Diversity is a good thing, writes our own Jonathan Rosenblum. So much of the yeshiva world has been concentrated and centralized in Lakewood, that many of its gifts are increasingly denied to smaller, less established communities. There is another variety of centralization whose consequences are perhaps more severe – the tendency to seek Torah guidance on all issues from the Torah community in Israel, rather than here in the US. Many people believe that is the cause of much that ails the American right-of-center Orthodox world today.

Rav Chaim Ozer Grodzinski penned an important observation about seeking guidance in meta-halachic and hashkafic areas in particular. They are preserved in a footnote to Shiurei Daas (of Rav Gifter zt”l), pg. 83. R. Chaim Ozer wa asked to comment about his own view on the dispute between R. Samson Raphael Hirsch and R. Selig Ber Bamburger regarding the proper stance to take to Reform Judaism. (R. Hirsch was the architect of austritt, the idea that traditional Jews were required to walk out of the until-then unified Jewish collective, after Reform had made it clear that it was cutting its umbilical chord with halacha. R. Bamburger strongly disagreed, maintaining that it was essential to keep a single strong Jewish front in its dealings with the non-Jewish world.) He first cautions the reader that the question is not a classic halachic one that is answered through the capable analysis of shas and poskim. Rather, the question could only be addressed by a clear perception of the situation and a sense of what methods would be most effective in facing the challenges to tradition. The positions of the the two German luminaries did not owe to their different understandings of established halacha, but to their different essential outlooks and their different personal approaches to avodas Hashem. The following is a free translation of the next lines:

This outlook is most clear to the chacham who understands the local situation, and who lives in that region and kehilla. He knows the natures of the people of the community in all their details, and is connected to them on multiple levels. He who takes responsibility for supervising their ways has the penetrating eye to properly weigh the spiritual issues that confront them, and to anticipate the impact of developments upon the future. For this reason, it appears to me, they did not take this weighty question to the preeminent Torah luminaries of their day, recognized throughout the reaches of our community, sages like the Malbim, R. Yisrael Salanter, the Maharil Diskin, R. Yitzchak Elchanan, the gaonim of Israel and Galicia. This was not a question that would be best addressed through sources in Shas and poskim, but through proper analysis and an appropriate and clear perspective. Those distant from the location of the question could not involve themselves in the determination; they had to rely on the righteous rabbis at the local level…

[Rav Gifter continues:] The words of our teacher are fundamental in understanding the difference between matters that require a precise halachic determination, and matters that require the clear perspective of Daas Torah. In our lowly generation we have moved away from this distinction. We suffer from internecine conflict and hatred whose root cause is the blurring of the distinction between these two areas of decision-making.

Last month, the English Yated Ne’eman bravely published a two-part article by R’ Avraham Birnbaum on some of the consequences of the ever accelerating dominance of Lakewood within the American learning community.

While the transformation of Lakewood is largely a tale of the remarkable growth of the American learning community, the changes have not come without costs.

It is now a standard rite of passage for American bochurim who are ready to marry to head for Lakewood. While they are in shidduchim, they will learn in overflowing batei medrash, with a thousand or more bochurim. After marriage, the default assumption is that the young couple will continue to live in Lakewood.

The presence of most of the eligible young learners in one place also has its effect on young women. Those from “out-of-town” communities must either leave their parents’ home and move to New York or endure costly and draining long-distance dating.

The media’s fascination with Orthodox Jews seems to only intensify with time. Some of us Orthodox may be discomfited by reports that television and motion pictures have come to increasingly offer up observant Jewish characters and observances; but one supposes that is simply the price of our community’s growth in numbers and visibility. Feature stories, at least those that don’t treat the Orthodox as some sort of freak-show exhibit, are generally unobjectionable. Legitimate news reports, of course, are fine.

One might question, though, whether some news stories are truly newsworthy, especially when they give vent to sentiments that regard Orthodox Jews as sinister or threatening.

A March 9 article in the business section of The New York Times may or may not have been journalistically justified. It was, though, thought-provoking.

