National Scholar Updates

            I begin with the wisdom of the Talmud. In one of its most frequently quoted dicta (Baba Batra 12b), Rabbi Yohanan declares: “From the day of the Temple’s destruction, prophecy was taken from the prophets and given to fools and children.” In our times, some people have concluded that sociologists should be added to the fools and children. Perhaps this comes from the assumption that because we sociologists focus on the common wisdom and behavior of society—which increasingly is dominated by fools and children—we can somehow tease out from it some understanding of what the people are doing and thinking, and with that knowledge speculate about what they are likely to be doing and thinking in the future.

The Talmud of course was always interested in what the people were doing: “Go out and see what the people are saying” it urges (see, for example, Berakhot 45a and Eruvin 14b) those who want to know the connection between what the law requires and what people are accustomed and therefore likely to do. The Talmud is powerfully concerned with “amre inshe,” the voice of the people and what is on their minds; the phrase appears approximately 130 times in its pages. These considerations—what people do, say, and think—which have taken on halakhic or Judeo-legal status, are, of course, fundamentally and acutely social. Hence turning to sociologists, ethnographers or anthropologists for some understanding about social behavior and its vicissitudes may actually not be so far from what the rabbis of the Talmud advised. Asking sociologists to predict the future is based on the idea that what is likely to happen down the road is a result of what people are doing, saying, and thinking now. So, at least for this occasion, I accept this reasoning. To figure out the future of Orthodoxy, the new Orthodoxy, and how people might get there, I begin by looking at what Orthodox people are doing, saying, and thinking now.

To start, I want to invoke Gregory Treverton’s useful distinction between puzzles and mysteries.[1] Puzzles, he advises, come from having insufficient information. If you get what’s missing, the puzzle is solved. If things go wrong with a puzzle, it’s because we have the wrong piece or we put it in incorrectly. Mysteries are a lot murkier: Sometimes the information we’ve been given is inadequate; sometimes we aren’t very smart about making sense of what we’ve been given; and sometimes the question itself cannot be answered. Mysteries require judgments and the assessment of uncertainty; at times, the hard part is not that we have too little information but that we have too much, or that we are looking at matters the wrong way. Puzzles can ultimately be solved; they have answers. Puzzles can come to satisfying conclusions. Mysteries often don’t and offer no such comfort because they may pose a question that may have no definitive answer because the answer is contingent; it depends on a future interaction of many factors, known and unknown. A mystery cannot always be resolved; it can sometimes only be framed, by identifying the critical factors and applying some sense of how they have interacted in the past and might interact in the future. A mystery is an attempt to disambiguate ambiguities. And that is not always possible.

Much of what we know about Orthodoxy today seems to be a matter of putting together the puzzle, fitting in all the pieces of what it is in order to see the big picture of what people are doing, saying, and thinking. But other elements—why, for example, the Orthodox are doing all that they do or how and whether what they say has affected their thinking and behavior or vice versa, as well as how all that will play out in the future—are more of a mystery. Determining whether the forces that are affecting Orthodoxy come from within it or whether they reflect the impact of external cultural factors, some of which may be non-Jewish and part of the wider cultural context in which Orthodox Jews in particular and Jewry in general find themselves, is more of a mystery. Those mysteries are what make predictions about the future so fraught. But let us begin with the pieces of the puzzle.

The Triumph of Orthodoxy

Perhaps the most important piece is contemporary Orthodox triumphalism. In its beginnings, from at least the onset of the period of Jewish enlightenment and political emancipation, Orthodoxy, emerging as a reaction against various forms of reform and change, saw itself as an often vulnerable and diminishing minority, and worried about its ability to survive and hold onto those raised according to its norms. Even though its adherents were certain that their interpretation of what was authentically Jewish was absolutely correct and in the long run were sure that they had the recipe for guaranteeing Jewish survival and therefore wanted to impose their beliefs and behaviors on all Jews, they were not always sure that in the foreseeable future they would be able to withstand the tides of change that were sweeping the Jewish people into the mainstreams of contemporary culture and it corrosive effects on Jewish singularity and culture. Indeed, the word “hareidim,” which we now associate with ultra- or extremist Orthodoxy, was once used for all Orthodox Jewry. It connoted “trembling anxiety,” a kind of abiding worry about the short-term survival of their way of life in spite of longer-term convictions of triumph. The anxiety was that Orthodoxy would have to retrieve all those who were lost to assimilation, and that that was an arduous and dangerous task, as retrievers were always at risk of themselves slipping away and their efforts extraordinarily complex, a view that many today in the Hareidi community believe are the risks facing Chabad, which is after all in the Jewish retrieval business. Although some believers were certain this retrieval of the lost would be one of the precursors of the messianic times (which may be why Chabad is so convinced they can succeed), others thought that time so vaguely distant that they remained Hareidi in the short term.

The idea that Orthodoxy, in spite of its conviction that it had a recipe for Jewish survival, might suffer losses in the short term was of course a fact of history. Many of those who made up the ranks of the Reform or other liberal religious movements as well as the secular, from the socialist Zionists to the pure skeptics, could trace their origins to Orthodoxy, and many came from Hasidic courts or the yeshiva world. When, for example, the Sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe was arrested by the Yevsektsiya, the Jewish affiliates of the Soviet Secret Police, he was led away by two former Lubavitcher Hasidim, and former yeshiva students made up many of the earliest socialist activists.

For much of the twentieth century, Orthodoxy seemed destined to be the form of Judaism one abandoned. From Ben Gurion to American sociologist Marshall Sklare, those who considered the likely future of Orthodoxy saw it as at best a residual category that would inevitably experience “institutional decay,” decline in numbers and confidence, and soon disappear.[2]

Even the Orthodox themselves betrayed a fear about their survival outside their European strongholds. When asked whether or not they should emigrate from Europe, where albeit in diminished form Orthodoxy still flourished, to America, the land of promise, or Palestine, the Promised Land, Orthodox leaders counseled against such a move, saying that both were places where Jews as individuals might survive but where Judaism, and in particular Orthodox Judaism, would die. We know now this counsel was tragically wrong. The Orthodox Jews who remained in Europe suffered decimation from Hitler’s Holocaust and Stalin’s purges, while in America and Israel Orthodoxy has reversed its decline and now virtually no one anymore argues that this form of Judaism will disappear. If anything, all the other religious movements seem in danger of disappearing while Orthodoxy, although radically changed from what it was in Europe, appears to be flourishing. In place of anxiety about its future, it seems extraordinarily triumphalist. Why?

The triumphalism comes from some remarkable successes of Orthodoxy beginning in the second half of the twentieth century, a time of economic boom and political stability that allowed it to grow. Among these successes is a powerful achievement in institution building. In the Diaspora, and particularly America, this has been in founding and maintaining synagogues. In the United States, almost 40 percent of the synagogues are Orthodox, and in the New York metropolitan area, where Orthodox Jews of all sorts make up more than 20 percent of the Jewish population and 32 percent of the Jewish households, that proportion rises to 57 percent.[3] Moreover, in America Orthodox Jews comprise one third of those Jews who describe themselves as “regular synagogue goers,” an attendance that is frequently daily. That pattern is repeated elsewhere in the Diaspora, while in Israel, that proportion is probably twice that or more. The birthrates of the Orthodox of all persuasions are higher than those of all other Jews, and their apparent ability to hold onto their offspring within the boundaries of Orthodoxy more than ever before (over 60%), moreover, suggests these proportions will grow into the foreseeable future.[4]

In addition, the Orthodox have created an educational system that includes both traditional yeshivas as well as the new-model Day Schools, which combine intensive Jewish learning with secular studies aimed at preparing students for university studies at a high level. In Israel this is paralleled by the yeshivas and the state religious public school (mamlakhti-dati) system. To these schools, beginning in the late 1960s with the founding of the Diaspora Yeshiva and later Ohr Somayach in 1970, were added the so-called ba’alei teshuva yeshivas for attracting Jews to Orthodoxy. Enrollment in all these schools has grown exponentially, and institutionally they remain one of the key instruments leading to Orthodox success in holding onto the young, a key element of future survival. Although the economic cost of these schools presents a daunting challenge, their importance is still recognized in the Orthodox world.

Supporting these is also a developed camp program, as well as increasing numbers of Israeli educational experiences for Diaspora Jews that have enhanced and often reinforced the synagogue and school. These camps operate not only in the summer but also during extended breaks in the school year. And the activities in them are Orthodox in form and content.

Although the staff in all these institutions has been changing, as have their goals and methods along with the financial burdens for supporting them, they, along with the many synagogues, have infused Orthodoxy with a confidence in its future and its ability to pass on its way of life that may be unrivaled in its history.

In addition, Orthodox Jews tend to live in areas of high Jewish density, generally in enclaves of the religiously like-minded, which gives them a sense of the ubiquitousness of an Orthodox lifestyle. This residential concentration synergistically acts to strengthen and intensify a sense of Orthodox identity and belonging. In the case of Hareidi Orthodoxy, people are so used to living in their enclaves that they often are unequipped to live anywhere else. In an open society, this socialization effectively prevents people from leaving the precincts of Orthodoxy, which in a mobile society they would otherwise be expected to do, thus reinforcing Orthodox solidarity into the foreseeable future.

When the more cosmopolitan Orthodox, the university graduates and professionals, have moved to the periphery of the Orthodox Jewish community (often for career or educational reasons), they have managed to do what few other Jews achieve: They transform the places into which they have moved rather becoming changed by them. Even when the Orthodox are outward-looking, they will not acquiesce to a diminished level of Jewish life, no matter where they live, and thus the movement of Orthodox Jews of all stripes into new locales has frequently promoted greater religious and ethnic participation in these places, and has attracted other Orthodox Jews to them. Orthodox Jews have been able to make areas of Jewish scarcity flourish by increasing its level of religious behavior and institutions. Once that happens, this tendency has led in recent years, especially among the Hareidi sector, not only to an effort to enhance Orthodoxy even more where they live but also to increasing intolerance toward those who do not share their lifestyle and values, an attitude the more modern Orthodox often try to downplay—though often their non-Orthodox neighbors do not recognize these efforts as genuine and therefore lump all Orthodox into a single group for whom they have little affection.

More and more, the Orthodox entry into a neighborhood has been met with a backlash of resistance to Orthodox residence by others in places where they seek to enter. There are a variety of strategies of opposition, often from other Jews, from denying the establishment of eruvs in the Diaspora to mass demonstrations against Hareidi norms and demands in Israeli communities. In residential movement, the triumphalism of the Orthodox has been redefined by its opponents as religious imposition of the sort commonly associated with fundamentalism. This tension is not likely to disappear anytime soon, as Orthodox Jews continue to insist on living with other Orthodox Jews like them.

In the domain of marriage and the family, the Orthodox also display triumphalism. In America, where intermarriage has been skyrocketing, the Orthodox proudly point to their difference: About nine in 10 of them are married to Jews (and commonly to Orthodox Jews), and of the relative few who have intermarried, a quarter have spouses who converted to Judaism (and were the rabbis more open to conversion, that number would probably rise). In their family life, the Orthodox maintain a high degree of stability, with a divorce rate that, although rising, remains far lower than the approximate 30 percent among other Jews and than in much of the rest of America. What holds true for America is largely the case in the rest of the Diaspora. In Israel, where the divorce rate is only about 15 percent, the Orthodox rate was reportedly rising, although still well below that of the non-Orthodox.[5] That stability, an accepted norm in a relatively conservative population that regards marriage as the ideal state, is likely to continue into the near term.

The Orthodox birthrate, surging during the last 25 years, remains on average somewhere between three to eight children per family (in the Hareidi sector the median household size is about six).[6] In Israel, demographers believe that by 2025, the Hareidi Orthodox sector alone will grow from 16 percent to 23 percent of the population. In a single year, according to a nurse at one hospital in the Lakewood, New Jersey, an area serving a Hareidi Orthodox population, 1,700 babies were born to 5,500 local families, yielding a rate of 358 births per thousand women. (The overall American rate is 65 births per thousand women.) Orthodox adults are younger on average than other American Jews, with more than half falling between the ages of 18 and 44. It does not take a prophet to discern the eventual impact of these trends. The Orthodox are the smallest of the three major denominations; in numbers, the Conservative and Reform movements far outstrip them. In America, however, they are the only group of Jews reproducing beyond replacement level. And that trend is growing, particularly in the Hareidi sector. While Jewry in general is aging, Orthodoxy is not.

In fact, the percentage of Orthodox Jews aged 18–29 is nearly double that in the 30–39 age group. In certain Hareidi enclaves, such as New Square or Kiryas Joel in New York, the median age is around 14. In America, among synagogue-affiliated Jews, the Orthodox have more children than any other group. In the UK, 3 out of 4 births of Jews are from Hareidi families. They are 17 percent of the total UK Jewish population, and in Greater Manchester about half of all Jewish children under five are Hareidi. What is true in America or the United Kingdom is even more so the case in Israel, where government subsidies have supported large families. If the Orthodox continue to retain the loyalties of their young people, as they have mostly done over the past 30 or 40 years, they will become an ever larger, more visible, and better represented part of the total community, and will be in a position to insist on a larger share of communal expenditures—as some Orthodox leaders are already doing.[7]

In the political domain, Orthodox Jews have risen to unprecedented levels of political power and influence both in local and national government, all without hiding their Jewish and religious commitments. Nowhere is this truer than in Israel, where Orthodox Jews hold important government posts and often the balance of power in coalition politics. But in America, and even in Russia, the Orthodox have found ways of exerting influence in spite of their relatively small numbers in relation to the general population. Long before the Orthodox Joseph Lieberman was nominated as a major party vice-presidential candidate, whenever politicians wanted to indicate their support for or from Diaspora Jews, they often had themselves photographed with Orthodox Jews, and preferably with ones with the longest beards and most stereotypical Hhareidi appearances.[8] In spite of the fact that Hareidim are still a minority among Jews, they have succeeded, with the help of politicians and the media, in making themselves icons of Jewry, and in the process enhanced their political influence, confidence, and triumphalism. As other Jews become indistinguishable from the mainstream, the Orthodox can be expected to increasingly make a claim to represent the ethnic and identifiably Jewish in the Diaspora.

Kosher food in its various incarnations is available nearly everywhere, and no airline can afford not to offer it, for the many Orthodox travelers. That ubiquity, as attested by the Kosherfest exposition in the New Jersey Meadowlands stadium with its more than 6,000 exhibitors, has also persuaded the Orthodox that their way of life is here to stay.

Although poorer as a class than all other Jews, in part because of their higher Jewish bill and larger families, Orthodox Jews have benefitted from the long period of sustained economic growth during the last 60 years in countries where they live, as well as from the welfare state, which in these places has in effect been the benefactor of last resort for the Orthodox, and they have learned how to manipulate the system for housing and food subsidies or even occasionally educational ones, as well as through laws that make charitable contributions to them tax deductions. Thus while poverty remains a concern in the most Hareidi areas (for example in Kiryas Joel, where Satmar Hasidim make up nearly all the residents, over half are on supplemental security income), it has not been enough to undermine the Orthodox way of life in these places.[9] On the contrary, it has sustained large family size and a lifestyle in which Torah learning has often become a full-time occupation. Nowhere has this become more the case than in Israel, where grants to large families and financial support for yeshivas are part of the government budget.

Orthodox Jews publish and own more sacred Jewish books (many in translation as well as the original) than ever before in their history. Most Orthodox Jews today have libraries that rival those owned by some of the most famous yeshivas of Europe.[10] Moreover, regular Torah study has become a common activity within Orthodoxy. The Daf Yomi has now become a regular feature of Orthodox life, and the recent siyum the largest ever. On the Internet, thousands of sites can be found that enable and coordinate such study, and these do not include the synagogue or corporate groups that meet daily for face-to-face learning or the telephone dial-a-daf.

In cyberspace, not only can one study Talmud, but Orthodoxy’s presence is ubiquitous. From askmoses.com (a Chabad site—one of thousands—that seeks to present itself as the voice of Moses and hence all of Judaism) to Kabbalah study at Zohar online, there is virtually no area of significance in Orthodox Jewish life that does not have a web address. For those seeking a place to pray, there is godaven.com. To find a Jewish study partner there is kehilla.org for those seeking a Lithuanian-style approach or yagdiltorah.org for someone looking for a Hasidic havruta. And if one wants a Russian speaker, there is toldot.ru. This expansion of Orthodoxy onto the web in effect has removed geographic limitations, so inherent to the enclave culture of Orthodoxy, as an obstacle to growth or the enhancement of a network of ties. This means that there are now more opportunities for Orthodox Jews to be in touch with one another, regardless of where they find themselves physically. That results in values, concerns and even behavior patterns that are not only more widely shared, but relationships that can transcend the limitations of space/time. Although Hareidim generally claim to spurn the openness of the Internet and would appear to be on the other side of the digital divide, they too have their own websites.

Of course YouTube and a variety of video sites allow anyone with a Smartphone and an Internet connection to participate in a Hasidic tish or wedding as well as to witness an Orthodox event. In one of my more prescient moments, I once predicted that the Lubavitcher Rebbe would be on re-runs after his demise, and indeed he is—so much so that some people, as noted in my latest book, The Rebbe, report recently having gone to a Farbrengen with the rebbe via a video, years after Menachem Mendel Schneerson’s physical death. Should the rabbis find a way to allow cyber-presence to be equivalent to physical presence, not only could Orthodox Jews study together in cyberspace, as they already do, but they could also worship together, listen to Torah being read in one place while they are present in another or answer amen to the lighting of Hanukkah candles in Israel while they are standing in Melbourne, Australia or Melbourne, Florida.

Together all this suggests that Orthodoxy is powerfully rooted in the modern world, in which Jewry finds itself and is likely to remain powerful and growing well into the current century. As for the economic future, particularly in the face of a downturn in the last couple of years and the possibility of a worldwide depression, one can only point to the fact that the poorest sectors of the Orthodox society are perhaps the most resistant to abandoning it, suggesting that Orthodox attachments, while not immune from financial considerations, are not completely dependent on the economic situation. Moreover, they have learned to make do with less and so unlike their more well-to-do non-Orthodox counterparts, they may know better how to weather economic hardship.

