A few additional points following up on my last post:

1) Ms. Horowitz’ statement is by no means unique in today’s Jewish world. Come and hear, as they say, what Stephen Fried writes in the prologue to his recent, well-selling non-fiction work The New Rabbi: A Congregation Searches for Its Leader (it was one of the Publisher’s Weekly Best Religion Books in 2002). But first, sit down, on a firm surface, not too far off the ground. Now, I quote: “While its different branches have slightly different theology and observance, Judaism does not dictate belief. Its timeless appeal is as a religion of questions, not answers.”

Are you still there?

Note, please, that he refers to all of Judaism’s “different branches” including, presumably, Orthodoxy. Horowitz, too, in her one-sentence precis of Jewish theology presumably is being inclusive of Orthodoxy (I don’t believe our marginalization is that advanced just yet). Even if we were to say that by their actions the heterodox movements have somehow led the utterly uninformed to believe that the former don’t regard faith as essential, can the same possibly be said of the Orthodox? And do Judaism’s “different branches” truly have only “slightly different … Read More >>

To an extent kiruv (Jewish outreach) requires a suspension of reality. This is not necessarily a bad thing because from a religious Jewish standpoint, the reality of American life is harsh. The many good people who engage in kiruv blot out circumstances that suggest that their efforts are akin to a steady uphill climb. We should admire them all the more because of what they have accomplished.

As I point out in my latest Jewish Week column, we are in the second generation of mass intermarriage. In most situations, the consequences of intermarriage are not reversible. It is certainly true that the impact of intermarriage is cumulative, so that with the passage of time, halachic ties to the Jewish people are weakened and this is also true of social ties. Put otherwise, with each passing year, the percentage of those who are identified as American Jews who are not halachic Jews inevitably goes up.

Our kiruv activities appear to be oblivious to this truth. Far more than we may realize, kiruv is conducted today much the same as it was conducted a generation ago. For all of the efforts, real or imagined, … Read More >>

Dostoevsky used to say that Russians imbibe anti-Semitism with their mothers’ milk.

Despite the terrible things it portends for our brethren in the FSU, I was somewhat underwhelmed by the news that the RussiState Prosecutor’s office has opened an investigation against Kitzur Shulchan an Aruch (an abbreviated form of the Code of Jewish Law), to determine whether it was racist and anti-Russian. The move came in response to a letter from 500 Russian public figures calling for the outlawing of the Jewish religion and closing of all Jewish organizations. Nothing all that unexpected there.

The news will make many uncomfortable, though, beyond the implications for Jews in other parts of the globe. I’m not supposed to say why, but I will anyway. There are no secrets in the age of the Internet.

Everyone knows that there are indeed items here and there in various texts that we would not like to see brought to the attention of our non-Jewish neighbors on network TV. They make us nervous. How do we explain them when we are put on the spot?

I’m going to talk openly about this, because they don’t make me nervous at … Read More >>

Following is a letter of mine appearing in this week’s Forward (although not online) responding to an opinion piece there some weeks back by social psychologist Bethamie Horowitz. Some of the data contained in her essay, although not groundbreaking, are quite disturbing; perhaps I’ll comment on those at some point. This letter focuses on her view of the role of belief in Judaism. The mere fact that her assertion appears, unchallenged, in a place of prominence in a serious Jewish publication is highly instructive; that, too, will wait for another day.

Opinion columnist Bethamie Horowitz describes a recent Notre Dame retreat for Catholic and Jewish educators at which the Catholic teachers exhibited “fluency in speaking about their faith and its meaning in their work,” while the Jewish ones found motivation in “feelings of belonging to the Jewish people,” but not in faith and the divine.

The question, of course, is: why? Ms. Horowitz suggests two responses, and it is here that she moves, unannounced, from the role of social scientist to that of theologian, with disappointing results.

For one, she speculates, talk of faith remains difficult only 60 years after the Holocaust. Undoubtedly, the Shoah was a watershed … Read More >>

Several weeks ago, I wrote that the Conservative Movement’s Rabbi Susan Grossman had mischaracterized Judaism’s understanding of when life begins, and the Jewish position on abortion, in an opinion piece in the Baltimore Jewish Times. This week, Rabbi Avi Shafran of Agudath Israel weighs in on this subject in the same journal.

