Sarx

Thanks to Avi, I’ve been reading Emet Ve-Emunah: Statement of Principles of Conservative Judaism. Conservative Judaism is not a Creedal or Confessional Religion (none of Judaism is, I think). Judaism - as I’ve been reading of it - is, like Anglicanism, a propositional religion. There are certain “out of bounds”, but mostly it’s not defined (unlike Catholicism or Mormonism).

The final portion of this document - to start at the end - offers a brief synopsis of Jewish history in the last centuries which explains the position of Conservative Judaism as one between extremes.

Throughout most of its history, Jewish life was an organic unity of home and community, synagogue and law. Since the Emancipation, however, Judaism has been marked by increasing fragmentation. Not only do we find Jewish groups pitted against one another, but the ways in which we apprehend Judaism itself have become separate and distinct. That unified platform upon which a holistic Jewish life was lived has been shattered. Participating in a majority culture whose patterns and rhythms often undermine our own, we are forced to live in two worlds, replacing whole and organic Judaism with fragments: ritual observance or Zionism, philanthropy or group defense; each necessary, none sufficient in itself.

Facing this reality, Conservative Judaism came into being to create a new synthesis in Jewish life. Rather than advocate assimilation, or yearn for the isolation of a new ghetto, Conservative Judaism is a creative force through which modernity and tradition inform and reshape each other.

By way of introduction…

For the Jews, “Jewishness” is an ethnicity. There are very few things you can do and be declared “not a Jew”. It’s not a religion, per se (as the YouTube Rebbe points out). One doesn’t “confess the faith of the Jews”. Rather one becomes a member of the tribe. It is, as Anne Rice wrote in Interview with a Vampire (albeit on another topic), a “body conversion”. One becomes a Jew - in a sense, one gets new DNA. In our better moments as Americans we model this perfectly: one becomes an American. There is no credo beyond accepting the others who are also Americans.

No matter what one does as a Jew, one is still a Jew: the genetics don’t change. One can be a lapsed, non-observant Jew. One can be a secular Jew. One can be an heretical Jew. One can be an apostate Jew. But, no matter what one’s religious status, one is still of the Jewish People. There are a few things that place one beyond the pale, of course, but - by and large - these are people-related rather than theology-related. Yes, saying Jesus is the Messiah is one of these things: but generally it’s because of how this violates the people. In so doing, one is perceived as siding with the Gentiles against Israel (as when the Christians pulled out of the Bar Kochba revolt). The political situation of the Jews throughout history is such that accepting Jesus as the Messiah was a political statement in favour of the people in power over the Jews.

This can not be true of Christianity - which is decidedly without a people. In creating Christianity, the Apostles were founding something entirely new: a religion without a people. Old tensions had to be done away with: You can not transcend the systems, politics and races of this world when you are trapped thinking in those terms. As Paul writes, “In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free.” He is pushing us beyond our human, ethnic, religious and political divisions towards a new concept: a “peoplehood” based on a religion rather than the other way around. The early Church had to develop real, doctrinal borders for it’s new People - because there were no national borders to protect it. And, in order for Christians to just get along together the Church had to lay down some strong rules about our shared social life. The first of those rules is not judging others for breaking those same rules.

Judaism is built on an older model: the people. It is tribal. It shares this model with the Japanese, the Hopi, etc. One can not just pick up The book of the Hopi and announce “I practice the Hopi religion.”

OK, enough intro…

Emet Ve-Emunah (which means “True and Faithful” - part of the acclamation that follows the Sh’ma in the Synagogue Liturgy and one of my favourite prayers) is divided up into three easy to read sections: God in the World, The Jewish People and Living A Life of Torah. For my purposes, I was most interested in the first section. This is why it took me a month to finish reading a 40-page booklet: I got kind of bogged down in what was left. There is also 15 pages of introductory material which, being a Church Geek, I found to be quite understandable and unremarkable. Seems that at first this statement was going to be formulated by a bunch of academics and clerics. But they realised that the laity needed to be involved for it to mean anything…

Good on them!

The Section on God in the World was, for me, the most informative. The theology is what interests me right now. I’m so very used to thinking in theological terms that I don’t know how else to evaluate something. Even with the assumptions with which I opened this post, it’s very hard for me not to want to think in Credal statements. But Emet takes that basis away from me on the the first page - paragraph 4:

Conservative Judaism affirms the critical importance of belief in God, but does not specify all the particulars of that belief. Certainly, belief in a trinitarian God, or in a capricious, amoral God can never be consistent with Jewish tradition and history. Valid differences in perspective, however, do exist.

The document then makes a clear statement of the deity one can image from “a straightforward reading of the Bible.” But it contrasts this with a more mystical POV:

Some view the reality of God differently. For them, the existence of God is not a “fact” that can be checked against the evidence. Rather, God’s presence is the starting point for our entire view of the world and our place in it. Where is such a God to be found and experienced? He is not a being to whom we can point. He is, instead, present when we look for meaning in the world, when we work for morality, for justice, and for future redemption. A description of God’s nature is not the last line of a logical demonstration; it emerges out of our shared traditions and stories as a community. God is, in this view as well, a presence and a power that transcends us, but His nature is not completely independent of our beliefs and experiences. This is a conception of God that is closer to the God of many Jewish philosophers and mystics.

