Morethodoxy: Exploring the Breadth, Depth and Passion of Orthodox Judaism

It wasn’t about making a point, or advancing an agenda. Nobody invited our local Jewish journalists, and even the one who was there never entertained the idea of writing about it. Because even though it had never happened before, we weren’t doing it in order to make local Jewish history. The beauty of the event lay in its being completely un-self-conscious. 

On the afternoon / evening of the Tisha B’av just past, three shuls – one Orthodox, one Conservative, and one non-denominational – got together to learn in havruta, to sing “If I forget you, Jerusalem”,  and to break fast together. When planning the event, my rabbinic partners and I were unsure as to how many of our congregants would actually show up. After all, it would already be 7:30 PM at the end of long day of fasting. And you never know what will happen when invite people to leave the comfortable “four amot” of their own shul, and to make their way over to another. But not only did people come, they came in numbers far exceeding our expectations. We literally had to bring in dozens of chairs from an adjoining room. 

For me and for our shul, this get together was the compliment to a gathering that we have been doing for years on the morning of Tisha B’av. For years and years we have been davening and reciting the kinot together with our brothers and sisters from the Young Israel down the boulevard from us, alternating venues each year. This year, we were joined (and hosted) by the third of the three major Orthodox shuls in the neighborhood, generating a truly powerful expression of communal unity and Jewish love. It’s indescribably moving. Which is what led the president of our shul, just after Tisha B’av a year ago, to encourage me to think in wider Jewish communal terms as well.    

And now, a year later there we all were.  As soon as we got everyone seated for our first-ever inter-denominational Tisha B’av afternoon program, the atmosphere turned magical, as the space filled with the intense din learning and discussion (we learned Brachot 3a, an aggada set in the ruins of Yerushalayim – you can email me at ravyosef@bnaidavid.com for the source sheet). People were learning with fellow Jews whom they had never met before, and remarkably, yet unsurprisingly, it all felt so natural. This was at least in part because it was Tisha B’av, and on Tisha B’av our sense of being family is particularly intuitive. 

As the end of the day was approaching, we broke for Ma’ariv. As had been pre-arranged, our chevra davened in a room that had been set for us with a mechitza, as the balance of the chevra davened in an egalitarian setting in a different room. It’s what we do for one another when we’re a family. 

I believe this is something you can do in your community too. It’s deceptively easy. 

Over the break fast, I heard only one complaint: “Next year, we need to have more time”. To which I would only add, “Next year in Jeruslaem”.

The RCA convention is over, and everybody’s gone home. Back to the work we do, the work, with God’s help, of healing and helping, teaching and inspiring. The convention was – for me – a two day stroll in the twilight zone, to a place far removed from the daily realty of rabbinic life, a place which sometimes vibrated with a palpable sense of historic significance, and other times was permeated by an exaggerated sense of self-importance. We, the members, recognized that there were many outside the walls of the convention who’d be anxiously awaiting the outcome of our deliberations concerning women’s roles in Orthodox leadership. But we were also at times candid enough to admit that the anticipation was at least partly for the Jewish community entertainment value we‘d provide, as we added the next chapter to this juicy ongoing saga of gender, power, politics and personalities.

A couple of important things did actually happen.  Many great rabbis worked very very hard to keep the “big tent” intact, to preserve a reasonable amount of unity within the everybody-except-Chovevai, non-Haredi Orthodox rabbinate. And to their great credit, they succeeded. First, by defeating the amendments that (a) would have rendered the sin of ordaining women a capital crime (in organizational terms), and (b) would have declared the sin of belonging to a group that thinks about women’s leadership roles in an expansive way to be an automatic disqualification for RCA leadership. And second, by crafting a resolution that one the one hand applauded and encouraged progress in  women’s higher Jewish education and communal involvement, and on the other hand drawing a red line at women’s ordination. I can only imagine the number of hours, and the dedication of mental energy that had to have been invested in drafting a document that would satisfactory to so many members. The preservation of organizational unity was an admirable feat, to be congratulated.

