## Community of Faith, PART III; The Future of Faith, Chapter 12; Aspects of Renewal ###### Community of Faith, PART III; The Future of Faith, Chapter 12; Aspects of Renewal 1 [Community of Faith, PART III; The Future of Faith, Chapter 12; Aspects of Renewal 1](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Community%20of%20Faith/s/PART%20III%3B%20The%20Future%20of%20Faith,_Chapter%2012%3B%20Aspects%20of%20Renewal/r/1) **Maggid Books, 2024:** ***Aspects of Renewal*** ###### Community of Faith, PART III; The Future of Faith, Chapter 12; Aspects of Renewal 2 [Community of Faith, PART III; The Future of Faith, Chapter 12; Aspects of Renewal 2](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Community%20of%20Faith/s/PART%20III%3B%20The%20Future%20of%20Faith,_Chapter%2012%3B%20Aspects%20of%20Renewal/r/2) **Maggid Books, 2024:** There is only one way to renew an institution: to go back to first principles and ask why it exists. ###### Community of Faith, PART III; The Future of Faith, Chapter 12; Aspects of Renewal 3 [Community of Faith, PART III; The Future of Faith, Chapter 12; Aspects of Renewal 3](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Community%20of%20Faith/s/PART%20III%3B%20The%20Future%20of%20Faith,_Chapter%2012%3B%20Aspects%20of%20Renewal/r/3) **Maggid Books, 2024:** The United Synagogue came into being to keep alive, at a time when other Jewries were fragmenting, the idea of *Knesset Yisrael,* the Jewish people as a single community of faith. It could never have hoped to attract all Jews, even all Ashkenazi Jews. A generation before it was born there were Reform congregations in England, and there were small Orthodox *hevrot* outside the mainstream. What it sought to do was to keep tradition and its standards at the heart of communal life, and to provide a spiritual home to which all Jews could belong. ###### Community of Faith, PART III; The Future of Faith, Chapter 12; Aspects of Renewal 4 [Community of Faith, PART III; The Future of Faith, Chapter 12; Aspects of Renewal 4](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Community%20of%20Faith/s/PART%20III%3B%20The%20Future%20of%20Faith,_Chapter%2012%3B%20Aspects%20of%20Renewal/r/4) **Maggid Books, 2024:** Today many Jews are restless with this idea. The more committed would like to see it more exclusive. The less committed would like to see it more flexible in its interpretation of Jewish law and faith. In this respect the 1990s are like the 1890s, when Chief Rabbi Hermann Adler faced criticism from both right and left, the right in the form of East End Jewry, most notably the *Machzikei Hadath,* the left in the form of the Hampstead Synagogue which sought liturgical and other reforms. Now as then the United Synagogue must resist such claims, for they negate its very reason to be. It cannot move to the left without abandoning Jewish law, and it cannot move to the right without abandoning a large segment of the Jewish community. The United Synagogue is what it is because that, until the nineteenth century, was what all Jewish communities aspired to be, what indeed they must be if they are to be faithful to the mandate of *Knesset Yisrael,* the rabbinic vision of the total Jewish people in covenant with God. ###### Community of Faith, PART III; The Future of Faith, Chapter 12; Aspects of Renewal 5 [Community of Faith, PART III; The Future of Faith, Chapter 12; Aspects of Renewal 5](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Community%20of%20Faith/s/PART%20III%3B%20The%20Future%20of%20Faith,_Chapter%2012%3B%20Aspects%20of%20Renewal/r/5) **Maggid Books, 2024:** The United Synagogue has not stood still, and has responded to the great changes in Jewry since its early days. Its services have become more informal. Wardens no longer wear striped trousers and black jackets, and rabbis have abandoned the clerical collar. New synagogues are less houses of worship than centres of community in all its forms. In Victorian England Jews went to the synagogue primarily to pray. Today they seek from it the full panoply of communal life: creches, kindergartens, youth groups, social events, lectures, *shiurim,* singles’ groups, women’s groups and friendship circles. Congregations organise communal Shabbat lunches, *sedarim,* walks, visits, residential seminars and trips abroad. These are symptoms of a profound shift in expectation. In Victorian England Jews knew that they were Jews but wanted to prove that they were also unmistakably English. Today Jews know that they are English. They want to rediscover, in a more compelling and intensive way, what it is to be Jewish. ###### Community of Faith, PART III; The Future of Faith, Chapter 12; Aspects of Renewal 6 [Community