Author Archives: Rabbi

(This is the third year that I am answering questions in the Jewish Press forum entitled, “Is it Proper?” All the rabbinic responses – and more – can be read at Jewishpress.com)

Is it proper to use video streaming apps that offer non-kosher movies and TV shows?

This raises broader questions that have been debated in the Jewish world for several thousand years: to what extent should Jews partake of the secular culture? And can we seal ourselves off hermetically from the world at large?

There are cogent arguments on both sides of the debate, as one would expect of such a hoary discussion. Certainly, there is no guardian against immorality and we have a paramount interest in warding off temptation. On the other hand, there are aspects of the secular culture that are enlightening. This was less so in the ancient world, more so in more modern times, but today’s cultural swamp is trending towards the former. Yet, we do recognize that it is impossible to shut out the world completely, and walking on the streets of most cities offers temptations that are more enticing than any app. What then is a good Jew to do?

Halacha demands that we live a disciplined life. We must develop our self-control. Kosher apps are fine but the devious, non-kosher mind will find a way around them too. Ultimately, streaming services – just like telephones, televisions, computers and the internet – are morally neutral vehicles. They can be used to enrich our lives or debauch them. Free people will even differ on what is considered kosher or non-kosher. Parents must know that their children will watch anything that they watch – and inconsistency is spiritually lethal.

The best approach – which is not to say is the majority approach in the religious world – is to worry less about the app and more about the person. We need to teach clearly and unequivocally what is right and wrong, moral and immoral, acceptable and unacceptable, and also teach techniques to avoid the temptations that will inevitably surround us.

Self-censorship using a moral compass informed by the Torah is more effective than censorship coming from the outside.

Is it proper to check your personal and/or business email before Shacharit?

It is high time we admitted that people who check their emails when they lay down and when they wake up (as if it’s Kriat Sh’ma), and obsessively in the middle of the day and in the middle of the night, have an addiction problem. They cannot disconnect from the outside world, ignore the reality of life (including family) for the fantasy that something better is happening out there, and become slaves to their devices.

This is exacerbated during tefilah. For years, I waged a relentless battle against people bringing their Smartphones to shul not only because of the distractions they cause to others when they ring but primarily because merely carrying them ruins the kavanah of their bearer. I was defeated in that battle by the Coronavirus, and now the norm has become for people to bring their phones into shul, daven from them and check their emails during Chazarat Hashatz. If that is the unfortunate choice, then people are better off checking their emails before they daven rather than during their davening.

But that is a choice that already concedes defeat. If we are proscribed from “tending to our [material] needs” before Shacharit (Orach Chaim 89:3) then checking emails would seem to be part of that proscription. Our first activity every morning should be the acknowledgment of our Creator rather than worshipping at the altar of spam and junk. Sure, some will argue that the emails might be conveying information about some impending emergency that can be ameliorated by quick action. Sure. That happens all the time…

Since email is addictive, there is a greater likelihood that we will become so consumed by its contents that we will be late for shul and distracted once we get there. That seems a bit more likely than missing out on the news that a meteorite is aiming right for us. Daven first.

Is it proper to watch entertainment videos on YouTube? Informational videos? Torah videos? Under what circumstances, if any, can young children use YouTube? Do you hold the same for all the above for TikTok?

Sadly, I must confess complete ignorance of TikTok although I have read of its abusive and harmful effects on children or others who are addicted to living their private lives in the public domain.

YouTube, generally speaking, is morally neutral like many modern contrivances. It all depends on how it is used. The access to Torah shiurim, including gedolim who are now in the world of truth, is breath-taking. You can sit in shiur with a Torah giant of two or three generations past! That is stunning. You can learn about the history of the Jewish people and find edifying lectures of all sorts. And certainly, it is possible to gain information, and access news and other worthwhile entities, through videos. The same applies for children if they are properly monitored.

However, we should be aware of the downside to all this. YouTube, or the internet generally, is a bottomless pit of Bitul Torah. We can literally waste hours and days watching people (gladly) make fools of themselves, revisiting previously seen entertainment and otherwise frying our brains into numbness. And what will be of the Torah? Life is too short to be wasted on frivolities.

The world is unfortunately filled with problems today, and those problems affect communities and individuals. If Chazal taught us that a suffering person should examine his deeds, and if no obvious defects are found to attribute his suffering to Bitul Torah (Berachot 5a), they knew well of what they spoke. And they spoke to every generation, including ours. That itself should be food for thought.

