when all Jews have access to the entire marketplace of ideas and beliefs, an authentic sense of being Jewish—of Jewishness—requires living as a Jew, doing Jewish in some way.

Many religious people think that concessions to human limitations are incompatible with divine law. An eternal truth should not be qualified by socioeconomic realities or cultural norms. Halacha’s pragmatism bespeaks a different understanding of Judaism.

in an ideal world, halakha is meant to be uncodified, like the rules of grammar, precisely so that its practice remain fluid much the way a native language is spoken. In the real world, codification is often necessary to prevent too much drift during times when collective intuition is compromised;

A robust sense of Judaism as a living organism requires a way for its component parts to connect in dynamic integration; the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. That integrated whole is precisely what halakhah offers us. Without a systemic commitment to contextualize mitzvot in the evolving conversation of the Rabbis across the generations,