National Scholar Updates

One of the enduring themes of my religious life has been the reconciliation of my Jewish and American cultural identities. As the daughter of a Modern Orthodox rabbi who taught me to look critically at the ways in which religion can be variously used and practiced, I became very aware of the pushes and pulls of different religious factions and how they have informed by beliefs. As a student of science, I gained insight into the importance of empirical knowledge and learned to look critically at the claims of universality and objectivity of research theories. My own framework for understanding differences in religious philosophy has developed over time, and centers around my personal struggles with the resolution of the cultural tension between my experience as an American—steeped in pervasive scientific values based on rational knowledge—and my experience as a Jew—with a set of mores and beliefs about the world that are strongly held but grounded within a framework that seems incompatible with the uncertainty that intellectual analysis brings.

The center of the internal struggle to integrate these seemingly incompatible aspects of myself crystallizes around my understanding of the observer effect. In science, the term observer effect refers to changes that the act of observing will make on the phenomenon being observed. Thus, every experiment is necessarily influenced by the presence of the investigator, and no researcher can be factored out of an experimental system. An elaboration of this discovery has led to the idea that as humans we inevitably try to impose order on a fundamentally chaotic universe; thus the way we structure our studies is implicitly biased and colored by human experience. This radical principle revolutionized the way we think about science and has led to a paradigm shift in the way we conceptualize and study other fields as well, comprising a vital component of postmodern scholarship.

Postmodern ideas now permeate almost every scholarly enterprise, from literature and history to psychology and sociology. Serious scholarship in many fields requires an open acknowledgment of the perspectives that provide the lens through which ideas are given meaning. The intellectual ramifications of the observer effect pervade twentieth-century intellectual thought and are an implicit part of a Western cultural sensibility. Despite its importance to our scholarship, this paradigm has not seriously influenced the way large segments of the Modern Orthodox world think about or treat religion and religious study. This disparity, as I see it, is one of the fundamental problems facing Modern Orthodoxy today. Since Judaism is taught in a factual way, while at the same time uncertainty permeates every other faction of our life, religion can become encapsulated or split off as a result.

In my various experiences growing up and living in different Jewish communities, I have found that Orthodox Jewish thought is often taught and learned in a categorical way that does not take into account differing viewpoints. As students, we are not taught to think critically about religious material or our religious leadership but must learn to do so on our own, outside of traditional educational systems. Religion is taught unequivocally, in a way that leaves out the doubts and subtleties each teacher necessarily brings to the material he or she teaches.

Under the current mainstream yeshiva system, pertinent information is selected and taught by instructors whose students are expected to grasp and apply it without significant evaluation of its merits. Teachers' formulations and interpretations are often implicitly presented and accepted as objective truths to be assimilated by their students. In this educational system, many learning experiences are characterized by acquiescence to the expertise of the teacher-as-authority. This method of indoctrination makes sense for young children as the stability and structure of an educational institution provide a sense of security, granting refuge from an ambiguous understanding of ideas. Yeshiva schooling constitutes a safe environment that provides a secure, though embryonic foundation for the understanding of religious knowledge.

The problem arises when this culture of indoctrination continues into our experiences as adult members of Orthodox communities. The dominant contemporary explanations of Jewish theology are generally given over in a way that precludes open debate or critical assessment of merit. In my experience, many religious leaders tend to be more concerned with making a point than with openly approaching others as an interpreter with a culturally bound perspective; this reluctance to address uncertainty extends to common religious discourse as well.

For many who do not acknowledge their participation in American culture, this does not pose a problem. They are content in being handed over objective knowledge, secure in the truth of their belief. But for those who choose to engage in Western culture and concomitantly adopt its cultural ethos, the struggle to integrate their American and Jewish sides is more difficult. It is not necessarily the content of the religious teachings that makes this challenging, but the way that knowledge is confused with or presented as objective truth. The prevailing methods for the dissemination of Jewish religious thought within communities are definitive and conclusive, as though the injection of any doubt or uncertainty into the discussion could lead the child or layperson astray. This trend can be alienating to those whose belief is influenced by American culture, as it leaves little space for a personal relationship with religious material. This can make it difficult to assimilate meaningful interpretations of religious information—and in effect widens the cultural divide between religious and secular selves.

The first time this conflict came starkly into my awareness was in my freshman year of college, in a humanities class covering a scholarly reading of the Old Testament. I had never before come into contact with this material—and its effects were gut-wrenching. I responded to what felt like an assault on my beliefs by holding on to my religious understanding of the Bible, defending it at all costs. As I listened to myself debate my classmates on the merits of these theories, I realized that I was approaching the issue from within a cultural perspective that was different from many of my fellow students. My only previous experience with the Bible had occurred within the framework of religious study, with an eye for one objective truth.

In this new, intellectual environment, my religious views seemed undeveloped; my beliefs were fundamental to my way of thinking but had never been challenged by the lens of historical scholarship. My previous yeshiva training had formed a secure basis for my religious beliefs but had not prepared me for impingement by the general prevailing cultural standards for critical thought. Because I could not locate my belief within a context, I was not equipped to effectively engage in intellectual discourse on the topic.

Years have passed since that shock of self-awareness, and yet I still find myself struggling with the same issues.  How is it possible to incorporate a fundamental religious belief system with a world based in critical rationality? I believe that the first step in bridging this divide would start with a growing awareness of the subjective nature of our beliefs. We may posit the existence of a set of objective religious beliefs, but as human beings interpreting these truths, our knowledge is necessarily bounded, even flawed. Even objective truths based in religious faith must be filtered through our subjectivity. The observer effect has taught us that because we are a part of the system we are studying, there is no way of standing apart, separate from our cultural milieu.

Acknowledging the biases with which we enter religious debate is never an easy task. Religion is the scaffolding on which our society is built and has provided a vital function for humanity. It forms the underpinnings for Western civilization and the guidelines by which many of us live our lives. Perhaps the centrality of Judaism’s position in our lives makes this struggle such a poignant one. It feels dangerous to subject our faith to critical examination as it may lead to a cynical deconstruction of our traditional Jewish beliefs. On the other hand, denying that our environment informs our perspective closes us off from seeing reality.

Each person must engage in his or her own quest for navigating meaning in religious tradition and modernity. For me, this has involved the reconciliation of the dueling sensibilities of my American and Jewish identities. The observer effect has helped me to locate my religious beliefs within a context. When viewed through a prism of critical rationality, Judaism becomes more complex, and is cast with ambiguity and nuance. And although it is decidedly more multifaceted and difficult, I am at peace with the uncertainty of my perspective, as it feels more compatible with the overarching environment in which I live. As humans our knowledge is necessarily limited; in our fallibility, we may take comfort in having others join in our struggle with uncertainty.

Mishlei 1:2-3

“To know wisdom and discipline, to comprehend words of understanding; To receive the discipline of wisdom, righteousness, justice, and equity; To give prudence to the simple, knowledge and discretion to the youth. Let the wise man hear and increase learning. The understanding man shall acquire wise counsels to understand an allegory and a figure, the words of the wise and their riddles. The fear of Hashem is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and discipline.”

Introduction

One of the last conversations I had with my paternal grandmother before she passed away changed my life in ways that I initially could not imagine. At the timeת my grandmother was 94 years old and her memory was starting to fade a bit. From her 80’s into her 90’s she was a bastion of family history and information with a memory that spanned decades and generations. I grew up far from most of my family and after my father died my contact with my grandmother was my main source of connection to them.

In her last years, my grandmother’s conversations were often repetitive due to her advanced age with “How have you been, where have you been, I have’t seen you in a long time, etc.” being the most common points of return for her. Yet, from time to time an almost eerie sense of clarity would come over her and she would say things to me that were often profound; things that she had never told me in the past.

During one such conversation my grandmother kept returning to trivial matters until all of a sudden out of the blue she asked me, “What do you believe in?” The question caught me off guard because it was sudden and had nothing to do with the subject of the conversation. The reality was that time of my life I was in a state of flux, intellectually, even though I thought I had it all figured out.

I stumbled through various ways of trying to answer grandmother’s question, not sure why I couldn’t find the words to explain myself. After a few moments of not giving her a clear and conclusive answer she stopped me and made one of the most profound statements anyone has ever made to me.

“Let me tell you that a day is coming where you will have to be something and believe in something not because of anything I told you, not because of anything your mother has told you, and not because of anything anyone has told you. No, the day is coming when you will have to be something and believe in something because you have investigated it and you know it to be true!”

With that statement her memory faded and she fell back into the trivial conversation we were having before. From that moment forth nothing was ever the same and even though I spent many years trying to come to grips with her statement eventually it came front and center when I chose to dedicate my life to the truth like she told me. That choice led me to ground myself in the reality of Torath Mosheh to the best of my personal ability while learning how to divest myself from falsehoods.

“Through the intellect man distinguishes between the true and the false. This faculty Adam possessed perfectly and completely. The right and the wrong are terms employed in the science of apparent truths (morals), not in that of necessary truths, as, e.g., it is not correct to say, in reference to the proposition "the heavens are spherical," it is "good" or to declare the assertion that "the earth is flat" to be "bad": but we say of the one it is true, of the other it is false. Similarly our language expresses the idea of true and false by the terms emet and sheker, of the morally right and the morally wrong, by tov and ra’. Thus it is the function of the intellect to discriminate between the true and the false--a distinction which is applicable to all objects of intellectual perception.” [1]

A Minority Report

The truth, speak about it in the wrong sectors and you can get strange glances. Have a conversation about the truth with someone in modern-western based society and you may end up in argument about how there is no such thing as absolutes. I can’t even count the number of times someone, with no real experience a particular topic, would tell me something is an absolute truth when in reality due to my own research I knew it was theoretical. Some of the same people, while discussing a topic they term as “religious,” have treated my presentation of facts as problematic when they can’t find contradictions. In many of these cases they often fall back on the, “How can anyone know what the truth is?” or “Nothing can be established as the truth” method of avoiding the issue. In many cases the people who fall into this category are often are not able to see any further than their own perspectives because they are often using the wrong tools for the wrong job while not recognizing the fault in their philosophical approach.

What I mean by this is that if one wants to know if there is a possibility that the Source of Creation spoke to Am Yisrael, as the Torah describes[2], one would not pull out arguments on theoretical physics, chemistry, or mathematics. These fields of study may answer the “how” such an event may have taken place but they cannot answer “if” something actually took place. No, one would first use a historical model which is sometimes termed as a “convergence of facts” or a convergence of evidence.[3] [4] On the other hand, if one wants to make sense of the various statements made by Hazal about human perceived natural events and extra-natural events that Torath Mosheh describes as having sources from Hashem, one would not use the models for historical analysis and instead would use what is currently known in the various sciences.

Thus, when I approach any challenge or any question as to what I hold by[5], what I don’t understand, or what I desire to establish I use my experience as an electrical and an EMC Engineer in line with my studies of Torah to make decisions and come to conclusions. This, as a practice, does not take place once or a few times but is something that I interact with every day as someone who is focused on trying to understand the truth of every matter that affects my personal life and my daily philosophy.

"Adam the first, majestic man of dominion and success, and Adam the second, the lonely man of faith, obedience and defeat, are not two different people locked in an external confrontation ... but one person who is involved in self-confrontation. ...In every one of us abide two personae - the creative majestic Adam the first, and the submissive, humble Adam the second." [6]

Truth – A Daily Companion

My confrontations and struggles with living out the truth, many times as the as a singular individual from a minority or as a minority within that minority, have been varied and numerous. They have spanned my travels in America, Israel, Ethiopia, Italy, and Japan and covered numerous topics. My ammunition has been the study of texts and keeping aware of how one determines the truth in realistic situations; using the right tools for the right situation. An unexpected result of this way of life is that at times it has caused me to stand alone in a crowd, even when surrounded by people who are also Jewish. The truth and one’s dedication to it can sometimes be a lonely place but the benefits of such a stance are well worth it.

It is important note that the point here is not what about one thinks or believes about a particular matter, because both thought and belief are subjective, but instead what one “knows” to be true and can with high level of confidence and certainty establish.[7] This is something substantiated by the Tanakh and the writings of Hazal, such as the comment made by Saadya HaGaon:

“And knowledge has two sides, truth and falsehood, the knowledge of truth is known as a matter that is “from the many is many, the few is few, black is black, white is white, available/established is available/established, and lacking is lacking. Falsehood is known as a matter that is from the many are few, the few are many, black is white, white is black, available/established is lacking, and lacking is available/established.” [8]

In order to unpack these ideas and place them into real word applications, I will detail of number of situations from my life.

Struggling with the Past – New York

For seven years while living between New Jersey and Manhattan I worked at a high tech company in Pearl River, NY. During my day to day functions the truth of the Torah was an integral part of my interactions with my coworkers both Jewish and non-Jewish. I was not the only Jew working for the company but I was the only Jew who openly wore a kippa and tzitziyot. Further, within a group of about ten Jews out of about 200 non-Jews I was one of three Jews who kept Shabbat and Haggim[9] and I was further the only Jew who kept kosher. Given these facts it didn’t take long for me to become the resident answer man for Judaism and it was due to this status that I came into contact with a coworker who took much interest in discussing life issues with me.

He was a Jew with a Christian name and though that may not be so strange in the U.S. it does speak to some of the inner conflicts and contradictions he had. Over the course of the seven years we worked for the same company I had many conversations with him, many of which addressed whether or not the concept of Hashem was logical or not. Because of my willingness to address any topic without reservation or coercion he felt comfortable enough to let down his guard on many personal topics.

During one of his visits to my lab he told me that he was angry because his wife was forcing him to start preparations for their eight year old son to eventually have a Bar Mitzvah. My coworker was actually perturbed by his wife’s request since in his mind this involved years of financial expense, joining a synagogue – another expense, and personal stress for him. I listened to his complaints and when he was finished I responded in the following way.

“I am sorry to hear about your turmoil but let me ask you one question. Is this your Bar Mitzvah or your son’s? Based on what you described you obviously feel strongly about this but your son is a Jew. Do you really want to possibly face him ten or twenty years from now with him asking you why you didn’t give him a Bar Mitzvah? What if he comes to you and states that all of his friends had Bar Mitzvahs and he wants to know why he didn’t receive one? What happens when you give him your answer and he may be angry with you because you robbed him of an experience of his youth? Are you willing to face the possibility of him telling you that this was his experience and not yours to deny him?”

