On more than one occasion, I heard Rav Mordechai Gifter zt”l tell the following story.

Rav Eliyahu Eliezer Grodnanski, the son-in-law of Rav Yisroel Salanter engaged his daughter to a young man, Chaim Ozer Grodzensky. Since the Kallah’s grandfather, Reb Yisroel, had not traveled to attend the vort [a learned speech made by the bridegroom], Rav Eliyahu Eliezer wrote his father-in-law, informing him of his granddaughter’s engagement, and enclosed the divrei Torah that the Hattan [groom] had delivered at the vort. Reb Yisroel wrote back, “Mazal Tov. I received your letter, and from the divrei Torah that you enclosed I can see that the Hattan is indeed a talmid hakham [wise scholar]. However the biblical verse says, “Et biti natati L’Ish hazeh…ve’al haIsh lo katavta li meuma!” (“I gave my daughter to this man, but you wrote me nothing about the man, i.e. the mentch.)¹

When we speak of the midot and derekh erets of a person, that is, the character traits of the person as expressed in his or her actual behavior, we speak of the man/mentch himself. Thus, when we speak of imbuing children with good midot and derekh erets, we are speaking of the creation of the total mentch that he or she can become. This quest cannot be accomplished by measures that address only a part of that whole. We must address the whole person.

Over the years, I have heard, read, and participated in many debates on the most important variables are that affect midot and derekh erets, as well as in attempts to implement programs to instill these qualities in our children. In these conversations, some have argued for our schools to teach midot more, that is, to tell children what proper moral behavior is. Others have argued that the teaching of midot can only come from the home, by example. Some have advocated the intense study of mussar (ethics), while others have created midot programs in which children are not merely told what moral behavior is; they are taught about midot, in organized lessons, complete with worksheets and homework assignments. Still others have instituted school-based hessed programs, with academic credit awarded for the participation in set number of hours of hessed, or volunteer community service.

All of these programs base themselves on underlying theories (generally not explicitly articulated) about what it is that will produce good midot in our children. Those who believe that good moral and ethical character stems from proper moral thinking teach midot via the subject matter of halakha and mussar, i.e., learning to think about right and wrong. Those who believe that good moral and ethical character stems from learning how to behaveproperly focus on providing children with good models for behavior and/or with institutionally based rules for behavior with the implementation of consequences and discipline for infractions of the midot and derekh erets rules. Then there are those who believe that children will learn to do good only by actually doing good; not by learning about doing good. They advocate enticing or demanding that children actively engage in hessed programs. These approaches address the cognitions, and the behaviors of our children, and to a lesser extent, and only indirectly, their affect.² Most educators feel that these programs are ineffective or not effective enough. In a previous article I described some of the failings in our system when it comes to midot.³ Educators and parent advocates of midot programs, judging a program to be ineffective or not as effective as they would like it to be, have a tendency to do what seems prudent—abandon what doesn’t work and begin something new that may. And so, we hop from one program to another, one effort to another, teaching mussar one year, focusing on disciplining children for infractions of midot in another, using a “thinking about midot program” the next, and then, finally, calling parents in and laying the responsibility at their feet. Not enough nuanced thought is given to figuring out what about these programs does work, what should be salvaged, and how the programs should be combined with other approaches.

The field of Psychology suffered from a similar malaise back in the 1960s and 1970s. For every study that showed some variable to have an effect, there was another study showing it to have no effect, or even an opposite effect, until, with a paradigm-changing insight, Urie Bronfenbrenner helped redirect research in the field. Bronfenbrenner compared the growth of the individual and the study of that growth and development to the growth of a plant and the study of that plant’s growth and development. We all understand intuitively that it makes little sense to argue about whether it is mainly the quality of the seed, the amount of water, the sunlight available, the air temperature, or the proximity and kind of other plants and animals, that affects a plant’s growth. Nor can we say simply that it is the combination of these that determines development, for in reality, the absence of any individual factor or variable can often be compensated by the increase of another. It is the combined interaction of all of these factors that actually determines, or more correctly, influences, the plant’s growth and development. Thus, in studying plant life we look at the entire ecological system, and study it as such, as an interconnected and interrelated system of factors and variables that affect each other, and the organisms within it, which in turn affect the system itself. So too, it is futile in children’s development to seek the cause or determiner of a particular behavior or set of behaviors, and to then construct a program around that factor. Instead, an ecological approach is necessary, a study of the combined effects of many interrelated factors, each contributing to, or distracting from, the healthy development of a particular trait.

Researchers in Psychology who study the development of behavioral characteristics in children are no longer likely to try to isolate any one factor and search for its sole effects on the characteristic of interest. Rather, in the case of negative outcomes such as “juvenile delinquency,” they attempt to identify those factors that, when present, are hypothesized to protect a child from becoming a juvenile delinquent, as well as those factors that tend to place a child at risk for developing delinquent behaviors. Then, all of these factors are studied systematically to discover  how they interact and affect each other—and most importantly how they affect the outcome, i.e. the development of juvenile delinquency. Similarly, in studying the development of a positive constellation of behaviors, researchers attempt to identify those factors that serve to enhance or facilitate the development of the positive trait, as well as those factors that serve to inhibit or hinder the development of that positive trait, and how all of these factors interact and affect each other.

If we wish to understand the development of midot and derekh erets we must adopt this approach. We must understand that there is no one method, factor, or place (such as school, home, synagogue, or neighborhood, mussar learning, role models, active hessed programs, and so forth) that, can by itself, assure the development of midot and derekh erets in our children. Nor should we blame and burden any one factor for a child’s failure to develop proper midot and derekh erets. The job is bigger than that. We must become aware of all relevant factors and how they interact—and keep them in mind when we educate our children.

In studying the development of midot, I would first identify the relevant enhancing factors, factors that make it more likely that good midot will develop in our children. I would then identify the detracting factors, that is, factors whose presence makes it less likely that good midot will develop. I would then try to become aware of how all of these factors, enhancing and detracting, interact with each other.

Some of the pertinent factors come to us by way of our biology or genetic endowment, and though we cannot change them, awareness can help guide us in our approach to the individual child, enhancing the effect of their positive natural traits and mitigating the effect of their difficult natural traits. Other factors come to us by way of our social environment, our experiences, our role models, our values, and our beliefs.

All of these domains and factors interact with each other constantly and in a dynamic fashion. Thus a positive factor, such as having a good role model, may offset the effect of a negative factor, such as not having been given rules. Or, it may even enhance and multiply the effects of another positive factor. For example having a sense of values will multiply the effect of having developed good habits of behavior that are in synchrony with one’s values and allow for their generalization to an increasingly broader range of situations.

In the following pages I will try to elaborate on some of these relevant factors. I will try to make some suggestions about ways parents, teachers, and members of the community at large can enhance the development of midot and derekh erets in our children. I fully realize that my musings will be seen by some as unrealistic “dreams.” However, dream we must. Hazal (Berakhot 14a) tell us, “One who goes seven days without a dream, is called bad.” The Vilna Gaon understands this “dreaming” to refer to having higher thoughts or aspirations. We must aspire to do better.

Laying the Groundwork: The Social Environment

Three main factors help lay the groundwork for the development of midot:

1. Respecting and valuing others. One must feel the value of and gain a sense of respect forall human beings, including one’s self, regardless of race, gender, or religious affiliation.

2. Having role models. One must have positive role models who embody midot and derekh erets.

3. Being affiliated. One must feel a sense of belonging, at first to a family constellation, and later to a school, synagogue, community, and people—and eventually to the greater community of humankind.

Imbuing children with midot and derekh erets begins at home. The home must set down a foundation and create a framework in which this will happen. The first step in such an endeavor requires creating a home environment that teaches children to value and respect everyone created beTselem Elokim—including one’s self. This feeling comes to an infant or child who feels valued by and cared for by his or her parents. Such a child gains a sense of self-respect and later on will not want to sully it. Reb Tsadok haKohen of Lublin writes (Sefer Tsidkat haTsadik No. 154): “Just like a person needs to believe in Hashem, so too he needs to believe in himself,” that is to say, a person should believe in the kohot haNefesh (strengths and abilities) granted to him or her by God. A person needs to believe that God created him or her with a purpose in mind; that he or she is capable of fulfilling that purpose and should not squander those kohot haNefesh. As the Meiri writes in Pirkei Avot (Perek 5, Mishna 1), “A person's humility should not reach so low a level that his humility brings him not to be concerned with himself when he behaves in a lowly manner and with disgusting character.”

From this sense of self-respect follows a respect for all human beings, all of whom were created by God with a purpose and were endowed by God with the requisite kohot haNefesh to fulfill their particular task and purpose on this world. Hazal (Mishna Sanhedrin 37a, and Baraita, ibid. 38a) tell us that Adam was created alone in order that later generations not be able to tell each other “My father was of a more elevated status than yours.” It is only when we, the parents, truly believe, in the deepest recesses of our hearts, in the inherent value of all human beings and in their right to basic respect, that we can hope to instill true midot in our children. This attitude and belief comes to children, with their proverbial “mother’s milk,” through their experiences at home in their most formative years. To use the language of developmental psychologists, early experiences equip children with “Internal Models of Experience,” sets of lenses that will color how they will look at human beings—and how they interpret their actions, strengths, and shortcomings. It is these early experiences that will determine whether they live up to the value expressed in the tefilah of the Rebbe Elimelech of Lizensk zt”l, “May it be your will that we see that which is elevated in our friends rather than their shortcomings.” The first step in imbuing our children with midot, then, is the creation of an atmosphere of respect, a respect for all human beings, for proper, polite, and caring behavior—and a disrespect and even disgust with coarse and uncouth behavior.

The above happens only through parents who serve as role models and instructors for the aforementioned attitudes, and the behaviors to other human beings that naturally result from them. Values and attitudes are fed to children in their earliest years not by preaching, but rather, by the words and deeds of their parents: by how the parents treat each other; by how they treat the meshulah at the door, and by how they treat the cleaning help in their homes. As Hazal tell us (Succah 56b), “The speech of a child heard in the street is either his mother’s or his father’s.”

Parents also instruct by their responses to the suffering of others, by the stories they tell their children, and by the books they encourage their children to read. When I was about fifteen years old, my mother, a Holocaust survivor, handed me Alan Paton’s Cry the Beloved Country, a novel about apartheid in South Africa saying, “Read this, you’ll learn. Not only Jews suffered.”

