Dynamic Orthodoxy

Posted on December 27, 2013 | 11 comments
     Recently, I stumbled on an article written by Professor Mordechai Breuer in an old issue of Hamaayan (Tammuz, 1999, 39:4) about Orthodoxy in the 19th century. Much of what we “know,” in retrospect, turns out to be false, including the very term Orthodox. Conventional wisdom teaches that the term was applied to religious Jews by our ideological foes, and was meant pejoratively. In fact, Professor Breuer demonstrates, the term was first used by the German theologian Johann David Michaelis as a friendly reference to Moses Mendelsohn, who then began using the term in his writings about Jewish life. The expression, meaning “correct belief,” has defined Torah Jewry for at least 150 years.
     What was especially fascinating about Prof. Breuer’s article was the description of the efforts made by the rabbis in the early 19th century to accommodate the nascent Reform movement so as to avert a schism in the Jewish people. Innovations were made and deviations were accepted, all for the greater good, although, in fact, not in major areas of Halacha. For example, no less an authority than Rav Yaakov Etlinger (the Aruch Laner) conducted Bat Mitzvot in his shul, and Rav Natan Adler of Hanover (later Chief Rabbi of the British Empire) told anxious questioners to obey a new German edict that prohibited Jews from burying their dead until 48 hours after death.
     Chacham Isaac Bernays (a rebbe of Rav Shamshon Rafael Hirsch) specifically chose the title “Chacham” to imply that he was a different type of spiritual leader, and permitted “modern” (it was 1835, after all) brides who objected to circling their grooms under the chupah simply to stand put. Confirmed Orthodox rabbis – like Rav Hirsch – wore ceremonial robes and preached in German, certainly to the horror of Eastern European rabbis. All of the above were staunch opponents of Reform Judaism.
     One reason for the openness was because all rabbis (except the Chatam Sofer) supported the Emancipation and knew that the fall of the ghetto walls would offer both risks and opportunities. They tried to present a more modern face to Torah and thereby keep even less observant but nominally “Orthodox” Jews in the fold as well as those leaning towards Reform. Unfortunately, these outreach efforts to Reform ultimately failed and all efforts were abandoned after the Reform held a conference at Braunschweig in 1844 in which they renounced fundamental principles of Judaism and gave up any pretense of adherence to tradition.
   Nonetheless, the innovations in Orthodoxy in the 1800’s – its sheer vitality and ability to adapt to the times – puts paid to the notion that the Torah world is frozen, frigid, unresponsive and archaic, all criticisms that one still hears today from people who find fault with the Torah and desire to conform its laws to the times. Prof. Breuer counts at least eight innovations or movements that transformed Orthdoxy in the 19th century, and most of them are still influential today.
1) Chasidut, which although technically arose in the 18th century, was perfectly placed to retain the allegiance of Jews who were not drawn to the study of Torah and provided a powerful emotional hook to lure in Jews who would otherwise stray.
2) The Yeshiva movement, started by Rav Chaim Volozhin in Volozhin in 1804, revolutionized the study of Torah. It was originally a counter force to Chasidut, but made Talmud Torah into a national project and desideratum (rather than just a local matter) and inspired many imitators across Europe.
3) The Musar movement of Rav Yisrael Salanter endeavored to permeate Jewish life with ethical sensitivity in a systemized, rather than informal, way. The study of ethics because a routine feature in many yeshivot, even as others resisted the encroachment on general Torah study.
4) Torah and Derech Eretz of Rav Hirsch was designed to make the modern world less frightening to the Jew. He taught and inspired generations that one can be a faithful Jew and still be part of the modern world – all of which was his response to the opportunities of Emancipation.
5) Formal rabbinical training  was unknown before the 19th century. The spiritual leader simply learned Torah and was sent to lead a community. The German rabbinate – credit here Rav Azriel Hildesheimer – pioneered the rabbinical seminary in which students would learn Torah and general knowledge, and acquire the skills necessary for leadership.
6) Scientific study of Jewish subjects, a matter fraught with danger, also attracted its share of religious proponents, and due to the emancipation, Jews for the first time in large numbers attended university. Additionally, professions like law, medicine, engineering,etc., historically limited to Jews,  now provided avenues out of the poverty in which most Jews were forced to live.
7) The land of Israel was reborn to Jews in the 19th century and at first was primarily a religious movement. Disciples of the Vilna Gaon and the Baal Shem Tov made Aliya in the early 1800’s, and Rav Tzvi Hirsch Kalischer already in 1840 exhorted Jews to return to Israel and reclaim our homeland. Zionism was perceived as a positive venture until the movement was taken over by opponents of Torah and the new yishuv advocated outright disobedience to Torah norms.
8) Women’s Torah education began in the 19th century in Germany, and then approximately 1920 in Poland with the Beis Yaakov movement. While there was little formal elementary education for boys in the 1800’s, there was almost none for girls. The advent of mandatory education for all necessitated this change, which revolutionized Jewish life as well.
    It turns out that the 19th century was hardly a time of stagnation for Jews but an era of immense vibrancy and growth. Jews in the 20th and now the 21st centuries have essentially built on the accomplishments of those giants. And lest one think that Orthodoxythen was lively but has become dormant in the last century, perish the thought: what are some of the great successes of the Torah world in the last 100 years? Certainly a more educated laity is at the top of the list, followed by the prominence of Orthodox Jews in every profession and endeavor, and the gradual permeation by the Jewish state of the ethos of Torah – including the development of the Orthodox soldier (the scholar-warrior), something not widely seen in Jewish life for almost two millennia, and others as well.
    It is uncanny – certainly G-d’s hand – that the Torah has been rejuvenated, and the Am Hashem is again dynamic. Our obligation then is to anticipate the challenges of the future and craft the appropriate response, to glorify the Creator, His Torah and His people.

