Category Archives: Orthodox-Bashing

Tempest in a Tefillin-Bag?

Of the slew of recent articles celebrating the idea of girls wearing tefillin two were particularly notable. One, because of how revealing it is of its author’s attitude toward halacha; the second, because it holds the seeds of a worthy lesson.

In Haaretz, feminist Elana Sztokman (upcoming book: “The War on Women in Israel”) asserted that “the crude, sexist responses within Orthodoxy to girls wearing tefillin” only “reflect men’s fears and prejudices.” And that her brand of “religious feminism is not about… women who are angry or provocative.”

She dismisses those who have noted that the Shulchan Aruch (technically, the Rama) criticizes women’s wearing of tefillin as just “try[ing] to make their objections rooted in halakha,” and she cites in her favor the halachic authority of the founder of a school described elsewhere as representing the “co-ed, egalitarian ethos of liberal Conservative Judaism.” That authority, Ms. Sztokman announces, has “unravel[led] the halakhic myths… about women and tefillin.”

What’s more, she continues, fealty to the halachic sources about the issue only shows how “some men think about women’s bodies and their roles in society” and “how deeply rooted misogynistic perceptions are in Orthodox life.”

And to think that some people call feminists strident.

The second article of note was by Rabbi Haskel Lookstein, the spiritual leader of Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun on the Upper East Side of Manhattan (where he has permitted a woman to wear tallis and tefillin at services). Admirably and responsibly, he cites the halachic sources that oppose the practice, concedes that it isn’t “normative practice in Halachik Judaism” for women to wear tefillin, and even states that he doesn’t “want to encourage women” to do so.

He tries, though, to parse one of them, the Aruch Hashulchan, in order to make a case that the prohibition should no longer apply “in our day, when the expectations for women in general are basically the same as the expectations of men.”

I don’t think that Rabbi Lookstein, although he is greatly respected by many as a communal leader and educator, considers himself a recognized decisor of Jewish law. And so, I imagine that he would not criticize those of us who look to such decisors for rulings, and certainly would not rail against us for being “sexist” or “misogynistic.” His discomfort, moreover, with encouraging women to adopt the practice of wearing tefillin may even reflect a suspicion that, while the immediate motivations of individuals may be entirely sublime, some who are vocally pushing the practice may be more interested in prostrating themselves before an “egalitarian ethos” than in serving G-d.

En passant, though, Rabbi Lookstein raises a point that every observant Orthodox Jew would do well to consider.

The Aruch Hashulchan, he notes, writes that it is clear that only men are commanded to wear tefillin. Thus, men have no choice but to make the effort to achieve the state of physical and mental purity tefillin require – at least for a short while each day, during morning prayers. It is a risk, but the commandment makes it a necessary one. Women, however, who are not commanded to wear tefillin, do not have to undertake the choice; so why should they put themselves in the position of possibly, even inadvertently, disrespecting tefillin?

Seizing on that argument, Rabbi Lookstein asserts that since today “nobody really does it the right way… why are women any different from men in this respect? Just look at all the men who are consulting their… phones, or reading, during parts of the davening, while wearing tefillin…”

The validity of Rabbi Lookstein’s halachic suggestion regarding women wearing tefillin is, of course, highly arguable. That some people don’t properly execute a difficult but assigned personal responsibility cannot be an argument for others to unnecessarily undertake the responsibility and its challenges themselves.

But Rabbi Lookstein’s observation nevertheless holds great worth for all of us who hew to halacha, who disapprove of women laying tefillin and oppose acceptance of the same by Jewish schools.

Because we must wonder why this issue has suddenly been thrust upon us, begetting rants like Ms. Sztokman’s. We can’t just dismiss the controversy as a mere tempest in a tefillin–zekel. It has unleashed anger and hatred against halacha-committed Jews. We are taught by the Torah to examine unfortunate events for some message, some fodder for self-improvement. What might we have done to merit the introduction of yet another tool for divisiveness among Jews?

Rabbi Lookstein may have unintentionally supplied us with the answer.

There are certainly shuls where tefillin are entirely respected, where men don’t joke around or discuss business or politics or check their phones or daydream during services.

But then, sad to say, there are all too many… others too. Might what goes on in them be what is nourishing the new ill will?

Aggravated Journalism

Hella Winston was surprised that her name appeared at the bottom of the recent New York Post report about the murder of Brooklyn businessman Menachem Stark, indicating her “additional reporting” to the story. She had not written any of the article – and certainly not its tasteless, insensitive headline (which implied that an unlimited number of people surely wished the Chassidic businessman dead) or the article’s incendiary opening words: “The millionaire Hasidic slumlord…”

She had nothing to do, either, with the rest of the ugly piece, which was rife with unnamed “sources” and unsubstantiated innuendo. (It went so far as to dredge the cesspool of a rabidly anti-Orthodox blog to find what it apparently deemed a journalistic gem– an anonymous posting opining that the victim’s “slanted shtreimel on his head gives his crookedness away.”). She had not seen the article before its publication.

