Having been born and raised in North America, the concept of a chief rabbi is someone foreign to me. Canada has never had, to my knowledge, such a post. The last person to hold such a title, Rav Avraham Price, zt"l, was the last chief rabbi of Toronto and died in 1994. I don't know if the other two large and old communities, Winnipeg and Montreal, ever had one.
In Israel the post is more political than anything else and others have noted that it is a position of leadership with no followers since the chilonim don't care about what the Chief Rabbi has to say and frum Israelis all have their own rabbonim to ask questions of.
It seems that in Europe there is a much older tradition of having national chief rabbis although again it seems the position is more political, possibly an appointment to be the de facto representative of the Jewish community to the government as opposed to a religious leader.
Is there a place for a chief rabbi nowadays? I would venture that despite the positive examples set by such folks as Rav Jonathan Sacks, there is no real point to having one anymore. There are a few reasons for this.
a) The Jewish community is extremely diverse and, unlike in eras past, not willing to acknowledge the authority of halacha. In the past, there were essentially two types of Jews - those who kept the rules, and those who knew the rules were there but didn't bother keeping them for whatever reason. The more recent innovation of Jewish "streams" that insist they are good members of the faith but predicate their observance on non-obedience to halacha adds a layer of complexity to who can represent the Jewish community. An Orthodox rav cannot speak on behalf of those who do not share his values. A secular leader often does not understand or care about the priorities of the religious community.
b) As I noted above, the position of Chief Rabbi does not carry any religious authority with it. Rav Yosef Eliashiv is, in essence, the Chief Rabbi of the Litvish community. Rav Moshe Sternbuch is the Chief Rabbi of the Mea Shearim community. Rav Shlomo Aviner is the leading Mizrachi authroity. Rav Ovadiah Yosef runs Sephardic Orthodoxy. Each Chasidic clan has its own rebbe to follow and there is no universally recognized authority in the Modern Orthodox community. There is no unifying figure whose psak would cut across "party lines" and be seen as binding on all Torah-observant Jews. Certainly the two current Israeli Chief Rabbis both get their marching orders from other authorities and are glorified followers at best.
Is there any purpose then to maintaining such posts or should they be relegated to the dustbin of history? I would suggest that they should since their continued existence does not add anything to the communityj except a cost for the maintaining of their position.
Navonim - The Ramblings of Garnel Ironheart
BUY THIS BOOK! Now available on Amazon! IT WILL MAKE YOUR LIFE COMPLETE!
Sunday, 14 March 2010
Unfair Criticism
The condemnation following Israel's announcement that it was building 1600 new homes for Jews to live in last week was predictable. From Joe Biden through Hillary Clinton and down to the liberal anti-Israel press, the idea that Israel would dare to build on its own land raised the usual spectrum of criticism.
On the surface, the criticism does seem justified. The timing - during Joe Biden's trip to the region - was admittedly poor. The announcement seems to go against Israel's own promise to engage in a building freeze in "the disputed territories" which further undermine's the Netanyahu government's credibility.
However, scratch beneath the surface and a different perspective arises.
The first is to address the American government's outrage at the announcement. Exactly what was wrong with it? The new units are slated to be built in the eastern half of Yerushalayim. When Netanyahu announced the building freeze, he expressively excluded Yerushalayim from it. Therefore, this announcement does not break any agreements or promises.
The second is the issue of embarrassment. The problem with the United States claiming that this announcement undermines their efforts ignores the reality that the Obama administration itself has done whatever it can to overtly support Israel's enemies over the last year while paying little more than lip service to the traditional U.S. - Israel alliance. Joe Biden himself has a long history of less than enthuasiatic support for Israel while Obama is on record as saying that he believes Israel only exists because of the Holocaust, not because we have a millenia-old claim to the land. That's not insulting? Apparently the U.S. can say whatever it wants but Israel is held to a different standard.
This announcement is an opportunity for Bibi Netanyahu to make it clear that there are still red lines that the Israeli government will not cross and that if these lines are too far over for our enemies, there is no point in meaningless peace talks that will consist of unreasonable demands from the other side and pathetic encouragement from our "friends" to take a chance for peace.
On the surface, the criticism does seem justified. The timing - during Joe Biden's trip to the region - was admittedly poor. The announcement seems to go against Israel's own promise to engage in a building freeze in "the disputed territories" which further undermine's the Netanyahu government's credibility.
However, scratch beneath the surface and a different perspective arises.
The first is to address the American government's outrage at the announcement. Exactly what was wrong with it? The new units are slated to be built in the eastern half of Yerushalayim. When Netanyahu announced the building freeze, he expressively excluded Yerushalayim from it. Therefore, this announcement does not break any agreements or promises.
The second is the issue of embarrassment. The problem with the United States claiming that this announcement undermines their efforts ignores the reality that the Obama administration itself has done whatever it can to overtly support Israel's enemies over the last year while paying little more than lip service to the traditional U.S. - Israel alliance. Joe Biden himself has a long history of less than enthuasiatic support for Israel while Obama is on record as saying that he believes Israel only exists because of the Holocaust, not because we have a millenia-old claim to the land. That's not insulting? Apparently the U.S. can say whatever it wants but Israel is held to a different standard.
This announcement is an opportunity for Bibi Netanyahu to make it clear that there are still red lines that the Israeli government will not cross and that if these lines are too far over for our enemies, there is no point in meaningless peace talks that will consist of unreasonable demands from the other side and pathetic encouragement from our "friends" to take a chance for peace.
Saturday, 13 March 2010
Here A Ban, There A Ban, Everywhere a Ban Ban
By now most of you have heard the latest chumrah-of-the-week (I wish I was making this up):
A group of haredi rabbis in New York caused a row within the local Jewish community after ruling that salmon is not kosher.
The rabbis said salmon, as well as other types of certain fish, may contain a tiny parasitic worm, Anisakis, which is not kosher. This renders the fish non-kosher as well, the rabbis said.
The ruling has caused alarm among many New York Jews, who have made the famous bagel and lox a staple of their diet. Moreover, the decision may hold significant financial implications: The smoked salmon industry makes hundreds of millions of dollars a year in the US, with the Jewish community considered its main consumer as result of the fish's price and the fact it's kosher.
However, the controversy is far from over, as the Union of Orthodox Congregations of America announced that the haredi rabbis' ruling is invalid. "Salmon is kosher for consumption, don't worry," said Rabbi Moshe Elefant of the group.
The agenda behind this initiative is clear: A rabbi in Israel named Karp has used salmon as a weapon to further delegitimize the RCA's authority. Why the RCA? Because its leader is named Rav Basil - wait for it - Herring.
As I've noted before, if the RCA is going to mount an effective defence against such attacks, it needs a leader named after a more fearsome fish.
At any rate, in the spirit of banning everything, I have investigated and discovered that air, that invisible stuff we all breathe, contains countless microbes, if not more. With every breath we inhale these non-kosher organisms and assimilate them into our bodies. How great the damage to our spiritual well-being with every inhalation!
Therefore, I am going to contact a home oxygen company and make available to the frum public tanks of specially prepared oxygen, oxygen which will only be touch by Jews during its processing. The tanks will be supplied along with suitable masks. By inhaling exclusive from these tanks, Torah-observant Jews can be sure that the air they breathe is as pure as possible to minimize the damage to their souls.
Accept no substitutes. Only those tanks marked Avir Yisroel with my seal of approval can give you the proper assurance that you are not inhaling any microbes that the Torah expressly forbids you too. Look for the Ironheart seal of quality to confirm that when you look down at your fellow Jew who is breathing avir stam, you can sniff with snobbish self-righteousness and know that you are sniffing Avir Yisroel.
As a concluding thought, if Chareidism is about banning innovation ("All new things are forbidden by the Torah") and Chareidism itself was an innovation of the Chasam Sofer, then isn't it guilty of being the very thing it forbids?
A group of haredi rabbis in New York caused a row within the local Jewish community after ruling that salmon is not kosher.
The rabbis said salmon, as well as other types of certain fish, may contain a tiny parasitic worm, Anisakis, which is not kosher. This renders the fish non-kosher as well, the rabbis said.
The ruling has caused alarm among many New York Jews, who have made the famous bagel and lox a staple of their diet. Moreover, the decision may hold significant financial implications: The smoked salmon industry makes hundreds of millions of dollars a year in the US, with the Jewish community considered its main consumer as result of the fish's price and the fact it's kosher.
However, the controversy is far from over, as the Union of Orthodox Congregations of America announced that the haredi rabbis' ruling is invalid. "Salmon is kosher for consumption, don't worry," said Rabbi Moshe Elefant of the group.
The agenda behind this initiative is clear: A rabbi in Israel named Karp has used salmon as a weapon to further delegitimize the RCA's authority. Why the RCA? Because its leader is named Rav Basil - wait for it - Herring.
As I've noted before, if the RCA is going to mount an effective defence against such attacks, it needs a leader named after a more fearsome fish.
At any rate, in the spirit of banning everything, I have investigated and discovered that air, that invisible stuff we all breathe, contains countless microbes, if not more. With every breath we inhale these non-kosher organisms and assimilate them into our bodies. How great the damage to our spiritual well-being with every inhalation!
Therefore, I am going to contact a home oxygen company and make available to the frum public tanks of specially prepared oxygen, oxygen which will only be touch by Jews during its processing. The tanks will be supplied along with suitable masks. By inhaling exclusive from these tanks, Torah-observant Jews can be sure that the air they breathe is as pure as possible to minimize the damage to their souls.
Accept no substitutes. Only those tanks marked Avir Yisroel with my seal of approval can give you the proper assurance that you are not inhaling any microbes that the Torah expressly forbids you too. Look for the Ironheart seal of quality to confirm that when you look down at your fellow Jew who is breathing avir stam, you can sniff with snobbish self-righteousness and know that you are sniffing Avir Yisroel.
As a concluding thought, if Chareidism is about banning innovation ("All new things are forbidden by the Torah") and Chareidism itself was an innovation of the Chasam Sofer, then isn't it guilty of being the very thing it forbids?
Friday, 5 March 2010
Not A Necessary Conflict
Anyone holding a radical position which isn't very defensible will usually work overtime on delegitimizing his opponent's position. A good offence is, after all, the best defence.
This is quite obvious when it comes to the issue of understand the process of evolution in the context of the Torah's narration of the creation of the world. For folks on one side, there is only the literal reading of the Torah. Aware or not of the weakness of this position, they spend great effort on constructing theories that sound, to outsiders, like they're completely absurd, such as the "ready made dinosaur bones" idea. They then busily attack any who disagree as heretics who don't deserve a hearing for their ideas.
Their opponents on the skeptic/atheist side are no different. If natural history is different than the Torah's narration, then the Torah must be wrong, there must be no God, chalilah, and everything can be explained by the randomness of evolution. They then work on villifying religion as irrelevant or a source of all the wrongs in the world, despite all the evidence that it's not religion but rather the abuse of it that causes much of what is wrong out there.
But what both sides save their worst energy for is the middle ground, the group that says that there is no conflict between Torah and science. For extremists at either end, this way of thinking is the real threat to their position. Having staked out a "Things must be exactly the way I describe them" position, a working compromise that accomodates both concepts fully is a great threat.
However, this does not change the legitimacy of the middle ground, especially when it is the only position that can answer all the questions being asked without having to resort to dogmatic or scientifically incorrect statements.
This is why I was pleased to read Israeli Science and Technology Minister Daniel Hershkowitz' comments on the compatibility of evolution with the Torah:
Minister Hershkowitz was asked whether the Education Ministry's chief scientist's reservations regarding evolution are just cause to oust him from his post. As a rabbi and a scientist, Hershkowitz responded that there is no contradiction between religious faith and Darwinism and that the chief scientist's position need not be a pretext for his dismissal.
Hershkowitz elaborated: "First of all, we can observe that from the perspective of faith, there is no need to oppose Darwin's theory of evolution. Harav Kook already wrote about it: '…even if we were to learn that the order of Creation was in accordance with the evolution of the species, there still is no contradiction as we gauge through the simplicity of the Torah's verses, which are much more relevant to us than any other former knowledge with which we do not have a deep connection. The Torah certainly speaks obscurely of Creation…'"
According to Hershkowitz, "It is also worthwhile to read the book by Rabbi Yitzhak Shilat, 'The Teachings of Rabbi Gedalyah' (on the writings of Rabbi Gedalyah Nadel, the student of the Hazon Ish), that shows Ovadiah Sforno, who lived more than 300 years before Darwin, proves from textual verses that the creation of man in God's image is the end of a long process that started with a non-rational creature, which belonged to the category of animals, and progressed until he had human intellect alongside the physiological structure of man with which we are familiar."
