Category Archives: Jewish Thought

Pain and Gain

Living lives of comfort and ease, it’s difficult for many of us to fulfill the direction of the first siman in the Shulchan Aruch to “be pained and distressed over the destruction of the Beis Hamikdosh.”  Do we experience agony at the fact that the holiest spot in the universe lies in picturesque ruin, trampled daily by the feet of deluded masses? Do we feel sick over the reality that, no matter how nice the weather and the house and the bungalow and the cars, we are in golus?

It’s easier these days, unfortunately.  We’re reminded.

It will be less of a challenge, too, to access the sadness of Eicha and our kinos this Tisha B’Av, when (unless we’re wonderfully surprised first by Moshiach’s arrival) we will focus entirely on the churban Beis Hamikdosh and its appalling offspring, the subsequent tragedies of Jewish history.

Because, no matter how one chooses to regard past weeks’ events in Eretz Yisrael, and no matter what may have been accomplished or might yet be, the situation is in fact dire and seemingly hopeless.

Some may take heart in the elimination of terrorists who, in their happiest dreams, and all too often in reality, exult in the murder of innocents.  To be sure, it is certainly not improper to feel relief in the removal of destructive forces from this world.  But anyone who thinks that there isn’t a steady supply of others ready to step into the bloody boots of recently dispatched psychopaths is fooling himself.

And the same is true of anyone who feels satisfaction at the discovery of so many “offensive tunnels.”  (The phrase’s adjective is doubly apt; the subterranean structures are not only intended as means for killing and kidnapping Jews, but offend morality itself.)  To be sure, each tunnel destroyed is one less conduit for murder and extortion.  But there are governments and groups that will be only too happy to send the necessary funds and materials to burrow new holes in the ground for the vipers and rodents.  (Yes, dehumanizing words.  Claims to humanness can be forfeited.)

And then there are the korbonos, the brave young men whose lives were abruptly ended as they were protecting their friends and relatives by fighting evil.  In our world, sometimes, at least in the short run, evil wins.

Even the dream-within-imagining of Hamas’ destruction, though still far from coming true, would lead, experts warn, to worse.  Other groups of (if it can even be envisioned) even more murderous Islamists wait in the wings; and a Gaza serving as their pernicious playground would not bode well at all for Israel’s citizens, or for civilization itself.

We may not overlook, either, the global anti-Semitism that has found a convenient reason to resurrect and invigorate itself, and is expressing itself so openly and honestly, with Jews being attacked, shuls besieged, swastikas brandished.  And the “soft” anti-Semitism of some of nations who ignore body-counts everywhere but in Gaza.

Yes it seems hopeless.  But pain, in the end, at least in Judaism, must not lead to despair.  On the contrary, anguish is what paves the way to redemption.  “All who mourn Yerushalayim,” Chazal inform us (Bava Basra 60b), “merit to see its rejoicing.”

There’s a reason, in other words, why Tisha B’Av is followed by the Shiva Dinechemta, the “seven weeks of consolation.”  The reassuring Haftoros we will read over those weeks offer not platitudinous comfort but, rather, pointed reminders of how things are destined to end, with a world enveloped by “knowledge of Hashem as water covers the seas.”

And so our pain on Tisha B’Av is rightly felt.  And it is more accessible than ever for those of us who in the past might have felt only pain, as the Chiddushei HaRim put it, at the fact that we weren’t feeling pain.

The key is to realize that all the world’s evils, all the wars and hatreds, all the terrorists and despots, all the bloodshed and madness, derive their power, in the end, from the distance we have put between ourselves and Hashem, a distance manifest in the fact that the Beis Hamikdosh is still absent.  When we look at Gaza today, and the West Bank, and all the Jews living under the threat of implacable, rabid and irrational enemies, we need to understand that it is the churban, in fact, that we are seeing.

The month of Av, we might remind ourselves, leads to that of Elul, in which we begin to prepare for Rosh Hashana, when we will declare Hashem’s Kingship over creation.  That Divine dominion is a reality, even if the King isn’t making it evident to all the world.  The day will come, though.

And may our mourning merit that we see it ourselves, and soon.

