Announcement

I’m happy to report that my regular weekly essay will now be appearing in Hamodia, a popular Orthodox daily newspaper. The essays will appear in the Wednesday issue of the paper. You can subscribe to Hamodia, which offers a wealth of worthy fare, by clicking here.

Hamodia is permitting me to post the essays shortly before each Shabbos following their print publication. And so they will appear on this site then.

I will also be posting here other articles I have written, either for other periodicals or exclusively for the website.

Thanks for checking out this site, and please return often.

Ironies, Divine and Otherwise

Walking home from Megilla reading on Purim morning, even before engaging the mitzvos hayom, I had what I think was an insight.

There isn’t any word in loshon kodesh, I pondered, for “ironic,” the meaningfully coincidental that we see in the Megilla, and sometimes in our own lives.

Rav Shamshon Raphael Hirsch explains that there isn’t a Hebrew word for “religion” because, from a Jewish perspective, there is no such qualitatively limited “thing” – our beliefs and the Torah’s laws are life and the universe themselves; they are all that there is.

Maybe, I mused, “ironic” is similar; we use it to refer to the glimpses we occasionally have of Hashem’s hashgacha, the Divine providence that in fact permeates all. But it’s omnipresent, whether we spy it or not.

It was spied recently, as it happens, in the shuttering of a butcher shop on Long Island.

The name “Commack Self-Service Kosher Meats” conjures memories in the mind of anyone who has followed the legal saga of “kosher laws” in the United States. That shop’s owners, having been issued a fine by state kosher inspectors back in 1993 for harboring poultry that lacked proper tags, subsequently sued to have New York’s kosher law at the time declared unconstitutional.

That law, which was created in 1915 to stem rampant misrepresentation in the kosher meat market, required that food labeled kosher had to be “prepared in accordance with orthodox Hebrew religious requirements.” And for many years it was enforced by a state agency empowered to force mislabeled products from shelves and levy fines on violators of the law.

In 1996, Commack Kosher’s proprietors claimed that the law’s language, by referencing “orthodox” standards, violated the U.S. Constitution’s Establishment Clause, illegitimately entangling government and religion.

The New York courts, like others in New Jersey and Maryland that scrutinized their own similar kosher laws, agreed. And so a new law, the Kosher Law Protection Act of 2004, was written and enacted. It requires only that products labeled kosher carry information about who stands behind the claim. The original law empowered state inspectors to force the removal of, say, a product with a “Kosher Nostra” hechsher backed by a supervisor named Vito. Under the current law, such a “hechsher” is just as “kosher” – at least as far as New York is concerned – as a Badatz certification.

Many Orthodox Jews weren’t particularly concerned about the fate of the original kosher law. After all, it had little impact on them. An observant Jew wouldn’t rely on a state inspector; he or she would look for the stamp or label of the rav or agency on a product to determine its acceptability. That, in fact, remains the upshot of the current law – that the state can only ensure that duly authorized labels appear on products, but final determination of kashrus is the consumer’s responsibility.

Still and all, an assortment of Orthodox groups, including Agudath Israel, did their best to defend the original law. Because there are many Jews whose commitment to kashrus might be less than robust but who would still prefer to buy a kosher product if it were available. Ensuring that products claiming to be kosher were in fact halachically so would benefit such Jews.

But that was not to be; the courts spoke. Still bent, though, on ridding New York of any kosher law, Commack Kosher sued the state again in 2008 to try to have the new law declared unconstitutional as well. They failed in that bid. They failed, too, despite their now-“kosher” Conservative movement certification, to garner sufficient sales to stay in business.

One of the owners, Brian Yarmeisch, reportedly told shoppers that he blamed “the community” for failing him.

What really failed him, though, was the Conservative movement.

