SPECIAL COMMENTARY
Boomer ReJew-Venation
Los An eles
"Whatever," shrugged the well-
he changes in American
dressed rabbi, dapper in Armani. But
Jewish life over the past 20
with the growing influence of the
years have been astounding.
ashram, and the recent adoption of
The imprint of the Baby
meditation-style worship, it's only a
Boomers, those middle-aged
matter of time until our
men and women who today
clothing goes with the flow.
dominate our community as
Frankly, I'll miss dress-
rabbis, synagogue leaders and
up Judaism and, like the
congregation members, is felt
recent re-adoption of the
more emphatically every year.
yarmulke (skullcap), predict
The child-friendly music, rit-
it will one day stage a
uals that resound with explicit
comeback. Business attire at
psychological reference and
services, especially heels, is
the recasting of female Bible
miserably restrictive, but
heroes into starring roles, are
that's the point, a beginning
MARLENE
Part I of the story. As these
at self-containment. You've
ADLER MARKS got to start somewhere, you
High Holidays begin, howev-
er, I see the start of Part II.
Special to
know, and teshuvah, the
Part I has focused largely
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spiritual chiropractic gener-
on surface issues of style. Take
ally known as "repentance,"
the dress code, for example.
is hard work. Many of my
When I was growing up in New York,
best intentions fail me. If I can't easily
my favorite Rosh Hashanah ritual was
change my habits, drives, ambitions
the purchase of a new Jewish suit.
and motivations, at least I can alter
Despite the threat of Indian summer
my hemline. We change slowly, from
heat, year after year I'd be in shul,
the outside in.
sweltering in blue wool, dripping with
sweat and pride; duped by seasonal
Matter Of Semantics
change again.
When I was growing up, we all
Living in Los Angeles now — of
believed in sin. I loved my sins and
course, we're laid back. New clothing
maintained a running annual score-
merely means a new black cotton T-
board, ready for purging. Four times
shirt. The other day at Torah study, we
that year, I had cursed my parents
discussed the controversy of Jewish
under my breath. Three times I had
jeans: Is it all right to wear denims
left my brother to wash the dishes,
and running shoes to services?
claiming the next day I had a history
or math test. On the "Wonder Years"
Marlene Adler is a senior columnist of
scale, these were big deals, and I
the Los Angeles Jewish Journal. Her
couldn't wait to have the blast of the
e-mail address is wmnsvoice@aol.com
shofar lift the load.
Today, of course, personal sin is
gone, and with it the idea of the High
Holidays as Judgment Day. Part I of
Boomer reJew-venation soft-pedals the
guilt, calling it, instead, "missing the
mark." Missing the mark is like being
bad at archery: there's always another
quiver for your bow.
Rather than a courthouse, our spiri-
tual tribunal today resembles a kind of
cvber-traffic school: fill out the form
and judge yourself Our kinder, gen-
tler prayer books go to great lengths to
stress inner process, that the harsh
decree of Yom Kippur can always be
overturned by teshuvah — by my
decision, however last minute, to be
different and change my ways. The
sage du jour, widely quoted in spiritual
circles, is the early late 19th century
Sefat Emet, the Chasidic Rabbi Yehu-
da Leib Alter of Warsaw, whose writ-
ings have been translated by Rabbi
Arthur Green. "Your task is to keep
those inner tablets free enough from
accumulated grime," Green quotes the
sage.
"The Book of Life is in you!"
In Search Of Truth
But if aging Boomers are more toler-
ant of Jewish jeans, on another level,
as we're also digging deeper into Jew-
ish genes, looking for truths in the
religious marrow. This is the task of
Part II.
Take the Rosh Hashanah Torah
reading, the traumatic story of the
Akeidah, the Sacrifice of Isaac. Abra-
ham is told by God to take his son to
a mountaintop as a human sacrifice.
(Reform synagogues read the Akedah
on the first day, Orthodox and Con-
servative synagogues on the second
day.)
At the last moment, just as Abra-
ham has the knife to Isaac's throat, the
boy is spared, and a ram in a thicket is
substituted.
So problematic is this story, and
the ancient decision that it should
be read at the biggest annual Jewish
convocation, that some liberal syna-
gogues years ago substituted a read-
ing of the Creation of the World.
When I was growing up, rabbis tor-
tured the text to make it a cross-cul-
tural political statement. We read
this story, I was told, because the
boy is not killed, showing that Jews,
unlike pagans of the time, do not
engage in child sacrifice.
Ah, but don't we? It seems to me
we're asked to'"sacrifice" our chil-
dren all the time, and at each stage
of their lives, in different ways. And
the reason we read the Akeidah on
this holy day is to remind us that
the lives of our children are in our
hands, subject to dangerous misin-
terpretation.
Have we sacrificed our children's
education for status? Are we imposing
goals of economic attainment that
might not be realistic for their talents?
Have we made them carry the wood
for political goals that fit our genera-
tion, but not theirs?
My friends and I, Part II Boomers
and their families, have awe for the
various knives we wield, and the sacri-
fices made again and again.
❑
It's Time To Revive Modesty
New York
engage in war and arrange
peaking about mod-
for our bodily pleasures. All
esty in the Jewish
of this, beyond the obvious
community seems
teachings in regard to mod-
always to make peo-
esty in clothing for both
ple think about sex and
men and women and as to
women's clothing.
sexual relations.
The Talmud, by contrast,
Why is modesty such a
speaks of tzeniut, or mod-
vital value in 21st-century
esty, in extremely broad
America? What is its connec-
RABBI SAUL
terms. The sages speak of
tion to Rosh Hashanah?
J. BERMAN
modesty in regard to how
And, what are the con-
Special to
we eat, play and study, and
ceptual underpinnings of the
the Jewish News
in relation to our weddings,
rabbinic teachings about tze-
the design of our homes and
niut?
our funerals. They speak of
In a striking talmudic
passage (Niddah 12a.), Rabbi Ami is
tzeniut in how we travel, speak,
quoted as having asserted that "one
Rabbi Saul J. Berman is director of
who fulfills the commands of the sages
Edah, a modern Orthodox advocacy
is called tzanuah.'" Why is "modest' ,
organization.
the correct appellation for such a per-
S
son? Because a central quality of mod-
esty is recognition of authority outside
of the self.
The opposite of modesty is extreme
self-centeredness, in which one thinks
that he or she is the ultimate arbiter of
all right and wrong. Such a person
would submit to power, but not to
persuasion. Such a person might sub-
mit to a biblical command out of fear
of Divine retribution, but would resist
rabbinic counsel, which is dependent
upon persuasion rather than enforce-
ment.
By contrast, the modest person rec-
ognizes that strength of passion and
desire for self-gratification has the
capacity to blind him or her to moral
sensitivity. Just then, it is essential to
turn to objective sources of wisdom
and ethics to provide the inspiration
necessary to resist the drive for imme-
diate gratification.
Universal Custom
A second rabbinic passage identifies
modesty with adherence to universal
Jewish custom (Midrash Rabbah,
Numbers 8:12). Why this connection?
Custom occupies a very special place
in the ranks of Jewish authoritative
teaching. Rather than being a mani-
festation of the superior teaching
authority of either Torah or the sages,
top down, custom is a reflection of
the embodiment of wisdom and spiri-
tual insight in the Jewish people as a
whole, bottom up.
The capacity to create binding cus-
tom reflects the ability of people to
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