Author Archives: Rabbi

Shared Roles

Posted on August 23, 2013 | 5 comments

The perpetual debate about the woman’s role in Judaism has been framed almost completely in the negative – what it is that women can’t do or shouldn’t do and why not? But what can women do? (What women should do is really a personal decision that depends on background, temperament, talent and other factors.)
Certainly, we should start with the basics. Both men and women were created in the image of G-d and both have the capacity to achieve great spiritual heights. “I call upon heaven and earth to testify whether Jew or non-Jew, man or woman, the divine spirit rests upon a person according to their deeds” (Eliyahu Rabba 10). Both have intellects and spiritual worth.
Certainly, as well, Chazal embraced for the Jewish family what economists call “production complementarities,” the notion that a fully-functioning home requires the distribution of tasks in a way that usually accords with the couple’s proclivities and thereby maximizes both success and happiness. Some people are just more suited to the workplace and the production of income, and others better suited to domestic life, hands-on child-rearing, and the nurturing of the home front. Obviously, the former was traditionally the domain of men, and the latter the domain of women, with some notable exceptions.
From that perspective, Chazal perceived the division of spiritual chores in the home accordingly: “How do women achieve merit? By sending their sons to learn Torah in shul, and sending their husbands to learn Torah in the Bet Midrash, and waiting for their husbands to return home.” In so doing, “the promise made to women is greater than the promise made to men” (Masechet Berachot 17a). The “production complementarities” of Jewish life worked well enough to sustain the Jewish home for several millennia, but, it must be conceded, no longer enriches the lives of many women. For them, their “souls are not satiated” (Kohelet 6:7) being relegated to a supportive role, even if that supportive role is actually perceived as superior, and even if that role has, for the most part, worked. (The book is still out on whether the elevated public role that women desire has been good or bad for the Jewish family and our children, but the early returns are hardly comforting.) What can they do? What can a woman contribute to the Jewish world once her child-rearing days are over? What can she do to exalt her own soul and those of others? Again, in economic terms, when a couple no longer pursues “consumption complementarities” – a shared pursuit of consumer goods and services – but each person pursues spiritual satisfaction of his/her own (as a religious “consumer”), what roles are open to women?
They are numerous. Earlier today, at a street fair here in Israel, I bought a set of “Nashim B’Tanach” (Women in the Bible) cards, produced in order to raise awareness of the esteemed role of women in Jewish life. In all, 40 women are profiled, ranging from the famous ones to the relatively obscure, like Achsah, daughter of Calev and wife of Otniel, who was so named (Masechet Temurah 16b) because “whoever saw her became angry at his wife [for Achsah was so beautiful and smart].” These women, giants of Jewish life, were all different, each making a unique contribution to the Jewish world.
At the top of the list of laudable activities is Torah study. Last week’s Besheva profiled Daniella Golan, a fascinating Baalat Teshuva who merited learning “b’chavruta” (companion study) with Rav Zvi Yehuda Kook in his latter years. She heads a study center for women in Yerushalayim called “Or Chaya” guided by some of the greatest rabbinical personalities of the last few decades that encourages Jewish women (when feasible) to leave their homes a few nights a week and learn Torah. It has a Chasidic bent, and eschews provocations and heavily politicized areas of study, simply to focus on Torah lishma, study for its own sake – to create better people and better homes. Add to that the dozens of daily shiurim for women taking place across the country designed for Talmud Torah, not political statements. Kain Yirbu!
Along those lines, nothing is more appropriate than women principals or heads of schools for young girls. They are ideal role models, and the ones that I have known have been filled with Torah knowledge and wonderful character traits. Ditto for women teachers of Torah, recognizing the reality that many men (not always for the most salutary reasons) will not attend a shiur given by women. But for women? Kain Yirbu. Additionally, while I have not been supportive of the yoetzet program for reasons stated elsewhere, many fine Rabbanim have been, both here and in America. The jury is still deliberating that also, whether it will stay within the bounds of the mesorah or stray afar, but I do concede that there are two sides to the issue.
Well over a decade ago, women first broke ground by appearing as toanot before the rabbinical courts. Truth be told, I never understood the objection before and do not really perceive this as encroaching on any Jewish principle. A to’ain (pleader) is essentially a lawyer in the rabbinical court system. Why can’t a woman be a lawyer in that forum, any less than in any other forum? As a lawyer myself, and as a Dayan, I have encountered women numerous times as advocates. Perhaps that is why I never understood the ban before or the hoopla after; it’s just something new, like female referees, but essentially innocuous.
Can women be machgichot? This is an open question that is usually answered affirmatively. Rav Moshe Feinstein permitted it in a somewhat limited case – a widow taking over her husband’s hashgacha – but many Kashrut organizations are permissive. There are technical issues involving forcefulness (often a problem for a male as well) and occasionally yichud, but both seem eminently resolvable.
When we consider that almost every profession is open to women, it emerges that women can have very full days, very fulfilling lives (if they too are not bitten by the materialism bug that can capture the male species), and actualize their spiritual potential as much as anyone. The problems only arise when female fulfillment is sought only in the duplication of the male role (essentially an insult to women), when parenting is delegated to outsiders, usually foreign women, entrusted with raising our children, and when the Torah virtue of limitations is renounced in favor of unfettered personal expression.
Nonetheless, we should never forget the ideal. Women who focus on rearing children and caring for the home can find immense fulfillment in that as well. The Internet provides unlimited opportunities to hear shiurim on a constant basis from thousands of Torah teachers, male and female. The chesed that women can do when their children are in school or grown is enormous and indispensable to Jewish life, adding a dimension to our world that is precious.
We do not have to be the same or do the same things (or even bear the same titles). In fact, it is far better that in G-d’s orchestra, like in man’s, each person plays a different instrument and plays it well, but together, to forge the great harmony that G-d has established for us as our most sublime goal in life.

