On the question of the categorisation of Masorti Judaism, please forgive me for rejecting the question and answering something else, as rabbis often do!
For me, the labels don’t matter as much as authenticity, and I am fairly convinced that I am living an authentic continuation of the Jewish tradition. Masorti Judaism is the framework that I find the most hospitable for this relationship of emotional commitment and intellectual integrity between myself, God and the Jewish tradition. If a Masorti synagogue today feels aesthetically different to the way we imagine a Jewish community 50, 500 or 1000 years ago, that’s because Judaism is dynamic and has always adapted its external features to respond to the world it lives in, and that change too is authentic.
Masorti is neither a sect nor a fixed ideology, but an approach to Jewish life. All these denominational labels are a fairly new (and Ashkenazi) phenomenon, and each is both a reaction to the others and influenced by them. I admire liberal Jews for their fierce personal autonomy, and orthodox Jews for their faithful submission to the law. The labels aren’t particularly useful though: people are complex and contradictory, and I might find people with the same spiritual and intellectual approach as me in different synagogues; people also tend to self-identify for all sorts of reasons which have nothing to do with ideology. But it is important to see that all these ‘denominations’, even and especially ultra-orthodoxy, are modern phenomena. Sociologically, it’s true that many Jews who identify as Masorti are not fully observant of the commandments, but that’s a mark of our times rather than a feature of the system.
(In my time in France, I haven’t seen a big difference in Shabbat observance or in moral behaviour between members of orthodox, Chabad, liberal and Masorti communities. The main differences seem to be the shape of the rabbi’s kippa, the subject-matter of the sermon, the tolerance of the community, and how far from the synagogue people park their car.)
I want to return to what I said about authenticity. Doesn’t everyone think they have the truth and that everyone else is mistaken? How can a community accept equal participation of men and women and still claim to be a continuation of a patriarchal tradition? But so it is. I subscribe to the idea of approaching the truth through study – not only of the Torah and rabbinic texts, but of history, archaeology, philosophy, physics and anything that brings me closer to the divine truth. When I study the historical evolution of Judaism, inside and outside of the Talmud, I see how the ancient rabbis adapted Jewish ritual to life after the Temple, to changing attitudes towards slavery and polygamy, to changing socio-economic status of the Jews, to different relationships with non-Jewish neighbours. When I think of the intellectual courage and flexibility of these rabbis, I simply don’t recognise them in the orthodoxy of today. I can’t imagine giants like Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai, Rabbi Meir, Maimonides or Abraham ibn Ezra, the Baal Shem Tov or Rebbe Nachman wanting to join the Consistoire of Paris or being interested in the petty debates of today’s ultra-orthodox Israelis. (And I’m not sure if they would laugh or cry at the absurd inventions of today’s kashrut industry!)
I am not suggesting that today’s Masorti rabbis are the equivalent of any of these sages I named. But if I look around today and ask where are the courageous Jewish thinkers with commitment to what Hashem is demanding of us in the world, without fear of where their investigations will lead them, and who follow the Torah of their heart in distinguishing between right and wrong – I feel that many of them are in the Masorti world, and so that’s where I want to align myself too.
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You can find Rabbi Josh’s English version of his writings on rebjosh.substack.com
