Reflections on Reform Judaism

[eveglass]

The bar mitzvah I attended this morning was held at a Reform synagogue. Oddly enough, I'd never been to a Reform service before. Though I have not attended any synagogue services for many years (with the exception of bar mitzvahs and weddings), the ones I have attended have all been Orthodox. To borrow and contort a phrase from Good Omens: "No, when it came to avoiding going to synagogue, the synagoge she stolidly avoided going to was Zikron Kidoshim, no-nonsense Orthodox, and she wouldn't have dreamed of avoiding going to any other."


Now, let's be clear that there's a reason I avoid going to (Orthodox) synagogue services: I don't like them. I find them too long and too boring. The liturgy is all in Hebrew, generally too fast for me to follow along or understand, and quite repetitve. I don't like them, and I suspect I never shall.

So, in some ways, the service this morning rectified some of my long-standing annoyances. Instead of the 3-4 hour bar mitzvah service I've come to expect, this one began and ended in less than an hour and a half. Instead of a wholly-Hebrew liturgy, it was mixed between Hebrew and English (about half-and-half). Instead of a single rabbi or cantor, there was a lot of music and song: the rabbi and a female rabbi (a lovely soprano) joined together in duets for many of the prayers, and there was an organist as well.

And yet for all that, I did not find it comfortable. It felt... well, "churchy." A congregation gathered together to listen to a rabbi speak and sing, to listen to beautiful music, and to leave in good time. There is nothing inherently wrong with this. Beautiful music is lovely, shorter services are a welcome change. (To borrow a phrase from The Muppet Christmas Carol, by Statler and Waldorf: "That was the speech? It was dumb. It was obvious. It was pointless. It was... short.... I loved it!") But it did not feel like synagogue. Perhaps this is just a product of my Orthodox background, but it felt very much like watered-down religion. It felt abridged, the melodies for the songs were wrong, some of the (new) rituals seemed contrived... there is nothing wrong with the service, but it didn't feel like the religion I grew up with.

The pamphlet given out at the beginning of the service didn't help, either. A few excerpts:

"During the ceremony the young person will read a passage from the Torah, the parchment scroll containing the Five Books of Moses."

"The HOLY ARK is the central feature of every synagogue.... The Ark contains the Torah, the Jew's most precious possession. Its scroll is handwritten in Hebrew with a quill on parchment. It consists of the Five Books of Moses, the first five books of the Bible. Selections from the Torah are read in the synagoge on the sabbath and holidays."

For some reason, these passages just seemed odd to me. Yes, I appreciate that the bar mitzvah boy is from an interfaith family and there might be Christians attending the ceremony. On the other hand, it seems obvious to me that most people attending syngagogue should know what the Torah is, and that it is read on sabbath and holidays. This just strikes me as blindingly obvious, and anyone who has attended synagogue even casually will know this as well. In my mind, it does not need explicit explanation at a bar mitzvah ceremony.

So, in the end, the service felt a bit odd to me. If anything, it has solidified my belief that I will likely never join a Reform synagogue / temple. If I'm going to avoid going to synagogue, it'll be an Orthodox, Conservative, or Reconstructionist one. After all, if something's worth not doing, it's worth not doing well.

Comments

[rfmcdpei.livejournal.com]

Ah, like the United Church.