PAST IMPERFECT

That kind of bias is extraordinarily common – the inability to recognize that the past was a real place, where real people made choices just as new generations do: weighing their options and coming to conclusions about what worked best for them and occasionally surfacing ideas that then stood the test of time. ​

Wisdom Wherever You Find It
 
That kind of bias is extraordinarily common – the inability to recognize that the past was a real place, where real people made choices just as new generations do: weighing their options and coming to conclusions about what worked best for them and occasionally surfacing ideas that then stood the test of time.      Christine Emba
 
I remain suspicious of the past, even as I celebrate it. It is a tension that keeps me insecure about the decisions I have made in my lifetime (even if I know there is no going back to experiment with a different pathway). And when you add to that one such decision – to live most of my adult life as a “professional Jew” – the momentum created by public pronouncements and purposeful examples can be a challenge to independent thinking.
 
Early in my adult life I embraced an approach to the practice of Judaism that relied on a now-disfavored slogan of my chosen denomination, Conservative*. The watchwords are “Tradition and Change,” popularized by Rabbi Mordecai Waxman, of blessed memory. Essentially, the notion committed the faithful Conservative Jew to accept the binding nature of Jewish law, which could be re-legislated only in specific ways by a committee of respected representative rabbis. Let me reduce it to the absurd: the speed limit on the highway is 55 by state law, and it can be changed only by the authorized authorities.  It prohibits, but does not prevent, a driver from going much slower or much faster.
 
And let me beat the metaphor into submission. That speed limit reflects an assessment of what the presumptions are, including driving conditions, road access, traffic volume, and driver expertise (and maybe even environmental impact). In practice, however, weather conditions could commend a much slower speed, and the behavior of other drivers could make adhering to that speed limit unsafe. Do I, as a driver, wait for the highway commission to complete a study before I hit the brakes or the accelerator? And if I do get a ticket for speeding or impeding, do I have a defense that claims my judgment in the circumstances is more reliable than those who have studied the situation? If it happens too often, I forfeit my license to drive.
 
Well, of course, I don’t forfeit my right to be a Jew if I develop a taste for pork carnitas (I haven’t; don’t worry).  But at what speed on the highway of Jewish religious observance do I relinquish my claim to be Conservative? *
 
Underlying the belief in the binding nature of Jewish law is the idea that it finds its source in God and the revelation to Moses at Mount Sinai. For thousands of years, the scholarly and everyday members of the Jewish community have understood their beliefs and actions to have traveled along a thread that, if followed to its origin, would bring them back to Sinai. Of course, some contend the thread is part of a tightly-woven tapestry and others more akin to the ends of the fringes fluttering from the corners of a prayer shawl.
 
Will I get to my point before I reach my word limit? Let’s hope.
 
At this season in my life, I have an appreciation of Christine Emba’s trenchant observation. The tradition I have inherited is true and certain enough to lay claim to its origins, but not to its immutability – not in Jewish life in general and not in my life in particular. As a people, as an ostensibly religious folk, we have the permission and the even the obligation to weigh our options and come to conclusions about what works best for us. As a person, I have that permission and that obligation as well. If done with integrity, I will extend the thread, and maybe even change the speed limit. If not, I will forfeit my claim to the Judaism I have promoted for breaking that thread or defying the safe speed limit too often.
 
My hope these days, more so than at any other point in my life, is that I have the privilege of being part of surfacing an idea that will stand the test of time because I did not forget that the past was as real a place as my own.
 
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*If you are unfamiliar with the terminology, Conservative Judaism has nothing to do with conservative politics, much as the word “straight” means different things referring to geometry and gender.