As the controversy over the Israeli conversion bill heated up, in other corners of the Jewish world, too, ‘twas the season to be silly. In a New York Times opinion piece so rife with howlers that a “Corrections” note of several paragraphs would not suffice, a Jewish magazine editor suggested that future historians would wonder why “as Iran raced to build a nuclear bomb to wipe the Jewish state off the map, did custodians of the 2,000-year-old dream of the Jewish people choose such a perverse definition of Jewish peoplehood, seemingly calculated to alienate supporters outside its own borders?”

It’s good the writer is concerned enough about the Iranian nuclear threat to make the rather strange connection between it and, of all things, the Israeli conversion controversy. Perhaps her next article can muse about what future historians will say about why the American Jewish establishment and its constituents — including her magazine’s readership — who are an important part of Barack Obama’s liberal base and are, even as his popularity plummets, still among his staunchest financial and political backers, failed to object strenuously — or at all — to his reconciliation to the reality of an Iranian bomb.

And perhaps those scholars will find confirmation of Santayana’s aphorism about repetitive history in the genuflection of American Jews — with those attacking the Orthodox over conversion prominent among them — before Obama’s Iran policy. It is, after all, an eerie replication of the “miserable failure” of Stephen Wise – that’s Hebrew Union College head David Ellenson’s phrase – to overcome his adulation of FDR to work for the salvation of European Jewry.

Then there is the writer’s invocation of the “alienation” meme, the notion that, in her words, neither “the Jewish diaspora nor Israel can afford a split between the two communities. . . .” As if in a giant echo chamber, this charge reverberated through the secular Jewish world, from former AIPAC head Tom Dine, whose memorable reference some years back to “smelly Orthodox diamond merchants” tends to diminish his moral clout, to Reform bigwig David Saperstein, who bemoans that among the “unaffiliated who identify with the Reform and Conservative movements, the message that the government . . . does not recognize their commitment does alienate people. . . . “ I’m trying to follow Saperstein on this: The “unaffiliated” — read: those who don’t even join a temple at least until their kid’s bar mitzvah and aren’t among the 15% of Jews who have visited Israel even once — are alienated because Israel doesn’t recognize their “commitment?! Whatever.

It’s hard to know if, in claiming that Israeli suppression of the non-Orthodox movements has alienated American Jews en masse, Sapirstein is engaging in cynical manipulation or really believes this stuff. Either way, I have a solution: He ought to take up reading his own movement’s eponymous publication, Reform Judaism. Its Spring issue featured a panel of Reform clergyfolk in Israel, and among them was David Forman, who passed away in May at age 65, while awaiting a liver transplant. Although his liberal and heterodox credentials were solid – director of the Israel office of the Reform movement for 27 years and a founder of the left-wing agitators’ group Rabbis for Human Rights – he was not a company man, and was often strikingly independent-minded about Israeli politics and candid about the Jewish scene.

Responding to the question “Has Reform Judaism become more accepted among Israelis?, Forman had this to say:

The Reform Movement’s inroads into Israeli society have been marginal at best – and I believe that we have erred greatly in trying to garner support among our Diaspora brothers and sisters by telling them how dreadful Israel is in respecting the rights of non-Orthodox Jews. We have basically turned off many North American Reform Jews to Israel.

The truth is, the cup is half full. Our Reform settlements . . . would never have been founded or maintained had it not been for Israeli government subsidies. Our educational institutions receive government aid as well. . . . Its time we start telling these positive stories instead of blaspheming Israel.

In an earlier article in the Jerusalem Post, Forman took aim at those in America who look for something to “be held liable for the comatose state of American Jews”:

Who stands in the dock? The usual scapegoat: Israel. Israel’s actions are alienating Jews abroad not only from Israel, but also from Judaism. The Jewish state has failed to fulfill its promise of being a “holy nation” It has demeaned Jewish values to such an extent that Jews around the globe are embarrassed and fleeing in droves from their Jewish roots.

