Exercises in Jewish self-definition. My parents raised me Reform, which I never found satisfying. Ive taught in Reform, Conservative, and Reconstructionist environments. An old friend used to refer to himself reconservadox. For a while, if asked, Id use the Yiddish out of Im a pshuta yid, and liked its echo of Agnons Sippur Pashut/Pshuta Mayseh/A Simple Story. But its really just a dodge. Or Id refuse any designation and revel in the assertion of my resistance to definition. My wife, if she were interested is designation, is on the left side of Modern Orthodox. And of all the movements in contemporary Jewish thought and observance, I find the emergent Open Orthodoxy most compelling, in part due to particularly nourishing engagements with my friend Seth Winberg. Ive also employed egalidox and praxadox at times. Modern Heterodox is in the right direction, but etymologically suggest more emphatic rejection than my flexibility really entails. And flexadox is associated with young modern orthodox Jews, particularly on the Upper West Side, who take temporary liberties between college and marriage, when they move to Englewood and become reliable members of the modern orthodox fold once more, thus signifying a moderate Jewish rumspringa. I occasionally think of myself as an Aggadic Jew, but that requires extensive explanation as it threatens to suggest a wholesale disengagement from halachic participation. So, today, I announce a new, but likely unsatisfying additional coinage. Today, I am a MODERN PARADOX Jew. Well see how far that takes me. Maybe Open Paradox Judaism?
Posted on: Fri, 28 Mar 2014 15:47:12 +0000
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