A Good Eye

One thing I was not prepared to find when I scanned the op-ed page of The New York Times this past Friday was reference to the perennial dilemma of what bracha, or blessing, to make on Crispix, the breakfast cereal whose morsels each consist of one side rice and one side corn. (No authoritative decision was offered; two separate blessings are the recommendation I’ve seen in more reliable sources).

That oddity (for the newspaper, that is; the Crispix question has been revisited numerous times in the Shafran home) was mentioned in the context of an article by columnist David Brooks entitled “The Orthodox Surge.”

Despite the nervous-making title – when I think “surge,” hurricanes and armies come to mind – the piece was a welcome respite from the sort of coverage of the Orthodox Jewish community more commonly found in the media. Orthodox-related happenings regarded as news fit to print usually consist of actual or alleged criminal acts committed by individuals in the community, or practices the paper’s readers are likely to find socially illiberal or bizarre. Even reportage of wonderfully positive happenings, like the gathering of 90,000 Jews this past summer at MetLife Stadium to celebrate Talmud-study, are carefully tarnished with negativity.

The Times’ article about the Siyum HaShas was peppered throughout with things like the substantial cost of the mechitza (curtain separating the men and the women present) at the event, and the fact that Orthodox women don’t traditionally study Talmud. Instead of interviewing any of the tens of thousands of such traditional women of all ages present at the event who fully embrace the concept of religious gender roles, the reporter managed to ferret out the rare feminist Talmud-student instead to quote at length. The piece deserved a prize, the “Agenda-Driven Journalism Award.”

Back, though, to Mr. Brooks. As a columnist – not to mention, an uncharacteristically conservative one for the paper – he does not have to toe any liberal line. And so he was free to approach his subject, the growth and values of the Orthodox community, without the usual mud-colored glasses.

Taken by his guide, Rabbi Meir Soloveitchik, to a large Brooklyn supermarket catering to the Orthodox, he found the religious safari enlightening.

He describes being impressed by how Orthodox Jews hew so carefully to their “collective covenant with G-d,” by how, “deep down,” observant Jewish life “is based on a countercultural understanding of how life should work.”

“They go shopping,” he writes, “like the rest of us, but their shopping is minutely governed by an external moral order.” Their religious laws “give structure to everyday life… infuse everyday acts with spiritual significance… build community… regulate desires… making religion an everyday practical reality.”

All in all, a straightforward, accurate depiction of the community and its values. And so, predictably, it stuck uncomfortably in the craw of some, chagrined that Mr. Brooks had dared focus only on beauty and not warts.

And it wasn’t only the usual bloggerei who simmered, but even as accomplished and respectable a person as Jane Eisner, the editor of the Forward. Ms. Eisner complained that the Brooks column hadn’t noted that “ultra-Orthodox Brooklyn, while experiencing an enviable surge in population, is also weighted down by increasing poverty, enhanced by the large families and devotion to pure Torah study that Brooks extols.” And she didn’t miss the opportunity to remind the paper’s readers that scoundrels exist among the Orthodox as elsewhere, heralding accusations of improprieties in the community – and, of course, her paper’s brave dedication to ferreting out and publicizing them.

Graciously acknowledging that, indeed, “there are magnificent aspects to the devout practice of religion,” she made it clear, though, that there are “troubling ones as well,” and that Mr. Brooks did a disservice to his readers by presenting only “one gauzy moment.”

I’m reminded by the Talmud’s teaching that one can gaze upon something or someone with either a “good eye” or a “bad eye,” with benevolence, that is to say, or with something else. It is unfortunate, but some of our fellow Jews seem ill-disposed toward us Orthodox. Part of the reason may be that the image of halacha-committed Jewish life inherently discomfits them, makes them wonder if traditional Judaism’s core belief system may still be relevant, even… Divine. Another part, perhaps, is simple fear, of something else Mr. Brooks notes, that the Orthodox community’s growth is positioning it to be “in a few years… the dominant group in New York Jewry.”

We’re sorry. We’re really not trying to take over, of course, any more than Jews as a people are aiming at world domination, as some anti-Semites contend. We’re just trying to live our lives as we believe G-d wants.

I think there’s a takeaway for us Orthodox Jews from Mr. Brooks’ recent column: Despite the determination of some to portray our community in dark hues, and despite the fact that there will always be individuals in our own midst who will provide them fodder, if the rest of us – the vast majority – endeavor to just live our lives in consonance with what our religious tradition teaches is G-d’s will, at least an objective observer will see the verdant forest for the occasional sickly tree – will see our community for what it actually is.

Dos Yiddishe Mensch

If you’ve noticed a little less dignity, geniality and nobility in the world of late, it may be because we no longer have Reb Yosef Friedenson here with us.

Reb Yosef’s humble bearing, good will and astuteness would have been remarkable in any man. But for a veteran of the Warsaw ghetto and a clutch of concentration camps to have emerged from the cauldron of the Holocaust as so shining a model of calm, forbearance and fortitude is little short of amazing – and something that deeply impressed all who had the privilege of knowing him.

