…the very idea that Judaism is a religion is a distinctly modern invention. Prior to Jewish modernity — most clearly defined as the acquisition of citizenship rights for Jews, a long process that began in Europe in the late-18th century — Judaism was neither solely a religion, nor simply a matter of culture or nationality. Rather, Judaism and Jewishness were all of these at once: religion, culture and nationality.

The basic framework of organized Jewish life in the medieval and early modern periods was the local Jewish community. While a Jewish community’s existence depended on the whim of others (usually the nobility or royalty), pre-modern Jewish communities were unique in that they had a tremendous amount of political autonomy.

Each community had its own set of bylaws administered by laypersons who, among other things, elected a rabbi for the community. Rabbis in turn had jurisdiction over ritual law and also gave credence to the laws of the community as a whole.

Each community also had its own courts, as well as its own educational, health, economic and social services systems. Outside rulers gave the Jewish community responsibility to maintain law and order, and the right to punish its members in a variety of ways, including exacting fines, imprisonment and corporal punishment.

For all these reasons, it simply was not possible in a pre-modern context to conceive of Jewish religion, nationality, and what we now call culture as distinct from one another. A Jew’s religious life was defined by, though not limited to, Jewish law, which was simultaneously religious, political and cultural in nature.

It was only in the modern period that the corporate Jewish community dissolved, and with that, political agency shifted to the individual Jew, giving him the freedom to define his identity for himself.

Leora Batnitzky, “Is Judaism A Religion Or A Culture?” The Jewish Week (2 September 2011), 24.

Raising a well-balanced, inspired, independent and motivated child — an immense challenge — is far likelier to succeed with two parents than one. Yet, while rabbis talk constantly about the 50 percent heterosexual divorce rate, pastors seem to gravitate far more to opposing gay marriage, even though we straight people have done a fine job of eroding marriage ourselves. (Indeed, one of the ironies of marriage in America is that the only men who seem to want to get married are gay!)

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, “Dear Gov. Perry: Instill Christian Values With Some Jewish Ones”, The Jewish Journal (23-29 September 2011), 13.

Throughout the first half of the 20th century, one of the more reliable (and entertaining) ways to track the impact of Jewish culture on African-American artists was to listen for bits of Yiddish making its way into black blues, jazz, and pop. Black argots like hep and jive were becoming central to black style and soon Yiddish — a fellow linguistic outsider — started mixing in as well.

“Heebie Jeebies: The World of Yiddish Jive” in the “Black Sabbath: The Secret Musical History of Black-Jewish Relations” exhibit at the Contemporary Jewish Museum (San Francisco)

Judaism is about obligations; but obligations are about relationships. Halachic theory accepts the fact that for a time, at least, this or that obligation may seem painfully beyond us. It does not, however, countenance our imagining that we are painfully removed from God. The divine-human relationship is sacrosanct.

Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman, “Echoes of Kol Nidre in Summer,” The Jewish Week (22 July 2011), 25.

Eliezer b. Hyrcanus is the first Tannaitic master for some of whose sayings we have chains of tradition, that is, authorities who say, “I heard from…” or, more commonly, Rabbi X says/said that Rabbi Y says that R. Eliezer b. Hyrcanus says/said. In addition, some of the Toseftan traditions about Eliezer, like many of those about disputes of the Houses, contain redefinitions of the substance of a dispute, or of the protasis of the pericope, preserving the apodosis just as it appears in the Mishnah. These constitute important evidence about the formation of Eliezer’s sayings; they tell us that a given authority knew and did not accept the specification of an opinion of Eliezer or of a matter about which he and others disputed, as given anonymously, but preferred a different formulation of the matter. Finally, we have, primarily from Judah b. Ilai, a number of opinions for Eliezer which are either consistent with (or contradict) anonymous Mishnaic laws, but which do not appear in the Mishnah in Eliezer’s name.

Jacob Neusner, <i>Eliezer ben Hyrcanus: The Tradition and the Man</i> Part Two (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1973), 73.

