SPECIAL COIlliIIIITAILY

What Happened To Them?

Given the prejudice against reli-
his past summer at an
gious belief with which they grew up
American Jewish Press
and were educated, each Jew who
Association symposium on
becomes religious is a miracle. And
the coverage of Orthodoxy
miracles cannot be replicated. Each
in the mainstream Jewish press, I
journey involves a unique
argued, inter alia, that the
combination of emotional
typical portrayal of Ortho-
and intellectual elements.
doxy as something from the
Yet common themes recur.
Dark Ages leaves American
In most cases, the road to
Jews unable to interpret the
Orthodoxy begins with
reality around them.
meeting an Orthodox Jew
Armed with that misinfor-
who seems qualitatively
mation, American Jews are
different from anyone pre-
incapable of understanding
viously encountered. That
how their children — prod-
Orthodox Jew, usually a
ucts of the finest secular edu-
teacher of some kind,
JON A THAN
cation's — could become
offers a vision of life lived
ROSE NBLUM
Orthodox Jews. I recalled
as a whole, one unified by
Specia / to the
that discussion recently.
the awareness that all of
Jewis h News
Gathered around my Shab-
one's actions are in the
bos table were an early 1980s
presence of God; a life
Yale graduate with a success-
without the usual bifurcations of
ful business career, a woman who
modern existence — work/family,
three months ago was a booker for
public morality/private morality,
The Larry King Show, and a young
work/leisure.
man who after graduating from Har-
Through that mentor, Matthew
vard Law School clerked for the U.S.
Arnold's famous epigram — "The
Supreme Court. Each is learning in an
Greeks taught the holiness of beauty;
Israeli yeshiva or seminary. Over the
the Jews the beauty of holiness" —
years, I have listened to the stories of
comes to life. Experiencing a Shabbat
hundreds of such Jews. No two are
or another Jewish holiday with a large
alike.
Orthodox family is another standard
part of the journey. Many are amazed
to be exposed for the first time to a
an
Israeli
biog-
Jonathan Rosenblum,
world
in which each child is consid-
rapher, is Israel director of Am Echad,
ered
an
incomparable blessing, inca-
an Orthodox outreach group. He can be
pable of being subjected to any
reached via e-mail at:
cost/benefit analysis.
jbr@netvision.net.il

T

Having been raised with an
emphasis on the generation gap,
young secular Jews are attracted by a
world in which traditions are passed
down from one generation to the
next and bind those generations
together. In a world in which the
anomie of individual existence has
replaced traditional communities,
the emphasis on communal life, and
the many ways that is expressed
among Orthodox Jews, draws those
from the outside. On the intellectual
level, many of those who become
Orthodox have lived for years with a
profound sense that there must be
some moral order to the universe. To
paraphrase Groucho Marx, they have
no wish to live in a world in which
they set all the rules.
"Without God, everything is per-
mitted," says Ivan in The Brothers
Karamazov. Unable to deny Dosto-
evski but unwilling to accept that
everything is permitted, some of the
brightest and most sensitive young
Jews search for God instead. Once
they accept that a moral order can
only be founded on God, it follows
for many that God must have
revealed His will, for how else could
finite man know the will of an Infi-
nite God?
Some of the most talented and
accomplished of these spiritual seek-
ers have lived for years with an over-
whelming sense of responsibility, a
feeling that their natural gifts oblig-
ate them to cure all the world's ills.

For them, knowledge that God, not
they, runs the world comes as a
relief. But that knowledge leads nei-
ther to quiescence nor to an end of
striving. Nearly 2,000 years ago,
Rabbi Tarfon summed up their new-
found attitude: The task is not
yours to complete; neither are you
free to leave it off."
No Jewish idea is so powerful as
the belief that everything we do or
think has consequence. Every
moment provides us with an oppor-
tunity to either imbue the world
with holiness or the opposite. There
is nothing neutral, no standing still;
at any given moment, we are raising
ourselves spiritually and the world
along with us, or we are lowering
ourselves. We are either conduits of
God's blessings to the world or plugs
stopping up channels.
A Torah life is a demanding one.
It insists that we can change our-
selves in fundamental ways. True,
each of us is born with a basic
nature, a combination of good and
bad qualities, but our innate nature
does not define us. We have the
power to overcome the bad qualities
and to emphasize the good. In short,
we are what we make of ourselves.
Thus, the final attraction of a Torah
life for many of our best and bright-
est is that it not only provides the
discipline necessary to make oneself
a better person but also the incentive
to do so. n

LETTERS

at the Jewish Federation's funding and
the Jewish News' coverage of Colloqui-
um`99, "Beyond Tradition: The
Struggle for a New Jewish Identity"
("The Future Is Now," Oct. 1).
The basic objection is that
HumanistiC Judaism,
whatever else it is, is
not Judaism and
thus beyond the
coverage of the
Jewish News and
the Jewish Fed-
eration. But
that begs the
question: what
exactly counts
as Judaism?
To a Jew
who offered
sacrifices at the
Temple, an

11/5
1999

Orthodox service does not look like
"Judaism." To a Jew believing that all
Torah, both written and rabbinic, was
given on Mount Sinai, Conservative
services are not "Jewish."
To a Jew for whom

the essence of Judaism is observing
Commandments for their own sake and
not as culture, Reform Judaism is not
"Judaism." To a Jew who believes that
Judaism is Ethical Monotheism,
Humanistic or secular Zionist Jews do
not practice "Judaism."
To a Jew who defines
Judaism as a cultural iden-
tity, all of the above are
Jewish.
Historically, "Judaism"
has been everything:
mystical and rational,
pious and skeptical,
serious and humor-

Secular Humanistic
Rabbis Tamara
Kolton and
Sherwin Wine of the
Birmingham Temple.

ous, ethnocentric and universal. It
would be far better to explore the wide
varieties of Jewish history and speak of
different "Judaisms" than to define some
essence of Judaism by excluding other
Jews. "Judaism" should be considered
the meaning of what it is to be Jewish.
Jewish is what we are; Judaism is what
that means to us.
I applaud the Jewish News and the
Jewish Federation: They have realized
that the key to Jewish survival is the
reality of options in Jewish life, and
that Jewish is v,rhat Jews do. If two
Jews have three opinions, they will
never fit into one Judaism. The more
Judaisms we have, the more places
Jews will have to call home.

Adam Chalom
Assistant Rabbi,
Birmingham Temple