‘Ethical Judaism’ vs Jewish ethics: The problem with Reform Judaism
The background of Reform Judaism
Around two centuries ago, mainstream Judaism — which had exhibited in what we now refer to as its ‘orthodox’, or rabbinic form considerable continuity since the Talmudic era (i.e. for at least 1,500 years) — gave birth to a radical new variant. This variant, which emerged in the first instance in Germany, went by the name of Reform Judaism, and was a response to both the growth of Enlightenment values and the accompanying emancipation of the Jews which took place around that time.
Reform spread to become the dominant form of Judaism in Germany and, through migration, the United States — although in the latter case its dominance was subsequently challenged by the more orthodox immigrants from Russia and Eastern Europe in the late 19th and early 20th century.
In the UK, Reform was and remains a minority though increasingly important tendency within the Jewish community, and is in fact split between two synagogue groupings — the Movement for Reform Judaism (MRJ) and the Union of Liberal and Progressive Synagogues (ULPS). For convenience, because I am dealing with ideas, not organisations, I have used the term Reform to refer to both of these branches of what is sometimes referred to as ‘progressive Judaism’.
Still another label which Reform Jews use today to describe their beliefs is ‘ethical Judaism’. It is this tendency which I wish to discuss in the present article.
As a member of a Reform synagogue myself, I have always been unhappy with the term ‘ethical Judaism’. After all, if there is a particular tendency in Judaism which merits the name ‘ethical Judaism’, then it follows that other brands of Judaism (including the long-established ‘orthodox’ or ‘normative’ rabbinic Judaism) are not ethical. And if Judaism isn’t ethical, then what is it?
The picture painted by Christian polemicists of rabbinic Judaism — the only kind they knew — was of an arid, legalistic religion, devoid both of ethics and spirituality. Many of us of course will understand this as a prejudiced caricature, yet by calling their own brand of Judaism ‘ethical’, progressive Jews seemed to be saying to Christians — we agree with you about the nature of traditional Judaism, but we’re different. This has of course been a common if depressing Jewish response to prejudice — to internalise the non-Jew’s image of Jews, but to insist that this applies to others and not themselves.
Not all Reform Jews have taken this course — Leo Baeck for example (Leo Baeck, 1958) wrote a powerful defence of Jewish as opposed to Christian ethics — but sadly this has not always been the Reform approach. This problem has been exacerbated by Reform’s resentment at Orthodoxy’s refusal to accept Reform’s claim to be an authentic interpretation of Judaism. For the official organs of Orthodoxy (though not necessarily for many of its synagogue members) Reform’s religious beliefs are not authentically Jewish, and their rabbis are not ‘real’ rabbis. This has often bred a defensiveness among Reform communities, in which its representatives can seem more interested in sniping back at the Orthodox than in defending Judaism as a whole.
For me, there is no one ‘brand’ of Judaism which deserves to be called ethical, because all Judaism is ethical Judaism. So what are Jewish ethics, and how do they relate to Jewish identity?
Jewish ethics
It is a common theme of traditional Jewish interpretation that the Torah consists of two kinds of commandment — the ethical and the ritual. The former consist of such obvious moral laws as ‘Thou shalt not kill’ and ‘Thou shalt not steal’, as well as many others, not all of which we might agree with today.
The ritual commandments on the other hand include Shabbat (the sabbath), kashrut (the dietary laws), observance of the festivals, and so on.
In traditional Judaism the ritual commandments apply only to Jews, and are to be observed as a sign of the covenant between God and the Jewish people. The ethical commandments — the moral law — are by contrast incumbent on all human beings.
This distinction is at the root of Judaism’s traditional lack of interest in proselytising. Unlike Christianity, for example, nowhere does Judaism suggest that a person has to believe in or practice Judaism to be saved — whatever being ‘saved’ means. ‘The righteous of all nations have a share in the world to come’ is a commonplace and familiar statement of Jewish attitudes on the subject.
