There Is No Judaism But Orthodoxy... and There Are No Orthodox Jews
Wolf, Arnold Jacob
THERE IS NO JUDAISM BUT ORTHODOXY...AND THERE ARE NO ORTHODOX JEWS ARNOLD JACOB WOlf For well over a hundred years we have been trying to find a theological alternative to Orthodox Judaism; I do...
...Their failure, as ours, is unavoidable...
...The truth is that we just do not believe in the Torah as it is...
...If you're playing baseball, you can't throw a forward pass on the grounds that the details of the game change over time...
...But if freedom comes before obedience, are we who agree with them, who exercise our freedom, still authentic Jews...
...He would answer for the details of the law that he could not himself enact by pleading "not yet...
...If, on the other hand, we are free to pick and choose among traditional Jewish obligations, then we are, in principle at least, superior to the Torah...
...The observant only observe some of the Torah...
...They only want to hear about some of the Torah...
...Is the halachah to tell us what brand of tuna fish we can eat, how to pray or, at least, what words to pray, but not to lead us through our own lives and our own history...
...We can be Jews, though perhaps not at the same time also modern men and women...
...So we are not Christians, but the question remains: Are any of us still Jews...
...it is beautiful and inspirational...
...The Torah is more than we say it is...
...more people will come to the service if we have a mechitzah...
...This view has the advantage of not identifying the whole tradition with that portion of the tradition that we find personally congenial, and yet leaving us not feeling guilty about that portion of it that we simply cannot live with in our time and place...
...But we are not lost...
...Paul of Tarsus believed the Torah was inevitably too difficult for human beings to perform...
...But he left our problem essentially unsolved, for you may feel addressed by the commandment of kashrut, I by the law of welcoming strangers...
...When a group of the most observant Jews at Yale Hillel wanted to introduce a mechitzah—a partition between the men's and women's sections—into the service, they could only think of "Reform" reasons for doing so: It is a very old custom...
...That is not the problem...
...entiously perform...
...Reform today is not as liberal as it pretends to be, Orthodoxy today is far less than authentic tradition requires, we are all less than our ancestors once were...
...It could not save the Jews because they could not obey Orthodox Jews are simply not what they think they are...
...His most recent contribution to moment appeared in April 1982, in "Seder Bitters and Sweets...
...Some Orthodox scholars admit (or boast) that the really profound issues of our time (women, war, justice) are not halachic issues at all, and that one can offer only personal advice or subjective opinion on these deeply divisive questions...
...Who is, then, the Revealer, and who the mere object of revelation...
...It is not simply that any one of them can always find someone with a more strict view of the law than his or her own, but that no coherent notion of observance is anywhere to be found...
...In that, at least, there is a half-consolation...
...The problem with Rosenzweig's view (and my version of it) is that most of us are too prone to rationalization, too comfortable with delay...
...If I am right, we are all—liberal Jews with easy consciences about jettisoning most of the Torah and Orthodox Jews who pretend they do it all but don't even want to know what all of it might be—in the same boat...
...All of them (and all of us) are sinners...
...Orthodox Jews are simply not what they think they are...
...Freedom is only true when it is disciplined and chastened...
...you by Deuteronomy, I by Mishnah...
...And, as long as we have not eliminated parts of the halachah from the Jewish agenda just because we find them too difficult or remote, there may come a time when we, or our descendants, will recover those portions...
...The problem is that not one of them any longer believes with perfect faith in the Torah of Moses, none of them is committed to its total demand on our lives...
...Not much is said there or here about war and peace or about gossip and slander or about relations with non-Jews or with our own children...
...You can, incidentally, invoke the designated hitter and the infield fly rule to show that a few particulars have, in fact, changed slightly in our own memory of the game—but baseball is still baseball...
...The real agenda of present-day Orthodoxy in Israel or in America is primarily Shabbat and kashrut...
...Secularists and covenant theologians, neo-traditionalists and humanists alike— we are all suffering the same loss of faith or loss of nerve...
...If the Torah is not, in a decisive sense, the word of God, who needs it...
...Even at the highest reaches of Orthodox thinking there is a deep division of opinion as to whether the halachah is broad enough to direct all our lives, whether there is or is not an ethical demand that is above and beyond our legal norm...
...He will not be bound by any rules that he cannot assent to out of his own free choice, and he cannot even imagine surrendering his decision-making to any rabbinic text or to any rabbinic body...
...We can be saved, though not only by our own devices...
...They needed a readier source of salvation, or they would all be doomed to die in sin...
...I do not believe we have succeeded...
...All our sacred past may yet be found...
...Any of us" includes also those who think they are Orthodox believers but who trim the Torah, whether unconsciously or by design...
...Then it abandons us precisely when we need it most...
...They really didn't or couldn't believe He did, so they came up with improbable arguments for an essentially lost cause...
...They have tried to distinguish between a core of Judaism, an essence which is immutable, and details which are historically bound and must be modified over time...
...they are radical dissenters, even if they do not acknowledge their own dissent...
...Who decides between us...
...We will sink or sail together...
...Some Orthodox Jews are confused...
...Borowitz and Siegel are truthful, and their reservations about limiting our freedom are reservations we all in fact share...
...The world we see is not all there is...
...Isaiah Israel Congregation (Reform) in Chicago...
...Too heavy" is only too heavy for those of us who do not sufficiently exercise our Jewish muscles...
...I have described this view in recent years as "walking along Jew Street picking up all the packages of mitzvot that one can handle and leaving those that are, for the time, still too heavy...
...Modem Jews agree, more than they think, with Raul...
...If we can admit our terrifying disloyalties and our punishing confusions, there is hope...
...God is more sovereign than we have permitted Him/Her to be in our lives...
...Eugene Borowitz, semi-official theologian of Reform Judaism, and himself rather observant and deeply respectful of tradition, insists that autonomy is absolutely essential to the modern Jew...
...it awaits us always...
...He did not propose anarchy or mere subjective whim...
...that way they can assume that they are "Torah-true" Jews...
...We will live or die as a people together...
...In the end, though they may have wanted a mechitzah, they did not need it...
...None of them gave the real reason, the only possible reason, in my view, for needing a mechitzah: God ordered us to have one...
...Subtle and thoughtful scholars have proposed alternatives to a complete, blind acceptance of Torah...
...Who brings us together as a community...
...If we really meant it, couldn't we here and now do more Judaism...
...it is not so hard to do or so very remote from our present life...
...And as we may find that past, so we may find ourselves...
...they hear about only some of the Torah in most of their schools and synagogues...
...Seymour Siegel, in his authoritative book on Conservative Judaism, limits the halachah to those of its elements that are strictly within the boundaries of contemporary ethical standards and even contemporary taste...
...But if the halachah is not about deep concerns, then what is left of it...
...If Judaism is Torah—that is, if it is a response to God through obedience to His law—then Judaism must be "Orthodox" or nothing...
...in fact, he was much more attuned to the traditional halachah than is sometimes assumed...
...Not yet" can easily become "never...
...Franz Rosenzweig refined our understanding of liberalism and the law by accepting in principle the whole of traditional halachah but living only that portion of it that he could consciArnold Jacob Wolf is rabbi of K.A.M...
...Martin Buber claimed that Torah is not law, but the place where God and the Jew meet, and that each of us must hear when and where we are addressed in that Torah...
...But, after all, God is in the details, isn't He/She...
...We do not accept Jesus as our personal savior, but we no longer believe that the Torah is immutable, complete and salvific...
Vol. 8 • September 1983 • No. 8
