Beyond Resonable doubt

I am racing my way through 'Beyond Reasonable Doubt'. I've read about a chapter a day which is good for me being, as Alec puts it, slow of reading.

( Just to give you some background )

Understandably his book is obsessed very preoccupied with biblical criticism to the extent that he almost seems to dismiss any other method of jewish learning or Bible study. It reminded me of a rabbi I met at Limmud who said 'Hypothesising about who wrote the Torah is all well and good but once you've accepted that it wasn't written by Moses it all gets a bit dull compared with reading the thing.' His main objection to Reform appears to be that he was raise Orthodox and their services are just a bit too churchy.

Where's the elephant?

Reading 'Beyond Reasonable Doubt' has helped me clarify in my mind the difference between the different denominations. It basically revolves around how they work out what is right or wrong. Imagine, if you will, that morality is an elephant that everyone is trying to locate but can't see. Different denominations have different approaches to finding the elephant.

Orthodox say "I know where the elephant is because G-d told Moses of Mount Sinai and then filled in the gaps by telling the prophets and endowing the rabbis who wrote the Talmud with divine insight. One can disagree on some aspects of the finer details but when not sure about something it is best to go by the decision of someone who has studied these things a lot such i.e. a rabbi."

Masorti/Conservative say "We don't know where the elephant is exactly but we know that our ancestors have been looking for it a very long time. Either by divine providence or natural evolution of ides we reckon they probably got reasonably close so our best chance of finding the elephant is to look where they looked."

Reform/Liberal say "We don't know where the elephant is so everyone has to look for the elephant themselves using the evidence available to them. As none of us know where the elephant is we shouldn't criticise each other even if we think they're looking in the completely wrong place and we've a lot more experience elephant hunting than them."

(no subject)

The more observant of you will have noticed that I have added two new tickers to my user info. This is because I have booked to go the a Hebrew Ulpan (language course) in Cambridge and Limmudfest.