Along with the sense of respect for human beings, one of the most basic and important things that children get from their parents is the sense of belonging, the feeling of being affiliated with a group, such as the family unit, and valued by it. This is an extremely important component of moral behavior. Belonging is a basic human need,⁴ and it underlies our feelings for others, our motivation to maintain ties, and our sense of guilt when we fail to live up to the moral norms and expectations of the group.⁵ The family is the first unit or group to which an individual belongs. From a child’s experience in the family unit and from his or her attachment to it, the child develops his or her internal model of belonging to other broader groups, those of the school, the synagogue, the community, K’lal Yisrael, and eventually, to the community of humankind.⁶

Children will learn good midot from their parents, but these attitudes need strengthening. This needs to happen in school. Rabbeim and teachers, in action and in deed, serve as role models for respecting others or for denigrating them. When they teach pride in Torah values by pointing to the beauty of Torah, they raise their children to loftier heights. However, when they try to instill pride in our heritage primarily by denigrating all others, they lower their student’s sights. When they treat all children with care and with respect for their persons, regardless of family background, of physical appearance, and of ability level, they instill in their students a sense of respect for others. When they create favorites, inadvertently or by design, or encourage the creation of cliques that define themselves to a great degree by the exclusion of others, they destroy their students’ respect for others. Teachers always need to be careful in how they speak to and about others, even about those whose actions need to be criticized and denigrated. The Hazon Ish (Sefer Emunah U’bitahon, Perek 4, No. 16) writes that when a rebbe admonishes a student using harsh and coarse language—whatever benefit this may seem to have on the student’s hesitance to repeat his transgression in the future—the immediate negative result is that the student learns to use coarse language, as he will mimic his rebbe. The Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rebbe Yosef Yitzhak Schneerson zt”l (Kuntrus haHinukh veHahadrakha) writes similarly, that a “rebbe or madrikh (counselor) who speaks about one of the greater human defects and refers to them with contemptuous labels—which are actually truly fitting for them”—will nevertheless find that the benefits of his intended message are outweighed by the loss of a student seeing his teacher using coarse language.

It is not sufficient to tell children a story about how Reb Yaakov Kaminetzky zt”l stopped a conversation to stand and watch with silent respect until a non-Jewish funeral passed, because, as he explained to his companion, “He, too, was created beTselem Elokim.” It is not enough to tell stories. We must emulate the actions of the heroes of those stories. At the very least, we should be careful not to destroy the message of a story by the way we actually speak to or about others, or by how we treat them.  When children observe that the kavod due to the tselem Elokim that God endowed people with can be abrogated by mere mortals when they so choose, they will conclude that they too can choose when to grant someone the kavod that comes with tselem Elokim and when to refuse a person that kavod. Much depends on what they see us do.

[H1] Engaging Affect and Emotions

The following are three vital points in engaging the emotions of children:

• Empathy and sympathy. One must develop an understanding for the life condition and pain of other human beings.

• Intuition. One needs to develop intuitive reactions, positive and negative, to proper and improper midot, up to and including a sense of disgust for insensitive, rude, crude, and cruel behaviors.

• Sensitivity. One should develop the ability to anticipate how a person may feel in a given situation, and how one’s actions may be interpreted (or misinterpreted) by another person. One needs to learn how to adjust one’s actions to head off any discomfort to others.

For midot and derekh erets to endure over a lifetime, across a wide and varied array of situations, they must be understood intellectually, and therefore taught and discussed. However, at a more basic level, our children need to feel them; they must engage them emotionally. A very basic ingredient in the development of midot and derekh erets is developing one’s feelings—especially one’s feelings for others. It requires learning to empathize with others, to feel their need, their pain. At the most primitive level, this is limited to feeling immediate pain, as in feeling the pain of someone we have just seen bang his finger with a hammer. Later, we develop our ability to understand and feel another person’s less visible hurts, such as hunger or embarrassment. Eventually we graduate to understanding another’s total life condition. We come to empathize with how a poor person feels when he cannot feed his family, or how one feels when he is different from the majority in his group, be it by dint of ethnic background, of socio-economic level, of being a newcomer or stranger, or by dint of one’s appearance, if it is perceived somehow as “different.” Parents can elicit these feelings from their children as natural opportunities arise. A parent can talk to a child about how he or she thinks a playmate felt when she hurt herself on the playground, or when she was not invited to a birthday party. Or, a parent can read stories to his or her child about people and their difficulties and invite the child to imagine and discuss the feelings of the people in the stories. These feelings need to be awakened in children to the extent possible at home, and then strengthened through the wider educational opportunities available through the school curriculum.⁷ Our learning should address emotion. In literature, in history, and in many other areas, children would gain from discussions of the feelings of the people involved. We teach Humash, which is replete with feelings and complex and difficult interpersonal relationships. But, I’m afraid that in many of our schools we focus on the facts and avoid discussion of the emotions involved. Perhaps daunted and awed by the task of explaining the emotions of the Patriarchs, Matriarchs, and other biblical figures to the young children learning Humash, we avoid it completely, a loss to our children and to their understanding of emotions and of midot.Taking children to visit the elderly who live alone or in nursing homes, having children involved in bringing them gifts or, more importantly their company, goes a long way in bringing a smile to the face of the lonely, and a sense of joy to children as they learn how much they can do for others. Such experiences begun at home and expanded on in school create indelible “memories” in children. In the future, situations even vaguely reminiscent of the feelings aroused by these early experiences will serve as markers to awaken their feelings as well as the appropriate called-for responses. These early experiences equip our children with a moral intuition, a set of internalized feelings and gut reactions to situations and behaviors,⁸ something I call the “yuck factor” or the “yummy factor,” as the case may be.

Research suggests that many—perhaps most—of our moral judgments are based not on logic, but rather on intuitive reactions. We recoil emotionally from that which our early experiences have taught us to be “yucky” and we are attracted emotionally to that which our early experiences have taught us to be “yummy.” Thus, for example, a person who is the product of an Orthodox Jewish upbringing will recoil at the thought of eating a cold piece of meat on a plate that had pork on it ten years ago (even though it would be halakhically permissible). Similarly, he will pull back in fright from just touching something muktsa on Shabbat (even though the prohibition is in moving the object rather than touching it). These intuitive reactions were embedded in the child through early experiences with the concepts of pork and of muktsa. He learned that they were “yucky” and recoiled from them. Unfortunately, the upbringing most children receive makes it less likely that they will recoil in the same way from instances of hurting another person, from lashon haRa, from hutspa, and the like. And herein lies one of the failures of our ability to transmit midot and derekh erets to our young. This needs to be changed. It will change only through the conscious planning of experiences for young children that will implant negative feelings for behaviors that exemplify bad midot and positive feelings for behaviors that exemplify good midot. Our children need to have experiences in which they come to feel and empathize with the pain of others, to have experiences in which they see their parents reacting with as much horror to their hurting another child’s feelings as they would to their turning on a light on Shabbat.⁹

Children who learn to empathize with others and gain a moral intuition also develop sensitivity to how others feel or may come to feel in given situations. This sensitivity eventually enables them to monitor their own behavior and its effect on others, to anticipate how others may interpret their behavior, and to adjust their behavior to preclude any misinterpretation and/or resultant hurt. This is a sign of an accomplished ba’al midot, one who contemplates one’s behavior with care always taken to avoid offending others, even inadvertently.

[H1] Teaching and Learning

The following are issues that are central to teaching and learning midot and derekh erets:

• Beliefs. One must have a belief system that proscribes negative behaviors, and wish to remain consistent with that belief system.

• Values. One should strive to gain knowledge and understanding of ethical and moral values (through mussar and other sources).

• Rules. One must have a knowledge and understanding of ethical and moral rules (such as halakha) and of societal or institutional rules governing proper behavior.

• Connections. One should connect one’s behavior back to one’s learning and one’s values.

Although early experiences and the actions of role models are important in instilling in children a feeling for morality, they cannot suffice. We cannot allow children to grow up relying only on feelings and on intuitive instincts acquired at an early age by which to judge moral situations. Many situations require reasoned and nuanced judgments of right and wrong. Intuitive reactions to such nuanced situations will just not do.¹⁰ Thus, our children must learn to reason intellectually about morality. They must be equipped with an understanding of the beliefs and values upon which our moral principles rest and the mitzvoth of Torah that follow from these beliefs and values and ultimately govern our behaviors.

In Parashat Ki Tavo, every Jewish farmer is commanded to bring his first fruits to the Bet haMikdash and to make a confessional declaration (viduy). Among other statements, the farmer is commanded to declare:

“I have eliminated the holy things from the house, and I have also given it to the Levite, to the convert, to the orphan, and to the widow, according to the entire commandment that you commanded me; I have not transgressed any of Your commandments, and I have not forgotten.” (Deut. 26:13)

On the last words, “and I have not forgotten,” Hazal remark, (cited by Rashi), “I did not forget to bless you …when separating the tithes.” To explain the deeper meaning of this addition of Hazal, the Sefat Emet (Parashat Devarim) remarks:

And I have not forgotten: This means that I did not forget while doing the mitzvah by turning it into a perfunctory habitual act. For there are those who do a mitzvah and forget and do not know what they are doing.

Unfortunately, human nature being what it is, it is quite possible to perform the most noble tasks in a perfunctory manner and to forget why we do them. It seems to me to be no coincidence that the Torah teaches us this lesson of not forgetting about the hallowed and holy nature of the mitzvoth we do, specifically as it speaks of giving “to the Levite, to the convert, to the orphan, and to the widow.” It is precisely in performing these acts that we may be most prone to forget the kedusha, or holiness, involved in them, and come to view them as mundane and even discretionary. Therefore, it is here that Torah tells us not to forget the holiness of these acts.

A vital aspect of any midot program is to teach our children that mitzvot bein adam leHaveiro—commandments governing our dealings with other human beings are God’s commandments no less than mitzvot bein adam laMakom—commandments governing our relationship with God. Children need to hear this from their parents at home, from the teachers and rabbeim in school, and from their synagogue rabbis. They need not only to hear this, they need to see the rules governing “mitzvoth between human beings” taught, modeled, adhered to, and in the case of transgressions in these areas, reacted to as intensely as to their transgressions in “mitzvoth between humans and God.” To do this properly, it is important to teach the underlying values of these mitzvoth and how these values emanate from God’s word.¹¹ With further growth, the child in yeshiva will learn the intricacies of these mizvoth. In learning Gemara, Shulhan Arukh, and works of mussar, our children will learn how far-reaching and how complex these mitzvoth and their ramifications are, and how seriously they are meant. This, in context with everything else I am outlining here will give our youth a deeply sophisticated appreciation and loyalty to the mitzvot bein adam leHaveiro.

But our students need to learn the mitzvot bein adam leHaveiro for more down-to-earth, practical reasons as well. As in other areas of Torah, children need to know what Torah requires of them in these areas. There are many halakhot to learn. To pick just one off-the-beaten-path area, there are halakhot governing how one should behave when eating with others. For example, “One may not look into the face of one who is eating or at his portion, so as not to embarrass him” (Shulhan Arukh Orah Hayyim 70, 4). Or, “One should not bite into a piece of bread and place it on the table [for it may disgust others at the table” (Ibid., No. 10, and Be’er Heitev there). If we are to fulfill the halakhot we must learn them.

[H1] Focus on Behavior

 To guide behavior, we must consider at the following:

• Habits. We need to develop habits for proper, civilized behavior, for good midot and derekh erets.

• Controls. We should institute a high level of controls at home and in school against behavior lacking in midot and derekh erets.

• Self-control: We aim to develop of the capacity for self-control.

