Arrogance and Authenticity

...Moon tells us the Jews must be a very holy people, they produce so many members for his church...

...The works of the great rationalists, like Maimonides, the great mystics, like the Besht, still are opened and taken seriously—for more than a fifty-minute classroom lecture—by the Orthodox...

...For beyond and above Ortho­doxy, organized and unorganized, lies the Judaism that is still best preserved in its richness and its mystery by—Orthodoxy itself...

...It is simply not the case, as "outsiders" sometimes imagine, that Orthodoxy—unlike the Reform and Conservative move­ments—speaks clearly and deci­sively...

...When young Jews wish to resume the holy way given up by their parents or grand­parents—when they become ba'alei t'shuvah, "reverters" to Judaism— what is it to which they revert...

...And that is pre­cisely why we have a right to ask of Orthodoxy, for its part, that it take seriously the methods and mean­ings of those teachings...

...When Jews want to live by the teachings of the great souls and minds of a tradition of four thousand years, they rightly turn to Orthodoxy...

...Does Orthodoxy approach that world with love and affection...

...Everyone knows the measure of religiousity, and it is not ever by a standard of religious practice of other than ritualistic character...

...And many others will concur that Orthodoxy is the standard by which all Judaism is measured...

...Nor should we underestimate the force of that paradox...

...When an Orthodox Jew says, "He is very religious," what follows—that "he is a person who fears God," or "who loves his fellow man...

...We hear politics, polemic and right-wingism (especially where the State of Israel is con­cerned), diatribes against Conserv­ative and Reform Judaism...

...More likely, "He waits seven hours between milk and meat...

...This, to me, is what shapes the transcendent and compelling call to Orthodoxy, the true Judaic way of life...

...Faced with its greatest opportu­nity in nearly two hundred years to regain the attention of the Jewish people, confronted by a generation of reversion to Judaism, Ortho­doxy's face is frowning, not smil­ing...

...Who are we when we do not live up to that image which is God's and ours...

...Does Orthodoxy rejoice in the (admittedly imperfect) efforts of the non-Orthodox religious Jew to keep the faith and practice it...

...Surely that grand perspective of who we are and what we may become, of ourselves in God's likeness and in accord with God's image, is lost...

...When Jewry was unready, Orthodoxy sent forth leaders of good sense and good will...

...He eats only glatt kosher...

...It did not have to be this way...

...True, there was Joshua...

...It is as if Orthodoxy wishes to prove right every piece of garbage about ritualism and self-righteousness which the enemies of Judaism have swept up to throw against Judaism for four centuries, since Luther...

...What, after all, is the human message of Orthodoxy...

...Still, why draw evidence from marginal people ("apostates...

...Since, we must all agree, Ortho­doxy is the fullest expression of Judaism, we surely have the right to turn to Orthodoxy for some insight into the current paradox...

...It is the Orthodox way...

...And soci­ologists tell us again and again that the young Jews (among others) in these cults go there for something they do not find at home, for a vivid life of the soul, a seeking after God and holiness that they cannot perceive in Judaism...

...There is better proof, nearer to the center of things, that greatness is gone from Orthodoxy, therefore from Judaism: There is evidence not only of omission—to which, after all, Orthodoxy can plausibly plead extenuating cir­cumstances...

...The Pentateuch and the prophets are read fully and accurately in Orthodox synagogues...

...And why indict the keepers of the grail for conditions so far beyond their control...

...It would be unfair to invoke, in this context, the names of Orthodox rabbis who were tried and con­victed of exploitation of old and sick people...

...Such mindless sermonizing is exactly what has driven many modern Jews into secular forms of Jewish life...

...People perceive, and I think rightly, that Orthodoxy keeps the grail (to use an inappropriate but weighty metaphor) of the holy way of life called Judaism...

...He won't even eat a hard boiled egg in the home of a Conservative rabbi...

...It is only an accident that some rav has not yet declared a fundamental article of faith to be belief that the world is flat...

...Out of the holy way of life, a mode of living meant to sanctify each gesture and each moment, a way of life supposed to open our hearts to God and our minds to Torah, Orthodoxy has created a pattern of petty and trivial non­sense, a set of contemptible and humanly irrelevant gestures, prac­ticed in a spirit of punctilious pride...

...And so it is—alas...

...Out of the chosenness of Israel and the holi­ness of the Land of Israel, Ortho­doxy in the State of Israel (with powerful support from North America) has made an irredentist and militarist, pseudo-Messianic ideal of keeping everything we can and throwing out the rest...

