My mother--an experienced rebbetzin--always said that a rabbi has no more than two or three sermons in them; rabbinic sermons are either variations on deeply cherished themes or "one-offs" (sermons for a particular moment in time, without an extended life span).
I don't know if she is correct (I'm sure many congregants in many shuls probably think so), but I do know that one of my oft repeated tropes concerns liberalism and Judaism. I strongly believe that Judaism is not reducible to current liberal values. Much of what Jews call their values derive from the Enlightenment and its reaction--ideas that have been imbibed through the painful but liberating encounter with European thought by figures such as Moses Mendelssohn and others.
This truth, however, can be difficult for liberal Jews to acknowledge. Jews are plagued by a gnawing doubt and seek instead to syncretize divergent beliefs. We fear that we are saying that Judaism is insufficient or incorrect somehow, if we acknowledge that we incorporate values from outside of Judaism into how we live our lives as Jews. What we are doing instead--I would argue--is confusing our politics with our transcendent Judaism; the one cannot lessen the other. I digress so let me say it more simply. I do not need the crutch of Judaism to defend with passion the values and loyalties I hold dear.
Read through a recent debate hosted by Jewcy, between Steven I. Weiss and Daniel "Mobius" Sieradski. They touch on these matters as they argue the question Is Social Justice the Soul of Judaism? It is a question of special importance for identified Reform Jews, given the Reform movement's historical identification of liberal values with Jewishness.
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