Q&A: Change and Reform from a Tactical Angle
Change and Reform from a Tactical Angle
Question
Hello Rabbi, I started reading No Man Rules the Spirit, and for now I just can’t stop. I only wanted to ask whether it might have been better to avoid the thing that caused people like Yeshayahu Leibowitz to be spat out immediately, since they created the impression that in order to live more correctly according to their approach, you have to leave your religion, or at least the ideological stream you belong to, and join a different and entirely new stream whose number of known members currently stands at 1 (the thinker himself).
It should be noted that my question is not about the substance, although I feel that such a question may come up after I finish the book and can say that I am able to grasp the outlines of your thought, and I would then also be interested in your response to that: is there not something problematic about presenting an independent religious position, and can "a faith of his own" (as was claimed about Prof. Leibowitz) provide an answer for a religion whose existence until today has been through tradition? (I ended up with a dreadful formulation because I couldn’t manage to define that last question, but I hope you’ll identify the issue I’m referring to in the question.)
Answer
I’m not sure I identified it. If it’s what I think, then that’s what I think. Are you asking whether it is worthwhile to think what I think? That sounds like a somewhat problematic formulation. Or perhaps you mean to ask whether it is worthwhile to write what I think? In my opinion, yes; otherwise I wouldn’t do it. Many people find value and benefit in it, so apparently this is not a group of one person. And whoever doesn’t want to can simply not read it. Health and happiness.
Discussion on Answer
All in all, usually there’s no need to make noise and no need to wrap it up. Just write/say what you think. The rest is a question for publicists.
If you reach some conclusion, act accordingly. I don’t know what "Judaism has failed" means. That’s a general question and not well defined, and I don’t see any point in dealing with it.
What I meant to ask was whether one should declare a "reform" loudly and dramatically, or try to wrap it in quotations from the old world. On the substantive issue, what I meant to ask was: if I reach the conclusion that only I and a few friends understand the Torah properly, would that still have value as the Torah of Moses and the Jewish people, or would I have to acknowledge that Judaism has failed?