Can Orthodoxy succeed where Conservative/Masorti Judaism has failed? Comments on Daniel Gordis's 'Cognitive Dissonance'

Daniel Gordis just published a fascinating follow-up to his critique of Conservative/Masorti Judaism in light of the Pew Report - http://jewishreviewofbooks.com/articles/673/cognitive-dissonance/

Here are my comments (also posted on the site):

It seems to me that there's a disconnect between Gordis's diagnosis and his solution.  The solution - a cross-denominational, counter-cultural Judaism grounded in obligation and Jewish literacy - is something I can wholeheartedly agree with, and reflects the vision we are trying to work towards at Masorti Judaism in the UK.  But the diagnosis which leads to this remedy - the idea that Conservative Judaism fell apart because of lowering of standards - is deeply flawed.

If Conservative Judaism failed because Jews are looking for authority and commitment, how does Gordis explain that only 1% of young people (according to Pew) identify with modern Orthodoxy, as opposed to the 11% who still identify as Conservative?  The numbers don't back up his arguments.  Moreover, there's a strong case to be made that the relative vibrancy of certain Orthodox congregations is a result of their exclusivity - ideological commitment is much easier to sustain when anyone who does not identify simply leaves (or does not come in to begin with). Clearly this kind of exclusivity is not a recipe for mass Jewish engagement.  And where Orthodox communities are inclusive - for example in the UK - we see that they suffer from exactly the same kinds of problems that face Conservative communities in the US.

The flip side of this critique is the real elephant in the room missing from Gordis's analysis: the deep commitment of Conservative/Masorti Jews (and many other members of the liberal Jewish world) to diversity and pluralism as matters of principle.  The real challenge is not simply how to sustain a committed, literate Jewish community (which is hard enough) but how to do so in such a way that Jews of different beliefs, styles of practice, philosophical and political orientations, not to mention genders and sexual preferences will choose to join and be part of the conversation.  I would like to hear some intelligent views from contemporary Jewish leaders on this pressing problem.

“A misbegotten shambles perpetrated by an out of touch elite” – why is Michael Gove so sensitive to criticisms of first world war leaders? Some thoughts on history, ideology and politics.

The catfight – I prefer not to dignify it by calling it a debate – between Michael Gove, Tristram Hunt, Boris Johnson, Nick Clegg et al about the history of the first world war is truly fascinating: who’d have thought that (mis)interpreting a complex, controversial historical event could be enough of a reason to demand the resignation of a shadow cabinet minister? 

But that’s what Boris Johnson said this week in response to Tristram Hunt: “I can hardly believe that the author of this fatuous Observer article is proposing to oversee the teaching of history in our schools.  If Tristram Hunt seriously denies that German militarism was at the root of the First World War, then he is not fit to do his job, either in opposition or in government, and should resign.” 

The article by Hunt which provoked this reaction was in some ways no less partisan.  He said: ‘The reality is clear: the government is using what should be a moment for national reflection and respectful debate to rewrite the historical record and sow political division.  In the very paper that so grotesquely called into question Ralph Miliband's wartime service in the Royal Navy, the education secretary has sought to blame "leftwing academics" for misrepresenting the First World War.’

And Gove’s initial foray was also explicitly political: “Our understanding of the war has been overlaid by misunderstandings, and misrepresentations which reflect an, at best, ambiguous attitude to this country  and, at worst, an unhappy compulsion on the part of some to denigrate virtues such as patriotism, honour and courage. 

“The conflict has, for many, been seen through the fictional prism of dramas such as Oh! What a Lovely War, The Monocled Mutineer and Blackadder, as a misbegotten shambles – a series of catastrophic mistakes perpetrated by an out-of-touch elite. Even to this day there are Left-wing academics all too happy to feed those myths.”

It should be clear that there are actually two separate arguments.  One is an argument about history: what actually happened?  Who was to blame for the war, why did it break out, was Britain’s decision to enter the conflict correct, and how should we evaluate the conduct of the war? 

