National Scholar Updates

Do not say that earlier days were better than these!

—Kohelet 7:10

My late father, Rabbi Kopul Rosen died in 1962, at the age of 49. He was a remarkably charismatic personality, tall and elegant, an orator and public speaker of a type and style no longer to be found. He was arguably the most influential and certainly the most popular rabbi in the Britain of his day. But he was also the symbol of a kind of rabbi and a style of Orthodoxy that has all but disappeared.

My father was born in London in 1913 to a very modest family, and his gifts were recognized at an early age. He was invited to preach in various synagogues from the age of 13. He was taken under the wing of the great Rabbi Yechezkel Abramsky, Av Bet Din in London at the time and he was sent to learn at Mir in Lithuania, where he received his semikha from the Rav of the town and the Rosh Yeshiva. There he came under the powerful influence of the great mussar mashgiah, R. Yeruham Levovitz, and indeed he gave me his Hebrew name. Mussar became the most significant element in my father's early spiritual life.

He returned to England in 1937 and was appointed the Rav of a prominent synagogue in Manchester before being promoted as Communal Rabbi of Glasgow in 1944. Despite his responsibilities, he found time to travel once a month to Gateshead to learn with the great Rav Dessler who was staying there at that time before he moved to Israel.

In 1954, my father was called to London to become the Principal Rabbi of the Federation of Synagogues. It had been established by Lord Swaythling as a more Orthodox alternative to the dominant United Synagogue. It was a meteoric rise for a man in his early thirties. While he was in the rabbinate my father wore the “old-style” square cappel and frock coat. By contrast, my mother, although a model rebbetzin, did not normally cover her hair. My father, together with other distinguished “heimishe” rabbis, ate at the “unsupervised” vegan restaurant in Leicester Square and enjoyed the opera at Covent Garden. But this was a time when the United Synagogue itself possessed not one working kosher mikvah, and hardly any of its officers, let alone its members, were Shomer Shabbat.

After Chief Rabbi Hertz died in 1946, my father, only 32 at the time, was one of two final candidates to succeed him. Not only his youth but his independence told against him. He felt that the options open to him in the rabbinate were so limited that he increasingly focused on education, as this was a distraction from the pettiness and wrangling of communal affairs.

While still with the Federation, my father founded a Jewish boarding school, Carmel College, in the Berkshire countryside in 1948. It was modelled on the great English public schools, with their outstanding academic standards and well-rounded cultural and sporting programs. He wanted, in his own words, to offer the very best of Jerusalem and Athens. In his opinion, a Judaism that was not based on serious study would not survive. But equally, a person who could not find his way in the modern world and feel at home in Western culture would be lacking too. His vision of “authentic” Judaism was Maimonidean both in its elitism and its breadth of scholarship. His worldview had a lot in common both with R. Shimshon Raphael Hirsch on the one hand and Rav J. B. Soloveitchik on the other (with the caveat that many who purport to speak in their names nowadays do not).

In 1949, my father resigned from the rabbinate. Coincidentally, he also resigned as president of the Mizrahi Movement in the UK when it went into politics in Israel. He was adamantly opposed to religious political parties. He believed, correctly with hindsight, that religion would end up, in his words, “prostituting itself” for political gain. Yet he was always a religious Zionist and insisted on our using Havara Sepharadit when speaking Ivrit. His dream was to settle in Israel. At the time that he died, he had been negotiating to establish a school similar to Carmel College in Israel, outside Petah Tikvah.

Our family moved to the school campus of Carmel at Greenham Common outside Newbury. Three years later the school transferred to Mongewell Park some ten miles south of Oxford, and that was where we were brought up, in rural splendour—but isolated from the main London community.

Religious life at Carmel was self-sufficient, a little community of its own in which we were all encouraged to participate. When the school was in recess it became a sort of intellectual retreat for staff and visitors, rabbinic and academic, who would come down for weekends. My father particularly delighted in hosting visitors from Oxford University and from Israel. I remember their exchanges, the sparring on matters secular and religious and the constant appearance of stacks of books of all kinds that one had to read.

We were constantly being exposed to ideas of all kinds. I recall his constant reiteration of the need to understand and feel comfortable in dealing with the dominant culture and the best way of doing that was by being confident and well grounded in one's own. He was not in favour of enclavism, of hiding within a mental ghetto to protect oneself from outside challenges. Rather, he espoused confronting these challenges and learning how to either reconcile, accept, or reject. He was inclusive in his attitude toward individuals of all types of Jewish identity while holding strongly to his Orthodoxy and having no patience for Reform ideology. When he returned from a visit to America he told us how he was taken aback by the prominent rabbis and communal leaders he met who held any degree of religious practice in contempt.

Most of my father's pupils did not come from religious backgrounds, and he therefore saw his role as one of educating and encouraging, of winning over by presenting Judaism as both a vibrant experience and a great storehouse of learning and wisdom. Above all, he was lenient in his halakhic decisions, for others if not for himself.

This was the atmosphere in which I grew up—an atmosphere that was religiously and intellectually stimulating and yet on the fringes of the community, neither part of it yet neither completely detached. In 1967, my father sent me, a rebellious teenager, to Kol Torah yeshiva in Bayit veGan in Jerusalem. He believed that only an intensive “old-world” yeshiva education could give a Jew that profound respect and love for Torah that was essential for informed religious commitment, in the same way that he urged pupils to get a thorough and intense education in Western culture and science.

In Israel at this time you could count the number of “foreign” yeshiva bahurim on the fingers of your hands. Israel was still a poor, struggling, and largely socialist country. The daily diet revolved around TCP (tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers), together with coarse black bread and margarine, and the universal eggplant. Meat was almost unavailable; we might get chicken for Shabbat if we were lucky. Hardly anyone had a car, apart from government ministers, and one contemporary who was fortunate enough to have a Vespa was regarded as something of a Rothschild. But there was an amazing pioneering atmosphere that is now largely lost.

The extent of the antagonism that existed to religion after the State was founded is largely forgotten. The divide in Israel between the Old Yishuv and the left-wing, secular pioneers, goes back a very long way. I arrived in Haifa by boat from Marseilles. Haifa was the most secular of Israeli cities and so left-wing that it was nicknamed “Red Haifa.” It was the only place in Israel where public transport continued on Shabbat. I was made fun of for wearing my cappel and was even spat at by a wild woman on Nof haCarmel. I was authoritatively informed that I did not need religion any more now that I had left the ghetto and come to this socialist paradise of liberated Jews. I asked for candles on Friday night at a Tiberias youth hostel. The caretaker told me I did not need to keep Shabbat any more now that there was Jewish State, and besides he did not fight for Israeli independence for people like me to drag the State back into the Middle Ages.

Employment was almost entirely controlled by the Histadrut, Ahdut haAvodah, and left-wing parties. It was unheard of to see men or women with head coverings working in public service. The League Against Religious Coercion used to send tenders full of brawny Kibbutzniks into Mea Shearim on a Shabbat spoiling for a fight. It is true the divide today remains as bitter as ever, but then the Orthodox were written off as unwanted fossils. Now there is a political battle for supremacy between rivals that count large followings, and both sides are more nuanced.

The yeshiva world then was dominated by the mighty institutions of Hevron and Mir in Jerusalem and Ponevez and Slabodka in B’nei Brak. The only Hassidic yeshiva of note at that time was that of the Tchebiner Rov. The Brisker Rov and the legacy of the Hazon Ish were powerful influences but not yet institutionalized. There were other smaller yeshivot in Bnei Brak and Jerusalem, and some rural ones like Kfar Hassidim. The once great Merkaz haRav Kook, torchbearer of religious Zionism, was a small collection of incompatible individuals living on its glorious past, around a courtyard at the back of the old Egged terminal on Rehov Kook. There was no such thing as a “modern” or a ba’al-teshuva yeshiva, much less institutions for American kids on one-year excursions.

Kol Torah was the new institution then, unique in that its old Mir Rashei Yeshiva had determined to build a clean, modern yeshiva with running water, baths, and the sort of facilities not available elsewhere. It was impressive, but too clinical for me. I was invited to the poorer, more primitive and less institutionalized yeshiva of Be'er Yaakov, for a Shabbat, and I was hooked.

Be'er Yaakov had recently started up, amongst the orchards and jackals of the coastal plane. It was a collection of bedbug-ridden huts dominated by an unlikely pair of master teachers with their rival groups of devotees, the intellectually brilliant and jovial Moshe Shapiro and the somber mussar giant Shlomo Volbe, both graduates of Mir in Lithuania. It was intense, passionate, and totally inspirational, such a contrast to insipid Anglo Jewry. Here one could experience the passion of prayer, the introspection of serious Mussar, and the excitement of intense Torah study. Perhaps it was its smallness that enabled it to be so different, and of course as it grew it lost its initial pioneering magic.

Rav Volbe was rumored to have studied philosophy in Germany before rejecting its values and moving to Mir. Certainly his Mussar had an analytical and intellectual aspect to it. When I heard him talk about Rambam's concept of “The Perfect Unity of God” I dared to confide that I did not understand what a perfect unity was and asked if this did not conflict with Rambam's suggestion that one could only say what God was not. He smiled at me, his gray eyes fixing me through his bottle round glasses, “Don't worry, young man. Learn Torah and one day you'll understand.” In all my years in yeshiva this was the nearest I ever got to discussing philosophy.

Be'er Yaakov was where I met Brooklyn boys for the first time. They seemed to have a social scale of values that all Jews were better than all white non-Jews, all white non-Jews were automatically better than all black non-Jews, and the only exceptions to the rule were Lubavitch Hassidim who were worse than the worst black non-Jews. This was my first intimation that I was seriously out of intellectual step with a significant part of the Orthodox world!

After two different periods at Be'er Yaakov, I wanted to add other dimensions to my yeshiva curriculum and transferred to Merkaz haRav Kook, largely because of the Nazir's evening lectures on mysticism and philosophy. I was disappointed by the yeshiva itself because of its heavy involvement in Israeli politics, which I found unsavory and corrupt. (Only later did I discover that my father had resigned from Presidency of the Mizrahi organization in Britain when the Israeli branch entered the Knesset. He had never discussed it with me. He later told me he wanted me to come to my own conclusions.)

One lesson I learnt from Merkaz was that it is “The Hour that Maketh the Man.” Rav Zvi Yehuda Kook had a small coterie of faithful students around him. Most of them are now prominent in Israeli religious life. But he was largely ignored both by the rest of the yeshiva and certainly by the outside world as a man of weird and messianic views. After 1966, when the West Bank was captured and the wave of idealism swept the country, Rav Zvi Yehuda was transformed overnight into the voice of radical territorial messianism.

Thousands came to hear him repeat the same ideas that a year or two earlier had been all but ignored. This taught me, too, that tides of opinion and ideology, political and religious, go in and out according to external factors that the individual cannot hope to predict or control. I found this frustrating in one way, because it meant one's opinions mattered less than what was fashionable at the time. But it was also ultimately comforting. Even if my perception of the spiritual life was currently out of fashion, eventually the circle would turn.

I returned to the UK because my father had insisted I have, if not a career, at least qualifications that would enable me to be self-sufficient. My yeshiva contemporaries tried all sorts of devices to prevent me from leaving, moral and spiritual blackmail. And I tried. But my father, fortunately and thankfully, stood firm. When we discussed my future, I suggested I might want to go into Jewish education or the rabbinate. Even if secretly my father might have been pleased, his jaundiced view of a rabbi's life led him to insist that I have another career as a fall-back, so I applied to Cambridge University to study architecture. Tragically, he lost his battle with leukemia and died just a few months into his 50th year. Now there was no doubt in my mind I had to try my best to follow in his footsteps.

My plan was to get the most I could out of Cambridge. I switched my field of study to philosophy. They called it “moral science” in those days, although it was neither moral nor scientific. But it was a wonderful introduction to rational thought, and in particular, to linguistic analysis, which stood me in great stead in my life as a teacher. I loved Cambridge and delighted in all the cultural and sporting as well as intellectual opportunities it offered. Although there was a small vibrant community of yeshiva graduates and a little student synagogue with Shabbat meals and regular services, nevertheless my Jewish soul went into a kind of hibernation.

Eventually it was time to exchange one world for another and I wanted it to be as intense and overwhelming an experience in Torah as I had just experienced in Western culture. So I wrote to Reb Leizer Yehuda Finkel of Mir, asking if I could come to learn there. I chose Mir because I was now in my twenties and wanted older company. In those days Mir was almost entirely a Kollel. I also wanted to be in the intense atmosphere of Mea Shearim and Bet Yisrael. It was hemmed into its own little extreme Ghetto, close to the Jordanian border in a divided Jerusalem, near the Mandlebaum Gate the only crossing point east. It was as far from Cambridge as one could get. Reb Leizer Yehuda replied, accepting me. Of course it was nothing to do with my achievements, but simply his policy of accepting the sons of old Mir alumni.

By the time I arrived in Mir in 1965, Reb Leizer Yehuda had died. I was ushered into his son Reb Chaim Zev Finkel “Chazap,” who received me kindly. I told him I wanted to learn in Mir. He asked me where I had come from. I said from Cambridge.

“Oh,” he said, “this is not the right yeshiva for you, and anyway we are very full. We have no space.”

“But I was at Be'er Yaakov before that,” I replied.

“Well, that is different. But tell me what did you study at Cambridge?”

“Philosophy,” I replied.

“No, this is definitely not the place for you. Try Merkaz haRav Kook.”

“But I have a letter here from Reb Leizer Yehuda accepting me.” I produced my trump card.

He took it and read it. “Oh, so you are the son of Kopul. Well, I cannot go against my father. But I warn you, if you talk any philosophy here in the yeshiva you will be thrown out.”

What was I going to say, that the philosophy I had studied was not anti-religious? It was not at all interested in religion because God was non-empirical? As A. J. Ayer had said, any statement that could not be empirically verified was “non-sense” (not rubbish, simply a subject there was no point in discussing rationally). Or that as Wittgenstein had said, “That about which we cannot speak we must remain silent?” Besides, I had no intention of spending any time on anything other than Torah. I knew that I would have to suppress the rational side of my mind. So I was only too happy to agree and thus began my years in Mir.

The traditional yeshiva was neither designed to deal with theological issues nor with intellectual doubt. The assumption was and remains that everyone had bought into the essential principles and ideas of its world. The question of belief in God or a definition of “truth” would never arise in such an environment. Certainly there was no one there who would have known how to respond to a challenge from outside its own parameters. In many ways, it makes sense for an institution to concentrate on its core expertise. But it meant that for the person who thought independently or who had questions that required rational answers, the traditional yeshiva was unable to meet those needs.

Much later, different types of yeshiva emerged in which discussion and debate were encouraged, mainly what are called ba’al-teshuva or outreach yeshivot. But even then the debate is usually within defined parameters and from a theological rather than a philosophical point of view. That is to say, theology is committed to its conclusions even before a word is spoken; whereas philosophy tries to discover what the answer might be or might not be. Still I have my doubts as to whether it is worth diluting a specialized institution. Anyway, it did not matter to me. I had my fill of rational argument at Cambridge. Abstractions had lost much of their attraction. I really did want to leave that behind while I concentrated on a totally different sphere of religious experience.

Sadly “Chazap” himself soon died and that left Reb Chaim Shmulevitz as the Rosh Yeshiva and his son-in-law Reb Nochum “Trokker” as the power behind the throne. Reb Beinish Finkel was also a Rosh Yeshiva, but despite his impressive appearance he was not in the same caliber as Reb Chaim, and devoted most his time to fundraising.

When, in my second year, Reb Chaim began to give mussar talks as well as his talmudic tours de force he was simply extending his brilliant talmudic method to the realms of midrash instead of halakha or pilpul. Reb Chaim would occasionally launch into the political arena. He said he would not allow any of his pupils to teach in a Yeshiva Tikhonit. And during election time he said he knew that the major religious party that spoke for the Hareidi world at that stage, Agguda, was corrupt but that everyone should vote Agguda because that would benefit the Yeshiva world most. The only way I could get out of being press-ganged into working for Agguda was by declaring myself a member of Neturei Karta! Actually a significant proportion of Mir Kolleniks at that time were loyal to Neturei Karta, including the first “foreign minister” of the movement, the American Moshe Hirsch.                      

