Monthly Archives: February 2010

Zayin Adar

Posted on February 25, 2010 by | 4 comments

I wanted to get this post in before Purim changes the mood. I went to a Zayin Adar dinner and expected to come home with lots of vignettes of how modern Orthodox Jews view death as about the living and not about a journey into the afterlife. Instead I sat next to an RCA committee member who just spoke about the Rabbah troubles and kept using in every sentence the words left, right, and center.

The one thing that did come up, which surprised the younger RCA Rabbi was that before the recent re-establishing of local Chevra Kadisha, the tahara and burial needs were taken care of by various old-time Jews of less than stellar reputation looking to make a buck. The sort of bottom feeders looking to take advantage of people’s grief. They did the traditional ritual as Jewish reverends offering people the old customs.

Rabbi Zohn, who is one of the leaders in the reclaimed Chevra Kadisha, wrote:

Prevalent in many other communities was the Chevra comprised of those people who could not make it in the business world, who found a way of making a dollar by doing a job no one else would do. They commercialized the Chevra. Their concern was not the respect for the work they were doing, and if necessitated by time or convenience, the Tahara would be done quickly, without sensitivity, without any real standard of excellence. Their purpose was served as long as it was done and they were paid, and the service was provided to the basic satisfaction of all.

I was looking more for a discussion of how modern Orthodox books said we know nothing about the afterlife when the very nature of the rituals of tahara and Chevra Kadisha are based on Hibbut Hakever and the needs of the soul as it journeys through its purification to get to heaven, as described in Maavar Yabok. How we have replaced discussion of the soul and hibbut hakever with new this-worldly understanding of avelut. Also from Rabbi Zohn:

A second accepted Jewish belief is that while the soul departs from the body upon death, it nevertheless remains nearby, fully aware of what transpires to the body and around it. This contradicts the oft-cited belief that funerals are for the living. In fact, the dead are very much “present” at their funeral.

Since most rabbis are trained to ignore the traditional 16th-18th works of the journeys of the afterlife- the actual basis of these rituals, but at the same time have little Talmudic resources on the topic, they tend to have to rely on their conflicting intuitions. I wanted some stories of how contemporary rabbis use analogous thinking to create new practices. I have older stories but I wanted some new ones.

For some of the traditional practices in English- Here is DHL dissertation from HUC by Rabbi Steve Moss that translates many passages from Maavar Yabok. It is 300 pages so be prepared before you print it.

In general, here is a great collection of sources on late 20th century issues.

Here is a great collection of first hand stories of Chevra Kadisha work and even better tahara stories

I want to compare the ritualism of Tahara to our discussion of the Tu Beshevat Seder. What are the issues that mitigate against the tradition? I will probably return to these issues again, but in the mean time. (1) Our medical and hospital model of death- the tradition was hospice and then taharah by the same people. (2) our lack of ritual sense (3) Our treating the death as about the mourner (4) Our rejection of Jewish teachings on the afterlife (5) Our security at home- where Tu beshevat can celebrate our eating but death is not part of our lives (6) The general denial of death in the community. What else?

For a sense of the baroque era ritualization- from the taharah process.

As the clothes are cut away (the body is at all times partly covered to protect its modesty), one of the participants recites Zechariah 3:4-5: And He raised his voice and spoke to those who were standing before him, saying, “Remove the soiled garments from him” And he said to him, “Behold, I have removed your iniquity from you, and I will cloth you in fine garments.”

In Zechariah, the prophet is having a dream-vision where he sees Joshua, the High Priest of his time, being tried in an angelic court. Joshua is clothed in filthy clothing, symbolic of the spiritual corruption that threatens the disintegration of the sacred community of Israel. In the midst of the trial, God graciously intervenes and declares Joshua fit, having endured the ordeal of exile, and ready to take on new, priestly duties. The angels strip him of his outer garments in a gesture signifying his spiritual purification… his soul has been cleansed, even as his material covering is cleansed – also indicating that sin, like the garments, are incidental, not integral to who he is.

By reciting these verses while stripping the body (perhaps in dead the body itself is the covering that is removed, revealing the soul beneath), the Chevra Kadisha is acting out a memesis of Zechariah’s vision. We become the angels preparing the dead for his/her elevation to a new and holy state. The deceased is Joshua, sullied and stained by transgression in life, undergoing the ordeal of death, but now he/she is readied by us to take a new form, a new role, to become a being akin to the priesthood.

What are our gaps from this way of thinking? How would someone armed only with halakhic thinking deal with it? Do we still like drama and ritual or must everything be didactic?

Here is a wonderful Reb Zalman article on the topic trying to reclaim the tradition. (plus his usual detour through the religions and psychology).
Copyright © 2010 Alan Brill • All Rights Reserved

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Post-Orthodoxy Contest and Masekhet Purim

Posted on February 25, 2010 by | 11 comments

I have been requested by a reader to run a contest on “post” for Purim.

Can we create a typology of all the new forms of Orthodoxy?
Define what characterizes these new “post” parts of the orthodox community? Don’t forget to give your definitive subjective opinion on whether these new ideologies are good for Orthodoxy?
Did I leave any new denominations out?
And we already know that we cannot compare THE NEW YORK POST Orthodoxy to The JERUSALEM POST Orthodoxy except in their politics.

Define these ten new groups in comments- best answers win, and will be posted.
Post- it Orthodoxy
Post-impressionist Orthodoxy
Post-tramatic stress disorder Orthodoxy
Post-nasal drip Orthodoxy
Post-apocalypse Orthodoxy
Post-hoc Orthodoxy
Post–haste Orthodoxy
Post-partum Orthodoxy
Post-prandial Orthodoxy
Post-meridian Orthodoxy

“Masekhet Purim”, a humorous parody of the Talmud, is believed to have first been written in the first half of the 14th century by Kalonymus ben Kalonymus. It later developed into several different versions.
Here is a copy but without the funnier Hagadah le-Lel Shikurim. Let me know if someone finds an online copy of the Haggadah and selikhot for Purim.
Update– Here is the Kol Bo L’Purim with the Kiddish, hagadah, selichot, teshuvot, akdamot, and more. Download it- It is only 31 pages and bring it with you on Purim

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Duties of the Heart

Posted on February 25, 2010 by | 2 comments

Luke Timothy Johnson, Professor at Emory, has an article in the current issue of Commonweal on the current battle between those who have an external religion and those who have a religion of the inner experience. Johnson considers the external religion as politics, conformity, social control, and a negative force if it is not connected to the experiential religion. He concludes that if external religion is only concerned with the activities of this-world, then secularism does a better job of creating a this-worldly humane society.

