“‘Zionist’ Contains Multitudes” — WSJ

An opinion piece of mine appeared in the Wall St. Journal. Its text is below:

I am a Zionist. I am not a Zionist.

Both statements are true, because the word, something of a war cry these days, has lost its meaning. Or, better, has multiple meanings. And it’s worth the while of anyone who cares about the Middle East, antisemitism or religion to tease out the details of the multiplicity.

As a haredi, or “ultra-Orthodox” (we dislike that pejorative), Jew, I do not subscribe to the foundational principle of the movement created by Theodor Herzl in the late nineteenth century that resulted in the establishment of the state of Israel.

Before Israel’s founding, in 1948, the religious leaders to whom most haredim like me looked for guidance opposed the establishment of a political state for Jews, even one self-defined as “Jewish.”

Theologically, they insisted, the return of Jews en masse to the Holy Land needed to await the arrival of the messiah predicted by the Jewish prophets of old (Herzl, an avowed secularist, didn’t quite fit the bill). And from a practical standpoint, they feared that a “Jewish state” would only serve to spur the hatred of Jews that forever lurks and seeks some excuse to express itself, often with violence.

So, as a Jew who believes that the Jewish religion, not any political state, is the essential expression of Judaism, I’m not a Zionist, at least not if one defines the word in its historical sense, as a believer in the Herzlian Zionist program.

At the same time, just as the religious leaders who did not back the creation of Israel in the end accepted the state once it became a fait accompli, and urged their followers in the Holy Land to participate in the country’s civil and political processes, I feel a connection with Israel and a deep concern for the welfare and safety of its citizens, many of whom are my friends or (closer or more distant) relatives.

So I am a Zionist, at least if one defines the word as a “accepter and supporter of Israel.”

There is, though, a third definition of Zionist, a new one, this one a slur, intended to refer to anyone who supports Israel’s current war against her enemies.

How Israel is waging that war is rightly open to criticism, but it is subject, too, to reasoned defense. When “Zionist!” is angrily shouted at those who seek to offer the latter, the word is used to portray defenders of Israel as moral monsters – for the slurred’s conviction that Hamas and other terrorist entities need to be destroyed, the Israeli government’s goal.

When that government’s goal is characterized, instead, as genocide, the accusers have gone from righterous protesters to ignorant haters. And when they vent their animus by intimidating random Jews or attacking them or their synagogues or institutions, they expose themselves as nothing short of old-fashioned antisemites hiding behind kaffiyehs.

It is unfortunate – no, tragic – that a terrible toll on civilians is so often taken in the prosecution of justifiable, even necessary, wars. And eradicating the engines of terrorism in Gaza necessitates attacking the places from which they operate (including, sadly, hospitals and mosques).

But, in the end, whatever one may think of Israel’s actions, if words are to have meanings, “Zionist” can only mean either a subscriber to Herzl’s vision or a rejector of the same who nevertheless supports the security of Israel’s citizens. When the word is twisted to mean murderers, the twisters reveal nothing about Israel, and much about themselves,

Letter Published by The New York Times

To the Editor:

In his lengthy lamentation about Israel’s ostensible descent into genocide, Omer Bartov somehow overlooks a most germane distinction between Israel’s war to vanquish an enemy bent on its destruction and murderous campaigns like those that took place in Bosnia, Darfur, Armenia, Rwanda and Cambodia — and certainly the one carried out by Nazi Germany.

How Israel is waging its war against an enemy that has loudly declared its genocidal intentions is rightly open to criticism, and subject, too, to a reasoned defense. But it is a strange sort of “genocide” that can end immediately with the rulers of the attacked region simply laying down their arms, releasing those they kidnapped who are still alive and leaving the scene.

(Rabbi) Avi Shafran

Staten Island

Matos – Thrice Upon a Word

“Even Ataros and Divon” is the extent of the Gemara’s directive about the halachah (duly codified in the Shulchan Aruch) that Jewish men recite shnayim mikra vi’echad targum – each pasuk of the week’s Torah portion twice and its Targum Onkelos rendering once (Berachos 8b).

The “even,” of course, refers to the fact that Ataros and Divon, as names of places, are proper nouns and hence no different in targum than in mikra. All the same, Rav Huna bar Yehuda in the name of Rabbi Ami says, they, too, must be recited a third time.

Although Rashi explains that the places in that pasuk are rendered the same in Targum Onkelos, our Chumashim do indeed have different renderings of those names (with the exception of the final one, Be’on), As do the Targum Yonason ben Uziel and the Targum Yerushalmi, with variations.