I told my co-worker that if the expense was the problem that there are a number of options that would cost him either nothing or close to nothing. I even offered that I could talk to people at the local Yemenite synagogue in Manhattan where I prayed because all children under the age of 13 receive the 6^th aliyah.[10] As a joke, I even told him to call the local Chabad and tell them he is giving up on all of Judaism unless his son gets a Bar Mitzvah. The joke being that there would shiluchim knocking on his door within minutes to help him for free. I stressed that the important thing is that if we are Jews and if we value our culture and history to deny his son an essential part of the normal modern development would be a sad and shameful thing for a father to do.

After my response my coworker had a silent moment and before leaving he thanked me for my response. A few weeks later he came to me and told me that after speaking with his wife he wanted me to come by their house to help get their son interested in learning Hebrew; to put him on the path of a Bar Mitzvah. I in fact did help teach his son some basic Hebrew after which his daughter proclaimed the she also wanted to learn.

My co-worker eventually opened up even more to be and I began to understand where his anger over thנקe issue of the Bar Mitzvah came from. He explained to me that he grew up in an “extremely secular” Jewish household with a mother who was a scholar and researcher.  What I mean by “extremely secular” is that he once told me that his mother the scholar made it clear that the Torah was utterly and emphatically “wrong.”

My co-worker further explained that he never realized how distant he was from his culture as a Jew until he recently attended a Passover Seder with his wife’s family. His wife’s family were at various stages of the Reform Movement but he said that he felt bad at the seder because he was the only attendant who didn’t know what they were doing. They would sing songs or perform actions as a part of the seder and he was not aware of what to say or do. He explained that during his childhood, while every other Jewish families were doing a seder on Pesah, his mother would sit he and his siblings down to explain how the haggadah was wrong and that there was no Yetziath Mitzrayim (Exodus).

Even with all of that, he was conflicted because he had an appreciation for the importance of being a Jew and he saw the relevance in the existence of the modern state of Israel but no matter how he felt he was always in the shadow of the way he was raised. My words to him were the same as what my grandmother once said to me about the importance of knowing from self-evaluation the truth. His critical decision was to determine and develop his understanding of what is the truth – Torath Mosheh vs. the path that his mother placed him on.

It is interesting to note that I had the opportunity to meet his mother at an art exhibit for his father and upon seeing my kippa and tzitziyoth her first words to me were, “You do know that whole exodus in the Haggada is wrong!” Thus began a classic debate with her stating that she had traveled to Egypt and performed research there finding no sign of any proof of such an event and that the haggada had been invented within the last 2,000 years. I course was not willing to let her statement stand unchallenged since I knew she had not done her researching using Jewish sources written in Hebrew and Aramaic from across the spectrum of the ancient Jewish world. As the argument heated up my coworker stepped in by changing the topic knowing that neither his mother nor I would give ground on the topic.

In 2007, after seven years of work I left that job in order to take on the ultimate challenge of my life - making Aliyah. After moving to Israel I only had a few sporadic contacts with my former co-worker. He left me a short message once on my former blog wishing me luck and thanking me for our interactions. I have no way of knowing what effect I had on him or his family but the truth of the matter is that maybe by being that one Jew out of several to try to walk the path of Torah publically and privately I may have been a part of a shuva process for him or maybe his children.

We Don’t Need the Har HaBayit! – Nachshonim, Israel

Thinking back on my time living in America, it is not hard to imagine situations where a Torah based Jew can feel like a singularity simply due to the lower percentage of Jews to the majority population. It is also a given that the social and professional pressure to be loose on areas of Torah such as Kashrut and Shabbat can be intense even when a handful of Jews are present. In situations where more Torah based Jews are present it isn’t so strange to have someone else who won’t eat with everyone else when business and restaurants excursions take place. In those kind of environments a Jew may feel like less of a minority in a minority but simply like one Jew of several in a non-Jewish environment – just a minority.

By like token, one would expect that it would be a lot easier to not feel isolated with these topics in Israel. We are talking about the modern state with a Jewish majority and a place where supposedly there is more respect for Torah based Jewish values, right? All I have to say is for those who have never spent more than a year here at one time you may be surprised.

I have worked in both hi-tech and in patent law here in Israel, I have also lived in at least 3 different regions of the countries, traveled at least 4 different sectors of the country, and the reality is that there can be situations where Jews who keep Torah are the minority within a secular Jewish majority; after which in contrast to the rest of the Middle East we are thus a minority within a minority.

From my professional experience here in Israel there have been numerous times when secular Israelis have called my kippa “that thing on your head” or my tzitzyoth “that stuff you are wearing.” Of course with Shabbat being an official day where no one is required to work[11] as well as the abundance of “kosher” restaurants Torah in every city; Torah based life is a lot easier to maintain in Israel than outside of it.[12] Yet, there is still the reality that the majority of the Jewish population here does not keep Torah and there are conflicts at times between so called “religious/Hereidi/Daati Leumi” interests and secular interests.

I find myself being in a weird type of middle ground where I don’t feel the need to personally enforce the Torah I hold by on others but at the same time I don’t accept, on any level, encroachment on the standard that I hold dear. At the same time, I have also felt the reach of secular elements of Israeli society which at times does everything it can to distance itself from Torath Mosheh.

I also recognize that the modern state can’t continue as it is and fulfill the prophecies that talk about Yamoth Mashiah, the establishment of an official Sanhedrin in Jerusalem, the rebuilding of the Beit HaMikdash, and the return the exiles to Eretz Yisrael. The truth for me is that something major would have to change in all facets of Israeli governance, life, and thought to facilitate such a complete worldwide social change and thus this is the contradiction of the situation.

This brings me to 2006 when I took part in a volunteer program on two military bases in the Mercaz region of Israel. During my interview process for the program it had been noticed that I wore a kippa, tzitziyoth, and also that I spoke about Torah. I was informed by the person performing the interview to not talk about “religion” when I arrived on the base since it would be frowned upon. I agreed and upon arrival when I entered my room at the barracks and met my room-mates I changed into a uniform while trying to hurry and remove my tallit katan but it was noticed by some of the guys in the room.

By chance after being asked to say the bracha for lighting the candles for Hanukha I became the answer guy since the majority of people in the area didn’t publically wear tzitziyoth. On one occasion I was asked about whether halakha allowed the use of marijuana, on another about male and female relationships, at times why does the Torah say this or that, and on another occasion why I would wake up every day at 04:00 a.m., shower, and head out.

My response to that last question led to interesting situation when I told my roommate that I was heading to the Beith Keneset to pray Shachrit at netz. He asked me, “There is a Beith Keneset here? Where is it?” I described the location to him and then I packed up my things and left. As usual, at that time of the morning there was only two of us praying in the Beit Keneseth but after finishing I noticed my roommate sitting in the back of the Beit Keneset without a tallit and without tefillin. He simple crouched himself over the chair in front of him and prayed. I went to him and asked if he wanted to borrow my tallit and tefillin but he quietly said that that was okay and he continued.

Yet, the highlight of that time was during a conversation with two younger soldiers in a conversation that turned into issues against Arabs. One of them mentioned how he hated Arabs and didn’t trust them for of course obvious and realistic reasons. Yet, before he could go any further the other young man chimed in and asked if we could change the subject because his mother was Jewish and his father was Arab/Muslim.

It was that same young man who turned to me and said he had a question for me. He asked, “You have a kippa and tzitzityoth. Tell me do you believe what the Torah says about the Luchoth HaBrith, the Aron HaQodesh, etc.” I responded, “Yes I do.” He in turned, “If all that stuff is true how come we have never found any of it?” Without pause I responded, “Let me ask you a question. The Har HaBayith (the Temple Mount), is it important or is it not important? Do we need it?” He responded, “No we don’t’ need the Har HaBayth we only need the Kotel.” It was then that I returned with the following statement.

You know it is interesting that you say that because there was a time when for the most part no Jew would have agreed with you. Today you say we don’t need the Har HaBayit, we only need the Kotel, and tomorrow your children will say we don’t need the Kotel we only need Jerusalem outside of the old city. After them your grandchildren will say that we don’t need Jerusalem we only need Tel Aviv. Finally, their children will claim that we don’t need Tel Aviv or Eretz Yisrael at all. You know if that is the case I don’t blame Hashem for hiding things from us because based on what you are telling me we don’t want them.

From there the conversation had to stop since their commanding officer walked in and things had to go back to normal. Yet, the truth of the matter is that maybe it didn’t. In reality, who knows what effect the conversation had on all involved.

Close Encounters, Palestinians vs Israelis – A coffee shop in Jerusalem

Several years ago I had the opportunity to meet with a professor from the United States who was researching how mixed ethnicity is viewed around the world in comparison to the U.S. We met at a coffee shop in Jerusalem and she arrived with a friend whose background I did not know and for most of the initial conversation her friend only listened attentively while taking notes. I explained my perspectives to the professor about how family background, language, and passed down traditional practices plays a major role in how one defines Middle Eastern cultures. I detailed, from my view, how the social affects, parameters, and issues of being mixed in more ancient traditional societies has more far sweeping implications than what exists for the most part in the U.S. for reasons that I spoke at length about.

As an example, I asked the professor’s friend about her family background since she had been quiet during the conversation. She responded to me that I may not want to know her background, to which I expressed no reservations. She identified herself as an American born Palestinian – her parents having been born in the Shomron region and having moved to the U.S. before she was born. I responded that I still had no problem and from there the conversation took a different turn into the realm of politics. She expressed to me that even though she identified with being a Palestinian and she was a very vocal advocate for a Palestinian state, as a secular American Palestinian she was terrified of such a state becoming Islamic and thus being no different than the existing extremist Islamic countries in the region.

I expressed that I could not imagine such a “potential Palestinian state” without some form of Islamic focus as it the only cultural background I have seen any Palestinian attach themselves to. Sure, I have heard some anti-Israel types claim that modern day Palestinians are descendants of Canaanites and the like but I have yet to see any linguistic or cultural practices in their societies that can identified as Canaanite. Further, during the entire time I have lived in Israel and traveled in the Shomron, Gush Etzion, and the Negev I have also never met a an Arab who used this claim.

The young woman had personally never heard of the claim that Palestinians were Canaanites and I explained that the reason was that the claim started as a grasp at straws to make any claim why Jews have no right to be here. Further, I asked her what kind of culture can override the one that currently exists and what common ground does it have the current Israeli one. I could tell by her facial reactions that these were also considerations she had never taken into account and to this point she had no answer.

Her response was to return to the political perspective and she stated that she could not understand why we could not all just live in peace. My retort to her was to ask the obvious questions of, “What exactly is peace, how do you maintain/obtain it on a day to day basis, when was the last time in world history that such a peace was achieved, and why does it not still stand now?” She did not have answers to my questions, and on one some level I think she had never even considered them before. It is also possible that no Jew had ever interacted with her in this way so I continued with the following statement:

“As you can hopefully see that situation is a lot more complicated than what you have considered. Yet, in all honesty I can’t tell you that you don’t have a right to fight for PA State that you or others envision using whatever means you see fit. That would be hypocritical to some degree since I have no divine mandate to dictate what you should dedicate your life to.

I do know that in reality if we Jews can’t maintain ourselves and if we don’t build the society that can withstand claims to the contrary or attacks on our perceived rights to be here then maybe we don’t have a right to be here – using basic rules of survival of the fittest.

Yet, if we can survive all of the claims against us and if we can overcome all those who are against us and if we Israelis can build a society that makes sense, what right does anyone have to oppose the reality as it would stand in that situation?

You though face a different problem; you face the challenges of authentic history and straight forward logic. Historically speaking there has never been an independent and locally elected government which defined itself as “Palestinian” here in this region. If such a nation did exist what was its currency, who were its locally elected officials, what was its local language, what ancient cultural elements can still be seen today, and why is Islam and Christianity the only two religions found being practiced by virtually all Palestinians, even by those who are secular, when these religions are respectfully between 2,000 to 1,400 years old?”

As she considered my questions, I went even further by asking her what her family’s last name is. She responded that it is “Hamdani” to which I asked what was the Hamdani family’s cultural and religion prior to the entrance of Islam in the region from Arabia. She shifted a bit and stated that she didn’t know but a moment later she claimed that more than likely they were a religion-less people. I stated that I didn’t believe that such a people existed here given the fact that we only receive rain during the winter with a delicate eco-system that can be disrupted by either too little or too much rain. That alone may cause any ancient/traditional people to pray to something, even if they didn’t do so on a regular basis.

Lastly, I informed her that Egyptian, Babylonian, Syrian, Greek and Roman accounts describe the local culture for the last few thousand years being Israeli/Jewish and during the 2^nd Temple period in the region of Shomron were the Samaritans so “if” the Hamdani family is of local ancestry, and not by import, they must have at one time been Jewish or Samaritan, one of the two. This statement seemed to shock her because it was not a part of the historical picture she had ever considered; if she had every considered one at all. So, seeing an opening I closed our conversation with the following:

What you need to do is go back to your family in the Shomron and ask the oldest members what were the Hamdanis before the entrance of Islam into this region. You may find some answers in that question that may make your future more focused.

You talked about peace. Maybe, just maybe, if we Jews and you so called Palestinians sat down and talked about ancestry and history we may find that we are from the same source, prior to the entrance of Islam in this region. We may find that at one time a number of so called Palestinians had Jewish or Samaritan ancestry – which is something that is already known to be true in a number of towns in the “so called West Bank.” [13] [14]

Yet, if this is the case this means that you and others may have a decision to make. If you find out that prior to the rise of Islam in this region the Hamdanis were either Jewish or Samaritan this may change the focus of what you are looking for on the national level. This may mean that a conflict between us is fruitless and a coexistence based on our common ancestry shouldn’t be a problem. Yet, who is willing to take these kinds of steps? It takes a bravery that some people may not want to take on because of their personal political agendas.