So confident and triumphalist has Orthodoxy become that Rabbi Norman Lamm, former head of Yeshiva University and an opinion leader in so-called Modern Orthodox circles, was quoted in 2009 predicting the demise of all non-Orthodox Jewish denominations (even though the “just Jews” non-denominational category remains today the fastest growing one). While I think this is unlikely, Orthodoxy goes into the first third of the twenty-century with an unprecedented confidence.

No doubt some of this is also a reflection of an increasingly conservative political atmosphere in those countries where Orthodox Jews find themselves in greatest numbers. In these places, liberal and progressive groups have been on the defensive for at least the last 30 years. Whether it is with the backing of evangelicals in the United States or conservative political forces elsewhere, the Orthodox often find their conservative lifestyles, family values, and political outlook in consonance with the conservatives in society, a factor that has added to their confidence that they will find a supportive environment and political landscape in which to root themselves.

Who Is Orthodox?

Given this sense of triumphalism propelling an assertive and confident Orthodoxy into the new century and growing over time for the reasons I have outlined, the question now increasingly has become which segment of Orthodoxy is responsible for this or who speaks for Orthodoxy? As this group of Jews has grown both in numbers and confidence, it has also grown in complexity, and within it there has emerged a contest over who will define its future based on who is controlling or responsible for its present. It is that contest, occasionally bitter but surely all-pervading, about which I have written in my book Sliding to the Right, that will play a role in determining what happens to Orthodoxy in the years ahead and I turn to it now.

Generally Orthodoxy has defined itself as a single group having two faces. One is outward-looking, engaging with the outside world in all its complexity, while maintaining fidelity to Orthodox faith and commitments. Although reflecting a belief that Orthodox religious behavior and customs are valuable and vital for Jewish continuity, it is unprepared to impose them on all Jewry but admits that other ways of living as a Jew are possible and in some cases even acceptable. It accepts the legitimacy of other Jewish denominations as well as the Zionist project and sees the State of Israel, though having religious meaning, as belonging to all its citizens regardless of the level of their Jewish observance or commitments. Indeed, many of its adherents even adopted the Sephardic pronunciation of Hebrew in prayer, study, and speech, in a tacit effort to identify with the State of Israel as representing what they believed was the authentic accent and sound of Hebrew. This Orthodoxy is generally tolerant and relatively pluralist in outlook, and its adherents see themselves as part of the modern world, and seek a life that while Jewishly committed is cosmopolitan and not totally bounded by Judaism. They view a university education as a desideratum and a professional career as valuable. They increasingly accept the idea of gender equality as both a fact of life and a moral value. Women are considered to have both a private and public role in Judaism, and also a place outside the home and community. While they see marriage based on personal choice and the family as normative and desirable, they tend to marry at a later age (in part because of their pursuit of a university education and professional career). Once married, they have more children than most non-Orthodox Jews, but still fewer than the other Orthodox. This comes both from their later marriage and the practice of some forms of birth control. As Orthodox Jews they are generally conservative in their worldview, but in comparison with other Orthodox Jews, they seem more liberal or progressive.

The other Orthodox face is assertively parochial, defined by those commonly called Hareidim, who are assertively inward-looking, creating all sorts of ideological and behavioral barriers to acculturation. They prefer to live, work, and socialize with those who are as or more Orthodox than them, a standard that is subject to continual recalibration and some debate. They view the outside world as seductive, its values toxic and patterns of behavior as dangerous, including and perhaps especially the university and its worldview. Their attitude toward other Jews is that they are lost if they do not accept Orthodoxy, and believe that where possible the Orthodox ways, as they understand them, should be offered, either by persuasion but if not then by imposition. Within their Orthodox culture, there are ongoing often bitter contests as to who best represents the authoritative version of what is proper behavior and beliefs. By and large they view the Zionist project with a jaundiced eye and seek to make Israel a place governed by their Hareidi point of view. As for their pronunciation of Hebrew, they reject the sound of modern Israeli Hebrew for prayer or study and increasingly adopt the accents of Lithuanian yeshivas or pre-war Polish Jewry as their own, as if to tacitly and aurally indicate that only in those places was Jewry authentic and the ideal sound of Jews to be heard. They have increasingly made gender separation a key element of their Orthodox identity, seeking to limit the mixing of the sexes not only in schools and synagogues but also in public places. They tend to have arranged marriages (or very short and pointed courtships) and wed at an earlier age. They have larger families than their counterparts, viewing any form of birth control as transgressive behavior. Women are expected to be sexually modest and hold traditional homemaker roles, although increasingly they are forced also to find work beyond the role of wife and mother. Paradoxically, Hareidim often place a greater burden on women to support and maintain the families, leading to an increased economic dependence on women than their modernist counterparts, and likely giving them more power in the years ahead.

As one observer has accurately noted: “While to an outsider all Hareidim may look alike—with their black coats, hats, and beards—the Hareidi community is as fractured as the Jewish community as a whole.” It is divided along Ashkenazic and Sephardic lines, Hasidic and non-Hasidic, moderates and extremists. Within the Hasidic community, too, there are multiple sects and sometimes even competing grand rebbes within the same sect.[11] These divisions have often led to various Hareidi sub-communities competing with each other for Orthodox leadership.

Some claim that only the most severe isolationism is truly Orthodox. Others try to negotiate some engagement with the outside, either for purposes of livelihood or in an effort to co-opt and use elements of the general culture instrumentally and only on their own terms. Still others are only interested in the outside world insofar as they can reach out and retrieve “lost souls” who are halakhically Jewish from it and bring them back to Jewish tradition (they are generally uninterested in converts to Judaism).

This contest within the Hareidi subculture has led, as the late Charles Liebman put it, to extremism as a religious norm, in which each group seeks to surpass its competitors in religious and behavioral demands, in its intolerance of other points of view, and in its desire to impose its ways upon Judaism in general and Orthodoxy in particular.[12] That contest can only be expected to intensify, as the young seek to outdo their elders.

Demographically, the cosmopolitan and outward-looking Orthodox outnumber their parochial counterparts; however, as I have argued elsewhere, the latter have in recent years become more assertive and confident that they alone are the voice of Orthodoxy. In part this is because most of the key institutions of Orthodoxy are progressively more under their control. Although the cosmopolitans have used their university education and outward tendencies to make headway in the general culture, entering fully into the professional class and making an impact beyond the provinces of religion, the latter often relegated to the private domain, the more parochial Orthodox have become religious school teachers, rabbis, religious court judges, scribes, mohels, certifiers of kashruth—in short, what sociologist Max Weber called “the religious virtuosi.”[13] As such, Orthodox Jewry is increasingly dependent upon them for their religious needs and therefore looks to them as authorities. Moreover, because one of the core principles of Orthodoxy is its reliance on rabbinical authority and its halakhic expertise, these religious virtuosi who dominate that world of authority have an institutionalized advantage in defining norms. Thus, for example, the Orthodox Jew who eats kosher must now adhere to a standard of kashruth determined by the parochial Hareidi authorities. If they change standards to be more restrictive, as they have, those who keep kosher are often forced to keep those new standards even if they do not necessarily feel a need to abide by such strictures since the Hareidim certify kashruth.

Given the structure of Orthodoxy and its dependence on institutions governed by Hareidim, one might confidently predict that this will increase the power and authority of the religious right wing in the movement. Even should the cosmopolitan and more liberal wing decide to infiltrate the rabbinate and these institutions—an unlikely prospect given the lower remuneration and prestige associated with these jobs and the fact that few would choose to pursue these vocations upon graduation from university—the training and socialization that those entering these vocations undergo would undoubtedly transform them in ways that would draw them away from their cosmopolitan origins and make them part of the Hareidi domain. That this would be the case is suggested by what has happened to many young Modern Orthodox men and women who have attended yeshivas in Israel or elsewhere during their post-high school years. The changes they have often undergone, as they become socialized to this life, have been called “flipping out” by some and hareidization by others.[14] Although not everyone who attended these institutions has moved to the religious right, those who come out of them and choose to become religious virtuosi generally have. This suggests that the opportunity to reverse this trend of dependence on an increasingly extremist, inward-looking, parochial, fundamentalist-like Orthodoxy is limited and unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.

The institutional impact is further affected by the expanding claims of authority by rabbis through the concept of da’as Torah, a conviction that one who is steeped in the wisdom and understanding of Jewish sources, “Torah,” becomes endowed with an intuitive understanding of its intent and its charismatic authority, da’as, such that he (and it is always a male, for in the Hareidi world women are not expected to be able to reach this level of knowledge) can expand the Torah to cover matters upon which it is silent. With da'as Torah rabbis deliver guidance beyond the judicial. As modern life throws all sorts of apparently unprecedented new realities that seem beyond the boundaries of the Torah into the basket of human experience, traditionalists use the concept and bearers of da'as Torah to fill the vacuum created by the seeming silence of the time-honored texts on many of these matters:

 For the talmid hakham [Torah scholar] is like the Torah itself and he is in its image, and

therefore it is certain that for this reason the Torah also commanded us to “not depart from all he will instruct you,” for the hakhamim [scholars] are the Torah itself, and as the Holy One, may He be blessed, decreed and gave the Torah to all of Israel, so he gave us the hakhamim and they are also the essence of the Torah.[15]

"My will," as Hasidic Rabbi Avraham Mordecai Alter of Gur put it even more starkly in a 1922 letter to his followers, "is the will of Heaven."[16] This sort of power, once limited to heads of yeshivas over their students and rebbes over their Hasidim, now has been asserted by all sorts of Hareidi leaders and often acknowledged by their followers. Indeed, the rabbi who has da’as Torah now has the power and authority to issue an ukase that in the minds of his followers has the authority of heaven.  Given this power, the limits on extremist or restrictive Orthodoxy seem likely to shrink in the years ahead. For example, is the Internet kosher, should women be allowed to drive cars, or does the Israeli state have religious significance? It is the ability “to interpret day-to-day events in a proper Torah light,” discern what tradition had in mind, and thereby extrapolate from it, thus being able “to anticipate the ramifications of events . . .in the future” that makes the rabbis’ opinions as authoritative as Torah.[17]

While one can imagine liberal rabbis and more cosmopolitan Orthodox chafing under these restrictions and endeavoring to challenge da’as Torah, this would require a political revolution that would force Orthodox Jews who are currently engaged by other interests and accomplishments to turn away from them and devote themselves to a full-time struggle to retake the rabbinate and its religious institutions, first in Israel and then throughout the Diaspora.

In the last 25 years, outward-looking Orthodoxy has indeed been mobilized to turn its attentions to parochial Jewish matters, but the matters they have become sometimes consumed by have to do primarily with religious Zionism, and the efforts to expand Jewish settlement in the biblical lands. That transformation, however, has not halted the slide to the right. If anything, it has gradually led to this Orthodoxy seeing itself in the same us-versus-them position as Hareidim. With each shift away from territorial expansion by the Israeli and Jewish body politic or withdrawal from settlements, those who have embraced settlement as an expression of their religiosity have become more oppositional and Jewishly inward-looking. This has led to an Orthodoxy often called “hardal,” an acronym for “hareidi-leumi” (nationalist Hareidi), that finds itself having more in common with the Hareidim than with their more cosmopolitan Orthodox counterparts. Extremism of one sort seems to lead to extremism of another. Jewish concerns as defined by the insiders become seen as the only important ones, and these views and the behavior associated with them considered paramount and legitimately imposed upon all people. This leads to greater parochialism and fundamentalist-like attitudes and behavior.

The Puzzle and the Mystery

Having thus put together all of the pieces of the puzzle in my possession, I see a future of a demographically increasing triumphalist Orthodoxy that becomes more inward-looking and less pluralist and tolerant, using all the technology and political power at its command to reinforce its increasingly extremist views and impose them as the dominant and only legitimate form of Orthodox Judaism—and in effect Judaism in general. But here’s the mystery. Why was this not always the face of Orthodoxy? Why was there ever a cosmopolitan, outward-looking, pluralist, and tolerant Orthodoxy, the so-called “Modern Orthodoxy,” and if it was dominant once can it become so once again? Is there a pendulum in the Orthodox world that swings between the outward- and inward-looking poles, or was the modernist phase simply a unique moment in time? There is no easy answer, but I would offer this hypothesis.

Orthodoxy was always viewed by its adherents as a strategy for Jewish survival, based on fidelity to law, custom, and powerful belief. The period of fast Jewish change in the twentieth century, characterized by mass migration from the old to new worlds, rapid assimilation, and the rise of an unexpectedly successful Zionist movement, coupled with the catastrophic experience of the Shoah, led to a period of doubt, instability, and confusion for the Orthodox. By the mid-twentieth century, many harbored doubts about the old ways and their ability to guarantee Jewish survival into the future. The failure of the advice of the rabbis and leaders who opposed emigration from the European centers of Orthodoxy to America or Palestine (and later Israel) was obvious and disorienting. The new situation of Jewry finding itself in a sovereign Jewish state or in a welcoming American society (as well in some other democracies) that allowed religious liberty and opportunity to taste of the outside world without necessarily sacrificing Orthodox allegiances led to many believing that the world was so changed that new ways of being Orthodox had to be created. Modern Orthodoxy was that new way, an Orthodoxy that believed that the secret of survival was compartmentalization, being a committed Jews but also standing with a foot in the outside world. But as they succeeded, they paradoxically created an atmosphere of confidence that would in time, as I have tried to sketch here, create the conditions in which the religious right wing would begin to emerge and warn that, in fact, this modernist, liberal strategy was not the right answer. While the Hareidi sector strengthened its hold on the institutions of Orthodoxy, the cosmopolitan sector became caught up in outward-looking, universal, and secular pursuits, even as it remained Orthodox institutionally. When Modern Orthodoxy was on the rise, the general culture was liberal. As during the 1960s and 1970s, liberal culture became radicalized, antinomian, and sometimes anarchic, doubts among the cosmopolitans about their strategy for Jewish survival emerged. In Israel, the Zionist project deteriorated into embourgeoisement and Israel became caught up in its own culture wars, political confusion, and doubts, while messianism and settlement building divided the society and confounded Orthodoxy.

In the face of rapid change, uncertainties, and confusion, the advantage is always to those groups who have absolute and extreme views. Driven by a confidence they know the truth, da’as Torah, they easily outflank those who see ambiguity and nuance. That is where I think Orthodoxy is today, driven by those who are Manichean and absolutist in their views. Where moderns see uncertainty in the future, those who are unambiguously certain they know the truth can gain control.

To be sure, outward-looking modernist and cosmopolitan Jewry has not altogether given up its struggle against creeping Hareidism. The emergence of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah and its new seminary for Orthodox rabbis, the selection of the cosmopolitan Richard Joel as head of Yeshiva University, the growth of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals, the establishment of the International Rabbinic Fellowship (an association of Modern Orthodox rabbis), Bet Hillel in Israel, the development of minyanim of the Shira Hadasha model that endeavor to empower women as well as men in the leading of public prayer, and the ongoing commitment of many among the Orthodox to a liberal arts university education for their children are all signs of a resistance to the Hareidi model of Judaism and Jewishness. Whether they will grow or go the way of the now defunct Edah, an association that characterized itself by its motto, “the courage to be modern and Orthodox,” remains to be seen.

Of course, while all this goes on, liberal Jewish denominations are fading as Conservative and Reform movements find themselves losing members and aging, and most of the rest of Jewry sees itself as post-modern and post-denominational world citizens who are “just Jews” and not necessarily exclusively so, leaving even more room for the most inward-looking Orthodox to define not only Orthodoxy but Judaism in general. When asked how many Lubavitcher Hasidim there were in the world, the Lubavitcher Chaim Hodakov, answered” “how many Jews are there in the world?” Besides being a cute way to avoid giving a number (which is surprisingly small), he was in a sense saying, we see no difference between the Lubavitcher version of Judaism and Judaism in general. That is the dominant view in Hareidi Orthodoxy today.

Yet the Hareidi Orthodox attitude that suggests that everyone should and can mold him or herself to its conformist, Manichean, and conservative way of life disregards the uniqueness of the individual, the human desire for autonomy, and the I–Thou attitude that exists in human beings that allows them to accept otherness and encourages tolerance. An Orthodoxy that does not divide the world into us and them and does not hold the view that “you’re either with us or against us” may in time turn out to be an Orthodoxy that can serve as the vanguard on the road to a renewable and renewing Judaism that eschews reform without being wrapped in the straight-jacket of the past. Stay tuned.

Notes

It is a truism that with the Emancipation and the rise of Reform and, later, Conservative Judaism, options for halakhic flexibility became much more limited. In the midst of a battle against the non-Orthodox movements, traditional Judaism retreated into a conservative mold both as a means of distinguishing itself from the non-Orthodox and out of a fear that in an era of halakhic crisis, any liberality in halakhic decision-making could encourage non-Orthodox trends. This latter sentiment was always on the minds of halakhists, even those who did not adopt lock, stock, and barrel R. Moses Sofer's famous bon mot, "Anything new is forbidden by the Torah."

The above description is accurate, however, only with regard to the Ashkenazic world. The Sephardic world never had to contend with non-Orthodox religious movements, and thus it was able to develop in a much more natural-one might say organic-fashion. In particular, this was the case in Morocco, a community that had a very old halakhic tradition and whose scholars produced numerous works of responsa.

In Morocco the rabbinic courts had complete control of issues of marriage, divorce, and inheritance. This meant that they were much more involved in the average Jew's life than the rabbis of other countries. Recognizing the great responsibility they had, in 1947 the Moroccan rabbinic leadership convened a conference of rabbis from all the important cities to deal with various problems that they were confronting.

All the leading rabbis agreed to attend the conference and debate the issues, after which a vote would be taken and all would be bound by the decision. If necessary, takanot (ordinances) would be proclaimed that would bind Moroccan Jewry. These conferences were designed to meet every year or so, and this occurred up until Morocco achieved independence in 1956. At that time, the Jewish leadership thought that the new government would not look kindly upon the gatherings, and thus the meetings were suspended. Because of the massive Jewish emigration that took place after Moroccan independence, the conferences would never again be held.

Why were takanot needed? Rabbi Moshe Malka wrote as follows, in words that reflect the mindset that was driving the Moroccan rabbis (Mikveh ha-Mayim, vol. 1 no. 54): "I am convinced that the times require adjustments and a revitalization of the structure of Jewish religious life, but one must approach this with great care and seriousness. We must esteem the modern outlook to the extent that it doesn't conflict with Torah and tradition."

