Thursday, March 24, 2022

the new normal

I am in the middle of reading Free as a Jew: A Personal Memoir of National Self-Liberation by Ruth Wisse and came across this remark that so perfectly describes the transformation that has taken place in our sociery (p223):

Not all the changes were equally unwelcome.  I thought decriminalization of homosexuality and abortion long overdue.  What hadn't occurred to me was that, in the rush to nonjudgment, tolerance would turn to advocacy, and advocacy into reverse orthodoxy...Having held standard views about the primacy and nature of family, I was stunned at how quickly those assumptions fell away.

The evidence of how far the "progressives" have led our society toward its moral destruction has been apparent long before we reached the climatic point of a Supreme Court nominee who cannot even define what a woman is.  

Given that this is what passes for cultural norms these days, how is there any room for a Torah-v'... whatever-you-want-to-call-it philosophy that embraces that outside culture?  Standing up and voicing support for Israel is enough to get you shouted down on most college campuses these days.  Add to that the conservative values that are inherent to our religion and I think you will find yourself a pariah in most intellectual circles.  The "reverse orthodoxy," as Wisse put it, has made what once was radical into the norm.  Refusing to kneel and accept that new normal will get you labelled a rascist/homophobe/chauvinist/etc. 

Getting back to Wisse, one other interesting quote (and I could pull many from the book!) is what she writes regarding the decision by JTS to ordain woman (p228):

Even someone as deficient in Talmudic expertise as I could see that the movement's avowedly cautious and "conservative" approach to innovation had been unceremoniously sacrificed to modern feminist pressure.  Had JTS' rabbinic authorities really framed their arguments for this decision in conformity with the movement's own guidelines?  Had a cohort of female Talmudists risen to rival or surpass their teachers in mastery of sources?  Had growing synagogue membership and intensified devotion on the part of conservative women required such a tradition-defying innovation?

Had any of those been the case, the decision might have marked a religious breakthrough.  Instead, Judaism was being asked to align itself with the tenets of the new women's movement without subjecting those tenets themselves to the slightest scrutiny.  The relaxation of norms, I felt certain, would simply hasten the decline in religious observance that had prompted the movement to inaugurate the change, and JTS to bless it in the first place.  Judaism's hard internal logic was necessary in tension with the pressure for progress at any cost, and giving in to change without anticipating the unanticipated consequences was a recipe for even greater assimilation. 

 

5 comments:

  1. This is something I've written about before but I'll share it with you now:
    Secular Liberalism is a religion.
    A real religion has dogma, beliefs, principles and definitions for what makes an adherent and what makes a heretic. And many real religions feel threatened by competitors since there can only be one "truth" which means alternate versions must be silenced.
    Just like Chrisianity was intent on silencing us for denying that God had an affair with Joe's wife and Islam was intent on silencing us for denying that God changed His mind and decided He wanted to be Muslim, so too Secular Liberalism is attacking established religion in order to dominate society and inflict its "truth" on anyone.
    According to Secular Liberalism, or Woke Folk for short, while there are "males" and "females" of the species, "man" and "woman" are now open terms one can choose to apply to oneself. The person may have a uterus and a full set of XX chromosomes but if that person decides it's a man then it's a man and you better call it "he" or you're a heretic.
    So yes, a new Jew hatred is here but it's no different that traditional Jew hatred. We've forgotten that modern anti-Semitism, the hatred of Jew based on supposed racial grounds, is less than a couple of centuries old. Before that it was religious hatred. We were lesser humans because we didn't believe in JC/Mohammed. Our beliefs set us apart. Today that has returned. Once again society at large will be setting us, the believers, apart because our views contradict their religion and its "truth".

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    1. >>>Secular Liberalism is a religion

      100% accurate

      Dennis Prager -- https://www.investors.com/politics/columnists/leftism-secular-religion-dennis-prager/

      https://www.nationalreview.com/2010/03/leftism-religion-dennis-prager/

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    2. Right, so the next thing to realize is that most Jewish organizations dedicated to fighting Jew-hatred, especially the ADL, are now fundamentally doing their jobs poorly. They remain stuck in the "Anti-semitism is racism" model because (a) they prefer to focus on right-wing Jew-hatred which is the domain of White racist groups (b) they prefer to ignore left-wing Jewish hatred because they're scared of being called racist themselves if they protest it.
      So if you're a White hillbilly from Arkansas carrying a Nazi flag, well you're the obvious enemy and we have lawyers to take you down. If you're a Black trans-something from Portland, Oregon who calls for the destruction of Israel, well you know, different points of view, historical oppression, we're against colonialization, and so on.

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    3. What bothers me more than groups like the ADL, which have a clear left wing agenda, is the Rabbis and lay leaders in our community who will endorse politicians who support the LGBT.. alphabet, CRT in schools, abortion for all at any point in pregnancy, affirmative action (i.e. reverse discrimination), and a "two state solution," i.e. selling out Israel. How does any of that fit with our values? And they don't realize the $ that these politicians promise ultimately comes out of our own pockets in the form of higher taxes and lost prosperity caused by their backwards economic policies.

      Thinking about it is not good for my blood pressure.

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    4. Don't forget that Heterodox Judaism is not Torah Judaism, just with less mitzvos. It has been, for a couple of generation, Secular Liberalism with latkes and humantaschen. Therefore, for a Reformative "rabbi" endorsing a wide variety of anti-Torah values is actually a pro-Jewish position.

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