Wednesday, July 22, 2009

The latest trend - the modern Jewry. (part two)

Many people have a tendency to think that Orthodox Judaism looks just the way it was 3,000 years ago. What we fail to realize is that we only same in principle, but not in the way we do things or even look like. The difference between the way orthodox people are changing and reform is that reform change is about changing into whatever direction your surroundings take you. You just go with the flow, with something new, period. Whether for better or for worse. As centuries go by that movement loses its identity and disappears, the only reason why it still exists it is because of newcomers who join that movement from elsewhere, once there it can go either back to orthodoxy or complete disappearance.
Example is by Shabbos, in some of those congregations worship on Sunday or on Saturday with gay or women Rabbis and to what purpose? Just because the issues of feminism and gay rights are in style today. Did it bring them closer to God? No. But it did bring them closer to those specific issues of the day!
Now picture a shwarma over a wine (and the amount which must make you tipsy), the rap inside it is a goat meat, much like popular version of the Arab shwarma today. If you think it is Purim time you're only one month off, it is a holyday of Passover. So, what happened over 3,00 years in orthodox world that changed it to only maror with burned crackers? Oh yeah and the wine is different.
Well, originally matzos were supposedto be different from regular bread in the fact that it must be baked within 18 minutes, no crunch, no holes required - It just never was, as Gemara Psochim describes it. Alter Rebbe has a tremendous discussion in his shulchan aruch about all the shaalos you can have with this kind of matzos after they were baked. He conludes however right at the end of the laws of Gebrochs and bent matzos, that the vast majority of these laws do not apply today, yes even Gebrochs is more of a custom than real chometz.
You see, the laws of real matza are so complicated that you need alot of practice and not just theory to know how to check if it is kosher one or not, did it become chometz or not, that if you do not know these laws intimately, then you should only let the expert do it. Well, we all started out in a jewish place of Israel and who did not know of all these shaalos with matzo and chometz?
Everyone knows it, right? Even women and children knew that passover bread needs special checking and care, they even knew how to care for it.
Then exile happened, so evben before Gemara started, Jews were so "busy" with these troubled developments that they began to forget most of these laws - and you can't just let people having a sin of eating chometz on Seder! So this is how we came to crunchy matzos, and different wine, and due to absense of a Tample, we no longer have a goat. and with the comlition of the Writing of our ORAL law (for similar reason), we even stick holes through them, so as to eliminate almost all problems that real matza can present to us.
Did it make us cool or brought us closer to issues of today? No. Now we're stock with discusting crackers. Buit it does bring us closer to God.
Orthodox people also use some good ideas from the outside world, for the same purpose as modifying certain laws or customs. For it has some benefits for us as well as for the rest of humanity, you see Orthodox population is not the one that rejects the world, but rather rejects of floating with flow of developments even if they are wrong. This is why so many of frum people don't watch television. They also know what is happening in the world, but they just need the time to filter out the events or findings or trends as they occur, so they have this filtered view of the world to keep up with their roots and to take in only those that make us better, not just "cooler".
There is still one problem remains - are orthodox filters always filter out garbage or not? No, not always and this is why every now and then we do get into problems and higher antisemitism.
So, what is the difference between 70-80's and 90's-now? That is my desperate attempt of provision of explanation in part three.

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