18 Mark Washofsky

nature; Jewish religious liberals thus have little use for halakhic thinking and should not waste their time trying to reform, reread, or otherwise,“kasher,” the recalcitrant texts of the Jewish legal tradition. To our right are those in the Orthodox camp who, deeply devoted to the halakhic process, reject our liberal halakhic conclusions as uninformed, misguided, or just plain wrong. As they see it, our “evolving” or“sane” halakhah is not halakhah at all but a pastiche of liberal political and cultural values masquerading as halakhah. The decisions we render in its name violate the correct interpretation of the sources and texts of Jewish law. And since no authentic Jewish practice exists outside the framework of halakhah, it follows that our practice is not and cannot be considered as authentically Jewish . Oddly enough, for all that separates the religious outlook of these two groups, they are at one in their definition of Jewish law. Both see halakhah as a body of objectively correct legal decisions. That is, there exists something that one can identify as“the” halakhah, a collected mass of rulings, interpretations, and behaviors that comprise the authoritative core and content of Jewish legal teaching. This core and content, it turns out, are identical with the understanding of Jewish law presented in contemporary Orthodox pesikah so that, according to both groups,“the” halakhah is whatever today’s Orthodox rabbinate says it is. From this, it follows that any ruling, interpretation, or behavior that differs from contemporary Orthodox pesak deviates from the true halakhah. Our critics to both our left and our right therefore consider the term“liberal Aalakhah” an oxymoron: any suggestion that we might arrive at a conception of an“evolving” or“sane” halakhah through the study and application of the sources of Jewish law is but a snare and a delusion. There is no halakhah other than the currently existing body of substantive rulings, interpretations, and behaviors that bear the name.2 Our choice is simply to accept or reject this body of rules in toto. On that point, the two groups diverge; they are united, however, in denying any intellectual justification to our efforts to derive a liberal halakhah.