A few weeks ago, Rabbi Moshe Grylak, the esteemed editor-in-chief of Mishpacha, wrote about the Pope’s visit to Israel. He wrote that the Pope undoubtedly had a difficult time on his trip, seeing first-hand the return of the Jewish people to their Land, and all the signs of their sovereignty. This, he claimed, was a huge affront to Catholic teaching, to the point of calling into question his entire foundation of belief.

I almost always agree with Rabbi Grylak, but that particular piece struck me as factually incorrect, even dangerous. The Church officially changed its attitude towards Jews over forty years ago. Believing Christians constitute the largest consistent group of Israel’s supporters today. Even non-Cathoics would be offended by Jewish inability to recognize the positive measures many have taken to extend themselves in the cause of Israel and the Jewish people.

I communicated with Mishpacha, and they readily agreed to publish a piece I would write. Once I turned it in, Rabbi Grylak exercised his right to respond, and Mishpacha a week ago published a four page debate between the two of us. I am grateful to Mishpacha (whose readership now exceeds that of Yated and Hamodia combined) for the extraordinary level of cooperation they showed.

It would have been my preference to publish Rabbi Grylak’s rejoinder to me at the same time. Mishpacha agreed, but was only able to provide me with a pdf of the article, rather than text. I have no place to park a pdf where I can link the url so that readers can get to it. I’ve told that to them, and I will wait a bit longer to see if they will send his piece in a different format. If not, I will paraphrase it – and of course relate why I thoroughly disagree with him.

The deep global recession has forced many to reconsider the way they give their tzedakah. It is more than likely that some changes will stay with us even after the health of the world economy is restored, BE”H.
We can’t speak of a silver lining to storm clouds so ominous and dark that they have kept bread (literally!) off the tables of children.

Nonetheless, we must note with admiration that the Baltimore community has once again scooped the rest of the country, and come up with a protocol worth considering and copying.

The innovation is somewhat radical. Community rabbonim are urging that tzedakah be allocated according to the guidelines actually prescribed by halachah! Those guidelines state that local poor come before all others – including those of Eretz Yisrael.

(A topic for consideration some time should be why so many good and sensible ideas originate in Baltimore and only seem to succeed there.)

What happens when you mix the flair of a Southern Baptist preacher with a bit of Torah enlightenment?

Watch.

[Thanks to Dr. Shmuel Lebovics, Los Angeles]

Where do we set the bar of observance for would-be converts? The row over standards waxes and wanes, but never quite disappears. A recent article in Tradition did not make the waves it should have. In an understated manner, it placed – not threw down – a gauntlet in a simmering conflict between two approaches to halacha that just do not talk to each other. I wish the author (my friend, frequent disputant, and oftentimes writing collaborator, Rabbi Michael Broyde) had finished the job he ably began. Without consulting him, I will herewith attempt to do just that.

Rabbi Broyde (together with Shmuel Kadosh) took sharp aim at a work that has proved nettlesome to many who engage in serious halacha, although most of them have never heard of it. When Rabbi Avraham Sherman, a member of Israel’s Supreme Rabbinic Court, invalidated some of Rabbi Chaim Druckman’s converts, he touched off a firestorm of criticism that has not abated to this day. At the eye of the storm was an assumption that if it could be determined by the later behavior of a convert that he or she had never fully accepted the yoke of mitzvos, then the conversion was of no legal validity ab initio. Many not particularly learned articles appeared, decrying this “innovation” in halachah behind Rabbi Sherman’s psak – part of a plot by the mullahs of Bnei Brak to beat the long-suffering masses of the general Orthodox community with cudgels of chumros. [Note: this is not an endorsement of Rabbi Sherman’s psak. He doesn’t need my approval – I do not approach his level of competence – but if asked, I would have a hard time giving it.] Without passing judgment on the specific application of halachic principle in Rabbi Sherman’s cases, it remains arguably true that a conversion, like other important changes in legal status including marriage and divorce, can be challenged and retroactively invalidated. There is nothing novel in this at all.

