Why men are running away from Judaism

View from the booth:

Perhaps if Reform Judaism (the one I grew up in, anyway)offered more of a spiritual dimension that is based on halacha, none of this men/women stuff would be of much pertinence, as men would presumably then have an outlet for faith. Having spent the first 17 years of life in Reform Judaism, I am grateful for the start: I learned Buber and Heschel but not Halacha. Fortunately, Buber and Heschel led me back to where they started - in Hasidism and Jewish mysticism.

If you go behind the major German Reform thinkers, you find a desire to assimilate into the main Protestant culture so much so that services were patterned after classic Protestant liturgy, complete with pipe organ and choir. There was a mad delusion that a Jew could be a German. That delusion was answered starting in 1933. I was a member of "The Church on the Lake" -- as Temple Sholom in Chicago was formerly known by. The reverence of and the reliance on "reason" -- that is, to bend halacha so out of shape as to be unrecognizable -- instead of using reason to use halacha in every day life (or at least try) was the undoing of Reform Judaism for me. The only thing that Jews have to call our own is halacha. The rest of our history as a people is connected to the countries and the history of those countries where we have found ourselves over the course of past 2000 years. The moves within Reform Judaism to cleave a tad closer to Halacha over the course of the past 10-15 years bear this out. The same is true of Conservative Judaism. What is Conservative Judaism conserving? We are not preserves. We are Jews. That the JTS in New York is running a $2 million deficit and the recent intra-movement controversy tells me that Conservative Judaism is by definition a movement without the possibility of a firm foundation. What and who decides which halacha will be followed and which not? Or is this simply Orthodox-lite? What is the single defining factor of all of Jewry? In my mind, it's halacha. And that's whether you agree with the Halacha or not. The important part is its pre-eminence in Jewish life on a daily basis. So let's argue about it, disagree and grow it. That's Judaism to me. It's why you can't put two Jews in a room and not come out with at least three opinions. The culture, the nation, the everything, is or should be based on the Halacha. Without Halacha, we are nothing, and end up worshipping ourselves. That is a narcissism that I cannot personally abide.

Randy Shiner



Why men are running away from Judaism

Rabbi Brackman contemplates reasons why Jewish men, boys are less and less attracted to Jewish activities

Rabbi Levi Brackman

According to a study just released by the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute and the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies in the Reform Movement, today's women are far more connected to Judaism than their male counterparts are. “When it comes to gender equality or gender balance, contemporary American Jewish life is caught between a rock and a hard place,” says the study’s co-author Daniel Parmer. “Boys and men as a group are not attracted to feminized Jewish activities and environments” the study found.

Commenting on this, in a just published article, Professor of American Jewish History at the Jewish Theological Seminary Dr. Jack Wertheimer concludes that “Reform today resembles liberal Protestantism, where men form a dwindling minority in the pews, in congregational leadership, and in the seminaries. Even within Reform few count this fact as a sign of success.”

What we really have here is the law of unintended consequences. As Wertheimer notes the Reform Movement wanted to include those who were perceived to have been marginalized by traditional Judaism. They therefore gave women the same roles as men within synagogue services. This strategy has now backfired terribly and as women became more involved, men started to move away. Ironically we have now come full circle with the Reform Movement experimenting with all men synagogue services to attract the men back.

'Inflicting more damage than good'

The problem the Reform Movement is facing is simple. They dismissed the possibility of there being deep wisdom within traditional practices. This lack of respect caused them to do away with many of them. In doing so, however, they ended up inflicting more damage than good. In fact there is wisdom in having men run synagogue services.

It is now almost universally accepted that whilst men and women are equal they are different. There are always exceptions, but, one can safely say that for men public recognition and a feeling of being needed is a great motivator especially when it involves doing something voluntarily.

Despite some exceptions, on the whole it can be argued that women simply do not need the same amount of communal acknowledgment to be 'Jewishly' involved and inspired. This assertion is backed up by the abovementioned Hadassah-Brandeis study which found that within Reform families, fathers participate much less than mothers in the Jewish upbringing of the children

In light of this there is tremendous wisdom in having only men lead synagogue services. The Reform experiment of allowing women that position has made men feel that they are no longer really needed in the synagogue – women can take their place as part of a Minyan. In addition the male sense of being uniquely acknowledged by the community has been taken away from them—women can lead the services, read from the Torah instead. Add to this the fact that the Reform movement fails to offer a spiritual dimension and male motivation to be involved with synagogue life and therefore Judaism has been completely removed.

While it is certainly important for women to have leadership roles within the Jewish community – and tradition acknowledges and supports that, room must be given for men to gain religious recognition that is uniquely their own. For centuries leading synagogue services was how they did this.

This study should be yet another wake up call for all of us who care about Judaism and its future. We must initiate a back to basics campaign for Jewish life in the United States and Europe and educate people about the immense wisdom inherent in the wonderfully rich and beautiful practices that are traditional Judaism.

Rabbi Levi Brackman is executive director of Judaism in the Foothills . His upcoming book , "Jewish Wisdom for Business Success", is set to be published in late 2008.