ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

Let me talk one more time about Ben and Joy’s wedding, and I promise it will be the last . . . unless you insist on seeing the pictures in my wallet.

It was a full-tilt Chasidische affair and resoundingly freilach. The only discordant note was the unanticipated Kabbalah-based distress that Meta and I faced as a divorced couple, despite decades that have transpired and our now amicable relationship. Fortunately, the issue was resolved, wounds have healed, perspectives have changed and most importantly, Ben and Joy are settling into a marriage that, please God, will last 120 years in health and happiness.

This is not a clarion call to anti-orthodox sentiment. Rather, it is about our attitude to the panorama of the Jewish experience. It is about the mandate to invoke freely the healing, conciliatory words “all things considered.”

The disposition of Lubavitch to our divorced status is patently indefensible. No Kabbalistic gymnastics or holy books could convince me otherwise. My gut reaction was of complete fire-breathing rejection. So it was, too, to the craziest outer fringe of those who believe in the Rebbe’s messianism (by the way, not including the vast majority of Lubavitchers who nonetheless believe that the Rebbe is the messiah).

But, all things considered, and these are operative words, they do magnificent work throughout the world, and not all of it is about marketing Judaism. Likewise, they and the Rebbe were there for me unconditionally in times of deep personal crisis, while colleagues that are more liberal turned their backs. And I am close enough to them to know that I have not been bamboozled.

All things considered.

I can’t see the orthodoxy of tearing toilet paper on Erev Shabbos or not shaking a woman’s hand. But I can certainly see the orthodoxy of Yeshiva University creating Einstein School of Medicine and Cordoza School of Law along with a superior rabbinical seminary.

All things considered.

Conservative Judaism? A cogent and sensible theology: God calls for each generation to engage in a tug-of-war to determine its point of equilibrium between tradition and change. Attentiveness to Halacha. Vibrancy of its services. But, then again, confusion between Halachic change to accommodate the whims of its constituencies versus responsiveness to the demands of justice and social realities. I cringe at some of its capricious changes, yet celebrate its perceptiveness of the future, not merely veneration of the past.

All things considered.

And the Reform? Feh? No. Incredible scholarship. Creative educational programming. Indignant calls for social justice. Some pundits would say that they are as “orthodox” in the Torah’s cry for social justice as the self-proclaimed “orthodox” are in their meticulous observance of ritual law. But still, they seem too easily confused between Judaism and ethical monotheism. Their Shabbat services often seem more like a hootenanny than a davenen. “Did you like my Selichot service?” a Reform colleague asked me. “It was terrific,” I answered, “but it didn’t have any Selichot prayers in it.”

All things considered.

The problem must have already vexed our European ancestors, because they had coined the Yiddishism, “yeder ainer macht Shabbos farzich alien – everyone makes his own Shabbos.”

Call me a Pollyanna. Any Jewish community should be able to lop off at least a few rough edges, not to do everything as one, but to do more things as one. Otherwise, just listen to what we are inferring about ourselves. We all have “special needs,” right? In our everyday vocabulary, to whom do we refer as having “special needs”? Children. Disabled children. And what is our highest aspiration for them? To draw them into the “mainstream.”

All things considered.