A Tale of Two Conservative Conferences in Our City (Column 217)

With God's help

Usually, in Makor Rishon's Sabbath supplement one can find advertisements for conferences on subjects like experts in geography and Land of Israel studies discussing the cultivation of potsherds in the southern Judean Desert during the Middle Mamluk period. So for me it was refreshing to discover there an ad for a conference held on Thursday, 16 May, dealing with conservatism, namely the First Israeli Conservatism Conference (whose location, in that advertisement, was kept secret, presumably to ward off the evil eye). At the same time, I learned of another conference taking place on that very same day—much to the sorrow of conservative women—dealing with women in the Torah world, in memory of Rabbi Lichtenstein.[1] On second thought, perhaps there is no cause for concern, since conservatives will not be participating in the second conference, and vice versa. Both conferences stirred in me some somber reflections, chiefly about conservatism, and I thought to share them with you.

A Story with a Moral: The Frogs and the Milk Pail

There is a well-known folk tale about two frogs in a pail of milk, and here is the wording:

Two frogs fell into a pail of milk. The walls of the pail were slippery and could not be climbed. The frogs tried with all their might to jump and get out of the pail, but without success. The pail was too tall and the milk too deep. One of the frogs despaired, and after a short while stopped trying… and drowned. But the second frog did not give up—it pushed frantically with its hands and feet to keep its head above the milk and avoid drowning. Again and again it tried to spring and leap out. And then.. lo and behold… slowly a solid lump of butter began to form beneath its churning feet in the milk. With one jump the frog sprang up and escaped from the pail.

Surely you will not be surprised that, for me, this story evokes the opposite association. As I see it, there is one frog that simply climbs up and swims out, while the other tries to battle the milk with all its might and refuses to let the milk buoy it up. It pushes desperately with its hands and feet, and slowly the milk turns to butter. Our industrious little heroine, of course, gets stuck inside and dies.

For me, this inverted parable reflects a situation in which a person creates problems for himself where they do not really exist, and this entangles him in a search for solutions that itself kills him. And now back to our conferences.

The First Conference: Women in the Torah World

I understood that the questions to be examined in the third session of the study day concern mainly the role of the female spiritual guide and how it is to be integrated with the community rabbi. Let me provide some background for those unfortunate enough not to be sufficiently conversant. In recent years there has been a criminal tendency in some modern religious communities to place women in rabbinic roles (not as the rabbi's wives but as rabbis in their own right). But what can one do? Our tradition does not look kindly on this. As a solution, a new concept was invented: Maharat (= a leader in Jewish law, spirituality, and Torah), a position that can be held by a woman as well. It is a brilliant solution, since there is no problem appointing women to it because this office does not appear in the Shulchan Arukh (and therefore there is likewise no problem appointing women as ministers, Supreme Court justices, or prime ministers, and no one says a peep apart from a few oddballs from the ultra-conservative wing). From this, among other things, you can understand that there is already a Yeshivat Maharat in the United States that ordains Maharats. This idea, of course, arouses fierce opposition in the Orthodox leadership (from there they may eventually arrive at defining a woman as a rabbi, heaven forfend. Not for nothing did our sages of crystal-clear vision protest against them. And, as they foresaw with holy inspiration, indeed this is already almost happening in practice).

Very well, so for the moment we have defined Maharat (or, for the punctilious, Maharatit, so that it is clear that this is a woman. After all, a man too can be a leader in Jewish law, spirituality, and Torah. Equality, right?!). At the next stage, a discussion begins about integrating a Maharatit with a rabbi in the community (see the list of questions above). How will the responsibilities be divided, what will she do, what will his roles be, and so on. Only one option does not appear there among the questions for discussion: that there be no Maharatit but rather a woman rabbi without a rabbi beside her. That option does not even arise for theoretical discussion, although the "bold" option does arise that a Maharatit is nothing but a rabbi in disguise (provided they are careful that Rabbi Yosef Karo does not notice, God forbid).

