Prologue
PROLOGUE One of the central puzzlements of KmMwBBbP recent American Jewish history is ' **NiW*VU^Lw^kWt\m the growing strength of Orthodox Judaism. Who would have supposed, back in the...
...Of course it does...
...For one reason or another, most of us have preferred to live in the shadows...
...I was there...
...Shadows...
...but we have secretly envied them for their stubbornness...
...A difficult question, because it is asked by people who cannot easily answer a much simpler question: Would you want your daughter to marry one...
...Nor do they sweat, nor do they evidence the discomfort...
...They are in the form of consoling formulas, such as these: lacking faith, I can still be faithful, lacking belief, I can still will myself into a meta-phoric framework that connects me to my brother the believer and to my ancestors the immersed...
...Not one of the kicky kind, the kind who dabbles in the aesthetic of the tradition, but a real one, one of those we see as humorless and musty...
...On a lazy day, no problem...
...And that means that I We have resented the Orthodox for reminding us of our weakness...
...The commandments become options, the Commander becomes just an idea, the whole system—as I suppose the Orthodox understand the system—is subverted...
...But now...
...I would prefer to think there are answers to be found in other and more congenial places, although the answers I sometimes stumble upon strike me as rather cumbersome, considerably more complex even if more palatable than the Orthodox answers...
...Issues of belief are much easier to avoid than to confront, at least for those of us to whom belief does not come naturally...
...For at least ten years now—since the Six Day War— Zionism has been the collective religion of the Jews, and the needs of Israel rather than the demands of the halachah have provided the norms for communal behavior...
...But somewhere, in the back of my head, I know that I would not be the Jew I am had my grandfather the Rav not been the Jew he was...
...What else is there to stand for...
...What is it that they know that we do not...
...it is because we are lapsed, or because we are lazy...
...must will myself into a religious sensibility...
...it suits me...
...The challenge is more from the traditional Jew in Brooks Brothers clothing than from his beshtreimeled colleague...
...At such times, I can live comfortably with the debate, knowing that the distinction is not between one interpretation and another, but rather between believers and non-believers...
...And it is not the only thing that does...
...They will claim that they believe no less profoundly, and much more plausibly...
...When we believed that Orthodoxy was not viable, when we believed that the compromises which modernity so obviously demanded would ennervate Orthodoxy, when we believed that our survival as a religious civilization required of us radical adaptation of the ancient tradition, when we believed that Orthodoxy in America was exotic and impractical, we did not have to face the question of authenticity...
...How can we continue to evade the question...
...Another recent issue of the same publication takes the Reform movement to task for its commitment to social action, which "rests on dubious moral foundations" and which "can do untold harm to Jewish interests— witness the terrible backlash suffered by Jewish merchants in the Deep South as a result of conspicuous Jewish participation in the civil rights movement...
...Look at the astonishing capacity of people who have explicitly entered—and conquered—the most modern precincts of the modern world, and who continue to celebrate the ancient tradition...
...Look at the Lubavitch movement...
...The yoke of the commandments replaced by glib—but empty—sentiment...
...Wishing it no harm, we nonetheless supposed that it would bow before the strength of modernity...
...A generation ago, the assumption of the rest of us—insofar as we ever bothered to think about the matter at all—was that Orthodoxy was a quaint vestige of earlier times...
...We have resented the Orthodox for reminding us of our weakness, and we have resented them for their pettiness, and we have resented them for their apparent certainty...
...But that is all on a lazy day...
...I find the metaphor aesthetically pleasing, culturally invigorating, morally enriching...
...But that which makes the interests worth defending and Israel worth protecting and the memories worth preserving is what we stand for...
...to the other, devotion to Israel...
...Accordingly, it might be thought that the non-Orthodox have no need to confront the challenge which Orthodoxy raises...
...The process of history, we concluded from our own biography, was inexorable: the tradition would weaken, crumble, change...