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Posted in Contemporary Life, Current Events, Machshava/Jewish Thought

The Conversation

Posted on August 15, 2013 | 10 comments

One of the intellectual joys here in Israel is the ubiquity of conferences on the great issues of the moment. They seem to take place somewhere every day, or at least every few days, and attract a great variety of rabbis, ministers (i.e., ministers in government, not churches), Knesset members, professors, and thinkers. One such kenes, conference, took place a few days ago, hosted by the Yeshivat Hasder of Rishon Lezion, and was entitled, “Torah va-chaim,” or “Torah and Life,” and I happily attended.
No heading could sound more generic, but the specific theme was the integration of Torah values and ideals in the general society especially in light of the presence of secular Israelis whose vision of Shabbat differs from that of the Torah world. In other words, how does a Jewish state observe Shabbat, and not just a state of Jews? To be sure, this is a debate that has been taking place for 70 years, if not 700 years, and each generation wrestles with Shabbat issues in its own way that are in some respects similar and in others dissimilar to the struggles of previous generations.
For example, most Israelis enjoy the concept of Shabbat as a day of rest and leisure, a day to pursue other aspects of life than simply the earning of money and the production of goods. That definition obviously includes Torah-observant Jews but also many non-observant of halacha. But one familiar refrain in recent years has been the claim of some that they enjoy Shabbat by “shopping,” going to the malls and just spending time there, if not also money. But how can they shop if Israeli law mandates that stores be closed on Shabbat?
This came to a legal skirmish very recently. Despite the law, some stores in Tel Aviv and elsewhere have been willing to – illegally – open on Shabbat, and pay the fines for said violation. It is an extremely cost-effective act; the fines are rare, not very high when they are imposed (which in Tel Aviv was not that often), and the income generated by sales far exceeded the fines. Other merchants sued, claiming that they were being placed at an economic disadvantage by not being open on Shabbat, but they themselves did not want to open on Shabbat – some for religious reasons but most because they simply wanted a day of rest. They did not want to be slaves to the material world, and felt that it is their right – guaranteed by the law – not to have to work seven days a week.
Concomitant with this was the growing reality that businesses that were open on Shabbat, illegally, would only hire workers who were willing to work on Shabbat and thereby openly discriminating against religious Jews and others who would not work on Shabbat. What an anomaly! In New York, New Jersey and most elsewhere in the US, no employer has the right to insist on Shabbat work, and dismissal for refusal to work on Shabbat is a human rights violation and regularly, and successfully, litigated. In Israel, no such protection exists (!) because the law itself bans Shabbat work.
Several months ago, the High Court ruled that the Shabbat laws must be enforced, that stores must remain closed, and that the fines for violation must be sufficient enough to serve as a deterrent. (Enforcement remains an issue.) But note another irony: the Court’s ruling was not based on Shabbat as a religious ideal, i.e., that Jewish law prohibits Shabbat labor. That undoubtedly would have been a losing argument in that secular body. But as the complaint was phrased in secular language – the rights of workers – the Court upheld the Shabbat laws as a cornerstone of human rights in a modern state.
Almost all the secularists on the conference panel approved of the decision, although perhaps it is unfair to label as secular those who perceive the value of Shabbat even if they observe it in a somewhat unconventional way.
The issue that kept recurring was the secular dilemma. Everyone knows what they – and other Jews – can’t do on Shabbat, but what can they do? Assuming that they are not going to the synagogue (but I have also seen well known “secular” Israelis in shul on Shabbat as well, davening like everyone else and not in attendance because of any particular event), what can they do if they can’t shop, and there is no public transportation, and cultural or entertainment venues are closed?