Is his observation an eternal tension of the inner duties of the heart and the legalistic duties of the limbs or does his formulation offer something new? Is this just Bahye’s Duties of the Heart or is he responding to the pressing issue of our time? Can he cure the community’s  over-riding concern with self- definition through conformity and social control? (Ignore his formulation using the word experience in our post- linguistic turn and construction of the self era; the article can easily to rewritten for our current terminology)

Dry Bones Why Religion Can’t Live without MysticismLuke Timothy Johnson

The great religious battle of our time is not the one being waged between believers and unbelievers. The battle within each of the three great monotheistic religions is between the exoteric and esoteric versions of each. In my view, the contest is already so far advanced as virtually to be decided.

The exoteric focuses on external expressions of religion. Its concern is for the observance of divine commandments, the performance of public ritual, and the celebration of great festivals. In its desire for a common creed and practice, its tropism is toward religious law, and it seeks to shape a visible and moral society molded by such law.

The esoteric, in contrast, finds the point of religion less in external performance than in the inner experience and devotion of the heart; less in the public liturgy than in the individual’s search for God. The esoteric dimension of religion privileges the transforming effect of asceticism and prayer. The esoteric element in religion finds expression above all in mysticism. Mystics pursue the inner reality of the relationship between humans and God: they long for true knowledge of what alone is ultimately real, and desire absolute love for what is alone infinitely desirable.

Less visible but no less significant is the negative effect on the exoteric when the esoteric life of individual transformation goes unacknowledged. A system of law unconnected to inner piety is simply an instrument of social control, a form of politics pure and simple. Whether it be an Islamic court issuing a Fatwah to punish someone who has insulted the Prophet, or the Vatican removing a theologian from a university faculty on suspicion of an inadequate Christology,

Islamic fundamentalism echoes Christian fundamentalism in this respect, demanding an absolute outer conformity to specific points of belief and practice, while paying little explicit attention to the intricate and difficult process of individual sanctification.

Seen in this light, the exoteric may appear to have won, yet its victory may only be prelude to the defeat of the tradition as a whole by secularism.

If religion is for this life only, then it must compete on an even plane with other worldly ideologies. And it is not unthinkable that such ideologies can offer a better and more humane society than that proposed by a religion that has been emptied of the transcendent, and lacks any room for the spirit that soars toward God.

Johnson loses me in his description of Judaism as not having this tension because we Jews follow the heikhalot texts, Ashkenaz pietism, kabbalah, and ecstatic Hasidim. Anyone know a Jewish community that fits his description?  Anyone know where we can return to follow Eleazar of Worms quest for the Divine will? Anyone teaching Heikhalot when they teach Mishnayot?

Of the three great monotheisms, Judaism has proved most successful at harmonizing exoteric and esoteric expression. The masters of the heavenly throne-chariot were among the greatest scholars of the early rabbinic tradition, and demanded of the mystic the punctilious outward observance of Torah. The medieval German chasid Eleazar of Worms (d. 1230) declared, “The root of love is to love the Lord. The soul is full of love, bound with the bonds of love in great joy. The powerful love of joy seizes his heart so that at all times he thinks: How can I do the will of God?” Similarly, practitioners of Kabbalah from the twelfth to the twentieth century assumed as the ground for their speculation a total immersion in the practices common to the community of faith. The early Hasidic movement aroused concern for its apparently antinomian tendencies, yet quickly became integrated in the exoteric tradition, and is found today among the strictest of observant Jews.

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List of Top Relgion Blogs

Posted on February 25, 2010 by | Leave a comment

People regularly ask me what I read on the Web for these Evangelical, Catholic and Muslim trends.  The SSRC just published a study of the top relgious blogs, where most people are getting their information, which gets the most hits, and which have the most authority. For those looking to to expand their blog horizons, it is worth looking at the list. The article itself is less interesting for those already online.

Here is a list of the top blogs with one line descriptions and links.

Here is a discussion of how to judge what is on top- authority, hits. But at he bottom it has the blogs arranged by topic: Academic, Cultural, News, Political. It also has a list of which blogs get the most comments.

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Review of Zolli’s Il Nazareno

Posted on February 24, 2010 by | 4 comments

A review just appeared in Italian, and is online in translation, by the Jewish Historian Anna Foa of “Il Nazareno” by Rabbi Zolli.  Jews do not usually want to discuss the case of the Chief Rabbi of Rome who converted to Catholicism after the war and became Eugenio Zolli. The review attempts to situate his views within trends in Jewish scholarship and what was being taught at the various seminaries and Jewish academies. Unlike the German Jewish authors (geiger, Buber) and later Israeli authors (Klausner) who painted Jesus as a liberal Jew, Zolli stresses the discontinuity of the two faiths. Christianity as forgiveness and love.

“All by myself, I read the Gospel, and experienced measureless delight. What a surprise I received in the middle of the green lawn: ‘But I say to you: Love your enemies.’ And from the height of the cross: ‘Father, forgive them.’ The New Testament really is a covenant… brand new! Everything in it seemed to me to have an extraordinary importance. Teachings like: ‘Blessed are the pure of heart’ and the prayer from the cross draw a line of demarcation between the world of ancient ideas and a new moral cosmos. Yes! Here there arises a new world. Here are delineated the sublime forms of the Kingdom of Heaven, of the persecuted who have not persecuted in return, but have loved.”

On the other hand, he warned the Jewish community of Rome of the true treat of the Nazis and wanted to declare a total state of emergency and the Jewish community leaders did not see the need. “One cannot deny that the measures he suggested — such as the closing of the temple and of the oratories, the general alarm, and many other things — would have saved the lives, if not of all, of very many Jews.”

Full version of book review

Interview with the editor

The rabbi who studied Jesus by Anna Foa

The book “Il Nazareno” by Eugenio Zolli appeared in 1938, published by the Istituto delle Edizioni Accademiche in Udine. Israel Zolli, who would later become Eugenio, was at the time chief rabbi in Trieste, and had not yet become – as he would a year later – chief rabbi of Rome in the place of Rabbi David Prato,

Seven years later, in February 1945, causing great scandal in the Italian Jewish world and a great stir in the non-Jewish community as well, Israel Zolli converted to Catholicism, taking Pope Pacelli’s name with baptism, and thus becoming Eugenio Zoll.

A volume about Jesus Christ written by a prominent rabbi, then, destined a short time later, in spite of this book and the vague whiff of heresy that surrounded him for many years, to become the leading rabbi of the Roman Jewish community.

Is the book a prefiguring of the author’s later journey, an anticipation of his subsequent baptism? Or does it reflect a journey of exegetical studies, with attention to the figure of Jesus Christ, undertaken by much European Jewish exegetical thought beginning in the second half of the nineteenth century?

The rabbi from Trieste writes about Jesus and about relations between early Christianity and the rabbinical culture of the time with accents and ideas not dissimilar from those of his teachers at the rabbinical college of Florence, Chayes and Margulies, and raising far less serious controversies than Joseph Klausner’s book on “Jesus the Nazarene,” which at its publication in Hebrew in Jerusalem in 1921 was attacked by both Orthodox Jews and Christians…

This area of study was very popular with Jewish scholars all over Europe, and in particular with those from Germany, heirs of the Science of Judaism and linked with the reformed currents, which strongly emphasized the Jewishness of Jesus and highlighted the correspondences between rabbinical Judaism and early Christianity. But it was also a favorite of Christian scholars, especially Protestant ones, in nineteenth-century Germany, in the setting of the school of Tubingen and of the later schools of liberal theology, and was assimilated, at the beginning of the new century, by modernist Catholic scholars.

Italian Jewish culture did not share this attention to the historical figure of Christianity, to the Jewish categories of its preaching, and to its Jewish roots in general.

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History – the Orthodox Way: Without Causality and with Presentism

Posted on February 22, 2010 by | 7 comments

Here is a good article that I missed when it came out and it does not seem to have gained notice of the Jewish education circles.  The article is about a Lubavitch girls school, but most of the observations that I excerpted apply equally well to Modern Orthodox students on both college and graduate level.  In addition, the article is on the Holocaust but can apply equally well to most other issues in Jewish history.  I have found students unable to apply any causality to the Middle East, to modern religious movements, or anti-Semitism.  I have also found students who treat theological statement of Rabbis or Rabbis working out theology as if it was real history. Theological statements about halakhah are used as causality for events. The lack of social science thinking about Judaism is wide spread despite the required Jewish history in high school. Absurd forms of presentism are acceptable for debate. This article harshly calls this accepted orthodox approach narcissistic, social isolationism, moral arrogance and religious triumphalism. Any thoughts?

Simone Schweber, “Here there is no why”: Holocaust education at a Lubavitch girls’ yeshivah. Jewish Social Studies Volume 14, Number 2, (Winter 2008) 156-185

Numerous authors have elaborated the discourse of the Holocaust’s unintelligibility, expounding on the Shoah’s unspeakability, unimaginability, and fundamental unknowability… Few, however, have considered the disciplinary limitations of such a theoretical position. The stance of unintelligibility may work for literary theorists and cultural critics, but it hardly aids educators. What might it mean, for example, to teach toward unintelligibility? Can one teach despite, through, or with a Warumverbot? [Asking why is forbidden]

When I set out to study the teaching of the Holocaust at a Lubavitch girls’ yeshivah in the Midwestern United States, I was not aware, naïvely perhaps, that a Warumverbot could serve as a pedagogical platform. How might students who believed in divinely driven history, for example, understand human perpetrators? When would contingency trump eschatology and vice versa?

First, as a result of the culture of argumentation, the students’ presentist orientations toward history surfaced. Because they thought of their religious dictates as being ahistorical or transhistorical, they could argue over whether it was “okay” for Jews in hiding to recite Catholic prayers; their investment in prayer and religious obligations trumped historical circumstances in their understandings of the Holocaust. Second, because some of the girls thought of Jewish teenagers as being basically the same across time and space, they could argue over why European Jewish teens would return to their homes. The girls’ assumptions about Jews, in other words, were personally based (and similarly presentist). In most public or Christian school contexts where the Holocaust is taught, Jews are easily exoticized, but for these Hasidic girls, Jews were noticeably normalized.

Rather than blaming assimilation, secular Jews, the advent of Reform Judaism, Zionism, Zionists, or the lack of or dedication to a Jewish homeland—all of which are common refrains in Israeli haredi materials—these girls located the root of persecution in envy. In response to the interview question “Why were Jews persecuted?,” each of the other four focus students supplied an answer that involved jealousy or difference… Because chosenness bounded the girls’ historical meaning-making, other victim groups fell out of their Holocaust narratives…. Hashem used the Holocaust as testament to both the endurance and enduring nature of the Jewish people…. By contrast, later in the unit, when they read about Japanese-Americans being interned in camps, a student asked, “What did they do to deserve that?”

Although Mrs. Glickman taught about the Holocaust during her secular studies block, she taught about it as a religious event. She did not include miraculous stories that so frequently populate Hasidic sources, but her course relied on the miraculous as explanation; for much of her Holocaust curriculum, rational explanations for events were not proffered.

The special status of the Holocaust in their classroom deprived them of basic historical understandings. None of the girls at the end of their unit knew about the history of antisemitism, the reasons Germans voted for Hitler, or the ways perpetrators were socialized. None could answer even basic historical questions like why the Holocaust occurred without resorting to all-encompassing theological rationales.

As I see it, Mrs. Glickman taught toward fundamentally narcissistic ends: she did not expand the girls’ notions of others, of otherness, or even of Jewishness itself

Moreover, in considering Nazi behavior to be abnormal, unknowable, and unable to be investigated, Mrs. Glickman fed the girls’ moral arrogance and religious triumphalism. Not only did the girls believe themselves to be incapable of compromising behavior, but they could not deign to discuss it even in others. The starkness of the moral divide… reified the girls’ righteousness and supported their narrow-mindedness. In the process, the contingencies, complexities, and even overly simplistic explanations that sometimes masquerade as history were occluded, rendered invisible to these girls.

Mrs. Glickman’s Holocaust education thus did not serve to complicate the girls’ worldviews but rather to narrow their world’s vistas and support its moral simplicity, religious clarity, and, ultimately, social insularity. Rather than opening up moral questions, Mrs. Glickman’s pedagogy closed them down.

Simone Schweber is the Goodman Associate Professor of Education and Jewish Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is the author of Making Sense of the Holocaust: Lessons from Classroom Practice (2004) and, with Debbie Findling, Teaching the Holocaust (2007).

Copyright © 2010 Alan Brill • All Rights Reserved

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Islamic-Jewish Fatwa

Posted on February 21, 2010 by | 7 comments

A mid 14th century manuscript from Grenada offers a theological dilemma posed by an unknown Jewish author to the renown Muslim jurist of Granada Abu Said Faraj ibn Lubb al Shatibi (d 1381).  The Jewish questioner assumes the Muslim is a follower of the Asherite doctrine of predestination. The questioner also assumes that the Muslim position is that we have free will to either choose Islam or make the wrong choice. The Jew asks the logical question of Islamic predestination: If all people are to freely choose Islam in order to allow for human responsibility, then if there is also predestination does that not mean that God ultimately determines his religion; and in the questioners case God chose him to be Jewish. The questioner asks: Why is God displeased with his Judaism if it was God’s will? The manuscript was brought to light and translated by Vincent Cornell and Hayat Kara and translated by the former. [i]

Oh scholars of religion, a dhimmi of your religion

Is perplexed. So guide him with the clearest proof:

If my Lord has decreed, in your opinion, my unbelief

But then does not accept it of me, what is my recourse?

