Category Archives: Pluralism

Sefer Torah Abuse

We rend our garments if a sefer Torah is, chalilah, desecrated. If one should fall to the ground, it is customary for those present to undertake to fast that day. I don’t know what the proper reaction is to seeing a sefer Torah employed as a prop in the service of a social cause, but a recent such exploitation made my heart hurt.

The exploiters, for their part, were jubilant. Members of the feminist group “Women of the Wall,” they had obtained a sefer Torah small enough to smuggle into the Kosel Maaravi plaza, where they proceeded to hold a “bat-mitzvah” ceremony, complete with a woman reading from the Torah and the 12-year-old reciting birchas haTorah.

“Today we made history for women @ Kotel,” the group announced on social media. “We must recreate this victory each month with great opposition.”

The latter phrase may have been incoherent, but the sentiment was clear. By flouting the Jewish mesorah (and current Kosel regulations) and by evading the Israeli police, the intrepid women had, at least in their own minds, scored points for their team.

For more than three decades, the Kotel has been a place – perhaps the only one in the world – where Jews of all affiliations and persuasions have regularly prayed side by side. What has allowed for that minor miracle has been the maintenance of a standard at the holy site that all Jews can abide.

Last year, to maintain that uniqueness, Women of the Wall was assigned an area in front of part of the Kosel, Robinson’s Arch (or Ezras Yisrael), for their “non-traditional” services. But the feminist group’s leader, Anat Hoffman, blithely dismissed that equally holy area as a “sunbathing deck.” With its recent incursion into the main Kosel plaza, the group has made it clear that it has no interest in avoiding offense, but rather, on the contrary, is committed to being “in the face” of the vast majority of regular visitors to the Kosel for tefillah, whom it views as the enemy.

Part of the recent verbal victory dance was performed by Women of the Wall’s Executive Director, Lesley Sachs, who seized upon the fact that the small scroll, which she said was 200 years old, had likely been written to avoid its seizure by enemies of Jews. “This time,” she explained, it was used to avoid “Jews imposing restrictions on Jews.” That would be the Rav of the Kosel, Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz, and those who, like him, wish for the standards of Jewish tradition to mediate public services at the Kosel.

It wasn’t only the sefer Torah that was conscripted for the cause. So was the bat-mitzvah girl.

The daughter of an immigrant from Russia, she was one of four whose images appeared in recent bus ads in Yerushalayim that were part of Women of the Wall’s campaign to hold such ceremonies at the Kosel. The Hebrew text of one, featuring a young girl in a tallis and holding a Torah, read: “Mom, I too want a bat mitzvah at the Kotel.”

After the celebration, the honoree shared that, amid the merriment, she had become “very emotional” at the Torah-reading, and “just had a lot of fun.” As, from all appearances, did her minders.

Predictably, the mainstream media were full of praise for the successful subterfuge, and the cause in which it was committed. Among the effervescent expressions was a piece by Lexi Erdheim, a rabbinic student at a Reform institution and a “Women of the Wall Intern.”

Ms. Erdheim wrote that she “could only imagine” the “overwhelming sense of pride and accomplishment” felt by those who had been fighting for years to obtain “women’s right to free prayer at the Kotel,” and who were finally able to “witness a young girl chant from a sefer torah.”

But she injected a note of reservation, too, since, “despite this momentous occasion, the battle is not over.” Still and all, she wrote, she was, “reminded of a quote from Pirkei Avot: ‘You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from it’.”

Another mishnah in Pirkei Avos, though, is more fitting for the occasion of a sefer Torah employed as a PR prop. It was cited well before Ms. Erdheim’s piece appeared, by Leah Aharoni, a co-founder of the mesorah-respecting group “Women For the Wall”: “Rabbi Tzaddok would say… ‘Do not make the Torah a crown to magnify yourself with, or a spade with which to dig’.”

Decommissioning Emunah

“But I will confess…” read the subject line in a recent e-mail from a dear friend, a very intelligent Jewish man who claims to be an atheist. In the message box the communication continued: “…that the continued existence of Jew-hatred… baffles me.”

“And,” my friend added, “I am not easily baffled.”

His comment was a reaction to a recent column that appeared in this space (which he saw electronically; he’s not yet a subscriber to Hamodia) that alluded to how powerful an argument for the Torah’s truth is the astounding, perplexing persistence of anti-Semitism.

If only my friend, and all Jews, would honestly and objectively consider that other, independent, anomalies also lead in the same direction.

