CCAR RESPONSA
The Reform Rabbi’s Obligations Toward the UAHC
5758.1
She’elah
During the past year, there has been significant controversy concerning how the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (UAHC or the Union) shall raise its monies. Are Reform rabbis ethically obligated to support the Maintenance of Union Membership (MUM) program of the UAHC? Is the rabbi of a Reform synagogue ethically obliged to take a leadership role in his or her congregation to urge its leaders to fulfill their financial obligations toward the UAHC? (Rabbi James Simon, Worcester, MA)
Teshuvah
This question poses a special challenge to the members of this Committee. We are all Reform rabbis. The vast majority of us are ordinees of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR), the North American yeshivah of the Reform movement which derives a large portion of its budget from the MUM dues collected by the UAHC. The chair of this Committee, moreover, is a faculty member at HUC-JIR. We therefore owe our rabbinical educations and our livelihoods in no small measure to the UAHC and to the funding it raises for our rabbinical school. At the same time, many of us are rabbis of synagogues affiliated with the UAHC, congregations whose fiscal health is never a sure thing and which struggle to balance their own budgets. Since MUM dues make up a significant proportion of a Reform congregation’s annual appropriations, the synagogue’s members and leadership, including its rabbinical leadership, understandably question the value that this particular expenditure offers to their institution. None of us, in other words, qualifies as a purely “objective” observer in this matter.
Yet as rabbis we cannot evade this question, despite our clear professional or financial stake in the answer we give to it. This she’elah, at its core, asks that we think about the nature of our religious community, to define its structure and circumference. It requires that we explain with some precision our understanding of Reform Judaism as a “movement,” as an institutional phenomenon whose existence and fiscal health depends upon the contributions of its members. In addition, it demands that we consider our proper role as rabbis, as teachers and scholars who work within the context of our particular Jewish community. These issues are not new ones, inventions of our own time. They have been the subject of Jewish communal discussion for many centuries. More than that: they have been the subject of rabbinical analysis, of debates and decisions carried on by rabbis in the language of sacred text, recorded in the halakhic literature of codes, commentaries and responsa. The record of Jewish tradition, that is to say, teaches us that this question is not the exclusive province of the “laity”. We therefore consider it our duty to take up this she’elah, even though we cannot claim some sort of dispassionate objectivity as to its teshuvah.
We should note at the outset one important point. As of this writing, much of the controversy surrounding MUM contributions (a controversy which may well have produced this she’elah) concerns the precise level of a congregation’s membership dues to the UAHC and the financial basis upon which these dues are calculated. Our sho’el does not ask us to consider these problems, and at any rate, they lie outside the boundaries of our competence as rabbis. Our task, instead, is to discuss the broader parameters of this issue: how does our understanding of Jewish tradition inform our perception of the obligations of Reform synagogues and rabbis toward the institutions of the wider Reform movement?
1. The UAHC As Our Community. In 1986, this Committee issued a responsum which concluded that the member congregations of the UAHC “are obligated to support this national organization at the level set by duly elected representative delegates.”[1] The teshuvah justifies this conclusion, in part, by citing as precedents a number of historical examples of financial contributions made by Jews to regional, national, or world-wide bodies. These include the half-shekel donated to the Temple in Jerusalem and the communal structures established in medieval Europe to collect taxes on behalf of the general government. These “precedents”, of course, do not correspond to our own communal situation. The Temple was an institution quite different from any other in Jewish history, and the medieval governments, unlike our own, considered us an alien element within the state, in which we did not exercise the rights of citizenship. The duties we owed to these institutions were imposed upon us by “superior” authority, either by the Torah itself[2] or by the government exercising its inherent powers;[3] we had no choice but to meet them. The UAHC by contrast is a democratic organization controlled by its members, who accept their financial obligations toward it voluntarily. The past, in these cases, may not offer us much in the way of useful guidance.