Ms. Winston, a sociologist by profession, had simply been contacted by the article’s main writers, she says, and provided them a small piece of information of no great consequence. Needless to say, the Post’s odious offering deeply hurt the murdered man’s wife, children and community. And I have no doubt that Ms. Winston is herself pained to have been associated in any way with the tabloid’s loathsome “report.”

What’s significant, though, is that the article’s writers cared to contact Ms. Winston, who has no prior connection that I know of with the paper.

What likely inspired them was the fact that she has some familiarity with at least part of Brooklyn’s charedi world (though Post reporters have no dearth of contacts who actually inhabit that world). She is best known, in fact, for a book she wrote several years ago that focused on young people raised in chassidic communities who abandoned their upbringings to pursue more culturally American lives. Through their words, the book portrays communities like those in Borough Park and Williamsburg as small-minded, constricting, suffocating environments.

What’s more, in 2006, Ms. Winston wrote an op-ed for The New York Times in which she described an unusual Pesach seder, whose participants were people who had “[broken] free of strictly Orthodox communities” and of the “myriad rules and regulations” that, in such places, “often [come] at the expense of the meaning of the holiday itself.” Passover, to them, she wrote, “embodies how strict Orthodoxy has become little more than social control.”

And in the Winter 2006-2007 issue of the Jewish feminist publication Lilith, Ms. Winston wrote of the “rigid gender roles” in Orthodox communities, the regulations that “control… women’s bodies and their mobility”; and of how yeshivos “can become breeding grounds” for deviancy.

Then there is the slew of articles Ms. Winston has written for the New York Jewish Week, practically all of which focus on (real, asserted or imaginary) unsavory happenings in the charedi world.

In 2011, for one instance, after the horrific murder of a little charedi boy, Leiby Kletzky, she wrote a lengthy piece in that paper contending that the Brooklyn charedi neighborhood volunteer security force Shomrim, which had played a major role in identifying the vehicle used in the boy’s abduction, had acted irresponsibly in the case and possibly hindered the police. The alleged critics of Shomrim quoted – “officials” and “sources” –were all unnamed. And “some,” the piece confides, believe that the murderer’s “violent tendencies… were known to people in the community who should have, but failed, to report him.” No evidence for any such knowledge was presented, nor has any emerged in the ensuing years.

The article then digressed into the halachic realm of mesira, or “informing,” on suspected pedophiles. There was no evidence of sexual abuse in the case, and no evidence was offered at the time (or has been uncovered since) that Leiby’s killer, currently serving 25 years to life in prison, is a pedophile.

So it’s not hard to imagine why those assigned by the Post to deliver the sort of article about the more recent murder that its readers savor – one filled with as much titillating information or misinformation as might be gathered on deadline – turned to a writer who has presented a negative picture of the Chassidic community in a book and numerous articles.

They could have turned, too, to any of a number of writers for Jewish media. Like Jay Michaelson of the Forward, whose anti-religious screeds seem to say much more about his wild anger at Judaism than about the community he regularly lambasts. Or to his colleague, the graphic artist Eli Valley, who seems to share Mr. Michaelson’s emotional agitation, although he is considerably more creative. Or to any of a number of columnists at organs like the Los Angeles Jewish Journal.

The unsavory exists, to be sure, in Chassidic (and non-Chassidic and non-Orthodox) communities, as it does in every non-Jewish community. That’s unfortunate and depressing. But so much of the Jewish and general media seem to relentlessly focus on Orthodox wrongdoing, and so often in in a journalistically irresponsible, if not libelous, way. Why that is so is something for a psychologist to ponder. For the rest of us, it should be enough to simply note the fact, and bemoan it.

No one really expects a New York tabloid to embrace accuracy and objectivity; such papers exist to titillate and scandalize their readers, not inform them.

But impartiality, fairness and truth shouldn’t be too much to ask of Jewish media. Unfortunately, the day when those ideals are respected by those organs has yet to arrive.

© Rabbi Avi Shafran 2014

Agudath Israel Condemns NY Post’s Lack Of “Basic Human Dignity”

Below is a statement issued today by Agudath Israel of America:

The New York Post crossed a line today, even for a paper specializing in the sensational, with its offensive front-page cover and equally offensive coverage of the vicious murder of a young Hassidic father of eight, Menachem Stark, Hy”d.

The paper demonstrated the poorest taste by choosing to focus on anonymous accusations rather than on the human tragedy of a wife and family’s sudden and terrible loss, and on their, and their community’s, grieving. Particularly at a time when Jews have been attacked on New York streets and are regularly vilified by hateful people around the world, the tabloid has demonstrated unprecedented callousness and irresponsibility.

