This little light of mine
I remember when I married my first husband, a Catholic boy who converted to Judaism to be in my family, we went to a reform synagogue on Esplanade Avenue. I remember being almost physically ill by the woman playing the cello, the books that read from left to right, the absence of Hebrew, the absence of yamulkas, the absence of all I knew to be Judaism having grown up in an orthodox household.
A long time has passed since then and I’ve found myself holding a much broader view of what religion is and could be and why it works for some and not for others, and its place in community. I read with interest about a Reform rabbi who has rewritten the prayer book adding thought pieces by Jonas Salk all the way to John Steinbeck. The metaphors for god have been enlarged, the gender language neutralized, and I thought that sounds good. And right.
There has been some squeamishness within the Reform congregations across the country about the new book, but of course there would be, people stay with their religion because it’s comfortable to them not because it is dynamic and progressive. But isn’t it nice to think that even within the staid confines of something so institutionalized as religion itself, much less in a religion 5772 years old, a little light could shine?