Joe emails:
The infighting among Orthodox shuls in L.A. is really an embarrassment.
Young Israel of North Beverly Hills is a total train wreck and a textbook example of what happens when ego is mixed with money and control issues.
Shaarey Zedek in the Valley is splintering faster than a corked bat, and none of the breakaways seem to even care what they are doing to the place that started Valley Orthodoxy.
At the beach, Pacific Jewish Center, which itself has two breakaways which are on life support, is down to hiring a part time Rabbi because the Shul cannot afford a full time rabbi.
Pico Robertson seems to be flourishing now, but who knows what happens when some constituency at BJ is pissed off about who becomes the new Rabbi. Otherwise, the iron hand of muskin and weil and the rising jewish population seem to be keeping Pico Robertson from internecine warfare.
Orthodox Jews have to stop fighting with each other.
There is a lot more at stake than whether a Rabbi wears a hat and whether woman are allowed to have executive positions on the board. Orthodoxy should be about expanding its reach and power – the real enemy of the Jews, as the Orthodox would all agree, is the distance of younger jews outside the fold from Judaism.
It is the reason that Obama won an even greater share of the vote than Kerry. Just as Obama regards Israel as just another country, and would not stake a nickel of his political capital in its defense, disaffected jews view Israel as an issue whose importance is somewhere below the Supreme Court’s view on medical marijuana, and are unwilling to use their vote to assist Israel.
I would question the Orthodox jew who walks away from his shul to support another shul, leaving two weaker parts. In Orthodoxy, the sum of the parts is greater than the whole.
I think there should be some type of communal shabbat in which all the breakaway shuls rejoin the main shul they broke off from and see the energy it creates.