Perhaps it is unrealistic to expect very much from a medium like the Post, but one should, we think, be able to expect some basic human decency in the wake of a family’s terrible personal loss.

Agudath Israel of America and its constituents, along with decent people of all religions and ethnicities, extend our deepest sympathies to Mr. Stark’s widow and children.

We, further, commend the New York City Police Department for its active pursuit of leads to Mr. Stark’s murderers, and pray that they be apprehended and brought to justice swiftly.

Seeding the Right Cloud

Following the time-honored if somewhat irritating tradition of speechmakers who begin by announcing that they are departing from the scheduled topic, I informed those present that instead of focusing on the media’s coverage of Orthodox Jews, I would make my presentation on cloud seeding.

The venue was Agudath Israel of America’s recent 91^st national convention, which took place this past weekend at the Woodcliff Lake Hilton in New Jersey, where thousands converged to hear words of inspiration and admonition from some of the Orthodox world’s guiding elders.

And, for some of the attendees, to hear words of lesser gravity from people like me, at various smaller sessions. Still, the Sunday morning one in which I participated, along with Agudath Israel executive director Rabbi Labish Becker, the session’s chairman; respected educator Rabbi Aaron Brafman; and accomplished attorney Avi Schick, drew nearly 500 souls.

A few voices in the back of the hall demanded that I repeat myself, for surely they had misheard. So I did, but, before puzzlement could turn to consternation, I launched into a pretty funny joke. No, I’m not going to repeat it here. If you’re really curious, you can get the CD from zalmanumlas@netzero.net .

But I will offer here the gist of my words that morning. (I’d love to do the same with those of my co-presenters, but don’t have their notes. So, again, please just order the CD.)

Orthodox Jews seem to be in the news a lot, usually in news stories focused on the wrongdoings of Orthodox individuals. That usually begins with the Jewish media, which make yeomen’s efforts to find anything scandalous – or even innocent but which can be presented in such a way as to imply something dark – in the Orthodox community. And larger media pick up the baleful ball and run with it.

Needless to say, there are truly egregious crimes that have been committed by members of the Orthodox community, as by those of any community. But the powerful lens aimed at the Orthodox world is sui generis. (I’m not a psychologist, but have my suspicions about why some Jewish media are so bent on ferreting out Orthodox misbehavior; it has something to do with Jewish guilt. But let’s not go there.)

And yet, there are times when it seems a stream of positive news about Orthodox Jews seems to burst forth from nowhere.

Recently, we were treated to Professor Noah Feldman’s Bloomberg News ode to the scholarship and democratic meritocracy that is Beth Medrash Govoah, the Lakewood Yeshiva; and reports about the political alliance and personal friendship between a Chassidic woman (elected to a town council) and a Palestinian one in Montreal, a man with a yarmulkeh riding a New York subway who allowed a young man in a hoodie to use his shoulder as a pillow, and a Connecticut rebbe who discovered nearly $100,000 stashed in a desk he had bought and unhesitatingly returned it to its owner. (She had forgotten where she had put the cash, which is a lesson to us all: Whenever we stash a hundred grand somewhere around the house, we should write where on a sticky note and put it on the fridge.)

What, though, precipitates the negative Ortho-news, and what the positive? A believer in chance wouldn’t have the question. But a believer in Judaism does.

And “precipitates” is the right word. My stab at an answer was where cloud seeding came in.

I picture a spiritual cloud of sorts, an amorphous mass of minor acts of chilul Hashem, or “desecration of G-d’s name.” Any time a visibly Jewish Jew blocks traffic by double parking, or is impatient with a clerk at a supermarket or cuts corners while doing his taxes, a bit of malign moisture is added to that Chilul Hashem cloud. And when it is sufficiently heavy, it rains down on our heads, and into the media, in the form of a large and public desecration of G-d’s name.

And conversely, when enough visibly Jewish Jews are considerate, polite, scrupulously honest and proactively friendly to others in their daily lives, their actions feed another cloud, the cloud of Kiddush Hashem – “Sanctification of G-d’s name.” And then the media are presented with un-ignorable examples of public actions of Kiddush Hashem, and are forced to report them.

So by our own actions, each of us helps seed one cloud or, G-d forbid, the other; whether acid rain or blessed rain results depends, in the end, on us all.

The most valuable thing I shared with those present, though, consisted of a sentence from the Rambam (Maimonides), what I believe is his definition of Kiddush Hashem.

“Anyone,” he writes, “who refrains from a sin or fulfills a commandment not for any earthly reason, not fear nor trepidation, nor to seek honor, but [entirely] because [it is the will] of the Creator… has sanctified G-d’s name.”

And so, even – perhaps especially – in our quietest, most private moments, we all have opportunities to seed the right cloud.

