Category Archives: Pluralism

Minyanim and Meta-Halacha

The article below appeared in Haaretz earlier this week, under the title “Partnership minyan is an innovation too far.”

It is reproduced here with Haaretz’s permission.

What educators call a “teaching moment” is presented by the issue of “partnership minyanim,” prayer groups that aim to provide Orthodox Jewish women greater opportunity to participate in services.

Although halakha is distinctly male-centered in the realm of communal prayer (as in the requirement of ten men to establish a minyan, a quorum permitting the recital of certain prayers), “partnership minyanim” jury-rig prayer services so that women lead parts that arguably may not require a man.

The teaching moment is about how halakha works.

Differences of opinion are part and parcel of not only the Talmud but some contemporary halakhic issues; different conclusions may be made by different poskim, or halakhic decisors.

But a truth that tends to draw fire but remains a truth all the same is that not every rabbi is a qualified decisor. Few, indeed, are.

The most trenchant text here may be a Talmudic aphorism in Tractate Nedarim.

“[What might seem] constructive [advice] of the young [can in fact be] destructive; and [what might seem] destructive [advice] of elders [can in fact be] constructive” (Nedarim, 40a).

Innovations are not anathema to halakha-centric Judaism. Things like the ketuba [the marriage contract cementing the husband’s financial support of his wife] or pruzbul [the legal mechanism to allow debts to be collected even when a shmitta, or “sabbatical year” has passed] in Talmudic times, or like conditioning divorce on the woman’s consent (instituted in the early Middle Ages), or like the Bais Yaakov movement in more modern times, are evidence enough that change can be embraced by the halakha-observant Jewish community.

But what makes such newnesses acceptable is their initiation by elders of the community, whether Talmudic sages or medieval luminaries like Rabbeinu Gershom, or – in the modern age – the Imrei Emes and Chofetz Chaim (who endorsed formal Jewish education for girls in the 1920s).

The reason why changing halakhic norms requires such elders’ endorsements is because such religious leaders alone, by virtue of experience born of age, great scholarship and – most important – their recognition as authorities by large numbers of other Torah-scholars, have internalized the meta-values of Judaism, something that cannot be gleaned from mere books and brains.

Invoking halakhic concepts like k’vod habri’ot (human dignity), several rabbis have endorsed “partnership minyanim.” None of them, however, has achieved the reputation of a recognized halakhic authority. Whatever their ages, they are all “young” in the sense of the aphorism from Nedarim. And so, while their decisions may seem constructive, the reality may be otherwise.

And it is. Every recognized halakhic decisor who has weighed in on “partnership minyanim” has rejected the idea as improper. They needn’t counter with texts or logic; what matters here is judgment. As the Yiddish saying has it, putting “a cat in the holy ark” may not be forbidden by any particular text, but it is wrong all the same. (Note to the humorless: No comparison whatsoever of felines and human beings is intended.)

It is tempting to some to dismiss opposition to the innovation as “Haredi-think.” The tempted, however, should consider the words of two highly accomplished halakhic authorities particularly respected in the so-called “Modern Orthodox” world (though well beyond it too).

Rabbi Herschel Schachter, who studied under Rabbi Yosef Dov Soloveitchik and is a rosh yeshiva at Yeshiva University’s Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, recently issued a strong responsum rejecting “partnership minyanim.” Inter alia, he asserts: “Not every young scholar who studied in yeshiva or even kollel or even was ordained a rabbi is entitled to an opinion in deciding halakha. To be considered a ‘scholar who has reached the status of decisor’ requires not just that one has amassed knowledge of Torah but also that he is ‘balanced’ [in his judgments of] his learning…

“To introduce new practices… requires the endorsement of Gedolei Torah whose knowledge spans the entire Torah and who can thus understand what is indeed the ‘spirit of the law’.”

Rabbi Gedalia Dov Schwartz, the head of the rabbinical courts of both the Beth Din of America and the Chicago Rabbinical Council and the presiding judge of the National Beth Din of the Rabbinical Council of America, also recently addressed “partnership minyanim,” in a letter. He declines to “engage in a polemic” regarding the matter, since doing so would be “an exercise in futility.”

