Chabad, Modernity & Jewish Pluralism - Friends or Foe?
Judaism, Jewish Community, Living Jewishly, Politics of Religion, Reform, Orthodox April 11th, 2007I came across an interesting news article in one of my RSS feeds this morning and it got me thinking about community, diversity and my own status as a Jew.
I suppose another reason this topic is on my mind is that I have realized that pretty soon I will be finding myself smack dab in the middle of the Chabad community in Los Angeles. A community which by the way doesn’t really consider me to be a legitimate Jew.
Before I get into all of this I do want to make it clear that although when it boils down to it, I am not a fan of Chabad the organization. However I have also found benefit in many different aspects of the work that they do as an organization.
Their web presence is phenomenal and has helped me (and certainly other liberal Jews as well) immensely in terms of developing my own level of Jewish literacy. Also the community I had the chance to participate in for six weeks while visiting Tamara showed me how tight and caring a Jewish community can be and that is something commendable. I have several friends who are Chabadniks and I value their friendship and perspectives on a wide range of subjects but I have to separate them from the organization in order to do it.
Unfortunately when I try to look at things objectively, I can’t help but recognize that Chabad as an organization is prejudiced against liberal streams of Judaism as well as ethnocentric, heterocentric if not homophobic and by simple virtue of being ultraorthodox sexist.
All of which unfortunately leads to a multitude of discriminatory practices, not to mention (in my opinion) ongoing attempts to undermine many of the reforms found in liberal Judaism.
For example recently in Montréal a community Mikva which is administered by a Chabad Rabbi has for the first time in 26 years shut off access to converts. This is not a Chabad built Mikva and from what I understand it is a communal facility built for use by the general Jewish community including non-Orthodox streams. It should be noted that this prohibition applies to all converts including those converting under Orthodox, Conservative and Reform Communities. However allegations have been made that this is an attempt by Chabad to interfere with the non-Orthodox conversion process. You see there are other Orthodox Mikvas in a community where halachick conversions can be conducted but this community Mikva is the only one available to non-Orthodox converts, therefore creating something of a problem.
Of course the official reason given was that an increase in conversions has led to an overuse of the facilities making them impossible to maintain. But according to the article over the past year or so the majority of orthodox converts have been using a Mikva located at another facility. Therefore it would seem that when the rabbi is referring to overuse, he’s really referring to overuse by a non-Orthodox converts. I for one see this evidence as anecdotal and that best circumstantial but considering my own experiences with Chabad and their views towards non-Orthodox conversions, believe there is indeed reason for concern.
Regardless of whether or not the intent behind the prohibition is malicious it highlights a situation which should not be tolerated by the broader Jewish community. It also serves only to reinforce many of the concerns and skepticism that liberal Jews have about Chabad. Also looking at this from a personal perspective it’s something that definitely concerns me. If I lived in Montréal and was converting now I might not be able to complete the process and that would have just been sad.
Also of interest and I should add the story that prompted this very post, is the recent announcement that a Chabad Rabbi has been denied affiliation with Princeton’s Center for Jewish Life (CJL) because there were concerns with Chabad’s practices as an organization as well as with this specific Rabbi.
This post is becoming a little too long so I won’t go into all of the juicy details but you can read the entire article over here and I will share a few quotes which caught my eye.
“The issue ultimately is that for Rabbi Webb, he’s trying to practice Chabadism which is bent on coercing other Jews into its rubric,” Skloot said. “And that coercive ideology is fundamentally problematic. Pluralism has never been their strong point.”
Skloot also said that Webb has “proven that he’s an untrustworthy figure.”
He added that while there are many strains of Judaism, “Hillel as an institution says all of those are recognized forms, and yet Chabad would not allow and denies the authority and the legitimacy of those movements except itself.” Hillel is an international campus Jewish organization of which the CJL is a part.
As a progressive Jew I’m glad to see that people are standing up for their convictions and saying enough is enough. I am a pluralist, a liberal and I don’t believe that fundamentalism should be tolerated in the broader community. I’m glad to see people are saying no to Chabad’s prejudices and absolutism, which is antithetical to pluralism. I do believe that Orthodox Jews have every right to practice the Judaism that makes sense to them but the reality is that they are a minority and they need to learn how to cooperate and exist within a pluralistic framework.
The bottom line is that we as liberal Jews have a responsibility to send out a loud and clear message that halachick elitism is no longer something that is going to be tolerated. Because unless we do incidents like the Mikva banning in Montréal are going to continue and progressive Jews along with their rabbis and institutions will always be second-class citizens in Israel. Reading stories like the one about the CLJ at Princeton are important because they are evidence that we can in fact create positive change if we want to.
I recall writing a post last year where I stated there was room in my Judaism for Orthodox Jews but that I feared there wasn’t room for me in theirs. Today I still feel like there’s room in my Judaism for them but I now understand that certain things simply should no longer be tolerated. If they don’t want to count me as a minion that’s fine but denying my status outside of their synagogue or in terms of Israel is unacceptable and will be fought tooth and nail. If they don’t want to attend shuls led by women rabbis that is their prerogative but their sexism and prejudice towards female rabbis and those of us who are fine with such things can no longer be tolerated.
And on that note TTYl.
Be Well
Technorati tags: Chabad, Princeton, Liberal Judaism, Jewish Community, Jewish Pluralism, Jewish Center for Living
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April 11th, 2007 at 3:22 pm
sorry I’ve been out of the loop for so long TG- your comments to my blog have been really funny. Thanks.