To train and guide our children in the ways of mitzvot bein adam leHaveiro, of derekh erets and midot, it is important to create and institute some rules in the home and in our schools to safeguard and to promote these ways. Thus, in the home, basic (even if seemingly old-fashioned) rules of respectful behavior toward one’s elders should be stated and adhered to. This might entail having even the youngest child get used to waiting his or her turn in getting kiddush wine or hallah at the Shabbat table. The youngster will at first naturally protest, but if calmed by his mother and told “soon, soon, everybody in turn,” he or she will get used to it, accept it, and eventually even understand it. The child will thus learn a lesson in derekh erets for those older than him or herself. More importantly, the child will learn a lesson in self-control and delayed gratification, probably one of the most important prerequisites for moral behavior.¹² Rules in the house about avoiding fights, about sharing, about helping out with the housekeeping are more than important, they are essential. Parents should demonstrate polite behavior, explain the rationale for such behavior, and tell their children that they expect them to emulate such behavior. Thus, they should learn to hold doors open for others, not to push or cut in front of others in a line, to give their seats up to those older than them or to people with disabilities, and to rise in respect of their teachers, rabbis, other dignitaries, or the aged. Children need to learn through doing, to show respect to others, that they may not abuse others, that they are not entitled to everything they receive. Instead, they should feel thankful for what they receive. They need to appreciate that others (including their mothers) are not there to serve them, and that they should not expect others to clean up after them.¹³ These lessons need to be taught gradually and at age-appropriate levels, but they should not be delayed or forgotten.

Additionally, families must deal with this subset of behaviors and with infractions in these areas as they would with any behavior: with expressed approval and positive reinforcement for adherence to these rules. And, for infractions, families must react with understanding, with explanations for why what the child did was wrong, with guidance as to how the child might correct that wrong, and with negative consequences, if necessary.

Schools also need to foster polite and kind behavior in their students toward their elders and their peers. Schools should be watchful for the negative effects of bullying and cliques. A school that is oblivious to such phenomena creates much immediate damage to the victims of such exclusion and discrimination—but also much long-term damage to the perpetrators of bullying and excluding others. These students will grow up with a lack of midot and derekh erets, sorry human beings with only a shell of their Jewishness connected to the Torah they are learning. Schools have even broader reasons for smothering negative behavior. Schools are communities. They develop cultures. When a culture of aggression, of cliquishness and of exclusion is permitted to develop in one generation of a school’s students, it tends to be transmitted to the next generation of incoming students and becomes harder to eradicate with each incoming freshman class that is welcomed by a negative culture. It is the responsibility of the school administration and its faculty to create a welcoming midot-friendly culture. This they can do by their example, but also by how they react or fail to react to infractions of midot and derekh erets. If they react with greater strength to an infraction of a school rule than they do to a child being taunted by another they are sending a clear and potent negative message. If a school is to foster a culture of midot and derekh erets it must institute and implement clear guidelines for positive behavior and clear controls against negative behavior. These will set the tone. The controls instituted by the school for proper behavior, if properly taught, and fairly and consistently implemented, will eventually be adopted by their students and become the bedrock of their self-control in these areas.

[H1] Naturally Endowed Traits: Temperament and Intelligence

Parents and teachers need to be aware of individual differences among children and take these differences into account. Children with difficult temperaments may have greater difficulties with self-control and with delayed gratification. However, they can learn with greater consistency, with more patience, and with greater degrees of understanding. We dare not declare them to be incorrigible just because they require more from us. Children with difficult temperaments or different learning abilities may need more patience and more explanation, but in the end, they can understand.

Hazal in the Mekhilta (Shemot 19:3) tell us that Moshe Rabbeinu was told to convey the commandments to the Israelite women with an amira raka, a “soft tone” (in contrast to the harsher tone that was to be used with the men). This “soft tone” did not however turn the commandments into suggestions or requests. The fact that women are obligated in mitzvot and are subject to the same strictures and punishments for transgressing them as men are, demonstrates that they are still commandments. What then does a “soft tone” mean? The Malbim (Vayikra 1:3) explains that a “soft tone” means speaking with more elaboration and explanation. Some of our children require this. All are entitled to it. But again, with all of them, our rules for proper behavior must remain just that, firm rules.

[H1] Summary and Conclusion

Children need to be brought up at home in a cradle of respect and value for the tselem Elokim in all human beings. They need to be surrounded by positive role models and provided with experiences in which to learn empathy and develop sensitivity to other people’s feelings. Subsequently, in school, and continually at home, they need to be taught to understand, love, respect, and follow God’s law, both where it governs mitzvoth between humans and God and where it governs interactions between human beings. Such children will develop midot and derekh erets. A lesser program might seem easier, but it will hardly do the job.

What is the mainstream expression of Jewish power? When superstars with millions of followers like Kanye West and Kyrie Irving exhibit antisemitic behavior, more often than not, it revolves around a sinister view of Jewish power. Jews are the bosses. They own the record labels, the movie studios and the sports teams. They run the world.

These stereotypes are not just sinister and antisemitic, but they are also insultingly materialistic. They overlook a whole other view of Jewish power, one that has little to do with material wealth and everything to do with Jewish wisdom and universal values.

When Judaism teaches, “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor” and that all of God’s children are “created in the image of God,” there is a special ethical power in those ideas, the kind of power that moves our hearts.

When Jews helped found some of our most important civil rights organizations, including the NAACP, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), that also was Jewish power.

When, between 1910 and 1940, more than 2,000 primary and secondary schools and 20 Black colleges were established in whole or in part by Jewish philanthropist Julius Rosenwald, that also was Jewish power.

When Jews made up half of the young people who participated in the Mississippi Freedom Summer in 1964, and Jewish leaders were arrested with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. after a challenge to racial segregation, that also was Jewish power.

The power of Jewish wisdom during the era of racial upheaval was perhaps most evident when Rabbi Joachim Prinz spoke right before King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech at the Washington Mall in 1963. In front of one of the largest civil rights marches in our country’s history, Prinz started by saying, “I speak to you as an American Jew.”

Then, with brevity worthy of an Abraham Lincoln address, he shared the universal wisdom of his tradition:

“We share the profound concern of millions of people about the shame and disgrace of inequality and injustice which make a mockery of the great American idea.

“As Jews we bring to this great demonstration, in which thousands of us proudly participate, a two-fold experience — one of the spirit and one of our history.

“In the realm of the spirit, our fathers taught us thousands of years ago that when God created man, he created him as everybody’s neighbor. Neighbor is not a geographic term. It is a moral concept. It means our collective responsibility for the preservation of man’s dignity and integrity.

“From our Jewish historic experience of three and a half thousand years we say:

“Our ancient history began with slavery and the yearning for freedom. During the Middle Ages my people lived for a thousand years in the ghettos of Europe. Our modern history begins with a proclamation of emancipation.

“It is for these reasons that it is not merely sympathy and compassion for the black people of America that motivates us. It is above all and beyond all such sympathies and emotions a sense of complete identification and solidarity born of our own painful historic experience.”

There is a profound, elevating power in those words and in the actions so many American Jews have taken to live up to them.

That’s why it saddens me that this humanistic view of “Jewish power” gets totally lost in the modern media circus when power is measured in dollars and clicks, rather than values and wisdom.

I saw parts of the documentary, “Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America!” that Kyrie Irving posted on Twitter and that triggered his downward spiral. I saw in the film the demonizing of Jews and outrageous lies denying both Jewish biblical history and the Holocaust.

Someone should encourage Irving and West to watch another film: Rabbi Prinz’s heartfelt solidarity speech from the 1963 march. These two megastars both say they want to share their “light” with the world and seek a higher level of understanding. They can start by learning more about a deeper power that is anything but sinister—the one rooted in the universal wisdom of the Jewish tradition.

Then they can tweet Rabbi Prinz’s speech to their millions of followers.

Angel for Shabbat, Parashat Vayeshev

by Rabbi Marc D. Angel

“Light is sown for the righteous, and rejoicing for the upright of heart. Rejoice in the Lord, righteous ones, and celebrate His holiness in praise.” (Psalm 97)

In this passage, the Psalmist identifies two categories of people: the righteous and the upright of heart. What distinguishes each group?

The righteous one (tzadik) is devoted to the light of truth. The tzadik pursues truth with singular commitment and resists diversionary temptations. While this pursuit can be a source of satisfaction, it also can lead to loneliness and alienation from others. The tzadik operates on a deeply intellectual and spiritual level that not everyone can appreciate.

The upright of heart (yishrei lev) are distinguished by warm-hearted relations with others. Whereas the Psalmist refers to tzadik in the singular, he refers to the upright of heart in the plural. Whereas the tzadik is rewarded with light, the yishrei lev are filled with rejoicing. If the tzadik is “a lonely man of faith,” the yishrei lev are sociable and well-liked. The tzadik finds satisfaction in the pursuit of truth; the yishrei lev find satisfaction in warm friendships and social interactions.

The Psalmist consoles the lonely tzadik. You are not alone! There are others who share your commitment. These tzadikim also find happiness…but their chief joy is rejoicing in the Lord. If most human beings do not appreciate or understand the tzadikim, God does! And that’s the ultimate source of rejoicing and personal fulfillment.

In rabbinic tradition, only one character in the Torah is given the title tzadik: Joseph—Yosef haTzadik. Some say that he was described as tzadik because he resisted the advances of his master’s wife. Yet, to be labeled as a tzadik would seem to reflect on Joseph’s overall character, not just his virtuous behavior in this once circumstance.

Looking at the range of stories in the Torah about Joseph, we see that he regularly calls on the name of the Lord. Instead of taking personal credit for interpreting dreams, he ascribes the power to God. He is only a humble servant. When he later reconciles with his brothers, he tells them not to feel guilty for their role in getting him sent to Egypt; it was part of God’s plan so that he could become a source of sustenance to his family.

Unlike Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Joseph was never addressed directly by God. Nevertheless, he felt God’s presence and strove to live a Godly life. Joseph was a tzadik in that he put his life in the context of relationship with God.

Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik described biblical Joseph as a basically lonely and misunderstood individual. In spite of external signs of success, he did not seem to enjoy warm relationships with family and associates. It was the spirit of God that gave light to his life.

Although being a tzadik is surely a great achievement, it often entails being spiritually and socially isolated. The joy of the yishrei lev—the warm-hearted and sociable people—is missing.

Whereas the Psalmist refers to tzadikim and to yishrei lev, the ideal is to incorporate both qualities in our lives. Our steadfast commitment to truth and Godliness can be—and should be—accompanied by the joy of warm-hearted relationships with others. One who combines the virtues of the tzadik with those of the yishrei lev is one whose joy is full.

Angel for Shabbat, Parashat Vayetsei

by Rabbi Marc D. Angel

The Kotzker Rebbe (1787-1859) was an important Hasidic leader known for his incisive mind and his impatience with human frailties. He was once told by his personal secretary that some of the Rebbe’s silverware had been stolen. The Kotzker cried out in disbelief: “Stolen? Is it not written in the Torah ‘you shall not steal?’” To him, it was unthinkable that anyone would willingly violate an ethical commandment of the Torah.

