By Harvey Belovski, on October 31st, 2007 My wife and I have just spent a magnificent week in Jerusalem. It was, as always, spiritually uplifting to visit the Old City, daven at the Kotel, absorb the incredible atmosphere of the eternal locus of Jewish physical and spiritual life, all the while sampling a degree of religious intensity that one can easily forget exists.
This time, we were also inspired by the growth of the new city: it was tremendous to see the huge number of building projects, the expansion of residential areas, the streets filled with young people. We were overwhelmed with a sense that without any question, the Jewish future lies in Israel, not elsewhere.
And, we have decided that Israel is the best place in the world for kosher restaurants. While we assiduously avoided mehadrin buses, we had the pleasure of dining at some really great mehadrin restaurants. They offer superb cuisine from across the globe at reasonable prices (by London standards, anyway) and despite what everyone says about Israelis, excellent service. (Click here for a version of this article that includes a list.)
With all this to recommend, my wife and I asked ourselves several times during our trip: why … Read More >>
By Jonathan Rosenblum, on October 31st, 2007 More than the Calf Wants to Nurse
One aspect of the Torah community in Eretz Yisrael that never ceases to amaze me is the incredible number of “mitzvah entrepreneurs” who see a problem and sally forth to fix it. Though they may do so in Don-Quixote fashion, unlike Cervantes’ hero they often achieve remarkable results. Tapping the energy of these “entrepreneurs,” and providing them with the tools they need is a communal priority.
A week or two ago, a young man knocked on our door. From the look on his face, I assumed that he was collecting for himself. I was wrong.
About four years ago, he and another friend heard about a 40-year-old man stricken with cancer who had a great desire to meet some of the famous singers in the religious world. With that Chaim L’Nefesh Yisroel was born.
Many wonderful organizations today work with childhood cancer sufferers and their families. But few deal with adult cancer sufferers. It was that niche that Chaim L’Nefesh Yisroel attempts to fill.
At present, about 30-40 volunteers take out one or two adult cancer patients every Thursday night for an evening of dancing and song, usually led by a famous performer … Read More >>
By Yitzchok Adlerstein, on October 31st, 2007 Much of the recent thrusting and parrying regarding Shmitah in these pages has brought home once again the importance of listening to other voices, especially the ones with which you do not agree. Two items last week exposed additional facets of the issue, one theoretical, and one a practical object lesson.
Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks was in characteristically impeccable form in his weekly essay. I cite here only a few paragraphs, but cite them in their entirely:
To put it at its simplest: we believe that the God of Israel is the God of all humanity, but the religion of Israel is not the religion of all humanity. You do not have to be Jewish to have a share in the world to come. The universality of the Jewish God stands in counterpoint to the particularity of Jewish life. No other religion of revelation embodies this tension. It explains our relative smallness and our reluctance to proselytise. It also explains why Jews have had an influence on the world out of all proportion to our numbers. Despite our particularity, our message the human person as the image of God, the story of the exodus, and the idea of a covenantal … Read More >>
By Yitzchok Adlerstein, on October 31st, 2007 Most of our readers are spared the infamous December Dilemma. We don’t agonize about denying our children their time with Santa. The end of October, however, offers up a different dilemma, because fewer of us have either the historic or halachic background to speak authoritatively about Halloween. (Those who want a quick overview can try here, in the appendix.)
Most of us have some awareness that Halloween has its origins in either a pagan or Christian celebration. (Answer: both are true.) For those who risk having their houses egged rather than open up to the revelers outside (Note: I am not suggesting that this is the only option), the following findings from an AP poll and release earlier this week has a few surprises about the behavior of other Americans:
Nearly two-thirds of the people in the survey said their households will distribute Halloween treats to children who come to call; the likeliest to pass out goodies include younger and higher-earning people.
Seventy percent of people in the poll who consider themselves liberals and 67 percent of the moderates questioned said they would hand out treats, compared with 55 percent of conservatives.