Takanot per se are nothing new, as history is full of them in both the Ashkenazic and Sephardic worlds. However, in more modern times not only did the Ashkenazic world lack the unity necessary for takanot, but there was also an ideological opposition to them. Leading scholars in the Hareidi world argued that we are no longer worthy to make takanot, and takanot, which are seen as compromises with modernity, are ipso facto invalid.

The rabbis of Morocco had a different approach. The reason for the first conference, as stated in the book recording its decisions, was to formulate "takanot and practices according to the societal circumstances for the good of Judaism and of life." Takanot were necessary "to complete the law, which needs adjustment according to the societal circumstances," as put by Moroccan Chief Rabbi Saul Ibn Danan at the first conference.

The Ashkenazic Hareidim of the modern period believed that it was the social conditions that needed adjustment, not the law, but the Moroccan rabbis were doing what had always been done in traditional communities, that is, dealing with the situation before them. To give an example, the talmudic sages could have said that if people won't lend money without interest then it is the people who must improve, but we will not adjust the law. They didn't say this. Instead, they invented a heter iska, which is a legalistic mechanism to enable one to lend on interest. Many similar examples could be given from talmudic days to the early modern era.

Rabbi Marc Angel has put the matter well in discussing the view of those who oppose takanot because to adopt them would imply that we are more sensitive than the sages of previous generations. As he states, this view "is essentially ludicrous. Throughout the centuries, our sages have initiated takanot in their communities to meet the contemporary needs of their people. Did they think it was an insult to their predecessors to be responsive to contemporary needs? Did Rabbeinu Gershom slander all previous generations of rabbis by instituting his takanot?" (Seeking Good, Speaking Peace, p. 85).

The most significant of the Moroccan takanot was the one permitting unmarried daughters to inherit along with sons. This was a response to the times, when unmarried women were living on their own and were not marrying at young ages. The situation was identical to that which is found in contemporary communities where, unlike what prevailed in pre-modern times, there is something unfair about only sons inheriting. What parents would feel comfortable with their daughters not inheriting? As the Moroccan rabbis were aware, we can assume that anyone who dies without a will would also want his or her daughters to inherit.

In fact, it is not only in modern times that this concern was felt. Two years after the expulsion from Spain, the Castilian exiles in Fez had already made a takana that unmarried daughters should inherit together with sons. They also decreed that if a woman dies, not only the husband but the children also inherit. However, there were different practices in Morocco since in the south, which included Marrakesh, the takanot of the Castilian exiles were not accepted. One of the purposes of the rabbinic conferences of the mid-twentieth century was to unify Jewish practice throughout the country.

There is no question that the desire of Jewish parents to have their daughters inherit extends also to married daughters. Yet a takana in this area would have been a very radical step, entirely overturning traditional Jewish law in the matter of inheritance. To be sure, there are ways around this such as through a shetar hatzi zakhar, but the Moroccan rabbis were not focused on this sort of legalistic approach. They were making takanot to fundamentally alter the way Jewish law operated, and they therefore investigated whether such a takana for married daughters was also valid.

The issue was formally raised at the last conference. The Chief Rabbi asked the participants to submit responsa, which would be discussed at a future conference However, due to Moroccan independence and the subsequent emigration, this was to be the last conference. We thus have no way of knowing what would have been decided. Yet from the responsa of the Moroccan rabbis that have been published, we see that there was great reluctance to take the far-reaching step of allowing married women to inherit along with single women. As R. Moshe Malka explained, to do so would be seen as an acknowledgment that Torah law is unfair to women. There were significant changes in the living situation of unmarried women from ancient times to the present, which made a takana for them understandable. But what could be the justification for changing the halakha with regard to married women? Furthermore, Malka argued, no one-not even the talmudic Sages-have the authority make such a wide-ranging takana, one that would abolish the Torah's rules of inheritance in their entirety (Mikveh ha-Mayim, vol. 1 no. 54). It is fair to say that the Moroccan rabbis were guided by conservative sentiments, yet this was a conservatism that recognized the validity of takanot to update Jewish law, a stance that was not recognized by the Ashkenazic authorities of the time.

In discussing how a certain takana diverged from standard Jewish law, Rabbi Shalom Messas, Chief Rabbi of Morocco and later of Jerusalem, wrote: "Even though this is not in accord with the clear halakha . . . nevertheless, this is the case with all takanot, for they diverge from the halakha in accordance with the conditions of the time, as long as there is a slight support in the earlier or later posekim" (Tevuot Shemesh, Even ha-Ezer, no. 47). This, of course, is the essence of all takanot, that the law as it stands is not adequate at the present time.

At the same time that the Moroccan conferences were taking place, Chief Rabbi Isaac Herzog in Israel was trying to ensure that matters of inheritance were placed under the authority of the Chief Rabbinate. He realized that the non-Orthodox, and even many of the Orthodox, would oppose this step if daughters were not permitted to inherit. The halakha was regarded as discriminatory and simply not relevant to modern times, and if this could not be fixed then there was no way Jewish law in this area would become the law of the land. The Chief Rabbinate floated the idea of takanot to allow women to inherit, yet this was roundly condemned by the Hareidi community and nothing came of it.

There was hardly any such opposition in Morocco. After the vote was taken, all rabbis throughout the country accepted the takana about inheritance, as well as the other takanot, even if they personally were at first opposed. They put them into practice in their Batei Din, so it didn't matter whether one lived in Fez, Agadir, Sefrou, or Marrakesh, as there was now one law. There is no parallel to this type of takana and response to changing circumstances in modern times, both for the substance of the takana and for the unified acceptance of it.

The rabbinic conferences in Morocco are the only example in modern times of a living halakha that responded to contemporary concerns with a united rabbinic front. These rabbis had confidence in their authority and didn't feel the need to look over their shoulders. Who knows what would have been achieved in Morocco had the conferences continued?

WOMEN’S VOICES IN CONTEMPORARY ORTHODOX TANAKH SCHOLARSHIP

Rabbi Hayyim Angel

Author's note:

Since I published this article originally in 2014, there have been a few updates:

Dr Avivah Zornberg’s Numbers book came out in 2015. Dr. Yael Ziegler's Ruth commentary was published in 2015 and her new commentary on Lamentations is about to be published in the Maggid Tanakh Series. Dr Erica Brown has since published a commentary on Jonah (Maggid, 2017) and her commentary on Esther is about to be published by Maggid. Tragically, Dr. Avigail Rock passed away in 2019. Her online course on exegesis will appear as a book published by Maggid, and is soon coming out in Hebrew and later in English.

INTRODUCTION

The past generation was blessed with the sui generis Professor Nehama Leibowitz (1905-1997), who revolutionized Tanakh education through her systematic treatment of classical commentary and interpretation of the biblical text. Her work continues to play a prominent role in religious Tanakh learning today. [1]

Our generation has witnessed a flowering of Orthodox women publishing on diverse facets of religious Tanakh learning, ranging from associative, insight-based derashot, to rigorous analytical peshat scholarship, to parshanut scholarship that emphasizes the contributions of individual commentators. In this essay, I will briefly survey the work of several outstanding scholars.

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Dr. Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg’s essays are derashot on biblical narratives. She draws on a wealth of midrashic and Hasidic teachings, classical scholarship, and contemporary literature and psychology in exploring the personalities of biblical figures.

Although “modern midrash” often becomes a vehicle of saying whatever one wants in the context of postmodern literary criticism, Dr. Zornberg uses classical commentary as a point of reference so that she can engage in her own work while having an anchor in traditional thought. She does not present a transparent analytical peshat methodology that can be replicated, but rather offers an associative and introspective presentation of her insights that elucidate aspects of spiritual and human experience. [2]

Dr. Zornberg has published books on Genesis and Exodus, and has a forthcoming book on Numbers.[3] She also has published a more eclectic collection of derashot in The Murmuring Deep.[4] Below are two examples from the latter work.

In her essay on the Book of Jonah (pp. 77–105), Dr. Zornberg asks the obvious question: What was Jonah thinking when he fled from before God? She quotes from Psalm 139, where the Psalmist seeks to hide from God but knows that it is impossible to do so:

O Lord, You have examined me and know me. When I sit down or stand up You know it; You discern my thoughts from afar…You hedge me before and behind; You lay Your hand upon me…Where can I escape from Your spirit? Where can I flee from Your presence? (Psalm 139:1–7)

The Talmud plays on the expression, “You hedge me before and behind,” stating that God created man with two faces (Berakhot 61a; Eruvin 18a). The Jewish French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas (1906–1995) interpreted this passage to suggest that if you have one face, there is a place in the back of your head where you can keep hidden thoughts. If you have a second face in the back of your head, however, then all is exposed to God. Levinas argues that this double-exposure brings joy to the psalmist through exultation in divine proximity and intimate knowledge. Everyone desires to be known and understood.

Dr. Zornberg maintains that Levinas is only partially correct. “Where shall I flee from Your face?” does not sound like an expression of pure bliss. Rather, it voices the human longing for a deep connection while simultaneously trying to protect the private self within.

Refusal to stand before God means to evade uncertainty, since confrontation with God generates feelings of fallibility and humility. After fleeing from God’s presence, Jonah becomes compulsively certain, insisting that he knows why everything happens. The sailors and Ninevites panic, say “maybe” and “who knows,” and they pray and repent. In contrast, Jonah calmly says yadati—I know why there is a storm, and I know how to stop it. I knew from the beginning that God would pardon the Ninevites. Jonah’s exaggerated knowingness is a camouflage for his anxieties. Jonah fears exposure to God, which would reveal that he really does not know. Jonah flees God initially, and would sooner die than concede uncertainty at the end of the narrative.

In a different essay, Dr. Zornberg discusses Judah’s dramatic speech to Joseph before Joseph broke down and revealed himself to his brothers. Judah “drew close to him, va-yiggash elav” (Genesis 44:18). The nineteenth-century Hasidic master Sefat Emet explains that Judah drew close to Joseph, but also to himself and to God. Dr. Zornberg expands on this insight: When Judah pleads on behalf of Benjamin by stating that Jacob would die of grief if Benjamin were not to return (44:34), Judah accesses a deep part of his own personality. Invoking Jacob’s potential grief over losing a son, Judah recalls the pain of losing his two sons Er and Onan, and suddenly feels a new empathy and identification with his father Jacob. Once Judah has discovered his true self, he also draws closer to God (pp. xii-xiv).

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In her book, Waiting for Rain,[5] Dr. Bryna Jocheved Levy presents associative derashot for the Tishri holiday season. She brings a mastery of the biblical text, classical commentary and Midrash, and weaves together a wide array of writings to develop her own insights.

Dr. Levy offers a multidimensional analysis of Noah’s character (pp. 3-24). In the Zikhronot blessing of the Musaf for Rosh HaShanah, we remember Noah. At one level, this association reminds us of God’s sovereignty over all humanity. The Noah story also teaches that we always can begin again, a central message of Rosh HaShanah.

However, several interpreters insist that Noah also failed in his responsibility to humanity, and we must learn from that dimension of the story as well. For example, Rabbi Abraham Saba (1440-1508) asserts that Noah should have pleaded for mercy for humanity as soon as God proclaimed the decree. Instead, Noah silently built the Ark and saved only himself and his family.[6] Dr. Levy explains that Rabbi Saba derived his critical stance in part from the fact that after the Flood, Noah planted a vineyard and got drunk (Genesis 9:20-21). Noah also never had other children, despite God’s blessing to be fruitful and multiply. Perhaps Noah recognized, too late, how devastating the Flood had been, and regretted not having tried to ward it off.

Dr. Levy then proposes alternative dimensions that also may have motivated Noah to become drunk and strip naked in the lone post-Flood narrative about him, including: (1) Noah longed to return to the innocence of pre-Flood life, and produced wine to remind himself of celebration. (2) Noah was inspired by the process of winemaking: To ferment, grapes decompose and then something wonderful emerges from something rotten. Similarly, Noah wanted the cadavers rotting beneath the earth’s surface to produce new life. (3) Noah wanted to escape the dreadful memories of the Flood. (4) Noah wanted to return to an Eden-like state. Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge, and thereby became conscious of their nakedness. The Talmud suggests that the Tree of Knowledge may have been a vine (Sanhedrin 70a). Noah now became drunk and stripped naked, returning to the primeval Eden-like state (cf. Hatam Sofer). Thus, Dr. Levy’s exposition considers several possible motivations for Noah’s post-Flood behavior, taking a larger-than-life situation and humanizing it with insightful complexity.

Elsewhere, Dr. Levy discusses Jeremiah’s stirring prophecy of redemption, which is read as the Haftarah on the second day of Rosh HaShanah (pp. 47-70). A highlight of this prophecy is the haunting image of the Matriarch Rachel’s crying inconsolably over the loss of her exiled children (Jeremiah 31:14-16). Dr. Levy suggests that Jeremiah selected the image of Rachel—the only time she appears in Tanakh outside of Genesis—in part because God had previously commanded Jeremiah not to marry or have children in Israel as a prophetic sign that there was no short-term future in the land (Jeremiah 16:1-4). Following the destruction, when Jeremiah stood at Ramah and watched Jewish captives being dragged into exile (Jeremiah 40:1), Jeremiah identified deeply with Rachel. In addition to weeping over the national tragedy, the prophet felt a personal sense of loss over the children he never had. His tears were Rachel’s tears. Jeremiah also looked beyond the immediate sense of loss to the hope for restoration, prophesying that there is reward for Rachel’s labor and her children will return.

Dr. Levy makes related attempts to connect the personalities of other prophets with their prophecies. For example, Moses was able to reveal God’s attributes of mercy to humanity because Moses possessed those traits himself (pp. 148-149). When Joshua encountered the angelic captain of God’s hosts prior to the battle against Jericho (Joshua 5:13-15), the angel was a manifestation of Joshua, the general of Israel’s army. “It is as if God held up a celestial mirror and asked Joshua to gaze within and respond to what he saw” (p. 243).

Another feature of Dr. Levy’s work is her sensitivity to the connection between art and religious experience. Invited to contribute to a recent issue of Conversations, she chose to include her analysis of Rembrandt’s paintings of biblical scenes. [7]

Also noteworthy in the genre of modern midrash by scholars with a strong grounding in peshat is Dr. Erica Brown’s book, Leadership in the Wilderness.[8] As the title suggests, she uses the text as a springboard to explore the concept of leadership through the Book of Numbers.

For example, in her analysis of the plague of fiery serpents and Moses’ brass serpent that helped bring about their cure (Numbers chapter 21), Dr. Brown derives meaning from the symbol of a serpent as a source of healing. Goodness sometimes come from places often perceived as sources of pain. The Israelites learned not to make judgments regarding what might bring salvation.

Additionally, the people needed only to look up at the serpent in order to be saved (Numbers 21:8-9). Evidently, if they did not look up but instead concentrated on themselves and their pain, they would remain unhealed. This detail teaches that sometimes the solutions to our most pressing problems are right in front of us; but we need to open our eyes to see them. Moses succeeded as a leader by empowering the people, teaching them how they could find their own salvation (pp. 159-160).

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We turn now to two leading scholars who champion the realm of peshat. Yeshivat Har Etzion and its affiliated Herzog College are at the forefront of contemporary Orthodox Tanakh study. This school exemplifies the bridging of the best of traditional and contemporary scholarship in a religious context.[9] Many of their courses are archived online at their Virtual Beit Midrash (http://www.vbm-torah.org).

Dr. Yael Ziegler taught a course on the Book of Ruth, archived at http://www.vbm-torah.org/ruth.html, and forthcoming as part of the new Maggid Press Tanakh series. Dr. Tova Ganzel taught a course on the Book of Ezekiel that has been published by Tevunot Press of Herzog College (in Hebrew). [10] Both scholars present material in a transparent, analytical manner that can be applied by others in developing their own learning methodology.

Weaving together biblical text, Midrash, classical commentary and contemporary scholarship, Dr. Ziegler illustrates how the analytical tools of literary analysis, including allusions, attention to individual words and syntax, rhetorical devices, key words, character development, and many other features, contribute substantially to our understanding of the Book of Ruth. She also demonstrates the immense value of the insights of Midrash in the realm of peshat. Midrashim are especially sensitive to the finest literary nuances, making them valuable for ascertaining meaning.

For example, Dr. Ziegler explores the meanings of the characters’ names in peshat and in derash.[11] The plain sense of Elimelech’s name—my God is King—righteously suggests that the people should not be interested in a human monarchy; rather, they should accept God as their King. However, one Midrash deviates from the plain sense and suggests that the name Elimelech should be read as though it said elai melekh, to me shall come the kingship (Ruth Rabbah 2:5). This Midrash fits into a constellation of other Midrashim that accuse Elimelech of selfishly shirking his responsibilities toward his community during the famine. The Midrash intimates that Elimelech felt entitled to be a king, and therefore did not deserve to produce a king. Dr. Ziegler bridges the peshat and derash etymologies by explaining:

The Midrash suggests that while Elimelech could perhaps have promulgated the notion that God is the ultimate King, thereby setting in place a viable model of human kingship, he does not do so. He corrupts the destiny that attends his name and, in a commensurate fashion, our Sages corrupt his name.

Dr. Ziegler also explores various midrashic etymologies proposed for the name Ruth:

Rabbi Yohanan said: Because she was worthy and from her emerged David, who saturated (rivahu) the Holy one, blessed be He, with songs and praises. (Berakhot 7b)

This etymology focuses on Ruth’s significance as the progenitor of David, who is mentioned at the end of the Book of Ruth (4:22).

“And the name of the second was Ruth,” because she saw (ra’atah) the words of her mother-in-law. (Ruth Rabbah 9:4; Tanhuma Behar 3)

This etymology highlights Ruth’s sensitivity toward her mother-in-law Naomi. Dr. Ziegler suggests further that these Midrashim may relate to others that derive the name Ruth from re’ut, meaning friend. Ruth’s loyalty shines throughout the book.

