The General Outline for Halachic Minimalism

Below is an outline I have written, which by means of headlines, lays out the ideas I will explore in this blog.

Halachic Minimalism  (Makorists)

Path to Jewish Unity

The Problems: Look Around you

• What is wrong with Orthodox Judaism today
• The nation has rejected “Torah Judaism”
• Sad but true statistics of the Jewish people
• There is growth in Torah, but it’s not enough.
• Kotel proclaimed “holiest site” in Judaism.
• Humras
• There are too many fences, so people trample along the field.
• Insular worlds breed corruption
• Materialism
• Power
• Lack of gratitude for “the other”
• Minority of Jews
• Pharisees “won” because the “masses” followed it.
• Power of Haredim by looking more numerous than they are.
• Everyone is a Talmud hacham, yet everyone is afraid of applying knowledge.
• Innovation is seen as tradition.
• Everyone is Afraid of “What it might look like”
• Much of modern day tradition is to davka, not be confused with some other Jewish label.
• We can’t be honest about halacha from fear of “slippery slopes”

• What is wrong with non-Orthodox Judaism today
• Stating the obvious, do we really need to?
• Right Idea, wrong method
• Rejecting the uniqueness of Judaism
• No recognizable Halacha – No foundation of agreement
• Rejection of the binding nature of ancient courts.
• “Everybody did what was right in there own eyes”
• Let’s all just be humanists
• Ignores the reality of Human psychology and the notion of the tribe.
• Recognition of the corruption
• A deep un articulated idea that the Judaism of the Galuth is not correct
• The need to learn from the divine revelation of the scientific method.
• The need to be a mensch to all people

The Sollution:  Jewish Unity     

• How do we solve these problems
• Identify The solution
• New methods of understanding structure, and how people behave, and learn.

Halachic Minimalism.

• Only demand the bare minimum from other people.  Demand the most from yourself.
• A single Halacha with clearly defined geographic customs.
• If you can’t defend your position with only the Talmud,Mishna, Tosefta and/or Tanach then don’t bother.
• Make it clear what is halacha and what is “community norms” of Galut

Willingness to keep Judaism breathing, living, growing

• A desire to make Halacha acceptable to the Nation, and not to force the nation to accept “your” halacha.
• When our tradition says one thing and Gd says another, trust in Gd.
• When reality and the texts disagree, reality wins.
• We ask Gd to return us to the days of old.  We must do so ourselves.

Educate Yourself

• What have we learned from history
• Gd rewards those who act
• Midrashim of Avraham
• Pinchas
• King David
• Ester
• Raban Gamliel and Yavneh
• Students of the Gra
• Modern Kollels
• Secular Zionists
• The Jewish people have return to Israel without a clear Messiah.
• Jewish sovereignty without a Torah based government
• All eras of Judaism have applied halacha and Torah to their “modern times”, but somewhere between the 1500s and now we stopped acknowledging that we were doing that.
• If the nation won’t accept something which cannot be defended through Talmud, Mishna, Tosefta, or Tanach, then educate the nation.
• Educate the people who have rejected “torah Judaism”
• You are not your family’s old nation.
• If you didn’t learn it from your parents, it isn’t a family custom, no matter what your rabbi tells you.
• If it’s not easy to understand, it’s easy to not remember the law.
• There is nothing wrong with those who were forced in Galut to act one way, and for us, who are in Geulah to act another.

First Steps

• Adapt teachings to the current reality, don’t reject them.
• Remove the old world Galut labels and ideas
• The Law of the nation cannot be esoteric; it must be easy to understand, and to follow.
• Within the bounds of halacha, do what makes sense.  Allow others the same freedom.
• Don’t be afraid to become “Israeli”, embrace the nation.
• Returning respect to the Knesset and the Chief Rabbi of Israel.
• Don’t write it off. Work with the system to make it better.
• No Era was ever perfect, take off your messianic glasses, and look where we are.

Ultimate Steps

• The only fix is to start from scratch, and see how we today would apply it.
• Start from scratch.
• Learn the halacha without trying to justify the actions of previous generations

Geulah

• What it means to embrace Geulah.
• Learn the customs of ancient Israel
• Make everyone mad and renew the siddur of eretz Yisrael
• The Need for Nusach Eretz Yisrael
• Gd speaks through History
• Gd uses the seemingly unrighteous to achieve goals for the Jewish people
• We assume that Gd must act one way, but He acts another
• Moav
• Cyrus
• Hashmonaim
• Secular Zionism
• Must reject things which are bad or foreign, until they are proven to be correct.
• The only Messiah is the one who (re)builds the Temple – Cyrus is the only person in tanach named “My anointed one”
• Spirituality in Judaism
• The need for the Zohar
• Religion as defined in Europe
• The Elitism of Legalism
• The need to reject the Zohar
• We are more educated today
• Separating the wheat from the chaff
• Too much superstition amongst the uneducated based on the Zohar.
• Raising the mundane to the sacred
• Fixing worlds by fixing shoes
• The miracles of Gd when we get dressed in the morning
• Miracles do not go against the science of the generation
• Spirituality through Legalism.
• A mundane relationship with the Divine.

• What it does not mean
• Our job isn’t finished
• This is not The end of the world
• It’s not ok to be happy with the status quo.
• Everything you ever learned was wrong.
• Push for the building of the Beit Hamikdash
• The building of a Sanhedrin, which adovcates for Halachic Minamilsm.

• Unity through Diversity
• A common Genome of Halacha           
• The prophets and the uniting of Judah with Israel
• Today, Israel is synonymous with Jews (Judah)
• Even if some try to deny it.

Appendix:  Crazy ideas worth playing with

• Thoughts to ponder, nobody knows, but is our world really on the same level of existence as 200+ years ago?
• Words which hazal and the Zohar use to describe the spiritual worlds, are words we use today to describe Technology.
• Are the Achronim of today, really the same as the Achronim of the 1500s?
• Finding old texts- Tichayet Hamaytim
• When you don’t see a friend in a year, you make a bracha for Tichayet Hamaytim
• Archeology as the rising of the dead
• Shadal:  "God sees how topsy-turvy the present (=mid-19th century) is and he acts for the good of his creation, knowing that each generation needs its teachers and judges. To understand how God acts, think of a king who rules over a vast empire. When he sees that his subjects in the farthest reaches lack proper supervision, he sends them leaders and judges from other provinces. So it is that God saw that the generation is orphaned, with many following nothing and nonsense. Even the sages and wise men are ineffective as leaders. So what does God do? He sends them sages and leaders from another generation. He causes old books to be lifted out of the dust piles, in order that their voices can be heard in a later generation. It is as if he returns the soul to the dead, breathing new life into the hearts of those that are straying. He turns the heart of the fathers - already dead - to the children, in order to turn the heart of the children toward their fathers. This is just in time before it's too late and the generation all goes to waste."