Posts

Posted on

The Importance of Good Company

This week, we witness Moshe throwing up his hands in despair. Moshe, Moshe Rabbeinu, our master teacher, he who transmitted the entire Torah directly from G-d to the Jewish People, has had it with the Jews. He’s done. “And Moshe said to Hashem, ‘why have You done such a bad thing to Your servant, and why have I not found favor in Your eyes, that You would place the burden of this entire nation upon me?'” [Num. 11:11]

What did Israel do that was so wrong, so horrible, that Moshe gave up?

Think about it. The nation believed the report of the spies, and mourned their (supposed) inability to inherit the land of Israel, and Moshe did not give up. So this was a bigger problem than their refusal to believe Hashem’s promise.

The people tried to replace Moshe with a Golden Calf, and not only did Moshe not give up, he demanded that God forgive them. “Why, Hashem, should your anger flare against Your nation, which You brought out from the land of Egypt with great strength and a strong arm? Why should the Egyptians say, ‘He brought them out for evil purposes, to kill them in the mountains and to destroy them from off the face of the earth?’ Return from your flaring anger, and set aside the bad for Your nation.” [Ex. 32:11-12] Moshe even said, “And now, if you will lift their sin [from upon them, then that will be good], and if not, erase me from Your book which You have written!” [Ex. 32:32] So what Israel has done here must be far, far worse than trying to undermine Moshe himself.

What did they do? They asked for variety on the menu! They asked for meat. They got tired of eating mahn all the time, so they wanted to go to a restaurant for a day. And this was the thing Moshe found unbearable. Why was it so wrong?

The answer is that Manna was a perfect food which took care of all their needs. In fact, it had whatever flavor they wanted, so they could have been tasting the finest broiled steak if they so chose. Those who ate it produced no excrement, as it provided full and complete nutrition with no waste. And it was provided each and every morning (except Shabbos) with no effort, so Israel did not have to worry about their physical needs, and could devote their time to Torah.

And that was the problem. Israel was demanding less spirituality. They couldn’t handle such a perfectly spiritual food, ingesting an open miracle all the time. They wanted to go down a few levels.

What inspired something so patently crazy? How did they come to think such a silly idea? “The gathered ones that were among them had a desire, and they sat and cried, also the Children of Israel, and they said ‘who will feed us meat?'” [11:4] Who were “the gathered ones?” Rashi explains, this was the “mixed multitude” who came out of Egypt with the Jews.

The mixed multitude was a corrupting influence. They were the first to worship the Golden Calf, and the first to demand meat. If not for them, the Jews themselves would never have thought about wanting a less holy food, but once somebody else was talking about it, suddenly it became “the rage.” It became the “conventional wisdom.”

I recently made the mistake of posting to a forum on Facebook which purports to be for open discussion of Jewish topics. Someone had posted, essentially, “how can some Jews be so foolish as to disbelieve {X}?” Now I’m sure some of you will immediately figure out what {X} was, but the scientific topic is not my point. I simply called to their attention that many (in fact, among the ‘charedim’, nearly all) who had attained an advanced education in the hard sciences, and also adopted Jewish observance as adults, had come to no longer believe {X}, so perhaps the issue is not as settled as they imagine.

If I imagined that an intelligent discussion would follow, I was to be sorely disappointed. For every person who attempted to address the issue, there were five who focused upon discrediting religious thought, the experts who dared buck the conventional wisdom, even my own credentials. The people I described, they said, must have had a psychological need to “fit in” with their new group (never mind that becoming observant requires willingness to deviate from a peer group). These scientists must reject scientific facts, ones that I had already mentioned they continue to regard as accurate. I was even told that I, personally, had “falsely” claimed a science or engineering degree by someone who didn’t understand the difference between a degree and a major — and someone restated the fallacy even after I showed that it was obviously wrong. To be certain, some also insisted that knowledge of mathematics and statistics is less relevant than biology to understand a question of mathematical probabilities. That was the tenor of the entire discussion.

It was an exercise in groupthink, in order to avoid critical analysis. Two days later, someone contacted me privately to tell me that he found my arguments very interesting, and that it was obvious to him that many in the so-called discussion were unable to respond objectively. “Anyone,” he wrote, “should have been able to see the prejudice in their approach.”

And he was right. Anyone should have been able to see that they were being irrational, but you had to be willing to question conventional wisdom in order to do that.

How do people imagine that soldiers defending lives are doing a bad thing? Because they are told by their neighboring influences, which is to say the media, that people were shot “protesting the move of the US embassy to Jerusalem,” rather than that armed terrorists were answering a call to “tear down the barrier, and tear out the Jews’ hearts.”

Thanks to radio, TV and the Internet, we are constantly barraged with false facts and false priorities. We have the “mixed multitude” close at hand, in fact in our hands, on little screens, telling us what to think and what is correct — to drop spirituality and embrace materialism and falsehood.

It is so obviously wrong to do so, that it is incredibly disheartening to those trying to lead us in a better direction. This is what brought Moshe to throw up his hands in dismay. May we have the discernment to reject false thinking, no matter how common, in order to embrace the truth.

Posted on

Dismantling the Palestinian Lie

This was edited and published in the Jewish Press, but this is the original version:

President Mahmoud Abbas addressed his Palestinian National Authority (PA) recently, in a speech broadcast on Palestinian Television. Rather than addressing the problems facing his citizenry, the lack of democratic governance exemplified by a President in the thirteenth year of his four-year term, or even the conflict with Israel, he turned his attention to history’s favorite target: the Jews.

