Reform Judaism: Now Fashionably Left for your Homiletic Pleasure

This evening, I have set foot in a Reform synagogue for (most likely) the last time.
While I grew up Reform, I’ve drifted to the right (big surprise) over the years — or actually, perhaps the Reform Movement has drifted to the left (less of a surprise). At any rate I haven’t been comfortable with Reform for a number of years, and when they neutralized the gender in the prayer books, that was pretty much the last straw. Since Sally and I got engaged and then married, and moreover decided that we were going to get married in and join the Conservative synagogue, I haven’t looked back.
So we went to the Reform synagogue this evening because Mom still belongs there and it was the Friday before Dad’s yahrzeit (anniversary of his death).
About the middle of the service, I leaned over to Sally and said, “Tastes great — less filling.” She agreed. We’re used to communal prayer, mostly done in Hebrew, not responsive reading done in English with a Hebrew prayer here and there. She grew up in the Conservaform (or Reservative, take your pick) temple a couple of blocks away (actually it’s a Conservative/Reconstructionist temple, which — if you know anything about Mordechai Kaplan and his Reconstructionist movement — says a lot about why we aren’t members there, but rather are members of the much smaller CONSERVATIVE temple a few blocks away in the other direction), so she’s been doing this all her life.
All this I can pretty much suffer through in order to make the family happy. It’s when the rabbi starts off on a sermon that sounds like it was taken point by point from the weekly Democratic Party fax that I get a little incensed.
And that’s exactly what happened tonight. I heard the same tired nostrums about who’s the more important enemy, Iraq or Korea; will gas prices continue to go up with all this uncertainty; Bush’s new stimulus plan will just benefit the rich…
…which is when I bolted straight up, turned on my heel, and walked out.
Sally and I already assumed, based on talking points we heard in High Holidays sermons in Reform synagogues in different parts of the country within the same couple of weeks, that the left-leaning Central Conference of American Rabbis (the Reform rabbinical conference) has been sending out talking points memos to its rabbis. Now we’re sure of it. I just suspect that they’re simply sending the DNC fax out to the rabbis now instead of making something up of their own.
So let me ask this rhetorical (because nobody in high places is going to want to acknowledge it) question. If Jews in this country are so adamant that church be separated from state, why don’t they insist that their religious leaders SHUT THE FUCK UP about politics? I for one am sick and tired of religious parasites who think they know better than I do what’s best for this country. And the dirty little secret in Judaism is that we don’t need our rabbis in order to have a thriving religious community. Rabbis are supposed to be teachers and spiritual leaders, not preachers and moulders of political doctrine. Quite frankly the only thing we really need them for is to commit marriage, and that’s only because the state insists that a marriage is only legal if performed by someone with state sanction — ie, a judge or a man of the cloth. And if you go have a quickie civil ceremony, any knowledgable Jew can perform the religious ceremony.
The beauty is that we joined a synagogue where the rabbi is truly a teacher, not a preacher. And if I ever had any doubts about joining this congregation, they went away tonight.
And although I used to argue that people who took this point of view were full of shit, I’ve been converted to it tonight: Reform Judaism isn’t Judaism anymore. I don’t know what it is, but it sure isn’t Judaism.