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

“Shall the Judge of all the earth not do justice?”

By humbly but firmly addressing this remarkable question to God, our father Avraham installed justice as a primary Jewish value. Everything, even the Divine intention, needs to be measured by the yardstick of justice. One can see the influence of Avraham’s position manifest in a variety of decisions later rendered by the Sages. The Torah rules, for example, that the “rebellious son” is to be judged, and ultimately executed, based upon his projected future malfeasance (“nidon al shem sofo”). One imagines that the Sages’ conclusions that this law was intended for academic but not practical purposes, was motivated by the fact that by normative legal standards, it is unjust to punish someone for sins he has not yet committed. (In the Midrash, God Himself explains His decision to save the young Ishmael from dying of thirst, in exactly this way.) Similarly, the Sages’ insistence that all of the Biblical  “eye for an eye” legislation must be read non-literally, explicitly derives from the inherent injustice of the literal application (Who’s to say that the victim’s eye and the perpetrators eye are of equal value?)

The primacy of justice as a religious value is in great evidence in the writings of the prophets of course, chief among them Isaiah, who declares the sacrificial rituals in the Temple to be of no value (or worse) as long as the widow and the orphan cannot find justice in that society. “Zion will be redeemed through justice”, Isaiah declares. Justice is a primary value, and its absence calls the value of our other forms of religious devotion in sharp question.

It has struck me recently though that while, as an Orthodox community, we are able to speak with clarity and passion about Torah and Mitzvot, about Hesed (kindness), and Tzniut (modesty / humility), we just don’t talk a lot about justice. We seem to feel uncomfortable around the term, associating it with center-left politics and with liberal forms of Judaism. Our shuls tend not to have social justice activities, and our schools, even when providing instruction in texts such as Parshat Mishpatim or Bava Metzia, focus entirely on conveying information, rather than on analyzing the material for how they are wrangling with questions of justice.  Perhaps we even fear that there is something dangerous or subversive about raising the issue of justice when we are engaged in the study of God’s law. How would we, for example, discuss with today’s fifth graders, the justice of a master not being liable when he mortally strikes his slave, as long as the slave did not succumb to his injury within the first 24 hours? The Torah’s explanation that “he (the slave) is the master’s property” probably would not suffice all by itself.

Our demotion of justice from being a first-tier value has not come without consequences for us. It has, for example, warped our communal conversation about Shalom Rubashkin, as at the same time that we decry the injustice of his sentencing, we have still not developed the language with which to describe the injustices he visited upon the workers in his factory. It hampers our ability to fully confront the phenomenon of agunot, as our conversation is often limited only to the halachik details of the laws of divorce or to the fruitless game of he said / she said, because  the plain and open cry of “injustice!” doesn’t seem to have sufficient currency to sway Orthodox public opinion. (Calling out the injustice cannot alone solve the problem of course, but it would go a long way toward shaming people into compliance.)

On the occasions that we have in fact assigned justice its proper place, we have achieved important things. The prevalence in Modern Orthodox circles of daughters reciting kaddish for parents, and of daughters marking their Bat Mitzvah in their shuls – each being practices which were met with considerable objection at first –  is the result of the  simple triumph of justice. Justice, one of our basic religious values.

 Let’s learn again how to use this powerful word. Let’s take the example of our father Avraham. And let us bring closer the day when Zion will be redeemed through justice.

 A few months ago, I was sitting in the car with my 18 year old son, as Kim Kardashian’s name was mentioned on the radio. “Who is that guy?” I asked (though for the life of me I can’t explain what male name I though Kim was a diminutive of.) After one very long incredulous teenage stare, I at least learned that she’s not a guy.

 Over the last few days I couldn’t miss the news that Kim got married and the filed for divorce in the space of 72 days. I realize that it may all be part of her reality show, and that maybe I shouldn’t be taking the whole thing too seriously. But for the sake of an institution that a lot of us believe in deeply – the institution of marriage – I believe it’s worth speaking up.

 Whenever I work with couples as they plan their marriages, we talk about the rewards of marriage, but even more so about the covenant of marriage. Because it is a covenant. That’s what it is. To marry is to undertake the most sublime set of commitments that we will ever pledge to another human being. And people not prepared to do this, truly have no moral business getting married.

