On the Controversy over Rabbi Melamed (Column 410)
In recent weeks there’s been a minor storm in the frum crowd over Rabbi Eliezer Melamed. Rabbi Matanya Ariel published a column in which he criticizes Rabbi Melamed for changing his fundamental positions on public issues, and mainly for “sliding” toward liberal directions, heaven forfend. A few days later he published another column explaining his motives for publishing and adding more personal fuel to the fire. The matter also reached the site here, where I was asked my opinion about Rabbi Melamed and his positions. As I wrote there, for many years now I have found myself highly esteeming Rabbi Melamed, even though a significant portion of his positions (especially in the past) run counter to my own. Long before his recent “decline,” I saw in him a courageous person who forms positions on various issues honestly and independently (the indication being that it’s hard to predict in advance what he will say). I’ll add that I don’t know him personally nor his conduct in different areas (unlike Rabbi Matanya, whom we came to know when my son studied at his yeshiva); I rely on what he writes. Therefore my remarks deal mainly with his thought, not with him personally (the critiques addressed both planes).
What is this about?
Rabbi Matanya’s words revolve around several rulings and steps that Rabbi Melamed has taken in recent years. I haven’t gone through all the material and won’t survey it here since that’s not my purpose (one can see a report here). I’ll just briefly note that he published liberal opinions (most are not halachic rulings) on various public matters such as women’s prayer and Reform worshipers at the Western Wall, the status of women, the attitude toward LGBTQ people, ending boycotts of Reform and Conservative Jews, meetings and cooperation with them, budgetary equality, and more. Rabbi Melamed has not retreated from his positions even in the face of criticism, and he continues to meet with other religious groups, to the displeasure of conservative critics and the delight of liberals.
These publications are received in the Hardal (nationalist-Haredi) world with heightened shock in light of his conservative past. Beyond being the son of Rabbi Zalman Melamed (head of the Beit El Yeshiva and founder of Arutz 7, which is headed by his wife, Rabbi Eliezer Melamed’s mother), in his youth he was among the founders of the separate youth movement “Ariel.” He consistently and forcefully advocated refusal to obey orders and opposition to hearing women’s singing in the army, without fearing sanctions (as you may recall, Ehud Barak, as defense minister, closed his yeshiva because of these positions). Add to that his series of halachic books, Peninei Halakha, which spread widely among the public and turned him (in my estimation) into the most prominent and influential religious-Zionist halachic decisor today.[1] One can gather that he is certainly perceived among the Hardalim as “one of us,” and it’s no wonder their public can’t quite digest what has been happening to him in recent years. One focus of criticism, beyond the criticism of the positions themselves, is the dynamism and extreme changes that have occurred in them.
Intellectual independence
It seems to me they are missing something that could have been seen long ago. His autonomous halachic decision-making and intellectual independence have been evident for quite some time, not always in the liberal or “lenient” direction (an unfortunate expression, since this isn’t about leniency and stringency). Therefore, although his directions differ from mine, in this sense I find much kinship with him. He has written more than once that a rabbi should express his positions as they are, whatever they may be, and not be afraid of mockers and opponents, even if they are important rabbis. Shlomo Piotrkowski aptly wrote in his recent response a few days ago that in his critique Rabbi Matanya Ariel didn’t bring even one example of Rabbi Melamed changing a position. He pointed to conservative rulings and approaches in the past, and to more open and liberal rulings and approaches in the present, but not necessarily on the same topics. Apparently he cannot digest what intellectual independence means. I will now try to clear some of the fog, as a public service.
I have written more than once that labels such as conservative, innovative, lenient, stringent, open or closed, deep or shallow, are the sole concern of the scholar. The rabbi and decisor himself should not rule or express a view because he decided he must be lenient or stringent, conservative or innovative. A decisor endowed with intellectual independence should not make sure to align his rulings and opinions with a particular ideological direction (even one he himself believes in), but should decide each matter according to how it appears to him. Sometimes that may come out conservative and sometimes open and liberal—everything depends on the case. Afterwards, scholars of his thought can come and discuss or determine whether he was conservative or liberal, if at all.
It is very important to remove intellectual independence from that list of features. Unlike conservatism, innovation, leniency, or stringency, independence is a trait that should guide the decisor himself (and not just the scholars of his thought). Without it, he is not a decisor but a repository of halachic information. Maintaining intellectual independence and integrity is a consideration within the very process of ruling, unlike innovation, conservatism, leniency, or stringency.
Implications for expressions of support and criticism
For this reason I’m also not very enthusiastic or impressed by expressions of support Rabbi Melamed receives from liberal or secular quarters (and likewise regarding similar expressions of sympathy that I myself sometimes receive from such quarters). Such support is worthless and doesn’t say much, since it comes from liking the bottom line. They are pleased with his liberal ruling or opinion because it suits them. A statement like “So-and-so is a ‘courageous’ decisor” almost always means he rules in the direction I (the liberal) like. I haven’t seen expressions of admiration from those quarters for his courage in expressing a stringent or conservative stance (such as refusal of orders, women’s singing, or founding the “Ariel” youth movement).
My appreciation and support for Rabbi Melamed do not stem from there. I disagree with him on quite a few issues on their merits. It’s true that in recent years he has been moving closer to the path of truth (in my view because he is a man of truth and a straight decisor), but I express support for him because of his intellectual independence, irrespective of the bottom line. Even when his independence leads him to positions and rulings that are squarely opposed to my directions, I will value him for that independence (if indeed the ruling in question expresses independence) and oppose his ruling or opinion. This is support that is not conditional on anything, for it concerns his mode of operation as a decisor and not the bottom lines he issues.
It seems that Rabbi Matanya, for some reason, recommends that a rabbi or decisor decide in advance what the agenda and the “party” affiliation require him to say, and only then rule or opine. In this sense, his critique is very similar to the expressions of support from Reform and liberal organizations, even though ostensibly they are on opposite sides of the barricade. What both sides share is that they support or criticize the bottom line, according to whether it aligns or does not align with their path and worldview.
I too have been accused more than once in the past of being Reform, conservative, Zionist, Haredi, heretical, liberal, benighted, feminist, chauvinist, and the like. I’ve often been asked whether I am conservative or innovative, and which ideological stream I belong to. I try to explain to such a questioner that affiliation with any stream or outlook should, if at all, be determined only retroactively. It should not be a consideration on which the decisor himself relies when forming and expressing a position on any issue. When my future scholars (the “Kurzweils”) come along, part of their job will be to characterize me and my rulings.
To avoid misunderstandings: it’s clear to me that a decisor’s worldview plays a role in his rulings. My claim is that it should not be conscious, and should not change his positions and rulings in cases where it seems to him that he should express a different position than expected. A Zionist decisor will certainly rule in accordance with his worldview, and so will a Haredi decisor, a Hasid or a Mitnaged—and that’s perfectly fine. That is their stance. But when he does not allow himself to say what he thinks because it is not Zionist or not Haredi, then we have a problem. When such outlooks are conscious for him, he is liable to take them into account in the ruling process, and then this problematic tendency is likely to appear.
I recall an anecdote from the time I was a member of the management council of “Noam” High School (first in Pardes Hanna, later in Kfar Saba). There was a period, after the retirement of Rabbi Yagel of blessed memory, when the head of the yeshiva changed almost every year. The council convened each time to choose a head, and after he resigned or was dismissed we convened again to choose a new one, and so on. At some point there was an intense effort by some council members and various surrounding parties (including parents) to select a religious-Zionist rabbi. They felt that the lack of a clear “color” was what was harming the school. As part of this, they approached me as well to try to persuade me to join the campaign. I told them I saw the situation exactly the opposite. Institutions with a clear ideological color already exist—and unfortunately they are as numerous as the sand on the seashore. What characterizes Noam is precisely that it doesn’t make a big deal of political ideology, and that it employs teachers and rabbis of all shades, who even argue among themselves before the students (with the administration’s encouragement, of course). In my eyes this is a welcome and unique situation, and I told them I would very much like to preserve it. I added that in my view this is the main justification for the school’s existence in today’s educational landscape. Ironically, the parents, who were not permitted to participate in the selection process or be members of the council, asked that time to present their position before the council members. When two parent representatives entered to speak, one of them—a woman who didn’t look very “frum”—expressed the parents’ firm position in favor of choosing the… Haredi candidate. It was a wonderful sight in my eyes, and a great reinforcement of the position I supported.
Forming a position according to what is expected from one’s ideological camp is a serious malaise common in our circles. Still, it is strange to me that precisely someone who does not act that way finds himself under harsh criticism. Instead of directing criticism at those who form a position based on what is expected of them and on what their ideology dictates—that is, at those whose every word is predictable and known in advance (so there’s no need for them to open their mouths at all)—it is precisely the one who displays intellectual independence who is showered with criticism for it. Essentially he is criticized for daring to be a decisor rather than a repository of halachic and ideological information (a hollow conduit who “draws and pours from the Torah of his teachers”), as expected of him by the “authorities.” I am astonished!
So much for a general introduction. I will now turn to several more specific points in Rabbi Matanya’s critiques.
On changes in a rabbi’s positions
Rabbi Matanya opens his first column by saying that recently changes have occurred in Rabbi Melamed’s positions, and then writes the following:
Among rabbis of the liberal and “lite” public, these developments arouse joy, expressions of satisfaction and sometimes even excitement. In contrast, to my taste these developments should arouse shock and a sense of contempt for one who has abandoned his values. My sense is that these are the feelings of many rabbis in the national-religious public. Despite these polarized reactions, I feel there is broad agreement: Rabbi Eliezer Melamed underwent, or is undergoing, a very significant, radical, and far-reaching change—a phenomenon that has almost no precedent in the rabbinate.
