National Scholar Updates

In a deeply personal account of the impact of Donald Trump's presidential candidacy upon his network of professional and social relationships, the conservative academic Tom Nichols leveled an eyebrow-raising assertion. "Trump is worse than Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama," Nichols wrote [1] . "Their policies are liberal, even leftist, often motivated by cheap politics, ego, and political grandstanding. But they are policies, understandable as such and opposable by political means."

American readers will, before anything else, regard this argument as reflecting the deep, perhaps irreparable, schisms within the Republican Party provoked by Trump's campaign for the White House. But it can also be observed that Nichols' specific anxiety over Trump addresses a more fundamental aspect of the character of politics today, not just in the United States, but in Europe as well. And it is one in which "the Jews," understood as a conscious, organized collective actively pursuing sectarian goals that clash with broader national interests, play a central role.

Since the turn of the century, the conduct of politics in the western democracies has developed the characteristics of an insurgency, spurred by individuals and social movements who loudly revile established institutions, processes and parties. In and of itself, this is a healthy impulse. Politicians are not a protected species and neither are transnational institutions, whether private investment banks or governmental bureaucracies such as the European Union. Still, as Tom Nichols highlighted in the case of Trump, there is a discernible shift towards a discursive stridency that elevates factors like personal identity and group grievance – whether genuine or contrived ¬– far above such dull activities as consensus building and bipartisan policy formulation.

This phenomenon is hardly new, of course. Ever since the American and French revolutions of the late eighteenth century, democratic polities have regularly weathered the peaks and troughs of political insurgencies from right and left. One of the many lessons we have learned is that such political currents almost never contribute to a general sense of well-being among Jews. To the contrary, what post-Enlightenment Jewish history has shown time and again is that Jewish communities fare best when political life gravitates towards the center. For when it doesn't, antisemitism, with its fantasy of Jewish collective malice, invariably rears its head.

Hence the heightened sense of worry that has dogged Jewish attitudes towards the 2016 presidential election. While past elections have featured sharp differences over American policy towards the State of Israel, what has made this one distinctive is the focus on the underlying attitudes of at least two of the main candidates towards Jewish sensitivities. As an overview of both Trump's campaign and that of Sen. Bernie Sanders on the Democratic side demonstrates, neither man has been afraid of courting those segments of public opinion that have actively alienated Jewish voters, despite whatever else might separate them.

In the early part of the year, as Trump's campaign overwhelmed such mainstream figures as Gov. Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio, media outlets fell over themselves in their bid to discover the who, the how and the why behind the New York billionaire's growing support. As the layers were peeled back, the term "alt-right," hitherto familiar only to students of political extremism, entered the mainstream lexicon within the context of the Trump campaign.

The "alternative right," to spell out its name in full, is very much a creature of the digital age. A cluster of obscure blogs, websites, social media feeds and ertswhile "think-tanks," the alt-right delights in offending liberal sensibilities over such core matters as race and gender. Not surprisingly, it has provided a home for wandering white power activists and Holocaust deniers, who find common ground with the newer voices that have coined such terms as "Weimerica" (a term commonly used on the Radix Journal website that fuses the word "America" with "Weimar," the unofficial designation of the German republic between the First and Second World Wars.) The implication of this term is that American democracy is as unstable and rotten as it was in Germany before Hitler's rise to power.

A much cited article on the pro-Trump Breitbart website noted that the movement is inspired by such thinkers as Oswald Spengler, the German nationalist who penned "The Decline of the West" in 1918, and Julius Evola, the Italian philosopher whose writings on race were acclaimed by Nazi ideologues[2] . According to the authors of the Breitbart piece, Trump's candidacy has been hailed by the alt-right because he is the "first truly cultural candidate for President since [Pat] Buchanan, [which] suggests grassroots appetite for more robust protection of the western European and American way of life."

Phrases like these leave many Jews shuddering under the weight of historical memory. Even so, Trump was indifferent to these concerns, impatiently waving away protests that he had failed to adequately distance himself from the endorsement of David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan leader, and even sharing messages of support from self-declared Nazis on his Twitter platform. When the journalist Julia Ioffe, who happens to be Jewish, published a magazine feature that presented Trump's wife, Melania, in a less than flattering light, Trump supporters bombarded Ioffe with threats about gas chambers, images of Jews being executed, and anonymous phone calls consisting of recorded Hitler speeches[3] . By not condemning this nakedly antisemitic harassment, let alone recognizing that it was taking place, Trump and his advisors seemed to be encouraging it.

Above all, what the relationship of political currents like the alt-right with Trump represents is the shattering of the taboo around racism that evolved in the aftermath of the Second World War. It is not that Trump positively identifies with national socialists or their fellow travelers. Rather, he does not feel obliged to reject their support and apparently does not believe that having them among his backers could cost him votes. It has certainly been a long time since far right extremists enjoyed such a degree of legitimacy.

A broadly similar pattern has unfolded on the left, around the Sanders campaign. As with Trump and the alt-right, it involves a term that most Americans have been unfamiliar with, but which is well-known to supporters and detractors of the State of Israel: "BDS," or "Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions," referring to the toxic campaign that presents Israel as this century's incarnation of apartheid South Africa. BDS seeks an economic and cultural quarantine of the Jewish homeland as a prelude to its eventual replacement by an Arab state stretching from the Mediterranean coast to the River Jordan.

Advocacy of BDS is not uniform on the left, but its influence is such that very few leftists are prepared to identify it for what it is – an antisemitic movement that regards the Jewish homeland as the pivot of global ills and therefore seeks the undoing of the national self-determination in Eretz Israel achieved, against gargantuan odds that included Arab invasion and British sabotage, by the pre-state yishuv.

By conventional measures, BDS has been a failure, as its effect on Israel's thriving economy has been negligible. But by the standards of insurgent politics, in which the repetition of discursive themes is valued more than practical results, it has been quite a success. After all, while Sanders has said that he is personally opposed to a boycott of Israel, he has not disavowed those among his supporters who urge one. Like Trump with the alt-right, Sanders has shown little patience for critics who demand that he adopt a morally-grounded stance against BDS.

In early April, the Sanders campaigned hired a recent graduate, Simone Zimmerman, as its co-ordinator of national outreach to the Jewish community. Zimmerman was already known as a prominent Jewish critic of Israel on campus who had led protests against the decision of Hillel, the Jewish student organization, to decline the hosting of speakers advocating BDS. But within a day of her appointment, media scrutiny led by the Washington Free Beacon newsaper brought attention to Zimmerman's publicly-available Facebook account.

Posts from March 2015 revealed online indiscretions so serious that the Sanders campaign felt compelled to fire Zimmerman. In two separate screeds aimed at Benjamin Netanyahu, Zimmerman showered the Israeli Prime Minister with expletives and accused Israel of the "state-sanctioned murder of 2,000 people" during the war launched by the Hamas regime in Gaza in the summer of 2014.

As screenshots of Zimmerman's posts flew across the internet, it rapidly became clear that her role as the principal interface between the Sanders campaign and the Jewish community was untenable: while divisions in the community over Israel are self-evident, there is near unity in rejecting the malicious allegations of IDF "war crimes" in Gaza emanating from the BDS network. But even as it abruptly terminated Zimmerman's employment, the Sanders campaign only distanced itself from her remarks, rather than condemning them outright. The campaign also declared, rather dubiously for some observers, that it had been "unaware" of her posts, which suggests at best that its vetting procedures were somewhat lax.

Undergirding the controversy was a more profound truth: that the Sanders campaign hired Zimmerman because it largely agreed with her views on Israel, and because Jews who disavow Israel are particularly prized in the left-wing activist circles like MoveOn.org and the relaunched Occupy Wall Street that have flocked to the Vermont senator. Even more importantly, one week before the Zimmerman affair, Sanders told a meeting of the New York Daily News editorial board that he believed "10,000" Palestinians had been killed during the 2014 war, and then immediately turned to his aides to ask them whether that number was correct. What the Sanders campaign later insisted was a slip of the tongue might also be a telling glimpse into the mindset that assumes, on first reflection, a maximal level of Israeli state criminality.

***

The simultaneous rise of anti-capitalist, isolationist, protectionist, nativist and xenophobic trends around the Trump and Sanders campaigns – hardly for the first time in the history of the United States – represents before anything else a challenge to the meaning of liberty in contemporary America. Political insurgencies are also social movements, and their highly-charged ideologies periodically find charismatic individuals to coalesce around, as occurred in 2016. That antisemitism reared its head in the present environment was therefore entirely predictable.

Yet it needs to be stressed that the fundamental reality enjoyed by American Jews, who contine to thrive in public life and as a community, stands in marked contast to Europe, where the conditions for insurgency politics have been historically more favorable.