The piece described how some residents of the Long Island community of Great Neck have come to feel oppressed by a growing Orthodox Jewish population in the village. The problem? Several stores have been closing on the Jewish Sabbath.

In a guest column in the Jerusalem Post, Rabbi Murray Singerman argues that “We Jews are too dedicated to defending theological turf.” He suggests that the divisions within Judaism are a major cause of assimilation: “When the decibel level of strident carping drowns out the beauty and positive values of all streams of Judaism, outsiders will choose to remain on the outside, and those on the way out will quickly join the ranks of the unaffiliated… For the sake of the future of the Jewish people, it is time for our rabbinic leadership to reach out to other denominations and find the will to pray together in one sanctuary.”

When I reached the end of the article, I noticed that the author was described as “a businessman in Baltimore.” At that point I scrolled back and noticed his name. I know him primarily through his daughter, who was my wife’s student. This well-written, well-argued opinion piece is only what I would expect — as they say, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. It is unfortunate that what he argues for so eloquently strikes me as a road to nowhere.

You can’t wallpaper over the cracks in Jewish unity. The divisions between the definitions of “Judaism” are far too real, far too serious, and far too wide. And furthermore, he presents no evidence to support his novel assertion that these divisions contribute negatively to Jewish affiliation.

A few weeks ago, the Jerusalem Post published another article with a similar, and what might appear to be an even more ambitious goal: that for the benefit of both the Conservative and Reform movements in Israel, the two should merge. A comparison of the reasoning in the two articles, however, demonstrates that it is the latter which makes the more cogent argument.

Everyone knows that “Money can’t buy happiness.” It turns out, though, that this is yet another case where the conventional wisdom is wrong. Money can buy happiness if you spend it the right way. And in this case, the right way is charitable giving.

A study published in this week’s edition of the journal Science found a consistent relationship between giving and happiness. For example, they studied the employees of a medical supply company who were given bonuses of several thousand dollars each. Researcher Michael I. Norton, assistant professor at Harvard Business School, said that they determined “the size of the bonus you get has no relation to how happy you are, but the amount you spend on other people does predict how happy you are.” Professor Elizabeth Dunn of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, who led the study, also said that those employees who devoted more of their bonus to “pro-social” spending came out higher on the happiness scale. This confirmed the results of an initial survey of 632 Americans, which also showed a clear correlation between spending on other people and general happiness.

It is true that having money can’t provide happiness. In the words of an older article in the Washington Post, about a $30 billion pledge (yes, thirty billion dollars) by investment guru Warren Buffett:

A wealth of data in recent decades has shown that once personal wealth exceeds about $12,000 a year, more money produces virtually no increase in life satisfaction. From 1958 to 1987, for example, income in Japan grew fivefold, but researchers could find no corresponding increase in happiness.

He entered the lioness’s den and came out unscathed.

Rabbi Yerachmiel Weiss of Merkaz HaRav Kook, Rosh Yeshiva L’Tzeirim was interviewed by Ilana Dayan three days after the terror attack, on her regular Sunday TV program. Secular Ilana Dayan usually plays hardball so it was surprising that Rav Weiss agreed. He displayed the sterling qualities that make him a leader: sensitivity, deep faith despite grief, patience and complexity. Parts of the interview were broadcast the next day on a haredi radio station. R. Hillel Fendel translated the interview into English “Faith Through Tears.” It is a good idea to skim the English translation first, the better to understand the Hebrew of Rav Weiss.

The interview, in Hebrew, can be seen and heard.. If you read some of the 150 comments posted beside the interview, you will see what a Kiddush Hashem this was.

“What makes Merkaz Harav unique?” was the question posed to me by several American Beis Yaakov seminary girls here for their gap year as we stood on the sidewalk outside of Merkaz HaRav. On the seventh day of the shiva for the eight precious masmidim of Yeshivat HaRav Kook, there was an evening of eulogies at the Yeshiva. Knowing there would be an overflow crowd the yeshiva set up screens in the street so those of us who could not get inside could watch/listen. The previous writers have expressed eloquently what all segments of the Orthodox world have in common with Merkaz HaRav. I think it is also important to touch on what makes Merkaz HaRav unique.

