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September 18, 1987

No to Pluralism (1987)

Jewish Unity Orthodoxy & Other Denominations Combating Assimilation
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Am Echad (1998)

Introd: If I asked one symbol cond'n A-J tody: And greatst challeng: converg ? → that Yes, we hv a future! 1. Survival A-Jy imperiled 2 factors: Numbers: Intrmrrg – 52%... Current 13M → 5-6M in one gen'n... Also: demographics: Since '60, world Jy=ZPG; A-J=NPG. Don't be consoled by bromide "outreach" = mantra (ST: Chelm... build clinic at foot mt.) Only bright spot: Orthx/ultra-Orthx growth But what of maj'y Js?... Tragedy!!! 2. 2nd: Disunity: UNITY Jewish people – urgent, yet undustrial size yawn... will not preach... But clear: עם אחד = critical Q: Jewish survival/continuity. Most disturb'gt memory my youth: beg WWII
Jewish Unity Combating Assimilation

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Divided We Stand (1986)

It is with a troubled heart that, as an Orthodox Jew, I address a concern that unites us – namely, those issues that disunite us from each other. The predictions of an unbridgeable and cataclysmic rupture within the Jewish community agitate all of us who love, care for, and worry about our people and its future. The twin issues of conversion and Jewish marital legitimacy – proper gittin (divorces) and, in their absence, subsequent adultery and the blemish of mamzerut (bastardy) – should give us no rest. The non-marriageability of a significant portion of the Jewish people with the rest of Am Yisrael is too horrendous to contemplate – and yet we are forced to do just that, lest our fragile unity, such as it is, be shattered beyond repair.We must try our very best, within the limits of our integrity, to promote unity and to oppose the seemingly inevitable disaster that looms before us.The critical phrase is “within the limits of our integrity.” I am an advocate of enhanced Jewish unity. But no honorable person can afford to dispense with his or her integrity, even in the pursuit of unity.The issues are too critical to permit us to indulge in a Jewish equivalent of the old “interfaith” meetings in which warmth substituted for light and good fellowship for genuine understanding. It is too late for that kind of goodwill posturing.It goes without saying that we must relate to each other in friendship and fraternity. Now we must also be honest and truthful with each other.The great Rabbi Saadia Gaon pointed out 1,000 years ago, in the introduction to his Emunot Vedeot, in analyzing the causes of skepticism and disbelief, that the truth is bitter and distressing and it is more convenient to ignore it. But without it, we are wasting our time. More — without it, we are lost. So, if my thesis proves disappointing and unpopular to some or even to all, it is because I am trying to be honest in keeping to the truth as I see it, even while attempting to be as accommodating as I…
Jewish Unity Orthodoxy & Other Denominations

Note

Segregationism vs. Inclusivism (1988)

The polemic between Center and Right on the proper approach to the non-Orthodox community must be viewed in a broader historical prospective. In normative Jewish society, which obtained from the Talmudic Age through the Middle Ages and until the Emancipation, heterodox ideas and conduct were viewed as aberrant behavior, and treated as such. Even if the bearers of such unorthodox views were organized into a community, they were treated as individuals rather than as a collectivity. Thus, no credibility was given to the Karaites as an organized religious grouping. Instead, Karaites were treated as individuals who had strayed from the straight and narrow path of the Torah, and one took either a hard-line rejectionist approach to them or, as was the case with Maimonides, a more accommodating and accepting approach. In either case, this was an attitude towards Karaites, not to Karaism. It was always understood that such heterodox groups represented deviations from the norm, and that eventually they would disappear by being reabsorbed in the historic flow of main stream Torah Judaism. Hence, heresy as a community phenomenon was simply not considered, and reduced to a simple collection of individual heretics who had no historical staying power.All this was unquestionably true as long as the overwhelming majority of Jews identified with the broad outlines of the Torah tradition. Individual aberrations could then be dismissed as transient phenomena in the history of the faith. All this changed with the Emancipation and the Enlightenment. For more than two centuries now, various forms of heterodox thought and behavior have attracted a great majority of Jews everywhere. Secularism has proved one of the most powerful foes Torah has ever encountered, and it has insinuated itself into the very bloodstream and sinews of the body of Judaism. The quiet give-and-take between Judaism and the environing cultures of the Jewish people, that understated the very real dialogue between Tora…
Jewish Unity Combating Assimilation