Back to the Yarmulke...

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They have been debating, avidly, for two years, and when their leaders gathered in Pittsburgh, Pa., to settle the matter, discussion dragged on for an unscheduled half a day. But at noon last Wednesday, the domed sanctuary of Pittsburgh's historic Rodef Shalom Congregation rang with cheers. By a vote of 324 to 68, the leadership of the 1.5 million-member Reform movement, the most liberal of American Judaism's three big branches, accepted the inevitability of the yarmulke.

That is a bit of an oversimplification, but American Reform had long defined itself by its distance from what the skullcap represented. Its founders in 1824 were moved both by the Enlightenment idea that humans could better approach God through reason than through unquestioning faith and ceremony and by an urge to create a sleek American Judaism shorn of old-world adornments. They replaced much of the Hebrew liturgy with English. Their platform pledged allegiance to traditional Judaism's moral laws (avoiding the Hebrew word mitzvoth) but dismissed ritual observances such as rules for keeping kosher as "entirely foreign to our present mental and spiritual state." Visitors to Reform temples were often asked to remove their yarmulkes.

No more. At major Reform gatherings, half the heads are covered; congregants hunger for once discarded traditionalism. Says Rabbi Paul Menitoff of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, who shepherded last week's new Statement of Principles: "Our grandparents' challenge was to become acculturated. Our challenge is to be more in touch with our roots."

Accordingly, his document commits Reform to continuous study of "the whole array of mitzvoth," acknowledging that certain of them "demand renewed attention." Studded with Hebrew, it recommends study of the language "that we may draw closer to our people's sacred texts." Menitoff describes it as a "radical break."

A little too radical for some. Ronald Sobel, senior rabbi at Temple Emanu-El, New York City's largest Reform synagogue, says that in elevating ritual to parity with ethics, the guidelines constitute "a distortion of the uniqueness of Reform Judaism." Since the principles are not compulsory, they will continue to be debated by Reform Jews everywhere. But after the measure passed in Pittsburgh, the "for" voters linked arms with the "against" voters, and all joined in the traditional prayer song Shehechiyanu. The words are Hebrew. Everybody knew them.