The European Union is currently in the throes of an existential crisis, gravely deepened by the financial disaster in Greece and the surge of national sovereignty movements in Britain and elsewhere demanding the withdrawal of their countries from the EU. Unemployment remains disturbingly high in member states like Spain and Greece, approaching 25% of the workforce, while the continental average is almost double that of the United States. Centrist parties of left and right have been battered or transformed beyond recognition by extremists in their ranks. Finally, the visceral rejection by the progressive left and nationalist right of any foreign military involvement has emboldened Russian militarism. It has strengthened the resolve of Islamist terror groups in attacking cities like Paris and Brussels. It has fueled antagonism to the continent's growing Muslim population, most recently boosted by an influx of refugees fleeing the criminal atrocities of Bashar al Assad's regime and Islamist factions like Da'esh in Syria.

In tandem with these broader developments, Jewish communities have undergone the greatest crisis of confidence and security since the Second World War. Every community has a tale to tell. In more than a decade of monitoring contemporary antisemitism, I have encountered Neo-Nazis and fascist paramilitaries in Hungary and Greece, attempts to ban Judaic requirements like brit milah and shechita on ostensibly "humanitarian" grounds in Scandinavia, Germany and Poland, deadly terror attacks and kidnapping in France and Belgium, and vicious political invective against Israel's very existence in the United Kingdom and Spain, among several others.

As a whole, then, Europe has emerged as the site where the most insidious antisemitic obsessions ¬¬– symbolized, as George Orwell memorably put it in his 1945 essay, "Antisemitism in Britain," by the "ability to believe stories that could not possibly be true" – have been revived and remodeled. Among them: that Jews are wealthier than everyone else (the rationale behind the 2006 kidnapping and murder of Ilan Halimi, a Jewish cellphone salesman, by a largely Muslim gang in Paris;) that Jews are offensively tribal (hence the universalist moralizing behind attempts to ban circumcision in Germany and Norway;) that Jewish loyalties are inherently suspect (a calumny at least as old as the Dreyfus trial of 1894, once again in vogue within the framework of public vilification of Israel;) that Zionism is a global conspiracy (a propaganda meme that was first developed in the Soviet Union and then imported into western Europe by the far left in the late 1960s.)

Most glaring of all is the trend of antisemitism denial. The wildly disproportionate presence of Jewish targets among those selected for attack by jihadi terrorists – among them the Ozar Hatorah school in Toulouse in March 2012, the Jewish Museum in Brussels in May 2014, and the Hypercacher kosher market in Paris in January 2015 – has done little to stem the accusation, especially pronounced from the ranks of the political left, that Jews charge Israel's adversaries with antisemitism in order to deflect their justified attacks on the Jewish state's raison d'etre. In Europe's universities and labor unions especially, the idea that antisemitism is a ruse to tear the public gaze away from the Palestinian plight has become an in-built assumption.

The European politician most associated with this practice is Ken Livingstone, the former Mayor of London. Livingstone's antipathy towards the Jewish community has been repeatedly displayed over nearly four decades. In the mid-1980s, he edited a Marxist newspaper that published antisemitic caricatures of the then Israeli Prime Minister, Menachem Begin, wearing a Nazi uniform; it is striking that similar images appeared in Soviet newspapers of the time, such as Izvestia.

More than twenty years later, Livingstone's attitude to Jews again became the center of national attention when, during an altercation with a Jewish journalist, he made a sarcastic comparison with a "concentration camp guard," refusing to apologize even after the journalist made clear that he was insulted on the grounds of his origin. This year, meanwhile, Livingstone has come to personify the eruption of antisemitism within the British Labour Party following the election of a far left parliamentarian, Jeremy Corbyn, as its leader in 2015.

The cause of this latest scandal was Livingstone's defense of a Labour Party colleague accused of antisemitism after she endorsed a social media campaign to "relocate" Israel to the United States (that senior politicians in one of the world's venerable democracies actually entertain such proposals is conceivably an even more disturbing element here, though one beyond the scope of this essay.) During the course of fighting his colleague's corner, Livingstone expressed the libel that Adolf Hitler had been a supporter of Zionism. In the furore that followed, Livingstone was suspended from the Labour Party, but Corbyn, his long-time ally, pointedly refused to highlight the offense caused by the Hitler claim.

Again, the ongoing political battles in the Labour Party should not obscure the lasting significance of this latest controversy involving Livingstone. Livingstone sincerely believes he is correct about Hitler because his ideological hatred of Zionism predisposes him to that judgement. Like those who deny the Holocaust outright, no amount of historical evidence will persuade him otherwise, because his standards of truth are determined not empirically, but by a heavy ideological bias.

That is one reason why Livingstone has denied the presence of antisemitism during every single one of his clashes with British Jews. Indeed, his reputation for adopting the discursive tactic led the eminent British sociologist David Hirsh to coin the term "The Livingstone Formulation" as emblematic of antisemitism denial[4] . As Livingstone put in 2006, "For far too long the accusation of antisemitism has been used against anyone who is critical of policies of the Israeli government, as I have been."

On both sides of the Atlantic, in legislative assemblies and lecture halls, at political rallies and on social media, some version of this form of words is heard with increasing frequency. That is, perhaps, an appropriate observation with which to end this brief survey. Anyone examining antisemitism at the global level needs to be careful not to generalize the condition of one country as the condition of all. But these transnational trends in Europe show American Jews not just what to look out for in terms of concrete threats. They must be cognizant, as well, of the tendency to portray antisemitism as a phantom prejudice that exists only in the Jewish imagination – and therefore one more proof, as an antisemite would have it, of the Jewish penchant for deceiving gentiles.

[1] Tom Nichols, "If I lose friends over Trump, so be it," The Federalist, April 26, 2016,
available at http://thefederalist.com/2016/04/26/if-i-lose-friends-over-trump-so-be-…
[2] Allum Bokhari and Mialo Yiannopoulous, "An Establishment Conservative's Guide to the Alt-Right," Breibart, March 29, 2016, available at http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/03/29/an-establishment-conservatives…
[3] Sara Ashley O'Brien, "Trolls Target Journalist After Melania Trump GQ Article," CNN, April 29, 2016, available at http://money.cnn.com/2016/04/29/technology/julia-ioffe-online-harassmen…
[4] David Hirsh, "The Livingstone Formulation, ‘playing the antisemitism card’ and contesting the boundaries of antiracist discourse," Transversal 1/2010, available at https://engageonline.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/4958_transversal_2010_…

Rabbi Hayyim Angel
To our members and friends,

I hope you have been enjoying a wonderful Pesah. Here are some upcoming highlights for our Institute’s classes and programs:

We are excited to present our next major highlight: On Sunday May 15, 10:00am-1:00pm: We will be having our next Symposium co-sponsored by the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals and Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun: “Bringing Peace Through Torah: Among the Orthodox, Among Jews, and to the World.” This symposium will feature three talks:

What Happens When Peace is Impossible?
Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz, Senior Rabbi, Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun

Waiting for the Messiah: Utopias and the Jewish Vision of a ‘Perfect’ World
Mrs. Miriam Berger, Tanakh Department Chair, Ramaz Upper School

‘The Disciples of the Wise Increase Peace in the World’:
The Use of Scholarship to Build Bridges and Mend Rifts

Rabbi Hayyim Angel, National Scholar, Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals; Rabbinic Scholar, Kehilath Jeshurun; Bible Faculty, Yeshiva University

For more information, go to:
https://www.jewishideas.org/bringing-peace-through-torah-symposium

In addition to the symposium, here are some upcoming classes I will be giving in April and May:

On Wednesdays May 11, 18, 25, and June 1, 7:15-8:15pm, I will be continuing my series, “Navigating Through Nach: A Survey of the Prophets,” co-sponsored by the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals and Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun. It is located at 125 East 85th Street in Manhattan (between Park and Lexington Avenue). In this session we will survey the books of Ezekiel and Jonah. Free and open to the public.

All of the earlier lectures in this series can be found on our Institute Website Online Learning section, https://www.jewishideas.org//online-learning. Newcomers always welcome!

On Sundays May 8, 15, 22, 7:30-8:30pm, I will teach a three-part series on Ezra-Nehemiah at The Young Israel of Jamaica Estates, 83-10 188th St, Jamaica, NY 11423. Free and open to the public.
Week one: Ezra chapters 1-6: Shivat tzion- what went wrong and what went right.
Week two: Ezra chapters 7-10: Ezra as Halakhic Authority
Week three: Nehemiah: A very different kind of leader

On Shabbat May 20-21, I will be a scholar-in-residence at Congregation Agudath Sholom in Stamford, Connecticut. 301 Strawberry Hill Ave, Stamford, CT 06902. Free and open to the public.

I thank all of our members and friends for their ongoing support and participation as we spread our vision to thousands of people throughout the country and beyond. I look forward to learning together with you and growing the reach of our Institute with your help and involvement.