 Dr. Erich Fromm said it best in his classic book “The Art of Loving”, whose central thesis is that nobody can  passively “be in love” for very long. If we plan to love someone long-term, we have to be committed to engaging continuously in the activity of “loving” that person. For Fromm, this involves scared commitments to continuously  demonstrating “care, responsibility, respect, and knowledge.”  His elaboration on the element of “knowledge” is especially striking. “To respect a person is not possible without knowing him; care and responsibility would be blind if there were not guided by knowledge…. The knowledge which is an aspect of love, is possible only when I can transcend the concern for myself, and see the other person in his own terms. I may know, for instance, that a person is angry… but when I know him more deeply I know that he is anxious and worried, that he feels lonely…”

 Not surprisingly our own literature sounds many similar themes. In his “Lonely Man of Faith”, Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik writes that the point of the Adam and Eve story is that a person who wants to overcome loneliness can do so only through a gesture of sacrifice. Adam literally gives part of himself to another, and as a result is able to establish with Eve, “a new kind of fellowship [where] not only hands are joined, but experiences as well, [where] one hears the rhythmic beat of hearts starved for existential companionship and all-embracing sympathy…” This is the marriage. Profound both in its transformative power and in the mutual commitment it demands. And it is ridiculed by a marriage that lasts 72 days.

 Even the sexual dimension of marriage is about the covenant. Commenting on the verse “and he shall cleave to is wife and they shall become one flesh,” the Netziv of Volozhin wrote, “ it is only the active effort of cleaving between husband and wife (i.e. sexual intimacy) that brings them closer together such that they become one”.  Marital sexuality is purposeful. It requires kavannah, in the same way that prayer does.  For it preserves and deepens the covenant.

 Whenever someone publicly mocks and diminishes the institution of marriage, the great majority of us who understand that marriage is our most scared covenant must respond. By calling out the offenders for what they’ve done, by insuring that our children understand what marriage really is, and by re-affirming our personal commitments to our covenanted partner.

The Torah is timeless; its laws binding for every generation. The Sages are the masters of the Oral Law; we accept their legal authority.

Does it follow then that we may never reassess rabbinic practices, even when circumstances change? Or, is it the case that such reassessments have frequently historically occurred? If they have, on what grounds have they occurred?  Where are the lines to be drawn?  And would not these reassessments constitute an affront to our Sages’ wisdom? These questions came to the fore in response to my post last week concerning the blessing “shelo asani isha”, and to my assertion that we should be using a halachik strategy to omit it from our daily blessings. And these questions richly deserve thoughtful response.

In broad terms, the Torah immovably and eternally anchors our values and our deeds, and it is our Sages who teach us what the Torah means. Thus, for example , Shabbat and its 39 categories of “work”, the laws of forbidden sexual relationships and who and what are included in them, and the mitzvah to preserve life as well as the extent we must go to do so, are our fixed stars.

But another legal function that our Sages perform is to apply (as opposed to interpret) the Torah’s eternal values and commands to the circumstances of real life. And the halachik record shows that when the circumstances of real life dramatically change, the Sages’ original application of the law can change along with them. This is particularly true when the original application is now seen as potentially harmful in light of the current, changed circumstances. Why is this process not considered an affront to the wisdom of the Sages? Why is it not deemed as an undermining of the Sages’ authority?  The answer is, that while we revere our Sages for their wisdom, we have never ascribed to them the gift of prophecy.  We have never expected that they would possess the capacity to anticipate realities that would unfold centuries or even millennia after they lived. And they never expected this of themselves.
A few examples to illustrate the point:

The Talmudic Sages applied the Torah’s command that we distance ourselves from idolatry to the circumstances of their marketplace, thus generating prohibitions on engaging non-Jews in commercial transactions that might in some way contribute to the latter’s religious practices. But centuries later the Jews of early medieval Ashkenaz were facing changed circumstances in which their ability to make a living depended entirely on conducting business with their Christian neighbors, including in ways and at times that the Talmud had forbidden. A number of reasons for leniency were offered by the great rabbinic voices of the day. One of those voices belonged to Rabbenu Yitzchak who cited the radically changed circumstances of Ashkenaz. “[These rabbinic practices were applicable] only in their days, when many Jews lived together [in a self-sustaining community]. We are today found among the nations, and we would have no way of earning money if we did not transact with them” (Tosafot, Bava Metzia 70b, and Avoda Zara, 15a). The circumstances of the marketplace had dramatically changed. Rabbenu Yitzchak intended no offense to the Sages of old.

