T he Times of Israel reports that “in what appears to be a rebranding — or de-branding — effort the leadership of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah [YCT] is distancing itself from the term ‘Open Orthodoxy.’ ”

Granted that the rationale given by the school’s president is that it wanted “to focus on the important work we are doing in the Orthodox community and beyond… rather than focus on a label that… has become a distraction.” But I’d like to think YCT may be belatedly acting on the counsel I helpfully offered the Open Orthodox (OO) movement back in 2016: “My suggestion is to drop the “Open” moniker unless you want to continue to look foolish when you ‘the people from Open ’ threaten lawsuits against those who tell the truth about what you’re up to.”

Of course dropping Open and being known simply as Orthodox simply wouldn’t cut it either and so I floated a few alternatives like “New Age” and “Hope and Change” (both already taken) and Morethodoxy (which wouldn’t work because I noted “are you folks really about Morethodoxy — or Lessthodoxy? When was the last time you guys said a non-female Jew must do more of anything?).

My final pick was “Heterodoxy.” I conceded that although technically “it applies to the non-Orthodox comrades-in-arms into whose arms you’ve run as you flee Orthodoxy only that crank Kobre uses the word in that sense (and I doubt his ultra-Orthodox readers even know what it means along with most of the words in his columns). The beauty of this name is that it contains the raison d’être of your entire movement: Heter.”

To hear the YCT folks tell it they’ve never called themselves Open Orthodox even going so far as to e-mail a New Jersey Jewish newspaper to ask it not to refer to the school using that term since that’s “not a term that we use to describe ourselves nor is it part of any language on our site mission marketing materials etc.’ ” The Times of Israel report however says that the “YCT website incorporated the language of ‘Open Orthodoxy’ in its mission statement from its inception and for several years it carried the tagline ‘Where open Orthodoxy begins’… but that language is gone.” Openness isn’t this movement’s strong suit.

Ultimately there seems to be a machlokes haposkim within OO regarding what to call themselves. YCT’s president says that he corrects people who call his school Open Orthodox: “When they say ‘Open Orthodox ’ I say ‘We are Modern Orthodox. We are a full part of Modern Orthodoxy.’ ” OO founder Avi Weiss on the other hand “continues to use Modern Orthodox and Open Orthodox interchangeably noting that ‘what matters is the holy work we are doing.’ ”

Then again he has a book due out soon entitled Journey to Open Orthodoxy — probably coined before he got the memo on the name change. Timing is everything as they say and having to print 10 000 new book jackets isn’t chump change.

The name issue can be confusing to the uninitiated. On the one hand the “open” in “Open Orthodoxy” alludes to Rabbi Weiss’s description of OO as standing for “vibrancy inclusivity and nonjudgmentalism.” Yet the Times of Israel piece quotes Menashe East a YCT ordainee and the spiritual leader of New Jersey’s Mount Freedom Jewish Center who finds OO “inspiring… an antidote to the closed insular afraid-of-questions dogmatic form of Orthodoxy.” So to sum up OO is the movement that includes everyone and judges no one — except the closed dogmatic Orthodox. Or shall we say Mount Freedom is the place for everyone unless he believes in what happened at Mount Sinai.

But I think I may have an explanation for the seeming self-contradiction. The Mount Freedom rabbi you see is a signatory to a recent statement by OO clergy in response to developments at the Kosel which declared:

We stand fully as allies with our sisters and brothers throughout the entire Jewish community in support of pluralism in America and Israel. We were disheartened to read that the Israeli government has rescinded its commitment to create a space for alternative and liberal groups to pray at the Kotel and is moving to delegitimize all conversions but those done by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel…. We encourage all Modern Orthodox Jews to publicly support freedom for multiple religious approaches to Jewish life.

So yes indeed OO most certainly is of “multiple religious approaches to Jewish life” like the Reform Conservative and Reconstructionist ones just not that “closed insular afraid-of-questions dogmatic” Orthodox one.

The Times of Israel writer speculates that the decision by YCT to abandon the term “Open Orthodoxy” “may be related to graduates’ limited success in landing pulpit positions in synagogues ” and “appears to signal a renewed bid to become more acceptable within” the Modern Orthodox world. He quotes Rabbi Steven Exler the current occupant of the Riverdale pulpit long held by Rabbi Weiss who says that “[w]e don’t want to give others ammunition to write us out [of Orthodoxy]; we want to stay in.”

That’s a wonderful sentiment but so long as the Whaddya-Call-It movement’s leaders continue to deny essential parts of Torah and mislead others to do so the choice of whether to “stay in” is not theirs.

THANKS BUT NO THX The other day a friend sent me a one-line e-mail asking for a third party’s contact information. I obliged and he thanked me — I think. His one-word e-mail reply read “thx.” I responded in turn with “Yr wlcm ” prompting him to parry with “yr nt hlf as fny as u thnk.” I left it at that happy to give my friend the last word (or whatever you call that).

But I thought to myself: How did he know I was being funny? Was it that my response omitted vowels and should have read “Yur welcom ” or some such (although his “thx” did the same)? Was it my capitalizing of “Yr” that was the telltale giveaway?

The real reason of course for my friend’s response is that he knows me and that I’m an old-fashioned fuddy-duddy who still insists on writing e-mails containing full sentences replete with properly spelled (or at least spelled) words with capitalization and punctuation greetings and closings.

When I write that way it’s not because I see myself as some righteous guardian of tradition and propriety. It’s that having been raised in a time when we still used the English language to communicate using some slapdash mutation to express my gratitude or a whole range of other feelings and thoughts to another human being feels like I’m shortchanging him. He deserves and I owe him more.

For me — although perhaps not for someone who grew up on this mishmash of chicken scratches — the message implicit in writing “thx” rather than “Thanks” is that whatever small favor it is that has elicited my gratitude isn’t worth the additional moment’s worth of time and effort (if one can even call it that) needed to pound out two more letters and a capitalized T. That’s not a message I’m interested in sending whether or not the recipient appreciates the implications.

Yes I know it’s all so exceedingly trivial. “Two letters more two letters less — get a life Kobre will you?” Well actually that’s precisely what I’m trying to do. Life is largely composed of a multitude of just such trivialities of barely discernible gestures of thoughtfulness of caring of attention to detail which taken together add up to something that’s not trivial in the least. It’s called menschlichkeit refinement ethical wholeness. The letters may be petty but the emotions the intentionality the honoring of the dignity of the other that underlies them can be enormous.

So thank you Technological Age for bestowing a great gift on us. Eons ago back when it was expected that gratitude be conveyed by sending a Thank You note there was no moral greatness in doing so.

But now the opportunities abound to expend effort to employ forethought to lavish attention on our interactions with others. When we send an e-mail in conventional human language or opt for a phone call over a text message or — to get downright radical — write seal stamp and mail a letter we acknowledge the humanity of another and in so doing actualize our own.

Originally featured in Mishpacha Issue 674. Eytan Kobre may be contacted directly at kobre@mishpacha.com