The majority of Jewish houses of worship in central Long Island are Conservative, and that movement, despite its declared early aspirations to “conserve” Judaism by tailoring it to contemporary American Jews’ desires, has been rapidly declining in popularity. More important, it failed miserably at its “conservation” goal. The average Conservative Jew may retain some interest in Jewish “life cycle” rituals. But Shabbos, taharas hamishpacha, kashrus… not so much.

Commack Kosher’s crusade, in fact, included its championing of a Conservative kashrus certification. Their original lawsuit explicitly charged that New York’s kosher law discriminated against non-Orthodox Jews, and claimed that Conservative Jews were being denied the right to market and purchase and label as kosher foods that Orthodox Jews consider forbidden.

And so, there’s more than a plumba of irony in the fact that, by putting its eggs (and chicken and meat) squarely in a Conservative basket, Commack Kosher ended up alienating any Orthodox clientele it had and, in effect, committing commercial suicide.

Some ironies are sourced in the Divine; others are of people’s own making.

Our Soulless Society

Back in 2005, The New York Times asked a number of contemporary thinkers what idea that is taken for granted these days they think will disappear “in the next 35 years.”

Professor Peter Singer, the Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University’s Orwellian-named “Center for Human Values,” responded: “the traditional view of the sanctity of human life.” That view, he explained, will “collapse under pressure from scientific, technological and demographic developments.”

It’s been less than ten years since that prediction but the professor is already being proven a prophet.

The Journal of Medical Ethics is a peer-reviewed academic journal in the field of bioethics, established in 1975. A scholarly paper that appeared in its pages in 2012 has, for some reason, been receiving new attention. It deserves it.

It was titled “After-birth abortion: why should the baby live?” and was written by two academics, members of the philosophy departments of, respectively, the University of Milan and the University of Melbourne.

Its authors’ summary reads, in its entirety, as follows:

“Abortion is largely accepted even for reasons that do not have anything to do with the fetus’ health. By showing that 1) both fetuses and newborns do not have the same moral status as actual persons, 2) the fact that both are potential persons is morally irrelevant and 3) adoption is not always in the best interest of actual people, the authors argue that what we call ‘after-birth abortion’ (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled.”

And the paper goes on to expand on each of those contentions. In The Weekly Standard, where he serves as senior editor, Andrew Ferguson offered his synopsis of the paper:

“Neither fetus nor baby has developed a sufficient sense of his own life to know what it would be like to be deprived of it. The kid will never know the difference, in other words. A newborn baby is just a fetus who’s hung around a bit too long.”

By using the word “newborn,” Mr. Ferguson is too kind to the writers. In their own words they make clear that they are not limiting their considered judgment to the moments, or even days, after birth. “Hardly,” they write, “can a newborn be said to have aims, as the future we imagine for it is merely a projection of our minds on its potential lives. It might start having expectations and develop a minimum level of self-awareness at a very early stage, but not in the first days or few weeks after birth.”

While the writers concede that killing babies, or terminating pregnancies, does prevent a meaningful life from happening, they contend that “it makes no sense to say that someone is harmed by being prevented from becoming an actual person…. [I]n order for a harm to occur, it is necessary that someone is in the condition of experiencing that harm.”

Missing entirely, of course, in the authors’ calculus is the possibility that something other than “harm” to a human being, whether born or potential, may be in play here. Any such concern, they would surely say, is for their universities’ religion departments to consider, not their own.

That is part of the toll taken by the compartmentalization of contemporary scholarship. Once upon a time, no essential distinction was made between what was called “natural science” and “moral science.”

The latter, part and parcel of philosophy, concerned things like G-d, teleology, human purpose and the soul.

In the absence of the concept of a human soul, there is indeed nothing to prevent us from casually terminating a yet-unborn life or a life no longer “useful” or a life not yet cognizant of its potential. Neither, for that matter, would one be justified to consider humans of any stage or age inherently more worthy than animals. Put succinctly, a society that denies the soul is not only soul-less but soulless.