Abbas asserted that hatred of Jews in Europe was “not because of their religion, but because of their… usury, banks and so on.” He denied the long history of bigotry and violence against Jews in the Arab world, and used this lie to “prove” that Jews were never hated “just for being Jews.”

He termed traditional Jewish prayers for Zion a “narrative” which we are “tired of hearing.” He insisted that Israel “is a colonialist enterprise, aimed at planting a foreign body in this region.” He revived the canard that Ashkenazic Jews come from the province of Khazaria: “And those are Ashkenazi Jews,” he said, “which means they are not Semitic and have no relation to Semitism and have nothing to do with the prophets Abraham or Jacob.”

By dredging up the traditional tropes of Antisemitism, Abbas inadvertently did the civilized world a great service: unmasking the true nature of the “new” stories his PA tells today.

For the record, I am no “Zionist,” in that I do not share Herzl’s delusion that taking the Jews from Europe to Israel would eliminate Antisemitism. Many of Israel’s government decisions are irrational and bureaucratic; occasionally they are dangerous.

What I am is a Jew and a Rabbi, who has studied anti-Semitism as understood by our leaders and teachers throughout history. No, I do not mean university professors who struggle to provide a rational basis for a fundamentally irrational hatred. Like attempts to express an irrational number as a fraction, those explanations collapse the more closely we look.

This is because hatred of Jews finds a new facade to fit each new era, a contemporary rationale to mask the ancient hatred beneath. Abbas’ mistake was to refer directly to earlier eras, connecting yesterday’s obvious lie to today’s “truth.”

Today’s facade is “Palestine,” the Arab homeland which the Jews are occupying and stealing from its owners. This is a Palestine which claims no Israeli Jew may live within its borders, yet calls Israel the “apartheid” country as it foments a “resistance” comprised of murdering Jewish civilians.

What is Palestine? Let us examine seven basic truths.

1. It is a Roman name steeped in bigotry and ethnic cleansing. As the Romans murdered and exiled the Jews from their homeland, they renamed Judea because of its obvious association with Jews. Arabs say Falehsteen because Arabic has no phoneme for a “P” sound. Yes, you read correctly: “Palestinian” Arabs have no name for their purported homeland pronounceable in their native tongue.

2. From the Romans in the year 70, to the Crusaders of the 11th Century, to the Arab massacre of Hebron in 1929, Jews have never left their homeland voluntarily and have always returned. During the past 2000 years, Palestine has been home to some of the foremost Jewish scholars, many renowned even by non-Jews today: Maimonides of the Guide to the Perplexed, Rav Yosef Karo who authored the Code of Jewish Law, and the Kabbalist Rabbi Yitzhak Luria (the Ari Zal) all moved to Palestine during their lifetimes. There is even a Palestinian Talmud. The longing for Zion derided by Abbas is no modern political movement, but a fundamental tenet of Judaism.

3. This fact was known to all who invaded or migrated there. The Arabic name for Jerusalem, Al-Quds, is an abbreviation of Bet Al-Maqdes, “The Holy Temple” (in Hebrew, Bet HaMikdash). Over 60% of Jerusalem residents were Jews in 1896, prior to the formation of the Zionist movement. The 1938 Flag of Palestine in a French Atlas consisted of equal panels of blue and white, with a six-pointed gold star in the center. The “Palestine Post” changed its name after Israel’s Independence in 1948 – to The Jerusalem Post.

4. Palestine has never been an independent Arab country or community, nor has Jerusalem ever been an Arab capital. On the contrary, “Palestine” was the target of the Arab boycott when it started in 1945. The PA flag, a derivation of that used by dozens of past and present Arab nations, was previously the flag of the short-lived Federation of Iraq and Jordan – in 1958.

5. Although every indigenous people’s homeland differs significantly from modern political borders (even in England and Scotland), the PA’s “Palestine” traces precisely that area of British mandatory Palestine that is today Israel. No Lebanese, Egyptian or even Jordanian territory is claimed; neither is an inch of ancient Israel left to the Jews.

6. The website of the Palestinian Authority declares: “today’s Palestinians are direct descendants of the Arab people and share their culture, language and history.” Not coincidentally, these are the three measures by which anthropologists distinguish distinct peoples. Mahmoud Abbas said in Jordan that “we are one people living in two states,” while Hamas leader Fathi Hammad declared on Egyptian television that “half of the Palestinians are Egyptian, and the other half are Saudis.” The Peel Commission of 1937 determined that “Arabs living both east and west of the Jordan River had ties of kinship, language and culture with the Arabs in surrounding countries.”

Zuheir Mohsen, then-leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s Pro-Syrian Faction, said bluntly in a 1977 interview: “The Palestinian people do not exist. Between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese there are no differences. We are all part of one people, the Arab nation.”

7. The objective of the PLO at its founding in 1964 was not to end an occupation or even to establish a country, but to destroy Israel. Zuheir Mohsen said in the same interview that the “Palestinian identity exists only for tactical reasons… Once we have secured our rights in all of Palestine, we would not postpone the unification of Jordan and Palestine for even a second.”

