[thereisone] Orthodox or Reform?
- From: Gutman Locks <locks.gutman@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: thereisone@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 14 Jul 2015 07:04:16 +0300
Orthodox or Reform?
The father and son were walking away from the Kotel when I invited
them to put on tefillin. The father insisted that he could not put them on,
“But I do not even know how to do it.”
“That’s what I’m here for.”
I gently pulled them in. They had never put on tefillin before. The
father moved from Russia to America before the boy was born.
The boy read the “*Shema*” in English and his father read it in
Russian. I had the father bless his son and I showed them how to pray for
their family and all that they needed.
When they finished, I explained to the boy why it is so important for
him to marry a Jewish girl. The father agreed. The father, wanting to show
me how important being Jewish is to them, happily told me, “Every Yom
Kippur we go to the Reform Temple.”
I said, “It is better for you to go to an Orthodox synagogue, some
place like a Chabad House, even though you are not going to follow all
their rules than to go to a Reform Temple and follow their customs
completely.”
I told him that the Reform movement and other break off movements from
Torah-Judaism want to make it easy for Jews to stay even somewhat religious
so they water down, or even completely change many of the basic teaching of
the Torah. They think that they are helping the Jewish people, but they are
not.
“The Reform customs do not follow even the basic rules of Torah, for
instance they say that even if your father is Jewish and your mother is
not, you are Jewish, but the Torah clearly says that your mother has to be
Jewish for you to be Jewish. The same is true about many other basic
teachings of the Reform movement.”
“You can do whatever you like. If you feel that following the orthodox
rules, like the rules of kosher eating are too difficult for you for now,
then eat whatever you like. But you should know the difference between food
that is allowed by the Torah and food that is not allowed. Then some day,
if you want you can begin to eat just kosher food. This is much better than
thinking that the non-kosher food is kosher.
It is better to not do all that the Torah says is right to do, knowing
that what you are doing is not right, than to do things that the Torah says
are wrong to do, thinking that what you are doing is right.
We took pictures of them smiling with tefillin on and they walked away
happy, with a lot of new, important information. Those five minutes were
probably the most important five minutes of their entire trip.
----
To reply; email me directly at: locks.gutman@xxxxxxxxx
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