There are many issues where contemporary mores stand in stark contrast with the Jewish values that have permeated the world since the time of Avraham. The issue of dispatching babies, unborn or otherwise, is one.

To be sure, halacha makes clear that the life of a Jewish mother takes precedence over that of her unborn child when there is no way to preserve both lives. And, while the matter is hardly free from controversy, there are respected rabbinic opinions that extend that precedence as well to cases where there is serious jeopardizing of the mother’s health. But those narrow exceptions certainly do not translate into some unlimited mother’s “right” to make whatever “choice” she may see fit about the child she carries. And certainly not about a child already born.

Judaism has little to say about rights; it speaks instead of right, and of wrong; of duties and obligations. And one obligation, although it is being degraded by the increasingly soul-less society in which we live, is to value human life, born or otherwise.

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.

Masquerading As Feminism

On Purim, Jewish men, to varying degrees, imbibe strong drink, and Jewish women do their best to keep them safe and anchored in civilization. The holiday thus may not seem very female-centered. But it is.

Not just because its hero is a heroine and the holy book about the historical event it commemorates is named after her, but because Megillas Esther verily revolves around femininity.

The pliable, preposterous monarch we meet at the Megillah’s start is a poster child (or, perhaps better, poster adolescent) for male chauvinism. His 180-day drinking party, as the Talmud describes it, was a bacchanal of arrested-development “good ol’ boys” acting like louts, and entailed the debasement, and eventual execution, of his queen.

And the next action of the foolhardy king was to organize the antithesis of true respect for women: a beauty contest.

And Achashverosh, of course, ends up being manipulated by a woman, our reticent, modest heroine Esther, and led by her to dispatch the Jews’ mortal enemy, saving her people from his evil plans.

But there’s a good deal more here, too, although it’s a good deal more subtle. Mordechai, the Midrash teaches us, was miraculously able to physically nurse the baby Esther when she was orphaned. Thus the male hero of the Purim story is rendered, at least in a way, something of a heroine himself.

And the Talmud’s very exhortation that a man is to drink “ad d’lo yada,” – literally, “until he doesn’t know…” – can be seen as a subtle reference to another Talmudic statement, that “nashim da’atan kalos.” That aphorism, often mistranslated as “women’s minds are weak,” is more accurately rendered “women’s daas is light.” That is to say that the psychological entity called daas (the root of both the words yada and da’atan) is less sharply present in women than in men (while another entity, binah, is more present in women than in men). What each of those entities precisely refers to isn’t for here and now, or for the likes of me to try to fathom. But still and all, ad d’lo yada can be seen as implying some sort of “feminization” of the aspirant. So men who “successfully” achieve the spiritual goal of drinking on Purim might be said to have in some way connected with their inner female.

Surprising and sublime thoughts like those are lost, however, on many people, certainly those who imagine they are somehow taking a stand for womanhood by celebrating, of all people, Vashti.

Yes, Vashti. The villainess of the Purim story, who enslaved, beat and humiliated Jewish women, and forced them to do work for her on the Sabbath.

What seems to have endeared Vashti to some simpleminded opinionators is her refusal (although out of sheer vanity) to obey Achashverosh’s summons to appear at his bash. As one pundit put it: “Saving the Jewish people was important, but at the same time, [Esther’s] whole submissive, secretive way of being was the absolute archetype of 1950’s womanhood. It repelled me. I thought, ‘Hey, what’s wrong with Vashti? She had dignity. She had self-respect’.”

Well, she had self-regard, anyway. So did for that matter, Ilse Koch, the “Beast of Buchenwald,” who stood up to her accusers in a West German court. But never mind.

Another writer describes Vashti as “a brave woman who risked her life for her beliefs,” seeing the Megillah’s message as, “Women who are bold, direct, aggressive, and disobedient are not acceptable; the praiseworthy women are those who are unassuming, quietly persistent…” and laments “the still-pervasive influence of the Esther-behavior model.”

