HALAKHIC CHANGE VS. DEMOGRAPHIC CHANGE

Abstract

Many Orthodox Jews, especially the Ultra-Orthodox or “Haredim,” insist that both the Written and Oral Torah as we know them were given at Sinai and that any mention of halakhic development is heresy. This article seeks to highlight change in American Orthodox Judaism from the end of the nineteenth to the beginning of the twenty-first centuries. The first part deals with cultural change. A series of changes in the halakhah-related sphere that are deemed to be religiously acceptable in the halakhah-observant community are then presented. The issue of the influence of values on the halakhic decision-making process is briefly discussed, after which a number of possibilities—sociological and demographic—are raised as explanations of the basis for the then-Chief Rabbi Brodie's veto of the appointment of Rabbi Louis Jacobs as Principal of Jews’ College and his subsequent refusal to reappoint Jacobs as Minister of London's New West End Synagogue.

Acknowledgements

Research for this article began when I was a Dorset Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, in Yarnton, UK, during January–March 2013, as part of a seminar on “Orthodoxy, Theological Debate, and Contemporary Judaism: Exploring Questions Raised in the Thought of Louis Jacobs,” convened by Prof. Adam Ferziger and Dr Miri Freud-Kandel. I benefited from discussions with all of the seminar members, especially Adam Ferziger and Dr Yehuda Galinsky. I also gratefully acknowledge the valuable criticisms and suggestions of Prof. Menachem Kellner on an early draft of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Chaim I. Waxman http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4539-0271

Notes

1. Known as “the Chafetz Chaim,” he was highly revered as a model of piety and an outstanding halakhic authority in Orthodox Ashkenazi circles.

2. In Modern Orthodox synagogues, it is now increasingly acceptable for women to recite the Mourner's Kaddish, but it is still frowned upon in most American Orthodox synagogues.

3. It should be noted that increased stringency itself can lead to a countermove towards leniency. As Yehuda Turetsky and I have indicated, there has been a “sliding toward the left” in American Orthodoxy (Turetsky and Waxman 2001). Whereas in the past, such moves resulted in breaking away from Orthodoxy, for example, the formation of Conservative Judaism in the USA and Louis Jacobs's formation of Masorti Judaism in England following the “Jacobs Affair,” it is still unclear where such institutions and groups as Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, Yeshivat Maharat, and the International Rabbinical Fellowship, among others are going. Perhaps contemporary American Orthodoxy is, and will continue to be, considerably broader and more flexible than its established spokespersons wish to admit.

4. He subsequently said that such instances were the exception and limited to very specific circumstances (Soloveitchik 2013, 258–277).

5. A nineteenth-century movement among Lithuanian yeshivot which strove for ethical and spiritual self-discipline (Etkes 1993; Mirsky 2008).

6. There are various and varied accounts of what came to be known as “the Jacobs affair,” and reference will be made to some of them in the analysis which follows.

7. For a hagiographic biography of Dessler, see Rosenblum (2000).

8. Dessler wrote of him,

 I would not be exaggerating in the slightest if I were to say that I have never seen a genius with such depth and all the other aptitudes that he possesses, he is a truly a great scholar and it is almost impossible to fathom the depth of his knowledge. (1986, 311)

   I thank my son-in-law, Noam Green, who is completing a doctorate on Dessler's thought, for bringing this reference to my attention.

9. Brodie expressed his indignation at the use of the term when he wrote, “we who hold to the validity of the Torah are called backward, stagnant, mediaeval and fundamentalist” (1969, 344) .

10. Jacobs specifically referred to my claim (Waxman 1993, 223–224) that many earlier halakhic authorities would have asserted that notion. A more recent version of that notion is presented by Broyde and Wagner (2000) who argue that, while results provided by halakha can change in response to changed social and/or technological conditions, there can never be any changes in the principles used by Halakhah.

Additional information

Chaim I. Waxman is Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Jewish Studies at Rutgers University and a Senior Fellow at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute. He specializes in the sociology of religion with special focus on American Jews. He is currently conducting research for a book on the sociology of American Orthodox Judaism.