Leslie Bass on Reform Judaism
July 2, 2008
Community | Holidays | Jewish Living | The Future
(1 comments)
By David A.M. Wilensky
As readers of Reform Judaism magazine will recall, the RJ Magazine's summer 2008 issue included a series of important questions regarding the Reform Movement and their answers as given by 30 adult members of the Reform Movement.
I'm currently at the URJ Kutz Camp with a group of people who will be the future lay and professional leadership of the Reform movement in North America. I'll be featuring many of them as well as many of the younger Kutz staff members this summer in a series of posts here on the RJ.org blog, in which I will be asking Reform high school and college students (and perhaps a few 20-somethings) for their take on Reform Judaism via questions similar to those used in the Magazine.
Leslie Bass hails originally from Austin, Texas. This fall she will be a junior at the University of Denver, where she is a double major in Digital Media Studies and Journalism. This July, she will be travelling to Brisbane, Australia to study abroad at the Queensland University of Technology for five months. In high school, she was an active member of NFTY-TOR and board member of her local TYG. She attended the URJ Kutz Camp in the Summer of 2005 and spent the Summers of 2006 and 2007 as Kutz Camp staff.
Why are you a Reform Jew? "Because my parents are" is a valid answer. If it is because your parents Reform, what has kept you involved in Reform Judaism?
I am a Reform Jew because I believe strongly in choice through knowledge. With Reform Judaism, I have found the flexibility and freedom to ask questions, ask questions of those questions and their answers, and to choose the values, rituals, and prayer schedule that I personally find the most meaningful, thus making my own Jewish experience the most effective and satisfying spiritual life I could have.
What has belonging to a congregation (or a Temple Youth Group or a Kesher group or going to a URJ camp etc.) that is part of the larger Reform Movement meant to you?
Personally, the reason I have continued to return to my home congregation and Kutz, and why I participated in my local TYG and NFTY in high school, was due to the strong sense of community and peer interaction I found there. The camaraderie I found as a member of these groups was not only beneficial to me on a personal and spiritually enlightening level, but it is through these groups that I have been able to find my place in the larger Reform Movement. By giving teens a place to discuss, voice their opinions, pray, and meet other Jews, the Reform Movement not only brought me to a greater self-awareness but also awareness of the community and diversity around me. This has led me to a greater understanding and sense of responsibility and action toward worldwide social issues, like the genocide in Darfur or the war in Iraq. Starting out on such a small scale helps build identity at a small community level, which only helps to build a stronger and more cohesive movement.
What has been your most meaningful (or least meaningful) Jewish holiday experience?
Passover has been my favorite holiday since I was a child, and I was particularly nervous and a little upset that I had to spend Passover away from my large extended family my first year of college. Instead, my two best friends and I went to Hillel.
Although the seder was loud and disorganized, I found that spending the holiday with a new community, and learning this new community's minhag, was particularly enlightening and exciting for me. I think I felt particularly connected to my Judaism that Passover because I was not only forced out of my comfort zone, but was welcomed with open arms into another Jewish community to create a new seder experience as a new community.
Do you believe in God?
Yes. I often used to explain my belief in God by saying, "You know when you really just click with someone else? Or you feel totally calm and grounded and simultaneously alone and full? That's God."
Was the Bible written by God?
No. I look at the Bible as a guide that promotes values I believe in and do my best to live by.
How do you reconcile Torah teachings that may be inconsistent with your beliefs today?
It's easy to reconcile Torah teachings with my modern beliefs if only because I recognize the passage of time and changing cultural, social, and natural environments that, I believe, are an easy answer to the problem of deviation from Torah teachings. The most important thing I find in the Torah are the values found throughout, which are really the Torah's one and only true, enduring message.
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I love Passover and so does my family. Only missing one family Seder, I totally understand how you are feeling. I was excited to lead my Hillel Seder and even cooked most of the foods that we would have at home...That said, I only missed one and I still travel home every spring to cook with my dad, set-up and re-set-up the living room into a massive dinning room and to sign, read, laugh and celebrate Passover.