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| Rabbi Asher Lopatin |
Sometimes I wonder if the right wing really does care about
the rest of Klal Yisroel. Oh, they pay lip service to it. There is a lot of
talk about reaching out to our secular brethren. And there are Kiruv
organizations run by the right that do a pretty good job reaching out to fellow
non observant Jews.
But after reading the constant barrage of attacks against
those who have crossed some lines in their attempt to reach out, I am beginning
to think that Kiruv, is at best an afterthought. That they care a lot more
about their own piety than they do about their fellow Jew.
It seems that ever since Rabbi Lopatin invited the leaders
of Reform and Conservative Jewry to give their perspectives on practical
rabbinics in our day, there has been one relentless attack after another. Not a
word about his intent. Only about how much damage he did by departing from
tradition and the wise counsel of the previous generation of Gedolim that
forbade any interaction with them.
Even Centrist Rabbis (whom I count myself among) wrote an
open critical letter to Rabbi Lopatin. As I said in an earlier post, It’s not
so much that I disagree with them. But I would not have signed the letter. I
know Rabbi Lopatin. He is a uniter and despite my disagreements with him he
deserves a lot better than he is getting from – not only the right wing, but
even from Centrists like me.
He should be left alone be given the chance to bridge the
gaps he so fervently wants to bridge. Rabbi Lopatin’s invitations to the
Conservative and Reform movements do not make him a Conservative
Rabbi. Nothing he has personally done
justifies making comparisons to the Conservative Movements’s founding. Rabbi
Lopatin never budged in matters of Halahca without first consulting with his
Rebbe - and mine - Rav Ahron Soloveichik. Rav Ahron was his Rebbe until the day
he died.
Would Rav Aharon approve of what he is doing now? I doubt
it. But then again I don’t really know. In the meantime Rabbi Lopatin has probably single
handedly reached out and touched the Jewish souls of more non observant Jews
than have all the rabbis on the Dais of the recent Agudah convention - combined. With the
massive intermarriage rate reported by the Pew Research organization, is this
the time to be telling an effective leader of outreach how terrible he is?
Wouldn’t it have been more prudent to just be quiet?
With this in mind, let us take a look what Jonathan
Rosenblum did in Israel a short time ago. From Mishpacha Magazine:
I participated in a panel on state and religion in Israel sponsored by the Israel Government Fellows Program of the Menachem Begin Center. My co-panelists turned out to be the current director of the Israel Religious Action Center (IRAC) and a teacher at a Jerusalem “secular yeshivah” who is also a blogger on New Age spirituality. IRAC is the public and legal advocacy arm of the Reform Movement in Israel.
Where is the condemnation here? You won’t hear any
from me. Nor will you hear any from Jonathan’s Charedi base. He tries to differentiate
between what he did and what Rabbi Lopatin did by saying (among other things)
that he was not billed as a rabbi – which he is not. I agree that there are the
differences between him and Rabbi Lopatin that he pointed out.
But he appeared on a stage with leaders of Reform to present
and directly debate Orthodoxy with them. Rabbi or not, is there any doubt as to
why Jonathan was invited to participate in that forum? He was the Charedi
representative. His appearance there is hardly that different than that of
Orthodox Rabbi Yosef Reinman who stood on the same stage with Reform Rabbi Ameil
Hrisch. In fact Rabbi Hirsch and Rabbi Reinman did not even debate their religious
perspectives - agreeing to disagree up front! Rabbi Reinman was criticized. Will
Jonathan be criticized?
Will Chabad be criticized for inviting Reform leader Rabbi
Rick Jacobs to their Shiluchim convention? Of course not. Most of the criticism
of Chabad in recent years has to do with their Messianism.
Not only did Jonathan criticize Rabbi Lopatin, he
criticized the British Chief Rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis for accepting an
invitation to Limmud. Which is a cross denominational day of teaching where each
denomination meets with visitors and teaches them about their various
perspectives. Why did he criticize him? He is worried about how this looks
(This refers to
Psak given by Rav Aharon Kotler and many of the Gedolim of the previous
generation forbidding interaction with Conservative and Reform rabbis because it
looks like we are endorsing Apikursus.)
Really? ‘How this looks’ trumps the numbers of Jews who
Rabbi Mirvis might reach at Limmud while Jews are otherwise hemorrhaging out of
Judaism at record numbers?!
Interestingly Jonathan included the following in his article:
But that does not mean that one can easily extrapolate from the 1956 psak to other cases.
How does Jonathan say that we cannot extrapolate
from 1956 and practically in the same breath – do exactly that in the cases he talks about?! One can speculate
that it would indeed be the same. But for Jonathan to be so critical when he himself
has done something so similar is unfair and counterproductive to the massive
problem of reaching out to those hemorrhaging Jews.
What Jonathan
said about these two rabbis is high praise compared to what Rabbi Yitzchok Frankfurter
said in his Ami editorial last week. He basically said that the ‘tepid’ rebuke by
those Centrists rabbis was not enough. He believes that Rabbi Lopatin and those
who share his views are no better than the Conservative movement and should be
treated that way!
That’s nice. And what about all the Jews, that Rabbi Lopatin
has reached… and the potential number yet to be reached? What about he 70%
intermarriage rate of non Orthodox Jews? I guess his answer would be, too bad! And
that as long as we ‘ the keepers of the faith’ perpetuate the Kollel system, make
sure our women dress modestly, and jettison anyone who veers slightly to the
left, we can ignore the rest of Klal Yisroel, sit back with a sense of triumphalism
and really feel good about ourselves.
