Who is a Ger?

Now that the dust has settled some on the geirus issue, below, you will find links to four articles which address the Geirus policy recently agreed upon by the RCA and the Chief Rabbinate in Israel. Two of the articles are written by dayanim, one by a well known congregational Rabbi and another a collaboration between a Rosh Yeshiva and retired congregational Rabbi. I will leave the reader to digest and take into consideration the purpose, meaning, vision and intent of each of the essays. It is worth the time to read through all four to better understand the flow of American and Israeli Orthodoxy.

I have written in the past of what I believe is a need for more unity and a common "gate keeper" within Orthodoxy. It appears to me that in terms of Geirus, the policy concluded by the RCA and the Chief Rabbinate is a significant step forward in bringing the Jewish people together and to set realistic and attainable road marks to conversion to Judaism. It has been implied that the role of the congregational/local Rav has been jeopardized as a result of this policy. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Rav's role has been strengthened by having a better idea how to prepare the potential convert (knowing what is expected from various dayanim and which beis din is a better choice for any particular candidate) and will help organize the time frame needed to do so. Potential converts also see the path that has been set up for them which eliminates the black hole experience for which some gerim have complained. (one person going through gerius once confided to me, {paraphrased}to the goyim I am a Jew, to the Jews I am a goy, when does this end?). Bringing Orthodoxy to common standards within the range of universally acceptable halachic boundaries should be the interest, goal, mission and purpose of every Orthodox Jew. Preventing the proverbial "I thought I was a Jew until...." conundrum should be the driving impetus.


(4 March 08) Conversion deal with Chief Rabbinate could diminish a major Jewish rift


(5 March 08) The Chief Rabbinate-RCA Deal: Two Views (Taking power away from the rabbis. Rabbi Marc Angel, and Rabbi Avi Weiss. Special to The Jewish Week)


Myths and Facts about the RCA's GPS - Geirus Policies and Standards
Mar 13, 2008 -- by Steven Pruzansky
Rabbi, Congregation Bnai Yeshurun in Teaneck, New Jersey
Treasurer, Rabbinical Council of America
Member, RCA's Geirus Policies and Standards Committee
Rosh Beit Din of the Beit Din L’Giyur in Bergen County, NJ.

An additional article to note in working through the conversion discussion:
Rabbis Form New Orthodox Organization

Jpost and Conservativist Propaganda

Top Masorti rabbi: We're allies of modern Orthodox
Dec 26, 2007 20:50 | Updated Dec 27, 2007 11:46
By MATTHEW WAGNER


Moreshet Avraham Synagogue, located in East Talpiot, looks like hundreds of Orthodox houses of prayer throughout the capital. Modest but inspiring respect, the Jerusalem-stone façade building is adorned with the typical Stars of David and constructed at a slight angle so congregants face the Temple ruins when they rise to pray to God.

Barry Schlesinger, a resident of the West Bank settlement of Efrat, is Moreshet Avraham's rabbi. With his full, graying beard and crocheted kippa, Schlesinger looks like any other modern Orthodox or religious Zionist rabbi.

But Moreshet Avraham is not your average Orthodox synagogue and Schlesinger is not a run-of-the-mill rabbi. Schlesinger is the president of the Masorti (Conservative) Movement's Rabbinic Assembly, and Moreshet Avraham is one of the most vibrant, growing Conservative communities in Israel.

Ahead of the Masorti Movement's 30th anniversary celebrations on Thursday and Friday at Kfar Maccabia, The Jerusalem Post met with Schlesinger to discuss Israeli-style Conservative Judaism.

"The difference between us and Orthodox Judaism is that we look more critically at the Shulchan Aruch [code of Jewish law]," says Schlesinger. "We are willing to go back to the sources, to the Talmud, to the early rabbinic authorities to reinterpret the Halacha. The most obvious example is the role of women. They are full participants, not just in prayer and Torah reading, but also as rabbis who make halachic decisions.

"In Efrat, there are incredible frameworks where Orthodox women are learning Torah at a super-high level. But that is where it stops. You don't have women making halachic decisions."

Schlesinger says Moreshet Avraham and other Conservative communities are traditional enough that Orthodox Jews feel comfortable with the prayers and rituals, and at the same time secular Jews can participate without feeling intimidated.

Nevertheless, Schlesinger does not deny that Conservative Judaism is challenging.

"I am not worried about scaring people away because I expect too much of them," says Schlesinger, who, if asked by his congregants, tells them not to drive on Shabbat and is opposed to same-sex commitment ceremonies and the ordination of homosexual rabbis.

"We have to be clear about our demands and let our congregants know that we are totally committed to Halacha and mitzvot," he says. "But at the same time, we must not be oppressive or threatening, rather challenging and engaging. We should feel comfortable bringing people from all backgrounds into our communities without worrying whether we have to lower standards of commitment. I believe that when you make demands, you communicate seriousness, and that attracts people. If people don't feel challenged, they lose interest. We have to be open about our expectations, and people will respect us for that."

Schlesinger denies that the Israeli Conservative Movement is more stringent in its approach to practice and ritual than the American Conservative Movement.

"I'd say we share the same spectrum of opinions - Left, Right and Center. Just like in the US, we solve our differences through dialogue. Despite dissent, we part as colleagues and friends. We hug each other while keeping dry under the same umbrella."

Schlesinger, who is in his early 50s, grew up in a modern Orthodox household in Englewood, New Jersey. He immigrated to Israel and got involved in community activism, eventually becoming the head of the community center in Jerusalem's Old City. When he was in his mid-40s, Schlesinger decided to pursue a master's degree at the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies. He said his mid-life decision to become a Conservative rabbi had been heavily influenced by Rabbi David Golinkin, Schechter's president and senior halachic authority.

Despite his decision to become a Conservative rabbi, Schlesinger's wife and children have remained Orthodox.

"But while I am nominally Conservative, there has been no change in my practice of Judaism. If anything, today I do more mitzvot than I did then.

"We have more things in common with modern Orthodoxy than things that divide us," he continues. "For instance, the shmita issue: We both believe in the Israeli economy, we are both Zionists. Tzohar, like the Reform and Conservative movements, used the Supreme Court to effect a change in the rabbinate's decision."

The reference was to a Supreme Court petition brought by Tzohar, an organization of liberal modern Orthodox rabbis who protested the Chief Rabbinate's stringent stand on vegetables grown by Jewish farmers in the shmita (sabbatical) year. Tzohar, along with a coalition of Jewish farmers and produce wholesalers, ended up winning the Supreme Court case, forcing the rabbinate to back down.

However, Schlesinger admits that Tzohar and other Orthodox organizations distance themselves from non-Orthodox streams of Judaism. In fact, one of the sharpest criticisms leveled at Tzohar by the rabbinate was the claim that Tzohar rabbis were acting like their Reform and Conservative counterparts. Tzohar went to great lengths to prove that its position on shmita was strongly based on Orthodox sources, and it enlisted leading Orthodox rabbis to gain credibility.

Nevertheless, Schlesinger sees in modern Orthodoxy a natural ally and partner. "The two of us can change the face of religious observance. We can work it out with them as comrades."

Schlesinger says he has two main objectives for the future.

"First, we would like to reshape our image in Israel to show that we are a true synthesis of modernity with halachic observance. Second, we want to continue to produce outgoing, compassionate and smart rabbis who can at one and the same time present a clear message of what is expected of his or her congregants and still be sensitive to each congregant's postmodernist narrative."

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The APRPEH comments on this article were posted to JPOST's talkbacks. Talkback commenter "aviel" labeled me along with a couple of other participants "talebans". I proudly wore it as a badge of honor. I have only posted the other talkbacks related to my comments. Conservativist attempts to gain recognition in Israel are clearly damaged by their comrades in North America. With such friends, they need no enemies. Even in Israel, Conservativist Judaism is pretty much recognized as a social movement not legitimate religious expression, (IMHO).

