Author Archives: Rabbi

The American gun debate has been a dialogue of the deaf for decades and no end is in sight. That is for the simple reason that the two sides each reflect incompatible and irreconcilable views on the matter. To simplify a bit, when one side feels that society would be safer with more guns and the other side feels society would be safer with fewer or no guns, there is not much middle ground that can bridge the differences. One side blames the gun for the crime (as if guns fire themselves) and the other side blames the perpetrator for the crime (as if he could kill people if he didn’t have a gun). And so horrendous tragedies such as last week’s  school massacre in Florida will continue to occur, rachmana litzlan.

Each side retreats to its arguments whenever a horrendous school shooting occurs. One side blames the easy access to guns as so obvious that it brooks no discussion. The other side blames the failure to diagnose and treat mental illness or at least intervene and curb the anger and delusions of the disaffected. There are so many layers to the problem that it becomes difficult even to discuss them or analyze them dispassionately. No one is in favor of providing weapons to the mentally ill; by the same token, we pride ourselves in not stigmatizing mental illness, so how can their rights be restricted? And by whom shall they be restricted? Add to this the collapse of the American family since the moral breakdown of the 1960’s – the plethora of fatherless children, the aimlessness of many youth, the broken homes and the lack of any moral guidance from authority figures (schools, churches, etc.) and one big problem looms. Add to this a culture that glorifes violence spawned by movies , television and video games that make killing look like fun and conscience-free. And add to that the modern drug of “fame” – the yearning to be noticed, to matter, to be significant in the eyes of society – as if that has any enduring value. There are too many losers who act in anti-social ways to get attention; a small percentage of them will turn violent.

It has reached a point where the arguments no longer address the issue at hand and the proposals made by the politicians satisfy a core constituency but would not solve the problem at all. Trying to prevent a school shooting by tightening the terrorist watch list is a non sequitur. Blaming the NRA and their campaign contributions for the presence of gun violence ignores the reality of the Second Amendment and presupposes that politicians would be amenable to restricting gun ownership if only they had the will. But such is false; most politicians – and most Americans – support gun ownership because they believe in the right of self-defense, itself a cardinal Torah principle: “He who comes to slay you, rise up and slay him first” (Masechet Yoma 85b). There is no virtue to allowing yourself to be killed by a criminal.

Defending the Constitution is seemingly as American as apple pie but its sundry clauses – especially in the Bill of Rights – always vex one group or another and is often under assault by government. Just in the last few years, the First Amendment’s “free exercise” of religion clause was assaulted by a variety of Obama administration measures, particularly regarding the provision of health care; many perceive the Trump’s administration’s hostility and verbal assaults on the media as infringing on freedom of the press; and all of us are subjected, and not always legally, to intrusive surveillance, searches and occasionally seizures with little redress, despite the Fourth Amendment.  The Seventh Amendment’s right to a trial by jury sounds great but has not always served the cause of truth and justice.

For better or worse, guns are ingrained in American culture and it is foolhardy to think that the confiscation of 300,000,000 firearms (count ‘em) is feasible even if it were sensible. Some people, naturally horrified by school shootings and the deaths of innocent children, can rail against the prevalence of guns in society but usually will be unaware of the positive roles guns play in the society. The NRA magazine features a monthly column entitled “The Armed Citizen,” in which there are at least a dozen accounts drawn from local media of citizens who saved their own lives (and those of others) by employing a firearm against a hostile entity – intruder, burglar, assailant, rapist, etc. I sense that these accounts weigh more heavily on people’s minds that even the random shootings that, gun control advocates think, should shock people out of their lethargy. Obviously there is a hunting culture in America that uses weapons with much firepower, but since hunting doesn’t speak to me at all (Jews are not hunters) I downplay its role in this debate. Safety first.

If almost everyone is in agreement that someone like the Florida school shooter should not have been able to purchase a weapon, then why can’t laws be crafted that make it more difficult for such malefactors to be denied access and easier for the good citizens to acquire and carry firearms?

It also needs to be noted that, I suspect, most homicides in America are committed with illegal weapons, not ones that are legally purchased. Illegal weapons are easily attainable, even though the average citizen would never seek to acquire an illegal weapon. As such, gun control that is too restrictive leaves weapons primarily in the hands of the criminals and outside the reach of the innocent. That doesn’t seem fair. Nor does it make any sense to argue – as politicians do all the time – that this or that law would have made a difference. Last I checked, there are laws against homicide and yet, somehow, those laws don’t deter homicidal maniacs from killing people. It is not the law as much as it is the person and the person’s capacity and willingness to obey the law.

