Q&A: The Pattern of Tradition
The Pattern of Tradition
Question
Hello Rabbi,
I was thinking about how in our world there are so many different types and shades of people in every respect—personality, sexual preference, worldview, and all sorts of other things. How can Judaism and tradition, which seem to have a pretty specific template for how to live life, fit everyone? I mean the Jews among us—the non-Jews we can leave out of the equation for the moment. Also, in Judaism there are ancient and old approaches that don’t all fit with all the progress and modernization that will obviously continue to develop. For example, the approach that the husband should sit in kollel all day and the wife should work—that already works less well today. True, there are Haredim who obviously don’t do that, but they aren’t considered “real” Haredim, and even among them there are those who see it as the default, while the ideal is to sit and study Torah. That is, of course, just one example among many others, and it’s actually a relatively easy case. What about men who define themselves as women? What about those who don’t want any definition at all? What about asexual people?
Judaism doesn’t contain all this. Of course there are people who do include it, but that’s in their own name and not in the name of Judaism. It very much feels like society in general is run by those same “rebels,” because if people were to conduct themselves exactly according to Judaism, it would probably look like Iran, since girls wouldn’t be allowed to wear what they want and all LGBT people would be officially denounced.
It seems that everyone lives life however they see fit, or however they happened to be lucky or unlucky enough to be born into some society or family, because sometimes those aren’t liberal enough.
So what’s the solution? And if there isn’t one, what does that say about Judaism in general?
Answer
The Torah does not dictate one single lifestyle. There is a system of commandments that everyone has to keep. Beyond that, there are many forms of life, and each person can choose what suits them. What is presented as an ideal is the invention of whoever is presenting it. The Torah sets no such ideals.