Allowing Women to Choose

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Prisoners of Preconceptions

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

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

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

A mindset is a terribly hard thing to move.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Never Going Back Again

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Prayer and Politics

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The “War of the Wall” Secret Weapon

It’s easy to dismiss the antics of Warrior of the Wall Anat Hoffman. Her guerrilla gatherings of women in vocal prayer services at the Kosel Maaravi, or Western Wall, in defiance of an Israeli Supreme Court decision and in affront to the traditional Jewish men and women who most frequent the prayer site, are legend. That’s largely because Ms. Hoffman, head of “Women of the Wall” and executive director of the Reform movement’s Israel Religious Action Center, makes sure the media are summoned and present to record her activities and detainments, which number eight at last count. She can bank, too, on the support – although some of it is uneasy – from the non-Orthodox American Jewish community.

Even those of us, however, who see danger and disunity in Ms. Hoffman’s goal of “liberating” the Wall from Jewish religious tradition – halacha forbids Jewish men from hearing the voices of women singing or chanting – would do well to realize that not all the women who flock to the activist’s side are political agitators. Some are surely sincere, and deserve our own sincere consideration.

Imagine a woman raised in a Reform or Conservative environment, who read from the Torah at her bat-mitzvah and for whom services led by women in the presence of men are the norm. When she visits Israel and is drawn to the Kosel she may well feel that something is somehow “wrong,” that while many women are present and praying, only men are conducting group services and reading from the Torah. Can we not empathize with her? If we can’t, we are lacking. Even misguided feelings are feelings.

There are powerful arguments for maintaining the status quo at the Kosel: Halacha is the historical heritage of all Jews. The Kosel is a remnant of the courtyard wall of the Second Holy Temple, where “Orthodox” services were the only ones there were. And permitting non-traditional group services at the Kosel main plaza will invite proponents of atheistic “Humanistic Judaism” to claim their fair share of the area, not to mention “Hebrew Christian” groups seeking their own time-share.

Making the case for halachic standards at the Kosel with reason, though, is one thing. More important than arguments in the end is empathy – on all sides.

For tradition-revering Jews, empathy means not confusing rabble-rousers with heartfelt Jews, not dismissing the feelings of differently-raised fellow Jews of good will.

And for those latter Jews, empathy means trying to feel what traditional Jews at the Kosel will feel if they are compelled by their commitment to halacha to leave the plaza during vocal women’s services.

I once queried a young granddaughter of mine about what she brought to school for lunch. She listed an assortment of sandwiches but an iconic one was missing. “What about peanut butter?” I asked. Her eyes widened and she said, “Oh, no. We don’t bring peanut butter into the school. Some kids are ‘lergic to it!”

The following week I was interviewed on a Jewish television program about the “Women of the Wall.” I had not planned to recount my conversation with my grandchild but it unexpectedly sprung to mind and I did. It surely inconveniences children with a fondness for peanut butter, I mused to the interviewer, to be unable to enjoy it for lunch. But concern for the sensitivities of others trumps our personal preferences, as it should. I suggested that sensitivities come in different colors. A halacha-abiding man may not be literally ‘lergic to women’s chanting. But in a way he is.

No doubt, Ms. Hoffman and others would proclaim that they are equally hurt by being unable to hold services “their way” at the Kosel, that their own tradition is insulted by halachic restrictions. But I think that a sincere, agenda-less non-Orthodox Jew will find the claim unpersuasive.

For more than forty years, the Kosel has been a place – perhaps the only one in the world – where Jews of all affiliations and persuasions have regularly prayed side by side. That has been possible because of the good will of non-Orthodox Jews – Israelis and Westerners alike – who, although they may opt for very different services in their own homes, synagogues or temples, have considered the feelings of those who embrace the entirety of the Jewish religious tradition.

Recapturing that good will amid a manufactured and media-seductive “War of the Wall” will not be easy. We Orthodox, though, might begin with empathy for fellow Jews who were raised very differently from us. And perhaps, in turn, that will merit us their empathy as well.