The most recent miscreant fell through the cracks and had all the indicia of trouble. Given up for adoption, adopted parents dead, expelled from school for violence, drifting, aimless, no future and no hope – a ticking time bomb ready to explode. In his own demented way, he was crying out for help. Someone who posts on the internet using his real name that “I want to grow up to be a professional school shooter” is begging to be noticed and stopped. That no follow up was done – that he was not found – is outrageous incompetence for which someone should be called to account. A cynic might speculate that had he said “I want to grow up to be a professional school shooter and I have evidence that Trump colluded with Russia before the election” the FBI would have found him within an hour. And the ongoing problem is that had he been found, there are no laws and there is no protocol that could have confined, stopped or deterred him.

There is no one law that will be a panacea, especially in the face of the great dysfunction of the American family. And it is not as simple as saying “we should not allow weapons in the hands of the mentally ill;” is a battered woman suffering from depression under the care of a psychiatrist and threatened by a violent ex-husband “mentally ill” and therefore not permitted to buy a gun to use to defend herself? And there are gradations of mental illness as well, from mild to severe.

What is needed in the long term is a cultural change – a moral renaissance reflected in the “bourgeois values” touted by Professor Amy Wax in an article whose thesis is so self-evident that in today’s climate was considered controversial and offensive – but even in the short term measures are necessary and mostly at hand. Schools are currently soft targets, accessible to one and all, student and psychopath alike. That has to change, and providing armed guards during school hours and searches, screening and profiling for all who enter the school building should be obvious. Such is done in Israel, as is the discreet arming of some teachers who rotate carrying concealed weapons on their persons. That secures the target, reasonably if not perfectly, and greatly enhances the chances of failure of the attacker to achieve his nefarious aims as to deter even the attempt.

As the school shooters have almost all been young males – from their teens to their 20’s – it is clear that males who have been expelled from school for violence, are under the care of a mental health professional, or have exhibited cruel and unusual behavior should be placed on a watch list that denies them access to legal weapons unless they are permitted to do so by a judge upon the testimony of doctors, parents, guardians and the like. Again, this is reasonable but not perfect. So is this: adults who store weapons in their homes and do not secure them sufficiently to prevent their use by murderers should be held criminally liable with a mandatory minimum prison sentence. Ah, isn’t this blaming the victim? Well, sometimes the victim deserves some of the blame. It is not sufficient to say “I trusted him,” “I didn’t know he had a duplicate key,” “I tried to turn him into a responsible adult,” etc. If it happens on your watch, you are liable. That should get the attention of law-abiding gun owners.

It is not fair to punish hundreds of millions of law-abiding citizens because of the despicable acts of a handful of people. Nor should we renounce constitutional rights that have safeguarded American liberties and provided an effective means of self-defense. Nor should we wash our hands and say that nothing can be done because there is no perfect solution. There is no perfect solution – the psychopaths can also acquire illegal weapons, psychologists will claim that putting their patients on a watch list would violate confidentiality and encourage reticence, the fantasy of a gun-free society will always animate some – but a sane society takes elementary measures to keep weapons out of the hands of the disaffected, a sane government focuses its efforts on defending its citizens, especially its children, and rational politicians – interested in more than retaining their seats and its access to the lucre of modern politics – know how to address complex issues with substance, sensitivity and efficacy.

The Jewish Press (February 16, 2018) asked a number of rabbis to address this interesting but rarely-discussed question: “Some of the most famous and important works of literature contain passages and themes that are immodest in nature. May a G-d-fearing Jew read these works for the good they contain, or must he forego reading them entirely?”

This is the link to the entire feature: http://www.jewishpress.com/sections/books/on-the-bookshelf-23/2018/02/16/

These were my thoughts on the matter:

