Monthly Archives: October 2012

Ever wonder how people who were hippie liberal in the early 1970s became conservative in the 1990s? How do some Shlomo Carlebach followers become Tea Party members or supporting right wing politics? Or how the liberal innovations of the 1960s in religious life become Evangelical? Or even how did the religious right win out over the religious left in the 1990s?

The standard answer to the second question is that people recoiled and retreated from the 1960’s liberalism to the safety of conservatism of Evangelicalism. A recent book by Axel Schäfer titled Countercultural Conservatives: American Evangelicalism from the Postwar Revival to the New Christian Right (Dec. 2011), offers new insights into these questions. He answers both questions with the same answer. The counter culture values became transformed into evangelical religion and therefore it was the same people in both groups and the turn was not recoil from the 1960’s as much as an adaptation. Much of his analysis applies to Centrist Orthodoxy.

Schäfer starts with the conventional approach that the Christian right was a backlash as change of the sixties and seventies, but then argues that if we look at the believers of the 1980s we see continuity. His book makes three points:

First, in the 1980s, conservative Protestants were less about teaching traditional religious concepts and had more conflicting impulses, in fact, they are remarkably modern and worldly in their social world. The world they created mediated between growing worldliness and Biblical piety; conservative Protestants combine moral traditionalism with consumer society, and orthodoxy with therapeutic personal conversions. They were educated Evangelical professionals. They were outwardly worldly yet sought separatist institutions. (Sounds a lot like the Jewish case.)

Second, the Evangelicals were not monolithic—every decision was tentative and ever negotiated. There were liberal and conservative forces within this religious turn and people made allegiances to bolster their positions.

Third, Evangelicals today are not a backlash against 1960s change, rather they have learned to base their own organizational strength, cultural attractiveness, and political efficacy on the style of the 1960s

Among the many important insights in this book, is the discussion how the concept of conversion – including finding God, being born again, or becoming a baal teshuvah- was therapeutic, about personal liberation, and spoke the language of popular psychology, that is—of notions like individualism, choosing one’s own path, but also of materialism and consumerism.
The left and progressives lost because they had too many internal divisions – they spent too much time on defining spiritual mission and the narcissism of small difference. The left was too earnest and against the consumerism. It also was still in favor of intellectual elitism, like the 1960’s liberals, preaching the need for academic and profession training in order to have an opinion.

In contrast, the Religious Right shared with hippies an aversion to liberalism, bureaucracies, and the confines of rationality. The antiestablishment attitude toward the liberal society and Church (or synagogue) created a conflation of libertarian thinking and individual self-expression. The hippie ethic and quest for authenticity became the libertarian ethic of entrepreneurial self-actualization. In Judaism, the shift was delayed for a decade until the shift from producing doctors to creating business people. Both the countercultural and Evangelical revivalism shared emphasis on ecstasy and non-rational systems.

(Think of the defunct organization Edah; it was very rational and not kabbalistic or therapeutic. In contrast kiruv provided ecstasy and self-fulfillment. Edah also still valued the 1950s ideal of Rabbi Dr, which does not speak to a hippie ethos.)

Why did Right Wing religion succeed? (1) it was more accomidationist than traditional religion—it was protean and adapted; (2) It spoke a language of spiritual pluralism and market orientation; (3) It worked on coalition building; (4) It actually hides greater secularization behind its new religiosity; it emphasized certain elements to display its religiosity but secularized many others; and (5) It fit the suburbanization of the era and offered the needed social support. It spoke a world of private schools and careerism.

The new Religious Right ethos was as atomistic individual and volenteeristic in association, we personally choose to return to God’s true path. Everything else in our lives is only contractual since our real covenant is with God.

The counterculture values of love, awareness, and good vibes, inner feelings, divine inspiration, and human relationship were similar enough to Evangelical values of spontaneity, emotionalism, public confession, revival, and conversion. Confession of one’s life story and conversion to a religious life is closer to hippy values than a return to 1950s religion. Both hippies and Evangelicals disliked the older liberalism of institution, rationality, intellect, and hierarchy. Of course, there is the overlap of Christian rock with hippie culture.(See my prior posts on the topic) They also have similar rhetorical styles, organization patterns, and expressive modes.

Both groups believe that one does not need to follow the values of WASP America and therefore, getting into Harvard, the country club, and the white shoe firm are not defined as “making it”. Both the counter culture and the new right denounced the older liberalism of the 1950s and 1960s as less religious and requiring assimilation into a WASP culture. On one hand, the new religion of the right became less religiously sophisticated , but many of the Religious right became lawyers and doctors upwardly mobile and educated in their professions.

Evangelicals were good at infiltrating hippies, so too Kiruv organization were equally as good at infiltrating counter cultural social groups. And for many parents whose children flirted with cults, and Asian religions, the American religious right seemed a better fate.