Mir was a shadow then of its present incarnation. The main building was the same on the outside then as it is today. In those days, though, you entered to the smell of the urinals on the ground floor that everyone in the area took advantage of, and the bedrooms next to them were the refuge of waifs and strays in Bet Yisrael. The main Bet Midrash upstairs was half its present size. It filled up only during the mornings, when many Yerushalmi kollel men chose to come and study in Mir. It was packed again for the shiurim given by Reb Chaim and Reb Nochum. But otherwise in the evenings it was all but empty except for the small number of single men who had no home to go back to. In winter the improvised paraffin metal stove that heated the hall emitted noxious fumes and clouds of smoke. But for the few late-night learners it was a haven, as well as a place where the local beggars could come and warm themselves against the fierce Yerushalmi winters. The north side of the building housed the rashei yeshiva and their families and the place had an air of run down familiarity. Mir then was small, intimate, and familial, with only a handful of “foreign” students.

I was given a bed in a room on the third floor with two forty-year-old bachelors. The room was a garbage dump. My roommates spent a good part of each day lying on their beds, chain smoking, making notes and comments on the Gemara. They seemed impervious to the filth, the smell, the dirty laundry, the ash, the dirt, and the bugs crawling up the wall. Initially I was in a state of shock, close to tears. I wondered if this was a last ditch attempt to stop me from coming to Mir. But I soon set to work, cleaned and disinfected. All the while, the two old bachelors continued to ignore me. I imposed my standards of cleanliness, bought them ashtrays, and within six months they had both left to get married. The only thing I could not clean or repair was the one bathroom, which served as a general dumping ground and storeroom. And so visits to Zupnick's mikvah became the only opportunities for hot water.

The contrast with university could not have been greater, especially the notion of study for study's sake, not to pass exams or to graduate. It was far more demanding than any other sort of study I had experienced. The dedication of men of all ages was tangible, completely immersed and living every moment they could in Torah. It was intoxicating. Now my soul came alive and the values of Cambridge receded into the past. It was easy to spend 16 to 18 hours a day in study, and I had so much to catch up on. It was seductive. I considered making it my life. The shidukhim I was offered all required that I devote myself entirely to the yeshiva world. But I knew my loyalty to my father's memory required me to go back out into the world of disappearing Jewry and tilt at windmills.

I stayed at Mir throughout the year, not like nowadays when flights are cheap and visits home or for vacation are considered the norm. I left only one summer to go to Southern Rhodesia, as it was then, on a mission to help the community in Bulawayo. Afterward, it was arranged that I would meet up with Rav Beinish in Johannesburg to help his fundraising campaign. I asked Reb Chaim what he thought I ought to do about Apartheid and racial discrimination. He said, to his credit, that he did not know enough about the situation to give me an opinion and I should make up my own mind. How unlike so many current rashei yeshiva who seem to have received “Daas Torah” on every possible situation. My Rhodesia experience was electrifying and confirmed my desire to preach, teach and outreach.

Another year, I returned to England for a summer break to be with my widowed mother and family. Otherwise, though I say it myself, I was a complete “matmid.” I had no time or interest in anything else—no books, newspapers, music, or other distraction.

The only external influences I allowed myself were when occasionally on a Shabbat I would emerge from the depths of Mea Shearim and venture into Rehavia. Either I would visit the former Chief Rabbi of South Africa, Louis Rabinowitz, or Yaacov and Penina Herzog. Louis was primarily concerned with my future as a community rabbi. He kept insisting that I should not lose myself in the ivory tower of yeshiva, but prepare myself for the outside world and absorb as much knowledge as I could of Bible, history, and thought. He was a great raconteur and liked to entertain with stories of his rabbinical battles, either for Zionism or against Apartheid. His emphasis on national and universal issues had a significant influence on me.

The Herzog house was altogether more ethereal. The younger son of former Chief Rabbi Herzog, Yaacov Herzog, had been the Israeli Ambassador to Canada and had argued publicly with the notoriously anti-Jewish historian Arnold Toynbee, who found no room in his history of the world for the Jews. A career diplomat, he was then the Director of the Foreign Ministry. His rabbinical credentials were impressive, but it was his combination of Jewish and Western culture in such an elegant and appealing way that really had a greater impact on me than anyone other than my father. He was actually appointed Chief Rabbi of the UK, but illness intervened, and yet another brilliant mind and magnetic personality died far too early.

Another of his regular guests was Haym Soloveitchik, brilliant, incisive, and critical of the religious distortions he saw around him. He too was a strong influence on me in emphasizing the importance of academic analysis and discipline. I was tempted to consider academia. But I could not envision myself in an ivory tower. I did however realize that one of the most important elements in a good education is to have the privilege of meeting and getting to know great minds and listening to alternative perspectives.

Eventually, I devoted myself to Yoreh Deah with a brilliant but strange Alter Mirrer, an old bachelor called Sobel who knew every word of every commentary by heart. Although he always brought his own text with him, he never seemed to need to consult it. He was also an expert in linguistics and I was always being asked to order books by the great Danish linguists for him.

I jumped through the hoops and passed the exams and interrogations of various dayanim until I came finally to ask Reb Chaim for semikha. He asked me to go and speak to Reb Nochum, because he had some things he wanted to ask me. I walked with trepidation down to his subterranean apartment. We had only had a few extended personal conversations of significance during my time in Mir. One was when he wanted suggest a shidukh. Another was one Pesah I stayed in yeshiva and we had a conversation over the divide between the secular and the religious in Israel. He told me that he did not really understand what the problem was. His children realized and understood the problem but did not know how to deal with it. Perhaps, he suggested, his grandchildren would be able to rectify matters.

I can only recall one conversation with Reb Chaim. It was some years after I had left and had come back to recharge my batteries. It was over the limits of leniency in halakha and the room for change. I talked about the pressures in the rabbinate for change, particularly on women's issues. He said that in his opinion, though he was not paskening, so long as I could find two Rishonim who agreed with what I wanted to do, I could, within my own community, permit what custom had not.

Reb Nochum was always wise, measured, and friendly. But I did not know what to expect this time. He sat me down and then, with that twinkle in his eye and half-smile, he started.

“Before I can recommend Reb Chaim to give you semikha I want to clarify a few things that I have heard that you said.”

My stomach churned. I had behaved impeccably. I had studied diligently. I had not, to my memory, ever stepped out of line in any way or raised any controversial issues. But clearly I had been spied upon relentlessly. What was going to come out?

“I heard that you said that shlogging kapporos (slaughtering chickens before Yom Kippur as a ceremonial of atonement) is barbaric.”

“Yes,” I admitted. I had, after all, been sick after my first practical shehita lesson. I could not eat meat for months after visiting an abattoir. I admitted I found the kapporos business barbaric.

“Actually, I agree with you. We never did kapporos back in Lithuania. But if you are going to be a Rav in a community you need to be very careful what language you use. Barbaric is a very harsh word and people will get the wrong impression. Do you understand me?”

“Yes. I understand what you are saying and of course you are right. Hakhamim hizaharu beDivreikhem.”

“Yes, but you also said that Rambam cannot answer our problems because he based himself on Aristotle and nowadays no one thinks the way Aristotle did.” I admitted that error too, relieved if after years of being observed this was all they had against me.

He continued, “Look, if the Jews then were on a much higher level than the Jews nowadays, which of course you will agree, so it must be that the great non-Jews then were greater than the non-Jews nowadays. So how can someone nowadays say Aristotle was wrong?”

What could I say? He looked searchingly at me. I looked down in capitulation. I was not going to dig a bigger hole for myself.

“And I heard you said that if Noah’s flood had covered all of the earth, why were there kangaroos only in Australia? What does that mean?”

I started to explain what the problem was, and that these were the sorts of issues that a rabbi going out into the secular world would have to deal with, and I was just looking for answers.”

He must have been satisfied because he told me to go upstairs again to Reb Chaim, who wrote out a semikha that I am embarrassed to read to this day, so generous is the wording. I often went back over the summer to relive the past, to see that, despite the enlargements and new building, that traces of the hole could still be seen, where a shell hit the yeshiva in the Six-Day War of 1967 as everyone huddled down in the kitchen. Illness struck yet another member of the family and Reb Nochum bravely battled it. But it was sad to see his slow deterioration. His untimely death was a terrible loss to the Torah world in more ways than one. I don't know what it was about Mir that so much talent expired before its time. Perhaps the fire burnt so powerfully it burnt itself out. Or, to borrow from another culture, “Those whom the gods love, die young.”

The world I entered when I returned to Britain to become a pulpit rabbi was a very different one. Despite my time in Cambridge, it was still a culture shock. Religion was and is so much more a matter of social convention and conformity than spiritual excitement. Adjusting to a world outwardly mine, but in fact very far removed, was a challenge. Unlike in the United States, nominal Orthodoxy is the dominant denomination in Britain. Reform and Conservative have always been minority interests. Most of the rabbis or reverends in the Anglo-Jewish world of the 1960s were graduates of Jews College, with its academic approach to Jewish Studies. Homiletics, liturgy, history, and pastoral skills vied with Talmud for a place in the curriculum. (Insofar as I had any knowledge or expertise in these areas I was completely self-taught.)

Most of those I knew were admirers of the controversial Rabbi Louis Jacobs, who ended up being effectively driven out of the Orthodox community. But given the nature of Anglo Jewry, most of them decided to remain silent and keep their jobs. I on the other hand, was the first of a trickle that turned into a tidal wave of rabbis trained in black-hat yeshivot. The only alternative to the established rabbinate at that time was the fledgling Chabad movement. The ba’al-teshuva and outreach organizations were years away.

So when I started in the rabbinate I was coming from the right wing. It is true that my background gave me a more open and cultured approach, which helped me a great deal in reaching out to disaffected youngsters. But certainly my loyalty was more with what would later come to be known as the Hareidi world than the more flaccid Rabbinical School brand of Judaism. I found the United Synagogue a very uncomfortable, pompous and alienating place with its bureaucratic centralized authority. So I looked for independent Orthodox synagogues where I would be the Mara D'Atra rather than a cog in the wheel.

My first position was in Glasgow, where many still remembered my father with awe and affection. It had at the time some 15,000 Jews. My synagogue, Giffnock, was huge, nearly a thousand families—but only a small core of religiously committed individuals. Its ethos and origins were strongly Lithuanian. The vast majority of the community, particularly the younger generation, was uninterested and disaffected. The rabbinate in the city was riven by rivalry and its status was low. It was the perfect place for me because I could both provide for the old guard with daily Gemara and other shiurim and reach out to the youngsters, going where I knew I could find them and trying to present a different image of Judaism than the stuffy and killjoy one that they had previously seen. I wanted to show that one could be a modern citizen of the world and enjoy its many legitimate experiences while still adhering strictly to Torah. I tried to make the services more accessible. I would often interrupt the congregation's talking, not to shut them up directly, but to interest them in the relevant text with an explanation or observation. It helped relieve the boredom of those who understood little and cared less.

And I went out of my way to court controversy. Most of my congregants ate out in the city. I caused a stir by suggesting that if they ate smoked salmon or salad on cold plates instead of eating outright treif, they would avoid breaking any laws. As word spread, I was called by various scandalized colleagues asking me how I could justify salads without a proper check for bugs. I assured them I would give a lecture on the subject.

My methods succeeded. The synagogue began to fill up and my time in Glasgow was exciting and rewarding, the community warm and appreciative. It was hard work—almost 300 weddings and bar mitzvas in three years and constant sick visiting, funerals, and shiva houses to attend. But I made many friends who have stayed in touch ever since. Outside of its decaying industrial centres, Glasgow was a wonderful place to live, an hour's drive from the Highlands or the sea. It was only the accident of the premature resignation of the headmaster of Carmel College, my father's school, that enticed me away from my Scottish idyll. I was certainly not going to turn down the opportunity of trying to continue my father's work.

The next fourteen years of my life as Principal of Carmel College were an opportunity for me to teach my religious attitudes and values to some three hundred 11- to 19-year-old pupils a year, from around the world. That too was an exciting and highly rewarding experience, but education is a different field than the rabbinate.

After a sabbatical in Israel in 1984, I returned to the rabbinate in London to the only old style Orthodox independent synagogue, the Western Synagogue, which was two hundred years old. The observant Jewish community had all but abandoned central London for the northern suburbs, leaving the Western without a significant local constituency. It survived because it owned its own lucrative burial grounds and its own building. I chose it precisely because of its independence and my insistence on not putting myself in a position where authority or pressure to conform would in any way hamper my style.

The demands of the community were not excessive and this gave me a great deal of time to contribute to wider issues. The synagogue also had a community centre that attracted attendance during the week from those who lived throughout the London area. But there were too many declining and virtually empty Orthodox synagogues in the West End of London and it seemed only sensible to merge. The nearest synagogue was Marble Arch, a constituent of the mainstream United Synagogue. I encouraged the merger, hoping the new combined synagogue would be independent too. But when it transpired that a condition of the merger would be the absorption of the Western into the United Synagogue, I knew that even if it was in everyone else's interests, it was not in mine. So in 1990 I decided to leave the rabbinate again.

During my time in the Western I had encountered so many examples of religious bureaucracy and politics in the United Synagogue and its Bet Din, examples of pressure brought to bear on recalcitrant or simply independently minded rabbis, that it was clear my old antipathies towards the Establishment were justified as ever. In general, a more exclusivist and intolerant mood was prevailing on such issues as excessive and unrealistic demands on genuine converts, increasing strictness on matters of kashruth and interaction with other, less Orthodox parts of the community. With the retirement of Chief Rabbi Jakobovits, whom I admired and worked for on Interfaith issues, there was no one left who could still hold the line, the writing was on the wall. I went off on my travels.

A few years later I returned to the UK to head YAKAR, the adult education center my brother, Mickey, had founded and named after our father, Yaakov Kopul Rosen. It stood for all the values I cherished: deep commitment to halakha combined with social responsibility, tolerance, and independent thought. But the UK was not and is not a welcoming place for nonconformity. Pressure to belong and to be seen to conform, fear of being perceived as an outsider, eventually tame and silence rebels, or drive them away. Some good and creative things have indeed happened in Anglo Jewry, but they are invariably from outside of the mainstream and the establishment. This is probably why most of my talented contemporaries have left the UK for either Israel or the United States.

Much of this may sound strange to American readers used to each synagogue being independent and self-sufficient, without the European tradition of state-recognized institutional religion, where pressure can be brought on individual rabbis and communities. Sadly, the European model was imported into Israel where a government-supported rabbinate and the politicized nature of religious life have combined to make religion a business and power game rather than a spiritual inspiration and a model of ethical values. The strength of American Judaism was always the laissez faire atmosphere of individual synagogue autonomy.

But the fact is that the disease of religious pressure to conform is spreading. Perhaps not in the structural style of Napoleonic Europe, but certainly in the way pressure is being brought positively and by default. Too many rabbis are worried about being regarded suspiciously by extreme opinion. There is a natural but disappointing need to conform to the authority and influence of more fundamentalist powers and movements. If this is positive in the way it emphasizes the importance of obedience to halakhic norms, it is regrettable in that it restricts variety. In addition there is the gap that has opened up so that halakhic authority and expertise do not automatically go together with wisdom and breadth of vision. In the United States, the increasing voice of extremism used to be balanced by outstanding alternative giants. In their absence, the alternative paradigm of popular absolutism is becoming the norm.

The space for innovation within halakha and freedom of thought is shrinking. On the other hand, there are signs of a fight back through institutions such as Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, Drisha, the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals, and the few still prepared to stand up for their views. Edah, although it no longer functions, still lives on in spirit. But there are mixed signals; some synagogues are prepared to take risks, others not. It is still too early and we are too close to the events to know how this will play out, but my optimism stems from the historical fact of cycles in thought and fashion. What I have noticed is that in the absence of significant religious leaders and authorities to do battle, so-called modern or moderate Orthodoxy has become a grassroots movement of significance and if anything it is growing rather than shrinking.