This neatly describes the consensus I outlined above, whereby both sides relate to Rabbi Melamed’s positions in a non-substantive way. Indeed, as I explained, there is broad agreement on this on both sides of the divide—but in my eyes this is a matter for reproach, not praise.
He then turns to the point of change in positions. He explains that it is legitimate for a rabbi to change his positions due to age and changing circumstances, but here the changes are, in his view, too extreme. He asks:
I suggest the reader not be misled by contorted explanations that will try to square the circle and explain why there has been no change in his views. From conversations with several of his students and residents of Har Bracha it also emerges that this is indeed “not the Rabbi Melamed we knew.” And therefore the obvious question arises—what happened to Rabbi Melamed? Where is the mistake? In what he thought in the past, or in what he thinks today?
One can of course raise this wonder about any small change in views. I don’t see why the quantitative matter (a big change) is relevant to this odd argument. There are two possibilities: either now Rabbi Melamed thinks he erred in the past, or the circumstances have changed and therefore today he believes one should act differently even without changing fundamental positions. I see no problem with either situation. Even if he erred in the past—does that not happen to every sage, including the Sages? Did sages not retract their opinions? Is intellectual honesty and a willingness to acknowledge error a stain on a sage or decisor? Very odd.
Another argument could be raised here, namely that if the same person changes positions then perhaps we shouldn’t rely on him. And indeed Rabbi Matanya writes further on:
And if for so many years Rabbi Melamed was in darkness, why should we rely on him now? And perhaps in a few years he will discover a new light, or return to the former darkness? So maybe we should simply wait until he decides definitively, and only then listen to his opinion? For while a person is entitled to undergo far-reaching processes between himself and himself, there is no justification for such processes to affect the general public.
Rabbi Melamed does not necessarily think that in the past he was “in darkness.” As I explained, either he erred in the past or the situation then was different. Either way, this isn’t about darkness and light but about a completely legitimate change of position, and here Rabbi Matanya is putting words in his mouth.
However, the question of how one can rely on someone whose position is not yet formed is indeed a good and stronger question. Ostensibly it would be preferable to wait until his position crystallizes and then rely on him and accept his directives. I too have written more than once (see for example here) that an indicator that a person has reached the level of issuing rulings is when he finds that his positions are formed (when he returns to the same sugya after a span of years and in most cases reaches the same conclusions). This, however, has no necessary connection to agreeing with the majority of decisors, contrary to what Rabbi Matanya writes at the start of that paragraph (in a sentence I will discuss in the next section). Even so, I must make several important remarks about this claim.
First, I explained that it’s not certain Rabbi Melamed changed his positions. It’s possible the rulings/positions changed because the factual and social reality changed.
Second, as I wrote in the introduction, Rabbi Matanya did not demonstrate any change of position by Rabbi Melamed. He showed that in the past he had Hardali rulings and positions in certain issues, and now he expresses more liberal positions on other issues. Perhaps he always thought one should act differently toward Reform Jews or LGBTQ people? How does that contradict his past positions in favor of a separate youth movement or the prohibition of listening to women’s singing in the army? Again it seems that in Rabbi Matanya’s view the general agenda should dictate the particular rulings—but that is not so.
Third, even if Rabbi Melamed’s positions in certain issues have changed, what is the threshold beyond which it is no longer fitting to rely on him? After all, Rabbi Matanya himself writes that any decisor may occasionally change positions. And who decided that these are the important issues (so that the scope and intensity of his change are high)? Are issues in the laws of Shabbat not more important?! (Shabbat prohibitions carry the penalty of stoning, and one who is an apostate with respect to Shabbat is like an apostate to the entire Torah.) Hardali rabbis tend to see political issues—especially those that are contentious—as the core of the Torah. In my eyes these are questions whose importance is usually marginal. They have social significance, but much less in the halachic-Torah plane.
Fourth, why does anyone need to rely on Rabbi Melamed and his positions? He expresses positions as he understands them and provides reasons. Whoever wishes and is persuaded—accepts them; whoever doesn’t—doesn’t. No one needs to rely on what any given decisor says. If anything, I would join Rabbi Matanya’s call not to rely on any rabbi (and certainly not on a rabbi who does not change positions). I permit myself to suspect that he won’t quite join that call.
Fifth, his words here assume that the decisor is the ultimate path to the one and only halachic truth, and only for that reason do people rely on him. But a different attitude is possible: a person may want a shoulder to lean on—i.e., he wants to ensure that a certain stance is legitimate (not outright nonsense), even if it isn’t the pure halachic truth. For that he may suffice with the fact that Rabbi Melamed expresses that stance, even if later he recants. Perhaps it was not the truth, but it is worthwhile to rely on Rabbi Melamed in pressing times (when a person does not know how to act). I say this as an avowed halachic monist (one who believes there is a single halachic truth).
The significance of a majority
At the beginning of the paragraph I just quoted, Rabbi Matanya raises a claim from the angle of the majority:
What happened that suddenly Rabbi Eliezer discovered the light? And what caused the other rabbis not to discover the light and remain in darkness?
The demagoguery in this argument is blatant. Is a person forbidden to hold different positions, including minority positions? Would a Tanna, an Amora, or any decisor throughout the generations, simply abandon his opinion whenever he was in the minority?
Rabbi Soloveitchik, in his Five Addresses, in his essay on the “Joseph of 1906 (5666),” deals precisely with this question: how he, who was vice-president of Agudath Israel in America, crossed the lines and stood at the head of Mizrachi. Isn’t this a central issue (the attitude toward Zionism)? Surely more central than the order of prayer at the Western Wall or meetings with Reform rabbis, no? Rabbi Soloveitchik changed his stance from one extreme to the other, and even explained cogently that this is what a rabbi and spiritual leader must do if he indeed concludes that the situation has changed or that his positions have changed. He goes against the majority, as Joseph went against the majority of his brothers.
But leave Rabbi Soloveitchik aside (for he too is off-limits to the Hardalim, except where he suits them, like his words about the presumption “tav le-meitav”). Rabbis who supported the Zionist movement were—and still are—a small minority (also in quality, at least in the view of the Hardalim who defer to the Haredim, and rightly so; according to their parameters for greatness in Torah there’s no comparing the magnitudes). How did Rav Kook and his disciples allow themselves to go against nearly all the great sages of the generation? How do today’s Hardalim allow themselves to do so? In Rabbi Matanya’s phrasing: what did they see that all the other great sages of the generation (including the Chafetz Chaim, R. Chaim Ozer, R. Meir Simcha, R. Elchanan Wasserman, R. Chaim of Brisk and his son, the Chazon Ish, as well as Rabbis Elyashiv and Auerbach, Wosner, Nissim Karelitz, and many more)—some of whom were Rav Kook’s own teachers—did not see? And note well: here I’m not speaking about changing positions (as with Rabbi Soloveitchik—that was discussed in the previous section), but about the very claim that a rabbi and decisor should align his positions with the view of the majority of leading sages/rabbis. And perhaps Rabbi Matanya himself is about to abandon his support for Zionism. He should update us before such a dramatic change in his positions; otherwise his students (among them my son) have been relying on him and his directives until now in error.
Who are the great rabbis and leaders of the generation?
Rabbi Matanya also assumes, mainly in his follow-up column, a very specific identity for the “great rabbis” with whom Rabbi Melamed was supposed to consult. Conveniently, these are exactly the Hardalim and their associates (including Rabbi Druckman, who always gets included—and about whom I have said what I have said more than once; see, for example, column 271). This is a typical Hardali case of begging the question: those who do not hold these positions are by definition not great rabbis; therefore anyone who goes against these positions is acting against the view of the great sages of the generation. By virtue of this begged premise, that group of rabbis also appoints itself as leaders of the religious-Zionist public. Moreover, unlike Rabbi Melamed, they crown themselves explicitly with that title—or at least allow the media to repeat that nonsense again and again.
Rabbi Matanya protests that Rabbi Melamed is appointing himself as a leader of the generation and issuing directives in public matters. But as far as I have seen, he did not appoint himself to this, nor is he issuing directives; rather, he is expressing opinions. He did not tell anyone to accept his view. Is a rabbi, however small, forbidden to express an opinion on public matters? I see no reason for that. On the contrary, Rabbi Matanya’s concern stems from the great weight given to Rabbi Melamed’s opinions—even though here that weight does not derive from his appointing himself a leader, but from the fact that the public sees him as a spiritual leader and one of the great figures of the generation, rightly or wrongly. That is, unlike those who have appointed themselves leaders for no good reason, he is actually considered by many to be such—and by a broad, varied, and large public (larger, in my opinion, than the public that stands behind those whom Rabbi Matanya speaks about—but that’s only my impression). But as noted, this entire discussion is ridiculous in my view; I conduct it only according to Rabbi Matanya’s approach.
As for consulting others—here I really don’t know whether to laugh or cry. The very rabbis Rabbi Matanya speaks of do not listen to or consult others; they speak and publish positions and opinions in the name of the entire public and in the name of the Torah, without makeup or hesitation, as if they have a daily meeting with the Almighty—with the backing of the entire religious-Zionist public. To direct such criticism specifically at Rabbi Melamed isn’t even funny.
At the end of his follow-up column Rabbi Matanya reassures readers by claiming that he is not among the “Kav” rabbis. But that really doesn’t matter for two main reasons: first, one should discuss matters on their merits; who the speaker is does not matter. Second, if he already bothers to say this, it should be noted that this is throwing sand in the eyes. The questions discussed here are in no way connected to “the line” (Ha-Kav) but to the Hardal camp. As is known, the Kav is only part of the Hardal (its messianic part). The discussion here does not deal with whether the State of Israel is the realization of redemption and the footsteps of the Messiah, or with the appropriate attitude toward the prime minister, the flag, and the president (the question of mamlakhtiyut, with the accent on the first syllable), but with questions concerning the attitude toward different groups in the population. If so, the relevant classification here is precisely affiliation with the Hardal camp and not with the Kav.