Schafer shows how Evangelicals who claimed to be entirely traditional and Christain Orthodox in dogma., nevertheless presented themselves in situations of outreach or in public, as a looser, more liberal and fluid approach. One bought into the counter cultural approach shown during outreach and then settled down to gradual adhere to the more conservative versions.

According to Schäfer, in the late 1970s, one would have thought a liberal version of this new ethos would have triumphed—the swing to political right was not forgone conclusion. However, the left was fractured over ideology. The left considered anyone even slightly dissimilar as an outside. if someone on the left strayed one inch to the left of the accepted version of orthodoxy they were considered outsider and equally one step to right placed one as an outside. It did not embrace broad contradictory tent. In contrast the right as typified by Reagan combined biblical religion with new age astrology- conservative values with 12 step thinking. The Right was also much better networking. The right even created a cultural war alliance with allies among Protestants, Catholics and Jews.

The Right was against questioning of theological absolutes and rejected the 1960’s liberalizing tendencies, they sought to create a new neo-fundamentalism but it was in the hands of the ordinary believer who really did not speak theology.

AB- I remember a point in the late 1990s where the complexity of the beit medrash and expert authority gave way to people with just a gap year background arguing from English Torah books they read, public discussions of Jewish thought that formerly used Maimonides and Lonely Man of Faith were replaced by Lawrence Kellerman and vortlach. To apply Schäfer’s approach to the Jewish case, the reason for the success of the right was not a backlash against feminism and Rabbi Yitz Greenberg, rather the right were trans denominational reaching out to other groups on the right, they had a new social agenda, they made cultural accommodation. Most importantly, they had the social concerns of suburbia; the concerns of the right transcended the Edah world limited to the concerns of the Upper West Side.

Old time racism and sexism was phased out, which was good however, there was a transition to new forms of blaming welfare moms and those were are deviant from the social world of suburbia

Evangelicals accepted literal Christian doctrine but have no study of doctrine, they accept a literal understanding of topics like virgin birth, resurrection, second coming and inerrancy but treat them as emotional assents, rather than intellectual. One accepts literal forms of dogma when one has one’s emotional conversion without any cognitive content. Theology is acquired in a revivalist conversion not a classroom (think of a kumzitz or ebbing- see my prior post). In the communities, they talk about business ethics or social ethics or sexual ethics reflecting issues of suburbia. Evangelical lack of theology thereby causes adherents to have a greater secularization that can accept respectable hedonism. Family values made more sense to people who did not really understand the concepts of advent and rapture. Rhetorically, they were a return to old-time religion but now the conversation is entirely about self-fulfillment through conversion and to be rightly ordered through family values

AB- I can see that all around me. Try teaching Eliyahu DiVidas Rehsit Hokhmah or Gra on Mishlei to Centrist Jews, the entire other-worldly and metaphysical traditional language is gone. Now, people are self made believer without saints, without kabbalistic musar, and without any of the traditional Jewish puritanism.

What of the conservative economic doctrine? Schäfer shows how they spoke of capitalism as self-reliance (or even as Torah uMAdda)- it hides the careerism, instant gratification, and creation of artificial needs involved. The authenticity and personal liberation derived from the hippie counterculture became cloaks for consumerism. Hippies and evangelicals could both be rebellious against the 1960s Great Society programs as against the true religious tradition of self-reliance, Yet blind to how their own consumerism is against the tradition. They both spoke the language of counter-culture, apocalypse, home-schooling, and crunchy gardening. Both sought to create alternatives to the institutions of the 1960s.

In April of this year, Axel Schäfer put out a sequel to Countercultural Conservatives: American Evangelicalism from the Postwar Revival to the New Christian Right, called Piety and Public Funding: Evangelicals and the State in Modern America which was limited to the economic thought of the aforementioned groups. He answers the question: How is it that some conservative groups are viscerally anti-government even while enjoying the benefits of government funding? How can they support libertarian economic policies, yet taking aggressive advantage of expanded public funding opportunities for religious foreign aid, health care, education, and social welfare. I look forward to reading that one.

Any thoughts? Does it ring true?
How does it apply to Centrism? to Engaged Yeshivish?

A new book came out on Mendelssohn stressing not his general Enlightenment rationalism, and downplaying his Jewish thought and metaphysics. I took it out as soon as it came into the library. It is quite good. Here is a review of the book from NDPR. As both the book and the review conclude- since religion is about symbols that are not immediately reducible to reason, then there can never be a religion without idolatry. We need the symbols but many will always take them literally.

Gideon Freudenthal, No Religion Without Idolatry: Mendelssohn’s Jewish Enlightenment, University of Notre Dame Press, 2012,
Reviewed by Benjamin Pollock, Michigan State University

In sum, Mendelssohn is not the admittedly important Enlightenment public figure but soft Enlightenment thinker we’ve come to know, who was somehow granted honorary “philosopher” status over the centuries, perhaps as acknowledgement for the fact that he was such a nice Enlightenment guy.

