The biographical note following Yoel Finkelman’s piece in the October First Thngs says he teaches Jewish thought in Jerusalem, but, truth to tell, there are precious few of those to be found in his essay. Ostensibly, the essay celebrates the publication of the new prayer book produced by Koren and translated and commented on by British Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. In fact, however, “A Prayer Book of One’s Own” amounts to a gratuitously mean-spirited hatchet job on New York’s Artscroll publishing house, with a puerile undertone of “my prayer book – and Orthodoxy — is better than yours” added for good measure. Rabbi Dr. Finkelman begins benignly enough, noting how enthusiastically the new volume has been received among some Modern Orthodox Jews and wondering why that might be. He posits that the Koren work represents a “confident, unapologetic alternative to what Artscroll has offered the Orthodox public.” Fair enough. It’s a debatable view, but at least a conventional one, echoing that of many other observers. But then, unwittingly or otherwise, Finkelman appears to have flipped the “No More Mr. Nice Guy” switch in his word processor — or brain. In the space of just two paragraphs, he proceeds to label “the so-called Haredi . . . community” whose voice “Artscroll represents,” as “narrow-minded,” “dogmatic to a fault,” “preach[ing] an isolationist religion,” “monolithic,” and “authoritarian.” And that’s just Flatbush and Passaic; don’t even ask about Pupa, Krasne and their ilk in the wilds of Williamsburg. Invoking his laundry list of essential (albeit, of course, non-dogmatic and, thus, presumably negotiable) tenets of Modern Orthodoxy – this would’ve made a great giveaway at conferences of Edah, o.b.m., as a laminated cue card for handy reference when challenged by those aggressive charedi types – Finkelman finds Artscroll sorely wanting on all counts: “The publisher advocates strong rabbinic authority, does not view the State of Israel as having much religious significance, gives little room to women in public religious life, and discourages the acquisition of general education.” Missing from the list, strangely, are the important values of tolerance, civil and thoughtful discourse and promotion of Jewish unity and intra-Jewish pluralism that are often touted by those in the circles Finkelman moves in to distinguish themselves from those to their right. Could it be that this intolerant, uncivil, superficial and divisive article is, perhaps, not the best setting for invoking those desiderata? Just a thought. Dr. Finkelman goes on to sum up Artscroll’s ideology as this: “The best a person can do is to humbly submit to the tradition as interpreted by the great rabbis.” And here I must admit to being indebted to the writer for formulating a brilliant, concise summation of precisely what I –and, I dare say, “the great rabbis” throughout the ages – believe to be at the heart of Judaism. Come to think of it, I think I’ll put that pithy, powerful précis of Jewish belief, worthy of Rabbis Hirsch or Soloveitchik, on a wallet card of my own. But query Dr. Finkelman: which specific words in his own sentence does he take issue with? He doesn’t say, so we can only speculate. Ought a believing Jew rebel against – or, at least, as the all-the-rage, trite modern Jewish phrase would have it, “struggle with” — rather than submit to, the tradition? Does the problem lie with the notion of submitting to said tradition “humbly,” rather than in an uppity, Miss Piggle Wigglean fashion as befits an enlightened modern? Or is it the yielding of interpretative authority to “great rabbis” that grates on Finkelman, excluding as it does the kind of rabbis he presumably breaks bread with, fellows who maybe be great in, say, their golf game, but in encyclopedic knowledge of Shas and Poskim, perhaps not so much. Part of Dr. Finkelman’s problem, it seems, is that he just doesn’t get out and about enough. If he did, he’d know that not only is it not so that “almost all North American Orthodox Jews are Ashkenazic” (which means that, when stateside, he’s missing out on a whole lot of wicked-tasting matbucha) but it’s also not quite the case that subscribers to the “Artscroll ideology” monolithically eschew the “acquisition of general education” or “extensive contact with people or ideas from outside the Orthodox enclave.” Perhaps on his next New York visit, someone can introduce Finkelman to a gentleman named Rabbi Nosson Scherman, who knows a thing or two about Artscroll — and also spent many years visiting the decidedly non-Orthodox enclave of the Loews Corporation offices to study Torah weekly with Larry Tisch. If Reb Nosson isn’t available just then, Finkelman will have to suffice by chatting with any of the thousands of fervently Orthodox folks who work, attend school, study Torah or otherwise interact with secular Jews on a regular basis. He could conclude his fact-finding field trip by swinging by any of Touro College’s several campuses or the many professional schools that enroll