Listen, it is not my intent to sway you in one way or the other but if the two of us can sit here and discuss history and ancestry and do so in a civil manner why can’t those who are our so called leaders? Maybe, if they were to take this approach we could either settle this over coffee or worse, the other thing.

We parted ways that day agreeing to be who we chose to be – whatever that may have meant for her. In truth, I am not sure where her life has taken her since that point but I did sense that she walked away with a different perspective than what she entered the conversation with.

I also know, looking back, that very few people would have approached the conversation the way I did and there was a time in the past when I would have not been so “open” as I was with her. Yet, even if I am alone in how I handled the situation the truth dictates that I hold by it even if it may seem like an uneasy position to take.

Further, as much as I may have been teaching her I was also taught a lesson about the importance of making the truth the source of one’s perceived political stances and how even in the most unexpected places the pursuit of the truth can bring understanding.

Torath Mosheh vs. Unsourced Religionism

As a last consideration, I feel it necessary to discuss the times I have been at odds with my responsibility to the truth as it relates to the people whom I come into contact from the nations on the internet. I mean this in the sense of both non-Jews and even at times Jews who follow what I term as “Unsourced Religionism.”

I define Unsourced Religionism as the practices and customs that one comes up with which do not adhere to any proven historical or logical methodologies. The truth is of course in stark contrast to this method of living and often Unsourced Religionisim is the source of some of the strife found in the world. Whether it be false religious concepts that lead people astray, worthless Atheist vs. Religious debates, or the various forms of fanaticism - the lack of contact with the truth has had devastating effects on human history.

This can be seen in the various cults throughout history that have risen up and convinced both the rational and irrational to throw away their logic and replace it with feel-good brain-washing. There was a time when I would have believed that it was not worth the time to confront the falsehoods of such groups but that changed when I came to know several individuals who had been drawn into religious cults – forcing me to use the truth of the Torah to fight an intellectual war against the falsehoods.

One such incident involves one of several cults that falls under the rubric of the title “Sacred Name Movement.” This movement is made up of former Christians who have come to believe that the more prevalent forms of Christianity are influenced by paganism and that specifically the four letter name of Hashem must be pronounced/uttered in order to have salvation. Though these cults believe that the various forms of historical Christianity practices have pagan origins, they use of the New Testament and their culture involves some type of belief in Jesus being divine although they believe his name originally had the two letter name of Hashem in it.

I recognize full well that debating this type of cult is an activity that most Jews would not engage in; especially given the fact that most Jews have never even heard of them. The time and energy needed to confront these types of falsehoods can take a certain toll on a person’s personal life and often the question may be asked, “is this thing I am doing having any true effect of the world at large?” Yet, even with all the reservations I have had in the past about my involvement in this type of activity I have learned that there are times when not expressing the truth can have a negative effect on the world around us.

With that in mind, I once spent an entire year defending a book review I did against a Sacred Name cult’s supposed translation of the Tanakh due to having personally known several non-Jews who were considering involvement in these cults.[15]

The back story of this situation is that more than a decade ago I came into contact with a non-Jewish friend who had purchased a supposed translation of the Tanakh produced by said cult based on Abiline, TX. I skimmed over the book and noticed that this cult was taking huge liberties with the text with no basis in Tanakh and accurate mesorah. Because the cult used a flashy apocalyptic end of times message and prided itself on revealing things to Christians who were already exploring the so called “Jewish roots of Christianity” I realized that I needed to do something to warn those who may be tricked into joining them.

At a certain point I decided to write a review against the so called translation, spending much time on methodically breaking down how unfaithful this cult’s book was to both the original Hebrew Tanakh and also to the historical mesorah[16] of the text. I ended my review by advising all who were interested in the book to instead spend time trying to learn Hebrew and Aramaic since the people who I knew who were interested in the sacred name cults were searching for the truth but had little or no tools to determine it.

My review garnered numerous positive responses as being helpful, several personal emails requesting help with finding a more accurate translation, and requests for assistance in finding resources to learn Hebrew but it also drew the attention of the cult that created the text. Several of them, and even one of them that someone informed me was most likely the cult’s leader, wrote nasty messages to me in the comments section. I wasted no time in responding to their false accusations and claims by using both textual and historical proof to make my points. As the back and forth continued the cult members resorted to name calling and condemnations of hellfire against me and anyone who favored my review. The language they used and their refusal to prove the accuracy of their work, by providing the source text they supposedly translated from, caused a number of parties who were originally interested in their text to abandon their interest while thanking me from preventing them from wasting their money and time.

As the cult’s members descended into even more non-sense with their responses, such as calling me a Catholic at one point, the next calling me a Pharisee, and later a Saducee, the site that the review was found on started deleting the cult member’s comments since they had received so many marks as being useless in the review process of the book. As more and more potential victims of the cult began to see that joining said cult would have been a waste of time I was reminded of the Rambam’s comment in his responsa concerning teaching Torah to Christians.[17]

Yet, even with this victory there is another side of this issue and that is when I have had to do mental battle with missionary/messianic cults and organizations. Most of them are evangelical types but in one case I was approached by an Islamic organization that focuses on trying to convince Jews to convert to Islam. In the case of the latter I was engaged in a two month back and forth with a member of said Islamic organization concerning what they claimed were inaccuracies in Judaism that are only understood correctly in Islam. Having had a background in Islamic studies, I knew the claims and was able to counter them in an honest and respectful manner. I had to do so though remembering that though the truth can break through any argument the Rambam advised in one of his responses against teaching Torah to Muslims since they could in turn use that information against us.[18]

The Truth: For What It’s Worth

Whether it is being responding to falsehoods on the internet or defending the truth of Torath Mosheh against falsehood the question at times may be – what is the benefit? For what reason would a person need to interact in this way with these types of people? The answer to me comes in two forms – one for Am Yisrael and the second for all of humanity. In several instances through my responses I was able to convince missionaries to become Noachides and in a couple of instances those who debated with me became interested in becoming Jewish. Even in situations where neither of these outcomes happen I feel that I have a responsibility as a Jew to stand for the truth when possible for the sake of being an active participant in Tikun HaOlam. Further, I know of situations where Jews have been lost to Torah completely simply because no one in their immediate area stood up for the truth in a strong, public, and dignified way. To this point, I was once pleased to come across a video of a famous Kiruv rabbi here in Israel who was asked by a secular young man why should a person who is good and doesn’t do anything to hurt people make teshuva to the Torah. The rabbi calmly but boldly declared, “There is no reason except for the sake of the Truth.”

[The deception is so great] that even the best of the chasidim [faithful] among our men [scholars] of Torah, think that they are true but forbidden because the Torah forbids them. They do not realize that they are nonsensical false things that the Torah warned against, just as it warned us against [believing in] falsehoods.[19]

In Closing

Years ago I would never imagined that my grandmother’s words would have the type of effect they have had on me for all of these years. I could not have imagined the path her words would have set me on or the completeness it brought me. She passed away before I could thank her but in a small way she may have known the result. The last time I saw her, before she passed away in 2002, she stated that there were things that she told me that she never told anyone else because when my father passed away she knew that I needed something more than everyone else.

When I open my eyes and take a look around I see that there are numerous others who are also seeking to have a love affair with the truth that Hashem has placed upon us. No matter how isolated I may feel at times I must remember to look to the hills where there are others waving the banner of truth; lighting the fires of Torah to draw the attention of any willing to observe. In reality, a life dedicated to truth has a way of changing the world whether it be in passive observance or active participation.

That when judgement is made of truth it is the truth that establishes the world. It brings peace to the world. Thus Hazal teach in the Misnhah on three things the world is established, on the judgment, on the truth, and the peace. The three of them are spoken of in the pasuk (Zecharyah 5) “Truth and justice of peace you will judge your gates.” Because when judgement is done/established, the truth is done/established. And because when the truth is done the peace is done/established. [20]

Thus, I must close with saying that the truth no matter where it places a person has a way of making them jump for joy when they know they have it. The truth has a way of turning sadness to content. It can make conflict into compromise and it has the ability to empower the lonely.

With this constant wrestling with truth of the Torah we in turn fulfill the prophecy that one day Hashem would cause us to become a light to the nations because as the prophets tell us, “ten men from the nations will grab the garment corner of a Jew and state: We have received falsehoods from our fathers. Take us with you because we have heard that Hashem is with you.”[21]   

“Tzedeq, tzedeq [Correctness, correctness][22], pursue; on account you will inherit the land which Hashem your Elokim is giving to you.” (Devarim 16:20)

[23]

In his Yad haHazakah, Rambam writes:

If someone is bitten by a scorpion or a snake it is permitted to recite a charm over the wound, even on Shabbat, in order to calm the patient and give him encouragement. Although such a thing is of no [objective] benefit whatsoever, since a life is in danger they [the rabbis] permitted it lest the victim suffer mental anguish [should it appear that not every effort was being made]. (Abodah Zarah 11:11)

This ruling of Rambam was adopted by Rabbi Yosef Karo (Shulhan Arukh, Y.D. 179:13)—to the great annoyance of the Vilna Gaon, as evidenced by his following comment:

This opinion is the Rambam’s [as expressed in the latter’s Laws of Abodah Zarah 11: 11–16]. He also wrote [similarly in] Perush haMishnah, A. Z. 4:7. But all subsequent authorities disagreed with him because of the numerous charms recorded in the Gemara. He, however, was drawn by the accursed philosophy, and that is why he wrote that witchcraft, names, charms, demons and amulets are all deception. But he has been thoroughly refuted on the strength of the innumerable stories found in the Talmud such as that of the matron who uttered words and immobilized a ship [Shabbat 81b, Hullin 105b] ... or that of the rabbis who every Friday studied the halakhot of creation, and would create a “tertiary calf” [Sanhedrin 67b] and R. Joshua who pronounced a name and was suspended between heaven and earth [Bekhoroth 8b] ... But philosophy with her blandishments misled him to explain all such stories allegorically and to uproot them from their literal meaning. As for myself, Heaven forefend that I should accept any of those allegorical explanations...” (Biur haGra Yore De‘ah, 179:13).

            The foregoing dispute reflects an age-old clash between two worldviews. Rambam reads the texts of the Talmud in a manner that does not violate reason or contradict the results of empirical knowledge. Rabbi Elijah of Vilna, on the other hand, prefers to uphold a literalist reading of the same texts. Indeed, his evident commitment to literalism propels him to accept superstition! As for the “accursed philosophy,” Rabbi Elijah blames for Rambam’s metaphorical interpretations of difficult aggadot, we cannot be sure what he had in mind. Certainly Rambam himself shows no awareness of being a victim of philosophical deception when he expounds his opposition to literalist readings of improbable aggadot. No, if Rambam is to be believed, his anti-literalism arose from deep convictions regarding the Sage’s essential rationality:

Know that the words of the Sages of blessed memory, are understood differently by three groups of people.

Regarding the first, from observing them, reading their books and hearing about them, they are the largest [group]…. They understand the teaching of the Sages only in their literal sense, in spite of the fact that some of their teachings, when taken literally, seem so fantastic and irrational that if one were to repeat them literally, even to the uneducated... their amazement would prompt them to ask how anyone in the world could believe such things true, much less edifying.

The members of this group are so poor in knowledge that it pains one [to think] of their folly. Their very effort to honor and to exalt the Sages in accordance with their own meager understanding actually humiliates them! As God lives, this group destroys the glory of the Torah and darkens its light, for they make the Torah of God say the opposite of what it intended. God said in the perfect Torah, “The nations who hear of these statutes shall say: ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people’” (Deut. 4:6). But this group expounds the teachings of our Sages in such a way that when the other peoples hear them they say, “How foolish and worthless is this insignificant group of people!” The worst offenders are preachers who preach and expound to the masses what they themselves do not understand. Would that they keep silent about what they do not know, as it is written: “If only they would be utterly silent, it would be accounted to them as wisdom” (Job 13:5).

The second group is also a numerous one. It too consists of persons who, having read or heard the words of the Sages, understand them according to their simple literal sense and believe that the Sages intended nothing else than what may be learned from their literal interpretation. Inevitably, they ultimately declare the Sages to be fools, and hold them up to contempt...

There is a third group. Its members are so few in number that it is hardly appropriate to call them a group—except in the sense in which one speaks of the sun as a group of which it is the only member. To this group the greatness of our Sages is clear. They recognize the superiority of their intelligence from their words, which point to exceedingly profound truths.... The members of this group understand that the Sages knew as clearly as we do the difference between the impossibility of the impossible and the existence of that which must exist. They know that the Sages did not speak nonsense....Thus, whenever the Sages spoke of things that seem impossible, they were employing the style of riddle and parable, which is the method of truly great thinkers. (Rambam, Hakdamah lePerek Helek. Cf. Isadore Twersky, A Maimonides Reader, West Orange, NJ: Berman House, 1972, 407–409)

Rabbi Yehudah Halevi shared Rambam’s fear of the threat to Torah posed by excessive irrationality.

See that we are not any different than our ancestors. If the details of ancient idolatrous practices were widely known today, we would also be lured astray—just like we are [at present] by other popular vanities such as astrology, incantation, talismans, and other actions [alchemy?] that mean to change physical nature—despite the fact that the Torah has commanded us to stay far away from these practices! (Kuzari, end of 4:23. Cf. Sanhedrin 102b; Rambam, Guide, III:37)

It is meet to come clean and state up front that I incline toward the Maimonidean position. That is to say, the Sages’ acknowledgment of nature’s basic predictability and their manifest scientific curiosity do not allow me to think of them as irrational. It is hardly necessary to add that such keen study of nature’s laws in no way debars a person’s openness to miracles and the power of God to change the world. That holds for the Sages, for Rambam, and for us humble latter-day folks. Yet, because they studied nature so closely, the Sages were in the best position to recognize miracles for what they are—the exceptional intervention on the part of the Creator for God’s own moral purposes.

            You may be wondering what this literalist debate has to do with the topic I’ve been invited to write about, namely Torah education from the perspective of a parent. Answer: the debate per se, nothing; its ramifications, plenty. A major pedagogic disappointment I have encountered over and over again is the seemingly indiscriminate way teachers in many Day Schools introduce young children to material far above the average child’s intellectual and emotional age. I know that some parents read Grimm’s fairy tales to their kids in the hope that a child will understand it as mere fancy. Be that as it may, sacred texts are another story. It seems to me that because the child approaches these texts with a different level of receptiveness, the educator needs to exercise extra care about what material to teach. Particular perturbation is caused to children when hard aggadot are set before them in the raw.

