In the space of a single hour this evening, I heard:

The former President of the most populous Muslim country on the globe declare that he will not rest until his country recognizes Israel. He then dedicated the honor he received to an unnamed rabbi (in Indonesia!), deceased for a few years, who enriched his life by introducing him to Talmud and Kabbalah.

The previous Archbishop of Canterbury closed his remarks with a beautiful piece of derush based on a beraisa in the first perek of Berachos. Lord Carey has campaigned against anti-Semitism for over twenty years, and stood up to his own church when it moved to divest its funds from Israel

A French-Catholic priest with tears in his eyes tell an audience why he has trekked for a decade through the Ukraine to uncover the previously unknown mass graves that hold the remains of a million and a half Jews murdered by Nazi mobile killing units. So far, he has found over five hundred of such graves. Invoking the words of the previous Pope in his visit to a Rome synagogue, he called Jews his “elder brothers;” he considered it intolerable that so many should be killed and their memories obliterated without any remembrance.

Does the deeply-seated need for revenge mean that we are trapped between two approaches, each of which is unsatisfactory? On the one hand, acting upon our instinctive need plunges us into unending cycles of retaliation. On the other, the rule of law seems to demand the suppression of an undeniable part of our nature. Are we destined to give revenge either too much or too little? Jared Diamond, the fascinating cell membrane physiologist, turned evolutionary biologist of birds, turned ecological geographer, examines this question in a recent article in The New Yorker.

I have read Diamond since my teens, and always been overwhelmed by his versatility. As a writer, he is engaging and clear. He won a Pulitzer for Guns, Germs, and Steel; it is one of the most important secular books I read in the last ten years. [Warning: this is not a pitch or endorsement. Those who believe in a six thousand year-old earth will only be offended by the book, and find nothing of value therein. Those who admit to other possibilities will find remarkable insights into how the Ribbono Shel Olam, by cleverly arranging geographical features within continents, may have engineered the emergence of key groups that would dominate the history of the most recent millennia, and facilitated key discoveries like plant and animal husbandry that would be important in the development of human civilizations. The list of early human achievements at the end of parshas Bereishis will never be the same after reading it.]

Diamond presents his dilemma by contrasting the behavior of a New Guinea society with that of his Holocaust survivor father in law. New Guinea comes first in the article.

In 1992, when Daniel Wemp was about twenty-two years old, his beloved paternal uncle Soll was killed in a battle against the neighboring Ombal clan. In the New Guinea Highlands, where Daniel and his Handa clan live, uncles and aunts play a big role in raising children, so an uncle’s death represents a much heavier blow than it might to most Americans. Daniel often did not even distinguish between his biological father and other male clansmen of his father’s generation. And Soll had been very good to Daniel, who recalled him as a tall and handsome man, destined to become a leader. Soll’s death demanded vengeance.

This is the time of year when even the non-kabbalist becomes aware of one of the most important notions in modern kabbalah – the ten sefiros. Every day of sefiras ha-omer, another combination of the seven “lower” sefiros stares out at you from the siddur. You get forty-nine points of contact with the mitzvah, and forty-nine separate opportunities to feel dumb about those two words in the small print in the siddur after each day’s recitation.

Many people are aware that those words not only mean something, but offer real structure and guidance towards the self-improvement that sefirah is all about. People have looked for a long time for a text that doesn’t leave the spiritual climb towards Sinai during these seven weeks so amorphous and uncharted. The person to write such a work would need to be a talmid chacham with a good command of a breadth of sources, including kabbalistic ones, good language skills, and a love for people and sensitivity to their inner dynamics.

Sefiros (the book; TorahLab ISBN 9780981497419) arrived on my doorstep this morning, a gift from my friends at AJOP and the book’s author, my old friend Rabbi Yaacov Haber (writing with Rabbi David Sedley), who possesses all the qualities mentioned above. I couldn’t resist perusing it, and I am enthusiastic about the parts that I’ve seen.

Most of what you will find in English on the sefiros is nonsense (or worse), the product of Kabbalah Center wannabes whose gray matter has been softened by the drivel they write. Some of the omer self-help manuals I’ve seen are well-meaning, but related in no manner of form to the pattern of progress (or more accurately regress) through the sefiros as we find them in the siddur.

