The Settler Movement, the Temple Mount and Leon Festinger

Yesterday Dr. Mordechai Inbari of the University of North Carolina at Pembroke spoke at Ohio State about the attitude of religious Zionists to the Temple Mount. This lecture caught my attention for two reasons. First, it was about religious apocalypticism and politics, my dissertation topic even if Dr. Inbari deals with modern movements while I focus on medieval and early modern ones. Second, he discussed Leon Festinger and his model of religious cognitive dissonance. (See "Leon Festinger's UFO Group and the Spreading of Whedon's Gospel.") Here are my notes for the lecture. As always all mistakes are mine.



The Temple Mount is the holiest site to Judaism and the third holiest site for Islam. For Judaism, the Temple Mount is the house of God. One can think of it as a heart with many layers. The deeper you go the holier it gets. Muslims also see this site as holy based on a story in the hadith where Mohammad journeys at night to a place called Al-Aqsa. Thus the Temple Mount became a major center of conflict in the Israeli-Arab war.

As a scholar, Dr. Inbari is interested in the notion of “when prophecy fails.” For this, you have to start with Leon Festinger’s book. This book was based on the study of a group of people who believed that aliens would come and take them away. As these expectations failed a certain dynamic developed within the group. Festinger called this process “cognitive dissonance. Rather than abandon their beliefs as its claims failed, members of the group became more convinced as to the truth of the claims and made a greater effort to proselytize outsiders. From studying the religious Zionists and the settler movement one can make a case for modifying Festinger's claims. Instead of trying to bring in more believers in response to failed messianic expectations, we see an intensifying of messianic zeal in order to prevent a complete collapse.

From the beginning of Zionism as a major political power within Judaism, Orthodoxy had a mixed relationship with it. Traditional Jews see themselves in exile both physically and spiritually ever since the destruction of the Second Temple. Since God destroyed his house only God can restore it. Therefore Zionism was looked at with suspicion. An example of this was the fifth Lubavitcher Rebbe who argued that Zionism was forcing the end and therefore must stop short of perfection.

Other voices were Rav Abraham Kook, a traditional European rabbi who joined the Zionist movement. According to Rav Kook, one should not judge Zionists based on their actions but on their intentions and even their hidden intentions. God started a human process with Zionism even if the Zionists seem to have rejected rabbinic authority. Once secular Zionists return to their faith the movement will move to a second phase with the restoration of the monarchy and the Temple. Rav Kook even started a yeshiva in 1921 to prepare students for Temple service. This did not mean that Rav Kook and his students were going on the Temple Mount. That would still require a red heifer. Also, it is not clear where the Temple was located.

Rav Kook was preparing for the Messiah, but he was not trying to force issues. The Six Day War changed the status quo in that for the first time in two thousand years Jews controlled the Temple Mount. Gen. Moshe Dayan decided to maintain Muslim authority. Non-Muslims can go as tourists, but only Muslims can pray, thus making the Temple Mount possibly the only place in the world in which Jews are not allowed to pray.

1973 saw the formation of Gush Emunim under the leadership of the son of Rav Kook, Rabbi Zvi Yehudah Kook (1891-1982). He believed that living in post-1967 meant that this was no longer preparing for redemption but now in the actual beginning of the redemption. That being said, the Chief rabbinate declared that one could not go on the Temple Mount until the Temple was built. Obviously, if Jews cannot go onto the Temple Mount until there is a Temple they cannot build one to allow them to go on in the first place. Rabbi Goren, the chief army chaplain, dissented; he went on the Temple Mount and ordered the engineering corps to map the Temple Mount.

The Oslo Accords brought a major crisis to religious Zionism. How do you explain Israeli withdrawal? If Jews controlling more land in Israel brings us closer to redemption does the fact that they now control less mean that we are further away from redemption? This is where cognitive dissonance comes in. Immediately after the signing of Oslo, there was a major shift among the settlers. You have Rabbi Dov Lior saying that the peace process was a punishment from God from delaying the building of the Temple. The conclusion, therefore, was that Jews should go on the Temple Mount. The Council of Yesha rabbis began to encourage Jews to go on the Temple Mount in 1996. The logic being that since Jews do not go on the site the Israeli government became convinced that it could be given away. Thus going on the Temple Mount, even if it violates Jewish law, is permitted due to the emergency nature of the situation.

From November 2003 – October 2004 70,000 Jews visited the mount. The site had been closed with the starting of the Second Intifada. Thus we see a major shift within religious Zionists with them doing something that had before been seen as a major prohibition. This is not religion influencing politics but politics influencing religion. This also serves as a case study of how flexible religion can be.

Muslim doctrine has also been evolving with an acceptance of a Hamas doctrine. Since Mohammad left Mecca on his journey to Jerusalem these two cities are two sides of the same coin; Jerusalem and Mecca are thus the same place and non-Muslims should be forbidden to enter at all.

