Category Archives: News

A Crying Shame

Readers of a certain age will likely recognize the name Edmund Muskie.  He was a candidate for the Democratic Party nomination for President back in 1972.

There were several reasons why the candidacy of the former Maine governor, senator and Secretary of State was curtailed.  Rumors were spread that he was a drug addict. The Manchester Union-Leader asserted that his wife was an alcoholic and bad-mannered, and that Muskie had made disparaging remarks about French-Canadians.

It emerged later that the latter rumor was a fabrication, part of Richard Nixon’s infamous “dirty tricks” strategy to harm political enemies.  But damage had been done, and Muskie’s reaction to the negative characterizations of his wife was widely regarded as coup de grâce for his campaign.

Standing before reporters outside the newspaper’s offices on a snowy February day in 1972, he emotionally defended his wife.  And, at one point, shed tears.

He later claimed that, while he was indeed upset, the droplets on his face were merely melted snowflakes.

No one will ever know.  Mr. Muskie died in 1996 and videos of the incident are inconclusive.  One thing, though, is clear: The idea of a president capable of crying seemed shameful to the American electorate in 1972.

Contrast that with the public reaction to the current Crier-in-Chief.  Mr. Obama has not held back from weeping on several occasions, including memorial services and as he presented military awards.  And, most recently, when he announced an executive order expanding the scope of background checks on gun buyers and increasing funding for mental health treatment (actions that, amazingly, raised howls of protest from some – but that’s a different article).  In the presence of family members of gun fatalities, he choked up as he recalled the children murdered in the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting.

The usual suspects, of course, intent on seeing only cold, diabolical evil in Obama, immediately took to social media to share theories about how the president had managed to conjure his obviously (at least to the commenters) fake tears.  The thought that he was sincerely distraught at the memory of small schoolchildren’s bodies riddled with bullets just could not be entertained, at any cost.

Saner Americans readily accepted that the president’s tears were sincere. Some found the tears laudable, evidence of his humanity.  Others found them telling, evidencing the president’s frustration over fighting a gun lobby that insists that, unlike other fundamental rights like free speech and assembly, the Second Amendment must be unlimited. Others just found the crying unremarkable.

We’ve come a long way.

No one these days seems to see a president sincerely tearing up as scandalous.  What to make of that?  Is it evidence to the “wimping down” of America?  An emotional counterpart to the moral decline of a once-great nation?

Or, perhaps, a sign of its maturity?

In some ways, American society has indeed grown more advanced.  It is, for instance, no longer as riven with overt racism and anti-Semitism as once it was (even if individual anti-Semitic acts are far from rare even today).  The idea that parents are the best arbiters of their children’s educational environments has become enshrined in law and widely accepted (if not yet widely taken to its logical legislative conclusion). The distance traveled since Mr. Muskie’s day regarding leaders’ public emoting may be another sign of America’s positive growth.

Leaving the hidden onion-juice conspiracy theorists aside (where they belong), sincere crying is not dishonorable.  Emotions, and the tears that accompany their most intense states, are the hallmark of a developed human being. Your GPS guide doesn’t cry.  Nazis don’t cry.  Terrorists don’t cry.

By contrast, we Jews are known for our tears.  It may have been wrong for our ancestors to cry out of fear when they first stood at the cusp of entering Eretz Yisrael.  But that bechiyah shel chinam, “unwarranted crying,” is atoned for by our own tears, on Tisha B’Av, on Yom Kippur, at Tikkun Chatzos…  The Kosel Maaravi is saltily stained with the sobbing of countless Jewish generations.

Our forefather Yaakov cried.  So did Yosef, and Moshe Rabbeinu.  Rachel Imeinu cries still.  The Cohen Gadol cried, as did tanna’im.  Even Hashem, kivayachol, is described as crying (Chagigah, 5b).

So, whether or not larger society’s having come to accept that even a leader is not lesser for lachrymosity is something positive, Jewish weeping for the right reasons most certainly is.

May it lead, and soon, to the end of all crying, to the fulfillment of Yeshayahu’s nevuah (25:8) that Hashem “will wipe tears from every face.”

