It’s an honour to be called a heretic, if only I had enough knowledge to justify that tag. But just to clear one thing up: I’ve made a conscious choice not to practice Halachic Judaism – apathy and laziness don’t come into it.

Plus you miss one reforming movement of Judaism that’s still going strong. It starts with a Z and ends with an M….

Which leads to the age-old (paraphrased) philosophical question – does it affect Judaism that a Jew doesn’t practice it, or does it only affect the Jew himself?

“Today, the challenge is not to make the Elisha Ben Abuyas of this world return to orthopraxis, but to ask how to form a community that will sustain them in their exile from the tradition.”

Typical heresy from a person who wants to justify his apathetic and lazy lack of religious practice.

Alex, the more you write and speak about subjects like this, the more desperate you seem to justify your position to the world. There is a reason why all reforming movements of Judaism (bar the ones that changed the religion completely, like Christianity) have died out over the years, yet tranditional orthodoxy has remained.

I say this from a place of love and respect; maybe if you devoted half as much time to learning and practicing Judaism and you do to justifying your reasons for not doing so, you may find yourself happier and less uncomfortable in your own skin. Just a thought…

Good subject matter and well explored! Do bear in mind that the character of Elish Ben Abuya is more complex then even this splendid post suggests. His impact on the Jewish world was so great that he was given a special name which will delight all postmoderns today. Elisha is known as “The Other” of Jewish literature. And his “otherness” is not explained only as a product of seeing that bad things happen to good people (Which is, frankly, rather self-evident) But also as a result of entering the garden of god-presense, where he sees a fraction within divinity itself. And, to make him even more interesting, the first thing he does after seeing this is to visit a (Jewish?:) whore. When she doesn’t agree to accept him as a client because he is a Rabbi he breaks the sabbath to prove to her he is no longer within the community. Indeed, the first person to say to him: “You are changed” (אחר אתה) is not a wise learned man but a humble street-walker.

It’s no surprise that Elisha was a figure much explored by Jewish (And Zionist) writers. And I refer you to Nurit Barri’s book “In with a bad crowd – The story of Elish Ben Abuya”

http://www.text.org.il/index.php?book=0710065

Congrats on the new blog!

Hagay Hacohen