Category Archives: Personalities

Open “Orthodoxy”?

A rejoinder to my recent essay, “True and Tragic Colors,” about Yeshivat Chovevei Torah and “Open Orthodoxy,” was published by The Times of Israel. Below is my response to that posting, written in my capacity as Agudath Israel of America’s spokesperson.

I am grateful to Dr. Ben Elton, a student at Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, for his rejoinder to my recent posting about that institution and “Open Orthodoxy,” in which I asserted that neither can lay claim to the adjective “Orthodox,” at least not if words are to have meanings.

My gratitude derives from the fact that Dr. Elton’s words help clarify the issue. Although he writes that he is “bemused” by my critique of his invocation of the Wurzburger Rav as an example of Chovevei Torah’s approach, his explanation of his bemusement can allow us to better understand whether that revered Torah personality would indeed approve of the inclusion of non-Orthodox Jewish clergy in training rabbis, which YTC proudly embraced at its recent presidential installation.

Dr. Elton is correct that there was indeed a difference of opinion between the Wurzburger Rav (Rav Yitzchok Dov Halevi Bamberger) and Rav Shamshon Raphael Hirsch regarding whether the rabbis of the Orthodox community of Frankfurt could remain part of that city’s official “Jewish community” council along with non-Orthodox clergy.

And he is correct, too, to note that Rav Hirsch’s objection to such membership was based on his conviction that it would “thereby give[s] formal recognition to the legitimacy of Reform.”

But he is mistaken to interpret Rav Bamberger’s dissent as permitting membership despite that contention. The Wurzberger Rav simply felt that membership in a communal body did not, in fact, confer legitimacy of any sort to Reform. As I noted in my response to Dr. Elton’s original posting, Rav Bamberger expressly forbade membership in other cities’ communal councils, where he apparently felt the terms of membership did in fact confer such legitimacy to Reform.

That a communal Orthodox rabbi, Marcus Horowitz, sat on the body overseeing the construction of a Reform Temple “and used his influence to prevent building taking place on Shabbat” – Dr. Elton’s evidence for his thesis – does not negate Rav Bamberger’s forbiddance to confer Jewish legitimacy on non-Orthodox systems of thought.

Nor does Rav Bamberger’s letter to Rav Hirsch in which he wrote that their common “reject[ion” and “detest[ation] of Reform with all our hearts” should nevertheless “not break the ties of personal friendship which bind us.”

Personal friendships, of course, are not the issue here. Orthodox rabbis, even among those who affiliate with Agudath Israel, maintain friendships with non-Orthodox representatives. The issue, though, is not personal friendship but something entirely different: whether non-Orthodox rabbis should be given a public platform to share their views on the quintessentially religious question of how to train rabbis.

As Dr. Elton himself concedes, Rabbi Bamberger would not likely “have advocated theological dialogue” with Reform representatives. Does he imagine that the Wurzberger Rav would have invited them, as YCT did, to a public forum to train rabbis? How, then, can Dr. Elton claim that “YCT is simply enduring the same critique today” as Rav Bamberger did in his day, and that YCT “can take pride in [Rav Bamberger’s] company?

Most glaring is Dr. Elton’s response (or lack of one) to the main point of my earlier posting: that neither YCT nor “Open Orthodoxy” can legitimately lay claim to the title “Orthodox.”

He blithely dismisses my summoning of quotations from YCT leaders and honored graduates that negate the very essence of what history has come to call Orthodoxy, with the observation that the quotes “do not contain much new material” and that they have been well explained “in the past.” He does not, however, offer even a synopsis of any such explanations. He cannot, for none can exist. One either accepts that Abraham and Isaac and Jacob existed or one does not; one either subscribes to the belief that the Torah, Written and Oral, was given to our ancestors at Sinai, or one does not. Esteemed leaders in the “Open Orthodoxy” movement do not. Orthodoxy does.