Like the perseverance of the Jewish People itself, despite all the adversity it has faced and faces; like the uniqueness of the Torah’s recording of sins committed by its most venerated personalities, in such contrast to other religions’ fundamental texts; like the seemingly self-defeating laws the Torah commands, like shmitah and aliyah liregel , which no human would ever have decreed, as they put their observers in great danger; like the predictions the Torah makes that have come to pass, like the sin-caused golus and scattering of Klal Yisrael around the world; like Moshe’s speech deficit and deep humility, the polar opposites of the qualities of all of history’s successful non-Divinely-ordained leaders.

And, of course, above all those uniquenesses, the dearth in the annals of human history of any other claim that the Creator communicated directly with an entire people, a claim that, by its nature, cannot be successfully asserted and perpetuated… unless it actually happened.

Those striking singularities should be particularly pondered by Jay P. Lefkowitz, who, back in the April issue of Commentary, extolled the idea of Jewish observance-without-belief in the Torah’s truth, and now, in that periodical’s September issue, tries to defend himself against a number of letters the magazine published (full disclosure: one was written by me) explaining that Judaism is predicated on awareness of the Creator.

Mr. Lefkowitz, who attends a synagogue weekly and, in his own words, “pick[s] and choose[s] from the menu of Jewish rituals,” but “without fear of divine retribution,” claims that the sort of “social conformism” he practices plays a “large role” even in traditional Orthodox communities.

It must be honestly, if sadly, admitted that there are indeed seemingly religious Jews who “do Jewish” but don’t seem to “think Jewish.” That some even in our own observant community, bizarrely, even defend observance that lacks G-d-consciousness, and are complacent about tefillah without kavanah. How large a role mindless Jewish praxis plays in the Orthodox community, of course, isn’t anything any of us can really know.

But whatever its prevalence, it is lamentable, not some ideal to enshrine, as Mr. Lefkowitz seems to do, as a new “movement” – much less an “Orthodox” one. It is a spiritual malady, something to be overcome. Judaism is not a culture; it is a belief system.

That religious observance is Jewishly vital, of course, is a truism. And so is the fact that all of us live imperfectly on a continuum of Hashem-consciousness. Few if any of us have actually realized Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai’s deathbed blessing to his talmidim: “May the fear of Heaven be to you as the fear of human beings.” When his puzzled students protested, the tanna explained: “Think! When a person commits a sin, he says ‘I hope no one is watching me!’” (Berachos, 28b).

The problem with Mr. Lefkowitz’s stance isn’t his forthrightness about his philosophical qualms. It’s that he seems comfortable with, even proud of, them. And that, rather than seek to alleviate his doubts with some deep and discomfiting thought about why Jews believe and have always believed in the truth of our mesorah, he chooses instead to legitimize the decommissioning of emunah, labeling his G-dless approach some sort of new “Orthodox Judaism.” It is neither Orthodox nor Judaism.

He correctly notes that no responsible rabbi would ever counsel a fellow Jew who confides that “I don’t really believe in G-d or that G-d gave the Torah, so I am not sure whether I should continue to fast on Yom Kippur or observe Kashrut or Shabbat” to “throw away observance unless it is faith-driven.” But a responsible rabbi would counsel the supplicant to undertake observance with a conscious intention to better understand his actions as the Creator’s will. Doing Jewish can lead to thinking Jewish. But one must want it to.

As for us believers, we might take Mr. Lefkowitz’s words as a push to strengthen our own Hashem-consciousness. Even if perfection in that ideal remains out of our reach, we are not absolved from aspiring to it, from aiming, each of us, at a higher state of recognition that Hashem Hu ho’Elokim.

That quest, in fact, is arguably the very life-goal of a Jew. It is certainly something timely to ponder now, well into Elul. May our focus on it be a zechus for ourselves – and for all our fellow Jews.

Republication or posting of the above only with permission from Hamodia

Driving Lesson

The article below appeared earlier this week (with a more incendiary title) in Haaretz.

Back in the day, before contoured bucket seats became de rigueur in cars, the front seat of family vehicles – especially larger ones – was once a couch-like affair that could, and often did, comfortably seat three adults across. The scene: Mr. and Mrs. Weisskopf, citizens of a certain age, are driving somewhere. The missus is upset, and her husband asks what’s wrong.