And yet, his silverware indeed had been stolen. People did—and do—sin. They may know in theory that God hates arrogance, lies, murder, wickedness, theft, trouble-making; and yet they do these things anyway.  Why?

People commit abominable acts for a variety of motives. They may be seeking personal gain, or taking vengeance, or trying to assert their own personal power over others; or they may be mentally ill or psychologically damaged.

King Solomon reminds us that “stolen waters are sweet and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.” People derive a certain degree of pleasure in doing that which is forbidden. Perhaps this provides a sense of freedom and power; perhaps this lets us think that we have outsmarted the system.  Since the days of Adam and Eve, humans have been confronted with temptations; and since the days of Adam and Eve, humans have succumbed to temptations.

Each human being has the capacity to be righteous and each has the capacity to be wicked. We each have the responsibility to shape the direction of our lives…for better and for worse.

In Hebrew, the usual word for sin is het. At its root, the word het means “missing the mark.”  The assumption is that people are aiming to behave honestly and morally, but they may veer off course. Their goal is to be upright and fine human beings; but due to errors in judgment or self-control, the goal is missed. They give in to the temptation to sin.

The Torah reports on an amazing dream of our forefather Jacob. He had fled from his brother Esau’s wrath and was on his way to Laban, his future father-in-law. At nightfall, Jacob went to sleep. “And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven; and behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it” (Bereishith 28:12). The usual understanding of this verse is that the angels were ascending and descending the rungs of the ladder.

A Midrash (Bereishith Rabba 28:12) offers a different explanation. The Hebrew words olim veyordim bo (ascending and descending on it) can also be translated “ascending and descending on him.” That is, the angels were jumping up and down on Jacob himself! The angels said to him: “Are you the one whose image is engraved on high?  They ascended on high and saw his [ideal] image and they descended below and found him sleeping.” According to this Midrash, the ideal image of Jacob was in heaven near the throne of glory of God. That ideal image represents the person Jacob could become…and should become. The angels viewed this perfected image of Jacob in heaven, but then descended to earth and found the sleeping Jacob who seemed unaware or unconcerned about his heavenly self. The angels pounced on him, as if to say, “wake up, don’t you realize who you can become, who you are supposed to become?”

This Midrash relates not only to Jacob but to all human beings. In a sense, we each are two people: our heavenly ideal self; and our earthly self. The heavenly self is an ideal to which we should aspire. We are each born with unique talents, sensitivities, opportunities. If we strive to develop to our maximum potential, we can approach the heavenly ideal of ourselves. We will realize that the “stolen waters” may taste sweet in the short run; but that they are poisonous to our moral development in the long run.

The angels reminded our forefather Jacob to rise to the challenge of becoming his best self. It is a challenge that applies to each of us.

How should we treat friends and family members who inter-marry?

Each situation is unique and needs to be evaluated separately. There isn’t one correct or effective answer to this question.

Halakha distinguishes between a mumar le-tei’avon (who sins for personal pleasure) and a mumar le-hach’is (who sins defiantly). Often, Jews who intermarry are in the first category. They happened to meet a non-Jewish person, entered a friendly relationship, and fell in love. Such individuals may still maintain a strong Jewish identity and may want their children to be raised as Jews. In these cases, it often is best to maintain cordial relationships with the intermarried relative or friend in the hope that they will eventually come closer. Perhaps their non-Jewish spouse will convert.

When a Jewish woman intermarries, her children will be halakhically Jewish. We certainly would want the children to be raised as Jewishly as possible. Alienating their mother would be counter-productive.

In the case of a mumar le-hach’is, we would naturally feel less conciliatory. The person has willfully and spitefully chosen to break with the Jewish people. We would have strong feelings of betrayal. Yet, even in these cases, we need to consider the Jewishness of future children. Even if the mumar le-hach’is deeply disappoints us, we should think long and hard before cutting off all connections with him or her.

Intermarriage rates continue to rise, and the Orthodox community is not immune. The stigma that once attached to intermarriage has been diminishing even among many who identify as Orthodox Jews.  Whether we like it or not, dealing with intermarried relatives and friends is an ongoing challenge. The quality of hesed is an important asset.

Is it proper to casually sit on the floor (say, to play with one's children or at kumsitz) when it is not Tisha B'Av?

The real question is: why shouldn’t one sit on the floor to play with one’s children or at a kumsitz?  The halakha has many prohibitions, but there’s no prohibition to sitting on the floor.

Why, then, are some people averse to sitting on the floor? The most obvious answer is that this is a practice associated with mourning. Some have an emotional/visceral discomfort with doing something that reflects mourning. Similarly, some disapprove of walking around the house in socks, since that also evokes the custom of not wearing leather shoes during Shiva or on Tisha B’Av.

If indeed someone has an aversion to sitting on the floor, that is a private decision. But for those who see this as a needless stringency, let them sit on the floor as they think best.

Is It Proper to Own a Gun?

The National Safety Council reported that in 2020 over 45,000 people died in the United States from gun wounds. While most entailed crimes of murder or suicide, over 500 people died through gun-related accidents. Having a gun in one’s house, unless carefully locked away, is an invitation to disaster.

If someone feels that owning a gun is vital to the safety of oneself and family, then one should train carefully on the use of the gun. One should be absolutely sure that the gun is kept locked and out of reach of others—including children—who could be tempted to use it unsafely.

Given the general rise in crime and the specific rise in anti-Jewish crime, it is (unfortunately) becoming more common to think about owning a gun as a means of self-defense. The problem is that owning a gun does not in itself provide safety. The criminals are more adept at gun use and are likely to act more quickly and more violently if resisted by an amateur gun-holder.

While I think it is preferable for civilians not to own a gun, it is understandable why some feel the need for a gun in order to defend themselves, their families and businesses. If one is to own a gun, though, he/she must be thoroughly trained on its use. The gun must be stored in an absolutely safe manner so as to avoid accidental shootings.

Instead of giving one peace of mind, owning a gun might have the opposite effect of causing ongoing anxiety. The exception would be where a person feels so threatened that gun ownership becomes imperative. Each person must evaluate the risk/benefit ratio of gun ownership.

Angel for Shabbat, Parashat Vayiggash

by Rabbi Marc D. Angel

When Joseph said to Jacob’s sons that he would keep Benjamin as his slave, Judah came forward to plea for his brother’s safe return home. Judah’s speech to Joseph is marked by keen logic, eloquence, and strength. It is one of the oratorical masterpieces of the Bible.

But how did Judah know that Joseph understood a word he was saying?  After all, the brothers knew Joseph only as an Egyptian official, someone who would not likely understand Hebrew. Normally, a translator would be present…but in Judah’s emotional plea to Joseph there is no evidence of a translator. Moreover, Judah’s eloquence would not have been properly conveyed by a neutral translator.

The 19^th century Italian Torah commentator, Rabbi Yitzhak Shemuel Reggio, suggests that the brothers somehow picked up clues that Joseph understood their private conversations. Thus, when Judah came forward with his plea, he had a suspicion that Joseph would understand his words.

Joseph was obviously moved to tears by Judah’s plea so that he revealed his identity to his brothers and began a family reconciliation. But perhaps Joseph was so powerfully moved not merely by Judah’s words—which Joseph in fact did understand—but by the non-verbal power of Judah’s presentation.

We can imagine Judah’s tone of voice, his facial expressions, and his body movements as he made his case to Joseph. The presentation began with a calm review of previous conversations between Joseph and the brothers. It became more emotional as Judah described how his father Jacob would suffer and die if Benjamin did not return home. It rose to a crescendo when Judah offered himself as slave in place of Benjamin.  And at this point Joseph broke down.

It was not merely Judah’s words that reached Joseph’s heart; it was the manner of Judah’s presentation. Joseph sensed Judah’s intense emotion, his sincerity, his strength of character. If Judah’s words had been sent to Joseph as a letter, they would not likely have made such a dramatic impression.

When people speak honestly and authentically, their non-verbal communication validates their words. When people speak deceptively and falsely, their non-verbal communication conveys their dishonesty.

Dr. Oliver Sacks reports on an incident in the aphasia ward of the institution in which he was working. (Aphasia is a condition that blocks patients from understanding words. They can pick up the sounds, but do not grasp the meaning of words they hear. But they are very attuned to non-verbal communication.)  While watching a televised address by the President of the United States, the aphasiacs were laughing. They did not understand the words of the President…but they understood the tone of his voice and his facial and hand gestures.  “It was the grimaces, the histrionisms, the false gestures, and above all, the false tones and cadences of the voice, which rang false for these wordless but immensely sensitive patients….That is why they laughed at the President’s speech.”  (The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, p. 87). They could distinguish between communication that was authentic or not authentic.

Although the President’s speech may have convinced some in his television audience, he failed miserably among those in the aphasia ward. They paid close attention to his manner of presentation, to his gestures and facial expressions. They found his communication to be laughable, deceptive, and insincere.

When Judah communicated with Joseph, the communication was total, sincere, authentic...and Joseph knew it and responded accordingly. Verbal and non-verbal communication were at work.

When we deal with others, it is essential to understand their verbal and non-verbal communication. Likewise, we need to be sure that our own non-verbal communication is in sync with our words. The line between authenticity and hypocrisy is easily blurred.

Angel for Shabbat, Parashat Mikkets

by Rabbi Marc D. Angel

“And Pharaoh said to his servants, can we find such a one as this is, a man in whom is the spirit of God? And Pharaoh said to Joseph, since God has shown you all this, there is none so discreet and wise as you are: you will be over my house, and according to your word shall all my people be ruled: only in the throne will I be greater than you.”  (Bereishith 41: 38-40)

Pharaoh had dreams that troubled him. He obviously ascribed special meaning to them. He asked his wise men to interpret the dreams, and they must have offered their suggestions. But Pharaoh was not satisfied. He felt a persistent foreboding.

His butler told Pharaoh of Joseph, a Hebrew slave who was currently in prison. When Joseph was brought to Pharaoh, the monarch said that he heard that Joseph can interpret dreams. Joseph demurred: no, he could not interpret dreams, only God could do that. Pharaoh must have been surprised by this answer. Who was Joseph’s God? Why did that God have such power? Why weren’t the Egyptian gods able to interpret dreams? In spite of likely misgivings, Pharaoh related his dreams, and Joseph offered the interpretation as well as a plan of action for Egypt.

Pharaoh immediately sensed that Joseph’s interpretation was correct. He was so impressed that he appointed Joseph to be second in power over Egypt. Moreover, Pharaoh acknowledged that God—Joseph’s God—had endowed Joseph with the wisdom to understand the dreams and to offer a constructive way forward.

Why was Pharaoh so impressed with Joseph? Why didn’t he take the interpretation under advisement, discuss it with his wise men? Why didn’t he return Joseph to prison?  Why was he so impetuous as to raise the Hebrew slave to become his top official?

Pharaoh was a great leader! He was remarkably perceptive.