But on the day after (who knows? Maybe it’s my jet lag?), I have an overriding queasy feeling. It feels to me that by drawing such a bright red line, by trying to slam the door shut on the ordination question not just for today, but forever, the RCA has placed itself on the wrong side of history, just as Rav Kook did when he opposed suffrage for women in the 1920’s. Rav Kook’s arguments then were almost identical to the RCA’s arguments today (e.g. time-honored tradition, appropriate gender roles, the surrender to value systems that are alien to Torah) But Rav Kook’s world was moving forward, and it was, in retrospect, a time to get aboard the train, not a time to lie down in front of it. It feels to me that the RCA has made the same miscalculation. Tellingly, the RCA resolution on women’s roles contained no specific forward-looking vision for Orthodox women’s leadership. Only the delineation of its limits. It wasn’t about playing to win, rather about playing to not lose.

And there’s a factor that contributed to this outcome that needs to be acknowledged. On my flight back, my thoughts kept returning to the fact that while this resolution had been crafted by so many learned, wise and esteemed rabbis, and then approved by so many others, not a single one of these rabbis was herself a woman. Which of course sets up a mad, closed circuit – the sort that history tends to eventually leave in its dust.

So what happened at the convention? Important achievements for unity and for tolerance. And some cold water thrown on the forward progress of Modern Orthodox women and their supporters. And we go on from here.

 With the dust settling (for the moment) over the issue of ordaining women, a question of a much more sweeping and urgent nature needs to be squarely addressed. The right-wing opponents of the RCA’s measured statement are demanding with one voice that the ordination of women expressly be labeled as “a breach of our mesorah (received tradition)”. Their claim is that it ultimately doesn’t matter whether bestowing the title “rabbi” upon a woman violates Halacha or not. Even if it does not, it is an act of near heresy, as it implicitly denies the validity of our received tradition which we believe originated at Sinai – a tradition which bans women from the rabbinate, or so their argument goes. This is the stance taken by Agudah, among others. Their argument is designed to be a debate-stopper. Such has always been the purpose of crying “heresy”.

 But is their understanding of the term “mesorah” accurate? Let us for now leave the specific issue of women’s ordination aside (though to argue that we have a tradition barring women from the modern rabbinate is comparable to the argument, made nearly a century ago, that we have a tradition barring women from voting). Let’s focus only on the larger question: Do we believe that to change any long-standing Jewish practice is perforce to deny the validity – or even the existence of – a legally binding “mesorah”?

Or might the opposite be true? That to stubbornly insist on never changing long-standing practices is actually itself a departure from our received tradition? 

There is a constellation of points in Jewish Law and practice which when taken together form a striking pattern. Accepted, Biblically-sanctioned legal practices are sometimes understood as falling short of our religious ideals, and are then subject to formal or de facto change. One point in the pattern is the Talmud’s decision to label the “Law of the Captive Beauty” (D’varim 21) as being a concession to the dark side of human nature, the yetzer hara. Yes, the Torah permits the Israelite soldier to seize a beautiful woman whom he finds among the captives of war. But to rabbinic thinking, the fact that this is permissible doesn’t imply that it is a behavior that meets Judaism’s religious/ethical ideal. Our Sages explicitly label seizing a woman, even under these circumstances, as  being a bad thing. It is something that a decent religious person does not do. Long-sanctioned legal tradition though it may be, the unmistakable conclusion  is that as we progress in our ethical self-expectations, the “Law of the Captive beauty” is a practice that should not be perpetuated (and in fact would never be tolerated in a Jewish army today)