© 2014 Hamodia

Musing: Iron Dome Hakaras Hatov

The New York Times today notes that:

“The United States has been instrumental in helping to fund the development of Iron Dome and has proprietary access to the technology. Israel has said that the system has a success rate of nearly 90 percent in intercepting the missiles it is meant to thwart.”

Indeed, in 2013, US President Barack Obama pledged continued funding of the Iron Dome system, stressing that America’s commitment to the State of Israel is a “solid obligation” and “non-negotiable.”

In 2014, the US provided $235 million for Iron Dome research, development and production.  At the time, President Obama called it “a program that has been critical in terms of providing security and safety for Israeli families,” one, he continued, that “has been tested and has prevented missile strikes inside of Israel.”

Actions and words worth remembering, and worth expressing hakaras hatov for, in these trying times.

If Only

To re-read Rachel Fraenkel’s words in a New York Times report that appeared mere hours before the discovery that her son Naftali and his two friends, Hashem yinkom damam, had been murdered is to experience anew the shattering moment that accompanied the first reports of the discovery.

onfiding to a reporter her belief that the kidnapping would “end in a positive way,” she took care to add: “Not that I don’t consider other things.  I’m not in denial.  If I have to fall apart, I’ll have time to do it later.”

The time, to the anguish and agony of us all, came.

I was on the phone with a colleague discussing an important legal development when I heard a mid-sentence gasp on the other end of the line, and thought I sensed tears.  Although no official word had yet been released, my colleague had just received an alarming e-mail and informed me that some news sources were reporting a “development.”  Suddenly the legal issue had not the slightest importance.

It was astounding how so many Jews so far removed from one another – geographically and otherwise – came together in hope and tefilla during the weeks the boys were missing. “Prayer vigils,” wrote a Forward reporter, “united even those not prone to praying.”

And no less remarkable was the broad and resounding collective moan of mourning after the unthinkable became reality.  It was the sound of an entire people’s grief.

And for those of us who understand that the murdered boys are not only victims but kedoshim, there was particularly painful poignancy in the subsequent revelation that the first clue about their fate was a pair of tefillin found inside the burned-out Hyundai believed to have been used in their abduction.

Some Jewish readers were outraged by the New York Times article in which Mrs. Fraenkel was quoted.  Headlined “After West Bank Kidnapping, 2 Mothers Embody a Divide,” it could have been seen as comparing the mother of the Israeli boy with, lihavdil, the mother of a boy, Mohammed Dudeen, who was shot and killed in Dura, a town near Chevron, when he hurled stones at Israeli soldiers searching for the abductees.

But I don’t concur with the exercised readers.  It’s the role of a journalist to report, not take sides (even when an issue is lopsided), and there was no tilt toward the Arab woman in the piece.  Quite the contrary, the facts reported spoke for themselves, and more loudly than any opinion piece could have done.  Not only were the kidnapped boys portrayed as the innocent yeshiva students they were, but Mrs. Fraenkel, by her words, showed herself to be a paragon of sensitivity and compassion.  Expressing how “extremely upset” she was when she heard what happened in Dura, she told the Times, “I really don’t want any Palestinian to get hurt.

By stark contrast, the Arab mother wouldn’t even concede that a kidnapping had occurred, insinuating that Israel had staged the abduction.  She kvetched about the fact that Mahmoud Abbas hadn’t visited – “Our prime minister can’t come to offer condolences?  Shame on you.”  And she said that if she bears a new son, she will name him Mohammed. “All pregnant women in the neighborhood,” she said, “will name them Mohammed.

(A subsequent New York Times piece, the day after the discovery of the murders, quoted the mother of one of the men identified by Israel as a kidnapper/murderer.  She promised that she will educate her grandchildren “to be for jihad… [to] be as their father, to be fighters and to be martyrs.”)

And that, of course, is the crux of the essential issue here, the “asymmetry of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict” that the first article asserts some see – though not the way they see it.

The asymmetry lies in the embrace of hatred, unconcern for life and celebration of violence that characterizes so many Arab residents in Yehudah, Shomron and Gaza; and the will for peace, cherishing of life and distaste for violence held by most, if not all, Jewish Israelis.

All of Klal Yisroel is in mourning this week; none of us, even if we had never before June 12 heard the names Naftali Fraenkel, Gil-ad Shaar or Eyal Yifrach, Hy”d, feels that they are anything but our kerovim.  May Hashem grant the families, and us all, nechama.

