Shalom!
I am Rabbi Jonathan Ginsburg. The good and the bad of reformed Judaism. I spent two summers at a Jewish summer camp in Wisconsin, under the reformed movement, even though I was raised under the orthodox and conservative school and raised in a conservative home, because I want to see what reformed Judaism really was. I figured that a camp was a great way to see it. There is much beautiful about it and much that I ultimately rejected.
First of all, it was beautiful. The rabbinic involvement, the flexibility, the opportunity for innovation, to rethinking Judaism. The music there was incredibly beautiful. The spirit, the singing, the study sessions and the discussion, loved all of that. So what ultimately could not I abide? Well first, the camp was strafe, and it seemed bizarre to me that a Jewish summer camp appealing to Jewish children would not have non-Kosher food. I did not understand how they could not, and served any pork but violating the other biblical laws of not buying meat under rabbinic supervision, not having separate dishes, meat and milk rules, all seemed something that was not very Jewish. Then they let people use the pop machine ion Shabbat, spending money. There were various unethical violations that simply seemed over the top. And I know that reformed Judaism basically says that people should be educated about the options and then choose for themselves. That did not seem Jewish to me either.
I know that is what people do. but Judaism was a legal system, it was a structured system where from top down, God gave us the commandments, our job is to interpret them and observe them, not decide for ourselves what commandments we should do and of course people do not observe all the commandments, people transgress the commandments, but it is a commandment system, that is what Judaism always was and to say people can simply choose what they want to do did not seem to be reasonable. And so, you have the good and the bad, reformed Judaism is obviously growing, they made a big appeal to inter-married families. And so much many of their synagogues that are populated by families where the Jews and non Jews and that is something the conservative movement needs to be more open and aggressive about. Reformed Judaism has surpassed conservative Judaism as the largest American denomination. So there is obviously a lot of success there, their schools are large, their camps are large, and so obviously there is a lot of vitality, but there is certainly drawbacks to the idea of letting people choose. For example, their synagogues services are by large do not follow all of the traditional rules. They could say that about conservative synagogues too. Most conservative synagogues triumph but they modify things based on what they think is a reasonable system of traditional Judaism.
And so those are some of the issues with reformed natural, which way it is headed. They made definite strives in the last ten years to be more traditional, and so whereas originally you found a prayer book with virtually no Hebrew, almost all English when I grew up, opening from the English side, and people are not wearing the amatos and Talitote. today reformed service can look more like a conservative or traditional service with caput, Talitote, prayer books with much Hebrew, opening the Hebrew side, and so their obviously have been changes. Personally, I could not be a reformed Jew but I salute them on their innovations and their efforts to try and bring ideas to Judaism that can help revitalize Judaism, and as they move closer to tradition, there probably will be, at some point, a more mainstream American form of Judaism that involves the dietary rules being taught, the Sabbath rules being observed traditionally by the synagogue communities, with the different religious dress and styles that now exist. That is a short, brief view of reformed Judaism.
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services