National Scholar Updates

Development of Formal Jewish Education for Women in the Orthodox Community The issues surrounding the education and status of women have been universal over time and cultures. As late as 1868, the English parliament was debating whether women could own property. One of its statesmen announced the following, which was picked up by The London Times, “giving women the right to own property will destroy marriages and society as we know it” (Munday, 2012). This issue, incidentally, was resolved by the Torah thousands of years ago in the divine decision relayed by Moses to the five daughters of Zelophehad, giving them the right to own land (Num. 27:1–11). But the defining issue today for Orthodox women are the problems caused by their rise to the top of the educational ladder in both secular and religious studies. Their rise in status, by virtue of their professional achievements in the secular world, is well known. What is not as well known are their professional achievements in the religious world. In the last century, formalized Torah education for women began with the Bais Yaakov movement founded by Sarah Schnirer (1883–1935). This pioneer Jewish educator from Krakow, Poland felt the need to establish a structured school system for girls, which opened there in 1918 with 25 students. It later spread throughout Poland with a complete curriculum of Hebrew and secular studies. Of special interest was the formidable religious studies curriculum, which consisted of Tanakh (Bible) with commentaries, explanations of the liturgy, Dinim (laws), Jewish history, Hebrew language, Yiddish, and Jewish ethics and values. A teachers’ seminary sprang up later to train future women educators (M.M. Brayer, 1986, pp. 122–125). In America, the Bais Yaakov movement began in the Williamsburg section of New York City in 1937, when it came under the umbrella of the Agudath Israel movement and has since grown considerably throughout the country. An early supporter of Sarah Schnirer was the world-famous sage, Chofetz Chaim (1838–1932), who gave a pragmatic reason for the need to establish the Bais Yaakov schools: Formerly a woman lived in her father’s home and was ensconced in Jewish tradition and followed the halakhot she observed there. In this home-oriented society there seemed to be no necessity of teaching a woman Torah; but in our mobile society, where women are no longer confined to the home and secular education is open to them, one should teach them Torah to prevent them from leaving Judaism and forgetting their traditional values. (M.M. Brayer, 1986, p. 129) If this was true of the Chofetz Chaim’s generation in Europe, how much more so is it necessary in twenty-first century America, where assimilation and intermarriage are at an all-time high. This legacy of Torah scholarship for women that took root during that era has flowered into the advanced level of scholarship we witness today in America and Israel. Although there have always been exceptional women who had higher education, they were relatively few. Beruriah, wife of R. Meir (second century C.E.), Yalta, wife of R. Nahman bar Yaakov (fourth century C.E.), and the daughters of Rashi (eleventh century C.E .) are noteworthy examples (M.M. Brayer, 1986, pp. 156–160). Each came from prominent rabbinical families and their arranged marriages with leading rabbinical figures of their respective generations helped cement their deserved reputations. The story of Beruriah, in particular, is worthy of special mention. Her vast knowledge, character, and scholarly reputation rivaled that of her husband Rabbi Meir. She took issue with the talmudic statement that women are literally “simple-minded” (Da’atan Kalot) or better said “emotionally fragile.” Her husband insisted that this statement was true. To prove his point, Rabbi Meir resorted to unbefitting actions that ultimately led to her death (Rashi, Avodah Zara18b). Although circumstances today are far more favorable for learned women, there nevertheless remains a deep-seated resistance to granting them a greater voice in religious affairs, as evidenced by the increased efforts to divide and separate the genders. Never in our history have there been so many highly learned Orthodox women in the scholarly text-based realm of Torah, Talmud, and halakha. In Israel we have an abundance of scholarly professional Orthodox women, heretofore unheard of in Jewish tradition: To’anot, professional women (advocates) who help in dealing with halakhic matters of divorce; Dayanot/Yo’atzot (Judges/Advisors) who make halakhic decisions on women’s issues relating to family purity; Menahalot (Directors) of women’s teacher seminaries such as Michlalah, Machon Gold, and so forth; and Women’s yeshivot (academies) such as Matan, Migdal Oz, and so forth. This virtual explosion of higher learning inevitably seeks an outlet in communal leadership in more proactive ways. As a result, we now find Orthodox women serving on community religious councils in Israel, a venue previously reserved only for men. In a recent column published in The Jerusalem Post (June, 2012, pp. 22–28) Rabbi Shlomo Riskin wrote, “Women’s greater involvement in Torah learning and teaching will produce different dimensions to the quality of Torah which is emerging.” Rabbi Riskin also reported, in an interview he had with the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, in which the Rebbe stated that “the greatest challenge facing Orthodox Jewry is the position of women in society and our halakhic response to a newly found acceptance of female equality within Western culture.” The Rebbe’s observation is indicative of one of the prime motivating factors behind this unprecedented growth. It is the rise of the Feminist Movement that began in the 1960s and that has propelled women’s issues to the forefront of Western culture. Under the leadership of Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug, and other outspoken American Jewish feminists, this movement has impacted Modern Orthodox women’s thinking as well. A number of Orthodox women led by Blu Greenberg established the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance (JOFA), which challenges traditional views about women’s participation in Jewish life cycle events and in religious services. In its wake came the emergence of separate Women’s Prayer Groups, which began to appear in larger Jewish communities around the country. These services gave well-educated Orthodox women an opportunity to practice their skills and to assume leadership positions in conducting their own services, hitherto only open to their male counterparts. Subsequently, other Orthodox women’s organizations and adult schools began to emerge. The formation of the American women’s adult school Drisha occurred in 1979, which as its Hebrew name indicates, involves inquiry into fairly advanced Hebrew religious texts. These new female-driven developments both here and in Israel pose a threat to the traditional hegemony of male Orthodox leadership. They are coming at a time when the American Orthodox rabbinate is also undergoing increased growth in numbers and influence. We therefore now turn our attention to tracking this Orthodox rabbinical growth pattern, and how it interfaces with the changes in status experienced by Orthodox women discussed above. The Growing Empowerment of the Orthodox Rabbinate In the pre-Holocaust era, “parish” rabbis served the religious needs of American Jewry, serving in communities large and small scattered throughout the length and breadth of this great country. These local Orthodox rabbis were the posekim (decisors) of Jewish law as it applied primarily to ritual questions relating to prayer services, holiday observances, kashruth, marriage and divorce, and death and burial. Their influence in addressing broader social, economic, and political issues was quite limited. The role of the rabbi was more insular, as he was tied to the religious needs of the local community. This is in stark contrast to the role of the Hassidic rebbe, who is viewed as a personal family mentor in all facets of life both secular and religious. The Hassidim were at that time a small minority within the Orthodox fold. After World War II this picture began to change dramatically. Orthodox communities gravitated to cities with large concentrations of Jews— Chicago, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Los Angeles, and so forth. This movement was in no small measure a response to growing assimilation of American Jewry, especially in smaller far-flung communities. To counter this wave of assimilation, the Orthodox communities began to build Jewish Day Schools, which gained momentum in the 1940s. This centralization of Orthodox Jewry together with improved communication via the media allowed the Orthodox rabbinate to exert a wider sphere of influence on a national scale, especially in kashruth (kosher dietary) matters (for example, the Orthodox Union, and in Day School education—Torah uMesorah). Strong centralized rabbinic leadership represented greater security and safety not only in combating assimilation and intermarriage, but also in developing an intensive expanding educational system that would produce future Orthodox scholars and lay leaders. As a result, rabbinic bodies became stronger, larger, and more powerful in the lives of their constituents. Although numerically much smaller than the Conservative and Reform movements, the Orthodox are now the fastest growing of the four American religious denominations. In a recent population study The New York Times reported that of the 1.1 million Jews living in New York City, over 40 percent are Orthodox, a rise from 33 percent in 2002, a decade earlier, and that 74 percent of all Jewish children in the city are Orthodox (UJA Federation of New York, 2010). Considering that its ally is the powerful Orthodox rabbinic establishment of the State of Israel (which did not exist in the pre-Holocaust era), Orthodoxy has become a formidable presence today in the world Jewry. This population increase is due not only to the increased birth rate among Orthodox Jews, especially among the Hassidim, but also to the growing numbers of ba’alei teshuvah, disaffected young Jews seeking a more intensive expression of their Jewishness. There is a growing number of Orthodox outreach organizations and yeshivot. Internal Issues within Orthodoxy The challenge for expanding Orthodoxy is no longer external, survival in secular America, but internal, containing and bridging the widening divergence of ideology and practice within its ranks. On the left are the more liberal Modern Orthodox, and on the right are the proliferating Hareidi Orthodox. This ideological divide centers on their respective responses to modernity and to their attitudes toward the surrounding secular environment. Within this attitudinal diversity, there is a perceptible “sliding to the right” (S.C. Heilman, 2006) within centrist Orthodox ranks. As for the role of the local centrist rabbi, he is seen more and more assuming the image of a “rebbe.” The Hassidic rebbe, by virtue of his exalted position, enjoys a special personal relationship with his Hassidim. This translates into the centrist rabbi now becoming more involved in many life issues of his congregants that previously were not part of his job description and for which he was not trained. He is now called upon as a consultant on business financial matters, occupational choices, personal family issues, parenting, sexual abuse, and the sundry societal problems afflicting our youth. Since clergy are often viewed unconsciously as parental figures, the new role of the rabbi as “super parent” induces their congregants to become more “childlike” in this relationship, which means less autonomy and more dependence. This slide to the right is not only apparent in the increasing empowerment of the rabbi, but more so in the intense impact Day School and yeshiva rebbes have in relationship to their students. As a result of their more right-wing education, this generation of students has become very visible today in the Orthodox community. One needs but visit a centrist Orthodox synagogue to observe a conformist trend, where the growing number of young men are garbed in their popular wide-brimmed black hats, black suits, and white shirts. This has come about because they attend Day Schools and yeshivot where the rebbes are recruited from the large pool of candidates available among the Hareidi Orthodox. These students comprise the future leadership of their respective congregations, which are moving in the same right wing direction in which their yeshiva rebbes were educated. This direction embodies a more insular approach to Judaism than that which was experienced by their parents. This rebbe-talmid (teacher-student) model is similar to that of the rebbe-Hassid relationship reflecting a more exclusionist outlook toward Jewish and secular life. Into this more insular social and religious milieu, we now find the learned accomplished Orthodox woman seeking greater acceptance and participation in what were previously traditional male roles. The Psychology of Groupthink To understand the underlying tension between these two movements: aspiring highly educated Orthodox women and the right-leaning Orthodox leadership, we need to examine group psychodynamics in their way of thinking as well as in action. In so doing we can better anticipate what lies ahead between these two contending groups. We are taught in Pirke Avot (4:1), “who is wise, one who learns from everyone.” Whereas Sigmund Freud is viewed as hostile to religion, his psychological insights into the workings of groups termed “groupthink” can nevertheless be instructive in analyzing our subject. One of people’s most basic needs is to belong. As a result, people will attach themselves to one or more persons. They receive satisfaction from belonging and being part of the group. The human tendency pushes us to connection with and acceptance by others. One of the difficulties that people anticipate is the fear of loss of love from others in the group. People will, therefore, conform to the group ethos at all costs. As Freud puts it, An individual forming part of a group acquires solely from numeric considerations, a sentiment of invincible power which allows him to yield to instincts, which had he been alone he would perforce had kept under restraint…We know today that by various processes an individual may be brought into such a condition that having entirely lost his conscious personality he obeys the suggestions of the operator (leader) and commits acts in utter contradiction to his character and habits. (Freud. Vol. 18, pp. 67f) Freud argues that there is a contagion of affect in groups. This is best demonstrated at organized sports games, where the enthusiasm and identification with the winner is seen in clothing identifying with the team and other external signs. This enthusiasm and affect help keep the group cohesive. The downside of this is that group thinking predominates and critical thinking is suspended. This allows the leadership to deliver an edict and there is no questioning or critical thinking regarding something that as individuals may not be acceptable. The power of the leader and the group as a whole is strong enough that to experience being excluded from the group is viewed as punishment and inclusion as reward. Freud lists the army and the church as prime examples of this theory. How do these Freudian insights help illuminate the sources of tension building up in the Orthodox community over the changing status of women? They help explain the psychological causes behind this mentality of “groupthink,” and how this in turn fosters greater conformity, dependency, and compliance with the leaders’ views. These traits of conformity, compliance, and dependence may not be discerned at first. Over time, however, in order to feel accepted by the religious community the person eventually “falls in line.” Dissent and individualism place one on the fringe of the group at best, and rejected at worst. In Freudian terminology, the leader’s demands bypass the person’s superego, i.e. conscience, in the interest of group unity. Groupthink has enabled rabbinic bodies to issue various edicts or humrot (restrictions) designed to further separate the sexes not only at religious services and functions, but also at organizational dinners, lectures, and social functions. The separation of the sexes at religious services has always been the Orthodox model. However, these new humrot exceed normative Orthodox practice that existed in pre-Holocaust America. It may be argued that they are even more stringent than what was observed in most Orthodox communities in pre-Holocaust Europe. This groupthink, however, is regressive because it takes well-educated Orthodox adults and puts them into a childlike role of accepting the arbitrary paternalistic authority represented by Orthodox leadership. The success of these efforts in groupthink finds some Orthodox women not only complying with these segregationist measures, but also abetting them by censuring those individualist women who may think and act differently. In a recent gathering (Asifah) of thousands of Orthodox men concerning issues relating to the use of the Internet, an interviewer asked several men why they were there. They answered in kind, “We cannot seem to control ourselves, so we came to get the rabbi’s guidance to help control our behavior.” This is another example of groupthink, where one’s behavior is controlled by the leader, rather than determined by one’s own free will. Noted psychoanalyst, Eric Fromm, in his discussion of humanistic versus authoritarian ethics provides another psychological source bearing on our subject. In analyzing the concept of authority, he distinguishes between rational and irrational authority. In speaking of the empowerment of the Orthodox leadership, to what kind of authority are we referring, rational or irrational? According to Fromm, irrational authority always seeks power over people, which can either be physical or mental. It is built upon fear because criticism of the authority figure is forbidden. Rational authority, on the other hand, is based on equality of both authority and subject, who differ only in the degree of knowledge and skill in a particular field. Authority on rational grounds is not intimidating and does not call for irrational awe. Rational authority not only permits but also requires constant scrutiny of those subjected to it (E. Fromm, 1942). Rational authority in our case, would allow for Orthodox leadership to adjust to the changing status of women rather than distancing and dividing them from the rest of the community. There is no need for a display of power and control by issuing arbitrary edicts such as we see in the following cases. A number of years ago a Lashon haRa (gossip) campaign targeting women swept the Orthodox community. The women were given stickers to affix to their phones reminding them not to use this means for speaking Lashon haRa. Men apparently are not suspected of violating this restriction! Another campaign directed toward women is the importance of observing higher standards of tseniyut (modesty). It is argued that some of the moral failings of Orthodox men are caused by women’s lack of tseniyut observance. A recent event occurred that illustrates the “progress” of this trend of regressive actions toward women. In 2012, in a large Orthodox community a number of unfortunate events occurred, such as severe accidents, premature illnesses, and sudden deaths. In response to these events a community meeting was called for women with the expectation that it would emphasize the reciting of Tehillim. Several inspirational speakers were invited who would offer comfort to a shaken community. The first male speaker declared that these unfortunate events occurred because women had not adhered sufficiently to the Orthodox tseniyut dress code. The solution presented was for women to become more aware of appropriate modesty, which would help prevent further disasters. A female speaker then offered a more “creative” solution. Each woman upon leaving the meeting was advised to go home and search for a garment that is not tseniyut and discard it. Though it may appear comical to believe that the unfortunate events and the solutions offered had any logic, it certainly demonstrates the psychology and power of groupthink. It also betrays an unconscious fear of the perceived power of women. It shows a tendency to concern oneself with externals such as what we wear, rather than to search internally for ethical and moral failings that apply to both men and women. A number of years ago, I attended an international conference for Orthodox mental health professionals. The theme of a major seminar was “What is happening to Orthodox youth once they attend college?” The two main speakers were very experienced Orthodox professionals. One was the Hillel director of an Ivy League College. The other was the female director (PhD) of an accredited Orthodox women’s college. Each related stories of students who had completed 12 years of Day School education prior to their admission to college. The male director bemoaned the fact that a number of Orthodox students had “forgotten” to bring their tefillin with them to college, did not attend the minyan, and were even seen eating at McDonald’s. He also reported questioning students about a hypothetical case involving cheating on a final exam. Of the religious denominations he questioned, the Orthodox students scored lowest in ethical behavior. The female director of the Orthodox women’s college then spoke about her interviews with Day School graduates applying for admission. Many reported negatively about their previous seminary and Day School experiences, specifically citing their frustrations when asking challenging religious questions. Some complained that teachers were more concerned with externals such as the length of their skirts and the color of their shoes than with their inner spiritual growth. At this point many of the women in the audience spontaneously arose and applauded enthusiastically because they felt, for the first time, someone had validated their own personal experiences. Although these reports were difficult to hear, one would have expected that mental health professionals and clergy in attendance would have taken this as a “wake-up call” to look for ways of addressing these issues. Much to my surprise, the following morning the woman speaker received a verbal reprimand by the conference authorities for her views, unlike the male speaker whose observations on Day School education were even more damaging. Ironically, the next day’s speaker, a rabbi of note, reported about his recent trip to Israel, where he had rushed to prevent his daughter’s expulsion from a seminary for asking too many challenging questions relating to faith. It was disturbing to observe the disproportionate anger directed at the female director, instead of addressing the underlying issue, which is the failure of Day School students to internalize Orthodox religious values. The Day Schools are very successful in teaching texts and rituals to those who remain within the protective environment of the system. However, after they graduate and move on to college, it is apparent that many have not mastered the internal religious discipline needed to adjust to a challenging, secular environment. The discriminatory reaction of the establishment in this episode is further evidence of the growing tension of these two parallel movements, that is, the changing status of women and the implied threat to male leadership. The question persists, how is it, at a time when the status of Orthodox women has risen to unprecedented heights in both secular and religious life that we are witnessing these new regressive actions? As in the previous discussion based on group psychodynamics, here too we may profit from viewing the problem from a psychological perspective. Traditionally, Orthodox leadership was male-dominated primarily because men were the most educated. They therefore are experiencing the change of status of Orthodox women today as a narcissistic injury because they experience it as taking away from, or interfering with their identity as religious leaders. This destabilizing effect upon Orthodox leadership is felt on both a personal and communal level. The male experiences the change in women’s status as an attack on his sense of self and identity. To redress this narcissistic injury requires an immediate response in order to reestablish his sense of value, self-esteem, and equilibrium. The way to do this is apparently to return the status of both men and women to an earlier time and space. Given the growing empowerment of the new rebbe-model in Orthodox life sustained by the groupthink mentality of the laity, these newly instituted edicts represent attempts to redress perceived rabbinical power losses caused by the rise of women’s stature in religious life as will be illustrated in the following timeline chart. These restrictions are not merely random symptoms of a “sliding to the right,” but their chronological and psychological pattern betrays a reactionary policy undeserved by our accomplished women. The following is a partial chronological list of Orthodox women’s professional/educational accomplishments since the 1970s. Timeline of the Rise of Orthodox Women’s Stature in Educational/Religious Life 1970s • Earlier graduates of Orthodox women’s colleges and teacher seminaries, such as Stern College in New York and Machon Gold and Michlalah in Israel, assume positions in Jewish life in America and in Israel. 1976 • Midreshet Lindenbaum, women’s Talmud study movement in Israel (originally Michlelet Bruria founded by Rabbi Chaim Brovender) 1979 • Establishment of Drisha Institute in New York • Establishment of Matan women’s yeshiva in Jerusalem 1980s • Increased Bat Mitzah celebrations for Orthodox girls • Introduction of separate women’s Orthodox prayer groups 1986 • Eshel-Sephardic School for Orthodox Women established in Israel • Midreshet Ein Hanatziv, an Orthodox Women’s college, established by Kibbutz Hadati 1988 • Women begin serving on Israeli Religious Councils. 1990s • Rabbi S. Riskin of Ohr Torah Stone spearheads movement to establish a school for To’anot (female rabbinical advocates) dealing with women’s halakhic issues 1997 • Nishmat, Torah study center for women begins to train Yo’atzot (female halakhic advisors) regarding Niddah (laws of Jewish family purity) • Beginning of J.O.F.A. (Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance) in America • Migdal Oz, a women’s Bet Midrash, established in Israel 1998 • Machon L’Parnasah – Orthodox women’s college established by Touro College in New York 2009 • Sara Hurwitz receives ordination from Rabbi Avi Weiss of Hebrew Institute of Riverdale New York as a “Maharat” • Rabbi Weiss opens Yeshivat Maharat in New York The following is a partial list of various edicts/restrictions enacted by some of the male Orthodox leadership targeting women from 1970s to the present. Whereas these may not reflect the views of many centrist Orthodox rabbis, they are included because the general rightward drift of the Orthodox movement. Measures Taken by Orthodox Leadership to Distance/Separate Men and Women • Greater pressure on women to observe more strictly the laws of tseniyut, with less pressure on males to exert self-control • Introduction of separate seating for Orthodox women at non-religious functions, such as congregational banquets, lectures, and social events • More and more congregational/organizational shiurim (classes) designed separately for men and women • Mehitzot increasingly being erected on the dance floor at weddings to separate men and women • Kiddush celebrations following services increasingly being separated for men and women • National Orthodox organizations press for the closing of separate Orthodox women’s prayer groups because “it divides the family.” (See 1980s on women’s list) • After the first graduating class of To’anot, Israeli rabbinate protested that women are entering an exclusive male space. The following year the To’anot exam was made unusually difficult to prevent further women graduates from entering the field. The Israeli Civil High Court of Justice condemned the rabbinate’s exclusionary policy (see 1990s in women’s list) • National Orthodox rabbinic organizations protest granting of Semikha (ordination) to women and censure Rabbi Avi Weiss for his actions (see 2009 in Women’s list). The following extreme measures are characteristic of some Hareidi communities both in America and Israel. • Signs warning women to observe strictly the laws of tseniyut • Separate entrances for men and women entering into Orthodox buildings • Separate entrances for men and women entering private homes hosting a public celebration or religious simha • Separate shopping hours for men and women in certain upstate New York stores • Separate sidewalks for men and women • Women instructed to sit in the back of public buses in certain neighborhoods in New York and Israel • Male relatives, includeing fathers and grandfathers, are not invited to attend graduations, plays, and even Siddur presentations (1st grade) in certain girl’s schools. Conclusion The beauty of halakha is its adaptability to meet the changing needs of the Jewish people. In less than a century since the advent of formal Jewish education for girls via the Bais Yaakov movement in the beginning of the twentieth century, education for Orthodox Jewish girls and women has reached unprecedented heights in quantity and quality. Orthodox women have established a vast network of schools of higher learning and organizations to sustain this movement. They have reached a stage where they are seeking opportunities for greater positions of leadership, within the framework of halakha that befits their newly won status in Orthodox life. Their motivation is generated by a sincere need to express their deep commitment to God and to religious life. There are enough examples to show where halakha, in the past, has been sensitive to the special needs of women and has adapted accordingly (M.M. Brayer, 1986, p. 152). Moreover, as early as the eleventh century, Jewish women in Franco-Germany demanded the privilege to perform mitzvoth (religious commandments) from which they are exempt if they choose to do so on their own, and Rabbi Yitzhak Halevi (one of Rashi’s teachers) permitted them to do so (Siddur Rashi, 1912, p. 127). However, we are currently seeing in Orthodox leadership a regressive divisive tendency via various edicts that further separate women from their families and from normal social interactions. Although one may consider the occurrence of these new restrictions as mere coincidence, their timing precisely during the decades of women’s greatest achievement in attaining professional leadership positions in the religious community, draws one to the inescapable conclusion that a causal relationship exists between women’s actions and establishment’s reactions. This is causing a growing internal division within an otherwise expanding successful movement. This division arises more from human frailty, than from purely religious considerations. They derive from fear of loss of power in religio-political terms or from feelings of narcissistic injury in psychological terms. This perceived loss could be overcome if we but learn to accept and even embrace this rise in women’s stature in a spirit of greater unity. In so doing our Orthodox leadership can find the creative means to do this within the framework of halakha. Bibliography Brayer, Menachem, M, The Jewish Woman in Rabbinic Literature (Hoboken, NJ: KTAV Publishing House, 1986). Freud, Sigmund, “Group Psychology and the analysis of the ego.” The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of S. Freud, vol. 18 (London, England: Hogarth Press, 1955), 67–134. Fromm, Eric, Man for Himself, An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics (New York: Holt, Reinhardt and Winston, 1942). Georgeson, John G., and Monica J. Harris, “The Balance of Power; Interpersonal consequences of differential power and experiences” (University of Kentucky, Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc., 2008) 1239–1257. Granite, Lauren B., and Deborah Weissman, “Bais Yaakov Schools,” Jewish Women’s Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia, March 1, 2009; Jewish Women’s Archives September 5, 2012. Grossman, Avraham, Pious and Rebellious (Waltham, MA: Brandies University Press, 2004). Heilman, Samuel J., Sliding to the Right: The Contest for the Future of American Jewish Orthodoxy (Berkley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2005). Helfbrand, S., From Sara to Sara (New York: Art Scroll Series: Eishis Chayil Books, 1980). Kohut, Heinz, The Analysis of Self (New York: International Universities Press, Inc., 1975) 11–13. Munday, Lisa, “Women, Money and Politics,” Time Magazine, March 20, 2012, pp. 23–24. Ostow, Mortimer “The Nature of Religious Controls,” The American Psychologist, vol. 13. 1958, 571–574. Rashi, On “Bruria,” Avoda Zara 18b. Riskin, Shlomo “The Voice of Women,” The Jerusalem Post, Feb. 2, 2012.

When I was in high school, a friend and I decided we needed to know whether God existed. It was a big public high school on Long Island, full of Catholics and Protestants who went to church and enough Jews to support a kosher bakery just around the corner from the football field. Everyone got along pretty well. But apart from bar mitzvahs, first communions, and the Civil Rights Movement—which galvanized much of the town’s clergy—daily life didn’t seem to have much to do with religion. God was mostly for holidays.

Yet I myself sensed God’s presence much more often, from an early age. For whatever reason, I always felt there was more going on than met the eye, that there was a Being up there Who cared about me and cared about right and wrong, and had set a right and a wrong in this world. It wasn’t a popular topic as the Vietnam War raged and college dorms started going co-ed and offering birth control pills. But for a few of us, it was pressing, and endured.

My friend was Presbyterian, and we met in choir at school, where I had some of the most intense and moving experiences of my life singing texts such as “O Magnum Mysterium” and “Surely He Hath Borne Our Griefs.” What was I to make of this? My family didn’t keep kosher, but I went to Hebrew school three times a week. I didn’t believe what I was singing, but I believed what I was feeling. So did my Christian friend. Our discussions were heartfelt and searching. We were hoping God existed, because without God the world seemed random and notions of good and evil too subjective. And if God did exist, it would matter a lot how we behaved—and we’d have to find a path.

In retrospect it’s obvious that we both really did believe, though I don’t think either of us thought there was only one correct path to follow. We knew we weren’t the first to ask these questions, and we didn’t expect to have to invent religion for ourselves. But we thought it mattered a lot to God what we would do. For me, it was going to mean looking at the best evidence there was of what God had said, what had been revealed to humankind in words—I needed a source. Sooner or later, that would mean text.

And so I set about searching, and though the only path to God is one that takes a lifetime and renews itself every day, I do feel that I found what God wanted of me in Modern Orthodoxy. I don’t think I could have landed anywhere else, and I’m always surprised to learn what a small—and to hear some tell it, fragile—outcropping of world Jewry it is. I don’t think my experience of God or life is unusual, or the demands of Modern Orthodoxy philosophically difficult or severe (financially might be another matter), at least not for anyone who believes in God as a Being, Creator, or Consciousness outside of ourselves. Perhaps what’s unique about my journey is just that I kept running into people who could explain things, and as diverse as these people were, all of them believed, and all of them were careful with language—words being so powerful, of course, that God used them to create the world. One by one, these teachers and what I learned from them prepared my steps: Baruch Ata ... haMeichin m’tsadei gaver. The first time I said that blessing after we moved into Los Angeles’ Pico-Robertson neighborhood, I knew that I was home.