He decrees my misguidance and says, “Be satisfied with your fate.”

But how am I to be satisfied with that which leads to my damnation?

He curses me and then shuts the door against me. Is there any

Way out at all for me? Show me the outcome?

For if, oh people, I was satisfied with my fate,

Then my Lord would not be pleased with my evil calamity.

How am I to be satisfied with what does not please my Master?

Thus, I am perplexed. So guide me to the solution of my perplexity.

If my Lord wills my unbelief as a matter of destiny,

How can I be disobedient in following his will?

Do I even have the choice of going against his ruling?

By God, cure my malady with clear arguments!

[i] Vincent Cornell, “Theologies of Difference and Ideologies of Intolerance in Islam” in eds. Jacob Neusner and Bruce Chilton, Religious tolerance in world religions (West Conshohocken, Pa: Templeton Foundation Press, 2008) 274-296.

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Suburban Religion

Posted on February 18, 2010 by | 12 comments

I have always been bothered by the enormous shift from the world of Eastern Europe Jewry to the new suburban Jewry. In its wake it has left a void of many aspects of Judaism and much of the new approach seems geared to keep God out of one’s life. Jews in their myopia tend to see it only as a Jewish or Orthodox problem, but it alters all American religion. Many Christians have noted this change from old-time religion to the new faith and attempted to discuss the new Suburban Christian, and they grasp the ironies. I recommend for the ironies – Albert Hsu, The Suburban Christian. There several other works with similar titles. But no one has yet to fully put their finger on the issues involved in the change. So it was important to see a Muslim also bristling again this immense change by making fun of Suburban Capitalist Islam.

To understand this, know that ilm means knowledge in the sense of both law and reason for the law. Rambam’s Mishneh Torah and his Guide are both fiqh and the study of which is knowledge( ilm.). When you read this substitute year in Israel, study of halakhah, shul classes for his references. In rule #12 those are references to the messianic age, in the sense that suburban orthodoxy does not acutely wait for a messiah. The author makes fun of the acquisition of knowledge and not having it interfere with one’s life. One can master halakhah and keep it out of one’s life. There is no more growth and piety. He makes fun of how their right wing is mainly characterized as those violating the materialism. History is avoided.

The author makes fun of how one can study much “contemporary law”  and one can debate for weeks whether something is permitted or forbidden but that debate obscures the real issues that one is no longer living in the religious world of the past. In this set up, “Knowledge’ has been set up as this idealized form of certainty and conviction.” offering self-justification and a sense that one has the answers. Finally, these classes have degenerated into self-help and a commodity for marketing.

Any of this sound familiar?

“Suburban Capitalist Islam” – List of Beliefs

1) American culture is the primary definition of the way we dress, the food we enjoy, the entertainment we seek (Movies, TV, video games).
2) Islam can be understood practically as a filter of the ‘bad’ aspects of the American lifestyle out of ones life. The bad aspects are the obvious haraam (forbidden actions). It can also be an encouragement of the ‘good’ aspects of American life.
3) Since Islam is a filter of good and bad, one needs to obtain ‘ilm’ (religious knowledge) in order to learn how to behave. Studying ‘ilm’ is paramount in Islam, and most ‘ilm’ is in Arabic.
4) What is taught by people in classes at seminars and ‘events’ is a translation and summarization of what is considered ‘ilm’.
5) Your status is defined by how much of this seminar-event-based ‘ilm’ you know.
9) What defines a good Muslim is how well integrated he is with Suburban-Middle-class Society (job, wife, kids, house) plus the combination of his ‘ilm’
10) With real ‘ilm’ we can combat a Non Suburban-Capitalist-Islam. The end result of Non Suburban-Capitalist-Islam is a lifestyle absent of the luxuries and principles of Suburban Capitalist Islam, primarily #1.
11)  Suburban Capitalist Muslims are moderate. They are moderate because they are largely indistinguishable from non-Muslim Americans within the workforce, except for a beard/Hijab and some dietary requirements.
12) Imam Mahdi (AS) and the Dajjal are topics of events far in the future. They are so far that they are largely understood as metaphors without meaning.
13) Islamic history is something left to be studied in a superficial manner, because most of Muslim history is filled with various mistakes and evil people. It is far more important to learn about the primary sources of ‘ilm’ and attend more seminars.
Suburban Capitalist Islam is inherently an American cultural product. What most Muslims in the West experience as the Islamic message is actually American culture filtered through certain Islamic injunctions. Under this paradigm, Muslims are able to argue day in and day out over details as to which particular filters/knowledge/’ilm’ they should apply in their lives, while ignoring the overarching logical breakdown and inconsistency between their belief system and their actual lifestyle, filled with TV, video games and shopping.
What are the youth to do with themselves while they are struggling in being ardent abstainers from these aspects of Western society? Surely, Islam must provide some alternative?

Largely this gap has been filled with the pursuit of ‘knowledge’. The message has been that through knowledge you are empowered to controlling your own Islamic future. While knowledge has been important to Muslims since the time of the Holy Prophet (S), it is only now that we see studying being associated so directly with piety and spiritual progress. ‘Knowledge’ has been set up as this idealized form of certainty and conviction. The more knowledge you get/purchase/sit in, the more everything about Islam makes sense, the more easier it becomes to justify the abstaining from the few ‘bad’ things surrounding us and also rationalizing our largely Western lifestyle as being halaal. And doesn’t everyone want self-justification and doesn’t everyone desire for it all to make sense.

Most of these ilm-sessions are set up as the Islamic equivalent to very secular self-help seminars. This cultural stand-in has allowed for competing institutes and community programs to emerge, each giving their own message of specific information-based knowledge. And it should be carefully noted that what is being peddled is information-based knowledge versus knowledge of the self or other forms of tacit knowledge which was how much of Islam was implemented in Muslim lifestyles.

A primary consequence of this Western approach towards Islam is the productization of ‘Ilm’, religious knowledge. What does Western society bring if not the concept of marketing? Catchy slogans, professional videos ads, hype-machines and superstar personalities have been built up to bring ‘Islamic knowledge’ into our lives. No one could deny, if given the opportunity , ‘American Muslim Institutes’ would be clamoring for some sort of witty ad selling their wares during Superbowl commercials. Frankly, if given the opportunity, they would want their own team and hijab-laden cheerleaders.

Full versions here and here.

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Millennial Data

Posted on February 18, 2010 by | Leave a comment

The Pew Forum has finally tabulated all the studies of the last few years and made their statement about the Millennial generation. No surprises. But what will it do to the community? Will Orthodoxy form a reactive ideology against the younger generation? Will Orthodoxy gain an influx of those for whom the issue of Gay rights pushes them out of their liberal communities? Another point, we see the children of Evangelicals giving up Literalism, even while remaining in the fold.How will the break of literalism 47% to 53% play itself out? Debates in the classroom? Fights over which books to read?
Anything else in full report worth noting? – Full report here.

