From: Joey Kurtzman
To: Jack Wertheimer
Subject: A Viable Judaism Requires Breaking from the Orthodox
Jack,
You are right: I don't regard the Jewish people as my family. I feel a great affection for Jewish culture, I value the Jewish tradition, and I feel a connection to other Jews. But there's no point in pretending that this is at all comparable to what I feel for my family.
At Jewcy we've talked about our "impulse to Jewishness," our persistent desire to connect with our Jewish heritage. As frustrated as we sometimes feel, as many times as we have been turned off by the Jewish community, we keep finding ourselves drawn back. But whereas our love for family may be inexhaustible, this impulse to Jewishness is not. And whereas we ask nothing from family in return for a role in our children’s lives, we demand something specific from Judaism in return for such a role.
Jacob Neusner has said that “the reason that Judaism has persisted and flourished as the religion of the Jewish people for nearly the entire span of recorded history…is that Judaism, in all its forms and manifestations, succeeds in explaining to the Jews the world in which they live.” Judaism simply no longer accomplishes this. Our demand is that it resume doing so.
A Jewish life ought to be one in which the wisdom and insights of Jewish scripture and Jewish history
Vos Macht a Amish Guy?: Does Judaism show us how to engage with the world, or how to retreat from it? help us more effectively engage with, and navigate in, the world in which we actually live. It shouldn’t serve as an alternative to that world, a sort of soft Amish-ism by which we retreat to the narrow, particularist concerns of one traditional community.
For decades, young Jews have voted with their feet, their hearts, their minds, their money, their lives, their children: we’re telling you in as many ways as we can that Judaism is being humiliated in the marketplace of ideas. You wonder how we can make young Jews shoulder the sturdy “yoke of Torah,” but this battle for relevance is the yoke that Torah itself is struggling to bear. I think you are right to fear for the future. I would encourage all Jewish-American leaders to surrender their optimism and begin panicking.
The Jewish-American leadership must eventually confront the reality that Judaism cannot thrive amongst a significant proportion of young American Jews unless we jettison the language and ideology of peoplehood. You say we need to "work towards a consensus on who is a Jew." There can be no positive outcome to that discussion. You would advertize the obsolescence of the tradition even by having that conversation. A Judaism that works will be one in which such antiquated concerns are retired once and for all, and a Jewish person is anyone who makes an effort to enrich his life with the wisdom of the Jewish tradition and Jewish scripture.
I understand that a shift to Judaism-after-peoplehood would be a historic change, as radical as the shift from a Judaism of the temple cult to a portable Judaism based on study and prayer. It will take scholars and others whose desire to make Judaism viable for the next centuries is stronger than their attachment to the old framework of peoplehood-centered Judaism. And it will inevitably mean a schism with the Orthodox and all others who choose to retain that peoplehood-centered Judaism. But we’ve been moving toward this schism for the past two centuries. This is why I talk about the mongrelization and impurity of my generation, our being new Samaritans, a people of polluted culture and ancestry whose Jewishness should not be trusted by the Orthodox. I use this harsh language because I want to shatter any delusions that this schism is preventable. All we can do is defer it.
Judaism-after-peoplehood must also be one in which moral obligations outside the Jewish community are of fundamental importance. You speak dismissively of the Jewish attraction to universalism—it’s a "flight of internationalist fancy," "adolescent emoting," and a "resort to motherhood and apple pie talk." And you ask why I don’t do volunteer work abroad, skeptical that the “yoke of Torah” has anything to do with universal concerns, or that someone can be morally serious unless they spend their time fretting about whether young male Je
Is This Worth a Responsa?: The good news is that he doesn't have to worry whether a peanut is a grain or a legumews can daven like their great-grandfathers.
Well, for what it’s worth I’ve done a good bit of volunteer work overseas. But for now I content myself with donating as much as I can to the best causes I can identify. Where is the responsa on how a privileged Jewish-American should go about picking a charity? The mitzvah commands that we donate ten percent of our income, no? But in cases in which further sacrifice on our part may mean the difference between life or death for someone else, do most Conservative rabbis hold that ten percent is still enough? One prominent philosopher says that middle-class Americans should donate at least 25% of their income to the fight against extreme poverty. How is this debate playing out at the Jewish Theological Seminary?
An intense and universalized ethical sensibility is something many of us associate with our Jewish heritage. Both my socialist grandparents and the Conservative Jewish day school I attended as a child communicated to me that moral issues were Jewish issues. "Tikkun olam," "justice, justice shall you pursue," "be kind to the sojourner," "pikuach nefesh": All of these were presented to me as universally applicable, rather than as the limited, ethnocentric injunctions of rabbinic interpretation.
Perhaps this was just happy talk, an attempt to persuade all these children of liberal American parents that their heritage was beautiful and visionary, without expecting we would actually buy it. But many of us did buy it. In the liberal movements of Judaism there is too much of this bullsh*t ambiguity about the content of our religion, too many fundamental disagreements obscured with intentionally vague language. Instead of working toward a consensus on “Who is a Jew,” how about working toward a consensus on whether it's pikuach nefesh or pikuach nefesh b'Yisrael?
The lesson you seem to have learned from the fate of Jewish unversalists like Rosa Luxemburg is that universalism is a fool's dream. But belief systems are not invalidated by the murder of their adherents. Jews know this, of course. Nor does the waxing and waning of antisemitism in 20th century Europe tell us very much about how things will play out in 21st century America.
Instead, the lesson I think we should learn from socialism's incredible appeal and longstanding influence in the Jewish world is that Emancipated Jews have been desperate for a belief system that instructs us in how to make moral and conceptual sense of the larger world, and that mediates our desire to play a positive role in moving human history forward. I see that same hunger today, and I believe that a reinvigorated, universalized Judaism, a Judaism-after-peoplehood, could sweep Frankenjewish America with all of the wildfire ferocity with which socialism once swept Jewish Europe.
Whether the necessary willpower and clarity of purpose exist to begin this new stage in the history of Judaism, I don't know. But I don’t think we can afford to wait any longer.
Thanks for doing this dialogue, Jack.
Joey
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zbird
Well put, but I'm not sure why you assume all orthodox must be ethnocentric.
In fact, the orthodox have freedom to be universalistic because their religion is based on observance of Torah rather than ethnic identity. As long as you daven three time a day, observe kashrut and shabbos, etc., the orthodox don't care if your father was a rabbi or a Somali warlord--you're still Jewish. Of course, you'd have to convert, but that possibility is open to anyone willing to make the commitment.
I think the people really challenged by universalism are the conservative and reform branches, because few conservative/reform Jews really believe the Jewish vision of god and the cosmos.
Without an ethnic identity, the orthodox still have Torah, but the conservative and reform Jews have nothing.
None of this means that the Orthodox don't ACT ethnocentrically. Most of them do (just like most people in the world). But if we need to draw lines between the universalist and ethnocentric Jews, I see no need to put all the orthodox on the other side of the line.
(by the way--in case anyone is wondering, I am not orthodox and have absolutely no personal stake in defending them).
