Why Pets Don’t Go To Heaven

When the woman identified herself as the producer of a national network television news program, I naturally sat up and straightened my tie. And she was only on th

Dropping my voice a couple octaves to project the requisite gravitas, I asked how I might be of help. As spokesman for a major national Jewish organization, Agudath Israel of America, I am regularly called by reporters from Jewish papers, and not infrequently even by various general media. But it is a relatively rare occurrence to hear from a major TV network’s news department.

I imagined she sought comment on some pressing Jewish issue of the day, or perhaps that I articulate an Orthodox perspective on some Jewish religious concept. I was quickly and properly deflated by her question:

“Rabbi, what we’d like to get your take on is the question of whether pets go to heaven.”

“Pardon?” I objected. She repeated herself, explaining that a survey on a popular religion-oriented website had revealed that the question of eternal reward for the four-legged or finned seemed of major concern to the participants. I responded that I really didn’t think I wanted to be part of the particular program in question. I’m ready for my close-up, I told myself, but if my only line is a single word – “no” – the debut will hardly be memorable.

She persisted, though, and, eventually, having been given a day to think it over, I consented. What I came to realize was that if the issue was really so important to so many, there must be some reason. And then I realized the reason.

Many of the most fundamental philosophical and moral issues of our time – indeed of any time – touch upon the special distinction of humanness. That is why proponents of abortion on demand, which they choose to call “choice,” choose as well to call an unborn child a “pregnancy,” or, at most, a “fetus.” Dehumanizing (used here in its most simple sense) a baby makes it easier to advocate for terminating him or her.

Ethicist Peter Singer has gone a significant step further, making the case for the killing of already-born babies who are severely disabled. He has written, pointedly, that infants are

“neither rational nor self-conscious” and so “the principles that govern the wrongness of killing nonhuman animals… must apply here, too.” Or, as he more bluntly puts it: “The life of a newborn is of less value than the life of a pig, a dog or a chimpanzee.” Professor Singer advocates as well the killing of the severely disabled and unconscious elderly.

In the realm of intimacy, too, the incremental abandonment of morality – of the Torah, that is, and subsequent systems based on its teachings – has led to a similar strange place. If the imperative of a man-woman union is, as sadly is the case, no longer accepted by much of society, why limit ourselves to the human realm altogether? That would constitute “speciesism.”

Indeed, one gentleman has already testified before a Maine legislative committee that proponents of a ban on animal sexual abuse are “trying to force morality on a minority”; he has also asked a judge to allow his “significant other” – who is of the canine persuasion – to sit by his side during a court case. The petitioner had been told that he needed special permission, he said, because, “my wife is not human.”

Professor Singer is supportive of jettisoning morality here too. The only conceivable reason for considering human-animal intimate relations to be unworthy of societal sanction, he cogently observes, is the belief that human beings are inherently superior. That, indeed, is the position of Judaism, and the professor rejects it summarily. “We are,” he maintains, “animals.”

All of which unfortunately casts an ominous cloud even on the entirely proper concern that animals not needlessly suffer. When “animal rights” groups advocate for better treatment of cows or chickens being bred for food, they may well simply be seeking to prevent needless pain to non-human creatures – a quest entirely in keeping with the Jewish religious tradition, the source of enlightened society’s moral code. But, in our increasingly morality-shunning world, they might also be acting as the subtle advance troops for a determined and concerted effort to muddle the distinction between the animal world and the human. Consider the astoundingly offensive but very telling title of a recent book that focuses on “the exploitation and slaughter of animals” in the contemporary world. “Eternal Treblinka” compares animal farming to Nazi concentration camps, decrying “the hierarchical arrangement of the world into ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ beings.”

And so what I came to realize is that much indeed of import to the contemporary world in the end revolves around the difference between animals and humans. It is a difference that not only keeps pets from meriting heaven (or, of course, hell), because they lack true free will and the divine mandate to utilize it, but also charges us humans with quintessential human behavior, as delineated by the Torah. Behavior that includes according special respect to human sexuality, and to human life, able-bodied or not.

That was the point I tried to make when the producer and her entourage eventually shlepped their camera equipment to my office to film the segment. I have no idea how

many, if any, of my comments made it into the program that was broadcast (I don’t own a television), but I hope that what I had come to recognize as a truly important opportunity to raise an important point wasn’t squandered, that at least a phrase or two of mine survived the cutting room floor.

And that some viewers may have been spurred to think about the fact that, whatever the case with pets, humans can indeed go to heaven.

But only if they earn the privilege.

What Da’at Torah Really Means

There’s been considerable buzz of late about what has come to be called “Da’at Torah,” the concept of trusting in the judgment of great Torah scholars regarding not only issues of Jewish religious law, or halacha, but issues of a sociological or even political nature no less.

In December, as Yeshiva University sought a new president, its long-time president Rabbi Norman Lamm explained why the opinion of leading talmudic scholars at the seminary was not afforded great weight. “We don’t work on the concept of da’as Torah,” he said. “[T]here is no principle of infallibility that we accept.”

At a recent conference, the “Modern Orthodox” group Edah’s director, Rabbi Saul Berman, recounted how encounters with Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik had left him with the impression that the elder rabbi made a distinction between religious matters, where “his authority on Halacha was binding,” and political or social matters, where they were not. The implicit message, The New York Jewish Week’s Debra Nussbaum-Cohen wrote, was that “Modern Orthodox Jews are not bound by Da’at Torah,” a belief “prevalent in the haredi world.”

A week later, Jewish Week editor Gary Rosenblatt pointed to a public apology that was offered by a respected rabbi for a misjudgment as proof that Da’at Torah is an inherently indefensible belief.

Whether Da’at Torah should be discounted by non-haredi Jews or not (not), and whether a rabbi’s admission of having made a mistake undermines the principle (it doesn’t), one thing that certainly does not help the cause of objective consideration of the idea is its misrepresentation.

Da’at Torah is not some Jewish equivalent to the Catholic doctrine of papal infallibility. Not only can rabbis make mistakes of judgment, there is an entire tractate of the Talmud, Horiut, predicated on the assumption that they can, that even the Sanhedrin is capable of erring, even in halachic matters.

What Da’at Torah means, simply put, is that those most imbued with Torah-knowledge and who have internalized a large degree of the perfection of values and refinement of character that the Torah idealizes are thereby rendered particularly, indeed extraordinarily, qualified to offer an authentic Jewish perspective on matters of import to Jews – just as expert doctors are those most qualified (though still fallible, to be sure) to offer medical advice.

Jewish tradition refers to Torah leaders as the “eyes of the community.” That is because they see things more clearly than the rest of us. Not necessarily perfectly. And there are times when G-d purposefully hides things from even His most accomplished disciples. But more clearly all the same.

What compels the concept of Da’at Torah is nothing less than belief in the transcendence of Torah.

In Jewish theology, Torah encompasses every corner of life. It is not limited to matters of Jewish law and practice. It extends to how one is to view happenings and face challenges, in one’s community, in one’s country, on one’s planet.

The phrase Da’at Torah may be a relatively new one, but the insinuation that the concept it reflects is some sort of modern invention by “unmodern” Jews is absurd. “Emunat chachamim,” or “trust in the judgment of the Torah-wise,” has been part and parcel of Jewish tradition for millennia. The Talmud and Jewish history are replete with examples of how the Jewish community looked to their religious leaders for guidance about social, political and personal decisions – decisions that, as believing Jews, they understood must be based on authentic Torah values.