But “as a rav who has extended himself in being sensitive to women’s educational and marital rights,” he writes, he rejects the innovation as “alien to normative balanced congregational activity,” and as “halakhically and intuitively… going beyond the boundaries of communal Torah observance.”

“Partnership minyanim” have, though, one redeeming value: They provide halakha-respecting Jews an opportunity to better understand how innovations in Jewish practice can happen, and how they cannot.

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Tempest in a Tefillin-Bag?

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

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

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

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

And to think that some people call feminists strident.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rabbi Lookstein may have unintentionally supplied us with the answer.

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

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

Unravelling Tefillin-gate

(This article appeared in Haaretz.)

Unlike some in the traditional Orthodox community, I empathize with the young women in two modern Orthodox high schools in New York who asked for and received permission to don tefillin during their school prayer services. They have, after all, seen their mothers wearing the religious objects and simply wish to emulate their parents’ Jewish religious practice. Carrying on the traditions of parents is the essence of mesorah, the “handed-down” legacy of the Jewish past.

None of us has the right to assume that these girls aren’t motivated by a deeply Jewish desire to worship as they have seen their mothers worship. Even as to the mothers’ motivations, I can’t know whether their intention is pure or homage to the contemporary and un-Jewish idea that “men and women have interchangeable roles.” Most of our acts, wrote the powerful thinker Rabbi Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler, are mixtures of motivations. And so I don’t arrogate to judge either the mothers or their daughters.

The question, though, of whether halacha considers it proper for women to wear tefillin, despite the much smoke and many mirrors conjured in myriad quarters over recent weeks, is pretty clear, at least looked at objectively, without a predetermined “result” in mind. It does not.

The essence of halacha is that discussions and disagreements among different authorities distill over time into codified and universally accepted decisions. The urtext of halacha in the modern era (using the term loosely) is Rabbi Yosef Karo’s Shulchan Aruch, along with its appendage “the Mapa,” in which Rabbi Moshe Isserles added glosses, sometimes but not always to reflect normative Ashkenazic law.

Rabbi Isserles states clearly that women should not wear tefillin. The Vilna Gaon prohibits it categorically. The “bottom line” commentaries on that part of the Shulchan Aruch, the Mishneh Berurah (written by the “Chofetz Chaim”) and the Aruch HaShulchan, both concur. And that is why Jewish women have forgone wearing tefillin until (for some) recent years.

That the daughter of King Saul famously wore tefillin is indeed a fact, but the exception only proves the rule: other women in her time and thereafter (and there were great and righteous ones in every generation) did not wear tefillin. The same applies to the practice of the “Maiden of Ludmir,” an exceptional figure in the Chassidic world. There is no evidence whatsoever to support the assertion that Rashi’s daughters wore tefillin; it is a legend that appears only in modern times. And, despite all the conceptual contortions of late, no Orthodox halachic authority of repute has ever permitted women to wear tefillin. “Retrofitting” halacha, going back to “earlier sources” to change established practices, was the hallmark of the early Conservative movement; it has no place in the Orthodox sphere.

More important, though, there is a Torah prohibition (lo titgodedu) against a part of a Jewish congregation adopting even a permitted Jewish practice if it is not the normative practice of the congregation. And a rabbinic prohibition (mechzi ki’yuhara) against adopting even acceptable practices if doing so will make the practitioners seem to be holding themselves “higher” than others.

That latter idea, it seems to me, speaks particularlyloudly here, even aside from the technical halachic concern. What message does the public tefillin-laying of some young women in the school send to the others? That they are somehow deficient or less holy, or less concerned with connecting with the Divine? What a terrible thing to imagine, what misguided pedagogy.

I once served as the principal of a high school where some students hailed from “modern Orthodox” or non-Orthodox backgrounds. I never interfered in the practices of those students and their families in their homes and synagogues, even when they may have diverged from normative halacha. But when it came to in-school affairs, normative halacha was the standard.

Were I the principal of a school for young women and some of them wished to don tefillin, I would not deride them for their desire, nor judge them in any way. But I would insist on normative halachic standards in school, and ask the girls to don their tefillin at home. I am told that such was indeed the policy of the schools at issue until now. Why it was changed is not clear to me.

What I would wish for my students, and indeed wish now for the young women at the two schools at issue, is that they intensify their commitment to mesorah, and maintain their determination to be closer to G-d. And thereby come to gain sufficient knowledge and objectivity to examine many things, including their tefillin-donning.

