Thank you, Joseph

MODERN ORTHODOX JUDAISM

You might think that my student loan debt for the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies would include learning about Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik or Rabbi Sampson Raphael Hirsch. Nope. We read medieval philosophers, Talmud, Bible, Jewish history. We heard from Conservative thinkers, but not a peep from those Reform or Orthodox. 

While Soloveitchik is viewed as pro-Zionist, he originally opposed the State, and his eventual support seems pragmatic, not at first theological, nor at last eschatological. Sampson Raphael Hirsch opposed Zionism entirely, believing that it violated the 'Three Oaths' and would only create divisions and conflict among Jews. Hirsch saw Torah observance as the unifying factor for Jews.

Soloveitchik was among the first rabbis to advocate for women studying Talmud. His contribution toward creating a philosophy of Jewish law is essential for the ongoing work of modernizing Judaism, including how to address so-called interfaith dialogue. He served as the Rosh Yeshiva for the seminary at Yeshiva University from 1941 to 1986.

Sixty-three blocks south of Yeshiva University, and when I arrived at JTS in 1985, David Weiss HaLivni was migrating from JTS to Columbia University because he did not want to teach women in his Talmud classes and opposed their ordination as rabbis. One day, he and I passed each other in the hall of Brush dorm where I lived. We exchanged a nod as our first and only encounter. 

JUDAISM IS LAW

מָה-אָהַבְתִּי תוֹרָתֶךָ כָּל-הַיּוֹם הִיא שִׂיחָתִי

When people do not have the right tools to modernize Judaism, they simply sprinkle Jewish symbols on whatever is nearby and call it Judaism. Meanwhile, the heart and soul of Judaism is law. When the Psalmist states, “Oh, how I love Your law”, he acknowledges that law connects us to God. This is what distinguishes Judaism from idolatry --  the most deadly being Christianity which has sponsored 2,000 years of antinomian genocide. 

Published in 1964, Soloveitchik's "Confrontation" states: 

“Man may despair, succumb to the overpowering pressure of the objective outside and end in mute resignation, failing to discharge his duty as an intellectual being, and thus dissolving an intelligent existence into an absurd nightmare. Of course, the Torah commanded man to choose the first alternative, to exercise his authority as an intelligent being whose task consists in engaging the objective order in a cognitive contest.” 

CENTRALITY OF ETHICS

This cognitive contest is measured in ethical terms -- or none at all. And the jury seems to still be out regarding how Reform Judaism will address a halakhic process for itself. In the 1980’s, the rabbinic concept of tikkun olam became a tenant for the Reform movement, dislodged from the larger implications of a halakhic process where the Torah has unsurpassed legal authority. 

Trading the governing details of halakhic process for broad conception of social justice has been a disservice to liberal Jewish women and girls, and in a different way to Jewish men. 

A conversation about actual tikkun would entail the older word and concept of t'shuvah, which begins with the individual — meaning each individual body. And the Jewish starting point for conversations about the body is the Holiness Code of Leviticus. For the Reform Movement, this presents a nearly insurmountable problem. 

WHY MYSTICISM FAILS AND MITNAGDIM HELP

Mysticism is popular today, elevating subjective and private experience over objective and collective understanding. The idea that everything-is-true and your private experience of the divine counts most contributes to a  crisis of loneliness and isolation that the U.S. Surgeon General described as epidemic in 2023. New-age mysticism (aka, spirituality) does not lead toward consensus or community experience — two social phenomena needed for collaboration, happiness, and safety.

Rabbis like the Vilna Gaon opposed Jewish mysticism, specifically the early Hasidism of Chabad Lubavitch which is founded on an 18th century text called Tanya by Schneur Zalman of Liadi. The Tanya promotes a concept of dual souls, where Jews have both an animal and divine soul, and non-Jews have only the animal soul.

There is no valid reading of Torah to support a two-soul theory. Genesis 2:7 indicates that to be human is to be a living soul, not a body possessing a soul, much less one body with two souls. Further, the Hebrew Bible teaches that all humans are made b'stelem Elohim — in the image of God.  Judaism’s task is to help the world, Jews and non-Jews, live up to this image, which we do through Covenant, not magic. 

Marsha Plafkin Hurwitz 

Shavuot 2025