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halacha: theory and practice
The fundamental difference between the liberal and traditional movements within Judaism is whether halacha is considered binding. There are, of course, subdivisions; the Conservative movement holds that some halacha is different from what the Orthdoox hold. But they both assert that they are halachic movements following a process.
I think one's attitude toward halacha and observance is bound up in what you believe happened at Sinai. If you think that God wrote these specific words, and specified all of the oral law that goes with them, then of course you're going to be very careful in your practice. After all, you believe that God specified all the details, and you don't want to violate God's will.
If you believe that humans wrote the Torah (either wrote it down at Sinai, or wrote it down after the fact), on the other hand, you're assuming imperfect transmission and you're going to be willing to question implementation details. And some people who question might draw non-traditional conclusions, including that this isn't really binding at all.
The body of halacha is huge. Vast. Way beyond the ability of one person to completely internalize. And so, in the halachic movements, the individual does not have the authority to interpret. If you don't know what to do in a situation you ask your rabbi. If he doesn't know he asks his, and so on up the chain until you get an answer. (Or, in the case of the Conservative movement, sometimes two or more responsa supporting different answers, one of which your rabbi will choose.)
In the Reform movement, on the other hand, the individual is invested with the authority and responsibility to make decisions. He's not forbidden from using traditional sources or methods, of course; a Reform Jew could certainly adopt the practice of taking all questions to his rabbi and following the rulings he gets, just like his traditional friends. But he doesn't have to. God gave us brains for a reason, and we're expected to use them. And since (in this view) the Torah isn't the precise word of God, there's more room for questioning and interpretation anyway.
That's the theory. And it all sounds much more tidy than it actually is. In practice, some traditional Jews interpret and some liberal Jews do not follow through on that responsibility.
No traditional Jew takes every question to his rabbi. Congregational rabbis just don't have the time, and I'd bet most Jews don't have the patience. Traditional Jews also interpret halacha. But this isn't "within the rules" of their system, so I wonder how this is justified theologically. (It's easy to justify it practically.)
Traditional Judaism isn't monolithic, either. Practice varies from community to community, rabbi to rabbi, and, as I just described, individual to individual. The common baseline is pretty-well specified; if you drive to your Orthodox shul or are seen eating at McDonald's you'll definitely draw negative attention. But there's a lot more variation in practice than it sometimes seems from the outside.
There's also a custom of bending rules. Traditional Judaism says halacha is binding, but if you can find a loophole, you might be able to do something that would seem to be forbidden. Even, it appears, if that loophole enables you to do something that pretty clearly violates the intent of the halacha.
Talking about loopholes is challenging, though. One person's loophole is another person's legitimate interpretation. I think turning your lights and heat on before Shabbat begins, rather than sitting in the dark and cold, is part of the intent; the Ka'arites called it a loophole. (Actually, they rejected the talmud entirely, but that's the best example I can come up with at the moment.)
But there are practices that seem a little more clearly leaning in the "loophole" direction. On a mailing list a couple days ago, someone talked about the practice of attending (ticketed) football games on Shabbat by sewing your ticket to your coat before Shabbat, walking in, and letting the ticket-taker tear it off. (Of course you walk there and you don't buy any food.) This, to me, is twisting the rules to achieve a result that was pretty likely forbidden in the first place.
Another example: Someone on this same mailing list described how he carries a house key on Shabbat. (He doesn't live in an eiruv.) The problem is that you can't carry things, but you can wear your clothes. So if you can make the key part of your clothing, you're ok. He was arguing, however, that just putting it on a string around your neck doesn't cut it; the key has to be either functional (in an integral way) or beautiful. You could make a beaded necklace with the key as one of the fobs hanging off of it, I guess. What he did was to modify his belt to make the key part of the buckle. He needs the key or his pants fall down. But to me, this is rules-lawyering well beyond where it should have gone. When I am in that situation, I carry the key and make no apologies. I don't pretend to be doing something else.
One more: I was once at a gathering on Shabbat and an auction was to take place. On my way out of the room, I ran into someone who asked why I wasn't staying. When I said Shabbat precluded the auction, I was told not to worry; arrangements had been made so we could bid now and pay after sundown. If the halacha is about making a financial transaction then that's legit (and I very much respect the person who told me this, so that's probably the case), but the whole point of the halacha seems to be about not doing business, and I can't reconcile bidding with "not doing business".
While I can be just as intellectually stimulated as the next guy by the fine distinctions of rules-lawyering, I don't accept these application when determining my observance patterns. Maybe that's connected with how I view revelation; I think God gave us (many) specific directives and commands, but I think we weren't supposed to lose track of the meta-issues. Those meta-issues include skipping the Steelers game, wearing actual clothing but not fake clothing, and not shopping.
I do sometimes attend activities on Shabbat (pre-paid or free) that might be questionable on Shabbat. I carry with or without an eiruv. I even ride in cars and (very rarely) drive, if it's important enough. I do not, however, do any of this with the illusion that my activities are in keeping with the traditional understanding of halacha.
I know that the Torah does not require us to be unnecessarily strict, and that adding to the law is as much an aveira (sin) as subtracting from it is. We're allowed to interpret; we can put our lights on timers rather than sit in the dark, and so on. But when have we crossed the line from reasonable accommodation into rules-lawyering to get the outcome we want? How can we tell? Within halachic movements I would expect this to be an important question, yet I don't think I've ever heard a serious discussion of it.
