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.

Lost rabbits and a dilemma about parenting

 We recently moved house and, in the space of a week, managed to lose our two guinea pigs and rabbit.  If you follow me on Facebook you may remember me scrambling around the garden to save one of these animals from a fox only a few months back.  The guinea pigs were the first to go.  Unused to having a lawn (our previous house had decking and a patio) we left the rabbit and guinea pigs in the run overnight.  The next morning, the rabbit was still there but the guinea pigs were gone.  The gashes in the grass led us to believe that the rabbit had dug a hole just deep enough to let the guinea pigs escape. Given that guinea pigs run more or less aimlessly when released from the hutch, we were under no illusions that they’d come back. 

We started being more careful with the rabbit after that, keeping him in his hutch rather than letting him run around the garden.  But he stopped eating and started to shed fur.  Whether this was from boredom or loneliness, we decided that pending the purchase of new companion guinea pigs, we had to let him roam around the garden, making sure to return him to his hutch at night time.  But the rabbit was hard to catch and impossible to retrieve when he hid in small, dark places.  One evening he escaped and hid under the shed.  We weren’t too worried about leaving him – this had happened before and he always emerged in the morning.  But in middle of the night we heard noises – some kind of screaming – from the garden.  I couldn’t really get back to sleep, and in the morning the rabbit was gone.  Only a few traces of fur were left in the grass.

I felt guilty about the guinea pigs (although the kids accepted their loss quite calmly) but we were all upset about the rabbit.  I looked for him in the garden for the next couple of days.  My four year old came home upset, having thought to pick dandelion leaves for him, then remembering he was gone.  I had a similar moment this morning when I cut the dry end off a cucumber I found in the fridge.

While I know this is trivial – animals die all the time – I’ve found the guilt surprisingly difficult.  I was responsible for a domestic animal who couldn’t look after himself in the wild, and allowed him to come to harm.  My wife (more upset than me – it was really her rabbit) said that’s just how it goes.  Animals are not objects, you can’t control them and you can only look after them while they’re with you.  Keeping a depressed rabbit cooped up in a hutch or run would have been the only other solution – and obviously no solution at all. 

I’m not sure I agree – there were other precautions we could have taken – but ultimately I accept that there’s a trade-off here: control and safety versus freedom and danger.  And the strength of my feelings shows that this applies not only to rabbits, but also in a more profound way, to parenting and our relationship with our children.  (Incidentally, I just finished re-reading Haruki Murukami’s Wind-up Bird Chronicle in which the disappearance of the narrator’s cat prefigures the surreal and unexplained disappearance of his wife). 

I let my kids do things (climb high trees for example) that I know make other parents quail.  I have a strong belief in letting children become independent and self-reliant, even if that sometimes means they face setbacks, get stuck or hurt themselves.  I focus on this belief as an antidote to my other tendency to protect and control.  But how would I feel if the independence I give one day confirmed my deep-seated fears by leading to real harm?

So an incident with rodents (and a leporid) has awoken existential angst about parenting which I don’t know how to solve.  In the meantime, we’re thinking about getting a cat.  You do have to let them out, but I think I’ll feel safer with a carnivore that can jump onto rooftops.

Royal babies, Republicanism and Torah OR why the Bible has a problem with royalty

I’m aware that any whiff of republicanism these days is considered to be outside the bounds of good taste – we all love the royal family now!  I'm going to risk unpopularity and perhaps scandal by relaying these thoughts which recently occurred to me.

Private Eye’s recent front page headline, ‘Woman has baby,’ naturally appealed to me but, although it points out an obvious truth about recent events, it also misses the point.  The new baby is not only a human being; the tremendous fuss around his birth is a reminder that he is part of one of the stranger British institutions – the monarchy.  The monarchy is strange because it exists within a democracy in which, notionally, sovereignty resides with the people.  Accordingly the queen (or king) has no actual political power – just a stack of land and money accumulated over the centuries, a generous taxpayer-funded remuneration package, guaranteed access to the media, and regular one-to-one, confidential meetings with the Prime Minister. 

