[Avodah] TIDE and Austritt

[T613K at aol.com]

Old  TK:  Non-recognition of Orthodox rabbis who reject first-degree austritt 
is  second degree austritt.  Nobody seems to advocate that in America 
anymore, for various  reasons. 



RRW:  >>I don't agree. YU , OU,  RCA have been shunned DAVKA because of some 
degree of co-ioepration with  R's and C's.  With regard to both military and 
hospital types of  chaplaincy such co-operation is indispensable. It simply 
works that way.   And you seem to suggest in an earlier post that it can be 
avoided. It is  virtually impossible.
TK:  YU and the RCA have been "shunned" because the  rest of the Torah world 
considered them to be dead wrong about some very  important issues, but the 
"shunning" is nothing like what went on in  Frankfurt.  It's more "coolness" 
than actual shunning.  The boundaries  between YU/Modern Orthodoxy and 
yeshivish/black hat Orthodox are extremely  porous in America, quite unlike the wall 
that separated gemeinde from austritt  Orthodoxy in Frankfurt.  I personally 
advocate a degree of coolness towards  YU that falls far short of "shunning."  
Some of my best friends.....
 
As for the chaplaincy, it is questionable whether it is  permissible for an 
Orthodox rabbi to be an army chaplain, since it is almost  impossible to avoid 
interacting with R and C chaplains as colleagues  and fellow officers.  In a 
hospital setting it is easier to avoid the  "other" rabbis.
 






Old TK:    Partly it has to do with the totally  different communal structure 
we have in America vs Germany, where there is  no one united community anyway 
and no one rav who is the authority of the  community.  To reject the 
authority of Rav Hirsch or his successor /in  Frankfurt/ would be the height of 
chutzpa, and to many it would be literally  unforgivable.    No rav in America 
holds such a communal  position.



RRW:  What we do here in America is NOT  related to Hirschian Austritt

 
TK:  Not related at all?!  I don't know how it's possible to say  such a 
thing.








Old TK: Personally I advocate austritt of the first degree but not of  the 
second degree, partly because that is the position that my father and  other 
advocates of austritt held and partly because it is quite  literally impossible 
to carry out a policy of austritt in the second degree  -- you would have to be 
a hermit living in a  cave.



RRW:  But that was Hirsch's point. Remember  [3rd time] an Austritt butcher 
in Frankfort was not aware of "frum" Geminde  O's until he went out of town on 
vacation. Shortly before his passing he  reported this story to me and said it 
was "wrong" in a very stern Yekke way.  To be shut-off from frum 
Talmud-loving Observant Jews in the same town was  wrong. It was doubly so in the Nazi 
era. 

TK:  It was the Gemeinde O's who did wrong originally in the 19th  c. by not 
accepting the authority of the Rav of their community, who was  also one of 
the Gedolei Hador, Rav Hirsch.  If you have read about the  kinds of pitched 
battles that went on between O and R and the pure evil  perpetrated by the Reform 
in Germany, it makes your blood boil to think that  there were Orthodox Jews 
who were prepared to turn their backs on a tzaddik  yesod olam like Hirsch and 
make common cause with the Reform -- sworn enemies of  Torah.
 
 
 









Old TK:  BTW I don't remember my father ever using the word  "austritt" and I 
am using it rather loosely as a short-hand way of saying  "Don't give C and R 
rabbis or their movements any public recognition as  rabbis or as movements 
within Judaism."  If somebody can come up with a  better word please let me 
know.



RWW:  But that is not a Hirschian  model

 
TK:  You mean that is not a Frankfurt model.  But my father was  very much a 
Hirschian Jew.  He derived his principles from Hirsch.  
 


--Toby  Katz
=============






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