I am among those fortunate souls, and I had the additional honor of working in the same offices as he, at Agudath Israel of America. There were times here and there when he would ask me to do some minor research for him. I tend to overschedule my days and, especially if I’m in a cranky mood, I sometimes feel put upon when asked to do something I hadn’t included on my day’s agenda. But when the asker was Reb Yosef, no matter how grumpy I might have been a moment before, the very sound of his voice, which transmitted his modesty and eidelkeit (sorry, there’s no English word that can do the job), melted any cantankerousness I might have been nursing. I was happy and honored to help him in any way I could. Because of the person he was.

He was known as “Mr. Friedenson” but in fact was a wiser man and more of a rabbi by far than most who coddle that title. He was not into titles but into work, on behalf of the Jewish people.

For more than a half-century – beginning in the Displaced Persons camps after the war’s end – Reb Yosef edited a Yiddish publication, which became the monthly “Dos Yiddishe Vort” – “The Yiddish [or Jewish] Word” – produced under Agudath Israel’s auspices. Even as the periodical’s readership dwindled with the loss of Holocaust survivors over the years, he forged ahead and, until virtually the last day of his life, worked hard to produce the glossy monthly that regularly offered Orthodox commentary on current events, historical articles and rare photographs from the pre-Holocaust Jewish era and the Holocaust itself. He approached his editing duties carefully and professionally, in the beginning of the venture recruiting top-notch writers and doing his own top-notch writing. He once said about his father, Eliezer Gershon Friedenson, who edited the pre-war Agudath Israel newspaper in Europe, that he was “bristling with energy and ideas.” It was an apt description of himself.

During his final years, Reb Yosef did much of the writing for Dos Yiddishe Vort himself, often under pseudonyms that were transparent to most everyone who read the publication. (No one cared; his own recollections and writings were deeply appreciated by readers.) And the issues increasingly focused on rabbinical figures who perished during the Holocaust, and on pre-war Jewish communities. Special editions were devoted to the Jews of Lodz or Lublin, to the Gerer rebbe or the Chazon Ish. And throughout, there were personal recollections of the war years and accounts of spiritual heroism during that terrible time.

That, in fact, was Reb Yosef’s overriding life-mandate: to connect new American generations with the world of Jewish Eastern Europe. He didn’t harp on Nazism or anti-Semitism. That there are always people who hate Jews was, to him, just an unfortunate given. It didn’t merit any particular examination.

What did, though, was the decimation itself of European Jewry and the horrifying toll taken by the upheaval of the Jewish people on the Jewish dedication to Torah. When he would reference the Germans it was usually to note their perceptive realization that Torah is the lifeblood of the Jewish nation. They tried to drain that figurative lifeblood along with their pouring of so much actual Jewish blood. But – and this was what yielded Reb Yosef’s victory smile – they failed. He saw the ultimate revenge on the Nazis and their henchmen in the reestablishment and thriving of observant Jewish life, yeshivos and Bais Yaakovs on these shores and others.

He would sometimes call attention to a line from a prayer said on Mondays and Thursdays, the long version of Tachanun. “We [Jews] are like sheep led to slaughter,” he would quote, and know well how true that has been over the course of history. But, Reb Yosef would continue, the operative words, the secret to Jewish survival and Jewish identity, lie in the supplication’s subsequent phrase: “And despite all that, we have never forgotten Your name.”

Reb Yosef never forgot G-d’s name, not in the ghettos, not in the camps, not in the office where he toiled for decades to remind others of the Jewish world that was, and that can be again.

And we, for our part, will never forget either him or his message.

Lies, Statistics and News Reports

It’s rare for light to be cast on the origins of a rumor. But a recent revelation about a charge made against Chuck Hagel before his confirmation as Secretary of Defense does that – and might provide us all some illumination too.

(Contrary to what some have surmised, I didn’t and don’t feel there is enough hard information about the now confirmed Defense Secretary on which to make a judgment of his attitude toward Israel. As attacks mounted on nominee Hagel, though, I suggested that Jews should think twice and thrice before attacking a public figure for animus to the Jewish state on the basis of pickings as slim as those gathered to criticize him.

Several people, including some pseudonymic letter-writers to a magazine that published my article, took my suggestion that bandwagons are best inspected before being leaped onto as support of Mr. Hagel. I explicitly wrote, however, that he might well not make a good Defense Secretary, and that I can’t claim to know one way or the other. All that I pointed out was that, despite a maladroit phrase Mr. Hagel once used – for which he apologized – and unsubstantiated claims of a similar sin, there was no actual evidence for the charge made by some that the man is “anti-Israel” or “anti-Semitic.” I pointed out, too, that a Secretary of Defense does not make U.S. foreign policy, and that it behooves us American Jews, in a world containing all too many all too real enemies of Jews, to not imagine, or inadvertently create, new ones.)

An edifying postscript to the Hagel hubbub emerged this week. In the midst of all the sturm und drang over the nomination, a conservative website (a “news source,” as it happens, that the angry letters to the editor suggested I consult for my education) reported suspicions that Mr. Hagel had received foreign funding from a group called “Friends of Hamas.” The story, of course, spread across the blogosphere with the speed of a brazen lie, which is precisely what it was. There is no such group.

And this week, the tale of how the charge came about was told – by the fellow who originated it, albeit unwittingly.

