Opening a Dialogue

When the Rosh Yeshiva of Ner Yisrael, Rav Aharon Feldman shlit”a, called to offer me a review copy of the journal Dialogue, there could only be one answer, of course. But having read it, all I can say is — get it. All the rest is, as they say, commentary [no, no slight intended to the journal by that name]. Each article deserves to be called “required reading” in Jewish thought.

The introductory article is a speech given to Israeli generals by Rav Feldman, explaining in detail the Chareidi worldview, its view on Torah learning, and why the idea of a draft or other mandatory service outside yeshiva poses an existential threat. Then a section of five articles, entitled “A Call to Spiritual Arms,” discusses “the seeming dissonance between the external and internal manifestations of Yiddishkeit in our community and its members’ lives.” Rav Feldman discusses those who are “observant” without being truly religious on the inside, a phenomenon otherwise known as “Orthopraxy,” and how to escape it. Eytan Kobre, perhaps best known for his acerbic wit and dismantling of the heterodox in the pages of Mishpacha, here looks inwards at the trends towards Orthodox conspicuous consumption and otherwise living an easy, “American-style” life. Rav Yaakov Hillel, a teacher of Kabbalah himself, looks at the phenomenon of phony mekubalim and how easily some are duped. Rav J. David Bleich returns to the problem of Orthopraxy vs. Emunah, while Rav Zev Cohen, rounding out this section, discusses the impact of a Mussar Vaad on working bnei Torah.

A shorter, second section covers “sources of Jewish practice.” Have you ever wondered about the origin of the various prayers in the Siddur? Rav Aharon Lopiansky discusses his effort to compile a “Completely Accurate Siddur” and what he discovered along the way, and Rav Zev Kraines explains how Kabbalah finds its way into halachah, in this section.

This would be quite enough a trek over difficult intellectual ground for the average journal, but not for Dialogue. I think the third section, on Science and Torah, will draw the most attention. Dr. Lee Spetner is a well-known critic of the Theory of Evolution, and the writer of Not by Chance, published in 1997. An extended excerpt from his new book, The Limits of Evolution, begins this section.

In the previous issue of Dialogue, Isaac Betech and Obadia Maya discussed “The Identity of the Shafan and Arnevet,” and this leads to another three articles worth an issue in their own right. Rabbi Natan Slifkin writes in to rebut Betech and Maya, and this is followed by articles by Rabbi Dovid Kornreich and Dr. Jonathan Ostroff rebutting Slifkin, providing a reasonably comprehensive picture of this complex debate.

I’m not quite sure why an article on Addictions fits in this section, except that it would fit any of the others even less. Rabbi Yechezkel Spanglet discusses the challenges posed by new addictions to our community — but I will comment that I’m not sure all of them qualify as addictions. When we speak of an addiction, we think of a person unknowingly drawn by chemical and psychological factors into something harmful, be that alcohol, drugs, or incessant surfing of the Internet. Is browsing “missionary propaganda, slander, [or] impugning the honor of Gedolim and Rabbonim” truly in the same category as “unregulated exchange of images,” to which a person might become addicted? I don’t think we can fairly diminish the culpability of those who engage in the former activities by saying they are just “addicted” to destroying other Jews and Kavod HaTorah. Be that as it may, this article, as well, provides much food for thought and discussion.

There are two more sections as well. Rav Feldman’s previous article on “A Torah View on Homosexuality” drew a letter (with his response) as well as to additional articles discussing the extent to which the demands of political correctness have shoved aside scientific fact to elevate “being gay” from a manifestation of the Yetzer Hara to an identity.

Finally, besides an additional letter and response on the issue of dividing those who do and don’t wear Tefillin on Chol HaMoed in a single shul, there are a pair of historical articles — on the destruction of Jewish texts in Hungary, and (in Hebrew) on civil marriages within the Jewish community in Italy and France.

With most journals, you find a few articles that really attract your interest, and skip the rest. I can honestly say that in this case, I would like to finish reading almost every one of these articles in detail. It is truly an exceptional Dialogue.