There has been a suggestion made in the last few years, and agreed to by a number of prominent Israelis across the societal spectrum who signed a “covenant” to permit the opening of places of entertainment and culture – theaters, museums, libraries and the like, loosening the restrictions on public transport, etc. while keeping Shabbat in the public domain or official facilities. Known in Israel as the “Gavison-Medan Covenant,” it was drafted and signed by Ruth Gavison, a law professor, and Rav Yaakov Medan, the Rosh Yeshiva of Har Etzion, and is uniquely Israeli. People who have no official role in society – without any legislative or judicial function – came together to resolve the debate but without any real authority to do anything about it except have the media depict it as a real agreement. (Similarly, the Geneva Initiative of Yossi Beilin of more than a decade ago purported to settle the conflict in the Middle East once and for all; of course, he had no authority to agree to anything on behalf of anyone, and yet his work product is still cited approvingly by the Israeli Left.) Such is unimaginable from an American perspective.
Nonetheless, several of the rabbis participating in this conference agreed with the “covenant,” and were willing to accommodate secular Israelis’ desire for cultural events on Shabbat, with some indifferent to the desecration of Shabbat and others on condition that Shabbat violations are not blatant. Fortunately, MK Tzipi Hotoveli, the Deputy Minister of Transportation, star of the Likud, and a religious and proud Jew, rose to the occasion and, in effect, chastised the rabbis for their willingness to forego the public observance of Shabbat. She, for one, is not, as to her a Jewish state is unthinkable without public observance of Shabbat. Granted, no one wants to make private transportation unlawful on Shabbat – that awaits the Sanhedrin and the Messianic era – but she found it objectionable that she had to defend Shabbat when some liberal rabbis are ready abandon it to curry favor with their fellow liberals. That doesn’t mean women can or should be rabbis, but as we know, “The wisdom of women builds the house…” (Mishlei 14:1). Women can and often do have a greater innate sensitivity to certain Torah values than do men.
It need only be mentioned that, in the grand style of Israeli “negotiations,” all the concessions came from the traditional element, none from the secular group – except, I suppose, their agreement not to riot or file suit about the existence of any remaining restrictions, at least for the time being. For sure, these concessions, if ever implemented, will be pocketed and serve as the basis for any future covenants. That should sound eerily familiar. (Another irony is that Ruth Gavison, although nominally secular, is one of the few professors and legal elites that is a political right-winger.)
Thus one flash point will be the unfortunate opening planned in the near future of a pedestrian mall at the old railway station in Yerushalayim. Under the pretense that several people will walk around on stilts (“entertainment”), shopping stalls will be open for business. It is an obvious disgrace, surely to be litigated to an unhappy ending. And, in response to the tedious howls of “religious coercion!” if the place will be shuttered, one participant – Uzi Dayan, leading security official for years and today a fairly traditional Jew – simply noted that all laws are coercive, by definition. That is why they are “laws,” and not suggestions. I add that those who want to “coerce” Haredim into the military must surely be aware of that. Apparently, the “majority” does reserve itself the right to use religious “coercion” when it suits them; a different grouping of much the same people should not protest when such is used against them. It merely reflects the will of the majority, which, after all, is a tenet of democracy.
Three longtime olim from Ethiopia – a rabbi, a politician and a journalist – spoke about their often unhappy experiences with the Israeli religious establishment and the rest of Israeli society. (Interestingly, all the secular participants wore kippot out of respect to the place and the topic, but not the latter two Ethiopians.) All three had marvelous senses of humor and at times very compelling stories, but their indictment of Israeli society as racist and their complaints about their absorption and subsequent treatment fell flat. In classic Israeli style, they were each heckled by audience members (indeed, there is no time allotted for questions; people just yell out a question while the speaker is speaking). Here, their complaints were greeted with shouts from the audience. “Stop whining!” yelled one older oleh from Iraq, “We were given almost nothing when we came!” An immigrant from Yemen hollered: “You don’t how good you had it compared to the way we were treated!” Publicly chastised, the three Ethiopian-Jews were made to feel like full and equal members of Israeli society, which, I suppose, is also progress.
In the lexicon of the left, repeated several times here, what was most important was the “conversation,” that people are talking about these issues. Indeed, the recognition that all Jews – of whatever level of observance – have a shared destiny is itself inspiring and needs reinforcement. And as Rav David Lau, the new Chief Rabbi, concluded the proceedings, all Jews have a share in the land of Israel and nothing is more important than finding a way to live together in harmony, peace and mutual respect.
Another week, another kenes.

