Category Archives: Machshava/Jewish Thought

Schism ?

Posted on February 5, 2010 | 16 comments

As the Rabbinical world wrestles with a public response to the latest deviation from tradition – the “Rabbah – woman Rabbi” phenomenon – it is worthwhile to reflect on its provenance, and one basic question that haunts many of us: at what price machloket ? Must the small, insular Jewish community – already beleaguered by external enemies – suffer another schism, another set of divisions ?

Andrew Jackson said of himself: “I was born for a storm, and a calm does not suit me” but he was not a Rav, and he lived in an especially tempestuous time. We all know the ease with which machloket are created and sustained in Jewish life and the rampant factionalization that besets us in the face of all the other enemies that we have. Jews can easily (too easily) define ourselves as anti-Satmar, anti-Chabad, anti-Haredi, anti-YU, anti-non-Orthodox, anti-everyone, anti-anyone-who-is-anti-anything, but at what cost ?

Sin’at Chinam is the great stumbling block, here defined as Rav Shlomo Aviner does – the inability to accept that there are differences in Jewish life and hating another simply because he is different and has a different approach to a particular issue.

But he added that that does not mean that we have to agree on everything, or be silent in the face of perceived violations of Torah norms, or abandon our roles as teachers of Torah, or shy away from articulating our views for fear of being labeled and castigated by a hostile, agenda-driven “Jewish” media. There must be a way to articulate our red lines, to call attention – without invective or r”l hatred of any sort – to perceived breaches of Torah or harmful trends in Jewish life, and to leave it at that, without personalizing the dispute and without engaging in a futile debate – but simply to state one’s sincere belief that “lo zu haderech” – even if all that is accomplished is that our opposition to these innovations are recorded for posterity. This is not simply to satisfy the Yated Neeman that succinctly asked when this issue first arose ‘where is the RCA?’ – although it is not inappropriate that our Torah brethren should wonder about our views, if not organizationally, at least as constituent members. And there are cogent objections – based on halacha, hashkafa, et al.

“Whoever can protest (prevent) the sin of his household or city and does not is apprehended for the same sin” (Shabbat 54b-55a). But the mecha’ah in those cases was for moral offenses – injustices, corruption, maltreatment of the vulnerable elements of society – and not for ideological deviations or halachic violations.

It is fascinating – but not surprising – that the “Maharat” title did not catch on. The very need to concoct that addled acronym reflected, as one colleague wrote, the genuine concern that combining “woman” and “Rabbi” was so alien to the Torah community that the very articulation would doom the experiment. And so the “Maharat” designation was a fig leaf hiding behind a smoke screen that fooled no one. (Q. What do you get when you cross a fig leaf and a smoke screen ? A. I don’t know, but eventually the fig leaf goes up in smoke.) It was a failed PR stunt, to have simple people believe that something is other than what it is. It was not the title that is provocative, but the role. As Rabbi Avi Shafran indicated, clarity helps. It is honest and edifying, and communicates who is within and without the Torah camp.

Strange, isn’t it, that the ordination ceremony several months back did not pay tribute to Sally Priesand or Amy Eilberg, the first female Reform (1972) and Conservative (1985) rabbis, respectively. They were the pioneers, the trailblazers, without whom the institutions of Maharat or Rabbah would not even be a fantasy. Clearly, this just continues down the trail they blazed, and simple integrity would have insisted that deference be paid. Not to acknowledge their role – their inspiration – and instead to wrap the institution in the mantle of Bruriah and her troubled life – strikes me as less than forthright.

Of course, I understand why that could not be done – any overt linkage to the Reform/Conservative movements would be the death knell of this deviation – but yashrut is yashrut. I would also have expected a public apology of sorts to the Reform/Conservative movements for impugning their reputation, and acknowledging their leadership and prescience on this issue. Such an apology can still be forthcoming, would go a long way towards Ahavat Yisrael and clarify still further the limits of Orthodoxy. That would be honest, and would help answer the question that dominates in these parts: If women rabbis were unacceptable from Sinai until today, then how could Torah-observant Jews suddenly accept it ?