Psychologists remind us that dreams are often a product of our inner thoughts and concerns. Pharaoh was worried about the wellbeing of his people. He knew that economic circumstances vacillate. In his dreams he had forebodings of economic distress for his land. The dreams were really not so mysterious. When lean cows swallow fat cows and when thin sheaves swallow fat sheaves, these would seem to be omens of upcoming disaster.

Pharaoh’s dreams haunted him so he asked his wise men to offer their interpretations. Whatever they told him did not make sense to him. He knew in his mind—and in his dreams—that huge problems loomed for his country. He was looking for confirmation of his insight and for a plan to deal with the upcoming challenges.

Pharaoh’s greatness was not simply in his insightful analysis, but in his willingness to seek advice even from a lowly Hebrew prisoner. Joseph came before Pharaoh without any credentials. He was not a professional wise man, diplomat, or celebrity. Moreover, Joseph claimed to rely on his God, not the gods of the Egyptians.

Pharaoh might have expected Joseph to use the occasion to offer words of flattery and to plead for freedom. But Joseph was humble, unpretentious…authentic. Pharaoh instantly knew he was in the presence of an unusual human being. When he heard Joseph’s interpretation of the dreams, Pharaoh was confirmed in his own understanding of the situation. When Joseph not only interpreted the dreams but offered a plan of action, Pharaoh sensed that Joseph was someone to be trusted.

It must have astonished Pharaoh’s wise men and advisers that Pharaoh immediately appointed Joseph to a position above them. However, it was astute of Pharaoh to appoint a lowly outsider to manage the coming years of abundance and famine.  If Joseph’s interpretation and plan failed, he could be blamed and sent back to prison. If Joseph’s interpretation and plan succeeded, all Egypt would benefit in spite of the unhappiness of Pharaoh’s advisers.

Pharaoh was a great leader. His concerns for his people extended even into his dreams. His search for truth went beyond his professional advisers. His humility enabled him to listen to and grant power to a Hebrew slave.

The great neurologist, Dr. Oliver Sacks, pointed out the psychological barriers that prevent people from thinking “out of the box.” It is natural to resist new ideas from untested individuals. It is natural to listen to one’s closest friends and advisers. But greatness entails the ability to break through the barriers and to think clearly for oneself. Dr. Sacks referred to the need for “spaciousness of mind,” the receptivity to new ideas and unexpected insights. (“The River of Consciousness,”  p. 205).

The people of ancient Egypt were fortunate to have a ruler such as Pharaoh. All nations--all communities-- could benefit from leaders who share Pharaoh’s wisdom, intellectual openness, “spaciousness of mind.”

One of the difficulties in learning about the meaning of Hanukkah is
that there is no biblical text. There are only three pages in the
Talmud dedicated to Hanukkah, and they focus primarily on the
technical laws of lighting the hanukkiyah (Shabbat 21a–23b).

Why are there so few sacred texts for Hanukkah? This question becomes
more pressing when we consider that the Maccabees and their supporters
composed four Books of the Maccabees. These books describe the heroism
of the Maccabees and God’s role in the victory.

Amazingly, the Talmud never mentions the Books of the Maccabees. Why
would the Sages ignore them? Why did they exclude the Books of the
Maccabees from the Bible?

Some argue that the Sages turned against the Maccabees once their
descendants embraced Hellenism and persecuted the rabbis.
Additionally, the Maccabees abused their religious authority and
became corrupt (see Rabbi Marc D. Angel, Angel for Shabbat, vol. 1,
2010, p. 36).

Another possible dimension emerges from a closer reading of the Books
of the Maccabees. One of the greatest heroes of the Maccabees was
their putative ancestor Phinehas (I Maccabees 2:26), the grandson of
Aaron the High Priest. In Numbers chapter 25, we learn of Phinehas’
religious zealotry as he killed the leading participants in the
idolatry of Baal Peor. God approved of his actions, stopping a plague
and granting Phinehas a covenant of peace (Numbers 25:12).

The Maccabees viewed Phinehas as a religious role model and sought to
apply his teachings to a Hellenized society. According to the Books of
the Maccabees, the Maccabean revolt began when a Hellenized Jew was
about to sacrifice to the Greek gods. Mattathias (Judah Maccabee’s
father) killed him and proclaimed, “Whoever is on God’s side, come
with me!” (I Maccabees 2:27). This expression derives from Moses’
battle cry against those who served the Golden Calf (Exodus 32:26).
Although the Torah prohibits idolatry, Jewish Law does not allow Jews
to take the law into their own hands and harm or kill violators of the
Torah. However, the Maccabees believed that they had acted correctly
like their ancestor Phinehas and like Moses. They claimed that the
victory and miracles enumerated in the Books of the Maccabees were
proof that God had sanctioned their actions.

On his deathbed, Mattathias instructed his children to continue to act
in the manner of their ancestor Phinehas:

When the time drew near for Mattathias to die, he said to his sons,
“…my children, be zealous for the Torah, and be ready to give your
lives for the covenant of our fathers…Phinehas, our ancestor, through
his act of zeal received a pact of priesthood for all time.” (I
Maccabees 2:49–50, 54)

Although the Maccabees idealized the religious zealotry of Phinehas,
the Sages drastically curtailed the application of his behavior. A
passage in the Jerusalem Talmud poignantly captures the paradox facing
the Sages. On the one hand, they were uncomfortable with Phinehas’
taking the law into his own hands. On the other hand, God explicitly
approved of his actions:

Phinehas did not act in accordance with the Sages. Rabbi Judah b. Pazi
said: the Sages wanted to excommunicate him, were it not for the
divine spirit that jumped in and said that he and his descendants
shall have an eternal covenant of priesthood. (J.T. Sanhedrin 9:7,
27b)

The Sages conclude that Phinehas himself acted appropriately, and God
attested to the absolute purity of his motives. However, the Sages
deeply circumscribed the applicability of Phinehas’ actions to others.

Two generations after the Maccabean victory, Hillel preached that we
should be students of Aaron—loving peace and pursuing peace, loving
people and bringing them closer to Torah (Avot 1:12). Hillel
represents proper Jewish teaching. We should emulate Aaron, not
Phinehas.

Perhaps Hillel also learned this lesson from his mentors, Shemayah and
Abtalion (see Avot 1:10–11). They were the rabbinic leaders of the
previous generation and were either converts of descended from
converts (see also Gittin 57b). The Talmud relates a story where the
High Priest was jealous over their popularity and denigrated them for
being converts whereas he was nobly descended from Aaron the High
Priest. Shemayah and Abtalion retorted that they truly reflected the
peaceful values of Aaron whereas the High Priest—the biological
descendant of Aaron—did not:

It happened with a high priest that as he came forth from the
Sanctuary, all the people followed him, but when they saw Shemayah and
Abtalion, they forsook him and went after Shemayah and Abtalion….The
high priest said to them: May the descendants of the heathen come in
peace!  They answered him: May the descendants of the heathen, who do
the work of Aaron, arrive in peace, but the descendant of Aaron, who
does not do the work of Aaron, he shall not come in peace! (Yoma 71b)

The Sages rejected the Books of the Maccabees from the biblical canon
and ignored them in their literature. The Sages also recast the
holiday as a spiritual festival, downplaying the military victory and
focusing instead on lighting candles and the beautification of the
mitzvot (hiddur mitzvah). The Talmud describes one miracle associated
with the Hanukkah story, namely, the miracle of the oil lasting for
eight days (Shabbat 21b). Although the Books of Maccabees report
several miracles, the miracle of the oil is conspicuously absent. By
ignoring the miracles in the Books of the Maccabees, and by focusing
on a miracle that the Maccabees did not consider important, the Sages
effectively deprived the Maccabees of the divine sanction they had
claimed for themselves.

The Sages also selected a Haftarah for Shabbat Hanukkah that preaches
a message in opposition to that of the Maccabees (Megillah 31a). The
prophet Zechariah envisioned a Menorah, and told Zerubbabel, “This is
the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel: Not by might, nor by power, but by
My spirit—said the Lord of Hosts” (Zechariah 4:6). It appears that the
Sages chose this passage to take a stand not only against the
Hellenists, but also against the overzealous approach of the
Maccabees.

In medieval times, Jews often were persecuted and powerless.
Consequently, the military heroism of the Maccabees against the Greek
enemy (and not against assimilated Jews) was brought to the fore and
celebrated. The Al HaNissim prayer that we recite in the Amidah and
the Grace after Meals appears to have been introduced during these
times and represents a response to persecution.

During this period, a book entitled “Megillat Antiochus” that related
the military victories of the Maccabees was composed and widely
circulated. The Maoz Tzur hymn also was composed, celebrating God’s
victories over the enemies of the Jews. This medieval model of Jewish
pride in the Maccabees’ strength sustained our people through
difficult times and became an additional layer of meaning for
Hanukkah.

Although that medieval recasting of Hanukkah is important, the core of
the talmudic observance of Hanukkah celebrates the triumph of the
spirit of the Sages against both assimilation and religious zealotry.
We celebrate peaceful dialogue, and transmission of the Torah to
students and children. We should again be reminded of Hillel’s
teaching: Love peace, pursue peace, love people, and bring them closer
to the Torah.

            “BRITANNIA WAIVES THE RULE,” scoffed the headline of the mid-March 1947 advertisement in the liberal New York daily evening paper PM. “British Jail American Seamen in Palestine. Who is Breaking What Law?” The advertisement explained that the “American crew of the ship Ben Hecht … are jailed in Palestine…. These very men, of all faiths, fought alongside the British in World War II. Still fighting for freedom, they ran the Ben Hecht through the Royal Navy’s illegal Palestine blockade.” They were arrested for “‘Aiding and abetting illegal immigration’—the British say.” The advertisement asked, “Did the Ben Hecht crew violate [an] international pact” or “slam the gates of Palestine, violating the world’s mandate?” The answer was that “[t]he only ‘law’ in Palestine is British might,” against which the Ben Hecht crew “volunteered in the American tradition.” Today they are in jail—prisoners of war in the post-war world.”

            My grandfather Henry (“Hank”) Mandel (1920–2015) was one of those Ben Hecht crew members imprisoned in the British Empire’s undeclared war against the Jewish people before the establishment of the State of Israel. His story and that of the Ben Hecht are told in my recently published book Without Permission: Conversations, Letters, and Memoirs of Henry Mandel (Cherry Orchard Books 2021). Mandel went from being a yeshiva boy to becoming an American Merchant Mariner during World War II, a crewman aboard the Jewish “illegal” immigrant ship Abril / Ben Hecht, a detainee in Acre Fortress, a technician in a covert Haganah armament plant in lower Manhattan, and a volunteer for the Israeli Army during the 1948 Israeli War of Independence. He provides a unique illuminating perspective on the creation of a Jewish state. He and his comrades struggled for a refuge for the survivors of the Holocaust where they could rebuild their lives in personal and national freedom.

