Category Archives: Personalities

Oren Gets Ornery

It’s axiomatic that diplomats must be, well, diplomatic. That might explain why Michael Oren, a current member of the Knesset (Kulanu) but who served as ambassador of Israel to the United States from 2009 until 2013, kept his disillusionment with President Barack Obama under wraps until now.

In a Wall St. Journal op-ed to promote a new book he’s written, Mr. Oren has accused Mr. Obama of, if not quite in the WSJ headline-writer’s contention, “abandon[ing] Israel,” at least (in Mr. Oren’s actual words) “abandoning the two core principles of Israel’s alliance with America.”

A serious charge, though, in its own right.

Mr. Oren acknowledges that “contrary to many of his detractors, Mr. Obama was never anti-Israel” and “significantly strengthened security cooperation with the Jewish State.”  The president, moreover, “rushed to help Israel in 2011 when the Carmel forest was devastated by fire.”

Presumably the ex-ambassador appreciates, too, Mr. Obama’s swift and strong warning to Egyptian authorities in 2011 that they had better protect mob-besieged Israeli embassy guards in Cairo.  And the president’s informing the Arab world in his 2009 Cairo speech that the U.S.-Israel bond is “unbreakable.”  As well as things like the administration’s condemnation of the Palestinian Authority’s “factually incorrect” denial of the Kosel Maaravi’s connection to the Jewish people.  And its vetoing of every anti-Israel U.N. Security Council proposal raised during its tenure.

But never mind all that (and more).  Mr. Obama stands accused by Mr. Oren of two sins: openly disagreeing with Israel, which Mr. Oren contends had “never” happened before; and neglecting to provide Israel with advance copies of statements concerning U.S. policy in the Mideast.

Sin #1, according to Mr. Oren, consisted of Mr. Obama’s telling American Jewish leaders in 2009 that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s lack of movement toward a peace process “erodes our credibility with the Arabs.”  And the president’s “void[ing of] George W. Bush’s commitment to include the major settlement blocs and Jewish Jerusalem within Israel’s borders in any peace agreement.”  And Mr. Obama’s call for a temporary “freeze of Israeli construction” in contested areas.

Sin #2?  President Obama didn’t share a copy of his Cairo speech with Israel ahead of time, even though it contained “unprecedented support for the Palestinians” and “recognition of Iran’s right to nuclear power.”

Strong evidence for a guilty verdict, it might seem.  Some pesky facts, though, get in the way.

American disagreement with Israel was unprecedented?  Presidents Reagan, Bush I and Clinton (let alone Carter) all publicly took issue with various Israeli policies and actions.  Pesky fact.

Support for a “two-state solution,” as it happens, has been American policy for decades (not to mention the current desire of a majority of Israelis – and the hope, at least so stated, of Mr. Netanyahu).  Thus, whatever one may think about the idea’s wisdom, not advancing it certainly erodes Palestinian hopes, and the credibility of the U.S. as an effective advocate for a peace agreement.  Pesky fact.

As to the terms of a final peace agreement – if ever there is one – Mr. Obama has never – never – said or implied that major settlement blocs or Jewish Jerusalem will not end up as part of Israel.  When he famously spoke about an agreement “based” on the 1967 lines, he also added, in the very same sentence, that it would include land swaps to ensure Israel’s security – code for land Israel considers essential.  Pesky fact.

As to a construction freeze, Mr. Netanyahu actually ordered one, for 10 months, in 2009.  The Palestinian Authority irresponsibly wasted the opportunity to negotiate then.  Would another freeze yield a different result?  No one can know.  But urging Mr. Netanyahu to try again isn’t an abandonment of anything.

Mr. Obama’s Cairo speech, while it indeed included outreach to the Arab world (a wise, if doomed effort), contained not only a clear call on that world to accept Israel but a condemnation of  “baseless, ignorant, and hateful” Arab Holocaust denial, and of Arab nations’ “threatening Israel with destruction – or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews.”

No, he didn’t announce an invasion of Iran in that speech.  He referenced that country’s past evils and asserted that the U.S. is “prepared to move forward” to help prevent “a nuclear arms race in the Middle East that could lead this region and the world down a hugely dangerous path.”  Mr. Oren, and others, might consider that approach misguided. But the leader of the free world is entitled to his own opinion about what will best protect Israel and the rest of the world.  And he may even be right.

