Since the last decades of the nineteenth century, social action has been a hallmark of Reform Judaism. Inspired by our prophetic tradition, Reform ideology – and in particular American Reform ideology - placed a premium on the mandate of ethical behavior as a way to identify itself not only as distinct from Orthodoxy but from Unitarian Christianity. To paraphrase Michael Meyer, a renowned scholar of the history of Reform Judaism, the practical application of social justice and the principles of morality greatly overshadowed and even replaced ritual and law as the basis of Reform religious expression. This impulse for elevating social action over and above Jewish law may seem like an outgrowth of Reform Judaism’s emphasis on rationalism as well as its theological concept of the messianic age and our role in bringing it about. Taking care of the world and each other is certainly a reasoned approach to enabling redemption. Yet, mysticism has its own brand of social action grounded in the 16th century Lurianic Kabbalistic theology of tikkun olam, a phrase which has become the most popular Jewish catch phrase for social action. These mystics, recently exiled from Spain, understood the need for human action in the form of mitzvot as a vehicle of repair for the world as well as for God – both of which in Kabbalistic thought are viewed as shattered, as broken.
I find it compelling that the Lurianic Kabbalists of 16th century Safed, despite their traumatic experiences, did not abandon God. Viewing God as in desperate need of human intervention, for sure, though they created an understanding of God that not only correlated with their experiences but that could also bring cohesion to the community. According to Robert Wright, author of Three Scientists and their God and a recent guest on NPR’s Speaking of Faith series, the intention of religious doctrine throughout history has been to keep chaos at bay. Lurianic Kabbalism adapted an existing religious system keeping God at the center while mobilizing the community to action. It wasn’t an absence of God that failed them, it was human failure. Accordingly, God needs mitzvot. In this system, social action, Tikkun olam, translated to conformity and abidance to Jewish law - that was the manner in which humankind could redeem both God and the world for this school of mystics.
While no longer, by choice of course, defined by halacha -- by the bounds of Jewish law, we too believe that our actions matter, and that it is our mandate l’taken olam, to fix the world. But, with the loss of a legal definition of social action (or mitzvot), must we lose the sense of God as a unifying and motivating factor in our mitzvot? I’d bet most of us engage in social action not because of a Divine impulse per se, but because of what we would define as our heightened sense of social consciousness, a value no doubt inherited in part from the early giants of the Reform movement such as Isaac Mayer Wise, David Einhorn, and Kaufman Kohler.
God, however, was central to the Reformers’ vision of the mandate of social action, and I’d argue that despite our individual beliefs (or doubts) regarding the existence of a personal God, a Divine impulse from outside of ourselves must be central to our own motivation for social justice. This is not an easily stated assessment mind you. I struggle with the existence and presence of God in our world as much as any other modern Jew living in such a predominately secular culture. As a whole, Jews are not particularly comfortable discussing God. In my years at Hebrew Union College, the seminary for the training of our Reform leaders, I rarely experienced a discussion about God (and this was typical). The richest discussions that I did have about God were for the most part an outgrowth of my chaplaincy training which was under the auspices of an interfaith, not a specifically Jewish, internship program. While anecdotal at best, my experiences working as a chaplain intern in a hospital setting underscored this observation. It was my Christian patients who sought out dialogue about and with God. My Jewish patients were far more content with playing Jewish geography. It seemed they were far more interested in a relationship with me, a kind visitor, than with God.
Our discomfort in discussing God which I believe stems in large part from our doubts about God’s presence need not translate into an abandonment of the ideology of God as a motivating factor behind social action. There need not be such a direct correlation between ideology and faith, in my mind. Here there is much to learn from our early Reform theologians.
Emil Hirsch, in his poetic translation of his grandfather David Einhorn’s Yom Kippur Avodah for the innovative 19th century siddur, Olath Tamid, writes:
“The yearning after Thee and the thought of Thy salvation, the assurance that Thou, O God, wilt refresh those that cry unto Thee in the drought. Yea, this is our spiritual patrimony, Thy love which worketh wonders, hath marvelously preserved for us amidst the destructive storms and from the raging billows of millennia. The survey of the ages which stretch from the hoary past of our weak beginnings to the young days of our present fuller strength may well fill us with wonder at the triumphant preservation of the fundamental truth, the underlying thought, in the ceaseless whirl of changing forms, customs and circumstances; but this fact should also be an incentive unto us to contribute in due measure….” (p. 181)
It isn’t enough to be awed by God and the wondrous workings of the world, rather this sense of something larger and more profound than ourselves should propel us towards organized action. Recall Robert Wright’s notion of religion as a balm against chaos. A God concept at the very least can serve to unify us in mission. Even Baruch Spinoza, the 17th century philosopher who was excommunicated by the Dutch Jewish community for his then heretical ideas regarding the nature of God understood the power of God as a motivating force for justice in the world, “The very essence of religion is belief in a Supreme Being who delights in justice and mercy…. and whose worship consists in the practice of justice and charity toward our neighbors,” he wrote.
God mandated action smacks of fundamentalism, yet, without God as an outside motivating factor for our deeds of social action, we run the risk of losing an important barometer of moral sense. Our early American Reformers understood this need for something profound, beyond ourselves, to encourage us, to help us push ourselves to be the best selves we can by acting justly in the world.
20th century philosopher and activist, Abraham Joshua Heschel, taught that “a mitzvah is where God and man meet.” An anthropomorphic image, of course, but one that can offer us a metaphor for our engagement in social action today. I don’t believe that God acts directly upon the world, but perhaps as Heschel suggests, it is through our acts of love and kindness, through the pursuit of social justice, that we can rise out of our mundane world to a level of divinity.
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