JewDot

A New Term for an Old Problem

Continuing a trend of endlessly creating new terms to describe the Upper West Side scene, The Forward has added a new one, Flexidox. The Forward’s description:

Flexidox Jews have practice, but not theory. Flexidoxy is defined by its refusal to defend itself or invent rationales to justify this or that deviation from traditional religious practice. In contrast, say, to the Conservative Jew who says that ancient religious law evolves, or the Reform Jew who says it is irrelevant, the flexidox Jew takes no position on what Jewish law actually is — only on how he or she interacts with it.

Esther Kustanowitz describes Flexidox Jews as

people who would otherwise be called Conservadox, but they don’t like the ‘Conserva’ part since it’s an ideology that they may find distasteful.

Creating a new label is fine and good, but as the article rightly points out there have been Flexidox Jews for years. The Jew that drives to an Orthodox shul, but would never dare set foot into a Conservative shul because it’s not frum is a classic example. At the end of the day the best description for these people are “lazy Jews.”

I don’t even like they are being associated with Conservadox. Their outward observance might be the same, but at least a Conservadox Jew believes that he is acting according to his understanding of Halakha. As a good example, a Conservadox Jew might decide to eat unhekshered cheese because he believes rennet is a davar chadash and is no longer an animal product. While a Flexidox Jew might decide to eat unhekshered cheese because it’s easily available and makes it easier to live in the modern world. Both people buy the same cheese, but deep down the Flexidox Jew believes that he’s eating treif.

This discussion doesn’t need to be contained in the Orthodox/Conservative divide. There are people in every movement that say, “I’m not X because being X is too hard.” Instead of promoting lazy Jews with a hip new term, we should be celebrating Jews that truly embody what it means to be Jewish. BZ is a great example. He’s a self identified Reform Jew, but instead of saying I do whatever I want because I’m a Reform Jew, he has an ideology and every decision he makes is logically justified in that ideology. When there are more Jews like him across the spectrum we can finally stop worrying about Jewish Continuity and instead celebrate being Jewish.

Anyone want to suggest a hip new term for Jews that actually believe what they practice?

Update:
David Kelsey comments on the same article(admittedly before me) and comes to a similar conclusion.

Also, Flexidox is not even a new term. Apparently FutureSimchas used it as a religious category as early as March 2004.

Labels: Flexidox, Forward

posted by Avi BenJakob @ 10:56 AM