The marketplace of Judaism

In “Flourishing Judaism” (Editorial, February 7), you quote Uri Keidar as saying that a “framework” that “regulates” interaction between religion and state should ensure that “there is a place for everyone and... Judaism draws people in and doesn’t distance them.”

You agree with him in that “there needs to be room for more opinions, more diversity and more ways to express one’s Jewishness.” You add: “Judaism is a living entity, and by granting a monopoly to any single [religious] group, no matter how honorable, principled and distinguished... Judaism’s tremendous potentials are stifled.”

To be a Jew, one has to live it according to the laws and commandments handed down at Mount Sinai. This certainly does not “stifle”; it only stops it from being trashed, misquoted and changed to suit the many forms of liberalism that come onto the “market.”

What your editorial recommends is “free market Judaism,” an atmosphere in which different expressions of Judaism are given the opportunity to compete freely. Huh? Are we talking about a shuk or the life-blood of the Jewish people through which we have survived thousands of years of pogroms and the Holocaust to return to our historic, God-given land?

Tellingly, you also say that “market forces – resulting most notably from the huge wave of immigration from the former Soviet Union – have created a demand for non-kosher food, more commercial activity on Shabbat and civil marriage.”

Herein lies what is at the bottom of the hullabaloo over Jewish practice. I believe it was always the intention to bring over people with no – or the most tenuous, bordering on the ridiculous – connection to Judaism to make us into a country for all people rather than the historic Jewish state for the Jewish people. This will not allow Judaism to develop; it will destroy it.

Can it be that after fighting and dying for this Jewish land, all we are now looking for is traffic on the road on Shabbat, places of entertainment open on Shabbat, shops and restaurants open on Shabbat, and the sale of non-kosher food with, perhaps, pigs as a centerpiece? We would not only be the laughingstock of the world, there would be no reason for denying the Arabs their stolen narrative, as we will have relinquished it. YENTEL JACOBS

Netanya