An article of mine responding to Forward contributing editor Jay Michaelson’s lament over the appointment of Betsy DeVos as the nation’s next Secretary of Education appears in that paper, accessible here.
The Boys Who Cried “Anti-Semite!”
The sobbing of some political liberals, including, of course, many Jews, that ensued after the presidential election results were tallied has turned into wild wailing with the appointment of Stephen Bannon as senior counselor to the president-elect.
Those observers were shocked enough back in August, when Mr. Bannon, the executive chairman of the politically conservative Breitbart News, was put in charge of Donald Trump’s campaign. Now, though, mouths are foaming.
Partisan condemnation of Mr. Bannon’s recent appointment was expected. 169 House Democrats signed a letter to Mr. Trump characterizing his new appointee as a purveyor of anti-Semitism, misogyny and racism. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid called him “a champion of white supremacy.”
In the Jewish world, the Union for Reform Judaism accused Mr. Bannon of being “responsible for the advancement of ideologies antithetical to our nation, including anti-Semitism, misogyny, racism and Islamophobia.”
The Anti-Defamation League said that Bannon is “hostile to core American values.”
Forward editor Jane Eisner, asserted that with Bannon’s appointment, “the anti-Semitic sentiments of the far right are closer to the center of political power than they have been in recent memory.”
And the National Council of Jewish Women pronounced its verdict: “Bannon and his ilk must be barred from his [Trump] administration.”
The actual evidence for labeling Bannon an anti-Semite, or enabler of anti-Semites, or racist, or all-around monster is slim. No, actually, nonexistent.
Not that a yeoman’s effort hasn’t been expended to make the case. The news organization that Mr. Bannon has headed since the death of its founder Andrew Breitbart in 2012 is certainly not to many people’s tastes (my own included). It makes famously right-leaning Fox News seem like a liberal lamb. And it has a penchant for putting provocative headlines on entirely reasonable (if arguable) opinion pieces.
Headlines like: “Bill Kristol: Republican Spoiler, Renegade Jew.” That Breitbart piece, written by political conservative David Horowitz, was an unremarkable gripe about the fact that Mr. Kristol, a dean of American conservatism, had written critically about Donald Trump. Mr. Horowitz noted how “Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hezbollah, ISIS, and Hamas” have “openly sworn to exterminate the Jews,” and shared his feeling that the Obama administration was not adequately facing that threat to Jews and to America. “To weaken the only party that stands between the Jews and their annihilation, and between America and the forces intent on destroying her,” Horowitz wrote, “is a political miscalculation so great and a betrayal so profound as to not be easily forgiven.”
Whatever one might feel about that article’s thesis, it was run-of-the-mill intra-Republican kvetching and not, by any measure, anti-Semitic.
Another piece of “evidence” for Bannon’s malevolence is the claim of his former wife, in divorce documents, that, while seeking a private school for his children, he made a remark about “spoiled” Jewish children. Needless to say, unsupported (and denied) accusations in divorce proceedings deserve no one’s attention.
The strongest charge against Mr. Bannon is his statement in an interview last summer that Breitbart News is “the platform for the alt-right.”
But, as has been noted before in this space, the “alt-right” means different things to different people, and includes widely disparate elements.
What those elements generally share is a dedication to family values; a reverence for Western civilization and rejection of multiculturalism. The fringes of the movement, though, can include racism, opposition to all immigration and anti-Semitism. The fringes of the “progressive” wing of American politics, too, include Jew-haters (though they dress up their hatred as “anti-Israel” sentiment).
Imagining that Mr. Bannon meant to include the alt-right’s tattered fringes in his statement is ungenerous, and unsupported by the actual content of Breitbart offerings. As far back as 2014, he explicitly predicted that racism would eventually get “washed out” of right-wing movements.
As it happens, not only was the late Mr. Breitbart Jewish, but the news service carrying his name was started by a Jewish lawyer and businessman, Larry Solov, who conceived it during a trip he made to Israel with Mr. Breitbart. It was to be “a site,” Mr. Solov wrote, “that would be unapologetically pro-freedom and pro-Israel.” Which it has been.
I don’t automatically accept the veracity of what I read at Breitbart, or in The New York Times. Every news medium, whether it admits it or not, has its slant and partialities. A semblance of accuracy can only be gained by reading, and balancing, a variety of media, fully aware of each one’s biases.
