The following is a letter I recently sent to Rabbi Lawrence Kelemen:
Cf. Israeli College Takes Back Presidency From Prof Who Once Taught At Israel's Version Of JTS. The case there is regarding an Orthodox professor who taught at the Conservative Schecter Institute.
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Dear Rabbi Kelemen,
Hello. I am writing regarding your article "Trace the Tree of Life", regarding the lack of historical authenticity for Reform and Conservative. http://www.simpletoremember.com/articles/a/reformconservativeorthodox/
Now, I largely enjoyed this article of yours, and as far as I can tell, it is largely correct. (Besides for my unbounded love for the Turkish/Balkan tradition of Rabbis Benzion Uziel and Hayim David Halevi and Marc Angel, I predominately and mostly follow the German and British Neo-Orthodox authorities, such as Rabbi Hirsch, Rabbi Yehiel Weinberg, Rabbi Dr. Eliezer Berkovits, Rabbi Dr. J. H. Hertz, Rabbi Dr. Isidore Epstein, etc. Speaking of which, I recently read Rabbi Hertz's lauded "The New Paths"; see Dayan Grunfeld's footnote in the Introduction to Horeb, referring to Rabbi Hertz's essays.)
But you say one thing that is surely inaccurate, and which I wish to call your attention to. You say, "According to Weiss Halivni, the Torah represents only a sixth-century B.C.E. manmade guess as to the original material’s form and content. According to both groups [viz. Mordechai Kaplan and Halivni], we do not possess a G-d given Torah, let alone a Divine oral tradition explaining the Pentateuch."
But according to Halivni himself, we lost the Sinaitic Torah in the Babylonian Exile, but we never lost the Oral Law. So according to him, your kal vahomer is incorrect; you cannot say "...let alone a Divine oral tradition explaining the Pentateuch." For according to Halivni, the truth and accuracy of the Oral Law is precisely why the drashot of the Talmud often appear to contradict the Torah's peshat; according to Halivni, the Sinaitic drashot contradict the peshat of the corrupted Torah because the Oral Law/Talmud's drashot are reliable and correct!
So first, your assertion is simply false, from an objective standpoint. But moreover, the general tenor of your words suggests Halivni ought to be classed as heterodox or heretical. But I see no basis for this. First, we see that Halivni accepts the same Oral Law as all Orthodox Jews do. Second, he does hold that the Torah was received at Sinai, only that we lost it in the exile. Now, I truly and sincerely hope that Halivni is incorrect in this belief, but I cannot prove him wrong, for theoretically, I see no historical reason why we couldn't have lost the Torah. There is nothing in the dogmas of Judaism that holds it is impossible to lose the Torah. We can hope that Hashem's hashgaha would prevent this, but we have no guarantee from Him, only hope and faith. In any case, then, while Halivni is - please G-d - incorrect, he is not a heretic, not by a long shot.
I was therefore extremely gratified when one of my rabbis - in a Haredi-Leumi yeshiva, in fact - said of Halivni approvingly, "They don't make rabbis like him anymore." Similarly, another of my rabbis, in the same Hardal yeshiva, was extremely adamant that Rabbi Saul Lieberman was Orthodox; he was adamant that despite having taught in JTS, that he was still Orthodox nevertheless. I was recently in America for Pesah, and one of the people I ate with, in the Orthodox community in Kemp Mill, MD, this fellow said that he learned under Rabbi Halivni in Columbia, and he said that it was like learning in yeshiva. Rabbi Halivni would say, "Your homework is to learn the daf and all the rishonim thereon," and that after class, they'd have a ma'ariv minyan in the classroom.