After over 40 years in the rabbinate, my own ideas have changed little but the Jewish world itself is transformed, I would say hijacked, by the increasing fundamentalism of the Hareidi world. Whereas once Be’er Yaakov and Mir stood for the Lithuanian alternative to Hassidic populism and anti intellectualism, now even the yeshiva world has adopted Hassidic attitudes toward authority, credulity, and conformity. The politicization of religion has worsened and the capitulation of the Israeli Chief Rabbinate to the Hareidi world must be making the bodies of such great rabbanim as Rabbis Herzog, Goren, Amiel, and Uzziel to mention only the most obvious, turn in their graves.

Yet the fact is that the Hareidi world for all its abuses, misuses, and hypocrisies does contain the fastest growing core of Torah-committed Jews, devoted to study to an extent never before seen. And I sometimes wonder why it is that now that I, so far to the left of virtually all their theological and social positions, still consider myself more loyal to that world than to any other. And I hazard the suggestion that maybe the times require it. Perhaps the pressures of a secular, self-indulgent, material world are so strong and pervasive that the only way for the mass of Jews to survive religiously is through this inward looking self protective enclavism. Maybe this is a time of Hora’at Shaah leMigdar Milta. And if God controls the ebbs and flows of history, this is His way of talking to us today. But even so, this does not mean each individual has to follow this path. The individual must remain true to himself or herself.

How did I come to be the nonconformist and independently minded Orthodox person I am? Of course I owe most of it to the example of my father. His persona and the way religious life was a delight rather than a burden certainly played their part. But I think his pendulum theory, perhaps borrowed from Rambam, is significant. Ideally one must experience the most intense examples of two different approaches to life in order to find a balance in the middle. Of course that is not easy and not everyone can tolerate the strains such bifurcation imposes. Above all one needs to have confidence in oneself to be a minority within a minority within a minority. Certainly knowledge of text, experience of the living Judaism, of the attitudes and ideas of previous generations, together with the passion of intense religious experience can give one the confidence to feel one is walking in the footsteps of giants. For all my criticisms I know that Jewish life in the Diaspora, as well as in Israel is stronger than it has been for thousands of years even if we are lacking the individual giants we once had. Perhaps this is the nature of modernity and individuality. If so, I welcome it.

                        In the spring of 2003, a handful of young people in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who regularly attended the only Orthodox minyan in town, were looking for a change. I was among them, and like the others  who had attended Darkhei Noam in New York or Shira Hadasha in Jerusalem, I was inspired by the possibility of praying in a minyan that was grounded in a commitment to halakha, but that created a prayer space that  belonged to men and women alike.

Prior to our first prayer together, it was unclear how many people would show up, or how long the minyan might continue to function. Today, six years later, Minyan Tehillah is still around, and has continued to go strong ever since. As testimony to its feeling of permanence, the board conducted its first survey in the spring of 2008 in an effort to gain insight into who Tehillah’s members are, what they like about the minyan, and in what areas they would like to see the minyan grow. The first part of this article draws on the survey results to provide a demographic description of the minyan, while the second part of the article discusses a number of challenges Tehillah faces as a minyan that works to negotiate a delicate line between Orthodoxy and feminism.

Tehilla’s adult members number approximately 100, with slightly more marrieds than singles. Our minyan is relatively young, with the bulk of our members—some 70 percent— being between the ages of 26 and 34. Among the married people, about two-thirds have children, the overwhelming majority of whom are ages three and under. Tehillah holds services two Shabbat mornings a month and one Friday evening a month. We meet in a variety of spaces, which we rent from established Jewish institutions in Cambridge. Our decision not to meet every Shabbat is a pragmatic one as well as an ideological one. On the pragmatic side, it takes tremendous energy to organize a service each time we meet. This is in part due to the fact that we are a lay-led, relatively transient community, and in part due to the fact that we are thinly spread across Cambridge, with very few people living close to the synagogue where we generally meet on Shabbat mornings. In fact, the majority of our members live over a mile-walk away from this locale. Because we do not begin the Shaharit service without the presence of both ten men and ten women, each time we meet we work to get a commitment from twenty people to arrive on time—a difficult task, given the distance combined with the fact that a large portion of our minyan is composed of young families.

But there are also social and ideological reasons for not meeting each week. The Tehillah community overlaps very strongly with several other prayer communities in town. Indeed, almost all of our members regularly attend other minyanim in Cambridge on the weeks that Tehillah does not meet. The strongest overlap is with the Harvard Hillel Orthodox Minyan, and the next strongest overlap is with Cambridge Minyan, which is traditional-egalitarian. One of the reasons people are satisfied with Tehillah meeting only every other week, is because they are loathe to give up their connections with the other prayer communities to which belong.

Although Tehillah was started by a group of people who all identified as Orthodox and were all committed to a feminist mission, it has filled other sorts of religious and social needs as well. First, the spirited and intentional tefilla is one of the attractions of Tehillah. From the minyan’s inception, great effort has been placed on creating a spiritually uplifting service; led by hazzanim who are well-prepared, who engage the kahal with lively tunes, and who lead the service with seriousness of purpose. Secondly, the minyan fills an important demographic niche in Cambridge for people who are no longer students or for those who want to be part a prayer community that is not affiliated with the university, but is their own. More than that, Tehillah is a creative project, run by people with tremendous energy, commitment, and imagination. In this sense, it offers a place for religious expression that is fresh, relevant, and meaningful—an aspect of tefilla that often feels absent in well-established and structured institutional life.

In short, Tehillah fills a number of complex needs for the variety of people who attend. It is a warm, open social space, which provides an environment that bridges the long-standing traditional American religious divide between Orthodox and Conservative. Yet, despite this innovation, Tehillah is also quite conservative (with a lowercase c). We have developed our own set of customs, and are relatively resistant to change. As a community, we are focused primarily on the prayer service itself, with almost no emphasis on social justice programs, or social events not linked to prayer.

With this background, I will turn now to discuss three of the pressing issues and challenges that the minyan currently faces. Perhaps the most complicated issue among them are questions surrounding halakhic authority and religious decision-making. Like other minyanim that are working to negotiate the difficult relationship between halakha and feminism (and which have been classified by the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance as “Partnership Minyanim”), Minyan Tehillah has not been sanctioned by widely recognized religious authorities. There are, of course, rabbis with Orthodox semikha who do support minyanim like ours, but they are on the margins of what is widely considered to be the Orthodox establishment. For this reason, some argue that it is illegitimate for us to call ourselves—or even think of ourselves—as Orthodox. “And why bother?” they may press, “Just join the Conservative movement; women can lead davening there.”

I propose a two-part answer to this challenge. First, it is not un-Orthodox to address the spiritual needs of women—needs that are inherently defined by the cultural and social contingencies of time and place; that is to say—needs that are very different today than they were in the past. Secondly, what we have consciously done at Tehillah is to separate between contemporary Orthodox institutional life—on the one hand—and the Orthodox halakhic process on the other. While we may be marginalized from the first, we understand ourselves to be squarely within the parameters of the second.

This approach helps to resolve the angst—at least for some of us—surrounding questions about the legitimacy of our work. But it still leaves us with a very practical set of problems. How should ritual decisions be made, and who should be invested with the power to make such decisions?

Classically, a community brings its religious questions to its rabbi. In our effort to address the spiritual needs of women, however, we are acutely aware of the fact that we are living in a time when women are able to receive the same level of religious education and knowledge as men, in institutions that are sanctioned by the Orthodox establishment. Yet the title Rabbi comes from passing an exam that women are simply not allowed to take.

There is a logical inconsistency here, which I believe has led to some loss of credibility for the office. We cannot help but ask: What does it really mean to be a halakhic authority and a community’s religious leader? And if it need not necessarily be a Rabbi whom we turn to, then who, and based on what criteria? These are serious questions that we face at Tehillah and for which we have not yet come up with a definitive answer.

Along these lines, there is another more subtle and vexing problem: One of the reasons that Tehillah is such a success is because it offers a prayer service that people refer to as meaningful. This is in contrast to a sense that can pervade established religious institutions, where the service may feel stale and impersonal. I think it is not a coincidence that at Tehillah the quest for personal relevance in tefilla is accompanied by a desire to be involved in the process of religious decision-making. Rather than handing over this responsibility to a religious authority who does the work and then provides an answer that must be passively accepted, there is an interest in being actively involved in the process: in the learning, understanding, and questioning that goes on when a halakhic decision is made. This approach calls for a new model or new way of thinking about religious authority.

The second pressing issue that Tehillah faces is that of gender, and its place in the service. Currently, gender plays a strong role in Tehillah. A mehitsa runs down the middle of our sanctuary, and we do not begin the service until both ten men and ten women are present. Women and men alike may receive aliyot and read from the Torah, however, when a woman is slotted to read from the Torah, only a woman may be called up for that aliya, and vice versa. In all of these examples we might say that male and female are separate but equal: The gender category is preserved, while still allowing both men and women to be full participants in the tefilla.

In the critical area of leading the service, however, this is not the case. Women are permitted to lead parts of the service, but not all, whereas men are permitted to lead all. For me, this difference is palpable each time I lead pesukei deZimrah for the congregation. When I get to the last paragraph, I cannot help but grapple with the fact that a man will—and must—take over from me because as a woman I may not lead Shaharit, although this same man may have led pesukei deZimrah in place of me. This transition is a difficult point in the service because it raises questions about what we are ultimately looking for. Are we looking to find a halakhic way in which women, like men,  can be full participants in all parts of the service? That is to say, are we working toward erasing gender as a category? If this is the case than the current form of our service appears to be only one step towards fully egalitarian roles in the synagogue. Or are we looking to keep gender as a salient aspect of our prayer experience. I would suggest that some of us (myself included) do want to recognize our femininity (or masculinity) as an essential aspect of the way in which we address God and come together as a community. In this case, the key question is whether we might occupy the synagogue as women (or men) and pray as women (or men), while simultaneously being fully integrated in the synagogue service, and remaining within the parameters of halakha.

The third pressing issue facing Tehillah is the question of the minyan’s sustainability and the place that it occupies within the wider Jewish world. We currently rent space from established institutions at a very low rate and we have no salaried staff. These factors allow our membership dues to remain nominal—which is critical for our relatively young, transient population.

The result of such low financial stakes is a tremendous amount of freedom and independence in making decisions and running our organization. On the other hand, this leaves us in a childlike position, where we are drawing on the larger local community’s resources without being full contributors. And as long as we remain in this position, our feminist, Orthodox project cannot be fully realized. Right now there are some ten to fifteen Partnership Minyanim across the globe, but they are mostly all in urban centers and college campuses. I ask myself every Shabbat—where is my family going to pray if and when we leave Cambridge? For our project to be taken seriously, and for it to expand beyond the centers that it now occupies, we need institutional backing, educational resources, and professional leadership. As we move forward, the challenge will be to build and maintain communal infrastructure while still remaining fresh, innovative and meaningful.

The primary source for the requirements of a mehitsa is a Mishna in Middot, the tractate that deals with matters relating to the Temple parts, structure, and measurements. Middot literally means “specifications.” The fifth Mishna in the second chapter of Middot tells us that the women’s chamber in the Temple, the ezrat nashim, was quite large: 135 cubits in length and 135 cubits in breadth. The Mishna goes on to say that the chamber had originally been bare, but then a balcony was added so that women could look out on the proceedings from above while the men were below. The purpose of the balcony was to prevent the mixing of the sexes.

In the context of the Mishna’s discussion of Simhat Bet haShoeiva—the great evening rejoicing that began on the second night of the Sukkoth festival—Rabbi Elazar elaborates on the decision to make what was a major structural change to the Temple, and one that could have been the source of controversy (Sukkah 51b). The Temple’s measurements had been divinely ordained, and the original “spec’s” did not provide for a balcony. How then could its incorporation be justified?

The Talmud tells us that initially the women’s chamber had been inside that of the men’s area, but there was too much frivolity taking place. It was therefore decided to place the men in the interior chamber, and the women in the exterior area. Unfortunately, the frivolity continued.

So the structural alteration was made, women were placed in the balcony, and the frivolity ceased. Nevertheless, how could the change have been sanctioned? As was their wont, the rabbis found a scriptural source. Zekhariah 12:12 speaks of the mourning in Jerusalem, mourning that is interpreted to be for the death of the Messiah son of Joseph (who precedes the Davidic Messiah). Zekhariah states that in each family the men and women would mourn separately. And so, the Rabbis concluded, if the prophet decreed that men and women mourn separately at a time when there would be no yetzer hara/evil inclination—which will not exist in the days of the Messiah—certainly while the evil inclination continued to thrive, men and women should be separated in the Temple precincts.

The Rambam, in his great work, the Yad haHazakah, provides an additional sense of context in the eighth chapter of the laws of Lulav (halakha 12). He states that “on the festival of Sukkoth there was a surfeit of joy, as it is written, ‘you shall be joyous before God your Lord seven days.’” He then points out that on Erev Sukkoth a balcony was erected to prevent the mixing of the sexes, and then they began to rejoice.

It was therefore in the very special context of extreme rejoicing—and we know that in such circumstances many people can lose their self-control-- that the mehitsa was called for. In other words, even as people rejoiced, dignity had to be maintained.

Why? Because the passage tells us u’smahtem lifnei hashem Eloheikhem. This was no ordinary party. This was a rejoicing before God. And before Hashem, yirat shamayim, fear of Heaven, is paramount, and extreme behavior of any kind is discouraged.

A mehitsa is not meant to wall off women. It is not a sign that men and women cannot mix, any more than discouraging drinking in a Bet Midrash is a sign that people cannot drink. It is, however, a reminder that there are places where the sexes can mix, outside the Bet Midrash, in a Synagogue lobby for example, and other places where such mixing is inappropriate.

But a mehitsa is still more than that. We learn in Tehillim, Psalms, “ivdu et Hashem beyirah, vegilu b’re’ada,” “serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling” (2:11). That was what was behind the Temple balcony. The mehitsa is in fact the embodiment of the concept veYareita meElohekha, “and you shall fear your Lord.”

The Torah uses the phrase veYareita meElohekha in five passages, all in Leviticus. In every case the phrase relates to man’s behavior toward his fellow man, and warns man not to dissemble or dissimulate, because God is watching, and one must fear God.

Perhaps the most widely known example is that of “lo tekalel heireish v’lifnei iver lo titein mikhshol,” “do not curse the deaf and do not place a stumbling block before a blind man” (Lev. 19:14), the latter part of the verse meaning that one should not trick the guileless or the innocent. But the other verses involve the same principle: do not pretend not to see an older man standing or to ignore the presence of an elder (“mipenei seivah takum”); do not charge any form of interest, including that which is not clearly identified (“al tikah me’ito neshekh v’tarbit”); do not hurt one’s sensibilities and pretend not to realize what has been done (“lo tonu ish et amito”); do not overwork a slave and pretend your action was inadvertent (“al tirdeh bo b’farekh”).

When my parents, zikhronam livrakha, would praise someone, they would call him a yerei shamayim, one who fears Heaven. Not “frum,” not one who buys the biggest etrog, lights the most elaborate hannukiya, has the fanciest seder plate—but one who fears God. A yerei shamayim is one who is sincere, and respectful of time, of place, and of people.

Building an Environmentally Sensitive Religious Community

Inspiring a culture change in the Jewish community or even in a single synagogue is never an easy task.  In order for the Orthodox community to assimilate the values of the environmental movement, there will need to be a paradigm shift in the way that people think.  That change in attitude will likely take a generation.

Allow me to first outline three macro challenges that we face in broader Orthodox community.  After that I will talk about the challenges from the perspective of a single Orthodox shul – Kehilat Kesher: The Community Synagogue of Tenafly and Englewood.  Once we have an idea of what we are trying to overcome, I will share a few strategies that can work in a congregational setting.  I will conclude with a vision for a “green” future that must be embraced by every faith community if we want to change the world in which we live.

1. Challenges that the “green” movements faces in the broader Orthodox community:

The first hurdle that we have to overcome is making this an Orthodox issue.  The reality is that the liberal Jewish community started the ball rolling and we are following them.  For the Orthodox community, that is always a scary reality.  We have to be able to get over our fears that bringing in great ideas from other denominations, or faiths, is dangerous.  The Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life (www.COEJL.org), a pioneer in this field, has been articulating a vision of environmental stewardship in the language of the liberal Jewish Community.  Canfei Nesharim (www.CanfeiNesharim.org) has been translating this into traditional language and has shown tremendous leadership within the Orthodox community.  Their website is filled with helpful source material, essays and shiurim.

