National Scholar Updates

“S.D.G.”—Soli Deo Gloria (To God Alone Be Glory), wrote Johann Sebastian Bach on his musical scores. Many of the greatest classical composers were deeply religious and openly expressed their gratitude to the Source of All Inspiration. As Jews, we learn in Bereishit about the inherent rhythm and bold artistry of Creation, crowned by that awesome moment when God breathes life into Adam. We are designed to “sing a new song,” and pivotal moments in Torah are vividly punctuated with music. But how do we connect Bach’s “music of the heart” with Bachya’s “Duties of the Heart?”

My foundational exposure to the role of music in religious expression was the tender voice of Cantor Carl Urstein, at the “Old” Sinai Temple on 4th and New Hampshire in Los Angeles. Recent transformative experiences include hearing the rich, velvety chanting of Cantor Laszlo Fekete at the Dohany Street Synagogue in Budapest and to the exquisite phrasing and nuances of Cantor Henry Drejer at Ner Tamid Synagogue in San Francisco, who has taught the cantorial arts to my daughter, Cherina. Jascha Heifetz, my beloved violin teacher, suggested that just before going on stage one can “thank God for the gift of music” and pray for “a blessing to the work of our hands.”

Regular practice and performance of works of great composers, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, invite flow into the musical vibrations of the divine. Even off stage in the kitchen, I delight in kneading challah to Rudolf Serkin’s rendition of Brahms Piano Concerto #1. Throughout my musical life, there have been powerful moments of spiritual insight—performing the banned Bloch Baal Shem Suite in Soviet Moscow; recording the Vaughan Williams Lark Ascending with the Israel Philharmonic on Tisha b’Av at the Jerusalem Music Center, on an empty stomach after hearing a human lark, Cantor Gail Hirschenfang the previous Shabbat; and introducing the Ben-Haim Three Songs Without Words to students in Taiwan. Perhaps the deepest imprint that magnified my sensitivity and appreciation of the role and relationship of music in religious expression was my acquaintance with Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel.

Rabbi Heschel, as a poet/philosopher, expressed himself through the musicality of language. The power of his writing and speech were enhanced by the lilt of phrase, the lyrical structure of sentence, the grace of alliterative voice, and abundance of musical allusions. As a musician, I find that one of the supreme joys of studying Heschel is being able to connect to his ideas through his musical language. At times the idea is beyond my comprehension, but I can make out a familiar tune. 

            I came to know Rabbi Heschel through music. Several weeks after my father’s death, I was sent to Camp Ramah in Ojai, California, to give my mother a chance to rest. There I met a kind, gentle redheaded boy, who also had chosen the elective of orchestra. Teddy “Tuvia” Kwasman, concertmaster of the group, immediately became my dearest friend. After camp ended, we communicated sporadically, seldom seeing each other except at an occasional concert or simcha. Years passed. Then one summer day he telephoned, inviting me to meet his new friends, Abraham and Sylvia Heschel. Teddy had been in the UCLA library, where Rabbi Heschel discovered him poring through a pile of impressive Jewish books. An instant bond occurred between them. When Teddy met Mrs. Heschel, a concert pianist, he told her about me, and soon we were lucky to be guests at the Heschel apartment.

            They waited for us to arrive to have Havdalah. It was a magical moment, seeing Rabbi Heschel’s eyes reflecting the dancing flames of the braided candle. After grapes and tea, Sylvia and I began to play. Here too, there was an instant bond. Lalo’s Symphonie Espagnole was followed by Beethoven’s Spring Sonata and then the Bloch Nigun. Sylvia was an outstanding musician. Both Teddy and I looked forward to the Heschels’ summers in Los Angeles. Teddy and the Heschels attended my wedding, where Rabbi Heschel sang the sheva berakhot and danced a handkerchief dance with me.

            Despite our friendship, I had experienced Heschel but had not read much of his work until I enrolled in a credit course on Heschel at UC Berkeley Hillel in 1975, taught by Burt Jacobson. Discovering the musical references did not surprise me; they seemed perfectly natural and logical, since I had always seen him steeped in a world of music. I believe music gave Heschel an invaluable linguistic tool, because he saw music as an inherent aspect of Jewish expression. Music was a source of mystery and majesty, a wisp of the ephemeral and infinite, of spirit and body, of boundaries and freedom, and of the complementary polar opposites of sounds and silence.

