By Yitzchok Adlerstein, on February 10th, 2012 Moshe Grylak, Mishpacha’s editor-in-chief, holds an honorable position on my A list. He wisely knows the limits of his readers, but often strains against them to challenge them with new ideas. His piece in last week’s issue (Feb.1, #395), however, left me disappointed.
Entitled “This Is What You Call Iran?,” the article was two weeks in the making. His contribution a week earlier simply set the stage for the main character to appear on the middle of the stage and proclaim, “If you only knew a bit of gemara! Once you see how difficult it is to gain a capital conviction in a Jewish court, you will never fear haredim again.” The idea has some merit, but won’t work without much more that Rabbi Grylak did not say, and perhaps cannot say.
Rabbi Grylak quite correctly makes a point about inflated hysteria concerning haredim in Israel. We can also appreciate his argument that face-to-face encounters between people who rarely, if ever, speak to each other might be a good thing. His next point, however, doesn’t sit well. He wishes us to believe that what secular Israelis fear most about “the demographic trend that clearly forecasts a Chareidi majority within a few decades” is that they will be summarily executed by Jewish courts for their chilul Shabbos and their paramours. Rabbi Grylak then reports the success he has had with secular groups by explaining all the details in halacha that make it well-nigh impossible to ever execute a perpetrator. The response of students: “Why didn’t anybody ever tell us this before?” We are to believe that fear of haredim then evaporated, and everyone lived happily and harmoniously ever after (they in olam hazeh, and we in olam haboh).
I hope that secular Israelis are not that stupid, because then no one at all is running the country. The ones I know might find his point enlightening and interesting, but hardly reassuring.
One fear, of course, that he does not address is that a country with a haredi majority whose members are overwhelmingly unemployed or underemployed is simply unsustainable economically. The more haredim, the fewer working Israelis paying the taxes that pay for social services to those who don’t work or don’t get paid enough. After a while (not so long) secular Israelis get tired of footing a bill that grows larger and larger, and they leave. Even fewer taxpayers are left. Israelis are shooting themselves in the foot, reloading, and shooting again. This is the issue one hears time and time again from secular Israelis.
But let’s leave economics aside, and just focus on whether or not secular Israelis ought to fear that Israel in a haredi majority might start to resemble Iran just a tad. Personally, I don’t think so, but I understand why chiloni fears are real. And I am not so sure that Rabbi Grylak would agree with my reasons not to fear.
Rabbi Grylak only addresses the issue of capital punishment. It is, indeed, a straw man. I don’t know why he elides the most striking detail of Jewish criminal law. That is the requirement of forewarning. The beis din only metes out capital (and even corporal) punishment if the perpetrator is warned by two witnesses just prior to the commission of the crime, and verbally acknowledges that he understands how he will be punished by the court, which is just fine with him. Want to avoid the death penalty for that extramarital tryst? Just keep mum when accosted by the two (kosher) witnesses.
Capital punishment is not the issue. Two other issues are far more important in addressing concerns that Israel could become Talibanized. The first is that not everyone listens to Moshe Grylak – or his gemara. You can argue that the community should not be held responsible for the escapades of kano’im and Sikrikim – but they aren’t doing a very good job holding them in check either – or even speaking out against them. Why wouldn’t a chiloni Israel look at their activities with concern that as the Chareidi community grows, there will be more on these zealots, who will become even more brazen in time?
More important is the gemara that Rabbi Grylak does not quote: Rosh Hashanah 6, and elsewhere, which establishes the authority of the Jewish court to compel people to perform mitzvos. The plain meaning of the text is that people who are reluctant to perform mitzvos can be compelled through grievous bodily force to obey the law. Couple this with the authority of beis din to act le-afrushei me-issura/ to distance a potential sinner from his ability to sin, and you have a license for batei din to compel full observance of the Torah, both affirmative and proscriptive obligations. No witnesses, no forewarning, none of Rabbi Grylak’s niceties that calmed his secular friends. Why should they not anticipate groups of people jumping out of vans, forcing tefillin and tzitzis on their bodies, and bulldozing their soccer stadiums?
I grew up believing (i.e. hearing from rabbeim, when they got in the mood to speak about such things) that if we ever “took over” the Jewish State, all the above would certainly occur. Now, I don’t believe that this is so anymore. I would point to a teshuva of the Mahari Tatz (cited in Ohr Someach, Geirushin 2:20) that forcing people to comply with Torah law (at least in regard to affirmative obligations) rests on the assumption that the person does have significant regard for Hashem and His Torah, and nonetheless strays. A person who completely rejects the mitzvah system as foreign and irrelevant to him cannot be compelled to perform mitzvos by the court, says the Mahari Tatz. I would think that this might apply to the 10% of Israelis who are hard-core secular and/or atheist. (I don’t know what to say about the many, many Israelis who flout every law in Shulchan Aruch – except for a few, for which they have much regard. I can see room for opposing arguments about them.)
