National Scholar Updates

Vision from the Prophet and Counsel from the Elders
By Rabbi Hayyim Angel
OU Press, 2013, 368 pages
Reviewed by Rabbi Israel Drazin

This scholarly, very readable, and informative book by a teacher of rabbinical students and advanced undergraduates at Yeshiva University is a superb book for anyone of any religion who wants to learn what the Bible is actually saying. Rabbi Angel examines the nineteen books of the Hebrew Bible that follow the five books of Moses, from Joshua through Chronicles, the prophets and writings. He exposes the plain meaning of the texts, not the homiletical, sermonic, lessons that others draw from them. He also offers some guidelines how to read the plain meaning of Scripture. Readers will discover that many of the books do not say what they think they say and will be enjoyably surprised to learn what they are saying.

For example: Angel explains why Joshua was a perfect candidate to succeed Moses. Both the books of Joshua and Judges report incidences out of chronological order, and the second century CE Rabbi Ishmael said that the five books of Moses also sometimes do so. Many of the biblical heroes had sons who did not follow their ways, even turning to idols. Some Bible commentators understood biblical statements literally that others insisted are allegories; thus Nachmanides believed Isaiah’s prophecy about a wolf and lamb lying together (11:6-9), that animals would become non-carnivorous in the messianic age. Similarly, while many people understood biblical prophecies as predictions of what will occur, others, such as Tosaphot Yevamot 50a, s.v. teda, and Malbim on Isaiah 11, took the prophecies as predictions of what should happen. In fact, they note that many famous prophecies never occurred.

Rabbi Angel reveals that frequently we need to read biblical narratives both forward and backward. For example: “When one reads the narrative from beginning to end, it appears that (King) Solomon failed spiritually only toward the end of his life…. Once we know the tragic end of Solomon, however, it is possible to look back through the narrative and trace the roots of Solomon’s failure to the beginning of his reign.” Angel also uses this reading-back technique to understand other biblical figures. He shows that Bible readers need to pay close attention to the text. Thus, he discloses that some biblical stories, such as Ruth “initially appear clear (but) are more elusive after further scrutiny.” This scrutiny, which many fail to make, but which Angel does, reveals that the “short narrative (of Ruth) captures so many subtleties in so short a space.” Sometimes commentators are able to see problems and need to argue poetic flexibility in their interpretations: Many rabbis explain Psalm 37:25’s “I have been young and am now old, but I have never seen a righteous man abandoned, or his children seeking bread” as “never totally abandoned.”

Readers will find surprising facts in this splendid book. Some examples are: Our current breakdown of biblical books is different than they were in the past. The books of Kings, Chronicles, and Ezra-Nehemiah were not divided into two books. Conversely, Psalms 1 and 2 were originally considered by several sages to be one psalm. The order of the Hebrew alphabet was not yet fixed during the ancient biblical period. Some rabbis suggest that some of the Proverbs in chapters 30-31 were composed by non-Jews. Remarkably, the Greek version of Esther, the Septuagint, mentions God’s name over fifty times, but the Hebrew version doesn’t refer to God even once. Additionally, it is possible to read, and Rabbi Angel shows how, that the main character of the book Esther is King Ahasuerus.

Among many other thought-provoking revelations, Angel notes the non-prophetic perspective of the book Ecclesiastes and writes: “Significantly, Ecclesiastes’ inclusion in Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible) and its consideration as a divinely inspired book elevates human perception into the realm of the sacred, joining revelation and received wisdom as aspects of religious truth.”

These are just a very small fraction of the multiple insights that Rabbi Hayyim Angel divulges in this splendid book.

How much legal autonomy—and how much exemption from otherwise applicable laws—ought religious groups to have?
When government grows larger and more ambitious, laying down the law in more and more areas of life, these questions arise more often and more urgently.

It is a common motif that without some “special accommodation” or exemption from various laws, it would be difficult for religious communities or even individuals to live religious lives. If public law forbids employment discrimination on the basis of religion, for example, religious groups have an obvious claim for exemption when choosing their clergy, and a claim for autonomy to decide who qualifies to be rabbi, priest, or pastor.

The controversy in recent months over the Obama Administration’s mandate to Roman Catholic institutions over abortive drugs and contraception is just one example of the almost limitless situations in which the question of special accommodation can arise. Should Native American (or Rastafarian) sects be exempted from drug laws that forbid peyote or marijuana? Should Mormons (or Muslims) be exempted from laws against polygamy? Should Christian Scientists be exempted from laws requiring parents to provide for medical treatment for sick children? Should Sikhs be exempted from laws prohibiting carrying knives in public? Should observant Jewish soldiers or officers be exempted from military uniform rules, which would not permit wearing a kippah? Should religious individuals be exempted from duties that would otherwise be required on the job: a nurse who refuses to assist in an abortion or administration of contraception? A police officer who refuses to arrest anti-war, or anti-abortion, protesters? A postal worker who refuses to deliver mail that he or she considers blasphemous, or (as is now an issue in Israel) who refuses to deliver pamphlets proselytizing for Christianity, or who refuses to process military conscription documents?

In the United States, these questions—as with so many things in American life—can often be framed as Constitutional issues. The first Amendment says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” So perhaps some or all of the claims for religious exemption must be granted in order to satisfy “free exercise.” On the other hand if they are granted, but people who might want to smoke peyote, marry polygamously, and/or carry ceremonial but sharp knives in public for non-religious reasons are prohibited from doing so, this can be said to be an “establishment of religion”: it would certainly discriminate in favor of religion and against people who might want exemptions from the law for secular (but perhaps for serious or conscientious) reasons. Free exercise and establishment, especially if each is construed broadly, threaten to collide with one another.

The U.S. Supreme Court has followed a notably up-and-down course in recent decades about special religious accommodation. In two famous cases decided in 1963 and 1972, the Court held that the First Amendment requires exemptions from generally applicable federal and state laws unless there is a “compelling state interest” (or something close to it) for enforcing the law—a constitutional standard that usually means the government has to give way to a claim under the Bill of Rights. The first case, Sherbert v. Verner, involved a Seventh Day Adventist who wanted an exemption from a requirement to be available for work on Saturday as a condition of receiving unemployment benefit; the second, Wisconsin v. Yoder, involved an Amish community that wanted its children excused from compulsory school attendance past the eighth grade.1 The Court held that Free Exercise requires a religious exemption in both cases.

But in 1990, in a case called Employment Division v. Smith, the Supreme Court reversed course and said that the Free Exercise Clause does not require religious exceptions from generally applicable laws that are enacted for secular purposes.2 The idea implicit in the decision, clearly, is no official preference for religion over non-religion. The U.S. Congress reacted sharply to the decision by enacting the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA), seeking to restore the pre-Smith “compelling state interest” standard, which favored religious exemptions. In 1997, the Supreme Court struck back, and struck down RFRA as unconstitutional: Congress has no power to impose this pro-exemption requirement on the states.3 Recently, in yet another turn, the Court tacitly upheld RFRA for religious exemptions from federal laws (although Congress still cannot require such exemptions from state laws).

In practice, there has been less change in public policy toward religious exemptions than a reading of the (somewhat dizzying) Supreme Court decisions might suggest. In the era before Smith, exemptions were by no means granted as readily as Sherbert and Yoder might imply, and after Smith they are still available in various guises. Even in the post-1960s (but pre-Smith) era, the Supreme Court rejected all religious claims for exemption from tax laws; it rejected all claims arising from prisons and the military; it rejected a claim for exemption from the Fair Labor Standards Act. Virtually the only claims the Court accepted were—like Sherbert—for religious exemption from (Sabbath) requirements to be available for work under unemployment benefit laws. And after Smith, religious claimants still sometimes win in the Supreme Court. For example, the Court says that where the government actually considers individual eligibilities—as it does in unemployment cases—it still has to grant religious exemptions. The Court also strikes down laws that it finds to be discriminatory against particular religions or their practices, such as, in a famous case, animal sacrifices by the Santeria sect.4
Perhaps more importantly, federal and state laws—even, or especially, after Smith—have been strongly favorable toward religious exemptions.5 RFRA was enacted by unanimous vote in the House of Representatives (better than the Declaration of War after Pearl Harbor), and by almost unanimous vote in the Senate; it still applies to the federal government, requiring religious exemption unless a “compelling state interest” militates against it. More than half the states have enacted their own RFRA-like laws. Twenty-three states and the federal government allow sacramental use of peyote.

Congress granted the Amish an exemption from social security taxes after the Supreme Court turned it down. Congress granted members of the armed forces the right to wear “religious apparel” after the Supreme Court turned down a claim by an Air Force doctor, an observant Jew, to wear a kippah on duty.

Some of these enactments might actually give cause for second thoughts, even if one supports generous religious exemptions. The federal Civil Rights Act of 1964, for example, prohibits employment discrimination on account of race, religion, sex, and national origin. But under a 1972 Amendment, religious corporations and institutions may discriminate on the basis of religion.6 (The original 1964 law had allowed such religious discrimination more narrowly, only in relation to “religious activities.”) The Supreme Court upheld the broadened exemption in the case of a gymnasium (open to the paying—not necessarily praying—public) operated by the Church of Latter Day Saints, which fired a janitor for failing to live by Mormon standards of religious practice.7 The exemption from anti-discrimination law is not merely for a few religious groups, under the new law, or for a narrow range of religious employees. Religious organizations employ more than a million Americans, and religious bodies can have large-scale business interests, with a lot of leverage over would-be employees. Churches own (or have owned) a major secular news agency (the United Press International), the largest beef ranch in the United States, and a major life insurance company. With the broad (or over-broad) exemption, there is the potential for enterprises owned by religious bodies to swallow the anti-discrimination law, at least in some localities or in some trades.

Meanwhile, there have been increasing calls in recent years both in the United States and in other Western democracies, not merely for religious exemptions from secular laws, but also for actual power to adjudicate under religious law. There are already steps in this direction with binding arbitration in religious courts: halakhic or sharia tribunals, for example, created by religious groups. An extensive network of Batei Din, or rabbinical arbitration courts, now exists in the United States. More recently, Islamic groups have called for the establishment of comparable Sharia courts. Thus, businesspeople can contract to arbitrate future disputes in a religious court; or a couple might sign a prenuptial agreement to arbitrate family disputes, including divorce, under religious law. Going further, there have been suggestions in the academic literature that “insular” or self-contained religious groups might be given public judicial powers, by analogy to the powers of tribal courts on Indian reservations.8 The Archbishop of Canterbury recently provoked a flurry when he called, in somewhat general terms, for aspects of Islamic Sharia law to be adopted in Britain. The role of religious courts in Israel is sometimes cited as an example of how religious adjudication might function in a democratic society.

In a sense, even “special accommodation” or religious exemption from secular law implies that religious groups must have some autonomy and power to decide, hence in a more or less formal sense, to adjudicate, relevant questions by their own standards: to decide at what age Mennonite children should leave school, for instance, or which day is the Sabbath and what are the rules of Sabbath observance, what apparel is religious apparel, what use of peyote is sacramental, and so on.

The creation of actual state religious courts in the United States, comparable to the Israeli religious court system, is improbable, to put it gently, given “separation of church and state” under the First Amendment. But to the extent that halakhic or Islamic arbitration awards are enforceable in the secular courts, such religious judgments would have binding force under American law. Supporters of religious “multiculturalism” and increased autonomy for religious groups have suggested that the usual rules of arbitration law should be relaxed for religious tribunals. For example, whereas a standard arbitration award is unenforceable if a court finds it to offend “public policy,” it has been suggested that religious adjudication should be enforced by the secular courts unless the judgment is “unconscionable.”9 On the other side, opposition to religious courts—in particular to the spread of Islamic Sharia law—has also grown. Oklahoma adopted a referendum in 2010, subsequently struck down by the federal courts, forbidding state courts to consider Sharia. At least six other states have considered similar measures, which might forbid state courts to enforce the judgments of religious arbitral courts. Along the same lines, after public statements by an Islamic leader in Toronto that only “bad Muslims” would fail to submit their disputes to Sharia arbitration panels, the Canadian province of Ontario now bans the enforceability of religious family law arbitration. In the words of the Premier of the Province: “There will be no religious arbitration in Ontario. There will be one law for all Ontarians.” But despite occasional rebuffs, halakhic tribunals and their caseloads—and Muslim interest in Sharia tribunals—have grown in the United States in recent years. It remains an open question to what degree and on what terms the secular courts will accept and enforce their judgments.

The attractive side of increased religious autonomy is fairly obvious. Generous exemption from secular laws and increased availability and enforceability of religious adjudication all provide a framework for people to live more religious lives, under religious law if they choose. These developments empower religion accordingly. They might seem especially well suited to “nomo-centric” or law-intensive religions like Judaism and Islam. After all, Jews are obliged under Jewish law, at least under appropriate circumstances, to adjudicate disputes before halakhic courts and not to turn to secular tribunals.10
When religious autonomy is enshrined in secular law, however, there are potential and actual problems and drawbacks as well.

In the first place, the substance of religious law may be at odds with the values of a liberal society. This arises most obviously on points where both Jewish and Islamic law, for example, are not egalitarian as between men and women. Divergences from liberal norms can arise in religious commercial law and in other areas as well. For example, it may conflict with federal and state antitrust laws in the United States for Batei Din or rabbinic arbitration tribunals to enforce the halakhic principle of hasagat gevul, which restricts competitive business practices that might put an existing business out of business.11

A plausible response to this sort of concern is that a liberal society is pluralist and does not require everyone to live by liberal norms: indeed that it would be illiberal to do so. So long as there are ample choices and full freedom to affiliate and disaffiliate, and so long as the interests of third parties are not compromised, liberal society should not be offended if some people and groups, including religious groups, voluntarily opt for non-liberal ways of life. In the case of hasagat gevul, this runs into the objection that third parties are compromised: that the purpose of antitrust, and of public policy favoring competition, is to promote lower prices and better quality goods and services for everyone, and that the public suffers whenever there is less competition. As for respecting people’s free choice to submit to religious law: the more readily secular courts enforce religious arbitral judgments, the more this implies scrutiny by the courts into just how voluntary, and how fully informed, the parties were when they consented to religious adjudication. Religious communities might feel such scrutiny intrusive, both as to the community pressures which undoubtedly affect whether people agree to religious adjudication, and also as to how much is known in advance about the interpretive or ideological leanings or commitments of particular religious tribunals.

There is also a concern, in terms of social cohesion, about the balkanizing effects of group autonomy, especially where religious groups, identity groups, or other groups inspiring deep passion and commitment are involved. This concern traces back to Hobbes and Locke, who wrote during or just after a period of religious civil war, and it has been a perennial worry in the history of liberal thought.12 The apprehension, of course, is that when such groups are empowered, it tends to diminish their members’ loyalty to, or even involvement in, the broader liberal community. If things go too far, it threatens to begin pulling liberal society apart. This concern has re-emerged sharply in Western European countries in recent years, where Muslim communities have grown, and where Islamic or Islamist leaders have achieved a degree of autonomy under “multicultural” policy. The concern, of course, is that group differences, far from shrinking, are growing more intractable and more threatening as a result of these policies.

If religions are granted exemption and autonomy that others might not be granted, there is also the ever-more-uncertain question of who or what is a religion. When Will Herberg’s famous book Protestant Catholic Jew appeared in the 1950s, it was broadly true that those were the three religious alternatives in America, with subdivisions among each of course, but each with a recognizable identity as well, and broad consensus about what is a religion, such that Americans could feel that they would know it when they saw it. Today it would be fair to say that there is an ever-expanding psychic shopping mall of religious, semi-religious, and quasi-religious beliefs, notions, groups, and ideologies. In American prisons, for example—not an entirely representative subset of the country, to be sure—there has been dramatic growth in adherence to a variety of sects including the Nation of Islam (“Black Muslims”), pagan groups such as Wicca, Odinism, Asatru, and Druidism (often associated with White Supremacists among the prisoners), and Native American spirituality.13 An American court today may confront not only the question of whether an Air Force doctor who is an observant Jew may wear a kippah on duty, but also a case of a Free Exercise claimant who asserts that his religious beliefs require him to dress like a chicken when going to court.14

If religions are granted exemption from otherwise applicable laws, and even a degree of autonomous authority, there is an obvious temptation for all sorts of groups to claim to be religions and to demand special privileges and powers. A well-known but by no means unique example is the Church of Scientology, which began as an entirely secular therapy-marketing enterprise founded by the science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, but which went on to claim religious status, partly in hope of a tax exemption. Despite its considerable criminal history by then, Scientology was eventually granted tax exemption in 1993 as a bona fide religion.15

There is a further point, which perhaps deserves more emphasis than it sometimes receives. If the state offers a significant degree of religious autonomy—power over jobs, resources, and decisions that affect people’s lives—it can encourage the take-over of religious communities by authoritarian and factional religious leaders. This may partly be due to the attraction that autonomous power might have for the most enthusiastic people within a religious group or its leadership, who may tend to be the most extreme people.

But autonomy has a perverse logic of its own, which more directly encourages extremism: namely, if autonomous rulings are not going to differ from the rules of secular, liberal society, then why is it important that the religious group should have autonomy? Whereas the more radically the group’s rulings do differ—including the rulings of religious arbitration courts—the more necessary and justified the claim for autonomy. Once there is autonomy, in other words, there is liable to be a “cascade” effect towards more distinctive, which is to say more extreme, positions on the part of the autonomous institutions and those who steer them, if only to justify the idea that autonomy is necessary in the first place.

The religious courts in Israel may be a cautionary example in this context. The State of Israel, as is the case with many Muslim-majority countries, maintains a religious court system within the state framework, with jurisdiction over family law, including marriage and divorce and related questions of “personal status”. The religious courts trace back to the “Millet” system under the Ottoman Empire—where the phenomenon of “Balkanization” originated—and was kept on under the British mandate in Palestine and again after the establishment of the State in 1948. It is common knowledge in Israel that the religious courts have increasingly come under the sway of Haredi rabbinical judges in recent years, and there have been notorious cases of the religious courts refusing to issue marriage licenses where one of the parties is a non-Haredi convert to Judaism; the religious courts have even attempted to revoke Orthodox but non-Haredi conversions retroactively and to render Jewish families abruptly “non-Jewish”.16 The polarization of religious life in Israel, and the growing power of Haredi ultra-Orthodoxy, undoubtedly has complex origins, and can surely not be laid to the existence of state religious courts alone.

But the religious court system, and the autonomous power of the religious “establishment” in Israel, have certainly not stopped the drift towards religious extremism in the Orthodox rabbinic world, nor prevented the estrangement of Jews of various religious tendencies from one another, both in Israel and abroad.

Extensive religious autonomy, in short, can lead to the creation—with state approval—of “islands” of authoritarianism in an otherwise free and democratic society. It can also promote corruption of various kinds, which often accompanies authoritarianism. Corruption, not on a modest scale, has certainly been one of the issues in Israel in the context of religious legal autonomy and political power.

A consideration of these various problems, actual and potential, with religious autonomy is not to suggest that religious exemptions from secular law, and a measure of a religious autonomy, are simply undesirable. On the contrary, they may be indispensable for religious people and groups to be free to live religious lives. Special accommodation of religious needs under secular law, and arbitral “alternate dispute resolution” in religious courts, may actually work reasonably well if there is a degree of moderation on all sides. If the government authorities are basically respectful towards religious concerns—which they generally have been in American history; if a rough consensus about who and what is a “religion” does not break down in a welter of opportunistic or unhinged claims; if religious groups themselves do not seek to abuse either the host society or their own members: then there is the prospect of a reasonable balance of interests. All this presupposes a degree of social cohesion and good faith, of course: that all concerned should be “touched... by the better angels of our nature.”17

Relying on everyone’s being touched by the better angels of our nature, unfortunately, can sometimes be uncertain. It is all the more uncertain in a fractious and polarized society. At root, the question of special accommodation, and of religious adjudicatory independence, arise most urgently when government grows in its reach and ambition. After all, if most areas of life, including those that touch on religious life, are left to people’s private arrangement, then not much special accommodation will be necessary. But when government takes control over more and more areas of life, regulating who shall do what, under what rules and conditions, then clashes with one or another religious way of life are almost inevitable. The dispute over government mandates to provide abortive drugs and contraception, in the framework of increasing government control of health care in America, is merely a well-known recent example.

With a relatively open market in health care and private health insurance, religious institutions needed no special exemptions to adopt their own approaches, on questions of contraception and abortion as on other matters. But greatly increased government regulation implies more uniform standards and rules, and hence more controversy over whether there should be religious exemptions, and if so, for whom, to what degree, and on what terms.

Special accommodation for religion, and special adjudicatory powers, are problematic, for reasons I have tried to suggest. In the long run, especially under less-than-favorable social circumstances, they might not be workable. If not, then society may ultimately have to choose between big government—an ever-growing and ever-more-powerful administrative and redistributive state—on the one hand, and lively religious pluralism and thriving religious life on the other. This, perhaps, is what religious people and groups ought to fix their attention on.

1 Sherbert v. Verner, 374 US 398 (1963); Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 US 205 (1972). Justice William O. Douglas dissented in Yoder, suggesting that a high school child may or may not want to be “harnessed” for life to the Amish community: “[h]e may want to be a pianist or an astronaut or an oceanographer. To do so, he will have to break with the Amish tradition… The child, therefore, should be given an opportunity to be heard before the State gives the exemption which we honor today.”
2 Employment Div. Dept of Human Resources v. Smith, 49 US 872 (1990).
3 City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 US 507 (1997).
4 Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah, 508 US 520 (1993).
5 The Supreme Court decisions are about whether religious exemptions are required as a matter of Free Exercise by the Constitution. But federal or state statutes are free to grant more “special accommodation” than the Constitution (minimally) requires: so long, of course, as the “special accommodation” isn’t viewed as rising to the level of an Establishment of religion.
6 42 US Code 2000e -1.
7 Corporation of Presiding Bishop v. Amos, 483 US 327 (1987).
8 E.g. Mark Rosen, “The Radical Possibility of Limited Community-Based Interpretation of the Constitution,” 43 William and Mary Law Review 927 (2002).
9 E.g. Michael A. Helfand, “Religious Arbitration and the New Multiculturalism: Negotiating Conflicting Legal Orders,” 86 NYU Law Review 1231, 1287-8 (2011).
10 Gittin 88b; but see Sanhedrin 23a. See generally J. David Bleich, “Survey of Recent Halakhic Periodical Literature: Litigation and Arbitration Before Non-Jews,” 34:3 Tradition 58 (2000); Michael A. Helfand & Yaacov Feit, “Confirming Piskei Din as Arbitration Awards,” 61 Journal of Halacha & Contemporary Society 5 (2011). Of course Jewish law does not, because it cannot, prescribe to what extent (if at all) non-Jewish secular courts will enforce halakhic arbitration judgments in cases where the losing party does not submit voluntarily to the judgment.
11 See generally Simcha Krauss, “Hasagath Gvul,” 29 Journal of Halacha & Contemporary Society 5 (Spring 1995).
12 See Richard Boyd, Uncivil Society: The Perils of Pluralism and the Making of Modern Liberalism (Lexington Books 2004).
13 For the religious situation in the prisons, see the United States Commission on Civil Rights report, Enforcing Religious Freedom in Prison, September 2008: http://www.usccr.gov/pubs/STAT2008ERFIP.pdf, especially the Statement of Commissioner Gail Heriot at p. 118. For a statistical survey of American religion generally, see the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, US Religious Landscape Survey 2010: http://religions.pewforum.org/reports. The Pew Survey summarises: “religious affiliation in the US is both very diverse and extremely fluid. More than one-quarter of American adults (28%) have left the faith in which they were raised in favor of another religion—or no religion at all. If change in affiliation from one type of Protestantism to another is included, 44% of adults have either switched religious affiliation... or dropped any connection to a specific religious tradition altogether.”
14 Compare Goldman v Weinberger, 475 US 503 (1986) (upholding prohibition of the kippah) with State v Hodges 695 S.W. 2d 171 (Tenn 1985) (quashing a contempt citation and remanding to the trial court for further consideration of the religious claim for the chicken costume). In a nutshell, the kippah lost. The chicken costume, at least tentatively, won.
15 See Hugh B.Urban, The Church of Scientology (Princeton University Press 2011).
16 See Marc D. Angel, “The Conversion Crisis and Challenge” (November 2008): http://www.jewishideas.org/min-hamuvhar/conversion-crisis; Zvi Zohar, “From Periphery to Core,” 10 Conversations 93 (2011). For an account of a case in which the rabbinic court purported to revoke a conversion, see “The Interrogation of the Convert “X” by the Israeli Rabbinic Courts” (February 2011):
http://www.jewishideas.org/susan-weiss/interrogation-convert-x-israeli-rabbinic-courts

The Center for Women’s Justice in Jerusalem is active in behalf of converts entangled in such cases, and posts about recent developments:
http://cwj.org.il/home/cwj-news/newrabbiniccourtrulingcwjclientsarejewish
17 Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address (1861).

The Orthodox-secular rift has threatened the Zionist movement from its outset. To facilitate cooperation despite the deep differences, the "status quo" was established, so that it would not be necessary to deal comprehensively with the place of religion in Zionism and the State of Israel. Piece by piece, various "arrangements" were established in order to avoid making fundamental decisions.

We wish to present a new message: Polar ideologies will be replaced by a wide national consensus. From right and left, from Meretz to the National Religious there will be agreement of a basic principle of intensifying the Jewish identity of the State of Israel out of free choice and not coercion. On many questions of religion and state there is agreement in principle of more than three quarters of the Jews in Israel. The working plan presented below is intended to offer a new agenda for the relationship between religion and the state, rebuilding this relationship on the basis of widespread agreement in principle.

Instead of the tension between loyalty to tradition and reaction to progress, a new plan is presented here. Progress will foster tradition—the Jewish Scriptures encourage progress. The protests for social justice in the summer of 2011 were described in the report of the Trachtenberg Committee—which was constituted in their wake—as encouraging participative democracy. We believe that nurturing participative democracy through communities will make the Israeli society more Jewish and more faithful to tradition. Social pluralism will lead to a flourishing Jewish tradition, imbued with the value of the dignity of each human being specifically, and democracy in general. These values are essential in reinforcing the base of democracy in Israel.

Renewal of the Jewish character of Israel necessitates changes in all sectors of society. We are not making accusations against any sector of the Jewish people. The Zionist majority in the state must assist the ultra-Orthodox minority to renew the learning of core subjects, the obligation to teach practical skills so that its children will be able to participate in ensuring the physical existence of the Jewish people. The Zionist majority should call for intensified Bible studies in the various educational systems, leading to more meaningful participation in the Jewish heritage.

Introduction

The Zionist movement has been headed by "secular" leaders since Herzl's time. Many ultra-Orthodox were opposed to the movement. The religious Zionist movement, established by "Mizrachi," was a bridge between the Zionist faction and ultra-Orthodox community. The vast majority of the religious Zionists in Israel, during the British Mandate and after the establishment of the State, were active participants in building the country, in its defense, in immigration and in settlement.

The leadership of pre-State Israel and the ultra-Orthodox Agudat Israel political party did not integrate in the pre-State institutions, and the ultra-Orthodox remained outside the mainstream. In their opposition to the secular leadership, they rejected modernity and progress in ultra-Orthodox education. The boys' educational institutions, from haderim to yeshivas, turned their backs on the basic requirement to teach an occupation and to teach skills that enable one to make a living. On the other hand, study of the Jewish traditions was neglected in the pre-State secular schools. In the words of one of the leaders of a secular party: "We wanted to bring up skeptics, and we brought up ignoramuses."

The Zionist leadership entrusted the National Religious sector, in its various forms, to set up the religious and rabbinical establishments in Israel. The heads of the rabbinical establishment declared its responsibility for all of Israel's citizens, but those carrying out the work were members of political parties. The party administration made its impression on the basic structure of the rabbinical establishment of Israel from the beginning.

The crises of Jewish identity, the ultra-Orthodox isolationism, and the decline of the religious establishment all merged together. The rabbinical establishment that was controlled by the political party bowed to the ultra-Orthodox parties and their functionaries. It was not able to inspire a generation seeking its roots. The growth of the ultra-Orthodox population in recent generations has led to abject poverty among them. The increase in magnitude of an education system which does not prepare its graduates to earn a living and support families has become a threat to Israel's growth and prosperity.

However, this crisis offers an opportunity to take a new direction. The ultra-Orthodox community is ready to recognize, in view of spreading poverty, "that a father should teach his son a livelihood" and progress is essential. The vulnerability of religious Zionism brought about the realization that Jewish tradition cannot be placed in the hands of the political parties. In fact, ignorance of Judaism has led to a thirst for knowledge in secular society. This brought about a demand for books from the traditional Jewish library.

Our basic premise is that the Torah was given to all Jews. We hope it will become the common property of all the people. Moreover, the responsibility of participating in the day-to-day existence of the individual, the family, the people, and the State belongs to all sectors of society. The study of the Torah should be the right of everyone and learning an occupation should be expected of all sectors.

From a Political Institution to a Civil Society

The Jewish nation consists of many ethnic groups, with no single religious leader of them all. Diversity and pluralism are its most outstanding characteristics. The religious leadership draws its strength from Jewish communities everywhere. Historically, each community appointed a rabbi spiritually suited to its members. The democratic and pluralistic character of the Jewish people was expressed in its rabbis.

However, after the founding of the State of Israel, the rabbinical establishment was based on a central authority. The Minister of Religion became the main factor in choosing the rabbis of towns and settlements in Israel. However, a religious leadership drawing its strength from politicians and political party sectors cannot be a source of inspiration for general society. The main democratic principle, according to which the leadership draws its authority from society, was neglected.

The central leadership, the government, the Knesset and the law courts, made decisions on religion: the best conversion methods, the most suitable kashruth certificates, the suitability—or unsuitability—of rabbis to serve communities. The political system's decisions were reached, as usual, by distasteful bargaining and not by persuasion, influence, and discussion. Shamefully, the discussions on the content of religion too often led to a distancing between the Jews in the Diaspora and in Israel. The damage to Israel, the Jewish people and religion as a result of the political influence on the religious system was obvious.

We recommend reversing the system and turning over control to the community: leadership and Jewish culture, financial resources, and authority should all be turned over to the general public. Each community will receive a budget according to the number of registered members who pay a voluntary religious levy (as done in some European countries). The community will plan its activities and the level of Jewish practice consistent with its members and its chosen leadership. The rabbis will be employees of the community, as has been the practice in the Diaspora for generations, and not government or local authority employees.

Matters requiring a broader forum than the community, such as kashruth, marriage, and conversion, will be carried out by voluntary community associations. The public and not the government will determine kashruth standards and conversion principles. The state will grant a number of communal associations (the larger ones) licenses for kashruth, marriage, and conversion. The general public will supervise, resolve, and authorize the various bodies to implement whatever necessary.

The range of tasks to be carried out by the communities are described below.

Community

1. A minimum number of people who are interested may be registered as a community and receive budgets according to the number of members.
2. The conditions to becoming a community are holding at least a weekly meeting and promoting mutual activities according to the Jewish tradition, such as prayer, Torah study, and Kabbalat Shabbat. Each community will decide on its character, and there will be no limitations regarding the religious, the ultra-Orthodox, or secular, ethnic groups, or other streams. Each community will decide on its character as it chooses.
3. Communities may become associations. Licenses to grant kashruth certificates, marriage ceremonies, and conversions will be granted to the largest communities.
4. The state will finance the community activities, but not control them. A regulator, and not a director, will prevent exploitation of the communities.