Many of the articles, written by people who identify with Orthodoxy and those who do not, make liberal use of Transforming Identity: The Ritual Transition From Gentile to Jew, by Avi Sagi and Zvi Zohar, two professors at Bar-Ilan. It is not a short work, and people – particularly those who are not at home with primary halachic texts – cite it as the last word, the exhaustive and definitive study of legitimate and exaggerated requirements for conversion.

Rabbi Broyde pulls no punches in his review in laying bare the serious methodological errors and simple misreadings that invalidate the work. The Conclusion section puts it simply and directly. “Its basic argument…is without precedent and includes glaring misunderstandings of the Jewish legal system.” Having read a few chapters of their work (I went straight for the halachic material), I would have been even less generous.

There is no gainsaying the beauty and appropriateness of Rabbi Chaim Dovid Zweibel’s letter to the son of Stephen Tyrone Johns. It demonstrates both the chochmah and lev of talmidei chachamim.

There is also no gainsaying that the perception of the attack by much of the rest of the world is different than the way many of our readers see it. We regard it as the next of a seemingly infinite series of anti-Semitic attacks. We have been used to them since Sinai, and expect them till Moshiach. Outside our community, however, the attack took on iconic value. Because the Holocaust looms so large in the way non-Jews – friends and enemies, each in their own way – look at Jews, an attack on the US Holocaust Museum was seen by them as a dagger in the heart of all Jewry. (It is the non-Jewish analogue to the way we saw the attack on Mercaz Harav, and the massacre of its kedoshim.)

Because of this, the eyes of the world will be upon our response. Will Jews reach out and support those who pay a terrible price for them, just as they are renowned for always taking care of their own?

One appropriate way to do so is to make sure that the family of Stephen Tyrone Johns is cared for as best as possible. The US Holocaust Museum has set up a fund for the family. You might consider going there and demonstrating that the Jewish reputation for caring for those who cared for them is well deserved. This is one stereotype that we might want to preserve, not destroy.

Obvious, you say.

Perhaps to us. But these are the words of Justice Antonin Scalia, in a dissent from the Court ruling on the legal need for a judge to recuse himself from a case involving a major donor to his election effort:

A Talmudic maxim instructs with respect to the Scripture: “Turn it over, and turn it over, for all is therein.” The Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Aboth, Ch. V, Mishnah 22 (I. Epstein ed. 1935). Divinely inspired text may contain the answers to all earthly questions, but the Due Process Clause most assuredly does not. The Court today continues its quixotic quest to right all wrongs and repair all imperfections through the Constitution. Alas, the quest cannot succeed—which is why some wrongs and imperfections have been called nonjusticiable. In the best of all possible worlds, should judges sometimes recuse even where the clear commands of our prior due process law do not require it? Undoubtedly. The relevant question, however, is whether we do more good than harm by seeking to correct this imperfection through expansion of our constitutional mandate in a manner ungoverned by any discernable rule. The answer is obvious

[Thanks to Dr. Irving Lebovics, Los Angeles]

One Esther has taken part in a lively discussion occassioned by Rabbi Landesman’s recent guest column. Recently, she issued a challenge:

Now I’m going to put a question to you, Rabbi Adlerstein and commenters:

These posts ask why we don’t celebrate Yom Yerushalayim, Yom Zikaron, Yom Haatzmaut. I ask you: Why don’t you commemorate the terrible crimes commited by Zionism?
You ask the non-Satmar non-Zionists: You don’t agree with Satmar on the question of statehood, so why aren’t you grateful to those who gave their lives for the State?
I ask the non-Zionists and religious Zionists: You agree with Satmar on the question of the crimes of Zionism, so why aren’t you angry? Why aren’t you lamenting the terrible losses klal yisrael suffered at their hands? The generations of every boy who had his peyos cut off by force, every girl who had her modesty compromised, cry out to us. Why is nobody talking about it? How can any torah-true Jew praise Zionism? Could you bring youselves to praise German culture or music? You do believe in גדול המחטיאו יותר מהרגו, don’t you?