Funerary orators often begin their remarks by relating how they are at a loss for words to properly express their feelings. I don’t have that problem The thoughts and images cascade without end in reacting to the petirah of my rebbi, Hagaon Rav Alter Henoch Leibowitz, zt”l.

The reason, perhaps, is that I am not in the inner circle. When you are a member of the core group, you have to focus on the expected causes for adulation of a gadol – gadlus in Torah, devotion to the cause, leaving behind many talmidim and institutions, serving as a link to the glory days of pre-War Lita. These were all fully true of the Rosh Yeshiva, and a succession of Torah luminaries, yibadlu lechaim tovim – Rav Shmuel Kamenetsky, shlit”a, the Novominsker Rebbe, shlit”a, Rav Malkiel Kotler, shlit”a - extolled these virtues in their remarks at the levayah.

I left the yeshiva almost thirty years ago for the opposite coast. I’ve been back very few times, and my sons did not (with one brief exception) attend any of the many branches of Chofetz Chaim. I have had much time to look at the yeshiva and the Rosh Yeshiva (the two are really inseperable) without the constraints that come with proximity. It has left me with more to say, rather than less.

Despite my having gone “my own way,” much of what I am (at least the things I would take pride in) is attributable in no small degree to the Rosh Yeshiva – even the fact that I went my own way! The Rosh Yeshiva did not smother people in his personality. He was large enough to allow individuality and even non-conformity, even as he himself believed that rules and details helped the majority stay focused on the chief occupations of yeshiva life. He spoke openly about chinuch and pedagogy (come to think of it, he spoke openly and frequently about many topics that are ignored in other yeshivos), especially as part of the world of mussar in general, and Slabodka in particular. He would tell and retell stories about the uncanny educational abilities of the Alter, giving the credit not to the individual alone, but to the mesorah of mussar he represented from Kelm and before. It behooved an educator to take into account the needs and the talents of each talmid as an individual, and to address and nurture them. This could mean at times that he would refrain from imposing his view on a talmid who needed space, or something a bit out of the ordinary. (I was privileged to be part of a not-so-small chevrah who were all fiercely individualistic, and maintained their identities.)

Bnei Brak collaborates with Hollywood, and the result is a winner!

If preparations for Pesach are draining your energy, take a six minute break and watch this. You won’t be disappointed. Turning up the volume will increase the adrenalin - and the pride.

[Thanks to Michael Eisenberg, Esq., Los Angeles]

A symposium on the compatibility of science and belief reminds us of the power of the Seder night.

The Templeton Foundation is committed to supporting rigorous academic exploration of what it calls “spiritual realities,” and is generally G-d friendly, without shying away from hard questions. It’s current “conversation” shows up in full on-line, supported by a two page advertisement in the current issue of Atlantic Monthly.

Hard scientists, soft scientists, philosophers and others weigh in on the topic “Does science make belief in God obsolete?” and the result is predictable. Many of the participants talk past one another, staking out familiar positions while dodging the volleys from the opposition by hiding behind the usual platitudes.

One theme of the anti-theists (אפ”ל) is that science has obviated the need, or even the allowable place, for G-d by answering the questions that generated belief in the first place. Typical is the contribution of Christopher Hitchens, who while certainly not the participant most familiar with science, is such an effective writer that he probably bats cleanup in the lineup of authors who have promoted atheism to the public.

What do Rav Isser Zalman Meltzer, Artscroll, and the RCA all have in common? They figured out that outsourcing was the key to intelligibility.

Rav Isser Zalman gave a weekly shiur, for which he would intensely prepare. He was a stickler for clarity – end users of Even HaAzel are all the better for it. His touchstone of clarity was the projected shiur’s comprehensibility to someone who was not “holding” in that area of study. So each week before offering the shiur to his students, he tried it out first on his wife! At least at one point in time, Artscroll is rumored to have employed the same thinking. One of the final editors of the Gemara was – by design – a woman. She was chosen because she was bright, but had not learned in Brisk for fifteen years. The thinking was that if the commentary really succeeded, she should be able to follow the discussion.

Tradition Magazine has taken outsourcing a step further, sending decades of content to India (where else?) to parse articles for internal subject subheadings to help in the online search function.

The Torah world is continuously enriched by projects that put vast amounts of material within the grasp of every person, especially material that is not available in every beis medrash. The really sophisticated student has found some way to access the digital mega-library of Otzar HeChochmah; others do with more modest contributions. One of these is Tradition, the quarterly of the Rabbinical Council of America, whose archives are now accessible I wish I could report that access is free, but you still need to pay $2 an article unless you are a subscriber. Still, the price is a bargain relative to getting in a car and driving cross-town to borrow a back issue from a friend.

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.

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.

[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) .

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.

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.

You cannot help but feel bad for Lori Gottlieb, and good for the mindset about marriage with which we provide our kids.

NPR correspondent and author Gottlieb was not looking for sympathy, but to offer heartfelt-advice. Writing in the current issue of Atlantic Monthly, she makes the case for “settling for Mr. Good Enough.”

“Is it better to be alone, or to settle? My advice is this: Settle!” Waiting too long for the perfect, one-of-a-kind soul-mate left Gottlieb single, with a biological clock winding down. She opted to become a single parent, which she does not regret, but has left her with less time to do the things she thought she would share with her mate, and less flexibility to keep trolling for a partner she would not have to settle for. Looking back at it all, she advises others to get practical.

Ask any soul-baring 40-year old single heterosexual woman what she longs for in life, and she probably won’t tell you it’s a better career, or a smaller waistline or a bigger apartment. Most likely she will say that what she really wants is a husband (and by extension a child.)

The American Jewish Committee’s 2007 Annual Survey of American Jewish Opinion is out, and it reflects once again the growing importance of the Orthodox community. Some will celebrate with high-fives and I-told-you-so’s. This would be a big mistake. For alternative reactions, read on.

JTA reported on the January 31 forum convened to discuss the survey. It made for irritating reading. The quoted notables spoke of the growing divide in attitudes and positions between the more politically conservative Orthodox and everyone else. This divide “threatens the long-term unity of the Jewish people,” as if it were the Orthodox who walked away from everything that Jews held sacred for centuries, rather than the other way around. It is hard to tell, however, whether the negative tone of the piece reflected the opinions of the participants, or was an artifact of the writing style of the author.

There aren’t many surprises in the results, save for the fact that what we sensed is now supported by the more scientific methodology of the pollster. According to the survey, 69 percent of Orthodox Jews said they feel “very close” to Israel, compared to 29 percent of Conservative Jews and 22 percent of Reform Jews. Only 4 percent of the Orthodox said they feel “fairly distant,” as opposed to 14 percent of Conservatives and 25 percent of the Reform.

How did this all come to pass? Steven Bayme, the director of the AJC’s Department of Contemporary Jewish Life, and a Modern Orthodox Jew himself, sees a smoking gun in the time that Orthodox high school graduates spend in Israel. Those yeshivos, Bayme says, are ideologically incompatible with mainstream American Jewish thought.

My friend Judea Pearl’s writing is frequently moving, and always incisive. On the yahrzeit of his son, Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl, HY”D, brutally slain in Pakistan six years ago, Dr. Pearl creates a new litmus test for journalism in an article in the Wall Street Journal.

No one in whom a Jewish heart beats even faintly will ever forget the words that Daniel proclaimed just before al-Queda beheaded him. “My father’s Jewish, my mother’s Jewish, I’m Jewish! Back in the town of Bnei Brak there is a street named after my great grandfather Chayim Pearl who is one of the founders of the town.”

While we still grapple with the undiminished impact of those words, the task is so much more difficult for his parents. They have thrown themselves into the work of making their son’s death work against those responsible for it. While working to support voices of moderation and tolerance within the Muslim world, they have worked just as tirelessly to out the phonies, to expose the difference between those who are posturing and those who are genuinely committed to decency and coexistence. “Moral relativism died with Daniel Pearl in January 2002,” he writes. Having come face to face with evil as purely distilled as it gets, there can be no hiding behind arguments of cultural differences and alternative perspectives. Pure evil must be labeled as such, without equivocation, without excuses, and without mitigating modifiers.

Dr. Pearl relates that the Pakistani Consul General offered condolences to the Pearls in their home here in Los Angeles. When they spoke about the antisemitic content of Danny’s murder, she commented, “”What can you expect of these people who never saw a Jew in their lives and who have been exposed, day and night, to televised images of Israeli soldiers targeting and killing Palestinian children.” Dr Pearl realized that this was not a hollow excuse, but a fact of life. Journalists – colleagues of his son – had become accessories in the propagation of evil, by helping to tell half-truths and outright lies. The Daniel Pearl video released by al-Queda was set against a background of Mohammed al-Dura visuals, taken from the footage faked by the frauds of France 2 television, who gave the jihadist world an icon and a rallying point for its barbarism. Pondering their role, Dr. Pearl began to see the opposing role of the good journalist.

If buildings could speak, the message of Dallas’ new Ohr HaTorah shul is one of pride, confidence, and inclusiveness. Simply put, it is – architecturally – the most impressive building of a right-of-Orthodox-center shul I have ever seen.

The community that built it lives up to the promise of the structure.

It wasn’t the shul that brought me to Texas. A group of seasoned activists within the United Methodist Church, America’s largest mainline Protestant denomination are up to some serious anti-Israel mischief. They are trying to get the rank and file to pass a divestment resolution at their General Conference in April, so my day job took me to Fort Worth last week to see what I could do to counter a bald lie that they have carefully nurtured for years. (Of all liberal Protestant denominations, the Methodists promote the ugliest and most imbalanced set of materials about Israel and the Middle East.) The Jewish community is so divided about Israel, they argue, that taking the side of the Palestinians will not harm Jewish-Methodist relations. Of course, every time they make the argument, there is a large cheering section on hand of vocal, marginal, and irrelevant Jewish groups who see Israel as the root of all evil. My mission was to begin the process of reality-checking, demonstrating that the vast majority of the Jewish community cares very much indeed about the safety and security of Israel, and regards imbalanced and unfair treatment of Israel as a body-blow.

There may be more relaxing ways of spending what to many was winter-break week. Going in to a different community as live bait is not a commonly accepted form of recreation. (Truth be told – it was not unpleasant at all. I never came face to face with the established Bad Guys. The people I met and conversed with – both delegates and officials, both pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian – were genuinely gracious and warm. They were mostly also hopelessly clueless about both the history of Israel, and the realities on the ground. Steady brainwashing by the Bad Guys has taken a toll.) Accepting the mission was made easier by the fact that the site of the pre-convention was only about 35 miles from my oldest son’s house in Dallas, which distance, by Texas standards, is about the length of an average driveway. So it was Methodists by day, my grandchildren by night, followed by the decompression and holiness of Shabbos.

It is still very much the elephant in the room. We can pretend that it didn’t happen, but it won’t go away that quickly. News sources are still writing new pieces, and the prosecutor has pledged new indictments. If you think it is one of the worst cases of chilul Hashem in memory, you are in good company. If you think that the story is all about sordid sleaze, you might have overlooked some points that were not picked up by conventional outlets. Not all the news was bad.

No one but the accused know whether the allegations are true, but no one can be sure that they are not. A few generations ago, an important Rosh Yeshiva visiting from Europe needed to borrow a small amount of cash for a short time. His would-be creditor embarrassedly asked him to sign an IOU. “It’s not that I don’t trust you, but I’ve been burnt before by others dressed like you who borrowed and disappeared.” The Rosh Yeshiva broke down and cried, that a talmid chacham should even be suspected of such a thing. Whether the current allegations hold up in court or not, I haven’t met anyone who finds them surprising. This itself is tragic.

The good news starts with some people who instantly got it right, who knew how to make a contribution to the effort to decrease the likelihood of waking up to a different scandal in the future. The rov of my shul - home to none of the accused – spoke about the need to reexamine issues of personal honesty and integrity. He did this not once, but three times. A prominent mechanech in town did not wait for students to ask questions. He dedicated his shmuess to issues of chilul Hashem and how to avoid it. As far away as Riverdale, where talmidim are kept so busy learning B”H that they have very little awareness of the scuttlebutt of the Orthodox world, R. Avrohom Ausband shlit”a seized the opportunity to give talmidim a litmus test in addressing subtle and not-so-subtle moral challenges. “Would you act the same way if you knew that your actions will be splashed across headlines the next day?” This was superb pedagogy, making the best educational use of a bad moment.

Not all rabbonim and mechanchim were so enterprising, but we can hope that they too will realize that they can contribute to a solution.

The following is an unretouched verbal snapshot of an international NGO gathering in Europe:

An Israeli is at the podium. He is young, bright, Western trained, and served a prior Israeli administration as an Oslo negotiator. He tells those assembled that he is prepared to give Europe a taste of what it is like to like as a Palestinian under the Occupation. He will gather other like-minded Israelis dressed in IDF uniforms. They will from human barricades across some of Paris’ busiest arteries, turning them into “checkpoints.”

Two Arabs sit in the audience. Arab1, wearing a confused look on his face, turns to Arab2, and asks, in Arabic, “Who is this guy?” Neither Arab even suspects that one of the people sitting within earshot works for the Simon Wiesenthal Center and, more importantly, speaks Arabic.

Arab2 responds, “He’s Israeli. But it’s OK. He’s on our side.”

Jonathan Rosenblum previously speculated in these pages that there are advantages to people living in religiously mixed neighborhoods. Another CC contributor, Rabbi Emmanuel Feldman, made the same point earlier this week in the Jerusalem Post.

Here are two variations on that theme, situations and vignettes in which a bit of Jewish intramural multiculturalism seems to be working well.

The Jerusalem Post (Dec. 25) reports on a follow-up survey of Nahal Haredi (NH) graduates. Over 90% have entered the work force, holding down jobs. For the most part, the only members of the haredi community who are urged to join are those for whom learning is just not working out. The finding should be seen positively, therefore, even by those who are opponents of NH. Were it not for their ability to fulfill their military service obligation through NH, these men wouldn’t be working but they wouldn’t be learning either.

The article further reports that NH has mushroomed. What began as a single company is now at battalion strength, including an elite counterterrorism unit. So things look good, at least to the Jerusalem Post.

Let’s say a person lives in Williamsburg, sports a shtreimel and long, curled peyos, and his father was the gabbai for many years in Rav Yoelish’s beis medrash. All his forebears in recent memory hail from Satu Mare, Hungary. On the other hand, he drapes an Israeli flag outside his apartment (and lives to tell about it), and swears allegiance to the Lubavitcher Rebbe. Is he a Satmar chusid?

My intention is not to be facetious, but to begin answering some of the concerns of readers over the last days. Dr. Shapiro pointed out what he thought was a blatant contradiction in two lines of Rabbi Leff’s review. Rabbi Leff calls certain positions “outside the pale,” but then goes on to say that rabbinic authorities are not conclusive as to whether these views are heretical or not. So which is it? Are these views kosher or treif?

I offered a resolution, of sorts. I argued that the contradiction vanishes if one assumes a difference between what is “heretical” and what is “unacceptable.” Rabbi Leff was saying, I believe, that some beliefs may not be heretical, but the voices that have rejected them have been close to unanimous. In those cases, maintaining such beliefs is “outside the pale” of Jewish experience. The community has the right to regard them as foreign, rather than merely different.

Back to our confused chosid. His neighbors will never succeed in persuading a court to order him to cease and desist from calling himself Satmar. On the other had, he could know shas and memorize Al HaGeulah V’Al-HaTemurah, but he won’t land a job teaching at Torah V’Yirah. He has the right to call himself whatever he wants; others have the right to ignore his declaration. Debating who should, and who should not, use the name Satmar will be of little consequence. His neighbors will simply see him as outside the pale. Rabbi Leff, it seems to me, makes the parallel argument regarding beliefs that push the envelope. Except for principles of faith, we don’t legislate beliefs. People can follow minority opinions in midrashim and in medieval philosophy. The price that one pays for such beliefs is that his thought-system is at variance with the near-unanimous collective experience of generations of Jews. Others may regard him – like our maverick Satmar – as foreign to their experience of Judaism – and with good reason.

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