So my journey began at the intersection of words and music, cobbled with contradictions and smoothed by these teachers, who seemed to come along at just the right moment. An avid piano student from the age of 7, I first signed up for choir at age 12, just when Hebrew School was ending and Junior Congregation was now for younger kids. I fell completely in love: music plus poetry, each making the other more compelling, sending the other to soar! The next years overflowed with madrigals and motets, oratorios and gem-like modern works—Brahms and Barber, Randall Thompson, Debussy and Distler—in a choir that met first period every day in high school. Beautiful years! All of it gorgeous and emotional, yet separate, mostly, from my Judaism. Would I allow myself to think about God while rehearsing Haydn’s Creation, lost in the exquisite trio section of Psalm 19: The day that is coming speaks it the day, the night that is gone to following night…? In a word, yes. Even so tortuously translated, it sang and it spoke. When the texts turned Christian—“For unto us a child is born”—I found a way. My cousin had a baby boy; Handel’s bursting fountain of sixteenth notes captured the miracle. On Sabbath and holidays in my Conservative synagogue, we prayed, well, differently; Cantor Victor Jacoby’s ringing baritone filled the room, brought down a heaven of its own. It was exotic, and it, too, was mine.

In college I began to feel more self-conscious about all this. Still hooked on choir, I noticed that the other choral majors sang in church groups and planned for church jobs. I also noticed that the occasional Jewish piece we sang was much less affecting than the Christian works. Then in graduate school, where I went to earn a Master of Music degree, I met my first important religious teacher, a secular Israeli: the great maestro Abraham Kaplan, whose father had formed the first choirs in Israel (then Palestine) and who himself spent 16 years teaching at Juilliard, directing New York’s Camarata Singers and preparing choirs for Leonard Bernstein. The first time I visited his study at the University of Washington, I saw on his desk a small stained-glass ornament that said, “The Lord works in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform.” Then, under his baton I sang the great Requiem masses of Mozart and Verdi, transported into a realm of holy inspiration grounded in texts that must have been relevant but that he didn’t believe either. Yet he led, and taught, with complete certainty, his interpretations informed by the text but transcending it; in performance it seemed he dissolved into the mind of the music. It’s a little hard to imagine if you haven’t performed with a great conductor, but perhaps if you’ve watched Dudamel you’ve seen it for yourself.

Of course this was very affirming. Professor Kaplan seemed to have no problem feeling and expressing the power of music as real or holy in a generic sort of way; like him, I could reject the meaning of the words without denying what the music was teaching me in vague spiritual terms. This now seems obvious; words are just humanity’s best attempt to share what people think they know—approximations, tools. No one would confuse the word “love” with the feeling, or say it encompassed it. So I could make a kind of separation in my mind between what the music offered and the words that had carried the composer to its discovery.

But it didn’t answer my religious questions. How was I to relate to God myself? Words are important too. Hadn’t God communicated with humanity that way? Calling Lekh lekha to Abraham, sending Moses off to Pharoah armed with verbal admonitions? Not to mention dictating the entire Torah, exactly general and specific enough to last 3,000 years so far and presumably to eternity? Whatever I’d learned studying music, it wasn’t the Torah. That was still to be found.

Around the same time I met Professor Kaplan, I also met another Presbyterian, though he considered himself “lapsed.” This young man, a medical student, was also very concerned about both religion and words and—first one, then two conversions to Judaism later—he became my husband. He had a strong belief in God, but the religion he’d been raised with, he said, was built on metaphors, and the metaphors no longer made sense to him. This became an insurmountable problem for him as a Christian, but only increased his desire to understand what God really did want. Late into the night when he wasn’t at the hospital, we would wrestle these questions together, until finally he started his residency and said he’d have to revisit religion when he was sleeping more than one night in three. That left me on my own for three years, during which I thought long and hard about whether Judaism might be wrong and Christianity right—I read the New Testament and wondered whether it was possible that God’s kingdom was already here, and that all we had to do was love one another and He would be with us. I didn’t have any Christian teachers outside of the great composers, but in any case I couldn’t accept it, couldn’t believe.

I went on to study journalism in New York while David finished his residency, and when we both returned to the Northwest, I invited him to visit the synagogue I’d joined in Tacoma, Washington. At Temple Beth El there, he found that the words of the Reform siddur Gates of Prayer made more sense to him than what he’d left behind in church. With Beth El’s very thoughtful Rabbi Richard Rosenthal, z”l, he started reading Franz Rozensweig and Rav Kook, and studying them with him on Wednesdays. One day he asked what it would take to convert, and Rabbi Rosenthal said, “Whenever you’re ready.” David had a Reform conversion, and that meant—to my understanding and training at that time—that my best friend and I would be able to marry, and continue a religious journey together. A year and a half later, we did.

We ended up in Los Angeles in the post-denominational congregation of Reform Rabbi Mordecai Finley, whose services plus lunch and bentching lasted until 2 P.M. on Saturdays and who taught us not only the weekly parasha—including stories I’d never learned, like Jacob and Tamar, Pinhas, Bilaam, Nadav and Abihu—but also the concept of spiritual discipline, the idea that the ritual commandments provide opportunities for us to bring God into more of our day-to-day actions and that, moreover, they were in the text. This was something I’d been waiting for: a way to live with God in mind. Although they were presented as voluntary, I loved each new mitzvah and concept I discovered.

The Torah asks us not to eat pork or shellfish. The Torah tells us not to place a stumbling block before the blind, literally or metaphorically. The Torah—God’s instructions!—held all sorts of commandments and stories, and by the way, many of them were very confusing without the interpretation of sages over the generations since. With that ancient elucidation, Rabbi Finley noted, they became both clear and ingenious—separating milk and meat, for example, as a way to delineate life and death in the world hour by hour; separating wool and flax, adjuring us to know when to be strong and forceful versus when to be soft. There were other commandments too, he noted, that we couldn’t understand but could take on faith—faith, something that came easily to me!

Rabbi Finley also encouraged us to hear Orthodox teachers—one year he sent us out to Orthodox synagogues on Shabuoth, and my husband David and I actually went to B'nai David-Judea, which many years later would become our home. But religiously we were still comfortable where we were. I served as one of three lay cantors, singing and arranging prayers, even directing a choir and trying to find some spiritual richness in the music. I did, a little, especially Leonard Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms. Our eldest daughter became bat mitzvah there, and when my beloved father died, there were tools both elevating and comforting with which to mourn him. We studied Hebrew with Rebbetzin Meirav Finley, and the holy language began to speak to us on its own.

It was a time of unfolding light, affirming to me what I’d long suspected: that my ancestors had hung on tight through persecution and pogroms to more than Shabbat candles and Pessah seders, as wonderful as those were. There was more there, enough to fill many lifetimes, and we were beginning to see what it was.

What drew us the rest of the way, once we encountered it, was the beauty of observance and a growing certainty that it was, in fact, commanded—as I’d sensed since high school, God surely cared what we actually did. We attended a three-part-seminar on the Orthodox view of marriage, taught by Rabbi Baruch Gradon of the Los Angeles Kollel, to which we were invited by friends who’d become Orthodox the year before, and after that I joined a series of living room classes sponsored by a Hareidi “outreach” organization called Ashreinu. The leaders of that group, Mrs. Shira Shapiro and Rabbi Moshe and Bracha Zaret, welcomed us into their modest homes for Shabbat dinners, the first we’d experienced in an observant setting, not minding that we drove there.

We were very moved by their example. Everyone at their tables, including the youngest of their children, could discuss the parasha better than most of the adult Jews we’d ever met. They were gracious and intelligent and their conversation was always rich with meaning. They were notably comfortable talking about God—something I’d only been able to do before with my Christian friends in high school, and then with my husband. And they were distinctly un-cranky—about their children, their jobs, whatever they discussed. In these religious homes, everything was seen as a miracle—exactly as I had been experiencing life all along. A high goal, they said, was to see God behind every tree, every lamp, every occurrence—to see far more than met the eye.
In my new class, taught by Mrs. Ivy Kalazan, concept after new concept lit up my world.

The shofar, she taught us, represented the blowing of God’s breath through the shell of our physicality. Our connection to God was un-severable, like the vertebrae of the spine, and could be damaged but never broken. The flame of Shabbat candles represented our yearning and reaching toward heaven, and the beauty of Judaism could bring holiness to a humble leaf of lettuce—by our washing and checking it to ensure it held no bugs. Everything physical has a spiritual correlate, she taught, and since God made men and women different physically, there must be spiritual differences as well.
This politically incorrect observation was something I’d always believed; here I had a religious explanation, grounded in the most basic understanding of creation.

I also read Blu Greenberg’s How to Run a Traditional Jewish Household and started observing the mikvah laws on my own, and then I read Rabbi Ezriel Tauber’s To Become One and studied privately; these laws and the concepts behind them, from the notion of what’s hidden being the most sacred to the idea that water is the closest we have to a physical emanation of God’s presence, were dazzling and answered questions I didn’t know I had. They illuminated, decoded in a way, my relationship with my husband, while protecting it at the same time from any possibility of boredom or routine. These ideas are so basic to Orthodox understanding, growing out of hundreds of generations’ grappling with text (in this case, Bereishith and Vayikra), and yet to David and me they were entirely new, while at the same time not seeming foreign. And it was ancient, proven wisdom: my grandmothers, and their grandmothers, had followed these laws. I was restoring a link in the chain.

For all of these reasons, really from the very first Orthodox lectures we attended, David and I began to walk our lives into this world of beauty and commandment. We loved our synagogue but my leading services on Shabbat mornings now seemed off; shouldn’t I be present for my family, instead of warming up my singing voice in the shower and getting ready to perform? We had long ago stopped shopping on Shabbat, but shouldn’t we also stop driving, and gardening, and turning on the lights? It might mean alienating my non-observant Jewish family, not to mention David’s Protestant one, which had been tested enough by his first conversion; it would also mean a second conversion for him. We loved our mixed neighborhood and we’d have to sell our home. We loved our local public school, but Ivy Kalazan taught in a religious high school—this material was available to children, during the day?—so they would change schools; that was probably the hardest thing of all. But we wanted them to know the beauty of this new way of life, and to understand it, just as we wanted them to take music lessons, study science and learn to read.

When the time came, we asked Shira Shapiro of Ashreinu to recommend a synagogue, and she suggested three: B’nai David, another that was Modern Orthodox and an Aish HaTorah center, all in Pico-Robertson—not the more Hareidi part of town where she lived. Later I asked her why, and she said that because I’d been leading services, she thought I’d be more comfortable in a synagogue where women had a larger role. That surprised me—it hadn’t seemed important to me at the time—but it turned out to be good foresight on her part.

Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky, at B’nai David-Judea, won us right away. Rav Yosef’s derashot were all about the text—how Moshe’s trials inform our own, how commentators understand the characters through back stories gleaned from textual hints, how individual words—individual words!—open windows onto worlds of meaning beneath the surface, and how all of this calls us to high personal responsibility every moment of our lives. On top of that, B’nai David was full of people just like us; by some estimates, fewer than a third of its members (at least at that time) had been raised in Orthodox homes. We were greeted there with lunch and dinner invitations, Purim baskets, and Pessah recipes, shiurim about holidays, lashon haRa, medical ethics, and maintaining the dignity of the dead while preparing them for burial. We also heard, though less frequently, about mixed Arab-Jewish schools in the Negev, and occasionally we heard from Israeli thinkers and journalists, and leaders of projects for Ethiopian emigres or Darfur. We signed up to deliver meals to the poor through a program very careful to protect their anonymity. More recently, we’ve joined a group of about 15 congregants who meet bi-monthly with a similar demographic from the liberal Islamic Center of Southern California. Coming from such a rich and challenging intellectual world before Torah, all of this was absolutely necessary for us to be observant and still feel like ourselves. I think this is true of most of the congregation, and of all of our friends there.

I hadn’t thought the shul’s women’s tefillah group, called Shirat Chana, would matter to me; remember, I’d decided that leading services compromised my observance of Shabbat. But it turned out to be quite helpful in our transition; when my middle daughter was bat mitzvah age, she was able to lain and lead services just as her older sister had, albeit at Minha with only nine men allowed to be present. Other innovations I would appreciate only later: for example, women carrying the Torah through the women’s section, which thrills me every time, especially when I carry it myself. The mehitzah at B’nai David goes right down the middle, and women can get as close to the bima, the Torah and the derasha as any man can, meaning we can see and hear everything and move if we can’t. Women at my shul say Kaddish, and I am able to say Kaddish for my father every fall. Sometimes we have women as scholars-in-residence, a woman is president of the congregation this year, and I myself am a kind of gabbai: for seven years now, I’ve been in charge of arranging which men and boys will lead Shabbat Shaharit, Musaf, and Anim Zemirot. David and I did not join B’nai David-Judea for any of this, but I would have felt much less included—and increasingly so, as time went on—without them. Because our journey has always been a joint one, if I were not fully involved (my husband does go to daily minyan on his own, a pleasure for him), it’s hard to see how it could have endured.

I’m not saying it’s been perfect. We had to step farther out of the world we knew than I had expected. Travel is harder, most restaurants are out. Raising our son and daughters, some things turned out to be impossible because of Shabbat; sadly for me, this included Los Angeles’ excellent children’s choir, along with any high school with a full orchestra or band. Even at Shalhevet High School, which is unusual in its attention to the arts, against the competing demands of four Judaic classes and a full academic program, the choir I direct meets just twice a week after school—far short of what defined my own high school years. This kind of thing has raised questions that Modern Orthodoxy tries to answer but doesn’t quite—for example, does God want us to be a light unto the nations while hiding our children away in schools with only one another, at a time and place in history when children learn together from every place on earth?

Also, I sometimes encounter signs of tribal chauvinism—a sense that Jews are somehow superior, ethnically, culturally, or otherwise, to non-Jews. This is beyond my ken, and strikes me as wholly unworthy of a worldview that celebrates the ultimate value of every human being.

But no culture is perfect, and every choice has its price. David and I still live in the big, diverse city of Los Angeles; we’re still news junkies; and we’re still hopelessly romantic about the flow of history and our small place in it—now we’re tied to a particular strand, one that feels ancient, eternal, and true. The evidence we have for this is partly on paper and partly in our hearts, as close as breathing and a just a bookshelf away.
And Modern Orthodoxy opened to us huge troves of text, all growing from the root of the Torah like the branches of a flowering tree, exquisite separately and together. That is what I set out so many years ago to find: a way to follow God’s instructions, one that works in the world we live in with all its challenges and mystery, and that ties us to God. Whatever our failings, David and I now can try to make our lives the fullest possible expression of those instructions as we are so grateful to finally understand them. This is a gratefulness that goes, and takes us, far beyond words.

In Praise of Praising Together - A review essay in Praise of Nehalel (Jerusalem: Nevarech, 2013)
By Rabbi Alan Yuter

This engaging Siddur is the post-modern expression of a thoughtful, educated, worldly, urbane, and religiously sensitive modern Orthodox lay person. The Siddur’s magic lies in the originality of its concept, the personal voice that provides an Everyman’s perspective as expressed by one thinking and feeling individual, and the public sharing of one person’s personal response to prayer.

The Siddur’s concept is a call to prayer, Nehalel, “let us praise the Lord together,” as individuals in community. This tasteful title is an invitation to the sacred, calling upon individuals to join in the common commitment to prayer. This Halakhic Siddur, as innovative that it is, never strays beyond the legal limits of the Orthodox rubric. It follows the Ashkenazic Nusach.

This Siddur, prepared by Michael Haruni, is dedicated to the memory of his parents; the dedicatory words of which bring to life the visions of religion lived, honestly, naturally, and piously. His mother “lived every smallest and largest moment of her life intensely aware this is happening under the gaze of her Creator.” This sensibility permeates the pictures that breathe new life into the old words of Nehalel.

Nehalel is a visual tribute to this vision. Haruni uses photography to juxtapose nature, Israeli historical and spiritual sights, and the expansive beauty of Creation, all in order to animate the words of the Siddur. This literary technique is not common in Jewish religious literature. The Torah, which contains Laws, Prose and Poetry, and is called “poetry” by God [Deut. 31:19], provides the precedent for Nehalel’s religious—aesthetic agenda. The Laws memorialize the narratives, while the narratives interpret the Laws, and the poetry moves the person toward God, the Creator of the world, the Torah’s Narrator, and Lawgiver. Haruni’s art serves as a visual commentary on the liturgy’s written words, providing the music to which the words are sung as well as the meanings that dart in and out of our souls as we pray. By praising together, Nehalel’s audience finds God in the written word, the historical moment, and in the natural world, all of which are summoned to converge in the spiritual moment of communal prayer.

Haruni’s father’s biography embodied the image of the archetypal Jew who wandered from the oppression of Iran to the freedom afforded by the sacred stones of Jerusalem. Both father and son share the insight that God is the non-slumbering Keeper of Israel; the father, with the faith to suffer adversity on the road to redemption; the son, with the inner vision to make music by harmonizing the insight of eye and ear, the logic of mind and heart, and the passion of conception and conviction.

Haruni, an exceptionally well-informed Orthodox layman, who is neither a professional Judaic scholar nor an ordained rabbi, translates the liturgy accurately, tastefully and thoughtfully. Quibbles regarding details are inevitable; his renderings are always thoughtfully responsive and reveal a thinking and traditional Jewish mind.

The volume opens with a two page picture of billowing clouds, dark green leaved trees, and a pasture that moves from dark to light green. The visual statement being made is that God the Author of Nature is the same God Who gave the Torah and Who hears prayer, the concern of the Nehalel prayer book.

The elegant God Who created nature also gave Haruni, the religious artist, the wisdom to know what he does not know and to seek the learned advice of others more erudite, including some very high powered rabbis and Orthodox academics. This standard of excellence of execution is prefaced by wonderfully inspiring Forward and Introductory essays.

Rabbi Daniel Landes, the senior scholar of Pardes Institute, with his erudite passion for the poetry of prayer, is the perfect choice to introduce this particular prayer book. Following the master Halakhist graced with the poetic soul, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, R. Landes explains to the reader how to change literature into liturgy, how this prayer book is a book which will help one to pray, how to see the invisible Divine light, how to dialogue with God and find answers in the words and scenes of this Siddur. Additionally, R. Landes provides the hermeneutic key that unlocks the theological magic of Nehalel. The reader is asked to see the words and read the scenes visually, and see how everything comes alive, hopefully including the reader/prayer. The volume’s title, Nehalel, “let us praise,” is the invitation for us to experience this together.

In his introduction to this Siddur, Rabbi Dr. Zvi Grumet, one of modern Orthodoxy’s most literate, professional, accomplished, and sensitive souls, focuses on Nehalel’s juxtaposition of “word and image;” he teaches that when we pray we talk to God and when we are spiritually open, God talks to us in the words that we use. Note well that R. Grumet is a master teacher whose trove of learning is shaped by his aesthetically and literary sensibilities. By declaring, clearly, correctly and astutely, that Nehalel “is a visual midrash on the liturgy,” R. Grumet concisely and precisely points to how the prayer book is to be read, understood, and used.

Ever aware that Maimonides demands that prayer is more than the mantic mumbling of words, Haruni, in his words, says “by juxtaposing of photographs that portray the meanings of the texts,” the words merge into the picture. This technique recalls liturgical public reading of the Torah. The reader must not read from a pointed, vocalized text. The reader must supply the vowels and thereby interpret and confront the text with his own, individual, idea contributing mind. Haruni asks his readers to make the effort to pray and spend the time to make prayer meaningful. He also challenges the reader, when engaged in prayer, to soar one’s soul, to be sincerely and authentically religious in the prayer moment.

This sensibility is uniquely both modern and Orthodox; in liberal Judaisms,” like liberal Protestantism, prayer is not about talking to God. It is about saying and affirming what a particular voluntary community believes or does not believe about God. For most Orthodox Jews, prayer is something to be done, an obligation to be discharged, and when done in a prayer quorum, an exercise to be performed in an identity affirming social context. Yet for the modern Orthodox Jew, real prayer is indeed a statement of what we should believe as we also affirm our place in our own community, but that is only prayer’s moral minimum. In Haruni’s words, prayer is premised on “the awareness that we stand in the presence of our Creator,” and it is to this end that Haruni’s pictures of Creation inform the visualizing individual in prayer by stimulating the soul to spiritual growth.

For Rabbinic Judaism and the prayer rubric it created, the God of nature is also the God of history. After kindling the Shabbat candles, which is redemptive human fire made by human initiative, two contrasting evocative pictures of the Western Wall are presented; one a photo in black and white of old Jews remembering the sad past, which is followed by a dark night view of an orange-yellow fire-like light piercing the darkest of the night. The black and white photo is an epitath; this contrasts with the fire-like light that praises the God of the past Who brought the dry bones of the Jewish past back to life. This stunning juxtaposition reminded me of the 9th of Av Nahem prayer where it is recalled that God brought the Wall down in fire and with that very same fire will in the messianic future build up that Wall. That picture reminds the visual reader that prayerful future is now, the Shechina has in our time returned before our eyes in mercy to Zion, and so too has Israel returned home.

After offering the liturgical blessings to be recited, those same dazzling colors, yellow and orange, color and comment on the hands of a female reciting the Sabbath candle blessing. When Israel observes the Sabbath, paraphrasing Ahad Ha’am, the Sabbath preserves Israel. Given their juxtaposition, the engaged reader/praying person uses the visual stimulation of the photo to react and more critically, to respond to the literature of liturgy, allowing the liturgy to serve as a stimulating libretto to the prayer enterprise that is called “life.”

At the very center of the Shabbat candles photo cast in orange and yellow hues is a small, pure white light. In the next picture, commenting on “those seated in your house have found happiness,” the beginning of the weekday prayer recited before the Sabbath, that white light, shining from the East [See Deuteronomy 33:2 and Isaiah 58:10] , alluding to the primordial Eden [in Aramaic, “Eedan” means time!], is more pronounced, more visible, and lightens the entire view. This light now emanates from the recesses, shadows, and tunnels of the Wall, deftly and lovingly making the statement that God has indeed come home and so too has His people. This insight is available if we have the inner eye to pray with the Siddur with the perspective of living history.

In modern Orthodox synagogues, Yedid Nefesh, very appropriately and correctly translated as “soul mate,” is sung before the Sabbath Greeting, or Qabbalat Shabbat, prayers are recited. The sun, here colored in white light, emanates a yellow glow above it and an orange glow below it. At this sacred, liminal moment, the prayerful Jew is entering what Abraham Joshua Heschel calls the “sanctuary in time.” The ordering of photos provides the footlight to the high light, that pure white light that we now realize was that Divine light that was created on the first day of creation, that lit Moses’ scrub bush but did not singe it, that shined inside the cloud that guided our ancestors in the wilderness and exile, and now has three residences: [1] in the infinite reaches of the cosmos, [2] in the sacred Temple precinct, and [3] in our praying hearts, if we start the fire. The highlighted passage, in brown/orange, “Light up the earth with your glory and we shall delight and rejoice in You,” animates the shining words. The theological statement here being made is that God’s cosmic light informs and inspires the first person’s inner state of being, delight, which gives rise to an outer expression, to rejoice in the Lord. Here the attentive reader realizes that the volume’s title, Nehalel, is the human dialectical response to the personal Divine call.

The Siddur then turns to Psalm 95, where the Hebrew text is set in a cloud-filled sky which flows from the cloud sky white to the oceanic visual blue, anticipating the colors of the Israeli flag, and the wilderness whose sun drenched sand is slowly being covered by the inevitably encroaching Shabbat shadows. Both Hebrew and English texts are shrouded in blue, with the highlighted passage, the words on and by which we are invited to meditate, “The ocean is His—He produced it and the terrain, too, was formed by His hands.” At the moment when the Divine and the ephemeral meet, the Creator and creation both rest, together, and the prayerful Jew responds to the infinite eternity of which the finite individual is a part.

Psalm 98 contrasts the white sky, which happens to be God’s abode [Psalms 115:16], to Israel’s green pasture on the left in all but the end and top of the picture a clearly newly planted Israeli forest on the left. In the upper right distance we see the unredeemed Transjordan hills. Haruni’s highlighted verse, “My pasture and all within will be enraptured, while the trees of every forest sing in exultation,” captures the secret of Creation. We have here the personification—not the deification—of nature. See also Psalm 19:3, where day and night will have something to say and have an opinion to express regarding their Creator, all with the sound of sacred silence. The Creator of the world has chosen His land to be personified, to come to life, and to be renewed by the handwork of His people.

Psalm 97 presents a dark background contrasting on the top of the page with white words, alluding to pSheqalim 6:1, which describes the Torah that was written with God’s first day creation, the white and black primordial and perfect light; at the bottom of the page we find the orange natural light of lightning. As land makes borders for shapeless water, writing enables the writer, both Divine and mortal, to create worlds for words.

This celestial firework show testifies that God is the King of the cosmos. The orange highlighted verse, “His thunderbolts will illuminate the planet, the earth will witness and tremble,” announce the Presence of that King. For paganism, the god/king is a tyrant; in Israel, the God Who is King invites His people into eternity. It is as if God calls out to Israel, nehalel, let us join together in recognizing God as our king.

Psalm 98’s Hebrew text presents a white text on a hunter green background, with the light blue highlighted verse, “Adonai has made his redemption known, and His justice visible to the nations.” The secular Ben Gurion is depicted, here wearing an out of character suit and tie, with a picture of Herzl over his head and two Israeli flag banners on either side, in the now famous black and white picture, declaring that Israel a free, autonomous nation state of the Jewish people. The juxtaposition of thunder of the Divine King, given to the secular Ben Gurion, to announce in history what was declared in Heaven in thunder, is full of ancient and modern irony. Haruni’s genius in Nehalel is its invitation for all, in and with the first person collective plural, to praise God together, with no one losing their voice. Without even a suggestion of a divisive polemic, Haruni’s modern Orthodoxy sees sanctity in individual creativity.

Haruni’s Nehalel is not blindly romantic; it affirms faith in the face of realism. In Psalm 99, God is king and rules all peoples; on the other hand, that terrestrial real estate is also God’s earthly footstool; however, the Dome of the Rock and East Jerusalem are not in Jewish hands. The highlighted verse, in blue, “Exalt Adonai our God and worship at His footstool, for He is sacred,” reminds the sensitive reader that God and not the State is sacred, allowing the reader the right to read the passage according to his or her own political proclivities. The occasional red of the Palestinian homes and the Golden yellow Dome contrast with the white Temple plaza and blue Psalm verse. Haruni seems to me to be saying that the pattern of redemption is in place; with strength, faith, peace and patience, redemption will continue at God’s planned pace.

Above we described the art of artful prayer that the modern Orthodox Jew is open to embrace. The Siddur Nehalel is Zionist; it reflects popular, main stream Halakhic opinion, and is a work of soul rather than scholarship, with scholarship informing the narrative of the soul. On the other hand, Haruni carefully asked scholars to review his work and nothing was suggested that violates the modern Orthodox religious consensus..

At http://torahmusings.com/2013/02/book-review-roundup-ii/, we find another view, by Rabbi Ari Enkin:
“I was immediately taken aback by the beauty and structure of the new “Nehalel beShabbat” siddur. This nusach Ashkenaz siddur, containing all the relevant prayers for Shabbat, is extremely unique and represents a fresh new dimension in the publication of siddurim. Similar to the “Nevarech” bencher, the Nehalel siddur is packed with extremely powerful and stunning full-color glossy photographs….
The photographs are intended to assist the worshipper in finding inspiration in the words he is reciting. …One of the photographs that accompanies Lecha Dodi features a panoramic nighttime view of the Old City of Jerusalem with the words “v’nivneta ir al tila” highlighted…..
As part of the Shir Hama’alot that follow the Shabbat afternoon mincha, Tehillim 123 features the infamous Nazi-Era photograph of a rabbi wearing tefillin being taunted by Nazi soldiers on the streets of Poland with the words “rabat sava la nafsheinu; hala’ag hashananim habooz l’gei yonim”.
This siddur is extremely Zionist in nature, complete with the prayer for the State of Israel and the soldiers of the IDF. It also has a prayer for soldiers still missing in action, not to mention a special Harachaman for the soldiers in the Birkat Hamazon. So too, many of the photographs are of Zionist themes, such as the famous Ben Gurion Declaration of independence, Kibbutz and kibbutznik related photographs, as well as highlights of modern aliyah (e.g. “v’hu yolicheinu komemiyot l’artzeinu”).
It would be remiss not to point out that many of the photographs in the siddur include women, and in some cases, the sleeve lengths and neckline exposure do not meet halachic consensus.
The “Nehalel” Siddur certainly offers readers a colorful and alternative prayer experience. The typeset is exceptionally crisp, clear, and well-spaced making for a very pleasurable read. The English translation is an impressive merge of modern and ecclesiastical English. The “Adonai” transliteration rather than the more common “Hashem”, “God” or “Lord” is an important feature for those who pray in English. Women are well represented with their own zimun, a misheberach and baruch shepetarani for bat mitzva girls, and more. Even those who, for whatever reason, will choose not to use the Nehalel Siddur for regular worship will still find it to be an attractive showpiece and “coffee table” item."