Another point we might quibble on: we must distinguish between different eras of Conservative. Notwithstanding Rabbi Hirsch's and Rabbi Hildesheimer's adamant denunciation of Frankel as a heretic, Rabbi Yehiel Weinberg nevertheless held him to be a rabbi in good standing. (I am indebted to Professor Marc Shapiro, today's foremost expert on German Neo-Orthodoxy ever since the loss of Rabbi Dr. Mordechai Breuer, for this information.) Similarly, Rabbi Kook would refer to Solomon Schechter as "Rabbi", and JTS was actually formed largely thanks to Congregation Shearith Israel, which played no small role in forming the OU as well. (And I would consider myself a student of Rabbi Marc Angel, and I am rather close spiritually to YCT and R' Avi Weiss.) Most of JTS's Talmud staff were Orthodox, and it was only in the 1940s, when the CJLS separated from JTS and the CLS, that Conservative Judaism split fully from Orthodoxy. But I am not so concerned with the vagaries of Conservative's history. Conservative's history is certainly murky, and it is difficult to sort matters out. Rabbi Alan Yuter has told me that he holds Rabbi Hirsch in low regard due to his denunciation for Frankel (I tried to argue against Rabbi Yuter and defend Rabbi Hirsch in this regard, and I later saw that Professor Shapiro gives the exact same defence as I did), and indeed, Rabbi Yehiel Weinberg held Frankel to be a rabbi in good standing. I could discuss this at greater length, regarding the sociology of pesak halakhah towards a polemic tendency (following Professors Shapiro, Menachem Friedman, and Haym Soloveitchik), but I'll try to avoid being detained by this tangent. Suffice it to say that if YU considered joining with JTS, and that if Rabbis Sabato Morais and Henry Pereira Mendes of Shearith Israel could help form both the OU and JTS, and if Rabbi J. H. Hertz could be JTS's first graduate, then we should realize that things are rather complex and controversial.
I am more concerned, however, with Rabbi Halivni. I am rather discomited by the suggestion that he was anything less than an Orthodox rabbi in good standing.
Thank you, and kol tuv,
Michael Makovi
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21 comments:
While you're at it, why didn't you attack him for the anachronism of calling Jews 'Orthodox' in the sentence "About two thousand years before the Reform and Conservative movements arrived on the scene, Orthodox sages recorded the claim that the oral tradition was received from G-d at Sinai"?
Or why don't you reprimand him for his chutzpah in reading the mind of Moses Mendelssohn ("What Mendelssohn hesitated to say publicly about Mesorah, Abraham Geiger (1810-1874), the most influential of Reform’s second generation, boldly proclaimed. ")?
Regarding the anachronism: I'm not bothered, because to me, "Orthodoxy" connotes not a specific brand of Torah observance (Eastern European Ashkenazi, or Haredi, or Sephardi, or Modern Orthodox), but rather, Torah observance in general; in fact, I therefore have said that Haredim should not be called "Orthodox." And so, according to this, Biblical Jews were - or were supposed to be - "Orthodox."
As for the latter, you are correct; thank you. I'm sorry I missed this. Speaking then of Mendelssohn's vindication, see Rabbi Gil Student's defense of him at http://hirhurim.blogspot.com/2009/07/mendelssohn-and-dogma.html. There, Rabbi Student adduces Schechter and Altmann as showing that Mendelssohn did believe Judaism has dogmas.
Also, in the comments there, I write:
In "Religion Allied to Progress", Rav Hirsch has an interesting interpretation of Mendelssohn: According to R' Hirsch, Mendelssohn *did* say that Judaism has no dogmas. However, according to R' Hirsch, what Mendelssohn meant was not that Judaism has no dogmas per se, but rather, that Judaism has no dogmas that distinguish it from believing Noahides. That is, the revelation at Sinai, Moshe's supremacy as a prophet, G-d's being one and incorporeal, etc., all these are equally true of Jew and gentile alike. What distinguishes a Jew from a believing Noachide then, is not dogma, but deed. A Noachide might believe wholeheartedly that the revelation at Sinai (and even if he doesn't believe in Sinai, it still happened!), but nevertheless, only the Jew is obligated in the 613 mitzvot. According to R' Hirsch, then, Mendelssohn was dicussing that which distinguishes Jews from gentiles. Our dogmas do not distinguish us, because our dogmas are true for everyone, Jew and gentile alike. What distinguishes Jews from gentiles is deed, not creed. (Obviously, gentiles do in fact DISagree on creed. Trinity, etc. I think Mendelssohn, according to R' Hirsch, is speaking of supernal realities and ideals, and not the imperfect reality. Similarly, mitzvot distinguish Jews from gentiles, even though non-observant Jews exist. Even though non-observant Jews do exist, and even though not all gentiles believe in the Torah's dogmas, nevertheless, ideally and theoretically, all Jews keep the mitzvot and all gentiles believe in the Torah's dogmas. Thus, Jews and gentiles are united in dogma but distinguished in mitzvah.)
