Rabbi Ovadia Yosef

Knowing my love for Sephardism, someone asked me my opinion of Rav Ovadia Yosef. My response:

With all due respect to Rav Ovadia, I am extremely suspicious of him. In general, however much he champions Sephardi halakhah, his general hashqafa seems Haredi. Anyone who worked with Rav Shakh (as Rav Ovadia did), I'm very suspicious of him.

I bring one random example, even though one could write a volume on this: Rabbi Ovadia: 'Women should stick to cooking, sewing':

Yosef blasted the opposing view, saying it was based on the opinion of "a few stupid women. A woman's knowledge is only in sewing," he ridiculed. "Women should find other jobs and make hamin (cholent) but not deal with matters of Torah."

In addition, he admonished women for following in the steps of their mothers in the order of the recitation of the blessing instead of adhering to his opinion.

"It has to be announced that women should not listen to the voice of their mothers or grandmothers not to continue with this mistake," he warned.

Rav Ovadia's low opinion of women, and his cultish subversion of family tradition in favor of an elitist textual opinion, both bespeak a very Haredi attitude. (The Haredim are well-known for engaging in historical revisionism, erasing and subverting family mimetic tradition in favor of untraditional and unhistorical practices derived from elite ivory-tower textualism. Many Haredi magazines and pamphlets after the Holocaust urged children to disregard their parents' traditions and teachings and instead follow the gedolim; Rav Ovadia is simply following a well-paved path.)

(The above quotation also indicates Rav Ovadia's attempt to unify all the disparate Sephardi and Mizrahi minhagim, trying to unify them all under the aegis of the opinions of Rabbi Yosef Karo, even when individual Sephardi/Mizrahi communities had differing customs. See the reference to "Skeptic" and Professor Marc Shapiro below.)

In the words of Daniel Elazar (Can Sephardic Judaism be Reconstructed?),

The death of Rabbi Uziel marked the final takeover of power from the Sephardim by the Ashkenazi rabbinical establishment. ...

The Sephardic Chief Rabbinate had been the preserve of the Spaniolim [i.e. Ladino/Judeo-Spanish Turkish Jews], who be the early 1950s were thoroughly outnumbered by Asian and African [i.e. Mizrahi] olim. In the struggle over who would be appointed to succeed Rabbi Uziel, the Ashkenazi rabbinical establishment threw its backing behind Rabbi Yitzhak Nissim of Iraqi origin, who was opposed by the Spaniol establishment. Rabbi Nissim won, with Ashkenazi votes, which put the Sephardic Chief Rabbinate in a clearly subordinate position, de facto, to the Ashkenazim, a position in which it remains to this day, although one of the selling points of Shas, the Sephardic Torah Guardians, and its spiritual mentor, former Rishon Le-Zion, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who is recognized as one of the great posekim (halakhic decision-makers) of our day by Ashkenazim and Sephardim alike, was that the Sephardim had to take back their rightful position.

Unfortunately, Rabbi Yosef and his colleagues had themselves become so Ashkenazified through their education in Ashkenazi or Ashkenazified yeshivot that, while they in fact regained some power, they did not offer very much of an alternative. Rabbi Yosef, also of Iraqi background (since the election of Rabbi Nissim, all the Sephardic Chief Rabbis have been of Iraqi background), feeling the pressure of the Ashkenazi yeshiva heads, consistently refused to provide support to the Sephardic community's efforts to establish more open yeshivot in the 1960s and 1970s.

*** Update: "Skeptic" in the comments below has rightly pointed out that I should make reference to Professor Marc Shapiro's review of several biographies of Rav Ovadia, here. As far as I remember, this article only summarizes (1) Rav Ovadia's rise to the political and scholarly position he now occupies (his childhood, his education, his relationship with Rav Shakh, etc.); (2) His crusade for Sephardism (teaching Torah in the Bukharian market, founding Shas, etc.); (3) His general relationship to various Sephardi poseqim and schools of halakhic thought (Shulhan Arukh, Ben Ish Hai, Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu, etc.), and his relationship to various disparate Sephardi minhagim and communities (Iraqi, Moroccan, etc.); (4) His controversial statements on matters of politics and culture (the Holocaust, etc.). As far as I recall, this article contains nothing that would support my thesis that Rav Ovadia is "Ashkenazified" (except for his relationship to Rav Shakh, which by itself is insufficient to make a case), but be that as it may, for this article, one way or another, contains much valuable information.

*** Update: also, as "Skeptic" points out, Rav Ovadia is far more complex character than I here give him credit for. Actually, this was my intent in saying I am "suspicious" of him (I'd use far stronger terms regarding bona-fide Ashkenazi Haredim). I'm suspicious of Rav Ovadia, and ambivalent about him, whereas I am enthusiastic for the German Neo-Orthodox and the traditional Moroccans and Judeo-Spanish and the Modern Orthodox, and I am downright disgusted with and repulsed by the Ashkenazi Haredim.

Did Rav Kook Write Against Rav Hirsch in Orot?

Rav Tzvi Yehuda Kook says that Rav Kook's Orot contains reply to Rav Hirsch, but a reading of Rav Hirsch makes this absolutely impossible. (I'm sure Rav Tzvi Yehuda knew his father's views, but I don't think he had any expertise in Rav Hirsch.)

I.

In Orot, Rav Kook basically says: Eretz Yisrael is an end, not a means. In Nineteen Letters, Rav Hirsch says the opposite, that Eretz Yisrael is merely a means and not an end. Shabang - contradiction!

But wait, not so fast! Let's check the contexts! For Rav Kook, an "end" (which Rav Kook endorses) means integral to Judaism, while "means" (which he criticizes) means a utilitarian tool which could be conceivably dispensed with. In particular, Rav Kook criticizes those who see Eretz Yisrael as a convenient place for the nation to be strengthened by physical gathering; if this were the purpose of Eretz Yisrael, then conceivably a substitute could be found, whether in Uganda or in a Hebrew University.

But for Rav Hirsch, "end" (which he criticizes) means idolatrous fascist nationalism as its own value (see his comments on the Tower of Babel), while "means" (which he endorses) means that it is an essential part of Torah. Rav Hirsch's "means" is identical with Rav Kook's "ends"!


Rav Hirsch, in criticizing the understanding of Eretz Yisrael as an "end", is writing against the nation-state being worshipped in and of itself, as its own value; think Nimrod and the Tower of Babel, and Machiavelli. Would you one dare say that Rav Kook, in his supposed disagreement with Rav Hirsch (holding Eretz Yisrael to be an "end"), means to say that Nimrod and Machiavelli are Toraitic?! Furthermore, Rav Kook himself, elsewhere in Orot, says one of the blessings of galut is that we were spared having to hold political power in the era of Roman Machiavellian politics! Thus, to posit a disagreement between Rabbis Hirsch and Kook here is to create an internal contradiction within Rav Kook!

To summarize:
Kook: End = essential for Judaism, means = dispensable and not required (think Uganda);
Hirsch: End = fascism, means = essential for Judaism
Thus, Rav Kook's "end" is the same as Rav Hirsch's "means"; the two actually seem to agree more than they disagree. Furthermore, since Rav Kook himself criticizes Machiavellian Roman politics (the same as Rav Hirsch's "end", which Rav Hirsch rejects but which Rav Kook supposedly endorses), to say that Rav Kook disagrees with Rav Hirsch here is to make Rav Kook internally contradictory.

Thus, Rabbi Bezalel Naor's edition of Orot quite rightly points out that Rav Kook is replying to cultural Zionism and the Ugandists, that Eretz Yisrael is convenient and helpful but not essential.

And according to Rabbi Yehiel Weinberg (from Dr. David Kranzler and Rabbi Dovid Landesman, Rav Breuer: His Life and Legacy - A Biography of Rav Dr. Joseph Breuer, p. 212, here),

The complaint against Hirsch that he negated the national ideal of the Jewish people is absurd. A religious philosophy which places the people of Israel in the center of its thought and which sees Israel as the axis around which world history revolves - could there be any nationalism greater than this? Hirsch was certainly opposed to secular nationalism based on the hollow and empty foundation of race and common suffering. Such a nationalism is alien to the Jewish spirit, for it is borrowed from the language of other nations and it falsifies our unique historical ideal. The nationalism of Hirsch is religious and ethical; such a nationalism is not concerned with hatred and conquest.

In other words: Rav Hirsch was not opposed to nationalism per se, but only to that nationalism which was parochial and chauvinistic and militant, seeing such nationalism as idolatrous (see again his comments on the Tower of Babel). Rav Hirsch would also likely disagree with Rabbi Moshe Shmuel Glasner's Zionism in the Light of Faith, when Rabbi Glasner said,

However, then as now, my position was this: even if we should admit that emancipation and reciprocity contain within them certain dangers for complete faith, this presumption cannot serve as a reason to ascribe to the people an intention to forego, or even to reject, natural rights. "Her ways are the ways of pleasantness," not the ways of unnatural rejection. The Holy One Blessed Be He does not demand of people to cease being people, nor does He demand of them that they quell their ambitions for success in anticipation of dangers that are liable to endanger the completeness of their faith.

Rav Hirsch, if I am not mistaken, would reject any claims predicated on the Jewish people being a "people" and deserving of the same things all people do. That is, some will say that all people deserve a land, including the Jewish people, but Rav Hirsch will reject this. This is actually incredible, given that the entire basis of Mensch Yisroel and Torah im Derekh Eretz is nothing other than the fact that Jews are people. They are even people prior - ontologically and chronologically - to their being Jewish. (See Rabbi Shelomo Danziger, "Rav S. R. Hirsch - His תורה עם דרך ארץ Ideology", in Living Hirschian Legacy, here.) But this is Rabbi Hirsch's position, agree with it or not.

The only significant and greatly meaningful difference between Rabbis Kook and Hirsch here is whether the importance of the land of Israel is rational or mystical, i.e. Maimonidean or Kuzarian (cf. Professor Menachem Kellner's Maimonides' Confrontation with Mysticism) - does the land of Israel contain inborn metaphysical significance, or is its importance physical and temporal? But that's it.

II.

Rav Tzvi Yehuda points to a second contradiction: Rav Kook says galut is bad, Rav Hirsch says it is good! But not so fast; Rav Hirsch never says this! Rav Hirsch, in his essay "Av I", dwells at length on how the galut is a tragedy, how the galut shekhina means G-d has lost His national manifestion and vehicle for the representation of the Torah on every level of national life. (I dare you to tell me how this differs from Rav Kook!) All Rav Hirsch says in Nineteen Letters is that bedieved (after the fact), there is value in the galut, but the galut is a tragedy nonetheless. And guess what? The Gemara in Pesahim seems to say the same thing, that we were exiled for the sake of gathering gerim. So maybe Orot is writing against the Gemara, not Rav Hirsch! And on top of that, Rav Kook, elsewhere in Orot, says there is an inner value in the galut, that in the Machiavellian world of Roman politics, we didn't have to rule - Rav Kook sees good in the galut! The only other person I've seen say this is Rabbi Dr. Eliezer Berkovits, in his Crisis and Faith, Towards Historic Judaism, and Between Yesterday and Tomorrow. (Rabbi Berkovits goes a bit further than Rav Kook; Rav Kook said this positive value of galut is bedieved, a post-facto comfort for us, while Rabbi Berkovits says it is the very reason for the galut in the first place, that Caesaria and Jerusalem could not stand together simultaneously, as the Gemara says.) So actually, Rav Kook perhaps sees more good in the galut than Rav Hirsch does! Thus, Rabbi Bezalel Naor says that Rav Kook's target for criticism is not Rav Hirsch, but rather Hermann Cohen, who saw the galut as a positive step upwards from vulgar nationalism and parochialism.

