An abrupt shift takes place in all the world’s synagogues around this time of year.

Over the previous 17 weeks, since the public reading of the Torah was begun anew after the holiday of Sukkot, the readings were narrative in nature, beginning with the world’s creation, continuing with elements of the lives of the patriarchs and matriarchs, then the account of Joseph’s life, the sojourn in Egypt, the Exodus and the revelation at Sinai.

Beginning with the portion called Mishpatim, though, the Torah’s focus is largely on technicalities of civil and ritual laws. Then, in subsequent weeks, laws pertaining to the minutiae of the Tabernacle’s construction, its many vessels and the special garments worn by Cohanim during sacrificial services will be read. The sudden transition from miraculous to mundane is striking.

Every word of the Torah, though, is as important as every other; a missing letter, whether in the account of the revelation at Sinai or in the rules governing property damage, renders a Torah scroll invalid.

To mark the just-concluded week-long visit to Israel of the presidents of Micronesia and Nauru, I republish below a piece that appeared in Hamodia in 2004.

Micronesia.

A fabulous name which, if it didn’t already exist, would simply have to be invented. Perhaps as the moniker of an exclusive island retreat for top Microsoft executives. Maybe as a medical term describing a very minute memory lapse. Or, can’t you just see it in some children’s storybook as the name of an enchanted kingdom populated by the Little People?

Yet, in reality, Micronesia is none of these things. It is, instead, the name of what is quite obviously a courageous little country that cares not what others think, not even what the whole world thinks, only about doing what is just and true. That is why each time Israel is brought before the bar of justice for one of its manifold perceived sins against the Palestinians or, indeed, the world community, there is a literal handful of countries that unfailingly support the Jewish state. One of these is the United States; another is Micronesia, which, though once a territory under U.S. stewardship, now charts its own foreign policy course.

I am not able to worship a G-d Whose ways are all crystal clear to me – attributed to the Kotzker Rebbe (1787-1859)

The ways of G-d are hidden and mysterious; they have never been crystal clear to man. Only a finite and mortal god can be fully known and understood by finite and mortal man. But who will worship a mortal god? By the same token, only an infinite and immortal mind can fathom the infinite and immortal G-d. But who among us has an infinite and immortal mind?

Given these obvious facts, it is difficult for a mortal mind to fathom the ease and eagerness with which other mortal minds presume to reveal divine secrets. For whenever some major catastrophe strikes, there are always those who leap forward with reasons and explanations. Whether it be a bridge collapse, a massive air disaster or a plague, inevitably a religious leader stands up and tells the world precisely why this happened.

Tsunamis, we are informed, strike certain countries because they disregard G-d; floods inundate populous areas because they are flooded with vice; hurricanes devastate cities because of overweening pride. It is as if every catastrophe were to have its own menu of cause and effect. For those who have direct lines to the heavenly throne, nothing that G-d does is mysterious or hidden. His actions are always readily understandable; simply check the menu.

My second daughter, Tehilloh, is very excited, as in about a month, God willing, she and I will be spending eight days together in Israel. She will become Bat Mitzvah at the end of June, and this trip to Israel, her first, is her special birthday present from me and my wife.

I have the privilege of visiting Israel often, but for various reasons, my wife gets there only occasionally, and my children not at all. As such, it is a challenge to ensure that our children share our passion for Israel and remain aware of the fact that Israel lies at the centre of all Jewish religious, political and national aspirations. It is too easy for them to spend their childhood in the comfort of Golders Green without properly understanding the importance of Israel and the focal role that it ought to play in their lives and objectives. How does one convey to children living in a Diaspora that is largely happy and supportive of their religious lives that living outside Israel is not ideal? How does one teach Diaspora children to comprehend the miracle of the Jewish return to the Land, celebrate Israel’s successes, commiserate with her failings and identify with Israel and Israelis? How does one make them appreciate that the heart of the Jewish people beats not in Golders Green or Boro Park, but in Jerusalem?

