Biennial Weekend

Rabbi Pete Tobias

Rabbi Pete Tobias of The Liberal Synagogue Elstree summarised the weekend in the closing session as follows:

(To the tune of Grace after Meals - Hatikvah)

A conference in Cheltenham seems a good idea
But the M40 is between our homes and here
Thought we’d get here nice and early – never realised
Heavy Oxford traffic Friday half past five.
Once we got here, things were pretty great –
Service, dinner – only 2 hours late
But we have no borders and we’re pretty liberal
Especially when it comes to keeping time.

The hotel got a fright – don’t think they had been told
How to cope with Jews who are given soup that’s cold
The staff were very helpful showing us the way
To rooms which were several hundred miles away
But they soon got used to taking our orders
And we settled down to talk about borders
Whether we should have them, what they were for anyway
And so we discussed them throughout the whole weekend.

We had 33 sessions and several other lessons about borders, separation and some grammar to make us think.

We had Judaism without commas, and we heard that we should be holy as I, God, is holy too.
Tradition, our mission, the future and the past, things which are eternal and those which won’t last.
Exploration, meditation, generations, Jewish nation, education, presentation, celebration prostration and waving chickens.
With all of these customs we want to reclaim as ours
Our Liberal service will go on for hours.

The conference continued through the whole weekend
And sadly it would seem it’s coming to an end
Amazingly that’s happening ahead of time!

Now comes the English reading. We have eaten and been satisfied. We have eaten, studied, prayed discussed and have – I hope – indeed been satisfied.

The title of this conference is grammatically challenging: the Judaism without Borders theme ends with a question mark. Does Judaism have borders?

Of course it does. Let’s recall the famous phrase from yesterday’s Torah portion, with all its grammatical ambiguity: You shall be holy for I, the Eternal One, is holy. The Hebrew word for holy is, as you all know, kadosh. This word is invariably translated as holy – a word which, for me, has connotations of angels and wings and haloes but in its original biblical sense, it means separate or distinct. That which was set aside for God was kadosh. The Israelites were told that they were kadosh and should keep themselves separate from the Canaanites and other nations. In other words, the very basis of Judaism, the religion of which we are the inheritors, was that it drew very clear borders around itself. And whatever may have been the biblical reasons for these borders and boundaries, their presence – then and now – cannot be denied.

Throughout the ages, Jews have continued to live within those borders. Sometimes the border was enforced from without – by the walls of the ghetto for example; sometimes they were imposed from within as communal leaders sought to keep their members separate from the nations round about them – to keep them kadosh. The Enlightenment, the unfolding of history, have challenged and brought down many of those more rigid, physical boundaries. Some have chosen to re-construct them – we, as Liberal Jews, occupy the other end of that spectrum – the end which seeks to push those boundaries further.

Have we pushed them too far? At certain points in the history of Progressive Judaism it would seem so. Sunday Sabbath services, the attempt to completely replace bar-mitzvah with Kabbalat Torah are examples of occasions when the borders of Judaism were pushed to a point where Judaism stopped being Judaism. And in our day we continue to re-define those borders, reining them in, bringing them closer to those elements of Judaism which were far more clearly delineated, the borders within which traditional Judaism resides.

A brief example. Many years ago, so I am told, when one came down to breakfast at Liberal conferences, one would see Liberal rabbis tucking into their bacon and eggs. About twenty years ago at Malvern a decision was taken to ensure that no treif was even offered to the participants at the conference. But the main hotel was over-subscribed and I was one of the lucky ones who found myself resident at the overflow hotel up the road to which this decree had not extended. So I and my fellow residents enjoyed what we considered t be a typical LJ conference breakfast on the Saturday morning – and were joined for Sunday breakfast by a surprising number of delegates from the main hotel!

But let us not also forget the borders which we have chosen to draw between ourselves and other versions of Judaism, other responses to the removal of those physical borders of the ghetto. Liberal Judaism defines itself very clearly by what it is not. We do not accept the traditional understanding of the origins of the Torah, we will not allow ourselves to be dictated to by those who regard us inferior or offering a watered down version of Judaism – frequently referred to – in these and other circles – as Judaism Lite. I don’t want to make a long list but I think we should be quite clear about what Liberal Judaism is NOT in relation to other elements of the Anglo-Jewish world. And that is a border which needs to be clearly defined, frequently re-stated and rigidly observed. Otherwise we are not Liberal Jews.

And we need borders at the other end as well. There is the line in SOH which says that ‘it has a permanent core and an expanding periphery. I sometimes wonder whether that is a reference to rabbis’ waistlines but it actually refers to the Torah. And we, as Liberal Jews, are at the very edge of that expanding periphery. Perhaps it is not appropriate to describe those aspects of our Judaism which we see as being the cutting edge of a modern Jewish response to our world as borders. Borders are lines we draw and behind which we stand, protected and entrenched. We have borders to separate us from the United Synagogue and other elements of Anglo and World Jewry which are rightly defined as such. But at our cutting edge we have frontiers. And by their very definition, frontiers are moveable borders which will change and develop and grow as we change and develop and grow as surely we must.

So are we a Judaism without borders? I don’t think so. We need borders to remind ourselves what we are not and, occasionally, to give us a clue as to what we are. But what we are is defined most clearly not by our borders but by our frontiers, what we are in the process of becoming and how we constantly re-evaluate that process in the light of our tradition and our experience.

One final thought. When I first thought about the word borders, I was reminded of the school I had the misfortune to attend many years ago which is just across the road from the synagogue of which I am now Rabbi. It had a number of pupils who lived on the premises – boarders. Most of us were day students who travelled in every morning and left at 4.00 pm. And, if you’ll pardon the corny pun, I think we need to be boarders. The reality of Anglo-Jewry is that too many of its constituents are day students – turning up on a Saturday morning, or for one-off life-cycle events or two days a year. What we need are more boarders – those whose commitment to Liberal Judaism pervades their everyday lives at a variety of levels and is part of everything they are and everything they do. Those of us who have been here for the weekend are Liberal Judaism’s boarders. Our task is to go back to our communities, where so many of our members are day students, occasional Jews, and fill them with the enthusiasm which has so convinced and inspired us. And that enthusiasm will help us to extend our frontiers and allow us – and the ancient faith which we so deeply love – to continue to develop and thrive in new, exciting ways.

So now I shall conclude this Grace After Conference:

Although our conference is done
The task isn’t finished
We must inspire our communities
And kol b’nei Adam.

You can watch a video of the Grace After Meals song here.

Back to the Biennial Weekend page