To be sure, readers have expressed valid concerns, especially with the advantage of hindsight.

Should the community ever work on behalf of a convicted murderer, or allow the secular courts to enforce the punishment that he deserves? This is a halachic question with an accompanying literature. R Yaakov Emden (Even Bochein 1:73), for example, finds within halacha a license for non-Jewish authorities to execute a Jewish criminal. Shut Chasam Sofer 6:14 strongly disagrees. I will leave the psak to others.

There were non-halachic concerns as well. Some were concerned with the perception by the family of the victim that our community was callous to their loss. Others were concerned with the idiot factor. Some of the messages sent to the Governor Crist present a strong case for substituting their authors for the perpetrator ... Read More >>]]> I have so little athletic ability, that I can’t be a good Monday morning quarterback – not even weeks later. Despite all that people have written – including most of my friends – I cannot fault the campaign that attempted to stop the execution of Martin Grossman. Moreover, I believe that the kernel idea behind it is absolutely essential to the survival of the State of Israel.

To be sure, readers have expressed valid concerns, especially with the advantage of hindsight.

Should the community ever work on behalf of a convicted murderer, or allow the secular courts to enforce the punishment that he deserves? This is a halachic question with an accompanying literature. R Yaakov Emden (Even Bochein 1:73), for example, finds within halacha a license for non-Jewish authorities to execute a Jewish criminal. Shut Chasam Sofer 6:14 strongly disagrees. I will leave the psak to others.

There were non-halachic concerns as well. Some were concerned with the perception by the family of the victim that our community was callous to their loss. Others were concerned with the idiot factor. Some of the messages sent to the Governor Crist present a strong case for substituting their authors for the perpetrator in the execution chamber. Calling them idiots is too generous.

While both of these concerns are valid, I find it hard to condemn the organizers of the campaign because of them. We should be faulted if we do not learn from this experience. But Jewish murderers are still a relative rarity. It should be understandable or at least excusable that people did not understand how the campaign would be perceived by others, or just how deeply idiotic are some of our chevra. We should note the mistakes, and act differently the next time – if chas v’shalom there ever is a next time.

Some have complained about a lack of consistency. Either we ought to support the death penalty in all cases, or oppose it. We should not pick and choose, based on how close we feel to the victim. We ought to act on principal, not on nepotism. I do not agree with this, as I will explain. But quite apart from this incident, I will argue that it might be time to rethink whether the Orthodox community should support the death penalty. I no longer do. The plain sense of the Rambam is that an eyewitness is required for a capital conviction in the Noachide Code. I recognize that some have argued that circumstantial evidence may be sufficient, on the basis of a passage in Moreh Nevuchim on the King’s Code. Additionally, Shut Maharam Shick, Orach Chaim #142 argues that wherever a single witness is dispositive, so is umdena (conclusion from circumstantial evidence). Further halachic consideration seems to be needed. But even if we could be convinced that circumstantial evidence would work halachically in some cases, the work of the Innocence Project has convinced enough people that we have set the bar too low on the evidence needed to take people’s lives. I am hoping that I will not be thrown out of shul for suggesting that the right course to take would be to oppose current death penalty laws.

I am most troubled by a different complaint. Many have commented that we should not have publicly acted to protect one of “our own” when it is likely that we would not or could not do the same for others. Too many Jews are embarrassed by one of our greatest assets – our sense of connection and caring for our own community first. Outside of the Orthodox community, shows of Jewish particularism are often anathematized. Some groups I have personally encountered show open contempt for agencies and campaigns that focus on Jews as Jews. There are Jews who will give generously to any need – except those that earmark other Jews as recipients.

These people detest Jewish particularism for two reasons, one ideological and one practical. They are wrong on both counts.

Ideologically, they argue, Jews should outgrow particularism. We may have needed it as a persecuted minority, but conditions are arguably better for us in the United States today. Having been scorned and shut out for centuries, we ought to shut out no one. We ought to make no distinctions, but embrace everyone.

This, however, simply does not work. The need for Jews to take care of each other is as strong today as it was at many other times in history, despite our remarkable privilege in this great country. The rebirth of open anti-Semitism in many places in the world should make that clear.

Even disregarding the practical need for Jews to take care of each other, universalism does not work as well as its proponents would like. Too many universalists are good at talking the talk, but few walk the walk, to translate their concern into devotion to the betterment of the lives of others. Loving everyone in general too often means loving no one in particular.

Concern for all people can be acquired, but it is a skill that must be learned. Part of our psycho-social development is a sense of our own selves, and its strength militates against sharing our little universe with others. The Torah has a realistic program to change that, to widen that universe so that our love includes ever more people. The Torah’s hashkafa, as best as I understand it, is to gradually draw a person out of the small world of a person’s own needs and experience. This is the first world known to all of us, and it takes training to expand that world to include others. We first enourage a person to practice ahavah on a mate that he or she has chosen freely. Next, children are added. We hope that the process continues, eventually encompassing community, nation, and all of mankind. (I believe I have seen this explicitly in the writings of Rav Kook, but cannot properly search at the moment.)

Skipping the intermediate steps, pushing for a love of everyone, leads to simplistic slogans, but little real action. The Torah expects us to first look out for those with whom we have the closest natural ties. (This is one of the explanations for the halachic rule that the needy of your own city come first. The Torah wishes to encourage the feelings of responsibility for those with whom we have some connection and affiliation.)

The world would be a better place (not a perfect one, but a better one) if all people acted upon this principle. We should not be completely dismissive of identity politics. African-Americans should identify with and take responsibility for other African-Americans. Similarly, Latinos should do the same for other Latinos, as should Korean-Americans in their communities.

Assigning pride of place to those closest to you does not mean that you need be uncaring of the other. You can devote most of your resources to your own, and still make your contribution to the general good. Those who have no room for anyone outside their own circles indeed do not understand the dynamic of the medinah she chesed that is the United States. We need not defend them.

Particularism does not contradict the urge to help the greater good. To the contrary. As stated above, the ability to love others is not present full-blown in most of us. It needs to be teased out and nurtured. When we teach ourselves to be helpful, concerned and generous to those closest to us, we gain the capacity to do the same to those a bit more distant. If we never practice the acts of kindness locally, we don’t get to the global applications.

My colleague Rabbi Abraham Cooper likes to point out that people like Paul Johnson and Thomas Cahill have inventoried the contributions that Jews have made to Western civilization. All of those contributions to the general good were made by particularistic Jews.

Some Jews oppose particularism on practical grounds. They feel that we are the only ones left who lavish privilege upon our own. Non-Jews, they argue, must certainly resent this, regarding it as clannish and primitive.

Apart from the hard-core anti-semites, my own experience is that fair-minded Americans don’t mind this closeness we have with our own, because they are busy practicing the same ethic. I have encountered individuals – particularly among serious Christians – who are impressive in addressing human need, regardless of where it is. Yet, these same people still feel an affinity for other Christians – and are not embarrassed by it. (One of the reasons that Israel is losing ground in some circles to Palestinians capitalizes on the tendency of church-goers to regard Palestinian Christians as “their own kind,” and offer them forums to tell their revisionist story that inevitably demonizes the Israel they do not know about – because they don’t think of offering equal time to the Jewish narrative!) (Some of what I’ve written in the past has been challenged by those who question whether I would say the same to a crowd of non-Jews. My answer always has been a loud “Yes!” This holds true here as well. Speaking at Pepperdine University a few weeks ago on the current state of interfaith activity – with the Los Angeles Times attending and taking notes – I declared for all to hear that one of the things I had learned through interaction with other faith communities is that Jews need not feel uncomfortable about particularism, since it was so widely practiced by others. The statement was not challenged by anyone in the audience.)

We pay for a reluctance to be seen as particularists in a number of important way. Many Jewish institutions are hurting not because Jewish giving is down, but because less and less of Jewish philanthropy is going to Jewish causes.

The worst manifestation of self-consciousness about loyalty to Jewish causes is J-Street, an organization that purports to support Israel, but never misses an opportunity to subvert Israel’s position in Congress and before the American people. J-Street has described itself as representing a different generation of Jews – proudly secular, rejecting traditional values, and very much in synch with general American concerns. At the core of J-Street’s malaise with overidentifying with Israel, I believe, is a reluctance to stand by other Jews qua Jews. (Organized American Muslims have absolutely no problem doing this for other Muslims.) They think of being seen as parochial as a horrible crime against humanity, on par with failing to exercise, or driving an SUV.

Israel will suffer for quite a while because of the sins of one turncoat named Goldstone. The errors and imbalance built into the Goldstone Report are legion. I cannot see how they could have been made had Goldstone possessed a stronger sense of responsibility for the impact of his words on fellow Jews around the world.

It is time for Jews to stop being sheepish and embarrassed about worrying about Jews as Jews. There is nothing wrong with it, and the mitzvah of ahavas Yisrael demands it of us. This is especially true of those of us who have nothing to be embarrassed about in our contribution to the general welfare of the larger communities we live and work in, and American life as a whole.

I did not speak to those in charge of the campaign to save Grossman, neither before nor after. My guess, however, is that they saw it as an opportunity for Jews to identify with another Jew, and there is too little of that around these days.

They showed that there are still strong leanings towards it, which could be tapped into. In that sense, the campaign was a success.

Here’s the quote:

Although it might seem unlikely that anyone would wonder whether the author of The Lord of the Rings was Jewish, the Nazis took no chances. When the publishing firm of Ruetten & Loening was negotiating with J. R. R. Tolkien over a German translation of The Hobbit in 1938, they demanded that Tolkien provide written assurance that he was an Aryan. Tolkien chastised the publishers for “impertinent and irrelevant inquiries,” and—ever the professor of philology— lectured them on the proper meaning of the term: “As far ... Read More >>]]> The premier issue of The Jewish Review of Books arrived in my mailbox a few days ago. It is more than impressive in its scope and the quality of its contributions. I hope to have more to say about it soon. I couldn’t resist posting this quote, from a rather well thought-out consideration of why Jews don’t have a fantasy literature, while Christians like C S Lewis not only did well at it, but used the genre as a very successful outreach tool. (Some of the arguments include the rootedness of Christian cultures in more recent paganism, and Judaism’s detesting of anything that attributes force or power to something outside of HKBH.)

Here’s the quote:

Although it might seem unlikely that anyone would wonder whether the author of The Lord of the Rings was Jewish, the Nazis took no chances. When the publishing firm of Ruetten & Loening was negotiating with J. R. R. Tolkien over a German translation of The Hobbit in 1938, they demanded that Tolkien provide written assurance that he was an Aryan. Tolkien chastised the publishers for “impertinent and irrelevant inquiries,” and—ever the professor of philology— lectured them on the proper meaning of the term: “As far as I am aware none of my ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or any related dialects.” As to being Jewish, Tolkien regretted that “I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people.”

J-Street is patur from the mitzvah of drinking on Purim. The entire year, they don’t know the difference between Arur Haman and Baruch Mordechai.

(Rav Nebenzahl, shlit”a, is the Rav of the Rova, and a former long-term chavrusa of R. Shlomo Zalman Auerbach, zt”l)

Washington – Free the gefilte fish! Just in time for Passover, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will try to resolve a trade dispute holding up a huge shipment of American-caught fish destined for seder dinners in Israel. Clinton drew chuckles from a congressional panel when she said that getting nine containers of Asian Carp filets from an Illinois fishery to a processing plant in Israel in time for the Jewish holiday “sounds to me like one of those issues that should rise to the highest levels of our government.”

She made the pledge Thursday to Rep. Don Manzullo, R-Ill. Manzullo said Israel slapped a 120-percent import duty on the fish, and he asked for help before the first seder on March 29.

“I will take that mission on,” she said.

According to the Aleinu Marital Satisfaction Survey—an anonymous online study conducted by the Orthodox Union in conjunction with a program of Jewish Family Service of Los Angeles and the Rabbinical Council of California—72% of Orthodox men and 74% of Orthodox women rated their marriages as excellent or very good. By contrast, only 63% of men and 60% of women in the public at large told the General Social Survey, conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, that they were very happy in their marriages.

Explaining why at one point he thought that a Jewish association for law students was needed only in the days of blatant bias in hiring Jews, Dershowitz shared that when he graduated, he was turned down by 32 Wall Street firms who would not hire Jews. Only the Jewish ones took him, and one withdrew when they learned he was shomer Shabbos. (I am pained when I hear of any Jew estranged from his or her Torah birthright; listening to Dershowitz’s brilliance intensified the pain, ... Read More >>]]> The national convention of the Jewish Law Students Association came to town, and I had the opportunity to speak several times, both at the opening banquet at the Museum of Tolerance, and later at the Sunday sessions at Pepperdine University in Malibu. Arguably, the high point of the gathering was the magisterial presentation over lunch by Alan Dershowitz. It was both an updated Case For Israel, and an unmasking of the evil of Goldstone. It is slated to go online soon as a YouTube; I would urge anyone who is sometimes called upon to state Israel’s case to see it. In the interim, I will simply share a few of his vignettes and choicer turns-of-a-phrase.

