This past Sunday, Rosh Chodesh Nissan, was the day of the inaugural Smol Emuni US conference in B’nei Jerushun (a storied, now non-denominational Manhattan synagogue). I was slightly interested in going, especially when I saw, amidst all the “religious” liberals, no less than Rabbi Yosef Blau as the opening speaker. I still didn’t attend, but I watched the first houw or so of the recording of the livestream
First, some background. השמאל האמוני The Faithful Left was founded in Israel two years ago as an organization of religious Jews who objected to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal to change the Israeli Judicial system. Similar to secular Israelis who were worried about giving too much power to the Ḥaredim, these religious Jews were/are concerned that their religion is being coöpted by right-wing nationalists. I sympathized with these people, which is why back in March of 2023 I started my first SubStack newsletter, שמאל אמוני/Smol Emuni, writing under the name Shmuel Emuni. After a year, I realized that I like writing Divrei Torah more than I like writing about politics, so I switched to the current incarnation.
Then came the war in Gaza. Now it was more than “are there two separate legal systems in Israel like in the West Bank”? Now we had people saying the massacre of Shmini Atzeres was a punishment for disengagement!
This led to two American organizations, Halachic Left, mostly focused on community advocacy, and the more scholarly (as in, mostly lectures) America Smol Emuni.
I’ll be honest that I have reservations about these groups. For one thing, their level of Halachic observance isn’t necessarily my idea of Orthodox. I’m also annoyed that they call themselves leftists when they are, I hope, liberals. I mean, if you’re not calling for workers to violently seize the means of production and reorder a society without religion, nationalities, or hierarchies, are you a leftist? Why can’t you just be liberal democrats (both words intentionally left lower-case, we’re talking personal opinions, not party membership)?
But, like I said, then I saw Rabbi Yosef Blau in the rotation for the conference. He was Mashgiach Ruchani at YU for 48 years. He’s a talmid of the Rav. (He’s the brother-in-law of the late Rabbi Elazar Meir Teitz, my high school dean.) He is the real thing. If it’s good enough for him to sit for an interview that would be shown there, and he said he’ll be watching the livestream, it’s good enough for me. At least, to pretend that I’m watching it with a mashgiach ruchani looking over my shoulder like Jiminy Cricket.
Most importantly for the context of this conference is that he’s a religious Zionist, former president of the RZA. An old-fashioned (he’s 86) liberal Zionist, who wants Jewish solutions to the problems Israel faces that the reflect the Jewish values of צדקה ומשפט as Hashem said Avraham’s mission was. I strongly recommend it, and it has been published as a separate video here
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That was the first thing after Dr. Jessica Lang’s (Dean of Weissman School of Arts and Sciences at Baruch College) opening remarks. After Rabbi Blau, event co-chair Esther Sperber spoke about the fear of “our Jewish religious tradition is being “Smotriched” from us by extremists who speak a language of revenge, power, and Jewish supremacy, laced with disdain for diaspora Jews, science, LGBTQ+ people and Western values.” It was a good part, except I’m not sure what she means by Western values. Democracy and pluralism, I guess. I mean, it presumably isn’t Christianity, sexism, and racism.
Then came the first discussion, with four speakers and moderator historian David Myers, on the conflict between והייתם לי סגולה מכל העמים and כי בצלם ﭏהים עשה את האדם. Best line of Myers introduction: “Not merely to say Not in Our Name. But also to declare that there is another Jewish tradition from that which is often invoked in traditional Jewish circles.” Sure, go ahead and say that you are Jews who reject Israel’s actions. Do you even care that there is a legitimate stream within Judaism to object to it?
First up was Mikhael Manekin, co-founder of the Israeli Smol Emuni and a long-time peace activist. He asked why halacha is only discussed in relation to international law when the former is (allegedly) lenient. Why no mention of the issur of בל תשחית or the limitations on conducting sieges? Rather than the cure for a חטא, he said, Judaism becomes the excuse for חטא. He also, regarding the discussion topic, rejected the assumption that there must be a contradiction between those ideals.
Next was Dr. Yasmeen Abu Fraiha, an Israeli-Arab doctor with a clinical fellowship in a Boston hospital and a Middle East Initiative fellowship at Harvard. First, she questioned why she, a Muslim, had been invited to speak for this topic. She decided, she said, that it’s because she is a doctor. Medicine is a field one goes into because they feel a calling, a chosen-ness, but is one chosen for, or chosen because? She gave examples of historical medical hubris, of doctors who cared more about what they could learn than the affects on their patients or victims. Then she talked about how it feels to be a Palestinian citizen of Israel. It was the most powerful speech up to that point.
Here's where we get a little fidgety. Third up was Sofia Freudenstein, a graduate student at Bernard Revel…and a student at Yeshiva Maharat. She opened discussing Halakhic Man (good…) and the philosophy of the Rav that Halacha applies to all reality and that all reality can be applied to halacha. Then she discussed the areas that halacha, in the current Jewish landscape, seems not to touch. (Uh-oh…) While there’s discussion over just what level of milchemet mitzvah this is, there’s no discussion over whether looting, torture, psychopathic singing and dancing over graves, are appropriate.
Equality between Jews and gentiles is hard, she says, when halacha is hard-wired to treat gentiles differently. Even when halacha provides for what we’d consider fairness, it’s often due to fear of retribution than any genuine humanism.
Well, that was a little…damning, I might say. There is, of course, a history of Jewish humanism, from the Meiri to Rav Hirsch to the Rav and Rav Ahron Soloveishik, to Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. It’s just that the crazies are the loudest. I guess the point of this conference is that we need to be loud, too. Here’s a discussion of doctors treating gentiles on Shabbos by a pseudonymous blogger almost ten years ago. https://rationalistmedicalhalacha.blogspot.com/2015/11/jews-and-gentiles-on-shabbat.html.
Finally, Knesset member Naama Lazimi, who discussed the negative effects of racism and the Jewish imperative for the two nationalities in Israel who aren’t going anywhere, to reach a moral peace.
Then they had a discussion, but I didn’t have time to watch the rest. Maybe next week.
In the mean-time, have a Good Shabbos and enjoy your Rav’s technically-not-Shabbos-HaGadol-Drasha.