Take, as another example the fate, in rabbinic hands, of the Torah’s instruction that we take Canaanites as our slaves, and that we not to ever emancipate them. Indeed, Tanach attests to the established tradition of Israelites owning non-Israelite slaves, and presumably bequeathing them to their children. But to the rabbinic mind, this Biblical law was a concession to economic realities, not a reflection of our religious ideal. (See Sifra Behar, parsha 6). In light of the severe Biblical restrictions concerning owning and working an Israelite slave, the earliest generation of Jews simply needed an alternative. (In the words of the Sifra, “Since You prohibited all of these, what labor shall we use?!”)  But the Talmud attests in several places, that our sages had grown uncomfortable with this long-standing practice of permanent servitude. In fact by the time of the Hadrianic persecution, the practice of emancipating foreign slaves was so common among Jews that when the Romans charged R. Elazar ben Parta with the crime of observing Jewish Law, one of the charges leveled against him was “why did you emancipate your slave?” . This practice, Rashi comments, was widely regarded as “dat yehudit”, standard Jewish practice (Gemara and Rashi A.Z. 17a}

The traditions of warfare are yet another point in the pattern. The Midrash (Tanchuma 96:3, in the context of  D’varim 20) portrays Moshe himself as rejecting the Biblical mode of warfare in which civilians are not always given the opportunity to escape. Moshe’s midrashic refusal to comply with God’s command to carry out just such a campaign, anticipates the halachik change to this effect. (See for example, Rambam’s Mishna Torah, Laws of Kings 6:1)

What these examples share is the fact that the stated law, the established practice, fell short of a religious/moral ideal that the Torah itself elsewhere expressed. The taking of women against their will is listed a sin of the generation of the flood. Our founding story revolves around the moral evil of forcing people to labor as slaves with no hope of freedom. Our progenitor Abraham’s greatest moment was the one when he insisted that one cannot kill the innocent along with the wicked.  And in each of the above cases, the legal tradition was ultimately modified.

These are but a few points in the pattern. Over time, our tradition has also effected changes in the areas of divorce, the taking of concubines, and the implementation of capital punishment, all with an eye toward the ideals the Torah elsewhere articulates. The underlying legal theory is the recognition that our people’s historical journey from the real to the ideal is a long one. As well as the recognition that the travelers with which we began our journey -  those who left Egypt – possessed but the most tenuous of grasps on what it was that God was envisioning. Rambam said it best. “Many things in our Law are due [to the fact] that a sudden transition from one opposite to another is impossible. And man, according to his nature, is not capable of abandoning suddenly all to which he was accustomed. (Guide, 3:32) As paraphrased by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, “the Torah is a series of provisional enactments, tending toward the realization of an ideal society”.

It is unmistakable that our received tradition instructs us to continuously reflect upon our long-standing practices.  For the fact that a given practice is long-standing can point either to the conclusion that it is worthy and good, or to the conclusion that it is overdue for a reassessment, as it represents a premature plateauing in our constant ascent toward God’s ideal. To change is not to breach the menorah. If anything, the opposite is true.

We have a received tradition regarding the means and the methods of change as well. The process is characterized by cautiousness and consensus-building, care and community. But we need to be wary of those who brandish the term “mesorah” as a weapon against any change that doesn’t suit their political tastes. They are abusing the term, and leading us backwards.

On Purim day, we open our hands to the Jewish poor. Of course on every day of the year we also open our hands to the Jewish poor, but on Purim day there is a specific mitzva to do so, for we are required to see to it that everyone has the capacity to partake in at least some kind of Seudat Purim, a festive Purim meal. This mitzva is clearly inspired by the 16^th chapter of Devarim, in which we are twice commanded to include the stranger, the Levi, the widow and the orphan in our Yom Tov joy. Thus Purim was ordained to be not only a day of feasting and sharing portions with our friends, but also a day of Matanot L’evyonim, gifts to the poor. Our shul, like so many around the world, fulfills this mitzva through sending funds to organizations in Israel who distribute the funds to the Israeli poor on Purim day. 

But what about the non-Jewish poor on Purim?  A few months ago one of my dearest congregants and friends proposed to organize an “Open Purim Seudah” on Purim day, here at our shul. For years we have been running regular lunches that serve our neighborhood’s poor and homeless, but for whatever reason, we had never done one on Purim.  I recognized right away that there would be many Jews in our area who would benefit from such a Seuda, and if they were to come we’d have the opportunity to fulfill the objective of Matanot L’evyonim in a very direct way. So without hesitation, we laid the plans and began advertising. Now, while our expectation is that Jews will comprise the lion’s share of our Open Purim Seudah guests, I’m equally sure that many non-Jewish poor will also arrive, and they will obviously be included fully. (At out regular community lunches, between 50 and 60 percent of our guests are not Jewish.) Are they too part of the mitzva of the day? Does Matanot L’evyonim in some sense extend to them as well? 

