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mitzvot in Conservative Judaism

I was recently given a photocopy of the article "Conservative Judaism in an Age of Democracy" by Rabbi Harold Kushner. (I think it came from Conservative Judaism magazine. I can't find an online copy.) This theologically-attuned Reform Jew found it a fascinating read.

Rabbi Kushner's thesis is that the halachic system isn't working for Conservative Judaism, and maybe it's time to stop trying. He argues that there is no enforcement, not by the community and not by a sense of obligation, in the eyes of most congregants, the way there is among Orthodox Jews. He writes:

And concerning the things they do observe, they feel that they are choosing to observe them. We damage our credibility, we blur our authenticity and we cede "home court advantage" to the Orthodox when we continue to claim to be a movement of halachah [...] Conservative Jews at their best are respectful of halachic rules but do not consider themselves bound by them a priori.

Rabbi Kushner wants Conservative Jews to be observant; he's not knocking that. He just thinks that they will only do it of their own free will -- out of a sense of personal autonomy. In his eyes, this is the only way an act can actually be meaningful.

I've long been saying something similar about Reform Judaism -- the serious kind, not the common case of secular Jews claiming to be Reform so they "don't have to do stuff". Reform Judaism's message of informed personal autonomy, guided by history and tradition, speaks strongly to me. While I initially thought I would end up as a Conservative Jew, once I started to learn more about the various movements, I think I realized that I had to be either Orthodox or Reform. Either I believe that torah is the precise word of God or I don't. If I do, I have to decide which of many traditions of halachic interpretation fits; Conservative is one of them but (from the outside) seems to take enough liberties to possibly pose challenges. (I hope I have not just alienated all of my Conservative friends.) And if I don't, then what is the role of anyone's authoritative halachic system in my life?

(What do I actually believe about torah? On one foot, I believe it is a human-written record of a real encounter with God.)

So (back to the article), if mitzvot aren't halachically-obligatory commandments, then what are they? He suggests that they are opportunities to connect with God. This, too, resonates quite a bit for me. Why do I keep any mitzvot at all? In each case, for at least one of two reasons: I have come to understand, through study, that this is what God wants of me (commandment), or it helps me to draw closer to God. The first is straightforward and I could provide examples, but the second is more interesting: Even knowing that the rabbis of the talmud invented the lighting of Shabbat candles, knowing that there's not a solid foundation for that in text, I find the ritual meaningful. Beginning and ending Shabbat with flames serves as a set of "bookends" for the day; it helps me switch into and out of Shabbat mode. I notice the lack when I'm away (say, at a convention or an SCA event) and don't make havadalah until late. It just feels wrong -- yes, I can say the abbreviated blessing, but it's not the same as lighting the candle. Absent any belief at all that these particular rituals are commandments, I would still do them.

Rabbi Kushner suggests viewing a mitzvah as "the opportunity to be in touch with God by transforming the ordinary into the sacred". This idea, too, is familiar. Most Reform Jews I know do not believe there's a strict commandment to say a blessing before eating or say grace afterwards, but the act of doing so elevates a base, animal act, eating. (Either that, or they just view it as polite to say please and thank-you.) I'm not completely sure how I feel about separate dishes for meat and dairy, but I have them -- because it's one more way in which I'm mindful of the fact that I'm not like the animals. I can choose what and when and on what to eat. I have a mind, a soul, and free will.

Rabbi Kushner raises the question: aren't there other ways to sanctify eating (or whatever)? Sure there are, he says, but there's something to be said for following the ones that our community is already connected with. You could say that you elevate eating by eating pork but not veal, but you would not have a community connection thereby. His argument seems to be that you may as well do it our way if you're going to do it at all, so we're all doing the same things together.

He gives a number of examples of "what would X look like in a post-halachic world?". I'll quote one example:

Fasting on Yom Kippur will not be a matter of afflicting ourselves so that God will see our sincerity and our hunger pangs and be moved to grant our prayers, a view the author of Isaiah 58 has been trying to talk us out of for generations. [...] Instead, fasting on Yom Kippur will be a way of proclaiming that we are true human beings. We can do what no other creature on God's earth can do. We can be hungry and choose not to eat. We can be sexually aroused and choose not to respond. We can be angry and choose not to lash out. And when we realize that we have chosen badly, we can choose to repent and change.