So much for Orot criticizing Rav Hirsch. The problem really is that no one actually reads Rav Hirsch. The academics assume he is a German gentile masquerading as a rabbi, and so they assume Kant is his source even when an explicit mishnah in Avot preceded Kant. (See Rabbi Joseph Elias's edition of Nineteen Letters, and Rabbi Shelomo Danziger's reply to Rabbi Howard I. Levine in Tradition.) And the Haredim assume he is haredi and holds by Daas Torah (even though Rabbi Hirsch's essay "Jewish Communal Life" is a masterpiece of constitutional-democratic theory that reads almost like John Locke, if I may exaggerate just a little bit, but not very much), and so they (the Haredim) also never read him. Everyone says the most ridiculous garbage in Rav Hirsch's name, things that are disproven by even a cursory glance at his own words. Rav Hirsch was a Spanish Jew - Muslim or Christian Spain, take your pick - in German clothing. That's it.

Speaking of Rav Hirsch's essay "Jewish Communal Life", the entire essay describes how the Jewish community is a microcosm of the Jewish nation. Throughout Rav Hirsch's writings is a famous emphasis of the traditional kehilla, and the whole time, the underlying assumption by him is that the kehilla is a microcosm and representative of the nation. In galut, we tragically lack national manifestation in Eretz Yisrael, as Rav Hirsch says in "Av I", but every time Rav Hirsch mentions the kehilla, he is implicitly expressing his own form of nationalism.

Yes, Rabbi Hirsch pasqened the Three Oaths as halakhah, and said that the galut would not end until we did teshuva for our sins. Yes, this is a contradiction with Rabbis Tzvi Hirsch Kalischer and Yehuda Alkalai and Rav Kook, absolutely. But this is something entirely else. If one wants to draw a distinction between Rabbis Kook and Hirsch based on mysticism versus rationalism, or based on the halakhic nature of the Three Oaths, then please, by all means. But don't misread Rav Hirsch and then mistake Rav Kook for criticizing Rav Hirsch when he was really criticizing Herzl, Ahad ha-Am and Hermann Cohen.

Similarly, people will say that Zionism began with Herzl. But in truth, people like Dona Nasia and Rabbi Haim Abulafia were already settling Teveria, Rabbi Yaakov Beirav tried to reinstitute semikha and the Sanhedrin, and Lurianic Qabalists believed their practices repaired the cosmos and brought geula closer. Their methods were different than those of the Zionists, but Rabbi Yehuda Alkalai (of Sarajevo)'s departure from the tradition of the Hida (Rabbi Haim Yosef David Azulai, the teacher of Rabbi Eliezer Papo, in turn Rabbi Alkalai's teacher) was not his love for Eretz Yisrael and his efforts towards geula per se, but only that he substituted Qabalistic theurgy with practical politics and agriculture. But both Rabbis Alkalai and Azulai took practical steps, in their own ways, towards geula.

Cherry-picking on Online Dating, and On Pornography

I am told a profile posted on "Frumster" (the major Orthodox dating site) (or any other dating site, Jewish or not) without a decent picture gets very few views.

--- "MiMedinat HaYam" commenting here

I have heard this as well - heck, Frumster themselves will tell you it - but I still don't comprehend it.

Whenever I've ever used online dating, I've systematically gone through every profile that met my search parameters. The reason is obvious: any one of the women who meet my parameters could potentially be the perfect woman for me! So what difference does it make what she looks like? How will skipping unattractive pictures or profiles without pictures at all help me find the woman who's right for me? Statistically, any one of the women - attractive or not - could be "the one".

So what's the logic in cherry-picking profiles to look at, rather than - as I do - systematically looking at every profile that meets the search parameters?

Am I missing something? It isn't cherry-picking for the sake of attractiveness that stymies me - it's cherry-picking period that I don't understand. Why would anyone cherry-pick from the profiles based on any criterion?

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In The Goyls Next Door, Jessica Pauline writes, inter alia,

Looking into our history and culture, it doesn't take much digging to speculate about the root of our [viz. Judaism's] unease with exhibitionism, or nudity for any reason besides procreation or showering. In the strictest branch of our religion [Judaism], a woman's sexuality is literally hidden from everyone but her husband. It hearkens back to the notion that men will be too tempted to control themselves when confronted with female sexuality (ahem, Adam), and so it's the woman's job to cover up -- which frankly doesn't give much credit to women or men.

Additionally, typical antiporn arguments...rely heavily on the notion of respect, or lack thereof, for women. Porn results in men respecting women less, society as a whole repsecting women less, and women respecting themselves less...in short, the complete undoing of everything feminism has accomplished to date.

But I would argue exactly the opposite. What is disrespectful is assuming that women who pose for porn magazines don't know what's best for themselves. What is disrespectful is analyzing porn only from the point of view of the consumer, thereby taking away the voice of the subjects, and all the while arguing that porn takes women's voices away. And what is disrespectful is relying solely on stereotypes to understand the decisions a woman makes.

...

I’m disheartened, friends. I’ve always liked to think of Judaism as slightly more open-minded, but apparently we’re just another organized religion frantically waving our moral compass over the heads of our congregations (particularly, of course, our young women), and while we like to couch our panic in intellectual discourse, it seems we’re really no better than all the rest.

I personally fail to see how porn isn't demeaning to women. Essentially, the idea of porn is: women are nothing but sexual objects, so let's put them on display. Porn is a lot like the zoo, except in print rather than behind cages.

The whole point of tzeniut is to avoid representing oneself as an object, and/or to avoid seeing others as objects. (Rabbi Marc Angel's Losing the Rat Race, Winning at Life excellently makes this point, using Buber's I-Thou relationship as his springboard; we are to relate to others as "Thou"s, not as objects. For a more involved psycho-philosophical exposition of this thesis, see Rabbi Dr. Eliezer Berkovits's "A Jewish Sexual Ethics" in Crisis and Faith and in Essential Essays on Judaism (ed. Hazony). Berkovits's thesis is that Judaism aims at redeeming sexuality from animality, and instead investing it with humanity and personality. The climax of his essay is when he brings the famous Talmudic aggadah about the yeshiva student who visits a prostitute and gets slapped in the face by his tzitzit. Rabbi Berkovits notes that initially, the man and the woman are referred to as "the man", "the woman", in third-person. (For example, the man journeyed to "the prostitute", and the prostitute's secretary/bouncer called out to her, "the man who paid 200 zuz is here", etc.) It is only when his tzitzit slap him in the face and he and she descend from the bed and refrain from sex, do they begin to refer to each other as "you", as human personalities with biopsychic/psychosomatic reality, i.e. with body and soul. Cf. Tamar Biala in To Teach Tsni’ut with Tsni’ut: On Educating for Tsni`ut in National-Religious Schools:

Again, instead of confining the conversation to strategies for confronting the sexual impulse (regarded as threatening and uncontrollable), we sought to focus on strengthening the sense that one is capable of maintaining human relationships with another person to whom one is not married. In contrast to seeing the other primarily as a sexual object, we tried to emphasize the concepts of personality, soul, and self-control. ... Observance of sexual tsni`ut is part of the demand that one conduct oneself with tsni`ut in all aspects of one’s life in this world. As we have seen in the various sources, there exists in every one of us an impulse to see the man or woman standing before us as a sexual object; and there sometimes exists an impulse to present ourselves to the man or woman before us as entirely or primarily a sexual object. The sexual component of our selves is important and blessed, but we must take care not to place it alone at center stage in the connections we form with others. Connections of that sort constitute “objectification” (that is, they involve seeing the other or presenting ourselves exclusively as a sexual object) and disregard the full range of the personality of one created in the image of God. Sexual tsni`ut, accordingly, does not mean nullifying or even weakening the sexual impulse; rather, it means assigning it its balanced place within the full scope of our existence as human beings.

Rabbi Berkovits also makes the crucial point that a human can never be a healthy animal, for even to consciously desire to be a healthy animal is something an animal cannot do. A human has both body and soul, and there is nothing one can do about it. Thus, one can either be a healthy human who appreciates his or her full biopsychic/psychosomatic/body-soul reality and that of others as well, or one can be an unhealthy human who vainly attempts the impossible task of becoming a healthy animal.)

In short: pornography exhibits women as being nothing but bodies, and reduces them to the level of animals. Like I said, the only other thing we put on display is animals in the zoo.

Another point: even those men who themselves look at porn, they would never suffer their daughters to be published in porn. Adam Carolla, on The Man Show put it well: every man fantasizes about having a loose scantily-clad girlfriend, but no man would ever actually want such a girlfriend in real life. Why? (The following is me, not Carolla.) Because he wants someone reliable and trustworthy. Every time a woman dresses scantily, she is selling herself short, because she (whether intentionally or not) is telling the other men that she is personality-less meat on display. Every man, when seeking out a real intimate relationship, will forgo the scantily-clad women, and will go for the woman he perceives as being wholesome and reliable and possessing of real personality and humanity, viz. the woman dressed modestly. Behind every woman who dresses immodestly is the lack of a father who taught her what men really think (see Dave Chappelle's What Men Want).

Therefore, even the men who look at porn, would be aghast and heartbroken if their own daughters were to be published in pornographic venues. (That is, assuming they actually respect women. In Hitch, a sexist pervert comes to Will Smith (who plays a "date doctor") to help him have sex with a certain woman. Will Smith replies that he only works with men who "actually like women", and the pervert replies, "Let me make one thing clear to you, rabbi...".)

Don't get me wrong; I'm not advocating that we seal up women in their homes as sexual objects. Just the opposite! In fact, the Haredim themselves are the most egregious violators of the ideals of tzeniut! For the object of tzeniut is that women present themselves as full humans, and that men appreciate the women as being more than just bodies. But Haredi tzniut hypersexualizes men and women, making women out to be nothing but sexual objects, and making men out to be nothing but seekers of sex. I prefer what (Orthodox) Rabbi Avraham Shamma says in Kol b’Isha with a Current Perspective:

If a person asks what the meaning is for us in our times of the ruling to "distance oneself from women very, very much", as the Shulhan Arukh rules, I would answer and say that if I were asked to express this [ruling] in a form that is relevant to our times, I would say thus: 'Women and men should behave in a manner that reflects great respect for one another; they should not consider one another in a crude manner such as sexual objects; they should not dress provocatively, nor should their body language be provocative; they should not digress to intimate conversations and they should not exaggerate their physical closeness when having a discussion, or the like; the wise person has his eyes in his head and not find loopholes in the Tora, but should know that no two situations are exactly alike and therefore should use good judgment with integrity and honesty, because the essence of these laws is not to observe them literally and formally, but rather their purpose is to improve society.' It was my intent at the outset to phrase my words in egalitarian language, addressing men and woman equally, [language that does] not objectify women or men: women are not defined as [objects of] lewdness nor are men [defined] as male animalistic or chemical creatures that are pheromonally attracted, without control, to females. Rather, the definition [of men and women that I suggest] recognizes their self-control and demands of them behavioral standards. Even more, this formulation does not attempt to 'defend the purity of men' at the cost of hiding the women and covering them.