Living “Out of the Box”

Olivewood is beautiful. It reminds me of Eretz Yisrael and little carved camels; it has a delicate, calming hue. And silver, well, it is pure and shiny and smooth, and brings sefer Torah ornaments to mind. The esrog boxes made of ornately carved olivewood and elegant, glimmering silver are most fitting containers for holding an objet d’mitzvah. My personal preference, though, is cardboard.

Not any cardboard, that is, but my cardboard, the white heavy-paper stock box in which an esrog of mine, many years ago, was packed when I bought it. These days, the standard-issue boxes tend toward illustrated green affairs. The old-fashioned white ones were more bland, but also better canvases on which a child’s imagination could assert itself.

And so my old esrog box—or at least its panels, re-attached now to a more sturdy modern box, covering up the garish green—is unique. Its sides and top feature a young child’s rendering in colored markers of, respectively, an esrog and lulav; a sukkah; a smiley-face;and (inexplicably but endearingly) a turtle whose shell is a sukkah covered with schach). The artists are now either mothers or “in shidduchim,” but some of us like, on occasion, to time-travel. We look at our grown children and see five-year-olds where they stand. The artwork was beloved to me many years ago when it was created; it’s no less beloved to me now.

And so, in my own personal ritual, I yearly unpack my new esrog from its sale-box and delicately place it in the one whose panels have enclosed each of my esrogim over nearly twenty years. It’s not olivewood, and not silver. Not even gold or platinum. It’s more precious than that.

I admit I get some stares in shul. Some may think I’m a cheapskate, unwilling to shell out a few dollars for what they think would be a more respectable container for a holy object, or insufficiently aware of the importance of hiddur mitzvah, the ideal of “beautifying a commandment.” Others, though—at least I like to imagine—understand the ethereal beauty of my unusual esrog-box, and perhaps are brought to some memories of their own, and even to some thoughts appropriate to Sukkos.

The word sukkah, sefarim note, can be seen as rooted in “socheh”—“to see” or “to perceive.” A sukkah, it seems, can afford us a deeper perspective on life. Most people—and Jews are people too—go through life trying to “get stuff.” What storehouses of gold and silver once conferred on their owners is today bestowed by new-model cars and luxurious homes built on the ruins of less luxurious predecessors. But stuff is stuff.

And even those of us who buy used vehicles and live in modest homes are far from immune to the “get stuff” societal imperative. We may apply it differently, limited as we are by reality. But we still feel the push to add to the inventories we’ll never take with us.

When we sit in our primitive week-house, though, outside the homes that harbor so many of our possessions, we may find it easier to realize that our accumulations are not essential. We can exist without them. They do not define us. They will one day be left behind for good.

It might seem odd, but that thought—after all, Sukkos is zeman simchaseinu, “the time of our happiness”—is a joyous one. For true happiness begins with the realization of what doesn’t really make us happy. Possessions may provide a rush but, like any drug’s, it quickly wears off. The soul is not satiated, which is why, as per Chazal, “No man dies with half his desires in hand.”

True joy comes from things more rarified than what can be purchased. It comes from our relationships not with things, but with people—our parents and our children, our teachers and our students, our friends and our neighbors.

What we really have in life is not what we own, but what we are.

Some who have seen me walking to shul on yomtov with my reconstituted cardboard esrog box proudly in hand may have wondered why I hadn’t opted for a hiddur mitzvah. What they failed to comprehend is that I did.

The Gorilla’s Lesson

The little boy was petrified, as one might imagine, by the gorilla who sat down next to him at the table in his (the child’s) home. I hadn’t meant to scare the kid; I was just tired and needed to get off my paws.

It was a very long-ago Purim (the child is now a father and accomplished talmid chochom) and a group of us had rented costumes to use in Purim visits to homes while collecting for a worthy charity. The gorilla suit was very realistic (and very hot).

Sheftel, as I’ll call the boy (because it’s his name) was around three years old at the time. I was around 19. I felt bad, and immediately removed my head—that is to say the gorilla’s.

Sheftel’s eyes shrunk back to their normal size and the scream that had lodged in his lungs never made it to his wide open mouth. He saw it was only me.

