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Floating Congregation. Schechter toyed with the idea of quitting the rabbinate altogether. Then he faced up to the fact that "my thing is Rabbi." In fact, he concedes, though he was ordained eleven years ago, "it's only been about a year that I've been one." For a decade he "played the game," speaking softly and wearing a necktie everywhere. Then "I finally broke loose from the repression of the seminary and the rabbinate and I'm back trying to serve God." Some of his admirers from Temple Shaaray Tefila will follow him into exile, though not, says Schechter, to establish a new temple. "The last thing the world needs is another synagogue." His hope for the future is a sort of floating congregation, perhaps headquartered in a storefront. Wherever it is, it will be something "loose, unstructured—strictly a spiritual thing."
"I Have No Place to Go"
Like Philip Schechter, Martin Siegel has a jaundiced view of Reform Judaism. He, too, is 37: the two men, in fact, were classmates at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. There the resemblance ends. Schechter's anger is a howl from the pulpit: Siegel's is a whine from the swimming pool.
His plaint became public in January, when New York magazine published excerpts from Amen: The Diary of Rabbi Martin Siegel (edited by Mel Ziegler: World: $6.95), a book detailing nearly ten months of Siegel's life as rabbi of Temple Sinai in suburban Lawrence, N.Y. The article, which assailed the materialism and shallow religious loyalties of Siegel's congregation, provoked angry reactions throughout the New York area. The book is due to reach the bookstores this month and should incite more. It is a depressing portrait of a U.S. Jewish congregation and its rabbi.
In his diary, for which he had publication in mind from the start, Siegel lets it all hang out: the April Friday that he chose to give his "Sermon of the Year" on Portnoy's Complaint, and drew a Yom Kippur-sized crowd: the July day when he had to delay a wedding ceremony in order to satisfy the couple's wish that they be pronounced man and wife at the moment the astronauts landed on the moon: the mother who decided on a ruinous $15,000 bar mitzvah so that "we'll be able to face our neighbors." In perhaps the most appalling passage, Siegel records his question to a confirmation class: How many of them would give up their Judaism if it was necessary to get into a good college? Out of 14 students, 13 told him they would.
There are moments of humorous relief. At the Portnoy sermon, Siegel's mother announced her opinion of the book: "That Mrs. Portnoy, she was a wonderful mother. After all, she was only doing what was best for her children." At a four-day seminar in upstate New York, a 70-year-old lady developed a crush on Siegel and finally popped a proposition: "Why don't we go to Israel together? I'll pay." Notes Siegel dryly: "I guess she thought that's the way to pick up a rabbi."