History is the best guide here. The Conservative movement began precisely as “Open Orthodoxy” has begun – the former was so named because it wished to “conserve” what it judged it could of halacha in a new environment that it felt deserved a more liberal approach to traditional Jewish thought and social norms. It shunned the word “Orthodox” only because it saw that adjective, at the time, as an albatross around its neck, since Orthodoxy was expected to expire quickly in America. YCT, by contrast, embraces the word as a badge of honor. Not because it fits but because embracing the word “Orthodox” – the institution hopes – might distinguish it from the Conservative movement despite its essential duplication of its essence.

The problem is that, to imagine an example in another realm, a person who is anti-immigration, anti-abortion, against higher corporate taxes and pro-gun and cannot legitimately claim the label “liberal.” As much as he may call himself that, he is like a leopard claiming to be an eagle.

And leopards cannot even change their spots, much less fly.

Whatever it may call itself, a neo- Conservative movement is simply not part of what history has come to call Orthodoxy.

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.

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.

Target (Mal)Practice

Some unwarranted criticism that was lobbed last week at several Orthodox writers greatly disturbed this one.

The target of one volley – though the shots widely missed their mark – was Rabbi Jonathan Rosenblum, one of the preeminent representatives of the charedi world. He was harshly criticized in a magazine editorial for a column he penned in a different magazine wherein he sought a silver lining in the current political disenfranchisement of charedi parties in the Israeli government coalition.

Rabbi Rosenblum suggested that the current situation “affords new opportunities to meet our fellow Jews on the individual level” and that now that they know that “we no longer threaten them” in the political realm, “they may be more open… to getting behind the stereotypes that fuel the animus” against charedim in Israel. “On a one-to-one basis,” he suggested, “we can show them what Torah means to us, what we are prepared to sacrifice for it, and what it might mean for them as well.”

Astonishingly, the writer of those words was pilloried for that sentiment, and misrepresented, too, as having asserted that “the hatred secular Israelis have toward charedim is the fault of the hated rather than the haters” (which, of course, he never contended). The censure of Rabbi Rosenblum continued in much the same vein, with the censurer lumping all non-charedi Israelis into one undifferentiated “secular” mass brimming with ideological hatred for religious Jews, and concluding that the only possible way to truly alleviate anti-charedi sentiment would be for charedim to abandon their beliefs and “adopt… the culture of the majority.”

To be sure, there are secular ideologues in Israel, and elsewhere, for whom Judaism itself is anathema. Rabbi Rosenblum knows that well, every bit as well as his attacker. But the vast majority of non-charedi Jews are not ideologues. Most Jews who may bear bias against their charedi fellow citizens do so because of anti-charedi propaganda – and the fact that they themselves have few if any positive personal interactions with charedim. It is precisely that latter unfortunate reality that Rabbi Rosenblum suggests charedim try to address.

Rabbi Rosenblum is a friend of mine, but I have not always agreed with him (nor he with me) on every issue; I would never hesitate to take issue with him if I felt it were warranted. But his straightforward, heartfelt and wise contention that religious Jews in Israel (and I’d extend it to those of us in America no less) would do well to seek opportunities for demolishing negative stereotypes about charedim is simply beyond any reasonable argument.

Two other Orthodox writers, members of what is often called the “Centrist” Orthodox world, were also strongly taken to task last week in a charedi newspaper. These targets, criticized by a respected columnist, were Rabbi Gil Student and Rabbi Harry Maryles, each of whom presides over a popular blog.

The columnist’s complaint was that the rabbinical bloggers did not see fit to condemn a third Centrist rabbi, a celebrated scholar whose reputation was, sadly, recently upended by the revelation that he had engaged in internet “sock puppetry” – the assumption of an alternate identity on the Internet. It was hardly the most scandalous of scandals but was still (as the culprit eventually admitted and apologized for) an act of subterfuge below someone of his scholarly stature.

Since the pretender had often posted, been quoted or been lauded on Rabbi Student’s and Rabbi Maryles’ blogs – the columnist contended – each of them needed to vociferously denounce him. That, because their blogs regularly link to stories in the general media that portray charedi Jews’ real or imagined crimes and misdemeanors, and because many comments appearing on each blog evidence clear animus for charedim. Why, the columnist asked, the double standard, the seeming readiness to extend mercy and the benefit of the doubt to a Centrist rabbi’s misdeeds but not to fallen charedim? The columnist, moreover, insinuated that Rabbis Maryles and Student themselves harbor ill will for charedim.