Two different answers come to mind, Esther.

Reports have it that she did it again, turning in another magnificent performance on Britain’s Got Talent. Boyle is the kind of frumpy looking 47 year old with unkempt hair who elicited snickers from the audience when she first appeared on the talent show a few weeks ago, and then left the viewing world stunned. She became an icon overnight – a symbol of the overlooked and ignored, of those who have the talent to make it to the top, even while defying pop-culture’s expectations of youth and physical beauty.

A frequently repeated motif of the coverage she received is that she was deprived of years of her life because she devoted them to the care of her aged mother. She was underemployed, and sang only at the church she regularly attended. It was only after her mother’s death that she thought of publicly competing, something she had tried decades earlier without much success. Devoting her life to her mother made her pitiable; people were delighted that at times, the loser can turn things around.

In our circles, of course, we’ve heard the story before. Had Dama ben Nesina (Kiddushin 31A) lived today, he would probably also be seen as a loser, for losing an opportunity for a windfall profit because he did not want to dishonor his father by rousing him from his sleep. We can imagine the looks of condescension he received for an entire year. “Poor chap. It’s lovely that he still cherishes that old value of caring for the old folks, but he took it a wee too far, didn’t he?” When an extremely rare parah adumah was born to him a year later, and he sold it for a handsome profit after all, some of those former critics might have cheered. Nice guys sometimes do come out ahead – despite themselves.

Chazal, of course, saw things very differently. The red heifer was born to Dama ben Nesina because he honored his father, not despite it.

Tuesday, at about 11 PM, I walked into a gathering of the hopeful, awaiting the results of a special statewide election. I’m not terribly involved with the political process – my day job leaves no room for publicly taking sides or electioneering. I came for a few minutes, simply to give chizuk to a candidate with whom I’ve had a long friendship, including some regular time over a gemara. As far as I could see, I was the only observant Jew in the crowd at the time.

A small flotilla of news trucks were lined up outside, all with their antennae raised aloft like so many masts facing the wind. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a close confidant of the candidate, walked up to the mic to make a statement to the enthusiastic cheers of the crowd. His words were unexpectedly interrupted by the sound of shattering glass. Someone had inadvertently knocked a bottle off a table, and the bottle made its dying gasp well heard by the crowd.

Instantly, as if by instinct, without any pause to think or reflect at all, about twenty people all called out, “Mazal tov!” One of them was the Mayor.

Galus has affected most of us far too much. But we’ve affected galus as well. If we tried a bit harder in our interaction with others around us, think of the opportunity for imparting a few Torah values as well, besides the proper reaction to breaking glass.

One of the first times that I heard Rabbi Norman Lamm speak, he held forth on two different ways that Megilas Esther could be read: as a happy set of coincidences that unseated one court favorite and replaced him with another, and as a remarkable tale of Divine Providence. In keeping with the political realities of living under the thumb of foreign rulers, the former reading had to be made part of the text, even while serving as a double entendre for faithful Jews, who could and would read it according to the latter understanding. Rabbi Lamm opined that the authors of the Megilah made this abundantly clear in their description of the royal advisory sent to the Jews of the realm (Esther 9:30): divrei shalom v’emes / words of peace and truth. The former reading was intended to keep the peace with the Persian authorities; the latter reading was the unvarnished truth.

Much of Rabbi Lamm’s career has taken the form of speaking both shalom and emes at the same time – often frustrating those who wished to see more of one than the other. In a recent interview about the future of American Jewry in the Jerusalem Post (May 11), Rabbi Lamm tilted heavily to the emes side.

“With a heavy heart we will soon say kaddish on the Reform and Conservative Movements…Reform is out of the picture, because they never got into the picture, and the Conservatives are getting out of the picture.” The demographic handwriting has been on the wall for a while, but public figures have had to look the other way. Rabbi Lamm dared say what many of us have felt for a long time, but is decidedly not PC to repeat publicly in the presence of boosters of the heterodox denominations.

