Rabbi Pruzansky's Blog

           I was enjoying the beauty of St. Moritz several weeks ago when informed that another breach of the Mesorah had occurred under ostensibly Orthodox auspices: a woman as prayer leader in the synagogue. G-d’s world is pristine and picturesque; man’s world is convoluted and clouded. My first reaction was that I do not receive the amud as often as I wish I did, and now I have to compete with women ? My second reaction was the eerie sensation that I had seen this movie once before. More on that shortly.

     A fine young man of my acquaintance learning in Israel asked me my thoughts on the matter. I asked his, as well, and especially whether it was a topic of conversation among his classmates in yeshiva. He answered, tellingly, “no. No one here considers him (the innovating Rabbi) Orthodox, so what is there to talk about ?” Well, such weighty matters are certainly not decided by impetuous youth, but what of it ? How far can a person or a group journey over the borders of traditional Orthodoxy until it becomes clear that they have left the Torah world entirely ?

     My eerie response was generated by recollections of the origins of the Conservative movement, which is quite instructive here. (For lack of a better term – the new group can’t be called Neo-Conservatives, with all due respect to Norman Podhoretz and the late Irving Kristol – so perhaps they should be called “Neo-ModOs” or just “Nehardaleans.”) What was most striking – even uncanny – is that this new movement is in one sense the Conservatives in reverse, and on steroids. In the 1970’s, the Conservative movement first permitted women to be counted in the minyan, then allowed women to serve as chazzanot, and only after that began to ordain female clergy. The whole process took ten years. The Nehardaleans began with ordaining women as clergy, now have allowed cantorettes, and will soon undoubtedly find some mechanism by which women can be counted in the minyan (perhaps, in line with the doctrines of the so-called “Partnership minyanim,” that will pray only in the presence of ten men and ten women, or something of the sort). The first two deviations – or mimicries – took just a few months. Strange – same trajectory, only in reverse. It is hard to maintain that the only difference between the deviations of the Conservatives and of the Neo-ModOs is that the latter are more … what, clever in their uses of tradition, better fence-straddlers or nit-pickers, better politicians and PR men ?

      The nascent Conservative Jewish movement also claimed fidelity to halacha (they still do so, with declining, perhaps even vanished, credibility). They were crafty in marshaling sources, or partial sources, to defend their deviations – embracing minority opinions as authoritative, employing creative interpretations theretofore unknown of ancient texts – some of which, according to them, meant the exact opposite of what several millennia of Jewish scholars understood them to mean. In some cases, they arrogated to themselves the right just to abrogate a biblical prohibition deemed irrelevant by modernity. And they also wrote “Responsa” detailing their assertions, much of it sophistry that could easily impress an abysmally ignorant laity.

      The early Conservatives also claimed the presence in their midst of distinguished Rabbis, some of whom were educated in the venerated yeshivot of pre-holocaust Europe. They claimed the existence of “authorities on whom they could rely” as they adjusted the Torah and Jewish law to modern times and mores, and commenced the process of winnowing down the essentials of Jewish practice, so that, today, most Conservative Jews are indistinguishable in their Jewish commitment – Shabbat, Kashrut, Taharat Hamishpacha, Talmud Torah, etc. – from our Reform Jewish brethren. (That is to say, their observance is quite shaky, and the recent intermarriage of a self-described “proud Conservative Jew,” adorned in talit and kippa – on Shabbat – to Chelsea Clinton, speaks for itself. The difference in intermarriage rates between Reform and Conservative Jews is negligible.)

      Just as fascinating, the early Conservative movement boasted a number of cross-over figures. Bear in mind that, around 1900, Orthodoxy was moribund in America, and so the Conservative movement began as a reaction not against tradition but against the anti-Torah excesses of the Reformers (especially the infamous treif banquet celebrating the ordination of the first batch of American Reform rabbis). Rabbis Sabato Morais and Henry Pereira Mendes were among the founders of the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1886, and both were Orthodox Rabbis, pulpit rabbis at that. Rabbi Mendes, in fact, served as the first president of the newly formed Orthodox Union (OU) in 1897 – at the same time he served as president of JTS. Talk about wearing two hats ! Clearly, then, we are talking about different people in a different time. The differences were not at all personal, but rather that the early Conservatives fit neatly within an Orthodox framework. When they soon deviated, the schism erupted, and the OU soon severed ties with the Conservatives over their non-Torah, scientific methodology of study and psak. Rabbi Mendes left JTS and himself later taught at RIETS.