No one distilled the feeling better than the op-ed columnist in Yated, whose headline read, “We Are All Mercaz Harav.” Ironically - in the month of ironies - he may have given us all a way to restore our simchas Purim.

The Avnei Nezer used to have a drink each day of Adar. He noted that it is inefficient to attempt genocide in a single day. Indeed, Haman had first cast lots and settled on a month-long program of extermination scheduled for Adar. It then occurred to him that the Jews would be rescued by Hashem, and his failure would be turned into a time of celebration. Not wishing to give Jews a month-long holiday, he scaled down his edict to a single day. Said the Avnei Nezer, “Because of that rasha, I should be denied a l’chayim?”

Even if it can be supposed that the Sochatchover Rebbe’s intent was whimsical, he touched on a serious theme. Haman’s contributed far more to the triumphant end of the Purim story than the turnaround from disaster to victory.

The Alshich Hakadosh expresses amazement that we should term the events of ancient Shushan miraculous. Is it miraculous that Hashem accepts the sincere teshuvah of Klal Yisrael? According to all His assurances to us in Chumash, the outcome of the episode should have been predictable.

Some outsiders regard the Orthodox Jewish world as monolithic, but those of us within the community know well that quite the opposite is the case. Few religious communities are as diverse.

The Orthodox universe hosts a multiplicity of approaches to a multiplicity of issues: the inherent value of secular education, what goes by the name of “Jewish religious pluralism,” the theological significance of the State of Israel, the proper degree of separating the sexes, the application of the concept of “daas Torah” – to name a few.

Sometimes the differences in approach can appear quite prominent and, indeed, people who take their Judaism seriously can only be expected to feel strongly about issues important to them.

And so the various Orthodox bubbles, although they occasionally collide gently (as bubbles are wont to do), generally just float about independently. There are times, though, when the bubbles all merge, when distinctions simply disappear. The horrific attack on the Mercaz Harav yeshiva was one.

The “steamroller,” we all know, was steamrolled. Although those whom Eliot Spitzer focused on flattening were New York State wrongdoers, he ended up being mangled by misdeeds of his own. And thereby became an object of derision and ridicule – the single greatest generator of schadenfreude since the Wicked Witch’s demise evoked the Munchkins’ delight.

From a Torah perspective, should we be jumping on the badmouth bandwagon?

One rabbi I know feels we should. He called the former governor an “evil man,” noting the irony of how his fall from a high peak of honor and power to ignominy came about through activity of a sort he had himself prosecuted others for doing, and stopping just short (I think) of equating him with Haman.

Succumbing to desires can indeed yield evil things. However, as Rabbi Meir’s wife Bruriah, taught us, it is important sometimes to distinguish between sinner and sin (Brachos, 10a). Most of us succumb, at least on occasion, to illicit personal desires – if only the desire to tell or listen to loshon hora, to react with anger, to waste time. As I told my wife and some family members, if I weren’t such a “baal taava” – a hedonist – I would be a good 20 pounds lighter.

The news these days is not at all new. It centers on man’s eternal struggle with temptation, and his occasional spectacular failings - as exemplified by ex-Gov. Eliot Spitzer of New York.

The Talmudic sages in Succa 52a describe temptation as yetzer hara or the Evil Inclination. They suggest that to the righteous, who appreciate the seriousness of sin, temptation seems as mighty as a mountain, and therefore they struggle to overcome it. To the wicked, who discount the effects of sin, it seems as thin as a thread which can be easily overcome.

The point is that no one - not even the righteous - is free from temptation. This is what the Torah means in Genesis 7:21: “The inclination of man is evil from his youth.” This is a warning shot, at the very beginning of history, across the bow of mankind: Watch yourself; be ever mindful of your negative tendencies to cheat, steal, hurt, to be corrupt, to engage in immoral behavior. The temptation to do wrong is built in to every human being. It is a powerful force, and no one is immune from it. And our task as human beings is to be aware of that tendency - and to resist it.

