“Kosher,” however, has nothing to do with health or “ethics.” There are Jewish ethical laws and Jewish ritual laws. Kashrut is entirely in the latter category. And it is simply not “Orthodox” to contend otherwise.
Rabbi Avi Shafran
Agudath Israel of America
New York
The reason for the attention was the heartfelt and stirring speech delivered by the Novominsker Rebbe, shlit”a, the Rosh Agudas Yisroel, at the gathering. And the fact that New York City mayor Bill de Blasio chose not to contest the Rebbe’s words.
Rav Perlow spoke to the issue of organized deviations from the Jewish mesorah, a topic that is timely because of the insistence of the latest such movement on calling itself “Open Orthodoxy,” rather than summoning the courage to find an independent adjective for itself, as did the Conservative and Reform movements of the past.
Over the past century or two, the term “Orthodox” in the Jewish world has been synonymous with full affirmation of the mesorah – including most prominently the historicity of Yetzias Mitzrayim; the fact that the Torah, both Written and Oral, was bequeathed to our ancestors at Har Sinai; and that Avrohom, Yitzchok and Yaakov actually existed – concepts that prominent products or leaders of the “Open Orthodoxy” movement are on record as rejecting.
Yet, the “Orthodoxy” in the group’s name has misled various Orthodox congregations across the country to assume that there must be truth in that advertising, and to engage the services of graduates of the “Open” movement as rabbis. And so, the Rebbe apparently and understandably felt it was important to, in effect, proclaim a strong and principled “caveat emptor,” so that any potential buyers of this particular bill of goods will beware of the fact that the product is dangerously defective.
And so he invoked the sad examples of the other heterodox movements, which, while they seemed once upon a time to offer the promise of Jewish fulfillment and a Jewish future to some undiscriminating Jews, have, the Rebbe lamented, “fallen into an abyss of intermarriage and assimilation” and are on the way to being “relegated to the dustbins of Jewish history.”
A rather unremarkable if unfortunate truism, that. But, at least to the two newspapers, it seemed to be news (“Orthodox Rabbi Stuns Agudath Gala With ‘Heresy’ Attack on Open Orthodoxy,” gasped the Forward headline) – at least combined with the fact that New York City mayor Bill de Blasio spoke after Rav Perlow’s remarks and chose to not address them. It couldn’t have been much of a dilemma for him, as an elected official (not to mention one presumably not expert in Jewish theology), to decide whether or not to mix into a religious issue.
The New York Times columnist who wrote about the rabbi and the mayor is Michael Powell. If his name elicits a sour taste, it’s because it was he who, only last month, wrote an egregiously unfair column about the East Ramapo School District’s “Orthodox-dominated board” that “ensured that the community’s geometric expansion would be accompanied by copious tax dollars for textbooks and school buses.” Those books and buses, of course, are mandated by law for all New York city schoolchildren – even Orthodox ones. He has written a number of other columns that touch upon – and not in a positive way – charedi communities, including a long cynical magazine piece about Satmar back in 2006.
What further upset Mr. Powell was Mr. de Blasio’s praise for the Agudah as a movement, and for its executive vice president Rabbi Chaim Dovid Zwiebel, with whom he has worked for years and who he said “is someone I deeply respect and listen carefully to.” Bad enough, the writer seemed to be thinking, that the mayor didn’t stand up for the cause of kefira, but did he really have to express admiration for an Agudath Israel leader?
Mr. Powell clearly has an “Orthodox problem.”
That’s unfortunate. Still, a columnist has the right to be biased, unfair and even offensive. What even a columnist may not do, though, is offer his readers errors of fact.
Rav Perlow did not, as Mr. Powell reports, offer a “shower of condemnation for Reform and Conservative Jews.” The Rebbe simply reaffirmed Orthodox Judaism’s insistence that heterodox theologies – ideas and beliefs, not people – are incompatible with the Judaism of the ages. Anyone who knows the Rebbe, or any of the manhigei hador, knows that they have only love and concern for all Jews, no matter how misled they may be by their religious leaders.
