Extreme Makeover, Mitzvah Edition

Rabbi Joel Fleekop

Friday, August 20, 2010

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the television airwaves were beset by an entire wave of makeover shows. There was TLC’s Ten Year’s Younger, MTV’s auto transformation show, Pimp My Ride, and by far the most disturbing—Fox’s “The Swan” on which contestants underwent dramatic plastic surgery prior to competing in a beauty contest.

One of the most successful of these programs was ABC’s Extreme Makeover, surpassed in popularity only by its home repair cousin – Extreme Makeover, Home Edition – which still runs today.

Though it never quite earned a primetime network slot, around this same time another transformation came to a conclusion – one we might call Extreme Makeover, Mitzvah Edition.

The subject of this mitzvah makeover was the role of Jewish ritual garb – specifically tallit and kippot, in Reform Judaism.

If we are to imagine this transformation in the framework of a makeover show, the footage would begin in 1885. In that year, the newly formed Central Conference of American Rabbis – the organization that represents Reform Rabbis, declared as part of its Pittsburgh Platform,

“Today we accept as binding only the moral laws, and maintain only such ceremonies as elevate and sanctify our lives, but reject all such as are not adapted to the views and habits of modern civilization . . . We hold that all such Moasic and rabbinical laws as regulate diet, priestly purity and dress originated in ages and under influence of ideas altogether foreign to our present mental and spiritual state . . . Their observance in our days is apt rather to obstruct than to further modern spiritual elevation.”

From this statement, which set certain Jewish traditions, including the wearing of a yarmulke and tallit, off limits to Reform Jews, the pre-transformation montage might go to a beautifully ornate synagogue from the early 20th century – imagine Temple Emanu-El in New York or Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles where a dapperly dressed congregation sits – dressed in their finest suits and dresses – but not a single head covered by a kippah or shoulders’ bearing a tallit. And finally, the opening segment might conclude, as these shows are want to do, with a story from a friend who is urging the makeover.

Perhaps they would interview Sandy Akselrad, son of Rabbi Sydney Akselrad. Sandy could tell the story of how upon ordination he first served a synagogue in Columbus Ohio. There he was, preparing himself to lead a congregation in prayer for the first time as a rabbi, when the senior rabbi stopped him on the way to the bimah and asked to remove his kippot – lest the congregation of Classically Reform Jews worry about the religious sensibilities of their new rabbi.

Extreme Makeover, Mitzvah Edition, would begin with these images, stories, and statements from Reform synagogues past. The closing segment – the post makeover – could include photos from our congregation tonight – many of us are wearing kippot, or of tomorrow morning, when, in front of the community, Jordan’s parents will present him with a tallit. It might have highlights of the Tallit making workshop that took place at the Union for Reform Judaism’s Camp Newman this summer. And to parallel the opening statement from the Pittsburgh Platform, the producers would excerpt from the CCAR’s 1999 Pittsburgh Principles.

Meeting, intentionally, in the same city as the movements’ earliest rabbis, this gathering of soon to be 21st century Rabbi Rabbis asserted,

We are committed to the ongoing study of the whole array of mitzvoth and to the fulfillment of those that address us as individuals and as a community. Some of these mitzvoth, sacred obligations, have long been observed by Reform Jews; others, both ancient and modern, demand renewed attention as the result of the unique context of our own times.

Reading between the lines – made possible by studying earlier drafts and the comments of those who crafted the statement-- it is evident that the phrase, “sacred obligations that demand renewed attention” means kashrut and most germane to our topic, Jewish ritual garb.

The beginning and end of this episode of Extreme Makeover, Mitzvah Edition are clear, but what about the middle of the program? How did our movement get from declaring prayer shawls and head coverings impediments to the spiritual growth of modern Jews to an urging by of our movement’s leaders to study and consider embracing the traditions of tallit and kippah?

Part of the answer is the Jewish community --- and the Reform Jewish community -- changed. In 1885, the American Jewish Community was overwhelmingly a German Jewish community – with its leadership influenced by the religious and social reforms occurring in Central Europe. The great immigration wave of Eastern European Jewry was just beginning to make its way to American shores – and when it arrived it brought millions of Jews with a more traditional religious sensibility.

At first, these Jews were almost entirely absent from Reform Congregations. Concentrated in America’s great urban centers, they worshipped predominately in Orthodox Congregations and following World War II, when they joined their fellow Americans in moving to the suburbs they joined Conservative synagogues. But over time and with the arrival of a new generation they made their ways to Reform synagogues. According to the National Jewish Population Study of 2000-2001, some 35 percent of members of Reform synagogues were raised in the Conservative movement. Whether drawn to Reform Judaism by style of service, approach to education, or the way in which interfaith families were welcomed, these new Reform Jews were used to wearing kippot and tallit – and expected to do the same in their synagogues.

Another part of the answer is that America changed. The assimilationist pressures of America – epitomized by the conformist culture of the 1950s began, in the 1960s and 70s, to give way to individualism and multiculturalism. As sociologist Samuel Heilman writes,

after the public silence of the fifties, when being Jewish seemed submerged in the efforts to establish an American identity . . . many Jews of the 1960s and 1970s seemed to revel in being noisy about Jewishness. . . Actively Jewish Jews, proud blacks, and other ethnics would remind Americans that cultural and ethnic diversity was American and that heritage needed to be celebrated and expressed.

Part of that celebration meant embracing traditional garb – which for Jews meant tallit and kippot.

And finally, the third and most surprising factor in this Extreme Makeover, Mitzvah Edition, is that the ritual objects had a makeover themselves. Seemingly always black, yarmulkes began to appear in a variety of colors and styles. Hand knit headpieces began arriving in America from Israel. Even the name changed – with the Yiddish word yarmulke gradually ceding ground to the new, modern Hebrew word, kippah.

Similar changes were happening to ritual prayer shawls. Rabbi Richard Levy writes,

As the 1960s progressed, the thin blue and white silk bar mitzvah tallis and the austere, even forbidding, black and white tallis began to be joined by tallitot, crated in a variety of colors. In a minyan in which my wife and I were much involved in the early 1970s, one young man wore a batik tallit; another wore one made of denim.”

In an age of increasing individualism, wearing a kippah or tallit became an opportunity to express oneself. The Jewish Catalogue, published in 1973, even included instructions for creating one’s own homemade tallit.

The prevalence of homemade or individualized kippot and tallitot helped make the traditional act of covering one’s head or donning tzitzit attractive. For this new generation of Jews, wearing a tallit or kippah wasn’t a question of putting on things – often perceived as old and ugly -- that your parents or grandparents had abandoned, but rather, embracing something beautiful and new – something you chose as an expression of your Jewishness and your individuality.

Once banned by many Reform synagogue by-laws, the wearing of kippot and tallitot is now normative in Reform synagogues. This change, this extreme makeover, was affected by a number of factors – some demographic, some societal, and some matters of style. Though we have very little influence over demography or greater societal change, we do have control over how a mitzvah, how a Jewish tradition is presented.

Hidur Mitzvah – the tradition of performing a mitzvah as beautifully as possible – has long been a part of Judaism. For Reform Jews in America -- Hidur mitzvah – having beautiful objects available, made the traditions of tallit and kipot accessible and attractive. As we go forward, let us continue to find ways – with art, with words, and with meaning, to adorn other mitzvoth with beauty – so that they too can be embraced and renewed.