            Growing up in the 1990s, I knew my Grandpa Hy had done something special, but it was hard for me to explain exactly why. His story did not fit into the paradigms I had learned about the heroes of his generation from television or school programs about the Holocaust. Moral courage in a world gone by is hard to understand and harder to emulate. He was not a survivor, in contrast to the grandparents of many of my contemporaries. He had not been a soldier in World War II, and his service in boiler rooms under the water lines of Merchant Marine vessels toward the end of the war and in the immediate post-war period, despite the dangers or lurking German submarines and floating mines, did not qualify him for benefits under the GI bill or points in civil service exams during his career as a Department of Defense and New York City Department of Health civil servant specializing in procurements. He had not become a rabbi, served as an Army chaplain, or led congregations, unlike some of his classmates who in high school had been no more learned than he. He served as a foreign volunteer in the young Israeli Army during the Israeli War of Independence, but he had not seen combat, and he had returned to America rather than settling in Israel.

Spurred by my grandfather’s death in 2015, Without Permission: Conversations, Letters, and Memoirs of Henry Mandel is the product of my efforts to better understand my grandfather’s story and to discover its lessons for today. The book melds personal narratives of the Ben Hecht crew, historical background, and analysis that complements Mandel’s recollections preserved in the book.

My grandfather habitually told the stories he found most meaningful about his life in bits and pieces as asides, during Shabbat walks, car rides, or on the stoop when his grandchildren were released early from school on Fridays. His mother, whose maiden name was Chana Reisner, was born in Bratislava (Pressburg), then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and spoke German and Hungarian. Her father had sold cattle to kosher butchers but had died in 1917 during the influenza pandemic. The family moved to Vienna and lived in the heavily Jewish Herminengasse neighborhood. One day a young man with a handsome beard and peyot (sidelocks) knocked on the door looking for the daughter of the “Widow Rosner.” It was Abraham Mandel, who had been raised in Ulanov in Galicia, had studied in the Galante yeshiva in Hungary, and had received ordination to be a ritual slaughterer. Chana’s mother quickly deduced that the young stranger had received directions to the wrong address in a meeting set up by a marriage broker, and not having enough money to hire a marriage broker for Chana or being privy to any knowledge about Abraham, introduced him to Chana. They hit it off and soon married. Leo, Henry (called Hymie by his family then), and Dora were born in Vienna; Rebecca Esther was born in Gouverneur in upstate New York, where Abraham slaughtered cattle until a serious sledding accident, and then Goldie, Morris, and Malka Tziporah followed once the family settled in The Bronx.    

            The Ben Hecht was not my grandfather’s first clandestine adventure. As a young boy, my grandfather and his older brother Leo used to take off their yarmulkes and attach themselves to groups of Catholic parochial school classes being admitted into baseball games at the Polo Grounds, home of the Giants. Giants’ owner Charles Stoneham's son Horace Stoneham, who would inherit the team and eventually move it to San Francisco, was at the time working in the ticketing office. One day Horace stopped the brothers and denied them entry, remarking that "Your tzitzit are showing." In 1936, when my grandfather graduated from Talmudical Academy high school, he was offered a half scholarship to continue on at Yeshiva College. He declined, not wanting to financially burden his family at a time his father could not even afford to buy a daily Yiddish paper. After leaving yeshiva at age 15, his first job was ditch digging for a Works Progress Administration project. The former yeshiva student was at a loss until a kindly older Italian man showed him how to wield a shovel. Looking back, Mandel was sure that his father would have somehow come up with the tuition. But, characteristically reflecting on the past optimistically, he felt the hard labor of his youth had built up his strength, and because he shifted to office work as he grew older his body had not been worn down.

            On his first day working in a Brooklyn Navy Yard machine shop, the foreman discovered there were now two workers with the first name Henry. The foreman declared there could be only one Henry in his shop. When the first Henry in the shop declared “My name is Henry,” my grandfather said he would be called Hank in his easy-going way, a name that stuck at sea and at work for the rest of his life. His beliefs gave him the security to not stand on ceremony. Mandel would explain to his daughters he had never legally changed his name from Heinreich, noting serving in the Israeli army was not so legal either, and as a Vienna-born naturalized citizen, he had taken his chances by serving Israel in violation of American statutes in an era when many citizenships were forfeited, and security clearances revoked, due to suspected disloyalty. He went by his Hebrew name Chaim in the Israeli Army, which perhaps was the name to which he most closely identified.

            Serving aboard Merchant Marine vessels broadened Mandel’s horizons, both in understanding the world and the diversity within the Jewish people, while remaining steadfast to his own identity. When working on a Merchant Marine ship in New York, a member of the crew, Henry Chan, introduced himself as the new messman. Chan, who had lost his rent money gambling, asked to borrow $10 so he could retrieve his luggage from his landlady. Mandel, who had been bringing a sandwich for lunch and eating supper at home while the ship was in port to eat kosher as much as he could, thought a messman was always a nice friend to have, and lent Chan the cash. The evening the ship went to sea, with his last sandwich already consumed, Mandel went into the ship’s mess for the first time with his cap on so he could recite a blessing before eating. An Able Bodied Seaman said “Hey, take your hat off. I told you to take your hat off when you are eating. Where I come from, we take our hats off when we eat.” Mandel looked at him and said “Where I come from we put our hats on when we eat.” At that moment Henry Chan came into the mess hall and the Seaman said “Henry, don’t feed that man until he takes off his cap.” Chan replied, “You know, this is my mess hall, and I feed whomever I want to feed. Now, if that man wants to wear his cap, he can wear his cap. If you don’t like it, you can leave the mess hall.” Chan, despite his last name, wasn’t Chinese. He had a dark complexion. As the ship shuttled in the Mediterranean, Mandel noticed that he spoke Italian in Italy, and on the next stop in Greece, he would speak Greek. As Passover approached Mandel told Chan “Henry, I am not going to be coming into the mess hall for the next eight days, but what I would like you to do is in the morning I will come by and give me six raw eggs.” Mandel intended to boil them in the engine room and eat them along with some matzos he had picked up in Greece for all of his meals during the holiday. Chan said, “Well, can’t you have anything else, how about coffee?” Mandel said “No.” “I will give you a brand-new can,” countered Chan. “No, I don’t want the coffee,” Mandel replied. Annoyed, Chan remarked, “You know, my parents were the most Orthodox people in Turkey. We used to drink coffee on Passover.” Mandel had no idea that Chan was even Jewish. Later on in life, when he and my Grandma Libby visited on holidays, he often prayed at the nearby beautiful Syrian Sephardic Beth Torah Congregation, explaining that the essential prayers of the Sephardic and Ashkenazic rites were the same.

            In early 1946, Mandel was serving aboard a United States Merchant Marine ship where he and a crewmate, radio operator David Kaplan, with the shared experience of traditional Jewish educations, read about how Holocaust survivors were trying to enter the land of Israel via boat in defiance of Great Britain’s edict declaring such immigration into the country illegal. They agreed that whoever would learn first of a Jewish immigrant ship they could join would tell the other. Mandel, upon returning to his parents’ apartment in The Bronx, was approached by a Mr. Green, who had grown up in the shtetl of Plonsk with his cousin David Gruen (who later changed his name to David Ben-Gurion) and whose daughters were friendly with Mandel’s sisters. He told Mandel there was such a ship looking for sailors. Mr. Green directed Mandel to the offices of the American League for a Free Palestine, which was led by Peter Bergson in Washington, D.C. Mandel sent a telegram to Kaplan, who had been at sea in an oil tanker off of the coast of Venezuela, and Kaplan returned to join him.

            Bergson, whose real name was Hillel Kook, had led a group of Irgun Zvai Leumi activists, loosely known as the Bergson Boys, who had during the war sought to stir the American public, Congress, and President Roosevelt to help refugees and to save Jews during the Holocaust. The Bergson Boys, which operated under different names, was now trying to raise funds and to influence the American public to support an independent Jewish state. The noted playwright and screenwriter Ben Hecht had lent his biting pen on behalf of the Bergson’s Boys’ efforts during World War II in advertisements paid for by the Bergson Group’s small donors, including one that ironically declared, when the American government blocked the payment of bribes to allies of the Nazis who might spare Jews in exchange for currency and materials, there was “For Sale to Humanity 70,000 Jews, Guaranteed Human Beings at $50 a Piece.” In 1944, with the Irgun engaged in an underground armed revolt in Palestine, the Bergson Boys had formed the League, to influence the American public, especially members of Congress, and to collect funds for the Irgun. In 1946, Hecht wrote the Broadway play A Flag Is Born to raise funds for the League, which featured a Holocaust survivor character played by a young Marlon Brando who travels to Palestine to fight for Jewish independence. The Brando character rhetorically asked where American Jews had been during the Holocaust.

            The Bergson Boys devoted the funds raised by the play, which amounted to almost the totality of their financial resources, to purchase and retrofit a ship to transport Jewish displaced persons to Palestine. The Bergson Boys set up the Tyre Shipping Company as a shell company to hold “nominal title” for a ship. The Abril was a worn down, rusty 753-ton former yacht. It was built by the Krupp company in Keil, Germany in 1930. It was initially named Agrosy and was renamed, Vita, Abril, and then served as the USS Cythera (PY 31) as a coastal patrol vessel during World War II. Tyre purchased it from the United States government for $36,400 (the next bid was $36,000, indicating that the bidders were trying to keep the price low for the Bergson Boys). The ship’s retrofit in the Gowanus Canal cost over $100,000.

            The M.S. (Merchant Ship) Abril, which was to become famous under its underground name M.S. Ben Hecht, was the only Jewish illegal immigrant ship not sponsored by the Mossad Aliyah Bet associated with the Haganah, the establishment Jewish Agency’s pre-state underground army, to transport illegal immigrants to Palestine after the close of World War II until the establishment of the State of Israel. Menachem Begin, the commander of the Irgun in Palestine, complained that Bergson felt that the cost of purchasing and sailing an illegal immigration ship was not justified because the Haganah, with much greater resources, had undertaken a large-scale illegal immigrant ship program as its primary method of challenging British rule. Begin argued that the League should devote its funds to buy arms for the Irgun, and not divert any funds towards operations intended to garner publicity. Bergson placed much greater importance to securing the support of the American public for a Jewish state. Moreover, he felt that the Haganah’s Mossad LeAliyah Bet, which was organizing and sailing illegal immigration ships clandestinely, could be pressed to expand its operations on a much greater scale if it were spurred by the publicity garnered by a competitor. The plan was for the ship to closely approach the Palestine coast where small boats would ferry the passengers to shore, allowing the ship to return with other passengers on another journey. It was hoped that the ship would avoid detection due to diversionary attacks by the Irgun on British installations.