The second argument is one about politics and ideology, over ideas of patriotism, nationalism, militarism, imperialism, pacifism and democracy.  When political leaders argue about history, they’re really arguing about something else: contemporary debates over Europe, immigration, the welfare state, education policy.  But the same leaders are also convinced that it’s possible to separate between the ideological and the academic – hence the outrage each side experiences at the other’s ‘abuses’ of history.

This conviction reflects a distinction made by historian Bernard Lewis in his book, History: Remembered, Recovered, Invented.  Lewis defines three kinds of history.  Remembered history is essentially collective memory: past events which a particular community or nation chooses to remember, whether as reality or symbol.  Recovered history is the history which has been forgotten, in other words rejected by collective memory, and which is subsequently reconstructed by academic scholarship (for a brilliant discussion on the relationship between memory, history and identity see Zakhor by Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi – Yerushalmi argues that critical, modern Jewish historiography arose in the 19^th century as an ultimately failed attempt to replace the traditional identity that had collapsed along pre-modern Jewish collective memory). Invented memory is designed for a new ideological purpose, whether this is conservative, radical, nationalist or multicultural. 

Lewis draws a clear line between recovered and invented history, claiming that whereas recovered history is characterised by an honest attempt to identify and neutralise the prejudices of the historian in pursuit of the truth, invented history reflects nothing but its authors’ ideological positions.  But aside from the fact that the current debate shows that it’s all too easy for one person’s recovered history to be dismissed as invention, the distinction itself is nowhere near this neat. 

In his classic book What is History?, E.H. Carr convincingly showed that ideology and scholarship can never be separated.  Our naïve faith that historical interpretations emerge in a straightforward way from the facts is disrupted by the insight – obvious once you consider it - that historians inevitably choose which facts to present – based on which are most relevant or important.  The problem is that relevance and importance assume a frame of reference, one that by definition cannot be derived from facts.  In other words, facts are a product of interpretation no less than interpretations are products of the facts.  While Carr refused to submit to relativism – the idea that any subjective historical narrative is as good as any other – he was clear that history is not objective in a simplistic sense, but consists of an interaction or dialogue between the historian and his or her facts.

But if the lines between history and ideology are inherently blurred, in another sense, the approaches of Gove, Hunt and the rest are all resolutely ideological.  Gove and Johnson are not only using the war to argue for their own political opinions.  Their underlying view is that there is one, objectively true version of history which has to be defended in the face of ideologically motivated mendacity. 

Hunt and Clegg understand, against this, that history is inherently pluralistic, with diverse interpretations vying for our attention.  Yet this nuanced approach is also a principled position which needs to be vigorously defended.

Thus the real debate is a philosophical one, between an objectivist, monistic epistemology (Gove and Johnson) and one which takes a more complex, sophisticated view of historical interpretation and knowledge in general.  And it’s no surprise that epistemological pluralism should go along with more accepting attitudes towards social and cultural diversity.

So when MPs argue about history, it’s not just a cover for a political debate.  Real historical and even philosophical positions are on the line – and debates over distant events, freed from the demands of political correctness when talking about more contemporary issues, are often where these views come into the open. 

A cynic might not be surprised, in this light, by a Tory politician’s sensitivity criticisms of the war as ‘a misbegotten shambles – a series of catastrophic mistakes perpetrated by an out-of-touch elite.’  It all sounds a bit too contemporary.  But this kind of unintentional honesty provides a rare opportunity for voters to judge politicians not by what they say, but by what they actually think.

Are religious labels past their sell-by date? A defence of denominations in a post-denominational world

This is my piece published in this week's thejc.com - but unfortunately not yet in the online edition.

I’m about to head out to Limmud conference, where literally thousands of Jews of every conceivable stripe spent five days learning, debating, celebrating and socialising together.  Coming hot on the heels of that other winter highlight, Hanukah, Limmud set out a particularly fashionable message about contemporary Jewish existence. 