Thus Jewish ethics are profoundly universal. It is important to understand however what ‘universal’ means in this context. It isn’t about universal rights. Indeed, Judaism says very little about rights, and a lot about obligations (although we may be able to infer the former from the latter). Thus it doesn’t say ‘you have the right to life’, rather ‘you shall not kill’. It doesn’t say ‘you have a right to property’, rather ‘you shall not steal’, and so on. It addresses itself to us, in other words, not as potential victims, but as potential wrongdoers.
Furthermore, ‘universal’ is not to be interpreted as some kind of ‘citizens of the world’ progressivism. Despite many attempts to suggest otherwise, nothing in Judaism tells us what our attitudes should be to immigration and asylum policy, or the desirability of the nation state as a political form, still less whether the UK should have left or remained in the European Union. Jewish ethics are a guide to personal behaviour, not a blueprint for public policy. What they certainly do tell us is that we should be good citizens. ‘Seek the welfare of the city where I sent you…’ (Jeremiah 29:7).
The essence of Jewish ethics is this: we are all, as human beings, the children of God, we all possess a God-given moral sense, and we all therefore have a God-given obligation to behave justly. This includes recognising each other equally as moral beings.
The problem of Reform Judaism
If all this is so clear, where did Reform Judaism ‘go wrong’?
We can see from the foregoing that Judaism is a combination of ethical universalism and ritual particularism. In traditional Judaism Jews have an obligation to observe the ritual law which is as compelling as their (and everyone else’s) obligation to observe the moral law. But a major part of Reform’s change to Judaism was to downgrade, and in some extreme cases completely reject, the ritual laws. Shabbat observance, kashrut, and all the other day-to-day observances were treated as at best quaint, and at worst oppressive, restrictions which stood in the way of Jews living as ‘normal’ citizens in European nations which were for the first time allowing them the rights of citizens.
But here’s the rub. If the (particularistic) ritual laws are downgraded, and only the (universal) ethical laws remain, then what is the point of the continued (particularistic) existence of the Jews as a separate people — or even a separate faith?
This was not merely a theoretical problem. Christian polemicists were not slow to point this out. The Jewish people may have had the honour — the most sympathetic of them conceded — of receiving the moral law on Mount Sinai, but this moral law has surely now become the common possession of all mankind. So what need now for the Jews to go on existing as a separate entity? Why not come into the fold of Christianity, and become like all other citizens?
The progressive Jewish response to this was fateful. If God’s covenant with the Jewish people no longer embraced the ritual law, then it must be based on the moral law. Hence the particular proposition of ‘ethical Judaism’ — that the Jews had a particular ‘mission’ (a Christian term if ever there was one) to spread the moral law among the nations. It is for this that the Jews were scattered among the nations. So galut — diaspora — becomes not a tragedy but an awakening, the butterfly of a universalist moral faith outgrowing the chrysalis of territorial peoplehood. Hence therefore Reform’s opposition to Zionism, which it saw as a backward-looking rejection of the new ethical mission in favour of an atavistic blood and soil nationalism. In confronting European society’s distinction between nationhood and faith group, progressive Judaism unhesitatingly plumped for the latter. And it read the biblical injunction to be ‘a kingdom of priests and a holy nation’ (Exodus 19:6) as though it had said ‘a kingdom of prophets’. After all, the biblical priest was never seen as a moral teacher, but a ritual intercessor.
However, there was a price to be paid for this choice. One of the problems about being a self-proclaimed prophet or missionary is that you had better behave yourself, because you’re going to be judged for any moral failings of your own much more harshly than any ordinary unassuming person would be. Thus progressive Judaism built into itself from the start a double standard by which Jews could be, and were, judged more harshly than others for the same real or supposed infraction.
It is accepted in modern society that to apply a double standard to an ethnic group is quite simply racist. And there’s a word for racism against Jews — antisemitism. Yet progressive Judaism blithely gave licence for just such a standard to be applied to Jews.
