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denial of the existence of the Creator Himself.” In this context, to say that the mehalel Shabbat befarhesya is“like a Gentile” makes perfect sense, since by disregarding the Sabbath and its prohibitions he denies both God and the fact of Creation. This designation, however, no longer makes sense, because the social and intellectual context in which the Jews live has changed radically. Today’s non-observant Jews may ignore the halakhic prohibitions against labor on the Sabbath , but this does not indicate that they“deny” the Sabbath as a religious institution or, for that matter, the existence of God . On the contrary: they“remember” Shabbat even though they do not “observe” it,”’ participating with evident sincerity in the ritual and liturgical aspects of the day, thereby recognizing God as Creator. Such Jews do not match the profile of the apostate who spurns Judaism and“rejects the entire Torah .”
The above arguments speak to the case of the“original”
sinners, those swept up in the first stages of the“infection” of nonobservance. Ettlinger now applies them as a kal vahomer(4 forteriori) argument regarding the descendants of those sinners, the generations“who have neither seen nor heard the laws of Shabbat .” Those generations“clearly resemble the Karaities who are not accounted as apostates, even though they violate the Sabbath , because they are simply following their ancestral custom.” They are like the captive infant raised among the Gentiles.” Indeed, the nonobservant Jews of today enjoy a more privileged status than do the Karaites , for while the latter differ with the Rabbinite tradition on essential elements of Jewish practice(Ettlinger mentions the dispute over the circumcision procedure and the fact that the Karaites do not follow the Rabbanite laws of marriage and divorce),“most of the transgressors of our time have not rejected these observances.”
Ettlinger concludes his responsum by returning to his point of departure, the position enunciated by Zuckerman with which he agrees in principle. Since, as he has acknowledged, the classical