"Jewish continuity"
This is a guest post by Jewschool commenter Amit.
(Thanks to BZ and Jonathan1 for encouragement, and to CoA for the posts that prompted this one).
Two threads have become particularly prominent at Jewschool lately – exceeding, on average, 100 comments each (the earlier one has about 150, the later about 70) – and both focus on the same issue. This is a hot-button issue for conventional Jewish organizations, which focus on “Jewish continuity” as a central pillar of their ideology.
“Jewish continuity” has created an interesting unholy alliance between militant Zionist groups, as well as the government of the state of Israel, and organized Orthodox groups and government agencies, such as Aish, Chabad-Lubavitch, and the Israeli chief rabbinate. Both sides of the alliance agree on several fundamental tenets:
(1) Jews are an ethnic group, and the central purpose/short term goal of this group is to perpetuate itself.
(2) Matrilineal descent is a necessary requirement for Judaism.
(3) There are no other requirements to be considered Jewish.
(4) People who marry members of other ethnic groups are “Lost”.
Any one of these tenets may be disputed (also – any connection between the aforementioned tenets and the aforementioned groups can also be disputed, but I’ll leave that work to the comment thread), and I would like to dispute them all, while trying to articulate my own (self -contradictory and complicated) views on the matter.
But first, to illustrate, a story:
I was “number two” in a four-man Jeep patrol in the West Bank last November, with an American-born nonobservant sergeant, a frum buddy; a resident of Kiryat Arba, who was born in India and traces his lineage to the “Sons of Manassah”; and a Russian driver. The Jeep contained three products of Zionist advocacy around the world who came to Israel to make their home, and none had come to Israel with the same picture in mind. Now, this is not a saccharine story about how “we’re all different, but we’re actually the same”. I had asked the Indian how his tribe had decided they were Jewish, and he gave me the standard “lost tribe of Israel” story: they had customs and traditions which were lost and/or distorted over time, they knew they had some connection with Jews but they didn’t know there were any left, they were discovered by Rabbi Eliyahu Avihail, converted happily, and were promptly transferred to the West Bank. The Russian was furious: first, how could you be Jewish without knowing you were Jewish, and second, how could you convert to Judaism without being Jewish first? The Indian said, “but we acted like Jews”, and the Russian said: “being Jewish is not how you act, it’s who you are”.
Now, both were brought here by the Jewish Agency. Both were hailed by the various members of the unholy alliance as the solution to the demographic woes of the Jewish people (and the Jewish community in Israel/the West Bank), but each thought the other had no right to be in the Jeep (not a big zechus to begin with, but that’s a different story). Each thought the other was mooching off the tax shekels he was paying and should be in India/Russia, and out of his hair. But I don’t think it’s self-contradictions and complications in the very essence of Judaism, which is the world’s most complicated phenomenon – in this case, it’s doublespeak. Israel, like God, presents itself in different faces to different people, and it doesn’t care what you pick, so long as you pick Israel. It can be the Ancestral Jewish homeland. It can be the cure to intermarriage. It can be frummie heaven. It can be the place where you can be a goy without having the goyim label you as a Jew. It’s whatever you want – just live here and join the IDF. Just to prove that that’s the only important part, if you insist that any and all of the above goals can be achieved without coming to Israel, then you’re an antisemite and a self-hating Jew.
So the first moral of the story is to keep Israel out of it, because Israel has its own interests at heart. The second moral of the story is that the Judaism, such as it is, of the Russian driver is quite depressing. Being Jewish for the sake of being Jewish is, well, silly. In the case of said driver it is also morally bankrupt, since it gave him a sense of entitlement to kill/displace/deport/bitch-slap Arabs on both sides of the green line.
So of course this is a bad thing. We can all agree that a Judaism with no sense of obligation and only a sense of entitlement is not a phenomenon worth perpetuating. This, however, is the variety of Judaism the Israeli establishment (the government and the Jewish Agency) is trying to sell, Judaism built on a birthright. A sort of connection to a country and a piece of real estate which is a conflation of sentiment and fear. “You have nowhere to go,” they tell you. “This is your real home,” they tell you.
Of course this is nonsense. Israelis are a people apart from Jews. We have our own national culture and our own language. More importantly, when we emigrate abroad, like any other national group, the children of our immigrants lose both culture and language and retain nothing. Just like the Irish, Polish, Greeks, and Italians that came to the United States, children of Israeli immigrants to the developed world have nothing more than sentiment and increasingly-distant family ties connecting them to their home country.
