Category Archives: Contemporary Life

Betrayal and Salvation

Posted on December 5, 2013 | 9 comments

Here in Israel, Chanuka is a magical time, celebrated as a national holiday and for the best reason: it is a national holiday. One night, I attended the lighting of the Menorah at the Kotel (the Western Wall, the remnant of the ancient Temple) and it is an incomparable experience to be present at the very location where the miracle of Chanuka occurred, just footsteps away. The previous Chief Rabbi, Rav Shlomo Amar, presided, in front of a crowd of more than 1000 people. The plaza was illuminated, alive and bustling – and Chanuka was more than the seasonal, gift-giving, party holiday it has become in America but rather an authentic expression of Jewish history before our eyes that arouses a present yearning for the rebuilding of the Temple.

The miracles of Chanuka are also being commemorated this year at a time when Israelis (and thinking Americans) see the looming specter of an emboldened jihadist Iran on the horizon. Nearly 80% of Israelis believe that this agreement will not prevent Iran’s entry into the nuclear club. President Obama’s domestic failures pale before the breath-taking incompetence of his conduct of foreign affairs that has made the world an increasingly and frighteningly more dangerous place. And there is a simple way to understand just how the Obama-negotiated accords with Iran has betrayed allies and friends, weakened America and strengthened Iran.

In one fell swoop, Obama undermined and vitiated more than a decade’s worth of UN resolutions designed to pressure, constrain and debilitate Iran. For the first time, Iran’s uranium enrichment program was legitimized, and its pursuit of nuclear weapons thereby, in effect, approved. The sanctions regime that was painstakingly assembled – garnering even Russian and Chinese approval in the United Nations – was greatly weakened. Even assuming that Iran’s economy is suffering and that such matters (to dictatorships such as Iran, civilian suffering is inconsequential), the injection into the Iranian economy of billions of dollars will enable it to survive even a re-imposition of sanctions in the future. Like the many US laws that Obama simply chooses not to enforce – his own health-care law when it suits him, its waivers and carve-outs, drug laws, immigration laws, etc., simply because he always knows better – the President has simply overridden Congress and the UN’s application of sanctions, because he knows better.

This is not merely opinion. The clearest proof is not the reaction in Israel to Obama’s betrayal, or the disgust with which the Saudis and the Egyptians feel let down by the American government. The rejoicing in Iran should be enough to give Obama acolytes pause. As Arutz-7 reported last week, the Chairman of the Iranian Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee boasted on Iranian television: “After ten years, we have emerged victorious over the west. They wanted to prevent us from acquiring nuclear technology, but we have reached that point…The Americans reached the conclusion that it would be futile to continue with their policy of confronting the Islamic Republic.”

As its centrifuges continue to spin, and its uranium continues to be enriched to weapons grade level, Iran edges closer to its cherished goal of acquiring a nuclear weapon that will transform it into the dominant power in the Middle East. Try imposing sanctions (“ratchet it up…crank it up” in Obama’s tired clichés) then on a nuclear Iran, and the world will learn the power of nuclear blackmail. The greatest change in US policy is that for the first time in almost 35 years, the United States has recognized the legitimacy of the Revolutionary Government in Iran – that same regime that held Americans hostage, killed hundreds in Beirut and across the world, and has been the leading sponsor of global terror in pursuit of the propagation of the “religion of peace.”

It is chilling that this agreement was negotiated largely by Wendy Sherman, whose prior negotiations with North Korea ended with the North Korean nuclear bomb, despite all her rhetoric, the signing ceremonies and the diplomatic pieties. Talk about “failing upward.” (Sherman’s professional training is as a social worker, apparently a most useful field of study when dealing with genocidal maniacs.) After the fiasco in her previous attempts at nuclear de-proliferation, promoting her to conduct the same negotiations with Iran makes as much sense as hiring a community organizer to be Commander-in-Chief of what was the world’s major power. But that happened as well, with predictable results.