And yet another advocate, a Reform rabbi, presumably oblivious to why feet are stomped at parts of Megillah readings, wrote: “Why aren’t we insisting that our synagogue communities cheer and stomp their feet at the mention of Vashti’s name? She is a foremother in the best sense of the word – assertive, appropriate, courageous.”

Although it’s hardly the first time it has happened, it’s still sad to see a carefully preserved Jewish historical tradition sacrificed on the altar of a contemporary ism.

But something’s sadder here, a tragic sort of vinahapoch hu. In their blind capitulation to the contemporary notion of feminism, the sacrificers here not only mangle the Megillah and mistake a malevolent oppressor for a role model. They miss entirely the genuinely feminist message of the Book of Esther: that the true power of womanhood isn’t to be found in trappings of manhood like self-regard and obstinateness, but in the embrace of the quintessentially feminine traits of modesty, selflessness, faith and courage.

Ultra-Cation

It was gratifying to see that a recent essay of mine in the Forward stimulated thoughtful responses. I had made the case for jettisoning the time-honored (if, to me, less than honorable) term “ultra-Orthodox.”

I argued that, like “ultra-conservative” or “ultra-liberal” in domestic politics, the prefix implies extremism, something that isn’t accurate about most charedim.

What best to replace it with is less obvious, as “charedi” is a foreign word, and euphemisms like “fervently Orthodox” insult non-charedi Jews, many of whom are as fervent in their prayer and observances as any charedi Jew (not to mention that some charedi Jews are far from fervent).

I suggested using the unadorned word “Orthodox” to refer to charedim, whose lives, I contended, most resemble those of their forbears.

After all, I argued, self-described “Centrist” and “Modern” and “Open” Orthodox Jews are, well, self-described, with those prefixes of their choices. So why not use “Orthodox” alone, without any modifier, to refer to “black-hatters,” or “yeshivish” folks. (The charedi subset of Chassidim could simply be called Chassidim, a word familiar to English speakers.) Think Coke, Cherry Coke, Diet Coke…

One immediate response to my essay came from Samuel Heilman, a Queens College professor of sociology.

Professor Heilman’s jaundiced eye regarding charedim is legend. He is often quoted in the media as critical of Orthodox Jews more conservative in their practices than he. (After September 11, 2001, he famously, risibly, implied that charedi yeshivos are “quiescent” beds of potential terrorists.)

The professor rejects “ultra” too, but sees the prefix not as a pejorative but as reflecting the idea that charedim are “truer in their beliefs and practices than others.”

He also accuses charedim of departing from the Orthodoxy of the past. The example he offers is that, in the charedi world, “water must be certified kosher.” And he decries the charedi “notion that Orthodox Jews always shunned popular culture.” Hasidic rebbes,” he explains, were, “among the crowds who streamed to Marienbad, Karlsbad and the other spas and baths of Europe for the cure, so much a part of popular culture in pre-Holocaust Europe.”

Charedim, the professor pronounces, fear “the encounter with the world outside their own Jewish one,” unlike the true inheritors of the Jewish past, like himself, who “believe Judaism can meet and successfully encounter a culture outside itself and be strengthened rather than undermined by the contact.” They, he adds, “also have the right to be called Orthodox.”

If by “kosher water” Professor Heilman means filtering water in places where the supply contains visible organisms, that is something required by the Shulchan Aruch. Most cities’ tap water is free from such organisms, but New York’s, at least in some areas, is not. And applying codified halacha to contemporary realities is precisely what observant Jews, whatever their prefixes, do.

As to pre-war Chassidic rebbes’ visits to European hot springs spas, they were “taking the waters,” not attending the opera. (Contemporary charedi Jews, a sociologist should know, take vacations too.)

And nowhere in my article, of course, did I claim that non-charedim forfeit the right to be called Orthodox. Nor did I assert (or ever would) that a non-charedi Jew is in any way inferior to, or less “true” to Judaism, than a charedi.

