Judaism 2.0

Occasionally I take a little stroll through my traffic logs to find out what brings my rag-tag, fugitive readership to Axinar's, and occasionally there seems to be an uptick in traffic related to people looking for information about Congregation Beth Adam.

Of late, specifically a few folks seem to be looking for such things as "Beth Adam streaming", so I presume they are looking for Rabbi Robert Barr's famous podcasts.

Actually, I got to thinking about it - it is probably only because Bob Barr has more than your average rabbi's interest in technology that he even caught my attention.

I think it was something like 1995 - he was giving a talk to the local Libertarian educational group and I remember part of the talk went something like, "Are you familiar with the Internet? You better get familiar with it. Certainly the enemies of freedom are familiar with it," and then he proceeded to pass around what I remember to be a stack of 50-some pages of print-outs of neo-Nazi sites.

For those of you who for whatever reason might never have the opportunity to hear Rabbi Barr speak, he has been doing podcasts for quite some time that are usually quite fascinating.

Bob Barr and Beth Adam are no strangers to controversy. Beth Adam is a Jewish congregation that doesn't mention God specifically in its liturgy.

Now, I once had a conversation with an überfrum Jew at Mensa who said to me, "Why of course, this is a very Jewish thing to do." He explained that if there is a concept that the "YHVH" that appears in the Bible as a name of God is never to be uttered, and even "Adonai" ("The Lord") is not to be said except in serious prayer (substituted with "Adoshem"), and "Elohim" is never to be said except in serious prayer (substituted with "Elokim"), then perhaps there is a perfectly valid point to be made here that referring to God AT ALL (even with "HaShem" - "The Name"), itself is hopelessly blasphemous and perhaps ONLY Beth Adam shows the proper respect to God.

Now, I don't think that's the the thought process that led Beth Adam to omit any overt references to God from its liturgy. Agnosticism and Atheism are very important aspects of Judaism - a thought that blows away a great many people with a Christian background and is too lengthy even for me to get into right at this moment.

While going over the various search links, I discovered that the controversy involving Beth Adam even made it all the way to the New York Times.

You see, somewhere along the way Beth Adam decided they wanted to join the UAHC - the "Union of American Hebrew Congregations", the national organization for Jewish congregations affiliated with the "Reform" movement.

There's actually a fair amount that has been written about Beth Adam's rejection from the UAHC, but probably the most coherent description I've heard came from a local Reform Temple-goer who said to me something to the effect, "Yes, we sat down and decided that Beth Adam was most definitely JEWISH, but it was not REFORM Jewish."

Beth Adam has continued to survive and prosper, constructing its own building in Loveland, and continuing to have a healthy, productive relationship with the Reform movement - hiring interns from Hebrew Union College and participating in other functions associated with the Reform movement.

However, since Mrs. Axinar's mother doesn't approve of the Unitarian Church's lack of a specific theology, I'm assuming she would be UTTERLY disappointed in Beth Adam, so I'm not sure I'm ever going to be able to drag Mrs. Axinar over there or not.

Oh, speaking of the Unitarian Church and Bob Barr's penchant for controversy - check this one out - he gave the Chrismas Eve sermon at the First Unitarian Church of Cincinnati (mp3) last year (December 24, 2007).

Yes, in the world of Liberal Theology, strange, strange things can happen ...

Keeping Up With The Unitarians

So last Friday night I'm looking through the bottom right section of the "churches" section of The Cincinnati Enquirer and I see that the topic at the First Unitarian Church of Cincinnati with the Reverend Sharon Dittmar is going to be "Judaism" for Sunday, 1-13-2008.

Well, I'm thinking this ought to be good.

You see - there is a BIZARRE flirtation of Sharon Dittmar's way of looking at life and that of a great many liberal Jews.

In fact, pretty much right from the beginning of the sermon she hit it right on the head - that, in particular after a great number of joint lectures and classes with Rabbi Robert Barr of the Congregation Beth Adam people were beginning to ask her if she was turning Jewish.

On the other hand, after giving the Christmas Eve Sermon (audio file) at First Church, one might also ask if Rabbi Barr were turning into a Unitarian Minister.

However, Rev. Dittmar went on, some had also asked her since she got divorced whether she might have any interest in posting an ad on JDate.

Wait a second ...

Did I hear her correctly?

Yep ... I checked it out ... I heard her correctly ... she got divorced mid-2007.

This is what I get for not keeping up with the Unitarians.

Now, you see, when I first found out about Rev. Dittmar, one of the first sermons I heard from her was on the subject of marriage. In fact, I was seriously thinking about asking her to perform the ceremony for Mrs. Axinar and I before my dear, sweet mother-in-law put the kibosh on the Unitarians for being "too liberal".

However, I was fairly convinced Rev. Dittmar wouldn't perform the ceremony anyway. In her 10-9-2005 sermon she goes on for quite some time about how she interrogates couples who want her to marry them. She also said she only had one bit of marriage advice - marry your best friend.

Now she's divorced herself.

Oh, wow.

For some reason I found myself thinking of the M*A*S*H episode "Fallen Idol" when Radar says to Hawkeye, "A lot of people look up to you here. They admire you and they kinda feel they want to be like you. And ... Gee, when you walk out on an operation, you make them feel like you've let them down. If they can't depend on you, well, they figure, well, maybe there's no point in depending on anything."

I'm telling this to my little teenie-tiny pocket-sized professor friend and she says, "But, Ax, she's only human."

Oh, I know she's human.

I also know in other denominations, getting divorced is an absolute career killer for a clergy member. It's, in fact, what turned Sam Kinison from a preacher to a stand-up comic.

Perhaps it's just proving a concept I learned from astronaut Al Bean - that, no matter how hard you may try - you simply can't predict exactly what's going to happen in the future.

On the other hand, no matter how unfair it might be, it's quite hard to shake the thought that if someone like Sharon Dittmar "got it wrong", what chance do the rest of us have?