Standing at Sinai: Sermons and Writings

By Fred N. Reiner

Standing at Sinai: Sermons and Writings captures the trends and the struggles of 25 years at Temple Sinai, a large Reform Jewish synagogue in Washington, D.C. The book includes a selection of Rabbi Fred Reiners High Holy Day sermons, Purim messages, scholarly papers, and additional writings that comment on key moments in his tenure. The result reflects Rabbi Reiners religious and intellectual journey, as well as the history of Temple Sinai during years of challenge, expansion, and growth. Standing at Sinai grapples with the questions confronting the congregation and the larger Jewish community at the turn of the 21st century: Can our Jewish community maintain its integrity as it continues to assimilate? What role does Israel play in our lives? What are the beliefs and values that help to shape us as post-modern American Jews?

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jun 28, 2011
• ISBN: 9781456765071

Fred N. Reiner

Fred N. Reiner, Rabbi Emeritus of Temple Sinai, Washington, D.C., served as Senior Rabbi of Temple Sinai from 1985 to 2010. Rabbi Reiner is a past president of both the Washington Board of Rabbis and the Mid-Atlantic Region of the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR). He chaired the CCAR Committee on Church and State and Committee on Aging, and served on the CCAR national Board of Trustees. He also has worked on behalf of maintaining reproductive choice through national and local organizations. Rabbi Reiners ongoing research on the life and works of nineteenth century biblical scholar Christian David Ginsburg has appeared in numerous publications and papers. Rabbi Reiner was born and grew up in Chicago, Illinois. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California, Berkeley and was ordained and received his Master of Arts in Hebrew Letters degree from Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati. After two years as director of admissions at Hebrew Union College, Rabbi Reiner served congregations in Topeka and Chicago before arriving at Temple Sinai. He is married to Sherry Levy-Reiner, Ph.D. Their son, David, is Rabbi of Temple Beth-El in Geneva, New York. The front cover design is based on the logo of Temple Sinai, Washington, D.C. The logo was created in 1993 by graphic designer Liz Clark from a 1951 site elevation drawing by the buildings architects, Nicholas Satterlee and Chloethiel Woodard Smith.

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Standing at Sinai: Sermons and Writings

Fred N. Reiner

Published by Temple Sinai, Washington, D.C.

to mark the retirement of Fred N. Reiner

Senior Rabbi, 1985-2010

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© 2011 Fred N. Reiner. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 6/23/2011

ISBN: 978-1-4567-6506-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4567-6507-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011908012

Printed in the United States of America

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Foreword

Sermons

Renewal in the New Year

Say Hineni

Mixed Marriages:

What Do We Do For Them?

Homosexuality, Holiness, and Sin

Jewish Survival and Open Doors

Opening Our Eyes and Seeing God

Building on a Foundation of Justice

Our Presence and God’s Presence

Day of Judgment – Day of Hope

Prayers of Our Hearts

I Believe With Perfect Faith

Truth and Faith

Are Reform Jews Nothing?

Legitimate Judaism and the Western Wall

Is Judaism True?

Sin and Morality

The Wake-up Call

It’s Only a Test

The Torah We Believe

Pride and Sacrifice

Justice, Mercy, Humility

Who is a (Good) Jew?

Looking Towards Israel From Afar

To Tell the Truth

Strangers and Citizens, Fences and Security

Showing Up, Belonging, Caring

Finding Our Place

Mending and Miracles

Resurrection and Renewal

Is the Bible True?

Hiding From Responsibility

Starting at the Back:

Confronting Our Shortcomings

Strangers in Our Midst

Sacred Journeys Together

Kol Nidre: Seeking the Sacred

Pursuing Justice and Holiness

Purim-Torah Messages

1986

1987

1989

1990

1991

1992

1993

1994

1995

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2007

2008

2009

2010

Scholarly Writings

C. D. Ginsburg and the Shapira Affair:

A Nineteenth-Century

Dead Sea Scroll Controversy

The Uses of Masorah in Public Scripture Reading

In the Congregation and

the Community

Remarks on the Position of Cantor

to a Special Meeting of Temple Sinai

Invocation

Strengthening the Fabric

of Our Jewish Families

Remarks on Intermarriage

to the Temple Sinai Board of Trustees

Rabbi’s Report

Temple Sinai Annual Meeting

Endnotes

Foreword

Some rabbis pontificate. Others re-tell the events of their times through a glossy Jewish veneer. Still others attempt to project a self-defined charismatic persona through personal anecdotes and stories.