Al Jazeera And The Jews

Even as Al Jazeera America – the new offshoot of the Qatar-based news organization – was making its broadcast debut recently on cable carriers in the United States, its parent organization back on the Arabian peninsula featured a commentary by former Muslim Brotherhood official Gamal Nassar, in which he claimed that the Egyptian military (and currently political) leader Abdel Fattah Al Sisi is a Jew. He didn’t mean it as a compliment.

Mr. Nassar cited an Algerian newspaper (“All the slander that’s fit to sling”?) to the effect that Mr. Al Sisi’s uncle was “a member of the Jewish Haganah organization” and that the nephew “is implementing a Zionist plan to divide Egypt.”

The Al Jazeera commentator helpfully added that “Whoever reads The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the writings of [the Jews], including those who were writing in the U.S., realizes that this plot was premeditated.”

Maybe it’s not fair to visit the sins of the father – Al Jazeera in Arabia – so to speak, onto the son – Al Jazeera America. The latter organization claims to be “a completely different channel from… all of the other channels in the Al Jazeera Media Network” and has its “own board and advisory board.” And the American operation asserts that it will be delivering “unbiased, fact-based and in-depth journalism,” which, if true, will become apparent in time. But, with the baggage of its family name’s reputation, “AJAM”’s battle will be uphill.

As it happens, not long ago, in my capacity as Agudath Israel’s public affairs director, I was contacted by a reporter for Al Jazeera – the original, Qatar operation. He worked for its English-language version, which is no longer accessible in the US, and was helping produce a television segment for the network, about the religious-secular divide in Israel.

I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to become involved, even as a mere resource, with an Arab-centered, less-than-sympathetic-to-Israel operation. A good friend of mine who also deals with media advised me to demur. But I decided to interact with the reporter (who turned out to be very friendly, and Jewish, to boot) all the same, and offered him some background information about the topic he wouldn’t likely glean from most Jewish media, and some suggestions for whom he might wish to feature as guests on the segment.

A few weeks later, he sent me a link to a recording of the program, which I watched carefully. The guests included a religious Israeli politician and an American proponent of dismantling the rabbinate and creating a more “democratic” state that didn’t favor Orthodox Judaism.

The segment, I had to admit, was excellent. Both sides made their cases, of course, but the moderator was outstanding, asking informed, probing questions not only of the politician but of the activist too, and letting her guests know when they didn’t address what had been asked. Another journalist on the program was monitoring personal media in real time, and the tweets and postings she shared with the audience were balanced, representing both sides of each issue.

Afterward, I sat back and pondered the contrast between mainstream Jewish media’s reportage of Jewish religious issues and what I had witnessed on Al Jazeera’s program. When it comes to things like the segment’s subject, many media, including some major Jewish media, are transparently biased against Jewish Orthodoxy. That’s not surprising, as most journalists, as a Pew poll several years back revealed, are less than sympathetic to religion. And most Jewish journalists are non-Orthodox Jews with, by their profession, an interest in the Jewish community; hence they bring some personal baggage to their keyboards. Al Jazeera, however, lacks any dog in the race, and so it addressed the subject in a refreshingly objective way.

That it did so recalled to me something I had said before an audience of my own, at the 92^nd St. Y a few months ago. In an offhand comment that drew some gasps (and, surprisingly, some applause), I asserted that the reporters most qualified to write for Jewish newspapers are non-Jews. They, I explained, are less likely to be burdened by preconceptions or guided, even subconsciously, by agendas.

I know Al Jazeera – the parent, that is – well enough to not expect it to report objectively on Israel. It doesn’t expend the effort to see beyond the Jewish state’s real or imagined warts, to its human face. Nor would I expect it to feature – although it should – opinion pieces defending Israel against the libels regularly hurled at her by much of the Arab world.

But, optimist that I am, I wonder whether Al Jazeera America, which aims to focus mainly on American news, might prove itself, at least in the realm of reportage on Jewish religious issues, to be a breath of unpolluted air. Time will tell.

How disturbing, though, to have to be looking to an Arab news network for balance in Jewish issues.

Black Peril, White Knights

A lengthy piece in the New Republic asserts – or, more accurately, hopes – that “an unlikely alliance between Orthodox and progressive women will save Israel from fundamentalism.” The latter word, of course, is intended to refer to traditional Orthodox Judaism.

Heavy on anecdotes about charedi crazies harassing sympathetic women, the piece, titled “The Feminists of Zion,” details how demographic changes in Israel have brought the decades-old peaceful co-existence of secular and charedi Jews to something of a head. The “once-tiny minority” of charedim “now comprises more than 10% of the population,” it informs. And it warns that “as their numbers have increased, so has their sway over political and civil life.”

