Biblical teachings are there to breathe vitality into the Jewish people

The rabbinic regime was designed to preserve the ancient teachings over the course of the long, suspended animation that was the Jewish Diaspora. Once the program has come out of hibernation and has begun once again to take root and bloom, once the animation is no longer, as it were, suspended, the rabbinic skills become less well suited for the challenges of making vital those ancient, biblical teachings.

The Haredi program of ultra-Orthodoxy is designed to keep that vitality from coming to the fore and to keep the biblical teachings in suspension. Modern Orthodoxy needs a vision that goes beyond the rabbinic regime. The Karraites did not differ from the Rabbinites in that both wished to do little more than preserve the ancient teachings. The only difference was the Karraites wanted to preserve the biblical teachings while the Rabbinites wanted to preserve the rabbinic teachings.

With the establishment of the State of Israel we need to return to the ancient, biblical teachings but not merely to preserve them; rather, we need to harness the biblical teachings to breathe new spiritual vitality into the Jewish people.