When last I wrote, it was to report on the politically (and anatomically?) correct move of the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute to add a smattering of women to its board, and to voice my wistful musing on the likelihood that strongly Orthodox Jews would ever be invited to join that august body.

Lo and behold, I read on to find that one of the three new female members of the People Policy Planning politburo is Professor Suzanne Last Stone, a highly regarded Orthodox academic. Thought I: by golly, I wonder if the Planners realize that they’ve actually chosen a strongly Orthodox woman to join the club.

Now, I’ve never made the acquaintance of Prof. Stone, nor am I at all familiar with her professional writings. All I’m going on here is my vivid recollection of her contribution to the August 1996 Commentary symposium entitled “What Do American Jews Believe?” I’ve gotten many hours of reading pleasure out of my by-now dog-eared copy of that symposium, which I heartily recommend to readers who are not allergic to even a whiff of Orthodox triumphalism.

To explain what I mean by that, I’ll quote from a review of the symposium in the February 1997 issue of First Things (our own Jonathan Rosenblum did his own excellent review at the time in the JO) by the refreshingly forthright Cifford Librach, a Reform clergyman who can be counted on to speak truth to power. Contrasting the 1996 symposium with one Commentary had featured on the identical topic thirty years earlier, Librach writes:

Just in time for Purim comes this item, yours for $95 plus tax, plus another $35 for the Sefer Torah. Truly unsure what to make of this, I called in my local expert on all things dolls and accessories: my eldest daughter.

“Is that supposed to be a boy or a girl?” she asked.

“A girl,” I told her.

“Then why is she wearing all the things men wear?”

Blogs were a bold step forward for many in the Orthodox world, an experiment in transparency that held great promise. For the first time, there was an open, collaborative forum (the principle behind Wikipedia) in which issues could be explored, and concerns shared in a serious, respectful manner – at least on a small number of blogs.

Looking at some of reader comments to recent postings, I wonder if the experiment worked. I very much hope that readers will still prove me wrong, but I detect an undervaluing of Torah in some of what has appeared on these pages.

When we started up Cross-Currents, we sought the advice of major figures within the Torah community regarding what to publish and what not to publish. Basically, we were told that publishing critical remarks was fine, as long as the substantive part of the criticism would be effectively answered within the blog. Usually, this has worked well. As long as comments did not use attack language or directly assault key principles of faith, we allowed them, and sat back and watched as other readers did a good job at least presenting another point of view. Many of our readers never look at the comments; those who do would see an Orthodoxy that is not afraid to ask hard questions about itself, and open to the challenge of providing answers.

In some recent postings, commentors have outdone themselves in exposing some of the fault lines within the haredi world. They have pointed to all sorts of problems associated with a society that offers few employment options, relies on handouts, etc. Reasonable readers can either agree or disagree. I, for one, will admit to sharing some of the apprehensions voiced. What disturbs me is that few people rose in defense of those who were criticized. Some, it is true, wrote that the haredi community will simply not bend its principles, and everyone else should stop tilting at windmills. This may be true, but it is hardly a cogent defense. Something more is called for – a defense that even the critics ought to be offering.

Word to the Wise: if you want us to write about an article you’ve seen, please send us a tip. All of my last four posts previous to this one came because of articles sent to me by others — and if you don’t tell me about it, I’ll probably miss it. Which explains why “Owning a Wall,” Neil Rubin’s editorial in the Feb. 16th issue of the Baltimore Jewish Times, escaped my attention until this Shabbos, and why you’ll have to go to the archives (set the date to Feb. 17) and look for the editorial in order to read it. When you do, you’ll find that Mr. Rubin begins by making the case that the Wall is not — or, philosophically, should not — be an Orthodox synagogue with separate seating.

I have this sketch at home by Rabbi Joseph Schwarz from his beautiful mid-19th century manuscript “A Descriptive Geography and Brief Historical Manuscript of Palestine.” It’s of pious Jewish men and women praying, side-by-side, at the Western Wall, or Kotel. That tells me that back then, members of both sexes could pray together at this most sacred of sites.