Who are the leaders of this transference movement – that is, those who look to find fault elsewhere for their own failures? Surprisingly, but on close examination not unexpectedly, . . . the liberal Jewish community. If only Israel were faithful to its prophetic tradition and also a reflection of the great social movements of the West, American Jews would identify with their Jewish heritage. . . .

I was shocked when [on a recent trip to America] I spoke to 10th graders at a synagogue’s Sunday school. It is amazing what they do not know. . . . [F]ew knew that Abraham preceded Moses, few could name one prophet, few knew in what part of the world Israel is situated. They all know who Jesus’ parents were –but they do not have the slightest idea whose were Moses’. . . .

Why should [American Jews] be interested in anything that has to do with Israel if they have no knowledge of anything that has to do with Jewish life? Liberal Jews should display a little humility before lecturing us that our country does not reflect what they expect of a Jewish state. . . . So stop using Israel as a scapegoat for the ills of the American Jewish community.

An important point emerges from this last piece: even without conversion crises on which to blame the spiritual and demographic unraveling of American Jewry, there’ll be plenty other things to blame it on, unless Israel is willing to shed its Jewish identity almost entirely and remake itself in the image of J Street and its ilk.

Too high a price to pay, methinks.

Judea Pearl, or Reb Yehudah as I call him, is a UCLA professor of computer science, with a strong interest in artificial intelligence. He is the father of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal writer murdered by Pakistani Muslims. No one can forget his last words. “I am Jewish….My father is Jewish, my mother is Jewish….Back in the town of Bnei Brak there is a street named after my great-grandfather, Chaim Pearl, who was one of the founders of the town.”

The following article (appearing in the Los Angeles Jewish Journal) is not only insightful, but demanding. If you cannot do what he asks in the last paragraph, you are deluding yourself about your commitment to Israel as much as the yefei nefesh whom he targets in this piece.

What makes fog float in mid air, while raindrops fall straight down to earth? Physics teaches us that it is all a matter of “surface-to- weight ratio” — a simple parameter that determines whether soap bubbles rise or fall, and how many passengers a jet plane can carry.
The larger the surface, so the theory goes, the easier it is for an object to lift its weight against gravitational pull.

The analogy came to mind this past week, on Ti-sha B’Av, when I pondered the fate of the Jewish people and tried to assess our collective surface-to-weight ratio.

It was a particularly cogent day to compare the amount of energy we spend at the boundaries of our existence, facing outward to defend our being, vis a vis the resources we waste facing inward, on self- congratulation, finger-pointing and other forms of added weight.

Take the protest march on behalf of Gilad Shalit last month. Tens of thousands of Israelis took to the roads, tens of thousands stood by roadsides feeding the marchers, and millions watched the marchers on Israeli TV. I have not seen any of it on CNN, for it was aimed inwardly, toward the Israeli government. We would have surely seen some of it had this enormous energy been directed outwards, say as a protest against the UN or the Red Cross or foreign embassies for not doing their share in stopping the most blatant human rights violation of our generation.

Or take Peter Beinart’s much debated article “The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment” (New York Times Review of Books, June 10). Judging by the number of invitations I received to attend his lecture in Los Angeles, one would think that this creative intellectual has finally discovered a formula for peace or a new weapon to silence rockets without hurting civilians, or, at the very least, an Arab intellectual willing to accept Israel. None of the above. Reading his article again and again, all I hear is how uncomfortable he feels being a Jew at a time when Jews are accused of

supporting a non-democratic entity called Israel, and how we can now extricate ourselves from this discomfort by speaking out, not against

the distortions, but against a leadership that place their faith in the solid democratic character of Israeli society. I hear a desperate son

coming home screaming: “Mother, the boys at school called you dirty names again. I hate you for causing me to face those bullies, and I hate you for making me feel so inadequate, unable to defend your honor

except by joining them in amplifying your blemishes”.