And come to wonder why, even if their mothers adopted the practice, their grandmothers, and their grandmothers and their grandmothers – heartfelt, intelligent and deeply religious women – did not.

© Haaretz

(This article is available for purchase for publication only from Haaretz.)

A Lesson From Limmud

Even now that the recent much-celebrated Limmud gathering in the historic cathedral town of Coventry, West Midlands, England has concluded, the celebration continues, at least in many Jewish media.

The popular Jewish event, which attracts people from all segments of the Jewish universe (and some, like the Reverend Patrick Morrow, who led a Limmud session at this year’s, from the non-Jewish one), is always loudly lauded as an opportunity to access a broad gamut of theologies and practices that have Jewish devotees.

But this year’s Limmud conference, at least to the media, was particularly exultation-worthy, as one of the attendees was Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, the current chief rabbi of the United Kingdom, the first person holding that position to grace the proceedings with his presence.

Much, unsurprisingly, was made of that first. Rabbi Mirvis was warmly welcomed by those in attendance, and his speech was parsed by the press with the determination of high school teachers seeking puns in Shakespeare, in a quest to find hints of disdain on the rabbi’s part for the religious leaders of the more traditional Orthodox British community, who made clear that the rabbi’s attendance at Limmud was ill-advised.

Aside from celebrating and parsing, the media also, however, grossly misrepresented the reasons for the charedi rabbinic leadership’s opposition to Rabbi Mirvis’ participation.

One news service initially attributed the charedi objection to the belief that the chief rabbi’s appearance “represented a danger to British Jewry by suggesting it was acceptable for observant Jews to associate with less or non-observant Jews.”

After being called to task for not realizing the absurdity of the notion that charedim – with their innumerable (and rabbinically-endorsed) outreach organizations and efforts, personal friendships and study-partnerships with “less or non-observant Jews,” – somehow consider it unacceptable to associate with Jews different from them, the news agency, to its credit, quickly changed the version of its report and notified its clients of the change (for what that was worth; the amendment was largely ignored).

The replacement line read: “The critics had said the conference, which draws thousands of participants from all walks of Jewish life, represented a danger to British Jewry because of its inclusion of non-Orthodox religious perspectives.”

Closer but also misleading, as the charedi rabbis hadn’t issued any blanket condemnation of Limmud, but rather simply disapproved of a chief rabbi’s participation in it.

Those religious leaders’ longstanding and principled opposition to Orthodox rabbis participating in “multi-denominational” panels, rosters and such, derives from their feeling that being part of such events perforce promotes the notion that all “rabbis are rabbis,” equals in belief and scholarship, and that all self-defined “Judaisms” are legitimate forms of the Judaism of our ancestors. Many Jews may believe those things, but, in the eyes of charedi leaders, not only are those Jews wrong but it is wrong to do anything that could be construed as an endorsement of the error.

What’s interesting is something that somehow wasn’t widely reported about this year’s Limmud event. It seems that its organizers had originally scheduled two talks by one Marcus Weston, a trustee of the London branch of the Kabbalah Center, the Los Angeles-based purveyor of what it claims is a form of Jewish mysticism. However, after objections were raised – the Kabbalah Center has been accused of using mystical claims and promises to mislead people into supporting the group – Mr. Weston’s addresses were summarily cancelled.

According to the British newspaper The Jewish Chronicle, after the cancellations, the Kabbalah Center representative was impressively sanguine. He “fully respected the decision,” he said, although, he contended, “it would have brought great value to the event if participants were given the choice to learn and debate with us.”

Another reaction reported in the newspaper was that of London-born, now Denver-based, Rabbi Levi Brackman. He accused Limmud of having “caved in” to pressure and, with its declining to allow those attending the event to hear Mr. Weston’s views, being “unfaithful to its own mission.”

That mission does in fact include the conviction that “‘arguments for the sake of heaven’ can make a positive contribution to furthering our education and understanding,” and that “everyone can be a teacher and everyone should be a student.” Limmud, further, according to its literature, “does not participate in legitimising or de-legitimising any religious or political position found in the worldwide Jewish community.”

