Reasonable Doubts: Orthodox Myths (06)
CHAPTER 1: Defining “Orthodox Judaism,” Part 4; CHAPTER 2: The History of Orthodoxy, Part 1
“Authentic” Judaism
It’s Orthodoxy’s perception of itself as the default, as the only Jewish group that is continuing to practice Judaism-as-it’s-always-been, that is responsible for the contempt many frum people have for non-frum Jewish denominations and practices. After all, if Orthodoxy is the measure of Jewishness, then those who are most conspicuously Orthodox are the most authentic, and those who are farthest from Orthodoxy are the least authentic.
This is unfortunately a view shared by many Jews, not just frum people. Even many non-frum Jews see Orthodoxy as the most authentic form of Judaism. But Orthodoxy is no more – or less – authentic than any other form of Judaism. Orthodoxy isn’t seen as the most authentic because of an objective evaluation, where Jewish denominations are ranked on some objective scale and Orthodoxy is found to be the denomination closest to the “authentic” end. Instead, Orthodoxy is assumed to represent authentic Judaism, and then all forms of Judaism are measured against it. The scale measures similarity to Orthodoxy, not some ethereal “authenticity.” And no surprise, when Jewish denominations are ranked by similarity to Orthodoxy, Orthodoxy is the most like Orthodoxy.
This perception of Orthodoxy as the authentic Judaism goes so far that frum people constantly conflate “Judaism” and “religious” with “Orthodox.” When a frum person asks, “is he religious?” what they mean is, “is he Orthodox?” Most frum people hear “a religious Conservative Jew” and “a religious Reform Jew” as oxymorons.
A friend of mine who grew up Conservative and became a baalas teshuvah in college once told me that she had often been the baalas koreh in her Conservative shul “before I became religious.” I told her that she had been more religious then than I, who grew up in the Yeshivish world, had ever been.
As with everything in Orthodoxy, the further to the right you go, the more pronounced and egregious this phenomenon becomes. As just one example, in an article in the Yated Ne'eman, a newspaper serving the Chareidi community, a columnist wrote[1] that Yiddishkeit was less developed when he was a child than it is today, which gave young people what he characterized as the positive experience of voluntarily taking on religious commitments.
The columnist’s characterization of Yiddishkeit as "less developed" in his childhood is telling. Judaism is around three thousand years old. How much development could there have been in the relatively short span of a few decades? Had he said that the Orthodox community was less developed in his childhood, that would have made sense. Orthodoxy is only two hundred years old, and the communities in the United States that he is describing less than half of that. It is not surprising that a community that is eighty years old would have developed significantly over a few decades. The columnist is using "Yiddishkeit" as a synonym for "American and Israeli Orthodox communities." It’s a reflection of the implicit assumption that “Orthodoxy” and “Judaism” are synonyms.
Of course, despite the subtext of his article, it’s unlikely that the columnist would agree that Orthodoxy is only two hundred years old. While to us it’s obvious that he defines “Yiddishkeit” as “Orthodoxy,” – a relatively new movement to which a few decades are significant - he is likely to insist that Orthodoxy is just a new name for the three thousand-ish year old tradition.
I have had people tell me that Moshe Rabeinu would be comfortable in any shteibel in
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