Let’s take the following text from Megillah 12b as an example:

“And Queen Vashti refused” (Esther 1:12). Since she [too] was immodest, as the master said above, that both of them had an immoral purpose, why then would she not come? Rabbi Jose bar Hannina said: This teaches that leprosy broke out on her. In a Baraitha it was taught that Gabriel came and made her a tail.

What goes through a teacher’s mind before deciding to share such an aggada with his or her class? Surely the teacher has considered at least the obvious questions it raises: Why did this great miracle of the tail occur—even if Vashti’s vanity was off the charts?! Or was the tail’s advent something less than a miracle? We recall that in the rabbinic corpus, a human changing into an ape is not precluded.

Rabbi Yirmiyah bar Elazar said: They [dor haPalagah] split up into three parties. One said, ‘Let us ascend and dwell there;’ the second, ‘Let us ascend and serve idols;’ and the third said, ‘Let us ascend and wage war [with God].’ The party that proposed…‘Let us ascend and wage war’ were turned to apes, spirits, devils, and night-demons… (Sanhedrin 109a).

So maybe our Sages believed that humans were created with the potential to turn into (revert to?) apes—but back to the question about Vashti. What was the size of her tail? It would have to be imagined as too long and voluminous to hide under the normal train of a queenly robe. What was it about Vashti’s sin that merited so vile a metamorphosis? If, on the other hand, humans were not endowed with simian latency, then why would the Creator choose to revise creation?

Unless the teacher has thought all this through, surely he or she is ill-advised presenting it to impressionable children, even if he or she emphasizes its sociological aspect. (There are those who see this aggada’s point as an attempt to downplay non-Jewish Vashti’s virtue in order to boost our collective Jewish ego.) Still, whether presented as entertainment, myth, or anthropology, this aggada, with its inescapable grotesqueness, is best saved for advanced students who are able to articulate any problems they might have with it.

            Another aggada, though seemingly innocuous, can cause considerable bafflement. Noah is told to provide the Ark with a “tsohar” (Genesis 6:16). This rare word, tsohar, is generally understood as a porthole by writers ancient and modern. However, one aggada identifies tsohar as a light-giving gemstone. Now, although jewels can sparkle and reflect light, they cannot generate it. Therefore telling children that stones can be luminous is plain wrong.

Besides choosing their material wisely, teachers would do well to prepare themselves both intellectually and emotionally for questions their students might throw at them. Years ago, my daughter was paying attention to a lesson about kapparot that her elementary school teacher gave in advance of Yom Kippur. When the teacher had finished explaining the mechanics and purpose of that practice, my daughter asked, “If all the sins of a person went into the chicken, was it not unfair to give the chicken to the poor? They would be inheriting all those very sins that had been purged from the first person!” The teacher gave the child a blank stare, and without any response, moved on to another topic.

Of course one is not advocating the sanitization of texts—or even an avoidance of charged ones. Most teachers are responsible, but often labor under the notion that anything found in our sacred literature must be edifying for all and sundry. The Mishnah thought otherwise: “[A child of] five years [is ready] for Scripture, ten years for Mishnah…fifteen years for Talmud…” (Aboth 5:21). Entrusted with the stewardship of Torah for the next generation, it behooves every one of us educators to rethink many current pedagogic practices.

Daily Birkat Kohanim in the Diaspora

By Daniel Sperber[1]

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Question: May Kohanim outside the Land of Israel give the priestly blessing (Birkat Kohanim, or Nesiat Kapayim) on weekdays and on regular Shabbatot?

Answer: The Torah explicitly requires the Kohanim to bless the people (Numbers 6:23), but does not tell us where or when they should do so. Rambam (Sefer haMitzvot, Mitzvat Assei 26) gives no details, but refers us to B. Megillah 24b, Taanit 2b, and Sotah 37b, to work out the details. However, there are versions of the Rambam's text (edited by R. Hayyim Heller and R. Yosef Kefir), where there are the additional words "every day,” and this, indeed, is his ruling in the heading of his Hilkhot Tefillah and Birkat Kohanim. (See further ibid., chapter 14; this also is the ruling in Sefer haHinukh, Mitzvah 367). However, there we find the additions that "the mitzvah applies in all places at all times…". Hagahot Maimoniyot, to Rambam Hilkhot Tefillah 15:12 note 9 writes, on the basis of R. Yehoshua ha Levi's statement in B. Sotah 38b, that any Kohen who does not bless the people transgresses three commandments, splitting as it were the biblical verse in Numbers thus: "So shall you bless the children of Israel: say unto them,” adding verse 27 ibid., "And they shall put my name upon the children of Israel…". The Hagahot Mordechai modifies this by adding that if the Kohen has not been summoned to bless the people, he does not transgress by not doing so, referring to the Yerushalmi text, and this view is accepted by the Beit Yosef, Orah Hayyim 128. There is also a minority view, rejected by mainstream authorities, that of Rabbenu Manoah, that even if the Kohen was not called, if he did not bless the people, he transgresses at least one commandment.

Outside Israel it is the practice in many congregations for the Kohanim not to give the priestly blessing, and for the congregation not to request that they do so—with the exception of musaf on the foot-festivals and Yom Kippur—even during Neilah. The Beit Yosef was very perturbed by this practice. He writes (Orah Hayyim 128):

The Agur wrote that Mahari Kolin [the Maharil] was asked why the Kohanim do not give the priestly blessing every day, since it is a positive commandment. And he answered that it was the custom of the priests to make a ritual ablution [in the Mikvah] before blessing, as is recorded in Hagahot Mordechai, and to do so every day in the winter would be very difficult for them. Hence, the custom evolved to do so only on the festivals. Furthermore, [doing so] would curtail the business activities (mi-taam bitul melakhah), and in any case if the Kohen is not summoned he does not transgress.

However, the Beit Yosef continues:

He forced himself to justify his local custom; but the reasoning is insufficient. For that which he said that they were accustomed to make a ritual ablution every day, this is a stringency—i.e., it is not really required—which leads to leniency… Since ritual ablution as a requirement for the priestly blessing is not mentioned in the Talmud. And even if they took upon themselves this stringency, why would they cancel three commandments, even if they were not transgressing since they had not been summoned. Surely it would be better that they carry out these three commandments clearly and not make the ritual ablutions, since there are not required, and by not doing so they could fulfill the three commandments.

He ends by saying:

And praise be to the inhabitants of Eretz Yisrael and all Egypt who give the priestly blessing every day, and do not make ritual ablutions for it.

Indeed there are some congregations that still follow the Beit Yosef's position. Thus, the Syrian community has birkat Kohanim every day, (see H. C. Dobrinsky, A Treasury of Sephardic Laws and Customs, Hoboken N.J., New York 1986, p.168). This, too, was the Amsterdam custom of the Portuguese community (Shemtob Gaguine, Keter Shem Tov, vol.1, Kédainiai 1934, pp. 222–227, note 268, who also quotes Even Sapir, that this was the practice in Yemen, and possibly in some Moroccan congregations), while in Djerba they did it on Shabbatot and festivals (R. Moshe HaCohen, Berit Kehunah, Orah Hayyim, pp.101–102, and note 30). Thus, there are ample precedents for this practice.

However, the Ashkenazi Rema, R. Mosheh Isserles, in his Darkei Mosheh, ibid., 21, seeks to justify the Ashkenazi custom. He writes:

Because [doing so] would curtail business activities for the people in these countries, for the Kohanim are struggling to support themselves in the exile, and they can barely support their families, other than the bread they gather by the sweat of their brows daily, and they are not happy. And it is for this reason that they do not carry out the priestly blessing, which leads to bitul melakhah la-am. And even on Shabbat they do not do so, because they are troubled and concerned about their future…, and they are only joyful on the festivals. And thus the custom evolved only to bless the people on the festivals. So it would appear to me.

The notion that the Kohen must be joyful when blessing the congregation has its roots in the early Rishonim (in Rash's teacher, R. Yitzhak ben Yehudah).

The Mateh Efraim, of R. Efraim Zalman Margaliot, added that this was an ancient practice, even more than 500 years old, going back to the Tashbetz haKatan, a disciple of the Maharam Mi-Rothenberg, and the Kol Bo sect. 128, and accepted by the Maharit, the Agur, the Darkei Mosheh, etc., "and one may not stir from this custom." He also gives additional reasons to support this custom.

The Sephardic Kaf haHayyim, R. Yaakov Hayyim Sofer, on the other hand (Orah Hayyim, ibid., note 16), cites French R. Yaakov of Mervais, (in his Shut Min-ha-Shamayim no. 38), who writes that

In a place where there are suitable Kohanim to bless the people, and they do not do so even once a year, both the congregation that do not call them to do so, and the Kohanim themselves, who do not make the blessing, transgress, also because they seem not to be relying on their Father in Heaven.

This was cited by the Egyptian Radbaz, R. David ben Zimra, and especially the Hesed leAvraham of R. Avraham Azulai, who writes at length censuring those who do not bless the people, enumerating the negative effects of their flawed thinking, concluding that "it is proper to do so in every place, and not to seek out strategies to avoid doing so."

And even the Ashkenazic Hafetz Hayyim, in his Mishnah Berurah 128:12 in the Beur Halakha wrote:

It is only because of weakness that the Kohanim can go out and not go up [to bless the people. For if not so, certainly they are not acting well to needlessly nullify a positive commandment.

Indeed, there are some Ashkenazic congregations where they do carry out the priestly blessing at least once a month, as we learn from the Sefer haMitzvot, or even every Shabbat, as is mentioned in the Mateh Efraim.

Finally, we may cite the words of R. Yehiel Michel Epstein, in his Arukh haShulhan, Orah Hayyim 128:4:

And behold, it is certainly the case that there is no good reason to nullify the mitzvah of birkat Kohanim the whole year long, and [it is] a bad custom. And I have heard that two great authorities of former generations—probably the Gaon Eliyahu of Vilna and R. Hayyim of Volozin—each one wished to reestablish birkat Kohanim daily in their location, and when they decided on a given day [to begin], the issue become confused and they did not succeed, and they said that from Heaven it was thus decreed.

In view of all the above we may state that Birkat Kohanim does not require ritual ablution, and in present-day diaspora countries, blessing the people will not affect or curtail any business activities, and people in the diaspora are not downtrodden, nor do they live in permanent misery so that they cannot be joyful enough to bless the congregation. And according to some opinions (e.g., the Pri Hadash) even if they are not called to give the blessing, they may/should do so, (see e.g. Piskei Maharitz, Orah Hayyim vol.1, Bnei Brak 1987, pp. 259–260, with the note of R. Yitzhak Ratzabi ibid., Note 7, ibid., Be’erot Yitzhak). Thus, the reasons given for avoiding giving the priestly blessing are for the main part largely irrelevant in present-day diaspora conditions.

On the other hand, not doing so means not carrying out three positive biblical commandments, and according to some, albeit minority, opinions this is also the case when the congregation does not summon the Kohanim. Some, somewhat mystical sources also stress the great spiritual benefits of the priestly blessing, and the considerable negative effect of their absence. Furthermore, we have seen evidence that in some Ashkenazic communities Birkat Kohanim was practiced on Shabbatot or monthly, and not merely on the festivals.

Taking into account all of the above, I would think that nowadays, there is little justification for not carrying out the priestly blessing daily in our diaspora congregations.

I would like to end by again referring to the Hesed le-Avraham:

…The Kohen who fears the word of the Lord and desires His commandments will not transgress by refraining to give the blessing to give satisfaction to his Creator, for it is good in the eyes of God to bless Israel. How good and pleasant is the practice in some places, where the Kohanim give the priestly blessing each day. This is the fitting way to practice in all places, and not to seek excuses for annulling a positive commandment from the Torah.

To summarize:

1. It is a biblical commandment that obligates the Kohanim to bless the people.
2. Not doing so means not fulfilling that biblical commandment, and, according to some authorities, even transgressing three biblical commandments.

Here we may add yet another element to our discussion. There is a well-known opinion of R. Eliezer Azikri, in his Sefer Haredim chapter 4 (with the commentary of R. Yitzhak Leib Schwarz, Kunszentmiklos 1935, p. 19), that "those who stand before the Kohanim in silence and direct their hearts to receive the benedictions as the words of God, they too are included in the mitzvah as parts of the 613 [mitzvot].”

The commentator, ad loc. (note 18–19) discusses this opinion, pointing out that it is a subject of considerable controversy among the greatest of authorities, but he quotes the author of the Haflaah, R. Pinhas ha-Levi Horowitz, (in his notes to Ketubot 24b and Rashi ibid.), that just as there is a commandment to the Kohanim to bless Israel, so too is there a commandment to Israel to be blessed by the Kohanim. He states that there are other examples where the Torah, explicitly commands only the active partner and not the passive recipient, but nonetheless both are obligated. He brings as one example to mitzvah of yibum, which devolves both on the levir (yavam) as well as the sister-in-law (yevamah), even though the Torah commandment is directed toward the levir alone. The Sefer Haredim's novum was widely accepted, even though his source remained unclear to many.

This being the case, surely we should not deprive Am Yisrael in the diaspora from having opportunity to participate in this important mitzvah.

The reasons given by the various authorities for not fulfilling this mitzvah regularly in the diaspora are in and of themselves problematic, but in any case quite irrelevant to present-day diaspora communities. There exist precedents in different congregations, even outside Eretz Yisrael, for daily, weekly, or monthly priestly blessings.

In Jerusalem and in some parts of Eretz Yisrael the priestly blessing is carried out daily.

In view of all of the above, it follows that the daily, or at least weekly, blessing on the part of the Kohanim be performed in diaspora communities.

We continue to reach thousands of people annually through our National Scholar program, combining classes, teacher trainings, and publications to promote the core values of our Institute.