What is especially amusing in this situation is that everyone knows where this is going. Everyone understands that all these people would like a woman to be able to serve as a rabbi, and everyone also understands that this is the right thing. And since these are rabbis and Torah scholars, I allow myself to assume that most of them also understand that there is no halakhic obstacle to this, apart from conservatism that lacks any real basis (and here we are already touching on the second conference, but I will keep you in suspense). But at the same time, everyone understands that the matter cannot be put openly on the table. Why? This is probably a combination of conservative instincts and confusion between them and Jewish law, and of course the "political" problems (it will not be accepted, it is still too early, and so on). Bottom line, the starting point is that we hold, as though it were a law given to Moses at Sinai (a law given to Moses at Sinai), that a woman is disqualified from the rabbinate, and so they look for bypasses. They have now found the brilliant bypass: Maharats. But the bypasses create problems of proper integration between this role and that of the community rabbi (for if there is no rabbi in the community, only a Maharatit, then there must also be a rabbi there). And thus we have arrived at the study day on women's leadership in the Torah world, which conducts discussions whose purpose is to solve this nonexistent problem.

All this is ostensibly conducted in an atmosphere of openness and liberalism, or religious innovation—an approach that at last gives women a place in spiritual leadership. But in fact there is a farce here, one played entirely on conservative turf. In other words, this is a discussion in the sociology of a conservative society: how it reconciles what it regards as right (that a woman should do whatever she wants and is able to do) with what is actually practiced (that a woman cannot be a rabbi), even though it is clear that this is senseless and has no validity (because there is no halakhic obstacle to a woman serving as a rabbi. See below). So they create, ex nihilo, funny titles and concepts like Maharatit. And now a learned discussion can begin about the integration between her and the rabbi, blah blah blah. A discussion that is wholly generated by the foolish constraints in which they themselves do not believe. Chad Gadya, Chad Gadya…

Are you beginning to see the frog and the butter? Instead of swimming straight up and out (that is, doing what is called for and what everyone thinks is right—appointing a woman as rabbi), these people get tangled in imaginary problems that they themselves created, thereby churning the milk into butter and choking in it. This obliges them to conduct absurd discussions that have nothing to do with Jewish law. How exactly will they determine the division of tasks there? Are there hints in Jewish law about the functions of a woman as leader of a community? This is a strategy session about how to appoint a woman as rabbi without letting Rabbi Yosef Karo know. For that purpose, one must define the new term Maharat and implement it in reality without stepping on anyone's toes. I will now explain this a bit more.

Is There Any Obstacle at All to Appointing a Woman as Rabbi?

Underlying all this is the question: what on earth is the problem here? The question of women's Torah study is apparently already behind us. Everyone understands that women can—and perhaps should—study Torah, each according to her level and dignity. So that is not what the discussion is about. Ostensibly, the question of positions of authority for women (entrusting offices that involve power) is what stands on the agenda. But doesn't it seem a bit strange, not to say bizarre and detached, when there are women prime ministers, ministers, and Supreme Court justices (including presidents of the Supreme Court), to discuss entrusting the supreme position of authority of the rabbi of the "Akhvat Moshe" community in the synagogue of Kfar Etrog to a woman? I have never heard rabbinic and halakhic discussions about appointing women to positions like Supreme Court justice or minister, but for a woman rabbi—sorry, a Maharatit—to serve a community requires conferences and deep, learned discussion.

These discussions resemble, in my eyes, the discussions that were conducted about women saying Kaddish. I opened my article on first- and second-order halakhic ruling with "learned" discussions dealing with women saying Kaddish. I pointed out there that these are discussions built in a very odd way. No one defines what halakhic problem is being addressed, and not by accident. There is no such problem. One could speak about a woman's voice is considered sexually immodest (a woman's voice being deemed sexually provocative), or about modesty. But relative to the accepted norms in our mixed communities, where women take part in every sphere of life and in the community as well, these discussions look completely detached and utterly implausible. We are already long past the question of a woman's voice, especially in this context (to the extent that there is any such problem in the synagogue at all). Questions of modesty in a woman's appearance before a congregation are, at most, a bad joke under our circumstances. And yet the discussion brings various sources this way and that, proofs and fine distinctions from the language of halakhic decisors for and against, when in fact there is no problem here to address at all. Once again, people drown in the butter that they themselves, through their rescue efforts, have churned.