A second challenge, no doubt related to the first, is that there are no lines in the Shulchan Aruch or teshuvot that we can point to and say, “See, you must do this because of that!”  The Jewish conceptual basis grows from aggadic texts, values and broad concepts.  Many people are working on this and trying to produce a literature grounded in Halakha that can be the basis for future action.  Some of the most obvious halakhik concepts that can be mined are: ba’al tashchit (wanton destruction – see Rambam, Laws of King and War 6:8,10, Sefer Hachinuch #529 and Seforno on Deuteronomy 20:19), tza’ar ba’alei chayyim (causing animals needles pain – see: Exodus 23:5, Shabbat 128b, Bava Metzia 32b, Rambam, Hilkhot Rotzeach 13:1, Shulkhan Arukh, Choshen Mishpat 272:9 and the limitation of Rema Even ha-Ezer 5:14)) and harchakat nezikin (moving certain damaging industries out of the city center – see Bava Batra 22b, Rambam, Hilkhot Shechanim 11:5, Shulkhan Arukh, Chosen Mishpat 155:41).   

Finally, many of the issues that we are dealing with are still emerging from the world of research.  While there are studies that show, for example, that household cleaning products contribute to cancer growth, there are also studies that contradict these findings.  The Orthodox rabbinic community has to cultivate relationships with experts in the field of environmental science so that we can have a more complete picture of the issues at hand.  Just as we seek the counsel of doctors in issues of medical ethics we must find people who are leaders in their field and ‘make for ourselves a teacher.’ 

2. Challenges within the congregational setting

When addressing these issues on the synagogue level there are a few additional hurdles.  First, the question of economics.  The reality of congregational life is that every dollar spent has to be justified.  When spending communal money nothing less should be accepted.  People have to imbibe the notion that spending money, time and volunteers on projects like recycling makes a difference.  Even when it might be the law on the city, people have to be inspired to take the extra step and separate all the different materials.

Second, shuls need strong leadership in this arena.  Since there are very few working models of what a ‘green’ shul should look like, this requires creative people who have an understanding of what is possible within the confines of daily shul life. 

Most shuls operate on a status quo model.  Much of what we do has been and has worked well for several generations.  Therefore, anytime a shul is asked to do something different, justification is necessary.  In order to affect a paradigm shift in the operations of the shul the rabbis and lay leadership must be educated and inspired themselves so they can educate and inspire the broader community.

3. Affecting a culture change - one shul at a time

Allow me to attempt to lay out a systematic approach as to how one can go about greening a shul.

Step 1: Cleaning Materials.  This is an area in which there can be a serious change made and for very little money or effort.  Though above I mentioned that there are conflicting studies on the impact of house hold cleaners, I tend to be strict on matters of potential life and death (pikuach nefesh).  At this point, green cleaning supplies, when bought whole sale are not more expensive than the standard toxic cleaner on the market.  What could be more important than displaying sensitivity to those people who clean the shul?  In addition, the youngest members of the synagogue, who crawl on the floor and breathe in these toxins, are certainly a high priority for most synagogues.

Step 2: Lights.  Changing to high efficiency lighting and CFL bulbs is typically something simple to sell.  Though there are associated up front costs, the payback over the life of the bulb is visible on the energy bill.  This is something that can be done in a very public way, perhaps even associated with Hannukah.

Step 3: Recycling. The reality of most Orthodox shuls is that we just don’t take this seriously, even when it is the law.  The only way for this to work is to make sure that there are recycling bins for paper, metal and glass in as many places as possible.  They have to be prominently displayed with creative signs as well as reminders through out the building.  If there is janitorial staff they must be trained.

This is the first area in which there are potential conflicts with halacha.  If we are going to take recycling seriously, we have to look carefully at what we choose to bury as shemos and what we recycle.  Also, when we make copies or sheets to hand out, there is no reason to print God’s name so that all paper being produced by the shul should be able to be recycled.

Step 4: Energy Conservation.  There are three areas where this can be most effective: water, power usage and power sources.  Water can be managed with low flow faucets and toilets as well as lowering the temperature on the hot water heater to 110.  Grey water can be re-used from within the building for irrigation and toilet flushing. 

In order to maximize power usage a power audit is necessary.  Most audits will save money for the institution very quickly.  Placing thermostats on seven day timers and using timers for lights is good both for Shabbat as well as the environment.  Many power companies will now allow you to purchase power from renewable sources like windmills.  It is generally more cost effective to purchase this power from someone who is producing it on a larger scale than to generate power with on sight generators like solar panels.

Step 5: Construction.  This is the area that can be the most impactful.  The key to constructing an energy efficient building is hiring the right architect and contractors.  Most major architectural firms have the infrastructure to provide LEED (The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design green building rating system was established by the U.S. Green Building Council in 1998) certification at only a minimal cost to the client.  For a synagogue to accomplish this there must be a strong desire on the part of the community, as there are associated costs.  However, the statement that it makes to the wider community is extremely important.  When places of worship of any kind display the courage of their conviction it send a message to members of the wider community of what can be done.

These fives steps – cleaning material, lighting, recycling, energy conservation and construction – are meant to be a model of how to move a community along the path of lowering their environmental footprint.  There may be additional steps to add along the way, but if you are walking this path, then you are moving in the right direction.

4. Looking forward to a “greener” future

We are living in a society that is changing at an alarming rate.  Moore’s law tells us that the processing speed of the computer doubles every eighteen months to two years.  Population growth has been exponential.  The industrial revolution and the age of technology has elevated mankind in some parts of the world to unprecedented heights.  Global climate change is a reality that we are, for the first time in human history, able to impact.  And so we, the religious community, must ask ourselves what that impact should be?

We could choose the path of least resistance and continue the process of displaying our dominion over the earth (Genesis 1:26).  Alternatively, we could seek to embrace the command to work and guard her (Genesis 2:15).  It is my sincere hope and prayer that the Orthodox Jewish Community is able to show leadership in reclaiming the mandate of chapter two of Genesis.  Through our actions we can teach the world what it means to live the ethics of the garden of Eden. 

Professor Chaim Waxman, a prominent and highly respected sociologist of contemporary Orthodoxy, has made a superb assessment of the history, development, and current and future situation of Orthodoxy in his relatively short but comprehensive 178-page book, “Social Change and Halakhic Evolution in American Orthodoxy,” with 48 additional pages of bibliography and index. The book is published by The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization in association with Liverpool University Press. Readers will receive a wealth of information from the book and much in it will surprise them, especially the finding that Orthodoxy is changing, and different styles of Orthodoxy exist in different countries. The following is a summary of a few of the many insights that he offers in his insightful book.

A few statistics of Jews in the US

Waxman quotes the Pew Center Survey that estimates that 1.5 percent of US citizens, about 3,638,000, are Jews by religion. Pew also estimates that about 12 percent of this number, 437,000, are Orthodox. Of these 12 percent, 66 percent, about 291,000 are ultra-Orthodox, and half this number, 33 percent, about 146,000, are Modern Orthodox. Orthodox Jews have an average income lower than non-Orthodox Jews, and ultra-Orthodox have a lower income than Modern Orthodox. Pew found that the percentage of divorced or separated Orthodox Jews, 9 percent, is lower than that of Mainline Protestants, 12 percent, and Catholics, 10 percent. Pew also found that among Jews with no denominational affiliation, only 31 percent had a Jewish spouse, while the figure for Orthodox was 98 percent. Surprisingly, while 79 percent of ultra-Orthodox are married, only 52 percent of Modern Orthodox are married, a slightly lower rate than that of Conservative Jews.

The origin of Orthodoxy

The term Orthodox did not exist before the nineteenth century. It was invented by Reform Jews in eastern Europe who used it to disparage what they considered backward, old style, more observant Jews. Soon thereafter, the more observant Jews accepted the title as a badge of honor. The term Orthodox is based on Greek words: ortho = right or true, and dox = belief or opinion. Despite what Orthodox means, many Orthodox Jews in the past and today are not literally people who agree with the traditional “beliefs and opinions.” They are Orthopractic, Jews who have decided to continue all or many of the traditional “practices” of Judaism. They accept many ancient Jewish laws and traditions “but not meticulously or rigidly so.”

Among Ashkenazi Orthodox Jews, those descendant from Europe, there are two main groups today, each divided into sub-groups: Ultra-Orthodox and Modern Orthodox. The former is subdivided into yeshivish who contend that Jewish males should separate themselves from modernity as much as possible and spend their life studying Talmud, and hasidish who follow the demands of Hasidic leaders called Rebbes. Modern Orthodox is subdivided into Centrist Orthodox and Open Orthodox, with the last adopting less restrictions and being more open to the involvement of women in the synagogue.

The Orthodox in America have a stronger attachment to Israel than do non-Orthodox American Jews. Orthodox Jews place greater emphasis on the law focusing on humans, bein adam ladam, while the ultra-Orthodox emphasize laws that focus on God, bein adam lamakom. 56.9 percent of Modern Orthodox feel that homosexuality should be accepted by society, but only 35.6 percent of ultra-Orthodox agree.

Rabbis

Contrary to what people suppose, ancient rabbis did not have a significant role in synagogues, they were “viewed as talmudic scholars and halakhic experts. Particularly in the area of isur veheter, ritual law, which includes kashrut, sexual conduct, sabbath observance, and so on. However, when it came to questions relating to broader matters, such as issues of communal policy, most people gave no special weight to the rabbi’s opinions and did not consult with them.” Rabbis “did not reign supreme” as they sometimes do today. The current notion that rabbis are elite individuals whose views must be followed did not exist in America until the twentieth century, is not a traditional teaching, but a copy by Orthodox Jews of the Hasidim and the Hasidic Rebbe.

Also contrary to what many think, “customs start with the masses, and go from the bottom up, sometimes to the point where they become actual laws.” Thus, despite the recent powers given to rabbis, we can expect that the more educated Orthodox Jews of today will bring about changes in laws and behavior. Many Orthodox Jews are dissatisfied with how Orthodoxy is practiced today and this will prompt change. “The 1990 National Jewish population survey indicated that ‘among those raised Orthodox, just 24 percent are still Orthodox.’”

In the recently published “Megillat Esther Mesorat Harav,” Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik recognized this phenomenon. He is reported as recognizing that Purim was instituted as a holiday by common people, not rabbis nor Jewish leaders, and it was only after the people instituted the practice that the rabbis accepted it. He is right. This is how the book of Esther portrays what happened.

Turning to the right

Just as the Orthodox swerved to the right in copying the Hasidic view concerning rabbis, they did so also regarding education. While Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik is highly respected in Modern Orthodox circles, and despite his co-educational classes in his Maimonides School in Boston, many Modern Orthodox day schools today separate boys and girls in different classes. Similarly, because the ultra-Orthodox insist on their own “higher” standards for the laws of kosher, many certifying agencies require food sellers to bow to their requests to obtain their certification resulting in much higher prices for kosher foods. Still another radical change was pioneered by ArtScroll and Mesorah Publications which publishes many books on Judaism and Jewish history, “Critics have argued that ArtScroll censors its books to present only Orthodox accounts and Perspectives.” Also, lamentably, many Orthodox synagogues have recently rejected the teaching of Maimonides, who quoted the Greek non-Jew Aristotle in his writings, and who explained that “The truth is the truth no matter what its source,” and replaced the highly respected “Pentateuch” by Chief Rabbi J. H. Hertz with the ultra-Orthodox ArtScroll Chumash because Rabbi Hertz included explanations of the Torah from non-Jewish scholars. Many other examples of mistaken turnings to the right can be cited, such as the new stringencies that the Chief Rabbinate in Israel have placed on conversions.

Waxman states: “The ‘turn to the right’ in American Orthodoxy was in large measure, a reflection of the broader turn to the right and the rise of fundamentalism in a variety of different countries and continents.” This seems to put the lie to the claim of many Orthodox Jews that they are not affected by non-Jews. “Much as many might deny it, Orthodoxy is affected by and does respond to its social environment. This is why American Orthodoxy today is different from what it was a century ago, and it is different from Orthodoxy in the United Kingdom, Europe, and even Israel.”

Torah from heaven

As late as fifty years ago, Orthodox Jews were united in believing that both the Written Torah and the Oral Torah were given by God to Moses at Sinai, with some, “such as Joseph B. Soloveitchik and Moshe Tendler, [who] went so far as to axiomatically assert a literal version of both parts of the credo, while others simply expressed a general allegiance to the credo itself without discussing the detailed implications.” But, “Today the situation is dramatically different.” Orthodox Jews in America, and even more so in Israel, are accepting many critical views about the Torah, as can be seen on the website “The Torah.com.” Waxman attributes the change to “the emergence of a generation of college-educated Jews” in the second half of the twentieth century. Orthodox schools, including yeshivas, in the past were like the Catholics of the Middle Ages who prohibited the translation of the Bible because they felt that when the masses read the Bible, they can be misled away from Catholicism. Like them and for the same reason, Orthodox schools did not teach Torah, only Talmud and selected books on ethical behavior in the past. But now, there is an “increase in the [study of the] Bible within the religious and traditional communities since the 1960s.”

Similarly, while Orthodoxy rejected the idea of evolution and even called it heresy, most Orthodox Jews today accept it as a fact: “in 2005, even the [Orthodox] Rabbinical Council of America issued an, admittedly very guarded, pro-evolution position.”

Conclusion

Waxman concludes: “As has been shown throughout this book, American Orthodoxy is anything but static. It has changed and will continue to do so…. Although we cannot know precisely what the group will be like in the future, one thing is certain: it will not be the same as it is now.”

In recent months, I have been involved in two divorce matters in which rabbis played a prominent role. In each case, a party informed me how a lack of disclosure of a personality flaw ultimately led to a failed marriage. Unfortunately, in both cases the party who failed to disclose the relevant information was a rabbi. This article will examine whether non-disclosure is a viable option in dating situations.

The Rambam in Shemona Perakim equated “illness of the soul” (that is, mental illness) with physical illness. There have been estimates that 25 percent of Americans have endured some type of mental illness. The spectrum of mental illness can range from chronic illness such as bipolar disorder to mild cases of depression. This article will deal with the issue of disclosure of mental illness or addiction, as the failure to disclose these conditions tends to have the most dramatic impact when they subsequently come to light. However, a failure to disclose any material fact would be subject to the same analysis.

A cursory search of the Internet shows a healthy number of articles on the halakhic question of whether mental illness needs to be disclosed before marriage. A number of these articles seem to hedge on the question of when disclosure is required. Some authors justify non-disclosure by arguing that if it is not likely that the mental illness will recur, there is no reason to disclose such conditions. Other authors opt for the safer conclusion that one is required to discuss such a condition only where so directed by a recognized posek.

I will state my conclusion without equivocation. Marriage is based on trust and respect. It is unfathomable to imagine that a person can contemplate marriage to an individual—and at the same time choose to keep vitally important information from that party. It is instructive to note that Dr. Abraham Twerski, in his book Getting Up When You’re Down, states in clear language (p. 108) that disclosure of conditions such as depression is obligatory. Dr. Twerski mentions no reference to asking a posek as to whether or not disclosure is required. The need to know such information, and the harm in non-disclosure, seems self-evident to this eminent author and thinker.

What of the argument that if the depression is not likely to recur, disclosure has no value? As stated above, trust underlies the marital foundation. (The Maharal emphasizes this ethical point in his work Netivot Olam). Relevant past history needs to be shared and explained. Why should one act as “judge and jury” in deciding that past history, arguably material and relevant, need not be shared? Practically speaking, what happens if the suppressed information later comes to light from another source? Or, what if the “cured” condition reasserts itself? How do we deal with the disappointment and suspicion that might naturally arise? A party who is suddenly presented with such news might rightly wonder what other information has been withheld. A failure to disclose relevant information robs a party of their right to choose their mate freely and fully.