As Rav Nosson Sliffkin has already (too) famously pointed out, there are plenty of significant authorites in Judiasm who have no difficulty with the concept of an old Earth and universe. The attacks against his position have been typical, with accusations of "quote mining" from some and others claiming Rav Eliashiv, shlit"a, said something to the effect of "They could say it, we can't." None of these rebuttals have been terribly convincing. The opponents who accuse Rav Sliffkin of quote mining prove their position only by doing the exact same thing, only this time picking those commentators whose positions are favourable to them. As for Rav Eliashiv's statement, if he indeed did say it, there is a simple reply: Maybe we can't say it, but we can read that they did say it and know about it.
On the other side, there are those for whom any whiff of legitimacy to religion is equally heretical from a secular point of view. Raise questions about the holes in the theory of evolution and be prepared to face intellectual wrath equivalent to a Neturei Karta mob on a Sunday afternoon outing to burn down the local gas station. Those who are willing to discuss evolution, take it for granted that some form of it can explain the development of life on Earth but wish to see it as a process directed and controlled by God are, for the skeptics/atheists, just another form of religious fanatic.
Look, there is no quesiton that there is ample evidence that evolution has directed the development of much of life on Earth. Anyone who questions the legitimacy of natural selection can safely be laughed at. Examples happening in real time, like the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and new viruse strains, abound. It is simply not intelligent to declare that this process is not happening.
On the other hand, do Darwin's theories explain everything about the current form of life on Earth? No, they don't. One quick and easy example is to look at the belief that men descended from monkeys. In fact, there is now evidence of a common ancestor of both apes and man which points to separate evolutionary pathways, something inconceivable just a few years ago. Needless to say, the famous "missing link" has already still not been found. Proponents of evolution say that this is due to gaps in the fossil record and therefore can be assume to be present. Possibly, but they have no evidence, just consistent theorizing to prove this.
Therefore a middle position understand that the Torah's account of creation is not meant to be understood in a literal sense and an embracing of the knowledge of science to help understand God's means for designing and running this world would be an emminently sensible position to take. It removes conflict, allows for belief and an examination of the evidence, and presents the most plausible explanations to many difficulties.
No wonder opponents on either side work so hard to destroy this middle ground.
This is quite obvious when it comes to the issue of understand the process of evolution in the context of the Torah's narration of the creation of the world. For folks on one side, there is only the literal reading of the Torah. Aware or not of the weakness of this position, they spend great effort on constructing theories that sound, to outsiders, like they're completely absurd, such as the "ready made dinosaur bones" idea. They then busily attack any who disagree as heretics who don't deserve a hearing for their ideas.
Their opponents on the skeptic/atheist side are no different. If natural history is different than the Torah's narration, then the Torah must be wrong, there must be no God, chalilah, and everything can be explained by the randomness of evolution. They then work on villifying religion as irrelevant or a source of all the wrongs in the world, despite all the evidence that it's not religion but rather the abuse of it that causes much of what is wrong out there.
But what both sides save their worst energy for is the middle ground, the group that says that there is no conflict between Torah and science. For extremists at either end, this way of thinking is the real threat to their position. Having staked out a "Things must be exactly the way I describe them" position, a working compromise that accomodates both concepts fully is a great threat.
However, this does not change the legitimacy of the middle ground, especially when it is the only position that can answer all the questions being asked without having to resort to dogmatic or scientifically incorrect statements.
This is why I was pleased to read Israeli Science and Technology Minister Daniel Hershkowitz' comments on the compatibility of evolution with the Torah:
Minister Hershkowitz was asked whether the Education Ministry's chief scientist's reservations regarding evolution are just cause to oust him from his post. As a rabbi and a scientist, Hershkowitz responded that there is no contradiction between religious faith and Darwinism and that the chief scientist's position need not be a pretext for his dismissal.
Hershkowitz elaborated: "First of all, we can observe that from the perspective of faith, there is no need to oppose Darwin's theory of evolution. Harav Kook already wrote about it: '…even if we were to learn that the order of Creation was in accordance with the evolution of the species, there still is no contradiction as we gauge through the simplicity of the Torah's verses, which are much more relevant to us than any other former knowledge with which we do not have a deep connection. The Torah certainly speaks obscurely of Creation…'"
According to Hershkowitz, "It is also worthwhile to read the book by Rabbi Yitzhak Shilat, 'The Teachings of Rabbi Gedalyah' (on the writings of Rabbi Gedalyah Nadel, the student of the Hazon Ish), that shows Ovadiah Sforno, who lived more than 300 years before Darwin, proves from textual verses that the creation of man in God's image is the end of a long process that started with a non-rational creature, which belonged to the category of animals, and progressed until he had human intellect alongside the physiological structure of man with which we are familiar."
As Rav Nosson Sliffkin has already (too) famously pointed out, there are plenty of significant authorites in Judiasm who have no difficulty with the concept of an old Earth and universe. The attacks against his position have been typical, with accusations of "quote mining" from some and others claiming Rav Eliashiv, shlit"a, said something to the effect of "They could say it, we can't." None of these rebuttals have been terribly convincing. The opponents who accuse Rav Sliffkin of quote mining prove their position only by doing the exact same thing, only this time picking those commentators whose positions are favourable to them. As for Rav Eliashiv's statement, if he indeed did say it, there is a simple reply: Maybe we can't say it, but we can read that they did say it and know about it.
On the other side, there are those for whom any whiff of legitimacy to religion is equally heretical from a secular point of view. Raise questions about the holes in the theory of evolution and be prepared to face intellectual wrath equivalent to a Neturei Karta mob on a Sunday afternoon outing to burn down the local gas station. Those who are willing to discuss evolution, take it for granted that some form of it can explain the development of life on Earth but wish to see it as a process directed and controlled by God are, for the skeptics/atheists, just another form of religious fanatic.
Look, there is no quesiton that there is ample evidence that evolution has directed the development of much of life on Earth. Anyone who questions the legitimacy of natural selection can safely be laughed at. Examples happening in real time, like the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and new viruse strains, abound. It is simply not intelligent to declare that this process is not happening.
On the other hand, do Darwin's theories explain everything about the current form of life on Earth? No, they don't. One quick and easy example is to look at the belief that men descended from monkeys. In fact, there is now evidence of a common ancestor of both apes and man which points to separate evolutionary pathways, something inconceivable just a few years ago. Needless to say, the famous "missing link" has already still not been found. Proponents of evolution say that this is due to gaps in the fossil record and therefore can be assume to be present. Possibly, but they have no evidence, just consistent theorizing to prove this.
Therefore a middle position understand that the Torah's account of creation is not meant to be understood in a literal sense and an embracing of the knowledge of science to help understand God's means for designing and running this world would be an emminently sensible position to take. It removes conflict, allows for belief and an examination of the evidence, and presents the most plausible explanations to many difficulties.
No wonder opponents on either side work so hard to destroy this middle ground.
Thursday, 4 March 2010
Our Responsibility
"And when the people heard these evil tidings, they mourned: and no man did put on him his ornaments. For the LORD had said unto Moses, Say unto the children of Israel, Ye are a stiffnecked people: I will come up into the midst of thee in a moment, and consume thee: therefore now put off thy ornaments from thee, that I may know what to do unto thee. And the children of Israel stripped themselves of their ornaments by the mount Horeb"(Shmos 33:4-6)
There are two obvious problems with these three verses:
a) Right after the text tells us the people took off their ornaments, God then commands them to do so.
b) So they do it again?
The Malbim, with his usual incisive analysis of the fine points of the text, notes something most people miss: "the people" and "the Children of Israel" are not the same thing. If they were, why would the Torah use two different terms, especially in consecutive verses? He notes from his experience that the term "the people" usually refers to the hamon am, the great masses while the term "the Children of Israel" refers to the leading portions of the nation.
In this case he differentiates based on the recent debacle of the golden calf. The Malbim notes that the majority of our ancestors did not worship the calf, but they also didn't protest against it and stop its worshippers from carrying out their foul actions. As a result, God withdrew his decision to allow His presence to rest amongst the people. Instead of building a Mishkan, the Bnei Yisrael would travel from Sinai directly to Israel, guided by an angel, not the presence of God.
The masses who had been eagerly expected the arrival of the Shechinah evinced their disappointment and regret over events by removing their "ornaments", the crowns that the malachei hashares had given them when they said na'aseh v'nishma not so long ago. But the Children of Israel, the leading elements of the people, didn't. Why not?
The Malbim brings an astounding answer - they didn't feel the right amount of regret over the golden calf! Yes they recognized that it had been a bad affair all around but since they had never given up hope in Moshe Rabeinu, a"h, coming back with the Aseres HaDibros and therefore had not participated at all in what had happened, they felt that the God's angery and the subsequent punishment had nothing to do with them. Thus while the average people knew what to do in order to begin the process of teshuvah they sat back figuring that nothing had changed for them.
But it had because when part of our people stumble, the damage affects us all. As Chazal note, all Jews are responsible for one another. The parable is told of the people in the boat where one of them starts drilling a hole under his seat. When teh others try to stop him, he tells them to mind his own business because he can do what he wants under his private seat. The others call him a fool because his private hole will flood the entire boat.
Here the situation was the opposite. It was as if some of the passengers had begun drilling holes while others said "What do I care, it's nowhere near me", oblivious to the obvious, that they would be drowned along with the others.
For me, the lesson can be grimly applied to the frumi community today. We are a minority amongst our people. The majority of our brethren do not observe the laws of the Torah either out of ignorance or an arrogance born of fundemental misunderstandings of how God works in this world. They are the great masses, we are the Children of Israel.
As such, it is our responsibility to reach out to them through personal example. Sitting back, criticizing those who know not better and saying to ourselves "If bad things happen it won't affect us because we're shomrei mitzvos" is not what God would seem to want of us. We must reach out to our brethren through positive expression of the Torah's moral valuese and show them what they are missing. Otherwise, we are just flooding the boat through our inaction and will be drowned with the rest.
There are two obvious problems with these three verses:
a) Right after the text tells us the people took off their ornaments, God then commands them to do so.
b) So they do it again?
The Malbim, with his usual incisive analysis of the fine points of the text, notes something most people miss: "the people" and "the Children of Israel" are not the same thing. If they were, why would the Torah use two different terms, especially in consecutive verses? He notes from his experience that the term "the people" usually refers to the hamon am, the great masses while the term "the Children of Israel" refers to the leading portions of the nation.
In this case he differentiates based on the recent debacle of the golden calf. The Malbim notes that the majority of our ancestors did not worship the calf, but they also didn't protest against it and stop its worshippers from carrying out their foul actions. As a result, God withdrew his decision to allow His presence to rest amongst the people. Instead of building a Mishkan, the Bnei Yisrael would travel from Sinai directly to Israel, guided by an angel, not the presence of God.
The masses who had been eagerly expected the arrival of the Shechinah evinced their disappointment and regret over events by removing their "ornaments", the crowns that the malachei hashares had given them when they said na'aseh v'nishma not so long ago. But the Children of Israel, the leading elements of the people, didn't. Why not?
The Malbim brings an astounding answer - they didn't feel the right amount of regret over the golden calf! Yes they recognized that it had been a bad affair all around but since they had never given up hope in Moshe Rabeinu, a"h, coming back with the Aseres HaDibros and therefore had not participated at all in what had happened, they felt that the God's angery and the subsequent punishment had nothing to do with them. Thus while the average people knew what to do in order to begin the process of teshuvah they sat back figuring that nothing had changed for them.
But it had because when part of our people stumble, the damage affects us all. As Chazal note, all Jews are responsible for one another. The parable is told of the people in the boat where one of them starts drilling a hole under his seat. When teh others try to stop him, he tells them to mind his own business because he can do what he wants under his private seat. The others call him a fool because his private hole will flood the entire boat.
