Who is a Fitting Model for Modern Orthodoxy?

By Rabbi Alan Yuter
Posted Monday, December 11, 2006

Rabbi Avi Shafran of Agudath Israel of America criticized Kehilath Ohel Eliezer, named after the late Rabbi Louis Finkelstein, for the "innovation" of hiring a woman "head of the community." He then calls attention to Rabbi Finkelstein's office, Chancellor of the Conservative Jewish Theological Seminary, in order to dismiss him, the synagogue named after him, and the fact that a woman is given the office as synagogue leader.

Rabbi Shafran's comments deserve comment. Rabbi Finkelstein had both Orthodox and Conservative ordinations. He only prayed in separate seating synagogues. His view of the Conservative Jewish Theological Seminary was that it was bound by Jewish law, critical study, social responsibility, and open to any and all Jews who respect Jewish Tradition. His Conservative Judaism sounds like a very real modern Orthodoxy.

When speaking about Nahmanides as a Jewish "gentleman," my colleague, the ever feisty Talmudist at Berkeley, Rabbi Daniel Boyarin, observed, "he means tsaddiq," or righteous man. Rabbi Finkelstein's overcoat was hanging over a bench, the shaatnez seal representing the inspection that wool and linen were not in the weave was there for all to see. Here is a man who obeys God's law.

Rabbi Finkelstein's rabbi, ha-Gerash Lieberman, of blessed and saintly memory, actually had to calm the religious rigor of his loyal student. During a hot summer vacation, Rabbi Finkelstein would not allow his son, Ezra, to go swimming during the first 9 days of Av. Realizing that bathing during the 9 days [other than on Sabbath and the fast day itself] was prohibited by later Ashkenazi rabbis and not by canonical Jewish law, Rabbi Lieberman told Rabbi Finkelstein not to be strict on this matter.

Rabbi Finkelstein tried to educate religious Jews, worldly in demeanor and learned in the law, and taught not in Yiddish by rabbis uneducated in the University. For the decade before his forced resignation, he made the Jewish Theological Seminary into the greatest Torah center in the world outside of Israel.

We have shown how "religious," or meticulous was Rabbi Finkelstein. He was also feisty, fiercely independent, educationally current, and socially responsive. His early writings have a Marxist bent, arguing that the rabbis of the oral law were social reformers, making lighter the burden of the proletariat. From Rabbi Lieberman he learned that 20th century categories are not appropriate in studying ancient writings.

Rabbi Finkelstein was current. He realized that congregants wanted to hear about ideas, not laws. And he was serving an Orthodox synagogue in the Bronx. He taught Pirke Avot to rabbinical students in order to teach them the ideas of Judaism that will sell to an American audience. He wrote about the theology of the Haggadah, Pirke Avot, Avot of Rabbi Nathan, and the scientific edition of the Legal Midrash to Deuteronomy called Sifre. Rabbi Finkelstein demonstrated that Maimonides' barring women from leadership roles was based upon a faulty reading of the Sifre text. In other words, critical scholarship was mustered to answer a contemporary problem

The qualities shared by the teachers he hired were: commitment to Orthodox observance, control of modern academic methodology, and an ability to speak to students.

Rabbi Finkelstein did not have "Orthodox envy." He was a truly pious man. When approached for charity from his fundamentalist detractors, he was gracious. But when approached during World War II that yeshiva students from Eastern Europe should have special preference, he politely refused his help. "And their blood is more red than other Jews?"

Rabbi Finkelstein supported interfaith dialogue. He was not afraid that Judaism cannot hold its own in open conversation. He believed that Judaism has something to say to non-Jews. Rabbi Soloveitchik disagreed, but failed to cite one norm or law to justify his unwillingness to allow discussions with non-Jews or non-Orthodox Jews who are learned and still not Orthodox.

The Judaism that Torah teaches knows about right and wrong and is unconcerned with issues of Right and Left. The Judaism that God commanded required that we honor learning, respect correct observance, and expect an open mind to an ever changing world. Rabbi Finkelstein exemplifies this ideal much more than his detractors, like Avrohom Shafran.

Rabbi Finkelstein was a man of courage, open mind, and open heart. We would do well to read his learning, so that he continue to teach us today.

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