How does one determine what information is to be deemed relevant, and in need of disclosure? I propose a simple test. What would a person reasonably want to know about the background of a prospective spouse? It is appropriate to wait for the right moment to disclose such information. But although timing of such disclosure is discretionary, the need for such disclosure should not be subject to debate.

Full disclosure not only helps the other party, it helps the disclosing party as well. Keeping personal matters secret and subject to implicit denial is a high-risk decision. One who opts for silence on such a matter might find they are living with the fear and uncertainty of what will happen if disclosure ever occurs in an unanticipated manner.  In light of the above, it seems fair to state that the advantages of non-disclosure are negligible in contrast to the considerations that militate in favor of open and candid discussion.

The previous discussion relates to the party who must decide about disclosure. I would like to relate my remaining comments to the rabbi who is consulted about the question of disclosure. In Issue 2 of Conversations, I wrote an article (“Mediation, Marriage, Divorce, Agunah”) in which I attempted to show how the role of a rabbi in a divorce scenario must go beyond simply pointing out where a “kosher” get may be obtained. The rabbi must engender communication and care while attempting to ensure that Torah values govern all proceedings.

A rabbi who is asked about disclosure of relevant medical/psychological information must do more than decide what must be disclosed. An illustration of what may be required of the rabbi is found in an anecdote related about the Brisker Rav, Rav Chaim Soloveitchik. Rav Soloveitchik, described often as a paragon of hessed, was asked by a congregant whether it might be permissible to use milk for the mitzvah of arbah kosot (drinking four cups [of wine] at the Passover seder). Rav Soloveitchik answered in the negative and then proceeded to give the man a generous donation. The Rebbitzen asked why this gift was made, when in fact it had not been solicited. Rav Chaim explained that a Jew who is prepared to drink milk in lieu of wine is clearly destitute. Rav Chaim reasoned that a man who had no money for wine likely lacked all means of providing for a proper Passover celebration. A generous donation was provided so that this man could properly enjoy the holiday with his family.

An individual asking a rabbi about disclosure of a chronic condition is really asking for much more. He or she is asking for support, acceptance, insight, and a dose of emunah (faith). The person wants to be reassured that the rabbi will share their burden, while simultaneously offering them hope and solace.

If an individual asks a rabbi whether or not to disclose a chronic condition, a short answer does not suffice. It behooves the rabbi to research the condition, confer with professionals, and help the individual map out his or her future goals and plans. The rabbi needs to look at the person qua person, not simply as the initiator of a halakhic question. The rabbi needs to project the image of a potential advocate and confidant.

One of the touching stories about the great teacher and communal leader, Rav Shlomo Freifeld, described how he “won over” an alienated young man who left his family to live on an Indian reservation. This young man was brought back to his roots by an accidental discovery. While waiting for Rabbi Freifeld in the yeshiva study, the man chanced upon a number of books that described Indian culture and mores. It was clear why the books were there; Rabbi Freifeld wanted to understand what made this man “tick.” Rabbi Freifeld had seen the human being who stood before him and tried to find ways to identify with him. This gesture led the man to a newfound belief and commitment. In like fashion, congregants may come to their rabbis with disclosure questions. They deserve rabbinic attention and empathy.

As a religious figure, the rabbi can offer needed support. A rabbi can guide the individual to increased communal involvement. A rabbi can exhort the individual to be open and proactive about his condition. Finally the rabbi can help the individual map out future goals and ambitions. In one phrase, the rabbi can reassure the individual described herein in the same fashion as was Moshe at the burning bush:”I will be with you.”

The concern for the individuals addressed in this article can, and should, manifest itself in ongoing relationships. Long after the question of disclosure has been answered, the rabbi needs to be a presence. The pulpit may be used for discussions on mental and physical disability. Pre-marital counseling for those with physical or psychological challenges should be carefully planned by the rabbi. Articles and shiurim on the issues that arise from meeting special challenges likewise merit serious consideration. The Jewish community has done wonderful things for children with special learning needs. Perhaps the next vista to tackle is the removal of barriers confronting those who face physical or psychological challenges.

***

In recent months, we have seen the results of the attenuation of honesty and integrity in the marketplace and society. Our tradition fortunately provides the antidote. We are in the image of God and we are responsible to act God-like. The “seal” of God is truth. A relevant bon mot on this topic was taught by the Maharal. He teaches that the letter with the lowest numerical value is the letter aleph. Yet if we remove that “small” letter from the word emet (truth) we form the shorter word of met (dead). This thought reminds us of the slippery slope that awaits us if we take liberties with truth and integrity. A slight shift from a commitment to truth can have devastating effects. It is time to place renewed emphasis on moral and ethical behavior. Encouraging fuller disclosure and candor in our interpersonal relationships is a proper place to begin.

Rabbi Yosef Dov Soloveitchik, late mentor to thousands of rabbis, once described the rabbi’s primary duty as being an exemplar of hessed. Rabbis can do much good by guiding their flock on the need to disclose disabilities and personal limitations in courtship situations. But that will not be sufficient. Rabbis must also guide these individuals through these challenges. Even when such support is not solicited, rabbis need to internalize the lesson of the Brisker Rav and the query about milk at the Seder. There is a need to go beyond the immediate question and discover the person behind the question. Discover what they need and try to help them in seeking solutions and inner strength.

Disclosure of certain conditions is painful and unsettling. There are however no alternatives to openness and candor. Rabbis who are concerned will not stop at offering this exhortation. “I will be with you” is a potent message to convey. We will be judged as a society by the manner in which we succeed in transmitting this message.

            We are in our second year of studying women in Tanakh every Thursday afternoon for an hour. The class takes place in one of the participant’s homes in memory of her late mother. The oldest woman in the class is in her 80s, the youngest in her 30s. There is a range of educational backgrounds around the table, from Day School graduates to women whose own observance is evolving. We study everything in Hebrew and English with a smattering of traditional commentaries and modern scholarship. Mostly, our focus is on a primary reading of Tanakh; we slowly dissect the words, paying careful attention to repetition, alliteration, and odd words or unexpected phrases. We spend a lot of time on biblical cross-referencing, moving to other passages or verses that present parallel stories or language. The class is no different, in certain ways, from any other in Bible through a thematic and literary lens. Yet, as the teacher, I find myself stepping back in observation at critical junctures to watch modern women judge ancient matriarchs. Do they see themselves refracted in the behind-the-scenes female manipulation of a narrative? How objective are they in removing themselves when doing a character analysis? Can they study a swath of text about women in compromising sexual situations and remain neutral? After all, gender is not an insignificant aspect of personal identity.

Yet I would not ask any of these questions during class. It is a safe space to express opinions, but such questions would be a digression we cannot afford given our limited time together. Then from a pedagogic standpoint, I wonder if I have made the right choice in ignoring the bridge from text to life. We certainly engage in what I call life/text dichotomies and entertain spiritual lessons so that the words can jump off the page and into our lives, but we do this more in the style of Aesop’s fables than a direct confrontation with an underlying gender bias. It would not dawn on me to pause, look up and ask: “Does this offend you?”

This is not a group of people who revel in feminist readings, although some of them struggle with a woman’s place in Judaism; they are mostly women steeped in tradition, and who have largely accepted gender limitations in their faith commitments or at least made some peace with ritual exclusion. They may not be content with every gender-based prohibition thrown their way, but they have accepted the total package of meaning and lifestyle that comes with Orthodoxy. Would this resignation manifest itself in their reading of the Tamar story, I wondered? Tamar was a risk-taker embroiled in a serious and morally trying tale. Sexual taboos were broken for the sake of succession. One value was pitted against another in an ethical and emotional tug-of-war that almost cost Tamar her life. It is hard to retain objectivity and not personalize texts in some way when faced with such turmoil. Life seeps in between the lines as we read the words together.

***

Tamar is the protagonist of Genesis 38. Judah picked her as a wife for his first-born son Er. God did not like Er; for some unstated reason, he was “displeasing to the Lord,” and God, subsequently took his life, leaving Tamar bound by the levirate laws of remarriage. Judah then adjured his next son Onan to “do his duty by her” to “provide offspring for your brother.” The obligation is presented with a paradox. The duty is described as a relief for her when, in actuality, it benefits a dead man by keeping his name and property intact in the family. The ambiguity of who this act of marriage is for may contribute to the puzzling way Judah proceeded. Onan was troubled that the seed would not technically count as his so instead of normal cohabitation, he spilled his seed outside of her.  He was willing to undergo intercourse as an act of pleasure but not as an act of responsibility, “so as not to provide offspring for his brother” (Gen. 38:9). He did exactly the opposite of his father’s wishes.

Tamar’s own feelings, loss, and future desires were not vocalized by Judah.  After Onan died—because the Lord also found him displeasing—Judah told his daughter-in-law to stay a widow in her father’s house until his third son, Shelah, grew up and could fulfill his commitment: “Stay as a widow in your father’s house until my son Shelah grows up…” (Gen. 38:11). Judah’s suggestion that Tamar return to her father’s house shows that he felt little responsibility for her welfare in the intervening years and yet expected her to stay faithful all the while. The continuation of Judah’s line through Er depended on Tamar’s commitment to a family that had little regard for her. This disregard is cemented by the side-thought communicated in the passage; even as he told Tamar to wait, Judah knew that he would never actualize the duty because he feared for his last son: “He might die like his brothers” (Gen. 38:11). God found Judah’s sons displeasing, but Judah conveniently blamed Tamar.

Scholars who struggle to understand the odd placement of this chapter between Joseph being thrown into a pit and Joseph being seduced by his Egyptian master’s wife, should note that this is another story about fatherhood and brotherhood that takes many wrong turns because filial and fraternal bonds were weak or severed. The displacement of seed is not unlike the displacement of an actual brother, another act that stops the family line from natural continuity. The private ruminations of a brother who is not willing to give provide children for a dead sibling is paralleled by a father who would dispose of a brother with nary a concern and force a daughter-in-law into prolonged widowhood with no escape.

Over time, Judah’s wife died and after mourning for her, he went up to Timnah to his sheepshearers with his friend Hirah, a minor character who surprisingly appears many times in the chapter. Tamar was told that her father-in-law was coming to the area. She was not informed directly. We are unsure how much time had elapsed but enough for her to understand that Shelah was never to be hers and that her garments of widowhood would be worn as a life sentence. Taking destiny into her own hands instead of waiting any longer, she exchanged her widow’s garb for the clothing of a prostitute to seduce Judah and make him give her the child that she deserved. Rather than seduce Shelah, the brother who should have been rightfully her husband, she tricked her father-in-law, perhaps literally coupling obligation with revenge. To add to the curiosity, the garments she donned as prostitute were not revealing, as we might expect, but concealing:

So he took off her widow’s garb, covered her face with a veil, and wrapping herself up, sat down at the entrance to Enaim, which is on the road to Timnah; for she saw that Shelah was grown up, yet she had not been given to him as a wife. When Judah saw her, he took her for a harlot; for she had covered her face.  (Gen. 38:14–15)

In three different ways we are told that Tamar was covered, ostensibly to conceal her identity from Judah but also a subtler signal to the reader that she was far from a prostitute in her manner. This identity was not one she wore comfortably. The ironic location of the encounter makes the reader smirk. Enaim in Hebrew means eyes. Tamar saw the future ahead as a spouse-less widow and saw an opportunity precisely because her father-in-law did not see what was coming.

            The use of a veil in conjunction with the name of the place, presents many opportunities for playful readings. One feminist commentary on the story speaks in the words of Tamar herself:

I exposed Judah’s shallow grief by subtly playing upon the irony of veils. When I dressed as his son’s widow, I was invisible to Judah. He sent me away; he ignored my legitimate claim on Shelah. But when I voluntarily hid myself behind a veil, then he noticed me and unwittingly fulfilled his duty as his son’s redeemer.^[1]

Veils reveal and conceal; it is no coincidence that the word for clothing in Hebrew “beged” is related to the word for traitor: “boged.” Clothing creates identities but can also disguise identities.

***

I spoke with several of my students between classes about studying the Tamar story together. Does it make them angry? It does not. One woman finds Tamar inspiring:

I perceive Tamar to be brave. She must have been in a lot of pain. As a woman, I could imagine her feeling unfulfilled and experiencing the loss. I imagine the loss was different. She must have been in a very emotional place, feeling blame on top of loss. I don’t think I felt anger when we were studying this; it was more admiration for her than anger against the situation. There wasn’t much time to get angry because the action took place very quickly in the text. It’s very powerful that she figured out something to move her life along.

This class participant did not feel angry about what happened to Tamar because she saw her as a woman who fought back and was able to “achieve her purpose without hurting someone else.” To her, Tamar was a symbol of empowerment since she admires those who struggle with a character deficit or adversity and find ways to overcome challenges. In this instance, Tamar, like other matriarchs and female characters in the Bible, plays a supporting role to the larger story, helping us forge a nation but not as an overt, public leader. “The woman is not the leader in a religious or tribal sense, but what she does or does not do becomes a defining moment that changes the course of history. It’s important not only to pay attention to the headlines but the sub-text.”

***

            The text confirms that Judah did not know that this woman was his daughter-in-law when he invited her to sleep with him. Tamar knew that to corner her father-in-law she needed to exact an identifying object. Judah did not pay in advance for this prostitute’s services but suggested that he would send an anonymous kid from his flock later. Tamar, shrewder than Judah, told him that she needed to secure a pledge from him, another ironic statement since Judah was not one to keep his promises. The “eravon” or collateral she seeks has the same Hebrew root as the word for responsibility, a subtle way to suggest that Judah betrayed his responsibility to her.

Judah did not know what to give her but she knew exactly what she wanted: “Your seal and cord and the staff which you carry” (Gen. 38:18)—all signature items of the one who holds them. Rashi explains that the seal was the ring by which Judah signed documents and the cord was a garment that he covered himself with; she could not have asked for identifiers stronger than these.  The Hizkuni mentions that these were items of regular use; the cord for him was an object used to weave wool. Taking away that which was basic and used often would remind Judah of the absence and perhaps bring Tamar’s dilemma to a more expedited solution. Nahum Sarna believes that the seal and cord were a unit:

The reference is to the widely used cylinder seal, a small object made of hard material, engraved with distinctive ornamentation. The center was hollowed out and a cord passed through so that the seal could be worn around the neck. When the cylinder was rolled over soft clay, the resultant impression served as a means of identifying personal possessions and of sealing and legitimating clay documents.[2] 

This explanation helps us understand why Tamar suggested these items. In Sarna’s words it was “a kind of extension of the personality” since it was had the function of a signature. It uniqueness was unmistakable.

            The staff is regarded as a symbol of power and makes its first appearance in the Bible in this chapter, fitting in with the blessing that Jacob gave Judah on his deathbed, namely that Judah would assume the mantle of leadership and that the scepter would not depart from his legacy. In taking it, was Tamar also suggesting that his leadership might rise and fall depending on his capacity to act with both compassion and justice? Taking these objects together was symbolically divesting Judah of authority by which he presented himself to the outside world. In essence, although Tamar played the prostitute, it was Judah who stripped himself bare of that which is most essential as a leader, all for momentary gratification.

            Tamar asked for three items, not one. Tamar wanted the paternity of the child to be certain, with no taint of ambiguity. Even though Tamar suffered years without pregnancy on the horizon, she was absolutely sure that this one sexual liaison would end with conception, and she was right. She then “took off her veil and again put on her widow’s garb” (Gen. 38:19). She quickly left the identity she temporarily donned for the long-suffering identity of the widow. But this time, something was growing under her widow’s robes: a child and a delicious secret.

            The Adullamite appears again and is the one sent to pay the pledge. Clearly Judah’s act was known to at least one person besides Tamar. When Hirah could not find her, he made inquiries about town, connecting himself and his cohorts with prostitutes publically. The text belabors this point. Hirah is seen asking about the prostitute. The townspeople replied in the negative, and then Hirah reported this all to Judah. Judah then made an ironic observation: “Let her keep them, lest we become a laughingstock. I did send her this kid, but you did not find her” (Gen. 38:23). The fear of being ridiculed did not occur to him beforehand. Judah was self-satisfied that he did his best by her since he tried to deliver on his pledge, without understanding that she had what was truly valuable: the damning evidence.

