Sunday, May 9, 2021

On modern Orthodoxy

 https://www.jpost.com/judaism/on-modern-orthodoxy-631076

 AFTER MORE than 15 years of teaching in the Modern Orthodox yeshivot and seminaries in Israel, I have found that the students themselves are confused about Modern Orthodoxy and perceive it as some sort of “diet orthodoxy,” same great beliefs, but fewer observances. To quote Kaplan yet again, who is in turn citing Heilman, the Modern Orthodox Jew sees himself as a criminal. He is “in theory committed to meeting the demands of both modernity and Orthodoxy; however, insofar as he perceives these demands as being inherently contradictory, his commitment to the demands of modernity results in his selectively violating or, at the very least, not wholly living up to the full range of the demands that Orthodoxy makes upon him. To be involved in the modern world, ipso facto means to live a life that involves the constant compromising of the rigorous norms of Orthodoxy, norms whose legitimacy the Modern Orthodox Jew fully recognizes; in a word, it means to live a criminal existence.” Often my students will report having spent Shabbat with their “really religious cousins.” When I ask them what they mean by that, they usually explain that they are haredi (ultra-Orthodox). As if there is this understanding that haredi Jews are the ones who are “really religious” while what we do as Modern Orthodox Jews falls short of the real thing.

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