Talkbacks

1. Halacha and the Conservationist movement

you cannot simultaneously say you are "totally committed" to Halacha and talk about changing it. this is dishonest communication. What Schlesinger is saying is no different than the Reformists, that is, what has meaning to me will be MY halacha, whether that is self-imposed standards or no standards.

APRPEH - USA (12/26/2007 23:05)

9. To the Talebans #1-3

Why does Tosefta Megillah mention that a woman can get an aliyah to Torah? Much of the "holy and incancellable" Halachah are concensus decisions by the rabbis even in cases where there are more options. Yishar koach, masortis! Words of a Modern Orthodox who adheres to this menschlicher community.

Aviel - Israel - (12/27/2007 17:13)

13. Women Aliyahs to Aviel #9

even as a Taleban, I wish to differ with you. Quoting Rbi Hershel Shachter: "The Tosefta (Megillah Chap. 3) records that theoretically, a woman should be permitted to get an aliyah (to the Torah), however the Rabbis did not allow this because of kvod hatzibbur. This has clearly been the universal practice in Klal Yisroel for close to two thousand years".

APRPEH - Taleban #1 - USA (12/27/2007 18:31)

14. Women and aliyahs to Aviel (pt 2)

The Torah leaves the Mesorah in the hands of the leaders of each generation, like it or not that is the way it is. Real Rabbonim, based upon the works of previous generations determine the impact of the Halacha given the circumstances at their time. Not to change it (G-d forbid) but to make it work meanwhile protecting the integrity of the law itself.

APRPEH taleban #1 - USA (12/27/2007 18:32)

15. women and aliyahs to Aviel (pt3)

This is not the goal of Conservatism and Reformism. This discussion brings to light one method Conservativism "rahbis"s use which is to take a theoretical exception and make it a rule, or sort of rule. In Reformist and Conservatism, there are no rules. Rules in these "movements" are meant to be broken when convenient.

aprpeh - taleban #1 - USA (12/27/2007 18:33)

21. To # 3 et al.

This chauvinistic fixation on women is amazing - as if they were not normal human beings. No.3, you are obviously brainwashed and consider your inferior position a compliment - after all, you don't have a breira . As for the K'vod hatzibbur - obviously in this view the females, kept away from the Torah, must do without kavod. That's why Masorti and Orthodoxy will never meet common ground.

DAvid - US (12/27/2007 19:51)

23. to David #21

No David. the continuing effort to turn women into men is not kavod for women. it is batuling the differences between men and women which is clearly an un-halachic thing to do. everyone man and woman is equal before HaShem. The privileges of ritual do not affect that. I hope you do not substitute a commoner notion of equality for the Torah's notion of Btzelem Elokim.

aprpeh taleban #1 - USA (12/27/2007 20:42)

38. To taleban # 23 and his kavod
No taleban # 1, Conservative women have not turned into men. Come and see them sitting next to their husbands - they look 100% female !!! Ritual and Torah is not a "privilege" but a right for the entire Am Yisrael, not just for half of it. If that bothers your precious kavod, too bad. Get over it !
David - US (12/28/2007 20:06)

39. to David #38
Dear David This taleban grew up and was not only active in a Conservationist congregation but actually worked in the movement. I know exactly what you are talking about. Sleeveless dresses, touching, kissing, short skirts getting aliyahs. It isn't in the dress for which the women seek to be men, but in the rights for which halacha designates to men. The kavod of the tzibor can be seen in various ways over the millenneum.
aprpeh - taleban #1 - USA (12/28/2007 21:55)

Review - Opening Up Orthodox Judaism

Opening Up Orthodox Judaism

Gaining visibility in its eighth year, Yeshiva Chovevei Torah presents challenge to centrist and right-wing elements of Orthodoxy.

by Steve Lipman, Staff Writer

In a small classroom across Broadway from Columbia University, Moshe is having a meltdown one recent afternoon.

Moshe, in his late 20s, is reluctantly unburdening with his rabbi about his drinking problem. Depressed, almost suicidal, unhappy with his family life, Moshe talks in shrugs and sullen grunts. The rabbi, leaning forward in his chair, listens sympathetically. After a while, he convinces Moshe to make an appointment the next day with a mental health professional. "It’s not going to help,’ Moshe declares. "Rabbi, life’s not getting any better."

Moshe and the rabbi grow silent. And a group of young men sitting around a large table in the classroom break into applause.

Like the other men in the room, Moshe (not his real name) and the rabbi (not a real rabbi, yet) are rabbinical students, taking part in a pastoral counseling class at Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School. To learn pastoral skills, students assume the roles, assigned at random, of rabbi and congregant.

The role-playing, say the founders of the eight-year-old, Modern Orthodox school that is housed in the Robert K. Kraft Family Center for Jewish Student Life, is one of many distinctive marks of an institution that combines the standard curriculum of a yeshiva with such innovations as leadership retreats and psychiatrist-directed process groups and fund-raising training.

Chovevei Torah (Hebrew for lovers of Torah), the first major Modern Orthodox rabbinical training center established in this country since Yeshiva University more than a century ago, is the creation of Rabbi Avi Weiss, spiritual leader of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, better known in many circles for his liberal brand of Orthodoxy and his decades of political activism on behalf of Soviet Jewry, Israel and other causes.

The yeshiva has grown from its original nine semicha students to 45 today, while drawing criticism in some parts of the Orthodox world. Rabbi Weiss’ vision of an "Open Orthodox Judaism" — open taking a capital O to brand it as a movement, like Modern or Centrist Orthodox Judaism — that grants respect to feminism and other branches of the religion has earned the opposition, often clandestinely, of other organizations.

YCT rabbis in some cities report opposition when they try to join local rabbinical boards. The yeshiva withdrew its application for its ordainees to join the Rabbinical Council of America, the central rabbinical group of the Modern Orthodox movement, when it became apparent that the application would be denied. And the National Council of Young Israel recently ruled that any candidates to head its 150 congregations had to submit to a screening by a National Council-appointed committee; the decision was seen as an attempt to keep Chovevei Torah rabbis out of Young Israel synagogues.

Young Israel’s action is the latest implicit recognition of the growing viability and visibility of Chovevei Torah. Many view the creation of Chovevei Torah as an implicit critique of Yeshiva University’s perceived shift rightward, an attempt to produce pulpit rabbis able to relate to and lead Orthodox congregants firmly entrenched in American society.

The opposition, says Howard Jonas, a Riverdale businessman and philanthropist who is a major financial supporter of YCT, is "a nuisance," not a hindrance. "It’s an unsuccessful campaign. We have more people applying [for enrollment] than we can accept. We have more jobs [open to Chovevei graduates] than we have graduates."

Rabbi Weiss agrees. "I really don’t take note" of the opposition, he says. "It has virtually no impact on us."

YCT enrollment this year is 45, mostly clean-shaven men in their 20s who favor large, colorful knitted kipot. The school has emerged as a leading producer of Modern Orthodox rabbis for pulpits, teaching positions in day schools and Hillel leadership posts on college campuses, providing competition not only for men ordained by YU, but by haredi rabbis who had taken many of those jobs in recent decades.

"We are about recruitment, education and placement," says Rabbi Weiss, who was ordained by Yeshiva University in 1968 and taught at YU’s Stern College for Women for decades. "The mission of the yeshiva is to produce leaders."