“Do you remember,” she says, wistfully but with unmistakable resentment, “how we used to sit so near one another on our drives? Look at us! We’re at totally opposite ends of the seat!”

The man is puzzled, as well he might be. “But dear,” he replies, looking across at her, his hands firm on the steering wheel, “I’m driving!”

The chestnut comes to mind upon reading some of the reactions of Reform leaders to the election of Ruby Rivlin to Israel’s presidency.

“He may be open-minded on a variety of issues,” Uri Regev, a Reform rabbi who now heads the “religious pluralism” organization Hiddush, pronounced 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 voiced a similar judgment in the days before Mr. Rivlin’s election, direly 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, penned an open letter 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” 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.”

Mr. Rivlin’s sin, of course, was being honest, and perhaps a bit blunt for American tastes. Although famously secular himself, he dared, back in 1989, after visiting two Reform temples, to share his evaluation of the liberal Jewish movement, calling it “a completely new religion without any connection to Judaism.”

Then in 2006, he opined 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.”

The latest voice to join the chorus of criticism of Mr. Rivlin’s unguarded judgment was that of Charles A. Kroloff, rabbi emeritus of one of the temples that Mr. Rivlin visited in 1989. He recently expressed his “hope” that Mr. Rivlin has come, over the years, to understand “that if we are to be strong we must respect our fellow Jews, and if we are to survive, we Jews must be a united people.”

Rabbi Kroloff is correct, of course, although his sentiment has nothing to do with the question of what theologies can properly lay claim to being legitimate heirs to the Jewish religious tradition and which ones cannot.

That religious tradition hewed for millennia, and still does today, to certain foundational beliefs: in a Creator, in the historicity of the Jewish forefathers, the exodus from Egypt and the revelation at Sinai; and in the eternal nature of the law transmitted there to the people, our ancestors, who were divinely chosen to be an example to all humanity.

The year before Mr. Rivlin visited Rabbi Kroloff’s temple saw the death of a Nobel laureate, the celebrated physicist I. I. Rabi. Born in Galicia and raised in the United States, he lacked the bluntness of an Israeli. But when asked about his faith, Mr. Rabi expressed much the same sentiment as Mr. Rivlin did mere months later.

“…If you ask for my religion,” he said, “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…”

The same is true for every Jew, no matter what prefix he or she has been persuaded to place before “Jew” in his or her self-description. Jews are Jews. And, whatever some Jews may imagine, Judaism is Judaism.

Like Mrs. Weisskopf, the leaders of the “dominant religiosity of North American Jewry” may feel insulted at the stubborn persistence of the original Jewish religious tradition, and peeved by its great distance from them. But it was they, not it, that created the distance.

And objective observers readily perceive what those leaders cannot bring themselves to confront, that there is today, as always, only one Judaism, the original one.

Musing: Skin in the Game

My new issue of Reform Judaism magazine just arrived. Its cover story is “Jews and Tattoos.” And it asserts that “Jewish tradition is surprisingly nuanced on the practice” of tattooing

That contention, and the arguments in the article to support it, well demonstrate the Reform movement’s attitude toward Torah (“Only one law,” after all, it explains, “in the Book of Leviticus, prohibits a tattoo.” As if more than one law prohibits murder.)

The article, seemingly seriously, offers “positive examples of tattooing” in the Bible. Things like Hashem’s placing a “mark” on Kayin (Beraishis 4:15) and His command (Yeshayahu 44:5) that “one shall call himself by the name of Yaakov; and another shall write with his hand to Hashem” (presumably understanding “with his hand” as “on his hand,” and by cutting the skin and applying ink).

It is sad, just so sad.

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 10^th 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

Dangerous and Defective Products

It isn’t every year that news reports about Agudath Israel of America’s annual dinner make the pages of media like the Forward or The New York Times. This, however, was one such year.

The reason for the attention was the heartfelt and stirring speech delivered by the Novominsker Rebbe, shlit”a, the Rosh Agudas Yisroel, at the gathering. And the fact that New York City mayor Bill de Blasio chose not to contest the Rebbe’s words.

Rav Perlow spoke to the issue of organized deviations from the Jewish mesorah, a topic that is timely because of the insistence of the latest such movement on calling itself “Open Orthodoxy,” rather than summoning the courage to find an independent adjective for itself, as did the Conservative and Reform movements of the past.

