There are times we are rendered mute, when silence is both becoming and unavoidable. The most obvious example (though far from the only one) is 9/11. One shakes one’s head in disbelief, in respect, in sorrow. At graveside, the only sound that lingers is the first shovelful of earth as it hits the coffin.

And there are times when we are wise to be silent, silence not as the inability to speak but in keeping with the talmudic dictum, “Wise men, be careful in your words.” That is an especially hard lesson to internalize for those of us who live by the sweat of our tongue.

But when to speak, meaning when to speak out, and what to say? For example: How to engage with those who claim American Jews who are critical of Israel’s policies must keep their criticism “private,” that when they speak out they are “washing Israel’s dirty linen in public,” “giving aid and comfort to the enemy,” that they have not the moral standing to speak out: “How dare you, living in safety in Boston, tell us, in Tel Aviv or Nachal Oz, or Rosh Pinah, how to solve our problems?

These are not always mere ploys designed to discredit the would-be critic. They are often heartfelt responses to the frustrations and anxieties of a suffocating conflict that pounds relentlessly on the Jewish sensibility, on Israelis, and a swath of their supporters outside the Land.

There are, to be sure, standard responses: “Let those who dirty the linen be judged before those who call attention to their poor hygiene.” Or: “You cannot ask that we stand silent in the face of policies and actions that seem to us, upon reflection, self-defeating.” Or: “If the only words Diaspora Jews and other Lovers of Zion are entitled to say in response to Israel’s actions are ‘Hip, hip, hooray!,’ we will quickly lose all credibility. We are not and you ought not want us to become cheering automatons.”

But there is more (much more than can here be argued) to be said. Words of rebuke can be spoken with spite or with love. They can be spoken arrogantly or diffidently. They can be spoken with glee (“gotcha!”) or with pain. And they can be spoken by people who have earned the right to be heard by virtue of their personal history, their ongoing connection to the safety and welfare of the Jewish state, or by those who wish Israel ill.

There’s this, as well: The governors of Israel are not the governors of the Jewish people. There have been, are, and will be times when Israel, for whatever its raisons d’état, chooses a course of action that is at odds with the considered sentiments of the Jewish people worldwide. We ought listen carefully, even respectfully, to Israel’s plea that we stand with them — and then make our own assessment about where the vexing intersection between politics and morality points.

My friend and sometime teacher, Dr. Aryeh Cohen, arguing in these pages last month, asserts that “the prerequisite for intervening when someone else is silent is clean hands.” Alas, were that the operative criterion, most of us would be forced to silence. Jimmy Carter, the self-righteous moralist, told us he had “lust in his heart.” And we, just about all of us, have dirt of one sort or another on our hands. Clean hands (and a pure heart) are prerequisites for entering heaven, not for participating in earthly affairs.

When Isaac Mayer Wise established the Union of American Hebrew Congregations in 1873 and the Hebrew Union College in 1875, he avoided the label “Reform” in the titles of his institutions because he did not believe he was a creating a denominationally distinct form of Judaism. His intention was to create an “American Judaism” that would guide the broad mass of American Jews at a time when the Jewish community was overwhelmingly composed of culturally homogeneous German-speaking Jews. The advent of large numbers of Eastern European Jews after 1881 caused his dream of a unified “American Israel” to perish.

This historical observation is no more than reminiscence today. The social and cultural factors that once so powerfully divided German and Eastern European Jews have long disappeared, and today’s American Jewish community — new immigrants from South Africa, Iran, Israel, and the FSU notwithstanding — is characterized by a high degree of cultural-social homogeneity. Wise’s non-sectarian vision of Reform appears viable once again.

Other factors only underscore the scope of the challenge the movement has today and highlight the task Reform confronts if Judaism is to speak to the bulk of American Jews in relevant and compelling terms. For all the universalistic aspirations and affirmations that marked Wise and the Jewish community during and immediately after his era, endogamy remained the communal rule. This is obviously not now the case. The high rate of intermarriage in present-day America speaks to how acculturated as well as how accepted Jews are by the American mainstream. While the American Jewish community may now be culturally homogeneous, it is just as surely “ethnically diverse.” Acknowledging this, the Reform movement is creating an inclusive and welcoming community that promotes the vitality of the Jewish people and religion in America.

