Category Archives: Israel

Retroactive Prophecy Redux

As I expected, my critique of some recent writing of Rabbi Berel Wein has generated many comments and communications. There were, also as expected, yeas and nays

The nays focused on either or both of two complaints. Paraphrased loosely: 1) How DARE you criticize an elder statesman of the Orthodox Jewish world? (And a sub-complaint: How DARE you not refer to Rabbi Wein as a Rosh Yeshiva?)

And 2) But Rabbi Wein is right! Gedolim have erred in the past! So what bothers you about what Rabbi Wein wrote?

The first thing first. I have great respect for Rabbi Wein as a person and a scholar, and feel enormous personal hakaras hatov to him for several things, among them his wonderful history tapes, which I used back in the 1980s to create a syllabus for a high school Jewish history course I taught then; and his mentorship of, and Torah-study with, a cherished son-in law of mine, who remains close to, and works with, Rabbi Wein to this day.

I meant no insult, chalilah, by not referring to Rabbi Wein as a Rosh Yeshiva (he led Yeshivas Shaarei Torah in Monsey for 20 years). He has not, however, served in that position since 1997, and his rightful claims to fame are his great knowledge of Jewish history and his writings. The Wikipedia entry for Rabbi Wein, in fact and accurately, identifies him as “an American-born Orthodox rabbi, scholar, lecturer, and writer… regarded as an expert on Jewish history…”

As to the reason I felt it was acceptable, even required, to publicly criticize his recent essays, I can only say that there are times that “ein cholkin kavod lirav” – “we do not defer to even great men” This, I felt and feel, was such a time.

As to the second complaint, the complainers need only read – this time, carefully – what Rabbi Wein wrote, and – just as carefully – what I did.

I did not contest the assertion that the religious leaders of Klal Yisrael can err; in fact the Gemara says so, in many places; to the contrary, I clearly stated the fact.

What I contested was the attitude that any of us can be sure, based only on our own lights, that great men in fact erred in specific cases; and – most egregiously – that those judgments allow us to cavalierly reject the current guidance of our own generation’s religious leadership.

To wit, Rabbi Wein insinuates that the Gedolim of today, who are looked to for guidance by the majority of yeshivos, Bais Yaakovs and Jewish day schools, are limited by “a mindset that hunkers back to an idyllic Eastern European world of fantasy that is portrayed falsely in fictional stories.” That jaundiced judgment is used by Rabbi Wein to explain why those Gedolim don’t endorse the celebration of Yom Ha’atzma’ut or the commemoration of the Holocaust on Yom HaShoah (but rather, instead, in other ways and at times like Tisha B’Av).

“The whole attitude of much of the Orthodox world,” he further writes, “is one of denial of the present fact that the state exists, prospers and is the largest supporter of Torah and Jewish traditional religious lifestyle in the world.” No one, though, denies those facts, only that they somehow mean that opposition to the creation of Israel before the Second World War is, as a result, somehow retroactively rendered erroneous.

Rabbi Wein also writes that “One of the great and holy leaders of Orthodox society in Israel stated in 1950 that the state could not last more than fifteen years. Well, it is obvious that in that assessment he was mistaken. But again it is too painful to admit that he was mistaken…”

Perhaps Rabbi Wein is referring to someone else, but if his reference is to the Chazon Ish, it is a tale widely told in some circles that lacks any basis I have been able to find. On the contrary, the contention has been utterly rejected by someone, a talmid of the Chazon Ish who became an academic, who spoke to the Chazon Ish extensively about Israel. The godol, the talmid writes, expressed his opinion that time would have to tell whether Israel would develop into a positive or negative thing for Klal Yisrael; but the Godol did not, the talmid stresses, ever opine what he felt the future held, much less offer some timeline.

The issue is not whether Gedolim are Nevi’im (they are not) but whether the Gedolim of each generation are, in the end, those to whom the Torah wishes us to turn for guidance, the “einei ha’eidah,” the “eyes of the people.” Or just some righteous but out-of-touch ivory tower scholars who cannot be relied upon for anything but issues concerning kashrus or Shabbos.

I make no apologies for standing up for the former conviction. And I would welcome Rabbi Wein proclaiming a similar stance. But, alas, words he has written have struck me, and many, many others (including both those upset at those words and others who welcomed them with glee) as implying the latter.

I truly wish I hadn’t felt the need to address those words, but I did.

Retroactive Prophecy

There exists a mentality, even among some who should know better, like the respected popular historian Rabbi Berel Wein, that any one of us can, and even should, second-guess the attitudes and decisions of Torah luminaries of the past.

In that thinking, for instance, the opposition of many Gedolim in the 1930s and 1940s to the establishment of a Jewish state was a regrettable mistake. After all, the cavalier thinking goes, a state was in the end established, and in many ways it flourishes; so the Gedolim who opposed it must have been wrong. And we should acknowledge their error and impress it upon our children with a nationalistic commemoration of the day on which Israel declared her independence.