This may be the way of the world, but is not the way of our holy Torah. Silly debates of descent aside (since technical “Jewishness” is a technical issue), religious Jews agree that Judaism is an intellectual and spiritual movement with covenantal content. God is present in this covenant and it is binding. This is what makes us Jews – nothing more, nothing less. And suddenly, the questions of entitlement and Jewish continuity become moot. Why perpetuate a people no different than any other people? Why lend religious significance to a country that is the world’s third-largest arms dealer? Why is it important to God that rather than fill our lives with his holy Torah and do good to others, we serve in the West Bank (in flagrant contradiction of many, many, many commandments)? And so, in a nutshell, this is my view on “peoplehood” and “continuity”, and other such silly words: that they are vessels that can be filled with good things, but they can never be an end unto themselves. So long as there are those who are willing to shoulder the burden of covenant, there will be a covenant.
This is not a question of Halakha, but of values. Halakha is ambiguous on the prohibition of cohabitation with non-Jews. You can’t marry gentiles anyway, and sex with gentiles is probably less problematic than sex while menstruating, definitely less problematic than male homosexual sex. But while the Jewish establishment actively promotes intra-Jewish sex in flagrant disregard of the last two prohibitions, the fear of the Goyishe partner still burns in its hearts.
So yes, Jews are a people with a culture. So are Israelis. But this is not what I’m in the game for. I’m in the game for content. For meaning. Anyone can have an army and an occupation, but our mission is to be a “Kingdom of Priests and a holy nation”. For this we need neither a territory or a state or silly debates on who gets to be Jewish – we need committed individuals and families and communities, learners of Torah and observers of Mitzvot, in any and all ways they choose to engage with them. The technical problems will learn how to solve themselves.
I enjoyed reading this post very much. It was very insightful even though I disagree with the conclusion.
I have a few points to make:
Zionism was created from the perception that no matter how righteous you are (either defined by observancy of Torah or just plain ol’ good deed), you will not receive the rewards promised by the covenant. That’s why many early Zionist leaders were secular. Why study Torah and follow mitzvot when the world punishes you not because of what you do, but because of who you are – a Jew. That was definelty the case during the first half of the 20th century and centuries before that. Israel is a place where you can defend your country and as yourself as a Jew. As a people, Jews following Zionism had to focus on security and construction of a new society which can only occur by having their own state, Israel. A “Kingdom of Priests and a holy nation” is not something we can find a model for to follow suit.
But now, since many Jews live in the US and are prominent members of that society which is safe and free, many Jews no longer perceive the world as punishing you just because of who you are – a Jew. In the US, you are rewarded for the great things that you do (fame, wealth, and power) and only punished when commit a crime or something of that nature. American values became American Jewry’s values, that hard work and education pays off. Religion and its traditions are not in that equation.
The perception of the Zionist Israeli is different than the perception of the American Jew. While both are relatively secular compared to previous generations, they are so for different reasons. Like I said before, religion has no effect on an American’s success and the opprotunities afforded to him or her. In Israel, you will always be Jewish (unless you are Arab)because in the Middle East, power and loyalty is divided by clans/tribes/religious denominations. Same with the Old Europe from which the early builders of the state first came from (Russia/Nazi Germany/ etc.). In Israel, you have no choice but to defend yourself as a Jew because there is no place for you anywhere else.
In conclusion, the majority in the Jewish societies of Israel and the US find no reason to strive for the super righteousness defined in Tanakh and other Jewish texts because the covenant does not exist, except as a mental construct held by self-sacrificers (I dont’ mean it in a negative way). Humans make descisions based a risk/reward formula. A moral life is a good ideal, but today’s people don’t see religion as the path to get it nor be successful.
You can’t marry gentiles anyway, and sex with gentiles is probably less problematic than sex while menstruating, definitely less problematic than male homosexual sex. But while the Jewish establishment actively promotes intra-Jewish sex in flagrant disregard of the last two prohibitions, the fear of the Goyishe partner still burns in its hearts.
I’m with you up until this point. Putting aside the question of what precisely halachah does and doesn’t prohibit, I haven’t seen any evidence of the “continuity” wing of the Jewish establishment actively promoting intra-Jewish same-sex sex. Even though same-sex relationships can in fact lead to more Jewish babies (since there is more than one way to become a parent), the “continuity” folks either don’t seem to be aware of this or it is overshadowed by their homophobia. But if you have data points to contradict this, I’d be interested to hear them.