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

Freedom of Irreligion

Posted on December 20, 2013 | 13 comments

      Religion is on the defensive in American life these days. What began as a simple, direct and unprecedented statement of government detachment from religion – the First Amendment’s “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” – has morphed into a steady weakening of the “free exercise” clause. The strongest weapon wielded against religion today is a distortion of the value of “tolerance.”

     In the name of “tolerance” marriage has lost its traditional moorings and now become unrecognizable; religious people have to watch what they say and even think; the Bible has to be suppressed, perhaps in some dreary future to be studied only in dark basements behind locked doors lest the thought police hear someone cite an unapproved verse; the values bequeathed to us by G-d have to be adjusted and conformed to the times, and often renounced in public discourse; and, indeed, it is unsafe and unhealthy to refer to G-d’s word in public, lest the advocates for “tolerance” show their ugly, intolerant sides.

Just ask the Duck Dynasty. In truth, the next time I watch the Duck Dynasty will be the first time I watch the Duck Dynasty. I am not even completely aware of who they are or what they purport to do. But I do know that the senior duck is being persecuted for articulating his faith and his values. The notion of homosexual conduct as sinful is not something that was fabricated in 2010. It is actually quite ancient. It is its “decriminalization” – i.e., its forced removal from the list of sins – that is new, and is being imposed on the rest of society under duress. The Ducks should take their business elsewhere, to an environment more hospitable to their needs. The elites, apparently, so confident in their moral superiority, feel no need even to reckon with or tolerate other viewpoints. “Off with their beaks!” they proclaim.

Same sex marriage has become an unstoppable force, and marriage itself is perceived by society’s elites as antiquated. New York City’s Mayor and New York State’s Governor openly consort with “girlfriends” without paying any social price. There is no scorn, no stigma, no moral opprobrium. We are way past that, too sophisticated. As predicted, the acceptance of same sex marriage has generated a re-evaluation of all marriage arrangements. This week, a Utah court watered down the state’s anti-polygamy law, ruling unconstitutional a clause that prohibited even “cohabitation” with more than one “spouse.” That is, in Utah today, one can marry one woman civilly and as many as one can bear religiously and not violate the bigamy statutes. Well, at least the Bible recognizes polygamy.

Rabbenu Gershom’s ordinance banning polygamy for Ashkenazic Jews, now more than 1000 years old, was rooted in the concept that polygamy was alien and considered abhorrent in Christian society. That conclusion might require some re-evaluation now, although, on a personal note, my wife is suddenly less progressive than I had assumed.

In another sign of the times, a North Dakota judge this week permitted a man married to a man (in another state) to also marry a woman, and why not? There is not enough love in the world, and the more the merrier. We are only at the beginning of the infinite permutations of marital arrangements in our future, all of which will lead to a further exacerbation of the dire problem of the instability of the American family and the dreadful effects on the aimless children being produced. It is, though, a boon for Hallmark, which can now expand its greeting card business into heretofore unimaginable terrain.