The reporters missed the real story. That a clarion call had been sounded to all Jews – charedi and otherwise – who recognize that the Torah is true and that our mesorah is real, to address the deceptive attempts to convince Jews that ersatz “Judaisms” and even “Orthodoxies” are something other than capitulations to the Zeitgeist.
The mayor may have understood that. Or just, wisely, recognized that he had no expertise to engage the issue of the meaning of Judaism.
Would that Mr. Powell had followed his example.
© 2014 Hamodia
A piece I wrote for the Forward about Shavuos can be read here.
As I expected, my critique of some recent writing of Rabbi Berel Wein has generated many comments and communications. There were, also as expected, yeas and nays
The nays focused on either or both of two complaints. Paraphrased loosely: 1) How DARE you criticize an elder statesman of the Orthodox Jewish world? (And a sub-complaint: How DARE you not refer to Rabbi Wein as a Rosh Yeshiva?)
And 2) But Rabbi Wein is right! Gedolim have erred in the past! So what bothers you about what Rabbi Wein wrote?
The first thing first. I have great respect for Rabbi Wein as a person and a scholar, and feel enormous personal hakaras hatov to him for several things, among them his wonderful history tapes, which I used back in the 1980s to create a syllabus for a high school Jewish history course I taught then; and his mentorship of, and Torah-study with, a cherished son-in law of mine, who remains close to, and works with, Rabbi Wein to this day.
I meant no insult, chalilah, by not referring to Rabbi Wein as a Rosh Yeshiva (he led Yeshivas Shaarei Torah in Monsey for 20 years). He has not, however, served in that position since 1997, and his rightful claims to fame are his great knowledge of Jewish history and his writings. The Wikipedia entry for Rabbi Wein, in fact and accurately, identifies him as “an American-born Orthodox rabbi, scholar, lecturer, and writer… regarded as an expert on Jewish history…”
As to the reason I felt it was acceptable, even required, to publicly criticize his recent essays, I can only say that there are times that “ein cholkin kavod lirav” – “we do not defer to even great men” This, I felt and feel, was such a time.
As to the second complaint, the complainers need only read – this time, carefully – what Rabbi Wein wrote, and – just as carefully – what I did.
I did not contest the assertion that the religious leaders of Klal Yisrael can err; in fact the Gemara says so, in many places; to the contrary, I clearly stated the fact.
What I contested was the attitude that any of us can be sure, based only on our own lights, that great men in fact erred in specific cases; and – most egregiously – that those judgments allow us to cavalierly reject the current guidance of our own generation’s religious leadership.
To wit, Rabbi Wein insinuates that the Gedolim of today, who are looked to for guidance by the majority of yeshivos, Bais Yaakovs and Jewish day schools, are limited by “a mindset that hunkers back to an idyllic Eastern European world of fantasy that is portrayed falsely in fictional stories.” That jaundiced judgment is used by Rabbi Wein to explain why those Gedolim don’t endorse the celebration of Yom Ha’atzma’ut or the commemoration of the Holocaust on Yom HaShoah (but rather, instead, in other ways and at times like Tisha B’Av).
“The whole attitude of much of the Orthodox world,” he further writes, “is one of denial of the present fact that the state exists, prospers and is the largest supporter of Torah and Jewish traditional religious lifestyle in the world.” No one, though, denies those facts, only that they somehow mean that opposition to the creation of Israel before the Second World War is, as a result, somehow retroactively rendered erroneous.
Rabbi Wein also writes that “One of the great and holy leaders of Orthodox society in Israel stated in 1950 that the state could not last more than fifteen years. Well, it is obvious that in that assessment he was mistaken. But again it is too painful to admit that he was mistaken…”
Perhaps Rabbi Wein is referring to someone else, but if his reference is to the Chazon Ish, it is a tale widely told in some circles that lacks any basis I have been able to find. On the contrary, the contention has been utterly rejected by someone, a talmid of the Chazon Ish who became an academic, who spoke to the Chazon Ish extensively about Israel. The godol, the talmid writes, expressed his opinion that time would have to tell whether Israel would develop into a positive or negative thing for Klal Yisrael; but the Godol did not, the talmid stresses, ever opine what he felt the future held, much less offer some timeline.
