Meet The Rabbi...

Rabbi, Ira S. Youdovin.

      Rabbi Youdovin is executive vice president of the Chicago Board of Rabbis. He has occupied leadership positions with congregations and with Jewish Institutions, both nationally and internationally.

   Currently, Ira Youdovin serves on the Illinois Governor's Commission on Discrimination and Hate Crimes. his associations include the National Conference of Community and Justice, the Coalition of Religious Leaders in Illinois, the German-Jewish Dialogue and the Catholic Jewish Scholars Dialogue.

   While living in New York City, Rabbi Youdovin was a leading participant in the Partners of Faith, which unites clergy of many faiths; Momentum, a program for feeding and counseling AIDS victims; and Beyond Shelter, which serves New York's homeless.

   Rabbi Ira Youdovin is a New York City native. He holds a bachelor's degree in psychology from Columbia University, a master's degree in Hebrew Literature from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, where he received rabbinical ordination in 1968. He was a U.S. Air Force chaplain, serving in California and Okinawa.

   Rabbi Youdovin has served congregations in Massachusetts, Florida, Illinois and New York.

RABBI'S CORNER

Feel free to contact me, my office number is 312-357-4715.  I am eager to meet with members of the congregation on any matter.

Please call to assure that I will be available when you come to see me.

Please note my new e-mail address is
IraYoudovin@juf.org
I may be in Beloit only on a bi-weekly basis, but I am your rabbi 24/7.

 Telephone and email is no substitute for meeting in person.  Toward this end, I have set aside time on the Saturdays I am in town as office hours at the synagogue.  If possible, please call in advance to make an appointment.  Otherwise, you may find me busy with somebody else.  But with or with out appointments schedule, I will be in my office at that time so you might try stopping in.  If you need to schedule an appointment at another time, please call and we will find a mutually convenient hour.

The Shabbat morning schedule now is as follows:

Saturday Schmooze with Rabbi 8:30 - 10:00AM

Adult Education 10:00 - 11:00AM

Please contact me for a personal appointment.  I look forward to seeing you during these times

As Always we invite non-members to worship with us.

INTERFAITH REPORT
Respecting other faiths' symbols

By Rabbi Ira Youdovin.
Published Chicago Tribune April 27, 2003

One indelible memory from the Iraqi war is of a Christian chaplain reciting the Shema, traditionally a pious Jew's last conscious utterance as he is dying, over a mortally wounded Jewish serviceman. The prayer, transliterated from Hebrew into English characters, appears in the manual issued to all U.S. military chaplains. Religious pluralism is integral to American life.

Interfaith worship services mark times of national grief, as well as moments of national joy. Clerics and lay leaders of diverse faiths meet regularly. Houses of worship are open to all. Christians attend Jewish services and vice versa, each group seeking to learn more about the other. Muslims invite members of others faiths to an Iftar meal during their holy month of Ramadan.

Years ago, the primary objective of interfaith exploration was to identify things shared in common, so as to homogenize religious diversity into a theologically neutral, trans-denominational expression sociologist Robert Bellah called "American civil religion."

Today, the goal is learning to respect one another's differences.

An article appearing in this space on Easter Sunday reported that many Christians are participating in Passover Seders (the ritual meal) being held this year in 250 Chicago-area churches. Those present say "it's an amazing ritual filled with references to Jesus," and they credit the Seder not only with "deepening their understanding of his teachings but also with heightening their appreciation of the Jewish community."

At first glance, this appears to be a splendid example of interfaith sharing, as might be expected in a city that justifiably prides itself on the strong ties that unite its faith communities.

But look again; there are no Jews at these Seders.

The participants are Christian fundamentalists whose purpose in holding them is not to enhance their understanding of Judaism. Rather, they seek to co-opt an ancient Jewish ritual, still practiced by millions of Jews around the world, by re-interpreting its symbols into something that is no longer Jewish but Christian.

Their "heightened appreciation" of Jews stems from this distortion.

They appreciate Jews not for what they are as Jews, but for this caricatured identity as proto-Christians. This is highly offensive to Jews. To be sure, investing religious symbols and rituals with new meaning is as old as religion itself. Sometimes the process fosters internal changes through which a religion grows and matures.