I cannot say that I have worked out the sugya to any decree of satisfaction. Readers, hopefully, will point us in the right direction. Whatever the outcome, I would be very careful about whom I would give Rabbi Grylak’s article with the hope of inspiring confidence that there is nothing to fear in a Chareidi majority.
By Avi Shafran, on February 7th, 2012 One hopes that readers here are not part of the population that peruses tabloids like the New York Post. If they were, though, they would have seen a recent opinion piece that called Jews “a small minority of the population… granted special privileges” who “wield power disproportionate to their numbers” and whose “behavior violates the law and infringes on the rights of others.” Wielding “considerable political clout,” and “flexing their political muscle,” they represent “a dangerous trend that has been allowed to fester and grow for decades.” Jews also receive “special treatment” by those in power and deny “the civil rights of [crime] victims.” When criticized, the writer explains, Jews simply dismiss their critics as anti-Semites.
Moreover, the piece reports, Jews represent “a demographic tidal wave” and threaten to become “dominant” in the United States. Warning that it is time to head off the coming misfortune, the writer concludes that our “silence is acquiescence.”
Oh, my mistake! It wasn’t “Jews” to whom the writer, an “activist” named Ben Hirsch, was referring, but rather “strictly Orthodox Jews.” Forgive me.
One wonders, though, how Mr. Hirsch manages to convince himself that there’s some qualitative difference between a generic bigot who offers the public a hodgepodge of sinister insinuations, half-truths, and outright lies about Jews as a whole, and a hater like himself who does precisely the same about an identifiable subset of Jews. Does the dilemma even occur to him?
What provided Mr. Hirsch his latest opportunity to besmirch charedim and prejudice the public against them were the allegations several weeks ago of disgusting acts in Beit Shemesh. In classic bigot’s style, he parlayed the bad behavior of a few into a tarring of an entire group. He knows his business.
As does another recent op-ed writer, this one in The New York Times. Rabbi Dov Linzer’s business, however, is not bigotry but the promotion of a new vision of Judaism, one that many find redolent of the Conservative movement’s early days. The dean of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah in Riverdale in the Bronx, an institution championing “modern and open Orthodox values,” Rabbi Linzer was once reported in the New York Jewish Week to have asserted that the Sages of the Talmud were unconcerned with a person’s religious beliefs; that, in the article’s words, “it was Maimonides who introduced the concept that Jews must adhere to basic dogmas, and even he was not consistent in his demands for such adherence.”
Such theological novellae, however, were not the subject of the rabbi’s recent offering. He, too, like Mr. Hirsch, was inspired by the reports from Beit Shemesh. (In addition to the sin of their behavior itself, the alleged Beit Shemesh spitters and cursers bear the iniquity-burden of having provided the Mr. Hirschs and Rabbi Linzers of the world with effective ammunition for promoting their agendas.) But the opportunity Rabbi Linzer saw was to sully not so much a group of Jews (although he does his share of that too) but rather a concept, that of tznius, or Jewish modesty.
He begins his piece, which ran under the lovely title “Lechery, Immodesty and the Talmud,” with the following paragraph:
“Is it possible for a religious demand for modesty to be about anything other than men controlling women’s bodies? From recent events in Israel, it would certainly seem that it is not.”
He goes on to assert that “the responsibility for controlling men’s licentious thoughts” lies “squarely on the men.” The notion that women may have a tzenius responsibility regarding their manner of dress, he writes, reflects only “a blame-the-victim mentality.” In fact, he informs us, it represents “a complete perversion” of the Talmud. Who knew?
The emergence of such… interesting writing by Jews in the secular media is, of course, disturbing. (Other adjectives occur as well.) It puts one in mind of what Rashi reminded us recently when we reviewed parshas Shemos, that Moshe Rabbeinu had puzzled over why the Jewish People had languished so long in Egypt—until he discovered the phenomenon of Jews acting contemptibly against other Jews. Then he understood.
If any of us are puzzling over why our current exile is so protracted, well, a glance at some op-ed pages can provide the tragic answer.
© 2012 AMI MAGAZINE
[Rabbi Shafran is an editor at large and columnist for Ami Magazine]
The above essay may be reproduced or republished, with the above copyright appended.