As Mohsen himself said, and these facts clearly indicate, Arab Palestine exists only to disenfranchise the Jews. True peace can come when the Arab world is able to free itself from falsehood and establish peaceful self-governance on land which Israel would happily give them, using a process it initiated in 1993. To pressure Israel in the meantime, to claim Israel is the obstruction as Arabs pursue false narratives of Jewish theft, greed, and blame for their own murders in lieu of productive development, is not merely counter-productive, but perpetuates an ancient hatred that still plagues humanity.

Posted on

Self Preservation

In this week’s Torah reading, the double portion of Tazria-Metzorah, most of our attention is directed to the phenomenon of Tzara’as, a spiritual blemish. People erroneously compare it to leprosy… but clothing and buildings don’t become leprous. The Talmud (Ehrchin 15b) tells us that the cause of Tzara’as is Loshon Hara, speaking evil of others — Reish Lakish teaches that Metzorah, the word for one who has Tzara’as, should be read as an acronym for “Motzei Shem Ra,” one who defames another.

Why should it be that when a person gossiped about someone else, that his skin would turn white, as if it were dying, and he would have to leave the community until he healed? [Our Sages teach that today we are not on the spiritual level necessary to receive such a miraculous punishment, but nonetheless the concept remains the same.]

The ability to speak, to communicate intelligently, is what separates us from animals. It is our human soul that gives us the ability to think and reason, and then to communicate those thoughts to others. We can use that gift for the greatest and highest of purposes, to teach and learn Torah, and we can use that gift to tear down and destroy. We choose how to use this gift.

And every person is susceptible to making the wrong choice. The two examples of people who were punished with Tzara’as in the Torah are none other than Moshe and Miriam — the recipient of the Torah and his sister. [In reality, Moshe did not truly speak Lashon Hora, as he merely told G-d that the Jewish Nation would not believe him (Ex. 4:1). And concerning Miriam (Num. 12:1) Rashi says that it is clear that she did not say anything to disparage Moshe — Rashi warns: “all the more so one who speaks about another to disparage him!”]

Every person, on his or her level, must be extremely careful to only speak appropriately about others. Tehillim (Psalm) 34 says: “Who is the man who desires life, loves days to see good? Guard your tongue from evil and your lips from trickery, turn away from evil and do good, seek peace and pursue it.”

Today there is an organization named for Rabbi Israel Mayer Kagan, who became known by the name of his work on avoiding Lashon Hora, which he entitled “Chofetz Chaim,” “desires life” from the Psalm. The organization pointed out that today we are tested in this area in a way that earlier generations were not:

The anonymity of social media makes matters worse. In Virtually You: The Dangerous Powers of the E-Personality, author Dr. Elias Aboujaoude cites a study revealing that on-line users convince themselves that their on-line behavior is “not me,” and therefore, they do not feel responsible for the consequences of their posts. Thus, a person who would feel constrained to say loshon hora out loud feels far less inhibited about posting and sharing it.

Language gives us the ability to do greater deeds than animals. Whether they are marvelous or terrible deeds, that is our choice — and language is the most powerful expression of our choices. Let us choose the path of life in every conversation!

Posted on

Always New

For seven days and nights, Aharon and his sons sat at the entrance to the Tabernacle, as they were commanded to do. Then the eighth day arrived, the first day of Nissan, a year after leaving Egypt, and it was time to bring the first offerings to G-d.

Aharon first brought sin and elevation offerings for himself, and then the sin offering on behalf of the nation. The verse reads [9:15]: “And Aharon brought the offering of the nation, he took the goat of the sin offering of the nation, and he slaughtered it and offered it like the first one.”

Rabbi Yaakov Galinsky zt”l (o.b.m.) is struck by that last expression, “like the first one.” Why does the Torah emphasize this point? Yes, the Torah describes the process in more detail the first time, in the previous verses. But we have a model for how a sin offering is to be done, as there is a (different) process for an elevation offering. It is unnecessary to tell us that Aharon did it the same way — and indeed, in the very next verse it says, “And he brought the elevation offering, and he prepared it according to its laws.” So what was the point of underscoring that Aharon brought the sin offering “like the first one?”

Rabbi Galinsky explains: the Torah is telling us that Aharon prepared the sin offering on behalf of the nation, the third offering which he brought in the Tabernacle, with precisely the same excitement that he had the first time, exactly as if this were the first sin offering he had ever brought! That is what it means, “like the first one.”

It is simply human nature that when we do a particular action repetitively, or even see a particular site often, that the impact naturally diminishes. The tour guide leading people down to the Grand Canyon does not gasp along with the tourists. Even those who pray at the holy Western Wall every day may no longer feel as they did the first time they touched its stones — but we know that we all should.

When I was a student in Lakewood, Rav Shlomo Wolbe zt”l, a tremendous scholar and teacher of Mussar (spiritual and ethical improvement) came from Israel, and spoke in the yeshiva during his visit. People came from everywhere for the special privilege of hearing him, including people who were no longer in the school or who studied elsewhere. Needless to say, most every student was sure to attend.

To me, this was the biggest lesson of his address that day.

The reason is that I had previously studied in “Lakewood East,” the branch of the yeshiva located in Jerusalem. Rav Wolbe was the father-in-law of the Rosh Yeshiva (Dean) of the Jerusalem branch, (ylctv”a) Rabbi Yaakov Schwartzman shlit”a, and Rav Wolbe spoke in that yeshiva once every two weeks.