Here the situation was the opposite. It was as if some of the passengers had begun drilling holes while others said "What do I care, it's nowhere near me", oblivious to the obvious, that they would be drowned along with the others.
For me, the lesson can be grimly applied to the frumi community today. We are a minority amongst our people. The majority of our brethren do not observe the laws of the Torah either out of ignorance or an arrogance born of fundemental misunderstandings of how God works in this world. They are the great masses, we are the Children of Israel.
As such, it is our responsibility to reach out to them through personal example. Sitting back, criticizing those who know not better and saying to ourselves "If bad things happen it won't affect us because we're shomrei mitzvos" is not what God would seem to want of us. We must reach out to our brethren through positive expression of the Torah's moral valuese and show them what they are missing. Otherwise, we are just flooding the boat through our inaction and will be drowned with the rest.
Tuesday, 2 March 2010
Would Your Shul Give Them An Aliyah
The Neutrei Karta are well known for their idiotic stunts which they perform in the name of what they think is Torah Judaism. Whether it's meeting and giving succour to Israel's enemies, participating in Holocaust denials, or just the usual burning of Israeli flags, it's clear this is a community of mentally unstable individuals whose hatred for their fellow Jews has consumed their rationality and turned them into bekisher-wearing primitives. Certainly any group that prefers Nazi imagery to Israeli symbols is in urgent need of injectable anti-psychotics.
And yet they are still called ultra-Orthodox. They are still perceived as fiercely, even violently religious and their barbarities excused as excesses due to their great passion for God and Torah.
This is false.
We are quick to condemn Rabbi Avi Weiss when he appoints a woman as a "rabbah". What a threat to Judaism that is! Are he and his group really still Orthodox? A shande. But when Neturei Karta authorities come out with this beauty...
One of the organizers of the ceremony in Jerusalem told Ynet, "We must keep in mind that Amalek's goal was to make the people of Israel sin and not necessarily kill them. Therefore, the true Amalek is Zionism and the State of Israel."
A few days before Purim Ynet reported that Neturei Karta had distributed flyers asserting that Nazi costumes and accessories are preferable to any costume which includes Zionist elements.
...then we must come out and ask the same question: Is this Orthodoxy?
I am going to give my answer clearly: No, these people are not Orthodox. Frankly, I don't know if they're even Jewish anymore, no matter how kosher their meat and how perfect their Torah scrolls. They have placed themselves as enemies of the Jewish people because the other 99.9% of us don't see things their way and have used violence and treason to accomplish their goals. They cannot be considered part of klal Yisrael. If one of them shows up in shul, is it appropriate to give them an aliyah? Even count them to the minyan?
I would say that if we're kicking anyone out of Orthodoxy, it should be them.
And yet they are still called ultra-Orthodox. They are still perceived as fiercely, even violently religious and their barbarities excused as excesses due to their great passion for God and Torah.
This is false.
We are quick to condemn Rabbi Avi Weiss when he appoints a woman as a "rabbah". What a threat to Judaism that is! Are he and his group really still Orthodox? A shande. But when Neturei Karta authorities come out with this beauty...
One of the organizers of the ceremony in Jerusalem told Ynet, "We must keep in mind that Amalek's goal was to make the people of Israel sin and not necessarily kill them. Therefore, the true Amalek is Zionism and the State of Israel."
A few days before Purim Ynet reported that Neturei Karta had distributed flyers asserting that Nazi costumes and accessories are preferable to any costume which includes Zionist elements.
...then we must come out and ask the same question: Is this Orthodoxy?
I am going to give my answer clearly: No, these people are not Orthodox. Frankly, I don't know if they're even Jewish anymore, no matter how kosher their meat and how perfect their Torah scrolls. They have placed themselves as enemies of the Jewish people because the other 99.9% of us don't see things their way and have used violence and treason to accomplish their goals. They cannot be considered part of klal Yisrael. If one of them shows up in shul, is it appropriate to give them an aliyah? Even count them to the minyan?
I would say that if we're kicking anyone out of Orthodoxy, it should be them.
Sleeping With the Enemy
In the important history book, Pillar of Fire, the details of the Hebron massacre of 1929 are covered. One of the chilling recollections notes that many of the Arabs that the Jews thought were their friends gleefully joined in the pogrom and showed great enthusiasm in attacking their former neighbours. It was something that would haunt many to their final days and still serves as a lesson to us: ultimately we can only completely trust in our Father in Heaven. Everyone else is negotiable.
It's a lesson some have forgotten, especially Rabbi Hyim Shafner and his friends who, in their eagerness to make friends and show that the world really is a wonderful, happy place, will cross any lines to prove their point.
In this recent article, Rabbi Shafner recounts a recent visit he made to Beit Lechem, once a Jewish town and now one in which Jews with Israeli passports are now forbidden to enter. As Shafner notes:
Two weeks ago I traveled with 40 Rabbis, Rabbinical students and educators to Bethlehem, and spent two days talking with Arabs in the West Bank who have committed themselves to solving the looming problems of the Israeli Palestinian conflict peacefully. I slept overnight in the very nice home of a Christian family in Bethlehem. None of us visitors were Israeli citizens since they are not allowed in Bethlehem which is part of Area A, the Oslo section of the West Bank that is solely under PA control.
Now there are several things to point out from this first paragraph that show that Rabbi Shafner, despite his sincerest intentions, is actually quite clueless about how things work in the Middle East. The first is to note that he really thought that there is value in talking with the average "Arab on the street". This is a typical mistake for Americans to make. After all, having been raised in a democratic system where politicians must seek out voter approval on a regular basis and where the free expression of ideas is encouraged (outside of university campuses, but that's another post) they blithefully assume that this is the case everywhere. Talk with enough Arabs, the thinking goes, and they can effect change in their societies that will lead to peace tomorrow, or possibly the day after.
Of course, the flaw in this thinking is that all Arab societies are dictatorships in which power in concentrated in a small ruling class that is insulated from and completely controls the actions of the general populace. Arabs in Yesha have as much control over the political events that affect them as a fish does on Michelle Obama's menstrual cycle. Sometimes small groups will exist that dare to speak about peace with Israel. Rest assured they remain small because the minute they start to become even remotely influential they disappear with the sound of a few guns firing. 99.9% of the populace of Yesha could want peace with Israel tomorrow. If Hamas and Fatah do not, there will be no peace. How much more so when the vast majority of the populace is either honestly anti-Jewish or willing to publicly display such sentiments out of fear of reprisal?
The second red flag, one which Shafner should be ashamed of ignoring is in his statement: "None of us visitors were Israeli citizens since they are not allowed in Bethlehem." In fact, that's not entirely true. Arab Israeli citizens have no trouble getting into and out of Bethlehem. Only Jewish Israeli citizens are forbidden entry. This should have stopped Shafner cold but again, what is common sense against blazing liberal zeal?
I., as many Anglo Jews and perhaps Israeli Jews, always imagined that to enter the West Bank was to take one’s life in one’s hands; that all West Bank citizens want most of all to kill Jews.
I can't imagine why anyone would think that. Oh wait, yes I can: In October, 2000 two Israelis driving near Yesha made a wrong turn and wound up in Ramallah. An Arab mob grabbed them, dragged them to the local police station and ripped them apart like wild animals. Who can forget the picture of one of the ecstatic murderers in the window, blood all over his hands? Well, Shafner could. He also seems to have forgotten how for several years after the sound of Arabic in parts of Israel was associated with suicide bombing which led people quite rightly to become nervous when they heard it.
it is also true that there are real people on the other side of the wall, Christians and Muslims, who do not fit the stereotype.
Yes there are, and many of them want little more than to live in peace. However, the dynamics of their society are completely different from Shafner's, something he may come to understand one day if he bothers to try. Those same Arabs who were probably wonderfully warm hosts would become part of the next pogrom if their leaders ordered them to, no matter how many kind words of appeasement were spoken to them. And folks like Hyim Shafner would be that much more mystified when it happens.
It's a lesson some have forgotten, especially Rabbi Hyim Shafner and his friends who, in their eagerness to make friends and show that the world really is a wonderful, happy place, will cross any lines to prove their point.
In this recent article, Rabbi Shafner recounts a recent visit he made to Beit Lechem, once a Jewish town and now one in which Jews with Israeli passports are now forbidden to enter. As Shafner notes:
Two weeks ago I traveled with 40 Rabbis, Rabbinical students and educators to Bethlehem, and spent two days talking with Arabs in the West Bank who have committed themselves to solving the looming problems of the Israeli Palestinian conflict peacefully. I slept overnight in the very nice home of a Christian family in Bethlehem. None of us visitors were Israeli citizens since they are not allowed in Bethlehem which is part of Area A, the Oslo section of the West Bank that is solely under PA control.
Now there are several things to point out from this first paragraph that show that Rabbi Shafner, despite his sincerest intentions, is actually quite clueless about how things work in the Middle East. The first is to note that he really thought that there is value in talking with the average "Arab on the street". This is a typical mistake for Americans to make. After all, having been raised in a democratic system where politicians must seek out voter approval on a regular basis and where the free expression of ideas is encouraged (outside of university campuses, but that's another post) they blithefully assume that this is the case everywhere. Talk with enough Arabs, the thinking goes, and they can effect change in their societies that will lead to peace tomorrow, or possibly the day after.
Of course, the flaw in this thinking is that all Arab societies are dictatorships in which power in concentrated in a small ruling class that is insulated from and completely controls the actions of the general populace. Arabs in Yesha have as much control over the political events that affect them as a fish does on Michelle Obama's menstrual cycle. Sometimes small groups will exist that dare to speak about peace with Israel. Rest assured they remain small because the minute they start to become even remotely influential they disappear with the sound of a few guns firing. 99.9% of the populace of Yesha could want peace with Israel tomorrow. If Hamas and Fatah do not, there will be no peace. How much more so when the vast majority of the populace is either honestly anti-Jewish or willing to publicly display such sentiments out of fear of reprisal?
The second red flag, one which Shafner should be ashamed of ignoring is in his statement: "None of us visitors were Israeli citizens since they are not allowed in Bethlehem." In fact, that's not entirely true. Arab Israeli citizens have no trouble getting into and out of Bethlehem. Only Jewish Israeli citizens are forbidden entry. This should have stopped Shafner cold but again, what is common sense against blazing liberal zeal?
I., as many Anglo Jews and perhaps Israeli Jews, always imagined that to enter the West Bank was to take one’s life in one’s hands; that all West Bank citizens want most of all to kill Jews.
I can't imagine why anyone would think that. Oh wait, yes I can: In October, 2000 two Israelis driving near Yesha made a wrong turn and wound up in Ramallah. An Arab mob grabbed them, dragged them to the local police station and ripped them apart like wild animals. Who can forget the picture of one of the ecstatic murderers in the window, blood all over his hands? Well, Shafner could. He also seems to have forgotten how for several years after the sound of Arabic in parts of Israel was associated with suicide bombing which led people quite rightly to become nervous when they heard it.
it is also true that there are real people on the other side of the wall, Christians and Muslims, who do not fit the stereotype.
Yes there are, and many of them want little more than to live in peace. However, the dynamics of their society are completely different from Shafner's, something he may come to understand one day if he bothers to try. Those same Arabs who were probably wonderfully warm hosts would become part of the next pogrom if their leaders ordered them to, no matter how many kind words of appeasement were spoken to them. And folks like Hyim Shafner would be that much more mystified when it happens.
Monday, 1 March 2010
Size Matters?
There's a Youtube video advertising the state of Israel making the rounds in North American Jewish communities that has caused, for some, a huge stir of outrage. I'm not going to post a link to the video because, based on what I've been told (and everyone's account is the same), I don't feel that I should be advertising it directly or participating in increasing its view count.
In brief, the video portrays two young people in bed. The girl looks down at the guy's genitals and comments on their diminutive size. The guy counters that it's not size but power and boy, is it powerful! Apparently at some point the sheet pulls away to reveal a map of Israel.
The rav in my shul went bananas over this video on Shabbos. Although he is renowned for his calm nature (it took me four years of goading to get him to yell at me, no he doesn't know it was a contest between me and a friend to see who could do it first!) he apparently shouted fire and brimstones to the congregation (I wasn't there, I haven't heard a sermon of his in... how many years has he been in town now?) about the video. He went on and on about how using sex and related innuendo to sell Israel to people is degrading and shows that we really don't understand our mission as Jews, and so on.