Communications: rabbishafran@amimagazine.org
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By Yitzchok Adlerstein, on February 6th, 2012 Kiruv is about bringing the old to the new. At last month’s annual convention of the Association of Jewish Outreach Programs (AJOP), its indomitable National Director, Rabbi Yitzchok “Itchie” Lowenbraun, staked the ranch on bringing the new to the old. By all accounts, he succeeded.
Rabbi Lowenbraun has been lovingly tending to AJOP for many years. You would have to try very hard to find something not to like about the Convention. It provides a great fix of spiritual adrenalin to the hundreds of people who work so tirelessly to bring Torah to anyone who will listen. People reconnect with friends, find ample time for productive networking, and listen to a variety of some of the best and most innovative presenters available.
This year, however, Rabbi Lowenbraun discovered a new mission. Like many others, he found the murmurings, the vague alienation and discontent within the FFB community worrisome. To be sure, the frum community is, BH, incredibly booming and strong – but there are too many sitting off to the side and wondering what it is all about. (One of the sessions I delivered was entitled “The Top Ten Reasons Frum People Are Unhappy With Their Yiddishkeit.” More on that at another time.) Rabbi Lowenbraun reasoned that kiruv professionals must have some of the tools with which to address spiritual dissatisfaction – and therefore a responsibility to address the problem. He banked on being able to take this new goal and interest an old profession to expand its horizons.
He made this hunch of his a theme of the convention in two ways. Many of the presentations to the professionals revolved around this theme. Additionally, he scheduled a second, parallel track concurrent with the convention for professionals. This track, open to the general public, was billed as an opportunity to hear from some of the best presenters in the world of kiruv, and to gain chizuk and inspiration from them.
Rabbi Lowenbraun had no idea whether anyone at all would come. Stamford, Connecticut is a bit of a drive from Flatbush and the Five Towns. But come they did – in droves. Days before the convention, he had to close registration when he maxed out at 300, and still had to turn down a few hundred more. Those attendees whom I spoke with found it more than worthwhile.
Where to now? Having demonstrated the demand for inspiration and the receptivity to kiruv presenters in the FFB community, where do we go from here? Many questions come to mind.
It would seem to me that Rabbi Lowenbraun’s hunch is correct. Kiruv professionals ought to have some of the goods that will be effective. In general, they are people people. As a group they are warm, caring, energetic, and dedicated. Equally importantly, they are a bit more open than others. They are not as afraid as some others to listen to new ideas or to make the acquaintance of new people. Because they have to make Yiddishkeit attractive to outsiders, they often have spent more time than others in both thinking through issues, and in studying the classic seforim that deal with them. They should be well suited to help FFBs deal with spiritual anemia and listlessness.
But what message or messages will they bring to the table? Will the arguments with which they interest a non-observant campus sophomore appeal at all to people with decades of yeshiva education? Much kiruv operates on the “ta’amu u-re’u” model. Bait people with good food and company, and they begin to take an interest in the rest of the package. FFB’s, however, don’t need bait, and don’t need to be convinced to give the fuller package a try. Been there, done that. Kiruv workers can sometimes rope ‘em in by painting an unrealistic, idyllic canvas describing the beauty of the frum community. They give out rose-colored glasses, which won’t work for jaded FFBs. Their glasses have been marred and scratched by realities within the community that leave them unhappy.
Kiruv professionals have been creative and inventive. They have come up with boilerplate arguments to overcome the objections of skeptics and scoffers. Many have been quite good. Some have been shallow. Some have been downright silly (I mean the Bible Codes, of course, still tragically used as snake oil by those who should know better), but that didn’t matter. Once new BTs involved themselves in mitzvos long enough to personally bond with HKBH and Torah, the arguments that lured them in became irrelevant. Or so the thinking went, even though there is ample evidence that this was not true, and new recruits later looked back with resentment at lines of argument that they later learned were inadequate.
Will we try the same strategies with the FFB world, developing new arguments for confident emunah that will appeal to those with years of experience? Will the arguments need to be more sophisticated, because the audience will be better educated in Torah content? Or can they be even less sophisticated, because so many in the traditional community have so little exposure to the secular counterarguments, that the unsophisticated argument conveyed with much enthusiasm will work quite well?
Are arguments of any kind the way to go? There has been an ongoing, endless debate about whether arguments should be conveyed as “proofs,” in the manner of some of the Rishonim, or whether proofs simply do not exist, and argument should be conveyed as lines of evidence, allowing belief (as R. Leib Kelemen elegantly phrased it) or buttressing it in those who already believe? Perhaps arguments are not the way to go at all, and we should follow in the way of the Slonimer Rebbe in Nesivos Shalom, who stressed again and again that within every Jewish neshamah resides a primal will to believe and an ease of attachment to the Divine. In other words, perhaps we ought not to tell people what they should believe, so much as show them who they are.