C. S. Lewis and the Scandal of the Evangelical (and Orthodox Jewish) Mind

Ryan Harper at the Huffington Post has an article on C. S. Lewis' influence on American evangelical Christianity, noting that Lewis is particularly valuable in countering arguments based on relativism. Harper argues, though, that the very strength of Lewis' ideas are having the detrimental effect of furthering Mark Noll's "The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind."

As is the tendency with all powerful ideas, Lewis's arguments have become a rhetorical talisman, an epistemological panacea. Because they offer a number of compelling insights that strike at the root of important questions, they are taken to resolve all root matters. Therefore, however new the wineskins, readers of popular evangelical apologetics end up drinking some version of that sound old Oxford vintage.



The result of this Lewis-worship is a two-fold narrowing of evangelical intellectual life. First, as Lewisian thought becomes the discursive structure of critical inquiry, it ceases to be the object of critical inquiry. Lewis is never put in the dock for inspection, revision, abandonment or refinement. Lewis is the dock.


Second, an evangelical milieu that so prides itself on its "engagement" with secular thought and culture begins to count reading and rehearsing Lewisian argument as such engagement. "Engagement" thus becomes a second-hand affair -- synonymous with finding out what C.S. Lewis has said on a given topic. But the 21st century has some new topics; and while it is unwise to execute some great divorce with the past and its great thinkers, each generation must write its own books.

Lewis certainly has had an influence on me and I openly admit that when making arguments about the need to put forth coherent statements about ultimate values, that I am channeling Lewis. That being said I see myself as engaging in a conversation with Lewis, a conversation that goes to different places. For me, the bigger issue than just trying to make moral statements is trying to pass those statements on to one's children. (See "When Lesbian Nazis in Bell-Bottoms Attack.") Perhaps this is because Lewis lived in a world in which even his atheists were still deeply in touch with a traditional culture. I live several generations down this path and worry when the heritage of the Enlightenment, based ultimately on early modern Christian thought, will finally run out on us.

This problem posed by Harper needs to be taken a step further. Yes, Lewis was a powerful writer. That the evangelical community has an unhealthy relationship with him I think, though, is due to the fact that it has yet to produce a writer who can match him. Perhaps this is the true scandal of the evangelical mind. Forget about being able to match secular academic culture; it has yet to match C. S. Lewis. Thus the theological conversation never moves beyond Lewis. Readers have nothing better to read than Lewis as writers are not capable of doing anything but reproducing Lewis.

I would go so far with this as to make a comparison to Orthodox Judaism and R. Samson Raphael Hirsch. Hirsch, a nineteenth-century German rabbi, was certainly the Jewish writer that most influenced me as a teenager and college student. Now as Dr. Alan Brill once pointed out to his class, Hirsch as a major influence on American Orthodoxy is a fairly recent phenomenon, due in large part to his having many descendants who translated his work into English and got them published. The other side to this, I would point out, that in terms of looking for books on Jewish thought that were sophisticated enough to pass muster with an intelligent teenager and which took an engagement with an outside world as a given I did not have much in the way of alternative options but for Hirsch. So this millennial American Orthodox teenager found himself in a situation in which the only Orthodox Judaism he could relate to was from nineteenth-century Germany. This is not a critic of Hirsch. He was a great thinker and writer. I am sure if I would be able to read him in German I would appreciate him all the more. That being said one has to ask why I was never given any serious twentieth-century Jewish literature to relate to. (The closest thing I could think of is Herman Wouk's This is My God which is Hirsch updated for 1950s America.)


As for me, I must admit that there was something particularly dangerous in Hirsch in that, considering my Asperger mental framework, I was not intuitively aware that I was not operating in nineteenth-century Germany and that I should not be trying to be a nineteenth-century German. So I had to push forward on my own to realize that I needed to face the reality of the twenty-first century and its unique issues; all this without the help of a useful Modern Orthodox literature. More recently I have begun reading the books of R. Jonathan Sacks and at least he is a step in the right direction. But until Modern Orthodoxy builds its own literature, it will remain caught between feeding off of Haredi and secular sources, while trying to create some personal dialectic whole between the two, and reaching back to some past thinker and trying to make him relevant for the present.


(Before readers bring up the examples of R. Joseph Soloveitchik and R. Abraham Isaac Kook, let me point out that I have been writing about my own personal experience as a teenager trying to mature into an intellectually serious Orthodox adult. Rav Soloveitchik and Rav Kook were not major influences on me at that point in my life. Furthermore, neither of these thinkers set out a coherent weltanschauung like Hirsch's Horeb, certainly not one that can be presented to teenagers. Most importantly, any attempt to use thinkers like Rav Soloveitchik and Rav Kook, both of whom distinct non-products of late twentieth century American culture, runs the same risk as turning to Hirsch.)