None of us, however, can possibly know what the world would be like today had Israel not come into being. What would have happened to the European survivors of the Holocaust who moved to Israel? Would they have languished in the ruins of Europe and eventually disappeared instead? Rebuilt their communities? Emigrated to the West? Would Eretz Yisrael have remained a British mandate, become a part of Jordan, morphed into a new Arab state? Would Jews have been barred from their homeland, tolerated by those overseeing it, or perhaps welcomed by them to live there in peace? Would there have been more Jewish casualties than the tens of thousands killed in wars and terrorist attacks since Israel’s inception, or fewer? Is the physical danger today to the millions of Jews in their homeland lesser or greater?

Would the widespread anti-Semitism that masquerades as anti-Zionism have asserted itself just as strongly as now? (A recent ADL survey revealed that Jews are hated by 87% to 93% of the populaces of North Africa and Middle East, and that the most widely held stereotype about Jews is that they “are more loyal to Israel” than their own countries.) Or would Jew-hatred have been undermined or attenuated by the lack of a sufficiently “sanitized” mask?

I don’t know the answer to any of those questions, of course. Neither, though, just as obviously, does anyone else, no matter how wise he may be or conversant with the facts of history. For we are dealing here not with history but with retroactive prophecy. And that’s something no one alive possesses.

Yet some people, understandably uncomfortable with even theoretically imagining an Israel-less world, sermonize as if they do know the unknowable, as if the very fact that a state of Israel exists means that those who opposed its establishment were misguided.

Please don’t misunderstand. Every sane and sensitive Jew today supports Israel’s security needs, and appreciates the fact that we can freely live in or visit our homeland; and that the state and its armed forces seek to protect all within the country’s borders.

And more.

We are makir tov for the good that previous governments in Israel have in fact provided Klal Yisrael, the support it has given its religious communities, yeshivos, Bais Yaakovs and mosdos chessed.

None of that, though, need come along with an abandonment of respect for great leaders of Klal Yisrael who felt that a different path to Jewish recovery from the Holocaust would have been wiser. Many of those leaders, of course, once Israel became a reality, “recalculated,” as our GPSs do at times, and accepted the state, even counseled participation in its political process. But they were adjusting to developments, not recanting their judgments, which were based on their perception that a secular state would, at one point or another, seek to adversely affect its religious citizens. A perception, it should be noted, that has been borne out by numerous policies and actions, from yaldei Teiman and yaldei Teheran to the agenda of the Lapids, père et fils.

The Gedolim who lived during the Holocaust, too, have been subjected to retroactive prophets’ harsh judgment. Those who counseled Jews to remain in Europe, in the hope that political and military developments would take a different turn than they tragically did are blithely second-guessed. Here, too, none of us can know with surety the “what-ifs?” or even the “whys?”

Not to mention that Gedolim are wise men, not prophets. Their guidance in each generation, which the Torah itself admonishes us to heed, does not assure us of any particular outcome. It is based, though, on their sublime connection to Torah, and thus must be of paramount importance to us. It’s odd how few would think of disparaging an expert doctor or lawyer whose best advice, following the prescribed protocol, led to a place the patient or client didn’t envision. Even if the outcome was unhappy, one would say, the advisors did their job. When it comes to Gedolim, though, some wax judgmental and condescending.

And it’s not an armchair issue. There are implications to disparaging the decisions of the true Jewish leaders of the past. It sets the stage for what, in our contemporary self-centered, blog-sodden and audaciously opinionated world, recalls the true prophet’s phrase “each man acting according to what is right in his own eyes.”

And the prophet is not lauding that state of affairs.

The Secular Sky Is Falling!

(This essay appeared in Haaretz this week, under a different title.)

Well, it won’t be long now before Israel institutes penalties for watching television on the Sabbath and declares a religious war against the Palestinians. At least that’s what a cursory – or, actually, even a careful – reading of a recent New York Times op-ed might lead one to conclude.

In the piece, Abbas Milani, the head of the Iranian studies program at Stanford University, and Israel Waismel-Manor, a University of Haifa senior lecturer, argue that Iran and Israel might be “trading places,” the former easing into a more secular mode, the latter slouching toward theocracy.

Whether the writers’ take on Iran has any merit isn’t known to me. But their take on Israel is risible, and the evidence they summon shows how clueless even academics can be.

The opinionators contend that the “nonreligious Zionism” advanced by David Ben-Gurion in the 1950s is “under threat” today by “Orthodox parties” that “aspire to transform Israel into a theocracy.”

The irony is intriguing. It was none other than Ben-Gurion who pledged, in a 1947 agreement with the Agudath Israel World Organization, representing Haredi Jews, to do “everything possible” to promote a single standard, that of halacha, or Jewish religious law, with regard to “personal status” issues like marriage, divorce and conversion; to designate the Jewish Sabbath as the new state’s official day of rest; to provide only kosher food in government kitchens; and to endorse a religious educational system as an alternative to Israeli state public schools. Those concessions, which pretty much sum up Israel’s accommodation of religion, were seen as inherent to its claim to be a “Jewish State.”