New York Daily News reporter Dan Friedman explained how, digging for a story, he had asked a Republican aide on Capitol Hill if Mr. Hagel’s Senate critics knew of any controversial groups that he may have addressed. Had the nominee perhaps “given a speech to, say, the ‘Junior League of Hezbollah’… or the ‘Friends of Hamas’?” the journalist jocularly queried.

Not realizing that politicians and their aides can be humor-impaired, Mr. Friedman compounded his little pre-Purim joke with a follow-up e-mail to the aide, asking if anything had turned up about that “$25K speaking fee from Friends of Hamas?”

Before Mr. Friedman could say mishenichnas Adar, the website had its scoop.

“Senate sources told Breitbart News exclusively,” the report, by one Ben Shapiro, informed its readers, “that they have been informed one of the reasons that President Barack Obama’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel, has not turned over requested documents on his sources of foreign funding is that one of the names listed is a group purportedly called ‘Friends of Hamas.’”

And so, other websites immediately ran with the fiction. For good measure, Mr. Shapiro tweeted the link to his nearly 40,000 Twitter followers. Countless inboxes welcomed the “news”; countless heads nodded knowingly.

Whether or not Mr. Hagel turns out to be a happy surprise or great disappointment, one thing is undeniable: Anyone who values truth – the “signature” of the Divine, in the Talmud’s description – must make painstaking efforts to be objective, and eschew the siren-call (to mangle a metaphor) of the bandwagon.

Lies, overt and subtle, large and small, are, unfortunately, the fertilizer (in both senses of the word) of politics today. They are regularly foisted upon us all from every political corner and by both major parties’ “activists.” We are being gently misled and manipulated whether our source of information is right-wing talk radio or NPR, Rush Limbaugh or Diane Rehm. True objectivity and fair-minded discussion are as rare as Yangtze River dolphins.

And so, if we really insist on having opinions about political matters, we do well to absorb different perspectives, to weigh them fairly and to realize, constantly and deeply, that not everything portrayed as obvious or fact is necessarily either.

Abusive Journalism

A number of years ago, a neighbor of mine, a business professional, shared a secret and a request. He told me that he had been found guilty of a crime – a dishonest financial reporting to the federal government – and was awaiting sentencing. He fully admitted that he had acted wrongly and offered no excuse for what he did. My neighbor is a kind, reasonable, family-oriented and charitable person. I drew on what thespian talents I had cultivated many decades earlier in high school, and feigned not being shocked.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” was all I could say. Then came the request. “Could you write the judge a character reference letter?” he asked.

“Of course,” I answered, without hesitation. My neighbor’s punishment would have great impact on his future, his family and his friends. Here was a good man who did a bad thing. The judge knew about the bad thing; the least I could do was describe the good man.

And so I did, the next day. I’ll never know whether my letter, which acknowledged the crime and sought only to provide an honest assessment of my neighbor as a person, had any effect. He was sentenced to a year in prison and served his sentence.

What brought that memory to mind was the most recent example of “creative” reportage in a Jewish newspaper. “Orthodox Rabbi Defends Jewish Psychiatrist Convicted in… Assaults” read the headline of a report in the Forward on February 8.

Now what kind of stupid fellow, I thought, would defend the abusive actions of a doctor? When I saw the name of the rabbi, however, I realized that the headline had itself probably been abusive, of the truth.

Rabbi Yisroel Miller is well-known as a caring, sensitive, accomplished and respected leader of a congregation in the Western Canadian city of Calgary. He previously served a congregation in Pittsburgh and has been honored with rabbinic leadership awards by the Orthodox Union and the National Society for Hebrew Day Schools; he received a special award from the United Jewish Federation too, for his work to build bridges among diverse groups of Jews. He has authored four well-regarded books of essays on Jewish thought.

Ah, I thought, and now he’s defending the indefensible? No way.

No way, indeed.

Upon closer inspection, the Forward piece exposed itself as an example of something less than responsible journalism. Oh, pshaw, let’s be straightforward: it was make-believe muckraking.

What Rabbi Miller did, it seemed, was just what I did for my neighbor – and what innumerable rabbis, priests and ministers (not to mention friends, relatives and others) have done out of a sense of mercy and propriety: ask a sentencing judge to take their impressions and information into account when deciding the punishment for someone guilty of a crime.

And yet the article was not only headlined to make it seem as if Rabbi Miller had defended the criminal – which he hadn’t done; his letter is explicit and clear about that – but led readers to imagine that he had minimized the crime. The rabbi is introduced in a sentence recounting how the defense attorney characterized his client’s crimes as “minor offenses” and how he “then proceeded to read aloud from a letter from… Rabbi Yisroel Miller…[of] Calgary’s Orthodox synagogue.”

Perhaps, I thought, the article’s writer had just somehow neglected to quote whatever part of Rabbi Miller’s letter “defended” the accused. I searched in vain. The Forward report included details about the 74-year-old defendant’s conviction, and angry comments about him from various people. But the only portions of the letter quoted were the rabbi’s plea to the judge for leniency in sentencing the defendant, including his experience of the man as having always possessed a “humble manner,” the observation that “The bad does not erase the good” and the fear that “a prison term would be a death sentence” for the doctor (who was reported to be frail and in the early stages of dementia).