One way that we have devised is to try to take each child for a private, intensive tour of Israel as the main part of the celebration of their religious maturity. I took our eldest daughter three years ago, but I hope that as we get further down the family, my wife will be able to take some of the children for their special tour. The rest of the celebration will be modest – a dinner for family and friends and a Se’udah She’lishit hosted by our community – but the trip to Israel is seen as the ‘big’ experience. While we are there, I hope to take Tehilloh to key places of religious and historical interest (she’s been researching where she would like to go), see some friends, engage in a chessed project and visit a couple of famous people. But mostly, I want Tehilloh to have a fabulous time soaking up the incomparable atmosphere of the Land, to experience its smells, sounds, people, craziness and Jewishness so that she too will get the ‘Israel bug’ that will fill her dreams and aspirations, as my wife and I did years ago. I am confident that this trip will do the job and enable her to understand why when I return from one trip to Israel, I can’t wait to plan the next.

As you can tell, I’m as excited as Tehilloh, even though I’ve done it all before, not least to get eight whole days of private daughter-daddy time. But most of all I’m excited and blessed to have the opportunity to contribute to strengthening Tehilloh’s Jewish identity and helping her to build her connection with our Land.

Back in the days when I used to visit my parents, of blessed memory, in Los Angeles, I was once driving along Coldwater Canyon, one hand busily turning the radio dial in search of something interesting, when a man’s voice came on talking about holiness. The southern drawl alerted me instantly to the fact that this must be a Christian station, but I paused, curious, just long enough to hear him say that we all have the voice of G-d in us, which we call “my conscience.”

What my conscience was telling me at that moment was to turn the channel, but the line remained in my memory and resurfaced a few days ago, thanks to a piece in The New York Times.

It was the title that caught my attention, “An Ill Father, a Life-or-Death Decision” – an article about euthanasia, obviously, by someone named Alicia von Stamwitz.

I wasn’t in suspense as to where a writer for the Times would stand on the issue.

It was hardly the first or only time, but one night not long ago I learned something important from my wife.

We were driving home from a wedding in another city, both of us sneezing and coughing from the bad cold we shared. As I drove, she checked for messages on her phone, which had been turned off during the wedding. One message was from one our married daughters, who lives with her husband and family in a different part of the country. Could she call back, I heard our daughter ask, when she had a chance?

Well, the chance was right there; and so my wife returned the call, on speaker phone so I could participate. She reached our daughter’s voicemail (of course) and left a message. I expected to hear the phone snap shut then but instead heard the Ms. Monotone phone-voice offer options, one of which was “to review your message, press…” My wife did. More options, one of which was to delete and re-record her message. She chose that too.

Her new message to our daughter consisted of precisely the same words as her previous one, but it was entirely different. The first one, understandably, carried with it all the misery of a bad cold – my wife sounded exhausted, and sniffles and an occasional cough accompanied her words. When she recorded her second take, though, she somehow managed to muster the energy to sound healthy, even cheery. I admit taking my eyes off the road for a second to make sure the same person was still sitting to my right.

China used to bother me quite a bit when I was younger. A lot of people seemed to live there, but it was notoriously absent from the world view of Chazal. (At that point in life, I had assumed that if something was real, it had to be explicitly featured in the chief texts of our mesorah.) How could something that big escape the notice of Chazal? One could follow a thread in Chazal that reduced the course of human civilization to a clash between Yaakov and Esav (after a few minor intrusions). There were many supporting actors besides the ones with top billing, but the Chinese didn’t rate as understudies or even extras.

Years later, I would often be asked the same or similar question by talmidim. What purpose, they would ask, do the Chinese serve? (Those were the years in which they were the Bad Guy Commies, not our trading partners and major consumers of our debt, so the question made at least limited sense.)

As the years went by, I modified my expectation of what I should find explicitly mentioned by Chazal and what I should not find. It’s a pity, because I think I found the answer to a question I no longer have. It was somehow not a surprise to find it in a thought of Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch, as I was preparing my weekly The Timeless Rav Hirsch shiur for publication.

It wasn’t just the words of Rav Hirsch. Hashgacha, and my role on a beis din for gerus had plenty to do with it.

by Doron Beckerman

The success of the holy enterprise rested on the broad shoulders of the seasoned prophet. This was to be the climax of the Exodus, the end of the Redemption, the return to the glory days of the Forefathers.

