Category Archives: Machshava/Jewish Thought

Back to Egypt

Posted on June 7, 2013 | 3 comments

The shock waves in Israeli society due to the controversy of “equality of burden” – work and army service as it relates to Haredim – have generated much commotion, excitement, trepidation, anger, and some very, very strange statements. Topping the list is this refrain, allegedly uttered by some prominent Roshei Yeshiva, that essentially says: “if any such evil decrees pass that threaten to undermine, weaken or even change the Haredi program of Talmud Torah, then we will have no choice but to return to Russia and Poland.”
In fact, such an assertion was first made at least 15 years ago by a leading Rosh Yeshiva, when similar proposals for Haredi service, work, reduced child allowances and curriculum reform were made back then. The sentiment is certainly understandable. In a community that feels that it has achieved the apex of spirituality – duplicating the grandeurs of Eastern European Jewry – undoubtedly a retreat from the current ideal is perceived as a dire threat to its future. Better, then, to return to the glory days of the shtetl where the Czar and other rulers allowed the Jews to dwell in peace and tranquility, each man under his vine and fig tree. The statement is thus almost Biblical in its audacity.
Actually, it is Biblical.
Several times during our sojourn in the wilderness, when the going got tough and sin diverted us from our cherished objective of settling the land of Israel, a variety of leaders, in their discontent with Moshe’s stewardship of the nation, exclaimed (sometimes implicitly) “Nitna rosh v’nashuva Mitzroima!” – “Let us appoint a leader and we will return to Egypt!” (Bamidbar 14:4). Even on the banks of the Red Sea, days after being liberated from the Egyptian house of bondage, there were voices crying that it is “far better that we serve Egypt than die in the wilderness” (Shemot 14:12). At least for the latter, the threat of imminent death was real, even if their faith was somewhat tenuous. The lure of Egypt, contrived and fictitious as it was, was ubiquitous.
Yet, for all the nostalgia for Egypt from group of malcontents– its foods, ambience, family life, beaches and resorts, all of which caused the horrors of slavery and persecution, and the murder of their male infants, to fade – no one ever actually attempted to return to Egypt. Those disenchanted after the sin of the spies decided to conquer the land of Israel without authorization, and failed – but there was never an actual movement to return to Egypt. It was a rhetorical device that packed an emotional wallop in its criticism of present trends but was never taken seriously by anyone. If so, why was it said? Why would something so preposterous resonate with anyone to the extent that the Torah would record it?
Surely, no one takes seriously “threats” of returning to Poland, Russia, Germany and elsewhere. Besides the facts that those countries also have mandatory conscription (do Jews forget the Cantonist decrees?!) as well as little interest in subsidizing Torah study as does the State of Israel, the gruesome memories are still raw. Those are countries that are drenched in Jewish blood, in which six million Jews were murdered just seven decades ago, and from which several million Jews fled in the half-century before that – primarily to the United States but also to South Africa, South America, England, Australia, and yes, the land of Israel. Eastern Europe became a graveyard for Jews, certainly physically but also, it needs to be said, spiritually as well.
For all its glories, and the majesty of the Yeshiva movement in Lithuania that inspires us until today, it was relatively small in numbers. The largest of the yeshivot barely numbered in the low hundreds of students at the peak of their existence, and most were far smaller than that. Most Jews were unlearned, and many completely dropped out of the world of Torah observance (far more in percentage than what we witness today with our so-called “youth at risk”), as evidenced by the substantial numbers of Jews that abandoned even their nominal observance the moment they arrived on American shores. Hundreds of thousands of Jews were swept away from Torah by the Enlightenment, Communism, Socialism, and secular Zionism. The nostalgia has no basis in fact, like our memories in later years of the home runs that we never slugged as young men but thought we did.
Worse, one reason those movements took root in the 19th and early 20th centuries was the grinding poverty of the “Haredi” world of that time that attempted to glamorize privation and suffering but found that they weren’t quite as marketable as they hoped. Rather than provide a kosher means to escape ghetto life and poverty, many leaders closed the gates and erected even more interior walls, with the result that many Jews just upped and left – Torah, not just Europe. Are they making the same mistake again today? Embracing policies that consistently lead to poverty and the need for public support – from a public that is less and less willing to provide – is not a recipe for long-term success. Hence, the warning that if pushed, they will leave and take their indigence with them to other shores.
The idle threat intoned in the wilderness to return to Egypt was not serious – except for this: it reflected a desire to escape their destiny as Jews and to somehow carve out a different destiny for themselves. “Going back to Egypt” meant severing one’s spiritual and emotional ties to the rest of the people of Israel, as if to say: “the rest of you are on your own. We want nothing to do with you, neither your honey nor your sting. We are a nation unto ourselves. Good luck.”
Is that the message that is being sent today as well? I would hope not, both because it won’t succeed and especially because it is such a poor reflection on Torah Jewry.
Count me among those who believe that threats of incarceration for Haredi resisters are wrong, misplaced, counterproductive and will not succeed. But those who in their anguish about the need to change certain aspects of Haredi life in order to be a part of the nation in all respects do a disservice to their constituents and the Torah itself when they make idle threats that sound – and are – bizarre and outlandish, and not to be taken seriously.
Thus, we are taught: “Wise men: be careful with your words, lest you become liable for exile and you are exiled to the place of evil waters, and your disciples who follow you will drink those waters and die, and the name of Heaven will be desecrated” (Avot 1:11).

