Category Archives: Personalities

Visitation Rites

The saintly aura that has enveloped Ronald Reagan in the minds of many who consider themselves social conservatives and independent thinkers – and I count myself among them; and I voted for Reagan in both 1980 and 1984 – has eclipsed the memory of his infamous 1985 visit to the military cemetery in Bitburg, Germany. Elie Wiesel famously told Mr. Reagan, “That place, Mr. President, is not your place.”

Bitburg comes to mind in the wake of the announcement that President Obama will be visiting Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima, Japan, more than 70 years after the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city – and then, three days later, another, on Nagasaki – killing upward of 200,000 people and leaving unknown numbers with illnesses born of radiation exposure. Mr. Obama will be the first sitting president to visit the site, and is being criticized by some for his plan to do so.

The wisdom, propriety and necessity of President Harry Truman’s decision to unleash nuclear destruction on the Japanese cities on August 6 and August 9, 1945 have been debated for decades. Japan had attacked the U.S. first, at Pearl Harbor, had starved, beaten and executed American prisoners of war and seemed undeterred by Germany’s May 7 surrender to the Allies.

Truman maintained that the bombings, by accelerating the Japanese surrender, saved countless American lives. “The Japanese began the war from the air at Pearl Harbor,” he proclaimed. “They have been repaid many fold.” And the bombings had been ordered “in order to shorten the agony of war, in order to save the lives of thousands and thousands of young Americans.”

Some historians, however, have judged these decisions harshly, maintaining that there were other paths toward Japanese surrender, and that the loss of life at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was unconscionable.

For its part, the White House has stressed that the visit is not intended as an apology, but rather is a symbolic gesture to promote Mr. Obama’s nuclear nonproliferation message and highlight the reconciliation between wartime enemies that are now close allies.

Nonetheless, knee-jerk Obama-bashers and knee-jerk “progressives” alike have registered their respective disgruntlements. The former have long characterized the president’s acknowledgments of U.S. misjudgments as unwarranted and unpatriotic apologies; they claim that the president’s very presence at the site is an unspoken expression of regret. And the latter believe that the U.S. in fact does owe Japan an unqualified and open mea culpa for the bombings.

Thus, “The Obama Administration Is Now Apologizing For America Winning World War II” reads the title of an opinion piece by David Harsanyi, a senior editor at The Federalist. And “America’s enduring Hiroshima shame: Why Barack Obama should apologize for the atomic bomb — but won’t” is the title of an essay by syndicated columnist Jack Mirkinson.

The guy in the Oval Office just can’t win.

Lost, though, in the political discussion of the impending visit – as is so often lost in so many political discussions – is reason. Not every expression of pain is a confession of guilt. One can regret the effects of an act without regretting the act.

I don’t know if pediatricians apologize to toddlers for the pain they have inflicted on them after a required inoculation. But I can certainly imagine a sensitive doctor acknowledging his small patient’s pain, including his role in creating it, while seeking to soothe the child.

Is the Commander in Chief of the United States visiting Hiroshima really much different? Even if the optics indicate something more than a celebration of how far U.S-Japan relations have come over the past half-century, even if Mr. Obama’s presence at the site is seen as an expression of anguish at the great loss of life caused by our country’s nuclear attacks on Japan, even if one believes that President Truman was entirely right in his decisions, is it somehow un-American or reckless to be perceived as pained by the incineration of two cities’ populations?

Elie Wiesel was right about Bitburg. It was not, and is not, a place for an American president. It is a cemetery for a military that fought to advance the cause of an evil regime. But, even if the Japanese regime was contemptible too, those who perished in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were civilians.

Words from the end of Sefer Yonah come to mind:

“Now should I not take pity on Nineveh, the great city, in which there are many more than one hundred twenty thousand people who do not know their right hand from their left, and many animals as well?”

A Troubling America for Jews…

American Jews might be excused for finding the circus more formally known as the current presidential campaign unthreatening, even amusing. Unthreatening, because the leading Republican candidate has a Jewish daughter; the leading Democratic candidate, a Jewish son-in-law; and her rival is a bona fide member of the tribe himself. All the candidates, moreover, have expressed support for Israel.

And amusing? Well, no need to go into detail on that one. We need a dictionary with more expressive words than “grandstanding” and “mudslinging.”

Some Jews, though, are worried by the Republican front-runner, despite his Jewish connection. After all, Mr. Trump at one point indicated that, if elected, he would approach the Israel-Palestinian impasse as “a sort of neutral guy.” But he later explained that he simply meant that he didn’t see how he could promote negotiations if he openly took sides. “With that being said,” the candidate added unequivocally, “I am totally pro-Israel.”