The issue is not whether Gedolim are Nevi’im (they are not) but whether the Gedolim of each generation are, in the end, those to whom the Torah wishes us to turn for guidance, the “einei ha’eidah,” the “eyes of the people.” Or just some righteous but out-of-touch ivory tower scholars who cannot be relied upon for anything but issues concerning kashrus or Shabbos.
I make no apologies for standing up for the former conviction. And I would welcome Rabbi Wein proclaiming a similar stance. But, alas, words he has written have struck me, and many, many others (including both those upset at those words and others who welcomed them with glee) as implying the latter.
I truly wish I hadn’t felt the need to address those words, but I did.
There exists a mentality, even among some who should know better, like the respected popular historian Rabbi Berel Wein, that any one of us can, and even should, second-guess the attitudes and decisions of Torah luminaries of the past.
In that thinking, for instance, the opposition of many Gedolim in the 1930s and 1940s to the establishment of a Jewish state was a regrettable mistake. After all, the cavalier thinking goes, a state was in the end established, and in many ways it flourishes; so the Gedolim who opposed it must have been wrong. And we should acknowledge their error and impress it upon our children with a nationalistic commemoration of the day on which Israel declared her independence.
None of us, however, can possibly know what the world would be like today had Israel not come into being. What would have happened to the European survivors of the Holocaust who moved to Israel? Would they have languished in the ruins of Europe and eventually disappeared instead? Rebuilt their communities? Emigrated to the West? Would Eretz Yisrael have remained a British mandate, become a part of Jordan, morphed into a new Arab state? Would Jews have been barred from their homeland, tolerated by those overseeing it, or perhaps welcomed by them to live there in peace? Would there have been more Jewish casualties than the tens of thousands killed in wars and terrorist attacks since Israel’s inception, or fewer? Is the physical danger today to the millions of Jews in their homeland lesser or greater?
Would the widespread anti-Semitism that masquerades as anti-Zionism have asserted itself just as strongly as now? (A recent ADL survey revealed that Jews are hated by 87% to 93% of the populaces of North Africa and Middle East, and that the most widely held stereotype about Jews is that they “are more loyal to Israel” than their own countries.) Or would Jew-hatred have been undermined or attenuated by the lack of a sufficiently “sanitized” mask?
I don’t know the answer to any of those questions, of course. Neither, though, just as obviously, does anyone else, no matter how wise he may be or conversant with the facts of history. For we are dealing here not with history but with retroactive prophecy. And that’s something no one alive possesses.
Yet some people, understandably uncomfortable with even theoretically imagining an Israel-less world, sermonize as if they do know the unknowable, as if the very fact that a state of Israel exists means that those who opposed its establishment were misguided.
Please don’t misunderstand. Every sane and sensitive Jew today supports Israel’s security needs, and appreciates the fact that we can freely live in or visit our homeland; and that the state and its armed forces seek to protect all within the country’s borders.
And more.
We are makir tov for the good that previous governments in Israel have in fact provided Klal Yisrael, the support it has given its religious communities, yeshivos, Bais Yaakovs and mosdos chessed.
None of that, though, need come along with an abandonment of respect for great leaders of Klal Yisrael who felt that a different path to Jewish recovery from the Holocaust would have been wiser. Many of those leaders, of course, once Israel became a reality, “recalculated,” as our GPSs do at times, and accepted the state, even counseled participation in its political process. But they were adjusting to developments, not recanting their judgments, which were based on their perception that a secular state would, at one point or another, seek to adversely affect its religious citizens. A perception, it should be noted, that has been borne out by numerous policies and actions, from yaldei Teiman and yaldei Teheran to the agenda of the Lapids, père et fils.
The Gedolim who lived during the Holocaust, too, have been subjected to retroactive prophets’ harsh judgment. Those who counseled Jews to remain in Europe, in the hope that political and military developments would take a different turn than they tragically did are blithely second-guessed. Here, too, none of us can know with surety the “what-ifs?” or even the “whys?”