American society today is open in ways that were unimaginable a century ago. Jews construct their individual identity and communal commitments in a world where people derive meaning against a backdrop of virtually unlimited options for affiliation and participation. Yet, as social creatures who seek meaning, Jews remain in need of fellowship, learning, and prayer, and the synagogue and allied institutions can and must provide the gateways and, ultimately, the venues where the fulfillment of such needs occurs.

At the same time, the synagogue will need to foster identity and to craft meaning in novel terms that speak to the present generation. In his important works, Princeton sociologist Robert Wuthnow cites the creation of the highly informal and personalized opportunities for meaning and community that many Generation X and Y persons seek, and he points out how important aesthetics and culture are to the building of their community. Reform leadership and laity must incorporate these developments into their communal planning, as institutions can no longer depend upon traditional associational and kinship patterns to foster affiliation. Contemporary Jews move among movements and individual teachers as they engage in their own personal search for spiritual purpose and community. The Reform movement should embrace this development, and our teachers must have the courage and conviction to acknowledge that an emphasis upon a “Judaism of meaning,” as opposed to a “Judaism of boundaries and borders,” is what is needed in our day.

Reform must establish multiple entry points for all elements of our diverse population in formal and informal settings that are both within and beyond the walls of the synagogue. These settings must include temples and camps, offices and schools, restaurants and shopping centers, the city and the wilderness. Programming should include all types of study that can transform institutions and forge meaning for both the individual and the group, social action programs that contribute to justice in the world, opportunities for the creation of community both formal and casual, and worship and lifecycle celebrations and observances that are evocative and joyous. Our most creative rabbis and professionals are providing for these moments of dialogical encounter already; these efforts must be replicated and increased.

People today, no less than in the past, wish to perceive a sacred vitality at the core of their lives. Living within a pluralistic framework that underscores the importance of individual choice, Jews still can and will seek out Judaism for the wisdom, identity, and community our tradition affords if our religion speaks to them in meaningful cadences. The legacy Isaac Mayer Wise bestowed upon Reform to address broad sectors of the community remains enduring, and the future of Judaism in the U.S. depends, to a large degree, upon the ability of the movement and HUC-JIR to provide leadership that will maintain and revitalize Jewish community, worship, study, association, and action in light of the conditions and values that shape our people today.

“Virtually everything I have done as a volunteer leader in the Reform movement from the congregation through my current position has been done in partnership with our professionals.”
—Robert Heller

“In any successful volunteer-professional partnership in the Reform movement, the participants must believe that the decision-making is a joint process. This requires a great deal of trust, respect, and faith in the partners who are working together.”
—Marilynn Yentis

These two statements by volunteer leaders in the Reform movement testify to a distinctive, if not defining, aspect of Reform Judaism. With the contraction of halakhic authority and the growth of congregational autonomy, decisions of religious policy and even practice are the shared province of professionals and volunteers. To be sure, the

balance between authority and autonomy is elusive and the partnership between professionals and volunteers is dynamic. In today’s era of professionalization, partnership often means that volunteers are directors that issue directives; they must assert lay ownership and share responsibility. Acknowledging imperfection and asymmetry in the partnership — at times the same vagaries as in any human relationship — is critical to the success of shared leadership. The partnership works more often in theory than in practice — sometimes ending in “divorce” or détente, but other times leading to synergy and symbiosis.

Rather than relying on poskim as arbiters of Jewish law (Orthodox) or members of a law committee (Conservative) to determine norms of Jewish practice, Reform Jewish thought and practice is shaped by a coalition that includes a seminary (HUC-JIR), an array of professional groups (CCAR, rabbis, ACC, cantors, NATE, ECE-RJ, and PARDeS, educators, and NATA, administrators), and a congregational system (URJ). Not surprisingly, decisions that engage this organizational matrix are time consuming, labor intensive, and process driven. For example, introducing a new siddur (Mishkan T’filah) involved multiple votes by rabbis and feedback from 300-plus congregations that piloted different drafts of the siddur. The result is also telling — a prayerbook in multiple versions, e.g., with and without transliteration, with and without weekday services. Developing a curriculum for congregational schools also required multiple layers of input from academics and practitioners, ongoing assessment, and continual refinement. This process-heavy attitude toward change can at times yield frustration but the prize of inclusiveness and the better outcomes it produces is perceived to be worth the price of inefficiency.