Mr. Oren didn’t respond to messages from the New York Times last Thursday.  He had a book party that night.

© 2015 Hamodia

Thoughtless Jewish Jeers

I’m trying to understand the sort of mindlessness that expressed itself in the jeering of Treasury Secretary Jacob (“Jack”) Lew by some Jews at a recent gathering.

The third Jerusalem Post Annual Conference which took place in Manhattan on June 7 and featured Israeli and American officials and journalists, was convened with the hope of garnering international attention.  It succeeded, if only in the widespread reportage of the way some in attendance reacted to Mr. Lew’s measured and accurate words.

Applause ensued when he told the crowd that the U.S. continues to consider Israel’s security a top priority as it negotiates a deal to curb Iran’s nuclear capabilities and that “we must never allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon.”

The Treasury Secretary then explained how the U.S.-led sanctions against Iran were intended to pressure that country to agree to negotiations about limiting and monitoring its nuclear program, and that they succeeded.  The first murmurs from the crowd were heard then.

And then, when he asserted that Iran’s movement toward a nuclear weapon had been arrested for now, and that an agreement, if one is signed, would thwart the outlaw nation’s suspected designs, the booing began in ugly earnest.

Mr. Lew is an Orthodox Jew with impeccable pro-Israeli security credentials who worked in the 1980s with Natan Sharansky to secure freedom for Soviet Jews and served for a year as Mr. Obama’s Chief of Staff.  With the knowledge of a true insider he went on to assert that “We are not operating on an assumption that Iran will act in good faith” and that “No administration has done more for Israel’s security than this one.”

Members of the audience openly jeered.  One called out “Nonsense!” Another shouted “Chamberlain,” a reference to Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister who tried to appease the Nazis.

According to one Israeli journalist present, it was “one of the surliest receptions ever accorded to such a high-ranking administration official by a Jewish audience in the United States.”

Jerusalem Post editor Steve Linde tried to quiet the audience.  Mr. Lew, looking sad, pleaded, “I only ask that you listen to me as we’ve listened to you,” to no avail.

Clearly taken aback by what transpired at its conference, the Jerusalem Post subsequently published an editorial calling Mr. Lew “a true friend” of Israel.

I do get that some American Jews regard any deal with Iran, even one that will include monitoring of all Iranian nuclear facilities and strict limits on Iran’s ability to produce a nuclear weapon, as a bad idea.  Even though the only alternatives are to do nothing or to attack Iran, which knowledgeable Israeli and American military and intelligence experts say would only somewhat set back Iran’s nuclear program and would further incentivize the rogue nation’s determination to attack Israel and the West.

But don’t those who feel that war is preferable to a deal realize that it is not only uncouth but counterproductive to express their view by booing an Administration official (much less an accomplished, informed and pro-Israel one like Mr. Lew)?

Apparently not.  The mentality of such jeerers is that Jews are no longer in galus, that Israel doesn’t need the U.S., that her existence constitutes the geulah shleimah and that Benjamin Netanyahu is, if not Moshiach himself, his harbinger.

The catcallers were likely among those who decried the U.S. Supreme Court decision the very next day that ruled in favor of the White House and undermined an act of Congress that aimed to allow U.S. citizens born in Jerusalem to request passports listing Israel as their birthplace.

As nice as it would be for the U.S. to recognize Israel’s sovereignty over Yerushalayim, all American presidents since 1948, when the U.S. recognized Israel, consistently held the position that no state has sovereignty over Jerusalem.  George W. Bush, no less than President Obama, refused to enforce the Congressional action.

And the ruling, in any event, was not about Israel per se, but rather about who gets to chart foreign policy, the President or Congress.  Should Congress’s and the White House’s positions be reversed at some point in the future, the decision will prove to Israel’s benefit.

It was though, a timely reminder that the world, including even Israel’s closest friends, is not yet ready to recognize the unbreakable Jewish bond between Yerushalayim – the object of Jewish yearning for millennia – and Klal Yisrael.

A reminder, in other words, that we’re still in golus, jeerers and all.

© 2015 Hamodia

Doubt Thyself

For years, national network news anchorman Brian Williams told various versions of a story about his experiences during the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.  His recent admission that he had gotten crucial facts wrong and his subsequent suspension don’t just comprise another case of the sudden fall of a mighty man (if one can define might as having earned widespread  respect – and $10 million a year).  The scandal may actually hold a niced-sized nugget of instructional hashkafah-gold.

