Musing: Two NYT Articles about Israel Say it All

Two recent articles in the New York Times conveyed as informative a picture of Palestinians and Israel as might be imagined.  One, on August 4,  profiled the “culture of conflict” nurtured by West Bank Palestinians, focusing on Arab teenagers’ delight in throwing large stones at Israel soldiers and Jewish residents of nearby communities, and younger boys’ games imitating their elders’ activities.

“Children have hobbies,” one teen, Muhammad, is quoted as explaining, “and my hobby is throwing stones.”

When a 17-year-old, arrested for his stone-throwing, was released in June after 16 months in prison, the article reports, “he was welcomed like a war hero with flags and fireworks, women in wedding finery lining the streets to cheer his motorcade.”

The second Times piece, the next day, described how, in its headline’s words, “Doctors in Israel Quietly Tend to Syria’s Wounded.”

Most Syrian patients “come here unconscious with head injuries,” said Dr. Masad Barhoum, the director general of one of the hospitals, the Western Galilee Hospital in Nahariya. “They wake up after a few days or whenever and hear a strange language and see strange people,” he continued. “If they can talk, the first question is, ‘Where am I?’ ”

“I am sure,” he added “there is an initial shock when they hear they are in Israel.”

A 13-year-old girl, who had required complex surgery, was interviewed “sitting up in bed in a pink Pooh Bear T-shirt.”  Her aunt, who had managed to locate her and was happy with the treatment her niece had received, told the reporter that they hoped to return to Syria later this week.

“Asked what she will say when she goes back home, the aunt replied: ‘I won’t say that I was in Israel. It is forbidden to be here, and I am afraid of the reactions’.”

The two pieces, taken together, really say it all.

They’re Not Us

The teaser e-mail alert from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency read: “Hasidim for Iran”; and the headline of the linked article, about a Neturei Karta member arrested for allegedly spying for Iran, was: “Haredi Israeli charged with spying for Iran.”

Well, yes.  But one has to wonder if, say, a “progressive” anti-Zionist Reform Jew had allegedly offered his services to an enemy of Israel he would be similarly described by his religious affiliation. And we certainly (and thankfully) didn’t see headlines back in 2008 about Bernie Madoff reading: “Jew Accused of Bilking Thousands of their Savings.”

The accused spy, who reportedly visited the Iranian Embassy in Berlin in 2011 expressing his wish to replace the Israeli government with one controlled by gentiles and saying he was willing to murder a Zionist, did indeed wear the sort of clothing associated with charedim.  And he’d probably call himself one.  But just like a psychopath who happens to be a doctor is hardly a representative example of his profession, neither is a charedi who aids a murderous regime (assuming the fellow is guilty as charged) anything more than an outlying grotesquerie.

That seems to fly over some heads, like that of the commentator who posted his thoughts to one of the news stories about the accused spy.  “EYES WIDE OPEN” (and, apparently, CAPS LOCK ON) wrote: “Haredi=anti-Zionist=anti-Israel! Haredi are a parasitic drain on the State!”

THANK YOU, EWO!

Let’s be clear.  Neturei Karta is a fringe sect, with perhaps several hundred adherents around the world.  Offensive actions of its members have been denounced by all other charedi Jews, even the much larger part of the charedi world, the Satmar chassidim.  No Satmar chassid, no matter how strong his principled opposition to the establishment of a Jewish state before the Messiah’s arrival, would ever do anything to harm another Jew, much less a country (theologically legitimate or not) filled with them.  And the vast majority of the rest of the charedi universe – chassidim of varied stripes and the entire non-chassidic “yeshiva world” – can most accurately be described as aZionistic, not anti-Zionist.  Charedim may not regard Israel as the flourishing of the Davidic kingdom or even as a potentially holy entity. But their commitment to Israel’s security and wellbeing is beyond all question.

