8
THE CANADIAN JEWISH REVIEW
JANUARY 7, 19*6
RABBI SAYS THAT RABBIS ARE ON THE WAY OUT
'�}V
A leading American rabbi. Dr. Arthur Ilcrt/.berg, of Temple Kmanu-F.I, of Fnglewood, New Jersey, bclicu'S th;it the American Jrabbi, as we know him today, is on the way out. that his religious function is "becoming ever more '�vestigial." He says that like the priests in ancient Israel, who were succeeded by the rabbinate, today's rabbis \\ill be replaced as were the earlier priesthood.
The \\ell known author, a member or the faculty at Columbia University, believes that the rabbi, like his Christian brethren, is steadily losing influence and becoming less and less of a .factor in the life of the Ameiicau community.
. Rabbi licit/berg's views are expressed in the January issue.of "Midstream." a Jewish journal of Opinion which. \\ith its January issue, h.is become a monthly. I lerc-toto're, it was published quarterly by an editorial board of the Her/1 .Foundation under the chairmanship ot Dr. Fmanuel Neumann.
In answer,to his own question, "C.m ilfc rabbinate "survive in its present' form and with its present functions?" Rabbi 1 lert/berg says:
"1 think-not! The rabbinate that Jews have knoun fortwo millennia end eel in America within the last decade. This hardly noticed event is as historic a turning as the beginnings of the rabbinate in ancient Israel, when the priest of the Temple kM the leadership of Judaism to the -'nascent class of Pharisaic teachers.
"The rabbinate arose then as a � new leadership, which the Jews were willing to accept, because the rabbis were the arbiters of n system ot religions values which commanded their assent: While the early Pharisees were rising to dominance, during the last years of the Second Temple, the priesthood remained, and it continued to perform ritual functions but these activities became ever more vestigial."
Rabbi Ilertzberg described the rabbi of today as higher salaried and less powerful than his predecessor of a generation ago. lie is "no longer the only learned man iu his congregation" and is less scholarly than his predecessor. lie is less a religious leader and more an administrator and a pastoral psychiatrist. As the institutional .executive" of a large organization, �the rabbi of today, says Rabbi I lert/berg, is'less a personality and more a ^bureaucrat. He is less a crusader-and is much more "safe." Because "Jews will not come to synagogues in. great numbers to pray." the rabbi lias become a book rex icwcr, an entertainer, a commentator on cultural and jwlitical life.
"All of these," said. Rabbi Hcrtz-bcrg, "arc now much' of the business of Jeuish life, not l>ccausc the rabbis really care '.about any of them, and not. as sonic of their critics have been maintaining, because the American rabbis have become vulgar. The rabbinate today is. essentially, neither judge nor leader. It is the agent of a remaining powerful and pervasive emotion alxmt Jewish togetherness. The. purely religious function of the rabbi has been becoming ever more vestigial for decades.
"Indeed, it is as far now from the center of Jewish ina^s consciousness as were the ritual functions of'the priesthood of old. llic rabbi's more contemporary role as lender of the Jews in a hostile world, or as moral guide to their political action, is' constantly diminishing. He has become peripheral to the m.ijor social struggles of this age-
"I he rabbinate thrived for
many centuries by offering Jews a
vision of themselves as the ser-
'�"vanls of God. It then carried on,
. for a relati\cly short time, by hold-
- ing up the drc.im of tltc Jew as
servants of their own quest for
freedom and, therefore, as trail-
. -blazers for nil the oppressed. 'I he
' Jewish con;mnnit\ within which
the rabbis .uc working today sees
itself, for the mo^t pait. as the
sonant of its own simhal. 1 here
arc no great. indi\ idu.il rabbinic
' careers, because there are no
shared Jewish purposes on the
American <c*;ne grand enough to
v evoke then).
"And I sec no sign of such purposes on the hori/on."
Tbe present crisis in the hearts
and souls of American rabbis, Rabbi Ilert/.berg contends, is caused by the bigness and the success of the synagogue, the de-pcrsonali/.a-tion of the individual rabbi, and the strengthening of the central rabbinical bodies of the various Jewish religious denominations. Rabbi Hert/bcrg believes that there are no truly great national rabbis today, "men like Solomon Goldman, in Chicago; Abba Hil-lel Silver, in Cleveland; and Israel Goldstein, and Stephen A Vise in New York."