Fred Reiner, my colleague and friend for 25 years at Temple Sinai, instead taught the Torah of social justice, Reform Jewish theology, and ethical practice, through his wise, insightful, and caring sermons and writings.

Fred is a scholar who also knew how to be a rabbi, able to translate his erudition into words that could help define and enrich the lives of his congregants. He did not need to be showy to be effective; he simply needed to say what was true in carefully thought out and precise language.

Fred rarely (ever?) raised his voice in anger or criticism. So when he spoke in a loud voice at a High Holiday service, or preached on a difficult or controversial topic, people listened. Congregants who were accustomed to listening to or being politically powerful individuals counted on Rabbi Reiner to direct their thoughts and actions to the transcendent, the lasting, the just. They respected his words and valued his character.

Washington, D.C. is not such an easy place to be a rabbi. We are a city of words, of speechwriters, of the press. Everyone has something to say and the means to say it. Over the years of Fred’s career, those means became more universally available with the advance of technology. At the same time, there are many orators here who rely on others to write their words for them. Sometimes, especially after a major crisis or historic event, we rabbis ask ourselves: What is left for me to say? And will I know how to say it?

Fred Reiner always managed to find an answer, always grounded in Torah and Jewish tradition, always poised between the power of the past and the exigencies of the present.

Social justice advocacy was a foundation of Rabbi Fred Reiner’s rabbinate, and as we can see from this collection of outstanding sermons, a focal point of his preaching. But he is also a God-centered person, consistently identifying Jewish theology as the catalyst for his social justice concerns. We were expected to be activists as Jews, Jews as activists; Torah was to be a constant challenge, not just a comfort. We always had more to do.

Fred had his lighter side, too. His Purim messages were amazingly creative. Combining scholarship and wit, he managed to invent a new commentary every year. These Purim pieces deserve a much wider audience than they have previously received, and I am especially pleased that he has included them in this collection.

And then there’s Christian David Ginsburg and the Masorah about which Fred wrote his rabbinical school thesis and continued to study for almost four decades (and counting). Very few congregational rabbis continue their academic studies in such a serious way. Fred, in contrast, published papers on Ginsburg and Masorah and spoke at meetings of the Society of Biblical Literature and other scholarly groups. This was truly Torah lishma—study for the pure sake of it, which he will continue in his retirement. Masoretic literature, though of great interest academically and intellectually, was not a jazzy topic for a congregational rabbi—unlike Midrash or contemporary theology or literature useful for sermons or teaching. It was simply what Fred loved to study—and in doing so, he became an even better rabbi.

I know how much his congregants miss him—this volume will bring back fond memories and inspire continuing thought and action. It will also be a great gift to those who never had the chance to hear Fred in person.

It was my privilege to be his colleague for 25 years, and it is also my privilege to introduce this collection.

We read in Pirkei Avot: Seek out a rabbi; and acquire a friend.

In Fred Reiner, I found both. If you haven’t already, you will too in this volume. It is a treasure.

Rabbi Mindy Avra Portnoy

Introduction

More than anything else, rabbis are communicators. We speak from the pulpit. We write letters, messages in our bulletins, and e-mails. We teach and tutor. We counsel and guide. We supervise and lead. We shape our congregations, our leaders, our students. We represent our congregations in our communities. We observe and capture the trends in our society, the challenges our people face, and we try to bring Jewish values to bear upon them. At weddings and funerals, at bar and bat mitzvah services and baby namings, we try to capture the essence of the person or family and share that insight with those who have gathered. We convey our vision of what it means to be a good Jew so effectively that others will share it and be inspired.

