Category Archives: Personal Reflections

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.

Holy Garbage

Trash isn’t usually the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about Yerushalayim.

But it was, I must admit, one of the first things I noticed on a recent, wonderful visit to Eretz Yisroel.

I suppose I have a bit of the neat freak in me. I try, with varying levels of success, to keep things in my life organized. My desk may not always show it, but I do try. So maybe I was too sensitive to the litter I saw along the streets and walkways of Sanhedria HaMurchevet, where we stayed. But the trash was ubiquitous and plentiful, and I’d be lying to say that it didn’t bother me. At least at first.

My wife and I were privileged to spend a week and a bit in Yerushalayim for the bris of a new einekel and for Shavuos. It was the first time in 14 years I had been in Eretz Yisroel (previous hiatus: 28 years) and we had never been there together.

It was an exalting, memorable week. There is much I could rhapsodize about, and much to recount – like meeting Eliyahu Hanavi on Har Hamenuchos (it’s a long story). But that will have to remain for, perhaps, some other day.

The neighborhood was deeply endearing. It wasn’t one of Yerushalayim’s posher places; the residents seemed mostly simple people, our kind of people. Our son and daughter-in-law, the parents of the new little Shafran who received the name Moshe (well, the bris was on erev Shavuos) live in a small apartment, eleven flights up (no elevator). The climbs were not easy, but it took no effort at all for this long-time suburbanite to feel totally at home in the surroundings.

The shuls were wonders, their tefillos unhurried and heartfelt. Birds glided gracefully through the open windows, making me feel that I was davening in the sky, the bright blue Yerushalayim sky. People were warm and helpful, and, throughout both the bustle of the weekdays and the ethereal calm of Shabbos and Yomtov, holiness hovered in the air. And the children, ah, the children. There were many, bli ayin hara. They streamed to their chadorim during the week and filled the streets on the holy days, playing joyfully, gaggles of little girls here, posses of little boys there, hiding and seeking, throwing and catching, walking bicycles and scooters up the hill, riding them down. And each little face seemed to shine.

It amazed me that, over the course of many hours of seeing them at play, I didn’t witness a single argument, or child crying. All I heard was laughing and singing. I was in awe of the youngsters, even knowing that in a few years they would no longer be children, that the challenges of adulthood would confront them soon enough. For now, though, they were radiant packages of potential, and their incandescence dazzled.

We hadn’t made the trip to tour, only to help our children a bit. (Well, that would be my wife; my assistance consisted of staying out of the way, and holding and dancing with Moshe here and there). And to absorb some of Yerushalayim’s kedusha. We left our host neighborhood only to go to the Kosel, visit some friends in the Old City, walk through Meah Shearim and seek a kever in Har Hamenuchos (in which quest the aforementioned Eliyahu Hanavi played a pivotal role).

Some things, I noticed, had changed since I first experienced the city as a yeshiva bochur in the 1970s. The traffic is much worse. (In fact, had I ever been to Calcutta, it probably would have reminded me of there.) Construction was ubiquitous and striking. Everywhere, it seemed, were cranes and building crews. Neighborhoods that had barely existed back when I was a teen (including the one where we were staying) were populous and thriving.

Meah Shearim, though, for all the decades’ passage, looked and felt much the same. The homes and shops seemed unchanged;Yerushalmi men and women still glided along its streets in the same traditional clothing, although the cellphones many of them held to their ears as they walked were clearly something new.

But back to the trash. No one seemed to pay it much attention. I saw a street-sweeping vehicle clear much of it from the main streets one day, but elsewhere it lay in peace. After trying unsuccessfully to not see it, I decided to confront it. No, not by trying to pick it up; that would have been a Sisyphean task. Rather, by analyzing it.

What I discovered was that the garbage was very different from what one might find in, say the Bronx, or even lower Manhattan, no liquor bottles, cigarette packages or pages from magazines. The Sanhedria detritus was comprised, almost exclusively, of candy wrappers, snack packaging and similar evidence of sweet teeth.

It wasn’t, in other words, the product of callous citizens unconcerned with the cleanliness that neighbors G-dliness, but, rather, the inevitable byproduct of a society whose most cherished possession is the mass of beatific little people whose play and demeanor had so impressed me, its beautiful, holy children.

It was, I realized, holy garbage.

Of Peoples… and People

Commuting to and from Manhattan daily on the Staten Island Ferry brings me into the vicinity of many a tourist. The boat sometimes resembles a United Nations General Assembly debate, without the translators.