What should be instructive to those of us who would have had no problem making the same statement ten years ago, is Rabbi Lamm’s insistence on not making triumphal hay of his pronouncement. The words with which he began – “with a heavy heart” – should be a model to all of us who interact with Jews outside the Orthodox community. Perhaps he will get away with the severity of his pronouncement precisely because he almost always resists the opportunity to be triumphal. He repeated the need for humility a few moments later. Outreach to Reform and Conservative Jews is a good thing, “but not by watering down what we believe and not by demonizing them either.”

[thanks to Rabbi Dr. David Fox, LA, for the lead]

The story has been told for well over a century. The Israeli Health Ministry just added a new twist to it.

Daniel Abramovich Chwolson (1819-1911) left many Jews confused. The distinguished Orientalist and professor at the University of St. Petersburg achieved a remarkable position of prominence in Czarist Russia. The price of entry into those circles was conversion, and the ex-yeshiva bochur from Vilna paid it. Unlike many other meshumadim, however, Chwolson remained fiercely committed to Jewish causes. He led battles against both blood libels and the denunciation of the Talmud. His assistance was solicited and gained for a variety of causes by stellar figures in the Torah world.

In the version I heard, someone asked the Netziv how to relate to such a person, who did so much good for the Jewish people, and yet was guilty of the ultimate treason. Do we see anything positive in him?

Pirkei Avos tells us that the wise person learns from everyone. One might think that certain places and people might be well beyond having anything to contribute. The Mishnah itself admits to no exceptions, however. Keep your ears and mind open, and you can learn something in all situations, even in Tinseltown.

The dinner from which I just returned bears no resemblance to the ones all of us attend to help support the shuls, schools, and chesed organizations that are important to us. My day job is with the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the largest Jewish membership organization in America, and the only one that chose the West Coast as its base of operations. As you may have guessed, part of its fund-raising capability involves heavy involvement with what everyone here calls The Industry. The honorees at the annual dinner, or at least some of them, come from their ranks. The studios all take tables; if you wanted to hawk a script, this is the place to be. The Hollywood people are not people I ordinarily interact with; I have little idea who most of them are.

One honoree was a young non-Jewish social worker in Holland when the Nazis invaded. On her way to work, she saw laughing Nazis throwing Jewish children between the ages of two and ten into the back of a truck for deportation. She could not shake the image, and spent the War years finding ways to save, harbor and protect Jewish children. She had some narrow calls, including one in which a Dutch Nazi returned to her house after she had given the all-clear and one of the previously hidden children attracted his attention by crying. With little time to think, she reached for a weapon supplied by the Resistance, and promptly shot him dead.

Marion Pritchard saved 150 Jewish children. The words she offered the audience werer simple and straightforward. “The world is no less in need of goodness today than in those terrible years. Everyone has something they can contribute to it.”

Many of us realized that the passing of Jack Kemp was cause for sadness. We did not necessarily know about the degree of his friendship with the Jewish community. Much will likely surface in the next days in conventional and alternative media. His passing, however, deserves some quicker tribute, so I offer below one perspective on a man who endeared himself to many of us. It is an excerpt from a larger article.

[Thanks to Brad Wixen, Los Angeles, for finding the article]

I saw Jack Kemp in person a number of times down through the years. My most memorable encounter, however, was when I stood with 250,000 other Americans on the National Mall in Washington on Sunday, December 6, 1987 as a participant in the March on Washington for Soviet Jewry and listened to Jack Kemp advocating our cause. No other member of the House of Representatives more effectively and ardently championed the cause of Soviet Jewry than Jack Kemp. In fact, the issue of Soviet Jewry was a cause not only of Jack Kemp but of his family as well – his wife, Joanne, for years served as a Co-Chair of Congressional Wives for Soviet Jewry.
Indeed, it was as an American Jew that I felt most deeply the greatness of Jack Kemp. He grew up in the Wilshire area of Los Angeles, then a predominantly Jewish area of the city and felt a deep personal kinship with the American Jewish community. He was not only a friend to the Jewish community – he was a true brother for us. Many politicians, both Democrat and Republican, give lip service in support of Israel in order to attract Jewish voters. Jack Kemp, however, was totally committed to Israel and Zionism, and the State of Israel never had a better friend in Congress than Jack Kemp.