      I could easily imagine Sylvia’s grand piano, which dominated the living room of their Riverside Drive apartment in New York City, and him sitting across the room enchanted by her music, carefully observing the process of her work. The practice of music requires a complex routine, repeatedly exercising the fingers, brain, imagination, and heart. Heschel wrote that “routine breeds attention… For this reason, the Jewish way of life is to reiterate the ritual, to meet the spirit again and again, the spirit in oneself and the spirit that hovers over all beings.”[1] He describes that the spirit is dependent not only on the accomplishment of the goal, like the concert performance, but the process, the practice, which is “…a song without words.”[2] “When done in humility, in simplicity of heart, it is like a child who, eager to hear a song, spreads out the score before its mother. All the child can do is open the book. But the song must be forthcoming. We cannot long continue to love on a diet that consists of anticipation and frustration.”[3]

            Heschel understood the complete concentration and focus, the letting go of ego, which makes a great performing musician like his wife. This same transformation allows prayer to take flight, to connect with God.

The artist may give a concert for the sake of the promised remuneration, but in the moment when he is passionately seeking with his fingertips the vast swarm of swift and secret sounds, the consideration of subsequent reward is far from his mind. His whole being is immersed in the music. The slightest shift of attention, the emergence of any ulterior motive, would break his intense concentration, and his single-minded devotion would collapse, his control of the instrument would fail…. Prayer, too, is primarily kavanah, the yielding of the entire being to one goal, the gathering of the soul into focus.[4]

            Heschel describes music as a gift enabling one to navigate the challenge of prayer.

In no other act does man experience so often the disparity between the desire for expression and the means of expression as in prayer. The inadequacy of the means at our disposal appears so tangible, so tragic, that one feels it is a grace to be able to give oneself up to music, to a tone, to a song, to a chant. The wave of a song carries the soul to heights which utterable meanings can never reach.[5]

            According to Heschel, speech and silence are not enough. “…[T]here is a level that goes beyond both: the level of song.” He quotes the Kotzker rebbe, “There are three ways in which a man expresses his deep sorrow: the man on the lowest level cries; the man on the second level is silent; the man on the highest level knows how to turn his sorrow into a song”[6] Heschel says, “True prayer is a song”[7]

            Heschel incorporates musical language in both describing the protective intimacy of prayer and the inherent discordance in connecting with God. “How good it is to wrap oneself in prayer, spinning a deep softness of gratitude to God around all thoughts, enveloping oneself in the silver veil of song! But how can man draw song out of his heart if his consciousness is a woeful turmoil of fear and ambition?”[8] “God’s grace resounds in our lives like a staccato. Only by retaining the seemingly disconnected notes comes the ability to grasp the theme.”[9]

            In Heschel’s discussion of symbols in relation to the reality of God’s presence, he writes: “Of a violinist who is moving his bow over the strings of his violin, we do not say he is performing a symbolic act. Why? Because the meaning of his act is what he is doing, regardless of what the act may represent.”[10] The will of God, to Heschel, is a known quantity, an obvious fact, “neither a metaphor nor a euphemism, but more powerful and more real than our own experience.”[11]

            Heschel understands music as a means for expressing the inexpressible.

To become aware of the ineffable, is to part company with words. The essence, the tangent to the curve of human experience, lies beyond the limits of language. The world of things we perceive is but a veil. Its flutter is music, its ornament science, but what it conceals is inscrutable. Its silence remains unbroken; no words can carry it away.[12]

And yet, Heschel also suggests the limitations of this concept. “The attempt to convey what we see and cannot say is the everlasting theme of mankind’s unfinished symphony, a venture in which adequacy is never achieved. There is an eternal disparity between the ultimate and man’s power of expression.”[13]

            Heschel differentiates between faith and creed, the former being the act of believing, while the latter is that which is believed. “Our creed is, like music, a translation of the unutterable into a form of expression. The original is known to God alone.”[14]

For Heschel, the heavens and earth are pregnant with song. He asks, “How shall we remain deaf to the throb of the cosmic that is subtly echoed in our souls?[15] God is everywhere, hidden in the essence of all of life. “The song that nature sings is not her own.”[16]

Heschel’s use of musical imagery enriches the poetic flow of his writing. At the end of Man Is Not Alone, however, he turns to the musical imagery of the prophet Amos. Heschel asks, “What does God desire? Is it music?”[17] Amos answers his question: “Take away from me all the noise of your songs, and to the melody of your lyres I will not listen” (5:23). The prophet castigates those who “chant to the sound of the viol and invent to themselves instruments of music like David” (6: 5), rather than feel the pain of others.