Joey Kurtzman
Zbird, yeah, I agree with you. I'm not saying that all Orthodox are ethnocentrist; it's just that I think transcending ethnocentrism ultimately must involve discarding our legalisms about "who is a Jew?" And we can't do that without a schism from the Orthodox. Our Jewishness will no longer be reliable to them. We really will end up like a new group of Samaritans, people who identify as Jewish but who traditionalists regard as irretrievably polluted, no longer authentically Jewish.
Vortle
Isn't there already a profound schism in Judaism? I remember being in a reform synagogue where a member was semi-jokingly ridiculed for having a frum child- "I don't know where he went wrong".
Then there's the built-in sentiment of Orthodox that non-orthodox/Chassidishe/Haredi Jews are almost-non Jewish because they do not observe mitzvos, and even many people accepted by Reform or Conservative movements as Jews (e.g. Reform converts or those with a Jewish father but not mother) are not accepted as Jewish by the Orthodox.
Still, throughout the history of the Jewish people, it has been mitzvos and Torah that have maintained the Nation, not ethnic identity. In the beginning there was no ethnic identity- Avraham Avinu circumsized everyone in his household, including his slaves. Later people who were ethnically Jewish converted to Xtianity to escape persecution, and all along the way people who were not ethnically Jewish converted to Judaism.
The turning point in this I think was the Shoah- for the first time people were persecuted on the basis of ethnic identity regardless of religious practice rather than just being forced to convert to something. Now we live in a time when our psyches are so shaped by this event that ethnic Judaism really means something because we fear it might mean something to someone else. And many people are embarrassed by religious Jews- perhaps because the nation's psyche still sees them as dangerously obvious, and being associated with that kind of obvious Judaism as a risk of persecution. Whether or not people can come to a Jewish practice or agree with the Orthodox philosophy/halakha/lifestyle seems irrelevant here.
People from any country or nation do not seek to be separated from their compatriots ethnically because of a religious difference- they differentiate themselves religiously, even politically and this is enough. An African Christian and and African Moslem do not seek to remove their African-ness because they feel it is "tarnished" by people practicing different religions. There have always been and likely will be religious strife, but the link of an ethnic identity and a religion is really unprecedented and new. To a certain extent, it is even false- the "ethnic" life of Sefardi and Askenazi Jews is hugely different. The two are considered Jewish by virtue of having ancestors who practiced the Jewish Religion, not by virtue of having a particular gene set (which is usually the determining factor in an ethnicity).
My great fear of the Jewish people having this kind of schism is because of where I think it comes from. As much violence as Hitler has done to our Nation, our ethnicity, and our history, that event continues to work on us today when we try to separate from one another to prevent too much Jewishness from ruining everything.
Carmen O
I just want to make sure I understand you, Joey.
Anybody who finds some value--sorry "attempts to enrich his or her life"--with the Jewish teachings and scriptures is Jewish?
Madonna?
Rosie O'Donnel?
You're kidding, right?
Your redefined Judaism is going to revolve around what, exactly? Not synagogue, because that's patriarchal and outmoded. Unless we decide there's no barrier to entry and no language restriction and no requirement to believe in anything specific. So where's the Judaism?
Maybe the Jewish home? Kosher isn't good enough - you'd have to be vegan. Shabbat is nice, especially if it's reduced to nothing but some candles and family boardgame night. There won't be any prayer, I imagine.
Holidays? Some of the holidays are ethnocentric, though, and don't map easily to universalist themes. We'll have to do away with those.
What will it mean to be Jewish? To care about Darfur?
Sounds to me like the be-all and end-all of Judaism, as far as you're concerned, is acting or donating on behalf of world causes. Tikkun olam (not a mitzva or even a concept in the Torah), pikuach nefesh (a term stolen outright from halachic literature), pursuit of justice (an instruction with several real-world application for judges), and being kind to the stranger (a mitzva with very practical and well-developed parameters).
You ask whether anyone at JTS is debating the importance of 10% vs. 25% charitable giving. It's not a new argument, Joe. Read the Talmud. Read Maimonides. Read "Gates of Kindness."
There are 613 mitzvot, Joey, and we've spent the last 2000 years analyzing their parameters and ramifications and relevance, too.
"Your generation" can't read Hebrew, though. "Your generation" bought the Tikkun Olam pablum and never realized there's more to the story. "Your generation" was robbed of a decent Jewish education, and now doesn't have any interest in learning *why* those crazy Orthodox are so distracted by minutiae.
Get the source material down first, then pass judgement.
Joey Kurtzman
Carmen, every day, Americans show up at the Western wall, Americans who know not a word of Hebrew, not a thing about Judaism. And up sidles someone from Heritage House with the inevitable question, which must be answered before any other discussion can proceed: “Are you Jewish?” The kids can answer that question, because the one thing they do know is that Jewishness is determined by whether your maternal grandmother is Jewish. You find it absurd to suppose that Madonna becomes Jewish merely because she’s made an effort to learn Hebrew, to study some Jewish texts, et cetera. I only point out that it’s nowhere as vacuous and absurd as to suppose that someone becomes a Jew because they discover that, lo and behold, grandma Mabel’s mother’s maiden name was Berkowitz!
As for Maimonides, pikuach nefesh, et cetera you're only repeating my own point. Of course Jewish scripture and commentary offer much insight into modern problems. What I am telling you is that rabbis and other Jewish thinkers should be busting their ass to determine the appropriate application of these ideas to the real-world problems of most American Jews. They should be doing that instead of fretting about Jewish continuity and intermarriage and "Who is a Jew" and other parochial, archaic concerns that are of no interest to anyone but themselves.
My generation can't read Hebrew, and yours can't read Aramaic. You managed with translations, and so can we.
yonahred
Jewish peoplehood, or nonpeoplehood is changing before our eyes. Even the 200 some years since the emancipation, is but a blink of time.
What does it mean to be a Jew if you don't believe in God and don't believe in Judaism and you're satisfied to watch your Jewishness blend with other colors and produce new colors, but cease to exist as a previous color.
Actually it means that you are part of a transition stage. If a previous stage of Jewish ungodness and unpeopleness produced an offspring of Marx, Trotsky and Rosa Luxemburg, we shall see what offspring are produced by the newest stage of unpeopleness, which is less tinged with self righteousness than that previous stage (and the murder it begot.) In previous generations Jews baptised themselves and ceased (?) being Jews. Today we mix and intermarry and have multiple identities and continue to be Jews, but also the new something that's a new color, not the same color as before. And in transition we are vaguely conscious of what we were and what we may become but superconscious of what we are.
mmausner
i find myself agreeing with zbird, joey, AND vortle. Jewish identity IS all of those things.
Two nights ago i had a wonderful conversation with my (orthodox, settler) rabbi about how to handle my brother's upcoming intermarriate to a non-jewish girl. My brother is (barely) reform, same as my parents, but he actually does want a jewish wedding, and as the family 'expert' on judaism, he wants me to get him a tallit and ketubah. I was feeling conflicted about this for a number of reasons, including halachic-- even as I might want to give my brother's wedding my blessing, to give it 'jewish' sanction as an orthodox jew, implying that I or that orthodox judaism approves of this, is problematic.