Not to mention that Gedolim are wise men, not prophets. Their guidance in each generation, which the Torah itself admonishes us to heed, does not assure us of any particular outcome. It is based, though, on their sublime connection to Torah, and thus must be of paramount importance to us. It’s odd how few would think of disparaging an expert doctor or lawyer whose best advice, following the prescribed protocol, led to a place the patient or client didn’t envision. Even if the outcome was unhappy, one would say, the advisors did their job. When it comes to Gedolim, though, some wax judgmental and condescending.
And it’s not an armchair issue. There are implications to disparaging the decisions of the true Jewish leaders of the past. It sets the stage for what, in our contemporary self-centered, blog-sodden and audaciously opinionated world, recalls the true prophet’s phrase “each man acting according to what is right in his own eyes.”
And the prophet is not lauding that state of affairs.
© 2014 Hamodia
Tommy, a resident of Gloversville, New York, filed a lawsuit in a New York state court last year against Patrick and Diane Lavery for what he claims was his unlawful detention in a “small, dank, cement cage in a cavernous dark shed.” Actually, to be more precise, the lawsuit was filed on Tommy’s behalf, by the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP), as he is a chimpanzee.
Legal action was initiated at the same time on behalf of Kiko, a chimp in Niagara Falls, and Hercules and Leo, primates in a research facility at Stony Brook University on Long Island.
The NhRP asked the court to declare Tommy, then 26, “a cognitively complex autonomous legal person with the fundamental legal right not to be imprisoned.”
In October 2011, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) filed a lawsuit on behalf of five orcas, accusing the theme parks owning them of violating the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery. The suit was dismissed by a judge in the U.S. District Court for Southern California who wrote in his ruling that “the only reasonable interpretation of the 13th Amendment’s plain language is that it applies to persons, and not to nonpersons such as orcas.”
NhRP’s president, Steven Wise, an attorney who teaches “animal rights law” at Harvard Law School, lost a similar case on behalf of a dolphin in 1991. But he is hoping, and not without reason, that over more recent years attitudes like that of Princeton University “ethicist” Peter Singer, who has decried “speciesism,” have taken hold in society and among the judiciary, at least with regard to animals like chimps, who, he says, “possess complex cognitive abilities that are so strictly protected when they’re found in human beings.”
Indeed, Mr. Wise has argued that, like severely compromised babies with no discernable cognitive abilities, animals like chimps should be considered persons in the eyes of the law. Professor Singer, for his part, has gone a step further, stating bluntly that “The life of a newborn is of less value than the life of a pig, a dog or a chimpanzee.” He takes his logic to its inevitable conclusion and advocates the killing of the severely disabled and unconscious elderly as well.
Such attitudes are of a part with books like the astoundingly offensive “Eternal Treblinka,” which compares “the exploitation and slaughter of animals” for food with Nazi concentration camps.
Some of the most fundamental philosophical and moral issues of our time – indeed of any time – touch upon the special distinction of humanness. Calling an unborn child something other than that, for instance, and characterizing its destruction as a mere “choice,” is, in the word’s most stark sense, dehumanizing. As is the removal of other moral curbs on human behavior on the grounds that people are, as Professor Singer asserts, mere animals.
The prospect that the decision in the chimpanzees’ case might further fuzz the line between humans and animals should deeply discomfit those of us who believe that humans, with their ability to exercise free will and their obligations to the Divine, are special parts of Creation.
According to our mesorah, until the time of Noach, although animals were allowed to be used as beasts of burden, they could not be consumed as food. After the Mabul, however, the eating of meat became permissible to mankind. One reason that has been suggested for that change is based on another rabbinic tradition, that the dor haMabul, the “Generation of the Flood,” had lost its essential moral bearings, going so far as to act as if there were no difference between humans and animals.
The divine sanction of meat-eating, that approach contends, was a means of impressing humankind with the too-easily-lost truth that human beings are special, possessive of a spark of holiness that does not inhere in animals.