Yated several months back was most on target citing the Dubno Magid’s mashal of this methodology of psak – of drawing a bull’s eye and then placing the arrow right there. Of course proponents decided the outcome and then created ”responsa” around it (but that has become a staple of the leftist fringe of Modern Orthodoxy, if it can still be called that). There is a substantial element of Modern Orthodoxy that never lets halacha get in the way of a good time or whatever it really wants to do. To paraphrase Admiral Farragut memorable line from the Battle of Mobile Bay during the Civil War: “Damn the mesorah, full speed ahead.” Find a “way,” the “way” being a “creative” interpretation of a few select passages coupled with an utter rejection of any dissonant passages or tradition itself, and heartfelt expressions of courage, daring, and the higher morality involved.

The Torah speaks a number of times of the spiritual leaders of Israel as men – anshei chayil (in Parshat Yitro) or anashim (in Devarim). If the Gemara (Sukka 38a) can state that “a wife can recite blessings for her husband, but a curse should come upon a man whose wife and children recite blessings for him,” then what will we say of men who seek spiritual guidance and Torah knowledge from women ? The Baalei Mesora are men, charged with preserving the national institutions, even as women are entrusted with maintaining the familial institutions. We have always maintained that the latter is more critical to Jewish survival, a point of view derided today as patronizing and condescending. So we have partly abandoned that dynamic in modern times, and judging from the state of the Jewish world, at our peril.

The objections to this innovation can be grounded in halachic issues of serara, psak, the inability of a woman to perform several functions of the Rabbinate (even a she is capable of performing others, like pastoral counseling) and the transformation of the public persona of a woman. It serves, in part, another subtle objective of the leftist ModOs – the downgrading of the role and position of Rabbi into that of a glorified social worker and spiritual cheerleader.

There are two greater objections: the utter disregard of norms of tzniut, with which ModOs generally struggle, and the corruption of the methodology of psak that transmits the Mesora and Jewish cultural norms and societal values. The only way to consider in this context the compelling Jewish value of “the glory of the King’s daughter is within” (kal kevuda bat melech penima- Tehillim 45:14) is essentially to discount it and say it has no relevance in the modern Western world. Thus, this ideal of Jewish femininity – the disinclination to seek a public spiritual role, cited by Chazal hundreds of times – is simply written out of the Torah system. And why ?

It is dismissed in order to accommodate the doctrine of Western egalitarianism that wages war against the traditional division of roles in society, and demands that there be no distinctions between men and women. And what if the Mesorah cannot be reconciled with Western values ? Therein lies the great demarcation in Jewish life – between those who will remain faithful to the Mesorah and those who will tamper with it and pretend it is still whole, or even improved. (I find the simplistic references to Sarah Schenirer a”h and women’s Talmud Torah today quite tedious. The basic facts are that until quite recently there was no general, formal education for women or men, not only in Jewish life but across the world. Only the elites were educated. This changed with the phenomenon of compulsory education – for both men and women – that was a late Enlightenment requirement. Then, faced with a choice of men and women receiving only a secular, public school education, Sarah Schenirer successfully stepped into that breach. The opposition to her was rooted in the belief that the Old World would somehow return. It does a disservice to proponents of “women Rabbis” to cite her, and her patrons the Chofetz Chaim and the Gerrer Rebbi, all of whom would roll in their holy graves to find their decisions mentioned in this context. It is more than a bit disingenuous.)

Yes, yes, the Torah is alive, and by its very nature provides us eternal guidance to deal with the challenges of every generation. That is not to say that each issue can only be resolved one (stringent) way, nor that the Torah is completely frozen and cannot be adapted to new circumstances. It is to say that we should be wary of those who can “declare a sheretz pure according to the Torah” (Sanhedrin 17a). Such a creative judge is eligible to sit on the Sanhedrin, but the sheretz is still impure. If we want to be creative, absorb Western values into the Torah, and create a new hybrid, many of us can find good grounds on which to permit tax evasion (Western materialism) or even pilagshim (Western decadence). That we don’t is not only because those causes are not politically correct (a driving force in this issue), although undoubtedly each would have its lobbyists, but because there is an inner sense of what sustains the Mesorah and what undermines it – of what advances the holiness of Jewish life and what impedes it.

