Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis Sermons

A Reenactment, January 19, 2001

by Harold M. Schulweis

When they thought I wasn’t listening they called me “Kappie” -- but never to my face. I was born on the 14th day of the month of Sivan 5641. The English date was 1881. I was born on Friday night at 11:50 PM and everyone knew the exact time because it was marked by my father, Rabbi Israel, who stopped the clock. Incidentally, Moses Maimonides' father did the same thing when his son was born. I was born in Sventzian to Israel Kaplan and I studied in Volzhin at the Yeshivah where the Rosh Yeshivah was Rabbi Naphtali Zvi Judah Berlin, called the Netziv. So I come from Lithuanian Jewry stock.

My father was a follower of Rabbi Israel Salanter and the Musar Movement that believed that Talmud study had to be supplemented by a devotion to ethical literature. Salanter emphasized Musar and created a special institution called a Musar Shtibl where young men would study ethical literature and pursue a disciplined ethical life. My motherís name was Haya Nehama. She was talented in music and language and she supported the whole family while my father learned in the Yeshiva. My parents owned a small general store in Sevntzian which my mother managed.

My mother had great plans for me, fantasizing that one day I might attain the position of Chief Rabbi of the British Empire. She bore two sons before I was born; both of them died in infancy. My father, Israel was frequently absent studying in the Yeshiva. When I think back, it may be that Sigmund Freud was quite right that whoever has glimpsed that glint of approval in the eyes of his mother can overcome almost every obstacle.

My name was Motel and while we were in France it was changed to Maurice. Later it became Mark or Max and still later I changed my name to Mordecai. In itself these changes may be a symbol of the changing character of Jewish life and its evolution.

I read in my obituaries that I died at 102. In some of the articles I am described as a very serious individual. I recognize in me sometimes the tendency toward depression.

I have faced, in my life, many internal conflicts, many frustrations. At times I think that I have been deluded in thinking that I can help render Judaism permanent, a sort of Menachem Mordecai of La Mancha to fight against windmills which also worst me. Thatís why I find myself like ìthe knight of the long face, always grumpy, always in bad humorî.

I looked around me and I found among the crises of anti-semitism, an internal sterility. I attended City College along with Maurice Raphael Cohen who later became the philosopher. At college I was exposed to the world of anthropology and sociology and to science generally. It was a world of Darwin, Newton, Einstein, John Dewey, William James. I felt that Judaism was still living in a pre-Copernican world, in a world of miracles, supernaturalism and magic. We were not speaking to Jewish secular people, to the enlightened ones nor,on Shabbat, to the Morrieís on Tuesday. I found, for example, we were confronting three kinds of Jews:

1. Jews who believe
2. Jews who canít believe
3. Jews who make believe

I was especially concerned with the Jews who make believe.

I was given an opportunity to teach in the Jewish Theological Seminary at its Teacherís Institute and at its Rabbinic School. I taught the philosophy of Judaism and Homiletics. I sensed in classes above all else, the absence of engagement by the rabbinic students. Specifically the absence of one of the three tenses of Jewish life -- hayitti, ehyeh - no 'I am'. Yes, students knew about what was, about history, about ancient texts and about the visionaries who prophesied the future, but something indispensably important was missing beneath the present tense. So I would turn in my classes to the rabbinic students - bright, intelligent, many of them clean from Yeshivah. They knew how to daven. They knew how to translate the prayers. They knew the meaning of míchayay hamaytim, a resurrection; and the chosen people; and animal sacrifices. But they were shocked by the simplest and most direct questions I asked, Do you believe in resurrection of the dead? Do you believe that Jews are the chosen people, exclusively selected by God among all the other people in the world? Do you believe in the restoration of sacrifices?

Most of them mumbled that they were not sure and many even argued that they were certainly not believers in those concepts. I asked them ìSo if you donít believe, why do you pray it? If you donít believe how can you pray?î What a shock! No one had ever asked them that. What does my belief system have to do with prayer, with behavior? Ask me about the date of the didaction of prayer -- when, how, where. Ask me the earliest formulaic of prayer, but donít ask me here and now whether I believe. Which professor asks that question?