Still other Midrashim expound on Ruth’s name as deriving from her relationship with God:

“And the name of the second was Ruth,” because she would boil herself (meratahat atzmah) [to stay away] from sins, in order to do the will of her Father in heaven. (Ruth Zuta 1:4)

This approach points to Ruth’s piety before God, as she becomes the paradigmatic convert. Dr. Ziegler concludes that each of these midrashic wordplays relates to central dimensions of Ruth’s character. Ruth was the progenitor of David, a loyal daughter-in-law, and a God-fearing individual.

Of particular value is her essay on methodology at the conclusion of the series.[12] Dr. Ziegler surveys the emergence of literary scholarship within the secular academy and its impact on contemporary Orthodox Tanakh study. She distinguishes between where the yeshivah and the academy can engage in productive dialogue, and where they differ. Most importantly, secular literary analysis focuses on Tanakh as literature, without necessarily seeking the theological dimensions of the text. In contrast, religious study uses the same literary tools to enhance Tanakh learning to grow in one’s relationship with God.

Dr. Tova Ganzel has distinguished herself as a scholar in the esoteric Book of Ezekiel. In her book published by Herzog College, Dr. Ganzel offers a commentary on the Book of Ezekiel accessible to scholars, educators, and interested laypeople. She combines a deep understanding of the historical period, literary analysis, and a mastery of classical and contemporary scholarship. One reading her book will gain a sense of the current state of scholarship on the Book of Ezekiel, and will be able to fathom many aspects of this difficult prophetic work.

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Ideal Tanakh scholarship keeps the biblical text at the center of inquiry and draws from the best of classical and contemporary interpretation. Parshanut scholarship, in contrast, focuses on individual biblical commentators and their modes of thought and contributions. A scholar of Ramban, Dr. Michelle J. Levine concentrates on his exceptional literary and human insight. She illustrates how Ramban offers a holistic view of biblical narrative. Through his integrative readings, Ramban develops more comprehensive character portrayals than most other classical commentators. Ramban also is sensitive to gaps and ambiguities, and exploits them in his penetrating analyses. Dr. Levine argues that these features make Ramban’s commentary particularly relevant and appealing to modern readers.[13]

To cite one example, Ramban maintains that Noah was absolutely righteous. Differing from those Midrashim and later commentators who relativize Noah’s greatness in contrast to that of Abraham, Ramban maintains that the Torah’s introduction of Noah as a righteous man in his generation teaches that he stood above everyone else and walked with God (Genesis 6:9). What of Noah’s drunkenness after the Flood? Ramban (on Genesis 9:26) explains that this passage warns of the potency of wine and its ability to bring down even the greatest of men: “For the wholly innocent individual (tzaddik tamim), whose merit saved the entire world, even he was brought to sin by wine.” Dr. Levine explains that Ramban’s positive characterization of Noah answers a central question of the story: Why did Noah merit to become the “second Adam” who would become the ancestor of all humanity? [14]

Also noteworthy in the realm of parshanut scholarship is Dr. Avigayil Rock’s course on “Great Biblical Exegetes,” archived at the Virtual Beit Midrash of Yeshivat Har Etzion (http://vbm-torah.org/parshanut.html). Dr. Rock surveys the history of traditional biblical peshat interpretation from Targum Onkelos and Rabbi Saadiah Gaon, through the nineteenth-century commentators. Her course elucidates the methodology and major contributions of each commentator.

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We have considered a small sampling of the contributions of several exceptional contemporary women engaged in religious Tanakh scholarship. Even more promising, however, is what likely is yet to come, as growing numbers of Orthodox women engage in high-level learning and teaching.

NOTES

[1] For a recent discussion of Professor Leibowitz’s continued relevance in developing a learning methodology, see R. Shalom Carmy, “Always Connect,” in Where the Yeshiva Meets the University: Traditional and Academic Approaches to Tanakh Study, ed. Hayyim Angel, Conversations 15 (Winter 2013), pp. 1-12.

[2] See especially the reviews of her book on Genesis by R. Shalom Carmy, Jewish Action 58:3 (1998), pp. 82-87; and Dr. Tamar Ross, Bekhol Derakhekha Da’ehu (BDD) 3 (1996), pp. 49-57.

[3] Genesis: The Beginning of Desire (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1995); The Particulars of Rapture: Reflections on Exodus (New York: Doubleday, 2001); Bewilderments: Reflections on the Book of Numbers (New York: Schocken, forthcoming).

[4] The Murmuring Deep: Reflections on the Biblical Unconscious (New York: Schocken, 2009).

[5] Waiting for Rain: Reflections at the Turning of the Year (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1998).

[6] See further discussion and sources that criticize Noah in Prof. Nehama Leibowitz, Studies in Bereshit (Genesis), trans. Aryeh Newman (Jerusalem: Eliner Library), pp. 59-66.

[7] Dr. Bryna Jocheved Levy, “Scripture Envisioned: The Bible through the Eyes of Rembrandt,” in Where the Yeshiva Meets the University: Conversations 15, pp. 189-199.

[8] Leadership in the Wilderness: Authority and Anarchy in the Book of Numbers (New Milford, CT: Maggid, 2013).

[9] See further discussion in Hayyim Angel, “The Literary-Theological Study of Tanakh,” afterword to R. Moshe Sokolow, Tanakh: An Owner’s Manual (Brooklyn, NY: Ktav, 2014), pp. 192-207; reprinted in Angel, Peshat Isn’t So Simple: Essays on Developing a Religious Methodology to Bible Study (New York: Kodesh Press, 2014), pp. 118-136.

[10] Nevu’at ha-Tzofeh: Ben Hurban le-Tekumah, Iyyunim be-Sefer Yehezkel (Hebrew) (Alon Shevut: Tevunot, 2012). This material also is archived in the Hebrew section of the Virtual Beit Midrash at Yeshivat Har Etzion, at http://www.etzion.org.il/vbm/search_results.php?subject=%F2%E9%E5%F0%E9%ED+%E1%E9%E7%E6%F7%E0%EC&koteret=%F2%E9%E5%F0%E9%ED+%E1%E9%E7%E6%F7%E0%….

[11] At http://vbm-torah.org/archive/ruth/07ruth.htm.

[12] At http://vbm-torah.org/archive/ruth/38ruth.htm.

[13] For an essay accessible to nonspecialists, see “Ramban’s Integrative Approach to the Reading of Biblical Narrative,” in Where the Yeshiva Meets the University: Conversations 15, pp. 154-167. See also her scholarly book, Nahmanides on Genesis: The Art of Biblical Portraiture (Providence, RI: Brown University Press, 2009).

[14] “Ramban’s Integrative Approach to the Reading of Biblical Narrative,” in Where the Yeshiva Meets the University: Conversations 15, pp. 160-161.

To our members and friends,

We are thrilled to report the ongoing programming of our Campus Fellows throughout the United States and Canada, as we promote our values and content through an inclusive, thoughtful Orthodoxy. Here are the latest reports of our fellows and their programming. We also welcome Eli Hyman of Yeshiva College of Yeshiva University as our latest fellow to join our circle.

Wishing you a wonderful Hanukkah

Rabbi Hayyim Angel

National Scholar

Aryeh Roberts and Mikey Pollack, University of Maryland

We helped coordinate Sermon Slam—UMD's annual Jewish Poetry Slam—and heard a lot of different stories. One person shared their struggles with depression, another on life in Pittsburgh after this year's tragedy, another on their religious struggles—it was a really powerful event. 

Zachary Tankel, McGill University

We had a total of five terrific events with the Institute this semester. One was a speech on the Chassidic approach to the concept of gilgul, and the other four were student-led discussion groups, on the topics of the suffering of the righteous, financial ethics, hilchot shemittah, and kavana in mitzvot. In all four discussion groups, everyone attending was very engaged and contributed to a highly interesting conversation and wonderful learning. 

The first two events, which I described in my previous email, was a discussion on the topic of the suffering of the righteous, which I led, and a speech on gilgul. 

The three events I organized since were discussion groups led by other students. (While someone else prepared the discussions, I organized all the other aspects, including scheduling venues, obtaining food and other necessary items, setting up and cleaning up, and advertising, which I do through Facebook.)

The first of these discussion groups was on March 12th, on the topic of financial ethics in Judaism. We talked about the halachot of selling goods below market price and heter iska, among other things. You can see the event page on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1143497409157684/. 

The second discussion group was on March 19th. We had an overview of the laws of shemittah, including shvitat haaretz, heter mechira, and kedushat shvi'it. You can see the Facebook event page here: https://www.facebook.com/events/604682016672760/.

The third discussion group was on April 2nd, on the topic of mitzvot and kavana. We discussed the general principle of kavana in mitzvot, mitzvot committed by force or otherwise without intent, and melacha done on Shabbat without the intent of doing the melacha (davar she'eino mitkaven). This is the link to the Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/330596857805341/. 

Thank you so much for making possible these events. Ever since OU-JLIC was discontinued in Montreal last year, the programs I organize on behalf of the Institute are, unfortunately, the only learning opportunities in downtown Montreal specifically for Orthodox students. (We do have some knowledgeable non-Orthodox students attend, but the discussions or speeches are always at a level appropriate for Orthodox students, in oppose to learning events hosted by other organizations, which generally have to accommodate less knowledgeable students). Everyone who comes is always engaged and interested in the topic makes for wonderful learning opportunities. Thank you so much for your support! 

Ayelet Rubenstein (University of Pennsylvania)

This past semester, I co-hosted a meal for Orthodox students oriented around the topic of Israel. We discussed topics such as our personal connections to Israel, Israel advocacy on college campuses, and what our obligation is to Israel as Modern Orthodox Jews. The dinner led to a thought-provoking discussion about what our relationship with Israel should be on both the individual and communal levels within Modern Orthodoxy. 

I also worked with two other students to bring in Rabbi Ethan Tucker, the Rosh Yeshiva and co-founder of Yeshivat Hadar. Rabbi Tucker led a Shiur entitled "Sacred Choices- Pluralism, Integrity, and Community: You Can't Have Them All." Following this event, I engaged my peers in a discussion about the values of these three ideals, and we analyzed which of them we prioritize in Modern Orthodoxy. This dialogue led us to consider how our own personal and communal values manifest in our religious choices.

Sara Evans (Queens)

I just ran an oneg for Queens college students that went to the Hamptons. At the oneg I spoke about the Institute. I gave a short D’var Torah about the parsha (Chayei Sara). In it I brought up the idea of loss and how to cope with it, also we bought up how Hahshem wants us to look forward and seek him out not only looking at the past. We also discussed the idea of how Judaism requires a lot fo faith in the future and in Hashem. 

I had my second event on December 2. Rabbi Aryeh Klapper came to speak and his topic was about speaking ill of the dead. The students who came really enjoyed it and found that they were able to be part of the process because Rabbi Klapper went through how this works from the start allowing students to ask questions and make their own revelations regarding the topic. The students requested if Rabbi Klapper could come back and speak again since they enjoyed it immensely.

Raffi Levi and Benjamin Nechmad, Rutgers

We hosted a lunch and learn event based off of Rabbi Marc Angel's recent article on not having an alarmist attitude when confronting the recent antisemitism. It was a very productive discussion and we had 10 people total. 

A couple of people brought their own sources that illustrated the main point further. 

It is always good to remind people to think rationally and calmly during times of struggle and many of my peers appreciated the lunch. 

Marta Dubov (Ryerson)

I am happy to report that a monthly woman’s Rosh Chodesh book club has been established, and we have thoroughly enjoyed reading and discussing Conversations, and working to apply the principles to our day-to day lives. Next semester they will resume, hopefully with some new members.

All 18 copies were successfully distributed. 10 to individual students and 5 donated to the Hillel of Ryerson for incoming students to pick up. I have been told there is great interest in them.

Ora Friedman, Stern College for Women, Yeshiva University

The event at Stern College on “The Impact of Jewish Education on Moral Character and Development” was a huge success! I introduced the event by speaking about how my own Jewish Education had a positive impact on my moral character and development, and I encouraged participants of the event to reflect on how their own Jewish Education impacts their moral character and development. Rabbi Chaim Hagler, Head of School of Yeshivat Noam, spoke about how morality is defined based on the ideals of the Torah, and as a result, Jewish Education is the only means to acquiring morality. He spoke about how part of an educator’s role is to model moral character and development for his or her students. There were nine students who attended the event, including Yeshivat Noam alumni, students from the Education club at Stern College, and other Stern College students. I received a lot of positive feedback about the event! 

It is with deep sadness that we record the passing of Rabbi Dr. Chaim Wakslak, for many years the Rabbi of the Young Israel of Long Beach, New York. The funeral was on Friday February 21, 2020. We extend our condolences to his wife Rivkah, to their children and grandchildren.

Rabbi Wakslak was a uniquely good man, a devoted rabbi and teacher…and a wonderful friend.

Much can be said about his remarkable life and his outstanding service as a communal Rav. I, personally, have rarely met a rabbi who was so truly a servant of Hashem.

                                                      *     *

“Rabbi Elazar said in the name of Rabbi Haninah: Rabbinic scholars increase peace in the world” (end of tractate Berakhot). The hallmark of a rabbi must be the commitment to increase peace and harmony among the Jewish people and within society at large. Without this guiding focus, rabbinic scholars betray their responsibility.

How do rabbis go about increasing peace in the world? How is this general truism translated into specific action? An answer may be found in the commentary of the Maharsha on the closing passages in Berakhot and Yevamot. The Maharsha states that rabbis are obliged to bring peace between the people of Israel and Hashem. By teaching Torah, the prayers and blessings, as well as by imbuing reverence and love of God, rabbis thereby lead Jews to find peace in their relationship with the Almighty. The rabbinic mission demands a spiritual outlook, an overwhelming desire to bring Jews closer to Hashem and Torah. This mission can only be fulfilled properly in a spirit of love, compassion, inclusivity—and much patience.

The rabbi must be—and must be seen by others to be—a selfless religious leader who places the public’s interests before his own. He must set the example of what it means to be a truly religious personality.

Rabbi Chaim Wakslak was a rabbi who brought people closer to Hashem, selflessly and sincerely. When he davened, his beautiful and spiritual voice lifted all of us. When he delivered his sermons, his keen wit and love of Torah filled the synagogue. He was devoted to his “Daf Yomi” group; he was a tireless teacher to all segments of the community.  He taught not only with words…but by example. If you want to visualize a genuinely pious, a sincerely religious human being—Rabbi Chaim Wakslak is the image you would call to mind.

The Maharsha points to another rabbinic characteristic that results in increasing peace in the world. It is the application of halakha in a way that reflects understanding and sensitivity to the human predicament. Our sages recognized overarching principles that guided halakhic rulings—principles such as sanctifying God’s Name; avoiding desecration of God’s name; making decisions with the understanding that the ways of Torah are pleasant and all its paths are peace.

 Rabbi Wakslak was not only a Rabbi but was a trained psychologist; he understood people; he related to each person with sensitivity. He knew not only how to speak, but how to listen. He was a talmid hakham who was able to bring Torah and halakha into peoples’ lives in a loving, thoughtful way.

To increase peace in the world, rabbinical scholars must be sensitive to the needs of the public and must see themselves as integral members of the public. These were qualities epitomized by Rabbi Wakslak. In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, he mobilized the entire Long Beach community—Jews and non-Jews—to come together, to help one another, to provide meals and comfort to those who lost so much in the storm. Whatever he did, he did with profound faith in the Almighty, and without seeking personal glory or even simple gratitude. He did what was right…because it was right, because the Torah guided his every step and every thought.

Rabbi Wakslak was the guiding spiritual light of the Young Israel. He was the tireless Rav who saw to it that the community had proper minyanim, shiurim, kosher establishments, an eiruv, a mikvah. With his passing, the community has lost a Rav of incredible energy and dedication. We have all lost not just a fine Rav; we have lost a genuine and trusted friend.

The Gemara (Berakhot 46b) cites the opinion of Rabbi Akiva that one should recite a blessing upon learning of someone’s death: Barukh Dayyan ha-Emet, blessed be the True Judge. This is a blessing of resignation. Although we are grieving, we acknowledge the ultimate wisdom of Hashem. We do not understand the mysteries of life and death.

But the Hakhamim suggest a different blessing: Barukh haTov ve-Hameitiv, blessed be the One Who is good and Who does good. This seems like a strange choice; but it is not strange. The hakhamim are reminding mourners that even in the deepest sadness, we need to remember the good things that the deceased person had experienced during the course of life. We are to remember the person’s goodness and how that goodness will continue to be a source of strength, blessing and happiness in the months and years ahead.

Rabbi Chaim Wakslak was blessed with a wonderful wife and family; a devoted congregation; years of satisfaction as a teacher, guide, and communal leader. With resignation and sadness, we say Barukh Dayyan ha-Emet. With gratitude for the blessings he enjoyed over the course of his life, and for the blessings he showered on his family and community, we say Barukh ha-Tov ve-Hameitiv.

    Reb Chaim, as a genuine talmid hakham, you brought peace between us and Hashem. You brought peace between us and our fellow human beings. You helped us find peace within ourselves.  May you, who were the source of shalom and sheleimut during your lifetime, now find ultimate shalom and sheleimut in the Olam haEmet.

May the mourners be consoled by the Almighty. Min haShamayim Tenuhamu.

The coronavirus crisis, in spite of its terrible downsides, also offers us a positive opportunity.

What is happening to us is that we suddenly hear what Abraham Joshua Heschel called "a perpetual murmur from the waves beyond the shore," which until now we didn't hear. Not because it wasn't there before, but because we have been deafened by the curse of taking our lives for granted. We tell ourselves that we're fine, that we have almost everything under control, and that we're close to becoming the masters of the Universe. One more step, a bit more patience, and we'll be there: absolute certainty; absolute security; absolute health.

And now, to our utmost dread, we have fallen into the hands of one tiny virus that forces us to our knees, causing us not only to be aware that we've lost our certainty, but to realize that we never had it to begin with!

And this wake-up call is actually an enormous blessing, enabling us to become genuine realists. This tiny virus forces us to admit that our self-assured sense of health is a farce, and that our certainty of being able to breathe, walk, speak and think, come what may, is all wishful thinking.

How wise were the sages of Israel when they instituted the custom of making a blessing on almost anything, whether it is eating, drinking, observing natural phenomena, or smelling extravagant aromas. They depicted all these activities as nothing less than totally miraculous.

And how did they come up with the bizarre suggestion that we should say a blessing after we have relieved ourselves? Who would ever think of making a blessing on something as physical as that?