Seven days of preparation were to be followed by the Presence of the A-mighty, dwelling within the Jewish nation. Any misstep, even a wrong thought, from Moshe Rabbeinu, would trigger a tidal wave of frustration, misery, and defeat. The enormous tension must have been palpable, and the unimaginably intense deveikus of Moshe Rabbeinu was readily visible during that momentous, awesome, final week of Adar.

Mar Ukva visited Ginzaq. He was asked… what did Moshe wear while performing the Service during the Seven Days of Induction? …A white cloak. Rav Cahana taught: A seamless white cloak” (Taanis 11a).
Rashi: “So that he would not be suspected of removing consecrated funds in the seam, since it is written: ‘And you shall be innocent before G-d and man’.

I had been planning to write a follow-up message about my posting “The Earth Trembles” even before Illana B.’s comment (# 20) appeared. But her request – taking me back to my family’s wonderful years in Providence – convinced me to put aside some other pressing things and get down to addressing concerns that have been raised about what I wrote.

I have to confess that I don’t usually read the Cross-Current comments posted to my essays. To be honest, I have found that posters often seemed to not have really read the essay on which they chose to comment; and that the tone of some postings seemed unnecessarily abrasive. I receive much feedback from individual subscribers to Am Echad Resources and so I get ample thoughtful responses and constructive criticism from that source.

Having been apprised, though, of comments on various blogs that mischaracterized my words as “blaming” the Haitian disaster on “a cartoon,” I looked at the comments C-C readers had offered and, at the moderator’s suggestion, cleared those I felt deserved to be posted, and deleted those about which I felt otherwise. The latter category included repetitious comments and those that included name-calling, were crass or disparaged Gedolim. There are places on the web where such writing can feel at home. C-C is not one of them.

But I think most, if not all, of the points that were made even in the rejected postings are reflected in one or more of those that I approved – which can be read following my recent essay. The points, rendered as questions, can be put as follows:

At a simchah recently, I bumped into the father of an old friend, whom I hadn’t seen for many years. Charlie was always known as a forthright person, and it was good to see that the passage of twenty years hasn’t changed anything. He asked me what I consider to be the place of a Jew who doesn’t believe in God. He also told me that he remains a proud member of the community and of the Jewish people (he is, and always was, a staunch member of an Orthodox synagogue), but doesn’t believe in God. Charlie confided that he had asked his own rabbi and claimed that he had ‘been unable to handle the question’.

I think that while it’s a matter of great regret that Charlie doesn’t believe in God, and it would be desirable to discuss his beliefs with him in detail, his question deserved an answer.

My response (admittedly unprepared and delivered while struggling to hear over blaring music) was simple. I suggested to Charlie that even if he doesn’t believe in God, Judaism can certainly provide him with meaningful ideas, practices, and occasions for inspiration that will enhance his existence immeasurably. By continuing his association with the Jewish world, he will benefit from a way to contextualise major life-events, from the support of others and from unparalleled opportunities to enhance the lives of others.

How would you have answered?

To any early 20th century Polish Jew, Japan could as well have been Neptune.

The distance between the shtetl and the Far East was measurable not merely in physical miles but in cultural and religious distance no less. Yet when, on September 1, 1923, a powerful earthquake hit Japan’s Kanto plain, laying waste to Tokyo, Yokohama and surrounding cities, killing well over 100,000 people, news of the disaster reached even the Polish town of Radin. That was the home of the “Chofetz Chaim,” Rabbi Yisroel Meir Kagan, the sainted Jewish scholar renowned around the world even then for his scholarship, honesty and modest life.

Informed of the mass deaths in Japan, the 85-year-old rabbinic leader was visibly shaken, immediately undertook to fast and insisted that the news should spur all Jews to repentance.

Yes, Jews to repentance. Jewish religious sources maintain that catastrophes, even when they do not directly affect Jews, are nevertheless messages for them, wake-up calls to change for the better. Insurers call such occurrences “Acts of G-d.” For Jews, the phrase is apt, and every such lamentable event demands a personal response.