            There are several upcoming classes and programs in January and February:

On Wednesday, February 14, 7:30 pm, there will be a book reception for my latest book, The Keys to the Palace: Essays Exploring the Religious Value of Reading the Bible. It will be held at Ben Porat Yosef Yeshiva Day School, 243 Frisch Court, Paramus, New Jersey. I will give a talk on “Building Bridges and Mending Rifts through Tanakh Scholarship.” Books will be available for purchase and signing.

Since the beginning of September, I have served as the Tanakh Education Scholar at Ben Porat Yeshiva Day School, in Paramus, New Jersey. I am developing a new Tanakh curriculum for grades 1-8, that reflects our core religious values at the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals. I also have given lectures to the Ben Porat Yosef parent community in this capacity.

On Mondays January 8 and 15, and Wednesday January 24, 8:00-9:00 pm, I will be teaching a three-part series at the Young Israel of Scarsdale (1313 Weaver Street, Scarsdale, New York):

Torah Study in a Modern World: Conflict & Resolution

Monday, January 8: Orthodoxy and Confrontation with Modern Biblical Scholarship

Monday, January 15: Traditional Commentary and Biblical Archeology: Friends or Foes?

Wednesday,  January 24: The Bible, as a Book of Literature vs. The Torah, as a Sacred Text

Copies of my new book, The Keys to the Palace, as well as several other titles, will be available for purchase and signing at the final lecture on January 24.

The classes are free and open to the public.

On Shabbat, February 9-10, I will be a scholar-in-residence at the Baron Hirsch Synagogue in Memphis, Tennessee (400 South Yates Rd, Memphis, TN).

The classes are free and open to the public.

On Sundays, February 18 and 25, 7:30-8:30 pm, I will teach a two-part series at the Young Israel of Jamaica Estates in Queens (83-10 188^th Street, Jamaica, New York) on Megillat Esther.

The classes are free and open to the public.

Our University Network, which I now coordinate, continues to do incredible work to promote our religious ideology and vision on campuses across the United States and Canada. We have added several new campuses and fellows this semester. Please see my December report on our Campus Fellows on our website: https://www.jewishideas.org/article/campus-fellows-report-december-2017

As always, I thank you for your support and encouragement, and look forward to promoting our core values through these and many more venues in the coming year.

Rabbi Hayyim Angel

National Scholar

Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals

I always took pride in the pervasiveness of the term “Tikkun Olam.” Of course, having been raised Orthodox, I was taught to resent the primacy other circles in Judaism granted social justice oriented mitsvot. I was told that this amounted to the implicit neglect of other more “real” Divine charges. This Orthodox critique of other denominations, while perhaps compelling, was not strong enough to undue the powerful messages I learned in Tanakh class. It was evident to me, as made clear by the prophets, that social justice was certainly a top Torah priority, no matter the modern socio-religious implications. With this understanding, I was drawn to carry the social justice banner with religious fervor and, not surprisingly, a smattering of self-righteousness as well. And, while we may have disagreed about the ideal balancing act between social justice oriented commandments and other mitsvot, it became clear that social justice was, in many respects, to most Orthodox Jews, a “pareve” cause. While other day-to-day mitsvot do in fact demand the usual attention, who can oppose efforts to feed the hungry and strides at upholding human dignity?

            With this understanding I began to explore the burgeoning world of social justice opportunities – fair trade, Free Tibet, mosquito nets in sub-Saharan Africa, domestic violence, the plight of the Palestinian people, immigration, to name a few. Soon, matters became murkier and questions about the complexities of social justice and Judaism abounded. When my friends and I worked to reinvigorate the Social Justice Society at Yeshiva University, late nights were spent debating the hierarchies of our efforts – Jews before non-Jews, Israel before other countries, New York before the rest of the world? Agunot or Darfur, the terror stricken youth of Sderot or the child soldiers of Uganda, microloans in Calcutta or Manhattan’s homeless? The realization that we could not just open up the Shulhan Arukh and find an answer was even more frustrating. Although Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’ writings were great inspiration, we began to feel as if we were treading through unchartered waters. It became clear to us that these and other questions would never be fully resolved. Perhaps instead of bemoaning the fact that there was no clear-cut assur or muttar verdict, we ought to revel in the privilege to grapple with these issues hands-on. Eventually, these halakhic ambiguities empowered us to become the true masters of our deliberations; enabling us to own our decisions in a very real way.

            The dearth of halakhic discourse on these matters of social justice gave us a lot of flexibility. It meant that there was significant openness in terms of the causes that we selected address. Moreover, it hindered outside criticism and dissension; if there were no straightforward instructions, we were free to explore as we pleased; nearly any position or cause was legitimate from a Torah perspective.

It soon became apparent, however, that there were other concerns beyond the purely halakhic that might hamper the Orthodox receptiveness of our social justice efforts. No one will accuse the Orthodox community of being anxious to learn about unpleasant truths. One case in point, which continues to raise eyebrows no matter how delicately the matter is broached, is the troubling state of the commercial sex industry in Israel.

Sex slavery, a global phenomenon, is categorized by the UN Palermo Protocol as a form of human trafficking. Trafficked persons are recruited by force or coercion and exploited in various ways. One form of exploitation is through sex and prostitution, which has come to be termed “sex slavery.” The state of sex slavery in Israel is especially troubling; Israel’s inaction in combating this injustice continues to compel the US State Department to give Israel poor marks in its annual Trafficking in Persons Report (TIP), which measures every country’s anti-trafficking efforts. The TIP Report maintains that Israel is not in full compliance with international anti-trafficking standards and urges Israel to become more diligent in these efforts.

            Due to the very clandestine nature of sex trafficking, the precise number of sex slaves in Israel is unknown. However, some estimates by the Israeli government maintain that there are 3,000 sex slaves in Israel, while NGOs approximate that 3,000 new sex slaves are illegally trafficked into Israel each year alone. Machon Toda’a Awareness Center reports that most of these sex slaves come from the former Soviet Union. In their countries of origin they are recruited by traffickers promising them that low-paying jobs in the food, modeling and massage industries await them in Israel. These women are then trafficked into Israel through a variety of ways. Sometimes they are smuggled across the Israeli-Egyptian border, though due to increased security, this method has become less popular. Recently, traffickers have succeeded in smuggling women into Israel through seaports and even through Ben Gurion International Airport by using the stolen identities of Jewish women in the former Soviet Union.

According to the Task-Force on Human Trafficking, once in Israel, these exploited women are sold in auctions to pimps and brothel owners at a value between $5,000 and $10,000. At this point they serve as prostitutes, often paid little or nothing, are deprived of their rights, underfed, compelled to work 6-7 days a week, receiving between 15 and 20 clients each day, with whom they are forced to have unprotected sex.  Many of these women end up locked into discrete apartments and brothels, left with little outside contact and often find themselves with no way out. In fact, there are approximately one million visits per month to prostitutes in Israel, to both sex slaves and non-sex slaves. For a population of not even seven million, this number is staggering.

The facts speak for themselves; the state of sex slavery in Israel is appalling. NGOs bemoan what they call the Israeli government’s inaction and apathy in combating this pugnacious industry. Nevertheless, few, particularly Orthodox Jews, are willing to confront this reality. This hesitancy is often due to a confluence of concerns, specifically the issue’s inescapably unsavory nature. Beyond this, however, the conventional approach is to shy away from criticism of the State of Israel, especially if coming from a Diaspora Jew. Further, some claim, why focus specifically on Israel, when in fact sex slavery is an international injustice? Having taken on this issue, my colleagues in the YU Social Justice Society and I are intimately familiar with these concerns. And yet, it seems that precisely for these reasons – that it is distasteful and especially insidious in Israel – sex slavery ought to be a top priority of the Orthodox community.

Sex slaves are forced into having unwanted sex. They are essentially the victims of rape. Rape is undeniably a uniquely horrific phenomenon, the veracity of which is emphasized by the Torah. The Torah is arguably progressive in its redress to the incidence of rape; calling for the rapist to marry the victim. While perhaps traumatic for her, this in a sense protects the victim, insuring that her basic necessities will be met. On a more conceptual level, the Tanakh appears to go out of its way to record incidences of rape. Three rapes in particular, that of Dinah by the hands of Shekhem, the Concubine at Gibeah and Amnon’s rape of Tamar, are recorded in detail. Given that the Tanakh is selective with its words, the attention it accords rape is very suggestive. Perhaps because of rape’s insalubrious nature, the Torah accords it particular attention, urging us to overcome our own discomfort. This is, in a sense, a wake-up call to address rape; to confront sex slavery head-on.

While the Tanakh’s unprecedented regard for rape speaks volumes, the details of these episodes are even more powerful and instructive. In the narrative of Dinah’s rape, the action or inaction of the characters is particularly poignant. Dinah is completely passive, she has no voice. She is the victim of Shekhem who “took her and raped her” (Gen. 34: 2). Jacob too is entirely passive, he learns of the rape, yet does not react. Instead, due to his inaction, Simeon and Levi take action by cunningly massacring the city’s men. Their response is a violent, calculated, emotional one.

In the story of Dinah’s rape the complexities of responding to sexual coercion emerge. Jacob does nothing, “he kept silent” (Gen. 34: 5), whereas Simeon and Levi take matters into their own hands, and are later chastised by Jacob for doing so. And yet, their motivations are recorded, suggesting that they were not misplaced, for, as they declare, “should our sister be treated as a harlot?” (Gen. 34: 31).

The episode of the Concubine at Gibeah begins with the book’s recurring phrase “in those days when there was no king in Israel” (Jud. 19: 1). This prelude sets the stage for what will transpire, suggesting that not only did these occurrences happen because there was no king, but that because of this leadership vacuum, their was no legal recourse for the victims. Instead, the victim, or her memory, must be defended by personal initiative.

In this narrative, the Concubine, like Dinah, has no voice. Rather, the Lodger, in an act eerily similar to Lot in Sodom, gives over his own daughter and his guest’s Concubine to the mob instead of ceding the Concubine’s master, the Levite. The Concubine is then raped by the mob and consequently dies on the doorstep the following morning. Her master, in response to the rape, cuts her body up into twelve separate pieces, sending a piece to each tribe. “Everyone who saw it cried out ‘Never has such a thing happened … Put your mind to this; take counsel and decide.’” (Jud. 19:30). The Levite, like Simeon and Levi, responds to the rape emotionally, violently, which eventually leads to the extermination of the tribe of Benjamin.

The rape of Tamar is more layered than those of Dinah and the Concubine. Amnon’s actions are clearly premeditated and the rape itself is incestuous. Further, unlike Dinah and the Concubine, Tamar has a voice and cleverly, albeit unsuccessfully, tries to dissuade Amnon from raping her. In the aftermath of the rape, David, like Jacob remains silent. Absalom, Tamar’s brother, follows in the footsteps Simeon and Levi, responding violently, a response that leads to more bloodshed and the eventual undoing of David’s throne.

What emerges from these three rape narratives is the thorniness of responding to the crime of rape. It seems that none of these responses are ideal – neither the silence of Jacob and David nor the violence of Simeon and Levi, the Levite and Absalom. And yet, as a community, in responding to the tragedy of sex slavery, we remain silent, passive and inactive. Perhaps its time for us to internalize the Tanakh’s message and actively confront this vile reality.

People often ask me why I’ve chosen to devote time, through my work with the Task-Force on Human Trafficking, to combating sex slavery particularly in Israel. They also wonder about the denigration of Israel implicit in my efforts. These questions frequently transport me to the many hours we’ve passed in the Social Justice Society deliberating about the prioritization and hierarchies of our advocacy. Though we may never arrive at a conclusion, our unique connection and responsibility towards Israel is evident, especially in matters of sexual coercion. The Torah itself identifies the distinctive link between the heinousness of prostitution and Israel’s sanctity. “Do not degrade your daughter and make her a harlot, lest the land fall into harlotry and the land be filled with depravity” (Lev. 20:29). While sex slavery is indeed a global problem, as Jews, we have a distinctively religious, moral responsibility to combat this evil especially in the Holy Land. And, while these efforts may suggest a somewhat unfavorable view of the State of Israel, is it better to stand idly by in silence?

I still believe that the Orthodox community does value Tikkun Olam. However, as I’ve discovered through my anti-sex slavery advocacy, and efforts in the Social Justice Society, there is often a discord between our theoretical regard for these issues and our ability to effectively translate these beliefs into action. The challenge is to help ourselves hear the cry of the prophets to “speak truth to one another, render true and perfect justice in your gates” (Zech. 8:16), with the comparable immediacy we approach the bugs in our broccoli. In so doing we ought to facilitate conversations that may not be palatable to the typical Orthodox ear, to embrace even the unsavory, to be critical of ourselves and our homeland. Let it not be said that we have made a harlot of our values.

Ilana is a good natured, caring, religiously observant high-school student who enjoys reading, baking hallah with her mother, and spending time with her peers at school and in her synagogue. When it became clear in pre-kindergarten that Ilana had a learning disability, her parents made the difficult decision to transfer her from the local Jewish Day School to a private school that specializes in teaching children with learning issues. Although this was a difficult decision, they knew it was necessary for Ilana’s academic growth and development. They reasoned that Ilana would have plenty of time to socialize with her Jewish friends on Shabbat and on playdates. They knew they could count on her continued involvement in their large Modern Orthodox synagogue.

Ilana’s mother was shocked and disappointed when one mother at their synagogue stopped inviting Ilana to participate in weekly playdates with her child. Invitations to birthday parties and other social activities began to stop as well. Even a B’nei Akiva dinner, designed for children to socialize with other synagogue members, felt “closed” to children who did not attend Day School. Ilana’s mother feels that no attempt was made to facilitate interactions between the Day School students and those from other schools. She finds it ironic that the same synagogue that graciously and compassionately hosts adults with moderate to severe disabilities at its yearly Yachad Shabbaton is unable to successfully include children, such as her daughter, with milder disabilities. She wants genuine acceptance and inclusion—and not compassion or pity. She wonders why some people act as though Ilana is “contagious” and that others can “catch” a learning disability or other impairment by socializing with children with special needs. She laments, “The social isolation is worse than the academic isolation.”

