Author Archives: Rabbi

      Here’s a quick take on the big Middle East summit that will take place next week, and fail miserably. No one here in Israel – right or left – trusts Binyamin Netanyahu. The right suspects he is a man without principle, and the left suspects that he is secretly a hawk (if so, it is a well-guarded secret). No one here trusts Mahmoud Abbas, the PA “President” whose term ended more than 18 months ago but who continues to rule in that charade of an entity known as the Palestinian Authority. Hamas doesn’t trust him because even talking to the accursed Jews is perceived by much of the Islamic world as an obscene sellout, Israelis don’t trust him because it has suddenly dawned on all but the willfully-blind that a man who was Arafat’s deputy for 40 years is unlikely to be a Zionist, and his own people don’t trust him because…well, his term expired around the same time George W. Bush left office but somehow Abbas is still around. And no one trusts Barack Obama, whose natural sympathies for the Arabs have been somewhat muted for political reasons but whose understanding of the Arab-Israeli dynamic is perceived by all sides as woefully inadequate. Obama’s early humiliation of Israel is not forgotten here, and his (self-) heralded Cairo speech and outreach to the Muslims has been mocked by the Arab world, when not ignored altogether.

      Obama, master of the grand speech and empty gesture, is likely to make several more, attempt to show a foreign policy “accomplishment” that cannot be attributed to a George W. Bush policy, and bask in the good intentions that generate glowing editorials in the liberal press, but little else.

      So, no one wants to be in Washington next week, and it will show. The Palestinians have been threatening to leave even before they arrive – a neat trick – all to put pressure on Israel as the impediment to peace. In that, they might succeed, because of Israel’s legendary, mediocre negotiating skills. Pressure will be put on Netanyahu to maintain the building “freeze” in Judea and Samaria. As predicted here last year, the Arabs would wait until the very end of this “gesture” to pocket new concessions in exchange for Israel to have to privilege of sitting with them and surrendering. It is a strange world we live in.

      A week ago, I visited a family living in one of the settlements on a street with beautiful private homes, but across from an empty lot strewn with rocks, sand and garbage that looked incongruous. Asking whether anyone was planning on building there, my host reminded me of the freeze. Someone had bought the lot and hired a contractor who was ready to build, but the freeze intervened before they could lay the foundation. How bizarre, how immoral, if you think about it in those terms ! A Jew is not allowed to build a home, in Israel, because of pressure placed on a weak, feckless Israeli government by Obama and Clinton to induce the Arabs to come to the peace table, once again, and again, and again. I don’t know who is more shameless – the Americans who demanded it or the Israelis who succumbed. But a lot – thousands actually – stands vacant and fallow, because of …why, again ?

      Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who is so blunt in his speech that he – rare for a foreign minister – is almost not allowed to conduct foreign affairs – was asked this morning whether the “gesture” (the freeze) should be extended. He answered, as is his tendency, that the time for Israeli gestures is over. Let the Arabs make some gestures for once. “It can’t be that we always have to pay for the pleasure of sitting at a table with the Palestinians; let them pay as well.” He makes so much sense that I doubt he will even be allowed in Washington. Of course, even he is not trusted because his policy positions don’t always match his rhetoric, and to keep him in line, a “police investigation” now hangs over his head for almost a decade.

       Nor does any significant segment of the population here – even on the left – believe anymore in the efficacy of the “two-state solution.” That dog won’t hunt. Even if Abbas started wearing a kippa seruga, he is a chief without Indians, i.e., he represents no real constituency. He could not make any concessions even if he wanted to, so negotiating with him is like entering into a contract for the purchase of a house with someone who is not the owner. The paperwork could be in order, and the rituals followed perfectly – but nothing really happens in the end except the buyer loses money if he is foolish enough to pay. The “Palestine” dreamed of by the naïve utopians who are the useful idiots of the evildoers who hate Israel has absolutely no resources, industry, talents or infrastructure to support a modern state. Their national history is as much a fabrication as the notion that their future intentions are peaceful and wholesome. So their renewed “demand” for a continuation of the freeze is a smokescreen.