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

The Uses of Violence

Posted on May 24, 2013 | 7 comments

Much of the Jewish world unleashed a torrent of invective denouncing the recent violence at the Kotel. A few weeks ago on Rosh Chodesh Sivan, the self-ordained “Women of the Wall,” as is their wont, arrived to breach the traditional customs of that holy site and were greeted by thousands of young women who had already taken their place in the Kotel plaza. The NY Times reported – grossly inaccurately – that the women were met by thousands of “protesters” who violently tried to prevent their prayers, all of which required police intercession. In truth, as numerous eye witnesses testified and video accounts verify, the “thousands” were praying silently even as roughly two dozen male hooligans engaged in the “violence:” chanting, the pouring of water and the throwing of some plastic chairs.
The males were dressed in the black garb of Haredim, and therefore this event became a “Haredi” attack on the women. A few points need to be made. Clearly, Jews have a low threshold for what is considered “violence.” In a world in which Muslims just in the last month set off bombs in Boston that killed and maimed innocent people, in which two Muslims accosted and beheaded a British soldier on the streets of London, and in which Muslims across the world – Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Nigeria and elsewhere – are brutally killing other Muslims and Christians, it seems overwrought, to say the least, to use the word “violence” for them and for what is the present equivalent of a schoolyard spat.
Additionally, one prominent Modern Orthodox rabbi in NYC took the opportunity on Shavuot day to decry the events at the Kotel, speak of achdut (unity) as the heart of Kabalat HaTorah, and then lambaste the “Haredim” for the violence at the Kotel. Suffice it to say, he would never blame “Muslims” for the violence of Muslims but speak of radicals, extremists, Islamists and other euphemisms. It is strange how “unity” for some is a one-way cul de sac. All Haredim apparently are responsible for the work of a handful in a way that he would never, ever, suggest that all Muslims are responsible for the violence of their “handful,” or two handfuls.
The reaction at the Kotel to the provocation of the women was beautiful and spirited. Thousands of women and young girls who lack any grievance against the Torah and actually love the Torah came to the Kotel early to pray. They dwarfed in size the number of provocateurs which barely registered 100 souls. The plaza held thousands more Jews praying that morning; 99.9% of the people were engaged in no violent acts at all, even of the mild variety committed. It should have been a non-story. The Kotel functions with a Rabbi who makes spiritual decisions; no one has any more right to impose their forms of worship on the Kotel as they do in Teaneck. More deference should be paid to those multitudes who come daily and conform to the norms of the place than those who come monthly and deviate from those norms. The Women were frustrated. Period.
Let me be clear that I also denounce the violence, as I do the provocations. Here are the problems with said violence: it is against the Torah, it is immoral, it is wrong, it desecrates the holy place, and it is counterproductive. And so that became the story –not the outpouring of genuine prayer on the part of the overwhelming number of Jews who love the Mesorah and find no fault with it but the catcalls of those few ruffians.
But here’s another problem with violence: it works, especially in the Middle East.
Arab terror in Israel for the last 45 years, going back to the era when they began hijacking planes, has succeeded in gaining them near statehood in the land of Israel and international support and acclaim for their cause (much of that, of course, because opposition to them carries with it the implicit threat of violence). Every new act of violence brings calls for more Israeli concessions. Arab terror internationally has provoked a wave of sympathy for their causes, and they are successfully infiltrating European capitals and exercising dominion there. The Left regularly blames America and the West for provoking the violence, and that violence has forced Americans, for example, to invent new words – Islamists – to describe the perpetrators rather than run afoul of the perpetrators and their supporters and trigger new violence. One can’t even say that Muslims have a problem with violence – even after the savagery in London and 50 years of evidence – for fear that aggrieved Muslims will retaliate with violence, which sort of proves the point. Every new attack or bombing fuels the strain in American politics that either blames America first and/or wants to withdraw from the world entirely.
Bashar Assad remains in power because he is violent; Hosni Mubarak – no saint – fell from power because he did not attack his own people in a sustained and deadly way. These lessons are lost on no one in the Middle East.