Rabbinical Authority

1. Every community can decide whether to employ a rabbi and the scope of that rabbi’s position.
2. The rabbi will be employed by the community, in accordance with an agreement between them.

Spreading of the Torah

1. Budgets for Yeshivas and Kollels will be transferred, in the main, to the various communities.
2. The communities will decide on the best ways, according to their understanding, to spread Torah among their members and the general public.

Kashruth

1. The state will grant licenses to issue kashruth certificates to a number of the larger communal associations.
2. The communal associations will select a "Kashruth Committee," which will decide on the kashruth policy of the association and will supervise its activities. [1]
3. The kashruth certificates will be issued by the various associations throughout the country.
4. Profits from the kashruth certification will be transferred to the communities, to develop and expand their activities.

Marriage and Divorce

1. The state will issue permits to grant marriage licenses to a number of the larger community associations.
2. Each couple may choose under which association's auspices to hold its wedding, not limited to the couple's place of residence.

Conversion

1. The state will issue licenses to grant conversion certificates to the largest community associations.
2. Each community association will establish a national conversion system.
3. These conversion systems will set up learning institutions and religious law courts which will carry out conversions according to their own policies.

Immediate reforms

Since the Mandate period, the religious establishment was developed with disregard for the local communities. Restoring authority to the communities will require a period of transition. Listed below are changes regarding religion and the state which should be carried out immediately. We believe that within a year it is feasible and essential to improve the religious establishment in Israel. These changes will increase the respect for the Torah and its followers.

Rabbinate

Before the transition to communities a number of outstanding distortions in the Israeli rabbinical establishment should be annulled.

Termination of the ethnic duplication

1. The Israel law calls for ethnic duplication in the rabbinical positions as well as in the various rabbinical bodies (the Chief Rabbis' Council, the body that elects the chief rabbis). All ethnic considerations in rabbinical positions should be cancelled immediately.
2. Only one Chief Rabbi should be in office, regardless of ethnic origin.
3. The president of the rabbinical court will be elected by a committee for the appointment of rabbinical judges.

Time limits in appointing rabbis

1. The appointment of rabbis will be limited to seven-year terms.
2. At the end of the term, the election committee will decide (by a majority of two-thirds) whether the rabbi should continue in the position. If the rabbi's term is not extended, the position will be open to other candidates.
3. Term limitations will apply to all categories of rabbis: neighborhood rabbis, community rabbis, area council and local council rabbis and municipal rabbis.

Council for Higher Religious Education

1. A council for higher religious education will be established, similar to the Council for Higher Education.
2. The goal of the council will be to extend Torah study to all sectors of the population. A budget for this purpose will be granted for a limited period.
3. The council members will be elected from various bodies—the central and local government, the Council for Higher Education and municipal rabbis. The goal of the selection will be to prevent sectorial control of the council.
4. The council will be in charge of deciding the guidelines for the religious education systems' budget.
5. The budget for Torah education will be granted mainly to those who have served in the army.

Kashruth

The word "kashruth" has regrettably become a synonym for shady deals. At a cost to the majority of Israelis who request kosher food and the rabbis who assist them, the various ultra-Orthodox (Badatz) certifications are raking in a fortune, sometimes assisted by the Israeli rabbinical administration in ways that are certainly not "kosher." We have presented a comprehensive proposal for a kashruth system supervised by the community associations, the profits of which will be directed to their wellbeing. Here we will propose principles which can immediately facilitate the struggle against the corruption existing in the present system.

Transparency

1. Each kashruth entity, official or not, will be required to publish its kashruth regulations on an internet site accessible to the public.
2. Each kashruth entity will be obliged to publish the regulations governing its tariffs and the price charged to each supervised entity.
3. All payments for kashruth certificates will be made directly to the kashruth entity and not to the kashruth supervisor.

Non-profit entities

Private companies will not be allowed to issue kashruth certificates, supervise kashruth etc. An ultra-Orthodox entity which wishes to issue kashruth certificates will be required to register as a non-profit association with full transparency.

The Rabbinical Courts

The political party control of religious services to the public and the hegemony of the ultra-Orthodox parties in the rabbinical establishment are seen predominantly in the rabbinical courts. To our sorrow, we cannot state that the many complaints directed towards the system are groundless. A number of immediate steps can be taken, which will contribute to the dignity of the religious courts.

General Education for Rabbinical Court Judges

The rabbinical courts deal mainly with disputes between married couples. Very often complaints are made that in these courts women are discriminated against. It is also maintained that some of the rabbinical judges are not anchored in the real world. The concepts and world views of those appearing before them are not understood by the judges, who come from a completely different background. On the other hand, there are complaints that the civil judges are detached from the Jewish sources. The following is therefore proposed:

1. Only rabbinical judges with a certain standard of general education will be appointed.
2. Only rabbinical judges with a certain standard of education in Judaism (such as Hebrew law) will be appointed.

Increased Representation of Women in the Rabbinical Courts

In principle, halakha adjudicators do not allow women to act as rabbinical judges. This causes a feeling of alienation in the women who appear before "a man's world" in the courts. To balance this situation it is proposed to ensure a majority for women in the committee for the appointment of rabbinical judges. Our proposal is based on halakha and is intended to improve the status of women. The integration of women in the system, even if they do not preside as rabbinical judges, will improve the attitude of the women appearing in court and will advance the dignity of the court, the Torah and its implementers. The Committee for the Appointment of Rabbinical Judges will consist of: [2]
a. The Justice Minister
b. The President of the Rabbinical Court and the Chief Rabbi One rabbinical judge
c. A female minister (or deputy minister) chosen by the government.
d. Two female members of the Knesset.
e. Two female rabbinical pleaders.
The rabbinical judges will be elected by a majority of seven of the committee members. A female rabbinical pleader will be chosen as the director of the rabbinical court. Approximately half of the rabbinical courts' area secretaries will be female.

Marriage and Divorce

1. Regional marriage registers will be set up.
2. The possibility of civil marriages will be advanced, based on the proposal of Rabbi Bakshi-Doron.

Conversion

The concentration of the conversion system in the hands of one central entity exposes the system to pressure from the ultra-Orthodox. Therefore the conversion process should be decentralized, as follows:

1. Three rabbis from each local committee will be authorized to sign conversion certificates. The "Tzohar Law"—drawn up by an independent group of the younger generation of advanced thinking rabbis—is more extreme, as it permits all municipality rabbis to convert. We have limited this to three rabbis.
2. A convert, like any other Jew, will be able to register for marriage in any place of his choosing.

[1] Some have observed: who will be responsible for the kashruth of the certificate? Kashruth supervision, like all quality control, requires specific expertise and specialization. The sages, who said "go out and see how the people behave," have already replied to this question. To ensure that the relevant experts will be responsible for kashruth one must trust in the wisdom of the people. A license to confer a kashruth certificate will be granted only to a limited number of kashruth associations, chosen by the members of the communities. It is a given that an expert will head the association. The U.S. OU organization is an example. Not only a bureaucratic system, chosen and controlled by government, local authorities and legislators, which organize and arbitrate, can be responsible for food kashruth.
Moreover, the marketplace today, with its many tens of ultra-orthodox courts, some tiny, each of which grants certificates to its followers, will be replaced by a limited number of associations, controlled by the general public transparently. Not only will respect for the Torah increase, but also observance of the commandments.
[2] The committee members at present are: the Justice Minister and an additional minister chosen by the government, the two chief rabbis and two rabbinical judges, two Knesset members and two members of the Lawyers' Bureau. At the time of writing (April, 2012) there is no woman among the twelve committee members.

Identifying the Problem

…the player directly responsible for Hapoel losing this critical game was the team's goalkeeper, Haim Cohen. His amateurish blunder in letting the ball slip through his hands gave Maccabi their first goal, and the second was the result of Cohen's poor positioning for the free kick. Nor was this the first game this season in which Hapoel has been let down by Cohen. His tendency to make mistakes under pressure has surely eroded his teammates' confidence in him; Hapoel manager Aryeh Rubin is rumored to be looking for a replacement...

…but the star of the game was referee Shimon Levy, who capped a series of strange decisions by ignoring a clear foul in the 43rd minute, when Maccabi defender Shai Golan brought down Hapoel's Yuval Sharabi several meters inside the Maccabi penalty area. Had Levy awarded the penalty to Hapoel it this point, when they were only one goal down, the whole game would have developed quite differently. The foul was plain to see and the TELEVISION replays left no room for doubt—but Levy brushed aside Hapoel's demand for a penalty kick. Hapoel's complaints over this decision are entirely justified and should force the Football Association to reconsider whether Levy is suitable to serve as a referee in Premier Division games…

These are fairly typical, albeit fictitious, excerpts from reports on football games. American readers are invited to translate the terminology into that used for the gladiatorial contests they call "football,” but the essentials will remain valid in any parallel sporting context. Player X played poorly, player Y was outstanding, this one did this and that one failed to do that, and so forth. In short, this is standard fare for followers of sports reports in the papers, radio, and television, or for one who shares impressions with his or her friends in the pub, bar, or wherever.

But is it kosher? Is it halakhically permissible to write, read, speak, or otherwise communicate such sentiments in this way?

Let's skip over any potential halakhic issues that may or may not exist with regard to professional sports per se and focus solely on the seemingly minor aspect of the way a game is reported and analyzed, whether in real time or afterward.

From a halakhic standpoint, material such as that above is riddled with major problems. The main problems stem from the fact that in the commentary, reporting, and “Monday morning quarterbacking” that accompanies and follows every game, the people involved are being publicly vilified—the goalkeeper was “amateurish,” he positioned himself “poorly,” he “let down” his team in a critical game—and not for the first time. As for the referee, he is presented as being totally incompetent.

These are serious charges and they run the gamut of halakhic prohibitions stretching from rekhilut, which is usually translated as “tale-bearing,” to lashon haRa (malicious reports) if the material is factually true, to motsi shem ra (slander) if it is not.

Let me stress immediately that I am not interested, here or anywhere in this article, in entering the halakhic jungle of what does or might constitute an infraction of each of these prohibitions. I am not personally qualified to define what does or might come under each heading, but even if I was, the detailed legal analysis is not the issue. At this stage, the point I wish to make as strongly as possible is that the everyday activity of following the news and keeping up with current affairs—via reading the papers, listening to the radio, and watching television—involves exposure to (and likely infringement of) halakhic prohibitions relating to the complex of topics we commonly lump together under the “lashon haRa” label.

Nor is the lashon haRa complex the only set of halakhic issues involved: urging that someone be fired, as the report does with respect to both the player and the referee, is also problematic—on both moral and legal grounds. Talking the same way with your buddy in the bar seems to be in a different category to writing in a paper or commenting on the radio—because the guys in the bar are just “letting off steam” and have no way to translate their assessments of players into practice. Or so we used to think. But nowadays, when thousands of irate fans can write comments on the team's website or Facebook page, their comments become part of a mass campaign that can and does result in actions—such as dismissing that player or pushing the referee out of top-level football. Taking someone's livelihood away, without compelling cause and due process, is not only morally reprehensible but also proscribed by halakha.

What might constitute “compelling cause” and who has the right to decide that it exists, are legal issues. Once again, I am not concerned here with the practical legalities; rather, I seek to create the awareness that there is a halakhic issue, potentially a serious one, in something as seemingly marginal and “innocent” as talking about a sports game and criticizing the performance of the participants (players, referees, coaches, etc.) involved. Certainly, the fact that in societal terms this is considered normative behavior does not make it halakhically permissible.

I have deliberately chosen to start with the seemingly flippant example of a sports report as a method of highlighting some of the halakhic problems that we all ignore every single day. By “we,” I mean everyone who consumes media of any sort. Anyone who never reads a newspaper, listens to the radio, watches any television, surfs the net, or uses social media, is not included in “we”—but if such a person exists at all, he or she is not going to be reading this publication either.

Having made that admission, let me now broaden the scope and, in so doing, deepen the problem. All the issues pertaining to the football game cross over from the sports pages/programs to the culture pages. The book/movie/theatre review is an even bigger halakhic minefield. Cohen's new novel is silly—and downright childish in parts; Levy's performance as Macbeth was shrill, unconvincing, and generally over-the-top—he really isn’t capable of taking on Shakespearean tragedy. As for Sharabi's latest album, it's nowhere near the quality of his earlier ones.

Turning to the business pages, we find Cohen Manufacturing Ltd. reported lower sales and profits last year. The company's most recent acquisition has contributed nothing to earnings so far, while its costs are higher than those of its peers—yet it paid larger bonuses to senior management than last year. The paper's business columnist summarizes the company's performance as follows: the CEO's vision is flawed; management is doing a lousy job; and the board is stuffed with pals of the CEO, who have no compunction in awarding outsize remuneration packages to the CEO and other senior managers. Not only is the recent fall in Cohen Manufacturing's share price justified, it says, but further falls can be expected. There is no good reason to hold these shares at current prices, certainly not to buy them.

Finally reaching the front page, we find that the mayor of a small town, one Shimon Levy, is under investigation for molesting and, in some cases, raping women who sought his help to obtain welfare support. The Trade Minister, Haim Cohen, is being accused of receiving kickbacks on trade deals he was instrumental in negotiating with some foreign countries. And the main headline is that the Prime Minister, Aryeh Rubin, secretly met Arab leaders to discuss a proposed peace treaty in which Israel would cede control of territories it holds.

Back in the pub—or perhaps outside the shul—where you and your friend usually meet and shoot the breeze, you both express disgust and revulsion about Levy's purported crimes. You suggest he should be locked up for 20 years, but your friend says that people like him should be forcibly sterilized—a comment that is overheard by some other people and generates a spirited debate, because one of them is a friend of Shimon Levy and another is his wife's cousin. However, everyone agrees that Cohen, the minister who took bribes (reportedly…) should “do the honorable thing” and resign immediately, thereby cutting short his promising political career.

As for the Prime Minister, the usual split develops between those willing to give peace a chance and those who believe you can’t trust any Arab leader and should not offer them anything. One young fellow mutters that if Aryeh Rubin agrees to an Israeli withdrawal, he should be “eliminated.”…

The Solution—Part 1: Getting Real about the Problem

So it's not just Monday-morning quarterbacking about the sports game over the weekend. It's certainly not just about what constitutes rekhilut, or lashon haRa, or whatever. It is actually far more fundamental than legal definitions regarding specific halakhic prohibitions.

The real problem, I venture to suggest, is this: One of the most important areas in modern life with which halakha has yet to confront, in the most basic sense, is the one we call “mass media.”

The interaction between technological progress and sociological and political development has driven—and is continuing to drive—huge changes in the way people communicate with and about each other. Mass media began in the eighteenth century with the development of pamphlets and newssheets, moved into newspapers in the nineteenth century and then—in the last 100 years—exploded into radio, television, internet, and now, the newest stage, social media.

Yet while all this has been happening, halakha has fallen ever further behind. The primary focus of halakhic concern with regard to the media, at least in recent decades, has been in the area of immorality in the sexual context. Thus attention has been centered on offensive content in the various media, with “offensive” referring largely to the gamut of sex-related issues, from modesty (and lack thereof) to outright pornography, and their impact and influence on individuals—especially children—and on society as a whole.

This is, of course, entirely justified. Indeed, the severity of the moral and legal problems posed by the internet in general and now by social media, is such that it has long transcended religious/conservative groups and is now widely recognized by all parts of society. In the halakhic context, it is obvious that not only overtly pornographic material, but also the use of scantily-clad models in advertisements, involves transgressions of various laws, as well as being morally offensive.

Unfortunately, the focus on sex-related problems has become obsessive and all-encompassing—and this may be the reason why other halakhic problems stemming from the production and consumption of mass-media materials are downplayed, overlooked, and even ignored. I was personally made very aware of the dichotomous and distorted view that religious (from Hareidi to Modern Orthodox) people took of the media when I worked as a journalist. It can be summed up in the reaction of "Oh, you cover economics and finance—that's OK,” which I heard umpteen times, from rabbis, rebbes, and laypeople alike.

That statement is not merely completely wrong and utterly fatuous. It also betrays stunning ignorance of the problems posed by the media. It is, in fact, a far-reaching admission by the person making the statement that Judaism as he or she understands it and halakha as he or she observes it are totally disconnected from modern media and communications—which is to say, from modern life.

For some reason, Orthodoxy has decided to draw the line between it and the modern world on the sex front, but not on other key fronts—such as communications. This is a convenient state of affairs, but it doesn’t stand up to any kind of rigorous scrutiny.

The comparison between the ongoing intensive struggle against sexual license on the one hand versus the lack of struggle over the production and consumption of regular media content, is the starting–point for any serious discussion of “media and halakha.”

Probably the most fundamental question that needs to be raised and to which answers need at least to be sought is philosophical: Does Judaism accept modern notions of free speech? If this strikes you as far-fetched, perhaps you should think again and try not to react from the gut.

It's pretty clear that Judaism is opposed to free sex, free love, or whatever other slogan is used to legitimize sexual license. It is also clear that there are major restrictions on what you can say about people in the context of normal inter-personal discourse—the lashon haRa complex of laws referred to above. But what about free speech as a basic element of democracy, in politics and society? What can you say, in the public arena, about people who are public persona, in whatever sphere?

The question, in other words, is whether it is possible to construct a theoretical framework relating the halakhic concepts defining permitted and forbidden topics of discussion and methods of expression to the theoretical and philosophical underpinnings of democratic societies? If such a construct can be developed, then it should be possible to derive practical guidelines as to how to report, comment, and discuss matters ranging from sports games to national security in the various media, with these guidelines covering everyone from participants in chat rooms on the internet to editorial writers in the leading newspapers. On the other hand, maybe the gulf between the demands of halakha and the reality of modern mass media is too wide to be bridged?
If—and only if—such a theoretical construct can be put in place, then it is possible to advance to the more practical, but no less fascinating, question of whether there can be “kosher media.” That phrase currently relates to media that are “clean” in the context of adhering to laws and mores regarding modesty and avoiding content and material that is sexually provocative or otherwise immoral. It does NOT relate to the substantive content of the material appearing in the media or to its implications in a wider societal context, as will be discussed below.

First, however, some comments with regard to the theoretical/philosophical issues. I have not conducted an extensive, let alone exhaustive, search of all likely or possible sources, even those accessible on the internet. Nevertheless, on the basis of the search I have made myself, or indirectly through others, I strongly suspect that there is very little discussion of these issues. However, there certainly has been some analysis, in articles published in both rabbinic and general publications, mostly in Hebrew, mostly written by Modern Orthodox rabbis. Hareidi material on this topic, if it exists, is more difficult to locate because it is not published on the internet.

Based on the material that I have seen and read, the following tentative conclusions emerge:

• There is very little attempt to address the underlying philosophical questions. The thrust of the discussion tends to be practically halakhic—may one do this or that, is specific behavior permissible (in the public arena, e.g. criticizing incumbent office-holders or candidates for office). The deeper issues are largely ignored or glossed over.
• There is a corpus of halakhic material relating to the issues under discussion, notably the works of the Hafetz Haim in the area of lashon haRa and allied prohibitions—although both the Hafetz Haim himself and contemporary scholars use other sources, including the main codes (Shulhan Arukh, etc.) and other important works (such as Rabbi Yonah of Gerondi, in medieval Spain). Although all the halakhic literature, going back to the Talmud, relates to publication or dissemination of information, facts and rumors, innuendo, and so forth in the public sphere, none of it takes into account a culture in which a) the public's “right to know”—and to comment—is a central value and feature of social and political life; b) holders of virtually all public positions are required—and hence expect—to be criticized and held accountable for their actions; and c) proactive dissemination of (partial and one-sided) information is the norm (press releases and press conferences), and/or is obligatory (corporate and other disclosure mechanisms) and hence taken for granted.

• Within this practically-oriented approach, the analysis—even of authors sympathetic to democratic society as we know it—points strongly in the direction of a negative conclusion. That is to say, the halakhic framework makes it very difficult in theory, and virtually impossible in practice, to permissibly produce and even to consume most of the news and current affairs (in the widest sense) material presented in the various mass media. I realize that that is a rather sweeping statement, but that's my assessment of the material I have seen.

• That conclusion is not usually overtly stated, for whatever reason. But the result is that the entire discussion then moves from leKhathila (a priori) to bediavad (a posteriori), which is probably one of the reasons that the analysis is then one of practical halakha: the starting point is, "in the existing circumstances, what can one do or not do.”

• Since the issue is presented as a practical halakhic one, it is perhaps unsurprising that the direction or approach adopted as a general solution is to establish an entity (e.g. a newspaper, or a political party or faction) that is separate and distinct from those already existing in the public arena and to place this entity under direct, ongoing rabbinic supervision. This mechanism, it is assumed and proposed, will enable specific problems to be dealt with in an authoritative and timely manner.

• However, the analyses themselves disclose several flaws in the way the authors approach the problem. The first flaw, as already noted, is the avoidance of an overall theoretical structure. The construction of such a structure is relegated to a vague and utopian future with quasi-messianic undertones—meaning that it's not something achievable in the here-and-now, so let's not relate to it in detail.

• Other flaws stem from a tendency to confuse the problem with the solution or from the unintended consequences of proposed solutions. Both of these subjects need to be considered in greater depth.

The Solution—Part 2: Don't Confuse the Problem with the Solution, and Don’t Make the Solution into a New Problem

In any attempt to define and analyze the problems posed to halakha by modern mass media, it is essential to realize—and accept—that many of the attempts to “solve” aspects of these problems have proven to be unhelpful. That is because either their premise is flawed from the outset—they are unaware of the real problems or they ignore them—or, worse, they become part of the problem rather than comprising part of the solution.

The most obvious and most widespread “solution” to the problem posed by mass media is to categorize the problem as being part of the wider phenomenon of secularization. Since this is, by definition, a negative phenomenon from the perspective of religious Jews, the solution has been to apply the standard response toward aspects of secularization, namely to proscribe it—to make it assur, illegal. However, this negativity is a very blunt weapon and is very hard to live with. The second part of the solution, therefore, is to replace the offensive mass media with acceptable or “kosher'” ones.

In practice, since at least the late nineteenth century, this has been the main response of Orthodox Judaism to the rise of mass media. The main battleground was—and to a great extent still is—print media, primarily newspapers and magazines, but it has extended to radio and, after largely skipping television, is now focused on electronic media, i.e., the internet and its derivatives.

Reviewing this prolonged struggle and how it has played out and is still being waged, it seems to me that it has been a strategic failure, although it may be argued that in tactical terms—meaning the specific cultural battles fought between Orthodox and non-Orthodox in various countries and cultures over the last 150 years—the existence of separate Orthodox media outlets was helpful and perhaps even essential. Nevertheless, over the long run, the attempt to create and maintain so-called kosher media has generated negative consequences that, I would argue, have ultimately outweighed the positive achievements.

The negative consequences fall into three categories:

1. "kosher pigs"
2. "echo chambers"
3. unintended consequences

"Kosher Pigs"

The most common problem resulting from the establishment of "kosher media" is that these are only kosher in some respects, while in others they are as flawed as the regular media. This is reminiscent of the midrashic comment on the difference between pigs and other ritually unacceptable animals. Of the two criteria for "kosherness" laid down in the Torah, namely chewing the cud and cloven hoofs, the pig falls down only on the former. Because its hoofs are cloven, it proudly presents its paws and hoofs to onlookers—whereas its digestive system, of course, remains hidden.

Orthodox media are obviously "kosher" with regard to lewd and sexually provocative content, and this can be ascertained immediately. However, the way they present news, information, and, especially, commentary and criticism, requires much more careful examination. The examination should encompass two elements: what they do report, and in what terms, prominence, and tone? Similarly, what do they not report, or relegate to relative obscurity, or adopt a negative tone in their reporting? Whom and what do they criticize, with what degree of vehemence—and with what motives?

This topic is obviously extremely sensitive, although it is quite amenable to analysis, both qualitatively and quantitatively. Almost all Orthodox media were ideological in origin and were established to serve an agenda, whether overtly religious and/or ideological, or political/religious. Therefore each media form had, from inception, its clearly defined "good guys" and "bad guys.”

Furthermore, within the framework of the lashon haRa halakhic complex, there are categories of people—such as "evil-doers,” "heretics," and so forth—whom it is permissible or even desirable to present in a negative light, to criticize, and even to vilify in public. Once a media outlet is established by a religious group with a clearly defined agenda that identifies "them" as "bad guys"—and obviously "us" as "good guys"—then the ground rules are clear-cut. "They" must be either ignored or, if mentioned, then in a negative tone or undertone.

All Hareidi and, over time, almost all dati-leumi media (I relate to those in Israel; I assume the American scene is similar, if not identical), have been sucked into this self-righteous mode of self-censorship, which is usually accompanied by "rabbinic oversight" to make sure the relevant rules are being obeyed. A simple, relatively innocent but nonetheless telling example of this mindset is the following story:

In the mid-1990s, the then Satmarer Rebbe visited Israel and, naturally, conducted large gatherings such as tischen during his visit. The Shabbat he spent in Jerusalem was a major event in Hareidi circles, not just for his direct followers but for many "unaffiliated" Hareidi youngsters. Despite these objective facts—or, more likely, because of them—Hamodia, the party newspaper of Agudat Yisrael and hence a bitter ideological foe of Satmar, totally ignored the visit and the events held during it, although its readership was fully aware of them and many participated in or were directly impacted by them.

This level of reality-denial is increasingly impossible in the modern world, as information permeates all but the most hermetically sealed societies. Even in the mid-1990s it was a pathetic attempt, but it spoke volumes about the theory and practice of Hareidi media.

Yet this is the way Hareidi groups relate to each other—either by ignoring rival groups' existence and viewpoints or, worse, by virulent criticism that is either overt or, in more sophisticated cases, implied through the use of biblical, midrashic, talmudic, or other metaphors, code-names, and 'role-models.’ Obviously, with regard to non-Hareidi, secular, or non-Jewish persons, groups, and organizations, there is even greater leeway, and this license is commonly used, whether to deny or distort, ignore or misinform, criticize, or vilify.

"Kosher pigs,” in short, are those many (probably most) Orthodox or Hareidi media outlets that proclaim that they are clean in terms of smutty, lewd, and sexually provocative content, and that their overall operations are under rabbinic guidance—all of which is true. However, by closely defining their ideology and mission, they effectively award themselves licenses to say what they please about—or ignore—all those persons, entities, and organizations that oppose their ideology, or that have been categorized (by the rabbinic authorities exercising guidance) as opponents.

"Echo Chambers"

The "kosher pigs" phenomenon inevitably leads to a phenomenon known in the media world as "echo chambers"—in which a paper, radio, or television station, or blog adopts a very clear line and thereby comes to attract people who largely agree with that line and to repel those who largely disagree. As the degree of interactivity in media has grown, the responders (in radio chat shows, or internet chat rooms) become ideologically and politically homogenous in a self-reinforcing process.

The result is that readers of a specific paper, listeners to a specific radio station, or viewers of a specific television channel tend not merely to hold shared views, but also to become increasingly convinced of the validity of their views—in favor of this and opposed to that—and increasingly negative toward opposing views.

This is a widespread phenomenon, symbolized in the United States by media such as the New York Times and Fox News, but it is a particular blessing for religious and especially fundamentalist groups and their media. It permits the pretense of in-depth analysis and serious discussion, although the content is seriously—and often entirely—skewed in the direction suited to the ideology of the specific medium. The essence of classic journalism, namely the presentation of different views in a fairly objective and dispassionate manner, is avoided or abused.

Religious media have always been echo chambers. As noted earlier, that is their raison d'etre. They have no truck with alternative views—even of other religious groups. In the Hareidi sector this is taken for granted: if Hamodia would not report the very fact of the Satmarer Rebbe's visit, what chance is there that he would be granted an in-depth interview to present his ideas? Or that Yated Ne'eman would run a feature on a major yeshivat hesder? The very suggestion is ludicrous—let alone that one of the leaders of a secular political party be allowed to write an op-ed explaining why he thinks Hareidi young men should serve in the army.
Although it is taken for granted that secular media should give Hareidi spokesmen space or air-time, the opposite is a non-starter.

Yet Hareidi newspapers claim to have upgraded themselves and become serious media organs—because, after all, they carry AP stories about the French presidential elections and Bloomberg analyses of Federal Reserve monetary policy. Yes, there is a problem with Germany, because the current Chancellor is of the female gender—ditto for stories on U.S. foreign policy. But at least there is coverage of world news and the larger Hareidi papers providing their readers critical information about what's happening outside the local or global Hareidi ghetto.

The underlying rationale behind this is that all the members of “our” group—however defined—should be exposed to or excluded from the same set of views and even news and, presumably, be influenced accordingly. The inevitable result is the creation and proliferation of intellectual and social echo chambers, in which group members absorb and exchange stilted perspectives that are reinforced by repetition among themselves.

This pattern is now prevalent in dati-leumi society in Israel, thanks to the proliferation of media catering to this group—which, like Hareidi society, is obsessively engaged in splitting into ever more self-defined sub-groups, but when viewed from without is actually highly homogenous. The media in question include daily and weekly publications, radio channels and a growing range of blogs and other sites. In these media spaces, datiim-leumiim talk to each other, about each other—and to the virtual exclusion of others.
Thus all the problems identified above with respect to Hareidi media have resurfaced in the dati-leumi sector—with one major difference: Whereas the trend in the Hareidi sector is of movement from a totalitarian structure, imposed rigidly from above, that is gradually opening up as the envelope is being pushed by many people in many directions, the datiim-leumiim are moving in the opposite direction.
They are coming from an open structure, in which they consumed primarily secular media, with their own as a side dish or dessert, to a structure in which they are choosing to “diet,” cutting down or eliminating secular media consumption, and increasingly preferring “their” media.

The driving force behind the change in the media consumption patterns of dati-leumi households is probably a growing backlash against the crudity (in the sexual and other contexts) of the main secular media. However, another factor is the desire to create an ideological echo chamber, especially in the area of primary interest and concern to the dati-leumi sector, namely Eretz Yisrael—meaning settlement, primarily in “the territories”/Yesha.

Unintended Consequences

The overall motivation behind the efforts to create religious media, now and in the past, can be summed up under the heading "veHaya mahanekha kadosh" (Deuteronomy 23:15)—"your camp should be holy.” This verse is interpreted so that “camp” means every social unit from household to sector of society, and “holy” means separate, as per Rashi's comment to Kedoshim tihyu (Leviticus 19:2). In other words, the goal was positive, at least in the value framework of the religious leadership, and the end justified the means, flawed as they may be.

However, as in most human endeavors, numerous unintended consequences resulted from the way this goal was pursued and how the means themselves evolved over time. Many of these unintended consequences have been negative, some profoundly so. All assessments are necessarily subjective, but the consequences that seem to me the most unfortunate are these:

1. Commercialization trumps ideology

The last 25 to 30 years have witnessed enormous changes in Israeli society, which can be summed up under the headlines of “the demise of ideology” and, in tandem, “the rise of the individual/privatization.” This process has seen a decline in the strength of all political and ideological groupings, one facet of which has been the loss of funding, whether from state sources or from the group's own membership. In the context of media activities—publishing newspapers, running a radio station, etc.—this has meant that the owners and managers of the medium have been obliged to seek funding from commercial sources, primarily advertising, but also sponsorship or co-ownership.

