Reform Jews Beginning Journey Back to Faith’s Traditions : Judaism: Some accuse these liberal religious people of picking and choosing what they want to observe, and they agree. They are re-evaluating the role of tradition within liberal Judaism.

Robert Mirisch is a product of what he termed a “very assimilated” Beverly Hills Jewish home in which even the annual Passover seder lacked any semblance of tradition.

“It was a family dinner, not a seder, even if we called it that,” said the 51-year-old entertainment industry attorney.

Despite his rather sketchy religious upbringing, Mirisch found himself pushing for the inclusion of traditional Jewish practices associated only with Conservative and Orthodox Judaism when he served as president of University Synagogue, a liberal Reform congregation in Brentwood, from 1983 to 1985.

Today, the only food he eats at home is kosher, and he delights in Friday nights spent sitting around the dinner table singing traditional Hebrew melodies with friends and relatives. Saturday mornings, he attends a traditional-style Sabbath worship service.

But he still considers himself a Reform Jew.

“Philosophically, I am Reform because everything I do Jewishly, I do from informed knowledge,” he said.

Mirisch is an example of a small but growing number of Reform Jews who, to varying degrees, have embraced traditional Jewish customs, rituals and symbols. For some, it is a return to long-abandoned religious practices. But for most, it marks the first time they have embraced traditional Jewish forms.

“I call them the observant Reform,” said Lydia Kukoff, the Los Angeles-based director of the 1.4-million-member Reform movement’s national outreach commission. “That term was an oxymoron in the past. Today, it refers to the re-evaluation of the role of tradition within liberal Judaism.

“People always said, ‘We’re Reform Jews, we don’t do that.’ Now they’re saying, ‘Well, what do we do?’ ”

Although the number of Reform Jews embracing traditional practices remains small, “they represent a very clear movement toward an increased trying on of Jewish ritual observance,” said Rabbi Daniel B. Syme, vice president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations,the Reform congregational umbrella organization headquartered in New York.

Significantly, many rabbinic and lay Reform leaders are in the forefront of the growing trend, including Rabbi Alexander M. Schindler, the congregation union president, who has been urging Reform Jews to increase their observance of traditional holidays and life-cycle rites, such as ritual circumcisions and wedding ceremonies, for nearly a decade.

The new emphasis on tradition is reflected in a recently published union primer on Jewish life co-authored by Kukoff and Rabbi Stephen J. Einstein of Congregation B’nai Tzedek in Fountain Valley. The 195-page book, “Every Person’s Guide to Judaism,” emphasizes the importance of Jewish education, prayer and holidays and the significance of the Sabbath, all within the framework of religious freedom of choice and ethical action, the twin pillars of Reform philosophy.

“The book is an attempt to empower, to emphasize that Jewish tradition belongs to all Jews and not just a particular group,” Einstein said.

“We’re making the full tradition accessible,” Kukoff added. “Reform Jews often feel disenfranchised as Jews because they really don’t know much about their own tradition. The book makes it possible for them to rediscover Judaism and to jump in at whatever point feels comfortable.”

Reform Judaism began as a modernist revolt against Jewish Orthodoxy in 19th-Century Germany. Men stopped wearing traditional skullcaps and prayer shawls, worship services were conducted in the language of the country, rather than Hebrew, and Jewish law was no longer held inviolate.

In recent years, the movement has pioneered the ordination of women within Judaism and has recognized patrilineal Jewish religious descent, a radical innovation adopted in acknowledgment of the prevalence of intermarriage among Reform Jews.

Reform’s non-doctrinaire, easygoing approach toward religious observance has struck a cord with late 20th-Century American Jewry, and it is now the largest and fastest-growing segment of organized American Judaism. About 47% of all Americans affiliated with any of Judaism’s main religious movements belong to the 825 Reform congregations.

Although it is just beginning to gain momentum, the return to tradition started about two decades ago, explained Rabbi Lennard Thal, West Coast regional director of the congregation union, when a new Reform prayer book containing considerably more Hebrew was introduced, and Reform rabbinical students embarked on a new study program that had them spend a year in Jerusalem, where they were exposed to a full range of Jewish tradition.

The general awakening of ethnic pride and spiritual longing that characterized much of the 1960s and ‘70s was also felt by Jews. Tens of thousands have become ba’alei teshuvah , or newly Orthodox.

For some Reform Jews, traditional practices came to be an anchor in an increasingly more impersonal society, Thal said.

“We get lost in the big secular city, and so to be part of an identifiable group is to be part of a smaller, more manageable community,” said Reform Rabbi Jerrold Goldstein, who heads the campus Hillel Club at Cal State Northridge.

Goldstein said he began wearing a kippa , or skullcap, in public as “a sign of my intense identification as a Jew. . . . If you want to feel tribal, you have to do something tribal.”

For Peachy Levy, a Santa Monica Canyon resident, who grew up with almost no religious training, embracing tradition filled a spiritual need.

“When I realized that the whole of Jewish tradition was mine, as well, I began to feel cheated by the standard fare offered in Reform synagogues,” she said. “It no longer satisfied me.”

The embracing of tradition has led Reform men who missed having a bar mitzvah at age 13, in accordance with custom, to engage in the ceremony as adults. At Los Angeles’ Wilshire Boulevard Temple, once a bastion of classical Reform innovation, Rabbi Harvey Fields said adult religious studies and Hebrew classes have “doubled and tripled” in recent years.

It also has spawned traditional-style Reform minyanim, or small worship groups, that meet on Saturday mornings as alternatives to the non-traditional Friday night services.

Einstein said his Orange County synagogue offers a monthly traditional-style service conducted almost entirely in Hebrew. About two dozen worshipers regularly attend. “Frankly, it is my favorite service,” he said.

Mirisch and Levy attend the traditional service, led by Rabbi Richard N. Levy (no relation) at University Synagogue. From 15 to 20 people regularly attend.

Rabbi Levy said traditional-minded Reform Jews are attracted to minyanim because “they’re a place where it’s possible to talk about God without being cut off by the skeptics who predominate at most Reform synagogues.

“Reform Judaism has always stressed the importance of God, but as a matter of practice, unfortunately, too many Reform Jews feel they will be laughed at if they talk about their personal relationship with God,” he said.

Rather than accepting the full yoke of Jewish tradition, Reform traditionalists generally choose to observe only some practices and customs. Mirisch, for example, will still wash his car on Saturday if he feels like it, which is contrary to traditional Jewish law prohibiting work on the Sabbath.

Goldstein said he “picks and chooses out of the tradition those things that work for me, that feel comfortable and combine what I need in an aesthetically pleasing way.”

He and other Reform Jews emphasize that their optional approach to tradition is fully in keeping with the Reform emphasis on individual autonomy.

“Liberal religious people are accused of picking and choosing,” Rabbi Levy said. “It’s true. But that’s often where we have been led, and part of being a liberal seeker is to acknowledge being led along a path.”