What I wrote, rather, was that charedi attitudes and practices are those closest to the attitudes and practices of observant Jewish communities of centuries past. A familiarity with Jewish history and responsa literature readily evidences that fact.

In an “Editor’s Notebook” column, The Forward’s editor, Jane Eisner, whom I have personally met and come to respect, defended the paper’s use of “ultra-Orthodox,” taking issue with my contention that it is pejorative. “[J]ust as often,” she contends, “it connotes something desirable, a positive extreme.” She cites “ultra thin” used to laud things like military ribbons and computer mouses. But people, of course, aren’t ribbons, and Ms. Eisner declines to address my citation of “ultra” as used in political discourse, the rather more pertinent comparison here.

I was surprised to read that someone as thoughtful as she would echo the professor’s peeve. To my contention that charedim today are most similar to observant Jews of the past she asserts: “[N]ot my grandparents, who were strictly observant Orthodox Jews, but did not dress, act, or think like the Jews of Boro Park and Crown Heights today.” The latter, she contends, refuse “to engage in the modern, secular world, to partake of its culture, acknowledge its obligations and respect its differences.” Charedim, she writes, do not practice “normative Judaism. Or even normative Orthodoxy.”

I didn’t know Ms. Eisner’s grandparents, but I am prepared to trust her memory. I’m pretty sure, though, that she didn’t know their grandparents, who I’m also pretty sure looked and lived much more like charedi Jews today than she might suspect.

And while there may be charedim today who fit the unflattering description Ms. Eisner provides, there are many, many more who most certainly do not, who engage, if within limits, with the modern world and its culture, and who fully “acknowledge its obligations and respect its differences” even as they live lives centered on halachic observance. Is the editor of a major Jewish newspaper really unaware of the variations of charedi experience? And is not generalizing from individuals to an entire group the very essence of prejudice?

The Forward can call us whatever it likes. I did my best to explain why the term is insulting, but I can’t force anyone to accept that judgment. I’ll suffice with the hope that other media may prove more open to change, and with the knowledge that I helped foster some intellectual engagement with the issue.

But whatever any medium chooses to call us, the contention that the charedi community today is some sort of Jewish aberration is a wild fantasy, fueled, perhaps by demographic predictions. History and facts, though, are… well… history and facts.

And neither editors nor sociologists are entitled to their own.

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The Anarchy Option

My interest in the recently concluded Winter Olympics in Sochi was roughly equivalent to my interest in the recently concluded International Kennel Club dog show in Chicago. Which is to say, nil.

But a “Jewish” issue that trailed in the snow behind the Sochi shenanigans was amusing. At least, initially. Pondered a bit, it was a reminder of something disturbing.

An ice dancer named Charlie White, who, with his partner, won a gold medal at the competition, was roundly celebrated by the media for his accomplishment, and by the Jewish media for his accomplishment… and Jewishness.

Despite the latter assertion, though, the skater’s mother apparently notified the Detroit Jewish News, the original reporter of Mr. White’s Jewish credentials, that neither she nor her son is a member of the tribe.

After some research, the paper discovered that the gold medal winner’s only Jewish connection was a Jewish stepfather; it apologized for its original reportage.

The Reform movement wouldn’t at present consider Charlie’s connection to the Jewish people sufficient to automatically qualify him as Jewish in its eyes. But it has long accepted a “patrilineal” definition of “Jewishness” – that is to say that, contrary to halacha, it is sufficient to have a Jewish father to be considered a Jew.

(Interestingly, that movement also requires that a person with only one Jewish parent – even if it’s one’s mother – “identify” in some way in his or her life as Jewish. So the “non-identifying” halachically Jewish child of a Jewish mother and non-Jewish father is considered a non-Jew in Reform eyes. Let it not be said that the movement lacks its stringencies.)

