Gimme that old time (Jewish) religion

It’s hard to say what that old time Jewish religion was. Abraham’s religion, 4,000 years ago, is far different than ours. Abraham heard God commanding him — but he never created a theology that is anything like our understanding of monotheism. In fact, even in Shirat HaYam, the ode at the Sea of Reeds, in the Book of Exodus, written maybe 3,200 years ago, Moses sings “mi kamocha b’alim Adonai?” “Who is like You among the gods?”

Deuteronomy teaches the centralization of worship.  God must be worshipped in one central location. It was a good try, but many of the later entries in the Tanakh attest to the fact that the Israelite people wanted an altar close to them, something they could see and touch when they needed to find their God.

Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai, in the first (Christian) century, revolutionized Judaism as he created a religion that, of necessity, was no longer Temple-, sacrifice-,  and Jerusalem-centered.

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There have been and are many versions of Jewish thought and  practice.

For me, the golden age of modern Jewish thinking and observance is found in the middle of the 20th century. At that time, we had four major approaches to Jewish thinking that still have much to teach and inspire us. At the Jewish Theological Seminary, where I studied both as an undergraduate and as a student in the rabbinical school, one of my favorite classes was taught by Professor Seymour Siegel. It was a study in contemporary Jewish thought, where he brought to JTS scholars from various streams within the Jewish community. Those scholars included Rabbis Norman Frimer and Yitz Greenberg, from the Orthodox world,  and Rabbi Eugene Borowitz, who was Reform. They shared with us their understanding of which Judaism spoke to each of them.

I believe that contemporary Jewish life has lost much as this golden age has ended. In the mid 20th century, Orthodox Judaism emphasized Torah u’Maddah, learning both Torah and science. Orthodox synagogues of that era would allow mixed dancing at their celebrations and separate but (almost) equal seating for men and women at prayer, without calls for a more opaque mechitzah separating women from men during services. Rabbinic Israel Bonds leadership revolved among Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform rabbis. They socialized with each other and prayed together on Israel Bonds missions.

Reform Judaism of that era emphasized prophetic Judaism, a Judaism that hears God’s voice and internalizes God’s message into Jewish action and practice. Prophetic Judaism is more than tikkun Olam, perfecting the world. It’s a call to conscience in both personal and communal life. It’s a way of bringing God into the universe that God created.

In the mid-20th century, Reconstructionism saw Judaism as an evolving religious civilization that required a knowledge of Hebrew language and literature and the further development of Jewish musical and dance traditions as well as the creation of new religious rites and rituals. Prayers that could no longer be recited because they represented an intellectual and philosophical disconnect from contemporary life were changed and rewritten.

In the Conservative movement, “tradition and change” was the byword. Conservative Judaism taught both an appreciation for what we inherited religiously and culturally and a willingness to change organically as our understanding of the needs of the day changed. Halachah and agadah, law and ethics had an equal voice in mid-20th century Judaism.  The Jewish Theological Seminary, the fountainhead of the Conservative movement then, had on its  faculty both the world-famous talmudist Saul Lieberman, who represented a very traditional approach to Jewish thought and observance, and Abraham Joshua Heschel, the teacher of Jewish ethics and mysticism who translated Judasim’s beliefs into social action. Mordecai Kaplan’s intellectualism and Louis Finkelstein’s conservative religious stance could be represented on the same faculty, balanced in creative tension.

Have the internal Jewish changes that we have experienced over the course of the last 50-plus years of Jewish life enriched the major approaches to Judaism in the United States or eroded our heritage?

No. In my opinion, we have lost more than we have gained.

Richard Hammerman of Caldwell, a graduate of the Jewish Theological Seminary, is rabbi emeritus of Congregation B’nai Israel in Toms River, where he served for 31 years, and is a member and teacher at Congregation Agudath Israel in Caldwell.