Scanning tunneling theological microscopes: forbidden!

Rabbi Adam Frank recently wrote an essay in the Jerusalem Post about what’s wrong with today’s Conservative Judaism. It got me thinking.

I admire the good intentions behind Rabbi Frank’s cri de coeur but wonder how many of his deeply held convictions are defensible. I was particularly taken, or taken aback, by the following “ikkar” in his Ani Ma’amin:

I believe that faith in God is not supposed to be put under a microscope for dissection.

“Supposed” according to whom? The Rambam? The Ramban? The tannaim? The amoraim? For they all did. Perhaps you mean that they were allowed, but we are not? Why not? Can some of us? Who decides? (Artscroll, perhaps? Rav Amar?)

Perhaps only those whose faith is unquestioned (unquestioning?) are qualified. For, indeed, our frumer brethren the Orthodox must never have any dark nights of the soul. Never has an Orthodox day school ever been confronted with terrible doubts by its students or faculty. All is peace and light there.

And, if we can agree who makes this determination (without, God forbid, a hint of the “snobbery” that might attach to, let’s say, intellectual honesty), what happens if someone has questions about God or belief? I take it we hang a “No Dissection” sign across the Jewish soul and leave it at that. You’re in or you’re out. You believe or you don’t.

Thank goodness – that will make everything simpler. For we all know that when previous generations, greater than ours, set down the principles of faith (we might call them ikkarim), that no one had any problem with them. All, indeed, was Torah-true. Agreement reigned. Spinoza and Mendelssohn are merely figments of God’s imagination meant to test our faith, like dinosaur bones. Not to mention Maimonides himself.

Now that that’s cleared up, we can get to another of Rabbi Frank’s principles.

I believe Conservative Judaism should encourage our boys and men to wear kippot outside of school, synagogue and the home.

Again, why? Does this midat chasidut demand elevation to the top of our spiritual to-do list? The omission of women is telling – where are they? Perhaps on the cutting room floor? Behind the mechitzah of Rabbi Art Scroll?

Are we imitating Orthodoxy because we have thought these things through, or because we are looking over our right shoulder?

Do we really think that the current Orthodox complacency and (in many cases) self-righteousness is really reflective of an eternal truth, or merely the rightward swing of a historical pendulum? Are we sure that such calls to fundamentalism are really not just appeals to the fashion of the moment?

It would be a shame to abandon our ideals on someone else’s altar.