More troubling to many Jews, and understandably so, is Mr. Trump’s dog whistling (actually, often, out-loud shouting “Fido!!!”) to American bigots and general lowlifes.

To read the rest of this piece, which appears in Haaretz, please click here.

The American Jewish Buffet

“Secular Orthodox.”

That’s how Avinoam Bar-Yosef, president of the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute, recently characterized many Israelis. What he meant was that, while an Israeli may not be observant of halachah, or even affirm belief in Torah miSinai, he is likely to still recognize that there is only one mesorah, one Judaism, the one that has carried Klal Yisrael from that mountain to Eretz Yisrael, through galus Bavel and countless galuyos since, and that carries it still to this day.

If only American Jews were so perceptive. Many criticisms can be cogently aimed at the movements to which so many American Jews claim fealty (or, at least, to whose congregations they send dues). Were there only an Orthodox option, that of Torah-faithful belief and practice, there would likely be a greater degree of Jewish observance throughout the broader Jewish community; intermarriage would probably be more rare than it sadly is; Jewish unity would certainly be more evident, and more real.

But the most damaging legacy of the heterodox movements (and I write here of those movements qua movements – their theologies, not their members, most of whom don’t understand the basics of Yahadus) is their propagation of the notion that there are different “Judaisms,” that Jews stand before some spiritual smorgasbord from which they are free to choose whatever doctrinal hors d’oeuvres they find appetizing.

I had a neighbor in the out-of-town community where I once lived, a middle-aged man who had observed some mitzvos as a youth, but who had long since lapsed and become a member of a non-Orthodox congregation.

One Shabbos, on my way to shul, I heard a disembodied “Good Shabbos” come from beneath my neighbor’s parked car. His head then appeared from under the vehicle, followed by his hands, one of them holding a wrench. I returned the greeting along with a forced smile, and then, with some sheepishness, my neighbor added: “I gotta say, my Shabbos is sure different now that I’m a Conservative Jew!”

In my neighbor’s mind, he had undergone a metamorphosis; he’d become a “different kind of Jew” – a perfectly observant, rabbinically-endorsed, card-carrying “Conservative Jew.” Changing the meaning of a Jewish life had become the equivalent of what he was doing, changing his oil.

Contrast my erstwhile neighbor’s attitude (that of most American Jews, unfortunately) with the insight of Nobel laureate I. I. Rabi (1898-1988), a groundbreaking physicist. He told a biographer that “To this very day, if you ask for my religion, I say ‘Orthodox Hebrew’ – in the sense that the church [sic] I’m not attending is that one. If I were to go to a church, that’s the one I would go to. That’s the one I failed. It doesn’t mean I’m something else…”

He was, and knew he was, a Jew. Far to one side of the observance spectrum, to be sure. But observance is a continuum on which we all live, with perfection far from most of us. Professor Rabi was perceptive and honest enough to recognize his failure instead of choosing to just invent a new entity, a “Judaism” where he could consider himself a success.

It is a tribute to the Israeli no-nonsense mentality that so many of the country’s less- or non-observant Jews haven’t bought into the American Jewish buffet model, and recognize what Professor Rabi did. Israelis tend to think and talk dugri – straightforwardly, even bluntly. Hence, Mr. Bar-Yosef’s seemingly, but not really, oxymoronic phrase, “secular Orthodox.”

What evoked that characterization, as it happens, was his interview by the New York Times about the recent Israeli government decision to expand an area to the south of the current Kosel Maaravi plaza, for feminist and non-Orthodox services. The Israeli was trying to explain why the American Jewish model of Jewish identity has not taken root in his country. American Jews, he continued, have “a desire to bring into the tent everyone who feels Jewish,” whereas Israeli Jews, even secular ones, “live in a [Jewish] state and want a unified system.”

That “unified system” – halachah – is, unfortunately, under attack by some American Jews, not only with regard to conduct at the Kosel but in even more important areas, like marriage and geirus. We have to hope, against all the evidence, that our less observant brothers and sisters recognize the danger – to themselves above all – of promoting a “multi-winged” model of “Judaisms,” instead of recognizing the most trenchant truth: that ke’ish echad was possible only because our ancestors were neged hahar.

Illogical Leadership

“Because you were convincing me,” was the woman’s straightforward reply.