Cf. Tamar Biala in To Teach Tsni’ut with Tsni’ut: On Educating for Tsni`ut in National-Religious Schools:

The conduct of “normal” activity in which men and women share the same physical spaces requires a degree of tsni`ut, and we tried to clarify that the tsni`ut is the responsibility of the one who is “looking” and not of his or her object. In doing so, we made use of halakhot and talmudic stories and of the responsum by R. Ben-Zion Me’ir Hai Uziel, dealing with the participation of women in elections for public office (Resp. Mishpetei uzzi’el, vol. 4, Hoshen mishpat sec. 6). ... Sexual tsni`ut is equally binding on men and women. Every person must take responsibility for his or her sexuality and not take advantage of or deprecate the sexuality of another person. Women must take care to avoid exploiting the sexuality of men, and men must take care to avoid exploiting the sexuality of women. In contrast to the concept that requires the other to limit himself or herself in order to avoid causing me difficulty or complicating my struggle with my impulse, tsni`ut is an action I take toward myself, an act of self-restraint, sensitivity, and concern taken as a result of maturity and health.

"U.S. pressures Japan on military package" - Japan Has Backbone to Say "No" to America

I just read "U.S. pressures Japan on military package" in the Washington Post (22 October 2009), and I must congratulate Japan on having the courage and self-esteem to stand up to the United States with gumption and self-confidence.

My maternal grandfather was in the United States Navy during WWII (U. S. Navy Memorial: Captain Willis S. Myers), and after the war, he and his family were stationed in Japan for a few years. But today, long past are the days when the West had reason to be suspicious of Japan; in the days immediately after the war, the West was understandly wary of Japan, but those days are long gone. My brother was recently in the United States Army, stationed in Germany, and he says that every time he went out to a bar for a drink, one of the German locals would apologize profusely to him for the Holocaust (my family is Jewish). My brother says he would reply that the Holocaust is long over, and that he has no need for apologies from people who weren't even alive at the time; he was, he would tell them, just a plain US soldier looking to relax with a beer.

To this day, Israel is afflicted with Stockholm's Syndrome, and in abject cowardice, surrenders to every demand the US makes of it. No matter how harmful the US's demands are to Israel's security interests, Israel kowtows to every demand, without protest. (Moshe Feiglin and MK Gilad Erdan are rare exceptions, bluntly telling Obama that Israel is not the 51st state, and that Israel has no obligation to obey the US's apodictic orders. Hear Feiglin's words here and read Erdan's here.)

Obviously, I hope that Japan will engage in just and righteous activity, but granting Japan the benefit of the doubt, I am heartened by Japan's courageous stand for its own dignity, having the self-esteem and confidence to tell the United States that Japan is its own independent nation with the right to national self-determination. With Israel once having been dominated by colonial Britain, I can sympathize completely with Japan's stance. Congratulations and best wishes to Japan!

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By the way, I'm told that I look like my grandfather. What does anyone think?

I ran the celebrity face-matcher at My Heritage, and while most of our results didn't match, we did both get Zubin Mehta. So if we both supposedly look like Zubin Mehta, then maybe we both look alike as well?

""But We Are Guilty for Our Daughters": Lessons Learned from the History of Jewish Girls' Education in Germany and Eastern Europe in the Ninteenth Century" - Dr. Laura Shaw Frank

I just wrote the following letter to Dr. Laura Shaw Frank, regarding her recent article in Conversations, ""But We Are Guilty for Our Daughters": Lessons Learned from the History of Jewish Girls' Education in Germany and Eastern Europe in the Ninteenth Century".

I don't have time right now to expand this letter into a fuller form comprehensible to those who haven't read the article themselves, so here it is instead in unedited form:

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Dr. Frank (Shaw-Frank?),

I much enjoyed your recent article in Conversations. Besides the purely intellectual/scholarly value (my knowledge of Reform's history has mostly been pieced together from my reading of the Hirschian corpus and secondary sources relating thereto, as well as from the 1927 edition of Rabbi Dr. J. H. Hertz's Affirmations of Judaism, "The New Paths"), you also had a few miscellaneous points of interest in there which I enjoyed.

Your discussion (pp. 131, 140) of the distinction between Western and Eastern Haskalah - modernity as an alternative to religion versus their being a Hegelian thesis/antithesis (my own formulation, but it seems to capture the gist of what you said, unless you'll correct me) - was enlightening.

Two ironies occur to me. First, the rigidity and inflexibility exhibited by the Eastern Europeans reminds me of a monastic Catholic attitude than of anything authentically Jewish; cf. Rav Hirsch in "The Relation of General to Specially Jewish Education", where he attributes the Orthodox attitude not only to ghetto-induced close-mindedness, but also to syncretic adoption of the Christian dichotomy between religion and science. (And this he says in an essay to the German civic authorities!)

Second, much as I hate to say anything good about the Reform movement ("Religion Allied to Progress" and "The New Paths" will have that effect!), one must say that their resolution to the conflict, while flawed, was nevertheless more healthily Jewish than the Eastern European response. I'm not sure whether this is because of any intrinsic Jewish content of their thinking (I'd be loathe to admit this, but I could be wrong), or simply because their Enlightenment-thinking, being exposed to Hellenism, just happened to be closer to Judaism than the Catholic-otherwordliness of the Orthodox - I'm relying of course on Rav Hirsch's treatment of Shem and Yafet - but regardless, in the end, the Reformers seem to have been more authentically Jewish than the Haredim! Indeed, anywhere Rav Hirsch criticizes the Reformers, one is almost sure to find a notification that in truth, the Reformers were only responding to equally if not more egregious errors by the Orthodox. Nineteen Letters of course - like Rav Kook - places the blame almost solely on Orthodox miseducation. (And the Haredim claim Rav Hirsch as one of their own!)

And I found it absolutely brilliant how you took the conclusions of your study - viz. the oft-noted and by now almost banal observation that the phenomenon of Eastern European woman being secularly educated but religiously ignorant posed a jarring and inescapable absurdity - and applied them straight-away to the recent controversy of women's semiha. (As for myself, given that Rabbi Benzion Uziel permitted women to be dayanim, I failed to see what the whole controversy was about. Then again, I'm a staunch adherent to Rabbi Dr. Eliezer Berkovits's thesis on women in halakhah (so far, I've merited only to acquire Crisis and Faith, but not yet Women in Time and Torah, unfortunately), so I think I would have come to the same conclusion even without Rabbi Uziel's imprimatur.)

So I much enjoyed your article. Thank you!

Sincerely,
Michael Makovi

Torat Haim: the Torah does not remove us from life

In Rabbi Marc Angel's magazine, Conversations, published by the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals, vol. 5 (Autumn 2009/5770), in Naomi Schachter's "Festina Lente: Make Haste Slowly - The Changing Status of Orthodox Women in the Twenty-First-Century", we read:

For example, women who have trouble getting pregnant because their natural monthly cycle does not match the strictures of the family purity laws are advised to take hormones in order to adapt their cycles to the strictures of the purity ritual, rather than, for instance, allowing these women exceptionally to go to the mikvah a few days earlier so that the mikvah night aligns with their ovulation, in fulfillment of a different mitzvah.

Schacter brings this as a criticism, and of course, I am equally appalled. But my reason has little to do with feminism, and more to do with what I believe is a healthy conception of just precisely what the Torah in fact is.

To put women on hormones is no small matter. According to a recent study published in the medical journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution (see Georgina Cooper, "Birth control pill could put women off macho men?", Reuters, 8 October 2009, http://www.reuters.com/articlePrint?articleId=USTRE5973OT20091008), women on birth control are likely to find more attractive men who are relatively delicate and effeminate, whereas ordinarily, women are attracted to more rugged and masculine features. I'm sure that medical experts could adduce far more data on this, but the basic point is clear: hormones seriously affect the body's chemistry (that is their purpose!), and it should be no small matter in anyone's eyes to so do.

Obviously, if someone has a health condition, something unequivocally wrong with his or her body, then of course hormones should be administered if necessary; that such treatments exist is one of the blessings of modern medical science. But Schacter's case, we are apparently dealing with women who are not unhealthy, who do not have anything wrong with their bodies. A 50 Hz 240V outlet may be different than a 60 Hz 120V one, but the former is not broken; it is different. Therefore, it is not doctors who are recommending hormonal treatment, but halakhists.

To tell a woman, a woman whose body has nothing wrong with it, a woman whose body is perfectly healthly, that her body is defective because it fails to adhere to a supra-natural convention said by halakhah, is absolutely ludicrous. More, it is downright cruel. To tell a woman that the body G-d gave her, the body which is perfectly healthy, that it is defective because it fails to adhere to an artificial convention, is the height of absurdity. All the more when the rectification is something so serious as hormonal treatment. To put the woman in danger (no medical treatment is without risks), not because her body is in need of repair, but because her perfectly functioning body fails to obey an external norm, is no less than cruel and unusual punishment.

(In our case, this is particularly so, because the law in question is merely Rabbinic, i.e. the extra non-Biblical days of niddah. In fact, if we follow Professor Yaakov Elman of YU, the matter is one merely of minhag, and not even Rabbinic law. According to Elman ("Middle Persian Culture and Babylonian Sages: Accomodation and Resistance in the Shaping of Rabbinic Legal Tradition" in The Cambridge Companion to the Talmud and Rabbinic Literature (Cambridge Companions to Religion), ed. Charlotte E. Fonrobert and Martin S. Jaffee, Cambridge University Press, 2007), the extra Rabbinic days of niddah are not Rabbinic at all, but are rather a freely-willed extension by Babylonian women of the Talmudic era, as part of the "narcissism of small differences" between Judaism and Zoroastrianism. That is to say, the Zoroastrians were stricter than Jews on matters of menstrual impurity, and so, out of a "holier than thou" attitude, the Jewish women freely chose to extend their niddah period, and so strong was this psychological "narcissism of small differences" than the Jewish men agreed. Be all this as it may; the fact remains that no matter how one approaches the issue, we are dealing with a relatively minor type of halakhah, and it should not be difficult to find grounds for leniency.)

This - viz. the tempering and moderating of the strictures of the halakhah when it confronts "real life" - is precisely what the Torah was given for. To be sure, Judaism was never "up to date" (Rabbi S. R. Hirsch, "Judaism Up to Date" in Judaism Eternal, "The Jew and His Time" in Collected Writings), and sometimes, we must freely submit our moral free will to the Divine heteronomous law. But the Torah is not unreasonable; "ought to" implies "can", and this is a crucial lesson we mustn't lose sight of.

In fact, this argument has no less than explicit Talmudic basis. Rabbi Dr. Eliezer Berkovits, in chapter one of his Not in Heaven: The Nature and Function of Halacha (reprinted in Essential Essays on Judaism (ed. Hazony) as "The Nature and Function of Jewish Law"), deals with the Talmudic principle "Heicha de’efshar efshar; heicha delo efshar lo efshar", "Where it is possible, it is possible; where it is not possible, it is not possible" (Hullin 11b). He notes,

A careful examination of the examples discussed will show that in the application of the principle of the possible, the impossible is not the objectively impossible, but that which is not reasonably feasible. The category of the possible (efshar) represents that which, in view of human nature and with proper attention to human needs, is practically or morally feasible.

Rabbi Berkovits brings one Talmudic example of this principle being applied: on the one hand, we have an elderly childless man living across the sea from his wife; he sends her a get in order that she not have the mitzvah of yibum/halitza with his brother should he die. On the other hand, we have a kohen who gives his wife a get whose activation is conditional on his death (i.e., she will become divorced an infinitesimal amount of time just prior to his death). In the first case, we rely on the presumption (hazaka) that the husband is alive until proven otherwise, and so the get is effective when it reaches the wife's hand via a messenger (shaliah). (A get is ineffective if the husband is no longer alive, and so the mitzvah of yibum/halitzah would apply, as the wife was never divorced.) In the second case, by contrast, we presume that the husband might have died at any moment, and so we immediately prohibit the wife to eat terumah (which only kohanim and their families may consume). The Talmud is perplexed; why do we presume one husband is alive until proven otherwise, while we assume the other husband may die at any moment? Rabbi Berkovits concludes,

In attempting to resolve the contradiction, the Talmud offers: "You are comparing terumah to divorce? Teruma is possible; divorce is impossible" (Gittin 28a). The meaning is: For the woman married to a priest, it is relatively easy to make arrangements to live on food that does not have the sanctity of teruma. But the consequences of assuming the death of the husband in the first case would be much more serious. The faraway husband, knowing that a writ of divorce sent by a messenger would have no validity, would refrain from sending one. As a result, his wife would become an aguna, neither married in fact nor able to remarry, since her husband might be alive.