So I asked my rabbi, whose yeshiva is mostly baalei tchuva with non-religious or non-jewish or intermarried families, but whose ideology is that engagement with said families should always remain strong, unlike the haredi cut-yourself-off POV. He actually told me I should do all that my brother wants and more, and if (as has been hinted at) his fiance is considering converting reform, I SHOULD encourage it even though Reform is so limited or 'wrong'. His rationale, roughly:
at several points in Hebrew/Jewish history, identity was NOT so set in stone as modern halacha would have it. It was largely patrilineal or 'either' through into 2nd temple times, according to pshat 'nach; and in Megillat Esther, a remarkable reference is made to people 'judaizing' ("mityahadim", i think) which implies linguistically that people were getting into judaism and identifying with us SHORT of some sort of elaborate, permanent conversion process. Likewise in Roman times. He then said that there is a tremendous blessing to people who openly make a public committment, in whatever form, to identify with am yisrael-- which certainly could include reform conversion and even Madonna. If these people want to call themselves Jewish, with all the dangers and downsides of that, we should welcome them with open arms. In fact, we should recognize a category of "Jewish" which is NOT halachically Jewish, but which IS Jewish. And for positive, not Nuremberg reasons (tho of course those are intertwined.
Let's hear it for inclusive orthodoxy! Am yisrael has far too many problems and enemies to waste time bickering amongst ourselves. Anyone who wants to join our struggles, and our vulnerability, and our tikun in the world, is welcome: we need all the help we can get.
mhpine
Its pretty clear that Kurtzman rejects Orthodox Judaism, JTS-style Conservative Judaism, Zionism and Post-War civil Judaism (based on the ethnocentric pillars of Federation, Holocaust rememberance and soft Zionism) as realistic alternatives for the majority of Americans of Jewish descent.
Fine, but there's an entire world out there of Reconstructionist and Reform Judaism that rejects the halakhic definition of Jewish identity and places the univeralistic values of Judaism front-and-center. Its obvious why Wertheimer believes that these movements are unsustainable and endanger the future of American Judaism - but Kurtzman has written a pretty cogent defense of the positions these movements have taken towards the collapse of ethnic and cultural boundaries in America.
I am puzzled, therefore as to what Kurtzman's main objection to the Reform and especially the Reconstructionist approach to the American Jewish condition. Is it anything more than simply an instinctive rejection of anything that is part of conventional American Jewish life, or is there something deeper at play here?
Anonymous
Either by birth or conversion. If your brother's fiance wants to convert it should be done before the wedding or else it will not be an authentic Jewish wedding.
You should not help your brother disrespect the Jewish religion or people by blatantly breaking it's laws and traditions. The problem is that Jews today are too inclusive and this has weakened Judaism to a breaking point. The Rabbi you spoke to is part of the problem.
If your brother's fiance does not want to convert than they should not get married by a Rabbi. They will never have a Jewish wedding if she doesn't. I'm guessing that this is a ploy by your brother's fiance to make your parents feel better about her. If she really wanted to convert to Judaism she would have done it already.
lmoldo
[This post is the first one of the series that I've read]
I can't tell you what JTS's discussion or reality is. Having recently graduated from another seminary, I can tell you the following for myself: my documented monetary Tzedakah has ranged from 5% of income in those years where starvation was imminent to 20% in those years where that was possible. In kind donations have always been a part of our life as well.
This is more of a "pre-response" than an actual Teshuva (Rabbinic Answer). The numbers are approximate, based on my memory of what I've read and studied.
There are at least three issues involved.
1. You are not allowed to impoverish yourself in the process of worshipping God or fulfilling mitzvot such as Tzedakah.
2. The tax to help the communal infrastructure operate consisted of a minimal poll tax and 10 to 25 percent of income or production, depending on the year. Today this could be realistically split between bankrolling Academic R & D, supporting Jewish R & D, and keeping the poor alive.
3. Translating the agricultural equivalents into the modern business world (although those who are involved in agriculture should retain the original concepts) we should retain a section for scroungers (those who can use our raw materials for their personal use as well as we can for our business use), a lost pile for others to find - specifically of items that have been processed but not packaged (through operator error or machine malfunction) and items that have been packaged but somehow not delivered properly.
A full treatment would go into more detail and cover more business options.
Part of the problem, however, is that there is a difference between "how-to act" documents and teshuvot. A teshuvah requires a question; a "how-to" document "merely" requires a market.
On a couple of other topics you mention:
I'm reading a book by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz; he doesn't let you opt out so easily. He said pretty much word for word that no born Jew can stop being Jewish (despite how "unjewishly" the person may act).
Your stated sentiments towards Jews and Judaism are actually kinder and gentler than many of my connections towards some members I'm biologically related to.
Anonymous
"I think transcending ethnocentrism ultimately must involve discarding our legalisms about "who is a Jew"? And we can't do that without a schism from the Orthodox. Our Jewishness will no longer be reliable to them. We really will end up like a new group of Samaritans, people who identify as Jewish but who traditionalists regard as irretrievably polluted, no longer authentically Jewish."
This schism you advocate for has already happened. Orthodox Jews I have met won't date or marry Reform Jews because they feel they cannot be sure the person is really, Halachically Jewish (aside from differences in lifestyle, but say, in teh case of a ba'al tshuva...). Even more so with non-Orthodox converts.
Moreover, I learned recently at a shi'ur that I went to on Shavu'ot that even if people are born Jewish if they stray from religious observance they are legally considered to be like non-Jews and are treated as such, including that they can't touch kosher, non-mevushal ("pasteurized") wine lest the wine become treif, you can't eat their food or off their dishes, etc. Non-religious Jews are treated esentially as non-Jews as per relatively recent Halachic decisions.
So there, you have your wish.
But I think a sense of Jewish peoplehood is a good thing and worth keeping, in my opinion.
Why?
Because WHEN YOU LIVE AS PART OF THE JEWISH COMMUNITY then it's like a place "where everybody knows your name...and they're always glad you came." And that place can be anywhere in teh world where latge numbers of Jews congregate. I have seen people run into old friends from school and camp that they haven't seen in 10 and 15 years on teh Upper West Side or at parties run by Jewish organizations. It imparts a sense of belonging that most people today are sorely lacking, with teh result being all the alienation and despair that we see in modern life. Sure people may get in each other's face and people may get sick of being amongst the some people all the time, BUT as long as people don't cut themselves off like the Haredim and keep porous boundaries, you can have a nice cozy community life and feeling of belonging that is increasingly rare these days.
Why throw this away? Is being "like everyone else" worth it, really? I don't think so.
Anonymous
Too many people here on Jewcy just seem to be burned by the fact that they are products of intermarriage, (and given intermarriage trends in this country most likely the father is Jewish and the mother isn't), making you most likely not Jewish and people making this known to you after your parents LIED to you and told you that you were Jewish.