            After Mandel learned that the League was looking for a crew, he was told to meet with Abraham (Abrasha) Stavsky. Stavsky had been convicted of the assassination of labor Zionist Chaim Arlosoroff on a Tel Aviv beach in 1933, but the conviction and sentence of death by hanging had been reversed due to lack of collaboration after Chief Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook had publicly declared “I can attest, on the basis of my inner conscience, that Abraham Stavsky is innocent of the murder charge.” In the late 1930s and early 1940s, Stavsky had shepherded thousands of Jews fleeing the Nazis in small boats to refuge in Palestine as part of operations organized by the Revisionist movement and the Irgun. Mandel later recalled that Stavsky “said he was looking for an American crew to man their ship the M.S. Abril (which was later changed to M.S. Ben Hecht). Up until that time the crew of Aliyah Bet ships, when captured, would mingle with the passengers and the British would not arrest any crewman.” However, if captured, the crew of the Ben Hecht would not conceal themselves. “The intention with the M.S. Ben Hecht,” Stavsky explained to Mandel, “was that if the ship was captured the American crew would remain to be arrested by the British. Because of the publicity they could not intern Americans in Cyprus or Eritrea. There would have to be a public trial where the Americans would be charged with ‘Aiding and Abetting Illegal Immigration.’” The crew would insist on a trial in which the British policy of forbidding Jewish immigration would be assailed as a breach of the League of Nations mandate to create a Jewish home in Palestine. Stavsky told Mandel that “the defense would be that the immigration was legal and that the British were given the Mandate to make Palestine a homeland for the Jewish people. This would show the English in a very unfavorable light before the entire world and would hasten the exit of the British from Palestine.”

            The ship was to be manned by a volunteer crew of American citizens (including some sailors whose families received a stipend, and two Norwegian engineers paid for their services but who shared in the crew’s travails). Mandel wrote later that he volunteered because “I was a Zionist, and I also felt that it was my duty to help my fellow Jews.” Mandel reflected 50 years after his Ben Hecht voyage that “[i]f I were Irish I would be proud to be Irish. If I were Italian, I would be proud to be Italian. But I am not, I am Jewish” he said with a smile. “And I am proud to be a Jew.” Hyman Robert (“Bob”) Levitan, who would navigate the Ben Hecht across the Atlantic to the shores of Palestine, had felt helpless as the Nazis rose to power as “an impotent little Jewish kid in Brooklyn,” and jumped at the opportunity to volunteer to help “the Jews that came out of the concentration camps…. They had no place to go, they had no place to live.” Crew members were not necessarily associated with any particular ideology but who were animated by a desire to help Holocaust survivors flee the land where their families were murdered. Several of the crew members were not Jews. Walter Cushenberry, a professional maritime chef, had been convinced by the League that Palestine was the only place to build homes for the displaced Jews of Europe. Cushenberry was influenced by the message of his union, the National Maritime Union (NMU) “that regardless of race or creed there should be no discrimination on ships….So frankly, I do think it’s my business.” Subsequent to his imprisonment in Acre Prison, he would recount that “after talking to those guys in prison and learning the truth” that “[t]he only way it’s gonna be stopped is for us to try and go and give them their freedom.” Cushenberry, an African American, explained in a soft whisper “I happen to know just what freedom means, you know.”

            Mandel served as second engineer and oiler in the engine room and an electrician and plumber aboard the undermanned Ben Hecht. After enduring severe storms and rough seas in the mid-winter crossing of the Atlantic, on January 10, 1947, the Ben Hecht arrived six days behind schedule in Port de Bouc, a small port near Marseille, France. Despite the misgivings of the Irgun leadership in Palestine, Irgun operatives in France aided in the practical work of preparing the illegal immigrant ship. Yehoshua HaCohen-Brandeis recalled that when the Ben Hecht arrived in France, he and Elyahu Lankin (who had escaped from a British prison camp in Eritrea and had had been appointed head of Irgun operations in Europe), Eri Jabotinsky (the son of Revisionist Zionist movement founder Ze'ev Jabotinsky), and Abraham Stavsky, who was the group’s expert on illegal immigration ship construction, organized the preparation of the vessel for the immigrants: HaCohen-Brandeis later recalled that Stavsky

decided this ship had room for 600 people. There were three bedrooms, one or two restrooms, and an engine room. But there was a big deck. And he began to design. He designed to install planks extending out over the sea …to expand the deck. At the end of these planks, he set up a small shack without a roof and without a bottom, like a telephone booth. He built like eight booths like these. These were the outhouses…. According to the design, all the men needed to stay on the deck—“which ever way,” by standing, by sitting, by lying down. In the rooms below, it was necessary that only sick women or sick men would descend; that would be the infirmary. And thus about 600 people were able to travel in that ship—if you call her a ship.

When he at first had heard that Stavsky planned to transport 600 on the Ben Hecht, HaCohen-Brandeis thought that Stavsky “was not serious. I did not know whether to call him an expert or something worse. But he was correct. He knew his trade.” Stavsky had previously fit equivalent numbers of illegal immigrant passengers into smaller ship spaces. The international nature of the expected passengers is captured by the multi-lingual signage on the twin outhouses for men and women constructed extending from the deck, though one suspects that the translation into Norwegian reflected the whimsy of the crew rather than necessity:

WOMEN                     MEN

FRAUEN                     MENNER

DAMES                       ERDJEL

ASZONYOK              EMBEREK

MUJERES                   HOMBRES

ENSA                          HERRER

DAMER

Irgun operative HaCohen-Brandeis chose eight young Betar youth group members and trained them in using guns and hand grenades and in a deserted wooded area near Marseilles. But Bergson Boys leader Yitzhak Ben-Ami instructed the crew and passengers to resist only passively the British if the Royal Navy seized the Ben Hecht so casualties would be avoided. Betar leader Gideon Abramowitz instructed the trainees to throw their weapons into the sea upon contact with the British to avoid bloodshed. Eliyahu Lankin and the Bergson Boy leadership were concerned that the Ben Hecht passengers would be in particular danger if there was any resistance due to the ship’s connection to the Irgun. British intelligence had monitored the Ben Hecht since its retrofitting in New York and believed that the vessel would fiercely resist capture even more violently than recent Haganah ships, which had sought to defend themselves with heavy objects and clubs.

            The great majority of the Ben Hecht’s passengers began their journey from Displaced Persons (DP) camps in the American-occupied zone in Germany. Note the strange nomenclature: they were no longer considered refugees deserving of sanctuary by the victorious Allied powers because World War II was over. They were merely displaced people unwilling to go back to their countries of origin. On February 28, 1947, the immigrants arrived in Marseille. Mandel noted the day that refugees boarded the ship “was a very touching moment…. They came out of Europe which to them was a slaughter house, and these people had lived to see many of the members of their family slaughtered, some of them actually saw them, others it was they just disappeared. And here they were being on a ship to go to the Land of Israel.” On Saturday, March 1, 1947, the Ben Hecht left Port-de-Bouc with 600 immigrant passengers and 27 crew members. The Ben Hecht’s captain had been dismissed after the crew complained of his drunkenness, and Levitan served as the senior officer on board for the ship’s trip from France to Palestine. Moshe Schwartz and Simcha Berlin were in charge of the passengers as Betar escorts. Most of the passengers were connected to the Revisionist movement, but there were also Orthodox passengers associated with Agudath Yisroel. Some of the passengers “were in a very pitiful state,” Mandel recalled, and “had not recovered from the concentration camps and the work camps which they had been in during the war.” A few Russian Jews “were big, strong, compared to the others” because they had been adequately fed in the Red Army. A group of Tunisian Jews who were members of Betar planned to form a Kibbutz once they arrived in the Land of Israel. There were five pregnant women on board. A couple were married during the trip because the couple feared they would be separated if the British captured the boat. The Rabbi who presided over the ceremony explained that the cup donated by Messman Jeno Berkovits would be shattered “in order to perpetuate the memory of the destruction of Solomon's Temple and remind the Jews that they live in dispersion.” A 17-year-old French citizen, Henrietta Goldenberg was traveling to reunite and marry her fiancé Bart Stroe of Tel-Aviv, whom she had met while he served as a Jewish volunteer in the British Army.

            An hour after sunrise the morning after the ship left Port-de-Bouc, the piston oil-pump rod of the ship’s port engine forward pierced a hole in a crankcase. The Ben Hecht was in a narrow channel between an uncleared minefield. The starboard engine had malfunctioned during the earlier trip to France, and if it failed again the ship would drift into the minefield. Upon being radioed the news that the port engine was wrecked, Jabotinsky consulted with his Bergson Boys colleagues and ordered the ship to return. Levitan, however, reasoned it was just as dangerous to return as to go forward and asked the engineers if the engine could be repaired at sea. Chief Engineer Haakom Lilliby, First Assistant Engineer Erling Sorensen, and First Assistant Engineer Louis Brettschneider, assisted by Mandel, worked for 24 hours straight to hammer repurposed deck plates to patch the engine. (Brettschneider had been recruited by Mandel.) These emergency repairs rendered the engine only operable at a reduced speed, which delayed the arrival of the ship near Palestinian waters by a day longer than the seven planned. The Irgun originally planned attacks on British installations to divert attention from the anticipated arrival of the Ben Hecht on a Friday night. However, the ship now could not meet that timetable. To their frustration, radio operators Kaplan and Edward “Eddie” Styrak (a Polish American who later volunteered for the Israeli Air Transport Command), the Irgun on shore was not aware that the Ben Hecht was behind schedule, and the Ben Hecht’s crew was not aware of updated information about the Irgun’s plans, which changed the time table of the attacks to Saturday night. Somewhat mysteriously, the Betar escorts did know of the Irgun’s change in plans, but apparently did not share that information with the American crew.

            The Ben Hecht was spotted by two British Lancaster patrol bomber airplanes at 10:40 am on Saturday, March 8, 1947. The Royal Navy destroyer HMS Chieftain came in sight of the Ben Hecht at 12:15 pm. The HMS Chevron arrived at 2:15 pm on the starboard side of the Ben Hecht. The Ben Hecht requested food and water supplies, and the Royal Navy destroyers warned her not to enter Palestinian waters. A British destroyer signaled “What ship? Where bound?” and received the reply that the name of the ship was the Abril and that the destination was Arica, Chile on the Pacific coast of South America. That answer belied Ben Hecht’s current course, which at that point was towards the direction of the Strait of Gibraltar, away from the Suez Canal, to confuse the British.

            The path of the Ben Hecht was blocked by the British destroyers at 4:30 pm, as twilight approached, over 10 nautical miles from the coast line of Palestine, well within international waters as defined by Great Britain’s interpretation of international maritime law. The Betar members trained by the Irgun ultimately followed the instructions of the Betar escorts and threw their weapons into the sea before they boarded. With only one day’s food supply remaining for the passengers, Levitan felt he had no choice but to turn 90 degrees and head toward the coast. Once again, a British destroyer signaled asking for the ship’s name and destination, and the response was that it was the merchant vessel Abril heading to Chile in South America, even though the ship was heading straight to Palestine rather than either to Gibraltar or the Suez Canal. Surrounded by the British naval vessels, the Betar escorts hoisted the Zionist flag aboard the Ben Hecht and led the passengers in singing the Zionist anthem, Hatikvah, and the Zionist Revisionist Party’s hymn. The Royal Navy destroyer Chieftain then went beside the Ben Hecht and landed a boarding party of thirty two officers and men and rammed the Ben Hecht. Thirty boarders then jumped onto the Ben Hecht’s deck from the HMS Chevron, and another 20 boarded from the HMS Chivalrous. In addition to these three destroyers, HMS St Bride’s Bay was also in the British force following the Ben Hecht. The hundred British armed marines, laden with tear gas grenades, batons, and javelins then jumped on the deck, some using water hoses, and soon gained control over the Ben Hecht.