      Are we witnessing the same naissance today ? The early Conservatives always insisted they adhered to tradition, which required modernization so as not to become stagnant and unresponsive to their constituents.

      Well, there are neo-ModOs today who also write erudite (but often sophistic) responsa in the same style (and with many of the same conclusions) as the Conservatives. They are also adept at finding ways to permit long-established prohibitions, sometimes with the caveat that “this is l’halacha but not l’maaseh,” for polemical but not practical purposes. Other times they will dangle the leniency before their public that – like Western man generally – is occasionally dismissive, if not outright contemptuous, of authority with which it disagrees, and so will be all-too-willing to adopt the proffered leniency as its own. The neo-ModOs also refer to their “authorities,” however obscure some of them are, and even if some of them dwell in an ivory tower far from the practicalities of Rabbinic life today and are therefore oblivious to the long-term effects of their “innovations.” Like the Conservatives, the neo-ModOs disregard notions of majority rule, faithfulness to minhag Yisrael, or a Mesorah recognizable to the overwhelming majority of Torah Jews. They, like the Conservatives, have corrupted the methodology of psak, reaching their conclusion and then seeking whatever sources they can muster by way of rationalization – in effect, shooting an arrow at a blank target and then drawing a bull’s-eye around it. Neat trick, if anyone is still fooled by it.

     Add these distortions to a Torah teacher here in Israel who is now urging – for the sake of “saving” Judaism – that people be given the right to adopt any opinion recorded in the Gemara if it will make their lives easier (in effect, attempting to undo 2000 years of scholarship and development), and we have the real danger that Torah itself will become a balagan, a free-for-all that means something to everyone but nothing that is really eternal or timeless, or divine in origin.

     The excesses of the Conservative movement in the 1980’s led to the founding of the Union for Traditional Judaism, a group that has fallen on hard times as positions have become even more polarized. UTJ defied an easy description; if the Conservatives believe that halacha evolves to accommodate the realities of modern life, UTJ must believe that halacha evolves, but …not that much ? Well, then, how much is too much, or too little, and who decides – and what do the Nehardaleans believe – that halacha always evolves to accommodate the realities of modern life – but, then again, how much ?

    Case in point: which movement stated the following ? “Even if we have the position of but one against the mainstream, if that position is preserved is that not a part of the halakhic process? Can we not lean on it for support if necessary? The necessity to go against the mainstream and depend on a minority view is perhaps created today because of the changing role of women in our society… The right to institute takanot is vested in the authorities of each age when they see the need to correct an injustice or to improve the religious and ethical life of the community. It was felt that since we have given a greater role to women in synagogue life and education, and since we wish women to attend synagogue services, that it was appropriate now to recognize the equality of men and women in regard to minyan.”

      Indeed, it was the Conservatives in a 2002 “responsum” discussing women counting in a minyan – but the problem is that one would not have been surprised to see such language used in a UTJ or Neo-ModO “responsum” either.

       Far be it for me to state unequivocally that the Neo-Modos are outside the pale of Orthodoxy, although they are certainly headed in that direction. The similarities in methodology and temperament of the Nehardaleans and the early Conservatives are uncanny. At a certain point, what walks, talks and quacks like a duck is a duck, all protestations to the contrary notwithstanding. But, like Rabbis Morais and Mendes, there is always room to return, to clarify, to distinguish, and to disassociate from policies and practices that most of Torah Judaism rejects unequivocally. Clearly, there are some – like the fine young man and his colleagues referenced above – who believe the line has already been crossed and the road back unmarked. It is unlikely that the mainstream Orthodox organizations will sit by idly and let this pass, and they should not.

       In line with Rav Kook’s dictum that one should seek to praise even one’s ideological adversaries, it is important to reiterate that the reluctance in many circles to absolutely renounce the Nehardaleans is the residual respect many (myself included) feel for their leader, a paragon of Ahavat Yisrael. Certainly, on some level, he deserves credit for keeping the issue of discontented women on the public agenda, even if the methods he uses to assuage them are problematic and border on the heretical. Perhaps, he, in his sensitivity, was well-positioned to tell them, pleasantly, even tearfully, “no,” when “no” was the appropriate answer. But he did not.

