Igros Moshe (OH IV 91.6) Whether to make a minyan in a room of a synagogue where they don’t keep Torah properly . There are important considerations. If it is a Conservative synagogue a minyan should not be made at all even in an isolated room, since they are a group that is known that they deny many Torah laws and are heretics and non believers and therefore are to be totally avoided. Because someone who denies even one thing in the Torah is as if he denies the entire Torah as is mentioned in the Rambam. And thus their status is that of minim (non believers). This is so even if they can be viewed as sinning by accident like children who have been captured and raised amongst non Jews because that is the way they were raised and educated and thus they don’t have the status of deserving punishment from Heaven nor the status of those to be lowered into a pit and not taken out but they are still heretics and they must be avoided. This that the Rambam says that it is proper to bring them back to repentance and to attract them with words of peace until they repent to proper Torah observance, this is not relevant in their own synagogue nor is everyone capable of doing this. In contrast Orthodox synagogues which have problems such as having an improper mrchitza or that uses a microphone on Shabbos are not viewed as heretics in Torah mitzvos but as one who does them improperly and they remain good Jews and don’t require distancing and thus a minyan can be made in a separate room as long as there is no concern that you will be viewed as going to pray with them especially if there is a separate entrance. As to whether their errors should be protested, it is only if you think they will listen to the protest and if not it is better that they remain as accidental sinners than deliberate ones.
In the post war era, Conservative was big in America, and orthodoxy was small, and also weak, because they were often not English speaking, and did not have the numbers to support them. Today Conservative is a shadow of what it used to be, it is closing down some of its shuls, and the young people probably know little about how they became conservative in the first place.
ReplyDeleteAlso kiruv has grown. It was probably non existent when Rav Moshe wrote this teshuva.
The whole question of making a minyan in a conservative place is less of an issue. Oh Rav Soloveitchik also sai it's assur to enter such a place, even to hear the shofar on Rosh hashanah
I once did a week at a Conservative summer camp. Davened by myself but on the last night the director came over to me and said that he had a yahrzeit for his father and could I help make a maariv minyan? And could I lead services? (Everyone "davened" shacharis and mincha but there was no official maariv except on Friday and Saturday nights)
ReplyDeleteSo I told him my conditions. Only men in the room. Only men who were bonafide Jews - no non-Orthodox converts, etc. And he agreed. He told me not to tell anyone he had because he'd get fired.
The camp didn't have a beis medrash, of course, just a library with a large central room so ten of us gathered there and we started Maariv. Then a woman walked by, saw we were davened and decided to join us.
Without having to tell anyone, a couple of guys walked over to her, asked her to sit in the corner and surrounded her with tables to function as a quick mechitzah.
The problem today is one of kavannah. In Rav Moshe's heyday the Conservatives were a theological problem. Most of their rabbis knew the truth but did the wrong things anyway. Today they and certainly their congregants sincerely have no clue that they're doing everything wrong.
A temporary place of prayer technically does not require a mechitza.
DeleteI take it this central "library" is not used for tfillah regularly.
I'm impressed the participants knew to make a separation of tables.
I was impressed but I have a feeling the camp director knows more than the average Conservative and figured out what his Orthodox doctor would want.
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