I just watched the YouTube of Chief Inspector Joe Sullivan of the Philadelphia Police Department explain what went wrong on that flight to Louisville Thursday morning. A cabin attendant, not familiar with the Jewish ritual device, became alarmed, etc. The plane was diverted to Philadelphia, where police determined that the device was no threat to safety. It is a black box worn on the forehead, with leather straps leading from it to another box worn on the arm. The device is known as an olfactory.

Something doesn’t smell right about the story.

The problem was certainly not with the Philadelphia PD. They couldn’t know about olfactories, having their hands full coping with all those late-night disturbances at the Philadelphia Yeshiva, one of the most notorious party-schools in the country.

The destination of the plane is cause for suspicion. Louisville is where the Presbyterian Church (USA) is headquartered. PCUSA was the first mainline Protestant denomination to approve divestment of its investment funds from Israel (although later repealed by its membership, which is not hostile to Israel, unlike some of its leadership). Its Israel-Palestine Mission Network routinely posts some of the worst anti-Israel – and, on occasion, anti-Semitic – material on the globe. I betcha they planted the olfactories, just to make Jews look bad. The seventeen year old passenger probably wasn’t even Jewish but evangelical, about the only people they hate more than Jews.

I was pleased that Agudah very quickly sent out a message pointing people to suitable agencies to which to donate. (I was frankly horrified that they included Oxfam, the virulently anti-Israel NGO. More suitable agencies are not in short supply.) It was understandable that Agudah did not mount a campaign of their own – they do not have a website. The OU does have one, and within a short period of time it had put a donation mechanism in place. Funds collected will go directly to the American Joint Distribution Center, which has already helped defray the cost of the Israeli relief mission. This is where I made my donation.

To a large extent, charitable giving in times of catastrophe is related to feelings of commonality. As of this writing, contributions in the US are ahead of those after the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004, despite the much higher death toll then. Haiti is America’s neighbor, and Americans therefore feel more of a bond.

For frum Jews with scores of needs competing for our tzedakah funds – some of them life-threatening – the issue is more complicated. I have nothing to say to those who could be completely indifferent to human suffering. ורחמיו על כל מעשיו.
Anyone who is not moved by the pictures of pain and privation cannot be a decent human being, let alone a decent Jew. To paraphrase Shakespeare, “Hath not a Haitian eyes? hath not a Haitian hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as any other person is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die?”

Beyond the necessary heart-felt compassion, I believe that our response will show how well our minds have internalized the notion of Tzlelem Elokim. There are few ties between ourselves and Haitians – despite Haiti’s welcoming Jews fleeing from Hitler, and its voting the right way during the UN partition vote in 1947 that allowed the creation of the Jewish State. We still see Haiti as primitive country, the poorest in the Western hemisphere. We regard it as lawless and chaotic, not a place we would even want to visit. Its culture does not impact upon ours; there are few, if any, shared interests and experiences. If we take Tzelem Elokim seriously, however, we have all the commonality we need to have.

While Rabbi Dovid Batzri’s first attempt to drive the dybbuk out was not apparently successful, R. Elyashiv, shtlit”a, reportedly refused to allow it in in the first place, according to the account in Chadrei Chareidim. “Go away from here. I have no business with a dibuk.”

Assume, for the sake of argument, that the account is accurate. (My own practice is to follow R. Elyashiv’s own directive, and assume that nothing quoted in his name is accurate, unless heard directly from him. Even then, I would be skeptical if any background information regarding an issue that was delivered to him by one of his more notorious gatekeepers, who are known to color, filter, and distort.) Was R. Elyashiv dismissive of the possibility that the unfortunate young man from Brazil was possessed by a dybbuk? Did he, like R. Moshe Sternbuch, shlit”a, see mental illness as the cause of the aberrant behavior, rather than a freeloading spirit? Or did he dismiss the dybbuk because he had nothing to say to it, and didn’t particularly relish its company?

The same account claims that R. Elyashiv certainly did not rule out the possibility of a real case of possession. Shlomo Kook, the editor of HaShavua B’Yerushalayim, attended the ill-fated attempt at a videoconferenced exorcism, and reported on its details in his paper. He then looked back at the celebrated predecessor to today’s dybbuk, the infamous dybbuk of Dimona, a bit over a decade ago. Kook reports that R. Elyashiv was asked at the time whether the story should be told to children, since not everyone believed that it was an actual dybbuk they were up against. According to Kook, R. Elyashiv responded:

“Can you say for certain it wasn’t genuine?” adding, “If some are encouraged (receive chizuk) by this, why not tell?”