No less mainstream a charedi organization than Agudath Israel of America (full disclosure: I work there, although I write independently) publicly stated several years ago, when members of Neturei Karta were hobnobbing with Iranian Holocaust deniers at a “conference” in Teheran, that “visibly Jewish men who regularly appear publicly with virulent anti-Semites and claim to represent Jewish Orthodoxy not only do not represent anyone but themselves but are a disgrace to the Jewish people.”

The Agudath Israel statement continued with a reference to the “pitiful spectacle” of the self-representatives’ “greeting and shaking hands with Iran’s demonic president” and to the fact that their garb obscures “the fact that all they accomplish is to offer succor and support to people who eagerly wish to do grave harm to Jews.”

The charedi mainstream bristles at the actions of Neturei Karta members, as it does at the actions of other self-proclaimed guardians of the faith who do ugly things like shout at observant soldiers for choosing army service, or who fall prey to the provocations of Women of the Wall and righteously (in their minds, at least; sinfully, in the judgment of every charedi rabbinic leader) hurl insults and more at the in-your-face feminists.

It’s unfortunate that the charedi world includes men with a surfeit of testosterone and a deficit of intelligence, but that messy combination is the unhappy reality in many a group, religious or otherwise.

It might be too much to hope that the media will take pains to convey the sharp disconnect between the handful of charedi louts and the hundreds of thousands-strong mainstream charedi world.  Too much to hope that purveyors of information perceive the fact that characterizing criminals as “charedi” in headlines is as wrong as would be the characterization of a less observant Jewish criminal as a “Jew.”

But it sure would be nice.

© 2013 Rabbi Avi Shafran

 

A Time for Stringencies

Chumros, or efforts to go beyond the letter of Jewish religious law’s requirements, have gotten a bad name over the years.  And it is true, some stringencies can be unwise, even counterproductive.  Some are even silly.

I recall a letter to the editor of a now-defunct Jewish magazine whose writer was deeply upset that an advertisement for a dairy product in an earlier issue had run face-to-face with one for a meat product.  Many readers, I’m sure, like me, first thought it was meant as a joke.  But it wasn’t Purim time and it didn’t carry any indication of wryness or satire.  The writer was serious, and, of course, deeply misguided.

But when a stringency is adopted, either by a community or an individual, for a good reason, it should not be resented or mocked.  Sometimes a person may feel a need to draw a broader circle than the next guy’s around something prohibited; sometimes a particular  era or community will require the adoption of special stringencies.  Generally, chumros present themselves in realms like kashrus or the Sabbath, in the form of refraining from eating or doing even something technically permitted.  Other stringencies, though, consist of adopting as one’s norm the example of a great person.

Among the greatest Jews who ever lived was the spiritual head of the Jewish people at the time of the destruction of the Second Temple, the famed Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai.  The Talmud (Brachos 17a) relates that no one ever greeted him first, as he was always the first to offer greetings, “even [to] a non-Jew in the marketplace.”

Now there’s an unusual – unnecessary, to be sure, but clearly laudatory – conduct worth considering these days, when civility seems on the wane. Obviously one can’t walk through a busy pedestrian area greeting every person one sees.  In any event, doing so might not endear one to those serially accosted.

But there are many times when one finds oneself in the presence of another individual or two when the option of a “good morning” or “good evening” hovers in the air, easily ignored but entirely available.

Taking the opportunity to convey the wish, the Talmud teaches us, is something praiseworthy.

And for Jews, the more “Jewish” one looks, I think, the more desirable it is to consider taking on the chumra of emulating Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai.  Because in addition to the inherent goodness of acknowledging another human being, there is the unfortunate fact that some people, for whatever reason, are quick to think of Jews, especially Orthodox ones, as “stand-offish.”  And our insular lifestyles, even though they are not intended to insult anyone, can inadvertently reinforce that impression. But it’s hard to maintain a bias against Orthodox Jews when one’s head holds the image, too, of a smiling such Jew offering a greeting.