When I hear German or a Slavic language spoken, I can’t help but recall the wry words of the late New York City mayor Ed Koch as he led the Ukrainian Day parade one year. He told the parade’s grand marshal: “You know, if this were the old country this wouldn’t be a parade, it would be a pogrom. I wouldn’t be walking down Fifth Avenue; I would be running… and you would be running after me.”

And I’m reminded, too, of the sentiment of my dear father, may he be well, who spent the war years first fleeing the Nazis and then in a Soviet Siberian labor camp. When I asked him many years ago how he feels when he meets a German non-Jew, he told me that any German “has to prove himself” to be free of the Jew-hatred that came to define his people. My father’s “default” view of a German (or, for that matter, Pole or Ukrainian or Romanian…) is “guilty,” or at least “suspect.”

And yet, he continued, if a German clearly disavows his elder countrymen’s embrace of evil, then he deserves to be seen and treated as just another human being. I imagine others might not be so willing to accept even the apparent good will of someone from the land and stock of those who unleashed the murder of millions of Jews (including my father’s parents and many of his siblings and other relatives). But that is how my father approaches things. And how I do, too.

All of which I shared with two German filmmakers a year or two ago. They had requested an interview, to be used in a documentary for broadcast in Germany that would focus on how Jews regard Germans today. I consented, if only because I had no reason to say no.

When the visitors, young people who clearly disavowed anti-Semitism, arrived at Agudath Israel of America’s offices and turned on their camera, I explained that there were Jews, of both my father’s generation and mine, who would always see Germans as evil; but others who would choose to judge an individual, in the end, no matter his genealogical or national baggage, as an individual.

What became of my comments, or the program, I can’t say. I don’t know anyone in Germany who saw the broadcast.

The interview comes to mind because of a recent Agence France-Presse report about Rainer Hoess, the grandson of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Hoess, yimach shemo, who estimated that he was responsible for the deaths of two and a half million people, including at least a million Jews. He was found guilty of war crimes by Polish authorities and hanged near Auschwitz’s crematorium in 1947.

As a 12-year-old growing up in post-war Germany, Rainer was puzzled by negative feelings toward him that he sensed in his school gardener, a Holocaust survivor. A teacher revealed the truth about his infamous forebear.

Now 48, Rainer Hoess seeks to deal with that awful discovery by devoting his life to fighting the rise of neo-Nazi movements across Europe. At first sought out by such hate groups to join them as a “high profile” member, he turned the tables and condemned them unequivocally.

“Every time I have the chance to work against them,” he says, “I will do that.” And he has devoted the past four years to educating schoolchildren about the dangers of right-wing extremism, sadly on the rise in Europe. Last year alone, he addressed students in more than 70 schools in Germany, and has visited Israel.

There’s food for thought here, because it seems inevitable that people will generalize about groups, be they ethnic, national or even professional, whether the justification is conceived as based on genetics, environment or culture.

But our generalizations, however justified they may seem to us, should not figure in our judgments of the individual who has just introduced himself. That fellow might end up adding fodder to our assumption. But he might do just the opposite, and should be given the chance.

After all, there are generalizations, too, that others make about us Jews qua Jews, sadly; and about us Orthodox Jews as Orthodox Jews, sadder still. And, whether those generalizations are based on isolated, unrepresentative facts or pure fantasy, we want others to regard us not in their shadow, but in the revealing light of who we are. And we should give others the same courtesy.

© Hamodia 2014

Children’s Programming

“Nahoul” is a giant bee, or, better, a man in a furry bee costume. He is one of the intended-to-be-lovable characters on “Pioneers of Tomorrow,” a children’s television program produced in Gaza.

In a recent episode, Nahoul encourages a boy from Jenin to attack his Jewish neighbors. “Punch them,” he advises. “Turn their faces into tomatoes.”

“If his neighbors are Jewish or Zionist,” Rawan, the little girl host of the show adds helpfully, “that goes without saying.” Nahoul then advises throwing stones at “the Jews.”

A bit later in the program, another little girl shares her hope to become a policewoman, so that she can “shoot the Jews.”

“All of them?” the host asks with a smile.

“Yes,” the other girl replies.

“Good.”

Nahoul is likely to meet the fate of other cuddly animals – like Farfour the Mouse, a rabbit and a bear – that were previously featured on the program only to suddenly disappear, the show’s little viewers being informed that each character had been “martyred” by Israelis.