Beinart was treated royally in Los Angeles because he is the prophetic voice for many Jews of Discomfort; they love him because he takes their discomfort and elevates it to a noble feeling of moral purity. They used to feel guilty for Israel’s actions, still concsious of her problems, no more. Elevated in virtue, they now see every blemish on Israel’s face as “the litmus test”
for her impure personality — hers, not theirs.

Observe another Jewish intellectual, the French philosopher Bernard Henry Levy, who is perhaps further to the left than Beinart. He too feels uncomfortable with some of Israel’s actions, and he too proposed ways to correct them. Yet instead of pointing fingers at the Jewish establishment, he takes to the trenches and, using his column on the Huffington Post, he tells his leftist colleagues: Stop this madness, look at yourself in the mirror. Is your liberalism dead when it comes to Israel? (Jun 7, Huffingtonpost)

It is all a matter of surface-to-weight ratio, says my physics book, Jews of spine confront their maligners, Jews of Discomfort blame their leaders.

Deep inside, Levy knows perhaps that ours may well be the last generation in which Jews can earn respect in academic and intellectual circles; pro-coexistence scholars are already pariahs in academia, forced to hide their sentiments from colleagues. (See my column in this newspaper, “Our New Marranos,” March 19, 2009), and if Israel goes under, Jews of Discomfort will certainly find themselves exorcised by the elite they now seek to appease. They would be remembered not for their discomfort, but for what they really were: members of a people who once supported a mistake called Israel — ruling elites do not easily forgive “mistakes” they labored to undo.

I will end with a request to readers. If you agree with my views or share my concerns, do not simply succomb to the temptation of sending this article to another member of your synagogue. Take to the trenches and face outward. Knock on the door of your gentile neighbor or office mate and say: Remember, Joe, how I used to go along with all your sarcastic criticism of Israel? Times have changed, Joe. My people are in trouble, and there are things I must do even at the risk of testing our friendship. I want to tell you how strongly I feel about Israel, what is factual and what is malice in what you hear, and why our world will not be the same without that tiny, shining spot called Israel.

It’s silly season again in the Jewish world. In other words, yet another fight has broken out over conversions in Israel, and ostensibly smart people have taken to saying some truly risible things.

In one corner, we find David Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Congress, reviving an old chestnut, one I’d thought had been laid to well-deserved rest years ago, but is apparently hardier than I assumed. His argument: When Hizbollah bombed a Buenos Aires Jewish center, killing scores, all that mattered for the terrorists was that the victims identified as Jews; likewise, there were no separate Nazi box cars, ghettoes and barracks for different Jews based on degree of Jewishness. Ergo, anyone with a sustained hankering for kasha varnishkes or Israeli folk dancing has a moral right to join the Jewish people.

There are a number of ways to respond to Mr. Harris, such as testing the logical limits of his position by asking if he knows how to spell unmentionable phrases like Jews for Jesus – but, honestly, there’s other silliness to cover, so we’ll have to suffice here with saying this: No thanks, we’d prefer not to hand the ultimate authority for defining Jewishness over to Adolf Eichmann and Hassan Nasrallah. The “argument from Hitler,” to coin a phrase, has emotive power, but little else to recommend it in a serious discussion among serious people.

Before taking leave of David Harris, however, one parting thought is in order. He begins his piece: ”I am a Jewish pluralist. I recognize that we are all on one journey, even though we proceed on many diverse paths.”

No, Mr. Harris, you’re a well-meaning fellow who’s concerned about Jews, but you’re no Jewish pluralist. If you were, you wouldn’t be able to write, as you do further on, that “there are those” – e.g. this writer and a majority of the Hamodia readership, in contrast to the Reform and Conservative movements, David Harris, the Nazis and Hizbollah – “who would willfully divide us, investing a monopoly of power in one interested party, creating hierarchies of ‘membership in the club,’ and relentlessly questioning the legitimacy of other would-be Jews.”

