The Emergence of Jewish Dogma
Medieval authorities responded to outside pressures and formulated Jewish principles of faith.
myjewishlearning.com/ideas_belief/About_Jewish_Thought/AboutI_B_Dogma_TO/AboutIB_MedDog_Kellner/AboutIB_DogCauses_Kellner.htm#
Dogma in Medieval Jewish Thought (Paperback)
amazon.com/Medieval-Jewish-Thought-Menachem-Kellner/dp/1904113214
Professors Jacob Katz and Moshe Samet define orthodoxy as a phenomenon of reaction. They argue that orthodoxy is not a direct continuation of Judaism as it was before the age of enlightenment. Part of orthodoxy’s new character is the fact it struggles against those who choose modernity over tradition. This reaction led leaders of Orthodox Judaism to decrees such as the need to avoid eating a secular Jew’s cooking, not counting him in a Minyan (no chance of counting a woman in any case…), and not allowing a secular Jew to marry an orthodox one
Conservative Judaism is that it is traditional Judaism with open borders. When Solomon Schechter, one of founders and leaders of Conservative Judaism in the States, was trying to define his task he spoke of “Judaism of the whole Jewish peoplehood”, thus restricting the need for a specific movement, since he saw his potential audience as “everyone”.
This concept of Conservative Judaism as tradition with open borders This concept means that we must not turn people away from our movement and synagogues, nor discriminate among them, on basis of gender, sexual preference, or level of observance. I am aware that my last sentence might infuriate some readers, among them Conservative Jews.Where does one draw the lines?
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Here in Israel, it could be argued that the irrelevance of denominations is even clearer. Conservative and Reform Judaism has never been very strong here, and often it is regarded as an import unlikely to reach anything more than a niche market. I remember my surprise as a High School teacher in the non-Orthodox sector in Haifa some twenty years ago, when I was asked to teach about Streams in Judaism. For many of my colleagues and students, there were no such thing as streams in Judaism at all – only the desert and the deep blue sea. There has often been a kind of binary system at play in Israel according to which you were either One (Orthodox) or Zero (Secular). If you tried to suggest a third option, you were often met by the three great 'i’s - incredulity, impatience, and indifference.
Who needs adjectives, particularly in Israel? A journalist in Yediot Aharonot recently launched a stinging attack on what she perceives as a kind of phony spirituality being offered by Reform in Israel, and in favor of the good old-fashioned binary system of Jewish identity. Those Reform Jews trying to have their Jewish cakes and eat them too deserve to have all baked items removed from their reach. How dare they claim to be serious about Judaism if they don’t profess Orthodox beliefs?
blogcentral.jpost.com/index.php?cat_id=8&blog_id=70&blog_post_id=1611
Why don’t haredim learn English or other modern languages?
A ban originated in 18th-century Eastern Europe in reaction to Moses Mendelssohn, 1729-1786, a Berlin Jewish philosopher to whose ideas the renaissance of European Jews, known as the Haskala (Jewish enlightenment) movement, is indebted. Mendelssohn translated the Hebrew Bible into German, and encouraged Jews to learn both religious and worldly subjects.
Obscurantist rabbis forbade learning modern European languages in the hope of preventing the spread of modern, secular ideas. During the final decades of Ottoman rule, Rabbi Yeshua Leib Diskin renewed that herem (halachic prohibition) on learning foreign languages apart from Hebrew and Aramaic - the languages of the Bible and Talmud. Most Ashkenazi rabbis of the old Yishuv (Jewish community in Palestine) endorsed that ban.
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