Someone sent me an essay written by a prominent MO Rabbi in a community that is very wealthy, upscale but famously not especially observant of Halacha. First, he launched into a discussion of the parameters of Bal Tosif vis a vis Karaism, quoted a Karaite scholar and then goes for the jugular.
Ultimately, the Karaites dwindled in size, and today are a community of about 35,000 people. Yet the spirit of Karaism lives on in a most unlikely place: the Orthodox Jewish community.
In a published lecture, Rav Yehuda Amital decried the fixation on halakhah in the religious Zionist community. He says that “just as Judaism fights against the Karaite relationship to the written Torah…So too it needs to fight against the Karaism of halakhah. Halakhah without an interpretation of reality is a form of Karaism.” Rabbi Amital sees this “Karaite-like” approach as a reason for disaffection in the Orthodox community:
This Karaite approach has brought us to the point that halakhah has turned, in the eyes of the younger members of our community, into an (absurdly detached method) that has no connection to reality…. This is why we hear today from young religious people that: “the Torah doesn’t connect to us,” is “not something realistic” and “not my thing.”
This is a dramatic assertion. But the phenomenon Rabbi Amital is complaining about is very self-evident; one need only look to the collection of "chumras jokes'' in the Orthodox community that mock absurd stringencies, to recognize how perceptive Rabbi Amital's words are.
Prof. Haym Soloveitchik, in his essay Rupture and Reconstruction, offers a similar observation. He argues that in the last century and a half the Orthodox community has become a “text culture,” deciding practice based on books alone. This new focus on halakhic texts leads to increasing stringency; each book has its own view, and when these views are collected, it becomes natural to adopt every stringency, or what he calls "maximum position compliance."
When the book becomes the focus, then one scrambles to ensure that the book is properly obeyed; and when there are many authoritative books, each with multiple possibilities of practice, then compliance becomes a halakhic treadmill, a constant pursuit of the perfect way to do a mitzvah. In this new halakhic Karaism, keeping every chumra is the pathway to redemption.
But fundamentalism fails because it is fundamentally disconnected. Rav Amital points out the disconnection from reality; Professor Soloveitchik points out the disconnection from parental and communal practice. And ultimately, fundamentalism is disconnected from God.
Fundamentalism doesn’t fail because it’s extreme; it fails because it is soulless. While fixating on reading every word of the text correctly, it forgets to listen for the voice of God. The Torah is essential for our relationship with God; but when the Torah is detached from love, compassion, and community, instead of being a remedy, it becomes a poison.
Ultimately, the text cannot come first. In a famous responsa from July 1802, Rav Chaim of Volozhin grapples with a difficult case of a woman whose husband was presumed dead but there was a dearth of clear evidence to permit her to remarry. (Chut Hameshulash 1:8). All the local rabbis had issued a stringent opinion, but then they then turned to Rav Chaim, who was acknowledged to be the foremost halakhic authority of his time. In page after page of careful legal reasoning, Rav Chaim disputes many halakhic precedents, and allows the woman to remarry. At the very outset of the responsa Rav Chaim explains his process. He says that he issued a lenient ruling because “I have deliberated together with my Creator, and saw it was my obligation to use all my might to find a solution for agunot; may God save me from mistakes.”
Rav Chaim recognized that to truly follow halakhah one must first look to serve God; therefore, he had to look for every possible way to alleviate the suffering of a bereaved widow. To simply offer a response without offering love for the crying widow would be a failure. A halakhic ruling without heart and soul is flawed.
Fundamentalism might be loyal to the text; but the goal of Judaism is to serve God. And that is precisely where fundamentalism fails.
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WOW!!!!! The Karaites are the Talmidei Chachomim, the Yirei Shomayim, the Bnei Torah. The people whose entire lives revolve around one goal - fulfilling the will of Hashem as He related it to us in the Torah and we received in our written and oral tradition. THEY have no soul!!
Who then are the "real Jews"? The chevre whose wives don't cover their hair and wear short skirts, the chevre who only washes and bentches on Shabbos, who might daven during the week but might not and probably not with a minyan. People who educate their children that the number one goal in life is to make mountains of money and thus any secular university is a far better choice than any Yeshiva. These are people who children all too often throw away the little Yiddishkeit they have in college if they didn't already do so in high school. [One girl I know from this community went to Europe for the summer after high school, came home and told her parents that she is done with Judaism - and so it was. So sometimes it happens in between H.S. and college]. These are the authentic practitioners of Judaism. AHHHHHHHH! Not sure.
Their rabbi is pontificating about being spiritual by not being careful about Halacha. Chapter 2,349 in the book "The World Gets Crazier".
So since he is such a talented writer I humbly suggest he use his skills to do what Rabbis are supposed to do which is lead their communities to greater levels of religious observance. Not to take every new chumra on the block [there is no such danger in communities like this] but that they should not be מחלל שבת and keep kosher even - gulp - outside the home. These aren't bad people. Most are much much better than I. But if this is the message they are hearing - what do we expect from them??
He quotes Rav Amital. What would Rav Amital say if he were asked whether one should send one's children to universities where there is zero Yiras Shomayim, tons of gilui arayos, and where just about every teacher is an atheist in some form? Should we send our children there?? What would he say about a community that raises their children to be ignorant of the vast majority of our literature and usually can't even read and translate basic texts??
Quoting Rav Chaim Volozhiner who was מתיר an עגונה? So irrelevant. He didn't permit her against the text [as the article implies] but based on the text. There is no such thing as being מתיר anything against the text unless one is reform or conservative.
Rav Chaim would faint if he saw the school [associated with the shul where this rabbi faithfully serves] where boys and girls learn Gemara in the same classroom together, often in "chavrusa". He would faint if he would go to the shul dinner and see the mixed dancing. He would faint at a lot of things that go on there. He is used to attack the Yeshiva world whose world view is built in no small part on his Nefesh HaChaim.
A word from the spiritual guide of Modern Orthodoxy on the Halacha that the aforementioned article assailed:
Halachic man, well furnished with rules, judgments, and fundamental principles, draws near the world with an a priori relation. His approach begins with an ideal creation and concludes with a real one. To whom may he be compared? To a mathematician who fashions an ideal world and then uses it for the purpose of establishing a relationship between it and the real world. ... The essence of the Halacha, which was received from God, consists in creating an ideal world and cognizing the relationship between that ideal world and our concrete environment.
Come to think of it, the entire book "Halachic Man" is a response to this article.