While I would hardly say the room was empty, people naturally try to postpone other tasks until they are done studying with their partners (which is how most learning is done in a yeshiva). People are much less particular about staying for “mussar seder” when other things arise. So the room was much emptier than earlier in the afternoon. They didn’t “pack in,” they “packed out.” It’s that same element of human nature: people specifically came to hear him when they knew they might only be able to do so once, but those who could hear from him biweekly willingly gave up the opportunity.

The Haggadah tells us that every person is obligated to see him or herself “as if he left Egypt,” personally experiencing the miracle of the Exodus, and the gratitude to G-d for bringing us out of slavery. We are told that every Jewish soul was at Mount Sinai, that we ourselves experienced the Revelation. And we say in our prayers that G-d “renews the work of Creation, every day, constantly.”

It is a similarly great challenge to renew ourselves that same way, to experience each day as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, the same way G-d constantly renews His Creation around us. But it is the truth: every day is our one and only opportunity to experience that day. We will only experience Parshas Shmini 5778 once in our lives. We will only pray tomorrow morning once in our lives.

Like Aharon, we must learn to take advantage of each once-in-a-lifetime spiritual opportunity!

Posted on

When Jews Target Jews

Hostility toward Judaism, Jewish observance and observant Jews has always been a central part of anti-Semitism. Sadly, it doesn’t always come from non-Jews, as Eli Steinberg noted recently in The Forward, in an op-ed called “Anti-Orthodox Is the New Anti-Semitism.”

Steinberg could have been referring to another opinion piece which emerged but two days earlier, by Elad Nehorai, also in The Forward, titled “White Nationalism Is Spreading in the Orthodox Community.”

We cannot minimize the problem of racism. It exists in all communities and needs to be extinguished in all communities, ours included. But to stereotype a particular group, whether religious or ethnic, as being racist is part of the problem, not the solution. How would we react to an op-ed titled “Nationalism Is Spreading in the Latino Community”? Does this not prove Steinberg’s point, that targeting the Orthodox is somehow more acceptable?

We must recall that Jews, who have suffered at the hands of whites more than most anyone, have never themselves been leading racists. And yet, the belief that Jews are supremacists who despise humanity and care about only their own is a core anti-Semitic canard. This is how Rabbi Naftali T.Y. Berlin, dean of the famed Volozhin Yeshiva, summarized anti-Semitism a half-century prior to the Holocaust (Commentary to the Torah, appendix, Gen. 31:29):

This is the way of the nations: that if they see one Jew steal, they say that all those who serve G-d are thieves — and that Judaism itself gives them permission to do so. And for this reason, one should do badly to [Jews] and stamp out Judaism.

This belief, that Jews are anxious to plunder the rest of humanity for Jewish benefit is found in the fabricated “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” in Nazi literature, and in the minutes of the Mahwah, New Jersey, town council, as Steinberg showed. Look at what we are routinely told about Israel. Myths of Jewish control of the banks, government and the media all grow from this same sickly root, and, exactly as Rabbi Berlin explained, this has been used to justify everything from pogroms to expulsions to genocide.

And yet, despite the proliferation of this idea, a canard it remains. And just as Jews are not a group of evil, self-interested plunderers, they are also not becoming white supremacists, contra Nehorai’s article.

Nehorai’s piece begins with the report that President Trump made a disparaging reference to countries designated for Temporary Protected Status and/or to Third World countries in Africa. Some said the comment was aimed at the racial makeup of the countries and was thus racist. But these accusations were in line with false accusations of racism and anti-Semitism that have dogged the president from the beginning of his campaign, as the Forward’s J.J. Goldberg reminded us.

The use of crass and unbecoming language, which the president denied, doesn’t make him a racist, and neither does the underlying sentiment. The TPS program protects foreign nationals from deportation “due to conditions in the [home] country that temporarily prevent the country’s nationals from returning safely, or in certain circumstances, where the country is unable to handle the return of its nationals adequately.” If one were to list countries to which one might wish to move, considering everything from human rights to medical care, indoor plumbing and high-speed internet, those countries would end up near the bottom of the list.

It is not racist to admit this, unless of course you believe that the TPS program, established with bipartisan support in 1990, is distinguishing between countries based on race or ethnicity. I don’t believe this, and I don’t think Nehorai does, either.

That Haiti is not a country to which we would aim to move is not a racist sentiment. On the contrary, humanitarian concern over the conditions of their home country is the very reason we do not deport Haitians. We give preferential treatment to them over people from Norway, or Barbados, and to those from El Salvador and Nicaragua over those from Costa Rica and Panama.

To be sure, racists like Richard Spencer and David Duke were eager to co-opt the president’s comments for their own use. But it is neither fair nor appropriate to use guilt by association to paint anyone with the temerity to defend the president’s dismissal of those countries as a racist.

Yet the writer does precisely this, quoting an Orthodox Jew who said roughly as follows:

Option A: El Salvador isn’t a ‘dump,’ so they don’t need 17 years of Temporary Protected Status, and migrants from there should be sent home immediately. Option B: El Salvador is, in fact, a ‘dump.’

Nehorai claims that he “was amazed at how similar” that commenter sounded to Spencer. This is astounding. Spencer said that solving Haiti’s problems requires more European, white Frenchmen and fewer Haitians. The commenter explains, using the president’s vulgar term, that countries are designated for TPS because they are in bad shape. This explains why we harbor El Salvadorans in the United States, a humanitarian practice that racists like Spencer would oppose.

Yet Nehorai not only describes the similarities of the two statements, but also their differences. On these grounds, he accuses the entire Orthodox community of turning to racism.

