130 Mark Washofsky

contemporary Jews who have abandoned the path of full ritual observance are“apostates against the entire Torah .” They are conscious sinners , just as those who have transgressed the miztvot have always been sinners . Since they refuse to repent, the standard halakhic response(since execution is no longer practiced) would be to excommunicate them. As this remedy is hardly feasible in an age when non-observance has become so widespread, the only proper recourse for the faithful is that of self-exclusion: the withdrawal by Orthodox Jews into rigidly separate and sectarian enclaves in which contact with the heretics can be reduced to an absolute minimum. Ettlinger’s story, by contrast, calls upon the Orthodox community to accept a different vision of itself. To be sure, by describing the non­observant Jews as“captive infants” he does not mean to endorse their conduct, but he does mean that a radical transformation has taken place in the condition of Jewish life. In this new era, just as in the days of the Karaites , masses of Jews believe that they can behave in a heterodox manner— that is, in a manner that does not meet with the approval of the Orthodox authorities— without imagining themselves as sinners or apostates. They do so, like the tinok shenishbah, as a result of their upbringing, their education, and their participation in a cultural milieu that is, in their eyes, as complete and at least as intellectually satisfying as the doctrine and lifestyle of the traditional society had been for their parents and grandparents. Ettlinger does not condone this situation of“Jewish pluralism,” but like Maimonides before him he calls upon his community to recognize its existence and to learn to live with it. To put this another way, when tinok shenishbah ceases to be an abstract concept, when it describes not a particular individual but a large proportion or even a majority of the Jewish community, it signifies the breakdown not only of traditional Jewish society but also of the religious discourse that bound that society together and gave it purpose and meaning. In the absence of this discourse, this agreed-upon language of Judaic value and authority, halakhists no longer possess the rhetorical tools needed to persuade the non-observant that Orthodoxy is the one and only