The Battle for the Soul of Orthodox Judaism

The Battle for the Soul of Orthodox Judaism

The popular perception is that Orthodox Judaism divides along the Haredi/parochializing/non Zionist “Traditional” wing and cosmopolitan/Zionist/ modernity accommodating “Modern” Orthodox. Haredim regard the modernists as “Orthodox lite”; modernists view Haredim as excessively obsessive in being “other” in the condition of modernity.

The popular perception is that Jewish Orthodoxy’s fault line is the “strictness” and therefore the otherness, of one’s “life-style.” In order to be merely “Traditional,” one observes Jewish folkways and traditions nostalgically, but without Halakhic rigor or consistency.  These are the Orthodox affiliating non-Orthodox Jews. They affiliate “Orthodox” and pay their dues to what they believe to be Judaism’s only “authentic” address. By supporting the Torah true virtuosi elite, they are viewed patronizingly as poor, decent, benighted Jews upon whom “outreach” is appropriate.

Modern Orthodoxy is seen to be the religion of what Prof. Samuel Heilman calls the “betwixt and between,” those who chose to maintain an Orthodox identity but have chosen to engage modernity not only as a station in time but also as a state of mind.  For these Jews, secular learning has both existential as well as instrumental value; secular learning is not only a means for making a living, but a goal for an enriched living.   Modern Orthodox Jewry also embraces Zionism, even though Zionism is at it heart a secular, nationalist movement that imposed an alternative leadership model to Orthodoxy’s rabbinic elite upon Jewry.

Just as Reform Judaism jettisoned the commandments that impeded acculturation, Modern Orthodoxy also shed those aspects of Jewish culture that made integration into modernity difficult, but honored those practices that were mandated by Talmudic law.  Men removed their beards, went bareheaded to their workday employment, and replaced their conspicuously Jewish attire with ethnically indeterminate professional garb. Modern Orthodox women also adopted modern dress by shedding the sheitel [wig] that was the badge of folk religion Orthodox identity [that seems to contradict a clear wig prohibition at bShabbat 64b]. Ironically, neither “modern” and “traditional” Orthodoxy take the Oral Torah texts to be their normative benchmark; Orthodoxy’s real benchmark is the social world that its adherents inhabit. Both “modern” and “traditional” Orthodox, rabbinate and laity alike, look over their shoulders for peer validation, and not into the canonical library.  Inconsistencies between Talmudic law and popular praxis are never addressed, because [a] these inconsistencies are rarely noticed and [b] calling attention to the unorthodox behavior of the Orthodox is “bashing” at worse, and gauche social practice at best. After all, Orthodoxy’s franchised narrative proclaims that it alone is the way, salvation, and life of Judaism, and no one outside of the Orthodox community is able, ordained, and authorized to intuit God’s will but Orthodoxy’s rabbinic elite.

 

From the time of Rabbi Moses Sofer, whose motto, “innovation is forbidden by Torah,” Haredi Judaism has resisted innovation in its culture with heroic resolve, as if and indeed because its life depended upon this resistance.

In order to accomplish this end, of resisting change in its culture, and the replacement of its rabbinic elite, this Orthodoxy is constrained to change Jewish law.  After all, very few rabbis who oppose innovative, Halakhah compliant Partnership prayer groups, will risk their social and professional status to oppose the woman’s sheitel.

The same Rabbi Sofer who outlawed innovation or deviation from the past also affirmed that a custom may override a law. Upon inspection and analysis, Haredi Judaism is the fabulously successful Reconstructionism of the Jewish religious right.  Being counter–culturally dissident is identical to being religiously Orthodox.