© 2016 Hamodia

Howling Hounds and Golden Calves

Whether or not they happen to own dogs, some politicians have an affinity for dog whistles, at least the political type.

That term plays on the fact that dogs can hear frequencies inaudible to humans, and refers to catchwords or phrases used in speeches and such to signal things, usually ugly things, to particular parts of the body politic.

When segregation became socially unacceptable, many pro-segregationists began instead calling for “states’ rights,” as a euphemism for the right of individual states to racially discriminate.  Used in a speech, it was an ultrasonic call-out to racists.  Now “states’ righters” has become a dog whistle of its own, used by some speechifying liberals to insinuate that anti-big government sorts are all racists.

In the current presidential primary race, Jeb Bush has accused Donald Trump of “dog whistling,” citing, among other things, the latter’s endless stream of insults to various groups of foreigners or non-males.  But those aren’t really dog whistles at all; they’re more like raucous tuba blasts, blown by a clown.

Some dog whistlers have long sought to call out to people not well disposed toward Jews or Israel, using well-placed phrases like “dual loyalty” or “powerful Congressional lobby.”  Back in 2012, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd upset many when she accused Republican presidential hopefuls as being guided by a “neocon puppet master,” a reference that was heard as referring to Jewish former administration officials.

A recent dog whistle sounding anti-Jewish notes was wielded by Congressional candidate Dan Castricone, a former Orange County legislator seeking the Republican nomination for New York’s 18th District congressional seat, which includes all of Orange and Putnam counties and parts of two others.

A little background:  Kiryas Joel, in case you aren’t aware, is a village and Hassidic enclave founded by the Satmar Rov, zt”l, that is part of the town of Monroe, in Orange County, New York.

A 2011 New York Times report noted that, despite the town’s very high poverty rates, “It has no slums or homeless people. No one who lives there is shabbily dressed or has to go hungry. Crime is virtually nonexistent.”

Some residents of the surrounding communities, however, view Kiryas Joel as encroaching on them, particularly because of the growth of the village and its residents’ desire to annex additional land to accommodate its growth.

In September, the Monroe Town Board approved a petition to shift 164 acres (approximately a third of what was requested) of the town into Kiryas Joel.

The concerns of those in opposition to that plan cannot be dismissed out of hand.  They prefer that the bucolic nature of their surroundings be undisturbed by new residential developments and the construction attendant to creating them.  At the same time, though, neighborhoods change, and development impinges on rural areas all the time; many a once-verdant, pastoral setting has been transformed into a vibrant residential community.  Some things in life might be bothersome, but need to be accepted all the same.

What isn’t acceptable – or shouldn’t be – is opposition to development that is wrapped in religious prejudice.

Which brings us to Mr. Castricone.

In a fundraising letter, after declaring his opposition to Kiryas Joel’s bid to expand, he announced that he will “fight until my last breath to stop it.”  All right, he’s impassioned.  No crime there.  But he also seems, unfortunately, to be something else.

In one speech, he railed that the current holder of the Congressional seat he seeks, Democrat Sean Patrick Maloney, “sits in Congress today only because of a certain bloc of votes [emphasis – or, at least, italics – mine] he obtained from a certain village in the center of a town called Monroe.”

Woof woof.

And if that didn’t get the hounds howling, the calculating candidate, in another address, railed against “one community” that he said has “run roughshod over the culture” of his beloved fatherland – pardon, region.  And, in case anyone might have wondered what “culture” he meant to reference, he helpfully continued by accusing Mr. Maloney of having made “a pact with the golden calf.”

Last we checked, democracy was alive and well in the United States, including upstate New York.  And members of all American communities were free to vote, individually or en masse, for whomever and whatever they believed to be in their best interest.

Mr. Castricone, no doubt, would affirm that all of that remains the case, and will wave the flag of freedom alongside all who are proud to live in this great country.  But the whistle he blows sounds a rather more sour note.

© Hamodia, 2015

Blame Terrorism, Not Songs

Some politicians and pundits – including several writers in Haaretz – seem misguidedly intent on extending blame for Jewish terrorism across Orthodoxy, even to the charedi community and its Torah educational system. And several have pointed to a song played at Jewish weddings as Exhibit A.