Barati yetzer hara, God says in Talmud Kiddushin 30a: “I have created the Evil Inclination. But I have also created an antidote to it, and that is the Torah.”

The Torah community of Eretz Yisrael achieved a brief moment of unity this past week. Unfortunately, it took the tragic slaughter of eight young yeshiva students at Yeshivat Mercaz Harav to bring it about.

Who could have even imagined before the attack the circumstances that could bring the Belzer Rebbe, Rabbi Shmuel Auerbach, Rabbis Rafael Shmulevitz and Yitzchak Ezrachi of Mirrer Yeshiva, Rabbi Moshe Mordechai Farbstein of Hebron Yeshiva, Rabbi Asher Weiss, and Rabbi Shmuel Bloom, executve vice-president of Agudath Israel of America to the campus of Mercaz Harav?

Or that would provoke the fiercely anti-Zionist Satmar Rebbe to proclaim of the students of Mercaz Harav, the flagship institution of religious Zionism, “When a disaster like this occurs, murderers penetrating into a yeshiva, it is as painful to HaKadosh Baruch Hu as the destruction of the Bais HaMikdash. This is a overwhelming tragedy for all of us. They were learning at that moment the same Torah we learn. The Gemara is the same Gemara.”

Speaking only a few minutes after the slaughter, Rabbi Reuven Leuchter, one of the closest talmidim of the late Mashgiach Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe, said that anyone who did not understand the shooting in Mercaz HaRav as a threat to every yeshiva, anyone who tried to make distinctions between this yeshiva and another, is a dangerous idiot.

by Rabbi Elchonon Oberstein

Pirkei Avos Chapter one, mishna 11 teaches us “Avtalyon says: Scholars, be cautious with your words, for you may incur the penalty of exile and be banished to a place of putrid water…….and consequently the Name of Heaven will be desecrated.” The following is brought down in the ArtScroll Sfas Emes on Pirkei Avos.

Rav Simcha Bunim of Peshis’cha compared a scholar’s words to a physician’s medication. Just as a doctor weighs every medication he prescribes ( the rebbe was a pharmacist), so too the tzadik weighs the impact of his every word on the physical and spiritual welfare of his followers.

The Sfas Emes explains that the mishna is admonishing the talmid chacham to weigh carefully every word, since we are lliving in an era when the words of Torah are in exile, i.e. easily misunderstood.

[YA - I do not have any easy way of verifying this as journalists are wont to do. I've received it in email form from diverse sources in the last few days. It is so moving, however, that I could not bear the thought of allowing too much caution to prevent the spread of an amazing story that should inspire every Torah Jew. Posting it is pretty much the first thing I am doing after getting off a plane from Philadelphia. Added 4/10 There are several credible claims now circulating that create doubt about the story. See, for example, http://myobiterdicta.blogspot.com/2008/04/merkaz-harav-urban-legend.html]

Doron Mahareta of blessed and saintly memory HY”D was one of the eight Yeshiva students that were massacred last week in Yeshivat Mercaz HaRav in Jerusalem.

Last night, I paid a shiva (condolence) call to Doron’s family. Every single type of Jew was sitting together, from Ethiopians to Polish Chassidim, from knit kippot to Yerushalmi white kippot, from jeans and sandals to long black frocks. Too bad that it takes a martyr of Doron’s magnitude to unite everyone.

One of the rabbis from Mercaz HaRav told me the most amazing story you’ll ever hear about Doron’s dedication to learning Torah, a story that competes with the Talmud’s account of Hillel’s near freezing on the roof of Shmaya and Avtalion’s Yeshiva (see tractate Yoma, 35b) .

With time, those with open eyes come to recognize that life is peppered with strange, small ironies – “coincidences” that others don’t even notice, or unthinkingly dismiss.

The famous psychiatrist Carl Jung puzzled over such happenings, which he felt were evidence of some “acausal connecting principle” in the world. In a famous essay, he named the phenomenon “synchronicity.”

To those of us who believe in a Higher Power, synchronistic events, no matter how trivial they may seem, are subtle reminders that there is pattern in the universe, evidence of an ultimate plan.