A few weeks ago, the courts rules that correspondence between Prince Charles and various government departments could not be released under the Freedom of Information Act as publication could damage his position of political neutrality.  The implication was that Charles is not neutral, has clear political opinions and has taken advantage of his position to communicate these to government ministers; keeping his letters secret serves the purpose of maintaining the illusion of political neutrality while allowing him to go about his business influencing government policy.

You’d think that in a democracy people would notice this kind of anomaly, not to mention the clash between their enthusiasm for these symbols of privilege and the values we all supposedly believe in.  The fact that hardly anyone does is less surprising when you consider how shallow our democracy actually is and take into account the centralisation of power, the inequality and the social immobility which have increasingly come to plague us.  (On the same subject, see the excellent book The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone).   Public worship of the monarchy shows how successful the institution is at implicitly legitimising the status quo.

Next week we’ll be reading Parshat Shoftim (Deuteronomy 16:18 - 21:9) which, among other things, gives us the laws relating to the monarchy:

“If, after you have entered the land that the Lord your God has assigned to you, and taken possession of it and settled in it, you decide, "I will set a king over me, as do all the nations about me," you shall be free to set a king over yourself, one chosen by the Lord your God. Be sure to set as king over yourself one of your own people; you must not set a foreigner over you, one who is not your kinsman.  Moreover, he shall not keep many horses or send people back to Egypt to add to his horses, since the Lord has warned you, "You must not go back that way again." And he shall not have many wives, lest his heart go astray; nor shall he amass silver and gold to excess. 

When he is seated on his royal throne, he shall have a copy of this Teaching written for him on a scroll by the levitical priests.  Let it remain with him and let him read in it all his life, so that he may learn to revere the Lord his God, to observe faithfully every word of this Teaching as well as these laws.  Thus he will not act haughtily toward his fellows or deviate from the Instruction to the right or to the left, to the end that he and his descendants may reign long in the midst of Israel.” (17:14-20).

The important bit is not the Torah’s assumption that a king will be predisposed towards the accumulation of excess wealth, immoral behaviour and idolatry, nor the idea that the king has to be watched by the priests to ensure he keeps to the laws of the Torah.  The most interesting detail is the opening word of the passage – ‘if.’  The Torah’s message is, you can have a king if you want one, but you’ll probably be sorry as this is far from the idea form of government. 

Later (I Samuel chapter 8), we learn how the people rejected the direct rule of God as represented by the Judges, and begged for a king so they could be more like the other nations and have someone to lead them into battle.  The prophet Samuel, while warning the people of the likely outcome, reluctantly agreed.  The rest of the Bible describes how the Israelite monarchy descended into exactly the sort of corruption warned about in the Torah.

I would argue that the Bible is a republican document.  It believes in the direct rule of God and sees monarchy as a pragmatic solution designed to pander to the people, but one which will inevitably lead to bigger problems than the ones it was designed to solve.  In our context, the monarchy has no power to solve our problems, only the capacity to blind us to them.  Yet direct rule by God is also unavailable to us.  In the absence of prophets, when we all have equal potential for understanding God’s will (perhaps alternatively understood as the common good?), is democracy the best available alternative to biblical theocracy?  The fact that the people undeniably still want a king is another matter.

Why Rabbi Schochet's wrong about feminism

Rabbi Yitzhak Schochet’s attack on the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance lays bare the rift in modern Judaism.  It’s not between the Orthodox and everyone else, but cuts across denominational lines, dividing people who want an insular Judaism to bury its head in the sand from those of us who want our tradition to embrace, critique and play a wholehearted role in the contemporary world. 

Rabbi Schochet advises Orthodox feminists not to push too far in their attempts to find equality in Judaism.  He notes that the glass ceiling has been shattered and women have achieved social equality, but religion is the wrong place to extend these rights further.  He argues that Judaism is about serving God, not ourselves and that halachah as a guide to God’s will is about obligations, not rights.  He claims that no Orthodox rabbi recognises ‘partnership minyanim’ where women read from the Torah and lead parts of the service.  He writes that the bat-mitzvah girl who wished her father could have been there when she was called to the Torah has ‘missed the point.’  Most strikingly, he believes that Judaism has never relegated women to the status of second class citizens. 