The Jewish tradition has always been aware of differences among God’s creatures, who are all considered to be created in the “image of God.” The Bible and rabbinic texts detail laws about treating people with special needs. We are taught, “Do not curse the deaf or put a stumbling block before the blind,” (Vayikra 19:14), and there is much discussion in various codes regarding the status of the heresh (deaf person), and the shoteh (possibly a developmentally delayed person). Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah (Hilkhot Berakhot, 10:12, based on Berakhot 58b) has a detailed discussion on which berakha to recite upon seeing people who are “different.”And the Mishna in Sanhedrin 4:5 teaches, “Although a person stamps many coins from a single die, and they are all alike—the King of Kings has stamped every person with the die of Adam, yet not one of them is like his fellow man.” These sensitively crafted sources suggest that each person is unique and worthy of respect and inclusion in the community—regardless of appearance or level of ability to walk, speak, hear, or learn. Additionally, these sources suggest that the Jewish community has a moral and even halakhic obligation to create programs to meet the needs of all people within our communities—regardless of special need or circumstance. How accepting and accommodating are our synagogues, schools, and community institutions? What can we do to better include and support those with special needs?

[H1] Synagogues

The synagogue is central to the daily life of most observant Jews—as a Bet Tefilla (a house of prayer), a Bet Midrash (a house of study), and perhaps most importantly, as a Bet Kenesset (a place of gathering). The synagogue is potentially the most important religious institution in the lives of families of children with special needs. Sadly, many families like Ilana’s feel that their synagogues lack a genuinely accepting attitude toward their children. Shabbat morning children’s services and afternoon Shabbat groups are often unable to meet the needs of children with special needs. Many parents feel that their children would benefit greatly from weekly Shabbat services and social activities, even if they sometimes need redirection and gentle reminders from patient, experienced group leaders. Children and their parents often receive uncomfortable looks, “shushing,” and requests to leave the sanctuary when a child is “making noise.” While parents recognize that fellow congregants have a right to pray and listen to the rabbi’s sermon in peace, they are often struck by the lack of understanding in their synagogue. This reception in their own synagogue stands in sharp contrast to the genuine acceptance they receive outside of their own synagogues.

There are Modern Orthodox synagogues and rabbis who have taken the lead in meeting the needs of congregants with special needs. In my work teaching children with special needs for bar and bat mitzvah, several rabbis have suggested sensitive, creative options for members with special needs. For example, families may choose to have a non-Shabbat bar mitzvah, where fewer members would be in attendance, the length of service is shorter, there is no haftarah, and there are no Shabbat-related issues when it comes to microphones, adaptive technology, or computers.

In one Boston area synagogue, a bat-mitzvah girl gave a devar Torah and “announced pages” using Power Point slides during a Sunday morning service. One Modern Orthodox rabbi suggested that a particular child with learning disabilities celebrate his bar mitzvah on the Sunday of Hanukkah because the Torah reading, from Parshat Naso, is repetitive and predictable and therefore less difficult for this child to learn. Another rabbi found a halakhically acceptable way for a non-verbal boy to celebrate his bar mitzvah on Shabbat morning. The boy had a very large brain tumor removed when he was two years old, and has unfortunately never been able to speak. He uses a Dynavox Dynamo augmented communication device seven days a week. He pulls down screens by topic and depresses buttons to communicate his needs. His very dedicated parents worked with the rabbi, so that their son could be called to the Torah on Shabbat morning. He essentially activated his father’s voice to recite the Torah blessing, lead Adon Olam, and deliver a devar Torah.

Despite these success stories, there remain unmet needs for people with disabilities in Modern Orthodox synagogues. Parents express frustration that they do not feel comfortable taking their children with special needs to Shabbat groups or children’s services. Orthodox parents who have made the painful decision to educate their children outside of the Jewish Day School system feel that such groups and prayer experiences are precisely what their children need to fully experience synagogue and Jewish communal life.

One Modern Orthodox rabbi, a parent of children with special needs, feels uncomfortable bringing his children to his own synagogue; yet, he and his children have been warmly welcomed and embraced “outside” of his community. He feels the neighborhood Hassidishe shtiebel understands and accepts his son—even if he is disruptive during the sermon or the repetition of the amidah. The Conservative Movement’s Ramah camping movement, through its CampYofi Program at Ramah Darom, has been similarly accepting and inclusive. Yofi offers a week-long camp for children with autism and their families. Similarly, Ilana and her family have been warmly embraced by a smaller, more traditional Orthodox synagogue in their neighborhood; each Shabbat afternoon the rabbi and his wife invite Ilana to their home, where she socializes with and even babysits for their children. Modern Orthodox synagogues should similarly embrace differences and work toward accommodating children with special needs.

[H1] Al Pi Darko—According to His or Her Way: Jewish Education for Children with Special Needs

Most parents in the Orthodox community accept as a given that their children will receive a Jewish Day School education. When it comes to providing an appropriate Jewish education for children with special needs, families often find that choices are limited. There are many reasons for this. First, the term “special needs” encompasses diverse impairments, including learning issues, physical disabilities, mental retardation, autism, psychiatric disorders, and other genetic and acquired conditions. Approaches and philosophies toward education, even within the special needs communities, can vary widely—from those advocating full inclusion to those promoting separate classrooms.

A second reason that choices are limited is that schools lack the staffing and expertise to consider implementing special-needs programs. Teachers and therapists with training in special education, speech and language therapy, psychology, physical therapy, and occupational therapy are required to support students with special needs.

Third, schools typically lack the financial resources for starting and running such specialized programs. The costs of providing a Day School education—even for “typical learners”—are never covered by tuition costs alone and can be prohibitive. Dr. Jed Luchow, Director of Special Education/Project SIR for the Board of Jewish Education of Greater New York, notes how complex and expensive providing such services can be. “When public schools need more money for services, they can raise taxes,” remarks Luchow. Yeshivot and Day Schools cannot.

Families specifically seeking a Modern Orthodox approach to educating a child with special needs find that few programs exist. Some turn to Hareidi schools, where there is more general acceptance of all learners who are viewed as created in God’s image. The recent movie, Praying With Lior, portrays the warm acceptance experienced by Lior Liebling, a young man with Down syndrome (and the son of two Reconstructionist rabbis) in a Philadelphia-area Hareidi yeshiva. Modern Orthodox parents of children with special needs have reported similar acceptance by the Hareidi world.

Some families feel that private special-needs schools (and in some cases, even Catholic schools) are better equipped to provide services to children with special needs. In the Northeast, for example, observant families sometimes opt for well-regarded schools such as Churchill and Gateway in Manhattan, Mary McDowell in Brooklyn, Windward in White Plains, New York, Eagle Hill in Greenwich, Connecticut, and the Cardinal Cushing School in Hanover, Massachussetts. This “trade off” means that families need to seek other avenues for providing Jewish education and Jewish socialization environments.

Fortunately, some Jewish community Day School programs do exist for educating children with special needs, and there are some successful initiatives supporting Jewish special education throughout the United States. Although specifically Orthodox-affiliated programs exist, families of children with special needs are more likely to cross denominational lines than they might for their other typically developing children.

Although it is impossible to highlight all such programs, I will mention some programs, mainly in the Northeast, in order to illustrate the various models and approaches currently offered. Many of the descriptions below are provided by the program; ability to live up to their claims are difficult to assess and are beyond the scope of this article.

In 1985, Rabbi Dr. Martin Schloss, currently the director of the Division of Day School Education for the Board of Jewish Education, and Dr. Sara Rubinow Simon founded the Consortium of Special Educators in Central Agencies for Jewish Education. The purpose of this group is to support special education programs in North American Jewish communities as well as to provide resources to Jewish special educators through professional networks. Members meet once a year to share ideas and materials to enhance and expand special education in Jewish educational settings.

Parents for Torah for All Children (PTACH) has supported children with learning differences from elementary school through high school for more than thirty years. PTACH programs exist at such schools as the Yeshiva University School for Girls and Chaim Berlin High School. Strides have also been made to sensitize and train teachers. PTACH’s educational director, Dr. Judah Weller, has created the “Jewish Day Schools Attuned Program,” based on the Schools Attuned Program, a nationally recognized professional development and service program, created by Dr. Mel Levine, Director of the Clinical Center for the Study of Development and Learning at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine at Chapel Hill. The Schools Attuned program covers eight neurodevelopmental constructs that affect learning—including attention, memory, language, motor skills, and social cognition. Several years ago, The Nash Family Foundation of New York City funded a grant to train 125 Jewish Day School educators in New York, Los Angeles, and other cities in the Schools Attuned program.

Kulanu Torah Academy in Long Island, New York, is a program dedicated for Jewish students with special needs, including students with Asperger syndrome, autism, cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, dyslexia, and Tourette’s syndrome, as well as developmental disorders, attention disorders, learning disabilities, and physical challenges. Students receive educational services within the yeshiva environment from middle school through high school. In addition, Kulanu’s Gesher Program is a three-year program initiative for 18- to 21-year-old students with special needs, which serves as a “bridge” from school to the world of work.

The Sinai Program in New Jersey offers schools for children with developmental disabilities and learning disabilities. According to their website, Sinai is sometimes referred to as a “school within a school.” Although Sinai is independently operated and funded and each school has its own administration and staff, all of Sinai’s schools are comprised of self-contained classes set within larger, typical community Jewish Day Schools, including the Joseph Kushner Hebrew Academy and Yavneh Academy. This structure increases opportunities for mainstreaming within the host schools.

Yeshiva Education for Special Students (YESS!) is the only full-service, professional, special-education yeshiva elementary school in Queens, New York, serving children in grades K through 8 with learning disabilities, attention deficit disorder, and language-processing disorders. According to their website, “It is the philosophy of YESS! that all Jewish children, regardless of their cognitive or physical challenges, have a place in the mainstream of the Jewish community." YESS! espouses individualized special education for general and Judaic studies. Mainstreaming and integration with the typically developing Yeshiva of Central Queens (YCQ) community are integral to the YESS! program.

Some Modern Orthodox schools have started programs to support students with a range of learning issues. Manhattan Day School in New York City has been offering support services for students in grades 1 through 8 with learning-based language disabilities since 1984. According to Sharon Miller, Director of Special Education, the program provides self-contained classes for between six and eleven students, who learn with one head teacher and one assistant teacher. Students learn basic skills in both secular and Jewish content areas, including reading, writing, mathematics, social studies, science, computers, organizational skills, Hebrew language, Bible, Talmud, and laws and customs. Students with Individual Education Programs (IEPs) often receive in-school services, such as speech and language therapy, occupational therapy, counseling, and physical therapy. The staff also includes special educators and school psychologists.

SAR Academy in Riverdale, New York, offers a program to support elementary and junior high school students with language-based learning disabilities. According to Rebecca Hirschfield, Director of Educational Support Services, the program was started, in part, to help keep students with learning issues in the Jewish Day School system. The SAR program is an inclusive educational initiative, designed to be able to meet the needs of children whose learning needs differ from their typically achieving peers. Children with special needs are placed in "inclusion" classrooms with typically developing children. The class is staffed by an additional teacher, who is a learning specialist. In the high school, students receive support through the Student Learning Center and may participate in a modified program, consisting of fewer periods per week of Talmud and Tanakh, and/or exemption from a foreign language requirement.

Ramaz School in Manhattan offers a Learning Center to support students. In the Lower School, students in need of remediation work individually or in small groups in the Learning Center. In the Middle School, students receive one-on-one remediation during the time they would otherwise be attending specialty classes such as music, art, or parashat haShavua. Students who have completed a formal external psychoeducational evaluation to document a learning disability are eligible for Learning Center services. Upper School students seeking the services of the Learning Center also must undergo psychoeducational evaluation; students may then be eligible for certain accommodations, including extended time for test-taking and laptops for use during exams. Based on the recommendations of the tester, students may also receive remediation from the Learning Center faculty.

A unique Boston-area program, Gateways: Access to Jewish Education, offers several programs for Jewish students with a wide range of special needs. Gateways provides a Jewish education to children with moderate to severe disabilities who are not able to receive one in a typical classroom setting (for example, children with autism spectrum disorder, hearing and visual impairment, developmental delay, cerebral palsy, and/or genetic disorders). Gateways also works with students in Jewish Day Schools across the denominational spectrum, including the Chabad Day School of Sharon, Maimonides School, JCDS, New England Hebrew Academy, Solomon Schechter Day School of Greater Boston, South Area Solomon Schechter Day School, Striar Hebrew Academy (SHAS), The Rashi School, and Torah Academy. Within each Day School, Gateways staff (comprised of speech-language pathologists, occupational therapists, and reading and learning specialists) provide extra support and assistance. Gateways works with students to help improve their academic and social skills and generalizing strategies in the classroom. In addition, the therapists assist teachers with curriculum modifications and provide teachers with professional development, including weekly coaching. For students who need more intensive instruction to develop reading and writing skills, Gateways provides an intensive alternative language arts curriculum to the classroom. This class focuses on explicit teaching of skills, including reading comprehension and decoding, written language, and word study (phonics, spelling, and vocabulary). Rabbi Mendel Lewitin is pleased with what Gateways has accomplished in his Striar Hebrew Academy. “Gateways has sensitized us to the fact that children have unique needs—from enrichment to remediation—and even helped remove the stigma associated with asking for special-educational services. Now, parents are comfortable seeking support, and all students are developing a deeper understanding of their peers.”

Sulam, established in 1998, is the only non-profit Jewish educational organization in the Greater Washington area for children who require specialized services for learning needs. By collaborating with Jewish Day Schools, Sulam educates children with diverse needs alongside their peers in a Jewish Day School setting. Sulam also provides adjunct educational services to high-school students at the Melvin J. Berman Hebrew Academy.

Another non-Day School alternative is MATAN: The Gift of Jewish Learning For Every Child, whose mission is “to give the gift of Jewish learning to every child, regardless of ability.” MATAN provides support to children, teachers, and families through teacher workshops, school consultation, program development, consultation with families, curriculum development and modification, behavior management, community presentations, and neuropsychological assessments. MATAN works with synagogues and provides after-school Talmud Torah-equivalent programs for children with special needs. MATAN also offers teacher training and provides consultation to families and synagogues.

