Congregational Meeting

Rabbi Melanie Aron

June 1, 2003

I spent last Sunday at rabbinic ordination services at Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles. If you've never been there it's quite a facility. Daniel Pinkwater of NPR once described it as looking "like a replica of the city of Jerusalem in Roman times, only bigger." The prominent rabbi there for many years, Edgar Magnin, was described by of NPR, "as sounding the way God would sound, if He'd had the lessons."

It was only the second ordination service of the Los Angeles campus of the Hebrew Union College, but the 120th in the history of the College Institute. There were some amazing moments, as when one of the presenters spoke about his own ordination by Rabbi Julian Morgenstern, president of the college from 1922-1947, nd shaking the hand on that day with a rabbi who had been ordained in the first class by Rabbi Isaac Meyer Wise himself. Our new assistant rabbi, Yitz Miller was quite moved by the ceremony, and looked quite happy all afternoon, surrounded by family and friends, and members of his various congregations.

Rabbinic Ordination is a good model of a quintessentially Jewish process of continuity and change. Ordination has its roots in the Bible, it took its classic form in the rabbinic period and it was reinvented by the Reform movement.

Ordination is traced back to the laying of hands by Moses on Joshua his successor as described in the book of Numbers. The rabbis of the Rabbinic period who lived in Israel, saw their own semichah as being part of a direct line of transmission going back to that first ordination. When life finally became too difficult in Israel, around the fourth century, the line of ordination in Israel ceased.

In Babylon where conditions were better at that time, a form of ordination was introduced that was considered somewhat secondary. You were ordained a rav and not a rabbi and your authority was not considered as great as those ordained in the Holy Land. That continued to be the practice for centuries. The authority of the rav was not considered as great as that of the rabbis of the Mishnah and early Talmudic period and so these later rabbis viewed themselves as having less latitude to deviate from the decisions of previous generations. They did not believe that they could constitute a Sanhedrin and change Jewish law. Interestingly the Conservative movement does not call its ordination of rabbis semichah, accepting that tradition of taking lesser authority.

Rabbi Isaac Meyer Weiss did not embrace the humility of the generations. His rabbis were to be rabbis in the tradition of Hillel and Akivah, having the authority to break with previous practice and institute new traditions. Ordination at the Hebrew Union College includes the ancient formula yoreh yoreh yadin yadin giving the newly ordained rabbi authority both to instruct and to innovate regarding Jewish practice.

As a living organism our congregation is constantly changing and growing. Once again I come to you this morning at a time of transition. We have numerous and significant new staff coming on and are also in the midst of our cantor's maternity leave. We have made various changes in our worship services, including the early Friday night service, planned innovations for Tot Shabbat and for a monthly spirituality/healing service for next year, and changes for B'nai Mitzvah families whose service will be conducted by Rabbi Miller instead of myself. This is very different for me and also for the families involved and it is natural for everyone to feel some anxiety about the changes.

I feel we are also on the cusp of some other changes as our congregation matures.

Young people who have grown up in the congregation and gone off to college, are beginning to return to our community in some number. How will we re-involve them in our congregation?

An increasing percentage of our members do not have children in our religious school. How will we continue to engage these adults in our congregation, understanding their new and different needs for community and opportunities to learn and serve?

Finally, we remain committed to personalization and individualization. The synagogue should not be someplace where you are treated as a number. The board has wisely recognized that alone I could not continue to offer the kind of personal attention to each member that I was able to offer in our earlier years. It is my fervent hope that the additional of an assistant rabbi, even if only half time, and the professionalization of the educator's position, will enable every member of the congregation to connect with some member of our professional staff in a way that is personal and meaningful.

Ordination itself and Jewish tradition in general provides us with a great model of reaching deeply into the past, building on traditions, but also not being afraid to reinvent that which is required in our own time and place.