I haven’t seen any evidence of the “continuity” wing of the Jewish establishment actively promoting intra-Jewish same-sex sex.
But certainly Amit’s point is valid when it comes to sex while menstruating. I’ve made that point before with regard to Yeshivah of Flatbush reunion politics regarding gay alums and their partners: Too many people make halachic arguments and take halachic stands to advance their vision of ideal Jewish community, while entirely ignoring related halacha that doesn’t fit in with the point they’re trying to make. If YoF cared as much about taharat hamishpachah as about homosexuality, it would be quite a different reunion entirely. And while the continuity folks do tend to ignore gay folks entirely in their discussions (which I suppose is margincally better than being actively, vocally homophobic), any halacha-based arguments they make about intermarriage still seem as specious as YoF’s about same-sex partners.
Amit, thanks for a great post!
Obviously, the far right doesn’t embrace or encourage same-sex relationships. But I’m sure many (grand)parents/organizations are discouraged by children “marrying out” and the same (grand)parents/organizations are happier with gay kids than with “non-Jewish” grandchildren.
This is a great post.
When I decided to visit Israel for the first time 15 years ago, I had planned to travel around Israel, maybe hop over to Europe for a while. But when I actually arrived, I don’t know what happened, I just knew that I was going to live here. Within one week of arriving in Israel the first time, i was at the Ministry of Interior “making aliyah”. I never was religious, I had studied for Bar Mitzvah, went to a Jewish summer camp, Jewish after school studies- all cornerstones to a “good american Jewish boy”. I do not know what connected me to Israel but I really and truly felt (as I do today) that I need to be here. I did not have any scarring anti-semitic experiences in my childhood, only ignorance at its finest. You may argue that if i had landed in Croatia on that same day I may have felt the same thing, but I did not feel that I was running away from something in the US. I never thought that I would live anywhere else but the US.. I mean, who leaves America? Come on.
My point is, that I think that my coming to live and make a family in Israel(and fight in the IDF and Police) was my way of expressing my Judaism, albeit possibly in self-serving terms. I feel that my life is better here than it “would have” been in the US or anywhere else for that matter.
See you in November.
-The American-born nonobservant sergeant
Amit, well done. A few points… 1) Culture (which you oppose to religious covenant) is not content-less. Even if we understand particular cultural categories to be historically produced (which is the approach I urge you to take), those categories mean something to someone. What they mean, and what their meaning implies for our communities or our politics is of course up for debate. 2) When Jews and other come to American they assimilate and “retain nothing”? American Jewish culture may be novel, hybridized, and symbolic (alaGans) it is not eviscerated.
I see how in rejecting a rather shallow nationalist conception of Jewish identity you might want to turn and embrace the religious (as many have done historically, see Reform Anti-Zionists for one example, or orthodox Anti-Zionists for another). I think it is more fruitful to think Jewish culture as some (vaguely defined) space in a broader cultural field that contains the totality of human conceptual mappings. While I am all for “content” I think it is helpful for us to see that content as constantly in flux and thus in need of evaluation by some other standard (for me its a certain liberal/radical moral standard), rather than as fixed religious or national content. I know I’m not being as clear as usual here. Once the comments heat up I’ll give it another try.
Culture is cosmetic! Identity is artifice!
Amit,
This post was a breath of fresh air. I loved the story, the characters, and your drush on it. I am just so happy to see a post which actually speaks of the covenant. By the way, side point, what covenant is that exactly? I’m curious which and if any you where referring to specifically? The one where Abraham is promised the land of Cannan to his ancestors? Or the covenant where we are promised the land if we uphold the mitzvot? or the rededication of that covenant and the land by Ezra? or which covenant where you speaking of which does not have the good and holy land sitting like a white elephant in our landless, people-less religion. I was once at an Israel day parade, and had a conversation with a Naturi Karta who was protesting the parade. He shared this exact line of reasoning and shared your view on God, Jews, and Israel down to a tee, including each of your points like having sex with a “shiksa”, nation of priests, halakha, and peoplehood. So I was glad to see the Naturi karta’s “weltanschauung” represented in such a lucid, intelligent, and liberal manner. As an anti-nationalist I find the ideas appealing but I would like to know under which carpet have you swept the land underneath?
