The Psalmist says, “Teach me to do Your will, for You are my God” (143: 10). Striving to do God’s will provides a compass amidst the sea of life’s most roiling questions. Does my life still retain a sense of purpose? Does it possess integrity? To search out God’s will means to measure my life against the ultimate standard of meaning and goodness. Jewish tradition helps reveal God’s way. Still, it’s so easy to go through the motions — and false gods are everywhere. So, twice every day in the traditional liturgy we pray that we may “keep Your commandments, do Your will and serve You with a full heart.”*

Halakhah, the general term for Jewish law, comes from the verb “to walk” and thus signifies a “way” of walking, not just down a road, but through the journey of life itself. The Sages of the Talmud counted 613 commandments in the Torah and noted that 365 negative commandments corresponded to the days of the solar year, while the 248 positive commandments corresponded to the bones in the human body (Babylonian Talmud, Makkot 23b). The lesson? That halakhah, Jewish law, is meant to be all-encompassing. But these 613 commandments hardly represent the complete system of Jewish law. The totality comprises the legal material of the rabbinic period (the Mishnah, Talmud, etc.), the legal codes and the vast body of rabbinic responses to legal questions, tshuvot, a collective corpus that spans about 1,800 years. When an individual rabbi or rabbinical court decides a question of Jewish law, in theory, that decision should take into consideration all relevant sources and previous decisions.

The purpose of this legal structure is not to deprive us of free will, to produce automatons who glide mindlessly through life, but to create opportunities to discover and carry out God’s will at every turn of the road. Joseph Soloveitchik put it this way: “Judaism declares that man stands at the crossroads and wonders about what path he shall take. Before him there is an awesome alternative e — the image of God or the beast of prey . . . and it is up to man to decide and choose.”* To choose to observe halakhah is to submit to the truth that we are diminished — and the world is endangerd — when we approach that crossroads without a reliable guide. And for Jews over the centuries, that guide has been halakhah.

That said, different denominations of Judaism relate to halakhah so differently that a comment Franz Rosenzweig made in 1920 still rings true: “Today the Law [halakhah] brings out more conspicuously the difference between Jew and Jew than between Jew and gentile.”* Orthodoxy and the Conservative Movement are deeply halakhic but have adopted sharply differing legal positions on a variety of issues. The Conservative Movement’s embrace of egalitarianism (equal participation of women and men) or its decision to permit driving to synagogue on Shabbat illustrate this divergence. Orthodoxy views both positions as illegitimate departures from the norms of Jewish law.

For nearly a century, Reform Judaism accepted the ethical dimension of Jewish law, but rejected the ritual component (e.g., the laws limiting work on the Sabbath or keeping kosher).

In 1999, the Reform Movement adopted a much more nuanced view.

We are committed to the ongoing study of the whole array of mitzvot and to the fulfillment of those that address us as individuals and as a community. Some of these mitzvot, sacred obligations, have long been observed by Reform Jews; others, both ancient and modern, demand renewed attention as the result of the unique context of our own times.*

Greater openness to ritual has arisen because as classical Reform Judaism no longer felt quite so compelling and was shorn of so many elements of practice, it was increasingly difficult to pass down from one generation to the next.

The position of Reconstructionist Judaism, the smallest and youngest of the movements, is often summed up by an aphorism of Mordecai Kaplan, its founder: “The Past has a vote, not a veto.” Reconstructionism stresses the view that rather than subordinating independent judgment to the will of God, “moral spiritual faculties are actualized best, when the individual makes his/her own choices.*

In one sense, Judaism has been rather tolerant of dissent. Virtually any page of Talmud reports conflicting positions that have happily co-existed over the centuries. The Talmud even transmits the teachings of its most well-known heretic Elisha ben Abuyah, although it ascribes them to Acher, ‘Other.” A heavenly voice resolves a legal dispute between Hillel and Shamai by declaring, “Both these and these are the words of the living God.”* But as the conclusion to the preceding story of Rabbi Eliezer illustrates, dissent is not always tolerated so easily. All objects that Rabbi Eliezer had ruled were clean were burnt in a fire and his colleagues excommunicated him. The excommunication was revoked only on his deathbed.