My family has come to notice what appears to us to be an increase of such quirky happenings in our lives during the month (or, as this year, months) of Adar.

Even though almost a week has passed, the horror of the terrorist attack at Yeshivat Merkaz HaRav still lingers in my broken heart.

The stories. The names. The pictures.

It’s all just too much to bear.

The thought – which try as I might, I cannot get out of my mind – of yeshiva students sitting in front of their seforim, studying, “talking in learning,” and celebrating the onset of Chodesh Adar when the terrorist attacked is just so painful to think about.

by Rabbi Ron Yitzchok Eisenman, Kehillas Ahavas Yisrael, Passaic NJ

As many of you remember, I have spent many a happy moment in the court of the Rebbe of Belz Shlita. Indeed, I once waited till 2:30 a.m. to be received by him. I still remember the incident vividly. I was told I had a 9:30 p.m. appointment. At 9:30 the Gabbai contacted me that the Rebbe was running late and I should arrive at about 11 p.m. When I arrived, the waiting was packed full of people and the Gabbai informed me that the Rebbe was still quite back-logged. I went back to where I was staying and at 1:30 a.m. I called the Rebbe’s Gabbai to inform him of my inability to remain awake any longer as I had a 7 a.m. flight back to the States the next morning with my children and mother. The Gabbai said, “I’ll call you when you are next, if you are still awake come, you won’t regret it”. At 2:20 a.m. the phone rang, it was the Gabbai. “Come right now, the Rebbe is waiting”. I threw my clothes on, grabbed a cab and off I sped, half asleep to the Rebbe of Belz.

The Rebbe received me warmly and calmly. I felt as if it was two o’clock in the afternoon as the Rebbe was cheery and vivacious and showed no signs of the fact that he had been seeing people for hours and hours already. The Rebbe inquired as to the size of my kehilla and family and gave me a Brocha that I should be zoche (privileged) to spend more time in Eretz Yisrael. I left feeling uplifted and inspired.

The next morning when I arrived at the airport with my wife, children, mother and twenty suit cases, a man came over to me and asked me if I would agree to be ‘bumped’. He offered all of us- my wife and I, our five children traveling with and us and my mother, a free El-Al round-trip voucher to be used any time in the year; a free hotel stay for the ‘extra’ night in Israel, a paid taxi to and from the hotel and one more night in Eretz Yisrael. The decision was not a hard one to make, and as I left with my family to our hotel, I kept thinking about the Rebbe’s Brocha the night before.

To my dear friends and family,

Daniel and I just got back from paying a shiva call to the family of Segev Avichayil, the young boy murdered in the terrorist attack Thursday night. I was expecting a terrible scene of crying and shouting, of blaming and lots of unanswered questions. What we encountered was the exact opposite.

The apartment was a modest one, the only interior design being the sefer-lined living room walls. this was clearly a home of torah and yirat shamayim. at least a hundred people were crowded into the room, all listening while the father of this young man spoke with total composure and clarity.

Segev’s mother and sister sat quietly listening to words which are difficult to imagine coming from a man whose son had been so cruelly torn from him. I tried to absorb every word, knowing that I was in the presence of greatness and would probably never encounter strength like this again.

For decades, Rabbi Marvin Schick has been the bulldog of Gedolei Torah in the English-language world. More than anyone else I can think of, Rabbi Schick’s columns presented the leadership of Torah luminaries in the most glowing terms, refusing to give an inch in the struggle by some to chip away at the role of Gedolei Torah as the proper address for leadership and direction. Last week, he penned what follows.

It ought to be painful to read. If Rabbi Schick can be moved to such an extraordinary statement, than we can be sure that the concert ban represents a watershed event for the right-of-center Orthodox community, and that the negative consequences of it are huge. At the same time, we ought to feel the pain of a dedicated community worker whose personal spiritual world has suddenly spun out of orbit and headed into free-fall. Many readers of Cross-Currents will find in this article a mirror of their own anguish.