            The passengers were imprisoned below deck and all the crew were kept under guard in a corner of the bridge. After approximately an hour, the ship was secured. “Many of our passengers were in tears and worse, some threatening to jump overboard,” Kaplan recalled. Jacques Méry, a French journalist aboard since the ship’s departure from Port-de-Bouc and who wrote a book about his experiences, Laissez passer mon people (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1947), left the deck among the passengers because he could not “stand the tears that run on the bony faces of men.” The boarding party was prepared for combat, but once they took control and there was no fighting, the British sailors and marines relaxed to a degree and treated the crew and passengers in a relatively friendly manner.

            The Royal Navy’s official history of its campaign to blockade and intercept Jewish immigration to Palestine claimed that the British boarding parties encountered no opposition, and that the boarding parties were offered fudge and tomato soup by the American crew from a modern galley. Mandel, however, insisted that

[w]hile we did not resist (another story in itself) we did not cooperate with the English. We disconnected the auxiliary motor to the rudder, and when the British took over the wheel it took two men to steer (“Those Jewboys must be bloody strong” was one comment by a wheelman.) We didn’t have a “modern cookhouse” and we did not serve the British anything. They commandeered what they wanted, but they could not have had tomato soup, as there wasn’t any aboard and our passengers and our own crew were never served tomato soup.

            The same New York Times article that reported in passing the arrival without “advance notice” of the Abril / Ben Hecht and its capture “without a struggle,” gave pride of place to eight attacks in Tel Aviv and along the coast of Palestine on that Saturday night, March 8, 1947, which could have served as diversionary attacks to distract attention from the Ben Hecht’s approach to the coast. The ship’s crew was not informed of the change in plan, and the ship had approached the coast and been intercepted before the 8:15 pm start time of those attacks. In those attacks, which included one on Citrus House, the British operational headquarters in Tel Aviv and the cutting off of Tel Aviv’s electricity, five Jews, an Arab woman, and one British soldier were killed, and approximately 50 Jews, British soldiers, and Arabs were wounded. The Jews and an Arab woman killed were passers-by, uninvolved in the attacks, shot in indiscriminate firing by British troops.

            In the wee hours of the morning of March 9, 1947, the Ben Hecht was towed into Haifa Harbor, and the British 88^th Red Devils Paratrooper Division, known as the Kalonniyot (Poppies) among the Jews in Palestine after their red berets, treated the Jewish immigrants roughly and beat them when forcing them into deportation ships Empire Shelter, Empire Rival, and the Empire Rest for transit to prison camps in Cyprus. Journalist I. F. Stone witnessed the deportation of the Ben Hecht passengers, and described the “weary, the dirty, the sleepy-eyed, the long suffering, some shambling through, some walking with defiant erectness and slow gait, others anxious to avoid trouble; men, women and some small children. They moved along one by one, driven human cattle to who, these shouts, shoves and quick squirts with powder [DDT disinfectant] were but one more in a familiar series to be endured, though this time at the very brink of Eretz Israel.”

            “We were taken off,” crew member David Kaplan later remembered, “and we were put into—not gently—into Haifa lockup.” Twenty crew members of the Abril/Ben Hecht appeared before Haifa Criminal Court Chief Magistrate Effendi Shadi Kahlil in Haifa lockup, who remanded the Ben Hecht sailors into prison on the charge of aiding and abetting 600 immigrants to enter in an illegal manner into the territorial waters of Palestine.

            The indicted crew members were sent to Acre Prison. As remanded prisoners, they were housed outside the main prison separate from the convicted prisoners. They were allowed contact with permanent prisoners who were members of the Irgun Zvai Leumi and the more radical Lehi (Stern Group) underground movements. When the Ben Hecht crew arrived in Acre, the Irgun was frantically planning a breakout from the prison to save Dov Gruner and three other condemned men from execution. Gruner had refused to appeal his sentence because to do so would have implicitly recognized the right of his British captor to impose their rule. Levitan had a small camera, and Kaplan had film, hidden in luggage, and not detected or confiscated by the British. The personal belongings of the Ben Hecht crew had not been thrown overboard by the British sailors, as was typically done, probably because they had not physically resisted arrest. Eitan Livni, the senior Irgun prisoner, asked Levitan to photograph prisoners, who unbeknownst to Levitan, had been selected to break out. Levitan was allowed into the main prison complex under the pretense of a visit for a shower, carrying the camera and film under a towel. He photographed multiple Irgun and Lechi prisoners in each shot to save film. Matiyahu Shmulevitz, a Lechi member whose death sentence had been commuted, asked for the film after Levitan took the pictures, without explanation. The photos were then smuggled out of the prison and used to prepare fake identification papers, which were necessary if the escapees were to evade capture after the breakout.

            The Ben Hecht crew were also, as Mandel later wrote,

permitted to enter the regular prison for Shabbat services when a Rabbi would come in. One of the Irgun prisoners asked me if I had any electric batteries. Among my other duties aboard ship I served as Electrician and I had a box with about a dozen batteries with me. We were searched by the English before we were permitted to join the prisoners. I put three batteries in the bottom of each shoe and hobbled in. The British searched me but did not have me remove my shoes and I brought in the batteries. I did this twice and brought in a dozen batteries.

            While the Ben Hecht crew awaited trial in Acre Prison, a publicity campaign was waged to bring attention to the injustice. Mandel’s youngest sister, Malka Tziporah, remembers her parents as being intensely distressed. Esther Kaplan, the mother of Ben Hecht radioman David Kaplan lobbied congressmen. Congressman John D. Dingell of Michigan, on March 20, 1947, in a speech on the floor of the House Representatives, said that:

The civilized nations of the world clearly set forth in the League of Nations Mandate their intent that Palestine become a Hebrew homeland. Britain concurred in that intent and eagerly accepted the Mandate. She has, in fact, been extremely loath to relinquish the powers the Mandate gave her and is unbecomingly assiduous in extending those powers…. The freedom of the seas has a long history in American interest from the shores of Tripoli to Leyte Gulf. I should not like to see that freedom abandoned under circumstances in which every precept of law, honor, and humanity asserts its dignity.

To avoid further negative publicity, the British decided that the Ben Hecht sailors would be expelled from Palestine. Mandel later explained that “the English realized that bringing us to trial would further reveal their perfidy to the entire world and to our great disappointment, released us without trial and expelled us from Palestine. However, there was much publicity about the arrest of Americans opposing the British, and the incident served its purpose.” The exiled Ben Hecht crew were warned that if they returned on another illegal immigrant ship, they could be sentenced to an eight-year prison term under British law.

            (Ignoring that warning, Walter “Heavy” Greaves, the ship’s third mate and bosun, a Gentile who had survived the sinking of three ships during the war and a man who was looked to for guidance in a crisis, again tried to run the British blockade on the Aliyah Bet ship Paducah, later renamed Geula [Redemption] by the Haganah. Demonstrating the non-ideological character of the crew, his Ben Hecht shipmates David Gutmann, Lou Brettschneider, and Louis Binder joined him on the Paducah. Upon the capture of the Paducah, Greaves would eventually be detected and imprisoned in Cyprus with captured Jewish refugees for close to two years. The other Paducah disguised themselves as refugees, and the Haganah arranged for their escape. Binder eventually became a member of Congregation Shearith Israel. Rabbi Marc D. Angel oversaw the conversion of his wife, Franja, a daughter of University of Chicago President Robert Maynard Hutchins, who Rabbi Angel remembers as an amazing human being. Sadly, both died at a young age; Franja first and then Lou shortly thereafter. Both are buried in the cemetery of Shearith Israel. Their daughter was adopted by a couple who knew the Binders from American Veterans of Israel organization.)

            The Ben Hecht sailors were expelled from Palestine on March 30, 1947, and were brought in irons unto the Marine Carp, which had a regular route between Palestine and New York. Mandel joined the crew of the Marine Carp when the ship became short-handed in Alexandria. To his surprise, Mandel’s former messman Henry Chan was also a member of the Marine Carp’s crew. On April 16, 1947, while the Marine Carp was still at sea on route to New York, Dov Gruner and three other members of the Jewish resistance, who the Irgun were desperately attempting to free when the Ben Hecht crew were in Acre, were executed by the British in Acre Prison. Over 50 years later, Mandel would write that “on May 4, 1947 the Irgun, in one of its finest moments, blew out the side of Acre prison and many prisoners escaped. I feel proud that I have even the smallest part in this action.” The League promised an “Armada of Mercy Ships” to follow up on the Ben Hecht. Instead, the Irgun insisted that the next ship organized by the Begson Group, the Altalena, carry arms. Stavsky tried to recruit Mandel for that trip too, but he already was engaged in setting up a secret Haganah bazooka shell plant in lower Manhattan that was reassembled in Israel with his assistance as a foreign volunteer in the new Israeli Defense Forces. Instead, Mandel suggested a friend, who was killed in a terrible fratricidal tragedy along with Stavsky by troops loyal to the new Israeli government, which feared a possible coup when the Altalena tried to land in Tel Aviv.

In an age in which the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish is constantly questioned, I hope my grandfather’s story and the tale of the Ben Hecht can help remind us, that despite imperfections, Israel is a moral and humanitarian enterprise. Even in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust, the survivors were left to rot without a home. It took the bravery of the survivors who challenged that fate, and the sacrifices of so many, to build a country where refugees could rebuild their lives in freedom and allow their dynamism to contribute so much to the well-being of the world.

Suggestions for Further Reading

Judith Tydor Baumel, The“Bergson Boys” and the Origins of Contemporary Zionist Militancy, Translated from the Hebrew by Dena Ordan with a Foreword by Moshe Arens (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2005).

Rafael Medoff, Militant Zionism in America: The Rise and Impact of the Jabotinsky Movement in the United States, 1926–1948 (Tuscaloosa and London: The University of Alabama Press 2002).

Rafael Medoff, “Sailor’s role in the birth of Israel”, The Jewish Star, May 1, 2009 / 7 Iyar 5769, available at https://www.thejewishstar.com/stories/sailors-role-in-the-birth-of-israel,758?

Rafael Medoff, “The Bergson Group, Voyage of the Ben Hecht”, Part 8 of the “Bergson Group, A History of Photographs”, available at http://new.wymaninstitute.org/2017/01/the-bergson-group-voyage-of-the-ben-hecht/.

Rafael Medoff, “The S.S. Ben Hecht: a Jewish refugee ship that changed history,” Midstream Nov. 1, 2008).

Rafael Medoff, “Zionists helped defeat segregation in Baltimore – opinion” (The Jerusalem Post, January, 12, 2022), available at https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-692340.