Intellectual charity dictates that we try to understand the Zoom-seder ruling as did the rabbinic scholars who proffered it. Chaim Saiman’s essay, “In Rejecting the Zoom Seder, What Did Orthodox Jews Affirm?,” is a learned and thought-provoking response to that ruling, but because he misses the intra-Sephardi dynamics of Israeli Jewish life that animated the decision, his essay does not comprehend what the members of the Association of Scholars of the Maghreb in the Land of Israel thought they were doing. By grounding their decision in the legitimacy of North African tradition and by assuming that tradition’s relevance for the nation of Israel as a whole, the Zoom-seder ruling is an expression of the cultural confidence of a resurgent community.
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More about: Halakhah, Religion & Holidays, Zoom Seder