Rabbi Enkin read Nehalel, is impressed by the artwork, and judges the volume for the position it takes, against the benchmarks of Judaism as he understands them. The book is, for R. Enkin, “extremely” rather than “passionately” Zionist. This seemingly innocent choice of diction implies “excess.” Nehalel is also “Feminist,” allowing what is technically not forbidden but which has been disapproved on policy grounds by the great rabbis whose subjective taste carries the “consensus” which is the benchmark of propriety for R. Enkin’s Orthodoxy. There are indeed non-Zionist Orthodox Jews and Nehalel was not composed for them. R. Enkin is not reviewing, or explicating what Nehalel is doing artistically, religiously, or ideologically; he is measuring the volume against the norms that his social world calls “Torah.”

According to R. Enkin’s world, an ideological view revealed in the review, only an Orthodox rabbi has the right to think religiously and deeply and express onself creatively. Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik’s Halakhic Man, indeed does have the talent, erudition, and qualifying esoteric ancestral tradition to be creative; conventional religious Jews do as they are told to accept what they must because they lack tradition, erudition, and the talent. Therefore, as a pretty coffee table work of art, Nehalel serves a culture function. R. Enkin’s explicit—but not only—problem is “that many of the photographs in the siddur include women, and in some cases, the sleeve lengths and neckline exposure do not meet halachic consensus.” For him, halachic “consensus” refers to the opinions of the Hareidi rabbinic establishment. Hence the polite but patronizing comment that Nehalel may appear on the Orthodox coffee table because it is pretty and the volume makes for unthreatening conversation. What is also here being said, subtly, deftly, yet unmistakenly, is that Nehalel does not, for R. Enkin, belong in the main stream consensus Orthodox pew.’’

Like Rabbis Landes and Grumet, I initially took no notice of the “offending” photos of Israell women. And for good and obvious reason. According to Maimonides [Laws of Forbidden Intercourse 21:2], Jewish Law only forbids sexually suggestive non-contact gestures, gazing, and conversation. I have failed to find an explicit, religiously binding Oral Torah norm that clearly requires all Jewish women to cover their elbows. Those who care to act strictly of course have a right to do so; but without an explicit Talmudic norm, the norm may not be imposed on others. The post-Talmudic consensus of some rabbis [a] does not bind all Israel, [b] cannot be claimed to be law until we clarify these rabbis’ identity, jurisdiction, reasoning, and cogency, and [d] why would this restriction apply to a non-suggestive, two dimensional, black and white old photograph.

Haruni has created both a modern Orthodox prayer book and a modern Orthodox artifact that talks to Jews who have no time for silly, unbecoming games.
Michael Haruni has not only compiled a wonderful prayerbook, he has shown what a thinking Jew is able to accomplish; he inspires his readers, among them me, to take God seriously, and he has created a model for modern Orthodox creativity.

THE PROSELYTE WHO COMES[1]

by Rabbi Dr. Isaac Sassoon

(Rabbi Dr. Isaac Sassoon is a faculty member at the Metivta, the Institute of Traditional Judaism. Among his publications is his commentary on Torah, "Destination Torah.")

“We are gereem before Thee” (1Chr 29:15)

Rome was not surfeited with rulers as educated or as well-disposed towards the Jews as the Emperor Julian. And even though he evidently studied Judaism, Julian’s following remarks show him laboring under a sad misapprehension with respect to at least one element of Torah. For this is what he writes regarding the Torah’s attitude to non-Jews:

Moses says that the creator of the universe chose out the Hebrew nation, that to that nation alone did he pay heed and cared for it, and he gives him charge of it alone. But how and by what sort of gods the other nations are governed he has said not a word - unless indeed one should concede that he did assign to them the sun and moon... It is fair to ask ... Why G-d if he was not G-d of the Jews alone but also of the gentiles, sent the blessed gift of prophecy to the Jews in abundance and gave them Moses and the oil of anointing and the prophets and the law... But unto us no prophet, no oil of anointing, no teacher, no herald to announce his love for mankind ... Nay he looked on for myriads of years while men in extreme ignorance served idols [2]

His reference to the assignment of sun and moon to the nations suggests that he got the idea from Deuteronomy 4:19. That verse reads: “Lest you lift your eyes skywards and seeing the sun, the moon and the stars you are led on to bow down to them and worship them which Hashem your G-d assigned to all the peoples under heaven”. It is not difficult to see how this ‘assigning’ (especially if taken in conjunction with Dt 29:25) could have persuaded Julian that Moses considered idol worship predestined by G-d for all peoples except Israel. Indeed, some modern scholars concur with Julian’s understanding. For example, Jeffrey Tigay writes “The implication that worship of the heavenly bodies by other nations was ordained by G-d struck many traditional commentators as unlikely, since the prophets teach that one day all nations will abandon false religion and recognize the L-rd alone. ... However ... [t]he view that the nations will someday abandon idolatry and worship the L-rd alone is never expressed in the Torah, and Deuteronomy 4:19 is consistent with this.”[3] Too bad Julian did not consult one of those ‘many traditional commentators’! For as Tigay goes on to explain, those commentators include the sages who paraphrased the last clause of Dt 4:19 thus: “which the L-rd your G-d allotted to other peoples to give light to them”.[4]

But for the rabbis Scripture’s sombre depiction was not the worst news. Scripture portrays what is out there, and attributes everything to the Ultimate Cause. No, not depictions but the reality itself disquiets the rabbis, a reality that ostensibly bespeaks indifference to the spiritual welfare of the overwhelming majority of His creatures on the part of ‘G-d of the spirits of all flesh’. And their disquiet drives the rabbis now to ponder, now to agonize. One answer they came up with was that as a kingdom of priests (Ex 19:6) Israel was entrusted with the spiritual advancement of her fellow humans.

G-d gave Torah to Israel in order that they should bring it to the nations (Tanhuma Dt. 2).[5]
Hillel said: ‘[love your fellow humans] and draw them close to Torah’. This teaches that one breaks into people [’s lives] and causes them to enter under the shekhinah’s wings just as our father Abraham would break into people [’s lives] and cause them to enter under the shekhinah’s wings. Nor was Abraham alone; Sarah did the same as it says [Gen 12:5] ‘... also the souls they made in Haran’. Now even the whole world in joint effort cannot create so much as a single gnat. So what does ‘the souls they made’ signify? It signifies that the holy One blessed be He reckoned it unto them as though they had created [those that they caused to enter under the shekhinah’s wings] (Aboth de R. Nathan A, 12 [p.53]; Cf. Gen. Rab. 39:21). [6]
It says ‘If having knowledge he does not tell he shall bear his sin’ [Lev 5:1]. This means unless you preach me as G-d among the nations of the world, you shall have to bear the brunt (Lev. Rab. 6:5).

With these and similar exhortations the rabbis inculcated a sense of noblesse oblige. The fact that Israel alone had been graced with the precious gifts of prophecy and revelation imposed on her the responsibility to share with others.

The extent of that sharing seems to have been in dispute as witnessed by our citations. The first citations, that speak of bringing Torah to the nations and drawing humanity at large to Torah, would appear to go further than the third that requires only the essentials of the faith to be shared. Obviously the latter is a minimalist approach, and like all minimalism in the moral sphere, it should probably be thought of as less than ideal. The Talmud recognizes two types of ger (= convert). The ger toshav renounces idolatry and accepts the principles of Jewish morality that follow from belief in the One.[7] Then there is the ger sedeq who becomes a full-fledged member of the covenantal community of Israel. This is how the groups referred to as wood-choppers and water drawers were integrated: “You all stand here today before Hashem your G-d your tribal chiefs, elders, officers ... the strangers that are in the midst of your camp, from your wood-choppers to your water-drawers ready to enter into the covenant of Hashem ... that He may constitute you this day as His people” (Dt 29:9-11).[8]

Some have questioned whether conversion existed in biblical times. They seem to forget that Covenant with Hashem is always a religious make-over; hence conversion.[9] Later, when the idea of covenant receded, circumcision took over Scripture’s covenantal lexis or, if you like, circumcision replenished the emptying shell of berith (=covenant) discourse.[10] Thus Achan’s breach of covenant (Jos 7:11), conjures up for the aggadah an epispastic Achan (San. 44a). “They, like adam, they broke a covenant” (Hos 6:7) implies that Adam was guilty of the same delinquency as Achan (San. 38b). In Elijah’s day circumcision was neglected - according to a widely attested aggadah - for Elijah complains “the children of Israel have forsaken your covenant” (1Kgs 19:14).[11] “Were it not for circumcision heaven and earth would have had no abidance as it says [Jer 33:26] If not for my covenant [with] the day and the night, [if] the laws of heaven and of earth I did not establish ...” [12] It is not impossible that the ‘entering into the covenant’ of Dt 29 also came to be read (consciously or otherwise) as a reference to circumcision. But of course there was no need to rely on such tenuous allusions when Ex 12: 48 spells it out:

If a ger sojourns with you and would offer the Passover unto Hashem, every male of his must be circumcised and then let him come forward and offer it for he shall be as a resident of the land; but no uncircumcised one shall partake of it.

Just in case there lingered any doubt about the phrase ‘he shall be as a resident of the land’, one could always fall back on Numbers 15:15-16 - especially Onqelos’ rendering thereof:

O congregation, there shall be one and the same law for you and for the ger that converts; an everlasting law throughout your generations you and the ger shall be alike before Hashem. One Torah and one [system of] justice shall there be for you and for the ger that converts with you.

Thus the rabbis had unassailable authority not only for the acceptance of proselytes, but also for the ritual that sealed a ger sedeq’s transition from gentile to Jew.[13]

Going back to Julian, one gets the feeling that had Julian challenged the rabbis of his day like Tinneius Rufus two centuries earlier, their response might have tempered his bitterness. For Tinneius Rufus put it to R. Aqiba: “‘If your G-d loves the poor why does He not feed them?’ R. Aqiba answered ‘so that the rest of us might come to their aid and thereby escape Gehennah’” (B. B. 10a). As the rabbis see it, then, G-d invites humans to be active partners in bringing nourishment, both physical and spiritual, to those that lack. And in sharing His bounty with others, men and women find favor with G-d who will reward them accordingly. For it was axiomatic to the rabbis that the blessings G-d grants cannot be enjoyed selfishly. Or as Hillel’s apothegm expresses it “If I am for myself what am I?” (Aboth 1:14).

One could fill pages with the rabbis’ acclaim for proselytes and, conversely, their censure of those who were too quick to give up on potential converts. To cite two illustrations of the latter

1) Timna‘ was of royal lineage ... She wished to be converted. So she approached Abraham, Isaac and Jacob but none accepted her. Thereupon she went and became a concubine to Esau’s son Eliphaz, declaring: ‘Better to be a servant in this nation than a mistress in any other’. From her came Amaleq, who was to be Israel’s nemesis. Why so? Because they [the patriarchs] were wrong to turn her away [14] (San. 99b; cited by Tos. at Yeb. 47b s.v. qasheem).[15]

2) R. Yitzhaq said the night that Orpah parted from her mother-in-law she was set upon by hordes [of Philistines] and violated ... Thus it says [of Goliath in 1Sam 17:23] that he came [or was the result] of Philistine profligacy[16] (Ruth Rabbah 2:21; cf. Sot. 42b) [17]

In light of the foregoing, it might seem puzzling when we hear people assert (as they frequently do) that Judaism has reservations about conversion. Indeed many of us have heard conversion spoken of as if it were a concession - akin to divorce or the yefat to’ar law[18] - rather than a recommended or mandatory misvah.[19] And have we not just as often itched to tell our interlocutors that they were mistaken and to show them the adulation heaped by rabbis upon proselytes and the sacred institution of giyyoor? But then a little voice holds us back, admonishing us that it would be devious to show off one half of the picture without the other: the light without the shadows. For cheek by jowl alongside the adulation, the sources preserve traditions that discriminate against proselytes, including bona fide proselytes; and even a few that appear to discount the very premise of outsiders entering the Jewish fold.

Demurral vis-à-vis giyyoor has a long history. One of its earliest manifestations transpires from the polemic of Isaiah 56:3-8: “The foreigner who has attached himself to Hashem must not say Hashem will keep me separate from his people ... As for The foreigners who attach themselves to Hashem to serve Him, to love the name of Hashem, to be His servants, all who keep the sabbath and do not profane it and hold fast to my covenant; them will I bring to my holy mountain... This is the word of Hashem G-d who gathers the dispersed of Israel ‘In addition to its [Israel’s] dispersed I shall gather [others] unto it’”. Evidently, there were people in Isaiah’s society who, while not necessarily spurning conversion outright, saw those who attached themselves[20] to Hashem as not quite on a level with native Israelites. Some converts had apparently bought the myth of their own inferiority, until Isaiah was sent to disabuse them. Whether Isaiah succeeded in his own generation we are not told. What is certain is that qualms about converts and conversion persisted, notably among the Jerusalem priesthood of the Second Commonwealth. Although not all the sources displaying antipathy to gereem/gerooth can be pinned onto priests, nevertheless, the priestly belief that a person’s worth is like a thoroughbred’s, determined by seed and bloodline, fuels the anti-ger ethos.

Ezra chides Jewish men “who have married foreign wives thereby causing the holy seed to become intermixed with the peoples of the land” (Ezra 9:2). His indignation sparks off the zealotry of Shecaniah, spokesman for the chastened exogamists: “We pledge ourselves in covenant to our G-d to send away all these women and those born from them ...” (ibid. 10:3).[21] Had Ezra believed in conversion he might have modified Shecaniah’s plan of indiscriminately bundling off not merely the foreign wives but also their children. For surely not all these women and children living under the roof of a Jewish paterfamilias would have been diehard heathens. The fact that Ezra does not bother to ascertain the individuals’ loyalties, suggests that in his book, once a gentile always a gentile.[22] One scholar to reach the same conclusion as to Ezra’s probable motivation, is Daniel R. Schwartz. In his analysis of a certain Simon, whom Josephus mentions as a critic of King Agrippa,[23] this is what Schwartz has to say.

Examination of his [Simon’s] criticism of Agrippa will lead us further. For it is clear that his position is a priestly one ... it was predicated on a genealogical argument, on the assumption that there is an absolute link between descent and access to holiness... a typically priestly point of view, for priests... are, in Judaism, determined by their descent. He who is not (believed to be) a descendant of Aaron cannot be a priest, no matter how dedicated to piety and sanctity he may be. But if the question “who is a priest?” is answered necessarily and sufficiently by descent ... it is natural to apply it to the question “who is a Jew?” as well, with the result that a gentile cannot become a Jew ... Note, for example, that when Ezra - as priestly as one could possibly be (Ezra 7:1-5!) - heard of the pollution of the “sacred seed” via intermarriage (Ezra 9:2), he apparently gave no thought to the possibility of conversion. but rather moved to destroy all the families involved. [24]

Schwartz hits the nail on the head. The Aaronide priests’ attitude to conversion was hardly fortuitous. Rather does it appear to have been a corollary of their fixation on pedigree and their literal, somatic understanding of ‘holy seed’. Both their preoccupation with lineage as well as their skepticism of conversion are widely attested. We believe these two tendencies to be intimately connected. Moreover, we strongly suspect that besides Ezra, most talmudic discrimination against gereem reflects the priestly legacy that, after the loss of the Temple, entered mainstream rabbinic discourse. This theory is supported by the fact that a predominance of the ‘discriminatory’ material pertains to priestly affairs, as we are about to see.

LINEAGE

Of the priests, the sons of Habaiah, the sons of Hakkoz, the sons of Barzillai ... these searched for their genealogical records[25] but they could not be found, so they were ousted from the priesthood. (Ez 2:61-62; Neh 7:62-63).

[A priest] who wishes to marry a woman of priestly family must check ... her mother, her mother’s mother, her paternal and maternal grandmothers, the mothers and grandmothers of both her paternal and maternal grandmothers. If the woman is of Levitical or [lay] Israelite family he must go back an additional generation (M. Qid. 4:4).

The chamber of Hewn Stone was where Israel’s great Sanhedrin sat and judged the priesthood. A priest whose genealogy failed the test would put on black [robes], wrap himself in black and go hence and depart ... (M. Mid. 5:4).

SKEPTICISM TOWARDS GEREEM/GEROOTH[26]

Tobias the physician as well as his son and his manumitted slave [i.e. a convert] all saw the new moon in Jerusalem. The priests accepted him and his son but rejected his slave (M. Rosh Hashanah 1:7).

[Even] after the Temple was destroyed priests comported themselves with haughtiness and refrained from marrying daughters of proselytes (Qid. 78b).

If the supreme court issued a ruling but one of its members knew his colleagues were in error and told them so; or if the court reached its decision in the absence of the court president; or if one of its members was a proselyte, a bastard, a Gibeonite or an old man who had never fathered a child - in all these cases the court is not liable [to bring the sacrifice prescribed at Lev 4:14]. Because here [Lev 4:13] it says edah and there [Num 35:24] it says edah. Just as that edah’s members must all be eligible to issue rulings so too this edah’s (M. Hor. 1:4).

It was taught in a baraitha A court of three who are as literate as [accredited] judges shall serve for halisah. R. Yehudah requires five ... How do we know that actual accredited judges are not needed? Because it says ‘in Israel’ implying that rank-and-file Israelites suffice [for halisah] ... But R. Samuel bar Yehudah said ‘in Israel’ comes to teach something else namely, that halisah must be performed in a beth din of Israelites not a beth din of gereem ... When R. Yehudah invited R. Samuel bar Yehudah to be one of the five members of a halisah beth din, he declined saying: ‘We have learnt that ‘in Israel’ means a beth din of Israelites and not a beth din of gereem - and I am a ger ... Rava said a proselyte is allowed by the Torah to judge his fellow proselyte as it says [Dt 17:15] ‘You shall appoint over you a king whom Hashem your G-d chooses; from among your brethren shall you appoint over you a king’. Only ‘over you’ do we require that he be ‘from among your brethren’, but there is no objection to a proselyte judging his fellow proselyte ... (Yeb. 101a-102a).

On exiting the Temple, the high priest was escorted by a throng who, on spotting Shema‘iah and Avtalyon, drifted away from him [the high priest] and followed Shema‘iah and Avtalyon.[27] When the latter came to take leave of the high priest he greeted them with ‘May the sons of nations[28] come in peace’... (Yom. 71b).

Aqabyah son of Mahalal’el[29] asserted four things ... that the bitter water ordeal is not administered to a proselytess or to a freed woman. The sages disagreed. They said to him ‘Karkemeet was a freed woman in Jerusalem and she was given to drink the bitter waters by Shema‘iah and Avtalyon’. He replied ‘the likes of her gave her to drink ...’ (M. Edu. 5:6).[30]

It was taught in a baraitha: What is the definition of a zonah [that Lev 21:7 forbids a priest to marry]? R. Eliezer says the epithet zonah is self explanatory.[31] R. Aqiba says a zonah is one who lives promiscuously.[32] ... R.Yehudah says a zonah is a woman incapable of child bearing. But the [other] sages say a zonah is none but a proselytess, a manumitted female slave and a woman who had been in a forbidden relationship[33] (Yeb. 61b).[34]

Undeniably, the first two zonah definitions attributed to the [other] sages rob conversion of its essential transformatory character. Prior to their conversion, proselytes will no doubt have contravened Mosaic and possibly Noahide Torah in all sorts of ways. But no other law, Mosaic or Noahide, that a person may have transgressed prior to conversion trails the convert into Israelitehood. Why the exception for fornication - nay, the mere suspicion of fornication?[35] The answer can be found only in the priestly scheme where body dominates and spirit languishes. In that system a convert’s soul, permeated as it may once have been with idolatry, is capable of living down its idolatrous past. But the body once tainted is irremediable. The approximation of the giyyoreth-zonah equation to priestly concepts is sometimes explained as rabbis having resigned themselves to the priests’ de facto avoidance of proselyte spouses. If that is so, the citation of Lev 21:7 as prooftext will have been a rabbinic flourish.[36] For the priests’ eschewal owed nothing to Lev 21:7, but, as noted above, was another aspect of their entrenchment in genealogy and ethnic ‘holiness of seed’. Alternatively, the anonymous giyyoreth definition of zonah represents an autonomous strand within rabbinic Judaism (perhaps with Shammaite leanings) that, in stark contrast to the (Hillelite) love for converts, tended to misprize them (see infra).

But whatever its history, the superstitious belief in an inherent disparity between a biological and an adoptive Jew, consolidated; thanks largely to the allure such self-congratulatory myths have among the disenfranchised. Still, allure notwithstanding, the Hillelite tradition was never abandoned. Every rabbinic expression of reluctance towards gereem/gerooth, is matched, if not outweighed, by affirmatory pronouncements. Take the giyyoreth-zonah example just surveyed. For starters, neither R. Eliezer nor R. Aqiba subscribed to it.[37] Moreover:

It was taught in a baraitha: R. Shim‘on b. Yohai said a female proselyte who converted below the age of three years and a day may marry into the priesthood as it says [Num 31:18] ‘but every female minor who has not known man carnally spare for yourselves’ - and [the priest] Phineas was with them. But the sages say ‘spare for yourselves’ means take them [not in matrimony] but as slaves. Now all opinions [on marriage of priests to proselytes and to offspring of proselytes] are midrashically derived from a single verse [viz. Ezek.44:22] ‘A widow and a divorcee they [priests] shall not take to themselves as wives; but only virgins of the seed of the house of Israel’.... (Qid. 78a).

As the gemara at Qiddushin 78 proceeds to explain, those who forbid all female proselytes emphasize the phrase ‘Israelite seed’. R. Shim‘on, on the other hand, downplays ‘seed’ (or takes it less than literally). The word R. Shim‘on highlights is ‘virgins’, thereby arriving at the meaning: ‘those who attain their virginity in Israel’.[38] Thus according to this alternative tradition, priests’ avoidance of proselyte spouses has nothing to do with the stigma of zenooth. The presence of these two distinct traditions (Yeb.61 versus Qid. 78) within the Babylonian Talmud has occasioned lively and ultimately irresolvable debate, notably between Rambam and Ra’vad (Issure Bi’ah 18:3) and their respective followers. So much for the Bavli. The Yerushalmi preserves a third tradition: “It says ‘none but a virgin from among his people shall he [the high priest] marry’ [Lev 21:14] which implies that to marry a giyyoreth [not being from among his people] would be to transgress a positive command since a law inferred from one positive command is also positive” (Y. Yeb. 8:2 [9c], Qid. 4:6 [66a]). Another source not to recognize a giyyoreth as a woman forbidden to a priest under the terms of Lev 21 occurs at Sanhedrin 82a. A Hasmonean beth din is said to have decreed that a man cohabiting with a non-Jewess shall be reckoned guilty of violating four prohibitions. Two amora’im, R. Dimi and Rabin, agree as to the identity of the first three prohibitions but dispute the fourth. Rabin claims that the fourth involved a prohibition peculiar to priests viz., a priest who had relations with a gentile would be liable for consorting with a zonah.[39] R. Dimi, however, declares that gentile women cannot be presumed zonot ‘because their women are not so immoral’.[40] R. Dimi obviously rejects the giyyoreth-zonah equation. But as the 12th century Tosafist R. Moses of Pontoise points out,[41] even Rabin did not consider a gentile woman’s presumptive zenooth anything more than a Hasmonean innovation. And if a gentile’s zonah classification was merely Hasmonean and unscriptural, a fortiori a giyyoreth’s.

As for the high priest’s slur on Shema‘iah and Avtalyon, it comes as no surprise. The only question is whether in calling them gentiles he meant quite literally to repudiate gerooth; or, as seems likelier, to convey the ingrained priestly position that gereem were unequal Jews. Today we have confirmation of such condescension towards gereem in circles associated with the sacerdotal clan. To quote once again Daniel Schwartz:

[In] conjunction with the usual rabbinic notion that the Torah “equates the proselyte to the native-born with regard to all laws of the Torah,” it follows that proselytes may enter [the Temple] along with born Israelites. But three pieces of earlier evidence, all from priestly circles, say otherwise. First of all, the inscriptions on the Temple mount which warned Gentiles not to enter referred to them as allogenes (“of foreign birth”) .... Already Clermont-Ganneau, who first published the inscription found intact [in 1872] noted that, if taken literally, it would exclude converts as well. Second, a Qumran text (Q4 Florilegium 1, 3-4) looks forward to the future Temple which ... will not be polluted by the entry of “the Ammonite, nor the Moabite, nor half-breed [sic], nor the foreigner, nor the proselyte (ger) ... our third witness: the Temple Scroll ... makes clear that the status of proselytes, at least with regard to entry into the Temple, is lower than that of born Israelites.[42]

Horayot 1:4 (item b cited above) implies that gereem were disbarred from the higher judiciary. Perhaps this disbarment of gereem went back to the days when the priesthood was in charge of the Temple. Since the Temple was where the supreme court convened, it would have been off-limits to gereem. Not that the Mishnah offers this etiology, or any other for that matter. Indeed, the Mishnah appears to take as given the proselyte’s inadmissibility to the Sanhedrin. But the Mishnah’s reticence is compensated by the gemara, especially the Yerushalmi (Hor. 1:4 [46a]) that offers the following explanation. “It is written [Num 11:16] ‘let them stand there with you’. Just as you [Moses] are neither a ger,[43] a Gibeonite nor a bastard,[44] so also shall they be neither gereem, Gibeonites nor bastards ...”.

Now Torah is quite forthright in itemizing its judiciary’s requisite qualifications. These include fortitude, fear of G-d, trustworthiness, having contempt for lucre (Ex 18:21); experience, being imbued with the spirit (Num 11:16-17); wisdom, discernment and understanding (Dt. 1:13). But absolutely nowhere does Torah so much as hint at DNA tests for judges or their progenitors. Only in the cultic realm does heredity reign (see Num 17:5), or to paraphrase Daniel Schwartz: the question ‘who is a priest?’ is answered necessarily and sufficiently by descent. In light of the scriptural evidence, perhaps we should understand the Yerushalmi’s patently forced derash[45] to be tongue in cheek, as if to say: if you can believe that Moses’ value resided in his pedigree, then believe also that pedigree determined the selection of his deputies. But needless to say, that is not the conventional reading. Instead, Horayot’s disbarring of gereem came to be viewed as normative halakhah, so much so that Shema‘iah and Avtalyon were felt to be an embarrassment. At that point, this pair of sages, described elsewhere in the Mishnah (Hag. 2:2) as president and vice-president of the supreme court, had to be transmogrified from gereem into descendants of gereem - conveniently forgetting that when they want, the sources know how to designate descendants. Moreover, if the ger status of one’s ancestors is the thorn in the side of the world’s Aqabiahs and high priestly purists, where’s their protest at other scions of converts, such as R. Aqiba[46] and those prophets descended from the proselytess Rahab (Meg.14b) who like R. Aqiba presided over bate din.[47]

But even if we grant that Horayot meant to deny the Sanhedrin the benefit of appointees such as an Obadiah[48] or a Yithra,[49] a Shema‘iah or an Avtalyon[50] - its denial was not necessarily the last word. As noted earlier, wellnigh every instance of ger-wariness is offset by its converse. The converse of Horayot 1:4 may be discovered at Sanhedrin 4:2. “Anybody can qualify to try monetary cases, but to try capital cases none qualify except priests, Levites and Israelites whose daughters would be allowed to marry priests.” Now we have seen a range of sources that prohibit matrimony between a priest and a convert - albeit each source invoking its own very distinct authority for the prohibition. The fact that these sources name specifically a giyyoreth, must surely imply that a born Jewess who happened to be parented by a proselyte would be above reproach.

So can a priest marry a ger’s daughter? Well, it depends whom you ask.

The daughter of a male halal[51] is unfit to [marry into] the priesthood for ever ... R. Yehudah says the daughter of a male proselyte is like the daughter of a male halal. R. Eliezer b. Ya‘akov says if a [native] Israelite marries a giyyoreth, their daughter is fit to [marry into] the priesthood; similarly the daughter of a proselyte father and a [native] Israelite mother. But if both parents were proselytes she is unfit to [marry into] the priesthood ... R. Yose says even if both parents were proselytes she is fit to [marry into] the priesthood (M. Qid. 4:6-7).

