’4 . , LED BARE“ v’T‘K COLLEGE 5‘17 ~ \ ~ r 1 [an Lxxu . A. “ THE CONFLICT BETWEEN ORTHODOXY AND REFORM John D. Rayner Introduction Judaism has never been monolithic. There have always been varieties of Judaism, sometimes in sharp conflict with one another, and today, for a reason we shall discuss presently, the variety is greater than ever. The two variants which concern us'this morning are Orthodoxy and Reform. Neither of these is monolithic either. The Orthodox camp includes Sefardim and Ashkenazim, the 'Far-Right' Orthodox or Charedim and the Modern Orthodox, as well as the various Chasidic sects. The Reform camp comprises all the communities affiliated to the World Union for Progressivé Judaism, whether they call themselves Reform, Liberal, Progressive, Reconstructionist or by some other name. But for our purpose these distinctions are unimportant.- We must think of them as two broad streams, Orthodox and Reform, or Orthodox and the World Union when it was founded in 1926 as ,. Progressive r.theiadjectivechosenvby an umbrella term to cover all its constituents. I shall be using the two terms, Reform and Progressive, interchangeably, whichever seems the more appropriate in the immediate context. Emancipation The first and most important point to be made about these two streams that, like all other modern Jewish movements, they are responses to the Emancipation. By 'Emancipation' we mean the process which began in Europe in the 18th century and continued at different rates of progress in different countries all through the 19th and into the 20th. It was a political process which liberated the Jewish populations of Europe and beyond from the medieval restrictions under which they had lived ever since the Roman Empire had become the HolyIRoman Empire. All the freedoms we take for granted - to live where we like, to travel where we like, to mingle with whom we like, to send our children to any school, to go to any university, to enter any trade or profession, to form and express our own opinions, and to participate on equal terms with others in the processes of democracy: all these we owe to the Emancipation. Consequences of Emancipation Most Jews saw this revolutionary change in their political situation as highly desirable - almost a fulfilment of their messianic dreams — and eagerly took advantage of the new liberties and opportunities it opened up. But to the extent to which they did so, the process was no longer merely political. It had other consequences. Economic and social consequences, for they entered many trades and professions previously closed to them; they lived in much closer contact with their Christian fellow citizens, and they experienced the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution. Cultural consequences, for their schooling was no longer, as it had been in the Ghetto, purely Jewish but embraced the whole syllabus of modern education; they dropped Yiddish, which had been so long their mother tongue, in favour of German, French or whatever was the vernacular of the country in which they lived; and they became familiar with European art, music, literature and thought, transformed as these had been since the Middle Ages by the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the rise of modern philosophy and science. These political, economic, social and cultural changes, in so far as Jews took advantage of them and entered into the spirit of them, were bound to make a big impact, among other things, on their religious life. Let us analyse that impact a little. Impact on Judaism Because they were no longer under the jurisdiction of the rabbinic courts of their former, self-governing Ghetto communities, but subject only to the civil law, therefore they were 2 legally free to distance themselves from the Iewish community as far as they liked, or even completely. They were, in fact, for the first time ever, free to cease to be Jewish. The term 'Jews by choice' is used in America to refer to converts to Judaism, but it describes us all. Being Jewish in the modern world is voluntary. We are all Jews by choice. Because emancipated Jews were no longer under any great social pressure to conform to Jewish ways but came increasingly under the opposite social pressure, to conform to Gentile ways, therefore they were not only free but actually tempted to distance themselves from the Jewish community. Because their knowledge of Hebrew and Yiddish declined, therefore they were no longer so easily able to participate in the synagogue services, which were conducted entirely in Hebrew, or to follow the sermons and talmudic discourses, which were delivered in Yiddish. Because the services were conducted in a language they no longer readily understood, therefore they tended to get bored with them, and to talk to each other, which led to indecorum. Because they became aware, by contrast, of the decorum characteristic of the churches attended by their Christian