Rabbi Kushner ends with these provocative words:

[T]he halachic system was an instrument of great depth and sensitivity and caused wonderful things to happen for many generations of Jews, but it is withering in an age of democracy and personal choice. Our movement, our generation is called on to do what Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai and his colleagues did two thousand years ago, to reinvent Judaism in a way that will meet the needs of people today to fulfill their human destiny and make God a constant presence in their lives in an age when the currency of Jewish loyalty and faith will no longer be obedience but the pursuit of holiness.

The halachic system is certainly not withering within the Orthodox movements, but it is having a rough time in many parts of the Conservative movement. I'm not sure why Rabbi Kushner feels the need to reinvent anything, though; serious Reform Jews have been pursuing many of these ideas for some time. I would like to invite him to join us in that pursuit.

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This comment is inspired by some of the comments and how they dovetail with the main post, so bear with me.

I know several Conservative Jews (in addition to the commenters) who faced that same sense of the fork in the road and felt they had to choose orthodoxy. Since people ask me some version of the same thing all the time, it's sure something I think about a lot.

I would reiterate that I really think this is a false dichotomy that everyone is setting up. It serves the purpose of denominational polemicists to insist that you have to make this choice, and that leads ineluctably to one denomination or the other. But it seems to me that whether or not you feel obligated by divine will, personal choice, communal values, or cultural inheritance has almost NOTHING to do with whether or not you're a Conservative Jew or if Conservatism will survive. It's not what Conservatism is based on, in the final analysis.

Conservatism (and the other movements too) is not about personal choice at all but about the halachic process. Conservatives maintain that the divine character of tradition can be maintained even if you think it is the result of a human process, what I would call "historicism" -- that decisions about mitzvot are made through human agency and not as the direct outgrowth of divine imperatives.

To pose the issue starkly: what does it mean, and can we accept, the idea that Torah writ large is the product of human discourse? Orthodoxy can't accept this because it seems to destroy the underpinnings of the halachic system. Conservatives say that you can accept this but still keep the system because the system acknowledges its own constructedness (with certain limits, of course).

It's a damn hard thing to do -- to say one day that the Torah is God's revelation and to say the next that it is a piece of wisdom writing among others in the northwest Semitic ethnic literature. For most of us, though -- and by "us" I mean thoughtful Jews who have engaged in the modern world -- it's the only real position. We want to think that we say brachas because we connect with the divine even as we know that Noah and Gilgamesh have an awful lot in common with each other.

And here it is that I can't make the jump to orthodoxy, and I suspect Conservatives as a whole won't either: orthodoxy goes further than saying that we are obligated by God to perform mitzvot. In the name of defending the integrity of Torah and halacha, the rationale for the obligation is given a trans-historical, supernatural character. Orthodoxy requires not only orthopraxis but belief in the ahistorical character of Torah as a whole. The psalms were written by David; Ecclesiastes was Solomon. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob observed Shabbat before it was given at Sinai. Etc. Every surface comment of the text has divine significance, and every traditional bulwark for belief must be accepted as truth. That's what happens when you maintain the divine character of the whole system, which has more or less merely unfolded in accordance with God's original intent.

I don't mean to deny that orthodox Jews are incapable of reasoning about history or of seeing distinct historical phases in halachic development -- of course they do. It's just that there's a limit to how far you can extend such insights. You can see individual halachic actors at work, but not in the creation of Torah, which is above all that. To (over)generalize, orthodoxy believes that historicism is corrosive and has to be kept away from texts that touch on the divine character of the system.

I would submit that there will always be a need for something like Conservative Judaism, because the fruits of historical thinking applied to Jewish religious development are simply too powerful to be wished away even by those who still feel God is present in the mitzvot as a whole. For me, it's a big part of why I could never see myself following these folks into leaving Conservatism. Even if I could see myself being orthopractic someday and make the leap to believe in divine obligation, I could never see myself making the leap to deny historical ways of thinking. That would be to deny everything I feel in my gut about how the world works. And I honestly don't know how they made that leap themselves over that issue.

There's Orthodox and then there's orthodox. As I wrote above:

On the other hand, I'm eagerly awaiting the fracture of Orthodoxy into YU Orthodoxy and Agudas Israel Orthodoxy --- As a "left-winger" I am very unhappy that the "black hats" get to define what most people thing of as Orthodox Judaism.

I believe that the halachic system is God-given and binding. I also believe that the Torah text was written and edited by divinely-inspired humans, that the universe is billions of years old, etc. The various beliefs that you ascribe to orthodoxy are held by some, but are not necessarily part of the halachic package.

You write:

I would reiterate that I really think this is a false dichotomy that everyone is setting up.