Her questioner was my rebbe, Rav Yaakov Weinberg, zt”l, then the Rosh Yeshivah of Yeshivas Ner Yisrael in Baltimore. He had asked the lady, whom he met at some Jewish communal function, why she had suddenly stopped attending the lecture series he had been delivering to a nonreligious audience. Rav Weinberg later said that he was struck by the stark honesty of the reply. No excuses, no claim of scheduling conflict, only a candid confession of her reluctance to be pulled in a direction that frightened her.

The lectures were about basic Jewish belief, and the Rosh Yeshivah combined concepts from the Rambam, Rav Yehudah HaLevi and others, leavened with his own insight, eloquence, humor and creativity, to describe the compelling specialness – indeed, singularity – of the Jewish mesorah.

There was the historically unparalleled claim to a mass revelation at Har Sinai, something that no one could dare make unless it happened – and that no nation or religion has in fact ever made, before or after the event. There was the seemingly self-defeating nature of some of the Torah’s laws, like Shemitta and Aliyah L’regel (when all able-bodied men left Eretz Yisrael’s borders unprotected, at easily predictable times). There were the Torah’s critical descriptions of its greatest personages, in such stark contrast to the perfect “heroes” of other groups’ “holy” books. There was the utterly irrational persistence of anti-Semitism in a broad, even contradictory, assortment of guises; and the perseverance of Klal Yisrael despite all the hatred and exiles.

And then there was the illogical leadership of Moshe Rabbeinu, detailed in the parshiyos we are reading communally in shul this time of year.

Over history, leaders – religious and political alike – tend to possess all or most of several defining characteristics. Almost by definition, they are ambitious and opportunistic, often aggressively so. They exude self-confidence, bordering on, if not exceeding, conceit; and they are natural orators.

Moshe Rabbeinu, Rav Weinberg would point out, had none of those characteristics. He didn’t want the role Hashem told him to adopt, pleading that his brother Aharon be appointed instead. He was, by the Torah’s testimony, not only modest but the most modest of all men. And he was, by his own statement, limited in his ability to speak.

Not, by nature, leader material. Other religion-forming figures, by contrast, possessed the natural ability to convince others of their purported connection to truth – and capitalized on it vigorously. Today, political leaders and aspirants to office, as we are witnessing most vividly during this presidential election year, are clearly saturated with self-regard, relentlessly self-promoting and accomplished in the art of speechifying.

Moshe’s lack of those traits didn’t matter, because his leadership was not the result of popular acclaim but rather of Divine direction. Indeed, his failure of the “leadership test” is evidence of that fact. No one, Rav Weinberg explained, could ever attribute the historic success of the Jewish message to the impact of charisma, self-confidence or oratorical skill. Only to G-dly guidance.

Only defective products need talented salesmen. Truth needs only itself.

Chazal (Berachos 58a) tell us to run to see a non-Jewish king, for if we are deemed worthy, we will be able to perceive the difference between a non-Jewish monarch and a Jewish one. Politicians aren’t kings; there are no brachos to be made over them. But there is certainly worth in pondering the gulf between what contemporary society calls leadership and a true, Divinely appointed, leader.

I don’t know at what point the woman who dropped out of the lecture series decided she had heard too much for comfort. It was probably before the “Moshe Rabbeinu” shiur. But she was perceptive enough to realize that the evidence for the truth of the Jewish mesorah was becoming overwhelming, that the thicket of rationalizations necessary for rejecting the compelling facts of history was obscuring a more compelling straightforward, Occam’s Razor-respecting, conclusion: Moshe emes visoraso emes.

And she just wasn’t ready to countenance the life-changing implications of that fact.

At least at that point. I like to imagine that, one day, she wandered into a shul somewhere this time of year, maybe even during an election campaign, and, during krias haTorah, followed along in an English translation and was struck by Moshe Rabbeinu’s “lack of qualifications” for leadership, as the word is mundanely defined. And that maybe, at that point, what she didn’t allow herself to hear from Rav Weinberg, she heard in her own head.

A Crying Shame

Readers of a certain age will likely recognize the name Edmund Muskie. He was a candidate for the Democratic Party nomination for President back in 1972.

There were several reasons why the candidacy of the former Maine governor, senator and Secretary of State was curtailed. Rumors were spread that he was a drug addict. The Manchester Union-Leader asserted that his wife was an alcoholic and bad-mannered, and that Muskie had made disparaging remarks about French-Canadians.

It emerged later that the latter rumor was a fabrication, part of Richard Nixon’s infamous “dirty tricks” strategy to harm political enemies. But damage had been done, and Muskie’s reaction to the negative characterizations of his wife was widely regarded as coup de grâce for his campaign.