Explaining why at one point he thought that a Jewish association for law students was needed only in the days of blatant bias in hiring Jews, Dershowitz shared that when he graduated, he was turned down by 32 Wall Street firms who would not hire Jews. Only the Jewish ones took him, and one withdrew when they learned he was shomer Shabbos. (I am pained when I hear of any Jew estranged from his or her Torah birthright; listening to Dershowitz’s brilliance intensified the pain, realizing that he had distanced himself from the shemiras mitzvos with which he grew up.)

Why should there have to be a “Case For Israel”, he asked? No one writes a Case For Canada. Only Israel is called upon to defend her very existence.

The infamous Noam Chomsky of MIT, formerly of Shomer Hatzair, was his camp counselor.

Abbott Lawrence Lowell, Harvard’s President, tried to impose quotas on Jews. “Jews cheat.” Judge Learned Hand wrote to him: But Christians cheat too! Lowell: Don’t change the subject. We’re talking about Jews! Dershowitz: This is what happens in the UN whenever Israel tries to defend itself. The argument about what the Palestinians are doing is rebuffed. We’re only talking about Israel and her crimes!

He had told Goldstone before the infamous report that he, Goldstone, had an obligation to state what Israel should have done in the face of 8000 rockets. Goldstone had no satisfactory response.

Elie Wiesel “It there is one lesson of the Holocaust it is to take the threats of your enemies more seriously than the promises of your friends.”

Dean Acheson: No country has ever had to have its survival depend on international law.

The International Court of Justice (unlike the International Criminal Courtt) is not a real court. The head judge when Israel’s security fence was considered was from China (which has over 800 such fences in Tibet). He was the figure in charge of China’s handling of Tienanmen Square.

Knows from personal knowledge that Sharon went to W and urged him not to attack Iraq, and focus instead on Iran. So much for Jews leading the US into the war.

Speaking at Irvine, saw among 1000 attendees, including two groups of obviously pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian attendees. Called on the crowd. “Who here is pro-Israel?” One group of 100 hands went up. “OK, how many of you would accept a Palestinian state?” Almost all the same hands stayed up. “OK, how many are pro-Palestinian?” A different group of 100 went up. “How many of you would accept a Jewish State?” No hands went up. Dershowitz: “With that, I won the debate. The Dean came over and said, ‘I never knew that.’ Always target the 800 in the middle, not the people at the extremes.”

“I am effective because I don’t make the 100% case for Israel, but the 80% case. Like any patriot, I am critical of the country I love, and so I disagree some of the time. I oppose J-Street because the only case they make is the 20% case.”

“The Germany responsible for the Holocaust began in the universities.”

He had to duck out as soon as he finished, to catch a plane to the East Coast, there to do some back-door lobbying against the scheduled execution r”l of Martin Grossman.

It doesn’t have to be that way. There is a tasteful and appropriate way to ask for clemency or review. Rabbi Chaim Dovid Zweibel articulated it perfectly in his mailing today, reproduced below. I hope that all will respond to this call.

No one need to have misgivings about asking for clemency. Other people from very different frames of reference will be making the same arguments. I friend of mine, decidedly outside the haredi and Agudah orbits, reminded me today that we knew Mike Farrell, the actor who played BJ Hunnicut decades ago on M*A*S*H (This was on a show that none of our readers ever watched, on a gadget ... Read More >>]]> The comments I read on the first sites and petition forms that I saw left me very uncomfortable and torn. The arguments were primitive, hopelessly parochial – to the point that they struck me as creating a chilul Hashem. Do we want to save a life BE”H at the expense of creating a chilul Hashem? (I have seen this time and time again. Frum Jews pack the courtroom at a sentencing hearing and say the most outlandish things, sometimes impacting the judge to move in the very opposite direction that they wanted.)

It doesn’t have to be that way. There is a tasteful and appropriate way to ask for clemency or review. Rabbi Chaim Dovid Zweibel articulated it perfectly in his mailing today, reproduced below. I hope that all will respond to this call.

No one need to have misgivings about asking for clemency. Other people from very different frames of reference will be making the same arguments. I friend of mine, decidedly outside the haredi and Agudah orbits, reminded me today that we knew Mike Farrell, the actor who played BJ Hunnicut decades ago on M*A*S*H (This was on a show that none of our readers ever watched, on a gadget called a television that none of us ever had.  In my case, I can actually say that I did not have a TV in that time, and saw not a single episode.) Mike is pretty far to the left, but a person of impressive and deep conviction. My friend emailed him, and learned that indeed, his chevrah know about the scheduled execution, and as implacable foes of the death penalty, are agitating against it. My guess is that they will also go the practical route, and ask for clemency, rather than froth at the mouth and attack the entire institution of capital punishment.

Rabbi Zweibel’s letter:

As you may know, a Jewish man is slated for execution – Rachmana litzlan! – in Florida next Tuesday. Martin Grossman was convicted of killing Margaret Parks, a Florida Wildlife Officer, in 1984, when he was 19 years old. He did so while under the influence of drugs and alcohol, and in an act of panic, not premeditation. He has conducted himself as a model prisoner since his incarceration some 25 years ago and has shown profound remorse and regret for his actions.

Agudath Israel has joined other Orthodox Jewish groups in asking Florida Governor Charlie Crist to grant clemency to Mr. Grossman, and we have also requested a meeting in person with Governor Crist to discuss the matter.

But it is important that the Governor hear from the grassroots as well – certainly from people who live or spend significant time in Florida, but even from non-Floridians. His e-mail address is Charlie.Crist@eog.myflorida.com , his phone number is (850) 488-7146 and he can be faxed at 850-487-0801. Letters and calls should be polite pleas to the Governor to take into account Mr. Grossman’s youth and impairment at the time of the crime and his good behavior and remorse in the years since. And the request should be that Mr. Grossman be permitted to serve his debt to society by serving the rest of his life in prison.

May we have happier occasions to demonstrate our achdus and ahavas Yisroel. And may our action here merit us such times.

The dimensions of his accomplishment are breathtaking. Starting from the ground up, he built a university whose scope and scale swamp those of much older institutions. Learning programs, academic programs, vocational programs, day programs, evening programs, undergraduate, graduate and professional schools, in New York, across the country, and in foreign countries – if it could be imagined, Bernie Lander ... Read More >>]]> I don’t believe that I will ever again meet anyone like Bernie Lander. I’ve met two kinds of people best described as bigger than life: those of huge vision, and those of huge accomplishment. Both are essential to a forward-moving community. Each adds an invaluable element to the full picture. Each kind usually has a deficiency. Those with the necessary vision are often incapable of translating that vision into a reality, and those who are builders and doers often narrow their vision to the job in front of them, and no further. Rabbi Dr. Lander was the only person I ever met whose creative imagination was enormous – and whose vision was matched perfectly by his performance. Somehow, he managed to make all the dreams come true. He talked big, but there was not gap between the talk and the walk.

The dimensions of his accomplishment are breathtaking. Starting from the ground up, he built a university whose scope and scale swamp those of much older institutions. Learning programs, academic programs, vocational programs, day programs, evening programs, undergraduate, graduate and professional schools, in New York, across the country, and in foreign countries – if it could be imagined, Bernie Lander made it happen. He faced many obstacles, in the form of nay-sayers and kana’im. He ignored both. (He can serve as a role model for standing up against the myopia of the zealots, and prevailing against the bunch of them.)

To me, one of his most admirable traits was concentrating so much of his energy on people who did not even affiliate with his world. Dr. Lander identified primarily with the Centrist Orthodox community, and served as an office of the OU for decades. (His son, however, the Rosh Yeshiva of Ohr HaChaim, learned in Brisk.) Yet the most important beneficiary of his vision is the American charedi world. Certainly the dynamism of the Touro institutions is one of the reasons why American charedim are not mired in the financial despair of their Israeli counterparts. When enough students on the right would entertain some form of higher education, but would not set foot on a secular college campus, he tailor-made programs that they would consider. If they demanded frum teachers, he got them. If they wanted separate hours for men and women (or even separate evenings, to insure no mixing), he provided that as well. He offered his programs in ways that yeshiva bochrim would be subject to the least amount of bitul Torah to take them. He provided training in the areas most suitable to frum family life. In time, he developed programs even in Israel, so that long-time learners who wanted to pick up a skill set could do so, without grating on their life style. Bending over backwards became a fine art to him, not an irritation.

It will take decades to fully grasp his impact. When Avraham Avinu planted an eishel/ tamarisk tree, Chazal see an allusion to its acronym: achilah shesiah, levayah, a place of food, drink, and accompaniment. Avraham provided for the material needs of the wayfarer – and then instructed them to regard the Ribbono Shel Olam as their benefactor, rather than himself. Taking up that theme, we must regard Bernie Lander as planting an entire forest. There are thousands upon thousands of people today who are able to support their families through the dignity of their work only because of the training that he made available to them. Their mitzvos are his.

He did not claim to be the Gadol Hador. He may, however, have truly been the Parnas Hador – with deliberate allusion to two nuances of meaning in the word “parnas.”

יהי זכרו ברוך

Years later, I would often be asked the same or similar question by talmidim. What purpose, they would ask, do the Chinese serve? (Those were the years in which they were the Bad Guy Commies, not our trading partners and major consumers of our debt, so the question made at least limited sense.)

As the years went by, I modified my expectation of what I should find explicitly mentioned by Chazal and what I should not find. It’s a pity, because I think I ... Read More >>]]> China used to bother me quite a bit when I was younger. A lot of people seemed to live there, but it was notoriously absent from the world view of Chazal. (At that point in life, I had assumed that if something was real, it had to be explicitly featured in the chief texts of our mesorah.) How could something that big escape the notice of Chazal? One could follow a thread in Chazal that reduced the course of human civilization to a clash between Yaakov and Esav (after a few minor intrusions). There were many supporting actors besides the ones with top billing, but the Chinese didn’t rate as understudies or even extras.

Years later, I would often be asked the same or similar question by talmidim. What purpose, they would ask, do the Chinese serve? (Those were the years in which they were the Bad Guy Commies, not our trading partners and major consumers of our debt, so the question made at least limited sense.)

As the years went by, I modified my expectation of what I should find explicitly mentioned by Chazal and what I should not find. It’s a pity, because I think I found the answer to a question I no longer have. It was somehow not a surprise to find it in a thought of Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch, as I was preparing my weekly The Timeless Rav Hirsch shiur for publication.

It wasn’t just the words of Rav Hirsch. Hashgacha, and my role on a beis din for gerus had plenty to do with it.

Within the last year, I have had the privilege of meeting a few wonderful gerus candidates from China and other parts of the Pacific Rim. As is my wont, I first push hard – really hard – to convince candidates that they have no need to convert. They can be fine people without it; Judaism does not expect everyone to become Jewish; Jews face new insecurities and uncertainties about the future in a world in which “itbach al-Yahud” (Slaughter the Jews) is a more familiar cry than “Play ball!”

They push back, and I resist some more. Eventually, it becomes clear whether I can succeed in cooling a would-be convert’s ardor.

Several times in the past year, we got to the point where I almost gave up, and had to use my trump card. This card is reserved for those from the Far East. It has worked each time.

“OK, I see I am getting nowhere with you. You are determined to become Jewish, despite having had your eyes opened to the risks. You know how difficult and detailed halachic life can be, and you still want to go ahead. You are prepared to (pick all the ones that apply to your gender) give up easily available food; stop eating cheeseburgers; get up every morning for minyan; throw out your wardrobe and wear hot frumpy skirts in the summer; deal with a pool of potential mates smaller than the number of fiscally responsible people known to Nancy Pelosi. You claim that the discipline resonates within you, and that you cherish the values of traditional Judaism. You have looked at the heterodox movements and have come to believe that they are a sham. One small problem remains. Living the life style isn’t enough, and won’t even work, unless you firmly believe in the assumptions behind it. The most important assumption is the existence of G-d, a Being about Whom you were completely unfamiliar until very recently. He just is not part of the working vocabulary in your former part of the world. You cannot convert without a G-d concept, and I cannot figure out where you are going to find one, coming from your background!”

Stops ‘em dead in their tracks, each time.

But not for long. It sometimes took them months before they returned, but they did come back, with clear, articulate responses that were inspiring to listen to. They are not for publicizing now, as they would violate the privacy of some wonderful friends. I can share a sense of wonder at the ability of some deeply intelligent people who have never known of a deity to look back at their lives and discover G-d within them. The idea of G-d, so absent from parts of the East, can trigger inner conviction when presented to people in the proper manner. I guess that if I were a Presbyterian missionary in Taiwan at the end of the 19th century I would not be surprised, but that experience has (mercifully) escaped me.

As a believer, I was pleased that the idea of G-d could resonate deeply in those who had never heard (literally!) of Him. I was even more struck by the realization that billions of people simply had no need for the concept in the first place.