Rabbi David Sperling, my rabbi at Machon Meir (who teaches also at Nishmat), once posed a question to me and a few of his other students: if someone became locked in the bathroom on Shabbat, with no way of freeing him save some sort of Shabbat violation, should one let him remain inside? Rabbi Sperling answered his own question, saying that indeed, one could probably find a way to slip food and drink into the bathroom via a window, and that in any case, one wouldn't die if he had to go all day without sustenance. Rabbi Sperling paused for a moment, and proclaimed that no!, one does not have to act in this way! G-d does not expect someone to remain locked in his bathroom for the duration of Shabbat for the sake of Shabbat! He conceded that at the moment, he didn't know how to free the person, and that he'd have to consult halakhic texts to find an acceptable way to repair the door without violating Shabbat. But he said that all the same, some way did exist, and that G-d did not expect a person to act this way. He also conceded that this is a slippery and dangerous slope; as he put it, all the forgoing was no more clear to him than it is to his non-observant relatives that G-d does not expect one to go Shabbat without driving a car or using a computer.

So indeed, this whole analysis must be done in fear and trembling and religious awe, and serious halakhic analysis must underlie considerations of mercy and love. (Rabbi Haim David Halevi made the same point about his mentor, Rabbi Benzion Uziel, in his Asei Lekha Rav 8:97, translated by Rabbi Marc Angel in "The Love of Israel as a Factor in Halakhic Decision-making in the works of Rabbi Benzion Uziel", Tradition 24:3, Spring 1989, pp. 1-20. Cf. Rabbi Angel's book, Loving Truth and Peace: The Grand Religious Worldview of Rabbi Benzion Uziel.) But all the same, we must remember: the Torah is reasonable, and the Torah was made to enrich life, and not to remove us from it. To counsel women to take hormones - and thereby endanger their health and wellbeing - for the sake of an external legal convention is sheer absurdity.

Judaism and Western Values: On Our Response to the Misogny of the Israeli Chief Rabbinate

I just wrote the following letter to the editor to Rabbi Marc Angel's Conversations magazine (published by his Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals), regarding an article in vol. 5, Orthodoxy: Family and Gender Issues.

---

I read with interest Dr./Ms.(?) Batya Kahana-Dror's "Violence is Not Grounds for Divorce" in Conversations 5 Autumn 2009/5770. However, while I agree with her overall sentiments and thesis, there is one particular theme, one that ran like a golden thread through her article, which particular discomforted me, viz. her consistent devaluing of halakhic Jewish values in favor of Western democratic values.

Actually, the theme with which I so vehemently disagree, she actually only gives expression to it twice, but as it appeared at the very beginning at again at the very end of the article, I feel it safe to conclude that the theme underlies her entire thesis. If I am in error, however, or if I have misunderstood her in any other way, I hereby ask the author's forgiveness in advance.

On page 91, she says, "...theocracy versus Western liberalism..." and again on the same page, "...the handling of issues of women's status by the rabbinical courts has sorely tested Jewish values against the liberal, democratic values of the State." And on page 104, "This [modern] stream of Orthodoxy...has to embrace halakha and its modern-day development against a backdrop of liberal Western values." (I have significantly abridged these quotations, and it may be assumed that anything I did not quote, I agreed with, and finding no fault with it, I saw no reason to quote it. It may bear mentioning that Kahana-Dror's thesis was that the Israeli Rabbinate has been abusing its power in order to impose its conservative and fundamentalist, and often misogynist, vision on Israeli society, especially in matters of marriage and divorce; I agree completely with her thesis. The difference between Kahana-Dror and myself, and the subject of this letter to the editor, is one of epistemology.)

As an aside, it is highly questionable whether the State of Israel is really very concerned with Western democratic values in the first place. Lecturer Raissa Epstein, in her appendix to Moshe Feiglin's Where There are No Men / Bimqom She'ein Adam shows that the political establishment of Israel relies on Marxist socialist concepts even as it abuses the terminology of Western democratic political theory to enrobe that Marxism. (Now queue a reference to Orwell's Newspeak in Nineteen-Eighty-Four.) One has not beholden tyranny until he is faced (as is documented by Feiglin, op. cit.) with a prosecuting attorney who successfully convinces an Israeli Supreme Court justice that civil non-violent disobedience is only legitimate in "unsavory regimes" like America, Britain, France, and China (with its Tiananmen Square), and not in a modern Western democratic nation like Israel. Similarly, according to MK Ophir Pines-Paz (Labor), "The rabbis' call [on soldiers] to refuse [IDF] military orders undermines Israeli democracy. This is dangerous incitement that is liable to break up the IDF. I call on [Yesha] settlement leaders to distance themselves from these rabbis' declaration. And I call on the attorney-general to open investigations against the rabbis for allegations of incitement." ("Rabbis: Soldiers must refuse IDF orders", Matthew Wagner, Jerusalem Post, 27 May 2009). Similarly, Kadima MK Nahman Shai, regarding soldiers refusing to follow orders to expel people from their homes (as in the Gaza Disengagement) said "In a democratic country, the army must not allow soldiers to take such a position." (Kadima MK: Put Soldiers in Their Place", Israel National News, http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/Flash.aspx/173114). If Pines-Paz and Shai ever looked up Schenck v. United States (1919) and "clear and present danger", it could only be in order to find out what democracy said so that they could demand precisely the opposite in democracy's name. (In that case, it was ruled, "when a nation is at war many things that might be said in time of peace are such a hindrance to its effort that their utterance will not be endured so long as men fight, and that no Court could regard them as protected by any constitutional right." In other words, draft-dodging is a danger to democracy only in time of war. Additionally, it is interesting that regarding the Kafr Qasim incident in Israeli history, Judge Benjamin Halevy ruled as binding Israeli law the Talmudic principle of ein shaliah b'devar averah, saying, "The distinguishing mark of a manifestly illegal [military] order is that above such an order [from a military superior] should fly, like a black flag, a warning saying: 'Prohibited!'." So Pines-Paz and Shai are apparently ignorant of more than just democratic political theory.) So with all due respect, I find it rather questionable to attribute "Western democratic values" to Israeli society and law, but be that as it may, for all this is as an aside.

Frankly, I am extremely troubled and discomfited by her reliance on Western liberalism.

This is not to say that there is nothing of value in modern Western liberalism - G-d forbid! I myself having been planning to spend the coming summer vacation of mine studying Locke, Hobbes, the Federalist Papers, etc. in order to gain greater insight into the Tanakh's political theory. (It is well-known that the Renaissance/Enlightenment theorists of democracy, social-contract theory, etc. were quite often extremely Hebraic in their thought.[1] But in the end, whatever I end up affirming for myself, it will be because the Tanakh said it, even if it required the helpful elucidation of Locke et. al; I will not be relying on Locke et. al. themselves. If there is anything true in the Declaration of Independence's statement that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights...", it is because our Torah already proclaimed, "ze sefer toldot adam". And so, when Rabbi Shlomo Riskin issued a halakhic ruling that one is obligated to violated Shabbat to save a gentile's life, he relied on the latter Torah principle, not the former Western value, and quite rightly so.

According to Rav Kook (Igrot vol 1., p. 103), ואם תפול שאלה על איזה משפט שבתורה, שלפי מושגי המוסר יהיה נראה שצריך להיות מובן באופן אחר, אז אם באמת ע"פ ב"ד הגדול יוחלט שזה המשפט לא נאמר כ"א באותם התנאים שכבר אינם, ודאי ימצא ע"ז מקור בתורה. (My own unprofessional translation: "And if a question arises on any given law of the Torah, that according to moral/ethical conceptions this law needs to be understood in another manner, then, if indeed according to the Beit Din ha-Gadol (i.e. the Sanhedrin) it will be decided that this law in question was stated only with regards to sociological conditions that are no longer extent, then indeed by means of this ruling a source in the Torah will be found for this moral/ethical conception.") And again, according to Rav Kook (Kevatzim mi-Ketav Yad Kodsho, vol. 2, p. 121, i,e, 4:16), כשהמוסר הטבעי מתגבר בעולם, באיזה צורה שתהיה, חייב כל אדם לקבל לתוכו אותו מממקורו, דהיינו מהתגלותו בעולם, ואת פרטיו יפלס על פי ארחות התורה. אז יעלה בידו המוסר הטהור אמיץ ומזוקק. (My own unprofessional translation: "When natural morality strengthens in the world, in whatever form it may, then everyone is obligated to incorporate this within his own ethos from its source, i.e. from its revelation in the world, and its details will be explicated via the paths of the Torah. Then pure morality will come into his hand, strong and purified.") See Professor Marc Shapiro, "Thoughts on "Confrontation" and Sundry Matters Part II" (The Tradition-Seforim Blog, http://seforim.traditiononline.org/index.cfm/2009/1/28/Marc-B-Shapiro-Thoughts-on-Confrontation--Sundry-Matters-Part-) for commentary on these passages. In particular, Professor Shapiro notes that "R. Kook is not speaking about apologetics here, but a revealing of Torah truth that was previously hidden. The truth is latent, and with the development of moral ideas, which is driven by God, the new insight in the Torah becomes apparent." Additionally, Professor Shapiro notes regarding Rabbi Norman Lamm that "He then develops the notion of a developing halakhic morality in which our evolving understanding of morality lead us back to the Torah 'to rediscover what was always there in the inner folds of the Biblical texts and halakhic traditions'". So it is very possible that new values and events in history will cause us to reevaluate and reexamine the Torah and its values, but in the end, it is always the Torah's values, never modern Western values, which impel and motivate us!

It could be fairly said that my own philosophy of the Oral Law - largely following Rambam, Rabbi Moshe Shmuel Glasner, and Rabbi Dr. Eliezer Berkovits - has very much in common with Conservative Jewish philosophy on that subject.[2] But there is one portion of Conservative philosophy of the Oral Law with which I must very vehemently take issue with: Zecharias Frankel's reliance on the Volksgeist, not unlike Rabbi Dr. Solomon Schechter's concept of Catholic Israel. (See Rabbi Dr. Ismar Schorch, "Zacharias Frankel and the European Origins of Conservative Judaism." Judaism 30, Summer 1981, 344-354.) We cannot give this subject its proper attention here, but suffice it to say for now, the concepts of the Volksgeist and Catholic Israel mean that Jewish law is to be determined by what the laity desires. The laity may very well have been be limited to the observant laity (implicitly by Schecter and later explicitly by Rabbi Dr. Robert Gordis - see Evan Hoffman, "Factors of TraditionalismIn Conservative Jewish Law", JHI 9978, Doctoral Planning, Fall 2004, http://www.scribd.com/doc/17398726/Factors-of-Traditionalism-in-Conservative-Jew-Law-Evan-Hoffman, notes 50 and 96 and the body text relevant thereto), but the fact remains that ultimately, it is the laity's own desires, and not halakha, which is determinative. Is there really any epistemological difference between the laity's ruling based on its sensual desire for pork or intermarriage and based on a preference for extra/super-Torah Enlighenment values?