In fact, Jack had such an extensive knowledge of Judaism and Jewish history that he often quoted Rabbi Moses Maimonides in his speeches. Rabbi Maimonides was also known as the Rambam, an acronym of his Hebrew name, Rabbi Moshe ben (son of) Maimon. The Rambam, who lived in 12th century Spain, Morocco, and Egypt, was one of the truly outstanding personages of Jewish history – he was perhaps the most outstanding rabbi in history, as well as being the greatest physician in the world in his time, and a world renowned philosopher as well. His book, the Guide for the Perplexed is one of the most influential and widely read books in the history of philosophy. In fact, there is a famous Jewish saying that “from Moses (in the Bible) to Moses (Maimonides), there was none greater.”

You won’t read about this in conventional media.

My dear colleague, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, was one of three senior officials of the Simon Wiesenthal Center to attend last week’s “Durban II” United Nations conference on racism in Geneva. Once again, an event many years in the making, and that could have addressed the real needs of millions of people suffering and dying around the globe, was sabotaged by hatred of Israel. Any chance to get groups from all over the world to work together was torpedoed by Ahmadinejad’s tirade against the United States, Israel, and Jews. The conference never recovered from the circus on its first day. Delegates decamped a few days later hailing the accomplishment of a single document that spoke of the rights of individuals. The number of people subject to torture in North Korea, beheading in Iran and Saudi Arabia, terrorism in Southeast Asia, and programmed starvation in Africa has not, however, declined since last week. This itself is a human tragedy.

While it lasted, NGO’s tried to salvage the opportunity, with so many representatives of governments and civil society gathered in one location. At one meeting, the Wiesenthal Center joined with two (non-Jewish) groups to focus on racism in Iran. The entourage that had accompanied Ahmadinejad numbered about 130; thirty of them decided to attend the session.

One of them, a diplomat permanently assigned to Geneva, sat politely with the rest, but was quick to rise in the Q&A. “Why are you picking on Iran?” It was certainly a legitimate question, that could have been answered in many ways. Rabbi Cooper went for one that was short and devastating. “How about starting with the Baha’i?” pointing to the Muslim splinter group that suffers from enormous persecution.

A scant few hours after Rabbi Goldberg posted his essay , I showed up at a school where I teach, only to discover that my class was preempted by some visitors who were going to address the entire school. I recognized one of them as Rabbi Benny Lau, since I had debated him on the conversion issue a few months ago in Toronto. We parted on more than good terms despite our differences, so I made a point of listening to his presentation instead of ducking out and returning to my office.

It was a good decision. Rabbi Lau related a beautiful thought, that took him back to his yeshiva days. A group of his fellow students accompanied Rav Amital shlit”a to Neot Kedumim, the famous nature preserve, a bit off the Tel Aviv-Yerushalayim road, not far from what today is Modi’in. They were met there by Nogah HaReuveni, the secular botanist who spent years putting together the park that makes not only Tanach, but Mishnah and Gemara come alive. (My favorite parts are the road lined with about every sukkah described in the mesechta, and the live demonstration of threshing on an actual threshing floor using reconstructions of period implements. They toast and salt fresh grain kernels, too, so you learn why קליות,that ancient snack food, beats potato chips in a modern taste test.)

The famed botanist addressed a question to the students. “When G-d told Yechezkel (Yechezkel 37:16; Haftarah of Vayigash) to take “etz echad” and write upon it “for Yehudah and Bnei Yisrael his comrades,” and then to do the same for Yosef, what was he asking him to do. What does “etz” mean? They responded, not sensing the trap, that etz meant a piece of wood.