Amit, while I appreciate you writing some of your thoughts, I still don’t see clarity in your thinking. It probably serves little purpose to start a flame war with you over factual inaccuracies, so let’s just dive into the heart of the matter:
our mission is to be a “Kingdom of Priests and a holy nation”. For this we need neither a territory or a state or silly debates on who gets to be Jewish
Yet, both of those issues are subjects of the Halakha that infuses our covenant with the depth and purpose you say you want. A large portion of the mitzvos – a big fat chunk of our covenant with G-d – revolve around the land (big L). Many of the writings of the prophets revolve around the Jewish people’s return to our land. I’m not making a case for modern political Zionism; I’m challenging your words literally.
Further, the definition of who is a Jew, and who a Jew is allowed to marry, are also quite settled points of Halakha. To dismiss them so cavalierly – “The technical problems will learn how to solve themselves.”; It’s simply confusing to me how a serious person can make such a statement. These things don’t just “solve themselves”. They are worked out, and have been worked out.
“I want chicken soup”, you say, “but it better not be chicken broth.” At least that’s what I’m hearing.
I think you made some interesting points here, but they were too many, too dispersed, and again, unfocused. Please clarify them.
If I may suggest, I don’t think you should respond to me in the comments. Write and submit another thoughtful article that clarifies your thought process on these issues.
Halakha is never settled. The very nature of the word is that it’s constantly moving. What might feel settled for one generation may be revisited by the next.
What might feel settled for one generation may be revisited by the next.
I don’t know what you mean by “feel” or “revisited”. The sentiment you express, that “the very nature of the word [I assume you didn’t mean to write “world”] is that it’s constantly moving”, I’ll challenge. The Torah does not change, nor move, nor evolve. The Torah does not adapt to the times; we adapt to the Torah. This is why we still wear tefillin and tzitzis, keep Shabbos, keep kashrus, and fulfill other mitzvos which make no logical sense, despite how we feel about them – because the Torah, our written covenant with G-d, said so.
It’s an argument we’ve had before, dlevy, and I think I have an understanding of where you stand, though it could always be expanded upon. I don’t have a good understanding of several key points made by Amit, as I wrote earlier, and I don’t wish to suck him into a tit for tat in the comments, when he could really elaborate, eloquently and concisely, in a new post (should you choose to grant him the opportunity).
Mika,
Your last argument doesn’t explain the many different ways to wrap tefillin, to tie tzitzit (let alone tehelet) kitniyot, what constitutes keeping Shabbos, as well as a myriad of mitzvot you conveniently leave out.
I would think your position would be that we really can’t even practice the religion until we rebuild the Temple. Or was that not an innovation too?
Your last argument doesn’t explain the many different ways to wrap tefillin, to tie tzitzit (let alone tehelet) kitniyot, what constitutes keeping Shabbos, as well as a myriad of mitzvot you conveniently leave out.
You feel that I should have pre-emptively addressed these and any other arguments any Jewschooler could come up with? Again, we’ve had these discussions in the past. Different minhagim tap into different spiritual elements, but they all fulfill the mitzvah. Yes, there are different ways of wrapping tefillin, even different tefillin, but they are all made of cow leather, not paper pulp, and wrapped on our arm and the head, not on our feet. The same goes for everything else you brought up. You’re talking about variations within halakha and the narrowly defined scope of Rabbic authority. In all this time, no one moved Shabbat to Wednesday, or “innovated” eating pork.
And what happens to those who “innovate”? We see examples of this with the Sadduccees, who rejected the Oral Torah as codified in the Mishna and Talmud, and thus ate their shabbos meals blind in the dark. We “innovated” a shabbos food just to spite them and forever demonstrate our commitment to the Oral Law – cholent. Now THAT’S innovation!
I would think your position would be that we really can’t even practice the religion until we rebuild the Temple. Or was that not an innovation too?
The Jews responded to the destruction of the Temple by codifying observance and divine service, not casting off the parts they felt weren’t “with the times”. Note that the mitzvot of Temple service remain, we simply cannot perform them, just as one whose arms are cut off (G-d forbid!) is exempt from wearing the arm tefillin.
So again, we’ve had these conversations before, and I don’t mind having them again. What I would like, however, is for Amit to clarify his beliefs, as I expressed earlier.
And what happens to those who “innovate”? We see examples of this with the Sadduccees, who rejected the Oral Torah as codified in the Mishna and Talmud, and thus ate their shabbos meals blind in the dark.
