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Boomer ReJew-venation

The imprint of the Baby Boomers, those middle-aged men and women who today dominate our community as rabbis, synagogue leaders and congregation members, is felt more emphatically every year.
[additional-authors]
September 28, 2000

The changes in American Jewish life over the past 20 years have been astounding. The imprint of the Baby Boomers, those middle-aged men and women who today dominate our community as rabbis, synagogue leaders and congregation members, is felt more emphatically every year. The child-friendly music, rituals that resound with explicit psychological reference, and the recasting of female Bible heroes into starring roles, are Part I of the story. As these High Holidays begin, however, I see the start of Part II.

Part I has focused largely on surface issues of style. Take the dress code, for example. When I was growing up in New York, my favorite Rosh Hashanah ritual was the purchase of a new Jewish suit. Despite the threat of Indian summer heat, I’d be in shul year after year, sweltering in blue wool, dripping with sweat and pride; duped by seasonal change again.

In Los Angeles, of course we’re laid back. New clothing merely means a new black cotton T-shirt. The other day at Torah study, we discussed the controversy of Jewish jeans: Is it all right to wear denims and running shoes to services?

“Whatever,” shrugged the well-dressed rabbi, dapper in Armani. But with the growing influence of the ashram, and the recent adoption of meditation-style worship, it’s only a matter of time until our clothing goes with the flow.

Frankly, I’ll miss dress-up Judaism and, like the recent readoption of the yarmulke, predict it will one day stage a comeback. Business attire at services, especially heels, is miserably restrictive. But that’s the point – a beginning at self-containment. You’ve got to start somewhere, you know, and teshuvah, the spiritual chiropractic generally known as “repentance,” is hard work. Many of my best intentions fail me. If I can’t easily change my habits, drives, ambitions and motivations, at least I can alter my hemline. We change slowly, from the outside in.

When I was growing up, we all believed in sin. I loved my sins and maintained a running annual scoreboard, ready for purging. Four times that year, I had cursed my parents under my breath. Three times I had left my brother while we were washing the dishes, claiming a history or math test next day. On the “Wonder Years” scale, these were big deals, and I couldn’t wait to have the blast of the shofar lift the load.Today, of course, personal sin is gone, and with it the idea of the Holidays as Judgment Day. Part I of Boomer reJew-venation soft-pedals the guilt, calling it, instead, “missing the mark.” Missing the mark is like being bad at archery, there’s always another quiver for your bow.

Rather than a courthouse, our spiritual tribunal today resembles a kind of cyber-traffic school: Fill out the form and judge yourself. Our kinder, gentler prayerbooks go to great lengths to stress inner process, that the harsh decree of Yom Kippur can always be overturned by teshuvah, by my decision, however last minute, to be different and change my ways. The sage du jour, widely quoted in spiritual circles, is the Sefat Emet, the 19th century Chassidic Rabbi Yehuda Leib Alter of Ger, whose writings have been translated by Rabbi Arthur Green. “Your task is to keep those inner tablets free enough from accumulated grime,” Green quotes the sage. “The Book of Life is in you!”

But if aging Boomers are more tolerant of Jewish jeans, on another level, while also digging deeper into Jewish genes, we’re looking for truths in the religious marrow. This is the task of Part II.

Take the Rosh Hashanah Torah reading, the traumatic story of the Akedah, the sacrifice of Isaac. Abraham is told by God to take his son to a mountaintop as a human sacrifice. At the last moment, just as Abraham has the knife to Isaac’s throat, the boy is spared, and a ram in a thicket is substituted.

So problematic is this story, and the ancient decision that it should be read at the biggest annual Jewish convocation, that some liberal synagogues years ago substituted a reading of the creation of the world.

When I was growing up, rabbis tortured the text to make it a cross-cultural political statement. We read this story, I was told, because the boy is not killed, showing that Jews, unlike pagans of the time, do not engage in child sacrifice.

Ah, but don’t we? It seems to me we’re asked to “sacrifice” our children all the time, and at each stage of their lives, in different ways. And the reason we read the Akedah on this holy day is to remind us that the lives of our children are in our hands, subject to dangerous misinterpretation.

Have we sacrificed our children’s education for status? Are we imposing goals of financial and economic attainment that might not be realistic for their talents? Have we made them carry the wood for political goals that fit our generation but not theirs?

My friends and I, Part II Boomers and their families, have awe for the various knives we wield, and the sacrifices made again and again.

Marlene Adler Marks is senior columnist of the Jewish Journal. Her email address is wmnsvoice@aol.com

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