of Faith, PART III; The Future of Faith, Chapter 12; Aspects of Renewal 6](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Community%20of%20Faith/s/PART%20III%3B%20The%20Future%20of%20Faith,_Chapter%2012%3B%20Aspects%20of%20Renewal/r/6) **Maggid Books, 2024:** The religious leaders of Victorian Jewry would have been surprised at this transformation, but they would have welcomed it as a return to the classic role of the *beit knesset* as the centre of Jewish life in all its sweep and scope. They would have applauded the United Synagogue’s investment in Jewish day schools and university chaplaincy. They would have welcomed the new dignity of the rabbi as a man of learning, and the sheer liveliness of the synagogue as a place of study. The United Synagogue has opened itself to a whole range of new influences, the yeshivah world, Hasidic rabbis, outreach groups, religious Zionism in its many forms and an old-new expression of women’s spirituality. It is more diverse than it ever was, and so it more faithfully reflects *Knesset Yisrael* in its irreducible diversity. Old congregations in the centre of London, long dormant, have begun to thrive again. New communities in the suburbs burst at the seams. In the process some of the Victorian dignity has been lost, but in its place has come a new Jewish exuberance. Once Anglo-Jews were reluctant to dance in the synagogue on *Simhat Torah* for fear of earning the disapproval of men like Samuel Pepys. Today, bringing a new *Sefer Torah* to the synagogue, they dance in the street as King David did when he brought the ark to Jerusalem. Having passed the “ordeal of civility” Jews now feel freer to be themselves. ###### Community of Faith, PART III; The Future of Faith, Chapter 12; Aspects of Renewal 7 [Community of Faith, PART III; The Future of Faith, Chapter 12; Aspects of Renewal 7](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Community%20of%20Faith/s/PART%20III%3B%20The%20Future%20of%20Faith,_Chapter%2012%3B%20Aspects%20of%20Renewal/r/7) **Maggid Books, 2024:** In many respects the United Synagogue has never been healthier. Nevertheless, it faces a formidable challenge. Jews, like everyone else, have become internationalised, and the patterns of Jewish life in Israel and the United States have begun to appear here as well. Many young Jews have become secularised. For them Jewishness is a matter of ethnicity, belonging without believing. A minority has become more religiously committed, the *baalei teshuvah* or returnees who, since the 1960s, have in increasing numbers gone to yeshivah, re-engaged with tradition, and become more learned and observant than their parents. The former are unmoved by the synagogue. The latter want smaller and more intensive communities than the United Synagogue provides. Both represent a profound generational change between the classic terms of Anglo-Jewish life and the divided state of world Jewry today. ###### Community of Faith, PART III; The Future of Faith, Chapter 12; Aspects of Renewal 8 [Community of Faith, PART III; The Future of Faith, Chapter 12; Aspects of Renewal 8](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Community%20of%20Faith/s/PART%20III%3B%20The%20Future%20of%20Faith,_Chapter%2012%3B%20Aspects%20of%20Renewal/r/8) **Maggid Books, 2024:** Synagogues alive to the challenge have responded in perhaps the only way they can. They have created multiple contexts of community: alternative services, explanatory services and *hashkamah* (early morning) *minyanim.* It is not unusual in some larger congregations to find as many as half-a-dozen services on a Shabbat morning, each for a different age- or interest-group. They organise social activities for particular ages, especially young singles. A group I started in a West End congregation a few years ago began with two people and grew rapidly to several hundred. These developments are not always welcomed, understandably so. A Jewish community ideally spans the generations and brings together singles, families, the elderly, the married, the divorced, those with children and those without, weaving out of their separate lives something genuinely collective. Nonetheless, at this time of change and generational discontinuity it is almost certainly the best response. By addressing the spiritual and social needs of different groups within a single multi-faceted family of congregations the United Synagogue is faithful to its original task of maintaining an inclusive community of faith. ###### Community of Faith, PART III; The Future of Faith, Chapter 12; Aspects of Renewal 9 [Community of Faith, PART III; The Future of Faith, Chapter 12; Aspects of Renewal 