These men, he said, were bigger than their individual '.synagogues; they exercised "what was essentially political leadership in the Jewish community and on its behalf in American politics and iu international Jewish affairs. They played-a major role in the development of Zionist sentiment in the United States, and in paving the way for the establishment of the State of Israel, and its recognition by the U.S."
Rabbi I lert/bcrg compared the role of these great rabbis in. the leadership of American Jewry of thirty and forty years ago with that exercised by Martin Luther King as a "Negro political : leader of today. Rabbis.-Wise.'Silver, Goldman,'and the others," said Rabbi Hert/bcrg, "represented a comparable �'phenomenon, at a comparable stage in the development of the American Jewish community.
"The American rabbi of today is quite clearly a different phenomenon. There exist today many individual congregations as large as
or larger than the congregations headed by Wise and Silver. Nonetheless, no comparably renowned rabbinic names have emerged. There is hardly one rabbinic figure today who commands the attention of the entire Jewish community.'The organi/cd enterprise that the rabbis head, the synagogue and all its institutions, is more powerful than ever before, but the rabbis seem to be less so.
"The status within the general community, and sometimes even within an individual congregation, is much more affected today by the relation of the rabbi to his denominational superiors than it was a generation ago. The result is that rabbinic careers today arc evermore being made in semi-bureaucratic fashion. They tend to be safe, rather than picturesque."
Rabbi I led/.berg contends that social change in the American Jewish community has made it necessary for the rabbi to become less and less a religious leader.
"The. essence of the problem that confronts the American rabbi today, much more sharply than it was ever faced by his predecessors," Rabbi Hcrtzbcrg says, "is the question, of faith and purpose. To what end can the rabbi really lead?
'�'-The crisis of Jewish faith is a long standing one. It is at least two centuries old. In its' starkest form, it boils .down to tlic question: if one rejects Orthodoxy, why be a Jew at all? This is the Jewish version of a question that has been confroTTTfhg all of religion in ,the age of modernity; what is the role of faith among men whose primary
concerns are of this world?
"The dominant answer among all the faiths has been that the contemporary function of religion is to play sonic significant role in the remaking of society. In the 19th century, and in the first part of the 20th, western Christianity addressed itself, in the name of the 'social'gospel,' to tlic \vocs of the underprivileged. In America today the most advanced churchmen make it their prime business to be on the barricades in the battle for racial equality.
"In Jewish circles the equivalent of this 'social gospel' has been the continuing battle of the Jews to reorder their own situation in the world. During the last century the rabbinate has been in the forefront of the fight for Jewish equality. Iu America, this battle is now over.
"The Jewish community itself has few tangible problems. It would be content to stop tlic social clock at this moment, so far as its own interests are concerned. The rabbinate, therefore, has no local Jewish social tasks left. The remaining issues concern the relationship of American Jews to other communities, especially to the Jews of Israel and to the Negroes in America. Both of these cares involve basic issues and Jewish commitments, and rabbis arc inevitably in the middle of the several battles.
"Nonetheless, it scarcely needs demonstrating that the American rabbinate is very much less involved in Zionism today than it was two decades ago. It is equally
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clear, despite the presence of rab-ris in places like Sclma, that race relations arc not today the major cause preoccupying the American rabbinate.
"There is notbing in the tenor of rabbinic involvement in the Civil Rights issue which resembles the urgency and singleness of purpose with which many of these same men picketed Great Britain twenty years ago, when they were still students at the seminaries. In their heart of hearts the majority of American rabbis arc ambivalent, for very serious reasons, about all the immediate, tangible issues of this day.
"Today the most obvious place is in the arena of social action on the American scene, which means the problem of race. But here, too,
the rabbis .arc in some tension. All of the leadership elements of the Jewish community have been drawn into this issue. A sense of moral compulsion is operating, allied with the feeling that no civic or religious leadership of any persuasion can avoid the question of the Negro without being; reduced to irrelevance.
"The rabbinate has certainly been sen-ing the Negro cause no less than any comparable group of liberal clergy in any.of the denominations, and the. organized Jewish community, has been involved in the race struggle more, perhaps, than any other white group. Nonetheless, it is hardly likely that the American rabbis in their various pulpits will find an adequate out-
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