Within reason, watching videos can be proper but must always be secondary and tertiary to what is most important in the life of a faithful Jew.

Is it proper to go on vacation to a place with no minyan? What about a children’s day trip where there will be no minyan?

The ideal is to vacation in places where one’s spiritual level can be maintained. Almost every city in the world worth visiting has a shul with daily minyanim. Think of the effect on children when, in a foreign country or strange city, they join with other Jews, daven, and see before their eyes the wide reach of Torah and the great variety of Jews. For children, it will enrich the bond of Jewish nationhood in a way that no lecture or speech ever can. I remember visiting France as a child and feeling out of sorts in shul until they started singing “Vayehi binso’a ha’aron” in the same melody we sang at home. I felt an immediate connection to my fellow Jews. (I learned some French as well when the Rabbi asked the congregation, in French, to stop talking.)

That being said, there are places that some people consider worth visiting where minyanim are not readily available. That engenders a discussion of the precise obligation of tefilah b’tzibur. The Shulchan Aruch (Orach Chaim 90:9) uses the term “yishtadeil,” “one should try to daven in shul with the community.” That means it is not an absolute obligation, and certainly where there is no shul in the vicinity. It also means that it is improper to daven at home with a small minyan when there is a minyan in shul, something that people often take for granted today.

Nevertheless, Chazal extolled the virtues and reward of those who daven in shul every day, and it should not be lightly ignored. If one is in a place without a minyan, the Mechaber continues that he should try to daven at the same time the community elsewhere is davening, so at least then his tefilah is somehow linked to the community’s tefilah.

So it is proper, and it is even more proper and beneficial to seek out minyanim on the road so our spiritual level and love of our fellow Jews are enhanced.

    As we embark on another election campaign that is certain to produce another uncertain outcome, it might be helpful to ponder how we reached this stage in our politics. And it is far deeper than pro-Bibi and anti-Bibi, the reason de jour and probably pour le futur.

    Consider this fascinating bit of political trivia. From 1948 through 1992, the ruling party in Israel’s governments (i.e., the party of the prime minister) always had at least 40 seats in the Knesset (reaching a high of 56 mandates with Golda Meir in 1969). But since 1996, the ruling party has never had 40 seats or more. That is a huge difference and reflects an enormous change in government, and its functionality and stability. In other words, the political situation is so unstable because there is a plethora of small parties. There always were small parties – many did not cross the threshold – but there were also big parties. For the last 25 years, without any big parties, there is instability, turmoil and even chaos built into the system.

     How did this come about? It is because our political system and its participating voters have moved from the world of ideas and values into the cult of the personality.   

     At a recent talk in the United States, I challenged my audience to deduce where I live. “In my country,” I said, “the leader of the right-wing party is immensely popular among his supporters and fanatically unpopular among his detractors. There is no middle ground. This leader is a punching bag for the leftist media and a relentless target of the legal establishment. When he was in power, the government was polarized. When he is out of power, the government and the electoral system are polarized. Many people who have worked for him hate him with a passion and have turned on him with a vengeance. Others swear never to work for him. Still, his allies are numerous and fiercely loyal and so he has a hold on the electoral system. His supporters are fervent, and would do anything for him, legal or otherwise. He has immense national pride, believes in strength, is conservative with traditional values, yet has been married several times and his personal relationships are challenging, to say the least. His party is stagnant until his future plans are resolved. He has been accused of crimes and of cutting ethical corners and his supporters deride those prosecutions as political witch hunts. So, where do I live to have such a leader?”

     From that perspective, the similarities between Israel and the United States are uncanny. Both countries live under a foreboding cloud or glorious sunshine, depending on one’s politics and the leader of the moment. Both countries political systems are paralyzed. That of the United States is in a slightly better state than Israel’s because at least in America there are regular elections. Israel is in a permanent state of turbulence and disorder because elections are irregular. Not since 1988 has a scheduled election in Israel occurred. But both Trump and Netanyahu, different in so many ways and alike in so many ways, hover over the electoral map like a Colossus. How did that happen? It can’t be a coincidence. It is that something has changed in both countries.

