Two Rabbis Rock the Boat

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.

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."

Reaction at Temple Sinai, where Siegel is still rabbi, has varied from reserved agreement to outrage. "We had such a nice family-like congregation here," laments one congregant. "Now this." Siegel's critics among his fellow rabbis are not so much disturbed by his portrait of a vacuous congregation as his own passive performance. "A rabbi," argues young Orthodox Rabbi Steven Riskin of Manhattan, "is foremost the educator of his community. He must impart values and represent them in his own life." Yet Siegel confesses that he "doesn't know" why he is a rabbi: he chooses to stay one because, among other things, "I have no place else to go." There is also, he reveals, an income of more than $25,000 a year, a 15-room home, and a swimming pool. "Who would want to give up a swimming pool?" he asks.

Clearly, not Siegel. In fact, he wants a raise "because in this community one's ability is measured by the amount of money he makes." Less than two months after the diary begins, Siegel records his visions of its commercial success, his potential as an "ephemeral public personality," and his chance for a shot at the Johnny Carson Show. But the height of chutzpah is the entry for Aug. 1, 1969: "Last night I dreamt I won the National Book Award for this diary." God forbid.

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