The Talmud ruled that a twice-widowed woman must not be allowed to re-marry, for it had reason to believe that she posed a life-threatening danger to any would-be third husband. This was an application of the Biblical mitzvah to safeguard life. By Rambam’s time however, rabbis no longer believed that any such danger existed. As a result, the Sages’ law no longer had the effect of safeguarding a man’s life, rather only reducing a widow’s life to lonely misery. Thus, Rambam and others supported a practice in which “we counsel the widow that if someone were to betroth her, we (the Bet Din) would not compel them to divorce”, and when and if such a betrothal actually occurs, “the Beit Din writes her a ketuba, since she has already been betrothed.”  (Cited in Kesef Mishnah to Laws of Forbidden relations, 21:31) The application of the law had to change according to the changed circumstances. 

Rabbi David Tzvi Hoffman, writing in Germany in the 19th century, acknowledged that the rabbinic tradition up to his day was to exclude public Shabbat-violators from counting toward a minyan. The logic was that those who removed themselves from the normative community should not be recognized. But observing the radically changed circumstances of his place and time, in which Jews who observed Shabbat were thought to be odd, and the non-observers were thought to be “normal”, he concluded that the the original logic didn’t apply any longer, and that the original practice shoudl therefore be changed.  (Melamed L’ho’il #29)  He was simply living in a circumstance that his predecessors couldn’t have imagined.

Many more examples could be cited (for example Hillel and Pruzbal, the normative halachik practice to violate Shabbat in order to save fetuses in the eight month of gestation). And the argument is strong for taking the same approach to the way that the Talmudic Sages’ applied the Biblical mitzvah to praise God. There was a time when to praise God for not being a woman was neither insensitive nor an obstacle in the way of crucial religious progress. But our circumstances are different.

None of the rabbis who reassessed earlier practices intended to offend, and one can be certain that no offense would have been taken. Reassessing rabbinic practice in light of radically changed circumstances is a healthy and necessary part of the halachik process.

What the precise mechanisms are for this reassessment, and how exactly the process is to unfold, are very important questions without crisp answers. But the general guideline is provided by the amora Raba, who told his students that after he dies they “should not tear up his rulings [even if they seem problematic], for if I were alive, I might be able to explain my reasons. But neither should you simply accept them, for a judge should be guided only by what his eyes see” (Bava Batra 131a)

Friends have correctly pointed out to me over the last few days that my post of last Thursday was too strident in tone, and too light in halachik discussion and sourcing. I am again reminded why our Sages advised us to acquire friends, and why God blesses us with them.

For the stridency of the tone, I sincerely apologize. I can and should do better.

With regard to the substance, I share two points. The first concerns the proper halachik execution for the omission of the blessing “for You have not made me a woman”.  Rabbi Lopatin articulated it well, and I will here summarize his argument for it is indispensible to this change in practice.

(1)  We are familiar from our siddur with the blessing “For You have not made me a non-Jew”.  In our printed versions of the Talmud however, (see Menachot  43b) the blessing appears not in the negative formulation, rather in the positive language “for You have made me an Israelite” (שעשאני ישראל). While the majority of Talmudic commentaries and Codes nonetheless maintained that the correct version is the one we have in our siddur, two prominent Sages demurred. Both Rosh (Brachot 9:24) and the Vilna Gaon prescribe the recitation of “for You have made me an Israelite” , in accordance with our version of the Talmud.

(2) Bach (O.C 46) , while aligning himself with the majority position, rules that if in error you said “for You have made me an Israelite”, then you should OMIT THE TWO BLESSING THAT FOLLOW, including “for You have not made me a woman”. (Mishnah Brurah 46:15 cites this position as well.) This is because the expression of gratitude for being a (male) Jew already includes the sentiments of the subsequent blessings within it.

(3) The argument now proceeds with the assertion that we ought to DELIBERATELY recite “for you have made me an Israelite” (for women, the feminine version שעשאני ישראלית) IN ORDER TO CREATE THE GROUNDS FOR OMITTING  “for You have not made me a woman”.

This is an unusual halachik maneuver to be sure, one which requires justification. And this brings me to my second point. We don’t re-explore our halachik options with an eye toward change, absent a compelling reason to do so. By the same token though, to resist re-examination when such is needed, is to abdicate our responsibility to ensure that we’re always practicing halacha at its very best.

