Presidential Sermon – CCAR Convention

Rabbi Harry K Danziger

San Diego CA – June 19, 2006

A number of people have cited Shelach Lecha as the parashat hashavua. Since we do not observe the second day of Shavuot, I must tell you that my very Reform PDA says that this coming Shabbat the portion is Korach. Well, speaking here in Southern California, I’m not about to base my message on a portion in which a group of Jewish leaders are swallowed up by an earthquake.

Anyway ----

My texts today are – Pirke Avot 5:19, Eruvin 13b, F. Scott Fitzgerald, the Centennial Perspective of 1976, and an old Jewish joke.

Pirkei Avot says, “A controversy for Heaven’s sake will have lasting value, but a controversy not for Heaven’s sake will not endure. What is an example of a controversy for Heaven’s sake? The debates of Hillel and Shammai. What is an example of a controversy not for Heaven’s sake? The rebellion of Korah and his associates.”

About Korach we understand, but what about that three year debate between Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai? Eruvin teaches us that, after three years of dispute, a bat kol said famously, “Eilu v’eilu divrei elohim chayim v’halacha k’veit hillel hein – both of these are the words of the living God, but the law is according to Beit Hillel.”

How could both offer divrei elohim chayim when they disagree? Must there not always be a right and a wrong, the acceptable and the unacceptable, God’s way or the highway? And if they are, in fact, both divrei elohim chayim, what entitles the rulings of Beit Hillel to be privileged as halacha? Are they more right? Do they capture God’s will in a way that Beit Shammai’s words do not? Are the teachings of Beit Hillel transcendent truths? Eternal verities?

Eruvin says the rulings of Beit Hillel were privileged: “Because they were kindly and modest, they studied their own rulings and those of Beit Shammai, and were even so humble as to mention the words of Beit Shammai before their own.”

We live in a world where polarization is a given. In our political culture, two sides increasingly demonize one another. In our popular culture, edge and put-down are an art form and Simon of “American Idol” becomes a folk hero for his ability to humiliate. “You’re fired” and “You’re eliminated” and “You lose” are catchwords in our time. How unlikely that a school of thought is chosen as halacha, not because of its intrinsic superiority, but because of the civility of its proponents. How different from a world where even discussions of issues take the form of “Crossfire”.

How countercultural the teaching of Eruvin: “They studied their own rulings and those of Beit Shammai, and were even so humble as to mention the words of Beit Shammai before their own.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote: “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”

I doubt that Fitzgerald read Talmud out on Long Island, but he echoed the tradition’s suprising capacity to call two opposing views divrei elohim chayim. Fitzgerald spoke of a first-rate intellect. I believe that the ability to hold two opposed ideas and still retain the ability to function is the mark of a great liberal religious movement, a great conference of rabbis, this great chevra we call the CCAR, at our best a great Jewish people.

Our movement and this Conference were marked, well up to the founding of the State of Israel, by a preponderance of skepticism about the need for and wisdom of the creation of a Jewish state. Anti-Zionism was alive and well long after the Columbus Guiding Principles were adopted in 1937. Yet in 1945 this Conference chose one of America’s pre-eminent Zionist leaders, Abba Hillel Silver, as its president.

A note: Those were the days when it was said that American Jews believed in drei velten -- three worlds: die velt – this world; yene velt – the next world; and Roosevelt. So the CCAR, a predominantly Democrat and non-Zionist group, elected Silver, a Republican Zionist to be its president.

The ability to hold two conflicting ideas and still maintain the capacity to function.

Over the years of Israel’s existence, this Conference has been steadfast both in support and love of the State of Israel and our fellow Jews there and in claiming the right and obligation to dissent from particular actions or policies of that government when we believe them to be contrary to Jewish values. It may be said of loving support and criticism in our tradition that here also Eilu v’eilu divrei Elohim chayim.

For years, we have understood and accepted the tension between a greater emphasis on ritual, custom and observance and the tradition of classical Reform Judaism and its emphasis on social justice and modernity. Again and again, the ability to encompass and to harmonize both has made us stronger, not weaker, drawing on the best from all of us and from the breadth of our heritage.

I look back thirty-three years to the Atlanta convention of 1973, called by some the Battle of Peachtree. There after years of debate and too often acrimony, a ten line resolution was passed opposing officiation at intermarriages. Pamphlets and articles attacking one side or the other abounded. There were even threats of a split in the Conference as there had been before over Zionism.

Five years later, in 1978, Alex Schindler, zichrono livracha, proposed a comprehensive outreach program through which we turned our attention, not only to weddings – the beginning of a new household – but to outcomes – the nature of the family thus created.

