The recent thought-provoking articles and commentary by the distinguished practicing and leading rabbis of the Boca Raton Synagogue (“I Am Not a Modern Orthodox Rabbi,” by Rabbi Efrem Goldberg, April 29, 2021) and the Queens Jewish Center (“Why I Am a Modern Orthodox Rabbi,” by Rabbi Judah Kerbel, May 6, 2021) have very innocently raised more deeper and thought-provoking issues than the apparent one, of which rabbi wants to or does not wish to label himself as a “Modern Orthodox” rabbi.
I make my comments as a non-practicing but ordained rabbi who, while an undergraduate in university was a student of ancient world history, which included the formation of religions. I then advanced my studies; first, for an M.B.A. and then a J.D. degree in law. I became a judge at one point of my career after being trained by the U.S. government and the treasury as to what its perception of religious institutions was and its treatment of religion should be. After retirement, I assumed the leadership in what is now an almost 100-year-old law office, which represents Jewish institutions and rabbinical dynasties with the U.S. government and the various state agencies that supervise and govern them. These religious organizations and the dynasties that spawned them go back hundreds of years to the time when these dynasties were formed in Europe and elsewhere in the world.
The articles in The Jewish Link precipitated this writing, but it is based on more than my personal education and personal life experiences. I am a product, also, of what I knew (from overhearing conversations and what I discovered on my own from reliable sources) that my parents had experienced and lived, even though they rarely spoke to me of their life before arriving in America as war refugees in the early 1950s.
I am a child of Holocaust survivors. My mother and father lived, until the Nazis attacked and overran their towns, in those long-gone, destroyed European shtetls in Galicia, Poland of Lizensk and Dukla, respectively.
My mother’s father, a Weisblum, while not a “rebbe,” was the son of the son, a direct descendent of the historical Reb Elimelech of Lizensk, who is accepted by all of the rabbinical dynasties as their starting point.
My mother had conveyed to me the sense of values that permeated the early 1900s shtetl, their attitude to religion and the early stirrings of the desire to “modernize” our Jewish religion. So much so that, with the proliferation these days of schools for girls, acceptance of girls in to the most advanced schooling including seminaries teaching the girls Talmud, as well as offering degrees in yoetzet halacha and in the rabbinate, it is hard to believe that no Jewish schools for girls existed as late as the early 1900s. My grandfather, despite his strict and severe rabbinical heritage, moved heaven and earth to establish a school for girls in Lizensk, with my mother being one of the many girls who were in the first graduating class of that school.
My father’s father died of natural causes while my father was a teenager. He had to face the world on his own, make his own decisions regarding Judaism, with many of the youth in his town being unhappy with the restrictions of the Orthodox religion in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. Yes, many left Orthodoxy and were enamored with the freer lifestyle of the lesser religious, non religious and the new ideas that were surfacing in Germany, just across their border and in other countries, cities and towns, leading to the rise of the Conservative, Reform and other new “modern” versions of Judaism.
It got worse, with the onset of World War II. Even the ones who had remained strictly religious until World War II now had to accept a God that did not protect them from the Holocaust and its horrors. My parents survived the war by escaping to Russia, whereupon they were sent to the Gulag of Siberia. They were in different places in the Gulag, hundreds of miles apart, by themselves with no family, friends or even more than a handful of other Jews. There were no minyanim, shuls or ability to pray together because there were not even 10 Jews together in one place.
My father was imprisoned, along with the scum of Russian gentile society, murderers and worse.
After the war, my father and mother each had to face the fact that they were the only survivors of their respective families, with all of their parents and siblings having been killed.
The Russians did not want anyone to leave the Gulag after the war, as they needed people to settle there and work the mines and timber. My parents, still not knowing of each other, independently escaped the Gulag and ended up in the post-war DP camps, still separated by hundreds of miles.
Many of the survivors who had not practiced their Judaism during the war saw no need to ever return to Judaism. They refused to believe in a God Who could allow the Holocaust, kill their parents and siblings and allow them to live through the hell of war for six years.
