by Larry Kaufman

The Jerusalem Post has excited the Jewish blogosphere over its recent interview with Rabbi Norman Lamm, chancellor of Yeshiva University. The sound bite that attracted all the attention was the rabbi's prediction about "the competition.".  "With a heavy heart we will soon say Kaddish on the Reform and Conservative movements," Rabbi Lamm is quoted as saying, "The future of American Jewry is in the hands of Haredim and the Modern Orthodox."

Most of the response I have seen to Lamm's provocative statement came in the form of angry denials from the purportedly moribund liberal movements, along with assertions about their vigor, vitality, and market penetration.  An academic from the other major Jewish university, Brandeis, responded differently. Writing in The Forward, the distinguished professor of American Jewish history, Jonathan Sarna, pointed to the danger signals that give the lie to Lamm's triumphalism. 

Aside from narrating the previous failures of prophecy about the American Jewish Community (from John Adams' prediction that we would all become Unitarians to Isaac Mayer Wise's expectation of the universal adoption of his minhag America), Sarna points to the five big challenges facing Orthodoxy today:

1. The demographic reality that Orthodoxy has trouble retaining its members
2. A leadership crisis, where no-one has yet captured the prestige once enjoyed by Rabbis Feinstein, Soloveitchik, and Schneerson, inter alia.. 
3. The brain drain from America to Israel
4. The polarization within the movement, especially in terms of an approach to confronting modernity
5. The financial crisis, especially as exacerbated within Orthodoxy by the devastation created by "one of their own," Bernard Madoff.

Professor Sarna is too wise to suggest that WE get ready to say kaddish for THEM. We Jews have a track record for re-inventing ourselves and our institutions to meet new needs and new circumstances; and we also have a long history demonstrating that one size does not fit all. 

The three big religious movements in American Judaism are all big tents, but the disparity from one side of our tent to the other is probably not as great as among the Conservatives or the Orthodox. But we need yield to no-one when it comes to a demonstrated capacity for re-invention. Our most visible and significant manifestations are:

1. Defining ourselves by what we do rather than by what we don't do
2. Changing our worship demeanor from audience to participant
3. Our embrace of egalitarianism and the corresponding ascendancy of women
4. Our embrace of Israel and Zionism
5. Our Counter-Reformation, reclaiming ritual practices that our predecessors had discarded

But while we can look backward at the ways we have changed, we still have to look forward to the future of Reform Judaism in the context of the panorama of American Judaism.  As important as are the significant institutional re-structurings taking place at both the URJ and HUC-JIR, I put forward the thought that those are micro issues, and that we need to look at Professor Sarna's view of the five challenges facing Orthodoxy to see how similar macro challenges apply to us. 

1. Is having become the largest Jewish religious movement in North America a status that we can maintain - and does it matter?
2. On the second point, leadership, I believe we can rest easy on most counts. Our weak spot is on both sides of the gender issue. Even with women heading the CCAR and the board of HUC-JIR, they are still under-represented in our national leadership. At the same time, we see shrinkage of the number of men and boys involved in congregational life. 
3. Our brain drain is not to Israel, but we may be facing a brain drain away from institutional Reform Judaism, as the "best and the brightest" among our young people head to other movements and/or to independent minyans.
4. Within the framework of our big tent, the stylistic differences that characterize our Classical Reform congregations are just that - stylistic differences - and are not polarizing factors. And though our rabbis may differ on their big question of the day, officiation at weddings where both partners are not Jewish, the do's and the don't's seem able to understand each other's positions and live under the same tent, even if not under the same huppah (wedding canopy). 
5. The financial crisis of the moment will pass, and hopefully our institutions will weather the storm. But even before the current crisis, our congregations and our national institutions were under-funded. The Reform movement needs to figure out how to get a bigger share of the giving capacity of its member philanthropists.  

With all due respect to the Chancellor (whose respect quotient has dwindled with this episode), it appears he marched in like a lion, and is going out like a Lamm. But even if we are not candidates for Kaddish, neither are we entitled to complacency. Although I doubt it was his intention, Rabbi Lamm may have done us a favor after all.

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