I respectfully disagree. The question is: "Do I consider myself obligated by the demands of the halachic system, even when they are inconvenient and even when I dislike those demands?" (Please note: this question does not address the degree to which and means by which the halachic system itself may evolve over time.)

Either answer can lead to a fulfilling Jewish life. The answer that, in my opinion, is intellectually inconsistent is "I am obligated by those halachot with which I agree." When one starts choosing which halachot one considers binding, then no single halacha is binding, and one has actually answered "no" to the question of whether the halachic system imposes obligation.

And, in my experience, the Conservative Movement's answer to the question is "yes" but the Conservative laity's answer to the question is "no." And that's the problem facing the movement. For example, the USCJ CLS has not and never will write a responsum permitting people to eat pork or shellfish, yet many Jews affiliated with Conservative synagogues do so. If that's not a dichotomy, I don't know what is.

Well, that last point there is the divergence between principles and practice. Just speaking for myself, I can't be bothered by that. Every belief system has armloads of hypocrites and tolerates hypocrisy. I agree with you that the divergence is lamentably bad for Conservative Jews, but that doesn't force a choice onto me personally.

I say this because I would certainly put myself in the category who sees myself (as you put it) "obligated by the demands of the haalachic system, even when they are inconvenient". And I agree that when most Conservatives pick and choose halachot with which they agree, they are being inconsistent -- but, nu, it's human nature that people are inconsistent, I think.

So if what you're saying is that Conservative rabbis or people like me who agree with your statements are essentially orthodox, great! :-) But of course that's not true on either the orthodox side or the Conservative side.

When I've brought this issue up with orthodox folks, they tend to give the answer that you do -- it's not really necessary if you're orthodox to believe "that stuff in the margins of ArtScroll."

But I think the way you yourself put it, that the system is God-given, is the heart of why left wing orthodoxy is always going to be married to right wing orthodoxy: both kinds of orthodoxy are grounded the same perspective on Torah, which is different from the Conservative perspective. Orthodoxy cannot validate critical historicism, ie the documentary hypothesis for the Torah or by extension for the halachic system in general. It's not possible for the Torah to be divinely created and yet for all these random pieces of Mesopotamian and Canaanitic mythology to be in there. I'm not talking about evolution (we all learned from the Hertz chumash that it's compatible with orthodoxy) but about what it would really take to acknowledge that Torah, broadly speaking, is not mi-Sinai.

That's why orthodox shuls couldn't join the United Synagogue in the 1910s (to Schechter's regret) -- it supported JTS, which trains rabbis in historicism.

Far be it for me to decide what is necessary to be part of another value system, and I know there's a lot of interesting stuff going on in the YCT wing of orthodoxy. Some folks, like the Greenbergs, are able to judge Conservatives on the basis of actions and not on beliefs. I see that.

But I think the reason those are minority positions within orthodoxy is that they are bucking the underlying intellectual thrust that divides the movements. It's a divide of belief here that goes beyond obligation and beyond what the other people in shul are doing. I don't think orthodoxy makes sense unless you see Torah as essentially standing outside of human history. And I don't think that most orthopractic Conservative Jews are going to get to that belief, even if the movement splits.

You claim that the fact that the institutions of Conservative Jewry won't permit eating pork & shellfish, but that Consevative Jews do so is a difference of principles and practice? If so, that should mean that were the pork-eaters asked, they would acknowledge that they shouldn't be eating pork, and perhaps feel some guilt. Is that what you believe would happen were the question asked?

Yes. In my experience most nonobservant but occasionally shulgoing Conservative Jews know that they're not living up to what the movement would have them do, and to some extent they feel guilty about it, though not necessarily enough to want to change their behavior.

Orthodoxy cannot validate critical historicism, ie the documentary hypothesis for the Torah or by extension for the halachic system in general.

You'll have to be gentle when you break the news to my rabbi and shul. Especially the professors of higher biblical criticism. :-)

It's not possible for the Torah to be divinely created and yet for all these random pieces of Mesopotamian and Canaanitic mythology to be in there.

Why not? If I can believe that God used evolution to create humanity, why can't I believe that God used the development of Mesopotamian and Canaanitic mythology to get us to end up with the Torah as we have it today?

Torah, broadly speaking, is not mi-Sinai.

If by "mi-Sinai" you mean literally theophanic, then you're probably right. But of course even in the gemara when they say "halacha l'Moshe mi-Sinai" that is a legal expression with the same import as "since time immemorial" in British common law.