While I emphasized her position on the beginning of life, Rabbi Shafran contradicted her more forcefully on the subject of abortion itself:

Abortion is expressly forbidden by halachah. There are different opinions about the nature and gravity of the prohibition of killing of a fetus, but no accepted halachic authority views feticide as a matter of personal “choice” subject to any individual’s will. Like most forbidden acts, abortion can become permitted, even required, in certain circumstances. Such circumstances include when a continued pregnancy threatens the life of a Jewish mother-to-be.

And whereis I brought up the opinions of Peter Singer to counter-balance her vision of the anti-abortion lobby, Rabbi Shafran chose to more directly confront her misstatements on that issue as well:

Rabbi Grossman went on to make several significant errors.

Firstly, she presented opponents of abortion-on-demand (the “anti-abortion lobby”) as intent on “mak[ing] all abortions illegal.” … Read More >>

Only anti-Semites believe that Jews control the world. Yet anti-Semitism itself has choked and strangled the progress of nations. Writing in the June issue of Commentary, Paul Johnson calls anti-Semitism an irrational disease that brought monumental harm to those who practiced it.

Many of our readers will consider Johnson (History of the Jews, Modern Times, Intellectuals, among others) the greatest and most readable of comtemporary historians. A non-Jew, he waxes so rhapsodic at the beginning and end of his volume on the Jews that kiruv organizations have been known to use wholesale quotations from him to most perfectly frame the contribution of Jews to world society.

Most of our readers can anticipate the contradictions that Johnson points to that make anti-Semitism different from other forms of racism – the fact, for example, that in neighboring countries, Jews were accused of and demonized for traits of opposing polarity. Johnson’s art in this piece is in providing the less common insights. When Spain expelled its Jews, it not only lost some of its most talented to the Protestant Netherlands (and ultimately, to America), but it lost the ability to manage the riches it imported from … Read More >>

On a northbound train today, the passenger who sat down next to me turned out to be a Reconstructionist Rabbi, a senior staff member of the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation. We shared the opportunity to discuss organizational development, structures and leadership of modern Jewish movements, and, eventually, religion. He is obviously both sincere and devoted to Judaism and Jewish education, and was familiar with Torah.org.

I asked him how he decided to become a Rabbi. He said that his family was secular but joined a Conservative synagogue (where one of the early Reconstructionist thinkers was a mentor), and he attended a Conservative after-school program through his high school years. Later, he was learning advanced Tai Chi when his instructor said to him, “you have to return to your roots!” And he realized that he hadn’t “given religion a chance.”

Now anyone who has heard stories of Baalei Teshuvah, returnees to observant Judaism, or has read a book such as Rabbi Akiva Tatz’s Anatomy of a Search, can tell you that similar inspirational comments have motivated many others as well. So after discussing why he chose Reconstructionism over the Conservative movement, I asked him why not Orthodoxy. Again I got … Read More >>

Sometimes, we can be our own worst enemies. And at other times, we can help our enemies when they are getting their just desserts — not quite as bad as “our own worst enemies,” but assuredly not beneficial.

Last week I posted that the US District Attorney is, once again, suing the Village of Airmont for anti-religious bias, specifically for keeping out Orthodox Jews.

Some of the responses — from Orthodox readers, mind you — were enlightening. “We ought not pretend that these people have no reason to be upset,” wrote Zev. “There is substantial merit to the claims of Airmont residents,” said Ari.

Both Zev and Ari appear to be good, thoughtful guys — there’s a certain subset of the Orthodox community that likes to snipe about what other Orthodox Jews who aren’t quite like them do, like in every society, but I don’t think that’s what’s going on here. Rather, along with some genuine dislike for what some of the Monsey neighborhoods look like, there’s a desire not to see bias that goes beyond objective truth. And that’s a mistake.