      As the political scientist Gene Healey noted in his book, “The Cult of the Presidency,” the American presidency has evolved in unanticipated ways. The founders feared a national leader who was too powerful, so quadrennial elections and the Electoral College (and impeachment) were checks against presidential overreach. For well over a century, the president was perceived as a mere administrator. Skip past the founders, and from Andrew Jackson to Theodore Roosevelt – more than six decades – the only memorable president was Abraham Lincoln, and he was routinely accused of overstepping his authority.   

     Teddy Roosevelt enlarged the position and its role (creating the “bully pulpit”) but it was Woodrow Wilson who gave it its imperial quality. The president who leads (domestically and globally), and seeks power and not just influence. The modern president is responsible for the nation’s soul, curbing inflation, bringing down prices, creating jobs, spending money, defining the culture, and infusing the nation with his personality.

      Until the 20^th century, it was considered unseemly for a president to even campaign for the office. Subordinates spread his message. While William McKinley broke one barrier by delivering speeches from his front porch, Wilson began the tradition of frontal campaigning and directly asking for votes. In due course, candidates began to be marketed like cereal and soap and their images polished for prime time. Candidates, allegedly, appealed to voters if they could play the saxophone, and voters presumably wanted a president with whom they would be comfortable drinking beer. That has led to the modern era in which candidates are celebrities, and quickly become media stars or villains. With the process shallow and regularly becoming shallower, presidents are bound to disappoint and usually do. The presidency has become a cult of personality; ideas and policies are secondary concerns.

     Israel has traveled down this same path in a much shorter period of time. For example, neither Ben Gurion nor Menachem Begin had this same cultish following. Ben Gurion stepped down as prime minister in 1963 and hand-picked Levi Eshkol as his successor. When the two had a bitter falling out, Ben Gurion left his party and formed a new one, Rafi, taking with him eight disgruntled Labor MK’s. In the 1965 election, Labor with Eshkol and without Ben Gurion won 45 seats – three more than Ben Gurion’s Mapai had won in 1961. His Rafi party won only 10 seats and did not have a long shelf life in Israeli politics. In other words, the people who voted for Labor voted for Labor, not for Ben Gurion. It was the last time he ran for office.

    Similarly, Begin languished in opposition with a very small but devoted party until Herut merged with other parties and formed a configuration called Gachal that won 26 seats in 1965, his best showing yet. No one was more beloved by his supporters and more despised by his adversaries than Begin but he had an undersized following until his party merged in 1972 with several other parties to form Likud. That party was formed by Ariel Sharon, and it was Sharon who, among other transgressions, established the cult of personality in Israeli political life.

     Until Sharon, Israeli leaders were politicians and members of parties, and party strength and solidarity were the critical factors in elections. Sharon was the first prime minister to leave his party and start a new one – Kadima. He was basically saying – vote not for the party, just vote for me. The party stands for nothing but me. Hence, the surfeit of Israeli political party names that are meaningless. Kadima…Forward? No thought at all was given to the name of Tzipi Livni’s short-lived party – Hatenuah…The Movement? And now our ruling party is Yesh Atid…“There is a Future.” We certainly hope so. Yamin became Yamina and I was hoping this time for Yaminist, but alas it was not to be, at least not in this round.

     The party names don’t matter because the parties don’t matter. Naftali Bennett, now on temporary hiatus from political life, ran through three or four party names. The point was to encourage people to vote for him, as it is to vote for Yair Lapid, or Avigdor Lieberman, or Benny Gantz, or Aryeh Deri. It’s not the party, it’s the person. Often, it is not even discernible what the party stands for (except for those that are extremely parochial and intend only to further the narrow interests of their base) or how it differs from any other party (the plight of the Likud offshoots, defining themselves only as antagonists to the current Likud leader, as well the Religious Zionist and Otzmah Yehudit parties that agree on everything). And oddly, unlike the big parties Likud and Labor (which once was a big party), the small parties never have primaries. They are controlled by the leader. He who doesn’t like it can leave. And if the leader would ever lose popularity, he would just go out and start another party. Most of the current parties are vanity projects.

     Politics has become a nasty trade and campaigns exercises in humiliation because the cult of personality demands unfailing allegiance. And, let it be said, it is difficult to let go and for politicians to bow out gracefully (and permanently). The Gemara (Menachot 109b) quotes Rabbi Yehoshua ben Perachiah who reluctantly became the Nasi during the Second Temple era: “Initially, if someone said to me: Ascend (become Nasi), I would tie him up and put him in front of a lion [out of anger for his suggestion]. Now that I am the Nasi if someone told me to leave

the position, I would throw a kettle of boiling water at him.” He grew to like the position. And so

politics has become the art of throwing a boiling kettle at your opponent without getting scalded yourself.