At kiddush, everyone was talking about the video and the sermon. The best line was "It was awful, totally lacking taste. It was so unbelievable I had to watch it three times to completely understand how bad it is!"
Today I got two e-mails from members of my shul imploring me to protest to the local Jewish Federation at how terrible it is to use this video to promote our land, especially because of the proximity of Israel Apartheid Week at all the local universities.
But try as I might, I can't see the reason for the outrage. As I wrote to one of the concerned congregants:
First of all, it was clearly
not meant to be marketed to the religious crowd. Frankly, if it's the same kind of people
doing this as what run our JCC, I don't think they even know a religious crowd exists or
are peripherally annoyed by our existence at best.
In the non-religious Jewish community, like the surrounding secular culture, sex sells.
Sexual jokes are considered humorous. Sexual objects are considered attractive. We may
be disgusted by such animalistic behaviour but that disgust doesn't change the
perceptions of the non-religious crowd. As a result, a video using a man's penis size
and sexual innuendo around it is no different that an ad using a scantily clad woman on a
magazine cover. It's all about what gets attention and in non-religious Jewish morality,
there's nothing wrong about it at all.
For non-religious Jews, Israel Apartheid Week, like the Holocaust, is very nerve
wracking. Having built a whole culture around fitting in and trying to be
indistinguishable from the surrounding population, they are thrown into great fits of
discomfort whenever someone points out that they are still targets of hatred for their
minimalistic beliefs. The same people who have no problem with this video, who spend
their Saturdays at the mall and bring magazines to read to pass the time in shul on Yom
Kippur suddenly feel threatened when their right to support Israel, possibly their only
connection to real Judaism, is attacked.
For religious Jews, however, IAW is no big deal. Aware as we are of history, this is
just another step along the lines of the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Pact of Omar, the
pogroms of Eastern Europe and the blood libel. In fact, IAW is a pretty good thing
because at least they're not spilling into the streets and looking to burn our homes down
after their meetings. That's progress!
In response to a point he tried to make about the need to portray the State of Israel in a morally upright fashion, I rebutted:
Are you going to call Tel Aviv's city hall and demand they not host the next
international Gay Pride parade? Are you going to demand that they send all the Russian
prostitutes walking the boardwalk on the TA beach back up the Volga?
Yet the actual message: Jews are what they are by virtue of the Torah and only through
its proper observance can we elevate ourselves and show real pride in our nationhood -
must remain unsaid because it will alienate all the non-religious who, by the way, don't
have a problem with this video in the first place!
One reaps what one sows. If one feels that it is important to have Israel exist as a modern, inclusive and liberal democracy, then one must expect that its culture will be as degraded and amoral and any other Western country's. Turning around and saying "Well, yeah but since it's Jewish it should be better than that" cannot be reconciled with that. As a people we have prayed for the rebirth of a Jewish state, not a state that happens to have a Jewish majority. As alienating as it may be to the non-religious portion of our community, that doesn't imply an inclusive, liberal state. Eventually they will have to make a choice and it's not going to be pretty but shouting about videos like this just emphasizes the confusion they are currently feeling.
In brief, the video portrays two young people in bed. The girl looks down at the guy's genitals and comments on their diminutive size. The guy counters that it's not size but power and boy, is it powerful! Apparently at some point the sheet pulls away to reveal a map of Israel.
The rav in my shul went bananas over this video on Shabbos. Although he is renowned for his calm nature (it took me four years of goading to get him to yell at me, no he doesn't know it was a contest between me and a friend to see who could do it first!) he apparently shouted fire and brimstones to the congregation (I wasn't there, I haven't heard a sermon of his in... how many years has he been in town now?) about the video. He went on and on about how using sex and related innuendo to sell Israel to people is degrading and shows that we really don't understand our mission as Jews, and so on.
At kiddush, everyone was talking about the video and the sermon. The best line was "It was awful, totally lacking taste. It was so unbelievable I had to watch it three times to completely understand how bad it is!"
Today I got two e-mails from members of my shul imploring me to protest to the local Jewish Federation at how terrible it is to use this video to promote our land, especially because of the proximity of Israel Apartheid Week at all the local universities.
But try as I might, I can't see the reason for the outrage. As I wrote to one of the concerned congregants:
First of all, it was clearly
not meant to be marketed to the religious crowd. Frankly, if it's the same kind of people
doing this as what run our JCC, I don't think they even know a religious crowd exists or
are peripherally annoyed by our existence at best.
In the non-religious Jewish community, like the surrounding secular culture, sex sells.
Sexual jokes are considered humorous. Sexual objects are considered attractive. We may
be disgusted by such animalistic behaviour but that disgust doesn't change the
perceptions of the non-religious crowd. As a result, a video using a man's penis size
and sexual innuendo around it is no different that an ad using a scantily clad woman on a
magazine cover. It's all about what gets attention and in non-religious Jewish morality,
there's nothing wrong about it at all.
For non-religious Jews, Israel Apartheid Week, like the Holocaust, is very nerve
wracking. Having built a whole culture around fitting in and trying to be
indistinguishable from the surrounding population, they are thrown into great fits of
discomfort whenever someone points out that they are still targets of hatred for their
minimalistic beliefs. The same people who have no problem with this video, who spend
their Saturdays at the mall and bring magazines to read to pass the time in shul on Yom
Kippur suddenly feel threatened when their right to support Israel, possibly their only
connection to real Judaism, is attacked.
For religious Jews, however, IAW is no big deal. Aware as we are of history, this is
just another step along the lines of the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Pact of Omar, the
pogroms of Eastern Europe and the blood libel. In fact, IAW is a pretty good thing
because at least they're not spilling into the streets and looking to burn our homes down
after their meetings. That's progress!
In response to a point he tried to make about the need to portray the State of Israel in a morally upright fashion, I rebutted:
Are you going to call Tel Aviv's city hall and demand they not host the next
international Gay Pride parade? Are you going to demand that they send all the Russian
prostitutes walking the boardwalk on the TA beach back up the Volga?
Yet the actual message: Jews are what they are by virtue of the Torah and only through
its proper observance can we elevate ourselves and show real pride in our nationhood -
must remain unsaid because it will alienate all the non-religious who, by the way, don't
have a problem with this video in the first place!
One reaps what one sows. If one feels that it is important to have Israel exist as a modern, inclusive and liberal democracy, then one must expect that its culture will be as degraded and amoral and any other Western country's. Turning around and saying "Well, yeah but since it's Jewish it should be better than that" cannot be reconciled with that. As a people we have prayed for the rebirth of a Jewish state, not a state that happens to have a Jewish majority. As alienating as it may be to the non-religious portion of our community, that doesn't imply an inclusive, liberal state. Eventually they will have to make a choice and it's not going to be pretty but shouting about videos like this just emphasizes the confusion they are currently feeling.
Saturday, 27 February 2010
Two Levels
The famous question: why no beracha on sending mishloach manos?
Not such an easy one to answer. Traditionally we are supposed to keep the other Purim mitzvos in mind while listening to the blessings before the megilla but why shouldn't there be a separate blessing for the others?
For the seudah and matanos l'evyonim, the answers are relatively easy. A meal on Purim lacks anything particularly distinctive to demand its own beracha. As for giving to the poor, there is the famous psak of the Rashba that explains why tzedakah doesn't get a blessing - any mivtzah that depends on another person for its completion cannot have a blessing since the other person might refuse the charitable donation making the blessing a vain one.
In truth, many try to apply that reasoning to mishloach manos since it is similar in some ways to charity. However, many poskim hold that it is sufficiently different to make the Rashba's psak not relevant to this case.
For one thing, the purpose of mishloach manos is not to give a gift to the needy but to spread love and brotherhood amongst the Jewish people. Some say that the purpose of the mitzvah is to counter Haman's words in the megillah, that we are a scattered and divided people. By sending gifts to one another we provde this untrue.
If this is so, then the mitzvah is in the sending, not the receiving of the gift. Slam the door on the messenger all you want, his having sent it in an attempted stab at friendship fulfills his requirements. Thus one should be able to make the beracha if that's the case.
Now, there is the position of the Rambam from hilchos Berachos in which he notes that while ben adam l'makom commandments generally get blessings, ben adam l'chavero ones don't. What the reason for that is remains to be explained.
One explanation is that there is little in most ben adam lchavero commandments to distinguish them as specifically Jewish. Visiting the sick, burying the dead, helping the poor, and so on all can be found amongst all the nations of the world. Jews performing these activites may do so l'shem mitzvah instead of simply because "it's the right thing to do" but to the outside observer, there is no difference between what we do and what eveyrone else do in these matters. Hence some poskim hold that blessings are reserved for distinctively Jewish activities that are generally classed as ben adam l'makom. So this might explain why mishloach manos might not get a beracha.
The Seridei Eish (hat tip to Nishma for pointing this out to me) notes a different, fascinating answer. Generally in Jewish law we have a principle that it is a greater thing to do something one is commanded to do than to do it from a voluntary position. Men are commanded to wave a lulav on Sukkos. Women can but don't have a command to do so. Men are therefore considered to have the greater reward, possibly because once something becomes a command the yetzer hara steps in to try and prevent the action but that's a separate topic.
However, the Seridei Eish implies that while this applies to ben adam l'makom commandments, it doesn't necessarily apply to ben adam l'chavero. Looking specifically at mishloach manos, he repeats the concept that the mitzvah has the purpose of spreading love and brotherhood amongst the Jewish people. Obviously sending gifts could have been commanded but the real value in a gift is its being offered freely instead of through coercion.
(As a side note, this could explain why the Mishkan was built almost entirely from free-will gifts instead of a mandatory tax)
As a result, the Seridei Eish holds that by applying a beracha to mishloach manos would remove the very purpose of the mitzvah, hence no blessing.
But there's a deeper concept I want to mention that emerges from this.
As written above there are two levels of mitzvos. Which are the more basic? One would have to say, based on a review of the Tanach, that ben adam l'chavero, the not-so-glamorous, not-so-specifically-Jewish commandments are the basic level of observance. Consider the famour drash as to why the generation of the Flood was destroyed while the generation of the Tower of Bavel was only dispersed. Consider how the prophets repeatedly emphasize social ills as the cause of the destruction of the Temple and our subsequent exiles. After all, of the three cardinal sins that destroyed the First Temple, only one is ben adam l'makom. The main sin that destroyed the Second Temple is entirely ben adam l'chavero.
Thus if one were to look at the two levels in a structural fashion, ben adam l'makom forms the second floor while ben adam l'chavero forms the first.
And while the prophets make clear that God can build a structure by first spreading out the roof and then filling in underneath, human beings can only put something up from the ground level first. A properly functioning Jewish system must be based on a strong dedication to ben adam l'chavero that then leads to the level of ben adam l'makom. Anything else is like trying to put up the second storey while the first is yet incompletely. The whole structure then collapses into a ruin.
Perhaps this is why there have been so much trouble reported out of the Torah observant community in the last while. For a couple of generations now, the emphasis in the "most kosher" circles has been almost entirely on ben adam l'makom, many times openly at the expense of ben adam l'chavero. Human dignity is shoved aside in a crazy delusion that somehow God doesn't care how we treat each other, just so long as we shokl hard enough when we daven and our black hats have big enough brims. Worrying about what our Father in Heaven thinks of the length of our tzitzis while we shove our way rudely past our fellow man is completely in the wrong direction.
This Purim let us all take a step back. The prophet quotes God as saying that given the choice between forming a functioning society and worshipping Him, he would choose the former because a functioning society will ultimately lead to people approaching Him. Sole worship of Him will ultimately fail because the dysfunctional society underneath will take everything down with it. Are you kosher enough? Don't worry, God forgives. Did you steal or cheat your fellow man? God's not so crazy about that, or so the prophets have told us.
We must restore the proper direction of Judaism this Purim by emphasizing the mishloach manos in our lives. One day a year to show communal fraternity is nice but really, mishloach manos are something you can do all year around. And maybe that's another reason there's no blessing on the mitzvah. Something we must always be involved with doesn't require a blessing because there's no start and certainly no end to the efforts.