     I don’t believe there is a definitive answer to this question, although it is certainly easier just to say “no.” Much depends on motivation, purpose, context, source, and especially the precise nature of the immorality, of which, of course, there are gradations. Perhaps the most important determinant is the message that is being delivered. Ancient and medieval works generally frowned on immorality and as such reinforce a Torah message while more modern and contemporary works often celebrate immorality. Usually, no good comes from the latter and prolonged exposure to values that are antithetical to Torah will eventually dilute the reader’s moral perspective and later his or her practice and commitment as well.
It’s important to note that Chazal (recorded in Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chaim 307:16) banned the reading of “divrei cheshek” – loosely, books of romance – as a waste of time that could be spent on more godly pursuits and as a tool that could only increase illicit temptation. Books that might fall under that genre must therefore have some redeeming value. Its prurient aspects must be incidental to its primary message for it to be considered appropriate and worthwhile. Fiction generally, Rav Kook wrote, affords us the opportunity to see the world through the eyes of another person’s experiences and thus can broaden our horizons. But not every lifestyle or experience deserves to be investigated, studied or fantasized about and certainly not emulated. So caution must be applied.
That being said, there is one Book that exposes the vices and venality that can permeate human nature and is unsparing in its accounts of our failings.  It is superior to any work of fiction. That Book is the Tanach. And we can rest assured that its moral guidance is always spot on. Anyone who wants to learn about our potential for degradation as well great virtue is urged to study the relevant passages and not just skip over them. They provide a solid grounding in moral instruction and, nevertheless, occasionally put human dysfunction on display. One who is drawn to indulge in problematic works of literature would be well advised to study the works of Tanach instead, especially the chronicles of the early prophets. “Turn in it and turn in it, for everything is in it”( Avot 5:22).

  The great baseball player Rogers Hornsby, still holder of the single-season record batting of .424, once said: “People ask me what I do in winter when there’s no baseball. I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.”

       He is not the only one, and this has nothing to do with baseball. It has been an unusually cold winter in much of the United States with temperatures even in New Jersey hovering for weeks near zero degrees. Let the scientists debate the global ramifications; each side offers definitive proof to its proponents of the correctness of its views and the errors of their dissidents. All I know is that it is cold outside, and then it gets colder. I am not even warmed by the realization that our ancestors in Eastern Europe – in Russia, Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine and elsewhere – lived through much colder winters although I am certain that added to the general melancholy of life in the Pale of Settlement and places further east.

      There are some people who enjoy the winter, with its beautiful vistas and the opportunity to ski some exotic mountain ranges. All I see is snow that has to be shoveled and ice that has to be avoided lest one encounter some unexpected peril. There are cities in the world that suffer during the winter with only seven hours of daylight, something which can only add to the desolation. Those who enjoy warm weather endure the winter and wait for spring, and those who spend the winter in temperate climes and complain when their thermometer hits sixty degrees find little sympathy in these parts.

     Adding to the gloominess is that we have no Biblical holidays in the winter. The holidays that are recorded in the Torah all occur during the spring and fall when the climate is temperate and the verdant beauties of nature are alive. In essence, the three regalim (Pesach, Shavuot and Succot) are all agricultural holidays, notwithstanding their historical connotations as well. The winter, therefore, should be the time of our discontent.

     And yet, that is the way G-d re-created His world when mankind was redeemed after the Great Flood. G-d promised never again to destroy the world and afforded our ancestors the variety of climatic conditions experienced today by much of the globe: “As long as the earth exists, there will be seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night; it will never cease” (Breishis 8:22). As there is a cycle to life, so too there are rhythms to the year, and in each new setting, we are challenged to be productive, serve our Creator and spread kindness among His creations.

     The winter, its chill and precipitation are all opportunities to praise G-d and marvel at His creation. “Praise Hashem from the earth…fire and hail, snow and vapor, the stormy winds fulfill His word” (Tehillim 148:7-8). Life is not all “mountains and hills, fruit trees and cedars” (ibid 148:9). G-d is the Master of nature in all its forms – and the Master of nations as well, “kings of the earth and all nations, princes and all judges on earth” (ibid 148:11).

     The earth lies dormant during winter. It conserves its strength, marshals its energies and finds renewal in the spring. Winter is the time for the earth to regroup. Indeed, the same could be said of the Jewish people. One reason that there are no Biblical holidays in winter is that it is a time for us to regroup as well. We survive the winter, both physically and spiritually. The holidays that we do celebrate during the cold season are Rabbinic holidays that commemorate our survival – Chanuka (our spiritual survival in exile) and Purim (our physical survival). As we marvel at the earth and its capacity to replenish itself and come back to life as the temperature warms, so too we should be astonished (and grateful) for our survival as a nation throughout the bitter harshness of exile. Against all odds, and only with the grace of G-d, have we been able to endure what no other nation has, and both survive and thrive, outlasting great empires that tried to eradicate us.

      During winter, we recoup, carry on, and reflect on our durability and eternity, but we are a people of the spring. We are duly commanded to “observe the month of spring, and bring the Pesach offering to the Lord, your G-d, because it was in the month of spring that the Lord, Your G-d, took you out of Egypt” (Devarim 14:1). The Jewish calendar is built around several propositions, the most important of which is that Pesach must always fall in the spring.

