In The Crosshairs

                                In the Belly of the Beast (part 2)

WARNING: THIS IS A VERY LONG POST THAT MAY BE HAZARDOUS TO YOUR PATIENCE.

In EmunahSpeak: Perhaps They’re Better Than You, we raised some eyebrows by actually saying something positive about the Internet as we opened a window, ever so slightly, to a brave new world of kiruv that is being Internet driven.  We said there: As far as kiruv is concerned the Internet is a win win phenomenon with no apparent downside, which enables us to reach people that heretofore were totally inaccessible vis á vis kiruv in any form.

And so it is.

In March 2010 (rabbi) Eric Yoffie who is President of the URJ (Union for Reform Judaism, r”l) addressed the URJ Executive Committee.  The relevant parts are as follows:

I am optimistic about the future of our Movement…and right now, we need the Reform movement more than ever. Because the future does not lie with the chareidim and the fundamentalists of the Jewish world; and it certainly does not lie with Chabad, which may do some good things, but which sells itself to our members as cut-rate, minimalist Judaism. The future, I believe, lies with us. 

But what do we have to offer? Is there something distinctive about being Reform? 

We draw the boundaries of Reform so as to include rather than exclude, and we welcome gays, lesbians, the intermarried, non-Jewish spouses and all who bind their fate to that of the Jewish people.   

We see tikkun olam as an essential element of our Reform identity – in fact, as the jewel in the Reform crown.  (Note: What he means by Tikkun Olam is cleaning up trash in empty lots in Harlem and other such spiritual venues). 

When disaster struck in Haiti, Reform Jews provided relief at a level that no other movement could even dream of.

  

The great majority of North American Jews will not choose a Judaism that is halakhically-based; they will not choose a narrow, ritually-obsessed Judaism; they will not choose an ethically-limited Judaism; and they will certainly not choose a fundamentalist, ghetto Judaism. The great majority will choose the modern, liberal, Torah-inspired Judaism that is Reform.

(rabbi) Yoffie’s pearls of Jewish brotherly love were posted on the URJ web site under the title of The Future of Reform Judaism, r”l.  If this would have been twenty years ago (rabbi) Yoffie’s remarks would have been published in the URJ magazine, and that would have been the end of it.

Way back when, from the mid seventies through most of the eighties, I made attempts to question/challenge the outrage de jour that Reform was attempting to sell as Judaism.  These forays into what amounted to doomed prospects for attempted dialogue were usually in response to something I heard on the news or an article I had seen in one of their publications in a doctor’s waiting room, and more often than not they took the form of letters to the editor.

All I received for my efforts was the silence of the dead.  The flow of information from the outside world was tightly controlled, and nothing even remotely critical of their movement was given a forum.

And that’s how it had always been.  Depending on the decade, Reform had its tentacles into a million plus Jews at any given time, and there was no way to get at them.  They had erected their version of the Berlin Wall, and it was no less effective.

And then the Internet came to town.

Reform’s once impregnable fortress morphed into a target on its back, as the URJ’s circle the wagons strategy gave way to the Net’s subversive egalitarian ethos.  Rather than do the expected, and simply reject my criticism of (rabbi) Yoffie’s less than prophetic mean spirited imaginative meanderings, the URJ chose to post it to its website where it was viewed by thousands of its members.

My comments, in and of themselves, were nothing special.  That they were posted on the URJ website, however, was historic.  Moreover, the live links to a number of Torah websites which I had embedded in my comments were left intact, thereby exposing their people to some of the best Torah content on the web.

After thirty-five years of shadow boxing with the kefira that masquerades as Reform I finally got to land a punch in an Open Letter to (rabbi) Eric Yoffie that was hosted on the URJ website:

I am absolutely astonished by your ((rabbi) Yoffie’s) assertion:  And right now, we need the Reform movement more than ever. The future does not lie with the chareidim and the fundamentalists of the Jewish world; and it certainly does not lie with Chabad, which may do some good things, but which sells itself to our members as cut-rate, minimalist Judaism. The future, I believe, lies with us.

I do not like the pejorative term “fundamentalists” nor do I care much for the word chareidim. If you are referring to Torah observant Jewry, the relevant demographics would seem to demand that you back up your assertion with something in the way of facts.

Given a birth rate amongst Torah Jewry that is several times higher than what passes for a birth rate amongst the Reform (which is on the level of Spain), and a divorce rate that is a fraction of what is presently ravaging Reform, and almost universal full day Jewish education for at least nine years at the margins and thirteen plus at the core, and an aggressive, yet sensitive outreach that gathers momentum by the day, are we not tempted toward the opposite conclusion?

And what exactly are we to make of your admission in the President’s Report to the URJ Board of Trustees (June 2010)?  To whit:

We must begin the work of rebuilding our youth movement….We have seen the decline of our youth activities to dangerously low levels, and we are not now providing our kids with the staff and the resources that they desperately need. A related area of equal importance is the work initiated by the Commission on Lifelong Jewish Learning to help our synagogues promote teen engagement following Bar and Bat Mitzvah. We know that if current trends continue, approximately 80% of the children who have a Bar/Bat Mitzvah in our congregations will have no connection of any kind to their synagogue by the time they reach 12th grade. This is a disaster for our young people and for our congregations as well.