So, at least for now, Charlie is not Jewish by Reform definition, as his Jewish pater was only a step-pater. But nothing stands in the way of the Reform movement one day deciding that step-parentage, too, can be a determinant of “Jewishness.” “Updating” things is part and parcel of Reform (and Conservative) theology.

There already is, in fact, a Jewish movement that skates an even wider circle here: The “Humanistic Judaism” movement defines a Jew as anyone “who identifies with the history, culture and fate of the Jewish people,” regardless of parentage. Thus, a person with no Jewish parents, grandparents – or stepparents – need not, the group’s explains, “give up who they are,” in order “to add Jewish identity to their self-definition.”

Does any of this really matter? Unfortunately, yes. Because there is currently a vocal movement to export the American smorgasbord of “Jewish” definitions to Israel.

Like many a major disaster, this potential one is approaching on tiptoes, the toes here those of the nominally Orthodox American activist rabbi, Avi Weiss.

Despite the rabbi’s Orthodox background, Israel’s Chief Rabbinate dared to call into question his assurance about the Jewish and marital status of a congregant. That action was met by outrage on the part of Rabbi Weiss and his supporters, who identify with the “Open Orthodox” group he founded. Pressure was subsequently put on the Chief Rabbinate and a compromise was agreed upon that essentially placed responsibility for vetting the testimonies of Rabbinical Council of America (RCA) members, including Rabbi Weiss, on the RCA.

Rabbi Weiss declared victory and is opposing the entire institution of the Chief Rabbinate in Israel, railing against its “far-reaching and exclusive control in Israel over personal matters” like marriage, divorce and conversion. “It is time,” he declared in the New York Times, “to decentralize the Chief Rabbinate’s power.

“In a democratic Jewish state,” he asserted, “options must be available.”

From the perspective of Jews who value halacha, the option of “Open Orthodoxy” standards is bad enough. Both Rabbi Weiss and his followers have flouted Jewish law (with “innovations” like ordaining women and proposing wholesale “annulments” of problematic marriages). Once “options” are made available, however, what will result will be personal status anarchy. Nothing will stand in the way of Israel’s accepting the standards, or lack of them, of yet other contemporary movements that are even more blatantly rejective of halacha.

Rabbi Weiss has in fact endorsed just that, writing in The Times of Israel that, “Israel as a state should give equal opportunities to the Conservative and Reform movements. Their rabbis should be able to conduct weddings and conversions.”

Weighing in with a hearty amen were, among others, Conservative Rabbi Julie Schonfeld, the executive vice president of her movement’s rabbinical group. While praising the Chief Rabbinate’s reversal regarding Rabbi Weiss, she pointed out that “Of course, my conversions are not recognized in Israel. Nor are those of my 1,700 Conservative colleagues, my 2,000 Reform colleagues and my 300 Reconstructionist colleagues.”

“Notify your board members and donors,” she exhorted members of non-Orthodox congregations, “that the rabbis who married them, bar mitzvahed their children, buried their parents, and converted their sons and daughters-in-law do not deserve to be called rabbis in the eyes of the Israeli rabbinate. Tell them that none of their life-cycle events count and that the State of Israel does not really think they are Jews for religious purposes.”

In contemporary America, having “Jewish credentials” is no longer an assurance that their bearer is in fact Jewish by halachic definition. Thankfully, that is not the case in Israel.

For now.

Until “options,” chalilah, are made available.

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Minyanim and Meta-Halacha

The article below appeared in Haaretz earlier this week, under the title “Partnership minyan is an innovation too far.”

It is reproduced here with Haaretz’s permission.

What educators call a “teaching moment” is presented by the issue of “partnership minyanim,” prayer groups that aim to provide Orthodox Jewish women greater opportunity to participate in services.

Although halakha is distinctly male-centered in the realm of communal prayer (as in the requirement of ten men to establish a minyan, a quorum permitting the recital of certain prayers), “partnership minyanim” jury-rig prayer services so that women lead parts that arguably may not require a man.