But Halacha is clear. You can continue to ignore it if you like, bit it is what it is. And unless you want to become a big Rabbi and put out a psak din saying patrileal decent is now OK to be called Jewish even in Orthodoxy (unlikely, especially since if your mother is not Jewish and you haven't converted you will now have to convert before becoming a Rabbi). Or you can just stick with thr Reform movement which has its own rules on this matter and leave everyone else to what you perceive is their own "mishegoss".
When feeling like others think you don't measure up somehow, you can either accept these people's perception of you and do something about it or you can reject these people's perception of you and stay as you are. But you can't expect to not change yourself AND force other people to change their perception of you. You can't make people think/believe anything they don't want to.
David Strauss
"But you can't expect to not change yourself AND force other people to change their perception of you. You can't make people think/believe anything they don't want to."
From that premise, racism, antisemitism, and homophobia are inescapable chains on human society. I certainly hope that's not the case.
torah
What a joke. So you want to be goyim? Good plan. Go learn Torah and stop this nonsense.
Gary D Anderson
My father was Jewish. In college a Jewish guy asked me if I was Jewish. I asked him why and he said that I looked just like his best friend. My daughter, 10 years ago looked just like Monica Lewinsky, and she would go into a restaurant and waitresses would take her drivers license and show the cook. A lady ran across the room where she was hired and asked her if she was Monica Lewinsky. You can see her more mature face at http://bgamall.stumbleupon.com
Now, I am going to approach this from a New Covenant perspective, because people will not really understand unless we do this. Paul was a Jew. He has this complete discussion in Romans chapter 11. He essentially said that the Jews were cut off from being chosen in Christ and the Goyim were given that election. But this cutting off is not a permanent status. Paul says that in the last of the last days, the Jews predestined to believe would be grafted back onto the olive tree, and they would be called and the goyim would be hardened.
Paul does not specifically state in the discussion who is a Jew and who isn't, but he is aware, acutely, of a nation, of a nation that was cut off, and that some of the descendents of that nation would be grafted in by divine revelation. That has happened to me as I foolishly proclaim this to all of you.
That means that even though I am not Jewish in the sense that Ezra defined jewishness, I am a descendent of Israel, and I have been called with this power of God. Israel is not holy, nor will it ever be again, but it is a sign of the end times, and a sign that God is showing mercy to the descendents of Jews. If God can choose me, with a Jewish father and being adopted by gentiles, then he can choose any descendent and Paul is on record as saying he doesn't care about geneology, but rather relied on the power of the living God.
I am quite aware that some of you will hate what I say. Maybe all of you. But I had to say it, I am compelled to say it. The goyim are not hearing, and maybe they are cut off from the olive tree, although I hope not, but you are the only ones left to tell.
The socalled Jews for Jesus are not hearing, because they believe in legalism, and in free will, and not in the power of a very selective God, who chose Abraham, who chose Isaac and hated Esau before they were born and before either had done good or bad, who chose all the servants that he used for His glory.
You all know that according to Daniel, as seen at the bottom of http://www.newcovenanttheology.com/dispensation.html the Jews were expecting the Messiah. The time was right. They even tried to make Jesus king but he could not become king until his ressurrection, because he had to offer himself as the perfect sacrifice first. With this sacrifice, this perfect King has fulfilled the sabbath rest, fulfilled the priestly office perfectly, fulfilled the perfect sacrifice, fulfilled the work of keeping the law, so the elect are not bound by it, fulfilled the law of love, the new law of Christ which is a circumcision not made with hands,in the heart.
The elect are bound by a law that seeks not the impossibility of a perfect obedience, but rather by a law of faith and love that looks to Christ as the perfect righteousness. He is Paul's righteousness and it was for the hope of Israel that Paulsuffered continual hardship.
For this prophesy of Paul to be true, those like me have to be called. It is time for the Jews. It is becoming too late for the goyim. The promise of a better Moses who has a better priesthood is now returning to you.
Gary D Anderson
http://bgamall.stumbleupon.com
Michael Brunner
It is time for the Jews. Time for them to become part of the community of humanity and not a separate species plotting against it, sometimes in awareness, sometimes not, but in any event causing a disproportionate amount of suffering on Earth for Jew and Gentile alike.
Use that Jewish intellect, now often cloaked in atheism as a proxy for anti-Christianity to proselytize the gullible Goyim into a 'Judaic' world-view, to ask seriously, what kind of God is this that the Pharisees have given you ? Is it, like Luther described; the poor stupid cobbler who can only make the left shoe , presumably the Godly Jews being the right or even the feet inside them. Is it Satan ? Are you working the left hand of God by bringing evil on Earth ? To bring a new Holocaust down on all of us ?
It is time for the Jews, time to abandon this genocidal sick nonsense of a gutter religion and a terrible identity that is ever trying to be made the politic of the day and join humanity.
Gary D Anderson
Michael, I am not certain what you mean, but if you are referreing to the neocons and the power of politics to corrupt religion, I would view that as being inevitable. I am no fan of Martin Luther, who ruled his church/state with little mercy, who wanted the Jews expelled from Germany, and who talked out of two sides of his mouth, but always relied upon the state in the end. See http://www.newcovenanttheology.com/luthermenno.html and look toward the bottom of the page regarding Luther and the Jews. It is quite likely that Luther sowed the seeds of the holocaust with his statements and beliefs.
Gary D Anderson
http://bgamall.stumbleupon.com
Anonymous
when you meet a jew, s/he usually brings it up in the first
few minutes of the conversation, as if anybody really cared?
David Strauss
How are you counting the people who are Jewish who don't mention it at all? Your sample is inherently biased.
mmausner
Anonymous, you're missing the point about my brother's intermarriage (and why would I take your word over the poskin of a well-established orthodox rabbi in Israel?)
There IS room in the larger identity of 'Judaism' for people who are not halachically Jewish. There is room for a Jew-'ish' wedding that's not halachic, performed by a reform 'rabbi'. Neither the marriage nor the children will be halachically Jewish: on that we do not disagree (nor would my Rabbi make that claim). But we are accepting of the reality of the situation of Am Yisrael in its current state of Galut.
B'di'avad (do you know what that category means? essentially, after the fact) we should accept and love any of our friends and family who intermarry, even if we might try to discourage it beforehand. And we should encourage them to connect to Torah in any ways they feel comfortable with, even as we maintain a clear distinction between what halachic definitions and larger definitions of Jewish are.
Reform and Reconstructionist threw the baby out with the bathwater in many ways. But the problems of am yisrael in this world are too large, the threats too dangerous and existential, to constantly be coming from a place of cutting-off and alienating each other. Also, a true understanding of Jewish history will recognize that Jewish identity is and has always been fluid in many ways, and we should welcome the 'ger' (really 'stranger', oft translated as proselyte but that's not really accurate) among us. Whether or not they have converted or want to, halachically or not. If the message of Torah is not to reach out to people with love, you're not getting it.
Anonymous
A powerful personal story Mr. Anderson.