He does the same when it comes to the neo-Nazi Unite the Right rally. The protesters had a permit to march, and were violently attacked by Antifa, the same group that tries to prevent Ben Shapiro and other conservative and pro-Israel speakers from being heard.

Video footage from that rally showed that there was violence perpetrated by both sides, which is exactly what the president said, and condemned. I do not believe the transcripts support the claim that he called Nazis “fine people.” He said that both good and bad could be found on both sides. Still, regardless of whether you agree with me, to call this view racist is wrong.

So how much actual proof of the spreading white nationalism among the Orthodox are we left with? None at all.

Unfortunately, that didn’t matter. To many, Nehorai’s article merely confirmed what they already “knew.” How often do we hear that Orthodox Jews care only about themselves, and don’t even accept the Jewish status of other Jews? You see? This proves (ultra-)Orthodox Jews are racists, like we’ve always said.

Many of the most prominent Orthodox institutions are devoted to serving non-Orthodox audiences, including Aish HaTorah, Ohr Somayach, the Community Kollel network and Chabad — which now has centers in all 50 states. Could we imagine young couples moving out to the proverbial middle of nowhere to serve people they don’t care about?

The myth of Jewish supremacy, that Jews care only for themselves, is not borne out in the observant community, either. In Israel, where the Orthodox comprise a much higher percentage of the total population, it is difficult to have something go wrong anywhere in the country without an Orthodox-led organization offering help without regard for race, ethnicity or religion: United Hatzalah, Yad Sarah, Ezer MiTzion, Ezra L’Marpeh, Laniado Hospital and Zaka are just a few examples. So it should be obvious that those claims are ridiculous calumny, yet they still have “traction.”

If we are going to celebrate diversity, we must go far beyond platitudes about coexistence. The very least we can demand is that we refrain from stereotyping other Jews. Tolerance begins at home.

This article was originally publshed in The Forward under a different title.

Posted on

Egyptian Amnesia

As we concluded Sefer Bereishis, the Book of Genesis, last week, the nascent Jewish People found themselves in very good circumstances. Yosef was second only to Pharoah himself, having saved the entire country from famine. There was no reason to expect what actually transpired.

The verses themselves suggest what happened. “Yosef passed away, and all of his brothers, and that entire generation. And the Children of Israel multiplied and spread, grew and were very strong, and the land was full of them. And a new King rose over Egypt, who did not know Yosef.” [Ex. 1:6-8]

The generation to whom the Egyptians owed gratitude passed away. As long as Yosef was alive, no Egyptian King would imagine that the Jews would be disloyal, but now Yosef is gone. And the Jews were successful, so much so that “the land was full of them.” In other words, “there were too many Jews.” And that is when a new king arose who forgot all that Yosef had done, all that the Jewish people had done to benefit Egypt.

There is an argument in the Talmud about what it means that the king “did not know Yosef,” as Rashi tells us. One school of thought is that there was truly a new king, but the other says that the same Pharoah stopped thinking of the Jews as a benefit to the country, as if he had never known Yosef.

In truth, these opinions are not as different as they might seem to be. The Egyptians wrote and depicted what happened in their country. There were records of what Yosef had done. They presumably did not knock down the storehouses. Certainly Egyptians were telling the story of how they had famously saved themselves and even fed neighboring countries during the years of famine. Even common people knew this, much less the successor to the throne. He did not need to have known Yosef to know what he accomplished on behalf of all Egypt.

Fundamentally, the new Pharoah expressed a lack of gratitude to the Jewish People, and demonstrated the familiar pattern of anti-Semitism. The reality was that the Jews had only benefited the Egyptians and the entire region. The myth was that the Jews were disloyal, and would exploit the Egyptians and the resources of the country. And the myth won.

Look at what is happening in the Middle East today. The reality is that Jews built a flourishing country on their ancestral homeland, inventing new technologies to make it fertile, advancing medicine, and bringing democracy, limiting the power of government, to that portion of the world — not just for themselves, but for everyone. Arab citizens of Israel have rights and opportunities found in none of the dozens of Arab countries. The myth is that the Jews are occupiers, exploiting the resources of the country, creating problems throughout the region. And before the United Nations of the world, the myth wins.

Our obligation is always to do better. We must model gratitude. When someone does a kindness for us, we have an obligation to recognize the generosity of that person, express our thanks, and above all not reciprocate good deeds with bad ones. That is the Egyptian model, the one we help eradicate every time we thank those who help us!

Posted on

Envy Isn’t Jewish

As a typical Jewish child attending a suburban prep school, I lived through the season just concluded with a certain feeling of envy. Most friends and neighbors were celebrating a big, gaudy holiday season, while I and my Jewish friends were left out. They decorated houses and trees, painted shopping malls red and green, and you couldn’t find a station on the dial that wasn’t playing music from earlier generations.

Little has changed, save my attitude. Having learned more about the unique responsibility and privilege of being a Jew, I have nothing of which to be jealous. My own children, growing up with the Jewish education I lacked, also do not suffer the least hint of that envy. We don’t want what they have; we want what is ours.

And it is fortunate that it is so. In the Sayings of the Fathers, our Sages caution us that envy is one of the dangerous traits that “removes” a person from the world. A person consumed by jealousy no longer sees and enjoys the world. He ignores his own blessings, caring only for what someone else has.