[H1] Youth Groups and Summer Camps

Parents recognize that their child’s Jewish education is comprised of more than the school experience. Opportunities to participate in the richness of Jewish communal and synagogue life are extremely important to a child’s Jewish and social development.

Yachad/National Jewish Council for Disabilities (NJCD) includes individuals with disabilities (ages 8 through senior adult) in Jewish programming across the United States and Canada. Yachad members participate in Shabbatons at various Orthodox synagogues. Yachad Shabbatons are generally staffed by high-school and college-age Orthodox youth, allowing for socialization between typical and disabled peers.

The Jewish Community Center of Manhattan and other Jewish Community Centers across the country offer programs that focus on providing Jewish cultural programming for children and young adults with varying needs. Initiatives include programs for school-age children such as after-school or Sunday programs, summer camps, sibling workshops, assistive technology, lectures and support programs for caregivers, and a Special Needs school fair. The JCC in Manhattan also offers a program for young adults featuring Sunday outings, lounges, drama therapy, technology training, and career development.

The Friendship Circle, founded in 1994 by the Lubavitch Foundation of Michigan—and now existing in many communities nationwide—offers programs to provide assistance and support to the families of children with special needs as well as to individuals and families struggling with addiction, isolation, and other crises. Teen volunteers are an integral part of their program serving individuals with special needs.

According to The Foundation for Jewish Camp, “No experience is more powerful, thrilling, or transformative than Jewish overnight summer camp.” Various Orthodox summer camp programs offer socialization and Jewish immersion experiences for children with special needs. Camp HASC, a summer program of the Hebrew Academy for Special Children, provides a seven-week overnight camping experience to over 300 children with mental and physical handicaps. HASC is specifically dedicated to children with special needs.

Yachad b’Nesher is a Yachad/NJCD program within Camp Nesher, a camp for typically developing children. Yachad b'Nesher specializes in mainstreaming boys and girls who are developmentally disabled. There are accessible bunks on each campus set up for these campers, their special needs, and their specially trained staff. Yachad campers participate daily in all activities with different bunks.

Yachad also offers Yad B’Yad travel programs, where typically developing high school students and members of Yachad together tour the East Coast, the West Coast, or Israel.

The Tikvah Program was founded nearly forty years ago at Camp Ramah in New England and now runs programs at several Ramah camps throughout the United States and Canada. Although Camp Ramah is the camping arm of the Conservative Movement, the Tikvah Program has historically attracted a significant population of its campers from Orthodox homes. In the Tikvah Program, campers are included in all aspects of the rich Jewish summer camping experience and benefit from the richness of “immersion” in Jewish communal life. Prayers are modified for the needs of the campers and generally involve singing, dancing, and repetition. Following spirited weekday morning prayers, campers begin and end breakfast with the appropriate blessings, return to bunks for nikayon (clean up), and participate in daily activities such as Jewish learning, Hebrew instruction, swimming, sports, arts and crafts, and vocational training. Tikvah campers even take a turn leading the camp in Shabbat evening services, and they perform a Jewish-themed play, partially in Hebrew, for the entire camp.

[H1] A Modern Orthodox Action Plan

Clearly, the Modern Orthodox community can do more to help make people with special needs feel more fully included in synagogue and communal life. A move toward full inclusion will require working collaboratively with others in the Jewish community (often across the “denominational divide”), continued education of rabbis, leaders and community members, and ongoing congregation and communal self-assessment.

[H2] Working Collaboratively with Others in the Jewish Community

The Jewish disabilities world has been very successful in breaking down denominational barriers. I heard a story of two Philadelphia-area Jewish parents of children with autism speaking very comfortably and openly—one was a Lubavitch rabbi, and the other was a female Reconstructionist rabbi. The chances of these two interacting in another context are slim. This heartwarming anecdote illustrates the potential for Jews of various backgrounds to work together. Successful collaboration already takes place in many communities across the United States.

In Westchester, New York, Carol Corbin is the chairperson of the Westchester Special Needs Roundtable. She is also the coordinator of Synagogue Inclusion, which is part of the UJA of New York Caring Commission. In the first year of the Roundtable, nearly forty Westchester area rabbis and parents from across the denominations, as well as directors of special-needs programs, JCCs, and various agencies, came together. They determined that the focus of the initial phase of their work should be on teacher training and congregational sensitivity. As their work has continued, the Roundtable has addressed ways to make congregations sensitive to populations with special needs. They have addressed such topics as building access and the social, emotional, and educational needs of those with special needs.

Shelly Christensen, Program Manager for the Jewish Community Inclusion Program for People with Disabilities (a program of Jewish Family and Children’s Service of Minneapolis, Minnesota), is a frequent presenter across the country on the topic of inclusion. Christenson, author of “Jewish Community Guide to Inclusion of People with Disabilities,” has worked with synagogues and agencies to help create awareness and action. Synagogues across the denominations are collaborating in an effort to serve those with special needs, and are taking part in “February 2009 is Jewish Disability Awareness Month.”

Following her presentation several years ago, each synagogue appointed a lay leader to a community liaison committee. Each committee meeting takes place at a different synagogue, and committee members tour different synagogues and discuss issues of accessibility. Christensen reports that members of the Orthodox community have been very involved with the committee, and that synagogues and schools have embraced inclusion. Synagogues of all denominations may wish to consider starting inclusion committees, which function much as social action, Israel action, and ritual committees.

 The Modern Orthodox community also has numerous opportunities to join the larger Jewish community in workshops and conferences. For example, the Partnership for Jewish Life and Learning in the Washington, D.C., area has a Department of Special Needs and Disability committee, which organizes a yearly conference, “Opening the Gates of Torah: Including People with Disabilities in the Jewish Community.” Their most recent conference featured twelve sessions on inclusion and attracted more than 350 people. In addition, this organization provides information, resources, consultation, and professional development to parents, teachers, and administrators in preschools, congregational schools, and Day Schools in community. Their extensive range of services strives to “help ensure that every member of the Jewish community, children and adults alike, has access to the range of social, educational, and religious opportunities that the Washington area has to offer.”

Modern Orthodoxy, with its long, impressive history of collaborating with the larger Jewish community, has an unprecedented opportunity to take the lead in the area of inclusion and accommodation of special needs. This willingness to work collaboratively and diplomatically can be useful in helping the community address sensitive issues such as religious and dietary policy in Jewish group residences.

[H2] Education of Rabbis, Leaders, and Community Members

Pulpit rabbis are often sensitive to the diverse needs of their membership. Yet each rabbi can point to the moment he was “sensitized” to the needs of a congregant he hadn’t previously “noticed.” These needs frequently come up when a family is considering the bar or bat mitzvah of a child with learning disabilities or physical disabilities. One rabbi sheepishly recalls being asked if there were any people in his congregation with visual impairments. He reported that he didn’t think so. When asked if his synagogue offered Braille siddurim or special seating for members with visual impairments, he reported that it did not. He was then asked if he felt there was any connection between the lack of accommodations and the lack of attendance by those with visual impairments. And, as noted earlier, parents of children with autism are often uncomfortable bringing their children into the sanctuary for fear they will be disruptive.

While parents are instrumental in educating rabbis, rabbinical seminaries can offer “disability awareness” as part of the rabbinical school curriculum. Rabbi Dov Linzer, Rosh Yeshiva and Dean of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School in Manhattan, recently brought the entire rabbinical school graduating class to a community-wide inclusion conference, held at the JCC of the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Linzer reports that the education of rabbinical students was encouraged by Shelly and Reuven Cohen, Manhattan residents, who had spent years seeking and developing educational and camp programs for Nathaniel, their son with special needs. When Nathaniel died, the Cohens approached Rabbi Linzer about possibly funding a program in their son’s memory, with the goal of training rabbis about developmental and physical disabilities. This program is now part of every YCT student’s rabbinical education. These rabbis will surely go out to their respective communities more knowledgeable and more sensitive to people with a wide range of special needs.

[H2] Ongoing Congregational and Communal Self-Assessment

Each synagogue has an opportunity and a responsibility to determine whether it is doing enough to meet the needs of people with special needs. This may involve surveying members as to their unique needs and assessing accessibility in their synagogues—from entrances, to the women’s section, to the reader’s desk.

[H1] Conclusion

Meeting the needs of those in our community with special needs involves a sincere belief that all Jews are created beTselem Elokim, and that each person has a right to respect and full inclusion in our communities. The Modern Orthodox community is in a unique position to champion efforts, within our synagogues and within our communities, to expand educational and socialization efforts. It is not our job to complete the task—but neither are we free to desist from it!

In the past generation, Orthodox Jewry in Israel has increasingly become more extreme and has isolated itself from mainstream Israeli society. There is a continued distance and alienation of the Orthodox population from the non-Orthodox community, and a seeming lack of interest in integrating halakha and Torah with the concerns and circumstances of modern life. A similar tendency can be seen in the American Modern Orthodox community, having shifted in the past years toward the right (both religiously and politically). This phenomenon is known as “the Hareidization of Orthodox Jewry.”

This article introduces an Israeli organization that strives to promote an alternative route for Israeli Orthodoxy, mainly by returning to the core values of Torah im derekh erets, a religious worldview promulgated by the great nineteenth-century rabbi, Samson Raphael Hirsch.

Ne'emanei Torah vaAvodah (NTA)

Ne'emanei Torah vaAvodah (NTA) is a religious Zionist non-political organization founded in 1978 as a reaction to the hareidization of Orthodox Jewry. It is highly committed to strengthening and restoring the foundations of religious Zionism. NTA promotes tolerance, equality, and social justice as key values within the religious community. We believe these values to be the ones that positively influence and define the unique Jewish and democratic character of Israeli society. The members of NTA, men and women, young and old, rabbis and academics, have come together to volunteer their time and energy in actualizing the potential of religious Zionism in Israel. NTA is committed to halakha and strives for an open, contemplative, and self-critical religious culture engaged in evolving halakhic discourse that is willing to address the challenges of our time.

 In order to achieve these goals, the organization focuses on education and advocacy for modification and improvement of the religious public services offered in Israel, as well as high-quality publications, and public relations to bring our ideas into the forefront of the social-religious discourse. A few of NTA main activities will be described here.

The De'ot Journal

In the religious world, many social and educational issues are considered taboo and are therefore never discussed seriously. Religious discussions are often restricted to the holiness of the land and ritualistic stringency, whereas the values of human rights, human dignity, and democracy are pushed into a forgotten corner. We strongly believe the discourse must not exclude any of those issues, and we promote a pluralistic discussion within Orthodox society.

NTA publishes a journal, De'ot. Our main goal is to advance an open and courageous discussion within the Orthodox community of contemporary challenges, on the basis of a commitment to halakha combined with sensitivity to social issues. The journal offers a unique platform for presenting different approaches that deal with issues, difficulties, and problems that are largely ignored within the religious community. The writers of the De'ot journal are affiliated with a broad spectrum of the Orthodox community.

De'ot was the first journal to discuss publicly a variety of sensitive and complex topics in Orthodox society. Among those issues are: the participation of women in prayer and in the public reading of the Torah; homosexuality in the religious community; domestic violence in religious society; halakhic rulings regarding the Internet and their implications; premarital sex, and so forth. In addition, the journal also includes essays on a wide range of topics concerning the shaping of a Jewish-Israeli identity, in which alternative ways of thinking are formulated. In fact, De'ot is unique in being the only Orthodox journal in Israel that permits the publication of viewpoints that dissent from “conventional” opinions in the Orthodox community.

Et liDrosh ("A Time to Interpret")

Another publication that is meant to broaden the cultural and religious discourse is a Shabbath-Portion leaflet by the name of Et liDrosh, whose purpose is to provide a platform for a wide range of opinions, and in this way to enrich and vary the Orthodox discussions that are conducted by means of the Shabbat-Portion leaflets. Young people in the organization produce the leaflet, which deals with issues of particular concern to them and their outlook. The leaflet discusses religious and Israeli topics in an effort to bridge the religious and modern worlds. The writers of Et liDrosh are prominent cultural figures from religious and Israeli society, alongside young leaders who seek to take part in shaping the face of society. Past interviewees include Rabbi Yuval Cherlow and Rabbi Yehuda Gilad, Prof. Aviezer Ravizky, Ilana Dayan, and Ehud Banai. We believe that the exposure of the Orthodox public to different voices is likely to assist a formation of openness, tolerance, and attentiveness to different approaches.

Bet Midrash Re'im

The Orthodox community offers many institutions for Orthodox youth that are dedicated to the study of Torah. However, while the vast majority of Torah study institutions are run separately for women and for men, Re’im encourages men and women to learn together. We believe that the separation of men and women in the Bet Midrash detaches the experience of learning from life, and creates a reality in which the place where young people study Torah does not reflect their way of life.

For the past few years, NTA has operated a unique Orthodox Bet Midrash, named Re'im (Companions) open to both men and women. The Bet Midrash is composed of a group of young Orthodox men and women in their twenties, most of them students, graduates of institutes of higher Jewish learning. In the Bet Midrash Re'im, participants diligently study the Bible and Talmud and discuss issues in Jewish Thought, including a wide spectrum of topics connected to the general world's culture. The teachers combine in their lessons different historical and cultural perspectives, and special emphasis is given to the relevance to the critical issues that concern day-to-day life in Israeli society in the twenty-first century.

Activities to Improve Religious Services in Israel

Religious services in the State of Israel are in a serious crisis. The lack of proper marriage and divorce proceedings, burial arrangements that are not always conducted with due sensitivity, the piling up of difficulties in the conversion process, and other issues that are not addressed properly—these all create situations of injustice and anguish to a wide sector of the Israeli and Jewish society who come into contact with the institutions responsible for religious services in Israel. These problems cause a severance of the general public from religious institutions and ultimately from Judaism itself. The public's lack of trust—and the increasing discoveries of corruption—have brought about the dismantling of the Ministry of Religious Affairs; but a solution has not yet been put into place for providing appropriate, well-administered religious services.

In an attempt to address these problems, NTA established a committee of experts, including rabbis and academics, whose task was to formulate a comprehensive program that will provide religious services in Israel. The committee, which operates on a volunteer basis, formulated its recommendations in a report entitled "Report of the Religious Services Committee," whose main conclusion speaks of the need to transfer administrative responsibility for matters pertaining to religion from the political echelon to the civilian realm.