A bit about the form
In his follow-up column, Rabbi Matanya opens with describing his deliberation over whether to take his critique public. He ostensibly uses very polite and respectful terminology and leans on great rabbis with whom he consulted (in many cases Hardalim behave like Geviha ben Pesisa—sending the critique by the hands of students. “It didn’t pass the rabbi’s review,” sound familiar?). But immediately afterward he moves to harsh personal slurs about Rabbi Melamed’s character and personal conduct: arrogance, insensitivity, bossiness, unwillingness to hear other views, unwillingness to receive people for a meeting,[2] including those greater than he, and more.
As noted, I have no acquaintance with Rabbi Melamed and therefore no ability to contend with these claims. Perhaps they are true and perhaps not, but in my view they are irrelevant. It’s important to stress that, here too as in many other cases, people are stricter about manners and style than about content. In my eyes that is an inverted priority scale. I often mock people and positions, but I try to ensure that this is only a matter of style, while the content should contain substantive arguments. Those who protest my style have often received that explanation from me. I have no problem with people laughing at me, speaking ironically, and mocking—so long as that is only the manner of expression of substantive argumentation (and not personal and irrelevant). Personal arguments under a veneer of politeness are hypocrisy and sanctimony in my eyes. Incidentally, I also see no problem in airing matters publicly, including harsh criticism, and even without first directing it to the subject of the critique (unless factual clarification is needed). Therefore, in my opinion there is no need to apologize for that. But if already Rabbi Matanya thinks one must be careful about it, it seems to me he did so in a highly problematic way.
Finally, for some reason the personal critiques of Rabbi Melamed and of the conduct of Arutz 7 (which is managed by his mother) are emerging precisely at the timing when his positions do not suit Rabbi Matanya’s taste. In all the years before, it seems that Rabbi Matanya and his like-minded colleagues got along quite well with Rabbi Melamed’s conduct and even with Arutz 7’s policy. It is possible that the change in his character and in Arutz 7’s conduct occurred simultaneously with the change in his positions, but I find that hard to believe. In any case, to me this looks like a tendentious personal attack.
[1] In my eyes this series is truly a masterpiece. It combines presentation of the conceptual background with primary sources and also practical, up-to-date guidance for our times. The books contain determinations based on his own reasoning on the various topics (and not merely summaries, as is common in such books), grounded in an understanding of contemporary reality and the correct application of halachic principles to it. Although the series addresses the general public (and even students and children), it presents an excellent and comprehensive picture of the subjects at a very good level, and it covers almost all relevant areas of halacha. It is a mighty undertaking, and indeed it also contains an element of innovation.
[2] I saw someone point to a column by Rabbi Amichai Eliyahu as evidence that these are not Rabbi Melamed’s traits. It describes how just now (following the criticism) he readily received for a conversation a group of rabbis who oppose his positions. I’m not convinced, because this happened after Rabbi Matanya’s critique, and it may be part of public relations rather than a real change in conduct.
But to the point: it’s entirely possible that Rabbi Melamed is a busy man and cannot receive for a meeting everyone who wishes to come. It’s also possible he thought the conversation would not be useful because these are un-listening people who sharply oppose his positions and would not be willing to listen. I don’t know—and I’m not sure Rabbi Matanya knows—whether this is his general policy regarding meetings with people. In any case, a person chooses whom to meet, how much, and when. It’s hard for me to see what could provide a sufficient factual basis for such decisive criticism of Rabbi Melamed’s character.
Discussion
This is a response I published to Rabbi Matanya’s second article, which was published on Channel 20:
This article is a bluff.
First of all, there is no such thing as a decisor for matters concerning all Israel and the leader of the generation. That is a Haredi mentality that the Hardalim are trying to imitate, but it is fake to the core. There is no such thing today as “the leadership of the generation.” These rabbis are leaders only of those who follow them, nothing more. Just as the great figures of the Haredi public are leaders of that public and nothing more. They are not the great men of the generation (in the sense of leaders of the Jewish people). Rabbi Melamed writes his opinion on various matters, and whoever wants to listen to him may listen, and whoever does not, not; the chooser will choose. All these issues of Reform Jews and kashrut are not clearly halakhic issues (rulings concerning all Israel), and therefore all the halakhot the writer brings here from the Shulchan Arukh are irrelevant. There is no Sanhedrin today, and it cannot be artificially manufactured.
Likewise, the writer’s concepts of greatness are not binding on anyone. With all due respect, the fact that someone sits on the Chief Rabbinate Council does not say anything about him. Rabbi Metzger was also a Chief Rabbi, and certainly Rabbi Melamed was under no obligation whatsoever to defer to him. The attempt to impose Haredi standards and a Haredi mentality on those who are not Haredi is ridiculous and self-righteous. That also explains why Rabbi Melamed did not consult anyone. There is simply no point in consulting someone when you already know in advance what he will say. The issue of privatizing kashrut is a complicated issue, but it does not belong to halakhic ruling because it is a matter of halakhic policy. There was not always state kashrut in every period throughout history. The same applies to the issue of the attitude toward Reform Jews. The bans imposed by great rabbis of past generations do not halakhically obligate anyone. They were not real, formal halakhic bans or excommunications. Rabbi Melamed, like Rabbi Stav, are simply people in places where there is no one else. Torah greatness does not play a decisive role here once a person has broad enough shoulders (that is, he has reached halakhic independence). Here, acquaintance with reality is also important. And what can one do? The Haredi mentality (which also characterizes most Hardal rabbis) is disconnected from Israeli reality.
One can mention the ideological rival’s article without describing his response as “heaven forfend.” That mockery is clichéd and unfair. What would have happened if, heaven forfend, you had omitted it?
A side question
It is not clear to me what fully formed and stable positions contribute. What do they contribute as an indication about the person himself, and why are they relevant to others? As an indication about the person — does stability mean that his true self really thinks this way? In what way is a view stable over time preferable to a view stable only for the moment? And vis-à-vis others — who says that his true self is better in Torah than his earlier, not-yet-complete self? The fact that something reflects more of the full set of So-and-so’s assumptions (whereas until now it partly reflected the assumptions of someone else who influenced him) seemingly says nothing at all about the quality of that something.
I may perhaps understand you as claiming that the percentage of mistakes in stable views is lower than the percentage of mistakes in unstable views. How does one get the impression that this claim is correct?
When I am stuck in the same positions for many years, I always wonder whether I have really reached the end, for me, or whether I have simply become mentally fixed. By the way, and this seems to me similar and related, I am very uncertain about a person who reached a conclusion and has now forgotten the reasons for it — what justifies him in following that conclusion? Maybe it is the conclusion of his inner self, but it is no longer his conclusion. In the past you answered me that this is hair-splitting, and that his past view is presumed to still be his present view unless he has reason to think something has changed.
Hello Rabbi. You wrote: “The rabbi and decisor himself is not supposed to rule or express a position because he decided that he must be lenient or stringent, conservative or innovative.” So in your view, when Rabbi Ovadia would say that one should look for the lenient path, and for the words of those who permit, was he mistaken, or is that different? I would be glad for an explanation.
Yosef, abroad
No problem. Then they should not listen to him. But is there any room for a call not to listen to him because of this? In my opinion, absolutely not.
I think there is a process in which a person crystallizes until he arrives at his own positions. Even then he changes positions from time to time, but in principle he is already stable. Of course, stability is not necessarily crystallization. Sometimes it is just laziness, rigidity, or conservatism. There is no hard-and-fast rule here.
One has to see in what context he writes this. Sometimes there is a situation that requires leniency (such as permitting an agunah, or a pressing circumstance). Taking circumstances into account is a completely legitimate halakhic consideration. That is different from a decisor who says to himself: because I am lenient/stringent, therefore I must rule such-and-such.
There can be a general disagreement over whether, in a case of serious doubt, one should take all views into account stringently, or choose the view that seems most correct to the decisor. Seemingly, decisors who disagree in such a general dispute could reasonably describe their disagreement as stringency versus leniency. No?
True, but that is not what I meant. Beyond that, personally I do not accept the approach of relying on authorities or going stringent. A decisor should decide according to what seems right to him.
Was I the only one bothered by this sentence??
“It is true that in recent years he has been drawing closer to the path of truth”
It does not suit Your Torah Honor to phrase things that way…
It does not suit the honor of my Torah to think that my path is true? Do you, for example, think that you are generally not right?
It suits it just fine.
My remark was only about the phrasing, which reminded me of a sentence like:
“In recent years he has merited to draw close to the tzaddik/our rabbi.”
The phrasing was of course in jest.
This concept, “his own positions,” is a bit undefined. Even before the crystallization and stabilization, he had positions he was convinced of at that moment. The positions after crystallization correspond more to what? To the core of his most solid basic assumptions? Why is that core interesting?
Suitable to the truth as it is perceived by a personality such as his. Even an ignorant child can have a position, but it is still not his position.
And is perception by the personality an indication of truth, or is it simply the definition of his true opinion, and relevant only for the matter of autonomy?
An indication of the truth as it is perceived by him.
When I am shut up in my room with two confirmed COVID patients in the house — what is left for me besides arguing with you? (And how will I reach the Days of Judgment now swiftly approaching without proper preparation also in the mitzvah of “you shall surely rebuke” and its ramifications?)
I will not address Rabbi Matanya’s column here, since I too do not accept the claim that Rabbi Melamed should subordinate himself to some council of great rabbis. On the other hand, I also reject your “doctrine of independence” in halakha. But that, and this, are not the subject here, and there is no room to elaborate.