For the sages, nothing was taken for granted, and all was seen in the light of radical amazement. They walked through life with a constant "Wow" on their lips, and they wanted us to share in this uplifting experience when making a blessing. They knew that to take things for granted is to be spiritually dead.

True, to live in quarantine for two weeks, (our grandparents lived for years in hiding in the days of the Holocaust!)  stop kissing and shaking hands, be forced to cancel our plans for vacation, be unable to drink a cup of coffee in a restaurant, or visit a cinema, and be thrown into a nearly impossible situation of dealing with our young children while being unable to go to work, is far from a joke.

But is it not also something very special, which we never imagined? Suddenly we find ourselves on a new mental planet. We are forced to rethink our lives, develop a new mentality, and live a radically different kind of life that we never envisioned. It asks us to break with the monotony that most of us are used to. Almost all of us jump into routine every morning – whether it's a job, or the need to sleep, eat, or entertain ourselves. And now, one little virus suddenly forces us to rethink everything, making us wonder what this life of ours is really all about.

This unforeseen interruption gives us the time to meditate on our lives, learn Torah, read books of wisdom we would otherwise never get to, and above all, to pray as we never did before.

But now we stand in terror and in awe, asking what will happen now. What is our future? And we are aware that nobody knows the answer, not even our greatest experts, and surely not our leaders.

All of this is in fact very liberating. It creates new space in our minds and souls and offers us opportunities that we forgot existed.

The mask has fallen, and reality has confronted us as never before.

We suddenly become aware that life is a gift that is unearned and it may be a little dangerous to feel too much at home in this world. We are offered the chance to make a distinction between the vital and the futile; the trivial and the important; what needs to inspire us (and we should cling to) and what to drop.

While we still have no clue as to what coronavirus will do to our world, our health, and our finances (perhaps all our precautions are not only exaggerated but even counter-productive?), we all recognize that something divine is at stake.

So, what to do? Let me quote a colleague of mine, Rabbi Moss from Australia: "Close your eyes and feel the uncertainty and make peace with it. Embrace your cluelessness. Because in all confusion there is one thing you know for sure: you are in the hands of God."

And let us not forget: once this trial is behind us and almost all of us will have escaped in good health, the greatest challenge will still await us. Will we fall back into our old ways, or will we be transformed and live a life of spiritual grandeur?

"The Lion has roared. Who will not fear?" (Amos 3:8).

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THANK YOU FOR CARING AND SHARING. RESPOND TODAY TO CREATE A BETTER TOMORROW.

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If you are already a member of the Institute, please consider making an additional gift at this time. If you are not yet a member, please join our growing community. Each contribution is a vote for a revitalized, intelligent, active and diverse Orthodoxy.

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In this article, I survey and analyze major stages in the fascinating growth of extremist positions on conversion to Judaism (giyyur) within Israeli rabbinic circles in recent years, up to September 2010. (The current hot-spot of controversy, relating to giyyur within the Israeli Defense Forces, is still “in process” and thus not covered here.) Throughout the article I make some general observations, and toward the end I also make draw some conclusions as to what all this reveals. Hopefully, the reader will gain some insights into interesting aspects of the history and the contemporary reality of the Orthodox rabbinic world in Israel.

Background: The Appearance of Novel Views within Hareidi Halakha Before the 1980s

The Shulhan Arukh explains (Yoreh De'ah 268:3)that acceptance of the commandments is a stage of the giyyur process that should take place in the presence of three (i.e., a Bet Din). This might be taken to mean that if there was no discrete segment of the ceremony called "kabbalat haMitzvoth” (acceptance of the commandments), then, even if all other parts of the ceremony took place, the candidate—who entered the ceremony as a non-Jew—remains a non-Jew as before. This interpretation of Yoreh De'ah 268:3was hotly debated by leading rabbis (see, for example, Avi Sagi and Zvi Zohar, Transforming Identity, 2007, ch. 11). In addition, even those rabbis who agreed that kabbalat haMitzvoth is absolutely required did not agree upon what this requirement means (see ibid., ch. 12–13. More recently, Rabbi Hayyim Amsallem has discussed and analyzed all these views in his magisterial Zer'a Yisrael, 2010, ch. 1–2).

In the late nineteeth century there developed within proto-Hareidi halakha a novel view of the requirement of kabbalat haMitzvoth. First formulated by Rabbi Yitzhak Schmelkes in 1876, this view held that the main event in any giyyur is an internal one: acceptance of the commandments means internal, subjective commitment by the candidate at the time of giyyur to practice all the commandments after becoming a Jew. This definition gave rise to an epistemological problem, which had not existed when acceptance was defined as a performative act: the event had to occur in the presence of the court, but—how could the court ascertain the occurrence of a completely internal and subjective intent?

Rabbi Hayyim Ozer Grodzinski (1863–1940) attempted to mitigate the problem by noting its limited scope. In general, he points out, halakha assumes correlation between a proselyte’s declaration of commitment to praxis and her internal intent. Thus, prima facie any proselyte who makes such a declaration is considered to have the appropriate internal intent. Only in specific cases might this general rule be suspended, by the principle of confirmed presumption (umdena deMukhah). Since the event of kabbalat haMitzvoth must be part and parcel of the giyyur ceremony, such a confirmed presumption that during her declaration of kabbalat haMitzvoth the proselyte lacked proper internal commitment to do so, could applied by the court only if at the time of giyyur clear dissonance was apparent between the proselyte’s life-context and her declaration of commitment (Responsa Ahiezer, vol. 3, #26). Non-performance of mitzvoth after the completion of the ceremony was completely irrelevant. In addition, toward the end of his Responsum, Rabbi Grodzinski stated that courts have discretion on such matters, and that if a court decided to rely upon the position of the great Rabbi Shlomo Kluger and to conduct a giyyur procedure to resolve a situation of intermarriage, this was halakhically sound.

In fact, it was extremely rare even for rabbis of this school to invalidate a proselyte who had already undergone giyyur.This is not surprising, for as Menachem Finkelstein points out (in his book Conversion: Halakha and Practice, 2006), ex post facto invalidation of giyyur is in contradiction to the basic principle of the finality of giyyur once the proselyte has “immersed and come up” (see Yebamoth 47b).

The Axelrod Innovation: A Transformative Halakhic Development

However, in the latter part of the twentieth century, a revolutionary development took place (the following section is heavily indebted to ch. 14 of Transforming Identity). Several rabbis developed an innovative method to overcome the hypothetical character of the evaluation of the proselyte’s inner intent. They argued that the proselyte’s inner intent at the time of giyyur is reflected in her subsequent actual praxis. If after giyyur the convert does not observe the commandments, this serves as unimpeachable proof with regard to her original (defective) intent.

Available evidence indicates that the first rabbi to publish this position was Rabbi Yitzchak Brand, who wrote:

Due to lack of acceptance the giyyur is totally annulled. This shall become clear over the course of time: if she subsequently fails to observe the commandments, she is considered an absolute Gentile. (Briti Yitzhak, 1982, p. 26)

Brand’s analytical innovation does not seem to have had any public effect. However, such effect was achieved byRabbi Gedalya Axelrod, son of a leading Chabad rabbi, who in the early 1980s was a member of a rabbinical court in the city of Haifa, then served as Av Bet Din until retiring in 2001, and currently is a leading proponent of Chabad messianism. He, along with other Hareidi judges serving on rabbinical courts, was outraged by what they perceived to be the infringement of their jurisdiction in the realm of giyyur by Chief Rabbi Shlomo Goren, who in the late 1970s had established special courts to conduct ceremonies of giyyur. At the beginning of 1983, Rabbi Axelrod addressed a halakhic query to Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv. Born in Jerusalem 1910, Elyashiv served as a judge in the Israeli rabbinic court system until 1974, and then established himself as a major leader of the ultra-Orthodox “Lithuanian” public in Israel. (Rabbi Axelrod’s query and Rabbi Elyashiv's Responsum appear in a photocopy appendix to a booklet titled The Halakhic Value of A Certificate of Giyyur (Te’udat HaGiyyur beMivhan haHalakha), edited by three rabbis (H. Pardes, A. Atlas, and G. Axelrod), and distributed to Israeli rabbinic marriage registrars on 24 Ellul 5743 (2 September 1983). In 1995 Rabbi Axelrod published a volume of his collected Responsa under the title Migdal Tzofim (Haifa, self-published), and in sections 29–31 therein printed much of the above material]. Rabbi Axelrod wrote:

It is known to me, that there are many persons who underwent a procedure of giyyur (ma’aseh gerut) in the Holy Land, by an Orthodox rabbi, but had no intent whatsoever to accept upon themselves the yoke of Torah and commandments. It is clear, that their declaration made in the presence of the rabbi overseeing the giyyur that they accept upon themselves to observe, to perform, and to uphold [the commandments]—was merely lip-service. Is it the duty of a rabbi registering them for marriage to investigate and to interrogate the proselyte who applies for marriage with a [born] Jew or Jewess, if they indeed intended to accept upon themselves Torah and commandments?

Although Axelrod provided no evidence for his contentions, Rabbi Elyashiv responded as follows:

It is very simple, that there is no [valid] giyyur without acceptance of Torah and commandments. And if the proselyte has no intention to really become a Jew, to take shelter under the wings of the Shekhinah, to observe the Sabbath without transgression, and to uphold the covenant, and his only objective is to attain his material goals and to fulfil his desires, the giyyur lacks all validity… and since—according to your question—many of the proselytes are of this type, there is a duty incumbent upon the rabbi registering the marriage to investigate and to interrogate before he issues a marriage permit for them. "So that Gentiles will not mix in with the Holy Seed" [a clear allusion to Ezra 9:2].

The very existence of such an interchange is worthy of note: Rabbi Axelrod, a hard-core Chabad believer, addresses a halakhic query to Rabbi Elyashiv, a leading “Lithuanian” rabbi, at the same time that tensions between Rabbi Shakh (then the greatest Lithuanian authority) and Chabad were at their highest ever (leading to the 1983 split within Agudat Yisrael)! Axelrod brings no proof for his contention that Orthodox rabbis accept for giyyur persons who blithely lie about their intention to observe the commandments but simply states that this is “known to him,” He proposes a plan of action: placing the responsibility for the validation of these proselytes’ Jewishness upon the marriage registrars, who should check whether the proselyte had the proper internal positive intention—commitment to observethe commandments—at the time of giyyur.

However, unlike what Rabbi Axelrod suggested, what Rabbi Elyashiv ruled was that the registrars must check, if at the time of giyyur there had existed external circumstances that indicated internal negative intent of the proselyte invalidating her declared commitment to praxis (i.e., whether there were sufficient grounds for an “presumed assumption” at the time of giyyur, negating the validity of the acceptance of commandments). Eliashiv’s ruling was thus still within the conceptual framework proposed by Rabbis Grodzinsky et al., and he did not accept the more radical innovation proposed by Axelrod.

Nevertheless, the historical significance of Axelrod's initiative and Eliashiv’s response is tremendous. From earliest times, the members of the court of giyyur were entrusted with the function of guardians of the threshold of Jewishness: only if they accepted a non-Jew as a worthy candidate could he undergo giyyur. However, if they decided that a non-Jew was indeed worthy, and he underwent a process of giyyur under their auspices, he had irrevocably crossed the threshold into Jewishness and had become a Jew once and for all. Rabbi Axelrod—himself receiving a salary from the State of Israel—casts aspersion upon the Orthodox Batei Dinof Israel. He claims that they were worse than all previous courts, had betrayed their responsibility, and had failed to prevent the infiltration of Gentiles into the Jewish ranks. Since the courts of giyyur had fallen into the hands of the Zionists, a new line of defence was required. This line would be manned by the (presumably Hareidi) marriage registrars, who would deny the possibility of marriage to “false” proselytes. This shifting of responsibility to the registrars was endorsed by Rabbi Eliashiv—until his retirement a dayanin the Israeli rabbinic system, but now acting as an overtly Hareidi authority.

Indefatigable Zealotry

Although Elyashiv did not agree with Axelrod that the criterion for determining such insincerity could be (non-) observance of the norms of halakha at the time of registration for marriage, this did not deter Axelrod. In 1983 he composed a halakhic treatise(later included in The Scandal of the Forged Giyyurim [Sha’aruriyat haGiyyurim haMezuyyafim], Jerusalem, The World Committee of Rabbis for Matters of Giyyur, 1989) in which he took a major step beyond previous positions. He argued that the criterion the registrars should apply was observance of a halakhic lifestyle at the time of registration. If a proselyte came to register for marriage but did not seem to be observing the commandments, the registrar should interpret this as reflecting lack of sincere kabbalat mitzvot. If so, the certificate of giyyur in the (so-called) proselyte’s possession had been obtained fraudulently, and he should not be considered a Jew. In this treatise, Rabbi Axelrod claimed that ex post facto invalidation of giyyur when the proselyte failed to consistently maintain a religious lifestyle is explicitly supported by the entire halakhic tradition, including the Talmud, Maimonides, the Arba’ah Turim, and the Shulhan Arukh.

Axelrod found three lesser rabbis—all serving as rabbinical judges in Israeli state courts!—who supported his novel position: Rabbis Joel Kloft (head of a rabbinical court in Haifa), Shlomo Teneh (head of a court in Tel Aviv)and Shlomo Shimshon Karelitz (a veteran judge from an important rabbinic family).Rabbi Kloft wrote to Axelrod three weeks after Elyashiv’s Responsum, arguing that since the great Rabbi Elyashiv has ruled on the matter, it is imperative to follow his guidance. According to Kloft the upshot is that “the registrar should investigate if the proselyte fully and completely observes the Torah of Israel, and if he is not observant, he is a complete Gentile.” On 15 November 1983, Rabbis Teneh and Karelitz concurred. Karelitz wrote: “It is our duty to investigate and find out if indeed this proselyte who comes before the registrar is a real proselyte and observes what he promised at the time of the giyyur.” Teneh wrote that since Rabbi Elyashiv had ruled on the matter, it is incumbent upon the marriage registrars “to check at the time of registration if the proselyte b of Torah and commandments.” Failing to notice the disparity between Axelrod's contentions and Elyashiv's responsum, these three rabbis focus on the proselyte’s behavior at the time of registration for marriage as the crucial determinant of his Jewishness.

At this point it should be noted that serious knowledge of the halakhotrelating to giyyur were never part of the classic Lithuanian yeshiva curriculum, nor was such knowledge part of the material that students were required to master in order to receive semikha (rabbinic ordination). Thus, it is perfectly possible to become a dayan(rabbinic judge) and even an Av Bet Din(chief justice of a rabbinic court) without any systematic command of the halakhot relating to giyyur. In addition, while highly detailed works of halakha proliferated in the latter decades of the twentieth century with regard to almost all areas of religious life (as Haym Soloveitchik noted well in his classic "Rupture and Reconstruction"), no such systematic and rigorous work on giyyur was ever written by any rabbi until last year, when Rabbi Amsallem published Zer'a Yisrael. Therefore, rabbis who were ordained without significant knowledge of the realm of giyyur had no way to access such knowledge without devoting much independent study to the topic. But who had time for that? This at least partially explains why dayanimsuch as Kloft, Teneh, and Karelitz were open to accept Axelrod's self-declared expertise on the topic, and unable to note the nuances of difference between him and Elyashiv.

Be that as it may, Axelrod convinced two other rabbinical judges to form an action committee with him, and on 31 August 1983 they sent out copies of the treatise to all the marriage registrars in Israel. The purpose of the action committee was to enlist the registrars as guardians of the threshold of the Jewish people, i.e., even if the proselyte had “fooled” a rabbinical court into enabling him to undergo giyyur, his intent to join the Jewish people would be thwarted by his inability to marry a Jewish spouse. Subsequently, the committee conducted a campaign to force the Chief Rabbinate of Israel to disqualify all certificates of giyyur that had been issued to proselytes who failed to follow a halakhic lifestyle after undergoing giyyur. They convinced 180 rabbis to sign a manifesto phrased as follows:

We the undersigned, rabbis and rabbinical court judges in Israel, request you to examine the lifestyle of hundreds and hundreds of proselytes in the kibbutzim, in the cities and elsewhere, and to ascertain if they observe the commandments—or if they received certificates of giyyur through deceit, and their giyyur is false.

The logical ground of Axelrod’s innovation, clearly supported by the three rabbis’ letters and this manifesto, is the existence of a dichotomy between two possibilities: Either the proselyte observes the commandments at the present time, or his giyyur is retroactively “discovered” to have been invalid and he is not Jewish. Now, not only does this not accord with all pre-Hareidi halakhic sources; it does not even accord with the positions of Rabbis Grodzinski et al., who raise the possibility of invalidating a giyyur only on the basis of a “confirmed presumption” with regard to the proselyte’s mindset at the moment of giyyur itself. In brief, Rabbi Axelrod successfully initiated a transformational halakhic change.

Whose Turf?

Although an individual rabbi may come up with a novel interpretation purely as the result of an intellectual speculation, the willingness of many rabbis to support such an innovation may indicate that beyond halakhic reasoning per se, additional considerations have an effect. A close reading of Axelrod’s treatise reveals at least some of these factors. He writes that in the past, giyyur had been in the hands of the regular rabbinic courts that could be relied upon to accept only worthy candidates. However, with the establishment of the preparatory schools (ulpanim) for giyyur, and the removal of a large number of giyyur processes from the jurisdiction of the [regular] rabbinic courts, the situation had taken a turn for the worse:

And the judges of the [regular] rabbinic courts had warned of this praxis in their conventions in 1979, 1980, 1982, 1983. And they had unanimously decided to turn to those responsible for giyyur in Israel, calling upon them ensure that giyyur would be performed only in the regular rabbinic courts… and that the giyyur of soldiers be performed not by the Israeli Defence Forces’ rabbinate but transferred to the jurisdiction of the regular courts.

Clearly, a central concern expressed in this text is that of jurisdiction. A matter previously under the monopoly of the regular rabbinic courts had been transferred to the jurisdiction of “special” courts established for that purpose. What this text fails to mention is that the “special” courts were established in response to the perception that the regular courts were alienating and/or rejecting most candidates for giyyur. The regular courts were predominantly staffed by ultra-Orthodox rabbis, whereas the “special” courts were staffed by relatively moderate Orthodox rabbis. The campaign of the rabbinical judges is thus a campaign to preserve (or fully establish?) the hegemony of the ultra-Orthodox vision of the meaning of Jewish existence.