I present it here in its entirety. I have been on the road for the past half week, and spoken to all sorts of people – students, rabbonim, thoughtful laypeople across the continuum of the yeshiva- and yeshiva-friendly communities. I shared many of the thoughts I wrote in previous columns, especially the halachic need for limud zechus, much of which was received favorably. It seems clear, however, that whatever I could muster as partial explanation for the behavior of revered individuals (and I hope that more capable people came up with better), the ban itself – this one, and the trend in general – has left some gaping wounds were they did not exist before.

There have been about two-hundred of these newsletters in the thirty-five years that I have been president of the Rabbi Jacob Joseph School. I believe that this is the first that includes material published elsewhere (see attachment) [YA - I haven't figured out a way to make this pdf available to readers of Cross-Currents], an editorial written by Rabbi Moshe Grylak, the editor of Mishpacha which is an excellent weekly magazine published in Israel in Hebrew and English language editions. Its readership is primarily in the yeshiva world. Mishpacha has given us permission to circulate what Rabbi Grylak wrote.

Who can console us, for what is beyond consolation? The pictures of the eight kedoshim, the choicest korbanos that Klal Yisrael could offer, haunt us beyond words.

I have forgotten which chronicler of the Churban wrote of his own despair when he witnessed the SS tormenting an elderly rov in one of the ghettos. Suddenly, one of the soldiers let out a shriek, and all of them let go of the victim. Instead, they turned their destructive attention to a sefer Torah they had discovered, venting their fury upon it.

He found consolation in that. He realized that the Nazis were not waging a war against people and bodies, but against the Torah itself, against G-d Himself. However many bodies they destroyed – and there were millions more to come – , whatever the cause for a period of charon af/ Divine anger, G-d would surely in the end snuff out those bent on snuffing Him out.

The terrorist who carefully cased Yeshiva Mercaz HaRav, an icon for Torah study, carefully aimed five hundred bullets at the heart of Torah itself. The target was more than deliberate. R. Chaim Brisker, they say, held that Amalek was not a particular group of people descended from their ancestors. Amalek is any group that displays the same hatred for G-d Himself. Some in our community have resisted applying the label of Amalek to the Palestinians (since, unlike Amalek, they do have cause, however unjustified, to see themselves as an aggrieved party in a struggle over land). They should now reconsider. The society that preaches martyrdom to children, that rejoices in the street over the deaths of students huddled over sacred texts, that praises death over life – this society has become Amalek.

Some pupils at the Yesodey Hatorah girls’ high school not too far from where I live have attracted UK and international news coverage (see, for example, here, here, here and here) over their refusal to answer examination questions about Shakespeare. Apparently, the pupils declined even to write their names on the papers, in protest at Shakespeare’s ‘anti-Semitism’, despite the fact that they had not even been studying ‘The Merchant of Venice’ and that by doing so they would forfeit the entire examination. As a result, the school has fallen drastically in the performance tables (it was, quite remarkably, first in the entire country last year and is now 274th albeit out of over 3000).

I should interject a word here about the school system in the UK. Many Jewish schools here have what is known as voluntary aided status, which entitles them to state funding for buildings, general studies teaching and a host of other things, leaving the parents to pick up the tab for the Torah curriculum. Of course, this requires the school to meet government educational standards in all relevant areas. The examination in question was a standard government test on material for which the Shakespeare section is a mandatory part of the syllabus.

The principal of Yesodey Hatorah, Rabbi Avrohom Pinter, has been interviewed several times about this curious episode, including on the prestigious BBC Radio 4 ‘Sunday’ religious affairs programme. (You can listen to the interview here: click on the link for ‘Shakespeare and anti-Semitism’). He walks a fine line between supporting the girls in their principled stand, while indicating that he doesn’t really agree with them. It is clearly not the school policy to eschew Shakespeare, since it has bought into a system that requires his works to be taught; at the very least it tolerates its inclusion in the English syllabus and assumes that its students will do likewise.