That sway has resulted in things like “an increase in modesty signs on public boulevards and gender-segregated sidewalks in Haredi neighborhoods,” not to mention “gender-separated office hours in government-funded medical clinics and de facto gender segregation on publicly subsidized buses,” among other affronts.

In 19^th century America, there was much anxiety about the “Yellow Peril,” the pernicious effect that Chinese immigrants were imagined to have on the culture of the union. During the Second World War, the phrase was applied to Japanese Americans (iceberg, Goldberg, what difference does it make?…). The New Republic writers, Haaretz’s Allison Kaplan Sommer and Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick, seem to perceive what they might call (although they don’t) a Black Peril in Israel. And the White Knight on the horizon who might vanquish the monster is the Jewish state’s “fighting feminist spirit.”

That spirit, the writers say, is championed by the Israeli Reform movement (and its legal arm, the Israel Religious Action Center, or IRAC) and by “modern-Orthodox” women in Israel who are fed up with charedim. One group of such Orthodox feminists, Kolech, the article notes, has begun to work with IRAC on “a host of issues.”

The “highest profile example of the renewed fighting feminist spirit in Israel,” the writers assert, may be “the stunning success this year of Women of the Wall,” (WOW), the group of feminists that has made a point of gathering monthly at the Western Wall, or Kotel Maaravi, to hold vocal services while wearing religious garb and items traditionally worn by men, which offends the charedi men and women who regularly pray at the site around the clock.

Mss. Sommer and Lithwick, hopelessly hopeful, posit the possibility that “the rising tide of feminist activism… will ultimately engage Haredi women as well.” Evidence for the unlikelihood of such cross-cultural contagiousness, however, lies no farther than the Kotel plaza itself.

For the past several Jewish Rosh Chodesh, or “new month,” morning prayer services, when WOW holds its untraditional services, the group and its supporters were outnumbered on the order of 1:100 by charedi women, young and old, who quietly prayed in a passive but striking assertion of their own convictions, those of the millennia-old Jewish religious tradition. (Unsurprisingly, the media, dutifully summoned by WOW’s leaders to boost its public profile among non-Orthodox American Jews, focused on handfuls of idiotic, inexcusable and uncouth young men who jeered and even threw things at the successful provocateurs.)

The many thousands of women quietly praying at the Wall, while they made no sound, spoke loudly. About who truly cares about the Kotel and the Holy Temple that once stood on its other side, and about true empowerment of women. They know the inestimable value of their roles as wives and mothers and future mothers, as teachers of their children and of other Jews, as women like those at the time of the exodus from Egypt, the “righteous women” in whose merit, the Talmud teaches, the Jewish People were able to leave the land of their enslavement.

So yes, as the article states, there is indeed a challenge to Jewish “fundamentalism” – the Judaism of the ages – in Israel these days. The challengers are the American movement called Reform and its small but militant Israeli counterpart, comprised of American immigrants and a smattering of “progressive” native women. And the challengers have indeed made some headway in Israel’s secular courts, and will likely make further gains as they file new lawsuits against charedim and their practices.

What is lost on many observers, though, is the fact that Israel’s charedim seek only to maintain their fealty to the Jewish religious tradition that, in the end, is the heritage of all Jews. They have made no moves to change the religious status quo that has been in effect in Israel since its inception. The lawsuits and public campaigns have all been initiated by IRAC and its allies.

And so, while Israel’s secular courts, perhaps with subconscious envy of (or conscious aiming at) American-style religion/state separation, may well look favorably on the demands of the self-styled White Knights, one thing is certain: those “progressives” are the antagonists here.

And by mischaracterizing charedim as intent on trying to change other Israelis’ lives, by painting religious Jews as a sinister, growing Black Peril that must be arrested before it is too late, the modern-day crusaders miss a terrible irony: They are engaging in the very same sort of vilification that has been, at times similarly successfully, employed over centuries by enemies of all Jews.

Missing the Joke — And the Message

The lack of a sense of humor may not totally disqualify one from being a good teacher, but in, as they say, my humble opinion, it comes close.

I had recent occasion to watch the recorded presentation of an Israeli professor who seemed, regrettably, humor-impaired. That he exhibited no sense of cleverness wasn’t so terrible. That he failed, though, to even recognize humor – in this case a poignant pun – was.

The lecturer was soberly providing his audience what it had come to hear, namely a scholarly assault on the contemporary “Ultra-Orthodox” world and its leaders. And, as has become de rigueur, in his effort to portray the charedi world as hopelessly close-minded, he invoked the famous dictum of the Chasam Sofer (Rabbi Moshe Schreiber, 1762-1839) that “chadash assur min haTorah” – “what is new is forbidden by the Torah.” But he presented it as some sort of absurdly pilpulistic application, not seeming to realize – or, certainly, not communicating – that it was, in fact, ingenious wordplay.