While I don't agree with your "End Times" eschatology, I agree that some kind of neo-Jewish 'awakening' is happening and that Jews who were once 'cut off' are returning to the Jewish fold.
This happened to me, too: I just recently found out that I have significant Jewish ancestry...this happened last year, when I was 24 years old (and I had NO CLUE about my Jewish ancestry my entire life up until that point)! And while I have no interest in Judaism (or ANY organized religion for that matter), I do now understand the definite ethnic component of Jewry and am seeking to learn more about my ethno-religious heritage.
Gary D Anderson
Don't be anonymous, stand with your ethnic roots. Don't be like Paul Allen. I was always perplexed about Paul Allen, because he could have joined PNAC or something. Maybe he played the race card a bit too much to turn back?
Gary D Anderson
http://bgamall.stumbleupon.com
mmausner
anonymous, it may be impossible to separate what is jewish 'religion' from ethnic-cultural heritage. My rabbi always has had the point of view that the 'tradition', meaning the wealth of texts and customs and holidays etc., is something that should be accessible to all Jews. That is, whether or not you have the slightest interest in 'becoming religious', you should develop the skills to learn Tanach, Talmud, and Chassidut and meet the tradition on its own terms-- and on your own terms.
Reformit
Reform Jews may not observe halakhah, but we Reform Jews do still have Torah and mitzvot. The major difference is not that the Orthodox are "religious" and we are "secular," but that the Orthodox believe that Written and Oral Torah were given directly by God and the Reform believe that Torah was given by God through human agents and must be interpreted. We also believe that revelation is an ongoing process, not a one-time deal on Sinai.
Anonymous
You don't get "it." I never once said that Jews who intermarry should be shunned or not loved by their families. They should be accepted but we can't pretend that they can have legitimate Jewish weddings or have Jewish children if their non-Jewish spouses don't convert. There is no such thing as a "Jew-ish" wedding. It either is or isn't.
Your brother will never have an authentic Jewish wedding before God if his fiance doesn't convert, period. I don't care what one misinformed "Orthodox" Rabbi says about it.
Judaism is in trouble because it has been watered down to accommodate non-Jews who want Judaism lite because of marriage and have no real interest in the real meaning of Judaism.
I wish your brother good luck and success in his marriage but he should accept the fact that his "Jewish wedding" will be a sham as long as his fiance doesn't convert. He's marrying a non-Jew and the result is that his children will not be considered Jewish. He should just embrace this fact and get over trying bring Judaism to a relationship where it has never existed.
mmausner
not everyone is that narrow. halachic is the strictest, most legitimate category of judaism, but it's not the only one even for orthodoxy. i don't see why you want to rain on someone's parade.
Anonymous
I wasn't born yesterday, but even I was surprised to see that in the book "Orot," Orot Yisrael chapter 5, article 10 (page 156), Rabbi Kook says: "The difference between the Jewish soul, in all its independence, inner desires, longings, character and standing, and the soul of all the Gentiles, on all of their levels, is greater and deeper than the difference between the soul of a man and the soul of an animal, for the difference in the latter case is one of quantity, while the difference in the first case is one of essential quality."
Doesn't look like an auspiciouis analogy...if somebody referred to blacks this way, the world would be
up in arms, or at least some people would.
Yair_ben_Avraham
Mausner,
As a non-orthodox convert who studied for several years before actually converting to Judaism I really appreciated your posts about your Rabbi's suggestion that there is a Jewish "umbrella" that extends beyond the borders of "halakhic" Jewishness. I leyn Torah at my synagogue, teach the bar/bat mitzvah students to do the same, occasionally lead services when the Rabbi is away, and teach adult education classes. I am Jewish, whether or not anyone in the orthodox community thinks so. My Jewish identity is not based on whether or not I am counted in an orthodox minyan. When I was recently in Israel, I hung out with Jews of all persuasions, from secular atheists to haredim, and with all of them I felt the connection of being a Jew. Would my daughters be able to marry all of them? Not without undergoing orthodox conversions of their own, if they wanted to marry any of the orthodox I met. Would I want my daughters to marry in to haredi communities? Not particularly. But those issues of heritage and conversion aside, I felt the connection with all of the Jews with whom I spent time in Israel.
As for the argument that some have raised that we would have to accept anyone who says they are Jewish (like Madonna - even though she clearly says she isn't Jewish), there is little strength to it. First of all, the "Kabbalah Centre" folks are there precisely because they do not want to convert to Judaism. If they wanted to be Jewish, they could convert. But they don't. Even "Messianic Jews" (most "Messianic Jews" I've met have not been at all ethnically Jewish, or Jewish through any conversion to Judaism) are not a problem. Mordechai Kaplan wrote of Judaism as a civilization, and that Jews decide what is Jewish. If we see something standing in front of us and we (for the most part) reject it as being legitimately Jewish, then it's not.
Anyway... congratulations on having an inclusive Orthodox Rabbi who clearly understands the reality facing people with non-orthodox conversions and the born Jews who are in their lives.
kol tuv,
Yair
mmausner
for sharing... while on the one hand I have a lot of problems with the ways reform and conservative have defined judaism and departed from the halachic process, on the other hand I think conversion should be relatively easy, and that the orthodox establishment stubbornness about it is a big problem for Am Yisrael.
My rabbi encourages people to be ENGAGED with halacha: learn about it, respect that there is a wisdom to the structure that is more than the sum of its parts, be willing to step into that world on its own terms. That is not the same thing as expecting people to be OBSERVANT of halacha; only to understand that it is an essential aspect of Judaism, however one reacts to it. When reform completely abandoned engagement with halacha (most reform jews in america don't even know what halacha is), it departed from the jewish klal in a very problematic way.
Yair_ben_Avraham
Hi Mausner,
You are definitely correct about the Reform movement's treatment of Halakha, although I argue that the Conservative movement didn't really abandon halakha - individual Conservative Jews might have in practice, but not in substance. In that movement halakha is still considered binding, and it can only change when the Committee on Law and Standards, a rabbinical board comprised of the movement's top legal and Torah minds, votes accordingly. This seems more grounded in the system of halakha; Reform threw it away, where Conservative/Masorti just tried to relate to it differently. Whatever the case, your objections in that regard are valid, and the failure to learn halakha in Reform communities (and to a lesser extent Conservative ones) means that people often know very little about how to practice traditionally. In many of these cases, children do not see things being done in the home (tefillin being laid, sukkah being built, kashrut being observed, etc...) and therefore do not know about them. The Jewish knowledge of many of the Reform people one meets is extremely low, and I think this can be directly tied to the outright abandonment of halakha - as you point out, not even talking about observance, just speaking of awareness. Anyway... hopefully even the Reform movement is ready to start reconsidering things, and I know that some in the Reconstructionist movement are talking about a system of halakha... Whatever the case, we have too much in common, and too many common threats, to pretend that we can separate from one another. Kol Yisrael areivim zeh l'zeh - all Israel is responsible for one another.