It’s certainly possible, of course, that the broadcaster had been intentionally lying when he claimed to have been on a helicopter that came under fire (a rather foolish choice, since those present with him at the time could, as several eventually did, contradict his account).  But it is also conceivable that Mr. Williams may have unconsciously conflated something he knew had happened to someone else with what actually happened to him, or confused a vivid fantasy with reality.

As Hillary Clinton may have when, in 2008, she claimed to have landed in Bosnia in 1996 amid sniper fire.  She recanted her assertion when a video of the moment showed otherwise.

Many of us, understandably, might more readily attribute a talking head’s or politician’s false claims to venality or vanity.  But the fact remains that memory distortion is not at all rare.  Perhaps you have experienced it yourself.  I have, although not about any grandiose claim of bravado or danger, but about more mundane things like who was at a chasunah or how a book ended.  I’ve been certain that my recall was accurate – until a photograph or document clearly showed me I was not.

Memory, to put it simply, is unreliable. In the 1990s, cognitive psychologist Elizabeth Loftus successfully convinced people that, as children, they had once been lost in a shopping mall. In another study, researchers showed people a doctored image of themselves as children, standing in the basket of a hot air balloon. Half of the participants later had either complete or partial false memories, sometimes “remembering” additional details from this event – an event that never happened.

Psychologists, moreover, have discovered that when people recall things, they often unwittingly “edit” their memories; and then, the next time the memories are recalled, they will include the “edited material,” as part of the original memory.  Disconcerting, but true.

Trial lawyers and judges have long known that people will swear to have seen things that they didn’t in fact see, and that they are most sincere in believing their memories are accurate.

The Rambam (Hilchos Yesodei HaTorah, 8:2) acknowledges the same.  Explaining that the requirement that a navi perform a miracle is a Torah-requirement but does not imply that a miracle, per se, can prove that its performer has been sent by Hashem, he then adds: “…just as He has commanded us to decide [legal] matters through [the testimony of] two witnesses, even though we cannot know if they are testifying truth or falsehood.”

Two people, in other words, can lie, or be misled by their memories, almost as easily as one.  The Torah’s directive to accept two witnesses’ word isn’t a logical construct but a Divine law.  We can’t know with surety if what was testified is the truth, only that Hashem wants us to accept it as legally determinative.  As to the facts of the matter being testified about, they may have been accurately recounted, intentionally distorted or innocently misremembered.

It would be a mistake to imagine that the unreliability of memory lacks application to our personal lives.  So many of our bein adam lachaveiro dealings, our interpersonal relationships – whether with friends, acquaintances, spouses, employers or employees – are colored by the memories we have of previous interactions, sometimes recalled with a negative tint.

When we come across someone who evinces a dark feeling, and then trace it to what we remember the person once said or did, it might be wise to stop and consider for a moment that our memory may not be entirely accurate.   To consider the possibility that what we recall may be an “enhanced” memory – one that was unintentionally “edited” at some point, or perhaps was inaccurate from the start.

Imagine how different our lives would be if, when dealing with others, we relegated negative memory-baggage to the realm of the doubtful.

Doubting oneself has a bad name in the contemporary world.  But its wisdom seems to be borne out by science.  And, more important, by the imperative of judging others l’chaf zechus.

© 2015 Hamodia

Candles and Candor

A non-Orthodox writer recently reached out to ask if I would participate in a panel discussion about Chanukah.  The other panelists would be non-Orthodox clergy

While I cherish every opportunity to interact with Jews who live different lives from my own, I had to decline the invitation, as I have had to do on other similar occasions. I explained that my policy with regard to such kind and appreciated invitations is a sort of passive “civil-disobedience” statement of principle, “intended as an alternative to shouting from the rooftops that we don’t accept any model of ‘multiple Judaisms.’ So, instead, [I] opt to not do anything that might send a subtle or subliminal message to the contrary.”

“Sorry,” I added, “Really. But I do deeply appreciate your reaching out on this.”

The extender of the invitation, Abby Pogrebin, was a guest in the Shafran sukkah this past Chol Hamoed.  Both my wife and I were impressed with both her good will and her desire to learn more about traditional Jewish life and beliefs.  In fact, she is currently writing a series of articles for the secular Jewish paper the Forward on her experiences observing (in both the word’s senses) all the Jewish holidays and fast days over the course of a year.

