[Avodah] Defining concern for the klal

[Arie Folger]

In a concurrent thread, RMS raised the issue of how important we consider 
Jewish unity to our 'avodat haShem. The stated implication was that we should 
aim for unity through communal institutions, and avoid Austritt.

I must say that, having seen the disorderly American Jewish institutional 
jungle, with, at the local level, a multitude of individual organizations 
dedicated to narrow goals (a synagogue here, a hospital there, etc.), and the 
much more unified approach in European kehillot (everything mostly rolled 
into one), I find equating Jewish solidarity with organizational unity to be 
a heap of nonsense. There is real beauty and power in the Jewish American 
jungle, far superior to what we do in Jewish Europe.

Rav Hirsch was not less concerned about other Jews than the Würzburger Rav, he 
surely loved them and felt dearly for them, as some of his writings attest. 
Yet, that did not deter him for Austritt and it did not deter Austritt from 
becoming (despite what many MO claim) the dominant American model. Yes, it is 
the strict organizational separation between O and R/C that enables far 
greater solidarity in the US. MO would not have existed if not for Austritt. 

What passes for unity in Stockholm (an umbrela organization with an O and a 
C/R synagogue, a rabbi and a "ra'bbai") would be unthinkable in 99% of MO 
circles.

However, stricter separation has allowed all kinds of O, whether M or not so 
M, to become more secure, by being in control of its religious destiny, by 
being able to build a core social identity within the Jewish people, by being 
able to fully dissociate itself from the eggrerious abuses of Judaism by the 
mere fact that they are organizationally separate from the transgressors, and 
by educating its children in O schools - where some non-O may be accepted, 
but on the premise of them joining an O school.

It is within this more secure O that MO has blossomed, and precisely because 
it isn't threatened by R/C, it can feel more for the klal.

That organizational separation does not equate ethnic separation can even be 
gleaned rom the very name - both in Hebrew and in German - of the Austritt 
communities. They were and still are called "Israelitische 
Religionsgemeinschaft," IOW Jewish religion society. They weren't supplanting 
the full kehillah, but rather creating a separate organization that would be 
centered around religion and the religious experience. In Hebrew, it is even 
more telling: Kehal 'Adat Yeshurun, or the community of *witnesses* *of* 
*Israel*. They weren't the kehillah, though they had a kehillah. Rather, they 
were the witnesses, who would guarantee, that if G"d forbid, everyone else in 
their locality would completely forget what Judaism is all about, would 
testify and bring the knowledge back in the public square.

By their very nature, as their names stress, they were to serve the larger 
Jewish community.

Jewish unity isn't necessarily measured by whether we sit on the same board. 
My concern for my fellow Jew might precisely preclude me from sitting on the 
same board (it did prevent Rav Hildesheimer from joining the assimilationist 
Alliance Israelite Universelle's board. For a long time he didn't even want 
to be a member - until IIRC the Dreyfuss affair - and indeed RSRH didn't join 
at all). However, how I treat such a Jew when in need, whether for welfare or 
security, and how much I care for his spiritual well being, as i shown 
through our qiruv efforts or the lack thereof, that is the true barometer of 
unity.

I must cut this short, for I have to attend a board meeting ;-)
(no, really, I am going to sleep now)

Kol tuv,
-- 
Arie Folger
http://www.ariefolger.googlepages.com