9](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Community%20of%20Faith/s/PART%20III%3B%20The%20Future%20of%20Faith,_Chapter%2012%3B%20Aspects%20of%20Renewal/r/9) **Maggid Books, 2024:** Perhaps the most profound change is that whereas in the past Jews came to the synagogue, today the synagogue must come to Jews. It must actively recruit members and devote considerable energy to the task. There was a period when the United Synagogue was endangered by its own success. For over a century it had been “the establishment,” one of the immovable pillars of Anglo-Jewish life. It took itself for granted, was capable of being bureaucratic and cold, and assumed that individuals would join out of habit because their parents had. It was just such a failure more than a century ago to reach out and respond to the new immigrants from Eastern Europe that led to the creation of the Federation of Synagogues, and it was one of Anglo-Jewry’s great lost opportunities. Today rabbis and lay-leaders know that they inhabit a world in which, in almost every arena, habit has been replaced by choice in bewildering profusion. The synagogue cannot wait for Jews to find it. It must go out and find them, inviting them in and making them feel that they belong. This is difficult but necessary. Institutions renew themselves only when they can no longer take themselves for granted, and nothing is more likely to lead them back to their original sources of inspiration. In the case of the synagogue they are three. ###### Community of Faith, PART III; The Future of Faith, Chapter 12; Aspects of Renewal 10 [Community of Faith, PART III; The Future of Faith, Chapter 12; Aspects of Renewal 10](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Community%20of%20Faith/s/PART%20III%3B%20The%20Future%20of%20Faith,_Chapter%2012%3B%20Aspects%20of%20Renewal/r/10) **Maggid Books, 2024:** In the *Ethics of the Fathers* Shimon ha-Tzaddik said, “The world stands by virtue of three things, *Torah,* Jewish study, *avodah,* Jewish worship, and *gemilut hasadim*, acts of kindness.” Those who meditated most deeply on the role of the modern synagogue, Nathan Marcus Adler and Samson Raphael Hirsch, understood that these were the three-fold foundations of community. Adler did so in his first pastoral letter as Chief Rabbi, and Hirsch wrote along similar lines in an essay, “The Character of the Jewish Community,” shortly after his arrival in Frankfurt. ###### Community of Faith, PART III; The Future of Faith, Chapter 12; Aspects of Renewal 11 [Community of Faith, PART III; The Future of Faith, Chapter 12; Aspects of Renewal 11](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Community%20of%20Faith/s/PART%20III%3B%20The%20Future%20of%20Faith,_Chapter%2012%3B%20Aspects%20of%20Renewal/r/11) **Maggid Books, 2024:** Significantly, the list begins with study, not prayer. Historically the synagogue began, whether in exilic Babylon or before, amongst Jews who gathered around the person of the prophet to hear him expound the word of God. Ever since, the reading and exposition of Torah has held a central place in the synagogue service. Torah study is the motor which drives Jewish life, and whenever communities neglect it they have already started on the route to decline. Hirsch was vehement on the point. He told his contemporaries, “Yes, you should build houses of worship, establish philanthropic funds and artisans’ guilds, but if you allow the Torah to remain unnoticed in a hidden corner, the spirit of idolatry will invade your houses of worship and all your charity will not be able to banish the spirit of misery, poverty and demoralisation from your midst.” ###### Community of Faith, PART III; The Future of Faith, Chapter 12; Aspects of Renewal 12 [Community of Faith, PART III; The Future of Faith, Chapter 12; Aspects of Renewal 12](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Community%20of%20Faith/s/PART%20III%3B%20The%20Future%20of%20Faith,_Chapter%2012%3B%20Aspects%20of%20Renewal/r/12) **Maggid Books, 2024:** Torah – not simply “that which is taught” but the process of learning and teaching, the ongoing conversation between parents and children, teachers and disciples – is the oxygen which Judaism breathes. An active community should have classes, lectures, *shiurim,* seminars and educational events of all kinds. One synagogue in London houses a full evening yeshivah. Some make a point of ending the Shabbat morning service early so as to provide an hour of study afterward for the whole congregation. Others have study groups every morning over breakfast after prayers. When I first became a rabbi I took it as my objective that as many people should attend study sessions during the week as came to the synagogue on Shabbat mornings, and we