Letter from Michael Makovi to Dan McLeroy

Our friend Michael Makovi took the opportunity of my previous post on Mr. Dan McLeroy of the Texas school board. To be clear, as someone who teaches history, I do not support the secular narrative of modernity and much of my efforts in teaching modern history are to debunk this view. I particularly support Makovi's argument about the role of civil liberties at different levels of government. I have used a similar argument about a sliding scale of civil liberties before. In essence I become less Libertarian the further down I go in government. For example while I support the legalization of drugs and prostitution, I would support the right of individual neighborhoods to ban such activity. In fact I would wish to live in such a neighborhood. I am willing to allow Kiryat Joel and New Square to run their own little "Jewish Calvinist Geneva's" and even to ban television and English newspapers.

Mr. McLeroy,

I read with interest the article "How Christian Were the Founders?" in the New York Times. As an Orthodox Jew, I largely agree with the general tenor of your opinions. I wish to make a few remarks, however, quibbling on some of what you and your colleagues say and hold.

I. Distinction Between Facts and Opinions

First, I believe we have to make a distinction between teaching history and teaching opinions. It is one thing to teach the unbiased and objective fact THAT the Framers and Founders were religious. It is an objective fact that the king of England viewed the Revolutionary War as a Presbyterian Revolution; it is an objective fact that New England Congregationalist sermons advocating revolution against Britain, printed as pamphlets, outnumbered all other publications in America, religious or otherwise, four-to-one. It is also an objective fact that the principles of federalism and democracy were derived by John Calvin and Heinrich Bullinger and others from the Bible, and that John Locke adopted these concepts and secularized them, and that Calvin and Locke together inspired the American Revolution. (See the cartoon "An Attempt to Land a Bishop in America".)

Everything I've just said is objective fact. However, while it is indisputable THAT Locke relied on Calvin, it is something wholly else to say that WE must rely on Calvin ourselves, or even Locke for that matter. Similarly, while it is an indisputable fact that Benjamin Franklin criticized Thomas Paine's denial of individual Divine Providence, it is something wholly else to argue that WE must agree with Franklin over Paine.

My point is that we must be careful to teach indisputable historical facts, and eschew offering our own opinions of what individuals ought to believe. I believe that public schools must teach the Christian past of America, not because I am myself a Christian (on the contrary, I am in fact an Orthodox Jew), but rather, because it is simply an unassailable historical fact that America has a Christian past. Let the public schools teach objective facts, and let students choose for themselves what to believe. If students wish to become Christians, that is their prerogative. But if students such as myself will choose otherwise (I have and will remain a Jew), that is in turn their prerogative.

Similarly, then, I would oppose teaching creationism in biology class. This is not because I, as an Orthodox Jew, disagree with creationism; I do in fact, on quite religious grounds, reject creationism and instead embrace evolution, but that is not the point. Rather, I oppose teaching creationism in biology class because creationism is a religious belief, not a scientific one. If you wish you teach the scientific objections to evolution, then that certainly is admissible in a biology class. But to teach religious principles in a science class is inexcusable. Rather, religious principles should be taught in a philosophy class. And even that, students should be taught the fact THAT many religious Christians advocate creationism. Creationism can be taught very accurately and faithfully, but it should be taught as a belief that some hold, not as a belief that one must hold. Similarly, Judaism and Christianity can be taught in dispassionate objection fashions, with students being told what these two religions say, without students being told to take any particular stance. The data will be provided to students but the conclusions will be their own. I, for example, am perfectly aware of what scientists say about evolution, and what creationists say in reply. Having all the relevant data at my disposal, I have chosen to stake my claim with evolution, on both scientific and religious grounds. (Again, my embrace of evolution is quite religious in nature. See, for example, Rabbi Chanan Morrison, "Noah: The Age of the Universe." Rabbi Morrison follows the approach of Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak ha-Kohen Kook, one of the greatest rabbis of recent times, and revered by both the American Modern Orthodox as well as by the Israeli far-right nationalist "settlers". Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch of 19th-century Germany, arguably THE father of Modern Orthodox Judaism, has a similar approach.)

Therefore, the proper understanding of the First Amendment depends on societal consensus. If the society is wholly and entirely Christian, then the separation of church and state will mean only that the government cannot coerce one particular Christian church; neither Catholicism nor Protestantism may be supported by the government. However, Judaism might be seen as entirely beyond the pale, and subject to coercion and punishment. That is, religious tolerance is relative; one may tolerate other Christians but not non-Christians.

Rabbi Menahem ha-Meiri of 13th-century Provence, France, is famous for tolerating Christians and Muslims and saying that in Jewish law, a Christian or Muslim is like a Jew, and that the commandment to love one's neighbor as himself includes them. But even Rabbi Menahem ha-Meiri declared that atheists could NOT be tolerated, because in his view, anyone who denied reward and punishment was liable to murder and steal and commit crimes against society. Today, however, things might be different, and one might rightly follow the general direction of Rabbi Menahem ha-Meiri, and based on his own logic, extend his tolerance to include even atheists, as long as they respect the rights of their fellow men and do not commit anti-social crimes. So the separation of church and state is relative, and must be reconsidered anew in every time and place.

