(Pun Intended)
I wrote to my Reform colleagues inquiring why so many congregations in our movement are inserting the word meitim in the second paragraph of the Tefillah prayer. The traditional prayerbooks have never changed Baruch Atah Adonai, m’chayei meitim, Blessed are You, Eternal One, who raises the dead (or gives life to the dead), while from our earliest prayerbooks we have said …m’chayei hakol, “Who gives life to all.” The theology of our more orthodox brethren (and sistren) – even those of the Conservative movement, hence lower case “o” — believe in resurrection. The Reform movement rejected that favoring the “immortality of the soul.”
Anyway, a flood of responses came my way. No one actually said we should change our theology back to the idea that our bodies will be restored and we’ll take the A-train to Jerusalem at the end of days to welcome the Messiah, the Orthodox view of resurrection, but everyone had some interesting interpretation indicating why the innocuous “Who gives life to all” is, as they say, neither meat nor milk, neither fish nor fowl (come to think of it, one colleague may in fact believes that we should at least teach all of Jewish theology, Halacha, and traditional liturgy, but he may have written tongue-in-cheek).
I’ll be in Harrisonburg this coming weekend, and on Shabbat I’m going to speak on the subject which is also the title of this column.
Just so you know I’m one of those who doesn’t agree with the return of resurrection (oh, again, sorry) in our movement. First of all, it’s not rational, and while “Who gives life to all” is so up-in-the-air, that’s the point…one can interpret it as one wants. In my mind, it’s hard to interpret m’chayei meitim. The reader who can translate Hebrew or the reader who just takes in the English sees “Who raises the dead.” Now some colleagues gave more cogent reasons than other colleagues; some were quite creative and surely offered food for thought.
The other reason it bothers me is that Reform has always given our adherents an option. Returning to the “good old days” is something we’ve been seeing for quite a while – that turn to the right — but the “good old days” shouldn’t be a melding of the branches to make them indistinguishable one from the other. We rejected the “good old days” when we were tied to Halacha (Jewish law). With the birth of Reform, the entire portrait of American Judaism reflected both a more contemporary approach to worship and a contemporary theology to our faith. It reflected what was actually happening! Surely change is the one truth of the universe but careful thought has to be given to the whats and whys of change.
Now we know that so many who previously were affiliated with the Conservative and Orthodox movements have joined our ranks; in many respects their customs have become our customs, and some of those changes are welcome; in my humble opinion our movement was headed towards becoming Unitarian (not that there’s anything wrong with the Unitarians). The wearing of the talit and the kipah are two examples, but even with those Reform never said – nor should we ever say – “You must cover your head. You must ‘enfold yourself in the fringes,’” as states the blessing upon putting on the talit.
Sorry to sermonize, but with whom can I share my concerns “occasionally” if not with you?