Have a great rest of Pesah,

Rabbi Hayyim Angel
National Scholar

(On March 4, 2016, a Conference was held at the United Nations: “Religious Pluralism and Tolerance: The Bahrain Model.” It was held under the sponsorship of the Kingdom of Bahrain, which prides itself on tolerance to citizens of its religious minorities. The Conference was opened by H.E. Dr. Shaikh Abdulla bin Ahmed bin Abdulla Al Khalifa, the Undersecretary of International Affairs of the Bahrain Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Participants in the Conference included representatives of various religions and countries, as well as members of the American government.

Among the invited speakers at the conference was Rabbi Marc D. Angel, Founder and Director, Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals. Here is a transcript of Rabbi Angel’s remarks.)

I was born and raised in Seattle, Washington, as were both of my parents. My grandparents had come to Seattle early in the 20th century from towns in Turkey. My ancestors had lived in the old Ottoman Empire since the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492. Spanish religious intolerance at that time was counter-balanced by Ottoman religious tolerance.

In Seattle, Jews were a tiny minority of the general population. Sephardic Jews — who had come to Seattle from Turkey and Rhodes — were a relatively small minority within the city’s Jewish population. My grandparents, like the other Sephardic immigrants, spoke Judeo-Spanish as their mother tongue. I thought it was perfectly natural and normal to grow up in Seattle with Turkish-born grandparents who spoke a medieval form of Spanish!

Aside from being part of a small minority of Sephardic Jews in Seattle, our family also was religiously traditional and most closely identified with Orthodox Judaism. Orthodoxy is a small minority among American Jews, consisting of perhaps 10% of American Jewry. Although I was a member of an extraordinarily minute segment of humanity, I learned to love my family’s traditions. I eventually became an Orthodox Sephardic rabbi, and an author of many works relating to Sephardic and Orthodox Jewish law, history, and worldview. Indeed, my life has been based on the truth and vitality of my religious beliefs and traditions.

I strive to live according to the truth of my faith. Yet, I also am struck by a massive reality: I am part of a Sephardic Orthodox Jewish community that represents an infinitesimal percentage of humanity. There are at least seven billion other human beings who live according to their faiths, and who know little or nothing about mine. If I have the true way of life — one for which I am willing to live and die — how am I to relate to the overwhelming majority of human beings who do not share my faith?

Growing up as an Orthodox Sephardic Jew in Seattle, I learned very early in life that I had to be very strong in my faith and traditions in order to avoid being swallowed up by the overwhelming majority cultures. I also learned the importance of theological humility. It simply would make no sense to claim that I had God’s entire Truth and that seven billion human beings were living in spiritual darkness. I surely believed — and do believe — that I have a profound religious truth that guides my life. But I also believed — and do believe — that all human beings have equal access to God, since God has created each one of us in God’s image.

Some years ago, I read a parable (in the writings of Dr. Pinchas Polonsky) that helped me clarify my thinking. Imagine that you have carefully studied a painting day after day, year after year. You know every brush-stroke, color, shadow… you know every detail of the painting and you understand it to the extent humanly possible. And then, one day someone comes along and turns on the light. You then realize that the painting you had studied to perfection is actually part of a much larger canvas. As you stand back, you realize that you need to re-evaluate your thinking. The segment of the canvas that you have studied all these years has not changed; you still know every detail; it is still absolutely true. Yet, you must now study your truth in context of a much larger canvas.

Each faith, at its best, has a very true understanding of its piece of the larger canvas. But when the lights go on, each faith must come to realize that it represents part of the picture but not the whole picture. A grand religious vision must necessarily entail a grand perception of God: God is great enough to create and love all human beings. God sees the whole canvas of humanity in its fullness.

One of the great challenges facing religions is to see the full picture, not just our particular segment of it. While being fully committed to our faiths, we also need to make room for others. We need, in a sense, to see humanity from the perspective of God, to see the entire canvas not just individual segments of it.

Religious vision is faulty when it sees one, and only one, way to God. Religious vision is faulty when it promotes forced conversions, discrimination against “infidels,” violence and murder of those holding different views. How very tragic it is that much of the anti-religious persecution that takes place in our world is perpetrated by people who claim to be religious, who claim to be serving the glory of God.

While religion today should be the strongest force for a united, compassionate and tolerant humanity, it often appears in quite different garb. Religion is too often identified with terrorism, extremism, superstition, exploitation…and hypocrisy. People commit the most heinous crimes…and do so while claiming to be acting in the name of God.

It is very heartening and encouraging that we are meeting here today at the United Nations, under the sponsorship of the Kingdom of Bahrain to discuss religious pluralism and tolerance. In this room, we have representatives of various religions and different countries. That we speak together in friendship and fellowship is highly important. This meeting itself is a model, a microcosm, of how religions should interact throughout the world. Our voice should be one of mutual understanding; we should remind ourselves and our fellow religionists that God loves all human beings and wants all human beings to be blessed with happy and good lives. There is room for all of us on this earth. We need to foster a religious vision that is humble, thoughtful, and appreciative of the greatness of God.

I thank the sponsors of this conference for having invited me to speak this morning, as Founder and Director of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals. I founded this Institute in 2007 with the goal of fostering an intellectually vibrant, compassionate and tolerant Orthodox Judaism. Our Institute promotes a grand religious vision that eschews extremism, authoritarianism, sectarianism and obscurantism. It views religious tradition as a way of coming closer to the Universal God of all humankind…and of bringing human beings closer together in mutual understanding and respect. The world needs many such Institutes among the various religions of humanity, so that all of us together can raise our voices for a religious world-view that not only respects our fellow human beings…but that respects God as the One who created all of us and who makes room for each of us in the Divine plan.

The great Talmudic sage, Hillel, asked the eternal question: if not now, when? If we do not seize this moment to espouse a visionary religious world-view, when will such a world-view come to prevail? If not now, when? If not us, who?

Rabbi Hayyim Angel
April, 2016

To our members and friends,

It has been remarkable to reach so many people, communities and educators over the course of this year through our classes, programs, and Online Learning of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals. Here are some upcoming highlights:

We are excited to present our next major highlight: On Sunday May 15, 10:00am-1:00pm: We will be having our next Symposium co-sponsored by the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals and Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun: “Bringing Peace Through Torah: Among the Orthodox, Among Jews, and to the World.” This symposium will feature three talks:

What Happens When Peace is Impossible?
Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz, Senior Rabbi, Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun

Waiting for the Messiah: Utopias and the Jewish Vision of a ‘Perfect’ World
Mrs. Miriam Berger, Tanakh Department Chair, Ramaz Upper School

‘The Disciples of the Wise Increase Peace in the World’:
The Use of Scholarship to Build Bridges and Mend Rifts

Rabbi Hayyim Angel, National Scholar, Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals; Rabbinic Scholar, Kehilath Jeshurun; Bible Faculty, Yeshiva University

Sunday, May 15, 10:00am-1:00pm
At Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun, 125 East 85th Street in Manhattan (between Park and Lexington Avenue)

Light refreshments served
Free and open to the public

In addition to the symposium, here are some upcoming classes I will be giving in April and May:

On Tuesday April 5, 1:45-3:00pm: I will be giving a class to the Yeshiva Women’s learning group, “The Unsung Heroes of the Exodus: Shifrah, Puah, and Pharaoh’s Daughter.” Open to women. At the Fifth Avenue Synagogue, 5 East 62nd Street (between Fifth and Madison Avenue) in Manhattan.

On Wednesday April 6, 1:00-2:00pm: I will be giving a class to the Allegra Franco School of Educational Leadership, “The Unsung Heroes of the Exodus: Shifrah, Puah, and Pharaoh’s Daughter.” Open to women. 1061 Ocean Parkway, Brooklyn, NY 11230.

On Shabbat April 8-9, I will be the scholar-in-residence at the Kingsway Jewish Center. 2810 Nostrand Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11234. Free and open to the public.

On Wednesdays May 4, 11, 18, and 25, 7:15-8:15pm, I will be continuing my series, “Navigating Through Nach: A Survey of the Prophets,” co-sponsored by the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals and Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun. It is located at 125 East 85th Street in Manhattan (between Park and Lexington Avenue). In this session we will survey the books of Ezekiel and Jonah. Free and open to the public.

All of the earlier lectures in this series can be found on our Institute website Online Learning section, https://www.jewishideas.org//online-learning. Newcomers always welcome!

On Sundays May 8, 15, 22, 7:30-8:30pm, I will teach a three-part series on Ezra-Nehemiah at The Young Israel of Jamaica Estates, 83-10 188th St, Jamaica, NY 11423. Free and open to the public.
Week one: Ezra chapters 1-6: Shivat tzion- what went wrong and what went right. Lessons for today?
Week two: Ezra chapters 7-10: Ezra as Halakhic Authority
Week three: Nehemiah: A very different kind of leader

On Shabbat May 20-21, I will be a scholar-in-residence at Congregation Agudath Sholom in Stamford, Connecticut. 301 Strawberry Hill Ave, Stamford, CT 06902. Free and open to the public.

