Where will the lunacy of extreme right wing Orthodoxy end? Will these rabbinic officials be satisfied only when they succeed in driving away 80% of Israel’s Jewish population, and forging a permanent rift between Israel and the Jews of the Diaspora?

There never has been a time or place with a monolithic Judaism, and there never will be. This is not a reason for distress; rather it is a cause of Jewish strength and survival. In his seminal book, The Shaping of Jewish History, Ellis Rivkin calls this the unity principal, perhaps ironically. He means that the changing challenges presented by historical development do not encounter silence from the People Israel; rather there are authentic Jewish values, practices and thought already existing in the range of Jewish experience to meet changing experience. All of these divergent Jewish modalities arise as Jews interpret their response to their relationship with God, and this common feature is the unity which underlies the variegated expressions of Judaism.

The rabbis teach us that each Israelite at Sinai heard a different, customized content in the one Torah interred by the one God. Of course, this is simply how communication works, and communication between God and human beings is no exception to the rules. —Rabbi Kerry Baker

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