Orthodox Judaism presents itself in everyday life as the Torah of Sinai in our time. Liberal Judaism, in all of its varieties, rejects the Torah of Sinai and therefore denies the binding force of the good old ways, as understood by the good old men, from the good old days.<\/p>\n
We have many popular Orthodox practices which do not conform to Jewish law. One YU Rosh Yeshiva tried, unsuccessfully, that minhag Yisrael <\/em>[a] is binding, [b] it is what Orthodox Jews happen to do, and [c] we assume that the practice under discussion has been approved by the great rabbis of the good old days.<\/p>\n The disallowance of women affixing [not writing] mezuzot<\/em>, saying Havdalah<\/em> for oneself, reciting birchat ha-zimmun<\/em>, the delay of the sanctification of the month benediction, and the willy nilly nullification of conversions reflect actual Orthodox usage<\/em> but are not Halakhic<\/em> customs.<\/p>\n According to Oral Torah law, women and men are legally obliged to remember\/mention the Shabbat when it begins and ends. If the husband has said the Havdalah<\/em> in the evening prayers and the wife has not said that prayer, the woman has a greater obligation than the man to say Havdalah. Folk religion Orthodoxy, based on Rabbi Isaiah Horowitz, Shenei Luhot ha-Berit<\/em>, who connects this practice to Adam’s and Eve’s sin in Eden, argues that a male must say Havdalah<\/em> for the female. Ignored are the principles [a] laws are not derived from secret traditions, [b] Genesis narratives may not be used to derive laws, and [c] the plain sense of the Oral Law is superseded because of sexist legends. While it is true that the Ashkenazi glossator assigns valence to this view, he fails to explain why the opinion should be considered.<\/p>\n Women are required to have mezuzot<\/em> on their doors. Ergo, they have the obligation to place them on their doors. While the mezuza<\/em>, a miniature Torah, may legally be written only by men, the Oral Torah does not memorialize this restriction<\/p>\n Since three adults have an obligation to say the invitation to say the zimmun<\/em>, the introduction to the after-meal blessing, and since women have minds, they are obliged to do so. The Tosafists feel that this is a mere custom, because their women do not perform this rite. Maimonides maintains that when one sees the moon at the beginning of the month, one says the appropriate benediction. There is no good reason for waiting in the rational, not in heaven Oral Law.<\/p>\n Last, if a conversion is supervised by three Orthodox non-experts, that conversion is kosher. Unless fraud can be proven, Jewish identity attaches to the convert the instant she or he is immersed in the miqveh<\/em>. A Great Sanhedrin may change this law; the Israeli Chief Rabbinate may not. These deviant practices are what Jews do; for official religion Orthodoxy, Torah is what Jews ought to do.<\/p>\n The popular idiom \u201cThe customs of Israel is law\u201d was originally \u201cThe customs of Israel are Torah.\u201d This idiom reifies popular usage into divine law. For Isaiah 2:3, Torah is the \u201cword of the law.\u201d But Leviticus 4:13 assumes that the entire community can be wrong. God\u2019s Torah has public laws and knowable rules. We are commissioned as Jews to evaluate the rulers\u2019 rulings, confront power with truth, and when the law and its restraints are violated, to issue protest even against those enfranchised elites who enjoy political or theological power.\u2019<\/p>\n\n Orthodox Judaism presents itself in everyday life as the Torah of Sinai in our time. Liberal Judaism, in all of its varieties, rejects the Torah of Sinai and therefore denies the binding force of the good old ways, as understood by the good old men, from the good old days. We have many popular Orthodox Continue Reading »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":634,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[75,148,85,95,78,83,77,76],"tags":[],"coauthors":[86],"class_list":["post-608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","category-converts-conversion","category-denominations","category-halakhah-modern-judaism","category-modern-judaism","category-philosophy","category-torah-talmud","category-womens-forum"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=608"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":609,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608\/revisions\/609"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=608"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}