As I wrote in my original post, I believe fervently that Orthodoxy has yet to grapple fully or satisfactorily with the dignity of womankind. We know and understand, like no generation before us has known and understood, that women are men’s intellectual and spiritual equals. Our society has accordingly decided to treat both genders with equal dignity, and has opened all professional, political and communal endeavors to both genders equally. I believe that our community however, falls short of this goal in many ways. We are, of course, committed to operating within the framework and rules of halacha. But it is not hard to construct a halachik universe in which women’s physical space in shul and intellectual space in day schools and Study Halls are not lesser, but equal. It is not hard to imagine a halachik universe in which virtually all positions of leadership are available to all. And we must create a halachik universe in which the extortion of women by their ex-husbands as the Bet Din stands helplessly by, is simply unfathomable.  It’s not halacha’s fault that we are lagging. It’s our fault.

I know of course, that “You have not made me a woman” can be understood in many different ways. But by its plain meaning, and by the simple smell test, it has the effect today of justifying our lack of progress, and of affirming for us that women do not possess the spiritual dignity than men do. In OUR specific time, given OUR specific challenges, the blessing hurts us. We thus find ourselves today in an halachik  “sha’at hadchak”, an “urgent circumstance”. The sort of circumstance that justifies utilizing an ingenious halachik stratagem to effectively drop this blessing from our liturgy.

 I know there are many who will disagree with me on one or all of the points I’ve made. I am hopeful that stripped of their stridency, they will be easier to consider on their merits. May our disagreements be for the sake of Heaven.

A few times over the last couple of weeks. I’ve asked myself, “What’s the lesson to be derived from the sordid tales of Anthony Weiner, John Edwards, Arnold Schwarzenegger et.al?” I mean aside from the lessons we already know: that one should avoid doing stupid things, things that are hurtful and destructive to the people you love, things that are exploitative of people who may be in a position of relative weakness. Is there something else, something larger, that can only be seen by taking one step back, and considering these sorry stories within the larger framework of Jewish thought?

 The conclusion I came to is that this is a great time to look again at that sometimes-maligned Jewish value called tzniut, physical modesty. It’s a sometimes-maligned value because people tend to think that it’s fundamentally  about the superficial matter of how people dress, and further  that it’s specifically about how women dress, or even further that it’s about placing the responsibility upon women to save men from their own out-of-control libidos or utter lack of moral compass. But this is all wrong. Tzniut surely has implications for dress – for both genders alike! – but it’s fundamentally about a core ethical belief, the very core ethical belief that you can bet was nowhere to be found when these sexual scandals originated.

 What core ethical belief does physical modesty express and uphold? The answer is simple. The belief in human dignity. The idea that every person possesses an attribute that endows him with ultimate value, and which demands that she be the recipient of honor, respect and equal treatment. And that this attribute  is in no way connected to anything physical or visible. In fact it exists even when the physical is compromised or degraded. It’s the meta-physical attribute we call human dignity. And it’s ultimately the only trait that we believe ought to define a person’s worth, and ought to determine the way in which we relate to and interact with another person. And dignity’s advocate and guardian is the value we call tzniut.

 Properly lived, tzniut is the way we express our commitment to the ideal of building a society, in which no one of us thinks about or defines themselves or anyone else in terms his / her physical attributes. It’s lived out through carrying ourselves, and teaching our children to carry themselves, entertaining ourselves, and teaching our children to entertain themselves, and indeed dressing ourselves, and teaching our children to dress themselves, in a way that insists that dignity – and dignity alone – be understood as the core of human identity. It’s a way of looking at the world that renders it unthinkable to abuse or exploit, to cheapen or demean another human being – to see them merely as an object of entertainment or sexual gratification. The rope with which we try to pull the world out of the muck of its worst and most ancient habits and attitudes, is the notion of human dignity.  And the muscle with which we pull it, is the steady, continuous commitment to the value we call tzniut.

 We of course acknowledge that we are physical, sexual beings.  But when, through the practice of tzniut,  we see others as defined not by their bodies but by their human spirit, we come to understand that our sexuality is a Divine gift to be cherished, not a primal urge to be satisfied. This is the crazy Jewish idea, first expressed in chapter of two of the Torah, and then embedded in all of the  laws concerning on what occasions and with what frequency a husband and wife are to engage in intimacy, that human sexuality is an instrument God gave to us through which to fully know our life partner, to find ecstatic joy in the marital relationship, to continuously renew an everlasting covenant. What an unthinkable betrayal of God’s generosity it would be, to reduce this gift to a tool of mere physical gratification. Our Sages regarded the sin of adultery to be rooted in a kind of insanity. This is a perspective anchored in our beliefs about human dignity, supported by our practice of tzniut, and our reservation of ourselves as sexual beings to our spouses alone.

