Differing Perspectives on the New York Celebrate Israel Parade

“It is extremely difficult to maintain cultural and social Judaism absent ritual and observance of Jewish law”
Absolutely, this is why the rabbis of the Talmud age invented countless laws, as well as rabbis of the following ages. The more rituals and observances there are the more locked into the club your are. No shared wine, bread, food, marriage, entertainment, muktza, etc……
You are just defining Jewish law at its very core.
Many years ago Mordechai Kapan came out with his own siddur and the Rabbis of the Rabbinical organizatoin that exised at the time held a public book burning. There was a write-up about this incident a few years ago in the Forward in which the author was critical of the rabbis. A letter responding to the essay made the point, that the rabbis were in the right, since had there been a Mordechai Kaplan in ever age, Judaism today would be unrecongnizable. But I contents that the rabbis have made Judaism unrecognizable as well.

their “one day” that we all stood together for something was the asifa, or the upcoming siyum hashas. they dont view modern orthodoxy as part of “us.” We’re fine with calling them part of us, but once we do we won’t be able to “join in unison and make a clear statement” about anything.

I’d like to give some more numerically driven context to this post.

I don’t think Modern/centerist orthodoxy is going to be leading a charge about the future of Judaism right now. For many orthodox groups, there is a rightwards push as a result of a new/old culture war about what both American and Jewish society in American should look post-1960s/1970s . This is largely driven by the fallout of suburban model, growth in technology, feminism, and acceptance of the idea that the dominant culture of a given place is not as all dominating and does not speak to everyone within it. The community is no longer the central place to develop identity/identities in post 1960s America. The rightward push is an effort to react and resolve this loss.

Nationwide, modern and centerist orthodox day school enrollment is flat (http://avichai.org/2011/12/2011-12-day-school-enrollment-sees-modest-decline/ if you add modern orthodox and centrist together, you get a net growth of 0.7%.) The numbers don’t add up to a place where the claim of a vibrant non-chareidi orthodoxy is going, especially with the numerous discussions over the cost of tuition for said same schools.

Within metro NY alone (excluding Jersey and CT, see this http://www.ujafedny.org/get/189755/), the most recent numbers are that if you are not orthodox and under the age of 35, you are probably not going to join a synagogue, you have a 1:2 likelyhood of intermarry, etc. etc. The group that is growing in NY is the ultra-orthodox (and to some degree the secular russian community), which are having their own sets of problems, primarily severe poverty and distance from other communal affairs.

The Israel Day Parade masks this. There is an expectation of a certain kind of Jewish person that goes with the parade. That person is slowly not existing any more. I also wonder if it weren’t for the strong ideological stances of the orthodox day schools that do march, including the requirement that students march, if students would go. It also bothers me greatly that this ideological stance tends to ignore the diversity of israeli opinions. If you are going to be the group that is the “biggest” supporter despite your own internal issues, you should at least acknowledge that your opinion is part of a diversity of opinions about said same country. That isn’t obvious at all when talking to students coming out of these schools. I rue the day that it hits many of the graduates the level of complexity that Israelis see on the subject of what is Israel and what is Judaism, because that day may become shattering to certain conceptions of identity. I’m not sure that everyone I’ve met will recover.

To quote Steven M. Cohen

But Steven M. Cohen, a leading sociologist and one of the three authors of the study, points out that the notion of a society with a strong center is passé, and that over the last several decades America has become increasingly diverse, fluid and complex.
“We are long past the 1950s America of Mom and Dad, two kids, the suburbs, and the dog in the backyard,” he said in an interview, noting that the New York study of 10 years ago already found signs of increasingly individualized identities on the rise among Jews.
The new study offers “a sharper picture of diversity,” according to Cohen, with more Jews in both the highly engaged and highly unengaged sectors, reflective of an American society in general that is “more diverse, more of a mosaic and with more complexity.”