I recently shared some thoughts on the matter with the readers of Haaretz. The piece is here and here.

 

Prominence ≠ Importance

When President Obama called the recent U.S. military announcement that all combat roles will now be open to women a “historic step forward,” the image that came to mind was of someone marching resolutely off a cliff.

There is something alarming in a purely practical sense here.  The U.S. military is currently an all-volunteer force, but young men are still required to register in case conscription is reactivated.  Will young women now have to follow suit?  And, if compulsory service is ever reactivated in the U.S., will women be drafted too?

More immediately troubling, though, is the position implied by the military: that there is no meaningful difference between men and women.

I don’t doubt that women, like men, with proper training, can be effective fighters.  But are women soldiers an enlightened expression of a new womanhood, or a benighted attempt to subvert the truth that men and women have different roles?  And are women in the military a true feminist accomplishment, or an unintentional statement that natural masculine strength is some ultimate ideal?

Some segments of contemporary society think they have the answer.  We, though, who take our attitudes from the timeless truths of the Torah, and who recognize that, like Avraham Avinu, we must sometimes take our places on “the other side of the river” of the Zeitgeist, know better.

The very idea of gender roles rankles these days.  People unaccustomed to thinking hard assume that prominence and power are measures of importance and worth. And so, if public leadership roles, or shul roles or military ones are reserved for men, that perforce belittles women.

Is the undercover agent, though, less important than a foot soldier?  The orchestra’s bassist less a part of the performance than the lead violinist?  The researcher less significant than the surgeon?  We all have roles, some of them assigned us by genealogy (no point in aspiring to kehunah if one’s father’s a Yisrael), some by talent (accurately shooting basketballs is something forever denied some of us), some by gender (no man can ever be as good a mother as a woman).

And prominence is no measure of import.

The Gemara in Kesuvos (67b) tells of the amora Mar Ukva, who, each day, on his way home from the beis medrash, would quietly leave some coins near the door of a poor person.  One day, he stayed late and his wife came to fetch him.  Together they walked, making Mar Ukva’s usual detour to leave the coins in the regular place.  As they placed the coins, they heard the poor man approaching the door.  Realizing they would be spotted and wanting their charity to be anonymous, they fled; and the poor man, intent on identifying his benefactors, gave chase.

The couple ducked into a large outdoor oven.  Unfortunately, its floor and walls were terribly hot.  Mar Ukva felt his feet begin to burn.  His wife, noticing his discomfort, told him “Put your feet on top of mine.”  He did what he was told; his wife did not feel the heat.  Their pursuer, having lost sight of his prey, returned home.

After the incident, Mar Ukva was depressed.  Why had his wife, and not he, merited the miracle?  “Don’t you see?” she explained.  “I’m in the house so much more than you, so I have many more opportunities than you to give tzedakah to the poor who come to our own door.  And the food and drink I give them is immediately useful, unlike the money you give.  And so, with regard to charity, my merit is greater than yours.”

The account really says it all:  What counts over our limited years on this earth is not the prominence we acquire but the merit we achieve; not our particular roles, but what we do with them.  Mrs. Mar Ukva’s “limited” role as someone running a home was what had merited a miracle, a miracle denied her scholarly, prominent husband.

The quest for women’s equality where it is compelling – when it comes to things like equal pay for equal work or the right to be fully respected – is just and proper, and deserves our support.

But pursuing an artificial man-woman “equality” in some quasi-mathematical sense denies reality and can only promote societal dysfunction.  Roles matter, and it is folly to imagine that fairness is well served only if there are women tank-gunners – if womanhood is gauged by measures of manhood. The contemporary world could learn much from the Mar Ukvas.

© 2015 Hamodia

Trumping Terrorism

When the Obama White House and Dick Cheney agree on something, it’s worthy of note.

What united the two – along with a conga line of Democratic and Republican presidential candidates, members of Congress and world leaders – was Donald Trump’s latest gambit to garner attention.  That would be the candidate’s announced desire to effect a “total and complete shutdown” of Muslims entering the United States until elected leaders can “figure out what… is going on.”