So if the Reform birth rate falls well below the point of sustainability not to mention the host of ravages that will take their toll on those who are born to the next generation, already diminished as it is, where then do you see the cause for optimism?

 Apparently from here:

The great majority of North American Jews will not choose a Judaism that is halakhically-based; they will not choose a narrow, ritually-obsessed Judaism; they will not choose an ethically-limited Judaism; and they will certainly not choose a fundamentalist, ghetto Judaism. The great majority will choose the modern, liberal, Torah-inspired Judaism that is Reform.

I once again protest the slash and burn pejorative references that paint Torah Judaism with broad strokes of negative innuendo. It’s simply not becoming of someone of your stature. While your imagery conjured up all the usual suspects including “ghetto Judaism,” which is de rigueur on the canard hit parade, ethically-limited Judaism is a new one to me. From out of whose hat exactly did you pull this rabbit?

Shakespeare’s perhaps?

Even so, you are essentially correct in saying that the great majority of North America’s Jews will not, at this juncture, choose to identify with Torah observant Jewry. Your mistake is in believing that they will come to Reform. The truth is that the mass of unaffiliated Jews will remain such, r”l and that both they and their descendants will continue to assimilate themselves into oblivion.  Not only will the unaffiliated Jewish masses not reverse Reform’s negative growth rate, their very existence is a massive accusation against Reform and what it symbolizes in their eyes.   

How so?

That the unaffiliated masses don’t want any part of Torah Jewry is perfectly understandable, given its perceived restrictions and such.  So why not Reform with its do your own thing culture? In what possible way could it inhibit their lifestyle?

The unaffiliated masses will never come to Reform because they don’t look upon it as authentically Jewish.  Keep in mind that we are talking about Jews who, aside from maybe putting in a cameo appearance on the High Holidays, have nothing to do with Judaism (as in zilch, zero, nada) the rest of the year. And yet, their dismal Jewish performance notwithstanding, they look upon Torah Jewry as the exclusive bearers of Jewish tradition.

Many, if not most of these Jews would rather openly break every law in the Torah than change those laws to redefine their behavior as permissible.  It could be by taking the hit rather than changing the law, they are vicariously keeping the Torah in their minds, even if only subconsciously. The masses are weak in their ability to do the things that the Torah requires of them and to resist doing that which the Torah forbids. The irony, of course, is that their collective greatness is rooted in their refusal to reduce Judaism to the level of their weakness.

Your vision of the future is terminally circumscribed by the present because the majority of those that ARE choosing to live Jewish lives have, for a number of years now, opted for that halakhically-based, ritually-obsessed, fundamentalist, oldie but goody from the ghetto.
Once again, however, on one point, you are more or less correct.  You said:  But what do we have to offer? Is there something distinctive about being Reform? My answer is “yes.”

Reform IS a unique product that has a market niche, but the market isn’t what you think it is. While Reform’s program, as articulated by you, is at full tilt in the direction of what is au courant on the Liberal Left, the Jewish community is no longer the liberal monolith that it has been longer than any one of us has been alive. For reasons of which all of us are aware, North American Jewry is beginning to reassess its undying loyalty to a Liberalism that the Radical Left (pardon the redundancy) destroyed some  forty years ago. This means that the trend line of the great mass of unaffiliated Jews, the same Jews that you would like to bring out of the bullpen to save Reform from its self-inflicted demographic nightmare, is headed (ever sooo slowly) in the opposite direction from the “philosophy” upon which you have staked Reform’s future. In the short term the effects will not be discernable. But long term it’s not good news for Reform.

And while it’s true that those who wish their environmentalism, feminism, egalitarianism, and all the other constituent isms of the liberal pantheon to be sprinkled with the fairy dust of Reform will continue to answer “present” at the Reform roll call, those who are seeking serious spirituality as opposed to having their secular ideology validated, will look elsewhere.

Reform has entered its Glasnost era. Those who truly seek to experience Shabbos, the Yomim Tovim, and anything else that is part and parcel of the “traditional Judaism” that you have dangled in front of their eyes in your push toward pseudo-tradition will not be satisfied with half a loaf, and Reform by definition is philosophically incapable of delivering the other half. It’s the nature of genies that once they’re out of their bottles it’s quite impossible to stuff them back in again. Quantitatively the losses may ultimately turn out to be surprisingly small but qualitatively they will be your best people.

You think not?