HaReuveni could scarcely conceal his disdain. “You are supposed to be yeshiva students? Don’t you know that etz can indeed mean a piece of wood in the language of Chazal, but never in Tanach? Etz in Tanach always means a tree. [Note: The Targum and other standard commentaries all render etz as a piece or tablet of wood – YA] But if it means tree in our verse, how could Yechezkel then be told to bring them together and make them one? How do you join two trees?

Seldom since the years immediately following the War has so much attention been paid to Yom HaShoah, thanks to Ahmadinejad’s tirade at the UN yesterday. Few news sources resisted the irony of the world’s most famous Holocaust denier urging the world to finish the job he claims Hitler never started, in an address just a few hours before Yom HaShoah would be observed throughout Europe. Regardless of whether or how you usually relate to Yom HaShoah, we perhaps have a special obligation today to think of those Ahmadinejad denied, the UN delegates mocked, while representatives of other countries – not all of them friendly to Israel – participated in an unusual show of decency by walking out. Besides the seven countries that refused to attend the UN conference on racism in the first place, like the US, Canada, Italy, and Australia, those who walked out yesterday included Austria, Belgium, Britain, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic ,
Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, St. Kitts and Nevis. (In polls of the populace, Greece and Spain are the most anti-Semitic countries on the globe outside of the Arab world. Go figure.) And let’s not forget Morocco! Morocco walked out!

Something to think about the Kedoshim appeared in last week’s Jewish Week. The author is Dr. Isaac Steven Herschkopf, an attending psychiatrist at the NYU Medical Center. It is worthwhile reflecting upon – especially today.

I could not have been more than 4 or 5 when I asked her. It seemed to me, at the time, to be an innocent, straightforward question: “Mommy, when do I get my number?”

I was, of course, upset when she burst into tears and ran out of the kitchen, but I was also confused. This was Washington Heights in the 1950s. It was an enclave of survivors. Every adult I knew had a number. Even my teenage sister had one in blue ink tattooed on her forearm.

If you made it this far without doing the reading, you are probably not going to get to it before the event. For a quick and easy presentation, try the summary written by the one who wrote the book, mori ve-rabi Rabbi Dovid Bleich, shtlit”a. It appears in the online version of the OU’s Jewish Action Magazine.

To make it even simpler for those pressed for time (and who isn’t today?), I will excerpt it, and include the sections that draw a straight line between Birchas Ha-Chammah and Pesach:

Although the celebration of Pesach commemorates the Exodus from Egypt and Birkat haChammah recalls Creation, the two share a singular common motif.

“Chayyav adam lirot et atzmo ke’ilu hu yatza miMitzrayim—a person is obligated to look upon himself as if he exited from Egypt.” On Pesach a Jew is obligated not simply to recall a historical event but to imagine himself an actual participant in that event. Rambam’s formulation is “Chayyev adam leharot et atzmo—a person is obligated to show himself” as one who departed from Egypt. A fantasy, to be sure. It is difficult enough to enter into a fantasy, yet Rambam requires not only that we enter into the fantasy but that we act it out as well. The essence of the obligation is internalization of long-ago events to the point that they are both intellectually and emotionally no different from personally experienced phenomena. To what purpose? To appreciate the omnipotence of the Deity who made possible the miraculous events surrounding the Exodus. For Rambam, intellectual appreciation is insufficient; it must lead to an emotional experience perceivable to an onlooker.

A colleague expressed displeasure with my citing a story about a call to violence by a rabbinic figure. He argued that, at least in America, he has never come across an instance of a legitimate rov calling for violence, and that I should have investigated the story further before publishing it.

He turned out to be correct. Checking with people who were there, it turns out that he did not urge people to burn down the store. He was agitated by what he saw as he approached the nearby shiur, and expressed that concern. He than added that he didn’t know if it was worthwhile going to jail for burning it down. It was also understood by people in the audience that he was expressing his pain, not a real doubt about a possible course of action.

Unlike abuse (and its cover-up), we can perhaps still lay claim to a rabbinate that is violence-free.