Sharing the Burden

The Sages tell us that the tribe of Yissachar distinguished itself through devotion to Torah study. Yaakov foresaw this, and even among the blessings given to his sons, this one is unusual: studying-torah-thumb“Yissachar is a strong donkey, who rests between the borders. And he saw rest, that it was good, and the land that it was pleasant, but he bent his shoulder to accept [the burden] and became an indentured servant.” [49:14]

Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki (Rashi) explains that a “strong donkey” needs large bones to accept a yoke, in this case the yoke of Torah. His land was good for production of produce, but he bent to bear the yoke of Torah instead, in the service of all Israel.

Yaakov tells us that to become a Torah scholar is the most difficult of occupations. A person has to be willing to take on the burden of study “day and night.” And to do so, he says, is to be in the service of all Israel.

Even in our day, it is a spiritually gratifying yet very difficult profession. The descendants of Zevulun, Yissachar’s brother, shared in that burden and its reward, by supporting their brethren as they learned. That partnership is available to each of us today, every time we give a donation to increase Torah study. That, like learning itself, is being part of the lifeblood of our nation.

The Rabbi has no Robes

Earlier this year, I wrote about how easy it now is to become a Reform or Conservative Rabbi, with the advent of $8000 online ordination. An enterprising woman from Detroit has managed to take things to the next level, serving as a Rabbi at a prominent Reform temple having “never trained as a rabbi,” much less receiving ordination.

But here’s the kicker: it took the congregation years to recognize that their “rabbi” had no training. She had become a “rabbinic associate” in 2008 and was expected to begin her studies, which she stated that she had completed last year — an ordination ceremony was held at the temple in May 2012. And they only found out because their board president contacted the institution she claimed to have attended in order to arrange for a second ordination ceremony there at the school — at which point he learned she had never even enrolled.

Perhaps it’s a nitpicking side point, but contrary to what the board president said to the press, the institution whose distance-learning course she was to take is not, in fact, affiliated with the Reform movement at all. ALEPH is the “Alliance for Jewish Renewal,” founded and led by Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, who, after “a transformational encounter with the late Lubavitcher Rebbe,” developed a “new paradigm” for Judaism that he called “Psycho-Halachah” — which, being predictably devoid of anything Judaism has called “Halachah,” serves as its own punchline.

Is it really any wonder that the congregants never figured out she’d never taken a class?

Federated Blindness

So the Jewish Federations of North America, the massive collected financial might of America’s leading Jewish donors, has left Jerusalem. Their General Assembly only meets in Jerusalem once every five years, so this was a major event. And what have we learned? Primarily, that the system has failed. As Michael Freund, the director of Shavei Israel, wrote: “this GA was reminiscent of the ill-fated RMS Titanic as it steamed straight for an iceberg in the northern Atlantic ocean in April 1912, oblivious to the impending doom.”

Rabbi Yisroel Mayer Kagan, zt”l, of Radin in Poland, is most often called by the name of his work, Chofetz Chaim, on the evil of gossip. Accompanying his tremendous knowledge of Torah, this leader of his generation was known for his profound insight. And with his keen vision, Rabbi Kagan condemned the idea of federated giving. He compared it to the advent of electric lighting in his city, when everyone stopped lighting candles (and backup generators weren’t yet available). As long as there were candles burning, even if one candle went out there was other light. But when the electricity went out, the entire city was plunged into darkness. Similarly, he said, if individuals make decisions, then the most needy charities will somehow get the support that they need. But if everything is handed to the Federations, he explained, then institutions will collapse and individuals will go hungry if the custodians of the coffers do not respond to those appeals.

There is one thing that he didn’t mention: the assumption that the curators would be good at what they do. He didn’t imagine a world in which federations had executives who sat in large executive offices and enjoyed all-expenses-paid executive trips to Israel, at which to demonstrate their collective executive incompetence. In actuality, the leadership of the Federations make the architects of the ObamaCare website look positively brilliant. At the GA, they pushed the wrong issues in the wrong place, and completely ignored the most important and pressing communal priorities on both sides of the Atlantic.