      Of course, why then have such an event ? Everyone knows that, at present, the minimum the Arabs will accept (Israel’s self-destruction) is more than the maximum the Israelis are currently willing to give (more expulsions and surrender of land). Certainly, Obama needs a optimistic photo op, with the American economy still tanking, unemployment and the market stagnant at unpleasant levels, the US sinking into bankruptcy level debt, and Democrats fleeing from his very presence for their electoral lives. In some quarters, he gets credit even for trying. The real danger, as always, is for Israel. They are the only party expected to make concessions (after all, get ready to hear again about the “Arab street” and how Arab public opinion suddenly matters in that region of 23 brutal dictatorships), and those concessions are pocketed in exchange for new papers, words, promises and ceremonies. It is a macabre dance that every American president – even those with purer motivations than Obama – tries to choreograph.

The estimable George Will: “The biggest threat to peace might be the peace process — or, more precisely, the illusion that there is one. The mirage becomes the reason for maintaining its imaginary “momentum” by extorting concessions from Israel, the only party susceptible to U.S. pressure. Israel is, however, decreasingly susceptible. In one month, history will recycle when the partial 10-month moratorium on Israeli construction on the West Bank expires. Resumption of construction — even here, in the capital, which was not included in the moratorium — will be denounced by a fiction, “the international community,” as a threat to another fiction, “the peace process.”

     Israel has to learn to say “no.” In that, Lieberman would be a much more effective spokesman than the glib Netanyahu, who is too clever by half and thinks he can speechify his way out of any predicament. Instead, he just sounds both duplicitous and disingenuous, and makes his interlocutors – fiends that they are – look straightforward by comparison. His approach is good – insistence on Arab recognition of Israel as a Jewish state (that’ll stick in their craw for a century or two), demilitarization, end to incitement, etc. – but the great unknown is whether he has the fortitude to stick with it. His track record is not good; hence, the apprehension whenever he embarks on one of these missions.

     Perhaps the time will come soon when a credible Israeli spokesmen will address his own people, and the world community, as adults, and tell them that peace is not at hand, that the Arab rejection of Israel’s continued existence is unabated, and that the only democracy in the Middle East cannot jeopardize its existence to accommodate terrorists, and that negotiations are on hold indefinitely until the Arab states democratize. That should be a winning argument, at least among the decent people. And among the indecent, it does not really matter.

      And Israel is in a good place now – economically and militarily. Terror has decreased considerably, and the PA police have done a commendable job in this regard in Judea and Samaria – not because they love Israel but because they hate Hamas (remembering well, as Jews do not, how the Hamas threw the PA police officers by the dozens off roofs in Gaza when Hamas conquered it in 2006). Patrols in the Arab towns and villages, arrests of terrorists and the thwarting of terrorist acts before they are launched have engendered a sense of security and calm that is much enjoyed after the terrible decade (1995-2005). The myth of the “demographic bogeyman” has been exploded by research, mainly that of Yoram Ettinger. Israel’s population is growing as the Arab growth has stagnated.

     The Arabs will certainly play their usual game, and threaten to walk out whenever their demands are not met. If that happens, the Israelis should simply point to the door. Can Netanyahu restrain his impulse to be liked, and put the onus on the Arabs ? Can he demand the immediate release of Gilad Schalit as an Arab good-will gesture, and the immediate release of Jonathan Pollard as an American good-will gesture ? He certainly can; that he likely won’t is to his discredit. Even worse, he will seek to split the difference – a “partial freeze” – thinking it offers everyone something. In fact, it just makes everyone distrust and dislike him.

      Fortunately, this empty ceremony will likely last just a day, break up into “committees” that will accomplish nothing, and send everyone home in time for Rosh Hashana.

 It could not come soon enough.

      A modern Hebrew word encapsulates the purposes and benefits of vacation. The word nofesh, used to mean recreation or vacation, is rooted in the word nefesh, or soul. Nofesh affords one the opportunity to refresh and revitalize the soul, to relax, think, read, write and recreate, away from the demands of every day life. Its need is universal, but recently, several articles have championed the indispensability of vacations for the practitioners of one particular profession, the clergy.