The airwaves in Gaza are tightly controlled by Hamas, the de facto government, and “Pioneers of Tomorrow” is part of that violent and hateful group’s effort to educate the region’s children about what Hamas considers their civic and religious duties.

They educate and we educate.

It might seem a novel thought, but it’s really an obvious one: The surest way to understand a society lies in the entertainment it offers its young.

American culture qua culture is largely aimless. If it has ideals, they are high-sounding ones like “freedom” and “individuality” but which generally translate as “do what you will” and “I’m okay, you’re okay.” Reportedly, much of the programming aimed at American children pays homage to the same.

Children’s fare in the Orthodox Jewish world is also telling. And although it does not use television as a medium, it’s voluminous. Whether in the form of books, compact discs, MP3s or cassette tapes, there is an astounding array of memorable musical offerings, characters, stories and performances that convey the ideas and ideals that inform the community, and that reflect its essence. Jewish children are taught about Jewish history, about love for other Jews and for Eretz Yisroel, about the beauty of Shabbos and the meanings of yomim tovim, and about the performance of mitzvos; about the evils of jealousy and loshon hora and about the importance of Torah-study.

And then we have Hamas.

Shavuos approaches. My wife and I will miss having our children with us. (They’re all either married or in yeshiva –yes, the marrieds invited us to join them, but their father is a hopeless homebody.) But when I go to the beis medrash on Shavuos night, I’ll remember all the Shavuos nights spent learning Torah with the little boys, later young men, whom we were privileged to raise, and all the subtle teaching of both them and their sisters that went on around the Shabbos table, and throughout the weeks and years.

And I will remember one Shavuos in particular, quite a few years back, when I was learning in a nearby shul – packed with others, many of them fathers and sons too – with one of our sons, then a 12-year-old.

We spent most of the night engrossed in Gemara. We began with the sugya of tzaar ba’alei chayim in Bava Metzia, which he was studying in yeshiva, and then continued with the sugya of Yerushalayim nischalka l’shvotim in Yoma, which he and I were learning regularly together.

Dovie seemed entirely awake throughout it all, and asked the perceptive questions I had come to expect from him.

The experience was enthralling, as it always was, and while it was a challenge to concentrate (at times even to keep my eyes from closing) during Shacharis, Dovie and I both “made it” and then, hand in hand, walked home, where we promptly crashed. But before my head touched my pillow (a millisecond or two before I entered REM sleep), I summoned the energy to thank HaKodosh Boruch Hu for sharing His Torah with us.

That silent prayer came back to me like a thunderclap a few days later, when I caught up on some reading I had missed (in the word’s most simple sense) over Yomtov. Apparently, while Dovie and I were learning Torah, the presses at The Washington Times were printing a story datelined Gaza City.

It began with a description of a 12-year-old Palestinian boy, Abu Ali, being “lovingly dress[ed] by his mother in a costume of a suicide bomber, complete with small kaffiyeh, a belt of electrical tape and fake explosives made of plywood.”

“I encourage him, and he should do this,” said his mother; and Abu Ali himself apparently agreed. “I hope to be a martyr,” he said. “I hope when I get to 14 or 15 to explode myself.”

My thoughts flashed back to Shavuos and to my own son, and I thanked Hashem again.

© Hamodia 2014

POSTSCRIPT: It turns out that we will indeed be away from home for Shavuos, in Israel, for the bris of Dovie’s and his wife Devorah Rivkah’s firstborn . May we all know only happy occasions!

The (Almost) Rude Jewish Man

Time was when you saw a person talking to himself you assumed he was deranged or at least a little off. These days, of course, prattling people wired up or Bluetoothed are commonplace. The unhinged are well camouflaged among the masses.

The middle-aged woman in the elevator didn’t even have anything in or clipped to her ear; she was holding an actual, physical cellphone near the side of her face. And so, when she said, once, and then again, “Which is the way out?” I wondered to whom she was speaking and what topic was being discussed.

It was the end of a workday in downtown Manhattan, and only the woman, whom I hadn’t ever encountered before, was in the elevator when it stopped at my floor. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop but had little choice. So I started to imagine what might have yielded her repeated, somewhat urgent-sounding question. A tax problem? (April was imminent.) A troubled relationship? Some existential crisis?

Following elevator etiquette, I faced the door. But, for some reason (in retrospect, probably siyata DiShmaya), I turned briefly in the woman’s direction. It was a good thing I did. Phone or not, she had been talking, I realized, to me. Her expression, telegraphing annoyance bordering on irritation, made that very clear.