The rabbi stresses that YCT is a rabbinical school, not a theological seminary. Its emphasis is not

A constant presence at the yeshiva, usually dressed in a cardigan sweater and no tie, Rabbi Weiss is available to confer with students. But he has delegated day-to-day operations to Rabbi Dov Linzer, whom Rabbi Weiss recruited a decade ago from the kollel (an advanced learning program) in Boca Raton, Fla., and to other advisory committee members and teachers, including Rabbi Saul Berman, founder and head of the now-defunct Edah, an organization associated with the liberal stream of Orthodox Judaism.

Together, the faculty designed the yeshiva "from scratch," Rabbi Weiss says, just as psychiatrist Michelle Friedman designed the pastoral counseling program.

Torah lishma, learning Torah for its own sake, but an education centered on the needs of a community rabbi. The men ordained by Chovevei Torah are expected to serve in pulpits or classrooms, not, as is the case at many other yeshivot, to become lawyers or accountants with an extensive Talmudic background.
Not A One-Man Yeshiva

"I’m not the yeshiva," Rabbi Weiss cautions.

"There is a tendency to identify a yeshiva with its founders," says Rabbi Tsvi Blanchard, a CLAL staff member who teaches Jewish philosophy and spirituality at YCT. "The yeshiva is much bigger than any one person. The guys are not Avi Weiss clones.

"I had the same concerns when I came here five years ago," Rabbi Blanchard says. Like him, many of the rabbis teaching at YCT come from haredi educational backgrounds.

Rabbi Weiss, says third-year student Devin Villarrea, "explicitly made a conscious effort to keep his politics out of the yeshiva."

All the students know Rabbi Weiss’ activist background, but activism is not part of the official or unofficial curriculum, students say. "No one yet has taught me how to chain myself to a door," says Seth Winberg, a first-year student, an allusion to Rabbi Weiss’s many protests at places like the United Nations or the convent at Auschwitz.

Rabbi Linzer, who was recently promoted from the school’s rosh yeshiva to dean, notes that "from the outset we recognized that a central role of a rabbi today is the pastoral role. We have heard rabbis in the field say to us, ‘I never got the training you guys are offering.’"

During a pre-Chanukah inspirational speech in the YCT beit midrash last week, Rabbi Weiss urged his students to strongly consider working outside of the Greater New York area after ordination. "There is a community that exists outside the tri-state area," he said. "We’ve got to create a culture of going out of town. We have a responsibility to these communities."

Think Peace Corps, Rabbi Weiss said.

The students, sitting in front of laptop computers, listened respectfully. If they are like past ordainees of the school, most will end up out of town; according to a map produced by Chovevei Torah, its rabbis have found positions in congregations across the U.S. and Canada, many in prominent synagogues.

The beit midrash, a large hall on the sixth floor of the Kraft Center, looks like any other yeshiva study hall, lined with bookcases that bulge with the Talmud and the Code of Jewish Law. The learning schedule also is standard – morning to night classes in Gemara and Jewish law, and chavruta sessions with learning partners.

That, in addition to the mandatory pastoral counseling and social action classes designed to help produce rabbis who can handle the demands of 21st century congregations.

"This is an Orthodox institution," Rabbi Weiss says.

"This," says Rabbi Blanchard, "is a classic semicha program. It’s definitely not an easy semicha. It’s not graduating half-baked kiruv (outreach) rabbis. We would not have credibility [in the wider Orthodox world] if we did not offer the same semicha program,"

Critics of Chovevei Torah, who tend to critique the school’s level of Jewish learning or its commitment to halachic standards, do not "have a clue what is going on internally at YCT," says an observer who is familiar with it and Yeshiva University. He asked that his name not be used.

The liberal reputation of Rabbi Weiss and of Rabbi Linzer, particularly in their willingness to engage with non-Orthodox denominations, "led to the sense that they are crossing the line," that Chovevei Torah offers an education that is not consistent with normative Orthodox Judaism, the observer says. "Some of this is perception rather than reality. It’s not [about] what’s going on in the beit midrash."

Has the success of Chovevei Torah had any effect on Yeshiva University, pushing its policies to the left?

"I don’t see it – in the same way that YU has not changed in response to Lander, which in on the right," the observer says. He is talking about the Lander College for Men, a seven-year-old Orthodox institution in Kew Gardens Hills, Queens, that combines a college education with a yeshiva program.

For most congregations around the country in the market for an Orthodox rabbi, the friction between Chovevei Torah and other Modern Orthodox institutions is strictly a New York City affair.

"In the end, they always hire the best candidate," Jonas says.

Roberta Goodman, former president of Congregation Sherith Israel in Nashville, says her synagogue received pressure – she is reluctant to give details – not to hire Rabbi Saul Strosberg, who was ordained by Chovevei Torah, for a pulpit opening two years ago. The rabbi says he also was urged, "based on the fact that I went to Chovevei," to withdraw his application.

He did not withdraw. He was hired. "We determined that we needed to hire the person who was going to meet the needs of our community," Goodman says. "Hands down, it was Rabbi Saul. It was the best decision we ever made. He is warm. He is able to relate to everyone. The community loves him," she said, calling him "the living embodiment of Ahavat Yisrael [love of one’s fellow Jews]."

Rabbi Michael Broyde, a prominent pulpit rabbi in Atlanta and a dayan, or decisor, on the RCA’s Beth Din of America, wrote a public letter several years ago questioning Chovevei Torah’s "inter-denominational interactions within Judaism," as well as its "interfaith cooperation" and views on working with gays and lesbians.

He declined to be interviewed for this article. But a year and a half ago, when Rabbi Broyde, a founder of Atlanta’s Torah Mitzion Kollel, needed to hire a rosh kollel to lead the institution, his choice was Rabbi Zev Farber, who was ordained by Chovevei Torah.

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I do not intend to enter into the subject of the "Orthodoxy" status of Chovevi Torah or review the well known history of events that have characterized the recent past of the school. There are plenty of places online to engage in that discussion.

What I do wish to look at is the nature of the above article and whether or not it contributes to the general discussion or has, possibly another agenda.

My initial reaction is that a school which seeks recognition as an "Orthodox Yeshiva" (albeit - Open?) does not support it's cause with an endorsement article from what is arguably NY's most "conservativish" of Jewish newspapers known outside of NY.

What I do wish to convey is my anxiety over an article which seems to highlight and glorify itself over the rifts in the Orthodox world, pointing out Yeshiva University (implicitly centrist) being pulled from Lander (described as on the "right"). No where is the equation concluded that YCT is on the "left", only Rabbis Weiss, Linzer and Berman earned that title. The angle of the writer can be seen in the discussion of the National Council of Young Israel's decision to have a national review of applicants seeking Rabbinic positions in one of their member congregations. The article pains itself to say this is aimed at YCT. Maybe, and if this is the case, so what?

Why didn't the writer say the same about the Israeli Chief Rabbinate discontinuing automatic recognition of North American "Orthodox" conversions? Is it possible that the Rabbinate was led to this action due to reports coming from the US regarding YCT? Is the argument a fair one? Should it have been discussed in the article? Is it a sign of strength or weakness within “Orthodoxy” that these conversations are taking place?

The writer chose to dwell on the disagreements within “Orthodoxy” with minimal attempt to actually dive beneath the surface. The best example is the RCA non-vote. The writer was satisfied to merely report that Chovevi's application was withdrawn due to a lack of support for it’s being included amongst the gatekeepers of “Modern Orthodoxy“. Why? No help from the article on this point. Is it possible that “Orthodoxy” is flourishing and can demand particular standards be met for acceptance? Is it possible that “Modern Orthodoxy” is finally blazing a trail back to it's roots and away from it's long drift toward being defined as in “the eye of the beholder“? The implication that the RCA non-vote drew little attention outside NY is far from true. It drew little attention in those places where “Orthodoxy” is not a well defined concept, religiously or politically.