      The New York Times featured two such articles recently, the first by a former pastor dealing with the phenomenon of clergy burnout.

(http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/08/opinion/08macdonald.html?src=me&ref=general)

“[P]art of the problem, as researchers have observed, is that pastors work too much. Many of them need vacations, it’s true. But there’s a more fundamental problem that no amount of rest and relaxation can help solve: congregational pressure to forsake one’s highest calling.” The writer describes quite vividly the changes in clergy expectations in recent years: “The pastoral vocation is to help people grow spiritually, resist their lowest impulses and adopt higher, more compassionate ways. But churchgoers increasingly want pastors to soothe and entertain them…[Clergy are] no longer expected to offer moral counsel in pastoral care sessions or to deliver sermons that make the comfortable uneasy. Church leaders who continue such ministerial traditions pay dearly.”

     The clergy as entertainer is judged based on the criteria with which other, more professional, entertainers are judged: box office, ratings and likeability, translated as bodies in seats generating a sufficient amount of laughter and good cheer. That can be both a difficult task to one unsuited for it and an inappropriate one for the person who studied and trained to preach G-d’s word. Certainly, a pleasing, pleasurable presentation helps deliver the message more effectively, but when the style becomes the substance, much is lost. A story that enhances the idea can have a powerful impact, but when the audience craves – and hears – only stories, the message (if there is one) becomes diluted.

     The writer: “In the early 2000s, the advisory committee of my small congregation in Massachusetts told me to keep my sermons to 10 minutes, tell funny stories and leave people feeling great about themselves. The unspoken message in such instructions is clear: give us the comforting, amusing fare we want or we’ll get our spiritual leadership from someone else.” That is pressure that only an extended (permanent ?) vacation can relieve. “Congregations that make such demands seem not to realize that most clergy don’t sign up to be soothsayers or entertainers. Pastors believe they’re called to shape lives for the better, and that involves helping people learn to do what’s right in life, even when what’s right is also difficult.”

     The other article was even more threatening. (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/nyregion/02burnout.html?pagewanted=1)

    “The findings have surfaced with ominous regularity over the last few years, and with little notice: Members of the clergy now suffer from obesity, hypertension and depression at rates higher than most Americans. In the last decade, their use of antidepressants has risen, while their life expectancy has fallen. Many would change jobs if they could.

    Public health experts who have led the studies caution that there is no simple explanation of why so many members of a profession once associated with rosy-cheeked longevity have become so unhealthy and unhappy.

   But while research continues, a growing number of health care experts and religious leaders have settled on one simple remedy that has long been a touchy subject with many clerics: taking more time off.”

      The writer avers that there are clergymen who have always been averse to vacations, figuring that the Lord never takes a day off, so how could they ? I am not one of them, but I do know some of them. The favorable way of approaching their reluctance not to be seen is to attribute it to their dedication, but there is an unfavorable way of approaching it too, and ultimately they might be cheating themselves, their families and their congregations of the full value of their personalities and services.

       Interestingly, the notion of the well-earned vacation was quite familiar to the Torah giants of the 19^th and 20^th centuries. The leaders of famous towns and yeshivot (R. Chaim Soloveitchik, R. Chaim Ozer Grodzinski, to name just two) and Chasidic Rebbis by the dozens would descend on the spa towns and mountain retreats of Switzerland, Hungary and elsewhere for the month of August, if not longer (corresponding to the time period after Tish’a B’Av until sometime in Elul). The change of scenery was itself invigorating, and the camaraderie developed between the distinguished vacationers – who, due to the communications system and travel opportunities then extant, otherwise had little personal interaction – enriched their spiritual lives as well.

