Q&A: Attitude toward Gentiles and the Rabbinate
Attitude toward Gentiles and the Rabbinate
Question
I got to know the Rabbi over the past few months, and I’ve really enjoyed your lectures and articles.
I’m “knitted-kippah,” probably fairly conservative by nature, and naturally some of what you say surprised me and maybe even shocked me.
(Prayer, providence, and so on.)
I laughed a lot at your articles in Makor Rishon about how surprised you were by your students in Yeroḥam Yeshiva because of their attitude toward gentiles.
(Everything changed—the eggs, the olives—only human beings stayed the same… ha ha ha.)
But on the other hand, in your Faith Notebooks (Notebook 5) you write, as part of the support for our faith, about the antisemitism that exists to this very day. About the discriminatory and hypocritical attitude of the nations of the world toward the State of Israel, you write that this is something incomprehensible. So maybe after all your students are right, and the gentiles haven’t changed all that much.
Another thing: you come out very sharply against the Chief Rabbinate. I’m not getting into your claims against the institution right now (I admit that the harsh attack is a bit hard for me), but among other things you blame the secular public for the situation and in effect encourage them to create a different rabbinate, a more liberal one.
Do you think it is fair to fight the rabbinate through people who do not keep the commandments at all, who do not believe in the basics at all?
It seems to me that the discussion about the rabbinate and its path should take place among believers, and not bring about your position through those who are not such people.
At least in general I think that we, the open believers, the Zionists, should feel closer to believers who are different from us than to secular people. After all, ideologically we are closer to them at the root than to secular people.
Answer
H. Hello.
1. Gentiles have changed greatly in their moral behavior. Today I do not see a significant moral difference between gentiles and Jews. The gentiles’ attitude toward the Jewish people is a pathology with psychological and historical causes, and of course it is far from characterizing all gentiles.
2. The Chief Rabbinate is not a rabbinic body but a governmental body. No one is discussing its halakhic or religious authority, because it has none. No sane religious person sees it as religious leadership. It is a body established by the secular government in order to organize public religious life. Public officials. The fact that they wear frock coats says nothing about their essence. Therefore the debate about them should take place only in the general public and not among religious people. Your claim itself is an expression of the very pathology I argued against: those who see the rabbinate as a religious institution relevant to the religious public. It is a secular governmental institution that is relevant mainly to the secular public (religious people have their own rabbis, and they do not need those corrupt people). Therefore secular people have the right and the duty to express an opinion about it and shape its character exactly as religious people do. Just as with the Supreme Court, one cannot say that only jurists may say anything about its conduct, its powers, and who will serve on it.
And in your own words I would ask: is it fair to set up over the general public a rabbinic and religious body when that public does not recognize it or its beliefs, and for it to impose a way of life on them? On the contrary, discussion of such a body must take place among the entire public and not among religious people. Do you want religious people to decide for the general public who will rule over it and who will run its life, and according to what principles? That is absurd.
As for the question of whom one feels close to—that is a psychological question, and there is no “should” or “should not” here. Whoever you feel close to, you feel close to. In any case, I am not talking about closeness or lack of closeness. But if you ask me, I do in fact feel much closer to secular people than to the people of the Chief Rabbinate. The reason is simple. Secular people are mistaken, but they act consistently according to their path and their belief. By contrast, the rabbinate does not act according to its belief and its path. It is simply corrupt.
Discussion on Answer
Well, it seems to me that the discussion is pointless. I’ll respond briefly, and I suggest we end it here.
1. Your hope has been disappointed. In my view the Chief Rabbinate is indeed worse than gentiles. An ordinary gentile is a decent and upright person, and the ordinary Chief Rabbinate is corrupt people.
2. The fact that the politicians are elected by their gentiles does not say anything. They are not elected because of their anti-Israel attitude. Our corrupt people too are elected by the Jewish public. So by your logic the Jews too are corrupt like the gentiles.
3. Of course there are good people in the Chief Rabbinate. As a body it is corrupt to the core.
4. My claim against the rabbinate does not concern only changes in Jewish law. That is one additional claim. My claim is that they are corrupt and immoral.
5. The rabbinate is a governmental body, and as such it is supposed to be subject to criticism and policy determined by the entire public. The initiative and interest in establishing the Bar Association also came from lawyers. So should they therefore be given authority to determine our lives for us? What does the Sabbatical year have to do with Mount Sinai? On the contrary, because the initiative and interest came from the religious, that is exactly why they should not be given authority; and even if they are given it, that is only with the approval and oversight of the secular public.
All the best,
Well, I hope that in your eyes the Chief Rabbinate is not worse than gentiles…
Gentiles today are not very different from Jews.
The rabbinate — “those corrupt people.”
The gentile politicians are antisemitic, and according to you that is pathological, for historical and other reasons. These politicians were elected by gentiles, and have continued to be elected over the past decades. In my opinion, the pathological issue is precisely the difference. If the representatives of the nations at the UN behave the way they do, that is “thanks to” their senders, who, what can you do, are gentiles.
I agree that my father’s foreign worker is a righteous gentile, and there are many more like him. But that does not completely erase what our Sages said about gentiles.
As for the rabbinate, I have no doubt that one cannot accuse the entire body of being corrupt.
This body has also had great and talented rabbis by all accounts (I assume you would agree).
Generally speaking, changes in Jewish law, which is your main claim against the body, are an extremely complicated matter in a conservative society that sanctifies laws from thousands of years ago. Such change requires a body accepted by everyone. It does not seem likely that such a thing will exist in the near future.
Even in the secular public (and the religious public), changing a law of the Knesset is no trivial matter. It requires quite a bit of work and does not always succeed. And that is when there is a body accepted by everyone with the power to make changes. All the more so in our case.
The influence of secular people on the rabbinate is not like the influence of jurists on judges. It is more like the influence of prisoners on the selection of judges. The rabbinate is indeed a body of the secular state, but the initiative and interest in establishing it belong to the religious.
The body is supposed to manage religion in the state.
It affects secular people too, but it is not reasonable that they should determine the rabbis, since managing religion in the state does not interest them, and if you want the rabbis to change the existing Jewish law, secular influence on the rabbis certainly will not contribute to that.
With appreciation and great respect