Jewish history has seen its share of heresy and schism. A few examples:

• A heresy that began in the early centuries of the Common Era and runs through rabbinic literature over more than 500 years involved the question of whether there were “Two Powers in Heaven.” Some scholars believe that rabbinic polemics on this theme helped articulate the boundaries between rabbinic Judaism and Christianity.*
• In the eighth century a movement known as Karaism (from the Hebrew mikrah, “Scripture”) developed in Babylon and spread through the Near East. Karaites denied the legitimacy of rabbinic Judaism and sought to revert to religious practice as described in the Bible. After several centuries of bitter conflict, the group splintered from Judaism.*
• In Europe, Maimonides (1134-1205) was attacked over his philosophic rationalism and his attempt to integrate Judaism and Greek philosophy. In the initial phase of a conflict that would simmer for centuries, Maimonideans and anti-Maimonideans excommunicated one another.
• The Jewish community of Amsterdam handed out the same punishment in 1656 to Baruch Spinoza for his “wrong opinions” and “evil ways.”*
• During the late 18^th and early 19th centuries in Eastern Europe, opponents of Hassidism accused Hassidic rabbis of subverting Judaism, directing their followers away from sober world of Torah study into ecstatic forms of worship and near deification of their leaders.
• Toward the end of the 18^th century, the Gaon of Vilna, one of the greatest Jewish scholars of all time, issued a ban on Hassidim – expelling them, denying the authenticity of their adherence to dietary laws, forbidding intermarriage with them, participating in business or even assisting at their burials.

The growth of Reform Judaism in Germany during the 19th century engendered vitriolic reactions from traditionalists and a growing rift between these segments of the community. Nowadays, especially in Israel, a grave fault line runs between the ultra-Orthodox and non-Orthodox Jews. The ultra-Orthodox have parlayed their electoral strength into a crucial swing vote, which has enabled them to deny legitimacy to Conservative, Reconstructionist and Reform rabbis in Israel. For example, the state does not recognize marriages or conversions performed by non-Orthodox rabbis.

A central tenet of Judaism holds that at Mt. Sinai, God revealed the Torah to Moses that included the foundation of Jewish law. According to the book of Leviticus, “These are the laws, the regulations, and the instructions that Yhvh gave between himself and the Children of Israel at Mount Sinai, by the hand of Moses” (26:46, Fox). Clear as this may seem, the extent and legal content of this revelation has remained in dispute for millennia. Heschel describes a maximalist and minimalist school dating back to the first and second centuries C.E.

The maximalist view interpreted this verse to teach “that the Torah was given, with its laws, minutiae, and interpretations through the hand of Moses at Sinai.”* The minimalist school argued that the legal content of the revelation included only 13 principles of interpreting scripture. As one scholar observed, “the maximalist approach is about discovery of religious laws and truths already given; the minimalist school is about construction, or even invention, of religious laws and truths out of materials previously given.” * (The distinction is not unlike that between strict and loose constructionist approaches to interpreting the Constitution.) Heschel himself went so far as to say that, “As a report about revelation the Bible itself is a midrash.” *

The Talmud relates a story that often comes up in discussions about the relationship between divine revelation and Jewish law. The story features two of the greatest sages of the first and second centuries C.E., Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Joshua. (Both of these sages appear in the Haggadah). They disagree about whether an oven is clean, i.e., meets the proper standards of ritual purity. To prove that it is clean, Rabbi Eliezer calls on God to perform one miracle after another — a river changes course, a tree moves from here to there, etc. Rabbi Joshua argues that such miracles have no bearing on a court of law. Finally the voice of God calls out, saying, “Don’t you know that Jewish law always follows the view of Rabbi Eliezer?” To which Rabbi Joshua replies — citing scripture against God! — “It [Torah] is not in heaven (Deuteronomy 30:12). The members of the court side with Rabbi Joshua. The Talmud explains that following the revelation at Sinai we don’t heed the heavenly voice and besides the Torah also says, “After the majority one must incline” (Exodus 33:2). The punch line comes when Elijah the Prophet reports God’s reactions to the proceedings. God laughs and says, “My children have defeated me.”* Human beings are the essential medium through which divine revelation is refracted into Jewish law.