By Yitzchok Adlerstein, on March 31st, 2008 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. … Read More >>
By Jonathan Rosenblum, on March 30th, 2008 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 Lakewood community of today bears little resemblance to that of even twenty years ago. At the time of the petirah of Rabbi Aharon Kotler, zt”l, in 1962, the number of kolleleit was no more than a hundred, and only a few hundred when his son Rabbi Shneur … Read More >>
By Avi Shafran, on March 28th, 2008 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.
One woman lamented how, wanting to buy a box of nails one Saturday, she found the local hardware store dark. Another had a similarly disconcerting experience … Read More >>
By Yaakov Menken, on March 27th, 2008 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. … Read More >>
By Yaakov Menken, on March 24th, 2008 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 … Read More >>
By Shira Schmidt, on March 23rd, 2008 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 … Read More >>
By Yitzchok Adlerstein, on March 20th, 2008 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 … Read More >>
By Avi Shafran, on March 20th, 2008 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 March 6 murder of eight boys and wounding of ten others in a prominent yeshiva brought tears to the eyes of all feeling Jews, of course. And the victims of every terrorist attack on any Jews … Read More >>
By Avi Shafran, on March 20th, 2008 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 … Read More >>
By Emanuel Feldman, on March 19th, 2008 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 … Read More >>
By Jonathan Rosenblum, on March 19th, 2008 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 … Read More >>
By Guest Contributor, on March 18th, 2008 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.
These words are especially insightful in the midst of this year’s very heated political contest. We are in golus and our words, whether words of Torah by a scholar, or comments on the political scene by a blogger can easily be misunderstood and cause undesirable consequences. We must be careful.
The current brouhaha about Barak Obama’s … Read More >>
By Yitzchok Adlerstein, on March 16th, 2008 [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 … Read More >>
By Avi Shafran, on March 14th, 2008 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.
That would make sense, of course, since Adar is the month of Purim, the Jewish holiday that is saturated with seemingly insignificant “twists of fate” that turn out to be fateful indeed. From King Achashverosh’s execution of his queen to suit his advisor and later execution of his advisor to suit his new queen; to Mordechai’s happenstance overhearing and exposure of a plot that comes to play a pivotal role in his people’s salvation; to Haman’s visiting … Read More >>
By Dovid Gottlieb, on March 12th, 2008 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.
The fact that this evil was perpetrated in a yeshiva, of all places, which is supposed to serve as an oasis of kedushah magnifies and exacerbates the tragedy. It is reminiscent – in a sense – of the powerful depictions of our enemies, during the Churban, entering the holiest of places to perpetrate the most sinful of acts. It’s not just what happened, but where it happened that makes it so horrific.
And yet.
And yet there are glimmers of inspiration emerging, slowly but surely, from the families and friends of the latest kedoshim. I never cease to be amazed at the heights which some people are able reach – especially, it … Read More >>
By Guest Contributor, on March 12th, 2008 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 … Read More >>
By Yitzchok Adlerstein, on March 11th, 2008 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.
Rav Avichayil was telling all the heartbroken people who came to comfort him that he was not broken. He said that he and his wife, and all of their remaining children were stronger in their faith and … Read More >>
By Yitzchok Adlerstein, on March 10th, 2008 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- … Read More >>
By Yitzchok Adlerstein, on March 10th, 2008 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 … Read More >>
By Harvey Belovski, on March 6th, 2008 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 … Read More >>
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