No less should rabbis seek and create new knowledge. We do research and share our findings in the classroom, from the pulpit, and sometimes in academic settings. Sometimes we need to lead others with humor, as on Purim.

I believe that our words also shape our history. They can give us a window to the events we see and confront. They can help us understand the changes that swirl about us. Preserving our words is a way to preserve our history, to record the events and trends of our lives and our communities.

This book is published as I retire from twenty-five years of service to Temple Sinai in Washington, D.C. In preparation for this transition, our Archives Committee asked me to undertake an oral history interview. We expanded the concept to include this volume, which reflects not just my history but the history of the congregation and this Jewish community.

Certainly they were years of expansion and growth—of the congregation, its schools and building, its programs and activities. They were years of challenge, as well. Can our Jewish community maintain its integrity as it continues to assimilate? What role does Israel play in our lives? What form does social action take in our day? What are the beliefs and values that help to shape us as post-modern American Jews? How do Judaism’s timeless principles stand up to the values in our American society?

As we communicate, we articulate what we stand for. We take our stands in the pulpit; we stand with our congregants at peak moments; we stand proudly as preservers and transmitters of Jewish texts and values; we stand as religious leaders in the community.

This volume, Standing at Sinai, captures some of the trends and the struggles of these twenty-five years at Temple Sinai in the nation’s capital. Our congregation is well educated and sophisticated. They appreciate nuance, and many seek Jewish answers for issues in their lives or in the world around them. They seek to reconcile the quest for social justice with what they understand from our sacred Jewish texts.

In planning this book we decided to include a variety of writings: sermons from across the twenty-five year span; Purim messages in the tradition of Purim-Torah, finding our sense of humor as we prepare for the early spring holiday; a few of the scholarly papers I published or delivered; some samples of writings from historic moments.

I have been privileged to work with many outstanding colleagues these twenty-five years. Rabbi Mindy Portnoy and I have worked side by side for most of them, so I am particularly pleased that she is setting the stage for this collection through her foreword. Christine Intagliata, a woman of remarkable and varied talents, serves as the editor. Marilyn Goldhammer and Carole Brand, each a leader in our congregation, have guided this project from conception to delivery, along with the assistance of Nina Borwick. The project is supported by the Harris History Fund of Temple Sinai, established by Ruth Harris in memory of her husband, Isadore. Ruth, a professional historian, is passionate about preserving the history of our community, and I hope this volume is a fitting contribution to that endeavor. Above all, I thank Sherry Levy-Reiner, my wife and faithful editor. Her skill and acumen is reflected in each sermon, and in other writings, as well. She sharpens ideas and makes the awkward felicitous.

Fred N. Reiner

Washington, D.C.

1 August 2010

Sermons

Renewal in the New Year

Rosh Hashanah Eve 5746

September 15, 1985

The year I went to Israel in my second year of rabbinical school, my suitcase was lost on the way. I knew that lost bags usually turn up right away and make it to the correct destination on the next flight. But this time El Al lost it, Swiss Air found it in Europe, cabled my parents in Chicago, and sent, at long last, the wrong bag to Jerusalem. They searched all over again, and several weeks later, the suitcase and I were reunited. The clothes had been missing so long it was if they were new. As I opened my suitcase in my room, now rediscovering the clothes I had packed for the year, my Israeli landlady smiled and said, "Titchadesh, may you be renewed. This is the Hebrew word we say when someone purchases a new article of clothing, as we might say in English, wear it in good health or wear it well. But the Hebrew has a way of saying it—may you be renewed"—as if the garment might renew our inner lives, strengthen our inner selves. We say titchadesh because the clothes were as if pre-worn, and my evident excitement at having recovered them was like one getting a whole new wardrobe. Titchadesh, may you be renewed. Here we are today, some of us wearing new clothes, all of us needing to be renewed. All of us needing to find our spiritual baggage again. All of us needing to wrap ourselves in our best Jewish garments, sometimes forgotten or lost of tradition, and stand these days before God. Rosh Hashanah is a time of renewal.