Racism and anti-Semitism are malign, to be sure. So, though, is, carelessly and without evidence, casting labels like “racist” or “anti-Semite” about.
© Hamodia 2016
Glimmer of Light in a Dark Campaign
Well, we’ve all had some time by now to recover from the year-and-a-half-long national convulsion that passed for a presidential campaign. Might there be something positive to point to in an experience most of us would prefer to somehow un-experience?
Well, there’s no way to make any sort of purse, much less a silk one, out of this particular sow’s ear. But still, in the campaign’s waning days, there was a flicker of civility to behold.
It came at a time of particular tension for the Clinton campaign – after FBI chief James Comey’s first statement revealing the discovery of a new trove of possibly problematic e-mails, and before his second one revealing that the trove was untainted.
It took place at a Clinton rally at Fayetteville State University in North Carolina. As President Obama addressed the large crowd, a protester wearing a military uniform stood up at the front of the gathering, holding aloft a pro-Trump placard. Predictably, a wall of loud, sustained boos resulted.
In professorial tones, Mr. Obama told the crowd to calm down. When it didn’t, he raised his voice. “Everybody! Hey! I told you to be focused and you’re not focused right now. Sit down and be quiet for a second!” The boos faded to a muted murmur.
“You’ve got an older gentleman,” the president lectured his listeners, referring to the protester, “who is supporting his candidate. He’s not doing nothing… This is what I mean about folks not being focused. First of all, we live in a country that respects free speech. Second of all, it looks like maybe he might have served in our military and we ought to respect that. Third of all, he was elderly and we got to respect our elders.”
The incident was reminiscent of one in 2008, at a Republican town hall meeting in Minnesota, where Senator John McCain, Mr. Obama’s opponent at the time, also had to deal with supportive but misguided booing – and did so decisively.
A supporter had said he was “scared” of the prospect of an Obama presidency, and the crowd loudly vocalized its approval. But Mr. McCain refused to bask in the anger.
“I have to tell you,” he said. “Senator Obama is a decent person and a person you don’t have to be scared of as president of the United States.”
“Come on, John!” someone shouted out. Others loudly labeled Mr. Obama “liar,” and “terrorist.”
Then a woman who had been handed a microphone said “I can’t trust Obama. I have read about him and he’s not, he’s not, uh – he’s an Arab.” Mr. McCain retrieved the mike and replied: “No, ma’am. He’s a decent family man [and] citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues, and that’s what this campaign’s all about.”
Such moments of comity are all too rare in the tumult of of campaign-tornados, like the recent one, that swirl angrily with snide innuendo, malign spin and outright lies – all eagerly drunk in and spat out by partisan pundits. But those moments are the ones consonant with the concept of menschlichkeit.
Pleasing, too, if not unexpected, was hearing Mrs. Clinton, the day after the election, tell her supporters that “Donald Trump is going to be our president. We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead.”
As it was hearing Mr. Obama, that same day, declaring that “we are now all rooting for [Mr. Trump’s] success in uniting and leading the country.”
The president’s decency was all the greater for his citing that of his predecessor. “Eight years ago,” Mr. Obama recalled, “President Bush and I had some pretty significant differences. But President Bush’s team could not have been more professional or more gracious in making sure we had a smooth transition so that we could hit the ground running.”
It’s no secret that I have come to judge the current president much more favorably than many in the Orthodox Jewish world. But I came to that conclusion only after Mr. Obama, to my lights, demonstrated his commitment to the safety and security of Israel and Jews. Until then, like others, I feared what the punditocracy was preaching about the purported Muslim, chassid of unhinged hater Reverend Wright, husband of a black power radical and all-around evildoer who had somehow infiltrated the White House.
Like many, even among some of Mr. Trump’s supporters, I have concerns about the president-elect. Heeding Hillary’s admonition, though, I am keeping an open mind, and will let future facts lead me where they will. I am hoping that the new president, like his predecessor, will come to pleasantly surprise me.
© Hamodia 2016
Ripe Citrons and Ruby Slippers
On the first day of Sukkos, after tens of thousands of Jews had paid princely sums for flawless specimens of a particular citrus fruit, payments were made by others, too, for a very different reason.
That day, the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History launched a public campaign to raise $300,000 in order to restore and preserve a pair of slippers, those that were worn by the main character in the 1939 film production of a children’s classic.
