“With its mechanisms of accountability broken, Modern Orthodoxy is more and more vulnerable to claims of direct Divine inspiration and non-accountable certainty”

With its mechanisms of accountability broken, Modern Orthodoxy is more and more vulnerable to claims of direct Divine inspiration and non-accountable certainty (often well-disguised as their opposites). A natural reaction to this risk of anarchy is to double-down on eligibility, ideology, and intimidation; these work in the short run, but lead almost inevitably to schism (and intimidation is a very hard habit to break).

Rabbi Aryeh Klapper, “When Majority Rule Breaks Down”, moderntoraleadership (10 September 2015) [https://moderntoraleadership.wordpress.com/2015/09/10/when-majority-rule-breaks-down/]