Observations of a Rabbi Who Never Became a Bar Mitzvah

By Jack Stern

From Reform Judaism, Winter 1997
Reprinted with permission from the author and Reform Judaism Magazine --- Published by the Union of American Hebrew Congregations

Many years ago I was working with one of my bar mitzvah students, who was totally negligent in his preparations. Exasperated, his mother finally turned to the boy and said: ``I'm sure that Rabbi Stern studied hard for his bar mitzvah, and that's what you should be doing!''

I was grateful that the mother made her point as a statement rather than a question because the truth is, I never became a bar mitzvah.

I grew up in Cincinnati, in the synagogue of my parents, my grandparents, and Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, the ``master architect'' of Reform Judaism in American. Like many other Reform congregations in the late '30s, our synagogue did not hold bar/bat mitzvah ceremonies. The worship service was conducted primarily in English. No one wore a kippah or a tallit; the closest we came was an atarah, which was affixed to the rabbi's robe.

The congregation of my childhood was still in that stage of Reform Judaism spawned in Germany early in the nineteenth century and transported several decades later to these American shores. With its varying hues and textures, it came to be known as ``Classical Reform,'' and it still persists in some congregations throughout contemporary America. My childhood congregations, however, is not among them.

From its inception, this new Jewish expression was a bid by those Jews of western and central Europe, now liberated from their ghettos, to take their place in the brave new world of intellectual enlightenment and political emancipation, a world in which the dictates of reason were expected to propel all of humanity toward a bright new day of universal brotherhood and peace.

In order to stake out their claim in America, the Reform pioneers divested themselves of any tradition that might separate them from the mainstream of their now-expanded world, discarding whatever smacked of the old life in the ghetto. The bar mitzvah ceremony was deemed ``Antiquated'' and replaced by Confirmation. The skullcap traditionally worn during congregation worship was tossed off, as was any expression of hope for return to Zion, which, they thought, would make them suspect of disloyalty to America.

Today the early Reformers are often maligned for attempting to disclaim or hide their Jewish identity. This might have been true for some, but for many others, and especially for the leaders, the exact opposite was the case. Our pioneers embrace their new identity with passion precisely because they saw themselves as Jewish bearers of a grand message to the world.

When I was about fourteen, I attended a religious school course on the biblical prophets and the impact of their ethical teachings on community life. To this day I can visualize the striking figure of the Prophet Amos in his peasant cloak barging into the sanctuary in Sumeria and railing against the people. ``You sell the poor into slavery, you cheat your customers with false weights and measure, your judges are corrupt because you corrupt them --- and then you dare to put on your finest clothes in a show of sumptuous sacrifice with this soaring music and convince yourselves that this is what God wants? Well, let me set you straight. What God wants, in place of all of this, is for `justice to well up as waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.' ''

This was the message these early reformers embraced: that there is one God who represents what is ethically good and right and who requires human beings to live their lives accordingly. It was a message of personal morality, person to person: do not cheat, do not exploit, do not lie, do not abuse. It was a message of social morality, person to society: transform God's shabby world into God's moral world, a world in which the weak and the poor are protected and unoppressed. If such a message, with all its rational cogency, could be delivered, the pioneers believed, then the rest of humanity would be bolstered toward this more decent and peaceful world.

The reformers went one step further. The most effective way to carry out their mission and imbue it with credibility, they reasoned, was for the Jewish people to begin with itself: to conduct itself, collectively and individually, as the living example of an ethical model. The task could best be accomplished not so much by preserving the old customs and ethnic separateness but instead by providing the model of personal and social morality and thus becoming a ``light unto the nations.'' With pride and passion, they carried the banner of Jewish ethics, Jewish morality, and Jewish responsibility to make God's world a better place. It was no coincidence that in 1918, decades before the birth of the Religious Action Center in Washington, the Reform pioneers campaigned for an eight-hour day, decent wages, the abolition of child labor, and healthier conditions in the workplace.

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