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Is there a trend among young Jews to create their own style of Judaism by borrowing from different traditions? For example, dressing like an ultra-Orthodox but practicing Reform Judaism?
Is there a trend towards deception? Or is it whether there is a trend towards a pick and choose way of living? Or is there a trend towards defining Jewish identity in an individual sense?
Is there a trend toward "Cafeteria Judaism " - picking and choosing what tenets to follow?
This is actually very true with gentiles.
Take Hispanics in the U.S. for example, whom are mildly Catholic. They followed the Catholic rule of no condoms and birth control pills, but ignored the pre-marital sex part, and then followed the abortion rule.
There's also something called cognitive dissonance - where you believe what you want to believe. Like the belief that "everything happens for a reason" whenever something bad happens.
There's generally a trend of people doing whatever they want, and then justifying it in the Bible somehow. The Bible has been reduced to a Rorschach test, where liberals somehow always manage to find liberal interpretations, and conservatives always manage to find conservative interpretations. My mind can't fathom how these two groups are reading the same book....
The "middle-of-the-road" movement "Conservative Judaism" (which has very little to do with the American political term 'conservative' so don't conflate the two) has the biggest problem with this. You could walk into one Conservative synagogue that is SO liberal it seems Reform; and next week walk into a different Conservative synagogue that basically seems almost Modern Orthodox, but with men & women sitting together.
To directly answer your example, yes, I've heard of people who wear yarmulke's and tzitzit, but are openly gay or don't keep kosher, etc.
Other inconsistencies include Orthodox Jews I knew in college who were crazy strict with rituals, but were very sexually promiscuous.
Nowadays you also have a type of "feminist Orthodox" movement growing that would have been inconceivable 20 years ago.
While visiting Israel recently I attended a "Conservative" synagogue that called up a lesbian couple for the first and second Torah aliyah honors because one was the daughter of a Cohen and the other was the daughter of a Levi. This is a MAJOR problem for anyone remotely traditional.
Ultimately, many of these differences really stem from different beliefs of who wrote the Bible. Liberals generally think the Bible is mostly human, and therefore changeable. Traditionalists believe the Bible is mostly or entirely divine. In Judaism, many traditionalists also believe that the "Oral Law" and the subsequent decisions of the Rabbis were also divinely guided.
I've heard the expression "Conservadox". Is there "Orthoform "?
Conservadox (Conservative leaning towards Orthodox) is Modern Orthodox lite. In Israeli standards it would be called Masorti (traditional). Orthoform (Orthodox leaning towards Reform) would have very little in common, thus would not exist.
What kind of Orthodoxy does Rabbi Avi Weiss promote, with his attempt to make it more inclusive of women?
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