We now feel separated and divided, but in many ways we are more unified. Families who never made the effort to get together are now uniting over Zoom.   Here at Kesher Israel each week we have been asking our members to teach as part of the new Voices of Kesher program -an opportunity to highlight the many brilliant and learned members of our community. Though we are only connected virtually, this has resulted in an easier way to get us together and to hear from each other. And so my hope is that this year will have been one of unity and togetherness rather than just of division and solitude.  For Jews, unity is vital, it brings redemption, whereas disunity brings exile.  Perhaps our need to become more unified as a people is part of the hidden lesson of this difficult time.

In addition to the virtual ways we are uniting, there are other, more theological ways of facilitating this extremely important matter of Jewish unity.  Recently, I have been rereading an important book, “Must a Jew Believe Anything” by Menachem Kellner, an Orthodox professor of Jewish philosophy in Israel.  He writes that we have adopted a doctrinal system of belief as Orthodox Jews that is not historically accurate, and which has had negative repercussions for our ability to view the Jewish people as one.  This system is the 13 beliefs of the Rambam, and the Rambam’s idea that anyone who does not accept them is outside of the Jewish people, has no eternal soul after death, and enjoys no share in the World to Come.

We find nowhere in the Torah, and perhaps not in the Talmud, that a certain set of beliefs is commanded.   In fact, the idea of dogma itself is the subject of argument in Judaism among the medieval Jewish philosophers- Rabbi Yehudah Halevi, Rabbi Yosef Albo, Rambam and others all proposed different systems from each other.  Professor Kellner explains that belief in God, trust in God, and the belief that God created the world and commanded us the Torah seem to be indispensable to living an observant life, but the idea that a false belief about God, or about the nature of prophecy, or the Messiah, or how the Torah was written- no matter how much one loves God or keeps the commandments- would exclude one from the Jewish people and doom one to hell, is, he suggests, something that begins with the Rabmabm and does not reflect the Torah’s perspective.

The Raavad, Rabbi Abraham ben David of Posquieres (1125-1198) the most basic commentary on the Rambam, comments on the Rambam’s law in the Mishneh Torah proscribing that one who does not believe God is  incorporeal is to be deemed a  heretic: “Why has the Rambam called such a person a heretic?   There are many people greater than the Rambam who adhered to such a belief on the basis of what they read in the Torah and the aggadah…”.

Professor Kellner goes on to explain that, the Rambam aside, a fellow Jew who does not renounce their Jewish faith nor worships other Gods, is still a Jew.  Even if they hold incorrect doctrines regarding Jewish theology, they are still part of the Jewish family and people.  Halacha prescribes actions not beliefs, and to render those who we deem as having incorrect beliefs about God or the Torah as outside of  the Jewish people, as the Rambam would, is not only not the law, but leads to extreme disunity within the Jewish family.  Now is the time to ensure we see all of our fellow Jews, even those we vehemently disagree with, as part of our family.  With this unity we will, God willing, have much redemption speedily in our days.