As everyone knows, the most important issue in Israel today is the “peace process,” and the fact that it’s leading nowhere towards peace simply makes discussion more urgent. But it was entirely absent from the GA agenda; JFNA president Jerry Silverman told reporters that since everyone agrees on a two-state solution, it wasn’t worth discussing. J.J. Goldberg dismantled this argument in The Forward:

In fact, this is one of the most fraught and divisive issues on the agenda of organized American Jewry. Beyond substantive questions like settlements and Jerusalem, Diaspora Jewish federations are constantly forced to reexamine the limits of permissible debate within their own walls. The debate over debate is bitter, nationwide and relentless. Jerusalem might have been just the place to discuss it, with the federation movement’s top leadership present and Israel’s leading diplomatic and military minds available.

But it was left out. The closest the assembly came to the topic was a series of how-to sessions on best techniques for defending Israel’s image.

And the most important issue in America? If you haven’t been sleeping for the past two months, you’ve probably heard of the Pew Report, and its devastating analysis of the future of non-Torah-observant Jewry — those best represented by the JFNA. And here I’ll quote Michael Freund again:

If the Jewish federations were serious about confronting this crisis, they should have taken the extraordinary step of reformatting the GA’s schedule in order to focus on the existential emergency at hand.

Instead, in an act of pathetic hubris, they had the gall to add a single session on Monday, with the self-aggrandizing title, “Responding to Pew: How Federations are Successfully Engaging the Next Generation.”

“Successfully”? Who are they kidding? Back in 1990, after the National Jewish Population Survey revealed an intermarriage rate of 52% (which was subsequently the subject of much debate), the Jewish world was stirred into action, vowing to do whatever was necessary to stem the tide of assimilation.

Here we are, more than two decades – and hundreds of millions of dollars spent on bolstering Jewish identity – later, and for all intents and purposes the situation has only worsened as growing numbers of Jews turn their backs on their heritage.

So if the Federations couldn’t be bothered with such trivial issues, to what did they devote their time?

Continue reading “Federated Blindness”

A Kiddush HaShem Goes Viral

Tablet magazine carries the story of Isaac Theil (which is on the NY Daily News, as well), who was innocently riding home to Brooklyn on the Q train when a young black man (tired from a long day at college, it turns out) fell asleep on his shoulder. For 30 minutes. Theil’s response? “He must have had a long day, let him sleep.” Theil thought nothing of it, got off at his stop and went home.

sleepingNot so, the passenger across the way, who thought this was an incredible act of kindness. He or she snapped a photo and posted it to an Internet sharing site, where it became an overnight sensation — nearly 5,000,000 views and counting.

I hope other people are also kind of wondering why this is such a big deal. I’m pretty sure the same has happened to me, and the most I would do is try to move him without waking him. Wouldn’t you be embarrassed to wake somebody up? It’s just that we are told to be careful about gezel shayna, disturbing someone’s sleep.

It reminds me of a letter that was in Ami magazine last week, from a Rabbi Yehoshua Ottensoser of Lakewood who is the Judaic principal of a school in Yardley, PA. He needed something notarized, and found a place in Yardley that had a notary public on the premises. The notary took the documents and prepared to stamp them. The Rabbi looked at him and asked, “don’t you want ID?”

The notary responded, “of course, but aren’t you a Rabbi?”

As Rabbi Ottensoser said, our communities “have had our share of self-inflicted black eyes.” The media has a field day every time a Rabbi or visibly Orthodox Jew is accused of wrongdoing, and we may even think ourselves that we have completely failed to create a positive perception of our world. As he wrote:

But then there are the bike-riding employees, cab drivers, bus drivers and of course notary publics, the simple average Joes (or Ahmeds) on the street who still very much believe in us and generally only think of us as people of a higher calling who can be unquestionably trusted and even asked to pray on their behalf.