This is all uncharted territory. I have some thoughts about some of these questions, but they will await future installments.
By Shira Schmidt, on February 2nd, 2012 How do you say “motherhood and apple pie” in Hebrew? This was an exercise we were given in a translation class. The best idiomatic rendering among the responses was — “Tzionut” in quotation marks (pronounced while making quotation mark signs with two fingers on each hand). Tonight I thought about the phrase “motherhood and apple pie” – in the best sense of the idiom – when I attended (as a fly on the wall) the founding conference of a new group called “Beit Hillel” formed by rabbis and female scholars in the Israeli religious-Zionist sector.
You can read the founding principles on their website. They include the eternity of Torah, total adherence to halacha, seeing a religious value in the state of Israel (Tzionut without quotation marks), seeing themselves as an integral part of Israeli society, viewing modernity positively as long as it coincides with Torah, and promotion of an open public conversation that is measured and tolerant. I went as a curious observer because the conference took place in a hotel across the street from where I live in Kiryat Sanz, Netanya.
Some of the statements made at the conference have me ruminating about various issues. One of the women teachers whom I highly esteem, founder & head of a MO women’s beit midrash in Jerusalem, used the phrase “normal” to describe the weltanschauung of the new group. Does that mean other groups are normal in their own ways? Or that other groups are abnormal? She insisted she is not saying anything about other sectors, and I felt she was sincere. But the term does beg the question.
After the plenum, we had the option of three breakout groups: women in the public realm, democracy and halacha (they focused on one topic: the army), and education. Everything was recorded, and I assume the videotapes will be on the Beit Hillel website.
At the closing plenum one participant objected to the name “Beit Hillel” which he felt was a cliché. Someone else objected for the opposite reason – it is too strong a statement that “we are Beit Hillel and you others are Shamai.”
For me the most valuable insight was R. Yoel Ben-Nun’s derasha on the pericope in Shabbat 17a. After Hillel died, circa 20 CE, the school of Shamai attained ascendancy, during which Shamai passed “18 ordinances” in conformity with his ideas. The Talmud states that when he passed one of the ordinances, contrary to the opinion of Hillel, the day “was as grievous to Israel as the day when the golden calf was made.” R. Ben-Nun explained that in Beit Shamai’s view, the leniencies of B.Hillel led to a slippery slope ending in the golden calf (i.e.,if you are extreme in emulating Aaron’s peaceful ways, you may wind up as Aaron did with a golden calf). In the view of B. Hillel, the stringencies of Beit Shamai make an “egel” out of every halacha.
In the closing session they invited Eran Rolls, CEO Israel Building Center, to speak. He defined himself as wearing a transparent kippa. Eran had grown up in the extremely secular left Shomer Hatzair movement, and had started to become more involved in the synagogue in his moshav. He was deeply hurt when someone felt it was problematic for Eran to lead prayers because he was not shomer Shabbat. Eran called for greater sensitivity and openness.
From this conference I went to the other side of Netanya to pay a condolence call to the family of R. Shimon Gabai z”l, who worked tirelessly for several decades to bring traditional but non-observant Sefardim to Torah study and observance. He built a haredi school which has educated thousands of newly religious from Edot Hamizrah. It was 11 pm and there were still hundreds in the two separate (men/women) mourning tents. This left me pondering the following: an approach like that of the Beit Hillel organization probably wouldn’t resonate with the audience of Rav Gabai. It’s good that there are different strokes …. Now how do you translate that into Hebrew? (answer in comments below).
It will be interesting to see how the new Beit Hillel movement develops, and what happens to the movement Rav Gabai set in motion now that he is no longer at its helm.
By Jonathan Rosenblum, on February 1st, 2012 Yeridos Hadoros translates as “the Decline of Generations”
Rabbi Benjamin Blech had an interesting piece last week at Aish.com on the Costa Concordia disaster. A few years ago, Rabbi Blech served as the scholar-in-residence on a kosher cruise on the magnificent ocean liner. Guests were escorted on a tour of the state of the art ship and its multiple levels of safety devices. At one point on the tour, the guide remarked, “No one will ever have a Titanic experience here.”
The builders of the Titanic famously asserted with even greater hubris that not even G-d Himself could sink it. Yet the Titanic did not survive its maiden voyage, and 1,517 passengers drowned.