Thus, Iran retains much of its nuclear fuel – for the first time, with Western acquiescence, can continue to enrich its uranium to a grade that permits easier enrichment to nuclear grade, and has delayed its program according to intelligence estimates by roughly…two weeks. It is even unclear whether all of its facilities have been revealed. Obama has chosen to rely on Iranian good-will in allowing complete inspections of its facilities, apparently unaware of the Islamic doctrine of takkiya, which permits lying to the infidel in order to promote jihad. And as if “inspections” have been effective in the past in halting anyone’s nuclear programs. That is deadly naïveté.

All is not lost. A visiting Israeli diplomat said last week that Israel possesses the capability to deal with Iran, although ideally several countries would act in concert. Iran’s military power is overrated, hence its quest for weapons of mass destruction. But it will not be easy, nor will it be pain-free.

Which brings us back to Chanuka. At the Kotel, Rav Amar noted that multiples of seven all celebrate aspects of the natural world. There are seven days of the week, two major holidays last seven days (Pesach and Succot) and the third holiday comes after the counting of seven weeks. Chanuka is our only eight-day holiday. It is beyond nature, super-natural. It is one of the special occasions during the years when we celebrate the divine miracles that have sustained us throughout history, until today.

And as he spoke, Rav Amar pointed to the ancient Herodian stones behind him that ringed the Second Temple and said that these stones are “witnesses.” They are witnesses to what happened on Chanuka (i.e., the stones beneath the Herodian ones), witnesses to the Jewish connection to this holy place, witnesses to our faithfulness throughout the long exile, and witnesses to our return to our roots and the place where the Divine Presence is most tangible.

At that time and at that place, it was impossible not to sense that our modern crisis will also be resolved, with determination and strength, and that salvation will come to us and our world, as it did to our forefathers in those days and during this season.

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Posted in Contemporary Life, Current Events, Holidays, Israel

The Few v. The Many

Posted on November 29, 2013 | 7 comments

One of the more unheralded, even obscured, aspects of Chanuka is this question: where were the Jews? We exult in the notion that the victory came about miraculously – rabim beyad me’atim – with the few defeating the many. But why were the Maccabees the few and the Syrians the many? In every struggle for national liberation, the indigenous population is always more numerous than the occupying army, otherwise they do not constitute a nation and likely could not prevail. For example, the Jews before 1948 and the American colonists during the Revolutionary War both outnumbered the British occupiers. How could they not? Part of the problem of being an invader is that the native population is always more numerous. So what happened here that the Maccabees (never numbering more than several thousand, and at the beginning totaling in the hundreds) were the “few” who defeated the “many”?

The sad answer is that the “many” included not only the Syrian tyrant and his military forces but also the Hellenistic Jews who supported them. They were the “evildoers given over to the righteous” and the “brazen vanquished by those were faithful to Your Torah.” But why did the Hellenistic Jews want the Syrian-Greeks to win? Granted, they were imbued with the Hellenistic spirit – but what happened to their patriotism, their national spirit, and their sense of kinship with their fellow Jews?

Perhaps they were realists – and did not see any way in which the small band of guerillas could defeat the world’s most powerful army. So they made their peace with the devil. Such “realism” flies in the face of Jewish history – so they too were defeated. But there is another type of realism that is probably even more harmful.

As the Jewish world continues to fragment, we have grown accustomed to a painful mindset that is pervasive among certain segments of Jewry. For sure, there have always been pro-Arab Jews – Jews who cast their lot with our enemies. Many of the Israel’s most prominent and hateful critics are Jews who become willful tools of those who wish to destroy the Jewish state and bitterly oppose any expression of Jewish nationalism. Some of them traditionally write for the New York Times. Indeed, one of the quickest routes to media fame is to be a Jew critical of Israel in front of non-Jewish audiences.

Add to that list the deleterious phenomenon of the “moral equalizers,” those who see fault on both sides, who criticize Israel for any act of self-defense and weep at the suffering of our enemies – suffering for which our enemies themselves are usually the catalysts. This group is always seeking “peace” (meaning a treaty signing; what happens after is of little concern), strutting about with a faux moral supremacy that them, enlightened ones that they are, to see both sides, to see all sides. They lament, in the words of one, the entrenched “narratives of good and evil, victim and perpetrator,” eschewing a greater concern for their own people than for our enemies. As the writer Cynthia Ozick once noted, in many cases, “universalism has become the particularism of the Jews.”

