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If you don't know and understand Hebrew, if you don't know and understand various Jewish traditions, if you don't know and
understand the nuances of Jewish history, you are quite likely to be lost at Jewish ceremonies.
Any number of times during my years as a Reform rabbi, I have listened to people describe the kinds of ceremonies they
do and do not want to have. Almost always they want a ceremony to be understood by those in attendance, whether Jew or gentile,
and by themselves. They also want the language to be appropriate and timely. People find the preponderance of feudal language
and imagery strangely anachronistic. Words like "Lord," and "Master," and "King" have lost
a great deal of their ability to transmit meaning in our age. At best, people tolerate such language as traditional and customary;
at worst, it feels meaningless and evokes a sense of disenfranchisement. During most of my rabbinic career, I have tried
to fit appropriate language into the forms of traditional ceremonies.
Contact Rabbi Jay Heyman at (415) 291-0990.
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My first teacher in this regard appeared early in my career when I conducted a Passover seder at a federal prison for youthful
offenders. When I read those words at the beginning of the haggadah that tell of our "forefathers" having been
wandering Arameans, an angry young woman rose up at the other side of the table and demanded, "What about our mothers?
Didn't we have mother, too! What were they, chopped liver? Since that time I have paid close attention to my use of words
and I've sought to incorporate inclusive language into each and every ceremony!
My goal in conducting Jewish ceremonies with an inclusive bent is really a theological issue. In our daily living, we
are so caught up in the culture of independence that a taste of spiritual community and universality lifts us all. An affirmative,
less particularistic voice counters the one so often heard in public ceremonies, the one that tells us how different we are
from one another, and how we must distance ourselves from THEM to avoid the contagion of similarity. I believe we must resist
this temptation and strive to beat our independent swords into open and affirming plowshares.
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It is not my goal to reduce religious truth to the lowest common denominator. I do not claim all religions to be just
another variation of Hillel's teaching, "What is hateful to you do not do to another." Neither do I want to claim that what
I have to offer is the best truth. What I want to embrace, especially in public ceremonies, suggests that while that selfsame
truth is available through the many doors of faith, the path leading to each of these doors is different. Thus, my path as
a Jewish universalist is unique to me, my social group, my family experience. Each path illuminates truth uniquely. Each
challenges us to live as best we can by these particular understandings, according to our own sensitivity, insight, and receptivity.
The only truth claim we must discount is the one of absolute Truth!
In today's world of zealots and holy warriors, real terrorists
base their behavior on the efficacy of only one path and on the primacy of destroying any other way. When people fail to
recognize the common ground on which our manifold paths are built, then their spiritual teachers have done their tradition
a great injustice and they have rendered their religious institutions moribund.
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