The Western Wall in Jerusalem could (and should) be a place of Jewish unity; instead, it has become for some a target of envy. To them, someone else — traditional Jews, whom their leaders impugn as “ultra” Orthodox — have a place for prayer, and they don’t have a place of similar size and prominence. Thus they are jealous — but of what?

Let us step back and be objective.

According to the Pew Research Center, half of Israel’s 6.5 million Jews are traditional or observant. And in another recent survey, the pluralistic Panim organization determined that under 3% of Israeli Jews, or just over 150,000, are affiliated with the American Reform or Conservative movements. Even this is an excessively optimistic figure, given the paucity of liberal synagogues in Israel. But using these numbers alone, it would be excessive for American liberal leaders to demand even 5% of the space afforded to traditional Jews.

And there is another factor. The average Orthodox person prays several times each day, and gravitates towards Jerusalem’s Old City and the opportunity to pray facing the Temple Mount, which Jewish tradition reveres as the holiest site on earth.

The average non-Orthodox Jew, by contrast, prays several times per year. And the Reform movement expressly rejects the Temple Mount as having special sanctity, and calls its synagogues “temples” to supplant it.

So even were their adherents equal in number, the need for space for American-style egalitarian prayer would likely be less than 1% of that allocated for traditional prayer. Take the two factors together, and the most that liberal leaders could reasonably demand is a space 0.05%, one in two thousand of that allocated for traditional prayer.

The government has thus already done far more than objectively necessary. Since the early 2000s, space at Robinson’s Arch has been available for “alternative” prayer services of whatever kind. Several years ago, then-Religious Affairs Minister Naftali Bennet upgraded the space, creating a new Ezrat Yisrael platform for this purpose.

Usage of that space — or lack thereof — proves the accuracy of the above analysis of need. Whereas the traditional plaza is filled to overflowing several times each year, Ezrat Yisrael has not once been used to capacity, and is rarely used at all.

What, then, explains the demand for a space of similar size and prominence to that used for traditional prayer, given an objective lack of both theoretical and demonstrated need while even the existing, smaller space is left vacant? It defies explanation, unless we acknowledge that envy is a powerful force. “They have it, so we must have it too.”

How much more good would these American leaders do, were they to not increase jealousy but reduce it? Why should Jewish children be left envious of non-Jewish peers celebrating non-Jewish holidays? I’m hardly the first to observe that when someone has a strong Jewish identity and an understanding of our unique national mission — and recognizes our disproportional impact upon civilization and history — it is obvious that we have nothing for which to be jealous.

Rabbi Eric Yoffie, the immediate Past President of the Union for Reform Judaism, has called this “the most Jewishly ignorant generation in history.” The crisis for American Jewry is not 6000 miles away, but all around us. There is so much that liberal leaders could and should be doing to solve this crisis.

Yet Jewish camps are in decline, and the various educational initiatives launched by Rabbi Yoffie during his tenure have long since flamed out. New efforts are clearly and urgently needed. Synagogue attendance will not increase if the rabbi wastes congregants’ time discussing a site that most have never seen. The intermarriage rate will not decline if rabbis do not teach the privilege of being Jewish.

Liberal Judaism in America will not rebuild from its collapse if its campaigns focus upon jealousy. When Jews are bringing “Hannukah Bushes” into their homes in America, to sermonize about Israel is to “fiddle while Rome burns.”

This piece first appeared in the Times of Israel.

Posted on

Not Just Jerusalem: Why America’s Rabbis Voted Trump and Don’t Regret It

Yes, you read correctly. America's rabbis voted for Donald Trump.

Given the common belief that Jews are liberal, this may come as a surprise to many. But not only do Orthodox Jews (the traditionally observant) have very different political leanings from their more liberal brethren, but they now encompass the vast majority of American Jewish clergy.

Lakewood, N.J. is the home of the largest rabbinic seminary in America and home to tens of thousands of its alumni. In a few square blocks, you'll encounter more rabbis than liberal seminaries have produced in several decades. Lakewood also produced the largest pro-Trump majority in 2016 of any New Jersey town, despite a higher percentage of immigrants, impoverished, and non-whites than most other pro-Trump communities.

Rabbis voted Trump not for financial benefits; it is liberal candidates who support generous government programs. They supported him not simply because of his pro-Israel posture, although he has exceeded expectations with his new, commonsense approach to the right of Israelis to live in peace and security.

Neither did they blind themselves to Trump's failings. They do not support what he said on a bus 12 years ago or appreciate the un-presidential things he says or tweets on a daily basis. They look askance at casinos and beauty pageants and have little patience for "reality TV."

So what is it about Trump that they liked on Election Day, and like even more a year later?

First of all, Trump understands that good and evil remain vibrant in today's world and refuses to point fingers only at those who liberals agree are evil. Charlottesville provided a great example of this phenomenon.

No honest reading of the president's remarks has him calling white supremacists "fine people." This nonsense, so loudly proclaimed in the media, was designed to prevent sober analysis of Trump's true crime: he dared point out that violence and bigotry are not unique to those perceived as "right-wing." This, liberals could not countenance. As Maxine Waters put it, "No, Trump. Not on many sides – your side."

That liberal narrative is both false and profoundly dangerous. Our First Amendment liberties depend upon protection of free speech even for those with abhorrent views. Disruption of opposition events was a Nazi tactic, and had Antifa not violently employed it against the Nazis, we might hardly have heard of Charlottesville.