We live in a time of technology and information and change, as pointed out by many commentators. Literary critic Clint Brooks says, We are living in an age of information in which we seek not information but meaning and wisdom.

Sociologist Robert Bellah points out that we live in a culture of success and freedom and justice where we need values and coherence. Business critic John Nesbitt calls it a time of technology where we need the warmth of human response. There are anomalies in these observations. With all the information we acquire, our children seem to know less. Studies point out a decline in test scores and in educational skills. With all the technology that we have gained, we have less time for family. We feel more rushed and frenzied. And with all the personal freedom we enjoy, we feel more acutely a sense of loneliness.

Clearly we cannot live by technology and information alone. For with instantaneous worldwide communications it took a month to find my suitcase. All of us need meaning and wisdom and warmth. Rosh Hashanah comes to help us find them.

Dr. Harry Harlow at the University of Wisconsin performed a famous experiment with infant monkeys. Two surrogate mothers were placed in a cage with an infant monkey—one of them consisting of a wire frame, the other one covered with terry cloth. The twist was that the wire mother was the one that nursed; the cloth mother didn’t. The infant would cling to the cloth mother for warmth and softness and affection, then run over to the wire mother to nurse, and then run back to the cloth mother. The infant monkey was able to compensate for the shortcomings of each. Harlow summarized this experiment by saying, Man cannot live by milk alone.1 We all need food and warmth, information and wisdom, freedom and a sense of belonging.

All year long we are caught up in careers and urgency and pressure to succeed and win and make our contribution, but today we pause and seek renewal. We look inside ourselves and examine our shortcomings and our direction. We seek to find our spiritual garments that have gone astray and put them on and be renewed.

Today we also seek continuity in a time of change. The pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus said, The essence of the universe is change. You cannot step into the same river twice, for it is constantly changing. We see changes swirling about us in our own lives. In this age of technology and information, words and ideas are instantly transmitted; we realize that there are changes that we cannot observe. Biologists tell us that we change all the cells in our bodies every seven years. Physically we are never the same person; we hope we can grow and continue to change spiritually as well. We see our bodies change. We see our children and our grandchildren and our parents changing, all of us growing older. We know that all of life changes before us.

This day of Rosh Hashanah comes to help us manage that change. To mark time. To help us scoop up some of river of life constantly flowing underneath us and capture some of its life-giving waters. Rosh Hashanah comes to tell us that there is continuity as well as change.

Once again this year Rosh Hashanah returns full of memories – laden with our sense of inadequacy amid all the rush in our lives. Here is Rosh Hashanah to bring us renewal. But how? How do we find the continuity that we need? How do we find the time with ourselves, the warmth we crave, the renewal we seek? Our liturgy on these Days of Awe speaks of turning. Teshuvah is the Hebrew word for turning, and the same word is for repentance. We are commanded to turn, or at least to begin to turn, on the New Year. To turn from carelessness to caring. To turn from ourselves to others. To turn from a life of consumption to a life of concern. To turn from the common to the commandments. It is a motif and a reference we recognize from our weekly prayer book, for as we turn to place the Torah in the Ark each Shabbat, we read the words of Lamentations: Help us to return to You, O God, then truly shall we return. Renew our days as in the past. This is the part of the message of Rosh Hashanah, too. To turn to God. To return to our childhood sense of wonder and religion. Seeing flowers for the first time, marveling at the world around us. To return to our personal Jewish past, our sense of who we are, the memories of our Jewish lives, of Rosh Hashanahs past, of family gatherings and long services. To renew our days as in the past. We must return to renew our sense of values and purpose as well. To remind ourselves that there is meaning and order in the world and in our lives. And to renew our dedication to values that lead us to caring and to God: providing for those in need, honoring parents, respecting age, being honest with one another. These are values that need renewal in our lives today, and Rosh Hashanah is the time to begin to renew.

Our ancestors used to wear white robes—kittels—to worship on the holydays. White was the symbol of purity and still is. Our prayer book quotes Isaiah: though your sins be as scarlet they shall be white as snow. So even today we change pulpit robes and torah mantles to white each year. But more than wearing white, everyone in those days wore the same garment. There was equality and simplicity and dignity and purity and continuity.