When, a bit later, I replaced my gorilla head, Sheftel let out a scream. I reminded him from inside that it was only me. He screamed again. I took off the head and he immediately calmed down. I put it back on and, once again, he screamed.

Children, apparently, have to reach a certain stage before they realize that a costume is only a costume, that the person wearing it remains the person wearing it even when he’s wearing it. Sheftel had yet to internalize that truth.

Related and more poignant is the lesson of an old Yiddish joke, about Yankel informing Yossel that, unfortunately, Shmelkeh had just passed away. “Shmelkeh?” asks Yossel, “the guy with the oversized ears?”

“Yes, that Shmelkeh,” Yankel says sadly.

“The fellow with the terrible skin condition, the rash covering most of his face?

“Yes,” once again.

“The Shmelkeh missing an eye, and with the large wart on his chin?

“Yes, yes, that Shmelkeh,” Yankel confirms.

“Oy!” exclaims Yossel. “Azah shaineh Yid!” (“Such a beautiful Jew!”)

Superficial things, we come to realize if we’re perceptive, are, well, superficial. Masks, in other words, mask.

The theme of misleading appearances is, of course, central to Purim. Esther, the heroine of the historical happening commemorated on the day, hides her identity from the king who takes her as his queen. Her very name is rooted in the Hebrew word for “hidden,” and is hinted to, the Talmud teaches us, in words the Torah uses to refer to Hashem “hiding” Himself, rendering his providence undetectable.

Which it is in the Purim story. The absence of Hashem’s name from Megillas Esther reflects the fact that His presence was not overtly evident in what happened. Yet, His “absence” was itself but a mask; Divine providence, in the form of delicious ironies, informs the story at every turn. From Achashverosh’s execution of his first queen to suit his advisor and then execution of his advisor to suit his new queen; to Mordechai’s happenstance overhearing and exposure of a plot that comes to play a pivotal role in Klal Yisroel’s salvation; to Haman’s visiting the king at the perfectly wrong time… Hashem’s presence loudly hums, so to speak, in the background. If anything merits being called The Purim Principle it would be: Nothing is an Accident.

Even the very symbol of meaningless chance, the casting of lots, turns out to be Divinely directed and crucial to the Purim miracle.

Klal Yisrael, too, is “masked.” The people seem beholden to an idolatrous, lecherous king, and readily participate in his grand ball where he celebrates, of all things, the finality of the Beis Hamikdosh’s destruction, chalila.

But that was, as the Talmud teaches us, a merely superficial stance. In truth, behind the unimpressive Jewish veneer lay Jewish hearts dedicated to Hashem. And when events began to blow like a strong wind, the masks were ripped away. Our ancestors, in their fasting and prayers, showed their true essence.

Is it any wonder that on Purim we wear masks? And make fun—of ourselves and even (good naturedly) of others? What we mock are the masks we all wear, the particular character each of us projects. The mockery declares that such things are superficialities, camouflaging what really matters: the Jewish soul that resides in, and ultimately defines, us.

Send Obama a Message

The Obama administration considers Israel a sponsor of terror —at least according to Dick Morris, the disgraced ex-advisor to Bill Clinton, and a host of self-styled “conservative” media. The news was shocking—well, maybe not to the clever folks who knew all along that the president is a secret Muslim, but certainly to the rest of us.

What turned out to be the case is that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency maintains a list of 36 “specially designated countries” whose immigrating citizens get extra scrutiny because their nations “promote, produce or protect terrorist organizations or their members.” Note the word “or.”

“Produce,” in this context, means that terrorists reside in the country. Thus, countries like the Philippines and Morocco, along with Israel, are on the list. Approximately a million and a half Israeli citizens are Arabs—many of whom have ties to Arab residents of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. So no, with apologies to Mr. Morris et al, the U.S. does not consider Israel a terror sponsor.

What makes some people all too ready to misrepresent such things is that many Americans, especially in the Jewish community, have deep concerns about President Obama’s Middle East policies. My personal view is that these concerns are overblown. While I realize there are other opinions, as far as I can tell Mr. Obama’s positions on building in the settlements and on the terms of Israel-Palestinian negotiations have been American policy since long before his presidency.