Now I am in the camp of those who prefer to avoid labeling Jews which may seem to be a contradiction to those who read my posts and in particular this one. But since this article seeks to shine light on the differences within the flow of “Orthodoxy”, I find myself drifting in the opposite direction. The defining of channels of “Orthodox” leaves a reader with the need to separate rather than unite; Lander is the right, YU is the center/mainstream, YCT is left, RCA is mainstream/right, NCYI is right, etc. As I have presumed, this is the purpose of the article. YCT has not helped it’s cause agreeing to cooperate with this writer and newspaper. Those who sought to help YCT have hurt it’s case for widening it’s acceptance by agreeing to be interviewed.

I have to make an additional observation concerning the left in general bringing a closure to the criticism of the New York Jewish Times and fitting nicely into the discussion . That is, we have been discussing in a larger sense the idea of an unclearly defined “open” yeshiva. The writer, IMO wanted to expose “Orthodoxy’s” woes. What then is “open” and to whom? The liberal truth test for which the writer failed is to acknowledge that differences are not necessarily subject to good vs. bad. When it comes to liberals, my way is the only way. True “openness” in thought allows for a free flow of ideas, analysis of strengths and weaknesses. The cream then rises to the top. The article (more of an editorial) has an opinion and seeks to discredit those who disagree.

My advice to Rabbis Weiss, Linzer and Berman:

1) Change the marketing piece. drop the meaningless word “open”. This has been antagonistic from the outset and insulting to the many thousands involved in “inreach” and counseling years before Chovevi was ever conceived

2) Stress your similarities not differences. The Jewish world has enough tension, follow your own mission and help to unify Jews and stop dividing with self-righteous (imho) pretensions of re-defining “Orthodoxy”

3) Keep the Catholics out of the Beis Midrash - no offense to Catholics intended. If you wish to be “modern Orthodox” at the very least pay attention to those things that HaRav M. Soloveitchik OBM strongly discouraged and avoid them.
4) Lower your profile for awhile. Credibility/peacemaking often comes after a period of quiet. Quiet is good for the soul.

5) Acknowledge that YCT’s campaign of acceptance has contributed to strained relationships between “Orthodox” institutions. Commit to damage control and repair of the breach.

There can be room within a wider umbrella of “Orthodoxy” for various channels and approaches. Rabbis are needed for many different positions within “Orthodox” institutions. Jewish organizations have different needs. Like those Jewish institutions mentioned in the article, some may find that YCT graduates fit their particular cultural liking (leaving aside for the now the argument made in my previous post concerning the membership of “movements” dictating practices either on the micro level of the individual institution or the larger “movement” itself and the implication of this for ‘Orthodox’ organizations). What is clear however, is that for a wider umbrella of “Orthodoxy” to function the role of the gatekeeper (RCA in this case) must be upheld. The setting of standards is crucial in order to produce harmony and unity for all Jews. Without, we risk returning to something that American Jewry resembled before the national Orthodox associations came on the seen, namely, local autonomies; questions concerning the halachic status of geirus, kashrus, eruvin, mikvas, etc. This is not the goal of YCT, I believe but an outcome which could result from it’s not changing course and a point well worth noting. Far fetched? Maybe. Possible? yes.

Now on a less serious note, some readers may have noticed that YCT recently ran a flash advertisment on the Israel National News website. Below, see a screen shot of the ad. Notice anything unusual? No rewards for correct answers will be given but leave a message if you like




EDITED - 26 DECEMBER
YCT ad has been fixed:



16 January: Blogger seems to have lost the original advertisement so I have re-uploaded the picture:

To Sanctify the Profane

National Jewish conference focuses on youth
More than 3,000 leaders expected at Nashville event

By COLBY SLEDGE
Staff Writer

Published: Monday, 11/12/07
The gathering sounded like a college football game, complete with pep-rally music and pennant-waving students.

Instead, the scene was the United Jewish Communities' annual General Assembly, which is expected to bring more than 3,000 Jewish leaders to Nashville this week. The event runs through Tuesday at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel and Convention Center.

With about 8,000 Jews in Nashville and around 20,000 statewide, Tennessee's Jewish community is the smallest to ever host the conference.

"It's really been quite an undertaking," said Judy Saks, community director for the Jewish Federation of Nashville. Saks' organization is teaming with similar chapters in Chattanooga, Knoxville and Memphis to provide volunteers for the event.

Although discussion topics will vary, the overwhelming issue for Jewish leaders is the same facing other religions: figuring out how to keep younger generations involved.

"That's the big question, and if you have the answer, we'll pay you a lot for seminars," Saks said. "It's probably going to involve a complete change in the way we are doing things."

Students get involved

More than 200 students from colleges ranging from the University of Michigan to Vanderbilt University are expected to attend the conference, which includes sessions on involving young adults in Jewish life.

"I'm here to learn a lot more about my Jewish identity," said Jon Hurst-Sneh, a University of Kansas student. "We're here to realize our religion."

Hurst-Sneh was among about 60 Jewish students and young adults who volunteered at the Nashville Rescue Mission on Sunday morning, sorting clothing, preparing food and speaking with men and women at the complex.

Volunteer and service work are likely to play a prominent role in future Jewish teaching of students, said Saks.

"They really want to put the things that they have learned in religious school to work, and one of those things is helping others and involving younger people," Saks said.

The students and other attendees will have several prominent leaders, Jewish and otherwise, to look to during the conference. Sunday's speakers included Gov. Phil Bredesen, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will address the assembly Tuesday morning.

"Judaism doesn't stand between being secular and being orthodox," said Pnina Gaday, an Ethiopian Jew who fled to Israel and now leads a student group in Tel Aviv. "Orthodoxy is scaring a lot of students. There are a lot of ways to be Jewish on both sides."

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Why do college age youth go the GA to learn about yiddishkeit? Why not spend a semester in Yeshiva? Today, there are plenty of "kiruv" or better "in-reach" (read it as enrich) yeshivas for boys and girls which will inspire growth in Judaism not only by advancing their knowledge of Torah but by spiritually motivating the 'soul' of the wandering and lost Jew. Indeed, all Jews are of one soul. (for reference material on the single neshama of Israel and the ideas implications, see Chassidic Dimensions, Shochet).

One would do well to begin this path with a desire to cling to HaKodesh Baruch Hu while overcoming the urge to look for an excuse not to do so. This is a direct challenge to the "I need to be inspired" crowd. It isn't inspiration so much which is lacking but commitment.

I would bet that most people making the "inspiration" argument have either played organized sports, taken up an instrument, dance, art or any hobby which must be nurtured. In the effort to learn or master the necessary skills, did they need inspiration or commitment? Clearly, the matter is one of desire to achieve. No one gives this to a Jew, it must come from inside. The inheritance is a gift but it must be brought out from the shell it is hidden in. But what of the end product? A sports player plays the game in the end, and the piano keys are stroked producing a melody. What of the Jew? Here we come to the loggerhead. What is the purpose of this search for meaning or spirituality? Is it to have some sense of satisfaction or accomplishment? Or is it something else, larger than the very person.

A Jew looks for HaShem for no other reason than to discover himself. How so? Since HaShem, Israel, and Torah are united in eternal oneness, the search for spirituality is to find oneself, or better to recognize the divine source of the soul itself. We are mere vessels carrying the soul. HaShem blew that soul into us. It seeks to return to it's source at all times, but the body selfishly refuses to let it go. And this, may I venture, is a secret of Jewish life. The body refuses to let the soul have it's way seeking to meet it's own agenda. However, being stuck together for a tour on earth, the soul and body must work together throughout life. The yetzer hara empowers the body in its effort to control the soul. The soul cries out to it's creator for strength to overpower the urges of the yetzer hara. The body can be convinced to do right and the soul can be taught to give in to foreign influences. It is an effort in the intellectual realm which drives a Jew toward an observant path away from a not yet observant path. A conscious effort is needed to turn aveiros into mitzvos.