I asked them to open up the Conservative Prayer Book; and you too! Turn to page 141. Explain to me why there is such an empty space on the left side of the page. Is it a typographic error or zecher lachurban, empty spaces with the reference numbers 28, 9 and 10. Empty on the left side but full on the right side. Full in Hebrew and blank in English. Whatís going on here? And its the same with page 152

So let us look up Numbers 28. There it is written ìAnd on the Sabbath day two he-lambs of the first year without blemish and two tenth parts of an ephah of fine flour for a meal offering, mingled with oil and the burnt offering thereof. This is the burnt offering of every Sabbath beside the continual burnt offering and the drink offering thereof.î Why did you leave it out and why didnít you translate it? Could it be that you donít believe that mode of animal sacrifice? Is that the reason that the Chazan sings that particular prayer so beautifully? Whenever you have doubts as to whether or not you mean the prayer you eliminated it from the English and sing it so that the melody can cover up your intellectual embarrassment? Why are the best melodies set to the poorest theologies? Is it rabbinic-cantorial conspiracy?

Some of the students turned away from me. Praying is praying. Look, this is the way my zayde prayed. And I loved my zayde. This is the way we pray. Never mind the Hasidic wisdom -- the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. Can I daven with my zaydeís head or heart?

They accused me of literalness and of seriousness. Too much philosophy, too much theology. I didnít enjoy my role as Jewish gadfly. But my heart bled because I recognized that if you cannot believe in what you pray all the efforts to make prayer more meaningful: shorter sermons, large choirs, organ music, violins, banjos will not work.

The faculty with whom I taught, taught them everything except their own present belief and convictions.

Look here, there was a prayer in the traditional prayer book which all my students used, blessing God for ìnot having created me a womanî. Is that the kind of prayer you want to pray? There was a prayer blessing God for not having made me a slave. And what about the slaves? Can you bless God for not making you a slave with them being a slave? Can you bless God for not making me a goy, whatever that may mean? Is that a prayer you can pray? Would you like to find such a prayer in the Church;- Blessed art Thou O Lord our God king of the universe who has not made me a Jew or not made me a disbeliever in Jesus?

I took for my role the Jewish Socrates' gadfly. And many of the students did not like thinking. ìShucklingî is not thinking, itís dancing. Is dancing davening? Just pray. Just daven. Just say the words. And what will your congregants think? Or will you make them shuckl? And thank God that they donít know Hebrew so that we will be embarrassed by the meaning, the theology, the philosophy of some of those prayers.

And then I asked them about prayer claiming Jewish chosenness! A prayer that the Reform and the Orthodox and the Conservatives all prayed, but I found to be morally obsolete; in violation of my ethical conscience. What does it mean to say we are chosen from all the peoples of the world? "How is it?" I said to my students. Look, you are unhappy with the notion of other faiths who believe that they are chosen and you are rejected, and that they have the truth of God and not you? Extra ecclesia nulla salus. Will you teach that to your children and your childrenís children as if you believe it? Do you really believe that God has chosen only you and not the others, that Christianity and Islam are false, and Buddhism and Hinduism are heresies? Weíve just gone through a Second World War and seen the folly of chauvinism and the terrible claims of superiority that has led to such a calamity. Many of my bright students said ìYou may be right but if so, what can you do about it? Who are we to change a Prayer Book or a Haggadah?î

I first met your rabbi in 1945. He came fresh from Yeshivah College into the Seminary where I was teaching homiletics. I was then 64 years old. Schulweis, like others, read the New York Times of June 12, 1945 that the Reconstructionist Prayer Book that I and my colleagues had written was burned by rabbis from the Aggudath Harabonim at the Hotel Mcalpin. And I was placed in herem, excommunicated, not to be spoken to, and most assuredly not to be read. It was a shock, even to those who opposed me, this burning. It was 1945, after the Second World War, after the episodes of the Nazis who burned so many books. And here we Jews were burning books. Still, I comforted myself into believing that progress was delayed because 500 years before, Calvin, unhappy with what he regarded as the heresy of Servetus, burned Servetus. I got away with murder because they only burned my book. Whatís a book among friends?

On the cover page of my earliest diary I had written a quote from the philosopher Nietzsche: ìOf all that is written I love only what a man has written with his bloodî. Without being melodramatic I must tell you that I was deeply hurt by the reaction of the rabbis and especially the reaction of my own colleagues, my fellow professors at the Jewish Theological Seminary. It was not that I wasnít forewarned. With my friends and colleagues Eugene Kohn and Ira Eisenstein I published the new Haggadah of 1941 because I found that in the Haggadah, the one that was distributed free from Maxwell House Coffee, the Haggadah that was good to the last trope, what was missing was the spiritual, ethical significance of freedom. In its stead it was a concentration upon the paschal sacrifice, the ten plagues which were being multiplied through rabbinic interpretation to be not only 10 but 250 plagues. I wanted to emphasize the democratic thrust of the Passover, the universal themes of liberation and the freedoms. And it enraged my colleagues at the Seminary. At my home, I showed your rabbi and his wife, Malkah the ten page letter that I received from my colleagues. They wrote "how dare I tamper with the Haggadah?" Prof. Louis Ginsberg said ìOnly a Saadya or a Maimonides has the right to philosophize about Judaism; but not a Philo who came to Judaism only with a knowledge of philosophy. Who are you to suggest a different text, a more modern text in the tradition?î