...How does he manage to sustain his belief, and where does he derive the energy to pursue his way, and is he as complacent as he often seems, and is the smugness we see a reflection of our own defen-siveness or is it the natural consequence of a certainty we cannot imagine...
...Who can say...
...I have some resources with which to compensate...
...The Orthodox, it is supposed, know what they believe, and what they believe is what Jews are, in some sense, supposed to believe...
...Even Chassidism is no longer merely exotic, not since the Lubavitch have mounted their mitzvah-mobiles, opened their Chabad houses on a dozen campuses, and provided the only systematic Jewish response to the soulsnatching cults of our time...
...Although I do not accept that there was a revelation at Sinai (which, according to the Talmud, means that I have lost the world to come), I accept entirely the tradition which teaches that all the Jews—the dead, the living, the as-yet unborn, were present at the Revelation...
...Who has time for philosophy when there are Jews in distress...
...In the popular perception, Orthodox is at least "more," perhaps also "better...
...And secretly we wonder: Does his belief insulate him from the tribulations we experience...
...All these questions, because it has now become clear: If Orthodoxy is an anachronism, as we have been pleased to suppose for so many decades, it just may be the healthiest anachronism going...
...The burdensome agenda of Jewish interests makes it easy to avoid...
...A tough question...
...Which at least gives me a firm grasp on the world that is...
...A nice place to visit, but would you really want to live there...
...I cannot abide the notion of a "good" Jew...
...Yet the Orthodox challenge remains...
...So much for tikun olam—the repair of the universe...
...And were we, their descendents, not what we were— secular, Reform, Conservative— but surely not Orthodox...
...the Tradition will rise again...
...Save your kipot...
...Who would have supposed, back in the 1950's, that Orthodoxy was here not only to stay, but to grow...
...But the folk, although it has eagerly adopted such alternatives, has known them for what they are: compromises, adaptations, facsim-ilies...
...And what is it that we can be said to stand for more centrally than a system of belief...
...Look at the Talmud classes attended by government officials...
...Orthodox Judaism was doomed...
...Does that make me an incomplete Jew...
...But we have secretly envied them for their stubbornness, and for their ability to believe, and for their fidelity to a constitution and a covenant which are our own as well...
...From diverse perspectives, those others address themselves to one part of the question: What does it mean to be Orthodox in America today, to be a part of the community of believers...
...The dominant faith of American Jews—as shown in survey after survey—remains, whatever the distribution of denominational affiliation, agnosticism...
...Formulas...
...We who have preferred the shadows are thankful that there are those who have chosen the sun, with all its discomforts...
...The lead article in a recent issue of The Jewish Observer, the publication of the Agudath Israel of America, quotes with smug satisfaction a critique of Judaic Studies programs on college campuses, and then adds, "This is not in the least surprising, for most of the teachers of Judaic Studies courses are Conservative and Reform rabbis, or others of marginal commitment...
...There is the defense of Jewish interests, of course, and there is Israel, to be sure, and there is nostalgic chic...
...Whether the answer is to be found within Orthodoxy as an idea, or among the Orthodox, as a movement, I do not know...
...The Orthodox themselves solve the problem for me, for in their institutional behavior (of course I know the exceptions) they continue to offend...
...It presses as we begin to restore the customs and ceremonies of yore, even as we continue to resist the convictions...
...And I am not the only one who is...
...To each his own authenticity: to the one, halachah...
...It did not happen...
...Orthodoxy is normative Judaism...
...More important, ever so much more important, the issue of Orthodoxy forces us to ask what it means to be Jewish...
...Most of all, I am happy to have the following question forced: What shall I tell my children about why they should care...
...And that is why I am unable to do more than let the questions dangle, turning to others to propose answers...
...But I do not believe it...
...And, if it is, is not every other way less authentic, which means, fundamentally inauthentic...
...And what, in the meantime, do I tell myself, do we tell ourselves...