The impression Messrs. Milani and Waismel-Manor seek to promote is that there has been some sort of sea change of late in the Haredi community’s influence and designs. The writers, like other “the secular sky is falling” oracles, point to demographics (the Haredi community considers children to be great blessings) and the rise of Haredi political parties (although they are not currently part of the government coalition and always at the mercy of the larger parties) as evidence.

But a closer look at recent religious controversies in Israel, whether the drafting of Haredi men, traditional prayer standards at the Western Wall, conversion standards or subsidies for religious students, reveals that Haredi activism, such as it is, is aimed entirely at preserving the “religious status quo” of the past six decades, not at intensifying the state’s restrained connection to Judaism – much less at creating a “theocracy.” Some outside the Haredi community feel that the religious status quo is outdated and needs to be changed. But Haredi political activism is limited to pushback against that cause; it does not aim to impose Jewish observance on any Israeli.

And on the infrequent occasions when individuals have sought to expand real or imagined religious values in the public sphere – like imposing separate seating for men and women on selected bus lines servicing religious neighborhoods – Israel’s courts have stepped in and conclusively quashed the attempts. (Separate seating on those limited lines remains voluntary, and anyone seeking to force it is subject to prosecution.) And when religious vigilantes have been reported to have done ugly things (see: Beit Shemesh), the reported actions have been broadly condemned, and have ceased. Messrs. Milani and Waismel-Manor presumably know that there have been no moves in Israel to compel synagogue attendance or to cut off criminals’ body parts, sharia-style.

They get totally wrong, too, what they describe as “the vast majority of Orthodox Jews” who they contend are “against any agreement with the Palestinians,” further contributing to the writers’ feverish imagination of (excuse the expression) Armageddon.

There are many, to be sure, in the “national religious” camp who agitate for annexation of the West Bank and shun the idea of a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. (The New York Times op-ed authors quite erroneously conflated this community, represented in Israel’s government by Habayit Hayehudi, with the Haredim, despite their distinctly different religious, political and cultural positions.

But the vast majority of Haredim are famously deferent to their religious leaders, many of whom have maintained for decades that that land may, indeed should, be ceded in exchange for a meaningful peace with trustworthy adversaries of good will. The current Haredi (and much non-Haredi) opposition to the here-again, gone-again current peace process is due to the apparent lack of such an adversary. While Haredim await the Messiah’s arrival and restoration of all of Eretz Yisrael to the Jewish people and the re-establishment of the Davidic kingdom, they do not consider it acceptable to try to push history forward.

Yes, Israel’s Haredi population has grown, and its growth has had impact on aspects of Israeli life – in Haredi communities. There has never been any attempt to insinuate religious practices into non-Haredi ones, and no one has ever put forth any plans to do so. The overwhelming majority of Israeli Haredim just want to be left alone and allowed to live their lives as their – and most Jews’ – ancestors did. That shouldn’t discomfit, much less threaten, anyone. And it certainly shouldn’t be portrayed as some looming catastrophe by sky-watchers in ivory towers.

Pondering the Prayer Gathering

The article below appeared last week, on March 11, in Haaretz. It is republished here with that paper’s permission.

Pondering the Prayer Gathering

Ruminations of a participant in the Manhattan Atzeret Tefilla

The weather in Manhattan on Sunday – a few degrees above freezing – wasn’t as pleasant as Jerusalem’s a week earlier. But that didn’t stop an estimated 60,000 Orthodox Jews from turning out to participate in an American counterpart to the mammoth prayer gathering that had filled the Holy City’s streets the week before.

Many American haredim live in communities far removed from New York, and thus couldn’t participate. Still and all, an ocean of black hats stretched about a mile along, fittingly, Water Street, a major thoroughfare at Manhattan’s tip. Traffic reporters were beside themselves, direly warning drivers to abandon all hope of entering lower Manhattan, and reporters in truck buckets high above the crowd shouted down to us earthlings that they couldn’t spy an end to the mass of humanity.

And, as was the case at the Israeli happening, a broad spectrum of haredim was represented.

There were Jewish businessmen and professionals from throughout New York and New Jersey, yeshiva and kollel students from places like Lakewood and Baltimore, chassidim of varied stripes, even including Satmar, a group that isn’t often comfortable with, and is seldom seen among, such broad efforts.

A large portion of the gathering site was set aside for women, of whom there were many, too, schoolgirls, seminarians and homemakers.

(Also represented, although in protest of the gathering, was the anti-Israel Neturei Karta. A small contingent of its teenage boys, held back by police near the Staten Island Ferry, seemed to be enjoying themselves, waving placards, denouncing Israel and condemning those who walked by for not sharing their point of view. The walkers-by just rolled their eyes and moved along to join the prayers.)

What united the supplicants was what united the participants in the Jerusalem gathering: the conviction that a dangerous line was about to be crossed.