Apparently, though, Limmud’s leadership felt that a particular brand of Jewish expression had misled Jews and, if granted legitimacy by being included in the event program, would be empowered to further do so.

An entirely defensible, indeed proper and principled position. In fact, although Limmud may draw its lines in a different place, it is the very position of the much-maligned charedi leadership.

Musing: What Were They Thinking?

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency, whose dispatches are widely reproduced both here in the United States and abroad, reported today on British Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis having become the first sitting British chief rabbi to address the annual Limmud conference, a gathering of multi-denominational and non-denominational Jewish leaders and laymen. By attending and being featured as a speaker, the JTA informs us, he was “defying the opposition of prominent haredi Orthodox rabbis in England.”

Fair enough. Those charedi leaders have a longstanding and principled opposition to Orthodox rabbis participating in “multi-denominational” panels, rosters and such, since doing so perforce promotes the notion that all “rabbis are rabbis,” equals in belief and scholarship, and that all self-defined “Judaisms” are part of the Judaism of our ancestors.

But the JTA report puts it thus:

“The critics had said the conference, which draws thousands of participants from all walks of Jewish life, represented a danger to British Jewry by suggesting it was acceptable for observant Jews to associate with less or non-observant Jews.”

How a Jewish news agency can think for even a moment that charedi Jews – with their innumerable and rabbinically-endorsed outreach organizations and efforts, personal friendships and study-partnerships with “less or non-observant Jews” – consider it unacceptable to associate with such Jews is beyond comprehension.

The “T” in “JTA,” here at least, would seem to stand for “tripe.”

UPDATE:

To its credit, JTA has changed the wording of its piece and notified its clients of the correction. The paragraph quoted above now reads:

The critics had said the conference, which draws thousands of participants from all walks of Jewish life, represented a danger to British Jewry because of its inclusion of non-Orthodox religious perspectives.

It’s not a perfect correction, as that would require a more lengthy explanation of the objection to Orthodox rabbis’ participation in Limmud, along the lines of my posting above. But it is a great improvement. And has moved the “T” much closer to “truthful.”

The Fact of the Matter

Several weeks ago, my wife and I had the pleasure of visiting Detroit (well, Oak Park, a suburb, and a solvent one), where two of our daughters and their husbands and their children live.

Oak Park, and Southfield, which abuts it, are home to a wonderful, vibrant and multifaceted Orthodox Jewish community. The two neighboring cities, within walking distance of each other, boast (figuratively speaking; the residents are a modest bunch) an abundance of shuls and shteiblach, a large and flourishing yeshiva and Bais Yaakov, a yeshiva gedola, a Kollel – and all the requisite kosher shopping and dining amenities to boot. And housing, to put nice icing on a scrumptious cake, is extremely affordable.

One of the cake’s delectable ingredients is a “Partners in Torah” night of study that takes place each Tuesday night at Beth Yehudah, the local yeshiva, where Jews of all stripes learn Torah for an hour with study-partners from the Orthodox community. Hundreds of pairs of men, on one side of a large room, and women on the other, delve into Jewish texts together. It’s an inspiring sight (and sound).

Our recent trip, though, didn’t include a Tuesday, so we missed that weekly event. But we were there over a Motzoei Shabbos, a Saturday night, when that same Beth Yehudah space hosts a “father-son” (and grandfather-grandson) study hour. For 45 minutes I got to study with one of my grandsons (smart as a whip, of course), while my son-in-law studied with another of his sons. Then all the boys – there were hundreds present – moved to one side of the room, where there were tables, and were treated to pizza and a raffle. This takes place, as in dozens of other cities with Orthodox populations, every Saturday night when Shabbos ends fairly early. But so large a turnout in the Detroit suburbs impressed me deeply.

On our return home, though, I was saddened. Not only because I missed our kids and their kids, but also because of an article that had appeared in the interim in the Los Angeles-based Jewish Journal.

It was titled “Open Day Schools To Non-Jewish Students,” and advocated, well, just that. Written by a Reform Rabbi, Jeffrey K. Salkin, it bemoaned the fact that non-Orthodox “Jewish day schools are… going out of business.”

The Conservative movement’s Solomon Schechter schools nationwide, the writer noted, have “lost 25 percent of their students during the last five years,” and “since 2008-2009, four Reform day schools have closed.”