Significantly, while the Chief Rabbinate did not at that time change its policies on this matter, neither the Chief Rabbis nor the Israeli legal authorities took any disciplinary steps against the signers of the manifesto, nor against Axelrod himself. Such reticence would of course be unimaginable had 180 judges of the secular court system come out with a manifesto against, say, a decision by the Minister of Justice to transfer some legal matters to the jurisdiction of specialized courts. Thus, the case of giyyur reflects the general problematic of the Chief Rabbinate and the State authorities' relationship toward rabbinic statements—even when made by rabbis who were themselves civil servants.

Since Israeli law attributes legal validity to certificates of giyyur issued on the basis of giyyur ceremonies performed by the special rabbinical courts, marriage registrars are required by law to accept these certificates as evidence of Jewishness, and to register the bearers of such documents for marriage with a Jewish partner. This creates a conflict between the novel view of Axelrod et al. requiring the registrars to deny registration to many of these applicants, and the legal obligations of the registrars. Rabbi Axelrod addressed this problem directly:

When there is a conflict between [Israeli] law and halakha, the rabbi acting as marriage registrar is obligated by halakha and not by law, and he is obligated by halakha to refer the bearer of the certificate to the [regular] rabbinic court, and not to allow him to marry before clarification of his status.

Here, too, one might expect that as a civil servant, Axelrod would have been taken to task for inciting other civil servants to act against their legal obligations—and here, too, this did not occur. Indeed, five years after Rabbi Axelrod initiated his novel move, Rabbi She’ar-Yashuv Cohen, chief rabbi and chief rabbinical judge of Haifa (where Axelrod served as a rabbinical judge), attests (in his article “Ger sheHazar leSuro veEino Shomer Mitzvot” [A Proselyte who Retracted and who does not Observe the Commandments], Torah SheB’al-Peh29 (1988), 33–43)to the influence of Axelrod's innovation:

It is quite common in rabbinical courts, that proselytes who underwent giyyur according to halakha under the auspices of rabbinical courts and outstanding expert rabbis, are interrogated later on by rabbinical judges to check if they are actually observant of the commandments. Some of them admit to the judges that currently they are not observant, and it sometimes happens that the court casts retroactive doubt upon the validity of the giyyur and refuses to confirm that they are Jewish even if for a brief period after their giyyur they observed the commandments and only later “reverted [to a non-observant lifestyle].”

Rabbi She’ar-Yashuv Cohen argues that this position is halakhically incorrect; but by his own admission it is clear that rabbinic courts—at least those in Haifa—were operating against the express ruling of the city’s chief rabbi. This itself demonstrates how quickly Axelrod’s innovation was accepted by his peers.

A Vector of Extremism

With the passage of time, Rabbi Axelrod’s position became even more extreme. His original formulation was that the marriage registrars are “required” to validate the certificates of giyyur on the basis of the proselyte’s current religious praxis. However, in 1995 he published a “Responsum” in the official organ of the Israeli Rabbinical Courts (“Observance of Commandments as a Condition for [Valid] Giyyur” (Hebrew), in Shurat haDin(The Letter of the Law), Vol. 3 (Jerusalem, Sha’ar haMishpatInstitute of the Directorate of Rabbinical Courts, 1995), pp. 175–190). When compared with his 1983 booklet, one major change that becomes apparent is that he now postulates that marriage registrars are forbiddenby halakha to arrange any marriage for a proselyte, without first validating the giyyur on the basis both of current religious observance and of religious observance during the period immediately following the giyyur ceremony. The fact that the proselyte presents to the registrar a certificate of giyyur signed by the official Chief [Orthodox] Rabbinate of Israel is irrelevant for the purpose of determining her current status:

The certificate of giyyur is not considered by halakha as a certificate of Jewishness, but only as a certificate affirming that the bearer underwent circumcision and immersion in the presence of a court. But s/he nevertheless falls under the law that s/he “should be regarded with reservation until his righteousness becomes apparent.”

The last sentence refers to Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah, Laws of Forbidden Intercourse, 13:17. However, the original meaning of Maimonides’ proviso is quite different from the meaning attributed to it by Axelrod, as no disqualification of giyyur is implied by this phrase. In addition, Maimonides applies this proviso only to proselytes who were not informed at all about the commandments and who underwent giyyurin an unofficial ad hoccourt of laymen. Axelrod applies it to all proselytes across the board.Axelrod explains that in the past, the presumption was that a person who underwent the process of giyyur would observe commandments, since the entire Jewish society was observant. However:

All the Responsa that we quoted above, and others that we did not cite, indicate that in our times the presumption is that the intention of those seeking to undergo giyyur is to mislead the court when they say that they will observe the commandments, while in their heart they are far from such intent… and the court has no permission to allow those seeking giyyur to fool them.

This paragraph contains two significant statements. One is that the general assumption with regard to all candidates for giyyur should be that they are cheaters. This is diametrically opposed to the entire halakhic tradition, including even the views of ultra-Orthodox rabbis from Grodzinsky to Eliashiv, who all hold that a proselyte’s declaration is sincere unless proven otherwise. The second significant statement by Axelrod is that (pace Grodzinsky) the court has no discretion regarding candidates who are willing to profess commitment to religious praxis but may be misleading the court: all such candidates must be totally refused access to giyyur.

Rabbi Axelrod’s novel analysis led him to outline unprecedented halakhic guidelines with regard to certificates of giyyur:

The [halakhic] consequence of our discussion is that the following wording must be added to certificates of giyyur:

a. This certificate is valid only if its bearer observes Torah and commandments.

b. The validity of this certificate is limited […] and must be renewed once a year.

On this view, not only can giyyur be retroactively disqualified, but it automatically becomes invalid if it is not renewed or if the proselyte fails to fully observant Orthodox lifestyle. Thus, only a person who was born to a Jewish mother is irrevocably Jewish. All others are on eternal probation, and their Jewishness is always completely contingent. Can one imagine a position more diametrically opposed to that of the Talmud in Tractate Yebamoth, which goes out of its way to stress that even if the proselyte reverts to pagan behavior immediately after immersion “he is like a Jew in every respect”?!

Retroactive Annulment of Giyyur by Israeli Rabbinic Courts

State rabbinic authorities in Israel have not officially adopted this position of Axelrod de jure. However, they have also never stated that retroactive annulment of giyyur is contrary to halakha and out-of-bounds to state-employed dayanim. The ever-present possibility that a rabbinic court might retroactively cast aspersion upon a giyyur that happened many years earlier means that the finality of any specific act of giyyur is de facto eternally contingent. In February 2005 the Knesset Committee on Aliyah, Absorption, and the Diaspora was assured that for 15 years there had been no case of retroactive annulment of giyyur (Declaration by Rabbi Moshe Klein of the National Authority for Giyyur in the transcript of the committee’s 207^th meeting online at http://www.knesset.gov.il/protocols/data/html/aliyah/2005-02-09-01.html). However, the facts were otherwise. Thus, in 2002 a special rabbinic court for matters of giyyur ruled that because of non-observance after becoming a proselyte, the giyyur of a certain Mrs X

is annulled because of doubt. We therefore rule that her status is that of “indeterminate proselyte.” The halakhic implication of this ruling is that Mrs X is forbidden to marry a Jew unless she undergoes a new process of giyyur and this should be made known to the marriage registrars. Similarly, she is forbidden to marry a Gentile. (The judges of this court were Rabbis Zvi Lifshitz, Judah Pris, and Moshe Ehrenreich. The official decision of the Rabbinical Court was signed by the above on the 17 Tammuz 5762 (27 June 2002) and confirmed by Rabbi David Mamo, Head Clerk, on 11 July 2002.)

On this view, continuous performance of halakha after the giyyur ceremony is a sine qua non for the Jewishness of the proselyte. Lack of performance at any subsequent time can be construed as undermining the validity of the giyyur. Should this occur the person may find herself in a much inferior position to where she was before: neither Jew nor Gentile, she is forbidden to contract marriage with any human being.

In 1992, a woman of Danish birth went through a yearlong process of giyyur under the auspices of the Israeli rabbanut (a result of which her original family disowned her). She then married a Jewish man in an Orthodox Jewish ceremony, and they had three children, all of whom were, of course, Jews by birth. Fifteen years later, in 2007, the couple reached a mutually agreed decision to divorce, and underwent a process of divorce in the Ashdod rabbinical court. When the woman later requested a document confirming that she was a divorcee, Rabbi Avraham Atiyyah of the Ashdod Rabbinical Court suspected that she was not religiously observant, and asked her if she observed halakha with regard to Shabbat and family purity. She replied in the negative, and Atiyyah said that she should go home and would in due course receive the proper document. Several months later, she received a nine-page decision authored by Atiyyah, from which it transpired that he had (unasked, of course) taken upon himself to determine if her giyyur was valid, and decided that it was not. Rabbi Atiyyah stated that since it was now clear that she had never been a Jew, her marriage had never been valid, and no divorce was required to terminate it. In addition, he declared that the children born to the couple were non-Jews. Significantly, the majority of sources quoted by Attiyah were composed by Axelrod.

Inter alia, the document contains a vitriolic attack upon the special courts of giyyur operating under the auspices of the Israeli Chief Rabbinate. Arguing that the rabbis serving on those courts are apostates, Attiyah states that in his view they are ipso facto halakhically disqualified from serving as judges and therefore, all procedures of giyyur conducted under their auspices are invalid, whether or not the converts were religiously observant!

Appeal to the Supreme Rabbinical Court—and the Court's Hard-Line Decision

The woman’s lawyers appealed this completely gratuitous decision to the Supreme Rabbinical Court of Israel. Chief Rabbi Amar appointed three of the court's judges to decide the case. Two were in favor of upholding the appeal, i.e., of ruling against Attiyah; one, Rabbi Abraham Sherman, wanted to reject the appeal. Sensing that he was in the minority and that his opponents would carry the day, Sherman declared "I can't make up my mind (eini yode'a).” This stymied the procedure. Subsequently, a new panel of three judges was appointed (in a manner contrary to the normal procedures of allocating such cases) with Sherman at its head and another judge, Rabbi Hagai Isirer, who held similar views. Rabbi Amar instructed the panel to withhold decision until he himself could deliberate upon the matter, but this time, Sherman had no difficulty in making up his mind. The court turned down the appeal and ruled (on February 10 2008), that Druckman et al. were illegitimate dayanim. Citing Hareidirabbis almost exclusively, refraining from citing any sources holding alternate views, receiving no witnesses, and without even hearing what Druckman had to say on the matter, Sherman stated these reasons for disqualifying Druckman and “his” courts:

1. They agreed to accept candidates whom they knew would not follow a religious lifestyle. And this was opposed to the entire halakhic tradition. A rabbi who rules against the entire tradition is ipso facto disqualified from serving as adayan.
2. By accepting such candidates, they were sinning against the Torah injunction not to place a stumbling block before the blind. Specifically, they intended to turn this person into a Jew, but, since he as a Jew would then not follow the mitzvoth, he would be punished by God, and thus his Jewishness was for him a stumbling block—placed there by the rabbis who “converted” him. Conversely, if the giyyur was invalid (due to lack of kabbalat haMitzvoth), Druckman et al. were placing a stumbling block before the general public, who would be mislead into thinking the “converts” were Jewish, while in fact they were still Gentiles. Such a sin disqualifies a person from serving as a dayan.
3. In addition, another rabbi had claimed that Druckman signed some conversion certificates despite not having been present at the giyyur. This proves that Druckman is a liar—a sin that disqualifies him from serving as a dayan.
4. Furthermore, several halakhic articles written by rabbis associated with the special courts for giyyur revealed that they felt motivated to accept candidates for giyyur in order to act for the general good of the Jewish People, and to prevent intermarriage and assimilation. But such considerations, wrote Sherman, were foreign and extraneous to halakha: An individual could be accepted for giyyur only based on his individual merits, not because of general policy considerations. By employing such considerations, these dayanim were further disqualifying themselves from constituting a valid court.

Since all the courts acting under Druckman's auspices were revealed to have been disqualified from at least 1999, and since there was reason to doubt their qualifications from the inception of their activities even before 1992, all giyyurim carried out by them could not be validated. Thus, all persons converted by them were either Gentiles or of doubtful, liminal status—perhaps Jew, perhaps not. The upshot was that none of these people or their descendents could be considered Jewish. (see this decision online at http://www.nevo.co.il/Psika_word/rabani/rabani-5489-64-1.doc).

Rabbi Isirer added, in a concurring decision, that even if some of the converts had sincerely intended at the time of giyyur to observe some of the mitzvoth—such as Sukkoth, Pessah, fasting on the Day of Atonement, and the like—this had no bearing on their lack of kabbalat haMitzvoth. The reason for that is that there is no religious meaning at all to the observance of select mitzvoth; rather, what is required is absolute and unconditional subservience to God's command. Living as a “traditional” Jew has no halakhic value at all.

Common to both Sherman and Isirer was a total disregard of the effect their ruling would have upon the specific woman whose giyyur they had undermined after 15 years, upon her three children who were suddenly declared non-Jews, and upon the thousands of persons converted by Druckman, as well as their spouses, children, family relations, and so forth. The main thing was, to get the law right, whatever the consequences: yiqov haDin et haHar! Although halakhists in the past would always extend themselves to the utmost to free even one agunah, and although Torah tells us that we must demonstrate the utmost kindness toward converts, here we have rabbinic judges on the Supreme Rabbinic Court doing the exactly the opposite: selecting only sources that support an exclusivist agenda, placing thousands of persons in an agunah-like limbo, and behaving cruelly toward thousands of converts. Apparently, by the fiat of declaring these persons non-Jews, all norms requiring decency toward them were ipso facto suspended. Upon further consideration one realizes that of course, these poor persons were in fact but pawns in the zealous crusade to discredit Druckman and his Zionist band of apostate accomplices.

Needless to say, this decision, effectively denying the Jewishness of thousands of persons who had gone through the laborious and extended giyyur procedure required by the special courts—courts manned by dayanim chosen by the Chief Rabbis themselves—caused an uproar. Rabbi Amar was caught in a bind, between his public position as Chief Rabbi (and Chief Justice of the Supreme Rabbinical Court), his personal relation with his sponsor rabbi Ovadiah Yosef (who did not support Sherman, but did not censure him), and his deep fear of Rabbi Eliashiv, aged 99 and supreme doyen of all Hareidi rabbis in the world, the mentor of Rabbis Sherman and Isirer and fierce critic of the special courts (see rabbi Ben Shim'on's statement, below). Amar's situation was complicated by the fact that most legal minds agreed that according to law, there was no way open for the Chief Rabbi to overturn a decision of the Supreme Rabbinical Court—i.e., of Sherman and company.

In June 2008, the woman and her lawyers, together with many women's organizations and public organizations, appealed to the Supreme Court of the State of Israel, claiming that the Supreme Rabbinical Court had acted in ways that were opposed to basic equity, to human dignity, to Israeli law, to halakha, and to elementary rules of rabbinic court procedure and jurisdiction, and therefore the decision should be declared void. A most eloquent document, the appeal is available online atwww.kitrossky.org/proselytism/Bagatz.doc. At the time of this writing, the Israeli Supreme Court has not yet issued a final verdict on this matter.

Rabbi Nissim Ben Shim'on on the Totalitarian Character of Hareidi Halakhic Discourse

After much procrastination, Rabbi Amar decided to utilize a loophole in the Sherman decision: the fact that the court had not decided conclusively that the woman who appealed Atiyyah's decision was not Jewish, but rather, that her status was “indeterminate.” He therefore appointed (two years after the Sherman decision) a “special” court of three rabbis, to determine conclusively if she was Jewish or not. This court, led by Rabbi Nissim Ben Shim’on, focused exclusively on two specific questions: 1. Was the Druckman court disqualified at the time they converted this specific woman? 2. Could it be proven that at the time of giyyur the woman had not accepted the mitzvoth?

Answering both of these questions in the negative, Rabbi Ben Shim’on determined (in September 2010) that the original giyyur remained in force, and the woman was therefore a Jew. Pointedly refraining from taking a more general stand on issues of giyyur praxis and policy, Ben Shim’on explicitly stressed another vital matter:

A leading Av Bet Dinrecently told me that he supports [a certain interpretation favoring a slightly lenient view]. I do not want to publicize his name, lest his name be added to the list of the "burnt" (haSerufim) […] the situation is becoming intolerable: if a rabbi relies upon the Ahiezer [who conceded that a court may rely upon Kluger] he is considered to be the worst […] if a rabbi—who is a rosh yeshiva, a gaon and a great scholar—does not follow "The Line" and does not rule in accordance with the view of that rabbi whom "they" decided is "The Posek—there is none other than he (haPoseq v'Ein Od miLevado),” then he [the too-independent rosh yeshiva] is no longer called a rabbi and all his rulings are discredited, not only the giyyurim that he performed. In addition, "they" threaten rabbis whom they suspect might not rule in accordance with "their" will, that his name will be added to the list of the "burnt.” But we, thank God, are immune, and we do not fear the FI"RE (haE"SH,  an oblique reference to either ElyaShiv or AbrahamSherman) and we follow the rule "Scatter the FIRE yonder" (v'et haEsh zre hal-ah [BaMidbar 17:2]).

In this revealing passage, Rabbi Ben Shim’on, Av Bet Dinof a District Rabbinic Court, portrays the atmosphere of fear that now pervades Orthodox-Hareidi rabbinic circles. Certain zealots have decided to impose a totalitarian vision of halakha, and to undermine and discredit (“burn") any rabbi who does not toe the line and follow the person crowned as the One-and-Only decisor (posek). Employing the classic rabbinic tool of literary allusion, Ben Shim’on compares these zealots to the 250 rebels who sought to illegitimate the leadership Moses and Aaron and replace them with Korah. So too, these zealots seek to undermine the duly appointed and authorized Chief Rabbinate, and also to force all rabbis to accept the dictates of a self-righteous usurper.

Comments

What can we learn from all this?