In addition to all of these upcoming classes and programs, our Institute is reaching far and wide through our online presence and publications. On Sunday, March 13, I gave a teacher’s training lecture on the Book of Kohelet via Skype to educators at The Academy of Jewish Thought and Learning in Johannesburg and Cape Town, South Africa! Their Academy runs many classes in Bible and Jewish Thought in South Africa, and it was a treat doing a teacher’s training session with them as they plan their next courses.

I thank all of our members and friends for their ongoing support and participation as we spread our vision to thousands of people throughout the country and beyond. I look forward to learning together with you and growing the reach of our Institute with your help and involvement.

Rabbi Hayyim Angel
National Scholar

January, 2016

To our members and friends, I hope you are well. It has been gratifying reaching so many people through classes and online offerings through our Institute. We thank all who are supporters and members and who have been participating in the wide variety of learning opportunities as we spread our vision across the country and beyond.

Here are some upcoming highlights for January-February:

Shabbat January 15-16: I will be the scholar-in-residence at the Kemp Mill Synagogue, Silver Spring, Maryland (11910 Kemp Mill Rd). Free and open to the public.

Saturday night, January 23, 8:30-9:30 pm: The Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals and Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun (125 East 85th Street in Manhattan) are co-sponsoring a three-part series, History at Home: Saturday Night Fights: Great Jewish Debates. I will give the second lecture, “Controversies over the Historicity of Biblical Passages in Traditional Commentary.” Free and open to the public.

Tuesday February 2, 7:45 pm: I will give a lecture, Introduction to Daniel at The Young Israel of Oceanside.

Year-Long Course: Navigating Through Nach: A Survey of the Prophets.

Beginning on Wednesday, January 27, I will resume our journey through the nineteen books of the Bible from Joshua through Chronicles. The best of traditional and contemporary scholarship will be employed as we study the central themes of each book. The course is taught at a high scholarly level but is accessible to people of all levels of Jewish learning. We have had over sixty people attending in the fall session. In the winter session we will cover the Books of Kings, Isaiah, and Jeremiah. All are welcome to join, and each lecture stands on its own so you can join at any time.

Wednesday evenings 7:00-8:00pm Dates: January 27, February 3, 10, 17, 24, March 2, 9, 16 Location: Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun, 125 East 85th Street (between Park and Lexington Avenues in Manhattan).

If you want to catch up on previous lectures, you can find the fall session classes and source sheets on our website, jewishideas.org, under Online Learning.

The first eight classes are now also available as a podcast here: http://podcast.jewishideas.org/

I also speak at Kehilath Jeshurun (125 East 85th Street) nearly every Shabbat and on holidays at their Sephardic Minyan, and give additional classes at KJ as well. All are welcome to join our vibrant, growing community, as we develop the ideas and ideals of our Institute in a communal framework.

Please check out our Online Learning section on our website, jewishideas.org, for the latest recordings of my classes. I thank all of our members and friends for their ongoing support and participation as we spread our vision to thousands of people throughout the country and beyond.

I look forward to learning together with you and growing the reach of our Institute with your help and involvement.

Rabbi Hayyim Angel, National Scholar

I will begin by presenting a fictitious case, closer perhaps to current halakhic
reality in certain circles than many would like to believe:

18-year-old Mary undergoes giyyur in an Orthodox Beit Din and becomes Miriam. Soon
after, she marries Reuven, a biologically-born Jew, and they have a son Yehuda
and a daughter Sarah. Yehuda grows up, studies in Israeli yeshivot, settles in Israel
and becomes a rabbi. While still a yeshiva student, he is invited to serve as a
witness at marriages of quite a few friends – sometimes signing the ketubba,
sometimes witnessing the kiddushin, sometimes, both. After getting semikha,
he not infrequently serves as a member of a court conducting giyyur (as
son of a giyyoret, he relates positively to people choosing to be
Jewish). He studies for dayyanut, and then begins sitting as dayyan (rabbinical
judge) on various cases. Meanwhile, Sarah gets married early, at 17, to a
Cohen. They have three boys, who grow up as Cohanim, bless the congregation,
get called up for the first aliyya, etc. When the boys are in their
teens, Sarah and her husband decide to move to Israel
to be near Yehuda and his family. Under Yehuda’s influence, the three boys are
sent to yeshivot; they too serve on occasion as witnesses for various halakhic
matters, receive pidyon for first-born infants of their peers, and the
like.

Miriam, now nearing sixty, has been working secretly for
several years on an autobiography – and it is accepted for publication. When
published, the public is informed about matters that her husband and close
friends have known all along: Miriam opted for giyyur because of Reuven,
whom she wanted to marry. She declared acceptence of mitzvot during her giyyur
procedure, but was never really convinced that the commandments were
ordained by G-d and revealed to Moses, and her observance of halakha, never
consistent even at the beginning, soon become spotty, then totally haphazard.
She has no problem with the fact that her son Yehuda has adopted a religious
lifestyle, and indeed keeps a kosher home for his sake, and when Yehuda and
his family come to visit in the U.S.,Miriam and Reuven make sure that everything
is halakhically meticulous. But when they are alone, they are not religiously observant.
Miriam’s good friend Maureen knows someone at the New York Times, and Miriam is
interviewed. She tells the reporter how happy she is to be Jewish, and how she really identifies
with the Jewish People and the Jewish values of social justice, warm community
and family ties, etc. However, she confides, the ritual parts of Judaism – such
as Shabbat, kashrut, taharat hamishpaha – never really attracted her,
and she doesn’t personally observe them. The interview is picked up by HaAretz,
and published in Hebrew in Israel.

Rabbi Axeman, a well-known rabbi who has authored several
volumes of responsa, hears about Miriam’s interview. He obtains a copy of
HaAretz, and after reading with his own eyes what Miriam said, he immediately
concludes that Miriam is really not, and has never been, a Jew. He calls up
Yehuda’s Rosh-Yeshiva, whom he knows well, and reveals to him the facts about
Yehuda’s mother. They both realize, that since Miriam is not Jewish, neither
Yehuda nor Sarah are Jews. Therefore, they have never been married to their
spouses. Sarah’s children are not Cohanim – indeed, they are not Jewish at all.
Even should Sarah now undergo giyyur, she can never remarry her husband,
because he is a Cohen. Halakhically, her children are not related at all to
their ‘father’, whether or not they choose giyyur. All those times they
were called up to the Torah for the first aliyya – were in vain; all the
first-born for whom they received pidyon now have to be located and have
the ceremony re-performed – this time, with a ‘real’ Cohen. Kiddushin and
Ketubbot witnessed by Sarah’s children, and by her brother Yehuda are invalid;
the relevant couples must be located and informed, the marriages re-performed
(and what if one of the parties now refuses to do so?). And what of those gerim
who became Jews under the auspices of a court in which Yehuda was a member?
Well, they are not Jewish, of course, because a giyyur that was not
conducted by a court is invalid, and a gentile cannot serve as a dayyan.
Similarly, matters of divorce etc. decided by a court in which Yehuda
participated are now lacking halakhic validity; if he was witness to a divorce,
the marriage may never have been terminated, the woman still eshet ish.
If she remarried, her children are deemed to be illegitimate.

Indeed, the more rabbi Axeman and his peers think about
this, the more they realize that the possibilities of discreditation are
unlimitted. True, the rabbis of old seem to have been unaware of these options;
thus, they allowed Jews by birth to marry a woman proselyte, and permitted a
Cohen to knowingly marry the daughter of a female proselyte and a Jewish man.
They relied upon the testimony of proselytes for all halakhic matters,
including marriage and divorce; counted proselytes for minyan … they were
seemingly oblivious to the notion that giyyur might be revealed to be
invalid. But this gives Axeman et.al. no pause: makom heinihu lanu raboteinu
le-hitgader bo. The rabbis of earlier times left room for us to discover
and apply novel halakhic rulings, and the well of halakhic creativity has not
dried up. And if someone were to object: what of the Torah’s repeated
injunctions to treat a ger with great consideration, and to refrain from
distressing him in any way?#_ftn1" title="_ftnref1" name="_ftnref1">

[1]

The response would be clear and swift: our ruling with regard to annulment of giyyur in
no way contradicts these supremely important commandments! Rather, all we said
relates to persons who are not really proselytes at all, but were only posing
as such; while the commandments of Torah relate to authentic, true proselytes –
whom we too would treat with great respect and kindness. That is: if such a
person should ever be discovered to exist in our times.

