The comments on my previous posting taking Edah, Ukeles and Heilman to task have been mostly critical. While there is always the possibility that those who are in agreement with me are silent, in the main my critics have made some good points and I hope that it will be useful for me to respond, in the course of which I will say some personal things about my work.

In one way or another, much of what I do involves day schools, including those that are Modern Orthodox or non-Orthodox. I approach each school in an empathetic way. Without going into all of the details, what has emerged from my activity is a nearly lifelong record of assisting Jewish schools around the country.

Perhaps the major expression of my efforts in the day school field is my work as president of the Rabbi Jacob Joseph School, a voluntary responsibility that is now in its thirty-second year. RJJ now encompasses four schools, including the Jewish Foundation School of Staten Island, a Modern Orthodox co-educational day school. This relationship came about because some years ago JFS ran into severe financial difficulty, owing nearly $1.5 million in short-term debt and it was at the brink of collapse. RJJ assumed all of this debt and maintained JFS as it was, because I could not accept the notion that a day school with 400 students would close. This action hurt RJJ enormously and we have never recovered from it because in addition to the direct financial cost, certain supporters could not accept what we had done inasmuch as it was contrary to RJJ’s approach to chinuch and they walked away.

About Edah, which incidentally I helped get a significant grant for a project that it did not handle well and therefore was not continued, I am offended by its slogan. The message that it takes courage to be modern and Orthodox is not only not true, it is deliberately aimed as a taunt to the rest of the Orthodox community. As the programs at its conferences show, Edah is far more comfortable with speakers from the non-Orthodox world than it is inviting persons from other Orthodox sectors. I have a particular grievance relating to the place that day school education is given each year in the program. Not once has Edah invited persons who are responsible for day school education or those who have researched and written on the subject. Its attitude toward day school education is overwhelmingly ideological, namely an attack against what it regards as pernicious charedi influences in day schools. There is hardly any empathy for those who teach in these schools, at low salaries and with great sacrifice. These teachers are made to feel as exploiters of the young. This from an organization that preaches tolerance.

Reaction from readers – posted and not – shows that the words of R’ Simcha Zisel of Kelm (see “A Torah Rationalist’s Manifesto,” Feb. 24) struck a responsive chord.

One reader may have supplied the answer to his own cri de coeur. “How can we expect to win the battle for our childrens’ minds and souls, if we don’t challenge and fortify them with DA’AS Torah, as opposed to a rationalist-rejecting emphasis on emunah peshuta (simple belief) alone?!”

I would turn the question upon my questioner. Can we expect to win the battle for our children’s minds and souls without fortifying them with much emunah peshutah?

Don’t get me wrong. The path I have chosen for myself – and for my children – involves a huge component of embracing rationalism. Living in an open society (whose few remaining barriers and mechitzos grow more porous by the day), I don’t know if there is much of a choice.

One way in which authentic Judaism differs from societal norms currently in vogue in the Western world is that Judaism abhors the cult of hero-worship. Before you lift your strongest finger to punch out your indignant comment, well, let me try to explain. Also, be nice because this is my first post.

Judaism promotes hard work and substance over style. It is inconceivable that a Torah leader would have any bit of his personality invested in marketing his image and reputation. Torah leaders are almost literally designated by the people as a result of their piety and scholarship. Yes, sometimes we ‘worship’ our heroes - in some circles there even seems to be a trend in that direction. But, and here’s the key, our heroes do not worship themselves. Memo to Madonna, Arnold and the rest: at the end of the day it’s not how well you look or sell, it’s what you are.

Which brings me to the fine folks celebrating next week’s Siyum HaShas. Clearly only a small percentage of those in attendance are actually completing all of Shas. What are the rest of us (yes…sigh…us) doing there?