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Mr. Trump’s position “disqualifies him from serving as president.”  Mr. Cheney said it “goes against everything we stand for and believe in.”  The others all echoed those sentiments.

Leaving aside, though, what America stands for, there is also what Israeli journalist Chemi Shalev noted, namely, that “ISIS dreams of an Islam-hating America that isolates its own Muslims; Trump is busy making their dreams come true.”

President Obama made that same point in his December 6 address to the nation.

He demanded that Muslim leaders “decisively and unequivocally reject the hateful ideology that groups like ISIL and Al Qaeda promote,” but also warned that “We cannot [let] this fight be defined as a war between America and Islam. That… is what groups like ISIL want.”

What’s more, there are more than a billion Muslims worldwide, and the vast majority of radical Islamists’ victims are Muslims. The average Muslim may not support Israel, but neither is he a murderer.

Had Mr. Trump just urged special scrutiny of visa applications from certain countries, it would not have raised very many eyebrows very high.  But, of course, it’s eyebrows and outrage he’s after.

A more dignified and wise approach toward Muslims came from Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, in an address to a gathering at a Virginia mosque.

After speaking out against “the discrimination, vilification and isolation that American Muslims face in these challenging times,” he reminded his listeners that “terrorist organizations overseas have targeted your communities. They seek to pull your youth into the pit of violent extremism.”  And he challenged the Muslim community to “Help us to help you stop this.”

Depressingly, though, instead of publicly exhorting their followers to seek out and uproot the germs of evil seeking to infect their communities, some American Muslim spokespeople chose instead to just kvetch.

“We would never ask any other faith community to stand up and condemn acts of violence committed by people within their groups,” complained one, activist Linda Sarsour.

Ms. Sarsour might consider that, were Presbyterians or Mormons regularly killing innocents in the name of their faiths and celebrating the carnage, they would surely draw similar attention to their co-religionists.  There, too, condemning an entire religion for the acts of some of its evil actors would be wrong.  But equally wrong would be reluctance on the part of the religions’ leaders to shout their condemnation of the evil from the rooftops and to call on their followers to be help root it out.

Instead, here, we have de rigueur, lackluster statements of disassociation from terrorist acts.

And, more depressing still, we have “moderate” sentiments like those of the male San Bernardino mass murderer’s father, who revealed that his son had expressed support for ISIS and “was obsessed with Israel.”  The father explained how he counseled his son to “Stay calm, be patient, in two years Israel will no longer exist… Russia, China, America too, nobody wants the Jews there.”

How prevalent such “moderation” is in the Muslim world can’t be known.  But it, too, is part of the rot that infects immature minds and can fester into violence.

Sympathy is in order for innocent Muslims who are portrayed by dint of their faith alone as potential terrorists.  It may be fear that prevents them from speaking out more loudly, engaging in concrete and effective acts to undermine Islamist ideologies and partnering with law enforcement to prevent terrorism.  But all that is their moral mandate; the proverbial push has come to shove.

Following the recent knife attack at a London subway station, where the attacker reportedly said “This is for Syria!” before proceeding to stab commuters, a video recorded the voice of an onlooker with an Arabic accent shouting “You ain’t no Muslim, bruv!” several times.  The phrase, happily, has been widely seized upon as an expression of how most Muslims feel.  And it likely is.

But still, it’s puzzling, and perhaps telling, that the shouter, despite the fame and adulation his words have garnered, has yet to come forward to present himself to the public.

Maybe he’s just modest.

Or, less laudable, he’s afraid.

© 2015 Hamodia

Of Labels and Fables

In European Union countries, the words “Product of the West Bank (Israeli settlement)” will now replace “Product of Israel” on labels of foodstuffs, cosmetics and other consumer goods produced by Jewish-owned enterprises in Yehudah and Shomron. Similar labels will grace Jewish products that originate in the Golan Heights and parts of Yerushalayim liberated in the 1967 Six Day War.

In announcing the new policy, E.U. authorities said it was their duty to let consumers know the geographic origin of products so that buyers can make “informed decisions.”  The new rule is itself “informed,” and by something more than consumer concern.  By anti-Israel sentiment.