But it make it clear that both views are firmly rooted in Jewish teaching and thought.

In the portion on revelation I appreciated the tension held between fundamentalism and relativism:

Conservative Judaism affirms its belief in revelation, the uncovering of an external source of truth emanating from God. This affirmation emphasizes that although truths are transmitted by humans, they are not a human invention. That is why we call the Torah torat emet ["True Torah" - DHR]. The Torah’s truth is both theoretical and practical, that is, it teaches us about God and about our role in His world. As such, we reject relativism, which denies any objective source of authoritative truth. We also reject fundamentalism and literalism, which do not admit a human component in revelation, thus excluding an independent role for human experience and reason in the process.

That tension is a line drawn horizontally - between differing human understandings of text. It is also a line drawn vertically - between a crediting the text as having either a fully divine or else fully human origin. This document attempts to hold the Torah in the middle of this crux: a divine and human document containing divine revelation and human discussion. As such this approach interests me far more than those Orthodox (of any religion) who teach that what they have is 100% God’s. History, alone, proves otherwise. But it also rejects those of other paths who insist that what they have is 100% Man’s: if that be so, then why bother?

I do take a very liberal stand in that I assume all religion is our response to God. That but that assumes that God did something to which we respond! That something must be articulated by God and Man acting in conversation. If that something be missing then what’s the point at all?

This attitude caries over into the Conservative understanding of Halakhah, the law. Here’s the opening graph of that section (emphasis added):

Halakhah consists of the norms taught by the Jewish tradition, how one is to live as a Jew. Most Jewish norms are embodied in the laws of the Bible and their rabbinic interpretation and expansion over the centuries, but some take the form of customs, and others are derived from the ethical ideals which inform the laws and customs and extend beyond them (lifnim m’shurat hadin). Since each age requires new interpretations and applications of the received norms, Halakhah is an ongoing process. It is thus both an ancient tradition, rooted in the experience and texts of our ancestors, and a contemporary way of life, giving value, shape, and direction to our lives.

Halakhah is an ongoing process. This is why Orthodox can begin ordaining women and why Conservatives can support gays - and both claim support of Halakhah. To me this is a very honest process with a specific, historical start and a traceable development - unlike those religious traditions that claim to have been handed down whole cloth from wherever they claim. (Ultra Orthodox Judaism - which teaches that Abraham knew the Shema and observed all the Mitzvot neither of which were even revealed until generations after Abraham - fits here as does ultra Orthodox Christianity. Some new age religions fit here as well.) To me this divine-human shared dialogue makes more sense.

I was intrigued by the theological discussion of “Our Vision of the Future”.

For each of these three dimensions — the individual, the national and the universal — the classical texts of Judaism provide a rich source of speculation. Since no one knows what will happen “in the days to come” each of us is free to fashion personal speculative visions of the future. In no other area of Jewish thought is dogmatism less justified and hence more hazardous.

This is, of course, referring to the Messianic Age. How do we get there? Who brings it? Emet Ve-Emeunah affirms a “gradualist” take rather than a “revolutionary” one. We get to the Messianic world by repairing the world… in a sense each of us are Messiah, if we do our part.

Which, for me, raised a question of Messianism itself. When did the Jews start expecting a person as Messiah? When did the Expectations (which Christians believe are fulfilled in Jesus) get so specific as to be listed and check-listed? Clearly Jews at some point began expecting a Person to do all these things. Clearly Christians think this Person is Jesus (despite the theological differences between the Jewish Messiah and the Gentile Christ). Is it possible to read the Tanakh without expecting a person called “Messiah”?

To me the discussion of Israel, women and relations between Jews, with other people, social justice, etc, were quite expected and non-surprising. Anyone familiar with mainline Protestant discussions of such topics would be familiar with the language used. If, however, you want a deeper understanding of where Conservative Judaism stands on these issues, this document will set out answers to your questions in clear and easy-to-understand terms.

By our active commitment to the ideals of justice found in biblical and rabbinic law and lore, we shall fulfill our obligation to be shutafo shel ha-Kadosh Barukh Hu be-maase bereshit, partners with God in the creation of a more perfect world.

The concluding section, on “The Ideal Conservative Jew” is, I think, a work-in-process. There is a page by the same name on the USCJ website which covers the same material.

The final ‘graph, though, is worth the trip it took us to get there:

Given our changing world, finality and certainty are illusory at best, destructive at worst. Rather than claiming to have found a goal at the end of the road, the ideal Conservative Jew is a traveler walking purposefully towards “God’s holy mountain.”

Given that earlier the document eschewed the relativist position, it is interesting to conclude with the statement that “finality and certainty are illusory at best, destructive at worst.” This can be read as nearly a Credo of the “Spiritual But Not Religious” movement. Yet, here it is coming from a “real” religion.

And I return to my earlier point - of Judaism not as a religion, but as a people. This is not a statement coming from an institution with a Creed, or a community with a confessional statement or a list of canons to which one must assent for continued membership. This is a people seeking to survive and using their customs and laws as boundaries when there is no nation in which the people may live. (Even today, when the state of Israel exists again, there are more Jews outside of Israel than inside of it.)

As a whole, it was very readable and very understandable. Thank you, Avi, for sending it along! The PDF is available for download from the library page.