12:14 AM
Gil Student
R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Community, Covenant and Commitment, R. Nathaniel Helfgot, ed., pp. 210-211:
More might have been accomplished had there been total separation [of religion and State in Israel]. Among the modern Orthodox community in America, there is the prevailing opinion that it has been a practical mistake... I am not religious liberal. It is not for the sake of religious liberty but for pragmatic reasons... The secularists would not have been able to blame us for interfering in Israel's way of life.. If there are no buses on Shabbat , the Orthodox and Judaism as such are blamed...
It would have been the State, not religion, that would have suffered by separation... its own image would have been tarnished... [I have in the past advised] the leaders of Mizrahi not to press for religious legislation for practical, utilitarian reasons...
I frequently debate with myself whether, indeed, we were obligated to make the great sacrifice of exposing ourselves to vilification and slander in order to save some secularists from contracting halakhically illegitimate marriages. Ninety-five percent of the population would comply with the halakhic code of marriage and divorce even if it were not sanctioned by the authority of the State...