By contrast, David Hazony, in his introduction to Essential Essays on Judaism (ed. Hazony, Jerusalem: Shalem Press, 2002), "Eliezer Berkovits and the Revival of Jewish Moral Thought" (found also in Azure Summer 5761 / 2001 pp. 23-56), distinguishes the philosophy of Rabbi Dr. Eliezer Berkovits from Conservatism, saying

Yet there is a significant difference between Berkovits’ effort and that of these other scholars, which concerns the nature of the values which justify change. Underlying much of the argument of non-Orthodox scholars is an effort to justify change as part of an ongoing evolutionary process resulting from the continuous encounter between tradition and the evolving needs of the individual or society. In the words of Louis Jacobs, a prominent Conservative thinker: "The ultimate authority for determining which observances are binding upon the faithful Jew is the historical experience of the people of Israel"—meaning that history brings new situations before the Jewish people, and halacha must evolve accordingly. (Jacobs, Tree of Life, p. 230.) ... Robert Gordis, another leading scholar of the Conservative movement, expresses a similar belief when he writes that "tradition constitutes the thesis, contemporary life is the antithesis, and the resultant of these two factors becomes the new synthesis. The synthesis of one age then becomes the thesis of the next; the newly formulated content of tradition becomes the point of departure for the next stage." (Robert Gordis, "A Dynamic Halacha: Principles and Procedures of Jewish Law," Judaism 28:3, Summer 1979, p. 265.) In these and similar writings, the emphasis is upon change as a response to new challenges posed by the flow of history, with little attempt to spell out exactly what are the eternal values, if any, that the openness to change is ultimately intended to preserve. Change is a product of the fluid encounter between the Jewish people and history, and therefore it does not follow any clear pattern; it is as variegated as history itself. As a result, it often becomes difficult to tell from these writings whether the need for change is determined through reference to principles that are themselves found within the Jewish tradition, or whether it is derived from somewhere else. (See, for example, Zemer, Evolving Halacha, pp. 44-57.)

From Berkovits’ standpoint, this view is hard to reconcile with the moral message of the prophetic texts. These were clearly meant to deliver a message whose importance rested not in its success as a "synthesis" between the traditional and the contemporary, but precisely in its ability to transcend the changing attitudes of history. Indeed, according to the Talmud it was the criterion of eternal validity that determined whether a given text was included in the biblical canon in the first place. (Megila 14a.) Instead, Berkovits understands change in halacha to reflect the careful, incremental adjustment of legal means to further moral ends that are themselves intrinsic to Judaism and unchanging. These moral ends are not an external "antithesis" with which the tradition must come to terms by changing its internal content in keeping with them; they are themselves the moral core of the same revealed message from which the law receives its authority. ... Berkovits writes [commenting on the Kuzari, as noted by Hazony], "The rabbis in the Talmud were guided by the insight: God forbid that there should be anything in the application of the Tora to the actual life situation that is contrary to the principles of ethics. What are those principles? They are Tora principles, like 'And you shall do that which is right and good in the eyes of the Eternal'; or 'Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace' or 'That you may walk in the way of good men, and keep the paths of the righteous'" (Berkovits, Not in Heaven, p. 19.) While the law may change, the values which underlie it do not; on the contrary, the purpose of change is to permit the continued advancement of the Bible’s eternally valid moral teaching under new conditions. This difference is felt in the way in which Berkovits levels his criticism of prevailing halachic practice. Berkovits believed that the halacha had ossified to the point of inflicting real damage on some of its own moral ends...

When calling for a reconsideration of the status of women in Jewish law, for example, Berkovits shies away from Enlightenment concepts such as liberty and equality, and instead invokes classical Jewish concepts such as human dignity, the protection of the innocent, and the covenantal symbolism which the institution of marriage is supposed to entail, in order to conclude that "we have reached a juncture at which the comprehensive ethos of the Tora itself strains against its formulation in specific laws." (Berkovits, Crisis and Faith, p. 121 [from "The Status of Woman Within Judaism" in his book Crisis and Faith, pp. 97-122].) In his theological writings, as well, Berkovits assumes that the Jewish tradition is driven by a set of moral values inherent to and derived solely from within that tradition. His Studies in Biblical Theology (1969) is an extensive and meticulous work dedicated to teasing out the essential moral principles of the Bible by analyzing its use of terms such as "holiness," "justice," and "truth." (Eliezer Berkovits, Man and God: Studies in Biblical Theology (Detroit: Wayne State, 1969).)

In this, Rabbi Berkovits would be similar, in my own opinion, to Rabbis Benzion Uziel and Haim David Halevi. Both were traditional Talmudists of the Judeo-Spanish school, neither ever attending university or having any reliance on Western values worth noting; as Rabbi Angel has put it to me, Rabbi Halevi was not a Modern Orthodox rabbi, but instead, he was simply a traditional rabbi of the old school, albeit with his head screwed on straight and with a loving heart in his breast. Nevertheless, Rabbi Halevi could say (Asei Lekha Rav 8:97, translated by Rabbi Marc Angel in "The Love of Israel as a Factor in Halakhic Decision-making in the works of Rabbi Benzion Uziel", Tradition 24:3, Spring 1989, pp. 1-20; cf. Rabbo Angel's Rabbi Haim David Halevi, Urim Publications, pp. 65f.), "The law came down on the side of the school of Hillel because its followers were sympathetic human beings, recognizing human frailty and the difficult challenges of life. They were sensitive to the human predicament and tended to be lenient in their rulings. ... Anyone who knew at first-hand our teacher, Rabbi Uziel of blessed memory, knows that his personality was stamped with the love of kindness and mercy to all people, and certainly to Jews, who are called children of God. It is not plausible that the heart that beat with pure love did not wield its influence on his general and halakhic thinking. I am witness that all his public service was deeply influenced by that love of Israel which infused him. ... How would it be possible that his halakhic thinking not be influenced in this direction?" According to Rabbi Halevi (Asei Lekha Rav, ibid.) and Rabbi Uziel (see Rabbi Angel's book, Loving Truth and Peace: The Grand Religious Worldview of Rabbi Benzion Uziel, Jason Aronson), such leniency is possible, however, only where a true Talmudic basis exists. That is, one cannot just rule based on compassion and mercy alone. Rather, compassion and mercy provide the justification for ruling based on minority opinions, novel understandings, etc., but those minority opinions and novel understandings and such must have real firm Talmudic basis. Rabbi Berkovits would agree; morality plays a role in ruling halakhah, but it itself alone, without some sort of technical Talmudic basis, is insufficient. And yet, nothwithstanding his refusal to rule without a traditional Talmudic basis, notwithstanding his lack of any university education, etc., Rabbi Halevi is perhaps the Orthodox poseq most often and most respectfully cited by Reform and Conservative poseqim, due to the fact that very often, Rabbi Halevi's rulings fit with their agenda, and and even when they do not, the non-Orthodox so respect Rabbi Halevi's rulings that they cite him, even if only to ultimately disagree with them. (Johnny Solomon, "Rabbi Hayyim David Halevy as the Orthodox poseq for the non-orthodox", Presented at the Jewish Law Association Conference, Manchester. 23rd July 2008. I am indebted to its author for sending this article to me.)

I agreed with Dr./Ms.(?) Kahana-Dror's overall thesis, but her reliance on Western liberal values, and her setting them up in opposition or at least in contradistinction to Jewish Torah values, with preference given to the former, tremendously worried me. If it weren't for the fact that I agreed with her thesis already before reading what she wrote, I'd surely, I have no doubt, have disregarded her message as worthless heterodoxy, in that I would have dismissed her entire argument (against the misogny of the Israeli batei din) as stemming from irrelevant non-Torah considerations. And even if one disagrees with me, and holds that it is quite proper and decent to rely on Western values over Torah values, will this succeed in aiding our victory over the Haredim? Regardless of what truth dictates, one must nevertheless craft one's rhetoric in such a way as to garner the most support. Will using the terms of Western liberalism in our discourse really help us gain favor in the eyes of the Orthodox world?

[1] For a most arresting illustration, see Rabbi Dr. Isaac Herzog, "John Selden and Jewish Law" in Judaism: Law and Ethics - Essays by Chief Rabbi Isaac Herzog, selected by Chaim Herzog, London / Jerusalem / New York: The Soncino Press, 1974. More generally, see, among the many sources that could be adduced: Fania Oz-Salzberger, "The Jewish Roots of Western Freedom" (Azure, Summer 5762 / 2002); Yoram Hazony, "The Jewish Origins of the Western Disobedience Tradition" (Azure, Summer 5758 / 1998); Yoram Hazony, "Judaism and the Modern State" (Azure, Summer 5765, 2005); Rabbi Dr. Joshua Berman, "What Orthodoxy Can Gain From Academic Biblical Studies: The Torah as Political Theory" (The Seforim Blog, 29 September 2009, http://seforim.blogspot.com/2009/09/joshua-berman-what-orthodoxy-can-gain.html). Several books which I have not yet been able to acquire but which, as far as I can tell, would seem to bear on this subject would include: Rabbi Dr. Joshua Berman, Created Equal: How the Bible Broke with Ancient Political Thought (Oxford University Press, 2008); John Dunn, The Political Thought of John Locke: An Historical Account of the Argument of the "Two Treatises of Government" (Cambridge University Press); Political Hebraism: Judaic Sources in Early Modern Political Thought, ed. Gordon Schochet, Fania Oz-Salzberger, Meirav Jones (Jerusalem: Shalem Press, 2008); Petrus Cunaeus, The Hebrew Republic (trans. Peter Wyetzner with introduction by Arthur Eyffinger, Jerusalem Shalem Press, 2006); Rabbi Dr. Jose Faur, The Naked Crowd: The Jewish Alternative to Cunning Humanity (Derusha Publishing, 2009); Professor Eliezer Schweid, Democracy and the Halakhah (analyzing the thought of Rabbi Haim Hirschensohn, University Press of America with the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, 2002). See also Rabbi S. R. Hirsch, "Jewish Communal Life", in Judaism Eternal (trans. Dayan Isidore Grunfeld, London / Jerusalem / New York: Soncino Press); this entire essay's thesis is showing from Judaism's own sources (without recourse to any Western liberalism) that the Jewish lay masses must involve themselves intimately in all Jewish communal matters, both civic and legal. (How the Haredim - whose apodictic and authoritarian philosophy of Da'as Torah is similar to Catholicism's papal infallability and ex cathedra rulings - can claim Rabbi Hirsch as one of their own is one of the vagaries of history, the possibility of whose being comprehended is amply illustrated by H. P. Lovecraft's The Cthulhu Mythos. Additionally, a reference to Orwell's Nineteen-Eighty-Four is again apt, this time to Winston Smith's occupation of systematic historical revisionism. Indeed, as Rabbi Dr. Aharon Lichtenstein would heartily affirm, even non-Jewish fiction can aid in the understanding of Judaism.)

[2] Actually, not only does my philosophy have much in common with Conservatism's, but it largely agrees as well with Rabbi Avi Weiss's explication of the Oral Law and halakhah in his "Open Orthodoxy!", Judaism 46:4, Fall 1997, http://www.yctorah.org/downloads/articles/aw-open-orthodoxy.pdf). V'ha-meivinim yavinu.) When I read Rabbi Dr. Daniel Gordis's summary of Conservative philosophy on this subject ("Positive Historical Judaism Exhausted: Reflections on a Movement’s Future (Conservative Judaism)". Conservative Judaism, vol. XLVII no. 1, Fall 1994/5755. http://danielgordis.org/sitefiles/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/Positive-Historical-Judaism-Exhausted-Reflections-on-a-Movements-Future.pdf), I found very little significant to disagree with him on. (See my response to him at http://michaelmakovi.blogspot.com/2009/08/positive-historical-judaism-exhausted-r.html.