First of all, that was the Karaites. Second of all, what about the Orthodox Jews, who rejected the Oral Torah that men and women are equal?
Mika, when God enjoined us to conquer the land, he did not tell us to become weapons dealers in the process. And puh-lease, you’re going to be a bigger tzaddik than 30 generations of Jews who thought the “Land” was a nice place to send money to but not live in?
The Torah does not adapt to the times; we adapt to the Torah
Yeah, when (god forbid) you next visit a shiva home, tell me how everyone covered their heads and turned their beds upside down. Also, explain how that “shin” got on the side of your tefillin when it wasn’t there 2000 years ago at Qumran. Perhaps at the same time you could tell me what you’re doing heating your mikvaot (in flagrant violation of rabbinic law) or demanding that converts study for a year (!) before they convert, living as Jews the whole time (totally forbidden for gentiles to keep shabbat). And don’t get me started about how women learn Torah and can work outside the home.
After that, tell me how nothing adapts to anything.
BZ,
“First of all, that was the Karaites.”
The sadducees rejected the oral torah. I find it hard to believe any one would except such a thing at all. Unless there truly was an oral torah implicit and given with the written one and therefore no one ever had a chance to accept and deny it. Until the hellenists provided every reason and coercion to do so.
Amit,
Again, how does the land flowing with milk and honey fit in to your weltanschauung?
and what covenant are you speaking about specifically? I would like to read it.
The sadducees rejected the oral torah.
The sadducees rejected the pharisees. The Mishna and Talmud (and the very concept of “Oral Torah”) are later than both. Get your history straight.
Saki, don’t be silly.
Mika, the land of milk and honey is part of the messianic age which has not yet come. Also, ask Hatam Soferet and she will tell you our sifrei Torah are nothing more than a mere replica. A placebo, if you will.
Thanks Amit for letting me know when the Mishnah was written. Where would I be without you? The sadducees rejected the non literal reading of the laws of Moses and any extra-textual teachings which relied on the oral tradition instead of the written word. But even that was not motivated by their desire to jeep the Torah in it’s prestine and purest form, but rather as a way of stripping down the Torah to it’s most threadbare form on order so that it should not conflict with their adoption and assimilation of hellenism. Pharasees where practicing normative Judaism at the time and the Sadducees rejected that normative Judaism. It’s implied in the Gemara and Josephus – so iwould like to know what history you are reading?
Amit,
I have no idea what your vague messianic claims mean? Nor what you mean by placebo?
“Mika,” are you unfamiliar with the etymology of the word halakha? Same root as la-lekhet or lekh l’kha – in other words, “walking” or “going.” Halakha can be neither stationary nor stagnant. Halakha is also not a synonym for mitzvot.
Saki, you’re not familiar with new studies in Saducee and Qumranic Halakha. See E. Regev, The Halakha of the Saducees, Jerusalem 2005; Y. Zussman, “The Study of Halakha and the Scrolls of the Judean Desert”, Tarbiz 1990. Just for starters, of course.
There is no evidence (other than Josephus, who is a problematic source) that the Saducees were in it for the Hellenization. And even if they were – their halakha was also practiced by the uber-frummies at Qumran.
There was no such thing as “normative Judaism”. Probably still isn’t.
Mika – I mean that when God exiles you from a place, you don’t go back alone and say God sent you. The biblical commandments (Such as they are – you can’t ignore 1000 years of halakha that say most are moot) are not applicable to us in the state of exile.
Don’t think for a second that Pharasaic Judaism wasn’t influenced by Hellenism. The structure of the Talmud itself betrays influence of Greek philosophy. See, this is the problem. No one wants to admit the Judaism has borrowed from outsiders because of the whole “derech hagoyim” taboo. But we have. Kaballah is basically (to oversimplify the relationship) Judaized Neoplatonism/Neopythagoreanism.
@shmuel – spot on. THe whole “Hellenizers” business was oversimplified and overamplified by (you guessed it) Zionist historians, who thought everything was about nationality.
We’re all Hellenists in one way or another.
“We’re all Hellenists in one way or another.”
And Babylonians!
Amit, so will you write a follow up as I requested here?
Halakha can be neither stationary nor stagnant.
One of the few serious comments since my mine. “dlevy” (?), we’re in agreement, but those words mean different things to us.