The inevitable result has been a process of commercialization, with all its attendant ills. Analyzing the range of halakhic issues connected directly to advertising could fill an issue of Conversations, but the general point to be made here is that the introduction of commercial considerations affects every aspect of a media enterprise, including and perhaps especially its ideological soul. Indeed, whether a so-called religious newspaper or radio station can exist in a commercial framework, and if so to what extent, is an open question.

2. The systematic desecration of synagogues and Shabbat

The most specific—and most severe—damage wrought by commercialization has been on the sanctity of the synagogue and prayer services held therein, and on the sanctity of Shabbat.

A broad spectrum of publications has developed that seek to provide material for religious Jews to read on Shabbat. Let us assume that their declared goal is to detach their target audience from the reading of secular newspapers on Shabbat—a very widespread practice in dati-leumi households in Israel and Modern Orthodox households in the Diaspora. In other words, their motivation is positive—or was, originally.

However, in order to survive in an increasingly crowded and competitive marketplace, these publications have been obliged to do some or all of the following: a) expand in size; b) broaden their range of content; and c) upgrade their visual presentation (glossy format, colored photographs, etc). This costs money, which comes mainly from advertising. The result is that publications that originally presented 2 to 4 pages of divrei torah, and perhaps some “news” such as publications of new books dealing with Jewish learning, history, and similar topics, began branching out into features relating to rabbis or other personalities, historic or living, events or developments presumed to be of interest to the publication's leadership, and so on. All this is accompanied by a large and growing proportion of the space available being given over to advertising—of everything from apartments to appliances, as well as specifically religious items, from books to tefillin.

In short, the divrei torah publications metamorphosed over the years from sheets and pamphlets to newsletters and even magazines that could effectively compete for the interest of the religious household against the secular and even religious newspapers and weeklies. However, these “divrei torah publications” are distributed via synagogues, with the result that today, in the vast majority of dati-leumi synagogues in Israel, there is a large selection of these newsletters and magazines available on Friday night and usually throughout Shabbat.

Many, if not most, members of the congregation now spend some, most or all of the service reading this material—including during keriat shema, the amida, hazarat hashat"z, and the Torah reading. Furthermore, despite the unquestionable violation of umpteen halakhot regarding prayer in general, prayer in synagogue and behavior in synagogue even not during prayer, very few rabbis or wardens have taken a stand against this plague, which is intensifying steadily, in scope and scale.

As an aside, I would add that Hareidi synagogues suffer from the same syndrome, but in different forms. Interestingly, in many Hareidi synagogues the problem of extraneous literature distributed during prayer services is worse on weekdays, but is by no means absent on Shabbat. Once again, I have rarely if ever seen or heard of attempts by rabbis or wardens to prevent this practice.

In sum, what has happened in this sphere is reminiscent of the U.S. army lieutenant in Vietnam, who was instructed to "pacify" a village suspected of having been infiltrated by the Vietcong. He reported back to his commanders that "in order to pacify the village, we destroyed it.” Similarly, in order to preserve the sanctity of the Sabbath from the depredations of the secular papers, the so-called religious papers have destroyed the sanctity of the Sabbath, the synagogue, and religious services as a whole.

3. Poisoning minds and hearts

In tandem with the process of the infiltration and pollution of the synagogue with material that is increasingly a-religious, even when it isn’t overtly commercial (a recent headline I saw in one publication was "events in Beer-Sheva this week"), is the politicization and radicalization of the divrei torah themselves.

In this sphere, the process has seen the Torah material move from being a discussion of items or topics in the weekly parasha or related to festivals, fasts, etc., drawn from classic sources and presented by contemporary rabbis with their own thoughts, to the parasha or festival becoming a springboard from which the rabbi or other writer launches into his (or, only in left-wing publications, her) ideas. In many cases, the correct term for what is being presented, by specific writers and by the publication as a whole, is an agenda that, whatever its inherent merits, has subverted the purported purpose of the publication, namely to disseminate divrei torah.

Of course, the writers and publishers will claim that what they are writing and publishing ARE divrei torah. That is precisely the problem: They are so convinced of the validity and value of their ideas, ideology, or approach to issues on the local, national, or global agenda that they conflate their opinions with divrei torah. When the writers or publishers are themselves rabbis, as is more often than not the case, this identity between subjective personal opinions and so-called divrei torah is quickly and easily achieved.

Unfortunately, in many cases this attitude is not merely negative but actually dangerous. As the dati-leumi camp veers steadily toward extremist and simplistic views on a broad range of religious, political, and social issues, the echo-chamber effect of the opinionated and highly politicized pseudo-religion pumped out by many of the pamphleteers generates growing damage. The tendencies toward ultra-nationalism, xenophobia, and general intolerance, which are becoming hallmarks of dati-leumi youth, are thereby intensified and exacerbated. By extension, the effort of religious liberals to break out of the extremist mold pushes them, in turn, to “extremist liberal” approaches in their divrei torah, which are as skewed and opinionated as those of their counterparts.

4. The dilution of rabbinic authority

But the ultimate unintended consequence, if perhaps the most predictable one, is that the attempt of the rabbinic establishment (of any specific group and of the religious sector as a whole) to control the religious media has backfired and resulted in an erosion of its own authority. More correctly, it has made a major contribution to the general process of the erosion of rabbinic authority that is underway.

The erosion process takes two forms. One is what one might term the "Canute syndrome,” exemplified by King Canute, an English king in the era of the Viking invasions, who reportedly parked his throne at the seashore and commanded the tide to turn back. The rulings and even curses pumped out by a broad swathe of Hareidi rabbis and rebbes over the last generation, against the use of computers, cellular phones, MP3s and then MP4s, internet, and so on, have been of comparable effectiveness.

If anything, the fact that the rulings had some temporary influence on at least some people has made the problem worse—because the person who obeyed the rulings for some time and then found that “everyone” was using the machine in question felt that he was being made a fool of. And if he didn’t feel that way, his kids did—and drew the relevant conclusions, so that the next prohibition landed on largely deaf ears, and the one after that merely made its author look ridiculous.

But the more dangerous form of erosion of rabbinic authority stems from situations of perceived conflict of interest. The source of rabbinic authority is the perception that the rabbis in question are defending what they sincerely believe to be the demands and dictates of the Torah, as the practical expression of God's will. Thus even when the rabbinic decree seems pointless, as in the Canute syndrome, it is not considered baseless. Like much else in Jewish life, it is a clash between what looks to be a hopeless cause, even if a just one, and a seemingly inexorable force, although a negative one. It is a declaration of faith and, in Hareidi theology, it expresses the idea that we can only—but must—do whatever is in our power, and the rest is in the hands of the Almighty.

However, if the sincerity of the rabbinic motivation comes under suspicion, then the entire theological and ideological underpinning collapses. Unfortunately, the trends noted above, such as commercialization on the one hand and the swing toward extremism on the other, have cast shadows over the involvement of rabbis in the religious media (and much else besides).

Rabbis, no less than laypeople, now tend to be pigeon-holed in terms of their stance, attitudes, views, and orientation. However, to make matters worse, most rabbis do not merely have ideological agendas, as in the past. Prominent rabbis are involved in politics, directly or indirectly, at local and national levels. They seek to disseminate their ideas, dispute rival ideas, and critically gain and solidify support for themselves, their ideas, the institutions they head, and the movements or parties with which they are associated. In all of this, they are no different from any other leadership group in that they need the media—and, if they provide “good, juicy copy,” by saying or doing things that attract attention and, yes, sell newspapers, then the media needs them, too. Of course, “their” media organs will champion them in any event, while rival organs will denounce them—but from a business and even from a leadership perspective, everyone benefits.

This process means that rabbis, as public figures, have become sucked into the celeb society. Indeed, in their own circles, rabbis and rebbes are THE celebs. Hareidi kids collect rabbi cards and pictures like other kids collect athletes or rock stars. In this environment, you would have to be superhuman not to have an ego issue—and although there are a few rabbis of exceptional humility, most are merely human, not superhuman.

In short, we have a situation in which rabbis who are prominent personalities, who have institutional interests to promote, and who have a political or ideological agenda, have been granted influence or even control over media outlets that have enormous power within these rabbis' communities. Even if the rabbis themselves are capable of avoiding the conflicts of interest created by this situation—and there are some—their coterie of advisers and executives often are not. They will abuse and exploit their power, because the dictum that “all power corrupts” does not have a caveat “except when wielded by religious people”; a more plausible addendum might be “especially when wielded by self-righteous people.”

The result is a growing cynicism regarding religious leadership that is inherently no different from the widespread cynicism toward leadership generally. The cynicism stems from a lack of conviction that the leadership is motivated solely, or even mainly, by the desire to advance the cause which it proclaims. If Moshe Rabbeinu faced that problem (repeatedly), it's hardly surprising that contemporary leaders do, too. But because the media tend to exaggerate and amplify these doubts, and religious media do so with relish vis-à-vis people they identify as their opponents, in the end everyone is tarred with the same brush. In the incisive talmudic phrase: "Kol haposel, beMoomo posel"—anyone who seeks to disqualify others tends to label them with his own faults.

The Solution—Part 3: Elements of Correction

"Religious media" are not the solution to the halakhic and moral problems presented by modern mass media. They have resolved some of the existing problems but have themselves become part of the overall problem, while creating entirely new ones. What, then, can be done?

The first essential step is to recognize, on the one hand, the scale of the problem and, on the other, the unsatisfactory nature of the solutions currently being employed. The problem is not a technical one, of how to edit the front page of tomorrow's paper without violating halakha, but rather how to address the mega-issue of applying halakha in the public arena in a modern society—and, especially, in a Jewish state in which there are large religious and Hareidi minorities, along with an irreligious majority, a large number of non-Jewish citizens (Muslim, Christian and a-religious) and many foreigners, from tourists to refugees.
How is public discourse to be conducted in these circumstances? What may be said about individuals, groups, and institutions and what is forbidden or unacceptable (not necessarily the same thing)? What is the relationship between democratic concepts such as free speech, the public's right to know, accountability to voters, etc., and halakhic concepts such as rekhilut and lashon haRa?

The second step is to begin to grapple with these big issues. Ideally this would be done in a large virtual tent, in which would be gathered, from the outset, all the various viewpoints. In practice, it is more likely that individual scholars or specific institutions will begin the process on their own initiative, and that their efforts will spur responses, debate and further discussion, moving the process forward from within, rather than it being prodded forward by exogenous forces. As it moves forward, it should also broaden to encompass a wider range of approaches.
There would be no agreement on fundamental issues, at least not for a long time—but the initial object is not to achieve agreement or even consensus, rather to define what the disagreements are. That would open the way to the third critical step—and the first practical one. Once the larger debate is underway and the issues are being publicly aired, then the worst excesses of the current situation would be fully exposed.

There would then be an opportunity for developing consensual positions over ground rules—not for matters of principle, but of practice. These would be akin to ceasefires and confidence-building measures, rather than peace treaties. Religious and Hareidi groups could surely come together around a set of guidelines for how to relate to each other and their respective leaderships and, by extension, how to relate to non-religious and non-Jewish persons and groups. That would involve accepting that the halakhic permit to vilify and besmirch 'heretics,’ 'evil-doers' and others may be best left unused, in favor of the more basic axiom of not doing unto others what you would not like them to do to you. Lambasting the secular leadership while denouncing anti-religious or anti-Hareidi rhetoric is not a persuasive approach, apart from being hypocritical and self-serving.

Having thus seized the moral high ground in the debate over the role of media in society, religious thinkers could then plausibly propose ways in which various media could be made less anti-social, less raucous, and more responsible. An obvious place to start would be with talkbacks and other forms of response by the general public. Here there could be actual halakhic rulings for religious people—and perhaps non-halakhic but moral guidelines for all people—defining how they could participate in a constructive discussion with their peers, instead of abusing the anonymity granted by the internet to spew venom against other individuals and to indulge in the coarsest forms of expression.

These religious thinkers could and should include rabbis of various stripes, who would desist from their pointless and self-defeating attempts to impose their will and views on their narrow groups of followers, instead seeking to guide and influence the general public.

The one thing that is certain is that the communications revolution will continue. Personally, I believe that the mass media cannot maintain their present nihilist and socially destructive trajectory for much longer and that a major change for the better will occur. Wouldn’t it be nice if, after generations of having being dragged along by the forces of change, Jewish religious leaders became part of those forces, helping shape a change for the better?

I would not presume to present a bibliography on this topic, nor even to identify seminal articles. However, the following articles, one in English and one in Hebrew, serve admirably as an introduction to the halakhic issues involved in journalism. Even in that context, they are in no way encyclopedic, nor do they attempt to address wider issues. Fascinatingly, although they date from 2001 and 1995 respectively, they are already obsolete, in the sense that they do not relate to the internet and its impact. But they certainly succeed in providing an entrée into the halakhic source material and the legal and moral complexities of the reporting of news from an halakhic perspective.

Sources:

“Journalism, Controversy, and Responsibility: Halachic Analysis”
Steven Oppenheimer, D.D.S
Journal of Halacha & Contemporary Society XLI; Spring 2001– From 5761
http://www.daat.ac.il/daat/english/journal/oppenheimer-1.htm

Rabbi Ari Shvat
Newspapers and news – mitzvah or prohibition
Appeared originally in “Talelei Orot” and now on the Yeshivot Bnei Akiva website
http://yba.org.il/show.asp?id=33936&big_cat=1590

Our Rabbis taught: A certain Heathen once came before Shammai and asked him, “How many Toroth have you?” “Two,” he replied: “the Written Torah and the Oral Torah.” “I believe you with respect to the Written, but not with respect to the Oral Torah; make me a proselyte on condition that you teach me the Written Torah [only].” He scolded and repulsed him in anger. When he went before Hillel, he accepted him as a proselyte. On the first day he taught him, Alef, beth, gimmel, daleth; the following day he reversed [them] to him. “But yesterday you did not teach me thus,” he protested. “Must you then not rely upon me? Then rely upon me with respect to the Oral Torah too.”

On another occasion it happened that a certain heathen came before Shammai and said to him, “Make me a proselyte on condition that you teach me the whole Torah while I stand on one foot.” Thereupon he repulsed him with the builder’s cubit which was in his hand. When he went before Hillel, he said to him, “What is hateful to you, do not to your neighbor: that is the whole Torah, while the rest is commentary thereof; go and learn it.”

On another occasion, a certain heathen…went before Shammai and said to him, “Make me a proselyte on condition that you appoint me a High Priest.” But he repulsed him with a builder’s cubit which was in his hand. He then went before Hillel who made him a proselyte. Said he to him, “Can any man be made a king but he knows the arts of government? Do you go and study the arts of government. When he came to, and the stranger that cometh nigh be put to death, he asked him, “to whom does this verse apply?” “Even to King David of Israel,” was the answer. Thereupon the proselyte reasoned within himself a fortiori: if Israel, who are called sons of the Omnipresent…yet it is written of them “and the stranger that cometh nigh shall be put to death,” how much more so a mere proselyte, who comes with his staff and wallet! Then he went before Shammai and said to him. “Am I then eligible to be a High Priest; is it not written, and the stranger that cometh nigh shall be put to death?” He went before Hillel and said to him, “O gentle Hillel; blessings rest on thy head for bringing me under the wings of the Shechinah!”

Some time later the three met in one place; said they, Shammai’s impatience sought to drive us from the world, but Hillel’s gentleness brought us under the wings of the Shechinah.”

Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 31a; Soncino translation

When there is no acceptance of the Mitzvoth on the part of the convert the conversion is not valid even after the fact; and the convert remains a non-Jew.

Supreme Rabbinical Court for Appeals, Case (4 Adar 5768/2008) #5489064-1, page 2.

In early 2007, a Danish-born female convert and her Israeli husband appeared before the Ashdod Beit Din (Rabbinical Court) to process a get (Jewish divorce). There were no outstanding issues as the couple had already agreed to the terms of the divorce. During the course of their appearance, Rabbi Avraham Attiya, a Dayan (Judge) of the Ashdod Beit Din, queried the woman about her religious observance and, on determining that she was not observant, ruled on February 22, 2007 that she was not Jewish because her conversion had not been valid. He therefore concluded that no get was necessary. In so doing he also determined that, by extension, the couple’s children either, and that, therefore, in order to marry a Jewish spouse, they would have to undergo conversion. In the course of his ruling retroactively nullifying the conversion, Dayan Attiya strongly criticized Rabbi Haim Druckman, under whose authority the conversion had taken place over a decade earlier.

Two months later, on April 22, the couple appealed the ruling to the Beit Din Harabani Hagadol, the Supreme Rabbinical Court for Appeals. The couple’s advocate argued that Rabbi Attiya had exceeded his authority, by nullifying the conversion when the only issue before him was that of the get. Moreover, in so doing, he had, as a single Dayan, overturned the ruling of the three Dayanim of the Rabbinical Court that had converted the woman. Initially, the Beit Din Harabani Hagadol granted the divorce without prejudice to the question of the propriety of the conversion. In February 2008, however, during a rabbinical conference, Rabbi Avraham Sherman, the presiding Dayan in the appeal of the Ashdod case, distributed a draft of a 50 page ruling, subsequently released to the public in April, that upheld Dayan Attiya’s position. [1] Rabbi Sherman wrote that the Jewishness of the woman and her children was uncertain and needed to be verified; that the family should be added to a list maintained by the Rabbinical Courts of people who could not marry a Jew until their status as Jews was finally determined; that all of Rabbi Druckman's conversions since 1999 should be retroactively invalidated; and that marriage registrars not register a convert whose external appearance, for example, a woman wearing pants, did not appear to be observant.

Rabbi Sherman’s ruling caused an outcry in Israel, because it invalidated some 40,000 conversions that Rabbi Druckman had supervised as head of a special rabbinical court for conversions under the aegis of the Chief Rabbinate—the same Chief Rabbinate in whose name Rabbi Sherman purportedly acted. Moreover, since the converts had married Jews, and, like the Ashdod petitioners, had started families, the ruling potentially affected several hundred thousand people.

The ruling also brought to a head an issue that had simmered for decades, the role of the Chief Rabbinate in the Jewish State of Israel. That issue remains very much unresolved, and the Chief Rabbinate remains the focus of anger, lawsuits, and calls for its reform, if not outright abolition. This paper will review some of the more recent issues that have confronted the Chief Rabbinate and will offer a preliminary approach to modifying its role and authority in contemporary Israeli society.

ORIGINS OF THE CHIEF RABBINATE: A BRIEF OVERVIEW

The institution of the Chief Rabbinate is far older than many people realize, dating back to medieval times. Although Jewish Law, the Halakha, does not prescribe the creation of such an office,[2] it proved to be a useful vehicle for kings seeking to maintain control, and raise revenues, from Jewish communities living in their lands. It was often the kings, or more regional rulers, who appointed the Chief Rabbis. The latter were then responsible for the management of the Jewish community, and for tax farming on behalf of the non-Jewish rulers.

Some Chief Rabbis were noted scholars, such as Rabbi Meir of Rothenberg, who was appointed by the Holy Roman Emperor in the 13th century. Others were far lesser known figures. Chief Rabbis held office in both Ashkenazic and Sephardic lands, and even did so when Christians conquered Muslim territories and vice versa.[3]

Chief Rabbis functioned in Palestine after its conquest by the Ottoman Empire. Rabbi Levi ibn Habib ruled from Jerusalem during the early part of the sixteenth century, though his authority did not really extend to the rabbinate in Safed, where great scholars like Rabbi Yosef Caro, author of the Shulchan Aruch (Code of Jewish Law) , and mystics like Rabbi Isaac Luria (popularly known as the Ari) held sway. The modern Israeli Chief Rabbinate derives its origins from the position created under the Ottoman Empire, that of Rishon LeTzion (“First (or Leader) in Zion”). That office was held by the leader of the Sephardic community, and dated back, in the Palestine, to 1665, when Rabbi Moshe Galante, who resided in Jerusalem, was named chief rabbi of Palestine.
There was no equivalent chief rabbi of the Ashkenazic community, which became more numerous in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries when students of the Elijah, the Gaon of Vilna, migrated to Palestine. It was only after the United Kingdom assumed mandatory control of Palestine in the aftermath of World War I that Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, who had served as Ashkenazic chief rabbi of Jaffa under the Ottomans, was appointed first as chief rabbi of Jerusalem and in 1921 assumed official authority over the Ashkenazic communities of Palestine as their first chief rabbi. The term, “official” is used advisedly, since the long-time ultra-Orthodox community, the so-called “old Yishuv,” never accepted his authority, following leaders of their own, notably Rabbi Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld. Nor did the Sephardim view Rabbi Kook as their Chief Rabbi, instead following Yaakov Meir, who took on the role of Sephardi Chief Rabbi in addition to the long-standing title of Rishon LeTzion. On the other hand, to the extent they paid attention to rabbis at all, the secular Zionist Jewish community recognized the authority of Rabbi Kook, who had made a point of reaching out to Jews of all levels of religious belief and practice.[4] For virtually all secular Jews, Judaism was synonymous with Orthodoxy; to the extent that any of them wished to partake in Jewish ceremonies or rituals, they did so within the Orthodox context. As a result, other streams of Judaism, notably German-based Reform, Hungarian-based Neologue, and the growing American Conservative movement, made virtually no headway in Palestine at all.

EARLY YEARS OF THE STATE: RABBIS HERZOG AND UZIEL

Rabbi Isaac Herzog, who succeeded Rabbi Kook as Chief Rabbi upon the passing of the latter in 1936, had a very different background from that of his predecessor. Rabbi Kook had reached maturity in his native Poland, receiving a classical Yeshiva education with no formal secular education before entering the rabbinate in Lithuania and then emigrating to become rabbi of Jaffa in 1904. On the other hand, as a ten year old boy Rabbi Herzog had moved to with his family from his native Lomza in Poland to the English provincial town of Leeds, Yorkshire, had studied at the Sorbonne and had earned his doctorate from the University of London. Prior to his emigration to Israel he had held rabbinical positions in Belfast and then Dublin, where he was Chief Rabbi of Ireland, a far cry from the environment with which Rabbi Kook was most familiar. Rabbi Herzog’s world was one of Anglo-Jewish mores—which meant congregations loyal to the Orthodox tradition but often lax in its practice—as well as involvement in the politics of the wider community, namely the turbulent period of the post World War I Irish civil war and the creation of the Irish Free State and then the Republic of Ireland. Indeed, Rabbi Herzog was more than a bystander; among his friends was Eamon De Valera, whom he reportedly hid in his home when the Sinn Fein leader, and Ireland’s first President, was being hunted by the British authorities.

Despite their differences, which extended to Rabbi Herzog’s top hat in contrast to the fur- trimmed streiml that Rabbi Kook wore, Rabbi Herzog’s tenure as Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi first of Palestine and then of the new State of Israel, was marked by the same broad tolerance that characterized Rabbi Kook’s term. In Rabbi Herzog’s case, his understanding of the character of secular Israelis was buttressed by years of interaction with Jews of indifferent Jewish practice. At the same time, his ability to work with the authorities of the new State of Israel drew upon his experience of life in the fledgling Irish state.

In his role as Chief Rabbi of the first independent Jewish state in Israel in nearly eighteen hundred years,[5] Rabbi Herzog had to address issues that over the centuries were essentially of no relevance to rabbinic decisors. These included the relationship of Halakha to the management of the state, most notably on Sabbath and holidays, issues arising from Biblical and rabbinic commandments relating to the land and its produce, the religious and legal rights of non-Jewish minorities,[6] and questions regarding the Jewish law and the military. In the latter case, while strongly supporting the Israel Defense Forces, Rabbi Herzog was emphatic about the need to exempt yeshiva students from military service.[7] In addition, Rabbi Herzog, like virtually all of his Orthodox colleagues, was a staunch opponent of Reform. He opposed the construction of Reform synagogues in Israel, arguing that their introduction would destroy “the peace and unity of the nation.” [8]

Rabbi Herzog devoted considerable energy to questions regarding conversion, both those that were dealt with in Palestine and then Israel, as well as questions addressed to him from abroad, particularly Latin America. While he tended to take a strict line on the requirements for conversion, he was more lenient with respect to both the invalidating of conversions that had already taken place, and the right of local rabbis to preside over conversions—two issues that would enflame Israeli and Diaspora society decades after his passing. [9]

In contrast to Rabbi Herzog, Rabbi Ben Zion Uziel was a native of Jerusalem and scion of a prominent rabbinical family. Like Rabbi Kook, with whom he became close while serving as Sephardi Hakham Bashi (chief rabbi) of Jaffa at the same time as the latter was the Ashkenazi chief rabbi, he had no formal secular education. But early on he exhibited the classical Sephardi tolerance for those whose practice was less than perfect, but whose respect for the rabbinate and the Torah it taught was second to none.

When Rabbi Uziel succeeded Rabbi Meir as the Sephardi Rishon LeTzion of mandatory Palestine, he found himself working alongside Rabbi Herzog, whom he respected as a valued scholarly colleague. Like Rabbi Herzog, he presided over his community during the turbulent years of World War II, and the creation of the new State of Israel. And like his Ashkenazi counterpart, he demonstrated a a unique ability to work with secular Jews. Indeed, his community-wide activities, included his participation in the creation of the Jewish Agency for Palestine.

Nevertheless, Rabbi Uziel’s greatest legacy to the modern Jewish State may not have been his organizational activities, but rather his attitude toward those outside the mainstream of Judaism. He was a strong advocate on behalf of the Bene Israel of India, who claimed that they were Jews, but had long been discriminated against by the “white” Indian Jews who had migrated from Baghdad.[10] He also was exceedingly lenient toward those seeking to convert to Judaism, and, particularly, the children of mixed marriages. (To the Orthodox, included in the category of such marriages were those between a Jewish male and a female converted by non-Orthodox rabbis.) In this regard Rabbi Uziel was even more lenient than Rabbi Herzog. Rabbi Uziel ruled that that the acceptance of all the mitzvot (commandment) was not a necessary condition for conversion. In addition, he argued that a non-Jewish woman already married to a man in a secular ceremony could be accepted as a convert and continue to live with her husband, although historically, the rabbis had frowned upon such arrangements. Finally, he ruled that any children from the marriage, even those preceding the conversion, should be treated as Jewish. [11]

POLITICS AND THE STRUGGLE TO SUCCEED RABBI HERZOG
Rabbi Uziel passed away in 1954, and was succeeded the following year by Rabbi Yitzchak Nissim, a highly respected scion of a leading Baghdad Rabbinical family that had emigrated to Palestine in the early 1900s. Rabbi Nissim, whose prior post was that of Chief Sephardi Rabbi of Jerusalem, was well known as an advocate of outreach to left-wing kibbutzim. He did so, however, from a position of religious conservatism and he was especially outspoken in his condemnation of intermarriage.[12] Nevertheless, like his predecessor, he advocated the acceptance of the Bene Israel of India as Jews and their right to emigrate to Israel; their provenance had been challenged by many rabbinical authorities;[13] indeed, Rabbi Herzog was somewhat ambivalent about their status. [14]

The process of choosing a successor to Rabbi Herzog differed markedly from that obtaining for his Sephardi counterpart. Rabbi Herzog had long been closely associated with the Orthodox Zionist Mizrachi movement, whose political arms was the National Religious Party (consisting of the Mizrachi and Hapoel HaMizrachi movements), and which was part of the governing coalition from the founding of the State. Upon Rabbi Herzog’s passing in July 1959, the NRP became embroiled in a succession crisis, with some of its leading members supporting the candidacy of the Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv, Rabbi Isser Yehuda Unterman, others supporting Rabbi Shlomo Goren, chief rabbi of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and still others that of the leader of the American Modern Orthodox Movement, Rabbi Joseph Ber Soloveitchik. Of the three, Rabbi Soloveichik was probably the hardest line on matters of personal status,[15] Rabbi Goren was probably the most lenient, and Rabbi Unterman was somewhere in between.

Throughout the remainder of the year, the succession turned into a series of increasingly bitter disputes within and between both the secular and religious parties. [16] In part because of a bout with cancer, in part because he had no stomach for internecine communal politics, which had turned especially nasty as the succession issue dragged on into 1960, Rabbi Soloveichik withdrew his name from consideration on February 15.[17] Even after his withdrawal, however, as the issue remained unresolved, and the infighting grew steadily worse, Rabbi Soloveichik’s supporters implored him to reconsider his decision. He refused, however, arguing that he was uncomfortable with the entire approach of the Chief Rabbinate, and asserting that “the fate of the character and nature of the State will not be decided as a result of religious legislation by the Knesset…it is impossible to impose religion on secularists through the channels of the state.” [18]

The crisis continued for several more years, as the collection of rabbinical, lay and government officials responsible for naming the new Chief Rabbi could not reach any agreement on who should succeed Rabbi Herzog. Rabbi Unterman was finally elected in 1964. Like his predecessor, Rabbi Unterman had served Anglo-Jewry for many years, in his case as Rabbi of the flourishing Liverpool Jewish community. In addition, like Rabbi Herzog, he was active in Zionist affairs and had helped resettle refugees after World War II. And like Rabbi Herzog, he served as Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv prior to his being elected as Chief Rabbi. Finally, and importantly, like his predecessor Rabbi Unterman pursued a moderate course in matters of personal religious status.

In responding to the first major wave of immigrants from the Soviet Union, many of whom were intermarried, Rabbi Unterman advocated a lenient approach toward the conversion of non-Jewish spouses. Though he fully recognized that a convert’s sincere intention to accept mitzvot was a necessary condition for conversion, he nevertheless argued that even “when the immigrants had not intended fully to live according to the mitzvoth, one should not condemn such conversions.” lest the public conclude that the rabbis are intransigent when it comes to dealing with conversions.”[19] It was a precedent that his immediate successors continued to follow but then was abandoned under Haredi pressure.

RABBI YOSEF, RABBI GOREN, THE LANGER CASE AND THE RISE OF RABBI ELIASHIV

Whereas Rabbi Nissim succeeded to the Chief Rabbinate after the death of his predecessor, Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef assumed the position after challenging, and defeating, the then-seventy-six year old Rabbi Nissim in an election held in 1973. The election was bitterly fought and highly controversial, as many felt it improper to challenge a sitting Chief Rabbi. But Rabbi Yosef, who had been born in Baghdad but moved with his family to Israel when he was still a young child, was no stranger to controversy. During his brief tenure as Chief Rabbi in Cairo, Egypt, from 1947-49, he clashed with the local community and rabbinate over standards of kashrut. Soon after his return to Israel, while serving on the Rabbinical Court of Petah Tikva, he permitted a levirate marriage (yibum) in defiance of a ruling by the Chief Rabbinate against such marriages.

Rabbi Yosef was acknowledged halakhic decisor well before he was forty years old; he served on the Supreme Rabbinical Court—the same Court from which Rabbi Sherman would later issue his controversial ruling—until his election in 1973. His tenure as Chief Rabbi was also marked by controversy, especially his bitter relations with Rabbi Goren, who was elected Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi the same year. An unabashed political actor, whose resentment of Ashkenazi dominance manifested itself in both the public square and in many of his halakhic decisions, Rabbi Yosef was instrumental in the founding of the Shas Party, which arose in reaction to the dominance of the so-called Lithuanian Haredim in the Agudah party and its successor, Degel Hatorah.