This question soon took on a more pressing quality when two more of my dearest congregants and friends proposed that – in the spirit of Matanot L’evyonim –  we set up tables after megillah reading on Saturday night, invite people to make PB&J sandwiches, and then deliver them to LA’s and Santa Monica’s homeless on Purim day. Is this kind of effort in fact in the spirit of Matanot L’evyonim, or is it a sort of misplaced generosity on Purim day?

 On the one hand, a very logical argument could be made that the tzedaka we do on Purim is – and should be -  just about our fellow Jews. The focus of the day is on facilitating the Purim celebrations of those who otherwise wouldn’t have them, and it would therefore seem that at least on this day, all of our efforts ought be directed toward this goal. And not surprisingly, the Halacha makes it clear that we in fact only fulfill the actual mitzva of Matanot L’evyonim through giving to fellow Jews. The purpose of the Miztva clearly defines the pool of potential beneficiaries.

 On the other hand, is it necessarily the case that the specific mitzva to support fellow Jews on Purim discourages us from practicing wider charitable activity on this day? Does the front-and-center focus on fellow Jews on Purim day imply that we should harness all of our charitable resources for this purpose exclusively? Or to the contrary, does Matanot L’evyonim generate a halachik ripple effect, rendering Purim day a time of generally heightened charitable activity?

 Interestingly, the Shulchan Aruch addresses this question directly. “We are not overly particular with the Purim funds; rather we give to whoever extends his hand. And in a place in which it is customary to give to non-Jews as well, one gives to them.” (694:3) R. Yechiel Epstein explains (in his Aruch HaShulchan), that this is done “for the ways of peace, in the same manner in which we include non-Jews in all of our tzedaka, as [the Rama] rules in Yoreh De’ah 291”.  Interestingly then, our question comes down to a community’s ordinary charitable practices. A community that routinely practices the Halacha of including non-Jews in tzedaka does so on Purim as well. My congregants and friends had hit the nail on the head. (By the way: R. Epstein notes that if the broader tzedaka can be performed with funds other than the official Matanot L’evyonim collection, this is preferable, but not technically necessary.) 

There is a principle stated in Pirkai Avot that “one mitzva begets another”.  As communities whose custom it is to support our own, and then also beyond our own, we render this literally true in the case of Matanot L’evyonim.

The recent change in title conferred upon my Morethodoxy colleague Sara Hurwitz has naturally generated a lot of intense reaction. Mahara”t Hurwitz is now Rabbah Hurwitz, as affirmed by the certificate that Rabbis Weiss and Sperber have newly updated. For all intents and purposes, the gender line in Orthodox ordination has been crossed and Sara has been named a rabbi. It’s not surprising that this development has elicited negative response even within the ranks of Modern Orthodoxy, which, in the final analysis, is a fundamentally traditional movement. We are, after all, Orthodox. 

But it’s vitally important to distinguish between legitimate criticism that merits reflection and discussion, and disingenuous and overheated rhetoric which thoughtful and serious Modern Orthodox Jews are obligated to reject as a matter of intellectual and religious principle. Legitimate criticism would focus on the questions of timing and long-term strategies. Should the Mahara”t model been given significantly more time to develop before being surpassed? Might the ordination cause have ultimately been better served through twenty Mahara”ts first establishing a track record of exemplary service to the Orthodox community over a span of 10 or 15 years? Does the move to full ordination right now compromise the ability of today’s Modern Orthodox community to solidly establish itself within the broader YU/OU/RCA community as an ideological force that cannot be dismissed or marginalized? Is the Modern Orthodox laity ready for this yet? These are legitimate and serious questions, forming the basis of potentially legitimate criticism. 

