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Rabbi Joel Lehrfield
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| The Rabbi's Study |
| September, 2003 |
The High Holydays are upon us and another cycle of the Jewish year is beginning once again. Jews of all shades of observance will be reasserting their connection to the G-d of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and to the faith of their forefathers. It is certainly a heartwarming scene to see synagogues overflowing with congregants. To be truthful, however, the nature of the connection to our forefathers seems to have changed for so many of us. The Hebrew term for the period of the year beginning with Rosh Hashana and concluding with Yom Kippur is called "Yamim Noraim." These words translated mean "Days of Awe and Trembling" and for many they were truly days of awe and trembling as we awaited the divine judgement. There was a special ambience to those times. The other day, someone was recalling to me what it was like to have grown up on the great West Side in the days of its glory. Those were more difficult days and life was not always easy but there was the scent of Jewishness that permeated the air. He recalled the Tashlich service and he described the throngs of people that looked like a river of human beings cascading down those grand boulevards that led to the lagoons. In this ancient ceremony there were interwoven the feelings of joy at seeing one's friends and awe at contemplating the fragility of our lives. But alas, those days when the bulk of the community would be in some way fashioned by a common religious faith have passed. Today, there are other things that hold most Jews together, and they are by and large secular in nature. We are more defined by our concern for Israel, by the rising tide of anti-Semitism that we had thought had been diminished by the events of the Holocaust, and by the liberal agendum for many of our people. These secular interests are much more embracing than G-d and Judaism. The inexplicable horror of the Holocaust, coupled with the rapidly diminishing numbers of our people who have experienced those events have left us ignorant of our heritage, incapable of understanding our values and of how they differ from the religion of our time--the liberal politics of the Jewish community. And the question remains - In this wonderful country of ours, if you're Jewish in America and you don't believe in G-d and have little understanding or perhaps interest in Torah, what is it that maintains Jewishness? I had read recently an article in which the writer of a prominent local newspaper points out how little the faith of his forefathers means to him. He titled his article "Religion Will Ban Everything, As Long As We Allow It To." He writes, "Having read the Bible in my youth, sometimes in Hebrew, I can tell you that it bans lots of stuff. Almost anything you can imagine is forbidden, and lots you can't. ...I don't muse about G-d much, obviously... Awful childhood diseases don't bother Him, apparently. No reaction on the Congo to date." I have no argument with this person's antinomian and probably agnostic beliefs. I merely use the article to illustrate my point. We are defined by what we are not, as Micah Sachs, of the San Diego Jewish Journal wrote last year - "We don't believe in Jesus, but we don't believe in G-d. We don't touch the New Testament, but we don't read the Torah either. We deplore anti-Semites for seeking to destroy our traditions (and ourselves as well). We are not Islamic fundamentalists, we are not homicidal bombers. We are not terrorists posing as political leaders." |
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