...For it is not just his clothing that is our clothing...
...The real question, I think, is not the Orthodox, but what Orthodoxy claims to stand for...
...it provides the standard from which all else is a deviation...
...I like what they have to say...
...My Reform and Conservative friends will object...
...Sometimes we have explained our choice on the grounds of intellectual conviction, sometimes by pointing to the irrelevance of the Orthodox way, or to its costs...
...Yet how can we ask it, we non-believers, weak-believers, confused-believers, ambivalent believers...
...Alibis...
...For decades, aggregations of deviants have struggled to articulate coherent and compelling alternatives to the Orthodox vision...
...We have known that without that fidelity, we would not be, hence we have been grateful to them for preserving the faith...
...And look also at the degree to which the rest of us have become defensive in the presence of the Orthodox...
...For now that we see that Orthodoxy cannot only make its peace with modernity, but actually thrive in the modern world, we are bound to confront the obvious question: is not the Orthodox way the authentic way...
...I long ago proposed, and still believe, that even the Jewish atheist knows full well what the God in whom he does not believe expects of him...
...And when there is deference displayed to the ways of the tradition, it is prompted by sentiment or by courtesy rather than by conviction...
...And if that be the case, what can I say of my children's children...
...But most often I remain troubled that, at least so far as the folk (rather than the rabbis, the theologians) are concerned, the distinction is not what we believe, but in how certainly and how coherently we believe...
...Will they have the metaphor still, or will the distance between metaphor and meaning have become so vast as to make the metaphor entirely alien...
...The uncertainties I here announce are not personal idiosyncrasies...
...Had our grandparents not also been Orthodox (although they did not use the word...
...Nonetheless, I am happy to have the questions forced...
...So much for ahavat Yisrael, love for one's fellow Jews...
...Among mainstream Jews, it is the performance of Israel-related tasks rather than of traditional mitzvot that provides the measure of authenticity...
...What is it that they know that we do not...
...The question presses because now we see the Orthodox...
...I speak, of course, from outside the Orthodox movement, with all my confusions intact...
...There are times I imagine the House of Israel to be an ongoing constitutional convention, the Orthodox resisting casual amendment, the Reform only now beginning to understand the critical difference between constitutional law and statutory law, the Conservative taking a judicious middle course, taking the constitution seriously but not passively...
...Who can any longer claim with confidence that fifty or a hundred years from now it will not be the way of the Orthodox that will have become the normal way for us all...
...His language is our language, his neighborhood our neighborhood, his occupation ours as well...
...Look around...
...More important, look at the modern Orthodox congregations, the ones with substantial numbers of members who teach physics at distinguished institutions, who are psychiatrists, corporate lawyers, business tycoons...
...The best of them will argue that Orthodoxy provides a framework, but that the framework must be subjected to review and renewal by each generation of Jews...
...And who is it that cares the most about that system, and, manners aside, takes the greatest care to sustain it...
...What is it that they will have to remember and to be nourished by...
...I am neither proud nor embarrassed to be what I am, and what I am, most of the time, is a Jew who takes Jewish religious metaphor very, very seriously but who cannot (or will not) move beyond religion-as-meta-phor...
...It presses as we pursue our own search for meaning, for the persistence of the Orthodox way suggests that meaning may be nearer at hand than we have wanted to believe...
...one way or another, they affect most of us, including, I imagine, a goodly number of those who call themselves Orthodox...
...But Chassidism, at least, is so very far from where most of us are, or want to be, or can imagine ourselves being, it is so outlandish, that it offers no direct challenge to our self-perception...
...We are Jews by desire, Jews by instinct, Jews by habit, Jews by passion—but hardly Jews by faith...
...The question now presses more insistently, as we become aware that they do not wilt or wither...
...If the rest of us do not believe it, it is not because we are smarter, or because we believe more important things...
Vol. 3 • September 1978 • No. 9
