Q&A: An article about assimilation in which you star
An article about assimilation in which you star
Question
Hello Rabbi Michi,
So in the latest issue of Akdamot, in which you also wrote an article, an article was published about the problem that the impossibility of assimilation causes for the spirit of Judaism in Israel. If you read it, I’d be glad to hear what you think.
By the way, your response to Leibowitz is simply excellent, although lately I’ve been developing a non-realist way of thinking about Jewish law (and religion in general), and therefore in general the whole story of rational justifications within religion is problematic. (I’d be happy to expand on that sometime.) And the considerations for adopting one halakhic ruling or another, or one religious belief or another, are much more extra-religious (moral, aesthetic, etc.).
Have a good holiday,
Answer
I read it. As far as I remember, I also wrote this thesis in several articles in the past. I wrote that the state is a fig leaf for Jewish identity, and that is where its harm lies, because it gives everyone an exemption. Maybe in my article on “Suddenly a Man Gets Up in the Morning” in Akdamot? I no longer remember. I completely agree. More than that, I argue that if we propose separation of religion and state and the clear-eyed secular people oppose it—and I think that is indeed what will happen, like that Yaron of Feiglin’s—then at least the truth will come out: that non-separation matters to the secular, not to the religious, despite how it appears today. Today we are fighting on their behalf and getting hit by catapults from them over religious coercion. Let them fight. My claim here is that even if the separation is not implemented, the very proposal to separate has advantages of its own.