“The shoes,” explained the Smithsonian, “are fragile and actively deteriorating.” Their color, appallingly, “has faded, and the slippers appear dull and washed-out. The coating on the sequins that give the shoes their hallmark ruby color is flaking off its gelatin base. Some threads that hold sequins in place have broken.” Something had to be done.
The campaign, which aimed at repairing the footgear and constructing a special temperature-controlled and light-controlled enclosed environment to ensure that the slippers last into perpetuity, was intended to span three weeks. By Shemini Atzeres, though, it had already exceeded its goal, and donations continue to pour in. Support came from 41 countries, with the highest concentration of donors in New York, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. And likely the fictional town of Chelm.
To paraphrase the prayer recited by mesaymim, “We expend funds and they expend funds.” And what an intriguing contrast the respective mass expenditures provide.
“Conserving an American Icon” is what the Smithsonian dubbed its save-our-slippers movement. “Icon” is a word borrowed from the Greek, and can mean “idol.” Whether the good-heartedly nostalgic donors to the Keren HaSlippers, for their adoration of physical objects, can be categorized as idolaters is not something I am prepared to say, or qualified to judge. But such simpleminded devotion can prove something of, if an irresistible pun can be forgiven… a slippery slope.
After Yom Tov, of course, many esrogim were either consumed fresh or, processed, as jelly. Others were just put aside to petrify. While the fruits were immensely valued for seven days, they had an expiration date, so to speak, one unrelated to their freshness. And that speaks to the essential difference between how a Jew looks at an esrog and how a sentimental soul sees a theatrical relic. The esrog is a means of performing a mitzvah, not an inherent object of adulation. It is valuable for the opportunity it provides to serve Hashem, a means toward a goal, not something to be venerated. And so, once its purpose as a path toward the performance of a mitzvah has been fulfilled, it reverts to a mere fruit.
To be sure, there are objects in our own world that possess inherent holiness, like kodoshim, meat or flour-offerings from korbanos brought in the Beis Hamikdash; or, today, a sefer Torah. But kodoshim is, in the end, consumed or burned, and a sefer Torah’s holiness derives from the words it contains, not from ink and parchment themselves; and when it is no longer usable, it is buried.
There are, moreover, Jews who treasure objects that were once used by great tzaddikim. But only, at least properly, because of the objects’ connection to those tzaddikim, who were in fact worthy of veneration because of the lives they lived. Rather different, to greatly understate things, from an artifact of a theatrical production.
Non-Jews, and Jews unfamiliar with their spiritual heritage, if aware of the prices paid by observant Jews for esrogim, must think us strange. After all, the most beautiful, symmetrical, aromatic lemon in the Trader Joe’s bin commands at most fifty cents. And it has a nice, smooth skin, too.
And if they knew of all the other substantial expenditures we make, for talmud Torah, for Shabbosos and Yamim Tovim (for Pesach alone!), for kosher meat, for tzeddaka… they would surely think us entirely unhinged. They, though, don’t comprehend what a mitzvah means to a heartfelt Jew.
If only they could truly appreciate the meaning of a mitzvah, they would perceive the deep contrast between cherishing a meaningless prop and valuing a precious objet d’mitzvah. If they only, so to speak, had a bren.
This past Sukkos gave us an example how starkly divergent are our world and the one “out there.”
A set of footwear was confirmed in the status of an icon, and a large sum was dedicated to its preservation – at least in the hopes of curators and now grown-up children – for eternity.
And a mitzvah was, as every year, performed at considerable expense by Jews, affording them actual access to eternity.
© 2016 Hamodia
Kotel Krusade
An op-ed of mine about the recent disruption at the Kotel engineered by non-Orthodox Jewish clergy and an Israeli feminist group appeared in Haaretz.
It can be read at:
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.750731?=&ts=_1478444374594
Vote-Buying, 2016
For all but the most starry-eyed devotees, or family members, of an aspirant to public service, voting essentially boils down to deciding which evil is lesser.
Well, that’s a bit harsh. What I mean is that it’s nearly impossible for any candidate to fit the full bill of any voter’s list of qualifications and preferred positions on all matters of importance. One aspirant to public office may have a preferable economic plan but a dismal approach to immigration or security matters; another may be on the right page regarding social issues but on a very wrong one when it comes to geopolitical ones. And then there are important other factors in play, like intelligence, honesty, gentility and likeability (or their absenses).