For David Harris’ benefit, here’s a one-line primer on pluralism: It begins with the pluralist’s openness to understanding the basis of the other’s position, and certainly to not mischaracterize it, and is followed by his commitment to live and let live to the extent no one is threatened thereby. Such tolerance for the other is grounded in respect, not necessarily respect for the other’s position, which the pluralist may regard as deeply erroneous, but respect for the other’s inherent human dignity and cherished staus before G-d.

Strange as it may seem, then, I am far more of the authentic pluralist in the matter of conversions, because I fully understand both my own position and that of Mr. Harris and company.

My position? There is one G-d, Who gave the Jewish people His Torah, and in that Torah, as interpreted by the Sages to whom He entrusted its transmission, He told us who, in spiritual reality, is a Jew and who is not. Harris’ position? First, a negation of all or almost all of the above. And once G-d has had nothing to say about who’s a Jew, the field is wide open.

As he himself put his worldview so well (with the liberty of a bit of embellishment by this writer), we’re all on one indefinable, amorphous journey, of unknown duration and nature, to an inherently unknowable destination, even though we proceed on many diverse, indeterminate paths. Given this definition –for lack of a better word — of Jews and Jewishness, if you’ve got your matzah balls, you’re all set, and logically so. A dip in the mikvah? Maybe, if it’s hot out. Circumcision? Nah. Genuine acceptance of the mitzvos? Fuggedaboudit.

So, as the reader can see, I clearly understand both positions on this issue. And while I honestly rue the tragedy of David Harris being robbed, likely through no fault of his own but by historical viccissitude, of his connection to the truth about G-d, Torah, the Jewish people and, ultimately, himself, I appreciate that, given his mistaken starting premises, his position makes good sense.

More: In keeping with my commitment to pluralism, I would not oppose Israel’s granting all who hold Harris’ position, as well as heterodox movements of all flavors, full authority over conversions to their sundry belief systems, as it grants such authority, and funding, to the Samaritans and other Jewishly schismatic sects.

But to protect the wellbeing of the Jewish people, there must be one proviso: the would–be converters and converts must be willing to set aside their personal and institutional egos, and acknowledge loudly and clearly that the terms “Judaism,” “Torah” and “Mitzvos” have already been taken – trademarked, if you will — by the Orthodox, and indeed by the Judaism of the ages, and that there is truth to the words of the refreshingly honest, late Reform clergyman David Forman (about whom more shortly): “While American Jews are creating a brand of Judaism that may be legitimate for its own reality, it is creating something that is simply not recognizable to the collective historical experience of the Jewish people.”

But, David Harris, what about you? As an aspiring pluralist, do you not owe it to me to make the effort to understand the basis for my position on conversion that I outlined concisely above? And more importantly, do you not owe it to me to respect my integrity and sincerity in espousing that position, based on authoritative Jewish legal rulings and love for fellow Jews, rather than to fling hurtful, false accusations about divisiveness, monopolies of power and sinister attempts to “relentlessly question the legitimacy of other would-be Jews”? Is this, truly, the language of the pluralist?

Benny Morris’ interview of Shimon Peres in Tablet has to be one of the most interesting and refreshing reflections upon history that I have read in quite a while, yielding much insight into the personalities of Israel’s elder statesman and those with whom he interacted. With all his faults, he emerges far more heroic than before, and serves as a reminder of the days in which those who toiled to found the State – for all our ideological differences with them – were made of stronger stuff than the self-serving bureaucrats of the present.

Benny Morris is himself an intriguing character. As one of Israel’s New Historians, he was the darling of the left for challenging the mythic orthodoxies of Israel’s early days, particularly the War of Independence. He argued that in fact not all of Israel’s Arabs had fled on their own; some had been pushed out. (This position peeks out at us in the course of this interview.) Arab civilians had been killed as well. He then stood his findings on their head by concluding that while such incidents had occurred, they were the exception, and quite within the range of behavior of other armies. Moreover, he argued, they were justified in retrospect!

I found two vignettes especially interesting. The first concerns his reasons for championing draft exemptions for bnei yeshiva.