In Freudenthal’s reconstruction, Mendelssohn the philosopher has three basic commitments. He is committed to common sense, or “sound reason,” as the human being’s primary access to necessary truths; he is committed to a notably limited and cautious employment of speculative metaphysics; and he is committed to semiotics as a means of uncovering the ways — and the limitations and dangers inherent to the ways — we articulate and communicate our beliefs and judgments.

The reader who buys into Freudenthal’s new depiction of Mendelssohn reaps considerable philosophical payoff by book’s end. On its basis Freudenthal is able to explain numerous aspects of Mendelssohn’s thought — many of which have remained at best curiosities until now — as part and parcel of a coherent philosophical outlook.

According to Freudenthal, Mendelssohn’s first philosophical loyalty is to sound reason or common sense, through which human beings have access to basic truths necessary for human life. Mendelssohn’s trust in sound reason is the basis for what Freudenthal deems an “optimistic view of human knowledge and reason” (25), according to which rational, empirical, and commonsensical avenues to truth stand in a “wonderful harmony” with one another, and even with the moral and aesthetic goods of human life.

Freudenthal’s second chapter offers a brief sketch of the philosophy of Salomon Maimon, and from this point forward, Maimon serves as Mendelssohn’s foil in the book… By juxtaposing Mendelssohn’s moderate philosophical standpoint, grounded in common sense, to Maimon’s extreme rationalist and skeptical leanings, Freudenthal is able to make a strong case for Mendelssohn’s independence and uniqueness as an Enlightenment thinker.

Mendelssohn finds the essential pillars of natural religion — “the belief in God, providence and the afterlife” — to be accessible to learned and unlearned alike through sound reason or common sense. Moreover, Freudenthal shows, Mendelssohn argues that a religious insider’s assent to the historical truths of a revelatory tradition is based on a “trust” in the authority of the witnesses of that tradition which parallels, on the scale of the particular religious community, the trust in common sense shared by human beings universally. Since it is always reasonable for us to trust our own traditions more than those of others, Freudenthal has Mendelssohn explain, we can equally grant that members of other religious traditions act reasonably in preferring their own historical truths and beliefs. Mendelssohn’s own profession of allegiance to Judaism and yet of tolerance for religious others — for which he has often been maligned as inconsistent or opportunistic — is rooted, Freudenthal elegantly explains, in this “epistemic pluralism” that grasps how trust works in the communal context.

The heart of Freudenthal’s book, chapters four through six, addresses Mendelssohn’s preoccupation with symbolic representation
On Freudenthal’s reading, Mendelssohn understands religious communities as forming around different symbolic systems that represent, firstly, the truths of natural religion, and secondly, the respective defining characteristics of the communities themselves.

Freudenthal explains, a symbol allows us to look through it and to see the transcendent object the symbol stands for. But in the context of religious life, symbols cannot be transparent: the very concreteness of their objectification of divinity is what gives them the power to awaken religious feeling among community members. As Freudenthal adeptly shows, this central problem that Mendelssohn highlights within religious life parallels the problem of linguistic representation that he identified in metaphysics. Just as metaphysicians tend to reify the metaphors through which they direct their sights towards speculative truth, so religious practitioners tend to forget the way religious symbols are meant to point to the divinity that transcends them, and wind up worshiping the symbols themselves instead of the divine. The result? Idolatry.

Idolatry, on Mendelssohn’s view, is an ever-present fixture of religious life. More than any other religious community, however, Judaism, Mendelssohn believes, is equipped to combat idolatry

The first is Mendelssohn’s rather infamous claim that Judaism is not a revealed religion that commands particular beliefs other than in the rational truths of natural religion, but rather is a revealed legislation, whose “ceremonial law” is designed to organize communal practice in such a way as promotes the celebration of and inquiry into the truths of reason. Freudenthal here shows how Mendelssohn’s understanding of Judaism follows directly from his concern with religious symbols. Unlike concrete objects, ceremonial practices “are transient and leave no permanent objects behind that are conducive to idolatry” (138).

He even shows the sin of the golden calf to exemplify, on Mendelssohn’s interpretation, the human tendency to forget the transcendent objects to which linguistic symbols refer, and to treat the symbols themselves as objects of adoration.