I can’t speak for others but I know why I wouldn’t want to miss it. These guys trudged out every morning or every night, rain or shine, often bleary-eyed and bone tired, to plow through the daily two-sided page of terse aramaic diamond-hard sentences and structures, surviving mostly on the skill of their teachers and the books of Artscroll. In this daily push, this consistency, lies greatness. Unheralded, no marketing plan and no fan base, just doing the right thing every single day even when it hurts. This is the essence of Judaism. It is what makes ordinary folks into heroes, and we attend their moment in the spotlight out of recognition of what they have achieved and the powerful lesson it holds for us all, men, women and children, long-time learners and beginners alike. Low-key consistency doing the right thing is the highest of virtues.

Edah, the ultra-Modern Orthodox fringe group whose coterie consists substantially of people who are conservadox or otherwise not Orthodox, is outstanding in both its capacity to attract publicity and its capacity to raise funds. Bashing the rest of Orthodoxy does sell in our media and with some of the super-rich. Still, this fringe organization reached a new low in probity with the issuance of fraudulent data attributed to Jack Ukeles that 75% of Orthodox households are “Modern” and that even in Brooklyn, this is true of a majority of Orthodox households. I guess that holding its latest conference in Temple Emanuel inspired Edah to be fair, tolerant and honest.

I will deal with Ukeles’ research in my next Jewish Week article and I also will deal with the collateral contribution by Sam Heilman. Ukeles and Heilman are bedecked with honor and credentials but their work is fraudulent in the extreme. If we accept Ukeles’ nonsense, Yeshiva University scarcely exists and certainly not Yitzchak Elchanon. Nor is there anything else that can be labeled as Centrist Orthodox, including dozens of day schools and perhaps the entire Jewish community in places like Teaneck. It is beyond credulity that this kind of stuff can be published and perhaps taken seriously by some.

What has happened here and also in virtually everything that has Edah’s fingerprint is the substitution of ideology for scholarship and for integrity.

Many thanks to Rabbi Matis Greenblatt, literary editor of Jewish Action, who not only saves me much embarrassment by picking up my errors before publication, but inevitably throws in numerous tidbits of Torah insight.

He has uncovered a fascinating document that will delight the hearts of many, both for what it says, and for who said it. The author is Rav Simcha Zisel of Kelm, one of the three great students of Rav Yisroel Salanter, the guiding light of the Mussar Movement in the 19th century.

Dear Friend:

We are writing to update you on the recent activities of the newly formed Society for Halakhic Creativity, Innovation, and Renewal. This umbrella organization - known by its acronym, SHICR - was created by the merger of the various Jewish groups devoted to creative and innovative halakha. Representing the broad Jewish spectrum - Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist, and beyond - the Society promises to introduce fresh and imaginative ideas into halakhic discourse.

In its brief existence, SHICR has already rendered trail-blazing decisions on several crucial issues in Jewish life. Below is an update on recent activities that offer an insight into the scope of our work.

Two weeks ago, Wendy Shalit had a much-discussed article in the Sunday NY Times Book Review, decrying the way Orthodox Jews are routinely pilloried in modern Jewish-American fiction. One of the writers she mentioned, Tova Mirvis, responded in the Forward, with an article that was critical and condescending towards Shalit. Shalit’s reply to Mirvis and to her other critics can be read in the Jewish World Review.

Full disclosure: I am both a friend and a fan of Wendy Shalit’s. I loved her book, A Return to Modesty, and I knew when I read it that she would be religious some day.

I wrote a letter to the NY Times to tell them how pleased I was that they ran Shalit’s article, and I also wrote a letter to the Forward to argue with Mirvis. The NY Times did not print my letter, the Forward did, but not online. Here are both letters.

Two visits by pairs of wonderful young rabbis highlight an issue in Torah education that I believe requires attention. Both meetings were set up by senior rabbis whom I respect greatly and both were efforts to secure support for their projects. One project is a creative and I think fruitful effort in special education, while the other is a more tangential approach to assist people with severe disabilities who wish to study Torah. The first project is extremely expensive at $20,000 per year per student; the other is far less costly.

I was greatly impressed by the earnestness of those responsible for these projects and by what they have accomplished. As things turned out and as I had anticipated, there is no ready way for me to help them, although I will continue to try.