There is evidence in the biblical text that a Feast of Unleavened Bread, an essentially secular, agricultural observance occasioned by the disposal of wheat left over from the previous year's harvest that had fermented in storage, was observed in ancient Israel long before the exodus from Egypt.

After the exodus event, the Israelites added religious and historical meaning drawn from the hurried circumstance of their escape from bondage, creating the Festival of Passover. Similarly, Christians, and later, Muslims drew upon the Hebrew Bible and post-biblical literature for substance and inspiration in building their new faiths.

The prophets, especially, are read by Christians as a rich resource predicting Jesus' coming. This approach is generally accepted as legitimate, at least among theologically liberal Jews, so long as Christians do not view their reading as superseding the Jewish one.

Studying the Seder to discover what Christianity has made of its symbols is one thing.

Celebrating it as a Christian event is something else. Ironically, many contemporary scholars, Jewish and Christian, assert that the Last Supper was not a Seder. Professor Michael Cook of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati cites Mark 14:1-2 as evidence that Jesus was arrested before Passover arrived, which resolves the long-standing mystery of how a Jewish court could have convened the next day, if that day was a Jewish holiday.

Besides, it is probable that the Seder did not as yet exist in Jesus' time.

Before Rome destroyed the Jerusalem Temple 30 or more years after Jesus' death, Jews celebrated Passover with animal sacrifice, as ordained in the Pentateuch. Only when the Temple lay in ashes did the Seder appear as a home-based replacement.

Rabbi David Sandmel of Congregation K.A.M. Isaiah-Israel in Hyde Park, who is the first occupant of the Crown-Ryan Chair in Jewish Studies at Chicago's Catholic Theological Union, notes that the Christian re-creation of the Lord's Supper is first mentioned by Paul without any connection to Passover, and that none of the early Christian texts use the Greek word for unleavened bread.

Instead, all use the word for regular, leavened bread. Identifying the Last Supper as a Passover Seder is an innovation of post-Pauline Christians, who used the Passover symbols as harbingers of their new faith.

Nevertheless, when properly structured and conducted by knowledgeable Jews, interfaith Seders have a significant place in American life.

Among the first were "Freedom Seders" arising from the African-American/Jewish civil rights alliance of a half-century ago. African-Americans had always seen in the Israelites' escape from Egyptian slavery a paradigm for their own struggle. Jews, who championed the cause and marched in Selma, Ala., and elsewhere, were eager to share their own ritual celebrating that long-ago deliverance.

"Let My People Go" took its place alongside the age-old Jewish Seder songs. (The Anti-Defamation League's annual Black-Jewish Seder here in Chicago continues that tradition.)

Another, and more influential factor, is the recent direction of mainstream Christian scholarship.

Unlike the insular orientation of Christian fundamentalism, this view holds that knowledge of Jewish life is a prerequisite for understanding Jesus and early Christianity.

The Seder is an excellent vehicle for teaching this history.

Jesus may not have participated in one, but many of his still-Jewish disciples a generation or two later did. Both the Seder and early Christianity reflect the strong influence of Greek culture in the Roman empire. And perhaps most important, participants can learn through discussion what the various symbols displayed on the Seder table mean to each group present.

In the process, Christians whose knowledge of Judaism comes largely from the Old Testament will learn that Jews stopped sacrificing animals nearly two millenniums ago; that there is no exceptional significance in the biblical stipulation that the Paschal lamb be without blemish because that requirement applies to almost every animal brought to the Temple; and that the Israelites were not commanded to paint crosses on their doors, but to mark the lamb's blood on the doorposts and lintel.

Somewhere along the way, Christians will look at the sacramental wine and think of the Eucharist, which celebrates a Messiah who has come and promised to return.

Jews, in turn, will open the door to symbolically welcome Elijah the Prophet, whose role in the Jewish tradition is to herald a Messiah or Messianic Age that has not come.

Inevitably, each group will wonder whose theology is correct.

And perhaps someone will suggest that, when the Messiah does come, we all can ask him whether this is his first or second visit.

        Rabbi Ira Youdovin can be reached by     at   cbrabbis@aol.com

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