Jewish secularism

[Mark Graber]

I think we are going down a dangerous path here.  My sense of some
non-orthodox Jews is that they do think of themselves as practicing
something that might be described as Judaism minus.  I would suspect,
however, that virtually all non-orthodox rabbis and many non-orthodox
Jews believe their practices are as legitimate a form of Judaism as
what is called orthodoxy, and some might even say that they are the
true traditional Jews, that some forms of "orthodoxy", in fact,
misread the "true" Jewish tradition (an analogy- - Dworkin claims
that he is the constitutional traditionalists and Bork the
constitutional radical).  I would suspect that many "liberal"
Christians would make similar claims.  Presumably, if the First
Amendment means anything, it means that the government cannot
adjudicate such disputes as what is true Judaism (or true Judaisms).

Mark A Graber
mgraber at bss2.umd.edu