A few weeks ago I mentioned the installation ceremony of the Reform movement’s new president Richard Jacobs at aBrooklyn temple. At the risk of triggering some irate reader’s letter about my giving Jacobs even more coverage in these pages than his own movement accords him I’d like to add a postscript that sheds light on the impact we frum Jews can have for better or for worse on the non-observant Jewish brothers and sisters with whom we interact.
In a recent article profiling Jacobs he recalled his first experience inIsrael while spending his junior year of university atHebrewUniversity. He had been inspired by an Orthodox teacher whose class he attended and decided to spend six weeks living on an Orthodox kibbutz in the north of Israel. This is what he found:
Since it was Passover I thought Here with this kibbutz family I’m going to celebrate the most authentic Pesach of my whole life. During the Seder one of my kibbutz “brothers” had a sour expression on his face and when I asked him “What’s the matter?” he replied “It’s boring. It’s the same every year.” I said “You’re not supposed to think that. You’re an Orthodox Jew!” At that moment I realized that inspiring religious life can be found in any place just as uninspired religious life can be found in any place.
Jacobs returned to the United States and enrolled in a Reform seminary because as he put it “I was … put off by the other seminaries which required that I first sign a document declaring my level of Jewish observance. That I felt was between me and a much Higher Authority.” Imagine that: those other schools had the temerity to actually insist on standards of observance for their clerical graduates.
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