Each Day We Accept the Torah Anew

Each Day We Accept the Torah Anew
Rabbi Angela Buchdahl

This Sunday, we will begin the Jewish pilgrimage festival of Shavuot – the most important Jewish holiday you don’t celebrate. Except that here at Central, and almost every other Reform synagogue in America, Erev Shavuot is when we celebrate Confirmation - a communal celebration of Jewish commitment by our 10th graders.

The first recorded Confirmation service in America was held in 1846, by New York’s Ahavat Chesed congregation – which eventually merged with Shaar Shomayim to create Congregation Ahavat Chesed Shaar Shomayim, which our founders astutely changed to Central Synagogue in 1917. So this Sunday, Central will celebrate the 179th Confirmation class of this congregation, with students who are in a line connecting back to the very first Confirmation service in America.

From our amazing archives, I have here a Shaar Shomayim Confirmation booklet from 1897. SLIDE 1: CONFIRMATION COVER 128 years ago, New York City had about 3.5 Million people and between 4-500,000 Jews. New York was already far and away the most populous Jewish city in the world, a distinction we still have to this day.

SLIDE 2: CONFIRMATION CERTIFICATE We can see that on Shavuot 5657, Frieda Kann was Confirmed. Here is the certificate to prove it. Jews love certificates! If you look at this first page… SLIDE 3: SERVICE BEGINS … it tells you so much. Consider yourself warned: this is not your old-school shul where you can walk in whenever you want. Service begins at 9:30AM. Doors will be positively closed. This is Reform innovation. Along with adding instruments, mixed seating and overall greater decorum.

The purpose of Confirmation as stated in the introduction, while over 125 yrs old, SLIDE 4: ZOOM IN INTRO still captures our intention today: “Confirmation means the religious instruction and examination of the rising youth in such an efficient and impressive manner as to make them forever loyal to their native faith. It is customary to celebrate the final act of Confirmation on the feast of Shabuoth (Pentecost) in the presence of the congregation when the confirmants, in solemn prayer and confession, declare themselves firmly attached and practically admitted to Israel’s Mission.”

Of course “Israel” here, written long before the State of Israel was established, means the people of Israel.

The tone and language in this program might read as “borrowed,” even Christian. SLIDE 5: CATECHISM Like Catechism, which is originally a Christian form of teaching religious principles through question and answer. Even the concept of “Confirmation” was borrowed from Christianity, which might beg the question – is Confirmation Jewish? BLACK OUT SCREEN NOW

Keep in mind, even the quintessentially Jewish Passover Seder, was adapted from the Greco-Roman symposium, where they drank wine, reclined, and made pedagogical use of questions. This doesn’t mean it’s not Jewish now!

Our early Reformers adapted Confirmation because they were a little uncomfortable with the highly rote and ritualistic ceremony of bar mitzvah, which, back then, was also –only for boys. Confirmation was not only egalitarian, but an opportunity for deeper, ethical religious instruction, at an age when students were more open to this. And maybe even more importantly – it was a communal celebration so that our youth would be “firmly attached and practically admitted to Israel’s Mission” –or in other words, connected to Jewish Peoplehood.

This is not a new idea – there is ancient precedent for this thinking: At the end of Deuteronomy, when Moses is about to die, he says: "Be attentive and hear, O Israel: This day – hayom hazeh – you have become a people to the Lord your God." This verse troubles the rabbis who ask: “was it only that day they became a people? Weren’t they already a people 40 years ago, when they left Egypt, stood at Sinai and entered into a covenant with God?”

The answer given by Rabbi Yehuda in the Talmud is that ‘hayom hazeh’ shouldn’t be read as THIS DAY – but rather: EACH DAY. In other words, becoming Israel is not a one-time event. It is not your bar mitzvah day and you are done, poof! – you’re a Jewish adult. Becoming a people requires a continual process of covenantal renewal. Of recommitting to Torah, identity and collective destiny. EACH DAY. To be a people, in this sense, is not just to have common ancestry or text— it is to have shared sacred commitments, chosen and RE-chosen, RE-CONFIRMED.

The last 20 months have driven home the challenge and opportunity of this message – with more force than I’ve seen in my lifetime.. Since October 7 many of us have been reconsidering and discovering a Jewish identity we may have taken for granted. We have witnessed a marked increase in Jewish visibility, solidarity, and activism which some have dubbed ‘the surge.’ Even in the most Jewishly populated city in the world, we see a resurgence here at Central – from Friday night attendance, to our largest religious school enrollment, to engagement in learning, a doubling of interest for our Center for Exploring Judaism, increase in philanthropic giving and a kind of emotional and spiritual awakening. And we know that this is happening in Jewish communities around the country.

The surge is not uniform, nor uncritical. It has included some very painful and difficult conversations in the Jewish community around identity, politics and solidarity. But we have the tools – and the mandate– to create, maintain, and grow a diverse Peoplehood.

For some, hayom hazeh, this day, is the first time they’ve taken the gift of Torah they received, pulled it down from the shelf and truly started learning it– and affirming it for themselves. There has been a powerful re-centering of Judaism in our Jewish lives.

And our Confirmation students know this so well. They carved out time to study each week, to travel to see a Jewish community in North Africa, which has not only strengthened their own Jewish identity, but solidified their understanding of being part of this Peoplehood. I invite each one of you to think about how you will engage the inheritance you’ve been given – because Judaism requires a kind of continuous re-upping, a renewed promise – not just to our Jewish selves but to our extended Jewish family.

Hayom Hazeh, THIS DAY, and EACH DAY, when we study Torah with new eyes, claim our identity, stand in solidarity, or in communal prayer, we become worthy of Israel’s mission.

So whether you’ve been in our pews for decades, or you’ve come to us after October 7 looking for your place among our people, I hope this Shavuot, we can all be Confirmation students, standing at Sinai anew, pledging a proud powerful identity – again and again.