Helping to create a meaningful Jewish life for every Reform Jew is the shared responsibility of rabbis, cantors, educators, administrators, and lay persons working collaboratively. Collaboration has become more than a method of engagement; it has become a value and, perhaps, a goal. And as partnerships develop, we see volunteers take on roles as teachers, readers of Torah, and worship leaders (shelichei tsibur). In early rabbinic Judaism, zugot (pairs of rabbinic leaders) articulated principles of Jewish thought and practice. They often presented their ideas in tension with one another, e.g., the exegetical approaches of Akiva and Ishmael. An echo of the zugot in Reform Judaism would include a rabbi and a congregational president, a professional and a volunteer, walking and working together, in pursuit of a Torat Chayyim, a living Torah that is authentic and relevant, rooted in Jewish tradition and open to Jewish innovation.

There is an abundance of terms of art around which American Jewish leadership organizes the idea regarding how the Jews should be configured and led: denominationalism; post-denominationalism; trans-denominationalism; and, of course, pluralism. Each in its own way, it seems to me, runs the risk of representing a new movement in American Judaism that only creates higher barriers.

As a Reform rabbi and ideological pluralist, I would be happy to never use the word “denomination” again. In an open-society and digital age when access is paramount, barriers to access seem beside the point.  After all, we are encouraged in Pirke Avot to “build a fence around the Torah,” not a fence around the synagogue.

Though my ordination is Reform, I arrived at Hebrew Union College by way of a secular Yiddishist, a German Jewish historian, and a Conservative rabbi — each of whom understood the younger iteration of my own aspiration for Jewish leadership and recommended HUC as the place of greatest, open inquiry.  That worked for me. Men and women played equal roles, gays and lesbians could be ordained, all 613 commandments were not considered binding, the demographic challenge of interfaith relationships would be addressed openly, and authorship of Torah was open to inquiry. While we accepted we were learning in a “movement” institution, our intellectual environment was pluralistic.

Interestingly, the one place I felt the presence of the movement was where many students also felt the need to express their individuality most: in prayer. Here we were bound by the decorum of a movement curriculum and siddur and here one could truly experience the dynamic tension between the classical idea that “Reform is a verb.” I often wondered if Reform was a verb or rather an institutional idea around which intellectual inquiry was organized.

The vast majority of students were less interested in “Reforming Judaism” than they were in finding their own place in a broader Jewish civilization.  For some, this was a position of humility; others relished the convenience of a movement that emphasized “choice.” But most felt that as the 20th century drew to a close and a new paradigm for the organization of Jewish life began to emerge, a pluralistic, expressive Jewish civilization was ascendant.

Here’s an example. Nearly 40 years ago, HUC began sending its first-year students to Jerusalem. This strategic move accomplished at least two things: First, it made an unambiguous statement about the centrality of Israel to Jewish identity; and second, an equally clear statement about the centrality of the Hebrew language to that identity. While students learned about the various initiatives undertaken by the Reform movement to advance the cause of Progressive Judaism in Israel, we were fundamentally immersed in an orientation to Jewish life that challenged our particular denominational ken. Shabbat and holidays in and around Jerusalem happened across a spectrum of choices:  Feminist Orthodox; Braslaver Ecstatic; Traditional Egal; Meditation/Renewal; Old-Fashioned Orthodox; Artists’ Beit Midrash; Classical Reform; and Progressive Israeli. We saw it all. The geographic and linguistic centrality of Israel and Hebrew meant that Reform Judaism would be one of Ahad Ha’Am’s unanticipated beneficiaries.

In the twelve years that I’ve been serving the Jewish people as a Reform rabbi, the majority of the inquiries I field from seeking Jews of all generations — even within the Reform synagogue — is what Judaism has to say about life, death, meaning, the state of the world, and the call to action for justice and peace. And just as HUC’s first-year students experience the invigorating varieties of expression along the Jewish prayer spectrum, so too does our synagogue, comprising dues-paying Reform Jews, offer multiple modes of spiritual engagement each week.

As Reform Judaism develops in this open atmosphere, I believe that we will experience a more open Judaism in general, enriched by pluralism’s shared goals of openness to inquiry, experience, and expression. Nearly two centuries ago, the denominationalism of Judaism answered a particular historical need at a particular time. Today, the Jewish maneuver, from what Franz Rosenzweig termed the “perimeter to the center,” necessitates a new series of configurations. Our synagogues and movements will be the richer for these changes. There is an elegant irony in all this:  Reform sets the organizing rules of engagement (open, democratic, historical reasoning) but the system engaged is the broad, plural ongoing miracle of Jewish civilization.