To many ModOs, the Torah is to be, as Thomas Jefferson said of some judges’ view of the American Constitution, “twisted and shaped as an artist shapes a ball of wax.” But is there no real substance in Torah, and should the public rightly perceive that the Torah keeps changing and lacks consistency or structure ? “Some wrote that a chacham is forbidden to permit something ‘astonishing’ that the masses will think that something forbidden is now permitted” (Shulchan Aruch, Yoreh Deah, 242:10). Is there anything more astonishing to a Torah Jew than the notion of “women Rabbis”? Lay the cards on the table: what stronghold will next be assaulted ? Women as witnesses, the mechitza, the legitimization of homosexuality, the blurring of distinctions between different religions ? When egalitarianism becomes the defining value of Jewish life, then those restrictions must be galling, if not downright immoral. Note how the very notion of “female clergy” is a staple of non-Orthodox religious movements, Jewish – and non-Jewish. Non-Orthodox. Res ipsa loquitur.

Sadly, since this phenomenon arises from the students of Rav Soloveitchik, it certainly tarnishes the legacy of the Rav, zt”l, who never entertained such notions. Maharal writes (Avot 1:1) that a true talmid need not hear everything from his Rebbi; the true talmid answers like his Rebbi would have without having heard his Rebbi actually say it. The broader point is that one need not embrace every psak of one’s Rebbi, or becoming (as famously described) just a parrot. But it does mean embracing the mesorah of the Rebbi, and in this case, some of the Rav’s students are not necessarily his talmidim. True, the Rav gave the first women’s Talmud shiur at Stern; but it is also true that he did not invite Stern talmidot to sit in his shiur in RIETS. There was only so much elasticity in the Rav’s views. There is no record of the Rav ever considering a female Rabbi as in the realm of the possible in the Torah world. Does anyone doubt that the Rav would have rejected the excesses and deviations of some of his students ? It wasn’t a lack of “courage” that inhibited the Rav, or even a sense that society was not “ready” for novelties; it was rather fidelity to the halachic process and the Mesorah, and to cherished Minhagei Yisrael.

How do we refute this assertion: “The Conservatives follow the Reform just a decade later, and the left-wing Orthodox follow the Conservatives two decades later.” It is as if the Reformers proclaim the “value” to be implemented and disregard the halacha, the Conservatives find the solution by changing the halacha, and the left-wing Orthodox then “find” the same solution “within” halacha ! The logic seems irrefutable, and therefore the overwhelming majority of the Torah world – yes, readers of Yated and others who don’t read Yated, and people whose opinions we should care about – will rightly reject it. But it does mock the halachic process in a way that should offend all of us.

I personally do not believe that engagement with the modern world inevitably entails accepting every cultural fad (read: value) as either imperative or elevating, but clearly some do. It does require that we remain discerning, with the ability to be mavdil bein kodesh l’chol.

As it is, the feminization of the Reform and Conservative movements has devastated them, with women comprising approximately 2/3 of their average weekly attendance. Men have fled in droves. It is odd, then, from a purely pragmatic perspective, that a group among us should now be traversing that same path. Fortunately, the Torah world will not accept it but “Modern Orthodoxy” will be discredited (as I have already witnessed among the youth in my community) and perhaps the “Open Haredi” approach (as someone here coined) will be the wave of the future.

I feel no need to apologize for the Mesorah, or the traditional roles recognized in Jewish life. Halacha is a categorical system. Women are exempt from time-bound mitzvot both pre-child rearing and post-child rearing (to borrow the reasoning of Rav David Abudraham) and men are obligated even if they are single fathers raising their children. The mesorah speaks in categorical terms, and those categories have sustained Jewish life even if some people chafe under them. But we tamper with the Mesorah at our peril, and the changing role of women in our society has been a mixed blessing.

It is by now axiomatic, sadly so, that anything can (and will) be permitted by someone, and anything can (and will) be prohibited by someone else. So we look, for normative psak, to a consensus of poskim, mindful that there will always be extremes on both sides. These winds of change do not at all rattle the House of Torah but do shake the foundations of Modern Orthodoxy, which will be forced to detach itself officially from its outliers who rightly and honestly belong in another camp.