Even doubters of Mr. Obama’s good will, though, should recognize the import of the administration’s declared readiness to veto any U.N. Security Council resolution recognizing Palestinian statehood. That stance risks the U.S.’s international political capital and may even, G-d forbid, come to threaten Americans’ safety. Might it speak more loudly about the president than his opposition to new settlements?

Speaking equally loudly is what happened on September 9, when Mr. Obama acted swiftly to warn Egyptian authorities that they had better protect Israeli embassy guards in Cairo besieged by a mob. When Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minster Barak were unable to reach the apparently indisposed Egyptian military leader Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta spent hours hounding the Egyptian, finally reaching him at 1 AM to let him know that if anything happened to the Israelis, there would be “very severe consequences.” Egyptian soldiers protected the hostages until an Israeli Air Force plane safely evacuated them.

Mr. Netanyahu later recounted that he had asked for Mr. Obama’s help and that the president had replied that he would do everything he could. “And so he did,” testified the Prime Minister.

It may not be meaningful for many, but I was struck two days later on the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks when the president, betraying his Islamic beliefs (joke!), chose for his reading at the New York ceremony the 46^th chapter of Tehillim. The one including the words (in the White House’s translation):

“Though its waters roar and be troubled… there’s a river whose streams shall make glad the City of G-d, the holy place of the Tabernacle of the Most High.”

And: “The God of Jacob is our refuge.”

Whatever our takes on this or that statement or position, hard facts are not up for debate.

Let’s not forget some such facts: The Obama administration has provided more security assistance to Israel than any American administration; he has repeatedly declared (first in 2009 in Cairo during his speech to the Arab world) that the bond between the U.S. and Israel is “unbreakable”; his Secretary of State lectured Al-Jazeera that “when the Israelis pulled out of Lebanon they got Hezbollah and 40,000 rockets and when they pulled out of Gaza they got Hamas and 20,000 rockets”; his State Department has condemned the Palestinian Authority’s “factually incorrect” denial of the Western Wall’s connection to the Jewish people; and much more.

Last week, in the lead-up to a Congressional election in Brooklyn in which Jews had ample other reason to vote against the Democratic candidate, some ads presented the contest as an opportunity to “Send Obama a Message”—which some Jews took to mean an angry message about Israel.

Many thoughtful Jews, though, have a different message for Mr. Obama: Thank you.

A Jewish Guide to Time Travel

Rabbi Shlomo Ephraim Luntschitz, the brilliantly insightful 16th century author of the Torah commentary Kli Yakar, comments on the fact that the word the Torah uses for the sun and moon—“me’oros,” or “luminaries,” (Beraishis, 1:16) is spelled in such a way that it can be read “me’eiros,” or “afflictions.”

“For all that comes under the influence of time,” he writes, “is afflicted with pain.”

Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner, the renowned Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivas Rabbeinu Chaim Berlin, saw similar meaning in the term “memsheles,” (ibid) which describes the luminaries’ role. Its most literal meaning, he said, is “subjugation.” We are, in other words, enslaved by time.

What is subjugating and frightening about time is not only that it brings about entropy and dissolution, that each day’s passing leaves us (as a poet once put it) “shorter of breath and one day closer to death,” but that it is entirely beyond our control. We can change our positions in space—moving here or there at will—but time seems frustratingly one-directional; its effects are entirely, utterly unchangeable.

Jewish tradition, however, informs us otherwise. We can travel, the Talmud teaches us, in time too.

“Sound the shofar at the new month, at the appointed time for the day of rejoicing,” declares the posuk in Tehillim (81) in reference to Rosh Hashana. The word for “at the appointed time”—“bakeseh”—is most simply read to mean “at the covering”—a reference, the Talmud tells us, to the fact that the moon, in pointed contrast to the situation on other Jewish holidays, is not visible at the onset of the Jewish new year. Rosh Hashana, of course, coincides with the “new moon,” when the lunar luminary is invisible to us.

Intriguingly, a mystical tradition attributed to the Zohar conceives of the moon’s apparent absence on Rosh Hashana as representative of the lack of “two witnesses” to the Jewish people’s sins. The sun, witness #1, is there—but the moon? Missing.