The criticism (mine, but it seems to me also that of others) against Rabbi Melamed stems from an entirely different place. Rabbi Melamed, apparently out of innocence, though I do not state this conclusively, refrains from seeing the Reform movement for what it really is: not a “stream” within Judaism, but a deviant religion that broke away from it, like the Christians 2,000 years ago and various bizarre sects from then until today. As an accomplished logician, you will surely agree that one cannot classify someone who believes in God and the giving of the Torah together with someone who denies this as believers in the same religion. That alone is enough to determine that Orthodoxy and Reform are two different religions, even if each claims that it is the faithful and authentic representation of “Judaism” (incidentally, Christianity claims this too). However, if Rabbi Melamed is an Orthodox Jew, he ought to understand that one who denies God and Torah from Heaven cannot be a legitimate interlocutor on matters of Judaism.
The interest Reform Jews have shown in Jerusalem and the Kotel is not religious. After all, Reform arose out of denial of the return to Zion, erasing every mention of Jerusalem and the Temple from the prayer books, and these matters are old history. The pseudo-Zionist awakening of the Reform movement stems from financial distress in light of their sanctuaries emptying because of the intermarriage that is devouring them wholesale (which they themselves enthusiastically cultivate), and the wits have said that the difference between a Reform Jew and Donald Trump is that Trump has Jewish grandchildren. The Reform movement hopes that on Mount Zion there will be refuge for the salaries of their priests and sextons. That and nothing more! Ironically, the “enlightened” U.S. administration does not fund their temples the way the “antisemitic” Viktor Orbán generously funds the Neolog temple in Budapest (which is also empty, in every sense)…
In exile, Jews were forced to debate Christians and apostates by royal decree, but what compels Rabbi Melamed to give them legitimacy nowadays? True, some of them (today it is hard to estimate their proportion precisely) are Jews according to halakha, but clearly their status is that of apostates in every respect, even if they are “captured infants,” etc. Perhaps they should be drawn near as individuals, but from there to “dialogue” with Reform clergy and recognizing them as a “stream within Judaism” is a very long road. (In fact, an infinite one).
Hence, at least my criticism of Rabbi Melamed is not focused on his “independence,” but on his faulty understanding of the historical processes of the last 150 years, and the enormous damage that granting legitimacy to the Reform movement as a “stream within Judaism” could bring upon Judaism in the Land of Israel. As stated, this is probably innocence, but still its danger and damage are great.
Powerful words. A timely message, how good it is. It seems to me that these days, the days of repentance, are days when we all need to repent for the very common sin of automatic, schematic expression of opinions, and of clinging to some line or other, without the ability truly to listen to a different opinion and to another person. The other side of the coin is fear of expressing a different opinion and of the criticism that will follow.
May it be God’s will that you be granted complete, speedy, and easy healing, in the merit of the mitzvah of “you shall surely rebuke.”
As you wrote, this is a completely different discussion that I did not enter into in the column. But since you raised it, I will say that in my opinion you are not right, for several reasons. Here are some of them:
1. Reform Judaism is a large group of different and diverse people, and it is not correct to lump them all together.
2. The reasons and ideologies that accompanied the establishment of the Reform movement are not necessarily relevant today. There were also those who saw Hasidism as a rebellious movement against halakha and the centrality of Torah study. Today that is not the case, and therefore even if the original description was justified, it does not matter for our time. The Reform movement as a movement changed its tune on these matters long ago. Incidentally, the Haredi movement, too, was established against Zionism and the return to the land as part of it. Should it also be boycotted because of that?
3. Even if all this is true, it still does not mean it is wrong to meet with them. Today this is an existing phenomenon (which admittedly in Israel is weak and has few adherents), and there is definitely room for the view that the right way to deal with it is through encounter and listening. And that does not depend on whether one sees them as fellow travelers. It is enough that they are on the same playing field as us, and the question is how best to advance your values.
4. I know quite a few Reform Jews, and I think your description does them a great injustice. They sincerely and genuinely think as they do, and they did not arise against anyone but rather in favor of their own view. The fact that Orthodoxy is used to seeing itself as the whole picture, and out of megalomania to think that anyone who thinks differently has no opinion and is interested only in destroying it — that is its problem. To the same extent, they can describe you as someone with no real position, whose whole concern is to suppress and exclude them.
Incidentally, from what I have written here you can also understand that the description of what happened at the founding of Reform is not accurate either. Orthodoxy was used to a monopoly, so anyone who thought differently and tried to organize was seen as a subversive whose sole aim was to harm it. But they simply thought differently and refused to accept the oppression exerted against them by Orthodoxy (which in my opinion acted against them with greater force and baseness than they acted against it — as also with Zionism and Haredism). Are they forbidden to act for what they think and against their opponents? Completely legitimate. Tendentious descriptions of history are a serious ill.
And above all, as someone who believes in democratic values, I think that even if they act against me, that is their right and the state should treat them equally. I will fight for their right to fight against me.
A. When Rabbi Sherlo tried to correspond with Rabbi Bleicher on the subject of the method of studying Tanakh, he got a response from one of the avrechim of Shavei Hevron. When Rabbi Lichtenstein (!) tried to correspond with Rabbi Avraham Shapira about the destruction of the synagogues in Gush Katif, he got a response from one of the grandsons. It seems to be a very common practice to refer a figure you do not want to respond to to one of the students.
B. Generally, there is frustration among teachers of in-depth Talmudic study toward books of abridged halakhic rulings. I remember the reactions in my yeshiva to the fact that Arukh HaShulchan lost its primacy to Mishnah Berurah.
And does that also improve accuracy with respect to the monistic truth?
Rabbi Melamed answered the questions regarding his attitude toward Reform Jews here:
https://www.inn.co.il/news/501141
To my taste, the answer is fine and detailed.
The harmonistic one. In the phenomenon there are different descriptions depending on the decisor, but halakha is one abstract monistic truth.
There is a question here of what lies in the heart of the Reform Jews. If they see themselves as part of the Jewish people and partners in its fate, and believe in its right to a state of its own and political independence, then they are no different from ordinary secular Jews and are captured infants, and the question whether to cooperate with them is the same dispute that exists between Religious Zionism and Haredism over cooperation with secular Jews. But if they do not believe in the Jewish people, like those progressive Jews in the U.S. who belong to the Democratic Party, who fight against the State of Israel and adopt identity politics, then they are indeed apostates and converts out, and they should be boycotted (the main sin in apostasy and conversion out was abandoning the Jewish people and not sharing in its fate. This is according to Maimonides in Hilkhot Yesodei HaTorah. And Rabbi Ovadia also relied on this in his ruling allowing public Sabbath desecrators to be called up to the Torah in public (I think. Or perhaps specifically Sabbath desecrators not in public. I do not remember)).
We may presume that Rabbi Melamed meets with Reform Jews of the second type.
Despite all that, what you wrote about how they suddenly support the State of Israel, Zionism, and the Kotel because of budgetary interests is actually very plausible. I am indeed very suspicious of every Reform Jew. It would have made more sense for them to be swept along with their progressive brothers in this trend that has been flooding the U.S. over the last decade. Since when did they suddenly remember their Judaism? It does indeed seem to serve their rabbis (their priests), who are left without work. But Rabbi Melamed met with a Reform woman rabbi from France who has a community, and discussed with her the rescue of Jews (as though we were in the period of the Holocaust — after all, antisemitism in France is very high today).
Thank you, and likewise may you be granted health and a good inscription and sealing.
I will try to respond according to the sections in your reply:
1) The Catholic Church too is a large group (an even larger one). In my comment I discussed the Reform religion, not Reform Jews as individuals, who may be nicer and more decent than many Orthodox Jews I know. I have wonderful friends, an Italian Catholic couple, who could serve as a model of decency, honesty, and simple faith. That does not absolve the Church of what it did to my great-grandfather in the Tiszaeszlár trial (see there). It seems to me that even you would not disagree that one must distinguish between the attitude toward a religion and the attitude toward the individual believers in it.
2) The comparison between Reform and Hasidism is beyond my understanding. Hasidism aroused suspicions in its time, but today it is clear that it denied neither God, nor Torah from Heaven, nor the other fundamentals of religion accepted by all Orthodox Jews. (I once read that the Tzemach Tzedek attributed to the Vilna Gaon the fact that Hasidism did not deteriorate into that; I do not remember the source, but if the Tzemach Tzedek באמת said this, it is nobility of spirit worthy of admiration toward one who excommunicated his grandfather and refused to meet with him.)
If the Reform movement has changed its tune, the change has only been for the worse. Today the Reform movement does not make belief in God, or any other condition, a requirement for ordination to the “rabbinate.” How can one see it as a stream within Judaism?
And note well: here I am referring only to the theological aspect of Reform and completely ignoring the antisemitic poison it spreads in the world. (This movement is one of the most poisonous antisemitic spearheads active today.) Perhaps another time.
3) They are absolutely not on the same playing field as us. I noted above that this is an antisemitic and anti-Israel movement, among the most vicious existing in the world today. (It seems to me that only the neo-Nazis are more poisonous.) There is certainly room for listening and dialogue with errant brothers, but as individuals and not as a movement. With the movement we have no common denominator whatsoever.
4) Again, I distinguish between individuals and the movement, and between innocent individuals and their leaders (and see Malbim on Exodus 13:14 and you will find satisfaction).
I detect in your words a misunderstanding of what I said, so I will sharpen it again. The “megalomania” is not relevant here at all. The question is not what is the “authentic” representation of the Judaism faithful to our fathers of blessed memory. The question is whether a religion that sees belief in God and the giving of the Torah as its foundation, and a religion that does not require that belief, can be considered two “streams” of the same religion. To my limited understanding — no! This is not “thinking differently.” It is a different religion.