So I contacted Rabbi Miller directly, and asked to see the letter myself. He readily sent it to me and it was, as I had expected, nothing more than a plea for leniency. In it, he explicitly declares himself unqualified to opine about the defendant’s guilt or innocence and, equally explicitly, acknowledges the “darkness of the human soul” to which even otherwise good people can succumb. At no point in the letter does Rabbi Miller try to minimize the seriousness of the charge against the defendant; at no point does he in any way “defend” him.

I asked the rabbi how he feels about being maligned by a national newspaper. “I myself don’t blame the Forward too much,” he responded, kind soul that he is. “After all, it’s their parnassa [livelihood].”

Iron and Irony

A typical offering included a close-up of the deformed face of a Jewish man above the legend “The Scum of Humanity: This Jew says that he is a member of God’s chosen people.” Another displayed a cartoon of a vampire bat with a grotesquely exaggerated nose and a Jewish star on its chest. In yet another, a Jewish butcher was depicted snidely dropping a rat into his meat grinder and, elsewhere in the issue, the punctured necks of handsome German youths were shown bleeding into a bowl held by a Jew more gargoyle than human. At its peak in 1938, print runs of Hitler henchman Julius Streicher’s vile tabloid Der Sturmer ran as high as 2,000,000.

“All our struggles are in vain,” Streicher told a Nazi student organization in 1935, “if the battle against the Jews is not fought to the finish. It is not enough to get the Jews out of Germany. No, they must be destroyed throughout the entire world so that humanity will be free of them.”

We approach the Jewish holiday focused on the blessedly ill-fated plans of a Jew-hater of old, the Amalekite whose name we will greet with raucous noise each time it’s read from Megillas Esther on Purim. Even a passing familiarity with the Purim story is sufficient to know that its villain’s downfall is saturated with what seem to be chance ironies; Haman turns up at the wrong place at the wrong time, and all that he so carefully plans eventually comes to backfire on him in an almost comical way – a theme Megillas Esther characterizes with the words v’nahafoch hu, “ and it was turned upside down!”

Such “chance” happenings are the hallmark of the defeat of Amalek, the would-be nemesis of the Jewish People – a fact reflected in the “casting of lots” from which “Purim” takes its name. Chance, Esther teaches us, is an illusion; G-d is in charge. Amalek may fight with iron, but he is defeated with… irony.

As was Julius Streicher. In the days after Germany’s final defeat, an American major, Henry Plitt, received a tip about a high-ranking Nazi living in an Austrian town. He accosted a short, bearded artist, who he thought might be SS Chief Heinrich Himmler, and asked him his name.

“Joseph Sailer,” came the reply from the man, who was painting a canvas on an easel.

Plitt later recounted: “I don’t know why I said [it, but] I said, ‘And what about Julius Streicher?’”

“Ya, der bin ich,” the man with the paintbrush responded. “Yes, that is me.”

When Major Plitt brought his serendipitous catch to Berchtesgaden, he later recounted, a reporter told him that he had “killed the greatest story of the war.” When he asked how, the reporter responded “Can you imagine if a guy named Cohen or Goldberg or Levy had captured this arch-anti-Semite, what a great story it would be?”

Major Plitt recalled telling the reporter “I’m Jewish” and how “that’s when the microphones came into my face and the cameras started clicking.”

Another happy irony in Streicher’s life involved the fate of his estate. As reported in Stars and Stripes in late 1945, his considerable possessions were converted to cash and used to create an agricultural training school for Jews intending to settle in Palestine. Just as Haman’s riches, as recorded in Megillas Esther, were bestowed upon his nemesis Mordechai.

There is a good deal more of interest in the life of Julius Streicher to associate him with Jewish traditions about Amalek. But one of the most shocking narratives about him concerns his death. Streicher was of one of the Nazis tried, convicted, and hanged at Nuremberg in 1946.

During the trial, Streicher remained true to ugly form. When the prosecution showed a film of the concentration camps, a spotlight was left on the defendants’ box for security reasons. Few of the defendants could bear to watch the film for long. Goering nervously wiped his sweaty palms. Schacht turned away; Ribbentrop buried his face in his hands. Keitel wiped his reddened eyes with a handkerchief. Only Streicher leaned forward throughout, looking anxiously at the film and excitedly nodding his head.

Although no proof was found that Streicher had ever killed a Jew by his own hand, the tribunal decided that his clear-cut incitement of others to the task constituted a war crime; and so he was sentenced, along with ten other defendants, to hang.

And hang he did. But not before taking the opportunity to share a few final words with the journalists present at the gallows. Just before the trap sprang open, he blurted out: “Purim Feast 1946!” – an odd thing to say in any event, but especially on an October morning.

The “Amalek-irony” of the Nuremberg executions doesn’t end there, either. The Book of Esther recounts how Haman’s ten sons were hanged in Shushan. An eleventh child, a daughter, committed suicide earlier, according to an account in the Talmud. At Nuremberg, while eleven men were condemned to execution by hanging, only ten were actually hanged. The eleventh, the foppish Goering, died in his cell hours before the execution; he ingested a cyanide capsule he had hidden on his person.