            Next Judah was told that his daughter-in-law was pregnant with another dose of irony: “Your daughter-in-law has played the harlot; in fact, she is with child by harlotry” (Gen. 38:24). All of the chatter that embodies the chapter tells the reader that this seemingly private encounter was the subject of gossip. Where news of Judah’s visit allowed Tamar to seek justice, news of Tamar’s pregnancy presaged an act of injustice. Judah was prepared to have Tamar brought out into the public square and burned. Burning is a very specific type of punishment. Its destructive powers are total. If Judah had paid Tamar little mind before, now he would have her literally obliterated without the residue of personal guilt that he should have carried. He could project his guilt onto her shame and feel blameless.

            “As she was being brought out, she sent this message to her father-in-law, ‘I am with child by the man to whom these belong.’ And she was dragged out to her public execution she added, ‘Examine these: whose seal and cord and staff are these?’” (Gen. 38:25). The moment of drama is acute; her walk of public shame is the physical approximation of the secret that was about to become public knowledge. Instead of the badge of shame brought on by pregnancy, we imagine Tamar’s head held high as she grabbed the objects that would save her and condemn Judah. Tamar immediately referenced the man who fathered the child so as not to bear the shame alone. It was as if she had said directly to the audience of voyeurs, “It takes two to have a child. Let me tell you who else should be punished with me.” To his credit, Judah recognized the objects and took the blame: “She is more in the right than I, inasmuch as I did not give her to my son Shelah” (Gen. 38:26).

            The chapter then turns from this scene of revelation to the birthing moment. The drama of the breech birth also involves the danger of twins, taking the reader from Tamar’s perilous risk in masking her identity to a sudden, breath-holding birth of two children. Since nothing takes place in an ordinary way in the chapter, the birth is no exception. One child placed his hand outside Tamar, and the midwife quickly encircled it with a crimson thread, a color associated elsewhere in the Bible with sin. The midwife assumed that this brother would come out first. Since the first-born is entitled to certain fiscal privileges and burdened with certain responsibilities, determining the first-born is not insignificant. The red bracelet would have been a sign of early victory. But, because nothing turned out as expected, the hand of this child went back into the womb, and his brother came out first instead. Just like the rest of the narrative, the one who is expected to triumph is vanquished to be eclipsed by another. Judah who thought he had the hand of power ended up bested by a powerless woman. The hand that grabbed life first went back into the womb to emerge second.

***

“I consider myself a pretty spiritual person and I know that she wants to continue the line, but I had a problem with this,” remarked another woman from the class.  “Obviously she is a very holy woman willing to sleep with her father-in-law to continue the line, to produce a future king but personally, that couldn’t have been me. Maybe it’s because I’m thinking of my own father-in-law.” She laughs.

I guess I admire her for it because it’s not something I think I could have done. I am in awe of her. She had a mission. She did it. I can feel the text very personally. I think studying texts about women is different than studying other texts. I can identify with the women we study. I love hearing a woman’s point of view. It’s different than sitting in a room with men and talking about what Tamar was willing to do. I don’t know how men would react to this story. I think studying this with women creates more openness with other women.  I don’t think women would have talked the same way if men were in the room.

For this student, studying with women creates a sensitive space for exploration. “The comfort level is different, and maybe even the thought level is different. Maybe the conversation is going to go in a slightly different direction with a group of women.” Safety is one feature of gender-based learning as is topic selection and discussion, but this woman was making a more radical suggestion: “the thought level is different.”

***

The context of Genesis 38 is critical.  Sandwiched between the throwing of a brother into a pit and the seduction of that brother by a woman in power, we have the story of a brother’s abdication of responsibility and a seduction by a relatively powerless woman. Genesis 38 begins with Judah’s lone descent. “About that time, Judah left his brothers and camped near a certain Adullamite whose name was Hirah” (Gen. 38:1). Grouped together as a unit, Judah and his brothers made poor decisions with long-term consequences; their brutality fed off each other.  Suddenly, the text singles out Judah, perhaps, as some commentaries believe, to understand the kind of brother who would allow his own flesh-and-blood to squander in a pit. He was not the first brother to be singled out from the group. Reuben took his own walk back to the pit and discovered that Joseph was missing, ripped his clothes and reported it to the others. When he painfully cried, “The boy is gone! Now what am I to do?” may indicate that Reuben thought this a mere prank driven by rivalry until it turned into something more sinister, and he, as eldest, would be held accountable. In an anxious huddle, the men contemplated their next move and took Joseph’s coat to their father. Once the deed had been done and its consequences unraveled, the linear movement of the story pauses and turns to Judah alone and a drama that involves him to the exclusion of any brothers.

Judah’s only close company in this chapter is his friend Hirah. Judah took a wife, had children, then lost a wife, had sons who died and a daughter-in-law who was banished to her father’s house. Hirah is the only character who stays at his side throughout the entire narrative. If Genesis 37 warned us about evil in company and the rabble-rousing that complicity can create, Genesis 38 continues the lesson. It is Hirah who Judah camps near, Hirah who Judah goes sheep-shearing with and Hirah who went to pay the prostitute. Judah’s decisions and actions throughout are self-absorbed. Even his friend is only regarded in service of him, and an ignoble service at that. This is the kind of man, the chapter suggests, who might just throw his brother in a pit, who is groomed for leadership himself and blessed with it by his father but he failed to initiate moral leadership, both with his brother Joseph and with his daughter-in-law Tamar.

***

Women studying about women with other women naturally precipitates conversations about women. One woman who prefers learning in a mixed-setting said that she does not necessarily view the texts from a woman’s perspective, making a study of women in Genesis undifferentiated from, say, an exploration of major themes in Numbers. “I’ve always liked talking with males about things, and in some of the mixed groups I’ve been in—without stereotyping men or women—I’ve liked the rigor and the logic that I don’t always find in learning with women.” Even as she says this, she hesitates. She does not want to stereotype the way that women learn and struggles to find the language to explain her preferences. She was aware as a child that when men studied separately she felt left out and didn’t want to feel left out. But then she pauses because there are times when the women-only learning setting and the cast of female characters does impact her more:

When we’re learning about a woman who is in a difficult position, either she doesn’t have the freedoms to do what she wants with her life or she doesn’t have children, I think that there’s an identification with what she might be experiencing which is more personal than with other characters. I think it’s easier to imagine oneself in the inside of a female character. It’s not seeing myself in her position currently as much as like when you’re little and you play imagination games. You play another character, and I could envision myself that way. But sometimes I do identify more with a male than a female depending on the circumstance.

Infertility, rape, nursing, birth, marriage, and mothering have come up as themes in the class. Could these be explored in the same way with men? “I think there might be a level of discomfort with the topics if we were studying with men. It’s not really about modesty but about privacy.” It allows for a comfort level for sensitive topics that surface in discussion.

***

The interpolation of this chapter in the Joseph narratives has led many scholars to view this story as an imposition or digression on what would otherwise have been a linear tale about the rise of Joseph’s power. The scholars who arbitrarily dismiss the placement as a result of multiple authors miss many of the more profound linguistics and thematic connections in the chapters before and after the story of Judah and Tamar. Robert Alter draws attention to a Midrash that regards Judah as the deceiver deceived (Bereshit Rabba 84:11,12) and comments on the way that the assumption of interconnectedness makes us more careful readers:

The difference between the two is ultimately the difference between assuming that the text is an intricately interconnected unity, as the midrashic exegetes did, and assuming it is a patchwork of frequently disparate documents, as most modern scholars have assumed. With their assumption of interconnectedness, the makers of the Midrash were often exquisitely attuned to small verbal signs of continuity and to significant levels of nuance as any “close reader” of our own age.^[3]

Specifically in reading this narrative, Alter places great weight on the repetition of the infinitive le-hakir—to recognize or to identify— in its various forms. Jacob was asked to identify Joseph’s coat dipped in blood in Genesis 37 and then Judah was asked to identify his seal, cord and staff in 38. Although Alter does not point this out, identifying objects surface again in Genesis 39 when Joseph runs away from the wife of Potiphar’s nefarious clutches and leaves his garment as evidence.

One critical emphasis in each of these chapters is the way in which an object tells a story. Although Alter stresses the verb “to recognize” that runs throughout these narratives, he does not note an inherent difference which the juxtaposed texts force upon the reader. The brothers, when handing Jacob the bloody garment did not lie. They let the coat lie for them in the visual shock it presented to their father: “They had the ornamented tunic taken to their father, and they said, ‘We found this. Please examine it; is it your son’s tunic or not’ He recognized it and said, ‘My son’s tunic! A savage beast devoured him! Joseph was torn by a beast!’” (Gen. 37:33).

In one chapter, an object lied. In the next, an object told the truth. There are many ways to tell a story and many props that lend themselves to non-verbal reporting. All Potiphar’s wife had to do to incriminate Joseph was hold up what he once wore. In her case, the object both lied and told the truth. It was indeed Joseph’s garment, but it was not left there as the remains of a sordid tryst. It was in this nameless woman’s hands because she took it forcibly, exerting her considerable power over a vulnerable servant who rejected her.

***

 “In our class, when you learn with women there’s a lot of discussion about the psychology of what’s going on, and I doubt we’d get that in a mixed class.” She was sure studying as a man would not be the same. “It might be on a different level; it might not look much to the interpersonal. The comments and questions people make inform our learning.”

As an instructor, I struggled and still struggle with this question. Does learning in a uni-gender classroom change the learning and possibly even change the thinking? I am familiar with the psychological research presented in Women’s Ways of Knowing:

Women pose questions more than men, they listen to others, and they refrain from speaking out—these have long been considered signs of powerlessness, subjugation, and inadequacy of women. When women’s talk is assessed against standards established by men’s behavior, it is seen as tentative, vacillating, and diminutive.[4]

Perhaps women in the company of men invalidate their own intellectual confidence, stunting their own exploration of an idea. I am aware that many women experience this, but generally I never have. Through high school, all of my own learning took place in a mixed-gender setting. My study partners were usually male by preference because, like the learner in the class who unwillingly made assumptions about the way men and women learn, I fell into the same trap. I felt comfortable with the confidence of boys and was anxious to be in their intellectual company. I shied away from what I regarded as “girly” topics and even studied and taught Talmud at the expense of my love of Bible, feeling it to be the intellectually superior discipline, not because it is but because I bought wholesale into that stereotype.

I appreciate the diversity of discussion that comes from different life-experience, different points of religious observance and non-observance, different ages, and, of course, different genders. I rarely teach women-only classes and have often turned down opportunities to privilege mixed-gender learning. But I did not turn down the invitation to teach this class in my neighborhood and soon found it growing into a highlight of my week. Try as I might to minimize the act of a woman teaching other women about women I could not resist its attractions. This is a community of learners in the best sense of the word. They care for each other and use the class as platform to honor a deceased parent on a yartzheit or to think about a member of the class who is ill. They know about each other’s families and have been through bat mitzvah celebrations, the birth of grandchildren, and even the passing of class members. They remind each other to pray for others and discuss communal issues before and after our learning. They learn in the most powerful way that ideas have staying power, when they are studied among friends.

***

“She is more in the right than I…” Tamar does not get the last word in her narrative. Judah does, speaking about Tamar and validating the risk she took, understanding that she did it with the most noble of intentions. Trapped in limitation, Tamar modeled responsibility, justice and compassion for Judah, a man blessed with future leadership. Those who wear the seal and cord and carry the staff must use power judiciously and righteously. And those who follow Tamar and study her story see in her the ultimate female empowerment, leadership not for the sake of authority alone but for the sake of continuity.

Notes

Our question is surely of great interest to Jews everywhere, but in the State of Israel it has existential force, and must be confronted every day. As we were writing this article, a brouhaha developed over an Arab justice on the Supreme Court who refused to sing Hatikvah at the installation of the new Chief Justice. All of the tensions between Judaism and democracy in Israel were brought out into the open by this event, however irrelevant it is to the real questions before us.

An apt way to open our discussion is to cite a verse from Psalms. The Psalmist says (19:8):  Torat Hashem Temimah…, The Torah of the Lord is perfect, renewing life; the decrees of the Lord are enduring, making the simple wise. Does the word temimah here mean “perfect,” without flaw, or “perfect” in the sense of complete? If the latter, then Torah must have a position on democracy.  Rambam, however, tells us that the first meaning of the word temimah in our verse is to be preferred (Guide of the Perplexed II.39, Pines translation p. 380):

Things are similar with regard to this Law, as is clear from its equibalance. For it says (Devarim 4:8): Just statutes and judgments now you know that the meaning of just is equibalanced. For these are manners of worship in which there is no burden and excess—such as monastic life and pilgrimage and similar things—nor a deficiency necessarily leading to greed and being engrossed in the indulgence of appetites, so that in consequence the perfection of man is diminished with respect to his moral habits and to his speculation—this being the case with regard to all the other nomoi [laws] of the religious communities in the past. When we shall speak in this treatise about the reasons accounting for the commandments, their equibalance and wisdom will be make clear to you insofar as this is necessary. For this reason it is said with reference to them (Tehillim 19:8): The Torah of the Lord is perfect. As for those who deem that its burdens are grievous, heavy, and difficult to bear— all of this is due to an error in considering them. I shall explain later on how easy they are in true reality according to the opinion of the perfect.[1]

According to Rambam, then, the word Torah, in our verse, refers to God's commandments (paralleling the word edut [decrees] in the second half of the verse); these commandments, unlike those in other putative bodies of divine law, are equibalanced: neither demanding too much nor too little. There is no claim here that the Torah is perfect in the sense of being complete, covering all aspects of life.

We start our discussion, therefore, with the following assumption: The Torah does not have positions about everything. The implications of this simple-sounding statement are actually substantial. If this assumption is correct, then there can be true and correct values independent of Torah. These values can cohere with the Torah, contradict the Torah, coexist with the Torah while remaining independent of it (i.e., neither cohere with nor contradict the Torah), or be hitherto unnoticed consequences of Torah. If this is correct, then the expansive notion of da'at Torah popular in many Orthodox circles today is clearly false.[2] It also follows that while many aspects of life are commanded, and others are forbidden, there are also aspects of life about which Torah, as it were, has no opinion. This latter approach is supported by Rambam, who writes in "Laws of the Foundations of the Torah," chapter ix:

It is clearly and explicitly set forth in the Torah that its ordinances will endure for ever without variation, diminution or addition; as it is said, All this word which I command you, that shall ye observe to do ; thou shalt not add to it, nor take away from it (Devarim 13:1); and further it is said but the things that are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever; that we may do all the words of this Law (Devarim 29:28). Hence the inference that to fulfill all the behests of the Torah is an obligation incumbent upon us forever, as it is said, It is an everlasting statute throughout your generations (vaYikra 23:14, Bemidbar 18:23). It is also said, It is not in heaven (Devarim 30:12)—hence, the inference that a prophet is forbidden to make innovations in the Torah. Accordingly, if any one should arise, whether among the Gentiles or among the Israelites, and, showing a sign and token, declare that God had sent him to add a precept to the Torah or take away a precept from the Torah, or give an interpretation to any of the commandments, such as we had not heard from Moses; or should assert that the commandments ordained to Israel are not of perpetual obligation for all generations but only temporary, such a man is a false prophet, because he sets out to deny the prophecy of Moses. He is to be put to death by strangling because he spoke perversely in the name of God that which God had not bidden him, for the Lord enjoined Moses that this Commandment shall be unto us and to our children after us forever. And God is not a man that he should lie. Since this is so, why is it said in the Torah, I will raise them up a prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee (Devarim 18:18)? The answer is that the prophet here referred to, will come, not to found a religion, but to charge the people concerning the words of the Torah and exhort them not to transgress it; as the last of the prophets expressed it, Remember ye the law of Moses, My servant (Malachi 3:22). And so, if the prophet gives an order in regard to things permissible, as for instance, if he says "Go to that place" or "Do not go to it,” "Wage war today" or "Do not wage war,” "Build this wall" or "Do not build it,” it is a duty to obey him. Whoever transgresses his instructions incurs the penalty of death by the hand of God, as it is said, And it shall come to pass, that whosoever will not hearken unto the words of the prophet which he shall speak in My Name, I will require it of him (Devarim 18:19).[3]

The point we wish to emphasize here is Rambam's assertion that prophets have the right to command with respect to permissible matters. In this regard, prophets are distinct from rabbis, who do not have that right. Rambam posits what today would be called a "separation of powers" between rabbis, prophets, and, we might add, kings. From Rambam's perspective, the attempt to expand rabbinic authority into areas of social and political questions (the so-called doctrine of da'at Torah) reflects an attempt by rabbis to expand their authority in the face of the vacuum created by the absence of prophecy and the absence of royalty. Rambam wrote his works long after the cessation of prophecy and long after the disappearance of royalty in Judaism; it is therefore probably safe to assume that he would not look with favor upon contemporary attempts to present da'at Torah as an essential element of classical Jewish thought. That does not mean that he would oppose its use as an ad hoc measure to stem the tides of assimilation. There is simply no way of knowing.