For Heschel, “man’s responsibility to God cannot be discharged by an excursion into spirituality, by making life an episode of spiritual rhapsody….”[18] The black dots on my musical scores remain meaningless until they are recognized, internalized, practiced repeatedly, recreated, pushed to their outer limits, exposed, and shared. For Heschel, the song is a prelude to the ultimate task of bringing the melody of a living, breathing, healing Torah to the people. If God, in search of man, breathed life into him, the exhalation breath of music is the human proof that man is not alone. 

Postscript

In 1978, Sylvia Heschel accompanied me on a concert tour of Israel, which included major recitals at the Rubin Academy in Jerusalem, the Tel Aviv Museum, and Weizmann Institute. She attended every performance I gave in New York.

Theodore Kwasman, scholar, author, and consultant to the British Museum, founded and directed the Jewish Studies program at the University of Heidelberg before becoming Professor at the Martin Buber Institute for Judaism at the University of Cologne.

This essay is written in memory of Rabbi Doctor Byron Sherwin, Heschel protégé, whose March 2014 class on his beloved mentor I attended at Spertus Institute in Chicago.

Orthodox Jews like to claim that they adhere to an unchanging tradition of laws and beliefs. Based on this understanding, it becomes possible to decide who "is in" and who "is out;" that is, who is part of the Orthodox camp and who must be placed in a different denomination. The term "Orthodox" itself, which is not part of traditional Jewish vocabulary but actually comes from the Christian lexicon, was adopted in order to distinguish different types of Jews. Yet what exactly defines so-called Orthodoxy is not so easy to pin down.

To illustrate the problem, let me give a few examples. When I was younger everyone knew that according to Orthodoxy, Jews were not permitted to ascend the Temple mount. Yet today many Orthodox Jews do precisely that, encouraged by great rabbis. A generation ago, the notion that women could read the Torah or get aliyot in an Orthodox synagogue would have been laughed at. In fact, it was precisely because of this that some women came up with the idea of a women's prayer group, at which women would be permitted to read the Torah. Yet today we have Orthodox minyanim in which women are, in fact, called to the Torah. When I was younger it was axiomatic that Orthodoxy could not accept women rabbis. Every Orthodox Jew knew that this was an impossibility. Seeing all the changes that have occurred in my lifetime, I don't think that I am going out on too much of a limb to predict that it will not be long before we have Orthodox women rabbis.

The reality is that Orthodoxy is not so much a concept as a social construct. With this understanding, it should not be surprising that what the Torah-true population regard as unacceptable in one era, could very well be regarded differently among at least some of this population at another time. It is vital to bear this in mind when considering the works of R. Joseph Messas (1892-1974). Messas served as a rabbi in Tlemcen, Algeria and Meknes, Morocco, and at the end of his life as Sephardic chief rabbi of Haifa. Although well known in the North African community, this very original thinker has only recently begun to catch the interest of both the broader Orthodox world as well as the scholarly community. Moshe Bar-Asher, Zvi Zohar, Avinoam Rosenack, David Biton, and Iti Moreyosef are among those who have written on different aspects of Messas' writings and worldview. From the rabbinic world, R. Zekhariah Zermati has recently published a collection of Messas' halakhic rulings, what he terms a Kitzur Shulhan Arukh. Even the Orthodox feminists have found what to be attracted to in Messas, as he provides the first testimony to women's prayer groups, complete with Torah reading and the donning of tefillin (Nahalat Avot, vol. 5, part 2, p. 268). He also shows great appreciation for women's learning, going so far as to sympathetically recount the stories of two women who declined marriage so that that they could devote themselves to Torah study.[1]

In order not to repeat what others have said, let me focus on the area of halakha, which is where I think one finds Messas' greatest significance. While Messas showed originality in every area he dealt with-and I don't think there was another North African rabbi who came close to his intellectual versatility-to apply this originality in matters of practical halakha required both a clear vision as well as an enormous amount of self-confidence. Messas was blessed with both of these qualities.