Of those adults whose children … Read More >>
By Avi Shafran, on October 30th, 2007 That the unveiling of a new Reform prayer book didn’t elicit applause from the Orthodox world was hardly surprising. Despite media hailings of the movement’s new liturgical offering as a turn toward Jewish tradition, the new prayer book, “Mishkan T’filah,” still pointedly omits vital elements of traditional Jewish prayer (indeed of the Torah) that its editors found discomfiting.
The essence of the Jewish religious heritage does not change; the very premise of Reform theology (and, as has become increasingly evident, Conservative theology no less) is that Judaism can be redefined according to the wishes of contemporary Jews. As a Reform leader once candidly explained, he examines each mitzvah and asks himself, “Do I feel commanded [to heed it]?”
Still and all, some encouragement may lie in the fact that a movement rejective of Judaism’s heart has even subtly and tepidly reclaimed an element of the Judaism of the ages. The Kotzker Rebbe, it is told, once asked: Who is more worthy, someone on the 49th level of spiritual accomplishment or on the 1st? His answer: “It depends on the direction in which each is heading.”
And for all the new Reform prayer book’s profound faults – and those … Read More >>
By Yitzchok Adlerstein, on October 26th, 2007 Ought parents provide clear moral guidance and a set of definite values to their children, by orchestrating what they are exposed to and what not? John Edwards doesen’t think so.
At the Dartmouth presidential debate in late September, the candidates were asked what they thought about a Lexington, Mass.teacher who read a story to second graders about a prince who married a prince, i.e. about same-sex marriage. Senator Edwards supported the notion:
Second grade might be a little tough, but even in second grade to be exposed to all … to all of those possibilities because I don’t want to impose my view. Nobody made me God. I don’t get to decide on behalf of my family or my children, as my wife, Elizabeth, who’s spoken her own mind on this issue. I don’t get to impose on them what it is that I believe is right.
Despite Suha Arafat’s absence from the room, Hillary made no attempt to protest, to distance herself from the remark. Neither, for that matter, did any of the other candidates. The point was subtle enough that perhaps the rest of them should probably not be blamed. May G-d save us, … Read More >>
By Jonathan Rosenblum, on October 25th, 2007 The most frightening thing about The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy is how bad, shockingly bad, it is. That two professors at two of the world’s leading universities could have produced a book so lacking in serious scholarship or even basic familiarity with their topic; that a major publishing house put its imprimatur on the book; and most significantly that it has attracted a wide readership and thrust the two authors and their views into the limelight is truly cause for concern.
The two authors Stephen Walt of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago purport to prove that American foreign policy has been subverted by the so-called ” Israel lobby” to the benefit of Israel and at great damage to the United States. One would expect a book about American policy-making to actually examine the decision-making process of American policymakers. Yet Walt and Mearsheimer do not cite, much less rely, on government documents.
They have spent no time in the archives. Nor have they interviewed key policymakers. Of the book’s 1,247 footnotes, only three refer to correspondence with a primary source and only two mention interviews with sources. No Congressman … Read More >>
By Jonathan Rosenblum, on October 24th, 2007 “The plural of anecdotes is not data” goes an old saying. Yet when one attempts to examine a wide variety of social phenomenon in the Israel Torah community, hard data is hard to come by.
One of those phenomena would be disaffected youth. How widespread is the problem? What are its causes? Is it possible to identify youth who might be at risk in coming years at a young age, and what types of early intervention might be effective? These are just a few of the critical questions worthy of investigation.
This past week I finally found someone who has been studying all these issues and collecting hard data in order to create effective early intervention programs. In the course of our long conversation, he observed that the “drop-out” rates in so-called mixed communities, like Petach Tikva, Rechovot, and Haifa, are dramatically lower than in all chareidi communities, like Kiryat Sefer, Beitar, Elad, and Bnei Brak.
That remark was far from the focus of our discussion, and we did not dwell on it. But it is still worth asking what are some of the differences between growing up in a mixed community and an all chareidi community.
The biggest difference … Read More >>
By Eytan Kobre, on October 22nd, 2007 Aha! Now that I’ve got your attention, I can tell the truth: this post is about the closing of the New York Kollel, an adult education program housed in and partially supported by Reform’s Hebrew Union College branch in New York (and thus, my headline about “leaving Kollel” is further inaccurate; it’s the Kollel that’s leaving its students, not vice versa).