The rabbi’s solution? “Let’s open Jewish day schools to non-Jewish students.” Not only products of intermarriage, he explains, but “full-blown, not-in-the-least-bit-Jewish kids.”

After all, he argues, “Jewish kids have been attending (nominally and not so nominally) Christian day schools… Perhaps it’s time for us to learn how to be hosts as well.”

“We might,” he acknowledges, “lose the automatic, unspoken expectation that our kids will meet and perhaps mate with other Jewish kids.” But it will be worth it, as Jewish schools will achieve solvency and “we get to be a light to the nations – a teaching instrument to the world.”

And then, a bit later, came the report that the Union for Reform Judaism had sold off half of its headquarters in New York, to use $1 million of the proceeds, according to the movement’s president, Reform Rabbi Rick Jacobs, to supplement major foundation grants to reshape the movement’s “youth engagement strategies.”

An admirable goal, yes; youth engagement is vital to Judaism. We are but links in a chain, and our youth are the next link.

But the chain starts at Sinai. And the links will only be as strong as their connection to that original one.

That isn’t just theory, of course, or claim; it’s a fact, blazingly evident before open eyes, here and now in the third millennium of the Common Era, more than three thousand years since the Jewish chain’s first link was forged.

It is a fact evident in the sweet cacophony of children’s voices that rang out from that large packed room I was privileged to sit in for a short time on Motzoei Shabbos, and in all the similar ones across the country.

It is evident in Southfield, Michigan’s weekly Partners in Torah study-partner session, and in countless similar one-on-one telephone partnerships.

It is evident in the explosive growth of Orthodox day schools, high schools, yeshivos and kollelim, and in the many building campaigns to add to their number.

It’s just not yet a fact that’s evident, tragically, to Rabbis Salkin and Jacobs. May they, and their followers, come soon to face it, and to ponder it well.

The Peril of Pluralism

The following essay was published earlier this week, under a different title, by Haaretz. It is posted here with that paper’s permission.

Those of us who believe that the Torah, both its written text and accompanying Oral Law, were bequeathed by G-d to our Jewish ancestors at Sinai, and that its commandments and prohibitions remain incumbent on Jews to this day, obviously hope that Jewish movements lacking those beliefs remain marginal forces in Israel.

But that’s a hope born of the perspective of a particular belief-system (albeit the conviction of all Jews’ ancestors until two centuries ago). Leaving such blatant subjectivity aside, though, would the growth of non-Orthodox Jewish theologies be a boon or a bane to Israeli society qua society?

The answer may lie in the example of the United States, where the Reform and Conservative movements, as well as less popular groups like Reconstructionism and Humanistic Judaism, had and have free rein to lay claim to Jewish authenticity. And here in the American diaspora, the results of the Jewish Pluralism experiment? Decidedly binal.

On the one hand, Jews who, for whatever reason, choose not to embrace the demands of a traditional (in this context, Orthodox) Jewish life have less demanding options for maintaining a Jewish identity. They have access to clergy who are not only sensitive and caring (as all clergy should be) but who don’t regard traditional Jewish observance as necessary for meaningful Jewish life, and who can guide them through times of personal challenges, happy occasions and, G-d forbid, sad ones.

The downside of the American “let a hundred Jewish flowers bloom” approach, though, is that there is no longer a single American Jewish community.

That is because the non-Orthodox Jewish movements, whether they are unconcerned with halacha (e.g. Reform, et al.) or view it as pliable (i.e. Conservative), have happily converted countless non-Jews and (less happily, to be sure, but readily all the same) issued countless divorces. (The Reform movement’s acceptance as Jews of children born to non-Jewish mothers but Jewish fathers has complicated matters even more.)

The problem is that Orthodox Jews, out of conviction, cannot recognize the validity of such status-changes that don’t meet the halachic bar. And so, there are thousands of American non-Jews who believe they are Jews, and unknown numbers of children born to women in second marriages whose first marriages have not, in the eyes of halacha, been dissolved, children who are severely limited in whom they may halachically marry.

As a result, whereas once upon a time (and it wasn’t long ago), an Orthodox young man or woman could see a similar-minded but different-backgrounded member of the opposite sex as a potential life-partner on the exclusive evidence of a claim of Jewish identity, that is no longer the case. A child or grandchild of non-Orthodox Jews may have the halachic status of a non-Jew or be the product of an illicit remarriage.