Thus R. Yehudah would disbar proselytes from the Sanhedrin for capital cases because a proselyte is a Jew whose daughter he deems unfit to marry a priest. R. Eliezer b. Ya‘akov and R. Yose, on the other hand, in declaring the daughter of a proselyte father eligible to marry a priest, ipso facto qualify that father to try capital cases.[52]

Lastly, we must confront the painful teaching of R. Samuel bar Yehudah - which brings us full circle. As if no Isaiah had spoken, this proselyte sage dredges up the old ‘racist’ bias that the prophet had contested all those centuries before. More amazing still, Rava appears to endorse R. Samuel’s prejudice and to broaden it. The only court from which R. Samuel debarred proselytes was a halisah court because of a unique exclusionary phrase Torah employs in connection with halisah. Rava, however, would seem to extend the debarment of proselytes by narrowing the scope of Torah’s ‘you’ (as in “over you”) to exclude adoptive Jews.[53] In other words, Torah’s use of ‘you’ in addressing Israel yields ‘you who were born Israelite’.[54]

Such corporeal definitions of Israel strike most of us as extremely baffling, as well they should. For they drive an ethnic wedge between Jew and Jew, which would seem to run counter to declared fundamentals of rabbinic gerooth:

R. Yose taught A proselyte once converted is like a newborn babe (Yeb. 48b; see also Yeb. 22a, 62a, 97b, Ket. 61b, Bekh. 47a).
Once he has immersed himself and emerged [from the water] behold he is like an Israelite in every respect (hare hu ke-yisrael le-khol debarav Yeb. 47b).

PRO AND CON IN THE AGGADAH

Arguably the most familiar aggadic comment on gerooth is R. Helbo’s quip:

Proselytes are hard[55] for Israel as [the dermatological condition that Lev 13-14 calls] sappahat (var. is on the skin). For it is written [Isa 14:1] ‘The ger shall join them and become attached[56] to the House of Jacob’ (Yeb.47b, cf. 109b).

In his magnum opus The Sages, Ephraim E. Urbach reminds us that R. Helbo’s own disciple R. Berakhyah distanced himself from his master’s interpretation of Isa 14:1.

Job said ‘no ger shall spend the night outdoors’ (Job 31:32). G-d rejects none of His human creatures but accepts them all; the gates are always open so that everyone that wishes may enter. Therefore, ‘no ger shall spend the night outdoors’ can be applied to the Holy One blessed be He ... R. Berakhyah asked: to whom does ‘no ger shall spend the night outdoors’ apply? It applies to gereem who shall one day be priests serving in the temple as it says ‘The ger shall join them and become attached to the House of Jacob’ - and the root SPH connotes priesthood as it says [1Sam 2:36] ‘attach me (= sephaheni), I pray thee, to one of the priestly orders’. [57]
But let us not be unfair to R. Helbo. He was not disavowing (heaven forfend) Isaiah’s prophecy that gereem would be attached to the house of Jacob; he was merely warning that for Israel their absorption would not be without difficulty. Thus R. Helbo makes it perfectly clear that he is speaking from a national standpoint. For Israel’s composure gereem might be a bane (albeit integumentary - no danger to vital organs) and an inconvenience.[58] But then many misvot are at times inconvenient, and the path of avodat hashem is often strewn with trials and tribulations. In any event, whatever R. Helbo’s original purport, later amoraim declared that in acquainting the gerooth-candidate with the lofty responsibilities Judaism lays upon a person, R. Helbo would be satisfied. How so? Because frivolous candidates will be deterred by so burdensome a prospect (see Yeb. 47b). This shows that these later amoraim took R. Helbo’s words as an admonition to bate din to be on their toes. So long as a system was in place for weeding out the irresolute and gormless, R. Helbo asked no more.

Another aggadic passage often understood as cynical of gereem and their motives, occurs at Yebamot 24b: “Proselytes are not accepted in the Messianic era. Likewise, they were not accepted in the days of David and Solomon. R. El‘azar provided scriptural support. It is written [Isa 54:15] ‘the one that sojourns with you will fall upon you’ meaning to say, whoever joins you in your affliction shall abide with you in the days of your tranquility”. To the extent we are able to fathom this cryptic pronouncement, its equilibrator may be located at Tos. Ber. 6:4.[59]

On seeing a place from which idolatry has been uprooted one says: ‘Blessed be He who has uprooted idolatry from our land; just as it has been uprooted from this place so may it be uprooted from all places of Israel and may you turn the hearts of the idolaters to your worship’. This last clause ‘may you turn the hearts of the idolaters to your worship’ need not be recited outside the land [of Israel] because there a majority of the population is gentile. R. Shim‘on [var. R. Shim‘on b. El‘azar] says also outside the land one must say it because they are going to convert as it says [Zeph 3:9] Then will I give the nations pure lips so that all may invoke Hashem’s name and serve Him with one accord.

Thus R. Shim‘on does not look forward to a moratorium on gerooth in the Messianic era, but quite the contrary.[60]

Even more distrustful of gerooth, is an aggadah domesticated by Rashi through his comments to Ex 32 vv. 4 & 7. At verse 4 he writes “The worshippers of the golden calf exclaimed ‘These are your gods o Israel’. They did not say our gods but your gods. From this we learn it was the mixed multitude [mentioned at Ex 12:38] ... who mobbed Aaron; they were also the ones that made it and then led Israel astray”. At verse 7 the words ‘your people has acted corruptly’ elicits the following from Rashi: “G-d does not tell Moses The people has acted corruptly but rather ‘your people’; ‘your’ denoting the mixed multitude that you [Moses] accepted and converted on your own initiative and without consulting me. You said ‘it is good that gereem cleave to the shekhinah [i.e. to G-d]’. Now it is they who have acted corruptly and corrupted [others].”[61]

One can scarcely imagine a damper more crushing to gerooth. If our master Moses is to be faulted for making converts without explicit divine concurrence, how far ought lesser mortals to run from conversion? Rashi, however, cannot be held solely responsible for the influence this aggadah has enjoyed. Maimonides outpaces Rashi by using it as underpinning for one of his more creative gerooth rulings. After codifying the ruling in question, Rambam continues “This is the reason the sages said ‘proselytes are hard for Israel as an affliction of leprosy’ because most of them have ulterior motives and mislead Israel. Yet, it is hard to separate from them once they have converted. Look at what happened in the wilderness in the incident of the golden calf and again at Kibroth-hattaavah. Indeed, the asafsoof[62] were in the vanguard of most of the [ten] ‘testings’[63]" (Issure Bi’ah 13:18).

Some have argued that the point of the mixed multitude aggadah was to warn against mass conversions; and no doubt, a sudden deluge of newcomers has the potential to saturate, or even disorient, a host community. Others bring up John Hyrcanus’ conversion of the Idumeans[64] to illustrate the mixed blessing of overambitious giyyoor. However, we must not discount the possibility that in John Hyrcanus’ day the atmosphere had already been infected with an aloofness towards gereem that got in the way of the Idumeans’ integration. Why, even King Agrippa was still being impugned on account of his Idumean extraction, at least in certain quarters. Earlier we had occasion to meet the erudite Simon, immortalized by Josephus for his gripe against Agrippa. As we saw, what bugged Simon was the king’s lineage, precisely the issue surrounding Agrippa in the Talmud’s recollection.

The high priest hands the Torah scroll to the king and the king stands to receive it but reads sitting down. King Agrippa, however, both received and read standing and was applauded by the sages. When he reached the verse ‘You shall not appoint over you a man who is a foreigner’ [Dt 17:15] he was seen shedding tears. From the crowd rose thereupon the cry ‘Agrippa do not fear, you are our brother. You are our brother. You are our brother’ (M. Sot. 7:8).
This story pulls back the curtains on a rare scene of the giyyoor polemic in full throttle. First to heave into sight is Agrippa reverencing the Torah and earning, in turn, the sages’ approbation. In the next tableau the king is weeping - whether genuine or crocodile tears or a mixture is left moot. But what brings on the tears is not in doubt. As his Torah reading progresses, Agrippa reaches Dt 17:15, the verse on whose strength his (priestly?) foes would dethrone him as a man who did not satisfy the verse’s miqqereb ahekhah stipulation. At which juncture the hoi polloi voices its (Pharisaic?) understanding of Torah brotherhood whereby the pious, Torah-committed Agrippa is hailed a true brother. So much for the Mishnah and its memory of the conflicting appraisals of Agrippa’s zygotic Jewishness among divers factions.

As noted earlier, priestly notions increasingly seep into rabbinic deliberations. In the process, Agrippa’s endorsement by his contemporaries, both scholar and commoner alike, is cynically written off as humbug. The Bavli records a source that lambastes the crowd as toadies sucking up to an imposter, while the Yerushalmi credits the flattery with deadly consequences. These sources take it for granted that his lineage disqualified Agrippa for an office limited to ‘brothers’ by Dt 17:15. In so doing, they align themselves with the position attributed to Rava (Yeb. 102a) that also treats as axiomatic the inter-fraternity of none but native Jews. Let it be noted, withal, how none of these sources feels the need to cite Holy Writ. Dt 17:15’s kingship law is unambiguous: no nokhri (= foreigner) shall be appointed king but only a man miqqereb ahekhah (= from among your brethren). Thus Deuteronomy sets the dividing line between ineligible foreigner and eligible brother. Being a brother among brethren, the ger must surely find himself, by definition, on this side of the divide. Or does he? Incredibly, for these sources a ger would appear to fall on yonder side, placed there not at Scripture’s behest but ‘because he pullulated from a tippah pesulah (=an unfit droplet)’.[65] But if droplets determine who is and who is not miqqereb ahekhah, then what of prophets?

Sifre (Dt. 157) construes the phrase ‘your brethren’ of Dt 17:15 to exclude gentiles. Gentiles - not gereem.[66] Dt 18:18 stipulates that Israel’s prophets shall arise miqqirbekha me-aheka. Again, the way Sifre (Dt 175) deciphers the phrase, the only people excluded under the miqqirbekha me-ahekha provision are gentiles. Even Yehudah Halevi (d. c. 1140), whose racist theory of Israel's singularity notoriously correlates prophecy with pedigree,[67] never cites Dt 18:18. That is not to preclude the role the ger-versus-brother dichotomy may have played in shaping Yehudah Halevi’s thinking. All the same, he could not invoke Dt 18:18 because neither that verse nor any other Torah verse allows for gere sdeq to be classified as a distinct sub-division of Jews. No, it is not Torah that yields racism, but primeval instincts, primitive and feral, lurking just beneath man’s consciousness. The priests exploited those subliminal proclivities to rationalize an hereditary priesthood. Eventually the rationalization took off and was accepted as self-evident. That explains why those who view the ger as a breed apart never feel constrained to provide scriptural authority. Chickens develop from eggs; butterflies from caterpillars; and the ger from a mysterious, undefined entity called tippah pesulah.

To recapitulate. Many of the texts reviewed so far, grade people according to the putative circumstances of their siring. This kind of scale, that takes embryonic purity more seriously than individual personality, smacks of a priestly provenance. You see, priestly purity-cum-holiness and defilement though firmly rooted in physicality, were possessed of metaphysical potency. Everything was either pure and therefore metaphysically sound or it was neither. Jewish seed Ezra had declared holy; other seed who knows? Consequently, priests had little use for conversion. If outside priestly purlieus converts were welcome, the priests for their part would regard them as second-class Jews. But we have also seen the vitality of a less carnal school that conceives of ‘entering under the shekhinah’s wings’ as a total transformation - the ger retroactively standing upon Sinai and ‘shedding the scum implanted by the serpent’.[68] The school that abnegates priestly taxonomies, declaring “all Israel eligible for kingship” (Hor.13a), and requiring a misbegotten Torah scholar to take precedence over a high-born but churlish priest.[69]

Amidst these cross-currents of the Talmudic ocean, we find post-Talmudic sources struggling to navigate a path. The overall tendency of these sources is to err on the side of caution. Let us consider the following rather typical example. The Talmud rules that pukka giyyoor requires a beth din of three (Yeb. 46b). The requirement is treated as scriptural, and as such the judges would have to be accredited (mumheen). For the number three is derived from the same Scripture that mandates accreditation (San. 2b et al.). Now the Talmud (San. ibid.) registers an exception to the mumheen requirement.

As for the mumheen requirement it is waived in line with R. Haninah’s teaching. For R. Haninah said Torah law requires a single standard of cross-examination in all cases whether capital or civil as it says [Lev 24:22] ‘A single [standard of] justice shall you have’. Why then have they [the rabbis] suspended it for [certain] civil cases? So that the door will not be shut in the face of borrowers (San. 2b-3a).

Thus the scripturally mandated grilling of witnesses was set aside for cases involving loans in order to keep creditors lending; creditors that might otherwise be afraid of losing their money should the testimony break down under rigorous questioning. Likewise, insistence on mumheen posed an obstacle to borrowing. What about mumheen for giyyoor? Tosafot answers that question. “You may wonder how we [not being mumheen] can accept gereem. We would have to say that just as they worried about the door being shut on borrowers so too did they worry about the door being shut on gereem” (Yeb. 46b-47a s.v. mishpat). For Tosafot to extrapolate from the misvah of lending[70] to giyoor proves that in their eyes, giyyoor is a misvah of comparable standing. No doubt, Tosafot also took stock of the words Sifre places in Moses’ mouth. “[Moses] said to him, ‘pray, do not leave us [Num 10:31] ... Perchance you think [by leaving us] to increase the honor of Maqom whereas in reality you will lessen it. Think how many gereem and slaves you can cause to enter under the wings of the shekhinah. Therefore, be our guide [i.e. stay on] so as not to shut the door on gereem who [in the event of your departing] will reason: if Jethro threw in the towel what chance is there for us?’” (Sifre Num. 80 p.76).

A moment ago we referred to erring on the side of caution. In the context of giyoor it would entail giving candidates who are not blatantly bogus the benefit of the doubt. No judge hearing a giyyoor application, or any other business for that matter, is ever sure of a verdict’s repercussions down the road. Prognosticating forms no part of a judiciary’s halakhic warrant which is, instead, meticulously sifting information and critically examining their own integrity. For this is the halakhahic formula for judges: “a judge has nothing but what his eyes discern” (en lo la-dayyan ella ma she-‘enav ro’ot).[71] Provided no stone is left unturned in the pursuit of truth, and no recess of the soul unscoured for extraneous agendas and prejudices, the rest is up to Providence. Hillel will have followed the same course when deciding to receive gereem;[72] even the oddballs that his colleague Shammai had turned down. Although the Talmud avers that Hillel was no clairvoyant nor formally endowed with the holy spirit (San. 11a), he was obviously blessed with deep faith and compassion and the insightfulness that flows from them. Taking that first step of coming in search of conversion seems to have counted with Hillel, because Hillel starts out with the assumption that giyyoor is, in principle, pleasing in the sight of Hashem. Hillel preached “love your fellow humans and draw them close to Torah” (Aboth 1:12). It was also what he practiced. So how about Shammai? you ask. How did Shammai justify the short shrift he gave the gerooth-seekers knocking on his door?

Shammai’s strategy parallels Hillel’s inasmuch as it too plays safe when in doubt. Their major difference is the angle from which they view the world. Hillel, the devoted disciple of Shema‘iah and Avtalyon,[73] was convinced that conversion was G-d’s will as revealed in Torah. Had Shammai viewed giyyoor as a Torah desideratum he would not have sent his visitors packing. No. Shammai evidently had at least one foot in the priestly camp, treating conversion almost as a mirror image of divorce which though recognized by Torah, is restricted for use only in the event of flagrancy.[74] Once gerooth is classified as a misvah in reserve, to be taken out only on state occasions, Shammai’s behavior falls into place. Conversion is all well and good for that paragon of propriety and submissiveness who comes dispirited and devoid of ego, not for smart alecs of the type Shammai dismisses (Shab. 31a). Besides, if there is no great virtue in spreading Hashem’s faith, playing safe would presumably translate into sparing the existing Jewish community the effort of accommodating neophytes. If on top of that the ger is a Jew-not-quite (as some sources imply), then it is Hobson’s choice to reject all but the worthiest, i.e. the least obtrusive.

This ambivalence to gerooth may not be entirely unrelated to the Shammaite belief that Jewish survival was best served by isolationism and by closing ranks. Although the immediate impetus for the so-called Eighteen Decrees is thought to have been political, there is no escaping the Decrees’ xenophobic underpinning.[75] Survival mattered to Hillelites just as much, but their opposition to the Decrees stemmed from their alternative perception of the Torah’s call. By means fair or foul, the Shammaites managed to muster the votes and the Decrees passed into law.[76] But the triumph was short-lived. Perhaps the Shammaites had overplayed their hand. In any case, the Hillelite school rebounded, and the later rabbis came to believe that Hillell’s Halakhah, not Shammai’s, met with divine approval.[77]

That is not to say Shammaite Halakhah ceased overnight. In their personal observance, individual rabbis continued to practice it. R. Tarphon, for instance, adopted the Shammaite recumbent posture when reciting the evening shema‘,[78] while R. Gamliel in his own home followed Beth Shammai in three halakhot pertaining to the festivals.[79] But when it comes to gerooth, which is hardly a question of private piety, there is no recorded lapse to Shammaism. At least not until the 19th century when gerooth can be said to have entered a new phase. Prior to the enlightenment - culminating for many minority communities with Napoleon and his emancipatory initiatives - proseletyzing had been forbidden and was a risky undertaking for both the convert and his/her Jewish sponsors. As freedom of religion began to displace medievalism on the European continent, conversion to Judaism gained momentum. Another feature of the emancipatory stirrings, was the rise of modernist reforms within Judaism. Then, amidst the controversies between the emerging factions of what were to crystallize as orthodox, ultra-orthodox, liberal and arch-liberal strands of European Jewry, there recrudesces a Shammaite defensiveness towards gerooth. Or rather ostensibly Shammaite. For now gerooth itself was not the issue, but had become a mere pawn in a larger denominational struggle. It is understandable that Orthodoxy, which was an ideology in the making at the time, should try to demarcate its boundaries, especially vis-à-vis the progressives who were the irritant that had produced the orthodox pearl, so to speak. As with any demarcation strategy, each faction tended to illegitimate its rivals in the process of forging self-identity. In order to sharpen their respective identities each stressed the misvot the other downplayed. Because the progressives put the ethics of Torah above its ritual, Orthodoxy that came into being as a reaction, reversed its priorities, laying particular emphasis on praxis that suited a separatist agenda. But as noted, the separatism went hand in hand with an aggressive invalidation of all other Jews, not merely the card-holding Reformists, but any that remained outside the ever-narrowing confines of the orthodox fortress.

This is not the forum to rehearse the birth of European Jewish denominationalism. For one thing, the story has been covered in many serious studies.[80] Moreover, our sole interest in the 19th century is to discover how gerooth fared in the face of all the turmoil. To some degree it fell victim to the brawls. If non-Orthodox Judaism was inauthentic, then so were gentiles who adopted that brand of Judaism. Authentic Jews were exclusively the adherents of Orthodoxy, and for converts to reckon as Jews they would have to convert under Orthodox auspices.

From here on the story will be taken up by the manifestos[81] of R. Akiva Joseph Schlesinger (d.1922) a man who set much of the tone for an important branch of segregationist European Orthodoxy, and who later exported it to the Holy Land. When reading the manifestos let us remember that gerooth is not the butt of their animus so much as are rival groups who were admitting gereem on their own terms. The writing is also fueled by a palpable militancy born of fear; that insidious, gut fear of the unfamiliar and the alien. Even as we cringe at the author’s special pleading, it is only meet to try and visualize the unenviable predicament that beset Jewry in his place and time. However, no amount of sympathy for Rabbi Schlesinger can justify reliance upon arguments such as his (for he was not a lone voice merely the most articulate, and some might say, candid). With the benefit of hindsight we may understand his siege mentality and its pretexts - pretexts that afford us no fig-leaf of cover in today’s vastly different circumstances.

1) Selections from the General Introduction to Lev ha-‘Ivri[82]

By divine plan humanity was predestined from the beginning to be divided into four species (or classes) each with its distinct mission. ... The first was given the seven Noahide laws ... and above all the misvah (or duty) to make the earth habitable through diligent study of nature, putting that knowledge to use for the benefit of the world. Never may they shirk this misvah even if they mean to exchange it for another misvah as it was taught [San. 58b] ‘A gentile who observes the Sabbath deserves death’... Later, the holy One blessed be He separated the second species that He chose to be unto Him a kingdom of priests. From them He withdrew the misvah (or duty) of making the earth habitable. G-d’s Torah alone was to be their care; and their life’s purpose to carry out the 613 commandments, the written Torah and the oral ... The third species is the priestly that must be completely removed from all things mundane ... The fourth consists of the high priest of whom it is written [Lev 21:12 ] ‘out of the sanctuary he shall not go’. Furthermore, the Cause of all causes established and fixed each of these [classes] in accordance with their respective souls and the quarry whence each was extracted so that each may attain the goal divinely willed for it. G-d also ordered that they shall endure for ever at their allocated posts and in their appointed positions, never interchanging from one to another and never trespassing or moving outside their boundaries. Thus, the Torah given at Sinai, being an inheritance of the congregation of Jacob, none of the other nations is allowed to delve into Israel’s Torah - especially the oral - because the Torah has decreed that a gentile who occupies himself with Torah deserves death. Conversely, the Torah decrees that Israelites, whose sole enterprise must be Torah, any one of them who gets involved with the learning of the nations, likewise, deserves death. For anyone transgressing the words of the sages is worthy of death (Erub.21b) and is called a renegade (Nid. 12a) ...
And even though the holy One blessed be He granted permission to a Noahide to transfer from his patrimony by converting and entering the Israelite collective, nevertheless it is not a preferential (or glorious) misvah to accept proselytes as indicated in tractate Yebamoth: Proselytes will not be accepted in the time to come when the prophecy ‘The whole earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the L-rd’ is realized. Because even then every nation shall still maintain its immutable position ... May the Merciful One speedily bring to pass [the promise of‘ Zeph 3:9] ‘Then will I give the nations pure lips so that all may invoke Hashem’s name and serve Him with one accord’ - Noahides according to their duty, Israelites according to their statutes, priests on their watch and the high priest in his sacred office ...[83]

2) Remarks on the Acceptance of Proselytes that is on the Rise in our Generation[84]

‘The heart of a king [and of princes] is in the hand of Hashem’ (Prv 21:1) and it is from His hand that this thing has come upon us - this recent movement towards eliminating religious divisions and hatreds. Like wild beasts, they envy the Jew no more. Instead, people go their own ways following their hearts’ promptings ... Ever since the declaration of liberty (also called freedom of religion) for all inhabitants of the land, it is no secret that the number of those attaching themselves to the House of Jacob has been increasing from day to day. But as for you, my brethren, what you need, is to know Hashem’s will in His Torah and to keep His statute.
To be sure, our Rabbis say ‘The holy One blessed be He, exiled Israel only in order that proselytes may join them’ (Pes. 87b). On the other hand, they tell us ‘Proselytes are hard for Israel as sappahat’ (Yeb.47b) which hardship Rashi and Tosafot understand to inhere in the failure of proselytes to observe misvot punctiliously which, in turn, sets a bad example in Israel. These two statements would appear to contradict each other, and one must reconcile the contradiction. As it turns out, there is a third text that does just that. The text occurs at Yebamot 24b: ‘Proselytes are not accepted in the Messianic era. Likewise, they were not accepted in the days of David and Solomon. R. El‘azar provided scriptural support. It is written [Isa 54:15] the one that sojourns with you will fall upon you - meaning to say, whoever joins you in your affliction shall abide with you in the days of your tranquility’. Thus we see that the acceptable proselytes were those that suffered and risked their lives to enter under the Shekhinah’s wings. For that kind of convert was Israel exiled. But those who come on a whim, let alone for their own satisfaction, they are unto Israel hard as sappahat. Of their ilk were the children of converts, or rather children of a mixed multitude, that were accepted in the days of Moses. From among them and their likes have emerged our tormentors: sappahat and [that other dermatological condition called] baheret Sadducees and heretics. But as birds of a feather flock together, so these, whose actions demonstrate that they are not of the children of Israel, exult to make converts in their own likeness. As the Rabbis predicted (ibid.) When many gentiles attach themselves you have sappahat and baheret.
And what is the exultation all about? Far better had they remained in their gentileness! Both for them and for us it would have been expedient because Sadducees and heretics are worse than idolaters as stated in our pure Shulhan Arukh (Hoshen Mishpat 34:22). We do not seek to swell our ranks. O that the nations would take away some of ours; those among us who crave their ways, their tongue and their ideas, in their thousands and tens of thousands. Then Jacob might well rejoice [and] Israel be happy that our dross and dregs have been removed. Hashem has said ‘You are few’ (Dt 7:7). Then shall the redemption come without delay, as the Rabbis teach ‘Proselytes [and those who marry underage wives] delay the Messiah’ (Nid. 13b).
And please do not raise an objection either from the Talmud’s description of Hillel’s lenient acceptance of converts or from the analogous story at Menahot 44a. For as explained in the writings of the ARI [R. Isaac Luria d. 1572] of blessed memory, They [i.e. Hillel etc.] recognized the source of [peoples’] souls. But we need not dabble in the esoteric; a thoroughly exoteric source says virtually the same thing. Tosafot (Yeb. 24; s.v. lo) accounts for [Hillel’s leniency] as follows: ‘Hillel was confident that [the people he converted] would eventually come round to doing it for the sake of Heaven’. Hillel, then, was acting upon ‘Hashem’s secrets revealed to those who fear Him’ [Ps. 25:14, cf. Sot. 4b].[85] Moreover, the Talmud rules that halakhah is not to be inferred from ma‘aseh (B.B. 130b).[86] Thus for us there is nothing outside the words of the Torah that are written in our pure Shulhan Arukh: ‘When a proselyte comes to convert, they must say to him ‘Are you not aware that Israel at the present time are despised and downtrodden?’etc.’ (Yore De‘ah 268:2). The ShaK (R. Shabbetai ha-Kohen) comments on this text that they must also be daunted (or intimidated)[87] perchance (or in the hope) they will withdraw because ‘Proselytes are hard for Israel as sappahat’. Now it is true that Beth Yosef (in his commentary to Tur Yore De‘ah 268) writes that even if the daunting was omitted the conversion is still valid. However, in his [later work] Shulhan Arukh he does not mention this, which suggests that he changed his mind. And in any case [R. Moses Isserles in his] Darke Moshe disagrees with Beth Yosef and states quite explicitly that without intimidation the conversion is invalid (see also Rambam Issure Bi’ah end of Chapter 13, where explanation is called for).[88]
In our present situation, so it appears to me, everybody would agree that the intimidation is indispensable and that, if anything, it ought to be redoubled. For today we are not exactly downtrodden and despised, thank G-d. Therefore one must be even more exacting upon them with regard to the stringencies of the misvot. These are the words of Rambam (Issure Bi’ah 13; also Shulhan Arukh Yore De‘ah 268:12): “When a proselyte comes to convert they check to see lest the motive be money or marriage etc. If no such ulterior motive is found, then the proselyte must be apprised of the heaviness of the yoke of Torah and the effort involved in observing it so that they might withdraw” etc. Rambam continues: ‘Anyone that gives up idolatry for the sake of a worldly vanity, is no righteous proselyte’. Moreover, in Hilkhot Melakhim (8:11) he writes “only if he accepts them as being commanded by the holy One blessed be He, and as being made known to us through our teacher Moses. But if he observes them because his mind dictates it, then he is neither a toshab proselyte nor yet a righteous gentile”. And further on (Melakhim 10:9) he writes: ‘This is the general rule. They must not be allowed to invent a religion or their own man-made misvot. Their only choice is to become a righteous proselyte or else to stick with their own [Noahide] Torah. They shall neither add nor subtract’. Mark these words!
As for those who jump at the chance to multiply converts and apostates, it is upon them that the Rabbis pronounced their malediction ‘Misfortune upon misfortune shall visit those who accept proselytes’ (Yeb. 109b). They also say (Bek. 30b): nokhri habba le-hitgayyer afillu me-qabbel alav kol ha-torah hootz diqdooq ehad middibre sofreem en me-qableem oto (A non-Jew who comes to be converted even if he takes upon himself the entire Torah except for a single nicety of the Scribes’ Words, he shall not be accepted). [89]
Make sure, once the checks, searches and intimidations are done, that they take it upon themselves to be of the number of the downtrodden Jews, recognizable by their distinctive names, speech and attire; and where applicable, by sisith, sidelocks and beard. So beware that you bring them into Judaism rather than into Sadduceanism, heaven forfend. So now you know!
These two texts bristle with Shammaism. First of all they divest Hillel’s example of its ability to serve as precedent by kicking it upstairs. The inference: Shammai must have lacked Hillel’s supernatural discernment or else chose not to avail himself of it when conducting interviews. Either way, because it was allegedly miracle-free, Shammai’s modus operandi need not be marginalized. Above all it should be noted how these texts give pride of place to the Bekhorot 30b prescript that, according to Rashi, actuated Shammai and molded his giyyoor policy.