The European Union is, of course, entitled to not recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the territories captured in 1967.  Our own country, in fact, has also regarded those areas to be under Israeli occupation since that year; Israel herself, for that matter, has never annexed them.  Israeli leaders, moreover, including her current Prime Minister, have pledged their willingness to offer Palestinians parts of the captured territory in exchange for an enforceable peace – although, until a nonbelligerent Palestinian leadership emerges, the vision remains hypothetical.

But the labeling law is no mere expression of disapproval of the territories’ unresolved status.  It is an act of transparent hypocrisy.

There are territorial disputes in scores of countries.  But no products from disputed areas of China, Morocco, Turkey or India, to take only several such nations, are subject to special labeling to “inform” consumers of the conflicts. The reason Israel is being treated differently lies… well, where anyone rational readily recognizes it lies.

The fact alone that the new EU rule came about only after incessant lobbying by Palestinian representatives and a gaggle of “sympathetic” NGOs should suffice to reveal the true agenda at work here.  And it isn’t consumer protection.  The EU’s contention that its rule is a simple technical correction is a cynical fable.

And the Obama administration’s acceptance of that fabrication is shameful.

A State Department spokesman, Mark Toner, said the EU move is only a “technical guideline,” and not a boycott, which, the spokesman explained, the administration would oppose.

But, he added, “We understand the objective is to provide EU consumers correct information on the origin of products, as required by EU law.”  He’s very understanding.

But should he wish to understand the essence of the new rule, he might consider the reaction of PLO secretary-general Saeb Erekat to its enactment.  Triumphantly, he lauded it as “a significant move toward a total boycott of Israeli settlements.”

Readers of this column know that I don’t share the common feeling that President Obama is less than fully dedicated to Israel’s security. His actions over the years, I have contended, and still contend, simply don’t support that conclusion.  But the same commitment to veracity that impels me to give credit where it is due obliges me no less to criticize the indefensible.  And the administration’s declining to condemn the EU rule cannot be defended.

I understand – from Mr. Obama’s perspective as a proponent and would-be architect of a “two-state solution” – the president’s frustrations with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. The recent “bury the hatchet” meeting at the White House was likely more photogenic than factual. And one might reasonably suspect that the administration’s laissez faire reaction to the EU rule was a sort of silencer-muzzled parting shot at what the American leader sees as the Israeli one’s insufficient determination to promote a resolution to the “occupation.”

But differences of opinion about promoting a two-state solution (leave aside who, much more than Mr. Netanyahu, is holding it back) is not the issue here. It’s not Israel’s current Prime Minister who is being marginalized by the Europeans.  It is Israel.  Mr. Obama should realize that, and he should have called the EU crooked spade a crooked spade, and denounced it as the duplicity it is.

It’s unlikely that administration officials are given to seeing symbolism and irony in world events.  But if they were, they might note the fact that, shortly after the EU ruling, the world was rudely awoken to the immediacy of terrorist evil.  Parisians and the Western World suddenly got a taste of what Israelis have been enduring regularly – terrorism emboldened by “world opinion.”

And the ground zero, so to speak, of the Paris massacres, the gritty, jihadi-breeding Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek, which spawned the late, unlamented terrorist Abdelhamid Abaaoud, is a mere 15-minute drive from Le Berlaymont, the building housing the headquarters of the European Union.

© 2015 Hamodia

Denominational Déjà Vu

This article appeared in the New York Jewish Week

Back in February, 2001, an article I wrote for Moment Magazine caused quite a stir.  Its thesis – that, since the Conservative movement’s claim to halachic integrity was not supported by fact, Conservative Jews who respect Jewish religious law should consider joining Orthodox communities – was understandably disturbing to some. Much of the uproar, however, was likely caused by the incendiary title that publication insisted on slapping on the piece.  I had titled it “Time to Come Home”; Moment ran it under a large, bold headline reading “The Conservative Lie.”