Indeed, the threat of violence is even better than violence itself. Jews are kept from praying on the Temple Mount because of “Arab sensitivities,” i.e., the threat of Arab riots if they do. MK Moshe Feiglin himself was barred from the Temple Mount because of the threat of Arab riots, despite his parliamentary immunity. The Bedouin in Israel’s Negev are running rampant, seizing land and harassing Jews with little official response except meek acquiescence because there is an explicit threat of violence (and already, numerous real life examples of thuggery) if they are restrained in any way. Illegal Arab construction in the Galil is left unchecked because the threat of violence intimidates government officials and the police. In the face of Muslim extremism, pusillanimity is the norm of Western governments. Threats work. It is easier to allow lawlessness than to use force to protect the law and the rights of victims; it is even easier then to enforce the law only against Jews whose notion of “violence” (!) is pouring water, throwing paint, and usually just sitting down. Remember Gush Katif – the fears, the hype and the reality.
A little passion in defense of religious rights is good, although it can often go awry. Jews have such an aversion to violence that we allow desecrations to take place rather than respond vigorously, which is probably just as well. Just a few hundred yards from the Kotel – in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre – riot police are always on duty, lest one of the Christian groups vying for control there move oner of their chairs three inches and provoke a holy war. Muslims defend their religious principles…well, we know what they do, and most often to each other. If a Jew steps onto the Temple Mount carrying a prayer book, Muslims claim he is trying to undermine Al-Aksa and call for protests and riots. Would a Haredi threat of violence be more effective than violence itself? Would the police then tell the women, as they do to Jews on the Temple Mount, we cannot allow your activities because of the “threat to public order” they will cause? Of course not, because a Jewish threat of violence is never credible, and the wave of condemnations for the sporadic violence that does occur is so universal that it undermines whatever cause the lout is espousing.
Jews use words rather than acts to express anger. That is why events such as this engender paroxysms of platitudes from Jewish officialdom, a cascade of clichés that can drown out both clear thinking and right-minded action. For all the blather about settler violence, there is actually very little violence relative to the threats and the provocations of the Arabs – constant stone-throwing, shootings, the seizure of crops and the burning of property, and the occasional mass terrorist attack. Any Jewish response is suspect; Jews are often arrested for self-defense and the burden of proof is on them to prove their innocence. Why? Because the Arab threat of violence trumps Jewish rights. But using words has limited effect in the climate in which they operate.
Over a decade ago, during the height of the civil war for the land of Israel then raging, with the horrific terror that was persistent and lethal, I was asked to sign a proclamation of local clergy and politicians denouncing “hatred and violence” in all its forms. It was – still is – a fairly typical liberal response to crisis: pass a resolution or a law (and if a law exists, pass a duplicate law – see Obama response to the persecution of Fox News’ James Rosen). I refused to sign, saying that “hatred of evil is good, not bad, and violence in self-defense is a virtue, not a vice.” To equate all forms of hatred and violence is wrong and immoral, and such a resolution was therefore meaningless claptrap. I still remember the dozens of scowls directed my way. The proclamation was never promulgated, and that particular bubble was burst. This squeamishness about violence is irrational, and frankly, does not emanate from Jewish values.
Nevertheless, it is also true that Jewish “violence,” such as it is and especially the Kotel affair, is not carried out by the dedicated, spirited, zealous and pious Jew who is offended by the cheapening of the Torah – but by young people who are just drawn to violence. It is a way to expend their aggressive energy in a way they think is kosher but is not. And had they not acted out, they would not have provided the pretext to the media to miss the real story – the profound expression of love of God and faith by thousands of pious women who love the Torah, not feminism.
To call the Rosh Chodesh event a “horrific riot,” as that senior Modern Orthodox rabbi did, inflames passions and serves an agenda, but hardly accords with reality. We should save the hyperbole – especially the word “horrific” – for savage beheadings and suicide bombings and not for the throwing of plastic chairs. Violence at the Kotel in this context is sinful and detrimental, strengthens the women’s cause, and provides a forum for polemicists and sermonizers to distract people from the real issues. Indeed, violence has many uses, for perpetrators and responders.
But we should recall as well that, lamentable as it is at times, violence will be with us until the day when all men will “beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.”
Let us hope that day comes soon, because within a very short time, few people will actually still be using plowshares and pruning hooks.