In the succeeding weeks and months, Antifa repeatedly proved President Trump correct, using force to stifle free speech not from Nazis, but from anyone with whom they disagreed — including Ben Shapiro, the conservative, yarmulke-clad Jew who was the journalist most targeted by anti-Semites in 2016. Trump deserved an ovation for stating that hatred is not a one-sided phenomenon.

The leading belief of anti-Semites is that all Jewish property is stolen; this is something rabbis know from both rabbinic literature and world history. It is why Jews were forced to live in ghettos and barred from most professions during the Middle Ages. It is why the Nazis began with a boycott that declared that Germans should "protect themselves" rather than buy from Jews. And it is why the Arab League co-opted the German boycott, which leftists then renamed BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) to make a "human rights" cause out of economic warfare against Jews living in their ancestral homeland, something visited upon none of those engaged in true, unquestioned occupations of the homelands of others around the world.

Thus, anti-Semitism travels seamlessly between the far right and the far left. It is too real and too dangerous to be wielded as a partisan cudgel.

We already had a president who said Israel is "occupying" Palestinian land and who sat idly while the U.N. called Jewish life in Judea "illegal." Similar language was seven percentage points away from being part of the Democratic platform. The only foreign flag flown inside the DNC was Palestinian, while they burned the Israeli flag outside. That's not about Israel's politics, government, or policy. That's about anti-Semitism.

The Republican platform rejected the "false notion" that Israel is an occupier, and President Trump has unquestionably acted in accordance with those positions. He has a history of trusting visibly observant Jews, and he put two of them, Jared Kushner and Jason Dov Greenblatt, in charge of negotiating peace with Mahmoud Abbas. Their first demand was that Abbas stop funding terrorism. In any other context, this would seem obvious, yet this revolutionary idea entirely escaped previous negotiating teams.

Nikki Haley's indignant, even furious reaction to the U.N. Security Council's attempt to tell the United States where it can put its embassy to Israel was merely her latest verbal fusillade against U.N. bias regarding the world's sole Jewish state. Trump's decision to move the embassy, recognizing that no peace can be achieved that does not recognize the attachment of Jews to Jerusalem, showed that he is unafraid to speak truth to world powers. The administration was far too busy protecting Jewish interests to pay attention to Jewish liberals claiming that Trump was "encouraging" Alt-Right hatred.

And then there is the "big picture" – the underlying vision for the future of America. Western civilization traces its roots to what are called Judeo-Christian values, which trace their roots to a small community of liberated slaves clustered on the Eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea.

Their Bible sanctified human life and peace, while surrounding countries glorified warfare and considered fights to the death a form of entertainment. They taught that a ruler's power must be limited, that even a king must live within the law. They pioneered universal education, which other cultures reserved for the wealthy. And they valued family and social responsibility while others regarded these as signs of weakness.

Western civilization depends upon choosing biblical values over those of Greeks, Romans, Huns, and Visigoths. This is not a political posture, but reference to our moral foundation. It is a sad commentary that one party seems devoted to tearing down traditional moral norms, expressing the belief that what is new is automatically superior.

Rabbis were guided by rabbinic scholarship and their consciences. We do not look to politicians as role models, and the idea of a perfect human is foreign to Judaism in any case. Rather, an election is a binary choice. Which candidate and which party will better protect innocent lives – our lives – here and around the world, and keep America closer to our core values?

This is why rabbis voted for Trump in 2016 and are yet happier with that choice today.

First published in the American Thinker.

Posted on

The Misunderstood Maccabees and Miketz Miracles

There is a lot of misinformation about the Chanukah holiday. People teach that the Greeks took over Israel, the Jews fought back, the Jews won the battle, and then there was the miracle of the oil — enough oil to explain the Menorah, Latkes, and Sufganiyot (Israeli jelly doughnuts). That one small flask of oil certainly went a long way.

But if there is one phenomenon that exemplifies the confusion, it would have to be the Maccabiah Games. It offers young Jewish athletes from around the world the opportunity to participate in… a pale imitation of the Olympics, which are, of course, modeled after the original Greek games. We, too, can be just like the ancient Greeks!

And that is exactly the wrong message. Because the victory of Chanukah came from being as unlike the Greeks as one could imagine.

The war that gave us Chanukah was not fought between Jewish Maccabees and the Greeks alone, but the Jewish Maccabees versus Hellenized Jews as well. There were many Jews who fell for the Greek ways, and their glorification of the human body — the reason behind the original Olympic Games. Jews competed in those games, and worshiped Greek idols.

The Maccabees were the very opposite of the Greeks. They neither celebrated nor possessed physical or military prowess; it made no sense that they won the war. The Medrash says that with prayers alone they felled thousands of Greek officers, leaving the military in disarray. The miracle of the oil was only one of many miracles that happened at that time, but showed Divine favor towards the Maccabees. The war did not end before Chanukah; it continued for several years after the miracle of the oil. But at that point to the Maccabees knew that they would emerge victorious.

In this week’s Torah reading, which is always read during Chanukah, we find a similar sequence of miracles happening to Yosef. He was sitting in an Egyptian prison, jailed because of a false accusation. Thus he could have despaired — but instead knew that everything came from G-d. And when it was time for him to leave that prison, he went from prisoner to viceroy, second only to Pharoah, in just a few hours. Another person could have lost his mind from this sudden, bizarre change of circumstances, but Yosef knew that it was all in accordance with a Divine plan.