Even more striking is something reportedly noted by, among others, the late Belzer Rebbe, the Kedushas Aharon. In the Megilla, the names of Haman’s sons are written in two columns, an unusual configuration. Odder still, three letters in the list are written very small, and one very large. The large letter is the Hebrew character corresponding to the number six; the small letters yield the number 707. If the large letter is taken to refer to the millennium and 707 to the year in the millennium, something striking emerges. According to Jewish reckoning, the present year is 5773. The year 5707 – the 707^th year in the sixth millennium – was the year we know as 1946, when ten sworn enemies of the Jewish people were hanged in Nuremberg, like ten others in Shushan more than two thousand years earlier.

What’s more, the Megilla inexplicably refers to the hanging of Haman’s sons in the future tense, as if to presage some hanging… yet to happen.

The Holocaust was the tip of an unimaginable iceberg of evil, stretching far and deep into the past. The evil, of course, persists today. But a time will come when Divine irony will end it forever.

© Am Echad Resources

An End to the Occupation

Like the repeatedly pummeled victim of depraved bullies who decides it might just be best to stay away from the schoolyard during recess, Israel recently opted to not show up to be judged by the United Nations Human Rights Council, a body with venerated members like Congo, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Uganda, Malaysia and Qatar.

The UN body and a number of individual countries, including the United States, pleaded with Israel to not be the first country to refuse to appear for an HRC “Universal Periodic Review.” But the Israeli government, in its chutzpah, decided to just say no to presenting itself for assault yet again by a group that has demonstrated a deep and troubling fixation on one political dispute in a world in which, elsewhere, authorities routinely amputate body parts, blithely murder citizens, incarcerate innocent people without trial and look the other way as human beings are enslaved and sold like sides of beef.

The New York Times, predictably, did its own huffing, munificently conceding that the HRC is “not without faults” but asserting all the same that the Middle East’s only stable and free democracy was showing “an unwillingness to undergo the same scrutiny as all other countries” and depriving itself “of an opportunity to defend against abuse charges” – as if anything Israel might possibly say in its defense could magically turn deranged, hateful people into reasonable ones.

An HRC panel’s findings, just released, were telling. The panel, made up of representatives of France, Pakistan and Botswana, contended that the establishment of Jewish settlements in “occupied” disputed territories violated the Geneva Conventions and constitutes a war crime.

“In other news,” as they say, the Washington Post, to its credit, issued a correction to a news story it ran last month that identified the Western Wall as “Judaism’s holiest site.” After being cajoled by the vigilant folks at the watchdog group CAMERA, the paper conceded that the wall, rather, is “the holiest place Jews can pray” but that “Judaism’s holiest place is the Temple Mount.”

The Post’s error is a common one. The BBC has made the same mistake, as have a number of other news organizations. It’s an error worth parsing.

Obviously, the Muslim world has its own narrative, but the history accepted for centuries before the founder of Islam’s great-grandfather was born has it that the Temple Mount, as its name testifies, was the site of Judaism’s central holy structure, first built by King Solomon a millennium before the advent even of Christianity. Hope for the restoration of the Temple as a place of Jewish worship has been a major element of Jewish prayer for the nearly 2000 years since the Second Temple was destroyed by the ancient Romans.

When Israel captured Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount, from Jordan in 1967, Jews and others flocked to the Western Wall; copious tears were shed and prayers prayed, as they still are there to this day. But Israel made clear that the Temple Mount itself would remain under the jurisdiction of a waqf, or Islamic authority.

It remains under that waqf’s authority to this day, and while some fringe nationalistic groups demand that Israel assert its dominance over the Temple site, Israel ensures that no such group can take any step to advance its cause. And no respected Jewish religious leader, whether haredi or national-religious, advocates for any imposed change to that status quo.

But every believing Jew knows that, through no military or political effort at all, one day Judaism’s holiest site will no longer host either a mosque, as it does today, or a church, as it did at other points in post-Jewish-Temple history, but a Divinely constructed Third Temple. The one we pray for thrice daily: “And may our eyes see Your return to Zion in mercy” and which will bypass – and undoubtedly come as a surprise to – the United Nations.

In the meantime, however, Jews are enjoined to accept the facts that the Messiah hasn’t yet arrived and that – as if it weren’t obvious – we live in a world often inhospitable to us. We are also enjoined to realize that, in order to merit the Messiah’s arrival, we must turn inward and become the best Jews we can be, kind, charitable and observant – sincerely dedicated, in other words, to the Torah’s laws and teachings. We would also do well, though, to remind at least ourselves, although the thought might confound the Human Rights Commission, that if any piece of Middle East real estate ever deserved the epithet “occupied,” it’s the one just beyond the Western Wall.

Allowing Women to Choose

Well-informed, they say, is well-prepared; and knowledge is power. An exception, though – at least in the judgment of some – seems to be when Jewish women in Israel are contemplating ending their pregnancies.

When an Israeli magazine announced it would bestow an award on a group called Efrat, “pro-choice” advocates (seldom have “scare quotes” been so appropriate) howled in outrage.

Efrat provides women with information about abortion, as well as financial support for mothers-to-be who are under economic pressure to terminate their pregnancies. The group’s detractors characterize it as preying on women at an emotionally vulnerable time.

