Pluralism and Unity in the Orthodox Jewish Community (1979)

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1979

Pluralism and Unity in the Orthodox Jewish Community (1979)

Jewish Unity

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Jewish Unity: The Underlying Concept (1995)

The reunification of East European Jewry with the rest of world Jewry is an appropriate occasion to raise a problem that concerns all Jews who retain even a minimal connection to their people, their heritage, their culture – or any one of these. That issue is Jewish unity and, underlying it, the more nettlesome problem of Jewish identity. Let us admit it openly: we are a fractious, contentious, argumentative people. Consider the raucous and dangerous polarization in Israel on political and religious issues. There is much truth in the old joke about two Jews stranded on an island who build three “shuls” – one for each and another they wouldn’t step into. There is a beautiful legend or agada that at Mt. Sinai, as the Children of Israel were gathered to receive the Torah, they were united “as one person with one heart.” That, I believe, is the last time we were truly united as one people – and that took a divine revelation to effect! It is therefore pollyanish to expect that we can, in this era which celebrates pluralism and individualism, find a formula to ensure unity on all issues amongst Jews. Since Sinai, there has been no such occasion and we should not expect one. Our ambitions must be more modest – to explore the concept of Jewish identity and unity, so that we may be able to build on that, each Jew individually, and together respond to each as members of a historic community that emphasizes the commonalities of its members without ignoring the differences. I invite you to join me in a brief foray into halakhic discourse, using Talmudic sources not, in this case, in its usual role as an authoritative source of direction, but more as a metaphor, an analogy. Jewish law places great importance upon the concept of a neder or vow. A word once given is holy; it must be respected. Hence, the Kol Nidre prayer on Yom Kippur eve, which annuls vows, is so very solemn. One who does not keep a neder is regarded as utterly beneath contempt. Now, there is a vow called moder…

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This fall, my wife and I spent Yom Kippur and Sukkot in Jerusalem. I spoke to many people in stations high and low, and returned with one particularly empty, aching feeling: there are many leaders and many competent people, but nobody who is thinking about all of us. I found people who were thinking of the Army and people who were thinking of Soviet Jewry, people who were thinking of the religious and people who were thinking of the secular, people who were thinking of education and people who were thinking of inflation, people who were thinking of Likud and people who were thinking of Maarakh. But I found no one whose concern covered all Jews, everywhere. This is the principal reason I accepted the very kind invitation to speak on the theme of, "Global Jewish Community---One Nation Indivisible." Let us use the shorter and more pregnant term, hallowed by centuries of usage and resonant with both sacred and national sentiment, Kelal Yisrael---the indivisible global community of the Jewish people. Before such pious sentiments have a chance to act as sedatives and put you to sleep, dimly expecting the usual sermonic bromides about Jewish unity that are the cliches of our communal discourse, let me assure you that I will not at all dwell upon them. They are true, of course---the Talmud’s teaching of Kol Yisrael arevim ba-zeh, that all Jews are responsible for each other; that we must learn the lessons of the Holocaust; and that the State of Israel needs us as its only friends. They are true, but I shall not elaborate on them. Let me ask you to bear in mind that what we take for granted does not necessarily enjoy universal acceptance amongst the Jewish people. We may advocate Jewish unity passionately, but it has not reached the level of a general consensus. Far from it. A scene just forty-four years ago, aboard a BMT train in Brooklyn: Poland had been invaded by Hitler in September of 1939, five months earlier. A twelve-year-old youngster is shouting above the din and …

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Unity and Integrity (1986)

I come here this evening with a troubled heart to speak as an Orthodox Jew about a concern that unites all of us, namely, those issues that disunite all of us from each other. The predictions of an unbridgeable and cataclysmic rupture within the Jewish community leave all of us deeply distressed. They serve to agitate all of us who love and care for and worry about our Jewish people and its future. The twin issues of Jewish identity — the question of conversion — and of Jewish marital legitimacy — of proper gittin (divorce) 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. At the same time, we have to retain a healthy skepticism about such projections. Samuel Goldwyn used to say, "Never make forecasts, especially about the future." Prophecy is a risky business, especially if it is based upon statistics. Moreover, while it is good to be alerted, it is not healthy to be panicked. Such excessive alarm sometimes leads to medicines which are worse than the disease. Disaster is not inevitable. Even if we are told that it is, then, as Justice Louis Brandeis once said about inevitability, "I am opposed to it." Hence, we have to try our very best, within the limits of our integrity, to promote unity and to oppose the seemingly inevitable disaster that looms before us. Now, let me repeat that phrase that I just used — "within the limits of our integrity." I am here, amongst fellow Jews, to do what I can as an advocate of enhanced Jewish unity. But, no honorable person can afford to dispense with his integrity. The issues are too critical to permit us to gather in a Jewish equivalent of the old "interfaith" meetings in which warmth substituted for light, and good fellowship for genui…