People often share things with friends that they would be embarrassed to tell their rabbi. A family friend made a disclosure like that over the summer when we were in Israel. When he and I spoke, on a Shabbat afternoon in July, this man, a family friend for decades, had already been in Israel for several days as he and his wife took a series of international flights to see family and enjoy a much needed and much deserved vacation. And then he shared with me that he had not been to his shul in two years.
This man and his wife, along with their closest friends, were the builders of their shul 20 years ago. But, like all of us, they stopped attending during Covid, and two years later, despite feeling comfortable with inter-continental air travel and socializing and eating indoors with my family, he had not prioritized returning to shul. His shul is a thriving community in one of the major Modern Orthodox hubs in the New York metropolitan area and, knowing how devoted he had been to his shul community I must have looked at him with a puzzled expression on my face.
“I’m a ‘social-Orthodox’ Jew,” he said.
In 2014 Commentary Magazine published an article that launched a thousand sermons called “The Rise of Social Orthodoxy: A Personal Account.” The author of that article described himself as a life-long observant Jew, not out of any deeply held religious commitment, but out of a desire to be connected to other Jews and a sense that his observance of mitzvot was part of a lifestyle that was valuable to him. He compared being an Orthodox Jew to being a member of a gang. Quoting West Side Story he wrote, “you’re never alone/ you’re never disconnected” when you’re a Jet, or a member of an Orthodox shul.
Already, hundreds of years ago, the anonymous author of the Sefer HaHinukh explained that אחרי הפעולות נמשכים הלבבות, our hearts are drawn by our actions. This orientation suggests that by doing mitzvot with our bodies we can refine our characters as they are shaped by the actions that we perform and reinforce over months and years. But for the Sefer HaHinukh, the goal was always for our characters to be improved and for our faith to be reinforced. No Jewish thinker, until that 2014 article, has ever endorsed a purely behaviorist theory of Judaism.
The pitfalls of Jewish commitments that are rooted in nothing more than being part of a team have become apparent in recent months. Just as our friend explained to us in Jerusalem. His Judaism was conditioned by social expectations. He came to shul each Shabbat and yom tov because that was what was expected of a member of the Jew Club. Twenty years ago, he built his shul because he is big-hearted and generous and his gang needed a place to daven. And once those expectations were removed by Covid lockdowns, a lot of Jews discovered that sleeping late, having a second cup of coffee, and reading the newspaper was an extremely enjoyable way to spend Shabbat morning. If social conventions and habits are the sole basis for our Jewish commitments, they will not endure hardship. They will not even endure the temptations of a cup of coffee and a newspaper.
All Judaism is, in some way, social-Judaism. There are certain tefilot that can only be recited in the presence of a minyan. There are mitzvot that require the participation of other people. There are minhagim, ancestral customs, which we treasure within our families and pass down from one generation to the next. The contours of our mitzvah observance are shaped by “community standards” for kashrut and how we dress. How is that different from tribal behaviorism?
Jewish life is rooted in community, not conformity. We join others in collective ritual, transmit customs and traditions to the next generation, and share meals and pay shivah visits – not because we are showing loyalty to a team, but because we are building a community around a common mission. Judaism thrives in community, but communities thrive when individuals have the commitment and conviction to show up, to encourage others to show up, and sometimes, to sacrifice some comfort in order to be in community with other people.
Avraham and Sarah are the heroes of Rosh Hashanah. Avraham’s discovery of God is the antecedent for our crowning of God as king on Rosh Hashanah. Akeidat Yitzhak, the binding of Isaac, is a recurring theme in our holiday liturgy as a source of merit. And their model of faith and perseverance, religious fervor, and religious humanism, can be a lodestar to us as we build a new foundation for our Jewish lives after the rupture of the Covid years.
There are midrashim which claim that Avraham was a child of 3 years when he discovered God and there are midrashim that claim that Avraham was 40 years old when he discovered God. Rambam, Maimonides, reconciles those two traditions and claims that Avraham was three years old when he began to seek God but it took until he was forty before Avraham made his great breakthrough and discovered there was One God, the Creator of heaven and earth. This hybrid position, which I believe is unique to Rambam, has the advantage of incorporating and reconciling two conflicting early traditions about Avraham. But this hybrid position offers us something more. Avraham, according to this model, is a hero of perseverance and of patience. For thirty seven years he persisted in a failed effort to understand the universe and his place in the universe. For thirty seven years he weighed and evaluated various theories and postulates.