Mr. Wise has warned his students to not hope for “a principles judge,” one who might say “You lose. I don’t agree with your principles. I agree with the principle that [G-d] created humans, and we all have souls, and we’re special, and nonhuman animals do not and so aren’t.” In that case, he tells his charges, “you’ve just shot yourself in the head.” One hopes that no violence is involved, but that if any of the young men and women he teaches are inspired to follow in his footsteps, they will encounter many such a judge.
And yet, we would be wrong to blithely dismiss concerns for animal welfare. We mustn’t forget that the Torah, although it permits us to “enslave” animals and even eat some of them, proscribes us from causing needless pain to non-human creatures. Tzaar ba’alei chaim is a serious issur.
But the animal-personhood crowd has it all wrong. The issue isn’t animal rights; there is no such thing. The issue is human responsibility – ironically, itself a product of humanity’s specialness.
© 2014 Hamodia
The confluence of this past Shabbos and reports about Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling’s alleged ugly racist remarks inspire me to share the piece below, which was written three years ago.
The Chasam Sofer probably never saw a black person. There weren’t likely very many in 19th century central Europe. But he certainly knew they existed. After all, they are mentioned in a posuk, the one that opens the haftarah of parshas Kedoshim, which was this past Shabbos. There, Kushites—Kush is generally identified as a kingdom in central Africa—are a simile for Klal Yisrael.
“Behold, you are like the children of Kush to Me,” the navi Amos (9:7) quotes the Creator addressing the Jewish People.
“Just as a Kushite differs [from others] in [the color of] his skin,” comments the Gemara (Moed Katan, 16b), “so are the Jewish people different in their actions.”
One might assume that the intention of that explanation is simply that, while most people often act thoughtlessly or selfishly, Jews, if they live as they should, do otherwise, planning their every action, concerned about their obligations to the Creator, and to others.
But the Chasam Sofer’s interpretation of the Talmudic comment (he apparently had “the righteous” in place of “the Jewish people”) goes in a different direction, and makes a point as fundamental as it is timely.
His words:
“It is well known that every Jew is required to observe all the mitzvos. But there is no single path for them all. One Jew may excel in Torah-study, another in avodah (service, or prayer), another in kindnesses to others; this one in one particular mitzvah, that one in another. Nevertheless, while they all differ from each other in their actions, they all have the same intention, to serve Hashem with their entire hearts.
“Behold the Kushite. Inside, his organs, his blood and his appearance are all the same as other people’s. Only in the superficiality of his skin is he different from others. This is the meaning of ‘[different] in his skin,’ [meaning] only in his skin. Likewise, the righteous are different [from one another] only ‘in their actions’; their inner conviction and intention, though, are [the same,] aimed at serving Hashem in a good way.”
There are two messages to glean here. One—which wasn’t intended by the Chasam Sofer as a message at all, but as a truism—is that people of different colors are only superficially different from one another. What lies beneath our shells are the same veins, sinews and organs, no matter our shades.
The Chasam Sofer’s novel message, though, is that there are different ways, no one of them any less essentially worthy than any other, of serving Hashem.
All too often we fall into the trap of thinking that we, or our children, must follow a particular trajectory and land in a particular place in life. But when Chazal teach that “just as people’s faces all differ one from the other, so do their minds,” they are informing us otherwise, that there are different, equally meritorious, trajectories, different, equally praiseworthy, landing places for different people. It’s not just that people are dissimilar and will choose a variety of vocations, excel in a variety of fields, and establish individual priorities. It’s that in all our diversity of vocations, fields and priorities, we can be entirely equal servants of Hashem.
Consider Rav Broka, who, the Talmud recounts (Ta’anis 22a), was often accompanied by Eliyahu Hanavi, and once asked the prophet whether in a certain marketplace there were any people who merited the World-to-Come. The individuals Eliyahu pointed to turned out to be a prison guard who made special efforts to preserve prisoners’ moral integrity and who interceded with the government on behalf of his fellow Jews; and a pair of comedians, who used their humor to cheer up the depressed and defuse disputes.
One wonders if the parents of those meritorious men felt disappointed at their sons’ choices of professions. Or whether they realized that there are, in the end, many paths that can lead to the World-to-Come.