The Chasam Sofer, venerated by Orthodox Jews to this day, was a strong opponent of the nascent Reform movement of his day, which had begun to attract adherents in his native Austria-Hungary and beyond. It was his influence and determination that kept the Reform movement out of Pressburg, the city he served as rabbi for more than three decades. And it was his determination to preserve what we today call Jewish “Orthodoxy”– namely, commitment to the entirety of classical Judaism – that impelled him to humorously hijack the “what is new is forbidden” phrase.

The phrase’s original context is the Biblical prohibition of consuming the “new grain” of each Jewish year until the second day of Passover, when the Omer sacrifice was brought. Rabbi Schreiber employed the phrase as a pun (oh, what injury we do to a joke by explaining it!), to express his entirely unrelated-to-agriculture feeling that even a seemingly innocuous innovation to Jewish life – “what is new” – must be regarded with skepticism, and scrutinized to ensure that it will not prove an inadvertent step in a bad direction.

Some innovation-minded Jews, including some who are fully committed to halacha, find the Chasam Sofer’s approach discomfiting. What they don’t seem to appreciate is that he was not, in fact, offering a blanket rejection of all that is “new” for all time, as people like the humor-compromised professor profess. To begin with, the revered Torah leader of his generation was confronting an immediate and formidable challenge to the mesorah, or Jewish religious tradition, a movement that rejected its very theological foundation. And so, even minor changes in liturgy or synagogue practices represented – at least to a deeply perceptive mind –a potential Trojan Horse. Or, perhaps a better metaphor, a slippery slope.

And secondly, he was not saying that every change in Jewish life or practice is dangerous. The fact that sermons are delivered from Orthodox synagogue pulpits in English, that there are schools and seminaries for Orthodox girls and women, that organized efforts exist to encourage Orthodox Jews to reach out to their non-Orthodox fellow Jews all reflect that fact that what is “new” is sometimes not only permitted but necessary.

What allows the novel to be embraced by Orthodoxy, though, is the considered judgment of the most experienced and learned religious leaders of the Orthodox world. That Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch sermonized in German, that the Chofetz Chaim endorsed the Bais Yaakov movement, that “outreach” was characterized as a Jewish obligation by Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, all demonstrate that the Chasam Sofer’s pun was not intended to promote some sort of spiritual Luddism.

What it was intended to do was to sensitize his generation to the existence, and danger, of slippery slopes, a recognition our own times require of us no less.

In truth, at least with regard to secular beliefs, most American Jews readily understand that small departures from a path can eventually lead to larger, more disturbing, deviations. Any “new” idea, for instance, that that would ever-so-slightly modify First Amendment rights in the United States, like freedom of speech or religion, is rightfully seen as a threat to those high ideals. Not to mention that every teacher – and parent – knows that there are times when making a small allowance can be an invitation to anarchy, when giving an inch begets the loss of a yard, or a mile.

Yes, of course, there are limits to what sort of Jewish “newnesses” should be regarded as wrong. There are many great jokes – speaking of humor – that we charedim tell among ourselves about taking stringencies or “the way it has always been done” too far.

But as a wise man (or wise guy; I think it was me) once said: Just because elephants don’t fly doesn’t mean birds don’t exist. Excessive insistence on fealty to the way things have always been is unwise. But so is pursuing, without the blessings of true Jewish leaders, shiny, happy innovations whose trajectories we cannot know. That was what the Chasam Sofer meant, and expressed in an amusingly creative way.

It’s unfortunate that the Israeli professor wasn’t able to recognize a joke – or the possibility that a venerated Jewish sage might be more prescient than he.

Addendum

A correspondent had some complaints about my essay below “Meet Cindy,” and since the points he raised are important ones, I am sharing my slightly edited responses to him here.

He quoted the following paragraph from my essay:

“And a country that calls itself the Jewish one, it can well be argued, has a special responsibility to underwrite the portion of its populace that is willfully destitute because of its dedication to perpetuating classical Judaism.”

And then commented:

The charedi community is not willfully destitute because of its dedication to perpetuating classical Judaism. In classical Judaism – both in sources in the Gemara and Rishonim, and in actual Jewish history – people worked to support their families. Following the directives of Chazal, people raised their children with the skills, the desire and the motivation to work for a living. There was no system of mass kollel.

The charedi community is not willfully destitute because of its dedication to perpetuating classical Judaism. It is willfully destitute because of its dedication to perverting classical Judaism.

My response:

Classical Judaism is, above all, hewing to the interpretation/application of the Torah’s timeless principles to each generation and place’s situation and needs. The dorshov of each dor vi’dor [spiritual leaders of each generation] are the arbiters of what is required of us in each era of our history.