Women have much to offer the Torah world, as is well known, and women’s Talmud Torah has been one of the inspiring phenomena of recent Jewish life. But that is not to say that, therefore, women are ipso facto the same as men and the halachic distinctions between the sexes must be blurred or vitiated. That may be an aspiration of liberal Americans but not of Torah Jews. Worthy women have historically been spiritual role models, but never spiritual leaders, and fidelity to Torah – for all Jews – involves recognizing both opportunities and limitations. And those limitations stem from the constructs of halacha and minhag, and not what a group of people perceives that the Jewish society can tolerate or accept at any given time.

I predict (always a dangerous venture) that this phenomenon will be self-marginalizing. A schism is upon us, sadly and unnecessarily, but not unexpectedly. In every generation the fences of Torah are breached, and at times by people who were once firmly inside them, and clarity is indispensable. Windows enable us to gaze upon the world outside, but keep the cold winds outside as well. Not all windows are the same quality, and some windows let in a draft that upsets the entire house. New movements have to define themselves by breaking away from the establishment. But people should know and understand the roots of the opposition, and the few proponents of this – who are tolerant of so much – should be tolerant of this opposition, and its consequences, as well.

And may we all continue to act for the glory of G-d and His Torah.

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Posted in Contemporary Life, Current Events, Halacha, Machshava/Jewish Thought, Philosophy

Authority

Posted on January 28, 2010 | 19 comments

Who is the posek (Rabbinic decisor) of Modern or Centrist Orthodoxy ? Who is the final, ultimate authority whose decision will be obeyed by all serious Jews – a role served in other wings of Orthodoxy in the past or present by such luminaries as Rav Moshe Feinstein, Rav Yosef Henkin, Rav Avraham Y. Kook, Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach, Rav Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, Rav Ovadia Yosef, Rav Asher Weiss, Rav Mordechai Eliyahu, Rav Shlomo Aviner, etc. ? At one time, of course, Rav Yosef Dov Soloveitchik filled that role for the ModOs, although he never considered himself primarily a posek. But who replaced him ?

Good question. Some will undoubtedly point to the distinguished Roshei Yeshiva at YU for that designation, but clearly their piskei halacha are followed by their students and a self-selected group of questioners. They, sadly, cannot be deemed the poskim for the ModOs, because many (if not most) ModOs would not ask them, and, if they did, would not necessarily heed their decisions. So who fulfills the role of the posek for the Modern Orthodox ? Good question. No good answer, and therein lies the essence of the problem of Modern Orthodoxy today, one it came by quite honestly, and which mostly answers the question: how did a so-called “Modern Orthodox” movement begin ordaining women, a matter that even Professor Saul Lieberman of JTS reportedly opposed just 30 years ago ?

The answer is that there is no posek for Modern Orthodoxy, almost by definition. Modern Orthodoxy has always been shaped by a variety of Western imperatives, and as Western values change, Modern Orthodoxy attempts to change with it. And one staple of Western man – especially in the United States for more than two centuries – has been a clear streak of anti-authoritarianism. “Don’t tread on me” was the chest-bumping chant of nascent America that is still prevalent today in American political life. (It is the unspoken but guiding principle of today’s Tea Party movement.) And it is among the dominant trends of Modern Orthodoxy, otherwise expressed as “Who are you to tell me what to do ? I am fully capable of making my own decisions !”

To be sure, there are many fine ModOs who will ask she’elot – whether to their local Orthodox rabbi or to a Rosh Yeshiva (here or in Israel) whom they respect – and they will consider themselves bound by the decision. They would likely and justifiably dissent from what follows, but, in truth, they would not be considered genuine ModOs by the keepers of the nomenclature. They might consider themselves “modern” because of some other dimension of their lives, and clearly many Western values – especially those rooted in Torah – are positive, virtuous, and indispensable to civil society. To be called “modern” is not necessarily pejorative – but neither is it always, necessarily, affirmative or honorable.