I cannot claim to be aware of everything (or even most things) that Rabbi Student or Rabbi Maryles have written. But what I have seen of the writings of each has never given me the impression that either man bears any such animus. They are not charedi themselves, to be sure, and I have disagreed with some of their stances. This is not fatal; indeed it is healthy, like all “arguments for the sake of Heaven.” But I don’t think it is reasonable to demand that they denounce someone whom each of them has looked to as a rabbinic authority. IMHO, as bloggers are wont to write – “in my humble opinion” – there was simply no need to pour salt into the wound here.

An important point, though, was registered by the columnist, and it is one that I hope Rabbi Maryles, Rabbi Student and, for that matter, the “charedi websites” alike all ponder well: Comments sections attract ill will, slander and cynicism like some physical materials do flies. While there are certainly responsible commenters out there, there are also many people with clearly too much time and too few compunctions. And it doesn’t strike me as outlandish to wonder if permitting the posting of cynical or vile comments is complicity in what such comments “accomplish.”

It’s a propitious time for talmidim, which we all are of our respective rabbaim, to do our best to ratchet up our “kovod zeh lazeh” – our proper honor for one another, even when we may be in disagreement. That can be done agreeably.

Savage Ignorance

It’s difficult to know whether shock-jock Michael Savage is in fact the actual person whose Bronx-accented ranting emanates daily from radios across the country, or whether that voice belongs to an adopted persona, a cantankerous, rude and hilariously self-aggrandizing misfit who seeks to capitalize on an assortment of angers lurking in the dark corners of listeners’ souls.

Certainly the fact that the former Michael Weiner adopted the name “Savage,” of all things, and that the portly 70-ish fellow introduces his program with abrasive headbanger music more suitable to a pierced punk rocker than a political pontificator would seem to argue for the alter ego case. So would optimism about the human condition: It would be disturbing to know that such an abrasive person was in fact real.

Already disturbing is the fact that the fellow (or his affected persona) has Jewish admirers. Those fans apparently figure that someone who voices fury for terrorists, bashes Israel-bashers and claims to stand up for traditional morals not only can’t be all bad but must be all good. No logic there, of course, but no one ever claimed that fandom is fettered by reason.

And so some Orthodox Jewish admirers of Mr. Savage (or DR. Savage, as he prefers to be called – he earned a Berkeley Ph.D. in “nutritional ethnomedicine”) were pained to hear the talk show host spend most of two programs last week spitting outrage at a Jewish ritual and its “bearded guys” practitioners.

The ritual, metzitza bipeh, or oral suctioning of a circumcision cut – a practice widely observed in Chassidic and yeshiva-centric communities – is hardly a good poster child for religious freedom. That it appears strange and even dangerous to uninformed people unfamiliar with the rite is entirely understandable.

But ignorance – something Mr. Savage champions himself as helping lesser people overcome – remains ignorance; and its promotion, heavily larded with ill will, is offensive. It might not be surprising in a radio personality who famously once asserted that in “ninety-nine percent” of autism cases the child is just “a brat who hasn’t been told to cut the act out” and on another occasion told a listener who dared take issue with him to “Go eat a sausage, and choke on it.” But the offensiveness remains.

Yes, New York Mayor (a.k.a. “Nanny-in-Chief”) Michael Bloomberg, with the assistance of the New York Board of Health, has waged war on metzitza bipeh, claiming that it has been the cause of infections of Herpes Simplex Virus Type 1 (the cold sore virus, carried by most of the population but which can be dangerous in babies). That fact was the extent of Mr. Savage’s research of the issue. But it has been compellingly asserted by objective scientists that the mayor and health board’s claims are without basis in fact.

New York Westchester Hospital Chief of Infectious Diseases Dr. Daniel S. Berman, Beth Israel Hospital director of epidemiologic research Dr. Brenda Breuer and Columbia University Professor Awi Federgruen, an expert in quantitative methodology, have all publicly called into serious question the claim that metzitza bipeh represents any quantifiable danger to babies.

