Q&A: Isn't the Rabbi concerned that his approach will lead to Reform and to serious disrespect for the divinity of the Torah among those who take his words one step further?
Isn't the Rabbi concerned that his approach will lead to Reform and to serious disrespect for the divinity of the Torah among those who take his words one step further?
Question
I know that the Rabbi does not attach importance to slippery-slope considerations, but I think one still needs to be somewhat aware of what this can cause. I gave some thought to the Rabbi's innovative ideas and to how closely they correspond to the early views among the Enlightenment thinkers that eventually led to Reform—they are strikingly similar. Doubts are raised in exactly the same places: prayer, the eruv in the synagogue, a positive-historical view of the Sages, and the like; a significant reduction in what was given at Sinai; no authority for the ancient sages to determine anything; and so on. It is clear to me that these ideas are found among the sages of Israel, but Rabbi Aaron Chorin also permitted a Jew to play an organ in a synagogue on the Sabbath on the basis of Tosafot regarding musical instruments. Judaism is not just formalism; first and foremost it is a covenant between the people and God, and if we undermine trust in that covenant, we cut away the very thing on which the "dry Jewish law" rests. One has to attach importance to what these ideas do. I would appreciate it if the Rabbi would not ignore the response. All the best.
Answer
I do not talk about phenomena but about people. I am not changing a generation, but at most serving as a partial cause of change in particular individuals. Particular individuals are influenced by what I say in all sorts of ways. For some, it may push them outward; for others, it strengthens them greatly—and it is דווקא the conventional positions that push many such people outward. Therefore, nothing definitive can be established here.
And from this follows my approach: I do not take such considerations into account. I say what seems correct to me, and whatever will be, will be. Some people boycott what I write, and perhaps that is good, because for them it is neither needed nor suitable. But there are others who do need it and are helped by it, and for them I write. For me, a slippery-slope consideration is something that can be invoked only in extreme situations: when the danger is clear, immediate, significant, and broad, and when there is no countervailing consideration—meaning that not publishing would not itself lead to an opposite slippery slope. Moreover, publication itself is beneficial insofar as it brings us closer to the truth, and if I do not publish, then by definition a slippery slope will be created in the direction of falsehood.