Ms. Pogrebin recently produced her Chanukah-themed entry in the series and, with remarkable candor, reported that her research has led her to the understanding that Chanukah is really about the victory of Jews faithful to the Jewish religious heritage over those who were willing to jettison it.

“I know it’s too simplistic to say the Maccabees stand in for the observant, and the rest of us for the Hellenized,” she writes. “But implicit in so many rabbinic Hanukkah teachings is that we’re in danger of losing our compass, losing our difference – abandoning the text and traditions that make us Jews.”

Then she continues in a personal vein:  “And that sense of alarm makes me look harder at where I fall on the spectrum before Hanukkah begins this year.”

Ms. Pogrebin goes on to quote Jewish writer Arthur Kurzweil as maintaining that Chanukah “is about Jewish intolerance in the best sense of the word” – that is to say, intolerance of assimilation to the larger culture.

He adds an analogy: “Baseball has four bases. You can invent a game with five bases; maybe it’s even a better game. But it’s not baseball.” Judaism, he explains, “is not whatever you want it to be.”

She goes on to note that it was hard for her “not to see the echoes of Maccabee-Hellenist tension this very month,” citing her failure to enlist traditionally Orthodox participants in a panel discussion she was moderating, the one to which she invited me.  Having requested, and received, my permission to do so, she then quoted my response to her invitation.

Of course she finds reassuring voices, like that of Conservative rabbi Rachel Ain, who tells her “I wear tefillin every morning. They’re black and what all the men wear. I find it so powerful. I also wear a kippah, but it’s a beaded kippah and I have a tallit that was made for me – it’s green and purple and blue – and it’s very feminine and very halachic… Hellenizing? I say it’s innovating.”

But Ms. Pogrebin is a tenacious reporter, and cannot ignore the other, more Jewishly grounded, testimonies she received.

And it personally pains her.  In words like Mr. Kurzweil’s and mine, she hears an echo of “countless voices in the observant world who would likely dismiss my level of Judaism as perilously assimilated.” And she is, understandably, distressed by that thought.

“Hanukkah,” she realizes, “celebrates those who refused to blend in.”

“Where,” therefore, she wonders, “does that leave those of us who, to one degree or another, already have?”

To my lights, Ms. Pogrebin is too hard on herself.  She’s no Hellenist. She may be entangled with the larger culture in which she lives – so are, to one or another degree, all too many observant Jews.  But she doesn’t reject the Jewish religious tradition, as did the Hellenists of old.  In fact, she has embarked on a quest to better understand our mesorah, and seems rightly suspicious of the blandishments of those who proffer “innovations” to Jewish religious praxis.

Observance, to be sure, is central to Yiddishkeit.  But a heartfelt undertaking by someone who wasn’t raised to be Torah-observant to learn more about observance, is hardly the enterprise of a Hellenist.  It’s the hallmark, I’d say, of a Jew.

© 2014 Hamodia

Punditry With Prudence

“According to you,” a reader wrote me privately about a recent column that appeared in this space, “we can’t make any conclusions, because of the unknowns.”

The column, titled “Unknown Unknowns,” pointed out how, particularly in political affairs (like the current American administration’s relationship with Israel) we don’t always have the whole picture.  I noted as an example, how, at the very same time that many Jewish media were attacking President Obama for his ostensible hostility toward Israel, the president was determinedly working hand in glove with Israel in a secret cyber-project to undermine the Iranian nuclear program. As pundits huffed and puffed, Stuxnet was silently destroying centrifuges.

The reader was chagrined that I, as he read it, was counseling a moratorium on commentary about all political affairs.  I wrote back to explain that no, I didn’t mean that at all.  We can, and even should, express our concerns openly in the free country in which we’re privileged to live. But we must do so with reason and civility (maybe even fairness), not the sort of ranting that passes for dialectic on talk radio these days. I meant only (and perhaps should have written more clearly) that a degree of modesty when voicing our assumptions and opinions is in order, and is all too often in absentia.

Serendipitously, shortly after I wrote the piece, a bit of news arrived that well illustrated its point.