If polls and man-in-the-street interviews are any indication, in the presidential election that is rapidly (and blessedly) soon coming to an end, the “lesser evil” calculus seems particularly pertinent. Both candidates’ negative ratings are, well, impressive.
Many factors might be blamed for that state of affairs, and for the general deterioration of American political campaigning. A prominent one is money.
Hundreds of millions of dollars have been raised to feed each of the current candidates’ cash-famished campaigns. And were a dollar equivalent to be assigned to the free airtime garnered by one candidate’s propensity to make attention-getting pronouncements, he (oh, shucks, I gave it away) has effectively either paid or received the equivalent of over a billion bucks.
Most complaints about the role of money in political campaigns revolve around the undue influence wielded by a relatively small group of very wealthy individuals. And it’s a valid concern. A mere 250 donors accounted for about $44 million in contributions to the Hillary Victory Fund during the last year.
The billionaire oilman T. Boone Pickens has boasted that he “won the election in 2004 for Bush.”
In the 2012 election season, Charles and David Koch, who own the lion’s share of the second-largest privately held company in the United States, pledged $60 million to defeat Barack Obama. Of $274 million in anonymous contributions that year, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics (CRP), at least $86 million came from “donor groups in the Koch network.”
In 1996, according to the CRP, the two major parties spent $448.9 million on the general election; in 2012, they spent $6.3 billion.
The republic’s founding fathers envisioned government as emerging from the consent of the governed, not the gvirim.
Then there is the toll taken by the fact that fundraising – in 2010, candidates for Congress spent $1.8 billion in their bids for office – has become a way of life for elected officials, swallowing up time and effort that could otherwise have been spent doing, well, what those legislators were elected to do.
Even more disturbing, at least to this decidedly apolitical observer, is what the money actually does. How, in other words, does a mega-stuffed campaign chest translate into mega-votes?
The answer is that cash can capitalize on ignorance.
Most voters, unfortunately, are far from conversant with the intricacies of issues, even those that they may care about the most. The average citizen finds calculations and thinking more than a step or two ahead to be boring endeavors, and more readily responds to appeals to emotions – good, bad and ugly ones alike.
A large chunk of political contributions goes to crafting and making those appeals. And so, political ads and mail pitches– no different in any way from those that make people buy particular brands of shampoos, beer or automobiles based on imagery and fantasy rather than quality – have become proven tools for effectively translating dollars into votes.
“Buying votes” used to mean ward bosses offering cash to individuals for their pledge to cast their ballots a certain way. Times have changed, though. Today, vote-buying is accomplished less sleazily, though no less ignobly.
In a saner democracy, there would be no campaign ads at all, only the presentation of detailed positions on issues of importance. Candidates would write manifestos, not lob accusations and insults. Debates, if we had them at all, would be strictly limited to issues, with candidates arguing the virtues of their respective goals and policies. Boasting, insulting, punching and counterpunching would be relegated to boxing rings, whence they came. (Actually, boxing is another blood sport the world would be a better place without.)
Alas, the Shafran System of Democratic Electioneering has about as much a chance at being adopted as Gary Johnson has of being elected president this November.
Still, one can fantasize, no?
© 2016 Hamodia
The Sukkah Still Stands
There is simply no describing the plaintive, moving melody to which Yiddish writer Avraham Reisen’s poem was set. As a song, it is familiar to many of us who know it thanks to immigrant parents or grandparents. And, remarkably, the strains of “A Sukkeleh,” no matter how often we may have heard them, still tend to choke us up.
Based on Reisen’s “In Sukkeh,” the song, really concerns two sukkos, one literal, the other metaphorical, and the poem, though it was written at the beginning of the last century, is still tender, profound and timely.
Thinking about the song, as I – and surely others – invariably do every year this season, it occurred to me to try to render it into English for readers unfamiliar with either the song or the language in which it was written. I’m not a professional translator, and my rendering, below, is not perfectly literal. But it’s close, and is faithful to the rhyme scheme and meter of the original:
A sukkaleh, quite small,
Wooden planks for each wall;
Lovingly I stood them upright.
I laid thatch as a ceiling
And now, filled with deep feeling,
I sit in my sukkaleh at night.
A chill wind attacks,
Blowing through the cracks;
The candles, they flicker and yearn.