Kol tuv,
Yair
Anonymous
You've left me speechless.
mmausner
unfortunately in practice most of the conservative i grew up with were almost if not more ignorant of halacha etc. than the reform congregation i was a member of. Some orthodox people i know think conservative was more insidious than reform because they 'pretend' (their words not mine) a level of fidelity to the halachic system, while reform has the decency to not even pretend.
Mesorati, IMO, esp. in Israel, is an almost wholly different category than conservative. From what i can tell it's people who don't necessarily wear a kepa or keep shabbat, but wrap tefillin and/or have kiddush friday night, and when they go to shul, they go orthodox, and would never claim halacha is other than orthodox. only that they choose to not keep it all the time... there's a big, big difference between practice and poskin, if you know what i mean.
Yehuda
I read the suggestion that American Jews "jettison the language and ideology of peoplehood". To "jettison" indicates that there is something in one's hand to throw away. I wish that it were so! American Jews have abandoned both the language and the ideology of Jewish peoplehood already 70-80 Jews ago. The Jews see themselves as part of the American peoplehood. I live in Israel, and I work with American Jews. When they use the word "we" or "ours", they only mean the Americans - never "we, the Jews". They see Jews who are not American citizens as "foreigners". If you ask them "why don't American Jews know any Hebrew", you get the answer which places them entirely outside of Jewish peoplehood: "Americans are not very good at foreign languages..." Hebrew, the language that defines Jewish peoplehood, is "foreign", not the heritage of an American. Ideologically speaking, it has always been the center of the American Jewish experience to become Americanized. The process was completed already decades ago. The difference between American Jews and other Americans is quite blurry - the difference between American Jews and other Jews in the world is very clear. My children, now all adults, cannot tell the difference between an American Jew and an American non-Jew. Peoplehood is defined by a shared language and a shared territory (and more). The American Jews speak another people's language (which is now their exclusive language), and they reject the idea of exile (so they don't share with other Jews a sense of affinity to the Land of Israel). Peoplehood has simply been abandoned, and there is no need to suggest to do that which has already been done.
mmausner
time is now measured in Jews!
:-)
John
Briefly...please excuse any spelling errors (writing on the fly).
First off.
I am not a Jews for Jesus (I am more like a truth for Christians).
The Pauline Church (later invention of men), really was the one who tried to make Yeshua a Pauline Christian, who abandoned LIFE within the LAW.
None of us are really ever exempt from G-ds law until we physically die (as Pauls commentary in Rom. 6:7 points out).
For this reason Tzaddik taught
Yeshua taught we ENTER INTO GEHENNA in the present evil age, not after physical death (pagan concepts from the nations, see commentary in Matt. 5).
These people end up outisde the spiritual camp of Israel / G-d in outer darkness.
Tzaddik taught cause of the hand (what makes us transgress law, starts in the mind works itself out in the flesh or animal soul).
He also taught as Ex. 34:7 points out that G-d ALWAYS HAS FORGIVEN MAN, but it is his GUILT which we retain (conscinece) hand pass down to our chidren in word and deed (not abandon the law of G-d).
An example;
Is it acceptable for a person to work on sabbath to feed starving people?
How a person understands this results in their understanding of G-ds forgiveness and their guilt (legally and emotionally).
Yeshua saw a kingdom of G-d, which could be made, or grown, if people would just die to their animal souls (kill it off daily) and live as if in their spiritual state (all man spirits are divine creation from G-d, that do not sin). This was really the prupose of the sacrificial system, guilt transfer to kill off our flesh blood.
When the pagans were coming into the New Man (Judges 20:1, Neh.8) Israel, they went back into a type of pagan captivity, and developed other doctrines which taught godman, magic type blood and flesh, and the instrument of sacrifice as they understood it, to escape their idea of firey torment (god of hades type stuff).
Within Jewish thought their is the idea of a Tzaddik, through self sacrifice can atone for a disobedient generation. But it is not based upon his blood and flesh being perfect, or that G-d needs this form of apeasement (like the pagans taught), it a focus / kapporet, of the mounment of atonement.
He was trying to get across that blood doesn't really take away sins, nor does G-d need sacrifice to forgive man (G-d forgives because He is G-d), those were ASSURANCE SYSTEMS to know (they could see their sin leaving the camp in the animal, they could kill off their animal soul in transfer substitute etc. etc.).
Anyway.....G-d needs young Jews, to be preaching to the nations. Doing a whole bunch of good things to get people to enter into idolatry does not make them righteous. An unrighteous doctrine does not a righteous people or person make.
John
Some of my message is missing? I must have deleted it by accident. Sorry, I was in a hurry, and my post seems a bit confusing.
I look at salvation systems as forms of assurance for what G-d already has done (forgiven man). How we relate with others is predicated on how we understand this forgiveness / love (mean G-d vs. good G-d). A perfect sacrifice is not based in flesh and blood (especially a man), its based in perfect LOVE. This however does not do away with our guilt for intentionally sinning. We retain guilt within our conscience (ability to fellowship with G-d in created time / living soul) and ultimately this affects our offspring, as it works itself in them in our words and deeds (Ex. 34:7). If any family knows about guilt and condemnation be passed on in generations it is mine.
Salvation to me is a WAY of life (not about getting to heaven or standing in perfected state / physical death).
Often times more fundamentalist type people (be them Jewish or Christian), will often say they take Holy Word at face value, without considering the implications of their theology.
For instance Christians would view Lev. 17:11 as a proof text that the blood of Messiah is for forgivenss of sin, when the passage is really about dietary restrictions on why a person should not eat animal blood (not human / man blood), becasue it was given to make atonement for their living souls.
Does G-d need this blood to forgive man?
Of course he does not. It was an assurance system to get rid of GUILT (the affects of transgression), so a person could use a substitute by transfering their guilt into the substitute. When no substitute or other means is available, guilt can sometimes be transfered into other people, where we work out this "killing off" of our animal soul.
Christianity is a later religion which developed over a period of years from the Nicenes.
You folks be blessed.
Reuven
Joey,
The fact is, the future Jews of the world will not be frankenjews, but Orthodox Jews. Take a look at the growth rate of Orthodox Jews (doubling every 15-25 years), and by midcentury, are set to account for a majority of Jews in the world.
Coupled with the baal teshuvah movement that has picked up steam since the 1960s, it doesn't take a genius to know that the future of Judaism, right or wrong, Mr. Kurtzman, does not belong to the secular. It belongs to those Jews who follow the Torah, who marry other Jews and who have large families.
These 250 years of Jewish secularism will, in the future, be merely a blip on the timeline of Judaism.
Hieronymous
I've been lurking for a while and have read several of Kurtzman's articles and epistolary conversations. I've enjoyed them all.
I was particularly interested in this conversation with Jack Wertheimer, though it ended up a bit unsatisfying. Wertheimer's caution about secular-Jewish-humanist-universalists being the first ones against the wall every time there's a political upheaval missed the point completely. Polyanna-ish or not, the propensity of its adherents for being killed has no bearing on the validity of a philosophy.