Not such an easy one to answer. Traditionally we are supposed to keep the other Purim mitzvos in mind while listening to the blessings before the megilla but why shouldn't there be a separate blessing for the others?
For the seudah and matanos l'evyonim, the answers are relatively easy. A meal on Purim lacks anything particularly distinctive to demand its own beracha. As for giving to the poor, there is the famous psak of the Rashba that explains why tzedakah doesn't get a blessing - any mivtzah that depends on another person for its completion cannot have a blessing since the other person might refuse the charitable donation making the blessing a vain one.
In truth, many try to apply that reasoning to mishloach manos since it is similar in some ways to charity. However, many poskim hold that it is sufficiently different to make the Rashba's psak not relevant to this case.
For one thing, the purpose of mishloach manos is not to give a gift to the needy but to spread love and brotherhood amongst the Jewish people. Some say that the purpose of the mitzvah is to counter Haman's words in the megillah, that we are a scattered and divided people. By sending gifts to one another we provde this untrue.
If this is so, then the mitzvah is in the sending, not the receiving of the gift. Slam the door on the messenger all you want, his having sent it in an attempted stab at friendship fulfills his requirements. Thus one should be able to make the beracha if that's the case.
Now, there is the position of the Rambam from hilchos Berachos in which he notes that while ben adam l'makom commandments generally get blessings, ben adam l'chavero ones don't. What the reason for that is remains to be explained.
One explanation is that there is little in most ben adam lchavero commandments to distinguish them as specifically Jewish. Visiting the sick, burying the dead, helping the poor, and so on all can be found amongst all the nations of the world. Jews performing these activites may do so l'shem mitzvah instead of simply because "it's the right thing to do" but to the outside observer, there is no difference between what we do and what eveyrone else do in these matters. Hence some poskim hold that blessings are reserved for distinctively Jewish activities that are generally classed as ben adam l'makom. So this might explain why mishloach manos might not get a beracha.
The Seridei Eish (hat tip to Nishma for pointing this out to me) notes a different, fascinating answer. Generally in Jewish law we have a principle that it is a greater thing to do something one is commanded to do than to do it from a voluntary position. Men are commanded to wave a lulav on Sukkos. Women can but don't have a command to do so. Men are therefore considered to have the greater reward, possibly because once something becomes a command the yetzer hara steps in to try and prevent the action but that's a separate topic.
However, the Seridei Eish implies that while this applies to ben adam l'makom commandments, it doesn't necessarily apply to ben adam l'chavero. Looking specifically at mishloach manos, he repeats the concept that the mitzvah has the purpose of spreading love and brotherhood amongst the Jewish people. Obviously sending gifts could have been commanded but the real value in a gift is its being offered freely instead of through coercion.
(As a side note, this could explain why the Mishkan was built almost entirely from free-will gifts instead of a mandatory tax)
As a result, the Seridei Eish holds that by applying a beracha to mishloach manos would remove the very purpose of the mitzvah, hence no blessing.
But there's a deeper concept I want to mention that emerges from this.
As written above there are two levels of mitzvos. Which are the more basic? One would have to say, based on a review of the Tanach, that ben adam l'chavero, the not-so-glamorous, not-so-specifically-Jewish commandments are the basic level of observance. Consider the famour drash as to why the generation of the Flood was destroyed while the generation of the Tower of Bavel was only dispersed. Consider how the prophets repeatedly emphasize social ills as the cause of the destruction of the Temple and our subsequent exiles. After all, of the three cardinal sins that destroyed the First Temple, only one is ben adam l'makom. The main sin that destroyed the Second Temple is entirely ben adam l'chavero.
Thus if one were to look at the two levels in a structural fashion, ben adam l'makom forms the second floor while ben adam l'chavero forms the first.
And while the prophets make clear that God can build a structure by first spreading out the roof and then filling in underneath, human beings can only put something up from the ground level first. A properly functioning Jewish system must be based on a strong dedication to ben adam l'chavero that then leads to the level of ben adam l'makom. Anything else is like trying to put up the second storey while the first is yet incompletely. The whole structure then collapses into a ruin.
Perhaps this is why there have been so much trouble reported out of the Torah observant community in the last while. For a couple of generations now, the emphasis in the "most kosher" circles has been almost entirely on ben adam l'makom, many times openly at the expense of ben adam l'chavero. Human dignity is shoved aside in a crazy delusion that somehow God doesn't care how we treat each other, just so long as we shokl hard enough when we daven and our black hats have big enough brims. Worrying about what our Father in Heaven thinks of the length of our tzitzis while we shove our way rudely past our fellow man is completely in the wrong direction.
This Purim let us all take a step back. The prophet quotes God as saying that given the choice between forming a functioning society and worshipping Him, he would choose the former because a functioning society will ultimately lead to people approaching Him. Sole worship of Him will ultimately fail because the dysfunctional society underneath will take everything down with it. Are you kosher enough? Don't worry, God forgives. Did you steal or cheat your fellow man? God's not so crazy about that, or so the prophets have told us.
We must restore the proper direction of Judaism this Purim by emphasizing the mishloach manos in our lives. One day a year to show communal fraternity is nice but really, mishloach manos are something you can do all year around. And maybe that's another reason there's no blessing on the mitzvah. Something we must always be involved with doesn't require a blessing because there's no start and certainly no end to the efforts.
Friday, 19 February 2010
Defend With Confidence
The Jew-hating anti-Israel industry has been in full swing since the release of Richard Goldstone's biased report, slamming Israel for daring to defend itself from terrorist attacks coming from 'Aza. Unfortunately, on the side of the defence there are two groups, not one as there should be to provide a unifed defence of Israel.
The first group is the one that knows that Israel had every right to level the entire 'Aza strip in retaliation for the thousands of rockets fired deliberately at civilian targets from that large open sewer. They know the facts and have no hesitation to point out that Israel not only committed no war crimes but exercised incredible self-restraint in the fact of an enemy that did everything it could to maximize the death count of its own civilians.
The second group knows all this is true but isn't quite as confidence. They say that Israel had a right to retaliate against the attacks from 'Aza but put too much stock in Arab lies about what happened during the incursion and wonder: were we moral enough during that war? Might we have committed some crimes?
Thus when the newest edition of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the Goldstone report, was released, the two groups reacted predictably. The first dismissed it as a pack of lies not worth the paper it was written on. The second studied it and wondered if any of it was really true.
Imagine the following: A, a wild punk, attacks B on the street. B, a trained martial artist, used his fighting skills to defend himself and then gives a couple of quick blows to A to convince him not to continue the altercation. By any reasonable perspective, B is beyond reproach. Instead of killing his opponent as he could have easily done, he did what he could to end matters quickly and with minimal damage.
Along comes Goldstone to write his report. This is what he writes: A was bothering B. B, a superior fighter, attacked A all out of proportion. The end.
In the wake of the Goldstone report, Jew hating groups led and funded by the New Israel Fund have gone out of their way to villianize Israel. This being the post-Zionist age, none of these groups openly admit they hate Jews and Israel. Some, like J Street, profess to be quite pro-Israelis although a search for any statements defending Israel in their repertoire is one of futility. Nevertheless they have put great effort into demonizing our State for their own ends.
Fortunately, a group called Im Tirtzi has pulled the pants down on the New Israel Fund and its anti-Israel activities. In a detailed report, it shows how the NIF has funded anti-Jewish and anti-Israel groups whose reason for being is to attack Israel, aiding and abetting the enemies of the Jewish people.
Some, like Shmuel Rosner, aren't so confident in their defence of Israel and when Im Tirtzu is able to show who the treasonous amongst us are, they pull back and try to minimize the damage to the enemy the pro-Israel crowd as wrought.
Others, like Rav Yonasan Rosenblum, pull no punches when it comes to defending Israel and pointing out that wishy washy allies are no allies at all:
The NIF would prefer its donors to think that it is involved in social welfare projects or pushing religious pluralism. It tells donors that it does not fund groups that call for disinvestment or boycotts of Israel, or who negate the existence of Israel as a Jewish state, or which advocate the Palestinian right of return, or which engage in propaganda. Each of these claims is false. Im Tirzu shone a light on the activities of the NIF that the organization would rather hide. But increasing public knowledge is precisely what the marketplace of ideas is supposed to do.
Many on the Left employ a double standard concerning free speech. They want their own speech as advocates or professors immunized from criticism – thus Professor Newman's outrage at groups, such as Campus Watch, which publicize what professors say in and outside of the classroom. On the other hand, they develop an elaborate set of rules to disallow the speech of others as incitement, Islamophobic, homophobic, sexist, racist, or McCarthyite.
Neve Gordon is an egregious example. He publishes a widely disseminated op-ed in the Los Angeles Times calling for a boycott of Israel, but whines when others point out what kind of people head Ben-Gurion University's Political Science Department and files libel suits to silence critics. Similary, NIF's CEO Larry Garber equated criticism of NIF's funding of organizations that call for an end to Israel as a Jewish state with "contemplate[ing] ethnic cleansing."
Finally, the Goldstone Report is a crucial public issue demanding the most robus public debate. The Goldstone findings place Israel in an intolerable bind, unable to defend itself. In his Brandeis debate with Dore Gold, Goldstone could provide no answer to Gold's question: What should Israel do in response to rocket attacks? If every Israeli response to terrorists using civilian populations as a shield is automatically labeled a "war crime" or "disproportionate," Israel is left with the unpalatable choice between swallowing terror attacks or risking international condemnation and possible sanctions. All those concerned with Israel's security have a right to know who laid the groundwork for Goldstone.
SHMUEL ROSNER, also writing in these pages, did not accuse Im Tirzu of stifling free speech. He did, however, describe Im Tirzu's campaign as "ugly, brutal and quite disgusting." Presumably, he was referring to the billboards and newspaper ads depicting Chazan with a horn coming out of her head (a visual pun on the identity of the Hebrew word for fund and that for horn). Those ads undoubtedly succeeded in drawing much more media attention to Im Tirzu's thoroughly researched 135-page report.
For those who still believe that Richard Goldstone meant well with his report, that at worse he was simply assuaging his liberal Jewish conscience by sticking up for the "underdog", there is a final nail in the casket for such incorrect beliefs. A friend of mine (who actually attended the same school in South Africa as Goldstone) pointed me in the direction of an excellent open letter to Goldstone, one which undermines any claims at a sincere desire to see justice performed.
The letter writer, a schoolmate of Goldstone's, meticulously builds his case based on openly known facts as well as personal recollections. His conclusions?
My final conclusions are indeed very sad ones. From all of the above, it is logically obvious that because of all your brilliant qualities, attention to detail, shrewdness etc:
1. You know and understand that your report is null and void.
2. You know exactly that I am right about the Arab truth, Arab facts and Arab information.
3. You know that the I.D.F. is the most moral army in the world.
4. You know that we did our best to avoid civilian casualties.
5. You know that our Israeli cause is just.
6. You know that everything that so many people have emailed to you is correct.
7. You know that your desire to become Secretary General of the U.N. is so over-powering that you do not care about Israel or her survival.
8. In other words, you are the instigator, architect and the driving force about everything in your report ie: the facts have become Goldstone facts the same as Arab facts, the information has become Goldstone information the same as Arab information, the truth has become Goldstone truth the same as Arab truth.
9. You have created in your name a Hamas report that they cannot do.
10. MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL, YOUR THOROUGH PREPARATION WAS SUCH THAT YOU KNEW ALL OF THE ABOVE EVEN BEFORE YOU STARTED ON THIS WHOLE PROJECT
Now, in all of this there is the inevitable rebuttal: But you're saying it's forbidden to criticize Israel! Of course it's not. Criticizing Israel in terms of economic policies, the state of its health care system, the wealth gap between the richest and poorest, all those are legitimate targets. Twisting facts and then damning Israel for defending itself from attack is not.
The Goldstone report is the modern day equivalent of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and those who give any credence to it are haters of the Jewish people.
The first group is the one that knows that Israel had every right to level the entire 'Aza strip in retaliation for the thousands of rockets fired deliberately at civilian targets from that large open sewer. They know the facts and have no hesitation to point out that Israel not only committed no war crimes but exercised incredible self-restraint in the fact of an enemy that did everything it could to maximize the death count of its own civilians.