Consequently, the ModO Rabbi will tout the virtues of local Rabbinic authority, as opposed to a centralized authority. About a decade ago, one of the leading exponents of this notion, the esteemed Rabbi Saul Berman, said at an RCA convention that pulpit Rabbis should construe themselves as akin to “District Court Judges” in the federal court system who have absolute authority in their districts, and need not turn to other districts for judicial guidance. I.e., we can make our own decisions, and we need not fear what a particular Rosh Yeshiva, Jewish community, or tradition itself, will say. When I interjected that the analogy is flawed because even district judges can be overruled by Circuit Court Judges, and they in turn by the US Supreme Court – in fact, engendering the very opposite conclusion from the one he was drawing – there was no response. Perhaps he could have said that since we have no Circuit or Supreme Courts in our system, therefore the District Judge (i.e., Rabbi) reigns supreme. But we do have judicial overseers – those entrusted with the Mesora from generation to generation, and the great body of Torah Jewry of all stripes who recognize – with great honesty and objectivity – what is an innate part of the corpus of Torah and what is a foreign graft that is not truly part of Torah and will eventually be rejected.

In a very real sense, the Rav zt”l was never replaced. Granted, he towered over the movement, and could not easily be replaced. Certainly, he was ill-disposed to the ideological direction of some of his disciples, but he was a complex individual – as many great people are – and that engendered the enduring discussion of the “Rav’s Legacy” in which a generation of his followers has eagerly engaged. But the Torah bids us to obey the “shofet asher yihiyeh bayamim hahaim,” the judges that will be in those days (Devarim 17:9). Each generation has its own leaders, and they are designated notwithstanding that they might lack the greatness of a prior generation’s leaders. There are outstanding Gedolei Torah in the ModO world; the fact that they are not perceived as “authorities” is not because they lack the magnitude of Rav Soloveitchik, but rather because many ModOs have willfully and purposely chosen not to embrace any final, absolute authority – to permit that ultimate freedom of action and to actualize that most American value: “Don’t tread on me.” (The right-wing, Yeshivish, Charedi worlds are much more hierarchical, and their deceased Torah giants are mourned, their teshuvot avidly studied and serve as precedents to be discarded reluctantly and rarely – but they do move on to the next generation of Torah leaders.) The ModOs never moved on, and in that vacuum of Rabbinic leadership, anything goes – including female Rabbis. Who’s to stand athwart history yelling “Stop!” ?

Two months ago, I wrote in this space: “I have no doubt that the International Rabbinic Fellowship will find a way to admit women as members, and as Rabbis, and thereby in the short-term necessitate a change in their name (already!) to the International Rabbinic Fellowship and Galship (IRFG).” That it happened so soon is also not that surprising, as any movement that thrives on media attention needs regular injections of publicity. And there is a virtue in clarity, in dropping all the pretenses, the forced explanations and contrived titles, and being honest about intentions and objectives. (And when they ordain homosexual rabbis and officiate at same-sex marriages – first to be called “commitment ceremonies,” of course – they will be up to speed with their Reform and Conservative colleagues. Now, they are lagging by about two decades.)

By the way, what kind of title is “Rabba” anyway ? The Reform and Conservative Rabbis all call themselves “Rabbi” – male and female. Rabba is a man’s name, to boot; roughly twenty amoraim were named Rabba, including, most famously, Rabba bar Nachmani, who must be rolling in his holy grave along with his famous bar plugta, Rav Yosef. Interestingly, the great Rabba was nicknamed “okeir harim” – the uprooter of mountains – for his keen analytical skills, while Rav Yosef was nicknamed “Sinai” for his prodigious memory. Is it fair to say that this new, female Rabba is just ….okeir Sinai ? (I.e., Okeret Sinai, of course.)

And what is next – non-Jewish Rabbis ? And why not, you might ask. Is there some prohibition about having a non-Jew preach (or sing) from the pulpit ? Apparently not. Is there a prohibition against a non-Jew doing pastoral work ? Certainly not. Is there some prohibition against a non-Jew leading psukei d’zimra or Lecha Dodi ? He (she) is only reading Hebrew. Can a non-Jew not pasken she’elot – assuming, of course, that they receive the same Torah training and education as a Jew ? Hmmm. Can a non-Jew not ascertain whether a wedding ring is a shaveh pruta ? Hmmm, you read it here first. Of course, a non-Jew cannot count in a minyan or read from the Torah or be a witness, but…never mind… This was meant facetiously –neither l’halacha nor l’maaseh! – but to illustrate where the embrace of pure individual autonomy, rejection of Mesora, and intellectual “creativity” lead.