The phrase “Modern Orthodox” seems to mean several very different things to different groups of Jews. But if the word “Orthodox” is to have any meaning at all, it has to reflect a basic belief in the supremacy and scope of Torah. And an appreciation of the concept of Da’at Torah – understood correctly – directly follows.

In the words of a great leader of Jews: “The very same priest whose mind was suffused with the holiness of the Torah of Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Eliezer, of Abaye and Rava, of the Rambam and Ravad, of the Beit Yosef and the Rama, could also discern with the holy spirit the solution to all current political questions, to all worldly matters, to all ongoing current demands.”

Those words were written in 1940, as part of a eulogy for a great Lithuanian Torah-scholar and leader, Rabbi Chaim Ozer Grodzenski. Their author was Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik.

[This article originally appeared in The New York Jewish Week.]

The Original Spin on Chanukah

Tis the season to be Jewish; menorahs and latkes abound, and oil (for each, unfortunately) will soon flow like water in countless Jewish homes. Chanukah, thank G-d, is once again upon us.

It has become fashionable to attribute the popularity of the Jewish festival of lights — second among American Jews only to Passover — to the fact that the winter Jewish holiday tends to roughly coincide with a major Western Christian celebration. But to see Chanukah as nothing more than a foil to another faith’s observance is to miss the Jewish festival’s conceptual essence. Chanukah may well resonate with contemporary Jews for a deeper reason — because it speaks, perhaps more than any other Jewish calendar-milestone, directly and powerfully to us.

Chanukah has been appropriated by a host of Jewish leaders and pundits for their own, often partisan, purposes. Last Chanukah, for instance, a New York news radio station repeatedly featured a Reform rabbi’s remarkable declaration that since Chanukah commemorates a victory over an oppressive regime bent on undermining the Jewish religious tradition, the holiday should be regarded as a celebration of religious pluralism. Several years earlier, a widely-published columnist (Orthodox, as it happens) suggested that the festival of lights is an affirmation of the need for tolerance.

Chanukah, however, isn’t celebratory Silly-Putty. It has a long, deep and clear tradition in classical Jewish texts, from the Talmud through the Lurianic mystical works to those of the Chassidic masters. And, on its most basic level, it addresses neither pluralism nor tolerance, admirable though those concepts may be in their proper place, but Jewish identity and continuity, the challenges most urgently faced by the contemporary Jewish world.

For the rededication of the Temple from which the holiday takes its name (Chanukah means “dedication”) and the military victory over the Seleucids that preceded it were unmistakable expressions of resistance to assimilation.

The real enemy at the time of the Maccabees was not the Seleucid empire as an occupation force, but rather what Seleucid society represented: a cultural colonialism that sought to erode the beliefs and observances of the Jewish religious tradition, and to replace them with the glorification of the physical and the embrace of much that Judaism considers immoral. The Seleucids sought to acculturate the Jewish people, to force them to adopt a “superior”, “sophisticated”, wholly secular philosophy. And thus the Jewish victory, when it came, was a triumph over assimilation. The Maccabees succeeded, in other words, in preserving Jewish tradition, in drawing lines.

And so the miracle of the lights, our tradition teaches, was hardly arbitrary. Poignant meaning lay in the Temple candelabra’s supernatural eight-day burning of a one-day supply of oil. For light, in Jewish tradition, means Torah, the teachings and laws that comprise the Jewish religious heritage.

Even the custom of playing dreidel, sources explain, is a reminder of the secret of Jewish continuity. The Seleucids had forbidden a number of expressions of Jewish devotion, like the practice of circumcision and the Jewish insistence on personal modesty. They also outlawed the study of Torah, which they rightfully regarded as the engine of Jewish identity and continuity. The spinning toy was a subterfuge adopted by Jews when they were studying Torah in pairs or groups; if they sensed enemy inspectors nearby, they would suddenly take out their dreidles and spin them, masking their study session with an innocuous game of chance.

Is it mere chance, too, that Chanukah seems so intriguing to contemporary Jews, so very many of whom are threatened with assimilation, not coercive, to be sure, but no less threatening to Jewish survival? Or might that coincidence be laden with meaning?

Meaning, and a message: Jews can resist the temptation to melt into the surrounding culture. They have the ability to put away the dreidels, take out the books and make serious, deeply Jewish, decisions about their lives.

May all we Jews have a happy, and meaningful, Chanukah.

© 2002 Forward

Candles in the Wind

There’s considerable cosmic meaning in Chanukah’s tendency to roughly coincide with a major Christian celebration (though this year they are several weeks apart).

For, while Chanukah is often portrayed as a celebration of religious freedom (or even, weirdly, as a salute to religious pluralism), the true meaning of the Festival of Lights is clear from the many classical Jewish sources about the holiday – from the Talmud through the Lurianic mystical works to those of the Chassidic masters. Chanukah is entirely about the struggle to maintain Jewish integrity and observance within a non-Jewish milieu, to resist assimilation into a dominant non-Jewish culture.

The real enemy at the time of the Maccabees was not so much the Seleucid empire as a military power, but rather what Seleucid society represented: a cultural colonialism that sought to erode the beliefs and observances of the Jewish religious tradition, and to replace them with the glorification of the physical and the embrace of much that Judaism considers immoral. The Seleucids sought to acculturate the Jewish people, to force them to adopt a “superior,” “sophisticated,” secular philosophy. And thus the Jewish victory, when it came, was a triumph not over an army but over assimilation. The Maccabees succeeded in preserving Jewish tradition, and protecting it from dilution.

The overwhelming gloss and glitter of the non-Jewish celebration of the season are thus a fitting contrast to the still, small, defiant lights of the Chanukah menorah.

And in times like our own, when assimilation and intermarriage are rampant, Chanukah should resonate even more meaningfully to us American Jews.

Release of the National Jewish Population Survey 2000’s data on Jewish affiliation and intermarriage has been delayed for now, but it is hard to imagine that when it comes it will bring good news. Some try to make lemonade out of the bitter fruit of contemporary Jewish demographics, choosing to celebrate the incorporation of the larger society’s perspectives and mores into “new forms of Judaism,” and to view intermarriage as a wonderful opportunity for creating converts – or, at least, willing accomplices to the raising of Jewish children. But they are dancing on the deck of a Jewish Titanic.

Lowering the bar for what constitutes Jewish belief and practice does not make stronger Jews, only weaker “Judaism.” And intermarriage is a bane, not a boon, to the Jewish future. Even leaving aside its inherent Jewish wrongness, consider what Brandeis University researcher Sylvia Barack Fishman discovered: fully half the intermarried couples raising their children as Jews hold Christmas and Easter celebrations in their homes.

Over so very much of history, our ancestors were threatened with social sanctions and violence by others who wanted them to adopt foreign cultures or beliefs. Today, ironically, what threats and violence and murder couldn’t accomplish – the decimation of Jewish identity – seems to be slowly happening on its own. Crazily, where tyranny failed, freedom is threatening to succeed.

The “miracle of the lights,” our tradition teaches, was not an arbitrary sign. Poignant meaning lay in the Temple candelabra’s supernatural eight-day burning on a one-day supply of oil. For light, in Jewish tradition, means Torah – the principles, laws and teachings that comprise the Jewish religious heritage.

Even the custom of playing dreidel is a reminder of the secret of Jewish continuity. The Seleucids had forbidden a number of expressions of Jewish devotion, like the practice of circumcision and the Jewish insistence on personal modesty. They also outlawed the study of Torah, which they understood is the engine of Jewish identity and continuity. The spinning toy was a subterfuge adopted by Jews when they were studying Torah; if they sensed enemy inspectors nearby, they would suddenly take out their dreidles and spin them, masking their study session with an innocuous game of chance.