It is not uncommon for aveilim to imagine “if only” scenarios – “if only he hadn’t taken that route,” “ if only I had suggested she see that doctor,” “ if only we had pressed him harder to take that advice…”

I have my own clock-turning-back fantasy here.  If only the two suspected murderers, when they were younger, had attacked some soldiers with rocks, like the boy in Dura, and been dispatched to a place very different from the next world of their imagining… Three pure-hearted boys would be in a beis medrash studying, or on the way home for a Shabbos with their families.  Instead of in their graves.

That’s anger speaking, of course.  And anger doesn’t yield good things.  What will yield us good things here is another set of “if only”s.  The sort that focuses on the future.  If only we seize this national tragedy to become better Jews.  If only we look inward, tease out and address the personal faults that prevent us from being better parents, children, siblings, spouses.  If only we aim to daven every day as we have over the past weeks.  If only…

We can’t change the past.  The future, though, is another matter

© 2014 Hamodia

Musing: Sneak Preview

I’m supposed to give the sermon this Shabbos at the shul I usually attend on Shabbos mornings.  The rabbi is away for the summer and sometimes asks me to say a few words when he’s gone.

I have several thoughts that I think I’ll share with those in attendance; but one insight I hope to cite is from Rav Elchonon Wasserman, zt”l, Hy”d.

As recounted by Rav Moshe Shternbuch, shlit”a, Rav Wasserman visited England (where Rav Shternbuch grew up) before the war, collecting money for his yeshiva.  Famously unconcerned with anything but truth, he spoke in a London shul and said something that resulted in part of the congregation standing up and exiting the room in protest.  He was unruffled.

What Rav Wasserman focused on is one of the descriptions of the Jewish people reluctantly pronounced by Bil’am (Bamidbar 23:9):  Aam livadad yishkon uvagoyim lo yischashov – “a people (aam) that will dwell alone, and will not be reckoned among the nations (goyim).

An aam, Rav Wasserman explained, is a people united by a purpose and calling; a goy, the citizenry of a country.  The Jewish people is the former; and lo yischashov – it should not be reckoned among the latter.  A country in the Holy Land that aspires to be a nation like the countries of the rest of the world is not a Jewish ideal.  The Land of Israel (in contrast to a country, even the one today called Israel, which was still unborn when Rav Wasserman spoke) is the holy place Hashem entrusted to us, invaluable for the closeness it offers us to Him and the commandments that can only be performed there.  It cannot be our mere “country.”

We all owe gratitude to the state of Israel for myriad things, but it is in the end but a country, a fact we sometimes forget.  Despite the wording of one Israeli leader’s eulogy for the three boys murdered by Arabs, they were killed not because they were Israelis.  They were killed because they were Jews; that’s why they are kedoshim.  May Hashem grant their families, and us all, nechama.

I hope no one stands up and leaves the shul in protest when I speak this Shabbos.  But if anyone does, I will be in good historical company.

Driving Lesson

The article below appeared earlier this week (with a more incendiary title) in Haaretz.

Back in the day, before contoured bucket seats became de rigueur in cars, the front seat of family vehicles – especially larger ones – was once a couch-like affair that could, and often did, comfortably seat three adults across.  The scene: Mr. and Mrs. Weisskopf, citizens of a certain age, are driving somewhere.  The missus is upset, and her husband asks what’s wrong.

“Do you remember,” she says, wistfully but with unmistakable resentment, “how we used to sit so near one another on our drives?  Look at us!  We’re at totally opposite ends of the seat!”

The man is puzzled, as well he might be.  “But dear,” he replies, looking across at her, his hands firm on the steering wheel, “I’m driving!”

The chestnut comes to mind upon reading some of the reactions of Reform leaders to the election of Ruby Rivlin to Israel’s presidency.

“He may be open-minded on a variety of issues,” Uri Regev, a Reform rabbi who now heads the “religious pluralism” organization Hiddush, pronounced about the president-elect, “but his mind was made up” about Judaism’s definition.  He is “the same old anti-liberal, close-minded traditionalist Israeli.”

Former Reform leader Eric Yoffie voiced a similar judgment in the days before Mr. Rivlin’s election, direly warning that he expects “candidates for president to act in an appropriate and respectful manner to all elements of the Jewish world.”