Were the great sages of the era to have forbidden such behavior, would not there have been separate prayer times? Would a rabbi have included the drawing in his book?

Actually, what is documented in Rabbi Schwarz’s book was the situation during centuries of Arab oppression. Jews were forbidden to form a minyan at the Wall, much less provide the trappings of a synagogue — Sifrei Torah [Torah Scrolls], Aronos [Arks], Shulchanos [Tables for the Torah readers], and, yes, Mechitzos [Dividers between men and women]. Yet even though they could not form groups there for regular prayers, pious Jews nonetheless came to the Western Wall to pour their hearts out in prayer.

8 b Adar

Two years ago the publisher of Haaretz, Amos Schocken, published an op ed in his own paper extoling the virtues of intermarriage, as a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian and Jewish-Muslim conflict. The Hebrew is still available on the Haaretz website May 8,2005 Ha-im Israel rotzei shalom? It has 400 talkbacks.
The English version of Schocken’s op ed is can be read on the “kibush” website (I couldn’t access it on the Haaretz website).
“Does Israel Want Peace?” dated May 6,2005.

What greater peace can there be between the peoples than thousands of Egyptian, Jordanian and Palestinian students at universities in Israel, and thousands of Israeli students at universities in the Arab states and in Palestine? And what greater peace can there be between the peoples than what is likely to ensue from this: marriages between young Israelis, both Jewish and Arab, and young people from the neighboring countries and from Palestine?

Embedded in the aspiration for peace is a real interest that the Israeli Arabs become an integral and involved part of Israeli society (and not a `sector`), and that Palestinians, Egyptians and Jordanians live in Israel. This can be within Arab families, but even mixed families (one partner Jewish and one partner Arab) should not be ruled out…

The thesis that is the Jewish Nation has an antithesis: Amalek. And just as the Jewish People is defined by its Torah, so is its polar opposite associated with a particular system of thought and attitude.

Amalek the nation is unknown to us today; the Biblical command to destroy it to avert the mortal threat it poses to all that is good and holy is thus moot.

Amalek the notion, though, is very much present – in the broader world, the Jewish one and perhaps, to a degree, within each of us as well. And its undermining remains an obligation both urgent and clear.

A hint to the attitude defining Amalek lies in the Torah’s words immediately preceding that nation’s first appearance. In Exodus (17:7), just before the words “And Amalek came,” the Jews wonder “Is G-d in our midst or not?” The Hebrew word for “not” – “ayin” – literally means “nothing.” That Amalek’s attack comes on the heels of that word is fitting, because Amalekism stands for precisely that: nothing. Or, better: Nothing – the conviction that all, in the end, is without meaning or consequence.

According to the New York Jewish Week, the Modern Orthodox community “may believe that it has made more progress in terms of gender equality than it actually has.” What’s the problem? “Even the most enlightened [emphasis added] of Israeli yeshivot for American young women,” “examples of ‘women’s progress’ in that they are devoted to rigorous Talmud study, as well as other Judaic subjects,” has a student body less than interested in Talmud, and even less interested in feminism — indeed, “any practices construed as feminist are considered dangerous.”

This impassioned critique emerges, like any number of other, similar essays and speeches decrying the rightward shift in Modern Orthodox youth, from someone on the left fringe of Modern Orthodoxy — in this case, Emily Shapiro Katz. “A graduate of Stern College, Shapiro Katz studied at Midreshet Lindenbaum’s Talmud program and later taught at Midreshet Moriah, Machon Gold and several other learning programs for visiting American young women.” After marriage, she “returned to the U.S. and is now on the faculty of an adult education program of a large Reform temple in San Francisco.”

Now, of course, any number of Orthodox educators participate in non-Orthodox educational programs in order to provide a traditional influence — but Shapiro Katz has this to say about her new post: “I’m a pluralist educator now and I feel liberated.” This alone is sufficient reason for anyone dedicated to the preservation of traditional Torah viewpoints to celebrate what she decries. Pluralism, as interpreted in the modern Jewish lexicon, means acceptance of views antithetical to Torah as “equally legitimate.”