I was absolutely on Kurtzman's side up until about the end. He essentially says "Either established Judaism finds a way to accommodate us, or we are forced to abandon Judaism to the Orthodox." But that is the point: We have no real choice but to do so. That's their job- to be custodians of our traditions and history. There are, in fact, flavors of Judaism that cater more to our tastes; Reconstructionism is custom made for the sensitive, thinking, modern Jew. Unfortunately, the people that it appeals to have little inclination to affiliate with any kind of "organized" religion regardless of how much sense it makes.
The problem is that our relationship with Judaism in unsustainable. Kurtzman and I (and countless others) are comfortable with our relationship to Judaism. We (and I am assuming here) are not observant. We feel a strong bond to the community. We are well-versed in the culture, history, ritual, language, and philosophy of Judaism. Our Jewish upbringing is responsible for who we are. And we love it. And we feel no draw to the ritual aspects. No draw to affiliate with a temple. No draw to becoming ritually observant Jews. Yet we are largely at peace with our Jewishness.
But how to pass this on to our children? I would want them to arrive at the same place, but I can't imagine committing 15 years of my life to creating the same Jewish environment for them that I grew up with. That, I think, is the real issue.
Barbara Reader
Part I: The original posting.
I want to agree with mhpine
I in fact, want to expand on his point, because I find the original post here much less interesting than the author apparently intends. I strongly encourage Mr.Joey Kurtzman
to review the history of 19th Century American Reform Judaism. He is reinventing the wheel. Unfortunately, his claim, " A Viable Judaism Requires Breaking from the Orthodox" has not been well born out so far.
I was raised Reform, and have spent time in the Conservative and Orthodox movements. I have issues with all of them, but Reform has been around for over 100 years, and has shown no capacity to do more than provide a temporary home for Jews becoming non-Jews, a place for intermarried Jewish men to come with their non-converted wives who the husband can then admire for being so kind to their inferior (that is, Jewish ... the anti-Semetism here being in the mind of the Jewish man, not the gentile girl) Jewish spouse.
That was not what Isaac Meyer Wise intended. Wise wanted to create a modern Judaism. To paraphase, which regarded Washington (D.C.) as it's Jerusalem, Cincinnati (Ohio) as it's Safat. At least Wise knew what Safat was. He rejected peoplehood and embraced the American experience, creating the first seminary to produce Rabbis in the United States of America, freeing Americian Jewry from what had, until then, been its reality... basically, if a Rabbi couldn't get a job in Europe, or if he had been disgraced there, he came here. For this, I give Wise nothing but credit. In fact, Rabbi Wise is massively underappreciated outside of the Reform movement. All American Jews owe him a debt of gratitute, even the most right-wing Haradi, since his movement greatly helped make America a Jewish-friendly place.
But the issue Mr. Kurtzman raises is survival. And here, too, we already have answers, as his proposed experiment has been running for many generations. The fact is, few Reform Jews are Jewish because their great-grandparents were Reform Jews. The overwhelming (as in over 90 per cent) of descendants of Reform Jewish adults in 1900 were gentiles in 2000. Isaac Meyer Wise himself had something over 10 children. I forget how many. But in a study of his descendants, (well over 1000 of them, if I recall correctly) only 4 identified as Jewish, one a single older person, the other three a descendant who had married an Orthodox Jew and had two children... the two children completing the four.
Mr. Kurtzman's proposal may make him happy, but it is not a proposal for Jewish survival. It is a proposal for the gradual assimilation of the Jews. If that is Mr. Kurtzman's goal, he has made a good proposal.
If Mr. Kurtman wants Judaism to evolve into an evangelizing American religion, bringing in many of what the Reform movement refers to as the 'unchurched', on the other had, I think it's more interesting. I urge him to contact HUC and act on his instinct. I'm very excited about this Reform project, one of the most exciting Reform Judaism has ever undertaken.
I will post comments on the comments at a later time. Many good comments here.
Anonymous
The Jewish-American leadership must eventually confront the reality that Judaism cannot thrive amongst a significant proportion of young American Jews unless we jettison the language and ideology of peoplehood...A great answer to Islamic fascism
Barbara Reader
By Jewish here, I mean somebody who is either religiously Jewish (Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist) or is a non-hostile secular person of Jewish descent. I do not include people like Disraeli who was born of two converted out parents and baptized at birth, even if by the technical standards of some that person is Jewish. I will not address the Christian, non-Jewish unidentified, and antisemetic posters (three separate groups. I do not read the two overt Christian posters who responded here as being antisemetic, although at least one other post appears to be) in this posting.
There seems to be a demand for definition here where there has long be none, and people seem determined to fight. The fact is, in some ways, antisemetism made this easier because anyone with a claim to not being Jewish separated themselves from the Jews with gusto. In modern America, people associate themselves with Jews, indeed there are non-Jews running around saying they are the 'real' Jews, and Jews are fakes.
The Israeli chief rabbinate was designed by the early secular socialist Zionists to be so right-wing as to alienate most Jews and to therefore help their vision of a secular Israel. I do not, therefore, think it is reasonable or fitting to treat them as some kind of bona fide central Jewish authority. Absent them, there is no central Jewish authority. What has been labeled by the early Reform movement as "orthodoxy" (a term only later embraced by the Halachic community) is a collection of disparate and very strongly disagreeing sects. Reading the list of comments and responses to this article alone should make that clear. The secularists would like to point to the most intolerant ones and label them as the only true Orthodox, and the most intolerant ones like to point to the secularists to bolster their own case that their position is necessary. The more inclusive Orthodox groups, (many of which consider themselves more Orthodox than their less inclusive neighbors,) and those Orthodox that practice outreach, have become more the norm, as many unaffiliated Jews are approached, most without success, and invited in. Nevertheless, few of these outreach congregations do not have significant numbers of members not raised in a Halachic setting, so even if 1000 were approached for every 1 or 2 who joined, if 150,000 were approached, that still creates 150 to 300 members. And the Orthodox hope some of the others have joined more liberal synagogues or other Orthodox ones.
The level of hostility among sects was, at least about ten years ago (the last time I tried to sample the waters) much stronger hostility from the liberals to the Orthodox than vica versa. This is not surprising, as the Orthodox have unemotional standards, fair or unfair, and therefore can draw a line, explain the rules for crossing it, and let the individual decide what he or she wants, and move on, while the liberal must emote over every issue.
Is the gentleman who was raised as and remains a devoted Christian, and can claim some Jewish ancestry, and has never been discriminated for being a Jew, a Jew? To the Orthodox, they whip out a definition. S/he fits, yes, s/he doesn't, no. That does not mean that that person is not deserving of kindness, or of help if they are discriminated against due to their Jewish identification. By Reform Standards, which require the person to be raised as a Jew, this person is not a Jew, but the statement I just made is more likely to enrage a Reform Jew than an Orthodox one. If the Jewish-identifying Christian is ruled out, many Reform Jews are outraged. Many feel it is wrong to exclude them.