Efrat, however, does not parade with offensive placards in front of medical facilities like some American groups. Nor does it seek to shame women in any way. Its goal is simply to advance “a woman’s right to free choice,” by providing expectant women who want it with accurate information about medical matters and the development of the lives growing within them; it also offers needy such women who choose to carry their pregnancies to term things like food packages, cribs and strollers. The group claims that, since its founding in 1977, 50,000 babies were born as a result of its work.

Strangely enough, that is precisely part of what irks some of the group’s critics. “They’re using the woman for demographics,” complained a protest organizer, Tzaphira Allison Stern, mixing pregnancy with politics. “Why shouldn’t a woman have an abortion?” she asks rhetorically in Efrat’s name. “Because we need the baby so there are more Jews, and so there are more Israeli soldiers, so we can defend the land and continue the occupation.”

Ms. Stern is also piqued by her assumption that “the organization works only with Jewish women, rather than with Arab, Druse or Christian women, which illustrates that they care only about politics and not about women’s health.” Like many Jewish charities, Efrat indeed focuses on the Jewish community, but it is in fact open to any woman from any background.

Denigrators of Efrat condemn it, too, for what they allege was the group’s role in the death of a young man this past October. Stopped by police after a traffic accident, the distraught man pulled a gun and threatened to kill his pregnant girlfriend, prompting police to shoot him. He died of a wound to the head, and the tragedy, schlepped along a convoluted path, was laid at Efrat’s door. Critics claimed that an Efrat employee had convinced the young woman to carry her child to term, which agitated the young man, and hence that the group was responsible for his fate (“death by counseling of another person” presumably). As it happens, Efrat insists that it has no record of any interaction at all with the young woman.

When Israel’s two chief rabbis came out in support of Efrat, the opposition grew even more heated, even though Ashkenazi chief Rabbi Yona Metzger made clear that when he opposes termination of pregnancies he is “not talking about a pregnant woman who has psychological, medical or familial reasons” for considering such a move, but rather women who do so “due to financial considerations,” which, he explains, is “where Efrat comes in.”

The activists, nonetheless, were only further activated. “This is another step in the radicalization of religious figures,” declared Hedva Eyal, who runs an abortion hotline in Haifa, “and is part of the discrimination against women that we are witnessing… with respect to their decisions over their own lives and health.”

Left unexplained is how allowing women to make fully informed decisions about babies they are carrying – yes, babies; Israel permits abortions even into the third trimester of pregnancy – is discriminatory. An equally over-activated Nurit Tsur, the former executive director of the Israel Women’s Network, scoffed that “the Chief Rabbinate… has been infiltrated by haredi elements,” as if any authentic Jewish approach condones abortion for financial considerations.

There are many issues where contemporary mores stand in stark contrast with truly Jewish values. But both the modern mindset and the authentic Jewish one are in agreement that important decisions should be made with as much pertinent information in one’s possession as possible, and that limiting the acquisition of such information is wrong.

In cases of life and death – even when it may be only potential life that is at stake – the ideal of informed decision-making is paramount, at least in theory. In reality, it seems, some would force it to pay homage to some imagined “higher” feminist ideal, where women are somehow best served by being denied information.

Prisoners of Preconceptions

Even with protective cover from Senator Charles E. Schumer – as determined a defender of Israel as there ever was – and even speaking only for myself, I hesitate to address the overwrought reaction in some corners to President Obama’s nomination of Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense. I don’t want to be labeled an anti-Semite too.

Not that there wasn’t or isn’t cause for some concern about Mr. Hagel. He is famously on record as having once referred to AIPAC as the “Jewish lobby,” and in the past questioned the wisdom of too hastily employing military force against Iran. But such things – you might want to sit down – do not an anti-Semite or unconscionable isolationist make.

At least not to reasonable eyes. Unfortunately, some tend to the visceral rather than the rational in such matters, prisoners of their own preconceptions. Despite the clear and ample evidence to the contrary, they just can’t stop pegging the president as less than committed to Israel’s wellbeing, and can be counted on to shoot at anything that moves if Mr. Obama set it into motion. So Mr. Hagel was immediately judged by some as bad for Israel, if for no other reason than that his nominator was the Dark Prince himself. Thus does circular reasoning attain its orbit.

A mindset is a terribly hard thing to move.

Mr. Hagel may turn out to be unsuited for the job of Defense Secretary. But that is a judgment to be made by Congress, based on the candidate’s testimony at his confirmation hearings – not by a trigger-happy pundit gallery.

Do Mr. Hagel’s critics even know what a Secretary of Defense does?

Hint: He does not make U.S. foreign policy. He oversees the operations of the military and, as part of the chain of military command, is answerable to the Commander in Chief. (Of course, that will hardly reassure those who choose to project their darkest fears onto Mr. Obama; cue the circular reasoning. And so, unfortunately, it goes.)

