COMPETITION GOOD FOR RELIGION; LIKE CATHOLIC CHURCH'S REJECTION OF REFORMATION, ORTHODOX JEWS IN ISRAEL RESISTING CHANGE.

Byline: Si Frumkin

COMPETITION is the enemy of stagnation. It is the driving force behind progress and efficiency. Without the challenge of competition there is no inclination, no need, to tinker with the status quo, to shake up the entrenched and familiar procedures, to be better, smarter, more productive. In every area of human endeavor, competition prevents stagnation and complacency that are inevitable when you are the only game in town and your clients have nowhere else to go.

Without competition from Japan, our automobiles would still be gas-guzzling dinosaurs. Without the breakup of the AT&T monopoly, we probably would not have cordless and cellular phones, call waiting, faxes and all the other telephonic tchachkes we take for granted, or even the right to actually own, not just rent, a phone of our choice. Without competition from FedEx and UPS our postal service still might be in the Stone Age of computing and electronics. (Federal agencies that have no competition are still there. Have you tried to get information from the INS lately? Try it if you have a day to waste.)

Our public schools are among the most extreme examples of entrenched inefficiency.

The affluent parents provide education for their children in expensive private schools, while the majority of Americans are forced to store their children in schools that produce uneducated, ignorant, sometimes illiterate graduates. School vouchers would give the less wealthy the opportunity to transfer children to better schools. The prospect of having to compete for the student horrifies the entrenched educational bureaucrats, and the immense political clout of the teachers unions is thrown into battle against vouchers whenever they are considered. In the meantime, the majority of those who are most familiar with public schools, the frustrated and intimidated teachers, whenever possible, place their own children in private schools.

The current conflict in Israel between the Orthodox and the non-Orthodox Jews is also about competition. Like any powerful and entrenched system, Orthodox Judaism in Israel abhors and fears change and denounces those who disagree as apostates.

In this, Judaism is not unique - the Catholic Church rejected the Reformation just as vehemently and the resultant bloodletting lasted for centuries, carrying over to today's Ireland. It might be interesting to speculate what the world would be like today if there had been no Reformation within the Christian church and all authority had remained with an all-powerful monolithic church and its hierarchy.

Would the church have eliminated corruption, stopped the sale of indulgences, curtailed the opulence and worldly power of its establishment? Would there have been progress in science, literature and humanities without the Reformation? Muslims were far ahead of Europeans in every branch of science - astronomy, medicine, chemistry, navigation and more. It is quite possible that a Muslim reformation might have resulted in the Industrial Revolution taking place in the Muslim world. Instead, stagnation set in after the Golden Age in Spain and the development of knowledge came to a halt.

There was no reformation in the Russian Greek Orthodox Church either, and it too continued unchanged, out of step with the times, contributing little to advance and enlighten the lives and minds of those it was supposed to serve.

Judaism had its minor reformation in Western Europe, and later, a major one in the U.S. with the growth of Reform and Conservative Judaism. In Eastern Europe, Hassidism was somewhat successful in attacking and questioning the dogmas of the Orthodox establishment but then it quickly degenerated into its own brand of fundamental know-nothingness, rejecting the outside secular world and proud of its insularity.

In the U.S., mainstream Orthodox Judaism has undergone some surface changes and has attempted to reach an accommodation with the Reform and Conservative branches. There was no such movement in Israel. The power of the Orthodox on the political scene is incontestable and they are not about to share it or make any concessions.

This refusal carries within it the same danger of stagnation, regression and backwardness that afflicted other religious establishments which refused to reform. The haredim who claim Divine authority for the prohibition against running buses on Shabbat, mixing meat and milk dishes, or allowing women to worship with men, forget that these rules are not really Divine. They are only human interpretations of the written word that were controversial when imposed, and were not accepted or implemented at all in many Jewish societies.

These and other obsolete restrictions are no more sacred than the Catholic prohibition to eat meat on Fridays (originally promulgated to prop up the Portuguese fish industry) or the exclusive use of Latin during Mass. These were abolished, against forceful opposition by the traditionalists, and the church still stands, as powerful as ever.

The current dispute is but one battle in a war that is as old as religion itself. The outcome is not yet clear but, unfortunately, the odds are that religious competition and revitalization will be rejected and that Judaism in Israel will join the list of those religions that contributed to the decline of their host societies.