As Reform Movement Evolves, Temples Embrace More Ritual

Were he alive today, Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise would hardly recognize the Reform movement he led a century ago.

Practices once considered anathema in his movement – wearing a tallit and kipah, celebrating the second day of Rosh Hashanah and chanting the Reader’s Kaddish and Avot prayers during worship – are now regularly used in a majority of Reform congregations, according to a recent survey of the movement.

Not long ago, a typical Reform service included a paid choir singing the few Hebrew parts of the service and congregants reading the mostly English-language liturgy.

Today, there are fewer professional choirs, more Hebrew in the services and more congregational singing and chanting.

Other elements of the services that were once standard in Reform temples, such as the use of accompanying organs, have become less common.

At the same time, Reform congregations are including elements that are considered more traditionally Jewish, according to the study, conducted by the Reform movement’s congregational arm, the Union of American Hebrew Congregations.

The recently released survey, “Emerging Worship and Music Trends in UAHC Congregations,” was conducted in late 1993 and early 1994. Of the movement’s 850 congregations, 677 responded.

Among its findings:

.Most Reform congregations use Hebrew for between 20 percent and 50 percent of the liturgy during Friday night and Saturday morning services.

.The Reader’s Kaddish is chanted regularly in 80 percent of Reform temples, up from 66 percent in 1987. Prior to 1975, no congregations chanted the prayer because it was not included in the standard Reform prayer book at the time.

.Thirty-eight percent of temples currently observe two days of Rosh Hashanah.

About 80 percent of all Reform temples currently make kipot available to congregants, and half supply tallitot.

.The majority of Reform temples consider the wearing of kipot and tallitot optional (496 of the 677 respondents consider kipot optional; 507 consider tallitot optional). Some congregations encourage the practice, while very few discourage or require it.

.In 60 percent of Reform temples, congregants always sing along during Friday evening services.

Eschewing practices that seemed too close to traditional Judaism was once the philosophical bedrock of Reform Judaism.

The principles of the Reform movement were first officially outlined in the Pittsburgh Platform, adopted by the movement’s leaders in 1885. Among the beliefs stated in that manifesto: “We hold that all such Mosaic and rabbinical laws as regulate diet, priestly purity and dress originated in ages under the influence of ideas altogether foreign to our present mental and spiritual state.

“Their observance in our days is apt rather to obstruct rather than to further modern spiritual elevation.”

Today’s Reform Jews obviously disagree.

Once one has moved beyond Orthodoxy on the right and Classical Reform on the left, the old labels have lost much of their original meaning and will require new and bold re-evaluations in the years ahead,” wrote the report’s authors.

The authors are Rabbi Daniel Freelander, the UAHC’s national director of programs and director of its Commission of Synagogue Music; Robin Hirsch, assistant director of the commission of music; and Rabbi Sanford Seltzer, director of the UAHC’s Commission on Religious Living.

At the heart of the Reform movement is the belief that no expression or form of Jewish spirituality is inviolable and closed from change, Freelander said. ..TX,-The changes in religious practice, which some might see as a return to traditional Judaism, does not reflect a failure of Reform philosophy or theology, he said.

“Our forms have to continue to evolve and change to reflect the needs of our constituency,” the rabbi said. “Expressions of personal spirituality are far more acceptable in America today than they were 30 years ago. If we perpetuated a 19th century model, we’d be failing.

He added, “If we wanted to canonize the practices, we’d be failing. Reform continues to evolve.”

Some of the evolution began in the late 1960s, with an increase in ethnic identity, he said.

Since then, Reform Judaism has continued to evolve as the nature of its constituency evolves, Freelander said. He noted that 50 percent of all new members in Reform temples were not raised in the Reform movement. Half of them were not born Jewish. The other half were raised as Conservative or Orthodox Jews, he said.

“Everyone brings with them their memories and practices,” said Freelander.

“Reform will continue to change as the membership does,” he said. “Reform does not reject the possibility of anything any longer.”