The Sin of Intuition and the Blame Game in Contemporary Jewry

By Rabbi Alan Yuter
Posted Monday, January 8, 2007

Orthodox and non-Orthodox Jewish leaders quote from the same library of holy books, which they interpret by appealing to the social program demanded by their constituencies. When the plain sense of the library of holly books differs from what they believe their constituencies want to hear, both appeal to intuition to bridge the divide between the shared canon and divergent Jewish cultures

Non-Orthodox rabbis preach to congregants who want to purchase a Jewish identity that is an accessory to their American secular lives. Judaism must not come with an inconvenient social cost, but in the words of Isaac Mayer Wise, be a "Judaism without tears." In a world where religion is a choice, Judaism must of necessity be the religion of discretionary time, of self-definition, and social identity. For Reform Judaism, autonomy is a fact of religious life that cannot be denied. To deny the autonomy of the dues paying member is to lose the dues of the former member. Membership dues accomplish the goals predicted by the Mishnah, "if there is no bread, there is no Torah." Freedom of religion comes with a cost.

Non-Orthodox Judaisms have to validate themselves. Its rabbinate applies modern, scholarly tools to show that Judaism changed in the past. Current ethical sensibilities determine how Judaism ought to change in the present. The consistent qualify of all change is not the call of moral conscience, but what will sell to the client constituency is who buying, with affiliation dues, the Jewish product being sold. Moral conscience may be invoked, but payers of dues must not be provoked.

The ideology of Liberal Judaism reflects the secular mind of the modern university and the pluralist realities of modern culture. Its members chose to be Jews not on the basis of critical Jewish studies, but because they are, in part, wanting to affirm their past. In order to justify and legitimate the changes that are made to Jewish rites and ethics, the university and seminary trained rabbinate demonstrates that changes occurred in the past and today's rabbinate determines the changes in the present that contemporary Jewry requires. Critical scholarship does not measure, and therefore does not find, God in the canon of sacred books. A God Who commands and demands is not the God of autonomy for Whom all foods are kosher, all values are relative, and the informed individual conscience is the ultimate measure of all things spiritual. Conservative Judaism's theologian, Rabbi Neil Gilman, has the integrity to concede that his Movement should give up the pretense that it is bound by Jewish law. The rabbis do not prescribe Jewish law and the laity does not care about or observe Jewish law, even as reconstructed by its leaders. Judaism's sacred library are called by Gilman "sacred fragments." With modernity, faith fragments in to pieces, just like the tablets broken by Moses when he saw the Israelites worshipping the golden calf.

The young people whom non-Orthodox movements hope to enroll attend the university, but rarely in yeshivot. In the university world of almost total tolerance, gender preferences are taken for granted. No self-respecting modern would approach a homophobic synagoguge. And since gender neutrality is manifested in ritual in all non-Orthodox movements, is it not consistent to include an egalitarian approach to gender equality?

In order to make these changes, both Reform and Conservative Judaisms had to reinvent their canon. According to Reform Judaism, Pittsburgh Platform 1885 argues that the ethics of Judaism are eternal, but not the ethnic, parochial laws. This doctrine reflects 19th Century's American Judaism attempt to shed its parochialism while remaining in some sense Jewish in a way that will look "religious" to the upper class Protestant elite. By adopting homosexual acts as morally acceptable, Reform and now Conservative Judaism not only rejects the binding force of Torah, but reconstruct the ethic of Judaism as well. After all, if God did not Author the Torah and Jewish practices are folkways and customs, why should acting on gender preference be subject to religious judgment?

The egalitarianism of market forces in attracting members becomes, with time, a matter of reified high ideological principle. The egalitarian narrative adopted by the non-Orthodox movements allows the rabbis and ideology that justifies themselves as moral leaders. Since the Orthodox do not accept egalitarianism, they are morally reprobate. One cannot be a good, moral and religious Jew unless one is an egalitarian and therefore, not-Orthodox. Accepting God as Author of the Torah and the Ultimate Auditorof humankind is not only bad scholarship, it is bad religion.