     The cult of personality has had the effect of exaggerating the virtues and peccadilloes of our leaders. Until Nixon, no president was investigated for any appreciable length of time. Now,  every word and deed is scrutinized, and in Israel, we are witness to endless prosecutions of disfavored politicians that continue until something sticks, even momentarily, and which are widely perceived as politically motivated. These practices have become frighteningly normal.

     Policies don’t matter as much as personalities. Netanyahu was for the expulsion from Gush Katif and then against it, for a Palestinian state and then against it. And he is not the only such zigzagging politician. But he knows, as the others do, that people are voting for him, personally, come what may and whatever he might do.
     We must return to being a people and an electorate of ideas, not personalities. We should never be so charmed by one individual that we throw away our cherished beliefs and principles. We should never be so revolted by one person that we throw away our cherished beliefs and principles in the other direction and latch on to his or her opponent, just because… and regardless of what they will say or do.

     The good news is that, as frustrating as it seems, this indecision is the way it is supposed to be. It is what makes Moshiach stand out – a leader who is moral and unifying and even unimaginable to the generation that welcomes him, who sees himself only as an agent of God. He will be the leader who unites, inspires and exalts his generation. Until that day, may it come soon, we should vote based on ideas and values, and thus better secure our present and prepare for that glorious future.

Rick Jacobs, head of the Reform Jewish movement, has demanded that “ultra-Orthodox Jews” denounce the recent attack at the egalitarian prayer site at the Kotel by young hooligans dressed in “ultra-Orthodox” garb. I speak for no one but myself but I denounce, condemn and repudiate those attacks that included harassment, destruction of prayer books and the like. I don’t know who the attackers were, from where they came or who instigated them (if anyone). My denunciation is unequivocal.

     Yet, it cannot rest there. I noticed that amid the plethora of Reform Jewish fulminations against the US Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe. v. Wade, which sent the determination of the legality of abortion back to the state legislatures, I do not recall hearing of even one Reform Jewish criticism of the violent attacks on Christian pro-life clinics in America nor any censure of the relentless, illegal and dangerous harassment of the Supreme Court justices. Call this selective outrage. Well, now you know what happens when people feel that their sacred institutions are trampled upon, in Reform’s case, abortion, and in our case, the Kotel.

     It is possible to unequivocally condemn the assault at the Kotel and still recognize the Reform provocation that fomented the assault. It is absolutely true that even vulgar provocations are no excuse to lose control and commit despicable acts of violence against property and harassment against people. Torah Jews, if that is who they were, should know better. And there is a long history of provocations from the non-Orthodox including those of the Women of the Wall, who have long violated halacha, Israeli law, and even common decency (smuggling a Torah under someone’s dress) with their monthly antics, and thereby disturbed the prayers of thousands of faithful women coming to this hallowed site. Certainly, the provocations of these adult women should be held to a higher standard than the immature, senseless and wrong actions of a bunch of teenagers. The pain caused to religious Jews is real and is not going away, even as the criticism of the Reformers is wrapped in waves of sanctimoniousness.

       Here is the bottom line. We love you, Reform Jews, but we despise the qualifier that you have placed before “Jews.” We are not angry but sad, sad at the destruction you have wrought to Jewish life, and sad at the sheer inability to recognize the harm you have already caused and persist in causing. You are asking – sometimes demanding – for modifications that we cannot grant. Here are some examples.

 You are asking us to rewrite the definition of Jewishness. We love you all, but even you, Rick Jacobs, once conceded that a majority of “Reform” Jews are no longer Jews according to Jewish law. You have taken an identity that is God-given and emptied it of meaning and import. This action, born of the necessity of keeping members affiliated due to the astronomical rate of intermarriage in your movement, has grievously injured Jewish unity and peoplehood. Rather than admit this historic error, you double down, and pretend that you are retaining Jews instead of repelling them. But the definition of Jewishness is not changing. It is immutable.