Sorting clothes at a shelter might be a good thing to do. If it is done because it makes the body feel good, then it has affected the soul negatively. If it is done because the soul says, it's an act of chesed for you to should sort clothes at the shelter, and the body says, "I would rather be sleeping but will go if you make me", then the soul has influenced the body in a positive way. This is called sanctifying the profane and is a message as I see it that the Rebbe taught. Make what you do holy. This message is what is missed by college students at the GA. Spirituality doesn't follow attempts to "realize our religion". Rather it is the love of humanity and desire to do what HaShem wants which teaches how we "realize our religion".

"Judaism doesn't stand between being secular and being orthodox," said Pnina Gaday, an Ethiopian Jew who fled to Israel and now leads a student group in Tel Aviv. "Orthodoxy is scaring a lot of students. There are a lot of ways to be Jewish on both sides."

Pnina, it isn't Orthodoxy" which scares students, it is the commitment which scares students. It is the fear of being Jews, who Think Jewish, act Jewish and appear Jewish which scares students. Your position is a false dicotomy. Orthodox or secular is not the choice. Jewish or not is the choice. You seem to wish to define Judaism based upon what is good for you. It isn't Orthodoxy which scares you it is the fear that you cannot set and keep the standards for which you are comfortable.

Comfort is not what makes you feel good but a sense of continuity, that you are able to keep the tradition of your ancestors alive and meaningful. This is a true comfort and what HaShem expects from you. Connectivity to the past and future is your reward. But it is hardly your only obligation. While it is truly hard work to live up to HaShem's expectations, seeing through the facade of self-determination Judaism is harder.

Bar Kamtza's Heritage

Modern Orthodoxy Under Attack
{more on Noah Bar Kamtza, see below}

Noah Feldman's intimate critique in the Times seen as raising the question of how to deal with Jews who marry out
Gary Rosenblatt - Editor And Publisher

However tempting, it would be a mistake to dismiss Harvard Law professor Noah Feldman’s personal and pointed critique of Modern Orthodoxy in The New York Times Magazine last Sunday (“Orthodox Paradox”) as merely The Big Kvetch.

His essay, sure to provide fodder for numerous sermons this Shabbat, is a long and bitter complaint that despite his numerous and remarkable professional accomplishments, he has been snubbed by the Brookline, Mass., yeshiva high school from which he graduated with honors in the 1980s.

Despite the fact that Feldman was

valedictorian of his class at Harvard, a Rhodes Scholar and Truman Scholar who completed his doctorate at Oxford in record time and went on to help craft the Iraqi constitution, he and his then-girlfriend were literally

cropped out of a reunion picture of Maimonides School graduates published in the alumni newsletter some years ago, and none of the personal updates he has sent in since have been published. Why? Because the girlfriend — now wife — is Korean-American. Not Jewish.

And Feldman, who aptly describes the yeshiva’s goals of “reconciling the vastly disparate values of tradition and modernity” as seeking to combine “Slobodka and St. Paul’s,” maintains that he has been rejected by his community despite the fact that he has “tried in my own imperfect way to live up to values that the school taught me, expressing my respect and love for the wisdom of the tradition while trying to reconcile Jewish faith with scholarship and engagement in the public sphere.”

Poor Noah, one may think on first read. How primitive and unfair for his former yeshiva to refuse to publicly acknowledge his successes.

But as one continues to read Feldman’s essay, we see that it is he who is unfair in expecting to be lauded by a community whose values he has rejected and in crafting an intellectually dishonest case for himself.

Still, the implicit and more lasting question raised by the essay is how should the Jewish community in general, and the Orthodox community in particular, deal with Jews who have married out?

Sending a message to our children that we deeply value in-marriage for social, religious and communal reasons is all well and good, but what do we do after the fact, once they’ve chosen a non-Jewish partner and conversion is not a part of the conversation?

Unfair Arguments

As for Feldman’s arguments, in insisting that Maimonides himself, the 12th century rabbinic scholar and philosopher, believed that knowing the world was the best way to know God, he ignores the fact that it was Maimonides who codified Jewish law, established the 13 principles of faith, and insisted on adherence to halacha.

Feldman then goes on at some length to cite Jewish law’s tensions over violating the Sabbath to save the life of a non-Jew. But he fails to mention that the dispute is Talmudic, not practical; no Modern Orthodox doctor would hesitate to treat a non-Jew on the Sabbath.

Perhaps most upsetting, and unjust, the only allegedly Modern Orthodox Jews Feldman describes in his essay besides Sen. Joseph Lieberman are Yigal Amir, the assassin of Yitzchak Rabin, and Baruch Goldstein, the American-born physician who murdered 29 Arabs in Hebron in 1994. The two are cited as examples of men who took Jewish imperatives to their logical conclusion by committing murder.

“That’s like judging the peacock by its feces,” noted Rabbi Saul Berman, a scholar and former head of Edah, an organization that promoted Modern Orthodox values.

Indeed, no serious Modern Orthodox Jew is unaware of the tensions between upholding the Torah law and recognizing the values and benefits of Western democratic ideals. Rabbi Berman credits Feldman with pointing out the need to explore such tensions, which when unrecognized or out of balance can produce an Amir of Goldstein, “but it’s not fair to judge the system” by such aberrations, he maintains.

Psychic Pain

In the end, Feldman’s essay is less about Modern Orthodoxy than about his own psychic pain over being rejected. He wants it all: to be embraced if not applauded by the Jewish community whose values he has discarded by marrying out.

As Rabbi Jacob J. Schacter, senior scholar at Yeshiva University’s Center for the Jewish Future, noted in a letter sent to The Times, “fealty to Jewish tradition requires more than a ‘mind-set’ expressing ‘respect and love’ for its teachings; it presupposes certain fundamental normative behaviors. America is a country of choices, but choices have consequences and not every choice is equal. It is unrealistic for Mr. Feldman to expect to maintain good standing in a community whose core foundational behavioral — as well as value — system he has chosen to reject.”

Judaism is not alone in this attitude. Witness, for example, the Catholic Church’s discomfort with former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, a divorced Catholic who favors abortion rights, or any religious faith’s attitudes toward members who publicly violate its tenets.

But Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, author and television personality (“Shalom in the Home”), cautions against alienating some of our best and brightest Jews who marry out. Rabbi Boteach has been a friend of Feldman’s since he served as a rabbi at Oxford University where Feldman studied for two years in the early 1990s. In an essay in the Jerusalem Post this week, Rabbi Boteach says that in addition to the “ethical and humanitarian considerations” regarding ostracizing those who intermarry, the approach is ineffective, with intermarriage rates so high.

He argues that the community has a far better chance of winning over the non-Jewish spouse and the Jewish partner through welcoming behavior rather than shunning the couple.

This inreach vs. outreach debate has been part of the American Jewish landscape for a number of years, but there are those who suggest a more nuanced approach.

“There is a difference between a personal and a communal response to intermarrieds,” noted one Jewish educator who knows Feldman from Maimonides School. It’s one thing, he said, to have a personal relationship (and one wonders if Feldman would have felt less hurt if someone from the alumni office had explained the decision not to print his picture). “But for the school not to crow about a graduate who married out — how could he think otherwise?”

Cropping Feldman and his wife out of the photo was “unconscionable,” according to Steven Bayme, national director of contemporary Jewish life at the American Jewish Committee and a graduate of Maimonides School. But he noted that even Feldman acknowledged every minority group requires boundaries to maintain and preserve its own identity and that marrying out is viewed with disfavor by every denomination of Judaism.