Back at the start of 2013, when Chuck Hagel was nominated to serve as Secretary of Defense, the reaction from various corners, including some in our community, ranged from deeply suspicious to apoplectic.  Several artless statements Mr. Hagel had made were fanned into four-alarm fires; taken in the worst possible way, they were waved around as evidence of the man’s disdain for Israel.  (That his nomination was made by the man in the White House made things, to the alarmists, even more distressing.

Elliott Abrams labelled Mr. Hagel an anti-Semite.  Abe Foxman insinuated that the nominee believed that the “the Jewish lobby controls foreign policy.” Charles Krauthammer blasted the new Defense Secretary for “pernicious blindness” when it came to Israel.  Magazines, newspapers and pundits in our own community readily hopped on the berating-bandwagon – and looked with pity (at best) upon those of us who, weighing the evidence objectively, just couldn’t work up a good panic.

Fast-forward to several weeks ago, when Mr. Hagel’s retirement was announced.  Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon, who had no reason to say anything at all about the transition, took the initiative to describe Mr. Hagel as a “true friend of Israel” whose “dedication to ensuring Israel’s security has been unwavering.”

“It is a real shame Hagel is leaving – he was great with us,” another Israeli official told Israeli reporter Barak Ravid.  Reporter Udi Sagal wrote that Hagel’s departure is “is bad news for Israel,” citing Hagel’s close personal relationship with Israel’s Defense Ministry.

The Jerusalem Post, no slouch when it comes to Israel’s security concerns, editorialized that Mr. Hagel “proved to be highly supportive of Israel” and imagined (likely unrealistically) that “some of the organizations that originally attacked Hagel quite viciously must now be embarrassed by their behavior.”

At least one erstwhile critic, Mr. Foxman, to his credit, seemed to come around to the realization that his fears had proven unfounded.  “Secretary Hagel’s energetic stewardship of America’s commitment to Israel’s security in a dangerous region,” he said, “has been vital.”

“His hands-on engagement,” the ADL leader added, “to ensure that our ally Israel can live in safety and security and maintain its rightful place in the community of nations will have a lasting impact.”

Yes, we can wax critical of political leaders.  But before we call them Israel-haters (and certainly Jew-haters), before we dump gobs of cynicism on their heads, or accuse them of flouting the law or the Constitution (when no court has rendered any such judgment), or pronounce them traitorous or stupid or evil, we need to pause, take a deep breath, remember a few things.  That there are at least two reasonable perspectives on most issues.  That there are things we can’t know with certitude.  And that, as Shlomo HaMelech observed and taught, “the words of the wise are heard” only when expressed “in calm” (Koheles 9:17).

The state of Israel, and Klal Yisrael, have all too many all too real enemies in today’s world.  We really don’t do ourselves any favor imagining, or, chalilah, creating, new ones.

© 2014 Hamodia

A Halachic Query of Jordanian King Abdullah II

Dear King Abdullah,

I’m quite sure you don’t remember me.  I was part of a sizable group of Jewish leaders, clergy, politicians and organizational representatives whom you, along with the Center for World Religions, Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution, invited to a gala lunch in a posh Manhattan hotel nine years ago.

To jog your memory, though, I was the fellow with the beard and black hat, and whose lips you may have noticed quietly moving when you entered the room.  I was reciting a Jewish blessing that is to be pronounced when one sees a king.  It goes “Blessed are You, G-d, Who has given of His glory to flesh and blood.”  It is, for obvious reasons, not a common blessing to make, and I was happy to have the occasion to invoke it.

I remember well your address to the crowd.  Its essence was your hope that Jews and Muslims might be able, despite political differences, to attain respect for each other’s religious beliefs.  Your message was a vision, of a human race unified by its members’ recognition of the worth and dignity of one another.  We, you may remember, applauded loudly and enthusiastically.

We learned, too, about how you had undertaken a brave and visionary mission: to marginalize Muslim extremism of the sort that continues to plague the civilized world.  You recounted how you had organized a conference of respected religious leaders from all the major schools of Islam to endorse a document that explicitly asserts the responsibility of Muslims to honor “every human being, without distinction of color, race or religion” and to “shun violence and cruelty.”  That last phrase particularly has stayed with me, and I recalled it recently.

It was when two Palestinian men, as you surely know, entered a synagogue in western Jerusalem where Jewish men were engrossed in prayer, and mercilessly hacked or shot four of them to death.  The attackers killed a police officer who rushed to the scene as well. And as they engaged in their slaughter of innocents, they shouted a declaration of Islamic faith, as so many murderers of Jews have done over recent years, months and weeks.  Eventually, police shot and killed the rampaging killers.

