My Dear Friends

The second book of the late Douglas Adams’ very strange series, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” is entitled The Restaurant at the End of the Universe [Harmony; 1st American ed edition, November 13, 1982]. In it, he explains the real trouble with time travel. He says the problem is not becoming your own father or mother (“There is no problem in becoming your own father or mother that a broad-minded and well-adjusted family can't cope with”), nor is it the danger of changing the course of history.

“The major problem is simply one of grammar,” he explains. For example, how does one…

“…describe something that was about to happen to you in the past before you avoided it by time-jumping forward two days in order to avoid it[?] The event will be described differently according to whether you are talking about it from the standpoint of your own natural time, from a time in the further future, or a time in the further past and is further complicated by the possibility of conducting conversations while you are actually traveling from one time to another with the intention of becoming your own mother or father.”

Once he gets to the lesson on “the Future Semiconditionally Modified Subinverted Plagal Past Subjunctive Intentional” tense, you begin to see the problem.

What I’m about to explain is much simpler.

In the English language as commonly spoken in England, Ireland, Australia, Canada and much of the United States(!), to change a verb from present tense to past, one usually adds the suffix “-ed.” Not always (“run” becomes “ran;” “fall” becomes “fell”), but it is usually so. “I walked to school” indicates an action which has happened before the present and is now over. “I fixed my bicycle” indicates that the bike should now work as intended. “Intended” means as it was in the past designed or proposed.

If you want to indicate something that happened before now and that action is over, a safe bet would be to add “-ed.”

That is why I always correct people when they refer to our denomination of Judaism – our stream in the great flow of understandings of our faith – as “Reformed.” “Reformed Judaism,” we are not. The “movement” of our Movement did not just happen once almost 200 years ago and remain unchanged since. Reform Judaism is an ever-changing, evolving movement.

Certainly, at it’s beginning, it was more a revolutionary movement. When Reform Judaism was born, it proposed major changes in Jewish life and particularly in the location of the power to make such changes. However, if you track the path Reform has taken since its inception in the early 19th century, you find that one of the few constants in Reform is its understanding that change has been and must continue to be a fundamental reality in Jewish life.

In Reform, we constantly question and explore new ways of finding modern meaning to ancient understandings. The Reform Judaism of 100 years ago is not the Reform Judaism of today. Our primary values are the same – G, Torah, the Peoplehood of Israel; our obligation to strive for Tikkun Olam (the ethics of universalism); that Jewish obligation begins with the informed will of every individual Jew, to name a few. However, the ways of generations past may not speak to our thirst for meaning; that which we once rejected may now deeply touch us; even the struggle to find that which may be enlightening is life-enriching.

No, Reform is not something that happened once long ago and has remained constant since. We change and seek change; we grow and seek understanding; we explore and probe and broaden our knowledge and our appreciation of Creation, Creator and our place in the Covenant as well as our place in the universe.

It doesn’t end. Not a century ago; not today; not tomorrow.

So, in your Judaism, be comfortable but not too comfortable. Challenge your understanding; try something new; a new practice, a new melody, a new way to look at the familiar. Make the effort. It will be worth it.

I will have been going to already guaranteed it. (Darn that time-traveling grammar!)

Rabbi Michael Davis