And the current head of the Reform movement, Rick Jacobs, penned an open letter to Mr. Rivlin in which he reminded the Israeli president-elect of the “stunning insensitivity” he had displayed toward the “dominant religiosity of North American Jewry” and expressed his hope that “you’re ready to update your harsh and rather unenlightened views of our dynamic, serious and inspiring expression of Judaism.”

Mr. Rivlin’s sin, of course, was being honest, and perhaps a bit blunt for American tastes.  Although famously secular himself, he dared, back in 1989, after visiting two Reform temples, to share his evaluation of the liberal Jewish movement, calling it “a completely new religion without any connection to Judaism.”

Then in 2006, he opined that he “has no doubt… that the status of Judaism according to Halacha is what has kept us going for 3,800 years” and that “besides it there is nothing.”

The latest voice to join the chorus of criticism of Mr. Rivlin’s unguarded judgment was that of Charles A. Kroloff, rabbi emeritus of one of the temples that Mr. Rivlin visited in 1989.  He recently expressed his “hope” that Mr. Rivlin has come, over the years, to understand “that if we are to be strong we must respect our fellow Jews, and if we are to survive, we Jews must be a united people.”

Rabbi Kroloff is correct, of course, although his sentiment has nothing to do with the question of what theologies can properly lay claim to being legitimate heirs to the Jewish religious tradition and which ones cannot.

That religious tradition hewed for millennia, and still does today, to certain foundational beliefs: in a Creator, in the historicity of the Jewish forefathers, the exodus from Egypt and the revelation at Sinai; and in the eternal nature of the law transmitted there to the people, our ancestors, who were divinely chosen to be an example to all humanity.

The year before Mr. Rivlin visited Rabbi Kroloff’s temple saw the death of a Nobel laureate, the celebrated physicist I. I. Rabi.  Born in Galicia and raised in the United States, he lacked the bluntness of an Israeli.  But when asked about his faith, Mr. Rabi expressed much the same sentiment as Mr. Rivlin did mere months later.

“…If you ask for my religion,” he said, “I say ‘Orthodox Hebrew’ – in the sense that the church [sic] I’m not attending is that one.  If I were to go to a church, that’s the one I would go to.   That’s the one I failed.  It doesn’t mean I’m something else…”

The same is true for every Jew, no matter what prefix he or she has been persuaded to place before “Jew” in his or her self-description.  Jews are Jews.  And, whatever some Jews may imagine, Judaism is Judaism.

Like Mrs. Weisskopf, the leaders of the “dominant religiosity of North American Jewry” may feel insulted at the stubborn persistence of the original Jewish religious tradition, and peeved by its great distance from them.  But it was they, not it, that created the distance.

And objective observers readily perceive what those leaders cannot bring themselves to confront, that there is today, as always, only one Judaism, the original one.

© 2014 Haaretz

Dear Graduates

Several years ago,  I was privileged to address the commencement ceremony of Bais Yaakov of Baltimore.  Below is an edited version of my remarks to the high school graduates, their families and friends.

Back in the day – the day when I was in grade school, that is – we were taught the “3 R’s” – Reading, Writing and ‘Rithmetic (that’s math to you, and yes, we didn’t spell so good back then).  Of course, you’ve all learned those things and more.  And as students of Bais Yaakov, you have also learned the really important things for a Torah life.

Among them, I think, are another “3 R’s.”  At this special moment, please permit me to briefly review them.

The first one is Recognizing – specifically, recognizing the good, hakaras hatov.  Its simple sense – gratitude – is something you graduates surely feel this evening – toward your parents, your teachers and your classmates, for all that they have given you.  But the term’s deeper meaning is to recognize – with a capital “R” – the good that is always present in our lives, all the things with which we are constantly blessed.  Because everything we have is a gift from Hashem.  We’re called Jews after Yehudah – so named by our foremother Leah because of her gratitude – hodo’oh – that Hashem had given her “more than her share” of sons.  We Jews are always to see what we have – whatever it may be – as “more than our share.”