[2]

But is all this possible? Of
course -- if one accepts that giyyur can be retroactively annulled.
Indeed, if it is possible to retroactively annul even one giyyur based
upon subsequent conduct of a ger, then we can NEVER rely upon the
Jewishness of ANY person who underwent giyyur, nor upon the Jewishness
of any descendent of a female proselyte. The Jewishness of all such persons is
eternally contingent, always liable to being undermined by some future
revelation. Knowing this, other Jews should always refrain from having gerim
or the descendents of female giyyorot serve as witnesses, rabbis,
Cohanim … they cannot be counted for a minyan, for a zimmun etc… and of course,
no one will ever agree to marry them. In fact, the most reasonable conclusion
for any Orthodox rabbi to draw is that it is better never to accept anybody for
giyyur – for who can really know what is in a person’s heart, and how
he/she will behave in the future? And of course, once it gets around to persons
who have been planning to undergo Orthodox giyyur that they and their
children will always be only conditionally Jewish – they will surely revise
such ill-considered plans. Who would knowingly place themselves and their
families in such a terrible bind?

However, there is no justification
for anyone to hold, that halakha enables retroactive annulment of giyyur based
upon the proselyte’s future conduct. This determination is based upon several
grounds. One is that the normal position of halakhic tradition is, that ritual
acts (in general) and ritual acts affecting an individual’s personal status (in
particular) are valid, irrespective of the subjective intent of the parties
involved and irrespective of their subsequent conduct. Another is, that the
central and major halakhic sources go out of their way to stress the point,
that giyyur is valid immediately and irrevocably, however the proselyte
subsequently chooses to conduct himself.

The Autonomy of Ritual

In western culture, especially in the context of Protestant Christianity, the autonomy of
ritual may seem strange; is not religion a matter of belief, a matter of the
heart? However, in many cultures and many religions, performance of certain
prescribed acts in the proper way results in an outcome possessing validity and
force. This is true also within many areas of western culture, e.g., law,
economic transactions – even in artistic and dramatic contexts. Focusing on
Judaism, the general rule within the framework of halakha is, that commandments
performed without conscious religious intent are valid (mitzvot einan
tzerikhot kavvana).#_ftn3" title="_ftnref3" name="_ftnref3">

[3]

By way of illustration, let us consider the case of Jewish marriage.

Marriage is an event that entails a major change of status, with dramatic consequences for
both parties. Because of these consequences, it seems to be the case that in
all known societies, the decision to marry is regarded as a serious commitment,
not to be lightly undertaken. Indeed, we do our best to educate our children
that marriage should be undertaken only with the right person, for the right
reasons. The words harei att mequdeshet li kedat Moshe ve-Yisrael should
be uttered by the groom with heartfelt intention, love, and deep commitment –
and they should be heard and accepted by the bride in like spirit. Therefore,
no person should agree to witness an act of kiddushin if not convinced
that it is being undertaken by the bride and groom in the proper spirit.

Now, imagine a case in which Shimshon, a young Jew with rich parents, is seduced by Gomer, a
Jewish woman of low morals who is interested in his money. He was interested in
her only for sex, and never intended to continue the relationship. But she
threatens to sue him if he doesn’t marry her, and he agrees to do so. However,
he is afraid of his parents, and therefore agrees to betroth her only by
‘secret’ kiddushin. They call over two yeshiva teenagers loitering
nearby, who (foolishly) agree to serve as witnesses, and he hands her a ring
and recites the proper formula. The next day, they reveal to each other that
they never wanted to be married: he says that he only went through the motions
in order to appease her, and she says that she only wanted to hurt him, and
never intended to be his wife. Both of them agree to behave as if the kiddushin
never happened, and they have no more contact with each other. He moves to Israel and marries a suitable wife, and she moves to Australia and marries a rich Jewish barrister. They have no problem in
doing so, for the kiddushin were secret and each easily provides the
local rabbinate with confirmation that they are unmarried.

So: Shimshon
and Gomer say that they never really wanted to marry each other; they participated
in the ritual of kiddushin for really reprehensible reasons; and their
subsequent behavior confirms that they did not regard themselves as married to
each other. But the witnesses were kosher witnesses, the ring was his, they
heard him utter the words clearly and saw him put the ring on her finger – and
she kept the ring on, and even smiled. Would any rabbi say that the couple’s
subsequent behavior “reveals” that they did not have the proper intent when
performing the kiddushin and therefore the marriage is invalid and they
are both eligible bachelors? Is there any halakhic doubt that Gomer’s
“marriage” to the barrister is invalid, and that any child she has with him is
a mamzer? The answer to both questions is in the negative. Once kiddushin
has been performed ‘by the book’, the motivation that led each of the
partners to undergo that process is irrelevant. So too, the subsequent conduct
of one or both of the partners will have no effect upon their halakhic status
as husband and wife. Gomer has undergone a radical transformation of status
from penuya (an unmarried person) to eshet ish, with all that
entails: under Torah law, sexual relations she has with anyone but Shimshon is
adultery, and any child she conceives out of such relations is a mamzer,
who will face almost insurmountable obstacles in his/her quest for a Jewish
marriage. All because of an ill-considered decision to participate in a
one-minute ritual act!

The case of kiddushin,
so clear to anyone familiar with the halakhic tradition, illustrates the
autonomous power and force of ritual.

The sources
on giyyur cited below reveal the same ritual logic: Once giyyur has
been performed, the motivation that led the Gentile to undergo that process is
irrelevant. So too, the subsequent conduct of the proselyte will have no effect
upon his/her halakhic status as a Jew. The proselyte has undergone a radical
transformation of status from nokhri (a non-Jew) to Yisrael (Jew/ess),
with all that entails: as a Jewess, she is now party to the Jewish People’s
Covenant with G-d, and bound to obey that Covenant, whether or not she knows
anything about its contents (similar to a biologically-born Jew).#_ftn4" title="_ftnref4" name="_ftnref4">

[4]

She may not marry a Gentile, and if she does, the marriage is automatically
invalid; she may marry only a Jew, and if she does, her marriage is valid
however she behaves or regards herself. As a Jewess her status is
non-contingent upon her fulfillment of the Covenant, or upon her continuation
of any contact with Judaism or Jews. Let us now consider the sources themselves
– beginning with the rock-bottom definition of Jewishness as deriving from
birth.

Jewishness, Birth and Giyyur

According to halakha, any person born
to a Jewish mother is a Jew. To most Jews, that sounds quite reasonable.
However, such a determination is far from self-evident. Consider a
counter-example: if a person was born on a kibbutz, and her two parents are
members of the kibbutz, she is not automatically a member. Rather, upon
reaching a certain age, she must decide if she wishes to apply for membership.
If she applies, her application comes up for discussion by the kibbutz
assembly, who then decide the matter by a vote. While it is reasonable to
assume that a child born and raised on the kibbutz will be accepted for
membership if she applies, it is not automatic. The important point (in the
current context) is that her membership is contingent upon at least two
decisions: her decision to apply, and the assembly’s decision to accept her. By contrast, Jewishness is not contingent
upon any person’s decision, but is regarded by tradition as a ‘fact of birth’.
The sources of this self-understanding are very ancient: in the Bible, the
Israelites are the “Children of Israel”, i.e., the lineal descendents of the
Patriarch Jacob and his twelve sons. In the Bible, then, the People of Israel
are made up of persons born into a (very) extended family.

Some notions accepted in Biblical
times were abrogated or modified by the Oral Torah (Torah she-b’al peh);
significantly, the concept of the familial nature of Jewishness was not only
retained, but also even reinforced. Not only is Jewishness acquired by birth
according to Rabbinic tradition, but it is permanent and irrevocable. In other
words, if a person born as a Jew chooses to relinquish all contacts with his
Jewishness, and (furthermore) to join another faith community out of sincere
and deep belief in a totally non-Jewish theology (e.g., Hare Krishna) – that
person nevertheless remains a Jew, in the eyes of halakha. He is an apostate –
but, an apostate Jew. The main practical halakhic implications of this
are twofold.

