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March 9, 2007
Reform Jews to meet
Biennial hosts Pacific Northwest groups.
KATHARINE HAMER EDITOR
As president of an organization that represents 1.5 million Jews
and more than 900 synagogues in communities across North America,
Rabbi Eric Yoffie has no such thing as a typical day.
Yoffie, who has led the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ) since 1996,
spends much of his time on the road – visiting congregations
and meeting with synagogue leaders. "My job," he said,
"is to, as best I can, try to articulate some sense of what
the movement believes in and what direction we're going in and to
do everything that I can, together with our lay leaders, to strengthen
our congregations. Ultimately, in North America, the health of our
congregations will determine the future of Jewish life."
It's a lot of responsibility, but Yoffie describes himself as being
"blessed to be in this job. There's no more wonderful job in
the Jewish world, as far as I'm concerned."
His role will bring him to Vancouver March 16-18 for the biennial
of the URJ's Pacific Northwest Council – to be held at the
Marriott Vancouver Airport Hotel and at host congregation Temple
Sholom.
Under the banner "The Art of Jewish Living," the conference
will feature dozens of sessions on topics ranging from the nature
of Jewish art to family life issues to the challenges that Judaism
will face in the future. Several of the sessions will zero in on
issues faced by synagogues specifically.
The focus, said Yoffie, is "to strengthen our congregations.
The building block of Jewish life is the synagogue, and we have
found that when we bring our synagogue leaders together, they learn
from each other and they exchange ideas and they renew themselves
– and, as a result, they go home enriched and strengthened
in their mission and their synagogue benefits very much from that."
Participants in the biennial will come from across the Pacific Northwest,
melding the sometimes differing viewpoints of American and Canadian
Reform congregations.
"There are some distinctive elements of Canadian culture that
are important here," Yoffie noted. "They tend to be somewhat
more traditional in their outlook. And, of course, some of the social
justice issues that we deal with are different – you have a
different government and political system, so that's part of it
as well.
"Having said that, in my experience, issues of congregational
life are very, very similar – whether you're in the deep south
or in the west or in the northeast or in Canada. It's remarkable
how the challenges and the problems are virtually identical from
area to area. There are different Jewish styles that may distinguish
us, but the fundamental issues tend to be very much the same."
That applies, said Yoffie, even for some of the more fractious issues
within the movement – for instance, the fact that American
Reform congregations largely support patrilineal descent, while
their Canadian counterparts do not. In general, Yoffie observed,
"The Canadian community is somewhat closer to the immigrant
experience than the American community ... and being closer to the
immigrant experience may therefore account for the somewhat more
traditional approach. Another reason may simply be to do with the
environment in which it's found. There are areas in Canadian life
where the surrounding Jewish community is, on balance, more traditional
than you're likely to find in the United States."
Yoffie, who last December also advocated outreach towards intermarried
families within the Reform movement, insisted the diversity of opinion
on this matter has not caused any significant ongoing problems.
"We have sensible lay leaders and rabbis who, when these issues
arise, sit down and work them through," he said. "Those
differences, they're openly discussed, they're freely acknowledged
and we benefit from that. The basic premise here is that, as Reform
Jews, progressive Jews, there's more that unites us than divides
us."
One of those uniting factors is building the Reform movement in
Israel, where it's still relatively small.
"Reform Jews were concerned with building up Israel in general,
rather than building our own movement," Yoffie said, "which
in some respects, I think, was a mistake, but in some respects,
it wasn't. We're proud of the fact that Reform Jews played such
a prominent role in both creating and supporting Israel ... [but]
I think we came somewhat late to the recognition that we really
had to also focus on creating specifically a liberal Jewish alternative."
In the last three decades, said Yoffie, there has been "some
significant progress" for the movement in Israel: "We
now have about 35 Israelis who are studying in our rabbinical program.
So this is a dramatic change. In 10 years' time, we're going to
have 100 Israeli-born rabbis functioning in Israel. That will make
a tremendous difference. So while our movement is small [in Israel],
I'm very optimistic about our long-term propects to build a significant
presence there."
He said URJ has also been in discussion with the Israeli government
about equalizing support for all streams of Judaism. Currently,
Orthodox communities receive government funding to build synagogues.
In general, Reform communities do not – a fact Yoffie described
as "simply discrimination."
Although there are now 25 Reform congregations in Israel, what is
not clear, said Yoffie, "is that the kind of Judaism that's
going to emerge in Israel will be the sort of model that we have
here. When we think of congregations, most Orthodox congregations
in Israel are not what we think of when we talk about a congregation
here. They're much more on the east European model, for instance.
In other words, it's a shul where you go to daven. But it doesn't
generally offer the broad range of religious services which we associate
with an American congregation."
With 14 regions, URJ is the largest movement within North American
Judaism – but it comes with its own challenges – the largest
of which, said Yoffie, "is learning Torah and doing Torah.
We need to educate seriously but you know, Jews don't study just
for the sake of learning, they also study for the sake of doing.
Doing Torah in a progressive way, in a thoroughly secular society,
is a tremendous challenge. A more fundamentalist approach is in
some ways easier, because you don't have to fully confront modern
life and modern society, with all its temptations. We need to do
that and that's ultimately, I think, our greatest challenge, but
I believe it's essential and ultimately that we can do it, that
we can succeed."
For more information, visit www.urj.org/pnwc.
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