Tendentious descriptions of history are indeed problematic. But where is there any description that is not tendentious? (Stalin already noted that history is written by the victors.) The historical competition of “who was more villainous” is not my concern here, and I am also not clear what oppression was exercised against them by the Orthodox. To the best of my knowledge, they had the views, the money, and the power from the day of their founding, and oppressed the Orthodox. It is needless to mention that they also fought Zionism, and because of them Herzl had to move the First Congress from Munich to Basel. But all this, as stated, is not relevant. My remarks were not aimed at a historical polemic at all, but a theological one. The main point of my remarks is that Reform is not a “stream within Judaism” but a religion that broke away from it and has been fighting it ever since. Their “sudden” interest in the Kotel does not express longing for the building of the Temple and the restoration of the sacrificial service, but a disgusting marketing gimmick.
1. I do disagree. I do not think your words are correct even regarding Reform Jews as a group. Their internal diversity itself testifies to that. And indeed I would say the same thing about Christians.
2. I did not say it is a stream within Judaism. It is a stream of Jews, and as such it is a faction within Jewry. Exactly like secularism. After all, I have written more than once that my position is that Judaism is halakha. That, and nothing else. You spoke about how Reform rejected Zionism and opposes the state. So I noted that Haredism did too.
3. Again, I disagree with you. Indeed, there are some among them like that, but you ignore the persecutions that the State of Israel and Orthodoxy are exerting on them. It is no great wonder that they do not love us. In your opinion, should American Jewry also be boycotted because many among them are anti-Israel? Or Jews who vote Democratic?
I answered everything else in 2. My discussion is not about the question whether Reform is Judaism. That is irrelevant to my remarks.
Diagnoses of motives are matters of the heart. There is no point in arguing about that, certainly when, by your own words, it is a gross generalization. I will only say that they have the right to pray at the Kotel regardless of why they want to do so. Just as Jews have the right to ascend the Temple Mount regardless of whether they do it as a political protest or from authentic religious desire.
1) I was not speaking about Reform Jews as a group, but about Reform as a religion that split off from Judaism. (A theological statement, not an ethnic or sociological one.)
2) And here, you too agree that they are not a stream within Judaism but “a stream of Jews and as such a faction within Jewry.” I admit I do not fully grasp your meaning. Are “Jews for Jesus” or “Messianic Jews” also “a faction within Judaism”? Is communism (which was founded mainly by Jews) “a faction within Judaism”? What defines “a faction within Judaism”? The fact that most of its members are ethnically Jewish? (That may define a group within the Jewish people sociologically, as above, but what does that have to do with “a faction within Judaism”? I am baffled.)
3) I am not ignoring any persecutions, simply because they neither existed nor were created. The State of Israel was founded as the state of the Jewish people, and other religions have no vested rights in it, except for religions that were active in the land prior to the establishment of the state (this was a commitment of the Zionist movement to Britain). They do not receive state budgets (both because they do not deserve them and because they are still, thank God, a small group), and they are not allowed to marry Jewish couples. Is that “persecution”? It seems a debasement of the term. No one is preventing them from gathering and conducting their rites as they wish.
My reference to their opposition to Zionism and the state was in response to your remark that they are “on the same playing field as us.” So no. They are on the field of our enemies and against us. Their pseudo-Zionist “awakening” is self-interested. Exactly like the establishment of Reform kashrut bodies in the U.S. What do Reform Jews have to do with kashrut? Good question, and thank you for asking. They discovered the many dollars in the Muslim “halal” market in the U.S. (Muslims do not know how to distinguish between real kashrut and Reform kashrut and swallow these tall tales).
Diagnoses are matters of the heart. True. But you too would not sign a deal with a partner if your heart told you he is a liar and a cheat. All the more so when it comes to a deviant religion that has broken away and for more than 150 years has fought against everything holy and precious to both of us. Let me sharpen this again: I have no problem sitting down for a serious conversation with a Reform Jew, just as I have done in the past with Christians (of various kinds and colors) and Muslims. My objection is to giving Reform as a movement and as a legitimate Jewish “stream” a foothold. Because they are not!
A note regarding “their right to pray at the Kotel.” By all means, but according to the local custom and without provocations!
I mentioned above my Italian Catholic friends. I am speaking of Prof. Mario D’Alio and his wife Prof. Elsa Fornero-D’Alio (formerly Italy’s Minister of Labor and Welfare). A few years ago I accompanied this special couple to the Western Wall (together with my wife, whom I enlisted for the event as an Italy-born native speaker of Italian). At the entrance we parted; my wife accompanied Elsa to the women’s section and I accompanied Mario to the men’s section. They asked why the separation, and when they were told that this is the accepted practice in a Jewish place of prayer, they accepted it with complete understanding. Elsa covered her head and Mario put on a kippah. As we approached, Mario asked me whether non-Jews are also allowed to pray here, and I instinctively answered with the famous verse from Isaiah: “For My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.” (Of course, a moment later I regretted it because I remembered to whom he prays, but it was too late…). The point is that these two devout Catholics understood that they were in a Jewish place of prayer and accepted upon themselves everything that entailed, without a peep or complaint. That is how Reform Jews should behave too if they wish to pray at the Kotel. No different from any other human being on earth.
Incidentally, if I may “show off” that I practice what I preach: when I was required to remove my kippah at the entrance to the Sistine Chapel in Rome, I gave up the visit and did not enter, despite my burning love of art and my dream of seeing Michelangelo’s marvelous paintings. (I had thought of entering because I did not know the place still functions as an active church.) When in Rome, do as the Romans do…
By contrast, when in Lisbon I was required to remove my kippah at an academic conference because it was being held at a “Catholic university” — I refused, and explained to that impudent fellow that this is a university, not a church. I pointed to the picture of the Pope (larger than life) hanging on the wall and added, “Come to me when he removes the kippah from his head”…
1-2. I repeat that the discussion concerns the question whether to meet with them and acknowledge them (without legitimizing them), or to boycott them. Therefore the question whether they are a stream within Judaism is irrelevant. They are a group of Jews.
3. Indeed, these are persecutions in every respect. What would you say about a state that did not allow Jews to marry according to their own outlook? Or to pray according to their own understanding (at the Kotel)? Not every persecution means trying to kill someone. Did the Greeks not persecute us either? After all, they merely forbade us to observe circumcision, the new month, and the Sabbath.
Indeed, I would not sign a deal with a person if my heart told me he was plotting against me. But here, in my opinion, that is not the case. And that is why I wrote that diagnoses are matters of the heart.
Fine, so then I really should not have complained about the residents of Midreshet Sde Boker who did not want to allow religious Jews to live there. It is the local custom. If at the Kotel they expected you to come in a suit and Hasidic or Lithuanian dress, would you accept it because it is the local custom? And if when you enter a synagogue they require you to wear a suit, would you not be upset? That is the local custom. I would be.
And of course there is a big difference between a non-Jew who comes to a Jewish place of prayer and a Jew who wants to pray differently.
With God’s help, 16 Elul 5780
The criticism by Rabbi Matanya Ariel disturbs me less. By the nature of things, someone who heads a large community and a yeshiva and institute, and who day by day must answer many questioners and write books and articles in halakha and outlook, is extremely busy. If someone wants to challenge his words, especially a great person, prima facie it is preferable that he publish his criticisms publicly, and thus the discussion will be more efficient.
What is puzzling to me is the campaign in which Rabbi Melamed is giving a “presentation” for Reform. A group that uproots the entire authority of halakha and encourages intermarriage — why encourage it and demand that it be allowed to establish a synagogue in the Kotel plaza? Will they also hold mixed-marriage ceremonies there and “bar mitzvah” ceremonies for the children of non-Jewish women? What for?
With blessings, T. Mahon
I did not understand the analogy from Sde Boker. Citizens of the state have the right to purchase real estate and live anywhere. What does that have to do with religious customs at a cultic site sacred to a certain religion? Your riddles are too deep for me.
If a certain dress code really had been an accepted custom at the Kotel for generations, it is quite possible that I would honor it and require every visitor (Jew or non-Jew) to honor it. I certainly respect synagogues that required me to wear a suit and hat as a condition for serving as prayer leader on my late father’s yahrzeit. Ideally, of course, I would prefer to go to another synagogue. But if it is the local custom — it should be respected (even if I think the custom has no halakhic basis whatsoever). What is so infuriating about that?
There is no difference between a Jew and a gentile. A Jew who seeks to enter a church is required to uncover his head, and in a mosque he is required to remove his shoes. When I was required in the Sistine Chapel to uncover my head, as recounted above, I did not “insist on my right” to enjoy the marvelous art displayed there, even though I had paid good money for an entrance ticket to the Vatican Museum. (The chapel is part of the museum, and so at first I thought it was no longer an active church.) It is the local custom, and I did not come to anger believing Christians, so I gave up the visit (and did not demand my money back, in typical Israeli male fashion; I should have checked beforehand). Simple as that!
Incidentally, during visits to many other countries I was more than once invited by colleagues and friends to tour places of worship (Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, and others), and I politely declined in order to avoid showing honor to idolatry. (Incidentally, I also declined an invitation to tour the grave of the Lubavitcher Rebbe for a similar reason…).
That is exactly what I expect of every person who visits Jewish houses of prayer. Respect the local customs and the feelings of the believers (like those devout Catholics who came with me to the Kotel), or forgo visiting the place. This is a basic requirement of a civilized person.
And once again, the point from which you are evading — this is not about a “Jew who wants to pray differently.” No one is restricting Jewish prayer rites at the Western Wall. We are talking about apostate Jews, who have accepted upon themselves another religion that broke away from Judaism and want to impose a foreign rite on us at our holy place. (For present purposes it does not matter whether they are willful apostates, captured infants, or any other definition.) They must be opposed, just as a Catholic who requests to hold a mass there should be opposed. Let him go to his church and let them go to their temple. The Kotel has been a Jewish place of prayer for hundreds of years.