It is less salutary to other industries, especially when the new immorality crashes head-on into the old morality, and this is where American religious life is again under siege. There are lawsuits sprouting across the country against religious businessmen – photographers, bakers, party hall renters – whose beliefs and values proscribe any recognition of or participation in same-sex marriage ceremonies. Some of those businesspeople have already lost at trial, ordered to pay thousands of dollars in fines, and whose cases are on appeal. Is this not an obvious violation of the “free exercise” clause? Do I not have the right to refuse to officiate at an interfaith or same-sex (or, for that matter, polygamous) marriage? Must our shul rent its facilities for purposes we deem inimical to G-d’s word?

Such was once obvious in America. It no longer is. The success of the homosexual lobby has been so enormous that, literally overnight, it has transformed what was considered to be deviant and depraved conduct into a moral desideratum. Those who find homosexuality sinful are on the defensive. In the America that is looming, the two previous sentences can easily be construed as hate speech to be reviled if not also prosecuted. We are left to beg for some measure of acceptance for our views, knowing how out of the mainstream they are.

But isn’t that the very essence of tolerance? Isn’t tolerance a two-way street? If I peacefully accept my neighbors’ views that I consider immoral, shouldn’t he also have to accept my views that he considers benighted? Of course, but not in today’s America, and it will be worse in tomorrow’s. We have reached a stage in which freedom of speech is subject to mob approval, and freedom of religion is constricted until it conforms to the prevailing social norms. And it is the liberals – purported defenders in the extreme of those very clauses in the Bill of Rights – who are today’s persecutors.

The thought police, the speech police, and the approved religious belief police – all self-appointed, and all then anointed by the media as moral watchdogs safeguarding the purity of American social life (as they see it) – are totalitarians. Worse (in their language), they are bullies, and the repugnance of their conduct is proportionate to the shrillness of their demands on the rest of us.

The US Supreme Court will shortly hear arguments about the Obamacare edict forcing religious institutions (and individuals) to pay for contraception and other matters that violate their religious beliefs. Orthodox groups are preparing to file briefs in support of the church’s position, as their struggle is the struggle of all religious entities. Donations can be made to https://fundly.com/jews-4-religious-liberty#supporters/donors to support the effort.

We are living through the consequences of the forced removal of G-d from the public domain, especially schools. More than two generations of children have been raised without knowledge of – without even any access to – any sense of objective morality. There is no longer any sense of absolute right and wrong to guide young people’s moral choices, only what makes one feel good or bad, happy or sad, and in the short term.  And the irresolute morals of the citizenry have engendered national leadership which is correspondingly anemic and ineffectual.

All we can do is hold firm to our values that will surely endure even this assault, never lose faith, and plead for “tolerance” to the powerful forces arrayed against moral man.

13 Comments

Posted in Contemporary Life, Current Events

Mandela

Posted on December 12, 2013 | 4 comments

    PM Binyamin Netanyahu was roundly criticized by the usual suspects for absenting himself from the memorial service for South Africa’s late leader Nelson Mandela. To be sure, the lamest of reasons was offered: the expense of traveling and the inability to arrange for adequate security in such a short period of time. The former is bogus – a delegation led by Israel’s Knesset Speaker attended anyway – and the latter is equally specious, unless the security needed was to protect the Prime Minister from some of the other world “leaders” in attendance. And therein lies the paradox of Nelson Mandela.

     The coverage of his life, death and prolonged funeral has effectively characterized Mandela’s remarkable career and life story, even as it has downplayed some of the more sordid aspects. That is usually understandable after someone’s death, but is especially reserved for iconic figures whose lives transcended their personal stories and thereby transmit a deeper message. Considering that South Africa is not a major world power and geographically isolated from much of the civilized world, and even conceding the ignominy of the apartheid system that kept blacks enslaved and second-class residents in their own country, what is it about Mandela – a national hero to be sure – that transformed him into an international symbol? And what are the limits of the adulation?

One simple comparison illustrates Mandela’s uniqueness, and alone justifies much of the lionization. Look at Zimbabwe’s thuggish dictator Robert Mugabe – who also prevailed over the apartheid system extant in Rhodesia – and the distinctions become clear. Mugabe has driven his country into dire poverty amid his own brand of persecution, ruling with a brutal, iron fist, preventing free elections, filling his prisons with his opponents and lining his own pockets and those of his supporters. It is inarguable that whites – and even blacks – were better off under the prior system, even with its racism, that they are today.