I may personally be (and am, in fact) a Hirschian in outlook, and be as puzzled as you at the seeming shunning of what seems to me to be healthy development for Klal Yisrael in Eretz Yisrael. But even Rav Hirsch, in his day, recognized that his school model in Germany could not be “exported” to Eretz Yisrael. To ascertain when we are correct and when we are not is what we have Gedolim [recognized spiritual leaders] for.

In the end, whatever my natural personal view, my emunas chachamim [trust in the judgment of the wise] trumps it. When there is a consensus of the greatest and most recognized Gedolim that a certain departure from the historic norm (and the historical uniquenesses of our times are many), I don’t second-guess them, because I believe that Hashem’s will is that I follow the decisions of the judges “in my day.”

My correspondent then asserted that my analogy between charedim and my fictional creation Cindy was flawed. He wrote:

1. Cindi is raising her children to be productive citizens, not to also require welfare.

2. Motherhood is something valued by everyone. Being charedi is not. (It’s not being a religious Jew that we’re discussing – plenty of people who work are also religious Jews.)

3. Cindi is presumably appreciative for the aid. She’s not part of a movement that disparages the government, refuses to serve in the army even in times of great national danger, and refuses to display any gratitude to those who defend her and those who financially support her.

4. Cindi’s situation is unplanned, unwanted, and she hopes to get out of it one day.

My response:

1) Perhaps she is, perhaps she isn’t. But if she isn’t, should we feel differently about her? And if so, should we see ourselves as responsible public policy makers or as social engineers? You may well disagree with my feeling that how Cindy raises her children should not matter, and I respect your point of view on that, but I reject it.

2) My essay wasn’t an attempt to convince a reader that the charedi way is right or wrong. It was intended only to, through a thought experiment, help him/her to better relate to how charedim feel.

3) Most charedim do not disparage the government (at least not any more than non-charedim or secular Israelis). Their avoidance of military service is for principled religious reasons, not as some sort of eye-poking (and they contribute – at least to those of us who consider Torah-study to be protective of Klal Yisrael – much to the security of the state).

And I explicitly wrote that charedim need to be makir tov [have and express gratitude to the state for what it provides them].

4) That is a valid difference. Whether it makes a difference is another matter. I don’t think it does.

Meet Cindy

Meet Cindy.

A single mother living in the Midwest with her three young children, she’s deeply unhappy because of the news she received the other day.

Although Cindy does some sales work from her computer at home, her income is insufficient to cover the monthly mortgage payments for her small home and food and clothing for her family. Until now, though, she has managed to make ends meet, with the help of various social safety-net needs-based programs like WIC and food stamps.

Earlier this week, though, Cindy, and hundreds of thousands of others like her, received word that the government is ending those programs. Budgetary concerns were one reason given but the letter Cindy received also noted that she could still qualify for some of the benefits she was receiving if she found and accepted a full-time job. “When citizens like you, Cindy,” the personalized form letter explained, “are a regular part of the workforce, it benefits not only you and your family, but the economy as a whole. And that is something that every loyal citizen should appreciate!”

Well, says Cindy to herself somewhat bitterly, I don’t. The state of the economy is important, but improving it isn’t my main personal goal. Raising my children myself is what I consider my immediate mandate. Spending my days in an office or behind a counter and entrusting my children to some sitter is not what I consider good parenting. Being a full-time mother, she tells herself, may not make me a model citizen, but it makes me, at least in my mind, a model human being. My children are my most important asset.

The new bad news, moreover, came on the heels of some earlier unhappy tidings, the repeal of the federal mortgage interest tax deduction, which increased Cindy’s tax bill by a good chunk of her income.

Making Cindy even more outraged and despondent was the popular move to require that every American child join a “junior civil service program” where values she (as a conservative Christian) doesn’t endorse are taught. And then, to top things off, there were the relentless media and public assaults on “welfare” single parents like her, the newspaper editorials and talk-show hosts labeling of them as “freeloaders,” “unpatriotic” and even “parasites.” It made her angry enough to cry.

Cindy, of course, and her troubles, are hypothetical. Our country still extends a generous safety net to its neediest citizens, and the mortgage interest deduction is alive and well. Children are not forced into any educational program and can even be home-schooled. But can you relate to how hypothetical Cindy would feel if the nightmare scenario were in fact real? If so, then you might better appreciate how charedim in Israel are feeling these days.

Over the past decade or so, their social services – primarily in the form of child allowances – have been drastically cut, several times. Now what is left of the allowances is under the knife again. And charedim are being pressured to forgo full-time Torah-study, their “most important asset” and first priority. They are told that they must enter the army, even though there is no need for them in the military (as its leaders have repeatedly stated) and they fear the impact Israel’s “military melting pot” will have on their lives. They are vilified without pause, and cajoled to act not in what they consider their best interest (and the best interest, ultimately, of the entire country) but rather just to do what they are told. All, of course, for “the economy” and the “greater good.”