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

Temperance

Posted on May 10, 2013 | 7 comments

How can we understand the harsh, intemperate remarks directed at Knesset Member Dov Lipman (Yesh Atid) by the distinguished Rosh Yeshiva of the very yeshiva he attended and with which he identifies?
MK Lipman, a self-described Haredi, belongs to the Knesset party whose leader has been most outspoken about having Haredim “share the burden” of public service and economic output. From one perspective, his membership in the party is an anomaly and the criticism was bound to happen sooner rather than later. That perspective is one that perceives Talmud Torah as the ultimate value in society – which is laudable – but also demands that the rest of the society acknowledge that as well, which is a much harder sell.
From another perspective, Lipman represents a new wave of Israeli leadership, in which the traditional divisions in Israeli politics between religious and secular are no longer sustained. That approach has already been commented upon here, as approximately half-dozen political parties boast members of Knesset who are religious Jews. That is unprecedented, and it recognizes that, just as the “Jewish Home” includes Jews who are religious and secular, so too the Jewish “Future” has the same. The parochial, provincial parties that are interested only in their own needs and constituents are in recession.
Lipman has embraced a plan that would limit the number of full-time yeshiva students supported by the State to 1800 people chosen annually. The rest could learn Torah until age 21, and then do some form of army or national service and then join the work force. It recognizes the value of Torah study, as well as the necessity of reversing the dire poverty that is endemic in the Haredi world. He also supports a plan to mandate that Haredi elementary schools teach secular subjects like mathematics and English, or lose some government funding. For all that, Lipman was called by the Rosh Yeshiva a “wicked” person, who “has learned [Torah] and rejected it,” and akin to “Amalek,” the eternal arch-enemy of the Jewish people, i.e., one who wants to destroy the Torah and the Jewish people. Ironically, MK Lipman, in his past a veteran Torah educator, wrote a book about Jewish education that carries the endorsement of the very same Rosh Yeshiva who has now denounced him.
One would think that the Haredi leadership, especially in Israel, would themselves be searching for a solution to the financial and educational crises in the Haredi world. The rates of employment among Haredim are staggeringly low; according to statistics released this week, 61% of adult Haredi women work outside the home (typical of the secular world) but just an astonishing 48% of Haredi men are employed. One sin begets another. An inferior secular education leaves even interested Haredim woefully unprepared to hold meaningful jobs that pay salaries that can support their families. Additionally, ignorance of mathematics makes Talmud Torah infinitely more difficult. Anyone learning Daf Yomi should realize that more than a dozen folios in Masechet Eruvin are incomprehensible without some rudimentary knowledge of mathematics. And yet, a defiant ignorance of this subject is being glorified in the Haredi world, notwithstanding the fact that in the Rosh Yeshiva’s own yeshiva in the United States secular subjects are studied in the Yeshiva high school and students in the upper yeshiva routinely attend college. It is hard to see why secular education for Yeshiva students here is the norm, and secular education for yeshiva students in Israel demands martyrdom rather than compliance.
Ask many Haredim in Israel privately, and they will concede that they have been let down by their religious leadership who have proffered an ideal of existence that cannot be achieved, that renders them incapable of functioning in a normal society, and that bears little relation to the Torah world historically.