We still are, by and large, the type of people who will help restore even a New Yorker’s faith in humanity. And if we live our lives remembering that we might become the next viral sensation for doing the right thing, rather than the wrong thing, that should prompt us to try to make the right choice at each and every moment.

Recognizing Your Worth

self-esteem-pillsIn this week’s reading, Yaakov works for his father-in-law, Lavan, for fourteen years, in return for the privilege of marrying Lavan’s two daughters. Then he goes to Lavan and says, I have a family to feed as well, so I need to make some money for myself also. And in offering to continue working for Lavan, Yaakov makes a pretty bold claim: “for the little that you had before I arrived, it has expanded greatly, and G-d has blessed you ‘to my feet'” [Gen. 30:30]. Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki explains that this means “because my feet came to you,” that all of the blessing that you received is because of me.

The Torah speaks a great deal about the value of humility, and G-d praises Moshe as the most humble of all men. How is it that Yaakov would praise himself so bluntly, and in a way that implies his father-in-law would not have been worth that blessing otherwise?

The answer is that nothing in the Torah says a person should dismiss his or her own self-worth. Yaakov knew that this was the truth, and he underscored this point to show Lavan that it was worth keeping him on and agreeing to this arrangement. Moshe may have been the most humble of all men, but he also knew to stand his ground with Korach, because the truth was with him.

A teacher of mine told me of a student who went to his Rosh Yeshiva, the Dean of his Yeshiva, and said that he was having trouble developing humility, because of his many ma’alos, his positive attributes. The Rosh Yeshiva thought to help him and said, “Ma’alos? Who says you have ma’alos?”

The student emerged crestfallen. “The Rosh Yeshiva thinks I don’t have any ma’alos!” And the point my teacher was making was that this lesson worked a little too well — according to him, it took the student about a year and a half to get over it! [It occurs to me now that perhaps my teacher was speaking autobiographically, but didn’t want to say so for obvious reasons. For the record, he is a person of tremendous ma’alos!]

To be humble is the very opposite of feeling worthless. Every person is created in the image of G-d, and every Jewish soul is compared in value to the entire world. It is important for every person to know his or her good attributes and self-worth, yet be humble enough to recognize that in the end they are all a gift from G-d.

Is Women of the Wall Anti-Israel?

Matzav.com is running an article entitled “EXPOSED: Women of the Wall Linked To Rabidly Anti-Israel Groups,” which it reprinted from Jerusalem Online. But if you go looking for the original article, you won’t find it. It has been taken down. In a comment posted to Matzav, the reporter, Rachel Avraham, doubles down on her accusations against Women of the Wall:

Women of the Wall threatened Jerusalem Online News with legal action, hence why it was removed. This is a routine scare tactic of radical leftists, since they only can tolerate having their own views published and are opposed to dissent. However, all of the facts in the article are documented and have been checked numerous times before publication. I am a serious investigative journalist and would not have published it otherwise. I want to thank Matzav.com for reprinting the article, so the article will be public at this moment. Women of the Wall had the article taken down because they threaten news organizations that don’t publish what they like. Since I proved beyond a doubt to my editor that Women of the Wall representatives lied to him about the accuracy of the article so he would be pressured into taking it down, we are discussing how to proceed. However, they can’t threaten journalists and then use the fact it was taken down as proof that the article is wrong.

Her assertions, if true, are a very strong indictment against key members of Women of the Wall, specifically board member Batya Kallus and chairwoman Anat Hoffman. Kallus is accused of helping funding for numerous anti-Israel organizations that called upon the United States to threaten cutting diplomatic ties, refused to recognize Israel as a Jewish State, and that were favorites in the infamous Goldstone Report.

Hoffman, the article reports, is the chairwoman of the Domari Society of Gypsies in Jerusalem, which in turn is part of the Grassroots al-Quds Network (using the Arabic name for Jerusalem). Grassroots al-Quds considers Jerusalem, the “Capital of the Palestinian People,” to be illegally occupied and refer to “the violent presence of illegal Israeli Settlements.” Among other services, it offers “a workspace and meeting point” “that provides activists with the tools and resources they need to organize, create and resist.”

