Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform Jews in the United States – Second article of a series on Responsa of Orthodox Judaism by Rabbi Dr. Joseph B. Soloveitchik. Question: American Jewish organizations tend to become more and more centralized, and in some instances, even integrated. What is the position of Orthodox Judaism toward this tendency? Is cooperation between Orthodox and non-Orthodox congregations, and between musmachim of yeshivot and other spiritual leaders, possible or not? Especially, we should like to know why Orthodoxy fights the Conservative movement, notwithstanding that the spokesmen of Conservative Judaism claim to recognize the authority of the halakhah. Responsum: The question of cooperation between the various groups is a very complex one. It is currently one of the most burning issues on the agenda of the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA). I should like to review briefly here the proposal which I presented at the last conference of the RCA this past summer in Detroit. The proposal is based upon a halakhic–aggadic concept. First, unity in Israel is a basic principle in Judaism. We have formulated this principle in one sentence: “You are One, Your name is One, and who is like Your people Israel, a unique nation on the earth?” The principle of unity expresses itself in two ways. First, the unity of Jews as members of a spiritual community, as a congregation which was established through the conclusion of a covenant at Mt. Sinai: “And you shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” The unity of Knesset Yisrael as a community is based upon the uniqueness of the Torah way of life, as practiced by us through Torah existence. What ties the Yemenite water carrier in Tel Aviv to the Jews of Boston? A uniform Orach Chayim, the Shema Yisrael, Shabbat, the Kol Nidrei night, the Seder night, kashrut, tefillin, the trait of kindness, the hope and waiting for redemption. The Hebrew word edah (congregation) is the same as ed (witness), edut (tes…

הויכוח החריף שנתעורר בחוגים אורתודוכסיים באמריקה לרגל הצעת הרב דוד הולנדר, נשיא הסתדרות הרבנים, באספת אותו הארגון באטלנטיק סיטי, להסתלק מ"מועצת בתי הכנסיות" ו"חבר הרבנים דניו-יורק", עוד לא שכך. חברי ההסתדרות ידונו בבעיה חמורה זו באספתם השנתית בוואשינגטון בעתיד הקרוב. מובטחני שלא יעלימו עין מכל השאלות החשובות העומדות על הפרק והדורשות פתרון, מהתוצאות המעשיות של פילוג בכל רחבי יהדות אמריקה, ומכל הזרמים במחשבת היהדות לשעבר המחייבים או השוללים את השיתוף הפעולה עם מוסדות בלתי אורתודוכסיים.

Norman Lamm, the author, is associate rabbi of the Jewish Center in New York City, instructor in Jewish philosophy at Yeshiva University’s Teachers Institute, and Editor of Tradition. The last issue contained his article on “Separate Pews in the Synagogue: A Social and Psychological Approach.”RECENT ADDITIONS TO THE KETUBAH: A Halakhic Critique: The “amendment to the Ketubah” announced some five years ago by the Conservative movement has been hailed by its leaders as “something which may very well place the Rabbinical Assembly not only on the map of the world, but also on the map of history.”¹ That the world has not been shaken by this action is already evident from the more recent pronouncements from Conservative sources indicating that their project is not meeting with the desired success, and that even many Conservative rabbis have decided not to make use of the “amended Ketubah.”² As for history, no one can accurately predict what the judgment of the future will be on the merits of this endeavor. But certainly history will record that its introduction generated sufficient controversy to rock to its foundations a Jewish community already sadly distinguished by its divisiveness and disunity. To this day most Jews remain confused, uninformed, and unenlightened by the polemics, for that is the only possible result when issues of religious moment are presented with immodest exaggeration and met with immoderate emotion, all in the public press.The Orthodox opposition to this innovation is based mainly on two factors: The competence of the proposed Beth Din (religious court), and the halakhic validity of the amendment itself. The first matter is serious indeed. How can Orthodox Jews—or, for that matter, any intellectually honest person—be expected to recognize the authority of an ecclesiastical court which denies (or, at the very least, seriously questions) the origin and hence the authenticity of the very Halakhah in whose name it presumes to speak and whose tenets i…