After a moment’s speechlessness born of surprise, I managed a smile and said “I’m sorry. What were you asking?” And she explained that she wanted to know which floor was the way out of the building. I told her that floor number “1” was the lobby, and apologized for not having realized that she had been speaking to me and for ignoring her question. Her earlier chagrin seemed to evaporate. When the elevator landed at the lobby and we left our temporary prison, I wished her a good night and she wished me the same.

During the trek home, I pondered several things. First, self-defensively, how is it that one might assume, especially when one is holding a phone, that others realize that you are addressing them? A simple, loud “excuse me” to get their attention would, to my lights, be in order.

Then, though, turning inward, I pondered how getting lost in one’s thoughts isn’t an indulgence one should choose when others are around, even other strangers. I was reminded of the fact that Hillel Hazaken’s version of what society calls the “Golden Rule” differs from that of other cultures. He framed it in the negative: “What is hateful to you do not do to others.” That might seem a weaker version than “Do unto others…” But just the opposite is true: It is both more challenging and more meaningful to be on constant alert to not, consciously or otherwise, do something objectionable to another person.

A third thought, however, quickly edged out the others: What had happened almost hadn’t.

Had I not for some reason turned around briefly, I pondered, I would never have realized that it was me my co-prisoner had been addressing. She would likely have just judged me a boor for ignoring her, left the elevator when I did, and gone on her way, all the while angry at the rude man who wouldn’t answer her simple question. The rude Jewish man.

Many people tend to generalize when they feel they have been offended by a member of an identifiable group, be it racial, ethnic or religious. But while a black or Mexican or Asian or Muslim may not particularly care whether others see his actions as confirming a negative group stereotype, a visibly Jewish Jew must care indeed.

So thought #3 was about how very careful we Orthodox Jews need to be to avoid offending others – even when we don’t mean to do anything of the sort. Part of that carefulness involves being aware of those around us in public places. That’s not so simple a matter for observant Jews, as our convictions usually point us in the direction of inward focus, and keeping the outside at bay. But on the other side of the scales is, chas vesholom, the possibility of causing, even inadvertently, others to think of our people and our faith negatively.

It’s a delicate balance, but a most important one, all the same, to strike.

Chopin and Shema Koleinu

A few years ago, reporters who were covering weddings of the rich and famous in four Monterrey, Mexico, churches were chagrined to find that they weren’t able to call or send messages to their editors. They routinely got a “no service” or “signal not available” message on their cell phones.

When one reporter asked the priest in one of the churches if he knew why, the answer he received, offered with a smile, was: “Israeli counterintelligence.”

He went on to explain that Israeli-made cell phone jammers the size of paperback books had been tucked unobtrusively among paintings that were hanging in the chapel. The jammers emit low-level radio frequencies that thwart cell phone signals within a 100-foot radius. Thus, technology developed to help security forces avert eavesdropping and phone-triggered bombings had been purchased for a more mundane (the priest would probably say holy) purpose.

Although cell phone jammers are employed in India’s parliament, Italian universities (to prevent cheating on exams), Mexican banks (to keep robbers from calling their accomplices) and Tokyo theaters and commuter trains, federal law prohibits their use in the U.S., and so shuls, alas, cannot legally utilize them to prevent davening from being punctuated by jazz, Beethoven or Hatikva (all of which have been heard by this writer during the silent Shemoneh Esrei).

Once, not too many years ago, the worst electronic interruption of tefillos in shul was the very occasional beeper; and the fact that it was usually summoning a doctor, presumably because of a medical crisis, mitigated the rudeness of the disturbance.

Today, though, as we all know, cell phones are ubiquitous, and so the satan has been able to add classical and pop riffs, and an assortment of utterly annoying chimes, tones and melodies, to his arsenal of davening disruptions, which once consisted only of mindless conversations among those who find silence a painful vacuum in need of filling.

What would the Tosfos Yomtov — who lamented talking in shul as courting tragedy, and composed the well-known, if too-often-ignored, Mi Sheberach for those who maintain shul decorum — say? Had cellphones existed in the 17th century, would he have showered special blessings on those who took three seconds to turn theirs off every time they entered a mikdash me’at? I have little doubt that he would have.

It is often said, generously, that the laxity of decorum in some shuls results from the comfort that Jews feel in their place of prayer. We feel at home in shul, the diyun l’chaf zechus goes, and so we converse. Indeed we do, but we shouldn’t.

