LOVE AND MARRIAGE: REFORM JUDAISM AND KIDDUSHIN’
Peter S. Knobel
rofessor Mark Washofsky of the Hebrew Union Col lege
Jewish Institute of Religion and Chair of the
Central Conference of American Rabbis’ Responsa Committee suggests that Reform decision makers can be divided into two opposite and often opposing camps on the basis of how they understand their relation to tradition. Each group bears a narrative that explains its view. He writes:
We are children of the Enlightenment . We are the descendants of Jews whose world was altered irrevocably by the breakdown of traditional society. We are no longer what we were. For almost two centuries we have been enthusiastic participants in the world of liberal modernity. We are separated from the other world, the world of tradition and authority, by a gap of spirit and of intellect that is as deep as it is wide. We retain an affection for our tradition, but we are emphatically not of it. We do not justify ourselves according to its values, its teachings and its sacred texts. Our authority, instead, is modernity itself. As religion is an evolving consciousness, our gaze is fixed to the future and not to the past. Our hope, the thing for which we strive, is to construct a religion that is itself enlightened and rational, a religion that is morally and spiritually uplifting to the Jews of modernity, one that resonates with those whose world differs so profoundly from the world of the Jewish past.
Now the other, competing story, again roughly:
A—————