(There is, of course, a slightly increased danger of any infection at the site of any open wound – including a circumcision, even when metzitza bipeh was not performed. But such increased risk of harm doesn’t approach that of the increased risk to life and limb attendant to, say skiing, bicycling or crossing a Manhattan street – even when the “walk” sign is on.)

Affidavits by each of those intrepid professionals (none of whom carries any brief for metzitza bipeh; their only goal is to defend the integrity of science and its objective application to life and law) can be read at http://protectmilah.org/ (on the click-through to the second page of the site).

Had Mr. Savage taken the time and care to actually research the issue of the Jewish ritual’s alleged dangerousness before launching his crude tirade, he might have been less inclined to render a judgment so quickly, absolutely and rudely. But that would have required fairness and objectivity, not to mention good will toward people with whom he has little in common.

And such things, admirable though they are, don’t do much for ratings.

Musing: Full Circle for a Firebrand Feminist

A long article in The New Yorker chronicles the life and death of radical feminist Shulamith Firestone, who angrily rejected her Jewish heritage and whose name in the 1960s became synonymous with the jettisoning of traditional mores.

Ms. Firestone died last August at 67, after increasingly exhibiting signs of schizophrenia over the final decades of her life, during which she survived on public assistance and the kindness of others. She eventually became a recluse, living in a East Village tenement and refusing visitors.

The article, by the Jewish feminist journalist and author Susan Faludi, includes a deeply moving image, recounting how a spurned visitor to the shut-in recalled hearing “a torrent of Hebrew coming from inside” the tenement. “Firestone,” the article explains, “was reciting Jewish prayers.”

Obama Comes Clean

Back in 2009, I was troubled by the reaction of many of my friends to President Obama’s speech in Cairo to the Muslim world.

I had shared the same concerns they had about Mr. Obama during his first campaign for the presidency – his Chicago politics background, his attendance of a church headed by a rabid racist, his association with other distasteful characters, the suddenness of his rise to political prominence. But after his election (which happened somehow, despite my vote for his rival) I tried to focus not on the past but the present. And I found his Cairo speech pleasantly surprising.

That he chose to address the Islamic world in itself did not disturb me. Were I in his position, I reflected, were I a person of color who lived in a Muslim environment as a child and now the leader of a free world plagued by Islamic extremism, I would have made the same choice, seized the golden opportunity to try to reach the Muslim masses with a message of moderation.

And, continuing my thought experiment, I imagined myself saying much what the new president did. He spoke of Islamic culture’s accomplishments, extended a hand of friendship and addressed some of the problems facing his listeners.

And not only didn’t he shy away from the topic of Israel, he seized it hard and fast. To be sure, he reiterated America’s long-standing support for a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, the position of even the Israeli government these days. And he called for an end to new settlements, also reflecting long-established American policy. But he declared too that “America’s strong bonds with Israel are… unbreakable… based upon cultural and historical ties, and that the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied.”

In fact, he decried Holocaust denial, so rife in the Muslim world, as “baseless, ignorant, and hateful,” and condemned the “threatening [of] Israel with destruction” and the “repeating [of] vile stereotypes about Jews.” He poignantly declared that “Palestinians must abandon violence,” that it is “a sign of neither courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus.”

And yet some Jews were deeply unimpressed – because the president described the state of Israel as rooted in the Holocaust. The Jewish connection to Eretz Yisrael, they complained, is rather older than that. Indeed it is, of course. But somehow I wouldn’t have thought it necessary or wise for Mr. Obama to quote from the Torah, particularly to an Islamic audience.

I suppose that the critics weren’t begrudging him quite that. They just wanted to hear some reference to the fact that the Holy Land was holy to, and populated by, Jews before Muslims (or Islam for that matter) came on the scene. Even that, I thought, would have been unwise at that time and place, and I felt it was ungenerous to not at least give Mr. Obama credit for what he did say, clearly and unequivocally. And I found the president’s subsequent actions on behalf of Israel, from pushing the Iron Dome project to intensifying the anti-Iran Stuxnet collaboration with Israel to his strong and quick intercession on behalf of Israelis held hostage in Egypt (and much more) as confirmation of my judgment of the man’s commitment to Israel’s safety and security.