Some of his rulings are so far removed from the mainstream of halakhic thought that many might be tempted to regard him as outside the realm of Orthodoxy. Yet Messas was a central figure in the Moroccan Torah world and, as noted above, later served as chief rabbi of Haifa. His responsa are found in the writings of a number of his contemporaries, and his works continue to be widely cited by Sephardic halakhists. He is a good example of just how diverse Torah-true Judaism can be, especially when it is not confronted by non-Orthodox movements and thus not required to create artificial boundaries through denominational labels.

Messas grew up in Morocco where he absorbed the best of the Moroccan rabbinic tradition. This meant that he devoted himself not only to Talmud and halakha, but was also at home in philosophy, Jewish history (in particular the history of Moroccan Jewry), parshanut, and anything else that can be regarded as part of the traditional Jewish library. His three volume Otzar ha-Mikhtavim, recently reprinted, shows his great breadth of knowledge. In many ways, Messas is the Sephardic counterpart to R. Hayyim Hirschensohn. Both were incredibly original in their halakhic writings. They were also willing to investigate how much halakha could be adapted in order to take into account the realities of the modern world, when commitment to Jewish law is not absolute, even among those who identify with traditional Jewish values.

An example of this is seen in Messas' experience in Tlemcen. He arrived in the city in 1924 and found that although there was proper shehitah, the kosher butcher shops were all open on the Sabbath. At this time, there wasn't yet a system of mashgihim who would testify to the kashrut of an establishment. Instead, all of Morocco followed the old approach of relying on the personal religious observance of the butchers. This practice was based on the assumption that if you could eat in someone's house without questioning if the food was kosher, you could also purchase from his shop. Yet this principle only applies to observant Jews, and in this case the butchers were all public Sabbath violators. According to Jewish law, these people simply did not have the religious credibility that observant Jews need from their butchers.

At first glance, there appears to be no avoiding the conclusion that since the butchers were not religiously reliable, observant Jews were obligated to give up meat. (As Messas explains, it proved impossible to open a shomer Shabbat store to sell the meat.) Yet was this the only possible conclusion? Messas recognized the many problems that would arise if he declared the butchers not kosher, not least of which would be that many people would simply ignore his declaration, thus destroying any communal standards of kashrut observance. He was also concerned for the honor of his community, which was, as he tells us, being portrayed as a place where everyone ate non-kosher. He therefore offered a radical halakhic justification for the status quo. He argued that since, according to one approach in the medieval authorities, the butchers were not violating any biblical commands which in Temple days would be regarded as a capital offense, they could still be regarded as trustworthy with regard to the meat they prepared and sold. He also offered other reasons why the local butchers, despite being Sabbath violators, could be believed in matters of kashrut. Messas surely knew that he was going out on a limb with this ruling, but under the circumstances he believed that it was the only proper halakhic answer, one that dealt with the reality he was confronted with (Mayim Hayyim 1:143).

While in earlier times it was obvious that one must avoid patronizing non-shomer Shabbat butchers, Messas felt that in his era, when so many were not observant, it was important to find a leniency. This is just one of many examples where Messas shows how dynamic halakhic decision-making can be, and how it can lead to some surprising conclusions. In this particular case it was very hard for those outside of his community to agree with his conclusions. Yet as R. Nathan Neta Leiter wrote to Messas, after expressing his disagreement: "I can find one justification for you, and that is what our Sages said, ‘Don't judge your fellow until you are in his place,' and I do not know the nature of your country" (Tziyun le-Nefesh Hayah, no. 29).
This trend of Messas is seen in other responsa as well. His most famous halakhic ruling is that in an era when women generally go about with uncovered hair, it is no longer regarded as nakedness. As such, it is entirely permissible today for married women not to cover their hair (Otzar ha-Mikhtavim, vol. 3, no. 1884, Mayim Hayyim, vol. 2, Orah Hayyim no. 110). He defended this opinion at length, and a well-known Moroccan halakhist from the subsequent generation, R. Moshe Malka, later chief rabbi of Petah Tikvah, expressed complete agreement with Messas' view (Ve-Heshiv Moshe, nos. 33-34).

The approach of limud zekhut, that is, of finding justification for the practices of the masses, has a long history in Judaism. It is this approach that Messas adopts in his responsa on women uncovering their hair. Since, as he tells us, the wives of pious people do this, there was a great motivation to find it halakhically permissible.