 But we need to respond bluntly to criticisms that are inherently disingenuous, and which negate numerous spiritual, moral, and halachik principles that we hold dear. In recent days, there are those who have contended that the move to “Rabbah” constitutes a departure into “Post-Orthodoxy”, into a realm that is outside of and irremediably irreconcilable with Orthodox practice and law. This claim and its variants are disingenuous and polemical, intended to pre-empt honest conversation, rather than to contribute to it. Disingenuous in the sense, that they could only sincerely be made by people who honestly subscribe to one or more of the following propositions:

(1)      Women don’t have the intellectual capacity to actually master the Orthodox Semicha curriculum.

(2)      Women are halachikly barred from teaching Torah publicly, or from tending to the pastoral needs of fellow Jews, or from responding to the common battery of day-to-day halachik questions that Orthodox rabbis need to field.

(3)      As full members of the human community, women are entitled to earn PhD’s, head corporations, and hold any elective office in the land, but are inherently disqualified for a position as prestigious as the contemporary rabbinate.

(4)      Orthodox Judaism promotes gender discrimination for its own sake, with Halacha itself lacking the authority to challenge the discriminatory pattern.

(5)       Orthodox religious leadership is just fine the way it is, and could only be harmed by the contributions of the other half of the population.

I’d be shocked if the “Post-Orthodoxy” accusers believe any of these 5.

  If you too find the 5 assertions above to be alien to the Orthodox Judaism you practice, then speak up when you hear criticisms that clearly rest upon them. Let there be robust debate about “Rabbah”, but don’t let the debate be hijacked by rhetorical hot air.

As Shabbat approached this past week, two things were immediately obvious. One was that we needed to daven for the people of Haiti in shul on Shabbat morning. The other was that there is nothing remotely close to a “Prayer for non-Israelites who are Suffering” anywhere in our siddur. Same for the book of Tehilim, to which we always instinctively turn at a time of crisis.

Sure enough, a Mi Sheberach prayer composed specifically for the catastrophe in Haiti soon began making its way through the Jewish internet. The Mi Sheberach’s modern Hebrew was flawless and the sentiments it expressed were profound, urgent, and moving. But I knew that I wasn’t going to use it in shul the next day.  For starters, too many of my congregants would not understand the Hebrew. And even for those congregants who would understand them, the recitation of these words, beautiful as they were, wouldn’t resonate in their souls as “davening”. “Davening” involves reciting words that are old, that conjure up memories, that join us instantly to generations past, that appear in a book whose pages are worn with use.

It was getting late, and I still didn’t have a prayer.

Thankfully, a line from selichot that that so pointedly related to the tragic plight of the earthquake survivors, surfaced in my head. “Perhaps He will have compassion upon the poor and impoverished nation. Perhaps he will have mercy.” (It’s a refrain – concerning ourselves – which we repeat in the Selichot on the third day before Rosh HaShana). Suddenly, in my mind’s ear, I could hear the kahal (congregation) davening this line, in response to the ba’al tefilla davening the middle verses of Ashrai, which speak of God’s compassion over all His creation. And finally, we had a prayer.

After Shabbat, I lingered over the fact that our books of song and prayer do not contain prayers for people other than ourselves (with the exception of a few paragraphs from the Rosh HaShana machzor.) And as I’ve done before, I worked on persuading myself that this fact is not as telling as it might seem, that it doesn’t reflect some kind of fundamental religious position of ours that the goyim can worry about themselves, that we need not, or perhaps even should not be davening for them in their time of distress. After all of the greatest figures in our history davened for non-Jews. In the parsha we had just read, literally minutes before we davened for Haiti, Moshe cried out in prayer three separate times asking God to relieve the suffering of Pharaoh and the Egyptians of all people! (He does it again this coming week.) And the prophet Jonah is specifically sent to save Assyrians from calamity. And there’s Avraham praying for the people of Sodom of course. And we have a long, long tradition of praying for our host government (though there is a touch of self-concern in this prayer as well). It worked, and I felt reassured, “precedented”.  Yet, there is a residual shadow. Shouldn’t there be something, somewhere in our canon of prayer that can be easily whipped out in cases of non-Jewish calamity?