       Are we present at the creation of another heterodox movement ? Will another branch of Jews detach itself from the Tree of Life, and go the way of those other groups ? Or will someone within the movement gain the perspective of the observer, and perceive these acts in aggregate and in part as defiance of the Mesorah – and halt the wagon as it speeds to the precipice ? The great poskim, Rabbis and leaders of our generation will surely weigh in, and the collective wisdom of Klal Yisrael, will, as always, determine intuitively what is inside or outside the Mesorah.

       That will be the guidance that preserves the Mesorah for another generation against another modern onslaught, one that was both tragic and unnecessary.

                                                          THE MOSQUE

     Why in the world would Muslims want to build a mosque just two football fields from Ground Zero on the ruins of a building destroyed by Muslims ? And why in the world would such enlightened souls as Mike Bloomberg, the City Planning commission and others be so eager to grant their wish ?

       Both questions are relatively easy to answer, not that the answers are necessarily persuasive. It is the epitome of “tolerance,” in circles where tolerance is a virtue prized over all others, to embrace your enemy. Christians even deem it noble to forgive one’s enemy even if forgiveness is not sought, even offering as many cheeks  to be struck as one person can muster. America values freedom of religion, and, notwithstanding that there are 100 other mosques is New York City, no Muslim population to speak of in that precinct, and no historical Muslim presence there (except the remains of the Muslim-Arab terrorists of September 11, 2001), once the flag of “encroaching on freedom of religion” is raised, there is no lowering it. It’s a liberal feel-good moment, allowing practitioners to bask in the glow of their own self-righteousness, and condescend to those who possess such disreputable traits such as national pride, historical memory, courage and fortitude.

     One wonders why no one ever thought of building a Shinto shrine at Pearl Harbor, as part of the healing process that following World War II. Surely Japanese militarism was a corruption of the Shinto faith, but having visited Pearl Harbor and stood on the still-listing battleship Arizona – with its 1800 dead sailors buried underneath at sea – I surmise that a Japanese presence at the scene would be the height of inappropriateness. And one wonders further – and other have noted as well – about the hullabaloo that accompanied the brief presence of a Catholic convent on the grounds of Auschwitz, built so a group of nuns could pray for the souls of the victims there. Having also seen that building myself, I can testify that it was all but unnoticeable, constructed in a far corner of Auschwitz and outside the grounds of the camp itself, closer to the town and miles from the well-known entrance to that hideous place. No visitor would see it unless he went looking for it – but its mere presence, and the symbolism, and obvious insensitivity, were enough to convince Pope John Paul II to induce the nuns to move elsewhere. And they did, reluctantly.

      It is hard to escape the conclusion that the desire to build this building in that place is part of the effective (to date) Muslim propaganda effort that is demoralizing and emasculating the Western world. An obvious part of that effort has been their expressed fear of “revenge attacks” against Muslim-Americans after every Muslim terrorist attack on Americans, which changes the topic and pre-empts any real, substantive discussion as to the nature of the Muslim personality that is so prone to violence and does not mind dying in the process of killing others – and even though no such revenge attack has ever taken place after any of the Muslim outrages of the last two decades. Another part of that drive is the mandated reiteration of the essential “peaceful nature of Islam,” which is not exactly born out by history – ancient or modern – followed by the ritualistic proclamation that the “overwhelming majority of Muslims are peaceful,” which, even if true (and I have no empirical evidence one way or the other), is small comfort as it still leaves an awful lot of Muslims capable of mischief in a world that contains more than a billion Muslims. Those assertions also chill any real analysis as to how this threat can be combated. There is currently a formal legislative process underway in world organizations to make “statements offensive to Islam” – and only against Islam – the equivalent of hate crimes. They, of course, reserve the right – under the Western concept of freedom of speech – to ridicule, mock and demean Judaism, Christianity and other religions, but deny the same “freedom of speech” to Danish cartoonists and other Dutch writers. Where have you gone, Salman Rushdie ?

      Add to this genre the cleverness in fostering terror by wrapping themselves in the mantle of Western values and arguing against “racial profiling,” “interference in their freedom of worship,” and for the embrace of “live and let live” (not at all a Muslim value), the pleas for “humanitarian assistance” for terror enablers (such as in Gaza), and, of course, the sanctification of “civilian life” (even though Muslims kill Jewish and Western civilian with abandon, and even though a suicide bomber is technically a civilian up to the moment he ignites himself.) Those are shrewd tactics, and they really work. They work so well that there are people – among them here, the supporters of the downtown mosque – who would have us believe that Muslims are the first and primary victims of Muslim terror, and so it is their community that requires outreach, sensitivity and compassion.