The second group knows all this is true but isn't quite as confidence. They say that Israel had a right to retaliate against the attacks from 'Aza but put too much stock in Arab lies about what happened during the incursion and wonder: were we moral enough during that war? Might we have committed some crimes?
Thus when the newest edition of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the Goldstone report, was released, the two groups reacted predictably. The first dismissed it as a pack of lies not worth the paper it was written on. The second studied it and wondered if any of it was really true.
Imagine the following: A, a wild punk, attacks B on the street. B, a trained martial artist, used his fighting skills to defend himself and then gives a couple of quick blows to A to convince him not to continue the altercation. By any reasonable perspective, B is beyond reproach. Instead of killing his opponent as he could have easily done, he did what he could to end matters quickly and with minimal damage.
Along comes Goldstone to write his report. This is what he writes: A was bothering B. B, a superior fighter, attacked A all out of proportion. The end.
In the wake of the Goldstone report, Jew hating groups led and funded by the New Israel Fund have gone out of their way to villianize Israel. This being the post-Zionist age, none of these groups openly admit they hate Jews and Israel. Some, like J Street, profess to be quite pro-Israelis although a search for any statements defending Israel in their repertoire is one of futility. Nevertheless they have put great effort into demonizing our State for their own ends.
Fortunately, a group called Im Tirtzi has pulled the pants down on the New Israel Fund and its anti-Israel activities. In a detailed report, it shows how the NIF has funded anti-Jewish and anti-Israel groups whose reason for being is to attack Israel, aiding and abetting the enemies of the Jewish people.
Some, like Shmuel Rosner, aren't so confident in their defence of Israel and when Im Tirtzu is able to show who the treasonous amongst us are, they pull back and try to minimize the damage to the enemy the pro-Israel crowd as wrought.
Others, like Rav Yonasan Rosenblum, pull no punches when it comes to defending Israel and pointing out that wishy washy allies are no allies at all:
The NIF would prefer its donors to think that it is involved in social welfare projects or pushing religious pluralism. It tells donors that it does not fund groups that call for disinvestment or boycotts of Israel, or who negate the existence of Israel as a Jewish state, or which advocate the Palestinian right of return, or which engage in propaganda. Each of these claims is false. Im Tirzu shone a light on the activities of the NIF that the organization would rather hide. But increasing public knowledge is precisely what the marketplace of ideas is supposed to do.
Many on the Left employ a double standard concerning free speech. They want their own speech as advocates or professors immunized from criticism – thus Professor Newman's outrage at groups, such as Campus Watch, which publicize what professors say in and outside of the classroom. On the other hand, they develop an elaborate set of rules to disallow the speech of others as incitement, Islamophobic, homophobic, sexist, racist, or McCarthyite.
Neve Gordon is an egregious example. He publishes a widely disseminated op-ed in the Los Angeles Times calling for a boycott of Israel, but whines when others point out what kind of people head Ben-Gurion University's Political Science Department and files libel suits to silence critics. Similary, NIF's CEO Larry Garber equated criticism of NIF's funding of organizations that call for an end to Israel as a Jewish state with "contemplate[ing] ethnic cleansing."
Finally, the Goldstone Report is a crucial public issue demanding the most robus public debate. The Goldstone findings place Israel in an intolerable bind, unable to defend itself. In his Brandeis debate with Dore Gold, Goldstone could provide no answer to Gold's question: What should Israel do in response to rocket attacks? If every Israeli response to terrorists using civilian populations as a shield is automatically labeled a "war crime" or "disproportionate," Israel is left with the unpalatable choice between swallowing terror attacks or risking international condemnation and possible sanctions. All those concerned with Israel's security have a right to know who laid the groundwork for Goldstone.
SHMUEL ROSNER, also writing in these pages, did not accuse Im Tirzu of stifling free speech. He did, however, describe Im Tirzu's campaign as "ugly, brutal and quite disgusting." Presumably, he was referring to the billboards and newspaper ads depicting Chazan with a horn coming out of her head (a visual pun on the identity of the Hebrew word for fund and that for horn). Those ads undoubtedly succeeded in drawing much more media attention to Im Tirzu's thoroughly researched 135-page report.
For those who still believe that Richard Goldstone meant well with his report, that at worse he was simply assuaging his liberal Jewish conscience by sticking up for the "underdog", there is a final nail in the casket for such incorrect beliefs. A friend of mine (who actually attended the same school in South Africa as Goldstone) pointed me in the direction of an excellent open letter to Goldstone, one which undermines any claims at a sincere desire to see justice performed.
The letter writer, a schoolmate of Goldstone's, meticulously builds his case based on openly known facts as well as personal recollections. His conclusions?
My final conclusions are indeed very sad ones. From all of the above, it is logically obvious that because of all your brilliant qualities, attention to detail, shrewdness etc:
1. You know and understand that your report is null and void.
2. You know exactly that I am right about the Arab truth, Arab facts and Arab information.
3. You know that the I.D.F. is the most moral army in the world.
4. You know that we did our best to avoid civilian casualties.
5. You know that our Israeli cause is just.
6. You know that everything that so many people have emailed to you is correct.
7. You know that your desire to become Secretary General of the U.N. is so over-powering that you do not care about Israel or her survival.
8. In other words, you are the instigator, architect and the driving force about everything in your report ie: the facts have become Goldstone facts the same as Arab facts, the information has become Goldstone information the same as Arab information, the truth has become Goldstone truth the same as Arab truth.
9. You have created in your name a Hamas report that they cannot do.
10. MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL, YOUR THOROUGH PREPARATION WAS SUCH THAT YOU KNEW ALL OF THE ABOVE EVEN BEFORE YOU STARTED ON THIS WHOLE PROJECT
Now, in all of this there is the inevitable rebuttal: But you're saying it's forbidden to criticize Israel! Of course it's not. Criticizing Israel in terms of economic policies, the state of its health care system, the wealth gap between the richest and poorest, all those are legitimate targets. Twisting facts and then damning Israel for defending itself from attack is not.
The Goldstone report is the modern day equivalent of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and those who give any credence to it are haters of the Jewish people.
Is There A Secular Jewish Culture
Haaretz recently ran an editorial accusing the Chareidi community of trying to monopolize Jewish culture all to themselves. Apparently this was the triggering event:
At the Herzliya Conference, former Shas leader Aryeh Deri took part in a panel on education toward Jewish identity, and two of his points made it into the headlines. He said that until two centuries ago, religion simply was the Jewish culture. Since then, he says, secular Jewry has given us education but no culture, and he basically equated Jewish secular culture with reality TV. As a result, he thinks that the only common denominator for a dialogue on Jewish identity needs to be that God created the world and that the Torah was given to us by God. Everything else for him is barren.
The editorial goes on to make some valid points about the existence of what it calls secular Jewish culture. Have certain forms of culture appeared in the last two centuries because of the initiative of various Jewish groups looking to express themselves? Certainly. Are these forms examples of Jewish culture? Ah, now that depends.
For folks like Aryah Deri, as well as most observant Jews, the definition of Jewish culture is radically different than the one used by the secular population. It is important to remember this when listening to statements made by folks on either side of the divide. What Haaretz has done is to insist that their standards are somehow universal, that Deri should acknowledge that and therefore admit he, and all those who hold like him, are wrong.
Simply put, for religious Jews any culture which lacks an acknowledgement of God as the Creator of the universe and the giver of the Torah at Har Sinai cannot be considered a Jewish culture, even if its membership is 100% Jewish. From the observant perspective, there is no such thing as secular Judaism. The two terms contradict one another and I am certain that Deri is working from this perspective.
From the secular perspective, standards are a lot looser. It seems that pretty much anything that is dominated by Jews eventually gains the Jewish adjective. Woody Allen films are an example of Jewish culture, Israeli heavy metal music, general literature and television shows are as well for the secular population if only because it's Jews producing them, the sina qua non of calling something Jewish.
For Haaretz to criticize Deri is to arrogantly decide that their perspective is the perspective that all groups must see the world through. This is patently unfair as it denies freedom of choice to any groups that disagree. If it was Chareidim doing it, well fine and dandy. Modern day Chareidim is about lack of choice and freedom of thought. However, when such insistence comes from the sector of society supposedly championing intellectual inquire and freedom of belief, it simply stinks.
At the Herzliya Conference, former Shas leader Aryeh Deri took part in a panel on education toward Jewish identity, and two of his points made it into the headlines. He said that until two centuries ago, religion simply was the Jewish culture. Since then, he says, secular Jewry has given us education but no culture, and he basically equated Jewish secular culture with reality TV. As a result, he thinks that the only common denominator for a dialogue on Jewish identity needs to be that God created the world and that the Torah was given to us by God. Everything else for him is barren.
The editorial goes on to make some valid points about the existence of what it calls secular Jewish culture. Have certain forms of culture appeared in the last two centuries because of the initiative of various Jewish groups looking to express themselves? Certainly. Are these forms examples of Jewish culture? Ah, now that depends.
For folks like Aryah Deri, as well as most observant Jews, the definition of Jewish culture is radically different than the one used by the secular population. It is important to remember this when listening to statements made by folks on either side of the divide. What Haaretz has done is to insist that their standards are somehow universal, that Deri should acknowledge that and therefore admit he, and all those who hold like him, are wrong.
Simply put, for religious Jews any culture which lacks an acknowledgement of God as the Creator of the universe and the giver of the Torah at Har Sinai cannot be considered a Jewish culture, even if its membership is 100% Jewish. From the observant perspective, there is no such thing as secular Judaism. The two terms contradict one another and I am certain that Deri is working from this perspective.
From the secular perspective, standards are a lot looser. It seems that pretty much anything that is dominated by Jews eventually gains the Jewish adjective. Woody Allen films are an example of Jewish culture, Israeli heavy metal music, general literature and television shows are as well for the secular population if only because it's Jews producing them, the sina qua non of calling something Jewish.
For Haaretz to criticize Deri is to arrogantly decide that their perspective is the perspective that all groups must see the world through. This is patently unfair as it denies freedom of choice to any groups that disagree. If it was Chareidim doing it, well fine and dandy. Modern day Chareidim is about lack of choice and freedom of thought. However, when such insistence comes from the sector of society supposedly championing intellectual inquire and freedom of belief, it simply stinks.
Sunday, 14 February 2010
A Casualty of Change
I may have mentioned before that I'm not a big fan of chazanus. For me, a chazzan warbling and dragging out davening detracts from my prayer experience. Not that I'm the kind of guy who's out the door as fast as possible but for me, the person leading the services should be inspiring people to raise their own level, not be putting on a show.
From my limited experience in the area, it also seems chazzanus isn't that big a deal in the Orthodox world. This isn't surprising given that most frum people are in shul to daven, not for the theatre experience. A good chazzan would prolong the time to dinner/lunch and is therefore more an annoyance than anything.
(One of my beliefs: the length of the davening by the shaliach tzibur is inversely proportional to the quality of the meal awaiting him at home)
Therefore it is with little sadness that I read of the downsizing of the Jewish Theological Seminary's cantorial school. In many ways the only surprise for me was that such a school still exists in the non-religious world. After all, with the changing of the siddur to meet secular liberal standards, the expansion of the use in English in their prayer services and the egalitarian concept in which anyone, regardless of actual qualification or (sometimes) knowledge base can go up and lead services, it's a surprise that cantors can actually find work outside of the High Holydays.
The cantor, for me, speaks to a bygone era when people went to shul to feel inspired by the cantor instead of trying to generate that internal feeling through their own efforts. Yes, a good chazzan could move you to tears with his rendition of Kol Nidrei or a dramatic kedusha, but the point of praying is to move oneself to tears, not to rely on someone else to bring it out in you.
So as a tribute to the soon-to-be-defunct program, I'd like to share a joke with my reader(s):
God is busy creating the world. He creates the horse and brings it before him.
"What am I?" asked the horse.
"You are a horse," answers God.
"And what is my job?"
"You will be man's most important tool. You will carry him into battle and help him expand his civilization by transporting him everywhere."
"And how will he treat me?" asked the horse.
"He will beat you with a stick," answered God, "to make you run faster, and make you sleep outside and when you get sick he won't try to heal you but will just kill you to turn you into glue."
