, or I feel when told that we are breaking the
law? Can we view Jewish norms with the
same ethical seriousness that we have for secular law?
Of course in medieval communities where rabbis had actual legal
authority in society, and coercive power to punish, adherence to the law was
not a question. And in ghetto or shtetl societies, where social norms
meant being accepted in the only community that will have you, adherence to the
law was unquestioned. But in our open society, with toothless laws that
have no coercive power, how will our traditions survive?
Our strength in Conservative Judaism is also our weakness.
Our commitment to unearth the true history of our people underneath the
mythology, and to accept the findings of science, archeology, literary criticism
and other social sciences makes us the most intellectually honest form of
Judaism. We are not shrouded in fundamentalist ideologies that deny the reality
of the world. But we are not defined by a blind love of modernity, no matter
what it happens to be. We are grounded by history, covenant, and the
broad and diverse expressions of Judaism throughout the ages, seeing ourselves
as yet another iteration of eternal truths and commitments to God Torah and
Israel. But by debunking certain myths
of our peoples history, myths which have to strength to set clear and
uncompromising legal controls, we are vulnerable to people drifting away,
picking and choosing, or rejecting the
traditional norms altogether.
Jewish Law, real halakhah as authority in our lives, is a
problem for us in this time and place in Jewish history. I believe
that how we talk about halakhah is the essential weakness of our movement, and
is the main point of disconnect between people who agree with the
moderate and reasonable approach of Conservative Judaism but have difficulty
with the norms of Jewish behavior that we teach. We basically create a
system of criminality, as a sociological condition. We actually undermine the
authority of the tradition, create a sense of irrelevance, and doom the system
that we are trying to preserve. How can we save the system of Jewish Law, the
essence of our history and religion, while being relevant in our modern lives. The answer lies in our social bonds, and our consistent
application of halakhik norms in the
community setting.
The study of non-conformist behavior in secular law is of course called
criminology. What warnings might criminology teach the Conservative
movement, given our broad gap between theory and practice?
First, criminal behavior is defined by social context. What
is acceptable, and what is deviant, is defined by the culture in which the law
lives. This seems contrary to the idea of halakhah, eternal Law
from God. But it is not. Social context changes how the law is lived by
us, but does not change the essential values and norms underneath. For example,
our current social context empowers women to be equal to men. but the commanded
norm of regular prayer, tallit, teffillin and torah reading do not change.
When we let women ascend the bima and read from the Torah, we are
fulfilling the law in a changed social context, not breaking the law. We
do not break the halakhah when we empower women to observe the halakhah. Quite the contrary. The secular world is the same: When America
allowed women to vote, it did not destroy the essence of democracy.
But social context is a double edged sword. The social context of the haredi world in Monsey
is different from ours. Since we are
talking about halakhah, and our
expression of Judaism contradicts their social norms, we are seen as
nonconforming Jews and are basically criminals in their minds. The will not eat
our food, recognize our rabbis, or –given the choice – marry our children.
Second, we know that social bonds help to create more stable and
law abiding individuals. Social bonds
create a form of control and accountability that reinforces legal norms. Criminality is most often accompanied by the
breakdown of social controls. Strong
social bonds, theory says, creates law abiding citizens.
For Judaism, this is where the law must live today. We don’t have the coercive control of a
religious criminal justice system. We
don’t have the coercive control of closed communities and the threat of
excommunication. Our people seek meaning
in relationships, and in a sense of harmony between their synagogue life and
their secular life. So the synagogue must teach, represent, and enforce all
aspects of halakhah in the communal
sphere as we gather and work as a community.
But our programs, our actions, our investments must be in things that
strengthen and grow those social bonds.
The sermon is important. The
Kiddush is more important. Adult
education is important. Classes and groups of people learning together are more
important. Sisterhood. Men’s Club.
Hazak. Kadimah. USY. These are the
vehicles that must embody the halakhah
as lived Judaism in social norms. If
there is a trend to the handful of people who have left the shul in the past
year, it is this: t
Judaism is a religion. It
has cultures. It has sociologies. It has ethics and morals. But it is a religion. And our religion is a religion of laws to
observe. When we say, I observe the
holidays, that is law. When we say, I
treat my neighbor with respect, that is law.
When we support the poor, champion the cause of the widow the orphan and
the stranger, that is law. When we make
a minyan, that is law. When we say kaddish, that is law. When we choose kosher choices, that is
law. When we set Shabbat aside from the
week, that is law. When our family gathers for Rosh Hashanah, that is law. When
we circumcise a child, that is law When we mark to moments of our lives in
sacred rituals, that is law. It is all
one system. Very little of Jewish law is
private to the individual. Almost everything that is commanded is commanded as
part of a social relationship with the other members of our community. It is not possible to move to rural Wyoming
and live a complete and observant Jewish life.
We need each other.
Yes, there is a strong sense of Judgment and criminality that can
come fro a system of law. But Judaism is
not here to coerce and enforce legal norms on you, threatening punishment and
sanctions if you deviate from the norms.
Judaism is here to bind you in relationships with others who share
common values, traditions and practices.
Judaism will flourish when our social context is imbued with those
practices in rich and vibrant ways. And
that is what the synagogue does for us in this day and age.
The synagogue is answer to the challenge of modernity. Are we adrift, each person establishing their
own norms, defining Judaism personally and abandoning centuries of proven
effective meaningful practices? Or can our diversity find common identity in
celebrating obligations to form minyanim, keep Shabbat, seek social justice, in
the context of friendships, family and associations that give our lives control
and meaning?
Yes, we are on some level all deviants and criminals in the eyes
of the halakhah. But our laws customs norms and celebrations
are more than worth pursuing without a sense of guilt or judgment. They
are part of an expression of purpose, identity and hope for a world in which
God and humanity achieve a just and lasting system.
We have a problem in Conservative Judaism, and it is in part the
language of observance - and it is a problem we rabbis have helped to create.
We talk about Judaism as a system of traditions, when the fact is that it
is a system of laws. The laws - the covenant - are still in effect, but labeling
imperfect adherence to the law as only empowers the extremes to the right and
left of us. If we are to live and thrive as citizens of Judaism, it is
the social bonds that we create in the synagogue community within the law that
will give our lives purpose and meaning, and keep Judaism alive for the next
generation.
So we do declare, that God is King in Malkuyot. We do assert that
knowledge and memory matter more than blind faith or modern rejection in Zikhronot. And we know that the call to
action is experienced together in Shofarot.
May this year bring you ever closer
to the practices of Judaism that will forever sustain us in time.
Shanah Tovah,
No comments:
Post a Comment