As for this problem of fitting into an orthodox world when you come from a reform perspective- I hear you. Its tough, but sometimes the Jewish liberal crowd can be just as exclusionary. For example- holding events for the Jewish community at large and not serving Kosher food. There is, I agree, a kind of insularity that exists in the orthodox/ultra-orthodox community that I find difficult to deal with, but as you said, a tight knit Jewish community is wonderful thing and they couldn’t be tight knit without being exclusionary to some degree. I hope that by being with Tam, you will be able to be welcomed and embraced.
April 11th, 2007 at 4:15 pm
Hi you two.
Amishav, I don’t understand something. At the end of your comment you write: “I hope that by being with Tam, you will be able to be welcomed and embraced.”
I don’t want to assume anything, but the way that reads, it sounds as if you’re suggesting/thinking that I am like a “pass” card for TikkunGer to fit and be accepted into the community I belong to? Please forgive me if I read into this wrong.
The problem with that comment if it is meant as I read it is that TikkunGer and I do not want to be praying at a shul where he/WE are not recognized as Jewish or legally married by Jewish tradition. We are definitely not trying to have him “fit” where it is clear that the beliefs held there and our own don’t match.
You see, I do love the people who show up at the shul I go to. It’s not in the middle of a Chabad neighborhood but the shul is run via Chabad and holds all the tenets of such a community. Now, the congregants are of all streams. Many are far far far from religious but love the people and the events just the same. However, even myself, who is active and “known” at my shul, rarely daven there. I must admit, I rarely daven anywhere besides my home. I’m getting off track here…The point is that we both love the people there and will go to events, Shabbat dinners, I’ll go to women’s circles and things like that. BUT…as far as a religious community, we will be searching for one in which we both feel loved and welcomed AS we are and not for how we COULD be.
April 12th, 2007 at 4:26 am
Hi. Great post. You said a lot of very significant stuff. I find that another issue that comes up for me is that a lot of less observant liberal Jews tend to take the claims of Orthodoxy to exclusive authenticity more seriously and relate any increase in religiosity to becoming “more Orthodox.” By doing so Judaism ceases to become a religion of many flavors and becomes a system of increasing levels, the highest of course being when you’re ready to take on Sephiroth and prevent a giant meteor from destroying the world, but I’ve digressed.
This mentality within the liberal community is both a self-delegitimtization and a stumbling block for those who would embrace unorthodox spirituality and its expression. I know that within my own family when I became more observant I had to frequently deal with questions like, “Are you going to become Orthodox?” as if Judaism is less of an open-ended journey, a process with no particular destination but God, and more of a linear path that leads from unobservant to Reform to Conservative to Orthodox until eventually you’re a black hat-wearing haredi, bypassing things like Renewal and Reconstructionism because they’re the other guys who don’t fit so neatly into the level-up system of Judaism, the “I see another mitzvah. Better incorporate it to become a better Jew” mentalitiy.
However, I think it’s a bit more like an mmorpg than an rpg, a game where you get to decide what will become of you, what form your life will take, and what way of playing the game is most skillful.
Getting back to what I was saying before, it makes it much more difficult for a liberal Jew to be observant in their way without the less observant folks they know considering them “going frum.” I think some of the difficulty stems in the fact that much of liberal Judaism is simply a rejection of the historical norms of the halachic system. It doesn’t really replace the old approach to the system with another methodology that’s more fluid, flexible, and focused on recognizing the individuality of individual Jews. There’s nothing that concrete. And this in turn legitimizes the idea that liberal Jews are wishy-washy and only do what they “feel” like. Now of course this is often not the case and there can be many complex reasons for individual choices, but without an established system to me I still hear the echoes of the voices of our forefathers in the haskalah who said, “Eh, let’s move Shabbos to Sunday. Then we can be more like everybody else. We can serve scallops wrapped in bacon at kiddush.”
The stumbling block that this creates is especially true for those who want to connect to tradition and be validated without obligating themselves to the whole megillah, or who want the whole thing but want it on different terms than those being pushed by the Orthodox community. As a capricorn the need to have some type of foundation to climb sometimes comes up for me but I’ve had less difficulty accepting Judaism as the evolving totality of klal yisrael and its creations and not as a single cell or organ in the Jewish organism. But for some it really does seem to be an issue. The other stumbling block it seems to create is turning off non-observant liberal Jews to any type of ritual embracement of their spirituality because they really don’t agree with Orthodoxy. It also means for that same type of Jew and others like her that more traditional texts, even those that existed well before the establishment of the denominational system, might be considered tamei. There really isn’t anything harmful about those texts of our people that defile the hands.
One last thing and then I will stop yacking. I wanted to sugest this website to you and Tam, which you may have heard of anyway: http://www.shulshopper.com
Shalom u’vrachah.
–Mal
April 12th, 2007 at 12:18 pm
Where I live, even though there is a substantial liberal Jewish community, there is no mikva that we can use, because they are all under the control of Chabad and Chabad will not allow converts under liberal streams of Judaism to use their precious pure facilities. I will have to travel about 2.5 hours to find the closest mikva where I will be welcome.
As for your living among a community that will not consider you a legitimate Jew, if it were me, the feeling would be very much mutual. I will consider them Jewish no sooner than the moment at which they consider me Jewish. They are the ones who strayed, not us liberals, born or converted Jews.
April 12th, 2007 at 6:35 pm
I was suprised to read Zed’s comment too. When TG and I talked about it it suprised me because I lived where Zed lives for ten years. I know of a Chabad mikvah. I know of one at a MO synagogue…and so, I went to do some research.
In researching I came across this article,http://www.jewishjournal.com/home/preview.php?id=7412
it’s really interesting and I was thinking there might be one down in TJ. But as I did more googleing I found this article about the same person which leads me to think the nearest one is up here in L.A. http://www.jewishjournal.com/home/preview.php?id=7412 It really is odd.