      I have come to realize the sublime advantages of the occasional get-away. There are very few 24/7 jobs today; the clergy (here, I can only speak for the Rabbinate) is one of them. This is an observation, not a complaint. The Rabbi is always on call – crisis, question, comment, presence. If the average person works five days a week, that itself is tantamount to 104 days off during the year, or more than three months, and that is before actual vacations are factored. The Rabbi has none of that, and the rest days for other people (Shabbat, Sunday) are work days for him; for me, oddly, Mondays are just as busy, if not busier. So, too, there are no set hours in the rabbinate, and early mornings and late nights are relatively normal. No wonder I have heard that Rabbi Shlomo Riskin has referred to rabbinical vacations as the “holy of holies,” never to be encroached upon.

      Interestingly, I was informed by some non-Orthodox Rabbis several years ago that the non-Orthodox movements have institutionalized the weekly “day off” for the rabbi, whether Monday or Wednesday – whatever day of his choice. Unless a member actually dies, the rabbi is not to be disturbed. I informed them that I did not see how that could work in an Orthodox context, because we go to shul AM and PM, and once there, we gladly respond to the issues, needs and questions on people’s minds. (Told, casually, “well, don’t go,” I remember responding, “I have to go anyway, to daven!”) The Times article also notes that the Conservatives now recommend three or four month [sabbaticals] for every three or four years of service. Interesting.

      My teacher and mentor Rabbi Berel Wein once wrote that the Rabbi’s vacations should be “long enough to be meaningful to the rabbi and his family but not too long that the people realize they can get along quite well without him.” That is a hard balance to strike. A simcha missed can never be replaced, and a funeral missed can never be re-attended. That is the downside of any time away. But in Israel for the last few weeks, I have been privileged to see many members of our synagogue family, offering comfort at moments of sorrow and celebrating together at joyous events (Bar Mitzvahs and weddings). To me, it is a special thrill to see them, and their children and grandchildren, in Israel and to join in their festivities and milestones. Most of my colleagues here have similar experiences and the life events that mark our lives therefore continue apace, and appropriately so.  

        None of the above should be construed in any way as a complaint, because I have been blessed (as I know some of my colleagues have not been) with congregations that were (are) quite understanding of the rewards of vacation despite the occasional costs to them (and, I hope, never too eager to see me leave).

        Vacation is free time to pursue endeavors that time simply does not allow the rest of the year but that assuredly benefits the rabbi in the conduct of his rabbinate. In addition to learning Torah, I am able to recommend four books that I read this summer, somewhat diverse, all fascinating: “Why Jews are Liberals” (by Norman Podhoretz), “God According to God” (by the physicist Dr. Gerald Schroeder), “The Prime Ministers” (by Yehuda Avner, a remarkable, riveting book that at 703 pages is actually too short) and “The Great Money Binge: Spending Our Way to Socialism” (by former Wall Street Journal columnist George Melloan), a dash of needed cold water on a hot summer day.

        With the Yamim Noraim “early” this year, right after Labor Day, preparations for those days soon after my return have already begun. In the meantime, nofesh is indispensable for the nefesh, for me and for you.

           I was enjoying the beauty of St. Moritz several weeks ago when informed that another breach of the Mesorah had occurred under ostensibly Orthodox auspices: a woman as prayer leader in the synagogue. G-d’s world is pristine and picturesque; man’s world is convoluted and clouded. My first reaction was that I do not receive the amud as often as I wish I did, and now I have to compete with women ? My second reaction was the eerie sensation that I had seen this movie once before. More on that shortly.

     A fine young man of my acquaintance learning in Israel asked me my thoughts on the matter. I asked his, as well, and especially whether it was a topic of conversation among his classmates in yeshiva. He answered, tellingly, “no. No one here considers him (the innovating Rabbi) Orthodox, so what is there to talk about ?” Well, such weighty matters are certainly not decided by impetuous youth, but what of it ? How far can a person or a group journey over the borders of traditional Orthodoxy until it becomes clear that they have left the Torah world entirely ?

