No doubt the endorphins released by vigorous exercise also played a large role. There are few better guaranteed mood enhancers than exercise.

But the best thing about the gym, I suspect, is the feeling it gives one of growing. Whether one runs faster or farther or just stays the same while growing steadily older, there is measurable improvement.

Every run includes at least a half dozen conversations in one’s head, in which any number of strong reasons are presented why right now would be a good time to stop. One experiences the truth of Rav Dessler’s statement that ever since the Sin of Adam the yetzer hara speaks from inside us – “I want.” When the yetzer hatov speaking from outside us – “You should” – wins one of those arguments, there is ... Read More >>]]> Returning from a successful run on the treadmill last week, I contemplated how much better I felt than when I dragged myself to the gym, after an early morning minyan. The most obvious reason was that I had made it there at all. Just showing up at the gym is its own triumph. The yetzer possesses an incredible number of ways to talk one out of subjecting oneself to pain.

No doubt the endorphins released by vigorous exercise also played a large role. There are few better guaranteed mood enhancers than exercise.

But the best thing about the gym, I suspect, is the feeling it gives one of growing. Whether one runs faster or farther or just stays the same while growing steadily older, there is measurable improvement.

Every run includes at least a half dozen conversations in one’s head, in which any number of strong reasons are presented why right now would be a good time to stop. One experiences the truth of Rav Dessler’s statement that ever since the Sin of Adam the yetzer hara speaks from inside us – “I want.” When the yetzer hatov speaking from outside us – “You should” – wins one of those arguments, there is a real sense of accomplishment.

What I derived from my morning run was the close connection between happiness and personal growth. Human beings are the only ones of Hashem’s creations whose actions are not determined by instincts common to every member of the species. Only we can contemplate the future and set individual goals for ourselves; only we can decide to forego immediate pleasure in pursuit of a long-range goal.

Hashem has planted in each of us a need to grow. That growth depends on overcoming our weaknesses, whether physical, emotional, or intellectual. The attraction of the gym is that it provides us with constant objective measures of improvement.

Recognition that human beings are hard-wired to seek growth has important implications for our role as parents. Most of us devote our parenting energies to shielding our children from pain and protecting them from experiencing failure. That desire to protect our children from failure has fueled the self-esteem movement of the last thirty years. My friend Rabbi Avraham Birnbaum wrote recently in Yated Ne’eman about the trend in our educational institutions to give every child not less than an A minus on their report card, regardless of either achievement or effort.

Instead of protecting our children from setbacks, our energies would be better spent on helping them develop the tools to overcome those setbacks and not give up in the face of adversity. Instead of inundating them in praise – which they, in any event, come to distrust when it is not linked to tangible effort or achievement – we have to teach them how to set goals and work towards attaining them. Let them experience the pleasure that comes from overcoming obstacles, both internal and external, while reminding them that growth is only measured in relationship to themselves and what they need to overcome, not in relationship to anyone else.

In short, our task as parents is to provide them with opportunities to experience the truth of Chazal’s statement: l’fum tzaara agra – according to the pain is the reward. As Rabbi Noah Weinberg used to say, the idea that the opposite of pleasure is pain is a product of Western decadence: Pain is often the precondition for true pleasure. He felt it important to speak frequently about all his many failures prior to founding Aish HaTorah.

WHEN I PRESENTED my gym-based insight about the innate human need to grow to my morning chavrusah, he entered an important caveat: Don’t confuse the moshol with the nimshal. The attraction of the gym is that it provides concrete, objective measures of growth. But such objective feedback is often not available in the most important areas of our striving. It is not easy, for instance, for a yeshiva bochur to measure his growth in learning b’iyun (in-depth). There may be indicators of growth – e.g., when one constantly meets “good friends,” in the form of Rishonim and Achronim, as one plumbs the depths of a sugya – but progress remains notoriously hard to quantify.

Faster-paced bekius learning offers more concrete measuring sticks in terms of the number of dapim (pages) covered. And it is easier to formulate tests of students’ command of the material in bekius learning. Those tangible measures of progress in bekius learning attract many to focus their energies there. I can still remember my rosh yeshiva warning me when I went off to learn the blatt, with regular tests, in the afternoon at Mirrer Yeshiva, “You’ll find bekius so enjoyable that you won’t be able to get back into iyun.”

Yet it is a tragic mistake to focus our energies in life based on the ready availability of objective feedback. Some areas are intrinsically more worthy of our striving than others. Not all improvement is equal. Otherwise, we would be well-advised to spend every available moment in the gym, where feedback is both objective and instantaneous.

Middos development, for instance, is not easily quantified. Situations like that described by the Rambam in Hilchos Teshuva, where one finds oneself in exactly the same situation in which one failed in the past, do not occur every day. Yet the difficulty of measuring our development in middos does not detract one iota from the necessity of constantly striving to improve.

The perfection of our middos is ultimate goal of our lives. The more that we succeed in emulating the middos of HaKadosh Baruch Hu – just as He is gracious and merciful so must you be gracious and merciful – the more we are capable of bonding to Him, and the greater connection we will experience to Him in the World to Come. But we will only know our final score on the test when we reach the World of Truth.

From the gym we gain a sense of the close connection between our personal growth and our joy in living. Nowhere else do we so readily experience the pleasure of carrying on to reach a goal when part of our brain is screaming, “Quit.” But once the lessons have been learned (and the endorphins released), it is time to apply them to more important goals than running faster or longer.

This article originally appeared in Mishpacha, March 17.

While some may superficially dismiss the Haggadah as a mere collection of random verses and songs, it is in truth a subtle and wondrous educational tool, with profound Jewish ideas layered through its seemingly simple text. The rabbis who formulated its core, already extant in pre-Talmudic times, wanted it to serve to plant important concepts in the hearts and minds of its readers – especially its younger ones, toward whom the Seder, our tradition teaches, is aimed. And so the author of the Haggadah employed an array of pedagogical methods, including songs, riddles and puzzles, as means of conveying deeper understandings. And he left us some clues, too.

When it comes to the ubiquitous “fours,” we might begin by considering the essential fact that Passover is when the Jewish people’s identity is solemnly perpetuated; the Seder, the ritual instrument through which each Jewish generation inculcates our collective history and essence to the next. ... Read More >>]]> Despite the late hour and exhaustion (not to mention wine), many a Jewish mind has wondered long and hard during a Passover Seder about all the Haggadah’s “fours.” Four questions, four sons, four expressions of redemption, four cups. There’s clearly a numerical theme here.

While some may superficially dismiss the Haggadah as a mere collection of random verses and songs, it is in truth a subtle and wondrous educational tool, with profound Jewish ideas layered through its seemingly simple text. The rabbis who formulated its core, already extant in pre-Talmudic times, wanted it to serve to plant important concepts in the hearts and minds of its readers – especially its younger ones, toward whom the Seder, our tradition teaches, is aimed. And so the author of the Haggadah employed an array of pedagogical methods, including songs, riddles and puzzles, as means of conveying deeper understandings. And he left us some clues, too.

When it comes to the ubiquitous “fours,” we might begin by considering the essential fact that Passover is when the Jewish people’s identity is solemnly perpetuated; the Seder, the ritual instrument through which each Jewish generation inculcates our collective history and essence to the next. Which is likely a large part of the reason so many Jewish parents who are alienated from virtually every other Jewish observance still feel compelled to have at least some sort of Seder, to read a Haggadah, or even – if they have strayed too far from their heritage to comfortably confront the original – to compose their own. (I once joked before an audience that a “Vegetarian Haggadah” would likely appear any year now, and someone in attendance later showed me precisely such a book – though it lacked the “Paschal Turnip” I had imagined.)

And so the role we adults play on Pesach night, vis a vis the younger Jews with whom we share the experience, is a very specific one. We are teachers, to be sure, but it is not information that we are communicating; it is identity.

At the Seder, in other words, we seek to instill in our children the realization that they are not mere individuals but rather parts of a people, members of a nation unconstrained by geographical boundaries but linked by history and destiny. We impress them with the fact that they are links in a shimmering, ethereal chain stretching back to birth of the Jewish nation, to when our people was divinely redeemed from mundane slavery in Egypt and entered a sublime servitude of a very different sort – to God – at Sinai.

So, on Passover, as we celebrate the birth of the Jewish nation and plant the seed of Jewish identity in the minds of smaller Jews, we are giving life – giving birth, one might say – to the Jewish future. And, while it may be the father who traditionally leads the Seder, he is acting not as teacher but rather in something more akin to a maternal role, as a spiritual nurturer of the children present.

In Jewish religious law, Jewish identity is in fact dependent on mothers. According to halacha, or Jewish religious tradition, while a Jew’s tribal genealogy follows the paternal line, whether a child is a member of the Jewish people or not depends entirely on the status of his or her mother.

It’s only speculation, but the recurrent numerical theme in our exquisite Haggadah, employed each year to instill Jewish identity might be reminding us of that. After all, the book has its own number-decoder built right in, toward its end, where most good books’ keys and indexes are found. We’re a little hazy once it’s reached, after four cups of wine, but it’s unmistakably there: “Echad Mi Yodea” or “Who Knows One?” – the song that provides Jewish associations with numbers.

“Who knows four?”

If you don’t, you can look it up.

© 2010 AM ECHAD RESOURCES

[Rabbi Shafran is director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America. The above essay was distributed in 2003]

All Am Echad Resources essays are offered without charge for personal use, sharing and publication,
provided the above copyright notice is appended.

Hamodia reports that Rabbi Shmuel Goldin, First Vice-President of the Rabbinical Council of America, has clarified that the RCA “in no way endorses the title ‘maharat’ or the ‘maharat’ program under the direction of Rabbi Avi Weiss.”

Rabbi Goldin further quotes RCA President Rabbi Moshe Kletenik as having stated that ordination of women “is a breach of our Mesorah and is unacceptable practice in Orthodoxy,” and that “it is also unacceptable for an Orthodox synagogue to have a woman on its rabbinical staff.”

Agudath Israel warmly welcomes the clarification and commends the RCA leaders for their forthright and principled words.

May we all continue to stand guard to protect the integrity of our Mesorah.

The leadership of the Rabbinical Council of America and Rabbi Avi Weiss have apparently reached agreement that Rabbi Weiss would no longer confer the title of “Rabba” upon graduates of his women’s seminary, but rather the title “Maharat.”

This superficial move does not in any way change the position of the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah that placing women in traditional rabbinic positions departs from the Jewish mesorah, and that any congregation with a woman in such a position cannot call itself Orthodox.

That the leadership of a respected rabbinical organization seems to have capitulated to Rabbi Weiss’ enterprise is deeply dismaying. We trust that this capitulation does not represent the perspective of the principled majority of the organization’s member rabbis.

I have often speculated to myself whether cynicism, of which I have been blessed with an inordinate amount, is in any way an exemplary or positive middah and I should thus try to direct it toward positive use, or if it might not be just another disguise employed by my yetzer ha-ra in which case I should do all that I can to suppress it. On the one hand, the Torah clearly expects us to demonstrate respect in ascribing purity of motive to our fellow Jews; the ideal of being dan l’kaf zechus even when an action appears to be incorrect or foolish. On the other hand, Chazal made it abundantly clear that they had little patience for behavior which fell within the parameters of the chassid shoteh. Given this unresolved apparent paradox, I allow myself to castigate not only those who sin, but also those whose actions clearly point to an abysmal lack of kavannah when reciting ata chonen l’adam da’as. To those who might feel that sarcasm has no place in the lexicon of bnei Torah, I point to the familiar words of Eliyahu ha-Navi in confronting the prophets of Ba’al [Melachim I 18:27]:

and Eliyahu teased ... Read More >>]]> by Dovid Landesman

I have often speculated to myself whether cynicism, of which I have been blessed with an inordinate amount, is in any way an exemplary or positive middah and I should thus try to direct it toward positive use, or if it might not be just another disguise employed by my yetzer ha-ra in which case I should do all that I can to suppress it. On the one hand, the Torah clearly expects us to demonstrate respect in ascribing purity of motive to our fellow Jews; the ideal of being dan l’kaf zechus even when an action appears to be incorrect or foolish. On the other hand, Chazal made it abundantly clear that they had little patience for behavior which fell within the parameters of the chassid shoteh. Given this unresolved apparent paradox, I allow myself to castigate not only those who sin, but also those whose actions clearly point to an abysmal lack of kavannah when reciting ata chonen l’adam da’as. To those who might feel that sarcasm has no place in the lexicon of bnei Torah, I point to the familiar words of Eliyahu ha-Navi in confronting the prophets of Ba’al [Melachim I 18:27]:

and Eliyahu teased them … call out loudly to him [Ba’al] … perhaps he is sleeping and he will [thus] awaken …

To those who contend that this form of speech was only permissible because it was addressed to idolators, I suggest perusal of the following comment by Rav Shamshon Rafael Hirsch [Shemos 14:11 s.v. ha’mibli ein kevarim]:

This sharp irony, even in moments of deepest anxiety and despair, is characteristic of the witty vein which is inherent in the Jewish race from their earliest beginnings.

In that I am fully cognizant of the need to be exceedingly careful not to engage in rechilus or anything that is avak lashon ha–ra, I assure the reader that what I write is meant entirely l’toeles. This posting is not simply an attempt to entertain or at self-aggrandizement; rather, I respectfully request that you take this missive as an effort to effect change by subjecting the actions of certain organizations and public figures to public scrutiny. I pledge not to mention specific names of people unless it is permissible to do so and also undertake to discuss each of the awards with experts in the field of lashon ha–ra before publication.

My general inspiration for the creation of a reward is the late Senator William Proxmire of Wisconsin.

Proxmire was famous for issuing his Golden Fleece Awards, which identified wasteful government spending between 1975 and 1988. The first was awarded in 1975 to the National Science Foundation, for funding an $84,000 study on why people fall in love. Other Golden Fleece awards over the years were “awarded” to the Justice Department for conducting a study on why prisoners wanted to get out of jail … [Wikipedia]

The inspiration for the name of the prize comes, of course, from the statement made by Achish [Shmuel I 21:16] in regard to the somewhat peculiar behavior of Dovid.

Despite repeated efforts, I have never been able to determine if the awardees are separate tzedakah organizations, or a single group raising funds under two different names [d.b.a.s (doing business as) in legal terminology]. Both organizations are, as far as I know, entirely legitimate. Trust me. I have conducted extensive inquiries about them out of an intense distaste for their publicity campaigns and in hopes of discovering that they are fakes and cheats. Not only are these real; they are quite effective and provide a great deal of relief and help in our communities. They do, in fact, enjoy the support of many gedolim.
That said, and pretend that you hear the drumrolls, the inaugural Achish Melech Gat award is presented jointly to Kupat Ha-Ir and Va’ad ha-Rabbanim who have raised the bar and set new standards of challenging the Guinness records for most advertisements by a single organization using various and varied media forms, including but not limited to mass delivery of multi-colored flyers that fill our mailboxes and all adjacent areas, inserts included with every major Jewish publication featuring full colored portraits of gedolim in a variety of interesting poses as well as endless columns of advertisements appearing in all Jewish media.

The award takes note of their great level of expertise in use of various media; specific reference being made to our recognition and applause for their demonstrated proficiency in the use of photo-shop in their campaigns. The award is presented to them based on the following outstanding achievements:

 saving many Jews the need to actually pray for themselves or for others by offering the possibility of having a number of erstwhile talmidei chachamim do so on their behalf for a given period of time for a set, low cost price.
 reintroducing the concept of segulos to a generation that had somehow forgotten about the efficacy of these time honored practices.
 providing countless trips for many important rabbanim who can now actually go to the kever of the Noam Elimelech without depleting their bank accounts.
 providing endless stories about yeshuos to a generation of children thus providing them with Torah true, kosher reading materials [I trust that no-one above the age of ten reads the stories].
 publicizing the pictures of gedolai yisroel doing something other than learning – e.g., writing checks or reading computer printouts of names – proving that our Torah leaders are flesh and blood and that we can therefore aspire to be just like them.
 reducing the welfare rolls by providing employment possibilities [for at least forty day periods] for out of work or underemployed tehillim zoggers and kotel visitors.
One humble suggestion to the organizations. Given that you have determined that the holy ends you seek to achieve gives you license to stretch the limits of good taste, may I raise the following proposition for your consideration. You are undoubtedly unfamiliar with a major source of revenue used in Hollywood and on Madison Avenue known as product placement. Advertisers are invited to place their product in a visible but subtle manner within the framework of a scene, not detracting from the main message itself, but strong enough to create an association in the viewer’s mind. In our case, can you imagine the bidding war between Coke and Pepsi if a can of either’s product was placed on the table next to Rav Chaim’s shtender. Just think what the Bank Leumi would be willing to contribute if readers would see that name on the checks that Rav Aron Leib writes to these tzedakos. I am certain that with the proper planning, the revenues of the charity funds would double or triple. Those funds could then be applied toward the granting of yeshuos to those who cannot afford to contribute the requisite amount necessary to being included in the list read by a major league gadol.

Readers are invited to suggest further reasons why these two organizations deserve to be honored as well as to nominate candidates for future awards. It should be noted that Kolel Shomrei Ha-Chomos was a close second in the judges voting, based on their remarkable decision to publicize the creation of a gemach [free loan fund] in memory of an executed murderer whose memory they canonized by affixing the suffix hy”d – an acronym reserved for those who die al kiddush Hashem

[Dovid Landesman resides in Israel and comments on the foibles of his fellow Jews. His recently published There Are No Basketball Courts In Heaven will shortly be available in bookstores in the USA and Canada.]

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.”

Then open your first two fingers of each hand and make a “mask” by bringing your fingertips together over your nose. Draw them out to the sides while closing them. The mask is “Purim.”

That’s how you say “Happy Purim” in Sign Language. Share the greeting with those who can’t hear it!

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)

When we were done, I hurried home to Mother. I had never participated ... Read More >>]]> Each year we try to cut down on the number of mishloach manot/shalach manos we send, and either give more matanot l’evyonim to the needy, or find indigent Jews who really need mishloach manot . As inspiration, I reread a chapter about real mishloach manot in the historical novel by Rav Haim Sabato, Boi HaRuach, a bestseller in Israel two years ago. This month it came out in English as From the Four WInds translated by Yaacob Dweck, Toby Press (and available on amazon, bookstores,etc). The chapter about mishloach manot can be a lesson for all of us and it is on the Hadassah Magazine website’s Purim section: “Making the Rounds in Beit Mazmil” a Jerusalem immigrant neighborhood in the 1950s. I added five discussion questions which you can see if you scroll down to the bottom of the excerpt. Try the link in question 5, to the Hungarian cake for Purim described in the excerpt. The chapter and questions might enrich your seudat Purim or Shabbat Zachor table talk.
As the child Haim in the chapter says at the end,

When we were done, I hurried home to Mother. I had never participated in such a delivery of Purim baskets. I had never had a Purim like that one.

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.

JERUSALEM (AP) — An Israeli archaeologist said Monday that ancient fortifications recently excavated in Jerusalem date back 3,000 years to the time of King Solomon and support the biblical narrative about the era.

If the age of the wall is correct, the finding would be an indication that Jerusalem was home to a strong central government that had the resources and manpower needed to build massive fortifications in the 10th century B.C.

That’s a key point of dispute among scholars, because it would match the Bible’s account that the Hebrew kings David and Solomon ruled from Jerusalem around that time.

Rabbi Menachem Porush was a giant within the world of Agudath Israel and beyond.

The contributions Rabbi Porush made to the growth of the Torah community in Eretz Yisroel over many decades of remarkable service, both from within the Israeli government and without, are incalculable. He was blessed with considerable talents — a brilliant mind, magnetic personality, keen insight into human nature, unparalleled communication skills — and used them all to promote the interests of Klal Yisroel. His closeness with Gedolei Yisroel from all backgrounds made him one of the world’s most prominent spokesmen for daas Torah, which for him was no mere slogan but a way of life.

Rabbi Porush’s petirah leaves a gaping hole that will not easily be filled. It is incumbent on all of us now to study his incredible life story, and to learn and grow from it.

As a girl, I dreamt of it often; it was the backdrop of my life. Its after-image cast such a long shadow, in those days, that stray sparks from the firestorm were still drifting around the globe. The fallout was like snowflakes, finding their way all the way from Japan into my yellow-wallpapered bedroom in Connecticut.

I wasn’t the only one. Any American childhood in the 1950s and 60s took place with that impossibility as the underlying reality, and underlying fantasy: a brilliant white nightmare in the backyard, rising faster than Jack’s Beanstalk. Americans who were optimistic enough to build fallout shelters were ridiculed by their compatriots. How could a concrete bunker, naively fitted out with air filter and a two-week supply of bottled water, protect you from a bomb reputed to be greater than a hundred Hiroshimas? Even if you and your family did make it into the shelter in time and shut the hatch successfully against your neighbors, what kind of landscape would eventually greet you if you ... Read More >>]]> I dreamed I saw the mushroom cloud. It’s been absent from my dreams for so long, in spite of Ahmadinejad. The more he talks about eliminating us, the deeper my sleep.

As a girl, I dreamt of it often; it was the backdrop of my life. Its after-image cast such a long shadow, in those days, that stray sparks from the firestorm were still drifting around the globe. The fallout was like snowflakes, finding their way all the way from Japan into my yellow-wallpapered bedroom in Connecticut.

I wasn’t the only one. Any American childhood in the 1950s and 60s took place with that impossibility as the underlying reality, and underlying fantasy: a brilliant white nightmare in the backyard, rising faster than Jack’s Beanstalk. Americans who were optimistic enough to build fallout shelters were ridiculed by their compatriots. How could a concrete bunker, naively fitted out with air filter and a two-week supply of bottled water, protect you from a bomb reputed to be greater than a hundred Hiroshimas? Even if you and your family did make it into the shelter in time and shut the hatch successfully against your neighbors, what kind of landscape would eventually greet you if you survived (assuming you hadn’t melted into the concrete of your underground chamber)? What would you dine upon when your supplies ran out? No way, anymore, to pick up a quart of milk at the supermarket. Busses would not be running. And how would you breathe in the brave new world, once the dust settled and you emerged into the radioactive light, or darkness, of day?

As a citizen of Israel, I’m therefore puzzled by a sort of fearless insouciance on my part in response to the Iranian President’s threats, which couldn’t be more blatant. A smiley fellow, boyish and diminutive, he’s usually pictured before a cluster of microphones. Over the past few years he has variously called Israel a “rotten branch that will soon be destroyed,” an “illegitimate regime that will be wiped off the map,” “an usurper and an illegitimate entity.” “As everybody knows,” the President has declared, “the Zionist regime was created to establish dominion of arrogant states over the region and to enable the enemy to penetrate the heart of Muslim land…. Israel must be wiped out from the map of the world,” and “there is no doubt the Palestinian nation and Muslims as a whole will emerge victorious.” “With the force of God behind it, we shall soon experience a world without the United States and Zionism.” “Anybody who recognizes Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation’s fury.”

Iran has reportedly requested United Nations aid for their nuclear development program, on the grounds that the purpose of its program is cancer research.

My efforts to be honest with myself about my own low-key reaction, whereby I do nothing whatsoever on a practical level to combat the threat, have failed. I truly can’t tell if this is admirable serenity in the face of mortal danger, or the paralysis of helplessness that sometimes seizes the dreamer. Perhaps it’s the necessary numbing which occurs naturally in the face of something so overwhelming that it’s off the charts. Would it be just too nerve-wracking to take him seriously?

Like Jews who remained in Europe when it was still possible to get out, am I incapable of thinking the unthinkable, or am I so profoundly at home in Jerusalem that no matter what happens, I don’t want to be anywhere but here? Could it be that my trust in God has taken root so deeply that I’ve at last arrived– after a long and circuitous, complicated route — at simple faith?

Or is there something going on akin to Queen Esther’s response to Haman, Ahmadinejad’s forbear, who in spite of his plans to annihilate all the Jews, ended up killing not a one? “For how can I bear to witness the disaster which will befall my people? How can I bear to witness the destruction of my relatives?”

As a child, I thought we existed in a random world, a planet spinning in a vast, dark universe in which physical laws constitute the ultimate reality, and unimaginable evil can triumph.

Now I know that reality is larger than the world we see, and that my own little voice, in personal conversation with the Creator, is the most powerful channel at my disposal to effect the course of events. But when I glanced out my window last night and saw the mushroom cloud, looking so strange and so familiar, and inevitable, I knew it couldn’t be. It was finally happening but was beyond belief, so I woke up, and it was just a dream.

Sarah Shapiro’s most recent books are Wish I Were Here and All of Our Lives: An Anthology of Contemporary Jewish Writing. This article first appeared in the NY Jewish Week.

WHEN Yitta Schwartz died last month at 93, she left behind 15 children, more than 200 grandchildren and so many great- and great-great-grandchildren that, by her family’s count, she could claim perhaps 2,000 living descendants.

Mrs. Schwartz was a member of the Satmar Hasidic sect, whose couples have nine children on average and whose ranks of descendants can multiply exponentially. But even among Satmars, the size of Mrs. Schwartz’s family is astonishing. A round-faced woman with a high-voltage smile, she may have generated one of the largest clans of any survivor of the Holocaust — a thumb in the eye of the Nazis.

[The new design is now fully implemented. If you notice any display problems, please send us a comment or email feedback -at- cross-currents dot com. Thank you!]

I want to take a moment to explain the primary motivation for this redesign. As all our regular readers know, many of the articles you find here are far longer than “blog posts,” and, we like to think, more carefully thought-out as well. A large portion of those articles also appear in other online and print publications. As a result, we the writers have felt a certain reluctance to publish brief tidbits, thoughts, references to articles published elsewhere, real-time commentary on events in the Jewish world etc., intermingled with those lengthy and thoughtful articles.

Thus the redesign, featuring a third column, “In Brief,” which you will find between the articles and the sidebar, on the home page. All articles will be archived together, but the home page will separate the two types.

In addition, the new theme which we are using permits us to publish the ... Read More >>]]> Yes, you’ve arrived at the right place, though it now looks a little different. Cross-Currents now has a different theme, the first significant redesign since our launch five years ago.

[The new design is now fully implemented. If you notice any display problems, please send us a comment or email feedback -at- cross-currents dot com. Thank you!]

I want to take a moment to explain the primary motivation for this redesign. As all our regular readers know, many of the articles you find here are far longer than “blog posts,” and, we like to think, more carefully thought-out as well. A large portion of those articles also appear in other online and print publications. As a result, we the writers have felt a certain reluctance to publish brief tidbits, thoughts, references to articles published elsewhere, real-time commentary on events in the Jewish world etc., intermingled with those lengthy and thoughtful articles.

Thus the redesign, featuring a third column, “In Brief,” which you will find between the articles and the sidebar, on the home page. All articles will be archived together, but the home page will separate the two types.

In addition, the new theme which we are using permits us to publish the most recent two articles in their entirety, while the older articles will follow with shorter excerpts than before. This will probably be of greatest benefit to those who check back with Cross-Currents frequently – and perhaps will encourage you to become one of them, if you aren’t already.

We hope you enjoy the new design, and encourage your feedback. We’re also looking for a better title for the “In Brief” section, if you have any suggestions!