But shouldn’t we care about our children more than about someone else’s children, or our parents more than another’s parents? Shouldn’t Jews be able to feel more loyalty to Jews before any feelings of loyalty to mankind? After all, that is the essence of nationhood and the hallmark of a people that sees itself as family.

Surely there were Hellenistic Jews who thought that the Maccabees could not defeat the mighty Syrian army – and there’s no sense in fighting a futile, suicidal war. Make peace with them, whatever it takes – and there are Jews today who believe the same thing. Compromise, concede, and hope for the best. That is one group of “realists” who maintain that when you cannot win – by traditional analysis – then don’t fight. Give up.

But there is another group of Hellenists. They don’t necessarily believe that the Maccabees cannot win; rather they believe that the Maccabees (or Israel) should not win. They think that winning is immoral. They are so permeated with a foreign culture and alien ideas that they do not want to win. They would rather lose and die and be perceived as virtuous, than triumph and live and be perceived as morally unfit by the cultural elites of the society in which they live.

And that is the dangerous world in which we live. Israel’s might is muted and its ability even to speak of victory is muffled when it has accepts the limitations placed upon it as well as the narrative of the impossibility of victory, the inevitability of two states, and – for many – the morality that exists on both sides – victim and aggressor, lover of all mankind and the hater of all mankind, and especially the Jews. Even the hater, after all, is a “child of G-d.”

This is why the Hellenist Jews fought against the Maccabees and preferred the Greeks, and it is why Israel cannot even fantasize about victory over its enemies, much less plan strategically for it. But that victory, that spirit, is the very essence of Chanuka, and the exhortation of the prophet Zecharia that our wars are not won with might or force – but with the spirit of G-d that animates our lives, preserves our morality, and will guide us to victory over all our enemies that will culminate in the rebuilt and rededicated Bet Hamikdash.

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Posted in Contemporary Life, Current Events, Holidays, Israel, Jewish History, Machshava/Jewish Thought

Esav’s Hatred

Posted on November 22, 2013 | 5 comments

      To say we live in strange times is an understatement when we consider that, just a month ago, anyone who suggested that Israel’s leading allies in the struggle against Iran’s nuclear ambitions would be France and Saudi Arabia would have been a candidate for institutionalization. The French are not exactly renowned for their war-mongering, and the Saudi’s hatred of Israel and Jews is religiously-based and implacable (Jews are still not allowed to visit Saudi Arabia under normal circumstances.) But the French, the Saudis and the Israelis – each for different reasons – do not want to live in a world where mullahs can go nuclear.

     This odd twist confirms the statement attributed to John Foster Dulles, himself noted for his hostility to Israel, that “The United States of America does not have friends; it has interests.” Or, as others have said it: “Nations have no permanent friends, only permanent interests.” Part of the current situation arises from the recognition – despite the Obama administration rhetoric – that America has retreated from its dominant role in world leadership, and that vacuum has been filled by others – especially by Russia’s Putin, whom Israel’s PM Netanyahu visited this week.

But as the world changes, there is one remaining constant, itself mindboggling.

There is no more enigmatic or consequential story in the Torah than Yaakov’s encounter and struggle with the angel of Esav. Yaakov was left alone and a “man” wrestled with him until dawn. Yet, when the two brothers finally met, Esav was docile – embracing, kissing and crying on his brother Yaakov, as one would expect from long-separated siblings. Nonetheless, our Sages debated the extent of Esav’s sincerity. Rashi (Breisheet 33:4) cites all the opinions: that Esav was genuinely touched; that Esav was faking it and meant ill; and a third opinion, as well, that it was both: “Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai stated: it is a well known halacha (law) that Esav hates Yaakov, but at this moment he was overwhelmed with compassion and kissed him with all his heart.” But what kind of law is that? How can an emotion be based on a law? And, if it is indeed so, why should it be any different here? How are we to ever know when our brother Esav means well or not?

