Teshuva: Examining our Relationship with Others (1997)

View The Text

This content is currently available in its original PDF format. As we expand the library, we plan to add a text version as well.

Centrist Orthodoxy and the Rest of the Jews (1997)

I. A friend has recently spent a Shabbos in a Chassidic community, and now he is bugging you to come with him. “It’s the greatest!” he says. “Those Chassidim really know how to do Shabbos!” You hesitated at first, but his persistent prodding finally coaxed you to come. Now it’s Thursday and you’ve called your Chassidic hosts for directions. It starts as a routine call, but after giving directions, your Yiddish-accented host continues: “Now, you must understand that on Shabb – I mean, on the Sabbath, we Jews don’t do any work, just like the Bible says, and this includes driving a car.” He then tells you by what time you have to arrive on Friday afternoon so you won’t “be mechal – I mean desecrate, the holiness of the Sabbath.” How should we view those (chareidi) denominations of Judaism which either don’t understand or simply refuse to accept the legitimacy of centrist Orthodoxy? Do they know something about Judaism that we don’t? Why do some of us seem to assume that we have to go to the chareidim to experience Shabbos? Is it worth it to expend our collective energies trying to educate and/or reach out to them? What about the fact that current demographic studies indicate that the chareidim will continue to grow even as Reform and Conservative Judaism will dwindle?II. “Minchah! Minchah!” You are visiting the campus of a different college when this familiar cry assails your ears. You turn to investigate, and sure enough, leaning out the window of a nearby building is a guy wearing a yarmulke and waving at you. “You’re number ten,” he yells. When you enter the room in which the minyan is being held, you stop short. Yeah, there are now ten people in the room, but only four of them are men. A smiling young woman walks over to you and extends her hand. “Welcome to our local egalitarian minyan,” she says. “Thanks for coming; it’s a really big mitzvah.” Should we support the religious practices of non-frum Jews? Granted, what they are doing is not halachically correct, bu…

Orthodoxy & Other Denominations Modern Orthodoxy & the Charedim

Past, Present, and Future - A Jubilee Perspective (1985)

A jubilee anniversary for an institution no less than for an individual is an occasion for brooding reflection. It is a time for both retrospective and prospective assessment, for pulling out of the hurly‑burly of daily events and viewing one's life from a wider perspective than is usually given to us. I shall therefore take this opportunity of the fiftieth birthday of the RCA to reflect on our current situation according to the paradigm of the three tenses – Past, Present, and Future. I intend to speak not about the R.C.A in these three time segments, but rather to analyze how we have gone about handling these tenses themselves. Let us begin with our host culture – the U.S.A. In its politics, its technology, and especially its psychology, America is a Future‑oriented culture. Hence, its emphasis on youth – even in a period when its population is aging and should be more concerned with geriatrics than pediatrics. Its greatest strength is: the Present. The mightiest (and most benevolent) power in the world, it is thoroughly immersed in the here‑and‑now. It is pragmatic, empirical, and business‑like.However, its great weakness is — the Past. Because of its relatively brief history — a mere 210 years — America's valuation of its past as a factor in the Present, its historical consciousness, is remarkably tenuous and deficient. In a sense, it is still a pioneer country eager to throw off the shackles of the Old World and build a new one. Consider this: What for an ordinary American child is early history — the 1770's — is for a Jewish school-child late Jewish history, the period of the Acharonim!2The most poignant and painful illustration of this characteristic American insensitivity to history is the incredible brouhaha of the Reagan administration — not of one man, an honorable and decent President, but a whole team of so-called experts — because they did not appreciate events of only 40 years ago, events of the most recent past. The President wanted to forget the P…

Orthodoxy & Other Denominations Modern Orthodoxy & the Charedim Who Is a Jew?