(I was personally involved, more than 30 years ago, in the case of a young observant Orthodox woman who discovered that her maternal grandmother had been a Reform convert, rendering the young woman halachically non-Jewish. She was able to undergo a halachic conversion. But countless others are not aware of their status and, even if they were, would not necessarily be willing to meet the necessary conversion requirements.)

And so, in America, not only must non-Orthodox Jews be regarded by Orthodox Jews as possibly (and, increasingly, likely) non-Jewish, but Reform converts (whose conversions do not meet Conservative standards) are similarly not Jewish in the Conservative casting of “halacha.” And as to the human repercussions of non-halachic divorces… well, imagine a young newly Orthodox man suddenly discovering that his beloved is halachically forbidden to him in marriage

At present, the Israeli Jewish community suffers no such balkanization. There is, to be sure, much disagreement within the Israeli Jewish family; but the fights are all family fights. Anyone presenting as a Jew is regarded as a relative, no matter his or her perspective.

That is the result of what is often derided as the “Orthodox monopoly” over “personal status” issues like conversion and divorce. A less charged description, though, might be “single standard.”

No less a non-traditional Jew than David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister, understood the need for such a standard. He wrote in 1947 that multiple definitions of “Jew” would court “G-d forbid, the splitting of the House of Israel into two.” The number may have changed, but not the validity of his concern. And the fact has now been borne out by the American experiment: multiple Jewish standards yield multiple “Jewish peoples.”

Standards may chafe, but they are part of every country’s life. Even here in the pluralistic West, we have “monopolies” like a Food and Drug Administration and a Federal Reserve Board. A Jewish state requires a Jewish standard for issues of defining Jewishness.

Until fairly recently, the “highest common denominator” standard has always been halacha – “Orthodoxy.” At present in Israel, it still is. But should the pluralism push there make inroads, what would result – even from a disinterested, strictly sociological perspective –would be nothing short of Jewish societal disaster.

In Those Days, In This Time

The following essay was written for Haaretz and appeared on its website recently under a different title. I share it here with that paper’s permission.

There’s a striking irony in the fact that Chanukah is one of the most widely celebrated Jewish holidays among American Jews.

Cynics have contended that it’s Chanukah’s proximity to the Christian winter holiday, with all the latter’s ubiquitous glitz, baubles and musical offerings, that has elevated Chanukah – seen by some as a “minor” celebration, since it’s a post-Biblical commemoration – to the pantheon (if a Greek word is appropriate here) of popular Jewish observances.

In fact, though, Chanukah is not minor at all; a wealth of Jewish mystical literature enwraps it, and laws (albeit rabbinical in origin) govern the nightly lighting of the holiday’s candles and the recital of Al Hanisim (“For the miracles”) in our prayers over Chanukah’s eight days.

As to whether many American Jews are enamoured of Frosty the Snowman, well, it’s an open question. Me, I prefer my winter nights silent.

But onward to the irony, which is not only striking but significant.

I recall hearing a Reform rabbi on a public radio program a couple of years ago extolling Chanukah as a celebration of “pluralism” and “tolerance.” After all, the Greek-Syrian Seleucid enemy of the Jews at the time of the Chanukah miracle, he explained, were intolerant of Jewish religious practices. Well, yes, but the Jewish rebellion wasn’t aimed at establishing some sort of Middle-Eastern First Amendment but rather to fiercely defend the study and practice of the Torah. And to rid the Temple of idols. Judaism has no tolerance at all for some things, idolatry prime among them.

What is more, the Jewish uprising also – and here we close in on the irony – was to counter the influence on Jews of a foreign culture.

To the Jewish religious leaders who established the observance of Chanukah, a greater threat than the flesh-and-blood forces that had defiled the Holy Temple was the adoption by Jews of Hellenistic ideals

For the Seleucids not only forbade observance of the Sabbath, circumcision, Jewish modesty laws and Torah-study, they held out to Jews the sweet but poison fruit of Greek culture, and some Jews devoured it whole.