 The big lesson here, is that our tradition and practice of physical modesty is not a medieval relic, but a guardian of our most cherished modern ethical beliefs.

Last Shabbat afternoon, our shul hosted a unique panel of three Orthodox Jews who are gay or lesbian. All three have partners and children. All three continue to live Orthodox lives. The purpose of our panel was not to advocate for a reassessment of Halacha, or to question God’s justice.  There was none of that at all. The purpose was simply to pull our heads out of the sand. To acknowledge that there are Orthodox gays and lesbians in our extended families and that they are part of our shul communities. And to realize that they need our understanding in order to live the lives of Torah and Mitzvot that their souls desire. We came together last Shabbat in order to begin seeing this not as a political issue, but as a human issue.

 All three panelists simply shared their own experiences of struggling with their identities, finally coming out, and then struggling again, to find a place for themselves in the religious community they love. It was a powerful afternoon in front of a standing-room-only crowd. If you’d like to do a similar panel discussion in your shul, please feel free to contact me, or to be in touch with the organization Eshel, at info@eshelonline.com

 Below is an excerpt from one of the personal stories:

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 Excerpts from “My Community”

byAviva Buck-Yael

  ….I once went to an ultra-orthodox shule and once loved being a part of that community.   I loved knowing that I was a valued member of my community and that I had a place where I belonged.  But I also knew without a shadow of a doubt that I was a lesbian and that if my community ever knew this about me, there would be no place for me.  I struggled with my identity.  I spent a very long time trying desperately to be who I wasn’t.  I tried to do that which I knew my community would wish me to do had they known they had a lesbian in their midst.  I ignored, denied, and suppressed this piece of myself.   I married a man, created a home, and established myself in the community.  But I always felt like a fraud.  I felt like a fraud to myself, to my community, and to the man I married. 

 Sure I told him when I married him that I was a lesbian, but I always felt that I was not capable of bringing the best of myself to the relationship no matter how hard I tried.  And G-d knows I tried.  I tried to be a thoughtful and giving partner.  I tried to be a responsible and capable home maker.  I did all the things that wives are expected to do.  I would cook and clean and have Shabbos guests by the dozens. But what kind of wife was I when I could never desire him as he needed to be desired, when I always wished deep down he could be something that he was not.

 You see, what I discovered was that it wasn’t possible to suppress individual parts of my emotional self.  To shut down this piece of myself meant to shut down the rest of my emotions as well.  When I suppressed this part of myself, I suppressed my ability to love, to feel and to connect with those around me.  This suppressing and disconnecting left me… in the end… feeling like a miserable example of a human being.  Eventually, after 11 years of marriage, I came to a point in my life where I couldn’t continue as I was.

 I have been divorced now for 5 years.  A lot of people have asked me why I finally left.  Others ask me why I stayed so long. In the end, the only thing I do know for sure was that it wasn’t until I had my children that I allowed myself to take a good long look at myself.  I looked deep inside and I saw nothing but a shell of a person.  I remembered once having been a fully fleshed out person filled with light and love and joy.  I remembered liking who I was.  Now I looked at myself and saw nothing inside. When my son was born I felt like I was given the most precious gift that life could bestow.  I didn’t want him learning from the hollow example of my marriage, what it meant to love someone.  I wanted him to be someone who lived life to the fullest.  I wanted him to see his world and connect with it and all the people in it.   How could I do that with the example I was giving him?

 But, I felt that if I was no longer a married woman in my community there would be no place for me in the Orthodox world.  I felt that if I was honest about who I was I’d have no community.  Surely I’d be tossed out, shunned, no longer a trusted and beloved member of the community.  I saw others like me that when faced with this dilemma simply left Judaism entirely.   I tried to imagine what it would be like to leave Judaism to allow myself room to be true to my emotional self. Forget all that religious baggage.  But how could I go through life giving up on spirituality and connection to G-d?  How can a Jew survive without Torah and community and not be left feeling empty?  And what I wanted more than anything to finally be whole.