Once we Jews used to get new clothes twice a year: on Rosh Hashanah and on Pesach. Two times a year we would say to one another titchadesh. But on these two occasions, ironically enough, the men would wear kittels, which would cover their new clothes, the same kittels year after year, on the High Holidays and at Seder. The kittel, moreover, was a reminder of mortality. The kittel was to be the shroud in which one would be buried. So the entire male congregation would come before God on the Days of Awe angel-like, wrapped in garments of purity, reminding them of their equality before God and their trust in God’s forgiveness, reminding them of their ultimate mortality.

Today we no longer wear kittels. These garments are lost to us. Yet we seek what that generation sought—forgiveness and purity and renewal. We seek to be cleansed and made whole. We seek our own garments of renewal. We seek warmth and continuity and values and tradition in the fabric of our lives. We who have lost touch with our spiritual selves, we who have lost our Jewish baggage, we who have lost our sense of purpose—we come here for strength and direction and healing and repentance. To wrap ourselves in the holiness of this day. May we find it here. Titchadesh. May we be renewed.

Say Hineni

Rosh Hashanah Morning 5746

September 16, 1985

Not long ago I saw a bumper sticker that said Say Hineni to God. As bumper stickers go, it was a bit esoteric, containing the Hebrew word hineni, meaning here I am. It’s a fascinating, simple word that most Hebrew students learn early. I remember answering hineni in Hebrew School, an elegant way of saying present when the teacher took attendance.

Hineni is a composite of hiney and ani. It means literally here I am, but it is an expression indicating readiness: In English we might say at your service. Saying it makes the speaker conspicuous. It is a word of acceptance, an acknowledgment of readiness and willingness to accept responsibility whether in Hebrew class or when uttered by Abraham in response to God’s call.

Sociologist Thorstein Veblen pointed out over 75 years ago that one of the guiding principles of our society and economy was what he called conspicuous consumption. So much of what we do in America—from the clothes we wear to the cars we drive—is guided by our desire to demonstrate our background, our affluence.

But if we take conspicuous consumption for granted, we do not take conspicuous Judaism for granted. We are conditioned, rather, to make our Judaism inconspicuous—perhaps because we have felt the sting of anti-Semitism, perhaps because we simply don’t want to be too visible. We all have had the experience of being in a room with strangers and sensing who is Jewish. As Jews, most of us know dozens of ways to hide and dozens of ways to discover one another. While our tradition teaches us to be anonymous when giving charity and to serve others because, it is our responsibility and not a path to glory, all of us need pride in being Jewish.

Rosh Hashanah evokes that pride in us; it summons us to say hineni, to affirm the importance of Judaism in our lives, to accept our responsibilities.

There are many definitions of Judaism and who is a Jew. There is the Halachic definition: someone born of a Jewish mother or who converts. There is the practicing Jew who keeps 613 mitzvot. There is the contributing Jew who gives to Jewish charities. There is the praying Jew who attends services. There is the gastronomic Jew who eats Jewish food. There is the cardiac Jew who says I feel it in my heart. There is the pediatric Jew who is Jewish for the sake of the children. There are rock Jews, who are perpetually in hiding, and there are crisis Jews, who emerge only in times of personal or public crises. What we need are participating and committed Jews willing to say "Hineni—here I am! I am ready! Ask me."

It’s a hard word for us to say today: hineni. We live in what Robert Bellah calls a culture of separation, apart from one another in mind and body; we look out for ourselves. Yet is a time when it is more important than ever to say hineni.

Not once but three times does Abraham say hineni in the Akedah story. First to God, at the beginning of the story; next to Isaac, as they ascend the mountain; and a third time to the angel, who has just halted the attempted sacrifice. So do we need to respond three times: to God, to families, and to those who serve.

