Its difficult, or at least uncomfortable, to take issue with Shmuly Yanklowitz demand for Justice, Caring and Goodness in general; its like arguing against Motherhood, or flossing.
Which is why there will always be a place for those of us with no social capital to lose.
The idea that we should be involved in making the world a better place is, in fact, not one with which Im inclined to disagree, but the tendentious description of Orthodox institutions, community and education makes me suspicious that theres more going on here. My concern is probably best expressed by a short passage from The Screwtape Letters:
My Dear Wormwood,
The real trouble about the set your patient is living in is that it is merely Christian. They all have individual interests, of course, but the bond remains mere Christianity. What we want, if men become Christians at all, is to keep them in the state of mind I call "Christianity And." You know - Christianity and the Crisis, Christianity and the New Psychology, Christianity and the New Order, Christianity and Faith Healing, Christianity and Psychical Research, Christianity and Vegetarianism, Christianity and Spelling Reform. If they must be Christians, let them at least be Christians with a difference. Substitute for the faith itself some Fashion with a Christian colouring. Work on their horror of the Same Old Thing.
Put another way, how much of this desire to do good is an outgrowth of our Judaism and how much comes from a desire to find favor with a coterie of Yankee intellectuals? Even some of the responses bend under this baggage: Gee, is it possible to talk about social justice to the right-of-wing? What can one do with people who wont accept Israels culpability in the Gaza war? Tikkun Olam is universal, but Charity and Kindness are insular (and somehow conflated with shuls and schools, which are somehow conflated with ritual slaughter; go figure).
This, by the way, is a big part of why I love Har Etzion, where R. Lichtenstein can exhort the students on behalf of the Vietnamese Boat People without moving an inch from his concentration on the parochial; where in the same breath he can lament haredi obtuseness to natural morality and modern-orthodox obliviousness to halacha; where R. Amital can support both the Rabin government and a disciples hunger strike against the Oslo accords; where R. Meidan can make common cause with left-wing Israelis but lambaste them over their inhumane abandonment of the Gush Katif evacuees. Its breathtaking to watch people dedicated to pursuing whats right, to the faith itself, even if I dont always agree, rather than to preserving their bona fides with one group or another.
Still, moving beyond the scent of Michael Lerners aftershave wafting from the manifesto, some interesting points have been raised. Among them:
1. What weight do we give to purely Jewish causes (and within those, to Jews in need, Israel, education, ritual services, etc.), universal causes (say, health coverage or environmentalism) and exclusively non-Jewish causes (Darfur, say). I wholeheartedly accept that we have an obligation to each, but its not clear to me how best to discharge those obligations.
2. Yanklowitz makes an excellent distinction between acts of kindness and working for systemic change. This too calls for an informed discussion of each ones claim on our time and attention.
3. David Wolkenfeld correctly points out that the connection to education is tangential at best. It has long been the policy of the Jewish community to use its children as cannon fodder in every cause du jour. When I was in high school it was mostly Soviet Jewry; when I was in college it was kiruv. Now that Im grown up, of course, nobody wants anything from me but money. I have always said we should leave the kids to their studies and let the grownups do the heavy lifting.
The last point is the one that should, perhaps, be taken up by the list, since it bears on whether the others are its proper subject matter.
Michael Berkowitz