It’s so strange a thing
That as the Kiddush I sing,
The flames, calmed, now quietly burn.
In comes my daughter,
Bearing hot food and water;
Worry on her face like a pall.
She just stands there shaking
And, her voice nearly breaking,
Says “Tattenyu, the sukkah’s going to fall!”
Dear daughter, don’t fret;
It hasn’t fallen yet.
The sukkah’s fine; banish your fright.
There have been many such fears,
For nigh two thousand years;
Yet the little sukkah still stands upright.
As we approach the yomtov of Sukkos and celebrate the divine protection our ancestors were afforded during their forty years’ wandering in the midbar, we are supposed – indeed, commanded – to be happy. We refer to Sukkos, in our tefillos as zman simchoseinu, “the time of our joy.”
And yet, at least seen superficially, there seems little Jewish joy to be had these days. “State actors” openly threaten acheinu bnei Yisrael in Eretz Yisrael. Enemies bent on killing Jews attack them, there and elsewhere in the world. Here in America, an ugly current of anti-Semitism emerges at times to remind us that it thrives in the dirt underfoot. The internal adversaries of intermarriage and assimilation continue to intensify and take their terrible toll.
The poet, however, well captured a Sukkos-truth. With temperatures dropping and winter’s gloom not a great distance away, our sukkah-dwelling is indeed a quiet but powerful statement: We are secure because our ultimate protection, as a people if not necessarily as individuals, is assured.
And our security is sourced in nothing so flimsy as a fortified edifice; it is protection provided us by Hakodosh Boruch Hu Himself, in the merit of our avos, and of our own emulation of their dedication to the Divine.
And so, no matter how loudly the winds may howl, no matter how vulnerable our physical fortresses may be, we give harbor to neither despair nor insecurity. Instead, we redouble our recognition that, in the end, Hashem is in charge, that all is in His hands.
And that, as it has for millennia, the sukkah continues to stand.
Under The Weather
With hurricane season upon us, we might learn something from the models that meteorologists offer when a large sea-storm heads for land. Something about Shemini Atzeres.
The maps created as a storm approaches often include colored lines indicating the projected paths of the hurricane as predicted by different models, each based on its own sets of data and methodology. The combined yield looks suspiciously like, though not as appetizing as, spaghetti. Only one model (if even that) will end up “winning” the prediction contest. And, as likely as not, the next storm around, a different model, based on different calculations, will emerge as the retroactively prophetic one.
“Cause and effect” is a basic principle of modern science. By observing what seems to make happenings happen, we can predict, at least theoretically and if in possession of sufficient information, almost anything.
Weather forecasting, despite mountains of data gleaned from satellites, weather stations and previous storms, cannot even generally predict a storm’s movement or intensity beyond a day or two.
That might be attributed to the sheer amount of information needed to make a weather forecast, and the complexity of combining all the necessary elements. There is what has whimsically been called the “Butterfly Effect” (and more soberly, “sensitive dependence on initial conditions”) – the idea that even something like the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in Asia might have an effect on the course of a storm in the Carolinas.
But something deeper and more subtle is at work, too. An accepted idea in modern physics, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, has it that at the most fundamental strata of physical matter, there is a limit to what can be known. The more precisely the position of a particle is determined, the less precisely its momentum can be known, and vice versa. So there is an inherent element of unknowableness (well, there should be such a word) in the matter comprising the universe.
What we call nature, in other words, isn’t truly predictable, or even “natural.” Nature is just the word we use to describe miracles we’ve come to take for granted.
Consider the weird world Rav Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler, zt”l, asks us to imagine, where the deceased routinely arise from their graves rejuvenated, but grain and vegetation do not exist.
In the thought experiment, a man appears holding a seed, something never seen before in this strange place. He loosens some soil and places the tiny kernel into the ground. The locals wonder at the oddity –why is he burying a pebble? – and are astonished when, several days later, a green sprout pierces the soil where the seed had been consigned. When it develops into a full-fledged plant, even – most shocking of all – bearing seeds of its own, the onlookers are flabbergasted.
Techiyas hameisim will be similarly amazing to those who will witness it, observes Rav Dessler. What is more, in our world, a seed’s growth is itself no less a miracle, willed from above. The numerical equivalent of the word “hateva,” – “the [realm of] nature” –sefarim hakedoshim note, equals Elokim.
