By Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah

This week’s parashah, T’tzavveh opens with a significant phrase: ‘You, you shall command [Attah t’tzavveh] the Israelites’ (Exodus 27:20a). While the Torah relates many engaging stories, it is also the repository of the mitzvot, ‘commandments’, that define the relationship between the Jewish people and God. The grand narrative of the Exodus from Egypt may be understood, simply, as a tale of liberation from oppression. However, the message, continually repeated, as Moses tries to persuade Pharaoh to free the Israelite slaves, is more challenging: ‘Thus says YHWH, the God of the Hebrews, “Let my people go that they may serve Me – Shalach et-ammi v’ya’avduni”’ (Exodus 9:1). The Israelites were liberated from the tyranny of Pharaoh in order to serve a more powerful Master.

While the teachings of the Torah concern every aspect of domestic, social, economic and political life, their foundation is the service of God. After the destruction of the last Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 CE, the centrality of Divine service continued through Rabbinic Judaism, which established the framework for Jewish life in the form of the halachah, the system of law articulated first in the Mishnah, edited around the year 200 CE. Whether or not one is a student of Rabbinic literature, every Jew who participates in Jewish rites is reminded of the obligation to serve God each time we recite a blessing which includes the words, ‘… asher kid’shanu b’mitzvotav v’tzivvanu l…’ – ‘… who makes us holy with His commandments and commands us to …’ (literal translation).

We are at a crucial moment in the history of Liberal Judaism and Reform Judaism in Britain, as the two organisations negotiate a merger with the goal of becoming a single entity, ‘Progressive Judaism’, a name that directly reflects the global movement to which both LJ and MRJ are affiliated: the World Union of Progressive Judaism, founded in 1926 at the Liberal Jewish Synagogue in London (https://wupj.org/about-us/history/).

What is Progressive Judaism? There is no single answer. However, there is a clue in the word ‘Progressive’. Progressive Judaism is not only, like Orthodox Judaism, a response to Modernity, to the consequences of intellectual Enlightenment and political Emancipation. Progressive Judaism provides a framework for working out how to live Jewishly in a rapidly changing modern/post-modern world; an attempt to re-interpret and re-engage with our Jewish inheritance in the context of the needs of the present. In the past fifty years since Rabbi Jacqueline Tabick became the first woman to be ordained as a rabbi at Leo Baeck College, Progressive Judaism has been in the forefront of change in the British Jewish community, to the extent that, today, 50% of the progressive rabbinate is female, and 20%, LGBTQ+. Just as important, from its inception in Germany at the beginning of the 19th century, Progressive Judaism has acknowledged that individuals – and not just communities – have a role in defining and perpetuating Jewish life. As a consequence, ‘informed choice’, rather than the notion of being simply ‘commanded’ has been the hallmark of Progressive Judaism.

But, of course, Jewish life depends on individuals choosing to contribute to building and maintaining community. More than twenty years ago, I first set out what I call the compelling commitments that frame the choices we make (‘Bridging Choice and Command’, MANNA Essay, MANNA, No. 78, Winter 2003). At this critical juncture in the history of the two progressive movements in Britain, when we are trying to work out what it means to be ‘progressive’, I offer these ‘compelling commitments’ as a contribution to our reflections. Emerging out of our on-going experience they are not set in stone, but at their heart, we find these three – each one with a particularist and a universalist dimension:

Compelling Commitment One:  Embracing Jewish Teaching and engaging with knowledge in the wider world

The commitment to nurture and cultivate our own Jewish lives and the life of the Jewish people as a whole, by continuing to learn and engage with the Torah, with our Jewish stories, teachings and traditions, and by participating in the various ritual acts, which celebrate Life with Jewish flavours, colours and tones.

And: The commitment to engage with the accumulating wisdom of the world, to study and to learn about the major developments in human knowledge, and to find ways of ensuring that the developing wisdom of humanity in all its dimensions connects with and informs Jewish teaching.

Compelling Commitment Two:  Sustaining the Jewish Community and repairing the world

The commitment to honour both those that have gone before us and those who are yet to be born, by becoming links in the chain of the generations of our people, and by maintaining, restoring and re-creating Jewish communal life in Britain, in Israel, and throughout the world.

And: The commitment to love not only our neighbours, but also the stranger in our midst; to liberate the oppressed, protect the vulnerable, and support the fallen; to pursue justice and to seek peace; to participate in the great task of Tikkun Olam, the repair of the world.

Compelling Commitment Three:  The Eternal is our God and The Eternal is One

The commitment to explore the meaning of existence, to journey, to search, and to listen out for the voice of the Eternal, who calls each Jew to become part of Am Yisrael, the people who ‘struggle with God’, and to strive to sanctify Life each day through our actions and our relationships.

And: The commitment to acknowledge that the Eternal is One, and to work together with all the peoples of the world to recognise the essential unity of existence in all its diversity.

Unlike the traditional understanding of the ‘commandments’, these ‘compelling commitments’ offer a framework for our lives, without spelling out exactly what each and every Progressive Jew should be doing each and every moment of the day. It is the responsibility of each one of us to decide for ourselves, and in relation to those around us, how to put our sense of commitment into practice.

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