On a fifteen-minute walk to shul a few Shabbosos ago, I met: two other shul-goers, a Muslim family, and a young man of indeterminate ethnicity.  I also passed a fellow washing his car.  I wished the identifiable Jews a “good Shabbos” (actually, one of them a “Shabbat Shalom”) and offered the others a smile and a “good morning.”  All the greetees returned the good wishes, as did a large man with dreadlocks standing in line with me at the kosher Dunkin Donuts a day later.  That’s usually the case.  Rarely does someone greeted ignore the greeting; and when he does, it’s usually because he didn’t hear it (or couldn’t believe his ears).

Whether my “stringent” behavior made the world any more civil a place I don’t know, but all any of us can do is our own small part.

Some religious Jews, who – rightfully – value modesty and reticence, may feel that it’s somehow not proper to engage strangers in public places.  And in some cases that may well be true.  But in many, even most, cases, it’s certainly not.

At least it wasn’t in Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai’s eyes.

© 2013 Rabbi Avi Shafran

 

The Truth About Trayvon

Could there possibly be anything else to say about the George Zimmerman trial that hasn’t already been said?

After all, the supporters of Mr. Zimmerman, who killed teenager Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida last year, have made clear all along their belief that Mr. Martin assaulted Mr. Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer, and that the latter shot his alleged assailant in self-defense.  Of course, as everyone knows now, the jury found no reason to endorse a different scenario.

And defenders of Mr. Martin have, both before and after the verdict, made their own, different, version of the happening known – that the teenager was an innocent victim of a trigger-happy, racist cop-wannabe who targeted Mr. Martin because of the color of his skin.

Pundits have since tirelessly trumpeted their convictions, either that the verdict was a triumph of justice or a travesty thereof.

But there is indeed something else to say about the case, and it may well be the most important thing to say.  And that is: No one alive but George Zimmerman actually knows what happened that night.  And so “taking sides” on the subject is the height of ridiculousness.

Somehow, that self-evident fact seems to have become overwhelmed by all the reaction to the verdict.  President Obama came closest to reacting reasonably, stating that Mr. Martin’s death was a tragedy but that “we are a nation of laws, and a jury has spoken” and asking that “every American… respect the call for calm reflection from two parents who lost their young son.”  More recently, he added “context” to his reaction, saying that the dead teen “could have been me 35 years ago,” and that even though “somebody like Trayvon Martin was statistically more likely to be shot by a peer than he was by somebody else,” the rallies and protests that have followed the verdict were “understandable,”

Those rallies and protests, thankfully, didn’t degenerate into riots, as some had feared. There were, however, gatherings of outraged citizens chanting slogans about justice; and, in some cities, vandalism of cars and bottle-throwing at cops (nice justice there). Al Sharpton, never one to squander an opportunity to capitalize on tragedies in the black community, announced that he will lead a national “Justice for Trayvon” day in 100 cities to press for federal civil rights charges against Mr. Zimmerman (which, unless new evidence somehow emerges, seems like a futile effort).

And for their part, the usual talk-radio pontificators did their usual pontificating, holding up the verdict (a reasonable one, considering the dearth of evidence) as evidence itself, somehow, that Mr. Zimmerman’s account must be true.

All the surety-silliness leads, or should lead, to some serious thinking on the part of people given to such endeavors – especially Jews, who pride themselves on being thoughtful people.

There are certainly certainties in most people’s lives, convictions that are rightly embraced for any of a number of valid reasons.  They include fundamental things, like belief in a Creator, and that the world has a purpose, and that human beings are privileged to find their roles in that purpose.  And derivative truths, like the rightness of treating others kindly, and the wrongness of things like murder or theft.

And then there are things we know to be true because we experienced or witnessed them.  But to proclaim our certitude about an occurrence removed from our personal experience, and about which we have been served conflicting claims, is senseless.  We’re entitled (at least sometimes) to our suspicions, but suspicion is not knowledge.  The truth about Trayvon?  That we don’t know what transpired.

And even in cases where we can make “educated guesses” – where we possess some, but incomplete, knowledge – it is always beneficial to keep in the backs of our minds (or, even better, their fronts) acceptance of the fact that, for all our intelligence and gut feelings, we still might be wrong.

