The Rise and Fall, the Fall and Rise

Would any intelligent country knowingly import a product that is known to be defective? How is it, then, that the secular Israeli establishment is welcoming Reform and Conservative ideology into Israel — which will inevitably dilute the sanctity of the Western Wall, reduce standards of Shabbos, kashrus, marriage, and divorce laws, and seriously loosen requirements for conversion to Judaism? (Interesting footnote to the clamor for “equal prayer rights” for women at the Wall: At the Shacharis service for the first day of Chanukah, the section allotted to “Women of the Wall” was empty.)

The very attempt to import such defective goods should be risible. Instead, Israeli leadership takes it seriously and even PM Bennett, dangling kippah and all, encourages Reform to come to Israel.

This phenomenon of intelligent Israelis actually encouraging a failed Reform transplant can only be due to several factors: a) the infusion of vast amounts of money from abroad; b) a visceral antipathy toward Orthodox Judaism, especially the chareidi incarnation; or c) a complete unawareness of the ideological bankruptcy of Diaspora Reform.

I write these lines not as a theoretical polemic. Rather, it is based on my personal experience as an Orthodox rabbi who served for 40 years in an American community dominated by the non- Orthodox, and for an additional 35 years as a retired rabbi of that community. In those 75 years, I have personally experienced the rise and tragic fall of these heterodox movements, and the fall and astonishing rise of the Orthodox.