I have news for Rabbi Schochet.  We still live in a world of brutal oppression and growing inequality.  You don’t have to go to the wartorn killing fields of Congo and Syria or the misogynist tribal backwaters of the Taliban to work that out.  Even in modern civilised Western Europe and the United States we are beset by growing economic inequality, incitement against the poor, discrimination against immigrants and – yes – anti-Semitism.  If he thinks the glass ceiling has been shattered, he should count the number of women in Parliament or on the boards of public companies.  And all too often, both in the developing world and at home, rather than speaking out against oppression and inequality, religious leaders lend them a helping hand. 

In this context, we have to ask ourselves: which side do we want Judaism to be on?  It’s simply not good enough to argue that while we believe in equality, this value ends at the entrance to the synagogue.  If we believe in equality, the first place to go about realising it is in Judaism.  Anything else is a kind of doublethink which makes a mockery of our values. 

We should make no bones about the fact that the Jewish tradition is a product of a patriarchal era and, as such, has often cast women as second class citizens.  True, the rabbis of the Talmudic period instituted ground-breaking reforms to protect women’s rights.  But nowadays, the gap between women’s status in halachah and the principles of equality and justice is increasingly clear.  Halachic Judaism is built around the value of obligation or commandedness.  The more closely one’s life is aligned with the demands of the mitzvot the better.  But women are defined in Jewish law as a group which has fewer obligations and thus fewer opportunities to do mitzvot.  Less obligation translates into lower status.  This also excludes women from leadership positions in the synagogue. 

More importantly, women have been excluded from halachic decision-making.  It’s no surprise that a tradition shaped almost exclusively by men should turn out to be patriarchal.  This point is lost on Rabbi Schochet, of course, as he regards halachah as a pre-packaged statement of God’s will, transmitted through human beings who take no active role in shaping its contents.  But for most modern Orthodox –and all non-Orthodox – Jews, this is an untenable description of the tradition which contains many voices, has a history and is influenced by social conditions in every period (for more on this see Rabbi Louis Jacobs’ excellent book A Tree of Life).

If halachah is created or at least shaped by human beings, it can’t be expected to deal adequately with gender issues as long as women are excluded from the learning and decision making process. The case for women rabbis and poskot halachah – halachic authorities – is more than clear.  Rabbi Schochet’s point that women should not pursue equality in the synagogue because Jewish law prohibits it is flipped – until halachah can be shaped by women, how can it presume any authority over them?  And why, specifically, should women accept the lower level of obligation and the consequent limiting of their religious lives which has been imposed on them by generations of male rabbis?

JOFA is clearly worthy of support, as were similar movements that pursued gender equality in the Reform and Conservative/Masorti movement a generation ago.   But the fact that Orthodox feminism comes in the wake of its non-Orthodox counterparts offers it both a resource and a challenge.  For decades, Masorti rabbis have been formulating halachic solutions to issues of counting women in the minyan, egalitarian services, calling women to the Torah, women rabbis and witnesses, agunot, and so on.  These are legitimate, well-researched, scholarly legal resources.  At last year’s Limmud Conference, Rabbi Daniel Sperber commented that many Masorti rabbis are indistinguishable from their modern Orthodox colleagues (he meant it as a compliment).  So why let the fact that these solutions are branded with a non-Orthodox label stop you from using them as a resource?  Modern Orthodoxy has far more in common with Masorti than it does with Haredi Judaism as represented by Rabbi Schochet (see Rabbi Sacks' comments on this) – especially on this issue.  Isn’t it time to overcome the denominational divide and learn to work together in pursuit of a common goal?

How the rabbis overturned the Torah: on rebelliousness and religion

Here are my thoughts on this week's Torah portion, published by Masorti Judaism in Reflections.