What’s more, there are dozens of names of places and people throughout the Torah that are rendered the same in targum as in mikra. Why would the Gemara seize particularly upon Ataros and Divon (especially since they do in fact have targum)? And there are other psukim in the Torah that, like Ataros and Divon, consist entirely of proper nouns.

Tosfos (ibid) say that the Gemara’s intention is to direct us to use the alternate targumim even though there is no non-repetitive Onkelos one. (And, presumably, publishers, somewhat misleadingly, included one of those targumim in our editions of Targum Onkelos itself.)

Interesting, though, is the fact that the targum renderings of the names the Gemara mentions, Ataros and Divon, the ones we have in our Chumashim, whether they are Onkelos’ or not, are machlelta and malbeshta, words whose roots seem to mean “inclusion” and “cloaked.”

I wonder if those renderings may be meant to signify that the Torah includes much more in its words than their simple meanings; and that deeper meanings are cloaked in its every word. And, thus, that repeating even a proper noun a third time is indicated.

Integrity and Ignominy

When Claire Shipman was appointed acting president of Columbia University, she pledged her “steadfast commitment to… integrity.”

Her score on that count is the subject of my most recent Ami column, which you can read here.

Pinchas – Dark Side of the Moon

Have you ever wondered why, in the Mussaf Amidah of a Jewish leap year (when there are two Adars), we add the phrase ulichaparas posha, “and for atonement for sin”? It is a 13th phrase in the list of brachos at whose end it is added, which makes sense for a year with 13 months. But why “atonement of sin”? The Nachlas Tzvi has a fascinating suggestion.

Our parsha lists a number of special communal korbanos. On Rosh Chodesh, the day of the new moon, among other sacrifices, a chatas, a sin-offering, is brought (Bamidbar 28:15). Unlike other chata’os brought on holidays, though, it alone is called a chatas laHashem. The halachic import of that fact, as Rashi notes, is that it atones for tum’ah contamination of the mikdash or kodoshim that no person ever knew about, only Hashem.

But the Midrash (also cited by Rashi) says something flabbergasting, that the korban is brought as an “atonement” – whatever that might mean – on behalf of Hashem, for His having “lessened” the moon. The reference, of course, is to the Midrash’s account of how the moon complained that “two kings cannot wear one crown” and, as a result, was divinely demoted.

The reason for a Jewish leap year, says the Nachlas Tzvi, is that the Jewish calendar, which is essentially lunar, requires an occasional additional month, to bring the Jewish months into alignment with the seasons (which are the result of the sun’s rays’ angle toward the hemispheres of an axis-tilted earth). The Nachalas Tzvi suggests that the “lessening” of the moon may refer not only to a muting of brightness or size but also to the fact that it takes less time for our satellite to orbit around the earth 12 times than it takes the earth to revolve around the sun, rendering a lunar year “less,” in a temporal sense – shorter – than a solar one.

He sees the “atonement” as being for the moon’s complaint. But it would seem that it might better refer to the confounding Midrash cited that Rashi cites, whatever it might mean.

Balak – Judge, Jury and Executioner

Moshe Rabbeinu couldn’t recall the halacha about the proper course of action when encountering a Jewish man engaging intimately with a non-Jewish woman (Sanhedrin 82a). Pinchas had to remind him that Moshe himself had taught him that kana’im pog’im bo, “zealots have permission to attack the violator.”

Even then, though, after being reminded of the halacha, Moshe demurs, telling Pinchas that “the reader of the letter should be its contents’ executor.”

It is an interesting aphorism, but was there any compelling reason why Moshe didn’t rise to the task of dispatching Zimri and Kozbi himself? It is hard to imagine the ultimate defender of Torah and Klal Yisrael not wishing to himself undertake what needed to be done to defend the Torah and protect his people. After all, the immediately preceding psukim have him punishing those who engaged in worship of Baal Pe’or.

Rav Shlomo Ganzfried, the author of the Kitzur Shulchan Aruch, in his sefer Aperion, suggests a reason, beyond the upshot of the aphorism, for Moshe’s hesitancy.

He points out that Zimri had challenged Moshe, asking if Cozbi was forbidden to him. “And if you say that she is forbidden, what about the daughter of Yitro to whom you are married? Who permitted her to you?” (ibid).

Moshe feared, Rav Ganzfried suggests, that if he were the one to dispatch the sinners, it might be seen as the settling of a personal score, not the heeding of a Torah law. It might be perceived not as an act of kana’us but rather of negi’us.