The 1986 responsum, however, does cite a third historical example which speaks more directly to our contemporary circumstances: the takanot hakahal, legislative enactments made by a community for the maintenance of its vital institutions and the governance of its public affairs. These ordinances defined the very nature of the kahal, the “community,” as a political institution, determined its constitutional structure and regulated a wide array of activities such as taxation, commercial transactions, enforcement of community mores, marital law, and many others. Given the wide and frequent use of this legislative power, it is somewhat ironic that the classical talmudic literature, the source of Jewish law, says relatively little about it. Simply put, it is not certain that talmudic halakhah, which speaks of the legislative power of kings and rabbinical courts, recognizes the authority of the “community” to adopt laws and to enforce them upon recalcitrant citizens. Halakhic scholars have therefore struggled to find a theory which would justify the takanot hakahal according to the basic premises of Jewish law. Some argue that these enactments are but a logical extension of the ancient right of the “townspeople” (beney ha`ir) to make rules concerning the control of wages and prices, the requirement to build a synagogue, the collection and appropriation of tzedakah monies and other matters.[4] Others assert that the community is the legal equivalent of the beit din, especially the ancient Sanhedrin, the rabbinical court which under talmudic theory does enjoy the power to enforce its decrees upon the people.[5] Still others locate the source of the community’s legislative power in valid and long-standing local custom (minhag hamedinah), in itself a valid “source” of Jewish law.[6] Finally, there are those who hold that the community by its very nature is endowed with the power to make its own determinations in matters of legitimate public concern, even if those determinations run afoul of some technical requirements of the halakhah.[7]
Whichever of these theories may be the “correct” one, they are united in their assumption that the kahal exists as a legitimate corporate entity and that it possesses the powers necessary to the successful function of such an entity. To put it differently: once the Jews have defined themselves as a community rather than merely a collection of individuals, they have created thereby a mechanism by which this political body can chart its common course and enforce the decisions that it has the right to make. And this serves, ultimately, as the basic argument in support of our 1986 decision on the responsibility of member congregations to support the UAHC. The Union, that is to say, is our community. In establishing the Union and in ratifying its By-Laws, our Reform congregations have indicated that they define themselves in large part as affiliates of an international community of progressive Jewish congregations.[8] Under Jewish law this community, like all others, is endowed with the power of “taxation,” which means the power to set membership dues in accordance with the procedures described in its By-Laws and regulations. As members of such a community, congregations are obligated to pay those dues.
The Reform rabbi is therefore equally obligated to call upon congregations to support the Union by meeting their agreed-upon financial obligations toward it. This is true of all Reform rabbis, but perhaps especially the case for those who serve UAHC member congregations. These obligations, remember, are not only accepted freely by the congregation when it joined the Union; they carry the full sanction of centuries of Jewish tradition. As the teacher of that tradition, the congregation’s rabbi must assume a “leadership role” in advocating the fulfillment of its legitimate responsibilities toward the larger community of which it is a part.
2. The Reform Rabbi and “Kevod Harav”. The principle of kevod harav, the duty to render honor and respect to one’s teacher, serves as an additional argument in favor of the Reform rabbi’s moral obligation to support the UAHC. We discuss this principle in a teshuvah concerning the question of “private ordination,” of whether a rabbi ordained at HUC-JIR may ordain as a rabbi any person who has not been approved for ordination by the College-Institute.[9] We decide that question in the negative: a rabbinic graduate of HUC-JIR may not participate in such an ordination, in large part because the concept of kevod harav means that in an important sense we rabbis remain subject to the authority of the rabbis who ordain us. “To act otherwise is detrimental to the kavod (honor) of one’s teacher and, by extension, of the rabbinate as an institution.” This limitation, to be sure, does not mean that we are prohibited from disagreeing with our teachers on matters of Torah and theology; both Jewish tradition at its best[10] and our own Reform Jewish tradition proclaim our individual intellectual freedom in these matters. On the other hand,
…we feel just as surely a sense of obligation to render honor to our rabbis, those who instilled Torah in us and prepared us for the momentous task of transmitting it to our people. We, too, recognize the principle of kevod harav. And this principle, if it means anything at all…implies that we have a duty to promote the welfare of the College-Institute in any way that we can. It demands at the very least that we avoid taking actions which would undermine the centrality and integrity of the College-Institute as the agency by which North American Reform Jewry has chosen to train its rabbinic leadership… Our semikhah, whatever powers it confers, cannot entitle us to undermine the school which granted it to us.
The duty of rabbis “to promote the welfare of the College-Institute in any way that we can” would certainly imply that we are required to speak out in support of the MUM program. Our seminary draws a significant percentage of its budget from the proceeds of that program, which are divided equally between the UAHC and HUC-JIR. When a member synagogue fails to meet its financial obligations to the Union, the College-Institute suffers thereby. Ordinees of HUC-JIR should not remain silent; they should indeed assume “a leadership role” on behalf of the Union and, through that means, on behalf of the school which taught them Torah.
Conclusion
. We therefore respond to this she’elah in the affirmative. Reform rabbis are ethically obligated to support the Maintenance of Union Membership program. This is because our movement defines and understands itself as an international community made up of member congregations, and like all Jewish communities ours has the right to set membership fees and dues through its authorized procedures. Rabbis ordained at HUC-JIR must also support the MUM program because, as rabbis, they owe a special debt of obligation to the school which ordained them, a school which receives a great deal of its funding from congregations who pay their share of Union dues.