That’s true not only regarding things like Trayvon Martin’s killing but in myriad realms, like politics and public policy, where all too many of us all too often feel compelled to take unyielding positions based on incomplete knowledge, and see any other position as obviously misguided.

Doing so, though, telegraphs a special sort of ignorance – ignorance of our own ignorance.

© 2013 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Missing the Joke — And the Message

The lack of a sense of humor may not totally disqualify one from being a good teacher, but in, as they say, my humble opinion, it comes close.

I had recent occasion to watch the recorded presentation of an Israeli professor who seemed, regrettably, humor-impaired.  That he exhibited no sense of cleverness wasn’t so terrible.  That he failed, though, to even recognize humor – in this case a poignant pun – was.

The lecturer was soberly providing his audience what it had come to hear, namely a scholarly assault on the contemporary “Ultra-Orthodox” world and its leaders.  And, as has become de rigueur, in his effort to portray the charedi world as hopelessly close-minded, he invoked the famous dictum of the Chasam Sofer (Rabbi Moshe Schreiber, 1762-1839) that “chadash assur min haTorah” – “what is new is forbidden by the Torah.” But he presented it as some sort of absurdly pilpulistic application, not seeming to realize – or, certainly, not communicating – that it was, in fact, ingenious wordplay.

The Chasam Sofer, venerated by Orthodox Jews to this day, was a strong opponent of the nascent Reform movement of his day, which had begun to attract adherents in his native Austria-Hungary and beyond. It was his influence and determination that kept the Reform movement out of Pressburg, the city he served as rabbi for more than three decades.  And it was his determination to preserve what we today call Jewish “Orthodoxy”– namely, commitment to the entirety of classical Judaism – that impelled him to humorously hijack the “what is new is forbidden” phrase.

The phrase’s original context is the Biblical prohibition of consuming the “new grain” of each Jewish year until the second day of Passover, when the Omer sacrifice was brought.  Rabbi Schreiber employed the phrase as a pun (oh, what injury we do to a joke by explaining it!), to express his entirely unrelated-to-agriculture feeling that even a seemingly innocuous innovation to Jewish life – “what is new” – must be regarded with skepticism, and scrutinized to ensure that it will not prove an inadvertent step in a bad direction.

Some innovation-minded Jews, including some who are fully committed to halacha, find the Chasam Sofer’s approach discomfiting.  What they don’t seem to appreciate is that he was not, in fact, offering a blanket rejection of all that is “new” for all time, as people like the humor-compromised professor profess.  To begin with, the revered Torah leader of his generation was confronting an immediate and formidable challenge to the mesorah, or Jewish religious tradition, a movement that rejected its very theological foundation.  And so, even minor changes in liturgy or synagogue practices represented – at least to a deeply perceptive mind –a potential Trojan Horse.  Or, perhaps a better metaphor, a slippery slope.

And secondly, he was not saying that every change in Jewish life or practice is dangerous.  The fact that sermons are delivered from Orthodox synagogue pulpits in English, that there are schools and seminaries for Orthodox girls and women, that organized efforts exist to encourage Orthodox Jews to reach out to their non-Orthodox fellow Jews all reflect that fact that what is “new” is sometimes not only permitted but necessary.

What allows the novel to be embraced by Orthodoxy, though, is the considered judgment of the most experienced and learned religious leaders of the Orthodox world. That Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch sermonized in German, that the Chofetz Chaim endorsed the Bais Yaakov movement, that “outreach” was characterized as a Jewish obligation by Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, all demonstrate that the Chasam Sofer’s pun was not intended to promote some sort of spiritual Luddism.

What it was intended to do was to sensitize his generation to the existence, and danger, of slippery slopes, a recognition our own times require of us no less.