Your Parliament’s reaction to this rather striking example of religious “violence and cruelty,” to borrow your phrase, was to observe a moment of silence, in memory… not of the victims but of their murderers.  Verses from the Koran (“to glorify their pure souls,” a member of your Parliament helpfully explained) introduced the memorial moment.

Shortly thereafter, according to published reports, your Prime Minister Abdullah Ensour sent a condolence letter to the families of the murderers.

And then, in a broadcast interview, a member of your Parliament, Rudaina Ati, praised “the [Jerusalem synagogue] operation” for sending “a clear message to the Zionist entity…”; and called on Arabs to use violence to “liberate Palestine from the colonialist Jews,” the “filthy Jews [who live] on the land of Palestine.”

All of which leads me to my question.  According to Halacha, or Jewish religious law, the blessing that I pronounced when I saw you nine years ago is only proper and only permitted when the monarch one sees has true monarchial power over his subjects, when he is someone whose subjects would not dare stand up in violation of their king’s decrees or initiatives.

The utterance of a Jewish blessing, moreover, which includes G-d’s name, is considered by Halacha to be a very serious matter.  One may not pronounce a blessing unless it is truly required.  Otherwise it remains a bracha livatalah, a “pointless blessing.”

I have many sins to confess to my Maker, and indeed I recite a confessional prayer daily.  My question to you is whether I should include in my confession the sin, even if it was committed unintentionally, of having uttered a bracha livatalah when I saw you nine years ago.

Thank you in advance for your response.

A. Shafran

© 2014 Hamodia

Stubborn Spirit

The birthday cake was ablaze with 105 candles, and many among the scores of people present at the Czech embassy in London this past spring for the party would not have been there – or anywhere – had it not been for the man in whose honor they had gathered.

Nicholas Winton, who remains in full possession of his faculties, including his sense of humor, saved the lives of 669 children, mostly Jewish, during the months before the Second World War broke out in 1939.  There are an estimated 6000 people, many of those children, now grown, along with their own descendants, who are alive today because of his efforts, which went unrecognized for decades.

Born in 1909 in West Hampstead, England, Mr. Winton was baptized as a member of the Anglican Church and became a successful stockbroker.  He lived a carefree life until December 1938, when a friend, Martin Blake, asked him to forgo a ski vacation and visit him in Czechoslovakia, where Mr. Blake had traveled in his capacity as an associate of the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia, a group that was providing assistance to refugees created by the German annexation of the Sudetenland regions of the country. Together, the two men visited refugee camps filled to capacity with Jews and political opponents of the Nazis.

Mr. Winton was moved by the refugees’ plight. Knowing, too, about the violence that had been unleashed against the Jewish community in Germany and Austria during the Kristallnacht riots a mere month earlier, he resolved to do for children from Sudetenland what British Jewish agencies were doing to rescue German and Austrian Jewish children.

Audaciously (and illegally) “borrowing” the name of the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia, he began taking applications from parents, first at a hotel room and then from an office in central Prague. Thousands lined up to try to save their children’s lives.

(When an interviewer recently remarked to Mr. Winton that his actions “required quite a bit of ingenuity,” the interviewee responded, “No, it just required a printing press to get the notepaper printed.”  And asked about travel documents he had forged and the “bit of blackmail” that he had employed to save children, Winton, seemingly amused, just replied, “It worked.  That’s the main thing.”)

Returning to London, Mr. Winton raised money to fund the children transports, including funds demanded by the British government to bankroll the children’s eventual departure from Britain; and he found foster homes for the refugee children.

The first transport organized by Mr. Winton left Prague by plane for London on March 14, 1939, the day before the Germans occupied the Czech lands. After the Germans established a Protectorate in the Czech provinces of Bohemia and Moravia, Winton organized seven further transports that departed by rail out of Prague and across Germany to the Atlantic Coast, then traveled by ship across the English Channel to Britain. At the train station in London, British foster parents waited to collect the children. The last trainload of children left Prague on August 2, 1939, and the rescue activities ceased when Germany invaded Poland and Britain declared war on Germany at the beginning of September 1939

During the war, Mr. Winton volunteered for an ambulance unit for the Red Cross, then trained pilots for the Royal Air Force. He married, raised a family and earned a comfortable living. For 50 years, his rescue efforts remained virtually unknown until 1988, when his wife found a scrapbook from 1939 with all the children’s photos and names.  (Asked why he kept his secret so long, he explained, “I didn’t really keep it secret, I just didn’t talk about it.”)