 You are asking us to rewrite the Torah. We love you, but we resent your grievances against our God-given Torah, if you even believe that God gave us the Torah. The Torah is “perfect” (Psalms 19:8) but you reject that foundational principle of Judaism. You have renounced the core of Torah and have jettisoned those practices that mark our uniqueness, our “wisdom and understanding in the eyes of the nations (Devarim 4:6). In so doing, you have stripped Judaism of its majesty and reduced it to a series of platitudes. You interpret Judaism through the prism of Western values that you deem superior. In the United States, you have been labeled with justification “the Democratic party with holidays.” Your Torah bears a faint resemblance to the Torah. But we are not reforming the Torah in order to accommodate your value system. Our Torah is immutable.

 You are asking us to ignore the desecration of our holy places. St. Peter’s Square does not contain a Protestant church, just like Mecca does not offer a variety of mosques to service every Muslim denomination. They possess self-respect. But you insist after many decades of acquiescence in changing the status quo at the Kotel. In the shadow of the holiest site in Judaism – the mountain that housed two Temples, for whose rebuilding you do not pray – you demand that your reformed service, with its mixed seating, singing and dancing, all done without a modicum of modesty, be not just tolerated but even celebrated. At the very place from which we derived the necessity of gender separation during prayer, you brazenly clamor for worshipping in your own style and then wonder why that should be provocative. But we are not denuding the Kotel of its sanctity or transforming it into some national, historic tourist site devoid of holiness in order to satisfy your needs.

     It is two minutes to midnight. You are close to causing an irreparable schism in Jewish life. Insiders know that the Reform movement’s detachment from Israel results not from a shift in values (maybe that too) but primarily from a shift in demographics. So many “Reform” Jews are no longer Jews that it is unsurprising that support for Israel has waned. We know as well that these provocations are necessary to generate interest and fund-raising.

      We are pained by your historic error and want nothing more than your return. We perceive you as desecrating our Torah, our peoplehood, and now our holy places. One sin begets another. Your rejection of Torah and mitzvot necessitated a redefinition of Jewishness that has now eventuated in a demand for a place at the Kotel, remnant of the Holy Temple, to appease your egalitarian impulses that are antithetical to the Torah. We do not want to witness your celebration of intermarriages at the Kotel on Tish’a B’Av, but you know that will invariably occur.

      These words are written in genuine sorrow and anguish. You can still save the remnant of your followers. And I can denounce the assault on you and the sanctity of the Kotel and denounce as well your provocation that induced it.  Focusing on the shameful actions of a group of unruly teenagers is deflecting from the real issues that involve the shameful actions of unruly adults who should know better.  It is great PR within the echo chamber and good for fund-raising but it is no way to bring Jews together in these perilous times. Let us all reflect on what is wrong, and what can be rectified, and salvage the honor of the Torah, the Kotel, the Jewish people, and the land of Israel.

      What is celebrated as “Pride” Month should not be allowed to pass without injecting a small dose of reality into the bacchanalia. Despite the merriment, the relentless adoration of the media, the parades and the provocations, the conduct of the “Pride” community remains forbidden according to the Torah, defies traditional norms that have sustained civilization since antiquity and threatens to undermine the family, which is the bedrock of civil society.

Let us give credit where credit is due. In the most successful marketing campaign in history, within a span of just a few decades, advocates went from a situation in which their preferred private conduct was a crime to where same sex marriage is legal in much of the world. What began as a quest for equality and tolerance has metamorphosed into a vehement demand for the silencing of all critics, a denial of their rights and liberties, and ongoing attempts to cancel and destroy them. In the United States, from a request two decades ago that same sex partners be granted visitation rights in hospitals, we have now reached the stage in which seemingly intelligent people who possess advanced academic degrees and prestigious titles become tongue-tied and incoherent when asked to define the nature of a woman. That is a marketing success.

     It was engendered first by co-opting language. Traditionalists were automatically deemed “phobic,” as if our commitment to moral norms makes us “afraid” of those who do not share those commitments. That is preposterous. Delightful words like “gay” or “pride,” and stirring ideas like “tolerance” and “freedom” were kidnapped by advocates for an agenda long rejected as inimical to society. Take, for example, the incomprehensible use of the term “pride.” Pride, as I understand it, is an internal feeling generated by a sense of accomplishment or achievement.  As the dictionary would have it, it is the “pleasure or satisfaction taken in something done by or belonging to oneself or believed to reflect credit upon oneself.” One feels pride in completing the Daf Yomi, winning the Nobel Prize or the World Series, or finding the cure for cancer. These are considerations that are external to the self.