Though often perceived as a hard-liner on religious matters, Rabbi Yosef’s approach to Halakha has tended to be marked by leniency on many occasions. Moreover, while hostile to non-Orthodox movements, he has been exceedingly tolerant of the lifestyles of those who do not practice Judaism rigorously but do not challenge its Orthodox tenets. In this regard, and despite personal animosity with Rabbi Goren, his halakhic orientation was not dissimilar from that of his Ashkenazi counterpart.

Rabbi Yosef issued several lenient rulings with respect to conversions. For example, while still serving in Cairo, in 1948, he ruled that if potential young converts demonstrated that they did not intend to keep the mitzvoth when they were grown men, but nevertheless had been converted by a Bet Din, the conversion remained valid.[20] Decades later, in 1974, he ruled that despite a long-standing ban on conversions in Buenos Aires, Argentina by that country’s rabbinate if a local rabbi defied the ban and presided over a conversion, the conversion could not be invalidated retroactively.[21] In yet another ruling in the 1970s, he supported the petition of a non-Jewish woman who had married a Jew, had borne children with him and subsequently wished to convert. Indeed, Rabbi Yosef not only permitted her to marry the man according to “the laws of Moses and Israel,” he supported the conversion that even if it were suspected that she were doing so under pressure, which in theory should have been an invalidating factor.[22]

Equally, if not more significant, perhaps, were his landmark rulings affecting entire communities. The first addressed the status of Jews who had emigrated to Israel from the Soviet Union during the 1970s. Their arrival had prompted questions about the authenticity of their Jewishness. It was alleged that many non-Jews had immigrated to Israel for economic reasons and then sought to register as Jews. Rabbi Yosef pondered the question of whether “one who comes to register as a Jew is to be trusted, even if he has no tangible evidence to that effect, and it is enough that he declares himself to be Jewish, or whether he needs to prove his case with reliable witnesses.” After reviewing all possible halakhic precedents, Rabbi Yosef concluded that “the essence of the law indicates that those who make aliyah from Russia and declare that they are Jewish are credible, though if there are indications that a declaration is incorrect, there is a need for a thorough investigation into the case at hand.” [23]

Similarly, much as his predecessors had done with respect to the Bene Israel, in 1975 Rabbi Yosef championed the Jewishness of the Ethiopian Falashas, in contradistinction to the position taken by leading Ashkenazic authorities. In 1975 he ruled that they were Jews, descendants of the biblical tribe of Dan. In 1984, in the wake of the massive airlift of Jews from Ethiopia, he issued a second ruling in the same vein.[24]

Having been denied the Chief Rabbinate of Israel in the early 1960s, and subsequently become a major figure as a result of his role in the Six Day War, Rabbi Goren easily was elected Chief Rabbi shortly after Rabbi Unterman’s death. Like his two most recent predecessors, Rabbi Goren was a committed Zionist. An immigrant from Poland, Rabbi Goren had served in the pre-independence Haganah and then founded and led the IDF military rabbinate. He had also served as a paratrooper during the War of Independence.

By the time of his appointment in 1972, Rabbi Goren had risen to the rank of Brigadier General in the IDF. With his intimate knowledge of things military, and their interplay with Halakha, and his constant interaction with secular Israelis who comprised the vast majority of Israel’s soldiers, especially during the early days of the State, Rabbi Goren was especially sensitive to the need to minimize the divide between his secular and religious compatriots.

Rabbi Goren was a highly controversial and polarizing figure, in part because of his increasingly militant Zionist stance after the Six Day War, and in part because of his attitude toward conversions, which were bitterly criticized by the Haredi establishment as being far too lax. While still Chief Rabbi of the IDF, Goren converted an American Unitarian woman named Helen Seidman, who had fallen in love with Israel, moved to a non-religious kibbutz, married a Jew by proxy in Mexico, and then was converted by a Reform rabbi when the Orthodox authorities refused to do so. She then turned to Rabbi Goren who convened a bet din of three Rabbis and converted her, reportedly arguing that conversion in Israel differed from that in the Diaspora, since it involved both a religious and national commitment.[25]

In what was an even more controversial case, Rabbi Goren, newly installed as Chief Rabbi of Israel, overruled a decision of a rabbinical court in Petach Tikva that forbade siblings named Langer to marry Jews on the grounds that their mother, who had married a convert in Poland, had never properly divorced him. As a result, she had rendered them mamzerim (bastards) when she bore them to her second husband; mamzerim are forbidden to marry into the Jewish community. Rabbi Goren convened a special Beit Din of nine rabbis, none of whom he would name publicly, who joined him in ruling that retroactively invalidated the original conversion and that, therefore, when the woman re-married she had not been in need of a get. As a result, the Langer siblings were not mamzerim and could marry Jews. Among those opposing Rabbi Goren’s decision was a veteran member of the Supreme Rabbinical Court named Rabbi Yosef Sholom Eliashiv, son of a famous kabbalist. Rabbi Eliashiv resigned from the court and was welcomed with open arms by the Ashkenazi Haredi community. He soon became a rising force in the community, even as the Haredim became increasingly numerous, militant and politically powerful. In 1989, Rabbi Elazar Shach, leader of the Ashkenazi Haredim, asked Rabbi Eliashiv to play a major leadership role in the new Degel Hatorah party. In 2001 he succeeded Rabbi Menachem Shach as leader of the Ashkenazi Haredim; at the time he was 91 years old.

It was during Rabbi Goren’s tenure as Chief Rabbi that the validity of non-Orthodox conversions became a major issue for the State of Israel as a result of the 1977 elections that brought Menachem Begin to power. As part of what proved to be his successful attempt garner Orthodox votes, Begin, a traditionalist despite not being personally religious, agreed to support legislation that would mandate recognition only of conversions undertaken according to Halakha. The legislation, which was introduced with government support in 1981, provoked a major outcry in the Diaspora, particularly in the United States, where the Orthodox constituted less than 10 per cent. of the American Jewish community. Faced with this onslaught of opposition, Begin retreated, and the legislation went nowhere. Neither Rabbi Goren, nor, for that matter, Rabbi Yosef, protested too loudly when the government backed away from the issue.

THE HAREDI TAKEOVER OF THE CHIEF RABBINATE

With the conquest of the West Bank in 1967, and particularly after the 1973 War, the Religious Zionist movement moved further to the right politically, under the influence of Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, son of the former Chief Rabbi. As noted above, Rabbi Goren very much reflected this view as did his successor upon his retirement in 1983, Rabbi Avraham Shapira, who had succeeded Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook as head of the Yeshiva Mercaz Harav, the hotbed of the religious settler movement, upon the latter’s death in 1982. Rabbi Shapira was not particularly noted for his outreach to the secular Israeli world, which was becoming increasingly disenchanted with Religious Zionists’ support and leadership of the settler movement. On the other hand, Rabbi Shapira maintained close ties with Haredi leaders, though they did not accept his halakhic dictat. His tenure marked the emergence of an increasingly religious trend among the formely Mizrachi Zionists. It was dubbed HarDaL, an acronym for Haredi Dati Leumi, or Haredi National Zionists, and came into vogue in the early 1990s as more and more West Bank settlers could, in many respects other than their Zionism, hardly be differentiated from Haredim.

Rabbi Shapira was succeeded in 1993 by Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, after yet another bruising succession battle. Rabbi Lau in many ways was a throwback to Rabbis Herzog and Unterman, not merely because, like them, he was serving as Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv when elected to the Chief Rabbinate. Though a major halakhic decisor with close ties to the Haredi community, Rabbi Lau was far more open to the wider Jewish community, indeed the non-Jewish community as well, than his predecessor had been. Perhaps it was because as a child he had been protected in the camps by a non-Jewish Polish boy, and then rescued by Polish Gentiles—at the behest of the a young priest who later became Pope John Paul II—who made every effort to ensure that he remained true to his Jewish origins. Perhaps it was because his sole surviving sibling, Naftali, with whom he remained close, led a very different life as a senior official in Israel’s Foreign Ministry. Whatever the reason, Rabbi Lau was seen as a conciliator and was a leader in inter-faith dialogue, reaching out to Christians shortly after he took office.[26] Moreover, he took a relatively moderate line on conversions, ruling that each local Bet Din had the authority to authorize a conversion, and to determine the sincerity of a convert who claimed that he or she would keep kashrut, Shabbat and family purity.[27]

Rabbi Shapira, who had been an outspoken opponent of the Oslo Accords while still Chief Rabbi, remained active in religious and national politics during Rabbi Lau’s tenure. As he had done when Oslo was signed, Rabbi Shapira ruled in 2005 that religious IDF soldiers should disobey their commanders if ordered to participate in the dismantling of the Gaza settlements. The ruling infuriated not only secular Israelis, but also more moderate religious Jews, as well as Orthodox Jews serving in the IDF. As such, it further deepend the growing divide between Israel’s more extreme Orthodox Jews, whether Haredi or HarDaL, and the rest of Israeli society.

Rabbi Yosef likewise remained very active both as an halakhic decisor and as the spiritual leader of the Shas Party, upon his retirement from the Chief Rabbinate. He came increasingly to be seen as Haredi, in no small part due to his Shas connection, but also as a controversial political figure because of his incendiary statements about Arabs in general and the Palestinians in particular. Nevertheless, his rulings did not reflect his progressively radicalized politics, and he still was a moderating influence on the Sephardi community, frequently asserting its independence from the rulings of Ashkenazi rabbis, no matter how prominent or learned they might be.

Rabbi Yosef’s successor, Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu, was born in Jerusalem to a family whose roots were in Baghdad. As a young man he was associated with an underground organization that fought the secularization of the new State of Israel by burning cars that drove on Shabbat and butcher shops that sold non-kosher meat. For his activities he was sentenced to ten months in prison in 1951. Rabbi Eliyahu was considered a prodigy and in 1960, at the age of 31, he was elected a Dayan, the youngest man ever to hold that position in Israel. After serving as Chief Rabbi of Beersheba for four years he was elected to the Supreme Rabbinical Court, and continued to serve on the court when he succeeded Rabbi Yosef in 1983. Although Rabbi Yosef was the acknowledged leader of the Sephardim in Israel, Rabbi Eliyahu did not hesitate to challenge his predecessor on the issue of a uniform Spehardi rite, which Rabbi Yosef sought to impose on that community. Instead, Rabbi Eliyahu stressed the importance of preserving the Iraqi traditions, especially those set down by the nineteenth century sage, the Ben Ish Chai.

Rabbi Eliyahu tended to adopt a strict halakhic line on issues relating to individuals, but was rather lenient on matters relating to the State as a whole. Despite his stated preference that disputes be judged in rabbinic courts rather than the secular Israeli system, he identified areas where “the law of the land is the law,” and where he acknowledged that secular courts had rightful jurisdiction.[28] Similarly, he recommended that rabbis grant certificates of kashrut to restaurants frequented by tourists, even if the restaurants were open on Shabbat. He reasoned that this approach would actually minimize Sabbath violations.[29] More generally, he emphasized the importance of outreach to secular Jews.

One area where he took a hard line even with respect to national issues was that of the leadership roles available to women. While accepting that women could be named to managerial posts in small communities organizations, he was opposed to their taking on national leadership roles, arguing that to do so was a violation of the Biblical commandment that restricted rulership to men. In this regard he reflected long-standing Sephardi tradition the stretched as far back as Maimonides’ code.

Rabbi Eliyahu was identified with the HaRdaL branch of religious Zionists. His politics were right-wing and he was closely associated with Rabbi Meir Kahane and his son. In addition, like his Ashkenazi counterpart, Rabbi Abraham Shapira, he was an outspoken opponent of the 2005 withdrawal from Gaza, though he insisted that he did not encourage soldiers to disobey their orders.

Like Rabbi Eliyahu, his successor, Rabbi Eliyahu Bakshi-Doron, was Jerusalem born. He assumed the Chief Rabbinate in 1993 after holding the post of Chief Rabbi of Haifa, a city long notorious for its secular leanings.[30] Like Rabbi Lau, he reached out beyond the Jewish community, seeking a dialogue with Muslim religious leaders and travelling to Arab states to do so. [31]

Rabbi Bakshi-Doron adopted what might be termed a “realistic” attitude to the conversion issue that continued to roil Israeli society during his tenure. In an article composed shortly after he left the Chief Rabbinate, Rabbi Bakshi-Doron argued that the Israeli law recognizing only Orthodox marriage and divorce had outlived its usefulness. He pointed out that secular couples were either flouting the law by marrying outside Israel, or worse still, if they married according to Orthodox ritual they did not obtain an Orthodox divorce, rending their children mamzerim. He further pointed out that the efforts by some rabbis to validate dubious conversions (he did not provide any examples, though the Seidman and Langer cases surely sprang to the minds of his readers) simply made a mockery of what was a serious religious matter. He therefore suggested that the time may have come to separate the processes of civil and religious marriage. Those who married in a civil ceremony would avoid any issue of mamzerut since Orthodox Judaism did not recognize the marriage ab initio. Another alternative was for the State to recognize co-habitation, with the same consequences for Jewish law as civil marriage. A third alternative was simply to abolish the Marriage and Divorce Law and have only those interested in a Jewish religious marriage approach the Chief Rabbinate for approval, who would inform them of their subsequent marital obligations, particularly that of granting a get in the event of divorce.[32]

The retirement of Rabbis Bakshi-Doron and Lau in 2003 led to the appointment of Rabbis Shlomo Amar and Yonah Metzger respectively as Sephardi and Ashkenazi Chief Rabbis of Israel. Both men have taken a very different approach to personal status issues than did their predecessors. In some respects, the Moroccan-born Rabbi Amar, who previously had been the first sole Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv (he was succeeded by Rabbi Lau), has reflected the general outlook of his predecessors. While a strict interpreter of Jewish law, and a strong opponent of non-Orthodox streams of Judaism,[33] like his mentor Rabbi Yosef, and indeed Rabbis Nissim and Uziel, like them as well he has had expansive view of how to relate to the Jewish population at large. And like Rabbis Uziel and Yosef, he too, has broadened the base of the family of Jewry. In 2005, he ruled that the Burmese/Northeast Indian Kuki-Mizo sub-tribe of the Shanlung people, called the Bnei Menashe, were fully fledged Jews requiring only immersion in a mikveh (ritual bath). As a result, several thousand of these people emigrated to Israel.[34]

On the other hand, Rabbi Amar has adopted a very different approach on the question of civil marriage from that of his immediate predecessor. In contrast to Rabbi Bakshi-Doron’s proposal to permit civil marriage for Jews, Rabbi Amar would restrict civil marriage to non-Jews, among whom he includes a large proportion of immigrants from the former Soviet Union.[35]

In addition, Rabbi Amar sought to restrict the applicability of the Law of Return to Jews born of a Jewish mother, in accordance with Orthodox practice. In November 2006 he submitted a legislative proposal to then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that would also ban any converts, from any stream of Judaism, from automatic eligibility under the Law of Return. Arguing that his proposal sought to prevent the creation of “two peoples ” within the State of Israel, Rabbi Amar also called for the Chief Rabbinate to have sole authority over conversions, thereby negating the traditional power of local rabbis, including Orthodox Rabbis, to preside over conversions, and upending the Law of Return’s provision that recognizes non-Orthodox conversions that have taken place outside Israel. [36]

Rabbi Amar’s proposal was not fully implemented, and had no impact on non-Orthodox conversions performed outside the United States; non-Orthodox converts continued to be recognized as Jews for the purposes of the Law of Return. On the other hand, Rabbi Amar announced that the Chief Rabbinate would no longer accept conversions of Diaspora Jews by Orthodox rabbis, unless those rabbis were on an “approved” list. Rabbi Amar justified his ruling, which violated the historic halakhic principle that “a judge can only see what is before his eyes,” on the grounds that he wanted to have “uniform standards” for conversion; in essence, he was ruling that those “uniform standards” were meant to be in line with Haredi practices. In what can be only termed a lack of backbone, the leadership of the Rabbinical Council of America acceded to Rabbi Amar’s demand and identified an “approved” list of rabbis, thereby denying all other Orthodox rabbis, including the vast majority of their own members, the right to convert non-Jews to Orthodox Judaism. [37]

If Rabbi Amar has represented a turn to the “Right” among traditionally more tolerant Sephardi Jews, Rabbi Metzger’s elevation to the Chief Rabbinate, and his subsequent actions, have taken on an even more extreme hue. Rabbi Metzger’s background actually is that of a classical religious Zionist. He was born in Haifa, was educated in the hesder Yeshiva of Kerem B’Yavneh, which provides for religious study and service in the IDF. He served in the IDF as a chaplain, though he only achieved the relatively low rank of Captain. He authored numerous books, two of which won major Israeli prizes.

As Chief Rabbi, he has been notable in his outreach to non-Jewish faiths, including Buddhists and Hindus, in addition to Muslims and Christians, notably the Armenian community. Yet Rabbi Metzger’s career has been marked both by controversy and by his exceedingly close ties to the Haredi community, and Rabbi Eliashiv in particular. Rabbi Metzger did not have a reputation as a leading scholar, nor had he ever served as a Dayan on a Rabbinical Court. He had also previously withdrawn his candidacy for Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv after an outcry arose over allegations of his personal misconduct.[38]

It was widely believed that Rabbi Metzger’s appointment as Chief Rabbi was orchestrated by Rabbi Eliashiv on behalf of the Haredi community. In some respects, that belief was a reflection of the increasing prominence of that community within the State-run rabbinate, which had long been dominated by religious Zionists. It was ironic that rabbis who did not recognize the authority of the State should be on its payroll. More exasperating to many Israelsi was the fact that local Haredi rabbis were taking a rigid stand on matters of personal status, notably conversion, which was becoming increasingly difficult for non-Jews to obtain. For his part, Rabbi Metzger did nothing to arrest these developments; to the contrary, he was seen as supporter of the Haredi line. And when Rabbi Sherman issued his controversial ruling regarding the conversion of Russian Jews, Chief Rabbi Meztger publicly supported him (though he was at pains to say his support was not addressed to the ruling per se.)[39]

RABBI SHERMAN’S RULING AND ITS AFTERMATH

Rabbi Avraham Sherman’s ruling, which drew upon numerous precedents in halakhic literature, reflected a number of strongly held presumptions on the part of the Haredi community. First and foremost was the deep distrust of converts, coupled with an intense dislike of non-Jews. As Rabbi Sherman told an international rabbinic conference a year after his controversial ruling, “There is no logic to telling tens of thousands of goyim [non-Jews] who grew up on heresy, hate of religion, liberalism, communism, socialism, that suddenly they can undergo a revolution deep in their souls. There is no such reality." [40]

Coupled to the uneasiness with which Haredim view conversion is the belief that such conversions can be overturned retroactively if its appears that the convert is not following all the mitzvot—as the Haredim themselves would define them. Thus, for example, a female convert who wears pants, or is seen in public with her hair uncovered, would be deemed to have fraudulently converted, despite the fact that both activities have long been tolerated, if not fully accepted, in Modern Orthodox communities. While there is some halakhic basis for retroactive invalidation of a conversion, Rabbi Sherman’s ruling was revolutionary in that he invalidated conversions that had taken place decades before, despite the fact that the converts in question had long considered themselves Jewish, and raised their families as Jews.

Finally, Rabbi Sherman’s ruling also reflected his highly controversial view that a beit din (rabbinical court) could overturn the ruling of another rabbinical court. Rabbi Sherman based his case on two separate grounds. First, he argued that the Supreme Rabbinical Court had the same authority to overturn rulings of lower courts in matters of personal status as in other matters. He made no distinction between legal decisions by a lower court where litigants were involved, and conversions, which were clearly not a matter of litigation.

Second, he postulated that “general concerns and uncertainties” were enough to merit judicial review of another rabbinical court’s conversions. He based his opinion on a public reaching (hora’ah) by “the decisors of the generation and yeshiva leaders” (poskei hador ve’roshei yeshiva) [41] that prohibited the acceptance of any converts “unless [rabbinical courts] were convinced that they [the converts] were truly ready to accept the yoke of Torah and mitzvot.[42] In his view this proclamation was binding upon world Jewry as the final word on the matter.

Rabbi Sherman’s ruling reflected the Haredi community’s veneration of its leaders, termed Gedolim (“great ones”), particularly its supreme leader, the Gadol Hador (“Leader of the Generation”) who at the time was Rabbi Eliashiv—who not only was Rabbi Metzger’s mentor but Rabbi Sherman’s as well[43] —and which it endowed with virtually prophetic qualities. Rabbi Sherman explicitly addressed the question of rabbinic leadership in an article that he published some two years after his ruling.[44] In his view, if the majority of rabbinic leaders—by whom is meant Haredi leaders—look to one man for leadership, that person assumes absolute halakhic authority over “all the communities of Israel, Torah scholars, courts and rabbis within them—whether collectively or individually.”[45] In practice this means that if the “Leader of the Generation,” takes a hard line on personal issues and conversion, there is no challenging his authority.[46] Naturally, Rabbi Sherman had Rabbi Eliashiv in mind. [47]

Rabbi Sherman’s views with respect to retroactive nullification of conversions; to the authority of the Supreme Rabbinical Court to review and if, deemed necessary, nullify the conversions of another court, notably the Special Rabbinical Court for Conversions; and to the undisputed (and undisputable) authority of a sole Gadol Hador (Leader of the Generation) has been challenged by other prominent Rabbis and Dayanim. Most notable in this regard is Rabbi Sherman’s colleague on the Supreme Rabbinical Court, Rabbi Shlomo Dichovsky. With respect to retroactive nullification, Rabbi Dichovsky has based his arguments on the halakhic rulings of leading Sephardi and Ashkenazi rabbis of previous generations, including Rabbi Kook, Rabbi Uziel, Rabbi Haim Ozer Grodzinski and Rabbi Moshe Feinstein. The latter was the foremost Haredi decisor of post-war America, who ruled that if convert did not openly state his/her intention purposefully to violate a given set of commandments, the conversion remained regardless of what passed through the convert’s mind at the time.[48]

As for Rabbi Sherman’s “Leader of the Generation” thesis, Rabbi Dichovsky again cites many decisors of past generations, including Maimonides and Rabbi Hayim of Volozhin, the leading student of the great Gaon of Vilna, who oppose the slavish adherence to the rulings of one man.[49] In addition, Rabbi Dichovsky points out that even within the Haredi world, there is no consensus as to who might be the ultimate halakhic decisor. To begin with, Sephardim look to Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who in turn follows the guidance of Rabbi Yosef Karo and his classic Code of Jewish Law, the Shulchan Aruch. Rabbi Dichovsky cites Rabbi Yosef’s blunt rejection of the contention by the leading post-war Ashkenazi Haredi decisor, Rabbi Abraham Isaiah Karelitz (popularly known as the Chazon Ish) that Haredim need not always follow the Shulchan Aruch if its rulings were questioned by later scholars. In Rabbi Yosef’s words, “it is revealed and well-known that the wise men of Spain and France [i.e. the Sephardim] accepted upon themselves and their descendants to rule in all cases like our teacher Rabbi Yosef Karo, of blessed memory, even if all later decisors disagree with him [my emphasis].” [50]

Moreover, argues Rabbi Dichovsky, “every community and every group of people has their own ‘Leader of the Generation” and they are obligated to follow him.”[51] For that reason, he adds, “the ruling of the Gadol Hador for one or another community is binding only on those who have accepted his authority and leadership, and not on those who have not accepted him.”[52] More particularly, Rabbi Dichovsky argues first, that the each individual community is bound by the rules of its own leaders and second, that each rabbinical court can rule in light of the evidence before it, (“the judge can only rule on the basis of what is before his eyes”). [53] The clear implication is that no rabbinical court can retroactively invalidate the conversion of another Orthodox court, nor can in invalidate the conversion performed by a court in another country. The latter argument goes to the heart of yet another question that has troubled Jewish communities outside Israel, namely, the decision by the Chief Rabbinate to authorize only certain Diaspora rabbis to conduct conversions.

It should be noted that Rabbi Dichovsky has not been a lone voice confronting Rabbi Sherman. Other rabbis have likewise challenged his halakhic rationale. These have included Rabbi David Bass, a member of the special rabbinical conversion court , who rejected an effort to invalidate the conversion of a woman and her daughter when it was discovered that the mother continued to have relations with a non-Jewish male[54] and Rabbi Yisrael Rozen, a judge on the Special Court for Conversions and the head of the Zomet Institute, who agreed in part with Rabbi Bass in the case just noted,[55] but who also both challenged Rabbi Sherman’s “Leader of the Generation” thesis as well as his assertion that the Supreme Rabbinical Court could review and overturn conversions by a lower court and/or the Special Court for Conversions. [56] The latter assertion was also challenged by other rabbis including Rabbi Ya’akov Epstein, a leading decisor who heads a Torah institute in Ashkelon, and Rabbi Moshe Mestbaum of the Sderot Yeshiva.[57]

Another prominent rabbi challenging Rabbi Sherman’s premises is Rabbi Chaim Amsellem, a Member of the Knesset and the author of two scholarly books on conversion. [58] And of course, Rabbi Druckman, whose authority and integrity were both the subject of Rabbi Sherman’s critique, steadfastly has held to his position.[59]

Shortly after Rabbi Sherman’s ruling was made public Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar, who has ultimate authority over conversions, announced that he would not cancel any conversion but simply return the case to the local rabbinical court.[60] Some fifteen months after his controversial ruling, but before Rabbi Amar had it officially revoked, Rabbi Sherman retroactively voided another conversion.[61] This decision prompted Rabbi Amar to announce that he would personally decide which rabbis on the Rabbinical Court would be authorized to deal with conversions. Rabbi Sherman held steady to his views, however. He continued to assert his position in rebuttals to the critiques of his colleagues.[62]

It was noteworthy that, as Rabbi Amar’s spokesman pointed out, Rabbi Amar’s announcement did not name Rabbi Sherman. Nevertheless, the Haredi community made it clear that it would bitterly resist any attempt to sideline him. A Haredi supporter of Rabbi Eliashiv responded to Rabbi Amar’s ruling by stating that “If reports regarding Amar’s letter are true, our rabbis will come out with a very serious reaction. Rabbi Amar has crossed a red line and he is directly undermining the halakhic validity of conversions in Israel.” [63]

The Haredi reaction was not limited merely to words, however. The Haredim had already achieved a major victory a few months earlier, when in March 2010 when Chief Rabbis Metzger and Amar issued a series of guidelines for determining a person’s status as a Jew. [64] The guidelines, which are several pages long, were aimed at those who immigrated to Israel after 1990 and who wished to marry or divorce within the Jewish tradition utilizing the State’s religious apparatus. The guidelines were meant for use by a Rabbinical Court whose investigator must determine whether the applicant is Jewish beyond a reasonable doubt. Applicants would have to present original documentation of their matrilineal descent from a Jewish woman up to the great-grandmother. The test for Ethiopians was even more rigorous: they would have to provide proof going back seven generations—a near impossibility for many of them.

At about the same time, the Haredi factions, and the parties representing them in the Knesset, were able to derail a major proposal that its proponent, David Rotem, a member of the Yisrael Beiteinu party whose major support derives from Russian-speaking Israelis, had intended as a vehicle for significantly increasing the prospects for converting the approximately 300,000 emigres from the former Soviet Union (FSU). These persons were not being recognized as Jewish by the Chief Rabbinate and thus were unable marry a Jewish spouse in an Orthodox ceremony. Rotem’s plan was to increase the number of local rabbis in Israel’s cities and towns who would be authorized to perform conversions, thus increasing the number and pace at which FSU émigrés could be converted.

Nevertheless, under pressure from the Haredi parties, Rotem accepted a series of amendments to his bill, that the first time granted the Chief Rabbinate authority over all conversions, whether in or outside Israel. The amended draft legislation stipulated that only the Chief Rabbinate could certify rabbis on the expanded “list.” Moreover, non-Jews whose conversions were not recognized by the Chief Rabbinate would no longer be accepted under the Law of Return, as had been the case since a ruling in their favor by the Israeli Supreme Court. The draft bill passed a Knesset committee in July 2010.

The Rotem Bill provoked an uproar in the Diaspora, as well as opposition from the Israeli government, and Rotem quickly began to back away from his own legislation. He insisted that his plan in no way affected conversions in the Diaspora, but was limited to those in the State of Israel. The legislation did not move forward. In addition, the conversion issue again reverted to the Supreme Court, which in April 2012 overturned Rabbi Sherman’s ruling and instead validated all Orthodox conversions. Finally, a new rabbinical group called Tzohar (emerged on the Israeli socio-religious-political scene to oppose the Haredi hammerlock on the Chief Rabbinate and its nationwide apparatus.

WHAT TO DO: TRANSFORMING THE CHIEF RABBINATE

Writing nearly fifty years ago, Rabbi Shaul Yisraeli, a leading modern Orthodox scholar and halakhic decisor, and a powerful supporter of the Chief Rabbinate, argued that despite the refusal of the Haredi community to recognize its authority, for “the majority of the Yishuv [community] of the Land of Israel, that chose the chief rabbinate and see them as their rabbis, they, as well as the rabbis that serve [individual] communities on the basis of their appointment and approval by the chief rabbinate, certainly qualify as the mara d’atra [local decisor] in the sense that their rulings and decisions are binding.” [65] Yet he also recognized that the Chief Rabbinate was hardly free from external political pressure that ultimately would undermine its authority. Indeed, three years earlier, in May 1960, while the battle over the successor to Rabbi Herzog continued to rage, Rabbi Yisraeli pleaded that the choice of a chief rabbi “should be free of all external influence” and warned that “otherwise the choice will be flawed, otherwise the community will not be able to relate to honor and glorify the authority of the person chosen for that position.”[66]

There can be little doubt that Rabbi Yisraeli’s concerns are paramount today. The Chief Rabbinate has become a political tool of a community that recognizes neither its authority, nor that of the State of Israel. Moreover, the Chief Rabbinate is becoming further and further removed from the Israeli public. Thanks to political machinations aimed at securing the support of the ultra-Orthodox parties in the Knesset, it has evolved from a modern Orthodox institution with a tolerant, if not all embracing attitude to secular Jews to a Haredi stronghold that displays minimal interest in Jews that do not conform to its increasingly rigorous standards. As Zev Farber, an American-born modern Orthodox rabbi now living in Israel recently wrote, “There is a pervasive feeling that the Chief Rabbinate has failed in its duties and has now become more of a hindrance to the average citizen’s relationship to Judaism as a facilitator of Israeli Jewish life.”[67] Indeed, because of the Chief Rabbinate’s views on conversion, as well as its refusal o recognize non-Orthodox marriages, it has been asserted (by an Orthodox observer, no less) that as many as one-third of secular Israeli couples are married in civil ceremonies outside of Israel.[68] This situation poses a serious threat to the cohesion of the Jewish state; there is an urgent need for the Chief Rabbinate to transform itself it is to retain any relevance to Israeli Jews who are not part of the insular Haredi community that so strongly resents them.