The Jewish Week reports on the Kollel’s closing:
Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, which has housed and helped support the Kollel since 1995, announced this spring that it would close the program, following a two and a half year “strategic planning process” that found the Kollel to be a financial drain.
“We seriously had to look at a number of wonderful programs that we would have been delighted to continue, but we frankly could not afford. The New York Kollel Program is one of them,” Rabbi David Ellenson, HUC president, wrote in a letter to Kollel participants who signed a petition and sent letters in recent months as part of a student-led campaign to save the Kollel.
But at least some associated with the program said shutting its doors was not only a shame, but a mistake for the Reform movement.
“Closing … Read More >>
By Yitzchok Adlerstein, on October 22nd, 2007 Israeli media are reporting that there was another incident of violence against a woman for refusing to move to the back of the bus.
I have no way of knowing whether the story is true, in whole or in part. Past history, however, would predict that there is some kernel of reprehensible truth, no matter how much it may have been embellished by the haredi-haters in the media. My spies in Ramat Beit Shemesh-Alef (the next community over from Ramat Beit Shemesh-Bet where the deed was done, if it was done) are hard at work, but I don’t have verifiable corroboration of the charges that five haredi youth assaulted a frum woman and the IDF soldier sitting next to her. Reportedly, police efforts were then thwarted by a crowd of supporters who came to their aid, who also disabled the tires on the police vehicle.
Verified or not, I can tell you who is interested in the story, and who picked it up right away: the Muslim media. I have seen with my own eyes the output of one Muslim listserv under the appropriate enough title “5 ultra orthodox Jews beat the hell out of woman in … Read More >>
By Jonathan Rosenblum, on October 21st, 2007 This past Yom Kippur Israeli security forces averted a major disaster when they uncovered a fully prepared explosive belt in the heart of Tel Aviv at the last moment.
The drama worthy of a Hollywood thriller began about a week before the planned attack, when security forces, presumably acting on intelligence information, rounded up 40 Hamas operatives in the Ein el-Hilweh refugee camp. Among those captured were a suicide bomber, his recruiter, and the driver who was to smuggle him into Tel Aviv.
While their capture was a set back for those behind the operation, they still had plenty of time to recruit another bomber and driver. They had already succeeded in smuggling an explosive belt in three separate parts into Tel Aviv and in assembling it there. Not until early Friday morning, less than 24 hours prior to the onset of Yom Kippur, did security forces capture Nihad Sahkirat, the planner of the operation, in a refugee camp in Nablus.
The details of Shakirat’s interrogation are not fully known, but we can be confident it was not a pleasant one from his point of view, as the security forces confronted the classic “ticking bomb” situation. For once common … Read More >>
By Avi Shafran, on October 19th, 2007 Those “Ultra-Orthodox” in Israel are at it again, inventing new stringencies, coercing other Jews, trying to make a dishonest buck and generally making life unlivable for everybody else.
At least that is what seems to emerge from recent reportage about the “Agricultural Sabbatical Year,” or Shmittah, ushered in on Rosh Hashana.
The New York Times contended that an Israeli Chief Rabbi, because he respected a revered elder rabbinical leader’s judgment, is “considered” – by whom was not clarified – “a puppet” of the senior rabbi.
A New York Sun columnist insinuated that a religious legal decision was born of a desire to make money on the backs of the poor. “There are, after all, no farmers in the ultra-Orthodox community,” wrote Hillel Halkin, wrongly, “and plenty of rabbis and kashrut supervisors who will find jobs making sure that Jewish-grown fruits and vegetables are not, G-d forbid, being smuggled into the diet of unsuspecting Israelis.”
And a New York Jewish Week editorial both got its facts wrong (contending that the Israeli Chief Rabbinate, by setting a kashrut certification standard, had “disallowed” food of lower standards) and saw fit to invoke an unsubstantiated accusation of moral turpitude against one rabbi and the arrest of another’s family … Read More >>
By Jonathan Rosenblum, on October 17th, 2007 Something about the scene struck me as completely incongruous. The members of the second Am Echad delegation – a group of concerned American Jews representing a wide spectrum of American Orthodoxy – were gathered at the Knesset to exchange views with Knesset members from a number of parties.