In both cases, the ships were brought down, not by failures in technical design, but by the moral failings of those in charge. The owners of theTitanic were eager to claim the record for the fastest transatlantic crossing, and thus settled on a northerly route, at a time of year when that area of the Atlantic was known to be still filled with icebergs. Worse, the telegraph operator received numerous warnings from another ship of a huge iceberg directly in its path. But the telegraph operator received large tips for transmitting the messages of wealthy patrons, and told the ship sending the warnings to stop pestering him and tying up his lines, which he could put to more profitable use. As a consequence, the captain of the Titanic never received any warning of the danger looming ahead.
In the case of the Costa Concordia, the ship became grounded because the captain decided to show off his magnificent toy to friends on the shore of the nearby island.
Human foible remained a constant in the hundred years between the Titanic and the Costa Concordia disasters. But there were differences as well. The captain of the Titanic instructed his officers to maintain calm as women and children were allocated the first seats on the lifeboats, of which there were far too few because the possibility of disaster never entered the owners’ minds. Some of the richest members of New York high society went down with the ship in evening dress, prepared to die as “gentlemen.” The captain did not desert the ship, and the ship’s orchestra continued playing as it sank.
The contrast could not have been sharper to the Costa Concordia disaster, in which passengers clawed for seats on the lifeboats, with the strongest prevailing. One of the first off the ship was the captain, who abandoned a sinking ship and ignored an order from the Italian coast guard to return to the ship. He was promptly nicknamed the “chicken of the sea.”
One hundred years ago, there still existed a code of honor by which honorable people – gentlemen, if you will – were expected to comport themselves. Such codes of honor are for the most part a remnant of the past.
So far we have been discussing the non-Torah world. But a similar decline can be seen in our world as well, albeit over a much longer time frame. This week I was learning a Gemara in Bava Basra, which discusses how far earlier generations would go to avoid having to take a shvuah (oath), even when they were telling the truth. Another assumption of the Gemara is that a person will not lie about matters that are likely to become known eventually.
Yet today we find instances of the most bald-faced lies. Signatures of prominent rabbonim are affixed to letters that they never signed, and this is done despite the fact that the number of signatures added in this fashion is so great that it will inevitably become known.
Every lie lessens the trust that is the basic glue holding any society together. But the avla (outrage) is compounded many times when it lessens public trust in pronouncements purporting to be from those upon whose leadership the public relies. Even if the one promoting false messages is motivated by his vision of the public good, it is hard to conceive of any purpose that could compensate for compromising public trust in the words of the gedolim.
By Avi Shafran, on January 31st, 2012 First time visitors to the Shafran home quickly notice how odd it is. Its walls, that is. Well, what graces them, anyway.
The dining room does sport a few normal things—a framed reproduction of a work of Hebrew micrography (a gift, many years ago, from some beloved students) and a small painting of a pensive man in a shtreimel studying Torah (likewise a gift, from some dear friends). And there is a photograph of Rav Avrohom Pam, zt”l, atop a bookcase.
But the remainder of the wall space, in that room and most of the others, is a hodgepodge of, well, oddball items.
There are photos of children and grandchildren (oddball only in that they are, for the most part, random snapshots from various decades and just taped to the walls in no particular pattern); “parsha pictures”—visual riddles about the weekly Torah portion (changed weekly and drawn by someone who is sometimes accused of being a writer but has never been mistaken for an artist); a framed ticket-stub from a trip to the top of one of the Twin Towers (from a visit my wife and three of our children made to the structure on August 30, … Read More >>
By Emanuel Feldman, on January 30th, 2012 If winter comes, is Pesach far behind? The frost chills us, but the Pesach hotels set out the lures. From the ads, one gathers that it is the “truly frum” who are the targeted clientele. Some of the attractions include (a composite from various ads): special Shabbos key locks and Shabbos elevator; shmurah matzoh; 100 percent non-gebrochts; chalav Yisrael; chassidishe shechitah; and daf yomi. It’s a true smorgasbord of piety for Jews who are dedicated to uncompromising service of G-d, who reverently observe the minutiae of the Shulchan Aruch and maintain every halachic stringency. For such folks, those hotels provide a Pesach that is a foretaste of Olam HaBa.