Not related to the issue you are addressing in this post, but out of interest I read Rabbi Keleman's article. If the things he says there are true, then I don't think I'm a Conservative Jew. I will definitely consult JTS's own history of the seminary that he cites. I was particularly struck by Rabbi Keleman's quotation of Harold Kushner:
Is the Conservative movement halakhic? Not “Should it be halakhic?,” not “Would the world be better, would my job be easier, more gratifying if it were?” But “Is it?” And the answer is that it obviously is not. Conservative Judaism is not halakhic because Conservative Jews are not halakhic, and increasingly even Conservative rabbis are not halakhic.
This is not what I was taught about the Conservative movement. Perhaps my rabbis were more to the right, as they were both personally observant and seemed to hold views leaning toward a belief in Torah miSinai. But if this is what the movement as a whole really is, I hardly feel a part of it.
Lindsey,
See also Rabbi Avi Shafran's "The Conservative Lie." (For the record, he has protested that the title is not of his choosing.) Agree or disagree with what Rabbi Shafran says, but either which way, your answers to his claims will benefit you, I think.
For example, I am personally highly in favor of women's ordination, but even so, I agree with Rabbi Shafran that the democratic method in which Conservative ratified women's ordination is illegitimate.
For a more scholarly interpretation of recent Conservative activities, see this scholarly review of the Etz Hayim Humash: Etz Hayim and the Conservative Movement, by Dr.(?) Tammi Rossman-Benjamin.
Oh, see another scholarly article on this subject: Factors of Traditionalism in Conservative Jewish Law, by Evan Hoffman.
Oh, and see also The Sociological Study of ConservativeJudaism in America, by Dana Evan Kaplan.
This essay is a review of Jews in the Center: Conservative Synagogues and their Members,
edited by Jack Wertheimer (New Brunswick,N.J.,and London:Rutgers University Press,2000),407 pp.
It also recommends another book on the same subject: Daniel J.Elazar and Rela Mintz Geffen,
The Conservative Movement in Judaism:Dilemmas and Opportunities
(Albany: State University of New York Press,2000).
The Kelemen link you linked to is broken.
Here is the link:
Sects of Judaism
Thank you and corrected.
r. kelemen's article in retrospect was very unfair towards the conservative movement, and could be argued to be falsifying. one important detail was that JTS DID save Jews and take them in during the Shoah under Finkelsteins administration - B"H, R. Halivni was one of them!! The reasons behind why they couldnt/wouldn't save more was also not as simple as he suggests. Also his treatment of R. Finkelstein's wife was also unfair; it was a source of tremendous pain for R. Finkelstein. The statistic on assimilation takes NO account for the degree and kind of drift OUT of orthodoxy INTO other denominations that DOES occur;
http://www.threejews.net/2009/05/will-your-grandchilden-be-commited-jews.html
Good to know, thank you. While I generally agree with Rabbi Keleman's overall thesis, it appears that many of this specific points are unfortunate and in error.
I think r. kelemen is broadly and consistantly not reliable in defense of Torah or attacking other worldviews, and I cant agree with anything "overall" about him, aside from perhaps mathematics and grammar. A silly one to me is his list of other religions in "Permission to Receive" - which was comically padded. I know very frum rabbis who are members of "religions" listed there...R. Yoel Finkelman has also questioned certain of his scholarship in his "Introduction to Artscroll", available free on torahinmotion, particularly regarding Kelemen's "To Kindle a Soul". Didn't get to read this piece, may be more in depth than the passing comments made in the above lecture;
http://hirhurim.blogspot.com/2008/12/nostalgia-as-history.html
Important to point out is Kelemen's writings elsewhere (on aish) about childrearing in the Islamic world, which consists mostly of frequent beating, etc, as Kelemen would have it (he of course hints that the "traditional Jewish" ways of childrearing have the opposite affect..which you can read about conveniently in his book)...And as Finkelman points out above...such abuse was A CLASSIC JEWISH AND ACCEPTED mode of chinnuk, taught by Sages!!!
