Reuven Hammer contradicts himself from one sentence to the next:
He writes: “….by stating that laws discriminating against non-Jews…..should not be seen as representing authentic Judaism we are [not] erasing an entire legitimate half of Jewish tradition.
He then goes on to rationalize his erasing of that tradition:
“Not everything that appears in our literature comes under the rhetoric of ‘both these and those are words of the Living God’.â€
At least this last statement contains an important admission. Talmdei Chachamim have long asserted that the rulings of Conservative Judaism have no authenticity, while Dr. Hammer and his colleagues have justified their distortions of Torah with the notion that ‘both these and those are words of the Living God’.â€
Yes, Dr. Hammer, we can agree: not every paper written by professors of Jewish literature is דברי ××œ×•×§×™× ×—×™×™×. On the other hand, the entire body of Talmudic literature is authoritative..
Here is a representative citation from the paper Dr. Hammer authored: “Practices that were valid in keeping Jews from contact with idolaters, especially at the times of prohibition of stam yenam …no longer serve any purpose. These measures were originally concerning idolaters, while we live in societies whose inhabitants are not so categorized. As previously indicated in the 1985 Teshuvah on wine written by Rabbi Elliot N. Dorff, today such prohibitions serve no purpose, are not effective in preventing intermarriage...â€
Well, thank you for teaching Chazal what is effective in preventing intermarriage! (while presiding over a movement whose disappearing adherents are doing precisely that).
But, it is not enough for Dr. Hammer to take on Chazal, he finds fault with laws of damages and usury, open Talmudic rulings based upon clear Torah verses. Then, following in the steps of Yair Golan, he claims WE are not being mindful to the lessons WE must learn from the Holocaust: “If there is one thing we must learn from the Shoah it is that anything that teaches that one group is superior to another leads inevitably to mass slaughter……we have a moral duty to eliminate such teachings from our own tradition†– here he effectively equates our Torah with the murderous hatred of our worst enemies.
Perhaps, there is actually one consolation in all this: Dr. Hammer and his colleagues are aware that nobody is really listening to their pronouncements, not even among their own dwindling constituency. Certainly, no one looks to them for moral guidance, instruction in Jewish Law, or what kind of Judaism to teach our children. Ten minutes of fame can likely be garnered in a release to the secular press, and I am sure they have generated many ‘likes’ on Facebook, but there is not a vibrant Bais Medrash anywhere in the world that will even bother to analyze and study their rejectionist ideas.
Heshy Grossman
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/13/2016 07:19AM by mlb.