In truth, at least with regard to secular beliefs, most American Jews readily understand that small departures from a path can eventually lead to larger, more disturbing, deviations.  Any “new” idea, for instance, that that would ever-so-slightly modify First Amendment rights in the United States, like freedom of speech or religion, is rightfully seen as a threat to those high ideals.  Not to mention that every teacher – and parent – knows that there are times when making a small allowance can be an invitation to anarchy, when giving an inch begets the loss of a yard, or a mile.

Yes, of course, there are limits to what sort of Jewish “newnesses” should be regarded as wrong.  There are many great jokes – speaking of humor – that we charedim tell among ourselves about taking stringencies or “the way it has always been done” too far.

But as a wise man (or wise guy; I think it was me) once said: Just because elephants don’t fly doesn’t mean birds don’t exist.  Excessive insistence on fealty to the way things have always been is unwise.  But so is pursuing, without the blessings of true Jewish leaders, shiny, happy innovations whose trajectories we cannot know.  That was what the Chasam Sofer meant, and expressed in an amusingly creative way.

It’s unfortunate that the Israeli professor wasn’t able to recognize a joke – or the possibility that a venerated Jewish sage might be more prescient than he.

© 2013 Rabbi Avi Shafran

A Modest Jewish Proposal

A reporter recently asked me whether I thought Jewish women could be experts in Jewish law.  “Of course,” I responded without hesitation.

The journalist was one of the horde of heralds who practically fell over one another a few weeks ago to celebrate – I’m sorry, report upon – the recent graduation of three women from a school whose aim is to place them in synagogues as rabbis, if not quite to call them that.

I elaborated on my response by citing the examples of my own wife and daughter.  (We have several, all of them knowledgeable Jews, but I had in mind our youngest, about to be married but for now still at home.)  “When I have a question, for instance, about what bracha, or blessing, to make on a food,” I explained, “they are the ones I ask.”

The reporter seemed surprised to hear that there could be questions about blessings. So I elaborated on the fact that much of an entire tractate of the Talmud deals with blessings on food and other things, and that there is a wealth of complex halachic material relating to the proper blessings a Jew is to make on different foods and special occasions.  Since brachos entail invoking G-d’s name, I pointed out, it is important that they be made only when required, and that, when required, the proper blessing be made.

There wasn’t time to go into the underlying meaning of brachos, our need to recognize how blessed we are to be able to eat this food or that one, to have reached a milestone in the Jewish year, to have experienced thunder, lightning or an earthquake, or even to have digested one’s food (yes, there’s a blessing to be recited after leaving the bathroom).

The majority of brachos, however, and the volumes of halachic material thereon concern the proper blessings to be made before consuming a food and, if a certain amount is eaten, afterward.

There’s a movement in the larger world these days that promotes “mindful eating,” the conscious focusing on one’s food before consuming it and the retaining of that focus while doing so, slowly and deliberately.  That approach dovetails well with the Jewish perspective on eating.  We are indeed to stop and appreciate every morsel we consume; and brachos are the key to focusing us on that goal.

Unfortunately, many of us observant Jews are not sufficiently careful with our brachos, reciting them hurriedly and pro forma, without summoning the requisite attention to the meaning of their words, and often while doing something else: working, reading, conversing, even driving.  What’s more, as above, the laws governing brachos can be very intricate; not having studied them is a recipe (I’m sorry) for error.

In the non-Orthodox Jewish world, to the best of my knowledge, there is little observance of brachos altogether.

Which leads me to a thought.  With all the contemporary Jewish world’s disagreements and disagreeableness, all the polarized points of view and highly charged issues, might a small measure of pan-Jewish People unity be attainable by a collective embrace of brachos?

Brachos, after all, don’t touch upon issues like feminism (they are – well, almost all – gender-neutral) or insularity (they are recited on both cholent and crêpes Suzette).  And brachos are not even within firing range of topics like drafting charedim in Israel or forcing changes in their educational system.  In other words, they may well comprise a perfect potential Jewish unifier.

