Secular Judaism Turns on the Jews

Considering the recent dust-up over anti-Semitism at New York’s prestigious Fieldston School and other schools associated with the Society of Ethical Culture, Judith Colp Rubin—who was among the third generation of her family to attend these institutions—considers the society’s founder:

Ethical Culture was the brainchild of Felix Adler (1851–1933). He was six years old in 1857 when his father, Samuel, moved his family from Germany to New York City to preside over Temple Emanu-El, the flagship of [American Reform Judaism]. Felix intended to become a rabbi himself. But his life was changed when he discovered Immanuel Kant’s supreme principle of morality, the categorical imperative.

When the twenty-three-year-old Adler returned to New York after studying in Germany, he made his first and last speech at Temple Emanu-El. It was called “The Judaism of the Future.” He called for an end to the trappings of ritual and theology and for a universal religion steeped in morality. Explicitly absent was the word “God.” His speech was considered revolutionary, but . . . when, in February 1877, the twenty-six-year-old Adler incorporated the Society of Ethical Culture, he did so with support from the Reform community. Although Ethical Culture dispensed with ritual and belief in a supernatural force, it incorporated certain aspects of religious life—such as holding Sunday services with sermons and designing its assembly hall to resemble a house of worship.

It should not then be surprising that Ethical Culture today finds itself grappling with the concept of Jewish identity. It has done so since its founding. Just how torn the school is about its Jewish roots became clear in 2015 when [its elementary school] instituted something it called “affinity groups,” a new mandatory part of the curriculum. A form arrived in an email to parents in which students, some as young as in third grade, were asked to pick their race. Their options were “African-American/Black,” “Asian/Pacific Islander,” “Latina/o,” “Multi-racial,” “White,” and “Not sure.” Students were then required to meet to discuss their self-affiliation and confront the affinities of others in a free-flowing mixed-race discussion.

Parents and others expressed concerns that the program was stoking the very racism it was designed to destroy by encouraging students to think in racial categories. Jewish parents had a special concern. Those who wanted “Jew” to be included among the [possible] racial identities were told by school officials . . . that this would not be an option.

Read more at Commentary

More about: Anti-Semitism, Anti-Zionism, Immanuel Kant, Secular Judaism

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society