Rabbi, what is your impression of Rabbi Matanya Ariel based on your personal experience?
I do not answer questions like that
Does this not stand in contradiction to what you explained in your articles about “Aristotelian” and “Platonic” conceptions of halakha, and your leaning in favor of the latter, in the name of the view that the decisor should not only strive to discover the halakha in any given case, and if he did not know what the halakha was he would have had to create it?
I did not understand
It is just a shame that people ignore the explicit ruling of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef and Rabbi Elyashiv, both of blessed memory: to give the Reform movement part of the Kotel. True, some explain it away as not really for Rabbi Melamed’s reasons, but apparently that is not correct. And at least the reason that they reduce assimilation, and that bringing bar and bat mitzvah boys and girls to the Wall strengthens Jewish consciousness and identity and reduces assimilation, was before those great rabbis’ eyes. At least in parts of the discussions that Buji Herzog and Avichai Mandelblit [who was then Cabinet Secretary] had with them, their need was well understood [they are not lacking budgets and wheeling-and-dealing; that is simply ridiculous], and legitimacy from Orthodoxy does not interest them [and who is wise? one who knows his place]. Indeed, at first the activists moved it toward approval, until the wrath of a few extremists with huge knitted kippot burst upon them.
Rabbi Melamed is allowed to think like Rabbi Elyashiv and Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, certainly after they plumbed the issue’s depths, and he does not have to think like others who every morning see how the sun and the whole universe are collaborating with the New Israel Fund and the Ministry of Education and all sorts of other nonsense…
Simply.
If halakha is one abstract monistic truth, including everything that emerges from your discussion with Tirgitz, that means the point is the conclusion, and the decisor is charged only with striving to uncover the truth that already exists.
By contrast, if we assume that the point is primarily the methodology and less the conclusion derived from it, that would fit with your “non-Aristotelian” approach to halakha, but less with what you say here.
With God’s help, 15 Elul 5780
To “Ken” — greetings,
I do not know where you got support from Rabbi Ovadia Yosef and Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, both of blessed memory, for the “Kotel outline” that the government decided on at the beginning of 2016, several years after the passing of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef and Rabbi Elyashiv to the heavenly treasury.
What existed before the “Kotel outline” was a plaza at the southern Wall, designated by a Supreme Court ruling for “egalitarian prayer.” But that was not enough for the Reform movement, and “Women of the Wall” continued their provocative “prayers” in the women’s section, and therefore the “Kotel outline” was proposed, under which official representation would be given to Reform and Conservative representatives on the council that would manage the “egalitarian plaza,” and entry to that “plaza” would be through the main entrance to the Kotel. In exchange, the Reform movement and “Women of the Wall” would cease their “prayers” in the women’s section of the Western Wall, which would continue to be run according to the tradition of rabbinic Judaism.
This compromise agreement, whose sole purpose was to remove “Women of the Wall and the Reform movement” from the women’s section of the Western Wall plaza, is highly problematic, because it includes official consent to turning the southern Wall into a Reform and Conservative prayer site.
Did not the sages of Spain in the fifteenth century teach us that a minor sin done with public consent is graver than a serious sin committed by an individual on his own? But at the beginning of 2016 the Haredi activists thought that making do with weak opposition to the Reform plaza did not count as “consent,” and that weak opposition should suffice in order to gain the removal of the Reform movement from the Western Wall plaza. But later the rabbis instructed that one must oppose it vigorously, for the reason explained.
At any rate, even the initial thought of making do with weak opposition was solely in order to bring about the removal of Women of the Wall and the Reform movement from the Western Wall plaza. Today they have forgotten that entirely and are holding the rope at both ends.
What connection is there between this and Rabbi Eliezer Melamed’s actions, singing songs of praise to the Reform movement as “guardians of Jewish identity”? They are known for supporting intermarriage; some of their rabbis even participate in mixed marriage ceremonies, and most or all of them accept mixed couples and their children into their communities. Can there be a greater encouragement of intermarriage and assimilation than that? What is the meaning of Rabbi Melamed’s praises, commendations, and publicized meetings with Reform and Conservative representatives?
And wonder upon wonder, he goes and meets Reform Jews who are a negligible minority in their own countries. Thus the “rabbi” Delphine Horvilleur in France, where Reform Jews make up one or two percent of all Jews, and likewise the Reform and Conservative movements in Israel, which are a negligible percentage of the population — did Rabbi Melamed have no one else to give a “presentation” to?
In the 1950s the Chief Rabbis Rabbi Isaac Herzog and Rabbi Ben-Zion Meir Hai Uziel, both of blessed memory, opposed even the establishment of a Reform minyan in the Hebrew Union College branch (see Ledor Vedorot, vol. 2: Bekomah Zekufah, p. …), and they explained this by pointing to the Reform movement’s undermining of halakha and its assistance to assimilation. And now, when the Reform movement has become even more extreme in its support of intermarriage — shall we come to support giving them a place near the site of the Temple?
With blessings, T. Mahon
Paragraph 1, line 1
… where did you get support from Rabbi Ovadia Yosef…
Paragraph 6, line 2
… after all, the Reform movement is known for supporting marriage…
All the pilpul about a sin of the many versus a sin of an individual is truly wonderful.
But it is irrelevant to the matter.
What we have here are our brothers and sisters who, for the deepening of Jewish identity, need a portion and inheritance in the Kotel in order to reduce assimilation, and the rabbis’ decision was to give it to them. And we have no right to push them away from Judaism. This is not recognition of their method, and it really does not trouble them whether Orthodoxy recognizes them or not. [It may even harm the more conservative parts there; the more liberal groups will mock them: look who supports you and the Kotel you obtained…]
People worked on the Kotel outline for many years, among others Buji and Mandelblit, and the framework was already in place during the lifetimes of Rabbi Elyashiv and Rabbi Ovadia. There is no point arguing. Study a bit about the compromise and its framers and on whose authority it rested, and all the questions will fall away on their own.
Of course, among the rabbis still living who supported this when it was actually brought to the government were Rabbi Nebenzahl, Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky [because that is what his father-in-law instructed], Rabbi Aryeh Stern, Rabbi Rabinovitch, and almost everyone who dealt seriously with the issue for years.
Those who scuttled it were Rabbi Shlomo Moshe Amar [and he then received torrents of ridicule and contempt for it in the Haredi press], Rabbi Tau [and those who follow him / his students], and Mati Dan. Those are the people who managed to change the picture for the time being. You may think they are right, and you may think they are mistaken and dangerous, but it is important to know the facts.
Rabbi Melamed does not have to cling to the most extreme line; he has the right to cling to the most sensible side.
I do not know why you say “our brothers and sisters.” For some reason it seems to me that all those Reform Jews oppose the State of Israel as the state of the Jewish people. See Kariv. And if only I am wrong. Are we lacking in crazies (the left) that we should bring here even more Jews who will undermine our independence?
I still have not understood anything. Which of my approaches are we talking about? What is the contradiction?
On the Reform movement’s support for intermarriage — see Tzvika Klein’s interview with Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism in North America, “Intermarriage? It’s an opportunity to connect more people,” on the Makor Rishon website, and Hanan Greenwood’s article, “84% of Reform rabbis: We will conduct intermarriages,” on the Israel Hayom website. (Among the Conservatives the percentage is smaller, but not negligible — 8 out of 59.) Indeed, these are the guardians of “Jewish identity” 🙂 What does Rabbi Melamed have to look for among them?
With blessings, T. Mahon
Incidentally, Rick Jacobs is one of the people of J Street, who opposes the “occupation.” Is the Kotel really what interests him, or the opportunity to bash the Orthodox?
I am referring to your words in the third column about Platonism:
I have already written and said more than once in the past that a similar debate is conducted regarding Torah study. Rabbi Ovadia and his students/sons hold the view that the lomdut analyses (=theories) serve the halakha, meaning that they are at most tools for organizing and streamlining the use of halakhic data in order to issue a ruling for any given case. Once we know the proper ruling for every case, our learning task is complete. In their view, lomdut has no value in itself, and at most it serves the collection of halakhic information. This is lomedic-halakhic instrumentalism. In contrast, yeshiva lomdut assumes (sometimes unconsciously) that the goal of study is the lomedic theory and the lomedic analyses. The “facts,” meaning the halakhic rulings in specific cases, only serve that goal and are not the aim of the learning activity. This is lomedic realism.
So far, your words.
There, further on, you claim to justify the method of yeshiva lomdut.
And my question is this.
If the main thing is the method — as you say there — then the conclusions are only derivatives of it, and one cannot claim that “halakha is one abstract monistic truth,” as you say here.
If the main thing is the conclusion, then indeed halakha is one abstract monistic truth, but then the decisor’s goal is merely to uncover the already-existing truth: “Once we know the proper ruling for every case, our learning task is complete,” as you say there.
Link to the column in question (column 385)
https://mikyab.net/posts/71518
I am unable to understand the difficulty (and again, I do not disagree with anything you said. I simply do not understand it. I cannot see any difficulty here).
I wrote that the main thing in Torah study is the method and the mode of looking. That is a statement about what has the primary value in the act of study, not about the question whether the conclusions are true or not, and whether they are unique or not.
In what sense does this contradict the statement that halakha is one abstract monistic truth? (Incidentally, “halakha” in that sentence too is not only the bottom lines but the entire whole.)
And even if the above statement were about content rather than value, and even if my intention in the word “halakha” here in the discussion were the bottom lines, I still do not understand what contradiction there is here. This is not an excuse or a disagreement. I simply cannot see what the problem is.
Maybe bring a specific example and we can discuss it.
With God’s help, 16 Elul 5780
Rabbi Avigdor Nebenzahl initially supported the compromise of the “Kotel outline” because of pressure stemming from the Supreme Court’s threat to permit the prayers of the Reform movement and “Women of the Wall.” In an interview with Behadrei Haredim dated 22/2/16, Rabbi Nebenzahl makes it unequivocally clear that he opposes any foothold for the Reform and Conservative movements near the Kotel, but the fear of the Supreme Court compelled accepting the lesser evil.
He notes that the principle of “the lesser evil” was based on Rabbi Elyashiv’s ruling 15 years earlier, though there is a difference between the old outline and the current one (and as I explained above, in the “Ezrat Yisrael” outline there is a side entrance and no official status for the Reform movement. S.Z.). Yes, Rabbi Nebenzahl does not hide his concern over the fear that the compromise would be exploited by the Reform movement for further breaches.
Shortly afterward, on 3/3/16, the article “Now it’s official: No rabbinic support for the Reform Kotel” reported that Rabbi Nebenzahl sent a message to the Chief Rabbinate (through his student Rabbi Yehoshua Katz) that he was requesting they do everything possible to cancel the outline. A few months later Ari Kalman reported, in his article “The Chief Rabbis and the heads of the Haredi parties decided: demand the cancellation of the Kotel outline,” that Rabbi Nebenzahl also participated in the meeting with the chief rabbis making that demand.
Opposition to the Kotel outline was led not only by Rabbi Shlomo Amar. Rabbi Meir Mazuz, Rabbi Shalom Cohen, and the Chief Rabbis Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef and Rabbi David Lau also spoke out forcefully against this outline, saying they had not been consulted at all in determining it.
With blessings, Yaron Fishel Ordner
Can you explain how you would strengthen the Jewish identity of Reform Jews (assuming they are Jews according to halakha, and there is no room to elaborate) when you bring them to the Kotel and allow them to conduct the rituals of their religion in the plaza?
Suppose a delegation of Jews for Jesus were to ask to hold a Christian mass in the Kotel plaza — would you also support that “in order to strengthen their Jewish identity”? That is absurd and ridiculous. The Reform movement is no different in any way. Reform is not a “stream within Judaism” but a religion that broke away from it and fights it. Conducting Reform ceremonies in the Kotel plaza while using Jewish sacred objects is a case of “Would he force the queen in my house while I am in the house?” A vile provocation that contains no strengthening of any Jewish identity whatsoever.
If you really want to strengthen the Jewish identity of Reform Jews, invite them to the Kotel so they can see genuine Jewish prayer (in whatever rite you choose). But under no circumstances should they be allowed to desecrate the sanctity of the Kotel (whose sanctity today is that of a synagogue) by conducting the rituals of their religion. Even if they get very angry! (Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear).
Or perhaps one may judge Rabbi Eliezer Melamed favorably and say that he is concerned for the future of the settlements in Judea and Samaria under the Biden administration, which tends more toward “advancing the peace process” and “Palestinian rights,” and therefore he thinks it worthwhile to draw close to the streams that are closer to the Democrats, such as the Reform and Conservative movements, in the hope that this will positively affect their attitude toward the settlements. This requires further study.
With blessings, Yefa"or
With God’s help, 15 Elul 5780
To Mordechai — greetings,
Recognition of the Reform religious establishment as “rabbis” is of course a great danger, lest they mislead the masses after them to permit everything forbidden by halakha, up to and including intermarriage, heaven forbid.
On the other hand, it is important to maintain contact with the common folk in the Diaspora, most or all of whom are “captured infants” whose knowledge of Judaism is close to zero, so that the thin “end of the thread” that still connects them to Judaism should not be severed. Some are brought closer by reading and study in the “Jewish bookshelf”; for some, foods or art, folklore and customs preserve the “spark.”
And there are also quite a few for whom entering a historical site of national and/or religious cultural significance, and praying and making a request to God in the personal way familiar to that person — that is what will kindle and intensify in him the “Jewish spark”; the “light in that place” may not return them immediately to the good path, but it will awaken and strengthen in them a feeling of affection for the heritage of Judaism.
So the idea that was conceived at the time, and led to the establishment near the southern Wall of the “Ezrat Yisrael” area, where even one for whom “gender separation” is taboo because of the liberal education he received can approach and commune in prayer with his Creator in his personal way — is not, on its face, an absurd thing.
The problem is that the Reform establishment is not willing to make do with such a plaza where they can pray in their way as private individuals. The Reform establishment is interested in official recognition as an equal-value stream within Judaism. And they were not interested in being pushed into a side plaza, and so they demanded from the outset equal status at the Western Wall; only after the fact did they agree to accept the “Ezrat Yisrael” at the southern Wall, on condition that entry there be through the main entrance to the Kotel and that they be given official representation on the council managing “Ezrat Yisrael.” See at length in Wikipedia under the entries “Ezrat Yisrael” and “Kotel outline.”
This is the complexity in this affair: how can one preserve the connection of the common folk in the Diaspora to the Kotel as a national and religious heritage site, but without officially recognizing the movements and “rabbis” who reject halakha?
With blessings, Eliam Fishel Wurkheimer
Paragraph 2, line 1
… that most or all of them are in the category of “captured infants,” …
Paragraph 3, line 1
… that entering a historical site of significance…
There, line 2
… and prayer or a request to God in the personal way…
To Yaron Fishel.
You are messing up again, and badly.
A father says to his child during a walk among the standing grain in the field: Look at the beautiful wheat, from which bread and cookies are made.
A few days later the child comes to the father: Why did you deceive me?
I saw with my own eyes how mother makes cookies from dough, not from wheat…
Years of discussions, and with the rabbis’ agreement, produced a suitable outline. Then one or two rabbis got up and shouted against it [Mati Dan, Rabbi Tau, and later apparently Rabbi Amar]; everyone else wanted it, waited for it, and was happy that it would pass.
The above people managed to stir up an atmosphere of opposition [this is not all that hard, especially among people of a very certain type with thinking habits of a very certain type], and now a few more rabbis are joining the anti atmosphere.
Now tell me this. Did the father lie? Are bread and cookies made from wheat or from dough?
I am dust beneath the soles of the feet of our master and teacher Rabbi Avigdor Nebenzahl. Literally and homiletically.
And still, there is much to discuss.
1. Rabbi Nebenzahl claims that the support of Rabbi Elyashiv [and Rabbi Ovadia] of blessed memory was only because of the Supreme Court. Many think that it was דווקא other good reasons that caused them to decide כך, including considerations raised [for all to see, and fearlessly — and this is mainly the difference between Rabbi Melamed and Rabbi Ovadia and Rabbi Elyashiv] by Rabbi Melamed. Perhaps indeed those were the considerations? Especially since he brought no proof from those who participated in the discussions with Rabbi Ovadia and Rabbi Elyashiv that it was indeed as he conjectures. [And there are grounds for this, especially from the direction of Buji and Mandelblit, that they did in fact raise before the great rabbis the situation of the Reform communities abroad and their contribution to reducing assimilation and strengthening identity and attachment to the Jewish people, and the reason and need to give them part of the Kotel. And I seem to recall that Buji said this explicitly on the radio in those days…]
2. Those great rabbis feared the Supreme Court and an atmosphere of dispute and desecration of God’s name that would ensue in the absence of a solution. Let us assume that, as the rabbi says, they feared only that. So what — were they not right? Has the fear disappeared? We can see with our own eyes…
Although I usually do not agree with the points you raise, regarding this point about intermarriage I agree with every word, without relating to the polemic itself and everything that follows from it. In American Jewry, for example, most members of the Reform community are halakhically gentiles. Rabbi Melamed also responds to this claim on his site Revivim and argues that it depends on which communities we are talking about. But even if that is true for certain communities, there is still an obligation of love of Israel and drawing near even toward a Jew who married a non-Jewish woman. He even goes further and argues that in his opinion this mitzvah extends also to the child of the non-Jewish woman, and even to the non-Jewish woman herself, because they feel identification with the Jewish people and its fate, and they should be drawn near and treated warmly.
This is a very strange claim in my eyes. I do not know of any halakha that says there is a mitzvah to love a person who married a non-Jewish woman and left the community of Israel. (Even though I assume that if one sees him as a captured infant or an unwitting sinner, really like the average secular Jew, there may be room to argue this.) But certainly there is no mitzvah at all to love his child or his partner. And the claim that they feel identification with the Jewish people is already very puzzling to me; most of those children and grandchildren do not see Judaism as a component of their identity.
He did not say there is a mitzvah to love the non-Jewish wife or her child. He said one should love them too. Not that there is a mitzvah. It is not the same thing. I assume there is no prohibition in that.
They claim: Since Reform Jews accept gentiles without conversion according to halakha and marry Jews to gentiles, in practice most of them today are gentiles, and there is no mitzvah to love them as Jewish brothers.
Answer: Even if that is so, there is an obligation to love all the Jews in the Reform movement, and even if, in the spirit of the times, he is married to a non-Jew, he is still our brother and is called the son of God. And their spouses or children who are not Jewish are also to be loved, since they are bound in a deep bond with our brothers, especially when they feel identification with the Jewish people. And may God help that we merit to increase the light of Torah until everyone will want to join properly the great vision of repairing the world according to the guidance of the Torah with all the details of its halakhot.