I ask Peres about Ben-Gurion’s agreement to waive the conscription to military service of the ultra-Orthodox, known as haredim, and to subsidize their Torah studies in yeshivas. Was this not a mistake, given today’s reality of massive exemptions from military service and the social crisis caused by massive government subsidies of the haredi tendency to have disproportionately large families and not work?

Peres: Ben-Gurion appointed me to negotiate the [exemption from service] with them. I think it was in 1951. I saw in my mind’s eye my grandfather. I was not a neutral observer. At the time, we were talking about 100-150 yeshiva students altogether. The ultra-orthodox leaders said: If there is no exemption, the yeshivot will be established in other countries. [I thought:] Israel without yeshivot?

Peres implies that he is averse to today’s mass exemptions. He adds that he—and perhaps Ben-Gurion—expected the haredim to change over time and become productive members of society.
Peres: To be a haredi is not eternal.

Morris: It seems to be.

Haredi women are beginning to go to work; haredim are going to the army.

Morris: We’re still talking very small numbers.

Another vignette might make Rav Yisrael Salanter proud. One of the three prongs of Rav Yisrael’s formula for mussar growth was understanding kochos ha-nefesh, or what we would call astute comprehension of human behavior. According to President Peres, he achieved a key objective in crucial negotiations because his understanding of the Arab psyche in general – and that of Yasser Arafat in particular – was more important than what was written in the playbook for diplomatic maneuvering.

Morris: How did you speak?

In English. His English was poor. He was embarrassed [by it]. But in private he spoke freely in English. Let me tell you a story. About Hebron. We wanted to retain [part of] downtown Hebron, the Cave of the Patriarchs and the route to Kiryat Arba. In the end, it was decided Arafat and I would sit, alone, until there was smoke [i.e., until there was agreement]. I felt he was very nervous. He started talking in French, which he didn’t know. And he started tapping with his foot, what he always did when he was nervous. [Peres demonstrates.] I called him “rais” [Arabic for headman or president]. He called me “your excellency.” I said to him, “Rais, we can’t reach an agreement.”

I returned to my room. There, IDF head of Central Command, Gen. Ilan Biran, said: “This is catastrophic.” [He was referring to the fact that Arafat had not agreed to leave a small but crucial area of downtown Hebron in Israeli hands.] I go back to Arafat, knock on his door.

Arafat: “You all right?” Peres: “You got what you wanted. I didn’t. I left your room depressed. You are a general, I’m not. You are a president, and I’m not. You are an engineer, I’m not. You are a religious leader, I’m not. It’s no wonder that you got what you wanted and I negotiated like a fool.” Arafat: “Let me look at the map.” And then he agreed to what we wanted. He had received our respect, recognition. It worked.

Peres understood one of the most important principles of mediation. People’s stated goals are not always their real goals. Often, they are not fully aware of the real goals themselves. An experienced rebbe or rav or mediator can draw from experience and recognize what disputants really want and need, and solutions can be implemented when the other side can provide it.

(Thanks to Dr. Saul Newman for the tip.)

This article, appearing in the Los Angeles Jewish Journal, omits only one significant fact in this kiddush Hashem of a piece. There is something that Benish Kaplan is even more passionate about than basketball. He is unswervingly loyal and dedicated to his illustrious relatives, the Feinsteins, shlit”a. Benish knows how to stick with a winning team!

Menschic Warriors
By David Suissa
Month after month, a few years ago, my little boy would nudge me. “Daddy, I want to try out for Kaplan,” he’d say. I knew Kaplan was a basketball program in the Hancock Park area, but I knew little else. My boy Noah was already playing for his Maimonides team in his school league, which meant practice every week and a game every Sunday – so why add a whole other layer of practice and games? It’s tough enough to juggle after-school activities for three busy kids; who needs another carpool headache to the other side of town?

Obviously, I hadn’t done my homework. If you’re a Jewish kid in a Jewish day school in Los Angeles, especially an Orthodox school, and you love to play basketball, the name “Kaplan” is like the name “Harvard” to an aspiring MBA candidate – hard to get in, but a dream destination. It’s like in those movies where a player toils in the minor leagues for years and dreams of one day going to “the show” – the major leagues.