succeeded. Ideally every congregation or group of them should establish its own Jewish day school, and wherever there is already one in the vicinity it should be integrated with the community and its achievements celebrated as a matter of collective pride. The *heder* or part-time classes must never fall short of excellence, and education in all its forms – child, adult, family, introductory or advanced – must be the community’s first priority. ###### Community of Faith, PART III; The Future of Faith, Chapter 12; Aspects of Renewal 13 [Community of Faith, PART III; The Future of Faith, Chapter 12; Aspects of Renewal 13](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Community%20of%20Faith/s/PART%20III%3B%20The%20Future%20of%20Faith,_Chapter%2012%3B%20Aspects%20of%20Renewal/r/13) **Maggid Books, 2024:** *Avodah,* Jewish worship, is easier to define than prescribe. It is measured not by the magnificence of synagogue architecture, the virtuosity of the chazan or the presence or absence of a choir, but by whether or not it succeeds in making the congregation feel that it stands in the presence of God. *Kavanah,* spiritual directedness, is of the essence of prayer, and all else is a means to that end. When we pray we are not asking God to do our will but asking ourselves to do His. Using essentially the same words in which our ancestors have prayed for more than two thousand years, we merge our private concerns with those of the Jewish people of all generations, joining our voices with theirs in a choral symphony of praise and supplication. The aesthetics of the synagogue service change from age to age, but its purpose stays the same. It is to the soul, said Judah Halevi, what food is to the body. Without the experience of prayer, the spirit starves. Said three times a day, it cannot always be inspirational. The very word *avodah* means not only prayer but also “labour,” suggesting that spiritual uplift is never lastingly achieved without constant rehearsal. But *tefillah,* the act of Jewish prayer, is the supremely spiritual moment at which the community dedicates itself to the service of God in the presence of God, and at its highest we leave the synagogue personally transformed. ###### Community of Faith, PART III; The Future of Faith, Chapter 12; Aspects of Renewal 14 [Community of Faith, PART III; The Future of Faith, Chapter 12; Aspects of Renewal 14](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Community%20of%20Faith/s/PART%20III%3B%20The%20Future%20of%20Faith,_Chapter%2012%3B%20Aspects%20of%20Renewal/r/14) **Maggid Books, 2024:** *Gemilut hasadim* signals the many social, charitable and welfare activities that must be at the heart of any Jewish community. The word *hesed* has been translated as “covenantal love,” and it means the relationship that holds between Jews as members of a single extended family. This is no idle metaphor. At one of the most solemn moments of the year, on the Shabbat before Tisha Be-Av, we read the blazing first chapter of the book of Isaiah in which the prophet rebukes those who attend the Temple but neglect the poor and powerless. Maimonides rules that we have not fulfilled our duty of rejoicing on festivals if we have neglected “the stranger, the orphan or the widow” and failed to invite them to our celebrations. Today this means that a community must be sensitive to the needs of singles, the elderly, those living alone, the unemployed, those living on low incomes, the retired, the divorced or those experiencing marital conflict, the physically or mentally handicapped, and new arrivals in a neighbourhood. They must be valued and made to feel that they belong. Synagogues have always had pastoral and welfare concerns at their core. They were where charitable funds were collected and distributed and where provisions were made for those who needed practical or emotional support. The covenant which binds us to God binds us also to one another, and when help or comfort are needed they must be there. ###### Community of Faith, PART III; The Future of Faith, Chapter 12; Aspects of Renewal 15 [Community of Faith, PART III; The Future of Faith, Chapter 12; Aspects of Renewal 15](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Community%20of%20Faith/s/PART%20III%3B%20The%20Future%20of%20Faith,_Chapter%2012%3B%20Aspects%20of%20Renewal/r/15) **Maggid Books, 2024:** These are the three bases of Jewish community life, and when they are strong it thrives. In this there is something more than good sense. There is deep religious insight, and to explain it I must say something more about *emunah,* Jewish faith. What philosophy was to Greek civilisation, *halakhah* – Jewish law – was and is to Jews. That is because, whereas