According to a new report by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, the gap on some issues has widened into a chasm, notably on issues related to gay rights and tolerance.

‘Young people are more accepting of homosexuality and evolution than are older people. They are also more comfortable with having a bigger government, and they are less concerned about Hollywood threatening their values,’ said the report, which was released on Wednesday.
For example, the report said that Pew’s massive 2007 US Religious Landscape Survey found young adults to be almost twice as likely to say homosexuality should be accepted by society as those 65 and older, 63 per cent versus 35 per cent. Overall in the 30+ age group only 47 per cent said homosexuality should be accepted. The report also said surveys showed that less than a third of Millennial adults saw Hollywood as a threat to their moral values compared to 44 per cent of those 30 and over.

Differences between young people and their elders today are also apparent in views of the Bible, although the differences are somewhat less pronounced. Overall, young people are slightly less inclined than those in older age groups to view the Bible as the literal word of God. Interestingly, age differences on this item are most dramatic among young evangelicals and are virtually nonexistent in other groups. Although younger evangelicals are just as likely as older evangelicals (and more likely than people in most other religious groups) to see the Bible as the word of God, they are less likely than older evangelicals to see it as the literal word of God. Less than half of young evangelicals interpret the Bible literally (47%), compared with 61% of evangelicals 30 and older.

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R. Bernard Lander, Officer Krupke, and Rav Moshe Feinstein

Posted on February 17, 2010 by | 2 comments

Rabbi Bernie Lander A”H died last week. He was from the G.I Generation also called the Greatest Generation. They lived through the depression, WWII, and the rise from the tenements of NY to middle class. They tended to seek solutions in social sciences and thought of law as social realism. He came of age in the Judaism of the 1930’s atheistic and Communist fleeing from religion. His writings followed the Chicago school of social science, which looked at society based on class, caste, and place of immigrant settlement.

Lander’s Phd and book was on what to do with juvenile delinquents. The short films Dead End Kids and Bowery Boys were intended to portray what downtown Jews were like. The Chicago school considered that juvenile delinquency portrayed in these films was due to the breakdown of the social fabric of family, school, religion, and community. Think of the song “Gee, Officer Krupke” from West Side Story where the kids are blamed by judge, social worker, psychologist, and police. Lander in his Towards an Understanding of Juvenile Delinquency blamed the breakdown on inter-group conflicts, like between the Sharks and the Jets. Bear in mind that West Side story was originally to be Jews and Irish in a rumble. Lander always thought in terms of class and social structure. He advocated education for the lower classes. In the 1960’s, he followed the ideas of alienation. “My conclusion,” he said, “was that the rioting was a reflection of how students were being treated as automatons. There was no relationship between students and university anymore. They were rioting against the depersonalization of American education.

Lander had been working on social issues since he worked for Mayor La Guardia to serve on a Civil Rights commission in 1941 and “from 1961 to 1969, Rabbi Dr. Lander researched poverty at Notre Dame, a Catholic University” He researched the juvenile delinquents and poverty of Spanish Harlem. His answer was education [and the Church]. He wrote a report on the need for government funding for education and housing for the Lavanburg Corner House for delinquents. “Dr. Lander pioneered no-frills education when adult education for the working class was in its infancy.”

So when he created Touro, he was thinking in terms of class and caste and creating a school for urban ethnic lower class Jews. “Touro, which was created in part on the model of more than a dozen small Catholic colleges interspersed throughout New York, was Lander’s way of enabling tradition-minded Jews to acquire a college education without having to go through the secularizing and depersonalized university machine.” Currently, Jews have forgotten about the class issues and see everything as religious ideology.

Lander as a member of the Greatest Generation saw things in terms of class, while the silent generation who were the major leaders of Modern Orthodoxy saw things in terms of the stable suburbia of the 1950’s. The Silent Generation catered to the middle class, spoke of liberal arts, and avoided getting their hands dirty with [gentiles or] social problems. By the 1980’s, modern Orthodoxy was already catering to a predominately second generation college, while Lander, still aiming at first generation college, understood that in social terms without an education then you don’t have social stability. If one is not thinking about religious ideology but about class, then there was little difference between his schools in 123st and Adam Clayton Powell Jr Blv in Harlem and his Brooklyn campuses.(If anyone from Touro is reading this and wants to commission a full 20 page article, then let me know).

Rabbi Lander dealt with more American social issues, had more exposure to gentiles, and had a more dynamic vision than the younger YU products who assumed the 1950’s would last forever. Most of the thinkers of the 1950’s Conservative movement were forged in the Greatest Generation, while modern Orthodoxy was more of a Silent generation movement (except for the older rabbis such as Rackman and Israel Miller).

The last time I saw Rabbi Lander was March 2009 was when the Catholic Cardinals came for their annual visit and were hosted by Touro. The topic was to “train young believers in modernity, to train young believers in tradition.” There was a tour of the Holocaust museum and a plan to work together on Holocaust education, a discussion of current issues, and then speeches over dinner of fellowship and working together. It was a far cry from the responsa of Rav Moshe Feinstein from over 40 years prior. (I have the teshuvah at hand, as well as Aleksandrov and the Dali Lama in Hebrew, as part of my forthcoming BOOK TWO)

19 Adar I, 5727 – March 1, 1967 To my honored friend, Rabbi Dov Ber Lander
Regarding the matter that you promised to attend the meeting on the 23rd of Adar I where Catholics and Protestants together with Jews from the Synagogue Council of America and Rabbis from the Rabbinical Council of America will meet. Even though you will only speak general words, it is obvious and clear that this is a severe prohibition of appurtenances of idolatry.

For a plague is now spreading in many places because of the new pope (Pope Paul VI) whose only intention is to move all Jews away from their holy and pure faith to accept the Christian Faith. For it is easier to accomplish this through these methods than through hate and murder that previous popes have used. Therefore any dealing with them even on general matters and all [the more so] actual coming close for a meeting is forbidden with the severe prohibition of “coming close to idolatry.” There is also a prohibition of enticing and leading astray.”
Even if you and the other rabbis who go there will be careful with your words and you will also not flatter the priests and their faith as do the Reform and Conservative rabbis, who entice and lead others to go astray, many people will learn from them that it is permitted to go to the events such as the lectures of the missionaries.

Furthermore, you should not even send a letter there expressing what you planned on saying for any interaction with them further assists their evil plans. It is also forbidden to participate in any manner in meetings like these for I heard that they want to have in Boston and Rome. Anyone who joins with them will be considered one who entices and leads astray the Jewish people. For this that the Catholic missionaries tried so hard for all these years and had very little success, but through these rabbis who lack knowledge who want to join with them, it is possible that many will apostate. We cannot justify the one who entices by saying this was not his intention; he is guilty of a capital offense in this act and all that consequences. .