Also read R. Daniel Gordis' essays on Conservative Judaism available at his website, especially "positive historical judaism exhausted";
http://danielgordis.org/articles/
Lindsey Healey; no movement, no label has an objective, unambiguous meaning in Shamayim or from Shamayim, unless it's in The Books. Until Conservative Judaism makes it a violation of their doctrines for someone to be halachic, until it renders illegitimate all dissenting, HALACHIC synagogues, rabbis and members WITHIN the movement, it is very hard to say "it" is not, to some degree, (though the great number may err in their pasak), halachic - if they continue to slap that name on themselves - which they do (despite the selective quoting of Gillman, Schorsh, et al, who didn't offer their words as new teaching at a meeting of the CJLS...). And this it CANNOT do, because pluralism is a fundamental doctrine of the movement - even if there are those in the movement who do not agree with pluralism, they are still Conservative and halachic.
You would have to admit the same regarding every orthodox-identifying shul, which to some degree, are not halachic due to the human nature of the humans who make up the congregants, officers, rabbis. Klal Israel needs and uses teshuvah and Yomim Noraim, regardless of some label that they may affix. you cannot deny a jew a mitzvah, or all manner of mitzvot appended to them - due to labels that have no standing in Shamayim.
R. Shafran's essay suffers from the same selective scholarship as R. Kelemens, perusing literature/words from past and current RWers in the Conservative/Masorti movement would show this - but there has, until recently, been a willingness to not sweep them up with the rest of the movement. There was a rebuttal from a Conservative figure published in a later edition of Moment, and R. Shaul Magid (musmach of Yeshivat Hamivtar, student at Hartman, former professor at JTS), wrote a tremendous essay on BOTH articles;
"Walking Softly on/with the
Law: Apologetic Thinking and the 0rthodox/ Conservative Debate," Conservative Judaism 54:1 (Fall
2001), pp. 29–52
Two historical essays that MUST be read about Prof. Shaul Lieberman and R. Zacharias Frankel are;
http://www.traditiononline.org/news/article.cfm?id=100960
Schorsch, Ismar. "Zacharias Frankel and the European Origins of Conservative Judaism." Judaism 30 (Summer 1981): 344–354
Schorsch's piece is especially revealing, since in his celebration of R. Frankel as NOT Orthodox, he brings to light much to suggest he indeed was not OrthoDOX - his praxis aside.
Another worthwhile essay on the ambiguity of labels is Harvey Meirovich's "Reclaiming Chief Rabbi Hertz as a Conservative Jew," Conservative Judaism 46/4 (1994). Much of the basis on which people would render R. Hertz non-orthodox would pasul many an orthodox rabbi today, and kasher many Conservative rabbis and laity on the Right.
also worthwhile (author is musmach of UTJ's Metivta);
http://www.templeisraeloflb.org/rabbi/halachic.pdf
Anonymous,
Thank you for all this. I've already downloaded several of Gordis's essays, and I've got the essay on Lieberman on my hard drive as well.
Question: what is the periodical "Judaism"? I've seen articles from it cited many times, but I haven't ever been able to find it, because it's very hard to Google a magazine called "Judaism"! Just some bibliographic information, please.
"Judaism; a [quarterly] journal of Jewish Life & thought", published by the American Jewish Congress. Try to find a friend with academic database access is the best way to access it. I'm rereading the Magid piece, and the "sting" of his critique of R. Shafran's contentions has only gained potency in the aftermath of Rubashkin, the ethical crises, the abuses charges, the Deal meltdown, etc, etc (etc...), as well as the Conservative tshuvot on Homosexuality, the rise of the "Egal Minyan" scene, Hadar (all with observant Conservatives in their vanguard), the advances of women in Torah and the "maharat" stuff...
(cont'd) all of which has transpired since the article was written. Many of the criticisms Magid levels at the Conservative movement are leveled by R. Gordis as well as the "egal" crowd. There would be a very different response to R. Shafran's piece if it were written now. Also relevant is his comments about what the 'death' of conservative movement would mean for Orthodoxy; R. Adlerstein has written about this a bit, as have others, probably with the knowledge of how much "crossbreeding" has occured between these "irreconcilable" judaisms - more with the observance trumping labels (note that IDENTITY BY LABEL has changed, where he notes many Conservative convictions were NOT lost in the quest for Observant community);
http://www.uscj.org/From_Conservative_to7883.html
That being said, observance includes beliefs that are mitzvot - and there are definitely kids wondering into JTS and AJU post-Israel, convinced by Kiruv arguments for Torah Mi Sinai, etc (...how long it lasts in another story).
Magid's article made some interesting points, but overall, his criticism of Shafran didn't impress me.