© 2011 AMI MAGAZINE
A few years ago, reporters who were covering weddings of the rich and famous in four Monterrey, Mexico, churches were chagrined to find that they weren’t able to call or send messages to their editors. They routinely got a “no service” or “signal not available” message on their cell phones.
When one reporter asked the priest in one of the churches if he knew why, the answer he received, offered with a smile, was: “Israeli counterintelligence.”
He went on to explain that Israeli-made cell phone jammers the size of paperback books had been tucked unobtrusively among paintings that were hanging in the chapel. The jammers emit low-level radio frequencies that thwart cell phone signals within a 100-foot radius. Thus, technology developed to help security forces avert eavesdropping and phone-triggered bombings had been purchased for a more mundane (the priest would probably say holy) purpose.
Although cell phone jammers are employed in India’s parliament, Italian universities (to prevent cheating on exams), Mexican banks (to keep robbers from calling their accomplices) and Tokyo theaters and commuter trains, federal law prohibits their use in the U.S., and so shuls, alas, cannot legally utilize them to prevent davening from being punctuated by jazz, Beethoven or Hatikva (all of which have been heard by this writer during the silent Shemoneh Esrei).
Once, not too many years ago, the worst electronic interruption of tefillos in shul was the very occasional beeper; and the fact that it was usually summoning a doctor, presumably because of a medical crisis, mitigated the rudeness of the disturbance.
Today, though, as we all know, cell phones are ubiquitous, and so the satan has been able to add classical and pop riffs, and an assortment of utterly annoying chimes, tones and melodies, to his arsenal of davening disruptions, which once consisted only of mindless conversations among those who find silence a painful vacuum in need of filling.
What would the Tosfos Yomtov — who lamented talking in shul as courting tragedy, and composed the well-known, if too-often-ignored, Mi Sheberach for those who maintain shul decorum — say? Had cellphones existed in the 17th century, would he have showered special blessings on those who took three seconds to turn theirs off every time they entered a mikdash me’at? I have little doubt that he would have.
It is often said, generously, that the laxity of decorum in some shuls results from the comfort that Jews feel in their place of prayer. We feel at home in shul, the diyun l’chaf zechus goes, and so we converse. Indeed we do, but we shouldn’t.
Because it’s still a shul. Those are siddurim, not newspapers, and the people holding them and moving their lips quietly are talking to the Creator, not the bartender. And they want you to please hold your tongue, and your calls.
It is, to be honest, easy to forget to turn off our phones when we enter a shul. I once neglected to, although thankfully it didn’t ring (or ping or sing) during davening. But it could have, and I have been more careful ever since.
And I was witness, not long ago, to another man’s neglect to power down his phone before a tefillah, and his phone did ring. What happened afterward, though, was truly remarkable.
During the week I daven Minchah at the national headquarters of Agudath Israel of America, where I am privileged to work. Many men who work in lower Manhattan attend Minchah at our offices during their lunchtime. During the silent Shemoneh Esrei at Minchah one day, the man’s cellphone went off. (I don’t recall what the selection was; something Jewish, I think.) No, that wasn’t what was remarkable (unfortunately). What happened after Minchah was.
The man whose phone had serenaded us during davening looked embarrassed and I noticed that he left the beis medrash quickly after Aleinu. (Please don’t even get me started about Aleinu, which cannot be recited by a normal human being in less than 45 seconds but seems to benefit from some odd sort of kefitzas haderech in all too many shuls.)
As I left the room myself, I saw the gentleman whose phone had asserted itself standing near the elevator bank, where all the mispallelim would have to pass, both those headed down to the lobby and those of us who work in the Agudah offices.
The man stood there and politely accosted each and every one of us individually — to apologize for not having turned off his phone when Minchah began.
What mentchlichkeit, I told myself. And what a poignant lesson about how we should feel if we have disturbed someone else’s davening.
And, of course, about how careful we should be to not do so.
© 2014 Hamodia
Had someone back, say, in the 1960s had both the foresight to trademark the word “Orthodox” and no compunctions about licensing it, he’d be a wealthy man today.