At some point, Eliezer “Cheetah” Cohen, a pony-tailed, former IDF helicopter pilot, who served as an unlikely representative of the Russian party, Israel Beitainu arrived late. He entered in a state of high agitation. “I just learned that the Muslim Waqf is destroying Har HaBayis,” he told us. He went on to describe how heavy bulldozers were being used to transform an underground area known as Solomon’s Stables into a new mosque. The dirt being removed by massive bulldozers from the site – tons of it – was being dumped into the Kidron Valley.
The secular “Cheetah” described all this with much pain and anguish in his voice. While those of us who direct our hearts three times each day towards HaKodesh HaKodoshim absorbed what he was telling us with a calm demeanor and occasional sympathetic tongue clucking. Thus the incongruity.
The memory of that meeting returned recently with the announcement that … Read More >>
By Jonathan Rosenblum, on October 17th, 2007 The woman said to the Serpent, . . . “Of the fruit of the tree which is in the center of the garden, G-d has said: ‘You shall neither eat of it nor touch it, lest you die’” (Bereishis 3:2-3).
By adding a seemingly innocuous prohibition against touching to the prohibition on eating, Chava brought death to the world and changed the course of human history forever. She provided the opening that the Serpent needed. He pushed Chava into the tree, and she did not die. The Serpent was then able to convince her that just as she had not died as a consequence of touching the tree so she would suffer no adverse consequences as a result of eating from it.
The story of Chava and the Serpent cautions us as to the potential danger of excessive stringencies. A talmid chacham once explained to me the rare, but not unknown, instances of wives of kolleleit dressing inappropriately. When they were in seminary, he said, they were told that certain colors of stockings were forbidden. When they noticed that competing seminaries had different forbidden and permitted colors or that the forbidden colors changed from year to year, they concluded … Read More >>
By Harvey Belovski, on October 14th, 2007 Last week, I fulfilled a long-held desire – to visit the ruins of the Jewish cemetery in Sochaczew, a town some 40 miles west of Warsaw. With a Jewish population of over 3000 prior to its destruction by the Nazis during the Holocaust, Sochaczew was known as a centre of Hassidic thought in the 19th and early 20th centuries (as well as being very close to the birth-place of the composer Frederic Chopin).
The Rebbes of Sochaczew were world-renowned thinkers: the first was the son-in-law of the Kotzker Rebbe, Rabbi Avraham Bornstein (d. 1910), known as the ‘Avney Nezer’ after his monumental collection of halachic responsa; he was succeeded by his son, Rabbi Shmuel (d. 1926), known as the ‘Shem MiShmuel’ after his nine-volume collection of discourses on the Torah and festivals. Representing a rare blend of intellectual, psychological, esoteric and inspirational material, the Shem MiShmuel rigorously analyses Midrashic sources, which are used to offer a creative approach to understanding Biblical narratives.
Around fifteen years ago, I was introduced to the writings of the Shem MiShmuel by a friend in Gateshead, and I have been a devotee ever since: his ideas have heavily influenced my own thoughts. My … Read More >>
By Yaakov Menken, on October 12th, 2007 Those not hiding in a cave or immersed entirely in Torah study for the past two days — and in either case, why would you then be reading Cross-Currents? — are undoubtedly aware that Ann Coulter has it out for the Jews, insisting that we all need to be “perfected.” And for this, Coulter — no stranger to controversy — is being pilloried in the media. CNN said that she “took a sharp swipe at Jews — that’s at least the way a lot of people are interpreting it.”
The only problem is, that’s not what happened, she demonstrated not an iota of anti-Semitism, and the media is taking her to task for being nothing more nor less than a traditional Christian, and quite a tolerant one, at that. The media’s true target is traditional religion, and it would do for traditional Jews to be part of setting the record straight.