God doesn’t call to us with tests as God did to Abraham, as a disembodied voice commanding us to take strange journeys. But here we are today because God calls to us in a different way. God calls to us through the message of this day, through the call of the shofar, through the words of the prayers we read. God calls to each of us on Rosh Hashanah to examine our ways in turn, to plumb the depths of our Jewish lives, to seek strength and comfort in the rhythm of Jewish life, to know who we are and before Whom we stand. And God does not just call to us on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, but throughout the year and throughout our lives. And while it is easy for us to ignore God’s call, to ignore the prayers and avoid the rituals in all the busyness of our lives, still God calls out to us and like Abraham we must answer with humility and trust: hineni.

The second hineni comes in the middle of the story, as Abraham and Isaac are going up the mountain together. Isaac notices that there is no animal for the sacrifice and says, Father. Abraham answers hineni.

How often do the members of our family call out to us and we fail to respond, "Hineni, here I am"? Be it our parents or children, spouses, brothers, sisters – we need to be ready to reassure, to put first those people who are most important to us and whom we so often take for granted.

Most of our lives lack the drama of Abraham’s journey to Mount Moriah. The demands that are made upon us are real but less pressing than those we read about on Rosh Hashanah. Yet the issues and struggles are the same, and when our families and friends cry out to us, we need to listen and respond hineni. Rosh Hashanah comes to give us a fresh start, to turn us to those who are closest to us as we turn to God and to say "Hineni, I am ready."

The third hineni is Abraham’s response to the angel. When Abraham picks up the knife to slay Isaac, the angel calls to him with urgency and concern: Abraham, Abraham. Unlike Abraham, we are not alone with an angel. Today we are gathered as a congregation. If we need to hear ourselves say hineni, so we need to hear one another say it too. (You realize, of course, that God may call once, but our congregation calls twice, even three times and more. For we recognize that synagogues and congregations need to ask and ask and need a great deal of attention.) We need to say and hear hineni more from ourselves and from one another. We need to strengthen our own commitment and thus strengthen one another. Instead of saying I don’t have time, we should say I’ll make the time. Instead of saying I can’t accept such a responsibility, we should say This will be quite a challenge. Instead of saying I’ve done my part for years, we should say I know how much this needs to be done. Instead of saying I don’t feel like I belong here, we need to say This is my place and I want to help. We need to say "Hineni. Here I am. Ask me."

You and I are far removed from Abraham’s world. We live in a society where people are searching for values. What are we committed to that is worthwhile? Where in our lives are our spiritual values, or have they disappeared? Where is our ability to love, to pray, to sacrifice, to pledge commitment to something beyond ourselves? In an age of self-commitment, in times such as these, how do we meet our spiritual needs, needs that are an essential part of us? We need to make a personal statement of commitment to remind ourselves of who we are, where we are, and where we are going. We need to strengthen ourselves spiritually, to sustain and direct the guiding principles of our lives. We need to hear ourselves say hineni.

Think of Abraham journeying three days, without a guide or path, in the wilderness, to a place he didn’t know, to do something he couldn’t understand, leaving everything behind, and still his response was hineni. We need to put aside our misgivings and make ourselves proud and supporting, to continue the road that has been marked and laid out for us, to feel that it is our road, not just a pathless wilderness. We need to know that others have been committed before us and marked the way, and we need to follow and keep the road maintained. Like Abraham, we need to be ready to set out on our journey, to be committed for ourselves and one another, to say with everything that is within us—hineni.

Mixed Marriages:

What Do We Do For Them?

Yom Kippur Morning 5749

September 21, 1988

I remember the call well. The woman wasn’t Jewish, and she didn’t really have any Jewish friends. But now her daughter had just told her that she was engaged—to somebody Jewish! The woman was at a loss as how to respond and what to do. So she got out the Yellow Pages, looked up synagogue, and found me. She ended her introduction with the question: What do we do for them?

Her other, unspoken questions were probably not too different from the questions on the minds of the Jewish parents in a similar situation: How will the ceremony work? What religion will there be in their house? Will I have Jewish grandchildren? And perhaps some of the same questions that I hear from Jewish callers: Why did this happen? Where did I go wrong?

