The only way to possibly effect change in another is through sincere caring for him as a person
The Autumn 2021 issue of Sapir, a newish journal on topics of Jewish interest, focuses on the question of how to ensure American Jewish continuity. My magazine shachein, Yonoson Rosenblum, appears therein with an essay arguing that to survive Jewishly intact, American Jews need to engage seriously with Jewish texts and the basics of Jewish practice. And that, he writes, requires having “a personal relationship with a fellow Jew who takes the Torah seriously and attempts to guide his or her life in accord with the Torah’s dictates….”
In an epilogue to the issue, editor Felicia Herman writes that the “Jewish people have survived because of our ability to adapt to new circumstances while retaining a connection, in some form, to the past. The trick is to balance ‘tradition and change,’ as Mordecai Waxman’s classic book about Conservative Judaism put it.”
Ms. Herman is certainly correct in noting our people’s talent for adapting to changed societal circumstances. But I would challenge her to adduce even one example in which Jewish survival was facilitated not by staunch dedication to Jewish practices as transmitted down through the ages, but instead by maintaining a mere “connection, in some form” to that tradition.
There’s a long history of Jewish schismatic sects trading in strict adherence to the mesorah of Torah shebe’al peh for some newfangled permutation of Judaism and eventually fading into Jewish historical irrelevance. Indeed, it’s quite ironic that Ms. Herman looks to buttress her thesis by resort to the title of a book by Mordecai Waxman, a leading ideologue of one such schism — the increasingly moribund Conservative movement.
Create a free account to keep reading.
