This passage and many others like it reveal the fundamental
paradox inherent in minhag: at some point, every minhag is a new behavior, and while some people welcome the new, some are still deeply attached to the old. In upholding the Reform Judaism of Reform Jewish Practice against subsequent change, Freehof is merely articulating his own version of the Hatam Sofer ’s famous dictum, hadash asur mi-d’oraita.
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Notes
Lee Levinger, A Jewish Chaplin in France ,(New York , 1921), pp. Pp. 86-87. See Howard Greenstein, Turning Point: Zionism and Reform Judaism, Chico , CA , 1981, pp. 37ff. and pp. 66ff. Freehof was known to sympathize with the Zionists (in a personal conversation June 20, 1999, Rabbi Theodore H. Gordon stated that Freehof ’s sympathies were common knowledge in the CCAR, because in conversations on other subjects he would make offhand allusions) but was always a moderate by nature and had a great aversion to public controversy. He had friends on both sides of the divide and it was natural for him to attempt a mediating role.
The committee also struggled to oversee pulpit changes on the home front so that those rabbis who had volunteered for the military would not feel that they were sacrificing their postwar careers. They were not always successful. His Conservative and Orthodox colleagues on the committee were Milton Steinberg and Leo Jung. (Responsa in War Time, New York , 1947, p.i). Solomon B. Freehof , Reform Jewish Practice and its Rabbinic Background, combined edition. New York , 1963, p. 15.
Here Freehof characteristically avoids controversy through masterful circumlocution:“When the Jewish community in Palestine grew smaller and smaller, the Jewish community all over the world grew correspondingly larger and Jewry became primarily a Diaspora people.”(P. 5) His readers could decide for themselves whether this change in geographical circumstances constituted“exile” or a God -given opportunity for Israel to fulfill its “mission.”