by Debra Rubin
NJJN Bureau Chief/Middlesex

January 6, 2009

A leading figure in Modern Orthodoxy, speaking in Edison, urged cooperation with other dominations and the wider world on matters of common interest.

Orthodox Jews “have a responsibility to be a voice in the Jewish world and in the non-Jewish world more than ever,” said Rabbi Julius Berman, board of trustees chairman of Yeshiva University’s Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Seminary.

He went on to encourage Orthodox Jews to become involved in local Jewish federations and community relations councils.

Berman spoke Dec. 13 at Congregation Ohr Torah in Edison during a program sponsored by the Orthodox Forum of Edison/Highland Park.

“I am simultaneously a stranger and a resident,” said Berman, describing his role as a Modern Orthodox Jew. “Like you, I am a member of the human race in business and commerce, in science…. I am also a ger, a stranger, and I have a unique relationship with God, a sense of responsibility. I have a special relationship with Hashem.”

As a past president of the Orthodox Union and former chair of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Berman recounted an era when cooperation between Orthodox and non-Orthodox denominations was more common.

Berman recounted the long history of cooperation among the three major denominations dating back to the beginning of the last century.

That history, however, has been fraught with misunderstandings, according to Berman, who represented the Orthodox on the Synagogue Council of America, which disbanded in 1994 after 68 years.

Referring to the council as a prototype for cooperation, Berman said it was formed at the instigation of a Reform leader of the time, Rabbi Abram Simon, who conceived it as “an experiment” as American Jews were assimilating into the greater society.

The council comprised three rabbinical groups — the Reform Central Conference of American Rabbis, the Conservative Rabbinical Assembly, and the Orthodox Rabbinical Council, as well as their congregational arms.

The Synagogue Council “was an attempt to pull the religious community together to fight against secularization,” said Berman. “The secular organizations were pretty much speaking on behalf of the Jewish community at large. The Reform rabbinate wanted a voice to fight the enemy: secularism.”

The group took up church-state issues, such as opposition to “blue laws” that would have prohibited Shabbat-observant business owners from opening on Sundays.

The organization managed to survive in relative anonymity from 1926 until 1956, when 11 national heads of Orthodox yeshivot issued an isur (prohibition) against participation in the Synagogue Council because of the interaction with Conservative and Reform Jews.

The dispute was touched off by the decision to hold the council’s installation in Temple Emanu-El in Manhattan, a Reform synagogue.

However, it was the glaring absence of one signature on that decision that stood out — that of RIETS dean Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, the revered leader known affectionately as “the Rav,” who was a proponent of combining Torah with engagement with the outside world.

The dispute led to debate within the Orthodox community about participation in other interreligious groups such as boards of rabbis and, said Berman, “became a whole hullabaloo.”

The prohibition was eventually withdrawn as Orthodox leaders recognized the need to interact with others on a host of issues confronting the modern Jewish world.

However, in the end the council ceased to exist, said Berman, not because of any Orthodox prohibitions, but because many of its issues and functions had been taken over by other groups; and, with other matters on their agenda, “the Reform were not interested.”

Still, said Berman, there is much to gain through unity in support of Israel and other such causes that transcend denominational lines.

He cited the joint effort mounted to free oppressed Soviet Jewry as an example.

“The Modern Orthodox were part of that, and there were no problems,” he said.

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