My parents were matched up, as many others were, by friends and word of mouth in the various DP camps. Marriages were arranged and conducted in the Orthodox Jewish tradition following the onerous rules and regulations that permeated post-war Germany.
My parents eventually settled in Stockholm, Sweden, where I and my siblings were born. My parents had decided to not reject the Jewish religion, despite the problems in Sweden of arranging to not work on Shabbos, finding kosher food and finding a mohel for their two sons.
They accomplished all that despite the enticement to modernize and to give up some of the hard-to-arrange aspects of Jewish life. They continued the heavenly life in the paradise that they had finally found themselves in after so many years of living in hell. They were keeping kosher and going to shul.
The proverbial “straw that broke the camel’s back” was me. I was a typical Swedish gentile, attended Swedish public school, had my hair cut by the same barber who cut the hair of the king’s family, went to a summer resort during the summer and spoke only Swedish. I could not read a siddur and knew no Hebrew, Yiddish or anything of my heritage. I knew nothing of Judaism and there were no Jewish schools for my siblings or myself.
My parents made the fateful decision to give up the Swedish paradise, leaving behind the major business enterprise my father operated and the beautiful lifestyle all because they wanted their children to live a traditional Orthodox Jewish life.
They accomplished that by placing me in a chasidic school even though they were not chasidim. They believed that only a chasidic school would provide the background and heritage that I was so sorely lacking. My father looked and lived a “modern” lifestyle; I was the only student in a school of hundreds who did not have peiyos, instead sporting a modern haircut and modern clothes. My father did not wear chasidic garb, did not have a beard, but never felt the need to consider himself “modern.” Eventually, my parents felt that their purpose had been accomplished and enrolled me in Yeshiva Torah Vodaas and Mirrer Yeshiva through my high school years.
With this background, I cannot understand what the need is from a social, religious or other perspective to obsess on the term “Modern Orthodox.”
What is going on with the proliferation of the obsession with the word “Modern Orthodox,” the increased advertisement of shuls and neighborhoods that are labeling themselves as “Modern Orthodox”? Are we looking to create a new branch of Judaism and even a new religion?
Reading both articles by both Rabbis Goldberg and Kerbel, the reader gets the sense that there is no real disagreement on the substance of their convictions that the traditional, historically strict and even chasidic background and foundation is valuable and important.
Both of their shuls label themselves as “Modern Orthodox,” yet their rabbis seem to prefer to adopt different labels. Despite the similar underlying values, Rabbi Kerbel prefers the “modern” label while Rabbi Goldberg does not.
This conundrum was inadvertently addressed by Rabbi Fabian Schoenfeld who addressed the shul attendees of a new Modern Orthodox shul in south Florida. He possibly wanted to guide them in their startup phase and adoption of the ruling principles of a Modern Orthodox congregation. He apparently was not comfortable with the idea of creating a new branch of Judaism.
While the listener may differ on how each person that day assimilated and accepted Rabbi Fabian Schonfeld’s words, the words were striking and clear.
Rabbi Schoenfeld stated that he was a dedicated and serious student of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, who knew how Rabbi Soloveitchik thought and what Rabbi Soloveitchik believed.
Rabbi Schoenfeld stated that Rabbi Soloveitchik would be turning over in his grave if he would know what is being ascribed to him and being done in the name of “Modern Orthodoxy.”
I will end with what I believe is the most compelling statement (a recollection of his phrasing) of his drasha that day and which should be considered by us after reading the articles of Rabbis Goldberg and Kerbel.
“Modern Orthodoxy should not attempt to modernize the Orthodox Jewish religion. The religion should not be modernized. What it should be doing is provide Orthodoxy to modern Jewish people.”
Judge Schubin is lead attorney at Joseph A. Schubin & Associates, PLLC SCHUBIN & ISAACS, Attorneys and Counselors at Law.
