What can Jewish Orthodoxy teach us?

UU World: The Magazine of the Unitarian Universalist Association, May/Jun 2004 by Lerner, Elizabeth A

I AM A UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST IN THE same way I am an American-born to it, out of a colorful ancestral stew. My ancestors arrived here from Poland, Russia, and Italy within the same twenty-year span. Roman Catholic on one side of the family, Jewish on the other, I am a perfect candidate for Unitarian Universalism-which is exactly why my parents chose this faith and raised me and my sister in it. Unitarian Universalism's religious pluralism, as so many of us have found, is a good match for American cultural pluralism.

For a long time, becoming an American meant that people shed their old family traditions and cultures and put on the glad rags of a new American self. And for a long time, becoming a Unitarian Universalist meant rejecting the religious traditions of one's parents and grandparents. Lately, though, many of vis have been trying to renew connections to our roots and honor them in our lives. But just as an interest in genealogy doesn't mean someone is moving back to their ancestors' homeland, Unitarian Universalists interested in older religious traditions aren't necessarily backsliding. We simply want to know where we came from, and to integrate parts of that heritage into where we are now.

My father's religious upbringing was very different from mine: He prayed three times a day, knew Hebrew very well, and grew up among Yiddish-speaking aunts and uncles. As an Orthodox Jew, he wore a tallis, the fringed prayer shawl, and used tefillin, small leather boxes containing text from the Torah worn on the forehead by men in prayer. Through him I am descended from a long line of rebbcs, dynastic rabbis, the last of whom was crucified by White Russians in 1922 during the Russian civil war.

Raised UU, I celebrated Jewish holidays with my relatives and learned songs and stories, but that was it. As an adult, I wanted to know more. In divinity school, I took classes in Jewish history and theology and began studying the Talmud, the fifth-century compilation of rabbinic reflection and opinion considered almost as authoritative as the Hebrew Bible itself. I even learned ancient Hebrew. So it is ironic, but not surprising, that at one point my parents worried that I was becoming "too Jewish."

But I have found that this engagement with Judaism enriches me as a UU-despite Orthodox Judaism's condemnation of partial Jews like me. To my joy I have found other UUs with similar backgrounds. Some, like the Rev. Lynn Ungar, produce works of reflection and meditation that are among the most beautiful Jewish expressions I know. (Parts of Ungar's 1997 meditation manual, Blessing the Bread, are available in What We Share: Collected Meditations, Volume Two, Skinner House Books, 2002; $15.) And to my sorrow I have learned from others' stories how hard the journey from judaism to Unitarian Universalism can be-complete with estrangement from family and friends and profound guilt about "betraying the tribe." Lately, three books have deepened my understanding of my Jewish heritage and offer insights for Unitarian Universalists of many heritages.

MIGHT WH FIND WAYS TO LET SOME OF Orthodox Judaism's wonder, depth, and commitment inform Unitarian Universalism? Although I want to avoid the prejudices and injustices of Orthodoxy, its thousands of years of scholarship and passionate debate make me hunger for a similar richness in our own young religion.

Judaism, like Unitarian Universalism, has a reputation for intellectualism, but some of its most valuable gifts to me have been simple opportunities for action. For instance, there is the Jewish New Year phone call tradition. At Rosh Hashanah, Jews look back on the year and atone for their wrong-doing. And so every fall, right around the Jewish New Year-and the start of the UU "church year"-I call up or visit the people closest to me and apologize for anything I've done in the past year that wronged them. I ask for their forgiveness and if I can do anything to make it up to them. Sometimes these calls are a joy; sometimes they're tough-especially the ones I go into blithely, thinking all is well, only to find out all's not well at all.

Judaism treats atonement as a High Holy Day obligation, not just as an important, healthy practice; atonement is a sacred act that regards relationships as essential to the balance of the world and to our capacity to be moral, loving, creative beings. Nothing matters more. And so those phone calls are holy acts.

Halakhah, the Hebrew word for "the way," refers to Jewish law, encompassing both religious and civil law. There are rules for everything from how to bless to how to divorce to how to conduct a legal transaction to how to observe each holiday. Study and observance of halakhah is a profound, illuminating, frustrating, and complicated way of living and thinking-those latter qualities make it easy to dismiss. These days, who has the time and attention to worry about the lawful way to clean lentils before cooking? And yet, who doesn't wish for the time and attention to do things carefully and well? Who doesn't enjoy the sense that nothing is more important right now, no matter how small, than doing a thing as it should be done? This is the essence of halakhah-knowledge and mindfulness.