“The Quest for Authenticity”

The following is the sermon that I delivered on Friday, February 15, when the gimel Hebrew class (6th graders) led the Shabbat worship service.

I love telling stories. We possess a treasure trove of stories that I can tap into. But there’s a catch: almost all of them are based on the Old Country: Eastern Europe … Russia’s Pale of Settlement.

They are not based in other parts of the world, such as Spain, North Africa, Near East. And very, very few occur in the United States in the 20th century.

With the Old Country, we learn about beloved rebbes, rabbis; loving husbands and wives; petty merchants with wares to sell and songs to sing; tightly knit communities. The nostalgia runs deep, and these villages are idealized.

By telling these stories, I have fallen into a trap concerning the Old Country. I am presenting Judaism as it should be; I elevate the Old Country as a model for Jewish community. I have inadvertently perpetuated a myth about this period of Jewish history. I do not use the word “myth” in a negative sense.

Examples of our myths.
• Abram hearing the voice of God and departing for an unknown land
• Moses floating down the Nile in a wicker basket, only to be saved by Pharaoh’s daughter
• The Israelites marching around Jericho as the walls came tumblin’ down

Who knows if any of this happened, but we need these myths. They teach lasting, endearing lessons. Our myths possess a unique wisdom. But the myth of the idealized shtetl? Tevya and Fiddler on the Roof?

Too many of us believe that Shtetl Judaism, Old Country Judaism, is authentic Judaism … real Judaism.

I just finished reading an outstanding book my Rabbi Arther Blecher, a Conservative rabbi in Washington, D.C. It’s titled “The New American Judaism.” In part, he expresses why we look back on the shtetl with such fondness:

It was the aftermath of massive Jewish immigration to these shores. The new challenge our leaders faced was how these masses could become Americanized and maintain their Jewish identities. The Reform, Conservative and Orthodox devised separate solutions.

We all feared that their expressions of JD would not be viewed as authentic to the children and grandchildren of the immigrants who fled to our country. All tried to prove who was more authentic than the other: In the process, they looked back to experience in Eastern Europe and Russia. But they looked back through an idealized, romanticized lens

Let’s look at that period of our history as it truly was:
• A dreadful existence
• poverty
• pogroms
• untold number of widows and orphans
• sons taken from homes into the army … never to return
• arranged marriages; dysfunctional homes
• alcohol abuse

Remember: When hundreds of thousands of Jews at last had a chance to leave, did not hesitate. They hardly looked back on that time of their lives nostalgically.

But unfortunately, in the quest for authenticity, our religious leaders taught again and again … drove the point home … that their form of Judaism was authentic because it traced itself back to the Old Country Jews, the very model of authenticity.

I cannot stress this enough: Here in the United States, we are all authentic: Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, Reconstructionist, Renewal, Chabad, even Humanist.

At this point, I looked to the individual students of the gimel class and called them out by name.

Remember, as you get older: as you become bar or bat mitzvah, as you continue with religious school, as you visit Israel, as you go to college, and as you become an adult: We are all authentic Jews, and never let anyone, anyone take that from you.

Let me return to where I began: my love of Jewish stories. I will continue, occasionally to tell these stories of the Old Country. I will teach lessons from these stories that we can apply to our lives. But I will avoid the unintended lesson: that they are the authentic Jews … and that we, the unauthentic Jews, can learn from then to become more complete. Instead, we are simply Jews learning from the Jews who came before us.

My hope and prayer for the gimel class and for all of us: let us be the inspiration for new Jewish stories. One day, may rabbis look back to our unique American experience and tell stories inspired by our rich, wonderful, varied Jewish wisdom.

Cain y’hi ratzon