     Supporters point as well to the fact that this mosque is allegedly under the sponsorship of Sufi Muslims (aka “good Muslims”), the mystical branch of Islam. But check the money trail, and perhaps another story emerges. Undoubtedly, Muslims worldwide will perceive this mosque as a sign of conquest, and be emboldened further in declaring that the presence of a mosque on such a hallowed and tragic site is “proof” that – as is widely believed across the Islamic world – that Jews, not Muslims, committed the heinous crimes of 9/11. And once consecrated as a Muslim holy place, they will certainly set about revising the history of that site, in the same way that Muslims have attempted in the last decade to deny and erase the Jewish historical presence on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

     There is a cloying naïveté to the claims of the supporters of the mosque that is the hallmark of what the late Italian writer Oriana Fallacci used to call “Goodists.” Goodists (a term made famous by the Wall Street Journal’s unparalleled columnist Bret Stephens http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704429304574467080047317314.html) are people who like to be seen as good, who think all conflict arises from simple misunderstandings that can be settled by reasonable people through dialogue and acts of penance. But Goodists are notoriously incapable of defending freedom and liberty. Perched in their ivory tower, they look down their noses at the unenlightened masses, but cannot see the danger in front of them, how they are being used as pawns – and how the bell tolls for them, as well, and perhaps first of all. Sometimes I fear they would rather be killed without having betrayed their conception of the world than to be perceived as wrong, or to fight for their right to be foolish indefinitely. The Goodists see the world not as it is, but as they wish it to be, always a hazardous enterprise. When wishes are father to thoughts, true thinking is stillborn.

     Just projecting ahead a few years: what do you think the reaction will be of these same Goodists when the mosque hosts a “retrospective on 9/11,” and invites speakers representing the “Bush-did-it-theory,” the “US-government-did it-theory,” the “Mossad-did-it theory,” and the “anyone-but-the-Muslims-did-it theory” ? If you answered that the Goodists will defend it on free speech grounds and feel even more morally superior as a result, you have properly immunized yourself against this malodorous doctrine.

         The Goodists are more dominant than one otherwise might think. That Israel is the defendant in the flotilla episode investigation speaks volumes about the pervasiveness of this attitude, and how inimical it is to Jewish interests. Jews, whose morality is based on the real world, especially suffer when morality becomes detached from life itself. The continued obsession with the deaths of ten Turkish thugs – when the world community studiously ignores massacres and pillages elsewhere – is typical. More typically was the recent published revelations by an Israeli leftist that she brazenly violates Israeli law by smuggling in Arab women from the PA for party days in Tel Aviv. Should she be prosecuted ? Certainly. Will she be prosecuted ? Likely not.

         The 1960’s Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol used to refer to his Foreign Minister Abba Eban as a “Gelernter na’ar,” a “learned fool,” who “always knew how to give the right speech but never had the right solution.” Eban was urbane, sophisticated, erudite and articulate – but his strategic thinking, his ability to see the big picture was questioned. Eban wasn’t necessarily a Goodist – they almost never achieve positions of real power – but the concept is the same: what the Goodists say always sounds nice, but it is usually inappropriate and often unseemly in the real world.

         Muslims with grace and sensitivity should strive to keep a low profile at Ground Zero. They should do penance, not build a mosque. The Muslim world – with all their petrodollars – should be compensating the families of the 9/11 victims, the murdered and the survivors, and not just the US government (i.e., the US taxpayer). The firefighters and gubernatorial candidate Rick Lazio are right in their fierce and principled opposition, and should be assisted. Build another mosque – if necessary – elsewhere in NYC, but not where it will be a thumb in the eye to the bereaved and a victory for Islam. “Freedom of religion” is ultimately irrelevant here; no one has the right to build a house of worship in the middle of Times Square. Those who cloak themselves in their flawed perception of American values should be reminded of the thinker who said that it is better to be kind than to be right. It is certainly better to be kind and right than to be cruel, insensitive and wrong – which this mosque is, at this time and at that place.