The article ended up causing some healthy discussion (and, I immodestly add, won an American Jewish Press Association award).  It also inspired several Conservative movement officials to call me nasty names.  None, though, offered any cogent rebuttal to what I had demonstrated, namely that the process of determining Conservative “halacha” differed in an essential way from the halachic process of the millennia.

Halacha has always been decided through the objective examination of Biblical verses, mediated through the Talmud and legal codes, with a single goal: to discern the Torah’s intention. By contrast, I observed, the Conservative process generally involved first identifying a desired result, and then massaging the sources to “yield” that outcome.

An example I noted was the issue of same-sex intimate relationships.  Although halachic literature, based on verses in the Torah, considers such relations unarguably wrong, contemporary Western society, even at the time, had come to embrace the idea of “alternate lifestyles.”

I predicted that, in the realm of sexual expression, the Conservative movement would soon enough “halachically” approve what halacha forbids in no uncertain terms.  In 2006, I was vindicated when the Conservative movement’s “Committee on Jewish Law and Standards” endorsed a position permitting “commitment ceremonies” between people of the same sex and the ordination as Conservative rabbis of people living openly homosexual lives. Since then, of course, as homosexual activity has come to be celebrated in the larger world, the Conservative legal system has trotted close behind.

It didn’t take any powers of prophecy to discern what I did, only those of observation and perception.  And I perceive precisely the same Conservative approach to halacha in what bills itself today as “Open Orthodoxy.”

That neologism encompasses three institutions: Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, Yeshivat Maharat – educational entities that ordain men and women, respectively – and the International Rabbinic Fellowship, a rabbinic group.

If the “open” in “Open Orthodoxy” means to imply that what has long been called Orthodox Judaism is somehow “closed” to other Jews, that proposition would greatly surprise any non-Orthodox Jew who has ever walked into an Orthodox shul.  What it more likely means to suggest is that, theologically, what has until now been called Orthodoxy is somehow “close-minded.”

That stance, though, reveals that the other word in the phrase, “Orthodox,” is deeply misleading. Which is why the Council of Torah Sages, an elite group of widely-respected yeshiva-dean elders, has declared that the new movement has no claim on the title “Orthodox.”

Whether the halachic topic being addressed is same-sex relationships, interfaith interactions, kashrut, marriage, divorce or conversion, the desideratum of “Open Orthodoxy” is unmistakably to bring Jewish religious praxis “into line” with contemporary mores.  That may not be not explicit in the wording of “Open Orthodox” statements or responsa – any more than it was fourteen years ago in those of the Conservative movement.  But in both cases it is manifest.

In halacha as it has developed over millennia, there are decisions that render permissions and others that yield forbiddances.  Tellingly, the Conservative movement’s “halachic” positions are almost exclusively permissive.  Ditto for those of “Open Orthodoxy.”  In fact, the two movements are, their different chosen names notwithstanding, simply indistinguishable.

Let me stress that I am speaking of a concept here, not people; of theological systems, not the intentions of students who have been attracted to “Open Orthodox” institutions, some of whom are clearly idealists who wish to serve the Jewish people.  The problem isn’t those students or their idealism, but rather the proposition they are taught, that halacha is ripe for “updating.”  Halacha does indeed take societal developments into account; sometimes they make a difference, sometimes they do not.  But the Zeitgeist does not determine the halacha.  The accepted elders, the most experienced Torah scholars, of each generation, do.  That is itself a premise of the halachic system.

The new movement’s name is a misnomer, a dangerously misleading one.  Just as “kosher-style” food isn’t kosher, neither is “Open Orthodoxy” Orthodox.  It is neo-Conservatism.  Which is why the greatest, most widely recognized, Torah scholars today – and not only those of the haredi world – have rejected its Jewish authenticity.

I take no pleasure in revealing the truth about “Open Orthodoxy.”  But truth-in-labeling is not only a civil mandate but a halachic one.

Fourteen years ago, I implored halacha-respecting non-Orthodox Jews to come home to the Judaism of the ages.  Today, I experience – apologies to the late Yogi Berra – “déjà vu all over again.” My plea persists.

Misguided Mounters

“As if the situation here was not sensitive enough,” groused an incredulous MK Yoel Hasson (Hamachaneh HaTzioni).

