Like clergymen of other faiths, rabbis have been known to have differences with their congregations, but U.S. Jews generally conduct their debates in private. Recently, however, two Reform rabbis, one in an established Manhattan synagogue, the other in a posh Long Island suburb, clashed publicly with their congregants. Their stories:
"We've Frozen the Form"
For Philip Schechter, 37, trouble began in earnest on the High Holy Days, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, last fall. He had been at Temple Shaaray Tefila on Manhattan's Upper East Side since May. Over the summer, with his beard already bushy, Schechter let his hair grow to shoulder length: hardly the image of the Reform rabbi. As the holidays approached, he asked himself what he could say in his sermon to many people he had never seen before—those who attend services only on the High Holy Days—and might not see again until the next year.
His message was the traditional yearly summing up and call for repentance. But he put it in modern context and made it unrelievedly apocalyptic. "Our world is coming to an end," Schechter told the congregation. Prejudice, hate and selfishness proliferate, he said. "The city is an ecological disaster." No two people today recall quite the same version of the young rabbi's rambling, extemporaneous sermon, but most recall that he quoted from rock lyrics, waved his arms prophet-style, peppered his talk with "hells" and "damns." Reform Judaism, he said, had lost its ability to adapt: "We've frozen the form and killed the spirit." The congregation was both delighted and vexed. "He's great," said one woman. "He's crazy," said her husband.
Before October was over, Manhattan Lawyer Sidney B. Alexander had prepared a list of complaints against Schechter. Among them: "an unsightly looking mass of hippie-type hair," a "spirit of levity" in the Yom Kippur sermon, and an unseemly harping on the "doomsday theory." The charges were tabled by the temple's trustees, but the malediction lingered on.
Schechter did not back down. He replaced older members of the Sunday school committee with people who had children in the school. To the young he spoke glowingly of Eastern mysticism, even recommended that they go to hear one mystic he admires, Swami Satchitananda. He continued to speak bluntly to his Friday night audiences and, perhaps more fatally, to the trustees.
He did develop admirers. One Manhattan surgeon, Dr. Murry Fischer, says that he went to temple more often for Friday services under Rabbi Schechter than he had for 20 years. Mrs. Frederick Block, wife of the congregation's president, says: "He woke everyone up. No one ever slept through his sermons." In the end, though, the critics won out. On the last day of January, the board of trustees voted 14-12 to recommend that the congregation not renew Rabbi Schechter's contract when it was up in June. A meeting of the congregation confirmed the trustees' recommendation by a vote of 144-135.