Standing before reporters outside the newspaper’s offices on a snowy February day in 1972, he emotionally defended his wife. And, at one point, shed tears.

He later claimed that, while he was indeed upset, the droplets on his face were merely melted snowflakes.

No one will ever know. Mr. Muskie died in 1996 and videos of the incident are inconclusive. One thing, though, is clear: The idea of a president capable of crying seemed shameful to the American electorate in 1972.

Contrast that with the public reaction to the current Crier-in-Chief. Mr. Obama has not held back from weeping on several occasions, including memorial services and as he presented military awards. And, most recently, when he announced an executive order expanding the scope of background checks on gun buyers and increasing funding for mental health treatment (actions that, amazingly, raised howls of protest from some – but that’s a different article). In the presence of family members of gun fatalities, he choked up as he recalled the children murdered in the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting.

The usual suspects, of course, intent on seeing only cold, diabolical evil in Obama, immediately took to social media to share theories about how the president had managed to conjure his obviously (at least to the commenters) fake tears. The thought that he was sincerely distraught at the memory of small schoolchildren’s bodies riddled with bullets just could not be entertained, at any cost.

Saner Americans readily accepted that the president’s tears were sincere. Some found the tears laudable, evidence of his humanity. Others found them telling, evidencing the president’s frustration over fighting a gun lobby that insists that, unlike other fundamental rights like free speech and assembly, the Second Amendment must be unlimited. Others just found the crying unremarkable.

We’ve come a long way.

No one these days seems to see a president sincerely tearing up as scandalous. What to make of that? Is it evidence to the “wimping down” of America? An emotional counterpart to the moral decline of a once-great nation?

Or, perhaps, a sign of its maturity?

In some ways, American society has indeed grown more advanced. It is, for instance, no longer as riven with overt racism and anti-Semitism as once it was (even if individual anti-Semitic acts are far from rare even today). The idea that parents are the best arbiters of their children’s educational environments has become enshrined in law and widely accepted (if not yet widely taken to its logical legislative conclusion). The distance traveled since Mr. Muskie’s day regarding leaders’ public emoting may be another sign of America’s positive growth.

Leaving the hidden onion-juice conspiracy theorists aside (where they belong), sincere crying is not dishonorable. Emotions, and the tears that accompany their most intense states, are the hallmark of a developed human being. Your GPS guide doesn’t cry. Nazis don’t cry. Terrorists don’t cry.

By contrast, we Jews are known for our tears. It may have been wrong for our ancestors to cry out of fear when they first stood at the cusp of entering Eretz Yisrael. But that bechiyah shel chinam, “unwarranted crying,” is atoned for by our own tears, on Tisha B’Av, on Yom Kippur, at Tikkun Chatzos… The Kosel Maaravi is saltily stained with the sobbing of countless Jewish generations.

Our forefather Yaakov cried. So did Yosef, and Moshe Rabbeinu. Rachel Imeinu cries still. The Cohen Gadol cried, as did tanna’im. Even Hashem, kivayachol, is described as crying (Chagigah, 5b).

So, whether or not larger society’s having come to accept that even a leader is not lesser for lachrymosity is something positive, Jewish weeping for the right reasons most certainly is.

May it lead, and soon, to the end of all crying, to the fulfillment of Yeshayahu’s nevuah (25:8) that Hashem “will wipe tears from every face.”

Trumping Terrorism

When the Obama White House and Dick Cheney agree on something, it’s worthy of note.

What united the two – along with a conga line of Democratic and Republican presidential candidates, members of Congress and world leaders – was Donald Trump’s latest gambit to garner attention. That would be the candidate’s announced desire to effect a “total and complete shutdown” of Muslims entering the United States until elected leaders can “figure out what… is going on.”

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Mr. Trump’s position “disqualifies him from serving as president.” Mr. Cheney said it “goes against everything we stand for and believe in.” The others all echoed those sentiments.

Leaving aside, though, what America stands for, there is also what Israeli journalist Chemi Shalev noted, namely, that “ISIS dreams of an Islam-hating America that isolates its own Muslims; Trump is busy making their dreams come true.”

President Obama made that same point in his December 6 address to the nation.

He demanded that Muslim leaders “decisively and unequivocally reject the hateful ideology that groups like ISIL and Al Qaeda promote,” but also warned that “We cannot [let] this fight be defined as a war between America and Islam. That… is what groups like ISIL want.”

