Of course this is not an unchallenged Orthodox doctrine, or rather attitude but of course, equally, this symposium cannot adequately represent those whose doctrine or attitude it is. At the very least, the old-school Orthodox say, a man who studies Milton or Mendel or Wittgenstein is guilty of bittul Torah, the transgression of wasting on frivolities the time he could give to studying Torah. To be able to write English passably well to have earned a doctorate in English literature, or analytical philosophy, or biology above all, to teach those subjects-for Orthodox Jews of a certain kind, such interests and achievements and occupations are, if not sinful, capable of inciting to sin. It derives, rather, from something that is hinted at in one of the more uncompromising responses below. Nor does the uncertainty derive from the absence of some of Yeshiva UniversityвЂ™s young critics of Orthodoxy from within, since their criticism basically is of strategy and style. The uncertainty does not derive from the ratio here of so-called modern Orthodox rabbis to other rabbis modern Orthodoxy is not a theological category, it is a sociological one. Obviously, also, since even his name is unknown to most of us, the rabbis have not spoken about him loudly enough.ДЄny other group of non-Orthodox North American rabbis would probably show a similar distribution, but it is uncertain that the Orthodox respondents in this symposium are equally representative of the Orthodox rabbinate. Obviously we have not given Nahum Glatzer and Schocken Books anything like the thanks we owe them for telling us about Rosenzweig in English.

The single greatest influence on the religious thought of North American Jewry, therefore, is a German Jew-a layman, not a rabbi-who died before Hitler took power and who came to Judaism from the very portals of the Church. (Yet when a Conservative wants to pray in a synagogue and has no Conservative synagogue to go to, he is much more apt to go to an Orthodox than a Reform one-especially if he is a rabbi.) Of the 27 non-Orthodox, I come up with this census: more or less classical (or serene) Reform, 4 or 5 - including a borderline case whose affiliation is Conservative Reconstructionists, 6 or 7-including one who takes his lead not from Dewey but from Sartre and Camus disciples of Franz Rosenzweig-15 to 17, mostly youngish. Cover the identifications of the non-Orthodox and what they write will not usually give you a clue to a Reform or a Conservative affiliation: few call themselves Reform, none Conservative. Reading the responses, one sees that the true division is between Orthodox and non-Orthodox. Why slightly more Reform respondents than Orthodox or Conservative? That is how the acceptances came out. Why were these rabbis invited and not others? These seemed likely, by the consensus of colleagues or by their own reputations. They appear below, in alphabetical order. Thirty-eight responses were received: 15 Reform, 12 Conservative, 11 Orthodox. Accordingly, a list of questions was submitted to some 55 rabbis (not all of whom, however, have congregations). The editors of COMMENTARY were curious to know whether this might also be true among Jews, especially since so much of the talk about Jews in past decades has been about Jewishness-that is, Jewish identity, understood historically and sociologically-rather than about Judaism, the system of belief and practice to which Jews are presumably obligated. One of the ironies surrounding all the discussion which has recently been taking place over the вЂњdeath of GodвЂќ is that, in many intellectual circles at least, God has not been so alive since Nietzsche wrote His obituary almost a century ago.

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