The candles we light each night of Chanukah recalling the Temple menorah miracle reflect a greater miracle still: the survival of the Jewish faith over the past 3000 years. All the alien winds of powerful empires and mighty cultures were unable to extinguish the flames of Jewish commitment. “Chanukah” means “dedication.” It is a time for all of us Jews to rededicate ourselves to our heritage.

We have the power to keep ourselves from melting into our surroundings, and to resist the blandishments of those who insist that there is no other way. We know how to put down the dreidels and open the books. We can make serious, deeply Jewish, decisions about our lives.

And with our will, our study and our observance, we can prove worthy descendants of those who came before us, and continue as a people to persevere.

We can all have not only a happy Chanukah, but, more importantly, a meaningful one.

Getting In Touch With Our Inner Slaves

The word “slave” doesn’t generally inspire positive feelings. For Jews, though, especially when Passover arrives, it should.

To be sure, the images evoked when we think of servitude tend to be of economically or racially oppressed classes, of men and women being treated as if they were something less than fully human.

There are other types of servitude as well that have little or nothing to do with class. For example, whether we choose to confront it or not, we are all servants – indeed slaves – to a considerable host of masters. Most of us are indentured to one or another degree to any of a number of physical and psychological desires. Some are relatively innocuous, like the craving for a particular food – or for food in general – or the yearning to be entertained or pampered or allowed to sleep late. Other desires are more sinister, like the compulsion to ingest some addictive chemical, or the lust to lord oneself over other people, or the coveting of property or persons.

In contemporary times, many of us are enslaved virtually without even knowing it – chained to our work, taking orders from advertisers, moving to the dictates of the arbiters of style, addicted to the media or to the Internet. Oddly, every modern opportunity seems to morph into a new master; new options pull us even further from true freedom.

It seems almost as if it is a hard-wired part of human nature that we serve. Indeed, Judaism maintains, it is, and for good reason: Because we are meant to be servants.

We just have to choose the right master.

Most people are aware that Passover is the Jewish holiday of freedom, commemorating how the distant ancestors of today’s Jews, embraced by God and led by Moses, threw off the yoke of Pharaoh’s enslavement. But there is something very essential to the Passover account that many don’t realize: Though Egypt was rejected, servitude was not.

“Let My people go!” G-d ordered Pharaoh. But the command doesn’t end there. It continues: “… so that they may serve Me.”

The Jewish concept of freedom, or cherut, does not mean being unfettered, but rather fettered to what is meaningful; it does not mean independence but rather subservience – not to the mundane but to the divine.

Which is why Passover, in a sense, doesn’t end after its seven (or, outside of the Holy Land, eight) days. On the second day of the holiday, following the Biblical command, observant Jews begin counting, marking each of the following forty-nine days by pronouncing a blessing and assigning the day a number. The fiftieth day, the day after the counting, or Sefirat Ha’Omer, is completed, is the holiday of Shevuot (“Weeks”); it is in a very real sense the culmination of Passover.

For according to Jewish tradition, Shevuot is the anniversary of the revelation at Sinai, of the day the Torah was given to the Jewish people. And therein lies the deep secret of Jewish freedom.

The life of a libertine is not freedom but quite its opposite, enslavement to transient pleasures, to substances and possessions, to the dictates of society. Meaningful freedom, paradoxically, is being indentured – but to the ultimate master, the Master of all. And so as we count the days – quite literally – from the holiday of freedom to the holiday of Torah, we express (and, hopefully impress on ourselves) just how inextricably the theme of Passover is linked to that of Shevuot, how the ultimate expression of true freedom is having the courage and mettle to throw off the yoke of temporal masters and commit ourselves to what is meaningful in an ultimate sense: the will and law of G-d.

The rabbis of the Talmud put it pithily, punning on the Hebrew word for “etched,” used about the words carved on the Tablets of the Law. The word is “charut,” which the Rabbis compare to cherut, freedom.

“The only free person,” they inform us, “is the one immersed in Torah.”

© 2001 AM ECHAD RESOURCES

Time To Come Home

Sincere and dedicated Conservative Jews need to face an uncomfortable fact: Their movement is a failure.To make so sweeping a statement is painful to me. I have met and been impressed with too many non-Orthodox Jews to be able to cavalierly attack the philosophy of the movement with which they affiliate. Nor do I harbor the illusion that all is well and perfect in my own Orthodox camp. Every Jew, moreover, is equally precious to me. But despite that—indeed, because of it—I feel a responsibility to be blunt, despite my pain. I hope I will be forgiven by Conservative readers for my forthrightness, but their movement is effectively defunct.

To be sure, the endowments and dedications continue unabated. Construction projects, rabbinic programs, and Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) chairs are still well funded. But the essential goal of the entire Conservative experiment—to inspire Jews to Jewish observance—not only remains unrealized, but recedes with each passing year.

That failure has not resulted from any lack of effort. The Conservative rabbinic leadership has done all it could to set less demanding standards for Jewish religious observance, and has produced reams of paper purporting to justify them. It has established pulpits, produced rabbis, and attracted members.

But even the movement’s radically relaxed standards remain virtually ignored by the vast majority of Jews who identify as Conservative. According to the 1990 National Jewish Population Survey, a mere 29 percent of Conservative congregants buy only kosher meat. A mere 15 percent consider themselves Sabbath observant (even by Conservative standards).

A study of Conservative congregants conducted by the Jewish Theological Seminary’s Jack Wertheimer in 1996 confirmed that the movement was utterly failing to meet its most minimal goals. A majority of young Conservative-affiliated Jews polled said that it was “all right for Jews to marry people of other faiths.” And nearly three-quarters of Conservative Jews said that they consider a Jew to be anyone raised Jewish, even if his or her mother was a gentile—the official Reform position, rejected by Conservative leaders as nonhalachic. Tellingly, only about half of Conservative bar and bat mitzvah receptions were kosher, by any standard.

There are two explanations for Conservatism’s striking failure: (1) The movement is not honest, and (2) it is superfluous.

Conservative leaders are dishonest because they purport to accept and respect halachah (Jewish religious law). United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism executive vice president Rabbi Jerome Epstein, for example, proclaims, “We regard halachah as binding,” adding, admirably, that “to be committed to halachah means to live by its values and details even when we don’t like the rules or find the regulations inconvenient.”(1)

Admirable but outrageous. The facts tell a very different story.

Take the ordination of women. The decision to ordain women was made not by halachic scholars but by a commission composed largely of laypeople. Realizing that the Talmud faculty of JTS—those most knowledgeable about the pertinent halachic sources—opposed ordaining women, the then head of the seminary, Gerson Cohen, opted to let a commission make the decision. Only one of the commission’s 14 seats was assigned to a Talmud faculty member. In a work published by JTS, Dr. Cohen is quoted as having confided to friends his intent “to ram the commission’s report down the faculty’s throats.”(2)

More recently, Rabbi Daniel H. Gordis, acting dean of the University of Judaism’s Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies, admitted that “the Conservative Movement allows its laity to set its religious agenda.” That approach may be pragmatic, even democratic, but it is not even arguably halachic.