But here is the problem: Special ed is terribly expensive. Even if we assume, as I am willing to do, that the investment pays off, in view of the obvious fact that communal resources are limited, is it right to spend substantial charitable funds on these children, while so many dayschoolers are shortchanged? The fact is that there are immigrant and kiruv schools that spend significantly below $5,000 per student on a dual curriculum program and certainly the students would benefit if more funding were available. More generally, nearly every yeshiva in this country is underfunded – in terms of the salaries paid, maintenance, special attention to children and counseling and everything else. Why should we be so solicitous of special ed children at a time when we are neglecting tens of thousands of other children?

The question actually has two answers: one is that special ed resonates with us as chesed and not as chinuch and as a community we are increasingly doing what other Jews do, namely prefering chesed in our charity allocations over education. A collateral factor is that we have come to accept the notion that ordinary Torah education is a consumer product to be paid for by the parents who are the consumers.

“He had the wrong dreams. All, all wrong.”

That is how Bif Loman, son of the protagonist of Death of a Salesman, summed up his father’s life. Any attempt to measure the life of Arthur Miller, who died last week, will inevitably recall those words, and challenge the person who penned them.

Miller was a colorful character, becoming one of America’s most successful playwrights, despite a particularly unstellar academic performance in high school. He translated his fame into a marriage to Marilyn Monroe, which meant the realization of the American dream, and then some. Honesty was a recurring theme of his oeuvre. This, added to the House Un-American Activities Committee’s distaste for him, gave him a reputation as a moralist, as one who had abandoned the Orthodox practice of his family, but not its core value system.

Fifty years from now, however, it is likely that all of this will be forgotten. If anything endures at all, it will be Willy Loman. Miller’s salesman, seen in the twilight of his years, evoked a pathos that resonated too well with readers. Loman had his commendable side – he was a loyal family man, and in his younger days a hero to his son. But he had made crucial mistakes, including too eagerly embracing an opportunistic view of gaining fame and fortune. When his spirit began to give out as his body declined in older age, all that was left was a pitiable shell of unrealized aspirations. In a sense, he became a monument to the banality of the ordinary, unexceptional American life.

Two weeks ago, one of those periodic media items painting the Torah Jews in a faintly ridiculous light flashed across the Israeli media for 24-hours before flaming out. Most chareidi Jews never hear of these items, or, if they do, they have learned to ignore them. Not so our fellow writer Mrs. Shira Leibowitz Schmidt, who has become something of a one-woman chareidi truth squad.

The story of what she did in this case should serve as a reminder to all of us (or, at least, those of us who are in fact chareidim) that our ability to respond to attacks on our community and to improve the image of our community is not always as slight as we might think. Indeed the list of Mrs. Schmidt’s efforts that I mention in the attached article from Mishpacha Magazine is only partial. In addition to those mentioned, she kept up a full discussion with Kolech, which describes itself as an Orthodox feminist group and which joined in demonstrations against Rabbi Abergil, who allegedly said that husbands should rip red garments off their wives if they insist on wearing them.

The Orthodox Union dedicated last Shabbos to a national campaign to oust so-called Kiddush Clubs from shuls. In the past, Rabbi Heshy Billet, when he was president of the Rabbinical Council of America, also spoke out forcefully against kiddush clubs.

Their efforts have, needless to say, brought much merriment to scoffers and cynics. An op-ed piece in the Jerusalem Post this week, asked whether we do not have something more important to worry about, given the magnitude of the problems confronting Klal Yisrael today.

That response strikes me as misguided. The OU does not have it within its power to eliminate pervasive Jewish ignorance in the larger community — one of the problems mentioned by the Jerusalem Post writer. It can, however, strike a major blow at kiddush clubs. By dedicating a nationwide Shabbos to the subject of kiddush clubs, OU provided cover for local rabbis who are not sufficiently secure in their positions to lay down the law in the form of a personal psak.

