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May 3, 1999

The Quest for Jewish Unity: Getting Beyond Buzz Words (1999)

Jewish Unity
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Speech

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…
Jewish Unity

Article

Pluralism and Unity in the Orthodox Jewish Community (1979)

For many years we have been discussing the problem of unity in our ever more heterogenous Jewish community, beset by religious, political, and social tensions. For reasons that will become apparent, it is no simple matter to relate directly all that has been said about the larger Jewish community to the Orthodox community and its inner dynamics. The question of diversity within Orthodoxy theoretically admits of three different solutions. a) "Anything Goes." This is the position of maximum inclusiveness, one which makes up in liberalism what it forfeits in discipline. Essentially, it opts for the freedom for self-definition of what and who is a bona fide Orthodox Jew. As a voluntary community, anyone may enter as freely as anyone may leave it. There are no objective standards for "membership," nor should there be any. The claim to be an Orthodox Jew is self-validating.I do not advocate this position and I know very few who do, and shall therefore not refer to it any further.b) "Only One Way." Unity, a great desideratum, is defined as uniformity. It is asserted that Halacha, by definition, has one answer to every question — the halachic answer. Hence, diversity is essentially inimical to Orthodoxy. This view, which makes up in consistency for what it lacks in communal conscience, is the working assumption of a large part of the Orthodox community. Because of its espousal of homogeneity, it naturally leads to the estab-lishment of clear lines of authority, since there must be some arbiters to enforce uniformity and settle disputes, c) A dialectic of discipline and diversity, a finite pluralism.Because I accept the third approach, let me elaborate upon it by citing an interpretation by Rav Kook, the first Chief Rabbi of what was then Palestine, of the talmudic passage (Beraishis 64a) that "scholars of the Torah increase peace in the world."There are those who, in their quest for peace and harmony, are impatient with scholars. The latter, in exercising their autonomous …
Jewish Unity

Speech

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…
Jewish Unity