The seventh chapter of Freudenthal’s book examines Mendelssohn’s attitude towards idolatrous trends in the Judaism of his own time (see: Kabbalah), and it also brings Mendelssohn’s semiotics to bear on his political philosophy

Mendelssohn is consistent throughout his career in suggesting that a Mosaic constitution in which God alone rules — and in which, therefore, church and state are one and the same — represents the ideal Jewish polity. It is just that since contemporary Judaism no longer lives according to the Mosaic ideal, it must conduct itself differently. The fall from this ideal occurred, Freudenthal shows Mendelssohn held, when the Jewish people called for the establishment of a worldly kingship, preferring a concrete manifestation of political power to divine rule (leading to the anointing of Saul as king). As Freudenthal shows, Mendelssohn thus views the separation of church and state within Judaism as the result of the very same propensity to idolatry that Judaism was intended to combat!

Perhaps most suggestive is the claim that the individual person’s potential for enlightenment in fact depends on the presence of idolatry within her community, without which she would lack the resistance required to spur her to that inquiry which alone would lead her to make knowledge of necessary truths her own. Hence the title of Freudenthal’s book, No Religion without Idolatry, designates, according to Freudenthal, “not only a curse but also a blessing: it is a necessary condition for the ever active quest for truth and enlightenment” (200-1).

Read the Rest Here

There is a new interfaith organization out there called “Orthodox Rabbis for Interfaith” with a surprising story, the group is made up entirely of young leadership affiliated with Shas. It seems that for the last three years the United Nations has given money from the Ford Foundation to a group of forty young leaders and rabbis- average age 35- associated with Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef for the purpose of educating them into the basics of Islam, the Middle East peace process, and the Palestinian perspective. They have received lectures, tours, and seminars from academics, Arabs, and the military to broaden their perspectives.

Now that their training has ended, they are fulfilling their promise and bringing what they learned out to the broader Shas community and they are engaging in active interfaith dialogue. They have even started a new organization to get the word of the need for interfaith out to the public. According to the articles they visited the Sheikh Abu Khader Jabari, the Palestinian clan leader of Hebron and discussed topics with the Imams. When asked “How can Jews thank God every morning for not making them a gentile goy?” They answered: “it only applies to the ancient pagan gentiles who worshiped the stars,not to Muslims.” They further relied with a pun “Maariv Aravim ba Hokhmah,” therefore God approves of Islam.
They seem to have a solid Romantic view of the peaceful co-existence of Jews and Muslims through the ages, which they will once again foster as Arab Jews who speak Arabic and share the same values and culture.

They were featured in the recent feature in the holiday magazine of Kav Itonut (parent of religious paper HaShavua) describing their history and activities.- Kav Laitonot.pdf Here is a description of their activities from a Shas publication-Shasnet from 2009 describing the training- here.

Here is a nice documentary on the program and their training.

They recently visited the Trappist monastery in Latrun desecrated with graffiti. And a representative was interviewed on the Israeli talk show “Kirschbaum and London,” where the secular hosts were particularly condescending to religion and toward the Arabs. The secular hosts even called the monastery the “therapeutic” instead of Trappist.

The same organization Interpeace is funding a Master’s degree in conflict resolution for ultra-orthodox women to serve as community organizers. About 40 prominent ultra-orthodox women are now participating in a similar educational programme. Many of the women are leaders within their communities, for example the wife of the chief Sephardic Rabbi of Israel, the daughter of the chief Ashkenazi Rabbi of Israel and the wives of two SHAS ministers etc. The Master’s programme is jointly implemented by Interpeace, the Haredi College of Jerusalem and Ben-Gurion University. Apart from organizing inter-religious encounters, the two year programme teaches English, mediation skills and about the ongoing Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

This past August the OU sponsored a Youth Conference that included Conservative Rabbis, sponsorship by non-orthodox institutions including JTS, and participation by leading liberal advocates of social action such as Ruth Messinger. This seemed an under-reported story; the reversal of a thirty year trend of insularity. In order to verify that this perception was correct, I emailed three participants for confirmation. They responded over the holidays. Hence, I am only getting to it now.

In the 1980’s, OU Orthodoxy stopped attending events where the other denominations had representatives. This change and the rhetoric created was collected by Jack Wertheimer in his A People Divided: Judaism in Contemporary America (1993). Wertheimer’s angle was the decline of the Conservative movement as the vital center . More recently, Adam Ferziger documented the breakdown of this divide in paternal situations of kiruv; Orthodoxy feels it can participate in their events and enter liberal institutions in order to teach them. Now we have a return to working together.

The program had a focus on the trendy topics of spirituality, social media, social justice and organizational management. They sought to bring together best practices and have mutual learning. They had Ruth Messinger on social action and equal time to an opponent of social action. They created a rouges gallery of Chabad and JTS, social action and Aish haTorah, 36 under 36 meets AJWS, Camp Ramah and Federation. Session speakers included Rabbi Jonathan Rosenblatt of the RJC and Rabbi Yael Buechler a graduate of Jewish Theological Seminary speaking on manicure midrash. Media included the formerly hip JEWCY, the hip G-dcast and general media consultants. Sexuality was discussed by a liberal participant as sexuality, not the Centrist euphemism of “intimacy.”