Hoffman is not identified as the Chair of the Domari Society on its website, though she is identified in news articles as “working with the Domari,” helped establish the organization, and plays an active role. So I’m not sure which documents provided this information. But even if true, I’m not sure it’s quite the big deal that Avraham makes it out to be. The Domari Society seems to be a very small organization, essentially a one-woman show, that Hoffman might support because it’s a woman, and one who doesn’t get a lot of acknowledgment from Palestinian Arabs, either. She might simply benefit from the meeting spaces and support provided by Grassroots Al-Quds without being involved in its civil disobedience.

Either way, it’s not really a big surprise, and I’m not sure why Women of the Wall apparently threatened legal action. In a different comment, Women of the Wall Spokeswoman Shira Pruce says that “our participants and supporters come from all walks of life, political opinions, and Jewish denominations and we would never want to divide that by taking a political stand that does not directly effect free prayer at the Kotel.” If so, why would Women of the Wall demand an article about the other political positions of their “participants” be taken down?

Pruce says that “the ‘article’ has since been removed by the editor,” neither confirming nor denying that Women of the Wall played a role. That’s an interesting stance, given that newspapers usually don’t retract published articles without a really good reason. In addition, why did she put the word “article” in quotes? Whether or not it contained in accurate data, it was unquestionably a news article, and there is something jarring about the tenor of her dismissal of its contents.

And again, what’s the big surprise? Prior to the 1993 Oslo Accords that made support for terrorist organizations official Israeli policy, Hoffman was the chair of Women in Black, a “peace” group that advocated giving the Palestinians (aka, the PLO) all the “occupied territories,” including East Jerusalem — including, of course, the Kotel itself. By comparison, her involvement with the Domari Society seems like a minor detail.

Hoffman claims to just want civil rights, and in her interview on BBC called the Orthodox “a minority that I respect deeply.” I happen to remember being in Israel when she ran for her seat on the Jerusalem City Council with the Meretz party. Her advertising included an orange map of Jerusalem, with black splotches and dots showing Orthodox settlement in the city. It is clear that she believed that the Orthodox were more of a threat to her voters than were the Palestinians — during the middle of the Intifada. I think it was the Jewish Observer that published a copy of this piece of campaign literature, juxtaposed with an earlier map with dials turned to the percentage of Jews in various cities — in Germany. That earlier map was published by the Nazi newspaper, Der Stürmer. So the idea that Hoffman might be speaking out of both sides of her mouth with regards to Israel and the Kotel isn’t, again, any big surprise.

But even more than that, Women of the Wall portrays itself as a “women’s rights” organization and claim that women currently don’t have rights in Israel, and say they are helping to “architect” a new Kotel section “for Jewish [sic] and Israelis to pray free from persecution and religious coercion.” This certainly bolsters the impression of Israel as a repressive country where the rights of minorities are not respected.

So it’s not a question as to whether Women of the Wall is actively harming Israel’s image and reputation, internationally. The only question is whether that is simply collateral damage in their war on Jewish tradition — or a desirable if secondary goal.

Upon the End of 25 Years of Deception

For months, as the Women For the Wall fought for the right of women to pray at the Wall undisturbed, we have heard from many, even within the Orthodox community, that really W4W should just have ignored the Women Of the Wall. Or as one pulpit Rabbi put it, “The WOW were not proselytizing anyone, they were not trying to win converts, they were not trying to make a revolution.”

Oops. Actually, they were.