Only half of JTS rabbinical students polled in the 1980s, moreover, said they consider “living as a halachic Jew” to be an “extremely important” aspect of their lives as Conservative rabbis.(3)

Halachah receives lip service, at best, from the Conservative leadership. In late 1997, for instance, the dean of JTS’s rabbinical school, facing the wrath of outraged students, reassessed a letter he had written proscribing premarital and homosexual sex. It had been, Rabbi William H. Lebeau insisted after the uproar, only a “personal statement, not a matter of policy.”(4)

Conservative leaders’ attitudes toward same-sex relationships are a particularly timely and telling window into the movement’s true feelings about halachah. There is an undeniable halachic prohibition—in the case of men, an explicit verse in the Torah—against homosexual activity. Officially, the movement is still on record as prohibiting it; however, Rabbi Joel Meyers, executive vice president of the Conservative Rabbinical Assembly, has admitted that “there has always been a group within the RA that haq been consistently agitating for a change in halachah” concerning how practicing homosexuals should be regarded.(5) “Changing” a verse in the Torah is about as blatant an abandonment of halachah as can be imagined.

Indeed, the process of changing halachah on this issue has already begun. For starters, the movement’s 1996 decision affirming the Torah’s prohibition of male homosexual activity contained a striking dissent rejecting the Torah’s characterization of such male activity as an abomination.(6) The movement considers such dissenting opinions to be legitimate options for Conservative Jews.

Some Conservative rabbis already are officiating at same-sex ceremonies without jeopardizing their standing in the Rabbinical Assembly, according to Rabbi Meyers.(7) Conservative Rabbi Phil Graubart has even insisted that he is “committed to halachic creativity regarding homosexuality precisely because I’m in the Conservative movement.”(8) The former rector of the movement’s University of Judaism in Los Angeles, Rabbi Elliot Dorf, has openly endorsed the blessing of “gay unions.”(9) He predicts that as time goes on, “there will be an increasing number of Conservative rabbis who will look forward to affirming same-sex unions.”(10) All evidence considered, this does not seem an unreasonable expectation.

The bottom line is clear: At the same time that Conservative leaders are waving the banner of halachah, they are effectively ignoring it. Whether the issue is sexuality or Shabbat, the Conservative claim of fealty to traditional Jewish religious law seems little more than a figurative fig leaf, strategically positioned to prevent the exposure of the Conservative movement as nothing more than a timid version of Reform.

Halachah evolves, Conservative spokesmen protest; and in a certain sense it does. There is often a plurality of halachic opinions in a given case, they insist; and indeed there is. But for those who accept Judaism’s millennia-old conviction that the Torah and the key to its understanding, the Oral Law, are of divine origin, there are clear rules (part of the Oral Law itself) for applying halachic principles to new situations, and ample precedents delineating when legitimate halachic latitude crosses the line into dissembling. And objectivity is the engine of the halachic process.

The law of probability leads us to expect that there will be times when the halachic result will be more lenient than one might expect, and other times when it will be more demanding. Tellingly, though, and practically without exception, Conservative “reinterpretations” of Jewish law have entailed permitting something previously forbidden. Whether the subject was driving a car on the Sabbath, the introduction of “egalitarian” services, or the Biblical prohibition of certain marriages, the “reevaluations” have virtually all, amazingly, resulted in new permissions. That is a clear sign not of objectivity but of agenda, of a drastically limited interest in what the Torah wants from us and a strong resolve to use it as a mere tool to promote personal beliefs. Whatever merit such an approach might have to some, it is diametric to what Jewish tradition considers the true Jewish response: As our ancestors declared at Sinai, “Na’aseh v’nishma, We will do and (then endeavor to) hear.”

Honest Conservative intellectuals admit the movement’s disconnect from halachah. Conservative rabbi and respected scholar David Feldman put it succinctly: “Knowing how valiantly the Jewish Theological Seminary and the Conservative Movement have striven to hold halachah as our guide, we mourn all the more the surrender of that effort.”(11) Rabbi J. Simcha Roth, a current member of the Halachah Committee of the Conservative movement’s Israeli affiliate, Masorti, has referred to its American counterpart’s acceptance of Jews driving vehicles on the Sabbath as “untenable sub specie halachah.” At the 1980 convention of the Rabbinical Assembly, influential Conservative rabbi Harold Kushner put it even more bluntly: “Is the Conservative movement halachic?” he asked. “It obviously is not.”

As early as 1955, historian Marshall Sklare declared that Conservative “rabbis now recognize that they are not making [halachic] decisions or writing responsa but merely taking a poll of their membership.”(12)

In short, while proclaiming fealty to halachah, the movement’s leaders have brazenly trampled the very concept.

To explain why the movement is not only dishonest but superfluous requires some historical perspective. The Conservative movement was created not, as many assume, as a liberal alternative to Orthodoxy but as a conservative (its name, after all) reaction to Reform. In the 1800s leaders of the Historical School—the forerunner of what became the Conservative movement—minced no words in protesting the radical attitudes of some elements in the Reform movement. When the latter declared the laws of kashrut (which they derided as “kitchen Judaism”) obsolete, and when special services were held on Sunday, leading Historical School rabbis vehemently objected. The adoption in 1885 of the Reform movement’s first official manifesto, the Pittsburgh Platform, was the real impetus behind the birth of the Conservative movement.

Why did the founders of the Conservative movement discount Orthodoxy as an effective means of countering the innovations of Reform? Why did they feel the need to create what they hoped would be, in effect, a new Orthodoxy?

The answer is simple: They expected the “old” Orthodoxy—European-style Orthodox Judaism—to vanish. As a result of its stubborn refusal to tailor Jewish practice to the mores of the surrounding culture, Orthodoxy would simply boil away like so much overheated chicken soup in the American melting pot. Orthodoxy simply lacked the stamina, the assumption went, to confront the scientific, social, and technological challenges looming on the horizon of the 20th century.

The Conservative movement thus envisioned itself as a safety net—designed to break the fall of Jews committed to Jewish tradition when Orthodoxy inevitably vanished—and as a means of conserving Jewish religious practice in the face of the threat posed by the Reform movement.

This is not the place to detail the strengths of contemporary Orthodoxy. Obviously it has not vanished. Despite the many challenges and problems it faces, Orthodoxy is strong and growing, both in numbers and in intensity of observance. While no more than ten percent of the American Jewish population is Orthodox, eighty percent of Jewish day-school students are Orthodox. And considerable numbers of Jews who were not raised Orthodox have become part of the Orthodox community, including scientists, academics, and other highly accomplished intelligentsia. Halachic observance in the Orthodox community is stronger than at any time in American history.

Those Jews in the Conservative movement who, regrettably, have no interest in halachah will increasingly come to see the Reform movement as an attractive and logical option. Those Jews are, in effect, already Reform Jews. The Reform movement provides the license they seek, without any discomfiting talk of religious law. And in light of the Reform movement’s recent reconsideration of its historical rejection of traditional Jewish praxis, a Reform synagogue will become an even more comfortable place for Conservative Jews unconcerned with halachah to hang their kippot.

That is only half the reason Conservative Judaism is superfluous. The other half relates to Conservative Jews who do have regard for Jewish law. For those—and I believe there are many—who are honestly dedicated to halachah and Jewish religious tradition, the challenge will be to face the manifest fact that their affiliation is at undeniable and hopeless odds with their ideals. They may well decide to become part of the only Jewish community that actually does espouse their ideals: the Orthodox.

To be sure, the challenge will be a formidable one. After years, in many cases lifetimes, of sitting with their spouses and children during services, of hearing women leading prayers and chanting from the Torah, of driving to shul on Shabbat, halachicaly committed Conservative Jews will not find it easy to enter what will surely seem a somewhat alien world. Its unfamiliarity, however, is only a reflection of just how far the Conservative movement has drifted from genuine halachic observance over the decades.