The latter commentor later admitted that he was uninformed: he “did not know that their zoning currently doesn’t tolerate… religious … Read More >>

DovBear wrote:

“Why kill a convicted murderer if there is a chance new evidence might one day exonerate him,”

I don’t think a murderer should be executed unless his guilt is proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. Nowadays, with DNA testing and other technological means, it is possible to prove guilt to a 100% degree of certainty.

However, I suspect that your “what if they get the wrong man?” argument is a red herring. In my experience, most liberals oppose the death penalty. Period.

Even if there is no doubt at all–for example, if there are witnesses to the murder as well as incontrovertible physical evidence–most liberals still oppose the death penalty.

A particularly fascinating phenomenon to me is the liberal argument that goes like this: “You claim to be pro-life, but

One springtime ritual in many homes finds Mom bringing out the summer clothing bins and selecting the short pants that her kids will be wearing over the coming summer months. Here then, as the weather turns warm, are some Selected Shorts:

Hasidim Too, But What Are They?

JTA, May 15 - Conservative clergyman Lawrence Troster was the only Jew invited to attend the modestly-named International Conference on Environment, Peace and the Dialogue Among Civilizations and Cultures, held recently in Teheran under the joint sponsorship of the UN and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

But Troster’s opportunity to regale the folks back home in Jersey about being the solitary Yiddel there was spoiled when he spotted “two Chasidim there, fresh from a meeting with the country’s president, Mohammad Khatami. He quickly realized that the two were members of the anti-Zionist Satmar sect. ‘They weren’t participating in the conference,’ Troster said, ‘but they were welcome because they were anti-Zionist. It was the last place I expected to see a Chasid, but you never know who you are going to run into at these things.’ ”

Presumably, Troster’s statement that the two “were welcome because they were anti-Zionist” was a conjecture from afar on … Read More >>

Rav Shamshon Raphael Hirsch’s famous essay on teaching about science remains, as most of our readers know, at the center of an ongoing controversy. That controversy focuses on the final argument of the essay, concerning material in the Talmud that seems to conflict with contemporary scientific thinking. What too many people have forgotten is just how carefully Rav Hirsch crafted his advice– how many steps he went through before arriving at his conclusion as the final argument to be used when all else failed.

He strongly advocates not hiding from any part of science, but inoculating students against conflict by first and foremost teaching them about how science works. What are its assumptions? Just what is scientific truth? What are the roles of probability and extrapolation? What are the strengths – and weaknesses of scientific method? I have successfully used this essay with bright high school students to show them just how and why scientific method – while the best application of human rational thought that I am aware of – can sometimes fall short of the goal. More importantly, they learn how the method can be abused – as can most things … Read More >>

I have a hard time separating soul from mind.–Lisa
Terri Schiavo’s body once had belonged to a person, but it hadn’t for a long time before she stopped breathing –Murky
If I had the choice as I lay in a hospital bed, and knew that either people could keep on pouring money into me when I would never get better, or that money could go to someone else who could then live/ recover- would I not chooose to allow the money to go to someone else? –Chana

In Judaism, the soul is not the same thing as the mind. As long as a person is alive, he has a neshama. His neshama existed before he was born and will continue to exist after it leaves his body. His essential self is his neshama, not his body. Even a newborn baby who cannot think or speak, or an elderly person in the final stages of Alzheimer’s disease, still has a neshama. It is true that the neshama makes thought and speech possible, but without thought and speech, the neshama is still present as long as the person is alive.

The neshama has a mission to fulfill, and as long as G-d … Read More >>

I wrote about Terri Schiavo while she was dying. Today the autopsy report came out. Todd Schnitt, a local radio talk show host here in Miami, was among many in the commentariat who crowed that the autopsy “proved” Terri’s husband was right to withdraw food and drink from her. The autopsy showed that she had suffered extensive and irreversible brain damage in the original stroke that left her in a persistent vegetative state.

As for me, I never thought she had any mental activity and never thought she had any hope of recovery. I just thought, and still think, that it is a terrible moral wrong to murder brain-damaged people.

Terri Schiavo was still a person. She still had a neshama. If she were a Jew and her family had to decide what to do according to halacha, they would have to continue food and water, via a feeding tube if there was no other way. At least that’s the halacha according to R’ Moshe Feinstein, the greatest posek of recent Jewish history.