But something perplexes. There is a second clientele being addressed by the same hotels for the same Pesach. For these guests — Orthodox but apparently not as frum as the first group — the very same hotels offer a pinch of Olam HaBa but generous portions of Olam HaZeh. Pesach laws will be kept, of course, but some of the attractions for the Not-As-Frum crowd include gourmet cuisine by famous imported chefs; Olympic outdoor pools; covered indoor pools; Jacuzzis; saunas; fully equipped fitness rooms; wi-fi throughout; vast selection of wines; … Read More >>
By Yitzchok Adlerstein, on January 30th, 2012 The piece that follows is shocking in its smugness, in its arrogance, in its elitism, in its hatred – even for Haaretz. I present it in the entirety, as an aid to understanding what is right and what is wrong with Israel today. This cannot be an easy time for the fanatically secular in Israel. A new survey shows that 80% of Israelis believe in G-d. In the midst of all the disagreement – even between contributors to Cross-Currents – about the role and responses of the charedi community, this factoid should be a source of great hope, promise and challenge for the future.
The effete snobs of Haaretz are not happy with this finding, and even less happy to learn that 70% of Israelis believe that Jews are the Chosen People. Gideon Levy has an epiphany. He discovers the reason for all that is wrong with Israel. This belief (and the attendant belief in the Bible itself, from which it derives) is the spring from which all kinds of ugliness and toxicity flow: the occupation, the racism, the ability to go it alone against the global community. He announces to whomever will listen: “The enemy is not religious … Read More >>
By Avi Shafran, on January 24th, 2012 It was over a decade ago, in the wake of a spate of terrible terrorist attacks on Jews in Eretz Yisrael, that the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah called upon Jews to recite chapters of Tehillim (they suggested chapters 83, 130, and 142) in shul after davening, followed by the short prayer “Acheinu,” a supplication to G-d to show mercy to His people. Many shuls, to their great credit, to this day still dutifully seize that special merit at the end of their services. None of us can know what dangers that collective credit may have averted, may be averting still.
It occurred to me, though, that recent events might well inspire us—not only those of us Jews who look to the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah for guidance, but all good-hearted Jews, charedi, “modern Orthodox,” non-Orthodox, “traditional,” and secular-minded alike—to consider reciting the holy words with special concentration, and the short prayer with an additional, somewhat different, intent.
For we have witnessed of late…
Reports of verbal and physical attacks on innocent Jews, even children, by other Jews who were, ostensibly, dissatisfied with their marks’ level of modesty.
The exploitation of media to bring such outrages, and exaggerations of … Read More >>
By Yitzchok Adlerstein, on January 24th, 2012 It has been over thirty years since I met Yaakov Katz, and I’ve regretted ever since that I have not had an opportunity to stay in touch with him. Ketzalah, as everyone calls him, is a larger-than-life figure that one can never forget.
The cane he hobbled on even back then was dwarfed by his warm, engaging, constant smile. It was a reminder of his hip taking a direct hit from an Egyptian RPG in the Yom Kippur War. His elite officers-only unit of twelve men killed all seventy of the enemy in that battle. Hanging on to life by a thread, he pledged to the Ribbono Shel Olam that if He let him live, he would devote the rest of his life to Hashem’s service.
Ketzaleh made good on his pledge. I met him in Beit-El, a community that he helped begin, and would fill with a yeshiva – which was the literal and figurative center of the community – as well as schools for boys and girls.
Meeting him marked, in a sense, the beginning of my reexamining what I had been taught in my yeshiva years. Since Beit-El was a product of the Zionist … Read More >>
By Shira Schmidt, on January 23rd, 2012 When my husband was a flight surgeon on the US Air Force base in Guam, he witnessed a feeding frenzy by sharks. Daily, a huge garbage truck would gingerly back up to the edge of a cliff, and dump the waste into the Pacific. In 40 seconds sharks made mincemeat of the garbage, leaving disposable dishes floating. In another 20 seconds those were also disposed of by sharks. If you can’t go to Guam, you can see a shark feeding frenzy on the Discovery Channel. Or you can follow the current media frenzy against haredim in Israel.
Perhaps this is what Rabbi Chanina had in mind when he stipulated, “Pray for the welfare of the government, for without fear of governmental authorities people would swallow each other alive” (Pirkey Avot 3:2).
Here are examples of the media frenzy.
(a)Yair Lapid showed a video in December on Israeli TV, which featured the most extreme peripheral haredim whose behavior is considered outrageous by almost all haredim and ultra-Orthodox rabbis.
(b)The NYTimes has blown out of proportion issues related to controversies in Beit Shemesh, on buses, and at conferences. On December 28 the weekday NYTimes gave wide … Read More >>
By Guest Contributor, on January 22nd, 2012 by Dov Krulwich
On September 6 I became an activist.