Particularly irksome is that the media has adopted the moniker “pro-Israel” for what would more accurately be characterized as pro-Likud. Employing the phrase implies that, somehow, anyone who dares to wonder whether every building project in Israel is a geopolitically wise thing to do is somehow insufficiently concerned with the country’s future. But not every legitimate right is rightly acted upon. I can understand (although I’m no less irked for the fact) how a believer in Israel as a re-established Davidic Monarchy might see Israel’s thumbing its nose at the (admittedly largely unsavory) family of nations as some sort of religious imperative. But that is not the approach of mainstream Orthodox Jewish theology – i.e. the teachings of the universally recognized Torah leaders of past generations and our own.

No, those interpreters of Judaism insist that the Messianic Age is yet to come, and counsel Jews as individuals to embrace modesty, and as a people to demonstrate a degree of deference to the nations of the imperfect world in which we float. Just as Jews in the Middle Ages or pre-Holocaust Europe had to pay (often distasteful but nonetheless necessary) homage to the nobleman or Czar, so do contemporary Jews bear a responsibility to take the feelings – yes, even unjustified, even hypocritical, even evil-fueled feelings – of the rest of the world into account. Even in a world with a Jewish state in the ancestral Jewish land, we are still in exile.

Maybe the Israeli right is right, and there’s a rational reason why contested population centers must be expanded, no matter what the United States or European countries say. Maybe there’s some larger-picture strategic need to do such things even if they alienate important global players, even Israel’s closest friends. But one thing is clear – or should be: Doubting those maybes, as all recent American administrations have done, is no sign of unconcern with Israel, and certainly not of anti-Semitism.

Senator Schumer spent some time with Mr. Hagel the other day, and emerged from their long conversation satisfied that the nominee’s views, both concerning Iran and Israel, are in consonance with his own. Mr. Hagel apologized for calling AIPAC a “Jewish lobby.”

To be sure, even if the nominee is approved, none of us can know the future. “In no man do I place my trust,” goes the prayer taken from the Zohar, advice for the ages. We cannot assume that even leaders who have demonstrated good will toward the Jewish people (or, today, the Jewish state) will always remain the same. But neither do we have the right to indulge in unwarranted panic attacks.

No question about it, it’s a dangerous world for Jews and for Israel. But that’s all the more reason for eschewing alarmism. We have all too many all too real enemies out there. What we really don’t need is to imagine, or create, new ones.

Never Going Back Again

American politicians tainted by scandal and forced to resign their positions usually explain that they want “to spend more time with their families.” Issam al-Aryan, a top advisor to Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi, who recently tendered his own resignation said he is overly “occupied with my work as head of the Freedom and Justice Party bloc in the Shura Council.” He must not lack for family time.

The scandal that attached itself to Mr. al-Aryan was that he had publicly invited Israeli Jews of Egyptian descent to return to their erstwhile home. “Egypt,” he told Jews who had fled Egypt over the years, “is worthier of you than Israel,” which, he explained, is a “racist, occupying entity.”

There was no rush of Egypt-born Israelis to take up Mr. al-Aryan’s offer, or for that matter any evidence of even a single Jewish individual who was enticed by the prospect of leaving a modern, prosperous country, not to mention his ancestral homeland, for a Muslim Brotherhood-dominated pit of poverty and political upheaval. What did come quickly, though, was the backlash against the Egyptian politician for his impudent invitation.

Muslim Brotherhood spokesperson Mahmoud Ghozlan, for example, lambasted Mr. al-Aryan, insisting that “Egyptian Jews are criminals who must be punished for what they did to Egypt and the Palestinians.” An associate of Mr. Morsi informed an Egyptian newspaper that Mr. al-Aryan does not represent the presidency’s stance and is not an official presidential spokesman.

In the wake of the criticism, Mr. al-Aryan hastened to clarify his message, explaining that his wish for Jews to return to Egypt had only been “in order to make room [in Israel] for the Palestinians,” and that, in any event, “there will be no such thing as Israel” within a decade.

Alas, it was too late for clarifications. Mr. al-Aryan came to be convinced that he needed more time if not for his family then for his Freedom and Justice Party duties. Pronouncements in Egypt about Israel these days, he now realizes, are better left to people like Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood cleric Mahmoud al-Masri, who recently told his audience on Egyptian television that “Allah willing, Israel will be annihilated because the prophet Muhammad said so,” adding for good measure that “ultimately, not a single Jew will be left on the face of the earth.” No Oliver Cromwell, he; the Hitlerian model is clearly his preference.

(Interestingly, comments about Jews made by Mr. Morsi himself recently came to light. In 2010, he referred to the “descendants of apes and pigs,” who “have been fanning the flames of civil strife wherever they were throughout their history” and who are “hostile by nature.” And he told a rally that year that “We must never forget to nurse our children and our grandchildren on hatred for… Zionists, for Jews.” The White House and State Department called the comments “deeply offensive” and “unacceptable.” Even The New York Times editorialized that Mr. Morsi’s words were “repulsive,” “scurrilous” and “pure bigotry.”)

Melodiously chanted in the Jewish background as Mr. al-Aryan’s travails transpired were the Torah portions read in synagogues around the world, about the original Jewish sojourn in Egypt, the one that came to a famous end with the ten plagues and the exodus.

That first emigration from Egypt, of course, also begat some – how shall we put it? – negativity on the part of the Egyptian leadership of the time. Whether Pharaoh, in leading his army to pursue the Jews he had earlier begged to leave wanted to return them to Egypt (presaging Mr. al-Aryan’s ill-fated approach) or to wipe out the Jewish people entirely (providing Mr. al-Masri with yet another historical model), he made his move and met his fate.