This Judaism believes and teaches that God’s will is revealed in the divinely inspired intuition of its great rabbis, called gedolim, the “great ones.” These uber rabbis must be respected, which means obeyed.  Torah study is not undertaken to be an act of searching the canon for divine truth; it is undertaken in order to discover the gedolim’s narrative in the canon. The gedolim doctrine proclaims that:

1. Judaism is defined by Torah, which is the word and will of God.
2. This word and will is not, cannot, and may not be found in the Torah canonical library; it is found and located in the intuitive inspiration of the great rabbi, of godol
3. Torah study may be undertaken to acquire knowledge and facts, or one may learn in order to conceptualize the Torah. One may not learn Torah in order to apply its norms. Critical studies of Torah undermine the Torah’s sanctity because they empower the student to render his/her own rendering and ruling.
4. By dint of divine inspiration, the godol is authorized, because he is everybody’s rabbi, to issue apodictic religious decrees that are binding on all Israel.
5. The Torah is essentially an unreadable book. One needs divine assistance to read, understand, and apply Torah appropriately. Only the godol is able, authorized, and allowed to issue normative rulings.
6. Just because an act is not forbidden by Jewish law does not mean that act is permitted to be performed. The approval of the godol is required.
7. Both Orthodox laity and rabbinate may not read with an eye to apply the Jewish canonical sources without the godol’s approval.
8. Challenging, questioning, or disobeying the ruling or declaration of the godol is akin to denying God, Torah, and one’s religious bona fides.
9. The godol is the master of Masorah, the “Tradition” that empowers him to issue apodictic Jewish religious rulings. Latter day saintly rabbis carry apostolic authority because Jewish law is not transmitted from Bet Din ha-Gadol to Bet Din ha-Gadol, as taught by Maimonides, and which became defunct with the demise of Rav Ashi [circa. 427 C.E.], but from the gedolim of one generation to the gedolim.
10. Modern Orthodox rabbis who issue independent Halakhic rulings are heretics because they dare to treat the Torah as readable; they fail to defer to the to the greater wisdom of the great rabbi.
11. Yeshiva University Orthodoxy regards R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik as its godol, and his apodictic decrees have the standing of Masorah/Tradition, and one is not permitted to question this Tradition. The Talmudic rule forbidding contradicting the sages [machishe maggideunu], does not apply only to the rabbis of the Talmud, but to the great rabbis of our time, as well.

On one hand, R. Soloveitchik affirms that “Masorah” compliance is mandatory, Halakhah is not just law, and challenging the great rabbi, for him the Ish ha-Halakhah, is a crime akin to questioning the Sages of the Oral Torah.

When R. Soloveitchik passed away, the Haredi and now defunct Jewish Observer [(May 1993), p. 42], issued a negative obituary that denied R. Soloveitchik the status of godol, and by implication, the legitimacy of modern Orthodoxy.  R. Soloveitchik’s “sins” include learning secular subjects, earning a Ph.D. in Kantian philosophy, and having conversations, however limited, with the competitive non-Orthodox streams. None of these policies violate statutory Jewish  law, but they do violence [a] to the parochialness that Haredi Judaism fosters and[b] is a frontal challenge to the authority of the gedolim who claim that they are the way, salvation, and life of Judaism.

Since R. Soloveitchik’s openness to Western high culture exposes Jews to critical thinking, R. Soloveitchik may not be considered a great sage. By permitting the permitted without the validating the consent of gedolim, he forfeits his bona fides for these Jews, because he  denies their authority, even though he maintains their system.

There is an alternative Modern or Open Orthodoxy that looks like Yeshiva University Orthodoxy, but is a radically different religion; it is a religion of Law.