Because it’s still a shul. Those are siddurim, not newspapers, and the people holding them and moving their lips quietly are talking to the Creator, not the bartender. And they want you to please hold your tongue, and your calls.

It is, to be honest, easy to forget to turn off our phones when we enter a shul. I once neglected to, although thankfully it didn’t ring (or ping or sing) during davening. But it could have, and I have been more careful ever since.

And I was witness, not long ago, to another man’s neglect to power down his phone before a tefillah, and his phone did ring. What happened afterward, though, was truly remarkable.

During the week I daven Minchah at the national headquarters of Agudath Israel of America, where I am privileged to work. Many men who work in lower Manhattan attend Minchah at our offices during their lunchtime. During the silent Shemoneh Esrei at Minchah one day, the man’s cellphone went off. (I don’t recall what the selection was; something Jewish, I think.) No, that wasn’t what was remarkable (unfortunately). What happened after Minchah was.

The man whose phone had serenaded us during davening looked embarrassed and I noticed that he left the beis medrash quickly after Aleinu. (Please don’t even get me started about Aleinu, which cannot be recited by a normal human being in less than 45 seconds but seems to benefit from some odd sort of kefitzas haderech in all too many shuls.)

As I left the room myself, I saw the gentleman whose phone had asserted itself standing near the elevator bank, where all the mispallelim would have to pass, both those headed down to the lobby and those of us who work in the Agudah offices.

The man stood there and politely accosted each and every one of us individually — to apologize for not having turned off his phone when Minchah began.

What mentchlichkeit, I told myself. And what a poignant lesson about how we should feel if we have disturbed someone else’s davening.

And, of course, about how careful we should be to not do so.

Pondering the Prayer Gathering

The article below appeared last week, on March 11, in Haaretz. It is republished here with that paper’s permission.

Pondering the Prayer Gathering

Ruminations of a participant in the Manhattan Atzeret Tefilla

The weather in Manhattan on Sunday – a few degrees above freezing – wasn’t as pleasant as Jerusalem’s a week earlier. But that didn’t stop an estimated 60,000 Orthodox Jews from turning out to participate in an American counterpart to the mammoth prayer gathering that had filled the Holy City’s streets the week before.

Many American haredim live in communities far removed from New York, and thus couldn’t participate. Still and all, an ocean of black hats stretched about a mile along, fittingly, Water Street, a major thoroughfare at Manhattan’s tip. Traffic reporters were beside themselves, direly warning drivers to abandon all hope of entering lower Manhattan, and reporters in truck buckets high above the crowd shouted down to us earthlings that they couldn’t spy an end to the mass of humanity.

And, as was the case at the Israeli happening, a broad spectrum of haredim was represented.

There were Jewish businessmen and professionals from throughout New York and New Jersey, yeshiva and kollel students from places like Lakewood and Baltimore, chassidim of varied stripes, even including Satmar, a group that isn’t often comfortable with, and is seldom seen among, such broad efforts.

A large portion of the gathering site was set aside for women, of whom there were many, too, schoolgirls, seminarians and homemakers.

(Also represented, although in protest of the gathering, was the anti-Israel Neturei Karta. A small contingent of its teenage boys, held back by police near the Staten Island Ferry, seemed to be enjoying themselves, waving placards, denouncing Israel and condemning those who walked by for not sharing their point of view. The walkers-by just rolled their eyes and moved along to join the prayers.)

What united the supplicants was what united the participants in the Jerusalem gathering: the conviction that a dangerous line was about to be crossed.

That line, of course, is the modus vivendi in Israel since the state’s inception, which permits full-time Torah-students to defer the military service required of (most) other Israelis. And the looming line-crosser is the Knesset legislation all but finally approved that would extend mandatory military or civil service to the haredi community and that allows, if mandated quotas are not met, for criminal prosecution of haredi conscientious objectors.

The law is generously sugar-coated, extolling Torah-study, phasing in its quotas over several years, insulating 1800 particularly promising haredi students annually from the draft and permitting others to defer service for several years. But, to the haredi world, the sugar cannot mask what they see as its bottom line bitter taste: effectively making a student’s determination to study Torah full time a criminal offense, potentially punishable with imprisonment.

That fact is “deeply dismaying and profoundly shocking,” according to a statement issued by the American gathering’s organizers. (Full disclosure: the organization I work for, Agudath Israel of America, was asked to provide its expertise in arranging the necessary permits, police presence and other logistical assistance. But it was only part of the broader-based effort.)