How could this be? Many important Rishonim treated emunah as a tautology hundreds of years ago. Prime Mover and First Cause arguments presumed that a person needed to know how the universe got here, and would understand the need for a Being that was responsible for creation in order to answer the question. There is no shortage of people in our community today who maintain that belief is tautological, that compelling evidence of His Existence is apparent to all those who do not deliberately close their eyes to it. How could it be that there are billions of people for whom the answer not self-evident? Moreover, they are not concerned with the question either!

Rav Hirsch provided some insight. With their backs to the Sea and the Egyptian army closing in on them, the Bnei Yisrael cynically confront Moshe. “Were there no graves in Egypt that you took us here to die?” Don’t be shocked by their lack of bitachon, says Rav Hirsch. Their disbelief is of great use to us to this very day. If our ancestors were the kind of people to be taken in by a charismatic leader who produced some great victory for them, we could not really trust their acceptance of our faith. They weren’t. They were stiff-necked skeptics who challenged Moshe again and again. Yet by the end of Devarim, their skepticism had turned to belief and commitment so firm that their descendants would endure the privations of the Galus rather than turn their backs on their beliefs. Something of significance had happened to make firm believers out of them.

Among the arguments of the New Atheists is the notion that there is a G-d gene, a byproduct of evolution that predisposes humans to belief in a higher power. If this were true, the effectiveness of all arguments for belief would be compromised. (NB – I used the word “arguments,” rather than “proofs.” At least to the people with whom I have dealt, the latter just do not work.) The Gra is supposed to have urged people to substitute Kuzari for Shaar ha-Yichud in Chovos ha-Levavos, claiming that Kuzari represents the authentic mesorah of the Jewish people. It might follow from this that the authentic argument for Jewish belief is R.Yehudah ha-Levi’s (author of Kuzari) argument that Jews know G-d because they were there, because they enjoyed a historical relationship with Him.

If all human beings were possessed (as I had been led to believe in my youth) of a real need to believe in a higher power, we would be more likely to doubt our mesorah of such a relationship, as surely as we would if we thought that earlier generations were gullible pushovers. Billions of Chinese demonstrate that there is no such compelling need. Like the skepticism of those who questioned Moshe moments before the splitting of the Reed Sea, the Chinese fortify our mesorah for belief!

Something doesn’t smell right about the story.

The problem was certainly not with the Philadelphia PD. They couldn’t know about olfactories, having their hands full coping with all those late-night disturbances at the Philadelphia Yeshiva, one of the most notorious party-schools in the country.

The destination of the plane is cause for suspicion. Louisville is where the Presbyterian Church (USA) is headquartered. PCUSA was the first mainline Protestant denomination to approve divestment of its investment funds from Israel (although later repealed by its membership, which is not hostile to Israel, unlike some of its leadership). Its Israel-Palestine Mission Network routinely posts some of the worst anti-Israel – and, on occasion, anti-Semitic – material ... Read More >>]]> I just watched the YouTube of Chief Inspector Joe Sullivan of the Philadelphia Police Department explain what went wrong on that flight to Louisville Thursday morning. A cabin attendant, not familiar with the Jewish ritual device, became alarmed, etc. The plane was diverted to Philadelphia, where police determined that the device was no threat to safety. It is a black box worn on the forehead, with leather straps leading from it to another box worn on the arm. The device is known as an olfactory.

Something doesn’t smell right about the story.

The problem was certainly not with the Philadelphia PD. They couldn’t know about olfactories, having their hands full coping with all those late-night disturbances at the Philadelphia Yeshiva, one of the most notorious party-schools in the country.

The destination of the plane is cause for suspicion. Louisville is where the Presbyterian Church (USA) is headquartered. PCUSA was the first mainline Protestant denomination to approve divestment of its investment funds from Israel (although later repealed by its membership, which is not hostile to Israel, unlike some of its leadership). Its Israel-Palestine Mission Network routinely posts some of the worst anti-Israel – and, on occasion, anti-Semitic – material on the globe. I betcha they planted the olfactories, just to make Jews look bad. The seventeen year old passenger probably wasn’t even Jewish but evangelical, about the only people they hate more than Jews.

The ones who would seem to have been most culpable are the Homeland Security people. It’s not like they are all sleeping. They certainly have spent time making sure that they are not profiling. It takes great wisdom to put into place procedures to courteously board Muslim extremists flying one way and paying cash, and whose fathers have alerted authorities to the danger.

On the more serious side, it wasn’t the fault of the organized Jewish community. Mark Weitzman of the New York office of the Simon Wiesenthal Center (my employer) had the conversation with an official of Homeland Security three or four years ago. He spoke of the need of a manual about America’s different religious communities, and what they might be bringing on planes at different times of the year. We offered to provide the Jewish content. They were receptive, but there was no follow-up that we are aware of. (On a different occasion, I wrote such a piece for TSA, which has been more than cooperative each year in assuring that frum passengers will not be detonated for carrying their lulavim around Sukkos time.) At this point, Homeland Security will hopefully swing into action, and find a way to share the information with the airlines.

Should the young man have davened on the plane? I’ve fielded the question too many times today. Everyone I know has been sensitive to the problem of frightening passengers who may not be familiar with the arcane habits of traditional Jews. (A yeshiva-days friend recalls the time his father, a butcher, came into his store and found his tefillin torn apart. Suspecting a worker, he told him that he was not interested in punishing the culprit, but finding the missing parshiyos. The worker ‘fessed up. Asked why he did it, the worker told him that it was common knowledge that Jews worship money, which is why they don tefillin each day. Inside those tefillin, of course, was a wad of cash.) We try, whenever possible, to daven in a quiet part of the passenger waiting area before or after the flight. More of us should try to do so. It is not always possible. On some longer flights, the entire time appropriate for shacharis is spent on the plane. And even those who try to leave room enough to daven before a flight can get caught in traffic on the way to the airport or at security. Flights that seem to leave enough time to daven upon arrival often push up their arrival time because of ground delays.

The bottom line is that we should be more circumspect where possible, and try not to daven on planes whose passengers may become upset. If we have to, we should first notify a cabin attendant. We should not, however, assume all the responsibility upon ourselves. There is nothing illegal or inappropriate about quietly praying on one’s seat. (It may be an effective hedge against shoe-bombers and turbulence.) It is the airlines that bear the ultimate responsibility to familiarize its personnel regarding the habits of significant subpopulations of the flying public.

[Thanks to Mara Kochba, LA, for submitting the YouTube URL]

To a large extent, charitable giving in times of catastrophe is related to feelings of commonality. As of this writing, contributions in the US are ahead of those after the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004, despite the much higher death toll then. Haiti is America’s neighbor, and Americans therefore feel more of a bond.

For frum Jews with scores of needs competing for our tzedakah funds – some of them life-threatening – the issue is more complicated. I have nothing to say to those who could ... Read More >>]]> I was pleased that Agudah very quickly sent out a message pointing people to suitable agencies to which to donate. (I was frankly horrified that they included Oxfam, the virulently anti-Israel NGO. More suitable agencies are not in short supply.) It was understandable that Agudah did not mount a campaign of their own – they do not have a website. The OU does have one, and within a short period of time it had put a donation mechanism in place. Funds collected will go directly to the American Joint Distribution Center, which has already helped defray the cost of the Israeli relief mission. This is where I made my donation.

To a large extent, charitable giving in times of catastrophe is related to feelings of commonality. As of this writing, contributions in the US are ahead of those after the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004, despite the much higher death toll then. Haiti is America’s neighbor, and Americans therefore feel more of a bond.

For frum Jews with scores of needs competing for our tzedakah funds – some of them life-threatening – the issue is more complicated. I have nothing to say to those who could be completely indifferent to human suffering. ורחמיו על כל מעשיו.
Anyone who is not moved by the pictures of pain and privation cannot be a decent human being, let alone a decent Jew. To paraphrase Shakespeare, “Hath not a Haitian eyes? hath not a Haitian hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as any other person is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die?”

Beyond the necessary heart-felt compassion, I believe that our response will show how well our minds have internalized the notion of Tzlelem Elokim. There are few ties between ourselves and Haitians – despite Haiti’s welcoming Jews fleeing from Hitler, and its voting the right way during the UN partition vote in 1947 that allowed the creation of the Jewish State. We still see Haiti as primitive country, the poorest in the Western hemisphere. We regard it as lawless and chaotic, not a place we would even want to visit. Its culture does not impact upon ours; there are few, if any, shared interests and experiences. If we take Tzelem Elokim seriously, however, we have all the commonality we need to have.

From Haiti there are stories that point to that tzelem. Stories of people in this poorest of places opening the homes that still stand to strangers. People working around the clock with simple implements, and with their bare hands, responding to the cries of strangers, and staving off sleep in order to try to free them from the rubble.

As a group, we throw the concept of Tzelem Elokim around pretty liberally when we want to show off the Jewish contribution to world civilization, or militate against pulling the plug on end-term patients. How we react to what is happening in these crucial days – with our minds as well as our hearts – says a good deal about how much of what we talk about we really believe.

Assume, for the sake of argument, that the account is accurate. (My own practice is to follow R. Elyashiv’s own directive, and assume that nothing quoted in his name is accurate, unless heard directly from him. Even then, I would be skeptical if any background information regarding an issue that was delivered to him by one of his more notorious gatekeepers, who are known to color, filter, and distort.) Was R. Elyashiv dismissive of the possibility that the unfortunate young man from Brazil was possessed by a dybbuk? Did he, like R. Moshe Sternbuch, shlit”a, see mental illness as the cause of the aberrant behavior, rather than a freeloading spirit? Or did he dismiss the dybbuk because he had nothing to say to it, and didn’t particularly relish its company?

The same account claims that R. Elyashiv certainly did not rule out the possibility of a real case of possession. Shlomo Kook, the ... Read More >>]]> While Rabbi Dovid Batzri’s first attempt to drive the dybbuk out was not apparently successful, R. Elyashiv, shtlit”a, reportedly refused to allow it in in the first place, according to the account in Chadrei Chareidim. “Go away from here. I have no business with a dibuk.”

Assume, for the sake of argument, that the account is accurate. (My own practice is to follow R. Elyashiv’s own directive, and assume that nothing quoted in his name is accurate, unless heard directly from him. Even then, I would be skeptical if any background information regarding an issue that was delivered to him by one of his more notorious gatekeepers, who are known to color, filter, and distort.) Was R. Elyashiv dismissive of the possibility that the unfortunate young man from Brazil was possessed by a dybbuk? Did he, like R. Moshe Sternbuch, shlit”a, see mental illness as the cause of the aberrant behavior, rather than a freeloading spirit? Or did he dismiss the dybbuk because he had nothing to say to it, and didn’t particularly relish its company?

The same account claims that R. Elyashiv certainly did not rule out the possibility of a real case of possession. Shlomo Kook, the editor of HaShavua B’Yerushalayim, attended the ill-fated attempt at a videoconferenced exorcism, and reported on its details in his paper. He then looked back at the celebrated predecessor to today’s dybbuk, the infamous dybbuk of Dimona, a bit over a decade ago. Kook reports that R. Elyashiv was asked at the time whether the story should be told to children, since not everyone believed that it was an actual dybbuk they were up against. According to Kook, R. Elyashiv responded:

“Can you say for certain it wasn’t genuine?” adding, “If some are encouraged (receive chizuk) by this, why not tell?”

This is the message this week regarding the dibuk of Brazil “whether we are dealing with a dibuk or not” the chareidi papers reported, quoting Maran R’ Elyashiv, echoing his words from 11 years ago – “if people receive a chizuk from this, why not?”

Many years prior to all of this, R. Simcha Wasserman zt”l spent one of his last Shabbosim in Los Angeles at our yeshiva, prior to his aliyah to Israel. Someone asked him what he knew about the Chofetz Chaim’s dybbuk – the one that R. Simcha’s father, R. Elchonon Wasserman hy”d had watched the Chofetz Chaim dispatch back to Dybbuk Central. R. Elchonon reportedly talked about the event only once a year. Would R. Simcha share the story?

R. Simcha demurred. “Yiddishkeit is difficult enough for many people to accept without burdening them with stories about dybbuks.”

R. Simcha’s was a very different reaction, born perhaps out of his experience with a very different population of Jews. Having lived among Americans, both frum and not frum, R. Simcha knew that while such stories might give some people a boost to their emunah, they could seriously hamper the growth of others.

For the haredi community in Israel, tales of a dybbuk might indeed bring chizuk. When the possessed woman came around eight months later and complained that she was put up to the entire drama by people who wanted to milk it for its propaganda purposes, the purported confession appeared in Ha’aretz. (I say “purported” because I generally pay less attention to Ha’aretz’s treatment of anything religious than I do to a would-be dybbuk. Some of its journalists write as if possessed by multiple demons.) Now, Ha’aretz is not a paper generally read by haredim. Many, many people still believe that ten years ago, R. Batzri conversed with a dybbuk, recorded his voice, and then succeeded in obtaining a summary eviction. To them, both dybbuk stories are sources of chizuk.

