DENNIS PRAGER

DENNIS PRAGER Among Jews, the religious Right and the secular Left perfectly mirror one another. The Right says, "more strictness, more observances"; the Left says, "more legislation, more...

...Thus, healthy women on welfare who have more and more children should receive more and more money...
...Are blacks helped or hindered by race-norming and blaming racism for all their problems...
...Liberal and Orthodox extremism among Jews also emanates from a commitment to a beautiful value—law...
...the Left says, "more legislation, more liberties...
...The key reason for this development is probably the simplest—extremism is more natural than moderation...
...Increasingly religious life is assessed not by its quality—spirituality, kindess and justice—but by its quantity...
...When observance is your supreme value, you can believe that God wanted a million Jewish children gassed because not all their parents kept kosher...
...The results lead to similar distortions—the Miranda ruling, the exclusionary rule, racial quotas and support for left-wing despots among many liberal Jews, and chalavyisrael (kosher milk), gjatt kosher and support for the late Meir Kahane among many Orthodox Jews...
...On the contrary, to extremists, when there is failure, it is because there is not enough of their ideal...
...Since halachah is beautiful, more halachot must be more beautiful...
...Until then, Jewish life will be increasingly lonely for its religious and political moderates...
...and in the name of protecting personal freedom, the ACLU opposes prosecuting owners of kiddie porn, opposes sobriety checkpoints and favors allowing parents to take children to X-rated movies...
...Liberal Jews, in their desire to protect civil liberties and to work for the elevation of downtrodden minorities, believe there can never be enough laws protecting civil liberties or civil rights...
...If a murderer wasn't read his rights, let him go free...
...Thus the ACLU, which has a disproportionately large Jewish membership, dispatches lawyers to advise mentally ill homeless people of their right to stay outdoors on freezing nights...
...It is very difficult to hold a beautiful ideal and to realize that there can be too much of it—yet the moment you do not realize there can be too much of your beautiful ideal, you have become an extremist That is how, for example, the beautiful ideals of nationalism and patriotism can lead to chauvinism and even fascism...
...At the same time, the Orthodox mindset is to increase the number of mitzvol (commandments) observed and to find new chumrot (strictnesses)—after all, how can a Jew possibly have too many mitzvot...
...S' Dennis Prager writes and publishes Ultimate Issues, a quarterly journal on personal, political and religious issues, and is president of the Micah Center for Ethical Monotheism in Culver City, California...
...What liberals once considered leftist or radical is now normative liberalism...
...Moreover, for both groups, commitment to laws can be so extreme that it overshadows moral considerations...
...If a police officer found a rapist's diary without the proper warrant to search the rapist's room, let the rapist go free...
...Thus, liberals tend to work ceaselessly for more and more civil rights and civil liberties legislation—even though the real needs of black America are not met by additional legislation and the criminal justice system does not need more laws protecting criminal defendants...
...If helping the poor is good, then there can never be too much of such a good thing...
...The problem is extremists almost always keep their fellow travelers in fear...
...The halachic extremist doesn't sit back and ask, "Is the community produced by more and more halachot, by more and more chumrot, a finer, more beautiful community...
...Orthodox Jews, cognizant of the instrumental role Jewish law has played in furthering Jewish morality and ensuring Jewish continuity, believe there can never be too much halachah (Jewish religious law...
...The extremist, by latching on to one value, rarely ponders the consquences of having too much of that value...
...Much of Orthodoxy has moved far to the Right, and much of liberalism— to which most non-Orthodox Jews adhere—has moved far to the Left...
...If there is one characteristic that few Jews would apply to themselves, it is extremism...
...Is America a better place thanks to more welfare spending...
...Yet I am convinced that in the last generation much of Jewish religious and political life has become dominated by this very characteristic...
...Liberals fear taking on Jesse Jackson or the ACLU, and Orthodox Jews fear disputing a right-wing gadol (rabbinic authority) . One day, God willing, all liberal and Orthodox Jews will fear God more than they fear their left or right wings...
...If kosher is good (which this kashrut observer certainly believes), then the more strict chalav yisrael and glalt kosher must be better...
...At the other end, the most influential right-wing Orthodox rabbi in Israel, Eliezer Schach, publicly declared the Holocaust a divine punishment for Jews' insufficient observance of Jewish laws...
...If civil liberties are good (which I certainly believe), then you cannot have too many of them...
...Many secular liberal Jews and right-wing Orthodox Jews do not know when to say, "Enough is enough...
...The religious Right's motto, "more strictness, more observances," is mirrored by Jews on the secular Left— "more legislation, more liberties...
...To combat these Jewish extremes we need liberal Jews to fight the Left and we need Orthodox Jews to fight the Right...
...What was once considered fanatic (chinyuHsh) in the Orthodox world has frequendy become the norm or at least an ideal...
...The liberal extremist doesn't question the consequences to his ideals...
...Thus, liberals want more spending and the Orthodox look to more observance...
...And that is how the ideal of equality led to the horrors of communism...

Vol. 16 • October 1991 • No. 5


 
Developed by
Kanda Sofware
  Kanda Software, Inc.