The program was disproportionally Orthodox but something had changed. Even on youthcon’s own blog we find:“I felt as if no ideas were off limits.”

An anonymous senior NCSY official who was there wrote the following in an email query:

I think Youthcon is an attempt not to solve – the denominational issue – but to ignore it – in light of accomplishing something more important. We are all facing similar challenges in engaging the next generation of youth. Those of us “on the ground” are beginning to see assimilation turn from statistics – to real time numbers issues – in running programming. The well of traditional – but not observant kids – is drying up – and it is becoming increasingly challenging to engage “unaffiliated” Jewish teens. I think youthcon is trying to put aside the denominational issues – and not talk about difference – and not debate and resolve differences – but simply ignore them so that we can share ideas and emerge with new models and approaches. I think the openness is refreshing – and I may not agree with the presence of every speaker – but I am comfortable attending a conference with them for this purpose.

Another person wrote me that he still cringed at some of the talks for their provincialism.

The language of Youth Con is similar to the language used about the Mormon YouthCon and the Baptist YouthCon. New models from the American religious landscape are being used.

In prior posts, we have seen that Rabbi Burg expressed interest in Mormon outreach models and that he reversed the ascetic Nahmanides to express an Eyn Od Milvado” embrace of the world. However, one of my inside sources wrote that Burg was “bringing greater creative vision to the different departments of the OU and pushing them beyond their comfort zones.” If he keeps up this work, Burg may find himself in the list of the Newsweek top 50 rabbis.

I saw an under-reported story but one of those who supplied information thought the most notable part was that “the salmon was great, as was the dessert table.”

There is a very crisp interview with Prof. Sarna in the current issue of Reform Judaism Magazine. He was asked about the change in the younger generation, to which he answered media, sustainability, and think with a start-up mentality. Don’t think central planning agency, rather seed lots of start-up projects. Sarna uses a great phrase “religious recession” for our current era of turning away from religion. The term is generally applied to the turn from religion that occurred in the great depression of the 1930’s, but during the last 2 months has been applied by many media sources to our current era. Sarna observes that the indie minyanim seek to recreate the Israel experience. This would explain some of the phenomena in the pop-culture synagogue programming. As a historian, he concludes with “embrace change.”

Forum for the Future: The Discontinuity of Continuity
an interview with Jonathan Sarna, historian and Brandeis University professor

There is a generational disconnect between elders who grew up before the Internet age and young people who grew up in a post-Internet age. They are in constant “virtual” touch with one another; they read on screen instead of in books; and they can meet their friends on Facebook, so they have no need to meet them at the synagogue or the JCC.

Our children, by contrast, watched that prosperity evaporate. Their question is not “What’s the next big thing?” but “What can we reasonably and responsibly sustain?”

Finally, the new generation approaches problem-solving differently. Since the Progressive era early in the 20th century, the American Jewish community has believed in central planning. We create a multi-year plan to actualize a vision and then follow a predetermined, step-by-step process to get there. Change in this model comes slowly and deliberately. By contrast, today’s young people look at who is at the forefront of change and see nimble start-ups and disruptive technologies. If you have an idea, they believe, you should carry it out—right now. They are not afraid of failure. They understand that in a start-up culture, 90% fail and 10% succeed. What they are not interested in is “continuity.” The people they respect are agents of change, people like Steve Jobs who are not afraid to break things.

I’d say that across the spectrum of North American faiths, we are currently experiencing what may someday become known as the Great Religious Recession. Protestants, Catholics, and Jews, mega-churches and tiny temples are all witnessing membership declines as young people shift away from religious institutions.

In contrast, in the 1970s, America’s religions, Judaism included, experienced an “awakening”—an unanticipated religious revival. Everybody at that time knew young people who had become much more religiously committed than their parents… Well, religion is a bit like gravity: what goes up must come down. Every revival is followed by a period of backsliding, and this one is no exception.

When else did we witness backsliding in religiosity in America? The late 1920s and early 1930s could also be considered a period of “Religious Depression.” Looking back, though, the religious recession of the 1920s and ’30s was also driven in part by automotive technology—having a car offered Americans many competing secular things to do on the weekends. My guess is that today, Internet/social media technology is partly driving the current religious recession. Nowadays nobody needs to go to temple to catch up with friends or learn about Judaism.

This generation of native-born American and Canadian Jews is better educated Jewishly than any of its predecessors as a result of day schools, camps, university-based Jewish Studies, and Israel programs. For example, the independent minyan movement has been heavily influenced by Jews who seek a Shabbat worship experience like the ones they enjoyed in Israel, and its standards of learning are higher than those of the 1970s chavurah movement because its leaders are much more Jewishly knowledgeable.

