[Avodah] Normal People Don't Care About Those Things

[Meir Shinnar]

Several points

1. the first person I know who is explicit about actions being primary is Mendelson. While he is viewed now by many as Reform,in his lifetime he was viewed by most to be Orthodox.

2. One has to define what one means by the Orthodox community carefully. In my daughter's dayschool in Philadelphia, I was told that denying gilgul neshamot was kfira. Bringing source such [Saadia Gaon was not relevant. However, if you go to, say, the Israeli religious academic community, the definition of what is acceptable would be vastly different. Eg, American Orthodoxy struggles with its response to biblical criticism. For most, if they knew of, say response of people such as Mordechai Breuer z"l or Yehuda Brandes, they would be shocked ( eg, see the Orthodox forum volume on Modern Scholarship in the study of Torah)

 3. Yeshaya Leibowitz comes closest, as for him the content is one is shomer Mitzvot - not any specific credo. He is accepted as Orthodox by most of the non haredi Orthodox in Israel. Even though most disagree with him

4. WRT radbaz, in the end, he is relevant. Yes, he recognizes some belief as necessary, but in the end, it is fundamentally not a major criteria. Eg, if I know someone is a kofer, but does not teach or preach- he remains a part of the community. If he publicly violates Halacha - he is not. So belief is not a criteria of belonging - but the action of teaching wrong beliefs is.

5.Menachem Keller  has a book on Must a Jew believe anything that might be relevant…as well as Marc Shapiro’s book on the rambam’s ikarei emunah- where he shows that the actual required belief , which he agrees does exist - is far smaller than most of the orthodox community now accepts

In the end, the Orthodox tent is far broader than most of the Orthodox community realizes…

Meir Shinnar
On Jan 14, 2026 at 07:29 -0500, Micha Berger <micha at aishdas.org>, wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 07, 2026 at 01:11:14PM -0500, Meir Shinnar via Avodah wrote:
> > Wrt discussion about role of belief in determining Orthodoxy, I know of
> > many classics tshuvot discussing status of mechallel shabbat befarhsia..
> > There are not that many early tshuvot discussing belief as determining
> > status, even though the Rambam clearly believes it does.
>
> I though this discussion was about which things people care about when
> making a religious decision.
>
> And so the limits we were discussing were the limits of the Ism, which
> ideas are withint the conceptual range we call Orthodoxy.
>
> That is different than judging who is within the Orthodoxy community. You
> cite a teshuvas haRadvaz:
>
> > the tshuva of the Radvaz (4:187) ...
> > argues that any position that we may think
> > erroneous, even if violates the 13 ikkarim -- but is reached through
> > one's thought, does not render one a kofer -- and does not violate one's
> > hezkat kashrut --
>
> But it does not change the limits of O ideas, it just says that there
> are people who believe things beyond those limits but are still part of
> the Orthodox community.
>
> For that matter, the Radvaz assumes there are limits to belief, and then
> pardons someone who gets beyond those limits through honest and unbiased
> intellectual explorations. His statement makes no sense if he denied
> the concept of iqarei emunah or somesuch.
>
> So if you want to say that it wasn't Reform who first claimed that
> Judaism -- again the Ism -- is about behavior to the exclusion of being
> about belief, you have to point elsewhere.
>
> The Radvaz, by writing about the status of a Jew who believes the wrong
> thing but for the right reasons, presumes that the concept of "believes
> the wrong thing" has meaning.
>
>
> -----
>
> That's may take away point. But I want to discuss this too, if it
> doesn't distract attention away from my thesis (above):
>
> > Rav Chaim disagrees (nebbish gofer),
>
> We don't have the phrase from R Chaim directly, but according to R
> Velvel (Haggadas Beis Brisk), it's his description of the Rambam's
> position. Since the Rambam in his haqdamah to Mishnah Pereq Cheileq (MB:
> and in the Moreh) says that correct belief is the cause of nitzchiyus,
> not surviving into olam haba is not a function of why one doesn't believe.
>
> It isn't clear that R Chaim holds like the Rambam he was explaining.
> All I can say is that the expression being an idiom does make it far
> more likely that people repeat it thinking he does.
>
> But let's assume for a moment (*as a hypothetical*) that he did mean he
> himself thinks that apiqursus excludes one from gen eden. That still
> doesn't mean the same person qualifies as an "apiqoreis" in halachic
> halachic rulings about how to treat them. One can accept the Rambam's
> hashkafah about yedi'ah about The Nitchi causing nitzchiyus and
> still accept the Radvaz's ruling that such a person could still be
> part of the community.
>
> R Aharon Soloveitchik doesn't necessarily hold like his grandfather, and
> his grandfather doesn't necessarily hold like the Rambam he was explaning.
> But RAS did rule that one could count a tinoq shenishba who was raised to
> embrace kefirah toward a minyan -- but for reasons specific to minyan,
> only if his beliefs leave the concept of tefillah meaningful. I.e.
> in principle, the nebich an apiqoreis is are part of the O community in
> general. And the Rambam could still say they can't survive in gan eden.
>
> --
>
> But back to reinforce what I intended to be the thesis of this post:
>
> As far as I know, denying that Judaism has mandatory doctorines is
> indeed a Reform canard. And actually contradicted, not supported,
> by the Radvaz.
>
> Tir'u baTov!
> -Micha
>
> --
> Micha Berger The day you were born is the day G-d decided
> http://www.aishdas.org/asp that the world could not exist without you.
> Author: Widen Your Tent - Rav Nachman of Breslov
> - https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF
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