First: If at
any point this person decides to join the Jewish community – all he has to do
is to recant, and resume Jewish praxis. No conversion is required, for in the
eyes of halakha he has ‘really’ been Jewish all along.#_ftn5" title="_ftnref5" name="_ftnref5">

[5]

Second: If our
devout Hare Krishna apostate places a ring on the hand of a Jewess in the
presence of two valid Jewish witnesses and while doing so recites the halakhic
formula: “You are betrothed to me by this ring according to the law of Moses
and Israel” – the couple is now halakhically husband and wife.#_ftn6" title="_ftnref6" name="_ftnref6">

[6]

As
Maimonides writes:

If an apostate
Israelite performs a betrothal, even if he has freely chosen an alien religion,
the betrothal is fully valid and [for the wife to be released from that union]
she requires a bill of divorce.#_ftn7" title="_ftnref7" name="_ftnref7">

[7]

This is also the clear-cut ruling of
rabbi Joseph Caro in his Shulhan Arukh.#_ftn8" title="_ftnref8" name="_ftnref8">

[8]

But … how do Maimonides and Rabbi
Caro know this? Surprisingly, it is nowhere stated directly in the Talmud that
an apostate Jew remains a Jew. Rather, both Maimonides and Rabbi Caro derive
the absolutely non-contingent Jewishness of a Jew by birth who willingly left
the fold, from the Talmudic ruling with regard to a Gentile who became a Jew
and immediately recanted.#_ftn9" title="_ftnref9" name="_ftnref9">

[9]

Rabbi
Shelomo Cohen writes,#_ftn10" title="_ftnref10" name="_ftnref10">

[10]

that
this is an a-fortiori (qal va-homer) inference: if a person who
was not born as a Jew, but became a Jew via giyyur and then reverted to
a Gentile life and faith, is nevertheless halakhically an apostate Jew and can
perform a valid betrothal – then surely a person who was born as a Jew and
chooses a non-Jewish life and faith is still halakhically Jewish (albeit, an
apostate).

But in fact,
postulating such a hierarchy is not logically or textually necessary. Rather,
what the Tannaitic text states is that immediately after giyyur the
status of the former Gentile is equivalent to that of a Jew by birth.
Here is the entire text, a Baraita cited in Yevamot 47b:#_ftn11" title="_ftnref11" name="_ftnref11">

[11]

Our
Rabbis taught: If a prospective proselyte comes to undergo giyyur in the
present era, we#_ftn12" title="_ftnref12" name="_ftnref12">

[12]

say to him: “What did you
see that made you come to seek giyyur? Do you not know that nowadays the
Jewish people are afflicted, oppressed, downtrodden and harassed and that
hardships come upon them?” If he responds: “I know, and I am unworthy [of
joining them],” we accept him immediately. And we inform him of some minor
commandments and some major commandments. And we inform him of the sin [of the
neglect of the commandments] of Gleanings, of the Forgotten Sheaf, of the
Corner, and of the Poor Man's Tithe#_ftn13" title="_ftnref13" name="_ftnref13">

[13]

. And we
inform him of the punishment for the transgression of the commandments. We say
to him: “Be aware, that before you reached this situation, if you ate
[forbidden] suet you were not punishable by Karet [extinction by Heaven]; if
you profaned the Sabbath, you were not punishable by stoning; but now [after giyyur],
if you eat suet, you will be punished by Karet, and if you profane the Sabbath,
you will be punished by stoning.” Just as we inform him of the punishments for
[transgressing] the commandments, we inform him of the rewards [for
observance]. We say to him: “Know, that the world to come is not made except
for the righteous. And, in the present era the Jewish people cannot receive an
abundance of good or an abundance of calamity.” We do not overwhelm him, nor
are we strict with him. Once he received,#_ftn14" title="_ftnref14" name="_ftnref14">

[14]

we
circumcise him immediately. If shreds that impede a valid circumcision remain,
we circumcise him again. Once he has healed, we immerse him immediately. And
two rabbinic scholars stand over him, and inform him of some minor commandments
and some major commandments. Once he has immersed and come up, he is like a Jew
in every respect.#_ftn15" title="_ftnref15" name="_ftnref15">

[15]

The
Talmudic sages ask with regard to the phrase “Once he has immersed and come up,
he is like a Jew in every respect” – “What is the implication of this
statement?” and answer:

[The implication is], that if the proselyte reverts [to a
Gentile life], and performs a ceremony of kiddushin [halakhic betrothal]
with a Jewish women, we regard him as an apostate Jew, and the kiddushin
are valid.#_ftn16" title="_ftnref16" name="_ftnref16">

[16]

Kiddushin
is a ceremony in which a Jewish woman becomes betrothed to a Jewish man, a
condition that continues until the death of one of the partners or their
divorce. According to Talmudic halakha, if one of the partners to such a
ceremony is not Jewish, the ceremony has no effect whatsoever. To state that a
person following a totally Gentile lifestyle can be a partner to a valid kiddushin
is equivalent to stating that she is unconditionally a Jewess. The Talmud
thus indicates that our Baraita is a statement about membership in the Jewish
collective. Any person who has undergone a process of giyyur is
irrevocably a member of the Jewish collective, and is equal to a person
biologically born as a Jew; both remain a Jew regardless of how they behave.

A similar position is found in
Bekhorot, in the framework of the Talmudic interpretation of a Baraita
originating in Tosefta Demai. The Tosefta states:

A proselyte who took upon himself all matters of Torah, and
is suspected [of non-observance] with regard to one matter, even with regard to
the entire Torah – behold, he is like an Israelite apostate.#_ftn17" title="_ftnref17" name="_ftnref17">

[17]

And
how is he like a Jewish apostate? The Talmud answers thus: “If he performs kiddushin,
his kiddushin is valid”.#_ftn18" title="_ftnref18" name="_ftnref18">

[18]

On the
basis of Bekhorot alone, one might imagine that perhaps some minimal period of
time must elapse between the giyyur and the apostasy, for the person to
be considered irrevocably Jewish. However, Yevamot makes it very clear, that
Jewishness becomes irrevocable immediately upon the completion of the giyyur
ritual: “Once he has immersed and come up, he is like a Jew in every
respect”. In other words, if upon emerging from the waters of the mikveh our
newly-Jewish acquaintance resonates to the drumbeat of an idolatrous procession
in the adjacent thoroughfare, rushes outside, joins the procession and
disappears from our view never to be seen again – he remains a Jew for
evermore.

Maimonides illustrates this by referring to the case of
King Solomon’s idolatrous wives. He explains, that (pace the plain
meaning of the biblical text#_ftn19" title="_ftnref19" name="_ftnref19">

[19]

),
Solomon never married non-Jewish wives. Rather, every time he found a Gentile
woman whom he wished to marry, he convened an ad hoc ‘court’ of three
laymen who conducted a giyyur ritual through which the woman became a
Jew – and he then married her. True, her only motivation for giyyur was
for the sake of marriage, she knew nothing about any of the commandments, and –
furthermore – devoutly believed in alien gods before, during and after
undergoing giyyur. Her subsequent behavior confirmed this, for after her
giyyur she continued to worship these gods, using her husband’s
resources to construct and maintain sites of idolatrous activity. Nevertheless,
she was a Jewess, and therefore her marriage to King Solomon was completely
valid. Here is how Maimonides puts it:

Do not imagine that Samson, the savior of Israel,
or Solomon, king of Israel,
who was called “the beloved of the Lord,” married foreign women while they were
still Gentiles. Rather, the secret of this matter is as follows… since Samson
had women undergo giyyur and them married them; and Solomon had women
undergo giyyur and then married them. And it is known that they became
Jewish only for a purpose, and their giyyur was in defiance of the
[official] court. Therefore, Scripture considered them as-if Gentiles. In
addition, their subsequent behavior revealed their original mindset, that they
worshipped their alien gods. And they constructed high-places for those gods,
and Scripture attributed to Solomon as-if he had built them, as it says (Second
Kings XI:7): “Then did Solomon build a high-place”.#_ftn20" title="_ftnref20" name="_ftnref20">

[20]

According
to Maimonides, it is worse to be involved in an intermarriage than to be married
to an apostate Jewess. Therefore, giyyur of a person who never even
considered abandoning pagan belief and worship and who becomes a Jew only for
the sake of marriage is preferable, if the concrete alternative is a Jew living
with that same person without giyyur. Clearly, this entire scenario is
possible only if a ritual of giyyur performed under such circumstances is
efficacious – and Maimonides stresses that such is indeed the case:

A proselyte whose motives were not
investigated or was not informed about the commandments and their desserts, but
was circumcised and immersed in the presence of three laymen, is a proselyte.
Even if it was known that his becoming a proselyte is for some utilitarian
purpose, he has exited from the Gentile group once he was circumcised and
immersed. However, he should be regarded with reservation until his
righteousness becomes apparent. Even if he once again worships idols, he is as
an apostate Israelite, whose betrothal is valid. And we are commanded to return
his lost property to him. Because he immersed, he is an Israelite. That is why
Samson and Solomon kept their wives, even though their wives’ secret was
manifest.#_ftn21" title="_ftnref21" name="_ftnref21">

[21]

It is obvious from this text that once a person
underwent giyyur, her Jewishness is completely non-contingent upon her
subsequent praxis or beliefs, or indeed, upon her praxis and beliefs at the
very moment of giyyur. It is therefore clear that whatever the phrase
“he should be regarded with reservation” means,#_ftn22" title="_ftnref22" name="_ftnref22">

[22]

it does not refer to the existence of any doubt regarding the validity of the giyyur
itself: if such doubt were to exist, no valid kiddushin could have
occurred, and Maimonides would have failed to rescue Samson and Solomon from
the charge of intermarriage. Indeed, if the validity of the giyyur of these
women was in any way contingent upon on their behavior or beliefs during or
after their giyyur, they would have been considered Gentiles because
“their secret was manifest” namely, at no stage did they forsake their
idolatry.