Once his story got out, Mr. Winton received a letter of thanks from the late former Israeli president Ezer Weizman, was made an honorary citizen of Prague and, in 2002, was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his service to humanity.  His recent projects include providing help to the mentally handicapped people and building homes for the elderly.

It would be easy to place Nicholas Winton’s story securely in the “Righteous Gentiles” file, along with the accounts of other non-Jews who proved themselves exemplars of humanity.   But his life, as it happens, is not that simple.  It may speak less to the greatness of chassidei umos ha’olam and more to the pinteleh Yid.

For the bittersweet fact is that Nicholas Winton was born Nicholas Wertheimer, and was baptized and raised Christian on the decision of his parents, assimilated German Jews.

© 2014 Hamodia

From The Mouths Of Secularists

“…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…”

Those are the words of the famous physicist and Nobel laureate I. I. Rabi (1898-1988), quoted in the book “Rabi, Scientist and Citizen.”  He was born into an observant family in Galicia, and was still a baby when his parents immigrated to the United States.

Although he eventually lost his connection to Jewish observance, he confided toward the end of his life that “Sometimes I feel I shouldn’t have dropped it so completely”; and, as his earlier words above testify, he rejected the idea that Judaism could ever be anything other than what it always has been, or that he – or any Jew – could ever be anything other than an Orthodox Jew – whether or not he chose to live like one.

A similar sentiment was voiced several years ago by then-Knesset speaker Reuven Rivlin, the man elected last week to be Israel’s 10th president.

In a 2006 Knesset speech, Mr. Rivlin, who has been described as secular, said that he “has no doubt… that the status of Judaism according to Halacha is what has kept us going for 3,800 years” and that “besides it there is nothing.”  During that same address, he explained that if non-halachic conversion standards were to be adopted by Israel, the state would be abandoning a “religious definition” of Jewishness for a mere “civic” one with no inherent meaning.

And back in 1989, after visiting two Reform temples, he was blunter still, calling the liberal Jewish movement “a completely new religion without any connection to Judaism.”

Mr. Rivlin was assailed by adherents of non-Orthodox Jewish movements on both those occasions, and his present ascendancy to the Israeli presidency has understandably caused them renewed heartburn.

“He may be open-minded on a variety of issues,” Uri Regev, a Reform rabbi who now heads the “religious pluralism” organization Hiddush, sniffed about the president-elect, “but his mind was made up” about Judaism’s definition.  He is “the same old anti-liberal, close-minded traditionalist Israeli.”

Former Reform leader Eric Yoffie echoed that judgment before Mr. Rivlin’s election, pointedly warning that he expects “candidates for president to act in an appropriate and respectful manner to all elements of the Jewish world.”

And the current head of the Reform movement, Rick Jacobs, recently penned an open letter in Haaretz to Mr. Rivlin, in which he reminded the Israeli president-elect of the “stunning insensitivity” he had displayed toward the “dominant religiosity of North American Jewry” (a risible description if ever there were one) and expressed his hope that “you’re ready to update your harsh and rather unenlightened views of our dynamic, serious and inspiring expression of Judaism” (ditto).

Whether Mr. Rivlin, who by all accounts is a pleasant fellow, will see a need to assuage the umbrage-takers remains to be seen.  He may succumb to the pressures, although one hopes that he will not sacrifice principle for pacification.

The fact that the new president’s old statements have been dredged up and placed in the spotlight, however, is a healthy development.  For it informs the “dominant religiosity of North American Jewry” – in other words, the vast population of the Jewishly ignorant – that disinterested, objective observers readily perceive that there is only one Judaism, the original one.

The conniptions over Mr. Rivlin’s comments also call attention to the fact that, while various Jewish groups were “evolving” new theologies and practices, and abandoning the mesorah, the community of Jews who remained faithful to the Jewish religious tradition didn’t peter out, as so many had expected (and so many had hoped), but rather thrived, and continues to thrive, b”H, mightily.