By contrast, Mandela emerged from prison humble, human, and dignified. He ushered in an era of reconciliation, which, if imperfectly implemented, was at least an effort at something positive. He was elected president, and then stepped down after one term, enshrining the façade of democracy and providing an example to his successors (not to mention other African strongmen). There was no reign of terror. For simply choosing a different path than Mugabe, Mandela deserves praise.

Nonetheless, as one looks at his history, and without justifying either the apartheid system or certainly not its excesses, one wonders, given the context of the era, if another narrative could have been written. The African National Congress, created almost 90 years ago to fight discrimination, became a terrorist group with strong Communist ties. It was almost reflexively anti-American, and attempting to overthrow a naturally pro-American government. Even discounting the racial dimension, that was not an approach that could have garnered much Western support at the time, and Mandela – arrested, tried and convicted of sabotage and conspiracy to commit other violent acts – and himself drawn to Communism, paid a very heavy personal price for his beliefs –nearly three decades of imprisonment under inhuman conditions. And yet he emerged from prison with moderated, not hardened, views, and astonishingly, not embittered by his experiences and the loss of so many years of his life.

Further analysis reveals his thorny relations with Jews and Israel. South African Jews themselves had a comlicated relationship with the apartheid regime, not enamored by it and yet mostly benefiting from the system. Certainly, South African Jews – primarily emigrants from Lithuania and their offspring – experienced persecution in their native land, escaped it, and undoubtedly were not eager supporters of the regime. Indeed, many South African Jews were prominent opponents of apartheid, including the Communist ANC leader Joe Slovo (born into a frum family in Lithuania) and Helen Suzman, longtime Member of Parliament and a crusader against the white government. By the same token, Mandela’s prosecutor – Percy Yutar (originally Yuter) – was also Jewish, indeed, South Africa’s first Jewish Attorney-General and a staunch defender of apartheid. (Interestingly, Yutar later claimed to have saved Mandela’s life by purposely asking for a sentence of life imprisonment rather than the death penalty, which, he says, the judge would have imposed had it been requested. When the two met again in 1995, at Mandela’s invitation, Yutar was served a kosher lunch and Mandela expressed no hard feelings.)

Regarding his attitude to Israel, Mandela followed lockstep the trendy, Third-World demonization of Israel that taints most countries until today. Whatever one maintains about the ANC, not every terrorist group in the world fights for a legitimate cause, and not every terrorist is a freedom fighter. Some (most?) are just bloodthirsty savages, and in Israel’s case, motivated more by passionate, Islamic-inspired Jew-hatred than by politics, statehood, territory, refugees or freedom. Here, Mandela had a blind spot. His closeness with Arafat (and Castro, Qaddafi, et al) demonstrated a lack of discernment as to the nature of people and their causes. Consequently, among the world leaders at Mandela’s funeral was a veritable rogues’ gallery of unsavory people, including a healthy assortment of murderers, oppressors, thieves, blackmailers and Jew-haters.

The Israeli press, anxious not to be left of the international love fest, scoured the record of the last two decades for Mandela statements that were positive about Israel. They did find some – he had a streak of graciousness and magnanimity that was admirable – but his negative rhetoric was more pronounced and perceptible. He was, and the South African government remains today, harshly critical of Israel, trapped in the vocabulary of the 1960s and 1970s that denounced colonialism regardless of whether or not the slur fit the situation. Mandela’s Third World ties, and world view, remained too firmly ensconced in the idiom of the oppressed to appreciate the nuances of the Israeli dilemma, and certainly not the drama of the Jewish people’s return to its homeland in fulfillment of the biblical prophecy.

As such, it was wise for PM Netanyahu not to attend, and thereby not be subjected to the unpleasantness of rubbing shoulders with some of the scoundrels who did come – villains who mean Israel and the Jewish people only harm. On balance, which is how we are all judged, Nelson Mandela lived an inspirational but flawed life and should rightfully be a hero to his people. But just like one cannot dance at every wedding, one also cannot mourn at every funeral. Sometimes, grief and appreciation of the indomitability of the human spirit, best takes place at a distance.

4 Comments

Posted in Contemporary Life, Current Events, Israel

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