     It is true that I take pride in being a Jew, in the sense that I feel blessed to be part of a nation divinely chosen to represent God’s morality on earth (however flawed we might be in executing that task) and entrusted with the Torah and the land of Israel to achieve that goal. But do I feel pride in being a tall, white, green-eyed male heterosexual? That would be absurd. I did nothing to attain any of that. A desire to copulate with the same sex is not an accomplishment – for that matter, nor is the same desire towards the opposite sex an accomplishment. Yet, we are incessantly lectured that this condition is innate, whether or not that is true. If so, what is the attainment that should evoke this pride? It is both linguistically and psychologically misplaced – but it is effective.

     The campaign has also been successful because it is always on the offensive.  Most rabbis – especially in America – have been intimidated into silence stemming from fear and compassion (in varying degrees for each person). People are threatened, jobs are lost, personal attacks are normative, and social media campaigns are ruthless and unyielding. They only cease when good people just ignore them. For many people, it is not worth the effort to address the issue.  “Pride” advocates have become intolerant bullies who cannot even hear another view, even if that view is divine and rooted in the Torah’s morality. So good, moral people are forced to be silent, swallow their opinions in the public domain, and try to salvage some semblance of morality in their private lives and families. There are three problems with this.

     Firstly, the Torah becomes mangled and distorted. Yeshivot today, especially in the Modern Orthodox and Religious Zionist worlds, struggle with moral instruction on what is a fundamental Torah concern. They are coerced into avoiding or tap-dancing around the issue. Rebbeim are instructed to eschew talking about it for fear of offending someone, somewhere. Profiles in courage, it is not.

     Secondly, the effect on the family is devastating. Families dealing with this issue need compassion and support; what they don’t need is to be lied to or to coerce others to join in their charade. It is increasingly common in the Modern Orthodox world to invite friends and relatives to same-sex weddings, essentially forcing others to violate Torah principles in order to make the parents feel better about their situation. That is unequivocally wrong. Modern Orthodoxy is especially under siege today – and fighting for its viability – because the gap between “modern” and “Orthodoxy” is a yawning chasm that cannot be navigated. It wasn’t like that fifty, not even twenty, years ago. It is like that today. Within the movement, it is undeniable that for a variety of reasons, when these challenges arise, “modern” always trumps “orthodoxy.”

     Thirdly, advocates have intimidated the legal and political establishments in banning (in many jurisdictions) what is intentionally and misleadingly called “conversion therapy.” Same sex attraction has become the only psychological concern on planet earth that cannot be dealt with therapeutically. It was done by highlighting rare cases of bizarre therapies – more a problem of the therapist than the therapy – and completely vitiates behavioral modification therapy which has been known to work for same-sex attraction as for other maladies. It is peculiar, indeed it is actually evil, to tell a person who wants help in overcoming a particular proclivity that the law prohibits any change. Even assuming that it doesn’t always work and that no one should be forced to undergo such therapy, it is immoral to tell people that they cannot change or better their lives if they so desire. It is pure malevolence to tell those individuals that they are not allowed to change their orientations – but encouraging young children to mutilate their bodies to change their sexes is somehow reasonable, even laudable. It is an insane, dangerous and harmful world.

     There is a playbook that advocates follow in order to stifle dissenting opinions. It has several elements. First, traditionalists are told that their objections will “kill people” and “instigate violence.” Cause and effect are never demonstrated. Obviously, any such violence, however limited, is condemnable. But in today’s cruel world, whites, blacks, Hispanics, heterosexuals, Jews, Christians, Muslims, doctors, lawyers and accountants, are all victims of violence. Homosexuals have no monopoly on victimhood. There is no inherent or rational reason why opposition to the “pride” agenda should provoke violence. This is fear-mongering, promoted by provocative bullies. (It is ironic that much thought went into changing the route of the Yerushalayim flag march so as not to provoke the Arabs, while no thought went into changing the route of the “pride” parade – a blatant provocation to the sensibilities of the majority religious population in the Holy City.)

    Second, traditionalists are told that their objections will lead to suicides, which is all the more reason why therapy is warranted for those who live in this predicament. Ironically, a recent Heritage Foundation showed that there is a much higher suicide rate among teens who are medically transitioning than among those who struggle with sexual confusion but are not medically transitioning. 

