Last week’s Mishpacha feature on South Africa’s Shabbos Project attributed part of its success to the lack of heterodox movements inSouth Africa. Well it turns out that those movements may be minuscule but they are not nonexistent.

The South African Progressive Movement issued a statement explaining that they could not endorse or join Chief Rabbi Goldstein’s call for all South African Jews to keep a full halachic Shabbos because “Progressive Judaism recognizes that different Jews keep Shabbat differently. For some Shabbat might include a hike on a mountain some gardening or Skyping with family inLondonon Friday night. For others it includes driving to shul to Shabbat dinner or to the beach for sunset. For some it might look and feel exactly as the Shabbat being promoted in the Shabbat Project.”

But lest the reader fear that anything done on Shabbat is included in “keeping Shabbat” Progressive Judaism is quick to reassure: “No clearly not. Shabbat must be holy sacred a day unlike the rest of the week.” Whatever one is doing it seems it must be restful and accompanied by muttering the words “holy” or “sacred ” in keeping with the spirit of the day.

Judaism in this pluralistic definition becomes whatever each individual Jew declares it to be.

Nothing could be more destructive to the entire concept of Torah MiSinai than the idea that mitzvos are just one option on the checklist and not a binding covenant accepted by the entire Jewish People when they said naaseh v’nishma.

The need to combat such a distortion of Torah led to the famous 1956 psak of 11 leading roshei yeshivah including Rav Aharon Kotler and Rav Moshe Feinstein banning the participation in the New York Board of Rabbis whose membership included Reform and Conservative clergy and participation by Orthodox organizations in the Synagogue Council of America which included groups directly affiliated with the Reform and Conservative movements. Such participation the signatories felt could only serve to reinforce the notion that Judaism is comprised of three separate but equal “denominations.”

That psak served as the lodestar for Rabbi Moshe Sherer longtime president of AgudathIsrael for his entire public career. When an Orthodox rabbi from distinguished lineage participated in a Federation-sponsored conference on Jewish ethics Rabbi Sherer remonstrated him for “the unwitting but nevertheless devastating impact on many confused Jews” by giving the impression that the other participants were also “halachic authorities that doctors might consult.” Rabbi Sherer frequently referred to the idea that Judaism has “three wings” as the single greatest threat to American Jewry.

THE SAME ISSUE has now arisen inEnglandin connection with participation in Limmud an umbrella learning platform which includes among the presenters those identified with Orthodoxy. But Limmud cannot even under the broadest possible interpretation be called an Orthodox framework. The program for the upcoming Limmud Conference in December for instance contains at least ten presentations that might be classified as abomination advocacy. The program includes as well more than a dollop of far left anti-Israel propaganda though how its inclusion could possibly increase the Jewish identification of participants is inexplicable.

Limmud is not a new program. What is new this year is thatEngland’s recently installed chief rabbi Ephraim Mirvis has announced that he will participate. Indeed that participation was an implicit condition for his appointment.

Recently retired chief rabbi Jonathan Sacks did participate in Limmud prior to assuming his official duties but in deference to the London Beis Din headed by Dayan Chanoch Ehrentreu he ceased doing so upon taking the chief rabbi position.

Last week a gilui daas signed by Dayan Ehrentreu the Gateshead Rosh Yeshivah Rav Avraham Gurwicz Gateshead mara d’asra Rav Shraga Feivel Zimmerman and a number of other prominent dayanim reiterated the long-standing opposition to Limmud. The gilui daas rejected the pluralistic notion of a multiplicity of equally valid definitions of Judaism and termed the “fundamental bedrock” of Torah Jews “that there is only one truth — the Torah shebiksav and be’al peh which is of Divine origin.”

Limmud the statement continued by advancing the ethos of pluralism “blurs the distinction between authentic Judaism and pseudo-Judaism and would bring about tragic consequences for Anglo Jewry.” The statement concluded by calling upon “any Jew whose heart has been touched by fear of G-d ... not to participate in any activity which is under the auspices of Limmud....”

Reaction to the gilui daas came fast and furious. Writing in the Jewish Journal British journalist and politician Daniel Finkelstein demanded “How dare you [i.e. the signatories] call me a pseudo-Jew?” But of course no one had called him a pseudo-Jew the definition of which is dependent on one’s mother’s halachic status. Rather they had referred to certain beliefs or nonbeliefs as “pseudo-Judaism.” The difference is crucial.