The fact that she is “posul” (unacceptable as an Orthodox educator) not because she wears pants, but because her views run contrary to a traditional Torah-based outlook, escapes both Shapiro Katz and the reporter — neither, admittedly, coming as a great surprise. A single dissenting view is relegated to paragraphs 18-20 of the 24-paragraph article. Her obvious bias renders her not only posul as an educator, but posul as a witness to what is actually going on in the Modern Orthodox women’s seminaries.

The Yeshive World blog reports:

With a heavy heart, I report to you of the Petira of Horav Haposek Rav Avrohom Blumenkrantz ZATZAL. The Levaya details will be posted as they become available. Boruch Dayan Emmes…

Rabbi Blumenkrantz was especially well known for his trailblazing guides to Kosher for Passover products, including household items and medications. His passing leaves a void that will be especially difficult to fill.

Mercedes recently ran a full page ad in The New York Times. It contained only six words. At the top were two words: “More Power.” Four inches below that were two more words: “More Comfort.”

And finally, four inches below that, the last two words: “More Envy.”

One can appreciate the advantages of driving a car with more power and with more comfort. But what does envy have to do with driving a car?

Furthermore, the ad seemed logically skewed. Power and comfort are qualities we can possess. Envy, on the other hand, is not something we possess; it is something others will feel toward us if we own this car.

Among the Jewish super-rich, philanthropy is alive and well. A decreasing share of it, according to a recent issue of Lifestyles magazine, stays within the community. The upshot of this is not so much about funding institutions as another sign that the Orthodox are going to have to take on a greater share of community responsibility. No one else will

Not so long ago, Orthodox institutions heavily depended upon non-Orthodox largesse to stay afloat. Some of that money had guilt written all over it; money was a form of atonement for not living an observant lifestyle. Some of it came with a bit of smugness attached: “You many have surprised us by lasting longer than we thought, but it ought to be perfectly clear that you couldn’t survive without the rest of us.” They counted on Orthodoxy to guarantee the Jewish future, but they saw themselves as the necessary financial guarantors of Orthodoxy.

As a new generation moved ever more distant from observance while Orthodoxy grew by leaps and bounds, the unpredicted happened. Orthodoxy developed its own funding sources – however imperfectly – and weaned itself away from financial dependence upon the non-Orthodox. The latter continued its stewardship of Jewish institutions unconnected to the world of religious practice: political advocacy on behalf of Israel, building hospitals, supporting Jewish culture. We Orthodox often told ourselves that, with so many of our own institutions to worry about, the rest of the fixtures of Jewish communal living – even the ones we approved of – would have to be someone else’s worry.

If recent trends in megagiving are an indication, the worriers are part of a shrinking population.

Rosh Hodesh Adar.
Sometimes I go to great lengths for the sake of the Cross-currents blog…. Last week I rode the length and breadth of the Land of Israel on the mehadrin buses in order to provide readers with a state-of-the-art summary of the controversial Egged bus lines.

I spent a few hours updating myself on the gender-separate seating. If you have been reading the media reports, you would have suggested I go in full battle gear, perchance I would be accosted by the 300-pound haredi who resembled a Sumo wrestler and commanded Naomi Ragen to move to the back, as she recounts in her interview on National Public Radio. Go to the NPR website and seach for “Jerusalem’s Rosa Parks Fights Modesty Patrols.” You can listen to and/or read the report. Listening is great because you can hear the derision in the speakers’ voices. I am so used to the haredi sector getting short shrift and unequal time that I don’t even mind that the anti-mehadrin side got most of the report, while my pro-mehadrin viewpoint was drastically abridged.

In contrast, the JTA (Jewish Telegraph Agency) was meticulously evenhanded. They had pro and con opeds. Phyllis Snyder, viewing things from her American perch, had written a blistering attack on the Israeli mehadrin buses. But the JTA held up publishing it until they had an oped of equal length defending the buses (by yours truly). They published them simultaneously on their website currently. Go to the JTA website . In the Mid East section you’ll find my “In defense of separate but equal” and Phyllis Snyder’s “Women Don’t belong at back of bus.”

One thing I regret is that in the JTA oped they had to cut, due to word count limits, a passage I quoted from a Naomi Ragen novel. Naomi is acutely aware of the problem of putting temptation in front of someone, so I am surprised she underestimates the attraction women sometimes present to men. This is the passage that was cut:

Some further clarification of the issues I raised in an earlier piece.

Judging people favorably is sometimes a halachic requirement, and sometimes just an admirable trait, even when not absolutely required. Never, however, does it require throwing discretion to the winds. When the need is great enough, we become suspicious. (See Rambam, Commentary to Mishna, Yoma 1:5, end, regarding measures taken to insure that the High Priest did not follow Sadducee practice in the Holy of Holies.) Specifically in reference to charitable giving, halacha is pretty clear. While you may give a small amount without investigation, a larger contribution calls for a checking of credentials (Yoreh Deah 250:3; see Shach loc.cit. #4. The value of a larger gift is not immediately clear to me. The Taz #1 writes that an amount greater than the cost of a single meal is definitely a larger gift.)

If you are interested in learning more about how tzedakos rate when measured against each other, and how most IRS-recognized charities opt to keep their exemption from opening their books to the public, I would recommend two sources – one general (www.charitynavigator.org) and one Jewish (www.just-tzedakah.org ). Between them, you will find all sorts of pleasant and unpleasant surprises, such as a downloadable shiur on priorities in tzedakah giving, the extremely high overhead of some charities (sometimes over 90%), and the highest rating possible given by the non-Jewish site to one of Israel’s venerable agencies, Yad Eliezer.

Back in my yeshiva days, we used to get sent out periodically to raise funds. Often, the amounts raised in a distant state hardly covered the cost of the airfare and lodging. It was wonderful and necessary experience for us students, teaching us how to interact with people often far less observant, as well as the difficulties and responsibility of fundraising. Yet, it bothered me that those from whom we collected would have been more than surprised to learn that the vast majority of their check was being directed to a travel agent, not to the salaries of rabbeim. It was enough to turn me into a cynic about charitable efficiency for a lifetime.

by Rabbi Harvey Belovski

I am enjoying the privilege of showing my eleven-year-old daughter around Israel and yesterday we spent the day grave-hopping in the Galil. We had a wonderful time, which both of us found highly educational, yet something disturbed me – the proliferation of ugly mechitzos (barriers dividing men and women) at gravesites. I found it particularly unpleasant at the grave-site of the Rambam.

I last visited the grave of the Rambam in Tiberius some years ago and remember it well. One leaves the road and walks up a gentle incline between fourteen pillars each engraved with the name of one section of the Rambam’s magnum opus, ‘Mishneh Torah’. Passing the resting places of the Shelah (Rabbi Isaiah Horowitz, the great 17th-century mystic) as well as those of Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai and other sages of the era of the Mishnah, one arrives at the grave of the Rambam at the top of the incline. The tombstone is quite distinctive and the inscription reads, ‘from Moshe (the original Moses) to Moshe (the Rambam), no-one arose as great as Moshe’.

This preamble is intended to indicate the beauty of the site and how the area has been carefully landscaped to honour the remains of the Rambam in the most apposite manner. Regrettably, the site has been completely spoiled by the metal barrier that now bisects the grave stone itself, ruining the architecture and obscuring the famous inscription. Barriers of this kind have sprung up all over the place to ‘preserve the sanctity of the site by preventing men and women from mixing’.

The dedicated askanim who devote themselves day and night to solving some of our most pressing communal problems are one of the crowning glories of the Israeli chareidi community. Recently two groups of askanim – one in Jerusalem and one in Bnei Brak — addressed themselves to the plague of tragedies involving the loss of parents of young children, often after long and agonizing illnesses.

Many of the stricken families are left without even the money for basic necessities, not to mention resources to cover all the extra help required in the wake of such tragedies. About money to help the orphans marry, we need not even speak.

In virtually every case, the deceased parent had no life or health insurance. So the family is left without any recourse other than to turn to the already overburdened community, and to ask strangers to open their hearts and purses.

The askanim in question refused to accept the current system of ad hoc appeals as the best possible solution. And they came up with the idea of creating large groups of ten thousand or more families, whose members would in effect self-insure one another. The initial plan promised approximately $50,000 to every unmarried child, upon the death of a parent in one of the participating families. Those costs would be covered by contributions from the other families in the plan, in an amount not to exceed $18 per month. For their efforts, these oskim b’tzarchei tzibur deservedly received the gratitude of gedolei Yisrael and blessings that their efforts be crowned with success.

No, this is not a defense of THE Jonathan Rosenblum article, the one that decried the cavalier attitude that some in the haredi community display towards the way their less laudable actions will be perceived by the rest of the world. So that there should be no confusion, I will say that I salute him for the content of his remarks, and his courage in writing them. As is the case so often, I wish I had done it first.

Rather, I rise to defend him regarding his piece about deception and tzedaka, in which he described how some people mulcted him out of some cash by fabricating need, and how he accosted them and demanded the return of the money.

A reader of Hamodia chided him for this, and opined that once money has been contributed, it is not our task to be judgmental and ever ask for its return.

I believe that this attitude is terribly in error, and damages the institution of charity rather than elevates it. Many people effectively “write off” their charitable funds, arguing that they have no real bond to them, because the money is “lost” to them anyway. Therefore, they can afford to be somewhat looser with tzedaka funds, since they have no vested interest in them other than seeing that they are aimed at something that looks like a deserving enterprise.

The following question and answer just appeared on our Jewish Answers web site, under the heading “Jewish Civil Rights:”

Please tell me why Jewish people as a whole seem not to defend their civil rights in America? I have noticed this in my experience with fellow Jews at our town meetings. I won’t go into the details, but I have tried to involve the organizations that claim to protect civil rights, but there is only so much they can do as non-profits.

I understand that Israel is important but for me the United States is important as well.I feel I am a fighter, a Maccabee, and I will continue but I truly desire to understand why I seem to be alone in this endeavor.

You have raised a very important question. I applaud your passion for protecting the rights of the Jewish people. Indeed, we are privileged to live in a land, which provides Jews equal protection under the law, and we should certainly strive to safeguard the civil liberties granted us. I cannot comment on the specific issue that you note, as I am not completely familiar with all the details. I will only comment on the hesitancy you notice among some (or many) Jews not to stick up for our rights.

An alert reader tipped me off last week to this piece from the JTA: “Latest salvo in intermarriage debate suggests a split in Jewish community.”

Steven M. Cohen, a prominent Jewish sociologist, has fired the latest salvo in what is becoming an increasingly vituperative debate about outreach to the intermarried.

In his newest paper, “A Tale of Two Jewries: The `Inconvenient Truth’ for American Jews,” Cohen uses his own research and data from the 2001 National Jewish Population Survey to argue that inmarried and intermarried Jews form two distinct halves of the Jewish community.

And the Jewish future, he argues, rests with the inmarried, who are more Jewishly engaged and much more likely to raise their children as Jews.

I am back from Calgary, having enjoyed myself more than I thought, and burdened with far more guilt than I bargained for.

Scholar in residence gigs can go either way. Calgary being somewhat off the beaten path for an Angelino, I had no idea what to expect, other than wishing that they had invited me in August when I would have driven to the Canadian Rockies, rather than on the weekend that the city tried to disprove the notion of global warming. Temperatures got up to a balmy one degree, and there was fresh snow on the ground. As a former New Yorker, I can appreciate snow, as long as I don’t have to shovel it.

Truth be told, Calgary is a lovely community, and the universal warmth of its people completely compensated for the vertically challenged mercury column. I would have been loath to call it a frontier town, but some of the residents did. Calgary is on the cusp of becoming a second capital of Canada, the capital of the Canadian West. The province of Alberta is oil country, and it is enjoying a frontier-style boom. Three thousand new residents arrive each month, vastly overtaxing the infrastructure, but not the geography. There is plenty of empty space. There is plenty of economic opportunity in such an environment, but don’t expect gunslingers roaming the street. (Deer yes; gunslingers, no.) In fact, the boom hasn’t changed the demeanor of the residents – friendly, helpful, courteous. Almost like they got stuck in the ‘50’s. A real pleasure. The winter chill is offset not only by the people, but by abundant sunlight, clear skies, and scenic beauty.

Congregation House of Jacob – Mikveh Israel reminded me about an aspect of the tenacity of Orthodoxy that I had long forgotten. Having grown up in a generation in which twelve years plus of formal Jewish education was a given for all flavors of Orthodoxy – left, right, and center – I had long ago discounted the viability of anything less. Calgary is a counterexample. It has families that have maintained core Orthodox practice for several generations, even with children attending public high schools. Shabbos, kashrus are transmitted faithfully. To be sure, it was easier in previous decades, when the competing culture was not as pervasive and not as destructive. Some of the families now worry whether their children will fall prey to intermarriage, despite their strong admonitions. Others have bitten the bullet, and send their kids away for high school. (The day school only runs through eight grade.) On the other hand, the number of people running community organizations who identify with Orthodoxy reminded me of Baltimore. I would not have expected it in Calgary. The proud vitality of Calgary’s Orthodox bears testimony to the strength the Jewish soul takes from some of the key practices of Torah life.

Last week, I was privileged to attend a lecture by Bernard Lewis at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The audience greeted the nonagenarian scholar with a degree of reverence and adulation that probably no other academic in the world commands. Many stood at the end of his presentation, and I fully expected to hear cries of “Bravo! Bravo!” Younger members of the audience will one day tell their children how they heard Lewis, still in full command of his subject, in much the way that aging baby-boomers regale their offspring with memories of Grateful Dead concerts.

Lewis was part of a double feature that began with the screening of Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West, a powerful documentary that has been widely shown on American TV, but for some inexplicable reason has yet to appear on Israel TV. One of the film’s great merits is the prominence given to the testimony of Arabs and Muslims. Nonie Darwish, daughter of the Egyptian military commander of Gaza in the ’50s, killed in battle with Israeli forces; Walid Shoehat (an alias), a former PLO member and Israeli security prisoner, Brigitte Gabriel, a black Lebanese Christian, raised to hate Jews, and The Jerusalem Post’s own Khaled Abu Toameh, whose courage and reporting it would be impossible to praise too highly, all appear frequently.

Equally powerful is the late Alfons Heck, a commander in the Hitler Youth, who compares the indoctrination of Muslim youth to that of Nazi Germany, and wonders at the world’s inability to see the parallel. Martin Gilbert, Churchill’s official biographer, recounts how Churchill saw himself as a failure for his inability to make his countrymen see the looming danger posed by Hitler.

Gilbert clearly feels the same sense of frustration today at the Western world’s refusal “to connect the dots” and see radical Islam as a global problem. Recognizing radical Islam as a single problem, Gilbert archly observed, would obligate the West to do something - and that it has no more interest in doing than Chamberlain had in confronting Hitler. (Incidentally, the film contains clips of the smugly smiling Chamberlain on his return from Munich, as he proclaims “peace in our time” to a roaring throng.)

When I first read about the lady on the #2 bus, I was inclined to cheer her on. From the sound of it, the behavior of the men was appalling, and she got some good licks in. Certainly the idea of separate seating on buses is most unappealing to me, but in her place, I would have meekly moved back anyway. Secretly I’m glad there are other, sterner women who aren’t so meek. Well, to be honest, it’s not the separate seating but the sitting in back that bothers me. If the men sat in back and the ladies up front, I really would not mind. My charedi brother in fact says that if looking at women is the real problem, the men should sit at the rear of the bus–facing backwards! :- )

My charedi relatives mostly are opposed to the whole idea of mehadrin buses, although one female relative tells me that many women prefer the separate seating because they are not crushed by pushy men who elbow their way through crowded buses. And they can nurse their babies discreetly under loose blankets without being noticed. But I still find the idea of segregated buses distasteful.