In 1797, R. Abraham of Kalisk, from the Holy Land, wrote a poignant letter attacking the Tanya. His concern was the explicit nature in which R. Shneur Zalman endeavors to explicate the message of the Besht and Maggid via Lurianic concepts.
…
R. Shneur Zalman wrote Tanya as a systematic guide. His intention was to uplift the masses and allow them to genuinely connect to the higher chain of mystical literature. However, R. Abraham felt that the great majority of Hasidic constituents had no place on that path. Rather, they were only meant to absorb the simple teachings that were placed before them. He did not trust the Hasidim; he did not think that they had the proper tools to understand the true teachings of the Besht and the Maggid.
…
R. Abraham of Kalisk’s point of contention, the manner in which R. Shneur Zalman explained the Hasidic doctrine, is exactly what made Tanya provocative and unique. R. Shneur created an organized and intellectual manual for his disciples. His goal was to use kabbalistic language in order to rationally elucidate the teachings of the Besht and Maggid. The Tanya employs an intellectual perspective to Hasidism; for this is precisely the meaning of Habad—Hokhmah (wisdom), Binah (understanding) and Da’at (knowledge). R. Abraham felt that empowering the Hasid himself to understand, rationally, the depths of the teachings takes away from the centrality of the Hasidic leader. The leader of a Hasidic group, referred to as the Zaddik, is not a mere communal head, rather he expresses cosmological and spiritual powers. This is perhaps the greatest innovation of Hasidism. R. Shneur Zalman changed this socio-religious dependence that the Hasid maintained towards the Zaddik, since he no longer had to rely on his faith of the Zaddik. Now, the Hasid had direct access to the esoteric teachings.
R. Shneur Zalman changed the leader/disciple relationship by establishing local guides, students of high intellectual pedigree, who assisted others to understand the meaning of Tanya. This was a further critique of R. Abraham of Kalisk, since Hasidic teachings in his mind were not intellectual teachings that could merely be explained. Rather, the illumination of esoteric Hasidic teachings required charisma. He maintained that they were meant to only be given over by a highly elevated and spiritual person— the Zaddikhimself.

Ben Vago, “Head to Head: Power Struggles in the Creation and Formation of the Habad Movement” Milin Havivin 4 (2010), 136-137.

Rabbi Fabian Schonfeld: I think a rabbi who feels burnt out shouldn’t have been a rabbi in the first place. You have to go into this profession, if you can call it a profession, with a spirit of dedication to Torah, to chinuch, to Klal Yisrael. If you do, you don’t get burnt out. I’ve seen rabbis who are burnt out. They get tired of meetings and with fighting with the congregation, with the shul president. But you have to feel the aish da’as, the fire of Torah, within you—independent of age, independent of circumstances. If you don’t have that, you shouldn’t be a rabbi.

Rabbi Dr. Gilbert Klaperman: We have to examine why a rabbi’s burnt out. Is it because he’s working too hard? Or because the challenge is too much for him? Or because he was never meant to be a rabbi? I had a non-Jewish friend [who was] a minister. He used to speak about his colleagues and say, “He was defrocked. He was unsuited.” There are young men who went into the rabbinate out of commitment, out of desire, but they’re not meant to be rabbis. They get burnt out very quickly, because the rabbinate is a challenging profession. It’s hard work. It’s demanding work. It’s intellectually challenging. The rabbis I see here [around this table] don’t look burnt out to me. Why? Because they were suited to be rabbis.

“Fifty Years in the Pulpit: Seven Veteran Rabbis Tell It Like It Was,” Jewish Action 69, No. 1 (Fall 5769/2008), 33.

With the emergence of Reform Judaism early in the nineteenth century…, appeal to the concepts of modernity and progress came to serve as the normative criterion for determining the value of Torah law. In the words of the third plank of the Pittsburgh Platform (1885): “We recognize in the Mosaic legislation a system of training the Jewish people for its mission during its national life in Palestine, and today we accept as binding only its moral laws, and maintain only such ceremonies as elevate and sanctify our lives, but reject all such as are not adapted the views and habits of modern civilization.” This statement of Reform Judaism in the nineteenth century demonstrates that the medieval rabbinic resistance to pursuing matters of human authorship was not unfounded. Subsequent history has shown that the traditional halakhic life is indeed endangered if the diachronic character of the Torah is openly and actively developed without any countervailing force. Concentration on the human authors could and, in this case, did detract from belief in the divine origin of the book. When a scripture comes to be seen as a product of culture, one that comes into existence through a long, variegated historical process, then the unity of the scripture – the simultaneity, self-referentiality, and mutual implication of all its parts – is thrown into doubt. As in the case of the third plank of the Pittsburgh Platform, the result is often a justification for the nonperformance of scriptural norms, in this instance, offensive or inconvenient Torah commandments (mitsvot). R. J. Zwi Werblowsky points out that “Liberal and Reform Judaism once welcomed Biblical criticism precisely [because] they found in criticism a welcome ally in their struggle to get rid of the Law and to substitute for it a purely ethical (and so-called ‘prophetic’) Judaism.” In fairness, however, it must also be noted that the perception of the Torah as an artifact of human culture that, like all others, reflects its own period led the liberals, in turn, to suspect that the totality of its norms could no longer be applied in the vastly different historical situation of modern Western Europe and America. As a contingent product of history, the Torah – or at least its superseded aspects – had to yield to the contingencies of history. To avoid the putative fossilization of the community, liberalism elected to fossilize large parts of the Torah, using historical methods to show that they are a dead letter. The theological liberals could do this only because they had shifted the locus of normativity from the text and the tradition onto the historical process, the dictates of autonomous reason, the conscience of the individual, and the like.

Jon D. Levenson, “The Eighth Principle of Judaism and the Literary Simultaneity of Scripture,” in The Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible, and Historical Criticism: Jews and Christians in Biblical Studies (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1993), 75-76.