II. A Nuanced Understanding of Just What Democracy and Federalism Are

Second, I believe we need to have a nuanced understanding of just what democracy and federalism are. If we search for the roots of democracy, we find them in John Calvin and Heinrich Bullinger and the like, responding to Catholic monarchs and their violation of Protestant sensibilities. We find that all the major ideas of the Calvinists were adopted by John Locke, and that Calvin and Locke together influenced the American revolutionaries. Thus, the cartoon "An Attempt to Land a Bishop in America" could depict revolutionaries holding the books of Locke and Sidney and hurling Calvin at a Brit.

What, then, is the difference between Calvin and Locke? The chief difference, I believe, is that whereas the Calvinists and Puritans were quite confident in their own religious beliefs, by contrast, Locke wrote a treatise on religious toleration. It has been put that Samuel Rutherford wrote the greatest work in favor of civil liberties and the greatest work in favor of religious intolerance. The difference between Calvin and Locke is not in their political ideas of how the government ought to uphold rights and liberties. Rather, they disagreed on just what those liberties and rights were.

In premodern Jewish societies, for example, religiosity was taken for granted, and so murder and Shabbat violation were equally heinous, and were equally violations of morality and crimes against society. However, Orthodox Jewish authorities have recognized that nowadays, most Jews are lamentably - but through no fault of their own - ignorant of Judaism, and so one cannot view Shabbat violation the same way anymore. The non-religious will simply not view efforts at curtailing their religious liberties the same way as they once would. The Orthodox authorities will still wholeheartedly advocate Shabbat observance, but they will not longer coerce it. On the other hand, however, everyone still agrees that murder is heinous, and so everyone will agree that murderers must be punished.

I have made this argument a few times; see, for example, my

1) "The Death-Penalty in a Theocratic Israel"

2) "The Death-Penalty in a Theocratic Israel, Part 2"

My point is that democracy and federalism has NO substantive contents or beliefs. All democracy states is that the government can coerce observance of fundamentals of morality but that it cannot coerce anything else. But just what are the fundamentals of morality? For Calvin, this included every little tit and tittle of belief or practice of Calvinism, and so Calvinists could oppress Catholics just as Catholics had oppressed Protestants. But for Locke, the fundamentals of morality had to be reduced to some sort of lowest-common-denominator, viz. "life, liberty, and the pursuit of property". Any society can have whatever list of morals it desires.

Thus, one can have a Jewish democracy or a Hindu democracy or a secular democracy no less than one may have a Christian democracy. The innovation of democracy is that there is rule of law, that the government has the obligation to uphold rights and liberties and laws, and that the government is subject to the same laws as the citizens. Furthermore, on any issue which is not clearly spelled out (for example, the Bible says nothing about proper taxation rates), the will of the people prevails. But this is very subjective; one society will have a different conception of morality than another.

Therefore, for example: a Biblical Jewish theocracy might enforce Shabbat observance, while a contemporary Jewish theocracy would not. However, both Biblical and contemporary Jewish theocracies might ban Christian missionary activities in Israel, since Israelis today, even secular ones, are in general agreement that missionizing in Israel is unacceptable. If, please G-d, a religious revival in Israel occurs, then perhaps Shabbat observance will again become the norm, and it will once again become the government's prerogative to enforce.

Christians today are perfectly entitled to present their views in the public sphere, and let their ideas be weighed in the marketplace of ideas. If, for example, Christians can convince America that abortion is murder, then abortion can become illegal and punishable. But if Americans reject that abortion is such a moral fundamental, then the Christians will lose their case.

This brings us to another point of American history: if I understand the argument of Professor Barry Alan Shain's The Myth of American Individualism: The Protestant Origins of American Political Thought, then we must realize the following: government coercion becomes more conscionable the smaller the given society is. That is, it is more justifiable for a CITY to coerce than for a STATE, and more justifiable for a STATE to coerce than a NATION. The smaller the entity, the more government coercion and societal moral censure begin to become indistinguishable. If an entire city is staunchly Protestant, then it is very justifiable for the city to force Protestantism on its inhabitants. Government coercion and general non-coercive societal moral censure become one and the same. But as the society becomes larger, i.e. when we deal with states and even more with nations, then this becomes less clear. Perhaps one state is Calvinist and another is Catholic, for example. Government coercion becomes exposed and susceptible to the argument that the government is far-away in Rome, judging those alien to it. Why should someone in California be beholden to the views of someone in Washington? In a smaller society, one may leave and relocate if he is displeased. If you live in Meah Shearim, an Ultra-Orthodox neighborhood in Jerusalem, then you cannot blame your neighbors when they try to coerce you to observe Jewish law; after all, you chose to live in that neighborhood!

But if someone in Meah Shearim tries to force Jewish law onto someone in Tel Aviv (which is mostly secular), then this is evil. John Locke's concept of the consent of the government, especially tacit consent, becomes more real and authentic with smaller communities than with extended nations or empires. If I understand Professor Shain, then he has made this argument, but in any case, I independently made the same argument myself before I ever saw Shain; see my article, "Religious Coercion, or On John Locke and the Kehilla's Right to Assess Tzedaqa."