The following links are to some of the most popular speakers in the English speaking Torah world today. They have had a tremendous impact on both religious and unaffiliated Jewry in North America, South Africa, Great Britain, and Israel.  And each one comes from either a Reform, Conservative or totally assimilated background. Torah Judaism is enriched by their teachings, as it is by the many others who have made the Long March from your movement and from the others. And there are hundreds if not thousands more, who by virtue of the Jewish genie that you have let loose from the bottle of Reform, who will one day come to join them as teachers of Klal Yisroel.

http://www.simpletoremember.com/authors/a/rabbi-lawrence-kelemen/
http://www.simpletoremember.com/authors/a/rabbi-dovid-gottlieb/
http://www.simpletoremember.com/authors/a/rabbi-akiva-tatz/
http://www.simpletoremember.com/authors/a/jewish-inspiration/
http://www.simpletoremember.com/authors/a/crash-course-jewish-history-mp3s/

Keep in mind that every point being made here relates back to your contention that: The great majority of North American Jews will not choose a Judaism that is halakhically-based; they will not choose a narrow, ritually-obsessed Judaism; they will not choose an ethically-limited Judaism; and they will certainly not choose a fundamentalist, ghetto Judaism. The great majority will choose the modern, liberal, Torah-inspired Judaism that is Reform.” 

The entire future of your movement stands or falls on that premise.

The links above are but a tease that serves as an intro to the most important thing affecting the future of Reform that you didn’t mention in your piece: the Internet.

Unlike in previous generations where Traditional Judaism was out of sight and out of mind to anyone not living in close proximity to one of several urban areas in the United States, today it’s big, bold, and in your cyberspace face, right where the totality of your target audience hangs out.

The Torah’s Internet presence is absolutely overwhelming, and it is impossible for the mass of unaffiliated Jews not to trip over it in due time. I don’t know how many sites there are because there are new ones every week, and I simply can’t keep up, but we’re talking here in the triple digits and counting.

I took the trouble of going to every Reform website listed on the drop down menu located on the URJ website, and found nothing in the way of content. The only reform site that contains anything of interest to outsiders is the URJ/Reform blog, and even so it’s all chit chat. Some of it is fascinating to be sure, but it’s still just chit chat just the same.

Here are three links:

The first is Rabbi Zev Leff’s website. I chose this because he is an individual who is not connected to any organization, and all of the content on his site was produced by him alone. This one site probably has more content than URJ, all of its affiliated sites, and all of its member Temples combined.
http://www.rabbileff.net/

Next is the Orthodox Union, and I chose it because it is the Orthodox organizational equivalent of the URJ.
http://www.ou.org/

And the third is Aish.com which is the web presence of Aish HaTorah, the famous kiruv yeshiva.
http://www.aish.com/

My purpose is not to have you sample the content but to do an INVENTORY of it, and you should make it thorough by clicking on all the various topical tabs etc.  As I have already stated, these sites barely scratch the surface but they should still give you enough information from which you can extrapolate as to how well mined is the road to Reform’s supposed glorious future.

If you do your due diligence in searching out Torah Judaism’s presence on the web you will no longer credibly be able to say: The great majority of North American Jews will not choose a Judaism that is halakhically-based….

And then there is the imagery/symbolism of Judaism.

Guess who owns it and guess what the impact of that ownership is and will continue to be on that mass of unaffiliated Jews that Reform pines for.  I know that the Wall and some other things are a sore point of contention for Reform, but for the purposes of this post I’m not interested in the politics of it all. I’m simply stating an incontrovertible fact as to where the public’s eye is drawn vis á vis the imagery and symbolism of Judaism.

The irony of it all is that Reform is stuck with the same imagery/symbolism. It’s in your temples and all over the website. And what other choice do you have anyway? If not a shofar, menorah, lulav etc., then what?  A recycling bag, a pushka that says Hati on it, and two guys holding hands?

Below is a link to a representative image to which you have nothing to answer. The crowd is mostly made up of Sephardim and they are singing Ani Ma’amin at the Kosel as it was sung in Auschwitz.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbCvrTy7HbI&feature=related

Let’s be honest now.

To whom do you think that uncommitted mass of unaffiliated Jews is going to emotionally respond? To those Jews who are singing the Ani Ma’amin or to the ones who ripped it out of the siddur?

The name of your original article is The Future of Reform Judaism, but the entire premise upon which you stake this future has a hole in it and it's taking water.  It would have been more accurate had it been entitled The Death Knell of Reform Judaism.

So much for (rabbi) Yoffie’s take on Reform’s future and my comments thereto.  This was not an isolated incident. It’s illustrative of an ongoing process made possible by the Internet which won’t end until this stain on the integrity of Klal Yisroel implodes, speedily in our days.

It is very important to understand that at the time, (rabbi) Eric Yoffie was president of a movement (URJ) that claims one and a half million members.  In addition, well over a thousand of those members click onto the URJ website every day, and it is to be presumed that these are the people with the most active interest in the doings of the URJ.

And yet….

Although thousands of (Reform) Jews read both (rabbi) Yoffie’s predictions as to their glorious future and the systematic shredding of those fantasies, only one person bestirred himself to come to their President’s defense, and even he didn't answer the bell for Round Two after his comments were rebutted.  These Jews may be ignorant of most things Jewish, but they are still capable of recognizing the truth when they hear it, and by their deaf and dumb reaction they made it quite clear that they weren't hearing it from (rabbi) Yoffie.

What can be said about a movement that allows its leader to be trashed on its own website with nary a response?

That it’s laser locked in the crosshairs, Boruch Hashem, with the door locked behind it and the clock ticking.

They know it's over.  They're just keeping up appearances.