That line, of course, is the modus vivendi in Israel since the state’s inception, which permits full-time Torah-students to defer the military service required of (most) other Israelis. And the looming line-crosser is the Knesset legislation all but finally approved that would extend mandatory military or civil service to the haredi community and that allows, if mandated quotas are not met, for criminal prosecution of haredi conscientious objectors.

The law is generously sugar-coated, extolling Torah-study, phasing in its quotas over several years, insulating 1800 particularly promising haredi students annually from the draft and permitting others to defer service for several years. But, to the haredi world, the sugar cannot mask what they see as its bottom line bitter taste: effectively making a student’s determination to study Torah full time a criminal offense, potentially punishable with imprisonment.

That fact is “deeply dismaying and profoundly shocking,” according to a statement issued by the American gathering’s organizers. (Full disclosure: the organization I work for, Agudath Israel of America, was asked to provide its expertise in arranging the necessary permits, police presence and other logistical assistance. But it was only part of the broader-based effort.)

And the purpose of the prayer gathering, the statement continued, was to let Israeli haredim know “that the Torah community in America stands with you…” All that transpired, as in the Jerusalem gathering, was prayer and recitation of Tehillim.

Between the two events, though, something less rarified transpired, something in fact ugly. Some enterprising fellow decided to produce his personal “official” video of the Jerusalem happening. It was set to a pop-tune that hijacked the lyrics of the traditional “siyum,” or tractate-completion, prayer, contrasting the life of scholarly Jews with aimless souls who “sit around at street corners.”

“We arise and they arise,” the grateful prayer goes. In the video, at the phrase “we arise to study words of Torah,” the image of a haredi studying appeared. And at “they arise to pointless ventures,” politicians… and soldiers were depicted. The insinuation (at least about soldiers) was deeply offensive to all feeling Jews, haredi ones included. Normative haredim, even those who wish to be scholars and not soldiers, and even with their sincere belief that Torah-study protects soldiers and citizenry alike, don’t disparage soldiers.

And, as might have been expected, a “counter-video” subsequently appeared, using the same pop-tune and words, but with opposite depictions.

How often and how tragically are important issues hijacked by the small-minded, whether Neturei Karta or haredi-haters, would-be impresarios of this extreme or of that. Having strong convictions doesn’t have to result in insensitivity, and certainly not insanity.

In a perfect world, every secular Israeli (even politicians) would respect those who sincerely embrace full-time Torah-study as a high ideal; and every haredi would not only respect the soldiers who put their lives on the line for the Jewish people but declare the fact at every opportunity. And Jews would seek, at most, to persuade, not ignore one another, and not try to legislate their lives.

But alas, our world is imperfect.

We can pray, though.

The Anarchy Option

My interest in the recently concluded Winter Olympics in Sochi was roughly equivalent to my interest in the recently concluded International Kennel Club dog show in Chicago. Which is to say, nil.

But a “Jewish” issue that trailed in the snow behind the Sochi shenanigans was amusing. At least, initially. Pondered a bit, it was a reminder of something disturbing.

An ice dancer named Charlie White, who, with his partner, won a gold medal at the competition, was roundly celebrated by the media for his accomplishment, and by the Jewish media for his accomplishment… and Jewishness.

Despite the latter assertion, though, the skater’s mother apparently notified the Detroit Jewish News, the original reporter of Mr. White’s Jewish credentials, that neither she nor her son is a member of the tribe.

After some research, the paper discovered that the gold medal winner’s only Jewish connection was a Jewish stepfather; it apologized for its original reportage.

The Reform movement wouldn’t at present consider Charlie’s connection to the Jewish people sufficient to automatically qualify him as Jewish in its eyes. But it has long accepted a “patrilineal” definition of “Jewishness” – that is to say that, contrary to halacha, it is sufficient to have a Jewish father to be considered a Jew.

(Interestingly, that movement also requires that a person with only one Jewish parent – even if it’s one’s mother – “identify” in some way in his or her life as Jewish. So the “non-identifying” halachically Jewish child of a Jewish mother and non-Jewish father is considered a non-Jew in Reform eyes. Let it not be said that the movement lacks its stringencies.)

So, at least for now, Charlie is not Jewish by Reform definition, as his Jewish pater was only a step-pater. But nothing stands in the way of the Reform movement one day deciding that step-parentage, too, can be a determinant of “Jewishness.” “Updating” things is part and parcel of Reform (and Conservative) theology.

There already is, in fact, a Jewish movement that skates an even wider circle here: The “Humanistic Judaism” movement defines a Jew as anyone “who identifies with the history, culture and fate of the Jewish people,” regardless of parentage. Thus, a person with no Jewish parents, grandparents – or stepparents – need not, the group’s explains, “give up who they are,” in order “to add Jewish identity to their self-definition.”

Does any of this really matter? Unfortunately, yes. Because there is currently a vocal movement to export the American smorgasbord of “Jewish” definitions to Israel.

Like many a major disaster, this potential one is approaching on tiptoes, the toes here those of the nominally Orthodox American activist rabbi, Avi Weiss.