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Posted in Contemporary Life, Current Events, Israel

The Incredibly Shrinking Rabbinate

Posted on August 9, 2013 | 17 comments

(The following appears as an Op-Ed in the Jewish Press, August 9, 2013)

With the constant drumbeat of articles about female rabbis appearing in the media almost weekly – essentially the same articles making the same points to the same eager audience, all to make the phenomenon of female rabbis seem commonplace – it is important to take a step back and examine how, indeed, we arrived at this destination. How is it possible that the ordination of women, something that until quite recently was perceived as incompatible with Jewish tradition, should suddenly be construed as acceptable to all, and even to the nominally Orthodox but better described as neo-Conservative Jews?
The New Synagogue of Berlin on Oranienburgerstrasse, which today functions exclusively as a museum of German Jewish history, displays the “ordination” certificate of Regina Jonas, purportedly the first woman to receive the title rabbi. She was ordained in 1935 after writing a thesis for the Reform seminary in Berlin on the permissibility of women’s ordination. Naturally, she concluded that women can be ordained. Nonetheless, most of her contemporary Reform rabbis – including Rabbi Leo Baeck, the dean of the German Reform Rabbinate – discounted her thesis and opposed her ordination as violative of Jewish law. Her certificate was signed by Rabbi Max Dienemann and she served for several years as an Assistantrabbi at the Oranienburgerstrasse temple; even they could not countenance a woman as the full-time rabbi. Sadly, Rabbi Jonas was deported to Theresienstadt in 1942 and murdered at Auschwitz in 1944.
For decades, she had no successors, and all denominations of Judaism, even those who did not otherwise revere or adhere to Jewish law, assumed that women were not eligible to be rabbis. What changed?
What changed were two distinct yet interrelated phenomena that pervaded the American cultural and civic scene in the 1960’s: feminism and anti-authoritarianism. Feminism was an aggressive response to the dominance of what was deemed the “patriarchy” of life, the sense that men ruled, controlled the levers of power, wealth and influence, and thereby suppressed women. Certainly, feminism had some successes, although none that was unequivocal. Women entered the work force in larger numbers, today women outnumber men in colleges and most graduate programs, and women have become much more self-sufficient economically.
Feminism also allowed women greater self-expression, a decidedly mixed blessing for all. For example, feminism empowered women to be as promiscuous and as lustful as men, as Pyrrhic a victory as has been seen since King Pyrrhus himself ravaged his own armies in 280 BCE. Marriage has suffered grievously; the latest statistics show that today barely half of America’s adults are married (only 42% in New York City), the lowest rate since 1961. Children, too, have been raised with a “new normal” in which homes are less stable and parental influence less forthcoming. Certainly, there are many exceptions but the culture has changed dramatically. The assault on the patriarchy has succeeded so magnificently – although never enough to please the diehards – that, if anything, real men are said to be in short supply and the shirking of traditional male responsibilities (fidelity to wife, parenting children, supporting families, etc.) is a social epidemic.
By the same token, the turbulence of the 1960’s – especially the Vietnam War, the urban riots and the assassinations of respected figures – produced a distrust of government and a pervasive antagonism toward authority. Tradition – both in terms of religion and social conventions – became suspect and required a renewed validation after an independent review of its worth and merits. Politicians were largely reviled, and religious leaders were soon after held in contempt by much of “enlightened”society, especially the media. The entertainment industry typically portrays clergymen as venal, hypocritical, and corrupt, and those are the good ones. Young people took pride in not listening to their elders, and taking refuge (or escaping) into drugs and alcohol. Oppositional Defiant Disorder entered the psychological lexicon a decade later. “The wisdom of the scholars was reviled, fearers of sin scorned, [objective] truth will disappear, children will embarrass their elders, [and] the old will stand before the young…” (Masechet Sota 49b). This was one legacy of the 1960’s, and these two forces soon coalesced.
The male rabbinate contained “tartei l’rei’uta” – the worst of both worlds. It was limited to men and the loathed symbol of religious (and therefore objective) authority. As such, the male rabbinate was a feminist/anti-authoritarian nightmare, and had to be undermined.
