Sermon Review: Central Synagogue
(New York City)

With its bulbous green domes pointing skyward and its highly articulated facade, Central Synagogue, on Lexington Avenue at 55th Street, is a marvel of Moorish Revival architecture. Constructed in 1872 in tribute to Budapest’s Dohány Street Synagogue, Central Synagogue is now considered to be the longest-active synagogue in New York City. On Saturday, April 10, however, the sparse and largely silent congregation displayed little of the vigor needed to fill the sanctuary’s thousand-plus seats. The synagogue’s website says the congregation “provides a joyous opportunity for Jews of diverse backgrounds to come together for prayer, spiritual renewal and community in a warm, enriching environment.” The only joyousness that seemed to emanate from the congregants on this Saturday morning came from the family of a girl who was celebrating her bat mitzvah.

Still, the sanctuary’s ornate interior rivals those found in the synagogues of old Europe. Twelve, two-story stained glass windows line the periphery and a rose window centers the eastern wall. The shape of the ark mirrors the exterior of the building; the ark’s grandeur seems to cast a glow over the rows of wooden pews.

Central Synagogue is home to a congregation that is part of the Reform movement, and its services carry the hallmarks of a progressive congregation. The ninety-minute service on Saturday was accompanied by a five-piece band that included an organist, a clarinetist, and three singers. Cantor Elizabeth Sacks led most of the service from a position front and center on the altar. She sang in a folksy tone and often accompanied her vocals with an acoustic guitar. Because the music was well rehearsed and the liturgy was stylized, almost as if it were a concert and not a Sabbath service, congregational participation was minimal. Many people bobbed their heads or swayed to the jubilant tunes, but there seemed to be little understanding or recognition of what was going on.

Aside from the Torah and Haftorah (the weekly selection from the Book of Prophets) portions, the majority of the noncantorial service was conducted in English. The service moved briskly. The bat mitzvah girl, a slender twelve-year-old with long brown hair, introduced the week’s Torah portion, Sh’mini , from Leviticus 10:1–11. The reading introduces the story of Aaron’s sons Nadab and Abihu. Earlier in Leviticus, God appears before the Israelites as a consummate fire. Nadab and Abidhu, however, light a fire without God’s decree; God then kills them in a fire of his own. Nadab and Abihu’s nondivine fire was an affront to God’s power. As Moses tells Aaron, “This is what the Lord meant when He said: ‘Through those near to Me I show Myself holy, and gain glory before all the people.”

After the conclusion of the Haftorah, the bat mitzvah and her family returned to their seats, and Michael S. Friedman, the youthful, red-haired associate rabbi, began his sermon. In a rather high-pitched but convivial voice he addressed the bat mitzvah rather than the congregation. Redundant and reductive, Friedman’s sermon lasted no longer than ten minutes and offered very little in the way of Torah commentary. The theme of Leviticus, he said (paraphrasing British anthropologist Mary Douglas), is about putting life “into categories, or putting things in boxes. It’s about making sure each thing is in the right box, the right category.”

One of the most troubling aspects of the story of Nadab and Abidu is why, exactly, God killed them for lighting a foreign fire. Friedman’s shaky conclusion was that the brothers didn’t quite know how to manage life’s different boxes. In other words, they couldn’t adapt to God’s prescribed world. But as Friedman went on to explain that it’s nearly impossible to truly compartmentalize life (he compared life to a “messy closet”), he forgot to address the justification for Nadab and Abihu’s death. Why were they killed and not just scolded? Friedman challenged God’s actions, explaining that this world of boxes is a “fantasy world. It doesn’t really exist.” So how do we understand God’s actions? It seemed as if Friedman simply portrayed God as wrongheaded: God did not have a realistic sense of the world.

While his sermon had contemporary resonance and earned an occasional chuckle, Rabbi Friedman challenged the rules and values God laid out in the Torah by concluding that they’re only the starting gate. In an unassuming way, Friedman undermined the entire notion of Leviticus without offering any advice for how one might balance “life’s boxes” while staying true to God’s will.

And on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day, Friedman failed to draw a connection between Nadab and Abihu’s story and that of the Shoah. If God inflicted such punishment on Aaron’s sons, then might he have done the same to the Jews of Europe? Were they also guilty of failing to compartmentalize? Maybe those are contentious notions, but one might apply Friedman’s explanation of Nadab and Abihu’s death to other examples of Jewish suffering. If God’s actions can’t be justified, we should, at least, be helped to understand them.

Information
City: New York
Borough: Manhattan
Neighborhood: Midtown East
Address: 652 Lexington Avenue, at 55th Street
Phone: 212-838-5122
Website: www.centralsynagogue.org
Religion: Judaism
Denomination: Reform
Main Services: Shabbat services, Friday, 6 p.m.; Saturday, 9 a.m.
Pastor/Chief Liturgist: Rabbi Peter J. Rubenstein (at this service, Rabbi Michael S. Friedman); Cantor Elizabeth K. Sacks