A halacha is an immutable law. It defines a reality that cannot be changed or undone – but needs analysis. If Esav is synonymous with the major powers in the world, then this “halacha” is an historical verity, and should not at all be a surprise to us, even today. Less than seventy years after the Holocaust, the reservoir of world guilt has been completely depleted. It is still dangerous to be a Jew – in Israel, where a sleeping soldier can be stabbed to death on a public bus by a teenager who undoubtedly will be released from prison in a few short years; in Europe, in South America. Hardly a week goes by in which a Jew is not attacked in some part of the world for being or looking Jewish. A non-Jewish Swedish reporter recently donned a kipa to determine if these reports were true; he wrote that he spent that day in fear for his life.

The propriety of mila and shechita are being widely debated where they have not already been banned – and all under the cover of a higher morality. Iran boasts about developing the capability to eradicate Israel off the map – as King David wrote long ago (Tehillim 83:5) “Come, let us cut them off from being a nation and the name of Israel will be no more.” Too many others are indifferent or supportive, worried only about whether or not it will affect them.

The American President, convinced of his rhetorical abilities and showing none of the infirmity of his growing domestic unpopularity, is ready to have a signing ceremony that depends on the trustworthiness of the Iranians. Obama’s most recent offer to Iran was, essentially, “if you like your nuclear weapons program, you can keep your nuclear weapons program – as long as you say you won’t.” If and when it fails, and the Iranian bomb looms over Israel and the Middle East, he can always add: “I am sorry that they are finding themselves in this situation based on assurances they got from me.” After all, that line is already in the teleprompter.

Rav Moshe Bleicher, former Rosh Yeshiva in Shavei Hevroin, wrote that Esav’s power is the antithesis of that of Yaakov, and indeed more popular than Yaakov’s. Both Esav and Yaakov believe in tikkun olam, perfecting the world – something everybody loves. Esav, the “man of the field,” knows how to develop the world. He is extremely talented in that sphere. He forms governments – stable governments – develops economies, and cultivates resources. The Talmud (Masechet Avoda Zara 2b) says of Rome (Esav) that it builds the infrastructure that makes life better and promotes the common good – bridges, markets, bathhouses, civilization, science, entertainment, and health care. Over the centuries, Esav also fashioned values that now animate Western society, and that sound very good as well – equality, rights, free expression and others. Compared to what Esav the nation brings to the world, what does Yaakov the nation offer? A few good sermons? Conscience? Comedians? Nobel Prizes?

It is no wonder that Yaakov feared their confrontation – and at the very moment when his life in exile was over (so he thought) and his existence as a nation in its own land was beginning anew. It is very hard to compete with Esav. We have lost more Jews to the words of Esav than to his sword. To many Jews, the fields of Esav are much more alluring than the tents of Yaakov, and always have been.

That is why “it is a well known halacha (law) that Esav hates Yaakov.” Esav is a counterforce to the children of Yaakov. When we stray and stumble, when we come too close to aping the world of Esav, then his hatred overflows for no discernible reason and forces us to look at ourselves. And his hatred is inexplicable, as is the world’s obsession with Israel, as is its focus on Israel’s imagined sins and its utter disregard for real massacres occurring elsewhere. In fact, there are places in the world today where Jews are hated and the haters do not even know why – places where Jews are hated and the haters have never even met a Jew.

When the brothers met after their long separation, Esav still hated Yaakov, but he had compassion when he realized that Yaakov was no threat to him. The world was his. While Esav was conquering surrounding tribes and building his empire, Yaakov was rearing children and raising sheep. Yaakov was limping, wounded, weak and submissive; there was no need for Esav’s enmity. It would take time for Yaakov’s family – his nation – to grow and develop, to internalize his ideals and to represent the G-d’s will in the world in a way that impresses people with our morality and goodness. That is when the battle will again be joined. That still hasn’t happened, and it won’t, if week after week, the world is shocked (or, by now, probably amused) by the sordid revelations in the tabloids about some sort of misconduct in the Jewish world.