The open-minded and determined, however, will soon come to understand that the truly Jewish time for sitting with one’s family is—as it has been among Jews for millennia—Friday nights at the Shabbat table, and that the Jewish time for driving and other acts prohibited on the Sabbath is from Saturday night until Friday afternoon.

Having the courage to recognize misjudgements is a laudable and inherently Jewish trait; the Talmud sees it in the very root of the name Judah from which the word Jew derives. Thus, many are the once-Conservative Jews who have blazed a trail of return to a halachic lifestyle. Others will surely follow.

I pray that my own world will, in turn, meet its own challenge: to be ready to warmly welcome all Jews into our shuls and into our lives. Here, too, there is a well-blazed trail—and much cause for optimism.

Because Ahavat Yisrael, love for fellow Jews, is not only a sublime concept and an underpinning of the Jewish people, it is part of the halachah—something Jews committed to their religious tradition know is God’s desire.

1. Jerome Epstein, “To Be Committed to Halacha,” Rochester Jewish Ledger (Sept. 17, 1998).

2. Tradition Renewed—A History of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (Jewish Theological Seminary, 1997), vol. 2, p. 502. )

3. Review of The Seminary at 100, in Conservative Judaism (summer 1998) p. 82.

4. “Battle Over Sex Sizzling at JTS,” Forward, (Nov. 7, 1997).

5. Eric J. Greenberg, “Activists Renew Fight for Gay Ordination,” New York Jewish Week (Apr. 9, 1999).

6. “Schorsch Faces Down Students in Stormy Session on Gay Rabbis,” Forward (April 2, 1999).

7. Julie Wiener, “Patrilineal Descent More Divisive than Reform’s Vote on Gay Unions,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency (April 2, 2000).

8. The back page, Jerusalem Report, (June 7, 1999), p. 56.

9. E.J. Kessler, “California Rabbis Back Gay Vows,” Forward, (June 12, 1998).

10. “Rabbis Sign Declaration on Sexual Morès,” Forward (Feb. 4, 2000).

11. David Feldman, “Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition,” Conservative Judaism (fall 1995), p. 39.

12. Marshall Sklare, Conservative Judaism—An American Religious Movement, (n.p., 1955). p. 237.

Shprintza Genendel, Chani and The Crouton Tree

The unmistakable aroma wafted from the kitchen into Shprintza Genendel’s living room, where she and her best friend Chani were playing a board game. It was called that because it is played on a board. And also because the two girls would quickly grow bored with it. That Friday, the delicious smell didn’t help.

“Chicken soup!” observed Chani, turning toward away from the game to the kitchen and licking her lips with anticipation. Shprintza Genendel agreed with that pronouncement and explained that “Ima always makes chicken, and chicken soup, on erev Shabbos morning.”

“Think she might let us have some now?” Chani asked.

“Sure!” said Shprintza Genendel, knowing her mother well. “But I have to tell you, we’re all out of croutons.”

“No croutons?” Chani said, her voice laden with disappointment. “Chicken soup just isn’t the same without croutons!” Shprintza Genendel solemnly agreed. With seriousness, too.

“Let me ask Ima if she’ll give us some money to go down to Fresser’s Delight to buy some,” suggested Shprintza Genendel. Chani gave her friend a smile and a thumbs-up.

Shprintza Genendel disappeared into the kitchen for a minute and came back holding a five-dollar bill. “Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah!” cried Chani. That was Chani’s way of expressing enthusiasm.

Shprintza Genendel and Chani practically danced out the front door, leaving the board and its pieces all over the floor – which elicited a deep sigh from Ima when she came out a few minutes later for a short break from cooking. By then, though, the girls were already marching up and down the aisles at Fresser’s Delight, looking for croutons. When they saw that the shelf where such things belong was bare, their faces fell.

Picking them up, they walked over to the checkout counter to ask the grumpy man standing there if the store had any croutons. “Maybe there are some in the back, somewhere?” asked, and hoped, Shprintza Genendel.

“Nope, sorry,” the checkout man responded dryly. “We sold the last container earlier this morning.”

“Oh, no!” exclaimed Chani. “What will we do?” Shprintza Genendel chimed in.

Mr. Grump-face just looked at the girls, smiled a crooked smile, and said “Why don’t you just go looking for a crouton tree?”

“A crouton tree?” both girls asked incredulously and in unison (and with wonder and at the same time, too). “There’s no such thing as a crouton tree!” Chani added, raising one of her eyebrows (a talent she possessed).

“Why, sure there is, girls. Where do you think WE get the croutons from?”

The girls looked at each other and then at the Mr. Grump-face, then back at each other.

“See that woods behind the store?” he said. “There are crouton trees in it.”

The girls were skeptical (also, they didn’t think he was right). But Shabbos was hours away, and they had nothing better to do, so they set off on a path into the woods.

The birds were singing as they walked. One, a reddish bird with a black tail, landed right in front of them. “Hi bird!” Shprintza Genendel chirped at it.

And do you know what the bird said?

Nothing, of course. Birds can’t talk.

And so the girls continued down the path, with the sun winking through the trees at them, as if to signal to them that they would indeed find a crouton tree on their walk.

But they didn’t. What they did find, though, was a squirrel, standing on a tree branch alongside the path, panting and eyeing them strangely.

“Mr. Squirrel,” Shprintza Genendel said quietly, making Chani smile and roll her eyes. “Would you know where we might find a crouton tree?

The squirrel shook its furry tail, and do you know what it said?

Nothing. Squirrels can’t talk either.

A half-hour later, after passing many different kinds of trees and shrubs but finding nothing that had anything like croutons hanging from it, the girls reached the end of the path, the end of the woods. They were in a neighborhood they didn’t recognize.

“Maybe we should head back the way we came,” said Chani, sensibly.

“Maybe we shouldn’t,” said Shprintza Genendel, non-sensibly.

Chani was about to start arguing with her friend but, as she looked around, she saw that down the street, not 500 feet away from them, stood a food store.

The sign over it read: “Basch’s Noshes.” Shprintza Genendel saw what Chani was looking at and, taking her by the hand, headed straight to the store.

There was a friendly-looking woman behind the counter, and she greeted the girls.

“Hi, ladies, I don’t think I’ve seen you here before.”

“That might be,” Shprintza Genendel offered helpfully, “because we have never been here before!”

Chani chuckled, and told the lady that they were on a quest to find croutons.

“Croutons!?” the lady almost shouted and then broke into a long, loud laugh.

“Yes, croutons!” said Shprintza Genendel.

“Well, my little pretties,” said the lady with a cackle that momentarily alarmed the girls. “You are in luck! You’ve come to the right place.”

She then pranced out from behind the counter and explained. “I ordered one case of croutons last week and the company sent me five cases by accident! I was wondering what I might possibly be able to do with so many containers of croutons! I need my shelf space for other things, like gefilteh fish and breakfast cereal, shoe polish and muffin mix!”

Shprintza Genendel and Chani slowly turned to look at one another, and the same smile seemed to crawl across their faces simultaneously (and at the same time, too).

They turned back to face the lady, who, then disappeared into a back room and returned a moment later with ten containers of croutons!

“All we have is five dollars,” protested Chani.

“No problem. Take them all. I need to unload these croutons. You’ll be doing me a favor by taking them!”