Theological debates took place at synods, conclaves and conventions. But the theological battles took place in board rooms. Rabbis who would not use automobiles on Shabbat would not get hired by liberal Conservative synagogues. The willingness to use a car reflects and implicit theology of "flexibility." A rabbi with the license to drive himself on the Sabbath to the synagogue will allow the congregant the license to do what she or he wants to do as a Jew. Rabbis who were not egalitarian could not compete in the market place of synagogues looking for rabbis. Rabbis whose conscience conflicted with the market left the pulpit and, eventually, the Conservative rabbinate which became even less pluralistic. Now, some Conservative rabbis call for making egalitarianism a dogma and that non-egalitarianism is a heresy, which are grounds for exclusion for a movement that seemed wedded to "pluralism."

Conservative rabbis were asked by Jewish Theological Seminary Chancellor Gerson D, Cohen. to decide if ordaining women per se is a violation of Jewish law. There is no clear law that forbids women from learning Torah. See tTosefta Berachot 2:12! But then the rabbinate was informed, not subject to vote or review, that Jewish law must change to empower women rabbis. When his successor, Rabbi Ismar Schorsch, invested women to the Conservative cantorate not because the Jewish laws justified the change, but because of an "ethical imperative," he, like his mentor, set a precedent. They cast the lot of the Conservative Movement with the Left. Rules and protocols are waived by people in power when their intuition decides that power is the ultimate arbiter of right and wrong. When power shifted and the Conservative Movement's collective intuition wanted to accept homosexuality as normative, against the Movement's own history and the plain sense of its sacred library, Rabbi Schorsch not only leaves the helm of the Seminary; he is the first Chancellor in its history to publicly castigate the Conservative Movement for the changes it made. The late Rabbi Louis Finkelstein, himself Orthodox in practice and thought, always treated ideological dissent with distance, but never nastiness. R. Schorsh felt that his intuitive principles could not be violated, but did not hesitate to break rules which violated the intuition of others.

The Jews in the pews are less concerned with homosexuality, which is an issue of the few, and intermarriage, an issue for many in a movement that has lost its anchor in a compelling thick Jewish culture. Reform rabbis who will not perform at intermarriages, like halakhically committed Conservative rabbis, cannot compete in the market place of jobs. The Mishnah teaches that without bread, or food , there is no Torah. And without a job, there is no salary; where there is no salary, there is no office; where there is no office, there is no pulpit, and without the pulpit, there is no is no market place for the ideas to be expressed or heard. So the market place of positions is the censor of ideas.

The collegiate community of Jews tends not to be Orthodox and, for that matter, seems to show little interest in affiliating and paying dues as Jews. Since the culture of the campus has, being tolerant, pluralist, and laissez faire, to oppose homosexuality would alienate the next generation of synagogue joiners.

The adult Conservative community is concerned that its youth affiliate. And intermarriage must be accepted or the youth will affiliate Reform or not at all. When the Reform Movement accepts intermarried couples, it is better equipped to attract this population, as well as there parents. The market place of dues always trumps the market place of ideas. "Intuition" is invoked to justify what the market place inexorably demands.

Orthodox Judaism emphasizes submission and obedience. One submits to God by obeying the Orthodox rabbinic elite, who devote their lives to studying and knowing the canonical library. Just as the Left in Judaism demonizes the Right, the Orthodox, which advocates correct creed, demonizes the Left as ungodly. Rabbi Moshe Feinstein claimed, apparently without the aid of a sociologist's survey, that all Conservative rabbis are atheists. Rabbi Aron Soloveitchik claimed that the modern methods of scholarship, when applied to religious studies, undermines "the sanctity of Torah." The "scientific" methdods findings of the Left does not find God in the Torah because God, being unmeasurable, cannot be defined or measured. The Left takes, or mistakes the Torah idea of God as Commander must be rejected by liberal moderns.