The intrepid Rabbi Yaakov Horowitz published an op-ed in the Jerusalem Post recently hailing the sentencing of an operative for a self-appointed tzniyus vaad in Yerushalayim to four years in jail. He then republished it on his blog, and called on others to join in the condemnation of violence and vigilante terrorism in the name of Torah. We should do so without hesitation.

The convicted perp had accepted $2000 from a tzniyus vaad, in payment for his breaking into the apartment of a woman in Maalot Daphne and viciously beating her. The vaad hoped that she could be convinced thereby to move out of their neighborhood. Members of the vaad itself escaped conviction because the case against them was bungled by the authorities. (See the piece on Rabbi Horowitz’s blog for the fuller story, and Dr Benzion Twerski’s thoughtful comment about the needed balance between openness and transparency on the one hand, and following halachah in regard to unfounded allegations on the other.)

Rabbi Horowitz did the right thing in publicly distancing the Torah community from violence in pursuit of purported Torah values. He called upon haredi MKs to see to it that the authorities fully prosecute such abominable behavior. I’m not sure why he stopped at MKs, rather than demand that all leaders, whether in the government or not, unequivocally condemn such actions, and to marginalize both those who participate in religious terrorism and those who support the terrorists. We should be equally demanding, refusing to contribute to institutions whose leaders are respected in the communities affected, but whose proclamations critical of zealotry have been lukewarm.

Religiously-motivated violence will not stay confined to Meah Shearim and Ramat Beis Shemesh. Visiting Flatbush last week, I had the pleasure of finally meeting Hirhurim’s Gil Student in person. We worked on some areas of common blogging interest, and he mentioned in passing an incident that occurred within a half a block of where we met over coffee.

“The heart wants what the heart wants.” – Woody Allen

“The heart has its own rules and ways” – Sheikh Yusef Al-Qaradawi

Qaradawi – is an icon in the Muslim world, and a leader of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. He is a popular authority on Islamic law on both Al Jazeera and IslamOnline. is the head of the European Council for Fatwa and Research (ECFR), and the president of The International Association of Muslim Scholars (IAMS). He is a consistent critic of the decadence of the West. He supports suicide bombings, and has ruled that Muslims must boycott American goods. He is barred from entering both the US and the UK, but is supported here by CAIR, which passes itself off as a moderate Islamic defense organization, but has recently been pointed to by the FBI for its terrorist connections.

Qaradawi is 82. Some years ago, he was impressed by the presentation of a student at a school where he lectured. These are his words: “”When I saw her up close, I said [to her]: ‘Praise Allah, who endowed you with physical as well as moral beauty. Allah gave you intelligence, rhetorical ability, an impressive presence, beauty, and a good figure. May Allah bless you, my child, for He has endowed you with talents, eloquence, courage and erudition…”

The modal reaction to those who came in contact with the Kids of Courage (KOC) West Coast Tour last week was one of utter disbelief. Twenty-four participants, all of whom suffer from chronic conditions so daunting that the rest of us cannot even pronounce their names, had an opportunity to enjoy unimpaired joy and camaraderie the likes of which they rarely, if ever, can enjoy.

To accomplish this, over fifty support personnel – all of them familiar with the needs of these kids – came along. Special arrangements had to be made every inch of the way. Disneyland, Universal Studios, and Sea-World had to cooperate. Special medical equipment had to be provided, including a Hatzolah ambulance that tagged along. Hospitals were “on call” and ready to meet anticipated needs. No airline was willing to fly so many “medicals” on one flight, until the very last one called – Continental – agreed. Toys R Us agreed to open an hour early to accommodate the kids (each equipped with one hundred dollars) who wheeled or dragged themselves through the isles for a surprise shopping spree. (They were met on arrival by Fox, CNN, and ABC media crews.) Srulie Williger flew out to entertain at a Hancock Park barbeque.

Of course, someone had to pay for it. Or rather, someone had to raise a hefty sum to make it possible.