One thing that can be seen clearly, in retrospect, is that halakha has not frozen in some pre-modern state. Hareidi rhetoric aside, dramatic changes in the religious positions of completely Orthodox rabbis and in central areas of “Orthodox” halakha have occurred in the past 150 years. Arguably, more dramatic change has occurred within Hareidi halakha than within so-called “centrist” and “Modern Orthodox” halakha—and this may be one reason for (or symptom of) the obvious vitality of the Hareidi world.

Second, these changes did not occur overnight. Seemingly, a single dayanfrom Ashdod, in a single decision made in 2007, ruled that thousands of giyyurim were invalid—and suddenly, due to Sherman and Isirer's ruling in 2008, this became the official position of the Israeli Rabbinic authorities. However, anyone who monitored the discourse, trends, and activities of the Hareidi rabbinic world in Israel could have seen that far from appearing ex nihilo, certain tendencies had been building up steam since 1876, when rabbi Schmelkes first interpreted kabbalat haMitzvoth as an internal psychological event. For a hundred years, this school of thought gained vogue in certain Hareidi circles, but had virtually no practical application. This was because other halakhic views were (still) in vogue, and the refusal by Hareidim to convert gerim did not preclude acceptance by other Orthodox rabbis worldwide—and in Israel too. At first, true-blue Hareidi rabbis refused to serve in the rabbinate of the Zionist state. But there were many Diaspora-educated rabbis who were not Hareidim, but Orthodox and pragmatic, and when they served in the Israeli rabbinate they realized full well that responsible persons in public office should follow a middle-of-the-road approach. Thus, when the mass immigration in Israel's early years brought many intermarried couples and their children to the shores of the Holy Land, these rabbis did their best, within traditional halakha, to facilitate their giyyur. Later, as Hareidiyeshivot in Israel expanded, a double change took place: More and more extreme attitudes became fashionable, and more and more graduates of the yeshivot needed jobs. Many of them—more ideologically extreme than the elder generation of Diaspora-educated rabbis—began to apply for positions within the Israeli rabbinate and rabbinical court system, becoming dayanim, town rabbis, and the like.

            As a result of this gradual infiltration of the Israeli state rabbinate, less benign attitudes toward those applying for giyyur began to prevail. This led Rabbi Shlomo Goren (chief rabbi from 1973 to 1983) to establish special courts for giyyur—thus circumventing the regular courts of “his own” rabbinate. However, his term of office ended in 1983; significantly, it was in 1983 that Axelrod turned to Eliashiv with his innovative proposal. The time was now ripe for the Hareidi rabbis serving within the state rabbinical establishment to assert themselves against the establishment's official policies—and the rest, described above, is history.

Furthermore, Goren—and his Sephardic peer Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef—were both strong and self-confident men, not afraid of any other rabbis. Both of them had been steeled in adversity, branded as mavericks from an early age, and reached their positions despite whatever more conventional rabbis thought of them. In 1983, their term of office ended, and they were replaced by more accommodating men, who were not “into” confronting disarray within the ranks. Thus, when 180 rabbis and dayanimsigned a manifesto against official rabbinate policy, or when Axelrod's 1995 article called for placing all gerim on eternal probation, or when marriage registrars began to question the validity of the rabbinate's own certificates of giyyur—no action was taken against these manifestations, and it became quite clear that a Hareidi dayanor marriage registrar could speak up brashly and/or actively subvert rabbinate policies—and continue to draw an attractive salary from the coffers of the state.

The basically anomalous character of state-rabbinate relations in Israel heavily contributed to the flowering of Hareidi attitudes within the state rabbinate. To a great extent, this is because of the dichotomic character of the way Israelis map attitudes toward religion: either you are secular (hiloni) or religious (dati). In the eyes of the conventional Israeli secularist, religion is a matter for the datiyyim: Let them do their own thing in the realm allocated to them, as long as they don't bother us too much. The datiyyim, for their part, including the Zionist Mizrahi movement when it was in the ascendant, encouraged this attitude: don't you secularists mix in on our turf. Thus, civil service functionaries and secular political leaders bent over backwards to avoid taking a position on “internal” religious matters, and state authorities were much more reticent in disciplining state functionaries who were rabbis, than in disciplining any other state-employed personnel.

Finally,while rabbis serving on the “special” courts for giyyur were (and are) at heart in favor of encouraging giyyur, they never developed a serious de jure halakhic foundation for the de facto leniency they were practicing. When I tried to understand from them how they justified to themselves acceptance of converts who later would most likely not perform many ritual mitzvot, they tended to reply that "perhaps at the time of giyyur their intention was sincere" or that "over time they will come to observe many more mitzvoth.” In other words, these rabbis themselves were (and are) not at all sure, that the (historically novel) halakhic position of their Hareidi antagonists is mistaken. This is no less true of Rabbi Amar (not to speak of Rabbi Metzger, who was appointed as a placeholder by Eliashiv). How then could they convincingly rebut the Axelrod/Eliashiv damning critique of their leniency? Of course, as Rabbi Hayyim Amsallem has powerfully demonstrated in Zer'a Yisrael, the lenient position in giyyur is halakhically much stronger than the Hareidiconstruct invented in modern times—but to write such a megaesterial work of halakha one has to be a serious talmid hakham and—in addition—has to have independence of mind and the courage of one's convictions.

At Friday Night Kabbalat Shabbat Services in the Synagogue of the city of Ioannina, an old man stood up to the podium, chanting in the melodies of his community. As I sat there and listened to him, my eyes begin to well with tears and I smiled; this inspiring community leader for nearly seven decades still had it within him at 90 years old to sing, and sing with pride. As he clutched the podium for support, he sang with tremendous emotion and power, as if he was still a young man. Suddenly, at the height of the prayer, he nearly collapsed, thankfully caught by some of the congregants right next to him. That man, Samuel Cohen, was a Holocaust survivor from northern Greece, and recently passed away at the age of 93. That was a defining moment for me, a point which I realized that I had a duty as a Greek Jew to tell his story, and the stories of the Jews of Greece, before it disappeared for good.

My Greek Jewish heritage is one major source of pride in my life. I’ve constantly asked my father about his parents’ roots in Greece and the former Ottoman Empire, their experiences immigrating to New York and the struggles they made to get me where I am today. My congregation, Kehila Kedosha Janina (Holy Congregation of Janina), the only Romaniote synagogue in the Western Hemisphere, still reads in many of the traditional melodies of my ancestors. I have given tours at my synagogue’s Museum about Greek Jewry and told visitors exactly where my grandfather and great grandfather lived in Greece. Most of all, I love inspiring other young Greek Jews within my community, helping them to realize how special they are and ignite their passions for learning their traditions and becoming more active in the community.

Yet a lot of people ask me why I am so passionate about my Greek Jewish community. Many of my friends pester me, asking why I’m so active in promoting Greek Jewry and making sure everyone knows how proud I am of it. But for me, in all honesty, this isn’t a choice. It can be a burden, a responsibility I have to the more than 67,000 Greek Jews who perished in the Holocaust. Yet this rich culture still lives on, and needs to be shared.

Jews have had a continuous presence in Greece for over 2,300 years, dating back to the time of Alexander the Great. This ancient community, known as Romaniote Jews, has the distinction of the longest, continuous Jewish presence in the European Diaspora. Romaniotes possess a unique set of practices, poetry, songs, and traditions unlike any other Jewish community in the world. They developed their own Judeo-Greek language, a combination of ancient Hebrew and Greek still spoken by some today. While much of the Jewish world follows the Babylonian Talmud, they follow the Jerusalem Talmud. Yet this historic and incredibly rich tradition is under threat. The Romaniote minhag is struggling; only around 5,500 Jews remain in Greece today, and those who still remember their communal customs prior to the Holocaust are in their 80s and 90s. Time is of the essence – many have already passed away and if something is not done to document this heritage, it may slowly fade away. 

That is why I am currently serving as a Fulbright Research Scholar in Greece, working with the Jewish Community of Athens under its Rabbinate and the Jewish Museum of Greece. My research is focused on creating an online database of documented recordings of the liturgical traditions, developing corresponding booklets of these written traditions paralleling the online resource, and collaborating with the Jewish Museum of Greece to curate a public exhibit on these traditions.

I have been privileged enough in my work thus far to be able to closely collaborate with the leadership of the Jewish Museum of Greece and the Jewish Community of Athens, including the current Rabbi, Gabriel Negrin, who as a young, native Athenian is doing amazing work to reconnect the next generation of Greek Jews to their heritage. I have not only begun conducting interviews with Rabbi Negrin and working with him one-on-one to document his extensive knowledge of Romaniote customs, but have also connected with an important network of contacts throughout Greece, both among the Jewish and non-Jewish communities. The Jewish Museum, which houses a robust historical archive and is doing amazing work producing new scholarship on Greek Jewry, has also been gracious enough to grant me access to explore many of its records, including beautifully digitized Romaniote manuscripts that are hundreds of years old. I’ve also begun to shadow Rabbi Negrin at religious services and community programs during my time in Greece, giving me the chance to record unique elements of the community prayer as well as learn some of them myself.

Engaging with the local populace throughout Greece will be an integral part of my research as well. I’ve begun to connect with some of the elderly, most knowledgeable members of the Jewish communities, with plans on traveling to the historic centers of Romaniote Jewish life in Greece, such as the cities of Ioannina and Arta. This will consist of personal interviews through audio and video recordings to document their expertise of specific traditional practices. These interviews will also include conversations of what life was like growing up in pre-WWII Greece, descriptions of their communities, and most importantly, discussions of the traditional songs and customs of Greek Jewry.    

As I collect materials to develop an online database, I am also working to compile the available texts that parallel these recordings, drafting Booklets organized by life cycle events, holiday practices, unique Greek Jewish piyutim (liturgical poetry), and cultural traditions that have been gathered through my individual research and interviews. I hope that by Spring 2020, we’ll be able to develop a public exhibit on my work through the Jewish Museum of Greece, using it as an opportunity to not only promote my work in Athens, but to publicly highlight the importance of mutual engagement between the United States and Greece through the Fulbright Program. My hope is that this can eventually turn into a traveling exhibit, allowing it to move to Museums in the United States.

My greatest hope, however, is that this project will not only serve as a resource for academic inquiry around the world, but will directly help both the Jewish Communities of Greece and my own Greek Jewish Community in New York. These beautiful traditions, whether it’s the unique hazzanut, piyutim, holiday customs, halakhic interpretations, or even special Jewish worldview, cannot end up being just something one reads about in a museum. They must remain a part of a living, active tradition, one practiced by my Greek Jewish Community in America as well as the one in Greece itself. I want the next generation of young Greek Jews that come after me to be proud of their heritage and work towards giving it a voice within the wider Jewish world. Indeed, it needs to be an integral part of the collective Jewish experience.

With time, I have realized how important it is that I not only continue to promote and serve my small Greek Jewish community, but I learn its traditions and love of life that so many Greek Jews did not have the chance to express themselves. I have a direct responsibility to ensure this rich identity not only continues to survive, but thrive. These traditions and memories cannot die. For Samuel’s sake, I cannot let them die.

Comparative Study of the Sephardic and Ashkenazic Wedding Ceremony

Yamin Levy

I recently attended the wedding of a young (very young) couple. They were both raised in a strong Orthodox Sephardic community, yet religiously influenced by Chabad and Breslav. Their heroic attempt at creating a ceremony that was true to their Sephardic heritage and reflected the Ashkenazic / Chassidic traditions of their rabbis inspired the writing of this essay. What struck me as I watched the various parts of the wedding ceremony unfold was the contrasting ambiances, tones and qualities stirred by the conflicting cultural backgrounds that the diverse Minhagim exposed.

The research for this essay brought to light not only the substantive differences in the way Sephardic Jews and Ashkenaz Jews achieve community sanctioned matrimony but also uncovered the differences in Halakhic methodology and attitudes towards Minhag (which requires a more in-depth study). European legalist spoke with the same if not very similar authoritative voice when codifying Minhag as they did when codifying Halakhah while Sephardic authorities clearly distinguish between that which is Halakhic and essential to the ceremony and that which is Minhag and considered a dressing to the ritual. This of course makes for a much greater amount of material originating in Ashkenaz sources where codification, responsa and texts dedicated to Minhag rarely differentiate between the essential ritual (law, Halakha) and that which is tradition (Minhag).

Two Examples

Take for example the use of a gold ring band under the Chupah. The traditional wedding ceremony consists of two[1] parts: Erusin[2] (or Kiddushin) and Nesu’in[3]. Originally these two ceremonies were held as much as a year apart. Today both of these ceremonies take place under the Chupah[4].

Erusin is introduced with a blessing over wine and is completed after the groom places a ring that is at least worth a Peruta, a coin of minimum value[5], on the bride’s finger. This is not an act of acquisition as much as it is an act of separation or exclusivity thus the term Kiddushin. Rachel Biale argues that the fact that Halakha rules the smallest coin ratifies the kinyan suggests: “the amount of money is immaterial because the acquisition is symbolic”[6].

Halakhically this can be accomplished by giving the bride anything of value and declaring that the exchange is for purposes of Erusin[7]. Ahkenaz Jewry streamlined this ceremony and only permit using a simple gold band for the Erusin[8] while Sephardic authorities point out that the use of a ring is a Minhag and a coin[9] or anything of value may also be used to complete the Erusin ceremony. The preferred choice for Sephardic Jews is either a ring, a coin or a piece of Jewelry.

What is most interesting is that European Jewry’s Halakhic authority’s view the use of a ring not only as a quasi-legal stricture and is codified as such but much ink is invested in the details of how the transfer of the ring takes place, why it’s done this way and why a ring is chosen as opposed to any other object of value. In other words because this simple act of transfer is infused with legal, religious and theological meaning the detail becomes significant. The groom must take the ring in his right hand[10] and place it on the bride’s right forefinger[11]. If the groom is left-handed he must take the ring in his left hand[12].

The Zohar is invoked as stating that the right hand represents love while the left hand represents strength[13]. The ring is placed on the bride’s forefinger because it is the seventh finger if you count the five fingers of the left hand and seven is a meaningful number in the wedding ceremony[14]. These are but a sampling of the many permutations the symbolism and meaning of the gold ring band produced in Ashkenaz Halakhic sources.

Another legal matter that finds expression in Ashkenaz Halakhic sources which leads to unique Minhagim which do not exist in Sephardic Halakhic sources is Ma’aseh Goyim, not mimicking the Christian church wedding practices. For example there is a school of Halakhic authorities in Ashkenaz that forbid making a Chupah in a Synagogue Sanctuary because it is reminiscent of a church wedding[15].  This led to a substantive amount of literature on the symbolism and meaning of the Chupah and its association with, the giving of the Torah, the Mishkan, and Bet HaMikdash, creation, and the Garden of Eden as proof texts or proof ideas to support the tradition that a Chupah is best performed outdoors[16] or in a non-sanctuary hall. None of this exists in Sephardic sources[17].

It is difficult to distinguish when Ma’aseh Goyim is invoked to prohibit the mimicking of Church practices and when it actually influences Jewish law. Grossman argues that Ashkenaz attitudes towards age[18] appropriateness for Marriage, and polygamy[19] are two of numerous examples where the Christian cultural background influenced Jewish attitudes in Ashkenaz.

This leads me to make humble disclaimer before I proceed. The goal of this essay is simply to bring to light the varying Minhagim of the wedding ceremony as it is observed today. In addition I will suggest that the tapestry of Minhagim reflect a community’s attitudes towards, marriage, sexuality, and public celebration while setting the mood and atmosphere of the ceremony.

For a comprehensive study of issues relating to marriage, divorce and a range of other topics relating to women’s issues in Europe (and in Moslem lands) during the middle ages and by extensions their influence in contemporary ritual I recommend the most recent contribution to the subject written by Avraham Grossman Pious and Rebellious Jewish Women in Medieval Europe[20]. Another less contemporary but comprehensive work on the subject is Ze’ev W. Falk’s, Jewish Matrimonial Law in the Middle Ages.

The amount of material available is daunting and the way it is used and manipulated can be endless. As my footnotes indicate I use a limited number of sources that I believe reflect the roots of the unadulterated contemporary wedding ceremony in Ashkenaz and in Sephardic communities today.

NiSu’in

The second part of the wedding ceremony involves the recitation of seven blessings in the presence of a Minyan[21]. The seven blessings or the Sheva Berakhot are recited over a cup of wine. Ashkenazim use a second cup of wine while Sepharadim refill the first. The European tradition has nothing to do with the Halakhic stricture of yayin pagum[22] which is easily rectified by adding “non-pagum wine into the cup”[23]. Rather it may have to do with preserving an element of the original custom of Erusin and NeSu’in being two distinct rituals performed months apart[24]. By using a second cup of wine the officiating rabbi distinguishes one ceremony from the other.

The more interesting reason given is found in a classic work on marriage originating in Ashkenaz called Shulchan HaEzer[25]. There the author Rabbi Yizchak Tzi Leibowitz (Central Europe pre-ww1) argues that the reason two cups are necessary has to do with the possibility that the bride or groom are Shabbath desecrators and once they drink from the glass of wine the wine is disqualified and cannot be blessed again.

Each of the explanations for two cups of wine under the Chupah are independently fascinating.  The first suggests a lingering commitment to the way ceremonies were observed in the past and doing whatever possible to preserve even commemorations of the past behaviors. Rabbinic authorities in Ashkenaz infused tradition with religious significance, and even if the custom is irrelevant today, the way it was done in the past remains sacred.  The second reason introduces an inescapable element that involves the larger community. Clergy serve the public and the community comprises of people who observe the law at varying degrees. The Ashkenaz rabbinic authorities protect the clergy from the pitfalls of such contact by introducing strictures that Halakhically have little to do with the ceremony at hand.  

NiSu’in is completed with an act that unambiguously demonstrates that the couple is now husband and wife. The Talmud rules that the Sheva Berakhot are recited when the groom is ready to bring the bride into his home in order to consummate the marriage[26]. Although NeSu’in could be accomplished by physical consummation, in practice this was frowned upon[27]. How the NiSu’in ceremony is perceived and the nature of the Chupah leads to one of the more noticeable Halakhic differences between Sepharadim and Ashkenazim.