Halakha is also not a synonym for mitzvot.
I’m not sure what you mean by this. Learning halacha is a mitzvah, and establishing courts of law (based on halacha) is a mitzvah. Do we want to get into textual wordplay or stay with concepts? It seems that you don’t like halacha, but you like mitzvos. To separate mitzvos from halacha is like studying physics while rejecting math. It sounds like a more elegant path, but then you start flunking your class. Feel free to expand on your thought process.
We’re all Hellenists in one way or another.
We’re Jews. Some of us are mentally trapped in the stagnant past and still think we’re Hellenists.
The whole “Hellenizers” business was oversimplified and overamplified by (you guessed it) Zionist historians.
Riiiight, it’s those “Zionists” at it again. And Matisyahu is just a hassidic regae singer. *Eyeroll*
Kaballah is basically… Judaized Neoplatonism/Neopythagoreanism.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahah!!!!!! Wow, you’re off.
I don’t see the use in have a conversation with people who just randomly start making up history. What’s next? Martin Luther King was a Palestinian? We’re the product of alien colonization? Margaret Thatcher was a hermaphrodite? You people are just silly.
Every time I start to talk about halakha as an evolving process, you counter with some argument about how the mitzvot of guarding and remembering Shabbat haven’t changed even if electricity didn’t exist in the time of the Torah. The mitzvot at hand may be the observance of Shabbat, and those mitzvot may not have changed, but the halakhot about how one may or may not use electricity on Shabbat are absolutely innovations, and are not settled for our generation.
I don’t know enough about physics and math to continue with the metaphor you introduced (maybe BZ will help me out here), but I believe that I can make similar argument using music. We may both study music, but if you only listen to classical music and I only listen to atonal modernist music and someone else only listens to rock and roll, they might all have the same antecedents but each is a very different approach to discipline. That doesn’t make one better than the other.
dlevy, like you, I use examples to make the broader argument. Let’s not get frustrated with one another.
I see that we’re coming at this from different perspectives, to the extent that we don’t even agree on the terminology. For example, when you bring up the use of electricity on Shabbos, I don’t consider the extension and derivation of the laws of Shabbos that deal with electricity to be an “innovation”, but an extension of legal precedent, and within Rabbinical judicial authority.
In that sense, I see where you’re coming from. New situations arise that require halachic rulings to provide clarity. For example, I’m very interested in medical halacha, in which there is quite a lot of activity right now (a lot of interesting things are happening there, someone should do a post about it). I’m not disputing that. I don’t consider the derivation of existing law to encompass new circumstances innovation, however. To me, “innovation” means adding or subtracting from the Torah and its precepts.
Take the case of electricity on Shabbos, which you brought up. Obviously there was no electricity 2000 years ago. Does that mean the Torah has nothing to say about using electricity on Shabbos? If you believe that the Torah is a living covenant, a blueprint for creation, the infinite wisdom of our creator, and that our role as Jews is to spread the light of Torah, to infuse the material with the spiritual, then it’s obvious the Torah not only has something to say about electricity on Shabbos, but offers us a path to do things in a way that is spiritually in tune with the wishes of our creator.
Where does it say electricity in Torah? Look for it, it’s not there, some might say. The Torah is a finite amount of letters and words, it’s true. Within those letters and those words is an infinitely compressed amount of knowledge. That may have seemed a radical concept two hundred years ago, but even with our limited knowledge of DNA today, we should know better than to make light of compressed and cryptic data whose meaning we might one day unravel.
This is what the last three thousand years of Jewish learning and Jewish law have been, the unpacking, unraveling and decrypting the infinite knowledge contained in the Torah. Would Moses have known what to do with electricity on Shabbos? I don’t know. What I do know, is that after three thousand years of scholarship, tackling electricity on Shabbos was not beyond the poskim of the previous generation, who made and codified their rulings. One can purchase books of modern halacha, and examine the reasoning that led to any given decision.
Do situations come up that still need clarity? Of course. I just have a difficult time thinking about this process of continual refinement of the law to encompass every conceivable complexity as “innovation”. For the purposes of daily living, the halacha has been decided. If you need a clarification for a specific, unique situation, call a poskin, as many people do.
If, on the other hand, you treat the Torah as a tired, yellowed, outdated microbiology textbook from the 1930s, I can see why some believe it is not applicable to modern immunology.