He was referring to Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely’s comment that her “dream is to see the Israeli flag flying over the Temple Mount” and her conviction that Jews should able to pray on Har HaBayis.

Mr. Hasson had harsher words, too, for the minister, ascribing to her “the stubbornness of a donkey” and calling for her dismissal.

Nor was Prime Minister Netanyahu pleased by Ms. Hotovely’s sentiment.  He had her cancel a press conference and impressed upon her the need to clarify that she had not been speaking for the government.  He also “requested” that Ms. Hotovely inform his office before any public appearance, so that her messages can be “coordinated” with Mr. Netanyahu’s policies.

The Prime Minister’s move was as wise as Ms. Hotolevy’s was foolhardy.  Past weeks have shown that bluster about Har HaBayis provides violent Palestinians with a handy pretext to violently vent the hatred they feel for Jews.

In the wake of Yerushalayim’s liberation from Jordan in 1967, Israel instituted a policy giving the Islamic trust known as the Waqf religious control over Har HaBayis, with Israel responsible for the area’s security.  That modus vivendi has generally kept the peace at the site.

That policy dovetailed with the halachic psak din at the time of rabbanim from across the spectrum, including Rav Avrohom Yitzchak Kook, zt”l, that ascending the Mount is forbidden.

Former chief rabbis Rabbi Shlomo Amar and Rabbi Eliyahu Bakshi Doron, and current Israeli chief rabbis Rabbi David Lau and Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, as well as senior “national religious” leaders like Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, have also forbidden Jews from ascending Har HaBayis.

In 2009 Rav Elyashiv, zt”l, called on Israel’s president to actively prevent Jews from visiting the site, both because of the halachic concerns and because doing so can lead to bloodshed.  Rabbi Moshe Sternbuch recently declared that those who ascend the Har “will be held accountable” for resultant Muslim attacks on Jews.

In defiance of that wide consensus, in recent years, increasing numbers of nationalist Jews have made a point of ascending the Mount, and have, as a result, raised the ire of Muslims. According to the Associated Press, approximately 10,000 Jews visited the site last year, compared to 200 or 300 annually a decade ago.  And a nationalist group is currently offering to pay $516 to any Jew arrested for praying there.

While any excuse suffices for some Palestinians to try to kill Jews, the “reason” professed by recent murderers and would-be murderers has been their perception that Israel is poised to abrogate the 1967 policy regarding the Har HaBayis.  It is a perception unarguably fueled by the actions and words of the “Temple Mount activists.”

Those nationalistic Jews, however, value the rush born of physically asserting that the Har HaBayis is Judaism’s holiest site, over whatever hatred or bloodshed it may evoke from violence-prone Arabs.  That respected Torah leaders reject that calculus as corrupt is of no concern to them.  They are the “young guard,” and know better.

And they bring to mind the Gemara in Nedarim (40a) about the decision made by the melech Rechavam to shun the advice of the elders of his father Shlomo’s court and heed instead the advice of younger advisors (Melachim Alef, 12): “[What might seem] constructive on the part of the young [can in fact be] destructive; and [what might seem] destructive on the part of elders [can in fact be] constructive.”  Rechavam’s wrong choice brought terrible schism to Klal Yisrael, fanning the flames of rebellion.

I don’t doubt the sincerity of the “activists”, only their wisdom – and their bitachon.  Yes, as Ms. Hotovely remarked, Har HaBayis is “the holiest place for the Jewish people.”  Thus, agitating for a Jewish presence there now might seem a high-minded thing.  In truth, though, it betrays a discomfort with our mesorah, which assures us that the Third Beis HaMikdash will appear only when Hashem sees fit.

Jews who are truly secure in their faith feel no compulsion to engage in political acts (much less actions that endanger other Jews) in order to proclaim that Eretz Yisrael is the Jewish land, and  Har HaBayis its spiritual center.  Those are indisputable facts.

And they are facts impervious to whatever borders temporal states may choose to draw, and whatever structures mortal men may build.  Yishmael is just a custodian, stewarding the Har HaBayis for the day – may it come soon – when the Beis HaMikdash will return to it.