The teaching moment is about how halakha works.

Differences of opinion are part and parcel of not only the Talmud but some contemporary halakhic issues; different conclusions may be made by different poskim, or halakhic decisors.

But a truth that tends to draw fire but remains a truth all the same is that not every rabbi is a qualified decisor. Few, indeed, are.

The most trenchant text here may be a Talmudic aphorism in Tractate Nedarim.

“[What might seem] constructive [advice] of the young [can in fact be] destructive; and [what might seem] destructive [advice] of elders [can in fact be] constructive” (Nedarim, 40a).

Innovations are not anathema to halakha-centric Judaism. Things like the ketuba [the marriage contract cementing the husband’s financial support of his wife] or pruzbul [the legal mechanism to allow debts to be collected even when a shmitta, or “sabbatical year” has passed] in Talmudic times, or like conditioning divorce on the woman’s consent (instituted in the early Middle Ages), or like the Bais Yaakov movement in more modern times, are evidence enough that change can be embraced by the halakha-observant Jewish community.

But what makes such newnesses acceptable is their initiation by elders of the community, whether Talmudic sages or medieval luminaries like Rabbeinu Gershom, or – in the modern age – the Imrei Emes and Chofetz Chaim (who endorsed formal Jewish education for girls in the 1920s).

The reason why changing halakhic norms requires such elders’ endorsements is because such religious leaders alone, by virtue of experience born of age, great scholarship and – most important – their recognition as authorities by large numbers of other Torah-scholars, have internalized the meta-values of Judaism, something that cannot be gleaned from mere books and brains.

Invoking halakhic concepts like k’vod habri’ot (human dignity), several rabbis have endorsed “partnership minyanim.” None of them, however, has achieved the reputation of a recognized halakhic authority. Whatever their ages, they are all “young” in the sense of the aphorism from Nedarim. And so, while their decisions may seem constructive, the reality may be otherwise.

And it is. Every recognized halakhic decisor who has weighed in on “partnership minyanim” has rejected the idea as improper. They needn’t counter with texts or logic; what matters here is judgment. As the Yiddish saying has it, putting “a cat in the holy ark” may not be forbidden by any particular text, but it is wrong all the same. (Note to the humorless: No comparison whatsoever of felines and human beings is intended.)

It is tempting to some to dismiss opposition to the innovation as “Haredi-think.” The tempted, however, should consider the words of two highly accomplished halakhic authorities particularly respected in the so-called “Modern Orthodox” world (though well beyond it too).

Rabbi Herschel Schachter, who studied under Rabbi Yosef Dov Soloveitchik and is a rosh yeshiva at Yeshiva University’s Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, recently issued a strong responsum rejecting “partnership minyanim.” Inter alia, he asserts: “Not every young scholar who studied in yeshiva or even kollel or even was ordained a rabbi is entitled to an opinion in deciding halakha. To be considered a ‘scholar who has reached the status of decisor’ requires not just that one has amassed knowledge of Torah but also that he is ‘balanced’ [in his judgments of] his learning…

“To introduce new practices… requires the endorsement of Gedolei Torah whose knowledge spans the entire Torah and who can thus understand what is indeed the ‘spirit of the law’.”

Rabbi Gedalia Dov Schwartz, the head of the rabbinical courts of both the Beth Din of America and the Chicago Rabbinical Council and the presiding judge of the National Beth Din of the Rabbinical Council of America, also recently addressed “partnership minyanim,” in a letter. He declines to “engage in a polemic” regarding the matter, since doing so would be “an exercise in futility.”

But “as a rav who has extended himself in being sensitive to women’s educational and marital rights,” he writes, he rejects the innovation as “alien to normative balanced congregational activity,” and as “halakhically and intuitively… going beyond the boundaries of communal Torah observance.”