The lives of dedicated Israel-bashers, especially those who hate the Jewish State because it’s no longer acceptable to just hate Jews, can’t be easy. The glaring contrasts between Israeli and Palestinian behavior have to make it hard to keep up the “Israel is the problem” chant, in the hope the weed-words find places to grow.

Recent events are illustrative. When a mosque in a West Bank village was torched at the end of the year, allegedly at the hand of an Israeli settler angered by his government’s construction freeze, a delegation of Israelis from West Bank settlements brought copies of the Koran to residents of the village and expressed sorrow over the crime. Shortly thereafter, Israeli Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Rabbi Yona Metzger visited the village to express his “revulsion at this wretched act of burning a place holy to the Muslim people” and compared the arson to “how the Holocaust began.”

Then, ten days later, a 45-year-old Israeli father of seven, Rabbi Meir Chai, was shot without provocation as he drove his vehicle on a public road. Although the group taking “credit” for the murder claimed affiliation with the Aksa Martyrs Brigades, a group connected to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party, the Palestinian leader did not extend condolences to the murdered man’s family. He didn’t care, for that matter, to disassociate Fatah from the murder.

What he did do, however, was immediately speak up when the Shin Bet, Israel’s highly regarded security agency, identified Rabbi Chai’s killers and killed three of them – one because intelligence information indicated he was armed, the other two because they refused to surrender. (A fourth suspect was taken into custody.) Mr. Abbas declared the three deceased militants “shahids,” or holy martyrs, and sent Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad to pay condolence visits to their families.

Simple instructions often claim “three” as their magic number. Think, “It’s as easy as A,B,C,” or “ready, aim, fire,” or “liberté, égalité, fraternité.” So it shouldn’t be surprising that someone telescoped the rules of justifiable speech into three simple questions: Is it true? Is it kind? Is it necessary?

It may not be surprising, until you read a bit more in a lovely article in the Wall Street Journal (January 6), and thereby discover that this formula is attributed to Socrates, or perhaps Buddhist tradition. Either way, the authors apparently came up with program for civilizing and uplifting speech civil with very little help from Sura, Pumbedisa, or Neherda’a.

Did they scoop us? Maybe not. There is no question that society would be in a better place if more people would use this tripartite litmus test before speaking (or blogging!). Under closer scrutiny, however, the program turns out to be unworkable. Seen from a Torah perspective, it is not only unworkable, but inaccurate as well!

Lest we be seen as intolerably persnickety, let us give credit where due. The article is a pleasure to read. It is good to hear that many people are aware of the damage done by gossip – both to the target and to the gossipmonger. It is a pleasant surprise to learn that some employers are so serious about banning it, that engaging in gossip can be grounds for dismissal; that some are teaching elementary school children to avoid socially damaging speech; that an old Aish HaTorah project (not identified as such in the article) called WordsCanHeal.org, succeeded in attracting the backing and support of an impressive number of major celebrities.

Neither facts nor logic have impeded champions of Nofrat Frenkel, the woman briefly detained by police at Jerusalem’s Western Wall, or Kotel Ma’aravi, on November 18.

Needless to say, Ms. Frenkel’s charge that she was unnecessarily manhandled by police should be responsibly investigated. Even a violator of the law has the right to be detained in a nonviolent manner. But that Ms. Frenkel violated the law, as per the Israeli Supreme Court’s decision in 2003 to apportion a special area, at Robinson’s Arch, for women to chant at feminist religious services, is not at issue.

Ms. Frenkel’s detention was not spurred, as her champions (media and pundits dutifully trotting behind in step) have repeatedly proclaimed, by her having dared to wear a tallit, or Jewish prayer garment, at the site.

Indeed, by Ms. Frenkel’s own account (Forward, November 24), she and 40-odd other “Women of the Wall” prayed as a group that morning in the main Kotel area wearing tallitot, without incident.