US Military Aid to PA/Fatah Threatens Israel's Security, Strengthens Terrorists

Study: PA Double-Dealing against Israel and US Congress
by Maayana Miskin
Israel National News / Arutz Sheva

...

Journalist David Bedein, head of the Jerusalem branch of the NEPR, told Israel National News Sunday that the U.S. gives Fatah-affiliated PA forces training and military equipment, while at the same time the Fatah-led PA attempts to reconcile with Hamas, which the U.S. recognizes as a terrorist organization.

American aid to Fatah has not caused waves in the Israeli defense establishment due to the erroneous assumption that Fatah will fight terrorism, Bedein continued. “There was an idea that Fatah would be fighting Hamas and reducing terrorism,” and a drop in terrorism was credited to Fatah, he said.

The NEPR's research shows that the drop in terrorism was actually the result of IDF activity in Judea and Samaria, he said.

...

What the Israeli defense establishment needs to realize is that Fatah, and by extension the Fatah-led PA, is not interested in fighting radical Islamic terrorism, Bedein explained. Information and testimony from PA-controlled Arab cities in Judea and Samaria clearly shows that the PA continues to incite against Israel and plans to fight until the Jewish state is defeated, he warned. "The Fatah makes no bones about the fact that it will continue the war on Israel until the last Palestinian returns to his home in Israel from 1948.

“It's clear to anyone with eyes in his head that if Israel were to pull out its troops from, say, Beit Jalla [adjacent to Bethlehem, south of Jerusalem]... if tomorrow morning Fatah has exclusive control, then there will be firing from Beit Jalla on Gilo tomorrow morning,” he said, recalling the many shooting attacks on the Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo launched by PA terrorists in the early years of the Oslo War, also known as the Second Intifada.

Surprise-surprise: given that the PA/Fatah has NEVER promised to fight terrorism, and is rather in fact trying to forge stronger ties with Hamas, the US's military aid to the PA/Fatah is threatening Israel's security. Who'd have thought??!! You mean, when Abbas explicitly promised to resume terrorist activity against Israel, he actually meant it??!!

So, all of you who think America is Israel's biggest friend: what do you say to this? As far as I can tell, America is helping arm terrorists who will use the American military aid to snipe at Israeli cars and homes and detonate Israeli cafes. America, just how much innocent blood do you want on your hands?

How Goldstone May Have Doomed Abbas: Does Not Anyone See the Irony??!!

How Goldstone May Have Doomed Abbas
Khaled Abut Toameh
Jerusalem Post

To quote some excerpts:

Over the past three years, the international community invested billions of dollars in boosting the standing of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah faction among Palestinians.

...

In the eyes of most Palestinian political analysts, even a miracle would not be able to repair the collateral damage to Abbas's status following his decision last Thursday to withdraw a motion demanding that the UN Human Rights Council endorse the findings of the commission of inquiry headed by Justice Richard Goldstone.

...

The "scandal" is the best thing that could have happened to Hamas.

...

... especially not when the Palestinian public is so furious with Abbas "for helping Israel bury its war crimes in the Gaza Strip." Whoever put pressure on Abbas to withdraw the motion from the UN not only foiled Egypt's efforts to end the Hamas-Fatah crisis, but also played into the hands of the Islamic movement. Hamas's chances of winning another election are now higher than they were before the fiasco over the PA's handling of the Goldstone Report.

Hamas's message to the Palestinian public these days is: You see, we told you that Abbas and Fatah were puppets of America and Israel, and both act against the interests of our people.

Hamas and many disenchanted Palestinians have dubbed Abbas's decision a great sin and historic crime against the Palestinians. Others have gone as far as demanding that he and his advisers be put on trial for high treason - a charge punishable by death in the PA territories.

It's not that the popularity of Abbas and Fatah was high in the first place. Despite the improved economy and sharp decline in violence in the West Bank, many Palestinians continued to relate to Abbas and Fatah as "traitors," largely because of their close ties with the US and Israel.

...

If there's truth to the PA claim that its decision to ditch the Goldstone Report was taken as a result of American pressure and threats, then the Obama administration has effectively undermined and discredited Abbas and Fatah.

Forcing Abbas to return to the negotiating table at this stage will further undermine what's left of his credibility, especially now that many Palestinians are calling for his resignation and questioning his right to represent them in any negotiations with Israel.

Thanks to the recent mistakes made by the Obama administration, not only has Hamas's power grown, but it would be difficult to find a Palestinian who would agree to purchase a second-hand car from Abbas, let alone accept a peace agreement he brokered with Israel.

Does anyone not see the incredible irony?

Abbas's credibility has been undermined because he did what is just and would bring peace (closer) between Israel and the Arabs. Just like with Anwar Sadat, anyone amongst the Arabs who tries to have peace with Israel has his credibility undermined, if not his life ended.

What on earth then is Israel trying to do? Why on earth should Israel keep selling the ground beneath its feet to a people who so despises peace with Israel that the only way to strengthen their leaders is to undermine the peace process, and the only way to strengthen the peace process is to undermine their leaders?

Actually, I do not really believe that Abbas wanted peace with Israel at all; he himself promised to soon rekindle the terrorism of the Intifada. But if there was any semblance of a possibility of peace, it was with Abbas, and look where it has gotten him. His very relationship with the US and Israel made the Arabs distrust him, and his just and proper rejection of Goldstone - regardless of whether it required Obama's pressure - only further hurt his reputation. If having a relationship with Israel and the US, and if rejecting Goldstone - a farcical miscarriage of justice if there ever was one - lead to the Arabs' rejecting Abbas, then I believe we could not ask for a better litmus test of where the Arabs stand vis a vis Israel.

Yael Mishali: The New Assimilated Jews

I just read Yael Mishali's piece on Y-Net, The New Assimilated Jews.

I found the piece so fantastic, that I think I'll just quote the entire thing! However, I will bold those sections with which I am particularly interested, and I will comment on those sections after I first quote her entire piece:

A recent campaign by the Jewish Agency that aims to “save” modern-day assimilated Jews drew much criticism and apparently hit a raw nerve. “We’re lost? Missing persons? How dare you?” say these so-called assimilated Jews. After all, we served in the army and we pay taxes...well, that’s true. You may indeed be good Israelis. Yet in Jewish terms, and please forgive this politically incorrect approach, you are assimilated Jews.

In my view, conversion should be a very simple and easy process. Anyone who wishes to become Jewish (for all the good or odd reasons,) can be Jewish. Orthodox, Reform, Conservative, or Secular conversation – anything goes. Each convert should do what he believes in. The only condition is that the conversion process will have Jewish purpose.

Jewish purpose has to do with culture, history, tradition, language, customs, etc. Under no circumstances do all converts have to promise to adhere to the Torah and the mitzvoth. The demands should be minimal in terms of knowledge, based on the principles of each denomination.

Jewish survival

And this leads me to the issue of assimilated Jews – because how will we know the minimal level of knowledge of those wishing to join us? How will we draft the admission test? That’s not a problem at all. We’ll just go over to the assimilated Jews and learn from them.

The modern-day assimilated Jew may have not had a chance to marry a gentile yet, but he still fits the definition well. The modern-day assimilated Jew learned in the national education system, and upon graduation he lost any connection to the Hebrew calendar. He has no idea about many basic Jewish concepts and doesn’t know the difference between the Reform and Orthodox. He doesn’t remember whether Purim came before Passover and Hanukkah or whether the Greeks or the Romans (or the Turks maybe?) destroyed our Temple.

In the best case scenario, the assimilated Jew will know something about some Zionist concepts, but let’s not count on that.

In my view, an assimilated Jew is anyone whose Judaism has no significance in his own eyes. He was born Jewish, and now just leave him alone. In my view, an assimilated Jew is a type of gentile. Perhaps even worse.

Both gentiles and assimilated Jews can be great people, and most of them are indeed like that. Yet in Jewish terms, they are as lost as it gets. And why do I care about all this? Jewish survival.

I think Mishali's article is absolutely fabulous.

First, her views on conversion are spot-on. Aside from the Hagahot Mordechai (who advised that his opinion not be followed, as it deviated from the tradition passed to him by his teachers) and Rabbi Yitzhak Shmelkes (who followed Hagahot Mordechai and ignored the latter's disclaimer), historical Jewish law has allowed for the conversion of candidates who do not promise to keep the mitzvot. Rambam even allows (at least after-the-fact) conversion of someone who does not pledge to abandon idolatry! See here. According to traditional normative halakhic opinion, conversion to Judaism requires (besides mikvah, circumcision, and a Temple sacrifice when possible) only that the convert accept the efficacy of the conversion ritual and accepts liability for any non-observance of the commandments. Whether the convert will actually keep Shabbat for example is irrelevant; as long as the convert accepts legal responsibility for any Shabbat non-observance, accepting teh authority and jurisdiction of the halakhic system and reward and punishment (both humanly and Divine), this is enough.

Second, Mishali's views on Israelis being assimilated Jews are exactly correct. Long ago, Rav Kook wrote that someday, the Zionist enterprise would achieve all its material goals, and the Zionists would then mistakenly believe there was nothing left to strive for, and post-Zionism would set in. Then said Rav Kook, a religious whirlwind would eventually have to come and reawaken the people to the true authentic values and ideals. More recently, Rabbi Meir Kahane noted that if one lacks a religious reason to conquer the land of Israel, then one is a thief, and if one lacks a religious reason to avoid intermarriage, one is a racist. The early Zionist pioneers explicitly desired to divorce Israel from the Diasporic Jewish past. On all this, Rabbi Dr. Eliezer Berkovits says (Crisis and Faith (book) and "Crisis and Faith" (article in Tradition magazine)

The question, of course, is: what is our function, the function of the Jewish people, in such a [metphysical] scheme of [Jewish] history [which Rabbi Berkovits has just completed summarizing at length]? It would seem to us that no matter what our reaction to the scheme may be, we shall remain the witnesses. What God has started with us he will complete. Too much remains unfinished; too much awaits its justification; too much waits for its redemption. God will not die in his exile. As far as we are concerned the question is: shall we just endure our destiny or willngly embrace it? We shall not escape it. This is probably the most important conclusion that we ought to derive from the Jewish meaning of the Yom Kippur War. The State of Israel has been forced back into Jewish history. One of the fundamental mistakes of Zionism has been - and this was clear to some of us long before now - that it sets for its goal the normalization of the Jewish people. We shall return to our land; we shall have a state; our own government, judiciary, police, army. Jews will again be farmers, workers; they will be in all trades and professions. We shall speak Hebrew again and create a new Hebrew literature. In short, we shall be the same as all other nations. Zionism was trying to emancipate us from the Jewish destiny of the ages. It was attempting something new, to wean us of our involvement with a Divine plan with man and to seek salvation solely for our [physical and material] national exile [as opposed to seeking salvation for the moral-spiritual universal exile of Galut Shekhina, G-d and His ideal for the world being exiled in history and mankind]. The State of Israel was attempting to break out of Jewish history and to start an Israeli history. The Yom Kippur War forced Israel back into the classical destiny of the Jewish people. We have learned that as in the past the Jew was homeless, so a state of the Jews too may be homeless. Once again it has become true:

Lo, it is a people that shall dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned among the nations.

The course of history forces us back to our historic identity.

