There's been a fascinating discussion (first time in ages) over at Jewschool sparked by a Forward piece by Ben Dreyfus. The piece is about shifting the way that 'liberal Jews' see themselves. BZ (his Jewschool handle) would like liberal Jews to stop seeing themselves in comparison to the 'authentic' Judaism of Orthodoxy and instead start seeing themselves positively, as practitioners of liberal Judaism.
For me, the argument is ultimately about the legitimacy of Reform Judaism (and Conservative as well, though because BZ is a partisan of Reform Judaism, that's where his focus is) as an authentic expression of Judaism.
The argument tends to get terribly obscure because the way Reform Judaism was envisioned and the way that Reform Judaism is practiced today are totally different beasts. More different than that, one is an animal, one is a mineral. On different planets. In different universes.
So, some people end up arguing for Reform, the ideal, and many others end up dissing the lived experience of Reform (watered down, minimalistic Judaism lite). It's frustrating that so much of the conversation gets muddied in this way. BZ knows what he's talking about when he champions an educated, literate, engaged Reform community. He's a product of such a community and literal royalty within the Reform movement. However, based on their exposure to the reality of American Reform Judaism, many, many of his readers make a 'pfff' sound upon encountering such an argument.
What I'm interested in is the particular ways we talk about denominational Judaism and its authenticity. The creation of post-Temple, Rabbinic, Talmudically based Judaism is often invoked as a way of legitimating the creation of liberal, denominational Judaism. The argument is- Judaism has undergone massive, fundamental changes in order to survive, and it can do so again.
Just two examples from the comments section of the blog post on Jewschool, comments made by a very smart, educated set of young Jews.
Commenter themicah writes
"...Jewish philosophy and law have been codified through the ages in many different forms to adapt to the world around the Jewish communities doing the codification. When the Temple was destroyed, Judaism abandoned sacrifice, but we don’t refer to today’s Orthodox Jews as “unobservant” for failing to follow Temple era norms.
The last couple centuries have seen explosions in secular knowledge (some of which directly challenges assumptions on which Orthodoxy rests) and in Jews’ ability to freely participate in the secular world, so it is no surprise that forms of Judaism have developed to adapt to today’s environment. And while those new forms may be different (in some cases, radically so) from the diversity of Judaism that existed before them, those differences do not make them 'lesser.'...
And BZ, the writer of the original Op-Ed comments:
"If evolution over time is a sign of deviation, then the Karaites are the most “observant”, and the rest of us are all deviants. Of course, the Orthodox party line is that the Oral Torah was all there to begin with, and the Reform party line is (or should be) that evolution over time is part of the normative Jewish narrative. But there’s no way to argue these points objectively without running into the grue-bleen paradox. We each have frames that dictate which changes (or lack of changes) are normative, and which changes (or lack of changes) are deviations from the norm. And we should use our own frames."
I have a problem with both of these uses of historical precedent to legitimate modern developments. There's the subtle suggestion here that the creation of Rabbinic/Talmudic Judaism was just one of many earth-shaking evolutions of Judaism that were ultimately adopted by all Jews and thus legitimate. But... really? It seems to me, that was it. The Temple was destroyed, we replaced Temple sacrifice with prayer, we wrote down the Oral Law, and Judaism as we know it today was created. One seismic event does not create a tradition of radical evolution.
The modern desire to encourage halakhic evolution on such a radical level, and to so radically change our position with regards to halakhah, gnaws at me. The creation of Rabbinic Judaism was prompted by the destruction of the Temple, the loss of Jerusalem and a Jewish nation state. There was no going back and the entirety of the Jewish people had no choice but to move forward and adapt. I might even say that the final destruction of the Temple gave the Jews a mandate to create a new, yet contiguous, way of living Jewishly.
On the other hand, our encounter with modernity, with the Haskalah and the Enlightenment, with Universalism and Western Humanism, happened in bits and pieces over hundreds of years, in many places. And it IS this encounter with modernity that created what we know as denominationalism, starting with the Reform movement in Germany. Is it possible to compare the two crisis points, the destruction of the Temple and the encounter with Modernity? Do we have the same mandate as existed two thousand years ago?
I'm growing increasingly (and surprisingly) resistant to frameworks of 'liberal Judaism'. What about you?
Part 2 coming soon.