Once upon a time, when Torah-observant Jewish life in America was expected to expire in short shrift, the “O” word was something of an albatross (though I don’t know if they’re kosher). Anyone wanting to establish a new-and-improved Jewish movement would coin a new-and-improved adjective – “Reform,” “Conservative,” “Reconstructionist,” something novel and shiny. But “Orthodox”? It bespoke a tired, dusty past, one without a future.
Times have changed. Today, Orthodoxy, boruch Hashem, is thriving, and “Orthodox” seems to be the adjective of the era. So much so that when the latest carbon copy (remember carbon copies?) of the Conservative movement is conceived, the last thing its proponents wants to do is to associate it with its languishing, moribund theological predecessor. It wants an “Orthodox” label, the better to lay claim to Jewish legitimacy.
And so we have seen “Orthodox Feminism,” which flouts established halacha and rejects “patriarchal” elements of Judaism. And “Open Orthodoxy,” which not only derides by its very name those committed to the mesorah (we “closed” folks) but proudly advocates for things demonstrably antithetical to the Judaism of the ages.
And now, in the April issue of the monthly periodical Commentary, we have the latest addition to the “Orthodox” bestiary.
The new animal, “Social Orthodoxy,” is introduced by Jay P. Lefkowitz, a former adviser in the George W. Bush administration. To be fair, he claims to not really be inventing anything new, only channeling what he considers to be the religion of many “Modern Orthodox” Jews (although he thereby insults all the upstanding, halacha-respecting Jews who choose to call themselves “modern”).
Mr. Lefkowitz’s creation is, in a sense, the polar opposite of what was once called “cardiac Judaism” – the once-popular “I’m a believing Jew in my heart, even if I’m not observant of any of the Torah’s commandments” approach. “Social Orthodoxy” means doing Jewish without believing Jewish.
To wit, Mr. Lefkowitz explains that he dons tefillin daily and attends a synagogue weekly. He eats kosher and, when eating in non-kosher restaurants, orders vegetarian dishes. He “pick[s] and choose[s] from the menu of Jewish rituals,” but “without fear of divine retribution,” indeed without belief in a Creator. (To Whom he prays in synagogue isn’t clarified.)
He claims, ludicrously, that “Modern Orthodoxy” of the sort he extolls has its roots in the teachings of Rav Shamson Raphael Hirsch; and, not ludicrously at all, sees its exemplification in the approaches of Rabbi Avi Weiss, the father of the aforementioned “Open Orthodoxy” and Mordecai Kaplan, Reconstructionism’s parent.
Indeed, that latter movement, although it hasn’t gained many adherents, is pretty much precisely what the Commentary commentator is championing, albeit with an attempt at some “Orthodox” redecoration. Kaplan’s first and most recognized work was entitled “Judaism As A Civilization,” and its title says it all. The Jewish faith, to him, is not a world-view, not a religion, not a revealed mission from the Creator to His chosen people, but a culture, and nothing more.
Mr. Lefkowitz recounts the astonishment of a Catholic friend who asked him, “How can you do everything you do… if you don’t even believe in G-d?”
The writer, he tells us, responded by citing to his friend his ancestors’ response at Sinai – “We will do and understand afterwards,” which he reads as “engaging first in religious practices” and only later, if then, dealing with “matters of faith.”
Of course, that is an utter misunderstanding of what Naaseh Vinishma really means, that it was Klal Yisroel’s acceptance of a Commander, regardless of whether or not we comprehend His commands. It does not bespeak, chalilah, any postponement of emunah but, quite the opposite, is predicated on it. Mr. Lefkowitz might do better to ponder Shema instead.
One wishes that he would have been more honest and straightforward and just declared himself a Reconstructionist. But rather than add a new member to that smallest of the mesorah-spurning Jewish groups, he insists on appropriating the “O”-word, with yet a new antithetical adjective in front of it.
Mr. Lefkowitz reports that his children attend a Modern Orthodox day school. Here’s hoping they receive a good education in basic Jewish texts and beliefs there, including what Naaseh Vinishma really means and the significance of Shema. May his choice of schooling for his progeny merit him the nachas of true Yiddisheh kinder and einiklach.
© 2014 Hamodia