There is a growing clamor both in Israel and the Diaspora that it is time to abolish the Chief Rabbinate. There are even Orthodox rabbis who take this view.[69] Certainly, such a move would gratify Israel’s non-Orthodox streams who feel that the State systematically discriminates against them. Yet despite their efforts, and pressure especially from the American Jewish community, which is overwhelmingly non-Orthodox, there is little indication that the vast majority of secular Israelis would turn to the Masorti (Conservative), Reform or other movements for spiritual direction. Most secular Jewish Israelis have little if any interest in their religion, and, to the extent they do, they appear to prefer traditional Jewish ritual, that is, Orthodox ritual, but without its accompanying strictures and lifestyle.

This is not to say that non-Orthodox streams should not benefit from State support. To the contrary, it is time they were fully recognized and indeed received such support. Nevertheless, just as the reality of popular disenchantment with the rabbinate must be confronted head-on, so too must the reality that non-Orthodox Judaism commands loyalty from a rather small fraction of Israelis.

What is needed, therefore, is not the abolition of the Chief Rabbinate, but rather its transformation into a much more circumscribed, yet relevant and all-inclusive authority. This idea was not unlike that of propagated some years ago by Chief Rabbi Bakshi-Doron, as noted above. His premise is similar, though not entirely identical, to that of Rabbi Farber: so many Jews have been ignoring the Chief Rabbinate and its role that, in practice, there already is a serious division within Israeli Jewry that belies the notion of “unity” among that community; in Rabbi Amar’s words, there are already “two peoples,” if not more.[70]

A modified version of the Bakshi-Doron plan would assign to the Chief Rabbinate, and the rabbinical courts that are linked to it, a role that would be a variant of that of the United Kingdom’s Chief Rabbinate and Beth Din: it would relinquish control over all matters of personal status and function alongside non-Orthodox Jewish streams, as it does elsewhere in the world. Following another British model, the Chief Rabbinate would, like the Church of England, embody the state religion, whose holidays would be publicly observed.[71] Moreover, the Chief Rabbinate’s status as the “official” state rabbinate would also include other duties, such as managing the “sale” of the land during the seventh shmitta year. Finally, of the utmost importance, and again analogous to the Church of England and its spiritual leader, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi and the Sephardi Rishon LeTzion, would constitute personal role models for all Israeli Jews, whatever their preferred religious stream or degree of personal practice.

Again, following the example of the British Chief Rabbinate and the London Beth Din, the Israeli rabbinical court system, which is linked to the Chief Rabbinate by virtue of the Chief Rabbi’s sway over judicial appointments, would retain authority over kashrut. While there is much grumbling over the nature of kashrut supervision in Israel, as long as this remains a state-supported function, the government could impose far more rigorous auditing and accountability guidelines than is currently the case today. Such rigor would go a long way toward preventing fraud, while the termination of control over personal status would limit the ability of the kashrut authorities to impose rules on personal behavior and dress that go beyond the strict dictates of dietary law.

This hybrid British model would enable Israeli Jews wishing to marry, divorce, and be buried in non-Orthodox ceremonies to do so, without having to endure the confrontation, and at times abuse, that often takes place far too frequently today when dealing with the Chief Rabbinate and its representatives. It would formally accept the status of non-Orthodox rabbis by rendering them eligible to perform life cycle ceremonies. It would enable all conversions to Judaism would be accepted by the State, whether for the purposes of both the Law of Return or, with respect to immigrants, for their recognition by the State as Jews. Finally, as in the UK, all religious institutions, whatever their stream, would be eligible for government funding as long as they met required standards for secular studies.

As the embodiment of the State’s majority religion, the Chief Rabbinate would participate in public ceremonies, such as those associated with Jewish holidays, as well as those secular ceremonies that call for contributions by religious leaders. Its courts would continue to offer the resolution of disputes according to the Halakha, as well as maintain a register of marriages and divorces performed under Orthodox auspices, much as the London Beth Din and other British religious courts have done for many decades. Those who care about such things will turn to the Chief Rabbinate for guidance; those who seek out non-Orthodox rabbis to minister to their life cycle events will be secure in the knowledge that those too will be officially recognized by the State.

Finally, the Chief Rabbinate and its associated rabbinical institutions would also continue to provide kashrut supervision for all government and public establishments, such as museums, as well as for the military. As in the UK, it would provide kashrut supervision services for food and beverages sold both wholesale and retail. In this way it would ensure that all Israeli Jews who accept the authority of the State,[72] including the Orthodox, could maintain their standards of kashrut anywhere in Israel. At the same time, stricter government oversight would underscore the credibility of kashrut certification while restricting the kashrut authorities’ overreach into personal matters.

Needless to say, achieving such changes will be neither easy nor simple. The Israeli Haredi and secular publics both are indifferent to the Chief Rabbinate and will not press for changes. Indeed, as salaried officials of the Chief Rabbinate, many Haredim have a vested interest in its preservation. While the leadership of any effort to transform the institution must come from within Israeli itself, the Diaspora, particularly the American Jewish community, is in a position to make its voice heard far more powerfully than has been the case until now. Israeli relations with the United States are in some ways more brittle than they have been in the not-so-distant past, and the government in Jerusalem needs American Jewish support as much as it ever has.

This last point deserves further elaboration. Israel simply cannot risk losing the support of the overwhelming majority of American Jews, who happen not to be Orthodox. Already there is much concern about the growing indifference of young Jewish Americans, while those entering the non-Orthodox rabbinate are becoming increasingly restive about relations with Israel. Such indifference poses a national security challenge for the State of Israel. America is Israel’s key ally, the source of critical military assistance that enables it to maintain what is called its “Qualitative Military Edge” over its enemies. Absent the active commitment to Israel on the part of the majority of America’s Jewish community, and given the changing ethnic face of America’s population, Israel could find that American long-standing support for its security might begin to wane. Therefore, while on its face the link between the future of the Chief Rabbinate and the future security of Israel might seem remote, it is in fact crucial, because the support of America’s Jewish community is a critical factor for Israel’s long-term security, and the State cannot afford to allow that community to be alienated by the Chief Rabbinate.

Nevertheless, though overwhelmingly non-Orthodox, American Jews must be careful about framing the debate purely in terms of their religious streams, and this for two reasons. First, most Israelis are as, if not more, indifferent to the non-Orthodox streams of Judaism than they are to the Chief Rabbinate. The majority still prefer to celebrate life cycle events according to the Orthodox tradition rather than in line with non-Orthodox practice. Second, not only the Haredim, but the HarDaLim, many of the modern Orthodox, and the traditional Sephardim, all remain to various degrees hostile to the non-Orthodox movements. Moreover, given the political clout of the Orthodox, especially the Haredim, in the Israeli political system, great care will have to be taken not to be viewed as meddling in internal Israeli affairs.

The issue of personal status is nevertheless not solely an internal political matter. It affects Diaspora Jewry, especially American Jewry, and not only its non-Orthodox streams, but some of the modern Orthodox as well. There is therefore no reason for the Diaspora to remain silent, or for that matter, uninvolved. Jewish organizations that are not affiliated with any religious stream, like the American Jewish Committee, should follow the latter’s lead and issue public statements calling for the overhaul of the Israeli Chief Rabbinate. Delegations visiting Israel call for the same, not only in private meetings with government officials, but in interaction with Israel’s highly vocal media as well. And American and other Diaspora Jewish communities should fund Israeli organizations of all religious streams, and those of purely secular bent, that seek to change the status quo. The Israeli organizations include not only those that are non-Orthodox, but also modern Orthodox rabbinical groups such as Tzohar, and lay groups such as Kolech, the organization that lobbies for change in the religio-legal status of women.

The Chief Rabbinate of the State of Israel, the homeland of all the Jewish people, should be the Chief Rabbinate of all the Jewish people. It must be inclusive, not exclusionary. It should provide for all, and to do so, must accommodate all. It means, on the one hand, offering supervised kashrut in all public facilities so that all Israelis can comfortably partake of food with their brothers and sisters. It means, on the other hand, support for the educational institutions of all of Judaism’s streams, so that all parents can bring up their children in the tradition that means most to them.

Finally, it must follow in the footsteps of Chief Rabbi Herzog, who, upon phoning the President of the United States in May 1948 to tell him that, “God put you in your mother’s womb so you would be the instrument to bring the rebirth of Israel after two thousands years, ” caused tears to rundown the cheeks of Harry Truman.[73] In other words, like Rabbi Herzog, or for that matter, Lord Jonathan Sacks, whose writings about Torah recently were published in the prestigious journal of the national security elite, Foreign Affairs,[74] the Chief Rabbinate must serve serving as a moral beacon, for Jews as well as non-Jews, winning the respect of all, and in so doing sanctifying the name of Heaven, both in Israel and around the world. Doing anything less will justify the arguments of those who call for its abolition.

IN CONCLUSION: A PERSONAL NOTE
I am proud to call myself an Orthodox Jew. I firmly believe in the divinity of both the written Torah and the Oral Law and in the thirteen principles of Maimonides. I recognize that other streams of Judaism do not share that belief. I am convinced that they are fundamentally wrong. Indeed, three men to whom those streams have continued to look for inspiration--Moses Mendelssohn, Solomon Schechter, and Britain’s Chief Rabbi Hertz (who was the first graduate of the Jewish Theological Seminary), all believed in the divinity of the Bible.

Nevertheless, I respect the sincerely held views of those with whom I disagree. I do not see them in any negative light, nor do I consider it appropriate, or indeed, mentschlich, to de-legitimate them, or their rabbis and leaders, in any way. Orthodoxy must make its case on the battleground of ideas, not behind closed political doors—and that observation applies as much to the Diaspora as to Israel.

In this regard, the Israeli Chief Rabbinate faces a crisis of confidence on the part of its multiple constituents: Jewish Israelis, and Jews worldwide. It has been hijacked by a group of intellectually dishonest extremists who deny the legitimacy of the state that signs their paychecks and who scorn those of their fellow Jews who do not see the world as they do. They exploit their power to ruin the lives of hundreds, even thousands of their co-religionists. They bring shame on the religion they profess to uphold, and on the Sacred Name whom they purport to represent.

Unless the Chief Rabbinate is transformed in a manner that enables it to retrieve its moral authority while co-existing with other streams of Judaism, its future and value as an institution will be problematic at best. The current situation simply cannot be permitted to go on. The credibility of Judaism in general and of Orthodoxy in particular, as well as the unity of the Jewish people, both within and outside the State of Israel, are all very much at stake.
_________________
[1] Beit Din Harabani Hagadol, 4 Adar I 5768 (10 February 2008), Case # 5489-64-1 (Hebrew).
[2] See Aharon Lichtenstein, “The Israeli Chief Rabbinate: A Current Halakhic Perspective,” Tradition 26:4 (1992), p.27.

[3] Salo W. Baron, The Jewish Community Vol. 1 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1945), p. 230.
[4] In fact, Rabbi Sonnenfeld, for all his differences with Rabbi Kook, accompanied the latter in some of his outreach efforts in the secular kibbutzim and moshavim of Northern Galilee.
[5] The land of the Khazars was a Jewish state from the eighth to the tenth century CE, and there were shorter lived statelets on the Arabian peninsula and in Babylonia during the sixth century CE, but the State of Israel was the first Jewish state in the Jewish homeland since Bar Kochba’s rebellion of 132-136 CE.
[6] Rabbi Herzog argued for full religious and political rights for Muslims and Christians living in Israel. See Rabbi Yitzchok Isaac Halevi Herzog, “Zechuyot Hami’utimm Lefi Ha’Halakha,” (Minority Rights According to Halakha), Techumin 2 (5741/1980-81), pp. 169-79.
[7] See the exchange of letters between Rabbi Herzog and Prime Minister David Ben Gurion, 16 October (12 Cheshvan) 1958 and 10 November 1958, http://www.archives.gov.il/NR/rdonlyres/CA26304C-B980-4921-8E1E-ABF974B07C65/0/herzog01.pdf
[8] Letter to Prime Minister Moshe Sharett, 1 Kislev 5716/1955, reprinted in Techumin 28 (5768/2008-2009), p. 468.
[9] See Rabbi Yitzchok Isaac Halevi Herzog, Pesakim U’Ktavim, vol. 4: Sh’eylot U’Teshuvot BeDinei Yoreh De’ah, nos. 87 and 95.
[10] His 1944 responsum on Bene Israel appears in ibid., vol 8: Sh’eylot U’Teshuvot BeDinei Even Ha’ezer, Appendix #2. The responsum reiterates a similar ruling that he gave seven years earlier in response to a query from the editor of the Bombay “Jewish Platform.”
[11] See Rabbi Ben-Zion Uziel, Mishpetei Uziel vol. 2, Yoreh De’ah No. 14. For a brief discussion of Rabbi Uziel’s views on conversion, see Rabbi Marc D, Angel, “Conversion to Judaism: Halakha, Hashkafa, and Historic Challenge,” Hakirah VII (Winter 2009) pp. 42-43. As will be discussed below, Rabbi Chaim Ozer Grodzinski, the leading Haredi rabbic decisor of the immediate pre-World War II generation, also ruled leniently in the case of a non-Jewish woman already married to a Jew who sought an Orthodox conversion see Sh’eylot U’Teshuvot Ahiezer,vol 3, no. 26, sub-section 6.
[12] See Rabbi Yitchak Nissim, Yain Hatov: Sh’eylot U’Teshuvot, Even Ha’ezer V’Choshen Mishpat, no. 6.
[13] See, for example, Rabbi Eliezer Yehuda Waldenburg, Sh’eylot U’Teshuvot Tzitz Eliezer vol. 10, 2nd ed., no. 25, sub-section 3.
[14] Pesakim U’Ktavim, vol. 6: Sh’eylot U’Teshuvot BeDinei Even Ha’ezer nos. 15-16.
[15] He was also the hardest line on the question of relations with other faiths, see Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveichik, Community, Covenant and Commitment: Selected Letters and Communications ed. Nathaniel Helfgot (New York: Ktav, 2005), pp. 247-68. Rabbi Nissim also took a hard line on this issue: he famously refused to participate in a reception for Pope Paul VI during the latter’s 1964 visit to Israel arguing that the pope had not shown respect to the Chief Rabbinate.
[16] Rabbi Soloveichik to Rabbi Reuven Katz , no date, ibid p. 177.
[17] Rabbi Soloveichik to Moshe Shapiro,February 15, 1960 in ibid., p.174.
[18] Rabbi Soloveichik to Dr. Moshe Unna, April 8, 1960, in ibid.,p. 187.
[19] Cited in Marc D. Angel, “Conversion to Judaism: Halakha, Hashkafa and Historic Challenge,” Hakirah 7 (Winter 2009), p. 44. See also J. David Bleich, Contemporary Halachic Problems Vol. 1 (New York and Hoboken, NJ: Ktav, 1977), pp. 294-95.
[20] Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef, Sh’eylot U’Teshuvot Yabia Omer vol. 2: Even Ha’ezer, no. 4.
[21] Ibid., vol. 9: Yoreh De’ah, no. 16. The case involved a man who was about to marry only to discover that his mother had been converted by a local Buenos Aires rabbi in contravention of the long-standing ban on conversions in that city. Rabbi Yosef did say that while the mother’s conversion remained valid, if “it were not inconvenient” for the man to convert in an Argentine town other than Buenos Aires, it was preferable that he do so.
[22] Ibid., no. 24.
[23] Ibid., vol.7: Even Ha’ezer, no. 1.
[24] Ibid., vol. 8: Even Ha’ezer no. 11.
[25] For a discussion of the case, see Bleich, Contemporary Halachic Problems Vol. 1, pp. 293-294.
[26] Danna Harman, “With Peace Process Stalled, Rabbi Is Promoting Dialogue With Muslims,” Los Angeles Times (May 24,1998) http://articles.latimes.com/1998/may/24/news/mn-52936
[27] Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, Yachel Yisrael, vol. 1, no. 25. Rabbi Lau cites an impressive array of decisors, both Sephardi and Eastern and Western European Ashkenazi, upon whom he relies. These include, among others, the medieval authors of Tosefot (cf. Talmud Bavli: Yevamot); the Sephardi Rabbis Yosef Karo (Beit Yosef) and Ben Zion Uziel (Mishpetei Uziel: Even Ha’ezer no. 25); the Eastern European Rabbis Shabbetai ben Meir Hacohen (Siftei Cohen, or Sha”ch), Malkiel Zvi Tennnenbaum (Sh’eylot U’teshuvot Divrei Malkiel vol.6, no. 19), Zvi Pesach Frank (Sh’eylot U’teshuvot Har Zvi: Yoreh De’ah no. 218), Ya’akov Breisch (Chelkat Ya’akov vol. 1, nos. 13-14) and Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook (Da’at Cohen, nos. 154-55); and, from the Western European tradition, Rabbi Dovid Zvi Hoffmann (Sh’eylot U’teshuvot Melamed Le’ho’il: Yoreh De’ah no. 85).
[28] Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu, “Yachas Ha’Halakha LeChukei Hamedina,” (The Relationship of Halakha to the Laws of the State), Techumin 3 (5742/1981-82), pp. 241-44.
[29] Rabbi Yisrael Rozen, “Gilui Eliyahu,” (The Revelation of Eliyahu), Techumin 31 (5771/2011-12), p.5.
[30] For many years, Haifa was the only Israeli city where public transportation operates on Shabbat, a result of the determined efforts of its longtime avowedly secular mayor, Abba Hushi.
[31] Harman, “With Peace Process Stalled.” See also Rabbi Bakshi-Doron’s Opening Presentation to the World Congress of Imams and Rabbis for Peace, that was held in Morocco, January 3-6 2005. http://www.imamsetrabbins.org/en/publications/detail/3/10/25
[32] Rabbi Eliayahu Bakshi-Doron, “Chok Nisuin V’Geirushin-Hayatza Sechoro B’Hefsedo?,” (The Law of Marriage and Divorce—Have its Liabilities Come to Outweigh its Value?), Techumin 25 (5765/2005), pp. 99-107.
[33] Rabbi Amar has vigorously opposed any official recognition by the State of Israel of Masorti (Conservative) and Reform rabbis. See Jeremy Sharon, “Amar: Stop recognizing of non-Orthodox Rabbis,” Jerusalem Post ( June 19,2012). http://www.jpost.com/JewishWorld/JewishNews/Article.aspx?id=274359

[34] For a brief discussion see Dov S. Zakheim, “What Happened to the Ten Lost Tribes,” in Yamin Levy ed., Mishpetei Shalom: A Jubilee Volume in Honor of Rabbi Saul (Shalom) Berman (New York: Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, n.d.), pp. 607-647-648.
Shahar Ilan, “But Not for Jews,” Haaretz (July 28, 2005). http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/features/but-not-for-jews-1.165253
[35] Amiram Barkat, “Chief Rabbinate Prepares Bill to Remove Converts from Law of Return,”, Haaretz, November 21, 2006. http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/chief-rabbinate-preparing-bill-to-change-law-of-return-converts-won-t-be-recognized-as-jews-1.201905#…
[36] For a discussion see Angel, “Conversion to Judaism,” p. 29.
[37] Baruch Kra, “Bakshi-Doron Slams Metzger appointment as Chief Rabbi,” Haaretz (April 28, 2003) http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/bakshi-doron-slams-metzger-appointment-as-chief-rabbi-1.11663
[38] Yair Ettinger, “Rabbinical Judge: Most Immigrants Seeking Conversion are Misguided,” Haaretz (June 18, 2009). http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/rabbinical-judge-most-immigrants-seeking-conversion-are-misguided-1.278291
Ibid.
[39] These were Rabbis Eliashiv, Shlomo Zalman Auerbach, Yaakov Yisrael Kanievsky and Elazar Shach.
[40] See Rabbi Avraham-Chaim Sherman, Bedika Chozeret Shel Giyur B’veit Din Acheir,” (Repeat Investigation of [a] Conversion in another Rabbinical Court), Techumin 31 (5771/2011), pp. 234-35.
[41] See, for example, Rabbi Sherman’s “Yichusam Shel Noladim Me’hapirya Chuitz Gufis Mitrumas Zara: Beirur Shitas Maran HaGaon Rav Yosef Sholom Eliashiv” (The Parentage of Children born in vitro from a Foreign [i.e. non-parental] Donor: Clarification of the Position of our Teacher the Gaon Rabbi Yosef Sholom Eliashiv), Yeshurun 21 (5769/2009), pp. 535-45.
[42] See Rabbi Avraham-Chaim Sherman, “Samchut Gedolei Hador BeNosei Ishut VeGerut,” (Authority of the Great Men of the Generation in Matters of Personal Status and Conversion), Techumin,30 (5770/2009-2010), pp. 163-173.
[43] Ibid., p. 165.
[44] Ibid., pp. 170-71.
[45] It is noteworthy that Rabbi Eliashiv himself, at least in his earlier years, did not always take a hard line on personal status. For example, in 1986 he ruled leniently in favor of two sisters who were about to marry but discovered that their late maternal grandmother was a divorcee, and had their mother by her second husband, but there was only family oral history to substantiate the belief that she had obtained an Orthodox religious divorce from her first husband. Rabbi Eliashiv permitted the weddings to go ahead. See “Eey Amrinan Sfek Sfeika Lehakel Bema’alas Yuchsin,” (Whether We Rule a Compound Uncertainty Is Permissive in Matters of Geneology) Yeshurun 18 (5767/2006), pp. 644-46). He also ruled leniently in a complex 1978 case of a woman seeking to marry who had converted as a child and now sought to marry a Cohen, normally forbidden to a convert. “Giyores LeCohen” (A Convert Marrying a Cohen), ibid., 17 (5766/2006), pp. 451-53.

[46] See Rabbi Shlomo Dichovsky, “Bitul Giyur Le’Mafreya,” (Retroactive Invalidation of Conversion) Techumin 29 (5769/2008-2009), pp. 267-280, who discusses and rebuts Rabbi Sherman’s position at some length. Rabbi Dichovsky could have cited other major twentieth century halakhic decisor—notably Rabbi Dovid Zvi Hoffmann, Sh’eylot U’Teshuvot Melamed Leho’il: Even Ha’ezer Nos 8 and 10, and Rabbi Yechiel Yaakov Weinberg, Sh’eylot U’Teshuvot Sridei Eish: Yoreh Deah no. 66—but he may have chosen not to do so because these rabbis reflected the more liberal German Orthodox tradition that was not fully accepted by the East European rabbis whom contemporary Ashkenazi Haredim venerate.
[47] See Rabbi Shlomo Dichovsky, “’Daat Torah’ Ba’Halakha,” (The Place of “Torah Outlook” in Halakha), Techumin,30 (5770/2009-2010), pp. 174-91.
[48] Ibid., p. 177-78. Rabbi Yosef’s statement appears in Yabia Omer, vol. 1: Orach Chayim, introduction.
[49] Dichovsky, “Da’at Torah,” p. 184.
[50] Ibid.
[51] Ibid., p. 191.
[52] Rabbi David Bass, “Tokfo Shel Giyur Bediavad Eem Hager Ayno Shomer Kol Hamitzvot,” (The Post-Facto Validity of a Conversion When the Convert Does Not Adhere to all the Mitzvot,” Techumin 23 (5763/2002/2003), pp. 186-98).
[53] Rabbi Rozen agreed that the daughter’s conversion remained valid, but that the mother’s behavior clearly indicated that she had never been serious about converting according to Jewish standards.
[54] See ibid.,30, appendix to Rabbi Sherman’s article, p. 173 and ibid. 31 appendix to Rabbi Sherman’s article, p. 236.
[55] Rabbi Ya’akov Epstein, “Lo Nitan Levatel Giyur She’na’ase Kedin” (There is no Provision for Annulling a Conversion Conducted according to the Law), ibid. 32, pp. 332-36; Rabbi Moshe Mestabum, “Giyur Einehul Chizui He’atid” (Conversion is not a Forecast of the Future), ibid., pp. 337-39.
[56] See Chaim Amsellem, “Acceptance of Commandments for Conversion,” Conversations No. 14 (Autumn 2012/5773), pp. 91-113.
[57] The Sherman ruling also prompted discussion among American rabbis. See Rabbi Chaim Jachter, “Nullification of a Conversion,” Journal of Halacha and Contemporary Society LXII (Succot 5772/Fall 2011), pp. 5-27.
[58] See also Angel, “Conversion to Judaism.”
[59] Kobi Nahshoni, “Friedmann: Israel Must Allow Marriages for All Citizens,” ynetnews.com (May 19, 2008) http://www.ynetnews.com/Ext/Comp/ArticleLayout/CdaArticlePrintPreview/1,2506,L-3544997,00.html
[60] Matthew Wagner, “Amar Moves to Bar Controversial Rabbinic Judge from Conversion Cases,” Jerusalem Post (June 25, 2009) http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=146773
[61] See, for example, “Teshuvat Harav Avraham Chaim Sherman Lehasagat Harav Yisrael Rozen b’Techumin 31 v’Hearot Mechaber Ma’amar Teguva Zeh (Response of Rabbi Avraham Chaim Sherman to the Critique of Rabbi Yisrael Rozen in Techumin 31 and to the Comments of the Author [Rabbi Epstein]of this Response), Appendix to Rabbi Epstein’s article, Techumin 32, p. 336.
[62] Rabbi Nahum Eisenstein quoted in ibid.
[63] Shlomo Moshe Amar and Yonah Yechiel Metzger “Hanchayot Bebirur Yahadut 5770/2010” (Guidelines for Establishing [One’s] Judaism ( 17 Adar 5770/March 3, 2010).
[63] Author’s translation from the Hebrew in Rabbi Shaul Yisraeli, Amud Hayemini 3rd. ed. (Jerusalem: Machon Hatorah Vehamedina, 5760/2010), no. 6.
[65] Author’s translation from the Hebrew in Rabbi Shaul Yisraeli, Harabanut Vehamedina: Asofet Ma’amarim, Ne’umim, Sichot, U’reshimot al Rabbanut Eretzyisraelit, Hatziyonut Hadatit, Medinat Yisrael, Eretz Yisrael (Jerusalem: Avraham Kohen, 5761/2002), p. 73.
[66] Zev Farber, “Reform, Restore or Rescind: What to do with the Chief Rabbinate of Israel,” The Times of Israel (September 27, 2012) http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/reform-restore-or-rescind-what-to-do-with-the-chief-rabbinate-of-israel/. Rabbi Zev Farber should not be confused with Rabbi Seth Farber, likewise a critic of the Chief Rabbinate, who is the founder of Itim, an organization devoted to helping Israelis navigate the complexities posed by interaction with the religious authorities. See, for example, Seth Farber , “The Challenge: To marry in the Rabbinate,” Jerusalem Post (August 11, 2012) http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=280881
[67] Matti Friedman, “A Battle for the Rabbinate, and for Israel’s Soul,” The Times of Israel (September 11, 2012) http://www.timesofisrael.com/a-battle-for-the-rabbinate-and-for-israels-soul/
[68] Zev Farber, “Reform, Restore or Rescind.”
[69] Bakshi-Doron, “The Law of Marriage and Divorce,” pp.
[70] The British Chief Rabbi does not formally represent the Reform and Liberal Jewish streams that are active in the UK and elsewhere, but he does represent the Jewish community on State occasions as well as on the international stage. The Archbishop of Canterbury has a much more formal role as the leader of England’s established church.
[71] The Haredim do not accept the authority of the State. Even if they do, their determination of what satisfies their standards is often peculiar to Haredi sub-groups (e.g. some Hassidic sects will not accept shechita (ritual slaughter) by anyone other than their own shochtim) and therefore cannot be fully accommodated.
[72] David McCullough, Truman (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992)
[73] Jonathan Sacks, “God’s Politics: The Lessons of the Hebrew Bible,” Foreign Affairs 91 (November/December 2012), pp. 124-28.

generic drugs

Why in Megillat Esther is the name of God not mentioned even once, considering that it was the hand of God that altered a near catastrophe for the Jewish people living in Persia?

God’s name, Y-H-W-H, meaning “He [=God] is in a state of continuous and eternal being,” is not mentioned in the Esther Scroll. Since the religious theme of the Scroll is that God watches over the world, the obvious question is: why is God’s name not mentioned even once throughout Megillat Eshter? This question lays the seeds for the Scroll’s deconstruction, and yields for the attentive reader a Biblical theology of Israel. For the religion of the Jews, God appears as a character in the national Book, the Hebrew Bible. The image of God that appears in the national, canonical Book provides a finite, human language description of how God’s presence is perceived by the pious, practicing Jew in everyday life.

Let us first summarize the questions that the narrative raises:

1. What is it in the Hebrew Divine Name that makes its absence notable?
2. How was this absence misunderstood by the Qumranide Dead Sea sectarians?
3. Who are the characters and what are their names?
4. Where does the narrative begin and where does the narrative end?
5. Why does the Scroll’s opening sound so much like Plato’s Symposium?
6. Why is it imperative that God not appear in the narrative by name?

_______________________________________
1.What is it in the Hebrew Divine Name
that makes its absence notable?

The Divine Name in Hebrew, Y-H-W-H, is a third person imperfect form, meaning “He is being.” In the First Temple times this verb form signified an imperfect tense, or continuing action. In later Hebrew, this originally imperfect form assumed the sense of a future tense. By remaining hidden beneath the narrative’s surface and story, God, as a literary character—and statement of Jewish theology, is never present to the secular eye yet is ever present to the pious, inner, introspective eye. The secular or mundane eye is able to notice from a distance the pious actions of the believing, behaving and identifying Jew, but is unable to appreciate, much less decode, the meaning of the strange, foreign, alien and therefore alienating gestures of the Jew whose laws do not conform to the edicts of a human king. The absence of the Divine is therefore ironic; the God Whom the mundane mind is unable to sense is the God Who pulls all the strings, arranges all events, settles every account, and directs history toward its providential telos, or goal.

2. How was this absence misunderstood by the Qumranide Dead Sea sectarians?

The Dead Sea sectarians were religiously very strict, theologically very stark, simple, absolute, and extreme. Deep down, this sect was theologically rather shallow. Their reading of Scripture and their understanding of Torah were not nuanced; the Qumranide reading of both Bible and reality was enchanted and apocalyptic, where the cosmic “forces” of evil are arrayed against the “forces” constructively striving for good. Their commentaries are re-writes of Hebrew Scripture called “mediations,” or pesharim. Since the Esther Scroll did not mention God’s name, this no nonsense, no nuance sect misread the Esther Scroll as a secular tale and thus excluded the Scroll from its community canon; there was not one exemplar or fragment of the Esther Scroll found at Qumran. On the other hand, both the Pharisees and their rabbinic successors composed commentaries called midrashim, highly nuanced and insightful observations regarding the multi-valenced meanings which are sought in Israel’s Divinely inspired, canonical documents. The rabbis, with their nuanced religious—and literary—sophistication, understood that God is hidden in a violent social, hierarchic political world that that cannot tolerate a Divinity that demands that humankind “do the right and the good.” [Deuteronomy 6:18]

3. Who are the main characters and what are their names?

Ahashuerus is the King of Persia and Media, which really was a double monarchy in antiquity. He ruled from India to Ethiopia, the precise range of Aramaic documents, the lingua franca of the Achaenamid empire, for which Persian was used for private, religious purposes. The Hebrew Scripture reports that in this empire, the Jews/Judeans of the 587 BCE exile seem to retain but are in danger of losing their religious and ethnic identity. According to Persian reports, the empire was divided into 20 administrative districts, or satraps. But Scripture reports that Persia possessed one hundred- twenty medinot. The historically aware, linguistically sensitive and theologically attuned reader does not find a contradiction here, as do the secular critics. The Persians thought as tyrant rulers in administrative terms—how to control the masses; the Jews/Judeans believed in an ethical ethnic identity, which is preserved in the city, the original meaning of medina, a place of localized law, or din in Arabic, Aramaic, as well as Hebrew—in order to nurture a sense of autonomous moral agency in every Jew. Ahashuerus rules blindly, almost always influenced by alcohol, women, intrigue and a congenital addiction to physical pleasure, over a vast kingdom. Bigtan and Teresh tried to initiate a coup d’etat, and were foiled by Mordecai, whom the King ineptly forgot or otherwise fails to reward for his efforts. We see a very human king who presents himself to be all powerful yet is unable to manage, much less master, the power that is at his disposal.