That will happen, though, through merits, not machinations.

© 2015 Hamodia

Barack is Leaving the Building

Although Barack Obama’s last day in office won’t come until January 20, 2017, the spectacle of the various presidential debates reminds us all that we won’t have him to kick around too much longer.

It’s no secret that the current Commander-in-Chief is unpopular in some circles, including, I suspect, a good part of of Hamodia’s readership.  His support for a “two state solution” in Israel seems, to many, outdated and unrealistic; his long-time discord with the current prime minister of Israel (amply fueled by both men) is legend; and, most recently, his Iran deal left many upset.

Some read those entrails as indicating an animus for Israel.  I don’t.  Either way, though, we’re not absolved from the elemental Jewish ideal of hakaras hatov, “recognition of the good” – which, Chazal inform us, is due even to inanimate things, and presumably, too, to people we may not like.  Whatever one’s views on Mr. Obama, some things he has said and – more importantly – done over his terms in office merit our recognition.

What things?  Here are some:

In his 2009 Cairo speech to the Arab world, he stated that America’s “strong bond” with Israel is “unbreakable,” and that the Jewish “aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied.” He firmly denounced anti-Semitic stereotyping and Holocaust denial, staples of the Arab square, and condemned anyone who would threaten Israel’s destruction.

That same year, he rejected the critical-of-Israel’s Gaza operation “Goldstone report.”

The next year he refused U.S. participation in joint military exercises with Turkey unless Israel was included.  And he told the U.N. General Assembly that year that “Israel is a sovereign state and the historic homeland of the Jewish people” (something denied, of course, by the Arab world).  Then, in 2011, he withdrew the U.S. from the Israel-bashing Durban II Conference.  That year, he also threatened Egypt with severe consequences if it didn’t protect Israeli embassy guards besieged by a mob, which it did, and Israel evacuated the hostages.

In 2014, he sought funding from Congress (to the tune of $225 million) for Israel’s “Iron Dome” system, and signed the law providing the funds.

He relentlessly pursued Islamic terrorists, like Anwar al-Awlaki and Osama bin Laden (and was vilified by some on the left for his decisive actions).  And the Obama administration has provided more security assistance to Israel than any American administration;

And then there are words Mr. Obama wrote or spoke that may not have received the attention they deserved.  Like:

“I’ve seen what security means to those who live near the Blue Line, to children in Sderot who just want to grow up without fear, to families who’ve lost their homes and everything they have to Hezbollah’s and Hamas’s rockets. And as a father myself, I cannot imagine the pain endured by the parents of Naftali Fraenkel, Gilad Shaar and Eyal Yifrach, who were tragically kidnapped and murdered…”

[Holocaust denial] is “baseless, ignorant, and hateful, [as is] the “threatening [of] Israel with destruction” [and the] “repeating [of] vile stereotypes about Jews.”

“Palestinians must abandon violence.  [It is] a sign of neither courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus.”

“More than 3,000 years ago, the Jewish people lived here [in Israel], tended the land here, prayed to G-d here.  [That Jews live in Israel today] is a rebirth, a redemption unlike any in history.”

“Those who long to see an independent Palestine rise must stop trying to tear Israel down. . . . After 60 years in the community of nations, Israel’s existence must not be a subject for debate… It should be clear to all that efforts to chip away at Israel’s legitimacy will only be met by the unshakeable opposition of the U.S.”

His Secretary of State lectured Al-Jazeera that “when the Israelis pulled out of Lebanon they got Hezbollah and 40,000 rockets and when they pulled out of Gaza they got Hamas and 20,000 rockets”; and his State Department condemned the Palestinian Authority’s denial of the Western Wall’s connection to the Jewish people.

I don’t think that Mr. Obama’s appointment of Jews to important posts (Jack Lew and Janet Yellin are the best known, but it’s a long list) or his yearly “Pesach Seders” are of great significance, but they do say something about Mr. Obama’s attitude toward Jews and Judaism.

And so, even those who see bad in Mr. Obama must, if they wish to be true to a Jewish ideal, recognize good too.

© 2015 Hamodia