To return to the First Amendment: the First Amendment's separation of church and state must be understood as applying to different societies in different ways. Until the 14th Amendment was passed, the Bill of Rights applied only to the national government, but not to state governments. Thus, the Federal government could not respect any religions, but individual states could respect any given religion they wanted to. I think the principle is that the smaller the society in question, the greater its ability to coerce residents. In a small town, a fantastic and incredible amount of coercion is conscionable.

My point in saying all this, is to prove the following: it is one thing for you to advocate Christianity and Christian beliefs and principles, but it is something wholly else for you to force them on someone else. For you to coerce others to believe in Christianity, you must grapple with two factors:

1) The general status quo today; the more people agree with you, the more you can coerce the minority, but the more people disagree with you, the more you must acknowledge and respect their convictions and resort to persuasion rather than to coercion;

2) The fact that coercion is more valid in smaller communities than in larger ones. The towns of New England were extremely religious, and Protestantism was taken for granted in them as a basic fact of morality and proper society. But these towns did not try to coerce people in other states to believe like them. They instead used persuasion, not coercion.

As I said, this forces us to reconsider the First Amendment in two ways:

1) The separation of church and state depends on just exactly what "church" means to that time and place. In the 18th-century, perhaps this separation put all Christian churches on an equal level but condemned non-Christians as beyond the pale. Today, things might be different.

2) The First Amendment applied to the Federal government, but not to the states. The smaller the society in question, the more it can coerce citizens, and the more liberty can become positive and not merely negative.

Therefore, while it is an unassailable fact that America's roots are Christian, it is something wholly else to claim that therefore, America should be Christian today. You should teach students only the objective historical facts, and nothing more. Let me give an analogy: On Wikipedia, one may not give his own personal views, but one can certainly objectively describe another's views. Therefore: I may NOT,on Wikipedia, record Jewish beliefs as the truth. However, I may write that according to such-and-such a book by so-and-so the rabbi, such-and-such is what Judaism says the truth is. Therefore: the proper course, I believe, is to teach students only the objective historical facts. (I am speaking of public schools; private schools may teach whatever they want, since there is Locke-ian consent of the governed. If you don't like what the school teaches, you may leave.) Once everyone is armed with the historical facts, they may make whatever decisions they desire. If the American people then choose to make America into a Christian society, then that is their prerogative.

As an aside, I believe that everything I've written has proven that democracy and theocracy do not contract at all. As I said, democracy is a METHOD of enforcing morality, but it contains no concepts of morality itself, except for the beliefs that the government is accountable to the people and that all people are equal. Other than this, democracy is a METHOD of governance, but is utterly devoid of any actual philosophical or moral beliefs. Thus, you can have a Christian democracy, a Jewish democracy, or a secular democracy, for example.

By the way: the Declaration of Independence says far more than just "the laws of Nature and Nature's God". The last paragraph of the Declaration discusses Divine Providence, and as Professor Jeffry Morrison (Assistant Professor of Government, Regent University; Faculty, James Madison Memorial Fellowship Foundation, Washington, D.C.) shows in his essay, "Political Theology in the Declaration of

Independence," that the last paragraphs of the Declaration is perfectly consonant with Calvinism. According to Morrison, the first paragraph of the Declaration appealed to deists, but the last paragraph appealed to very religious Calvinists.

Thank you, and sincerely,

Michael Makovi

Formerly of Silver Spring, MD

Now a student of Yeshivat Hesder Petah Tiqwa (literally: "The

IDF-Affiliated Orthodox-Jewish Theological-Seminary of Petah Tiqwa") in Petah Tiqwa, Israel

Are Haredim to Blame for the OTD Phenomenon?

Michael Makovi wrote a series of comments that I thought deserved a posting of its own. He offers an eloquent Modern Orthodox challenge (which may make it beside the point) to Rabbi Dovid Schwartz and the Haredi community as to their responsibility in causing people to abandon ritual observance.


Rabbi Schwartz,

As I indicated, what most troubled me about your letter was that while it was quick to defend the secular Zionists and such (which is remarkable - I do sincerely thank you), nevertheless, it was quick to condemn the contemporary OTDs and such. You admit the "broken school system", and you admit that the school systems are unable to impart true religiosity unless they include 8+ years of kollel. Shouldn't this set off alarms in your head? Perhaps the OTDs are responding to these failures of the school system?