By contrast, American Jewry outside the Orthodox world is in deep demographic crisis.  The intermarriage and assimilation that concerned us greatly decades ago have only intensified and accelerated.  Long gone are the days when a person presenting himself as a Jew can be presumed to be halachically Jewish.

And yet, there are still countless actual Jews out there, Jews who lack the benefit of an observant upbringing or a Jewish education, and are under the delusion that Judaism is a smorgasbord of offerings.  They are, moreover, relentlessly bombarded with articles in the “mainstream” “Jewish” media that, in effect, warn them not to dare sample the Orthodox tray, that it will make them sick.

What can we do to help those cherished if distant fellow Jews?  Ultimately, be who we are supposed to be.  Many who have gotten their impressions of Orthodox Jews from actually seeing true Orthodox life and behavior (rather than from the media malshinim) have in fact returned to their spiritual roots.

But a first step is the promotion of a truism, one that was voiced by a nuclear physicist and an Israeli president.

 © Hamodia 2014 

Storied Lives

I used to have a chavrusah, or study partner, with whom I learned Torah annually.

Yes, annually.

Usually for about an hour or two.

In a different city each year.

The text we studied was rather complex and challenging – the exquisitely concise (and often exquisitely confounding) glosses of the 18th-century Torah luminary known as the Vilna Gaon to the Shulchan Aruch’s section on the laws of mikva’os, or ritual baths.  That complex material was a major focus of my study-partner’s analysis for many years.  I was just “tagging along.”  Once a year.

The reason for the infrequency of that study partnership was that my partner, Rabbi Hillel Goldberg – a formidable Torah scholar, writer and the editor of the Intermountain Jewish News – lives in Denver, and I reside in New York. We would meet, though, each year at a gathering of Jewish journalists sponsored by an organization that held its annual get-together in one of various cities across the country.

When Reb Hillel would arrive at the convention hotel, one of the first things he would do was to contact me to arrange a good time to sit and study a bit.  I well recall our study sessions in places like Washington, Philadelphia, Denver and Los Angeles (where we discussed one of the Vilna Gaon’s glosses amid actors’ trailers at the Universal Studios lot, surely a place that had not witnessed such holiness in the past).  Our chavrusah-sessions were highlights of the junkets for me.

I haven’t attended the gatherings for a number of years now (due to budget constraints and a general feeling that there wasn’t much for me to either gain or give by my attendance), and not long ago, Reb Hillel published a comprehensive and scholarly tome on the course of his Vilna Gaon glosses study over those years.

Reb Hillel is also the author of several more works, considerably more layman-accessible.  And he has just published a new one, entitled “The Unexpected Road: Storied Jewish Lives Around the World.”

Anyone who knows me knows well that I’m not a fan of what pass for “inspirational stories” – that is to say, undocumented (if widely believed and shared) accounts of various great people’s performance of wonders or astounding mental feats.  It’s not that I don’t value miracles (though I have found few than can top a starry sky, or a baby), or that I’m not impressed by eidetic memories (though, ultimately, human value lies in righteousness, not talent, mental or otherwise).  It’s just that, well, there isn’t, shall we say, rigorous corroboration of most of the popular tales that make the rounds; and I’m a hopelessly critical thinker (read: cynic).

And so I tend to favor overtly fictional parables – stories that make no pretentions whatsoever to having ever actually happened, but nevertheless yield food for thought.  And first-person accounts from people I actually know.

Rabbi Goldberg is one such person, and his new book is chock full of such accounts.  He describes people he knows, or has known, and lets us share in some of the inspiration and realizations he has gleaned from their lives and doings.

In the book, one meets a man who reunited two brothers separated at Auschwitz, an American congregational rabbi who cast himself to “chance” in order to personally witness Divine providence, great leaders of Jews and simple Jews, even a neo-Nazi who came to give a Jew a thankful hug.  The places along Rabbi Goldberg’s “unexpected road” include Basel, Santa Fe, Boston, Minsk, Jerusalem (of course), Brooklyn (ditto, lihavdil), Frankfurt and Atlanta.

This collection of stories will indeed, as Rabbi Berel Wein predicts in a blurb on the book’ jacket, help readers realize that “there is more to life and life’s events than ‘me’ and one’s plans and decisions.”  Each of us, Rabbi Goldberg assures the reader, can become, like many of the people whose stories are included in his book, angels of the Divine.

© 2014 Rabbi Avi Shafran