That is not the reality of Jewish life, but that is a growing perception, and only we can change the perception.

Esav develops the earth – his “fields” –  but only Yaakov and his sons can unite the heavens and the earth – to exalt the world so that it can become the repository of G-d’s truth and His presence. That is the ongoing struggle of Yaakov – to transform ourselves, our families, our homes, and our lives in points of holiness for the betterment of all mankind.

 

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Posted in Chumash, Contemporary Life, Current Events, Israel

Open and Closed

Posted on November 15, 2013 | 6 comments

     The British novelist Terry Pratchett once said that “the trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.” In a nutshell, that is the problem with the movement self-entitled “Open Orthodoxy.” Too many people are coming along and dropping into the Open Orthodoxy box ideas, values and practices that are more “open” than they are “Orthodox.” After all, Orthodoxy is not an intellectual, moral or behavioral free-for-all. It is a system of beliefs and practices that guide our lives and with which we seek to shape the world around us. Orthodoxy naturally clashes with a society that is more amenable to “anything goes” than the absolutes of commandments that reflect the will of G-d.

     This has been an ongoing controversy in the Jewish world for several years running, addressed here quite a while ago, and has heated up again in the last few weeks. The new president of YCT , Rabbi Asher Lopatin, penned a piece in Haaretz, of all places, essentially blaming the ultra-Orthodox for the continuing castigation of his institution. This was followed by a response by a sizable group of decidedly not ultra-Orthodox rabbis (including myself) which underscored that the opposition to YCT, and especially the excesses of some of its ordainees, comes in large part from the mainstream of the Orthodox world –meaning that almost the entire orthodox world as currently constituted finds its program flawed and wanting.

The defense from an academic – again in the secular Jewish media – came swiftly, as well as a bizarre attack on the traditional rabbinate by a fringe group that invoked the Holocaust as well as all the modern buzzwords of abuse but never addressed an iota of the substance. Even the academic  defense was inaccurate, attributing the “Statement on Open Orthodoxy” to a rogue group of RCA members – “none of them, it should be noted, an officer of the RCA.” In fact, one signatory is a present officer, several are past officers and present members of the Executive Committee, and at least two are past presidents. It is a widely representative group and assembled ad hoc and on short notice. In any event, this group was assailed for disassembling the “Big Tent” of Orthodoxy and compared to the troglodytes of right-wingers in the 1930’s who ostracized the members of the fledgling RCA.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

There are two unresolved problems. The first is that no one I know is interested in ostracism, tiny tents, witch-hunts or quarrels. Indeed, both Rabbi Lopatin and his predecessor, Rabbi Avi Weiss, are extremely charming, genuine people, with sterling personal qualities who both have accomplished much for the Jewish people. Most people I know are reluctant to deal with this openly because of the respect both men have garnered over the years, notwithstanding the controversial positions they have taken. But this is business, not personal.

Added to this brew is the contretemps over the rejection by the Israeli rabbinate of some of Rabbi Weiss’ letters vouching for the Jewish credentials of Americans wishing to marry in Israel – an admittedly strong step – and we have the makings of a real brouhaha. But it is a brouhaha that is inevitable when we realize that the Torah must stand for something, and that something has to be defined, embraced and loved.

The second problem is internal. On some level it is unfair to attack an institution for statements or acts of its alumni, and the same is true for rabbinical institutions. RIETS, for example, has had a number of its ordainees openly leave Orthodoxy in the past, teach at non-Orthodox seminaries, or otherwise espouse heretical views. But RIETS at least has a tradition that is nearly a century old. Its musmachim have included notable Torah figures and Rabbis who shaped the Torah world. The YCT sample size is much smaller, and therefore disproportionately representative of the institution.

When some YCT graduates deny the divine origin of the Torah, assert that our forefathers never existed and therefore the entire narrative of the Jewish people is false, or insinuate that there was no divine revelation at Sinai, they have done more than force a band of rabbis to constrict the size of the tent; they have departed from Orthodoxy and lost the right to present themselves as Orthodox rabbis.

