Crossposted at Crystal Decadenz
I am disturbingly familiar with the arguments against Orthodoxy. I imagine someone will take issue with my characterizations of the liberal branches, but it’s good to disagree sometimes. I know that really accurate characterizations would take a book to write (I’m telling you now so I don’t have to break up every other sentence with “I know this isn’t always true, but…”) Sometimes I wish I’d never become so intimate with the intricacies of the branches, because it’d be much easier for me to say “Everyone who isn’t Orthodox is dead wrong, end of story.” Alas, instead I’ve come up with a few (rather unorthodox) reasons for why I’ve decided to convert to Orthodoxy. I’ve included two of the more interesting reasons here.
Judaism shouldn’t need a “platform.” You may have noticed that there’s no Orthodox “platform.” There’s also no Orthodox central authority akin to the USCJ or CCAR. Reform probably gets it the worst here, with their many different platforms (and how!), ranging from “we believe all ritual is archaic” (1885) to “we believe in studying the whole array of mitzvot” (1999). Their platforms are quite reactionary, and it seems that their goal is indeed to fine-tune their belief system with each passing generation—in as condensed a phrasing as possible, and to appeal to the most people as possible (indeed, their latest platform boldly proclaims that “we will encourage spiritual seekers to find their home in Judaism”!) Is this discomfiting to you?
Similarly, although Conservative Judaism only has one platform, they seem unsure on where they stand—possibly they aren’t entirely sure what their stand on halacha is. (The example I always bring up is the fact that women are included in minyan even though no one’s really sure whether women are actually obligated in fixed prayer.) They too could not resist summing themselves up in a pithy saying, as if they were a sports drink—”Tradition and Change.” Conservative Judaism has also taken the strange step in distinguishing itself not only as a way of practicing Judaism, but quite consciously as an entirely autonomous branch of Judaism. A Conservative Jew would have to look at the texts through the lens of the USCJ, and that makes me uncomfortable.
My Reform professor unwittingly said it best while we were discussing the different branches and their platforms—after reading the Reform platforms and the Conservative one, we skipped a discussion on the Orthodox platform because “They don’t need a platform; their platform is the Torah.”
Eventually, there is a divide between practice and ideology in liberal Judaism. Ideology can only get a person so far. It took me a while to realize this. Although Reform was never an option for me, I considered Conservatism for a long, long time (hence this post). It had occurred to me that many Conservative Jews aren’t practicing to their potential or even according to their beliefs, but I ignored this. When I was going to the Conservative synagogue back home, I quickly became one of the most observant people there…and I’d only been going for a year. After nineteen years of having had no Jewish education (I literally didn’t know mitzvah from mikveh), I’d envisioned better for those people. I simply couldn’t understand why they refused to learn rudimentary Hebrew or certain holiday basics or even the order of the service. It was all the more shocking because these were Conservative Jews, who ought to have subscribed to the position that to know those things was important. “Too busy,” they always said.
This is liberal Judaism. People are “too busy” to learn about Judaism—to practice Judaism—and that’s simply not me. Judaism has wholly and irreversibly taken ahold of every aspect of my life—how could I dare to say I was “too busy”? I am accustomed to asking myself first and foremost before ever embarking on anything how I would sustain my Jewish needs—when I buy foods, I always look at the ingredients or the kosher label. When I was considering studying abroad, the first thing I did was Google Map the nearest synagogues. I write “can’t work on Saturday” on my job applications. I deal with my caffeine withdrawal because I won’t use money to buy coffee on Shabbat.
This isn’t to say that Conservative Jews can’t do this, but I can’t imagine choosing a community where these questions don’t normally occur to people. I don’t like to have to guess whether my congregation will consider halacha important; I don’t want to feel that I ought to celebrate the “achievement” of actually finding that rare liberal congregation where people are very (and not just incidentally) observant. Nor do I especially wish to subscribe to a life where I constantly have to “teach” my peers Judaism. There’s something beautiful about living in a community where people know what to do with a negel vasser cup; and no complex theology or ideology will ever make up for the moment when a liberal rabbi has to explain to his congregants how to use it.
Laura Cooper is a Religious Studies major at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, VA. Her interests include graphic novels, punk rock, and making Judaism interesting. She blogs at Crystal Decadenz. Her column, The Jew in the Boonies, appears here on alternating Sundays.