Miracles we haven’t previously experienced impress us. Miracles we live with daily are harder to appreciate. “If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years,” wrote the poet R. W. Emerson, “how would men believe and adore…!”
Or as famed physicist Paul Davies wrote a few years back, “The very notion of physical law is a theological one.”
The miraculous, in other words, is ubiquitous, even if the phantom of predictability lessens our appreciation of it. Weather, though, with its fickleness, reminds us of what we easily forget: that uncertainty is the real rule, underlying even the very building blocks of matter.
In fact, the Hebrew word for “rain,” geshem, means “physical matter” as well.
There is a human entity, too, that eludes predictability. Empires and nations rise and fall, never to rise again. Populations are exiled from their lands and never return. Those are “natural” rules of history. You know the exception.
The number eight, the Maharal teaches, represents the miraculous, what lies beyond what we call nature. Klal Yisrael, the Midrash says, is the partner of Shabbos, and hence, in a sense, the “eighth day.”
In the time of the Beis Hamikdash, on Shemini Atzeres, the “Eighth Day Festival,” after the Sukkos offerings of 70 parim representing the nations of the world, a single par, representing a singular nation, was offered.
That, on the day when we remind ourselves that there really isn’t any independent entity called “nature” – focusing on the wonder that is Klal Yisrael, and, in Tefillas Geshem, on the wonder that is rain.
© 2016 Hamodia
Greetings!
“How do you say ‘the horse died’ in Yiddish?” asked the African-American panhandler to whom I had given a quarter when he accosted me in lower Manhattan. It was many years ago, shortly after I moved to New York. A bit taken aback (would you not have been?) by the unexpected quiz, I responded “Der ferd iz geshtarben.”
“No,” he insisted. “A mensch shtarbt. A ferd paigert.” He was right, of course. The Yiddish verb for “died” is different for a human and for an animal.
New York, I remember thinking, is an interesting place.
I never found out how my interlocutor knew Yiddish so well, but, over the ensuing years, I have met many, if less interesting, seekers of alms.
When I first began working in “the city,” as an out-of-towner unaccustomed to street beggars, I made a point of giving a coin or two to each of the bedraggled people on my route who shook a cup of coins or asked passers-by for a donation. Chazal, after all, teach us to provide charity to all (Gittin 61a).
Rightly or wrongly, though, I eventually came to stop that practice. There were the times when, after my small donation to an indigent person, I was besieged by theretofore hidden others who, having witnessed my largess, suddenly and magically appeared to stake their own claims. I would have had to carry a bag of quarters each day.
And I came to realize, too, that there are an abundance of agencies and charities that provide food and shelter for the homeless. I wondered what “extras” the coins and bills in the cups would end up purchasing. Candy bars? Cigarettes? Drugs?
And so, for better or worse, I joined the overwhelming majority of New Yorkers, who go about their business without acknowledging the sound of shaken change or the repeated mantras of “got any spare change?” But I felt (and feel) bad. I was still ignoring human beings. That’s not something a descendant of Avraham Avinu should be able to do nonchalantly. True, the solicitors don’t seem to mind being ignored by so many, and are seemingly happy with the “business” of the ever-present tourists. But still.
One day not long ago, though, an elderly man sitting on the sidewalk and asking passersby for change focused on me as I approached where he sat. “Rabbi!” he called out. “Got anything for me?”
Having been so (somewhat) personally addressed, I had to interrupt my brisk walking. In Manhattan, that can be dangerous; those behind you are often inhabiting alternate worlds, talking on phones or pecking out emails as they walk. By stopping short, one can cause the pedestrian version of a vehicular pile-up. Luckily, though, the foot traffic behind me must have naturally noted my braking, since it just flowed smoothly around me.
I wasn’t, though, about to change my callous custom. So I just bent down to smile at the fellow and tell him that I don’t generally carry cash (which by then was true) but that I wished him a wonderful day.
I can tell a sincere smile from a contrived one, and the one he returned was the real thing. And along with it came, without a hint of cynicism, a “thank you.”
Whenever I see the fellow in his spot, I make a point of addressing him, just to smile and wish him a good day. And each time I do, he seems genuinely pleased. Sometimes, he even beats me to the greeting. He doesn’t ever ask me for money.