The girls couldn’t believe their good fortune. “Baruch Hashem,” said Chani, and Shprintza Genendel agreed. And before they could properly thank the lady, she had put the containers of croutons into a bag for them. Then they thanked her properly.

Taking turns holding the large bag, which somehow seemed to grow heavier as they walked, the girls headed back along the path they had taken before.

At one point, a dragonfly hovered in front of them, its slender, glistening body shiny blue and its wings beating furiously. “Hi, Mr. Dragonfly!” said Shprintza Genendel. “How are you today?”

And do you know what the dragonfly said?

He said, “Fine, Baruch Hashem. I just ate a tasty mosquito!”

It was a talking dragonfly.

The girls were momentarily taken aback, but it was getting late, so they didn’t carry on the conversation. They wished the dragonfly good luck finding other mosquitos, and hurried on their way.

When they reached the end of the path, they saw that Fresser’s Delight was closing for Shabbos. Mr. Grumpy-face was locking the doors. When he saw the girls, he asked them what they had in their bag. They showed him.

“Where did you get all those croutons?” he asked them.

“Oh,” answered Chani, carefully avoiding saying a lie. “Weren’t you the one who told us about the crouton trees in the woods?”

“Yes!” added Shprintza Genendel, following Chani’s example. “Thank you so much!”

And then the girls turned and headed home, but not before stealing a glance over their shoulders to see Mr. Grumpy-face, headed quickly down the path into the woods.

They giggled all the way home.

P.S : The soup was superb!

Meir’s Monster

Meir’s Monster

A short, almost-true story

for smart, almost-big children

Meir’s scream, the first time he saw the monster, was extremely loud (for the most part a high-c, though its pitch varied as he wailed), and his parents came rushing in a panic to his room.

It was 2:14 in the morning, and the creature had woken Meir up with growling and grunting noises. He wasn’t furry or fanged, but was terrifying all the same. He had a huge face – in fact, he was mostly face, with no visible body at all, just arms and legs jutting out from where his ears and chin should have been And the face, well, it was a frightful one, with angry eyes – four of them, in fact – and a bulbous, gnarled nose. At the end of the monster’s long, bony hands were clattering claws, which seemed to be reaching for Meir. And the monster’s mouth, which dripped with a mayonnaise-like substance, was slowly opening.

And so, Meir’s scream.

When his parents arrived, the monster promptly disappeared. When they asked Meir, still shaking with fear, what had happened, he couldn’t say a word. His tongue seemed frozen. Truth be told, he had only been speaking intelligibly for a half-year or so, and what speech he managed even in calmer circumstances was rather simple. But even “I saw a monster” eluded him for a full minute, until he managed to squeeze out the words.

“Now, now,” cooed Mother soothingly. “There aren’t any monsters.” Meir wasn’t calmed, though; and now, what was worse, he knew that his mother didn’t know everything after all.

All the same, though, Mother’s embrace and gentle rocking, along with Father’s singing quietly lulled Meir back to sleep in what seemed to be seconds, even though as Mother and Father could tell you, it was really close to an hour.

As fate would have it, the frightful monster showed up with frightful regularity, every night for many nights thereafter, and always at, or around, the same frightful hour. And each night Meir would scream, his parents (at first, both; eventually one or the other) would come, and the monster would, at that very moment, disappear.

Meir was not happy. How do I get rid of this monster, he thought to himself, once and for all? His father, sensing Meir’s anxiety (and remembering his own interrupted sleep) had suggested several methods. One was shooting rubber bands at the monster, a technique that Father taught Meir, but which wasn’t successful. Meir’s fingers just didn’t work right when the monster appeared and he could only fumble with the rubber band as the monster came alarmingly close. And so Meir had no choice but to resort to Plan B, the scream.

Then Father asked Meir to draw a picture of the monster, which Meir was happy to do with red and black crayons (although the depiction didn’t really look quite like the monster). Father then told Meir to take the portrait to bed with him and, when the monster appeared, crumple and crush it. The monster, Father said, would then disappear. No need to scream.

Alas, although Meir managed to crumple the paper when the monster next showed up, it had no effect at all. Meir figured, in fact, that it had probably made the monster all the more angry. And so he screamed.

Every night, for many weeks, was a monster night, and both Meir and his parents grew accustomed to the routine.

One night, though, Meir hadn’t even fallen asleep yet when he found the monster right at the side of his bed. But as Meir took a deep breath to scream, the monster held a bony finger to his mouth, as if to say “Please don’t.” And so Meir didn’t.

And then the monster, for the first time ever, spoke. His voice was gruff, as Meir had imagined it would be, but his words were quiet ones.

“I have a confession to make,” the monster said. Meir’s eyes answered, “What?”

“I’m only a figment.”

It took him a minute, but Meir managed to respond, although the monster certainly didn’t look like it was having a baby. “You’re prigmant?”

“No,” said the monster, with a hint of impatience but also, Meir thought, of a smile. “I’m a figment.

“A figment is something you create in your thoughts. That is to say that I am only what I am because you formed me in your head. I am real only because you believe in me.”

Meir didn’t fully understand, even as the monster continued to speak.

“The moment you stop thinking that I’m really here,” he said, slowly, “I won’t be.”

Meir thought he saw something like a tear emerge from one of the monster’s four eyes.

“What?” was all that Meir could manage to say.

“Think about it,” the monster said. And then, at the sound of Mother walking past the door, he just disappeared, leaving Meir to his thoughts.

And think he did, hard, about the monster’s words, and, as he drifted off to sleep, he thought that maybe he did understand them. He slept through the entire night that night, much to his parents’ delight.

The next day, though, Meir was unusually quiet. Mother and Father asked him if something was wrong. “No,” was all he said.

That night, though, he woke with a start at 2:25 AM. And there sat the monster, across the room, on a beanbag chair, eyeing him with all fours.

He stood up slowly and walked toward Meir’s bed. Meir was totally silent.

And when the monster reached Meir’s bed, he opened his mouth and spoke.

“Thank you,” he said.

Sack of Salvation

“Salvation.” Thadeusz thought the word so hard he found himself saying it aloud. His mind pressed on, impelled by his intense discomfort at what he had done, and he imagined himself basking in the warm forgiveness of his lord, a lord he knew had once been mere flesh, just like Thadeusz himself.

And who, again like Thadeusz, had suffered. The sins of others, one’s own sins, what difference did it really make? Pain was pain, and Thadeusz was feeling a good deal more of it than he cared to ever endure, though it was being increasingly lightened by the sweet balm of salvation-thoughts. Forgiveness would yet be his, he knew. He had an idea, the perfect idea.

The priest, Thadeusz recalled through the alcohol-haze, had often spoken about sin. There was little else, indeed, of which he ever spoke. And Thadeusz knew from the priest’s spirited words just where the roots of the sin really lay. Its branches may hover everywhere, even in the hearts of good Christians like Thadeusz, but its roots, its deepest roots, were buried firm and deep in the stinking swamp of the prince of darkness. And in the black souls of his cohorts here in the world of the living.

And so, Thadeusz’s own sin, he reminded himself once again, was not really his at all, but the devil’s. He had, of course, allowed the horned one to take control – and for that lapse surely needed his lord’s forgiveness – but the deed had not been born, could not have been born, in his own Christian heart.

The orphan-boy, in any event, had practically sealed his own fate, walking and acting and speaking as he had, tormenting Thadeusz as he had. For weeks Thadeusz had felt strange deep within him, irresistible urges to make the boy pay for the evil he had evoked, day after day, week after week.