Finkelstein’s confusion of “who is a Jew” with “what is Judaism” derives directly from his definition of Judaism as whatever any Jew says it is. So by his lights calling his nonpractice and nonbeliefs pseudo-Judaism is tantamount to saying he is not a Jew.

A group of community leaders including many identified with the United Synagogue (England’s largest Orthodox organization whose head is the chief rabbi) issued a statement condemning the gilui daas and asserting that Limmud is “consistent with the best traditions of Anglo-Jewish orthodox rabbinic leadership — promoting an open approachable and inclusive Judaism whilst adhering to a firm halachic framework.” They did not explain how any halachic framework could encompass abomination advocacy or the expression of opinions denying the binding nature of Torah.

THE GILUI DAAS made no mention of Chief Rabbi Mirvis and he issued no response. The new chief rabbi is well-respected by his more chareidi colleagues and has been the initiator of a number of successful communal Torah learning programs.

One can sympathize with his position. He is known to have good interpersonal and organizational skills and no doubt burns with plans to revive the moribund United Synagogue. And he certainly knew that if he refused to attend Limmud the selectors would find another candidate less capable and less committed to spreading Torah learning.

The chief rabbi’s own keynote address will no doubt contain only words of Torah and encouragement of Torah study. There will be no representatives of other denominations on the podium with him. Perhaps he even hopes that his one-time attendance at Limmud will be enough. One can understand why he decided that the price to be paid by attendance is justified by all the great things he hopes to achieve.

I too have experienced the temptation of being asked to debate in questionable forums. My initial reaction has always been that I would have a wonderful opportunity to cogently present the Torah view to those not usually exposed to it. But in each instance wiser heads prevailed and told me that I was only invited (sometimes for generous fees) not for my views but for the legitimacy my black velvet yarmulke would confer on the proceedings.

And the reality remains that the chief rabbi’s attendance at Limmud will legitimize participation of other United Synagogue rabbis and open the floodgates for them to take up slots in what is ultimately a smorgasbord of offerings of which Torah MiSinai is only one. The primary goal of the gilui daas is to deter the latter rabbis. Torah Judaism is not another offering on the menu.

MORE THAN A DECADE ago I twice participated in Encounter Conferences (established as a counter to Limmud) inEngland— once inLondonand once inManchester. Both drew a large non-Orthodox attendance. Presenters also spoke in United Synagogue shuls over Shabbos and in the big Jewish schools.

The model was later picked up and expanded by Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein inSouth Africain the form of the fantastically successful Sinai Indaba. (No South African rabbis teach at the local Limmud.) Too bad the British community didn’t invest greater resources in Encounter to keep it going.

Only Losers

Since the end of Succos the Israeli Torah world has been fully absorbed in the municipal elections. That Torah world faces the biggest threat in decades and yet the focus of all its energy in recent weeks has not been on Yair Lapid but on intracommunal competition.

I once saw an Eastern European religious paper circa 1936 in an archive. The top two-thirds of the front page were devoted to a communal machlokes while a small item at the bottom of the page reported that Nazis yemach shemam had vandalized a few shuls inGermany.

In the same vein a friend told me recently of an Oberland community whose rav passed away triggering a vicious succession struggle between his son-in-law and son. Fisticuffs broke out among partisans of each candidate. And then the Nazis came. After the war a few survivors straggled back and when they saw each other they could only wonder what had seemed so important about their machlokes.

The scars of machlokes do not soon heal and the greatest damage is that on the neshamos of the participants. The Stoliner Rebbe recently told his flock: Just a month ago we were absorbed in thoughts of teshuvah. Now we are talking about internecine strife. A visitor from the US over Succos told me that in his years in yeshivah he never heard derogatory speech about a gadol b’Torah. Someone replied “That’s because America never had a culture of pashkevillen.”

Out of the machlokes in one of Israel’s flagship yeshivos a generation of bochurim have imbibed the lesson that anything is permitted as long as it’s l’Sheim Shamayim. That attitude culminated the morning after the elections in a physical assault on Rav Aharon Leib Steinman shlita as he sat learning in his home at 5:30 a.m.

One of Israel’s most successful kiruv activists told me that she is going to have a much harder time after these elections. I thought she was referring to selling Torah to secular Jews who can avidly read all the shmutz that we hurl at one another. But she corrected me: It was her own disillusionment that concerned her.

Let the spin-meisters have their day and interpret the results as a great victory for this side or that. But bottom line: We were all losers.