Despite the rabbi’s Orthodox background, Israel’s Chief Rabbinate dared to call into question his assurance about the Jewish and marital status of a congregant. That action was met by outrage on the part of Rabbi Weiss and his supporters, who identify with the “Open Orthodox” group he founded. Pressure was subsequently put on the Chief Rabbinate and a compromise was agreed upon that essentially placed responsibility for vetting the testimonies of Rabbinical Council of America (RCA) members, including Rabbi Weiss, on the RCA.

Rabbi Weiss declared victory and is opposing the entire institution of the Chief Rabbinate in Israel, railing against its “far-reaching and exclusive control in Israel over personal matters” like marriage, divorce and conversion. “It is time,” he declared in the New York Times, “to decentralize the Chief Rabbinate’s power.

“In a democratic Jewish state,” he asserted, “options must be available.”

From the perspective of Jews who value halacha, the option of “Open Orthodoxy” standards is bad enough. Both Rabbi Weiss and his followers have flouted Jewish law (with “innovations” like ordaining women and proposing wholesale “annulments” of problematic marriages). Once “options” are made available, however, what will result will be personal status anarchy. Nothing will stand in the way of Israel’s accepting the standards, or lack of them, of yet other contemporary movements that are even more blatantly rejective of halacha.

Rabbi Weiss has in fact endorsed just that, writing in The Times of Israel that, “Israel as a state should give equal opportunities to the Conservative and Reform movements. Their rabbis should be able to conduct weddings and conversions.”

Weighing in with a hearty amen were, among others, Conservative Rabbi Julie Schonfeld, the executive vice president of her movement’s rabbinical group. While praising the Chief Rabbinate’s reversal regarding Rabbi Weiss, she pointed out that “Of course, my conversions are not recognized in Israel. Nor are those of my 1,700 Conservative colleagues, my 2,000 Reform colleagues and my 300 Reconstructionist colleagues.”

“Notify your board members and donors,” she exhorted members of non-Orthodox congregations, “that the rabbis who married them, bar mitzvahed their children, buried their parents, and converted their sons and daughters-in-law do not deserve to be called rabbis in the eyes of the Israeli rabbinate. Tell them that none of their life-cycle events count and that the State of Israel does not really think they are Jews for religious purposes.”

In contemporary America, having “Jewish credentials” is no longer an assurance that their bearer is in fact Jewish by halachic definition. Thankfully, that is not the case in Israel.

For now.

Until “options,” chalilah, are made available.

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The Devil’s In The Daydreams

One would be forgiven, especially were one an optimist, for imagining that recent reports of the government of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s donation of $400,000 to a Teheran Jewish hospital might signal something positive about Iran’s current leadership. With Purim within sight, the idea of good news coming out of Persia is an enticing one.

Our theoretical optimist would also likely have been gratified by the words of the hospital’s director, Dr. Ciamak Morsadegh, who said the Iranian leader “is showing that we [Jews], as a religious minority, are part of this country, too.”

But the Iranian leader’s smiles, largesse and (to flashback several months) Rosh Hashana good wishes to the world’s Jews were lopsidedly outweighed by another recent report, this one provided by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

(MEMRI, the single most valuable news source for happenings in the Arab and Muslim worlds, does not profess or evidence any political stance; it simply translates and makes available speeches, media reports and other information, positive and negative alike, that aren’t otherwise accessible to the English-reading public.)

The report included a video clip and transcript of a broadcast aired on Iran television’s Channel 1 on February 6. It is remarkable.

The video consists of a simulation – not quite up to the latest Hollywood special effects standards but which might hold its own against a 1980s disaster film – of Iranian planes and missiles attacking civilian and military targets in Israel.

Footage of ostensible missile-equipped “unmanned aerial vehicles,” or drones, in flight are accompanied by voice-over comments like “Iranian UAVs entering stealth mode in order to evade enemy radar” and “Iranian UAVs passing over the Iron Dome systems of Tel Aviv and Haifa.”

The planes are shown bombing target after target (bulls-eyes all, of course): Tel Aviv, Ben Gurion Airport, Israeli “missile bases in Jericho,” an Israeli Defense Ministry “emergency meeting,” the Dimona nuclear reactor and Haifa’s airport and refineries. Missiles streak forth, spectacular explosions ensue and, presumably, large numbers of people are incinerated. Actual news footage is interspersed here and there from what seem to be terrorist attacks in Israel, with wounded people staggering about and emergency personnel frantically trying to help.

Nor is America spared in the Iranian blood-lust fantasy. Attacks on the mainland aren’t portrayed – the producers apparently wished to keep things within the realm of believability – but an American aircraft carrier stood in for the country.

“The USS Abraham Lincoln” is shown in the Straits of Hormuz and its commander is sternly warned by an Iranian official by radio.

“Commander of Abraham Lincoln, Navy,” he intones. “You have entered the Islamic Republic of Iran’s marine borders. Immediately leave this zone. I say again: Immediately leave this zone. Otherwise, we will have to defend our territory.”

After which Iranian missiles are fired, and the American ship is destroyed in a succession of fireballs.

