From: gertler@ptms_dev.sbi.com (User - Don Gertler)
Subject: Re: Anti-Orthodoxy (was Re: O-C-R debate)
Reply-To: <gertler@ptms_dev.sbi.com (User - Don Gertler)>
Organization: Nysernet
Date: 31 Jul 92 16:21:01 GMT

rivk@quads.uchicago.edu (nora gayle rivkis) writes:
>weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener) writes:
>>warren@nysernet (Warren Burstein) writes:
>>>				   one would be allowed to (unless they
>>had explicitly forbidden such beliefs or practices - aside from the
>>>old-style R temples that insisted on bare heads (or so I've heard - I
>>>see lots of kipot on the heads of people going in and out of a nearby
>>>R shul in Jerusalem)

>>In America, you can still find such R temples.

>Yes; they generally call themselves "classical Reform", meaning that
>when the rest of the movement figured out that it was throwing the
>baby out with the bathwater and gave up such idiocies, they stuck to
>their guns. The rest of the Reform movement simply calls them nuts.

Mighty tolerant.

>>>		      I'm not aware of anything we O do (aside from
>>>claiming that they are wrong) that they think is wrong.

>I can think of several things the Orthodox do that Reform thinks is
>wrong: not holding women to the same ritual obligations and privileges
>as men is the most obvious one. Eating meat from animals that, while
>they may have been slaughtered according to the requirements of kashruth,
>were not treated in a humane fashion when they were alive, is another
>example.

Some questions about your second point first:  Is that the official
Reform position?  Does Reform reject meat of animals that were not
treated humanely?  Or is that your view projected on the movement as
a whole?  (If it is the official view, is it held by the "nuts" cited
above? :-)  If this is, in fact, the official view, I have no qualms
about it.  Indeed, I would suggest a joint Orthodox/Reform hekhsher
that all Jews adhere to.  It would require both kosher shkhita and
humane treatment for the living animals.  (The symbol already exist
on many packages.  We could just adopt the Reform hekhsher, the O-R :-)

On your first point, I have some difficulty.  It's a rather unusual
approach, but I feel I must voice it.  It seems to me that the Reform
and Conservative movements discriminate with regard to sex more than
do the Orthodox.  The Orthodox have a rigid system that many complain
restricts change with the times.  Okay.  Let's take that as a given.
The Reform -- and somewhat less so, the Conservative -- are
relatively unrestricted from change, however.  For them, it's a mere
vote of a "governing" body.  Why, then, did it take the Reform until
the mid to late 1970s -- and Conservative, until the 80s -- to allow
women to participate equally with men in every aspect of Jewish
life -- the Rabbinate, in particular.

The world was in line; why were Reform and Conservative Judaism out
of sync?  In fact, why should they even have waited for the rest
of the world to come around?  Unrestricted as they were by
tradition and convention, they should have been on the front lines
in this battle for decades.  What is the next late "innovation"
Reform will finally come around to, then use to accuse Orthodoxy
of being stodgy?

-Don Gertler
Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish