The Washington Post has an article on Jerusalem’s “Kosher Gym,” which has separate hours for men and women and doesn’t have “MTV-tuned televisions and piped-in hip-hop.”

The Post doesn’t get everything right, of course. Observant Jews are not “encouraged to shun physical exercise in favor of time with the Torah.” I would say that yeshivos seem to treat PE with benign neglect, although getting physical exercise to stay healthy and energetic is part of guarding your health. It is a hyper-focus on sports and physical prowess that is discouraged. So going to a Kosher Gym doesn’t necessarily involve “emerging from their cloistered precincts” or finding “an athletic refuge away from their religious one.” The Kosher Gym in NY is so successful that it is actually two separate facilities — one each for men and women — complete with a library of Torah tapes so you can learn and lift at the same time.

But here’s an eye-catching passage. The article notes that the gym has “attracted a small clientèle of secular women tired of see-and-be-seen health clubs.” Would we say that health clubs in government buildings cannot provide separate hours? If we are not going to let the market figure it out for itself, but insist upon government intervention, how will we emerge with what female (and male) clients want, rather than what nine (secular) justices think they should want?

The case against the Egged Bus Company’s “Mehadrin Lines” is moving forward and in the news. I think it deserves its own comment thread, independent of the plagiarism complaints against one of the parties.

Sitting here in Baltimore, I cannot claim any special access to information. I read the news, articles and comments from Israeli authors and commenters here on C-C, and receive an occasional private email — for example, a copy of Mrs. Shear’s original complaint. If my facts are wrong, please correct them, because from what I have read and discerned between the lines, what is being portrayed in the press is far from the truth.

First and foremost, the plaintiffs have gone to the press with their fight against “Jewish fundamentalists” with their “Taliban-like rules.”

Small problem: They are not suing Rabbis. They are not suing the Edah HaCharedis, the Torah factions in the Knesset, or Chaim Mod’chl Brecher and his gang of goons that terrorize female passengers. [N.B. In case you didn't click the link, the reference to CM Brecher is a joke - it's a spoof call to an operator. I'm not aware of any real person named Chaim Mod'chl Brecher.] They are suing… Egged, the ubiquitous bus company that operates most of Israel’s public routes. This is Egged, the Israeli cooperative with over 2300 employee-owners. The same guys with the grotesque ads on the side of their buses (from what I’ve gathered, the cities own the bus shelters with their own ads, but I’m not certain either way). This is hardly a charedi crowd. And Egged is … fighting back?! Unless we imagine that all the bus drivers secretly voted for Shas, since when do they align themselves with “the Jewish Taliban?”

In a Jerusalem Post opinion piece, Dr. Jonathan Schorsch calls me a “clever fellow” whose “handwringing” over the hatred I’ve encountered aimed at Orthodox Jews is “somewhat posed, if not disingenuous.”

Dr. Schorsch can be easily disabused of his first assertion by perusing my high school scholastic records, or by consulting my wife and children, who can regale him of all manner of dumb things I’ve said and done (but who love me, I hope, all the same).

As to the second charge, I assure him that I am sincerely pained by my observations.

Dr. Schorsch quickly moves to his real point, the contention that Orthodox Jews are themselves the cause of the hatred aimed at them, because they lack sufficient ahavat Yisrael, or love for fellow Jews. He cites personal experiences of Orthodox Jews insulting him and the Orthodox refusal to accept the Jewish legitimacy of non-Orthodox theologies.

Like many others, I grew up with the understanding that there really weren’t any bona fide apikorsim (heretics) any longer. “Do you know how much a person has to know before he can be considered an apikorus?” teachers used to say. The assumption was that one had to have studied far in excess of the hoi poloi to be a candidate for the title. (One cynical young man I knew sported a T-shirt with the slogan “Aspiring Apikorus.”)

Discovering the Chazon Ish changed all that. The Gemara is quite clear about urging an “exit strategy” for them, in a manner short of actively spilling their blood. However, says the Chazon Ish (Yoreh Deah 2:16), this was true only when the community clearly recognized the operation of Divine Providence in its midst, and understood that any backsliding towards transgression jeopardized society by compromising its relationship with G-d. Eliminating spiritual fifth columnists was roundly appreciated as vital to the security of the community. In contemporary times, ridding ourselves of heretics would cause even greater contempt for religion, and is counterproductive. We have no choice, he says, but to attempt to win back the heretics with bonds of love.

Implicit in this approach is that heretics are not a thing of the past. They live among us, even today. A heretic need not be a gadol hador (Torah giant) who went bad. Heretics today know enough that they can be considered genuine rejectionists, not benighted souls victimized by their unfortunate ignorance.

So heresy came back to life as a functional category of people. In more recent times, the potential for heresy grew exponentially as some uncovered a new way to bring more folks under the heresy umbrella. The argument goes something like this. “My rebbi/ rebbe/ rosh yeshiva etc. is a very important talmid chacham (Torah scholar). The Gemara states that disparaging a talmid chacham makes one an apikorus. Now my rebbi, etc. holds X. Nothing could be more disparaging of him than for you to contravene or ignore X. Since you have elected to disobey, you are therefore a heretic.”

Item: ‘Government panel to alter conversion policy’ (Jerusalem Post, March 5); Item: ‘Since intermarriage is inevitable, humanist liberals say that conversions are unnecessary’ (Haaretz, March 28); ‘New calls for reform of rabbinic conversion courts’ (Jerusalem Post, March 29); Item: “Conversion in crisis” (Jerusalem Post editorial, April 5)

I have in my hands a copy of the eagerly awaited Inter-Ministerial Committee to Re-Examine Yom Kippur Practices report. The reexamination is in response to widespread demands, led by liberals and the secular media, to loosen the Yom Kippur restrictions, which have become a major stumbling block for non-Jewish immigrants who want to convert to Judaism.

Transcripts of interviews with these immigrants reveal that many abandoned the conversion process because of the adamant attitude of the rabbinic courts. The immigrants, most of whom are Russian, were willing to accept Judaism, but balked when told about Yom Kippur.

“These restrictions are 3,500 years old. Why should I have to deny myself food and drink for 24 hours?” asked one potential convert.

A few weeks before Pesach, I tagged along with my wife for an extended weekend at Moshav Hispin under the auspices of Chayeinu (the Israeli branch of Chai Lifeline). The purpose of the weekend was to provide a treat for children with cancer, and some relief from the constant stress for their families.

And the weekend delivered. Though some of the children came straight from the oncology ward, an outside observer would have had a hard time discerning the nature of the group, apart from the number of the completely bald children. For those two-and-a-half days, the families looked like any other families savoring a long-awaited vacation.

Much of the success of the weekend can be attributed to the presence of two groups of youthful volunteers who came as counselors. During the year, these volunteers visit the hospital wards to pray or learn or just schmooze with the patients, and to offer encouragement and practical assistance to their families. In addition to the work in the hospital wards, each family has its own volunteer, who is in regular contact and works with both the patients and their siblings.

Over the weekend, the volunteers provided most of the ruach; singing, dressing up in various costumes, and leading the large circle dances. One only had to see the way the faces of their young charges and their families lit up when they approached their table to know what the volunteers mean for these families.

by Sarah Shapiro

In the Jerusalem Post of February 23, 2007, I read of a plagiarism charge against the author Naomi Ragen, and was prompted by that report to inform the plaintiff’s attorney of my own related experience. Two respected rabbinical authorities on shmiras halashon were consulted as to whether it was advisable and permissible to make this matter public, before doing so.

My first book, entitled “Growing With My Children: A Jewish Mother’s Diary,” was published in 1990 by Targum Press. A daily journal from the years 1986 to 1989, the book recorded virtually all the events in my life during that period but its main focus was my participation in an ongoing parenting workshop, and the ups and downs I experienced along the way to becoming a more skilled and patient parent. After its publication, the head of Targum at the time, Rabbi Moshe Dombey zt”l, called to say he had given a copy of the book to Naomi Ragen, of whom I hadn’t heard at that point. He said she had previously done some work as an editor for Targum, and he thought my book would be of interest to her.

I soon received a call from Ms. Ragen. She said that she had enjoyed my book and would like to meet, and — to my delight — invited me to her home in the Ramot neighborhood of Jerusalem. During that visit, she related to me warmly and encouraged me to continue writing.

Frankly, I could not care less whether Winston Churchill wrote, “The central fact which dominates the relations of Jew and non-Jew is that the Jew is ‘different.’ He looks different. He thinks differently. He has a different tradition and background. He refuses to be absorbed.” Certainly, nothing in those words detracts one iota from Churchill’s status as the greatest world leader of the 20th century, and the one to whom, more than any other, we owe our existence today.

I’m inclined to believe Sir Martin Gilbert that Churchill did not write the words quoted above, and that they were those of a ghostwriter. Ghostwriters — at least if they are any good — are paid to reflect the sentiments of their principal. And the sentiments expressed by Churchill, in my opinion, far from being contemptible, reflect a certain spiritual sensitivity – the recognition that the Jew is different. I only wish more Jews today were equally confident of that difference, and that more gentiles shared Churchill’s awareness of Jewish distinctiveness, and were as little inclined to marry us as they once were.

There is a great chasm between the genteel discomfort around Jews expressed by Churchill (and which by the way is by no means limited to the gentile half of the relationship) and the antisemitism of the Nazis or many lesser imitators today. If one studies the rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust, one finds that many of them harbored sentiments about Jews considerably less friendly than those expressed by Churchill. But those sentiments neither led them to harm Jews nor prevented them from close friendships with individual Jews. And ultimately they did not prevent the rescuers from risking their lives to save those of Jews.

Churchill has hitherto been known as something of a philo-Semite, and was certainly sympathetic to Jewish national aspirations in Palestine. Even in the article in question he (or his ghostwriter) expresses his admiration of Jews in various places.

The influx of one million Russian-speaking immigrants in the 1990s was a blessing for Israel, albeit a mixed one. The mass immigration provided hundreds of thousands of Jews with a chance to reconnect to their heritage after 80 years of Soviet dictatorship.

Shuvu, a nationwide school system, whose enriched Jewish curriculum combined with superior secular studies has benefited tens of thousands of immigrant youths, and which is funded by the overseas haredi community to the tune of more than $10 million annually, is the most intensive effort at reconnecting young immigrants to Jewish tradition.

At the same time, the wave of immigration brought the country as many as 500,000 non-Jews, under the Law of Return and the Citizenship Law. When prime minister Ehud Barak went to greet the millionth new immigrant, few Jews could be found on the plane. Of 1,004 new immigrants from Chaburusk in 1999, only 38 were Jewish. Former Diaspora affairs minister Michael Melchior lamented that on visits to Israeli embassies in the FSU, all he found were “people… with no connection to Israel or the Jewish people.” One family of eight had only a grandfather who was one-quarter Jewish, and 20 years dead to boot.

Government policy deliberately maximized the number of non-Jewish immigrants. US government funding of immigrant resettlement constituted one-fifth of the Jewish Agency’s budget in the ’90s and was pegged to the number of immigrants. Former absorption minister Yuli Edelstein described the Jewish Agency’s policy as one “of turning over every stone in Vilna in search of a drop of Jewish blood.”

Koreans took the news hard. Lee Tae Sik, South Korea’s ambassador to the United States, suggested that Koreans in the US fast for 32 days, one day for each victim. President Roo Moo-hyun devoted a press conference to the story; the Ministry of Foreign Affairs felt compelled to issue a statement. Cardinal Nicolas Cheong Jin-suk said. “As a South Korean, I can’t help feeling apologetic about how a Korean man caused such a shocking incident.” Koreans were reported to be in a state of shock, stirring from it to offer a string of apologies.

Not everyone found this so admirable. One Los Angeles talk show host accused Korean-Americans of using the tragedy to stimulate sympathy for their community through a display of exaggerated contrition. He accused them of “playing the race card…. Now look who’s stereotyping.” An online Korean news source offered its own distaste. “It’s an overreaction. It’s doubtful whether the South Korean reaction will really help anyone.”

Some spun it more sympathetically. They pointed out the vulnerability that all minority groups feel. The Los Angeles Times reported that Muslims, African-Americans, and Latinos all expressed relief when they learned that they could not be linked to the gunman. Koreans had much to fear. Of foreigners studying in the United States, more come from Korea than any other country – including India and China. Koreans were fearful of compromising what could be seen as a special relationship with the United States.

Some pointed to elements of Korean history and geography. Koreans are a people of a single “blood” or ethnicity, with a long memory of oppression at the hands of two much stronger peoples (the Chinese and Japanese) that took turns at invading them. Koreans, it was surmised, had an artificially pronounced sense of the collective.

The perfect, it is said, is the enemy of the good. Striving for unobtainable perfection can leave us empty-handed when very good solutions were within easy reach. On the other hand, no religious person can, with a clear conscience, either falsify or compromise his deepest beliefs.

The tension between these two principles is currently playing itself out in a fascinating fashion in the deliberations of the Knesset Law Committee, which is involved in drafting a constitution for Israel. Constitutions are by their very nature compromise documents. They are almost always drafted by a committee, not by a single individual, and reflect that multiplicity of authorship. More important, they are efforts to reconcile a variety of interests in order to command the widest possible support.

The proposed constitution of the Institute for Zionist Strategies reflects the fundamental compromise between the desire to preserve something of the Jewish character of the State, on the one hand, and the desire to command wide support, on the other. In several places the proposed constitution can be seen as a response to particular Supreme Court decisions. Paragraph 27 states, “The State shall act to ingather the Diaspora of Israel and to establish Jewish settlement in Israel,” a clear effort to reverse the Kaadan decision barring the State from allocating to the Jewish Agency land for exclusively Jewish communities. Another provision stating that “Jewish Law shall serve as a source of inspiration for legislation,” responds to several decisions by Justice Aharon Barak, in which he implied that legislation having its basis in Jewish law and tradition might be democratically infirm because Israel is not a “theocracy.”

In many places the seams of the compromises hammered out are clearly visible. For example, in the paragraph devoted to Shabbos and days of rest, the document specifies that no worker may be employed on these days of rest, except as determined by statute. In other words, the default position is that no one may be employed on Shabbos (though the status of the self-employed and their family members is left unclear). On the other hand, the next sentence specifies that activities prohibited on these days of rest shall be determined by statute. In other words, the default position is that activities are permitted, unless otherwise specified. The bottom line, however, is an attempt to dramatically reduce the current level of commercial activity.

AP will likely not pick up the moving story, reported on Yeshiva World, of the mobilization of forces to provide the final tribute to Prof. Librescu.

If only we were half as good in our kavod ha-chayim as with our kavod ha-mesim…

Amid the horror of the massacre at Virginia Tech, the story of a hero is being told. One brave professor blocked the door to his second-floor classroom, holding it closed until his students could flee out the window. In doing so, he gave his own life. [Update: President Bush mentioned Prof. Librescu in a news conference, as well as the fact that this Holocaust Survivor gave his life on Holocaust Remembrance Day. "We honor his memory," said the President, "and take strength from his example."]

Liviu Librescu was an Israeli, a survivor of the Holocaust. He was a Jew. And although he did not have an easy life, one that could have made him bitter, he instead devoted himself not only to teaching, but to others. The Jerusalem Post quotes his son Joe: “He saw himself as the ambassador of Israel to that part of the world, to an American university that had few Israelis but many representatives from the Arab world.”

A teenager during WWII, he survived fascist Romania and life in the shadow of the Gestapo. His father was deported to a forced labor camp during the war, while Librescu spend part of the war in relative safety in Russia, Joe Librescu said. “Afterward, he endured [communist dictator Nicolae] Ceaucescu’s Romania.”

As a scientist, his contacts with the outside world were blocked. When his desire to leave for Israel became known, he was forced to resign his position without knowing whether he would find other work. “Nevertheless, and at risk to his life, he continued to publish,” Librescu said. “So I wasn’t surprised at what he did when [facing] the shooter [Monday].”

Writing laments for Israeli society is not hard. Declining educational achievements, youth violence, hedonism, materialism, and corrupt politicians all provide ample material for those wishing to up-date Lamentations. Over the last twenty years, I’ve probably written as many such lamentations as anybody.

But every once in a while, it is worth acknowledging Israel’s achievements as well. Over the last century it would be difficult to name one advance in any area of human endeavor coming from 22 Arab nations. By contrast, Israeli researchers make hundreds of lifesaving medical advances every year. The Israeli economy remains one of the industrialized world’s most robust, despite last summer’s war and the continued threats to Israel’s existence.

But I have something deeper and more fundamental in mind. The pintele Yid is still more easily discerned among Jews in Israel than among their secular counterparts in the Diaspora.

Western society today is characterized by a loss of belief in G-d, indeed by deep skepticism about all transcendent value. Those who advocate an ever-expanding recognition of individual rights in their own societies nevertheless show a remarkable tolerance for societies that deny all such rights to their own members - e.g., feminists who turn a blind eye to the subjugation of women in Islamic society.

In today’s Miami Herald there are four articles, each one an interview with an elderly Florida couple who survived the Holocaust. Their stories are tragic and also inspiring, but here is the fact that caught my eye: each of these couples — all of them now in their eighties — had exactly two children, and today they have between them very few grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

I am not certain whether it is because of the conscious choices that non-Orthodox Jews made, or Divine Providence, but today it is only Orthodox Jews whose numbers are increasing. I don’t remember who made the famous remark about not granting Hitler posthumous victories, but Jews in America are famously reproducing at negative-ZPG rates.

The only non-Orthodox elderly Jews with significant numbers of grandchildren are those fortunate enough to have at least one BT child. It is too late for those elderly survivors, but young Jews today who do not want Jewish numbers to decline any further should 1. marry young and 2. have more than two kids and 3. give their children enough of a Jewish education so that their kids, too, will have more than two kids.

“Marry young” means, for a woman, before age thirty — even if she doesn’t have tenure yet. Some things are more important than a career, or should be. Jewish heroism today means giving birth to more Jews! Have you seen the latest biography of Einstein? The lists of Jewish Nobel laureates? The review in Moment Magazine of a book about the Chofetz Chaim? Jews are a blessing to the whole world. Jews, Jews, we need more Jews!

by Rabbi Harvey Belovski

In an attempt to catch the last moments of holiday spirit, my wife and I took our children to the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew in West London on the day after Pesach. It was a magnificent day, matched by the beauty and diversity of the displays at the gardens. I hadn’t visited Kew Gardens for many years and had forgotten just how glorious it is. Our children, while initially reluctant to be schlepped along, enjoyed themselves in the end. A couple of comments they made there prompted me to write.

We were visiting the palm house admiring the trees when my elder son, who is seven, pointed at a gigantic leaf and asked, ‘Daddy, if this were Romaine, how many kezaysim (olive-volumes) could you get from that?’ This was a reference to the quantity of lettuce required for bitter herbs at the Seder. The answer, of course, was hundreds, but that is beside the point.

A little later, we were standing near some steps leading up to a building. At the side of the steps was a smooth concrete incline topped by a horizontal slab. Two of our daughters, aged eight and seven, observed that the structure looked like the altar in the Temple. When I smiled uncomprehendingly, they kindly explained that the incline was the ramp leading up to the altar and the slab at the top was the altar itself. Obvious, really.

Finally, a treatment with some balance. The Jerusalem Post, just in time for Yom HaShoah, provides an important review of the new translation of Hidden in Thunder: Perspectives on Faith, Halachah and Leadership During the Holocaust by Esther Farbstein, a haredi Holocaust scholar and educator who has been enormously important in setting the course for contemporary Holocaust education in the haredi world.

Farbstein’s work, says the reviewer, focuses primarily on the acts of spiritual heroism – remaining steadfast in Torah practice under the most difficult circumstances imaginable. Drawing from haredi archives, however, she also shows that there was a more nuanced approach to physical resistance than is acknowledged in some circles today. While some Torah personalities denied any value to taking up arms not to extend the possibility of living, but to defend Jewish honor or exact revenge,

The Radzyner Rebbe, Rabbi Shmuel Shlomo Leiner, called on Jews to break out of the ghettos, flee to the forests and take up arms. Rabbi Shlomo David Yehoshua Weinberg, the Slonim Rebbe, allowed underground activists to use his basement as an arms cache. Rabbi Yehoshua Moshe Aronson, who was held in the Konim labor camp, supported a plan by the inmates to take revenge against German soldiers.

“Let us at least defend Jewish honor and avenge our spilled blood,” wrote Aronson. The plan was never carried out, however, and Aronson expressed sorrow at having missed the opportunity for vengeance and rebellion.

This in from an alert reader: “Teachers drop the Holocaust to avoid offending Muslims.”

Not what you expected, was it? We’re used to being told how things like same-sex relationships need to be taught in the classroom, in order to support tolerance. We’re told that for teachers to do otherwise would be irresponsible, no matter how offensive some parents might find an extensive discussion of the topic. But now we see that teachers do use their discretion to avoid offending people… to avoid teaching basic world history.

A few days ago I saw a letter to the editor (which journal, I have already forgotten) in which the writer dismissed the idea that children need to be fully informed about all possible behaviors in order to learn tolerance. He is right, of course. The baby-boomers weren’t taught to tolerate people with green highlights or eyebrow piercings, they just do it. Teaching children a set of things and saying “you must tolerate these” is far less effective than teaching general principles of tolerance. And in truth, the key point to be made is that unless a person is truly evil, you condemn the behavior, not the person. To an individual homosexual, a person can be tolerant, sympathetic, and understanding — even while simultaneously subscribing to the Torah’s view of the male homosexual act as to’eyvah.

Children don’t need lessons in unusual behaviors, of whatever kind, to learn tolerance. They do need lessons in history. Schools are falling down on the job on both counts.

It isn’t likely that very many people exhaled at long last with relief at the news that three entertainment industry executives had compiled their pet list of “America’s 50 most influential rabbis.” But there was still something worthwhile, if not terribly comforting, to learn from the venture.

It was, to be sure, an odd bird, rendered stranger still by its prominent reportage in Newsweek magazine, a periodical that once actually reflected its name. The roster, in any event, became fodder for much mirth-making – jubilant press releases from groups boasting connections to one of the Fab 50, and snickers from more disinterested corners.

There were even some knitted eyebrows, since lists of “influential” Jews more commonly reside in the darker recesses of the blogosphere, where they are usually festooned with swastikas, SS bolts and the like.

And there was some puzzlement too. Why, even if for some reason one wished to identify paradigms of Jewish influence, would one limit the focus to clergypeople? What of Jewish teachers, activists, writers?

Less than two weeks ago, I mentioned that the akismet spam blocker included in WordPress had trapped over 80,000 spams to our blog comments. We just hit 100,000.

It’s an honor we could do without, but there you have it. 100,000 spams, and, as said earlier, barely a dozen false positives. I’m still waiting for akismet for my INBOX!

Most would agree that the single most consistent and dangerous flashpoint in the Orthodox-Heterodox divide is the issue of “Who is a Jew.” Much of the animosity and anger that the heterodox feel about this issue, however, is misplaced — because they are given an inaccurate portrayal of the position of the observant community. Just recently, Scholastic Books committed to reprinting the “Israel” volume in an educational series, because of the erroneous claim that “some ultra-Orthodox Jews… believe that Reform and Conservative Jews are not really Jews at all because they are not strict in their observance of all the religious laws.”

This falsehood was, itself, the outgrowth of an earlier one: that the Orthodox summarily reject Reform and Conservative conversions, excluding committed young men and women from the Jewish people simply because they converted under heterodox auspices.

A falsehood? But isn’t it true that the Orthodox summarily reject heterodox conversions?

I would argue that this is, in fact, a falsehood. What is surprising is finding support for this position in an article distributed by the JTA. Sue Fishkoff is the author of both the JTA piece and “The Rebbe’s Army: Inside the World of Chabad-Lubavitch.” While Chabad is not even mentioned in this article, I wonder to what extent her deeper understanding of observance led her to question the conventional wisdom. Perhaps, though, it was simply observing the real-world consequences when “patrilineal” families migrated to Conservative synagogues, only to find that their children were ineligible for Bar or Bat Mitzvah honors because they were born to a non-Jewish mother.

One story that is sure to grip the Orthodox world in coming months is the civil suit for plagiarism brought against best-selling author Naomi Ragen by Michal Tal. Well-known chareidi writer Sarah Shapiro has entered the fray with her own story of Ragen’s “borrowing” from her book Living with My Children (1990), a tale that she shared with me already many years ago. Below is a copy of the letter published by Mrs. Shapiro in last Thursday’s Jerusalem Post in response to Ragen’s op-ed piece “I am not a plagiarist.”

Readers who are interested in a full list of Ragen’s borrowings are invited to Email Mrs. Shapiro at sarahkit@netvision.net.il Yet another flagrant example of Ragen lifting incidents from the works of chareidi writers has been uncovered, though whether that writer will bring a civil suit (and if so in what forum) still depends on the ruling of her rebbe. Incidentally, Michel Tal, the original plaintiff is not Orthodox, and Mrs. Shapiro, who is chareidi, has not been joined as a plaintiff nor has she yet brought suit independently in civil court.

Sir, ­

Re: “I am not a plagiarist” by Naomi Ragen (March 22)

While “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” (Santayana) it is not clear that those who do remember escape it. When it comes to rabbinic disputes, that may not be such a bad thing.

Menachem Butler called my attention to a fascinating article on the controversy regarding machine-made matzos. It appears in the 2004 HUC Annual, and is coauthored by Dr. Meir Hildesheimer (yes he is…) at Bar-Ilan. It is not yet available online. The article offers historical background, analysis of the arguments on both sides of two separate flare-ups of the dispute, separated by forty years, and consideration of economic elements of the disagreement. While the chief protagonists were the Shoel U-Mashiv on the side permitting machine matzos and R. Shlomo Kluger on the other, the list of those who also got involved is more than impressive.

Much of the material will make some of us initially uncomfortable. It shouldn’t, as I will explain shortly. We would like to believe that all halachic decisions are about legal abstraction, with arguments considered in a cool, detached and gentlemanly manner. The historical record, though, includes lots of things that perhaps shouldn’t happen in a perfect world. The chronicle of this dispute includes much name-calling and vituperation – by Torah giants. People who are charged with crimes against halachic humanity lash out at their accusers in retaliation – against the advice of friends and family. Clearly exaggerated arguments and claims enter the fracas. Revisionists appear on the scene, claiming that the original disputants changed their minds, albeit without a shred of evidence. Family feuds are part of the background of the dramatis personae, as well as insinuations that a certain brother-in-law took the wrong side because of a contested claim to an estate. People seized positions and titles that they did not hold. The motivation of some of the less-than-stellar talmidei chachamim (Torah scholars) is not always purely halachic. (One of the chief organizers of the opponents of mechanized matzah stands accused of wanting to regain his reputation as thoroughly frum while smarting from charges that he was too chummy with the maskilim (”Enlightened” Jews who rejected tradition, in whole or part). Whole groups of people – to wit, those terrible German Jews - are accused of being less than authentic, and too eager to embrace modernity. The press gets involved, and adds fuel to the fire.

There are some really surprising elements as well, like the Shoel U-Maishiv printing the entire responsum of a Reform rabbi in his community (Lemberg/ Lvov), together with the reasoning of others on his side (The Shoel U-Maishiv, while strenuously fighting Reform, was a harsh critic of fracturing the organized Jewish community, and maintained good relations with Reform rabbis in his city.) Subsequent developments pad some of the impact of the opening rounds: we learn that there were apparent apologies of sorts later on, and that the Shoel U-Maishiv and R. Shlomo Kluger worked together on other issues later in life.

There’s little time to write during the holiday, of course, but the news of the moment surrounds the British marines and naval personnel captured and then recently released by Iran. The news reports say that some have criticized the soldiers for appearing to admit to straying into Iranian waters while in captivity.

What brave words from the armchair quarterbacks. Let one of them be kidnapped illegally at gunpoint, held in isolation with the sounds of guns being cocked in the background, offered two choices — admit error and go home, or be jailed for years by a terrorist regime — and see if they managed to avoid spilling any sensitive information as they sung (likely loud enough to put several dozen canaries to shame!).

The armchair critics provide an appropriate lesson for us, as shortly after Passover we will be called upon by the modern State of Israel to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust on “Yom haShoah vehaGevurah,” the day of the destruction and the strength. Why “and the strength?” Because the day they chose is the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and is followed shortly thereafter by Yom HaAtzma’ut, Israel Independence Day. The message we are given is: these Jews, the Jews of the uprising, are the ones we should admire. Not the old “golus mentality” Jews with their reticence and their religion, but those willing to pick up weapons.

Does it matter that the uprising was futile, as they were all martyred? Is it really a great consolation that they managed to take out a few Nazis as well? Perhaps. But meanwhile, the old “golus mentality” Jews hatched a plan involving traditional golus methods — personal contacts, even bribery — that could have saved as many as 900,000 Jewish lives. It was the modern Jews with their focus upon Zionism and Roosevelt, even as Roosevelt was abandoning the Jews, who failed to follow through. Observing from a distance, they concluded the only thing they could do was help the Allies win the war, and if their brethren were sacrificed in the meantime, so be it. In Yom HaShoah vehaGevurah they assuaged their own collective conscience.

While my children were out purchasing their “afikoman presents” with my in-laws, I happened on my own holiday present in the form of a remarkable article by Dr. Francis Collins.

The highly regarded Collins is the director of the National Human Genome Research Institute and the piece is a synopsis of his personal journey of faith. I found the statement noteworthy as much for what it did not claim as for what it did assert.

Collins’s main premise is that not only is there no conflict between science and belief, but that, in fact, scientific discovery is itself testament to the greatness of God’s creation. As he so beautifully writes,

As a believer, I see DNA, the information molecule of all living things, as God’s language, and the elegance and complexity of our own bodies and the rest of nature as a reflection of God’s plan . . . I have found there is a wonderful harmony in the complementary truths of science and faith. The God of the Bible is also the God of the genome.