 As I prepared to leave the community I had been connected with for so long, I found that HaKadosh Baruch Hu was watching out for me. I found out there was a little known community in on the other side of town that I hadn’t even heard of previously… and there I found a community that was deeply committed to loving Hashem, learning Torah, practicing halacha in accordance with Orthodox principals AND making the morality that comes from all these things a part of their everyday lives. For them it meant truly embracing the notion of love your neighbor as yourself. It meant embracing the notion that we are all B’tzelem Elokim and as such we all need to be treated as holy beings. It meant taking responsibility for everyone’s Jewish journey and making certain that there was room enough for every Jew who wished to be shomer mitzvot to have a place in their community. For me, it meant finding a community capable of welcoming me and fully embracing me, a queer Jew, into their community. It meant that I was able to find a Rav for myself that I could talk to, to bring my self – my whole self and my religious struggles that come with being my whole self – to, and ask for guidance. It meant that I had a community to share Shabbos and simchos with. It meant that I had a place where I could be treated with love and respect for exactly who I was. As we all ought to be.

Encountering God in an airport terminal

Last Saturday night, I had to catch a red-eye to the east coast, to attend a conference that was beginning on Sunday.  I had the pleasure of driving Ruthie to the airport as well, who was heading for the same flight and the same conference. We parked, took the shuttle van to the terminal, and started walking toward the gate. As we were approaching the security check, Ruthie suddenly realized that she was without her jacket, which meant that she was also without her phone and her wallet. “Oh no! I left my jacket in your car!” This was bad.

 But bad soon became worse. As we were debating whether or not we had enough time to get back to the parking lot and still catch the flight, I realized that her jacket was not in my car. I had a distinct mental image of Ruthie placing her jacket on the luggage rack in the shuttle van. Now what?

I pulled out my own phone and frantically began to search for a phone number for the parking lot, wondering how, even if I reached someone there, we’d ever get this jacket back before the flight – or at all. As I was dialing, we saw a figure running toward us through the terminal, holding a jacket aloft in his outstretched hand. Wow. We barely had time to thank him, before he had to run back to his now unattended van.

Moments later, as we waited on the security line, Ruthie and I had a chance to reflect on the strange phenomenon that we often encounter God when we least expect Him. So often, when we are actively searching for Him, we come up empty. And then, out of nowhere, there He is. In one human being’s concern for another, in an act of selfless kindness for a stranger.  An act of generosity, inspired by an awareness and appreciation of the One whose kindness extends to all.   

And then, a moment later, God slips back out of view. Leaving behind His hope that we are newly reminded that He is in fact, always here.

(This essay appeared in the Journal Jurnal of Greater Los Angeles on Friday)

The Orthodox community is rapidly approaching a moment of truth. The many issues that the Orthodoxy community is debating internally are rapidly collapsing into one overarching issue, one macro-question, with which it must grapple head-on. And this is, whether or not the ethical norms of western society should figure into the process of determining Halacha (Jewish Law).

 Consider the issues that have most roiled Orthodoxy just over the past year or so. There is the controversy over the statement of principles concerning the place of homosexuals within the Orthodox community, a document that while upholding the Biblical prohibition on homosexual behavior, mandates that people who are homosexual be afforded full dignity and respect, and that they be included in their Orthodox communities. Signed by 150 Orthodox rabbis and educators, it was flatly rejected by at least as many. There is also the ongoing debate over whether women may serve as synagogue presidents, as well as the sure-to-return debate over women being ordained as rabbis. More recently, we have seen renewed controversy over  whether or not Halacha permits us to donate our organs following our brain-stem death, even as it is clear that we are permitted to receive organs from non-Jews who are brain-stem dead. And most recently, we have witnessed the controversy in Israel as to whether Halacha prohibits the sale or lease of apartments to non-Jews in the land of Israel. Each of these issues is complex in its own way, and none can be facilely decided in the absence of rigorous Halachik analysis. But over and over again, the wedge issue turns out to be whether or not consideration of western ethical norms is relevant to the analysis.

 This emerged clearly last week, as the Rabbinical Council of America registered its objection to the ban on renting to non-Jews in Israel, saying that the Halachik analysis of this issue demands “special sensitivity to societal realities, widely-held ethical principles, and historical injustices”.  Which is to say, that when we examine our universe of viable Halachik alternatives, our choice of alternative can and should be influenced by wider ethical considerations. Yet this is, of course, precisely the point of contention.