for Plato truth was something to be discovered, meditated and known, in Judaism it is something to be lived. Moses, says the Talmud, gave 613 commands to Israel. David reduced them to eleven, Isaiah to six, Micah to three and Habakkuk to one: “The righteous shall *live* by his faith.” *Emunah* is not faith contemplated but faith realised in life, by the way we live. The three great principles of Judaism are creation, revelation and redemption. That, I believe, is why the sages said “The world depends on Torah study, worship and acts of kindness.” ###### Community of Faith, PART III; The Future of Faith, Chapter 12; Aspects of Renewal 16 [Community of Faith, PART III; The Future of Faith, Chapter 12; Aspects of Renewal 16](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Community%20of%20Faith/s/PART%20III%3B%20The%20Future%20of%20Faith,_Chapter%2012%3B%20Aspects%20of%20Renewal/r/16) **Maggid Books, 2024:** In Torah study we live revelation. We listen to Torah as God’s word, and through learning and teaching place it at the centre of our lives. In worship we live creation. In structure and style the Torah indicates that the Israelites’ building of the sanctuary in the wilderness was the human counterpart of the Divine creation of the universe. As God made a space in whose midst man lived, so we are commanded to create a space in whose midst God lives. In acts of kindness we live redemption, building through small deeds a world slowly perfected under the sovereignty of God. That is why the synagogue is the home of *emunah,* for through our communal life the principles of faith become living realities for those who participate in it. ###### Community of Faith, PART III; The Future of Faith, Chapter 12; Aspects of Renewal 17 [Community of Faith, PART III; The Future of Faith, Chapter 12; Aspects of Renewal 17](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Community%20of%20Faith/s/PART%20III%3B%20The%20Future%20of%20Faith,_Chapter%2012%3B%20Aspects%20of%20Renewal/r/17) **Maggid Books, 2024:** I visit many synagogues, and in the best of them faith palpably lives. In them we are caught up in something immeasurably vaster than ourselves and we participate in the great collective “We” of *Knesset Yisrael* as it has journeyed through centuries and continents, betrothed to God. Judaism is supremely a religion of life. The Torah is a “tree of life.” Moses tells the Israelites to “Choose life.” In the laws of purity, contact with death defiles, for God’s presence is in life. Most of the vast code of Jewish law is an infinitely detailed discipline in not taking life for granted, but making a blessing over it and sanctifying it. That is why, though Jewish communities can suffer a temporary eclipse, the Jewish people will survive, for despite the fact that its history has often been written in tears, it remains the most life-affirming of all religions, and has never been defeated by tragedy. To be a member of an outstanding synagogue, to be part of a community’s celebrations and study and prayers, is to be glad to be alive and to be a Jew. ###### Community of Faith, PART III; The Future of Faith, Chapter 12; Aspects of Renewal 18 [Community of Faith, PART III; The Future of Faith, Chapter 12; Aspects of Renewal 18](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Community%20of%20Faith/s/PART%20III%3B%20The%20Future%20of%20Faith,_Chapter%2012%3B%20Aspects%20of%20Renewal/r/18) **Maggid Books, 2024:** The renewal of our synagogues must hold centre stage in any plan for Jewish continuity. It is one thing to be momentarily inspired by an outreach seminar, a Jewish arts festival or a journey into Jewish history. It is something else to turn that inspiration into a lasting commitment that can be handed on across the generations. That requires participation in a community, one that is open, supportive and uplifting. That is the United Synagogue’s greatest challenge. Much will depend on whether the most committed of the younger generation, those who have studied at yeshivot and spent significant time in Israel, turn inward or outward. If they turn inward, creating small congregations with limited contact with the rest of Jewry, they will have guaranteed the Jewish future of their families but they will have abandoned the community as a whole. If they turn outward, staying within the United Synagogue and exercising leadership and influence, they will change the lives of others and renew Anglo-Jewry. This in turn will depend on whether the central idea of the United Synagogue – *Knesset Yisrael* – still has the power to inspire. Speaking personally I think it does. In Judaism, faith lived is faith shared, and its home is in the centre of community.