       The Jewish people have been given up for dead many times by our enemies, almost disappearing into the wintry frost of the ghettos and the Gulag. Yet, our national existence parallels that of the spring. The nations of the world have their moment in the sun of summer and then they disappear. We are eternally young, a people of spring. Even during the darkest and bleakest moments of winter, we still dream and remember. If the winter is the time when creativity and growth are stifled, it can nevertheless also be the springboard to even greater growth when it passes.

       Rav Kook wrote that the Exodus from Egypt will always be spring, not just for us, but the world’s spring as well. We are responsible for the blossoming of the national idea and charged with ensuring that the nations use their political formations for good and not evil. Like the seed of winter that disintegrates before it achieves new life, we must always have before our mind’s eye that the darkest times are only preludes to the fulfillment of our national destiny in the spring.

      As King Shlomo wrote: “Behold the winter has passed, the rains have come and gone, the blossoms have appeared on the land and the time of your song has arrived” (Shir Hashirim 2:11-12). May we soon merit the full blossoming of our redemption.

Is there a uniquely Jewish approach to immigration?

Obviously, Jews have benefited from liberal immigration policies, such as existed in the United States from 1880-1923, and suffered grievously from restrictive immigration policies in the years before and during the Holocaust. But Jewish Law proscribes even the entry of, for example, idolaters, to the Land of Israel, much less their permanent residence. Gerei Toshav who by definition embrace the Noachide laws are welcome, to a point determined by the society. That sounds reasonable.

To read some of the statements of the Jewish left, one would think that Jews support unlimited immigration, as if every person on the planet has the right to live wherever he or she chooses to live. That is certainly a compassionate sentiment, albeit unrealistic, and compassion that is not tempered by realism is harmful and foolish. It is as if the Treaty of Westphalia that established in 1648 the ground rules of the system of nation-states is as dead as the Oslo Accords. We can delude ourselves into thinking that we are in a post-national world where defined borders and distinct national identities no longer matter but wishing it so does not make it so. Indeed, the restrictions built into Jewish Law on residence in Israel for foreigners is designed to maintain the unique character of the Jewish polity that would be diluted by the residence of large numbers of aliens; we are, after all, “the fewest among the nations.”

Nowhere is this dilemma highlighted more than in the current debates over illegal immigration in the United States and the presence of illegal migrants in Israel. Naturally, the leftist spokesmen who habitually distort the Torah’s view on any issue that intersects with their political positions favor what appears to be unlimited immigration to America (although they won’t call it that) and have recently criticized Israel for endeavoring to deport some 40,000 migrant workers from Somalia, Eritrea and Sudan who escaped to Israel looking for work but have also brought terror, crime and general misery to the Jews of South Tel Aviv where they disproportionately reside. We are sympathetic to the plight of the refugee and all refugees, i.e., people fleeing persecution, deserve temporary havens until permanent places of residence can be found. But not every person who leaves his country of origin is a “refugee” as classically understood and as naturally evokes the sympathy of Jews and all decent people.

For example, people who leave their home countries that “lack infrastructure, opportunity and stability” (to “paraphrase” President Trump) are not necessarily refugees who are entitled to a haven in their country of choice. Thus, in Israel, the migrant workers sneaked in to the country to seek greater economic opportunity, certainly understandable from their perspective. But every nation has a responsibility first and foremost to its own citizens and when uninvited newcomers threaten to unravel the social dynamic, a country is obligated to protect itself. In Israel’s case, it built a wall on its southern border that reduced illegal migration by 99%, part of the impetus for the Trump approach and a rebuke to those who say that walls are obsolete. They are not, even in America’s case where so many illegal immigrants just overstay their visas. But a wall is certainly a necessary step to prevent the entry of contraband and to reduce the number of illegals who cross the border.  And there are plenty of poor Israelis who need job assistance and public support, and a nation that defines itself as a Jewish state must seek to retain its character. That means providing temporary asylum and then return to a country that is more culturally and religiously homogenous to the entrants.

The situation in the United States is more complicated as it defines itself as a nation of immigrants, and no nation has been more receptive to immigration than the United States. But the inability of people to distinguish between legal and illegal immigration is as astonishing as it is farcical. By the tenor of the debate, an observer would assume that anyone opposed to illegal immigration is opposed to immigration generally. That is a canard, one that is bolstered by the semantic games played – played extremely well – by the left. In the recent past, the term “illegal immigrant” has become a pejorative and replaced by “undocumented immigrant,” as if the problem is mere paperwork. By that logic, shoplifting is just an “undocumented acquisition,” a shopper frustrated by the failure to exchange the right paper (i.e., money) with the merchant.