There are cogent halachic, philosophical and social objections to the ordination of women (related to serara, leadership, the normal functions of the Rabbinate that cannot be performed by women, psak, mesora, et al), but history provides the clearest instruction. The Conservative movement approved women’s ordination only after the death of Professor Lieberman, a Slabodka talmid who always seemed out of place in Morningside Heights. (Reportedly, when Professor Lieberman came to America, Rav Yitzchak Hutner asked him first to teach at Yeshivat Chaim Berlin; instead, he went to JTS… It was a different generation!) But when JTS ordained women, that decision was the primary catalyst for the founding of the Union of Traditional Judaism, a Conservative splinter group for which the ordination breach was just too much. Is it fair to conclude that, for those keeping score at home, that this puts IRFG (and its YCT patron; forget the cosmetic barrier erected between the two) somewhere to the left of UTJ, known colloquially as “right-wing Conservative”? If so, and apparently it is so, then shouldn’t YCTers now come home ? Did they originally see themselves as being outside the pale of Orthodoxy ? Did they realize that the legitimacy of their semicha would be challenged, and then rejected by the Torah world ? For most, certainly, I think not. Come home.

The slope is no longer slippery, as the bottom has already been reached, for now at least. Modern Orthodoxy, and its leading Rabbinical organization, has to clarify where it stands, drawing lines in the sand where necessary, and deciding, regretfully and sadly, what – and who – is outside the world of Torah. No one needs another intramural fight, not with Iran’s nuclear bomb looming. But in this week’s sedra, Amalek attacked a Jewish nation “she’rafu yideihem min haTorah” – whose grasp of Torah slackened, loosened, and became more tenuous. We have to re-assert the fundamental norms of Torah, or we will cease being construed as authentic representatives of the Creator.

One of those norms is the rejection of the anti-authoritarian streak of Western man, and the recognition that subservience to halachic authority is the hallmark of the Torah Jew. And the converse – the life of the libertine – is the antithesis of Torah, and the root of idolatry: the creation of G-d in man’s image. Most ModOs will reject this latest innovation, but the leftist fringe will keep pushing and pressuring, especially in small communities away from the center of Jewish life. We need to protect them, and push back, and state unequivocally – with love and tears – to those who are about to walk the plank: “This is not the way. Come home.”

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

Prayer

Posted on January 20, 2010 | Comments Off

Prayer is a daily obligation of every Jew, and therefore can become a most difficult endeavor. The dangers of insincere, lackadaisical or rote prayer are known to all – it was known in the time of the Talmud as well – and the struggle to maintain one’s sharpness or enthusiasm in prayer is constant. Too many people typically perceive prayer as a last resort, as something you do when all else has failed, as something you do when you want or need something – the province of the weak and the desperate. But that is only one – and a very narrow dimension – of prayer.

Hundreds gathered at the Kotel in August for a prayer rally in support of Gilad Schalit, the captured Israeli soldier held by Hamas in defiance of international law and on the occasion of his 23^rd birthday. There really is only one happy ending to his saga that I pray for daily: that he be rescued alive and all his captors killed. There is no other happy ending possible. Interviewed at the Kotel, Noam Schalit, father of Gilad, was quoted as saying: “We are not optimistic. If we were optimistic, we would not have come to pray.”

I certainly have no intention of criticizing him, whose pain is intense and unimaginable. He was speaking off the cuff, and under great stress, and might have been misquoted. And I mention his statement only because it reveals an approach to prayer that many of us might share – prayer as the last resort, as asking for things, as making requests – and nothing more. It literally reflects the English word “prayer,” meaning “beg,” and was the type of prayer that the ancient Egyptian Pharaoh beseeched Moshe after several of the plagues: “Beseech G-d for me.” And immediately after Moshe did so, Pharaoh reverted to his hard-heartedness.

Making requests of G-d is a type of prayer and perfectly appropriate – but not what we would call tefila. And if requests (or demands) of G-d are the sum and substance of our worship, then such an experience can easily leave us desiccated and disappointed, frustrated and flustered, bigheaded and bored with the entire process. It is not always about us.