I explained there that an orderly halakhic discussion should begin with an analysis of the question and identification of the halakhic components that are relevant to it: Torah commandments and prohibitions, rabbinic enactments or decrees, or customs and halakhic policy. After laying out the conceptual map, a discussion should open on each of the items and on their application to our case, and finally one should summarize what emerges from all this for the question at hand and conclude with a halakhic ruling. One cannot begin a discussion by bringing sources this way and that when there are no halakhic categories on the table at all. It is like discussing whether it is permitted to watch birds at the Hula Lake and bringing proofs from nuanced readings of the wording of halakhic decisors who saw birds in various places. What is missing here is the most basic infrastructure: what are the halakhic categories at issue? What exactly is there to discuss? As I wrote there, if I had to write a responsum on women saying Kaddish, it would be formulated roughly as follows: permitted, because there is no reason whatever to forbid it (non-issue). Afterwards one may perhaps speak about social meanings, recommend or oppose, but that is truly no longer a halakhic matter. Such disconnected halakhic responses can appear only when one relates to Jewish law at the second order, that is, when one relies on sources without analyzing the matter from its foundations.

Everything That Is Not Forbidden Is Permitted

In the legal world, the principle of legality is accepted, according to which, for the citizen, everything that is not forbidden is permitted (and with respect to the authorities, the reverse). The same is true in Jewish law: everything that is not forbidden is permitted. The burden of proof and of argument lies on the one who claims that a prohibition exists. He must explain on the basis of which categories he says so. Only after prohibitory categories are raised, if any, is there room to begin discussing whether to permit.

This is precisely the situation with respect to a woman serving as community rabbi. One may discuss women's Torah study, but that is already behind us. Assigning positions of authority to women is likewise something we are long past. So what exactly is being discussed here? What is the problem with a woman (who is suited to it in terms of personality and knowledge) serving as community rabbi? But among us, even in the most liberal communities (except one, among those I know), this is not even thinkable. The most liberal communities discuss the question of how to integrate a Maharatit with the rabbi's role, essentially how to square the circle, while the option of appointing a woman rabbi is not on the agenda at all. This is a result of second-order halakhic thinking: it is accepted that we do not appoint one, and we have no sources that permit appointing one, and that is that. But there is no problem here at all, so why are sources needed? It is simply beside the point.

Lack of Proportion

It is interesting to note that Professor David Halivni, one of the best-known Talmud scholars, left the Conservative movement over this issue. I have always wondered how he was willing to swallow everything else there, yet a banal matter like appointing women as rabbis was what broke him. I now saw in Wikipedia that similar criticism was indeed leveled at him (see note 1 there):

Moderate organizations like "Edah" rejected Halivni with the argument that he and his supporters did not express opposition to issues like permitting driving on the Sabbath or the effective nullification of many of the laws governing marital relations, yet they withdrew precisely over a borderline issue like women's ordination.

That reminds me of the well-known story about the Sha'agat Aryeh, who arrived in some community to serve as its rabbi and asked for the community record book (the place where all the customs practiced there are written down). They brought him the book, and he began copying the Ten Commandments into it. When they asked him what this meant, he explained that he was trying to ensure that people would be as careful about the Ten Commandments as they are about who says Kaddish and when.

There are quite a few serious problems in religious society, in Jewish law and in Torah worldview. There is secularization on worrying scales, and there are also difficult halakhic questions and serious hardships. It seems strange to me to devote a session to discussing the integration of a Maharatit's role with that of a community rabbi. I am sorry, but it sounds bizarre to me. It may be that this disconnection is one of the reasons for some of the problems I listed.

The Conservatism Conference

Here I come to the First Israeli Conservatism Conference. When I saw the heading, my initial reaction was a snicker. I do not know, but there is something stale and repellent, in my eyes, about conservatism as a matter of principle. It seems strange to me to hold a conference whose purpose is to advance an anachronistic endeavor, that is, to move forward toward the past. But on second thought I said to myself that, by the same token, innovation is not a value in my eyes either.

A person who adopts a certain position on the basis of substantive considerations, and it happens to come out conservative (matching what existed in the past), is not a conservative. The same is true of one who adopts, on the basis of substantive considerations, a new position—he is not an innovator. Conservatism and innovation as ideologies mean adopting conservative or innovative positions because they are such. What is called conservatism today (the economic and social right) is nothing but a collection of positions that fit what existed in the past, but the reasons for them are not necessarily conservative. One may claim that those positions are correct or more reasonable in themselves. But, as noted, that is not conservatism. Conservatism is arguing for them only because that is how things were in the past. But that is precisely where the problem lies.

A person ought to form a position according to what seems right to him. When two possibilities for action stand before me, or two ideological paths between which I must choose, what I am supposed to do is think and decide which of them is preferable in my eyes, whether conservative or innovative. It follows that both the conservative and the innovator are in fact using non-substantive considerations to form their positions. One chooses the conservative path because it is conservative, and the other chooses the innovative path because it is innovative. What they have in common is that they are not weighing the substantive considerations.

It seems to me that I once wrote here that a halakhic decisor should be neither conservative nor innovative and original. He should determine Jewish law according to the best of his understanding and according to what seems right to him. If he determines a halakhic position because it is conservative or because it is innovative, he betrays his role. This does not mean that there is no conservative or innovative decisor. Of course there is. My claim is that this consideration should not take part in the halakhic decision itself. Let researchers come, study the rulings of that decisor, and determine whether he is conservative or innovative. That is their job, but it has nothing to do with his own considerations.

The arguments in favor of conservatism are usually based on social stability and on the claim that the accumulated wisdom of generations is probably preferable to new ideas. But no one can seriously claim that these are sufficient criteria for adopting any position. At most, if I am in doubt, one may recommend on the basis of these considerations that I remain conservative.

In my book Emet VeLo Yatziv I defined fundamentalism as a conception that does not subject itself to the test of critical thought. A person who adopts a position not because of arguments on the merits but because of its general character and its relation to other positions is also a kind of fundamentalist. He adopts conservatism or innovation merely by virtue of their being such, just as the Muslim fundamentalist adopts the caliph's position, the New Age adherent that of the alien (with whom he communicates), the Hasid the position of his Rebbe, and so on—and all this only because the caliph/Rebbe/alien said so, without subjecting it to the test of critical thought.

Is There a Dispute Here?

In light of everything said thus far, I actually suspect that among the supporters of conservatism who participated in the conference there are no people who advocate adopting views merely because they fit what existed in the past (I shall call this fundamentalist conservatism). Those among them whom I know are clear-headed people, and therefore it is reasonable to assume that the term conservatism there appears in its clear-headed sense. Clear-headed conservatism serves to negate another notion: preferring the new and disparaging the old just because it is old. The goal of the clear-headed conservative is not to recommend the non-substantive adoption of positions, but mainly to oppose ideological innovation, that is, automatic disparagement of the old. He argues that it is worth examining the existing position too, and not necessarily adopting a new one. The old is not always stupid, he argues against the innovators.

If you look at the conference program, you will see that it is a collection of topics not necessarily related to one another. This would seemingly lead to the conclusion that it really is fundamentalist conservatism, for there is no principled reason why a person who believes in the ideas of a market economy must also oppose postmodernism and endorse a national and conservative culture. Only someone who clings to what was because it was in the past adopts all these positions as a package deal. But as I said, from my acquaintance with the people involved, it seems more likely to me that these are people who reached their conclusions on the different issues for substantive reasons, except that in the end they all found themselves in a situation in which the position that seemed right to them was the position that existed in the past, and thus the conservative movement, in whose framework the conference was held, came into being. As stated, my assumption is that this is clear-headed conservatism (which in fact is not really conservatism).

If we examine the other side of the coin, we will find that the situation there is similar as well. I do not know an intelligent person who advocates innovation for its own sake, that is, for whom the very newness of a position is a sufficient reason to adopt it. This is senseless fundamentalist innovation. A clear-headed innovator will tell you that his goal is to push back against conservative mental rigidity. He seeks to get people to consider new paths, and not always cling to the old. He will argue that conclusions should be formed in light of substantive considerations and that one should not recoil from something new. But our clear-headed conservative should agree to that as well.