In 1972, Sally Priesand was ordained the first female Reform rabbi in the United States.
Yet, neither social movement should have had any resonance among religious Jews. Despite the persistent claims of Jewish feminists, Judaism has never perceived itself as a “patriarchy.” We have patriarchs and matriarchs, equally venerated. Jewish identity is transmitted through the mother, not the father. Jewish women frequently worked outside the home, were often the bread-winners, and never suffered the legal disabilities that in other societies limited a woman’s capacity to own property or accumulate wealth. And the very essence of Judaism is the surrender to God’s authority, by assuming the yoke of Torah obligations as conveyed to us through the written and oral law. Traditional Jews revere authority even as modern men (and women) revile it.
To be sure, Jewish law assigns different modes of worship to men and women, as it does to Kohanim, Leviim,and Yisraelim. It even distinguishes between men and women when it comes to the observance of certain mitzvot, although, by far, just a small minority ofmitzvot. The toxic brew of feminism and anti-authoritarianism has caused some women to chafe under these designated roles. This discontent is engendered by the egalitarian obsession of feminism – that men and women are equal, therefore identical, and any distinctions inherently invalid, if not also repugnant – and by the rejection of any objective authority, of the “no one can tell me what I can or can’t do” variety. Both are misplaced, to say the least, as any organization or system can only survive if defined roles are allocated and those roles are carried out faithfully by participants. Obviously, the military could not function if every soldier did as he wished on the battlefield. It is the cohesion of disparate elements that allows the machinery of organization to thrive.
The Reform ordination of Sally Priesand was understandable in the sense that the movement never claimed to adhere to Jewish law and, almost by definition, sought to reform it until it conformed to“modern” values. By the late 1960’s, the twin rebellions of feminism and anti-authoritarianism had captured the liberal imagination. It is hard to attribute the reason for the almost four decade hiatus between the ordinations of Rabbis Jonas and Priesand to anything but sexism. Certainly the Torah was no obstacle. It remained absolutely clear to the Torah world, and to the Conservative movement that claimed a nominal fidelity to Jewish law, that ordination of women was impossible.
In 1985, the Conservative movement ordained Amy Eilberg as their first female rabbi. Conveniently, JTS waited for its primary scholar, Rabbi Saul Lieberman, to die (1983), as he had adamantly opposed women’s ordination and considered it a nullity. Eilberg’s ordination culminated a series of proclamations – all influenced by the twin cultural forces rampant in American life – that had rejected Jewish law and equalized the role of men and women in worship. Thus, beginning in the 1970’s and unfolding in short order, women were first counted in a Minyan, first allowed to receive aliyot, first allowed to lead the tefilot and finally allowed to function as rabbis. (More recently, in 2004, women were also allowed to serve as legal witnesses, completing the break with Jewish tradition.)
In the ensuing decades since women have begun to serve in the non-Orthodox rabbinate, male attendance at services has declined precipitously and the non-Orthodox rabbinical seminaries have become majority female. But at least those presumably faithful to Torah, its values and traditions, stood firm against this onslaught. That changed as well in the first decade in the 21stcentury with the ordination of the first woman, followed most recently by three other women. Such was possible not only because of the utter conquest of the left-wing of Orthodoxy (by now, neo-Conservatism) by its masters, feminism and anti-authoritarianism, but also by the re-definition of the rabbinate. Without shrinking the rabbinate and the role of the Rabbi – without accentuating certain functions of the rabbinate and minimizing others – such a re-definition would be impossible, or, at the very least, it would not be possible and still claim with a straight face to be faithful to Torah.
Thus, in the traditional American rabbinate, the rabbi looms large in the prayer service – sitting in front, even leading on occasion, and in many communities, serving as the reader of the Torah. Those roles are off limits to religious women. Or, all male Jews are obligated in Torah study, the daily recitation of Sh’ma, the time-bound mitzvot like talit and tefillin, public prayer, and other commandments. The idea of a functioning rabbi exempt from Torah study, public prayer or the wearing of tefillin is peculiar, and rightfully so. The rabbi is often perceived as a role model for others in the fulfillment of Jewish law, notwithstanding that all Jews are obligated in the commandments that apply to them. Traditionally, the rabbi serves as a judge in halachic matters, or as a witness to various halachic acts.