No one, to be sure, can claim a “right” to social service entitlements. And one can, if he chooses, take the stance that no citizen of any country should expect, for any reason, that the government needs to take care of him in any way. That’s a perfectly defensible position, at least from a perspective of cold logic.

But every compassionate country recognizes the rightness of assisting the poor. And a country that calls itself the Jewish one, it can well be argued, has a special responsibility to underwrite the portion of its populace that is willfully destitute because of its dedication to perpetuating classical Judaism (which, as it happens, is what kept the connection between Jews in the Diaspora and their ancestral land alive for millennia, and allowed for a state of Israel in the first place).

Gratitude for what one has received is a deeply Jewish ideal. And Israeli charedim should indeed feel and express gratitude for all that the state provides them. But absent are calls for non-charedi Israelis – or the rest of us – to consider feeling and expressing gratitude for the charedi willingness to live financially constricted lives in order to remain immersed in Jewish practice and learning. Instead, just the opposite is seen: Israeli charedim are used as political pawns, regarded and portrayed and treated as Israel’s misfortune.

Cindy would relate.

Crime and Prejudice

My first encounter with the legendary Rabbi Moshe Sherer, z”l, the late president of Agudath Israel of America and the man who hired and mentored me as the organization’s spokesperson, was an unexpected phone call offering praise and criticism.

It was the mid-1980s, and I was a rebbe, or Jewish studies teacher, in Providence, Rhode Island at the time. Occasionally, though, I indulged my desire to write op-eds, some of which were published by the Providence Journal and various Jewish weeklies.

One article I penned in those days was about the bus-stop burnings that had then been taking place in religious neighborhoods in Jerusalem and elsewhere in Israel. Advertisements on the shelters in religious neighborhoods began to display images that were, to put it genteelly, not in synch with the religious sensibilities of the local residents, for whom modesty was a high ideal and women were respected for who they were, not regarded as means of gaining attention for commercial products.

Scores of the offensive-ad shelters were either spray-painted or torched; and, on the other side of the societal divide, a group formed that pledged to burn a synagogue for every burned bus-stop shelter. It was not a pretty time.

My article was aimed at trying to convey the motivation of the bus-stop burners, wrong though their actions were. Imagine, I suggested, a society where heroin was legal, freely marketed and advertised. And a billboard touting the drug’s wonderful qualities was erected just outside a school. Most of us would never think of defacing or destroying the ad but most of us would probably well relate to the feelings of someone who took things into his own hands. For a charedi Jew, gross immodesty in advertising in his neighborhood is no less dangerous, in a spiritual sense, and no less deplorable.

Rabbi Sherer had somehow seen the article and he called to tell me how cogent he had found it. But, he added – and the “but,” I realized, was the main point of the call – “my dear Avi, you should never assume that the culprits were religious Jews. Never concede an unproven assertion.”

I was taken aback, since hotheads certainly exist among religious Jews. But I thanked my esteemed caller greatly for both his kind words and his critical ones. I wasn’t convinced that my assumption had really been unreasonable, but, I supposed, he had a valid point.

To my surprise, several weeks later, a group of non-religious youths were arrested for setting a bus-stop aflame, in an effort to increase ill will against the religious community. How many of the burnings the members of the group, or others like them, may have perpetrated was and remains unknown. But Rabbi Sherer had proven himself (and not for the first or last time) a wise man.

What recalled that era and interaction to me this week were the reports from Israel that arrests had been made in the 2009 case of a gunman who entered a Tel Aviv youth center for homosexuals and opened fire on those inside, killing two people and wounding 15 before escaping.

Both Israeli and western media freely speculated at the time that the murderer was likely a charedi, bent on visiting his idea of justice upon people who live in violation of the Torah’s precepts.

What has apparently turned out to be the case, though, is that the rampage at the club had nothing to do with either charedim or religious beliefs. It was reportedly a revenge attack in the wake of a minor’s claim that he had been abused by a senior figure of the club. A family member of the minor allegedly went to the club to kill the suspected abuser but, unable to find him, opened fire indiscriminately. (Unsurprisingly, but worthy of note all the same, none of the media pundits or bloggerei who laid the shooting at the feet of charedim have offered apologies.)

There are, to be sure, unsavory people in charedi communities, as there are in every community. Religious dress and lifestyle are no guarantees of what kind of person lies behind the façade. The Talmud includes a difference of opinion about how “Esav’s personification,” the angel with whom Yaakov wrestled, appeared to our forefather. One opinion holds that the malevolent being looked like “a mugger”; the other, “like a religious scholar.”

But for anyone to assume that any particular crime must have been the work of someone in the charedi community – or in any community – bespeaks a subtle bias born of animus, whether recognized by its bearer or not.

And such assumptions are criminal in their own right.