“The price for the individual may be tragic,” Bayme said, “but the loss is far more destructive for the community in terms of cultural distinctions and communal cohesion if you remove the boundaries.”

Irreconcilable Issue

What Feldman’s essay points up is that intermarriage is the irreconcilable issue for those who argue that American and Jewish values are compatible. “We’ve sold a lot of Jews a bill of goods when we’ve told them there are no contradictions between being a good Jew and an American,” noted Jonathan Sarna, a professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University. “In America you are taught you can marry anyone you fall in love with, but Judaism argues that we are a minority culture and will only survive if Jews marry other Jews.”

Sarna chairs an American Jewish Committee task force on attitudes toward non-Jews in the community, and asserts that with an estimated 1.7 million non-Jews living in Jewish households — to put it another way, about 23 percent of those living in Jewish households are not Jewish — this is “a very important debate” for the community to engage in.

Citing the “magnitude” of the issue and the “bitterness that drips out” of Feldman’s essay, Sarna suggests that perhaps it is time for the community to reconsider ways to draw people in rather than ignore or shun them, especially when there are indications that many non-Jews are supportive of raising their children as Jews.

Others would argue that the community already has tilted so far toward outreach and acceptance of non-Jews that there is little incentive left for them to convert to Judaism.

What Noah Feldman has done, consciously or not, is raise some important issues, less about his old yeshiva and Modern Orthodoxy per se than about dealing with Jews who do not see marrying out as leaving the fold.

Conversion is the most obvious and desired solution, but for those who eschew that option, we need to explore ways to encourage their positive exposure to Jewish life.

Feldman would argue that just because he intermarried does not mean he chose to separate himself from his heritage. But being Jewish means not only incorporating the values and traditions, but also remaining part of a community.

For all of Feldman’s candor in the essay, he has nothing to say about where he fits into the community, if at all; whether he wanted his wife to convert; whether they are raising their children as Jews or not; or his feelings about all this. He only owes us such information if he wants our understanding and empathy, which clearly he does.

He does owe Modern Orthodoxy an apology for pinning it with his anger over rejection, knowing full well the rules of engagement. But we in turn owe him a sense of gratitude for a wake-up call, however unpleasant, about the need to struggle more deeply and honestly with the moral and religious tensions and contradictions in Modern Orthodoxy that can never be reconciled, and about learning how to deal more sensitively with those on the outside who may be calling out — in anger and loneliness — for a way back in.

E-mail: Gary@jewishweek.org

Bar Kamtza Speaks

Q&A With the Author of “Orthodox Paradox”
Joey Kurtzman, July 23, 2007


Noah Feldman
Marrying a shiksa?

TAGS: Education Intermarriage Kookiness Mitt Romney Modern Orthodox Noah Feldman The New York Times Magazine Tradition

Noah Feldman’s “Orthodox Paradox,” an article published in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, is a shanda fer da goyim, a skewed and distasteful takedown that invites non-Jews to gawk at the internal problems of a modern Orthodox Jewish community. Or maybe it’s a poignant and brave discussion of the challenges of bringing a traditional faith into modern life, written by a man who cherishes his people. Either way, it’s kicked up a storm of impassioned chatter throughout the interweb, where you can find both these judgments and many more.

“Orthodox Paradox” hits on themes close to Jewcy's editorial heart, what with Feldman trying to figure out what a cosmopolitan Jew’s to do with this bewildering, antiquated faith that we just can't seem to leave behind. So we had to pick his brain a bit. Feldman, a professor at Harvard Law School who was raised modern Orthodox, agreed to answer my questions via e-mail.

In the hot seat: Noah Feldman

Why did you write this article?

These are issues I've been thinking about for a long time, and that have recurred again and again in my work on the U.S. and the Muslim world. My thinking on those topics is influenced by my education in the modern Orthodox world, and I came to think that others might be engaged with similar issues.

You were surprised when Maimonides—the yeshiva from which you graduated—airbrushed out you and your (non-Jewish) wife from a photo published in the alumni newsletter. Your surprise struck many readers as rather strange, since the community makes no secret of its rejection of intermarriage. It’s a bit as if you’d pulled out a bag of pork rinds, devoured them with relish throughout the evening, and then expressed bewilderment when someone asked you if you'd set them aside until later. What are your critics missing here?

My classmates are great. As it happens, the reunion was lots of fun and we were all warm towards one another, as one would hope. What is troubling about the view you describe—which I never sensed from my classmates—is its implication that somehow modern Orthodox people should be protected from my living my life as I choose. As if choice of life partner were as trivial as a snack. Going to a reunion is a perfectly normal part of life, and choosing not to attend, in order to shield people from my life, would be absurd. People who are comfortable with their own life choices don't get "offended" when others choose differently.


Along with some areas of the African-American community, Jews seem to be one of the only groups in America that can raise holy hell about intermarriage and get away with it. Why do you think this is? And if this aversion to intermarriage is harmful to our community, do you think we would benefit from more external criticism for it?

The comparison to the African American context is intriguing and complex—see Randall Kennedy's book Interracial Intimacies. I do think we need some serious reflection on how best to achieve the goal of continuity. Chabad certainly pursues this goal through practices of inclusion, and I think the rest of the Jewish world could learn a lot from them in this regard. As for criticism, from within or without, I think honesty is the best course.

A teacher of yours argued that Jews should only break Shabbat to save the life of a non-Jew if doing so protects the wellbeing of the Jewish community. He later apologized—but only because he’d said it in front of non-Jews. The idea is that we must watch our words around non-Jews, lest we reveal something about our traditions that will cause them to hate us or harm us. I’m struck by how similar this seems to the controversial Islamic concept of taqiya (utilized by Shia and Druze); that is, the deception of outsiders to protect the community. Is this an accurate comparison? Do Orthodox Jews essentially practice taqiya?

All oppressed communities must surely share the impulse to dissimulation. It includes taqiya but also, for example, casuistical texts allowing Catholics and Protestant to dissimulate when tortured by each other in early modern Europe. But in today's world of readily accessible information, little religious doctrine can remain secret. Anyone with a search engine could find plenty of texts dealing with the issues I discuss in the article—see for example, David Berger's scholarly article "Jews, Gentiles, and the Modern Egalitarian Ethos: Some Tentative Thoughts." What I find unconvincing is the argument that we are better off being silent about these lest they come into common currency or debate. They are already out there, and have been for centuries.

Throughout the piece you identify some very stark contradictions between what you call the "moral substructures" of traditional Judaism and modern life. For example, this debate about saving the life of a non-Jew on Shabbat conflicts drastically with the idea that all lives are of equal value. But then, after laying out these troubling contradictions, you finish the article by throwing your hands in the air and asking "Isn't everyone's life a mass of contradictions?" Isn't that a cop-out? If Judaism is anything, it's the refusal to live incoherently. If we’re serious about the business of adapting the tradition to modern life, don't we need to make tough decisions about what to do with these contradictions, and which aspects of the tradition ought to be deemphasized or reinterpreted? Is it really enough to say, "Gosh, life is so complicated!" and leave it at that?

By writing this piece I am precisely not "leaving it at that." Nor, I suspect, are the most thoughtful among the modern Orthodox and other streams of Judaism, who really are trying to live coherent lives, as I am.

Should Jews take a strong stand against the rules for breaking Shabbat to save a life of a non-Jew? Should religious leaders simply say that this teaching is obsolete and irrelevant, and that today we break Shabbat to save the life of a non-Jew for the simple reason that, as the Jewish doctor in your story said, "a human being is a human being"? And are Orthodox rabbis capable of saying such a thing?