This is an outcome whose baleful consequences are only perhaps being seen in our own time. After all, older forms of antisemitism had no need to quote such standards. Jews were deemed evil for quite other reasons. Killing Christ, in league with the devil, members of the evil Semitic race, and so on. But in our own day, when antisemitism presents itself as universalist liberal values, Jews are suffering the consequences of this fateful ideology — as when self-proclaimed ‘ethical Jews’ address mobs of demonstrators baying for the blood of Israelis and the elimination of their nation state. And this is all justified by the notion that Jews have a special obligation to behave impeccably, and that a Jewish state can only be justified if it really is a light unto the nations (a standard of perfection that no state in history could ever meet).
So what alternatives were there? After all, most of us, modern western Jews, are not consistent observers of the ritual commandments. Most of us have made our compromises with a secular western lifestyle. So what, the progressive might demand, is the point of us remaining Jewish?
Another unacknowledged problem for the ideologues of Reform is the uncomfortable fact that if its congregations ever took seriously the notion of Judaism as a faith group, it would rapidly find itself denuded of followers. For many if not most Reform Jews — indeed many if not most Jews generally — membership of a synagogue is not an expression of Judaism, but Jewishness — that is, peoplehood or ethnic belonging, not religious faith. One may surmise that the majority of Reform synagogue members no more believe in Judaism’s universal ethical mission than most of their Orthodox counterparts believe in Torah min Hashamayim (the proposition that the Five Books of Moses are literally the revealed word of God given on Mount Sinai).
Reform and Zionism today
It might seem that the foregoing is out of date, at least as a summary of Reform’s attitude to Zionism. After all, Reform Judaism today has deep ties with Israel, where there are indeed a growing number of Reform synagogues. Indeed, MRJ’s own web site proclaims its Zionist credentials (MRJ position on Israel). So what changed, and does this shift invalidate my argument?
The change took place as a result both of public events — in particular the actual foundation of the state of Israel and its dramatic survival in 1948 and 1967 against the odds — and also a generational shift within Reform itself.
On the first point, there is no doubt that the anguish at the potential destruction of the state in 1948 and 1967, followed by the euphoria of victory (widely shared, as is too often forgotten today, by huge numbers of non-Jews, including on the political left), led to an important change in Reform’s attitude.
Regarding the generational shift, this was a period in which Reform Judaism enjoyed significant expansion. It drew in many young people who, while identifying strongly with their Jewishness, had become discontented with the Orthodox Judaism with which many of them had grown up, and sought a more vibrant and less judgemental alternative. Many of these young people identified strongly with Israel and had often been there, either on holiday or living and working on kibbutzim and elsewhere. They returned speaking Israeli/Sephardi Hebrew rather than their parents’ Yiddish-derived Ashkenazi variety, and with a taste for hummus and falafel rather than chopped herring or chicken soup.
Nevertheless, Reform’s new-found Zionist enthusiasm was never entirely without ambivalence. Often, the double standard which ethical Judaism appeared to impose on the Jewish people was simply transferred to the Jewish state. It was never enough to argue, in defence of Israeli actions, that ‘any other state would have done the same confronted with these circumstances’. This, after all, was the Jewish state, and so it had to be whiter than white, a ‘light unto the nations’, even while it fought desperately to defend its citizens from murderous and existence-threatening attacks. This is, of course, a standard which no state existing in the real world, let alone one facing the threats which Israel did, could possibly live up to.
The wheel of history, and of fashion, turned again. From the 1970s onward, the Western political left gradually ceased to focus on its traditional working class concerns, instead identifying with what were regarded as ‘liberation movements’ in what we used to call the ‘Third World’. Identifying with swashbuckling revolutionaries from Che Guevara to Ho Chi Min to Yasser Arafat was far more exciting and romantic than the minutiae of industrial conflict in the factories of Dagenham or Longbridge could ever be. This shift was given added force by mass migration, which brought significant and growing ‘Third World’ populations, including importantly Muslim ones, into the west, and made them an important electoral force.
This change had a powerful impact on Reform Judaism, and especially a rabbinic and lay leadership which identified strongly with the left. Today, it does not seem fanciful to see a blending of ideas, in which the white self-flagellation of ‘Critical Race Theory’ merges with the self-flagellating double standards of ‘ethical Judaism’ to form a toxic mix of a ‘First-world’ guilt given theological sanction. So ‘we’ — that is, white people generally, and Jews (now designated as a sort of uber-whites regardless of their actual origins, physiognomy or historic experiences) in particular — have a particular responsibility to act justly, while ‘they’ (people of colour, Palestinians) are allowed to carry their presumed victimhood as a get-out-of-jail card which absolves them of responsibility for their own actions.