I'll also point out that among the breadth of positions laid out in Emet Ve-emunah are several that you are identifying as orthodox and as incompatible with Conservative beliefs. I know the Conservative movement has evolved in the last twenty years but I don't think it's narrowed its umbrella that much.

OK, well, if you have a rabbi who teaches biblical criticism and the documentary hypothesis from the pulpit and you're in an orthodox shul, I admit, that's a new one for me. Granted that much of my knowledge is from reading and the like, but so much of orthodox writing that I've seen is apologist against bib crit. Would teaching it at YU not get you put under cherem? Look at the blasting directed at a mild historicist like Eliezer Berkovits. I admire his stuff quite a bit, but I really think his is an outlier position even in modern orthodoxy.

If I can believe that God used evolution to create humanity, why can't I believe that God used the development of Mesopotamian and Canaanitic mythology to get us to end up with the Torah as we have it today?

The Torah has long been legitimately be read allegorically in Judaism, so I think Hertz was right when he said that evolution posed no problem. The Semitic religion thing... huh. I dunno how you square that circle. Perhaps you want to say that the myths are there to mislead us the same way some biblical fundamentalists say the fossils are in the rocks to test our faith. But if you're a historicist you have to say something along the lines that those stories are probably there because the Hebrews got them from their neighbors, told them around the campfire for a long time, they got to be seen as sacred after awhile, and then someone put them in the Torah. I don't see how that's compatible with the idea that God gave Torah to Moses in more or less the form we have it now in a single revelation, which is the classic traditional formulation.

Again, I'll admit to not knowing all the ins and outs of modern orthodoxy, but there's no doubt at all that the rupture between what was then modern orthodoxy and traditional Conservatism came down to the fact that Schechter's JTS taught what was seen as heretical by the American rabbis of the early 20th century. The reasons aren't hard to fathom. When you let historicism in you also let in questions not just about why these stories are there, but whether the mitzvot themselves are the product of a certain time in history and thus are maybe no longer relevant to us. That leads down the path to classical Reform.

I wouldn't say that an ahistoricist perspective on revelation is incompatible with Conservative beliefs -- the idea with that chart was to include everyone to the right of Reform. (Conservatism has done less to theoretically differentiate itself from orthodoxy than to say that the Conservative approach is just making explicit what halachists have always done.) However, I understand that they don't let you into JTS unless you accept biblical criticism.

When one starts choosing which halachot one considers binding, then no single halacha is binding, and one has actually answered "no" to the question of whether the halachic system imposes obligation.

Where is the line between "X is not binding" and "I disagree with the interpretation of X and choose not to follow it"? For many mitzvot, and staying within the orthodox movements (plural intentional), you can find a range of opinions that includes "not applicable". Consider, as one example, dress. Modern Orthodox women are not, in their theology, sinning by wearing pants; they don't see a commandment forbidding it. A woman of chareidi theology who wore pants would understand herself to be sinning. Both follow the same system but got different answers. Do you believe one of them is following "those halachot with which I agree" while the other is not? How does that differ from the Conservative system, or from a Reform Jew who says "I disagree about X"?

I am not trying to be combattive here; these are honest questions from someone who's still trying to figure this all out. (Really, the study and the struggle are lifetime endeavors.)

When one starts choosing which halachot one considers binding, then no single halacha is binding,

I misspoke when I wrote this, and I apologize. What I should have written was:

When one starts choosing which halachot one considers binding, then one has answered "no" to the question of whether one accepts the halachic system (in toto) as binding.

As you point out, one can certainly accept individual halachot as obligations without accepting the entire system, although I am not sure whether that differs from one taking on an obligation that is not rooted in the halachic system. For example, I consider it my civic duty to research the candidates and vote in every election.

I think the core of the halachic system is "aseh l'cha rav" --- one must establish a relationship with a rabbi who has been trained as a halachic decisor and who can serve as ones posek. There are many rabbis, each of whom has a unique perspective on the halacha, and all of whom balance their understanding of the historical development of the halachic texts, the current social milieu, and the needs of the individual asking the sheila. The system is designed to give different answers to different people at different times.

So, as in the case you discuss, one rabbi will rule one way and another will rule differently, and one follows one's rabbi's ruling while (in an ideal world, at least) acknowledging that a different rabbi's ruling, provided it was done following the halachic system, is valid for that rabbi's community.

When the Conservative "system" works, it's not that different from the Orthodox "system." The Committee on Law and Standards gets to define what are the bounds of normative halacha for the United Synagogue, and the social milieu and understanding of the historical evolution of the halachic texts is sometimes broader than what would be relied upon by an Orthodox rabbi, but the principle is the same: the shul rabbi is the mara d'atra and issues rulings for his or her community and those rulings obligate the members of the community.