I was chatting recently with a high school administrator about the well known difficulties of tefila among high school youth. They are bored and bewildered by the whole experience, and every school labors to find the right mechanism to inspire their students. He deduced that too many people pray – even come to synagogue – for two bad reasons: coercion and guilt. Some are forced to (as in high school, or in the case of adults who want to be part of a community or social group for which one price of admission is weekly attendance at synagogue). Others feel guilty not doing it. He related to me that when he was 20 years old, he was learning in shul before Mincha on Yom Kippur when an older man walked up to him, expressing surprise that he was learning just for the sake of learning – and said that he is in shul for only one reason – and this was on Yom Kippur day (!): if he weren’t, his father would be spinning in his grave. Guilt.

Too many people come to synagogue with those motivations, and it is typically reflected in their level of interest and behavior, and the quality of their davening – and perceived quite easily by their children. But that’s what happens when tefila becomes only asking for things, a laundry list of requests from G-d as Santa Claus. No wonder teens find it hard to daven – how much do they have to ask for (we give them almost everything), and how much of our daily tefila really involves these supplications? Perhaps 5 minutes out of 30, not much at all.

Rav Kook wrote that true tefila emerges from a thirst for G-d – itself a rare sensation today – and must be directed at Him in totality, and not to a particular attribute like His compassion. Rav Kook characterized tefila as “service of G-d with one’s emotions,” contrasting it with Torah study that is “service of G-d with one’s intellect.” That is not to say that the intellect plays no role in tefila; it is to say that prayer and Torah study are two different experiences. I note parenthetically that both the ArtScroll siddur, and the new Rabbi Sacks siddur are fine works (each with its own passionate advocates), with many fascinating insights about tefila. Both are filled with ideas, but both are missing something – the heart, the experience of standing before the King of Kings, and the sense of awe and reverence that should engender. But that cannot come from a siddur – that has to come from us.

Those siddurim tell us what to contemplate, but not what to experience. They cannot convey the prayer that Rav Kook described as the “revelation of the depth of the soul,” and the spontaneous outpouring of the real person. The real person, as Rav Kook saw it, is primarily expressed through the emotions, not the intellect. The proof is that we don’t always obey the intellect – but we always know how we feel. (Of course, ideally, our emotions are shaped by our intellectual attainments.) That is the part of the human personality that is accessed during prayer, and that is why we – who often live purposely superficial existences – can find prayer difficult and exasperating.

Pharaoh of old knew only begging, until the very end when he asked Moshe to bless him – in the language of tefila and not the language of begging. Until then, Pharaoh’s heart hardened after each time he sought Moshe’s intercession – because the beggar is never satisfied. There are always new requests that have to be granted. Prayer as begging will always be inherently unsatisfying, always leave us wanting more – more things, not more tefila. Requests are a part of tefila, but not an essential part.

What makes tefila difficult is what makes it so sublime. It is not the quota of words we say or even our mouths that utter them – but rather the expression of what is inside us – our thoughts, our feelings, the framework and mindset with which we stand before G-d. Such prayer requires patience, practice and effort – but such prayer can be a joy, an inspiration, and an example for us and to mankind as to the way to properly relate to and serve the Creator.

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

Parenting

Posted on January 6, 2010 | Comments Off

Our forefathers all had parenting challenges, but none more than Yaakov, our ancestor who was closest to us in time and life experience. In a sense, Yaakov had more difficulties in raising his children – for the most part, as a single parent – than did Avraham or Yitzchak. It is easier to raise children if one is righteous and one is wicked. We have clearer guidelines when the dichotomy is black and white. Between Yitzchak and Yishmael, between Yaakov and Esav – there are separate, distinct paths. Shades of gray – the dazzling diversity of Yaakov’s children as exemplified by his blessings – are more difficult to manage and direct, and Yaakov was blessed with twelve colorful children, thirteen if Dina is counted, all whom required direction and discipline. And the stakes were never greater.

Somehow, despite their famous feuds, all of Yaakov’s sons gathered around his deathbed, and Yaakov was quite precise in identifying their uniqueness, their personalities, and their destinies are part of the nation of Israel. Of the twelve, only Shimon and Levi are described as “brothers” – in Ramban’s phrase, “complete brothers, resembling each other in a brotherly way in thought and deed.” All the others were individualists – and Yaakov raised them all, and uneasily, with one objective: to create the nucleus of G-d’s people. So how does one rear – and discipline – diverse children?