I did my best to reassure the woman on the phone that Jews are people not unlike those she knew. What do you do for them? I said. They are in love, and it’s a happy time. You congratulate them and wish them well and plan a wedding with sensitivity. Perhaps you can get the couple to explore the religious issues in their relationship, and perhaps let them know your feelings. Then stand back.

There is no topic more on our minds as Jews than mixed marriage. Some in our community perceive it as a threat to Jewish survival, and others view it as a reality with which we must come to grips. We cannot help but view it personally as well, for chances are that mixed marriage will come into your family as it has come into mine, with all the mixed feelings, all the discomfort, and all the concerns that go along with it.

For today, 35-40 percent of Jews who marry will choose spouses not born Jewish. That figure compares with 6 percent in 1950, when Jewish mixed marriages were a curiosity, and it compares with 70 percent in some cities in our nation today. That means that one-third to one-half of the children in our religious school—our b’nai mitzvah, our confirmands, youth groupers, and college students—will marry someone not born Jewish.

I don’t believe there is much you or I can do to reverse these trends today in our society. One fourth of these marriages lead to a conversion and a Jewish marriage, and these are not my concern. But two-thirds of these couples do nothing about religion in their family. For me that is the most alarming statistic, that two-thirds of these interfaith couples neither convert nor make a decision about religion in their home or for their children. These figures, cited by Egon Mayer of Brooklyn College and quoted by Paul and Rachel Cowan in their recent book Mixed Blessings,1 spell out the departure from meaningful Jewish life of 25 percent of the Jews who marry.

What could be more on our minds today? On this day of introspection and consideration of past and future, on this day when we think of the bonds that unite us as Jews with ages past, with endangered Jewish communities, with the martyrs of our people, what could be more pressing than the disappearance of one-quarter of our children from the Jewish community?

Our Torah reading this morning gives us an insight about this situation. We read from Deuteronomy the powerful words of Moses’ oration: You stand here today—all of you—before Adonai your God, everyone in Israel: men, women, children, the strangers in your camp, to enter into the sworn covenant with God (Deut. 29:9-11). Read it carefully and the text says: not just Jews, but the ones who live with you, as well; not just your family of birth, but those close to you also.

It is a message of open doors: Open doors for all who enter, including those men and women who are married to Jews but are not Jewish themselves. Many of these people have no other religion. Some of them, at least, want to be a part of the Jewish community. We need to open our doors. We need to tell them the doors are open. We need to get these families through the doors, or we will lose them. And this is why we need to reach out to the interfaith couples in our midst.

We don’t say Kaddish or sit shiva for our children who marry out. We cannot think for a moment of writing these children off, or of keeping them cloistered, or of ruling their adult lives. Yet we cannot honestly deny the differences between Jews and non-Jews, between Jewish and interfaith marriages. The challenge that mixed marriage brings to us is how to deepen our own commitment—for all of us—to the covenant Moses proclaimed at Sinai.

Sometimes people ask me, What is the blessing for a mixed marriage? After all, Judaism has blessings for so many things: hearing thunder, seeing a rainbow, receiving good news and bad news alike. The rabbi in Anatevka devised a blessing for the anti-Semitic czar. So surely, rabbi, there must be a blessing for a mixed marriage.

There is! Every marriage, of course, should be blessed with love and satisfaction and companionship. But a mixed marriage must be especially blessed with openness and clarity. It must have openness to understanding, to building a religious life, to reaching reasonable decisions, and openness to commitment. It must have clarity to appreciate differences, to understand ourselves and our religion; it must also have clarity to acknowledge that Judaism is a system of practice and belief and not just a culture. We need to be honest with ourselves and with others and recognize that Jews believe in one God, that we do not accept Jesus as divine, that we do not celebrate holidays of other religions, that we have a strong tradition of practice and belief that is unique to us and different from Christianity, Islam, and other religions, even though we share much in common. We need to say clearly that Judaism is important to us, that Jewish survival is important to us. We should be showing our children and our parents that we want Judaism to be important to them, an integral part of the life of every Jew, as we stand symbolically today—with all other Jews—before God.