"That sounds awful!" exclaimed the horse. "How long will I live?"
"Thirty years," replied God.
"That's too long," declared the horse. "Let me only live for fifteen."
God agreed, sent out the horse and brought in the dog.
"What am I?" asked the dog.
"You are a dog," answers God.
"And what is my job?"
"You will be man's best friend. You will help him hunt, guard him and his children and give him companionship and support."
"And how will he treat me?" asked the dog.
"He will beat you with a stick," answered God, "if you don't do everything he's say, and make you sleep outside and when you get sick he won't try to heal you but will just abandon you."
"That sounds awful!" exclaimed the dog. "How long will I live?"
"Thirty years," replied God.
"That's too long," declared the dog. "Let me only live for fifteen."
God agreed, sent out the horse and brought in the chazzan.
"What am I?" asked the chazzan.
"You are a chazzan," answers God.
"And what is my job?"
"You will lead services for Jews in their synagogues. You will inspire their prayers, bring tears to their eyes and leave them spiritually inspired."
"And how will I be treated?" asked the chazzan.
"You will be constantly feted," answered God. "People will constantly praise and celebrate you and you will be the certain of attention wherever you go."
"That sounds wonderful!" exclaimed the chazzan. "How long will I live?"
"Fifty years," replied God.
"That's too short," declared the chazzan. "Can't you make it a lot longer?"
So God thought about it and then took the fifteen years he'd take from the dog and the fifteen years he'd taken from the horse and gave them to the chazzan.
So now when you see an elder chazzan eating like a horse and wailing like a dog, you know he's living on borrowed time!
From my limited experience in the area, it also seems chazzanus isn't that big a deal in the Orthodox world. This isn't surprising given that most frum people are in shul to daven, not for the theatre experience. A good chazzan would prolong the time to dinner/lunch and is therefore more an annoyance than anything.
(One of my beliefs: the length of the davening by the shaliach tzibur is inversely proportional to the quality of the meal awaiting him at home)
Therefore it is with little sadness that I read of the downsizing of the Jewish Theological Seminary's cantorial school. In many ways the only surprise for me was that such a school still exists in the non-religious world. After all, with the changing of the siddur to meet secular liberal standards, the expansion of the use in English in their prayer services and the egalitarian concept in which anyone, regardless of actual qualification or (sometimes) knowledge base can go up and lead services, it's a surprise that cantors can actually find work outside of the High Holydays.
The cantor, for me, speaks to a bygone era when people went to shul to feel inspired by the cantor instead of trying to generate that internal feeling through their own efforts. Yes, a good chazzan could move you to tears with his rendition of Kol Nidrei or a dramatic kedusha, but the point of praying is to move oneself to tears, not to rely on someone else to bring it out in you.
So as a tribute to the soon-to-be-defunct program, I'd like to share a joke with my reader(s):
God is busy creating the world. He creates the horse and brings it before him.
"What am I?" asked the horse.
"You are a horse," answers God.
"And what is my job?"
"You will be man's most important tool. You will carry him into battle and help him expand his civilization by transporting him everywhere."
"And how will he treat me?" asked the horse.
"He will beat you with a stick," answered God, "to make you run faster, and make you sleep outside and when you get sick he won't try to heal you but will just kill you to turn you into glue."
"That sounds awful!" exclaimed the horse. "How long will I live?"
"Thirty years," replied God.
"That's too long," declared the horse. "Let me only live for fifteen."
God agreed, sent out the horse and brought in the dog.
"What am I?" asked the dog.
"You are a dog," answers God.
"And what is my job?"
"You will be man's best friend. You will help him hunt, guard him and his children and give him companionship and support."
"And how will he treat me?" asked the dog.
"He will beat you with a stick," answered God, "if you don't do everything he's say, and make you sleep outside and when you get sick he won't try to heal you but will just abandon you."
"That sounds awful!" exclaimed the dog. "How long will I live?"
"Thirty years," replied God.
"That's too long," declared the dog. "Let me only live for fifteen."
God agreed, sent out the horse and brought in the chazzan.
"What am I?" asked the chazzan.
"You are a chazzan," answers God.
"And what is my job?"
"You will lead services for Jews in their synagogues. You will inspire their prayers, bring tears to their eyes and leave them spiritually inspired."
"And how will I be treated?" asked the chazzan.
"You will be constantly feted," answered God. "People will constantly praise and celebrate you and you will be the certain of attention wherever you go."
"That sounds wonderful!" exclaimed the chazzan. "How long will I live?"
"Fifty years," replied God.
"That's too short," declared the chazzan. "Can't you make it a lot longer?"
So God thought about it and then took the fifteen years he'd take from the dog and the fifteen years he'd taken from the horse and gave them to the chazzan.
So now when you see an elder chazzan eating like a horse and wailing like a dog, you know he's living on borrowed time!
Thursday, 11 February 2010
Brinskmanship
There is a fine difference between aggressive negotiating and brinksmanship. The former may lead to pushing an opponent nearly into unconditional compromise but there is always some give and take. With the latter, there isn't. As the term implies, one party is prepared to push the other to the brink, and then give him a shove off the edge for good measure.
One example of this phenomenon in the Jewish world is the way the Chareidi leadership is currently interacting with the non-Chareidi Torah-observant communities. There is no other word for their tactics other than brinksmanship. It would seem their interest in clear - to control all aspects and characteristics of Torah observance as defined by them.
Look at the events of the last few years and the cultural trends and the pattern becomes clear. One group has decided that they represent "Torah true" Judaism with any group that differs representing a deviation from the norm and therefore inferior. Conversion, tznius, kashrus, the standards are set by one group and the others are told "You have to hold by these because we won't recognize or accept yours."
Does such a position generally work? In a word: yes. When the Israeli Rabbanut, under its current Chareidi leadership, decided to change the standards of conversion so that only they would be able to decide "who is a Jew?" the RCA put up a brief fight and then submitted. What was the alternative?
Well what is the alternative? Modern Orthodoxy, as a movement, has an important choice to make because history is moving along and either it controls its destiny or gets swept away in the current. There are two choices:
a) accept what those on the right consider the inevitable. Modern Orthodoxy is an aberration, an illegimitate and weak form of Torah Judaism. It has no future, it cannot control its halachic destiny and therefore all those MO Jews who are serious about Torah observance have to stop fooling themselves, go out and buy black hats and suits and come home to the Chareidim, leaving the rest behind to merge into Conservatism.
b) stand up to the opposition and say "Ad kan", until here. If pushing back means Chareidi leaders announcing that non-Chareidi Orthodox converts will no longer be recognized by the ultra-Orthodox, if pushing back means the Chareidim will no longer eat in MO institutions or recognize their rabbis' authorities, so be it. The only way MO can survive into the future as a distinct entity is to jump off the cliff before being pushed.
Not an attractive source of options, are they?
One example of this phenomenon in the Jewish world is the way the Chareidi leadership is currently interacting with the non-Chareidi Torah-observant communities. There is no other word for their tactics other than brinksmanship. It would seem their interest in clear - to control all aspects and characteristics of Torah observance as defined by them.
Look at the events of the last few years and the cultural trends and the pattern becomes clear. One group has decided that they represent "Torah true" Judaism with any group that differs representing a deviation from the norm and therefore inferior. Conversion, tznius, kashrus, the standards are set by one group and the others are told "You have to hold by these because we won't recognize or accept yours."
Does such a position generally work? In a word: yes. When the Israeli Rabbanut, under its current Chareidi leadership, decided to change the standards of conversion so that only they would be able to decide "who is a Jew?" the RCA put up a brief fight and then submitted. What was the alternative?
Well what is the alternative? Modern Orthodoxy, as a movement, has an important choice to make because history is moving along and either it controls its destiny or gets swept away in the current. There are two choices:
a) accept what those on the right consider the inevitable. Modern Orthodoxy is an aberration, an illegimitate and weak form of Torah Judaism. It has no future, it cannot control its halachic destiny and therefore all those MO Jews who are serious about Torah observance have to stop fooling themselves, go out and buy black hats and suits and come home to the Chareidim, leaving the rest behind to merge into Conservatism.
b) stand up to the opposition and say "Ad kan", until here. If pushing back means Chareidi leaders announcing that non-Chareidi Orthodox converts will no longer be recognized by the ultra-Orthodox, if pushing back means the Chareidim will no longer eat in MO institutions or recognize their rabbis' authorities, so be it. The only way MO can survive into the future as a distinct entity is to jump off the cliff before being pushed.
Not an attractive source of options, are they?
Monday, 8 February 2010
The Smoking Gun Line
Conversation is still raging over Rabbi Avi Weiss' decision to promote Sara Hurtwitz from being the carrier of an unweildly acronym to being the carrier of a new title, one that is probably far more controversial than what it replaced.
Throughout all the arguing back and forth, one thing has been forgotten. The essential question is: What defines Orthodoxy? I recently analyzed Rabbi Yosef Kanesky's article defending the "rabba" concept in order to refute his five straw-man arguments. On further consideration, one line he included in there seems to be the clincher as to how YCT's initiative departs from Orthodoxy, its proponents' claims to contrary not withstanding. Here's the line:
(4) Orthodox Judaism promotes gender discrimination for its own sake, with Halacha itself lacking the authority to challenge the discriminatory pattern.
Now remember, this is no. 4 of 5 arguments made against the concept of women rabbis that he lists. All 5 arguments are weak and made to sound ridiculous, the idea being that you'll then say that since these are the best the anti-rabba folks can do, there is no good reason to oppose this initiative. But it's the wording of this one in particular that needs to be analyzed.
No. 4 essentially differs from the other arguments in its style. For example, the first argument, that women lack the intellectual capacity to become rabbis is absurd. Anyone who actually believes that is an idiot and such people can safely be ignored during a debate. It's the same with the rest - they can also be dismissed with the line "Only a moron would use that reasoning" - except no. 4.
No. 4, in fact, doesn't present an opposing argument at all. In fact, it's an argument in favour of the rabba initiative. Read it again and you can see that this is what Rabbis Weiss, Kanefsky and Rabba Hurwitz believe, that the halacha is discriminatory. In every other argument, the opposition is presented in positive or neutral terms. Here Rabbi Kanesky would have us believe that we who oppose his ideas are not merely on the wrong side of political correctness but openly embrace bigotry as a religious value while secretly admitting we know it's actually negative. Yes, we know discrimination is wrong but so what? We're in favour of it!
This would seem to be the line that YCT has finally drawn that will ultimately formally separate them from the rest of Modern Orthodoxy. How is this so?
For the genuine Orthodox Jew, there are two principle considerations when dealing with clashes between halacha and modern values. The first is that our approach to modern values is guided by the halacha, not vice versa. The second is that no halachic value is bad.
Thus for the genuine Orthodox Jew, the idea that the halacha differentiates between men and women, assigning them different roles in national, religious and personal life is not discrimination. It is a positive thing with good consequences and therefore a value to be upheld, not minimized in the face of a society that seeks to eliminate all differences between the genders (except, inexplicably, when it comes to divorce court but that's another rant).
However, for the Morethodox Jew, these two concepts are held in the precisely opposite fashion. Their approach to halacha is guided by modern values and therefore there can be halachic values that are bad. This may fit the YCT way of thinking but it is certainly not Orthodox.
This article in The Jewish Star goes further in helping clarifying the large step Rabbi Weiss has taken out of Orthodoxy despite his (and Hurwitz's) impassioned protests to the contrary:
“I don’t think anything I’m doing is outside the boundaries of halacha,” she stressed. The more advanced semicha, “Yadin yadin is a little more controversial because women are not supposed to be judges or witnesses. It’s a little more halachically complicated.”
“I’m pretty traditional,” Hurwitz admitted drolly with a faint South African accent. “I know halacha. I keep halacha very carefully. I have tremendous emunah. I can’t convince somebody else that I really am Orthodox and that Rabbi Weiss is really Orthodox. The only way is for somebody to realize it themselves. And they’ll realize it.”