If the person was days from death, there might not be a … Read More >>

The question that forms the title for this posting is from the concluding line of a communication sent to me by an Orthodox Jewish mother whose son cannot get into a Jewish school. He is a teenager whose siblings are in yeshiva. He is not, apparently because he is ADD and there is no Jewish school that will accept him. So he is in a private school outside of New York where just about everyone there is not Jewish and where the atmosphere is warm and promotive of self-esteem.

The mother’s communication is doubtlessly overwrought. But we cannot deny that there is something wrong in our schools. Too many children are turned away, too many children are sent away. The explanations are many and, at times, they ring true. Far more often than not, they come from people in authority who do not care enough, people who for all of their religious credentials do not adequately sense the pain of parents and children, people who do not understand that Torah chinuch must embrace and not turn away.

We are a people who ask all kinds of halachic questions, too many of them trivial pursuits … Read More >>

The United States District Attorney for the Southern District of New York is suing the incorporated village of Airmont, NY, for violating the civil rights of Orthodox Jews… again.

Back in 1991, the District Attorney traveled this same road. The DA claimed that the Village was using zoning laws to exclude Orthodox Jews, by prohibiting small houses of worship where similar non-religious gatherings were permitted. That sort of unique clause is an unconstitutional intrusion into the free exercise of religion.

The DA went further, however, arguing that the Village’s very raison d’etre was bias and bigotry. “The Village was formed for the purpose of excluding Orthodox Jews by, among other things, imposing restrictions on Jewish forms of residential worship. Specifically, the Airmont Civic Association (“ACA”), an organization whose purpose was the incorporation of the Village, was to enact a zoning ordinance completely preventing worship in homes — a primary method of Orthodox Jewish worship” [emphasis added]. In other words, the village was formed — in the DA’s opinion — not simply for self-governance, but in order to zone the undesireables out of the neighborhood.

The Court found in favor of the DA (and, independently, in favor of the Park Avenue Synagogue … Read More >>

Subscribing to the daily e-mail bulletin of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (as I’ve recently done) has its pluses and minuses: decreased work productivity, increased fodder for blogging on Cross-Currents, increased heartburn with a concomitant increased yearning for Moshiach’s immediate arrival, etc. What follows is a recent representative news item, along with a bit of commentary.

Item: A new survey (conducted by a group strongly sympathetic to Jewish intermarriage, though the article doesn’t make this entirely clear) of adult children of intermarried parents shows “a population that ‘feels Jewish’ in many ways, despite a lack of Jewish education or affiliation.” Many of the respondents “describe themselves as half-Jewish, seemingly unaware that the Reform and Reconstructionist movements accept patrilineal as well as matrilineal descent.” (An aside: isn’t it possible that this self-description is not due to “unawareness”; that these young people, only 30% of whom “identify with Judaism as a religion,” frankly don’t give a darn what any movement says about their status?)

In light of these findings, the CCAR’s Committee on Jewish Law (a/k/a, to paraphrase Eric Yoffie, the Committee on Jewish Practices Deriving From the Individual’s Autonomous Personal Choice to Feel Commanded) will likely be facing some tough, momentous … Read More >>

I imagine that most of us know Americans who made aliyah and settled in Beit Shemesh. These are in the main people who can be characterized as Leumi Dati, with a bit of charedi instinct thrown in. They are men and women with wonderful values, good midos, sincere religiosity and a love for Israel and the Jewish people. They are certainly among the best that we have.

When the first English speaking olim came to Beit Shemesh or actually Ramat Beit Shemesh, they encountered a fair amount of difficulty. As I recall, there were many burglaries and there was tension between the newcomers and the poorer Israelis, mostly Sephardim. After the initial period of adjustment, relations improved and the newcomers went about their jobs and their important contributions to the Jewish State.

As Ramat Beit Shemesh grew, there were sections that were occupied by charedim, mostly Chassidic families coming from other parts of Israel. There have been a number of incidents involving attempted intimidation by charedim of the Anglos and the situation has worsened considerably in the past year. On Yom Ha-Atzmaut, there was an event for school girls, a number … Read More >>