His major criticism of Shafran is that Shafran didn't engage in any introspection.
For example: Shafran criticized the ahalakhic manner that Conservatism permitted the ordination of women, but Shafran never asked himself what halakha would say.
Similarly, Shafran criticized Conservatism for not living up to its own standards, but never examined what he'd say if Conservatism did indeed live up to its own standards.
Now, these are interesting questions, and are desiderata for further study. But they are beside the point in the present context.
Shafran's goal was not to explore what is the proper Judaism, or whether women should or should not be ordained. His point was only to show that according to its own standards, Conservatism is a failure, period.
For my part, I believe women can indeed be ordained, and I assume Shafran would disagree. But I still agree with Shafran that Conservatism's manner of ordaining women was illegitimate, and this is enough, for this is all Shafran aimed to prove.
Similarly, it may very well be that many of Conservatism's theoretical principles are quite valid. Gordis holds that Conservatism is quite correct in emphasizing tanur shel akhnai and Moshe's not understanding Rabbi Akiva's lecture, and I - following Rabbis Berkovits, Haim David Halevi, and Rackman - agree wholeheartedly with Gordis. In this, I presumably disagree with Shafran. But Shafran's point was not to explore what Orthodoxy ought to be; his goal was simply to show - like Gordis - that Conservatism fails to live up to its own principles.
Magid criticizes Shafran for not doing something that Shafran never aimed to do in the first place.
I will summarize my criticism of Magid:
Shafran and I can both completely agree on Shafran's criticism of Conservatism, even though Shafran and I both completely disagree on what Orthodoxy ought to be. This, I think, shows that Shafran's thesis was a complete success; that a right-wing semi-Haredi (Shafran)and a left-wing Modern-Orthodox / questionably-Conservadox (myself) could both agree with Shafran's thesis shows that he didn't have to engage in what Orthodoxy ought to be, in order to nevertheless successfully critique Conservatism.
Of course, were Shafran to engage in introspection and ask some of the questions Magid poses, the result would have been very interesting, and I probably would have disagreed with Shafran's conclusions.
I just read the essay about Rabbi Hertz.
It's certainly very interesting, and sheds a lot of light on Rabbi Hertz. Many things that I knew about him from his writings, gained reinforcement from reading that essay.
Nevertheless, its ultimate thesis fails. If Rabbi Hertz was a Conservative for his philosophy of the Oral Law, then Conservative Judaism also includes Rabbis Moshe Shmuel Glasner, Eliezer Berkovits, Zadok ha-Kohen of Lublin, Emanuel Rackman, Benzion Uziel, and Haim David Halevi. If Sabato Morais is Conservative for doubting the reinstitution of sacrifices, then so is Rav Kook and the scholars adduced in Professor Shapiro's Limits. If Hertz is Conservative for praising Solomon Schechter, then Rav Kook is Conservative for referring to Schechter as "Rabbi". If Hertz is Conservative for praising Frankel, whereas Rabbis Hirsch and Hildesheimer denounced Frankel, then Rabbis D. Z. Hoffman and Yehiel Weinberg are also Conservative, since they also viewed Frankel as a rabbi in good standing. (See Professor Marc Shapiro's "Review Essay: Sociology and Halakha", Tradition 27:1, Fall 1992, for the fact that Hoffman and Weinberg viewed Frankel favorably, and that Kook referred to Shechter as a rabbi.)
I'm actually in the middle of reading Rabbi Hertz's Early and Late right now, and I just read the 70th Birthday sermon last night. In that sermon, Rabbi Hertz freely conflates "positive-historical" and "Orthodox" (with a capitol "O"). This is an interesting question of how he could do so, but it is irresponsible to ignore the fact that he referred to himself as Orthodox.
As for Rabbi Hertz's referring to JTS and Jews' College as sisters: indeed, Rabbi Hertz does this rather often in his writings. And yet, Rabbi Dr. Isidore Epstein, the principal of the rabbinic arm of Jews' College, received his smiha from none other than Rav Kook himself! Once again, I suppose Rav Kook is a closet Conservative, three times over in fact (once for holding like Morais regarding sacrifices, once for referring to Schechter as "rabbi", and once now for giving smiha to the head of Britain's JTS.)
Im curious what was Rabbi Kelemens response Did he ever write back to you?
No response.
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