To many others, however, both stories are the polar opposite. They are about supposedly discerning people preferring irrationality (or at least meta-rationality) above rational and commonsensical explanations. They create problems and doubts for people who struggle with criticism of their life style by people who see them as superstitious, anti-intellectual, narrow and primitive. They have answers for those people, but those answers are compromised by the behavior of their coreligionists, particularly when a dreaded dybbuk is unmasked as a foolish fraud.

Chizuk is good – as long as there is no strong probability that it will turn into the opposite under scrutiny. In more insular communities, that scrutiny is not very likely, and there is at least room to embrace the chizuk. For those of us in more open societies, every possibility of chizuk has to be weighed against the significant chance that it will be stood on its head. We must be far more prudent, as R. Simcha was.
The real lesson, I believe, is an old one that is often ignored. The needs and realities of the Torah community in Israel are not identical with those here. What is right in Bnei Brak is toxic here. All sorts of questions need to be asked and answered closer to ground zero, because advice appropriate to the tzibur in Israel is not appropriate here.

Realizing this may be the first step in ridding ourselves of our own community’s demons.

It may not be surprising, until you read a bit more in a lovely article in the Wall Street Journal (January 6), and thereby discover that this formula is attributed to Socrates, or perhaps Buddhist tradition. Either way, the authors apparently came up with program for civilizing and uplifting speech civil with very little help from Sura, Pumbedisa, or Neherda’a.

Did they scoop us? Maybe not. There is no question that society would be in a better place if more people would use this tripartite litmus test before speaking (or blogging!). Under closer scrutiny, however, the program turns out to be unworkable. Seen from a Torah perspective, it is not only unworkable, but inaccurate as well!

Lest we be seen as intolerably persnickety, let us give credit where due. The article is a pleasure to read. It is good to hear that many people are aware of the damage done by ... Read More >>]]> Simple instructions often claim “three” as their magic number. Think, “It’s as easy as A,B,C,” or “ready, aim, fire,” or “liberté, égalité, fraternité.” So it shouldn’t be surprising that someone telescoped the rules of justifiable speech into three simple questions: Is it true? Is it kind? Is it necessary?

It may not be surprising, until you read a bit more in a lovely article in the Wall Street Journal (January 6), and thereby discover that this formula is attributed to Socrates, or perhaps Buddhist tradition. Either way, the authors apparently came up with program for civilizing and uplifting speech civil with very little help from Sura, Pumbedisa, or Neherda’a.

Did they scoop us? Maybe not. There is no question that society would be in a better place if more people would use this tripartite litmus test before speaking (or blogging!). Under closer scrutiny, however, the program turns out to be unworkable. Seen from a Torah perspective, it is not only unworkable, but inaccurate as well!

Lest we be seen as intolerably persnickety, let us give credit where due. The article is a pleasure to read. It is good to hear that many people are aware of the damage done by gossip – both to the target and to the gossipmonger. It is a pleasant surprise to learn that some employers are so serious about banning it, that engaging in gossip can be grounds for dismissal; that some are teaching elementary school children to avoid socially damaging speech; that an old Aish HaTorah project (not identified as such in the article) called WordsCanHeal.org, succeeded in attracting the backing and support of an impressive number of major celebrities.

There will always be nay-sayers:

At the same time, gossip is a social interaction. “Is it kind? Is it necessary? Those are good questions,” says Dr. [Susan] Hafen [a professor of communication at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah]. “But it would be a boring world if we always had to tiptoe around, being kind. For one thing, we wouldn’t be able to tell any jokes.”

More seriously, she says, prohibiting gossip that isn’t “kind” may be a way of “avoiding unpleasantness, of fence-sitting, of not rocking the boat. If we only tell kind stories about people, then we may be avoiding holding people responsible for their actions.”

The second point is certainly valid, and from a Jewish perspective, even understated. If speech must always be kind, all kinds of evil will never be exposed, and therefore never resisted. Beyond manifestly evil behavior, much other information is seen by Jewish law as necessary to be shared, and therefore permissible even when unkind. The heter of “le-to’eles” is well-established and well-known.

In halacha, one of the three prongs of the test is inaccurate, and the other two are interdependent. The truth of the report is largely irrelevant. The laws of lashon hora apply even if the information is entirely true. (If it isn’t, further prohibitions kick in.) Kindness and necessity do a dance around each other. Any speech that is derogatory (i.e. unkind) is prohibited – unless it happens to be necessary, in which case it often isn’t! Not unexpectedly, many conditions must be met before justifying the unkind speech, and for them we need to immerse ourselves in halachic texts.

Perhaps we catch a glimpse here of another dimension of a familiar aphorism of Chazal: יש חכמה בגוים תאמן… יש תורה בגוים אל תאמן
The non-Jewish formulation shows chochmah/wisdom. It provides much to think about, and much to emulate. It can inspire, but not quite offer direction in every situation. Those who seek such guidance are looking for a legal system, not sermonics, however compelling. Torah is a legal system, going beyond general advice to a reliable yardstick in all circumstances. The non-Jewish world produces much chochmah – but not Torah. For a self-contained, systematic legal approach, we need more than human wisdom. Looking for it, it will be best to bypass Socrates, and run straight to Sefer Chofetz Chaim.

[Thanks to Rabbi Ephraim Buchwald of NJOP for providing the link.]

When a good friend of mine excitedly told me about a successful presentation to a non-Orthodox audience, I asked him to send me the transcript. Rabbi Meyer May is the Executive Director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) in Los Angeles, where I work. He was asked to speak in Dublin at an event over the New Year’s weekend co-sponsored by iACT (SWC’s campus outreach wing) and the European Center for Jewish Students. The students from Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, London, Dublin, Marseilles, Lyon, Paris, Antwerp, Brussels, Amsterdam, Russia, the Ukraine, Brazil, Berlin, Dusseldorf, Sweden and Gibraltar. The speech was met with ... Read More >>]]> Dovid HaMelech prided himself in speaking enthusiastically and unabashedly to foreign royalty about Hashem’s Torah (Tehilim 119:46). Too many of us react, “Gee, if I were in that position, what would I say? Why would they be interested?” We have lots to say, but we haven’t always thought carefully enough about what parts of the Torah’s message are most accessible and stimulating to others. Because of our reluctance to intelligently showcase Torah (and increasingly, the sorry state of our communications skills), we lose opportunities to influence our friends and neighbors, whether of royal lineage or not.

When a good friend of mine excitedly told me about a successful presentation to a non-Orthodox audience, I asked him to send me the transcript. Rabbi Meyer May is the Executive Director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) in Los Angeles, where I work. He was asked to speak in Dublin at an event over the New Year’s weekend co-sponsored by iACT (SWC’s campus outreach wing) and the European Center for Jewish Students. The students from Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, London, Dublin, Marseilles, Lyon, Paris, Antwerp, Brussels, Amsterdam, Russia, the Ukraine, Brazil, Berlin, Dusseldorf, Sweden and Gibraltar. The speech was met with rousing and sustained applause, and led to much further interaction with the students.

Most of the ideas will not be new to our readers, but I present it for its elegant balance, as a model of how to reach across the divide. It combines the right amounts of history, contemporary name-dropping, inspirational material – and divrei Torah that are not watered down. (Humor, too, but I deleted the joke, since you’ve all heard it .)

We should be doing more of this kind of thing.

Just a little over two years ago, I was one of the leaders of a Simon Wiesenthal Center delegation that was given a private audience with Pope Benedict at the Vatican. At that meeting, we discussed with the Pope the ironies of history. “Can you believe”, we said, “that 65 years ago, the world was preoccupied with the threat of Communism and a doctrine that denied the existence of G-d? And now it is religious fanatics who have sought to bring civilization to a terrified halt”?

We also spoke about the grand mystery of Jewish survival. How is it that his “elder brothers” managed to persevere throughout the generations and the attempts at extermination? No one people, it seems, is more experienced with dealing with existential threats than we, the Jewish People.

Despite a millennium of persecution, the Jewish People has proven itself resilient beyond reason, surviving against all odds and against all enemies. Great empires have come and gone, but miraculously, our small and numerically insignificant nation has demonstrated time and time again that it is invincible – both physically and spiritually! Consider the Jews in the Kovno Ghetto whom the Nazis forced to sing as they were marched to their extermination. One Jew began singing a tune, “Mir velen zey iberlebin” (We shall outlive them) with the others soon joining in.

How, indeed, is it that we have managed to outlive the murderers of mankind and those whose hatred for us has known no bounds? What is the key, the secret, if you will, to our survival? Might it be that G-d has endowed us with extra special gifts — with the brains, values and talent — to survive as His Eternal People!

Isn’t this what King David meant, as explained Rabbi Avrohom Chaim Feuer, when he wrote in his Psalm, “Ki yitzpanani b’suko”? That, “Often when I am in danger, a shelter seems to appear as if by chance. I am not misled. I know that G-d, Himself, has provided this salvation and that it is His shelter”.

You see, King David is revealing to us that often, and most often unbeknownst to us, G-d will provide the emergency skills or just the plain good fortune we need to protect and preserve us. Often, these gifts appear disproportionately, as if purposefully planted within our Jewish National DNA to assure our survival, all without leaving discernible, Divine fingerprints.

Essentially, G-d has our backs. He has endowed us with all the capacities we need to outlast the powerful who have tried a hundred times to wipe us out. And we, Jews, are not the only ones who know it! Honest non-Jews have drawn their own similar conclusions.

George Gilder, an important writer whose essays are always worth reading, wrote that Jews form, “The vanguard of human achievement…. At the heart of anti-Semitism is resentment of Jewish achievement…. Jews attract extraordinary hostility because they have succeeded in extraordinary measure.”

As evidence he writes that in the first half of the 20th century, Jews won 14 per cent of the Noble Prizes awarded in Literature, chemistry, physics and medicine. In the second half of the 20th century, the percentage rose to 29 per cent. Thus far in the 21st century, the percentage has risen to 32 per cent.

And read, too, other flattering perceptions of Jews by other renowned Gentiles:

Winston Churchill said, “Some people like the Jews, and some do not. But no thoughtful man can deny the fact that they are, beyond any question, the most formidable and the most remarkable race which has appeared in the world.”

Irish Author, Thomas Cahill wrote, “The Jew gave us the Outside and the Inside – our outlook and our inner life. We can hardly get up in the morning or cross the street without being Jewish. We dream Jewish dreams and hope Jewish hopes. Most of our best words, in fact, new, adventure, surprise, unique, individual, person, vocation, time, history, future, freedom, progress, spirit, faith, hope, and justice – are the gifts of the Jews.

And lastly, Matthew Arnold, the noted British poet and critic wrote, “As long as the world lasts, all who want to make progress in righteousness will come to Israel for inspiration as they are the people who had the sense for righteousness most glowing and strongest”

Yes, we Jews have been endowed with so many gifts and so many talents – even a great sense of humor. Sometimes we are even too smart for our own selves and outsmart ourselves! Sometimes we are even our own worst enemies! But if we are honest, we must acknowledge that we have been gifted — and we have quite the book of business in world affairs, in the arts and sciences, finance and technology — to show for it!

But we have also been bestowed with some indispensible spiritual gifts that are worthy of mentioning and remembering. Some of these thoughts are reflected in talks I heard from my own Rabbi Yaakov Krause in Los Angeles at the Young Israel of Hancock Park.
When Jews mark our traditional New Year, we celebrate a series of Holy Days ranging from the profound solemnity of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur to the joyous days of Succoth and Simchat Torah — the rejoicing of the conclusion of the annual cycle of Torah readings and the beginning of the new Torah cycle.

The very last word of the Torah in Deuteronomy is “Yisroel” (the Jewish People). The Torah’s very first word in Genesis is “Beraishis” (In the beginning). Apparently, there is an indispensible and meaningful connection between the Jewish People and the concept of beginnings.

The Torah, which is replete with Mitzvoth, actually 613 of them, might have begun in the book of Exodus (the second of the Five Books of Moses) where the very first Mitzvah, the monthly Mitzvah of “Kiddush Ha”Chodesh” (Blessing the New Moon), resides. After all, the raison d’être of the Mitzvoth is to help us formulate a wholesome religious life. Why delay introducing us to these Mitzvoth for all of the Book of Genesis and more, with ‘story time’ about Creation and the Patriarchs and Matriarchs and start with Beraishis, “In the Beginning”? Why, indeed, did The Torah not begin with the first Mitzvah in the Book of Exodus?
Allow me to suggest that the Author knew full well what He was doing! The Torah must start with Beraishis because we read the Torah immediately after we reference the Jewish People at the Torah’s conclusion. Because it is “rejuvenation” that is our mark as a People.

The secret of our survival is our extraordinary capacity for renewal! We survive because no matter how devastating the attack on our existence, no matter how many of us they get, they will never get us all! Those that remain live and grow excel and rejuvenate. Time and time again throughout the millennia, this has been our hallmark. Even the devastation of the Holocaust did not spell the end of us.
Perhaps, too, this is the reason why the first Mitzvah is the blessing over the New Moon. Nothing bespeaks renewal in it essence more than the moon itself whose cycles we mortals observe each month as it grows and wanes and then is reborn the next month to renew its continuous cycle all over again.

This lesson was not lost on the inmates of Auschwitz, who would do anything to light Shabbat candles or light a Chanukah Menorah. But the Nazis would have nothing of this and every effort to observe some meaningful tradition was thwarted on pain of death. However, the inmates of terror were not to be denied. Each month they came out of their barracks to gaze at the New Moon and utter their silent prayer at its rebirth. “The Nazis can take away our candles and even our Tefillin, but they cannot take away our moon!”
And it’s this symbolism of renewal, which is the secret to our national immortality. We say to our tormentors, “You can visit upon us the very worst that human cruelty can design, but like the moon, we will be reborn and climb to the very heights of society”.
Maybe that was why we were so shocked when our Simon Wiesenthal Center delegation met the French President, Jacques Chirac, in the Élysée Palace during the height of the intifada and the devastating spate of murderous terrorist attacks in Israel. During our discussion about the Middle East, amazingly all he could think of saying, in response to the hideous headlines, was that we must recognize the humiliation of the Palestinians.

He went on to describe a conversation he had on the election trail with a young Palestinian college student. The student told him that he was leaving his French university so that he could return to the Middle East to kill Jews.

“Why do you want to kill Jews?” the President asked. “Did you lose your parents to an Israeli bullet?” “No!” said the young man. “I lost no one! I just want to kill Jews because they are humiliating my fellow Palestinians!”

We keep on reading in the media about how frustrated Palestinians are, about how their backs are to the wall. And we cannot justify any humiliation of them. But, for thousands of years Jews were the targets of oppression, Pogroms, Crusades, Inquisitions and the Holocaust. But no matter what, we always pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps and rebuilt our lives and communities. We never taught our children to murder students in schools, bomb innocent people in restaurants and on buses, nor have we had the chutzpah to assure them that these acts are their entry tickets into Paradise. Not even after the horrors and obscenity of the Holocaust could render its survivors’ into suicide bombers.

Instead, to the numerous apostles of inhumanity and their supporters throughout history, we have always said, “You have callously plucked the finest fruits from our tree of life. But you should know that our tree will never die. It will always replenish itself with generations of young men and women who will carry on the faith because they embrace the secret of “Beraishis”! The Jewish people and the State of Israel live on and thrive. “Mir velen zey alla iberlebin” (We shall outlive them all). Because the capacity for new beginnings has become our mantra and new beginnings is what define and empower us!

But there is also one other element – our national capacity to sacrifice to preserve our values. We just finished celebrating Chanukah and know that there are two possible locations to set the Menorah before lighting. One is the obvious, in front of a window so that all who pass by in the street can see the “Chanukia” in all its glory and in all our pride.

But for those living high above the street, where passerby would not take note of it, an alternate placement is suggested – right opposite the Mezuzah near the doorpost. What is the significance of that location?

The Mezuzah on the doorway of every Jewish home represents the ever-present link to our tradition and to our common destiny. It is permanent because we are ever cognizant of our faith and enduring commitments as Jews.

The Menorah, on the other hand, reflects another capacity – the Chanukah capacity. This capacity, fully inherent in the Chanukah story — where many were given to the few, the strong were vanquished by the weak and people of faith conquered the ungodly – speak to the Jewish capacity to make sacrifices for our survival. We will not be destroyed and we will never surrender our values no matter the intimidation and no matter the price to be paid.

As such, when only Israel is demonized on worldwide campuses and in the United Nations (yes, that same United Nations, which stood dark and idly by while thousands of rockets were rained down on Sederot), and North Korea, Iran, Sudan and Somalia get an easy pass, remember that we have and always will out live them.

And anytime you run into an assimilating or disaffected young Jew or Jewess remind them that they are the newest and finest fruits from our tree of life. Tell them that they have it in their hands and in their hearts to sacrifice to insure that our ancient and enduring tree will never die. They have it in their DNA to insure that our tree will always replenish itself with new generations of young men and women who despite everything will show a reverence for life over death and for the respect for human dignity over intolerance and hatred. They can show that by holding on for dear life to the heritage, beliefs and faith that their predecessors sacrificed so much to preserve. They can do that by rejuvenating — starting yet another chapter, their own new chapter, in our enduring national story.

As an employee for a large corporation within a mainstream Jewish community, I’ve had the opportunity to respond to many requests for job search assistance from both individuals and Jewish organizations dedicated to this effort. As a result of this experience, I feel compelled to share a few thoughts on what I believe to be a significant concern. Several of the candidates who have approached me have a number ... Read More >>]]> An avid reader and commenter (who shall remain unnamed) put us on the trail of a professional who has been guiding yeshiva men entering the workplace. Said professional put together some of his reactions based on his significant experience in helping frum men find positions. After some prodding, said professional revealed his name. It turns out that he, too, is an avid Cross-Currents reader. Daniel Rubin has a Masters in Human Resources from Rochester Institute of Technology and has made the transition from Jewish education to corporate training and development. He has been involved in both of these fields for over a decade each and actively mentors young professionals. We thank him for this contribution, which is must reading for the inexperienced job seeker.

As an employee for a large corporation within a mainstream Jewish community, I’ve had the opportunity to respond to many requests for job search assistance from both individuals and Jewish organizations dedicated to this effort. As a result of this experience, I feel compelled to share a few thoughts on what I believe to be a significant concern. Several of the candidates who have approached me have a number of critical issues they need to address before actually applying for a job. They prepare poorly written resumes which reveal very active Jewish lifestyles, ambiguous advanced degrees, and “work experience” which is debatable and irrelevant. I have tried to delicately communicate the following ideas to these candidates:

• A resume is not a recorded history of extra-curricular activities from 9th grade and onward. Each statement has to send a powerful message that is meaningful to the non-Jewish reader and will make he/she want to distinguish your resume from the other thousand on the pile.

• Identifying yourself as an Orthodox Jew (or a member of any other religious or ethnic group, for that matter) is not to your advantage. It is not wise to encourage the reader to believe you are different than the rest of the world and may have special needs. Either make an accomplishment religiously neutral or exclude it.

• Please face the fact that your degree gives you no skills or experience and market yourself accordingly. Whether you like it or not, you are competing with people who have serious skills and experience in addition to the requisite educational backgrounds, so plan accordingly. (I am not looking to condemn our current educational system but it is important to avoid the negligence of misunderstanding your status in the job market). You may have seen or heard a great deal about drunk, overindulgent degenerates without priorities but these will not be the people you are dealing with to earn a living.

These resumes are embarrassing and would demean any professional who thoughtlessly passed them on. Unfortunately, the situation becomes worse as I try to impart these messages. This is because these candidates choose not to listen. Instead they will usually apply to additional jobs and then e-mail me for assistance with getting an Interview. Even if I could bypass the resume stage and deliver them straight to an interview, I would never do so considering the striking shortage of social and emotional intelligence that they have displayed throughout this process. In addition to shortcomings in powerful statements that sell their skills, many of them do not have the social skills to conduct a conversation with me, let alone a non-Jewish employer who will have much less latitude or patience.

To summarize, I have been seeing a significant amount of untrained job seekers who have little to no marketable skills with degrees that clearly did not teach them to discuss their field in a manner that is anything less than embarrassing.

I realize that responders to statements like these have a tendency to rush to ideological bandwagons. Perhaps this clarification will save a bit of time. I attended Kollel for many years, then spent time in chinuch and am therefore familiar with the” landscape”. As I stated earlier I am not using this letter to bury or praise the “system”. Instead my purpose is to point out that there are many people exiting our educational systems who are drastically unprepared to enter the job market. Now more than ever, the Jewish community is being asked to facilitate this transition directly, by brokering opportunities for these job seekers, and indirectly by the urgent calls for funds from the struggling mosdos that these job seekers are a part of. (I am not suggesting that they or their children should be rejected from these mosdos Chas VeShalom, merely pointing out that this job search is ultimately being subsidized.) I have met way too many people whose preparation for the financial responsibilities of marriage and family consists of a series of anecdotes, incidental conversations and some seed money that eventually runs out. They seem to feel that earning a degree with an indistinct title is sufficient preparation for immediate hire. It is highly unfortunate that this fallacy must be pointed out at advanced stages of financial responsibility. Wouldn’t it behoove a student to ask an institution offering a degree about how it will prepare them for the job market? Might a conversation or two with an experienced professional in a desired field shed some light on whether a degree program is a waste of time or a valid first step into the job market? My recent experiences and the world economic situation demand that now more than ever, transition planning which emphasizes professional development, social/emotional intelligence and financial realities are imperative.

It is wonderful to see the manner in which the Jewish community is responding to the vital need for employment. However an important first step in this process might be to disabuse some notions about college degrees and career preparedness present in our midst.

For what it is worth, I will offer one man’s opinion, written as a bit of an insider in the world of gerus, since I sit from time to time on a respected beis din for gerus. The opinions expressed herein are my own; they were not vetted by my colleagues.

I have come neither to praise EJF, nor to bury it. If I believed that EJF was worthless, I wouldn’t bother writing. It is only because I see the potential for accomplishment that I pen these thoughts, in the hope that others will feel the same way.

The chief problem with EJF is not its recent scandal-ridden past. The problem is that to date, it has not done enough to insure that the past will not be repeated. The way in which it has addressed the past hardly inspires any confidence.

The first thing that EJF should have done is promptly apologized. It should have apologized to any and all victims, and to the Torah public for sullying its reputation. The victims include gerim whose credentials were unfairly ... Read More >>]]> If you don’t know what it stands for, skip the rest of this piece. I am not going to rehash the whole sordid affair.

For what it is worth, I will offer one man’s opinion, written as a bit of an insider in the world of gerus, since I sit from time to time on a respected beis din for gerus. The opinions expressed herein are my own; they were not vetted by my colleagues.

I have come neither to praise EJF, nor to bury it. If I believed that EJF was worthless, I wouldn’t bother writing. It is only because I see the potential for accomplishment that I pen these thoughts, in the hope that others will feel the same way.

The chief problem with EJF is not its recent scandal-ridden past. The problem is that to date, it has not done enough to insure that the past will not be repeated. The way in which it has addressed the past hardly inspires any confidence.

The first thing that EJF should have done is promptly apologized. It should have apologized to any and all victims, and to the Torah public for sullying its reputation. The victims include gerim whose credentials were unfairly questioned, and those who were browbeaten into switching from the programs of perfectly valid batei din to those more to the liking of its past director.

Instead of apologizing, EJF issued a statement days later that tries – poorly at that – to provide itself with cover. There are still people out there whose reaction to every problem discovered within the Torah community is to cover up and deny, and to issue vague assurances that everything they do is under the supervision of unnamed Gedolei Torah. Those people should not be trusted with anything of importance. The rest of us know that Gedolei Torah do not micromanage the running of large institutions other than their own. Believing that anyone but a certain part of the population would be satisfied with such an explanation is an insult to the intelligence of everyone else.

The RCA (which is responsible for a great portion of the conversion in the US, and has been working hard in the last few years to vastly improve its own standards by switching to a regional beis din system) had every reason to demand the dismantling of EJF. Parts of EJF’s leadership were working to cast aspersions on every conversion performed by centrist Orthodox rabbis in the country. (Who can forget the remark made by one of them mocking and delegitimizing rabbis in brown suits, or calling into question the conversion of any candidate who believed that the earth might be older than 5770 years?) To its credit, the RCA avoided triumphalism, and in a timely fashion issued a statement that showed responsibility and understanding of its public. It began with a show of concern for all who were impacted by the scandal, and offered help – including phone numbers – for any candidates who needed assistance. How the EJF did not do the same is beyond me.

Beyond a lack of any apology or offer of assistance, EJF offered nothing concrete to reassure anyone that the problems of the past will not reoccur. EJF, according to rumor, has doled out around 26 million dollars over the last years. This is wonderful for cash-strapped mosdos ha-Torah, but should mean quite a few people whose conflict of interest, or even appearance of conflict of interest, makes them ill-suited to stay on top of the management of the future EJF. I hope that the money will continue to flow to them – but the possibility of error, or even the perception of possibility of error, can only be addressed by a decision-making process that is open, transparent, and in the hands of people who are squeaky-clean and have the public trust.

More importantly, EJF arrogated to itself the right to set standards for all gerus in the US. Whether or not it actually set unusual standards – whether leniencies, stringencies, or both – is disputed. What cannot be disputed is that if EJF continues to covet the position of supreme setter of standards, it should be shunned and dropped by every self-respecting beis din. There is no one in the American Torah world who can claim such authority, and the exigencies of the realities here make it impossible for anyone to set policies from a distance. Gedolei Torah have always emphasized that many, many questions require the knowledge and experience of people closer to the local situation.

This criticism does not mean that EJF should cease to be. Quite to the contrary, it can offer important support and professionalism to existing batei din, similar to what AJOP added to the world of kiruv. EJF needs a credible and well thought out mission statement, and a delineation of its goals. It needs to tell us just what it hopes to accomplish.

Because gerus affects all Jews, EJF needs to be inclusive of all legitimate batei din. It needs to mimic the cooperation of batei din for gittin, where the panels across the Orthodox spectrum do speak to each other and cooperate to insure that the gittin that women receive will be respected all over.

As for the past, the public should not be unnecessarily harsh on those who participated in EJF events in the past. My own experience was that every single person I knew who attended did so with great reservations, and without offering anything. The events were valuable because they allowed batei din to network, and because they provided the presence of some stellar figures. Participants thought that they were giving up nothing by simply attending without modifying their own practices. This turns out to have been an error, but an understandable one. In fact, attendance offered credibility, which is what allowed EJF under its previous director to position itself as the voice of gerus. (It is true that some saw the problems immediately. Rav Aharon Feldman, shlit”a, wanted nothing to do with EJF; Rav Hershel Schachter, shlit”a, attended only once in person long enough to see what was going on, and was turned off enough to want nothing more to do with it.)

Should all these participants now walk away? I don’t think so. The organization, properly run, could be a great chizuk. What is needed is, as one of my friends put it, a separation, not a divorce. Rabbonim and batei din should make it clear that they will be prepared to deal with an EJF that is responsibly run, and organized in a manner that it cannot become a monster. They will stand at the sidelines and watch from a distance to see if EJF can do a better job than it has done in the last few days.

The gemara in Yevamos calls kabolas gerim a mitzvah – so much so that once a beis din had determined the suitability of a candidate, delaying his immersion in the mikveh is called a shihui mitzvah. With the recent formation of a rabbinic group that champions standards of conversion that the vast majority of the Torah world repudiates, it is more important than ever for b’nei Torah of all stripes, persuasions and headcoverings to band together to protect the primacy of halacha from this new assault, and to add hiddur to this mitzvah.

I have lost friends, close relatives, and even students before. I have witnessed the sudden, unexpected loss of young people. I have grieved for my own losses, and shared in the grieving of others. Something was different here. Charlie Abbott was not supposed to die. Sure, everyone gets called back to the Yeshiva Shel Ma’alah. But nobody thought it would happen to Charlie.

We all reacted to the news of his melanoma just slightly differently than Esav. The day that he yielded the bechorah to Yaakov, Esav had been guilty of the three cardinal sins of Yiddishkeit – the worst of the worst. It was the day of their grandfather Avraham’s levaya. The ba’alei mussar explain that Esav recoiled in shock at his zeide’s death. He wasn’t supposed to die. Shouldn’t a tzadik like Avraham weather any storm or crisis? The magnitude of his merit was immeasurable. Wouldn’t G-d hold him in the palm of His hand, ... Read More >>]]> Los Angeles yidden lost one of their most beloved yesterday. I lost a cherished friend. It will take a long while to remember and reflect. What I offer here are just a few early thoughts, more cathartic to me than a proper tribute.

I have lost friends, close relatives, and even students before. I have witnessed the sudden, unexpected loss of young people. I have grieved for my own losses, and shared in the grieving of others. Something was different here. Charlie Abbott was not supposed to die. Sure, everyone gets called back to the Yeshiva Shel Ma’alah. But nobody thought it would happen to Charlie.

We all reacted to the news of his melanoma just slightly differently than Esav. The day that he yielded the bechorah to Yaakov, Esav had been guilty of the three cardinal sins of Yiddishkeit – the worst of the worst. It was the day of their grandfather Avraham’s levaya. The ba’alei mussar explain that Esav recoiled in shock at his zeide’s death. He wasn’t supposed to die. Shouldn’t a tzadik like Avraham weather any storm or crisis? The magnitude of his merit was immeasurable. Wouldn’t G-d hold him in the palm of His hand, and protect him from ageing and infirmity? If all his mitzvos and merit couldn’t do that, then who needed them? He was ready to live his life free of any constraints.

None of us is going to throw off the yoke of mitzvos. I expect that many will, at least for a while, turn to them with even greater resolve – some of us because we will keep Charlie’s image in front of us, and others to try to offer something to his pure neshamah. But we all thought that if anyone would be pulled out of his medical straits, it would be Charlie. Gedolei Yisrael, upon first hearing of his illness, reportedly reacted the same way. He had so, so many zechusim. How would they not stand by him in his hour of need? There was a huge outpouring of tefilah in Los Angeles and elsewhere. We never know how Hashem will receive our tefilos, but we thought to ourselves that this situation was different. We weren’t so much asking Hashem to change His midah so much as calling upon Him to make a small withdrawal from a huge account of merit.

We go back well over thirty years, when we were both relatively recently married, and lived on the Pico side of Los Angeles. I remember him trekking many miles – and back – on Shabbos to UCLA hospital, where he had to do rounds as a resident. He never looked perturbed. It was something that had to be done, so just do it.

Just do it. I don’t know if he ever said the words, but it could have been his motto. When the small haredi day school needed someone to take charge, he did it, for many years. That meant the dirty, unappreciated work, not the get-your-picture-in-the-paper work. Begging people in town to lend money to cover each payroll. Seeing to it that the tuition committee treated people with respect. Building the new buildings when the small school became the largest this side of the Mississippi. Starting an afternoon kollel (and continuing to take responsibility for it) as a way to both augment the salary of mechanchim in the city, and to make sure that those mechanchim would keep their heads in learning. (This was the kollel people knew he supported. They did not know of a few more in Israel, completely dependant upon him.) Charlie (or Nechemiah, as people who knew him more recently called him) became an icon of community responsibility and chesed – one of a small number who built a community not because he shared his wealth (he wasn’t wealthy), but his talent, his lev, and his will.

He did what had to be done, as long as he could be assured that the Ribbono Shel Olam wanted it. He did not seem to have any other interests or hobbies, other than following that ratzon. He knew where to best find what that ratzon was, developing a close relationship with major roshei yeshivah. He became their close talmid, not just another donor. When they came to town and stayed with him, it was their words of Torah he appreciated, not the honor he received. He completely identified with their outlook on life and their ideals. Learning was at the top of the pyramid. He learned, and wanted more than anything else for his sons to elevate learning to the highest value in their lives. They all became b’nei Torah – something that cannot be taken for granted today; some are kelei kodesh or learning full-time.

He worked at his ophthamological duties, including surgery and multiple offices, with the same dedication and nonchalance. There was nothing frenetic about him, in a practice that itself was often frenetic. He was just so focused and even-keeled. But he was the furthest from machine-like or even stoic. In conversation with his patients and his friends, the twinkle in his eye never departed, with the possible exception of literally the last days of his life. Children loved coming to his office, because he knew each one by name, and made conversation with them as if they were his peers. He couldn’t be condescending if he tried.

He defined those opthamological duties in a characteristically Charlie kind of way. He had know-how and ability, so his duty was to share it. Always. His home dining room was a frequent operating room theater. When kids had nasty gashes on Shabbos, parents ran to his house, where he kept a set of instruments and sutures. (He just didn’t want people to have to wait in hospital emergency room.) Of course, he thoroughly familiarized himself with all the shailos of suturing on Shabbos, and found out what gedolei poskim held about what was sakanah and what was not, when a physician could violate a d’orayso, and where only a derabbanan. (One of my grandchildren opened a huge gash over his eye approximately three minutes before candle lighting on Erev Pesach. Hatzolah responded and told us we could either go to Cedars-Sinai, or to Charlie. We took the patient in a stroller to shul, and didn’t bother him till after davening. He looked at it, and insisted we come to his house, where he delayed the start of the seder for an hour while putting in many stitches.)

There was, however, only one thing of importance in his life, and that was the Ribbono Shel Olam. He was the chief presence in his medical practice. He knew that Hashem was the Rofeh kol basar. One of my grandchildren seemed to have an alarming visual deficit at birth. Some doctors assumed the worst. Charlie was consulted, of course, even though the baby was in Israel, and was an immense source of strength. Baruch Hashem, it turned out to be a rare case of a late development of part of the eye, and the child’s vision is fine today. It was more than stressful along the way. Two years after, Charlie would still inquire regularly about visual progress, and refer to him by his full Hebrew name and that of his mother. He let on that he had been davening for him since birth. Every day. Who knows how many other patients he had been davening for? How many of us now realize that his tefilos for a refuah for others may have been more effective than for his own? Who will daven for those patients now?

Charlie wasn’t supposed to die. HKBH has His own, better judgment, and we will of course accept it. Our tziduk ha-din will be helped along by remembering the depth of Charlie’s emunah.

We won’t be able to figure out Hashem’s thinking, nor do we have to. We will try to remember Rav Kook’s, zt”l, explanation of tumas meis. Death, he wrote, conveys tumah because it is the ultimate lie and falsehood. We all fear it, tremble in its presence and run from its anticipation. In truth, however, death is an important part of life, perhaps the most important. It moves a person from one kind of life to a much deeper and richer one. As humans, we can only mouth the words, without really understanding them. So we still recoil before Death as the ultimate horror, when it is not.

If there ever was someone in Los Angeles about whom we could have this confidence of now moving to the next level up, it was Charlie.

תהא זכרו ברוך

No one else there was particularly interested in asking questions of Dr Meyer, so I had open road ahead of me. Very politely, I let go with all the reservations I had, relating to the frum community setting sail on the ID ship. I wasn’t going to argue whether the ship was seaworthy. Then – and now – I can’t say I know enough about the issues to develop an opinion without doing much more reading than I have time for. My questions had to do with whether the ship was heading for a destination that was good for us.

Were the social implications of Darwinism a concern to us in the frum community? Arguably, Darwinism has been used by some to destroy any sense of the specialness of being human, and any moral message that might go along with that election. We who stood at Sinai ought to be immune to that. Evolution (the G-d initiated kind I wrote about in the last posting) cannot put a dent in the historical relationship between Hashem and Klal Yisrael, from which we draw out emunah and our resolve to lead a Torah life style. Non-Jews as ... Read More >>]]> (continued from Part One)

No one else there was particularly interested in asking questions of Dr Meyer, so I had open road ahead of me. Very politely, I let go with all the reservations I had, relating to the frum community setting sail on the ID ship. I wasn’t going to argue whether the ship was seaworthy. Then – and now – I can’t say I know enough about the issues to develop an opinion without doing much more reading than I have time for. My questions had to do with whether the ship was heading for a destination that was good for us.

Were the social implications of Darwinism a concern to us in the frum community? Arguably, Darwinism has been used by some to destroy any sense of the specialness of being human, and any moral message that might go along with that election. We who stood at Sinai ought to be immune to that. Evolution (the G-d initiated kind I wrote about in the last posting) cannot put a dent in the historical relationship between Hashem and Klal Yisrael, from which we draw out emunah and our resolve to lead a Torah life style. Non-Jews as well ought to be able to draw on their faith in G-d and belief in His message to all of mankind to offset the cynical and narrow vision for mankind that some draw from evolution. We don’t need a challenge to evolution, as much as more G-d consciousness. Why would we need ID?

Why had much of Dr Meyer’s very powerful presentation dealt with what he called the new “friendliness” of science to theism. What could ever be unfriendly about science to true belief? Showing areas of overlap between science (e.g. the Big Bang with Creation) and the Bible seemed almost sacrilegious. Torah doesn’t need corroboration from science, not can it offer any. (As Rav Reuvein Leuchter, shlit”a, talmid muvhak of R Wolbe zt”l once put it to me as we tried to outdo each other in our antipathy to the Bible Codes, how can Torah, which completely transcends all teva, be secured by something within teva?) Worse yet, to me, was the notion of pointing to phenomena that some believe are not yet satisfactorily explained by evolution (abiogenesis, the Cambrian explosion, irreducible complexity, etc.), and yelling, “Eureka! We’ve found it! That’s where G-d has been hiding, and that’s where we really need Him!” It sounds far too similar to “G-d of the gaps” for comfort. (“G-d of the gaps” refers to any one of a number of arguments for His existence that start out with “How else are you going to explain…?” The problem with it is that if the gap narrows or disappears through discovery and enlightenment, so does the reason for belief. Unfortunately, much belief around the globe is built on such arguments, reinforcing the stereotype advanced by the New Atheists that religion is only for the undereducated and ill-informed. A posting of three years ago examined more sophisticated objections to “G-d of the gaps.” ID’ers believe that their approach is not “G-d of the gaps,” but we don’t want to get ahead of ourselves here. At this point, I was asking the questions, and not yet listening to answers.) Why would frum Jews want to get involved with a “G-d of the gaps” approach, which will make us look silly when the gap is filled in, as has happened several times before?

Dr. Meyer instantly grasped all the points, and dealt with them one at a time. He left his deepest impression upon me with an anecdote:

Ten years ago, Dr Michael Behe (author of Darwin’s Black Box; often associated with irreducible complexity) met with Father Richard John Neuhaus in the offices of the magazine the latter founded, First Things. Behe was looking for allies, and approached Fr. Neuhaus, one of America’s most respected Catholic thinkers. Neuhaus listened, and finally was not able to contain himself. “Michael! You are a true believer! You have studied some theology. Why would you need any of this?” With great economy of expression, Neuhaus telescoped all my reservations in one exclamation. The true believer need not fear evolution, nor look for the inexplicable as the “place” where G-d resides. Nor need he fear the depredations of evolution on our sense of specialness, and hence on our commitment to a set of moral expectations. The true believer will find G-d in all things, comprehended or not. He will find his moral signposts in the revealed word of G-d.

Behe was equally effective. “You are right, Father. But millions of people are not theologians. To them, if the scientists can explain everything, they will listen to the scientists, not to those who speak of G-d.” Neuhaus accepted the point, and in the decade before he died, he moved in the direction of greater friendliness towards ID, publishing four articles about it.

I can’t say that I achieved any profound insight from the exchange. I did, however, feel validated in Fr. Neuhaus’ initial rejection of ID – and therefore in a better position to respond to the pragmatism of Michael Behe. What I take as obvious about the relationship between Hashem and the natural world, others see as “theology” – and so many people, even frum Jews, have little patience for theology. They can either look at the world naturalistically, or spiritually – but not both at the same time, inextricably intertwined with the former dependant upon the latter. If a naturalist explanation is fully satisfying, they lose interest in a spiritual one. Those who are deeply invested in a spiritual understanding of the cosmos are often quite comfortable with using only its vocabulary, and have little cause to understand naturalistically. There are, of course, many exceptions who have synthesized the two systems of understanding, but they are not in the majority.

In the manner of derush, I would offer that this finding is much a part of Chanukah. Chazal tell us that Yavan “darkened the eyes of Yisrael.” Now, I would have expected them to say that the darkness came from the entire lifestyle that the Syrian-Greeks offered in place of Torah. With all its external beauty and pretentious claim to enlightenment, it was a poor alternative to Torah. (R. Yehudah HaLevi: “Yavan was all flower, and no fruit.”)

They don’t say this, however. Chazal explain that the source of the darkness was the command to “write on the horn of an ox that the Jewish people does not have a portion in the G-d of Israel.” How does this make sense? The horn of the ox is likely a reference to the incident of the Golden Calf. But the Syrian-Greeks believed neither in the G-d of Israel nor in His book. What sort of challenge was this to us?

Possibly, they told us no such thing directly. They didn’t have to. Their arrogant confidence in their enlightenment, their derision of everyone else as benighted, left its mark of the souls of many Jews. For them as well, there was no room for two different world views to overlap. If the Hellenes and the Hellenizers were correct, then Torah wasn’t. Perhaps there once was a special relationship between HKBH and Klal Yisrael, but we must have been replaced. The others couldn’t be so right, and we therefore so wrong, had G-d not abandoned us. He must have rejected us after the sin of the Egel.

In a similar manner, many people are prepared to follow one world view – but not two simultaneously. If the ability of science to explain and to deliver becomes god-like, then they have no use for any other Deity.

For the majority of Jews today who are not theologians, I am beginning to see a place in the Orthodox world for some of the thinking and the materials associated with ID.

As I see it, four issues within the ID orbit have possible interest or utility to frum Jews:
1) Does evolutionary theory explain known phenomena, or must we insist that its methods are inadequate to explain the evidence of design?
2) Is ID science?
3) Poking at the smugness of scientism and its proponents
4) Cataloging the phenomena that have not been adequately explained by believers in the NDS.

Two of these should have little or no interest to us. The laypeople among us need not take sides. We ought to tell our children about the two sides, and that the Torah Jew can be comfortable with either one of them turning out to be the truth. (On the evolutionary side, I am speaking as I did in the first installment of this topic, of an evolution after the initial conditions were deliberately assigned by G-d to allow for the development of a world through natural selection. I acknowledge that some readers correctly pointed out that this itself is a position of some people in the ID camp, who speak of “front loaded” design, and that all frum people therefore must embrace ID. This position, however, is not the majority one. When I speak of two sides, the one I have labeled ID is the one that argues that holes in the NDS position make it wounded animal. It fights ferociously, but will not survive. In the end, they will have to concede that NDS cannot explain everything, and will have to yield to the evidence of a designer.) I don’t believe that we need to make any predictions as to who will prevail, and limit the choices available to committed Jews.

We have even less interest in the issue of whether ID should be considered science or not. Even the judge in the Dover case admitted that ID perhaps has a place in the public school curriculum, as a topic of societal debate, as long as it wasn’t in the science classroom. We should feel comfortable bringing up the points that ID raises in our yeshivos (i.e. the yeshivos that address evolution, rather than ripping the pages out of the textbook).

The last two points have greater promise for us. We should never, never drive a wedge between emunah and science. But when a prominent vocal minority arrogates for science G-d-like knowledge and power, we must be prepared to show that sometimes the Science Emperor wears no clothes. Most of the effort should be placed in showing the difference between the systems of science and religion, and what they can and cannot tell us about ourselves and the universe we inhabit. For many people, however, it will be most effective to demonstrate that there are holes in NDS’ understanding. We can and should admit that such holes are not fatal – that it is part of scientific method to hold on to theories that work, and wait for the remaining answers to come in. Still, it will be important to show that there is smugness – indeed a religious faith – in the ability of the prevailing theory to ultimately address major issues. It will help show our children that those who mock faith are themselves people of great faith – in a different system.

The last point may be the most important. ID presenters can do for us today what R Avigdor Miller zt”l did forty years ago. He opened the eyes of thousands of readers to the wonders of nature, by assembling so many phenomena from the macro world. Science has moved on. In our world, we should be able to turn to the micro world, and show the wonders of what Hashem created. ID has inventoried much of that, and it is the natural modern complement to what R. Miller did decades ago. Whether the “rotor” of the flagellum is an example of irreducible complexity or not, it still should cause the jaw of the believer to drop in amazement and wonder. If ID presenters can bring the information to us, we should welcome their assistance.

In the end, it is still Mah rabu ma’asecha Hashem.

Many of my friends greeted the ID people with open arms. After all, everyone “knows” that ID people give a hard time to evolutionists, and everyone knows that properly Orthodox people blanch at the very mention of the e-word. So if the ID people give evolutionists a hard time, they must be our friends.

Maybe I’m not properly Orthodox, but evolution is just not an issue for me. (I know what you are thinking, but spare me. I’ve written this before. Much of what follows is an abbreviated form of an exchange with David Klinghofer in this forum in November 2006.) I recognize that I am in the minority in this regard (although not so sure if this is true for frum folks with scientific background), but I made peace with evolution years ago. I’m neither convinced of its truth (although it explains volumes of collected phenomena that no ... Read More >>]]> Winds blew some Intelligent Design folks into town, and I wasn’t quick enough to catch the last stage out before they arrived. As a confirmed contrarian, I immediately moved into defensive and skeptical postures. Nonetheless, I came away with a different attitude than before. Given where I started off, I even surprised myself.

Many of my friends greeted the ID people with open arms. After all, everyone “knows” that ID people give a hard time to evolutionists, and everyone knows that properly Orthodox people blanch at the very mention of the e-word. So if the ID people give evolutionists a hard time, they must be our friends.

Maybe I’m not properly Orthodox, but evolution is just not an issue for me. (I know what you are thinking, but spare me. I’ve written this before. Much of what follows is an abbreviated form of an exchange with David Klinghofer in this forum in November 2006.) I recognize that I am in the minority in this regard (although not so sure if this is true for frum folks with scientific background), but I made peace with evolution years ago. I’m neither convinced of its truth (although it explains volumes of collected phenomena that no one in the frum community even begins to deal with) nor convinced of its untruth. Of course I reject one small assumption made by some evolutionists, including the most strident and vocal ones. They believe that not only did G-d have no part in it, but that having adequately explained the Great Mystery of Life, there is no need to believe in G-d, c”v. My belief is that if the Ribbono Shel Olam set up the original conditions, including the physical constants of nature in such a way as to produce the world as we know it, using natural selection and about 15 billion years (a span of time so large I simply can’t wrap my mind around it to decide whether the scenario is plausible or ludicrous), I for one would have no objection. As R Samson Raphael Hirsch wrote in the infancy of the theory – well before he could, in all fairness, properly analyze it, but also before over a century of corroborating evidence – if the theory turns out to be true, we will stand in even greater awe of the wisdom of HKBH. There is wondrous elegance in reducing all of existence to what was contained in the singularity that preceded the laws of nature as we know them. Reducing all there is to a mysterious oneness has great appeal to me.

In other words, it makes no difference to me whether Hashem created the world in six days of miraculous intervention, or telescoped all of the miraculous into some moment preceding Big Bang. As long as the results are attributed to the Will of HKBH, I can live with either scenario, and I don’t really need to know which of these – or some other alternative – is correct.

There are advantages and disadvantages to each. Believing in six literal days makes it much easier to follow the verses of the first chapter of Bereishis – but leaves so much of the observed world, as seen by multiple disciplines, unexplained. (My preference is to leave them unexplained, rather than offer some of the explanations I have heard people propose, which I can only regard as well-intentioned silliness, guaranteed to drive young people off the derech should they ever study real science.) Evolution provides a framework for understanding much of the natural world – but sends those who accept it scrambling to find an acceptable approach to the Creation story. (Just what some of those approaches might be is a topic for some future post, but not this one.)

How to choose? If you have no occasion to ever step over the threshold of modern science, there would seem to be little reason to abandon the plain meaning of the opening of Bereishis. This seems to be the message of quite a few Gedolei Torah who live in communities in which science simply doesn’t figure. Their advice should be vigorously heeded.

For others, there is no compelling reason to choose at all. We live with many valid and opposing options in other areas of Jewish life, including halacha and just about any daf in Shas. We don’t need answers to all questions. It should be satisfying to some people to be able to hedge their bets. Their formulation might be expressed this way: Maybe the evolutionists are right; maybe they are not. Either way, I feel comfortable getting up in the morning and shouting, “Mah rabu ma’asecheh Hashem…!”

Others, however, have different needs. People who spend time in the science classroom or the research lab cannot be expected to sit calmly at the 50 yard line, watching the action on both sides. The language of biology is the language of evolution, and it has been that way for decades. People tend to invest themselves in what they spend their time doing. It is natural to expect that they will not or cannot be expected to function as intellectual aliens within their disciplines. Rejecting evolution for them is the equivalent of asking a frum geographer to join the Flat Earth Society.

What options are available to such people in the frum world? I am aware of two. The first is the Divinely authored and engineered form of evolution I described above. The second is ID.

I would have thought that the former is greatly to be preferred. After all, what we are looking for is a way for a frum scientist or student to minimize the apparent tension between science and emunah. Embracing a Divinely driven evolution does just that. A student can sit in any classroom, take part in any discussion, read any paper, without having to pinch himself or herself and say, “Hey, I’m not really supposed to believe any of this!” He can believe any of it he wants – except for the very beginning of the process, which tends not to come up in any discussion because it is outside of the purview of science. Our student will not feel compelled to speak up in class to protest his disbelief, nor feel guilty for not speaking up! The tension is minimized.

If, on the other hand, we would embrace ID, we gain very little. We still put our students at loggerheads with what everybody else in their discipline believes, because – whether for good reason or bad – the ID view is rejected by most. What do we gain by substituting one unpopular alternative to the industry standard (ID) for another unpopular one (the old creationism)?

Let me clarify for those who may not be up on the details of the topic. ID is a scientific formulation, to those who subscribe to it, not a philosophical or theological one. It does not speak about G-d, although it is patently G-d friendly. It argues that there are scientifically valid ways to show design, rather than the aggregate product of natural selection. Furthermore, it argues that therefore the present understanding of evolution (which we will call neo-Darwinian synthesis, or NDS) simply cannot explain the phenomena we know about. This last point is the rub. A frum evolutionist could believe that everyone else’s understanding of how evolution happened (again, other than the Divine role in setting it up) is correct. The ID supporter has to believe that they all are laboring under a misconception. Natural selection alone cannot and did not do the trick. This moves the ID supporter to the margins of accepted scientific thought, or beyond them. Speaking purely practically, why should we put ourselves there?

So when Stephen Meyer of the Discovery Institute addressed an early morning meeting of LA rabbonim, I challenged him with this very pragmatic question. (A few weeks before, I had challenged David Berlinski with the same question, and found him agreeing with me!). I also posed a more theoretical challenge to him.

He responded to both well enough to get me thinking – and to modify my thinking in part. More on that in the continuation of this topic later.

Some in the heterodox world encourage and embrace intermarriage. Others don’t approve, but frequently find a silver lining in the dark cloud of a Jewish family that will cease to exist. They understand that intermarriage sometimes leads to sympathy, influence and power through the non-Jewish spouse on behalf of the people with which he or she now identifies.

Thus it is no surprise that the Los Angeles Jewish Journal had this to say about the news that Chelsea will tie the knot with her long time boyfriend Marc Mezvinsky:

No word on whether Clinton will convert before the marriage—or at all—but as political royalty, her close affiliation with Judaism is certain to delight America’s pro-Israel supporters.

The delight is baseless. We can hope that Marc Mezvinsky harbors some positive feelings for the people of his ancestry. Both his and Chelsea’s activities show that they are comfortable around things Jewish. ... Read More >>]]> Intermarriage should never be cause for celebration, even if the partner-to-be is Chelsea Clinton. Every intermarriage – at least for a Jewish male – is the end of a line stretching back millennia. It means that a human chain of commitment to act as a vehicle for G-d’s teaching has come to an abrupt end.

Some in the heterodox world encourage and embrace intermarriage. Others don’t approve, but frequently find a silver lining in the dark cloud of a Jewish family that will cease to exist. They understand that intermarriage sometimes leads to sympathy, influence and power through the non-Jewish spouse on behalf of the people with which he or she now identifies.

Thus it is no surprise that the Los Angeles Jewish Journal had this to say about the news that Chelsea will tie the knot with her long time boyfriend Marc Mezvinsky:

No word on whether Clinton will convert before the marriage—or at all—but as political royalty, her close affiliation with Judaism is certain to delight America’s pro-Israel supporters.

The delight is baseless. We can hope that Marc Mezvinsky harbors some positive feelings for the people of his ancestry. Both his and Chelsea’s activities show that they are comfortable around things Jewish. But it is hardly a foregone conclusion any longer that having a Jewish name is an indication of any pro-Jewish or pro-Israel leanings today. (Neither is synagogue attendance on the High Holidays. Noam Chomsky attends a Conservative temple each year; he is still an arch-nemesis of the Jewish State.) Alas, some of Israel’s most treacherous enemies are Jews.

I don’t mean naifs like Richard Goldstone, J Street, and Michael Lerner. However dangerous, they believe that they are contributing to the survival of a Jewish State, not orchestrating its destruction. I mean the men and women who work tirelessly to delegitimize Israel, to heap the scorn and contempt of millions upon her, who eagerly assist those who would abolish her very existence. I mean those who are recognized to be the modern reincarnations of the Johannes Pfefferkorns and Pablo Christianis of earlier years, whose memories will forever be an execration among faithful Jews. I mean people such as Neve Gordon, Anne Baltzer, Jeff Halper, Norman Finkelstein, Adam Shapiro, Ilan Pappe, Phyllis Bennis, and Ahmadinejad’s shtreimel-wearing friends.

The all-time worst may have been the late and unlamented Israel Shahak. Shahak saw Judaism as inherently evil, and pointed to misunderstood and out-of-context passages in the Talmud as the source of all Jewish evil, in the same manner as the prosecutorial disputants in the medieval Church debates and modern anti-Semitic websites. His grasp of Talmud was legendary, as it included even material that no one else had ever seen (e.g. “both before and after a meal, a pious Jew ritually washes his hands….On one of these two occasions he is worshiping God… but on the other he is worshiping Satan…”) To inspire hatred of Jews, Shahak fabricated a non-event, and broadcast it around the world – a religious Jew who refused to save the life of a non-Jew on Shabbos, and an admission to him by an august group of rabbis that this was in fact the law. (There was no such admission, since this is not the law, and the entire episode, he later conceded had not taken place, according to former British Chief Rabbi Immanuel Jakobowitz, who was at the center of the controversy.)

Shahak is missed by no Jews who value their peoplehood or their faith. He was eulogized at the time of his death as “a man of courage and conviction” by a collaborator (double entendre intended) of his in writing one of his toxic works. The book was entitled Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel.

The coauthor of that book, alongside Shahak, was Norton Mezvinsky. He is Mark’s uncle. His kind of Jewish influence we don’t need on Chelsea or her mother.

We hope and pray that Marc will follow a different road.

Hiddush is the latest in a series of attempts to bring the Orthodox community in Israel to its knees. The only thing different about this attempt seems to be the addition of a website, and a broadening of the agenda. Previously, the issues were Mi Yehudi (defining Jewishness), and participation (i.e. funding) of the non-Orthodox streams in Government-funded activity. For Hiddush, the very existence of a haredi world is now also an issue, as it tries to alter its lifestyle by curtailing government subsidies to large families and military exemptions for yeshiva students.

The new organization is born of an old device: joining an old ineffective Israeli voice to American money.

Uri Regev has a long record of success in saying nasty things about Orthodox Jews, while remaining unsuccessful in getting Israel to further erode its definition of Jewishness to include Reform conversions performed in Israel. Indeed, he must be particularly miffed in the singular lack of success of Reform to draw more adherents in a country that has very strong anti-haredi feelings. For most Israelis, the shul ... Read More >>]]> Hiddush means something new, but there is nothing new at all in Hiddush, the organization. Even the dramatis personae are just warmed-over stock characters.

Hiddush is the latest in a series of attempts to bring the Orthodox community in Israel to its knees. The only thing different about this attempt seems to be the addition of a website, and a broadening of the agenda. Previously, the issues were Mi Yehudi (defining Jewishness), and participation (i.e. funding) of the non-Orthodox streams in Government-funded activity. For Hiddush, the very existence of a haredi world is now also an issue, as it tries to alter its lifestyle by curtailing government subsidies to large families and military exemptions for yeshiva students.

The new organization is born of an old device: joining an old ineffective Israeli voice to American money.

Uri Regev has a long record of success in saying nasty things about Orthodox Jews, while remaining unsuccessful in getting Israel to further erode its definition of Jewishness to include Reform conversions performed in Israel. Indeed, he must be particularly miffed in the singular lack of success of Reform to draw more adherents in a country that has very strong anti-haredi feelings. For most Israelis, the shul they don’t daven at continues to be Orthodox. Reform in Israel remains a very small phenomenon. If Regev cannot persuade more secular Israelis to find spiritual fulfillment in his brand of Judaism, the least he can do is make life miserable for Judaism’s most enthusiastic adherents.

His new ally is Los Angeles businessman Stanley Gold, who recently warned that Israel’s economic boom is endangered by the rights and privileges of the ultra-Orthodox who don’t work and don’t serve in the army, and therefore suck the life force from the Israeli economy.

Now, reasonable people can differ as to whether there is any merit in his argument. There might be room to air Gold’s view in the proper forum in Israel. But Gold took his case not to the Israeli public, but to the readers of the Los Angeles Times in an op-ed on October 4. What did he hope to accomplish by taking his case to the citizens of Los Angeles, other than to display his contempt for other Jews and see his name in print? It was one of the most egregious instances of bad taste in memory.

His being an outsider does not faze him, despite the obvious difficulty of any outsider to get a clear picture of a situation, especially without checking with insiders. He shows his gall in making halachic pronouncements as well, although non-Orthodox in practice. “There is nothing inherent in ultra-Orthodox religious tenets that keeps believers from working.” He may be correct, but how would he know? Making the statement is as arrogant as my writing to the Pope to drop his opposition to the marriage of priests, since Peter had a wife.

Gold’s rant was counterproductive, as anyone familiar with the haredi community would know. By showing his contempt for haredim, he alienated many American Orthodox voices who might have agreed with some – not all – of his position. It is no secret that there are many haredim in America who do not understand the “system,” and would not be disturbed to see some change. The changes will come from increased educational and vocational opportunity for haredim in Israel, coupled with the growing inability of the system to sustain itself economically, with less support coming from American friends struggling with the global recession.

More and more haredim will enter the work force if conditions permit, but one thing is guaranteed to prevent any change. If haredim feel that there is a campaign from the unobservant to change their life style, they will resist with every ounce of energy. They will see it as sha’as ha-shmad, and devote everything they have to staying put. Nothing could do more harm to the considerable efforts in place to bring haredim into the economic mainstream than for Stanley Gold do declare a holy war against them. Hundreds of people could have told him that, had he asked.

If Gold were really interested in encouraging haredim to produce for the Israeli economy, he would be investing in the schools and training programs that are slowly but surely allowing more haredim to acquire the skills they need. He would work to insure that Israeli employers understood the advantages of hiring those trained, just as similar programs work in the United States to encourage employers to utilize the skills of minorities and handicapped people in the workplace. He would use his influence to insure that the experiences of an Israeli haredi attorney are not repeated.

When I completed my law studies, and my wife, children and parents embraced me proudly, I thought there would be no problem joining one of the leading firms: My grades were high, I was no longer a child, I had extensive connections in the business world and everyone who knew me could warmly recommend me.

But the rejoicing was premature and excessive. In fact, it is hard to imagine the discouragement caused by my encounter with reality. I phoned a well-known law firm, to which some of my acquaintances had sent many recommendations on my behalf.

“Yes, yes, we’d be delighted,” said my interlocutor, a well-known lawyer and partner in the firm. “Definitely. Come in and we’ll talk.”

However, when I entered his office he looked perplexed and surprised. “Ah … look,” he said. “Do you understand that the food here isn’t kosher?”

I nodded.

“And that there aren’t mezuzahs on the doors here?”

I smiled.

“And, well, there are women here and …”

I tried to divert the conversation to the relevant topic: Was I suitable for the job in light of my qualifications and areas of knowledge? I did not get an answer.

“You know that many people in the firm work on the Sabbath, no?” asked my interviewer. “And what about laying tefillin? How many times a day do you lay tefillin?”

When I left, I already knew it was a lost cause.

“What kind of doss [a pejorative term for an observant person] did you send me?” the important lawyer protested the following day to someone who had recommended me. With that he slammed the door on the possibility that I would work at his firm. I tried another two or three places. The reaction was the same.

Israeli society cannot continue dancing at both weddings: It cannot both hate the ultra-Orthodox for their separatism and not allow them to work. Young ultra-Orthodox men are studying very practical professions – law, accounting, computers and paramedical professions – with the fervent hope that they will integrate into workplaces, prove themselves and support their families. If we are not given an opportunity, we will understand once and for all that the fine talk about the academic revolution is just that – fine talk.

Instead, Gold’s animus merely fuels the prejudices and stereotypes that keep haredim from making the very changes he says he would like to see.

Hiddush in our circles also means a novel, creative idea, born of deep thought and analysis. We have a colorful phrase for an idea that would aim to be apposite, but entirely fails. Hiddush the organization is not a hiddush but a boich sevarah.

[Thanks to Dr Saul Newman for the Haaretz cite.]

The Rebbe Maharash, the fourth Lubavitcher Rebbe, might have approved. His epigram of choice was lechatchilah aribber. Loosely translated, it means that when an obstacle blocks you from getting where you have to go, refuse to be fazed. If you can’t go through it, simply go over it. Go over it with confidence and impunity. Don’t let a backboard get in the ... Read More >>]]> Everyone who knew the difference between a basketball and a watermelon talked about the impossible shot. At the end of the first quarter of Sunday night’s game between the Lakers and the Oklahoma City Thunder, Kobe Bryant simply ran out of room as he charged the end of the court. He was already past the net and had nowhere to go but out of bounds, when he managed to get the ball loose. Despite Kobe’s great control and aim, he had a small problem. Between him and the net was something that typically does not get in the way of a clean shot – the backboard. This proved to be no problem for Bryant, as he directed the ball over the backboard and into the net. Momentum had different plans for his body, which continued out of bounds.

The Rebbe Maharash, the fourth Lubavitcher Rebbe, might have approved. His epigram of choice was lechatchilah aribber. Loosely translated, it means that when an obstacle blocks you from getting where you have to go, refuse to be fazed. If you can’t go through it, simply go over it. Go over it with confidence and impunity. Don’t let a backboard get in the way. More importantly, don’t let anything, no matter how formidable it seems, get in the way of your avodas Hashem.

Readers, I am sure, can come up with many examples of this principle. At the late hour that I write, two (from the “snag” world) come to mind.

The Chofetz Chaim was reportedly moved by the way a town rumor destroyed the life of a young rov. The toxicity of lashon hora was well established millennia before the Chofetz Chaim. It was a problem that everyone knew had no solution. After all, the gemara itself conceded that everyone was guilty of at least avak lashon hora. The Chofetz Chaim refused to accept the obstacle. He went over it, writing his seforim that did not instantly cure the problem, but created the tools to make great progress in addressing it.

Rav Aharon Kotler came to the shores of an America that everyone knew could never recreate anything remotely similar to the excellence in Torah learning that existed in pre-war Europe. Other Torah personalities were prepared for various fall-back positions, of offering American Jews some lesser refraction of Torah focus and Torah brilliance. This, in time, they could hopefully accept. Rav Aharon refused to accept the obstacle of American distance from Torah, and founded his yeshiva accordingly. Today, of course, Lakewood the yeshiva is the largest in America, and Lakewood the city a Torah metropolis.

May all of us learn to take the impossible shots.