The “business model” of the Haredim has failed. Proof of its failure is the strident rhetoric flung at MK Lipman in place of a reasonable attempt to find solutions to the existing problems – as if Lipman is the problem and if he – and his ilk – would only disappear, then all problems in the Haredi world would disappear as well. That is patently false, but he is a convenient target for the major failure in the Haredi system, which follows.
Personally, I am drawn to the Haredi world, and especially in its regard for Torah. Too often, one finds in the Modern Orthodox world grievances of one sort or another against this or that aspect of Torah, as if Jews get to sit in judgment of God and His Torah. There are groups that define themselves by their rebellion against the part of Torah or the halacha they do not like. That is disgraceful arrogance, and that type of insurgence is thankfully unknown in the Haredi world. They like – love – the Torah, and they have no complaints against the Creator. Often, they are more humble servants of God than one finds elsewhere, and certainly defer to rabbinic authority (always welcome, but here, probably to a fault).
But those for whom the primacy of Talmud Torah is paramount have failed miserably in one regard: they have not successfully conveyed the value of Torah study to the rest of the society that they hope will support them. And that failure was quite predictable given current trends. That is to say, you cannot tell the rest of society that you cannot live with them in the same neighborhoods, ride with them on the same buses, fight alongside them in the same units (or any unit, for that matter), and socialize and interact with them in any meaningful way – and then stick out your hand and say “support me, because Torah study is the greatest value.” The mendicant cannot condescend to the benefactor, at least not forever; the benefactor might develop his own ideas and values and eventually say “no, sorry.”
In fact, that failure is even more troubling that it sounds on the surface, as the Haredi lifestyle and the walls that it has erected around itself has convinced too many Israelis (and other Jews) that it is impossible to observe the Torah’s mitzvot and still be a productive citizen. To be a pious and observant Jew, it would seem from their value system, demands that a person withdraw from the world at large, from gainful employment, and from meaningful contributions to anyone outside one’s narrow community. But a Yeshiva is not a monastery in the wilderness; it shares a root with yishuv, civilization. A true yeshiva enhances and even defines the civilization around it; it doesn’t detach itself from it.
The chickens of detachment and segregation have come home to roost.
Of course, I know of no precedent in Jewish history where a community of putative scholars expected the rest of the Jewish world to support them in perpetuity, and the Haredi world is being forced to reckon with that reality. The shrillness of the responses to date – catcalls of Amalek from some, threats by others to leave Israel and relocate to Poland and Russia (re-create the “good old days,” I suppose) – underscore the paralysis of leadership in the Haredi world, which is a shame for all Jews because the Torah commitment of Haredim is unparalleled. But that commitment also needs to be re-focused and especially must begin to infuse Jewish life outside the Bet Midrash.
The saddest aspect of this imbroglio is that it has thus far stimulated no major reassessment in the official Haredi world, no re-evaluation of what they might have done wrong and what they might do better, and no acknowledgment that there is even a problem in their circles. They seem to feel it is all politics, combined with Jew-hatred, and that the storm will pass whenever the next elections occur, they handle the post-election coalition building more deftly and the money will start to flow their way again.
They could be right about the latter. That is a tragedy, because such “victories” imperil the Torah world and ultimately harm all Jews. And there is no shortage of role models in Israel today of people who learn, fight, work, earn and build – who see themselves as part of something greater and not apart from everyone and everything else. They are the embodiment of the Torah ideal today, and they are the ones who will move Jewish destiny forward.