I think my own ethical view is pretty clear. There are various positions in this debate, but the doctor's view could certainly have been expressed by someone with rabbinical ordination.

In your discussion of Baruch Goldstein’s 1994 massacre of 29 Palestinians at the Tomb of the Patriarchs, you write that "It would be a mistake to blame messianic modern Orthodoxy for ultranationalist terror." But you also describe how Goldstein attended services in which he heard the Biblical commandment to "erase the memory of [the Amalekites] from beneath the heavens," and would have been taught that the Amalekites rise again in every generation as the Jewish people’s enemies of the day. So it seems fairly straightforward for Goldstein to have concluded, based on things he’d heard in synagogue, that the Palestinians were today’s Amalekites and that he ought to kill as many as possible.

So my question is this: There is much talk these days about the responsibility of Muslim scholars and holy men to promote a kindly, magnanimous version of their faith, one which will not incite violence against nonbelievers. Do you believe that the Goldstein affair indicates that the Jewish community also ought to examine our faith and teachings to ensure that we are promoting no hatred or violence toward non-Jews?

The Islamic ethics of violence are undergoing a rapid and worrisome transformation for the worse. Muslim scholars—and all Muslims—have a duty to examine their own tradition. Jews have an analogous responsibility. It is easy to let ourselves off the hook and think of Baruch Goldstein and Yigal Amir as isolated figures. But we need to reflect on how their actions were connected to the ultranationalist messianic settler movement and its ties to mainstream Judaism. And these actions have had global consequences. What would the Mideast look like today if Rabin had lived?

Do you think Mitt Romney's Mormonism is kookier than other traditional belief systems? Are there any traditional communities in the United States whose practices you would find worthy of scrutiny if one of their members were running for President?

There is nothing wrong with scrutinizing the beliefs of candidates who say their religion influences their political judgments, but there is also no reason not to vote for someone just because he is a Latter Day Saint. There is nothing inherently less convincing about ascribing prophecy to Joseph Smith than to Moses or Muhammad. It always requires faith—whether a leap or some other acrobatic movement—to enter into the full consciousness of the religious person.

Many blog posts have already been written about your article. Are there any that you found particularly insightful? Any that led you to rethink something you'd written in the article?

I spent the weekend playing with my kids and haven't read blogs.

I asked the senior writer of the Jewess blog, Rebecca Honig Friedman, if she had any questions for Feldman. The following three questions are hers.

In the article, you mention your rabbi's rather ridiculous reaction to your holding hands with a girl. How would you have the modern Orthodox world deal with the issue of teen sex? Are you familiar with the OU's neigah.org website, and what do you make of it?

I hadn't seen the site until just now. It is obviously reminiscent of the broader national abstinence movement, and another interesting piece of evidence on the cultural interplay between modern orthodoxy and contemporary Christian evangelicalism. The problem is more challenging with respect to gay and lesbian Orthodox Jews: it remains to be seen whether orthodox Judaism can avoid the cultural trend of the evangelical movement and be accepting and welcoming within the bounds of halakha. As for the question of teen sex, honesty is crucial here. The halakha is what it is, and it will inevitably create tensions with sociocultural reality.

How, in your observation, does the role of women play out differently in modern Orthodoxy versus ultra-Orthodoxy or more liberal forms of Judaism?

Books have been written on this, and more need to be. I think modern Orthodox women in some ways face the greatest challenge with respect to modernity and tradition. I don't want to speak on anyone's behalf, but I will say that much of the most creative Jewish engagement with tradition today is coming from women working within a halakhic framework.

Why write this article in the NYT Magazine? What relevance do you hope it will have to not-specifically-Jewish readers?

What community—religious, ethnic, racial, or otherwise—doesn't engage with similar issues of belonging and membership, tradition and modernity?

* This post has been edited for concision since publication.

---

Noah Bar Kamtza, why not say what is on your mind? Try:
"It's all about me". "What matters to Judaism is irrelevant" "Who cares if I my children will be goyim. And what business is it to you?"

It is offensive to suggest that ChaBaD condones intermarriage. Noah Bar Kamtza should try learning Sichos of the Rebbe. Noah look at Volume 3, 15th Day of Tammuz, 5739, Sichos In English where the Rebbe OBM discusses Ahavas Yisroel:

3. In the concept of Ahavas Yisroel, there is a point that requires explanation: In Tanya, the Alter Rebbe quotes the Talmud that speaks about those about whom “King David... said “I hate them with a consuming hatred ... the heretics and atheists who have no portion in the G-d of Israel.” The Mitzva of Ahavas Yisroel encompasses them as well. We can relate to an object in two ways: 1) through union, or, 2) through negation. The latter is also a means of relation. There, too, a connection is established. Therefore, even the negative feelings that are expressed towards these people are part of the Mitzva of Ahavas Yisroel.

Though these feelings seem to run contrary to the entire concept of Ahavas Yisroel, there is a point of connection. A similar idea helps explain this point. Torah is called “the Torah of Kindness.” However, in the Torah there are also punishments. These punishments are also an expression of kindness.[237]

The Torah is also called the “Torah of truth.” Therefore, its kindness is true kindness, that true kindness motivates G-d “to wash the filth from the daughters of Zion,” (Isaiah 4:4) with punishments. The aim of these punishments is to bring the sinner back to the Jewish fold and to lift him up to the level of a Baal Teshuva, a level higher than that of a perfect Tzaddik. Similarly in our case, the hatred shown to these people removes their negative qualities[238] and allows us to relate to them, in a positive sense, through Ahavas Yisroel, as well.

Noah Bar Kamtza, did you hear what the Rebbe was saying? The Jews should shun you and avoid you for your choices. M'karev? Absolutely. But you must take the first step. You must seek to correct your wrong doing, to seek teshuva. Do you believe your Rebbeim have nachas from you? Go to them and plead for mechila. Then come back and ask to be treated better. Yes, you should have been air-brushed out of a Yeshiva Day School reunion photograph. Stop crying about it, unless those tears are tears of teshuva. Based upon your writing, I believe they are tears of humiliation. Instead, of trying to be the vatron you ran to the Roman authorities to betray and slander the Jews to Rome. Cheshbon nefesh would do you well.

Rabbis and Cults

Modern Orthodoxy’s ‘Cultic’ Influence
Retiring Rabbi Marc Angel charges movement’s growing reliance on yeshiva deans is danger sign.

Debra Nussbaum Cohen and Stewart Ain - Staff Writers

Rabbi Marc Angel of Manhattan is going out with a bang.

As he prepares to retire from the pulpit this fall, the prominent Modern Orthodox rabbi and former president of the Rabbinical Council of America, has fired a salvo at his own movement, saying it is “slipping over the line to a cultic superstitious kind of religion.”

“In the early part of my rabbinate, Orthodoxy was free, open to dialogue and discussion, and had a message for other Jews and for the world,” he said.

But during his 38 years as spiritual leader of the Upper West Side’s Congregation Shearith Israel, known as the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, Rabbi Angel said he has seen a growing insular perspective that shuns innovative thought and relies instead on the opinions of so-called authorities.

“There’s been an increasing tendency to defer to certain authorities and of the individual rabbi or individual Jew to back off on personal responsibilities,” he told The Jewish Week.

Thus, instead of answering a congregant’s question about halacha or Jewish law, many Modern Orthodox rabbis are turning to a rosh yeshiva (the head of a yeshiva) for the answer.

“If the rabbi doesn’t know the answer, he should try to find out” and can consult a rosh yeshiva as part of his research, Rabbi Angel, 62, suggested.