...There is evidence of commission as well...

...Now that the Jews are ready, ready to hear the authentic mes­sage of holiness and Torah as spo­ken by Orthodox voices, Ortho­doxy—with only a few exceptions—speaks gibberish—and with a grimace to boot...

...And what can we be when we fully reckon with that image...

...There were great Orthodox rabbis who came to Westernized Jews with messages of love, with hope for a return (which finally has come about, but not under Orthodox aus­pices in the main...

...Yeshivot, for their part, treat learn­ing as pure ritual, so that merely repeating words, without under­standing what they mean, is taken as a holy act...

...Orthodoxy does not love the Jewish people—unless they are Orthodox...

...Israel Salanter in the 19th century, the great Pales­tinian chief rabbi, Rav Kook in the 20th—these are only two names revered by all Jews...

...A once reasonable tradi­tion of religious learning now requires the denial of facts in the name of faith...

...For if we claim that the keepers of the grail have allowed it to become tarnished, who can differ...

...Parades of words, spoken without passion and conceived without anguish, words which say absolutely noth­ing—and do so insultingly...

...When you consider the power of Judaism, realized most fully and profoundly in Orthodoxy, you must wonder why every Jew should not be Orthodox and Judaic—not merely Jewish...

...We cannot forget, after all, that the Torah studied by Orthodoxy and in mindless yeshivot is still the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud...

...The difference is that it hides its confusion behind a mask of authenticity...

...So there is the paradox: the power and mystery of Judaism on the one hand, the indifference of the Jews to Judaism on the other...

...Authenticity" is no substitute for thought or for manners...

...That fact accounts for the growing tradition­alism of Jewish Theological Semi­nary and Conservative Judaism, and even for the kosher eating facilities at Hebrew Union College...

...Such rhetoric says nothing and makes the skeptic yawn...

...Nor are we interested in the many examples of a certain Orthodox indifference to ethics when "outsiders" are concerned...

...These are not the issues...

...And when we turn to the "mod­ern Orthodox" and ask them for a Jewish message, what is it that we hear...

...So when they return, they take for granted that it must be to Orthodoxy...

...It does not excuse either self-righteousness or the affectation of certainty...

...Is its message one of the sanctification of all Israel, of the precious worth and holy meaning of every Jewish soul...

...In a different context, Ray Soko­lov recently had this to say about Robert Gordis' new book on Judaism and sex: "The real prob­lem with this book is that it cannot hope to persuade thousands of apostate Jews of anything except that they were right to abandon for­mal Jewish observance—not so much because of the rigid views of the rabbinate, but because of the irrelevant and empty language that 'modern' leaders .. . spew out in a simplistic and vacant attempt to win young people back to the fold...

...ARROGANCE AND AUTHENTICITY JACOB NEUSNER Jacob Neusner, University Profes­sor, Professor of Religious Studies and the Ungerleider Distinguished Scholar of Religious Studies at Brown University, is a contributingeditor of MOMENT...

...The critique is even more appro­priate when applied to the Ortho­dox...

...Its message is a tale of con­tempt to the non-Orthodox religious Jews...

...And yet, the great major­ity of North American Jews who choose to be religious also choose not to be Orthodox, and a near majority of them choose not to be religious at all...

...The grandeur of the Judaic per­spective on humanity, the extraor­dinary relevance of that perspective to everyday practice, the ineffable beauty of the consequent way of living, a holy way of living, sepa­rate and distinct, in full measure congruent with the profound meaning of our mortality and our human striving—what is life with­out that vision...

...Out of the holy Torah, an intel­lectual tradition of amazing bril­liance and continuing power, Orthodoxy has fashioned a set of propositions of dubious truth and little fact...

...It is Orthodoxy that claims—and I think fairly and rightly—to be authentic and (in its vulgar and embarrassing phrase) "Torah-true...

...Are we not told by students of every cult and crackpot outfit, from Jews for Jesus to Reverend Moon, that Jews make up not three or four percent of their followers but six­teen to sixty percent...

...Except for the hand­ful able to adopt the Orthodox way of life in all details and assimilate into Orthodox circles, Orthodoxy has nothing but ugly and unfriendly words...

...But precisely because its claim is fair and right, its expression of that claim is tragic, its arrogant demeanor an offense...

...And how can people turn their backs upon it...

...But there was also Isaiah...

...And yet...

...The issue is how we may describe the face of Orthodoxy to the Jewish world itself, to Reform and Conservative Jews, and to the "non-religious...