What would we call a rabbi who cannot read the Torah, daven for the amud, is exempt by Jewish law from a variety of common ritual practices (and in some cases, actually proscribed from fulfilling them), serve as a judge or a witness – and is forbidden by Jewish law, according to prevailing opinion, from serving in positions of authority? Not much of a rabbi.
It is no coincidence that the concept of serarahis rejected by the neo-Conservatives as a definitive aspect of the rabbinate and therefore as grounds for rejection of a female rabbinate according to Rambam and others. The abhorrence of serarah is at the very root of the current rebellion –both in terms of the feminist hatred of the patriarchy and the anti-authoritarian’s contempt for authority.
That is why certain aspects of the rabbinate are emphasized to make it seem as if female rabbis are a natural fit. Do rabbis teach Torah? So do women. Do rabbis counsel the afflicted? Certainly, and of course there are more female therapists today than male therapists. Can women speak at a shalom zachar? Why not – they’re the ones having the babies anyway! So, if that is all there is to the rabbinate, why was there ever any reasonable objection to it?
From that perspective, the yoetzet movement also, wittingly or unwittingly, serves the same function of chipping away at the fundamentals of the rabbinate. Certainly, it is arguable whether women can decide questions of Jewish law; some authorities permit it, while others (see Shaarei Teshuva in Shulchan Aruch Orach Chaim 461:17) prohibit it. But the women who will today answer questions of taharat mishpacha, with debatable authority, can tomorrow answer questions of Shabbat, Kashrut, Eruvin and civil law. That day – if it ever comes – will see the end of the traditional rabbinate. Fortunately, it will never come, because by that time those who have embraced this departure from tradition will have long left the mainstream Orthodox community. But those are the lines that need to be drawn today, by all Jews who care about the Mesorah and the continuity of Jewish life.
The growth of Torah study for women in the last century has been a boon to Jewish life, in line with the Chafetz Chaim’s recognition that such was needed to survive spiritually in the modern world. In an extreme minority of cases, such Torah knowledge has encouraged crashing through the barriers of halacha, and that is most lamentable. Torah study should lead to greater humility and surrender to G-d’s will, and not to the conflating of G-d’s will with whatever secular value is ascendant in any given era.
The only way to accommodate women rabbis is to modify the rabbinate itself, shrinking it by excluding from normative rabbinic practice certain obvious and important elements of the field. The job description itself has to be constricted, much like the physical qualifications for firefighters had to be reduced in order to accommodate female firefighters. Rabbis who cannot normatively perform significant aspects of the profession (officiate at weddings, for example) are “rabbis” of a diminished stature, graded, as it were, on a curve, whose very limitations underscore their ineligibility.
Employing different titles and calling that “ordination” does not change anything. Taking a rabbinical function and re-assigning it to a layman does not make that layman a rabbi. The rabbinate is more than just the sum total of different tasks. It represents the continuity of spiritual leadership that connects Jews to Sinai of the past and to Moshiach of the future. In fact, the diminution of the rabbinate to a few limited functions implicit in its feminization provokes the intriguing question: what can this newfangled woman rabbi do that a non-Jew occupying the same position could not also do?
The diminished rabbinate highlights the rabbi’s pastoral role and minimizes the study of Torah and Jewish law, as if social work is the rabbi’s main task rather than an ancillary function of the rabbinate. It fosters a sense of the Torah as a “feel-good” document whose laws are not really binding on modern man because they can be adjusted to conform to core values such as feminism, egalitarianism and self-expression.
From that perspective, it is certainly understandable why Sally Priesand was an honored guest at the ordination ceremony that occurred last month. Neither halachic methodology nor mesorah figure significantly in the calculations of the Neo-Cons. Notwithstanding the professed good intentions of this movement, the conquest by the feminist and anti-authoritarian rebels of the 1960’s will continue until the appropriate boundaries are drawn, and surrender to Torah again becomes the prerequisite of divine service.