The verbs used to describe the king are intransitive, signifying a state of being. This king merely “is.” He drinks, sits on his throne and enjoys the presence of beautiful women. He does almost nothing without wine, and what he does focuses upon gainful winnings and pleasuring himself. If someone wants to advance in this monarchy that Machiavelli could have imagined, one must anticipate the only real rule of the realm, that which pleasures the prince. See Esther 1:19, 3:9, and 5:4-5, ‘im ‘al ha-meleh tov.

Haman is an Agagite. Agag was the Amaleqite king that King Saul, the Benjamin tribe member, was supposed to execute according to God’s explicit command but did not. As a “professional courtesy” to a fellow human monarch, he allowed Agag to live. Like the Amaleqites of Saul’s time and the Amaleqite tribe in Moses’ time, Haman hopes to destroy Israel because Israel is Israel; because there is no reason in reality for baseless hatred, no reason is offered for it. But we may find a hint in the case that Haman makes before Ahashuerus, that ancient Israel, now known as the people of Judea, i.e. the Jews, must be annihilated. Haman claims that “there is a nation scattered and dispersed among the people [of the empire], they have laws that are different from all the nations, and it is not worth it to the king to leave them be.” [Esther 3:8] Realizing that his own hatred of Israel is irrational, Haman appeals to the king’s utilitarian, greedy instincts: the people are not indigenous; this people by habit resists the acculturation needed for administrative order, social cohesion, and most critically, tax collection, and it simply is not worth it to the king to suffer their potentially irredentist presence. And to seal his maniacal deal, Haman pays the King for the right to stage a pogrom. [Esther 3:9] By portraying Israel as “other,” the nation whose Laws demand that one treat others with dignity, Israel is subversive of every hierarchy, tyranny, and aristocracy. Because of its Book- based ethic that enshrines an inalienable human dignity, Israel the nation thinks critically, makes its own choices, and is born to be free. In narrative contrast, Haman is so possessed with himself that his evil plans are thwarted, as we will see below, by his own sick sense of misplaced importance that ends in impotence. Recall that he enters the King’s courtyard for the right to hang Mordecai, not aware that the King could not sleep, was read the account of the Bigtan and Teresh abortive coup d’etat and Mordecai’s unrewarded act of good—and salvific—citizenship. We here see, even before Haman makes his murderous claim, that it is indeed worth it to have citizens who keep the law like Mordecai the Jew. The King, now for the only instant in the narrative sober--a state unnoticed by the egotistical Haman—plays Haman the way the King was hitherto played by Haman. The King, now scared sober, wants to know what’s on Haman’s clearly twisted mind, being invited to the King’s rolling bar by the King’s favorite wife and entering the King’s courtyard in the dead of night. The King asks, with grim sobriety, high anxiety, and remarkably piercing insight, playing on Haman’s ironically hapless hubris, “what shall be done for the man whom the King desires to honor?” [Esther 6:6a] The now scared, sober, and sleepless King is playing the player even as he is being played by the ultimate Player, the unseen King of kings, who providentially keeps the inept human king from slumber. Realizing that Haman does not suffer from modesty, but is obsessed with ambition, the King asks Haman what his wildest wish would be. And Haman’s hubris overtakes his malevolent cunning; he would wear the royal robe, ride the royal steed, don the royal crown, and be so proclaimed as the friend of the Throne in public. The signet ring of administrative power on his finger is not enough for Haman; he who would destroy Israel for no reason now unwittingly tells the king that it is he who cannot be trusted, any more than Bigtan and Teresh, whom Mordecai had thwarted, from assaulting the Kingdom in the dead of night to kill the human king who at that very moment is unable to sleep.

Esther is the Scroll’s round character who undergoes development in the Scroll that bears her name. Her name is cognate to the pagan deity Ishtar; yet, she has a private hidden Hebrew name, Hadassah. Raised by her pious uncle, Mordecai, the Jew or Judean, Esther is on one hand named by her now deceased parents as the pagan “star,” and grows in Judaism, the cult of the Judeans who serve the unseen God Who is King of the Cosmos, the Father in Heaven and its stars, the Redeemer of Israel, and the Player who plays and preys upon those who would prey and play upon His people. If her Indo-European name represents the visible shining star, the very same word in Hebrew, the language of her people [Esther 8:9 and Esther 9:27] means “hidden,” the root str in Hebrew. When God’s presence is hidden and God’s Presence is unseen, the nations hear the decree to destroy the Jews in their vernaculars and scripts [Esther 3: 12]; Esther’s name and God’s now apparent presence appear when Israel, now redeemed, is recognized as a nation.

In Ahashuerus’ empire, people are passive pawns to be exploited and manipulated by power people. In need of a trophy talent to replace his deposed Vashti, who actively and insubordinately refused the royal order to appear before the King in order to display her natural assets, [Esther 1:17] a beauty contest was suggested to pick her appropriate replacement. The notion that Vashi was asked/ordered to appear/come in the nude, with her crown on her head her only attire, reflects the Midrashic suggestion that the king’s drinking assembly’s intentions were not honorable. [Esther Rabba 3:13] Read the end of the verse, and mQeddushin 1:1.

Esther is taken to the the King’s harem, ina passive voice. [Esther 2:18, 16] As a subject of the tyrant, she is subject to that very tyrant. When challenged by Mordecai that she cannot hide in the Harem in order to escape the King’s decree, she is in a bind. Recall two at first seemingly insignificant narrative facts: that edict which is signed and sealed with the King’s seal cannot be rescinded. [Esther 8:8] and that the King’s decree against the recalcitrant Queen Vashti by the de jure omnipotent King could not be overturned, even by the by the King himself. The deliciously caustic irony is that the Law the human King advances, a Law that once given, cannot be changed, is precisely the Law of the Jews given by the God Who does not change and Who in this Scroll does not appear. [Deut. 4:2, 13:1, and the Epilogue to Hammurapi would have that Code, written in stone, not to be effaced or changed.] Ahashurus acts as if he is a god but appears, except when he is scared sober, to be an inept drunkard.

Esther risks her life with an active leap of faith when she appears before the king uninvited and unannounced. [Esther 4:11] The human King is very aware that he sits on a very fragile throne, especially after the Bigtan and Teresh incident. Unless one is called/yiqqarei in the passive, one is subject to the death penalty for the legitimate fear that one who appears before the king without an appointment may indeed be intent upon regicide. The word for scepter, sharvit, is a Babylonian causal form meaning “to cause one to bow down,” i.e. make the requisite gesture of passivity before the King, who alone is authorized to be active. The King of kings predisposed the human king to look favorably upon his nervous first lady of the harem. After all, we, the omniscient readers, realize that Esther was not called to the King’s bedroom for thirty days [4:11] not because she fell out of favor with her royal husband, as Esther at first feared, but because her fearful husband King was in nervous terror for his own life. Note well that Esther “was not called,” she was not deemed worthy of being passive in the presence of the appropriately paranoid impotent potentate.

Esther grows into religious maturity by being active, by being a moral agent, and by taking a dangerous risk. Idolatrous religion makes a man into a god and people into slaves, as in the case of Pharaoh, or into passive subjects, as in the case of Ahashuerus. As noted by the great Henri Frankfort, in Mesopotamia the king is a god while in Israel—and in the Esther Scroll, God is the King.

Mordecai’s family heritage stems from the tribe of Benjamin and Saul. Neither Saul nor Benjamin’s tribe acted honorably, and neither did those who gave Mordecai his non-Hebrew name, a name he shared with the pagan god called Marduk. In pagan Persia, the king is a tyrant. No one speaks independently but the human King; so the real King, God the Creator, speaks silently. See Psalms 19:4. By protecting the politically legitimate King [the narrator is keenly aware of Jeremiah 9 29:23-28], adopting and nurturing Esther, by mourning publically and praying the unmentionable word in Persia, Mordecai’s external acts testify to his internalized politically astute enlightened piety. Throughout the Esther Scroll, the human king regularly gives orders that render his subjects passive. But at Esther 2:22, the matter of insurrection is made known to Mordecai; there is a Commander/King Who talks and makes His will known to Mordecai. And Mordecai acts upon this information! Haman’s “critique” of the Jews, mean-spirited as it is, ironically, is correct. There is a nation that obeys the commands of God before the drunken bumpkin who sits on Persia’s peacock throne, ever true to the Hebrew nationals who answer to an even higher authority.

4.Where does the narrative begin and where does the narrative end?

The actual Esther Scroll narrative begins with Amaleq at Exodus 17:8 with the gratuitous attack on Israel by the Amalaqite enemies of Israel, who attempted to eradicate a society where every citizen is a moral agent who “embodies” the image of God, whose disposition leads to freedom. The narrative ends with Ezra 2:2 and Nehemiah 7:7, when Mordecai goes home, to Judea. Saul was told by Samuel that God does not lie, I Sam. 15:29, and Mordecai told Esther that if she is not willing to be an active player and moral agent, Israel’s aid will come from another place, [Esther 4:14], she and her household will not survive—because as noted above the human King’s commands, including his command to kill all of the Jews, cannot by pagan law be rescinded—but that God’s care for the Judeans will nonetheless not be abandoned. [Psalms 94:14]

5. Why does the Scroll’s opening sound so much like Plato’s Symposium?

Plato’s Symposium tells a story about the best, brightest, and most beautiful people of Athenian antiquity. Plato the narrator recalls that there was a drinking party, where men discussed—and tried to put into practice—love amongst themselves. The Hebrew word for such a party is called a mishteh, an occasion for party drinking. This is where the affairs of state take place in the Esther Scroll. The hero of the Symposium party, Socrates, wins the day by speaking about true agape love, holding down his wine, and rejecting the advances of the knave general, Alcibiades.

The Jews in Esther join the first drinking party in anonymity, as individuals in the mob. Drinking wine at the party of redemption exemplifies the difference between the two cultures: the Greeks, and the
Persians who to our view are the “Greeks” for whom, under Greek rule, it is politically correct to mock and belittle others cleverly and to drink to and for diversion. The Jew drinks with a benediction, praising the Creator for creating the fruit of the vine, and showing how one may be both joyous and pious. The “ethic” and protocol of Plato’s Symposium was limited to invited male aristocrats alone, where we get to see Socrates say “no” to Alcibiades and his advances not because of sexual morality, but because the latter person was not to the former’s taste. In contrast, the Jewish Purim meal requires wine for all, sending of gifts to others, and caring for the poor. When the Passover offering was being observed, only those listed to eat from the offering could legally do so; once the offering became defunct, “all who are hungry may come and eat, all who are in need are invited to join for the solidarity of the seder.” The Greeks, and the Persian characters who portray them, believe in fate, aristocracy, and honor; the Jew, like Mordecai, believes that there is a Judge and there is a judgment, there is a law which promotes an aristocracy of ethics, because everyone is to walk humbly before the silent God Whose acts speak loudly.

The human aristocracy of the Greek or Persian pagans demanded humility from the masses, expressed literarily by the passivity that is imposed by the inept human King upon his chaotic, multi-national empire that appeared from afar to be powerful but upon close look was out of control.

When some men [women do not do this] press others to be humble, they are asking the “other” to nullify her or himself, to defer out of self-disrespect to someone mistaken to be one’s “better,” to accept the truth of others while being passive and denying one’s self-worth. The ideal Jew is a moral agent who acts out of ethics for good. The ideal Jew’s God created the world, gave a Torah, and commissioned the Jew to put God in the world by acting as Divinely commissioned moral agents.

6. Why is it imperative that God not appear in the narrative by name?

Because Esther’s narrative setting, ancient Persia, and historical setting, the Hellenistic cultural challenge, makes no place for God, God only appears to be absent to those who do not possess the insight of God’s immediacy. The monarchical diction honors protocol and one singular person, Ahashuerus the king. In this amoral pagan setting, great men are petty and morally small; Mordecai’s and Esther’s acts of faith do not resonate within these pagan cultures, so pious Jewish gestures are described as meaningless motions at best and as defiant non-conformity at worst. The engaged reader realizes that what the Jews do indeed are in fact profound acts of religious faith, a point lost upon the narratives pagans but obvious to the attentive reader.
\Ezra 1:1-3 reports:

1”Now in the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, in order that the word of the Lord given by the mouth of Jeremiah might come true, the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia, was moved by the Lord, so that he made a public statement through all his kingdom, and put it in writing, saying,
2These are the words of Cyrus, king of Persia: The Lord God of heaven [an Aramaic idiom common to pagans, see Jonah 1:9] has given me all the kingdoms of the earth; and he has made me responsible for building a house for him in Jerusalem, which is in Judah.
3Whoever there is among you of his people, may his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and take in hand the building of the house of the Lord, the God of Israel; he is the God who is in Jerusalem.” [my italics]

The setting of Ezra is filled with the Presence of God, where Cyrus replaced Ahashuerus as King of Persia. It is a world in which God moves people, and people are moved to put God in the world. God appears in the world when humans let God enter the social construction of ethical reality that is humankind’s to make. In the Esther Scroll, paganism does not allow for religious discourse so God’s name is unmentionable in pagan settings. The Esther Scroll is a commission to the Jewish people to allow God-talk to be part of our spiritual conversation and to beware of leaders who demand less than the fulfillment of the moral agency of each person who by dint of humanity, carries God’s’ image.

In 1954, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, the acknowledged leader of Modern Orthodoxy in America, was asked whether it was permissible for Orthodox rabbis and congregations to unite or to cooperate with their non-Orthodox counterparts. The question came amidst gathering controversy concerning Orthodox membership in joint rabbinic councils, formation of community-wide rabbinical courts, growing adoption of Conservative practices in Orthodox congregations (such as mixed seating), and new deviations from traditional observance authorized by the Conservative rabbinate (such as permitting driving to Sabbath services). The Rav, as his followers referred to him, gave his answer in a column in the Yiddish daily, Tog Morgen Journal, which was republished several years ago in Community, Covenant and Commitment: Selected Letters and Communications, Rabbi Joseph. B. Soloveitchik, edited by Nathaniel Helfgot. [1] The answer, paradoxically, was, in a nutshell, that unity and separation must co-exist. The Rav’s answer emanated from his understanding of how the concepts of unity and separation grow out of two covenants recounted in the Book of Exodus, which together define the nature of Jewish identity: one covenant based on G-d’s “taking” the Jews to be His People, and the other covenant based on the People’s declaration of readiness to accept G-d and his terms. We examine here the basis for the Rav’s accommodation of contacts between Orthodox rabbis and leaders and their non-Orthodox counterparts, which in turn is based on the Rav’s examination of how and why unity and separation must co-exist within the Jewish People, and how the changed circumstances six decades later have undermined the Rav’s solution to resolving the two fundamental forces driving Jewish identity.

The principle of unity, the Rav wrote, is a basic principle of Judaism, succinctly stated in the Sabbath afternoon prayer, “You are One, Your Name is One, and who is like Your people Israel, a unique nation on earth.” However, unity in Judaism is expressed in two ways: the unity of Jews as a spiritual community, living a Jewish way of life, which he called the edah – a voluntary congregation of witnesses [tied] to the collective memory and future of the tradition; and the unity of Jews as a unique political/historical nation – the am.

The Rav’s conceptualization of two expressions of Jewish unity is based on two covenantal acts, recounted in the Torah, through which the Jewish identity is created. The first is made at Sinai, in which Jews individually and collectively commit themselves to be a community based on the unique Jewish way of life. The Rav cites as his proof-text: “You shall be unto me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” [2] The heart of this unity, he says, is a collective “transcendental-ethical consciousness” of a special purpose. Jews who have bought into the edah commit not only to a separate and different way of life from the nations, but to be “priests,” with each member striving to be an example to all peoples of how to live in the world. This is a separateness of means, not necessarily of ends. To be a member of the edah means to adhere to particularistic rules and ways of living (the Torah tradition) expressing a Divinely commanded universal ethical conception of how to live. Conversely, as the Rav states it: “[T]he Jew who erases from his memory this great testimony [the tradition], and destroys the unique collective tradition, breaks the tie which joins him with the Jewish community as part of a congregation, as part of a spiritual Torah entity.” [3]

The second expression of Jewish unity is derived from G-d’s declaration, passed on to the Israelites in Egypt, of the historical covenant that is about to unfold, “And I shall take you unto me as a nation, and I shall be unto you a G-d.” [4] As the Rav puts it, “this covenant forced upon us all one uniform historical fate.”[5] He also cites the blessing that G-d put in Balaam’s mouth: “Lo, it is a people that shall live alone, and among the nations shall not reckon itself.” [6] “No Jew can renounce his part of the unity,” says the Rav, which encompasses the non-traditional as well as the traditional Jew. It is this unbreakable bond, welded through our unique historical transmigrations and in our paradoxical fate, characterized by loneliness and affliction, according to the Rav, that requires all Jews to “fight the enemy, who does not differentiate between those who believe in G-d and those who reject Him.”[7]

In short, to the Rav, Jewish identity paradoxically is an amalgam of two unities, one a spiritual/ethical unity affirmed and expressed through a particular and unique system of Jewish law and practices, as well as a transcendental world view, the preservation of which may require separation from non-affirming Jews; and the other an existential uniqueness experienced in the historical aloneness and affliction of the Jewish People, which all Jews experience in common and whose existence is threatened by disunity. Under this conception, the spiritual unity of the edah can only be destroyed from within and this must be resisted by separation from those of do not accept this spiritual unity; whereas the existential unity of the am (i.e., the People, rather than the tradition) is destroyed from without, and must be resisted by means of a unified fight against the common outside enemy. Put another way, one can, by choice, separate himself from the tradition; however, all Jews share the same fate, whether they follow the tradition or not.

From this conceptual and textual foundation, the Rav concluded in his essay that with regard to spiritual and religious matters “Orthodoxy cannot and should not unite” with groups that deny the fundamentals of the tradition. He placed both the Reform and Conservative movements in this category. But, when Jews face the outside world in defense of their rights, “then all groups and movements must be united.” Disunity in the latter context could be “disastrous for the entire people.” Thus, on the one hand, the Rav railed at Conservative “Halakhic” deviations, which he worried could, in the name of harmony, “erase the [] boundaries between Orthodoxy and other movements” and “cause confusion in the minds” of Orthodox congregations. Separation of the edah from such practices is required to preserve the uniqueness of the tradition. On the other hand, he adamantly opposed creation of separate Conservative rabbinical courts to decide family issues (for non-Orthodox Jews), which he presciently warned would split the Jews into “two camps,” threatening the unity of the am. Similarly, behind the scenes, the Rav, worked (albeit without success) to create a joint beit din with authority to decide all Jewish family law issues arising in both Modern Orthodox and Conservative congregations.[8]

One of the most prominent examples of applying this paradigm – that is, including non-traditional Jews within the unity of the am, while at the same time retaining a strict division between traditional Jews (the edah) and non-traditional approaches – was the Rav’s role in preserving the Synagogue Council of America.[9] The Synagogue Council of America had been organized in 1926 by the six organizations comprising the three mainstream Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox rabbinical and congregational associations, including the RCA and Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America. Formed to represent Jewish religious interests to the outside world, both in the United States and abroad, the SCA often found itself crippled by differences among its member organizations, and survived as long as it did on the strength of a one-organizational veto, which allowed the Orthodox groups to reject any joint action (particularly one that might be perceived as straying into the “spiritual” realm) they disagreed with. [10]

In 1956, the Rav’s support for the SCA came under attack both from within his community (the RCA) and from without (the Lithuanian yeshivah world). Just days before the RCA’s Halakha Commission, of which the Rav was the chair, was to meet to address a petition from the RCA’s leadership to require withdrawal from the SCA, the ultra-Orthodox Rabbinical Alliance issued a public ban on all Orthodox participation in the SCA as well as other joint rabbinical boards. Neither the Rav nor the Halakhic Commission ever formally ruled on the question, despite repeated efforts by the RCA leadership to force the issue.[11] Indeed, the issue continued to simmer, but despite a widening of the gap between the “two camps,” the RCA and UOJCA remained members of the SCA until the Rav’s death in 1993.[12]

The Rav’s conception of Jewish identity as a dynamic tension between a traditional edah that separated itself from non-traditional “deniers” and a united am (including these same deniers) defending itself from outside forces seems to have enjoyed ever diminishing popular support from within his own community. It is likely that respect for the Rav was an important factor keeping the SCA together for forty years following the Tog Morgen Journal article, but both the SCA and the enterprise of joint defense of the am were gradually being sapped of their force by social forces at work both within the Jewish community and outside it. The dissolution of the SCA in 1994 simply put a punctuation mark on a completed era. With the Rav gone, it was as if the last remaining force (within the Orthodox world) trying to maintain the tension between unity and separation, to restrain the deep separatist forces at work within Orthodoxy, within the larger Jewish world, and in the wider society, was released. It was in fact a watershed. [16] What the Rav’s death marked was not so much the end of the Rav’s influence, but the end of the milieu in which Conservative as well as Orthodox rabbis (and to some extent even Reform rabbis) came from (and in some cases adhered to) traditional roots and perspectives that made debates among them still possible.

What certainly seems to be the case is that even the Rav could not restrain the deep (and bi-polar) forces of Jewish social consciousness driving religious and non-religious Jewry apart. In the decades following the Tog Morgen Journal article, the Rav’s (and Modern Orthodoxy’s) attempt to maintain a creative tension between tradition and the secular world became increasingly difficult.[13] The Holocaust produced two competing (and conflicting) visions of the American Jewish future – one aimed at recreating the lost European world of traditional Jewry, and one aimed at creating a “post-Holocaust” Jew, fully integrating into American culture and abandoning all outward signs of cultural distinctiveness.

With the perspective of six decades, the Jewish world of the 1950s, despite its fissures, was a much smaller, tighter, and more ethnically united world than we have today. Though acculturation away from Jewish literacy and learning, which had profound impacts on participation in the edah, was then already well under way, the social consequences of illiteracy and acculturation were still to be seen. For example, the societal revolutions of personal identity – intermarriage, equal rights for women and gays, and the personalization of religious self-identification – all of which were to have profound impacts on the am – had yet to become the norms of the society. After all, the world of the 1950s was a world where the division between Jew and non-Jew was still palpable throughout American society, which conversely tended to bring Jews of divergent ideologies closer to one another. It also was a world in which great Jewish minds on both sides of the Orthodox/non-Orthodox divide still talked to each other about the issue of unity and could think that the social fabric was still susceptible to mending. The Rav’s warnings to the Conservative movement in Tog Morgen Journal[14] evinced an awareness that the edah was coming under assault from internal forces; but his concept that the am is “forced upon us” by historical forces beyond our control, and that we must “fight the enemy” in “defense of Jewish rights” suggests that the European experience, and particularly the Holocaust, deeply affected the Rav’s conception of the am.[15] The Rav did not then foresee the extent of acceptance of the Jews in America; how small a role outside forces would soon play in enforcing the unity of Jewish aloneness; and how, over the next half-century, internal forces would play a larger role in fragmenting Jewish cohesion, undermining the potency of the covenant of the am.

The problems facing the edah and the am today are not only radically different from what they were 60 years ago, they look remarkably similar to each other. If existential threats to the edah and the am exist today, they come not from without, but from within. Orthodox Jews today are not flocking out of traditional shuls to join Conservative, Reform or other non-Orthodox institutions. If anything, it is the reverse. It is traditional Judaism that is attracting Jews into the edah.

Similarly, few would argue that an American Jew is physically threatened by the outside world, requiring all Jews to unite in order to protect themselves from that threat. Indeed, acceptance and integration of Jews in America have been principal reasons for the weakened potency of the am as an element American Jewish identity. For the majority of American Jews, calls to unite around an aloneness of the am, enforced from without, fail to address the world they live in. Moreover, across the board, from the most traditional to the least, positive assertions of Jewish identity have replaced defensive postures. As a general matter, Jewish identity increasingly is expressed through affirmative Jewish behaviors and “spiritual/ethical consciousness,” and less through defense of forced aloneness. Even the most distinctive groups feel safe to openly assert their Jewish practices, programs and political positions. But, the flip side of the decline of external enemies is the readiness, across the board, to assert a particularistic and separatist vision of who are “my People.” Thus, at the same time that the am is shrinking in absolute terms, other Jews increasingly are seen as the “other,” whether one is traditional or non-traditional. To paraphrase Pogo’s words, “We have found the enemy, and the enemy is us!”[16]

The question may therefore legitimately be raised whether, in these times, the Rav’s paradigm of edah and am, and his proof-texts, call for a more dynamic approach to the two spheres, one in which the fuel for energizing the outer sphere, the am, is not the threat of external enemies, but rather the same power of the testimony that drives the inner sphere – the edah. The Rav sanctioned cooperation among the rabbinical and congregational organizations only to the extent that such cooperation did not require or involve discussion of religious or Halakhic issues. The Tog Morgen Journal essay was equally clear that what the Rav considered heretical ideas emanating from the non-Orthodox movements were the principal reason for not engaging in cooperation with these movements on such issues.

Does that mean that the traditional community is powerless to engage the non-traditional community in order to prevent the dissolution of what now constitutes the majority of the am? Do the Rav’s textual sources require the sort of dichotomy between edah and am advanced by the Rav in his Tog Morgen Journal essay? For example, is there any basis in his proof-texts for declaring that “ethical/spiritual consciousness” of the “collective memory” – that is, the tradition – is an essential characteristic of the edah, but not an essential characteristic of those who “shall live alone” and are taken “as an am”? Another look at these verses suggests as much overlap as division.

Just as the Sabbath afternoon prayer describes “Your people” as a “unique nation,” all of the cited Biblical verses, both the covenant in Egypt (“And I shall take you unto me as a nation, and I shall be unto you a G-d”) and the covenant at Sinai (“You shall be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation”) make the “nation” the partner of G-d in His enterprise. It is the nation that at Sinai is called upon to “witness” the covenant by undertaking the Torah as an expression of “transcendental/ethical consciousness,” thereby becoming a “kingdom of priests.” So too with “aloneness.” In the verse, “Lo, it is a people that shall live alone, and among the nations shall not reckon itself,” separation is from other nations, not from within; and the Jewish nation is to be “reckoned” according to another standard, that is, before G-d. Like the other verses, this one also pairs unity and aloneness with bearing witness to G-d’s will.[17]

Of course, we cannot know how the Rav himself would have applied his liturgical and biblical sources in light of the current situation. However, if our conclusion is that, in this generation, defense against an external enemy is no longer a compelling basis for preserving the am, what sort of glue remains to prevent its dissolution?[18] Similarly, if non-traditional movements are no longer attractive alternatives to Orthodox Jews, to what extent is separation for the sake of the edah necessary to protect traditional communities? What does erection of barriers do other than impede the spread of the “collective testimony” of the tradition? Indeed, wouldn’t the test of interaction strengthen, not weaken, the edah? If the traditional community retreats behind a wall of separation what is left of the “unique nation?” To continue in the same direction under these circumstances would appear to destroy the very covenantal relationship that the Rav sought to preserve.

Even more fundamentally, treating other Jews, no matter how different in their approach to the tradition, as “the Other” creates a duality in Judaism that undermines the unity of G-d, which is the foundation of the ethical/spiritual consciousness which Judaism seeks to instill in its people through Halakha and universally by example. What appears to be required is for both the Orthodox and non-Orthodox communities to recognize that believing or acting as if other Jews are “the Other” is a form of idolatry – a fundamental denial of the unity of G-d. Jews who not only profess a belief in G-d but seek to devote their lives to fulfilling G-d’s will will find this conclusion very difficult to accept, and may reject it out of hand. But this conclusion derives directly from the Rav’s concept of the inclusion of all Jews within the am. Non-Orthodox Jews, including affiliated non-Orthodox Jews, may find it no less difficult to recognize the obligation to reach across the wall in the other direction, to accept the authority of the tradition, and to discuss with an open mind traditional positions on a host of issues. Unfortunately, treating Jews on the other side of this wall as “the Other” has permeated American Jewish culture to a degree that is not readily acknowledged, and which undermines the feasibility of exchanging ideas about the tradition and physical encounter that is needed. Nevertheless, breaking down the wall between the self and the other is itself a fundamental teaching of the Torah. [19]

In approaching the difficulties raised for traditional Jews by incorporating non-traditional thinking and practices into the traditional community itself, the Rav dealt with this inherent tension through externalization. Non-traditional thinking and practices, and particularly non-traditional rabbis and religious institutions, are essentially kept out of the Torah sphere by defining a second, larger, sphere around it that incorporates traditional Jews without letting non-traditional Jews affect the Torah sphere. The Rav conceptualized this arrangement as maintaining the unity of the covenant of the am, while maintaining the integrity of traditional learning and practice. The experience of the past 60 years shows, however, the corrosive effects of this solution. There no longer is a common enemy that unites all Jews. What is left is an Orthodoxy that claims exclusive possession of the tradition and of the people, and a non-Orthodox world that has little cohesion forced upon it from outside and fewer tools to explore, waning attachment to, and less and less knowledge or understanding of, the testimony of the tradition to nourish it from the inside. The result has been disintegration of the larger sphere, and a failure of the inner sphere to recognize and address the breaking of the covenant of the am. More practically, it deprives those in the larger non-traditional sphere from exposure to the values of living and learning in a Torah-centered world; and it deprives those in the Torah world of the opportunity to spread those same values to the majority of the people to whom the Sabbath afternoon prayer refers – that is, to make “a unique people on earth” a reality.

As a result, it is difficult to imagine the Rav, were he still with us, proposing the same solutions he did nearly 60 years ago. Would the Rav propose reconstitution of the Synagogue Council of America, which sought outreach to the gentile world, and never had the whole-hearted endorsement of the Orthodox world in any event? Or would he emphasize the inter-relationship and inter-dependence of the two expressions of Jewish unity – the ethical transcendental consciousness of the Sinai covenant of witnesses to the testimony and the political/historical covenant of a shared fate – in order to find a new synthesis of these fundamental building blocks of Jewish identity to address the existential issues facing Orthodox and non-Orthodox Jews alike?[20]

The Rav’s articulation, in his essay, Kol Dodi Dofek, of a covenant of “shared destiny” engrafted upon the covenant of the “nation-encampment” suggests that the Rav saw a dynamic relationship between the two covenants, with the Covenant of Sinai having the potential to transform from within all of the Jewish People. How he would apply these insights to Orthodox-non-Orthodox dialogue today is uncertain. Nevertheless, the paradigm presented in the Rav’s Tog Morgen Journal essay provides students of the Rav and followers of his teaching (in both the narrow and broader sense) a jumping off point. In short, we should draw from the two-part (edah and am) covenantal partnership between the Jewish People and G-d a call to rebuild Jewish unity from within, not based on the need to fight an external enemy, but on the need to return the entire Jewish nation to a ethical/transcendental consciousness of its unique covenantal relationship with G-d.