It’s all primitive and risible propaganda, to be sure, intended for internal Iranian consumption. But what does it say, in the end, about the Rouhani regime if that is what it feeds the country’s populace, if it is seeking to prepare them not for détente but for war?

The current “Geneva Agreement” between Iran and six world powers, including the U.S., consists of a short-term freeze of crucial portions of Iran’s nuclear program and its daily monitoring by international inspectors, in exchange for decreased economic sanctions; and it is intended as a time-buyer as the countries work toward forging a permanent agreement.

No one can know whether that strategy will bear fruit in the long term. But what the world powers need to know, even as they pursue diplomatic solutions to the threat that is Iran, is that they are dealing with a government that may occasionally present a reasonable face but whose internal fantasies are dark and destructive, a leadership whose sociable smiles are belied by its devilish daydreams

A snake can seem to smile, too, and can even, with skill, be rendered docile, at least for a time. But it’s always necessary to remember that, however quiescent and cooperative the creature might seem, it’s still, in the end, a snake.

The Road to Heil

If ever there were a question to inspire ambivalence it might be whether the current push in Israel to outlaw the word “Nazi” and Holocaust-era German symbols is a good idea.

On the one hand, the word and symbols are often used these days to score political points, to just insult someone with whom the user disagrees or in the ostensible service of humor. Placards of Yitzchak Rabin’s image in a Nazi uniform were brandished in demonstrations before his assassination; and, more recently, religious Jewish children were dressed in concentration camp garb to protest government budget cuts. A long-into-reruns popular American television show included a character, the irascible owner of a food stand, who nom de tv was “the soup Nazi.” Talk about trivialization.

But there’s another hand, too, at least to many minds: Outlawing speech is not something to undertake lightly. And just where does one draw the line between speech that’s just impolite or crude, and speech that is so depraved as to merit being criminalized? Forbidding the shouting of “fire!” in a crowded theater is understandably worthy of penalization; calling someone a soup Nazi, well, somewhat less so.

And then there is the question of whether criminalizing even clearly outrageous use of words like “Nazi” would in fact in the end help curb the misuse of the metaphor, or, perhaps, empower it, making it even more enticing to those who seek to shock, not enlighten.

The sponsor of the Israeli bill, the Yisrael Beitenu party’s Shimon Ohayon, said that “We want to prevent disrespect of the Holocaust,” and contends that “we have too many freedoms.” Free speech advocates, as might be expected, do not agree. (To their credit, though, they seem to have avoided comparing the proposed legislation with the Nuremberg laws.)

The pending bill would impose a fine of 100,000 shekels (nearly $29,000) and six months in jail for anybody using the word or symbols of the Third Reich in a “wrong or inappropriate way.”

Whatever one feels about the wisdom of the legislation, though, what exactly will define “inappropriate”? Oy, there’s the rub.

Is likening Iran’s nuclear ambitions to the designs Nazi Germany had on the world in the 1930s inappropriate? Most of us would say it’s no stretch at all. Dov Hanin, however, a member of an Arab party in the Knesset, feels otherwise, and has suggested that, had the pending law been enacted a year or two ago, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would deserve jail for having compared former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Hitler.

And what about people who, as has happened in the U.S., falsely accuse a community – say, the charedi one – or one of its organizations of being part of a sordid conspiracy to enable the harming of children? Would it be inappropriate, in light of such a law, to compare the accusers to Nazi propagandists who insinuated that Jews as a group killed Christian children for their blood? There is certainly a difference between the two propagandas; the contemporary accusers don’t seek (one hopes) to kill their fellow Jews. Is it a difference, though, that makes a difference?

I recently dared to write an essay that suggested that the animus some Orthodox Jews display toward President Obama is misconceived, and unjustified in light of the facts. Most of the responses I received were positive ones; there are many observant Jews, it seems, who have harbored that realization quietly and who were happy to see it actually expressed in a public medium.

Then there were responses that took issue with my point, and pointed out things – some of them loosely pertinent to Israel, many of them in entirely unrelated realms – that the writers felt justified their anti-Obama attitudes. Even though I was unmoved by the arguments, that’s fine. People don’t see things, or have to see things, the same way.

But then there were the crazed reactions, among them that of a gentleman who posted his take on a blog. I had begun my piece with an anecdote about a Mi Sheberach prayer made for President Obama; the blog-poster, clever fellow that (he thinks) he is, attempted to show how wrongheaded that was – by suggesting a parallel prayer being made in a German synagogue in 1938 on behalf of… you guessed it, Adolf Hitler. The rest of his piece was similarly unhinged, reaching far and wide to change the subject, preaching the talk-show tropes of Benghazi and Obamacare, and berating me for my criticism of “Open Orthodoxy.”

In the end, I remain of two minds regarding the proposed Israeli law. I fully understand the desire to enact such legislation, and recognize the bill’s sponsors’ good intentions; yet part of me feels that things would best be left alone.