PS: In late-breaking news, the distinguished Rosh Yeshiva publicly apologized to MK Lipman for his intemperate remarks (sort of: he went from calling him a “rasha” to simply “misguided” and denied comparing him to Amalek). Now, on to solutions.

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

Women on the Wall

Posted on April 26, 2013 | 9 comments

Here in Israel, some would have you believe that the most recent contrived contretemps – women wearing talitot and seeking public prayer at the Kotel – has riveted the country and pitted groups, people and politicians against each other in waves of outrage and recriminations. The truth is that it is barely a story, discussed very little by Israelis, and reflective of the peculiar forms of Jewish self-expression that are rooted in the exile experience.
As such, two sensations wash over when reading the sporadic references to these matters in the media. The first is tedium. Whatever their motivations, and I assume at least some are sincere, this battle is same-old same-old. The movers and shakers among the provocateurs are predominantly non-Orthodox, and some of those leading the charge and being arrested for the blatant breaches of the law are secular women who would otherwise not be found within 2000 ells of a house of prayer. As is customary these days with all groups that are uncomfortable with established religious or cultural norms, they wrap themselves in the banner of “equality,” as if that justifies anything and everything.
Memo to provocateurs: Judaism does not believe in absolute equality, nor does nature or life itself. The Torah is quite explicit that men and women share the same essential spiritual worth – both males and females were created in the image of God. But that is not the same as saying that modes of worship, and treatment under the law, therefore have to be identical. In God’s orchestra, men and women, kohanim, leviim and yisraelim, all have different roles and play different instruments. That is why that orchestra produces beautiful music and has spawned millennia of faithful Jews who have clung to the Torah despite great suffering imposed from outsiders and enormous challenges from secular culture and values.
The orchestra of the provocateurs plays only one instrument – a loud trumpet that blares and blares, and attracts attention but not respect.
There is a second sensation that arises as well to which many have become accustomed as these arguments pop up every now and then: sadness. It is sad when women feel that they are spiritually significant beings only when they mimic what men do. Whatever obscure sources one wants to cherry-pick after the fact, it is obvious – for example – that women have never worn talitot during prayer. That these women should feel that their prayer is elevated and worthy only when wearing male garb in public is just sad. (One wonders why these women just don’t wear tzitzit¬ – a talit katan – everyday under their garments like observant men do, or is it just the public show that matters?)
Certainly men can light Shabbat candles every Friday night and go to the mikveh once a month, but those men are mimicking women and fashioning their own religion that has little connection to God or Torah. It is the ultimate in self-worship. Egalitarianism has become the dominant value – above all others – such that the Torah is merely a tool in achieving it, and any jot or tittle of the Torah that engenders any sort of inequality must be abandoned, according to this way of thinking. For example, there are non-Orthodox Jews known to me who refuse to daven anywhere there is a mechitza (partition between men and women), deeming such to be “immoral.” They are sincere, albeit misguided. Where does it end? Should we anticipate a day when women will be clamoring to grow beards during sefira and lamenting the unfairness of it all – the “male patriarchy” – if they can’t?
In truth, the groups comprising the Wall Women have different agendas. Some want to push for women’s prayer and the duplication of the male experience, while others want full egalitarian prayer – mixed minyanim and the like. They are not identical but have joined forces to fight the greater battle – much like Conservative Judaism does not accept Reform Jewish conversions but fight together against Orthodox control of the conversion process. Both, again, have found the convenient bogeyman – the Haredim who are the enemies de jure in Israel and blamed for much of society’s ills and the strife at the Kotel. But anyone with remote familiarity with the events on the ground knows that the most caustic opponents of the provocateurs are not Haredi men, but women, and not all Haredi women, just religious women who are happy in their lives, love the Torah and find no fault in it, and do not want their prayers disturbed by these foreign elements who have incessant complaints against God’s Torah instead of their own unwillingness to comply with it.
The Haredim, though, are depicted as the enemy because they are convenient targets, and a woman-woman brawl would be even more tedious. And not all the women involved are non-Orthodox, but, as we have seen in other areas, rebellion against Torah can come from those who wear suits, hats, tichels, wigs and tallitot – and from both men and women.
Much has been made of the arrests of women wearing tallitot and otherwise disturbing the peace at the Kotel. It sounds bizarre that anyone should be arrested for “praying” in an uncustomary matter, until one realizes that just a few yards away from the Kotel, Jews are routinely barred from praying near the Temple Mount, and even arrested if they are caught moving their lips. There is a concept among decent people of respecting the norms and customs of a place. Certainly, these women would not demand freedom of worship in Al-Aksa, nor even try to enter wearing shoes. They would not seek to impose their forms of worship on a church, and if similarly-minded Christians did, the church would be justified in having them evicted and, if necessary, arrested for disturbing the peace. In their egalitarian ardor, they show contempt for Judaism that they would never show to other religions. (It reminds me of when the late Leah Rabin visited Pope John Paul II and covered her head with a scarf, something she would never consider when visiting the Chief Rabbi. Interesting.)
