Some thoughts to stimulate your thinking over Shabbat.
1. Dr. Daniel Gordis is a terrific writer and thinker. His recent piece in the Jewish Review of Books (see it at http://bit.ly/KJu9zT) was a response to those who responded to his analysis of the Conservative movement. Very Just Judaism in tone. I strongly encourage reading the whole article, but here are some of my favorite parts:
What all this suggests, though many Orthodox rabbis will publicly deny it, is that a large percentage of Modern Orthodox Jews are not theologically Orthodox; “revelation” and “commandment” are key words in the lexicon of their communities, but not so deep down, they’re motivated as much by sociology as theology. When the daughter of a childhood friend of mine recently married, she bought a sheitel, a wig, in order to keep her hair covered at all times. This would have been unimaginable in the crowd in which we grew up. When I asked her mother where the kids were heading for their honeymoon, she mentioned a place where I knew there was no kosher food. How were they doing that, I gently inquired? When they’re away, they eat in non-kosher restaurants, she told me.
Halakhically, eating out in such restaurants is far more problematic than not wearing a sheitel (which many would claim is not necessary at all). But intellectual consistency, the celebrated hallmark of Conservative Judaism, is not what these young people are seeking. What they want is meaning, community, closeness, and a sense of striving (incidentally, that’s what their non-Orthodox peers seek too). They have found these things in a halakhically demanding universe. And, although some of my interlocutors would scoff at their way of life, the fact is that it works.
In that community, the Jewish calendar is the metronome of life; they have homes infused with much more ritual, they learn more Torah, they intermarry much less, they visit Israel more often than their Conservative and Reform peers. They sing together and daven (which is not the same thing as worshipping) together. The best of them (not all, not enough) read just as much, think as broadly, and are as fully engaged in the modern world as their non-Orthodox counterparts, despite the intellectual tensions.
Many of the women among them find the opportunities for high-level Talmud study—opportunities that their mothers did not have—a profound indication that even in Modern Orthodoxy, feminism is alive and well. Pace Professor Judith Hauptman, most of them don’t need “ritual egalitarianism” to feel that they matter. Those who do, leave. That is what is wonderful about the American Jewish spiritual marketplace. (For the record, despite Dorff’s intentionally misleading suggestion to the contrary, nothing in my original article can fairly be construed as an endorsement of Orthodoxy.)
Minhag k’lal yisrael works, but it’s working for Modern Orthodoxy—because Orthodoxy was never afraid of cognitive dissonance. Does it help that Orthodox rabbis still speak in theological terms? Yes, it does, and that would have been challenging for Conservative rabbis. It may not have worked even had we tried; there is something powerful about the theological certainty that is elusive for most of the lettered class, and that is undoubtedly the reason that Pew shows Modern Orthodoxy struggling now too.
I do not see these elements as the basis for a movement, Capital-C Conservative or otherwise. The world of intellectual openness coupled to halakhic rigor is hard, which is precisely why what is called for is not robotically soldiering on, but seeking new partners and new ideas as we seek to teach and inspire American Jews. One possibility worth trying is a broad coalition of people who disagree strongly about matters of Jewish law and might not even be able to pray together, but who nonetheless become partners in articulating forcefully the necessity of these three elements, even as they go about implementing them in radically different ways.
This coalition could include the most intellectually courageous Modern Orthodox rabbis (including, but not limited to, Yeshivat Chovevei Torah and its “open Orthodoxy”). It will include the “socially Orthodox” along with the world of www.thetorah.com in which mostly Orthodox rabbis wrestle with the challenges of biblical criticism. It will include non-denominational institutions like Yeshivat Hadar and Pardes, along with the more serious Conservative rabbis and their communities. It will evoke the commitments of Magen Tzedek, the Conservative movement’s attempt to make kashrut a moral enterprise, more liberal communities like Ikar in Los Angeles and Reform rabbis who are also committed to the necessity of ritual and the centrality of study. Such a broad coalition might succeed where movements have failed; they could change the face of Jewish life in America by banding together even in the face of all their principled differences, precisely because Pew shows that time is running out.
2. Daniel Gordis postscript – What if Israel Were a Jewish State? http://bit.ly/1gpN6lL We Jews have our work cut out for us.
3. Can Jewish law get its creativity back? I sure hope so! That is the title of a Mosaic essay by the talented (and Ramaz alum) Joshua Berman. See here.
4. The Torah portions of the Exodus are full of miracles. The stated goal is for God to be recognized by the Children of Israel and the world. Sometimes the miracles seem completely unbelievable. That’s what makes them miracles. To end on a humorous note:
A student at the Hebrew University was noticeably affected while reading the Bible. When his professor inquired about what had so aroused his enthusiasm, the young man replied that it was the story of the parting of the Red Sea. The professor, who was not Torah-observant, told the young student to relax, because, according to the scientists, the Red Sea at that time was, at most, ten centimeters deep. A few minutes later, the young student became even more enthusiastic about what he was reading, and again the professor asked for the reason. The student replied, “What a great God we have. He was able to drown the entire Egyptian army in just ten centimeters of water!”
- Story by R. Nachman Kahana, posted here.
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