The attempt to escape Jewish destiny by way of Zionism has undermined the moral security of the people that dwells in IsraeL. Wide sections of Israeli youth, alienated from the historic continuity of Jewish people, have become unsure of the moral validity of our claim to the land of our fathers. And indeed, there is no Israeli claim to the land; there can only be a Jewish claim. Where there is no continuity, there can be no return. Only in the uninterrupted chain of all Jewish generations is the certainty to be found that this has been our land all through our exile, and has been taken from us by force. Our faith in G'ula, in the coming Redemption, has been our eternal protest against anyone who held possession of the land of our fathers. But this faith is inseparable from the historic destiny of our Jewishness. The moment we reject identification with it, our claim to the land of Israel can only be based on the batbaric right of conquest. We either return to the Holy Land or there is no land for us to return to.

Even more serious than the moral uncertainty of the claim, if it is to be based on Israeli history, is the puzzlement and the loss of bearing that has overtaken Israeli society in the wake of the Yom Kippur War. Much more serious than the political uncertainty regarding the future is the spiritual uncertainty concerning the historic destiny of this little nation in the arena of violence of "normal" nations. All this struggle, blood letting, sacrifice, endless hardships, what are they all for? Where is the end to it all? Is it worthwhile? The hidden cause of the traumatic shock of the war has been the sensing of the loss of historic purpose, the loss of a transcending national destiny. Zionism has attempted to replace Messianism. The vision of the future has been replaced by the desire for the immediacy of the present. A new national purpose was to be forged for this ancient people. What we got is manufactured national reality, trying desperately to cut its roots from the soil of past history. But no nation can live with a borrowed national destiny, nor can it survive by a plastic national identity. Zionism has its justification only as an instrument of Jewish Messianism. It did have this character in the early days of the Jewish resettlement in Eretz Yisrael. The idealism of the pioneers was a secularized manifestation of the Messianic hunger of the Jewish people of history. That is why it could withstand all the trials and tribulations and triumph. Now that it has spent its inherited resources, large segments of Israeli society are left with a rootless secularism, which, as it is without memories, so has it no expectations either. It is altogether of today and all its future can be nothing but an eternal repetition of today. What it holds for man, it must deliver now; its only rewards are the fruits of the passing hour. A nation cannot live by that. It drags a society down to the level of the crudest forms of a demoralizing materialism. Therein lie the causes of the most serious internal problems of Israeli society. If the tragedy of the Yom Kippur War wil bring home to us the futility of our desire to become a "normal" people and will induce us to recover the ethos of the Jewish stance in history in the context of Galut and G'ulah, it may yet be turned into a triumph of our struggle for survival within the messianic wave of world history. Only in that context can it be said that the State of Israel has come to stay. Of course, it is going to stay. The attempt to break out of that context has failed. It is going to fail again and again. The God of history will not let us go. We are not being asked. There is no escape for Israel from the historic destiny of Israel. The question is: shall we only endure it or find the ultimate meaning of our human existence in it by embracing it with resolute determination and dedication. There has hardly ever been a more worthwhile moment in history to be a Jew in the classical context of Galut and G'ulah than at this time of moral and spiritual exhaustion of the human race.

Third, her remark on assimilated Jews and Israelis being good humans but not good Jews calls to mind Rabbi Yitzhak Herzog's essay on the lulav in Judaism: Law and Ethics. Basing himself on the four species (the etrog with fruit and smell, the willow with neither, the myrtle with smell, and the date-palm with fruit - according to Hazal, these symbolize four kinds of Jews, variously with and without deeds and Torah-learning), Rabbi Herzog sees four kinds of Jews:
1) Those with smell alone - their reputations spread throughout the world, for they are great learned humans with culture and art and science. However, they have no Jewish fruit, doing nothing for the Jewish people and having no Jewish concerns or involvements.
2) Those with fruit alone - these are the backbone of the Jewish people, serving Jewish causes with little attention received from the world. They labor silently, constituting the masses of the ideal (as opposed to actually existent today) Israel.
3) Those with fruit and smell - those who serve the Jewish people and are simultaneously recognized by the world as being great cultured humans.
4) Those with neither - those who are neither great Jews nor great humans.

Rabbi Marc Angel on Rational Judaism, a Lesson for the Thinking Jew: An Interpretation of a Great Lecture - Shelomo Alfassa

Rabbi Marc Angel on Rational Judaism, a Lesson for the Thinking Jew: An Interpretation of a Great Lecture

Shelomo Alfassa

[This lecture was originally published on December 25, 2007 at http://www.alfassa.com/blog/2007/12/rabbi-mark-angel-on-rambam-and.html, on Shelomo Alfassa's “The Sephardic Perspective: The source for original political, social and historical commentary and observations from a Jewish worldview.” However, this location is no longer available, so I have reposted this article here – Michael Makovi. All text in brackets are my own additions. Except for bracketed text, or unless otherwise noted, all text is Alfassa's.]

Introduction: The following text is not a transcript of a lecture. This is just one man's write up, an interpretation if you will, about an extraordinary lecture, given by Rabbi Dr. Mark [sic: Marc] D. Angel, Saturday December 22, 2007. Rabbi Angel's lecture took me five hours to digest and expand upon here, and any errors are my own. It was an incredible lecture, and I present a summary here for all Jews of all background to read. If you are going to listen/read one thing by a rabbi this year--this is it. This article addresses two major problems we have in the Jewish world today. The audio version of the full lecture will be online, contact me for the link shelomo(at)alfassa.com.

[The online URL for the original lecture is http://www.merkaz.com/lectures/RABBI%20ANGEL.mp3, hosted by Merkaz Moreshet Yisrael, http://www.merkaz.com/. - Michael Makovi.]

Rabbi Mark [sic: Marc] Angel's original title was: "Rambam and the Philosophers: What Reason Can and Cannot Attain." I think it should have been called, "Rational Judaism, a Lesson for the Thinking Jew."

I am one of "those" people who find it difficult to get inspired by most rabbis and their, frequent, dull lectures. Of late, I find too many rabbis repeating subjects of fundamental substance, often delivered and brought down to a level that is so simple, and so full of subjective emotion, that I am jaded within the first few moments. This didn't happen when I had the pleasure to attend several lectures by Rabbi Mark Angel, Rabbi emeritus of the Congregation Shearith Israel, the historic Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue in New York City. Rabbi Angel's congregation was founded in 1655 and is the oldest congregation in America. The rabbi was born in Seattle's Sephardic community, his ancestors came from Turkey and Rhodes and he grew up speaking Ladino at home.

Rabbi Angel had come to speak as the scholar-in-residence at Sephardic Institute, one of the main Syrian synagogues in the Brooklyn, New York Jewish community. The event was sponsored by Rabbi Ricky Hidary's Mercaz Moreshet Yisrael.

* * *

Rabbi Angel spoke on several different topics, including rationalism, ignorance, and power. He started the Saturday evening conversation by introducing Baruch Spinoza, a 17th century Jew from Holland who is remembered as a great philosopher. Spinoza's ancestors were Conversos who fled from Portugal to escape the Portuguese Inquisition and return to Judaism. Spinoza came from a traditional family and learned Torah from great rabbis. Yet, before he was 30, he was excommunicated and considered an outcast and heretic to his religion because of his questioning of religion and the Bible. Spinoza became cynical about his religion for many reasons including those attributed to these two stories:

Rabbi Angel told that a young Spinoza was sent to a pious Jewish woman's home to retrieve a debt for his father. When the boy went to pick up the money, the woman attempted to trick him and keep some of the funds for herself. However, Spinoza caught her, and asked her for the rest of the money. Once home with his father, Spinoza said, "father-this is our religion? A woman is so pious but she tried to cheat me?"

Another case unfolds when the young Spinoza was in class and a rabbi told him he was not allowed to ask certain questions. "We don't want to hear those questions, they will confuse the other students." I believe Rabbi Angel was bringing up a point, that if the rabbis would have entertained Spinoza's questions, and even sat and spoke with the young man, he may not have ran away or turned against his religion. Rabbi Angel told that Spinoza, a rationalist, thought the Almighty endowed humans with reason--and He would not have provided us with such a virtue unless He wanted us to use it.

The past two reasons are only two of what may be many more reasons that Spinoza became obviously jaded and cynical, something we can see happening to both young and old Jews today. Rabbi Angel communicated that while we would never want our Jewish children to be like Spinoza, we must recognize there is a world outside of the Jewish people, there is philosophy and that there is value in it. We should allow our children to be exposed to it, but we should protect them.

Rabbi Angel quoted Rabbi Prof. David Hartman of the Jerusalem based Shalom Hartman Institute. He related that Rabbi Hartman indicates there are four ways of trying to deal with the world of Torah and the world of philosophy.

The first is "the way of insulation…we have the truth, they don't!...anything the world has to say is not relevant to us." Rabbi Angel tells us through this approach, [one that is certainly taken by the haredim] children aren't exposed to anything outside of the closed community. Children that are raised this way today, are taught that others outside of the community are bad, reform, goyim, etc. The rabbi said that while there is some logic to it, it is not a proper answer to the problem.

The second is to compartmentalize. To be one way on the outside, and maybe, another way on the inside. He used an example, that if you "dress religious" and look the part, your children will see you and think you are doing everything right, and they will learn to do everything right themselves. Rabbi Angel infers that this is not a proper way to be, because there is definitely a disjoint between the way you think and the way you act in the society around you. He said that there is no harmony in this manner.

The third way is to go the way Spinoza chose, and that is rejection. The rejection process says that if you have both the Torah and philosophy, and that if you decide that the latter is the truth, then you simply put aside the Torah, eliminating it all together.

The forth way is integration. In this method, you integrate both the Torah and general wisdom. You study them both, rationally, and from that process you are going to be a better person, this is the approach of Maimonides (RaMBaM). If you use a mathematical equation as an example, you will find that it is much more significant to comprehend how to calculate an equation and come up with an answer, then just knowing the answer. It is the path of thinking which educates. Rabbi Angel mentioned that the RaMBaM said there were many people that are ignoramuses of the law, people that skip the steps, people that if they know the answer, say, "Why do I have to do the calculations for? Analogous to this, Rabbi Angel remarked, the purpose of the Torah is not to just do misvot, but to understand why we are doing misvot. He added, that we shouldn't be doing misvot just in form, but we should understand the substance behind them.

I believe Rabbi Angel was commenting that if we truly understand--why we do--what we do--then we will be able to (and desire to), do it with more meaning. He said that while we will never understand God's ultimate reason and wisdom for some misvot, there is no reason not to want to understand and thus become closer to God as best as we can. Among many benefits, Rabbi Angel said that the advantages to ‘doing the calculations' is that it teaches us to think.

The RaMBaM indicates there are different ways to understand these passages. One group are very foolish and cynical people, they say that the stories of the great rabbis [the Hakhamim, commonly called Sages], don't conform to reason, so this means the Sages were unreasonable, and thus we won't listen to them. This, Rabbi Angel said, was the way of rejection. [This is the way Spinoza took, this is a way that does and has led many educated people away from Judaism.]

The RaMBaM encouraged the use of intelligence and rationalization, he gave reason tremendous power. Yet, he felt that if rationalization became too common and people interpreted everything based on how they felt it should be translated, we would end up in disorder. Rabbi Angel said that if we all tried to translate and interpret everything ourselves, we would end up with a religion that is no longer a religion, with people all doing their own thing. To counter this, the RaMBaM thought there had to be authority, had to be boundaries to prevent people from reinterpreting the Torah, and as Rabbi Angel mentioned, becoming like a "Spinoza."