If Avraham had given up after ten or twenty or thirty years of fruitless investigation and contemplation, none of us would be here. Because he persisted in his search for God to an unreasonable degree, the world was transformed. Sarah’s perseverance was demonstrated later, but continued for even more years. She uniquely understood that the religious mission of her household depended on successfully transmitting that mission to a next generation and she waited decades before she saw that occur.
Avraham was an iconoclast. He literally destroyed idols according to the midrashic tradition. Avraham is described in the Torah as being the Ivri, which we take to mean, “the Hebrew,” but it can also mean someone who came from the far side of the river, a reference to Avraham’s homeland in Ur Kasdim. Homiletically, Avraham is described in the Talmud as being someone who stood me’ever, across a divide, from the rest of humanity. He stood apart because his values were different and his beliefs were different. But standing at a distance gave him a perspective that was clear, not only about matters of faith, but also about issues that concerned the people around whom he lived. The distinctiveness of Avraham and Sarah’s home, and the religious fervor that they cultivated, was always intended to be of service to others and was intended to recruit others to an expansive vision.
There are feelings of disappointment in many shuls where attendance did not bounce back instantly after the worst months of Covid. This dynamic has been observed at many congregations across North America and in Israel and it has been grist for the sermonic mill on the part of many rabbis over the past year. But no shul today is as lonely as Avraham and Sarah when they were the only two Jews on earth. They were not discouraged by being a minority of two. Instead, they were inspired to find recruits and fellow-travelers.
The Torah introduces their journey to Eretz Yisrael with the description that they brought with them: וְהַנֶּ֖פֶשׁ אֲשֶׁר־עָשׂ֣וּ בְחָרָ֑ן “the souls they had made in Haran” which the rabbis understood to mean the men and women who had been attracted by the religious vision of Avraham and Sarah and joined their community.
The great achievement of our patriarchs and matriarchs is that their total commitment to God was aligned with a total commitment to other human beings. Avraham is praised by God in this way:
כִּ֣י יְדַעְתִּ֗יו לְמַעַן֩ אֲשֶׁ֨ר יְצַוֶּ֜ה אֶת־בָּנָ֤יו וְאֶת־בֵּיתוֹ֙ אַחֲרָ֔יו וְשָֽׁמְרוּ֙ דֶּ֣רֶךְ ה’ לַעֲשׂ֥וֹת צְדָקָ֖ה וּמִשְׁפָּ֑ט וגו׳
“For I have singled him out, that he may instruct his children and his posterity to keep the way of the LORD by doing what is just and right.”
God notices Avraham’s religious commitment to a path of justice and righteous concern for other human beings. And God notices that Avraham and Sarah’s household is one that believes in education and the capacity to pass a worldview and a set of values as well as behaviors to the next generation. This is amplified by all of the patriarchs and matriarchs in their, sometimes troubled, interactions with their non-Jewish neighbors. Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Yehuda Berlin, in his Introduction to the Book of Genesis explains that the patriarchs and matriarchs were known as being particularly upright in their ethical conduct even when dealing with their ethically compromised neighbors. Ethical excellence requires other human beings with whom one can be ethical.
And so, perhaps, there is something to be said for “social Orthodoxy” and social-Judaism more broadly.. Faith and commitment and a relationship with God cannot be replaced with behaviorism and loyalty to a club. But concentric circles of care and commitment and responsibility and ethical sensitivity must radiate outward from our family to our communities and ultimately to all human beings. There is a collective action problem that must be overcome to revitalize Jewish life. More people in shul means stronger singing and more inspired davening and also more people for whom and with whom I can perform mitzvot. Invite your friends to come back to shul with you. And if you care about being in shul and are sad that your friends are no longer here with you, consider making friends with those who are here.
Given that all Judaism is social, maybe there is a new paradigm. Not “social Orthodoxy” but “socializing Orthodoxy.” If you want to live in a vibrant Jewish community, you may need to build that vibrant Jewish community. In the years that I’ve lived here, I have seen so much inspired vision on the part of so many of you. You have ideas. You care. You suggest projects and you truly have a direction in mind for the future of the shul. Avraham and Sarah teach us that a life in community with others is a life that also requires grit and determination and hard work in addition to vision.
I do not know what the leadership of the shul will look like next Rosh Hashanah, but I know that you all have ideas and passion and love for this community. Your challenge will be to match that vision with the determination, and sometimes tedious work, day in and day out, of standing up for the things you believe in and gathering followers to build the community you wish to enjoy. Sometimes you will need to be the one who stands, “m’ever” and recruits others to join you. This is, essentially, the same cause to which Avraham and Sara dedicated their lives. It remains a worthy cause. With vision, determination, perseverance, it can yet inspire countless others for many years to come.
Shanah Tovah.
Rabbi David Wolkenfeld 