Over the past century or two, the term “Orthodox” in the Jewish world has been synonymous with full affirmation of the mesorah – including most prominently the historicity of Yetzias Mitzrayim; the fact that the Torah, both Written and Oral, was bequeathed to our ancestors at Har Sinai; and that Avrohom, Yitzchok and Yaakov actually existed – concepts that prominent products or leaders of the “Open Orthodoxy” movement are on record as rejecting.

Yet, the “Orthodoxy” in the group’s name has misled various Orthodox congregations across the country to assume that there must be truth in that advertising, and to engage the services of graduates of the “Open” movement as rabbis. And so, the Rebbe apparently and understandably felt it was important to, in effect, proclaim a strong and principled “caveat emptor,” so that any potential buyers of this particular bill of goods will beware of the fact that the product is dangerously defective.

And so he invoked the sad examples of the other heterodox movements, which, while they seemed once upon a time to offer the promise of Jewish fulfillment and a Jewish future to some undiscriminating Jews, have, the Rebbe lamented, “fallen into an abyss of intermarriage and assimilation” and are on the way to being “relegated to the dustbins of Jewish history.”

A rather unremarkable if unfortunate truism, that. But, at least to the two newspapers, it seemed to be news (“Orthodox Rabbi Stuns Agudath Gala With ‘Heresy’ Attack on Open Orthodoxy,” gasped the Forward headline) – at least combined with the fact that New York City mayor Bill de Blasio spoke after Rav Perlow’s remarks and chose to not address them. It couldn’t have been much of a dilemma for him, as an elected official (not to mention one presumably not expert in Jewish theology), to decide whether or not to mix into a religious issue.

The New York Times columnist who wrote about the rabbi and the mayor is Michael Powell. If his name elicits a sour taste, it’s because it was he who, only last month, wrote an egregiously unfair column about the East Ramapo School District’s “Orthodox-dominated board” that “ensured that the community’s geometric expansion would be accompanied by copious tax dollars for textbooks and school buses.” Those books and buses, of course, are mandated by law for all New York city schoolchildren – even Orthodox ones. He has written a number of other columns that touch upon – and not in a positive way – charedi communities, including a long cynical magazine piece about Satmar back in 2006.

What further upset Mr. Powell was Mr. de Blasio’s praise for the Agudah as a movement, and for its executive vice president Rabbi Chaim Dovid Zwiebel, with whom he has worked for years and who he said “is someone I deeply respect and listen carefully to.” Bad enough, the writer seemed to be thinking, that the mayor didn’t stand up for the cause of kefira, but did he really have to express admiration for an Agudath Israel leader?

Mr. Powell clearly has an “Orthodox problem.”

That’s unfortunate. Still, a columnist has the right to be biased, unfair and even offensive. What even a columnist may not do, though, is offer his readers errors of fact.

Rav Perlow did not, as Mr. Powell reports, offer a “shower of condemnation for Reform and Conservative Jews.” The Rebbe simply reaffirmed Orthodox Judaism’s insistence that heterodox theologies – ideas and beliefs, not people – are incompatible with the Judaism of the ages. Anyone who knows the Rebbe, or any of the manhigei hador, knows that they have only love and concern for all Jews, no matter how misled they may be by their religious leaders.

The reporters missed the real story. That a clarion call had been sounded to all Jews – charedi and otherwise – who recognize that the Torah is true and that our mesorah is real, to address the deceptive attempts to convince Jews that ersatz “Judaisms” and even “Orthodoxies” are something other than capitulations to the Zeitgeist.

The mayor may have understood that. Or just, wisely, recognized that he had no expertise to engage the issue of the meaning of Judaism.

Would that Mr. Powell had followed his example.

Defining Orthodoxy Down

Had someone back, say, in the 1960s had both the foresight to trademark the word “Orthodox” and no compunctions about licensing it, he’d be a wealthy man today.

Once upon a time, when Torah-observant Jewish life in America was expected to expire in short shrift, the “O” word was something of an albatross (though I don’t know if they’re kosher). Anyone wanting to establish a new-and-improved Jewish movement would coin a new-and-improved adjective – “Reform,” “Conservative,” “Reconstructionist,” something novel and shiny. But “Orthodox”? It bespoke a tired, dusty past, one without a future.

Times have changed. Today, Orthodoxy, boruch Hashem, is thriving, and “Orthodox” seems to be the adjective of the era. So much so that when the latest carbon copy (remember carbon copies?) of the Conservative movement is conceived, the last thing its proponents wants to do is to associate it with its languishing, moribund theological predecessor. It wants an “Orthodox” label, the better to lay claim to Jewish legitimacy.