    Third, traditionalists are called names – “bigot” or “hate-monger” being the most common epithets. Traditionalists are lectured that they are being cruel, insensitive and intolerant. These lectures are proffered by those who, without even the slightest bit of self-awareness, have become cruel, insensitive and intolerant to those who disagree with them. “Live and let live” has become “Live and I will force you to agree with me or you shall die.” Name-calling, as always, is a poor substitute for reasoned argument but it makes for good placards and sound bites. Good people who hear the name-calling should yawn and tune out. it is meant to intimidate, not to persuade.

      Fourth, traditionalists are told that they cannot “impose their morality” on others. Indeed, public coercion is lamentable and ineffective. But should the bullies have the privilege of imposing their immorality on others? Who would have thought that a quest for “equality” and “freedom” would become a macabre circus in which dissenting views are suppressed, dissenters are persecuted and business people – photographers, bakers, florists, caterers, hall owners and others – would be coerced into violating their own religious beliefs or be sued into submission. 

     The United States Supreme Court has, to date, upheld the religious liberties of dissenters, at least in some limited cases but as yet without a clear forceful statement of individual rights. Israel lags behind in protecting religious freedom.  A catering hall owner in Beersheva who refused to host a same sex wedding paid a settlement of 80,000 NIS. The Rav of the Technion was assailed for criticizing the decadence of a drag party.  An Israeli organization that supports the traditional family is basically construed as a hate group. A lower court in New York City ordered Yeshiva University to open a “pride” club, as its denial violated the City’s human rights law and ruling that YU is not a “religious institution.” YU will appeal, and even if they lose in the State’s appellate courts, a federal lawsuit is warranted. The  US Supreme Court has become the leading legal defenders of religious liberty. Nevertheless, the well funded bullies are still winning, religious freedom remains under attack and traditionalists are castigated and canceled. They are pilloried on social media and their employers are harassed into firing them. Advocates must learn to accept that people are entitled to disagree with them on moral and religious grounds, and they should be tolerant of that.

     Finally, the playbook suggests that traditionalists be badgered that if the “pride” agenda is not accepted, then the advocates will go “off the derech.” They will leave Orthodoxy. If parents do not celebrate their marriages, and invite their friends, they will “cut off all relations.” There is certainly merit to the argument that even if they sin in this area, they should still try to perform all the other mitzvot. Yet, we must distinguish between people who succumb to sin – all of us – and people who celebrate sin and demand others celebrate with them. That is no longer a personal violation but a rejection of the system. In a real sense, they have already rejected Orthodoxy, tradition, the Torah and their families. Besides, blackmail is unbecoming, and a moral argument that is founded on blackmail is both hollow and unappealing.

     What is the way forward?  Traditional Jews are not abandoning or reforming the Torah.  The pride agenda should be countered, with love and joy. We should declare May or July to be “Traditional Family Month” with parades and floats, and an orange flag that is emblazoned with the blue images of father and mother, son and daughter. We should speak –yes, with pride – about the delights of the traditional family, the core of the Jewish home and the Jewish state.  We should acknowledge that this movement is a driving force of the execrable modern craving to publicize even the most private aspects of one’s life; that alone must be reversed in all its dimensions. We should be unafraid to articulate the values of the Torah, without any rancor, hatred, mockery or condescension but with an abundance of love and compassion. My guess is that most people feel sorry for those suffering in this plight rather than feel any rage or antagonism.

     And we should be candid and forthright. Sometimes the truth can sound insensitive, which doesn’t make it any less true. The Torah is not changing. Homosexual conduct is and will remain forbidden, and no number of parades or floats will change that. Traditionalists will not celebrate it, which doesn’t mean they love their children any less.  Those who face challenges in this area and neither succumb or celebrate are Jewish heroes.  Rabbis who unabashedly preach the Torah morality should be extolled and defended. The Torah was given to us, and the Jewish state exists, not to parrot the debauched morals of the nations but to be a beacon of light as to what is best for mankind. That is why the Torah is always countercultural, in every generation.
Most people would be content with live and let live, with keeping private conduct private, and with restoring some semblance of decency and propriety in public life. Tolerance is a two-way street. Advocates must abandon the power high that convinces them they are entitled to tell people what they are allowed feel, think,  say, do and legislate.  No,  thank you! For that, good Jews have the Torah. And that is another dose of reality whose acceptance by all would calm these turbulent waters and make us all better people.