For two weeks before Rosh Hashanah, R. Berel Soloveitchik could not taste food. It all went down like chalk, because he could not salivate. Anticipating the Divine judgment with which he would soon be scrutinized, his salivary glands stopped working. His bone-dry mouth could not make out any familiar tastes.

Unfortunately, most of us do not share this problem. If we are concerned at all, it is with our lack of concern. We have a hard time getting our hearts to respond to what we tell them with our minds – that we ought to be facing the Day of Judgment with fear and trembling.

If we can’t fully move ourselves to proper trepidation over our appointment with the heavenly tribunal, we can consider alternative ways to find merit in judgment.

For hundreds of years, people have puzzled over the upbeat parts of Rosh Hashanah. Despite the fact that our lives hang in the balance, we somehow find room for celebratory activity. We have Yom Tov-style meals; we wear fine clothes. (The Kotzker remarked that we ought to carry ourselves on Rosh Hashanah like the sequence of tekias shofar, with the teruah surrounded on both sides by … Read More >>

California voters face an unusual choice in the coming gubernatorial election. Interestingly, a recent Daf holds the key to the way frum voters are likely to go.

Elections are often a choice between tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum. (Too often, unfortunately, that should be spelled tweedle-dumb.) The two candidates in this election could not be more different, and each candidate’s claim to excellence in one area is unimpeachable.

Former Gov. Jerry Brown (D) is super-bright, a philosopher, and a deep thinker. He is reputed to outthink almost all he comes in contact with, often leaving them wondering what he is talking about. He had a frum roommate at Yale, and lots of ties to the Jewish friends.

Meg Whitman (R ) is one of the most successful managers in the US business world. She turned Ebay into the giant that it is and continues to be. She claims no special prior knowledge about many important areas, but that means she has no preconceptions or entanglements, and she knows how to learn. She is a visionary, and she gets things done. She is throwing enough of her own money into the campaign that she will be beholden to no one.

For those … Read More >>

The one hundred and thirty children and young adults with whom I spent a few days share two things. They are all Jewish, and they all contend daily with serious and debilitating illness. Many of them have done so all of their lives. You would think that this might provide the ultimate mussar ride for Elul, an in-your-face confrontation with your own mortality, and the need to be grateful to HKBH for life itself and the parts of it we take for granted.

You might think so, but you would be wrong. It’s not the ultimate ride at all. It may be the teeter-totter compared to the Montezuma’s Revenge of lessons you can garner from these kids.

In the three years that he was supposed to be sitting in classrooms at Cardozo Law School, my son Ari – together with some valiant and dedicated partners – built up Kids of Courage, by offering gradually larger and more exciting programs for young people who face challenges you don’t want to know about. They include the Jewish genetic diseases, as well as the alphabet soup of development gone awry – CP, MD, CR, etc. And of course, various cancers. Some conditions … Read More >>

When the Clinton-Mezvinsky nuptials were announced, I played the role of Grinch, and opined that there was little cause for celebration. Nothing could change my mind. All of us certainly wish Chelsea Clinton all the happiness in the world. In any intermarriage, our bone of contention is with the Jewish participant, who becomes (at least in the case of Jewish males) the tragic terminal point of a Jewish lineage nurtured in by centuries of steadfastness and mesiras nefesh.

Mezvinsky, like so many others who intermarry, had to real possiblity to make the decision we would have preferred, so we can hardly assign blame there. Nothing but a rich and authentic Jewish upbringing can counter the attraction of romantic involvement, and Mezvinsky never had it. He proudly displayed his heritage – one insufficient to prevent him from doing what all Jews for millennia regarded as breaking with it – by wearing a talis in front of a watching world, and having a Reform rabbi co-officiate with Chelsea’s Methodist minister. That may be an accomplishment for him, but it can hardly be a source of comfort or pride to the rest of us. To the contrary, the melding of Judaism with … Read More >>

Judea Pearl, or Reb Yehudah as I call him, is a UCLA professor of computer science, with a strong interest in artificial intelligence. He is the father of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal writer murdered by Pakistani Muslims. No one can forget his last words. “I am Jewish….My father is Jewish, my mother is Jewish….Back in the town of Bnei Brak there is a street named after my great-grandfather, Chaim Pearl, who was one of the founders of the town.”

The following article (appearing in the Los Angeles Jewish Journal) is not only insightful, but demanding. If you cannot do what he asks in the last paragraph, you are deluding yourself about your commitment to Israel as much as the yefei nefesh whom he targets in this piece.

What makes fog float in mid air, while raindrops fall straight down to earth? Physics teaches us that it is all a matter of “surface-to- weight ratio” — a simple parameter that determines whether soap bubbles rise or fall, and how many passengers a jet plane can carry. The larger the surface, so the theory goes, the easier it is for an object to lift its weight against … Read More >>

Benny Morris’ interview of Shimon Peres in Tablet has to be one of the most interesting and refreshing reflections upon history that I have read in quite a while, yielding much insight into the personalities of Israel’s elder statesman and those with whom he interacted. With all his faults, he emerges far more heroic than before, and serves as a reminder of the days in which those who toiled to found the State – for all our ideological differences with them – were made of stronger stuff than the self-serving bureaucrats of the present.

Benny Morris is himself an intriguing character. As one of Israel’s New Historians, he was the darling of the left for challenging the mythic orthodoxies of Israel’s early days, particularly the War of Independence. He argued that in fact not all of Israel’s Arabs had fled on their own; some had been pushed out. (This position peeks out at us in the course of this interview.) Arab civilians had been killed as well. He then stood his findings on their head by concluding that while such incidents had occurred, they were the exception, and quite within the range of behavior of other armies. Moreover, … Read More >>

This article, appearing in the Los Angeles Jewish Journal, omits only one significant fact in this kiddush Hashem of a piece. There is something that Benish Kaplan is even more passionate about than basketball. He is unswervingly loyal and dedicated to his illustrious relatives, the Feinsteins, shlit”a. Benish knows how to stick with a winning team!

Menschic Warriors By David Suissa Month after month, a few years ago, my little boy would nudge me. “Daddy, I want to try out for Kaplan,” he’d say. I knew Kaplan was a basketball program in the Hancock Park area, but I knew little else. My boy Noah was already playing for his Maimonides team in his school league, which meant practice every week and a game every Sunday – so why add a whole other layer of practice and games? It’s tough enough to juggle after-school activities for three busy kids; who needs another carpool headache to the other side of town?

Obviously, I hadn’t done my homework. If you’re a Jewish kid in a Jewish day school in Los Angeles, especially an Orthodox school, and you love to play basketball, the name “Kaplan” is like the name “Harvard” to an aspiring … Read More >>

The piece that follows is an exceptionally cogent and heart-felt presentation of some of the multi-tiered tragedy of abuse in our community. The incidence of abuse is tragic; the efforts to silence victims is tragic.

I was not able to ascertain the background or veracity of the specific charges in the piece, which first appeared in the Jewish Star. It doesn’t really matter. In the absolute worst case, think of it like racial discrimination in Emmanuel: it may have been the wrong example, it turns out, but the behavior is rife in other locations.

The most important reaction is for people to acquaint themselves with the names of those poskim who have said, and continue to say, that when an abuser may strike again, he must be stopped, and the proper halachic reaction it to go to the police. Period. Abuse kills. Nothing less than that.

Honoring the Badge

By Daniel Sosnowik

“Officer, what’s your badge number?” I’ve been asked that question countless times over the last 26 years. Almost always, it followed an unpopular decision. Always, it was accompanied by an unspoken message: “I’m letting you know I will hold you accountable for this decision.”

… Read More >>

While all of us are conscious of the loss of the beis hamikdosh yvbb”a as the underlying cause of all natioal tragedy in the last two millennia, many of us still react most deeply to events closer to our day. I have seen shuls full of people dutifully reciting kinos without significant emotional connection come to life and tears arriving at the kinos of R Shimon Schwab and R Weismandel about the Holocaust.

In corresponding with one of our commenters, veteran mechanech and history buff Rabbi Shmuel Burstein, I came across a wonderful piece he published a number of years ago. It can quickly remind us of what Jewish life can become when HKBH lifts His protective shield r”l. It is published with the author’s permission. It has appeared in a number of places, including Aish.com, and the CUFI website.

It was the end of May, 1943, and Jewish Lvov was burning. Once home to Poland’s third largest Jewish community, Lvov’s 100,000 Jews numbered less than 8,000. “They are killing the Jewish police! This is the end!” came a cry from the ghetto.

Huge buildings, entire blocks were on fire. Jews ran in all directions. Hundreds made a … Read More >>

Rav Yehuda Amital zt”l left last week for the Yeshiva Shel Ma’aloh. He was born Yehuda Klein in Grossvarden, Romania, and studied as a child in the local yeshiva, which was run by a transplant from the Mir. He suffered the destruction of his family in the Shoah, and spent eight months himself in a labor camp before being liberated by the Red Army on Simchas Torah in 1944.

Arriving in Israel, he learned in Chevron under R. Issar Zalman Meltzer, from whom he subsequently received semichah. (He would later marry his granddaughter, יבלח”ט Miriam.) He also learned with R Yaakov Moshe Charlop.

With the outbreak of the War of Independence, he was drafted into Tzahal, and fought at Latrun and the Western Galil. After the war, he served as one of the roshei yeshiva of Yeshivat HaDarom. It is there that he developed the concept of the Hesder yeshiva, and was one of the important forces bringing turning that vision into a reality.

After the June War, he accepted the position of Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivat Har Etzion, a post he would retain until age 80, serving alongside יבלח”ט R Aharon Lichtenstein, shlit”a.

Rav Amital championed a … Read More >>

While much of last week’s buzz concentrated on words that were never uttered, the issue behind it has been around for many hundreds of years. Should Torah chinuch stress limud Torah alone, taking a dim view of any other involvement, or should it include aspects of secular training and acculturation, large or small?

Most of our readers are familiar with the famous comparison made by Rav Dessler zt”l in Michtav Me-Eliyahu vol.3 pgs 355-360. Rav Dessler pointed out that chinuch in Germany, which included secular study according to the directives of R. Samson Raphael Hirsch, succeeded in producing laypeople almost uniformly observant. It did not, however, produce Torah giants. Eastern Europe, however, which allowed no secular involvement, produced many Torah luminaries. The price it paid, however, was the many dropouts from observance altogether.

Rav Dessler’s analysis was first published in 1963. Three years later, the journal Ha-Ma’ayan published an anonymous response. This response is not as well known as R. Dessler’s piece, and deserves some attention and thought, whatever people decide is the proper course for them.

It may be true, says the author, that R. Samson Raphael Hirsch’s Germany did not produce many Torah giants. It is … Read More >>

It took the United States a century and a half to tell itself that it had meaningfully rid itself of discrimination against African-Americans. Even so, few people really believe that anti-black sentiment has been removed from our society with the election of Barack Obama.

It may be profoundly disappointing to many of us, but it should not surprise us that Israel has not purged itself entirely of prejudice against Sefardim in much less time. To their great credit, there are subgroups and institutions that seem to have banished such prejudice entirely. It still exists in many places, including as many have pointed out, on the Supreme Court, where only one justice of fourteen is of Mizrahi origin.

People who tell television cameras that there is no prejudice against Sefardim in the haredi world because we study Rambam play the rest of Israeli society for fools. The prejudice is palpable and institutionalized – although far from uniform There have always been Torah figures who have opposed it. The most common forms of it that I have heard – and heard often – are two. One of them argues that cultural differences are potent enough that Ashkenazim and Sefardim simply shouldn’t … Read More >>

Inter alia means “among other things.” Legal types use it quite often, along with other choice Latin phrases. Using Latin adds presence, if not a bit of pretentiousness, to a document.

Sometimes, you need some pretentiousness to cover for the lack of substance. The Israeli High Court’s original decision on the Emanuel Bais Yaakov uses inter alia eleven times in the space of forty-nine pages with very, very wide margins. Remove the Latin, and very little else commands respect. As a part-time law prof, I find the decision an embarrassment – not for its conclusions as much as for its uninspired thought and shoddy support of key arguments. I would expect more from bright graduate students, let alone supposed legal luminaries.

Let me remove the issues that concern most people, which will distract from my thesis, which only concerns the way the Court goes about its business. I personally have no doubt that racism abounds in Israel, in many parts of the community, including a variety unique to the frum community. We should be campaigning vigorously against it, rather than denying it, and making foolish statements like “we can’t be racist – we learn Rambam.” … Read More >>