 What do you think about all this?

For the last 14 years, I have been leading a Sunday morning discussion group with our Bnai/Bnot Mitzvah. It’s one of the highlights of my week. Every year, I devote one of the Sunday morning sessions to exploring the kids’ thoughts and feelings about the changing roles of girls and women within Judaism generally, and within Orthodoxy in particular. It’s always an interesting and thought-provoking session, but this year’s was exceptional.

The items that I (literally) put on the table for discussion each year include women dancing with a Sefer Torah on Simchat Torah, women leading their own zimmun, reciting Kiddush for the family on Friday night, learning Gemara in school, delivering Divrai Torah in shul, and becoming rabbis. I always emphasize that the point of the session is thoughtful discussion, not the reaching of any particular conclusion. I do my level best to keep my own feelings out of the proceedings, while challenging the kids to think deeply about their positions on this or that contemporary innovation. In past years, the kids took the direction of distinguishing between the practices that they were “comfortable” with from those which “felt wrong” to them. This year, their whole approach was different.

Rather than wanting to focus on the details of particular practices, they drove the discussion in the direction of overarching principles. The ideals that emerged as being most important to them were equality in educational opportunities, and freedom to pursue one’s passions, including the passion to be a religious teacher / leader. The kids talked about according respect to all, and recognizing the dignity of men and women alike. It was obvious to them that the only criteria that ought be relevant – even for the rabbinate – are the talent and capacity to do the job. I was blown away. The majority of the kids in the group attend self-described “centrist” Orthodox day schools, and haven’t grown up in families in which feminism is a value per se. They are tomorrow’s Orthodox kids on campus – halachik commitment runs in their veins – and then, with God’s help, they’ll be the rank and file members of Orthodox shuls. 

What’s changed? A few things, I think:
(1) This is the first wave of kids who were born and raised in our shul, and who thus take it for granted that the pulpit is open to women (and girls celebrating Bat Mitzvah), and that women do hakafot in the same way that men do. These girls have all attended numerous Bat Mitzvah celebrations at the Women’s Tefilla, and have seen their fathers and mothers alike take leadership positions in all facets of shul governance.
(2) By the time this group of kids arrived in middle school, Mishna and Gemara had already taken firm hold in the girls’ curriculum. (In historical terms this is a new development in most of our LA Orthodox schools, but what do these kids know from history??)
(3) They are very aware of the many women who have achieved prominent positions in US government (I’m sure they can’t name the last California Senator who was male), and their lives are filled with women who have accomplished impressively in every professional field.

If this year’s class is not a fluke – and I think it’s not – then it provides an inspiring testament to the power of quiet perseverance, the patient pursuit of a communal vision, and the fact that over time, communal norms can really change. I have no illusions as to the likelihood that some will soon wrangle with the halachik limitations on women’s participation in public tefilla, but I’m confident that they will be equipped to sort those issues out in a productive way.

So hang in there Morethodox communities. The future is bright.

 ”From the day that the Temple was destroyed, the Holy One, blessed is He, has nothing in His world, except for the four cubits of Halacha.” (Berachot 8a). 

This soulful rabbinic reflection is both an expression of grief over Jerusalem’s destruction, and an affirmation of the religious power of halachik study. Only in the places and times where Halacha is being studied, can the Divine Presence that had formerly dwelt in the holy of holies, now be found. 

I wonder whether this rabbinic teaching has been taken way too far in our contemporary context, to disastrous effect.

 It goes without saying that we don’t actually believe that God has abandoned the vast swaths of world that exist outside of Halacha’s four cubits. Every morning we speak the sacred words, “The One who mercifully gives light to the world and all who inhabit it, and in Whose goodness renews daily the work of creation”. After every meal we acknowledge God who “sustains the entire world in His goodness”. And every Monday and Thursday we plead, “have compassion upon us and upon all of Your creatures”. On Friday nights we even call upon the entire Earth to sing to Him. We definitely believe that God is still everywhere, and that His care and concern continue to be universal.