Kaplan is the major leagues – in more ways than one.

First, it’s a Jewish team that plays in a non-Jewish league. Which means, forget about the haimish atmosphere of the Jewish leagues, where everybody knows everybody and “the Jews always win.”

Second, it’s really serious. Kaplan basketball isn’t recreation. It’s a passion. This is a reflection of the man who started the program more than 10 years ago.

Beinish Kaplan is a Charedi Jew who grew up on the Lower East Side of New York in the 1950s and 1960s; studied in yeshivas and was a student of the renowned Rabbi Moshe Feinstein; joined the U.S. Army and became a first lieutenant; started a successful garment business in New York before moving to Los Angeles in the 1970s and working in the finance industry; became an active member of Agudath Israel and a volunteer jack-of-all-trades organizer for the Orthodox community; and, through it all, was and remains an absolute, unequivocal basketball nut.

He started his love affair with the game as a kid, playing with his Jewish buddies and African American and Puerto Rican kids on the cement courts of the Lower East Side, rain, snow or shine.

Fifty-some years later, he hasn’t lost one twinkle of that love.

Today, on a strictly volunteer basis, he recruits and coaches seven Jewish teams each year, the kids ranging in age from 8 to 18, in a city league called ARC Basketball. From September to May, covering three different seasons, he runs practices every school night from 6 to 9 p.m. and coaches most of the games himself every Sunday from noon to 7 p.m. in locations as far away as the Santa Clarita Valley.

Catch him on any given Sunday pacing the sidelines during a game, and if not for that black yarmulke on his head, you’d think this was your typical tall, imposing, ultra-serious college coach during the Final Four tournament.

As you might expect, Kaplan puts a lot of emphasis on Jewish midot. He doesn’t tolerate trash talking, arrogance or swagger. His players are competitive but always well behaved or they don’t survive in the program.

There’s another midot Kaplan is known for: his intensity. Kaplan is so intense that he’s been known to scare off some parents. What’s funny, though, is that he rarely scares off the kids. He taps into their love for the game, so they don’t just tolerate his intensity, they see it as their ticket to becoming better players.

And while they do become better players – more often than not, his teams are consistent winners – the coach is after something bigger than basketball. He sees the program as teaching lessons for life. For overprotective parents who worry that their kids might be getting a little soft and could use a little toughness and discipline – in other words, most of us – this is a dream shidduch.

Someone will make a movie one day about Kaplan’s Yiddishe adventure in the inner-city world of serious basketball. I often wonder what goes through the minds of other coaches and players when they hear Kaplan call out plays in Hebrew (“Purim!” is for a high post play, “Cohen 2!” is for a screen and roll, and so on) or when the Kaplan players yell out “hazak ve’ematz!” (“strength and courage!”) before getting on the court.

I can’t tell you what it felt like the day my boy guarded the son of Arsenio Hall. I think I texted half of my family members in Montreal.

It’s all part of the Kaplan experience – never a dull moment. While the program is made up mostly of Orthodox kids, Kaplan welcomes Jewish players from all schools. Some players wear a kippah while playing, others don’t. There’s no controversy here between observant and nonobservant Jews, because all Jews at Kaplan observe the same rules: the coach’s.

Ultimately, Kaplan says, he wants to build “menschic warriors.” These are Jewish boys who will work hard to succeed in life, who will be proud to be Jewish and will defend the Jewish state, who will learn the rules of life and follow them, and, most of all, who will do it with confidence but without swagger and arrogance.

Some of his favorite phone calls are from former players, who are now in college or are married with children, and who call him just to keep in touch or ask for his advice.

“That’s when I know I’m winning,” he says.

“Whatever happened to ahavas Yisrael?” an acquaintance recently demanded to know. While I sometimes doff my defender-of-the-faithful hat at the gym, I assumed he was talking about Emmanuel and dutifully trotted out all my proofs that no ethnic discrimination was involved. Though Emmanuel was — as I had guessed — the impetus for his question, the issue he raised was far larger than Emmanuel.