In 1983, there were passionate divisions in this Conference over the proposed resolution on children of intermarriage, what has been termed “the patrilineal” resolution. The debate was intense. At the end, we broke new ground in response to new realities, and we proclaimed that, for us, the gender of the Jewish parents would not be the determinant of who is a Jew. Most of us came to live by it. Some still question it. That is part of who we are.

Move forward yet another eleven years. In 1994, in Philadelphia, I was invited to be part of a major program at the convention. Two rabbis and two lay leaders spoke. I was invited to speak on why and how I do in fact officiate at intermarriages. And the president of the Conference at that time, Shim Maslin, who deserves great credit for that program, was a leading proponent of the 1973 resolution. Beit Hillel – They studied and listened to the views of the other side.

This week we have workshops and programs that deal with how we respond to intermarriage, how we engage and involve, yes, and honor, the non-Jewish partner who lives as a Jew albeit without conversion – what some of us call a ger toshav – what I sometimes call a “common law Jew”. The official position may continue to be a ten line resolution in Atlanta, but the practice has become a consensus that there is more than one respectable way to deal with those issues.

Again and again, de facto if not de jure, our Conference of rabbis has lived the model of Eruvin – Eilu v’eilu divrei Elohim chayim. We have come to discover that, like Fitzgerald’s person of first-rate intelligence, this Conference can encompass and examine and hold more than two divergent ideas and function all the better because of it. Like Beit Hillel, we listen to, study with, and learn from those whose practice is not our own. When hot issues such as same gender ceremonies or physician assisted suicide arise, we spend far more time, energy and resources learning from and listening to each other than debating “Do we or don’t we…either-or…yes or no.”

Not only do I urge us to preserve and embody this heritage among ourselves and within our movement. I urge us to model it in our dealings with those we lead and teach and serve. My years with the National Commission on Rabbinic-Congregational Relations tell me that our people, our congregations, our institutions, and we are vulnerable to the culture of conflict which contaminates our lives. And we must consciously work to avoid it. We need to model for our people the way of Beit Hillel – to listen to and seek to understand the views of the other.

As with Beit Hillel, what gives value to our teachings is not simply their substance. It is how we advance our views and how we treat others and their views. We as rabbis have a tradition from which model our communities. It is a tradition in which controversy and difference need not be Newton’s fourth law of motion – every celebration of success must leave behind someone wallowing in failure, every winner must also produce a loser. If the synagogue and the Jewish community engender in people feelings of failure and loss, then no one – no one ever wins.

To be sure, there must be and there is a short list of principles which are non-negotiable, from which we will not retreat. But there must be a much longer list about which we are prepared to hear, to consider and sometimes to accept that which once we rejected. And the short list must not grow too long – and the long list must not become too short.

Eugene Borowitz, before his current career as film critic, taught us in the Centennial Perspective of 1976:

Reform Jews respond to change in various ways according to the Reform principle of the autonomy of the individual. However, Reform Judaism does more than tolerate diversity; it engenders it. In our uncertain historical situation we must expect to have far greater diversity than previous generations knew. How we shall live with diversity without stifling dissent and without paralyzing our ability to take positive action will test our character and our principles. We stand open to any position thoughtfully and conscientiously advocated in the spirit of Reform Jewish belief.

If that was true in 1976, al achat kamah v’chamah thirty years later.

As I said, I have five texts today – Pirke Avot, Eruvin, F. Scott Fitzgerald, the Centennial Perspective, and an old Jewish joke.

That is the story of the two parties to a dispute who come to the rabbi. You surely know it.

After the first presents his case, the rabbi says, as you surely remember, “You’re right.” And after the other presents his case, the rabbi says to him, “You’re right.” Whereupon the rabbi’s secretary says, “Rabbi, you just told them both that they’re right when they take opposing positions.” And the rabbi said famously, “And you’re right too.”

That joke may have been meant as a put down of rabbis, but I understand it to be a reflection of a first-rate movement, a first rate rabbinate, a first-rate Conference. We celebrate our Reform tradition where certainties are suspect and options are honored. If the Talmud can say of opposing opinions, Eilu v’eilu divrei Elohim chayim, who are we to say that can’t be?

Popular wisdom says that, where there are two Jews, there are three opinions. What does that mean?

Does it portray a constantly quarreling people? Does it picture a community perpetually divided? Nonsense!

What a richness that saying describes! When we are at our best – as rabbis, as a Conference, as a movement, as a people -- when two Jews come together, albeit with three opinions – when they come together in mutual respect, ready to hear each other’s views, ready to honor each other as persons – when two Jews come together with differing views but in common cause -- when zvei Yidden -- two yuds are joined together l’sheim shamayim – they do not spell discord – they do not spell chaos -- they spell Adonai ­ -- they spell God.

Kein yehi ratzon!