The model of our forefathers – and life itself – reinforces that there is no perfect system and no guarantee of ultimate success – but there are patterns that lead to successful discipline that in many ways is on the wane today. Here are some rudimentary thoughts:

Firstly, a parent must be a parent first, and a friend second or third, if at all. A child has friends – a child needs parents. A parent who acts like a child is not acting like a parent – and a parent who feels a need to ingratiate himself/herself to a child or who craves the child’s approval is also not acting like a parent. And a child needs a parent. I recently heard, incredulously, about the mindboggling case of parents who allow their children to smoke marijuana in their home – preferring that they smoke there “under supervision” than outside the home without supervision. Heaven save us – and children – from such “parents” (and their not-so-supervision) who through their children are undoubtedly re-living their wayward youth that apparently turned out so…well, or from parents whose search for personal happiness induces them into shirking or abandoning their parental responsibilities.

Parenting, secondly, requires occasionally saying “no.” Not always saying “no” or always saying “yes,” but occasionally saying “no.” A friend rarely says “no” – or you would just find another friend. There are parents who feel their children will love them less if they say “no.” In fact, the opposite is true – children love their parents more when the parents set limits. Limits – discipline – are examples of parental love, not only authority. In truth, parents whose good values have been absorbed by their children (and whose personal virtues have been witnessed by their children) will have to say “no” less frequently as the child grows in adolescence, not more frequently.

Rav Shlomo Wolbe cited the verse in Zecharia (11:7) as illustrative of the two models of parenting: “And I took two staffs, one I called noam, “pleasantness” and the other chovlim, “destruction,” and I shepherded the flock.” Parents have two tools of discipline – noam and chovlim – at their disposal, and must choose wisely.

There is a destructive form of discipline – when the parent thinks he/she can create a clone of himself/herself and becomes intolerant of any deviation. The child must look, speak, think and act like the parent, walk in the parent’s footsteps – live in the same community, attend the same school, etc. That is wonderful if the child so chooses, and destructive if it is coercive. It is destructive when parents discipline in anger, and without reason or rationale. That is the “makel chovlim”– the destructive staff.

The “makel noam” is pleasant – it rewards, it gives incentives, it provides guidelines, and it sends a message of love. Discipline is like the guardrails on a narrow, winding road; guardrails are not unreasonable constraints on one’s freedom but rather expressions of societal concern and caring. Guardrails do prevent one from experiencing the exhilaration of sailing over a cliff, but also spare one the gruesome reality of hitting rock bottom. Guardrails allow room for maneuverability – within limits. The great criticism lodged against King David, who also struggled with many of his children, is that he never disciplined his rebellious son Adoniyahu – “His father never aggrieved him” (I Kings 1:6) – never caused him any grief, never challenged him, and never said “no.”

Thirdly, it is no crime not to be able to afford something – especially these days when many parents seem to fear telling their children “we cannot afford that, you can’t buy that.” Indeed, it is no crime not to buy something even if you can afford it. Nor is it a crime to say “no” – “you can’t go there, you can’t watch this, you can’t buy this” – even if all your child’s friends can. Parents who judge their worth based on what they give their child materially are not really worth that much, or giving them that much. There are vapid politicians today who lament that our children’s generation might be the first in American history not to out-earn their parents – and the very sentiment corrupts our children’s values. So what if they are not wealthier – there are greater, more valuable legacies we can leave our children. Would we be in a state of deprivation if we had the same material bounty, or even a little less, than the last two generations? Certainly not.

Yaakov’s twelve sons were not an easy bunch – they were strong-willed, complicated, dynamic individuals who had legendary problems with each other and occasionally with their father. Yet, when Yaakov said “gather and listen,” they gathered and listened. And he blessed them, each with a personally appropriate blessing.

For a parent to bless a child requires that the parent knows both his child, and the blessing. To know the child and not know the blessing is as ineffectual as knowing the blessing but not how to transmit it to the child. We need both.

To know one’s child requires insight and objectivity, and to know the blessing – to recognize and use the “staff of pleasantness”– requires knowledge of Torah, and the spirit of our ancestors, our fathers and mothers, our grandfathers and grandmothers. And then we will merit children who are productive Jews and responsible adults, we will be positive role models to the world, and our national history will reach its inevitable – and grand – climax.

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