It was an attitude quite familiar to me. I knew it from the Talmud. In the Gemorah Shabbat 112 it is written: If our ancestors were like sons of angels, we are like sons of men. And if our ancestors were like sons of men then we are like asses.î That I could not accept. We are not like asses and we must not act like asses merely carrying the burden of books. In the letter they added, among other things, a typically scholarly note. My Haggadah translated ìkarpasî as celery. Now they showered me with all kinds of philosophical information that the proper translation is ìparsleyî not celery. Thatís Wissenschaft des Judenthums. In the footnote of the letter a P.S.- Professor Max Artz is in Florida and therefore he did not sign the letter on our position to your work.

That was the first experience with the faculty. Not only the Orthodox world placed me in herem, excommunicated me but also the senior professors at the Jewish Theological Seminary. Such scholars as Louis Ginsberg, Alexander Marx, Saul Lieberman attacked me and did not speak to me. In the faculty sessions around the table there were chairs but on either side of me the chairs remained empty.

Your rabbi and I were once riding the elevator of the Seminary when we stopped at a particular floor and Professor Saul Lieberman took a look and when he saw who was there, mainly Kaplan, he turned his back and walked away. He would not ride in the same elevator.

But you have to have faith. And you have to believe that what you are doing is for the well being of the Jewish people and its renaissance. I went ahead with my programs despite considerable insult and ostracism.

But I was blessed. People did listen.

You will not find it as a resolution in the Rabbinical Assembly or its Commission on Laws and Standards but you have a Bat Mitzvah in your congregation. That was unheard of. But I began it against the cries and criticisms and recriminations of Reform and Orthodoxy and Conservative. The first Bat Mitzvah took place in the synagogue on March 18, 1922. They said the reason that I introduced Bat Mitzvah was because of four arguments, namely Judith, Hadassah, Naomi and Selma, my four daughters.

You are the beneficiaries of my idealism. I understand that you confirm Bat Mitzvah. I understand that your Bat Mitzvah reads from the Torah, the Haftorah and conducts services and is counted into the minyan. They wear a tallit. You have presidents of your congregation who are women. You even ordain women. So Judaism and the Conservative Movement are the beneficiaries of my battles.

I donít like Jews who make believe. I love the Kotzker Rebbe who said you can imitate everything except truth. And you, the members of Conservative Judaism, listened to me. You may not even understand it but you have changed because of me. Following the publication of my burned Prayer Book you changed your own Prayer Book. If you open it up to page 45 you will see the character of that change. What you have there in your series of benedictions is a substitute for the original which blessed God for not making you a goy or an eved or an ishah. You now pray Blessed art Thou O Lord our God who makes me according to Your will.

In the play ìLe Bourgeois Gentlehommeî, there is a character called Jourdain who is informed one day by the philosopher that he was speaking prose. ìGood heavensî said Jourdain, ìfor more than 40 years I have been speaking prose without knowing it?î For decades American Jews have been thinking and practicing Reconstructionism without knowing it.

Let me read you one important definition that Kaplan introduced into contemporary vocabulary. That was that ìJudaism is an evolving religious civilizationî. For this I was roundly criticized and chastised. But what did I mean and what was the reason for a such a definition? First of all, civilization is larger. Itís a term that is larger than that used in defining Judaism as a religion. Civilization is the total expressions of life and of values of a living organism - the Jewish people. Civilization includes Jewish art, Jewish music, Jewish drama, Jewish humor, Jewish language. You have no Episcopalian lullaby but there is a Jewish lullaby. You have no Methodist humor but there is Jewish humor. Judaism is a civilization that includes everything that gives life and vitality and purpose and fulfillment to this living organism called The Jewish People. I hear that B.J.E. in New York and at Sinai use music at services. I even read that VBS used an accordion after services and some wondered why.