Therefore, do not be concerned with not keeping your promise to attend and speak. For on the contrary, perhaps through this that you do not go on account of the prohibition, perhaps others will not go and you will bring merit to the community. Your Friend, Moshe Feinstein.

Based on David Ellenson, “Two Responsa of Rabbi Moshe Feinstein.” Chronicle of Hebrew Union College, Volume LII, Nos. 1 and 2, Fall 2000-2001.

When reading Rav Moshe, did you agree with his visceral reactions? Do you think that Rabbi Bernard Lander who had been working for Notre Dame thought that all Catholic clergy were out to convert the Jews? Do you think that he thought that in 2009 when hosting the Cardinals

When the septuagenarian Orthodox Rabbis who proudly proclaim that they follow Rav Soloveitchik, were busy flattering the Cardinals and discussing how they have been good friends for decades and how much they trust the Cardinals- were they still in the apprehensiveness of the 1960’s? Were these senior Orthodox rabbis, for whom the Catholic clergy are old and trusted friends, still viewing the meetings as a hidden missionary agenda? When those Jews who work in community organizing are continuously working with Catholic clergy in social projects, are they still waiting for the conversionary speech? What about when Orthodox rabbis or Orthodox organizations state that Catholic social theology and Halakhah are the same on marriage and that they should work with their Catholic friends in banning same-sex marriage? Are they still expecting missionary activity after the joint worldview statement? How about when Orthodox rabbis eagerly listen, and then applaud wildly, when Pastor Hagee tells them that God will bring the Jews to Israel where they will even convert after the wars of Gog and Magog?
Is the change just due to the Culture Wars and new found Islamophobia or is there something more?

Copyright © 2010 Alan Brill • All Rights Reserved

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My New Book Just Came Out-Judaism and Other Religions

Posted on February 13, 2010 by | 10 comments

My book Judaism and Other Religions is to be officially released on March 2nd by Palgrave-Macmillan. But it is already available in the warehouse and available for purchase, Be the first one on your block to own one. Buy it now:

Click here to buy it at Amazon

Editorial Reviews

“This wide-ranging but carefully organized collection of Jewish thought about other religions constitutes an indispensable resource for Jews and non-Jews engaged in interreligious relations today and for Jews seeking to develop a text-based contemporary Jewish theology of religions for our global world. Brill accompanies his lucid presentations of each approach with insightful critiques that will help guide their contemporary applications.”—Ruth Langer, Associate Professor of Jewish Studies, Theology Department Associate Director, Center for Christian-Jewish Learning, Boston College

“Serious Jewish engagement with other religions has substantially deepened and widened in recent years, both stimulating and responding to an increasing interest in Judaism from within the other world religions. Brill’s book provides essential access to the classical sources within the Jewish tradition relevant to this encounter.”—Rabbi Dr. David Rosen, International Director of Interreligious Affairs, AJC

“This is an excellent work: reflective, engaging, well-written, and perhaps most important—timely. Brill knows both the theoretical foundations for interreligious dialogue and rabbinic approaches to ‘other religions.’ It is a fine piece of scholarship, and it is also creative in bringing together three fields of discourse in a way they have not before been aligned. It blends both traditional and modern thinking about interreligious dialogue, and it analyzes these materials convincingly.”—Nathan Katz, Professor of Religious Studies, Florida International University

Product Description

With insight and scholarship, Alan Brill crisply outlines the traditional Jewish approaches to other religions for an age of globalization. He provides a fresh perspective on Biblical and Rabbinic texts, offering new ways of thinking about other faiths. In the majority of volume, he develops the categories of theology of religions for Jewish texts. He arranges the texts according classification widely used in interfaith work: inclusivist, exclusivist, universalist, and pluralist.

Judaism and Other Religions is essential for a Jewish theological understanding of the various issues in encounters with other religions. With passion and clarity, Brill argues that in today’s world of strong religious passions and intolerance, it is necessary to go beyond secular tolerance toward moderate and mediating religious positions.

Click here to buy it at Amazon

There is a forthcoming sequel volume Judaism and World Religions, which will be available at the end of 2010.

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Aleksandrov, Rav Kook, Buddhism, and Gentile Religion

Posted on February 13, 2010 by | 8 comments

I subscribe to the VBM shiur by Tamir Granot on the letters of Rav Kook. Currently, the discussion is a letter of Rav Kook to Shmuel Aleksandrov on the topic of modern philosophy and the wisdom of other religions. The shiur is entirely from Rav Kook’s perspective, I want to add a little background on Alexandrov and the give Alexandrov’s perspective.

The initial letter from him is in Samuel Alexandrov, Mikhteve meḥḳar u-viḳoret: al devar ha-Yahadut ṿeha-rabanut ba-zeman ha-aḥaron (Yerushalaim: M. ṿe-G. Aleksandrov 1931). The first volume of Mikhteve Mehkar from 1906 is readily available, but the 1931 second volume is missing from JTSA and YU, rumored by a catalog to be at Penn and seems to only really exist in the US at Harvard. However, it is available in several copies at JNUL. Most of the following is from Alexandrov’s letter.

Rabbi Shmuel Aleksandrov (d. 1941) had been a close friend of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook in Volozhin, where they both studied. Unlike Kook, Aleksandrov never left Russia, and became a rabbi in Bobruisk. Until his death at the hands of the Germans in 1941, Aleksandrov was a spiritual leader to many rabbis, particularly during the severe religious persecutions of the 1920s and ’30s in the USSR.

Aleksandrov propounded a grand theory of the relationship between Jews and Gentiles, containing deep roots in the Kabbalah and Maharal. According to Aleksandrov, of the two trees in the Garden of Eden, the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge, the former is an exclusively Jewish possession, i.e. Torah, while the Tree of Knowledge belongs to the Gentiles. Among its fruits are scientific-technical progress, philosophy, and art. Nevertheless, there exists a mystical exchange of the fruits of both trees. By giving to the world the fruits of the Tree of Life, Jews consecrate the Gentile world, while simultaneously Jews receive from the Gentiles the fruits of vital knowledge and ideas.

Among these ideas of the nations, Alexandrov especially seeks to find a place for the wisdom learned from other religions, specifically the idea of Buddhist nothingness. Aleksandrov claimed that one universal truth forms the basis of all religions; hence, the Buddhist concept of nirvana and Hasidic concept of ayin point to the same concept in different words. He made this assertion based not on the study of texts nor from encountering Buddhists, but rather from the conceptualizations of religion found in the writings of Schelling and Schopenhauer.

Alexandrov postulates a universal religion given by Moses and reiterated by Plato,that overcomes the abstract intellect knowledge of contemporary knowledge by incorporating emotional and psychological knowledge, and offering individual salvation.