Parshat Naso contains one of the Torah’s more disturbing passages – the laws relating to an ishah sotah or ‘wayward woman’ (5:11-31).  A man becomes jealous of his wife and suspects her of adultery; there is no evidence against her and she may or may not be guilty.  He brings her to the Tabernacle and presents a meal offering on her behalf.  The priest rips the woman’s clothing, dishevels her hair and makes her swear an oath, declaring that if she has indeed defiled herself, the subsequent ceremony will cause her thigh to fall away and her belly to swell and she will become a curse among her people.  The priest now takes a jug of water into which dirt from the Tabernacle floor has been mixed, blots the inky words of the curse - written on a scroll - into the water, and makes the woman drink it.  If she is guilty, the predetermined results ensue. 

The Mishnah modifies this procedure in several important ways.  Before a woman can be subjected to the ordeal, she must have been warned by her husband against secluding herself with a named individual.  Both the warning and the seclusion itself must be attested to by witnesses.  If such evidence exists, the woman is brought to the high court in Jerusalem where the judges implore her to confess her sins.  If she does so at any point before the curse is blotted into the water, her guilt is assumed and her husband may divorce her, but she avoids the ordeal.  And even if a truly adulterous woman goes through with the ceremony, the effects of the bitter water will be delayed by up to three years by any other good deeds she may have done. 

The contrast between the biblical and rabbinic accounts is striking.  As in other cases (laws relating to the death penalty, the execution of rebellious children, punishments of an eye for an eye) the rabbis, it seems, could not stomach some of the Torah’s more barbarous prescriptions.  Thus, while notionally respecting the sanctity and integrity of the text, they introduced so many procedural safeguards that in effect they reversed the Torah’s intention.  It’s reasonably clear that to the rabbis, the bitter water had no physical effect.  Rabbi Shimon hints at this in the Mishnah, arguing that if merit is understood to delay the punishment, guilty women will cease to fear the water and the reputation of innocent women, ostensibly cleared by the ceremony, may be called into question.  None of this would be the case if the bitter water worked, even occasionally.  Rather than a true trial by ordeal, the rabbis have rewritten the ceremony so as to protect women from arbitrary accusations and as a judicial – not magical - disincentive to adultery.

But this kind of revolutionary reinterpretation goes back further than the Mishnah – right into the text of the Torah itself.  Academic Bible scholars have noted that the ritual of the sotah bears the marks of an earlier, pagan ceremony, which served as the vehicle for a new, monotheistic religious message.  The text itself appears to be fragmented: read chapter 5 verses 24-26 and decide whether the woman drank the water before the priest offered the sacrifice or vice versa.  This kind of repetition and inconsistency indicates to some scholars an evolution and editing together of older traditions into a new text.  Where once the bitter water was considered to have magical powers of its own, the Torah makes clear that its function is symbolic - any harm inflicted comes from God.  And while the procedure reflects patriarchal, sexist assumptions, it’s possible to read the biblical text as an attempt to alleviate some of the worst misogynistic excesses, providing a public, judicial alternative to the private and arbitrary punishment of wives by jealous husbands.

Masorti Judaism: between mitzvah and autonomy

Perhaps the most difficult issue for liberal halachic Jews is the tension between two core values: mitzvah (which I translate here not as an individual commandment but as the concept of commandedness) and autonomy.  Mitzvah is the most important principle of halachic Judaism while autonomy is the indispensable grounding idea of modern ethics.  I want to explain more clearly what these two values mean and why the contradiction between them is inescapable.

Commandedness is perhaps the most important principle of rabbinic Judaism.  For the rabbis, the value of performing a mitzvah is not only inherent in the act itself (and sometimes, as in the case of sha’atnez or tefilin for example, the act might have no intrinsic value other than the fact it’s commanded).  A mitzvah is important simply because it’s commanded and because we are under an obligation to perform it.  The Talmud (Kiddushin 31a) illustrates this idea with the story of a non-Jew, Dama ben Natinah, who was seen to have honoured his parents even at great cost to himself, and was subsequently rewarded by God.  Rabbi Hanina comments that if this happened to someone who honoured his parents despite having no obligation to do so, how much more would a Jew in a similar position be rewarded, as (this is the punchline) it is greater to be commanded and act than to act without being commanded. 