If so, fundamentalist conservatism and fundamentalist innovation can indeed battle one another. But these are two rather foolish positions, and therefore not especially interesting to engage. By contrast, clear-headed conservatism and clear-headed innovation are actually saying the same thing, only in opposite words. Both propose examining each position on its own merits and not becoming fixated on the old or on the new—exactly what I, too, would propose. So now I wonder what the purpose of the First Israeli Conservatism Conference is: if indeed it is clear-headed conservatism, as I assume, then there is no principled difference between it and clear-headed innovation. It is hard for me to assume that the purpose of the conference is to say that in cases where we have no considerations for preferring an innovative or conservative position (= an intellectual or value-based tie), we should adopt a conservative position. Such cases are rather rare, if they exist at all, and are not really worth dedicating a conference to.

The unavoidable conclusion is that the purpose of the conference is to present clear-headed conservatism as an alternative to innovation. But clear-headed innovation is a position almost identical to clear-headed conservatism. Therefore it seems that the conference is meant to oppose unreflective innovation (that is, fundamentalist innovation). It is a conference whose whole point is to argue that one ought to consider the old positions and not automatically prefer the new ones. But by the same token, when the First Israeli Innovation Conference is eventually held, I assume it will present the opposite picture: its purpose will be to fight unreflective conservatism and present a clear-headed innovative position. That is, it will call upon us to consider new positions and not cling to old ones. But as I explained, these two are identical positions.

Either way, the conclusion is that one should be clear-headed—that is, one should weigh all the options seriously and on their merits, and not surrender to a priori, non-substantive dictates, whether innovative or conservative. In other words, one should not be a fundamentalist. It seems to me that there is no great novelty here (our sages already said this long ago: it is better to be young, healthy, handsome, rich, and wise than old, sick, ugly, poor, and stupid). But that does not help me understand why such a conference should be conducted under the banner of conservatism (or innovation). If one really wants to hold such a conference, the clear-headed conservatives and the clear-headed innovators could gather together and hold a conference in favor of clear-headedness and substantive judgment, and against uncritical fundamentalism. I am entirely in favor, though I must say that even this sounds a bit trivial. Of course, one can take various examples and point to different failures of thought concerning them, and propose clear-headed alternatives, ancient or new. Either way, I do not see the point of a conference on conservatism.

For some reason, the conference on conservatism arouses in me the same feelings as the discussion about integrating Maharats with a rabbi in the spiritual leadership of a community. Not only because both reflect a strange conservatism (clinging to the old only because it is old), but mainly because, on second thought, it is clear that both arouse a nonexistent problem, both invent a term (Maharatit, or conservatism) in order to sidestep it, and then both hold a conference to devise a way to solve it (what to do about the dreaded innovators, or how to integrate the Maharatit with the rabbi). These discussions are nothing but churning butter. What is there to discuss? Just swim upward and do what you all believe in.

[1] So as not to leave the page blank, I will comment on the designation "HaRaL" that has been increasingly bandied about in our circles. In my poverty of understanding, I do not see what is wrong with "Rabbi Lichtenstein". Were I not afraid, I would say that his students decided to memorialize him with the initials RaL, apparently in the hope of granting him a place in the pantheon of the transmitters of tradition, for he is no less than Rabbi Shagar, the Ran, the Rashba, and Maimonides (although one can distinguish, since in Rabbi Shagar's case that abbreviation was the family name he himself used). Forgive the pettiness, but I really do not like maneuvers of this sort. Rabbi Lichtenstein was an impressive enough figure even without subjecting him to public-relations tricks. It reminds me of those who insist on referring to some rabbi with the title "Rabbi" (Rabbi Kook, Rabbi Soloveitchik, Rabbi Shmuel Rozovsky, etc.) rather than simply using his name, in order to emphasize that every reader/listener is supposed to understand that this is the Rabbi (master of all Jewry), and none besides. Once again: Haredi public-relations tricks.