Ultimately, the key for success is to embrace change. The Reform Movement’s continued success is a testament to its ability to change, as seen in its evolving views on bar mitzvah, Israel, ritual, and much more. Now there are new things to be changed in the face of a young generation that challenges the assumptions and norms of its elders. Change will keep us going—if we do it right.

Read the Full interview here.

According to their own website, the Ne’emanei Torah Va’Avodah Movement is a 40-year-old, a-political religious Zionist movement that was founded by Yehezkel Cohen with Prof. Hanna Safrai, Prof. Ze’ev Safrai, Dr. Avraham Nuriel. It sought to return religious Zionism to its roots. Its orientation aims to promote the values of tolerance, equality and justice in religious society, and to have an impact on the Jewish and democratic character of Israeli society. Committed to Jewish law, the movement works to create a thinking, religious culture that is both open and self-critical, and to encourage a constructive Halachic discourse that deals with the challenges of contemporary times. Its focus is not limited to one area or issue but rather seeks to influence the religious culture of the country and to create a religious discourse that will cover all aspects of life.

Yehezkel Cohen Z”l (born 1938, Tel Aviv) passed away this past week. (h/t menachem mendel). In his eulogy Rabbi Benny Lau stated that Yehezkel Cohen recognized the danger of the changes and warned.

He was the pioneer before this camp. Back in the early seventies he recognized the trend. As an expert diagnosist, he warned of the risks of being dragged after the populaces do not identify with the principles of Zionism and modernity. He fought stubbornly for the burning issues: general education, recruitment of yeshiva students, integration of women in public life, attitudes towards to non-Jews. He recognized the danger and warned. As a soldier stood on guard and not let go… Many left him with a shrug. Others pointed to him as dinosaur.

In the 1970’s, the original 1920’s vision of the Mizrachi movement was fading as the younger generation moved beyond the farm and austerity. In addition, the Bnai Akiva world was turning to the separate of sexes and the reduction of secular studies. This organization wanted to return the ideal of Torah and avodah. They understood Rav Kook by the phrase “the old will be renewed and the new will be sanctified.” They understood the core of Rav Soloveitchik as “I believe in perfect faith that this Torah has been given to be fulfilled and realized in every place and every time, and in all social, economic and cultural frameworks; under all technological circumstances and in all political conditions”. They also viewed Haredim as sectarian and ideological not as pious. Yehezkel Cohen published an ideological tract that was translated into English.

Below are some selections from the little tract. They see themselves as restoring the original Religious Zionism. Torah today must engage the world, the traditional approach is about separation from the world. For the Relgious Zionist, worldly life is in itself a sacred mission, god’s will is ethical, we should engage all cultural creativity, and work for social justice. Cohen sees the left –wing (his term) of Religious Zionism as the true bearers of the message and embraces the rejection from the Haredim as “hating the Torah world.” He wanted the kulturekampf.

Cohen acknowledged that “Religious Zionism achieved physical maturity without commensurate maturity of its theoretical ideas.” And he acknowledged that “not all of the activities of Ne’emanei Torah va-Avodah are beyond reproach or criticism.”

Platform: (1) No full time Torah study (2) There is a need for science and culture, Rav Kook taught us that rejecting culture is only due to “smallness of faith.”(3) Women need to study Torah (4) Women need greater roles in public and religious life. Modesty is based on the needs of the time. Don’t claim it is not in the halakhah, because the pure halakhah bans women and single men from teaching, and women from going out in public. Yet, the haredim don’t follow the tradition. (5) Personal responsibility for and participation in the burden of national and state obligations. In other words, one lives according to the halakhah in a spirit of independent thought and personal responsibility.

He decries the erosion of the Religious Zionist world toward the direction of those of the Ultra- Orthodox community such as the rejection of co-ed activities or limited secular studies.
For him, Halakhic pluralism within Orthodox Jewry is a fact. (In the 1990’s they turned over the reigns of the organization to younger leadership with new ideas and their were many new authors for their journal Deot.)

TORAH AND AVODA- THE IDEA AND THE WAY
Authors: Rabbi Michael Nehorai , Dr. Yehezkel Cohen

There have recently been many inquiries, both oral and written, concerning the principles guiding the movement known as Ne’emanei Torah va-Avodah (“Loyalists of Torah and Labor”). In the following pages, I shall attempt to demonstrate that these principles are identical with those which were inherent in the earliest, founding stage of the historic Religious Zionist movement. This movement, which acted out of a combination of national mission and religious sensibility, never formulated its ideology in a conceptual, philosophical manner, so that its fundamental principles came to be forgotten over the course of time.