The problem that Rabbi Kushner is addressing is that this system seems to break down more often than not.

Moving on now to a different sub-topic, that of "conscientious objection" as it were....

Where is the line between "X is not binding" and "I disagree with the interpretation of X and choose not to follow it"?

There's a whole spectrum of answers to "Why don't I follow halacha X." At one end, there's "I know I'm obligated to, but I don't have the strength of self-will to do it." At the other, there's "I don't believe halacha can tell me what to do."

But "I know the halacha says that, and I normally follow the halacha, but in this case I think the halacha is wrong" is not on that spectrum. It's along a different axis. I think it's the hardest part of having chosen to accept the halachic system: there are halachot with which I disagree, and I have to decide which of the things I believe in I have to compromise.

But you even see that in the Talmud sometimes. There will be two conflicting halachic principles, and one of them will have to be compromised. So when I face this sort of struggle, I try to understand it in that way, that it's not a conflict between halacha and my personal, internal moral compass, but that my moral compass itself has been shaped by and is grounded in my learning Torah, and that the conflict I face is one within the halachic system.

There's a whole spectrum of answers to "Why don't I follow halacha X." At one end, there's "I know I'm obligated to, but I don't have the strength of self-will to do it." At the other, there's "I don't believe halacha can tell me what to do."

I don't now remember where I learned this, but I have come to understand that there are three, not two, basic answers to the question "do you keep halacha X?". They are "yes", "no", and "not yet". For me, "not yet" is very powerful; it keeps open the possibility, acknowledging my current lack of either knowledge or will without shutting any doors. When my answer is "no", it is for sound reasons after study and consideration. Most of my answers are either "yes" or "not yet".

I'm not sure what caused me to write that here, but I'll leave it there anyway.

But "I know the halacha says that, and I normally follow the halacha, but in this case I think the halacha is wrong" is not on that spectrum.

So when a rabbi (in Orthodox Judaism you would always consult your rabbi, yes?) says "in this situation this person should have a lenient interpretation", he is not saying "the halacha is wrong" but rather "the halacha is flexible enough to permit me this interpretation for this sholeh". That makes sense. (And, in retrospect, I knew that.) Being within the system is key; that said, the system does not produce single answers most of the time.

I first encountered the "not yet" in Nine Questions People Ask About Judasim by Prager and Telushkin.

Being within the system is key; that said, the system does not produce single answers most of the time.

Yup.

But it seems to me that whether or not you feel obligated by divine will, personal choice, communal values, or cultural inheritance has almost NOTHING to do with whether or not you're a Conservative Jew or if Conservatism will survive. It's not what Conservatism is based on, in the final analysis.

It might not be what Conservatism is about (and might not be what causes it to succeed or fail), but isn't it a key tenet of Conservative Judaism (on paper, at least) that there is a halachic system, given by God, that is binding on all Jews? The Orthodox movements say the same thing but the movements disagree on specifics. (So do the various Orthodox movements, by the way.) Conservative Judaism adds mechanisms that allow more lenient modern interpretation, but I thought it was all supposed to be working within a framework.

Reform Judaism rejects the framework binding on all Jews, but accepts that mitzvot can be binding. (How do we know? Big question, and I don't think I'll have time to speak to it before Shabbat.) Personal choice, divine will, communal values, and cultural inheritance are all seen as justifications for doing mitzvot; within the other movements, while doing is better than not doing, you're not being a good Jew if you don't specifically go down the "divine will" path (one of the Rambam's 13 principles).

Now as a Reform Jew who does understand some mitzvot to be binding on me (not just good ideas), I'm in a weird place in my movement. (I wrote about this in another reply.)

I would submit that there will always be a need for something like Conservative Judaism, because the fruits of historical thinking applied to Jewish religious development are simply too powerful to be wished away even by those who still feel God is present in the mitzvot as a whole.

Thank you for helping me to understand this.

isn't it a key tenet of Conservative Judaism (on paper, at least) that there is a halachic system, given by God, that is binding on all Jews?

Yes, that's absolutely true, but what I'm saying is that exactly how you feel you're obligated doesn't have a lot to do with why you pick a given denomination. I think it has more to do with what you believe about the nature of Torah than about how you're obligated to mitzvot. And those are obviously related things, yes. But it's critical historicism and not the rationale behind the mitzvot that I think are at the heart of what CJ is all about.

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