Recently, I wrote an article in the Jewish Tribune regarding the perceived conflict between democracy and Judaism which I posted on the blog at
Subsequently, there was letter to the paper that critiqued this article. This letter can be seen at
I, in turn, responded to this letter in a subsequent paper which can be seen at
(My response, unfortunately, was not formulated for the web but rather can only be seen in a pdf of that week's paper as a whole. The response is on page 20 of the paper and is entitled: "Same issue: value conflict in Israel.")
What I found most
interesting in this interchange was the distinction in language and
meaning that permeates the Jewish community but to which we are often
not sensitive. For example, there is clearly a difference in how the
writer and I understand the term Judaism. This is the reason why I wrote
my article "Adjective and Non-Adjective Jew" (available on the Nishma
website at http://www.nishma.org/articles/introspection/introspection5761-2-adjective_jew.htm).
I guess that since I was already aware of this problem, I must also
accept some of the responsibility for the disconnect in this dialogue
due to the fact that I did use the generic term Judaism within my
original article -- which then allowed the writer to go on from there.
Rabbi Ben Hecht
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