Now, on his recent trip to Israel, the president came clean, so to speak, on the issue of the Jewish connection to Eretz Yisrael.

“More than 3,000 years ago, the Jewish people lived here,” he said, “tended the land here, prayed to G-d here.” And he called the fact of Jews living in their ancestral land “a rebirth, a redemption unlike any in history.”

Needless to say, as the Zoharic prayer “B’rich Sh’mei,” recited by many when the Torah is removed from the ark, has it, we are not to put our trust in any man. And the hearts of leaders, in any event, are in Hashem’s hands, and subject to the effect of our own merits.

So the future cannot be known by any of us. But the present can, and we are obliged by our tradition, which hallows the concept of hakaras hatov, “recognition of the good,” to be thankful for both what President Obama has done and what he has said.

May we merit to see his continued support for our brothers and sisters in the Holy Land.

Dos Yiddishe Mensch

If you’ve noticed a little less dignity, geniality and nobility in the world of late, it may be because we no longer have Reb Yosef Friedenson here with us.

Reb Yosef’s humble bearing, good will and astuteness would have been remarkable in any man. But for a veteran of the Warsaw ghetto and a clutch of concentration camps to have emerged from the cauldron of the Holocaust as so shining a model of calm, forbearance and fortitude is little short of amazing – and something that deeply impressed all who had the privilege of knowing him.

I am among those fortunate souls, and I had the additional honor of working in the same offices as he, at Agudath Israel of America. There were times here and there when he would ask me to do some minor research for him. I tend to overschedule my days and, especially if I’m in a cranky mood, I sometimes feel put upon when asked to do something I hadn’t included on my day’s agenda. But when the asker was Reb Yosef, no matter how grumpy I might have been a moment before, the very sound of his voice, which transmitted his modesty and eidelkeit (sorry, there’s no English word that can do the job), melted any cantankerousness I might have been nursing. I was happy and honored to help him in any way I could. Because of the person he was.

He was known as “Mr. Friedenson” but in fact was a wiser man and more of a rabbi by far than most who coddle that title. He was not into titles but into work, on behalf of the Jewish people.

For more than a half-century – beginning in the Displaced Persons camps after the war’s end – Reb Yosef edited a Yiddish publication, which became the monthly “Dos Yiddishe Vort” – “The Yiddish [or Jewish] Word” – produced under Agudath Israel’s auspices. Even as the periodical’s readership dwindled with the loss of Holocaust survivors over the years, he forged ahead and, until virtually the last day of his life, worked hard to produce the glossy monthly that regularly offered Orthodox commentary on current events, historical articles and rare photographs from the pre-Holocaust Jewish era and the Holocaust itself. He approached his editing duties carefully and professionally, in the beginning of the venture recruiting top-notch writers and doing his own top-notch writing. He once said about his father, Eliezer Gershon Friedenson, who edited the pre-war Agudath Israel newspaper in Europe, that he was “bristling with energy and ideas.” It was an apt description of himself.

During his final years, Reb Yosef did much of the writing for Dos Yiddishe Vort himself, often under pseudonyms that were transparent to most everyone who read the publication. (No one cared; his own recollections and writings were deeply appreciated by readers.) And the issues increasingly focused on rabbinical figures who perished during the Holocaust, and on pre-war Jewish communities. Special editions were devoted to the Jews of Lodz or Lublin, to the Gerer rebbe or the Chazon Ish. And throughout, there were personal recollections of the war years and accounts of spiritual heroism during that terrible time.

That, in fact, was Reb Yosef’s overriding life-mandate: to connect new American generations with the world of Jewish Eastern Europe. He didn’t harp on Nazism or anti-Semitism. That there are always people who hate Jews was, to him, just an unfortunate given. It didn’t merit any particular examination.