neighbours, therefore they felt ashamed of the lack of it in their synagogues. Because they experienced the glories of_ European music, therefore they regretted the lack of instrumental music or even disciplined choral singing in Jewish worship. Because they wished to identify themselves with the society in which they lived, therefore those traditional prayers which implied that they did not feel at home there in any permanent sense but, on the contrary, longed for the day when they would be able to return to their ancient homeland and live under their own sovereignty, were a particular embarrassment to them. Because of the spirit of free inquiry which was of the essence of modern European philosophy, going back to Descartes, and which undergirded and permeated the whole scientific enterprise, therefore Jews began to feel inwardly free to question traditional Jewish beliefs and practices. Because this spirit of free inquiry expressed itself not only in the natural sciences, which seemed to contradict the biblical accounts of creation and miracles, but also in the historical sciences, which cast doubt on the traditional teaching as to how the Bible had come to be written, therefore the crucial issue of the authority behind Jewish tradition became an open question. Response to Modernity To be a more specific, the age of scholasticism was over. Here let me explain that by 'scholasticism' I mean the typically medieval world-view according which ‘Holy Scripture' - Jewish, Christian or Muslim, as the case might be - was totally unlike any other literature, in that it was a transcript of divine revelation, and that it therefore contained the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so that all other alleged sources of knowledge were to be judged by it. If cosmology or biology contradicted the biblical Creation Story, then cosmology or biology was, to that extent, wrong. If biblical scholarship contradicted the historical narratives of the Bible, then biblical scholarship was to that extent wrong. If psychology contradicted biblical ideas concerning human sexuality, then psychology was to that extent wrong. And so forth. All this may also be expressed by saying that the Emancipation, in so far as Jews took advantage of the opportunities it offered, brought them face to face with modernity,. We said before that Orthodoxy and Reform, like all other movements in contemporary Judaism, are essentially responses to the Emancipation. We may now rephrase that and say that they are essentially responses to modernity. Reform is a positive response. It embraces modernity - perhaps too uncritically, as its opponents allege. Orthodoxy, on the other hand, is a negative response. Not altogether, of course. In so far as modernity does not challenge Jewish tradition, the Modern Orthodox at least are happy enough to go along with it. But in so far as it runs counter to Jewish tradition, it must be rejected. Then the motto applies that Judaism is not to be judged by modernity, but modernity is to be judged by Judaism. Precisely that was the stance of Samson Raphael Hirsch, the founder of Modern Orthodoxy. His motto, you may recall, was 1'13 111 m: mm, by which he meant ‘both Torah and European culture‘, but with the implicit proviso: as long as Derech Eretz doesn't get in the way of Torah. As for the Charedim, the ultra- Orthodox, their motto might be said to be ’Torah without Derech Eretz' - except in so far - - as Derech Eretz provides the technology, such as electric time-switches, which facilitates the observance of Torah. Tension and Conflict This then is the essence of the difference between Orthodoxy and Reform. It is rooted in a different appraisal of modernity. The difference could not but produce tension: a tension we have lived with for 200 years and shall have to go on living with in the foreseeable future. From time to time the tension has erupted into open conflict. Happily, the conflict has rarely taken the form of physical violence, though that too has happened, especially in Israel. But there has been a great deal of verbal violence - a war of words - and sometimes political oppression. That is to say, Orthodoxy has on occasion used its political power to maintain communal structures which disadvantage Progressive Judaism, and even appealed to Gentile governments to suppress it. In the Diaspora, the power of the Orthodox to harm Progressive Judaism is fairly slight; but in the State of Israeli it is considerable becaugg there the religious parties have always been a' ' 'eithéF'Edélitiorf partners oi‘ othérwise in position to blackmail the Government into allocating funds and enacting legislation hugely to the advantage of the Orthodox and the disadvantage of the Progressives. Furthermore, if the Orthodox in Israel were ever to gain sufficient power, it is hard to believe that they would not use it to promote legislation prohibiting nonOrthodox expressions of Judaism altogether.