For two reasons: First, because legislating civility is likely a futile endeavor. And, second, because, all said and done, the wild misapplication of words like “Nazi” and “Hitler” ultimately says something only about the person who misuses them.

Obama and the (Orthodox) Jews

(The article below appeared in Haaretz on January 6. It is shared here with that paper’s permission.)

The gabbai at the shul I usually attend on Shabbos is something of a comedian. When I was recently called to the Torah, he offered the traditional “Mi Sheberach” and added a blessing for “ha-president” – which he quickly qualified by adding: “Not Obama – the president of the shul.”

I interjected “yes, Obama.” Nearby congregants gasped.

They shouldn’t have. The Mishneh teaches us that Jews should pray for the government, as governments are what prevent people from acting on their worst instincts. For many years, every American Orthodox synagogue included a special prayer for the president and vice president, a practice that, for some reason, has fallen into disuse.

But beyond the Jewish obligation to express hakaras hatov, “acknowledgement of the good,” to the leaders of their lands, I believe that the current occupant of the White House well deserves our special good will.

That is not, I know, the common stance in the Orthodox world. I have been puzzling over that fact for five years.

A registered Republican since I could vote, I shared in the skepticism and concern that swept the pro-Israel community and a good part of the American populace when Mr. Obama appeared on the scene. His ascendance to prominence was so sudden, his record so sparse, his connection to a rabid preacher so troubling, what reason for optimism, really, was there?

We expected that, if elected, he would prove anti-Israel, a global isolationist, lax on national security. His wife, we were warned, was the second coming of Angela Davis. John McCain got our votes, hands down.

But when the worst actually happened and the Obamas moved into the White house, the anticipated bad news, well, never came.

Mere months into his first term, the new president dared to address the Arab world in Cairo and stated clearly that America’s “strong bond” with Israel is “unbreakable,” and that the Jewish “aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied.” He firmly denounced Holocaust denial and anti-Semitic stereotyping, the mother’s milk of much of the Arab sphere, and condemned anyone who would threaten Israel’s destruction.

I was surprised and heartened. But strangely, the reaction in many Orthodox circles was to focus not on Mr. Obama’s blunt and courageous words but on his reassurance that the U.S. is not at war with Islam (are we?), his endorsement of a two-state solution for the Israel/Palestinian conflict (the declared American position over several administrations) and his very invocation of the Holocaust as the root of Israel’s establishment (as if he should have offered his audience Torah verses). I was flummoxed by the refusal to give the man any credit, and reminded of Rodney Dangerfield’s mother-in-law’s supposed reaction when, having given him two neckties and seeing him wearing one of them, sneered “What’s the matter? You don’t like the other one?”

Then came Obama’s withdrawal from the Durban Conference, his rejection of the Goldstone report, his refusal to participate in joint military exercises with Turkey unless Israel was included, his pushing of Iron Dome, his relentless pursuit of terrorists (and authorization for killing Anwal al-Awlaki, outraging the American left), his statement before the UN General Assembly that “Israel is a sovereign state and the historic homeland of the Jewish people,” his threat in September, 2011 of severe consequences if Egyptian authorities didn’t act to protect Israeli embassy guards besieged by a mob, which they did, his successful focus on neutralizing Osama bin Laden, and more.

And yet, much of the Orthodox community, including dear friends and most of the Orthodox media, seemed to see only danger in Mr. Obama (and his wife, whose malevolent designs, it turned out, were on childhood obesity). They parsed his every utterance with the determination of a JFK-conspiracy buff examining the Zapruder film, for new “evidence” of their pre-existent conclusion. His uneasiness with Prime Minister Netanyahu (shared by a good piece of the Israeli citizenship, as it happens, and fueled in Mr. Obama’s circumstance by the Israeli’s unwarranted and insolent lecturing of the American in the spring of 2011) was seen as a rejection of Israel, which clearly was not, and has been proven not to be, the case. His every appointee (like mortal threats Chuck Hagel, Susan Rice and Hannah Rosenthal) was mindlessly rumored to be a stealth bomb aimed at Israel.

And more recently, instead of admitting that Mr. Obama’s dogged commitment to an international boycott of Iran brought its malevolent leaders to the negotiating table, many have pilloried the president for his judgment that the best path toward defanging Iran lies in allowing the mullahs to save some face rather than pushing them into a corner and risking a new terrorism campaign born of desperation.

When I occasionally wrote about President Obama’s record, it was heartening to glean from some readers’ (private) reactions that I was not alone in my puzzlement over so many Orthodox Jews’ fear and anger about Mr. Obama. It wasn’t likely a silent majority, but even a silent minority was reassuring.

Some suggested that the animus against the president was, at its core, racist. I don’t believe that. Others claimed that Mr. Obama’s social-issues liberalism irredeemably damned him in the eyes of social conservatives, a group to which most Orthodox Jews (myself included) belong.

But I think the answer is more simple. We humans don’t like to admit that we were wrong.

Not exactly a high Jewish ideal, that.

Not like hakaras hatov.

Where Are The Red Carpets?

