Who do you want to get into bed with - Masorti or Haredi Jews? A question for my modern Orthodox friends

The organised Jewish community has become obsessed about who’s attending Limmud.  More specifically we’re preoccupied with which Orthodox rabbis are attending (or not attending) and more specifically still with what other Orthodox rabbis have tosay about Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis who has finally done what his predecessor Jonathan Sacks should have done, and signed up for the conference.

I hate to add to the clamour by writing this piece, and I personally have no strong feelings about whether Rabbi Mirvis should attend.  I hope he enjoys Conference and feels he made the right decision.  But the episode does raise important issues of Jewish identity and Jewish peoplehood.

I recently stuck my nose into a Facebook debate in a groupcalled MO/OO – Modern Orthodox/Open Orthodox.  A call had been issued for modern Orthodox leaders to stand up for the Chief Rabbi and speak out against a group of ultra-Orthodox luminaries who’ve issued a public letter urging their followers to boycott Limmud.  I asked why only modern Orthodox leaders were being called on.  Shouldn’t Jewish leaders of every stripe rally round an institution that brings Jews together to learn?  How has the question of participation at Limmud come to be seen as an internal battle for people who label themselves with the ‘O’ word?

There’s a fundamental question here for people who define themselves as modern-, liberal- or open-Orthodox (or any other variant I have yet to come across).  Who is your coalition?  Who do you align with?  Who’s a member of your Jewish ‘family’?  Are you more at home with the people to your right – the ‘black’ and ‘grey’ worlds of more mainstream and ultra-Orthodoxy – or with those to your left – Conservative/Masorti Judaism and the more traditional fractions of other liberal Jewish movements?  Are the aspirations of MO/OO Jews best served by fighting over the future of Orthodoxy, or should they more profitably throw their lot in with the rest of us, ignore their own right flank, and focus on the future of the Jewish people as a whole?

Some people in the Facebook debate said we can’t ignore reality – whatever the similarities between us, Orthodox and Masorti are divided by a clear line: Orthodox Jews are obligated in a very practical sense to halachic observance whereas most Masorti Jews, however committed they might be to the halachic framework in theory, tend to give halacha at most a vote and certainly not a veto in their own religious decision making.  This difference seems to stem from a theological distinction: Orthodoxy of whatever persuasion ostensibly buys into the idea of a direct link between divine revelation and the halachic system, whereas Masorti/Conservative Judaism understands halacha as a human creation which evolves over time in response to changing historical circumstances and the Jewish people’s ongoing quest to articulate a meaningful response to God.

But the minute we look around us, we see this isn’t the case.  The (Orthodox) United Synagogue is full of Jews who identify as Orthodox but whose lifestyles don’t begin to approach the standards set out by halacha; you can’t even assume that committed members of US communities are fully observant.  I’d venture to say that not every member of the MO/OO Facebook group keeps all 613 mitzvot.  And I know for a fact that they (alongside many modern Orthodox academics and intellectuals) don’t all buy the official line that the Torah as we know it was given to Moses at Mount Sinai.  At my own (Masorti) shul, this diversity of religious practice also holds true – in fact, there’s no way of knowing who keeps what, and the fact that there’s no correlation between communal involvement, Jewish knowledge and ritual observance is one of the best things about the community. 

And even if we could draw a (blurry) line between Orthodox and Masorti Judaism in terms of practice or theology, should we assume that commitment to a certain style of observance is a necessary qualification for participation in the debate over liberalism and halacha?  To anyone who thinks it is, I’m tempted to respond that maybe a certain level of commitment to liberal values should also be a condition of entry.  In other words, if you think I’m not frum enough to participate in your conversation, maybe you’re not open-minded enough to take part in mine.

But this kind of small-mindedness is clearly fruitless.  I prefer the line taken by an (Orthodox) rabbinic colleague who told me he aspires to create a meaningful conversation about the future of what he calls ‘centrist Judaism’ in which anyone who connects with the term would be able to participate.  I take this to mean a conversation in which anyone who cares about halacha, Torah education, Jewish peoplehood and liberal values can take part – without strict entry criteria and without the problem of constantly having to look over our shoulders at people whose opinion we think we should care about but who are not part of the conversation.  Because this way, anyone whose opinion we care about will be part of the conversation, and anyone who chooses to stay outside can safely be left there.

One final point, and something I think all of us – Orthodox or not – can learn from the history of Conservative/Masorti Judaism (and emphatically not because Masorti Judaism is in any objective way better than the other streams).  Conservative Jews have always had as their first allegiance not their own movement, but the Jewish people as a whole.  Solomon Schechter, one of the founders of Conservative Judaism in the States, coined the term ‘Catholic Israel’ to refer to the collectivity of committed Jews of whatever denomination, in his eyes the historical agent which has the authority to shape and authorise halachic change.  Today, the Conservative movement in the States is in a period of numerical and organisational decline, but hundreds of independent minyanim, synagogues, educational projects and social change initiatives are being led by people who’ve grown up in the Conservative movement and who are now expressing their values in the wider Jewish world. 

In this country too, Masorti Jews are disproportionately represented in the leadership of cross-communal Jewish institutions of all kinds.  On a personal level, I’ve recently been part of the initiative to set up a new Jewish school – Alma Primary in Finchley.  Many of the initial founders were members of New North London Synagogue, but we took the decision to make Alma a cross-communal school, not a Masorti one.  In his sermon for Yom Kippur and in a recent address to a meeting of Masorti leaders from all over Europe, Rabbi Chaim Weiner, Av Bet Din of the European Masorti Bet Din, spoke about two exemplars of modern Jewish leadership: despite the ideological rift between them and Masorti, he chose to take example from Rabbi Ovadia Yosef and the Lubavitcher Rebbe.  How many Orthodox leaders would be open enough to publicly take inspiration from Leo Baeck or Mordecai Kaplan?

A slightly cynical friend – an Israel Masorti rabbi – commented to me that the problem with Masorti/Consevative Jews is that we invest all our energy in the future of the Jewish people, while neglecting the future of our own movement.  But in the present divided, fractious state of the Jewish community, I see this tendency in a much more positive light.  We certainly face a challenge in getting the balance right: how much do we invest in our movement as a vehicle for articulating the Jewish values we believe in, and how much do we act on those values through action in the wider Jewish community? 

And the same challenge is no less important for Orthodox Jews involved in leading Partnership Minyanim, championing Limmud, working for gay/lesbian inclusion or promoting critical, open-minded education.  I’d like to extend this challenge as an invitation to anyone who’s concerned with centrist, liberal, halachic Judaism, and the future of the Jewish people as a whole.  How can we work together and learn from each other, both within and across the denominational lines which ostensibly divide us, in pursuit of our common goals?  I’m waiting to hear ideas.