B'nai Emunah was a Conservative Congregation, not Reformed, but it had a large number of "three-day-a-year Jews." Most people fasted on Yom Kippur, or at least pretended to. The kids got out of school for the High Holy Days. Many of their mothers kept kosher homes, but they went out to restaurants for dinner and didn't always mind cheeseburgers. The men were of the "greatest generation" who fought through France or drove Higgins boats to Pacific beaches and then, having survived, returned home to obediently make money and babies for America. Some of them worked on Saturday.
Harold Stern was a very capable religious scholar, but he was an absolutely brilliant politician. His congregation was wealthy and large, and he was paid very well for many years, despite growing cultural cynicism and the youth rebellion that was in full flower by the time my wife and I were in high school. Stern later convinced the mother of a close friend not to attend her daughter's wedding because it wasn't Jewish; and in 1975 he told my wife and me that if I didn't go through elaborate rituals and grueling study to properly convert to Judaism (which he made a point of saying he wouldn't recommend anyway), then he would never officiate at our wedding. He was sort of a Jewish version of Richard J. ("shoot to maim") Daley or George Wallace to us. It seemed incomprehensible that he could get away with being so arrogant and mean, and yet be so respected for so long by our parents.
The ultimate crowning-blow offense was when Rabbi Stern was appointed to officiate at my wife's grandmother's funeral. He refused to even consider any statements or recollections by family members as part of the memorial. These were people who had loved the deceased Bubbie all their lives, but Stern insisted that he knew what to say and he didn't need or want any advice or suggestions from anybody.
In retrospect, Harold Stern ruled his flock of almost 1000 families with guilt. They knew they were not Jewish enough and their children would be even less Jewish. Their parents and grandparents were frowning on them from their graves. They had somehow left it to the Orthodox to replace the Six Million. B'nai Emunah's people would remain negligent in many duties, despite their rabbi's best efforts. They were ignobly assimilated, and the congregation finally merged with another shortly after the end of the Twentieth Century. Perhaps ironically, its architecturally beautiful building was sold to an Assyrian foundation, and it now hosts classes teaching an ancient Middle Eastern language that is not Hebrew.
Nevertheless, that one sermon about why we don't blow the shofar when Yom Kippur comes on Shabbat established Rabbi Stern as an important religious figure for me. Blowing the ram's horn is itself work; but what of carrying it to and from the synagogue? We are commanded to "Do no work!" on the sabbath; and we are also told to blow the shofar at the conclusion of the Day of Atonement. How do we choose which is the more important duty?
In God's eyes, the heroic, dramatic actions performed rarely or just once a year are not as holy as the routine weekly disipline. It's the ordinary, not the extraordinary stuff that counts most. We can dream all we want to about winning the lottery or an epic battle. But in the final analysis our happiness comes from mundane production of value added each week in life. If we can create our world in six days, then on the seventh we should rest: create time, plan for that weekly sabbath, not Christmas and New Years.
The current thrall of psychedelic drugs, and psychiatry's broader apotheosis of the brain, show our continuing human demand for a short-cut or a catalyst to give us mental health and spiritual salvation without a necessity for religious work and study, and tedious planning and collaboration. This is precisely the wrong instinct.
The "miracle of modern medicine" is a graven image. Psychiatry is the golden calf most offensive to God.
Have an easy fast and keep the sabbath holy.
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