Nor are kiddush clubs only a minor problem. Anytime a child observes his father talking during krias haTorah or spending his time in shul shmoozing about sports or stock prices, he cannot but absorb the message: my father doesn’t really believe the Torah is the word of G-d; in fact, he does not even find it particularly interesting or much of a guide to life. If his father absents himself during maftir and does not bother to return for mussaf because he is otherwise occupied getting soused, the message is only amplified. And that message is conveyed not only to children of the inebriates but to every young person in the shul that tolerates such kiddush clubs. What does the message that all this Torah stuff is just another instance of adult hypocrisy do to the chances of the young people in such shuls or homes of ever taking the Torah seriously?

In my 300-page book about the Slifkin affair, of which only a few pages will ever be written, I said that I would try to answer a few questions. Two that I want to tackle today are: What is the nature of da’as Torah — Torah authority? And, a related question: Who or what are the gedolim, the Torah luminaries of the generation?

When I first posed these questions, one of my correspondents hastened to point out that I am not qualified to answer them. The rejoinder, from another correspondent, was that it is perfectly possible for a woman to be a scholar.

While I appreciate this vote of support, the fact is, my first correspondent is right. I am not qualified to answer the questions I posed. I am not a scholar. Therefore, you can ignore what I say, or if you wish, you can write me angry letters, in fact I quite enjoy those. (The only thing I really hate, as a teacher, is when my students fall asleep during my lectures.)

To start with a very loose translation: da’as Torah is Torah authority or Torah opinion — teachings, attitudes and opinions on matters that are not, strictly speaking, halachic questions. Gedolim are, literally, “the greats,” the greatest Torah authorities of one’s age.

Righteous Gentiles

The following is an except from a letter I received from a gentleman in Canada.

“What is a Noachide allowed to study? I have heard about three answers to this question. I have read the greater part of the book ‘The Path of the Righteous Gentile,’ in which the author states that a Noachide is allowed to study all of the Written Torah but only parts of the Oral Torah. Apparently this views states that only those sections that deal directly to the seven Noachide laws are permitted for study. Halachah would then be off limits.

“The second view I have heard is that Noachides are only to study the first eleven chapters of Genesis. Anything after that is given specifically for the Jewish people.

Ah, for when life was simpler!

One of our readers, Shalom Simon, stuck it to me regarding my post on the grand debate at Harvard Law School. He asked whether the event (which had received approval from personages otherwise opposed to interdenominational gatherings) had really smacked of legitimizing any heterodox movement. If not, should we not rethink the usual hands-off policy to such gatherings?

This is what I responded:

Dear Reb Shalom,

There are some groups whose search engines are going 24/7 seeking out foibles among the Orthodox and seemingly absurd or inciting comments of Rabbis.

I describe such a “red herring” case in the Jerusalem Post Opinion Page (Friday Feb.4 Magazine). A fortnight ago there was a false Maariv newspaper report about a “new” ruling by Rabbi Abergil that supposedly “outlawed” the wearing of red by women, and the green light he supposedly gave to husbands to tear off red clothes from their wives. Nuts?

“Limdu hora techilah,” advises Rabbenu Bachya ibn Paquda in Chovos Halevavos. “Study evil first.” There is much to learn by first considering the alternatives to truth.

Around tens of thousands of our Shabbos tables last Friday night, we traded thoughts about the defining moment of Jewish and human history – Revelation at Sinai. Heeding the exhortation of Deuteronomy to keep the events of Revelation fresh in our minds, we consumed luscious morsels of insight with the same gusto as the carefully prepared Shabbos delicacies that graced our plates.

Ashreichem Yisrael! We are more fortunate than we can realize.

For too many of our brothers and sisters, the issue of Sinai is not what happened there, or even whether something happened there. For all too many Jews, carefully weaned away from their precious legacy, the issue of Sinai is the assumed impossibility (rachmana litzlan) of any real communication with G-d taking place at all. Those of us fortunate enough to understand the opposite have even more to be thankful for than we knew.