Parents at the Orot school in Beit Shemesh were complaining about Chareidi zealots demonstrating against the school, and commenting that their kids were afraid. My response was one of disbelief. I knew people living in the buildings near Orot, and I davened and learned often in Batei Midrash in nearby Chareidi neighborhoods. It simply couldn’t be, I said, that the situation warranted schoolkids being afraid for their well-being. We’re talking about religious girls with skirts and elbow-length sleeves! The response was simple: If you don’t believe it, come and see. I went the next day, and was shocked at the kanayus that I saw – cursing, yelling, spitting, shoving, intimidating – all with looks of sheer hatred.
In the months that followed, I spent time virtually every day trying to confront the kanayim, document the kanayus in order to have it dealt with by Rabbonim and by the police, and protect the kids from the 10-15 kanayim that waged a steady war against the school. My videos of kanayim with hatred in their eyes were viewed tens of thousands of times, I became well-known by the kanayim and their … Read More >>
By Jonathan Rosenblum, on January 20th, 2012 Israeli journalists are among the most mobilized in the Western world: They view their jobs as a soapbox to teach proper thoughts to the hoi polloi. The media’s desire to shape the national agenda also makes it among the most easily manipulated in the world. The EU and individual European states pour millions into left-wing Israeli NGOs annually to peddle their favorite nostrums for peace in large part because they get such a large bang for the buck from the NGOs and media working hand-in-hand.
Blackening Israel’s image abroad is one favorite technique. There is an insatiable thirst for stories on the Talibanization of Israel and front-page headlines like “Seismic rift in Israeli society over the role of women” (Sunday’s New York Times). The negative portrayals from every direction reinforce one another. If women in Israel, for instance, have no higher status than in Teheran, it is easier to believe claims that Israel is an apartheid society. Negative foreign reports about Israel are intended to convince Israelis of the country’s growing international isolation in order to make them more malleable.
One example of how this works. Tanya Rosenblitt, who works for a media mogul, boards a bus in an … Read More >>
By Yitzchok Adlerstein, on January 20th, 2012 Many people, myself included, believe that the fallout from Beit Shemesh and Kikar Shabbos will have a longer half-life than others suppose. One item to keep an eye on is the fault line that has surfaced, much as those that sometimes appear on the earth’s surface after an earthquake.
This fault line separates Israeli charedim from many of their American counterparts. Two different narratives developed. Americans could not accept the Israeli one, while Israelis were deaf to the arguments of Americans.
Americans by and large rejected the suggestion that protest was unnecessary, because there is no reason the rest of us should be responsible for the actions of a relatively small number of extremists. Witness the wall-to-wall condemnations of the activities in Beit Shemesh and Yerushalayim. Americans understood what was at stake: if you don’t distance yourself from ugliness, you are considered complicit in it. It didn’t matter to us whether lumping us all together was just or not. The honor of Torah, our relationships with non-Jews and non-religious Jews, our ability to attract baalei teshuvah in the future – all these would be imperiled by our remaining silent. So we spoke up, and couldn’t understand that in … Read More >>
By Guest Contributor, on January 18th, 2012 by Etana Hecht
[Editor’s Note: Contributing to this blog, I know full well that editors must sometimes – often – pull the plug on discussion after fruitful exchange gets to the point of diminishing returns. From the feedback I get from irate readers, I also know of the frustration they feel when some points of view never see the light of day because discussion has been cut off. I can understand and accept the decision of my friends the Frankfurters of ending Ami’s coverage of the Beit Shemesh debacle and moving on. Blogs have a bit more flexibility; we can provide an outlet where print media cannot. I know Etana and her family, and think it worthwhile for the public to read her contribution.]
As most of you have probably seen in the media, Bet Shemesh has been having problems with a group of thugs who call themselves Chareidi who have been causing much trouble and pain to many of the citizens of Bet Shemesh. In a series of articles on this issue, Ami Magazine interviewed Mayor Moshe Abutbol to answer some questions about the situation. In his responses, there were a few false statements, as well as some … Read More >>
By Avi Shafran, on January 17th, 2012 Reb Lazer Elya Der Melamed (“the cheder teacher”) was born in the late 1850s, lived in Ostrolenka, Poland, and died shortly before the Germans invaded in 1939. I arrived in this world about a century after he did and on a continent he never saw, so I never met him. But I was introduced to him all the same, by my father, may he be well. Reb Lazer Elya was his grandfather.
My father lived for a time with his grandparents while attending a branch of the Novardhok yeshiva in Ostrolenka. He recalls his bar mitzvah there. His parents, living in a town called Ruzhan, had no money for the trip. My father read the Torah and his impoverished grandfather brought some kichel and a small bottle of schnapps to the shul to mark the occasion.