And the purpose of the prayer gathering, the statement continued, was to let Israeli haredim know “that the Torah community in America stands with you…” All that transpired, as in the Jerusalem gathering, was prayer and recitation of Tehillim.

Between the two events, though, something less rarified transpired, something in fact ugly. Some enterprising fellow decided to produce his personal “official” video of the Jerusalem happening. It was set to a pop-tune that hijacked the lyrics of the traditional “siyum,” or tractate-completion, prayer, contrasting the life of scholarly Jews with aimless souls who “sit around at street corners.”

“We arise and they arise,” the grateful prayer goes. In the video, at the phrase “we arise to study words of Torah,” the image of a haredi studying appeared. And at “they arise to pointless ventures,” politicians… and soldiers were depicted. The insinuation (at least about soldiers) was deeply offensive to all feeling Jews, haredi ones included. Normative haredim, even those who wish to be scholars and not soldiers, and even with their sincere belief that Torah-study protects soldiers and citizenry alike, don’t disparage soldiers.

And, as might have been expected, a “counter-video” subsequently appeared, using the same pop-tune and words, but with opposite depictions.

How often and how tragically are important issues hijacked by the small-minded, whether Neturei Karta or haredi-haters, would-be impresarios of this extreme or of that. Having strong convictions doesn’t have to result in insensitivity, and certainly not insanity.

In a perfect world, every secular Israeli (even politicians) would respect those who sincerely embrace full-time Torah-study as a high ideal; and every haredi would not only respect the soldiers who put their lives on the line for the Jewish people but declare the fact at every opportunity. And Jews would seek, at most, to persuade, not ignore one another, and not try to legislate their lives.

But alas, our world is imperfect.

We can pray, though.

Unpublished Heroes

I think it’s time I came clean regarding my doubts about Judaism, about everything I was taught by my parents and rabbaim in yeshiva. How can we be sure that the Torah was really given to my ancestors at Sinai? Are its laws really eternal? Is halacha really G-d’s will? Are Jews in fact a special people? And are Orthodox Jews true examples of what a Jew should be?

I came across some very compelling literature that called traditional Jewish beliefs into question, and was disturbed by what I had read, and so I read more, and did a good amount of serious thinking and research.

As to Orthodox Jews themselves, yes, most seem to be fine people, but there have also always been “characters” – people with strange fixations or behavior patterns. And then there are Jews proven or rumored to be… not so nice.

The thought that the “outside” world might provide a more rarified and thoughtful community was an enticing one. And so I began to entertain doubts about Jewish beliefs, my religious identity and my community.

I was 14.

To my relief now, many decades later, there was no Internet then to intensify my confusion, and no examples of people who had abandoned Jewish beliefs and observance and written best-sellers about the fact. I had no opportunity at the time to capitalize on my doubts and gripes with a memoir that would garner me the media spotlight, interviews and royalties. Though I had what to tell, like how my second grade rebbe would rap my fingers hard with a ruler when I misbehaved. I would have had to have been truthful and admit that he didn’t do it in anger, and that I felt he loved me dearly throughout. But I could have racked that up to Stockholm Syndrome.

Lacking the commercial incentives, though, allowed me to take my time, do some critical thinking and research, and give Judaism a chance. I engaged my doubts with information, and was blessed to have parents who gave me space, who didn’t try to overly control my reading, dress or activities; and with rabbaim who didn’t consider any question off-limits.

And so I found answers to all the questions I had. As a result, even though I was raised in an Orthodox home, I consider myself “Orthodox-by-choice,” someone who made a conscious decision to accept the Torah, and the mission it bequeaths all Jews.

What reminds me of my intellectually tumultuous days is the spate of “I Escaped Orthodoxy and Lived!” memoirs that have appeared in recent years, practically a cottage industry. The autobiographies are celebrated and hyped for their anger and outrage, and an “enlightened” world considers their authors to be heroes.

Please don’t misunderstand. I don’t mean to disparage the true experiences of others, or to discount the special challenges some may have faced, especially in very insular and rigid communities. But there is much that is deeply suspect in some of the literary accounts. In one case, a writer was revealed to have entirely fabricated a terrible crime, a murder-mutilation of which there is no police record. Needless to say, that employment of creativity calls the rest of the writer’s impossible-to-confirm personal experiences into some doubt.