What’s more, there are more than a billion Muslims worldwide, and the vast majority of radical Islamists’ victims are Muslims. The average Muslim may not support Israel, but neither is he a murderer.

Had Mr. Trump just urged special scrutiny of visa applications from certain countries, it would not have raised very many eyebrows very high. But, of course, it’s eyebrows and outrage he’s after.

A more dignified and wise approach toward Muslims came from Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, in an address to a gathering at a Virginia mosque.

After speaking out against “the discrimination, vilification and isolation that American Muslims face in these challenging times,” he reminded his listeners that “terrorist organizations overseas have targeted your communities. They seek to pull your youth into the pit of violent extremism.” And he challenged the Muslim community to “Help us to help you stop this.”

Depressingly, though, instead of publicly exhorting their followers to seek out and uproot the germs of evil seeking to infect their communities, some American Muslim spokespeople chose instead to just kvetch.

“We would never ask any other faith community to stand up and condemn acts of violence committed by people within their groups,” complained one, activist Linda Sarsour.

Ms. Sarsour might consider that, were Presbyterians or Mormons regularly killing innocents in the name of their faiths and celebrating the carnage, they would surely draw similar attention to their co-religionists. There, too, condemning an entire religion for the acts of some of its evil actors would be wrong. But equally wrong would be reluctance on the part of the religions’ leaders to shout their condemnation of the evil from the rooftops and to call on their followers to be help root it out.

Instead, here, we have de rigueur, lackluster statements of disassociation from terrorist acts.

And, more depressing still, we have “moderate” sentiments like those of the male San Bernardino mass murderer’s father, who revealed that his son had expressed support for ISIS and “was obsessed with Israel.” The father explained how he counseled his son to “Stay calm, be patient, in two years Israel will no longer exist… Russia, China, America too, nobody wants the Jews there.”

How prevalent such “moderation” is in the Muslim world can’t be known. But it, too, is part of the rot that infects immature minds and can fester into violence.

Sympathy is in order for innocent Muslims who are portrayed by dint of their faith alone as potential terrorists. It may be fear that prevents them from speaking out more loudly, engaging in concrete and effective acts to undermine Islamist ideologies and partnering with law enforcement to prevent terrorism. But all that is their moral mandate; the proverbial push has come to shove.

Following the recent knife attack at a London subway station, where the attacker reportedly said “This is for Syria!” before proceeding to stab commuters, a video recorded the voice of an onlooker with an Arabic accent shouting “You ain’t no Muslim, bruv!” several times. The phrase, happily, has been widely seized upon as an expression of how most Muslims feel. And it likely is.

But still, it’s puzzling, and perhaps telling, that the shouter, despite the fame and adulation his words have garnered, has yet to come forward to present himself to the public.

Maybe he’s just modest.

Or, less laudable, he’s afraid.

Black Power

Australian political advisor Robert Hoge was born with a severe facial deformity and describes himself as “the ugliest person you’ve never met.” When he was born, his parents burst into tears.

Mr. Hoge did not allow his disfigurement to prevent him from going about the business of life. In fact, he worked in journalism, a field famously focused on the superficial, and then became a high-profile advisor to former Queensland premier Anna Bligh, the most senior politician in the state.

He describes the attitude that allowed him to overcome his disadvantage.

“Some kids are good spellers,” he writes. “Some have bad haircuts; some are fast runners; some kids are short; some are awesome at netball. But the kids who are short aren’t only short. And the kids who are great at netball aren’t only just great at netball. No one is only just one thing. It’s the same with appearance.”

That truth might seem obvious, but in the contemporary world – and that world’s ills spill into our own machaneh – it is too often overlooked.

And the idea that a single “negative” aspect of a person doesn’t define the person is true not only in the physical realm but, more importantly, if less obviously, in the spiritual.

In the passuk that opens the haftarah of parashas Kedoshim, Hashem declares to Klal Yisrael: “Behold, you are like the children of Kush to Me” (Amos, 9:7). Kush, of course, is usually identified as a region of central Africa. “Children of Kush” would seem an odd simile to use for Klal Yisrael.

The Gemara offers the following: “Just as a person from Kush differs [from others] in [the color of] his skin, so are [the members of Klal] Yisrael different in their actions.” (Moed Katan, 16b).

The Chasam Sofer’s text of the Gemara apparently had “the righteous” in place of “Yisrael.” And, he explains, while every Jew is required to observe all the mitzvos, “there is no single life-path for them all.