This cannot be done without dialogue between Orthodox and non-Orthodox leaders and laymen on how to spread the testimony of the tradition. A central idea behind the concept of the am is that even the most tangentially connected Jew is part of the covenant, and a necessary part of the “unique nation on earth.” This generation is experiencing an unparalleled level and breadth of Torah scholarship and living, but with some notable exceptions, has largely turned away from the imperative of Jewish unity.
We – and by “we” I mean thinkers and leaders from Orthodox and non-Orthodox educational and communal institutions – can start down this path by examining why it is that Jews are fighting each other, why we have come to think of other Jews as the “Other,” or even the “enemy.” This involves studying the texts the Rav relied upon in his Tog Morgen Journal article, but much more – the rest of rabbinic literature, the ebb and flow of Jewish unity and separation throughout Jewish history, as well as the sparks of the tradition that lie embedded in the various forms of contemporary non-traditional and secular Jewish culture. The unifying purpose of this effort should be to study what it means in our situation and our time to be a people “living alone” in a relationship with G-d. And a basic component of such study should be “partnering” with others, at whatever level of partnership appears to be achievable. The Rav’s belief in outreach to the non-Orthodox community is evident in a recent compilation of the Rav’s 1970s lectures. In one of these, the Rav drew from Moses’ encounter with the burning bush that the spiritual flame of the Jew is inextinguishable, and therefore the road back to G-d is never closed.

“This message was crucial not only for Moses thousands of years ago, but is so for us as well. No Jew should be given up on as hopeless! A Jew may look quite like a thornbush . . . We might think that it does not pay to concern ourselves with him. But in truth we must try to expand our concern to embrace everyone.”

If involvement of all Jews in defense of the am from external threats served, in the Rav’s time, to protect and defend the edah, the Torah-living community, wouldn’t strengthening the knowledge and attachment of the entire am to the Torah tradition, in whatever measures are possible, serve as even a better defense today? This “re-purposing” of the defense of the am presents a different, and perhaps more difficult, type of challenge, because it involves a kind of partnering that addresses not merely the fact of our aloneness, but the purpose of our aloneness. It carries more risk, but isn’t facing this risk itself part of the tradition?

1/18/13 GEJ

[1] (New York: Ktav, 2005 )(“Helfgot Collection”) at 143. The Tog Morgen Journal article was first published in English in Amos Bunim, “Fire in His Soul,” (Jerusalem: Feldheim, 1989).
[2]Ex. 19:6.
[3]Helfgot Collection at 144. The Rav’s paradigm would thus appear to leave out of the edah many Jews who consider themselves “religious,” but either do not believe in “Torah me-Sinai” or do not fully observe the mitzvot.
[4] Ex. 6:7.
[5] Helfgot Collection at 145 (emphasis added).
[6] Num. 23:9.
[7] Helfgot Collection at 144-5.
[8] The beit din was to be composed solely of Orthodox rabbis jointly selected by rabbis from the Modern Orthodox and Conservative movements. A proposal for such an entity was rejected in January 1956 by the Rabbinical Council of America’s Halakhic Commission, by an 11-6 vote. See, Elijah J. Schochet and Solomon Spiro, Saul Lieberman, The Man and His Work, Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 2005, pages 45-46.
[9] Rabbi Walter Wurtzburger, in an essay on the Rav’s life and writings, writes unequivocally that the Rav strongly supported continuation of RCA and UOJCA participation in the SCA, recounting that he and the Rav, along with Rabbi Klavan had strategized how to keep the SCA status quo from falling apart. See, “Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik as Posek of Post-Modern Orthodoxy,” in Angel, Marc D., Exploring the Thought of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, at 14 (1997).
[10] See, “From Cooperation to Confrontation: The Rise and Fall of the Synagogue Council of America,” Jonathan J. Golden, at 138-9, 2008. Indeed, cooperation within the SCA framework appeared to be at its highest where the “threat level” to Jews as a whole was greatest and where differences in religious ideology and practice were least relevant.
[11] Three letters from the Rav relating to requests by the RCA’s leadership to obtain a formal ruling, published in the Helfgot Collection (151-155), appear to be the Rav’s sole published writings on the matter. The Rav, together with Dr. Samuel Belkin, then president of Yeshiva University, wrote successive RCA presidents that the highly-charged political atmosphere prevailing at the time made objective consideration of the issue impossible, and deferred any ruling until an atmosphere of political calm might prevail.
[12] The Orthodox groups did leave the SCA briefly in 1974 and then finally in 1994, a year after the Rav’s death.
[13] See Heilman, Samuel, Sliding to the Right, University of California (2006), at 1-14.
[14] See Helfgot Collection at 146-149.
[15] The depth of the Rav’s anguish over American Jewry’s failure to come to the defense of European Jewry during the 1930s and 1940s was more directly expressed in Kol Dodi Dofek, discussed more fully below.
[16] Walt Kelley, Pogo: We Have Met the Enemy and He is Us, Vintage, 1972, 1987.
Internal separation and division has been an enduring theme throughout Jewish history, but often it has been akin to a cancer in the body of the Jewish People, associated with its downfall.
[17] There are, in fact, countless responses to this question to be found in the “organized Jewish community.” One recent example, written by two Federation professionals, is : Erica Brown and Misha Galperin, “The Case for Jewish Peoplehood. Can We Be One?” Jewish Lights, 2009, which discusses the relationship between Jewish identity and Jewish Peoplehood from a variety of perspectives.
[18] Rabbi Akiva said: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” is the fundamental rule of the Torah (Rashi on Lev. 19:18). A central Mussar teaching is that bearing the burden of the other is the primary pathway to this love. See, Stone, Ira F., A Responsible Life: The Spiritual Path of Mussar,” (New York: Aviv, 2006) 160 et seq., annotations to Hochmah U’Mussar of Rabbi Simha Zissel Braude of Kelm. This understanding of the Torah, together with the principle of kavod habreyut (respecting the dignity of others), provide a traditional rationale for the “outreach” that is here suggested.
[19] The potential for such a synthesis is implied in the Rav’s essay “Kol Dodi Dofek,” first published in 1961, but originating in an address in commemoration of the eighth anniversary of Israel independence, in 1956, and therefore dated only a short time after his Tog Morgen Journal article. There, the Rav articulated a synthesis of the two covenants. He characterized the Covenant of Egypt as the covenant of a “nation-camp realized through shared fate and forced isolation,” in contrast to the Covenant of Sinai, which he saw as “the covenant of a sacred community and people that finds expression in a shared destiny of a sacred life.” “Our historic obligation today,” he wrote, “is to raise ourselves from a people to a holy nation, from the Covenant of Egypt to the Covenant of Sinai, from a compelled existence to an original way of life, permeated with morality and religious principles that transcends history.” See, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Kol Dodi Dofek, Listen – My Beloved Knocks (New York: Yeshiva University, 2006), at 84, 89.
[20] Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Vision and Leadership: Reflections on Joseph and Moses, editors, David Schatz, Joel B. Wolowelsky, Rabbi Reuven Ziegler (New York: OU Press, 2012), at 84-85.

Secular subjects are taught with various approaches in Jewish schools. Some take the approach that they are a necessary evil, and are taught only because they are required to do so by the civil authorities. They believe that only really worthwhile learning is that of limudei qodesh. Others take a more positive attitude toward limudei chol, considering them important at least for purposes of earning a living. Others go even further and consider all knowledge to have some intrinsic value. Scientific truth has sanctity in that it attests to the wisdom of the Creator.

Mathematics stands out somewhat from other subjects. Not only is the truth in mathematics not merely empirical but provable by reason, but there are also many areas in limudei qodesh for which an understanding of mathematics is essential. In some cases, the mathematics may even be considered part of limudei qodesh. An excellent example of this is the study of RMBM’s Hilchot Qiddush Hachodesh. There RMBM presents what is essentially a mathematical algorithm for determining the Jewish calendar.

Hilchot Qiddush Hachodesh of RMBM’s Mishneh Torah is divided into 3 distinct parts, which were almost certainly written at 3 distinct times in RMBM’s life. The first 5 chapters describe how the calendar was set during Talmudic times. It follows the rest of Misheneh Torah in relying on Talmudic sources. Chapters 6 through 10 comprise the second part and in chapters 6-8, contain the algorithm for determining the calendar in our times. It is this material that we are concerned with here. [1] The last part deals with astronomical calculations useful for determining when the new lunar crescent may be observable. This is only relevant for when the calendar is determined through observation, and has no direct bearing on the previous 5 chapters.

We will first sketch an outline of the ideas in Chapters 6-8 of RMBM. The summary we give will take advantage of our modern notation for numbers and some modern terminology. RMBM used the common gematria notation, which makes the explanation more cumbersome. We will then examine some of the mathematics that we can learn by studying RMBM.

A Summary of RMBM’s Calendar Algorithm

The modern Hebrew calendar is fixed, so that it is generated by a mathematical algorithm which is based on approximations to the lengths of orbits of celestial bodies. The Hebrew calendar is lunisolar, which means that it is based on approximations to the length of the month and the length of the year. [2] The day is divided into 25920 units, called helakim or parts. Thus there are 7 x 25920=181,440 parts in a week. A month is considered on average to have 29 days plus 13753 parts. Thus a month has on average 29 plus 13753/25920 days, or about 29.5305941 days. This is remarkably close to the modern astronomical value (29.5305888 days).

The length of the solar year is based on the assumption that nineteen years have 235 months. Multiplying the number of parts in a month by 235 gives 179,876,755 parts in 19 years, or 6939 days plus 17,875 parts. Dividing by 19, gives an estimate of 365 days plus 6397 and 12/19 parts in a year. In decimals, this is about 365.2468 days. The modern astronomical value of the mean tropical year is about 365.2422 days, so this is closer to the modern astronomical value than that of the Julian calendar estimate (365.25 days), but not as close as that of the Gregorian calendar (365.2425 days).[3]

The calendar is divided into 19-year cycles. The 235 months in each cycle are apportioned to the years so that 7 of the years have 13 months while the other 12 have 12 months. This is known as the Metonic cycle and was used in the ancient Babylonian calendar. The Jewish calendar version has the 3rd, 6th, 8th, 11th, 14th, 17th and 19th months in the cycle as the ones with 13 months.

What remains is to set the calendar for each particular year. This is done by first setting the day of week that Rosh Hashanna of each year falls on. Since we know the approximate length of the year, knowing the days of the week of 2 successive Rosh Hashannas determines the exact length of the intervening year.

The determination of the day of the week for Rosh Hashanna is done through the calculation of a number called the molad.[4] This is a number associated with every month of every year, and is defined by an inductive algorithm. An epochal molad is associated with the first month of the first year, and the molad for any subsequent month is calculated by adding the number of parts in a month to the molad of the previous month, modulo the number of parts in a week.[5] The day of week that Rosh Hashanna of a particular year falls is determined by the range of values in which the molad for Tishrei of that year falls, according to some precise rules. Generally, these rules say that the day of the week should correspond roughly to the number of days that the molad value represents. Adjustments are made so that Rosh Hashanna never falls on days 1, 4 or 6, and so that the length of year is always within certain parameters.

The actual calendar for a given year depends on the length of the year and the day of the week on which it starts. The algorithm is formulated so that there are only 3 possible lengths for a 12-month year and for a 13-month year respectively.[6] The lengths of months within the year are determined by the length of year. The final refinement of the calendar is a function of the days of week of Rosh Hashanna of 2 successive years, which determines Torah readings.

It is evident from the above description that the calendar algorithm is a purely mathematical one. The terms year, day etc, are purely notional ones, and should be thought of as numbers consisting of the number of parts which the algorithm assigns to them. To be sure, in implementing the algorithm, we use actual days. However, this involves a simple process of counting these days by observing sunrises and sunsets. Anyone who knows the current year, the position of the current day in that year and the current day of week can implement the algorithm.

Mathematics of the Calendar

Joseph Justus Scaliger was a 16th century French scholar. In his De Emendatione Temporum (1593) he writes: “Of all methods of intercalation that exist today, the Jewish calculation is the oldest, the most skillful, and the most elegant." There is indeed much interesting mathematics in the calendar that is well worth studying. Here we give an outline of some such topics.

1)Representations of numbers and their operations.

We learn about our number representation at an early age. As a consequence, we tend to identify a number with its representation. In truth, a number has an intrinsic meaning apart from its representation, and it is only comparatively recently in human history that our current way from representing it has become widely accepted.

The modern representation of numbers is a decimal (base ten) positional system. There are ten symbols:0,1,..,9 which are strung together, and their position in the string determines their value. The rightmost symbol has the value assigned to the symbol if it were standing alone. The one to the left of it has ten times this value, the next one a hundred times its value, and so on. These values are then added together to get the value of the string.

The operations of addition and multiplication on numbers are straightforward using this system. If an operation results in a number greater than ten, it is divided by 10, the symbol for the remainder , being between 1 and 9, is put in the rightmost column, and the quotient is carried over to the remaining columns. We continue this way, going column to column.

An alternative system of representing numbers is the gematria system used in many ancient societies. This is an ordinal system, where numbers are represented by the letters of the alphabet, the value of a letter being dependent on its position in the alphabet. Larger numbers are formed by stringing together smaller numbers. A disadvantage of this system is that very large numbers must be formed using very lengthy strings. The rules for operations on numbers using this system are also much more complicated.

The decimal positional system originated in India. It became known to Persian and Arab scholars in the 9th century, and it greatly facilitated their study of mathematics and astronomy. RMBM, erudite scholar that he was, surely was familiar with it and must have used it in his private computations. Nevertheless, in Mishneh Torah he uses the gematria system which his readers would be familiar with. [7]

A close examination of RMBM however reveals that he actually is using the essential ideas of positional notation, albeit in a different form. After all, he has to use numbers as large as 181,440 (the number of parts in a week). When he says that an hour consists of 1080 parts, he is really saying that he is using another unit to handle numbers greater than 1080. Similarly, the unit of a day is used to handle numbers greater than 24 hours, or 25920 parts. Thus, instead of using position to deal with large numbers, he simply gives special names to the numbers 1080 (an hour) and 25920 (a day). And instead of using a uniform base 10 system, he uses a system with mixed bases (1080, 24 and 7).

All this is explained by RMBM in 6.9. where he states:

When in doing the computations for the molad, whenever the parts add up to 1080, you discard them, and add 1 to the count of hours.

This is the analogue in our notation of carrying over values greater than ten to the next column. RMBM gives a similar algorithm for handling values greater than 24 hours.

These days, the use of the decimal position system is widely accepted. Even the purists among Jewish educators appreciate its simplicity, elegance and ease of use, despite its foreign origin. Most translations of RMBM's Hilchot Qiddush Hachodesh render his numbers using our decimal notation. It certainly makes the computations easier to follow, but is somewhat misleading, as his original readers would mostly have had to do these calculations solely within the gematria system. For someone whose goal is to study RMBM for its own sake, an interesting exercise is to try to reconstruct these calculations. It takes patience, but can be done.

At the other extreme, if one's goal is to understand the calendar as efficiently as possible, it makes sense to abandon RMBM's day-hour-part system completely and represent all values using decimal notation. Although this loses some of the significance of the role of the numbers in setting the calendar - the day of week of Rosh Hashanna is primarily determined by the day-value, but with notable modifications - it certainly makes the algorithm easier to analyze and program.[8]

2)The Euclidean Division Algorithm

The division algorithm is taught in grade school. So much attention is focused on the mechanics of carrying out the algorithm with modern number representation that the essential simplicity of the idea behind it and its justification is lost. Euclid did not use
positional representation , and the algorithm is independent of the particular representation of the numbers involved.

The algorithm says that if a and b are whole numbers, then either b divides a evenly, or b can be divided into a to produce a quotient q and remainder r, with the property that r is
smaller than b. The method for finding q and r is as follows: If b is already less than a, then q=0 and r=b. Otherwise, start subtracting multiples of b from a. The differences become smaller as the multiples increase, so eventually we must reach a point where it is less than b. This is the remainder r.

When determining the representation of a number greater than 10 in the decimal positional system, by moving multiples of ten a position to the right, one is implementing this algorithm by dividing by 10. Likewise in RMBM's algorithm, when converting
parts larger than 1080 to hours and parts, one is dividing by 1080 to get the quotient (hours) and the remainder (parts). Thus RMBM is giving a clear statement of the algorithm in the quote from 6.9 above.

3)Modular Arithmetic

At the end of 6.9, RMBM says:

When the days add up to more than 7, you discard 7 from the count and keep the rest. For we do not calculate to know the actual number of days, but to know on which day of the week, and in which hour and in which part the molad will be.

The concept that RMBM is introducing is that of congruence modulo an integer m.

If m is a positive integer, we say that 2 integers are congruent modulo m if their
difference is divisible by m, or, equivalently, if they have the same remainder when they are divided by m. For a given integer a, the set of integers congruent to it modulo a is called the congruence class of a. The set of all such congruence classes is a finite set, called the integers modulo m, and denoted Zm. Thus multiples of m are considered to be equivalent to 0 in this set. We deal with Zm when we are interested, not in the number itself, but in its remainder when divided by m.

So, RMBM says, the relevant set of values for the molad is not the integers (Z), but Z181440 .

Another instance where modular arithmetic arises in calendar calculations is in the 19-year Metonic cycle, where the relevant set is Z19 .

4) Functions

The notion of function is essential to modern mathematics. If to every value in a domain, a value is assigned in another domain, we say that we have a function from the first domain to the second. An example is the assignment of a Tishrei molad value to each year, which is a function from Z to Z181440. Another example is the assignment of day of week to a molad value. This assignment depends on the position of a year in the Metonic cycle, so is a function from Z181440 x Z19 to Z7. The composition of these two functions gives the assignment that we are really interested in, from Z to Z7. (The function from Z to Z19 is reduction modulo 19, the assignment of an integer to its congruence class modulo 19.)

5) Induction

The principle of mathematical induction says that if one has a function assigning a value to the integer 1, and a rule telling how to define a value for an integer provided that the value for the previous integer is known, that one has a function assigning a value to all positive integers.

In 6.8 RMBM states:

If you know the molad of the current year, and add to it the appropriate remainder [depending on whether it is a regular year or a leap year], you will obtain the molad of the following year. And so it is year after year until the end of time. The first molad is that of the first year of creation (2 days, 5 hours 204 parts).

Thus RMBM is giving a precise application of the principle of induction.

6)Other mathematical topics

A more detailed analysis of the calendar gives rise to several other interesting mathematical topics.

One can ask for the periodicity of the calendar, that is how often the calendar repeats itself. It turns out that the period is 19 x 181440 /d years, where d is the greatest common divisor of 181440 and 69715 (the number of parts mod 181440 in a 19-year period, which is 5. Thus the period is 689472 years. As a consequence we can consider the molad function as one from Z689472 to Z181440.

One can ask for the inverse of this function, that is, which years have a given molad. The answer uses a concept that is known as the extended Euclidean Greatest Common Divisor algorithm. It turns out that for a given molad there are either 3 or 4 values in Z689472 which take on that molad value, depending on its congruence modulo 5.

Details of these and other topics can be found in the reference in footnote 8.

Conclusion

The calendar plays a central part in Jewish ritual life, yet the principles behind it are generally not well understood.[9] From the point of view of Jewish studies, mathematics is essential for a thorough understanding of its calendar. RMBM’s superb understanding of the mathematics involved and his lucid exposition come through in the study. The contemporary student has the advantage of modern notation and terminology which makes the mathematics considerably more accessible than previously.

From the point of mathematics education, the calendar offers motivation for studying several important topics. The mathematics teacher often encounters skepticism from students as to the usefulness of the subject, and studying the calendar makes the mathematics come to life and gives it meaning. There is a natural symbiosis between the two subjects, and serious thought should be given to find a way to integrate them.

[1] A description of the Jewish calendar was by the Muslim scholar al-Birundi in the early 10th century. An earlier work by Saadia Gaon exists only in fragments. The mathematician R. Abraham b. Hiyya (also known as Savasorda), in his Sefer Ha’Ibbur, described the calendar about 50 years before RMBM. His work closely resembles that of RMBM, who may have used him as his source.

[2] The lengths are of necessity approximations, since they are not constant over time.

[3]The discrepancy between the approximate length of the calendar year and the length of the tropical year implies that the calendar dates in our days occur about a week later in the season than when the calendar was first instituted. If instead of using the metonic estimate for the number of months in a year, we used the astronomical value, the average year length would be about 365.242256 days. Thus about 99% of the discrepancy in year length is due to the error in the metonic estimate. However, the sages in instituting the calendar had to find a small integral number of months to fit into a small integral number of years. Given this constraint, the choice of Metonic cycle was probably optimal.

[4] Molad is usually traslated as lunar conjunction. RMBM distinguishes beteween molad amiti, the true molad, and molad emtzai, which is best thought of as a theoretical number. It doesn’t correspond to any real time, but is a value used to determine the calendar.

[5] This concept is presented in more detail below.

[6] Since the difference between the moladim of 2 subsequent months equals the number of parts in a month, the difference between the moladim of 2 months which are 19 years apart will differ by the number of parts in 19 years. This guarantees that, although there is much variation in the length of the year, the average length of the calendar year will be exactly 365 days plus 6397 and 12/19 parts.

[7] In contrast, al-Biruni used Indian decimals in his description of the Jewish calendar.
His readers had already been introduced to this representation of numbers by the mathematician
Al-Khwarizmi. RMBM's readers, on the other hand, were mostly not familiar with this notation.

[8] See “A Mathematical Analysis of the Hebrew Calendar”, http://www.math.uga.edu/~lenny/papers/PaperList.html, where this is done.

[9] The mischaracterization of the molad as a physical event in the Artscroll siddur and the Chabad web site attests to this. This is also seen in the way the molad is described in printed calendars and announced in synagogues. Instead of using the natural, Jewish way of referring to the week day by its number, it is translated into its secular equivalent. For example, Day 2, 5 hours becomes Sunday evening at 11 PM. The purpose of such a translation eludes us, since to use the molad for its intended purpose, one would have to translate it back into a number. What is even more bizarre, some calendars adjust the molad in summer for daylight savings time!

Issachar and Zebulun are said to have founded an economic model that has become popular within a segment of Orthodox Jewish society. The model is commonly viewed as follows: Issachar “bore the yoke of Torah,” devoting himself exclusively to study, while Zebulun was a successful global merchant. Recognizing the benefits and deficiencies of their single-track careers, they contracted to share the rewards, if not the burdens, of their respective interests. Each brother received goods produced by the labor of the other. Lacking time for constant study, Zebulun financed his brother’s cerebrally pious lifestyle and, in return, was guaranteed a portion of Issachar’s metaphysical reward. Issachar avoided traditional work but, thanks to Zebulun, he could still put food on the table.

The paradigm just described turns out to be based on a superficial and incomplete reading of Issachar’s image in the Bible, in the traditional biblical commentaries, and in the literature of the Sages.

As with many midrashic themes, the Sages derived the concept of an Issachar-Zebulun partnership from cryptic but suggestive biblical language. The relevant biblical passages are below. The first is from Jacob’s poetic blessings of the tribes; the second, from the blessings of Moses. The final passage is from an account of King David’s coronation in the Book of Chronicles (translations from the New JPS version):

Issachar is a strong-boned ass,
Crouching among the sheepfolds.
When he saw how good was security,
And how pleasant was the country,
He bent his shoulder to the burden,
And became a toiling serf (Gen. 49:14-15).

And of Zebulun he said:
Rejoice, Zebulun, on your journeys;
And, Issachar, in your tents (Deut. 33:18).

Of the Issacharites, men who knew how to interpret the signs of the times, to determine how Israel should act; their chiefs were two-hundred, and all their kinsmen followed them (I Chron. 12:33).

To celebrate David’s ascension to the throne, Chronicles reports, nearly all the tribes of Israel sent large delegations of their best soldiers to Hebron. The Issacharite team was unique; instead of fighters, they sent a small cadre of two-hundred men who were expert in reading the ”signs of the times.” This expression is ambiguous, and the precise nature of the two-hundred Issacharites is something of a mystery. Jewish translations and commentaries provide multiple explanations, including suggestions that they were astrologers, astronomers, or gifted policy makers with broad expertise on national issues. The Midrash identified them as legislators who were experts on the Hebrew calendar, specifically, the rules of intercalation (i.e., when and how to add a thirteenth lunar month to the year). Having mastered this highly technical area of the law, the Issacharite council was charged with determining -- for an entire people -- the proper days to observe the biblical holidays. This must have been a daunting responsibility, as both religious observance and national unity depended on it.

The central biblical source-text on Issachar is our passage from Genesis. However, the metaphors in Jacob’s blessing, while detailed and colorful, are hardly transparent. Jacob compares the tribe to a crouching, toiling donkey, who willingly bears some sort of burden as “a toiling serf (mas ‘oved)”; but it is unclear from the text whom Issachar serves and of what his service consists. Rashi, following the Sages, defines Issachar’s burden as Torah study, and he adds Zebulun’s supporting role to his portrait. On the surface, Rashi appears to promote the current paradigm, in which Zebulun goes to work and earns a living while Issachar “sits and learns.” Read carefully, however, Rashi’s description is nuanced and strikingly different from that paradigm.

The popular model assumes that by virtue of his single-minded dedication to Torah study, Issachar had a right to Zebulun’s financial support. But Rashi himself underlines Issachar’s responsibilities, rather than his privileges, and says nothing at all about Issachar’s rights to external subsidies. As a serf who “bent his shoulder to the burden,” Issachar owed specific services, not only to his patron but, in Rashi’s words, to “all of his Israelite kinsmen.” For the privilege (not the right) of Zebulun’s investment, Issachar was obligated, according to Rashi, “to provide [the nation of Israel] with religious instruction and with [decisions on] the intercalation of the calendar,” i.e., setting the calendar and the holidays. Rashi’s model essentially depicts Issachar as a utility, providing a real, if spiritual, commodity to the nation. Issachar’s scholarship was only a means to satisfy the Jewish people’s religious and cultural needs; it was not as an end in itself.

In Rashi’s portrayal, as it happens, Issachar also brought a physical commodity to his partnership with Zebulun. On the words “he saw how good was security (va-yar menuha ki tov),” Rashi cites the view of the midrash and Onkelos that Issachar’s land produced superior fruit, allowing him to spend minimal time at work in the orchard. A related midrashic opinion, not cited by Rashi, takes the expression “when he saw . . . how pleasant was the country” at face value; “this refers to his land,” in the words of an alternate view (yesh omrim) in the midrash. But even Rashi’s conception of Issachar includes an element of real labor. Rather than a completely passive recipient of charitable gifts from Zebulun, Issachar grew his own fruit and utilized his merchant brother to bring them to market. On at least some days, we would find Rashi’s Issachar in the orchard, rather than the beit midrash.

Other exegetes on the pages of Mikraot Gedolot offer alternative views of Issachar that are worth considering in contrast to the currently popular model. Rashbam, following the midrashic thread mentioned previously, portrays Issachar as a farmer rather than a scholar. Seeing “how pleasant was the country,” Issachar preferred an agrarian lifestyle, became highly successful and wealthy, but was also heavily taxed by the Israelite kings in the form of tithes from his vast produce. Much more harshly, Ibn Ezra suggests the Issacharites “lacked courage” and were thus assessed a draft-dodging fine or, to avoid conquest, they paid protection money to the surrounding powers. Ibn Ezra’s portrait of a rather emasculated Issachar appears to be inspired by our passage in Chronicles; if they were able to fight, why would Issachar not send soldiers to King David’s inauguration, like the other tribes? (Interestingly, Onkelos portrays Issachar in the very opposite light. Following another midrash, he says that Issachar achieved extraordinary military success against his enemies, turning them into “toiling serfs.”) For the Rashbam and Ibn Ezra, Issachar was never dependent on the financial support of any other tribe. In fact, the reality was just the opposite; by establishing a mostly self-serving economy, Issachar -- not Zebulun -- was in debt to his brothers. His books were regularly audited and he was forced to give up a substantial percentage of profits to the national treasury.

Moses’ two-word blessing to Issachar is even more mysterious than Jacob’s. How should we interpret a blessing of “rejoicing in tents”? The peshat (natural) approach, taken by several traditional commentaries, is straightforward and parallel to the previously cited explanations of Jacob’s blessing. Represented by tents, the Issacharites were shepherds and farmers, in contrast to the merchant-marine Zebulunites. Again, midrashic exegesis takes a different approach. The Sages read “tents” as a symbol of Torah study; recall that Jacob is also called a “dweller in tents” (Gen. 25:27). Like Jacob’s, Issachar’s “tents” were taken to mean “tents of Torah study,” i.e. batei midrash, financially maintained by Zebulun’s profits. One may be tempted to say that the midrashic approach supersedes the natural one, and that in this case the popular Issachar-Zebulun model is in perfect agreement with the midrash. But peshat and derash are both legitimate and religiously significant layers of biblical interpretation. I believe that the Sages did not preclude the idea of Issachar being blessed with agricultural fruitfulness; rather, they added the additional element of scholarship to the more obvious peshat interpretation. When we imagine Issachar, we may picture both.

One additional biblical reference to Issachar must be included in this discussion. From Deborah’s Song in the book of Judges, we get a view of Issachar’s character during a period of national crisis:

And Issachar’s chiefs were with Deborah;
As Barak, so was Issachar --
Rushing after him into the valley.
Among the clans of Reuben
Were great decisions of heart.
Why did you stay among the sheepfolds
And listen as they pipe for the flocks?
Among the clans of Reuben
Were great searchings of heart! (Judges 5:15-16)

Perhaps Ibn Ezra was correct and the Issacharites would have made poor soldiers. Still, when Barak and Deborah led Naphtali and Zebulun in battle against Sisera, Issachar enlisted voluntarily and served courageously. The neighboring tribe of Reuben, in contrast, sat out the war. The Reubenites themselves, of course, believed that their lofty contributions were necessary and sufficient: “Among the clans of Reuben were great decisions of heart,” Deborah sang with bitterness and sarcasm. After all, the Reubenites were the (self-appointed) thought leaders of Israel, who could count on thousands of their flock to attend spirited rallies at a moment’s notice. At their conferences, they had “great searchings of heart,” analyzing the issues of the day from all possible sides. But Reuben’s meetings and pronouncements were irrelevant to the public, produced no meaningful action, and only highlighted Reuben’s isolation; in the end, they “stayed among the sheepfolds,” (bein ha-mishpetayim; ironically, the very same expression Jacob used with respect to Issachar) remaining on the nation’s periphery. In an earlier era, Reuben had fought at the front lines with Joshua, to pay his debt for the patrimony Moses granted him east of the Jordan. But now, in the age of the Judges, the Reubenites were secure in remote villages far from the Canaanite armies, and they saw no personal gain from joining Barak’s war. Issachar, in stark contrast, remained empathetic to their brothers, and fought alongside them when needed.

