Is It Politic to Preach on Politics From the Pulpit?

Rabbi Nancy Meyers saw the commotion and, fearing that someone had taken ill, stopped preaching in mid-sentence. Then she heard the voice of the congregant who was holding up his arms in an X.

“You have no right to talk about politics in the pulpit,” he yelled. “It has no place here!”

It was her first High Holidays as head of Westminster’s Temple Beth David.

“As he spoke, I heard others mumbling their consent,” recalled Meyers, 36, a Democrat who had been speaking on allegations of U.S. atrocities at Abu Ghraib prison and Guantanamo Bay. “I was unsure how to proceed.”

After confessing aloud that nothing like this had ever happened to her, she went on with the service as the protester was escorted out. But the aftermath of that 2004 encounter has broken new ground at the temple. It has been a learning experience for both the liberal rabbi, who comes from the Chicago area, and the congregation, which tends to be more conservative than most.

In her own pulpit for the first time, after six years as an associate rabbi in Illinois, Meyers invited speakers to address the issue of bringing together people with opposing political opinions.

She initiated a series of discussions titled “The Politics of Understanding,” in which handpicked volunteers planned how to create exactly that in the temple.

And recently Meyers hosted the first of what she hopes will be regular “brunch with the rabbi” meetings openly exploring the congregation’s divergent views.

“I believe our temple is big enough to support Democrats and Republicans and all points of view,” said Meyers, who describes the last two years as a “hard time for our congregation” during which she has received both criticism and praise and seen several members resign.

“In fact,” she said, “I believe it can be our strength. This is a great place to create bridges of understanding in an especially divisive time.”

What makes the dialogue at Temple Beth David particularly noteworthy, observers say, is that it is occurring within Judaism’s outspoken Reform movement, which historically leans to the left.

“The Jewish community is one of the most identifiably liberal communities in the United States,” said Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Washington, D.C.-based Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, “and the Reform Jewish community is even more liberal” than that.

The center, which acts as the movement’s social justice and public policy arm, has, among other things, condemned warrantless wiretapping and abuse of Iraqi prisoners. It also opposes the death penalty, supports same-sex marriage and favors abortion rights.

So why the controversy at Temple Beth David over the rabbi’s remarks?

“Orange County in general,” Saperstein said, “is more conservative than other parts of California.” And some believe that the war on terrorism, along with events in Israel and the Middle East, may have caused some Jews to shift to the right.

Yet a rabbi’s authority to speak from the pulpit remains sacrosanct, according to Saperstein.

“Even when there are differences of opinion,” he said, “there is nothing that says a rabbi shouldn’t speak out on the great moral issues of the day; her right to do that is an overwhelmingly accepted norm of Jewish life.”

Not everyone seemed to agree after Meyer’s first official diversity brunch earlier this summer.

“In my family we had people of all different views,” the rabbi told about 30 congregants gathered at the temple on a Sunday. “We used to sit around and discuss and argue, but we still were a family.”

To help illustrate her point, Meyers led participants in an exercise in which they made introductions after picking foil-wrapped chocolate candies -- one representing themselves, and one for each of their parents. In the parlance of the game, red meant Republican, blue stood for Democrat and silver indicated somewhere in between. It was a conversation-starter, to illustrate congregants’ political roots.

“My dad is Republican, very much so; my mom was a slight feminist, but not too much, and I’m moving up in the ranks of the Republican Party,” said Mark Bauman, 22, the assistant manager of a bookstore and member of the Orange County GOP Youth Advisory Committee, staring at the three red candies he had chosen.

Bauman said he hoped to run for public office someday as a Republican.

Joel Block, 58, picked three blue candies but added, “I don’t like labels. I would say I’m from the radical middle.”

And Steven Swartz, 53, chose two blues and a red. “Both of my parents are Democrats,” he explained, “but in name only. I was a Democrat in my early years, but Clinton changed me; now I’m a Republican and proud of it.”

The three participants later gave the event radically different marks.

“I thought it was great,” Bauman said. “I liked the fact that so many people showed up and remained civil; it shows that there are great differences among us yet we can all live together without blowing each other up.”

Said Block: “I appreciated it very much. I’m one of those who believe that you can’t separate religion from politics and politics from religion; one’s moral outlook often dictates one’s political approach.”

Only Swartz had a different take.

“I am really tired of politics at our temple,” he said, characterizing the rabbi’s brunch as a “stupid” waste of time. “I belong to the temple to learn Judaism; I really don’t want to go there for the politics.”

Meyers says she has tempered her approach to sermons in light of the uproar her remarks caused.

Though she still addresses controversial political topics, the rabbi said, she now tries to make them “thought-provoking and not infuriating. That’s the line I crossed before.”