I’m sure Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, has a good heart. His intentions are good. He wants to save Yiddishkeit. But in an op-ed piece he wrote for the Forward, he shows himself to be the true ignoramus of Torah that most Reform rabbis are, and oblivious to the reality that the Reform Movement has created.
He is apparently upset at the embrace of and the support given by major Jewish community organizations like AIPAC to Pastor John Hagee. For those with short term memory problems, Pastor Hagge who has been one of the most outspoken supporters of not only the State of Israel, but of the Jewish people and adherence to the precepts of the Torah.
In a fiery speech at AIPAC recently, he was interrupted with applause for almost the entirey of it. That speech made it to the front pages of the Jewish Press. I wrote about it at the time and I remember thinking that this speech sounded more Jewish than many I’ve heard from many other Jewish sources. The one thing I remember most about it was along the lines that the Torah is the truth and that Christianity could not exist without it. ...And that he issued a profound apology for savage crimes caused by the anti-Semtism of Christianity over the millennia, Catholic and protestant alike.
So what is Rabbi Yaffie’s problem? Is it that he does not want Christians to be seen as Spokesman for Jews? One might think so and he would have a point. And he does allude to that. But that isn’t his real problem. His problem is that Pastor Hagee is too Frum. That’s right. He has the same problem with Pastor Hagee that he has with Orthodoxy. It seems that observing the Mitzvos of the Torah is too off-putting to today’s liberal minded youth... even the so-called committed ones. Here is what he says:
“They are pluralistic in their thinking, and they are tolerant of difference, especially differences in gender and sexual orientation. They respond negatively to those who disparage other religious traditions and who make exclusivist religious claims. John Hagee, who is contemptuous of Muslims, dismissive of gays, possesses a triumphalist theology... If our intention was to distance our young adults from the Jewish state, we could not have made a better choice.”
I see. According to Rabbi Yoffie, the Torah is just too politically incorrect for our modern day liberal young person. It is too off-putting to them. We can’t have people going around with such intolerant views of homosexual practices. We must also have pluralism. “How dare Orthodoxy tell us that our lack of belief in the binding nature of Halacha makes our views illegitimate?!” Elu V’Elu. Pastor Hagee is just more of the same along those lines. How dare we embrace ...that! We will lose whatever draw we have on today’s young people if we tell them following Halacha is a requirement of the Torah.
Losing young people? He thinks that insisting on Halacha is the problem?! And he calls himself a Rabbi? Has he learned nothing from the history of the Reform movement? His movement is one of primary forces in the destruction of our youth. The rejection of Mitzvah observance is the single biggest contributor to assimilation. And this has resulted in a culture of secularism that has removed almost all vestiges of Jewish identity from today's youth.
The new liberal Jew he speaks of knows more about the history of slavery in America than he does about his own Jewish heritage... more about American Idol than Moshe Rabbenu. The new liberal Jew is in essence a secular Jew interested more in equality and social justice. That is what God is all about to them. This is what they decided God wants. Not what God Himself has told us in His Torah.
The liberal Jew is a humanist who thinks humanity determines right and wrong. Mitzvah observance and Torah have little if anything to do with their lives and are unimportant or irrelevant to their cause and to the times.
Intermarriage is not a problem. Is it any surprise that so many of them wonder, “Why be Jewish at all”? They believe in the ‘brotherhood of man”. And they worship the latest cultural social fad, like extreme environmentalism or radical feminism. “God is ...whatever I want Him to be.” “The God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob... how is that relevant to my life and goals?”
This is Rabbi Yaffie’s hope for the future. And he believes that catering to these ideals will save them.
Save them for what? Judaism? That has been lost to them generations ago.
Sorry, Rabbi Yaffie. Your solutions are Hevel VaRik. They are a Be’er Shachas... an empty pit full of destruction. Your solutions... are the problem. Your solutions are not new but have been tried ever since the first Pittsbugh platform which abandoned Halacha. They have been tried and they have failed. Miserably.
What young people need instead is to be taught from scratch about the truth of Judaism. Judaism does not mean fighting for a woman’s right to abortion on demand. It does not mean, ordaining practicing homsosexuals. It means understanding and living according to the eternal word of God as given to us in His book, the Torah.
We need to reach out to today’s unaffected youth and teach them that. And it will be Orthodoxy that will succeed at doing so, as it has done with amazing success in recent decades. That’s why Orthodoxy is growing and other denominations are shrinking. This is how we will recapture our youth, not by catering to the ‘spirit of the times’ which has little if anything to do with the Torah. Only this will save them. And, Rabbi Yaffie, if you take heed it can save you too.