What happened was that Donny Deutsch, a Jewish talk-show host, asked her what her dream America would look like. And she said it would “look like New York during the Republican National Convention.” Note, of course, that for her to want everyone to be Republican is not considered offensive. … Read More >>
By Avi Shafran, on October 12th, 2007 The symbol commonly known as the Magen David (“Shield of David”) or more colloquially as the “Jewish Star,” is the subject of an unusual responsum written by Rabbi Moshe Feinstein in 1968 (Igrot Moshe, Orach Chaim 3, 15).
The familiar six-pointed polygon yielded by two superimposed triangles adorns countless synagogue ark-curtains and Torah-covers, containers for religious items and pieces of jewelry.
And, of course, the Israeli flag, set between two broad stripes meant to evoke a talit, or Jewish prayer-shawl. It was, in fact, that appropriation of the Jewish star symbol which formed the basis of the question posed to the famed decisor of Jewish law: Since the State of Israel is the fruition of an essentially secular, political dream – Herzl’s Judenstaadt – is the Magen David symbol appropriate as an adornment for religious items?
Rabbi Feinstein replied that regardless of what service the symbol may have been pressed into, it remains an ancient Jewish emblem, and is therefore entirely properly displayed in synagogues and on religious objects.
What the Magen David signifies, however, the revered rabbi continued, is not entirely clear. Despite the hexagram’s antiquity, there seems to be no authoritative Jewish source that addresses its significance.
All the same, Rabbi … Read More >>
By Yitzchok Adlerstein, on October 11th, 2007 I don’t know, but I sure hope so.
That way I can hype a new weekly shiur on a sefer very close to heart: Nesivos Shalom. I don’t fully understand why people don’t just pick it up and learn it on their own, instead of asking for translations. Maybe Artscroll has spoiled us. In any event, starting with Parshas Noach, there will be a weekly adaptation of some piece of the Slonimer Rebbe zt”l, available through Project Genesis – Torah.org.
I know the fellow who is writing the essays too well to give my unqualified support, but you may find something of interest anyway.
By Eytan Kobre, on October 11th, 2007 Stop him before he writes again.
At least that’s what they must be saying up in Morningside Heights in the inner sanctum of the Conservative movement, in the wake of his latest Commentary salvo, The Perplexities of Conservative Judaism. As in his whole series of articles in Commentary over the last several years, describing and diagnosing the progressive disintegration of secular American Jewry, Wertheimer pulls no punches.
Here are a few of the money quotes:
Of the theological brochure the movement got around to publishing in 1988, he writes: “Significantly, it was not until the late 20th century that the movement even tried to produce a statement of principles. Attempting to harmonize irreconcilable beliefs, the resulting document, Emet ve’Emunah, was virtually incomprehensible.”
He also bears out a point made not long ago on this site by Kobre (but which appeared towards the end of a characteristically long piece, which is why some may have missed it) regarding Conservatism’s selective abandonment of pluralism, at least the intra-movement kind, with this damning indictment:
When religious traditionalists dominated the movement’s key institutions, the tactic adopted by proponents of innovation was to argue for pluralism. Rather than accept a single understanding … Read More >>
By Yitzchok Adlerstein, on October 11th, 2007 It is remarkable that the staunch defender of middle of the road American Judaism, the prim and proper Hadassah Magazine, would do a positive interview with John Hagee (October, pg. 32; not yet online). Until recently, many non-Orthodox Jews looked at John Hagee as the archetypal militant, bible-thumping Christian fundamentalist they were taught to dislike and mistrust. It is a sign of the eroding confidence Jews have in their position as a distinct group that even Hadassah must come to grips with the fact that John Hagee is one of the most powerful human allies that Jews who love Israel have.
If you are one of our left-leaning readers, don’t hang up yet. The piece is not meant to be yet another irritating encomium for Evangelical Christians, although I personally have no difficulty serving them up. The point is an issue he raises inter alia. But first, some background
Pastor Hagee has a congregation of 18,000, and is said to be able to produce a million emails to politicians who cross Israel’s interests. He runs Christians United for Israel, a national lobby, and is the architect of the Night to Honor Israel program in cities around the … Read More >>
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