[Avodah] R' Angel & Geirus Redux (Michael Makovi)

[Arie Folger]

RMS wrote:
> The gemeinde position in Germany was not that the Reform was tinokot
> shenishbu <SNIP> However,
> German Gemeinde Orthodoxy, including Rav Bamberger, the leading posek
> in Germany at the time of Rav Hirsch, as well as Rav Hildesheimer, and
> as well as the Seride Esh who participated in  gemeinde activities
> <SNIP> allowed and even
> encouraged religious interaction with the non O formal religious
> communal structure.  Even though  many of the rabbinic leaders of the
> non O had grown up O - and many even had O rabbinic training - and
> that they espoused positions that made them mehallel shabbat
> befarhesya and a kofer by many shittot - the O gemeinde still
> advocated continued interactions and being part of the same community.

Bim'hilat kevodo, this picture painted in few brush strokes does not seem to 
square with reality AFAIK it (based on the works of Grauper, Lieberles and 
others). It also seems at odds with people's family traditions about what 
life was like in 19th Century Ashkenaz.

Rather, only the elite could be R, most people were traditional amei ha'aretz, 
too ignorant to be firmly established in any camp. One reason for O to remain 
within the gemeinde structure was in order to take responsibility for the 
masses.

AFAIK, Rav Hamburger and Rav Weinberg would be just as unlikely to maintain 
official contacts with the Liberal institutions as Rav Hirsch would. The 
former, however, did not want to break with the klal, provided O Judaism 
would be sufficiently acommodated for, and would have contacts at the 
neutral, social level. I would consider that more nuanced and more reserved 
than "allowed and even encouraged religious interaction with the non O formal 
religious communal structure".

The social institutions, including the community administration can hardly 
have been considered to be a "non O formal religious structure." It was, 
rather, a formerly religious structure that had become infested with the 
mistaken notion that the desirable national and regional governmental 
separation of church and state in the West should translate into a separation 
within a religious cummonal structure between that, which is subject to 
religion (the synagogue etc.), and that which isn't (the social 
institutions). Then again, once communities included R, there was little 
choice for a different, more wholesome model (except for RSRH's Austritt).

Writing from a gemeinde that, despite attempts to the contrary, always 
respected some important red lines, including the aithority of halakhah upon 
the adminstrative component of the gemeinde.

Kind regards,
-- 
Arie Folger
http://www.ariefolger.googlepages.com