Dovid HaMelech prided himself in speaking enthusiastically and unabashedly to foreign royalty about Hashem’s Torah (Tehilim 119:46). Too many of us react, “Gee, if I were in that position, what would I say? Why would they be interested?” We have lots to say, but we haven’t always thought carefully enough about what parts of the Torah’s message are most accessible and stimulating to others. Because of our reluctance to intelligently showcase Torah (and increasingly, the sorry state of our communications skills), we lose opportunities to influence our friends and neighbors, whether of royal lineage or not.

When a good friend of mine excitedly told me about a successful presentation to a non-Orthodox audience, I asked him to send me the transcript. Rabbi Meyer May is the Executive Director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) in Los Angeles, where I work. He was asked to speak in Dublin at an event over the New Year’s weekend co-sponsored by iACT (SWC’s campus outreach wing) and the European Center for Jewish Students. The students from Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, London, Dublin, Marseilles, Lyon, Paris, Antwerp, Brussels, Amsterdam, Russia, the Ukraine, Brazil, Berlin, Dusseldorf, Sweden and Gibraltar. The speech was met with rousing and sustained applause, and led to much further interaction with the students.

Most of the ideas will not be new to our readers, but I present it for its elegant balance, as a model of how to reach across the divide. It combines the right amounts of history, contemporary name-dropping, inspirational material – and divrei Torah that are not watered down. (Humor, too, but I deleted the joke, since you’ve all heard it .)

We should be doing more of this kind of thing.

There is a tendency in the Israeli Torah community to view the world as a zero-sum game, in which that which benefits the secular population is at our expense and vice versa. An intelligent friend of mine once argued with a straight face that the chareidi community is overtaxed because the funding we receive for education constitutes a lesser percentage of national budget than our share of the population. When I explained to him that we also use the roads, are protected by the IDF, and drink the water, he reacted as if he had never thought of that.

Of course, everyone appreciates that we are in a common boat with respect to security. An Iranian nuclear attack would not distinguish between religious and non-religious. When a decree of destruction. comes to the world, it sweeps before it the tzaddik and ordinary person alike. But common interests are by no means limited to matters of security. The perennial problem of Israel’s lack of drinking water is another example of a crisis affecting one and all.

An avid reader and commenter (who shall remain unnamed) put us on the trail of a professional who has been guiding yeshiva men entering the workplace. Said professional put together some of his reactions based on his significant experience in helping frum men find positions. After some prodding, said professional revealed his name. It turns out that he, too, is an avid Cross-Currents reader. Daniel Rubin has a Masters in Human Resources from Rochester Institute of Technology and has made the transition from Jewish education to corporate training and development. He has been involved in both of these fields for over a decade each and actively mentors young professionals. We thank him for this contribution, which is must reading for the inexperienced job seeker.

As an employee for a large corporation within a mainstream Jewish community, I’ve had the opportunity to respond to many requests for job search assistance from both individuals and Jewish organizations dedicated to this effort. As a result of this experience, I feel compelled to share a few thoughts on what I believe to be a significant concern. Several of the candidates who have approached me have a number of critical issues they need to address before actually applying for a job. They prepare poorly written resumes which reveal very active Jewish lifestyles, ambiguous advanced degrees, and “work experience” which is debatable and irrelevant. I have tried to delicately communicate the following ideas to these candidates:

• A resume is not a recorded history of extra-curricular activities from 9th grade and onward. Each statement has to send a powerful message that is meaningful to the non-Jewish reader and will make he/she want to distinguish your resume from the other thousand on the pile.

• Identifying yourself as an Orthodox Jew (or a member of any other religious or ethnic group, for that matter) is not to your advantage. It is not wise to encourage the reader to believe you are different than the rest of the world and may have special needs. Either make an accomplishment religiously neutral or exclude it.

A few weeks ago, I wrote in these pages a piece summarizing some major lessons from the life of Rabbi Moshe Sherer, zt”l. I now realize that I left out a very important lesson: Rabbi Sherer was extraordinarily careful never to let anyone close to him whom he feared might ever reflect badly on Torah Jewry. Many times, he rejected out of hand suggestions that Agudath Israel of America honor particular people out of a concern that the award might come back to haunt the organization one day.