Having said all that, I really wonder about some of the details in the bus story. There is an email going around the internet, purportedly written by the victim, which has in it one absolutely astounding detail. It claims that there were TWO SECULAR CAMERAMEN ON THE BUS WHO VIDEOTAPED THE INCIDENT. Is this plausible? How often do secular cameramen take the #2 bus to the kosel at 6 AM? What are the odds that they would do so just on the day when this bizarre incident unfolded? Was the confrontation planned? Did someone tip the cameramen off? Were they really on the bus? Where are these two men? Where is the footage they shot? Why hasn’t it been aired?

Below, the email in full (I have put a couple of sentences in bold). I don’t know for sure that this is the form in which she originally wrote the letter; others may have edited or added some elements, or perhaps someone else wrote this letter altogether:

A group of five feminists, including novelist Naomi Ragen, has petitioned BaGaTz against the Mehadrin lines maintained by two publicly-subsidized bus companies: Egged and Dan. Petitioners do not demand the immediate cessation of Mehadrin service, but rather that the Court order the Transport Ministry to conduct a study of the necessity of separate seating bus lines and require Mehadrin buses to be clearly labeled.

At the hearing before BaGaTz, a good deal of attention is likely to focus on an incident that took place on the number 2 bus between Har Nof and the Kotel last November 24. In a widely circulated Email, Mrs. Miriam Shear, an Orthodox grandmother from Toronto described an alleged attack on her that day. According to her email, she rode the number 2 bus to the neitz minyan at the Kotel daily over a period of five weeks that she was visiting in Jerusalem. Though that particular bus line is not a Mehadrin line, the majority of passengers on the line are chareidi, and she was asked on a number of occasions to move to a seat on the back of the bus. In each case, she refused.

According to the Email, on the morning in question, a male passenger told Mrs. Shear that he wanted to sit in her seat and asked her to move to the back of the bus. She noted that there were two open seats in front of her and another across the aisle, and again refused. At that point the man spit at the middle-aged grandmother, and she reciprocated in kind. That led to a knockdown brawl, in which Mrs. Shear’s hair-covering fell off and was thrown out of her reach, she was kicked in the face, and she was surrounded and jostled by four men, including the original assailant. (I was able to confirm from Mrs. Shear’s host in Har Nof that she returned home hysterical from this encounter and with a badly swollen face.)

Predictably, this particular Email began spread like wildfire through cyberspace. Mrs. Shear was sought out for feature stories and interviews by some of the world’s largest TV and print media, most of which, to her credit, she refused. Equally predictably, a Reform leader penned an op-ed piece in the Jerusalem Post in which he compared Mrs. Shear to Rosa Parks, the black woman whose refusal to move to the back of a public bus in Montgomery, Alabama helped spark the American civil rights movement. For good measure, he also compared chareidim to the Taliban in Afghanistan, and that comparison has been picked up and repeated ad nauseum.

At Agudath Israel of America, before taking a political or social stance, launching a new effort or offering educational material, we look to our rabbinic leadership for guidance.

Although we obviously do not bother the members of the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah (the Council of Torah Sages) with much of the day-to-day work we do in the realms of our advocacy, public service or education, when faced with new situations requiring policy decisions, we consult the Council. Similarly, while I do not submit everything I write for Am Echad Resources to the Council, when I am addressing something of unusual importance, or have any concerns about what I have written, I make sure to ask Rabbi Yaakov Perlow, the Novominsker Rebbe and the rabbinic head of Agudath Israel of America, to review it first.