What is more, a sermon in a Reform or Conservative synagogue is far more likely to denounce Orthodox Jews than Orthodox Jews are likely to be denouncing anyone who is not currently trying to kill Jews. Orthodox are more likely to be discussing Loshan Hora, Tsdaka, or Kashroot. The do not have the level of obsession with the liberal movements that the liberal movements have with them. From the numbers, you would think it would be the reverse. After all, Reform is more than half of affiliated Jews, and Conservative is larger than Orthodoxy. But The first two are break-aways from the last, and feel the need, therefore, to find the most obnoxious rabbi, or even common member of any congregation identified as Orthodox, and label the community as a whole as being THAT PERSON.
I personally think the liberals should worry more about their own vast houses and less about the tiny numbers of Orthodox Jews who remain Orthodox.
My favorite and most extreme example of this obsession took place when I was taking a course at Jewish Theological Seminary from Rabbi Gelman about 10 or 14 years ago... I don't remember the date. He made a statement in his lecture that was strongly at odds with my understanding (I think he attacked Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan's first Haggadah, which was published in the Middle of World War II. My father loved that Haggadah totally, and used it obsessively). As I preferred not to dispute with him in front of the roughly 100 classmates, I went to his office after that. There I found a dart board with a photograph of my Reform-turned-liberal-Conservative intermarried ex-husband on it, with the label under it, "Orthodoxy". My ex, I do not dispute, was a very obnoxious neocon, who had discovered he could get good money from Orthodox audiences telling them they were the future of Judaism, which money he then spent on his gentile wife and children, or donated to the Conservative synagogue he had joined. Nevertheless, he was taking the Orthodox for a ride, he was not Orthodox. I explained this to Rabbi Gelman, who at first disputed with me, until I pointed out to him the My ex regularly discussed, in his column, the secular private school which his children attended. "How many Orthodox Jews do you know who spend their money sending their kids to private school, and that school is NOT a Yeshiva?" Rabbi Gelman acknowledged he knew none, and I noticed he had removed the dart board the next day. Nevertheless, the story illustrates in an extreme way the enthusiasm liberal Jews have for labeling anyone they find obnoxious as typical and central to Orthodoxy.
Similarly, one of the quotes above about gentile souls is not identified as to time or place. Was that Rabbi Kook the same one who was the first chief Rabbi of Palistine? If so, he was dealing with a congregation of Jews who fled the Pograms of Eastern Europe, many of whom just survived a pogrom in which his entire family had been raped, tortured, and murdered before their eyes. And yes, he probably drew on similar threads written by other rabbis dealing with other horrors and traumas in the past. And with the Nazi propaganda cirumnavigating the globe and beginning horrors, I have no doubt the comments were written down and studied later by other people... and after WWII, by people in less stressful and traumatic circumstances. But Orthodoxy is all about debate, so presenting it as if it were THE WORD is innately silly. People go through trauma and react in ways which are less than ideal. They make pronouncements which try to make sense of things they have lived through. The solution Orthodoxy poses to this is to teach many viewpoints, not just one. Is the writer suggesting that killing tens of thousands of Jewish people, and after Rabbi Kook's death killing millions more, something any half-descent Rabbi could deal with in a kind and generous way, so this comment is more awful than the age the man lived in?
I wonder if this same writer who quoted this might not be as enthusiastic about somebody quoting Gloria Steinham saying a woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle and saying that's shows what feminists think of men.
Judaism has a 4000 year old history. Many people have said many things, some of them embarrassing in our modern context. Others, remarkably forward looking. If you want to prove something, Jewish literature is vast enough that you can probably do so, no matter how silly your point.
rs
As a great Reform rabbi observed, the problem in America isn't antisemitism, but, Rather, "they are loving us to death."
We are complicit in our own destruction, Orthodox triumphalism aside.
Barbara Reader
Which Rabbi?
And it's not just that they are loving us to death. Many Jewish men consider it a triumph to marry any non-Jewish woman, and a defeat to marry a Jewish woman. Since 99.8 per cent of the women in the world are gentile, this is a triumph easily obtained. I refer you to my response in http://www.jewcy.com/daily_shvitz/when_rich_jew_pigs_marry_gold_digging_... .
OrthoBKJewess
I could not have said this better. Baruch Hashem. If she's not Jewish, there is no such thing as a Jewish wedding. This is why Judiasm is in the state it's in.
Gary D Anderson
While I differ with Reformed and Orthodox in that I believe in a New Torah, I don't know that the people here could care about that New Torah although I hope they do.
But it is clear to many that many Jews don't really care about their own moral compass either! They support the neocons, and they support Sarah Palin, and they support Paul Wolfowitz, who studied at the feet of Leo Strauss, a man of Jewish parents who was an atheistic Zionist. As an atheist, Strauss taught that you lie to the masses and respect the FORM of democracy. The result was Wolfowitz WMD lie!!
Alan Dershowitz emailed me once and told me that Strauss was not a Jew but his parents were. So, the Jews are silent because this amoral, even immoral guy becomes the foundation of thought for the lying killing neocons who went into Iraq to steal oil and likely allowed 9/11? Where are the Jews who should be standing against this neocon evil? Just because these amoral rats are Zionists does not mean that Jews with a conscience should just bow down to these killers!!!
Now you have Sarah Palin being put forth by Karl Rove and Bill Kristol as the new neocon hope. Why, because she believes in Dominionism, a false unChristian view that you subdue the world by force in the name of Christ? I just don't get it. I just don't see the outrage. And if any of you think I am lying about the neocons just look up "neocon" and "Leo Strauss" in Wikipedia and read all about em! Now these amoral rats want to fuse with a CRUSADER. What kind of convoluted thought is this?
This is the bottom line, Jesus said His kingdom was not of this world, The earthly sanctioned religion for its time was Judaism. Geneva was not holy. The United Kingdom was not holy. No nation post Christ is holy.
But when Sarah Palin says going into Iraq to steal oil is HOLY, she does not speak for Christ, though she may be speaking with the crusaders and torturers of times past! And yet Jews, or at least many, have no problem with her position. That is indeed troubling.
Gary D Anderson http://squidoo.com/palinsucks http://squidoo.com/who_is_a_neocon
Adam Shprintzen
Umm, you mean like the whopping 22% of American Jews who voted for McCain/Palin? Perhaps you need to worry about some other groups' affinity for religious fundamentalist politics in the US...
Gary D Anderson
Adam that is actually an encouragement but, certainly most Jews must not like the results of neocon behavior, or many just don't like the economic mess. People must still be informed about what the neocons are up to because they are not done and they are a threat to world peace in the way they provoke the Russians. Certainly domionists like Palin are fusing with the amoral neocons and that is a dangerous mix.
Gary D Anderson http://squidoo.com/palinsucks http://squidoo.com/who_is_a_neocon
http://bgamall.stumbleupon.com
mikewinddale
mmausner,
Your rabbi's position sounds an awful lot like that
of Rabbi Benzion Uziel and Rabbi Marc D. Angel. Who is he, and at which
yeshiva?