No one is 'excluding' advocates for American-style liberal Judaism - opinion

Published date06 November 2021
Was Maimonides "Orthodox?" Was Rabbi Isaac Luria, the kabbalist? Or Hillel, famous for his love and patience toward all Jews, for that matter? Hess would be the first to bristle at such a notion, claiming them as his intellectual forebears as well. Yet all three ardently promoted a code of Jewish conduct that the American liberal movements roundly reject. Hess may value "Jewish pluralism," but the Judaism inherited from our forebears is emphatically not pluralist.

With all respect to Efrat Mayor Oded Revivi, stating (in "Walking the narrow bridge with Rav Melamed," October 22) that "the Talmud and Jewish tradition are replete with opposing views" follows the paradigm of missing the forest for the trees. The Talmud not only states far more agreements than arguments, but assumes a common basis: the rabbis all believed in God, that the commandments of the Torah were to be followed and that Shabbat runs from Friday evening through Saturday night. There was no need to state these and the host of other foundational concepts upon which the Talmud's debates were built.

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In other words, there isn't an argument in the Talmud that, in a different context, wouldn't be dismissed by activists as "nitpicking." The rabbis didn't argue to express their differences, but to seek the truth down to the last detail. The idea that there is, in fact, one truth has been the Jewish way for millennia – and profoundly at odds with the declared beliefs of the American liberal movements.

Set religion aside for a moment. Israelis, like most everyone else outside North America, define "football" as what Americans call "soccer." Given that kaduregel was solidly identified as soccer when the Israel Football League (IFL) was formed to play American football, organizers decided to simply use a transliteration from English for their Ligat Futbol HaYisraelit.

No IFL players have ever come onto the soccer pitch with helmets and shoulder pads, demanding to play in the same league as the Maccabi Tel Aviv Football Club (which plays soccer) while throwing a prolate spheroid down the field and showing the Maccabi players what "tackling" means in the American sport.

The situation here is precisely analogous, and Judaism is considerably older than soccer. No one is "ostracizing" advocates for American-style liberal Judaism; it is simply that their ideology is not...

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