But it’s impossible, of course, to reconcile this conviction that God’s eyes are everywhere and that His mercies are upon everyone, with the awful behavior of Orthodox Jews that has captured public attention over the past months and years. Unquestionably, many factors contribute to a religious person’s (a religious leader’s) decision to behave illegally and unethically. Greed and base temptation figure in prominently. But we shouldn’t underestimate the impact of the mindset which confines God to the beis hamedresh, to the four cubits of the yeshiva and to the “heimishe” community, to the exclusion of the wider world which is populated by those who do not enter the beis hamedresh, or who are not part of the halacha-bound fraternity.

 You can’t launder money unless you’ve convinced yourself that God doesn’t really know from the IRS, and doesn’t really care about the beneficiaries of taxpayer-financed government programs. You can’t abuse and manipulate people who are hoping to convert to Judaism unless you’ve concluded that God looks away from the anguish of the non-Jewish “stranger”. You cannot protect men who are utilizing a “get” as an instrument of extortion against their ex-wives unless you believe that women – who in many communities are outsiders to the clique of the beis hamedresh – fall outside God’s concern. And you cannot underpay and otherwise maltreat Guatemalan workers unless you don’t regard them as being God’s creatures in quite the same way that you are.

 It’s a disturbing and dangerous sort of arrogance that can arise from a misreading of the Talmud’s statement that God is only found within the four cubits of the yeshiva. If the great contribution that Modern Orthodoxy makes to Orthodox Judaism is to restore the God of Israel also to the world outside the Beit Midrash, and to speak with clarity about what needs to be fixed – dayenu.

I thank all of my friends and new friends who have shared comments on the “Ever-Narrowing Orthodox Mind” . There are numerous ways in which I’d like to engage and respond, though I’ll begin with two:
(1) providing sources in opposition to two of the closely-related non-dogmas (with more to come in subsequent posts)
(2) addressing the question as to whether it any longer matters that opinions on these issues range dramatically in our classical sources, given that “most Orthodox Jews today” believe the alleged dogmas.

In the previous post, I asserted that Orthodox Jews need not embrace the following two ideas, as many of our classical thinkers did not embrace them either:
(1) Every calamity that occurs on Earth is the result of an express Divine decision as to how and when it should unfold, and that God directly decides who shall survive it, and who shall not.

(2) When tragedy strikes, this is invariably the fault of somebody having sinned.

The classical thinkers I had in mind include both Ramban (Nachmanides) and Rambam (Maimonides). In his commentary on Humash (Braishit 18:19) Ramban writes that God only extends providential protection to the righteous. “God’s Providence in the lower world is general , and even human beings are subject to random events (“mikrim”) … Only for His righteous ones (“hasidav”, like Abraham, who is the subject of the commentary), does God devote His heart to know them in detail”. Ramban’s comment is a milder version of Rambam’s, as it appears in the latter’s Guide for the Perplexed, 3:51. There, Rambam limits personal Divine Providence to people who have achieved perfect intellectual apprehension of God, and even for these, only when they are actively engaged in thinking about God. When distracted, they become “a target for every evil that may happen to befall” them.  The writings of Ralbag (Gersonidies) go even farther than Rambam’s. The Midrash too reflects this opinion in the voice of Resh Lakish, who taught that God had to give up on properly guarding over the righteous in this world, although He will certainly reward them in the next world. (Eicha Rabba, 3:1, “Oti Nahag”) In the views of these indisputably “Orthodox” thinkers, random events all too often do in fact overtake ordinary, or even extraordinary, human beings.

Equally if not even more mainstream is the Talmud’s discussion about the permissibility of healing people who have taken ill. (Bava Kamma 85a) The Talmud considers the possibility that healing should be prohibited on the grounds that a person’s illness is presumably an act of God, Who is afflicting the person on account of his or her sins. (See Rashi’s commentary.) But the Talmud then cites a Biblical verse permitting healing nonetheless. While there are many nuances in the interpretation of the Talmudic conclusion, one way or another, the Talmud is stepping away from the premise that illness is the direct outcome of sin.