The Hanukah story is a narrative of cultural tension and ultimately civil war within the Jewish people.  Sectarianism threatened their existence whereas unity brought salvation.  So too, the Limmud version of Judaism preaches the values of coexistence, mutual respect and learning from each other as vital for the Jewish future.  In recent weeks, this message has had a galvanising effect: those Orthodox rabbis who called for a boycott of Limmud have been roundly criticised by most mainstream communal leaders.

This welcome support for better relationships among different kinds of Jews, however, reflects a more radical, controversial view: the idea that denominationalism is necessarily destructive.  In the face of exciting new cross-communal initiatives, traditional institutions such as Masorti, Reform, Liberal and the United Synagogue often seem to be on the back foot - if not actively softening at the edges.  Perhaps this explains the development of multi-denominational community centres in Oxford and Hatch End, the emergence of alternative, ‘partnership’ minyanim within Orthodoxy, or the fact that for the very first time, the Chief Rabbi felt the need to attend Limmud.

In the United States, denominational Judaism also seems to be in retreat.  The recent Pew Research Center’s survey, ‘A Portrait of Jewish Americans,’ shows that whereas 75% of Jews aged 50+ affiliate with particular denominations (Reform, Conservative, Orthodox or ‘other’), in the 18-29 age bracket that number shrinks to 59%, with the remaining 41% identifying as Jews of no denomination. 

While there is much to celebrate here - Jews getting along better with other Jews is certainly no bad thing - the post-denominational trend has a more troubling side.  The Pew figures show that as American Jews assimilate, they tend to switch allegiance from the traditional to the progressive strands of Judaism, from there to non-denominational affiliation, and finally to identifying as ‘Jews of no religion.’  This is not to say that you can’t be a committed Reform or post-denominational Jew – plenty of those certainly exist.  But the emergence of non-denominationalism seems primarily to reflect a process of disengagement from Judaism.  

But does assimilation leads to the loss of denominational identity, or is the relationship the other way around?  In a recent article, Daniel Gordis (a Conservative rabbi who has moved towards modern-Orthodoxy) blames the synagogue movements – and Conservative Judaism in particular – for failing to stem the tide of assimilation through their inability to articulate a compelling message for modern Jews.  Gordis believes that too much compromise and the abandonment of principles has driven people away.  Yet we’re all too aware that very few contemporary Jews want to engage with a Judaism they see as dogmatic or intolerant.

So what are our options?  Here and there in the Jewish world there are exceptions to the sectarian/assimilation polarity.  Chabad Hasidim, for example, are well known for combining passion and commitment with genuine love and openness.  But while Chabad’s outreach strategy reflects tolerance of all Jews, it does not imply a fundamentally accepting attitude towards different expressions of Judaism.  

My own movement, Conservative/Masorti Judaism, provides a different twist to this model.  A slightly cynical Masorti rabbi friend from Israel recently commented to me that our problem is that we invest all our energy in the future of the Jewish people, while neglecting our own movement.   It’s true that in the States, at a time when official Conservative Judaism is undergoing a period of organisational decline, hundreds of independent minyanim, educational projects and social change initiatives are being led by people who’ve grown up in Conservative synagogues and summer camps 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.  Although many of the initial founders were members of New North London Synagogue, we took the decision to make Alma a cross-communal school, not a Masorti one. 

And, unlike Chabad, this commitment to diversity goes all the way down into Masorti theology.  Our rabbis are committed to the idea that halacha, Jewish law, is inherently pluralistic.  Masorti synagogues are well known for combining a clear, recognisable ethos with a remarkable tolerance for difference – often within the same community.  My own shul, New North London, has both traditional (separate seating, male-led service) and fully egalitarian minyanim, with very little tension between them.  And all this takes place in a synagogue community where people meet week in week out for prayer, Jewish learning and the building of meaningful relationships.  Are there any post-denominational frameworks in the country that can offer the same?

It turns out that there is a third option beyond intolerant sectarianism and the abandonment of specific ideological commitments.  The kind of ‘soft’ denominationalism represented by Masorti and other like-minded communities might be our best way forward.  Certainly without it, the post-denominational institutions we’re so proud of will have very little to sustain them.

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?