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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

and Eliyahu teased ... Read More >>]]> http://www.cross-currents.com/archives/2010/03/07/the-achish-melech-gat-awards/ ... Read More >>]]> http://www.cross-currents.com/archives/2010/03/05/a-holocaust-story-of-a-different-sort/ I have so little athletic ability, that I can’t be a good Monday morning quarterback – not even weeks later. Despite all that people have written – including most of my friends – I cannot fault the campaign that attempted to stop the execution of Martin Grossman. Moreover, I believe that the kernel idea behind it is absolutely essential to the survival of the State of Israel.

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

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

There were non-halachic concerns as well. Some were concerned with the perception by the family of the victim that our community was callous to their loss. Others were concerned with the idiot factor. Some of the messages sent to the Governor Crist present a strong case for substituting their authors for the perpetrator ... Read More >>]]> http://www.cross-currents.com/archives/2010/03/05/particularism-idiots-and-the-future-of-the-state-of-israel/ The premier issue of The Jewish Review of Books arrived in my mailbox a few days ago. It is more than impressive in its scope and the quality of its contributions. I hope to have more to say about it soon. I couldn’t resist posting this quote, from a rather well thought-out consideration of why Jews don’t have a fantasy literature, while Christians like C S Lewis not only did well at it, but used the genre as a very successful outreach tool. (Some of the arguments include the rootedness of Christian cultures in more recent paganism, and Judaism’s detesting of anything that attributes force or power to something outside of HKBH.)

Here’s the quote:

Although it might seem unlikely that anyone would wonder whether the author of The Lord of the Rings was Jewish, the Nazis took no chances. When the publishing firm of Ruetten & Loening was negotiating with J. R. R. Tolkien over a German translation of The Hobbit in 1938, they demanded that Tolkien provide written assurance that he was an Aryan. Tolkien chastised the publishers for “impertinent and irrelevant inquiries,” and—ever the professor of philology— lectured them on the proper meaning of the term: “As far ... Read More >>]]> http://www.cross-currents.com/archives/2010/03/04/tolkien-on-jews/

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

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

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

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

When we were done, I hurried home to Mother. I had never participated ... Read More >>]]> http://www.cross-currents.com/archives/2010/02/26/never-gave-purim-baskets-like-those/ In a pleasant break from the usual, this AP wire story has nothing to do with the dreaded Anisakis worm that is the subject of debate within the kashrus community:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I wasn’t the only one. Any American childhood in the 1950s and 60s took place with that impossibility as the underlying reality, and underlying fantasy: a brilliant white nightmare in the backyard, rising faster than Jack’s Beanstalk. Americans who were optimistic enough to build fallout shelters were ridiculed by their compatriots. How could a concrete bunker, naively fitted out with air filter and a two-week supply of bottled water, protect you from a bomb reputed to be greater than a hundred Hiroshimas? Even if you and your family did make it into the shelter in time and shut the hatch successfully against your neighbors, what kind of landscape would eventually greet you if you ... Read More >>]]> http://www.cross-currents.com/archives/2010/02/21/last-night-i-saw-the-mushroom-cloud/ From the NY Times:

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

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

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

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

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

In addition, the new theme which we are using permits us to publish the ... Read More >>]]> http://www.cross-currents.com/archives/2010/02/21/our-new-design/ ... Read More >>]]> http://www.cross-currents.com/archives/2010/02/19/last-words/ The national convention of the Jewish Law Students Association came to town, and I had the opportunity to speak several times, both at the opening banquet at the Museum of Tolerance, and later at the Sunday sessions at Pepperdine University in Malibu. Arguably, the high point of the gathering was the magisterial presentation over lunch by Alan Dershowitz. It was both an updated Case For Israel, and an unmasking of the evil of Goldstone. It is slated to go online soon as a YouTube; I would urge anyone who is sometimes called upon to state Israel’s case to see it. In the interim, I will simply share a few of his vignettes and choicer turns-of-a-phrase.

Explaining why at one point he thought that a Jewish association for law students was needed only in the days of blatant bias in hiring Jews, Dershowitz shared that when he graduated, he was turned down by 32 Wall Street firms who would not hire Jews. Only the Jewish ones took him, and one withdrew when they learned he was shomer Shabbos. (I am pained when I hear of any Jew estranged from his or her Torah birthright; listening to Dershowitz’s brilliance intensified the pain, ... Read More >>]]> http://www.cross-currents.com/archives/2010/02/15/an-afternoon-with-alan-dershowitz/