many hundreds of non-Modern Orthodox Jewish students. All of these, of course, might not satisfy Dr. Finkelman’s definition of “general education,” since these students spend little time cogitating on Camus and Steinbeck. He may profit, as well, from a conversation with Rabbi Moshe Meiselman on precisely how much “religious significance” the latter’s uncle, Rav Yoshe Ber Soloveitchik, accorded the State of Israel. All this is a tall order, to be sure, but what won’t one do to gain an accurate perception of reality? The writer bemoans the fact that fervently Orthodox Jews aren’t “more open-minded and less dogmatic,” which seems like a roundabout way of saying he’s perturbed they really do believe the Torah is superior to anything modern or pre-modern society might have to offer in the way of morality and ultimate meaning. This is the religious analogue to the notion that, sure, America thinks it’s exceptional, but, hey, the British and the Greeks fancy themselves likewise. The Obama foreign policy with a kippah attached, one might say. One would be more favorably disposed to assume Dr. Finkelman is uninformed but well-intentioned were it not for his quite unbecoming tendency to presume the worst of intentions on Artscroll’s part. Faced with explaining the 1987 collaboration between the publisher and the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA) in producing a special prayer book edition featuring an introduction by Edah founder Rabbi Saul Berman, no “centrist” he, and the inclusion of a prayer for the State of Israel, Finkelman takes the low road out of the dilemma by impugning the motives of both parties without a shred of basis in fact. By agreeing to publish the RCA edition, Finkelman writes, Artscroll “seemed to say ‘We’ll gladly ship you thousands of our prayer books and even more gladly cash your checks. We’ll include your introduction, and we’ll even swallow our anti-Zionist pride and include the prayer for the State of Israel.’ But the . . . rest of the siddur, with its authoritarian religious instructions and commentary that reflects our values, will carry the day.” The RCA’s decision, as well, to “use an edition of the ultra-Orthodox Artscroll siddur seemed like selling out” to “ultra-Orthodox . . . hegemony.” But might it just be that both the RCA and Artscroll hold their respective religious principles firmly and honestly, yet don’t necessarily rule out of bounds the somewhat variant scruples of other Torah-observant Jews? Could it be, in a word, that Artscroll and the RCA are, to borrow a phrase, actually “more open-minded and less dogmatic” than Dr. Finkelman? He waves away that uncomfortable thought by resort to imagined conversations that the parties “seemed” to be having – which is, well, rather unseemly. For Finkelman, these prayer books are political footballs in “the ongoing dispute between [the] two Orthodox camps.” First, the Artscroll siddur’s “success in penetrating Modern Orthodox synagogues seemed symptomatic of emerging ultra-Orthodox victory and hegemony.” And for its part, the “Sacks and Koren volume has a clear agenda to be the non-Artscroll. . . .” Yet, it was the Ba’al Shem Tov who famously advised Jews to reaffirm the mitzvah of ahavas Yisroel before engaging in prayer, and with good reason: the Sh’monah Esrei is, after all, couched entirely in the plural, as a supplication on behalf of all Jews everywhere. It’s more than a bit sad, then, to think that when Dr. Finkelman and those of his bent approach G-d in a prayer encounter that ought to foster humility, awe and love for G-d and his chosen nation, the siddur they hold in hand might instead evoke for them an “agenda” based on the kind of Jews they are not, a sense of one-upsmanship and disunity. Not this way, one would imagine, lies Heavenly acceptance of prayers, nor, for that matter, the longed-for Final Redemption. Throughout his essay, one senses there’s something viscerally eating away at Dr. Finkelman; why else would someone who, in personal terms is undoubtedly a lovely individual, pen something so needlessly vindictive? His penultimate sentence gives an inkling of what that might be: “[Rabbi Sacks] produced the kind of prayer book that Modern Orthodox Jews can use without looking over their shoulders at what the ultra-Orthodox would think.” So there, it appears, is the rub. The Koren siddur enables Modern Orthodox Jews like Dr. Finkelman to celebrate a work that is of and for their community and thereby assuage long-nursed feelings of inadequacy and defensiveness vis a vis their co-religionists to the right. It’s only a shame that those same feelings had to be put on such public display in the pages of a prominent Catholic journal. | 
Has anyone seen this movie? What the heck was it about??? And what did the story with the dybuk have to do with anything? Was the message of the movie that everything is random? And do Conservative shuls really call up the next aliyah before the previous aliyah has said the final brachah? 
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