“One Jew may excel in Torah-study, another in avodah, another in kindnesses to others; this one, in one particular mitzvah; that one, in another. Nevertheless, while they all differ from each other in their actions, they all have the same intention, to serve Hashem with their entire hearts.”

“Behold the Kushite,” he continues. “Inside, his organs, his blood and his appearance are the same as other people’s. Only in the superficiality of his skin is he different from others. This is the meaning of ‘[different] in his skin,’ [meaning] only in his skin. Likewise, the righteous are different [from one another] only ‘in their actions’; their inner conviction and intention, though, are [the same,] aimed at serving Hashem in a good way.”

A particular G-d-fearing Jew, in other words, may be best suited for a particular area of serving Hashem. He should not be defined by his relative weakness in another area. What matters in the end is his goal, avodas Hashem.

Some well-intentioned parents imagine that their children must follow a particular life-trajectory and land in a specific place. But there are different, equally meritorious, trajectories, and different, equally praiseworthy, landing places for different people. It’s not just that people are dissimilar and will choose a variety of vocations, fields and priorities. It’s that, in our diversity of vocations, fields and priorities, we can all be entirely equal servants of Hashem.

Consider Rav Broka, who, the Gemara recounts (Taanis 22a), was often accompanied by Eliyahu Hanavi. Once, in a marketplace, he asked the prophet whether there were any people among those present who merited the World-to-Come. Eliyahu pointed out one man, who turned out to be a prison guard who made special efforts to protect his prisoners and who had interceded with the government on behalf of his fellow Jews. And then the navi pointed out a pair of jesters. When Rav Broka inquired about the comedians, he discovered that they used their humor to cheer up depressed people and defuse disputes.

Most of us would, understandably, be put off by the prospect of our child becoming a prison guard or a clown. We rightly wish, and guide, our children to be talmidei chachomim and klei kodesh. But if they express their natures in other ways, we must realize that an abundance of vocations can express what matters most: yiras Hashem.

“Don’t tell kids they’re all beautiful; tell them it’s okay to look different,” writes Mr. Hoge about physical traits. As per the Chasam Sofer’s lesson, that advice is no less worthy in more rarefied realms.

What We Build and What We Are

As the 93^rd nears, the 78^th comes to mind.

Agudath Israel of America’s national conventions, that is.

The 93^rd gathering opens tomorrow and will, over four days, feature a constellation of topics and speakers, include the presence of Gedolim, Rabbanim and askanim, and a host a host of us simple folk, seeking information, inspiration and guidance.

There are always greatly worthwhile thoughts shared by those who address the various sessions, particularly the plenary ones on Thursday night and on Motzoei Shabbos. (The public is welcome, free of charge, to all sessions.) But a speech that was made on Motzoei Shabbos fifteen years ago made a particularly deep impression on me. And it remains, I think, as timely as ever.

The speaker, the final one of the evening, was Rabbi Shimshon Pincus, zt”l, the Rav of Ofakim. His address that night would be the only one he would offer at an Agudah convention. He, along with his Rebbetzin and one of their daughters, were killed, R”l, in a car accident in Israel mere months later.

Although over ensuing years, I, like so many, were edified by the collections of Rabbi Pincus’ lectures that were posthumously published, at the time, I had not known much about him.

The backdrop of his speech that night included the brutal lynching, weeks earlier, of two Israeli soldiers in Ramallah, and a slew of Islamic Jihad and Hamas (yimach shemam) car bombings that killed or injured scores of Israeli civilians.

Rabbi Pincus acknowledged the crisis at home, but took pains, to stress that “tovah Haaretz meod meod.” He exulted over the proliferation of yeshivos and shiurim, over the fact that Jews once alienated from their heritage were returning to it and that the populace is not unduly fearful. “The real crisis,” he contended, “is not in Eretz Yisroel per se, but in the entire Jewish people – Eretz Yisroel is but its heart.”

And he suggested that an important message to Klal Yisrael lies in the fact that the strife in its heart is not a battle between governments but between peoples, and the threat is not so much against a country as against individuals.

He noted the wonderful efforts and projects that Yidden were involved in, the building of yeshivos, kollelim and mosdos chessed. “There is a contrast,” though, he added, “between what people build and what they are.” Perhaps, he suggested, we need to more carefully apply to ourselves as individuals the very same concern that we so strongly translate into community efforts.

“The bnei Yishmael,” he explained, “are claiming that it was their ancestor, not Yitzchak, who was chosen as Avraham’s heir, the son Hashem called ‘yechidcha.’ We must all act as miyuchadim to Hashem. No matter how old, each of us is His ben yachid. Our behavior as such will prove that we are deserving of that honor.”