The enemy, in other words, didn’t just install a statue of Zeus in the Temple, but an assimilationist attitude in some Jewish hearts. And Chanukah stands for the fight against that attitude.

It’s easy to dismiss the ancient Greek soap-opera that passed for divine doings, the gods who were described as acting like the lowest of men. It isn’t likely that many Jews (or Greeks, for that matter) really believed the tales of celestial hijinks that passed for spirituality at the time.

But the ancient Greeks had something much more enticing to offer. Hellas celebrated the physical world; it developed geometry, calculated the earth’s circumference, proposed a heliocentric theory of the solar system and focused attention on the human being, at least as a physical specimen. It philosophized about life and love.

But much of Hellenist thought revolved around the idea that the enjoyment of life was the most worthwhile goal of man, yielding us the words “cynic,” “epicurean,” and “hedonist” all Greek in origin.

Western society today revolves around pleasure too. It adopts the language of “freedom” and “rights” to disguise the fact, but it’s a pretty transparent fig leaf.

To be sure, most Jews in the U.S. remain stubbornly, laudably, proud of their Jewishness. But, all the same, they have been culturally colonized by a sort of contemporary Hellenism, American style.

Which bring us – if you haven’t already guessed – to the irony.

Because Chanukah addresses neither pluralism nor tolerance (admirable though those concepts may be in their proper places), but rather Jewish identity and continuity, the challenges most urgently faced by contemporary American Jews.

And its message stands right in front of them, in the flickering flames.

The “miracle of the lights,” Jewish tradition teaches, was not arbitrary. Abundant meaning for the Jewish ages shone from the Temple candelabra’s supernatural eight-day burning of a one-day supply of oil. For light, our tradition further teaches, means Torah, its study and its observance – not “contemporized,” and not edited to conform to the Zeitgeist, but as it has been handed down over the centuries.

When American Jews light their Chanukah candles they may not consider that the holiday they are acknowledging speaks most poignantly to them.

But they should.

For older Chanukah-themed essays just click on “Chanukah” in “Categories.”

Musing: Professor Sarna’s Hammer

Jonathan Sarna, a professor of history (and someone whose company I have enjoyed on too-rare occasions) recently penned a piece (“Why is Orthodoxy Packing Up Big Tent”?) for the Forward in which he tries to minimize the import of a letter signed by scores of members of the Rabbinical Council of America saying, in effect, that the “Open Orthodoxy” movement is not only unorthodox but non-Orthodox. He compares the widespread rejection of the “OO” movement by rabbis across the Orthodox spectrum to earlier rejections of movements within Orthodoxy that came to be included in the Orthodox tent. The RCA itself, he points out, was once condemned by some respected Orthodox religious leaders.

It is to be expected that a professor of history with a conceptual hammer will see every happening as a parallel of some earlier one. But, with all due respect to Professor Sarna, the issue at present isn’t whether or not the RCA was once itself seen by some as beyond the pale.

The issue is whether the “big tent” has any walls, whether one can jettison essential elements of the theology of what has been called “Orthodoxy” over the past century and a half and still claim the mantle of that name.

Honored members of the “OO” movement have made theological statements and proposed “halachic” actions that are indistinguishable — indistinguishable — from those of the Conservative movement in the 1950s.

Back then, Conservative leaders had the honesty to distinguish their movement from Orthodoxy, by the very name they adopted. “Open Orthodoxy,” by striking contrast, is attempting to do just the opposite, claiming to be something it demonstrably is not.

“Time to Come Home” or “The Conservative Lie or Whatever

Back in 2001, I wrote a piece for Moment Magazine about the Conservative movement. It caused quite a stir, evoking angry and overheated reactions from Conservative leaders. Part of the anger, no doubt, was a result of Moment’s titling of the article “The Conservative Lie.” I had titled it “Time to Come Home.”

But much of the anger was about my message itself, that the movement was not, as it claimed, grounded in halacha, and therefore was losing, and would continue to lose, members who sought an authentic connection with the Judaism of the ages.

Of late, there has been much written about the Conservative movement, born of the recent Pew survey’s revelation that it has faltered greatly in terms of members over recent years.

I thought my article of 12 years ago might be of interest to some readers. So if it is to you, I have posted it here.

Rabbi Avi Shafran

Reflections on Jews, Judaism, Media and Life