What did, though, was the decimation itself of European Jewry and the horrifying toll taken by the upheaval of the Jewish people on the Jewish dedication to Torah. When he would reference the Germans it was usually to note their perceptive realization that Torah is the lifeblood of the Jewish nation. They tried to drain that figurative lifeblood along with their pouring of so much actual Jewish blood. But – and this was what yielded Reb Yosef’s victory smile – they failed. He saw the ultimate revenge on the Nazis and their henchmen in the reestablishment and thriving of observant Jewish life, yeshivos and Bais Yaakovs on these shores and others.

He would sometimes call attention to a line from a prayer said on Mondays and Thursdays, the long version of Tachanun. “We [Jews] are like sheep led to slaughter,” he would quote, and know well how true that has been over the course of history. But, Reb Yosef would continue, the operative words, the secret to Jewish survival and Jewish identity, lie in the supplication’s subsequent phrase: “And despite all that, we have never forgotten Your name.”

Reb Yosef never forgot G-d’s name, not in the ghettos, not in the camps, not in the office where he toiled for decades to remind others of the Jewish world that was, and that can be again.

And we, for our part, will never forget either him or his message.

Send Obama a Message

The Obama administration considers Israel a sponsor of terror —at least according to Dick Morris, the disgraced ex-advisor to Bill Clinton, and a host of self-styled “conservative” media. The news was shocking—well, maybe not to the clever folks who knew all along that the president is a secret Muslim, but certainly to the rest of us.

What turned out to be the case is that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency maintains a list of 36 “specially designated countries” whose immigrating citizens get extra scrutiny because their nations “promote, produce or protect terrorist organizations or their members.” Note the word “or.”

“Produce,” in this context, means that terrorists reside in the country. Thus, countries like the Philippines and Morocco, along with Israel, are on the list. Approximately a million and a half Israeli citizens are Arabs—many of whom have ties to Arab residents of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. So no, with apologies to Mr. Morris et al, the U.S. does not consider Israel a terror sponsor.

What makes some people all too ready to misrepresent such things is that many Americans, especially in the Jewish community, have deep concerns about President Obama’s Middle East policies. My personal view is that these concerns are overblown. While I realize there are other opinions, as far as I can tell Mr. Obama’s positions on building in the settlements and on the terms of Israel-Palestinian negotiations have been American policy since long before his presidency.

Even doubters of Mr. Obama’s good will, though, should recognize the import of the administration’s declared readiness to veto any U.N. Security Council resolution recognizing Palestinian statehood. That stance risks the U.S.’s international political capital and may even, G-d forbid, come to threaten Americans’ safety. Might it speak more loudly about the president than his opposition to new settlements?

Speaking equally loudly is what happened on September 9, when Mr. Obama acted swiftly to warn Egyptian authorities that they had better protect Israeli embassy guards in Cairo besieged by a mob. When Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minster Barak were unable to reach the apparently indisposed Egyptian military leader Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta spent hours hounding the Egyptian, finally reaching him at 1 AM to let him know that if anything happened to the Israelis, there would be “very severe consequences.” Egyptian soldiers protected the hostages until an Israeli Air Force plane safely evacuated them.

Mr. Netanyahu later recounted that he had asked for Mr. Obama’s help and that the president had replied that he would do everything he could. “And so he did,” testified the Prime Minister.

It may not be meaningful for many, but I was struck two days later on the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks when the president, betraying his Islamic beliefs (joke!), chose for his reading at the New York ceremony the 46^th chapter of Tehillim. The one including the words (in the White House’s translation):

“Though its waters roar and be troubled… there’s a river whose streams shall make glad the City of G-d, the holy place of the Tabernacle of the Most High.”

And: “The God of Jacob is our refuge.”

Whatever our takes on this or that statement or position, hard facts are not up for debate.

Let’s not forget some such facts: The Obama administration has provided more security assistance to Israel than any American administration; he has repeatedly declared (first in 2009 in Cairo during his speech to the Arab world) that the bond between the U.S. and Israel is “unbreakable”; his Secretary of State lectured Al-Jazeera that “when the Israelis pulled out of Lebanon they got Hezbollah and 40,000 rockets and when they pulled out of Gaza they got Hamas and 20,000 rockets”; his State Department has condemned the Palestinian Authority’s “factually incorrect” denial of the Western Wall’s connection to the Jewish people; and much more.