The moon has a direct role in Jewish life. It keeps time for us. The sun may mark the passage of days for all humanity, but it is to the moon that Jews are commanded to look to identify the Jewish months.

The moon is our clock. Perhaps it goes missing on Rosh Hashana because the holiday reminds us that we can transcend time.

Our time machine is teshuva, repentance. And that is no mere metaphor. We are actually empowered by teshuva to reach back into the past and alter it.

How else to understand our tradition’s teaching that sins committed intentionally are rendered by even the most elemental teshuva (born of fear) into unintentional sins? Or the even more astonishing fact that when teshuva is embraced out of pure love for Hashem, it actually changes sins into good deeds?

Consider that shocking idea for a moment. An act of eating of non-kosher meat years ago can be “accessed and edited” into the equivalent of consuming matzah on Pesach. We can travel back in time and change the past.

And so if one is a successful penitent on Rosh Hashana, there can indeed be no complement of “witnesses” to his past sins; the sins are no longer there to be witnessed.

The Rosh Hashana night sky, with its missing “Jewish clock,” reminds us that time can be overcome in a meaningful way, through sheer force of will.

This tossing off of time’s shackles may be what lies at the root, too, of the theme of freedom that is so prominent on Rosh Hashana. The name of the month it introduces, Tishrei, is rooted in “shara,” the Aramaic word for “freeing”; the day’s central mitzvah, the sounding of the shofar, is associated with Yovel, or the Jubilee Year, when slaves are released; one of the holiday’s Torah readings is about Yitzchak Avinu’s release from his “binding”; and Rosh Hashana is the anniversary of Yosef’s release from his Egyptian prison.

All of us, too, if we honestly and critically confront our lives and resolve to change for the better, can break free from the seemingly unshakeable bonds of time.

Gmar chasima tova!

GRAPHOANALYSIS: SCIENCE OR SNOW JOB?

As a boy growing up in the 1960s, I became intrigued with handwriting analysis. It’s an intriguing notion, an almost obvious one: our character traits are subtly expressed in our handwriting. Every person is unique, after all, and so is every person’s handwriting. Our brains are the physical organs that mediate our “selves” and ultimately produce our writing. It seems reasonable that our handwriting unconsciously reveals things about our personal characteristics. The revelations will be subtle, to be sure, but with enough research, studies, and testing, it should be possible, the reasoning goes, to establish rules to allow for the accurate analysis of personality from handwriting.

And, indeed, the claim that such rules are available and can be practically applied, at least by experienced initiates, is the fundamental principle underlying the discipline of graphology, or handwriting analysis.

I read whatever material on the topic I could find. In the end, though, I concluded that if graphology were in fact a science, it was too inexact and fuzzy to be of any use. And so I lost interest and moved on to model rocketry.

But graphology, to understate things, went on quite well without me. Today, there are scores of books on the topic; companies specialize in analyzing handwriting; individual graphologists offer their services for a fee; people use graphological analyses of their strengths and weaknesses to make life decisions; and employers routinely evaluate applicants at least partly on graphologists’ judgments of handwriting. (The use of graphological profiles as an employment tool is particularly popular, for reasons not clear, in Western Europe and Israel.)

Some Clarifications Up Front

When approaching the subject of graphology, it’s important to realize that the phrase “handwriting analysis” is sometimes used to refer to an expert document examiner’s comparison of a person’s handwriting with writing introduced as evidence in a civil or criminal trial. In such cases, the analyst (often called a “questioned document examiner”) is simply comparing details in one sample of handwriting with those in another and rendering his or her judgment about whether both were produced by the same person. Such expertise has nothing to do with graphology, the assertion that people’s character traits are discernable in their handwriting.