The Gemara in Berachos (6b) quotes Rav Chalbo in the name of Rav Huna as saying: “Anyone who is greeted and does not return the greeting is called a thief.” His source is a passuk in Yeshayahu (3:14): “The theft of the poor man is in your house.” Rashi explains that a poor person has no possessions to steal, and so the thievery referred to must be a greeting owed him, of which he was deprived.
Presumably, if an unreturned greeting is a theft, an offered one is a gift. My indigent friend certainly appreciates that fact.
Greeting every person we pass throughout the day isn’t very practical, and would seem eccentric. In some cases, personal interactions might even be inappropriate. But in so many others, the opposite is true. The hurried nature of modern life shouldn’t obscure the testimony of Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai (Brachos 17a), that no one ever beat him to a greeting, as he was always first to offer one, “even [to] a non-Jew in the marketplace.”
© 2016 Hamodia
Commanded
Just in time for Rosh Hashanah, a number of media, including the Wall St. Journal and the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, found a good “Jewish” story in the popularity and abundance of dogs in Tel Aviv.
Talk about pnei hador kipnei hakelev, the prediction in massechta Sotah (49b) that, with the approach of the Geulah, “the face of the generation will be the face of a dog.”
Tel Aviv, it was reported, is home to 413,000 people and 30,000 dogs, and, declaring itself the friendliest city in the world for dogs, it recently hosted a “dog festival” cutely called “Kelaviv.”
Our mesorah is undeniably sensitive to concern for animals. Not only were Yaakov Avinu and Moshe Rabbeinu caring shepherds, but the Torah prohibits causing an animal unnecessary pain.
I recall as a young boy how my father, shlita, scooped a pair of injured birds from a street and brought them home to care for them. In my own home (which over the years has hosted, among other animals, a goat, an iguana and a tarantula), even insects are captured and released rather than killed.
But like most ideals, concern for animals can be taken too far. The “animal rights” group PETA’s founder once declared that that “Six million Jews died in concentration camps, but six billion broiler chickens will die this year in slaughterhouses.” More infamously, she coined the aphorism “A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy,” reflecting a philosophy nothing short of perverse.
Torah-committed Jews – and all thoughtful human beings – maintain a clear and crucial distinction between the animal sphere and the human one. Animals may be forced to work and may be killed for food. But humans may not, because we are the pinnacle of creation, and are alone gifted with free will.
In my role as Agudath Israel of America’s media liaison, I regularly receive requests for public comment. A number of years ago, a call came in from a major media outlet producing a national program. Flattered, I asked what presumably weighty topic was to be explored. I was thoroughly deflated to hear the response: “Rabbi, we’d like to get your take on the question of whether pets go to heaven.”
I politely declined the offer to comment but then changed my mind. What I realized is that many of the most fundamental philosophical and moral issues of our time – indeed of any time – touch upon the special distinction of humanness. The subject may be the beginning of life or its end; the meaning of family, or of decency. If humans see themselves as mere mammals, they end up in a very different place than if they see themselves as baalei bechirah, creatures with a mission, and the ability to undertake their individual roles in its attainment.
So, as it happens, the Tel Aviv dog articles are not immaterial to Rosh Hashanah at all. They can serve to make us think a bit, and remind us of why pets, and all animals, while they may well serve a higher purpose and achieve a tikkun in their service to us baalei bechirah, do not in fact possess the potential, as we do, to “go to heaven.”
The Berditchever conveys a pithy and pertinent thought on the wording of one of the Torah’s prohibitions of idol worship: bowing down before “the sun, moon or other heavenly bodies that I have not commanded” (Devarim 17:3).
We may not genuflect to the sun, but we may do so to a human being. The navi Ovadiah, for instance, bowed before his master Eliyahu. Explained the Berditchever: People, by virtue of our being commanded creations, intended to not just exist but to shoulder responsibility, are singular parts of creation. Our being commanded exalts us, places us on a plane above everything else in the universe.
The sun and the moon – and animals – are not charged, or able, to choose. They are bounded by their natures and their instincts.
Not so, us.
We may, to be sure, lapse into “instinctive” living at times. But we have the ability to transcend our failures. And that’s why Rosh Hashanah, when we are judged for our choices, is described both as a Yom Hadin, a Day of Judgment, and as a festive holiday. Even as we face our failures and stand kivnei maron, “like sheep,” before the Judge of all, we celebrate with our seudos Yom Tov. Because we are not sheep. We are commanded beings – a fact that should fill us with both awe and joy.
© 2016 Hamodia