Yosef knew that the dreams he had as a young man were prophetic revelation: he would eventually rule over his brothers. And it was the plot of those same brothers, their selling him to be a slave in Egypt, which led to the fulfillment of that prophecy! It makes no more sense than the idea that a single prayer could kill Greek military officers, but there it was.

The lesson of Chanukah is that, just as with Yosef, things are not as they seem. Everything is happening according to a Divine plan, though it may be beyond our comprehension. The Jewish obligation Is to recognize that “many are the thoughts in a man’s heart, but it is the prescription of G-d which will be fulfilled” [Proverbs 19:21]. Chanukah tells us that our path is not one of physical, intellectual or business prowess, but Divine Intervention. And in the end, victory is preordained: the Jews survive against all odds.

Posted on

Reform’s Celebration of Lawlessness

by Rabbi Pesach Lerner and Rabbi Yaakov Menken

On Thursday, November 17, Rabbi Joshua Davidson did something truly extraordinary: he prayed the weekday morning service. The synagogue which he serves as Senior Rabbi, Temple Emanu-El in New York City, apparently offers no such opportunity, so what inspired his religious fervor?

Perhaps a better question is whether his fervor was indeed religious. Rabbi Davidson claims that “because the Kotel’s regulations do not permit egalitarian worship, and because Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reneged on his promise to create a prayer space there that would, we began our worship on a distant platform over the Southern Wall excavations.”

While this assertion may play well in his Temple and at the UJA, one does not gain allies by slandering them. To Israelis, Rabbi Davidson’s words are not merely false and defamatory, but contribute directly to the anti-Semitic depiction of Israel as a supremacist, apartheid state where only some citizens have rights.

There is no factual support for his claim that the “Kotel” regulations do not permit egalitarian worship. Thanks to overwhelming popular demand, a small section of the Kotel, comprising only one-sixth of its total length, has been allocated for traditional Jewish prayer. During the high holiday season alone, that traditional plaza saw over 1,000,000 visitors, and on multiple occasions was filled to capacity.

For nearly two decades, the Israeli government has provided facilities for egalitarian and other nontraditional prayer elsewhere along that same 1600-foot-long Western Wall. This section was upgraded and dubbed “Ezrat Yisrael” by then-Religious Affairs Minister Naphtali Bennet during the previous government; it features tables with large umbrellas, comfortable chairs, and Torah scrolls under the administration of the Masorti (American Conservative) movement.

Though it may be smaller in absolute terms, this space has never been filled, and thus is less in need of expansion. Less than 0.3% of Israelis affiliate with the American Reform or Conservative movement, according to a survey conducted by the pluralistic Panim organization — and, of course, weekday prayer is mostly foreign to them. During the same High Holiday season, the Ezrat Yisrael section stood almost entirely empty.

Rather than conduct their prayers at the space allocated for their use, Rabbi Davidson and his peers brought eight Torah scrolls from the outside and pushed their way into the traditional plaza — purportedly for a weekday morning service that requires only one scroll for a brief reading.

They had no need to enter the traditional plaza in order to conduct their non-traditional, egalitarian service. The only time eight Torah scrolls are carried is while dancing on Simchat Torah. And that is exactly the point: they were not coming to pray, but to dance. They came to provoke and create a disturbance, using eight holy Torah scrolls as props for their political theater.

They were not content to simply protest; they forced their way past the soldiers and police guarding the plaza. Although Rabbi Davidson’s family was safely back in New York, Israelis know that these soldiers — often members of their own families — are putting their lives on the line to protect visitors every time they search a bag. It is also against the law to bring in Torah scrolls, because someone might thus be able to steal one of the scrolls belonging to the Holy Site. To whatever extent Rabbi Davidson was “roughed up” — and those guarding the security barrier tell a different story — this transpired while he was physically breaking past the guards, breaking the law while interfering with the soldiers’ attempts to protect life, safety, and the sanctity of the Torah scrolls Rabbi Davidson claims to revere.

So, no. No one was “roughed up” due to being a Reform Jew, much as saying so delighted anti-Semitic bigots around the globe. Whatever violence transpired was directly attributable to the behavior of Rabbi Davidson and his colleagues.

Israelis recognize political theater for what it is. The current situation was described thusly by Moshe Dann, a former Professor at the City University of New York who has spent the last quarter-century living in Israel: “Unable to achieve their objectives through dialogue, negotiations and good will, without an appreciation of Israel’s distinctiveness and differences, liberal/progressive leaders are turning their communities against Israel.”

This is undeniable. The same Reform leaders also refused to take a phone call from President Donald Trump before the High Holy Days, not long after Union for Reform Judaism President Rabbi Rick Jacobs and several colleagues sat down for a friendly chat with Mahmoud Abbas, leader of the Palestinian Authority. After that meeting, Husam Zomlot, PA ambassador-at-large to the United States, told the Jerusalem Post that “we see eye-to-eye with the Reform movement.” Most recently, the movement explicitly turned against both Israel and America, stating that recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and the move of the US embassy to that city, must be held hostage to a “peace process” that Abbas refuses to pursue.

If Reform now sees “eye to eye” with a Palestinian Authority that refuses to acknowledge Israel as a Jewish state, and would withhold recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, it is clear who has abandoned whom. Is it any surprise that Israelis have lost patience?

The authors are the President and Managing Director, respectively, of the Coalition for Jewish Values This article first appeared in the Times of Israel.

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This