A second important point to keep in mind when investigating graphology, at least as it is embraced by most people today, is that it is presented as a scientific discipline. There are those who claim a mystical ability to divine personality and facts about individuals from their handwriting, just as there are people who claim to be able to do the same from facial birthmarks or palm creases or tarot cards. Some of those methods, depending on how they are used, may be halachically forbidden, although there have been Jewish mystics who, it is claimed, could “read” a person from his face or his writing. Whatever the merits of such claims, though, graphology’s contemporary promoters do not claim any such supernatural divination. What they say they do, rather, is a form of scientific analysis, the interpretation of handwriting quirks and patterns, based on what they claim to be a cause-and-effect premise, to yield subjects’ psychological, occupational, and even medical attributes.

A Little History

The earliest use of handwriting as a window into the mind may go back to the Roman emperor Nero, who is said to have judged people by their writing. The first written treatise on graphology is generally considered to have been produced in 1625 by an Italian named Camillo Baldi. In the nineteenth century, members of the Catholic clergy in France founded “The Society of Graphology” and one of them, Abbot Jean-Hyppolyte Michon, wrote several books on the topic. Within a hundred years, German thinkers had embraced the idea that state of mind affects handwriting; and Americans soon followed, with the establishment by a Kansas shorthand teacher of the International Graphoanalysis Society in 1929. (“Graphoanalysis” refers to one of a number of different schools of graphological methodology, which all differ in their assignment of meanings to certain writing patterns.)

It wasn’t until the 1950s, though, that experimental claims of graphology’s validity as a psychological tool were put forth, and its popularity began to soar both in America and Europe.

Method in the Manuscript

Although, as noted earlier, there is no canonical school of graphology, but rather an assortment of schools that each claim a particular technique of ferreting details of a mind from the writing that it has produced, most graphologists pay particular attention to the size and slant of characters, their curvature, and things like the pressure of upward and downward strokes. A right slant generally correlates with extroversion, and a left slant with introversion. The shape of the letter ‘t’ and the way it is crossed are important markers in most systems, as are the size of the personal pronoun “I” and the way it is rendered. Anyone interested in the finer points of the methodology used by the various approaches within graphology can choose from dozens of books and papers outlining the details of all the various systems.

Sifting Through the Studies

The intricacy of the systems utilized by graphologists is clear, as is the popularity of graphology itself. But is it justified? Have the claims made on its behalf been borne out by facts? Has handwriting analysis been proven to be a useful tool? The answers are clearer than one might expect, and—at least to some—may be surprising.

There have been literally hundreds of studies aimed at finding evidence for graphologists’ claims. The ones that have demonstrated efficacy on any level for handwriting analysis have been those conducted by graphologists themselves, or have appeared in journals where payment is rendered for the inclusion of papers. Objective studies in recognized professional scientific periodicals have yielded no evidence that personality traits can be reliably divined from handwriting.

Anat Rafaeli and Richard J. Klimoski, for example, studied expert graphologists’ interpretation of the handwriting of 104 real estate agents in 1983 and compared the assessments with the agents’ performance. No relationship was found. In a 1992 survey of research on handwriting analysis for personnel selection, Mr. Klimoski concluded that the “credible, empirical evidence” does not support the claims of graphology as applied to personnel selection.

In 2009, Carla Dazzi and Luigi Pedrabissi published a paper in Psychological Reports on a study they conducted about graphology and summarized their findings thus: “No evidence was found to validate the graphological method as a measure of personality.”

Even one of the very few studies that yielded a slightly greater correct/incorrect ratio in the judgments of graphologists over a control group—a 1973 paper for the Netherlands Society of Industrial Psychology—provides little succor for proponents of handwriting analysis. The Dutch researchers concluded that for judging an individual, “…graphology is a diagnostic method of highly questionable and in all probability minimal, practical value.”

More enlightening are the results of “meta-analyses” of studies on the issue. A meta-analysis is essentially an evaluation of a group of studies, which—since the weaknesses of individual studies are diluted in the pool of others considered—yields a clearer and more accurate picture.

In one such meta-analysis of 17 graphology studies in 1988, Efrat Neter and Gershon Ben-Shakhar found that graphologists were no better than nongraphologists in predicting future performance by examining an applicant’s handwriting. The researchers concluded that in cases where “neutral scripts” (writing samples whose content did not reveal anything about the writers’ lives, attitudes or interests) were used “the validities of the graphologists were near zero.” Their results, they wrote, suggested that the source of whatever “limited validity” may have been demonstrated for graphologists’ appraisals “may be the script’s content”—in other words, the content of the writing sample, not the handwriting itself.