There has always been a tension between the desire to follow the halakha as found in the books, and the competing desire to justify widespread behavior. I am not talking about justifying those who have abandoned Tradition. Rather, I am referring to the practices of the traditional community, which in the Sephardic world encompassed a much wider range of observance in modern times than that of the Ashkenazic world. In much of the Ashkenazic world those who didn't choose to be observant moved over to one of the other denominations. Lacking such denominations in the Sephardic world, the less observant found their place in the traditional community. As such, rabbis like Messas felt a sense of responsibility for these Jews. They would often bend over backwards in attempting to justify their practices, all in order that others not see them, and they not see themselves, as rejecting Jewish tradition. Some would say that Messas bent so much that he even fell backwards. This is what R. Matzliah Mazuz and R. Ovadiah Yosef had in mind when they wrote that one cannot rely on the rulings of Messas (Ish Matzliah, vol. 1, Orah Hayyim, nos. 3, 32; Yabia Omer, vol. 7, Orah Hayyim no. 44:3). Yet R. Moshe Malka states that anyone who speaks this way "will have to render an account." In other words, he has sinned against a learned and righteous man (Ve-Heshiv Moshe, no. 49).

The most radical of Messas' attempts at limud zekhut also relates to Sabbath observance. This time, however, the issue was that people were carrying on the Sabbath. This was not something new, even for otherwise traditional Jews. At that time, most cities in the world did not have an eruv, and plenty of people would carry, especially small items such as keys, as well as push baby carriages. In their minds, this was very different from driving a car or opening their stores.

Rather than regard the carrying as just another sin, Messas attempts an amazing justification, which he tells us was also shared by R. Hayyim Beliah (1832-1919), who had also served as rabbi of Tlemcen. He argued that there is no need for an eruv in order to be able to carry on Shabbat. To say that this is a radical position is an understatement, since the laws of eruv are found in all the standard codes from medieval times until Messas' day, and no one had ever suggested such a thing. In the words of R. Shalom Messas, R. Joseph Messas' younger cousin, this view is nothing less than "bal yeraeh u-val yematze" (Tevuot Shemesh, Orah Hayyim, p. 167).

Yet Messas was not one to be frightened by originality, and was thus willing to offer an incredible justification of the masses' carrying on the Sabbath. He pointed out that our cities do not have the status of a public thoroughfare (reshut ha-rabim), in which carrying is biblically forbidden. Rather, they are to be regarded as a karmelit, whose status is between that of a private dwelling and a public thoroughfare. The rabbis forbid carrying in a karmelit because of fear that one would be led to also carry in a reshut ha-rabim. But today, when we don't have such large areas that qualify as reshut ha-rabim, the decree against carrying in a karmelit is no longer applicable.

While the logic makes good sense, one must agree with R. Shalom Messas that this opinion is without any real basis. After all, beginning in medieval times, many halakhists agreed that there are almost no places that are to be regarded as reshut ha-rabim, yet they all assumed that there is still a prohibition to carry in a karmelit. Yet as a limud zekhut, Messas thought that his approach was compelling. (Prof. Moshe Bar Asher has a copy of Messas' manuscript responsum which he hopes to publish. Messas' arguments can be seen in R. Shalom Messas, Tevuot Shemesh, Orah Hayyim, no. 65).

In another responsum, Messas did not go so far as advocating complete abolishment of the restrictions against carrying on the Sabbath. However, using the same logic we have seen, he declared that there is no longer any need to be concerned with an eruv hatzerot, which allows one to carry in a jointly owned courtyard. The only reason carrying is forbidden in such a courtyard is due to a rabbinic decree designed to prevent people from mistakenly concluding that just as it is permitted to carry from their home into the joint courtyard, so too they can carry into a reshut ha-rabim. It is the eruv hatzerot that changes the status of a joint courtyard to a single domain, allowing one to carry in it. Messas argued that since we no longer have any real reshut ha-rabim, the reason for the decree of an eruv hatzerot is no longer applicable, and thus one is permitted to carry on Shabbat in a joint courtyard (Mayim Hayyim, vol. 2, Orah Hayyim, no. 110).