There is great merit, he explained, in all the special things we do, whether building Torah institutions, establishing social services or, for those of us who aren’t of sufficient means or talent, donating what we can to such efforts, attending shiurim, reciting Tehillim. The power of such things, whether large or small, cannot be overlooked.

But they must not allow us to overlook even more basic, if more difficult, pursuits – like our efforts to work on our middos and personal observance. How we conduct ourselves in public, and in private; how we interact with our spouses, our parents, our children and our friends and, especially, people who are none of those things; how we daven, how we make brachos, how we think – these are, or should be, the most important foci of each of our lives.

And, oh, how easily such “minor” things can be obscured by more “weighty” ones.

Although I have yet to achieve what Rabbi Pincus set forth as the proper goal of a Jew, his reminder has remained with me, and likely always will.

After his tragic petirah, many accounts of his actions and interactions were told.

One concerned a “selling of aliyos” on a Purim morning. The gabbai had announced, “Fifty shekels for pesichas haaron,” for opening the ark. Rabbi Pincus, it was recounted, ran to the bimah and amended the nature of the bidding.

“Pesichah,” he announced, “for reciting asher yatzar word-by-word for one month!”

Bidding ensued, and the winner pledged to undertake the practice for three years.

I would be surprised if the winner stopped even then.

Say It Ain’t So, Mike

In 1990, attorney Mike Godwin introduced what became known as “Godwin’s Law,” the contention that if an electronic discussion (regardless of topic or scope) goes on for long enough, sooner or later someone will compare someone to Hitler, ym”s.

Philosopher Leo Strauss referenced something similar back in 1951, coining the means of argument that compares an opponent’s view to that of Hitler as “reductio ad Hitlerum.”

Over recent weeks some critics of the U.S. administration have characterized its approach to curbing Iran’s nuclear weapons as dangerous appeasement, and President Obama as a reincarnation of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who famously crowed that the 1938 Munich Agreement with Germany heralded “peace for our time.” Less than a year later, of course, Germany would invade Poland and Europe would be plunged into World War II.

Needless to say, even for those among us who consider the Iran deal ill-advised, there is a considerable gulf between proudly waving a piece of paper as proof of an evil man’s good will and an arduously crafted and enforceable agreement requiring an evil regime’s submission to intrusive inspections and monitoring.

But, inflated though it was, the Obama-Chamberlain comparison was one thing.

Another thing entirely was Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee’s contention last week that President Obama was marching Israelis “to the door of the oven.” The candidate – no other way to read it – was calling the president a Nazi.

I have personally always found Mr. Huckabee’s voice to be a refreshing one in the political arena. On moral and educational issues, the former Arkansas governor and Southern Baptist minister generally reflects ideals valued by most religious Jews. He has visited Israel numerous times. And he has a sense of humor (very important in my book), as evident in his naming the musical band he formed, “Capitol Offense.”

But his Iran deal comment was grotesque.

To be sure, the designs of Iran’s leaders today can certainly be compared to those of Germany’s 77 years ago. That doesn’t, however, make anyone who wants to thwart Iran’s nuclear weapon dreams without declaring war a Hitler.

Criticism of Mr. Huckabee’s words drew fire not only from Democratic politicians but from nonpartisan groups like the ADL, and from Israeli officials. Israel’s ambassador to Washington, Ron Dermer, called the comment inappropriate and Israeli Transport Minister Yisrael Katz, while stressing that Mr. Huckabee was “genuinely concerned” with Israel’s future, said: “Dear Mr. Huckabee, no one is marching Jews to the ovens anymore.”

Mr. Katz’s chiding, however, came from a brash Zionist place, evident from his further words: “That is why we established the State of Israel and the Israel Defense Forces; and if necessary, we will know how to defend ourselves by ourselves.”

To those of us familiar with the phrase kochi v’otzem yadi, such braggadocio is saddening. In this case, though, it’s also entirely beside the point. What was offensive about Mr. Huckabee’s words wasn’t their insinuation that Israel is helpless; it was the vulgarity of the comment itself.

To wax meta, the comment is itself a comment – on the state of political discourse in the United States today. Yes, there has always been a measure of rudeness in political partisanship, a small serving of snark in the way politicians and their fans refer to other politicians and theirs.

But there once was some degree of dignity that reined in excess when it came to political speech. No more, though. Decorum has left the building.