Now, I am not commenting on Sara Hurwitz either as an individual or on her sincerity. However, I am criticizing her willingness to minimize the controversy she is in the middle of. The statement "Yadin yadin is a little more controversial" is flabergasting. A little more controversial? Is there a crack team of scholars at YCT working overtime to prove that women can suddenly be judges and witnesses within the bounds of halacha? As for the statement "I know halacha", well there I had to shake my head. I don't think there's a major talmid chacham alive who would make such an arrogant statement. It reminds me of how some of us in first year medical school thought we knew all about medicine after completing our anatomy and physiology courses. We had no idea about the size and complexity of the corpus of medical knowledge. Torah dwarfs even that and she "knows halacha"?
But if you look through the Morethodox website, it becomes clear that she and her friends don't actually know what they don't know. Read up and down and the articles, with only a few exceptions, all fall into the same patters. Here's a social issues, hey Morethodoxy has something to say about it! No halachic analysis, no deep explanations of any gemara, no Torah at all that is not connected to a pre-exisiting social agenda.
I don't doubt that in time Rabbi Weiss will find a way to create female judges and will overcome every barrier the halacha puts in front of him. He will continue to call himself Orthodox and insist that everything he is doing is consistent with Torah Judaism.
At the beginning of the NHL season, Brian Burke announced that this year's edition of the Toronto Maple Leads was a fine time that would handily compete for a playoff spot. Anyone can say anything they want, really but just at least Burke now admits he had a bunch of losers that aren't going anywhere. Rabbi Weiss is still fooling himself.
Throughout all the arguing back and forth, one thing has been forgotten. The essential question is: What defines Orthodoxy? I recently analyzed Rabbi Yosef Kanesky's article defending the "rabba" concept in order to refute his five straw-man arguments. On further consideration, one line he included in there seems to be the clincher as to how YCT's initiative departs from Orthodoxy, its proponents' claims to contrary not withstanding. Here's the line:
(4) Orthodox Judaism promotes gender discrimination for its own sake, with Halacha itself lacking the authority to challenge the discriminatory pattern.
Now remember, this is no. 4 of 5 arguments made against the concept of women rabbis that he lists. All 5 arguments are weak and made to sound ridiculous, the idea being that you'll then say that since these are the best the anti-rabba folks can do, there is no good reason to oppose this initiative. But it's the wording of this one in particular that needs to be analyzed.
No. 4 essentially differs from the other arguments in its style. For example, the first argument, that women lack the intellectual capacity to become rabbis is absurd. Anyone who actually believes that is an idiot and such people can safely be ignored during a debate. It's the same with the rest - they can also be dismissed with the line "Only a moron would use that reasoning" - except no. 4.
No. 4, in fact, doesn't present an opposing argument at all. In fact, it's an argument in favour of the rabba initiative. Read it again and you can see that this is what Rabbis Weiss, Kanefsky and Rabba Hurwitz believe, that the halacha is discriminatory. In every other argument, the opposition is presented in positive or neutral terms. Here Rabbi Kanesky would have us believe that we who oppose his ideas are not merely on the wrong side of political correctness but openly embrace bigotry as a religious value while secretly admitting we know it's actually negative. Yes, we know discrimination is wrong but so what? We're in favour of it!
This would seem to be the line that YCT has finally drawn that will ultimately formally separate them from the rest of Modern Orthodoxy. How is this so?
For the genuine Orthodox Jew, there are two principle considerations when dealing with clashes between halacha and modern values. The first is that our approach to modern values is guided by the halacha, not vice versa. The second is that no halachic value is bad.
Thus for the genuine Orthodox Jew, the idea that the halacha differentiates between men and women, assigning them different roles in national, religious and personal life is not discrimination. It is a positive thing with good consequences and therefore a value to be upheld, not minimized in the face of a society that seeks to eliminate all differences between the genders (except, inexplicably, when it comes to divorce court but that's another rant).
However, for the Morethodox Jew, these two concepts are held in the precisely opposite fashion. Their approach to halacha is guided by modern values and therefore there can be halachic values that are bad. This may fit the YCT way of thinking but it is certainly not Orthodox.
This article in The Jewish Star goes further in helping clarifying the large step Rabbi Weiss has taken out of Orthodoxy despite his (and Hurwitz's) impassioned protests to the contrary:
“I don’t think anything I’m doing is outside the boundaries of halacha,” she stressed. The more advanced semicha, “Yadin yadin is a little more controversial because women are not supposed to be judges or witnesses. It’s a little more halachically complicated.”
“I’m pretty traditional,” Hurwitz admitted drolly with a faint South African accent. “I know halacha. I keep halacha very carefully. I have tremendous emunah. I can’t convince somebody else that I really am Orthodox and that Rabbi Weiss is really Orthodox. The only way is for somebody to realize it themselves. And they’ll realize it.”
Now, I am not commenting on Sara Hurwitz either as an individual or on her sincerity. However, I am criticizing her willingness to minimize the controversy she is in the middle of. The statement "Yadin yadin is a little more controversial" is flabergasting. A little more controversial? Is there a crack team of scholars at YCT working overtime to prove that women can suddenly be judges and witnesses within the bounds of halacha? As for the statement "I know halacha", well there I had to shake my head. I don't think there's a major talmid chacham alive who would make such an arrogant statement. It reminds me of how some of us in first year medical school thought we knew all about medicine after completing our anatomy and physiology courses. We had no idea about the size and complexity of the corpus of medical knowledge. Torah dwarfs even that and she "knows halacha"?
But if you look through the Morethodox website, it becomes clear that she and her friends don't actually know what they don't know. Read up and down and the articles, with only a few exceptions, all fall into the same patters. Here's a social issues, hey Morethodoxy has something to say about it! No halachic analysis, no deep explanations of any gemara, no Torah at all that is not connected to a pre-exisiting social agenda.
I don't doubt that in time Rabbi Weiss will find a way to create female judges and will overcome every barrier the halacha puts in front of him. He will continue to call himself Orthodox and insist that everything he is doing is consistent with Torah Judaism.
At the beginning of the NHL season, Brian Burke announced that this year's edition of the Toronto Maple Leads was a fine time that would handily compete for a playoff spot. Anyone can say anything they want, really but just at least Burke now admits he had a bunch of losers that aren't going anywhere. Rabbi Weiss is still fooling himself.
Thursday, 4 February 2010
Be Vewy Ca'hful, I'm Hunting Wabbits!
A year ago or so Rabbi Avi Weiss of YCT decided that the Jewish world needed something new, a female rabbi. Unwilling to simply go ahead and ordain women straight out, he took his protege, Sara Hurwitz, and gave her the title "Maharat", an acronym which stands for “manhiga,” “hilchatit,” “ruchanit,” “toranit".
Over the course of the year, Weiss and Hurwitz rebutted or ignored the widespread criticism they received not from the Chareidim (who, to be honest, couldn't care less) but from the rest of the Modern Orthodox world. Unlike everyone else, they refused to see that a significant line had been crossed in the name of combining Torah observance with secular liberal ethics in an attempt to minimize the conflict the former has with the latter. The effors included the founding of a "yeshivah" to train new Maharats.
However, a year later Weiss has decided to be more bold. Although apparently still unwilling to call Hurwitz a rabbi, he has created yet another new title: Rabba. Sara Hurwitz will now be known by this title since Rabbi Weiss has, along with Rabbi Daniel Sperber, signed a piece of parchment saying so. Once again Weiss has made clear that he considers her a rabbi with all the authority he ascribes to that position.
This time, Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky has decided to take up the challenge of defending this position. In an article that draws its style from Rav Avi Shafran, he sets up several arguments against the position and knocks them all down. (Like Rav Avi Shafran, he also will not publish my comments on his position, but I digress...):
(1) Women don’t have the intellectual capacity to actually master the Orthodox Semicha curriculum.
(2) Women are halachikly barred from teaching Torah publicly, or from tending to the pastoral needs of fellow Jews, or from responding to the common battery of day-to-day halachik questions that Orthodox rabbis need to field.
(3) As full members of the human community, women are entitled to earn PhD’s, head corporations, and hold any elective office in the land, but are inherently disqualified for a position as prestigious as the contemporary rabbinate.
(4) Orthodox Judaism promotes gender discrimination for its own sake, with Halacha itself lacking the authority to challenge the discriminatory pattern.
(5) Orthodox religious leadership is just fine the way it is, and could only be harmed by the contributions of the other half of the population.
Is he serious? This is the basis of the rebuttals in defence of the Rabba?
1) No one believes that women don't have the intellectual capacity to learn what it takes to be a rabbi.
2) Women aren't barred from anything he lists, and they also do not need a title to do any of those things. Neither does a man.
3) Since when does Judaism give a lick about what the human community considers acceptable? Is the human community (does he mean "mankind" in a politically correct way?) going to tell us what we can and cannot observe as well?
4) Orthodox Judaism does not promote gender discrimination for its own sake but because man and women are - hang on! - different. Yes, you read it here first. Men and women are different. They have different drives, interests, intellectual processes, desires, etc. That does not make one gender better than the other, no more than an apple is better than an orange or vice versa. It is only the limited thinking of the politically correct that prevents them from not equating difference with inequality.
5) Who says the other half can't contribute? Why do they need a title to do it?
My final argument against the title, however, is much simpler than all that. The word "rabba" is simply wrong. If they're looking for the true feminine, then it's "rabanit". I don't think they'd use that because it's now the Hebrew equivalent of the Yiddish Rebbitzen so they need something else. But Rabba? No, I think it should more likely be "rabbit". I don't think they'll pick that though. Women rabbis, bunnies, other stuff comes to mind.
Over the course of the year, Weiss and Hurwitz rebutted or ignored the widespread criticism they received not from the Chareidim (who, to be honest, couldn't care less) but from the rest of the Modern Orthodox world. Unlike everyone else, they refused to see that a significant line had been crossed in the name of combining Torah observance with secular liberal ethics in an attempt to minimize the conflict the former has with the latter. The effors included the founding of a "yeshivah" to train new Maharats.
However, a year later Weiss has decided to be more bold. Although apparently still unwilling to call Hurwitz a rabbi, he has created yet another new title: Rabba. Sara Hurwitz will now be known by this title since Rabbi Weiss has, along with Rabbi Daniel Sperber, signed a piece of parchment saying so. Once again Weiss has made clear that he considers her a rabbi with all the authority he ascribes to that position.
This time, Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky has decided to take up the challenge of defending this position. In an article that draws its style from Rav Avi Shafran, he sets up several arguments against the position and knocks them all down. (Like Rav Avi Shafran, he also will not publish my comments on his position, but I digress...):
(1) Women don’t have the intellectual capacity to actually master the Orthodox Semicha curriculum.
(2) Women are halachikly barred from teaching Torah publicly, or from tending to the pastoral needs of fellow Jews, or from responding to the common battery of day-to-day halachik questions that Orthodox rabbis need to field.
(3) As full members of the human community, women are entitled to earn PhD’s, head corporations, and hold any elective office in the land, but are inherently disqualified for a position as prestigious as the contemporary rabbinate.
(4) Orthodox Judaism promotes gender discrimination for its own sake, with Halacha itself lacking the authority to challenge the discriminatory pattern.
(5) Orthodox religious leadership is just fine the way it is, and could only be harmed by the contributions of the other half of the population.
Is he serious? This is the basis of the rebuttals in defence of the Rabba?
1) No one believes that women don't have the intellectual capacity to learn what it takes to be a rabbi.
2) Women aren't barred from anything he lists, and they also do not need a title to do any of those things. Neither does a man.
3) Since when does Judaism give a lick about what the human community considers acceptable? Is the human community (does he mean "mankind" in a politically correct way?) going to tell us what we can and cannot observe as well?
4) Orthodox Judaism does not promote gender discrimination for its own sake but because man and women are - hang on! - different. Yes, you read it here first. Men and women are different. They have different drives, interests, intellectual processes, desires, etc. That does not make one gender better than the other, no more than an apple is better than an orange or vice versa. It is only the limited thinking of the politically correct that prevents them from not equating difference with inequality.
5) Who says the other half can't contribute? Why do they need a title to do it?
My final argument against the title, however, is much simpler than all that. The word "rabba" is simply wrong. If they're looking for the true feminine, then it's "rabanit". I don't think they'd use that because it's now the Hebrew equivalent of the Yiddish Rebbitzen so they need something else. But Rabba? No, I think it should more likely be "rabbit". I don't think they'll pick that though. Women rabbis, bunnies, other stuff comes to mind.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)