And evolving means we are not frozen into the past, that we are not replications of the past, that we are not Xerox machines, that as long as the Jewish people lives it always changes just as the world of the Bible is not the world of the Mishnah or Gemorra, or the world of medieval Judaism is not the world of modern Judaism. Evolution is the way in which we live. Whoever studies Jewish history will know that what has kept us alive is the capacity and the genius to adopt and adapt the truths of the past to meet the challenges of the present. There is a phrase that I wrote that has been quoted often. I must admit it is a good summation of much of my belief. ìThe past has a vote but no veto.î We must live in three tenses but if there is any contribution that I have made to my readers and to my students it is to respect the most neglected of the three tenses, the present tense which means you and me together and now.

A story is told that a rabbinic student offered his sermon and I corrected his position. A month later he gave the same sermon only this time he included my correction. But I didnít like the correction. The student protested ìBut I changed the sermon so that it included your correction of last month.î ìOh, that was last month. I changed since then.î I know how uncomfortable we are with change. How fearful we are that change will dissolve our identity. But I believe that the deepest threat to Jewish vitality is immobility, paralysis, staleness, sameness.

I'm not a Chasid. But I am taken by the Bratzlaver who called for ìfrishkeitî, freshness. Respect the past, honor the future but do not neglect the present.

The following handout was distributed at this lecture

THE PRINCIPLES OF RECONSTRUCTIONISM

Judaism, or that which has united the successive generations of Jews into one People, is not only a religion; it is a dynamic religious civilization.

Judaism has passed through three distinct stages in its evolution, and is now on the threshold of a fourth stage. It was primarily national in character during the first Commonwealth era, ecclesiastical during the second Commonwealth era, and rabbinical from then until the end of the eighteenth century. It is now developing into a democratic civilization.

The emergence of the next stage calls for the reconstitution of the Jewish People and its enhancement, the revitalization of the Jewish religion, and the replenishment of Jewish culture.

The reconstitution of the Jewish People is predicated upon the following:

• The reclamation of the Land of Israel as the home of the historic Jewish civilization;
• The renewal of the covenant binding all Jews throughout the world into one united People, with the Jewish community in Israel as the core;
• The formation of organic Jewish communities in all countries of the Jewish Diaspora.

An organic community is one in which all activities and institutions conducted by Jews for Jews are interactive, and in which the fostering of Jewish peoplehood, religion and culture is given primacy.

The revitalization of Jewish religion can be best acieved through the study of it in the spirit of free inquiry and through the separation of its organized institutions from all political authority,

The revitalization of Jewish religion requires that the belief in God be interpreted in terms of universally human, and specifically Jewish, experience.

By reason of the prevailing diversity in world outlook, there has to be room in Jewish religion for different versions of it.

The continuity of a religion through different stages, and its identity amid diversity of belief and practice, are sustained by its sancta: these are the heroes, events, texts, places, and seasons that the religion signalizes as furthering the fulfillment of human destiny.

The traditional conception of Torah should be expanded to include:

• Ethical culture, the fostering of love and justice in all human relations;
• Ritual culture, the fostering of the religious sancta with all their symbolic significance;
• Esthetic culture, the fostering of the arts as a means of expressing the emotional values of Jewish life.

Every people, Jewish and non-Jewish, is nowadays confronted with the problem of living in two civilizations. It has to blend its historic civilization with the modern national civilization of the country in which it lives.

Loyalty to Judaism should be measured by active participation in Jewish life, in keeping with the foregoing principles. 

1. We want Judaism to help us overcome fear, temptation. and disheartenment.
2. We want Judaism to imbue us with a sense of responsibility for the righteous use of the blessings wherewith God endows us.
3. We want the Jew to be so trusted that his yea will be taken as yea, and his nay as nay.
4. We want to learn how to utilize our leisure to best advantage physically, intellectually, and spiritually.
5. We want the Jewish home to live up to its traditional standards of virtue and piety.
6. We want the Jewish upbringing of our children to further their moral and spiritual growth, and to enable them to accept with joy their heritage as Jews.
7. We want the synagogue to enable us to worship God in sincerity and truth.
8. We want our religious traditions to be interpreted in terms of understandable experience, and to be made relevant to our present day needs.
9. We want to participate in the upbuilding of Eretz Yisrael as a means to the renaissance of the Jewish spirit.
10. We want Judaism to find rich, manifold and ever new expression in philosophy, in letters, and in the arts.
11. We want all forms of Jewish organization to make for spiritual purpose and ethical endeavor.
12. We want the unity of the Jewish People throughout the world to be fostered through mutual help in time of need, and through cooperation in the furtherance of Judaism at all times.
13. We want Judaism to function as a potent influence for justice, freedom, and peace in the life of men and nations.
     

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