[Shammai] shooed him away because it is taught in a baraitha ‘A person who comes to accept the things pertaining to haberuth except for one thing and similarly a ger who comes to be converted and accepts upon himself the words [or things] of Torah except for one word [or thing] he is not accepted’ (Rashi at Shab. 31 a s. v. hosi’o binzifah). [90]
Hillel, Rashi goes on to inform us, was also aware of the Bekhorot 30b baraitha but, unlike Shammai, chose to interpret it less rigidly (Rashi ibid.).[91] The editors of the Talmud were not content to simply record the stories reflecting Shammai and Hillel’s contrasting approaches to wayward petitioners - and then sit on the fence. Rather did they see fit to add a postscript vindicating Hillel’s approach and by more than implication decrying Shammai’s. “In the course of time the three proselytes [rebuffed by Shammai but later received by Hillel] met. They said ‘Shammai’s punctiliousness[92] sought to drive us from the world; Hillel’s meekness[93] brought us close under the wings of the Shekhinah” (Shab. ibid.).[94]

[1] “The rabbis speak of ‘The proselyte who comes to convert' even though at the time of coming the person is actually a gentile. The reason for this usage is that it would be offensive to refer to a person who has since converted by the epithet ‘gentile’” (Ritva to Ket. 11a).

[2] Against the Galilaeans translated by Wilmer F. C. Wright, Loeb Classical Library, The Works of the Emperor Julian vol. 3 pp. 341-343.

[3] JPS Commentary to Dt, excursus 7 p.435.

[4] See Meg. 9b; Y. Meg. 1: 8 [71d]; Mekhilta Bo 14 (p. 51); Tanhuma Ex. (Shemot 22); Sofrim 1:8; Sifre Dt 148.

[5] Buber edition Dt p. 2; Midrash Tanhuma Hamfo’ar vol. 2, Jerusalem 5754 p. 250; cf. Testament of Levi 14:4.

[6] The same aggadic understanding of Gen 12:5 is presupposed by the Talmud. “It was taught in the school of Elijah ‘The world has 6,000 years [of which] 2,000 are void, 2,000 Torah and 2,000 the days of the messiah’... When did the 2,000 of Torah begin? ... from ‘the souls they made in Haran’” (A. Z. 9a).

[7] See A. Z. 64b.

[8] See Rashi to Dt 29:10 and his source in Tanhuma. Also Shab. 146a; Yeb. 79a.

[9] Conversion rituals are, of course, quite another matter.

[10] The original idea of covenantal community being the antithesis of ethnic solidarity, it is understandable that where genealogy prevails covenant survives merely as a form, eviscerated of its definitional status. As Mendenhall notes (of an age long before the rabbinic) “...the basis of solidarity was no longer the covenant, but the myth of descent from a common ancestor” (The Tenth Generation pp.16-17). The rabbis made no attempt to revitalize the covenantal idea, but instead invested biblical references to covenant with the force of circumcision, the only berith in their experience. See Shaye J. D. Cohen’s “Your Covenant that You Have Sealed in our Flesh: Women, Covenant and Circumcision” in Studies in Josephus and the Varieties of Ancient Judaism, Louis H. Feldman Jubilee Volume (Leiden 2007, pp. 29-42).

[11] This Elijah aggadah climaxes in Pirqe R. Eliezer chapter 29.

[12] Ned. 32a; cf. M. Ned. 3:11; Shab. 137b.

[13] At any rate, a male proselyte’s. The female proselyte’s ritual was to be tevilah (=immersion) - adduced from Ex 19:10 that mandates ablutions preparatory to the Sinaitic covenant. Since the rabbis saw every conversion as a continuation of Sinai, they modelled conversion rites on Sinai. Accordingly: “Ribbi (R. Judah the Patriarch fl. c. 220) says ‘...your ancestors’ entry into the covenant was [solemnized] with circumcision [for the men], immersion [for all] ... So too shall they [future proselytes] enter the covenant in the same manner’” (Ker. 9a). Of course, this still leaves a discrepancy between the single rite for one gender and two for the other. Which leads to the hoary question: Why would a rite of passage be chosen that pertains exclusively to men? This conundrum has piqued writers from as far back as Philo (see Philo Supplement 1, Questions and Answers on Genesis, translated from the ancient Armenian version of the original Greek by Ralph Marcus, London 1953 pp. 241-242). To situate Philo among other ancients who considered circumcision’s gender implications, see “Why Aren’t Women Circumcised?” by Shaye D. J. Cohen (in Gender and the Body in the Ancient Mediterranean, Maria Wyke ed., Oxford 1998 pp.136-154).

[14] Rashi adds: “[They were wrong to] turn her away from entering under the wings of the Shekhinah; they should have converted her”.

[15] Tosafot juxtapose the Timna‘ aggadah to qasheem for the express purpose of mitigating the qasheem stricture (to be encountered anon) and cutting it down to size.

[16] Although the Keri is mi-ma‘arkhot pelishteem (= the Philistine ranks), the derash exploits the Ketib: mi-ma‘arot pelishteem.

[17] This example was brought to my attention by Rabbi Benjamin Z. Schmeltz, z.l.

[18] Dt 21:10-14; Qid. 21b et al.

[19] To which category accepting gereem belongs as demonstrated by - among others - R. Shim‘on ben Semah Duran (d. 1444). “... accepting gereem is a misvah that devolves upon the religious courts to receive and not to turn them away. It is clearly implied by the statement in tractate Yebamot (47b) ‘[once his wholehearted commitment has been ascertained the male convert] shall be circumcised immediately because we have a rule that a misvah may not be postponed without good reason’. The same rule is invoked by the Talmud with regard to levirate marriage. In the event that the oldest surviving brother is abroad but a younger brother is to hand, although the senior brother normally takes precedence, so as not to postpone the misvah, the junior shall perform the levirate duty. Thus we see that accepting gereem is a misvah on a par [with yibboom] ... Moreover, in tractate Ketuboth it says that when the applicant for gerooth is a minor, the underage ger is immersed [i.e. undergoes the attendant rites of giyyoor] with the consent of the religious court. Why so? Because of the misvah that obligates us to accept gereem” (Sefer Zohar Ha-raqiy‘a, p.37).

[20] The Hebrew is ha-nilvah; most likely a quasi-technical term for conversion (cf. “ve-nilvah ha-ger” at Isa 14:1).

[21] Cf. Neh 13:23-28.

[22] Proselytes are listed in M. Qid. 4:1 among the ten ranks (or rather castes) that removed from Babylon. Presumably this refers to the first wave of returnees under Zerubbabel, although the name of Ezra is associated with the ten castes in the course of the gemara (Qid. 69b). However, Ezra’s mention may be due to the Talmud’s telescoping of the two waves.

[23] Ant. XIX 7:4.

[24] Agrippa I, King of Judaea, Tübingen 1990 pp. 126-127.

[25] The Hebrew original translated ‘genealogical’ is ha-mithyahaseem - hithyahes deriving from the root YHS. All 20 biblical attestations of this word (mostly in the hithpa‘l as here) are confined to the post-Exilic books of Ezra, Nehemiah and Chronicles. It is highly telling that neither the word nor the idea (by any other name) occurs in demonstrably pre-Exilic books (but see Onqelos and other targums to Num 1:18).

[26] Schwartz lists the most egregious examples (op. cit. p. 129 n. 89).

[27] Named in the chain of Torah transmitters as teachers of Hillel and Shammai (Aboth 1: 10-12).

[28] This is a literal rendering of the Aramaic original ‘bene amameen’. However, there is no doubt that bene amameen (sing. mostly bar amameen) denotes gentile[s], and in Targum it is more or less the standard equivalent of biblical bene nekhar or nokhri (e.g. Lev 22:25; Dt 14:21, 29:21 et al.).

[29] Aqabyah is never identified as a priest. Yet the laws he champions at Eduyot 5:6 - leprosy, ritual purity, shearings of the firstborn of the flock and the water ordeal - all belong to the priestly domain. At Neg. 1:4 Aqabyah figures as one of three tannaim who dispute the consensus regarding another aspect of leprosy law. One of the two tannaim is definitely a priest namely R. Hananiah Segan Ha-kohaneem. Is expertise in leprosy law a priestly trait? Be that as it may, in his scorn for Shema‘iah and Avtalyon qua proselytes, Aqabyah showed himself to be a chip off the block of the high priest we met at Yoma 71b. Finally, in Aqabyah’s anthropology man has his beginning neither in the dust as per Gen 2:7, nor in the womb or the bowels of the earth (Ps 139:13-15) nor in a mould (Job 10:10) nor in any biblically located site. Aqabyah’s focus is tippah seruhah (Aboth 3:1). Without putting too fine a point on it, in whose mind but a priest’s (and a laboratory biologist’s) would the thought of human incipiency conjure up tippah (= a droplet)?

[30] Like Karkemeet, Shema‘iah and Avtalyon were not Jews-from-birth. They were proselytes (Ber. 19a, Rashi and Tosafot ibid.; Tosafot Hashalem: Commentary on the Bible, Jacob Gellis edition vol. 8 p.143; Y. Mo‘ed Qatan 2:1; Rambam, introduction to Mishneh Torah and comment on Edu. 1:3; Bertinoro on Edu. 5:6 & Aboth 1:10). However, in the 17th century there was a move to deprive Shema‘iah and Avtalyon of their proselyte status for the sake of harmonizing, as we shall see.

[31] I.e. it is to be understood in its commonly attested sense of a wife who is unfaithful to her husband (Rashi).

[32] Even though she is single (Rashi).

[33] E. g. she had been in an incestuous relationship; alternatively, an Israelite woman who had been married to [or in a relationship with] a Gibeonite or a bastard (Rashi ).

[34] The Mishnah’s parallel reads: “R.Yehudah says even if he [a rank and file priest] has a wife and children he may not marry a woman incapable of child bearing for she is the zonah spoken of in the Torah. But the [other] sages say zonah refers to none but a proselytess, a manumitted female slave and a woman who had been in a forbidden relationship” (Yeb. 6:5).

[35] “A proselytess [is reckoned a zonah] because she was surely married (or was in a relationship) when still a gentile ... and since gentiles do not have qiddusheen, her marriage (or relationship) renders her unfit” (Rashi Yeb. 61b s.v. ella giyyoreth). The idea of presumption is even more clearly articulated by Rashi at Yeb. 60b s.v. kesherah likh-hunnah & Qid. 74b top, s.v. hakhee qa-amar.

[36] Some appeal to the Yerushalmi’s ke-zonah formulation (giyyoret ke-zonah hee esel ha-kehunnah - Y. Qid. 4:1 [65b]) to show that priests’ avoidance of giyyoret spouses was never understood to have scriptural warrant. But we must beware of forced harmonizations, especially as the convert definition in Yebamot nestles amidst a list of alternatives (as we have seen) that all appear to be serious attempts at defining zonah of Lev 21.

[37] Nor, as far we can tell, did the amoraim who held that Torah forbids a zonah not merely to priests but to all Israel (Yeb. 56b). To be sure, under the relaxation deduced from Num 5:13 the only zonah lay Israelites must avoid is a zonah by choice (whereas for priests even a coerced zonah is unlawful). In any case, the entire discussion presupposes that zonah of Lev 21: 7 (see Rashi Yeb. ibid. s. v. ba‘lah loqeh) denotes a woman involved in some degree of infidelity and totally precludes the zonah=proselytess definition.

[38] Obviously two traditions are being conflated. According to the first R. Shim‘on’s source was Num 31:18, while here it is given as Ezek 44:22.

[39] See Rashi ibid.

[40] Cf. zo haita bikhlal shimmoor attributed to R. Ele‘azar b. Zadok (Hor. 13a).

[41] Quoted in Tosafot San. 82a s.v. ve-iddakh and A. Z. 36b s.v. mi-shoom.

[42] King Agrippa, pp. 127-128.

[43] This statement appears to conflict with Ribbi. “Ribbi says ‘...your ancestors’ entry into the covenant was [solemnized] with circumcision [for men], immersion and [a] blood [sacrifice offered] for acceptance. So too shall they [future proselytes] enter the covenant in the same manner’” (Ker. 9a; see n. 13 above). Cf. Rashi San. 82a “It was prior to Sinai that Moses had married Jethro’s daughter, all at that time having the status of Noahides. When the Torah was given they all, she [Jethro’s daughter] as well as proselytes of the mixed multitude included, entered into full misvah-hood”.

[44] One cannot help sense the irony: “Amram married his father’s sister Jochebed and she bore him Aaron and Moses” (Ex 6:20). At least according to some tannaim, such incest was forbidden even to Noahides (San.58b but see Rambam, Melakhim 9:5).

[45] Significantly, the Bavli rejects the Yerushalmi’s derivation. Firstly, it informs us that Numbers 11’s ‘let them stand there with you’ teaches that Moses presided in person over the 70 elders bringing their total to 71. R. Yehudah disputes Moses’ participation in his court’s proceedings - which leads him to the conclusion that a Sanhedrin’s quorum is exactly 70 - not 71 (San. 16b-17a). Secondly, at San. 36b (in a discussion cognate, though not identical, with Horayot) Num 11:16 is declared inadequate authority for disbarring gereem and other ‘genealogically impaired’ Jews from the Sanhedrin. Instead, the Bavli proposes Ex 18:22’s ‘let them bear with you’. (Again, how ironic that these words are spoken by Jethro, a man who served for the rabbis as the paradigmatic ger-sedeq!)

[46] In the introduction to his Mishneh Torah, Rambam identifies as a ger R. Aqiba’s father Joseph.

[47] R. Aqiba headed the Bene Beraq beth din (San. 32b). For R. Aqiba’s calendrical activity see Ber. 63a; M. Yeb. 16:7; for the prophets’: Y. San. 1:3 [19a] et al.

[48] The prophet Obadiah was a ger according to the Talmud (San. 39b).

[49] Yithra (also Yether) is portrayed as a ger who formed an important link in the transmission-chain of Oral Torah and played a major role in establishing halakhah (Yerushalmi Yeb. 8:3 [9c]).

[50] Bene Bathyra appear to have shunned Shema‘iah and Avtalyon. When Hillel arrives on the scene, he upbraids the old Bathyra guard for spiting their own faces in failing to take advantage of the two sages. As for the ‘sloth’ to which the Bavli (but not the Yerushalmi) attributes Bathyra’s ‘underutilization’ of Shema‘iah and Avtalyon, it is in all likelihood a euphemism for something far more deliberate (Pes. 66a).

[51] Literally ‘a profaned person’. Dealing with ordinary priests, Lev 21:7 says: “a woman who is a zonah and profaned they shall not marry and a woman divorced from her husband they shall not marry ... ”. Further on, at Lev 21:14 it says of the high priest: “A widow and a divorcee and a profaned zonah none of these shall he marry ...”. Even though the phrase ‘a zonah and profaned’ of verse 7 cannot be mistaken for anything but hendiadys (not to mention adjectival ‘profaned’ of verse 14) nevertheless, rabbinic midrash coaxed out of these adjectives an additional category of unfit wife that they called halalah. A halal was a son born from the disapproved union between a priest and a halalah.

[52] At Sifre Numbers 78 we meet tannaim in apparent agreement with R. Eliezer b. Ya‘akov and R. Yose. “What was the reward of Yonadav’s kin [who were Kenite converts]? ... [they were assured that] their progeny would continue to stand before Hashem. R. Yehoshua (var. lect. R. Yonathan) expostulated ‘[How could they stand before Hashem which connotes ministering within the sacred precincts] - surely gereem do not enter the hekhal [= the temple adytum] for no lay Israelite enters the hekhal! Rather did they sit on the Sanhedrin and deliver Torah rulings. According to an alternative opinion, their daughters married priests and consequently grandsons of theirs offered sacrifices upon the altar.”

[53] At least from the Sanhedrin, including the lesser Sanhedrin of 23 (Rashi Qid. 76b s. v. kol mesimot). Rambam, on the other hand, stretches Rava’s disbarment of gereem and applies it even to courts of three that try monetary cases. Rava thus appears at odds with all those talmudic statements that explicitly qualify a ger for monetary cases (San. 36b; Nid. 49b et al.). Evidently Rambam did not relish the idea of his Rava (as distinct from Rashi’s Rava) in disagreement with an array of sources. So he set about to diffuse the situation by positing that the ger qualified for monetary cases refers only to the ger who has a Jewish mother (Yad, Hilkhot Sanhedrin 11:11).

[54] The difficulty comprehending Rava’s derash (also cited in the name of ‘a master’ at Yeb. 45b and by R. Yoseph at Qid. 76b) is only amplified when we consult Sifre. There (Sifre Dt. 157) the phrase ‘your brethren’ of Dt 17:15 is said to exclude gentiles - not gereem; and then only from kingship, not judgeship. Even B.Q (88a) that does elicit a disqualification of gereem from Dt 17:15, it is still the crown alone that is denied a ger, not the bench. The same is true of the ger’s disqualification acknowledged in tractate B.B. (3b, end). Moreover, if the purpose of Rava’s derash is to disbar gereem, would it not create a glut of such derashot? As we have seen, Yerushalmi derives the ger’s disbarment from Num 11:16 and Bavli from Ex 18:22. Harmonizations that manage to improvise discrete uses for each derashah, cannot disguise their strain. If all that were not enough, the leap of faith Rava invites us to make seems beyond our capabilities, insofar as his derash (Yeb. 102a cited above) would have us extrapolate from monarchy to judicature. Yet in the Torah’s legislation, king and judge are distinct all round, including the lexis denoting their respective appointings. The king’s is designated SUM ‘AL, a term never uttered by Moses apropos judges. To be sure, at Ex 18:21 Jethro counsels Moses “ve-samta ‘alehem”. But significantly (in the midrashic world crucially so), verse 23 that reports the actualization of Jethro’s plan, substitutes va-yitten ... ‘al (from the root NTN) for Jethro’s SUM ‘AL. Even in Dt 1:13,15 Moses refers to his appointment of judges by the verbal phrases va-’asimem be- and va-etten ‘alekhem - as if studiously avoiding SUM ‘AL.

[55] Hebrew: ‘qasheen’ - plural of qashe whose primary meaning is hard. As long as sappahat remains an unknown quantity (does it cause itching? soreness? unsightliness? all of these? or some other disagreeable sensation?) we have no choice but to render it by non-committal ‘hard’.

[56] In Hebrew: ve-nispehu - hence sappahat.

[57] Ex. Rab. 19:4 cited in The Sages (Heb.) Jerusalem 1978 p. 491. It is also worth noting that Rashi in his commentary to Isa 14:1 chose to side with R. Berakhyah inasmuch as he classifies ve-nispehu with sephaheni (1Sam 2:36) and me-histapeah (1Sam 26:19) while altogether omitting sappahat.

[58] Wherein the hardship inheres is a matter of debate. Rashi and Tosafot between them come up with no fewer than seven proposals (See Tos. Yeb 47b s.v.qasheem; Qid. 70b s.v. qasheem). Some modern scholars have speculated that the ‘hardship’ R. Helbo feared was not from the gereem themselves but from the Roman authorities who, from the Antonines on, all but outlawed conversion to Judaism. Representative of this understanding is the following comment of Alfredo Mordechai Rabello: “We cannot exclude the possibility that many of these discussions took place in reaction to the Roman legislation regarding circumcision and proselytism" (“The Attitude of Rome towards Conversions to Judaism" part XIV in The Jews in the Roman Empire: Legal Problems from Herod to Justinian, Aldershot, Hampshire 2000, p.43).

[59] Also Ber. 57b.

[60] Recognizing the tension between these Messianic visions, the Talmud (A. Z. 3b) attempts to harmonize by positing two types of conversion. The type that will cease is conversion effected by bate din. However, so-called gereem gerureem i.e. converts who adopt Judaism outside the official channels (see Rashi A. Z. 24a s.v. gerureem; and cf. the case of the convert - albeit, not dubbed garoor - who converted ‘among the gentiles’ [Shab. 68a-b]) will flourish in the future just as they did in the days of David and Solomon (when Jesse preached and Yithra responded Y. Yeb. 8:3 [9c] and when bate din were allegedly being unreceptive but 150,000 converted nonetheless Yeb. 79a). In a different context, the Talmud limits the Davidic-Messianic-age ban on beth din sponsored giyyoor. Even in good times, such as the Davidic and Messianic, it is only gereem whose motives for conversion are suspect that are turned away by the beth din. Pharaoh’s daughter, for example, would have been accepted, since someone of her station is unlikely to be lured by Israel’s material prosperity (see Yeb. 76a-b). Finally, it should be noted that neither ger garoor nor giyyoreth gerurah is attested; it is invariably in the plural gereem gerureem and refers to group conversions. Is it conceivable that for such groups a special giyyoor process had once obtained?

[61] For fuller versions of this aggadah see Ex. Rab. 42:6; Lev. Rab. 27:8.

[62] The word asafsoof is a hapax legomenon occurring at Num 11:4. Tannaim disputed its meaning. “The asafsoof in their midst were gereem gathered out of many places (Sifre Zuta ascribes this view to R. Shim‘on b. Menasia). R. Shim‘on b. Menasia says they were the elders of whom it is written [Num 11:16] ‘gather for me (esfa lee) seventy elders’ (Sifre Zuta ascribes this view to R. Shim‘on).” (Sifre Num. 86 Horovitz ed. 1917 pp. 86 & 268). Rambam obviously opts for Sifre’s anonymous definition (= R. Shim‘on b. Menasia’s of Sifre Zuta) and furthermore, lumps the mixed multitude together with the asafsoof - as does Rashi at Num 11:4. However, at Ps 78:31 Rashi defines asafsoof as “the elders of whom it is written ‘gather for me’”.

[63] An allusion to Num 14:22 “Ten times they have tested me and not listened to my voice” and to Aboth 5:4.

[64] Josephus Ant. XIII 9:1.

[65] San. 36b, Nid. 49b et al; see n. 29 supra.

[66] See n. 54 supra.

[67] Kuzari 1:95, 115.

[68] See Shab. 146a, Yeb. 103b, A.Z. 22b.

[69] Hor. ibid.

[70] Lending to the indigent is an obligation (see Mekh. to Ex 22:24 and its reliance on Dt 15:8). It was this same conviction of the duty to lend and the sinfulness of withholding loans from the needy that prompted Hillel to institute that other famous ‘reform’ - perozbol. “Hillel the elder saw that [from fear of forfeiting their loans to shemittah] the people were holding back from lending and thereby transgressing that which is written in the Torah [Dt 15:9] ‘Beware lest your heart wickedly whisper to you ‘the seventh year, the year of release is approaching’ and you then begrudge your needy brother and lend him not’ etc. So Hillel rose up and instituted perozbol” Git.36a).

[71] San. 6b end (and Rashi ibid.), B.B. 131a, Nid. 20b.

[72] As confirmed by R. Joseph Karo. “Regarding the man who came to Hillel and said ‘convert me so that I may aspire to the high-priesthood’, Tosafot explain that Hillel, like Ribbi in the case recorded in Hatekhelet [Men. 44a], was confident he [the convert] would eventually come round to doing it for the sake of Heaven. From here we learn that it is all up to the beth din’s discernment (de-hakkol lefee re’ot ‘ene beth din)” (Beth Yosef, Yore De‘ah 268 near end).

[73] A devotion so touchingly epitomized at Edu. 1:3.

[74] For the Shammaite position on divorce see M. Git. 9:10.

[75] The precise makeup of the 18 remains hazy, and varies from list to list even within sources (i.e. Tosefta, Bavli, Yerushalmi). Common to all lists, however, is the disproportionate number of separatist measures. See “Les Dix-huites mesures” by Solomon Zeitlin, REJ 68 (1914) pp. 22-36; Kovets Shneur Zalman Zeitlin [Heb.] Bitzaron 25:3 NY 1964 esp. p.6.

[76] See Shab. 17a-b; Y. Shab. 1:4 [3c].

[77] See M. Ber. 1:3; Erub. 13b; Yeb. 14a et al.

[78] M. Ber. 1:3.

[79] M. Bez. 2:6.

[80] E.g. Jacob Katz’s Masoret u-Mashber [Heb.] 1958; Tradition and Crisis 1993 and elsewhere in his oeuvre; Emanuel Etkes’s introduction to Ha-hadash Asur min Ha-torah by Moshe Samet (Heb.) Jerusalem 2005.

[81] Manifestos rather than halakhic directives - which they do not purport to be (whatever influence they may arguably have exerted on certain halakhic decisors).

[82] Vol. 1, Ungvar 1864. “Lev ha-‘Ivri. .. which appeared in two parts in 1864 and 1868, became an instant bestseller, quickly running through five editions. And it achieved considerable fame not only in Hungary but throughout central and eastern Europe. A few years later the Russian maskil Eliezer Sevi Zweifel could write from far-off Zhitomir, ‘I have never seen any book published in our time which has been greeted by the Jewish public with such great honor and tremendous jubilation as the book Lev ha-‘Ivri’.” Michael K. Silber “The Emergence of Ultra-Orthodoxy: The Invention of a Tradition” in The Uses of Tradition: Jewish Continuity in the Modern Era, Jack Wertheimer ed. NY 1999 p.38.

[83] In this our author contradicts the Talmud’s asseveration that Noahaism has no future in the Messianic age when ‘all will worship Him in one accord’ (A.Z. 24a, Rashi s.v. shekhem ehad).

[84] Lev ha-Ivri, from Kithbe R. Akiva Yosef Schlesinger, Jerusalem 1989 vol. 2 pp. 291-292.

[85] And accordingly his leniency cannot serve as precedent for those not divinely briefed. So what does our author propose in the absence of supernal input? Presumably, the uninitiated must willy nilly convert all lest genuine applicants be lost. For surely it is preferable to take on board a rotten apple, nay a hundred rotten apples, than risk shutting out a single righteous soul. Or is it?

[86] The noun ma‘aseh denotes ‘an event’, ‘a tale’ or ‘a precedent’. The Talmud ubiquitously invokes tales from the lives of its heroes for establishing halakhic precedent. R. Schlesinger seems to be suggesting that such use of precedent is proscribed at B. B. 130b.

[87] Le-ayyem which is Schlesinger’s term, not his source’s.

[88] One that would presumably have to neutralize Rambam’s ruling: “A ger who was not checked out or not apprised of the misvot and their penalties, but underwent circumcision and/or immersion in the presence of three lay judges, such a person is a ger”.

[89] When we open our gemara at Bekh. 30b we search in vain for Schlesinger’s quote. Instead we find “A non-Jew that comes to receive words of Torah except for one thing he shall not be accepted. R. Yose son of R. Yehudah says even a single nicety of the Scribes’ Words”. This reading is corroborated by numerous witnesses. However, Rashi’s gemara may have approximated Mekhilta of R. Shim‘on b. Yohai “A ger who takes upon himself” etc. (see Mekh. of RaSBY to Ex 12:49; Rashi Suk. 28a s.v. diqduqe sofreem; but cf. Rashi Shab. 31a “A ger who comes to convert”; also next note). T. Demai 2:5 in standard printed editions has: “A ger that takes upon himself all the words of the Torah except for one thing he shall not be accepted. R. Yose son of R. Yehudah says even a small detail of the Scribes’ niceties” (for T. variants see Lieberman’s Tosephta Ki-fshuta Zera‘im Jerusalem 1992, vol. 1 p. 212). Common to all variants, then, is the attribution of the view - that rejection of diqduqe sofreem impedes giyyoor - to a solitary tanna, namely R. Yose son of R. Yehudah. Schlesinger allows for the impression that R. Yose’s stringency belongs to the stam (= the anonymous plurality).

[90] Thus according to Rashi, (who reads: “A ger who comes to convert” at Bekh. 30b) it was Shammai’s blind obedience to a literal understanding of that baraitha that locked him into his all-or-nothing position. On the other hand, those who read “A non-Jew that comes to receive words of Torah” would not necessarily connect the Bekh. 30b passage with gerooth. As noted above (f. n. 1), the stereotypical formula for referring to the seeker after conversion is ‘a ger who comes’ not a ‘non-Jew’. Hence, unless one has Rashi’s variant, one is going to be extremely circumspect about applying a ‘non-Jew’ or ‘gentile’ text to a ger. Commentators have suggested that this may be why Rambam codifies the all-or-nothing dictum of Bekh. 30b only in respect of ger toshav (Issure Bi’ah 14:8) but not in respect of a ger sedeq. Tur and Shulhan Arukh, that omit ger toshav laws, also omit all reference to Bekh. 30b. Incidentally, it is quite curious that a self-declared devotee of Shulhan Arukh such as our author should brandish a text Shulhan Arukh evidently considered extraneous to gerooth.