And so we have seen “Orthodox Feminism,” which flouts established halacha and rejects “patriarchal” elements of Judaism. And “Open Orthodoxy,” which not only derides by its very name those committed to the mesorah (we “closed” folks) but proudly advocates for things demonstrably antithetical to the Judaism of the ages.

And now, in the April issue of the monthly periodical Commentary, we have the latest addition to the “Orthodox” bestiary.

The new animal, “Social Orthodoxy,” is introduced by Jay P. Lefkowitz, a former adviser in the George W. Bush administration. To be fair, he claims to not really be inventing anything new, only channeling what he considers to be the religion of many “Modern Orthodox” Jews (although he thereby insults all the upstanding, halacha-respecting Jews who choose to call themselves “modern”).

Mr. Lefkowitz’s creation is, in a sense, the polar opposite of what was once called “cardiac Judaism” – the once-popular “I’m a believing Jew in my heart, even if I’m not observant of any of the Torah’s commandments” approach. “Social Orthodoxy” means doing Jewish without believing Jewish.

To wit, Mr. Lefkowitz explains that he dons tefillin daily and attends a synagogue weekly. He eats kosher and, when eating in non-kosher restaurants, orders vegetarian dishes. He “pick[s] and choose[s] from the menu of Jewish rituals,” but “without fear of divine retribution,” indeed without belief in a Creator. (To Whom he prays in synagogue isn’t clarified.)

He claims, ludicrously, that “Modern Orthodoxy” of the sort he extolls has its roots in the teachings of Rav Shamson Raphael Hirsch; and, not ludicrously at all, sees its exemplification in the approaches of Rabbi Avi Weiss, the father of the aforementioned “Open Orthodoxy” and Mordecai Kaplan, Reconstructionism’s parent.

Indeed, that latter movement, although it hasn’t gained many adherents, is pretty much precisely what the Commentary commentator is championing, albeit with an attempt at some “Orthodox” redecoration. Kaplan’s first and most recognized work was entitled “Judaism As A Civilization,” and its title says it all. The Jewish faith, to him, is not a world-view, not a religion, not a revealed mission from the Creator to His chosen people, but a culture, and nothing more.

Mr. Lefkowitz recounts the astonishment of a Catholic friend who asked him, “How can you do everything you do… if you don’t even believe in G-d?”

The writer, he tells us, responded by citing to his friend his ancestors’ response at Sinai – “We will do and understand afterwards,” which he reads as “engaging first in religious practices” and only later, if then, dealing with “matters of faith.”

Of course, that is an utter misunderstanding of what Naaseh Vinishma really means, that it was Klal Yisroel’s acceptance of a Commander, regardless of whether or not we comprehend His commands. It does not bespeak, chalilah, any postponement of emunah but, quite the opposite, is predicated on it. Mr. Lefkowitz might do better to ponder Shema instead.

One wishes that he would have been more honest and straightforward and just declared himself a Reconstructionist. But rather than add a new member to that smallest of the mesorah-spurning Jewish groups, he insists on appropriating the “O”-word, with yet a new antithetical adjective in front of it.

Mr. Lefkowitz reports that his children attend a Modern Orthodox day school. Here’s hoping they receive a good education in basic Jewish texts and beliefs there, including what Naaseh Vinishma really means and the significance of Shema. May his choice of schooling for his progeny merit him the nachas of true Yiddisheh kinder and einiklach.

Ironies, Divine and Otherwise

Walking home from Megilla reading on Purim morning, even before engaging the mitzvos hayom, I had what I think was an insight.

There isn’t any word in loshon kodesh, I pondered, for “ironic,” the meaningfully coincidental that we see in the Megilla, and sometimes in our own lives.

Rav Shamshon Raphael Hirsch explains that there isn’t a Hebrew word for “religion” because, from a Jewish perspective, there is no such qualitatively limited “thing” – our beliefs and the Torah’s laws are life and the universe themselves; they are all that there is.

Maybe, I mused, “ironic” is similar; we use it to refer to the glimpses we occasionally have of Hashem’s hashgacha, the Divine providence that in fact permeates all. But it’s omnipresent, whether we spy it or not.

It was spied recently, as it happens, in the shuttering of a butcher shop on Long Island.