More recently, another writer has been making the rounds and has not only contradicted herself about a formative period in her life but admitted to having been mentally unstable and self-destructive since childhood. Her intelligence and eloquence at present is obvious. But her description of her far-from-New York, non-chassidic community is at wild odds with reality. Whether her personal memories are real or delusional thus remains unclear. Her publisher and the media, of course, don’t seem to care much either way.

Although I can rightly wax suspicious about some of the assertions in some of these ostensibly true stories, I have no right to deem their writers intentional fabulists. Perhaps their once-Orthodox environments, or some other life-experience, so damaged them that they became confused as a result. Or perhaps they suffer from some congenital emotional problem beyond their control.

But what I can do is reflect on the fact that adolescence brings all sorts of psychological and intellectual challenges, including to Orthodox adolescents. And recognize that a particularly powerful challenge is presented to young people these days by the Internet and social media, which provide easy misinformation, precarious camaraderie and false solace; and by publishers anxious to sell books – the more outlandish and prurient, the better.

Of little interest to blogs or editors, tellingly, are the vast numbers of intelligent, sensitive Orthodox youth, including many in the most insular communities, who stand up to the special, myriad challenges of our time as they forge their personal paths through life.

Those young Orthodox Jews are the true, if unpublished, heroes, for ignoring the contemporary, technology-empowered sirens of cynicism. They are heroes for having the courage to pursue resolutions for any doubts or confusion they may harbor, for realizing that there is balm for the wounds they may have suffered, and fulfillment in the religious heritage bequeathed them by their parents, and their parents before them.

Unravelling Tefillin-gate

(This article appeared in Haaretz.)

Unlike some in the traditional Orthodox community, I empathize with the young women in two modern Orthodox high schools in New York who asked for and received permission to don tefillin during their school prayer services. They have, after all, seen their mothers wearing the religious objects and simply wish to emulate their parents’ Jewish religious practice. Carrying on the traditions of parents is the essence of mesorah, the “handed-down” legacy of the Jewish past.

None of us has the right to assume that these girls aren’t motivated by a deeply Jewish desire to worship as they have seen their mothers worship. Even as to the mothers’ motivations, I can’t know whether their intention is pure or homage to the contemporary and un-Jewish idea that “men and women have interchangeable roles.” Most of our acts, wrote the powerful thinker Rabbi Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler, are mixtures of motivations. And so I don’t arrogate to judge either the mothers or their daughters.

The question, though, of whether halacha considers it proper for women to wear tefillin, despite the much smoke and many mirrors conjured in myriad quarters over recent weeks, is pretty clear, at least looked at objectively, without a predetermined “result” in mind. It does not.

The essence of halacha is that discussions and disagreements among different authorities distill over time into codified and universally accepted decisions. The urtext of halacha in the modern era (using the term loosely) is Rabbi Yosef Karo’s Shulchan Aruch, along with its appendage “the Mapa,” in which Rabbi Moshe Isserles added glosses, sometimes but not always to reflect normative Ashkenazic law.

Rabbi Isserles states clearly that women should not wear tefillin. The Vilna Gaon prohibits it categorically. The “bottom line” commentaries on that part of the Shulchan Aruch, the Mishneh Berurah (written by the “Chofetz Chaim”) and the Aruch HaShulchan, both concur. And that is why Jewish women have forgone wearing tefillin until (for some) recent years.

That the daughter of King Saul famously wore tefillin is indeed a fact, but the exception only proves the rule: other women in her time and thereafter (and there were great and righteous ones in every generation) did not wear tefillin. The same applies to the practice of the “Maiden of Ludmir,” an exceptional figure in the Chassidic world. There is no evidence whatsoever to support the assertion that Rashi’s daughters wore tefillin; it is a legend that appears only in modern times. And, despite all the conceptual contortions of late, no Orthodox halachic authority of repute has ever permitted women to wear tefillin. “Retrofitting” halacha, going back to “earlier sources” to change established practices, was the hallmark of the early Conservative movement; it has no place in the Orthodox sphere.

More important, though, there is a Torah prohibition (lo titgodedu) against a part of a Jewish congregation adopting even a permitted Jewish practice if it is not the normative practice of the congregation. And a rabbinic prohibition (mechzi ki’yuhara) against adopting even acceptable practices if doing so will make the practitioners seem to be holding themselves “higher” than others.

That latter idea, it seems to me, speaks particularlyloudly here, even aside from the technical halachic concern. What message does the public tefillin-laying of some young women in the school send to the others? That they are somehow deficient or less holy, or less concerned with connecting with the Divine? What a terrible thing to imagine, what misguided pedagogy.