Though I described this trait in Rabbi Sherer, I don’t think I fully appreciated it. I did not realize how great the temptation is nor how rare is the ability to resist. We are not talking about turning down money to do something that is clearly wrong or where the potential downside is evident to all, but about something much more subtle: Refusing an immediate and obvious benefit because of a slight suspicion that it may one day generate a negative fall-out.

One morning about a year ago, I got a call from a distraught friend. She had been working for a few months as the secretary of a tzedaka organization, and had just discovered that none of the funds had been used to “benefit needy children,” as claimed by the public relations brochure she herself had helped produce. The money had been going into the director’s pocket, who later explained himself by saying that his family, too, was in dire need.

So ashamed was she that ever since her discovery, the woman had been in a depression. Frum from birth, she said that what had broken her was not only the discovery itself, but the reactions she’d gotten from two other frum Jews. The first, a close friend, had suggested she help the director set up a bona fide organization.

“But all this time he was lying to me, and getting me to steal for him! How can I continue working with him?”

Her friend seemed inadequately horrified.

Ironically, or maybe not, as one scientific establishment raises alarms about what it perceives to be dire threats to the planet, another is posing demonstrable threats to individual human lives.

The trove of e-mails written by climate scientists at East Anglia University in England that was made public last month seems to implicate some of those professionals as having sought to alter data and suppress evidence about global warming. The e-mails certainly show that scientists can be as spiteful, conniving and deceptive as anyone else. Global warming skeptics have seized upon the e-mails’ revelations to promote their skepticism; whether it is warranted or not remains an open question.

But another idea, this one promoted by much of the medical establishment, presents a clear and present danger.

“Decisions are made every day in this country to withdraw and remove people from life support,” says a doctor quoted by Dr. Sanjay Gupta in his book “Cheating Death,” “without really giving them a chance.” And, as was recently reported in the New York Times, “terminal sedation” – administering drugs to alleviate pain but thereby hastening death – has been embraced by many medical professionals. Life, quite literally, isn’t what it used to be.

By Rabbi Dovid Landesman

There are singular events throughout our lives that provide unusual and unexpected inspiration. At times they are a source of insight, providing resolutions to questions that have long been troubling. While it can often be difficult to trace the connection between the event/circumstance and the answer that suddenly presents itself, surely we must, at minimum, express our gratitude to those who provided us with these opportunities for enlightment. Hence, I would like to acknowledge my great debt to a number of people who are responsible for one of the most memorable experiences of my life: to Rabbi Ariel Levine shlita, chief rabbi of Georgia [in the Former Soviet Union], to Dr. Rosenshein and Baruch Hertz of the Va’ad L’Hatzalat Nidchei Yisroel of Agudath Israel of America, and to my wife Nechama for her part in establishing the new seminary for girls in Tbilisi, Georgia. B’ezrat Hashem, this new school will soon become part of the Ma’alot/Nevey Yerushalayim network. It was through the combined efforts of these people that I was fortunate to spend five days in Tbilisi this past week.

Let me first apprise you of the question that found resolution through this experience. In this past week’s parashah, Vayigash, we come across one of the most dramatic scenes in all of Tanach; Yosef’s revelation to his brothers.

Ani Yosef, ha’od avi chai? I am Yosef, is my father still alive?
Some commentaries explain that with this statement Yosef was giving Yehudah, and by extension all of the brothers, mussar; suddenly you are worried about our father’s physical and mental health! When you sold me you had no such concerns!

If you don’t know what it stands for, skip the rest of this piece. I am not going to rehash the whole sordid affair.

For what it is worth, I will offer one man’s opinion, written as a bit of an insider in the world of gerus, since I sit from time to time on a respected beis din for gerus. The opinions expressed herein are my own; they were not vetted by my colleagues.

I have come neither to praise EJF, nor to bury it. If I believed that EJF was worthless, I wouldn’t bother writing. It is only because I see the potential for accomplishment that I pen these thoughts, in the hope that others will feel the same way.

The chief problem with EJF is not its recent scandal-ridden past. The problem is that to date, it has not done enough to insure that the past will not be repeated. The way in which it has addressed the past hardly inspires any confidence.