The name “Commack Self-Service Kosher Meats” conjures memories in the mind of anyone who has followed the legal saga of “kosher laws” in the United States. That shop’s owners, having been issued a fine by state kosher inspectors back in 1993 for harboring poultry that lacked proper tags, subsequently sued to have New York’s kosher law at the time declared unconstitutional.

That law, which was created in 1915 to stem rampant misrepresentation in the kosher meat market, required that food labeled kosher had to be “prepared in accordance with orthodox Hebrew religious requirements.” And for many years it was enforced by a state agency empowered to force mislabeled products from shelves and levy fines on violators of the law.

In 1996, Commack Kosher’s proprietors claimed that the law’s language, by referencing “orthodox” standards, violated the U.S. Constitution’s Establishment Clause, illegitimately entangling government and religion.

The New York courts, like others in New Jersey and Maryland that scrutinized their own similar kosher laws, agreed. And so a new law, the Kosher Law Protection Act of 2004, was written and enacted. It requires only that products labeled kosher carry information about who stands behind the claim. The original law empowered state inspectors to force the removal of, say, a product with a “Kosher Nostra” hechsher backed by a supervisor named Vito. Under the current law, such a “hechsher” is just as “kosher” – at least as far as New York is concerned – as a Badatz certification.

Many Orthodox Jews weren’t particularly concerned about the fate of the original kosher law. After all, it had little impact on them. An observant Jew wouldn’t rely on a state inspector; he or she would look for the stamp or label of the rav or agency on a product to determine its acceptability. That, in fact, remains the upshot of the current law – that the state can only ensure that duly authorized labels appear on products, but final determination of kashrus is the consumer’s responsibility.

Still and all, an assortment of Orthodox groups, including Agudath Israel, did their best to defend the original law. Because there are many Jews whose commitment to kashrus might be less than robust but who would still prefer to buy a kosher product if it were available. Ensuring that products claiming to be kosher were in fact halachically so would benefit such Jews.

But that was not to be; the courts spoke. Still bent, though, on ridding New York of any kosher law, Commack Kosher sued the state again in 2008 to try to have the new law declared unconstitutional as well. They failed in that bid. They failed, too, despite their now-“kosher” Conservative movement certification, to garner sufficient sales to stay in business.

One of the owners, Brian Yarmeisch, reportedly told shoppers that he blamed “the community” for failing him.

What really failed him, though, was the Conservative movement.

The majority of Jewish houses of worship in central Long Island are Conservative, and that movement, despite its declared early aspirations to “conserve” Judaism by tailoring it to contemporary American Jews’ desires, has been rapidly declining in popularity. More important, it failed miserably at its “conservation” goal. The average Conservative Jew may retain some interest in Jewish “life cycle” rituals. But Shabbos, taharas hamishpacha, kashrus… not so much.

Commack Kosher’s crusade, in fact, included its championing of a Conservative kashrus certification. Their original lawsuit explicitly charged that New York’s kosher law discriminated against non-Orthodox Jews, and claimed that Conservative Jews were being denied the right to market and purchase and label as kosher foods that Orthodox Jews consider forbidden.

And so, there’s more than a plumba of irony in the fact that, by putting its eggs (and chicken and meat) squarely in a Conservative basket, Commack Kosher ended up alienating any Orthodox clientele it had and, in effect, committing commercial suicide.

Some ironies are sourced in the Divine; others are of people’s own making.

Ultra-Cation

It was gratifying to see that a recent essay of mine in the Forward stimulated thoughtful responses. I had made the case for jettisoning the time-honored (if, to me, less than honorable) term “ultra-Orthodox.”

I argued that, like “ultra-conservative” or “ultra-liberal” in domestic politics, the prefix implies extremism, something that isn’t accurate about most charedim.

What best to replace it with is less obvious, as “charedi” is a foreign word, and euphemisms like “fervently Orthodox” insult non-charedi Jews, many of whom are as fervent in their prayer and observances as any charedi Jew (not to mention that some charedi Jews are far from fervent).

I suggested using the unadorned word “Orthodox” to refer to charedim, whose lives, I contended, most resemble those of their forbears.

After all, I argued, self-described “Centrist” and “Modern” and “Open” Orthodox Jews are, well, self-described, with those prefixes of their choices. So why not use “Orthodox” alone, without any modifier, to refer to “black-hatters,” or “yeshivish” folks. (The charedi subset of Chassidim could simply be called Chassidim, a word familiar to English speakers.) Think Coke, Cherry Coke, Diet Coke…

One immediate response to my essay came from Samuel Heilman, a Queens College professor of sociology.