For those of us who identify unapologetically with the Jewish past and consider halacha sacrosanct, a renewed focus on brachos would mean strengthening our knowledge about the laws of brachos and undertaking to recite them properly.  Instead of mumbling them, let us resolve to pronounce each word clearly and carefully.  Instead of a mindless “shkolniyedvoro,” let us try harder to articulate our words and think about what we’re saying.

For the part of the Jewish world that does not consider itself governed by halacha at all, simply focusing on the Divine blessings inherent in our food, and acknowledging them with brachos, should present a wonderful opportunity to embrace a non-hot-button Jewish observance.  There are many excellent English-language guides to the recitation of brachos available today.

And for Jews who embrace halacha in principle but feel a need to champion elements of contemporary societal mores, mindful eating and Jewish observance would seem a perfect pairing.

Imagine the importance and laws of brachos being spoken about from the pulpits of Orthodox shuls, Reform temples, feminist yeshivot and Jewish Federation meetings.

No, it won’t bring all Jews to agree on other things. But you know what they say about the journey of a thousand miles…

© 2013 Rabbi Avi Shafran

There’s A Will

A new book, “The Anatomy of Violence,” suggests that “the seeds of sin are brain-based,” at least in a sense.  Its author, psychologist Adrian Raine, isn’t speaking of sins like gossip or tax evasion but rather violent crime.  And he makes the case that such criminalities may have biological roots, and that “neurocriminology” may provide society with ways of curbing crime.

Both genetic makeup and prenatal environment, Dr. Raine asserts, are factors that can presage a criminal mind.  On the most basic level, it has long been clear that there is a correlation between certain “accidents of birth” (or of life) and proclivity to crime.  Being born male rather than female, for instance, makes it much more likely that one will become a mugger or murderer.  And certain types of damage to the brain have long been observed to yield changes in behavior, sometimes including a proclivity to violence.

Likewise, more mundane things, like an expectant mother’s smoking or consumption of alcohol (not to mention even more severe chemical insults to the brain of a fetus, like exposure to lead or use of other drugs), can contribute to the likelihood of eventual bad behavior on the part of the child later born.  That a low resting heart rate, however, correlates with antisocial behavior – a finding relayed by Professor Raine – comes as something of a surprise, as does evidence that fish consumption may have the opposite effect.

Many other factors, of course, biological, environmental and situational, may also contribute to the statistical likelihood that a person will be prone to violence.

Correlation, however, does not mean causation.  Shoe size, after all, broadly correlates with math proficiency – most small children are not as good with numbers as are we larger people.

More important still, even causation needn’t be absolute.  Professor Raine cites the case of a man who possessed many of the risk factors for becoming a killer.  The fellow suffered from a vitamin deficiency as a young child, as a youth had a low resting heart rate; and abnormal structures in his brain, revealed by a scan, were reminiscent of abnormalities in the brains of serial killers. And in his pre-teens, the subject joined a gang, smoked cigarettes and engaged in vandalism.  With time, however, he veered from that course, and in fact even wrote a book about the biological roots of violence.  Yes, Professor Raine speaks of himself.

“Why didn’t I stay on that pathway?” he wonders.

The answer is simple: human beings have free will. Bad behavior, whether of the sort universally recognized as such or, for a Jew, behavior forbidden by the Torah, is ultimately a choice.

To be sure, as the great Jewish thinker Rabbi E. E. Dessler (1892-1953) famously pointed out, different people occupy different points of a free will continuum.  One man’s free-will challenge (because of his nature and nurture) may be to refrain from murdering someone he hates; another’s, whether to opt for a kosher product over a tastier non-kosher one; yet another’s, whether to utter a sentence that straddles the line of derogatory speech.

But Francis Crick (quoted by the professor) was wrong to assert that “free will is nothing more than a large assembly of neurons located in the anterior cingulate cortex.”  The choices we make may be processed by our brains, but they are sourced in our souls.