Personally, I am fairly observant, including some halacha that I'm not really convinced on (but community is important too). In many areas my default approach will be to do, rather than to not do; I don't have to personally research every subject. But even if my practice were 100% in compliance with that of the canonical traditional Jew (should such a person exist), I wouldn't be a traditional Jew and I wouldn't represent myself as one. That's because I followed a very different process to get there. And that process is founded in beliefs about revelation.
Re: a traditionalist response, part 2
The idea that halacha (as it comes to us today) isn't necessarily what God dictated but may as well be is intriguing. I have at times said similar things about the revelation at Sinai -- that even if it didn't happen, it is so bound up in who we are that we should proceed as if it did. I've said this in reference to the written Torah, though, not the oral. While it's circular reasoning, we have "documentation" (that is, the Torah itself) for the Torah being given there. We don't have primary documentataion for the oral law accompanying it; we only have hints. Is there a stronger case for it than the assertion at the beginning of Pirke Avot -- that God transmitted it to Moshe, who transmitted it to Yehoshua, who transmitted it to the prophets, who transmitted it to the men of the Great Assembly?
As for when how much of Torah was revealed, I'm actually fuzzier on that then you give me credit for. :-) Basically, I believe that God did have a conversation (if we can use such a mundane word) with Moshe, who wrote it down during and after. I give more weight to things that are repeated; for example, it seems really, really obvious that God cares about making Shabbat different from the other days. I am not concerned about implications of minor spelling or word-choice issues, gemmatria, etc. And I hand-wave mightily around the who D'varim (Deuteronomy, in case anyone else is still reading this) question, because I really don't believe that Moshe wrote an account of his own death.
But I absolutely believe that something happened at Sinai between God and b'nei Yisrael. If I didn't, halacha would just be interesting quirky traditions of an adopted people (not even my own family), and what does that mean? (I think a lot of Reform Jews don't believe in the Sinai encounter, and this is part of why so many of them do only the fun family-oriented rituals and not the rest of halacha.)
As for the "whole point of the halacha", I elided an important distinction. While I will hear all opinions, I give the Torah more weight than I give oral law. So, for example, I don't know, or need to know, what God has against eating pigs; it's clearly stated as a problem in Torah, and I'm convinced it's important. On the other hand (to continue with a food example), the Torah doesn't say anything about separate dishes and waiting periods, so when examining the halacha on this I sometimes ask myself "is this really in keeping with what appears to be the intent?". That is, derivative opinions have to show their work.
(That said, I do actually keep separate dishes, including for Pesach, and observe waiting periods. Part of it is that I'd like to be able to cook for certain friends, and part of it is that I have found new meaning with which to invest these practices. I find that it is very powerful to have to think about the source of my food and well-being every time I shop, prepare, and serve a meal. So while, halachically, I could solve the dishes dilemma by maintaining a supply of disposable tins, plates, etc, and thus never thinking about meat vs. dairy when setting the table, that would actually diminish things for me. Um, I think I'm not explaining this very well.)
[to be continued]
Re: a traditionalist response, part 2
It's interesting: notice that that passage doesn't say "Oral Torah" or even "the Torah," it just says "Torah was received by Moses etc..." In other words, if this is a chain of revelation, it's not very clear. Neusner has a good point about this: the amazing thing about the Mishna is that it's very radical -- Pirke Avot aside (and that's not even technically part of the Mishna), it makes no attempt to justify its rulings.
As a historian, I personally am also quite "fuzzy" about revelation and I am committed to a historicist view of these things, which is to say that, yes, something happened at Sinai, and then after that we have the residue of a thousand years of evolving institutions in both the Written and Oral Law.
But, my point is that I think that Judaism as a post-70 CE phenomenon is incomprehensible without the Mishna, and the Mishna, as I said, is very radical and audacious. It basically says, accept this, or don't -- it doesn't even really say why to accept it. That erases all that stuff that's in the written Torah that is fodder for critical historicism (like the fact that there are 2 accounts of Noah's ark). It's presenting rabbinic Judaism as a single thing to subscribe to or not; if you don't subscribe to it, you're left with just the letter of the written Torah itself -- Sadduceeism. In this respect, what's in a text like the Torah (or the Mishna) is less important than the idea that there is such a thing as Oral Law that has an authority from God.
I think that in that way it leads me (as a traditionalist) to an opposite conclusion from what you discuss about original intent and things that are in keeping with whatever the original intent was. As a historian, I feel pretty confident that the "original intent" of the prohibition on pig was some kind of tribal custom based on an ancestral taboo. But if I really believed that that was what Judaism meant, it would be meaningless to me. So that's why on some level I think Oral Law is important. It's a way to mediate the practices of a bunch of desert tribesmen with the realities of today. It gives us license to think about the meaning behind these things -- even as it then puts up limits to how far those meanings can go.
I wonder if I haven't reasoned myself into a circle, a bit, but I wanted to explain why Oral Law strikes me as more liberating than constricting, in the grand scheme of things... perhaps I'll write more when I'm in a more coherent state of mind.