We repeat that this teshuvah in no way deals with the proper level of MUM dues, a question which cannot be answered by way of text and tradition but which must be settled by the congregations themselves, speaking through their duly-elected representatives to the Union. With regard to the more fundamental issue, however, our understanding of our tradition and of our nature as a community leaves us in no doubt whatsoever: Reform congregations are obligated to support the Union which they have created, and Reform rabbis, as the teachers of Torah they claim to be, must assume a leadership role in assuring that their synagogues fulfill that obligation.
NOTES
- Contemporary American Reform Responsa
(CARR), no. 139.
- Exodus 30:11ff.
- The principle indicated here is dina demalkhuta dina, “the law of the state is the law.” For a detailed discussion, see our responsum 5757.1.
- R. Chananiah bar R. Yehudah Gaon, in the collection of geonic responsa known as Sha`arey Tzedek 4:4(16). The rabbinic sources concerning the beney ha`ir include M. Megilah 3:1, Tosefta Bava Metzi`a 11:23, BT Bava Batra 8b, and BT Megilah 27a. R. Chananiah also applies to the community the rule hefker beit din hefker, derived from Ezra 10:8, according to which the court is empowered to confiscate the property of all citizens who disobey its decrees; see BT Gitin 36b. A similar line is adopted by Rabbenu Gershom ben Yehudah, the “Light of the Exile,” Responsa, no. 67, and by R. Yitzchak b. Sheshet (14th cent.), Resp. Rivash, no. 399.
- This is notably the case with R. Shelomo b. Adret (Rashba; d. 1310) of Barcelona, the source of much of the halakhic theory concerning takanot hakahal. See his Responsa 5:126: “the relationship of the majority of the city to the minority is that of the Great Sanhedrin (beit din hagadol) to the Jewish people in ancient times: their decrees are binding, and the one who transgresses them is to be punished.” See as well Resp. Rashba 1:729, 3:411 and 417 and others. This theory, however, is not universally accepted. R. Ya`akov Tam, in particular, rejects the analogy of the community council to the rabbinical court; accordingly, he rules that the majority of the community may not enforce its will upon those who dissent. See Sefer HaMordekhai, Bava Batra 1:480.
- Resp. R. Meir of Rothenburg
, no. 106 (Prague ed.) and 371 (Lvov ed.). This may be the strongest theoretical argument, in that it accommodates R. Tam’s objections to the beit din analogy (see note 5) by injecting a note of pragmatism. See Resp. Chatam Sofer, Choshen Mishpat, no. 116: the minhag is to follow the majority decision in all community matters, for “were we to wait until unanimity is achieved, no public business would ever be concluded.”
- R. Chaim Ya’ir Bachrach (Germany, 17th cent.), Resp. Chavat Ya’ir, no. 57.
- The process of ratification is important here, since it means that this community was created in the form of an explicit agreement among its members, who imposed its authority upon themselves. The outlines of such a democratic theory already exist in Jewish law, which speaks of the “ratification” of the Torah by the Israelite people (Ex. 24:7) and of a subsequent “re-acceptance” during the days of Esther and Mordekhai (see BT Shabbat 88a on Ex. 19:17 and Esther 9:27; the rabbis were concerned over the seemingly coercive elements of the Mount Sinai narrative). See as well Maimonides’ Introduction to the Mishneh Torah, which explains the legal authority of the Babylonian Talmud in terms of its “acceptance” by the Jewish people (hiskimu…kol yisrael). This is not to say that this theory fully corresponds to the notion of representative democracy as it operates in modern political culture. We mean to suggest rather that some of the opposition to the authority of the community, particularly that of Rabbenu Tam (see note 5), can be allayed when we remember that our own communities are based explicitly upon “popular acceptance” of the governing rules, which are not imposed by a body which claims the powers of a beit din to enforce its decrees against the will of the people.
- Teshuvot for the Nineties
, no. 5753.4, particularly at pp. 136-138. See the accompanying notes to that teshuvah for source material.
- For example, R. Ya`akov Emden (18th cent.), Resp. She’elat Ya`avetz 1:5: “on matters of halakhic judgment, it is not sufficient to say that the student is entitled to argue in favor of his own opinion against that of his teacher; rather, he is obligated to do so. He should not remain silent due to the honor of his teacher (kevod rabo), for the honor of the Torah takes precedence (kevod torah adif).”
If needed, please consult Abbreviations used in CCAR Responsa.