Reviews of the book and its thesis reminded me of the Talmudic statement (Shabbos, 156b) of Rav Nachman bar Yitzchak.  There are two opinions in the Talmud about whether astrological factors, presumed to influence the world and most of its inhabitants, have any effect on Jews.  Rav Nachman bar Yitzchak was of the school of thought holding that they do.  In fact, he declared that someone born under, so to speak, an unlucky star, the planet Mars, will be a “shedder of blood.”

But, he goes on to say, what that means is that he will be either a surgeon, a mugger, a ritual slaughterer of animals or a circumciser.  An orientation, in other words, is one thing; its expression, quite another.  Because that is a matter of will.

So whether one seeks the sources of personal psychologies in a scan of a brain or a scan of the sky, in a double helix or a double star, whether one peers through a microscope or through a telescope, ultimately we all choose our actions, and thus our fates.

© 2013  Rabbi Avi Shafran

Addendum

A correspondent  had some complaints about my essay below “Meet Cindy,” and since the points he raised are important ones, I am sharing my slightly edited responses to him here.

He quoted the following paragraph from my essay:

“And a country that calls itself the Jewish one, it can well be argued, has a special responsibility to underwrite the portion of its populace that is willfully destitute because of its dedication to perpetuating classical Judaism.”

And then commented:

The charedi community is not willfully destitute because of its dedication to perpetuating classical Judaism. In classical Judaism – both in sources in the Gemara and Rishonim, and in actual Jewish history – people worked to support their families. Following the directives of Chazal, people raised their children with the skills, the desire and the motivation to work for a living. There was no system of mass kollel.

The charedi community is not willfully destitute because of its dedication to perpetuating classical Judaism. It is willfully destitute because of its dedication to perverting classical Judaism.

My response:

Classical Judaism is, above all, hewing to the interpretation/application of the Torah’s timeless principles to each generation and place’s situation and needs.  The dorshov of each dor vi’dor [spiritual leaders of each generation] are the arbiters of what is required of us in each era of our history.

I may personally be (and am, in fact) a Hirschian in outlook, and be as puzzled as you at the seeming shunning of what seems to me to be healthy development for Klal Yisrael in Eretz Yisrael.  But even Rav Hirsch, in his day, recognized that his school model in Germany could not be “exported” to Eretz Yisrael.  To ascertain when we are correct and when we are not is what we have Gedolim [recognized spiritual leaders] for.

In the end, whatever my natural personal view, my emunas chachamim [trust in the judgment of the wise] trumps it.  When there is a consensus of the greatest and most recognized Gedolim that a certain departure from the historic norm (and the historical uniquenesses of our times are many), I don’t second-guess them, because I believe that Hashem’s will is that I follow the decisions of the judges “in my day.”

My correspondent then asserted that my analogy between charedim and my fictional creation Cindy was flawed.  He wrote:

1. Cindi is raising her children to be productive citizens, not to also require welfare.

2. Motherhood is something valued by everyone. Being charedi is not. (It’s not being a religious Jew that we’re discussing – plenty of people who work are also religious Jews.)

3. Cindi is presumably appreciative for the aid. She’s not part of a movement that disparages the government, refuses to serve in the army even in times of great national danger, and refuses to display any gratitude to those who defend her and those who financially support her.

4. Cindi’s situation is unplanned, unwanted, and she hopes to get out of it one day.

My response:

1)  Perhaps she is, perhaps she isn’t.  But if she isn’t, should we feel differently about her?  And if so, should we see ourselves as responsible public policy makers or as social engineers?  You may well disagree with my feeling that how Cindy raises her children should not matter, and I respect your point of view on that, but I reject it.

2) My essay wasn’t an attempt to convince a reader that the charedi way is right or wrong.  It was intended only to, through a thought experiment, help him/her to better relate to how charedim feel.

3)  Most charedim do not disparage the government (at least not any more than non-charedim or secular Israelis).  Their avoidance of military service is for principled religious reasons, not as some sort of eye-poking (and they contribute – at least to those of us who consider Torah-study to be protective of Klal Yisrael – much to the security of the state). 

And I explicitly wrote that charedim need to be makir tov [have and express gratitude to the state for what it provides them].