     My eerie response was generated by recollections of the origins of the Conservative movement, which is quite instructive here. (For lack of a better term – the new group can’t be called Neo-Conservatives, with all due respect to Norman Podhoretz and the late Irving Kristol – so perhaps they should be called “Neo-ModOs” or just “Nehardaleans.”) What was most striking – even uncanny – is that this new movement is in one sense the Conservatives in reverse, and on steroids. In the 1970’s, the Conservative movement first permitted women to be counted in the minyan, then allowed women to serve as chazzanot, and only after that began to ordain female clergy. The whole process took ten years. The Nehardaleans began with ordaining women as clergy, now have allowed cantorettes, and will soon undoubtedly find some mechanism by which women can be counted in the minyan (perhaps, in line with the doctrines of the so-called “Partnership minyanim,” that will pray only in the presence of ten men and ten women, or something of the sort). The first two deviations – or mimicries – took just a few months. Strange – same trajectory, only in reverse. It is hard to maintain that the only difference between the deviations of the Conservatives and of the Neo-ModOs is that the latter are more … what, clever in their uses of tradition, better fence-straddlers or nit-pickers, better politicians and PR men ?

      The nascent Conservative Jewish movement also claimed fidelity to halacha (they still do so, with declining, perhaps even vanished, credibility). They were crafty in marshaling sources, or partial sources, to defend their deviations – embracing minority opinions as authoritative, employing creative interpretations theretofore unknown of ancient texts – some of which, according to them, meant the exact opposite of what several millennia of Jewish scholars understood them to mean. In some cases, they arrogated to themselves the right just to abrogate a biblical prohibition deemed irrelevant by modernity. And they also wrote “Responsa” detailing their assertions, much of it sophistry that could easily impress an abysmally ignorant laity.

      The early Conservatives also claimed the presence in their midst of distinguished Rabbis, some of whom were educated in the venerated yeshivot of pre-holocaust Europe. They claimed the existence of “authorities on whom they could rely” as they adjusted the Torah and Jewish law to modern times and mores, and commenced the process of winnowing down the essentials of Jewish practice, so that, today, most Conservative Jews are indistinguishable in their Jewish commitment – Shabbat, Kashrut, Taharat Hamishpacha, Talmud Torah, etc. – from our Reform Jewish brethren. (That is to say, their observance is quite shaky, and the recent intermarriage of a self-described “proud Conservative Jew,” adorned in talit and kippa – on Shabbat – to Chelsea Clinton, speaks for itself. The difference in intermarriage rates between Reform and Conservative Jews is negligible.)

      Just as fascinating, the early Conservative movement boasted a number of cross-over figures. Bear in mind that, around 1900, Orthodoxy was moribund in America, and so the Conservative movement began as a reaction not against tradition but against the anti-Torah excesses of the Reformers (especially the infamous treif banquet celebrating the ordination of the first batch of American Reform rabbis). Rabbis Sabato Morais and Henry Pereira Mendes were among the founders of the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1886, and both were Orthodox Rabbis, pulpit rabbis at that. Rabbi Mendes, in fact, served as the first president of the newly formed Orthodox Union (OU) in 1897 – at the same time he served as president of JTS. Talk about wearing two hats ! Clearly, then, we are talking about different people in a different time. The differences were not at all personal, but rather that the early Conservatives fit neatly within an Orthodox framework. When they soon deviated, the schism erupted, and the OU soon severed ties with the Conservatives over their non-Torah, scientific methodology of study and psak. Rabbi Mendes left JTS and himself later taught at RIETS.

      Are we witnessing the same naissance today ? The early Conservatives always insisted they adhered to tradition, which required modernization so as not to become stagnant and unresponsive to their constituents.

      Well, there are neo-ModOs today who also write erudite (but often sophistic) responsa in the same style (and with many of the same conclusions) as the Conservatives. They are also adept at finding ways to permit long-established prohibitions, sometimes with the caveat that “this is l’halacha but not l’maaseh,” for polemical but not practical purposes. Other times they will dangle the leniency before their public that – like Western man generally – is occasionally dismissive, if not outright contemptuous, of authority with which it disagrees, and so will be all-too-willing to adopt the proffered leniency as its own. The neo-ModOs also refer to their “authorities,” however obscure some of them are, and even if some of them dwell in an ivory tower far from the practicalities of Rabbinic life today and are therefore oblivious to the long-term effects of their “innovations.” Like the Conservatives, the neo-ModOs disregard notions of majority rule, faithfulness to minhag Yisrael, or a Mesorah recognizable to the overwhelming majority of Torah Jews. They, like the Conservatives, have corrupted the methodology of psak, reaching their conclusion and then seeking whatever sources they can muster by way of rationalization – in effect, shooting an arrow at a blank target and then drawing a bull’s-eye around it. Neat trick, if anyone is still fooled by it.