The term Chupah appears in Tanakh a number of times and is clearly associated with the marriage chambers[28]. In rabbinic literature Chupah is a preparation for intercourse[29]: “Everyone knows why the bride goes to the Chupah[30]”. The nature of Chupah is disputed among the authorities and leads to a difference in practice. The question at hand is whether or not Chupah suffices as a means of demonstrating marriage or not. According to European authorities Chupah alone does not suffice and therefore the couple must have enough time[31] in a secluded place to potentially consummate the marriage[32]. This is called Yichud. In some Ashkenaz circles the groom is either given the room or he pays a symbolic fee for the room so that he actually brings his bride into his own domain[33]. Two witnesses are designated and posted outside the chambers so that the couple’s seclusion is legally ratified[34]. The witnesses first examine the room and make sure it is empty before allowing the married couple to enter[35]. Yichud is thus, according to Ashkenaz tradition, the final stage of the NiSu’in.

Sephardic authorities maintain that the Chupah suffices as a means of completing NiSu’in and the couple’s Yichud takes place after the wedding festivities when the groom brings the bride into his chambers or home. It has been suggested that the reason why the groom in Sephardic wedding ceremonies drapes himself and his bride with a new Tallith is in order to demonstrate publically that he is providing her a garment – a biblically ordained husbandly act[36]. Therefore Sephardic wedding ceremonies do not include Yichud immediately following the Chupah[37].

The Ketubah

According to Jewish Law it is forbidden for a man to live with his wife unless a Ketubah has been dully executed[38], and signed by two witnesses. The Ketubah remains in the possession of the wife or her agent. If it is lost a Ketubah deIrkhesa (Ketubah for one lost) must be written[39] and duly signed by witnesses.

Prior to Rabbenu Gershom (circa 960 -1028) a man could divorce his wife against her will. The costly promise of a Ketubah not only protected the wife financially in case of death or divorce but also mitigated the possibility of a man impulsively divorcing his wife against her will[40].

The difference between Sephardim and Ashkenazim regarding the Ketubah has to do with its legal origin. According to Sephardic Poskim the Ketubah is rabbinically legislated and is therefore written as such[41] in contrast Ashkenaz Poskim view the Ketubah as Biblically ordained[42] and their text states “zuzei matan dechazu likhi mide’oraita” “two hundred zuz that you are entitled to from the Torah”.

The differing conclusions suggest that there is more here than the interpretation of an ambiguous Talmudic text because the Talmud is not at all ambiguous. The majority of the Talmudic sages clearly rule that the Ketubah is Rabbinic in origin. The single opinion of Rabbi Shimon Ben Gamliel is even stated in a tentative manner: “Mikan Samkhu Liktubat Isha min HaTorah” From here the sages found SUPORT for the Ketubah being from the Torah. At least one medieval Ashkenaz authority created a legal compromise[43] in order to make sense of the position that the Ketubah is biblically ordained. One wonders if Chachmei Ashkenaz imputed a Biblical origin to the Ketubah in order to emphasize its importance to the people. Here again contact with the larger community presents a unique problem. Not everyone will observe and respect the ritual on the same level. In order to impress upon the uneducated the importance of the Ketubah, Chachmei Ashkenaz amplified its significance by attributing to it biblical authority. Once invoked the position becomes legal with all its ramifications.

The prevalent Ashkenaz custom is to read the entire Ketubah immediately following the Erusin while the custom among many Sephardic communities is to read the first few lines and the last few lines of the Ketubah[44].  If indeed Chachmei Ashkenaz were intent on emphasizing the importance and significance of the Ketubah it makes sense that it was read in its entirety at the wedding ceremony. For Sephardic communities the reading of the Ketubah under the Chupah functions as an interlude between the two parts of the wedding ceremony and therefore only portions of it need to be read.

Tena’im

The Signing of Tena’im[45], a contract setting the wedding date and stipulating certain prenuptial conditions was a Minhag that at one time was observed by both the Sephardic[46] and Ashkenaz[47] communities. Sepahardic communities call this a Shetar, a contract. This ceremony did not have a religious character and did not involve any sort of blessings. Sephardic communities therefore considered the engagement to wed a festive event[48] but never gave this ceremony religious significance. Verbal agreement or other forms of understanding between the families replaced the need of a Shetar[49].

In Ashkenaz the Tena’im were infused with religious and symbolic character and has thus been ensured a much longer life span. The difference between Sepharadim and Ashkenazim regarding this ceremony may have to do with their respective attitudes towards cancelling engagements. In Sepharad the cancellation of an engagement did not cast aspersions or shame on the family and Sephardic rabbis did not impose financial penalties. Rabbi Saadya Gaon clearly states:

“For in this generation we do not have monetary penalties for either shame or damages. For it is the custom of the world that several people may speak of marriage with the daughters of Israel, and they do not marry except the one who falls to their lot. Because the matching of a woman to a man is nothing short of an act from heaven”[50].

Chachmei Ashkenaz on the other hand penalized families who broke engagements[51]. Within this context it makes sense that the engagement ceremony Tena’im played a large role in European communities.

Ze’ev Falk attributes the strict rules associated with cancelling an engagement in Ashkenaz to the influence of the surrounding Christian society[52]. Pitchei Teshuva writes that trusting that the bride scheduled her menstrual cycle appropriately depends on her being assured that the Tena’im were duly signed. Rabbi Hizkia Medini in his work Sedei Hemed writes that it is the Minhag of Ashkenaz to break a glass plate at the Tena’im ceremony. The dish must be earth ware and is broken by the mothers of the groom and bride[53] as a reminder of the destruction of Jerusalem. Again we note the pattern of infusing a Minhag with symbolic and theological significance. The legal discussion continues as to why the mothers break the dish at this ceremony while the groom breaks the glass under the Chupah?[54] 

Today despite the template nature of the Tenaim text, and the lack of communal pressure associated with cancelling engagements the custom is still meticulously observed.

Seeing Each Other

Another difference in Minhag between Sepharadim and Ashkenazim has to do with the couple seeing each other prior to the wedding ceremony. In some Ashkenazic circles the couple does not see each other the day prior to the Chupah, in some circles they do not see each other evenings for an entire week while in some circles they don’t see each other at all and don’t even speak to each other for an entire week prior to the Chupah. Despite the accepted practice of this tradition it is hard to find an authentic rabbinic source for this Minhag[55].

The reasons given for this tradition vary. Some sources suggest that the Yetzer Hara is most potent at this time or that the Satan is eager to ruin the party. Other sources suggest that the bride and groom should miss each other and feel a yearning to be intimate and thus fulfill the Mitzvah of marital union with much greater zeal after not having seen each other for an extended period of time. A Halakhic parallel would be not eating Matzah for an entire month before Pesach so that the Mitzvah of eating Matzvah is performed BeTei’avon with enthusiasm[56].

The first time in one week that the couple sees each other is at a ceremony immediately prior to the Chupah called Bedekung in Yiddish or in Hebrew Hachnasat Kallah.[57] There the groom veils the bride and family blesses the couple.

Sepharadim do not share this practice at all. In fact the groom signs the Ketubah in the presence of the Bride immediately prior to the Chupah. Sepharadim did not share the concern of satanic influence and assume the bride and groom would yearn for each other’s closeness the more they saw each other prior to their Chupah. Some Sephardic sources suggest that forbidding the bride and groom the opportunity to see and speak with each other would cause them unnecessary Za’ar pain and suffering at this time of great joy.

The Day of the Wedding

A common practice among Ashkenazim is the Minhag that has the bride and groom fasting on their wedding day[58]. At the Minha service on the day of their wedding the Bride and groom recite Aneinu in the Amidah as they would on any other fast day[59]. In some Chabad circles the father of the bride also fasts on the day of his daughter’s wedding. Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Schneerson (1878-1944) in his Likutim writes “whoever increases and intensifies his tears during this fast day, a day likened to Yom Kippur, is to be praised”. The Yom Kippur theme is further amplified by having the bride and groom recite “Al Chet” the penitential prayers of the eve of Yom Kippur and the viduy confessional prayers on the day of their wedding[60].

The Ashkenaz tradition has the groom wearing a Kittle under the Chupah[61]. The Kittle is a white cotton robe without pockets – a reminder of the shrouds in which one is buried[62]. Men wear their Kittle on Yom Kippur (and Rosh Hashanah) and under their Chupah. The Kittle on Yom Kippur is a clear evocation of death. In Frankfort it was customary that the groom cover his head like a mourner[63].  The assumption is that its appearance under the Chupah suggests the motif of repentance, sobriety and solemnity taken to an extreme. The groom on the happiest day of his life is reminded of his death[64]. Prior to the wedding ceremony some Ashkenazic communities place ashes on the head of the groom as a sign of mourning for Jerusalem[65].

In Sephardic circles any association with death or tragedy at an auspicious moment like a wedding ceremony would be very much frowned upon and regarded as a bad omen.

Sepharadim have never practiced Minhagim[66] (until the wedding of the young couple I mentioned above) that invoke mourning, penitence or even contrition. Such Minhagim for Sephardic Jews would be contrary to the celebratory and festive quality infused in every aspect of the day. The Talmud states clearly "Any man who has no wife lives without joy, without blessing, and without goodness" (B. Yev. 62b); ‘They taught: whoever has no wife is lacking in goodness, without help, without joy, without blessing without atonement…even without peace … without life … nor is he a complete person…[67]. A man is considered excommunicated from heaven if he does not have a wife[68]. These and numerous other such statements in Talmudic literature clearly describe a positive disposition towards marriage. Furthermore the Talmud takes very seriously the Mitzvah to rejoice the bride and groom. A page and a half of Talmudic discourse is devoted to how one dances before the bride and groom[69]. It is therefore no surprise that Rabbi Ovadia Yoseph z”l and earlier Sephardic Halakhic authorities took serious exception against those who fasted on their wedding day[70].

In stark contrast to the Kittle the Sephardic groom wears a newly purchased Tallith. Usually a gift from the bride, and if the ceremony is during the day the groom recites the blessing Lehitatef Bezizit and Shehecheyanu. If the ceremony is in the evening only Shehecheyanu is recited. The assumption being that the Mitzvah of marriage and the joy associated with the moment warrants the recitation of Shehecheyanu[71].

Here we encounter the most significant aesthetic difference between Sephardic Jews and Ashkenaz Jews in terms of the wedding ceremony. One can only speculate why it is that European Jewry introduced such sobering rituals into what should be a festive ceremony.  Some have suggested that the wedding ceremony is in consonance with the oppressed existence of the Jews in Christian Europe over the ages[72]. Sephardic Jews also experienced their share of oppression in Arab lands and did not turn joyous occasions into solemn ceremonies.

Others have suggested that discomfort with too much merriment has roots in the Talmud itself. The beginning of chapter five of Tractatce Berakhot pages 30b and 31a in defining the verse in Psalms “rejoice with trembling” the sages express ambivalence about too much festivity.

Alternatively, the sexuality underling the marriage ceremony made European authorities uncomfortable and led to a tempering of the rituals.

Marriage in Judaism is favorable (see above) and the institution of marriage is healthy as Rabbi Yaacov Ben HaRosh, the author of the Tur Shulchan Arukh insinuates in his introduction to his Evven HaEzer where lists the psychological, social and physical benefits of marriage. It is good for society and the most civil way to procreate and propagate. And yet Judaism walks a religious tightrope between the permissibility of sexuality within marriage and the value of ascetic denial of the libidinal drive. This very tension is expressed in the rabbinic statement: “Let us be thankful to our forefathers for had they not sinned (by having sexual intercourse) we would not have come into the world.[73]”

Sephardic Communities and Ashkenaz Communities through the Middle Ages and into contemporary practice have each emphasized the opposite spectrum of the tightrope-tension. In Muslim and Middle Eastern countries in Middle-Ages sexuality, while scrutinized, was actually celebrated in literature, poetry and art. Take the well know comment of Nachmanides on Shemoth 21:11 where he claims that the three biblical obligations of a man to his spouse: “She’era, Kesuta, Ve’Onata” all refer to the quality of sexual intimacy[74]. Such an interpretation can only emerge from a culture that is comfortable with sexuality and embraces it. The Iggeret HaKodesh which is ascribed to Nachmanides, but probably written by another Sephardic Medievalist Joseph Ben Avraham Gikatilla (1248-1325), has a very positive view of sexuality emphasizing the proper ways of initiating intimacy. He goes as far as saying that intercourse is a part of the divine process[75]. Shemuel HaNagid’s well-known erotic poetry[76] is not an exception in Muslim lands. There were countless Jewish and Muslim writers poets and artists who celebrated human sexuality through literature, exegesis, poetry and erotic art[77].

This attitude towards sexuality in Sepharad is not an innovation but rather a continuation of an attitude that finds full expression in Talmudic literature for example the very graphic advice Rav Hisda gives his daughters:

“Rabbi Hisda said to his daughters: When you husband caresses you to arouse the desire for intercourse and holds the breast with one hand and ‘that place’ with the other hand give him the breast at first to increase his passion and do not give him the place of intercourse too soon, until his passion increases and he is in pain with desire. Then give him[78].”

One does not find this kind of comfort with sexuality in Europe. As a result Ashkenaz had a very different attitude towards sexual intimacy and eroticism. The Church’s more suppressed views on marriage and sexuality carried the day in Europe and influenced Jewish attitudes on the subject. It is therefore no surprise that the Ashkenaz wedding ceremony tips towards the opposite direction in the tightrope-tension[79]. 

Rabbi Yehuda HaHassid

Rabbi Yehuda HaHassid (1150-1217) born Yehudah ben Shemuel of Regensburg was a leader of Chassidei Ashkenaz, a mystic sect in Germany. In addition to his most famous work Sefer HaHasidim that is devoted to ethical guidance he authored a series of decrees that have been passed down through the generations.

One of his decrees that influenced not only Ashkenaz communities but also some Sephardic communities has to do with the name of one’s bride. The saintly rabbi decreed that a man could not marry a woman whose name is the same as that of his mother[80]. While no reason was given some have speculated that this has to do with the man thinking about his mother while he engaged in sexual relations with his wife. Later Ashkenaz authorities have even ruled that if the man becomes aware of this after marriage he must divorce his wife. Again I argue that much of these Minhagim are driven by an ambivalence with sexuality.

Two decrees, which have been accepted universally by the Ashkenaz community but not at all by the Sephardic community, are: 1. Two brothers may not marry two sisters[81] 2. A man may not marry the sister of his deceased wife[82].  Both of these unions were universally practiced in Sephardic communities of the previous generation.

Besides the nuclear family the Torah presents the following list of forbidden relationships: One’s aunt, sister-in-law, stepsisters, mother-in-law, step-daughters, daughters of a sister-in-law, daughters-in-law and granddaughters. According to Maimonides these prohibitions cover all the females in an extended four-generation family that may be exploited by men in their care[83]. The one exception is one’s niece, which is not forbidden in Halakha. In fact marrying a sister’s daughter is considered a special act of kindness[84]. In Sephardic communities of the previous generation such marriage arrangement were common.

In Ashkenaz communities they were not only rare but as mentioned above relationships that are Halakhically permissible were forbidden in Ashkenaz.

Seven Rotations

The Ashkenaz wedding ceremony is unique in that it begins with the bride circling the groom seven times. In the Kabbalah this ritual symbolizes the Soveiv, God’s eternal light encircling the couple to protect them.[85]  Other explanations include the bride walking around the groom as an act of binding him to certain commitments and obligations[86]. On a more cosmological level the seven circuits represent the seven revolutions the earth made during creation[87]. Others associate this tradition to a selective reading of a verse in Jeremiah (31:21) where according to this translation the prophet says that in the time of Messiah woman will protect the man.

The Kabbalistic idea may very well have its origins in the mythological magic circle, which wards off evil spirits and demons. The use of a circle was common in other practices as a boundary of an area that becomes sacred. The area encircled is set apart from everyday life and is protected from evil influences.

Ashkenazim are not unique in introducing practices that are designed to ward off evil spirits or the evil eye. Sephardim have a ceremony called the Hinnah. This ceremony usually takes place the night before the wedding and the Hinnah dye is put in the hands of the groom and bride protecting them from the Ayin HaRa.

The Breaking of the Glass

Investigating the origin of Minhagim is often regarded as blasphemous. And yet it is something we cannot do without. The universal practice of breaking a glass at a marriage ceremony is nowhere to be found in Talmudic literature[88]. It first appears in the late Middle Ages in Franco German Ashkenaz[89]. A similar custom is found among the non-Jewish German folk who would break a glass when celebrating their joyous occasions in order to trick the demons into believing that a catastrophe rather than a celebration was taking place.

Like so many Minhagim, its source is not relevant and despite the controversial[90] nature of its origin breaking a glass was eventually universally accepted and practiced by both Sepharadim and Ashkenazim as a reminder that on their happy day, they should reflect on the destruction of the Temple.

The Bet HaMikdash is often associated with marriage. We pray that the groom and bride build a home where the Shechinah will dwell like the Bet HaMikdash. In contrast “The Mizbe’ach sheds tears when a couple divorces”.

This practice amplifies the meaning of the seventh of the Sheva Berakhot: “Let there soon be heard in the cities of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem the sound of joy and the sound of gladness the sound of the groom and the voice of the bride”.

Final Thought

It is theorized that even before the expulsion of the Jews from Israel after the destruction of the second Temple there was a range of Minhagim associated with life-cycle events, holidays and rituals. Certainly after the close of the Talmud and the dispersion of Jews throughout the world distinct Minhagim evolved into the practice of various, and geographically separated communities. In many cases Minhagim emerged with a basis in Talmudic or rabbinic lore while in some cases, Minhagim developed without support in the legal system. At times rabbinic authorities struggled with this kind of folk custom but when it became rooted in popular practice it became almost impossible to eradicate. Once a part of the ritual, these “new” Minhagim were given a Jewish interpretation, thus rendering them innocuous[91].

Halakha exposes Judaism’s core values while Minhag reflects its community’s fears, and aspirations, dresses moments with joy or navigates ceremonies through moments of sadness. Minhag transforms ritual into a culturally relevant aesthetic experience.

If this is indeed so our study of the differences in the way Sephardic Jews and Ashkenazic Jews wed has given us a unique viewpoint on the intersection between Law and tradition and its role in the making of special moments within Judaism.

ies and the Prohibition of Lo’eg LaRash, Jubilee Volume in Honor of Rabbi Shalom Carmy called Rav Shelom Banayikh.