I’ve spoken

about my contempt for Reform Judaism in several places in this blog, viz.:
Reform Judaism: Now Fashionably Left for your Homiletic Pleasure
Wherein a conservative Jewish man visits the synagogue where he grew up to say Kaddish for his father and walked out on the rabbi’s Democratic fax-spewing “sermon”
What’s all this, then?
Wherein said conservative Jewish man wondered aloud about why anyone cared about a gay Episcopal bishop when Reform Judaism has bent over for the gays in its midst for well over a decade
Jewish Reform Movement is full of shit
Wherein said conservative Jewish man wondered what the fuck was up with the Union of Reform Judaism getting on its high horse because Congress was passing legislation that was clearly pro-Israel and (thus) anti-Paleostinian.
So last night we returned to the synagogue where I grew up to say Kaddish for my dad once again (last year we went to OUR conservative synagogue but we were trying to please my mother). Since it was Family Night, we went to the adult service in the chapel. Some adult service.
I knew we were in trouble when the attractive young female rabbi bounced in with a guitar over her shoulder, followed by a teenage youth group girl ditto. Crap. A Debbie Friedman camp-music songfest. I wasn’t wrong.
And I hate the fucking touchy-feely shit. I don’t need to shake hands with the people on either side of me, or wish them Shabbat Shalom. What I need to do is open the fucking prayer book and pray. In Hebrew. And in chant. With no musical accompaniment. (Although, as I observed to Sally, there’s an organ in that chapel for a reason.)
I felt like I was at a Catholic Mass. In fact, when I related this story to my good friend Frumious Bandersnatch this morning on the way to a Masonic function, I got to the guitar part and he roared with laughter. “Thought you were at a Catholic Mass, didn’t you?”
The funny part of this is, I have actually attended a collegiate Mass at the Catholic University of America, in the crypt of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. And indeed, it featured a young earnest priest with a guitar. So we were definitely on the same wavelength.
Baby-boomer Judaism. It’s awful and it needs to go away, and Debbie Friedman needs to be shot before she writes anymore gooey-sappy camp music. That crap does NOT belong in the synagogue. Period.
Let me repeat something I said two years ago: “Reform Judaism isn’t Judaism anymore. I don’t know what it is, but it sure isn’t Judaism.”
May as well convert to Christianity as go to a Reform shul. I’m dead serious. Reform Judaism is a dead, dead end. It just doesn’t know it yet.