Let us examine some of the issues about which Torah appears not to have an opinion. Our late teacher and friend Steven S. Schwarzschild would disagree with what we are about to write, but we do not believe that Torah has a position on the debate between capitalism and socialism.[4] This should be hardly surprising: there were no capitalists or socialists at Sinai, or at Yavneh. Torah has no position on "Obamacare" or on the wisdom of American policy in Iraq and Afghanistan. Torah certainly has no opinion on whom to vote for in the upcoming American elections, or even in Israeli elections.

There are many other issues about which Orthodox Jews who take Torah very seriously cannot agree. Torah has a position on these issues, but honesty compels us to admit that we cannot say what it is (even though we certainly have strong opinions ourselves on what Torah teaches in these matters). Here are some examples:

• Are human beings in some significant sense all equally created in the image of God? The tradition is (sadly) deeply divided over this issue. In general, is Torah fundamentally universalist or fundamentally particularist?
• Is Kabbalah a part of Torah, or a dangerous deviation from it? The issue has been decided within the world of tradition, but for centuries it divided that very world. Similarly, does Torah have a clear cut position on the value of the "secular" arts and sciences?
• Is the State of Israel part of the messianic process, religiously neutral, or a dangerous deviation from Torah?
• Is territorial compromise with Palestinians opposed by Torah (the view of many Zionist rabbis), demanded by Torah (the view of a much smaller cadre of Zionist rabbis), or a practical matter to be decided by generals and politicians, not rabbis (reportedly the view of the late Rav Joseph B. Soloveitchik)?
• How does the Torah deal with scientific theories, such as evolution? (Rav Kook saw in the theory of evolution an expression of the way in which God works in the world; many of his followers today are deeply embarrassed by that.)

One could easily multiply these examples. There have been thinkers who have tried to finesse these debates, denying that there is any true tension between the various apparently opposed positions, and there are many among us today who adopt one side of each of these debated issues and condemn as un-Jewish those who disagree with them. It is more historically and theologically accurate to admit that we simply cannot determine what Torah's position is on these issues.

Not only are there long-standing disagreements within the tradition over fundamental values, it is hard to deny that those values have changed over the generations and continue to change in front of us. The Torah commands genocide: are there any (sane) Jews today who actually expect to do to Amalek what the Germans did to us? The Torah condones and in some cases enjoins slavery. Is there any (sane) rabbi today who would accept the reinstitution of biblical slavery? Polygamy, which was practiced among some Jews within living memory is another example. We should be honest about this: our values have changed. How to relate those changes to our understanding of Torah is too big an issue to address here, but we do not want to pretend that it does not exist. In addition to values which have changed, we have values which are changing before our very eyes: the status and role of women, for example. There are other values which will likely change in the not too distant future: the attitude of Orthodoxy towards homosexuals, for example.[5]

Now, finally: what about democracy? Does Torah have a position on democracy?

First of all, what is democracy? Is it a set of procedures (such as majority rule)? Is it a set of values (such as human equality)? Or, as we hold, is it a set of procedures determined by certain values? Procedures in democratic states and societies vary widely. Some have constituency-based elections (as in the USA), in which the electorate chooses individuals; others have party-based elections, in which voters choose a party list, but not the individuals making it up (largely the case in Israel). In some democracies (as in the U.S.) free speech is a fundamental value (unlike the case in the UK, where protection of speech is much weaker than in the U.S.). Separation of Church and State is a fundamental dogma in the United States, very much not the case in the United Kingdom, and, sadly, certainly not the case in Israel. In some democracies, the separation of powers is a dogma, while in others (as in many parliamentary systems), the executive is a subset of the legislative. In the United States the executive and legislative branches together choose the judiciary, whereas in Israel the judiciary is largely independent of the other branches of government and to a very great extent self-perpetuating. Some democracies, like Canada and the United States, are very much "states of all their citizens" in which citizens have no shared ethnicity or religion, and relatively little in the way of shared values (and the nature of whatever shared values there may be is hotly debated), while others, such as Israel, France, Norway, Hungary, Greece, Turkey, and probably most other functioning democracies, privilege one ethnic or cultural group over all others.

Even assuming that Torah has an opinion about democracy as a form of government (something which we very much doubt), it certainly takes no position on the matters sketched in the last paragraph. In fact, if pushed to the wall, it probably makes sense to claim that Torah does not look with favor upon democracy, since most authoritative texts look forward to a messianic monarchy. Rambam, whom we have already cited twice, certainly was no democrat and looked forward to a messianic king and a renewed Sanhedrin.  Further, democracy is based upon a notion of rights, while the Torah appears to be based upon a notion of obligations (from which, of course, one may derive certain rights, but they remain derivative).

The Torah may have no view on democracy, but we certainly do. We hold these truths to be dear, if unfortunately not yet self-evident, that all human beings are created in the image of their Creator, and that each is thereby endowed with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of self-fulfillment, where such pursuit does not infringe upon the rights of others. It follows from this, as night follows day, that we support forms of government which protect these rights. We are fundamentally uninterested in the question of whether we hold these values because they are derived from, or at the very least consistent with the Torah as we understand it, or because we were both raised in classic liberal homes, or for some combination of these and other possible reasons. It is simply the case that these values are very important to us; furthermore, we believe that they can to a great extent be justified rationally and morally—they are not simply a matter of taste or sentiment.

It follows from all that we have said that, aside from matters of issur veHeter, we do not look to rabbis as such for guidance. We have seen no evidence that halakhic competence, however great, is smoothly translated into social or political wisdom.[6]

Having brought the discussion this far, we discover that we have several problems. For one thing, we would like our basic values (commitment to Torah and commitment to democracy) to cohere in some significant sense, rather than simply be consistent one with the other.[7] We would particularly like them to fit together and interpenetrate each other.

We also have a problem that, because we live in the State of Israel, we face every day. It is not enough for us to affirm that in principle halakha and democracy do not conflict. We want a halakha for a democratic and Jewish state (in the world today). At the moment, we are Jews, we are also Israelis, and we are also democrats; we would prefer to be Israeli Jewish democrats. Torah and democracy can, of course, conflict, especially when each side of the equation seeks to expand beyond its appropriate boundaries. As noted above, the doctrine of da'at Torah is an example of the world of halakha seeking to impose itself in areas it was never meant to enter. The same can happen with respect to democracy. A good way of seeing both is to take note of a statement attributed to the former Chief Justice of the Israeli Supreme Court, Professor Aharon Barak: haKol shafit (everything is judiciable).[8] Similarly, all too many rabbis believe that haKol pasik (everything is subject to halakhic pesak, or decision). When judges decide that they know how democratic values (as they construe them) should impinge on every aspect of society, and when rabbis decide that Torah has something decisive to say about every social issue, conflict cannot be avoided. When these judges and rabbis are Israelis, then …

Zionists believe that, especially after the Holocaust, a Jewish state is not only a religious and moral requirement, but also a necessity. But ingathering the exiles, and establishing Jewish sovereignty in our ancient homeland is something for which Jewish history and Jewish tradition are wholly unprepared. Even those who are sure (or would like to hope) that the State of Israel is the athalta deGeulah, the first phase of messianic redemption, have to admit that Jewish history, Jewish texts, Jewish teachings give no indication of how to create a Jewish state. With the possible exceptions of Rabbis Aharon Kook, Shlomo Goren, Haim David Halevy, and David Hartman (for all their differences) almost no rabbis in the Land of Israel have had the courage to look this new reality in the face and ask themselves: what must be done in order to create a Jewish state in the modern world? When we add to that equation the demand that a modern Jewish state be a democracy, then we can hunt high and low and not find any rabbi who has approached the problem in any significant way.

A third problem was brought home to us recently when we heard a very secular radio personality opening her talk show by intoning, Oseh shalom bimromav, hu ya'aseh shalom aleinu veAl kol haOlam: "May He Who makes peace in His heights, make peace upon us and upon all the world." Surely a sentiment with which we agree, but, we wondered, what is so terrible about the traditional ending of the Kaddish: Oseh shalom bimromav, hu ya'aseh shalom aleinu veAl kol yisrael: "May He Who makes peace in His heights, make peace upon us and upon all Israel." This person clearly has a problem with Jewish particularism. Without knowing much about her, it is probably safe to say that she thinks that there is a tension between democracy and Jewish identity, and, feeling forced to choose, prefers the former over the latter. Given realities in the world of traditional Jewish observance today, what could we say that would convince her that she is wrong?

In conclusion, it appears that our problems follow from the imperfect nature of our world. The Torah is temimah, perfect, but its interpreters certainly are not. Seeking the sort of perfection in which all of our ideals not only do not conflict with each other, but actually entail each other, appears to be a messianic dream. If that is the case, does it not behoove us to make our world as messiah-worthy as possible? For us, that means working towards a world in which M. Sanhedrin iv.5 serves as guide. That Mishna teaches that every single human being must say, "The world was created for my sake," meaning that the world was created for the sake of every other human being as well. This mishnaic ideal entails the notion of human equality, and indeed, a notion of human dignity. From this it appears clear to us that democracy, as a set of procedures meant to embody the ideals of human equality and dignity, is the form of government the wide adoption of which is most likely to make the world messiah-worthy. So, in the final analysis, halakha and democracy may not cohere today, but they should, and, at some point in the future when we are worthy of it, they will.

Growing up in suburban New York City, I never heard the phrase “secular humanism,” or if I did, I did not find it meaningful enough to remember because I had no concept of religion as a life-encompassing endeavor against which to compare it. Certainly, life offered choices. I could choose to become a doctor or a lawyer, and I might even be so bold as to move to Africa to work for UNICEF, but the mentality of my secular Jewish upbringing would remain underneath any career or geographical choices. In the end, I would be “learning” the New York Times wherever I went. One of the hardest tasks in life is breaking out of one’s Weltanschauung. Few do it, and it is a bona fide miracle that people find their way to Torah observance, which can be a whopper of a life-change in our era.

 A quarter of a century ago when I became frum, the yeshivot for ba’alei teshuvah essentially were Hareidi, or they tried to appear so. My limited experience in the Torah world left me unable to categorize them as such just as my prior life as a secular Jewish middle-class American did not seem to me at age 18 a life choice but rather life itself. I lacked the words to encapsulate it and to contrast it from anything else.

Even though I did not become observant via a kiruv organization, but rather through thinking and reading, I made my way to yeshiva when enough of the people I encountered recommended it. I had expected yeshiva to be a place for further exploration of the religion and of my own thoughts and feelings about it, in part because it was advertised as such, but that’s not what it was at all. Rather, it was a kind of factory for producing Hareidi Jewish men.

I do not say that with outrage. Many of my old classmates function fairly well as Hareidi Jewish men, better than they were functioning as secular Jewish men. They took to yeshiva and found a productive place in life through the lifestyle it promoted. Most importantly, of course, they are Shomer Shabbat.

The problem was for the people who did not precisely fit the mold. If this matter of single-sizing is causing trouble in the schools for the frum-from-birth (FFB), the trouble is magnified for ba’alei teshuvah. Consider, for example, what happens to the academically inclined person who had spent his entire life immersed in secular studies. Whether this happens in public school, which serves largely as preparation for college, or college itself, or graduate school, or a PhD program, or Sunday afternoons with the New York Times, it comprises a life’s work for many people. Suddenly, one hears that it is all narishkite, emptiness, and lies. Try it on yourself; say “My life’s work was a waste of time.” That is a bitter pill to swallow, and it has nasty side effects.

This would not be such a problem if indeed it were all emptiness and lies. Emet serves as an excellent replacement for sheker. Normally, one is happy to unload rocks from his backpack. But what if they are not really rocks?

Consider my coming to Yiddishkite. As I said, I found my way on my own, not through a kiruv group. Ironically, I did it largely through “secular” studies. Despite the claim that the non-Torah observant thinkers and writers of the world are all heathens and enemies of God, there are in fact many who write about morality, monotheism, and spirituality. For example, it was none other than conservative political and social commentator William F. Buckley, whose writings taught me about the concepts of faith, self-restraint, and morality as pursuits to encompass every facet of life. He talked about eschatology, that is, the idea that life on a personal and global level takes place in stages with heaven and hell coming last. He introduced me to the catchphrase “Don’t immanentize the eschaton,” which is an exhortation against utopian secular philosophies such as communism that try to make heaven (the eschaton) on earth. The phrase stems from the writings of Eric Voegelin, a German-born political philosopher who taught at University of Notre Dame and University of Munich.[1]

I am not suggesting that either Buckley or Voeglin were b’nei Torah or that seminary students in Lakewood should read their writings. I am saying merely that the bifurcation of humanity into camps of pure truth or complete lies is not the complete truth. Wonderfully, I have learned after years in the frum world that many great figures from our history would concur with my statement. Take for example what Rabbeinu Bachya wrote in his introduction to Duties of the Heart:

I also quote the pious and wise men of other nations whose words have reached us—such as the words of the philosophers, the discipline of the ascetics, and their admirable codes of conduct—for it is my hope that my readers will incline their hearts to them and listen to their wisdom. Our Masters of blessed memory have already said [in this regard]: One verse says, “But you have acted in accordance with the laws of the nations around you” (Yechezkel 11:12), and another verse says, “Nor have you acted [in accordance with the laws of the nations around you]” (ibid. 5:7). What is the resolution [of the two verses]? You have not acted like the refined among them, but you have acted like the corrupt among them. (Sanhedrin 39b).[2]

Here we learn that not only did Rabbeinu Bachya study the works of gentile thinkers but he incorporated some of their ideas into his masterpiece. Let us remember where Duties of the Heart stands in the cannon of Jewish thought as the Rambam, the Vilna Gaon, and the Hatam Sofer, each one a seminal figure in the Hareidi world, studied and praised it.[3] The grandson of the Hatam Sofer said that “Almost all of his ethical teachings and practices were from the words of this holy book.”[4] In our times, the Steipler Gaon wrote, “Whoever has not seen the lights of the holy words of the Duties of the Heart will be missing very much, he will be wanting inside, in the purity of all that is holy.”[5]

So what do we do with secular studies, much of which obviously is not fit for Jewish eyes or human eyes for that matter? I do not have a simple answer. But I can tell you this, pressuring a person to surrender truths only because of their source or to force them into different terminology that does not feel as true can yield destructive results. As I said, it is a miracle that many people become frum.

The gaon Rav Yaakov Kamenetsky was sensitive to this idea. He advised kiruv professionals that their goal should be simply to help non-observant Jews to become observant, that is, to keep the mitzvoth. One should not try to impose personality change or to destroy the essence of what defines the person. One should not impose conformity.[6] In other words, do not fold, spindle, or mutilate, to borrow a phrase that used to be printed on machine-readable cards for computers. Rav Yaakov said that it is essential that a ba’al teshuvah feel normal in his Torah observance. He said that, for example, the typical ba’al teshuvah will not feel normal if he does not complete his college education so he should not be discouraged from doing so.[7]

For many ba’alei teshuvah, life in a contemporary Hareidi environment will not feel normal, particularly if one’s mentors are not striving to follow the advice of Rav Yaakov. I have been to more than one shiur where the speaker declared how all secular music was prohibited. Each time I thought to myself, “Bridge over Troubled Water” is osur? Seriously?” I combed through the lyrics, “When you’re weary, feeling small, when tears are in your eyes, I’ll dry them all.” What is the problem here? Is this a hok like shatnes? Am I never allowed again to hear this song that has comforted and inspired me throughout my life? In my view, most of the people who I observed entering and leaving the frum world left not because they could not handle mitzvoth observance but because they could not cope with the more extreme approaches to it. That is a tragedy. Hence, there was and is a great need for Modern Orthodox kiruv yeshivot where the answer to incorporating the good of the secular world is not met with a shochet’s knife, but rather, with discussion, with decisions, and with indecision.