Orthodox policy has been to paint itself as right, without reference to the sacred canon, and to portray the Left as bereft of redeeming value. Whatever the Left does is wrong. One great rabbi, R. Moses Sofer, opposed innovation on principle. So whatever new practice or idea that was suggested was vetoed not because it was forbidden by the Torah canon, but by the culture of people who lived the culture canon that appealed to but in practice often violated that canon. Because the Orthodox have historically complained about any and all changes when done by the Left, the criticism of the Orthodox is ignored. A Sanhedrin that makes a capital conviction unanimously is a flawed, and biased court. By confusing community taste with God's law, Orthodoxy's public practice conflicts with its professed theology. If, following R. Joseph Colon, a custom may override a Talmudic law, then appeals to an unchanging law lack credibility. The same R. Sofer who ruled that "innovation is forbidden by the Torah" also allowed the women's wig "because a custom overrides the law." It is my view, following Maimonides, my mentor, Prof. Jose Faur, and a one time teacher of mine at Hebrew University, Prof. Israel Ta Shma, a custom does not override the law according to the Jewish sacred library. Prof. Bemjamin Ish Shalom, in a personal communication, quipped regarding R. Sofer's claim that innovation is forbidden is itself a most radical innovation.

The intuition of the Orthodox elite that supersedes the canonical library is called "Daas Torah." The Torah opinion of the holy book may not be parsed without referencing the holy person. The authority of God may be determined not by reading the holy word because we are biased. The authority of God is determined by the intuition of the great rabbi, who like R. Sofer, fuses the Tradition of culture with the Tradition of Sinai.

How might this divide be bridged? I suspect that the virtuosi class of leaders have no interest in bridging the divide because their jobs, salaries, offices, and power are invested in that divide. But the Jewish people cannot survive the divide that is bleeding its ranks. Modern Orthodoxy presents a model that is honest to God and honest to human beings. The law of the Jewish sacred library is religiously binding. And autonomy begins where the law stops. The author of the Shulhan Aruch wrote that a woman may be a kosher slaughterer. Since the Talmud permits this role to women, the fact that it was not done does not mean that it may not be done. The practice forbidding women slaughterers is itself grounded in a position that maintains that women may not be given authority. A close reading of the rabbinic canon yields that women may not be appointed to be kings. As long as women are not appointed to be monarch, no rule is violated. So if a woman were elected prime minister of Israel, but not appointed, the canonical restriction would not obtain. And just as the "rule" that a woman ought not to be may be a leader read into the canon, it is not explicit in the canon

In Jewish tradition, intuition may apply in what are called "hard cases," where the statute is unclear. Often, sources that are canonical are suppressed when we do not trust Jews with the rights that Judaism affords us all. Rabbi Elchonon Wasserman suggested that we are too biases to read the canon clearly. Therefore, we submit to the intuition of great rabbis. Logically, argues Maimonides, women may observe the lulav and the talleit commandment, but say the commandment blessing on neither, as they were not commanded to do so. The great French master, Rashi, in Mahzor Vitry, endorses this rule. Rabbi Moshe Feinstein disallows the talleit but permits the lulav rite, with blessing. His intuition, however inspired, reflects community usage. God commanded a Torah law, which for Orthodox Jews is not subject to review. But accidents of community usage are subject to review in modern times when measured against the benchmarks of the Jewish sacred library.

Being modern in the age of heresy, which is the age of choice, means that we be aware of and appreciate the integrity of those with whom we disagree. Demonizing the other often demonizes the demonizer. When our opponents do right, give them credit. And when they to our mind err, we have not a right but an obligation to ask the probing question. If Moses asked for dialogue with the unbelieving Korah, may we not dialogue with those who do believe, albeit differently? One person's intuition is another person's mistake. God does not provide an intuition to individuals to rule over others, but God did provide a Torah which, following R. Jacob Neusner, is a code for conduct and map of the Jewish value complex. The intuitions of Jewish leaders may and indeed must be measured against the public rule of the sacred library. So let us learn together, talk together, and reason together.

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