Indeed, perhaps these women would garner more support if they took their prayer to the Temple Mount. A steel cage match between Muslims and liberal Jewish women would be worth ten times the price of admission. As one of my dear colleagues pointed out, it would be delightful if these liberal women fought for their rights to pray unfettered at Me’arat Hamachpela in Hevron, or at Yosef’s Tomb in Shchem. If nothing else, it would put them on the side of the angels in support of Jewish rights throughout the land of Israel.
Of course, Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount is prohibited by Israeli law so as not to offend Muslim sensibilities. Why, then, are Jewish sensibilities any less precious than Muslim ones? And – to be blunt – Jewish sensibilities are offended by blatant violations of Torah and mockeries of Torah that take place anywhere and in any form. True, we control our rage better than Muslims do, but the issue is not prevention of violence but sensibilities. And law and order.
Right now, the law bans some of the antics of these women. They may not like it, as I don’t like other laws, but those who break the law deserve to be arrested. Civil disobedience comes at a price, although the left in Israel – trumpeters of the “rule of law” – have long reserved the right to break laws they don’t like for causes they consider to be just. They conveniently forget the illegal negotiations with the PLO before Oslo – when even meeting PLO officials broke the existing law. Anarchy results when people pick and choose which laws are moral and which laws they will follow.
The gloomier prospect is that this matter will not end. Natan Sharansky’s compromise has been hailed by many, and give him credit for trying. (He wants to enshrine in practice the High Court’s license to have such prayers take place on the Western Wall’s southern extension, near Robinson’s Arch, on the unspoken but compelling theory that “out of sight is out of mind.”) There is logic to it, although religious Jews recoil at the permanence of any arrangement that breaches Jewish law. As is well known (Masechet Sukka 51b), the Bet HaMikdash of which the Western Wall is but a remnant had a balcony for women erected whenever large crowds were expected. Perish the thought – but the Holy Temple for whose rebuilding we pray every day was not an egalitarian institution! And the same mesorah that teaches us that today’s Kotel is part of the retaining wall of the Mikdash and the place from which the Divine Presence has never left and which God vowed would never be destroyed (Midrash Shir Hashirim Rabba 2:9) is the same mesorah that regulates how Jews pray.
And the compromise is sought on the specious grounds that failure to do something will cause a diminution of American-Jewish support for Israel. But that train left the station years ago; the primary supporters of Israel today in America are evangelical Christians, not Jews. Jews have become too unreliable, and too assimilated, to constitute a durable core of support, although few will admit this publicly, and the denial of this reality serves a purpose in keeping otherwise straying Jews somewhat tethered to Jewish life. And if the compromise is coupled with increased Jewish rights throughout the land of Israel – on the Temple Mount and elsewhere – it will have served a noble purpose.
But the controversy will not end – whether or not the “great compromise” goes into effect – because, as we have seen with race in America, “equality” leaves its seekers unsatisfied and they begin to demand special treatment and privileges. Robinson’s Arch will be construed as Plessy v. Ferguson re-visited, a “separate but equal” facility that will stoke the flames for years to come. In accord with Middle East custom, the provocateurs will pocket these concessions and plan their next move. It will not end, because the yetzer hara for Torah is also powerful and usually self-justifying. The latest reports are that the women in question have already rejected the compromise. They want more, and subtlety is not their strong suit.
What is missing – as is frequently the case in these intra-Jewish disputes – is surrender to a Higher Authority. Thus, this is a good debate to have, even if it has little traction in Israel, because it is a compelling reminder of the fundamental principles in Jewish life and the very foundation of Torah: Whom do we serve, how and why? What does it mean to be Jewish? How can all the deviations sought in Jewish law and morality not be deemed as self-worship? One recalls that among the initial founders of Conservative Judaism were Orthodox Jews and Rabbis. It is hard to imagine such a thing today, but, for example, Rabbi Henry Pereira Mendes at the very end of the 19th century served as the president of the OU (Orthodox Union) and the Jewish Theological Seminary, of which he was one of the founders. It took two decades to sort out who was who and who stood for what. I sense that these groups and their agendas will not require that much time to determine whether or not they want to be part of the halachic world.
The answers to those questions usually are a powerful indicator of a person’s Jewish commitment, but more importantly, the extent to which that commitment will be transmitted to his/her children and grandchildren. A sin engenders a sin, and a mitzvah engenders a mitzvah. On which side of the wall, then, will these women, their supporters and their children, wind up? That is the critical question.
Meanwhile, a District Court Judge – identified as Orthodox – ruled yesterday that women can pray at the Kotel as they wish because there is no “local custom” that has to be obeyed. One would have thought that the Rabbi of the Kotel would have been in a better position to determine what the local custom is, but, at least, whatever the merits of his argument, this judge has now proven his liberal bona fides and put himself on the fast-track to a Supreme Court appointment.
Before anarchy descends on the Kotel, it would be a good time to remind ourselves that the Kotel is a symbol of Churban (the Destruction of the Temple) and not yet a symbol of redemption, may it come soon.