And so, when the opportunity finally arrived, Thadeusz had eagerly seized the chance. It had been less a choice than an imperative.

The boy, round and soft and sneering, had boldly entered Thadeusz’s workshop that morning, as he had done so very many times before. That morning, though, no one else was there. Thadeusz had shouted at the little hoodlum to leave, but the brat just stood there smiling his smug, infuriating devil-smile. Children, Thadeusz thought, have no business in a blacksmith’s shop unless they are apprenticing, and that fat demon had neither the physique nor the discipline for the work. When Thadeusz had started to walk to where the boy stood, the child darted out the door faster than Thadeusz would have thought the overfed urchin could run. When he reached the door himself, it had been just in time to see the boy’s plump legs, a hundred paces in the distance, disappear behind a well. Thadeusz had turned, frustrated, taken a long swig of his liquid apprentice, closed his eyes for a moment and then returned to work.

No sooner, though, had he cleared his head and lifted his mallet when he had caught a glimpse of some movement in the far corner of the shop – and realized that the little piglet had somehow sneaked back in without his even noticing.

Propelled by a flood of rage and other more nebulous but equally powerful feelings, Thadeusz had lurched at the scamp, caught him firmly by his overgrown, dirty yellow hair and pulled him toward the door leading to the room at the back of the shop. At first the demon laughed as he struggled, but when Thadeusz, without the slightest hint of a smile, had clenched his large hands around the boy’s fleshy, tender neck and began squeezing, the laughter abruptly stopped. Everything, indeed, stopped; the boy made a weak high-pitched noise or two, rolled his eyes and went limp.

Curiously, Thadeusz had felt even more emboldened with the boy’s wilted body in his hands, impelled to go further, overwhelmed. He dragged the boy through the door and felt and odd inexplicable excitement well up inside him, something like what he imagined a cat felt when it managed to snatch a mouse. Something seemed to beckon him through the dense fog in his head. He loosened his grip long enough for the boy to become conscious again and then amused himself for a short while with the boy’s humiliation, pain and fear – let the worthless scamp pay for what he had done – but when he finally applied his hands again, he did so firmly and decisively.

Finished with the boy, Thadeusz stood gazing down at his lumpy, lifeless body. The strange pleasure he had been feeling slowly but decisively metamorphosed into shame. He knew he was regarding the work of the devil, but still he felt fear, for he knew he had himself been the devil’s instrument. Over the hours that had passed since that moment, the thought of his involvement had pained him deeply and constantly.

And then he was inspired with his plan, which had emerged before his eyes like the friendly faces of his friends at the tavern after a long drunken nap. It was a simple plan, but profound all the same. Indeed, it was a beautiful plan. He would turn the devil’s handiwork against the devil himself, fight hellfire with hellfire. And thereby win the forgiveness and love of his lord.

The boy had bled but a bit, no more than a few whiskey glasses’ worth, from the mouth. Now, though, Thadeusz was thinking blood and nothing else; it was, he knew, the key to his salvation.

And so, late that night, under the cover of clouds he knew his lord had sent to shroud the bright full moon, Thadeusz did what he had to do with a knife, stake and mallet, stuffed the boy into a burlap sack, hoisted it onto his shoulder and walked deep into the forest that abutted his shop. There among the trees and small animals, his nerves fortified by a few more swallows of his brew, Thadeusz did what he knew he had to.

Back in his shop, he relieved himself of his baggage and bounded up the stairs to where his bed lay. Despite the gruesome contents of the lumpy cloth bag that now sat in the corner of the shop’s back room directly beneath him, he slept soundly, like a tightly swaddled, well-fed baby; his dreams were lucid, filled with bliss, blood and salvation.

The insistent tolling of bells pulled Thadeusz from his sleep much earlier than he would have wished. Well, he thought, what did he expect on Good Friday morning? The town church wasn’t there to let him sleep as late as he wanted, now, was it? No, it was there to call him to serve his lord. And serve him well he would, Thadeusz thought with a smile, that day unlike any other.

After dragging himself out of bed, Thadeusz washed his face with stale water from the basin on the floor nearby and dressed himself in his Sunday finest, clothing that differed from his workday dress only in its relative lack of burn-marks and caked-on filth.

Before leaving the shop for the outhouse, he opened the door to the back room a crack and stole a glance at the sack in the corner. It was just as he had left it, not that he’d expected to find it otherwise. Only the two or three widening patches of crimson now staining the coarse cloth marked the sack’s contents as anything other than mundane.

From the outhouse, Thadeusz proceeded to the church, where he quickly fell asleep during the service, awakening with a start sometime during the sermon, when the image of his lord’s torment and death began to encroach on the considerably less holy thoughts he had been entertaining. The priest was describing the events at Calvary, quoting familiar passages from Matthew. Thadeusz stretched and smiled broadly. The words, he knew, were addressed to him.

Hours later, back in his room above the shop, Thadeusz watched evening fall and picked his teeth. His usual spartan dinner, boiled potatoes and weak beet soup, seemed particularly delectable that night, enhanced by his anticipation of where he would be and what he would be doing somewhat later.

Thadeusz dozed off again at the table and when he awoke he rushed out to look at the moon. It was just past midnight. Only a few more hours, he thought happily. He descended the stairs and entered the back room to gaze again at the sack in the corner. The telltale spots had widened somewhat since the morning but their cherry redness had now faded to a pale, earthy brown. Thadeusz imagined his own iniquity fading too, slowly disappearing and then dissolving altogether in the blessed solvent of salvation. Only a few more short hours.

The hours however, turned out to be anything but short. Thadeusz didn’t dare drink as he waited, for fear of falling asleep again and missing his appointment with destiny. Time seemed to plod along heavily; he imagined the devil straining against the moon, pushing it back toward the horizon. It wouldn’t work, though. He and his lord would persevere.

He thought back to the sermon at church that morning. He couldn’t remember much of its theme but certain phrases, those he has heard many times before, slipped quite easily back into his consciousness. There was “blood of the lamb”. And “his blood be on us and on our children.” He had, Thadeusz realized with a smile, become a scholar, even before his salvation.

Thadeusz stole outside occasionally to check the sky and the sounds, and finally, when he was convinced by the position of the early spring moon and the perfect stillness of the cool, clean air that the assigned time has finally arrived, he set himself resolutely to the mission ahead.

With a happy grunt, he heaved the sack with its unwieldy, unsavory contents onto his shoulder, and took a deep, excited breath. The time had come to turn the devil’s work to his lord’s purposes. He muttered a hurried prayer, took a long swallow from the bottle he had so righteously shunned all night, and marched like a soldier through the door, out into the still, pregnant, holy night.

Through breaks in the cloud cover occasionally allowed the moon to cast its cold, harsh light on the trudging, burdened figure, no one in the town surveyed the scene. Thadeusz reached the vicinity of his destination and, although the streets were utterly empty, he tried to assume an even lower profile, stealing through the alleyways like a cat, imagining himself pushed ahead by the wings of loving angels.

As he closed in on the house he sought, he thanked his patron saint that no Jew of the town had stretched his Passover feast that far into the early hours. The ghetto was as motionless and black as the rest of the town. The devil’s own darkness, he snickered, would become Thadeusz’s ally.

Passover, Thadeusz’s mind touched the word like it was a snake. The gall of those Jews, celebrating the death of his lord, even as they insisted on denying his resurrection. They, the ones who killed him in the first place! Truly the devil’s seed, as the priest had said.

But the lord had risen, Thadeusz knew. That was Easter, after all, whether the Jews knew it or not.