I know more about the Modern Orthodox community than the Haredi one, so it is difficult for me to speak of the Haredi one except as an outsider looking in, but what I see, from where I stand, is that the Haredi community forces an outdated and obsolete worldview on its students. The Haredim try to teach their students as if it is still 1800, as if nothing has changed. My rabbi, Rabbi Marc Angel writes an insightful essay "Modern Orthodoxy and Halakhah: An Inquiry" (printed in Seeking Good, Seeking Peace), in which he argues that the difference between Modern Orthodoxy and Haredism is that they mentally live in different times. The Modern Orthodox want to understand the sages of previous times, but they want to themselves live in today's world. The Western-European Sephardim were similar; they were completely observant, but they lived amidst the greater non-Jewish society, and participated fully. When the Haskalah came, the Jews of Holland and Italy were barely affected, because they were already full participants in the Renaissance. Rabbi Menashe ben Israel had his portrait done by his friend Rembrandt! Rabbi Marc Angel, in "Thoughts on Early American Jewry" (in Seeking Good, Seeking Peace) writes about a Reform historian who mistook the American colonial Sephardim for Reformers, because they dressed normally and spoke English. Rabbi Angel responds that for an Orthodox Sephardi, to dress like his non-Jewish neighbors and speak their vernacular did not contradict living a fully Orthodox lifestyle.

Similarly, Rambam would have been "Modern Orthodox" in that he tried to follow the Talmud, but admitted that he lived in 11th-century Spain (and later Egypt) and not 6th-century Babylonia. Thus, the Mishneh Torah will often say, "The law ought to be like this, but back when I was in Spain, we did like this."

The Haredim, by contrast, try to mentally live in a world that no longer exists, and that in any case, is out of sync with the outside world. The Haredim try to pretend they're still in 18th-century Lithuania or Poland.

The more gifted and intelligent children will realize that something is amiss, that something is being hidden from them. Their intellectual perspicacity will not tolerate this. As Rabbi S. R. Hirsch says:
It would be most perverse and criminal of us to seek to instill in our children a contempt, based on ignorance and untruth, for everything that is not specifically Jewish, for all other human arts and sciences, in the belief that by inculcating our children with such a negative attitude ... we could safeguard them from contacts with the scholarly and scientific endeavors of the rest of mankind…You will then see that your simple-minded calculations were just as criminal as they were perverse. Criminal, because they enlisted the help of untruth supposedly in order to protect the truth, and because you have thus departed from the path upon which your own Sages have preceded you and beckoned you to follow them. Perverse, because by so doing you have achieved precisely the opposite of what you wanted to accomplish... Your child will consequently begin to doubt all of Judaism which (so, at least, it must seem to him from your behavior) can exist only in the night and darkness of ignorance and which must close its eyes and the minds of its adherents to the light of all knowledge if it is not to perish (Collected Writings vol 7 pp. 415-6, quoted in Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch—Torah Leadership for Our Times by Rabbi Dr. Yehudah (Leo) Levi).
The brighter students will realize that according to their teachers, Judaism can survive only in darkness and ignorance. Rav A. I. Kook attributes the rise of secular Zionism and the like to the fact that the secularists had more idealism than the religious. As one of my rabbis put it, the secularists were talking about changing the world while the religious talked about meat and milk spoons. The situation is exactly the same today. The OTDs, etc., see the outside world as being more idealistic, more learned, more culturally and intellectually advanced, than the religious community.And you cannot underestimate the influence of mis-education. I have a friend who became a baal teshuva, but went back to non-observance when he started seeing all the stories of revoking conversions. He said, if the Orthodox have so little humanity, so little morality, if they're so perverse and misanthropic, then what do I need with them? He had Haredi relatives, and he heard disgusting and repulsive remarks from them about converts, saying that no converts are really authentic, etc. He said, if the Orthodox can so reject people who truly want to be Jewish, then he doesn't need the Orthodox.

Hillul hashem is powerful, in case we didn't already know.

(By the way, this friend of mine, I've told people that his violation of mitzvot is greater and more G-dly than the observance of others. Why does he violate the mitzvot? Because he saw the Orthodox abusing converts and refusing to give gittin to their agunot, and burning trash cans in Meah Shearim in order to protect mentally-ill child-abusers. I'm not saying I agree with my friend; in fact, I've tried to convince him to become observant again, and in any case, I've seen all the same disgusting things he has, and yet I've myself remained observant nevertheless. My point, however, is that I respect (though disagree with) his reaction - viz. going "off the derekh" - more than I respect the mitzvah-observance of others. Look at the reasons he doesn't keep mitzvot anymore - his reasons to violate the mitzvot are more G-dly than the reasons others keep them!!)

Rabbi Schwartz, you say, "And even the much maligned hamon ahm should not be underestimated. While it may be true that many received no more than a cheder education ponder for a moment how vastly superior that system must have been to our own elementary chadorim in that it stood it's students in good stead to live ehrlicha upgeheetaneh lives for a lifetime. Is the fact that in our system having 20 plus years of schooling not being enough, such that anyone who didn't spend 8+ years in Kollel after the chasunah is tsorich bedeeka acharov supposed to be a compliment? That the ahava and yirah that we implant is so flimsy that it will fold like a cheap camera in the face of a few college courses or six months in an office environment?"

Maybe what you've just written should give you pause. Perhaps the OTDs of today are not entirely to blame; perhaps they are the products of a "broken school system". Why shouldn't we judge them as favorably as you judged the secular Zionists?