The RaMBaM said that Sages were highly intelligent, and that if they said something that sounded unintelligent or foolish, we should understand that the Sages were speaking poetically, in illusions, they were discussing things which had a deeper hidden meaning. Rabbi Angel said the RaMBaM indicated that once you understand why the Sages spoke in such language, you realize their words were not foolish--but were wise. Yet, sometimes the Sages had things wrong, and the RaMBaM admits it. He said the Sages sometimes admit this too, for example, the Sages admit the Greeks knew better on certain issues such as Science. Rabbi Angel held that on where the Sages give medical advice, we should not listen to them, we should go to a physician. To paraphrase Rabbi Angel, "The Sages believed in things which are not aspects of our faith, such as shadim [demons], and thus we are not bound to accept this concept." Throughout this discussion on the RaMBaM, Rabbi Angel is trying to demonstrate that being a literalist, someone that takes the statements of the Sages for their face value (as well as stories of the midrash), is not proper.

RaMBaM's approach tells us we should take misvot at face value when there is no question about them. But, when there is a question about a certain misva, we should use reason to understand it, but always follow tradition; we should follow the words of our Sages, from generation to generation. Rabbi Angel tells that the RaMBaM's approach is a very difficult approach, and it has confidence in people's ability to think-and-it demands that we think. He adds that if we don't think to the best of our ability, that we are not in fact being religious.

Speaking of superstition again, Rabbi Angel brought up the absurd practice of treating the mesuzah on the door as a magical charm. On how when people have a problem, they put their hands on the mesuzah, or how people feel that a mesuzah can provide protection to the house. "That is not religion...the RaMBaM was absolutely against such practices." The rabbi said the custom of "checking" the mesuzot when something bad happens, is not a religious practice. He spoke of how people take holy items and put them near crying babies, and how this is not part of Judaism. He said the RaMBaM called people like this both fools and kofrim, deniers of God. He said the RaMBaM says "Torah was not given for this purpose...it is a terrible misunderstanding of Torah."

Rabbi Angel said that the RaMBaM was so very strong about this topic, because he knew religion could slip into a magical formula for some. The RaMBaM didn't want people to see religion like the pagans did where there was a salvation if you construed the right formula or mouthed certain words. The rabbi said Judaism is a thinking person's religion and that it is not for people who want shortcuts or magic. He said we are not a religion where we should do things without thinking about why we do them.

It is my interpretation, that Rabbi Angel supposed that the RaMBaM's ways attempted to halt creating people like Spinoza, people who are easily turned away from the Torah because they see superstitious or other ideas and stories as just ridiculous. He said, "If I was Spinoza's rabbi, I would teach him more of the approach of the RaMBaM." Rabbi Angel added that this approach, a rational one based on the RaMBaM, should be taken with today's Jewish children.

Rabbi Angel then moved on, telling that another other type of Judaism is based upon authoritarianism, xenophobia, intellectual unsoundness, superstitiousness, and other characteristics. He gave some examples including how a certain Rosh Yeshiva speaking at the latest Rabbinical Council of America convention said that rabbis' jobs are to marry people, burry people, counsel people, lead them in prayers, make them feel happy, etc. The Rosh Yeshiva said, "when it comes to thinking…to serious questions…stay out of it—come to us and we will give you the answer." Rabbi Angel said this frustrated him, and what people like this are really saying is, "We do the thinking for the Jewish people--you are not authorized to think!" He said they are restricting people's right to decide and use their own brain to decide. As a further illustration, he mentioned how the National Council of Young Israel has now restricted which rabbis can be hired around the country. How only a few select people will have power over who gets hired. Rabbi Angel said this demonstrates how a small group is attempting to control the larger organization. He said, increasingly small groups of people who call themselves Gedolim, are telling the average person--you have no right to think, to come to conclusions, nor to decide anything. These self-proclaimed leaders are saying, "You have an Algebra problem and you have an answer--just take the answer, don't worry about understanding the calculation which brought you to the answer." The rabbi said that these people are really telling us, "We don't want you to think, we have the answer, and we will give it to you."

Rabbi Angel said once this type of philosophy becomes dominant [which has rapidly become the norm in the Ashkenazi world and is not encroaching in the Sephardic world], it is the first sign of death. The rabbi said we are already beginning a process of intellectual, spiritual and cultural strangulation.

Shockingly, Rabbi Angel told the audience, that in Israel, most food has a kashruth supervisory stamp from the "Badatz of the Edah Hareidit," and that when you buy any of these foods you are supporting them. He revealed that the Badatz are a group that shares a Satmar philosophy that is anti-Israel as well as, "anti-all of us that don't follow their ways, they have civil wars among themselves, they even called for one hassidic rebbe they didn't like to be killed by a hitman." Rabbi Angel said the Orthodox Union (OU), supports Badatz of the Edah Hareidit, and that the OU in Israel called the Badatz of the Edah Hareidit "the best" kashruth supervision. In a mostly serious manner, Rabbi Angel confirmed, "Edah Hareidit are religious, their frum, because they wear black hats they look very religious, but they are insidious destroyers of the people of Israel, even among themselves they are killing each other, literally, figuratively and spiritually."

"We have lost our balance as a people," declared Rabbi Angel, "we don't even know what is right or wrong anymore." He said the people who are ultimately in charge, the office of the chief rabbinate, allow the Badatz to function by giving them permission. Rabbi Angel told a story which most people in Brooklyn know, then when young people go to learn in Israel, the first thing they are taught [brain washed] is to only trust the kashruth supervision of the Badatz. The rabbi lamented, "We have entered a Twilight Zone where self-appointed individuals are saying ‘we know best for you.'" He added that while these people think they know what is best for the Jewish people, all the facts demonstrate otherwise. He added that what these people are doing is not good for any Jews, Orthodox or other.

Rabbi Angel then spoke on the topic of midrashim, and how too many people take these old Jewish stories literally, when they should not be. He mentioned that at a recent conference in the USA, he heard a rabbi [Rabbi Nachum Eisenstein], stand up and say that anyone who believes the world is older than 5768 years, is a heretic, the person is not a Jew, the person is not going to go to heaven, the person cannot be a rabbi, etc. He said Eisenstein indicated that believing the world is only 5768 years old is a principle of Judaism--but it is not! Rabbi Angel indicated there were many more people and rabbis greater than Eisenstein that assumed the world was billions of years old.

Rabbi Angel said that the RaMBaM would say, if science could show, in a reasonable way, that is the universe is billions of years old, then we should accept that it is billions of years old. "You don't have to teach people to be morons," he said. Calling it an outrage, he told how some haredi teachers today are telling Jewish children that dinosaurs never existed, and that fossils are only buried dog bones which were swollen with the waters of the flood of Noah.

The rabbi told how an American man opened a New York style pizza shop in Israel but had rocks thrown through the windows because he allowed boys and girls to both eat in the restaurant at the same time. He said the American had a sign with the Statue of Liberty on it for which the haredim also attacked him. They said "liberty is not a value among us…freedom is not the issue, following the rules is the issue." Eventually the pizza shop was boycotted, closed and relocated. Rabbi Angel's overall theme was that we have brains, and we should use them, and we should not feel that we shouldn't. He spoke on how self-proclaimed rabbis including rabbis such as Ovadia Yosef, are speaking up on behalf of Jews, when they don't represent all Jews.

Rabbi Angel indicated he was worried some young people would succumb to this type of lifestyle. He said there were those who want to think, but feel a "thought mafia" was controlling them. "They want to live responsible lives, but they feel they are being strangled," he said, "The people want to stay with in the boundaries of the Torah, but the Torah is not properly being presented to them."

He said, while we don't have the answers to everything, it is important to be allowed to ask and question, and certainly understand that we can do this in a framework of the Torah, and that we should never feel oppressed by Judaism. He said both rabbis and laymen should take more active responsibility in their communities and that we all can do something. He said we should never let self-appointed cowboys be the spokesmen for Judaism. Rabbi Angel said we should never say "how can we win when there are more of them and they control the mikvahs, the kashruth, etc." He said we should at least protest and have our voices heard. He said we should build up a resistance to this by speaking to friends, children and others.

Rabbi Angel's new institute, The Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals, (www.jewishideas.org) plans to publish and distribute materials based on topics relating to this lecture and other topics. Rabbi Angel has a vision of Orthodox Judaism that is intellectually sound, spiritually compelling, and emotionally satisfying. It is based on an unwavering commitment to the Torah tradition and to the Jewish people, it fosters an appreciation of legitimate diversity within Orthodoxy.

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[Thus concludes Shelomo Alfassa's own text. The following text is Michael Makovi's own addition.]

See also Rabbi Marc Angel's new book, Maimonides, Spinoza and Us: Toward an Intellectually Vibrant Judaism, Jewish Lights Publishing: 2009. According to the publisher (http://www.jewishlights.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=JL&Product_Code=978-1-58023-411-5&Category_Code=):

A challenging look at two great Jewish philosophers, and what their thinking means to our understanding of God, truth, revelation and reason.

Moses Maimonides (1138–1204) is Jewish history’s greatest exponent of a rational, philosophically sound Judaism. He strove to reconcile the teachings of the Bible and rabbinic tradition with the principles of Aristotelian philosophy, arguing that religion and philosophy ultimately must arrive at the same truth.

Baruch Spinoza (1632–77) is Jewish history’s most illustrious “heretic.” He believed that truth could be attained through reason alone, and that philosophy and religion were separate domains that could not be reconciled. His critique of the Bible and its teachings caused an intellectual and spiritual upheaval whose effects are still felt today.

Rabbi Marc D. Angel discusses major themes in the writings of Maimonides and Spinoza to show us how modern people can deal with religion in an intellectually honest and meaningful way. From Maimonides, we gain insight on how to harmonize traditional religious belief with the dictates of reason. From Spinoza, we gain insight into the intellectual challenges which must be met by modern believers.

The reviews there say:

“Clever and insightful ... Sketches a Maimonidean approach to Judaism essential for Jews who are attracted to Torah but unwilling to turn off their brains. Based upon studious research and profound knowledge [yet] presented with a light hand and in an engaging manner.”
—Professor Menachem Kellner, Department of Jewish History and Thought, University of Haifa; author, Must a Jew Believe Anything? [and notably in connection with our present topic, also author of Maimonides' Confrontation with Mysticism – Michael Makovi]

“An intriguing and extended conversation between three voices: Maimonides, Spinoza, and Rabbi Marc Angel, an increasingly influential voice for openness and inclusivity in the contemporary Jewish community…. A fascinating attempt to bridge the centuries!”
—Rabbi Neil Gillman, PhD, emeritus professor of Jewish thought, The Jewish Theological Seminary; author, Doing Jewish Theology: God, Torah and Israel in Modern Judaism

“Makes the thought of Maimonides and Spinoza on vital topics of contemporary religious import accessible to readers with characteristic clarity and erudition. [Anyone] interested in achieving a mature and intellectually honest religious faith will be entranced and educated by the dialogue and concerns this uncharacteristically open Orthodox rabbi presents in this engaging book.”
—Rabbi David Ellenson, PhD, president, Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion

“Boldly attempts to revive the Maimonidean tradition, arguing for a spiritually vibrant yet intellectually sophisticated Judaism.”
—Dr. Marc B. Shapiro, Weinberg Chair of Judaic Studies, University of Scranton

“Accessible … engages the thought of Maimonides and Spinoza on issues of both perennial Jewish and general importance. I applaud Rabbi Angel’s lovely book.”
—Heidi M. Ravven, PhD, professor of religious studies, Hamilton College; author, Themes in Spinoza’s Philosophy

Rabbi Marc Angel on Rational Judaism, a Lesson for the Thinking Jew: An Interpretation of a Great Lecture -...