The larger world has a rather different ethic.  An advertisement recently asked me “Don’t you deserve a new Lexus?”  Well, no, I don’t particularly.  I’m not at all sure I even deserve my used Saturn with the manual roll-up windows either.  In fact, every morning when I open its door, I thank Hashem for granting it to me.  There is a contemporary social disease one might call eskumptmir-itis – from the Yiddish phrase “It’s coming to me.” We have to try mightily not to contract it.

As it happens, there is a vaccine for the disease of entitlement: the brochos we say throughout every day.  Each is an expression of hakaras hatov, a recognition of a gift, and of its Source. We do well to say them carefully, and think of what we are saying.

The second “R” is Relating – trying to feel what others are feeling, empathizing.  Here, too, a very different atmosphere envelops the world around us.  Maybe it’s different in Baltimore, but in New York the roads teach much about empathy – about how things are when there isn’t any. Obviously each of us cares most about himself – that’s why “Love your neighbor like yourself” takes “yourself” as the given – but the law of the jungle is not our law.  We are charged to try to see the world through the eyes of the other.

You’ve heard, no doubt, about the new father-to-be who paced the waiting room for hours while his wife was in labor, about how the process went very slowly and he became more and more agitated, until, an eternity later, the nurse finally came in to tell him his wife had delivered a little girl.

“Thank heaven!” he burst out.  “A girl!  She’ll never have to go through what I just did!”

You will meet people like that, I assure you – although, with Hashem’s help, not your future husbands – and they exemplify the self-centeredness we have to strive mightily to shun.

The third “R” is perhaps the most important, since it touches on a Torah mitzvah and concept of singular status:  Kiddush Hashem.  That imperative, of course, requires a Jew to die rather than commit certain aveiros, or any aveira in certain circumstances.  But we’re charged not only with dying, if necessary, al kiddush Hashem but also with living in the same state of sanctification.  This “R” is thus “Reflecting” – for, as frum Jews, our actions reflect not only on ourselves, our parents and teachers and schools, but on our Torah – in fact, on our Creator.

Today, perhaps, more than ever.   Waiting at a bus stop once, I was approached by a young mother whose little boy was cowering behind her.  She approached me and asked politely if I might assure the child that I was not Osama bin Laden.  Turban, black hat, whatever, we do both have beards.  I managed to convince the young man who I wasn’t, but was struck by the realization that Mr. Bin Laden not only has the blood of countless innocents on his soul but the sin of desecrating Hashem’s name.  We must counter with the opposite.

What an incredible obligation – and what an incredible opportunity.

The Rambam, in his laws about Kiddush Hashem, adds that great Torah-scholars have a particular mandate to act in an exemplary way – for they are perceived as the most powerful reflections of the Torah.  I don’t think it’s a stretch to understand those words to apply today to all who are perceived to be reflections of Torah.  In a world like ours, all identifiably Jewish Jews are “great Torah scholars” regarding this halacha – and we must all endeavor to act the part.

The opportunities are ubiquitous.  Receiving change from a cashier, a smile – not to mention a “thank you” – leaves an impression.  On the road, where politeness is at a premium, driving politely leaves an impression.  The way we speak, the way we interact with others, all leave an impression.  We must leave the right one.

So, dear graduates, remember always, above all else, just who you are: reflections of Hashem on earth.

Reflect well.

And may your reflections be clear and brilliant, and help merit a fourth “R” – the ultimate Redemption, the ge’ula shleima, may it come speedily.

Musing: Skin in the Game

My new issue of Reform Judaism magazine just arrived.  Its cover story is “Jews and Tattoos.”  And it asserts that “Jewish tradition is surprisingly nuanced on the practice” of tattooing

That contention, and the arguments in the article to support it, well demonstrate the Reform movement’s attitude toward Torah (“Only one law,” after all, it explains, “in the Book of Leviticus, prohibits a tattoo.”  As if more than one law prohibits murder.)

The article, seemingly seriously, offers “positive examples of tattooing” in the Bible.  Things like Hashem’s placing a “mark” on Kayin (Beraishis 4:15) and His command (Yeshayahu 44:5) that “one shall call himself by the name of Yaakov; and another shall write with his hand to Hashem” (presumably understanding “with his hand” as “on his hand,” and by cutting the skin and applying ink).

It is sad, just so sad.