I think that the issue as to whether Shakespeare was an anti-Semite is irrelevant – it has been debated for centuries. My own opinion (to the extent that I know enough about the subject to have an informed one) coincides with Rabbi Pinter’s. While the portrayal of Shylock has anti-Semitic overtones, there are also very humane, sensitive (dare one say philo-Semitic?) aspects of his character. The bard lived in an age when anti-Semitic sentiments were common; actually it is likely that he was writing with little first-hand knowledge of Jews, as he lived at the end of the 16th century, long after the expulsion in 1290 and some while before the resettlement in the mid-17th century. As such, I am not inordinately troubled by Shakespeare’s alleged anti-Semitism.

Barack Obama is black. Hillary Clinton is a woman. John McCain has hair and is clean shaven. So who’s a balding, bearded Jew like me supposed to support?

If the question strikes you as silly, or worse, you haven’t been paying attention to the media and pollsters. They inform us, and with ample evidence to support the claim, that large numbers of black Americans support Mr. Obama simply because of his color; many women, Mrs. Clinton because of her gender; and many Caucasians Mr. McCain, because of his – well, both.

A recent CNN headline was typical. “Gender or Race,” it reads, “Black women voters face tough choices…” One of the “story highlights” of the featured article amplified: “Women are torn between voting their race or voting their gender.”

Now, it’s certainly understandable that blacks – and, for that matter, we persons of pallor – take pride in the fact that someone of African ancestry is a viable candidate for the highest office in the land; or that women – and men – feel similarly impressed by the fact that a female is the other candidate for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. Many Jews, of course, felt no differently about a Jewish candidate – an observant one, no less – when he was a vice presidential candidate in 2004.

My brief stopover in Toronto last week happened to coincide with a solidarity rally for Sderot called by the Toronto Jewish Federation. As an Israeli citizen and a resident of Israel for almost three decades, it struck me that if Jews in Toronto were gathering to show solidarity with their fellow Jews in Sderot, it was no less incumbent upon me to do so.

The growing apathy of North American Jewry towards Israel was one of the topics I had been discussing in a series of speeches on the security situation in Israel, and I felt it also behooved me to observe counterexamples as well.

Finally, the headline speaker was Professor Alan Dershowitz, probably Israel’s most forceful advocate in the mainstream American media. In recent years, he has argued that Israel should announce in advance that the price for rocket attacks on Israel will be the destruction of a certain number of houses in neighborhoods from which those rockets emanate – a rather brave position for a member of the Harvard faculty and someone still identified as an international human rights advocate. I was curious to hear whether he would expand on that proposal and whether he believes that Israel could withstand the international outrage if it followed his advice.

Dershowitz spoke with the expected eloquence, skillfully pressed the crowd’s emotional buttons, and succinctly pointed out how international public opinion is the key to Hamas’s strategy: If they kill Jews with their rockets, they win; if Israel kills Palestinian civilians in an attempt to stop terrorists who operate out of civilian areas, they also win. The Palestinian’s trump card, as their spokesmen constantly proclaim, is that they love death while Jews and the West choose life. They can thus sacrifice their own citizens without compunction.

I asked a local posek who is highly regarded in the chareidi world and he told me that if everything is prohibited and there are no kosher outlets for our youth, then we are driving them to go off the derech. It seems that Rav Shmuel Kamenetzky made the same comment that kids need an outlet. Yet, he also said that he felt obliged to follow the lead of Rav Elyashiv and Rav Shteinman and therefore had to go along with the very last minute ban on the Lipa Concert.

Personally, I find it hard to believe that the complete disappearance of mega-concerts for all times would drive kids off the derech. (Note: I am not advocating or defending, just presenting a thought arguendo.) Kids (and adults) who need outlets need them on a regular basis, not twice a year. Banning music or mp3 players might help push hundreds of kids over the brink, but not banning concerts. (I will admit to harboring questions for decades about the permissibility of attending mass concerts because of the zecher l’churban halacha.) Perhaps they are contemplating a full music ban as the next move, but the way to handle that responsibly is for you to quietly and forcefully relay those impressions to Torah leaders that you know. It is not as satisfying to many people, and lacks the cathartic release of a good zinger in the blogosphere, but it will likely do more good.