Recently, a Shabbos Sheva Brachos for my niece took place at Yeshivas Ner Yisrael in Baltimore, where the father of the bride, Reb Lazer Elya’s great-grandson—my dear brother—is a rebbe. Our great-grandfather was present in a way, through a letter he had written, read by my father at one of the meals.
My father is the administrator of the Baltimore Bais … Read More >>
By Emanuel Feldman, on January 16th, 2012 What could be the connection between intensified Israeli media incitement against haredim and the appearance of a new Yom-tov prayerbook designed exclusively for Israeli Jews? On the surface, none. But let’s glance beneath the surface.
Media incitement against haredim is old hat, an automatic Pavlovian reaction against their favorite bête noir. Were there no haredim, they would have to be invented for the benefit of the secular elites and their servile media. Whipping boys are hard to find.
Recently, however, the incitement has become unusually shrill. Granted, haredi society is far from perfect, and the behavior of some of its adherents far from exemplary. But even though one expects higher standards from those who defend Torah values, the fact is that whenever a haredi commits a wrong that would normally be reported on the page 15, the anti-religious media, religiously faithful to the tradition of yellow journalism, pounce on it and create a media circus: screaming headlines, attack columns, admonishing editorials.
Certainly the ugly behavior of some haredi hooligans, such as those in Beit Shemesh, are abhorrent. They bring shame to the name of Gd, Torah, and Orthodox Jewry, trampling upon the pleasant dracheha darchei noam face of Torah. … Read More >>
By Yitzchok Adlerstein, on January 12th, 2012 When R Aaron Lopiansky shared a moving story with his fellow advisory board members at Klal Perspectives (unvarnished plug!), I asked him for permission to publish on Cross-Currents. I am happy that he granted it. It comes in the form of a letter he received from a talmid:
I thought Rebbe would appreciate this. It just happened on January 1st at the Yeshiva in Teaneck….
After the passing of the Mir Rosh Yeshiva, Rav Nosson Tzvi Finkel z”l, R’ Mordechai Grunwald, the executive director of Yeshivas Mir and close talmid of R’ Nosson Tzvi, was asked to deliver a hesped at the Yeshiva Gedolah of Teaneck. Amongst many stories that he told about R’ Nosson Tzvi, he related the following:
Approximately 15 years ago there was a family from New York who lost their father, a distinguished Talmid Chochom, and talmid of the Mir. Rav Nosson Tzvi had a particularly fond relationship with the deceased father and took it upon himself to ensure that his orphans will have a fatherly figure to turn to and that they will receive proper chinuch. He told the children to correspond with him through letters and that they can ask him any question … Read More >>
By Yitzchok Adlerstein, on January 12th, 2012 Call it nepotism, if you wish. I am partial to my very extended family, which includes the people who frequented our Shabbos table for years.
Even though he takes issue with some of what I wrote in my Charedi Spring piece, it was a delight to hear from Dr. Michael Schein. In the old days, he as an undergraduate at Caltech; today he is on the mathematics faculty at Bar-Ilan. His letter breaks some new ground, and is worthwhile sharing with our readers.
How are you? Yasher koach on your recent Cross-Currents article on the Beit Shemesh situation. It is not at all clear to most people who aren’t closely familiar with the situation why the thugs in RBS, despite their stripey bekeshes, should not be seen as the “authentic” charedi Jews. I was told many years ago that the way to distinguish a true gadol from someone who is only pretending to be one is by his derech eretz. This was confirmed to me during my first year in Israel, when I was living in Mea Shearim while doing a postdoc at the Hebrew University. An aside, in case the reader should ask what a mathematician … Read More >>
By Guest Contributor, on January 11th, 2012 by Michael Freund
This past Sunday I got a first-hand glimpse of one of the hottest phenomena in American pop culture and sports.
The venue was Metlife Stadium in New Jersey, the occasion was the first round of the National Football League playoffs.
Just prior to the start of the game between the New York Giants and the Atlanta Falcons, after the Giants had come onto the field, eight of their players headed toward the end zone, where they did something entirely unexpected.
These hulking and intimidating behemoths, who make their living by strapping on layers of protective body gear and pummelling their opponents, each knelt down on one knee, bowed their heads, and offered a silent prayer.
This act has come to be known as “Tebowing,” after Tim Tebow, the quarterback of the Denver Broncos, whose signature prayerful genuflections have become a popular and internet sensation.
Tebow, who has led his team to some stunning comeback victories, including this past weekend when he tossed an 80-yard touchdown pass in overtime to defeat the vaunted Pittsburgh Steelers, is an unabashed fan of his Christian faith. He talks about it in interviews and does not shy away from publicly thanking … Read More >>
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