“Partnership minyanim” have, though, one redeeming value: They provide halakha-respecting Jews an opportunity to better understand how innovations in Jewish practice can happen, and how they cannot.

The Devil’s In The Daydreams

One would be forgiven, especially were one an optimist, for imagining that recent reports of the government of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s donation of $400,000 to a Teheran Jewish hospital might signal something positive about Iran’s current leadership. With Purim within sight, the idea of good news coming out of Persia is an enticing one.

Our theoretical optimist would also likely have been gratified by the words of the hospital’s director, Dr. Ciamak Morsadegh, who said the Iranian leader “is showing that we [Jews], as a religious minority, are part of this country, too.”

But the Iranian leader’s smiles, largesse and (to flashback several months) Rosh Hashana good wishes to the world’s Jews were lopsidedly outweighed by another recent report, this one provided by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

(MEMRI, the single most valuable news source for happenings in the Arab and Muslim worlds, does not profess or evidence any political stance; it simply translates and makes available speeches, media reports and other information, positive and negative alike, that aren’t otherwise accessible to the English-reading public.)

The report included a video clip and transcript of a broadcast aired on Iran television’s Channel 1 on February 6. It is remarkable.

The video consists of a simulation – not quite up to the latest Hollywood special effects standards but which might hold its own against a 1980s disaster film – of Iranian planes and missiles attacking civilian and military targets in Israel.

Footage of ostensible missile-equipped “unmanned aerial vehicles,” or drones, in flight are accompanied by voice-over comments like “Iranian UAVs entering stealth mode in order to evade enemy radar” and “Iranian UAVs passing over the Iron Dome systems of Tel Aviv and Haifa.”

The planes are shown bombing target after target (bulls-eyes all, of course): Tel Aviv, Ben Gurion Airport, Israeli “missile bases in Jericho,” an Israeli Defense Ministry “emergency meeting,” the Dimona nuclear reactor and Haifa’s airport and refineries. Missiles streak forth, spectacular explosions ensue and, presumably, large numbers of people are incinerated. Actual news footage is interspersed here and there from what seem to be terrorist attacks in Israel, with wounded people staggering about and emergency personnel frantically trying to help.

Nor is America spared in the Iranian blood-lust fantasy. Attacks on the mainland aren’t portrayed – the producers apparently wished to keep things within the realm of believability – but an American aircraft carrier stood in for the country.

“The USS Abraham Lincoln” is shown in the Straits of Hormuz and its commander is sternly warned by an Iranian official by radio.

“Commander of Abraham Lincoln, Navy,” he intones. “You have entered the Islamic Republic of Iran’s marine borders. Immediately leave this zone. I say again: Immediately leave this zone. Otherwise, we will have to defend our territory.”

After which Iranian missiles are fired, and the American ship is destroyed in a succession of fireballs.

It’s all primitive and risible propaganda, to be sure, intended for internal Iranian consumption. But what does it say, in the end, about the Rouhani regime if that is what it feeds the country’s populace, if it is seeking to prepare them not for détente but for war?

The current “Geneva Agreement” between Iran and six world powers, including the U.S., consists of a short-term freeze of crucial portions of Iran’s nuclear program and its daily monitoring by international inspectors, in exchange for decreased economic sanctions; and it is intended as a time-buyer as the countries work toward forging a permanent agreement.

No one can know whether that strategy will bear fruit in the long term. But what the world powers need to know, even as they pursue diplomatic solutions to the threat that is Iran, is that they are dealing with a government that may occasionally present a reasonable face but whose internal fantasies are dark and destructive, a leadership whose sociable smiles are belied by its devilish daydreams

A snake can seem to smile, too, and can even, with skill, be rendered docile, at least for a time. But it’s always necessary to remember that, however quiescent and cooperative the creature might seem, it’s still, in the end, a snake.

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.

Rabbi Avi Shafran

Reflections on Jews, Judaism, Media and Life