In 1992, Australian researcher Geoffrey Dean published, in the journal of the American Psychological Association, a review of 200 studies of graphology’s efficacy. He found that no graphologist of any of the schools of handwriting analysis fared better than untrained amateurs making guesses from the same materials presented to the graphologists. In the vast majority of the studies surveyed, neither group exceeded chance expectancy.

The late professor of psychology Barry L. Beyerstein was a particularly blunt critic of graphology, calling it “scandalous that a pseudoscientific ‘character reading’” like handwriting analysis “should be used to make decisions that can seriously affect people’s reputations and life prospects.”

“The scientific literature,” he said, “overwhelmingly supports the notion that handwriting analysis is pseudoscientific bunk.”

The Handwriting Analysts’ Response

What do graphologists say when confronted with such comments and the results of studies finding no validity to their claims?

To answer that question, I interacted with accomplished handwriting analysts. They don’t dispute the fact of the scientific findings but insist that the studies are flawed. Some will point in the direction of their own, or other graphologists’, studies. Others claim that if handwriting analysis were unreliable, courts would not employ it. But I could find no evidence that any court of law in the United States has ever relied in any way on graphology (although, again, comparisons of handwriting samples to identify writers is commonplace in courts).

And some say, in effect, leave the studies aside; look instead at the facts—namely the convictions of their clients, who claim that analyses of their handwriting (or that of others that they have submitted) have been accurate, even astoundingly perceptive.

When such claims are examined, though, they tend to lose some luster. In many cases, the accuracy of the readings can plausibly be tied to the content of the written questions or writing sample submitted. The graphologist need not have consciously intended to mine that content but may nevertheless have registered elements of it in his mind, which later emerge in his evaluation. In cases of public figures, the evidence of reputations often seems to inform (again, consciously or not) analyses of their handwriting.

An example would be one graphologist’s analysis of presidential candidates’ handwriting before the 2008 elections. He concluded that Senator John McCain has an “optimistic nature” and also “a restless inner temperament, with elements of impulsivity and impatience. He can blow up in an instant… prefers to defend the given order and is stubborn, determined and unyielding in his approach to life.”

And, the analyst added, the senator is a “maverick.” All of which is common knowledge.

As to then-Senator Barack Obama, an analyst said that he “needs to always be the center of attention,” has a “seemingly informal style” and “has overcompensated for an absent father and a overbearing mother and grandmother.” (The same handwriting expert also saw in Mr. Obama’s writing “a Christian cross and the alif, the first letter of the Arabic alphabet… hinting at the crescent, the symbol of Islam.”)

And, in consonance with popular opinion at the time, he added on a radio program that “Barack’s signature scared the daylights out of me.”

Or/But/While

In other cases, vagueness and what might be called “or/but/while” statements allow people to see perception where in fact there may be none.

Examples of vague, open-to-many-meanings, or universally applicable phrases include things like: “divided nature,” “compatible with most people,” “protects innermost feelings,” “strives for independence,” “always asking questions and seeking answers,” and “sense of pride and dignity”—all actual phrases culled from random published analyses of handwriting samples. At first glance each phrase might seem to communicate something clear and discrete; but a second look and bit of thought yields the realization that each phrase is sufficiently vague to apply to almost anyone. Or consider (also from an actual analysis) the following: “Had trouble with parents in teens.” The inherent vagueness of the word “trouble” and the essential psychology of adolescence combine to make such an assessment more of a truism than a revelation.

Someone, however, predisposed to seeing himself in a graphological analysis would readily feel, about any or all of the phrases above, that the graphologist has indeed divined elements of his personality.

“Or/but/while” statements also abound in most graphoanalyses. Those would be things like the following (also culled from random actual readings): “has an opinion… [either] because he has character, or because he is arrogant”; “can be compatible with most personalities but will not hesitate to argue her point of view”; “charming in social situations while remaining socially distant”; “take[s] great pains to be impartial… [but] can be contentious, argumentative”; “takes [money] seriously but doesn’t allow financial concerns to consume him.”