I will admit that in many ways, the religious state of affairs in prewar Europe was superior to what we have today. Professor Menachem Friedman describes in "The Lost Kiddush Cup" how the Haredim today have rejected their families' mesorot, and no longer use their own grandfathers' kiddush cups. Professor Friedman notes that the kiddush cup is a symbol of tradition, and that if the cups of old are no longer considered kosher, then a great break in tradition has occurred.

Rabbi Yom Tov Schwarz's Eyes to See shows at length how the prewar Jews were more concerned with ethics and morality than Orthodox Jews are today. Rabbi Schwarz presents a very ethical and humane Judaism, one that would make Rabbi S. R. Hirsch proud, one that puts less emphasis on technical ritual observance, and more on how one treats his fellow man. Rabbi Schwarz follows the Sifra and says we were brought out of Egypt for the sake of the mitzvot bein adam l'havero. He notes that in Beitzah, and unkind Jew's credentials as a Jew are questioned, a Shabbat-violating Jew's bona fides are not questioned.

Rabbi Yehuda Amital writes (here):
We live in an era in which educated religious circles like to emphasize the centrality of Halakha, and commitment to it, in Judaism. I can say that in my youth in pre-Holocaust Hungary, I didn't hear people talking all the time about "Halakha." People conducted themselves In the tradition of their forefathers, and where any halakhic problems arose, they consulted a rabbi. Reliance on Halakha and unconditional commitment to it mean, for many people, a stable anchor whose purpose is to maintain the purity of Judaism, even within the modern world. To my mind, this excessive emphasis of Halakha has exacted a high cost. The impression created is that there is nothing in Torah but that which exists in Halakha, and that in any confrontation with the new problems that arise in modern society, answers should be sought exclusively in books of Halakha. Many of the fundamental values of the Torah which are based on the general commandments of "You shall be holy" (Vayikra 19:2) and "You shall do what is upright and good in the eyes of God" (Devarim 6:18), which were not given formal, operative formulation, have not only lost some of their status, but they have also lost their validity in the eyes of a public that regards itself as committed to Halakha. Rabbi Amital, like Rabbi Yom Tov Schwarz, sees an overemphasis on ritual observance and a lack of concern for morality.

Rabbi (Dovid) Schwartz, perhaps this is why the OTDs do what they do? Perhaps prewar Europe was better than today's Orthodoxy? Perhaps this superiority of prewar Judaism is the cause of the OTD phenomenon? Perhaps the existence of OTDs is a result of the inferiority of today's Orthodoxy?

Oh, and see Dr. Yitzchok Levine's very Hirschian piece, Orthodoxy, Then and Now.

Rabbi Avigdor Miller and the Neturei Karta

One of the issues that have come up with this discussion on Authentic Judaism is that of Rabbi Avigdor Miller and his role in influencing some of the more radical Haredi bloggers. I brought it up in passing and Parshablog has dealt with it in more detail. Whatever problems one may have with the late Rabbi Miller (and believe me I do) Rabbi Miller is of little value in of himself as a target. He is no longer alive and the Haredi world has by and large rejected his more radical views. Rabbi Miller is still useful for going after Haredim because, despite the fact that most would say that they disagree with him on specific points, they still revere him as a scholar. I see this as an intellectual dodge and a moral failure to treat certain issues with due responsibility. This was brought home to me when discussing the issue of Rabbi Miller with Not Brisk, who, while not wishing to defend Rabbi Miller outright, did not hesitate to try to interest me in some of Rabbi Miller’s less polemical work. According to Not Brisk, even I “who obviously can't swallow his [Rabbi Miller’s] world opinions, can still take the ‘good’”. I do not question Rabbi Miller’s intelligence and I have no problem acknowledging that he has written things that are better than his tapes and his books Rejoice O Youth and Awake My Glory. That being said, these things are the Rabbi Miller that I know and apparently this is the Rabbi Miller that bloggers like Authentic Judaism and Jewish Philosopher know. Nothing that Rabbi Miller said could change this.

Not Brisk would have me bifurcate between the populist Rabbi Miller and the scholarly Rabbi Miller. Do not get me wrong, I have no problem with having a disagreement with someone and taking what I like about them and discarding what I do not. There are two different types of opposition; there is the opposition where the opponent is still viewed as legitimate and then there is the opposition where the opponent is cast aside as something satanic without any legitimacy. For example, I accept that different people are going to have different views on the State of Israel. You may disagree with me about the army or about settlements but we can agree that we are all good Jews here. I will still give you an aliya in shul and agree to eat in your home. That being said, a Neturei Karta person, who believes that Israel should be destroyed, would not be legitimate. (The Neturei Karta are a small but highly visible group. You can often see them at Israel rallies in Hasidic garb and waving Palestinian flags. They also gained a lot of attention when members of their group attended the infamous Holocaust denial conference in Iran.) A member of the Neturei Karta could study Torah sixteen hours a day and be the nicest person you have ever met. All of that would mean nothing against the fact that this person has plotted with and aided those who wish to murder Jews. It is a moral stance for me precisely to not bifurcate between a Neturei Karta member’s actions as a member of the Neturei Karta and his actions when off duty. (Similarly, I would not say that someone is in the Ku Klux Klan but he is nice to his mother. A member of the Klan is a member of the Klan, no ands ifs or buts.) Anyone who simply says that they do not personally agree with the Neturei Karta but still wish to accept them as another Jewish opinion is taking a stance and is morally culpable in the continued existence of the Neturei Karta. (To their credit the Haredi community has been pretty good at expelling the Neturei Karta.)

