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| Shas Party head and Interior Minister, Arye Deri (JTA) |
One has to consider the source. Which in this case is Shas Party head, Aryeh Deri who now serves as Israel’s Interior Minister. He is a convicted criminal having served time (3 years in an Israeli prison) for of bribery, fraud and breach of trust.
That his party has chosen to resurrect his political career as its political leader is a stain on their record. Skilled politician though he may be. The price of political party choosing a criminal to lead it - who thought nothing of abusing his political position to commit fraud - is too high.
Normally I would ignore him as an unpleasant fact of life. But he has opened his mouth recently and condemned a community of religious Jews more committed to his country than he ever will be. From JTA:
The head of the Sephardic Orthodox Shas party called members of the Religious Zionist movement “borderline Reform,” an insult among his haredi Orthodox constituents.
“Even the ‘knit kippot’ today, as some know even in very large communities, mainly in the center of the country, they’re already borderline Reform,” Aryeh Deri said earlier this month at a conference of a haredi Orthodox rabbinic organization, Benoam. The remarks were captured on video and broadcast Monday on Israel’s Channel 2.
“Knit kippot” refers to the crocheted kippahs worn by the more modern Orthodox community.
It’s true, there are more kippot” in these communities than in American Reform synagogues, Deri went on. “It looks different, it’s more Israeli. But it’s still borderline Reform.”
And from Arutz Sheva:
Members of the Religious Zionist community, who tend to represent a less insular form of Orthodoxy than haredim, have been critical of the haredi Chief Rabbinate’s strict control of marriage and conversion issues in Israel. Modern Orthodox Jews in Israel are less likely to support yeshiva exemptions from army service and expensive subsidies for large families.
Deri also attacked Tzohar, a rabbinical group that has sought to make the Chief Rabbinate more user friendly and which has opposed a more stringent conversion law proposed by Shas.
“Together and in collaboration with the Reform, because they know their intention is to destroy [the Chief Rabbinate], they benefited from the baseness of others who were slandering the rabbinate and searching for faults in it,” Deri said. “They [do] everything for free, welcoming, lenient and all that, but we all know the truth.”
"Even those with knitted skullcaps (religious Zionists), in very large communities, are already on the edge of the Reform Movement," Deri said at a closed conference Monday.
To their credit, Tzohar’ responded’ with the following:
"these things are not worthy of a response, both because of their content and because of who spoke them."
Damage control is one of the hallmarks of a good politician. Deri has ‘explained’ his comments by saying that he was speaking only about those elements that are on the left most fringe of Modern Orthodoxy. He added that even many Religious Zionist rabbis have expressed similar thoughts.(Modern Orthodoxy is where most Religious Zionists find their cultural home.)
It was a nice dodge. But it doesn’t mitigate his original smear of a community of which I – as a Kipa Seruga wearing Modern Orthodox Jew - am a part of.
It is no secret that I too have my issues with the extreme left, and have spelled them out many times. I too fear that the extreme left (which is referred to by some as Open Orthodoxy) is on the same dangerous path once taken by the Conservative movement – for similar well intentioned reasons. Which is to reach out to Jews influenced by the culture in which they live and speak to the issues raised by that culture.
It is only the methods the extreme left employs in trying to do so that I (and rabbis from across the board of all of Orthodoxy) believe can all too easily lead to the same slippery slope Conservative Judaism fell into.
But certainly most Kipa Seruga wearing Jews are not in that category, including Tzohar. Although they were created in response to a growing disaffection with a Chief Rabbinate that has moved to the right - to the best of my knowledge Tzohar does not reflect the views of Open Orthodoxy. I have for example been told that in all cases where people come to them for conversion to Judaism, it is done in conjunction with the Chief Rabbinate. That some people might gravitate to Tzohar is because they are seen as a kinder and gentler option and easier to deal with than the Chief rabbinate.
And even Open Orthodoxy is not Reform. Reform Judaism rejected Halacha completely. Only recently have they started to advocate observance as a wise but not required way to express one’s Judaism.
Open Orthodoxy still requires full adherence to Halacha as expressed in the Shulchan Aruch and its commentaries. Their controversy is in how they respond to modern sensibilities in ways that challenge long held tradition. And in how they might tweak interpretations of Halacha towards that end. (As did Rabbi Shlomo Riskin recently by claiming that homosexuals are not responsible for actions that are clearly forbidden by the Torah because their nature forces them to behave that way.) While these kinds of ‘interpretations’ are rejected by mainstream Orthodox rabbis of all stripes, I don’t think we can yet say that Open Orthodoxy is not Orthodox. At most we can say they are going in that direction.
But Deri has decided that that those of us that wear the Kipa Seruga are all the same. We are just a bunch of borderline Reform Jews. His ‘explanation’ notwithstanding. That’s nice. But like I said, consider the source.