Professor Heilman’s jaundiced eye regarding charedim is legend. He is often quoted in the media as critical of Orthodox Jews more conservative in their practices than he. (After September 11, 2001, he famously, risibly, implied that charedi yeshivos are “quiescent” beds of potential terrorists.)

The professor rejects “ultra” too, but sees the prefix not as a pejorative but as reflecting the idea that charedim are “truer in their beliefs and practices than others.”

He also accuses charedim of departing from the Orthodoxy of the past. The example he offers is that, in the charedi world, “water must be certified kosher.” And he decries the charedi “notion that Orthodox Jews always shunned popular culture.” Hasidic rebbes,” he explains, were, “among the crowds who streamed to Marienbad, Karlsbad and the other spas and baths of Europe for the cure, so much a part of popular culture in pre-Holocaust Europe.”

Charedim, the professor pronounces, fear “the encounter with the world outside their own Jewish one,” unlike the true inheritors of the Jewish past, like himself, who “believe Judaism can meet and successfully encounter a culture outside itself and be strengthened rather than undermined by the contact.” They, he adds, “also have the right to be called Orthodox.”

If by “kosher water” Professor Heilman means filtering water in places where the supply contains visible organisms, that is something required by the Shulchan Aruch. Most cities’ tap water is free from such organisms, but New York’s, at least in some areas, is not. And applying codified halacha to contemporary realities is precisely what observant Jews, whatever their prefixes, do.

As to pre-war Chassidic rebbes’ visits to European hot springs spas, they were “taking the waters,” not attending the opera. (Contemporary charedi Jews, a sociologist should know, take vacations too.)

And nowhere in my article, of course, did I claim that non-charedim forfeit the right to be called Orthodox. Nor did I assert (or ever would) that a non-charedi Jew is in any way inferior to, or less “true” to Judaism, than a charedi.

What I wrote, rather, was that charedi attitudes and practices are those closest to the attitudes and practices of observant Jewish communities of centuries past. A familiarity with Jewish history and responsa literature readily evidences that fact.

In an “Editor’s Notebook” column, The Forward’s editor, Jane Eisner, whom I have personally met and come to respect, defended the paper’s use of “ultra-Orthodox,” taking issue with my contention that it is pejorative. “[J]ust as often,” she contends, “it connotes something desirable, a positive extreme.” She cites “ultra thin” used to laud things like military ribbons and computer mouses. But people, of course, aren’t ribbons, and Ms. Eisner declines to address my citation of “ultra” as used in political discourse, the rather more pertinent comparison here.

I was surprised to read that someone as thoughtful as she would echo the professor’s peeve. To my contention that charedim today are most similar to observant Jews of the past she asserts: “[N]ot my grandparents, who were strictly observant Orthodox Jews, but did not dress, act, or think like the Jews of Boro Park and Crown Heights today.” The latter, she contends, refuse “to engage in the modern, secular world, to partake of its culture, acknowledge its obligations and respect its differences.” Charedim, she writes, do not practice “normative Judaism. Or even normative Orthodoxy.”

I didn’t know Ms. Eisner’s grandparents, but I am prepared to trust her memory. I’m pretty sure, though, that she didn’t know their grandparents, who I’m also pretty sure looked and lived much more like charedi Jews today than she might suspect.

And while there may be charedim today who fit the unflattering description Ms. Eisner provides, there are many, many more who most certainly do not, who engage, if within limits, with the modern world and its culture, and who fully “acknowledge its obligations and respect its differences” even as they live lives centered on halachic observance. Is the editor of a major Jewish newspaper really unaware of the variations of charedi experience? And is not generalizing from individuals to an entire group the very essence of prejudice?

The Forward can call us whatever it likes. I did my best to explain why the term is insulting, but I can’t force anyone to accept that judgment. I’ll suffice with the hope that other media may prove more open to change, and with the knowledge that I helped foster some intellectual engagement with the issue.

But whatever any medium chooses to call us, the contention that the charedi community today is some sort of Jewish aberration is a wild fantasy, fueled, perhaps by demographic predictions. History and facts, though, are… well… history and facts.

And neither editors nor sociologists are entitled to their own.

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The Anarchy Option

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For now.

Until “options,” chalilah, are made available.

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Rabbi Avi Shafran

Reflections on Jews, Judaism, Media and Life