It occurs to me that Moshe may not so much have been concerned with what others might think but rather demurred and invoked the aphorism of the letter-reader because of the singular nature of kana’im pog’im bo.

Normally, a violator of the law must appear in court and his case properly adjudicated. Kana’im pog’im bo is an exception to that. Thus, the executor of the punishment is acting in a way like a judge. Halacha disallows a judge from adjudicating a case if he has any relationship of pre-existing bias for or against a litigant. So Moshe may have felt he could not halachically assume the role of a kana’i here. As to who could, well, he said to Pinchas, “You read the letter.”

Getting Away With Murder — Beware the MAID

New York State’s legislature-passed assisted suicide law is perched atop a sadly well-traveled slimy slope. Only Governor Hochul can knock it off its precarious perch. To read about the slipperiness, please click here.

Chukas – The Marrow of the Matter

Our ancestors were divinely commanded to gaze at a copper representation of a snake. In order to end a plague of snakebites born of their complaint about the mon (Bamidbar 21:8). Chazal explain that it wasn’t the sight of the copper snake per se that effected the plague’s end.

Rather “when the Jewish people turned their eyes upward and subjected their hearts to their Father in Heaven, they were healed, but if not, they were necrotized [by the venom]” (Rosh Hashana 29a).

So, the obvious question: Why not eliminate the middlesnake and just look directly heavenward?

Rabbeinu Bachya calls attention to the word used to introduce the (real) snakes in the account: hanechashim (Bamidbar 21:6). Not “snakes” but “the snakes.” The definite article, he says, is a reference to the poisonous reptiles that, are described (Devarim 8:15) as having been ever-present in the desert our ancestors wandered.

Rav Samson Rafael Hirsch expands on that observation, explaining that gazing at the copper snake was meant to sensitize the people to the ubiquity of snakes around them – and to the realization that when the snakes hadn’t harmed them, it was because of Hashem’s protection.

That puts me in mind of a pasuk (Tehillim 35:10) included at the end of Nishmas, the beautiful expression of gratitude recited at the end of psukei dizimra on Shabbos. “Kol atzmosai… matzil ani meichazak mimenu” – “All my bones shall say, ‘Hashem, who is like You? You save the poor from one stronger than him, the poor and needy from the one who would rob him’.”

My bones?

Parts of Nishmas describe our bodies’ figuratively praising Hashem. But those parts can be read, too, as asserting that our bodies’ functionings are themselves praises of Hashem.

Our physical bodies are threatened by scores of dangerous invaders, held off, if we are healthy, by an unbelievably complex biological network we call the immune system.

An astounding menagerie of antibodies is produced by the white blood cells in our bodies, each product designed by our Designer to disable a specific bacteria, virus or toxin, thousands of which constantly seek to infect our bodies.

Those protectors, as it happens, are born in the marrow of our bones.

Korach – Schism and Stereopsis

His “eye,” not his “eyes.”

That’s what Chazal point to with regard to how a pikei’ach (perceptive person) like Korach could undertake a shtus, a “stupidity” like fomenting a rebellion against Moshe Rabbeinu.

The words of the Midrash, brought by Rashi (Bamidbar 16:7), are: “His eye misled him. He saw [in a prophecy] that Shmuel would be one of his descendants” and assumed that he, Korach, was thereby licensed to foment a rebellion.

Why his “eye,” in the singular?

The fact that we have a pair of eyes allows, of course, for a special sort of vision, stereopsis, which gives us the ability to perceive depth and three-dimensional structures by combining the slightly different images received by each eye. That facilitates our ability to judge the relative distance of objects and perceive depth.

Korach was focused on only one aspect, his genealogical legacy, his future descendant Shmuel. He didn’t employ the full complement of vision, and remained blind to the larger issue of what he was actually about to do – foster a schismatic rebellion against Hashem’s chosen messenger. He saw a picture, yes, just not the big picture.

Chazal famously teach that “falsehood has no feet” – that the word sheker teeters on the single “foot” of the letter kuf – while truth is stable, as each letter of the word emes is firmly grounded (Shabbos 104a).

But that same Gemara also notes that the letters of sheker are adjacent to one another in the alphabet, while those of emes span the entire aleph-beis. That fact, Chazal say, teaches us that falsehood is easily found, but truth, only with great difficulty.

I understand that to mean that one can be misled by focusing on only one aspect of something. Perceiving the truth, by contrast, requires spanning the entirety of what is seen, the “big picture,” complete with stereopsis. It’s a lesson much needed in our polarized, black-and-white, one-dimensional times.

Korach — Schism and Stereopsis