Note that I use the term Modern Orthodox in the broad sense to mean not “Torah only” or not contemporary Hareidi. There are different shades of Modern Orthodox. For example, in my view, the litvaks of old Europe and even mid-twentieth-century America would not fit neatly into either camp. However, the Modern Orthodox world tends to allow more room for a person to match the complete litvish approach to Torah life which usually included the pursuit of parnassah at younger ages and often included secular studies and other matters that we associate today with the Modern Orthodox. As the Hareidi world narrows its scope, the Modern Orthodox world absorbs approaches to Torah life that are not characteristically modern.

I cannot speak for the contemporary kiruv world as I have long moved on to the daily focus of earning a living. But the English speaking kiruv world of decades ago I knew pretty well, particularly the yeshivot. There really was only one place for people who all ready had earned college degrees that I could describe as espousing “Modern” Orthodox sensibilities of any significance and the rabbi who I met after knocking on the door spent our interview testing me on the Gemara. What I did not know at the time, what he evidentially did not know either, is that I was seeking to learn more about Torah Im Derekh Erets and Torah u’Maddah. As the expression goes, you don’t know what you don’t know. I did not know these terms so I did not know to inquire about them. I only knew that the outlook I was trying to hoist upon myself was not working as promised.

You might be surprised if you came into my home today to see very little secular material lying around. One reason for this is my fear that young people in this era cannot manage both Torah and maddah successfully, particularly as the academic world and general society have drifted into some really bizarre and indecent territory. I cannot get my mind around what passes for culture and entertainment today. But also, I want to spare my family the painful choices and sacrifices that I had to endure. I often think that some ba’alei teshuvah would be wise to retain a small percentage of their old interests, as long as they are halakhically permissible. At some point, you have to make peace with your past. You can only discard so much. But as Rabbi Avigdor Miller used to say, you can like chocolate cake, but you don’t have to tell the whole world about it. Let the FFBs in my house have some peace; let them enjoy the simplicity that just was not their father’s lot in life.

Orthodox Singles: Breaking Myths (or: The "Shiddukh Crisis" Revisited) [i]

I'm smart, successful at my career, and fun to be with. I've worked out many of my "issues" in therapy. Here I am, eminently eligible and ready for a relationship, but somehow all of the guys I meet just aren't there yet. I feel like prescribing them a course of therapy, life-skills, and relationship-skills, and telling them to return in a few years, though hopefully I'll have found someone by then…

Sarah, age 27

I really want to get married and build a "bayit ne'eman b'yisrael" and all that other good stuff, but sometimes life gets in the way. I'm struggling really deeply with my conflicting sexual and religious needs, while trying to move forward in my career, and still make it to minyan—all this under the watchful and critical eye of my parents and community. Spending Shabbat with my parents is the opposite of relaxing. I wonder whether they would have gotten married as young and as happily as they did had they had the same challenges to contend with when single as I do.

Avi, age 31  

I hesitate to take up my pen and write about the broad topic of Orthodox singles. It's a topic on which much ink has been spilt and to little effect. I generally confine myself to the topic of singles and sexuality/religious conflict, which has been much less explored and where there are perhaps more constructive things to be written. However, I want to write briefly about some of the broader challenges faced by singles and by the Orthodox community. The issues are manifold and complex—spanning the religious, psychological, phenomenological, existential, physiological, and halakhic realms, among others—and my goals are limited. If I can succeed in making you question your assumptions about singles, or in breaking some of the myths that you hold dear, and shaking your sense of certainty about anything relating to singles and their place in the community, then I will have done enough. Deconstruction is easy compared to reconstruction, but it often needs to come first—I leave the rebuilding to the future.

We often hear mention of the "Shiddukh Crisis" or "Singles Problem" that currently plagues the Orthodox Jewish community. Various groups, organizations, synagogues, and individuals have given much thought to finding the "solution" or a range of "solutions" to this "problem." I don't want to enter into the fray of searching for solutions, partly because some of the "solutions" I've seen have been worse than the problem itself and have augmented the problem rather than solving it, and partly because I disagree with the entire construct of problem-solving that has been set up around Orthodox singles.

Let's start with some definitions: Many today would define the "Shiddukh Crisis" as the fact that today, more than ever before, large numbers of Jews are remaining single for longer, marrying later, or not marrying at all. This definition assumes that the mere status of married or unmarried is how we define success, and the quality of a person's married or single life doesn't matter to us. For many people, the "Singles Problem" is something that needs to be solved simply by getting everyone married as quickly as possible.

I want to suggest a different definition of the "Singles Problem": the crux of the crisis is, on the one hand, deeply personal, surrounding the individual issues that prevent people from either desiring or achieving a meaningful and committed relationship. And on the other hand, there is a wider communal dynamic in which the Orthodox community simply doesn't know how to include the unmarried individuals in its midst and often alienates singles, forcing them to either form their own singles communities or to leave Orthodoxy.

In this article, I want to focus on the intersection between the single and the community and on some of the myths that prevent mutual understanding.

Beginning the Myth-Breaking

The line between straining at truths that prove to be imbecilically self-evident, on the one hand, and on the other hand tossing off commonplaces that turn out to retain their power to galvanize and divide, is weirdly unpredictable. In dealing with an open-secret structure, it's only by being shameless about risking the obvious that we happen into the vicinity of the transformative….

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet, p. 22

Before we can move toward a productive conversation about singles and their place in the community, I need to clear the ground from some of the many and often contradictory myths that currently prevail regarding singles. The very act of generalizing—of making statements that are relevant to "all singles" or "everyone"—does violence to the individual and his or her experience. Individuals come in different shapes and sizes; physically, emotionally, intellectually—and they relate differently to this period in their lives. We simply can't make any general assumptions about people.

I have chosen five common myths that I want to break systematically, though there are many more. I begin with the sexual realm because I think that it is the proverbial  elephant in the room, which often hovers in people's consciousnesses but is not mentioned in polite conversation. Since halakha does not permit pre-marital sex or any physical contact with the opposite sex (“negiah”), singles either are not sexually active, or their sexual activity is illegitimate. Therefore, they are either grappling with sexual denial or repression, or they are violating the halakha. Either way, their situation is one that the wider community cannot easily identify with. The prevalence of assumptions and dearth of real information about people's sexual beliefs and practices—the confusion between myth and fact—may contribute to suspicion mixed with awkwardness in interactions between singles and members of the wider community. In this vein the myths can be especially damaging.

Myth #1: Everyone is "shomer negiah" /No one is "shomer negiah."

These myths, though they contradict each other, are both quite prevalent within the Orthodox community. Each comes from a totalizing perspective that seeks to reduce all singles to the same experience so that we don't need to give the matter further thought. If all singles are shomer negiah, then the system works—everything is fine, there is no conflict to be reckoned with, and we need not concern ourselves with the personal toll that this halakhic observance may be having upon the individual. On the other hand, if no singles are shomer negiah, then there is also no conflict—singles simply don't care about the halakha and thus they aren't part of the community. Each of these totalizing perspectives is detrimental and each ignores the uniqueness of the individual and the fact that people are different and that they cope with singlehood in different ways.

Although sex and sexuality are universal phenomena, they are experienced differently by different individuals and even by the same individual in different stages of life. For some, sexuality is a major challenge during the single years. For others, sexuality is a non-issue, or a minor issue. Some observe negiah with ease, others with difficulty, others not at all. Some are shomer negiah in some relationships and not in others or with some people and not with others. For others, the status changes with time. The endless permutations make stereotypes worthless. There are people who don't look the part who are completely shomer negiah, and people learning in yeshiva who visit prostitutes. A friend of mine recently asked two male friends of hers, of similar age and profession, what they were looking for in a wife in terms of her sexual experience—the answers they gave were diametrically opposed. One would only date women who had never touched men, because "If I waited, why couldn't she?" and the other would only date women who had had some physical contact with men, because, "I don't want someone who's not having sex just so that her ketubah [marriage contract] can say betulah [virgin] (which it can either way)." Leave the stereotypes behind and look at the person who is facing you.

Myth #2: Anyone who engages in premarital sexual activity is totally fine with it.

This myth is particularly damaging because it allows us to ignore the pain and conflict that many Orthodox singles are experiencing. Although there are certainly singles who are not conflicted about their premarital sexual activity, all of the singles with whom I have spoken have struggled very deeply with these issues—either overtly or beneath the surface—and while some eventually made their peace with the choices they made, others continue to struggle.

An extension of this myth is that those who engage in premarital sexual activity simply don't care about the halakha. Most of the singles that I have spoken with cared deeply about the halakha, and it was precisely because they cared so much about the halakha that they were thrown into such a deep existential conflict in its violation. However, the guilt surrounding premarital sexual activity is not purely due to halakhic violation. For many people feelings of guilt are a complex combination of many factors, the halakha being one, and communal or familial expectations and social pressures being another. For women especially, society’s double standard of sexual behavior adds onto the halakhic layer the feelings of being “damaged goods” once one engages in premarital sexual activity, and raises questions about one’s larger identity as a good girl, a good person, and a good Jew. Even those singles I spoke with who chose to leave the halakhic lifestyle retained a lingering sense of guilt and discomfort about their decisions in the sexual realm.

Myth #3: Singles are happy the way they are—they don't want to be part of the "broader Orthodox community."

“Community” means different things to different people. Here I am using this term in an intentionally ambiguous way, though on a basic level I am referring to the community that forms around a synagogue or a neighborhood. In either case, families are generally the building block of the community. Depending on the specific community, singles may have formed their own minyan, or in places with fewer singles, singles may be either invisible within the communal framework or may be full members of the community.

If we take this myth in the specific context of the community that forms around a synagogue, then the exact opposite is often true as well: Many singles feel so alone and isolated that they are often thirsting to be a part of the larger community, if only the community would let them. Especially in the absence of a spouse—who, among other things, provides a regular companion for Shabbat meals—singles often appreciate the sense of belonging or of being part of something larger than oneself.

However, not all singles want to be involved in the community to the same extent, and the community should be sensitive to the range of needs that individuals might have. Some singles might appreciate an invitation to a Shabbat meal, others might appreciate being set up, others might just want a smile and greeting after prayer services, and others might want a more active role on the synagogue board or on various committees. And beyond these concrete actions, there is the ineffable; the sense you get when the person in front of you is being perfunctory in conversation, scanning the room for someone else to talk to, the sense you get when "How are you" is a statement rather than a question. Married people: Be open to singles the same way you would be open to a new family that joins your community, and allow the situation and the person standing in front of you to guide your actions.

Myth #4: Any attempt on the part of the Orthodox community to grapple openly and deal seriously with the challenges and conflicts that singles face will help to legitimize perpetual singlehood and make singles even less likely to marry.

In 2009, when the numbers of unmarried Orthodox Jews in their twenties, thirties and forties have reached an unprecedented high, and when the percentage of Jews who end up never marrying is increasing, failure to confront the issue constitutes an act of burying our heads in the sand, and further alienating those singles who remain part of the Orthodox community. At this point, the question of legitimization of singlehood is almost moot, as the numbers speak for themselves, with the message that people are remaining single, with or without such legitimization. We as a community need to get over the fear of raising questions, and singles are just the tip of the iceberg here.

Several years ago, when single, I was part of a committee of both married and single individuals (which included rabbis and communal leaders) that was dedicated to thinking through the "singles problem" and trying to offer "solutions." Even after a couple of years of conversations, and countless suggestions, this committee was not able to take any definitive steps. We had finally realized the complexity of the issues involved and realized that the proposed “solutions” were merely band-aids that didn’t get to the heart of the problem. At one point this myth surfaced and the committee began to question its existence—was the very fact of our open conversation going to somehow legitimize singlehood? Aside from the fact that none of this committee's deliberations were public, I felt impelled to point out in an email that, "To assume that communal pressure [for marriage] will help the matter is misguided…. Please trust me when I say that no amount of communal acceptance and welcome will ever make any of us forget that we are not your ideal and never will be until we are married with children" (1/2/05).[ii]

Sylvia Barack Fishman puts the issue in more extreme terms, which are perhaps reflective (or perhaps not) of the threat that the community construes in its singles:

The question facing Orthodox communities today has some similarities to Jewish communal questions about how to treat intermarried families: Outreach activists urge inclusiveness—"why not accept the singles community as it is"—while others counter that total inclusiveness would be tantamount to legitimating singleness as an alternative lifestyle for Orthodox Jews. Thinking about the treatment of Orthodox singles thus demands coming to terms with deep philosophical, sociological, and communitarian issues. (Gender Relationships In Marriage and Out, p. 111)

Perhaps the extremity of the comparison is illustrative of how deeply threatened the community feels by the existence of singles.

Myth #5: The sexual restrictions of yihud and negiah have the teleological purpose of ensuring that people have only one sexual partner in life (namely, their spouse); these halakhot are rooted in an awareness of the psychological and spiritual damage that even casual premarital physical contact can cause.

This myth is perhaps the most detrimental myth of all, in that it breaks out of the communal sphere and speaks to each and every single who has ever had even accidental physical contact with a member of the opposite sex, and tells them that they will suffer for this act and it will impact their ability to form a happy marriage; how much more so the individual who has had intentional sexual contact. This idea comes from those popular Jewish authors who, in their quest to convince teenagers to become shomer negiah have—without any use of Jewish texts and sources—read their own pop-psychology into this law.

Although I cannot fully break this myth in the context of the present article, suffice it to say now that the existence of biblical polygamy, concubines, and prostitutes— categories that are all difficult to reconcile with Judaism as we currently live it—and, on a more normative plane, the encouraging of remarriage for those who have been widowed or divorced, serve to dispel the notion that lifelong monogamy is the root of these prohibitions. There is no authoritative source that I am aware of that discusses the psychological or spiritual damage that will ensue upon violating these restrictions, any more than the spiritual damage that results from any sin, and that can be healed through repentance. In fact, a cursory reading of Maimonides (Hilkhot Issurei Bi'ah, chapter 21) and the Shulhan Arukh (Even haEzer 25, Orakh Hayim 240) reveals a very different root to these prohibitions, which is perhaps more disturbing to our modern sensibilities; namely, a striving for asceticism, even within marriage![iii]

To promulgate myths of this nature under the banner of "Judaism," "Torah," and "halakha" has a detrimental effect because it compounds the guilt and anxiety of many singles who are committed to Judaism but for psychological, emotional, or physiological reasons are not observing all of the sexual restrictions mandated by halakha. Although there is certainly value in encouraging abstinence among teenagers, we cannot achieve this at the price of being dishonest about Judaism and halakha.

A corollary of this myth is the assumption that there is no difference between teenagers, and those in their twenties, thirties, and forties who are single. Not distinguishing between adolescent sexuality and adult sexuality reflects a failure to see singles as adults who, among other characteristics, are also fully developed sexual beings, with needs and desires that are substantively similar to those of their married counterparts. There is nothing natural about being a “40-year-old-virgin”—and the halakha itself recognized this and therefore encouraged early marriage. Even if halakha today constrains us from endorsing premarital sexual activity, we as a community need to adopt a more empathetic and understanding stance to those who engage in it; the thirty-year-old woman who is physical with her serious boyfriend is different from the adolescent whose hormones have overtaken him. It is time we stop infantilizing singles under the banner of halakha.

***

   The topic of singles in the Orthodox community is complex and is comprised of many different issues and questions, which are often lumped together into the same category. There are the personal crises that individuals are forced to navigate, the interpersonal issues involved in the process of seeking out and building intimate relationships, the family dynamics that arise during singlehood and the wider communal issues, as well as the religious and sexual issues, to name but a few. We are still a long way from fully understanding any of these issues, let alone knowing how to address them. However, I hope that this exercise in myth-breaking will have helped clear the way toward increasing understanding between singles and the broader community and toward opening the conversation.