This letter, and a post by a Mir student on another popular yeshivish website, have crystallized something I’ve been struggling to figure out for months, if not years. I think I finally get it.
Those who are advocating these views, those who are dictating these views, those who are supporting these views – You’ve done something that neither the advent of chasidus has done, nor the reform or conservatives or the progenitors of the Haskala.
You have redefined Judaism and Jewish observance to the point where you have produced a new religion.
What does that mean?
I don’t mean for a minute that you’ve abandoned the framework of mesorah.
I don’t mean you’ve abandoned shmiras hamitzvos.
I don’t mean that you have evil intent.
I don’t even mean that you are objectively wrong.
What I DO mean is that you or those whose guidance you follow have eviscerated national responsibility and national purpose from Judaism. You have removed it, for your communities, from what it means to be Jewish. And it is understandable, because expression of that national responsibility and purpose was limited almost to extinction for more than a thousand years.
Now that the opportunity to act like a nation has been given to us by HKBH, you turn away from it. You’ve redefined Judaism to “work” without it.
Many Torah observant Jews disagree with you. Many of them embrace the opportunity to practice a “whole” Judaism. They not only learn but also do that which builds and protects the physical national environment or infrastructure which nationhood within Torah Judaism demands.
Many of our brothers and sisters who are not (yet) Torah observant embrace the opportunity to begin to fulfill the responsibilities incumbent on “Am” Yisrael. They may be inspired to national responsibilities, but little in the demeanor and public discourse of those who advocate for a Judaism without national responsibilites encourages them to embrace the individual and congregational responsibilities which have come to solely define your new Judaism.
I think that there is an authenticity to a Judaism inclusive of national responsibility that you are not seeing or understanding. You think its new, when it seems to me it is ancient.
And with the clarity I think I now have, I wonder – what of those many of us who have a foot planted firmly in both camps? Are you going to make us choose your religion over theirs? Will they make us choose?