[91] If not for Rashi, one might have surmized that Hillel disagreed with the ger proviso of Bekh. 30b or considered it analogous to its companion provisos that deal with the priest, haber etc. Haberuth - whose central praxis was treating quotidian meals as if they were consecrated - owed nothing to Torah, written or oral. Of non-sacrificial meals Sifre has this to say: “‘The clean [person] shall eat it together with the unclean’ [Dt 12:22] Scripture is telling you that both eat of the same dish.” As for priests being catechized, this too has no support elsewhere. The oath that was administered to the high priest on the eve of Kippoor (M. Yom. 1:5) assured conformity to right practice. However, as far as commitment was concerned, the Sadducean priests, even while desisting from acting upon their errors, persisted in them as the gemara apprises us (Yom. 19b). Moreover, even priests that had worshipped at idolatrous shrines, once they repented of their apostacy were not denied their sacred emoluments (M. Men. 13:10). In short, it is far from self-evident that the Bekh. 30b baraitha represents the concensus.

[92] Or: ‘Shammai the stickler’.

[93] Or: ‘Hillel the meek’.

[94] Another version has one of Shammai’s rejects confiding to Hillel after the latter had converted him: ‘If you Hillel were like Shammai I would never have entered the congregation of Israel’ (Aboth de R. Nathan A, 15).

This striking finding, which was championed by the Christian right, fascinated the writers of this article. We were well aware of the religious literature promoting taharat haMishpahah as a way of renewing sexual interest.[v] Our basic question became: “How do women who are faithful to the tradition of taharat haMishpahah experience intimate marital life?” On the one hand, we speculated that based on the Laumann et al. study’s findings, married observant Jewish women might be even more sexually satisfied than married women in the general population. On the other hand, our extensive clinical experience made us keenly aware of sexual difficulty in many observant marriages. We considered the possibility that the lack of available information and discussion about sexuality in the observant Jewish community might contribute to reduced marital sexual satisfaction than in the Laumann et al. married sample. As scientists and clinicians we were well aware of the limitations of anecdotal vignettes and of impressions from our personal experiences. Thus, we set out to investigate the sexual experience of observant Jewish women from a sophisticated, methodologically rigorous research perspective.

 Our team constructed a survey, similar to that used by Laumann et al., that included questions specific to observant Jewish practice. These items would allow us to determine whether, and to what extent, education about and adherence to the laws of taharat haMishpahah are associated with sexual satisfaction for women. Using many of the same questions as Laumann et al. allowed us to compare aspects of sexual behavior and dysfunction in observant women with that of the general population.  Although Laumann et al. looked at the experiences of both men and women, we focused our efforts on observant women only. Certainly a comparable study of men would add a great deal to the understanding of observant marriages.

Because our objective in this article is to highlight certain issues for the observant community, we will not give a comprehensive presentation of all of our findings. Rather, we focus on areas that might be particularly relevant to the general community, rabbis, mental health professionals, medical personnel, and educators. This last group, educators, includes school teachers of all levels as well as those serving in the unique institution of hattan and kallah teachers, that is, men and women who instruct soon-to-be grooms and brides in the laws of taharat haMishpahah. An emerging new group of religious advisors/educators is that of the yoatsot halakha, women who are highly learned in taharat haMishpahah as well as well versed in gynecology and marital dynamics. All of these religious, medical, and lay people have potential involvement in the intimate lives of observant Jewish couples. Increased knowledge and sensitivity on the part of rabbis, health workers, and educators is likely to enhance intimacy and strengthen attitudes toward observance, thereby improving marriages in the observant community.

III. STUDY DESIGN

            The study by Laumann et al. obtained data based on face-to-face interviews. Since observant women generally value modesty and privacy, our project was designed as a written questionnaire that was completed anonymously and mailed back to us. We tried to replicate as closely as possible the Laumann et al. scales of marital satisfaction, emotional and sexual happiness, and sexual function and dysfunction for both women and their husbands. Many of the questions asked for the same information—basic demographics, physical and mental health, sexual education, sexual history, and current sexual practices. Women were included in our study if they were currently married, pre-menopausal, and regularly used the mikvah as prescribed by religious law.

            Mindful that the regular observance of mikvah might span across the denominational spectrum of observant religious life, we asked women to rate their religious affiliation and gave them choices of “Modern Orthodox,” “Yeshiva/Agudah,” or “Hassidic.” The latter two categories describe a level of Orthodoxy that is sometimes referred to as “ultra-Orthodox.” This subdivision reflects a debate within the Orthodox Jewish community. Unlike Modern Orthodox Jews, who actively participate in the general culture, Hareidi Jews, or ultra-Orthodox Jews, embrace a theologically conservative outlook that advocates substantial separation from secular culture. (Hareidi literally means “one who trembles before God.”)[vi] We also gave women choices to denote their religious/cultural affiliation as “Sephardic” or “Ashkenazic.”

No assumptions were made about women’s sexual past or present lives. We asked detailed questions about early sexual life, including auto-eroticism and premarital activity. Knowing about the impact of sexual abuse on later sexual life,[vii] we included questions regarding history of molestation as well as current sexual abuse.  At the same time, we added new questions that addressed the unique experience of women who observe taharat haMishpahah. These questions related to respondents’ subjective perceptions about going to the mikvah and adhering to laws of family purity. We also inquired about pre- or post-marital sexual education, such as whether they attended a kallah class and if so, whether useful information about sexual relations was provided. Women were asked how they dealt with questions they may have had concerning the permissibility of specific sexual activities, and to whom they turned when sexual problems arose in their marriages.

Certain questions were deliberately omitted so as to not offend potential study participants. These referred to same-sex activity, abortion, infidelity, and substance abuse. In retrospect, this stance may have been too conservative, as some women did respond on the open-ended questions that they had struggled with these issues.

            Participation in our study was voluntary. Women received no financial or other material reward. Our goal was to sample a cross-section of observant women based on religious affiliation and socio-demographic information. As the chief entry criterion was regular use of the mikvah, the most obvious, impartial venue for data collection would have been mikvaot. Although several rabbis overseeing individual mikvaot were consulted prior to the implementation of the study, none granted explicit permission to distribute questionnaires at any community mikvah. Instead we recruited women via other sampling methods, such as relying on medical professionals whose practices included large numbers of observant Jewish women (e.g., obstetrician/gynecologists, nurses, midwives, and pediatricians) to distribute the surveys. We also spoke at broad-based Jewish women’s organizations where we asked audiences to fill out the survey. In addition, we posted the questionnaire, which had only an English version, on the Internet and directed it to large listservs of observant communities in Israel. To determine the representative nature of the sample, demographic results from respondents of our study were compared to those obtained in the 2000 census sponsored by the United Jewish Communities.[viii]

IV. OUR FINDINGS

1. Demographics

We analyzed 380 returned questionnaires. Our average respondent was 36 years old. More than three-quarters of our respondents were born in the United States, and nearly half were daughters of two American-born parents. Almost two thirds of women and their husbands were brought up in an observant home. The remaining third were ba‘alot teshuva, meaning that they grew up in non-observant homes and chose to become observant on their own, usually around age 20 or 21. Among women who were ba’alot teshuva, only 6 percent of them had become observant after marriage. With respect to affiliation, 55 percent of women identified themselves as Modern Orthodox, 35 percent as Yeshiva/Agudah and 10 percent as Hassidic. Women who responded to the survey were typically well educated; many had graduate-level degrees. Most women held jobs outside the home and had not been married before. Our typical respondent had married at age 23 and had four children.

B.        Sexual Education/History

Respondents reported receiving sexual education from a variety of sources. Most commonly, they learned about sex from friends, written material, and media (movies and television) followed by family members, kallah classes or high school classes, and experimentation. Less than 10 percent cited health professionals as being a source of sex education. It should be mentioned that although Jewish women turned to printed materials for information about sex, the material they read was written by secular or non-Jewish writers and purchased at mass-market bookstores. Until recently, there have been very few works available that specifically discuss sexual matters for observant Jewish consumers.[ix] Only one book dealing with sexuality from the Jewish perspective provides explicit information as to the basics of sexual anatomy or physiology.[x] Bookstores catering to religious clientele do not typically carry such books for fear of violating propriety and alienating their customer base. How do women obtain these materials? Our respondents indicated that they had to make special requests for these books or go to a mass-market bookstore in a different community. One woman wrote of her reaction to the book most commonly cited by respondents to our survey, John Gray’s Mars and Venus in the Bedroom, “Why did I have to learn about sex from an ex-priest?”

Before they were married, two-thirds of participants knew the details involved in sexual intercourse, and a similar number had discussed sexual feelings with their husband. Less than a quarter of respondents reported no physical or sexual contact prior to marrying their current spouse. They did not hold hands, hug, kiss, pet, or engage in any more intimate sexual behavior. This also means that despite the emphasis on premarital chastity, over 75 percent of women who participated in our survey had some degree of intimate contact with their current spouse. There were differences with respect to premarital sexual behavior between those raised religious and those who became observant before marriage. Nearly one-third of women raised observant reported abstaining from any premarital physical contact with their husbands compared with 7 percent of women who became observant on their own. This suggests that while almost all women who become observant do so before marriage, they are more likely to have been involved in physical and sexual relationships with men before marriage than women raised observant. We did not ask women to indicate whether their premarital relationships were with their husbands or other partners.

 Almost all respondents studied laws of niddah with an outside (kallah) teacher before marriage. However, most women did not feel the kallah classes were helpful in preparing them for married sexual life and their wedding night in particular. The prevailing emphasis of kallah classes seemed to be ensuring that women not commit halakhic errors. Few teachers apparently covered other topics such as the permissibility of various sexual acts, and more importantly, how to prepare to engage in sexual acts that culminate in intercourse. Although half of the kallah teachers indicated their availability for follow-up discussion after the wedding, they were rarely consulted.

A handful of women praised their kallah teacher for providing instruction beyond halakhic issues. For example, one woman wrote

 My kallah teacher covered halakhot (legal rulings), sex positions, and shalom bayit (family harmony). Everything was explained clearly until I felt very comfortable. Barukh HaShem (Thank God), I have a beautiful marriage. I strongly believe that a kallah teacher has a big responsibility to convey physical and emotional matters in a clear and concise manner.

 Women who felt well prepared by their kallah class wrote statements such as, “I knew as much as I could, the rest had to be from experience.”

However, more than a third of respondents were disappointed on their wedding night and only 15 percent stated that their wedding night was better than expected. Almost half of the respondants, stated that they could have been better prepared for married sexual life. Despite the fact that almost 90 percent of the women in our sample studied with a kallah teacher prior to marriage, only 50 percent of them learned about sexual matters from this source. In light of this discrepancy, it was not surprising that many women wrote in suggestions of topics they wished had been discussed with their kallah teachers prior to marriage.

            We present excerpts from the suggestions made by women that they felt would improve preparation for sexual life in marriage. In general, there were three types of responses to our open-ended question: “What should your kallah teacher have covered?” The most common response was about basic sexual education. Women wished they had learned more about “women’s body parts, women’s sensitivities, orgasm, different positions,” “what a man’s body looks like, what to expect” and “how to actually consummate the marriage.” Many women voiced shock at their first sexual intercourse. They wished they had known practical information, such as how awkward the position of sex would feel, how to be satisfied or achieve climax, that sex might be painful the first time, that it would be messy, and so forth. The awkwardness of sudden transition from celibate single life to fully sexual marital experience was echoed by many respondents who wrote in that it was hard to “turn off” their notions of being a “good girl.” As one woman, herself a kallah teacher, wrote, “The difficulty we have in communicating needs verbally I feel is a result of the ’modesty‘ and inhibitions we were shown as examples.” Another woman elaborated extensively on this point:

Orthodox attitudes that affected me negatively are not inherently negative— but they have potential to cause problems depending on the person. I think part of the problem is that a lot of the Orthodox community feels like the laws of taharat haMishpahah and the restrictions on premarital sex or touching are a foolproof system that makes sex more wonderful for everyone. The extreme privacy within the Orthodox community, while promoted as modest, beautiful, and virtuous, also causes/supports feelings of shame regarding sex. The laws of tseni’ut (modesty) on a more subconscious level, supports (not necessarily causes) shameful feelings about one’s body. The constant praise of how wonderful and holy sex is because it’s saved for after marriage and only at certain times of the month sets up unrealistic expectations and avoids entirely the physical aspect of sex. Again… tseni’ut and negiah (no touching before marriage) are promoted as being beneficial for women because otherwise men would only look at you sexually. This view makes men out to be uncontrollable purely sexual beings to whom women are powerless. Then you get married and you are supposed to trust that your husband wants to have sex with you because he truly loves you. It’s hard to change that pattern of thought. For 20 years one is told to do things so men don’t look at you sexually, and then poof! One day you’re supposed to feel totally comfortable letting go completely and you’re suddenly supposed to be a sexual being[YR1]  too[MF2] !

I’m not sure these things are unique to religious Judaism —probably other religions as well. And the attitudes might be more reflection of Orthodox society and not the Torah.

Many women also wished the kallah teacher would have educated them more on the relationship between sex and Jewish life. They suggested the following topics be covered: “The place of sex and pleasure in Torah life;” “sex and emotion…shalom bayit (family harmony) topics;” “[Jewish views on] a woman’s right to pleasure;” “that sex is not only permissible, but essential to your and your husband’s happiness to have a full, exciting sexual life.” Some commented on the impact of religious upbringing on sexual lives, and suggested these topics were important to discuss in the context of premarital education: “Growing up religious, you are taught to feel that girls should not be forward… it’s OK to be more forward and guide my husband to please me. Giving me an orgasm is not a ‘favor’ to me, rather it is my right as a married woman.”

Our respondents raised many issues that had caused them concern and discomfort: “What if you and your husband are too embarrassed to ask the rabbi a question?” “What if your sex life isn’t a beautiful thing? What if it doesn’t enhance your marriage?” Others indicated “I didn’t realize it was so common for a couple to be unable to consummate the marriage right away;” and some wished they had learned “What should you do if sex does not work like the ’textbook‘ case?” Others wondered, “What constitutes abusive behavior and what is not ‘normal’ behavior?” To summarize, in the concise statement of one woman, “I wish someone told me point blank everything instead of assuming I knew it.”

C.        Attitudes about Mikvah

Two-thirds of our respondents indicated that the experience of ritual immersion in a mikvah was religiously enhancing. These women were asked to elaborate on how this experience was enhancing. The following quotations are illustrative. One woman wrote, “I love going. I always pray in the mikvah and feel very pure after. Spiritually, I feel renewed, closer to God and to my husband.” Another commented, “I feel a rebirth. The mikvah is especially helpful to lift me out of depression I feel about my infertility. It always fills me with hope.” Another respondent stated “I feel that going to the mikvah introduced holiness into our marriage… also, it is simply the halakha that has been done by Jewish women for generations.”  Related to this, one woman wrote: “I feel mystically connected to something very primitive and deep.” Comments such as: “The mikvah experience makes sex spiritual and not animal-like” were made by several respondents.

Almost a quarter of respondents indicated that going to the mikvah could be an unpleasant experience. These women described finding the preparation and process of going tedious and annoying. Concerns about modesty dictate that women keep timing of mikvah use private and that visits to the ritual bath be made only after nightfall. Some of our respondents reported disliking having to make excuses to their children for their absence from the home. Some  felt critical of mikvah facilities and personnel. The majority of negative comments relating to the mikvah's physical facilities came from women living in Israel. The following quotations are a sample of negative feelings: “I don’t feel comfortable naked in front of anyone;” “I don’t like all the superstitions that are attached to mikvah;” “I try not to think about how unhygienic the water is after who knows how many women have been in before me.” More extreme responses are exemplified by the following respondents who wrote, “I hate it,” “(I) Find it degrading,” “I hate being examined like a cow,” “Mikvah is such a turn-off that I come back irritated, annoyed, angry and am mean to my husband, subconsciously, of course,” and finally, “I feel it is almost abusive.”

            With respect to whether sexual or emotional life is enhanced by the observance of taharat haMishpahah, we noted that more than three-quarters of our sample believed that their sexual life is improved by following these laws. The following quotations represent women’s experiences. “When you know you only have two weeks each month, you tend to make more of an effort;” and “I really feel that sex would have become too routine and boring without the rest period that the mikvah provides.” Also representative was the following remark: “It certainly helps. Even though our sexual relations are less than satisfying on the whole, having a break because of niddah does help the sexual relations become a little bit more satisfying; it’s ‘fresher.’”

            One of the interesting observations was the contrast between the high percentage of women who believed taharat haMishpahah enhanced their sex lives with the much smaller segment who felt that their emotional life with their husband was enhanced by taharat haMishpahah.  In fact some women who claim sexual benefits of believed that the niddah period impacted negatively on their emotional lives. One woman stated:

I believe that following the laws of niddah and the mikvah does enhance my sexual life. While I love my husband, after some time sex does get boring. The laws of niddah force a break and renewal. Right after going to the mikvah any physical contact is exciting and invigorating. My problem with the whole process is how my husband and I interact during the time of niddah. It seems like we take a complete emotional break from each other, as well as a physical break. I can’t understand why my husband can’t show me his emotions and feelings about me without sex.

This sentiment was expressed repeatedly: “My husband feels he has to become numb and he withdraws from me;” “My husband and I both have a huge problem with the suddenness of the switch between ‘can’ and ‘can’t’ and the accompanying feeling on the mikvah night that we ‘have to’ because the clock has started ticking again. The pressure kind of kills the desire and it ends up feeling very non-spontaneous;” “We fight more when I am in niddah. I feel rejected by not passing objects. It is rude—like I am untouchable. Even though I understand the reason, I still feel rejected.” “I am a very touchy, feely person and suffer terribly not being able to snuggle with my husband. Being a nursing mother now, I do miss the initial excitement of coming home from mikvah, but I would not give up my status of taharah (non-niddah) for that.” “We learned how to have sex properly when I was pregnant [and therefore had nine months of non-niddah time together]. We never found there was enough time to learn and experiment in between niddah sessions.”

            A representative quotation from the much smaller sample of women who wrote that niddah did enhance their emotional life is illustrative: “Sometimes, for example, if a crisis situation arises during niddah, you’re able to resolve it without touching; it brings you emotionally closer.”

Survey questions were designed to assess the number of women who report feeling relief upon becoming a niddah, as well as how many postpone immersion.  Almost two-thirds of our respondents reported that they sometimes felt relief at being in niddah (about a third of these respondents reported feeling relieved nearly every month).  More than a quarter of our respondents reported postponing going to the mikvah, almost all for emotional reasons. Only a tiny fraction reported postponing mikvah as a form of birth control (trying to miss ovulation).

D.        Asking for Rabbinical Counsel

 Traditional Jewish practice encourages people to seek rabbinic advice when faced with challenging questions. As all aspects of life, from the mundane to the lofty, are imbued with religious significance, observant Jews regularly pose questions to rabbis. Queries concerning  pillars of observant life, kashruth, Shabbat, and taharat haMishpahah are routine. Our data, however, revealed a significant skew regarding questions posed to rabbinic counsel—namely, that women in our study were less likely to inquire about matters relating to sexuality.  This is illustrated by the fact that over 90 percent of women indicated that they have asked a rabbi questions about kashruth or about laws pertaining to the Sabbath. Only 76 percent, however, have asked about an aspect of niddah, and most of these questions were directed to technical concerns about menstrual staining. Just over one-third of women had ever asked a question pertaining to permissibility of a particular sexual practice. Mindful that our respondents are highly adherent to the laws of family purity, we assumed that they would naturally have questions about the religious permissibility of various sexual activities in marriage. We knew from their comments about their kallah (bridal preparation) classes that frank issues such as sexual desires and practices were rarely discussed by those teachers. We wondered, therefore, how couples align their sexual desires and their religious sensibilities.

Fully half of all women answering our survey have wondered whether performing certain sexual acts, during the course of their observant, married life, might constitute a violation of Jewish law. Oral sex was the activity of most concern followed by the use of fantasy during relations. Of this 50 percent who acknowledged halakhic concerns, only a small portion (12 percent) asked a rabbi for guidance. Of the remaining 88 percent who did not seek religious consultation, almost half refrained from the religiously questionable sex, while the rest enacted their desire without permission.

A related area is the use of contraception. Observant Jews take the biblical commandment “be fruitful and multiply” seriously and generally give birth to and raise families larger than those of their secular peers. We wondered how observant women access family planning. Our findings revealed that although nearly 90 percent of our sample reported using birth control at some time in their marriage, only half of these women consulted a rabbi about that decision. Once again, our data suggest that many religiously committed Jews do not bring questions about their sexual or reproductive lives to the scrutiny of their rabbis with the same frequency that they bring questions about equally serious but less bodily intimate matters.

Respondents to our survey were strictly compliant with the laws of family purity. Ba‘alot teshuva (women who became observant on their own) were as rigorous in their observance as women raised observant. Women from both backgrounds who were virgins at marriage were more likely to ask a rabbi questions about niddah laws, about sexual life not directly related to laws of niddah, and were also less likely to postpone going to mikvah. This was true regardless of religious affiliation.

E.         Physical and Emotional Health

Although the vast majority of participants in our survey described their health as good, almost half reported that their physical health interfered with sex at least some of the time. Treatment for medical conditions affecting sexual function, such as chronic pelvic pain, endometriosis, and venereal disease were extremely rare, although vaginitis was reported by a quarter of respondents.

Almost a third of respondents reported that infertility had been an issue in their marriages. A quarter reported they had trouble conceiving, but they also reported that they eventually had children. Only 4 percent of the women indicated that they had no children as a result of problems conceiving.

Emotional health seems to have more impact on sexual dysfunction than physical health. The vast majority of respondents indicated experiencing interference with sex due to emotional issues. When asked about whether they had ever been treated by a mental health professional, about half of the sample reported having been in some kind of psychotherapy. The problems they brought to these treatments included marital problems, depression, and anxiety. We were intrigued by the high utilization of mental health services by our respondents. Some critics of this study allege that the large number of women accessing mental health treatment indicates a sample bias toward more distressed women. An alternative interpretation would be that women who allow themselves professional mental health services are more comfortable with themselves and thus willing to participate in a study about intimate life experience.

F.         Sexual Abuse

More complete analyses of our data are also presented elsewhere,[xi] but for the purpose of this discussion it is essential to point out that this is the first anonymous survey of married observant Jewish women in which direct and detailed questions were asked about sexual abuse and where objective data was collected. One quarter of our sample answered “yes” to the question: “When you were a child or teenager, did anyone ever touch you sexually in a way that made you uncomfortable (molest you)?” These figures are comparable to those reported by Laumann et al. in their survey of married American women and are consistent with estimates of sexual abuse in the general population.

Two divergent points, which we discuss in greater depth in the above referenced paper, deserve mention here. On the one hand, women who became observant reported significantly more childhood sexual abuse than those raised religious. On the other hand, more ultra-Orthodox Jewish women reported abuse than their Modern Orthodox peers.[xii] We conjecture that women who experience sexual abuse in their younger years may be motivated to seek out a more structured and sexually restricted adult life. As has been established in previous studies, history of sexual abuse is associated with higher rates of mental health treatment in adult life.

Regarding current abuse, domestic violence was reported by 5 percent of our respondents. Two-and-a-half percent alleged that they had been raped by their husbands.

G.        Sexual Life

            Women were asked to respond to the same set of questions about sexual frequency and satisfaction as appeared in the study of sexual practices in the United States published by Laumann et al. The pattern of sexual frequency among the sample was different from that of monogamous, married women in the Laumann et al. study. In that study, half of the women reported having intercourse one to two times per week, as compared to 40 percent of our sample. Thirty-five percent of the married observant women in our study reported sexual intercourse three to six times per week as compared to half that number (17 percent) of the Laumann married women. We surmise that this is due to observant couples concentrating their physical intimacy into the two weeks available when a woman would not be in niddah. At the same time, a greater number of women reported sexual intercourse once a month or less.

            Observant women in our study had significantly different experiences with respect to orgasm as compared to the Laumann et al. married, monogamous sample. High frequency of orgasm was much lower in our sample, and reports of never experiencing an orgasm during sex were higher (9 percent as compared to 1 percent). Regarding auto-eroticism almost two-thirds of participants in our study reported doing so at frequencies ranging from several times per week to every few months during the past year.

Like Laumann et al., we inquired about various components regarding satisfaction with marital sex. When participants in our survey rated their physical satisfaction, 75 percent of them rated feeling very satisfied. When asked about emotional satisfaction from sex, generally understood as sense of closeness with their husband, 70 percent rated feeling very satisfied. One question on the survey asked how sex made women feel. Feeling loved and wanted ranked highest, followed by feeling excited, doing wifely duty, and being taken care of. Fewer women endorsed feeling more “negative” feelings such as anxiety, sadness, fear, and guilt.

Communication about sex proved to be an important feature in satisfying marital relations. Women with more satisfying sexual lives described better communication and vice versa. Of women who enjoyed orgasm, over three-quarters said that their husband knew how to bring them to satisfaction and that they could tell their husband what gives them pleasure. On the other side of the communication spectrum, women who have problems with sexual life also have difficulty talking directly to their husbands about this.

H.        Sexual Problems

            We asked respondents to our study to rate their experience with six specific areas of sexual dysfunction identified by Laumann et al.: 1) frequent lack of interest in sex, 2) lack of ability to climax, 3) pain during intercourse, 4) not finding sex pleasurable, 5) anxiety about their performance and 6) trouble lubricating during sex. One-third of women in our study indicated experiencing the first difficulty (frequent lack of interest in sex) followed by smaller numbers with the other five categories. Nearly half of our sample cited such difficulties as causing them to avoid sex altogether. It should be noted that the rates of sexual difficulties in our sample were significantly greater than that reported by Laumann et al.

            We also queried women about sexual difficulties experienced by their husbands. According to their wives, a third of husbands experienced premature ejaculation, over 25 percent had difficulty maintaining an erection, and a similar percentage lacked interest in sex. Fewer women reported husbands being anxious about their performance, having difficulty with climax, and not finding sex pleasurable. Some of husbands avoided sex because of these problems.

             Couples experiencing sexual dysfunction had trouble talking about this. Despite the rather high frequency of both male and female dysfunction, as mentioned earlier, few women had talked to their husbands about sexual problems. Additionally, few women sought outside guidance in relation to their sexual problems. Less than 10 percent of the women had asked a rabbi or observant teacher for information, and less than 4 percent asked a kallah teacher for help.

IV.       ASSOCIATIONS AND PREDICTORS

We used sophisticated statistical procedures to analyze the enormous data gleaned from the questionnaires. One goal of this study was to understand more fully the variety of factors that are associated with sexual practice, sexual satisfaction, sexual dysfunction, and the relationship between these variables and religious observances. We will not present here all the associations we discovered but only those that strike us as particularly significant or surprising. We remind our readers that associations do not necessarily imply causation.

A.        Background Information

            Physical satisfaction was found to be associated with higher income, the husband providing the financial support, and more modern religious affiliation. In other words, lower-income women and women who affiliated as either Agudah or Hassidic reported significantly less physical satisfaction than did Modern Orthodox women in dual-income families.

Emotional satisfaction was associated with similar demographic variables, and also with age group. Sex was more frequent in younger respondents, and also in respondents who were younger when they got married. Younger women reported higher emotional satisfaction compared to older women. Women who provided sole financial support were less satisfied than women who had other support. Emotional satisfaction was lowest for Hassidic women. Older age and not completing college were associated with painful sex and avoidance of sex. Women who were raised observant were twice as likely to have difficulty achieving climax than women who reported themselves as ba’alot teshuva; however they were less likely to report painful sex and less likely to avoid sex.

B.        Mikvah and Niddah

            Greater physical satisfaction was significantly more likely in women who demonstrated less conflict about niddah and mikvah. These women never postponed mikvah and also did not report feeling relieved when they became a niddah. A different pattern was observed with respect to the influence of postponing mikvah and emotional satisfaction. Women who never postponed the mikvah for any reason showed significantly lower emotional satisfaction than women who did. But women who were often relieved to be a niddah were also less emotionally satisfied. This was also true for those who did not feel that niddah enhanced their sex lives as well as for women who felt that they could have been better prepared for marital life. Interestingly, adherence to niddah was associated with better emotional (but not physical) satisfaction.

C.        Sexual Education and History

            In general, physical and emotional satisfaction and frequency of sex were not related to sexual education and history. Women who were virgins at marriage reported greater frequency of orgasms and less difficulty achieving orgasm during marital sex as compared to those women who were not virgins when they married. Conversely, women who had experimented with sex short of intercourse premaritally (i.e., they were technically virgins) reported greater physical satisfaction, greater frequency of orgasm, and less difficulty achieving orgasm than virgins who had minimal (holding hands) or no sexual experience at the time they married.

D.        Husbands’ Sexual Dysfunction

            Although physical satisfaction and frequency of orgasm were not significantly related to husbands’ sexual dysfunction, frequency of sex was. Difficulties such as lack of interest, premature ejaculation, performance anxiety, erectile dysfunction, and avoiding sex were associated with less frequent sex. Husbands’ problems achieving orgasm were associated with less emotional satisfaction in the relationship. Furthermore, husbands’ sexual dysfunction correlated with reports of sexual dysfunction by the wife. Greater lack of interest and lack of pleasure as well as anxiety about and avoidance of sex were more often reported by women when similar sexual difficulties were reported for the husband.

E.         Communication Patterns

            Communication patterns about how sex was initiated were significantly related to physical and emotional satisfaction as well as to sexual frequency. A significant predictor of good sex was whether both husband and wife expressed interest in initiating relations. A woman’s participation in initiation of sex, independently or mutually, was associated with greater physical and emotional satisfaction, regardless of how she communicated her interest, such as by physical gesture or in words. Sexual difficulty, particularly lack of interest and lack of pleasure, was associated with less involvement in initiation of sex by the wife and more frequent initiation by the husband. Avoiding sex because of sexual problems was similarly related to initiation patterns.

F.         Sexual Abuse and Mental Health

            Women who reported a history of sexual abuse, regardless of when the abuse took place, were less emotionally satisfied. Type of abuse or perpetrator was not significantly related to any of the other variables we examined related to sexual satisfaction. Sexual abuse history was related to current sexual difficulties. Women who reported a history of sexual abuse were more likely to report no interest or pleasure in sex, anxiety about sex, and consequent avoidance of sex. When the perpetrator was a relative, women reported less interest in sex.

            Mental health was significantly related to physical and emotional satisfaction as well as frequency of sex. Women with a history of depression, but not anxiety, reported lower physical and emotional satisfaction as well as less interest in and lower frequency of sex.

G.        Religious Background

            We were also interested in examining the impact of religious background (i.e., being raised observant vs. being a ba’alat teshuva) on predictors of characteristics of sexual satisfaction. These analyses revealed significant differences between women who were raised in observant homes and those who became observant later in life.  For those women who were raised observant, lower physical satisfaction was associated with feelings they could have been better prepared for sex before marriage, frequently postponing going to mikvah, low emotional satisfaction, not learning about sex by experimentation, not feeling that niddah enhanced emotional life. None of these relationships was observed in women who became observant later in life. It is worthwhile to note that despite having significantly more past sexual abuse than their peers who were raised observant, ba’alot teshuva experienced greater overall sexual satisfaction in marriage.

V.        DISCUSSION

            The research goal of this pioneer study was to better understand how married Jewish women who adhere to taharat haMishpahah experience sexual life. Our project included designing a suitable questionnaire, distributing that questionnaire as broadly as possible, and then analyzing the data obtained. We intended our findings to be helpful for the observant lay community as well as the broad spectrum of rabbinic, educational, and health professionals who serve religious communities. Our findings demonstrate something we intuitively know, that sexual and emotional intimacy are complex and nuanced experiences. We hope that subsequent research carries our beginning explorations further.

      As our questionnaire was modeled on the Laumann et al. study, we report the overall comparison that women who participated in our study reported significantly less physical and emotional satisfaction as compared to married  women from the Laumann et al. study. Our respondents also reported greater sexual dysfunction on many of the comparable variables. We speculate that lack of education about sexuality in the observant community might account for these findings. Discussion about sex rarely occurs in homes and schools and is absent even in many kallah classes. Lack of communication skills between husbands and wives regarding sexual life is also a likely contributor to physical and emotional dissatisfaction among observant women.

A number of factors contribute to the reticence regarding sex in observant Jewish culture. Traditional religious communities are reluctant to openly discuss or develop educational curricula for schools regarding sexuality. Reverence for modesty as a value, coupled with dismay regarding the hypersexualized aspects of contemporary secular society, leads to caution. Although there are several limitations of the current study, including the representativeness of the sample, the findings underscore the importance of education about sex within the context of marital relationships. This might occur in the context of standardization of the curriculum of teachers responsible for the preparation of brides and grooms in the area of taharat haMishpahah. Mikvah attendants are another group deserving in-service education. As the actual gatekeepers to immersion, women who work in the mikvah are in a privileged position to observe obvious distress and to direct women to appropriate resources.

One domain in which observant women and secular American women did not differ was in the prevalence of sexual abuse. It is imperative to not minimize the prevalence of such experiences within the observant community in light of their impact on both mental-health-related issues and married life.

Another important conclusion concerns the relatively few differences that could be attributed to adult religious affiliation. Though this may not be very evident in everyday observant life, the data suggest that Modern Orthodox, Yeshiva/Agudah and Hassidic women were far more similar to each other than not when it comes to sexual life. We conjecture that traditional attitudes expressed during girls’ formative years about modesty and gender role exert powerful influence across observant denominations.

We were impressed with the contrast in marital sexual life between women born religious and those who chose to become religious. As compared to their ba’alot teshuva peers, those raised observant experience more sexual distress. We noted a puzzling contradiction between the higher rates of sexual abuse among ba’alot teshuva and their greater sexual satisfaction once observant and married. We also noted that these women, once married, observe laws of family purity as strictly as their religious from birth peers. However, in their younger pre-religious years, ba’alot teshuva enaged in more premarital sexual experimentation. In addition, they were sexually expressive with their husbands even before marriage. We hypothesize that ba’alot teshuva import early, more positive attitudes toward sexuality into their adult marital lives. Greater awareness of sexual feelings and confidence may even offset such trauma as sexual abuse.

We respect that traditional Jewish life advocates premarital chastity and values modesty throughout all of life. We do not recommend that observant Jews advocate premarital sexual experimentation. Our work, however, highlights the need to encourage healthy sexual attitudes and communication skills in the observant Jewish community. This is a broad educational goal to be shared by parents and institutions such as schools and camps. Whatever their differences, lay and religious leaders across the denominations would serve their communities well by focusing on abuse awareness, prevention, and treatment, as well as positive attitudes toward human sexuality.

Finally, it may be important that observant Jewish women who have serious religious questions about sexual matters currently do not turn to religious personnel (rabbis or kallah teachers) for advice or counsel in this critical area of religious life. At the time of this writing, the advent of yoatsot halakha was too recent to have significantly impacted our respondents. Certainly this cadre of religious teachers/advisors  in taharat haMishpahah  are uniquely placed to serve observant women in the area of marital sexual life. Just as we advise implementing relationship and sexuality education in established school systems and establishing standards for those who prepare brides and grooms, rabbis would benefit from receiving training in sexual and emotional issues. Those who are in a position to counsel and educate couples both before and after marriage should carefully consider the significance of these observations.

The October 2013 Pew Report underscored the fragility of the Jewish future in North America and has led to anguished discussions and debates regarding "continuity", i.e., how to reduce the number of Jews relinquishing Judaism and Jewish identification in favor of other options.

But given the nature of the American religious scene, as I will present below, it is simply impossible to assure Jewish continuity by such a strategy alone. Rather, only if a strategy of easing the path of conversion is joined with current educational efforts and programs do we stand a chance of achieving continuity.

Such a strategy is of course at odds with the notion that conversion should be discouraged and difficult. However, that notion itself was not the primordial position of our tradition but rather historically conditioned. Encouragement of would-be converts and the intentional application of the more lenient positions found in our sources can be fully justified from within the halakhic tradition -- particularly in times of crisis such as ours.

Stating the Problem Honestly

Even if 100 percent of all children born to Jews in the United States were to remain Jewish, the Jewish population would decline significantly over time, because of the simple fact reported by Pew that Jewish adults aged 40-59 have an average of 1.9 children– while 2.1 children in a family represents the minimum fertility replacement level, that is, the level at which births equal deaths in a society with good health services. Although I am Orthodox, the fact that Orthodox Jewish families have an average of 4.1 children is no consolation to me. My concern is for the future of the entire community and not for any particular sub-group alone. Indeed, I believe that religiously and morally, such horizons of concern are befitting all Jews – and especially the Orthodox.

But even if Jewish fertility in the U.S. were to rise and become on par with that of the general public – 2.2 children per family – Jewish continuity would not be ensured. The reason is that many persons born as Jews do not currently regard themselves as such. The Pew report is based on interviews with 3,475 Jews (of whom 20 percent identified themselves as “Jews of no religion”). In order to reach those 3,475 Jews – a total needed for statistically significant findings – the Pew surveyors conducted more than 70,000 screening interviews. By the time they had located 3,475 individuals who said they were Jewish, they had come across 1,190 persons who stated that they had been Jews – but were currently not Jewish in any way.

In other words, of 4,665 persons born Jewish, only 75 percent regarded themselves as Jewish in any way, while 25 percent regarded themselves as totally non-Jewish. Thus, even if the Jewish fertility rate were to reach 2.2, with this outflow of 25 percent, the effective Jewish fertility rate would be 1.65 – well below the fertility replacement level. As it now stands, the effective fertility rate is 1.425 percent. Because younger age cohorts are increasingly less affiliated and more intermarried, it stands to reason that the actual fertility rate is dropping even lower.

But why are 25 percent leaving us? Surely, something must be wrong with our schools, our synagogues, our community, for so many born Jews to choose to totally opt out? Not necessarily. While nothing in this world is perfect, it seems to me, as an Israeli, that the schools, synagogues, and communal activities of American Jewry are admirable and dynamic institutions, staffed by caring professionals sincerely committed to preserving Jewish continuity.

Indeed, the 25 percent attrition rate of born Jews is significantly below that of the American public in general – as emerges from another report of the Pew foundation. In 2008, Pew published its landmark "U.S. Religious Landscape Survey." A key finding relating to our topic was:

More than one-quarter of American adults (28 percent) 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 percent of adults have either switched religious affiliation, moved from being unaffiliated with any religion to being affiliated with a particular faith, or dropped any connection to a specific religious tradition altogether.

Note that the 25 percent of born Jews who now say they are not Jewish at all is below the national average of 28 percent of those who have left the faith in which they were raised. Even if we add to those 25 percent the additional 15 percent of born Jews who say that they are Jewish but not at all religious, this is less than the national average of 44 percent cited above.

The fact that Jews have a retention rate better than the national average indicates that there is a significant return on the tremendous efforts of our schools, synagogues and community centers to encourage born Jews to remain within the fold. While this may be comforting on one level, on another level the comparison with general overall trends in the U.S. religious landscape leads us to realize just how serious the challenge to Jewish continuity is. This is because the 2008 Pew survey enables us to realize the tremendous flux of all religions in the contemporary United States.

Indeed, one might ask: if not only Jews but all religions are losing such a high percentage of those raised in the faith, how is it that any religious group continues to exist? The answer to this is found in what I regard to be the most crucial finding of that survey for our current discussion. In a paragraph titled, "A Very Competitive Religious Marketplace," the authors of the 2008 survey wrote:

The survey finds that constant movement characterizes the American religious marketplace, as every major religious group is simultaneously gaining and losing adherents. Those that are growing as a result of religious change are simply gaining new members at a faster rate than they are losing members. Conversely, those that are declining in number because of religious change simply are not attracting enough new members to offset the number of adherents who are leaving those particular faiths.

It may well be the case that other countries in the world are not characterized by such “constant movement” among religions. For a variety of reasons, such movement is certainly not characteristic of Israel. In Israel, it is almost universally acknowledged that Jewishness is first and foremost identification with and a sense of belonging to an extended kinship group, with some of the kin being more attached to the group's religion and some less so.

Such a sense of Jewish peoplehood was characteristic of Jews in Eastern Europe, the Ottoman Empire, and many other countries where Jews resided; it was also characteristic of most of the first-generation Jewish immigrants to the United States. However, with the passage of time and the deepening Americanization of the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those immigrants, the “given-ness” of peoplehood has receded.

American Jews have now become a “religious group”– not only in the eyes of the general public and analysts of the Pew foundation, but in the eyes of Jews themselves. This is well reflected in the similarity of “constant movement” characteristic of the affiliates of Judaism and other American religious groups. Comprehension of this constant is crucial to any strategic discussion of Jewish continuity in the United States.

Maimonides (Guide of the Perplexed 1:71, citing Themistius) stated that opinions must be grounded not in wishful thinking but in empirical reality. If Jews are now involved as actors in the field of American religious groups, they must comprehend the reality of that field. Specifically, they must realize that, wishful thinking to the contrary:

1. In the American religious landscape, despite all efforts to the contrary, a significant percentage of born Jews (25 percent at least) will choose to opt out of being Jewish.
2. There is no way in which that loss will be offset by internal fertility.

If Jewish continuity is predicated only upon those born as Jews, then a dramatic and continuous numerical contraction of American Jewry is the clear prognosis.However,for a religious group to predicate its future only upon those born into it is to blithely ignore a central characteristic of the U.S. religious landscape, in which "every major religious group is simultaneously gaining and losing adherents." The future of any specific religious group is contingent upon gaining at least as many adherents as it loses. This is true for all religious groups in America – and therefore also for the Jews. Yet from a comparative perspective, the Jews – such a talented community in many ways – have seemingly been outstandingly inept in this regard. We have lost many more adherents than we have gained.

Of course, as all Jews know, we have not really been inept at gaining converts. We have been intentionally adverse to receiving converts – not from time immemorial but since the ascent of Christianity and Islam. In medieval and early modern times, this policy was adopted in order to ensure our survival: the authorities of the dominant faiths reacted violently to members of their group opting for another religion, taking vengeance both upon the convert and those who accepted him.

Currently, however, the exact opposite is true: Jewish continuity is crucially contingent upon gaining many more adherents. Continuing to maintain the classic aversion toward accepting converts, or even following a more neutral or lukewarm policy toward persons seeking to become Jewish, is – in the current religious reality of the United States – a sure way to undermine and act against Jewish continuity.

Our only hope lies in a combination of two strategies: doing our utmost to maintain (as we have until now) a high retention rate of those born into our religious group, and simultaneously doing our utmost to be extremely warm and encouraging toward those seekers who, unhappy with their current affiliation, indicate interest in joining us.

However, coming as I do from the halakhic tradition, I know that it is not enough to argue on the basis of exigency alone. Rather, one must ask: is it halakhically possible, from within the tradition, to support and justify action that seems to be called for by a sober assessment of reality? Specifically:

Is it possible within traditional halakha to justify a policy under which rabbis will warmly encourage converts and follow the most lenient possible halakhic opinions, in a manner that will be most conducive to widespread giyyur (conversion)?

Answering the Question Honestly

In order to answer in the affirmative, we do not need to seek unanimity – for halakha is characterized by a wide range of legitimate views. Rather, we must see if we can find within halakhic sources strong voices stating that in matters of conversion broad policy considerations must determine the choice of formal halakhic requirements. If such voices exist, then, even if they are numerically in the minority they should be followed in a time of crisis (she'at ha-dehaq). If the reader does not think that the recent Pew report reveals we are in a time of crisis, she can stop reading here.

In fact, ever since the time of the great scholar Hillel in late antiquity, quite a few rabbis have advocated that in matters of conversion, policy should guide which converts to accept and what to require of them. I would like to briefly give voice to three great twentieth century halakhic scholars – each no less learned than Rabbi Moshe Feinstein of blessed memory –who strongly advocated such a policy-guided strategy: Rabbi Ben-Zion Uzziel (1880-1953), Rabbi Joseph Mesas (1892-1974) and Rabbi Hayyim David HaLevi (1924-1998).

Rabbi Ben-Zion Uzziel, the first Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel, received a request in 1951 for halakhic guidance from Rabbi Judah Leon Khalfon, head of the rabbinic court of Tetuan (Spanish Morocco):Is it permissible, he was asked,to convert the children and wives of completely non-observant Jewish men, as they would presumably also be non-observant Jews?

Rabbi Uzziel’s response (published in responsa MishpeteiUzziel7:20)addressed both whether it is possible to convert someone who will subsequently not be religiously observant, and why rabbis should want to convert such persons.

With regard to the first question, Rabbi Uzziel was aware that certain East European rabbis had claimed that the halakhic requirement of “reception and acceptance of commandments” meant that the convert was required to sincerely promise observance of mitzvot; on that view, a person whom we think will not be observant could not be converted. Rabbi Uzziel pointed out that, to the contrary, no classic halakhic text – including the Shulhan Arukh-- specifically required such a promise. Indeed, this was not a chance omission, for if conversion were to be made contingent upon an inherently indeterminate future observance,"then no converts would ever be accepted in Israel. For who can guarantee that this non-Jew will be faithful to all of the Torah's commandments?”After undergoing conversion, all converts – whatever the degree of their religious observance – will be no less Jewish than a born Jew leading a similar lifestyle.

With regard to the second issue,Rabbi Uzziel’s response is of even greater relevance to us today. He points out that classic rabbinic texts teach us that God loves converts. Indeed, the Talmud (BT Pesahim 87b) teaches that God dispersed the Jews throughout the world so that non-Jews would have the opportunity to become acquainted with them and choose to convert! Therefore, it is a positive commandment to warmly accept proselytes, whenever this is possible.

Over and above the general positive attitude cited above, Rabbi Uzziel added that special reasons exist in modern times to accept candidates for conversion in cases linked to intermarriage:

And in our generation we bear special and heavy responsibility, because if we lock the door before converts we are thereby opening wide the gates of exit, pushing Jewish men and women to change their religion and to leave Judaism entirely or to assimilate among the gentiles…. (rabbis have special responsibility to accept such converts so as to promote the Jewishness of their children).Even if they are the children of a non-Jewish mother -- they are Seed of Israel. And they are therefore “lost sheep.” And I fear that if we push them away completely by not accepting their parents for conversion we will be accused (by God) and it will be said of us: "neither have ye brought back the strays, nor have ye sought those which were lost" (Ezekiel 34:4).

Rabbi Uzziel stated that avoidance of such Divine rebuke should clearly outweigh the concern of receiving unworthy proselytes.

In 1965, Rabbi Joseph Mesas, then Chief Rabbi of Haifa, stated that in matters of conversion, the general policy to be followed is that of the rabbis of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia – who accepted all persons seeking to convert (responsa Mayyim Hayyim, vol. 2, #108). Rejection of persons seeking to become Jewish achieves no positive results, and frequently leads to unhappiness, resentment and bitterness, both of the candidate himself and of individual Jews, families and communities affected by that rejection, he said. He noted that if the rejected candidate really wants to become a Jew, s/he would simply turn to another rabbi, and ultimately be accepted. What then has the first court achieved, except to cause anguish and hatred?

Indeed, the notion that the rabbis have control over the consequences generated by rejecting converts is an illusion. To illustrate this, Rabbi Mesas related a case (one of several that he personally knew of) in which rabbis refused to convert a woman who then proceeded to move with her Jewish husband to another location where they “passed” as Jews. Fifty years later, it was discovered that the family's matriarch was not Jewish; ipso facto, neither were her daughters or their children – although all of them had grown up thinking they were Jews. Several members of the family agreed to convert, while others were so upset and distraught that they left Judaism entirely.

Rabbi Mesas did not blame the matriarch. He said that the rabbis who rejected her were responsible for the tragic outcome, because they lacked the foresight or the will to comprehend the cost to present and future generations of their rejectionist policy. Indeed, he said, under contemporary conditions, rejecting candidates for conversion was not a sign of true religious commitment but rather a manifestation of a sanctimonious pseudo-piety.

Because rabbis have a responsibility to further the well-being of the entire Jewish community, they should follow the halakhic policy that leads to the most positive overall results:“When a conversion to Judaism takes place, then a light shines in the darkness and everything is forgotten and joy dwells in their home.”

Rabbi Hayyim David HaLevi (Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv 1973- 1998) cited with great approval the position on conversion policy expressed by the great Rabbi Israel Joshua Trunk (1820-1893) of Kutno. Rabbi Trunk had been told that in the early Middle Ages the King of Kiev negotiated with the leaders of Israel in his generation.He wanted to convert and to convert all of his people with him, but he proposed just one condition – and because of this condition the agreement fell through and did not take place.He wanted them [the rabbis] to waive circumcision of the elderly; that they should convert by immersion only, and die uncircumcised.And the newborns would be circumcised.And this way in the next generation they would all be fully Jewish. The rabbis refused to agree to this condition [and the King and his nation did not convert].

Rabbi Yehoshele(Trunk)criticized them, saying that it was wrong of them to reject a populous great nation and to prevent them from joining the Lord's estate… the Talmud (Nedarim 32b) says:

"Why was our Father Abraham punished and his children doomed to Egyptian servitude for two hundred and ten years? Rabbi Johanan said: Because he prevented people from entering beneath the wings of the Shekhina, as it is written (Genesis 14:21), "Give me the persons, and take the goods to thyself"[…]
Allies are crucial!

Rabbi Trunk regarded the rabbis' refusal as a strategic mistake of the highest degree: the long-term positive implications of the king's proposal for the Jewish future were so momentous that they could (and should) have ruled according to the minority opinion of Rabbi Joshua ben Hananiah, who held that conversion without circumcision is valid (BT Yevamot 46a). The idea that numbers are of no significance for the Jews is absolutely misguided: "Allies are crucial!", declared Rabbi Trunk.

In this context, Rabbi Trunk cited Rabbi Johanan, who held that the reason for Israel's fate in Egypt may be found in a close reading of Genesis 14:21. As related earlier in that chapter, the populace of Sodom had been captured as prisoners of war, and Abraham had overcome their captors. The king of Sodom proposed that Abraham keep the booty, and return the populace to his (the king's) rule. But implicit in that very request was the king's acknowledgement that the people of Sodom were at that point in time legitimately under Abraham's domain. Abraham (notes Rabbi Johanan) could (and should) have retained them and converted them, i.e., brought them into Abraham's covenant with God.Abraham's failure to seize this opportunity to dramatically expand God's flock was a strategic blunder – and the ultimate cause of Israel's servitude in Egypt. So too, declared Rabbi Trunk, with regard to the rabbis who rejected the king of Kiev's proposal: had they accepted it, the Russian people would all have become adherents of Judaism – and how different would have been the fate of Jews in Eastern Europe in medieval and early modern times!

Rabbi HaLevi explained that Rabbi Joshua ben Hananiah, who Rabbi Trunk thought should have been followed in the Kiev case, was himself articulating halakhic policy in response to the conditions prevailing in his own times (the first century C.E.):

An extremely widespread movement of conversion developed towards the end of the Second Temple period.At the time there were about a million Jews in Egypt, about a million and a half in Syria and Asia Minor, about a million in Europe and North Africa, and about a million in Babylonia.These numbers did not stem from emigration, as at the time there were not so many Jews in the land of Israel itself.According to historical experts, these numbers reflect a broad movement of conversion…. This was the era in which idolatry lost its appeal, and Judaism captured the hearts of many… [but most converts were women]; It seems apparent that the obstacle that kept many men from joining the house of Israel was circumcision.

It could be, that we hear in the Talmud a faint echo of this severe problem … the Talmud states: "all [i.e., Rabbi Joshua and Rabbi Eliezer] agree, that immersion without circumcision is effective."(Yevamot 46b) It is simple, that the Halakhah is according to the [other] Sages [who required both rites].But it seems that there were indeed proselytes for whom circumcision was an obstacle - who sought to enter under the wings of the Shekhina by immersion only […].And indeed Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Joshua considered their conversion to be valid.

Who today could imagine the possibility of accepting masses of converts without circumcision?Yet this was possible, at least theoretically [also in post-Talmudic times;after quoting Rabbi Trunk's position cited above, Rabbi HaLevi concludes].

From all of the above we can learn the depth and breadth of the halakhic maxim relating to conversion: "Everything can be in accordance with the judge's view." Note this well.

Rabbi Hayyim David HaLevi argued that a serious discussion of giyyur must comprehend halakhic statements in their real-life context. At the outset it must be realized that the basic position of Jewish tradition is very much in favor of accepting converts. This positive attitude, encouraged by the rabbinic leadership in the centuries before and after the beginning of the Common Era, proved extremely successful. However, women were more prone to actually convert than were men – because conversion of a man required circumcision, to which many men were averse. Having established this general background, Rabbi HaLevi proceeded to a contextual reading of the late first century rabbinic debate. Heproposed that those rabbis who were willing to convert without requiring circumcision were able to advocate such a position because they knew well that the Torah affords rabbis a tremendous amount of latitude in deciding what to require of a proselyte – and they also knew that Torah is very much interested in the acceptance of converts.

Rabbi HaLevi further stated that one should not imagine that such leeway was available only to rabbis of ancient times. He pointed out that Rabbi Trunk obviously thought that post-talmudic rabbis also possess such prerogative – and that they should have employed it to facilitate the conversion of the king of Kiev and his nation.

Returning to this issue in 1989 (responsa 'AsehLekhaRav Vol. 9:30). Rabbi HaLevi wrote:

Judaism is not a missionary religion, and it does not relate at all [in a missionary way] to any other religion, including Christianity.[…] But in a broad historical view, Christianity caused tremendous damage to the spread of Judaism.This is because the entire yearning of the idolatrous world for a new faith (after the ancient world became tired of idolatry which was about to disappear from the world) caused many to flock to Judaism – until Christianity appeared and preached an easy religion devoid of any practical commandments.
[At this point, rabbi HaLevi inserts the following footnote:]

It is possible that we find an echo of these matters in the disagreement among the Tannaim … [citing Yevamot 46ab, HaLevi writes]: And perhaps Rabbi Joshua thought to be lenient by accepting proselytes on the basis of immersion alone, because that would open the door to conversion of masses of people and their entry into Judaism, something that circumcision -- which was so difficult for them -- prevented.It goes without saying that it did not cross Rabbi Joshua's mind to nullify the commandment of circumcision among the proselytes.Rather, his intent was only with regard to the older members of the first generation of proselytes. The children who would be born to them would be circumcised in accordance with the law, with the waiver applying only to those who themselves converted. Had Rabbi Joshua's opinion had been accepted in the Beit Hamidrash – the face of history might have looked very different!

Rabbi Joshua's position was not followed. The tidal wave of conversion to Judaism was diverted, and the great masses of non-Jews seeking religious fulfillment in a relationship with the God of Israel chose to do so via Christianity. Over the course of time, rabbis and other Jews forgot that Judaism had ever been interested in attracting adherents. But Rabbi HaLevi was well aware of the path not taken, and of what might have been had those rabbis responded otherwise to the strategic significance of the early Christian challenge: "Had Rabbi Joshua's opinion had been accepted in the Beit Hamidrash – the face of history might have looked very different!"

The competitive religious marketplace of the 21st century United States is significantly analogous to the religious marketplace of late antiquity: tens of millions of people are dissatisfied with the faith into which they were born, are seeking alternatives – and are changing adherences. The 2013 Pew report reveals that born Jews are also part of this landscape, with 25 percent of them having left. But all faith groups are in a similar situation; because Jews are less than 2 percent of the population, that means that for every Jew who opts out, there are 50 non-Jews seeking fulfillment outside of the group into which they were born.

Judaism possesses a rich and diverse religious-cultural tradition, woven together from ancient times to the present by talented and creative individuals and communities. Furthermore, Jews have developed a strong and vibrant sense of togetherness, kinship and family – a resource increasingly valuable in times such as ours. Is it not reasonable to assume that of all the tens of millions of non-Jews seeking fulfillment, many could find meaning and fulfillment in Judaism?

Whatever the Israeli rabbinate's policy on giyyur in Israel may be, this has no relevance for the reality in which United States Jewry exists. If they are indeed (as they see themselves) the true keepers of the halakhic tradition, Orthodox rabbis are especially called upon to acknowledge all of the above, and to respond to the strategic call of responsibility for the future not only of Orthodox Jews, but of all God's flock.

Does halakhic tradition contain the resources that can enable Orthodox rabbis to rise to that call, to warmly encourage converts and to follow the most lenient possible halakhic opinions that will be most conducive to widespread giyyur? Yes, it does.

The halakhic tradition contains many strands and many voices. That same tradition also teaches that in times of urgency (she'at ha-dhaq), the most lenient options should be followed. The Pew reports prove unequivocally how great that urgency is.