Aleksandrov reinterprets the thought of his forefather the Maharal to suggest a complementary movement between Israel and the nations, rather than an antagonistic struggle. For Alexandrov, the dialectic of Israel and the nations, presented by Maharal, will be overcome at the end of days when all national differences will be abolished by the coming of the Messiah.

Rabbi Kook found this approach to concede too much to universalism. Rav Kook responded to Aleksandrov’s universal claims with a inclusivist claim that all truth is from Judaism, and in other places states that Jews can elevate the light in other faiths. Here, Rav Kook presents his view of God as not the monotheism of the philosophers, rather the light, the spectrum of colors, and Edenic watering of the Zohar. Rav Kook accentuates the Schopenhauer pessimism of Buddhism and states that even Buddhists want to get beyond the pessimism of this world. (Google Schopenhauer and Buddhism for more details). I don’t have a scan of Alexandrov in my computer but I will cite Rav Kook as in the VBM shuir and another paragraph from latter in the same letter. He writes:

Monotheism is a fabrication of gentiles, an imprecise translation, a sort of self-contradictory comprehensible infinity, and therefore can lead to nothing. This is not the source of the name of the God of Israel, the infinite, incomprehensible root of all existence, because He is the existence of the world who can be comprehended and spoken of only through the nuances of colors through many deeds and abundant peace, his profusion of love and courage. Israel proclaims, “This is my God and I will adore Him,” and can see these [colors], not the barren wilderness of Islamic monotheism, nor Buddhism’s negation, only the highest existence which brings joy to all and gives life to everything, revealed through the subjective revelation of all hearts who seek and comprehend him.

As for the reality of nothingness in the statements of those of Buddhist leanings, it seems that they mean the reality of the force which aspires to negate and nullify absolutely…Jewish consciousness, however, in the goodness of God’s knowledge, brings about a recognition of the absolute reality. …Thus we find that even this contradiction between Buddhism and Judaism is not absolute opposites, because reality as viewed without God is everywhere evil and bitter, and in its midst lies the longing for absolute negation, which will in the end be fulfilled.

Aleksandrov had observed that Jews throughout history acquired knowledge from the wisdom all of nations during the exile, and claimed that contemporary Jews can continue this process through study of Buddhism and other religions. Rav Kook, on the other hand, found all of religion in Judaism, minimizing any need to study other religions.

This debate played itself out in their differing concepts of religion. For Aleksandrov, an infinite inner core of the Divine resides behind the particular Jewish commandments; the current versions express the infinite by limiting it to concrete forms. In contrast, for Rav Kook, the commandments in their concrete particular forms contain an infinite essence that needs to be brought into daily life.
For Aleksandrov, Judaism and its commandments are themselves limits on the infinite Divine, while for Rav Kook the commandments are the very conduits of the infinite.

Once we move beyond the 19th century German idealism of the debate – what value does this debate hold for today? Any Thoughts?
On the subject of Buddhism and Judaism, here was one of my very first posts on this blog – The first Jewish reference to the Dalai Lama.

Copyright © 2010 Alan Brill • All Rights Reserved

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Levinas’s Wartime Notebooks

Posted on February 11, 2010 by | Leave a comment

Summer Reading- Levinas’s Wartime notebooks. From the brief excerpts in the review in this week’s Forward, it seems that the content is steps on the way to his “Existence and Existents.” It also shows the early interest of Levinas in fiction and human nature. The short quotes seem to have a Nietzsche quality or a Thomas Mann pessimism.

The Obi-Wan Kenobi of 20th-century Jewish philosophy, Lithuanian-born French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, has grown in fame and stature since his death in 1995.

This spring, a flood of admiring new books on Levinas will appear: “Levinas and the Cinema of Redemption” from Columbia University Press; “Other Others: Levinas, Literature, Transcultural Studies” from SUNY Press; “Levinasian Meditations” from Duquesne University Press; and “A Covenant of Creatures: Levinas’s Philosophy of Judaism” from Stanford University Press.

Yet none is as startlingly, indeed stunningly, revelatory as a new book… Levinas’s previously unpublished “Notebooks in Captivity” the first volume of a planned series of his complete writings.
The notebooks were written mostly during the Second World War (some uncollected postwar jottings and essays are also included). Levinas, a French citizen since 1930, had served in the army, and after the Nazi victory he became a prisoner of war in various French camps and finally, from 1942 to 1945, at Stalag XI-B at Fallingbostel, Germany, near Bergen-Belsen… Levinas was assigned to one of the all-Jewish commandos, doing hard labor for long hours under brutal conditions. He mostly worked in harshly treated forestry brigades,

Fascinatingly, the notebooks reveal for the first time that Levinas long planned to write novels, even though these would remain unfinished, surviving in the form of outlines and fragmentary drafts. One, titled “Sad Opulence” (Triste Opulence) and later retitled “Eros,” tells the story of an army interpreter who becomes a prisoner of war. A second novel, “The Lady From Wepler’s” (“La Dame de Chez Wepler”), also set in wartime, is about a protagonist’s obsession with a prostitute glimpsed, but never approached, because of the “chasm which separates respect from sexuality.”
Levinas notes: “Sexual love — the only one which may be fulfilled, in which caresses may culminate. Other loves (even filial or paternal) are impotent. Impotent because inexpressible, incapable of being fulfilled.”

Excerpts from Emmanuel Levinas’s nine small wartime notebooks:

Appearance of prisoners in Germany. Monastic or moral life. Even old men have something innocent and pure about them.

In the room with the little dormer window, men like clouds which hide the sun.

In Tolstoy the main thing is not truth about human nature but the emotion of someone who suddenly discovers all of life’s falseness, lying, complacency.

Winter sun, like a dead man’s kiss.

The only human perfection — beauty. Like a miraculous branch on a rotten tree trunk. The only miracle.

Tree — the most arrogant vertical of living nature. Its majesty — vertical majesty.

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New issue of Sh’ma – DIY Judaism

Posted on February 10, 2010 by | Leave a comment

Marshall Sklare’s classic work Conservative Judaism (1955) declared Orthodoxy dead because orthodoxy means Yiddish derahsas not English sermons, it means old world customs, it meant rabbis without a secular education, it meant no college and no professions. What about the rising modern orthodoxy of the 1950’s? They were few in number and most importantly when Jews who moved to suburbia in 1950 viewed their live options and their memories, it was the Orthodoxy of their childhoods. They forever visualized Orthodoxy in those terms, which justified their choices even into the 1980’s when their original vision of Orthodoxy was no longer reality.

We have a similar retention of an original childhood vision by modern orthodox who still refer to the Conservative congregations of their youth that were unlearned Orthodox synagogues without a mechitza, with a traditional rabbi paternally leading a semi-observant congregation. In those days, Conservative Jewish centers taught peoplehood and ethnicity.

