The Reform Movement is getting tons of press these days

I read a number of articles recently about problems facing the Reform Movement, including this front-page story in today’s Boston Globe, and it seems that a big problem plaguing Reform Judaism today is that men are fleeing the movement in droves.  Look at some of these stats:

At the Reform movement’s seminary, 60 percent of the rabbinical students and 84 percent of those studying to become cantors are female. Girls are outnumbering boys by as much as 2 to 1 among adolescents in youth group programs and summer camps, while women outnumber men at worship and in a variety of congregational leadership roles, according to the Union for Reform Judaism.

The evidence is everywhere. At Temple Sinai in Sharon, nine of the 11 members of this year’s confirmation class were girls. At Temple Beth David in Canton, last Saturday’s Bible study drew 11 women and no men. At Temple Isaiah in Lexington, the executive board for the last year had eight women and one man. And at the Prozdor, an intensive supplementary high school program at Hebrew College in Newton, 59 percent of the students are female.

The analysts and experts are creating commissions to investigate the problem, but I think the reasons are simple.  According to this article in Commentary Magazine (the voice of the Reform Movement) entitled “What Does Reform Judaism Stand For?” it says:

In recent years, Reform Judaism, at the prodding of its Washington arm, the Religious Action Center, has issued resolution after resolution in support of Left-liberal positions across an array of political and social issues. It has opposed the war in Iraq and the nomination of Justice Samuel Alito; sharply rebuked the Christian Right; and vigorously supported the left-wing Democratic stance on gay marriage, affirmative action, and school vouchers.

In other words, the Reform Movement is a left wing organization.  It is leading the fight for “inclusiveness,” and pushes hard for things like women’s rights, gay rights, and egalitarianism.  But what does it offer a nice heterosexual Jewish boy looking for something “Jewish” to belong to?

Nothing – or not much at least.

He doesn’t feel at home or comfortable with all the left-wing ideologues.  He is cowed by political correctness and afraid to speak up or defend himself.  And so he leaves.  What do you expect?

Unfortunately for the Reform Movement, the swift exit of men is only one of its many problems.  I won’t list them all here, but I think the article in Commentary does a great job summing it all up:

What does all this augur for Reform itself? The movement has wagered its future on the gamble that a coherent and vibrant Judaism can be built on the idea of a big tent, on the informed choice of each Reform Jew, and on a highly elastic definition of both “Reform” and “Jew.” Both in what it cannot accept and in what it cannot but accommodate, the movement is very much at one with the individualistic and “pluralist” ethos of contemporary American culture. But for how long will significant numbers of people continue to be drawn to, or stick with, a religious movement that cannot or will not define standards for committed living, and that, except when it comes to political imperatives, has self-consciously shunned the very notion of imperatives?

June 22nd, 2008 Jewish Issues