NTA promotes the implementation of the Committee's recommendations through activities on the political level through an effort to form a lobby in the Knesset (the Israeli Parliament) for changing the current structure of religious services in Israel. There is also a level of public awareness: our efforts are focused on exposing the wider public to the religious services crisis, and to offering possible solutions for addressing this situation.

NTA is the only organization in Israel that has dealt in a comprehensive way with the issues of religious services and has formulated a detailed proposal for changes. In this regard, the organization has dealt not only with the problem of marriage and divorce—with which many women's organizations are also involved—but also with the entirety of the issues related to the connection between religion and state. The implementation of the Report’s recommendations has the potential to initiate substantial, positive change in the relationship of citizens to religious services, and to constitute a turning point in the Jewish character of the State of Israel.

 NTA cooperates with other organizations in working for a solution to specific problems in the area of religious services. In the Ikar coalition, we work together with organizations struggling for a solution to the problem of aginut, in which women whose husbands have refused to grant them a religious divorce are not free to remarry.

  We take part in running the non-profit organization, Menuha Nekhona–Jerusalem. This organization was founded in order to provide an inclusive burial procedure for all Jews (Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, and unaffiliated) in Jerusalem. It is a known fact that an exclusively Hareidi monopoly runs all of the religious services in Israel, including all the burial procedures. This reality is even further emphasized in Jerusalem's cemetery, which is dominated by strict hlakhic rules. A daughter is not permitted to say Kaddish, a wife may not eulogize her husband, and a non-Orthodox Jew won't be buried unless approved by the Hareidi officials in charge. These are just a few examples of the problems of an exclusive Orthodox monopoly. NTA, together with Menuha Nekhona, strives to change this reality, and offers inclusive burial procedures in Jerusalem's cemetery. We already received approval from the Israeli Supreme Court for a burial area in Jerusalem's cemetery, and we plan to start using this area in the coming year.

Together with the women’s organizations Mavoi Satum and Kolekh, we are teaming up with Modern Orthodox rabbinic groups in Israel and in America in a landmark initiative to create an alternative rabbinical court. This is an attempt to create a real change in the religious apparatus that chains woman, converts, immigrants, non-Orthodox Jews, and others, and holds the entire country hostage to an antiquated system of a Hareidi monopoly. We believe that this alternative Bet Din could be the way to break this monopoly, and we hope that it will start functioning in the coming months.

  In conclusion, let me return to the title of this article: Can we prevent the hareidization of Modern Orthodox Judaism? There isn't, of course, any sure way to know how Orthodox Jewry will develop. We can promise, though, that in NTA we are doing everything possible within our means to promote a more pluralistic, tolerant, and inclusive Judaism that will restore the basic values of combining Torah with derekh erets; halakha with morality and human rights; the ancient Jewish tradition with the modern world. We hope we will succeed in preventing, to the extent possible, the hareidization of Modern Orthodox Jewry.

For comments please contact us by email: [email protected].

Over the last two decades much ink that has been spilled regarding the halachic analysis of whether or not brain-stem death is equivalent to halachic death. So much has been written, in fact, that from a substantive point of view, little, if anything, new can be said.

The debate, far from being theoretical, has far reaching implications. When the brain-stem dies, if the patient had previously been connected to a ventilator, the heart may continue beating for a few more days before it too dies. Since organs – for the purposes of life saving transplantation - typically need to be recovered before the heart stops beating, we need to know if halacha views a beating heart as a sign of life. If so, organ transplantation would be forbidden since removing the organs would be akin to killing the donor.

Halachic Analysis

Many, if not all, of the halachic articles written in English and Hebrew over the past 25 years, both accepting and rejecting brain-stem death as halachic death, may be found at the website of the Halachic Organ Donor Society (www.hods.org).  The primary halachic sources are Talmud Yoma page 85a and Mishna Ohalot 1:6.

Institutional Positions

Among the orthodox rabbinic institutions that take a position on this issue are the Chief Rabbinate of Israel and the Rabbinical Council of America who both accept brain death as halachic death and support organ donation. The Halachic committee of the Chief Rabbinate issued its ruling with unanimous consent in 1986. In 1991 the Rabbinical Council of America held a three day convention at Spring Glen, N.Y. where halachic presentations were heard both for and against brain-stem death.

The RCA membership then voted to adopt a resolution accepting brain-stem death as halachic death and supporting organ donation. [Even though no new medical information has surfaced that was not considered in their deliberations before the vote in 1991, the RCA is currently reviewing its position on this issue.]

This RCA resolution, the article in the NY Times announcing the RCA’s newly adopted position, and the RCA’s Living Will which explicitly promotes heart transplants from people who have died brain-stem death are available at www.hods.org.

Rabbinic Positions

While the rabbis who reject brain-stem death succeed in making their voices heard, less well known are the prominent rabbinic figures that accept brain-stem death and support organ donation. They are former Chief Rabbis Avraham Shapiro z”l, Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu and Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef, current Sephardic Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar, Rabbi Shaul Yisraeli z”l, Rabbi Zalman Nechemia Goldberg, Rabbi Avraham Shlush, Rabbi Nachum Rabinovitch, and Rabbi Dr. Avraham Steinberg.

While Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach and Rabbi Yosef Dov Solevitchik accepted brain-stem death as halachic death their positions are often challenged as being mischaracterized. Instead of revisiting their writings, as has been done ad nauseum, I think it important to note the oral testimonies given by people who spoke with them about this issue.  (All of the following oral testimonies are available to be seen on video at www.hods.org)

Rabbi Moshe Feinstein

Rabbi Moshe Tendler, Rabbi Mordechai Tendler, Rabbi Shabtai Rappaport, and Dr. Ira Greifer testified that they heard many times Rabbi Moshe Feinstein state that he was of the opinion, and rule in actual cases, that a person in a state of unconsciousness and irreversible cessation of respiration, as confirmed by brain-stem death, is halachicly dead – even though the heart continues to beat – and should be an organ donor.
 

The following is a partial transcript of Rav Dovid Feinstein’s emphatic and unambiguous testimony:

“My father’s position was very simply that the stopping of breathing is death. It doesn’t matter if the heart is functioning or not functioning… that is the way he explained the gmorah in Yoma… I don’t think anyone ever argued that point [when he was alive]. It is very simple - cessation of breathing. I don’t think anyone ever said any differently… it doesn’t matter if his heart is working or is not working. If a patient is available for a heart transplant… he would definitely encourage it.”

Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach

Rabbi Auerbach, after initially rejecting brain-stem death, ultimately accepted it as halachic death after the famous sheep experiment showed that a decapitated (thus ‘brain-stem dead’) pregnant sheep attached to a ventilator could have its blood pressure and heart beat maintained and fetus kept alive. He did, however, require proof that every cell in the brain was dead. He dictated his position to Rabbi Dr. Avraham Steinberg and had the ruling published in ASSIA magazine (no 53-54, 1994). Rav Steinberg states:

“Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach told me, specifically… I have written his words and he checked it and agreed for it to be published, and his position clearly was that the heart, per se, is not necessarily a sign of life and death. In other words, a person can be defined as dead even though his heart is still functioning. What is important to Rav Auerbach was brain function.”

Rabbi Yosef Dov Soloveitchik

There are students and family members of Rabbi Soloveitchik who claim they never heard the Rav accept brain –stem death as halachic death. This is not tantamount to asserting that they heard the Rav reject the idea. It is possible that those people simply never heard him state his position on the issue.

Since the RCA had a policy of accepting Rav Soloveitchik’s position on all halachic matters, Rabbi Benjamin Walfish, former Executive Director of the RCA, turned to Rav Soloveitchik when he was asked about brain-stem death by RCA member Rabbi David Silver z”l : Rabbi Walfish states:

“I met with Rav Soloveitchik in 1983…84 to discuss this concept of brain-stem death and Rabbi Soloveitchik told me personally that he accepted it… I’ll testify to that. As far as the gmorah’s definition of death, the Rav felt that it was the stopping of breathing that was the definition of death according to the gmorah [Talmud Yoma 85a].
…Rabbi Tendler told me about the Harvard criteria and brain-stem death and so on and I went to see the Rav on the subject…He asked me whether Rabbi [Moshe] Tendler is certain that this test [Apnea test]is conclusive without any doubt and that it has been tested and it’s accepted as conclusive proof that the brain-stem is dead.  I said yes. I offered to have Rabbi Tendler call the Rav and the Rav said ‘no it’s not necessary. If Rabbi Tendler says this is so he knows what he is talking about in these matters and we can accept it.’ And that is when I wrote the letter to Rabbi [David] Silver explaining to him the procedure and telling him the exact language that should be written into the Pennsylvania law as the definition of death.”

Done with Brain Death

After all is said and done, there remains a legitimate halachic debate as to whether or not brain-stem death is halachic death. There are enough living halachic authorities on both sides of the divide that one is forced to recognize a plurality of halachic positions on this issue as there are with many halachic issues. The Halachic Organ Donor Society offers a unique organ donor card for the Jewish community that allows people to define death either at brain-stem death or at cessation of heartbeat.  At either point, one may become an organ donor and help save lives. No matter what your definition of death is, everyone is warmly invited to register for an organ donor card on-line at www.hods.org to fulfill the mitzvah of pickuah nefesh.  “Lo ta’amod al dam re’echa – Don’t stand idly by the blood of your brother.” Leviticus 19:16.

As adults with jobs, children, and endless responsibilities,
we often think back to our childhoods, the “good old
days,” when everything was easy and carefree. We played
in the park, played with our friends, played sports, and played imaginative
games with our siblings. We didn’t have to worry about feeding our families,
paying bills, staying up with our babies at night, and then trying to be
functional the next day! We just had to be kids!

Now, being a parent myself, I often wonder how carefree our children feel today.
Young children attending Day Schools have long days full of learning
both General Studies and Judaic Studies. The day starts at approximately
8:00 A.M. and can go as long as 4:30 P.M. The children practice and learn
new skills that enable them to become articulate, educated, and successful
adults. There is no greater gift then seeing your child read for the first
time, write a creative book about dinosaurs, and translate a biblical verse
better than you can yourself. We owe this to the great schools our children
attend, and to the wonderful teachers who are dedicated to giving our children
these amazing skills. However, what exactly is the role of homework?

Educators agree that homework increases a child’s learning—as long
as it isn’t busy work and is kept within certain time boundaries. However,
if given too much, the results, I believe, could be detrimental to both child
and parent. When school-aged children get home from a long day of learning,
they need time to turn off their brains for a while. Just as we all need
“down time” at the end of the day, to watch television or read the paper or
a good novel, so do our children. Not only do they need down time, but
they can use this time to develop other important hobbies and skills.
Whether curling up with a book or a magazine, playing sports, taking a
musical instrument lesson, having a playdate with a friend, playing board
games with their siblings, or even just having a chat with their parents
unrelated to school or homework—down time like this is valuable for
growing up, building self-esteem, and developing good conversational and
social skills.

The amount of homework continues to grow year by year. As children
get older, more is expected of them. Thirty minutes of homework becomes
an hour, an hour becomes two… When does it stop?

As I wrote before,the work not only affects the children, but the parents as well. As my oldest
child began getting homework, afternoons became battles. It is clear to
me now why it took my son a seemingly endless time to do his homework!
He needed to shut his brain down for a while! But back then, we
used to fight. A lot. I would tell him if he would finish quickly that he
would have a chunk of free time. I would offer rewards. I would sit with
him. I would stay in the other room, then come back to check in.

My afternoons became so stressful; not only were my nerves shot, but it obviously
affected my son and my other children. I strongly resented the idea that
I was ignoring my other children, yet I wasn’t spending quality time with
my son and his homework!

As much as I understand the need to review the day’s work, I did not
understand the need for more than that. Our kids do as they are supposed
to, just as we did as kids. There may be groaning and moaning about it,
but it does become routine, and complaints aren’t as strong as they were.
But does that mean it’s acceptable? Does that mean that our kids don’t
need periods of time to choose activities that interest them?

Some parents I know have no problem with the amount of homework given, and wouldn’t
mind if there was even more! They feel that not only is it enhancing
their children’s learning, but provides educational structure for the
evening. They think that learning, as all of us would agree, is more productive
than playing video games or other mindless activities. However,
with some monitoring of duration, playing such games is a good way to
tune out for a bit. In excess, video game playing is probably not the best
idea! But there are so many ways that kids could have down time other
than video games. It is up to us as parents to give our children good choices
and guidance.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are parents who struggle, as
I do, with the evening juggling act of balancing our housework, tending
to younger children, helping more than one child with homework, cooking
dinner, and so forth. I know many people who have to hire tutors or
homework helpers just to physically have someone there to sit with their
child, because they are either working parents, or just don’t have the time
or the patience! Some kids can sit down to do their own work, but there
are many others who need help with the content of the work given, or
help focusing into the work after a long day at school.

If homework is such an important aid for our children, why does it create such havoc in our
homes? Why should our children be sitting doing work at home after sitting
for the majority of the school day? Our children need to move, to be
silly, to choose their nightly activities after working all day. Our children
just need time to be.

There has to be some type of happy medium, where children have
some time to review what they have learned over the course of the day, but
it shouldn’t take over the whole evening! Homework is given over the
weekend; homework is given over summer vacation! They never get a
period of time without it!

The problem is that, unfortunately, I do not think this will change much.

I just hope for the sanity of children and parents
everywhere, homework will be more review and less busywork. I
wish there would be more creative assignments, something that might be
less repetitive than what they have been working on in school. School is
the place for going through the basic drills and building on them. Afterschool
time should be time for opportunities for other, very important
skills to be learned, practiced, and enjoyed. We want our children to know
their ABC’s and 123’s, but at what expense? Will my child not get into college
or find a job without doing two hours of long division every night?
Are seven hours of school not enough?

Maybe my tuition is so highbecause it accounts for the two hours of extra work at home! Kids need
time to be kids, and parents need time to be parents. If children cannot do
their homework in a reasonable time, then it should not be done at home.
There is still something called schoolwork, right?