Shofar Adar/Nisan 5772
Jewish Family Congregation www.jewishfamilycongregation.org
March 2012
From the Rabbi’s Desk Recently, I have participated in some discussions in a variety of interfaith settings, involving lay people and ordained clergy. And each time, I marvel at the widespread ignorance, among Jews and non-Jews, about the actual status of Jewish officiants. Rabbis and cantors are not clergy. That term…clergy…is defined in my Oxford Dictionary as persons “ordained for religious duties”. The same dictionary goes on to list those who would qualify under its definition, including priests, ministers, chaplains, pastors, parsons, rectors, etc. The terms “rabbi” and “cantor” do not appear on the list. The term “rabbi” is defined, in the same dictionary, as “a Jewish scholar or teacher, especially of Jewish law”, or someone “appointed as a Jewish religious leader”. “Cantor” is defined as “leader of the singing in a synagogue”.
prophets to the earliest of the rabbis, who lived in the first century CE. Those who were ordained, after the time of Hillel the Elder, around 30 CE, were awarded the title rabbi, which literally means “my master”, indicating that others acknowledged the person’s mastery of Jewish learning. The Romans prohibited the transmission of this authority and actually tortured Jewish leaders who tried to pass it on to their students. The political, spiritual and economic situation of the Jews in Israel under the Romans declined dramatically, and the center of Jewish learning shifted to Babylonia, so that the chain of ordination in Israel was broken, in theory never to be restored again.
Today, Reform rabbis are ordained using the traditional Jewish formula of s/he can teach, s/he can judge (in the areas of Jewish law only, of course) and until the advent of the Reform Movement, 200 years ago, teaching and And while we in the Reform Movement (and the Conser- adjudicating matters of Jewish law were the primary funcvative and Reconstructionist Movements as well) do speak tions of those carrying the title “rabbi”. of our rabbis as ‘ordained” (and now the same term will The Reform Movement borrowed some clerical and pasbe applied to cantors, who have, up till now, been intoral functions from the clergy of the Lutherans surroundvested), it is clear that this is a recent innovation, not in ing them, and rabbis became officiants at services and ceremonies (which they had not been at all till then), and keeping with the history of Jewish practice. In Jewish history, ordination originated when Moses was counsellors, comforters and official community represencommanded by God to transmit some of his own authority tatives as well. to his successor, Joshua (Num 27:18). The sages who gave So those of us in rabbinical and cantorial positions today us the Talmud noted, in Pirkei Avot 1:1 that the line of are often included when people refer to clergy. transmission of authority went from Moses to Joshua, to (Continued on page 2) the elders of the tribes, to the prophets and from the From the Rabbi’s Desk What’s Happening/March Second Seder Invite Service Schedule March Oneg Hosts Kids Ask the Rabbi Early Childhood Center Purim Carnival Invite The Religious School
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