4) That is a valid difference.  Whether it makes a difference is another matter.  I don’t think it does.   

Meet Cindy

Meet Cindy.

A single mother living in the Midwest with her three young children, she’s deeply unhappy because of the news she received the other day.

Although Cindy does some sales work from her computer at home, her income is insufficient to cover the monthly mortgage payments for her small home and food and clothing for her family. Until now, though, she has managed to make ends meet, with the help of various social safety-net needs-based programs like WIC and food stamps.

Earlier this week, though, Cindy, and hundreds of thousands of others like her, received word that the government is ending those programs.  Budgetary concerns were one reason given but the letter Cindy received also noted that she could still qualify for some of the benefits she was receiving if she found and accepted a full-time job.  “When citizens like you, Cindy,” the personalized form letter explained, “are a regular part of the workforce, it benefits not only you and your family, but the economy as a whole.  And that is something that every loyal citizen should appreciate!”

Well, says Cindy to herself somewhat bitterly, I don’t.  The state of the economy is important, but improving it isn’t my main personal goal.  Raising my children myself is what I consider my immediate mandate. Spending my days in an office or behind a counter and entrusting my children to some sitter is not what I consider good parenting. Being a full-time mother, she tells herself, may not make me a model citizen, but it makes me, at least in my mind, a model human being.  My children are my most important asset.

The new bad news, moreover, came on the heels of some earlier unhappy tidings, the repeal of the federal mortgage interest tax deduction, which increased Cindy’s tax bill by a good chunk of her income.

Making Cindy even more outraged and despondent was the popular move to require that every American child join a “junior civil service program” where values she (as a conservative Christian) doesn’t endorse are taught.  And then, to top things off, there were the relentless media and public assaults on “welfare” single parents like her, the newspaper editorials and talk-show hosts labeling of them as “freeloaders,” “unpatriotic” and even “parasites.”  It made her angry enough to cry.

Cindy, of course, and her troubles, are hypothetical.  Our country still extends a generous safety net to its neediest citizens, and the mortgage interest deduction is alive and well. Children are not forced into any educational program and can even be home-schooled.  But can you relate to how hypothetical Cindy would feel if the nightmare scenario were in fact real?  If so, then you might better appreciate how charedim in Israel are feeling these days.

Over the past decade or so, their social services – primarily in the form of child allowances – have been drastically cut, several times.  Now what is left of the allowances is under the knife again. And charedim are being pressured to forgo full-time Torah-study, their “most important asset” and first priority.  They are told that they must enter the army, even though there is no need for them in the military (as its leaders have repeatedly stated) and they fear the impact Israel’s “military melting pot” will have on their lives.  They are vilified without pause, and cajoled to act not in what they consider their best interest (and the best interest, ultimately, of the entire country) but rather just to do what they are told.  All, of course, for “the economy” and the “greater good.”

No one, to be sure, can claim a “right” to social service entitlements.  And one can, if he chooses, take the stance that no citizen of any country should expect, for any reason, that the government needs to take care of him in any way. That’s a perfectly defensible position, at least from a perspective of cold logic.

But every compassionate country recognizes the rightness of assisting the poor.  And a country that calls itself the Jewish one, it can well be argued, has a special responsibility to underwrite the portion of its populace that is willfully destitute because of its dedication to perpetuating classical Judaism (which, as it happens, is what kept the connection between Jews in the Diaspora and their ancestral land alive for millennia, and allowed for a state of Israel in the first place).

Gratitude for what one has received is a deeply Jewish ideal.  And Israeli charedim should indeed feel and express gratitude for all that the state provides them.  But absent are calls for non-charedi Israelis – or the rest of us –  to consider feeling and expressing gratitude for the charedi willingness to live financially constricted lives in order to remain immersed in Jewish practice and learning.  Instead, just the opposite is seen: Israeli charedim are used as political pawns, regarded and portrayed and treated as Israel’s misfortune.

Cindy would relate.

© 2013 Rabbi Avi Shafran