Orthodox Judaism promotes neither a single religious archetype, nor an ideal “Torah personality,” nor a monolithic economic theory. Over the centuries, our religion has accommodated multiple paradigms for all aspects of life. There are many great and varied figures in our history and in our literature from whom we can draw inspiration. The Issachar most of us know -- the full-time scholar -- was never held up by our Torah or our Sages as the one and only model of authentic Jewish living. His image has taken on other, no less ideal, forms in biblical and rabbinic tradition, including that of a man who loves to work the soil under his feet and returns home daily soaked in the sweat of physical labor. That Issachar is no less a ben Torah than the one who has never left the beit midrash. With a sense of responsibility stretching beyond his own borders, the Issachar we have described is the one the Jewish people can look to for support and for leadership, on and off the battlefield. It is time to rethink our fixation on the two-dimensional Issachar, to the exclusion of all others. The others, on closer examination, may be even more inspiring.

(This article consists of two sections with different purposes. The first is an account of how I came to take on the observance of mitsvot, and what was going on in my family while that was happening. Though it is my personal story, it touches on issues that will resonate with others in various stages of engagement with halakhah. In the following section, I address a broader set of concerns that could be useful for potential ba’alei teshuvah, converts, and those who may be connected to them.

I make no attempt here to speak for my brother, who was a friend and companion throughout. He is a very private person, which means that his story must be as absent from these pages as I can possibly manage without obscuring my own tale.)

Origins:

I come from a family of Portuguese Jews of the Amsterdam rite who immigrated to upstate New York in the 1850s. They settled in the community of Poughkeepsie as merchants and tradesmen, and as the family grew into the fabric of American life their rigor in observing mitsvot diminished. Whether this change happened abruptly or gradually is beyond living memory, but we know that within two generations of our arrival in America, the expression of our Judaism did not extend much beyond simply having a Jewish identity.

When my father was a boy, his mother pushed the family to join a synagogue, and they eventually found a Reform Temple that his skeptical father could suffer through. While this gave him a basic Jewish education, he was unengaged in Jewish life as a young man, and our Sephardic surname gave him an easy pathway to blend in with a gentile crowd. He fell in love with an Episcopalian, and her eventual conversion to Judaism had more to do with her own spiritual journey than it did with her marriageability in his eyes. Feeling that proximity to Jewish resources should not constrain their living arrangements, the young couple moved to a small Midwestern college town where the work was good, and had two kids. Thus it happened that I was born in a Catholic hospital in downstate Illinois, taking the unlikely name of “Raif” from an Episcopalian priest, Reverend Ralph P. Brooks, Jr.

I credit the first glimmer of my parents’ interest in Jewish life to the fact that as a Jew-by-choice, my mother had a reason to think about her Jewishness in an adult way that my father rarely had before they met. Through helping to introduce her to the Jewish world, he was given a pathway back to it himself, slowly breaking down a sturdy reluctance. As they tell it, a pivotal moment occurred one Festival evening when they sat down to a meal of pork roast. Although they had eaten this dish before on holidays, this time they looked at each other and said, “this isn’t right, is it?” The seed was planted, and when my brother’s birth left them in need of a mohel and a Cohen, they were finally ready to make their first meaningful contact with the community in whose midst they had lived unobtrusively for five years.

By the time I was born, their journey had progressed enough that our household was not unlike many other American Jewish families on the liberal side of the spectrum. We were members of the local Temple, and we attended services at the Traditional minyan there as often as its intermittent schedule permitted. On Friday nights we made a point to recognize that it was Shabbat by lighting candles and having a special meal, and as the holidays came and went we marked their passing in at least some intentional way. My earliest years were colored by a definite knowledge that I was a Jew, and while I had a sense that this meant something significant, I could not have articulated what exactly that was.

Our Jewishness easily could have continued along those lines indefinitely, but the summer of 1986 marked a turning point that would change our family forever. My father had spent the spring semester in Uppsala for work, and my mother, brother, and I joined him that May for the last 10 weeks of his stay. We children were very young, and the process of acculturation marched along at the brisk pace with which that age is blessed. Although we had been away less than three months, I vividly recall a day when I could not determine whether ja and nej (“yes” and “no”) were English words or Swedish. This was not lost on my parents, and on the plane trip back to the United States, they grappled with the uncomfortable realization that our family knew more about being Swedish than we did about being Jewish! Eventually they agreed that if they expected us to take Judaism seriously, they had to give it a cardinal place in our lives.

Despite the clairvoyance of this vision, knowing how to bring it about was another matter altogether. My parents knew they wanted more, but what did “more” mean? What might they change, and how far or fast were they willing to take it? Whom could they turn to for advice in an unfamiliar world whose inhabitants might not share their values? How would they explain everything their children, who were nearly 4 and 8 years old and would be taken well outside their comfort zones? What would this be like with so few Jewish peers, and virtually none who were going through a similar experience? And that is to say nothing of the unforeseen questions, which arose frequently and could have demoralizing effects. All they could do was to try their best with the information they had – to jump in and deal with the awkward moments as they came up.

One of the first exploratory steps that they took was to increase their participation in the Traditional minyan at the local Reform Temple. In style, it was a “Conservadox” liturgy carried out under egalitarian principles, and the participants were united by a desire to actively shape their Jewish lives instead of relying on others to do it for them. We met many families and young people who would become lifelong friends and mentors, and the synagogue offered a handful of resources like an underdeveloped (but much appreciated) religious school, adult education groups, and lay leadership opportunities. Yet the Traditional minyan did not meet every week, and once we felt secure there we ventured into a small Orthodox minyan that operated out of the campus Hillel Foundation. At first this strange new expression of Jewish life was alienating, but it came with three friendly young families who reached out to us and made us feel less vulnerable. That such people existed and were so welcoming made us feel that we could have a place there, and they were a big part of why we kept coming back. Since the rest of the minyan consisted of college students, there was also a ready source of tutors to make up for lost time in my Jewish education.

All of this external exploration gradually worked its way into our home life, and that was a far more challenging, uneven process than what happened at synagogue. At some point, anyone who engages in Jewish observance must recognize that its origins lie in rabbinically articulated halakhah, and they will have to form an opinion about how that system relates to their personal practice regardless of whether they buy into it. At first it was easy for my parents to let halakhah remain in the background, but as our home life became increasingly defined by Jewish elements, it grew more difficult to ignore. Eventually they worked out a three-point policy of running the family, and this became one of the most conspicuous elements of my later childhood:

1. Engaging with mitsvot is a value, even if we have not defined that precisely. Our family practice will be influenced by halakhah, but it will not necessarily be dominated by the halakhic system.

2. It is easier to bring mitsvot into the home than it is to keep them up outside. Therefore, the best way of trying out mitsvot is to craft a home life in which there is a safe space for experimentation to occur. Creating this space is worth making compromises in the practical operation of our household, which may make us feel unsafe in other ways.

3. Once we leave the home on any given day, it is up to each family member to decide how far they personally want to take anything we have learned about Judaism and mitsvot. We may observe none of it or all of it; violating Shabbat and kashrut are just as much on the table as putting on tallit and tefillin.

Under these guidelines, we began bringing mitsvot into our lives in a process that developed over nearly ten years. We started off light, eliminating certain obvious items from the menu and finding more children’s books and play activities that were specifically Jewish. My parents read voraciously and redacted what they learned into a gloss that I could appreciate as a child, often focusing on holidays, parashat hashavua and other materials whose content refreshed regularly. As time went by, we took on more serious commitments like learning Hebrew prayers for synagogue and Modern Hebrew for ourselves. For several years before taking on the real thing, we kept a form of “practice kashrut” in which we had only one set of dishes but ate only meat or only dairy at any given meal. This was paralleled by “graduated Shabbat,” in which every few weeks we would take on a new required practice or forswear a forbidden one. The fact that the boundaries were in flux would sometimes put us into comically impractical situations, and we occasionally resorted to a “five-minute freebie” after Shabbat began in order to fix the things we had forgotten to set up in advance.

By the time of my bar mitsvah, our home space was fully shomer Shabbat and shomer kashrut, and I had enough Jewish literacy to read my entire 147-verse Torah portion in an Orthodox service with which I was very much at home. We also remained active in the Traditional minyan, which by then was the only destination to which we would drive on Shabbat. But as these sweeping changes unfolded at home and in synagogue, my personal practice in the outside world was in a completely different place. The three rules of the family contained an important compromise: although I had no choice but to learn enough about mitsvot that I could observe them if I wanted to, there was a fundamental recognition that nobody could force me to keep them against my will.

The duality of lifestyle that this permitted helped to smooth over a lot of the challenges that a consistent practice of mitsvot would have presented in my younger childhood, especially given where we lived. It meant that I could eat in the school lunchroom or a restaurant just like anybody else, and that going over to a friend’s house was as simple as walking through the door. It meant that I could take part in weekend trips with my scout troop or go to the movies with my buddies on a Friday night. Most importantly, it meant that being Jewish didn’t make me “that weird kid” who had a daunting list of special needs and couldn’t do anything fun. But it also meant that I lived in two very different worlds which were largely disconnected from each other, a convenience that diminished personal guilt even as it left behind incipient questions about my identity and integrity.

During this plastic phase my religious development, two experiences in particular made Jewish life seem like something I might one day work into my practice on my own terms. The first was being part of the campus Hillel through the Orthodox minyan. This introduced me to a small chevre of Orthodox children my age, and even though they were in a very different place than me religiously, I had far more in common with them than I did with the kids at the Reform Temple (no judgment here, it was just a fact). It also brought me in contact with a self-replacing crop of Orthodox young adults who were excited by their relationship with mitsvot. Over the years, many would become tutors and older-sibling-like friends, while others surprised me by asking me to teach them things about Judaism that they did not yet know. I was particularly inspired by my bar mitsvah tutor, a brilliant young man who had learned the entire Talmud by his early 20s, and by the Executive Director, a Reform Rabbi who embraced halakhah as an adult during his time at the helm of Hillel. But in addition to these important individuals, Hillel put me in an environment where people with vastly divergent religious beliefs had to share a space together in mutual respect. If someone did something differently from my family – which was the rule and not the exception – I had to confront it and reflect on the validity of my own perspective rather than retreating to a space where I could not be challenged.

The other experience that shaped my personal relationship with mitsvot was attending Camp Ramah in Wisconsin. It was here that I first met people whom I could call my Jewish peers, for the home-vs.-outside model is widespread in the Conservative Movement, and for once in my life people actually understood where I was coming from. Since we were interested in being kids we didn’t really talk about serious issues like that in a formal way, but the daily fact of being around them was enough to start a whole new train of subconscious thought. The camp administration played a parallel role to that of our parents, creating a Jewish “home space” from the top down knowing that the campers were all over the map in terms of how they related to their Jewishness inside. We chafed against the artificiality of this environment and felt limited by its boundaries, yet we tromped enthusiastically back to camp each year, happy to be in an intentionally Jewish place.

Some Setbacks:

Admittedly, it is only in retrospect that I can articulate so many nuances of the family’s religious trajectory and of my quest to carve out a set of personal beliefs within that context. At the time it was happening, none of us fully understood the significance or consequences of the issues at hand, which left us exposed to unforeseen pitfalls. The above narrative might sound like a beautiful reengagement with mitsvot in which each family member was a united, willing participant, but it was also a jarring disruption of our family life in which personal anchoring could not always be achieved. On the many occasions where the outside world intruded into our home, I lamented the absence of a peer group with whom I could unpack my discomfort from a place of understanding. My parents simply could not be neutral sources of guidance since they had instigated the very changes that we all struggled with, and although there is a sense in which we went through this together as a family, there is another sense in which each of us went through it alone. Without a doubt, my family’s engagement with mitsvot was one of the most fulfilling and the most upsetting experiences of my life.

Probably the highest hurdle on this obstacle course arose just a few years into our journey, threatening the entire enterprise. My mother’s conversion from Episcopalianism in the 70s had been Reconstructionist, and it dawned on my parents that many Jews would have counted neither her nor her children among their number. They began to hear of stories in which “questionable” Jews had their identities challenged by busybodies and the well-meaning alike, and they knew that such an experience would be devastating to us after all we had invested in reclaiming our Jewishness. To resolve this, they reached out to a renowned Orthodox conversion authority in a nearby city, but that predictably dragged all of their unanswered questions about halakhah out into the spotlight. It took nearly two years of persistent follow-through to convince the beit din that they were serious, and in the meantime there was no choice but to allow them to intrusively dictate how we were to think about our Jewish lives. Insulting remarks and decisions had to be absorbed without recourse, the most hurtful of which was that the beit din positively refused to put my father’s Hebrew name on my conversion certificate even though he is a born Jew. It was a bitter pill for my parents, and they did not tell me that part of the story until I was 23 years old.

After this was finally resolved, two other themes emerged as recurrent internal challenges for our family. The first was that as we took more of a mitsvah lifestyle at home, participation in the Traditional minyan at the Reform Temple became less of a fit for us. It was six miles from our house, which meant that we had to drive there even though we were phasing out the use of the car on Shabbat. Its membership did not keep strictly kosher, which progressively closed off the possibility of socializing at their houses. And although its liturgical form was remarkably close to Orthodox prayer, the handful of differences became increasingly salient. Complicating matters was the fact that each family member had a different take on what the right solution should be. Some of us believed that we could engage with mitsvot and go to the Traditional minyan with no inherent contradiction. Others felt that although we must do everything in our power to retain the wonderful friendships we had made, the minyan itself could no longer fulfill our religious needs. As these two viewpoints became irreconcilable, some of us crossed permanently over to the Orthodox minyan at Hillel and others continued going to both. While we have since found healthy ways to cope with this realignment, it tore a painful rift in the family at the time.

The other difficult theme was that the journey of a ba’al teshuvah looks very different for men than it does for women. When a man begins to take on mitsvot, the sky is the limit, and virtually no privilege or experience is barred from him. If he decides to observe halakhah in an Orthodox manner, he surrenders comparatively little of his public or private life as a Jew. But when a woman begins to observe halakhah, particularly if she is coming from an egalitarian community, she must have faith that the spiritual rewards of such a course will outweigh the sense of loss that she cannot but feel when accepting a diminution of her status. The first demonstration of this in our family happened a few years after my bar mitsvah, when my exposure to the Orthodox minyanat Hillel led me to adopt a more gender-conscious outlook to ritual without understanding how this would affect my relationship with my mother. After one Shabbat meal, she began to lead the zimun as she often had before, and I thoughtlessly blurted out that she “couldn’t do it” because she was a woman. Had they anticipated this situation, my parents could have come to an agreement about how to share halakhic spaces in our home, and might have challenged me to reflect on where this belief had come from. As it was, I surprised my father out of his composure, and he found himself justifying my rendering of the situation instead of supporting my mother in her hour of need. She was bitterly wounded, and we retreated into a surly defensiveness as her justifiable anger blew up in his face. Curiously, the version of the story that I remembered years later cast my father as the initial objector who provoked her outburst. I take this as an indication of how far my position on women and halakhah has changed in the meantime.

By now we have been navigating these minefields in our family life for many years, agreeing on a set of compromises and truces that have taken the teeth out of the problem, if not the sting. Our unconditional love for one another has meant that we try to meet each family member were they are, knowing that no single choice will satisfy everyone. If I said that we have worked out all the issues and are going along just fine, it would plainly be a lie, but we have made a lot of progress. Sometimes it is better to serve an unusual mix of ingredients in a salad bowl than to burn them in a melting pot.

Taking the Tiller:

Until my early teens, the development of my Jewish self took place in an environment in which my parents were the principal actors. While I could define my own boundaries within their story, it was they who set the ship in motion and oversaw its general course. The first time that I made an independent decision about my relationship with Judaism happened the summer after seventh grade, through a situation that was created unintentionally by the staff at Camp Ramah. Since the administration valued having services three times a day, campers would frequently get into trouble for leaving their kippot in their bunks, and I took to wearing one all the time as a purely practical measure to prevent this from happening. The morning after I returned to the real world, I thoughtlessly plopped a kippah on my head just as I had done every day for the past two months. Looking in the mirror, I was quite surprised that I didn’t want to take it off. It just “felt right,” whatever that means, and I have worn a kippah every day of my life since then despite the many eyebrows that it raised among my peers in the beginning.

As it turned out, this particular habit would have a far greater significance for me than I anticipated when I first adopted it. For reasons that are only tangential to this narrative I began hanging out with “the bad kids” at school around this time, forming meaningful friendships that would affect the next few years of my life for both good and ill. Unlike many of them I did well in school, but I readily adopted their freewheeling lifestyle and became a source of worry for my parents. On a fateful Friday evening a few months after my bar mitsvah, I met up with one such friend to hang out, and we decided to see if we could get our hands on some beer. While this would not have been hard for under-aged college kids at a party campus like my hometown, we middle schoolers were too young looking to pull that off, and petty theft was more our line. Strolling into a convenience store not half a mile from where I would pray the next morning, I engaged the clerk in conversation while my friend snuck back to the cooler and stuffed a six-pack into his oversized jacket. After a brief round of small talk, the clerk noticed my kippah (yes, I was wearing it even then!) and began asking me an intelligent series of questions about Jewish practice. It turned out that he was an observant Ethiopian Christian, and he was fascinated by the concept of a divine law governing all human behavior. I found myself describing halakhah and mitsvot in terms of “we do X” or “we don’t do Y,” and the whole time a little voice in the back of my head was saying “...uh, aren’t you stealing beer from this guy to go under-aged drinking on Shabbat?!‘We’ my aunt Fanny!”

When I got home that night, I decided that I had crossed a line with myself that I could never repeat. To recover my integrity, I had to either try and keep mitsvot in a real way or stop representing myself as someone who does. Aware that both choices would involve giving something up, I decided to try the mitsvot option for a period of one month and see how it felt. My parents were supportive of this even though I couldn’t bring myself to tell them the real impetus behind it, and I was pleasantly surprised to discover that my motley crew of friends deeply respected the direction I was headed in. While on the surface they were a shady bunch that exerted a “bad influence” on me, I don’t think that I could have gotten through the transitional period without them. They were nearly all gentiles, yet they arranged our social gatherings so that I wouldn’t need to drive or use the telephone on Shabbat, and they went out of their way to buy kosher products if they planned on sharing food. At school, they aggressively put down the slightest whiff of disrespect for Jewish practice on the part of others, whether accurate or perceived. Even the curious risked their ire, and I sometimes had to call off their dogs as they defended me in their endearingly foul-mouthed way when some well-meaning student asked me to explain “them goofy strings hangin’ offayo’ belt.”

I sensed that I had made the right decision when I didn’t even notice how the first month flew by. The structural duality of my religious life was finally beginning to disappear, and with friends and family rooting for me I wanted to do what I could to close the gap at a pace that worked for me. For the first year I simply brought the mitsvot into my personal life without attempting to change its secular and hedonistic nature, treating halakhah as a set of logistical limitations within which it was still possible to keep the company that I kept before and do most of the things that I did before. Though imperfect, this stage was well suited to a high schooler with limited personal space who lived outside of a major Jewish center – only an exceptionally strong kid could have withstood the isolation that would have accompanied the abrupt adoption of a Torah life. The next major development came somewhat serendipitously, when a story that is unrelated to this text drove me to abandon all of my friends in a single night. Although I still looked for a band of misfits when carving out a new social niche, the tenor of my new existence was more loving of general mankind than in the group I had left, and willy-nilly this fit better with a halakhic worldview. In practice, the seriousness of my observance of mitsvot increased only by degrees, but the attitudinal change was paramount, and it made my personal life feel more Jewish for the rest of my high school experience.

By the time I graduated I was committed to the general direction that I had been going religiously, but the next step could have taken many different forms. I had lived an Orthodox-looking lifestyle for four years and was used to it, but I understood that its prime motivation was a striving for personal integrity before God, not an endorsement of the halakhic system per se. The only thing that I knew for sure was that I was not ready for college, having been worn out by the unremitting cycle of school and summer camp that left me ahead of my years in some respects and deeply immature in others. Because I still had religious questions, I thought it would be useful to spend the next year in Israel, which my parents encouraged. However, I had a profound suspicion of the yeshivah world because of its reputation for predatory indoctrination, and I began searching for Hebrew-language-focused programs as a more ideologically neutral alternative. The ensuing school shopping only underscored that there weren’t too many people like me in the Jewish world: if I found a program that had a high enough level of Hebrew for me, it could not accommodate those interested in keeping mitsvot, while all of the programs that accommodated mitsvot were invariably yeshivot.

After a not inconsiderable struggle I took a second look at the yeshivah courses, eventually finding a non-judgmental, left-leaning Orthodox program with Hebrew-only classes called Yeshivat Hakibbutz Hadati at Ein Tzurim. It was a huge gamble: with little preparation I traveled 6000 miles from home to spend a year in an out-of-the way agricultural community where I had no prior acquaintances and only a dim idea of what the courses would be like. The daily schedule began at 6:30 am and ended at 10:30 pm, so there would be precious little escape if I didn’t enjoy the environment. But the Lord works in mysterious ways, and as it turned out I hit the jackpot. Not only did the staff succeed in making Jewish texts and halakhah come alive for me, turning a detached interest into a budding passion, but they did so in a loving way that met me where I was. Never did they demand that I cease thinking critically or surrender my sense of self-worth, and I finally had a model of a truly modern Orthodox thinking that aligned with my own innate values.

Only when I returned to the US for college did I fully appreciate the change that was manifest in my Jewish outlook. During my year abroad I successfully maintained a long-distance relationship with a gentile girlfriend at home, but once we were back in the same city, things fell apart. It rapidly became clear that I was uncomfortable with the halakhic challenges posed by our relationship, even though they hadn’t seemed to bother me the previous year. I wanted to make it work because we loved each other and had invested a lot in staying together, but the only long-term solution would have been for her to become a Jew, and neither of us had any illusions that this would be a good fit for her. Although our interpersonal issues were still the ultimate reason behind our (multiple) breakup(s), I am certain that the religious development that I had undergone was a significant contributing factor. When I finally got over the pain of separation, I was surprised by the sense of spiritual closure that came with resolving one of the last great contradictions in my religious life. I am still not entirely sure when I started to think of myself as a “real” Orthodox Jew, but I could not date that point until sometime after her absence from my life felt right to me.

Epilogue:

Since my return to a life of mitsvot is the subject of this article, I will leave the many evolutions that reshaped my Orthodoxy in the ensuing ten years for another time. Suffice it to say that I have evolved a great deal in the interim, and owe a deep debt of gratitude to the people and institutions that have helped and encouraged me along the way. Chief among them is my wife, who has kept me on my toes in a beautiful quest of reflective growth over the seven years we have been a couple, and who supported me in my recent decision to join the rabbinical seminary at Yeshivat Chovevei Torah. Her loving and well-articulated challenges of my ideological positions are an important part of the Jew that I am today, and have affected the way in which I interpret the meaning of my story before we met. I have great hopes for what we will accomplish together as a Jewish household, and wherever we end up we will have come a long way from my parents’ Festival dinner of pork roast 35 years ago.

Just because a personal story is meaningful and transformative does not necessarily make it a universal model that everyone should emulate. That being said, the pathway I took to adopting Orthodoxy covered a fertile ground that could speak to a variety of people involved in a ba’al teshuvah or conversion story, whether as central actors or as elements of their emotional, religious, and social context. Because of this, I have shared my outlook on some of the central issues concerning the adoption of mitsvot, with the acknowledgement that my interpretation comes from a subjective experience. I published it because I believe that it will contribute to an important discussion, but I also make no claims of infallibility.

For Parents:

One of the most meaningful experiences for a Jewish parent is to witness a continuity of Jewish life unfold through their children and grandchildren. Yet this is not always something that happens organically, even in a household with a specifically Jewish atmosphere. While I recognize that the Jewish developmental environment in which I grew up was not ideal, it instilled two important values in me that I believe are transferrable to an a priori situation:

The first is that positive modeling sets a followable lead. If you expect your kids to connect with mitsvot when they grow up, then it is important to demonstrate that Orthodox Judaism is an “intellectually sound, spiritually compelling, and emotionally satisfying” way of life that enriches your experience together as a family. By consciously bringing out the greatness of Jewish life and welcoming your kids to access why you appreciate it, you increase the possibility that they will attach a similar significance to it. If you allow it to become an arbitrary, authoritarian system that continually emphasizes what can’t be done, then a negative take-home for your children will hardly be surprising. To put it in other words, you may not be in control of the Torah itself, but you have tremendous power to frame it in a way that shows why it is worthwhile for one to follow its precepts.

Parallel to this is the importance of recognizing that your children will one day grow up and enter a world in which their association with Judaism and the Jewish community is entirely voluntary. The more you can make observance of mitsvot an informative, empowering experience that gives them the tools to continue on their own, the more likely they will be to want to claim mitsvot for themselves. If they passively receive a version of mitsvot where the difficult choices are either handed to them ready-made or forced down their throats, then Jewishness may come off as something to be devalued or cast aside. No technique is guaranteed, but my experience suggests that these two values can smooth an admittedly difficult way.

For Ba’alei Teshuvah and Converts:

There are many reasons why someone might adopt a life of mitsvot, which means that each person’s path will take a different course than then next – will travel at different speeds and produce different results. Because of this, it is vital to maintain an intentional and ongoing conversation with yourself in which you articulate what you are doing and what you hope to achieve by it. This is particularly true since your journey will not take place in a vacuum, and may have extensive consequences for the people you know and love:

• What about your previous life do you feel was not working for you?
• What aspects of assuming a life of mitsvot do you believe will address that?
• What changes and sacrifices might you need to make along the way?
• Is what you hope to get worth what you are giving up?
• Who else besides you will be affected by what you are going through?
• What conversations might you need to have with them about what is happening?
• What style and rate of change will accommodate your needs and theirs?
• According to what parameters will you evaluate your progress?
• Whom will you look to for mentorship and guidance?
• What social and educational resources will you use to stay informed?
• What qualifies these mentors and resources as authoritative for you?

You may not be able to answer all of these questions at any given time, but knowing that you cannot answer an important question is better than not knowing that the question even exists. If you keep up good communication with yourself and those around you, then you will be better equipped to meet the inevitable obstacles as they come, and you will maximize your potential to grow and learn from the experience. It will be useful to ask yourself questions like these every few months, to compare your experience with your goals and assess whether you need to make any adjustments.

On the Rate and Definition of Progress:

My experience has been that taking on mitsvot gradually is less overwhelming. Once you buy into a halakhic worldview, it can be tempting to hold yourself to a binary standard that uses unequivocal language like permitted/prohibited, authentic/inauthentic, and right/wrong. I will suggest that this thinking can impede a successful assumption of mitsvot for two reasons. First, halakhah is by its very nature the outgrowth of dispute among rabbinic authorities, and unanimous agreement about a given halakhic problem is the exception, not the rule. The most renowned sages in each generation have disagreed about issues of every kind, making the halakhah more of an oscillating band than an undeviating line. Going from zero to sixty and holding yourself to such a demanding standard overnight creates the possibility that you will find the burden of mitsvot too heavy to bear, and might give up the enterprise entirely. Second, halakhah is so rich and all-encompassing that you will not be able to understand it fully at first. When attempting to adhere to a system with which you are not completely acquainted, you must resort to the stringent position in cases of doubt, which means that the form of Jewish life that you observe will be much more rigid than for people who are aware of accepted leniencies. This too can lead to an experience of an unforgiving system that asks more than you can give, and may be fatally discouraging.

Far better, I will suggest, to try things out slowly in an ongoing process of experimentation. Take on one mitsvah for a while and see how it feels, then add more in a rolling process that moves at a pace that is manageable for you. Don’t be afraid to say that it doesn’t feel right or that you aren’t ready yet, or to stop doing something that you started if that is what you need. When you begin to introduce yourself to observant communities whom you might look to for mentoring, be open about the fact that you are not exactly sure where you are going, and have not yet adopted mitsvot completely. If they reject you because of this, then it is not a safe place for you in any case. Ideally, you should be able to find a social support network that understands your vulnerability – that helps you along the way at your own speed without taking advantage of your weaknesses to perpetuate their own agendas. Sometimes the journey can be as meaningful as the final destination, and it is helpful to do your traveling in a company that is open to this even if they have never been in that kind of place themselves.

On Pseudo-Authenticity and Oversimplification:

Many of us have had at least some exposure to forms of Orthodox Judaism that are led by charismatic figures who appear enviably self-assured in the world of mitsvot, and who wear the label of “authentic” Judaism proudly on their sleeves. They seem to have an answer for every challenge and a gem of sagacious advice for every seeker. No problem in the world appears to ruffle their sense that the black-and-white system that they present to all comers is unassailable from every possible angle. They project confidence in a reality that is filled with uncertainty, and their magnetic personalities have a broad appeal to many who suffer from the gnawing sense of doubt that eats at us all.

I would advise newcomers to the world of mitsvot to be extremely cautious around such people. Their brand of one-size-fits all Judaism is not necessarily suitable to everyone, and until you are in a position to critically assess the things you hear from them yourself, they will wield all the apparent power and credibility that comes from superior knowledge. This is not to say that you should avoid the kinds of experiences that they have to offer, but rather that if you do decide to explore in that direction, you should keep some important things in the back of your mind:

The understanding of Orthodoxy that these leaders represent is a product of historical revisionism. As they would have it, Orthodoxy is the one authentic branch of Judaism that existed from the revelation at Sinai until today, emerging from the massive upheavals of the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) entirely unscathed. In reality, Orthodoxy is a direct response to the Haskalah, and it represents a novel departure from the looser heterogeneousness that preceded it. While today’s Orthodoxy shares a commitment to halakhah with pre-Modern Judaism, its leaders were only able to defend the halakhic lifestyle by instituting unprecedented social and religious innovations that would have been viewed as dangerous and seditious in a prior age. The reforming denominations may have created the initial rupture by stepping outside of halakhic norms, but the mere fact that they are innovative does not make them any less “authentic” than their Orthodox brethren.

Something else to remember is that life, like halakhah, is filled with gray areas and contradictions. People are inconsistent, morality can be equivocal, and we know very few things with complete certainty. When you encounter someone who tells you otherwise, regardless of whether it is in a Jewish context, you should take a step back and get another perspective on the situation. Critical thinking is an instrument that will serve you well here as in many other places, and abandoning it need not be a pre-condition for membership in the halakhic community.

In Summation:

While the preceding paragraphs highlight that adopting a life of mitsvot is not a simple undertaking, it can nevertheless be a source of meaningful growth and spiritual fulfillment if carried out lovingly, seriously, and introspectively. I would never recommend that someone start down this path merely because they are a Jew or want to become one. However, I believe that if a questioning soul goes into it with and open mind that understands and validates the risks, there is a potential for profound enrichment that could be worth the toll that it takes.

A final note that I will add is that during the writing of this article, I unearthed many dusty memories of an adolescent’s unfolding spiritual development, and was forced to synthesize and interpret them through the eyes of an adult who has moved on to another place. By engaging in this important introspective exercise, I recognized that the knowledge I acquired from those now distant experiences is an ongoing part of who I am today, and if only for that it was worth putting pen to paper. If I may be indulged in a parting recommendation, I will suggest that anyone, regardless of where they are in relation to mitsvot, stands only to gain by taking the time to think about what being a Jew means to them and how they came to the ideological space that they currently inhabit.