Another example of a rabbinic decree that he thought was no longer relevant today, and which could therefore be ignored, was that of bishul akum (food cooked by non-Jews). This was a decree in order to prevent assimilation, but (reflecting his time and place) Messas argued that there is very little assimilation, and what there is does not come about because of eating non-Jewish cooking. Based upon the reason given for this decree by the early authorities, he infers that there is no reason for the rabbis to continue to insist upon it. Along the same lines, he defends drinking alcohol which contains wine that had been handled by Muslims. He quotes a responsum by an earlier Moroccan rabbi who even permitted drinking the wine itself-Messas didn't go this far-and who had justified this decision as follows: "There is no unity [of God] like the unity found in Islam, therefore one who forbids them to handle [wine] turns holy into profane by regarding worshippers of God as worshippers of idols, God forbid" (Otzar ha-Mikhtavim, vol. 1, nos. 454, 462, Mayim Hayyim, vol. 2, Yoreh Deah, no. 66).

Normally the rule is that even if the reason for a rabbinic decree is no longer applicable, the decree still stands. This would seem to undermine Messas' approach with regard to non-Jews' cooking and wine. Yet Messas' view was that this principle only applies where there is a fear that the original reason could be relevant in the future. Yet since there is no reason to think that idolatry will once again return to the civilized world, therefore this issue is no different from the talmudic prohibition against drinking from uncovered water. Since there is no longer a fear of poisonous snakes leaving their venom in this water, there is no prohibition to drink from it. Messas cites this example and applies its logic to the cases he deals with (Otzar ha-Mikhtavim, vol. 1, no. 454).

Often Messas' halakhic decisions can find support in earlier sources, but will be incomprehensible to many because of the meta-halakhic concerns that have affected the halakhic process. For example, he permits having a cemetery for all religions if the Jewish graves are kept separate by 4 cubits (Mayim Hayyim, vol. 2, Yoreh Deah, no. 106:1). He was asked if it is permitted to view the dead and to put flowers on the coffin. A posek in Europe would not even consider such questions, because it is obvious that viewing the dead and placing flowers on a coffin are non-Jewish practices. Yet was this always the case? Messas notes that in ancient days the dead were viewed, and the reasons why this was banned are no longer applicable. Therefore, he holds that there is no problem with having an open casket. Similarly, the custom of putting flowers on the coffin is also an ancient Jewish practice, and Messas adds that the flowers help in instilling belief in the resurrection of the dead (Mayim Hayyim, vol. 2, Yoreh Deah, no. 106:3-4).

Based upon what I have written, some readers might conclude that Messas was not a serious halakhist. Yet nothing could be further from the truth. His commitment to the halakhic process in all of its parameters was no different from any of his more "conventional" colleagues, and he was a venerated member of the Moroccan rabbinic elite. It is just that he saw halakha as able to respond to the contemporary reality in a way that others did not. It is true that he came to many lenient, even radical conclusions. Not for naught was he known as Yosef ha-Matir (Joseph the lenient), a play on the expression Yosef ha-Mashbir.[2] Yet the majority of his responsa show nothing out of the ordinary, and are exactly what one would expect from a posek. In fact, in a number of responsa Messas even rules le-humra in cases where other poskim were able to find grounds for leniency. For example, when asked about a mehitsah, he states that it should be constructed so that the men cannot see the women at all (Mayim Hayyim, vol. 2 Orah Hayyim, no. 140).

From our standpoint, the halakhic rulings of Messas are not of much practical significance. As has been the fate of many other poskim, the rabbinic community did not accord him the sort of significance that allows his rulings to exercise much influence after his passing. Yet the life and works of R. Joseph Messas remain of great importance for another reason. He showed that traditional Judaism can encompass a great diversity of thought, and that even in matters of halakha, often thought to be the most "closed" of all Jewish disciplines, there is a myriad of interpretive possibilities to which we can avail ourselves.

[1] See Zvi Zohar, "Kol haOseket beTorah liShmah Zokhah liDvarim Harbeh," Peamim 82 (2000), pp. 150-162.

[2] See Harvey E. Goldberg, "Sephardi Rabbinic Openness in 19th Century Tripoli", in Jack Wertheimer, ed., "Jewish Religious Leadership: Image and Reality" (New York, 2004), p. 699.

In his book, The Perspective of Civilization, Fernand Braudel utilizes a concept that he calls “world-time.” Braudel notes that at any given point in history, all societies are not at the same level of advancement. The leading countries exist in world-time; that is, their level of advancement is correlated to the actual date in history.