1. Like Haredi and Yeshiva University Orthodox Judaism, the Written and Oral Torah Judaism is the word of God, our alternative Modern Orthodoxy is bound by the Torah as filtered through its own eyes, and not the eyes of Orthodox Jews with alternative religious narratives.
2. The most critical difference between these two contending Orthodox Judaisms is the role of the individual, existential Jew. Following Deut. 33:4, “Torah was commanded to us [=the collective of the Jewish people,] the heritage for the [entire] Congregation of Jacob.” According to the plain sense of God’s word, in order to be Torah, the idea/doctrine/behavior norm must be public [Deut. 30:12],  it does not tolerate addition, subtraction, or emendation,  even if the human speaker claims to speak in God’s name as a prophet or a dreamer of dreams [Deut. 13:1-6]. Even the king is subject to the law; the king is an assessable constitutional   monarch [Deut. 17:13-20]. The Jew is commanded to affirm three times a day that God graced the human person with the powers to reason and discern; the Jew who is empowered by knowing the law is entitled to a defensible opinion, even if they are not part of the official, institutional franchise [Nu. 11:2-29]. Since Scripture is a readable book, the well–read informed Jew is mentally free and the tyrant’s worse nightmare. After the legal, apodictic, Amoraic part of the Babylonian Talmud came to closure [bBaba Mezi’a 86a], rabbis are ordained to teach and persuade but not to legislate or command anyone or any community not under that person’s jurisdiction, no matter their renown. Torah is a religion of law, not charisma.
3. One studies Torah in order to know what God asks of the Jew. A beginner should have one mentor, who should nourish and guide the student to confront Torah on his/her own. Once an accomplished student, the student should hear multiple perspectives in order to formulate her/his own, unique reading of Torah. Mishnah Avot 5:21 provides the Oral Torah’s explicit, and hidden, curriculum. At the age of five, the child learns Scripture, the canonical Torah narrative that shapes Jewish identity that explains the sacred calendar, and reveals God as the Creator of the world, the Giver of the Torah, and the Judge of the world. Ideally, the student will also be exposed to Targum Onqolos, which is the first written document of Oral Torah.  From ages ten to fifteen, the student learns Mishnah, the apodictic statement of the Oral Torah the authority of which starts at Sinai. The student now confronts how the community lives, how Scripture is translated into every day life, and is exposed to the rubric by which the student, at thirteen an adult member of the community, share and live their lives. And at fifteen, now a mature adult, the student learns Talmud, which here means the Judaic hermeneutic system, or how Torah Judaism works. The ideal student loves his/her teacher, but loves Torah even more. The student respects the teacher for giving Torah to the student, but God gets first claim on both the  student’s and teacher’s loyalty [Proverbs 21:30].  The fact that the teacher may learn from the student [bTa’anit 7a] indicates that the Torah laws culture episteme projects a readable Torah, an empowered learner, and the ideal individual Jew is a learned moral agent, not an obsequious robot who submits blindly to no person when Torah values are at stake.
4. Torah was understood by non-Jewish observers as nomoV, or Law. The Law is determined by honest readings of documents. Charismatic intuition is not a source of law; the legislation of the Torah’s legally authorized law creating organ, the Bet Din ha–Gadol, is legitimate. Legitimate Rabbinic opinions are not ideally determined by counting heads; only when the Bet Din ha–Gadol is sitting together in plenum are we comparing apples and apples. Different situations and conditions may generate different rulings; alternative cultural environments will necessarily frame questions, facts, and conclusions otherwise. The Bet Din ha–Gadol may legislate—because it is authorized by the Torah [17:8-13].  Rabbis designated by communities are authorized by, and for, those communities. Only when a communal rabbi steps outside of the Oral Torah’s legal limits may a rabbi’s ruling be rejected.  When “great rabbis” issue apodictic decrees, some people submit, others rebel, and thinking Modern Orthodox rabbis will respectfully, learnedly, and forcefully ask, “How do you know that? If the Oral Torah does not say what you seem to say [i.e. women by Tradition may not say qiddush [the wine prayer at Shabbat’s beginning] or havdalah [the wine prayer after Shabbat’s end], on what basis do you rule as you do”?  One great rabbi refused to forbid smoking “because great rabbis smoke.” If taken at face value, one finds here the doctrine that great rabbis have sovereign immunity. According to Torah, not even God gets sovereign immunity