There is a fascinating observation made by Rabbi Emanuel Feldman in Jewish Action. I have been a fan of Rabbi Feldman from the very first time I read him. We are almost always on the same page Hashkafically. And I find it quite interesting that his brother is Ner Israel Rosh HaYeshiva, Rabbi Aharon Feldman whose Hashkafos are so different than mine. For those who don’t remember, Rabbi Aharon Feldman is in the forefront of trying to impress upon the American Charedi mindset the importance of eliminating the study of secular subjects from exceptional Torah students.
In any case, I once again find myself in complete agreement with Rabbi Emanuel Feldman. I have written about this issue many times, most recently in an article from last year in the Jewish Press.
In the current article Rabbi Emanuel Feldman writes of the “stunning and almost shocking” surprise he got from a study about the ascendancy of Orthodox Judaism in our time:
“A recently issued study by the American Jewish Committee and that in the decades to come it is destined to exercise major influence on the quality and direction of American Jewish life.”
As I have pointed out in the past, many non-Orthodox movements are rejecting the rejectionist ways of their forebearers and are incorporating many of the trappings once reserved for only the most Orthodox of Jewry. Reform Rabbis are now wearing Kipot once anathema to them, and urging Mitzvah observance albeit not mandatorily and have even established Kollelim… as a way perpetuating their existence. Both the Conservative and Reform movements now have their own elementary schools and the Conservatives even have their own high schools. While it is true that the Conservatives are in the midst of an identity crisis, it may yet self resolve because of this new and apparently successful phenomenon.
So what was once an “orthodoxy” of the American secular Jewish mindset to totally assimilate out of Jewish practice is now almost an apostasy. They have done an almost complete 180. And that’s a good thing. Secular Jewry has seen the fruit of old policies. Dropping observance has turned into intermarriage and many Jews hardly identify at all as Jews and have virtually no Jewish identity. The once predicted demise of Orthodox Jewry has morphed into an emulation of Orthodox practices.
But there’s a fly in the ointment. All is not well in candyland. Rabbi Feldman correctly laments that in essence, we are our own worst enemy. We cannot be content to celebrate our successes and move forward in unison. We instead quite because of our success, fight amongst ourselves. Instead of uniting in common cause in Orthodox brotherhood, we have taken to factionalizing and narrowing our circles so as to exclude those with whom we have even the slightest of differences.
It is one thing to reject extremism that might be on the fringes of both ends of the Orthodox spectrum. I could understand drawing those lines and draw them myself. But we have come to a point where we are drawing our circles smaller and smaller in an effort to more narrowly define what we believe to be authentic Judaism. And in the process we do more harm to ourselves as a whole than we gain in our subsets.
Who knows? Maybe someday this kind of thinking will be recognized for the harm it causes and we can once again return to the days of Rav Aharon Kotler and the Rav who could work together for the same purpose while differing Hashkafically, and yet could actually respect each others views. Imagine how wonderful that would be!
I will end with the following from Rabbi Feldman’s article: It is a virtual clone of my own dream although expressed far more eloquently than I ever could:
A Jewish fantasy: An emergency joint task force of the leadership of the Orthodox Union and other MO institutions, and of Agudath Israel and other Yeshiva Orthodoxy (YO) institutions, is established. It has a single, circumscribed purpose: It will focus on ways to fight the onslaught of Jewish ignorance and intermarriage. Neither group necessarily accepts the others’ worldview; perspectives on Torah and Jewish life remain unchanged. But in this critical eit la’asot situation—and in fulfillment of the words of the Talmud Yerushalmi in Sotah (7:4), and of Ramban (Devarim 27:26), that those who are able to influence others to be loyal to Torah and do not care to do so, do not find favor in the eyes of our Creator—stereotypes and intolerance are put aside, and resources and energies are combined for this single objective.
Imagine the electric impact on the Jewish world even of such a limited cooperation.