(http://www.thejewishweek.com/editorial-opinion/gary-rosenblatt/community-pulling-apart)
Unlike Steven Cohen, I don’t take the “new center” thing all too seriously as identity seems to be moving towards an internal sense rather than external. I’m fine with the intermarriage rate. We know in many not-NY Jewish communities, the kids turn out all right and do affilaite, though not through religious institutions and some cultural institutions as we have them today.

It makes me wish that my ex-hillel wasn’t going through politics, since it was becoming an early model of how to handle this change. Groups like reboot also are moving into a post-communal identity method to reach out. On some level this seems to be working. It is really hard to explain restaurants like Kushner’s otherwise.

Rabbi, the Haredim have thrown a monkey wrench into the works regarding the future of Orthodoxy. They’re still trumpeting the old battle cry: “You’re assimilating out of existence! Your grandchildren won’t be Jewish!” Meanwhile, it’s been two centuries and we’re all still here – but Orthodoxy is now at a watershed moment.

After the war, the Haredim began to arrive in greater numbers. While your parents and grandparents were having smaller families and focusing on getting their kids into top tier universities, the Haredim, upon orders from their rabbis, were breeding prodigiously in order to replenish the population they lost in the Holocaust (which happened in large measure because those same rabbis forbade them to emigrate). By virtue of sheer number, they now are Orthodoxy. They’ve commandeered nearly all of the support institutions – mikvaot, baatei din, kashrut organizations, etc. They now own the franchise.

At the same time, the Modern Orthodox have always suffered from a basic insecurity regarding their imagined “compromise” with modernity. We now have three generations of MO who’ve grown up hearing their parents tell them, “Our way is better, because we remain faithful to the tradition while embracing secular culture and education”, but watching them glance furtively over their collective shoulder, longing for Haredi approval – an approval we all know you will never receive.

The Modern Orthodox and the liberal and secular Jews are suffering from a bad case of Fiddler on the Roof nostalgia. It began with Vishniac’s staged photographic essays, which played upon nostalgia for the “alter heim”, and it blossomed from there. Between that, Haredi hegemony and Modern Orthodoxy’s collective feelings of inferiority, all of Orthodoxy has moved sharply to the Right. This is the reason you’re losing as many kids in that direction as you are to the Left.

I maintain that apart from a few fringe groups – e.g., Avi Weiss, his students and the HIR community – there is no more “Modern Orthodoxy”. Authentic, pre-war Modern Orthodoxy – the Orthodoxy of Rav Soloveitchik and his heirs, such as Yitz Greenberg – is dead. The Haredim killed it, and the Modern Orthodox helped them to dig the grave. What we’re left with are Haredism and Haredism Lite (I would place the “centrism” of YU in the latter category; the Right Wing Modern Orthodox are Haredi in all but name and a few eccentricities of dress).

The Haredi world is collapsing, succumbing to pressure from without and deteriorating from within. It’s outstripped its resources and can no longer provide for its growing numbers; they need only so many mashgiachim and purveyors of holy seforim. They’re shooting themselves in the collective foot, and when they go, they’ll be taking most of Orthodoxy with them. There won’t be enough of you left to sustain a subculture; there may not be enough to provide a viable gene pool. The Haredim, for the most part, won’t default to Modern Orthodoxy. They’ve been brought up to regard MO with contempt, and in any case, as I’m sure you know, when they defect they tend to frei out completely.

I don’t say this triumphally; I think it’s very sad. We would never agree theologically, but I wouldn’t have wished this upon your subculture, certainly not at the hands of those lunatics. In any case, the long-predicted schism has taken place; we now have two religions, each appropriating the name “Judaism”. The breach is irreparable; it’s time to acknowledge it and move on. You may not approve of Liberal Judaism (the more strident among you don’t regard it as “Judaism”, or Yiddishkeit, at all); you may consider it unsustainable in the long term – but, ultimately, it will almost certainly be all that is left.

If Haredism does survive (which it won’t), what’s left of Modern Orthodoxy is going to have to make a decision. It can either become the most traditional branch of Liberal Judaism or Haredism’s poor relation. It’s an unenviable position.