“The answer should come from the rabbi of that congregation. He shouldn’t say, ‘I’m not capable of answering; that kind of question has to go to a rosh yeshiva.’

“And in general, this is what is happening. ... The Modern Orthodox have surrendered in almost every area of responsibility to the more right-wing group.”

The result, Rabbi Angel said, is that “people with independent opinions get shut out. When people stop thinking and expressing creatively, then there’s no more intellectual dynamism.

“Once that intellectual dynamism is gone that’s the beginning of stultification, of cultism. There’s a very fine line between true religion and cultism. Orthodoxy to a certain extent is slipping over the line to a cultic, superstitious kind of religion,” he said. “It bothers me endlessly.”

Samuel Heilman, a sociology professor at Queens College who has written extensively about Orthodox Judaism in America, agreed, saying that there are younger rabbis today who were educated by “more haredi [fervently Orthodox] and less modernist” Jews.

“Many went through a yeshiva system that is further to the right or were ordained in Israel in yeshivas where you always defer to the rosh yeshiva and seldom take a position on your own,” he said.

Such reliance on roshei yeshiva has pulled Modern Orthodoxy to the right, Heilman observed, because these halachic authorities “tend to be more right- wing.”

To counter this trend, Rabbi Angel is creating the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals, an organization whose goal is “to foster an appreciation of legitimate diversity within Orthodoxy.”

It is similar to Edah, the organization that folded last year after nine years working to bring Modern Orthodox Jews together through conferences and programs. The difference, Rabbi Angel said, is that he intends to focus more on ideas than action and to develop religious responses to questions that have not been adequately addressed in the existing Orthodox legal literature.

Among them is whether it is permissible to go to the opera, which appears to be a violation of the prohibition against men hearing women sing.

“I know there are plenty of good Orthodox Jews who go to the opera,” Rabbi Angel said. “How do we understand kol isha [a woman’s voice]? What are its parameters, what does it include and not include?”

Rabbi Haskel Lookstein, principal of Ramaz, a Modern Orthodox Jewish day school in Manhattan, said he agreed that “in general there is a tendency towards hesitancy in rabbis making halachic decisions.

“But on the whole I think most rabbis make them except where there is a major community issue or an issue of marriage or divorce where the seriousness requires the expertise of an outstanding posek [Jewish law expert],” Rabbi Lookstein said.

Rabbi Angel said the situation has now reached the point where rabbinic candidates for pulpits are asked by congregational screening committees, “Who are your gedolim, who do you turn to when faced with hard questions?”

Rabbi Fabian Schonfeld, spiritual leader of the Young Israel of Kew Gardens Hills in Queens, who has been in the rabbinate for 56 years, acknowledged that such a question has been asked.

“It depends on the nature of the congregation,” he said. “He is not wrong, but he is exaggerating it. Balabatim [lay leaders] do ask.”

Rabbi Schonfeld said there have been occasions when he was asked by congregants to consult with another rabbi on particular questions.

“It happens, but he [Rabbi Angel] exaggerates. And in some cases, one is duty-bound to consult,” he said.

Rabbi Basil Herring, executive vice president of the RCA, said that although there has “certainly been a trend in recent decades towards specialization in dealing with questions of Jewish law ... congregational rabbis do not necessarily simply echo or consistently give carte blanche to such opinions.”

“They are able to filter that very specific knowledge through the prism of their communal realities and through the prism of the world around us, which requires a certain exposure to these realities,” he insisted.

But Rabbi Angel said he has found that roshei yeshiva have “become surrogate authorities” for a rabbi’s own judgment “instead of coming to conclusions based on [their] own reasoning. ... Of course we consult with other people who are experts in certain areas, but we’re not just blind sheep, and we have to think for ourselves.”

When he was president of the RCA and tried to implement new ideas, “there was more resistance than I anticipated.”

He recalled that he organized five regional conferences for RCA members to discuss intermarriage and conversion. “My hope was that people would say that ‘we should open our doors and people have a place to come and talk, so they know the Orthodox are open to them.’”

But instead, he said, “I was attacked tremendously, mostly from the right. Several of the roshei yeshiva [rabbinic deans of Yeshiva University] called me on the carpet and said, ‘The people who marry out are wicked, they are traitors and by having conferences on the subject we imply that Orthodoxy is soft on the issue.’”

“Why should we pretend that people don’t exist?” he asked, adding that “today Orthodoxy has become much narrower than it was in 1990” when he was president of the RCA.

Rabbi Angel, whose 600-family synagogue was the first established in North America, will be succeeded by his son, Rabbi Hayyim Angel, the current assistant rabbi.

Reflecting on the changes in Modern Orthodoxy, the elder Rabbi Angel said those who dare to offer a different opinion “are cut down and isolated, which is something that is not healthy for Orthodoxy and Judaism in general.

“There is a sort of intimidation out there and if one takes a stand that is different, that person is isolated. People are afraid to be isolated; that fear is palpable.”

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“Once that intellectual dynamism is gone that’s the beginning of stultification, of cultism. There’s a very fine line between true religion and cultism. Orthodoxy to a certain extent is slipping over the line to a cultic, superstitious kind of religion,” he said. “It bothers me endlessly.”

This rabbi gives a bad name to all those cults we know and love to hate. What part of cultic behavior does Rabbi Angel see? Is it fair to say that communal pressure to follow a particular minhag is close enough or the same as the social and behaviorial controls practiced by cults in order to preach this chillul HaShem? Evaluating Your Cult Involvement


What Rabbi Angel is missing is the idea that his belief is not universal nor does he have a right to re-define modern orthodox in a way that makes his retiring conscience feel better since these trends he criticizes have occurred during the prime of his career. There will always be actions we regret for doing and for not doing but we cannot change the past. In retirement, Rabbi Angel will seek to re-write his past. It will not be successful and his retirement a bitter one.

Edah, the leftist orthodox organization mentioned in the article died not because of funding but because it lacked a true purpose (this is why it could not raise money). Rabbi Angel will seek thousands and millions of dollars to pay for not very popular Rabbis or Rabbis who may be well known but ignored to create old/new ideas which will muddy the waters of halachic observance. If Orthodox Jews are not happy as Orthodox Jews, they will merely not ask shailas and draw their own conclusions. It is that simple. If Rabbi Angel wants orthodoxy to follow conservatism by creating a system where minority vaiations are as acceptable as those held by the majority, the rabbinic system will break down and the Jewish people will further crack on sectarian lines.




Rabbinic authority is often discussed in terms of the words of the Torah in Deuteronomy 17:10,11:

17:10 Since this decision comes from the place that God shall choose, you must do as they tell you, carefully following their every decision.
17:11 [Besides this, in general,] you must keep the Torah as they interpret it for you, and follow the laws that they legislate for you. Do not stray to the right or left from the word that they declare to you.

From a very basic interpretation of the above, one wonders whether or not Rabbi Angel has actually ever looked in D'varim? What sort of options does he wish to provide Jews and how many different and opposing Rabbinic sources does he wish to create and further why does he seek to create so many divisions within the Jewish people? Is he doing this because his own congregants go else where with their shailas?

A few years ago I had questions as to the medical treatment my dying Grandmother was receiving at a convalescent home. I went to the Rabbi of my congregation with my questions and observations? After asking me a few questions, he called his posek to confer with him although I believe he already knew the answer. I had the greatest respect for him for doing so. I could have guessed the answer but wanted to be certain that what I considered the logic of the halacha to be was accurate. The psak halacha coming from a recognized authority was a lesson for me in the effectiveness of the rabbinic system. The ability of this Rabbi to reach his posek so quickly and answer my question is to me evidence that something else is going on in Rabbi Angel's conscience. My experience may not echo that of everyone else however, for me it was proof conclusive.