Last week, in the lead-up to a Congressional election in Brooklyn in which Jews had ample other reason to vote against the Democratic candidate, some ads presented the contest as an opportunity to “Send Obama a Message”—which some Jews took to mean an angry message about Israel.

Many thoughtful Jews, though, have a different message for Mr. Obama: Thank you.

A Song From Beyond

My dear mother, of blessed memory, has been gone for 22 years. Her yahrtzeit, the Jewish anniversary of her passing, 22 Adar I, fell on a Shabbos this year, several weeks ago. All who knew her will readily testify that she was one of the kindest, most caring people they had ever met. Despite her transplantation from Poland to the U.S. as a little girl, and then the loss of her grandmother, a brother and her father when she was a teen, no scars of those challenges were ever evident in her interactions with people—the moment she met you she began caring for you—and she was the most wonderful mother any child could ask for.

And she was present at our Shabbos table on her yahrtzeit this year. She even taught my grandson a song.

Two year old Shmuel, who was visiting with his parents and little brother, is an adorable, rambunctious little boy; to his good fortune, his propensity to display his impressive pitching arm and ability to break things have been divinely counterbalanced with preternaturally blue eyes and a smile that could melt Pharaoh’s heart. He’s a quick learner too.

At one point, someone at the meal claimed to be directionally challenged, needing to consciously think about which way was right and which was left. I smiled as I realized, and explained, how I came to have a split-second recognition of which way is right.

When I was a little boy, probably a bit older than Shmuel, I would accompany my mother on Shabbos afternoons to the shul in Baltimore’s LowerParkHeights neighborhood where my father, may he be well, was rabbi. There, she would host a gathering of neighborhood children for snacks and songs and stories. One song has remained with me over the more than half-century since. It consisted of the verse “Kol rina viy’shua bi’oholei tzaddikim; yemin Hashem osoh choyil”: “The sound of rejoicing and salvation is in the tents of the righteous; Hashem’s right hand does valiantly” (Tehillim 118, 15). And, in the song, the word for “right hand”—“yemin”—was repeated with gusto thrice, each time with everyone thrusting a right fist into the air.

And so, I recounted, I need only think of the word yemin and my right arm starts automatically to move. I demonstrated the song and the motion, much to the amusement of Shmuel, who then shouted “Yemin!” three times, complete with hand motion. As we all laughed, I realized with a start that, my goodness!, my mother had just reached through the years—on her yahrtzeit no less!—and taught her great-grandson a song.

Of course, I think she is constantly teaching him, many other more important things as well. Every time I am moved to do something kind or considerate, I know it is her legacy (bequeathed to her no less by her parents) that I am, if imperfectly, embracing, and hopefully passing on to others. My wife and I, and our children—Shmuel’s mother among them—along with their spouses are all links in a chain of generations, passing on the Jewish beliefs and values we have absorbed from our forebears to the young with whom we have been entrusted. In fact, being such links is arguably our most important role in life. And whether we’re adequately filling it should be our constant concern.

More recently, my wife, perhaps in the spirit of chaos associated with the season, invited Shmuel’s parents to leave him with us for the Shabbos before Purim, an offer they couldn’t refuse. We had a wonderful time hosting our grandson. He managed to break only one child-proof gate, open only one child-proof cabinet (though several times) and drop just one book into the aquarium. (My wife’s quick move prevented Shmuel’s socks from following.)

That Friday night, when I returned from shul, the house was very quiet. Shmuel had been put to bed, but hadn’t yet fallen asleep. To soothe him and ensure that he didn’t climb out of his crib (something in which he has considerable expertise and experience) and wreak havoc, our daughter was sitting in the darkened room with him. He was babbling quietly, probably planning his mischief for the next day.

While we were waiting for the babble to fade to the peaceful slow breathing of well-deserved sleep, my wife excitedly motioned to me to come closer to the bedroom door, which was slightly ajar.

And then, bringing me a rush—and a smile leavened with a tear—I heard what she had: “Yemin!” Shmuel’s little-boy voice was piping. “Yemin! Yemin!”

Rabbi Avi Shafran

Reflections on Jews, Judaism, Media and Life