The upshot of “or/but/while ” statements is that the subject can choose to focus either on what precedes the “or,” “but” or “while,” or on what follows it. If he’s inclined to want to believe his character has been plumbed, he’ll likely zero in on the description he feels suits him best.

A Case Study

The more daring graphologists, however, do indeed include, at least inter alia, clear assessments in their analyses of handwriting samples, descriptions of character traits that are neither vague nor qualified. It would seem that evidence for graphology’s effectiveness would assert itself in such judgments.

“Moshe,” who is something of a public figure, challenged a respected graphologist to provide scientific evidence for the efficacy of handwriting analysis. The handwriting professional told him that the fact that people found analyses of their handwriting to be accurate descriptions of themselves is the only evidence needed. And he offered to analyze Moshe’s handwriting. Moshe confided to me that he took up the offer but, to make the experiment a truly “blind” (unbiased, scientific) one, he submitted instead the handwriting of someone else—“Tzipporah”—whose character traits are markedly different from his. He is analytical, philosophical, lawyerly, and gregarious; she is intelligent but emotive, quiet, and unpretentious. While he is systematic, very organized and calculated, she has more of a “go with the flow” personality. He is very self-assured; she is modest and reserved.

The following are Moshe’s words, after receiving the detailed analysis of “his” (actually, Tzipporah’s) handwriting:

Most of the analysis reflected things about me that are easily available on the web. And those things are simply not true about [Tzippora].

Other parts of the analysis are open to broad interpretation, and in some cases even contradictory. For example, it claims the writer is ‘not meticulous about details’ and ‘given to procrastination’ but in the very next paragraph says he is “organized, with good planning skills” and, earlier, that he ‘pushes himself’ and “rarely allow[s] obstacles to deter him.”

And where the analysis does state clear “facts,” they are generally without basis—either regarding me or “Tzippora.” Neither of our fathers were delinquent in establishing “clear direction” in life. Neither of us has “past experiences [that] have created aggressive feelings.” Neither of us had unusual “trouble with parents” in our youths, and certainly don’t “blame” ourselves for that nonexistent trouble. There is much more, too, that is wildly inaccurate about both “Tzipporah” and me.

The graphologist didn’t even indicate that the writing was that of a female, not a male like me.

Moshe does not believe that the handwriting analyst consciously sought to fool him. He thinks the graphologist actually believes in his ability to see character traits in handwriting. “But,” says Moshe, “he is wrong. He somewhat described things fairly well known about me—even though it wasn’t my handwriting he analyzed—and totally struck out when he tried to go further.”

Where There’s A Will…

There will always be people who want to believe that they can obtain insight into themselves through various means. Whether they pursue a psychotherapist or a soothsayer, their goal is the same: to better understand themselves and, hopefully, better utilize their strengths, address their weaknesses, and live better lives. And so it might well be asked what gain is to be had by presenting handwriting analysis in its true colors—something bearing the patina of “science” but lacking any evidence for its validity. After all, even if it is just a parlor game, where’s the harm in playing it?

The answer lies in the stark fact that many who seek analyses of their (or others’) handwriting actually make life-altering decisions based on what they are told. A potential marriage partner may be nixed, or a job not offered. One graphologist told me that his skills resulted in a student being revealed as guilty of a crime committed in his yeshiva. He claimed that the student subsequently admitted his guilt. But there have been many cases of admissions of guilt under pressure that turned out—on the basis of hard evidence or eyewitnesses— that emerged only later to be false. A handwriting analysis can itself be a crime, and not a victimless one.

There are, however, effective ways to receive accurate and truthful information about one’s character, strengths, and weaknesses; and to obtain useful advice for how to make life-choices. For a believing Jew, the path to such good advice has been clearly pointed out by Chazal, in Avos (1:6): “Choose for yourself a rav,” the Sages advised, “and acquire for yourself a friend.”

And when you need personal guidance, turn to them.

Rabbi Avi Shafran

Reflections on Jews, Judaism, Media and Life