Israel/Palestine
Related: About this forumProud to be secular - and Jewish
Upon reading Rabbi Eric Yoffies needlessly polarizing The Self-Delusions of Secular Jews, I found myself incredulously checking the byline. This must be, I thought, some sort of mistake. Why would the esteemed and estimable past president of the Union for Reform Judaism upbraid his secular brethren (and in the liberal Huffington Post, no less)?
An ultra-Orthodox rabbi must have written that, I concluded, in an effort to ease cognitive dissonance. We would, after all, expect someone opposed to the liberal value of personal autonomy to declare: Secular and cultural Jews may think they can wring the holiness out of their Jewish identity and practice, but they cannot.
Maybe this was a scene out of Philip Roths Operation Shylock. A devious double, a pseudo-Eric Yoffie is astir on the Internet. The position he espouses in his article would be as good for Reform Judaisms longevity as Moishe Pipiks Diasporism (i.e., a doctrine demanding the immediate return of all Ashkenazi Jews to their ancestral European homelands) would be for Israels. But this was no mistake. This was, in fact, Rabbi Yoffie. Our Rabbi Yoffie.
Now, secular Jews - whether you define them as atheists, agnostics, skeptics, or believing moderates who buck Tradition - are accustomed to being anathematized. They are blamed for everything from Intermarriage Culminating In The End Of The Jewish People, to the Messiahs tarrying. Rabbi Yoffies strictures against them are not novel. It his prominence within the Reform movement, however, that makes his critique baffling.
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/proud-to-be-secular-and-jewish.premium-1.500792
Scootaloo
(25,699 posts)But I'm reading Yoffie's piece that is linked in the first paragraph.
That part in bold? Makes a little vomit chuck into my mouth whenever I see it. Usually it's coming from creationist fuck-knuckles insisting that "evolution is religion too!" but really, I think I'm reading the same sort of mindset here, so I don't think the reflex is uncalled-for.
oberliner
(58,724 posts)You can get the whole article for free.
R. Daneel Olivaw
(12,606 posts)oberliner
(58,724 posts)Glad to have you on board the site. Keep on learning on growing.
That you are not sure how it relates to I/P is fascinating.
R. Daneel Olivaw
(12,606 posts)I'm not able to get past the pay wall, so perhaps there was a snippit that relates to Palestine?