Here is the most difficult question of all. It is harder than What can we do for them? and Is there a blessing for this marriage? The hardest question is: What can we do to insure Jewish survival? We ask this in a time when many Jews do not marry and of those who do marry, at least one-third marry non-Jews.

Here is the answer: Judaism can survive only if Jews care enough about it to make it survive. We take our Judaism too much for granted. Except for a few days each year, most of us are indifferent. For many of us, Judaism is like a special garment we put on from time to time, at peak moments in our lives. It is an important part of our identity, but not the motivating force in our lives. We are uncomfortable with belief in general, unwilling to be guided strictly by Jewish practice, and unknowing about Jewish spirituality. We have translated our Judaism into Jewish culture: bagels and an occasional Jewish word, a quaint custom here, a Jewish contribution there. We have satisfied ourselves—most of us—with this cultural definition of what it means to be Jewish. So our children—or our fiancé—come to ask us: If Judaism is so important, why don’t you do more? Or, How can I as a non-Jew be part of a culture I wasn’t born into? Or, Where is the substance? I need a religion that satisfies my need for God and guidance. When we hear these questions, we find ourselves too often unable to answer.

The adult child of one mixed marriage finds his religious life centered in the Hindu tradition of Yoga. It is a spiritual discipline to achieve union with the Universal Soul. It is ecumenical, he says. It involves no rejection. I can comfortably say I am both Jew and Christian. Unable to choose, he has opted out of both.

We must remind ourselves that Judaism has a remarkable richness to draw upon, a richness of practice and prayers and ceremony and belief and study. It is the result of the spiritual quest of five millennia, centered in a covenant between God and our people, the covenant described in our Torah reading, the covenant entered into with those who stood at Sinai and equally with future generations. It is a covenant with open doors, a covenant that faces the future, a covenant that cares about survival.

No less today we must be concerned about our own covenant, our own survival, our own relationships. No less must we keep our own doors open, for the real concern about mixed marriage and survival should be concern about these families, and this is why our interfaith couples group and our study programs are so important.

It is not a problem of wedding ceremonies that last fifteen minutes but of marriages that last many years. It is not a problem of compatible cultures but of ultimate commitments. It is not a problem of achieving success or failure but of reestablishing Jewish life for vast numbers of our people. I see many mixed married couples stuck on trying to reconcile their religious differences and others flourishing as a Jewish family. I see many where each goes his and her own religious way or non-religious way. I have rejoiced that many do choose Judaism, motivated by a commitment to build a family dedicated to Jewish life. I see many families where Judaism is deeply important to the Jewish partner and something simply not shared at home.

There are, after all, many Jewish life styles and many ways to practice Judaism. Some of them are easier, some are more difficult, and some are indeed problematic. The question is not which Jewish life style to select, but How soon can you start? The threat of our day is not mixed marriage but apathy—apathy whether there is in the family one Jewish person or two or three or four.

So where is the key to Jewish survival in our day, when mixed marriage is so common? My answer comes from Deuteronomy—from our Torah portion this morning: It is not in heaven that we need someone to go and fetch it for us. It is not on the other side of the sea that we need to go there and get it (Deut. 30:11-14). It is not in the sociological studies of marriage trends. It is not in the doomsday prophecies. It is not distant from us nor hard for us to understand. No, it is very near to us: in our mouths, in our hearts, and in our minds, if only we would do it, before it is too late.

Homosexuality, Holiness, and Sin

Kol Nidre 5750

October 8, 1989

I have always been intrigued by the choice of the traditional Torah reading on Yom Kippur afternoon. The traditional Torah reading is not the magnificent Holiness Code from Leviticus 19 that we read at Temple Sinai, as do Reform congregations everywhere. Rather, it is the simple list of the forbidden marriages and sexual immoralities listed in Leviticus 18. I often have asked myself, as others have before me, Why has our people read a passage from the Torah dealing with the laws against incest and sexual immorality on the holiest day of our year?

The answer is not clear. Different authorities have offered explanations over the years: Max Arzt in his classic work, Justice and Mercy, offers the explanation that it is a warning to young men against selecting the wrong mate. Israel is warned, he says, to