These rabbis, from Shlomo Riskin on down, are now left to contemplate their naivete concerning WOW. Since they ignored WOW founders Rivka Haut and Susan Aranoff, who wrote (many months ago) in the Times of Israel that the reason WOW must remain at the Kosel is because, in reference to religious women (esp. charedim), they will “change their worldview,” now they must deal with the reality of Anat Hoffman admitting that this poorly-hidden agenda was, in fact, their continuous goal. WOW’s leading cheerleader in the press, Judy Maltz of HaAretz, reported the following after Hoffman’s conference call with WOW supporters, in which she defended their recent decision to move (with a ridiculous collection of conditions, but that’s for another article) to Robinson’s Arch:

Among the factors that brought about the change of heart within the organization, she said, was the realization that changing the mindset of Orthodox Jews was not possible. “Women of the Wall is the right group for bringing about change in Israel but not the right group for bringing about change in the Orthodox world,” she said. “I’m not sure that a group which has members from all the different streams of Judaism is the right one for doing something like this.”

In other words, WOW’s mission statement, claiming that they only want “to achieve the social and legal recognition of our right, as women, to wear prayer shawls, pray and read from the Torah collectively and out loud at the Western Wall,” was never more than a facade for WOW’s true mission, to “bring about change in the Orthodox world.” Having concluded that WOW is not “the right one for doing something like this,” Hoffman has decided to pack out for the greener pastures of Robinson’s Arch, where, of course, they will be able to wear prayer shawls, read from the Torah, and do whatever else they please.

Hoffman also went much further, conceding that a plaza equipped with a mechitzah, 100 Sifrei Torah, hundreds of prayer books and its own Rabbinic authority might, after all, be considered a traditionally Jewish religious space, and that those who use this space regularly have rights, as well:

Our Haredi sisters also have rights, and we saw last Rosh Chodesh that they really don’t want – maybe not all of them, but many of them – do not want to see a woman in a tallit and tefillin, and they also have rights. I think it’s absolutely fine that the state gives the Kotel rabbi absolute authority over the Haredi space.

This quite astounding achievement could not have been brought about without Women For the Wall. They basically saved the possibility of a place for traditional prayer at the Kotel for all of us (on Channel 2, Hoffman once contemplated an era where people would be shocked to learn that there had once been a mechitzah at the plaza)… and along the way, taught a few Rabbis what it means to trust a politician, like the former Meretz Jerusalem City Council member turned religious activist!

Not Just “Going Through the Motions”

One of the Commandments that Moshe Rabbeinu addressed again in Deuteronomy is that of returning lost property. In this week’s reading, the verse reads: “You shall not see the ox of your brother, or his sheep or goat, having wandered off, and ignore them; you shall surely return them to your brother.” [22:1] The earlier version of this Mitzvah was in the book of Exodus [23:4]: “When you come upon the ox of your enemy, or his donkey wandering, you shall surely return it to him.”

470_2601432There is a profound difference between these two versions of the same Commandment. In the first version, it says you should return your enemy’s property — isn’t it obvious that you’ll return your friend’s property too? But then the later one says the property is your “brother’s,” perhaps implying that you only really have to return the property when someone you love is involved. How should we resolve this contradiction?

Rabbeinu Bechaya says that the Torah is teaching us that this Commandment has another objective, even beyond the simple act of returning lost property to its owner. This act of giving to another person offers the opportunity to arouse feelings of love and generosity towards that person, and for reciprocal feelings of gratitude and love as well. It’s not just “great, I get to do a Mitzvah” — it’s that the deeper goal is to arouse feelings of love and brotherhood.

With some Commandments and opportunities, the heart is crucial to the whole process. For example, prayer said by just saying the words, with no concentration, is compared by our Sages to a body without a head.

The same can be said, and even more, about things like the Mitzvah of having guests. More than once recently I’ve heard people say something like “they only invite people over for Shabbos to make them religious,” as compared to inviting them over as “people.” But the whole warmth of a Shabbos meal would be lost if that were true. If you don’t care about the person, inviting him or her to be a guest is of little value.

This general principle applies to so many of the things that the Torah tells us to do. It’s not just about going through the motions, but the underlying training to be more godly in our actions and behavior — and feelings. It’s important to put our hearts into everything we do!

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This