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Battered Nation Syndrome

Posted on August 1, 2013 | 11 comments

As a young attorney a few decades ago, I was trying a case of child neglect in the Family Court. The mother testified (trying to excuse her neglect) that she had been beaten regularly by her husband – weekly or monthly – for six or seven years. “Did you ever call the police?” I asked. “No.” “Well,” I said trying to impeach her credibility, “why would stay for years with a man who was beating you?”
The wrath of the court fell on me. I was called to the bench, where the judge asked me: “Counselor, haven’t you ever heard of the ‘battered wife syndrome’?”
Indeed, I hadn’t, but quickly gained an education. There are women, I was told, who routinely live with abusive husbands. They stay because they can’t afford to leave, because they always think the situation will improve and the last beating is the last beating (until the next one, and that becomes the “last” one), because there can be long periods of domestic tranquility punctuated by explosions, or because they have low self-esteem and on some level “feel” that they deserve the beatings by provoking their malevolent husbands or by not being sufficiently good wives.
Obviously, it is irrational, and almost inexplicable to an outsider with a healthy psyche and a normal, healthy way of looking at the world.
Welcome to Israel, afflicted with the “battered-country syndrome.” There is really no rational explanation why a nation would enter into negotiations with an enemy sworn to its destruction, when any outcome of those negotiations will redound to its detriment, and almost immediately. Furthermore, the very notion that Israel should have to bribe its evil interlocutors to come to the negotiation table by releasing another 104 murderers of Jews is beyond bizarre, beyond explanation, and only attributable to a virulent strain of a mental illness that is unprecedented and, as yet, untreatable. It is painfully obvious that no other country on earth ever has or ever will agree to liberate the murderers of its own citizens simply to purchase the right to have an enemy negotiate them into further concessions and weakness.
It is mindboggling. How would the US respond if Iran insisted, as the price of negotiations on its almost-finished nuclear program, that the US release Dzokar, the Boston Marathon bomber? The depraved absurdity speaks for itself. And Israel is releasing 100 Dzokars.
Note as well that the Obama administration, in pressuring Israel to free terrorists, refused to release Jonathan Pollard imprisoned now for almost 29 years. They would not consider it, despite the fact that Pollard has no blood on his hands, unlike the Arab murderers being released some of whom were involved in absolutely brutal slayings of innocent civilians. Only Israel, suffering from the battered-country syndrome. (And what does it say about the Arab society that demands freedom for these killers and celebrates them as heroes? But that is a different syndrome altogether.)
Israel’s response can only be the result of a mental illness because neither the negotiations nor the release make any sense – in timing or in execution. The Middle East is aflame – a tinderbox of violence and hatred. Three times as many Syrians have been killed by each other in the last two years than “Palestinians” have been killed by Israelis in 65 years, and few of those Palestinians were innocent of any wrongdoing. Egypt is in the midst of a civil war. Northern Africa is Islamasizing. Jordan fears for its future, as the unrest to its north and the radicalization of Islam that surrounds it threatens the stability of its monarchy. Gasoline prices in the United States have doubled – yes, doubled – since Obama took office.
And John Kerry can find nothing better to do than browbeat Israel into negotiations with its enemy, and at the price of freeing murderers as well? Kerry has made six trips to the region in his attempts to jumpstart these talks, which do not lead to a good place for Israel. There are only two possibilities ahead: either Israel makes more territorial concessions that further weaken it, strengthen the Arabs, and demoralize its Jewish population, or Israel makes no concessions and is blamed for the lack of peace in the Middle East and beyond. How is it possible that its government can be so obtuse and behave in such a shameless way?
Surely, PM Netanyahu knows the disadvantages of pandering to terrorists; he even wrote a book on it. And, of course, he has long insisted, quite passionately and eloquently, as is his wont, that “there will be no pre-conditions for negotiations!” That robust declaration, apparently, holds true – until it doesn’t. Does he believe that peace will come as a result of these talks? Does he believe that the US will give Israel a green light to attack Iran, or even attack Iran themselves? Does he believe that Israel cannot any longer bear the absence of negotiations? Does he believe that the same three people who failed in their last round of negotiations five years ago will now suddenly succeed, and the Arabs will morph into the Swiss? Does he believe that the European Union will renounce their hateful boycott of Israel? (Why not make that an Israeli pre-condition for negotiations??)