Similarly, when some YCT graduates remove parts of the davening that they find offensive, when they celebrate the nuptials of two homosexuals, when they invite non-Orthodox female clergy to lead the prayers, when they host or join interfaith prayer services, or, indeed, when they demean and distort the traditional role for women in Jewish with untold ramifications, they are bound to attract the opposition of the traditional, mainstream Orthodox rabbinate. Indeed, as our statement enunciated: “But if Open Orthodoxy’s leaders feel some distance developing between themselves and mainstream Orthodoxy, they should not be blaming others. They might consider how they themselves have plunged ahead, again and again, across the border that divides Orthodoxy from neo-Conservatism. Why are they surprised to find themselves on the wrong side of a dividing line?”

Similarly, no one rejoices in the rejection of Rabbi Weiss’ letters, neither personally or professionally. I genuinely feel for him and his congregants who are affected by this, and I hope an appropriate resolution is found. But there is a point at which the Orthodox world will take note of certain spiritual choices made, and say, “Enough; this is beyond Orthodoxy.” It should be no surprise that the ordination of women will strike the Israeli Rabbinate as the hallmark of the non-Orthodox clergy, as will the hosting in shul of church choirs, as will having a woman lead Kabbalat Shabbat, as will the embrace of halachic leniencies that are far outside the consensus of Orthodox practice. Surely, his new demand for the recognition by the Israeli rabbinate of the conversions conducted by non-Orthodox rabbis is not generally associated with the leanings of an Orthodox rabbi.

Can an Orthodox rabbi really endorse granting Israeli citizenship as a Jew to a “convert” who does not accept the mitzvot, did not go to Mikveh, has no intention of leading a Jewish life? Or, as is Reform practice, can it be expected that Rabbis who cherish unity in Jewish life will nonetheless acquiesce to ascribing Jewish status to the child of a Jewish father and non-Jewish mother? In one fascinating exchange earlier this week, the white knight of the modern Orthodox rabbinate (I say that half in jest), Rav David Stav shlit”a, the head of Tzohar and erstwhile candidate for Chief Rabbi, retorted to a Reform rabbi: “The problem of assimilation among American Jews isn’t just an American problem… Chelsea Clinton married a Jewish man. I don’t dispute your right to think what you want, [but] do you want me to recognize Chelsea Clinton’s child as a Jew? You want me to recognize the rabbi who married them as a rabbi? He added that we sometimes have to pay a steep price in terms of public relations and even love of Torah by not-yet observant Jews, but “we are willing to pay this heavy price because of our responsibility to the people of Israel, and our desire to keep the people of Israel united – even though in the short term, it leads to enmity toward the Torah and its sages.”

Undoubtedly, YCT has a number of fine musmachim, as did JTS in an earlier incarnation of neo-Conservatism, and they must surely recoil at the intemperance of some of the classmates. They have a critical role to play before the reputation of their alma mater is cemented in the public eye as neo-Conservative, if indeed it is not too late already. With the demise of the Conservative movement, there is that niche to be filled – but wouldn’t the ultimate consequences be the same?

There is a limit to which the Torah world can embrace modern notions. Pluralism, egalitarianism, and moral relativity make fine contributions to the Western world, and are an improvement on paganism and ritual sacrifice. But just because they define Western society does not make them Jewish, or even desirable.

If you take the “-dox” (belief) out of Orthodox, then you are left with Ortho-, and we might as well be selling specialty shoes. We are defined by what we believe and what we do, by our fidelity to the Mesorah, our respect for our Sages and our willingness to conform our desires to G-d’s will rather than the converse. A wise person once said that “even an open mind has to close at a certain point or nothing stays in.” The boundaries of “Open Orthodoxy” have to be delineated not in platitudes, clichés and slogans – but in deeds, thought, values and Torah commitment.

In that process they will find the Orthodox world a reliable ally – or a steadfast opponent.

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