The Unfolding Tradition: Jewish Law After Sinai (review)

To some extent, those of us who bear no particular relationship to Conservative Judaism might feel vaguely misled by the promise of the title. It promises an exploration into the jurisprudence and philosophy of Jewish law generally, but delivers instead an exquisitely thorough analysis of the spectrum of philosophical positions that characterize the history of Conservative Judaism from Frankel and Schechter to the contemporary figures Alana Suskin, Raymond Scheindlin, Gordon Tucker, and, of course, the dean of contemporary Conservative legal thought, the author himself. What we are presented with is a superior sourcebook for the study of Conservative legal thought, but not an exposition of Jewish law after Sinai, unless “Conservative legal thought” and “Jewish law” are the same thing.

But this is a minor quibble about a significant contribution by a scholar whose thoughts about Jewish law resonate well beyond the boundaries of Conservative Judaism. Elliott Dorff is a clear thinker and a graceful writer, and, if the area he has demarcated in this volume is not quite as large as the area promised by the title, it is large enough, and important. He has specifically attempted to survey the boundaries of Jewish law as it is understood by the Conservative thinkers he considers, to present a working model of what Conservative Jewish law can be. Although his approach is not essentially comparative, Dorff is genuinely concerned to remove Conservative Judaism’s reputation for vagueness as regards the law (he quotes the familiar “Orthodox, lazy; Reform, crazy; Conservative, hazy” generalization [p. 427]). For Dorff, Conservative Judaism is anything but vague in this matter:

To depict Conservative Judaism as simply some ambiguous, noncommittal, and nonconfrontational form of Judaism describes it falsely, for from its inception Conservative Judaism has made some serious assertions about the nature of Judaism in general and of Jewish law in particular

(p. 427).

To fill in the part of Judaism’s map that delineates the Conservative movement, Dorff surveys a small variety of non-Conservative legal theorists to the right and to the left of that movement, from the modern Orthodox Yeshayahu Leibowitz to the even-more-modern Orthodox David Hartmann, to the 1999 Statement of Principles of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the umbrella organization for the rabbinate of the Reform movement, to some legal theorists on the farther left, Arthur Waskow, Arthur Green, and, finally, a brief discussion of Eugene Borowitz, whom Dorff characterizes as “on the left border of Conservative Judaism” (p. 463.) This latter discussion serves as the introduction to Dorff ’s reprinting his own essay, “Autonomy vs. Community,” which he wrote in response to Borowitz, and originally published in Conservative Judaism (Vol. 48, No. 2 [Winter, 1996]: 64–68). He accompanies this essay with Borowitz’s response and his response to Borowitz’s response, also from Conservative Judaism (Vol. 50, No. 1 [Fall 1997]: 61–65). This lively discussion of the border between Reform and Conservative Judaism from each movement’s most thoughtful modern theorist provides the most creative moments in this volume.

Jewish legal theory is one of those fields whose most passionate theorists are also among its most passionate practitioners. Eliott Dorff has a more-than-theoretical interest in the geography he is attempting to survey. One measure of the value of this book is the extent to which Dorff ’s own understanding of the Torah underpins his work on the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards of the Rabbinical Assembly, although only his last chapter describes how this understanding affects practically legal decisions within the Conservative movement. Although the author accomplishes his main purpose in producing this volume in its theoretical exploration of the boundaries of Conservative territory, many readers (including the present one) will find this latter discussion most stimulating.