Jews in a multicultural society
Reform Judaism was a legitimate and deeply thought-out response to the modernisation of European societies and the changing position of Jews within them. Could that response have been different?
It seems to me that a key mistake of those nineteenth century pioneers of Reform was to accept that remaining Jewish demands a reason, that it is something that we need to justify. A related mistake is to believe that the alternative, a rejection of our Jewishness, involves taking on a ‘universal’ identity — that when we cease to be Jews we become citizens of the world.
Modern progressivism (and I now mean the political progressivism of the wider western society) has had many baleful consequences for Jews, some of which I have pointed out above, and elsewhere. But it has also given us some positive insights.
One is that all human beings embody multiple identities. I am Jewish, but I am also British, and English and no doubt many other things as well. One of these identities does not diminish the others. So I am not half-British and half-Jewish, but all British and all Jewish. And I have no need to apologise for or justify either.
The other is the explosion of the myth of the universal man. There are no ‘citizens of the world’, only individuals each of whom is the possessor of a multiplicity of identities, backgrounds and cultures. If I purport to give up my Jewish identity in favour of Christmas trees and bacon and eggs, I have not thereby become a citizen of the world — merely a follower of a culture that is in every way as particularistic as the one I am rejecting. And if I wave Palestinian flags at a demo calling for the elimination of Israel ‘from the river to the sea’, I am not transcending my particularism, but merely latching onto an ideology that was born in the universities of a few rich, western countries, and which will one day no doubt look as odd as Savonarola or Shabbatei Tzevi do to us.
I am profoundly fortunate. I am the heir of two great civilisations — the one that gave the world Moses and Isaiah, Maimonides and Einstein, and the one which gave it Newton and Darwin, Shakespeare and Dickens. I am not, nor can any human being sensibly be, a ‘citizen of the world’.
The future of Reform Judaism
So where do we stand today?
Recently, it must be said, there have been some encouraging signs within Reform Judaism that the wheel of fashion is turning again. The shock of the Labour antisemitism scandal (hard for Jewish leaders to ignore when even the ‘woke’ BBC gave it airtime) appears to have led to a change of mood. It is of course too soon to judge how deep or lasting this change is. One is still far more likely to hear in Reform sermons about the plight of Somali refugees than Hamas rockets or the increasingly blatant antisemitism afflicting our own community. The effect is the appearance of a Reform leadership which is somewhat out of touch with both its own members and the increasingly ominous trends in wider society.
Jewish leadership has often seemed like the British defenders of Singapore in 1942, famously pointing their guns out to sea while the real threat came from the opposite direction. So German Jews in the inter-war era, recalling the pogroms of the previous generation, understood that the threat of antisemitism came from backward and uneducated Russian peasants, and could not possibly come to dominate their own cultured and advanced society. While we can all clearly see their deadly error, we are in danger of making an equally catastrophic mistake of our own. So we, with the horrors of the Holocaust burnt into our consciousness, are prone to see ‘real’ antisemitism coming from the far right, actual Nazis and their sympathisers, and not from the left, who are often still seen through rose-tinted memories of the Popular Front and Cable Street. The former are of course still toxic and deadly. But whereas they are marginal and despised, the antisemitic left has a dangerous respectability — not just because it captured a major political party, but because of its high-status sympathisers in the universities, media and other institutions.
To awaken Reform Judaism to this danger will take more than a rethinking of our politics. It requires a critical reappraisal of our own Reform Jewish heritage, and the ideas which gave it its existence. Whether the movement has the self-awareness and critical capacity for such a reappraisal is still an open question.
References
Leo Baeck, Judaism and Christianity, Jewish Publication Society, 1958
MRJ position on Israel, https://www.reformjudaism.org.uk/israel/