I don’t understand why people cannot read between the lines of Rav Shmuel’s shlit”a words. I know very few of the other signatories; Rav Shmuel’s integrity I can swear by. I am obligated – and many of our readers as well – to bend over backwards to judge him favorably. (That is not an opinion, but a halachic requirement!) Rav Shmuel, even as one of the reigning gedolim of America, has his own obligation of kavod haTorah in regard to iconic representatives of Torah learning at its greatest in Israel . He has to discharge this both on a personal level, and to prevent anything that he does to be seen as slighting their honor – even if he disagrees. If you think about it, what he did makes ironic sense to people who can bottle up their rage for a while.

What follows is a guess, nothing more. I have not spoken with Rav Shmuel, neither directly nor indirectly. If I am completely wrong, I hope he will be mochel; my intention is to be mindful of his kavod and that of the Torah. Many leaders of groups – nations and others – must learn the language of diplomacy. This does not mean hypocrisy, but articulating in a manner that will send different messages simultaneously to different people. Rav Shmuel was beset by the kanoim on the one hand, the requirement of kavod haTorah on the other. Think of what he did. He paid the kavod HaTorah debt, and then effectively let the word out that this is not the way he would have preferred to see the matter handled. Why doesn’t anyone get it? He unmasked the kanaim! He essentially told people that when kanaim do this kind of thing, people have to be a bit more astute and probing, and make subtle inquiries, directly or through others, about what their own individual Torah authorities really think. Perhaps he actually meant what everyone is frothing at the mouth about: don’t take Kol Korehs at face value! He said it, not you!

Huddie William Ledbetter, popularly known as folk and blues sensation Lead Belly, was and remains an important influence on contemporary music. His repertoire was diverse. The five hundred songs he composed can’t be pigeonholed into a single category, but touched on many styles and contexts. He was regarded as the master of the twelve-string guitar, but he played several other instruments as well.

As a human role model, he comes up short – perhaps for reasons beyond his control, but that is not the point. He dropped out of school at age fifteen. He served time a on several occassions, for crimes including homicide and attempted homicide. He bragged about so many regular nightly triumphs with the opposite gender, that he becomes serious competition for the title claimed by Wilt Chamberlain.

He is also, it turns out, the probable source of the tune most of us will be singing come Shabbos: Mishenichnas Adar marbim besimcha. (The tune itself is an old slave song, but Lead Belly put it on the performance map.) If one were a musician looking for some material to borrow and translate into a different cultural idiom, Lead Belly’s output represents a treausre trove. If one were looking for more “kosher” performers from whom to borrow a melody and turn it into a frum Jewish song, Ledbetter’s baggage would prevent him from rising to the top of the list.

Someone has turned all of this into a faux-ban against singing Mishenichnas Adar. The document apparently was meant to be a commentary to the recent Lipa brouhaha that led to the cancellation of the big Madison Square Garden event, a reformed Lipa, and the launch of a campaign against all concerts, and all music that borrows from non-Jewish culture. It attempted to poke fun at the notion of cross-cultural borrowing. If you want to purge the frum community of secular influence – particularly in music – be prepared for long interludes of The Sounds of Silence. Rather than tilt at windmills, the document seems to say, we should just concede that it is pointless to try to keep foreign influences out of the music we listen to.

At least for one of us. Me. For those on the East Coast who wonder how Torah can survive on the Left Coast, you are invited to find out. I will be at Cong. Ahavas Yisrael (147-02 73rd Avenue, Kew Gardens Hills, Queens NY) this coming Shabbos, BE”H, reuniting with my old chavrusa Rabbi Heshy Welcher. He and a few of his mispallelim (Steve Brizel and Mark Frankel) are key figures in one of the more worthwhile blogs out there: Beyond BT. The new issue has an interview with me about Cross-Currents that might explain some of our writing and commenting policies.

The following Shabbos, Parshas Vayikra, I will be at Congregation Beth Hamedrosh in Wynnewood, PA, outside of Philadelphia. The theme of the Shabbos will be “Torah Judaism and Reason.”

Purim will take me back to Dallas.

I hope that some of our readers will join in these events, and come over and introduce themselves.