The Apikorsus Companion v2.0

I finally got my hands on a (paper) copy of the “Responsum on the Sabbath”, more commonly known as the “driving teshuva”, one of the most (in)famous, controversial, and misunderstood responsa of the American Conservative movement.

Before I analyze the answer, we should review the question, asked by an anonymous congregational rabbi, and answered in 1950:

One cannot serve a congregation for any time without being depressed and disheartened by the widespread disintegration of Sabbath observance among our people. This breakdown of one of the major institutions in Jewish life is too deep and too prevalent to be countered by preachment and exhortations. . . . They [the congregants, second- or higher- generation American Jews] are Jews who not only have been born into the modern, industrial world, but have also been educated in its institutions and have been mentally and psychologically shaped and moulded by its approaches, attitudes and activities. . . . On the other hand to overlook the spiritual alertness and interest as well as the healthy Jewish pride and desire for Jewish identification which motivate them, is to doom to atrophy those characteristics which hold forth greatest promise for the future of American Jewish life. . . . I therefore turn to you to ask for guidance in instructing my people as to our view as a movement on the Sabbath disciplines, our best thought as to its proper observance and a practical program by which its meaning may be better understood, its spirit more widely shared, its sanctities more greatly respected by our congregations that look to us as Conservative rabbis, for guidance and instruction.

The rabbi faced congregants who wanted to identify with Judaism, otherwise they would not have been in his synagogue in the first place. But still, they were unreceptive to exhortations to be more traditionally observant. He feared that pushing the matter would cause congregants to leave instead of bringing them closer to observance.

In fact, two answers were given to the same question (how unusual :-) ). The first by Rabbis Morris Adler, Jacob Agus and Theodore Friedman, and the second by Rabbi Ben Zion Bokser.

The Adler-Agus-Friedman teshuva is the one referred to as the “driving teshuva”. They identify these issues:

The Sabbath is central to Judaism (“A Sabbath-less Judaism is no Judaism”), and is just as or more important an institution now as it was to our ancestors. It serves the individual as a spiritually necessary “sanctuary in time” from the “drives for posession and dominion” that control modern life. The Sabbath serves to join families and the community together.

They diagnose the problems leading to the decline in Sabbath observance.

1. Jews cannot operate economically only by interacting with other Jews. Therefore, they are forced into the six day work week (Monday-Saturday) to maintain a decent standard of living. An economic infrastructure making Sabbath-observance feasible was simply not in place.
2. Previous immigrant generations had already started working on Shabbat, without any negative social consequences within the Jewish community.
3. American Jews accepted the American ideal of economic advancement above strict observance to Jewish law. Therefore, a simple education campaign, preaching, or quoting halacha would do no good.
4. The second generation of American Jews never even knew of proper Shabbat observance.¹ If the trend continues, it can be expected that the Shabbat will disappear from American Judaism entirely.

While writing that halacha must be responsive to changing times and attitudes, they state without equivocation that

The preservation of the Sabbath spirit and of Sabbath practices is an indispensible element in any program for the Jewish future.

Therefore, the teshuva presents itself only as an emergency measure:

Emphasis on this immediate program should in no wise militate against the ultimate objective — the cessation of all gainful employment on the Sabbath. It is in the convinction that only the immediate can lead to the ultimate that the following program is proposed.

The “program” calls for the Rabbinical Assembly and United Synagogue to encourage Conservative Jews to acknowledge the sanctity of the Sabbath with certain changes to their regular behavior. They encourage cleaning the house before Shabbat,.lighting candles, saying kiddush, blessing children, and singing zemirot. In addition, they encourage synagogue attendance at least once on Shabbat and studying Torah. And, they should discourage “all activities that are not made absolutely necessary by the unavoidable pressures of life and that are not in keeping with the Sabbath spirit, such as shopping, household work, sewing, strenuous physical exercise, etc.”
And, finally, they arrive at the issue of driving:

Refraining from the use of a motor vehicle is an important aid in the maintenance of the Sabbath spirit of repose. Such restraint aids, moreover, in keeping the members of the family together on the Sabbath. However where a family resides beyond reasonable walking distance from the synagogue, the use of a motor vehicle for the purpose of synagogue attendance shall in no wise be construed as a violation of the Sabbath but, on the contrary, such attendance shall be deemed an expression of loyalty to our faith. (emphasis added)

The commonly-heard Orthodox response, that synagogue attendance is not mandatory, is then answered. Previously, the teshuva had compared the average contemporary American Conservative Jew to the Talmudic תינוק שנשבה בין העכו"ם ושכח עיקר שבת - A child kidnapped and lost among the non-Jews, who had forgotten the practices of the Sabbath.² By their logic, synagogue attendance is the bare thread hanging these Jews to their Jewish identity. Without it, they may lose that connection and they would certainly not pray on their own at home.

They go on to make a halachic argument about why use of electric lighting and cars may not be considered to be direct m'lachot (prohibited creative work), using some technical features to have their prohibitions covered under the category of shevut, rabbinic enactments meant to guard from actual performance of m'lachot.³. They base their heter (allowance) on three basic principles: (1) אין שבות במקדש, that these prohibitions do not apply to the work of the Temple (note the capital letter there). (2) That certain public obligations override the Sabbath. (3) And, finally, they claim the right to negate those rabbinic prohibitions in a specific time and place. The arguments themselves seemed to me like relatively weak grasps at straws, but, it is pretty clear that, unlike the popular perception, the teshuva's prime purpose was not to permit driving and use of electricity. It was, instead, to provide a little wiggle room for rabbis to feel comfortable “allowing” their congregants to come to shul, while the massive reeducation plan takes place.

