Tzeidah la-derekh: textual content for our Jewish journeys

Judaism, Summer-Fall, 2005 by Eliot Malomet

Lisa comes to my office with a question. Every Friday night before lighting her Shabbat candles, she calls her non-observant parents to wish them a "Good Shabbes." Sometimes she is not able to reach them before Shabbat. Can she call them after she lights the candles? "They're getting older." She says. "I don't want them to spend a whole day worrying. Rabbi, what should I do?"

This is a halakhic question that only a Conservative rabbi would get. I assume that if Lisa were Orthodox, she would know that halakha forbids her to use the telephone on Shabbat and prioritizes Shabbat observance above honoring parents. If Lisa were Reform, using the phone on Shabbat wouldn't be an issue. But Lisa is a Conservative Jew whose life is informed by traditional Jewish practice and at the present moment, she finds herself conflicted between her sense of obligation to her parents and the pattern of her religious observance.

When we discuss her problem, I am reminded of what my late teacher, Rabbi Israel Silverman, used to say when confronted with a difficult halakhic question. "The easiest answer to give," he said, "is a 'No.' With a 'No' you don't have to think too much. It's much harder to find a way to say 'Yes.'" Lisa and I begin a conversation about the journey that has led her to this point, the challenges that she has encountered and the sacrifices she has made. We talk about what Shabbat means to her and the value she places on her own pattern of observance. Would she feel that she was doing something wrong if she called her parents on Shabbat? Would it be worse if she didn't call them and caused them to worry? Would her parents understand? Is it a sin if she calls? What does God want us to do?

I review Rashi's commentary on Leviticus 19:3 with her, which states that if your parents tell you to violate Shabbat, you may not listen to them, because they too are obligated to keep Shabbat. "But Rashi didn't know your parents," I argue playfully. "He also didn't have a telephone!" I explain to her that in order to examine her dilemma more critically, we need to sit down and study more Torah together. I extend the invitation and happily, she accepts.

This is the kind of halakha that I do. Admittedly, this is not the halakha of the Shulhan Arukh or even of Rabbi Isaac Klein's Guide to Jewish Religious Practice, but it is a halakha that meets Lisa exactly where she is in her life. Lisa's moral sensibility regarding the pain that she is causing her parents is in sharp conflict with her sense of religious obligation. She comes to her Conservative rabbi looking for guidance, not binding legislation, wisdom not pretentious piety, counsel not coercion. She is looking for a meaningful personal connection to her Judaism, one that reflects her own moral sensitivity and one that is part of her own sacred cartography. And most of all, she is looking for more Torah in her life.

People come to see their rabbis not in quest of guidance to resolve their religious and moral conflicts, but because they seek texts that will help shape the way they relate to the world around them. When the tsunami hit southeast Asia last year, one of my members asked, "How does a benevolent God allow so many innocent people to perish by a wave?"

"It's a question with ample precedent in the tradition." I answered. "Take Abraham's question, 'Will the judge of the earth not act justly?' (Gen. 18:25). Does your question not echo his?"

When Terry Schiavo was being taken off her feeding tube, many people asked me for Judaism's view on end of life issues. They were deeply disturbed by the spectacle and wanted to clarify their own views within a Jewish context. "Let's go back to the text," I said. "What do the words, 'Choose life,' (Deuteronomy 31:19) mean anyway? How do you 'choose life' when your brain has atrophied and you have no cognition?"

The Jews who populate our synagogues are making contact with Judaism at various personal, even idiosyncratic points of their lives. They describe themselves as being on their own personal journeys, not on ladders of observance. The goal of our movement ought to be to create communities of caring Jews and guide them in mapping their sacred explorations, teaching them Torah and giving them the tzeidah la-derekh-sustenance for their journeys, the textual content to live as meaningful, authentic, and rich a Jewish life as they themselves choose.

As our Conservative movement enters the twenty-first century it is laden with inconsistencies and paradoxes. It is a movement that claims to follow halakha but in general, its members relate to halakha as optional and not binding. It has rigorous standards in matters pertaining to personal status, but flexible guidelines on almost everything else. Our synagogues maintain standards of kashrut, but most of our members regularly eat all kinds of food in their homes and in restaurants. When pressed, most of us would admit that it is forbidden to drive on Shabbat, but we would never discourage any of our members from doing so, nor criticize any of our rabbis or cantors who elect to live too far from their synagogues to walk. We oppose intermarriage, but bend over backwards to make sure that intermarried families are welcome in our synagogues. Our majority and minority opinions in the Law Committee make us the subject of Orthodox ridicule and Reform perplexity, but to us, they are a source of pride. They show that we are not one monolithic movement, but a canopy covering many different types of Jews. Our strength lies in the fact that we do not have a single creed, a single dogma, a single way of being a Jew. What we lack in consistency we gain in diversity. Our strength is that we are klal yisrael.