And he too, Thadeusz, had risen, he thought as a grateful tear ran down his grimy cheek. Above the very devil himself.

The house! He had no memory at all having crept so close, but there it was, within his touch. It seemed to have suddenly materialized before him; all in all, a good sign, he thought, as he shifted his sack from one shoulder to the other. Feeling its contents awkwardly shift, he couldn’t help but picture what lay inside it. The fat mouth hopelessly agape, the bulging eyes recalling the boy’s last moments of terror, the once-succulent body now drained of blood and, rigor mortis having faded hours earlier, utterly, decisively limp. When the carcass would be found, Thadeusz mused, the slit throat and dearth of life-fluid would be immediately noticed, along with the oozing, ugly wounds where Thadeusz had carefully hammered his metal stake, at the center of the palm of each flabby hand and through the ankles of the swollen, dirty feet.

Thadeusz walked, slowly nervously, along the side of the building, feeling for the cellar window he knew would be there. It was, and he practically yelped with glee when his hand finally found it. The full moon poked through the clouds at that very moment but then disappeared once again. Thadeusz knew without doubt that the lord was with him.

It would be a tight fit, he realized, but he was a strong man. He smiled as he reassured himself that the boy would surely not object to being pushed a bit, under the circumstances.

The baker’s name, Thadeusz was pretty sure, was Yapov or something of the sort. He had come to the ghetto often enough to buy the baker’s cheap bread, but had never engaged the man in conversation. What difference did the Jew’s name make, anyway? It would be mud soon enough and, if Thadeusz was lucky, the cursed devil would be taking some of his fellows along with him to the grave – after a long spell on the wheel.

The boy, Thadeusz reflected with a cynical smirk and no small touch of resentment, might even be made a saint. Killed for his pure, innocent – here Thadeusz stifled an audible laugh – blood. Killed to provide the magical ingredient for the Jews’ Passover blood-bread. Killed by the devil’s own, martyred for his lord.

He himself, though, Thadeusz reassured himself, would also be hailed, if not as a saint then at least as a hero – and there was considerably more to be gained, in any event, as a live hero than as a dead saint. He, after all, as the townsfolk searched for the urchin, would make the discovery. He would know just where to look.

Buoyed by his happy thoughts, Thadeusz placed his burden firmly against the cellar window and pushed. The sound of the breaking glass was muffled by the bulk of the sack and its contents. He pushed harder and harder, putting pressure now here and now there, until the bundle somehow squeezed through the narrow opening. It landed on the dirt floor inside with a dull, satisfying thud. Thadeusz laughed aloud again, then caught himself and looked nervously around. All was still.

Before heading home again, the penitent paused and looked heavenward. He thanked his lord for his love and forgiveness and, beyond all else, for inspiring him with the means of his absolution.

How wondrous, Thadeusz thought with deep humility, that his lord’s grace had extended him that holy insight. And how wondrous and beautiful that Salvation was now his.

Ignorance of Things Past

“Nurse! Harebrained harridan. Nurse! I know you can hear me! Nurse!”

She’s unbelievable. For all that girl knows I’m lying here breathing my last and she’s so engrossed in her MTV she can’t even hear me. Or probably just doesn’t care. Witch.

“Witch, get up here! Right this min – oh, well it’s about time. Were you waiting perhaps, for a convenient cardiac arrest to shut me up? I need to take my pills now. It’s afternoon, isn’t it? What? Are you sure? I’ve had dinner too? All right, well, I need some ice cubes anyway. Yes. And you can turn that television down. It’s polluting my air. A few more. There.

So patronizing, that woman, so patronizing. I’m so bored. I can’t think of anyone I know that I’d like to talk to who’s not dead. If only I weren’t stuck in this stupid bed I know I’d find something or other to do.

“Nurse!”

Why does she act like she can’t hear me? That woman, why I have half a mind to-

“Why, yes a matter of fact I did call you. I’m quite aware of the fact that you’re going off duty now. And if my heart muscle decided to go off duty with you you’d probably just point to the clock and shrug. Is the night nurse here yet? Yes, you can go anyway.”

Witch.

“Just please do me one small service before you leave, dear. Please bring me another of those boxes of papers from the other room. Yes I know they are and I’d gladly help you if I could. Will you just bring me one already, curse you! I’ll put in a good word for you when I get upstairs.”

Jezebel.

“Thank you from the bottom of what’s left of my heart. Good BYE!”

And good riddance. Well, let’s see what scraps from the junkyard of the past lie rotting in this mess. Goodness, this is ancient stuff! From school days, some of it! Report cards. Hard to believe, these. I must have put the better ones in another box. Term papers. Compositions. So I was a young fellow once upon a time, after all, heh. I don’t seem to remember much of this and some of it even – why how unusual! This is odd. An unopened letter. Addressed to me. And in my own handwriting?

Now what the devil does this mean – “Not to be opened until 1999”? Well it’s a bit overdue then, I would say. I really don’t remember writing such a letter. It doesn’t make sense. I’ll just tear it open and – there. My, it definitely was sealed well… goodness, the whole letter’s in my own handwriting and… it’s signed by me!

A WORD TO MYSELF ON THE OCCASION

OF HAVING REACHED OLD AGE

I am writing this letter as one writes to a friend, feeling a bond of kinship yet respecting the dissimilitude that characterizes different personalities. Although I am writing to you, my self, the sameness isn’t real. For the differences imposed by time are likely as pronounced as they would be in the case of two totally different beings. Yet we are quite close: I am the teen age you; you, I hope, the elderly me.

I feel compelled to write this letter as a result of having experienced the close company of a group of older folks in the nursing home, some of whom I can recall from my childhood days as they once were. I have been struck by certain things and wanted to put them to paper so that I will be aided in recalling them when I become you.

As least some of the changes that ageing brings are negative. The elderly person’s decline in memory can be sorely complimented by an ill-tempered haughtiness, and the combination of the two can result in a person who is irritable, irascible, mistaken in a good many of his notions yet as certain as he can be that he is quite correct.

The finest, nicest victims of such senility are content to feel to themselves that those around them are basically naïve, and they are satisfied to keep their opinions to themselves. The rash ones, by far the majority, are not happy until they torment those around them with their mistaken convictions and can act obnoxiously without the slightest realization of the fact. To them, the years have brought only physical deterioration, not mental. And only an un-deteriorated mind can judge deterioration of mind. An affected mind views itself through itself and will not detect any failure of mental ability any more than a shrinking man in a shrinking universe would detect any change of scale.

Hence my writing to you, me. Through this communication you have the advantage of being cautioned by someone outside yourself (yet yourself) and warned to beware of the insidious menace of age, which can destroy personality and is by nature undetectable to those whom it infects.

Please look at yourself. Have you (I) changed for the worse over the years? Do you – we – intimidate or irritate people and make unreasonable demands of them? Are we hateful, spiteful, petty, begrudging? If so, the recognition of it may just be the beginning of its reversal. Senility might be affected by the senile’s recognition of the fact. We may be the one with the opportunity of demonstrating so, thanks to the foresight of your own young self.

Please, old me, know yourself and judge yourself. Realize where and what you may be, and let your awareness prevent or reverse your dissolution of mind. Save us.

Well this can certainly go in the garbage pile. I definitely had some weird ideas back when I was a kid. Not just weird. Stupid. Idiotic Kids are all just idiots anyway… where IS that nurse?… Doesn’t the witch know it’s time for my pills…?

Rabbi Avi Shafran

Reflections on Jews, Judaism, Media and Life