“When I grew up in Detroit,” Max told me, “there were barely enough kids from shomer Shabbos families to support one day school. We all went to school together. I remember Rabbi Avrohom Abba Freedman, a devoted disciple of Reb Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz, going from bed to bed in hospitals asking people if they were Jewish. If they were, he would beg them to send their children to Bais Yehudah. Many important talmidei chachamim from that era came from non-shomer Shabbos homes.”

As the frum community has grown, schools have become more and more selective. The emphasis today is on refining the criteria for exclusion, not bringing in as many Jewish children as possible. Rav Aharon Leib Steinman has quipped that Avrohom Avinu would not be accepted in our schools today because of his father, but Yishmael and … Read More >>

The piece that follows is an exceptionally cogent and heart-felt presentation of some of the multi-tiered tragedy of abuse in our community. The incidence of abuse is tragic; the efforts to silence victims is tragic.

I was not able to ascertain the background or veracity of the specific charges in the piece, which first appeared in the Jewish Star. It doesn’t really matter. In the absolute worst case, think of it like racial discrimination in Emmanuel: it may have been the wrong example, it turns out, but the behavior is rife in other locations.

The most important reaction is for people to acquaint themselves with the names of those poskim who have said, and continue to say, that when an abuser may strike again, he must be stopped, and the proper halachic reaction it to go to the police. Period. Abuse kills. Nothing less than that.

Honoring the Badge

By Daniel Sosnowik

“Officer, what’s your badge number?”
I’ve been asked that question countless times over the last 26 years. Almost always, it followed an unpopular decision. Always, it was accompanied by an unspoken message: “I’m letting you know I will hold you accountable for this decision.”

And always, I answer that question … Read More >>

While all of us are conscious of the loss of the beis hamikdosh yvbb”a as the underlying cause of all natioal tragedy in the last two millennia, many of us still react most deeply to events closer to our day. I have seen shuls full of people dutifully reciting kinos without significant emotional connection come to life and tears arriving at the kinos of R Shimon Schwab and R Weismandel about the Holocaust.

In corresponding with one of our commenters, veteran mechanech and history buff Rabbi Shmuel Burstein, I came across a wonderful piece he published a number of years ago. It can quickly remind us of what Jewish life can become when HKBH lifts His protective shield r”l. It is published with the author’s permission. It has appeared in a number of places, including Aish.com, and the CUFI website.

It was the end of May, 1943, and Jewish Lvov was burning. Once home to Poland’s third largest Jewish community, Lvov’s 100,000 Jews numbered less than 8,000. “They are killing the Jewish police! This is the end!” came a cry from the ghetto.

Huge buildings, entire blocks were on fire. Jews ran in all directions. Hundreds made a dash for the sewers, … Read More >>

There exists an eerie parallel between the treatment of Israel by the international media and the treatment of chareidim in the Israeli media. Within two days of the Gaza flotilla incident, videos showing the Israeli naval commandos who rappelled onto the Mavi Marmara deck being set upon with metal bars and knives were available to all news outlets, and the association of those killed with jihadist groups well-documented.

Nevertheless both the United Nations and the United Nations Human Rights Council pushed forward with demands for an international investigation, and much of the international press continued to write about the event as an act of wanton murder. Reuters took a particularly creative approach to uncomfortable facts: it simply photo-shopped them out of existence. The knife in the hands of one of the jihadists, which had been used to eviscerate the commander of the Israeli forces, disappeared from the Reuters photo.

Moreover, the international press turned the flotilla into a huge public relations success by continuing to write about the “humanitarian crisis” in Gaza as an established fact. Few of those reporting on that crisis seemed the slightest bit interested in actually visiting Gaza to witness the crisis firsthand. Had they done so they … Read More >>

How the citizens of Israel speak about and to one another makes a great deal of difference. If anyone should understand that it is Daniel Gordis, Senior Vice-President of the Shalem Center.