To
make my argument as strongly as the sources warrant: at no point between the
Talmudic period and the 19th century did any rabbi rule that an
individual proselyte’s sinful behavior or pagan beliefs after immersion for giyyur
would invalidate his Jewishness. Furthermore, at no point between the
Talmudic period and the 19th century did any rabbi rule that an
individual proselyte’s inappropriate motivation, inner disposition or beliefs
during the process of giyyur itself – would invalidate the
efficacy of the ritual.#_ftn23" title="_ftnref23" name="_ftnref23">

[23]

Giyyur as Birth

As I
noted above, the irrevocability of giyyur is consonant with the general
halakhic position regarding the autonomy of ritual acts affecting personal
status. According to all major halakhic sources, the halakhic efficacy of any specific ritual process of giyyur
is dependent only upon the empirically verifiable performance of certain
acts (or: occurrence of certain events).

Furthermore, I noted that with regard to giyyur all major
halakhic sources posit the irrevocability of the Jewish status of a ger and
the Jewish status of a Jew-by-birth. Therefore, there is an inseparable
halakhic link between the (irrevocable) Jewishness of a proselyte and the
(irrevocable) Jewishness of a Jew by birth, whatever they believe and however
they act.#_ftn24" title="_ftnref24" name="_ftnref24">

[24]

This inseparable link is not merely a formal correlation, but
derives from the core metaphor of Jewishness as kinship, in which membership is
acquired in only one way: birth. For a person to be a Jew, he must be born into
that status. That is the basis for the religious-cultural halakhic logic, of
considering giyyur as equivalent to birth. Indeed,
the rabbis explicitly compare a ger to a newly-born Jew, stating: “A proselyte who has undergone giyyur is
as a newborn child.”#_ftn25" title="_ftnref25" name="_ftnref25">

[25]

This
equivalence of giyyur with birth applies not only to the irrevocability
of a proselyte’s Jewishness – but also to other very basic aspects of his
identity. As a newly-born person, all the proselyte’s prior kinship ties are
regarded as dissolved from the moment of giyyur. If several members of a
Gentile family underwent giyyur, each one is now regarded as a discrete,
unrelated individual. This entails powerful halakhic consequences, such as:

1) The [newly
unrelated] proselytes were allowed by Torah law (de-Oraita) to marry one
another: the [biological] father might marry his daughter, the mother her son,
a brother his sister, and so forth. #_ftn26" title="_ftnref26" name="_ftnref26">

[26]

2) If a father and son both underwent giyyur, the
son does not inherit his father upon the
latter’s death.#_ftn27" title="_ftnref27" name="_ftnref27">

[27]

3) While
according to halakha the testimony of relatives is not acceptable in court,
persons who were related prior to giyyur may [after undergoing giyyur]
testify in court on behalf of each other.#_ftn28" title="_ftnref28" name="_ftnref28">

[28]

The
radical implications of these laws can hardly be overemphasized, for they subvert
the most basic foundations of social order and of morality by upsetting family
ties ostensibly grounded in biological reality. Undoubtably, this is a high
price to pay. But since Torah regards Jewishness as deriving only from birth,
the only other avenue open to halakha would be, total rejection of the
possibility of giyyur. But the G-d of Israel
loves proselytes; indeed, G-d is characterized as Ohev Ger (Deuteronomy/Devarim
10:18). Therefore, giyyur
IS possible – and it is possible only as birth into the Jewish kinship. Thus, a former Gentile who immerses
in water for the sake of giyyur is
transformed and recreated. Emerging from the waters of the mikveh, he is newly-born, as an infant emerging from a mother’s
womb – a Jewish mother’s womb. That is why he is as irrevocably Jewish
as is a Jew by [biological] birth: “Once he has immersed and come up, he is like a Jew in every
respect”. Birth cannot be retroactively annulled.

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[1]

Bava
Metziah 59b, Mishne Torah Hilkhot Mekhirah 14:15-17, Shulhan Arukh
Hoshen Mishpat 248:2

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[2]

But the
existence of such a person would be a rare event, indeed, because “in our times the presumption is that
the intention of those seeking to undergo giyyur
is, to mislead the court when they say that they will observe the
commandments, while in their heart they are far from such intent”. Rabbi
Gedalya Axelrod, 'Observance of Commandments as a Condition for [Valid] Giyyur' (Hebrew), in Shurat ha-Din (The Letter of the
Law), Vol. 3 (Jerusalem, Sha’ar
ha-Mishpat Institute of the
Directorate of Rabbinical Courts, 1995), pp. 175–90. The quote is from p. 189.

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[3]

There
are certain specific exceptions to this general rule, but that is what they
are: exceptions. One exception: Fulfillment of the mitzvah of prayer requires
one to recite the ‘amida, consisting (on normal weekdays) of 19
benedictions. One should attempt to attend to the meaning of the words of the
prayer, however, if one failed to do so, one has nevertheless fulfilled the
mitzvah of prayer – if at least during the first benediction one did attend to
it’s meaning. I.e., reciting the ‘amida with attention to the first 5%
of the words is fulfillment of intention required for the mitzvah. Cf. Shulhan
Arukh Orah Hayyim 101:1.

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[4]

Cf.
Shabbat 68a where the Talmud refers to a Gentile who underwent giyyur
without ever hearing of the existence of Shabbat.

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[5]

This is
the original halakha. In medieval times it became customary in Europe
for returning apostates to undergo a ceremony analogous to giyyur,
although this was not formally necessary. Cf. Shulhan Arukh Yoreh De’ah 268:12.

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[6]

A Jewish
marriage can be contracted only between a man and a woman, both of whom are
Jewish.

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[7]

Hilkhot
Ishut 4:15.

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[8]

Shulhan Arukh Even HaEzer 44:9.

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[9]

Cf.
Yevamot 47b. For this being the source of Maimonides’ ruling, cf. Maggid
Mishne ad.loc. For this being the source of rabbi Caro’s ruling, cf. the
following commentators ad.loc. : Be’er HaGolah #90; Beiur
HaGra #16 (who concurs and adds a second source, Bekhorot 30b, that also
relates to a recanting ger). Interestingly, rabbi Moshe Feinstein holds
that the impossibility of a born Jew changing his identity and becoming a
Gentile requires no source text at all, as it is absolutely self-evident
(Responsa Iggerot Moshe Even HaEzer IV:83). However, an examination of
the history of halakha reveals that the matter was not regarded as
self-evident. Rather, it was seriously debated in early medieval times and
there were Geonic authorities who held that if a born Jew abandons Torah to the
extent of joining another religion and publicly desecrating the Shabbat, he is
no longer a Jew even for purposes of marriage (cf. Responsa of Rashi #169;
Responsa Tashbetz III:43; Responsa Yakhin
uBoaz II:31).

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[10]

Responsa MaHarShaKh, 3:102. Rabbi Cohen lived in the 16th
century Ottoman Empire.

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[11]

Translated
by Sagi and Zohar in Transforming Identity (Continuum Press, London
and New York, 2007).

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[12]

The
grammatical structure of the talmudic text is ambiguous regarding the subject
addressing the prospective proselyte: the phrase Omrim lo [say to him]
is in present tense plural, but the subject can equally be translated as we or
you (pl.), or they. Our use of “we” is not definitive.

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[13]

These
are commandments instructing farmers to leave portions of the crop for the
poor. Cf., e.g., Leviticus 19,7 and 23,22.

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[14]

The
Hebrew word kibbel is ambiguous. We translate it here as “receive,” but
it can also be translated as “agrees” or “accepts.” This ambiguity enables
multiple interpretations, as Avi Sagi and I discuss in Transforming Identity.

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[15]

Yevamot 47b. Our translation here is based on
the Schottenstein edition of the Talmud Bavli, New York,
Mesorah Publications, 1999. However, we have emended the translation in several
places to give what we see as a better rendition of the sense of the original
text.

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[16]

Yevamot
47b.

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[17]

Tosefta
Demai 2:4 (p. 69 in the Lieberman edition). Our translation.

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[18]

Bekhorot 30b.

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[19]

Cf.
Second Kings XI.

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[20]

Mishne
Torah, Hilkhot Issurei Biah, XIII:14-16.

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[21]

Ibid.,
XIII:17.

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[22]

Much
ink has been spilled by rabbis in recent times to explain this. For our
interpretation, see Transforming Identity pp. 168-169.

