Find ten differences

...between the Church of England and the Church of Reform and/or Conservative Judaism. (Although, based on the dvar Torah I heard this Shabbos in the local presumably Orthodox shull... well, never mind...) Starting 0:30:



“...theology is a device for enabling the agnostics to stay within the Church.”

— One of them wants to get G-d out of Church of England, and the other one wants to get the Queen out.
— Well, the Queen is inseparable from the Church of England.
— I see. What about G-d?
— I think He is what’s called “an optional extra”.

See also this, starting from 1:26:



— I’ve heard he is very religious.
— Well, it’s all right for a bishop, is it not?

Frierdiker Rebbe on “Modern” Judaism

Founders of the German communities, see what fruit has grown from the tree you have planted. You killed all positive feelings; you caught them like fish in a net. You squeezed out any juice. You exchanged the honor of Torah—of Jewish wisdom—for the games and idols of the non-Jews. The soul of G–d has been ripped from them. Who has wrought this shame? Was it not done in the name of the Torah, stirred together with alien thoughts? Who asked you to do this? What spurred you to do this? It was only the thirst for secular sciences, the wisdom of Jepheth, which has now completely consumed the Torah of Shem.
— Frierdiker Rebbe

It’s very interesting to me that if one reads Mendelsohn’s writings (sometimes quoted in Hirsch Chumash), one doesn’t see anything too problematic. Most of the times he sounds a bit MO; oftentimes, of all the sources quoted (in that particular instance, Ramchal and a few contemporary Jewish philosophers), his thoughts are the most chassidish ones (e.g., he says that fulfillment of a mitzva is more important than understanding of it — yep, the same Mendelsohn).

An exerpt from the letter by the Previous Lubavitcher Rebbe about him and the long-reaching effects of his on German Judaism. As always, both the content and the form are amazing.

The point of the letter is relevant to today’s American Jewry as never before. Don’t tell me that the imagery that the above quote paints is not familiar to you. One doesn’t have to use labels to feel it.