More than anyone, Gordis has been responsible for breaking the painful news to supporters of Israel that there is little hope of peace in the near future. That was the thrust of his most recent work, Saving Israel: How the Jewish People Can Win a War That May Never End, for which he received the National Jewish Book Award.

Winning that war requires maintaining a modicum of civility when voicing our complaints about one another. Without a measure of unity, we will not prevail in that long war. Thus I was shocked by my friend’s recent vitriolic diatribe against the charedi community (“The Five-State Solution,” Jerusalem Post, June 25).

He fires a series of one-sentence accusations at the charedi community, not lingering over any of them long enough to interject even a trace of analysis, or nuance, or solutions. If charedim have ever contributed anything of value to Israel, or might ever do so, it has escaped his notice. Lifting a page from the old campaign posters of … Read More >>

Rav Yehuda Amital zt”l left last week for the Yeshiva Shel Ma’aloh. He was born Yehuda Klein in Grossvarden, Romania, and studied as a child in the local yeshiva, which was run by a transplant from the Mir. He suffered the destruction of his family in the Shoah, and spent eight months himself in a labor camp before being liberated by the Red Army on Simchas Torah in 1944.

Arriving in Israel, he learned in Chevron under R. Issar Zalman Meltzer, from whom he subsequently received semichah. (He would later marry his granddaughter, יבלח”ט Miriam.) He also learned with R Yaakov Moshe Charlop.

With the outbreak of the War of Independence, he was drafted into Tzahal, and fought at Latrun and the Western Galil. After the war, he served as one of the roshei yeshiva of Yeshivat HaDarom. It is there that he developed the concept of the Hesder yeshiva, and was one of the important forces bringing turning that vision into a reality.

After the June War, he accepted the position of Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivat Har Etzion, a post he would retain until age 80, serving alongside יבלח”ט R Aharon Lichtenstein, shlit”a.

Rav Amital championed a new approach to learning Tanach … Read More >>

While much of last week’s buzz concentrated on words that were never uttered, the issue behind it has been around for many hundreds of years. Should Torah chinuch stress limud Torah alone, taking a dim view of any other involvement, or should it include aspects of secular training and acculturation, large or small?

Most of our readers are familiar with the famous comparison made by Rav Dessler zt”l in Michtav Me-Eliyahu vol.3 pgs 355-360. Rav Dessler pointed out that chinuch in Germany, which included secular study according to the directives of R. Samson Raphael Hirsch, succeeded in producing laypeople almost uniformly observant. It did not, however, produce Torah giants. Eastern Europe, however, which allowed no secular involvement, produced many Torah luminaries. The price it paid, however, was the many dropouts from observance altogether.

Rav Dessler’s analysis was first published in 1963. Three years later, the journal Ha-Ma’ayan published an anonymous response. This response is not as well known as R. Dessler’s piece, and deserves some attention and thought, whatever people decide is the proper course for them.

It may be true, says the author, that R. Samson Raphael Hirsch’s Germany did not produce many Torah giants. It is not at … Read More >>

On a number of occasions my attention has been drawn to the fact that some of my essays posted on Cross-Currents have elicited in their comments sections negative remarks about, portrayals of, or insinuations concerning various groups of Jews. This pains me, primarily because I believe such sentiments prolong our golus, and secondarily because I feel complicit in them.

Halacha proscribes saying something positive about another person in front of someone who dislikes that person and who may then feel compelled to voice a negative feeling about him or her. The nature of a website is such that those who read its content will always include some who are ill-disposed to this or that individual, group of people, type of person, organization or movement. If an essay of mine that lauds someone or something causes others to feel a need to point out, blatantly or subtly, negative things about that someone or something, I am culpable.

I realize that there are guidelines for comments to Cross-Currents postings (they can be found at http://www.cross-currents.com/comments_and_tips/ ), but, for whatever reason, I have found that some comments my offerings have elicited have fallen short, sometimes far short, of what … Read More >>