I thank the editor of Chavrusa for affording me the opportunity of offering several alternate ideas on the subject raised by my brother in the previous issue. First, there is nothing world-shaking about the problem of whether the name of authentic Judaism in our contemporary, confused age be called "Orthodox,” "Traditional" or anything else. There is nothing particularly sacrosanct about the name "Orthodox" or any other such appellation. Ideally, our attitude should be that no adjective is the best adjective. We are Jews, and our faith and practice is Judaism, unqualified, uncompromised, undiluted. Once we agree to an adjective of any kind before the name Judaism, we have willy-nilly implied our assent to the co-validity of other "Interpretations" of Judaism. The acceptance of an adjective means that there are many kinds of Judaism and that ours is only one special kind, perhaps the kind with most chumrot. This is a concession we must grant the dissenters, as Wouk calls them. They will give us and forgive us anything and eveiything as long as we grant them a hehksher of equal validity based on the spurious and overworked thesis that there "are many roads to the same goal.” And this is the one concession which, if we grant it, we have lost our very souls, no matter what else we have won.And yet, this too, is no solution. Our numerical weakness, our antagonists' claims to historical authenticity as the legitimate heirs of the past and the nebulous, confused ideas which go into the making of the current consensus, all conspire to make the term "Judaism” as such, fairly meaningless. It, therefore, behooves us to specify who and what we i are. The very fact that we are adjectively J־ different in name can, by means of public education, be used to drive home that,/ we repudiate the "equal validity" thesis and claim exclusive legitimacy as the Jewish faith, authoritarian as that may sound in this age of religious euphoria. If we reject an adjective we may find ourselves b…

א. בהתאם לנטייה המודרנית, אני מסתייג מ"אידיאולוגיה" ומ"שיטה" בעלת צורה שלמה וסיסטמטית. אני מזניח את הרעיון שהיהדות היא שיטה פילוסופית עקבית. בתור דרך חיים שניתנה לנו מסיני, יש לה הוראות וערכים מרחיקי לכת, ואפשר למצוא בה – על ידי ניתוח דק – כמה וכמה יסודות מחשבתיים לרבות פילוסופיים, אולם אין לנסות להתאימה למיטת סדום אידיאולוגית. מגמתי היא להכיר את העיקרים של היהדות התורנית כפי שאני מבינם, למיינם ולבררם. ב. לדעתי, ההלכה הפורמלית היא החומר היסודי להשקפת היהדות על האדם – השקפת עולם מצומצמת למסגרת אנתרופוצנטרית, וכל הוראה בתורת האדם צריכה לנבוע מן ההלכה. באשר למשנה תיאוסופית כוללת יותר, ההלכה מציבה גבולות – אף שאינה קובעת הוראה פסוקה, היא שוללת תפיסות שגויות מתוך סובייקטיביות או מדרש בלבד. ג. המעשה הדתי, כפי שהוא מוגבל על ידי ההלכה, משמש מסגרת ומכוון לחוויה הדתית. המעשה הוא המפתח לעולם הרוחני וכרטיס הכניסה לקרבת אלקים – ועם זאת, הוא גם המסגרת המובילה את האדם בדרך ישרה ומגינה עליו מן האנטינומיה. המינימום: תגובה לצו אלקי. המקסימום: גשר אל האינסוף – כדברי ריה"ל: "אין האדם מגיע אל הענין האלקי אלא בדבר האלקי". ד. ההלכה מושרשת במציאות – "לא בשמים היא" – ויש לה מנגנונים פנימיים להסתגלות, הדורשים אומץ קדוש. אולם אם ה"מציאות" היא הזיה סובייקטיבית, יש להגן על ההלכה מפני פגיעה. מכל מקום, הסמכות לקבוע היא בידי גדולי התורה בלבד. ה. השלב הראשון הוא "תורה עם דרך ארץ" (הרש"ר הירש), אך שיטתו אינה מייצרת דיאלוג פנימי בין קודש לחול. לעומת זאת, הראי"ה קוק ראה בקודש והחול שני ממדים של מציאות אחת – אין הבדלה נצחית ביניהם, אלא תהליך של קידוש החול. התורה לא רק "עם" דרך ארץ – אלא פועלת "על" דרך ארץ. חינוכו של קוק אינו רק חינוך אלא חזון קוסמי. ו. יש להשתחרר מן המיתולוגיה הרעיונית – גאולה, אתחלתא דגאולה, גלות – ולהכיר בכך שהעובדות ההיסטוריות והערכים הדתיים אינם משתנים על ידי פלפולים סמנטיים. מדינת ישראל אינה הגאולה השלמה – אך היא תופעה היסטורית חשובה. אם יבוא משיח ויתברר שהיא אתחלתא דגאולה – מה טוב; ואם לא – לאו. בכל מקרה, היא מדינתנו. ז. היחס אל הזרמים הלא־אורתודוקסיים: 1. אי אפשר לראות בתנועות הכופרות בתורה מן השמים יהדות דתית – העיקר הוא נאמנות להלכה. ההתבוללות אורבת מאחורי המילים היפות של קונ…