Interestingly, despite that determined pursuit and the fact that Egypt enslaved our ancestors for hundreds of years, we Jews are charged by the Torah to “not hate an Egyptian, for you were a stranger in his land” (Devarim 23:8). We must actually feel a degree of gratitude for Egypt’s having hosted our forebears for so long.

And yet, in no less than three places, the Torah forbids Jews from returning to live in Egypt (e.g. Devarim 17:16). There’s something about the place, it seems, that contraindicates a Jewish presence.

So Mr. al-Masri needn’t fret – at least not about any large-scale return of Hebrews from their ancestral land. He might though, along with Mr. Ghozlan and Morsi, give some cautious thought to the synagogue Torah readings these weeks.

Prayer and Politics

I was heartened by the responses I received to my essay last week, in which I suggested that Jews of good will on each side of the issue of women’s prayer groups at the Kosel Ma’aravi make an effort to empathize with those on the other.

Even as someone who wishes to see the Jewish religious tradition of millennia upheld at that holy spot, I still consider it important to try to appreciate how women used to women’s or mixed-sex services might feel in a segregated national Jewish prayer area where the only group services are men’s. And I expressed my hope that those women, too, will try to put themselves in the shoes of men who embrace halacha and thus may not hear women’s voices raised in song. Where such empathy might lead was not my point; the empathy itself was.

I heard, among others, from several non-Orthodox rabbis who (even though they prefer a different setup at the Kosel than I) expressed their appreciation for what I wrote. Heartening too was that I didn’t receive a single communication from anyone in my own charedi community eschewing empathy for those unlike us. (Perhaps that shouldn’t have been surprising, but it was.)

Deeply unimpressed with what I wrote, though, was a Reform rabbi on the West Coast. In a blog she writes for JewishJournal.com, Susan Esther Barnes characterized my call for empathy as inconsistent and even “insulting” since I pointedly did not apply it to people like Women of the Wall’s leader Anat Hoffman, whose words and actions seem to be weapons wielded in pursuit of a political/social agenda.

It is true, and I made no bones about it. I am unable to summon empathy for ideologues like Ms. Hoffman. While a Jew who (justifiably or not) feels personally pained by the dearth of vocal women’s prayer groups in the main Kosel plaza deserves the sincere concern of other Jews, one who is motivated by the social activist cause of undermining Jewish tradition is a different matter. Someone who construes halachic standards at the Kosel as some intentional, nefarious “silencing… of women who comprise half of this nation,”(Ms. Hoffman’s words), as a moral wrong that must be fought and vanquished – and who proudly declares that by provoking arrest “we are reclaiming Judaism’s holiest site” (ditto) – cannot lay claim to my good will.

My critic insists that the purposeful disruptions engineered by Ms. Hoffman at the Kosel are nothing more than “traditional Jewish prayer,” as if praying somehow entails summoning an eager cadre of media to record it (and, of course, its predictable results).

Rabbi Barnes accuses me of “calling heartfelt Jewish women rabble-rousers.” But I did nothing of the sort. I called heartfelt Jewish women heartfelt Jewish women. It was rabble-rousers whom I called rabble-rousers.

It’s hardly my judgment alone. The presumably non-charedi op-ed page editor of the Jerusalem Post, Seth J. Frantzman, recently wrote that “If Orthodox Jews decided to abandon the Kotel, Women of the Wall would follow them, because it is the Orthodox Jewish method of worship [that disturbs them]… [it is] the need to ‘liberate’ the Jewish Orthodox women, i.e. colonize them, that unfortunately appears to motivate some of these actions.” The group, he contends, “seems too often interested only in itself and its narrow agenda.” I would not apply so broad a brush myself, but there is little doubt that there are indeed places that merit the tar.

Writing in Commentary, moreover, respected (non-charedi) journalist Evelyn Gordon, while raising a different issue, makes a similar observation. What, she asks, about “the thousands of women who visit the Western Wall every day not to ‘see and be seen,’ as Women of the Wall chairwoman Anat Hoffman” described her goal, “but to pour out their hearts to G-d”? Should they be subjected, against their will, to services “conducted in as loud, public and disruptive [a] manner as possible”?

What Ms. Hoffman and like-minded social ideologues want, Ms. Gordon continues, “is to make a political statement.” Were they “more interested in prayer than in politics,” she suggests, “Israelis might be more sympathetic to their cause.”

There are women among supporters of women’s prayer services at the Wall who are sincerely interested only in prayer. Those are the fellow Jews for whom I feel, and counsel others to feel, empathy. Their goal is not to “see and be seen” or to “reclaim” the Kosel, but to pour out their hearts to Heaven. And whether they choose to pray at the Robinson’s Arch area of the Kosel set aside for vocal women’s prayer or quietly alongside their more tradition-minded Jewish sisters in the main plaza’s women’s section, they, along with all the men there for the same reason, are part of a unified, de-politicized, heartfelt Jewish presence in that peaceful, holy place.

Rabbi Avi Shafran

Reflections on Jews, Judaism, Media and Life