The MO never ask: what is done today? What people do today is indie and DIY. When gen-y opts out of Orthodoxy for intellectual and cultural reasons -they are attracted to indie.

Well, the current issue of Sh’ma is an essential read to catch up on current affairs, especially for this snowy day. It describes the new world of Do It Yourself and indie Judaism. They want everything to be a co-op or a collective activity. They do not seek wisdom of the boomers or an organizational hierarchy, they are DIY.

[I cannot seem to create a direct link. It seems that you now have to sign up – It is still free but they get your email. Let me know if one can get in directly. Here are the links:
www.shma.com/shma-subscriptions
www.shmadigital.com/shma/201002/?u1=texterity

Steven M Cohen wrote a great article in the issue (It is on page 3) on “The New Jewish Organizing” outlining five points (1) indie and spiritual minyanim (2) culture- music, magazines, film, poetry (3)learning in LIMMUD format (4)social justice (5) new media- social networking. Cohen points out that the gen y calls themselves activists, not leaders. High quality davening is valued over building an institution. They don’t want to change the system like Boomers, rather they want to create opportunities for like minded people with similar sensibilities to gather. They don’t like the preoccupation with divisions and boundaries of the older generation. Cohen writes that they blur the boundaries of” education and entertainment., prayer and social justice, learning and spirituality.” They remain single into their 30’s and exist in a separate social realm than those settled. Religious experience is more important than numbers attending.

To develop Yosef’s comment, the younger gen y’s are moving out but not pulled by the Conservative movement circa 1975, which still lingers mainly in the imagination of the modern orthodox. It seems Yosef is affirming my original definition that the gen-y’s are in a new place. Yet all the gen-x and boomers can do is use the phrase post-orthodox and think of the issues of the 1980’since they have not visited the new minyanim. Some Boomers do not get that for the DIY movement, MO synagogues seem intellectually and cultural stagnant like a 1970’s Jewish Center. The gen y’s are pulled by the new indie vision. Yosef seems to be correct, the older generation may call them post-orthodox, but they are indie and DIY. The current issue of Shema is probably the best list itemizing what might be considered as post-orthodox to a Boomer and treated as natural to a gen y.

But just as I remember Conservative leaders were still telling people in the 1980’s that one cannot be Orthodox and go to college or be a professional. Even though no one who was mastering the halakhic world of Rav Soloveitchik students ever thought about Yiddish and the Lower East Side. I suspect that the older Orthodox will still think for years to come that the younger set is leaving to return to the liberalism circa 1978.

Copyright © 2010 Alan Brill • All Rights Reserved

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Post-orthodoxy and the end of the Twentieth Century –part II

Posted on February 9, 2010 by | 2 comments

Continued from part one on Stern’s MA here.
I will now deal with some of the specifics that Nechemia Stern thinks created this.

Back in 2004, a group of young Rabbis were discussing the various halakhic controversies including filtering water and Indian hair. I was asked what I thought and I commented that I thought it was just a structural shift of the new generation of poskim coming into their own, I assumed there would be several more such plate tectonic changes and then it would settle down. Moshe Shoshan asked in a comment, Isnt all this a structural change? Yes I agree. But Nechmeia Stern attributes considers it a vortex of controversy.

So here is my amendment to Stern, even using Stern’s premises. Stern makes it sound as if these legal decisions are based on the vortex of change. They are not. The Poskim gave their decisions based on what they thought. The vortex was created by the echo chamber world of controversy, op-eds, bloggers, and pizza place gossip.

Stern writes “I believe it is possible to point to various historical and social influences that have inspired the questions and difficulties that have led to the ‘post Orthodox’ shift.”
Stern attributes this world to the division created by Chabad messianism, 9/11 framing Orthodoxy as another fundamentalism, the Edah-YCT backlash against right, and the disengagement from Gaza.
I am skeptical if this is indeed the list of causes or if this is the list I am not sure they are being defined correctly.

Stern notes the blurring of denominations based on Jeremy Stolow’s book on Artscroll. Artscroll blurred the lines of Ultra-Orthodoxy and Centrism and it blurred the lines of right wing Conservative and Orthodoxy. He also relies on Stolow for seeing the end of the use of the word Orthodoxy and its replacement by “Torah observant.”

The transformative categories of Judaica are excellent examples of the move towards post Orthodoxy. Indeed Stolow documents: As liberal Orthodox, synagogues (or Conservative synagogues) change their texts to the Artscroll, “new relationships are being forged across and around what were once taken to behardened lines of communal affiliation, leading to an increasingly blurred division between the “right wing” of Conservative Judaism and Orthodoxy, or the “right”and “center” of orthodoxy itself (Stolow, 2007. 310).
‘Torah observant Judaism (or Jew)’is becoming increasingly popular as an alternate means of religious identification. Indeed it is very reminiscent (purposefully so) of the Artscroll’s ‘Torah perspective’.

Stern discusses the anxiety over the flipping out of kids in Israel by their parents. Stern points out that for the parents there are clear lines between Modern Orthodox and Haredim, two different dress codes, two different cultural realms. But for the kids, they have no problem wearing a black hat and still having modern interests. They will still become proper modern suburbanites even with their black hats. They were not transformed, they just crossed the parents conceptions.

Where ‘us’ represented the Modern Orthodox, and ‘them’ represented
the Haredim. I began to realize that the parents – who were educated within a field of relatively well defined denominational boundaries – simply could not grasp the ways in which their children’s religious boundaries could be so quickly transformed after only one year.
For these students, the black hat does not necessarily imply a change towards Haredism, as much as it denotes a particular kind of religio-social transformation. The students returning have not changed denominations so much as they have transcended them. They
are not ‘Modern Orthodox, nor are they ideologically Haredi. I would say that these students are ‘post-Orthodox’. In so doing they have gone beyond the bounded denominational differences that were readily apparent in their parent’s generation, and have created new theological and social divisions.

Another case for Stern is those people who cross back and forth between movements.

Rabbi Gold received his rabbinic ordination from a Conservative institution. However, he also spent two years in Israel studying in an Orthodox religious seminary that espoused a pluralistic perspective. At this time, he received certification as a Kosher
butcher from an Orthodox Rabbi.

So in these chapters, Nechmia Stern defines post-Orthodox as caused by (1) the creation of the controversy vortex (2) the use of Artscroll by everyone from traditional Conservative to modern Orthodox to Yeshivish (3) The younger generation who do not stick to their parents conceptions (4) those who cross between movements.

Stern has given us food for thought but no polished description or causes.
And I do not feel he has captured his experience within the community.

I was certainly not prepared however, for the zealous and almost fanatical response I received. After twelve years of an orthodox education, I did not consider my views heretical, and certainly not equivalent to the denial of God.

Any thoughts?

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