On June 20, 2022, I published a post titled Some Tentative Thoughts On The Jewish Claim To A "Religious Abortion." I started thinking about that post several weeks earlier. I only published it when I did to get ahead of the imminent Dobbs decision, which eventually was released on June 24 (a few days earlier than I expected). I spent as much as I did on the post because I knew it would be controversial. I was writing on two of the most hotly-contested topics in our polity, abortion and religious liberty, against the backdrop of a long-simmering divide within the Jewish community. I knew that my post would stir up a debate in my own circles–there would be tweets from law professors, essays on Slate, and maybe a few footnotes in post-Dobbs law review articles. But the reaction was far greater. The post went viral, and global. Beyond the usual suspects, my piece was discussed in Jewish publications in the United States and in Israel. And it was referenced in mainstream media sources.
In the past, some of my writings had triggered national conversations, such as my work during the Trump impeachments, but those reactions were seldom about me. At most, I was called a "partisan hack" or some such charge. But here, the reactions to my writing were quite personal. Even the local Jewish newspaper in Houston (yes, we have one) carried an editorial about my piece. People from a local synagogue invited me to attend a program they were hosting on the topic. (I wasn't able to make it, but I asked them to send me a recording). The rabbi from my parents' temple in New York asked me about it. People attacked me, in particular, as a Jew being critical of other Jews. In the lingo, chilul hashem, which is often used to describe a Jew defaming his own people. Or, to use the title of a recent book, a Bad Jew.
My usual policy is to respond to critics on my own terms, and my own timetable. I learned this lesson well during the Hamilton documents imbroglio of 2017. Law professors and others accused Tillman and me of doing something wrong, and demanded a response immediately. We took our time, prepared our response methodically, and–in my view at least–our strategy was vindicated. This lesson is all-too-important in our Twitter-crazed culture, where people make wild accusations, but seldom follow-up if they were mistaken. I am fairly confident that the overwhelming majority of people who criticized my piece did not actually read it. At most, they read a piece in Slate, or perhaps read a piece somewhere else that paraphrased what was in Slate, or most likely, read a few negative tweets, and went from there. It's like making a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy–something is lost with each successive reproduction. I don't fault people for not taking the time to read my lengthy post, which was filled with legal jargon and professorial nuances. That sort of writing does not translate well for wide-spread consumption. And I knew that fact going in, which is why I wrote a 1,900 word blog post, rather than a snappy op-ed.
