On My Mind

Sorry about the strange hyphenation.  I typed this response up as a MSWord document and pasted it in the box, which apparently messed up the format.

(This is largely taken from a commentary I wrote on a Jewish-oriented Usenet dis-cussion group about five years ago.)

I note that the definition of “modern Orthodox” has drastically changed since I grew up going to a MO shul.

Perhaps “Orthodox” has a different meaning to many of us.  As I was growing up, my peers and I made a distinction between “frum” and “Orthodox”.  I am a member of that generation who grew up modern Orthodox.  I now go to a Conservative shul. In the 50’s and 60’s, “Orthodox” really meant “Modern Orthodox”. 
Most of the shuls in Baltimore were MO.  We could count the “black 
hat” or “frum” shuls on the fingers of one hand (Glen Avenue’s 
Shearith Israel and a couple of cottage shuls on Rogers and Park 
Heights Avenues). We were Orthodox because we went to Ortho-dox shuls.  My family kept kosher inside the house (but we always had plastic cut-lery and paper 
plates for the inevitable Chinese carry-out from Golden Dragon or Lotus Inn) and we went to shul most Shabboses; but we drove places, watched TV, etc.  “Orthodox” to the generation of my parents meant 
“going to services at MO shuls” without the “frum” connotations.  In my neighborhood, everybody went to ei-ther Rogers Avenue or Beth 
Jacob, both MO congregations. 

Whether you went to a Reform, Conservative, or Orthodox shul was largely a mat-ter of economic status. It was
too expensive to belong to Reform or Conservative shuls back then.  We were the middle to lower-middle class.  The well-to-do folks that lived in Mt. Washington and Pikesville were the ones who went to the upper Park Heights R and C congregations.  Today, there are more affordable C and R (and Reconstructionist) 
alternatives in the Baltimore area, making R and C mem-bership a more 
viable option for Jews.  There are very few MO shuls left (Beth Tfiloh, Liberty Jewish Center and Ner Tamid may comprise 
the complete MO list). The MO membership of my parents’ generation has largely become C and R mem-bership (or no membership at all) of my peers. 

I was a three-times-a-year Jew for a good many years, as frankly the 
Orthodox ser-vices my father went to (and that very few of my peers 
continued to go to as we be-came adults) no longer spoke to me.  In the past decade, the attraction of my small egalitarian participatory C congregation has re-kindled my Judaism and made me feel I am getting 
something out of the service although I don’t understand the He-brew words I am saying (another failure of the Hebrew schools of my youth). 
There is a sense of togetherness and meaning that I get from the services, from the rabbi and from the weekly divrei torah given by 
fellow congregants.  Women daven and layen, not being treated as 
second-class citizens and not being separated by a phys-ical barrier. 
These are things I never could find at O shuls.  C has a respect for tra-dition, yet realizes that the Torah needs to be re-interpreted with each succeeding generation.  That’s the kind of shul I believe my parents would have joined way back when had they had the money to do so. 
In Baltimore today, the influx of the frum in search of: (a) a vibrant UO community and (b) affordable housing, coupled with the
ever-spreading influence of the Ner Is-rael Rabbinical College, has led 
to a proliferation of strict O shuls.  Where in the past there was 
just Glen Avenue and a couple of cottages, there are probably around 50 UO shuls or mini-shuls (what the French call “oratoires”) in the 
area.  I really don’t think that there has been a migration to these shuls from the existing R and C communities or from the remaining MO.  The people who 30-40 years ago were MO are I would say
almost all either still MO, or have become R or C.