This flies in the face of common sense.  Why might it be the case?  The Tosafot (medieval Talmudic commentators) offer several explanations.  The pragmatic view is that a person who is obligated to do a good deed is more likely to act than a person for whom the deed is voluntary (on Kiddushin 31a).  A more principled explanation – and one that in my view goes to the heart of rabbinic Judaism – is that the value of performing a mitzvah is that in so doing a person negates her own desires submits herself to the will of God (Avodah Zarah 3a).  If so, demonstrating obedience rather than the content of the act itself is the vital component in any mitzvah.

In complete contrast, modern ethics is based on the value of autonomy, which literally means self-rule.  The eighteenth-century philosopher Immanuel Kant argued that any act which is impelled by a heteronomous (external) source of authority can never be described as moral.  The reason for this is that obedience can only be induced by fear of punishment or hope of reward: we pay tax to avoid being fined, we stop at red lights to avoid being injured or arrested and so on. Because morality is defined in terms of duty while heteronomous action is always a matter of self-interest, heteronomy can never be the basis for morality.  Moral agents are always by definition autonomous in that they make free, rational decisions as to how to behave, based on their sense of duty to others.

The clash between mitzvah and autonomy should now be clear.  Autonomy is about obeying our own, rational, self-imposed moral principles, whereas mitzvah means putting these to one side in order to obey God or submit ourselves to Jewish tradition.  Incidentally, this holds true regardless of whether or not we consider the Torah to be of divine origin: obeying God contradicts the principles of autonomy no less than obeying the rabbis.  Sometimes the practical results of these two principles coincide: either could lead a person to give tzedakah for example.  Less often they clash: when my son was born, I was acutely aware of my halachic obligation to perform a brit milah, whereas my moral sense was outraged by the thought of intentionally injuring a new baby.  But if intentions are what’s important, then the contradiction is always there.  I can’t act in order to realise my own autonomy and simultaneously aspire to overcome my desires so as to obey God or the rabbis, both heteronomous sources of authority.

Progressive and ultra-Orthodox Jews resolve this tension by prioritising one of the two principles.  For ultra-Orthodoxy, commandedness always holds sway and personal values and desires are to be abandoned when they clash with halachah; Progressive Judaism privileges autonomy and empowers the individual to selectively filter the mitzvot in light of modern, rational principles.  The challenge is most squarely faced by the centrist movements in Judaism, modern Orthodoxy and Masorti: neither are prepared to jettison their halachic commitment or sacrifice their modern, liberal principles. 

What might be a Masorti response to this dilemma?  How can we be true to ourselves, our passionately held values, and our sense of personal freedom, while at the same time upholding our commitment to Torah and mitzvot in the framework of halachah?  For my answer, I want to draw on the work of one of the most important of all modern Jewish thinkers, Franz Rosenzweig.  While Rosenzweig is not usually identified with Masorti Judaism, I believe that his commitment to liberal philosophical principles together with his profound commitment to the tradition makes him a particularly suitable role model for us.

Rosenzweig returned to Judaism after a period of assimilation but felt unable to submit himself to Jewish law as this would have compromised his freedom as an individual.  The solution lay in a distinction he drew between Law and Commandment.  Whereas Law is an objective set of rules whose imposition clearly compromises personal autonomy, Commandment is a personal directive issued in the context of a committed, loving relationship, where the power of the relationship enables us to hear and freely obey.  Rosenzweig’s insight is that a loving relationship dissolves the boundary between autonomy and heteronomy: if we are able to feel the power of the mitzvot, in other words to experience God’s love through them, we’ll be able to respond to the commandments without compromising our freedom.

But what if we don’t experience the mitzvot in this way?  What if observance still feels like an imposition and a restriction?  Rosenzweig’s answer is simple: the only way to open yourself to the inner power of the mitzvot is by doing them.  Our job is to experiment: take on a commandment, not because we feel obliged but as an experience, practise it, remain open to its inner power.  Gradually expand the role halachah plays in our lives, without any pretence or abandonment of personal integrity, but as an educational exercise.  Practising Judaism here takes on a double meaning: we practise the mitzvot in the sense of practising a musical instrument, and in so doing we develop our ability to practise them in the sense of practising medicine: performing them in the truest sense.