     Add these distortions to a Torah teacher here in Israel who is now urging – for the sake of “saving” Judaism – that people be given the right to adopt any opinion recorded in the Gemara if it will make their lives easier (in effect, attempting to undo 2000 years of scholarship and development), and we have the real danger that Torah itself will become a balagan, a free-for-all that means something to everyone but nothing that is really eternal or timeless, or divine in origin.

     The excesses of the Conservative movement in the 1980’s led to the founding of the Union for Traditional Judaism, a group that has fallen on hard times as positions have become even more polarized. UTJ defied an easy description; if the Conservatives believe that halacha evolves to accommodate the realities of modern life, UTJ must believe that halacha evolves, but …not that much ? Well, then, how much is too much, or too little, and who decides – and what do the Nehardaleans believe – that halacha always evolves to accommodate the realities of modern life – but, then again, how much ?

    Case in point: which movement stated the following ? “Even if we have the position of but one against the mainstream, if that position is preserved is that not a part of the halakhic process? Can we not lean on it for support if necessary? The necessity to go against the mainstream and depend on a minority view is perhaps created today because of the changing role of women in our society… The right to institute takanot is vested in the authorities of each age when they see the need to correct an injustice or to improve the religious and ethical life of the community. It was felt that since we have given a greater role to women in synagogue life and education, and since we wish women to attend synagogue services, that it was appropriate now to recognize the equality of men and women in regard to minyan.”

      Indeed, it was the Conservatives in a 2002 “responsum” discussing women counting in a minyan – but the problem is that one would not have been surprised to see such language used in a UTJ or Neo-ModO “responsum” either.

       Far be it for me to state unequivocally that the Neo-Modos are outside the pale of Orthodoxy, although they are certainly headed in that direction. The similarities in methodology and temperament of the Nehardaleans and the early Conservatives are uncanny. At a certain point, what walks, talks and quacks like a duck is a duck, all protestations to the contrary notwithstanding. But, like Rabbis Morais and Mendes, there is always room to return, to clarify, to distinguish, and to disassociate from policies and practices that most of Torah Judaism rejects unequivocally. Clearly, there are some – like the fine young man and his colleagues referenced above – who believe the line has already been crossed and the road back unmarked. It is unlikely that the mainstream Orthodox organizations will sit by idly and let this pass, and they should not.

       In line with Rav Kook’s dictum that one should seek to praise even one’s ideological adversaries, it is important to reiterate that the reluctance in many circles to absolutely renounce the Nehardaleans is the residual respect many (myself included) feel for their leader, a paragon of Ahavat Yisrael. Certainly, on some level, he deserves credit for keeping the issue of discontented women on the public agenda, even if the methods he uses to assuage them are problematic and border on the heretical. Perhaps, he, in his sensitivity, was well-positioned to tell them, pleasantly, even tearfully, “no,” when “no” was the appropriate answer. But he did not.

       Are we present at the creation of another heterodox movement ? Will another branch of Jews detach itself from the Tree of Life, and go the way of those other groups ? Or will someone within the movement gain the perspective of the observer, and perceive these acts in aggregate and in part as defiance of the Mesorah – and halt the wagon as it speeds to the precipice ? The great poskim, Rabbis and leaders of our generation will surely weigh in, and the collective wisdom of Klal Yisrael, will, as always, determine intuitively what is inside or outside the Mesorah.

       That will be the guidance that preserves the Mesorah for another generation against another modern onslaught, one that was both tragic and unnecessary.