There is an established mechanism for deriving halacha. Maybe we have a disconnect here as well. Are you familiar with the basis of Rabbinic authority to derive and declare halacha, and the limits on their authority? Maybe that’s something we should talk about.
I don’t disagree with anything you wrote in your last comment. (Well, I don’t believe that the Torah is the infinite wisdom of the creator, but I certainly accept that others do view it that way, and I can work within that framework for the sake of this discussion.) However, you do realize that there are disagreements among poskim, right? (Even among Orthodox poskim.) When new situations arise that require the halakhic process to make a ruling, different authorities come up with different rulings. That’s part of what makes Jewish law interesting. Sometimes, over time, one view takes precedence over others – that’s why turkey is considered a kosher bird and poultry is considered fleishig and not pareve. But for one particular view to take such precedence, that requires time and consensus (of both rabbis and those practicing halakhic Judaism).
Actually, it strikes me that the acceptance of turkey as a kosher bird is an interesting example, because while most halakhot that have evolved over time trend towards becoming more strict (hence chicken stopped being pareve, or using the same dishwasher for fleishig and milchig became taboo… not sure why I’m only coming up with food-related examples)… But the widespread acceptance of eating turkey is the more liberal answer to the original question. (ie, Since the Torah lists all kosher birds, and turkey isn’t listed, how do we know it’s kosher?)
In our generation, we see the halakhic definition of who is a Jew and whom a Jew can marry is no longer settled, from many directions. On the one hand, we have some rabbis arguing for patrilineal descent. On another hand, we have some rabbis arguing that conversions-at-birth aren’t valid. Others argue that conversions without strict 100% adherence to one particular kind of halakha aren’t valid. We have some rabbis claiming they can undo conversions. So to say that the halakha of who-is-a-Jew is settled is simply incorrect.
(And the reason I enclosed “Mika” in quotes is because you have been posting under different names. You’re welcome to call me David or dlevy. If you’re going to stick with Mika, I’ll respect that, but if you’re going to juggle several different names, I’m not comfortable playing that game.)
if you’re going to juggle several different names, I’m not comfortable playing that game
You know exactly why I am forced to do so, and there’s no sinister game behind it, at least on my end. If you don’t know, I’ll be happy to explain the situation.
Amit,
“you’re not familiar with new studies in Saducee and Qumranic Halakha. See E. Regev, The Halakha of the Saducees, Jerusalem 2005; Y. Zussman, “The Study of Halakha and the Scrolls of the Judean Desert”, Tarbiz 1990. Just for starters, of course.”
no, I am not. Thank you, for the Rosh Hashanah gift.
Shmuel,
“Kaballah is basically (to oversimplify the relationship) Judaized Neoplatonism/Neopythagoreanism.”
If you study esoteric and mystical traditions you find great synchronicity between them. This is reflective of a core spiritual experience or mystic truth, and not that the other tradition ripped you off. By definition esoteric mysteries are not easily defined and the historians who tried categorize these mysteries did them a great disservice, and often that was the underlying agenda as well.
@Mika said, You know exactly why I am forced to do so, and there’s no sinister game behind it, at least on my end. If you don’t know, I’ll be happy to explain the situation.
I don’t know. Why do you?
Mika, I second TWJ’s question.
Amit, this is great. I’m not going to inject myself into the middle of the discussion, but you’ve made some terrific points, and I’m really glad that you were able to take the discussions that occurred in the comment threads and turn them into something this self-sufficient. Your thoughtfulness and eagerness to discuss is admirable, and makes me really glad that I write here.
Keep up the excellent work, y’all, and good yontif.
There’s a whole doctrine of abrogation in the Talmud, as described in the jewish encyclopedia (search for abrogation.)
One of *many*: “The Sanhedring of Jabneh, permitted an Ammonite to enter the Jewish congregation, thus abrogating Deut xxiii. 4.” Ammonite was below gay at the time (is a gay Jew more precious than an Ammonite?), so abrogating on homi sex is stone throw’s away.
That’s just shoddy research.
(1) The prohibition against Gay sex is much stronger than allowing for marriage to an ammonite.
(2) This has nothing to do with the talmudic doctrine of Abrogation.
Google will not help for everything.
TWJ, dlevy, rennaisanceboy, I’d love to tell you, but someone keeps deleting my posts. If that doesn’t answer your question, I don’t know what does.
@Mika, As you have multiple aliases, your comments are held for moderation as with all new commenters. But no one is deleting your comments.