From The Mouths Of Secularists

“…To this very day, if you ask for my religion, I say ‘Orthodox Hebrew’ – in the sense that the church [sic] I’m not attending is that one.  If I were to go to a church, that’s the one I would go to.   That’s the one I failed.  It doesn’t mean I’m something else…”

Those are the words of the famous physicist and Nobel laureate I. I. Rabi (1898-1988), quoted in the book “Rabi, Scientist and Citizen.”  He was born into an observant family in Galicia, and was still a baby when his parents immigrated to the United States.

Although he eventually lost his connection to Jewish observance, he confided toward the end of his life that “Sometimes I feel I shouldn’t have dropped it so completely”; and, as his earlier words above testify, he rejected the idea that Judaism could ever be anything other than what it always has been, or that he – or any Jew – could ever be anything other than an Orthodox Jew – whether or not he chose to live like one.

A similar sentiment was voiced several years ago by then-Knesset speaker Reuven Rivlin, the man elected last week to be Israel’s 10th president.

In a 2006 Knesset speech, Mr. Rivlin, who has been described as secular, said that he “has no doubt… that the status of Judaism according to Halacha is what has kept us going for 3,800 years” and that “besides it there is nothing.”  During that same address, he explained that if non-halachic conversion standards were to be adopted by Israel, the state would be abandoning a “religious definition” of Jewishness for a mere “civic” one with no inherent meaning.

And back in 1989, after visiting two Reform temples, he was blunter still, calling the liberal Jewish movement “a completely new religion without any connection to Judaism.”

Mr. Rivlin was assailed by adherents of non-Orthodox Jewish movements on both those occasions, and his present ascendancy to the Israeli presidency has understandably caused them renewed heartburn.

“He may be open-minded on a variety of issues,” Uri Regev, a Reform rabbi who now heads the “religious pluralism” organization Hiddush, sniffed about the president-elect, “but his mind was made up” about Judaism’s definition.  He is “the same old anti-liberal, close-minded traditionalist Israeli.”

Former Reform leader Eric Yoffie echoed that judgment before Mr. Rivlin’s election, pointedly warning that he expects “candidates for president to act in an appropriate and respectful manner to all elements of the Jewish world.”

And the current head of the Reform movement, Rick Jacobs, recently penned an open letter in Haaretz to Mr. Rivlin, in which he reminded the Israeli president-elect of the “stunning insensitivity” he had displayed toward the “dominant religiosity of North American Jewry” (a risible description if ever there were one) and expressed his hope that “you’re ready to update your harsh and rather unenlightened views of our dynamic, serious and inspiring expression of Judaism” (ditto).

Whether Mr. Rivlin, who by all accounts is a pleasant fellow, will see a need to assuage the umbrage-takers remains to be seen.  He may succumb to the pressures, although one hopes that he will not sacrifice principle for pacification.

The fact that the new president’s old statements have been dredged up and placed in the spotlight, however, is a healthy development.  For it informs the “dominant religiosity of North American Jewry” – in other words, the vast population of the Jewishly ignorant – that disinterested, objective observers readily perceive that there is only one Judaism, the original one.

The conniptions over Mr. Rivlin’s comments also call attention to the fact that, while various Jewish groups were “evolving” new theologies and practices, and abandoning the mesorah, the community of Jews who remained faithful to the Jewish religious tradition didn’t peter out, as so many had expected (and so many had hoped), but rather thrived, and continues to thrive, b”H, mightily.

By contrast, American Jewry outside the Orthodox world is in deep demographic crisis.  The intermarriage and assimilation that concerned us greatly decades ago have only intensified and accelerated.  Long gone are the days when a person presenting himself as a Jew can be presumed to be halachically Jewish.

And yet, there are still countless actual Jews out there, Jews who lack the benefit of an observant upbringing or a Jewish education, and are under the delusion that Judaism is a smorgasbord of offerings.  They are, moreover, relentlessly bombarded with articles in the “mainstream” “Jewish” media that, in effect, warn them not to dare sample the Orthodox tray, that it will make them sick.

What can we do to help those cherished if distant fellow Jews?  Ultimately, be who we are supposed to be.  Many who have gotten their impressions of Orthodox Jews from actually seeing true Orthodox life and behavior (rather than from the media malshinim) have in fact returned to their spiritual roots.

But a first step is the promotion of a truism, one that was voiced by a nuclear physicist and an Israeli president.

 © Hamodia 2014