The views of the great halakhic scholars cited above are crucial to the contemporary discussion of Jewish continuity. Relying upon earlier sources and applying them in contemporary reality, they teach that within the heart of the halakhic tradition there is a clear voice calling out: At all times, and in all places, God loves converts. Conversion is a mitzvah. Over and above that general rule, there are times in which conversion is crucial to Jewish continuity, and inclusion of non-Jews into God's flock is a strategic imperative.

Ours is such a time. Will future generations look back in regret and say "Had Rabbi Uzziel's, and Rabbi Mesas' and Rabbi HaLevi's opinions been accepted in the Beit Hamidrash, the face of history might have looked very different.” Or will they say: "How great were the Torah leaders of those times, who chose the halakhic path most appropriate to the American religious landscape, and led the entire American Jewish community from seemingly inevitable numerical decline to numerical and spiritual growth."

The question is whether we move our synagogues to where God is now dwelling. Will we, the religious, live up to the expectations of the young people in cafes and discussions groups who have preceded us? Will we apologize to them and join in their discussions, creating a real religious experience out of our synagogue service? Or will we, as usual, stay put, fight the truth, and then be put to shame?
—Rabbi Nathan Lopez Cordozo

Rabbi Cordozo is correct that unless we, Jewish leaders and institutions, are able to understand and relate to the current culture and weltanschauung of the Jewish people and the society that nurtures them, we will not be able to serve, educate, or engage them in religious community. But we would do well to avoid seeing this situation as one of us and them, the establishment versus the innovators, young versus old. We are one family. It is our job as leaders to know what the Jewish people need as individuals and as a group. This cannot just be a matter of gesturing, or catering to some societal perturbation in order to serve a financial or survival agenda; it must be about how to function as a Jewish community together. It must be genuine and organic.

I believe that no other Jewish institution can serve the role of building strong, encompassing, spiritual community than a shul can. Shuls educate, create community, care for people, guide them on their journey, and can, if navigated with a wide vision, make a difference in our world far beyond their own members. Shuls can be the vehicles that enable us, the Jewish people, to gather in our brethren and be a light unto the nations.

I think I speak for many younger and mid-career rabbis, when I say that although stolidness may seem to be the rule in synagogues, it is by no means ubiquitous or necessary. I will use my own synagogue, Bais Abraham Congregation in St. Louis, Missouri as one example of utilizing creativity and open mindedness in the service of generating a more vibrant community.

Spiritual Tools

It takes a large spiritual tool box to encounter an infinite God, but most of these tools and approaches are not foreign to Judaism; most are not even new to us, but were born within our tradition. For me personally, even innovation itself has its roots in the hareidi yeshivot of my youth where nothing was valued more than hiddush, the truly new idea in Torah. Let me share one example of the ways in which we are utilizing Judaism's plethora of spiritual approaches and tools in invigorating and renewing our community.

When I was a young adult I came across a book on Jewish meditation. This was a foreign concept to me at the time, having grown up Orthodox. I was quite surprised to discover in its pages that the Talmud’s Hassidim haRishonim, Ancient Pious ones, took an hour to prepare for prayer, an hour to pray and an hour to come down from their prayer, and that the Ariza”l and many Hassidic rebbes taught methods of visualization and mantra meditation. I was struck by how none of this sounded like the “chopping of a minha,” that I often witnessed, and was even considered virtuous in some Orthodox circles. Years later I studied Jewish meditation in a more formal capacity. This is one of the many Jewish tools that has fallen by the wayside, and that we are bringing once again to our prayers and religious life. I must stress that it is not difficult to learn meditation but something that anyone with sensitivity and a bit of training can learn well enough in a short time to utilize and teach.

I have actualized this through a weekly meditative service on Shabbat mornings. Many people in shul do not really know what they are saying when they pray and do not really know how to utilize kavvanah, prayerful intent. Each Shabbat morning at the end of the Torah reading, I go to another room in the synagogue to lead a meditative kavvanah-oriented service, really a class about prayer with some guided meditation. About 20 percent of the shul follows me. We take just a few prayers and first read them to understand their meaning, then look at the themes of the prayer, and then I direct a guided meditation to focus us more deeply and personally on those themes. This I think is what we mean by the very traditionally Jewish notion of, “having kavaanah,” deeper intent. Some of these methods might borrow techniques from more Eastern practices but the medium of the meditation and its content is wholly Jewish, indeed it may be indispensable for real traditional tefillah itself.

Creating Community

Many Orthodox shuls are places people come to pray; they need a minyan for daily halakhic reasons or for holidays or a yortzeit. At Bais Abraham, the vast majority of attendees did not grow up Orthodox and so do not always know how to daven; it is rather a desire for community that brings them. And so we put a great deal of effort into community programming. Although davening is very hard for many, most Jews really do want the experience of an embracing community. Shuls today must function a bit like Jewish Community Centers, engaging lay leaders in creating social, intellectual, and educational programming for all ages and demographics.

Shuls must also be wider communal institutions. By communal I do not just mean the Orthodox community, but a vital part of our neighborhoods, cities, and country. Shuls must feel a deep sense of obligation not only to their members but to, as a community, turn outward toward the rest of the Jewish community and the general communities in which a shul finds itself. One important way to do this is as a shul to volunteer in the larger community.

Bais Abraham has an ongoing partnership with one of the most economically disadvantaged neighborhoods in St. Louis, which is located less than a mile from our shul. Once a month we spend an evening studying about an aspect of hessed from a Jewish point of view. Later that week we put this into practice as a community painting a house, serving food to the elderly, and so forth.

A Culture of Welcoming

Many shuls see themselves as welcoming, but often this is limited. Many are welcoming on their own terms to those who can fit in. I believe that to be truly welcoming, a shul’s culture must be so embracing that it draws almost no boundaries to entry at all. To be welcoming to Jews that one hopes to influence is a very limited way of welcoming, and usually people see it for what it is. Only a narrow range of seekers will come to such a place. In a truly welcoming culture all are welcomed because there is no other way to be.

Rabbi Abraham Magence, my teacher and the rabbi who preceded me in my shul, made the point that when Avraham welcomed the three men walking in the desert, for all Avraham knew, as Rashi points out, they were idol worshipers. It was three idolatrous nomads that Avraham left God’s presence to run to greet and serve. What if we had a culture within Orthodox shuls like Avraham’s? If a homeless person comes in on Shabbat to our synagogue building he or she is welcomed and included fully in the kiddush or seudah shelishith, and welcome to be in the services with us.

I remember a certain non-Jewish homeless man in an electric wheelchair who would come on Shabbat morning, charge his chair and spend the entire day eating at and interacting with people in the shul. We must not just welcome people into shul, but transform our shuls into places in which the culture of welcoming is deeply ingrained, almost without limits. It is only then that the wide array of Jews who do not imagine themselves in shul will feel comfortable.

Alternative Venues

Alternative venues outside of the synagogue are a good way to engage a population of non-Orthodox, younger people who may find it hard to enter the synagogue space. Although an old standby, barbecues outside of the shul building for various holidays such as Lag B’omer, Tu B’Av and Sukkot are always worth doing. They bring a sense of fun and are good ways to bring together shul families with new people who may not be affiliated. Alternative venues also serve to disrupt a congregation's tendency toward monotony and to inject a sense that Judaism and community can suffuse the surrounding environment outside the shul’s walls; that Jewish community extends outside the bounds of the synagogue space.

Years ago, during the weeks leading up to Rosh Hashanah, I began leading a once-a-year hike in the woods as a way to prepare for the Yamim Noraim, the High Holidays. We typically begin in a circle near the woods, sharing some thoughts about the upcoming work of teshuvah, repentance. I focus the group on the New Year and on teshuvah between us and others and between us and God. Then together we take a silent hike through the woods. No talking is allowed so that though we are together as a community, everyone is at the same time allowed and encouraged to be alone in their thoughts. The hike concludes with another circle in which we reflect upon the time spent in silence, and a sharing of plans for teshuvah.

As a shul, we also use alternative venues for Torah study. We hold a class called “Torah on Tap,” which meets in a bar. It is a discussion that is sometimes a text study, sometimes topical, and sometimes just asking questions. In engaging the wider Jewish people, atmosphere is just as important as content. Many Jews might not know how to pray or might feel they are not “religious enough,” but a bar has very few barriers to entry. This not only brings Judaism to the people who are hesitant to enter the shul, but it brings the community outward, facilitating a strong feeling that we are more than a shul; we are a community within the world. This makes for much stronger communal bonds because people are not living one identity outside of shul and another inside, rather the two sometimes bifurcated worlds begin to merge.

Several years ago, we spent the year creating an emphasis on seeing Judaism through art. Among the many classes, hands-on art explorations, and Orthodox rabbinic scholars-in-residence who were exploring Rav Kook’s and others ideas about art, we spent an interesting day at the local art museum taking a tour that I guided along with one of the docents at the museum who was also an Orthodox Jew. I focused the tour on the many paintings that drew on the Torah for their subject matter. We looked not only at each painting against its biblical background but also at the painting or work as a work of art in itself. What did the colors the artist used, and the emotive quality of the painting in turn, teach us about the biblical story from which it had emerged? This was a good example of opening our eyes to the cultural resources around us outside of our shul that can help to expand what we do to a wider audience and a wider Torah vision.

Flexibility

In this age of online shopping and instant messaging, synagogues must be flexible enough to meet the varied needs of the Jewish people with quality and speed, even if it involves creating services and products to which we are unaccustomed. Several years ago a secular Israeli family approached us with an observation. There were a growing number of secular Israelis in St. Louis whose children attend secular public schools and have no Jewish education. These children speak some Hebrew, which they learned at home but cannot read or write Hebrew. Secular Israelis who move outside of Israel quickly find themselves without the Jewish influence of Israeli society upon which they relied for connection to Jewish holidays, culture, and even religious moments. They find themselves in a larger society that is largely under Christian influence, and feel disoriented and bereft of their Jewish identity. Their children have no knowledge at all of the Jewish people and its land, its religion, its language, or its culture.

With the guidance of one or two Israeli families, we immediately took steps to establish a weekly Hebrew school that would focus on reading and writing Hebrew, thus serving the needs of this population on their own terms. Our goal was ultimately not just to teach Hebrew but primarily to teach Judaism in a way that would be acceptable to these families and ultimately to engage them in the Jewish community. Three years later, 15 families attend this Hebrew school, have a strong connection to the Bais Abraham community, and are even asking for additional religious instruction for their children. Had Bais Abraham been a place of much bureaucratic procedure I doubt it would have been able to be flexible enough, quickly enough, to engage a new population with such specific needs so unexpectedly.

Innovation

If Jews are not fully connecting to the prevalent model of community, then we must be willing, within the bounds of halakha and with its sage guidance, to tweak the model. Tradition and the status quo are important values with great benefits, but they must be weighed against their costs. I am not recommending that we compromise halakha, but I am saying that within halakha we should be willing to perhaps go against parts of prevalent Orthodox culture. As the talmudic statement often quoted by halakhic decisors goes: Lo ra’inu ayno ra’ayah: Just because we have not seen something before, does not mean it is automatically forbidden.

One example that comes to mind today is the increase of female Orthodox religious leadership within Orthodox synagogues. Programs at Yeshiva University, Drisha Institute, Nishmat, and Yeshivat Maharat are training Orthodox women to be guides, teachers, and halakhic decisors within Orthodox communities. This has fallen under some attack of late often with the caveat I have heard over and over: “It is not halakhically forbidden, but we should not do it.”

This fear of change even when something is halakhically permitted and increasingly practiced in centrist Orthodox communities stops us from being flexible enough to speak to the needs of the moment. This does not mean the halakhic answer is always yes, nor does it mean we should not sacrifice for halakha, or keep the halakha even when it flies in the face of current notions of morality. However, there is a limit to unduly sanctifying the status quo and the current Orthodox culture. The color of one’s clothes or hat or the language one uses should not necessarily be seen as holy or required just because they are the Orthodox culture of the moment.

Thus, Bais Abraham has this year hired a soon-to-graduate student of Yeshivat Maharat. We do not call her rabbi since she is not one, nor would it be a good idea to push her into a rabbinic box. I believe that Orthodox women today in positions of leadership will help to define this role as a new one within the long list of Jewish female historical leadership typologies. The shofetet, the neviah, the song leader, all of these roles were held by famous Jewish women in other eras and I think that the Jewish Orthodox women leaders of today are on the verge of helping to define a new and much needed leadership role for the Jewish people which will help Jewish Orthodox life, values, and Torah to speak more clearly to the current Jewish community with a more vibrant and innovative shul makeup.

If we are willing, within the bounds of halakha, to open ourselves and our communities to embrace a wider and more varied range of Jewish ideas, Jewish spiritual tools and Jewish people, our synagogues will quickly become the beverage of choice, once again, for even the younger generation of Jews who are so thirsty for the word of God.

A. Inspiration for Prayer

One of the classic debates in the Talmud concerns the basis for the three daily prayers of Shacharit, Mincha and Arbit. [1] According to Rabbi Yossi the son of Rabbi Chanina, these prayers were instituted by our Patriarchs, whereas according to Rabbi Yehoshua Ben Levi, they were instituted by the Men of the Great Assembly in order to correspond with the daily tamid offerings.

While - taken at face value - Rabbi Yossi and Rabbi Yehoshua are discussing the origin of the three daily prayers; I believe that the fundamental issue being discussed is the inspiration for the three daily prayers. According to Rabbi Yossi, we pray at these times because we wish to emulate our greatest Jewish role models - the Patriarchs; whereas according to Rabbi Yehoshua, we pray at these times because we wish to model our worship on the greatest Jewish institution - the Temple.[2] Thus, for Rabbi Yossi, inspiration comes from holy people, whereas for Rabbi Yeshoshua, inspiration comes from holy places.

Following the destruction of the First Temple, the synagogue was established as ‘a miniature sanctuary’[3] and consequently, in the modern era, this debate concerning the inspiration for prayer can be rephrased as follows: are we to find inspiration for prayer from people who pray, or from places for prayer?

The Talmud concludes its debate by stating that the prayers were instituted by our Patriarchs, but the Rabbis subsequently associated the three daily prayers with the tamid offerings to teach us that these prayers are considered obligatory. This suggests that while synagogues may support us with our prayer obligation, people teach us about prayer inspiration. Without inspiring people of prayer, we cannot have inspiring places of prayer.

B. People make synagogues

This concept of the centrality of people as the inspiration for prayer is supported by a different discussion in the Talmud [4] which addresses the following question: when does a synagogue become a holy place? The answer, which is subsequently cited in the classic halakhic codes,[5] is that a synagogue becomes holy from the moment people pray in the synagogue, because it is the holiness of people that creates the holiness of the synagogue. In fact, an extension of this concept is expressed by the verse ‘in the multitude of people is the king’s glory’, [6] which suggests that not only do people convey holiness onto a synagogue, but in fact, the more people that pray in a synagogue, the more holiness there is in a synagogue. [7]

C. Synagogues as democracies?

In order to maintain a synagogue where everyone is considered to contribute spiritual value, the synagogue must value the principle of democracy. As Rabbi Jeffrey Cohen explains, ‘the Kneset Ha-Gedolah …were committed to making the democratic institution of the synagogue a worthy competitor – and ultimate successor – of the priestly aristocracy which governed the Temple.’ [8] Thus, as Rabbi Joseph Hertz explained, ‘the sacred word, and not any sacramental or ritual act, was now the centre of worship; and that Sacred Word was the seat of religious authority and the source of religious instruction.’ [9] This meant that ‘the synagogue proved of incalculable importance’ because through it, ‘the Torah became the common property of the entire people, ..the synagogue became the “home” of the Jew.’ [10]

However, at some moment in time, it seems that we forgot that it is people that make synagogues holy, and not the other way around. We have incorrectly adopted the position of Rabbi Yehoshua who claims that it is the place of prayer that attracts the people to prayer. The seat of authority, previously held by the Sacred Word, has been replaced by the ‘Sacred President’, and the synagogue is only “home” to those who can afford the fees. How did this transformation occur? What has led to this profound misrepresentation of Jewish values in the places of Jewish worship?

D. The decline of Jewish fellowship

Rabbi Jeffrey Cohen has noted that ‘the Orthodox synagogue has truly preserved the spirit of the ancient Temple, from which it developed. The Temple was a bustling centre’[11] and ‘a noisy place, with people chattering excitedly, priests called ritual instructions to each other as animals were being dispatched and prepared for the altar, with oxen lowing, sheep bleating, children crying, Levites singing, vendors advertising their souvenirs, beggars importuning, and witnesses and litigants arguing loudly as they made their way to the Chamber of Hewn Stones to present their case to the Sanhedrin.’[12] He continues to observe that ‘it is that informal, and mildly irreverent, spirit which has determined and moulded the ethos of the traditional synagogue to this day.’[13] In the synagogue, ‘we have to feel “at home”. We have to be relaxed, natural, without inhibition. In synagogue, the dignity and decorum – even the dialogue – are of secondary consequence. It is the experience of Jewish fellowship underlying the concept of minyan, and the keen awareness of the Being before whom we are “appearing” and “assembling” …that are the primary considerations and preconditions of Jewish prayer.’[14]

This concept of ‘Jewish fellowship’ as the key factor in the synagogue atmosphere is explored further by Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik in his essay on ‘The Community’. He writes:

Quite often a man finds himself in a crowd among strangers. He feels lonely. No one knows him, no one cares for him, no one is concerned for him… He begins to doubt his ontological worth. This leads to alienation from the crowd surrounding him. Suddenly someone taps him on the shoulder and says: “Aren’t you Mr. So-and-so? I have heard so much about you.” In a fraction of a second his awareness changes. An alien being turns into a fellow member of an existential community (the crowd). What brought about the change? The recognition by somebody, the word![15]

This is a beautiful description of what is means to reach out to another and a perfect illustration of what Rabbi Cohen refers to as ‘Jewish fellowship’. However, as the small synagogues of the towns and villages have transferred to being large synagogues of the cities, there has been a measured decrease in such interactions in which a stranger is identified both physically and existentially, and consequently, coupled with a significant increase in alienation amongst Jews who visit synagogues but who subsequently leave as much a stranger as they were when they arrived. Many Jews no longer feel at home in the synagogue. Why?

E. The rigid structure of the synagogue

Running parallel to the decline in Jewish fellowship has been the trend towards the institutionalization and rigidity of the synagogue as a response to the Reform movement. Judith Bleich has observed that, ‘the earliest stirrings of Reform centred on improvement of the worship service’[16] and ‘in keeping with the desire to present an appealing religious service, new emphasis was also placed upon beautifying the synagogue building.’[17]

In Germany, synagogue reform was expressed by the desire to play organs as part of the service; in England, it was expressed by the desire to establish mixed choirs, and in America, synagogue reform concerned itself with mixed seating. However, in Hungary, it was the location of the bimah which was ‘elevated to a question of ideology that became symbolic of the entire struggle for and against Reform,’ [18] and ‘it was in connection with his unequivocal ruling on the impermissibility of shifting the bimah from its central position that Hatam Sofer applied his oft-quoted aphorism, “Hadash asur min ha-Torah – innovation, ie. departure from accepted practice, is forbidden by the Torah.”’ [19]

In explaining the rationale for maintaining the place of the bimah in the centre of the synagogue, Lord Jakobovits [20] lists three reasons, each of which are found in the rulings of Rambam:
a) We place the bimah in the centre of the synagogue so that all those in the synagogue can hear the reader of the Torah. [21]
b) At the national convocation in Jerusalem every seven years [22] - known as Hakhel - a bimah was placed in the centre of the women’s part of the Temple court. The king would sit upon it and the men, women and children heard his reading whose purpose was to encourage them to perform mitzvot and strengthen them in the true faith. [23]
c) Each day during the festival of Sukkot, people made a circuit around the altar, and nowadays, we make a circuit around the bimah where a Sefer Torah is held, in memory of the Temple. [24]

Yet, while not all poskim viewed the removal of the bimah from its central position as a fundamental issue ,[25] this controversy demonstrated how ‘a comparatively minor halakhic matter assumed exaggerated significance,’ [26] and it led many Jews to conclude that it was the holiness of the synagogue that created the holiness of the people (which was why the synagogue could not undergo any change without it having an adverse effect on the community). Moreso, it was from this controversy that the synagogue’s halakhic integrity became associated with its halakhic inflexibility. Yet, while many synagogues still maintain a bimah in the centre of the sanctuary, many Jews no longer feel a part of the synagogue community.

In my humble opinion, while the three reasons cited above may infer that a synagogue may not move its bimah, they also infer that a synagogue must provide a wide range of services to maintain and engage its community, and while numerous communities ‘won the battle’ for the bimah, they are currently ‘losing the war’ against alienation from the synagogue.

F. The duties of a synagogue

I have previously noted that one reason offered for maintaining the bimah in the centre of the synagogue is so that all those in the synagogue can hear the reader of the Torah. While Rabbi Cohen speaks of the ‘informal, and mildly irreverent, spirit which has determined and moulded the ethos of the traditional synagogue to this day,’ [27] this should never come at the cost of being able to hear the Torah reading, and therefore, it is incumbent on a synagogue to maintain a respectful amount of decorum. Moreso, while a bimah may be placed in the centre of the synagogue, if a ladies gallery is placed in the rear of the synagogue it is highly unlikely that the women will be able to hear the Torah reading at all. Therefore, a synagogue should ensure that the Torah is read in the middle of where the community is, rather than in the middle of the men’s section.

A second reason offered the central position of the bimah was so that the men, women and children could listen to the Hakhel reading whose function was to encourage them to perform mitzvot and strengthen them in the true faith. This teaches us that every synagogue should establish education programmes that speak to both the hearts and minds of all men, women and children, and not just the most knowledgeable.

The third reason provided for keeping the bimah at the centre of the synagogue refers to the hakafot which are recited on Sukkot when we walk in a circular movement around the bimah on which there is a Sefer Torah. This ritual, which is a ‘homage to Torah,’ [28] is understood by Rabbi Soloveitchik [29] to teach us that since ‘all marchers are equidistant from the centre,’ all Jews have equal access to Torah. Therefore, all communities should ensure that they are wheelchair accessible to allow ‘all marchers’ to be equidistant from the centre,[30] and in communities where women would wish for a greater involvement with Torah, the Sefer Torah should be passed to the women prior to its reading and made available to women who wish to dance with a Sefer Torah on Simchat Torah. [31]

G. Concluding thoughts

Rabbi Soloveitchik writes that ‘to recognise a person means to affirm that he is irreplaceable. To hurt a person means to tell him that he is expendable, that there is no need for him,’ and the fact that many young Jews are no longer found in our synagogues is a clear message that they think that we do not need them. We claim that the synagogue is the home of the Jew, but we ask people to move when they are sitting in our seat. We talk about Jewish fellowship, but do not welcome strangers; and whereas the synagogue was previously guided by the sacred word, we often do not even say a word to those who are visiting.

Synagogues should do more too. The Torah should be able to be heard and accessed by all, and family education should be a priority, but most importantly, a synagogue should regard every Jew as irreplaceable, because without people of prayer, we cannot have places of prayer.

[1] see BT Berachot 26b
[2] In fact, it may be possible to find further support for such a thesis from other teachings of Rabbi Yossi and Rabbi Yehoshua throughout the Talmud. Rabbi Yossi’s philosophy of prayer is person-centric and he emphasises that the power of prayer comes from the moment when people pray together rather than the place where people pray together (see BT Berachot 8a, see also BT Berachot 10b where many of the teachings he cites from his mentor, Rabbi Eliezer Ben Yaakov, also reflect this attitude. However, Rabbi Yehoshua’s philosophy of prayer is synagogue-centric and he often emphasised the importance of attending and praying in a synagogue (see BT Berachot 8a, 8b) and arriving early when attending synagogue (se BT Berachot 47b).
[3] Ezekiel 11:16
[4] JT Megillah 3:1
[5] see Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chaim 153
[6] Mishlei 14:28
[7] See BT Berachot 53a, Pesachim 64b, Rosh Hashanah 32b, Yoma 26a, Yoma 70a, Sukkah 52b, Megillah 27b, Menachot 62a
[8] Jeffrey M. Cohen Horizons of Jewish Prayer (London: The United Synagogue, 1986) p. 41
[9] Joseph H. Hertz The Authorized Daily Prayer Book (London: Soncino Press, 1976) p. xvi
[10] Ibid. p. xvii
[11] Jeffrey M. Cohen Horizons of Jewish Prayer pp. 143-144
[12] Ibid. pp. 144-145
[13] Ibid. p. 145
[14] Ibid. p. 146
[15] Joseph B. Soloveitchik, ‘The Community’ Tradition 17:2 (Spring, 1978) p. 16
[16] Judith Bleich, ‘Liturgical Innovation and Spirituality: Trends and Trendiness’ in A. Mintz & L. Schiffman (ed.) Jewish Spirituality and Divine Law (New Jersey: Yeshiva University Press/KTAV, 2005) p. 319
[17] Judith Bleich, ‘Liturgical Innovation and Spirituality: Trends and Trendiness’ p. 362
[18] Ibid. p. 364
[19] Ibid. pp. 364-5
[20] Immanuel Jakobovits Jewish Law Faces Modern Problems (New York: Balshon Printing, 1965) p. 43
[21] See MT Hilkhot Tefillah 1:3
[22] See Devarim 31:10-12
[23] See MT Hilkhot Hagigah 3:1-4
[24] See MT Hilkhot Lulav 7:23
[25] See for example Iggerot Mosheh, Orach Chayim Vol. 2 (New York: 1963) no.’s 41& 42
[26] Judith Bleich, ‘Liturgical Innovation and Spirituality: Trends and Trendiness’ p. 366
[27] Jeffrey M. Cohen Horizons of Jewish Prayer p. 145
[28] Abraham R. Besdin Man of Faith in the Modern World: Reflections of the Rav Volume Two – adapted from the lectures of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik (New Jersey: Ktav, 1989) p. 154
[29] While Rabbi Soloveitchik is talking about Shmini Atzeret & Simchat Torah where the Sifrei Torah circle the bimah, I have adapted these insights to the Hakafot of Sukkot
[30] Abraham R. Besdin Man of Faith in the Modern World: Reflections of the Rav Volume Two – adapted from the lectures of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik pp. 155-156
[31] See Nachum Rabinovitch Responsa Siach Nachum (Maaleh Adumim, 2008) No. 40
[32] Joseph B. Soloveitchik, ‘The Community’ p. 16

Mysteries of Judaism, by Rabbi Dr.Israel Drazin
Gefen Publishing House, 2014

Reviewed by Rabbi Marc D. Angel

In this book, Rabbi Dr. Israel Drazin offers a series of essays on a variety of topics. The early chapters of this book emphasize the rabbinic contributions to Judaism’s observance of holy days and festivals. While many think that our observances are based on biblical teachings, Rabbi Drazin makes the case that the Talmudic sages shaped our understanding and experiencing of these days. Especially after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE, it was imperative for the rabbis to reinterpret and reframe basic elements in Judaism.

In Chapter 21, the author examines the nature of rabbinic authority. While appreciating the greatness of the ancient sages and their stress on education, Rabbi Drazin reminds readers that rabbis after all are only human. They are not infallible. Rabbi Drazin advises that people “should evaluate everything the rabbis tells them and not accept what he says simply because he is a rabbi. They should consider the sources that the rabbi uses for his decision, and then make up their own minds how to behave. As with physicians, it sometimes pays to get a second opinion.” (p. 79)

Rabbi Drazin insists on a clear distinction between what the Torah text states, and what rabbis say in their homilies and midrashic statements. “Thus when people hear a sermon or read a book on ethics, they should ask themselves: ‘Am I learning some true facts about life, the world, and society? Is this only the rabbi’s opinion supported only by the rabbi’s interpretation of Scripture or anecdotes?...Am I being entertained or taught.’” (p. 81)

The closing chapters of the book relate to the role of women in Orthodox Judaism. Rabbi Drazin laments the injustices to women caused by the rabbinic establishment in Israel in matters of divorce. These problems—although institutionalized in Israel—are also evident in the Orthodox rabbinic courts in the diaspora. Rabbi Drazin admires Rabbi Emanuel Rackman and Rabbi David Hartman for their efforts to ameliorate the status of women in Orthodoxy. He suggests that contemporary rabbinic leadership needs to be more sensitive, creative and courageous in addressing the problems of our time.

Rabbi Dr. Drazin served for 31 years as a chaplain in the US Army and attained the rank of brigadier general. He has a PhD in Judaic studies, as well as master’s degrees in psychology and Hebrew literature. He is the author of 25 books, including a series of four books on Moses Maimonides.