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

[Micha Berger]

On Thu, Jan 22, 2026 at 09:08:58PM -0500, Meir Shinnar via Avodah wrote:
> Looking at my post, I wasn't sufficiently clear. I fully agree with
> Ilana that Mendelson is Orhtodox My point is that while Mendelson was
> considered Orthodox in hisletime, late on more and more people considered
> him trade -- and my guess is that most haredm or hared adjacent who know
> who Mendelson was would think of him as trafe.

> RMB first agrees with me then in a second post, disagrees.

Kind of. I think it is true that Mendelsohn the person belonged in
the O community, but whether or not I would consider his beliefs
Orthodox depends on whether they were more likely to evolve the way
they did or not.

I happen to think his seeds were far more likely to leed to Reform
than not.

I happen to have recently learned that RSRH thought that it wasn't what
Mendelssohn wrote that led to Reform, but what he didn't write; that it
was because his work remained uncompleted.

But in any case, my whole thesis is that "Orthodox" means a bunch
of things (and this list grows with each post):

1- having a place in the O community.

2- having beliefs that justify being observant.

3- having beliefs that conform to pesaqim about who the rest of us
   can accept with regrad to stam yeinam, shechitah, geirus... Which
   AFAIK, is a loose defintion of the 13 Iqarim. (Pace R Melech
   / Dr Marc Shapiro)
   Although most of us hold lequlah, that it's not only the beliefs
   that actually decide whose wine we can drink, it's still a
   component of the din. But look at the next bullet item.

4- not being an actual min, apiqoreis or kofeir because one's beliefs
   don't conform (#3, but for reasons that don't make one culpable
   for that lack of belief (Radaz)
   This definition includes the previous as a criterion, but shifts
   from discussing "one who has O beliefs" to one we can actually treat
   as O by adding culpability.

5- according to the Rambam and those who follow him to link olam haba
   to belief / knowledge rather than primarily being about ethics /
   intended behavior, having beliefs that cause one to reach gan eden.
   I think this is best left to (1) people who agree with the Rambam
   who are also (2) Hashem's accountants, or looking at themselves
   only.

And without paying attention to this distinction, I will seem to
contradict myself more often than I actually do. (Which still isn't 0,
which is how the list of possible referents of the word "Orthodox"
keeps on growing.)

> Nor do I personally think that believing heresy always makes one
> halachically someone we must treat like a min, apikoreis or kofer...

But it could be grounds for avoiding what they teach, anyway. After
all, you don't want to absorb such heresy.

As I said, I think that with 20:20 hindsight, we can see that much of
what Mendlsohn thought violate the second definition I ofered for being
Orthodox -- his beliefs did not sufficiently justify observance. And
that's why R evolved from his writings. Contrary to RSRH and R Ezriel
Hildesheimer's opinions of Moses Mendelssohn, with the advantage
of hindsight, I think the writing was on the wall.

That doesn't mean I think he was a min, apiqoreis or kofeir. Or even that
he believed something heretical -- although I haven't a position either
way on that one, not having read enough of his writings. But because he
didn't give sufficient logical reason to observe, he did end up crossing
what I called definition #2.

Getting back to the original claim, I think that Mendelssohn's position
that Judaism is a "revealed legilsation" consisting of law, behavior and
action, to the exclusion of "religion" and beliefs, directly led to R.
Because behaviors without justifying beliefs never stand unchanged.

And therefore even after all the thought this conversation has generated
(so far) I still think it's fair to say it is an idea promulgated
by Reformists.

Personal opinion, of course.

That said, I also still stand by Mendelsshon having a place in the
Jewish community, having beliefs that allow us to drink his wine
(never mind the question of culpability for not having such beliefs).

I will ignore the Rambam and beliefs necessary for olam haba because
frankly, I think it's a product of his Aristotilianism that no
significant part of our chevrah buys into anyway. (Ranking middos
and mentchlachkeit as secondary to yedi'ah might be something
many of us subconsciously do, but I don't think any of us actually
want to have those values.)

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 Life isn't about finding yourself.
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   Life is about creating yourself.
Author: Widen Your Tent               - George Bernard Shaw
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF