Several authors spoke of people possessing inadequate understanding of the whys and wherefores of Yiddishkeit. There are too many bright people who realize at some point that their comprehension of what a Torah life is all about conceptually still operates on a grade school level. When they were younger, they did not have any questions; decades later, they go through the motions, but have no idea about where to find answers.

Some authors suggested that for some people, the most satisfying way to gain a sophisticated appreciation of the inner workings of Yiddishkeit is to study the great classics of Jewish philosophy and ... Read More >>]]> From the feedback we’ve been getting, the current edition of Klal Perspectives dealing with connectedness has touched many people. Besides the runaway success of Rabbi Moshe Weinberger’s contribution, two other factors have been played a role in the popularity of the Spring 2012 issue. Firstly, the topic seems to have resonated with many people who were ready to confront the uncomfortable realization that their relationship with HKBH was not as rich as they wanted. Secondly, between the different authors, the issue offered a plethora of suggestions, appealing to all kinds of different backgrounds and needs.

Several authors spoke of people possessing inadequate understanding of the whys and wherefores of Yiddishkeit. There are too many bright people who realize at some point that their comprehension of what a Torah life is all about conceptually still operates on a grade school level. When they were younger, they did not have any questions; decades later, they go through the motions, but have no idea about where to find answers.

Some authors suggested that for some people, the most satisfying way to gain a sophisticated appreciation of the inner workings of Yiddishkeit is to study the great classics of Jewish philosophy and machshavah. The Rishonim asked all the key questions, and provided approaches that have weathered all the centuries that followed them. So much of what was written after is based upon their contribution. Their approaches, when properly understood, satisfy the thirst for understanding far better than their more recent competitors.

Unfortunately, many people are so overawed by the most important works, that studying them is not an option for them. They believe that to do an adequate job, you need to understand the philosophical underpinnings of the works of the Rishonim in particular, and they do not have the tools to proceed. Such people have a rare opportunity to study with someone who does, free of charge.

Rabbi Chaim Eisen of spent many of his early years in Flatbush before settling in Yerushalayim. He has the love of Torah and textual competence of a real Ben Torah, having spent many years learning and teaching in both “black” and “white” yeshivos (including R Tzvi Kushaleveky’s and the Mir); he has the rich depth and academic background of an accomplished academician. (My love for Maharal is no secret. Yet, when Rabbi Eisen published his magisterial treatment of Aggada and the Maharal in Hakira, I called him to ask him whether he published the piece just to make me look juvenile! It is the best piece I have ever seen on the history of explicating Aggada.) He knows R Sadya, R Yosef Albo, Kuzari, and the Moreh like few people I have ever met.

As part of his new Yeshivat Sharashim, he is offering an online, interactive, web-based video series on Kuzari beginning this Sunday. There is no charge, but registration is required to keep the class at a size that students can interact with the instructor in real time. (The time, by the way, for the hour long first class is 11AM, EDT.)

This is a wonderful opportunity that does not come up very often. We hope and trust that it will be followed by another in-depth series on the Rambam’s Moreh.

A front-page New York Times story on May 1 concerned (thanks, Mr. Rumsfeld, for the pithy phrase) a “known unknown”: the earth’s cloud cover. Specifically, the causes and effects of its extent, altitude, and qualities—which are only very imperfectly understood. MIT professor of meteorology Richard S. Lindzen, the article explains, considers clouds a sort of planetary self-corrective mechanism that can counter the effects of greenhouse gases, the global warming drama’s villains.

Predictably, despite his unassailable credentials and the scientific community’s ostensible commitment to objectively consider all hypotheses, Dr. Lindzen has been excoriated by many of his colleagues, who, while they concede the enormous effect of clouds on climate, say he lacks proof for his contention and that, by raising the cloud issue, he is acting, in the words of one, in a “deeply unprofessional and irresponsible” manner.

The Times reporter mirrors that negativity, beginning his piece by stating that “a small group of scientific dissenters,” having had “their arguments… knocked down by accumulating evidence,” have “seized on one last argument,” namely, “that clouds will save us.” ... Read More >>]]> I think I’ve discovered what makes me so uncomfortable about the assertion that global warming is a real and urgent problem.

A front-page New York Times story on May 1 concerned (thanks, Mr. Rumsfeld, for the pithy phrase) a “known unknown”: the earth’s cloud cover. Specifically, the causes and effects of its extent, altitude, and qualities—which are only very imperfectly understood. MIT professor of meteorology Richard S. Lindzen, the article explains, considers clouds a sort of planetary self-corrective mechanism that can counter the effects of greenhouse gases, the global warming drama’s villains.

Predictably, despite his unassailable credentials and the scientific community’s ostensible commitment to objectively consider all hypotheses, Dr. Lindzen has been excoriated by many of his colleagues, who, while they concede the enormous effect of clouds on climate, say he lacks proof for his contention and that, by raising the cloud issue, he is acting, in the words of one, in a “deeply unprofessional and irresponsible” manner.

The Times reporter mirrors that negativity, beginning his piece by stating that “a small group of scientific dissenters,” having had “their arguments… knocked down by accumulating evidence,” have “seized on one last argument,” namely, “that clouds will save us.” There is a reference to “withering criticism” of Dr. Lindzen and an assertion that the renegade researcher has been “embraced” by “politicians looking for reasons not to tackle climate change.” The sneering is subtle, but it’s there.

Less subtle was the environmental zeal of Al Armendariz, the erstwhile top Environmental Protection Agency official in Texas, who recently resigned after a video emerged of him discussing how to enforce oil and gas extraction regulations. He suggested the approach of “the Romans,” who “used to conquer villages” by taking “the first five guys they saw and… crucify[ing] them,” rendering the village “really easy to manage for the next few years.”

Of course, neither the hasty dismissal of rational speculations like Dr. Lindzen’s nor the over-enthusiasm of some environmentalists like Mr. Armendariz means that climate change isn’t real or that we have no responsibility to try to deal with it. We simply don’t know. The climate alarm-raisers may turn out to have been modern-day Chicken Littles squawking that the sky is warming. But they may turn out to have been environmental prophets. To be sure, most of the scientific community believes the latter. But in something as complex and long-term as climate change, even a scientific consensus—“groupthink,” Dr. Lindzen calls it—is only a contender for truth, not its arbiter.

Still, what those who preach with absolute certainty that our climate is in crisis bring to mind is the late writer Michael Crichton’s assertion that people who do not believe in G-d “still have to believe in something that gives meaning” to their lives, and that “environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists.”

Environmentalism, he elaborated, posits “an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature,” then “a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge”—i.e. technology and exploitation of natural resources—and “as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all.”

“We are all energy sinners,” he concluded, summing up the new religion’s world-view, “doomed to die, unless we seek salvation.”

What Dr. Lindzen’s contention and the reaction to it have helped me realize is that, whether or not Mr. Crichton is correct, a core credo of environmental zealots (whether or not they also believe in G-d) is the belief that human beings are where the environment buck stops, that we alone can make or break the planet.

Once again: the climate may in fact be in crisis. What discomforts me, though, is the stance of those who insist that they know with absolute surety—which they can’t—that it is. And that by lambasting any who dare dissent from their pronouncement, they show unwillingness to even consider the possibility that the world G-d created for us humans may not need our help to stay inhabitable—that, in His wisdom, He may have imbued not only our skin with the ability to heal its wounds, but the earth’s to do the same.

© 2012 AMI MAGAZINE

The above essay may be reproduced or republished, with the above copyright appended.

Communications: rabbishafran@amimagazine.org

Subscribe to Ami at http://amimagazine.org/subscribe.html .

Fallows considers, inter alia, the gargantuan task that confronts any US president:

The sobering realities of the modern White House are: All presidents are unsuited to office, and therefore all presidents fail in certain crucial aspects of the job. All betray their supporters and provoke bitter criticism from their own side at some point in their term. And all are mis-assessed while in office, for reasons that typically depend more on luck and historical accident than on factors within their control. …Presidents fail because not to fail would require, in the age of modern communications and global responsibilities, a range ... Read More >>]]> A few months ago, veteran political columnist James Fallows presented two opposing views of the Obama presidency in a cover story for The Atlantic. It generated much discussion, in part because of its balance, in part because of the depth that only someone who has been as close to the presidency as Fallows can bring. Fallows admits to leaning to a favorable view of the President, but it does not get in the way of pinpointing his flaws and errors. If you are open to two points of view on the subject, “Obama, Explained” remains a good read.

Fallows considers, inter alia, the gargantuan task that confronts any US president:

The sobering realities of the modern White House are: All presidents are unsuited to office, and therefore all presidents fail in certain crucial aspects of the job. All betray their supporters and provoke bitter criticism from their own side at some point in their term. And all are mis-assessed while in office, for reasons that typically depend more on luck and historical accident than on factors within their control. …Presidents fail because not to fail would require, in the age of modern communications and global responsibilities, a range of native talents and learned skills no real person has ever possessed. These include “smarts” in the normal sense…. A president needs rhetorical clarity and eloquence, so that he can explain to publics at home and around the world the intent behind his actions and—at least as important—so that everyone inside the administration understands his priorities clearly enough that he does not have to wade into every little policy fight to enforce his preferences….A president needs empathy and emotional intelligence….He needs to be confident but not arrogant; open-minded but not a weather vane; resolute but still adaptable; historically minded but highly alert to the present; visionary but practical… capable of being fully alert at a moment’s notice when the phone rings at 3 a.m.—yet also able to sleep each night, despite unremitting tension and without chemical aids….Ideally he would be self-aware enough that, in the center of a system that treats him as emperor-god, he could still recognize his own defects and try to offset them.

It struck me that much, if not all, of this analysis holds true of our expectations of gedolei Yisrael. We ask of them, expect of them, more than most mortals can possibly deliver.

We would be naïve if we tried ignoring or denying the murmurings in the tents of many yerei’im u-shleimim in the Orthodox world. Cross-Currents is one of the minority of blogs whose authors remain committed to the ideals of emunas chachamim and taking counsel with gedolei Yisrael. Yet even among our readership, it is clear that many people – if only anonymously – sometimes express disappointment with this or that gadol, or with the general manner of leadership of the Torah community.

There may be room for criticism, but we should ask ourselves many questions before we criticize too publicly or too vocally. One of those questions should be whether we ask the impossible of our gedolim.

In truth, the comparison to the President fails, for reasons that took a trip to Washington for me to appreciate. A few weeks ago, I was in DC as part of my day-job, and dealt with personnel at the White House. The subject is not suitable for discussion on a blog, and largely irrelevant. (It is not quite of “eeef I tell you, I have to keeel you” caliber, but still sensitive. It will wait for an appropriate time in the future.) Having to differentiate between doors upon which to knock, the complexity of government became much more immediate and real. The point is that there were offices, often multiple offices, for almost every kind of problem and program imaginable. Within the White House itself, there were people waiting on hand to assist the President with every kind need and every contingency, leaving him with as much freedom to make the decisions required of him.

How different this support system is from the lives of our gedolim! Not only do we expect of them all that Fallows describes, but we demand that they provide the right answers without any of the support system available to the President, even on a much smaller scale. To the contrary, almost all of them have immediate responsibilities to their talmidim, boards of directors, alumni, members of their immediate communities, etc. These duties alone could take up every waking minute – but we still believe that they should be able to serve up insight and leadership that comes from entire offices at governmental agencies and corporate headquarters.

I am not arguing that all is perfect, or that it is heretical to look for ways to improve the system. But we ought to be able to cut our gedolim a bit more slack than some of us do.

We certainly ought not make things worse by making assumptions that are not true. A case in point is a clip of Rav Aharon Leib Shteinman, shlit”a, holding his own against two interlocutors. At age 100, he is so on target, incisive and strong that many viewers have found themselves cheering from the sidelines. It is a rare opportunity to watch an overworked and overburdened gadol at work – and turning in a command performance.

A few days later, talking into a microphone he did not know was open, President Obama is heard assuring Russian President Medvedev that after his election he will have more flexibility in the area of missile negotiations. Which of course led the anti-Obamas to charge that Obama was more than willing to give in to Russian demands, but can only afford to do so after he is reelected, not now. (This followed an earlier embarrassing open-mike nasty putdown of Binyamin Netanyahu by both Obama and President Sarkozy of France.)

The ensuing ... Read More >>]]> The power of human speech made the headlines once again this month — even before the WikiLeak shocks had worn off — with two gaffes by prominent American politicians. One of Mitt Romney’s top campaign strategists was asked if Romney would not be permanently locked into certain positions because of his primary promises. He replied with the unfortunate “Etch-a Sketch” analogy: You shake the picture a bit and start from the beginning. Which of course led the anti-Romneys to charge that this proves that Romney has no convictions and no principles. He is just a politician who blows with the wind — or the granules of the “sketch.”

A few days later, talking into a microphone he did not know was open, President Obama is heard assuring Russian President Medvedev that after his election he will have more flexibility in the area of missile negotiations. Which of course led the anti-Obamas to charge that Obama was more than willing to give in to Russian demands, but can only afford to do so after he is reelected, not now. (This followed an earlier embarrassing open-mike nasty putdown of Binyamin Netanyahu by both Obama and President Sarkozy of France.)

The ensuing outraged reactions on all sides brings to mind the creation of Adam. When God creates him, He breathes into him the “breath of life “ (Genesis 2:7), which Targum Onkelos famously translates it as ruach memallela” a breath of speech,” that which differentiates man from the beasts — the power to talk. And it is truly a power, fraught with possibilities for good or ill. Through his words, man can sustain or destroy, heal or wound, express kindness or cruelty. No wonder King Solomon declares in Proverbs 18:21: “Death and life are in the power of the tongue.” Because of this, the Torah is replete with warnings about the use and misuse of human speech: false vows and promises; gossip, blasphemy, obscenity, and more. Human speech is so charged that it requires constant monitoring.

The truth is that even without open-mike problems, we are beginning to sense that the words that emanate from our mouths do not simply evaporate in the atmosphere. Since speech is a gift from the Eternal One, it is not unreasonable to suggest that speech itself must contain some form of eternity. Somewhere in space, the words live on, in another realm and in another way. One gleans an inkling of this from a very common earthly illustration — from the world of computers. In word processing, nothing is ever really deleted or erased forever. Everything one ever wrote on his computer can ultimately be skimmed off the hard drive and recovered. Whatever one writes digitally is never fully lost; it remains imprinted even after it is deleted. (Which is both ominous and comforting at the same time.)

The unguarded comments of politicians constitute a morality tale. Whether they reveal or do not reveal their true inner thoughts and calculations no one can know. But one thought keeps bobbing to the surface because of these gaffes. Namely, we all realize that this is not a perfect world. But one way to make it less imperfect is to imagine that there is an open mike nearby whenever we open our mouths, and to behave as if others were listening in. Yes, it might inhibit us a bit, but why would that be a bad thing? After all is said and done, such self-imposed verbal discipline might be a net gain for us personally, for our marriages, our friendships, and for our relationships in general.

Truth to tell, there is no need to imagine that there is an open mike nearby. For there exists a real one in fact, one that is with us wherever we go. See the Mishnah in Avos 2:1, which offers the formula for avoiding sin: “… consider that there is always with you a watchful Eye, a listening Ear, and that all your deeds are recorded in a Book.” “A listening ear ….”: were the Sages possibly referring to the perpetual open mike that surrounds us? Hmm.

This article first appeared in Mishpacha.

Haredi Jews have become accustomed to their portrayal in a variety of negative ways over the years, the result of our stubborn refusal to assimilate Western values and mores into our lives, our rejection of the notion of a multi-winged Judaism-bird (and, perforce, of conversions of non-Jews to “new Judaisms”) and, to our shame and chagrin, the inexcusable actions of some individuals in our community.

Still, it was eye-opening to read Rabbi Eugene Korn’s recent indictment of Haredim (NYJW, April 17, “In The Name of Judaism, Haredim Have Turned Inward”) on a new charge: embracing an isolationist worldview “adopted by early Christian monks and ascetics… in stark contrast to rabbinic Judaism.”

Who knew?

As the rabbi charges, Haredim do indeed inhabit “a universe far removed from society at large” – at least if society at large is defined as the sort of things that are the bread and butter (and mud) of popular tabloids and magazines.

But is it really accurate to see Haredim as, in his words, “a version of Christian monks, albeit with families”? ... Read More >>]]> This article appears in the current issue of the New York Jewish Week and is shared here with that paper’s permission.

Haredi Jews have become accustomed to their portrayal in a variety of negative ways over the years, the result of our stubborn refusal to assimilate Western values and mores into our lives, our rejection of the notion of a multi-winged Judaism-bird (and, perforce, of conversions of non-Jews to “new Judaisms”) and, to our shame and chagrin, the inexcusable actions of some individuals in our community.

Still, it was eye-opening to read Rabbi Eugene Korn’s recent indictment of Haredim (NYJW, April 17, “In The Name of Judaism, Haredim Have Turned Inward”) on a new charge: embracing an isolationist worldview “adopted by early Christian monks and ascetics… in stark contrast to rabbinic Judaism.”

Who knew?

As the rabbi charges, Haredim do indeed inhabit “a universe far removed from society at large” – at least if society at large is defined as the sort of things that are the bread and butter (and mud) of popular tabloids and magazines.

But is it really accurate to see Haredim as, in his words, “a version of Christian monks, albeit with families”? Or to characterize the rabbis of the Talmud as embracing the broader societal mores of their times?

To anyone truly familiar with Haredim and the Talmud, both contentions are risible.

As is Rabbi Korn’s further assertion, that much of the Haredi community has “lost interest in relating to the entire Jewish people.”

Let’s start with asceticism. Jews, to be sure, are enjoined by the Torah to focus on their inner lives, i.e. their spiritual self-improvement. That is nothing to criticize; it is what all of us, no matter our vocation or degree of interaction with the wider world, are obligated – indeed privileged – to do as Jews. And Torah study as the center of a Jewish man’s life is, to understate the case, not something foreign to “the rabbis of the Talmud.” In dozens of places, the Talmudic rabbis extol Torah study and all who make it their mainstay.

And they repeatedly warn, too, of absorbing negative influences from surrounding societies. They certainly interacted with others outside of the Jewish community when it was necessary or prudent. As do Haredim today, something readily evident to any open-minded observer of the community.

But seeking to live among members of one’s own religious community and trying to avoid the effluence of a coarse popular culture does not a monk make. Prudent, measured insularity is not medieval Christian asceticism.

As to the alleged Haredi loss of “interest in relating to the entire Jewish people,” tell that to the beneficiaries of the innumerable “community kollelim” nationwide whose fellows’ dual purpose is to study Torah in depth and to be a resource to members of their respective broader Jewish communities. Those Haredi kollel members interact in conversation, friendship and study with Jews of all affiliations, or of none. Tell it to the thousands of tri-state area Jews – of every conceivable background – who, hospitalized in Manhattan, have been visited daily and provided hot food by the famed “Satmar ladies.” Tell it to all the Reform, Conservative and unaffiliated Jews who have weekly phone-partners with Haredi men and women as part of Torah Umesora’s “Partners in Torah” project. Tell it to the untold numbers of non-Orthodox Jews who have been befriended and assisted in countless ways by Chabad emissaries.

Tell it to my colleagues at Agudath Israel of America, among them lawyers who interact with Jews and non-Jews daily in the interest of promoting truly Jewish values and all Americans’ religious rights. Tell it to all the thousands of non-Haredi participants who were invited to, and participated in, the Daf Yomi Siyum HaShas seven years ago (and to all those who are planning on attending the upcoming one, at the Metlife Stadium on August 1).

Tell it to the Jewish cancer patients and their families, whatever their affiliations, who have been assisted by Chai Lifeline – or, in Israel, by Zichron Menachem. Or, speaking of Israel, beneficiaries of Haredi social service groups like Meir Panim; medical resource providers like Ezra L’Marpeh; or of patients at the famed Laniado Hospital, in Netanya, under the direction of the Sanz-Klausenburger Rebbe, which serves the entire community (and has the distinction of being the only hospital in Israel that has never closed due to a strike).

All those efforts are not antithetical to the Haredi world’s focus on Torah; they derive from it, are informed by it, concretize it.

Rabbi Korn’s judgment of contemporary Charedim was sparked, he explains, by his experience on a flight from Israel where his young Haredi seat-mate was studying Mishnayos and, after exchanging pleasantries, seemed more interested in resuming his learning than in conversing. Rabbi Korn shouldn’t have been offended. The young man likely didn’t intend to be rude, or even monkish. One day he might surprise Rabbi Korn with the fruits of his internalization of the Jewish religious heritage.

A political group is entitled to its opinion, no less than a president is to his. But to imply that a religious value like “tikkun olam” – and by association, Judaism – is somehow implicated in a position like the one the president articulated, is outrageous, offensive and wrong.

We hereby state, clearly and without qualification, that the Torah forbids homosexual acts, and sanctions only the union of a man and a woman in matrimony.

The Orthodox Jewish constituency represented by Agudath Israel of America, as well as countless other Jews who respect the Jewish religious tradition, remain staunch in their opposition to redefining marriage.

The implication is that those who continue to ignore Israel’s Independence Day act in the same spirit today. “It [Yom Ha-Atzmaut] was celebrated last week throughout the world by countless Jewish people, though not by many in the Orthodox Jewish community. Yom Ha-Atzmaut is generally either ignored or treated with disdain by most Orthodox Jews.”

The piece has generated vigorous discussion. Is it true that most Orthodox Jews ignore Yom Ha-Atzmaut? Do not a majority of Jews who ... Read More >>]]> The editorial in Ami did not promote such celebration, of course. It provided an original and thought-provoking reason to celebrate its non-celebration, so to speak. Survivors of the Holocaust would naturally take great comfort in seeing the creation of the State as a Divine Hand reaching down to comfort the bedraggled remnant of the Jewish people. It took principled courage, claims the author, to resist what he calls “the comforting interpretation of Jewish history.” Survivors refused the convenience of such an interpretation of the events around them out of fealty to their religious convictions, which had no room for a secular state replacing the yearnings of the Jewish soul. (You can and should read the original, which is posted here.)

The implication is that those who continue to ignore Israel’s Independence Day act in the same spirit today. “It [Yom Ha-Atzmaut] was celebrated last week throughout the world by countless Jewish people, though not by many in the Orthodox Jewish community. Yom Ha-Atzmaut is generally either ignored or treated with disdain by most Orthodox Jews.”

The piece has generated vigorous discussion. Is it true that most Orthodox Jews ignore Yom Ha-Atzmaut? Do not a majority of Jews who accept the Thirteen Principles of Faith, i.e. the Rambam’s definition of who is an “insider,” in fact celebrate the day? (We should probably accept the author’s protestation that by “Orthodox” he meant “charedi,” and was guilty of poor word choice, but not malice.) Is it true that “subsequent…military action stirred additional rabbinic opposition to Zionism, and was seen as proof that the Zionist idea was, from a perspective of Jewish tradition, illicit from the start?” Wasn’t this just the reaction of Satmar and Brisk, and in fact rejected in all other Torah circles? Can the position of Rav Yosef Dov Soloveitchik be reduced to nothing more than seeing the State as “a buffer against assimilation,” while dismissing “the idea that its creation was in any way associated with the concept of redemption?” Does Rav Kook merit any attention at all? Did the author ever see the newsreels of Novemeber, 1947 (the reaction to the UN partition vote), with circles of charedim and secular Jews dancing together in unbridled joy? They don’t really support the conclusion of a wholesale charedi rejection of the State. Nor does the signature of R Itche Meir Levin on Israel’s Declaration of Independence, nor all of those who did mark the first few anniversaries of the Declaration with joy and thanks to Hashem.

I will leave to others to develop those objections, and turn to one that I believe may be the most serious flaw in the editorial. Even if the facts would have been as the author has them (and I do not believe that this is the case), they would have little relevance to us today.

Yom Ha-Atzmaut is not a celebration of secular Zionism, or any kind of Zionism. It is the celebration of the coming into existence of an independent Jewish community – no, nation – in the land that is ours. Israel is the largest Jewish community in the world. Its continued existence, its thriving against all odds, is a gift from Heaven. It can, should, must be appreciated as an enormous chesed from HKBH, Who allows us to live in our holy Land and work again to slowly build up a Jewish nation. How can we fail to acknowledge the incredible saga, past and present of rov minyan and rov binyan of the Jewish people? What do we do to ourselves when we stand to the side as literally millions of Jews celebrate in their own way (even if not the way we would have designed such celebration), and we do not feel their simple joy of being Jewish? What damage to we foist on future generations of our people, as we propagate division and dissension by not smiling at them and saying “Chag Sameach,” even if it is not mentioned in Parshas Emor?

The author cited Rav Soloveitchik, and I will do so as well. Among other things, I admired (albeit from a distance, since I never attended YU) two elements in his life and thought that are actually intertwined. The first is that he was capable of changing his mind. He was an Agudah firebrand at one point, but he jumped ship. That doesn’t happen to gedolim in our revisionist biographies; it does happen to real people.

The second is his finding that halacha has its protocols of psak, which determine how to decide between competing positions. History, he said, is what sometimes determines the outcome of hashkafic debates. In the debate over the significance of the Jewish State, history was machria that it is significant.

This is not dependent on the ideology that is called Zionism. Many years ago, I heard a young rosh yeshiva argue that all of us were like the Japanese soldiers who remained holed up on Pacific islands many years after the end of World War Two, still keeping guard at their posts. They were living a war that had already ended. There was a war for the heart and soul of the Jewish people between secular Zionists and those faithful to Torah. Secular Zionism lost that battle! We in the Torah community should have declared victory and moved on! We now have a country of our own, and we should take our places in its development, without fear of supporting an ideology that died a long time ago. Yom Ha-Atzmaut is not about ideology today – it is about the privilege of having a place where we need bow to nothing but Hashem. Recall the words of the Rambam (Chanuka 3:1) writing about why Chanuka was important: “Jewish governance returned to for more than two hundred years, till the churban.” Those two centuries were presided over by rulers a good deal more evil than the people sitting in Knesset.

When I left kollel, I was an anti-zionist kana’i. I’m not sure if there is much of the old-style Zionism left to oppose. Today, there is only the reality of a world in which, as the Satmar Rov once said, “When they say Zionist, they mean us.” Like it or not, that exasperating, poorly governed, socially divided patch of land is seen by the rest of the world as identical with world Jewry. I support the State not because of speculative ideology, but because of the certainty that I want to defend Yidden. For many years, I felt jealous of those who could celebrate on Yom Ha-Atzmaut, who could share the thanks, the concerns for the future, and the joy. My previous training left no room for it. Gradually, I made some room. (I don’t say Hallel, because I am not bowled over by the arguments to do so. I do say tachanun, and don’t see any contradiction. I attended the local Consular affair, but left deliberately before the musical entertainment, because of Sefirah.) But I always looked over my shoulder, feeling a bit uncomfortable. As a yeshiva-trained Jew, did I belong there?

Ami’s piece was so wrong, that I now have reason to shake off the discomfort. That is important, because when you cannot bring yourself to sincerely join in the aspirations, dreams and joy of other Jews, it becomes so much easier to write them off as “the other.” It bcomes that much easier to see yourselves as the only legitimate emissaries of G-d. From there, you and your friends can spiral out of control, taking over neighborhoods and schools contemptuously, or wearing Auschwitz uniforms in Kikar Shabbos.

Faced with the choice of celebrating with people whose religious outlook I do not share, or accepting an outlook that is too narrow and off-putting to be true, I will go with the former.

Thank you, Ami, for making life a bit less worrisome.

In the extraterrestrial’s mind it would be a place where women are forced to sit in the backs of buses and the sound of their voices prohibited from being heard. A place where religious extremists eschew democratic values and control the government and national discourse.

(Our Martian would be stunned to actually fix his multiple eyes on Tel Aviv’s Rechov Dizengoff—or, for that matter, Jerusalem’s Rechov Ben-Yehuda. He’d be stupefied by the unfettered operation of Reform, Conservative, and Messianic places of worship. The Knesset would utterly blow him away.)

The NIF’s latest Big Lie took the form of a big ad—a full-color full-pager, in fact—in The New York Times and the Forward. Maybe the latter periodical ran the ad gratis, but the Times charges $175,000 for a color page. Even discounted, it cost the NIF a pretty penny.

Actually, the one it cost is Murray Koppelman, as noted in the corner of the ad. Mr. Koppelman, an Upper East Side money manager, is a major supporter of the group—he ... Read More >>]]> Were the New Israel Fund a newly landed Martian’s only source of information about Israel, he’d likely imagine the country as a cross between Saudi Arabia and North Korea.

In the extraterrestrial’s mind it would be a place where women are forced to sit in the backs of buses and the sound of their voices prohibited from being heard. A place where religious extremists eschew democratic values and control the government and national discourse.

(Our Martian would be stunned to actually fix his multiple eyes on Tel Aviv’s Rechov Dizengoff—or, for that matter, Jerusalem’s Rechov Ben-Yehuda. He’d be stupefied by the unfettered operation of Reform, Conservative, and Messianic places of worship. The Knesset would utterly blow him away.)

The NIF’s latest Big Lie took the form of a big ad—a full-color full-pager, in fact—in The New York Times and the Forward. Maybe the latter periodical ran the ad gratis, but the Times charges $175,000 for a color page. Even discounted, it cost the NIF a pretty penny.

Actually, the one it cost is Murray Koppelman, as noted in the corner of the ad. Mr. Koppelman, an Upper East Side money manager, is a major supporter of the group—he has pledged $500,000 in matching donations to it—and is featured on a video the NIF produced.

In the clip, the grandfatherly Mr. Koppelman reminisces about his youth. Shortly after Israel’s declaration of independence, he spent time on two kibbutzim and, after deciding that “I don’t want to be poor,” embarked on what appears to have been a successful career.

During his kibbutz days, though, he recalls visiting Yerushalayim and how “it always distressed me, as I walked through the religious sections of Jerusalem,” to see “these women… walking behind their husbands.” He wondered “what kind of life they lead” and about their inability to “really show what their capabilities were to do better for the world, rather than just to look up to their husbands, who become their god.”

Mr. Koppelman may not be a Martian but he, too, could benefit from a dose of reality. (He can start with a visit to my house.). His imaginings aside, the organization benefitting from his largesse is using it to renew its batty battle-cry that Israel is becoming a theocracy.

The new NIF ad is dominated by a photograph of another ad, on a billboard in Israel. It features a woman’s face but only half of it is there, as part of the ad has been torn off. The large words in the NIF ad ask: “WHAT HAPPENS WHEN EXTREMISM CROWDS OUT EQUALITY AND DEMOCRACY IN ISRAEL?” The word “EXTREMISM” is written in such large type that it takes up an entire line, symbolically “crowding out” all the others. (The damaged ad-in-an-ad was itself posted by an NIF-supported group that opposes “gender separation in the public sphere” and supports a “pluralistic” Jerusalem.)

Although no one can know whether the defacing was the work of religious Jews or those who seek to vilify them (such “proxy” vandalism is not unheard of in Israel), the problem here is vandalism, not impending theocracy. And the solution is to catch and prosecute vandals, not to wax alarmist or besmirch a community.

Likewise, when an individual Jew, whether motivated by religious zeal or lesser stimuli, acts improperly, the problem is that individual—not the larger religious community.

Yes, that community’s democratically elected Knesset representatives seek to maintain the standards of the Jewish mesorah in Israel regarding things affecting the essential integrity and unity of the Jewish people, like issues of marriage and divorce.

And, yes, observant communities deserve respect in things like the routing of traffic on Shabbos away from their neighborhoods, and even by permitting some buses servicing their neighborhoods to offer separate, voluntary, gender-separated seating. But such accommodations of the observant population do not a theocracy threaten. The model here is not Iran, but the Israel of the past 64 years.

It’s painful to recognize, but no less true for the fact: The same sort of intransigent ill will that so many Arabs harbor for all Israelis is harbored by the NIF and its supporters for religious ones.

© 2012 AMI MAGAZINE

The above essay may be reproduced or republished, with the above copyright appended.

Communications: rabbishafran@amimagazine.org

Subscribe to Ami at http://amimagazine.org/subscribe.html .

His reasons for this drastic move are informative. He hopes that “leaving the internet will make me better with my time, vastly more creative, a better friend, a better son and brother… a better Paul.” He said that he was spending an average of over twelve hours each day using some sort of device with an Internet connection, not even including his smartphone.

By separating myself from the constant connectivity, I can see which aspects are truly valuable, which are distractions for me, and which parts are corrupting my very soul. What I worry is that I’m so “adept” at the internet that I’ve found ways to fill every crevice of my life with it, and I’m pretty sure the internet has invaded some places where it doesn’t belong.

This is a profound statement for a person who makes his living as a technology writer, a job ... Read More >>]]> On Monday, Paul Miller, a Senior Editor at a “technology-focused news publication” called The Verge, announced that he was quitting the Internet for a year. He’s switched to a “dumb” phone, and has pledged to neither use the Internet nor ask others to use it for him, if he can.

His reasons for this drastic move are informative. He hopes that “leaving the internet will make me better with my time, vastly more creative, a better friend, a better son and brother… a better Paul.” He said that he was spending an average of over twelve hours each day using some sort of device with an Internet connection, not even including his smartphone.

By separating myself from the constant connectivity, I can see which aspects are truly valuable, which are distractions for me, and which parts are corrupting my very soul. What I worry is that I’m so “adept” at the internet that I’ve found ways to fill every crevice of my life with it, and I’m pretty sure the internet has invaded some places where it doesn’t belong.

This is a profound statement for a person who makes his living as a technology writer, a job that will be far more difficult without the ability to research new devices online, see what others have written, and even exchange e-mail to share ideas. His previous weekly column was entitled “The Verge at work: sync your text everywhere, never lose an idea again” — which, of course, requires the Internet.

Yet after his first day, he described the experience in glowing terms. “The moment I reached down and unplugged the ethernet cable from my computer, I felt like school was out for the summer, and the simultaneous relief and boredom that last bell brings. I stood up, and I realized that I’d been anticipating this moment for ages.” The rest of his day was relaxing — including hours spent playing local multiplayer video games with colleagues.

At home I listened to records with my roommate and the peaceful boredom continued. I found myself really engaging in the moment, asking questions and listening closely, even more than if I’d just closed my computer or locked my phone, because I knew neither of those things could demand anything of me.

What I suspect he will discover is that Day 31 isn’t nearly as enjoyable as Day 1, especially given his career. But he has clearly recognized that it takes a complete disconnect in order to avoid distractions, and that other areas of our lives suffer when buried under a flurry of text messages, interesting articles and more.

It is possible, though, to take a less extreme approach and enjoy the same benefits: a weekly disconnect. It is as if the Laws of the Sabbath, which G-d called a special gift thousands of years ago, were expressly designed for our era. Now, more than ever, we need to turn off these devices in order to tune in to what really matters.

In our world, that doesn’t mean spending hours playing video games with colleagues, but devoting that time to family, friends, and spiritual growth. You, too, can experience Day One of “Life without the Internet” — each and every week.

Also published as the Project Genesis Lifeline.

One of the contenders davens at an Orthodox shul. He is not the one for whom most of our readers will be rooting. Peter Beinart is not just an irritant. He is an irritant equipped with media power. His op-eds land where he wants them. He controls an entire section of The Daily Beast (called Open Zion) from which he can conduct his campaign to save Israel through tough love. Meaning, among other things, calling for a selective boycott of Israeli products, which puts him in bed with the worst of the Palestinian Israel-haters. (They don’t like him any more than I do, because he implies that there is such a thing as a progressive, liberated Zionism. This thought is anathema to the current crop of Palestinian leadership, which dumped the idea of a two-state solution a few years ago, and forgot to inform the benighted leadership of some mainline Protestant denominations, who are also contemplating selective boycotts of Israel as a ... Read More >>]]> By the time you read this, the Great Debate may already have taken place. No matter. The issues will be around long after the hall at the Kraft Center at Columbia empties on Wednesday evening, May 2nd.

One of the contenders davens at an Orthodox shul. He is not the one for whom most of our readers will be rooting. Peter Beinart is not just an irritant. He is an irritant equipped with media power. His op-eds land where he wants them. He controls an entire section of The Daily Beast (called Open Zion) from which he can conduct his campaign to save Israel through tough love. Meaning, among other things, calling for a selective boycott of Israeli products, which puts him in bed with the worst of the Palestinian Israel-haters. (They don’t like him any more than I do, because he implies that there is such a thing as a progressive, liberated Zionism. This thought is anathema to the current crop of Palestinian leadership, which dumped the idea of a two-state solution a few years ago, and forgot to inform the benighted leadership of some mainline Protestant denominations, who are also contemplating selective boycotts of Israel as a sign of their great love for Israel and Jews.)

The other contender is Daniel Gordis, arguably one of the most talented and effective advocates for Israel, period. I am not alone in rating his handling of Beinart’s new book, The Crisis of Zionism, as far and away the best of the lot.

It is a curious thing. Reading his political commentary, I find myself always nodding vigorously, and asking myself why I didn’t think of phrasing things so mellifluously. When he writes about issues of Jewish law and history, we might as well be living in parallel universes, without a worm-hole or a shared vocabulary to connect us. (Gordis hails from a storied Conservative family, although I hear that his own halachic observance is fairly traditional.)

This recent article of his leaves me disoriented. I can’t figure out whether it is political – which would explain why I loved it, or religious – which would explain why I am skeptical about his conclusion. Here are excerpts of his pummeling of Beinart:

Beinart’s problem, most fundamentally, is that the American liberalism with which he is so infatuated does not comfortably have a place for Jewish ethnic nationalism.

Throughout the book, the words “liberal” or “democratic” are always positives. And what means “negative” or “shameful”? In Beinart’s book, the word is “tribal.” … “Among younger non-Orthodox Jews,” he later says smugly, “tribalism is in steep decline.” What is wrong with the settlers is that they have “tribal privilege” much “like the British in India, Serbs in Kosovo, and whites in the segregated South.”

Really? Israel, in which Beduin women graduate from medical school, is like the segregated South? Surely Beinart knows better. So why the relentless attack?

Beinart’s problem isn’t really with Israel. It’s with Judaism. Bottom line, what troubles Beinart isn’t what’s happened to Zionism. What troubles him is the dimension of Jewish life that he can’t abide, but of which Zionism insists on reminding him. And that element is the undeniable fact that Judaism is tribal.

I don’t know which kiddush Beinart recited on the first night of Passover, but surely he knows that most Jews begin the main portion of the kiddush by praising God “who has chosen us from among all the nations, raising us above other languages.” Has he noticed that the blessing before being called up to the Torah thanks God for “choosing us from among all the nations,” or that we end Shabbat with havdala, noting that God distinguishes between “holy and profane, light and dark, between Israel and the nations”?

Now we can surely debate whether or not Jewish tribalism – a view of the world that says that we are not just like everyone else, that we are distinct and ought to remain that way – is one with which we are comfortable. We can debate whether or not this element of Judaism invariably leads to illegitimate Jewish senses of supremacy. But what we cannot debate is that that is what Judaism has always been. Had Beinart argued that a tribal Judaism has outlived its usefulness, that would not have been very new (Reform Judaism made that claim a long time ago, though it has largely retreated from that position), but it would have been interesting. And honest. And fair.

Some of us, myself included – as in my forthcoming book The Promise of Israel – would then respond that the very tribalism that so troubles Beinart is actually essential. Why? Because it is tribalism, the very opposite of the universalism that so enthralls Beinart, that is key to our being someone, of having something to contribute to humanity.

We sense that Gordis is correct, but does that mean that Beinart is wrong? A younger generation of non-Orthodox Jews does not relate to Israel with anything near the passion and love that their predecessors did. Why should they? The last generation grew up with images of little Israel surviving serial onslaughts by its enemies, and its stunning victory in 1967. The current generation grew up with pictures of Israeli soldiers armed to the teeth facing down oppressed Palestinians at checkpoints. Or so they are taught on campus. (Just a few years ago, kiruv organizations took the lion’s share of their fresh recruits to Israel, because young secular Jews still identified strongly with it. Today, you would think that the Jewish national homeland was Costa Rica.) What do we get from understanding that it is really Judaism itself that Beinart rejects? How will that shore up Jewish loyalty among young Jews? When Gordis goes to kiddush and havdalah to prove his point, does that not suggest that those who have little use for either of them are just doomed to not getting the point?

In other words, does Gordis’ presentation make any sense outside of a connection to a Judaism and an Israel that remain connected to G-d, Torah, and observance?

Yet, I sense that he is correct and that I am wrong. I sincerely hope, despite deep-seated theological differences, that he is correct and that I am wrong. Because the more people outside of the community of the halachically committed who stay loyal to the Jewish State and the Jewish people, the better. Their children might remain in the fold; some of them will come back to their true roots.

I see evidence of Gordis being correct every time I visit Israel, and often in my interaction with dedicated non-observant members of Israel’s foreign service. Soldiers who would give their lives for their country, and would not entertain any thoughts of leaving, despite the hardships. And despite the likelihood that their own children will also have to put their lives on the line. How is it that such loyalty persists, when it vanishes so quickly in the West if it is not connected to Torah and mitzvos? Many, many Israelis have gone the predictable route. Without commitment to Torah, they leave, they intermarry, they are lost to the Jewish people. What makes other secular Israelis different, and retains their dedication?

I struggle to find a model that works. The closest I have come is bound up in the words of the Meshech Chochmah (Nitzavim 30:2). “This is what the Torah means when it says והשבות אל לבבך/ you shall take it, return it, to your heart: Love of the the Jewish people is etched into his heart. When he returns there, when he listens to what remains engraved on his heart from the moment of Sinai, then he will return to Hashem his G-d. Since he returns to his people, it is assured that he will return as well to his G-d and be cured of his foolishness.”

Why do some Jews far from observance still manage to read the words etched on to their hearts, while others are blind to them? I do not know. In the long run, I cannot see how anyone other than the Orthodox will manage to survive Jewishly. In the short- and intermediate-terms, however, I pray that Gordis will get the better of me.

It was the winter of 1941, the first one my father, may he be well, as a 14-year-old, along with his Novhardoker colleagues and rebbe, spent in Siberia, as guests of the Soviet Union. It was a most challenging season for the deportees, as they had no proper clothing for the climate.

As the youngest member of the group, my father, known then as “Simcha Ruzhaner,” after the Polish town of his birth, was assigned to guard a farm a few miles from the kolkhoz, or collective farm, where they were based. The night temperature often dropped to forty degrees below zero, and he had only a small stove by which to keep warm.

One night, he couldn’t shake the chills and realized he was feverish. He managed to hitch his horse and sled together, and set off for the kolkhoz. Not far from the farm, though, he ... Read More >>]]> Having recounted the story in talks and in writing, I apologize if any readers are encountering it here not for the first time. It’s actually my father’s story; in fact, I only heard it from him when I was an adult (and not a particularly young one, at that).

It was the winter of 1941, the first one my father, may he be well, as a 14-year-old, along with his Novhardoker colleagues and rebbe, spent in Siberia, as guests of the Soviet Union. It was a most challenging season for the deportees, as they had no proper clothing for the climate.

As the youngest member of the group, my father, known then as “Simcha Ruzhaner,” after the Polish town of his birth, was assigned to guard a farm a few miles from the kolkhoz, or collective farm, where they were based. The night temperature often dropped to forty degrees below zero, and he had only a small stove by which to keep warm.

One night, he couldn’t shake the chills and realized he was feverish. He managed to hitch his horse and sled together, and set off for the kolkhoz. Not far from the farm, though, he fell from the sled into the deep snow and the horse continued on. He remembers reciting Tehillim, knowing that trying to walk to the kolkhoz would mean certain death from exposure. Somehow he forced himself to get up and run after the horse and sled.

Inexplicably, the horse halted; my father reached it and collapsed onto the sled. The horse took him back to the kolkhoz and the next day, shaking uncontrollably, he was transported to a town, Parabek, where there was a hospital.

There, after two days in a fevered daze, the patient began to feel a bit better. As he lay in bed, the door opened and he saw a fellow yeshiva bochur from the kolkhoz, Herschel Tishivitzer, before him, half frozen and staring, incredulous. The visitor’s feet were wrapped in layers and layers of rags—the best one could manage to try to cope with the Arctic cold without proper boots. My father couldn’t believe his eyes. Herschel had actually walked the frigid miles from the kolkhoz!

“Herschel!” he cried to his equally shocked visitor, “what are you doing here?”

The answer that came is something my father has never forgotten and surely never will.

“Yesterday,” Herschel said, “someone came from Parabek, and told us ‘Simcha umar,’ [‘Simcha died’]. And so I volunteered to come and bury you.”

That degree of dedication of one Jew to another, even in such trying circumstances and for such a reason, is a tribute, of course, to the would-be undertaker. But it is also a lesson to us all about what it means to be a Jew, to be part of Klal Yisrael.

Boruch Hashem, Herschel’s services weren’t needed, and my father eventually went on, as did Herschel, to emigrate to the United States, where my father became and remains a respected rov in Baltimore. Herschel moved to Boro Park.

Recently, our daughter Chedva and her husband and family moved to a lovely fledgling Jewish community in Ramapo, east of Monsey, called Chestnut Ridge. Among the new acquaintances my daughter made is another young woman, Dini; the two are occasional “carpool partners” and their respective 4-year-old daughters, Shaindy and Tehilla, are developing a budding friendship.

One recent Shabbos night after davening, my son-in-law Yehoshua overheard a guest in shul being introduced as a writer. He was actually the editor of the Five Towns Jewish Times. Yehoshua asked the guest, Mr. Larry Gordon—Dini’s father—if he knew his father-in-law, who writes for Ami. Mr. Gordon and I are in fact well acquainted; he often republishes this column in his paper with Ami’s permission.

Mr. Gordon’s own father-in-law, as it happens, is one Herschel Nudel, may he be well, who was once known, long ago, as Herschel Tishivitzer. The connection between Yehoshua’s and Mr. Gordon’s respective fathers-in-law quickly emerged.

And so, in a new Jewish neighborhood, great-granddaughters of Herschel Tishivitzer and Simcha Ruzhaner play together.

Rockland County is a long way from Siberia. But in a way, at least for two families, it really isn’t at all.

© 2012 AMI MAGAZINE

The above essay may be reproduced or republished, with the above copyright appended.

Communications: rabbishafran@amimagazine.org

Subscribe to Ami at http://amimagazine.org/subscribe.html .

Ragen accused Sarah Shapiro of having sued her “out of a desire to silence my criticism of the Haredi community’s treatment of women.” On Israel TV, she derided the verdict as worthy of a “banana republic.”

In a lengthy interview in Yediot Ahronot published over Pesach, Ragen charged that she was the victim of a chareidi conspiracy. Asked how the chareidim had ensnared a highly respected jurist and former military judge with the rank of colonel into their plot, Ragen did not answer directly. Elsewhere in the interview, however, she implied some kind of improper political influence on the judge: “It’s no wonder Shas very much wants this judge to be the next state comptroller.” (I’d be surprised if one Shas MK has ever heard of Ragen.)

Later in the interview, Ragen expressed her wonder that the intelligentsia had not rallied to her cause: “Just as [they] did not initially understand what the mehadrin buses ... Read More >>]]> Just before Pesach, best-selling novelist Naomi Ragen was socked with the largest plagiarism judgment ever in Israel. District court judge Yosef Shapira ordered her to pay Sarah Shapiro 233,000 shekels for scenes “stolen” from Shapiro’s memoir Growing with My Children for Ragen’s novel Sotah.

Ragen accused Sarah Shapiro of having sued her “out of a desire to silence my criticism of the Haredi community’s treatment of women.” On Israel TV, she derided the verdict as worthy of a “banana republic.”

In a lengthy interview in Yediot Ahronot published over Pesach, Ragen charged that she was the victim of a chareidi conspiracy. Asked how the chareidim had ensnared a highly respected jurist and former military judge with the rank of colonel into their plot, Ragen did not answer directly. Elsewhere in the interview, however, she implied some kind of improper political influence on the judge: “It’s no wonder Shas very much wants this judge to be the next state comptroller.” (I’d be surprised if one Shas MK has ever heard of Ragen.)

Later in the interview, Ragen expressed her wonder that the intelligentsia had not rallied to her cause: “Just as [they] did not initially understand what the mehadrin buses were, now they don’t understand … that the chareidi influence has entered into the judicial system.”

But Judge Shapira did not render judgment in a cultural war. His 92-page verdict was a meticulous examination of the two works, which led him to conclude, “[S]imilarities between the two works are so essential that any explanation other than plagiarism is untenable.”

Ragen’s appropriations from another chareidi woman writer, Sudi Rosengarten, are even more blatant than those in Sotah. The plot and even the descriptive details of Rosengarten’s story “A Match Made in Heaven” appear to have been lifted almost in toto and incorporated as Chapter 24 in Ragen’s novel The Sacrifice of Tamar. (Readers can compare for themselves.) Rosengarten, whose story appeared in Our Lives Vol. I, an anthology edited, ironically, by Sarah Shapiro, has also sued.

Shapiro’s case went beyond the appropriation of one fictional plot into another work of fiction. Growing with My Children is a memoir of her own struggles and sense of failure as a young mother feeling overwhelmed by many children in close succession. The use of her brave and path-breaking account in another author’s fiction was nothing less than identity theft.

How diabolically clever of those chareidim to trick Ragen into copying their works in order to discredit her.

This article first appeared in Mishpacha.

But fret no longer: Newsweek magazine on April 2 solved the problem by publishing its annual list of “America’s top 50 rabbis.” What yardstick was used is not made clear. Was it Torah learning? Apparently that was not a factor, since among the jurors there seems to be no one who could measure Torah learning. Was it the ability to uplift and inspire a community to return to Torah learning and living? That, too, was evidently not an issue, since among the jurors there was no one who could appreciate that quality. The magazine’s press release does mention “impact” as a criterion, but it is not clear how “impact” was weighed. Was it the size of the rabbi’s institution, or the amount of publicity he received? Or was it the rabbi’s popularity, which was gained by never taking a stand on anything not previously approved by the NY Times editorial pages? Rabbinic popularity, after all, is not difficult to attain: never push congregants to live ... Read More >>]]> If you ever wondered how to judge the success of a rabbi, you know how complex the matter can be. What are the criteria, the measuring rods, by which a rabbi is judged?

But fret no longer: Newsweek magazine on April 2 solved the problem by publishing its annual list of “America’s top 50 rabbis.” What yardstick was used is not made clear. Was it Torah learning? Apparently that was not a factor, since among the jurors there seems to be no one who could measure Torah learning. Was it the ability to uplift and inspire a community to return to Torah learning and living? That, too, was evidently not an issue, since among the jurors there was no one who could appreciate that quality. The magazine’s press release does mention “impact” as a criterion, but it is not clear how “impact” was weighed. Was it the size of the rabbi’s institution, or the amount of publicity he received? Or was it the rabbi’s popularity, which was gained by never taking a stand on anything not previously approved by the NY Times editorial pages? Rabbinic popularity, after all, is not difficult to attain: never push congregants to live more Jewish lives, to perform more mitzvos, to refrain from gossip or desecration of the Name of Gd, to devote more time to Torah study, to give more generously to tzedakah.

One wonders who chose the choosers. There were no rabbis on the committee, no Judaic scholars, no religious academicians. Instead, they were captains of industry – top executives of Time-Warner, Sony and CBS. Their only qualification to be judges of rabbis is that they all seem to be Jews. (In which they are very traditional, for is it not an old Jewish article of faith that every Jew, no matter how unlettered, is a rabbinic mayvin?…)

It is not even certain if any one of the judges is personally an observant Jew, or is conversant with any basic Jewish text. How very strange: those who choose prizes for literature are themselves writers; prizes in physics are awarded by other physicists. It is quite correctly presumed that only those who are themselves experts in the field can measure the qualifications of their peers. By what standards are the Newsweek jurors connoisseurs in what constitutes a good rabbi, much less a “top” rabbi? On this, Newsweek has no comment.

How does one evaluate the success of a rabbi? Much of what a genuine, dedicated rabbi does is so far beneath the radar, so unseen, as to defy categorization. Malachi 2:7, which refers to the teaching role of the ancient kohen, is often the model for the ideal Rav: “Sifsei kohen yishmeru daas, veTorah yevakshu mipihu, ki malach haShem Tzevakos hu” – “The kohen’s lips maintain wisdom, and they all seek Torah from his mouth, for he is the messenger of the Lo-d of Hosts.” It is rather unlikely that Newsweek used this verse as their yardstick, but what Malachi is saying here is that the ideal Rav is a messsenger from Gd Himself, has deep knowledge of Gd’s laws, and inspires his followers to preserve His Torah. He is, in a word, a genuine “rabbi,” which, of course, means “teacher.”

One of the most effective and successful rabbis I know is a living embodiment of this verse. He serves in a remote town with a small synagogue and tiny membership, but he devotes his entire life to his flock. He teaches: how to read Hebrew, how to study Chumash, how to practice mitzvos, how to daven, how best to serve Gd. He uplifts them, raises their sights to realize what it means to be a believing, learning, and practicing Jew. He is not well known, no one outside of his town has ever heard of him, but his personal example – and that of his wife – is on such a high level that they are a living sanctification of Gd’ s Name, and have brought countless people back to the joys of Torah life. I suspect that in the eyes of his Creator he is a very successful rabbi. But – surprise, surprise! – he failed to make Newsweek’s top fifty.

The criteria by which Newsweek’s rabbis were chosen are so nebulous and so without substance, and the jurors so pathetically unqualified, that it is hardly an honor to be chosen – although inadvertently there happen to be one or two worthy names on that list. Nevertheless, the more I think about it, the more do I feel that not to be chosen is the real honor.

This article first appeared in Mishpacha.

I was wrong. Four to five hundred soldiers made their way into the hall. (A sure indication that Jews account for only a half a percent of our men and women in uniform is that the soldiers arrived early, and the program began at precisely 10AM.) Before taking their seats, the soldiers viewed The Courage To Remember, the Wiesenthal Centers’ traveling display of the history, context, and scope of the Shoah that the Center makes available for such occasions. A film clip from the US Holocaust Museum ran on a screen up front. By the time the program began, every chair was filled; many stood in the rear. The Army had upped the ante. ... Read More >>]]> No one really had to be there. Attendance at the Ft. Hood Holocaust Remembrance Days ceremony was voluntary; I psyched myself up to present to a small crowd of soldiers. The important thing, I told myself, was that the US Army honored the memory of the kedoshim by wanting to understand the events of seventy years ago. My job, representing the Simon Wiesenthal Center, was to show effusive appreciation, and scrupulously follow the requests made by my hosts concerning the content of a short message.

I was wrong. Four to five hundred soldiers made their way into the hall. (A sure indication that Jews account for only a half a percent of our men and women in uniform is that the soldiers arrived early, and the program began at precisely 10AM.) Before taking their seats, the soldiers viewed The Courage To Remember, the Wiesenthal Centers’ traveling display of the history, context, and scope of the Shoah that the Center makes available for such occasions. A film clip from the US Holocaust Museum ran on a screen up front. By the time the program began, every chair was filled; many stood in the rear. The Army had upped the ante. My remarks had become an opportunity to reach out to a significant number of mostly young people, from a variety of ethnicities and backgrounds. More about that in a follow-up piece.

It was the second major surprise of my stay at Ft. Hood, the country’s most populous military base, and effective deployment location for much of America’s striking force. I had arrived the evening before, and stepped into a world that was strange but reassuring. Here, people looked you straight in the eye when they spoke. They said “please” and “thank you” like they meant it, rather than shrugging their shoulders and offering a lukewarm “no problem.” They said “Sir” and “Ma’am” without sounding like they were rehearsing for a bit part in a ‘50’s movie. When they offered to help, they meant it; you didn’t have to ask for the assistance, because they had anticipated it in advance, and had the bases already covered. Crossing the gate into the base, I had come to an alternate reality, created to take responsibility for protecting America’s freedoms from all external threats. It had its own language, its own culture, its own values. A colonel I later dined with was quick to point out that it was far from perfect. It had its criminals and its failures. Nonetheless, the seriousness and sense of mission of the base were palpable. The ubiquitous signs of the trivial pursuits of pop-culture beckoned just beyond the perimeter (and were certainly available in the large tracts of family housing on the base), but in the planned activity around you, one could feel the dedication to a larger purpose that moved the distractions from central focus. Without the invitation to speak, I would never have had the opportunity to experience a different part of America, neither red nor blue, but one that delivered a sense of pride in the red-white-and-blue even to a very civilian and casual visitor. I will always be grateful for the day I spent there.

There were surprises for the observant Jew as well. I had planned on surviving for a day on granola bars. This would be made easier because the presentation left too little time to scramble for a return to LA. Happily, I would have no choice but to rent a car and drive a few hours to Dallas, where my son and daughter-in-law would treat me as always to a lavish Shabbos. Roughing it for a day would be a small price to pay.

The granola bars were left behind. Shortly after I accepted the invitation, the base Jewish chaplain reached out and offered hospitality. I responded with something non-committal, believing that the chaplain was some non-Orthodox type in whose house I would not be able to eat.

I ate plenty. It turns out that of eleven Jewish chaplains in the Army, nine are shomrei Shabbos. Captain Rabbi Moshe Lans is one of them, and I learned early on that he was entirely frum and trustworthy. His house could have been in Monsey (except for the dog), and the food was exquisite, not even lacking cholov Yisroel cheese for breakfast. The hospitality was not all his doing, of course. His wife, Leah Bracha (AKA Laurie, a former producer of Dennis Prager’s radio show), greeted me in a sheitel and long skirt. This was unexpected enough on an Army base, and doubly so considering the fact that they are intermarried. Not in a halachic sense, mind you. The crossing of lines has to do with military protocol. Moshe is Army; his wife is in the Navy Reserve. She can regale you not only with divrei Torah, but with stories about crawling through sand in Iraq to duck below the bullets. (Men will appreciate the scene I witnessed as a large moth flew through the door, and the Navy saw fit to call out the Army to deal with the intruder. She explained, “I can deal with snakes. I can deal with terrorists. Insects gross me out.” My favorite anecdote concerned the time she attempted to conceal a wrist problem by showing up on the shooting range and firing with her left hand. The subterfuge failed; she was outed by a quick-witted drill instructor. Not ready to give in, she protested that her wrist problem should not hold her back from deployment. “My weapon of choice is a Cruise missile!” she protested.)

Captain Lans does not get huge turnouts for the minyanim he runs leyl Shabbos and Shabbos afternoon. Even those who attend are not all halachically Jewish. From what I observed of his interactions with other officers, it seemed to me that his main mission klapei shemaya is as a Special Forces Kiddush Hashem Specialist, a job he discharges quite well. He should take great pride in his work.

Dinner lasted for a good few hours. I returned to my quarters (in what they call an Army Hotel, which is actually an entire house, beautifully maintained and supplied) with enough time to daven maariv, finish the Daf, and crash for the night, entirely unsure of what I would speak about the next morning. I figured that there would be time after davening in the morning to take the background notes I did prepare in advance, and turn them into a speech.

Stay tuned for what happened in the hall.

With my unfashionable beard, dark suit and black hat, tagging me as an Orthodox Jew is pretty much a slam dunk. And, having commuted, along with my beard and hat, on those huge orange floating shuttlecocks four or five days a week for the better part of two decades, I have many memorable (at least to me) stories to tell. I’ve never gotten around to setting them down in writing (though choosing the imaginary collection’s title, “Ferry Tales,” was easy).

There was, for instance, the older lady, herself behatted, though hers was a broad-brimmed floral affair, who, standing next to me on the outside deck one glorious spring day, turned to me and beatifically emoted: “Can’t you just see him walking on the water?” (I told her, no, actually I couldn’t.) Or the young man sitting a row in front of me telling his young lady friend how he had read an article about genetic engineering on humans and that he planned on “gettin’ some of them Jew genes for my kid—he be takin’ over the world!”

The latest in my parade of ... Read More >>]]> The lady on the Staten Island ferry the other day was clearly grunting for my ears.

With my unfashionable beard, dark suit and black hat, tagging me as an Orthodox Jew is pretty much a slam dunk. And, having commuted, along with my beard and hat, on those huge orange floating shuttlecocks four or five days a week for the better part of two decades, I have many memorable (at least to me) stories to tell. I’ve never gotten around to setting them down in writing (though choosing the imaginary collection’s title, “Ferry Tales,” was easy).

There was, for instance, the older lady, herself behatted, though hers was a broad-brimmed floral affair, who, standing next to me on the outside deck one glorious spring day, turned to me and beatifically emoted: “Can’t you just see him walking on the water?” (I told her, no, actually I couldn’t.) Or the young man sitting a row in front of me telling his young lady friend how he had read an article about genetic engineering on humans and that he planned on “gettin’ some of them Jew genes for my kid—he be takin’ over the world!”

The latest in my parade of memorables, the grunting lady, was clearly trying her hand at a similar one-way communication. She was middle-aged, perhaps a few years younger than I, looked Jewish—my Jewdar is in pretty good form— and was reading a book, a real one, with pages (remember them?). The volume she held was the latest in a series of aspiring exposés of Orthodox Jewish life that have become something of a cottage industry in a part of the Jewish world.

The book, about which I had read, was written by a young woman who turned her back on her somewhat Chassidish upbringing. It was subsequently demonstrated that the author seems to have had an uneasy relationship not only with her family but with truth—committing small errors like falsely accusing a father of having murdered his son. Calling the writer’s general view of Chassidishe life jaundiced, moreover, would be like calling Rush Limbaugh inelegant. Nevertheless, the book has been righteously embraced by people who wish to think poorly of the Orthodox world. And that’s, unfortunately, a lot of folks.

Including, I came to surmise, the lady on the ferry. She was standing near the doors that would soon open, after we docked, to disgorge the boat’s human cargo onto Staten Island at the end of a workday, and she seemed to be holding the book up so that I could see it. And—have I mentioned this?—she grunted. Repeatedly.

It wasn’t really the sort of sound one would associate with a burly dockworker. It was more like a subtle rumble, communicating disapproval.

I’m not terribly shy, and I considered acknowledging the lady’s nonverbal communication and asking her if she had any questions I might be able to address. I even readied a business card to hand her, in case she wanted to speak by phone at more length. But then I chickened out.

Maybe I shouldn’t have. Maybe had I made a polite offer, she would have shared some of her chagrin with me and I could have disabused her of some of the untruths that elicited it. Or explained how some Orthodox practices and attitudes are wrongly regarded in the dark ways in which they are sometimes presented. Or we may have had a civil discussion about some of the things that had ostensibly pushed the writer over the edge (of Williamsburg).

But, in the end, sensing raw anger, I was dissuaded. A more likely scenario, I feared, would have been the reader’s channeling the antagonism she felt for Chassidim at me. She might have loudly accused me of accosting her against her will, or made a scene by shouting out some of the more putrid passages from the volume she held aloft like a religious tract. That wouldn’t have been good. It would have only spread her ill will to the many bystanders. So I just went my way.

And so, to my ongoing regret, the doors opened and a mind stayed shut.

© 2012 AMI MAGAZINE

The above essay may be reproduced or republished, with the above copyright appended.

Communications: rabbishafran@amimagazine.org

Subscribe to Ami at http://amimagazine.org/subscribe.html .

For those who have been following the case of George Zimmerman, who claimed to have shot an African-American teenager in self-defense, was believed, and then was charged following protests and a media willing to charge him with racism (despite Zimmerman, who is Hispanic (and, despite the name, not Jewish) serving as a mentor to two African-American children), something similar happened last week. ABC News first joined the media’s conviction of Zimmerman in abstentia, scanning grainy security camera footage and hastily pronouncing that there were no signs of injury on the back of George Zimmerman’s head, casting doubt on his story. Last week, however, ABC not only released an exclusive photograph claiming to show the bloodied back of Zimmerman’s head, but also pointed out that the image, taken with a cell phone, included encapsulated information showing that it was taken near Zimmerman’s location 3 minutes after the shooting was heard on 911 tapes. In other words, his claim of self-defense appears quite likely to have been true all ... Read More >>]]> First it was the BBC telling the truth about Israel’s humane efforts against terrorism, and the desires of Gazans to continue to fight the “occupation” of Jerusalem, Haifa and Tel Aviv.

For those who have been following the case of George Zimmerman, who claimed to have shot an African-American teenager in self-defense, was believed, and then was charged following protests and a media willing to charge him with racism (despite Zimmerman, who is Hispanic (and, despite the name, not Jewish) serving as a mentor to two African-American children), something similar happened last week. ABC News first joined the media’s conviction of Zimmerman in abstentia, scanning grainy security camera footage and hastily pronouncing that there were no signs of injury on the back of George Zimmerman’s head, casting doubt on his story. Last week, however, ABC not only released an exclusive photograph claiming to show the bloodied back of Zimmerman’s head, but also pointed out that the image, taken with a cell phone, included encapsulated information showing that it was taken near Zimmerman’s location 3 minutes after the shooting was heard on 911 tapes. In other words, his claim of self-defense appears quite likely to have been true all along.

But the clincher comes from HaAretz, which reported Friday on the release of the Shin Bet transcripts of the interrogation of terrorist mastermind and Arafat aide Marwan Barghouti. To the surprise of no sane, informed, philo-Semitic individual (which is to say, to the surprise of all of the Jewish left and the entire population of Europe), Arafat was behind the wave of terrorism that followed the failed Camp David talks. “Barghouti’s confessions indicate that PA Chairman Arafat issued a general directive to carry out terror attacks, but made sure not to get personally involved in any way that might incriminate him.”

What has happened to the media? Has it suddenly gone honest? If the media keeps this up, and continues to tell us the simple, unspun truth even when it doesn’t go the way the media prefers… Obama will have little chance, coverage of Charedim will be much more positive… who knows, Moshiach may come…

We thank HKBH and some of the shakers and movers of this project that we have been able to keep to our timetable as a quarterly. A personal observation that brought home to me how just how well the animating spirit of this journal has been received. (Full disclosure: I am a member of its editorial board.) For the first issue, board members had to put in significant time urging, convincing, cajoling prospective writers, after we assembled a list of those we from whom we thought we would want to hear. By the second issue, by and large, targeted contributors were willing to contribute without any arm-twisting. ... Read More >>]]> With pride, we announce the third issue of the online journal Klal Perspectives. Is there an epidemic of spiritual malaise, even among people fully observant? How widespread are feelings of lack of connection with the Ribbono Shel Olam? What has changed in recent times? Have solutions been found that are effective in whole or in part? These are some of the most pressing questions to a large part of the Orthodox world, and once again, Klal Perspectives brings together a diversity of analyses and suggestions across a spectrum of Orthodox thought.

We thank HKBH and some of the shakers and movers of this project that we have been able to keep to our timetable as a quarterly. A personal observation that brought home to me how just how well the animating spirit of this journal has been received. (Full disclosure: I am a member of its editorial board.) For the first issue, board members had to put in significant time urging, convincing, cajoling prospective writers, after we assembled a list of those we from whom we thought we would want to hear. By the second issue, by and large, targeted contributors were willing to contribute without any arm-twisting. This issue harvested more submissions than we has originally planned on. Some personalities who were, for one reason or another, not on our list of prospects contacted us and asked to write! We hope that the community senses that even when some of our problems seem intractable, we are blessed with gifted and dedicated thinkers. We hope, be-ezras Hashem, that if enough of them are allowed to continue to use their imaginations, we can make some progress in improving the rich bounty of Kerem Yisrael.

Rather than present my own overview, I present below the entire Foreward, which offers an abstract of each article:

Rabbi Moshe Weinberger: “Just One Thing is Missing: The Soul”
In every generation, the outside world stands as a tempting alternative
to Yiddishkeit, yet wielding the axe against it has never provided more
than a short-term, superficial respite. Only a deep, introspective,
passionate Yiddishkeit, bursting with a tangible consciousness of
Hashem’s presence, can expose the emptiness of any alternative.
Recent decades have shown that for rabbis and teachers, selfrevelation
– in which they share their own experiences and struggles in
Yiddishkeit – has become an absolute educational necessity.

Rabbi Yaakov Glasser: The Vital Role of Experiential Jewish
EducationMany of the factors that inhibit connectedness and spirituality within
our community can be overcome most effectively through informal
educational programming – especially for adolescents, for whom this
is essential. In such environments, promoting values such as religious
growth, individuality in religious identity, maturation of religious
ideals, mentorship, expelling cynicism and embracing questions as an
authentic search for religious meaning can all contribute to a more
spiritual and connected religious community.

Rav Ahron Lopiansky: Self-Inspiration – A Tool for LifeBoth Chassidus and the Mussar Movement emphasized the essential
need for deliberate efforts to stimulate an emotional dimension to
shmiras hamitzvos – both because ahava, yirah and simcha are core
Torah values, and because Torah observance without emotion
inevitably falls into decline. This vital lesson seems to have been lost
on us, as has the pivotal role of the Mashgiach Ruchani dedicated to
inspiring emotional engagement in his students. Parents must seek
such additions to their childrens’ educational experience, and demand
that yeshivos return to these ideals.

Rabbi Bentzion Twerski: Is Serving Hashem Still a “Jewish” Ideal? As has happened in the past, we are a generation who seem able to
relate to the intellectual pursuit of Torah study to the exclusion of
service of the heart. We must not deceive ourselves that Torah study
alone is adequate. Steps we can take to deepen our connection to Torah
and mitzvos include investing more in connecting to Hashem through
tefilah, learning to appreciate “hachana l’mitzvah” (preparation for the
mitzvah), joining or forming a chevra for mutual support and acquiring
a particular approach based on available sefarim.

Rabbi Yitzchok Feigenbaum: Been There, Done That: Why Being
Frum Is So BoringToday’s teenagers are increasingly disconnected, disenchanted and
suffering from a spiritual malaise more severe than any in our
memory. The primary goal of yeshivos and Bais Yaakovs today must
be, in the words of Sara Shneirer “to make frum girls [and boys] from
frum homes proud and excited about their Yiddishkeit.” To provide
students with the sense of accomplishment, uniqueness and self-worth
essential to their development, we must encourage individualism,
validate their struggles, embrace failure, encourage questions and give
up the pretenses that taint our chinuch.

Moishe Bane: Merely CopingThe small cadre of American Jews still loyal to halacha aspire to
connect to G-d but they are deeply scarred by centuries of bitter exile
and unspeakable suffering, during which G-d’s face remained hidden.
Nevertheless, Torah observance was maintained in America –
primarily through cultural ghettos that strengthened Orthodox
identification with community. For a variety of reasons, the walls of
the cultural ghettos are wearing thin, and the sense of insular, frum
identity is fading, undermining the connection to G-d and Torah, as
well. To survive this horrid golus, the connections among Torah Jews
must be reinvigorated and intensified and the community must become
a sense of pride that is not based on parochialism.

Rabbi Dr. Dovid Fox: The Abandonment of the Soul: The Struggle
of Dispirited Observant JewsWhile some of those struggling with spiritual connection grew up
without any feeling spiritual ties to their observance, others struggle to
rediscover the faded passion that once directed their religious
behavior. Spiritual stagnation often results when adults have not
contemplated their “god concept” or their sense of the Sacred since
childhood. When spiritual development matures over time, with
reflective contemplation, with experience, with study, through candid
discussion with select others, and with clarification of what we
believe, religious practice among the Orthodox may be more fulfilling
and rewarding.

Chaya Newman: A Time for InspirationThe alleged perception that there is an “increasing number of Jews
across the spectrum who feel no meaningful connection to Hashem,
His Torah or even His People” is unfortunately more than a perception
– it is reality. G-dliness is no longer felt in most homes; instead, there
is the “false god” of money, luxury and the accumulations of goods.
Perhaps it is time for schools and yeshivas to create a curriculum
whose main goal is inspiration and emotional connection. It is time for
a serious consideration of kiruv kerovim.

Jonathan Rosenblum: Creating an Environment for Developing
Closeness to HashemAlthough the desire for a deeper relationship with Hashem must come
from each individual, there are important environmental factors that
have an influence. Examples include one’s general level of satisfaction
with life as a frum Jew, opportunities for youthful idealism and for
making a difference, limitation of materialism and openness about Gd’s
love for us. It is also essential that young people are taught the
principles of emunah and that they have role models of great people
from whom to learn.

Rabbi Shalom Baum: Looking Inward to Move UpwardIn considering the spiritual needs of Torah-observant Jews today, it is
helpful to recognize two distinct groups: those who have consciously
and deliberately chosen their observant lifestyle even if raised
observant and those whose commitment is derived solely from
upbringing. Both groups suffer from oversimplified views of religious
experience that fail to appreciate the ongoing, inner struggle
characteristic of meaningful growth – whether from an imagined place
of strength or from one of weakness. The absence of substantial
introspection of the deeply committed also deprives them from being
better role models for the less committed.

Judith Cahn, EdD: Family, School and Community: The
Psychological Impact of ConnectednessNumerous, empirical broad-based studies have examined adolescent
connectedness to family, school, and community and its impact on
their health and adjustment. Since Jewish day schools and yeshivot
currently serve as the center of the Jewish community, these
institutions need to maintain environments that encourage student
feelings of connectedness and to guide parents about how best to
provide home environments that promote feelings of connectedness
within the family.

Rabbi Dovid Goldwasser: Defrosting JudaismThere is an urgent need to draw close not only those who are feeling
disconnected but also the many others who are feeling relatively
uninspired. Our challenge is heightened by the pervasive inroads
secular culture has made into our insular community with the advent of
the Internet and by the decreasing numbers of individuals who have a
rav to follow as their spiritual leader. Some ideas to bring the spirit
back into our observance include programs to enhance deeper
appreciation of mitzvos and increased expressiveness of our love for
Torah and mitzvos that nurture devotion and passion in our children.

Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein: An Observation and Some Modest
ProposalsConnectedness is experienced by different people in different ways –
some with outward passion and energetic expression, and others more
inwardly. As such, multiple approaches will be necessary. Some
suggestions: connection to Hashem can be revved up by shouldering
more responsibility for His mission and work; encourage young people
to engage in growth experiences outside academic curriculum;
providing meaningful challenges through which effort must be applied
to make Torah one’s own; setting goals in learning that can be
monitored by others and, in particular, learning the works of the
Nesivos Shalom.

Rabbi Shaya Karlinsky: The First Connection is to Your Inner SelfThe root cause of people not feeling a connection with G-d (or with
society) is frequently the absence of a true connection with, and
appreciation of, their own “self” – a prerequisite for knowing another
with any depth. To nurture this connection with self, we must focus far
more teaching on midos and refinement of midos and we must
recognize and value different talents and abilities and offer
frameworks for advancing goals connected with life’s purpose. Key
obstacles are lack of time and rampant consumerism.

Shifra Rabenstein: The Good Old DaysToo many Orthodox Jews are simply less growth-oriented and
generally satisfied with a religious status quo. Contributing factors
include insufficient grounding in the basics of emunah, the intrusion of
secular culture and shortcomings in our educational systems. Possible
solutions include painting a picture of Judaism for students as the
wonderful, meaningful and exciting experience that it is, offering
students opportunities to spend time with teachers outside of a formal
classroom setting, better modeling our intended relationship with
Hashem and introducing hashkafah in a more robust manner.

Rabbi Gidon Rothstein: Searching for God Where God is FoundThe need for ‘religious fulfillment’ or ‘spiritual connection’ can too
often be a subjective need to feel good rather than a sign of meaningful
connection; the overriding goal must be avodat Hashem, service of
God, rather than just personal feeling. Moving ourselves in that
direction involves a gentle but consistent process of putting God in the
center of our decisions.

Rabbi Shmuel Silber: Struggling with Connection: Ancient
Challenge, Contemporary SuggestionsReligious apathy consistently has been one of our people’s greatest
challenges – albeit with varying causes. Some of today’s causes are:
we focus on rules but not on their meaning and relevance, we don’t
know God well enough and we tend to expect instant spirituality. To
address these, respectively, schools should emphasize understanding
principles more than acquiring knowledge and adults need a
revitalized program of ongoing substantive education, we must focus
on issues of faith and the discipline of emunah and we must promote
the virtue of perseverance as a key to spiritual growth.

Rabbi Dovid Goldman: Whose Torah is It?Ideally, learning Torah over the long term should bring about a deeper
connection to Torah, and thus to Hashem and His people, but this is
too often not succeeding. In recent times, mussar, chasidus, Torah
lishma and “Rav Chaim’s derech” played vital roles in forging this
personal connection to Torah but various factors have led to a critical
distortion in how the relationship between Yisrael and Torah is
viewed. To feel connected to Torah, we must know that Yisrael was
not created to keep the Torah – the Torah was created for the sake of
Yisrael.

This causes a minor inconvenience for many people. Many apps and webpages written in Israel, for instance, refer to a different Torah reading than those written outside it. This week, many who are about to travel to Israel will walk to places where they can listen to Israel’s reading in order to “catch up.”

Now of course, you can find some people today who say that we really should only have one Passover Seder. This usually comes from the same sources that claim that Ashkenazic Jews shouldn’t care about eating kitniyos (legumes, rice, etc.) on Passover ... Read More >>]]> This week, I cannot refer to “this week’s reading” and be universally accurate. The Torah portion read this week in Israel is “out of sync” with the rest of the world, a phenomenon that will continue for another month. This is because while Israel celebrates the holy days of the three festivals on one day each, those living outside Israel celebrate them for two. Since the last day of Passover was on Friday this year, in Israel they read Parshas Shemini on Shabbos, while outside Israel, we read the special reading for the eighth day of Passover, and will read Shemini this week.

This causes a minor inconvenience for many people. Many apps and webpages written in Israel, for instance, refer to a different Torah reading than those written outside it. This week, many who are about to travel to Israel will walk to places where they can listen to Israel’s reading in order to “catch up.”

Now of course, you can find some people today who say that we really should only have one Passover Seder. This usually comes from the same sources that claim that Ashkenazic Jews shouldn’t care about eating kitniyos (legumes, rice, etc.) on Passover anymore — and that oh, by the way, the traditionalists are so monolithic! As I have written before, we should celebrate the diversity of customs that have developed over thousands of years of Jewish history, all surrounding a common core of Torah and Rabbinic legislation designed to encourage us to come closer to G-d.

For the record, I recently saw a webpage which explained accurately that the reason why Jews outside Israel observed two days of the holidays was because the community in Babylon could not receive timely word from Jerusalem concerning which of two possible days was consecrated as the new month, because this was done only based upon eyewitness testimony before the Sanhedrin, the supreme religious court. The same page, however, also asserts that this practice “continued even after mathematical models made it possible to calculate the date of the new moon.”

This latter statement is inaccurate: the mathematical models were in Jewish hands from the time that the Torah was given, to a degree of accuracy that required NASA to replicate. That is why we can still rely upon the calendar established by Hillel Sheni (the second Rabbi Hillel), although it is nearing two millenia since his lifetime. He created a set calendar not because he had developed a mathematical model, but because he recognized that there would soon not be a Sanhedrin to receive witnesses! The festivals still carry with them the message that the Jewish people has the ability to affect the entire world, spiritually, by affecting the time when the spiritual powers encapsulated within the festivals come into the world once again.

One day soon, we should hope to see the day when everyone returns to Israel, observes one day of all holidays, and a cloudy evening might affect when they are!

Also published as the Project Genesis Lifeline.

What’s wrong with this picture? Plenty. And not what some people think.

JTA ran an article about a couple that moved from the States, and found their niche of service. They provide Shabbos hospitality to soldiers who do not have homes that welcome them when they get a weekend off. Last year, they served some 3000 Shabbos meals.

Scott and Teresa Johnson, however, are not Jewish. They are evangelical Christians, and do not hide it. That makes their sacrifice even more significant. (I believe that it is more than likely that the journalist got it all wrong in making the assumption that evangelicals support Israel because they wish to see all Jews gathered there for conversion before the second coming. While there are evangelicals who believe that, they are not the majority, and not even close. The majority support Israel and the Jewish people because they take Hashem’s brachah to Avrohom (“I will bless those who bless you.”) very seriously.)

So while I am not discomfited by the actions or motivations of the Johnsons who deserve accolades rather than criticism, I can’t be comfortable with their providing a service we ought to be providing ourselves. Indeed, ... Read More >>]]>

What’s wrong with this picture? Plenty. And not what some people think.

JTA ran an article about a couple that moved from the States, and found their niche of service. They provide Shabbos hospitality to soldiers who do not have homes that welcome them when they get a weekend off. Last year, they served some 3000 Shabbos meals.

Scott and Teresa Johnson, however, are not Jewish. They are evangelical Christians, and do not hide it. That makes their sacrifice even more significant. (I believe that it is more than likely that the journalist got it all wrong in making the assumption that evangelicals support Israel because they wish to see all Jews gathered there for conversion before the second coming. While there are evangelicals who believe that, they are not the majority, and not even close. The majority support Israel and the Jewish people because they take Hashem’s brachah to Avrohom (“I will bless those who bless you.”) very seriously.)

So while I am not discomfited by the actions or motivations of the Johnsons who deserve accolades rather than criticism, I can’t be comfortable with their providing a service we ought to be providing ourselves. Indeed, there are organizations in Israel devoted to the חייל בודד, the lone soldier. Did those who gravitate to the Johnsons fall between the cracks? Are those organizations not interested or not capable of providing a Shabbos table for those who want it? I tried to get some answers through contacts in Israel, but have not come up with them yet.

The gemara in Bava Basra 10B frowns upon accepting tzedakah from non-Jews. The practical application of that gemara is nuaned and complex (see Shut Tzitz Eliezer v.15 33:5-13, and Shut Mishneh Halachos v.5, teshuvos, #178). One of the ideas that emerge, however, is pretty straightforward: we don’t accept donations when they will be a chilul Hashem. This happens when others mock us for their having to provide what we should be offering our own brothers. Providing Shabbos meals to soldiers defending our country and having no place to go seems to me to be precisely the kind of service that anyone looking in would expect of our community. How could this not be a chilul Hashem?

Even harder hitting were these lines. We should not accept the report as accurate without corroboration. Yet it is disquieting that we cannot instantly reject it as impossible either. The fact that we can entertain its possibility is reason enough to mourn:

Oved Ben Yosef, 20, whose family originates from Yemen, ended up at Miflaht after his haredi Orthodox parents rejected him for joining the military. He hasn’t spoken with his parents in more than a year, but he says he’s found surrogates in the Johnsons. On weekends when he’s not on military duty, Ben Yosef stays in their guest room.

Can you please give one or more concrete examples of this (the ideas, not the persons who expressed them)? It would go a long way toward helping me (and probably others) understand the parameters of the discussion. Thank you.

Forgive me if I only meet you half way. I am reluctant to point a finger at ideas that can be associated with specific authors who are fine people. As I mentioned previously, Rav Yisrael Salanter bemoaned the fact that rabbonim in his generation cheapened Chazal in his estimation, by turning it into nothing more than a springboard for their rabbinic imaginations. Those he criticized were surely fine talmidei chachamim. ... Read More >>]]>

You wrote: “People read in their own thoughts to what they want a text to say – only skipping the nicety of reading their findings into a Maamar Chazal. The result is the same. People see Torah discourse about all matters outside of halacha is nothing more than a debating club, using bits of Hebrew and Aramaic phraseology to sound authentic. They therefore come to believe that there is no such thing as an authentic Torah view, or set of views – to the exclusion of those that are inauthentic.”

Can you please give one or more concrete examples of this (the ideas, not the persons who expressed them)? It would go a long way toward helping me (and probably others) understand the parameters of the discussion. Thank you.

Forgive me if I only meet you half way. I am reluctant to point a finger at ideas that can be associated with specific authors who are fine people. As I mentioned previously, Rav Yisrael Salanter bemoaned the fact that rabbonim in his generation cheapened Chazal in his estimation, by turning it into nothing more than a springboard for their rabbinic imaginations. Those he criticized were surely fine talmidei chachamim. His criticism of them was not meant to turn them into objects of scorn. I would like to remain free of that taint myself.

Instead, I will offer extreme examples of what I mean, and hope that readers can sense that the same phenomenon occurs in tamer areas:

1) A colleague of mine, visiting one of the first gay synagogues decades ago on Shabbos Kedoshim, heard the rabbi hold forth on the pasuk dealing with male homosexuality. “If Bill and Steve are in a relationship, and they accept each other for who they are with love and commitment to each other, their relationship is certainly blessed and approved of by the Torah. If, however, Bill insists on relating to Steve as if he were a woman, this is the intent of the Torah of mishkevai ishah, and is indeed an abomination!”
2) A heterodox rabbi circulated a letter decrying the proliferation of baalei teshuvah in the community. These people now turn against their own families, by refusing to eat in their homes just because they are not kosher, etc. They are fanatics. This can be demonstrated by the Akeidah, where Abraham clearly failed his test, because he was ready to be a fanatic in the service of G-d. Fortunately, G-d stayed his hand at the last moment, thereby instructing him that Judaism has no place for fanatics.
3) Orthodox rabbis in the US before the Civil War used Chumash to prove their positions. Northern rabbis for the most part proved that the Torah was anti-slavery; their colleagues in the South proved the opposite.
4) The devil quoth Scripture. So do Neturei Karta and, at times, the New Israel Fund.

I hope you get my drift. Virtually anything can be read into a pasuk. I personally do not doubt that our holy Torah is an inexhaustible spring of new insights. Each generation can find new depth and beauty in it that has not been articulated previously. On the other hand, each new generation can also find an endless supply of boring platitudes, not to mention absurdities and heresies, by claiming to find support in the text.

How do we tell the difference? There are several ways. One of them is to understand that not all contributors to Torah literature are created equal. We can assume that Chazal offered us neither platitude nor heresy. We can’t necessarily assume the same for later – and certainly contemporary – authors.

People (including the previous Lubavitcher Rebbe zt”l in an early work) argued that Rashi was not deaf to the claim that much of what he presents in Chumash hardly seems like simple pshat, despite his promising to deliver just that. Rather, Rashi deliberately limited his options to a large extent to approaches found within the literature of Chazal. His goal was to open Chumash up to the reader specifically through the world view and hashkafah of Chazal, because the Torah Jew never “reads” Torah in a vacuum. Torah she-b’al peh is not a tool we pick up from a rack when we need it. It is the lens through which we view all parts of the Torah, whether halachic or otherwise. It is the safest way to go in ensuring that we are listening to Hashem’s kolah delo pasik, rather than our own musings.

Don’t get me wrong. I do not believe that Rashi is the only Rishon who should be read. I do believe that there have been brilliant contributions to Torah literature in all generations, and that more will be forthcoming. I also believe, however, that as a consumer of Torah, the best certificate of authenticity I can look for is the consistency of the author’s conclusions with the worldview of Chazal. More importantly, I believe that it is sound educational policy to keep teaching Chumash to children the way we have for centuries. Rashi ought to be the foundational Rishon, the one which takes pride of place. Everything else can be built upon that foundation, including those who disagree with Rashi, or who insist that Rashi need not necessarily always be taken literally. (The age at which this process should begin would be a good topic for later discussion, but does not belong here.)

Unsurprising for those of us back in this world was the revelation that when Mr. Merah was holed up in a building, his mother had refused to urge her son to surrender; or that, after Mr. Merah’s dispatching, his brother told police he was “very proud” of Mohamed and “approve[s] of what he did”; or that the murderer’s father plans to sue the French government over his son’s death.

Even the act of Lorraine Collin, a 56-year-old high school teacher at Gustave Flaubert High School in Rouen, Normandy, who asked her class to observe a moment of silence in memory of the deceased murderer, was not terribly surprising; it was pretty much par for the contorted conscience course.

What did come as something of a surprise, and a happy one, was the French Education Minister’s suspension of Ms. Collin’s ... Read More >>]]> After a hail of French police gunfire relieved humanity of the noxious presence of Mohamed Merah, the 23-year-old Algerian-Frenchman who murdered seven people, including three children, in cold blood and declared himself ready to enter paradise, his soul must have really been surprised. If, that is, he had a soul and wasn’t just some demon in human guise.

Unsurprising for those of us back in this world was the revelation that when Mr. Merah was holed up in a building, his mother had refused to urge her son to surrender; or that, after Mr. Merah’s dispatching, his brother told police he was “very proud” of Mohamed and “approve[s] of what he did”; or that the murderer’s father plans to sue the French government over his son’s death.

Even the act of Lorraine Collin, a 56-year-old high school teacher at Gustave Flaubert High School in Rouen, Normandy, who asked her class to observe a moment of silence in memory of the deceased murderer, was not terribly surprising; it was pretty much par for the contorted conscience course.

What did come as something of a surprise, and a happy one, was the French Education Minister’s suspension of Ms. Collin’s from her job. Good for him, and may he make it permanent.

Surprising, too, at least to some people, were the words of Eva Sandler, the widow of one of the victims, Rabbi Jonathan Sandler, and the mother of two others: 5-year-old Arieh and 3-year-old Gabriel. Amid her unimaginable shock and grief, she had the presence of mind and conviction to pen a public message, thanking “the Almighty for the privilege, short though it was, of raising my children together with my husband.”

“Now, “she continued, “the Almighty wants them back with Him.” And she urged all Jewish parents to honor her dead family members by loving their children and teaching them to love “their fellow man.”

“Parents, please kiss your children,” she wrote. “Tell them how much you love them, and how dear it is to your heart that they be living examples of our Torah, imbued with the fear of Heaven and with love of their fellow man.”

Which takes us back to the “unsurprising” realm, namely the fact that, while Orthodox Jewish newpapers and magazines, and even secular media, duly reported Mrs. Sandler’s striking sentiments, the bereaved woman’s words were entirely ignored by the mainstream Jewish media.

Yes, those media that routinely seek out and highlight the worst examples of Orthodox Jews, individuals who commit crimes or show disdain for others, the media that do their best to leave their readers with the impression that such people are somehow normative and representative of the Orthodox community. The media that, it seemed, spilled more ink to recount and re-recount and comment and further comment on an allegedly uncouth Israeli individual’s saliva than on Iran’s nuclear program.

Those media, for some reason, didn’t find Mrs. Sandler’s words newsworthy. Why might that be?

Could it be because Mrs. Sandler revealed herself to be a true example of a dedicated Orthodox Jew? And that to bring attention to so refined, faithful, and purposeful an Orthodox Jew would only confuse their readers? After all, it might cause them to puzzle over the fact that there are Orthodox Jews who are truly selfless and deeply caring, who bear even the most unbearable burdens with grace and religious conviction. Could such a person, they might come to ask themselves, really be part of the same community that routinely flouts the law, harbors hatred, and spits on little girls?

Maybe I’m being too harsh. Maybe I missed mention of Mrs. Sandler’s sentiments in the Forward and the New York Jewish Week and the Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s dispatches. Maybe the search engines at the sites of each of those venerable institutions are all faulty, and reports of the bereaved widow and mother’s words lurk somewhere out of electronic reach.

Or maybe Mrs. Sandler’s words, and the meta-message they send about truly observant, believing Orthodox Jews, will yet appear in those media. It’s only been, after all, two weeks since she shared them with the world—at least the part of it that get its news from Orthodox or non-Jewish media.

© 2012 AMI MAGAZINE

The above essay may be reproduced or republished, with the above copyright appended.

Communications: rabbishafran@amimagazine.org

Subscribe to Ami at http://amimagazine.org/subscribe.html .

Yet the servitude of Mitzrayim was hardly the last time that Jews were enslaved by another people. The Babylonian, Persian, Greek and Roman exiles followed. The Promised Land flowing with milk and honey has been ours for but a brief portion of our national existence.

Still Jews have gone on celebrating the Seder even in the midst of the most brutal oppression, whether hiding in caves from the Romans or in dark cellars evading the Inquisition.

Even in the Nazi death camps, Jews collected kernels of wheat grain by grain in order to bake matzos. Despite working endless days at backbreaking labor, on a diet about half of subsistence level, they traded away their major source of sustenance for less nutritious matzos. Others who could not find matzos exchanged their bread and soup for raw potatoes to avoid eating chometz, even after being told by rabbis that the commandment to preserve their lives required them to eat ... Read More >>]]> Rabbi Yaakov of Lissa famously asks in his commentary on the Haggadah, Ma’aseh Nissim: If someone were released from prison and subsequently imprisoned again, would he invite his cell mates to gather with him to celebrate the day of his initial release?

Yet the servitude of Mitzrayim was hardly the last time that Jews were enslaved by another people. The Babylonian, Persian, Greek and Roman exiles followed. The Promised Land flowing with milk and honey has been ours for but a brief portion of our national existence.

Still Jews have gone on celebrating the Seder even in the midst of the most brutal oppression, whether hiding in caves from the Romans or in dark cellars evading the Inquisition.

Even in the Nazi death camps, Jews collected kernels of wheat grain by grain in order to bake matzos. Despite working endless days at backbreaking labor, on a diet about half of subsistence level, they traded away their major source of sustenance for less nutritious matzos. Others who could not find matzos exchanged their bread and soup for raw potatoes to avoid eating chometz, even after being told by rabbis that the commandment to preserve their lives required them to eat bread.

Like our forebears in Egypt, Jews in the death camps had their spouses and children ripped from their arms; they lacked a moment to breathe or call their own. It took no act of imagination for them to comprehend the words of the Haggada: “They tortured us; they oppressed us; they subjected us to unbearable pressure.”

Yet they still recited praises to God for having taken us “from slavery to freedom, sorrow to joy, from mourning to festive days, from darkness to great light, from slavery to redemption.”

A survivor of Buchenwald recalls a Seder in the spring of 1945 in a bloc comprised mostly of Jewish children between nine and 16. He describes listening as one young boy recited the Four Questions to an older boy. In another bunk, he heard a young boy telling his friends the story of Pesach.

HOW COULD THEY HAVE DONE SO? Why did they do it?

The first answer is that the memory of the Redemption from Mitzrayim – from the most brutal of nations ruled by the most brutal of rulers – continued to be a source of hope no matter in what circumstances Jews found themselves on leil haSeder. The Torah refers to the holiday as Chag Ha’aviv or Chag Hamatzot. But we call it Pesach, in remembrance of Hashem’s skipping over the houses of the Israelites when He killed the Egyptian firstborn.

And so has He always skipped over us. Those who oppressed, enslaved and murdered us filled the planet with sound and splendor. But in the end they vanished, and the Jew remained.

Every Jew knows, on account of the redemption from Egypt, that no matter how bad his present situation, next year he will be free, and if not next year, the one after that. And even if he personally does not survive – like all those who perished in Egypt or in the death camps – the Jewish people will survive to celebrate Pesach in happier circumstances.

BUT HOPES FOR OUR COLLECTIVE future are only part of the matter.Yetzias Mitzrayim does not serve only as proof that Hashem is capable of rescuing us no matter how hopeless our circumstances. At the deepest level, the imprint of yetzias Mitzrayim remains unaffected by subsequent exiles and oppression.

The Redemption did not end with going out from Egypt, but with Sinai. Through the miracles of Egypt and the giving of the Law, God revealed a realm of the spirit beyond the power of any tyrant to touch.

The matzah reminds us that our freedom is ultimately spiritual. Matzah, writes the Maharal, is the symbol of our freedom precisely because it is spiritual bread. It consists only of its absolute essentials: flour and water. Any additional ingredients render it unfit. The spiritual world is one of simplicity and unity; the physical world, by contrast, is one of structures piled on one another, a world of building blocks amalgamated together.

Because the freedom gained was spiritual in nature, it has never been fully lost. We ceased to be slaves to slaves and became servants of the Holy One, Blessed Be He. The pharaohs in each generation attempt to intrude on that relationship, but there remains a point beyond which they cannot harm us.

With their celebration of Pesach in the death camps, Jews expressed their defiance and contempt for their Nazi oppressors no less bravely than did their ancestors when they took the sheep worshiped by the Egyptians and slaughtered them prior to leaving Egypt.

“You can starve us, you can kill us, but you cannot destroy the most essential aspect of our being,” they silently proclaimed. “For you cannot deprive us of the knowledge of a world filled with purpose, a world in which every aspect of physical existence, even the greatest physical degradation, can be filled with holiness.”

The Redemption revealed a world of spirit, and our access to it. And that revelation remains with us in all times and all places.

This article first appeared in Mishpacha.

In typical BBC fashion, “the view from each side” includes not a word from anyone in Israel. But they do quote the residents of Gaza a little too accurately when the citizens, untrained in propaganda, wander away from the pre-packaged Palestinian narrative.

A four-storey house had been completely destroyed. Its roof had collapsed inwards; tables and chairs, bedclothes and children’s toys spilled out of its squashed floors like shopping from a torn plastic bag…

On first inspection it looked like one of Israel’s missiles must have gone astray, a case of collateral damage.

But on closer questioning the picture changes.

“I have already lost one son to the struggle for liberation,” the man told me. “I have two more, and I am willing to sacrifice them too.”

One of his sons is in the al-Qasam brigades, he says, the other in Islamic Jihad…

I asked another ... Read More >>]]> Since the BBC, like most British media outlets, isn’t highly regarded for balanced coverage of Israel, I felt it worth pointing out a notable exception. “Gaza-Israel clashes: The view from each side“, although nearly a month old, reflects a level of accuracy and fairness we’ve seen rarely, in a far longer time.

In typical BBC fashion, “the view from each side” includes not a word from anyone in Israel. But they do quote the residents of Gaza a little too accurately when the citizens, untrained in propaganda, wander away from the pre-packaged Palestinian narrative.

A four-storey house had been completely destroyed. Its roof had collapsed inwards; tables and chairs, bedclothes and children’s toys spilled out of its squashed floors like shopping from a torn plastic bag…

On first inspection it looked like one of Israel’s missiles must have gone astray, a case of collateral damage.

But on closer questioning the picture changes.

“I have already lost one son to the struggle for liberation,” the man told me. “I have two more, and I am willing to sacrifice them too.”

One of his sons is in the al-Qasam brigades, he says, the other in Islamic Jihad…

I asked another local how it was that so many people could have escaped relatively unscathed from a building that was so completely destroyed. “Sometimes the Israelis call up the person beforehand and warn them that they have 10 minutes to leave the house, then they strike.”

Whereas the Palestinians aim at Israeli population centers in order to kill as many civilians as possible, the Israelis warn residents even before depriving terrorists of their homes.

“What do you mean when you say you are struggling against the occupation?” I asked one Gazan. “After all Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005?”

“We mean the occupation of Jerusalem, and Jaffa and Haifa and all the other places that belong to us,” he said without hesitation.

As expressed by this typical Gaza resident, the idea that Palestinian terrorism will end with “self-determination” is a pipe dream, the pursuit of which has already cost thousands of lives. Palestinian terrorism will only end once the Arab residents of Gaza and the West Bank recognize that the destruction of Israel is an unattainable goal, and abandon it in favor of a better life. Either that, or they attain it. Forcing Israel into further concessions weakens the first possibility, and strengthens the second.

The Siberian summer is oppressive; insects left the exiles at times unrecognizable for their swollen faces. Winter in the taiga, of course, brought challenges of its own, including 40 degree below zero temperatures.

In his short memoir, “Fire Ice Air,” my father recalls that even as the yeshiva exiles arrived in the East, Pesach was already on their minds.

And so, as they worked in the fields, some of the boys squirreled away a few kernels of wheat here ... Read More >>]]> The group of Novardhoker yeshiva bochurim and their rebbe (and his rebbetzin)—along with a number of families—were packed into the train’s stock cars in the summer of 1941. Since Rav Yehudah Leib Nekritz, zt”l, and his talmidim, then in Soviet-conquered Lithuania, had declined the offer of Russian citizenship, the Soviets were providing them an all-expense-paid trip to Siberia. Occasional pieces of bread and cups of water were also offered at no charge during the weeks of travel. Not to mention the cruise across a lake on a barge to the work camp where my father, may he be well, the youngest of the yeshiva group, and his rebbe and friends, would spend the years of the Second World War.

The Siberian summer is oppressive; insects left the exiles at times unrecognizable for their swollen faces. Winter in the taiga, of course, brought challenges of its own, including 40 degree below zero temperatures.

In his short memoir, “Fire Ice Air,” my father recalls that even as the yeshiva exiles arrived in the East, Pesach was already on their minds.

And so, as they worked in the fields, some of the boys squirreled away a few kernels of wheat here and there, carefully placing them in their pockets—something that was “entirely against the rules, and very dangerous.”

“The Communist credo, though,” he writes, “was ‘from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs’ and so we were really only being good Marxists. Our spiritual needs, after all, included kosher for Pesach matzo.”

They put the kernels in a special bag, which they carefully hid where no one could find it.

The winter was brutal but the Novardhokers all survived it, as did the bag of grain. When the end of the cold season was rumored to be near, they ground the kernels into flour with a small hand grinder intended for coffee beans. My father remembers that the flour was coarse and dark, but resplendent all the same.

The next part of the Pesach plan was to arrange for the actual matzo-baking. Although the yeshiva boys were barracked with non-Jewish locals, there was one hut in the area that was occupied solely by a Jewish family, the Beckers, who had come from Kovno. Arrangements were made for some of the boys to come to their house in the middle of the night, when all the town’s residents were asleep, and fire up their oven on full blast for two hours to make it kosher. Then they would bake matzos for the family and themselves.

Since matzo dough is traditionally perforated in rows to ensure that it is “baked through,” the young men improvised a special tool for the purpose by whittling a piece of wood so that it could be fitted with gear-wheels borrowed from a clock. The apparatus was rolled over each matzo-dough quickly before the baking. “When Pesach came,” he recalls, “we all gathered at the hut and all of us—the Nekritzes, we yeshiva boys, and the Beckers—were able to fulfill the mitzvah of eating matzo on the first night of Pesach, in remembrance of our ancestors’ release from the outsized prison that was ancient Egypt. Understandably, it was a mitzvah that resonated strongly for us.”

The four kosos could not so easily be addressed; there was no wine and there were no grapes to be found in Siberia. But, to at least undertake some semblance of that mitzvah, the exiles managed to obtain milk—an expensive delicacy in its own right—and used it instead. To them, my father writes, “it tasted of the finest wine.”

The group even bartered some of their possessions for a few eggs, traditionally eaten at the Pesach Seder. Some of the eggs were frozen, he recalls, “but that was nothing that a bit of roasting couldn’t cure.”

As we all prepare for Pesach this year, cleaning our homes and polishing our silver and shopping for our personal plethoras of pesachdikeh products, accounts like my father’s—whether from Siberian exiles, concentration camp inmates, or Jews in hiding—should be required reading, and required pondering, for our children and for ourselves.

They provide something priceless: perspective.

© 2012 AMI MAGAZINE

The above essay may be reproduced or republished, with the above copyright appended.

Communications: rabbishafran@amimagazine.org

Subscribe to Ami at http://amimagazine.org/subscribe.html .