This seems to me to be the path Masorti Judaism would recommend: an incremental journey through the halachah, taking on practices, experimenting and learning and, as we begin to experience the inner power of the tradition, deepening our commitment and sense of obligation to the truly commanding voice of the mitzvot.

This is my recent piece published in Masorti Judaism's Reflections.

Jewish law is not morality - more on Torah, liberalism and sexual ethics

Here are two examples about the tension between liberalism and halachic Judaism I mentioned in my last post (dedicated to Alex Stein - see his blog at http://falsedichotomies.com/).

1.
Today I attended a learning session for Masorti Judaism staff led by Rabbi Daniella Kolodny. We were looking at a Masorti responsum on smoking by Rabbi David Golinkin (see volume 4) which, aside from unambiguously prohibiting smoking, attacked ultra-Orthodox poskim such as Rabbi Moshe Feinstein for failing to do so.  Just to be clear: I agree with the teshuva; it's clear to me that smoking is contrary to basis halachic injunctions to save life and remain healthy.  But I'm ambivalent about the value of applying halacha to this kind of issue.  I have ultra-Orthodox acquaintances who won't paint their house before asking their rabbi what colour to choose. I wonder whether applying the authoritative framework of Jewish law to a question whose answer is self-evident in terms of modern science and common sense is the start of a slippery slope which leads, ultimately, to this kind of self-abasement.  In other words, as liberal Jews, can we accept a pan-halachic perspective which holds that Jewish law has the capacity to dictate all our decisions, or should we limiting halacha to the areas where we actually need it (ritual matters, genuinely fraught ethical issues) and asserting our right to make our own decisions about most areas of life?

2.
But sometimes it's not clear what's a halachic issue and what isn't.  For example, our rabbis were recently asked to comment on the question of same sex marriage in the UK.  The Church of England and the Orthodox Chief Rabbi have come out against it and the Progressive Jewish movements (Liberal and Reform) among others have predictably been in favour. All the arguments for and against have been framed in moral terms: gay marriage is seen as either a good thing or a bad thing.  Masorti Senior Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg issued a statement making clear that gay Jews are welcome in our communities, that he approved of same-sex civil partnerships, and that he wants to find a way of marking same-sex relationships with a religious ceremony.  The subtext of this statement is that allowing same-sex couples to undergo kiddushin (Jewish marriage) is not a simple proposition - in other words there's a gap between what's moral and what's halachic (on this see Rabbi Jeremy Gordon's article quoted in the previous post).

Kiddushin is the legal procedure whereby a man acquires a woman (in the language of the Mishnah) - as such, it simply doesn't apply to same-sex couples.  There's no moral judgement here, just a question of applicability.  On the other hand, when synagogues register marriages in the eyes of the State, they are performing what is by definition an extra-halachic act, as Jewish marriage is a private contract in which the State or even the Bet Din has no role.  To my knowledge, English law doesn't specify the form of religious ceremony people have to undrego before their synagogue can register them as legally married, and increasing numbers of straight couples are choosing alternative ceremonies in preference to kiddushin, which they see as patriarchal and sexist. What would happen if we instituted an innovative, religious commitment ceremony for same-sex couples, having nothing to do with kiddushin, but followed up by a registration of civil marriage under the auspices of the synagogue?

I'm not a rabbi and I'm certainly not empowered to influence this kind of decision.  I'm more interested in it as a thought experiment which might help us think about the question of what is a halachic issue and what is an extra-halachic one.  In most ways, halacha (and Judaism in general) plays too small a role in our lives as liberal Jews.  But all too often halachic categories are invoked to prescribe particular solutions to what could be seen as social or political problems.  I think we need to be very clear about which mode of thinking is relevant to which issue, bringing halacha to bear more intensively where appropriate, but fighting the corner for liberal values and autonomy wherever we can.