Remember the Sabbath?

Rabbi Eric Yoffie, President of the URJ, has announced an initiative to bring Shabbat back to the center of Jewish life for Reform Jews. At the most recent biennial convention of the Reform movement, Rabbi Yoffie proposed two things. First, change our temple’s Shabbat morning worship into a vibrant and interesting experience for the entire congregation. Second, deepen our personal engagement with Shabbat. Both aspects apply to our congregation and its members. This posting addresses the first point. Next week, I will discuss the second.

Rabbi Yoffie bemoaned the current state of Shabbat morning worship in Reform synagogues. He said: "With the morning worship appropriated by the Bar and Bat Mitzvah families, our members who come to pray with the community often sit in the back of the sanctuary and feel like interlopers in their own congregation….

The results are tragic. We lose young families, whose children cannot stay up late on Friday. We lose seniors, who avoid nighttime driving and prefer to pray during the day. We lose those wanting to say Kaddish and those who are simply looking to join their community in prayer....

We are also sending a message about bar mitzvah that we do not want to send. Bar mitzvah is the occasion, symbolically at least, when a young person joins an adult community of Jews. But you cannot join what does not exist. A regular community of worshippers, who would be best suited to mentor the child, is not even present. At the average bar mitzvah what you almost always get is a one-time assemblage of well-wishers with nothing in common but an invitation."

Rabbi Yoffie’s remarks describe Monmouth Reform Temple in some ways but miss the mark in others. Sadly, our Shabbat situation is sometimes even worse than his assessment. Rabbi Yoffie spoke of the "members who come" on Saturday. We rarely, if ever, have even a single member of the congregation beyond the invited guests and official representatives. But it is still worse. Our members typically do not invite each other to their b’nei mitzvah, so "a one-time assemblage" – all non-members – is the norm for our Saturday mornings. But it gets even worse. Increasingly, even the invited guests do not come for the worship service and only show up for the party. Many b’nei mitzvah families stress the importance of the service to their guests, but others tell me that "everyone is coming tonight to my party" without the slightest sense of regret, irony, or embarrassment. Lastly, our congregation only holds Shabbat morning worship when a bar or bat mitzvah is scheduled. This is a common practice in Reform synagogues but Rabbi Yoffie reminds us: "a great religious Movement does not forego regular Shabbat morning communal prayer."

Rabbi Yoffie is right. It is time to reclaim our greatness, our Shabbat, and our community. I can picture a day when we have Shabbat morning worship at MRT every week of the year with as many temple members worshipping as bar or bat mitzvah guests. I can picture a Shabbat community at MRT – a full house of activity and gathering at the synagogue and in each other’s homes. There will be Torah study, meditation, social gathering, shared meals, tikkun olam, music and singing, joy, and lots of people connecting with each other. It will be Shabbat and it will be great. Are you in?

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