Jewish Law
... to be worth anything, it must create a positive feeling towards wanting to serve god. People who associate with a movement but don?t delve into their own ideas are ?sloppy? Jews. Dorff: Dorff?s criticism on Borowitz is that for his idea of the Reform movement to work, everyone that is a real Reform Jew must be a learned rabbi. To be able to understand text at such a level that you can yourself make decisions on whether god in fact wants you to follow this or not, is not something that the average person can do. He explains that he has no doubt that Borowitz can achieve this high level of thought, but he is essentially enabling others who cannot to ?shortcut,? and not do everything that is still possible to be practiced today. Not everyone in the Reform movement can be a learned rabbi and therefore Borowitz?s Reform is not feasible. Dorff explains that we cannot see ourselves as individuals before Jews. He says that we are just as much autonomous over ourselves as Judaism is heteronomous over us. We must see ourselves as part of a people, not as individuals in a vacuum. We cannot use Borowitz?s Reform ideals to allow us to do whatever we want as Jews, because we are a part of a people who have made collective decisions together. Dorff explains that we cannot use our autonomous self to justify being autonomous over Judaism, as Borowitz suggests. Judaism is a set of codes and morals to live by that sometimes make us do things that we don?t want to do. But this is exactly what religion is about. If you can pick and choose and get rid of all of the hard stuff, than you are practicing a watered down version of the religion. Dorff here explains that although Conservatism seems harder in its practices, is actually easier because it doesn?t require a whole cadre of people to be high thinking rabbis. He states that it is simpler and in essence, more Jewish traditionally, to make decisions as a community. Also, if you were to make up your own set of practices, you are creating a religion that just congratulates you on what you were going to do anyway. The point of Religion, according to Dorff, is to expand your horizons and make you think about things that you wouldn?t have thou...