Three people took chief responsibility. All of them are part of the Camp Simcha universe. (Indeed, although the event was not part of the official Camp Simcha calendar, KOC has to be seen as the natural consequence of the astounding work that Camp Simcha does.) They are Camp Simcha’s famous medical director, “Dr D” (Dr. Stewart Ditchek), its Chief Paramedic, Howie Kafka, and its Boys Division Head, who happens to share my last name (and asked me to downplay his role).

So many people joined the first of our four-part intro to Maharal last week, that it would be insulting to keep referring to them – even playfully – as Dummies. For those who missed last week, it is not too late to join us this coming Sunday evening BE”H for the second installment of the webcast series, brought to you by Torah In Motion. Once again, if you don’t have a set of Maharal, you will be able to download the texts you need prior to the webcast. Registration instructions are available by followng the links at last week’s advisory

Darwin was a Brit, after all, so it would be rather rude of Sir Jonathan Sacks not to comment on his 200th birthday. The Chief Rabbi manages to neatly side-step the thicket of arguments about evolution, and to simply state that its factuality is largely irrelevant to believers. If anything (mirroring the famous reaction of R Shimshon Raphael Hirsch), if it is assumed to be true, it only increases our sense of awe at the wisdom Hashem attached to His Creation.

Happy Birthday, Charles! While your findings fueled your struggle with G-d (or your struggle with G-d fueled your findings), the rest of us ma’aminim b’nei ma’aminim aren’t having a rough time of it at all.

There are some even in this skeptical age who still believes that god is an old man with a long white beard. His name is Charles Darwin, patron saint of scientific atheists.

2009 will be a double anniversary for followers of Darwin: the two hundredth anniversary of his birth and the 150th anniversary of his work The Origin of Species. We will undoubtedly hear the claim asserted that Darwin dealt a death blow to religious belief.

This may not initially read like a book review, but it is just that. Some older books are so important, that they deserve a bit of contemporary context to remind us how important they are. This review is about one such work. Please bear with me.

Debates about G-d have come a long way since medieval times. Back then, the key issues were whether the Prime Mover argument was more compelling than the First Cause alternative, and whose conception of G-d was accurate, with the loser consigned to eternal damnation in the fires of hell. Hell doesn’t enter into the discussion too much anymore, and His existence is supported in very different ways.

Christopher Hitchens is a capable and engaging presenter; going up against him takes either courage or foolishness in the attempt, and real skill in prevailing against him. All in all, I would give Rabbi David Wolpe very good marks in his November debate at Manhattan’s (high temple of classic Reform) Temple Emmanuel.

Rabbi Wolpe is certainly one of the Conservative movement’s most articulate spokespeople. (Contrary to the NY Times story, he was not rated #1 in Newsweek’s famous rabbis list, not having made it higher than #12. The number one position continues to belong to one of my superiors, Rabbi Moshe Hier.) He is also certainly not Orthodox. (Our readers will recall his sermon on Pesach a few years ago in which he told his congregants, most of whom are traditional Persians, that the Exodus likely never really occurred, and invited the Los Angeles Times to turn it into a front page story.) Not being Orthodox conferred distinct advantage upon Rabbi Wolpe. It allowed some leeway in his responses to Hitchens that an Orthodox rabbi would not have had, and that worked well for his audience. I believe that he did far better than a high-profile Orthodox rabbi did in his recent debate against Hitchens.

Not quite. Dummies can’t understand Maharal, and I am notoriously poor at lecturing to intellectually challenged audiences.

Still, lot of folks see themselves as dummies when it comes to wading through the works of one of the most important resources in explicating Aggadah.

Starting Sunday evening, I am going to try to disabuse them of their feelings of inadequacy, by giving a four-part interactive webcast through the friendly folks at Torah in Motion. The shiur will begin at 9PM EST, 6PM PST. There is no charge, but registration is required.

We will offer some background and then wade into representative texts of different kinds of tools that Maharal offers us in approaching the world of Aggadah. Texts will be available before the shiur, either as downloads or last minute emails, depending on whether I manage to get them to the shiur hosts in a timely manner. Each shiur will last about an hour, including time for questions at the end. Those with webcams can see and be seen; those without will be able to see others.