The more recent past has seen advocacy for the “Dreamers,” another inspired euphemism that refers to children brought here illegally as minors by their illegal immigrant parents. The euphemism is a marketer’s delight; who could be against a “Dreamer” but a nasty troglodyte? If they would be referred to by a more accurate moniker, such as CHIIPS (Children of Illegal Immigrants ParentS), somehow their cause wouldn’t seem as fetching.  And this is so notwithstanding the sympathy that any normal person has for their plight, brought and raised here, Americans in all but name.

What exacerbates this debate is the extremes on both sides that reflect dueling values. It seems odd that neither side recognizes that there are competing values that must somehow be accommodated and can only be accommodated through reasonable compromise that should leave both extreme camps somewhat unhappy but most people gratified that a permanent solution has been achieved.  Not to oversimplify too much, but at its core, the conflict pits chesed (kindness) against tzedek (justice).

Thus advocates of unrestricted immigration present as paragons of compassion and morality, support stable families, dismiss crimes of illegal aliens as aberrations and unrepresentative of most illegals, and recognize that these immigrants often do work that Americans spurn and thus help the economy and the business climate. That is by and large true, although it doesn’t account for the anguished sense that one vicious crime committed by someone who should not be here is one too many, and it totally ignores the unfairness implicit in rewarding lawbreakers (illegal immigrants) while penalizing foreigners who applied for immigration through regular channels and are waiting their turn to immigrate lawfully. To reward lawbreakers by granting them amnesty incentivizes more law-breaking, and to grant even temporary relief without taking elementary measures of self-defense (such as a wall, increased security along the border, an end to chain migration and the like) is an exercise in futility as it just encourages even more illegal conduct.

These advocates also reject the notion that there is a particular American identity, and so do not mind that new immigrants (especially illegal) often do not make even the slightest effort to assimilate into the American culture and value system such as was common among our immigrant parents and grandparents. To them, talk of an “American ethos” is a synonym for “white supremacy.” Whatever that is supposed to mean, it is perceived as a compelling argument that should stifle all debate. But part of the polarization that has roiled America for almost two decades has been engendered by the diminution of an American “character,” and avoiding this issue will only make the situation worse and potentially irreparable. It is ironic that some of the loudest advocates for unlimited immigration to America are also some of the loudest voices castigating the country and its citizens as racists, sexists, xenophobes, etc., which begs the question: why would anyone want to live in such a country? And yet people still want to come – by the millions.

By the same token, proponents of restrictive immigration policies sometimes do not recognize the abject conditions that exist in some of these countries that “lack infrastructure, opportunity and stability” that drive myriads of people to want to leave their birthplaces, homes and sometimes families to seek opportunity in the United States. It is as if they don’t realize that America remains a magnet for the rest of the world, and what is often considered a “problem” here would be a blessing in much of the rest of the world. They should also recognize the humanitarian interest in formalizing the status of the CHIIPS; there is something awry when – as has happened – a CHIIP on active duty in the US military can face, or his parents can face, deportation.

Immigration can be boon to a country even as it can also undermine social harmony. Every new wave of immigration brings with it a criminal element; even immigrant Jews in the early 20th century had a criminal underworld although we outgrew it after several decades. (Look it up: there were Jewish mobsters who would not murder on Shabbat out of respect for their observant parents.)

A zero tolerance policy is in order for illegal aliens who commit crimes. Otherwise, the compromise being suggested strikes me as fair: a big wall that prevents infiltrations and smuggling, increased security at the borders, legalizing the status of the CHIIPS (or Dreamers) over time even allowing full citizenship if appropriate after a decade or more from the bill’s passing, and even finding some legal status for the current illegals whose only crime to date was crossing into America illegally.

Of course, it’s not perfect. Law and order proponents (“yikov hadin et hahar”) will be dismayed by rewarding any illegality. Unlimited immigration proponents will cry foul at any restrictions or limitations on full acceptance of non-citizens as citizens. In the broad middle, a solution is to be found that aspires to fairness and justice, and effects the proper balance between chesed and tzedek.

The partisans can keep fighting about this issue for a few more decades or leaders acting in good faith (if there are any left) can act. Which is more likely? We will see.