I’m annoyed (and not just at Obama; I think you’ve got that covered anyway).
I’m reading a book called The New Rabbi by Stephen Fried (2002), and it’s not very good. It’s a journalistic log of what happens “when a rabbi is replaced” in a popular, large and prominent congregation, which may or may not be a “bar mitzvah mill”. I kept reading it because of certain trivia gems such as the one that mentioned my favorite book The Jewish Catalog being written by the cofounders of a place called Havurat Shalom in Massachusetts—”a primer for baby boom Jews”, or how Jewish summer camps apparently are all D.I.Y. and kids actually like them. And of course I liked such phrases as this:
He believes some of [the new resurgence in Jewish spirituality] is heartening and admirable, but ‘so much of it has a frightening, simplistic quality about it. It is seductive but avoids the hard questions. Make it easy and it will sell.’
A good deal of the book is devoted to the politics of congregational life obviously, and it only serves to heighten my distaste for the “huge, powerful, establishment congregations”—i.e. synagogue life. For instance, I’m horrified by how often the “old rabbi” allegedly recycles stories about his disabled wife for his sermons! I dislike sermons enough, even when they do distantly relate to the parsha and don’t let everyone in on every detail of the rabbi’s home life. Ugh. I hope this isn’t typical.
The author also plays the dreaded “all Jews do this, all Jews like that” game, which is even more annoying given his distance from practicing Judaism (as one review mentioned, he was writing all his notes down during Shabbat, even the rabbi’s High Holy Days sermons), only hanging around the catch idiosyncrasies that are “so Jewish”, like asking where you grew up and where you went to summer camp and so on, until you can figure out if you know anyone in common. Quite petty. Not to mention all the abrupt asides Fried has to make to explain basic concepts to all the hordes of laypeople who are naturally so interested in synagogue life.
But I basically stopped reading the book because I got it, quickly. I doubt that Fried’s point is that the typical American synagogue has become so overwhelmingly bureaucratic that we ought to leave them in droves for simpler methods (in fact I think he’s into the big elite congregations). But reading “When I write ‘younger congregants’ of course I mean middle-aged” and “Younger people always want change, but they rarely donate anything more than change” pretty much only validates my discontent with the synagogue-as-center. Maybe I just haven’t visited enough innovative ones. Though I’m fond of mine, it’s pretty “take it or leave”. This way of doing things seems so devoid to me that it’s almost expected that people might keep themselves occupied by playing the “all Jews do this” game. It happens when you’ve got nothing substantial left.
My (Orthodox-leaning) Torah study partner keeps reiterating to me how important it is to “know our role”. The implication is that making waves won’t really help when the Messiah comes and we’ve got to be at arms. She’s converting too, and she told me that she is ready to give up anything in her life, and replace it with “Jewish culture”, and fit in seamlessly just like that.
Try as I have, I never got into this way of thinking. It’s not going to work for me. She’s (inadvertently, of course) making me feel a little guilty for being so discontent with the way things currently are. I told her I would absolutely love to join a havurah, and she told me if I converted with an Orthodox beit din, I’d probably never be able to, because I’d be pinned to Orthodoxy forever—”it’s in the contract”. Similarly, if it is a Conservative beit din, I’ll be pinned to Conservative. It’s all very sad to me that I’ve got to pledge my allegiance with a big dinosaur denominational head, rather than to Judaism—that means that I can’t fit in the way I know is best for me, not the one-size-fits-all “role” she seems to be fine with. And despite my Torah partner’s surety, my role is not fitting seamlessly into one denomination for the rest of my life.