According to the underlying conception of Religious Zionism, Judaism is manifested in the fact that it presents the various elements – religion, nation and land – as interrelated. Indeed, the words of the Torah clearly assume the inter-relationship of all elements of existence- individual, people and land.
This argument is elaborated in the words of Rabbi Kook, uttered in another context: “If a person wishes to state novellae concerning matters of Repentance in this time, but does not look towards the revealed end and the emergence of the light of salvation, he will be unable to direct anything towards the truth of the Torah” (Iggerot ha-Re’eyah, Vol. II, p.37).

The traditional religious ideal was one of maximal separation from the life of this world, focused upon Torah study as the goal of life. How can such an ideal be squared with that of the wholeness of Judaism in a modern state, expressed through military service, the study of science, and the acceptance of the authority of a democratically-chosen government?

Rabbi Isaac Jacob Reines (1839-1915) the founder of Religious Zionism, was the first to offer a religious legitimization for change and variety in the Jewish way of life

Worldly life is in itself a sacred mission, not only a passage-way to the next world. The obligations towards the nation and the state incumbent upon a person as the result of human conscience are also commandments. God’s will is itself ethical, so that it is inconceivable that an act which appears good and necessary from a human viewpoint be proscribed for religious reasons. Such a spiritual climate expanded the framework of religious intent and legitimized the natural human desire to be involved in all realms of cultural expression. In particular, a religious dimension was given to the study of science and the concern for social justice as preconditions for full involvement in the life of the nation and the state.

Ne’ emanei Torah va-Avodah as Carriers of the Religious Zionist Idea
Torah and Avodah was always the slogan of B’nai Akiva and of the National Religious Party in general, and only recently has it been taken over by the left-wing of the national-religious camp, who claim exclusive right thereto. This slogan always aroused the criticism of Torah circles. The placing of another value (i.e. Avodah) on equal footing with Torah unseated the latter from its position of supremacy, Labor being treated as a parallel ideal. Those who negated this slogan argued that, if the Torah is the main thing, all of man’s other needs and the components of his life are determined by what follows from it.

The message implied by the expression Torah va-Avodah in our day, and the monopoly claimed over it by those within the NRP who hate the Torah world and have claimed this expression as their own, indicates that that which the great Torah scholars feared has come true, (ha-Modia. 1 Ellul 5747 [Sept 1987] ).
Historically, Religious Zionism achieved physical maturity without commensurate maturity of its theoretical ideas. It did not articulate the great goal intended for it by history – to unify in action, through its way of life, the full scope of the Jewish spirit.

Even if not all of the activities of Ne’emanei Torah va-Avodah are beyond reproach or criticism, one must credit it with the fact that it has brought about a revival of the original principles defining the identity of Religious Zionism.
The Fourteenth “Principle of Faith”- Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik

A second fundamental truth upon which our movement is based may be expressed in a fourteenth “principle of faith”. What is this principle? It may be formulated in the simple declaration: “I believe in perfect faith that this Torah has been given to be fulfilled and realized in every place and every time, and in all social, economic and cultural frameworks; under all technological circumstances and in all political conditions”.

We reject the approach of separatism as dangerous to the survival of the (Jewish) nation. … As a result of this approach, there is a concrete danger that we will become reduced to a small sect, which cannot long survive. We solemnly declare that the principle of the eternity of the Torah assures us that it is possible to study the Torah and to fulfill it, not only in the House of Study and in the ghetto, but in every place in the world, be it in the modern home, laboratory, campus or factory; in private life or in sovereign existence. [Num. 13:30].– from “The Second Principle: ,’It is Not in Heaven'” (Hebrew), in his Hamesh Derashot,Jerusalem, 1974, pp. 111-113.

The New will be Sanctified and the Holy will Be Renewed

The term Haredi refers, not to punctiliousness in the observance of mitzvot – i.e., “one who fears the word of God”- but to a community which, from a religious-social-cultural perspective, identifies with Agudat Yisrael; which refers to itself by the term Haredi; and which claims for itself greater religiosity and a monopoly upon the path towards God

1. Torah study is an important value, and considerable time ought to be devoted to Torah study. However, the ultimate goal of the Jewish people is to live a natural, earthly life according to the Torah – whether within the private framework of the individual or as active participants in the life of the state and society. In the dispute between Rabbi Ishmael and Rabbi Simeon bar Yohai, we are followers of Rabbi Ishmael:

2. Science and positive aspects of general culture ought to form a part of the spiritual world of the religious Jew. We cite the words of Rabbi Kook:
Because of their smallness of faith, it seems (to some people) that whatever human beings do in order to strengthen their position… to acquire knowledge, strength, beauty, order – that all these are outside of the Divine contents within the world. For this reason some people, who think of themselves as relying upon a Divine basis, look askance upon any worldly progress and hate culture and science…But all this is a great error and a lack of faith. (Arpelei Tohar, Sect. 47).