 The story is the same with regard to the organ donation issue. Here too, viable and scholarly halachik positions have existed on both side of this issue for many decades. Last month though, a Rabbinical Council of America report (ironically), which preferred the position that effectively prohibits  Jews from donating organs, elicited the following response from Rabbi Dr. Moshe Tendler, a prominent scholar and bio-ethicist (and a longtime proponent of the brain-stem definition of death, which results in the permissibility of organ donation) “Their final conclusion is that a Jew who is in need of a heart transplant can receive a heart from a brain-dead patient but he can’t donate his heart if he is brain dead. Such a ruling defames Judaism and exposes every Jew to the hatred of non-Jews. It is saying that a Jew can take a vital organ from a non-Jew even though Jews consider him still alive — that his life doesn’t count. How could you justify such a ruling?”

 The wedge issue is the same when it comes to the place of homosexuals in the Orthodox community. The opening words of the above-referenced Statement of Principles are: “All human beings are created in the image of God and deserve to be treated with dignity and respect.” While it is of course true that the idea that all people are created in the image is Biblical, its specific application to homosexuals is a distinctly modern historical development. It is our way of clothing in our religious language the modern, western ethical assertion that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”. The relevance of such ideas to our halachik calculus is again what stands at the center of the controversy. Similarly, when rabbinic scholars in pre-State Palestine debated whether or not women ought to have the right to vote in Yishuv elections, the old/new “image of God” idea was one of the main pivots of the discussion.  And it continues to play out in today’s controversies over the position of women in the Orthodox community.

 Are the ethical norms of modern western society essential to halachik discussion, or are they irrelevant? Are they to be integrated, or to be shunned? This is, in the final analysis, the central issue that the Orthodox community is grappling with. And the answer will determine Orthodoxy’s long term viability as positive force in the wider Jewish community, and the wider world.

Though the OU recently made it quite clear it will not tolerate Partnership Minyanim within its member synagogues, the “amcha” of the Orthodox community should support this newest expression of Orthodox spirituality. For the grassroots movement to create a highly egalitarian form of Orthodox davening will likely prove to be enormously beneficial and healthy for the future of Orthodoxy. 

The halachik debate on the matter has already been fought to a draw, and I won’t rehash the details of that debate here. (You can review it by seeing the articles written by Rabbis Henkin, Sperber, and M. Shapiro at www.edah.org, and that of Rabbi Gidon Rothstein in Tradition 39:2, Summer 2005) Thinking simply in terms of what’s strategically best for the Orthodox community as we move deeper into the 21^st century, it’s clear to me that we need to have Partnership Minyanim as part of our mix. They provide an option that is vital for us to have. 

The Orthodox establishment’s read of Partnership Minyanim is predictably upside-down. It assumes that the minyanim are the brainchild of feminist instigators, whose ultimate allegiance is not to Halacha, but to egalitarianism, and who are attempting to lure upstanding but unsuspecting Modern Orthodox Jews into the abyss whose bottom is Conservative Judaism. From everything I have seen both in New York and here in Los Angeles (I have not been to Shira Chadasha in Jerusalem), the movement is led by people who are personally and ideologically committed to halacha, institutionally and financially bound up with the Orthodox community, and who are creating Partnership Minyanim in order so that Orthodox Jews of an egalitarian bent don’t need to consider leaving the Orthodox community, rather can remain within it. It’s not “feminists” who are pioneering this, rather Orthodox men and women who simply believe that we are religiously obligated to create maximal halachik opportunities for all Jews, regardless of gender, to participate in our deepest moments of communal holiness. They’re not looking to leave. They’re looking to stay. 

Most Orthodox Jews will never embrace their approach to davening. This is fine. Partnership minyanim are definitely not intended for the majority of Orthodox Jews.  But we are, and always have been, a community of many voices. And there’s no question that one of today’s vital, sacred voices, is the voice of the Partnership minyanim. It’s a voice that keeps our tent healthy and big. 

And it’s the Orthodox “amcha” who need to give this movement the recognition and space that we all need for it to have. Orthodox institutions will not be able to do so for the time being. It’s part of life that institutions need to balance a great variety of interests and pressures. I know. I head one myself. And I’ve been very open with my congregants as to why we don’t offer a Partnership Minyan. But we are in an age of independent and outside-the-box religious expressions, in which institutional support is no longer necessary (and in fact often hurts). And collectively we will be doing the Jewish people and the Orthodox community the largest of favors by recognizing Partnership Minyanim, and welcoming their emergence onto the Orthodox landscape.