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[23]

For the sake of clarity: this is true not only with
regard to those rabbis who held that a valid giyyur is possible without kabbalat
mitzvot, but also with regard to those rabbis who held that kabbalat
mitzvot is a sine qua non for a valid giyyur. This is so
because, however those rabbis understood that phrase, they never identified it
as an internal disposition but as an event that is empirically verifiable at
the moment it occurs.Some understandings of that event were: the proselyte’s
reception of information about the commandments, as conveyed to him by the
court; the proselyte’s willingness to become a Jew; the proselyte’s commitment
to proceed with the giyyur ritual (= circumcision and immersion) after
hearing about the commandments; the proselyte’s declaration of commitment to
observe the commandments. See: Transforming Identity, chapters 9, 10,
11, 12.

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[24]

Undermining the status of a person who underwent giyyur because of how
he conducts himself logically entails undermining the status of a person who
was born to a Jewish mother, because of how he conducts himself. Indeed, it is
my personal opinion that this is the ‘deep logic’ that underlies the common
custom in haredi circles to reject the propriety of marriage between
“frum from birth” haredim and Jews who were born to non-haredi families
and later chose to adhere to a haredi lifestyle.

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[25]

ger she-nitgayyer ke-katan she-nolad --
Yevamot 22a, and parallel texts.

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[26]

It
should be noted that such marriages between relatives of the first degree have
been forbidden by rabbinic enactment. However,
marriages between relatives of lesser closeness are permitted to proselytes,
although they are forbidden between Jews born to a Jewish mother. On all this see
Code of Maimonides, Laws of Forbidden Intercourse, 14:11 and ff.

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[27]

See Code of Maimonides, Laws of
Original Acquisition and Gifts 1:6.

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[28]

See Code of Maimonides, Laws of
Evidence 13:2.

The current conversion crisis that is searing the larger Jewish community in general and the Orthodox community in particular is grounded in politically and ideologically driven doublespeak. Orthodox Judaism teaches that the Jew is sanctified by obeying God's commandments. Honest people may disagree over details. When agendas replace conscience and the halakha is superseded by policy, we are not being honest to God or to each other. The organization that sees itself as the "Eternal Jewish Family"wants the world Jewish community to adopt its own conversion standards that are "universally acceptable." This seemingly innocent idiom makes the immodest claim that unless the standards of the most strict, who by implication are the most fervent, religious and authentic Orthodox, are adopted, the Jewish people will be hopelessly divided. It makes the implicit assumption that the hareidi conscience is inviolable and other Orthodox standards, which are asked to define itself as Judaism lite, must defer to its dictates and dictators.

The hareidi so-called Eternal Jewish Family standards are not the standards of red letter Jewish law. As long as the norms of the plain, simple and logical reading of the Oral Torah canon are observed with regard to conversion, the eternal Jewish standard has been satisfied, and dissenters must be ignored. If Jewish legal standards are observed with regard to conversions, the invalidating of kosher converts without evidence invalidates the invalidators precisely because eternal Jewish standards are superseded by social and political considerations.

Jewish values are based upon laws, not standards. Standards not required by Jewish law may be practiced as personal piety gestures but may not be imposed on all Israel as God's unchanging law. Jewish law actually does allow conversion for the sake of marriage! Consider the fact that the female captive has a month after capture and mourning before she can be taken as an Israelite wife, [Dt 21:10-13]. The Talmudic view of R. Nehemiah, that conversions for marriage are improper, is reported but rejected.[bYevamot 24b]. And consider the narrative of bMenahot 44b that describes a prostitute whose "client," a student of R. Hiyya, was slapped by his tsitsit tassels upon undressing in her presence, reminding him that amongst the Torah's commands is the admonition not to succumb to improper temptations. The student concedes that the woman is beautiful but he loves Judaism more. Taken by her client's poignant piety, she asks for his biographical particulars and confronts the student's mentor, the insightful, knowing, wise, and kindly R. Hiyya, who told her "that very bed that you made for him [her recalcitrant client] illicitly, make that very same bed for him properly, i.e., by becoming a pious Jewess by choice.

Authentic Jewish law allows the presiding rabbi almost unqualified discretion regarding the acceptance of converts. "Standards" not recorded in the Jewish legal canon are not Jewish law. In Responsum Pe'er ha-Dor 132, Maimonides permits a conversion as the better alternative to intermarriage. A rabbinical court of three observant lay people, i.e., non-rabbis, may not be ideal but its conversions are nevertheless kosher once accomplished [Maimonides, Laws of Forbidden Relations, 13:17!]. Requiring extra "expertise" for converting rabbis on the part of hareidi Judaism is a disingenuous ploy intended to disqualify those rabbis who disagree with the extra-legal standards of extremists and who believe that Torah law is in no need of reformulation. Since a convert who was accepted by a halakhic rabbinic court consisting of three observant males is kosher, the rejecting of that convert, whom we are required to love, [Dt 10:19, Maimonides, Positive Commandments, 207] we cause
good Jews by choice to be tempted to sin. If we are not really certain that the conversions of non-hareidi rabbis are kosher, we would, it would seem, accept the conversion candidate cautiously in order to assure that these candidates for conversion be properly integrated into the Jewish community. By claiming the right of veto of converts of Orthodox rabbis who obey Jewish law, hareidi Judaism advances the claim that Judaism is based on rulers, not rules, and standard bearers, not standards, and deference to men and not devotion to Jewish law.

Jewish standards are defined in the Talmudic canon, and not councils, conventions, or conclaves of policy makers. Torah is the Judaism of all Israel. The so-called Orthodox Right has here wrongly misrepresented Jewish law. Individual rabbis may suspend the law in emergency situations [Maimonides, Laws of Dissenters, 2:4].This discretion is given not to a self-select rabbinic elite; it is given to the local rabbi, who is authorized to apply humanity, uncommon common sense, and what is deemed to be appropriate in the circumstances as they appear at that moment [bSanhedrin 6b].

The Israeli rabbi, Abraham Sherman, not only invalidated Rabbi Haim Drukman's conversions, he called the latter rabbi a wicked man. Slander is a sin that invalidates Sherman's rabbinic credentials. Yet most Orthodox rabbis hesitate to make this necessary, logical, and undeniable recourse because modern Orthodox rabbis wish to be "accepted" by all Orthodox parties. When fully observant converts, who are even observing the family purity rules, [See Maimonides, Forbidden Relations, 13:8] are being disqualified, the disqualifiers are acting wrongly. When Orthodox Judaism is defined by political standards and not by Jewish law, then God's view is silenced. Rabbi Shelomo Amar invalidated Diaspora Judaism's Orthodox converts without doing research. By not accepting a kosher convert, one tempts a Jew, the kosher convert, to sin. Rabbi Amar is not applying "strict construction" Jewish law; he feels that he is answerable to that block of Orthodoxy that sees itself as the salvation and life of all Israel, and whose intuition trumps what the written and oral Torah actually require.

A local rosh yeshiva in Springfield, New Jersey became very angry with me for supporting the Neeman proposal as advanced by Rabbi Lamm of YU. Rabbi Lamm was denounced by a zealot as a" Hater of God." bQiddushin 79a teaches that whoever invalidates the bona fides of another projects the flaw in oneself. The fact that many within Modern Orthodoxy, including the Rabbinical faculty of Yeshiva University, did not invalidate the bona fides of those who slandered Rabbis Drukman and Lamm, but protested weakly, begs the existential question as to whether this brand of Orthodox Judaism is loyal to God and conscience or compulsion and consensus.

Rabbi Isaac Schmelkes claimed 150 years ago that a kosher conversion is invalid if the person converting is insincere, and if the convert at a subsequent date was not observant, the convert is deemed to be insincere. This view is without precedent in the Jewish legal literature and must be rejected as such. The oral law at bSota 44b requires military service in Israel for both men and women. The very rabbis who impose these "innovative" conversion standards also outlaw military service for yeshiva men and for its women. Jewish law must be enforced consistently and appropriately and not spun sociologically.

I have recently experienced a case where an Orthodox rabbi's conversion was not accepted by another Orthodox rabbi ordained by the same yeshiva. The converting rabbi is modern Orthodox; the rejecting one is hareidi. On one hand, we define ourselves by proclaiming who we are not. The Jewish laws of conversion are rather clear, are not difficult to master, and are in no need of alteration, from either the Left or from the Right.
The quest for "universal conversion standards" de-authorizes Jewish law by misrepresenting Judaism as a religion of standard bearers and not of objective standards.

Authentic Orthodoxy advances principles and not politics. Torah is about rules and not rulers, it is about the law of Torah and not standards of self-selecting elites. There is room for vigorous and public discussion. We undermine our own bona fides when we succumb to incivility and when we put up with put downs. Judaism is about the fear of Heaven and not the fear of people. In order to restore its existential credibility, Orthodox Judaism must affirm Jewish law honestly, because this alone is our eternal Jewish standard.