It is not difficult to marshal sources which oppose alleged dogmas which are really not dogmas at all. The more difficult task, I have discovered over the last week, is to convince people that the exercise is worth it.  Whether believing that contemporary Orthodoxy has effectively rejected all of the above thinkers, or believing that tampering with people’s security dogmas undermines their piety, folks have expressed that we should  throw in the towel. There are at least two reasons why we must not. The first is that people’s beliefs affect their attitudes and actions. Think about attitudes we saw in our community years ago – and sometimes still today – toward people who contracted AIDS. Think about the claims made by Orthodox rabbis concerning why New Orleans was almost wiped out by Katrina, or why some people survived on 9/11 and others did not. And think about how these kinds of attitudes belittle us as a religious community, and turn us away from people in need.

And the other reason is simply that when you love something, it kills you to see corrupted and warped. It one’s Orthodox commitment means anything, it means wanting to see it healthy and productive, being the source of blessing it is designed to be.

Another way that we are unnecessarily making Orthodoxy unappealing to folks is by tolerating the perception that Orthodox Jews are bound by a set of religious dogmas, many of which strike the modern mind as being highly implausible and/or deeply offensive. I’m referring to the alleged Orthodox dogmas which our children too often pick up in day school, and which become further propagated and entrenched with every ArtScroll publication that hits the shelves. When we fail to respectfully but vigorously assert that these are not Orthodox dogmas, we become complicit not only in a form of Chilul Hashem, but also in reinforcing the impression that Orthodoxy does best by the narrow-minded. (In truth, the consequences of our silence are more grievous still as these “dogmas” also seem to grant some of their adherents the license to engage in terrible behavior.) 

Here are just a few examples of damaging “dogmas”, each of which is in reality only one opinion among other dissenting opinions that have been expressed in classical (= Orthodox ) sources. Your local Morethodox rabbi will surely be ale to point you to the sources that dispute the notions that: 

(1)   Jewish souls have a superior innate quality relative to non-Jewish souls. And only the former enjoy the benefits of eternal life. 

(2)   Every calamity that occurs on Earth is the result of an express Divine decision as to how and when it should unfold, and that God directly decides who shall survive it, and who shall not. 

(3)   When tragedy strikes, this is invariably the fault of somebody having sinned. 

(4)    Our biblical ancestors, most especially our patriarchs and matriarchs, never erred or sinned. Any act that they performed – including those which would horrify us if our spouses or our children did them – is righteous.

 (5)   It is prohibited to return lost objects to non-Jews, and one ought not extend tzedaka to non-Jewish individuals or causes as long as Jewish need exists. And that it goes without saying that there are no circumstances that under which parts of  Eretz Yisrael could be ceded for the creation of a non-Jewish state.

 (6)   The Midrash and the Aggada are comprised of narratives that were passed down to our Sages from Sinai, to be regarded as possessing the same truth as the biblical narratives themselves, even when they thus compel us to negatively stereotype whole peoples (e.g. Ishmaelites), or require us to morally justify exploiting your twin brother’s weakness for lentils, for your own financial benefit.. 

(7)   It is possible, utilizing mathematics and physics, to prove the scientific authenticity of the Torah’s account of Creation, and that to regard the opening chapters of Genesis as being anything other than literally true, is heresy. 

(8)   Jews who are not Orthodox would be better off not davening at all than davening in a non-Orthodox shul. Cause we know how God thinks about these things. 

(9)   [“Damaging” in the sense that our intellectual honesty is shot by this one..] The book of Tehillim, including the Psalms describing events surrounding the destruction and rebuilding of Jerusalem, were nonetheless somehow authored by King David. And the books of Mishlai and Kohellet were authored by King Solomon -  despite the fact that they are written in a Hebrew that belongs to the Second Temple period. And the issues surrounding Isaiah etc, etc. 

If you’re reading this, the chances are that you’ve been troubled by all of these “dogmas” before. But don’t take them lying down. I believe that if we speak our piece, we can reshape what “Orthodoxy believes”. Artscroll did it. Why can’t we?