None of the above is credible in the least, and the ongoing weakness is only attributable to the battered-country syndrome. Just like the battered-wife blames herself for the violence, thinks she can improve the situation by making unilateral changes, lacks self-esteem, and therefore endures the violence, injury, emotional and verbal abuse and degradation that is her fate – so too Israel.
Only a country that lacks self-esteem willingly surrenders its land to its enemies; that diminished self-worth is only possible among those who deny the divine promise of the land of Israel to the Jewish people. Only a battered-country blames itself for Arab unhappiness and discontent, and thinks it can solve all its neighbors’ problems. Only a battered-country will tolerate rockets on its citizens’ heads, endure terror for years without responding, and then regret and apologize for its forceful response when it does happen. (Just like the battered wife will often regret defending herself against her abusive husband.)
Just like battered women have been known to seek out cosmetic surgery in order to please their husbands (new face, new look, new start), so too, only a battered country will make surgically excise parts of its homeland in order to please, or even just temporarily mollify, its abusers. And just like the battered wife always feels that relief is just around the corner, so too the battered country feels that peace is attainable, juuuuuuuuuuuust around the corner. It’s entirely visible, like any mirage.
The battered wife accepts repetitive cycles of abuse and tranquility, but always lives in fear of the abuse and thinks she can somehow avert it by changing something, anything. But the same story repeats itself again and again – like here, the same faces emerge once again: Livni, Molcho, Erakat, Indyk. Expect Dennis Ross to make a cameo, and Shimon Peres to take a bow at some point. And where is Hanan Ashrawi?
The battering husband never makes concessions, because he thinks he does nothing wrong. Fault lies only with the misbehaving, unsatisfying, failed wife. So, only Israel, the battered country, must make concessions. The only Arab concession –having to sit in a room for a short time with the accursed Jews – is bought at the price of freeing murderers of Jewish men, women and children. The battered country makes concessions in order to forestall terror and violence, because it thinks that it is responsible for the distress of the “husband,” and because it does not really believe it is entitled to a peaceful, tranquil existence, a normal life, as other countries have. It does not really believe it deserves such a life, and so it does everything it can to undermine it, and at every opportunity.
And then the terror resumes, and the heartbreak of expulsions and the denial of rights to its citizens recur. Just like the battered wife often takes out her frustrations on her children (as in the case above), so too the battered country abuses its citizens, expels them from their homes, expects to stomach terror, massacres, bombings and shootings, and exults in its victimization. After all, it deserves it.
The battered country, like the battered wife, thinks it cannot live without the “husband.” But the healthy know that the dependency is unhealthy and reversible. Thus, every country pressured by the Obama administration thumbs its nose at it; only the battered country is incapable of standing up for its interests and saying a polite “no.”
The greater irony here – and what underscores the illness –is the superfluity of it all. Israel is today living in relative peace and prosperity, much more than any other nation in the region and more than in most of the world. The “Palestinians” are a spent force, characterized by Bret Stephens in the Wall Street Journal just three weeks ago as a “boring” people, whose affairs do not really interest the world or have any impact on global affairs. Watching the Israeli news the last few days, it was surprising that these negotiations barely rated mention in the first half-hour. The only outcry – from the pockets of normalcy that remain – was over the impending release of the Arab murderers. The cause of the Palestinians is not even in the top five interests of the Arab world today; it is probably not in the top fifty of important world concerns.
So why do it?
The Oslo process also began when the Arabs were in political decline. Their civil war had petered out, with Israeli casualties in the years before Oslo numbering annually in the twenties. (After Oslo, there was an awful spike in terror and casualties.) Now again, terror is at an all-time low, notwithstanding the recent increase in shootings, stabbings, and, in the last few days again, rockets. Why should Israel indulge Kerry, revive the dormant Arab cause, punish its own citizens, and weaken itself in the process? Why not just do as the battered wife should do – leave her abusive husband until he gets help, or just leave him altogether – as in “peace is not possible in this generation with these Arab leaders; let us focus instead on co-existence”?
It is inexplicable, as inexplicable as the battered country syndrome.