I once served as the principal of a high school where some students hailed from “modern Orthodox” or non-Orthodox backgrounds. I never interfered in the practices of those students and their families in their homes and synagogues, even when they may have diverged from normative halacha. But when it came to in-school affairs, normative halacha was the standard.

Were I the principal of a school for young women and some of them wished to don tefillin, I would not deride them for their desire, nor judge them in any way. But I would insist on normative halachic standards in school, and ask the girls to don their tefillin at home. I am told that such was indeed the policy of the schools at issue until now. Why it was changed is not clear to me.

What I would wish for my students, and indeed wish now for the young women at the two schools at issue, is that they intensify their commitment to mesorah, and maintain their determination to be closer to G-d. And thereby come to gain sufficient knowledge and objectivity to examine many things, including their tefillin-donning.

And come to wonder why, even if their mothers adopted the practice, their grandmothers, and their grandmothers and their grandmothers – heartfelt, intelligent and deeply religious women – did not.

© Haaretz

(This article is available for purchase for publication only from Haaretz.)

Storied Lives

I used to have a chavrusah, or study partner, with whom I learned Torah annually.

Yes, annually.

Usually for about an hour or two.

In a different city each year.

The text we studied was rather complex and challenging – the exquisitely concise (and often exquisitely confounding) glosses of the 18^th-century Torah luminary known as the Vilna Gaon to the Shulchan Aruch’s section on the laws of mikva’os, or ritual baths. That complex material was a major focus of my study-partner’s analysis for many years. I was just “tagging along.” Once a year.

The reason for the infrequency of that study partnership was that my partner, Rabbi Hillel Goldberg – a formidable Torah scholar, writer and the editor of the Intermountain Jewish News – lives in Denver, and I reside in New York. We would meet, though, each year at a gathering of Jewish journalists sponsored by an organization that held its annual get-together in one of various cities across the country.

When Reb Hillel would arrive at the convention hotel, one of the first things he would do was to contact me to arrange a good time to sit and study a bit. I well recall our study sessions in places like Washington, Philadelphia, Denver and Los Angeles (where we discussed one of the Vilna Gaon’s glosses amid actors’ trailers at the Universal Studios lot, surely a place that had not witnessed such holiness in the past). Our chavrusah-sessions were highlights of the junkets for me.

I haven’t attended the gatherings for a number of years now (due to budget constraints and a general feeling that there wasn’t much for me to either gain or give by my attendance), and not long ago, Reb Hillel published a comprehensive and scholarly tome on the course of his Vilna Gaon glosses study over those years.

Reb Hillel is also the author of several more works, considerably more layman-accessible. And he has just published a new one, entitled “The Unexpected Road: Storied Jewish Lives Around the World.”

Anyone who knows me knows well that I’m not a fan of what pass for “inspirational stories” – that is to say, undocumented (if widely believed and shared) accounts of various great people’s performance of wonders or astounding mental feats. It’s not that I don’t value miracles (though I have found few than can top a starry sky, or a baby), or that I’m not impressed by eidetic memories (though, ultimately, human value lies in righteousness, not talent, mental or otherwise). It’s just that, well, there isn’t, shall we say, rigorous corroboration of most of the popular tales that make the rounds; and I’m a hopelessly critical thinker (read: cynic).

And so I tend to favor overtly fictional parables – stories that make no pretentions whatsoever to having ever actually happened, but nevertheless yield food for thought. And first-person accounts from people I actually know.

Rabbi Goldberg is one such person, and his new book is chock full of such accounts. He describes people he knows, or has known, and lets us share in some of the inspiration and realizations he has gleaned from their lives and doings.

In the book, one meets a man who reunited two brothers separated at Auschwitz, an American congregational rabbi who cast himself to “chance” in order to personally witness Divine providence, great leaders of Jews and simple Jews, even a neo-Nazi who came to give a Jew a thankful hug. The places along Rabbi Goldberg’s “unexpected road” include Basel, Santa Fe, Boston, Minsk, Jerusalem (of course), Brooklyn (ditto, lihavdil), Frankfurt and Atlanta.

This collection of stories will indeed, as Rabbi Berel Wein predicts in a blurb on the book’ jacket, help readers realize that “there is more to life and life’s events than ‘me’ and one’s plans and decisions.” Each of us, Rabbi Goldberg assures the reader, can become, like many of the people whose stories are included in his book, angels of the Divine.

Rabbi Avi Shafran

Reflections on Jews, Judaism, Media and Life