The letter below appears in today’s New York Times

To the Editor:

I’m neither an “Israel right or wrong” person nor a supporter of what has come to be called “the Palestinian cause.” But one question keeps coming back to me when I read about objections to decisions by Jewish campus groups not to invite speakers hostile to Israel: Where is the push for Arab campus groups to roll out their red carpets to unabashed defenders of the Jewish state?

(Rabbi) AVI SHAFRAN
New York, Dec. 30, 2013

The writer is director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America.

The Peril of Pluralism

The following essay was published earlier this week, under a different title, by Haaretz. It is posted here with that paper’s permission.

Those of us who believe that the Torah, both its written text and accompanying Oral Law, were bequeathed by G-d to our Jewish ancestors at Sinai, and that its commandments and prohibitions remain incumbent on Jews to this day, obviously hope that Jewish movements lacking those beliefs remain marginal forces in Israel.

But that’s a hope born of the perspective of a particular belief-system (albeit the conviction of all Jews’ ancestors until two centuries ago). Leaving such blatant subjectivity aside, though, would the growth of non-Orthodox Jewish theologies be a boon or a bane to Israeli society qua society?

The answer may lie in the example of the United States, where the Reform and Conservative movements, as well as less popular groups like Reconstructionism and Humanistic Judaism, had and have free rein to lay claim to Jewish authenticity. And here in the American diaspora, the results of the Jewish Pluralism experiment? Decidedly binal.

On the one hand, Jews who, for whatever reason, choose not to embrace the demands of a traditional (in this context, Orthodox) Jewish life have less demanding options for maintaining a Jewish identity. They have access to clergy who are not only sensitive and caring (as all clergy should be) but who don’t regard traditional Jewish observance as necessary for meaningful Jewish life, and who can guide them through times of personal challenges, happy occasions and, G-d forbid, sad ones.

The downside of the American “let a hundred Jewish flowers bloom” approach, though, is that there is no longer a single American Jewish community.

That is because the non-Orthodox Jewish movements, whether they are unconcerned with halacha (e.g. Reform, et al.) or view it as pliable (i.e. Conservative), have happily converted countless non-Jews and (less happily, to be sure, but readily all the same) issued countless divorces. (The Reform movement’s acceptance as Jews of children born to non-Jewish mothers but Jewish fathers has complicated matters even more.)

The problem is that Orthodox Jews, out of conviction, cannot recognize the validity of such status-changes that don’t meet the halachic bar. And so, there are thousands of American non-Jews who believe they are Jews, and unknown numbers of children born to women in second marriages whose first marriages have not, in the eyes of halacha, been dissolved, children who are severely limited in whom they may halachically marry.

As a result, whereas once upon a time (and it wasn’t long ago), an Orthodox young man or woman could see a similar-minded but different-backgrounded member of the opposite sex as a potential life-partner on the exclusive evidence of a claim of Jewish identity, that is no longer the case. A child or grandchild of non-Orthodox Jews may have the halachic status of a non-Jew or be the product of an illicit remarriage.

(I was personally involved, more than 30 years ago, in the case of a young observant Orthodox woman who discovered that her maternal grandmother had been a Reform convert, rendering the young woman halachically non-Jewish. She was able to undergo a halachic conversion. But countless others are not aware of their status and, even if they were, would not necessarily be willing to meet the necessary conversion requirements.)

And so, in America, not only must non-Orthodox Jews be regarded by Orthodox Jews as possibly (and, increasingly, likely) non-Jewish, but Reform converts (whose conversions do not meet Conservative standards) are similarly not Jewish in the Conservative casting of “halacha.” And as to the human repercussions of non-halachic divorces… well, imagine a young newly Orthodox man suddenly discovering that his beloved is halachically forbidden to him in marriage

At present, the Israeli Jewish community suffers no such balkanization. There is, to be sure, much disagreement within the Israeli Jewish family; but the fights are all family fights. Anyone presenting as a Jew is regarded as a relative, no matter his or her perspective.

That is the result of what is often derided as the “Orthodox monopoly” over “personal status” issues like conversion and divorce. A less charged description, though, might be “single standard.”

No less a non-traditional Jew than David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister, understood the need for such a standard. He wrote in 1947 that multiple definitions of “Jew” would court “G-d forbid, the splitting of the House of Israel into two.” The number may have changed, but not the validity of his concern. And the fact has now been borne out by the American experiment: multiple Jewish standards yield multiple “Jewish peoples.”

Standards may chafe, but they are part of every country’s life. Even here in the pluralistic West, we have “monopolies” like a Food and Drug Administration and a Federal Reserve Board. A Jewish state requires a Jewish standard for issues of defining Jewishness.

Until fairly recently, the “highest common denominator” standard has always been halacha – “Orthodoxy.” At present in Israel, it still is. But should the pluralism push there make inroads, what would result – even from a disinterested, strictly sociological perspective –would be nothing short of Jewish societal disaster.

Rabbi Avi Shafran

Reflections on Jews, Judaism, Media and Life