Five years ago I was asked to submit, to a special study panel of the Orthodox Union, a draft of the reasons why we ought not to secede from the Synagogue Council. I now have been asked to do so again. As I look over my paper of 1969, I am convinced I can let almost the whole thing stand as is. Indeed, it is depressing how little things have changed – and how caught up we are in a nexus of inconsequentiality! It seems to be the fate of Orthodoxy, at least in this country, that its major battles are fought over matters of little or no genuine significance. We have allowed truly important matters to be bypassed, and have chosen what are, relatively speaking, trivialities on which to stage our strongest stands. The Orthodox Union, as a more or less centrist group, seems peculiarly afflicted by this penchant for the petty. Once again we are evoking great principles – and wasting precious time and risking wounded pride and injured feelings – on an issue which is of concern as a symbol, but unimportant substantively. From everything that I have heard about the Synagogue Council of America (SCA), it has a limited scope of activity. It is not the kind of organiza-tion which will seriously affect the destiny of Torah and American Jewry one way or another. I do not by any means wish to deprecate the value of SCA. It has its place in the community and its functions to perform. In the course of the past several years I have intermittently accepted some assignments from the SCA, and have had occasion to observe its activities and, in most cases, to admire its efficiency and its adherence to the principles upon which the Ortho-dox groups have conditioned their affiliation with it. But it certainly does not appear to me to be worthy of the dissension it has produced in our ranks. We will survive with it, and without it. It is almost farcical how we have succeeded in making a “tzimmes” yesh me’ayin.Nevertheless even insignificant issues must be met if they are thrust upon us agai…

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 and care for and worry about our Jewish people and its future. The twin issues of conversion and of 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 peo- pie 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 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. The critical phrase is “within the limits of our integrity." 1 am an advo- cate 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 understand- ing. It is too late for that kind of good- will posturing. It is a given 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 Ve'deot, 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 Norman Lamm is President of Yeshiva University׳. His words appeared in moment in September 1983 ("Why You?"). …

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…

The Aug. 21 editorial urging that Jewish educators “promote such communal concerns as pluralism” may not be well founded and, indeed, may be counterproductive if pursued. The word “pluralism” no longer refers – as it once did – to respecting another’s right to worship as he or she sees fit and to treating that person’s beliefs and religious leaders with dignity and respect. If that were the meaning of the word today, I would heartily agree with the advice. Unfortunately, pluralism has developed into a code word that means acceptance of all the principal Jewish religious movements as expressive of “legitimate” Judaism. When used in this manner, it is simply not possible for an Orthodox Jew to teach or accept pluralism. When one holds fast to the divine origin and binding nature of the written and oral law – as do all Orthodox Jews – one cannot ascribe Judaic “legitimacy” to any religious movement which rejects or deviates from the law. For example, in the context of a contemporary problem, since Orthodox Jews believe that divinely ordained law requires that the identity of a child as a born Jew be derived from the mother, they may not treat as Judaically “legitimate” a view which holds that identity may derive from the father. According to Rabbi Norman Lamm, president of Yeshiva University, the “criterion [for legitimacy] is the Jewish lex – the halacha.” In his words, which would be repeated with conviction by every Orthodox Jew, “I cannot, in the name of unity, assent to a legitimation of what every fiber in my being tells me is in violation of the most sacred precepts of the Torah.” Pluralism in the contemporary sense is simply out of bounds in the yeshiva and Orthodox day school world and in Orthodox adult education programs as well. Matters of legitimacy and pluralism need not deflect us from pursuing the goal of Jewish unity, however. Lamm has written and spoken about the clear and unequivocal “functional validity” and “spiritual dignity” of the non-Orthodox …

On Tuesday, March 22, Dr. Norman Lamm, the president of Yeshiva University, spoke in Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue Synagogue. His remarks were widely disseminated. In fact, the New York Times devoted considerable coverage to the event. The title of his address was “Centrist Orthodoxy: Agenda and Vision, Successes and Failures.” The Times report began: “Ultra-Orthodox Jews, including Hasidim, have set the religious agenda for too long in both the United States and Israel, the president of Yeshiva University said Tuesday, calling on moderate Orthodox elements to reassert themselves.... Dr. Lamm said the ultra-Orthodox has been ‘powered by triumphalism,’ which he defined as an attitude of, ‘We are winning, therefore we are right.’” This was not his first time to have attacked the Orthodox right and not the first time that he has sought to rally “centrists” to action. Due to the public nature of his statement, his words should not pass without comment. As a step toward dispelling some of the wrong impressions that were created by his statement, The Jewish Observer presents Professor Aaron Twerski’s open letter to Dr. Norman Lamm. Dear Dr. Lamm, עמו״ש: The remarks that follow are not intended to serve as a rebuttal to you. Nor do they constitute a retreat. As a card-carrying member of the “triumphalist” Orthodox right, and a Hasid to boot, I am confident enough to state without equivocation that our agenda for action will remain very much in place. But I am genuinely confused as to the substantive nature of the “centrist” view of things, as you espoused them. You did make a point of saying that you spoke as president of Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, putting your words into a religious framework. All the more reason that your statement is worthy of scrutiny – and all the more do I find it disturbing. Your remarks “were not an attack, but an attempt at self-definition.” The definition followed: “Unlike the right wing... the centrist group is open to secular cultu…