However, there also are countries and civilizations which are far behind world-time, whose way of life may be centuries or even millennia behind the advanced societies. While the advanced technological countries exist in world-time, underdeveloped countries lag generations behind; some societies are still living as their ancestors did centuries ago. In short, everyone in the world may be living at the same chronological date, but different societies may be far from each other in terms of world-time.

Braudel's analysis also can be extended to the way people think. Even though people may be alive at the same time, their patterns of thinking may be separated by generations or even centuries. The characteristic of Modern Orthodoxy is that it is modern, that it is correlated to the contemporary world-time. Being part of contemporary world-time, it draws on the teachings of modern scholarship, it is open to modern philosophy and literature, and it relates Jewish law to contemporary world realities.

On the other hand, “non-modern” Orthodoxy does not operate in the present world-time. Its way of thinking and dealing with contemporary reality are pre-modern, generations behind contemporary world-time.

The differences between so-called right-wing Orthodoxy and Modern Orthodoxy are not differences in sincerity or in authentic commitment. Rather, the differences stem from different world views, from living in different world-times.

A Modern Orthodox Jew does not wish to think like a medieval rabbi, even though he wishes to fully understand what the medieval rabbi wrote and believed. The Modern Orthodox Jew wishes to draw on the wisdom of the past, not to be part of the past.

The philosophy of Modern Orthodoxy is not at all new. Rather, it is a basic feature of Jewish thought throughout the centuries. In matters of halakha, for example, it is axiomatic that contemporary authorities are obligated to evaluate halakhic questions from their own immediate perspective, rather than to rely exclusively on the opinions of rabbis of previous generations. The well-known phrase that “Yiftah in his generation is like Shemuel in his generation” (Rosh haShanah 25b) expresses the need to rely on contemporary authorities, even if they are not of the stature of the authorities of previous generations. We are obligated to be “Modern Orthodox,” to recognize present reality and to participate in contemporary world-time.

One of the weaknesses of contemporary Orthodoxy is that it is not “modern” in the sense just discussed. There is a prevailing attitude that teaches us to revere the opinions of the sages of previous generations, and to defer to those contemporary sages who occupy a world-time contemporary with those sages.

Who are the sages of the present world-time, who absorb the contemporary reality, the contemporary ways of thinking and analyzing? To be Modern Orthodox Jews means to accept our limitations, but it also means that we must accept our responsibility to judge according to what our own eyes see, according to our own understanding. It means to have the self-respect to accept that responsibility.

Modern Orthodoxy and pre-Modern Orthodoxy do not engage in meaningful dialogue because they operate in separate world-times. The sages of each generation are influenced by the social and political realities of their time. If many of our sages in the past believed in demons and witches, if they thought that the sun revolved around the earth, or if they assigned inferior status to women and slaves—we can understand that they were part of a world that accepted these notions. We do not show disrespect for them by understanding the context in which they lived and thought. On the contrary, we are able to understand their words better, and thus we may determine how they may or may not be applied to our own contemporary situation. It is not disrespectful to our sages if we disagree with their understanding of physics, psychology, sociology, or politics. On the contrary, it would be foolish not to draw on the advances in these fields that have been made throughout the generations, including those of our own time.

There is no sense in forcing ourselves into an earlier world-time in order to mold our ways of thinking into harmony with modes of thought of sages who lived several hundred or even several thousand years ago.

One of the nagging problems that bothers many thoughtful Orthodox Jews is how Orthodoxy has become increasingly authoritarian and obscurantist—how it has seemed to lock itself into a pre-modern worldview. There is a palpable drive to conformity—in dress, in thought, in behavior. Independent thinking—especially if inspired by “secular” wisdom—is discouraged or forbidden. It is as though people wish to pretend that findings of modern science may be casually dismissed; that women and men of today must think and act as they did in pre-modern times; that Orthodox life demands a strongly negative posture vis a vis modernity.

Thinking Jews should be standing up for a genuine modern Orthodoxy that insists on functioning in contemporary world-time. While facing modernity has its real challenges, not facing modernity will lead Orthodoxy into a cult-like existence-- out of touch with reality, out of touch with the needs of thinking and feeling human beings…out of touch with Torah itself.