Perhaps the most interesting point of the Adler-Agus-Friedman driving teshuva is that its ultimate target audience was the congregational rabbis, not their congregants. In my reading, in order to take advantage of the heter, one must be too ignorant to understand the heter!

The Bokser teshuva empahasizes that the purpose of the Sabbath prohibitions is to force increased spirituality by negating mundane activities. He picks out the prohibition on travel, in particular, as a way to keep people near their homes, where the Sabbath spirit can be fulfilled to its fullest extent. He acknowledges that the travel prohibitions were set aside, even for practical purposes, citing the varying Talmudic understandings of long ocean-going voyages. He then asks whether the modern circumstances warrant overturning the prohibitions. He advises the congregational rabbis:

Jewish tradition knows many periods in our history when widespread violation of law was followed by a new-won respect for it. One thinks of the tribute paid Rab that prior to his coming Sura was “an unfenced area, but that he fenced it in,” making it a community of Torah observant people. . . . We owe it in any case to those who desire to observe the Sabbath and find in it its sanctifying influence, to advise them as to what is sound.

Bokser adds something interesting and relevant:

It is fair to add that in many cases the dilemma [of being unable to walk to synagogue] is not altogether real. People who feel they must travel could and do often walk greater distances on an occasional stroll. Our problem has become acute because, with the prevalence of the automobile, the art of walking has simply disappeared from many people and they use their cars for the shortest distances.⁴

Bokser's answer, though, is not totally prohibitive. He advises rabbis not to turn away congregants who feel they have no choice but to drive to shul. His ultimate answer, in fact, calls on a principle of “individual autonomy” for this particular Sabbath violation. Rabbis should recognize that an individual Jew will make decisions that are not always in accordance with halacha, and the rabbis should have a “sympathetic understanding of the facts which have led him to his decision”. But, they should not attempt to alleviate the guilt that Bokser presumed prompted the original question. According to Bokser, the guilt is there because the demands of observance are incompatible with their practice. He suggests that the good 'ol Jewish guilt (ok, not in those words) could encourage an individual to return to traditional practice. Removing it might move him further away.⁵

It's been 55 years since the driving teshuvot, and, since then, the place of American Jews has changed dramatically. The suburbanization (an exurbanization) of America has continued and the Jews have followed the general trend. While Orthodox Jews have made for themselves suburban enclaves, and built the institutions near their populations, Conservative Jews tend to live in all the far-flung corners of suburbia. The pressures working against Shabbat observance have changed. For most Americans, the direct economic disincentive to Shabbat observance is no longer applicable. Americans are used to the five-day, 40 hour work-week. In the retail sector, stores are now open on Sunday, so, Jews on six-day work-weeks can frequently work then instead of on Saturday. The pressures have become the suburban pressures of keeping up with the proverbial Joneses, little league, and so on. As it appears to me, the incentive is now mostly the Jews' social place among non-Jews, instead of the previous major economic and social causes of the emergency that prompted the enactment. Bokser warned:

If [travelling were] allowed, it would become regular, continuous. It would then be difficult to distinguish between one kind of travel and another.

A classical slippery-slope argument. Friedman had an opportunity to respond to it when the teshuva was reevaluated in 1961. Then, the question was asked whether the 1950 teshuva permitted driving to another synagogue on Shabbat for the celebration of a boy becoming bar mitzvah. The answer, given by Friedman, was emphatically negative. He stressed that no exceptions should be made to the ruling that one may only drive to one's own regular synagogue, envisioning a slippery slope where once the CJLS would budge on this restriction, permitted driving would become a regular occurrence. Has the USCJ upheld its part of the bargain? I don't know what happened in the 1950's. But, now, there is no major campaign to restore Sabbath observance, and, sure enough, most Conservative Jews are not observant. Many even think that certain levels of Shabbat observance are uniquely “Orthodox,” and shy away from them on the grounds of identity politics.⁶ Sadly, Bokser's slope began to slip with the first permissive teshuva. How many Conservative Jews today know that the movement allows driving on Shabbat? (I will bet the answer will be a great majority) How many know that they may only drive to their own synagogue and back? (Probably a small minority) How many know that they may only take advantage of the permission if they do not live in “reasonable walking distance” from the synagogue? (Even smaller?)

Technorati tags: Conservative+Judaism, driving, Shabbat

¹ An interesting point is made that Jews may be unwilling to begin Shabbat observance because they would feel like hypocrites if they started some observing some aspects, but not the whole thing. Strangely enough, I have heard this kind of twisted logic more from Orthodox Jews than Conservative Jews.

² It is pretty clear that this categorization also includes the ones who go to shul.

³ The logic used permit starting and running engine, an act that involves starting a fire, was that the prohibited act is in the use of fire for cooking, heating, lighting, or production of ash. In a car, the fire is used to locomote, which was not envisioned by the Torah/rabbis when the prohibition was enacted. Incidentally, this logic prohibits the use of a the car's heating system on Shabbat.

⁴ Standard suburban construction of predictably winding roads with rows of houses (and no sidewalks!) well separated from the nearest commercial district certainly contributed to this one. And the obesity epidemic?

⁵ Note that the question asked here was referring to normal, healthy people. I am not sure if Bokser would have granted a heter of a different sort to the elderly, sick or infirm.

⁶ Sometimes, the easiest way to convince a Jew not to do something is to tell him that those other Jews do it, and vice versa.