Part of the blame, of course, is the media. Not just talk radio and other electronic forms of verbal blood sport. But print media too, which seem to endorse not only “If it bleeds, it leads,” but “If it’s hating, it’s a high rating.”

And so, politicians eager for attention vie to outdo each other (and in Mr. Trump’s case, to outdo himself) in outrageousness, hoping to seize the news cycle for a day, or even a few hours. That all the shameful showboating seems to garner increased support says something about at least part of the contemporary electorate, and it’s not pretty.

What’s even more disturbing, though, is that even Jews are drawn into the jeering crowd around the boxing ring.

“The response from Jewish people,” Mr. Huckabee said as the criticism of his “oven” remark swirled around him, “has been overwhelming positive.” How overwhelmingly sad.

There’s hope, though. Later, the candidate admitted that, “Maybe the metaphor [of the oven] is not a good one.”

If he continues on that more thoughtful track, he may yet win back his dignity. And who knows? Maybe it will even prove contagious.

Spaced Out

“Are we alone?” asked the oversized headline of a full page ad in the New York Times last Tuesday. “Now is the time to find out,” it answered itself.

The open letter that followed was signed by Russian-Jewish entrepreneur and venture capitalist Yuri Milner and more than a score of astronomers and other scientists. The gist of the missive was that humanity has an obligation to launch “a large-scale international effort to find life in the Universe” – presumably life other than the sort we know here on earth. “As a civilization,” it continued, “we owe it to ourselves to commit time, resources, and passion to this quest.”

Among the resources, as a news story in the same paper and many others that very day explained, will be $100 million dollars of Mr. Milner’s fortune over the next decade.

Parochial a person as I am, I couldn’t help but think about what greater good – at least in my scheme of things – so large a bag of dollars could do, how many yeshivos, Bais Yaakovs and kollelim it could pull back from fiscal cliffs, how many chessed groups it could fund, how many impoverished Jews it could rescue from hardship.

But even from the perspective of a less sectarian observer, wouldn’t a hundred million (yes, yes, I know, $100 million isn’t what it used to be, but still) be better put to terrestrial use?

After all, another Jewish boy who did well for himself, social network creator and billionaire Mark Zuckerberg, has bankrolled schools and hospitals in the U.S. and technological advances in the developing world. And Tesla founder and PayPal co-founder Elon Musk (whose maternal ancestry is not clear) created a foundation dedicated to providing solar-power energy systems in disaster areas.

And Bill Gates (Jewish only in the eyes of some anti-Semites, but he looks Jewish) has had astonishing success battling river blindness and other infectious diseases that afflict the world’s poor.

And George Soros… – well, okay, scratch that one.

One has to acknowledge the good in some billionaires’ dedication to the alleviation of poverty, illiteracy and disease. Seeking to decrease human suffering is a noble goal. Casting about in the cosmos in the hope of finding other species, though… not so much.

Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against making the effort, as SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) has been doing (fruitlessly, it must be added) for decades. But to the tune of $100 million dollars that could do so much actual good on this planet? Mr. Milner shouldn’t expect a check from me.

What interests me here, though, isn’t the quest itself to seek intelligent life out there but rather just what it is that motivates accomplished men and women like Mr. Milner and those who signed on to his letter to pursue that quest.

On one level, I suspect that they, or at least some of them, may be whistling intellectually past the beis olam, so to speak, seeking reassurance that we humans are really not so special, and thus that we have no higher purpose than to serve ourselves (and, of course, explore the cosmos).

As Professor Stephen Hawking – one of the letter’s signatories and who in a 2011 interview asserted that the idea of an afterlife is a “fairy story for people afraid of the dark” – confidently proclaimed: “We believe that life arose spontaneously on Earth, so in an infinite universe there must be other occurrences of life.”

(A number of which civilizations, it might be presumed, have developed technologically well beyond where we are today and have been searching for us too, although we haven’t gotten the call. Oh, never mind.)

But something else occurs, too, a more generous thought. Maybe the compulsion to find intelligence outside our world is an expression – well disguised but present all the same – of a desire to find ultimate meaning to life.

Maybe, in other words, some of the alien-searchers have done what they could to paint over the innate human sense of the Divine, but have found that even the several coats of paint haven’t entirely obscured the sense that there is something more than this world. So they pursue extraterrestrials they imagine to reside in some faraway galaxy.

If enough of the paint chips away, they may yet come to realize that they were wrong but they were right. Wrong about the little green men, but right that we are not alone.

We have a Creator and a purpose.

Rabbi Avi Shafran

Reflections on Jews, Judaism, Media and Life