Among the many repulsive things in Rabbi Miller’s writing, Rabbi Miller took certain Neturei Karta type stances in regards to Israel. For example, Rabbi Miller has this to say about Zionism:

346. Let us see what they [the Zionists] have accomplished. They have succeeded in gaining for Jews the hostility of the entire Arab world and of most of the “Third World” nations. They have fomented bad relations with Russ and to some extent with France and Mexico. They have created animosity in the United States and elsewhere.
347. These achievements are of small benefit to Jews, but the Israelis and their Zionist proponents are persistent, because they hope to make all lands untenable for Jews (as they did in all Moslem countries) so that Jews be forced to settle in the State of Israel which is losing the population race against the local Arabs (one million Jewish babies have been slain by abortion in the State of Israel from 1948 to 1976, equal to the number of Jewish children slain by Hitler). (Awake My Glory pg. 104)

So according to Rabbi Miller, it is the fault of Zionism, not Arab anti-Semitism, for Arab hostility. It is Israel’s fault and not the Arabs that Sephardic and Yemenite Jews had to flee their homes. This is the classic Jews are responsible for anti-Semitism line. Finally, because Israel has legal abortion, the Israeli government is as bad as Hitler. Not surprisingly the Neturei Karta has made use of Rabbi Miller. Because of this, Rabbi Miller should be about as kosher as a bacon sandwich; not just some of the things that he said but everything. It is not good enough that the Haredi world accepts some things of his and ignores others.

When I was in the Yeshiva Torah Vodaath, one of the rabbis there recommended to me that I read Rabbi Miller as a good source on Jewish thought. (Little did he know that I was already a fan of listening to his tapes and yelling at them.) I am willing to give this rabbi the benefit of the doubt and imagine that if I were to show him the above passage he would be quick to say that he did not agree with it. That being said, the fact that, of all the people he could have told me to read, he sent me to Rabbi Miller raises certain questions. In a more liberal environment, where one comes expecting to be exposed to many different ideas, this would not have been such a problem. For example, someone coming to this blog has to understand that I love and value ideas for their own sake. They should not assume that just because I link to something and say that it is worthwhile to read that I agree with it. The yeshiva system, though, prides itself on the tight control it maintains on its students. These rabbis were, in essence, guaranteeing my father that they would not expose me to any questionable material. As such they cannot play innocent in exposing me to radical anti-Zionism. (This is why you never want to operate an authoritarian system. No one can live up to the implicit responsibility.) So what does it mean when this Haredi rabbi showed significantly less diligence in not exposing me to radical anti-Zionism than he did in not exposing me to say the writings of Rav Abraham Isaac Kook? (I am still waiting for it to be a common Haredi position to say that Rav Kook was a great Jewish thinker who everyone should read even though we may not accept some of his political positions.) I can only conclude that people like this Haredi rabbi do not really oppose Rabbi Miller’s position on Zionism, not in a meaningful way. Of course, when engaging in apologetics with outsiders it is important to deny this position. But, when in private, it can be tossed around as a perfectly legitimate option; something to keep in the bag for when the situation calls for some selective self-serving outrage against the Israeli government.

The “Immodesty” of Women Voting

During the early 1920s there was a major debate amongst the religious community in Israel as to whether women should be allowed to vote. Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook famously opposed it. One of the defenders of women’s suffrage was Rabbi Ben-Zion Hai Uziel, who would later go on to become the Sephardic chief Rabbi. In particular Uziel rejected the argument that we should be concerned lest women voting lead to increased intermingling between men and women and thus lead people to sin. Uziel challenged this premise:

What licentiousness can there be in each person going to the poll and entering a voting slip? If we start considering such activities as licentious, no creature would be able to survive! Women and men would be prohibited from walking in the street or from entering a shop together; it would be forbidden to negotiate in commerce with a woman, lest this lead to intimacy and hence to licentiousness. Such ideas have never been suggested by anyone. (The Jewish Political Tradition Vol. II pg. 204)

Looking back at this response, nearly a century later, one is struck by how naïve Uziel was. He obviously never had to deal with modern Israeli Haredim, who see any contact between unrelated men and women as inherently sinful and have no problem banning such activity. For example the recent campaign to have women sit at the back of buses. (See here) The irony here is that Haredim today allow their women to vote. Is it liberalism on their part or an unwillingness to commit political suicide? I suspect it is not the former.