Ignorance of science and general culture not only deprives one of an important spiritual dimension of one’s humanity and harms one’s own Judaism, but also prevents the religious public from occupying positions of importance and influence in the state and in society, leaving the shaping of our society in the hands of the secularists alone.

3. Woman as a person of dignity in her own right. As such, she is entitled to and deserving of intellectual and cultural, as well as full religious development (i.e. Torah study)
Rabbi Hayyim David Halevi, who writes that: “In the earlier days, when a woman was exclusively a housewife and the girls did not study at all… but in our day, when they engage in general studies with great seriousness, why should Torah study be inferior?” (Aseh lekha Rav, Vol. II: p. 193).

4. The participation of women in public life and in the shaping of society, sharing both in the privileges and obligations implied in such. This implies the existence of a mixed society. Those who reject this tendency in the name of sexual modesty argue that the choice is between modesty, attained by woman staying at home, and licentiousness, resulting from woman’s involvement in society. The advocates of Torah and Avodah believe that the principles of modesty, as opposed to the specific details derived from the life situation of previous generations, both can and do exist in a mixed society.

One frequently hears the demand, aggressively directed towards our circles, that one follow the laws of modesty as formulated in the Mishneh Torah. the Shulhan Arukh. and similar halakhic codes. This is the reason offered by those who advocate the division of B’nai Akiva into two separate movements for boys and for girls. Yet those who make these demands, and the Ultra-Orthodox public generally, themselves fail to observe a number of regulations of the Shulhan Arukh concerning this subject.

Both the Shulhan Arukh (Even ha-Ezer 22:20) and Maimonides (Issurel Bi’ah 22:13) contain halakhic rulings, based upon the Mishnah and the Talmud, stating in a clear and unequivocal manner that a woman or an unmarried man are not allowed to engage in teaching, for reasons of modesty and mixing between men and women. Yet the entire Independent Educational system of Agudat Yisrael (Hinukh Atzma’i) is built upon female teachers, while unmarried men likewise serve there as teachers. What happened to the principle of modesty? This problem is articulated in the comments of several later halakhic authorities:

The Shulhan Arukh rules that “A man must separate himself from women very greatly” (Even ha-Ezer 21:1). How does this explicit halakhah square with the fact that, in offices, shops and the like, one finds Haredi women working alongside men, including non-religious men? Maimonides rules that:

It is shameful for a woman to go about constantly, sometimes out of doors and sometimes in the streets. A husband is to prevent his wife from doing this, and not allow her to go out except once a month or several times a month. (MT, Ishut 13:11).
How many Haredi families observe this law? One could cite many other examples, but these will suffice. How are we to understand all this? An answer may be found in the remarks of Rabbi Saul Yisraeli who, in his discussion of National Service for girls, observes that: “It seems that the limits of (the principle), ‘All the honor of the king’s daughter is within’ depends upon local custom” (Rabbi J. L. Maimon, ed., ha-Torah veha-Medinah, Vol. IV: p.226).

5. Personal responsibility for and participation in the burden of national and state obligations. The religious public is not a group enjoying special privileges. Therefore, all young men and women are obligated to serve in the various frameworks available to them. The mitzvah of Torah study does not exempt one from other mitzvot, including that of military service:

In other words, one lives according to the halakhah in a spirit of independent thought and personal responsibility, rejecting those approaches in which the individual abnegates his personal responsibility in favor of one or another halakhic authority. Judaism implies personal responsibility for the sanctification of life, accepting the tradition on the basis of independent and critical thought.

Joseph of 1902 (i.e., the Mizrachi) felt that it was forbidden to rely upon the status quo, that great changes were about to take place in the life of the Jewish people, and that we must be ready and prepared for these changes… In our day, the Creator of the Universe has ruled that the halakhah follows Joseph of1902 (against the entire yeshivah world of that time!). (״Joseph and His Brothers”, Hamesh Derashot,Jerusalem, 1974, p. 23).

In recent years, at the initiative of certain circles within the National-Religious public, a degree of erosion has taken place in the principles and way of life of Torah and Avodah, toward the direction of those of the Ultra- Orthodox community. Some examples of this erosion are: the circle associated with Yeshivat Merkaz Ha-Rav has estabished a religious high school for girls whose students are forbidden to belong to mixed youth movements (i.e., B’nai Akiva or Ezra), as well as a heder which limits secular studies to the absolute minimum. In the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, a new youth movement was established, in which there is absolute separation of boys and girls.

Had these things been done in order to meet the legitimate needs of those who do them and members of their circle, we could accept them. However, those who advocate these changes openly declare that it is their intention to make their way that of the entire national-religious public (see, for example, Moreshet, No. 3, p. 71).

These acts of omission and commission express the “Haredi” world-view. This view has halakhic sources, just as the path of Torah and Avodah is based upon the halakhah. Halakhic pluralism within Orthodox Jewry is a fact that cannot be

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