Since “Burning Issue” deals with an important topic and describes a fundamental Jewish belief, I faxed an early draft of the essay to Rabbi Perlow’s study early last week. When I hadn’t heard back from him by Friday, I assumed he had found it acceptable and released the essay. Unfortunately, the fax had only come to his attention on Friday afternoon, at which point he called me with two concerns. One was my omission of the concept of “honoring the dead” – from which the halachic imperative of burial derives; the second was my statement that the revival of the dead is “not explicitly expressed in the Written Torah.” Although the statement is not inaccurate, the Talmud takes pains to stress that there are in fact indications of the concept in the actual text of the Torah. Rabbi Perlow felt that it was important to more clearly note that. (An astute and knowledgeable recipient of the essay, the renowned Professor Jacob Neusner, had earlier that day made the same point to me.)

And so, I edited the essay accordingly and resend it here. I hope it will help convey Judaism’s attitude toward cremation – and, through the history of its editing, something about commitment to Jewish integrity and Torah leadership.

Many of us in Los Angeles were not prepared for the frank language we heard in shul on Shabbos. Moreover, it didn’t come from some visitors, but from the rov.

Aleinu is an Orthodox social service agency operating under the aegis of Jewish Family Service of Los Angeles. It enjoys a national reputation for being cutting edge. If it didn’t, Shabbos’ “Davening Under the Influence” program would have provided enough reason.

Weeks before, community rabbonim began to be peppered with backgrounders about the Shabbos devoted to addiction, in the hope that each one would use his pulpit to educate shul-goers about the issues.

Posters around town told the rest of us it was coming. Many of us, I think, expected an appeal. Instead, we were given a strong dose of reality about something that people usually either ignore, or speak about in hushed tones.

by Rabbi Harvey Belovski

What do the following four women have in common?

· Andrea: management consultant, graduate of a seminary in Israel, summa cum laude graduate in business management, volunteer for a Jewish outreach organisation.
· Channah: Kodesh teacher in a Jewish Girls’ High School, graduate of Beis Ya’akov seminary (classic Jewish higher-education college) and talented musician.
· Sara: freelance computer programmer, Ba’alas Teshuvah (late-comer to religious life) of 12 years standing, graduate of Harvard and seminary in Israel.
· Trudy: university lecturer in psychology, graduate of modern-style seminary in USA and gifted artist.

While the connection may not be immediately obvious, they share the facts that they are sophisticated, attractive, deeply committed to lives dedicated to Torah and Mitzvos, and, wait for it, in their 30s and single.

The NY Jewish Week includes an article called “Mending G-d’s Garment.” The subtitle? “Synagogues attempt to save the earth, one compact fluorescent Ner Tamid at a time.” As you might expect, it’s about synagogues focusing upon environmental awareness as a “Jewish” issue, featuring such items as the “Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life’s ‘Light Among the Nations’ campaign, where synagogues and their congregants were encouraged to change from incandescent light bulbs to compact fluorescent bulbs.”

The dangers of confusing and conflating modern values with Jewish ones are relatively obvious in many cases — the Conservative movement’s slow tumble into the endorsement of that which the Torah calls an abomination being merely the latest example. Other cases, such as the one above, are hardly so clear.

For the record, most of the bulbs in our house are now compact fluorescents. Besides the energy savings, they last a lot longer, meaning my children get to experience the humorous answer to “how does one vertically-challenged rabbi change a light bulb” with considerably less frequency than before. I am, in addition, happy to participate in recycling programs and other efforts to conserve energy and preserve our natural resources — but not as a new mitzvah. It is obvious to most traditionally-observant Jews that the use of compact fluorescent bulbs is less important than, say, lighting Shabbos candles.

Sometimes issues do rise to the level of mitzvos — e.g., not smoking. The dangers to health posed by cigarette smoking are sufficiently obvious to make not smoking part of shemiras haguf, guarding physical well-being. A young yeshiva bochur’s decision to start smoking means he has other priorities than sitting in front of his gemara, and that he is taking a very casual attitude towards his own health — neither of these being particularly positive signs.