From his website
Indeed, you are right. Probably and most likely he did not mean love in the sense of a written commandment. I got hung up here on semantics, simply because his claim arouses my wonder for a certain reason — if it had said that there is room to love, as a commandment or not as a commandment, descendants of a Jewish father, as his personal reasoning or not his personal reasoning because of arguments about Israel’s special quality that in his opinion is embedded even in them, because of drawing near the Jew who is married to a non-Jewish woman in gentle ways since he is a captured infant just like the secular Jew, and perhaps one could even bring them a tiny bit closer to the true religion or at least give them a door in order to fulfill one’s duty or cause them at least not to hate it — that would be one thing. His claim is puzzling to me because of his somewhat cosmic optimism regarding Reform Jews as they are. The reality on the ground shows that most Reform thinkers are basically just classic Western secular liberals who dress their statements in “Jewish garb” (that is, they preach for a life and value system identical to that of the average secular liberal / total spiritualist who comes to a house of worship once a week in Denmark or Switzerland, and then claim some support for this lifestyle from a certain midrash in Hazal or some verse in the Bible to which they give a creative interpretation). Some are also complete atheists. They openly claim that there is no difference at all between them and classic liberal, and even progressive, views — and they admit it, that their holidays, prayers, and the like are basically just an expression of preserving certain ethnic customs, and no more.
In my opinion, all the exaggerated uproar over this story stems precisely from what many perceive as a circus. After all, cooperation between the knitted-kippah sector and the secular and traditional public that is not committed to commandments — and even cooperation with anti-religious figures and forces — in day-to-day politics, economics, academia, the army, and other areas, is commonplace, which all of us, as well as rabbis and religious figures, do. And dialogue or just philosophical conversation with such people is nothing new. No uproar arose because Chaim Navon hosted Yair Lapid on a radio program, or because Rabbi Cherki meets every week with a psychologist who is ultra-progressive and ultra-atheist.
The compliments and charm that Rabbi Melamed grants the Reform movement are of course his full right, but they are contrary to reality. His statement that the distance between Orthodox and Reform is immense, but that there is also a broad and close shared religious denominator, is mistaken.
It seems to me that if the meeting had taken place while stating that he was coming to speak with them and hold some kind of debate with them over the nature of religion or the purpose of the Torah, while emphasizing that he does not see them as a stream or movement close to Orthodoxy, and that of course in the meeting he is not granting any legitimacy but only trying to find a way to cooperate with them in certain neutral areas where both sides agree — such an uproar would not have arisen.
Although on the other hand, it is also his right to phrase things this way. And it is also his right to think that they are indeed a stream within Judaism and are indeed close to Orthodoxy because they at least believe in one God and observe commandments between man and his fellow, or at least reject idolatry — and also those who start imagining world wars, hysteria, panic, and pressure just because Rabbi Melamed met with someone called a female rabbi, or just because he phrased things differently — the problem is in them.
I basically agree with you. I will only add that for me, the one thing sufficient for cooperating with a Jew is if he shares with me the feeling of a shared fate and the preference for Jews over
non-Jews in this regard (like a family’s preference and concern first of all for family members). Whoever does not share this is, for me, outside the bounds (he is the one who excluded himself). What is very suspicious about standard Reform Jews is that it seems that in their hearts they are progressives who worship the god of equality. Or perhaps Rabbi Melamed believes in their Jewish point. But in this matter I have only what my eyes see. But this is also a problem in Israel. Although as individuals most of the left-wing camp is made up of people who are Zionists, as a camp and a collective it is progressive and not Zionist. Which, for me, completely disqualifies cooperation with the left in Israel, to the point of demanding that its people leave the הארץ with their property (since they do not believe in the land and in the Jewish people; for them nationhood is a racist concept, and whoever does not believe in Jewish nationhood has no right whatsoever here in the land and should leave. He certainly cannot rule over me — in such a case he is an alien invader and occupier — and I also do not wish to rule over him. And it is impossible to split the state into two states. It is not practical). The question is whether there are Reform Jews who are not progressive; from appearances, the one from France whom he met is such a one.
The typo is “employee” / “rental” / “wall”
With God’s help, 23 Elul 5780
In accordance with the distinction I proposed between the Jewish common folk who, out of ignorance, trail after “Reform and Conservative rabbis,” and whom one should draw near through explanation and gentle ways, and those “rabbis” who know the Torah but interpret it in a way that empties it of its intent.
Just as one should criticize Rabbi Melamed for his meetings with Reform and Conservative rabbis, and for his proposals to promote the establishment of a Reform prayer place near the Kotel — so one should praise his book The Jewish Tradition, which explains succinctly the principles and ways of Judaism in clear and accessible language, understandable even to a modern person who lacks a traditional Torah childhood background.
The book should be translated into English and Spanish, French and Russian, so that Jews lacking knowledge of Judaism can receive clear concepts of the values of rabbinic Judaism faithful to halakha, and perhaps the words may influence even their intellectuals and spiritual leaders to draw somewhat closer to the tradition of their people.
With blessings, Afo"r
I received today a nice link regarding the character of the midrasha mentioned in the column:
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10223975214301792&id=1040771182&comment_id=10223975364065536¬if_t=feedback_reaction_generic¬if_id=1630331336247868&ref=m_notif
Listen, Mordechai, I enjoyed reading you, and of course, complete healing!
Here is another fool whose rulings should not be relied upon. Not because he is a heretic or wicked, but because he is an idiot:
https://www.bhol.co.il/news/1283981
The meeting with Rabbi Amichai Eliyahu took place before the publication of Rabbi Matanya’s column. (The publication came afterward.)
With God’s help, 6 Adar II 5782
As I surmised, one of Rabbi Eliezer Melamed’s purposes in his meetings with non-Orthodox female rabbis is to draw them closer, and through them their communities, to settlement in Judea and Samaria.
Rabbi Melamed took part in an initiative organized by the Genesis Foundation (“Bereshit”), which gathered leaders and intellectuals from various streams in Israel and the Diaspora, with the aim of creating the “Scroll of Shared Destiny,” which would serve as a common “vision” around which all Jews in Israel and the Diaspora could unite. See Tzvika Klein’s article, “The revolutionary scroll you must hear about,” on the Makor Rishon website.
Among other things, Rabbi Melamed spoke with the Conservative female rabbi Sharon Brous, whose political views are deep on the left. Among other things, she was chosen to bless Obama at his inauguration and expounded regarding him what was said about Abraham, that he “saw a burning castle” and concluded that there must arise “a leader for the castle.” See her entry on Wikipedia, and Yair Sheleg’s article, “Judaism on different tracks,” on the Shabbat Supplement — Makor Rishon website.
In a conversation with her that lasted hours, Rabbi Melamed sought to show her how little each of them knows the other, and invited her to come on her visit to Israel to the community of Har Bracha, an invitation to which Rabbi Brous responded positively, but which did not materialize because of the coronavirus.
There is some room for skepticism regarding the chance of bringing Rabbi Brous and her French counterpart Delphine Horvilleur closer, since their interest in Jewish tradition is to take from it what suits and strengthens liberal values, and as Brous put it (in Yair Sheleg’s article): “Our focus is not ‘what do I need to do to fit myself to tradition,’ but rather: what does Jewish tradition have to say to me in the place where I am.”
And even more problematic is the connection with the French female rabbi Delphine Horvilleur, whose liberal community is very small. Her great influence is through her French books presenting Judaism from a liberal angle, and there is reason to fear that dialogue with Rabbi Melamed will not bring her closer but rather strengthen her public influence.
And as I wrote below, instead of speaking with leaders who are not interested in drawing closer — it is preferable to try to find paths to the common folk; and books such as Rabbi Melamed’s The Jewish Tradition, which summarizes in clear language the principles and ways of Judaism — if translated into foreign languages, may influence the broad public that thirsts to know Judaism.
With blessings, Yefa"or
The “Scroll of Shared Destiny,” which seeks to unite around itself all streams of Judaism, can be viewed on the website of the Genesis Foundation established by Mikhail Fridman, who is also one of Putin’s close associates.
The scroll speaks about shared principles of concern for the physical existence of the Jewish people in Israel and the Diaspora, cohesion and connection between the state and the Diaspora public, the building of an exemplary society that will be “a light unto the nations,” nurturing science and progress, and strengthening “Jewish identity” through mutual recognition of the different streams as “different interpretations of Judaism.”
Commitment to the faith of Judaism and its commandments, and struggle against assimilation and intermarriage — are not there. These are apparently only some of the “legitimate interpretations,” within the framework of “pluralism” 🙂
And as for us, we will hold fast to our old scroll, which opens with the inability “to do according to every man’s pleasure,” and ends with the limitation of being “accepted by the majority of his brethren”; and even though Mordechai could not be accepted by e-v-e-r-y-o-n-e — he nevertheless remained “seeking the good of his people and speaking peace to all his seed.”
With blessings, Reuel Chiya Shapsil Zigler
The main point here is what was defined in the article as “independent thinking.” That is the root of the whole matter. There should not be independent thinking in halakhic ruling! This is not a discussion of outlook but a ruling. That distortion is what causes all the distortions that follow. In ruling, one may not rely on personal outlook; that is not how halakha is studied, and certainly not how it is taught.
I too, poor soul that I am, have appreciated Rabbi Melamed for many years, and some of his articles are truly a school of halakhic ruling in my eyes (lest there be any doubt – my appreciation remains as always). And yet, there is something to the criticism, even if some of the critics did not quite put their finger on the right point.
As you wrote, the assessment of whether a posek is conservative or liberal is made from the outside. But once it has been made, it definitely has practical implications. There are people who listened to Rabbi Melamed on the assumption that he shared their same value-world. The assumption was that in each of his rulings, that value-world was a foundational premise. Their feeling is that recently a critical mass of rulings has accumulated that cannot be explained as matter-of-fact halakhic rulings based on that same value-world, but only on the basis of a significant change in it. Something like rejecting a hypothesis in statistics: the observations here are so extreme that one probably has to reject H0. And if such a change has indeed taken place, then it is certainly possible that the paths of student and rabbi have diverged.
Personally, I am not at all sure that there is such a critical mass of rulings. But time will tell.