National Scholar Updates

Campus Fellows dinner meeting at the home of Rabbi and Mrs. Marc Angel, December 24, 2014

Review by Israel Drazin

Peshat Isn’t so Simple
By Rabbi Hayyim Angel
Kodesh Press, 2014, 311 pages

For over two millennia most Jewish Bible commentators did not explain the Bible’s plain meaning, called “peshat” in Hebrew, but used the biblical verses and events as sources for homiletical lessons. Some exceptions existed, such as the writings of Maimonides, Abraham ibn Ezra, and Rashbam. Unfortunately many people thought that what rabbis told them in sermons was what the Bible actually states. They believed imaginative stories, such as Abraham destroying his father’s idols, are events told in the Torah.

Today, there are some yeshivot that are teaching peshat and new books are appearing with peshat. Hayyim Angel, a clear-thinker and author of six splendid books and over a hundred learned articles, all written in interesting and easy language, is in the forefront of such scholars. People who want to know what the Torah actually says – distinguishing “between text and interpretation” - will learn much from his writings. (All the quotes in this review are from Rabbi Angel’s book.)

Rabbi Angel devotes eleven of his twenty-one chapters to discussing the methods of peshat, and offers many eye-opening fascinating examples in ten chapters. He states that the best peshat “captures the language or the spirit of a passage more fully.” This is not easy. Also, although there are many rabbis and scholars who seek the peshat today, they do not always agree how it should be done or what the peshat is.

Understanding the simple meaning of the biblical text is influenced by the commentator’s worldview. Rabbi Angel mentions Maimonides who “maintained that if logic or scientific knowledge contradicts the literal sense of the biblical text, that text must not be taken literally,” but understood figuratively or allegorically. Maimonides understood “that nature will not be altered fundamentally in the messianic era” and interpreted messianic prophecies such as Isaiah’s view that at that time “the wolf shall dwell with the lamb” as a poetic description indicating that all nations will live together in peace. Maimonides felt that humans are unable to see angels while in a waking state and therefore interpreted Abraham’s meeting with three angels as a vision. He felt that the prophet Hosea “did not actually marry a prostitute, nor did Isaiah walk around naked in public,” nor did Ezekiel “lie on his sides for a total of 430 days” even though the text states that they did. These and many other events, according to Maimonides, should be understood as the prophets’ visions, parables, or allegories.

“Although the divinely revealed Torah is an eternal covenant (Maimonides believed that) it was given to a certain society at a particular time.” Maimonides “attempted to understand how the ancient setting in which the Torah was given influenced the narrative and style of the Torah, and even the mitzvot (the divine commands).” While
God had no need of sacrifices, for example, since “the Israelites had a strong predilection to offer animal sacrifices,” God allowed the practice. The Torah contains many passages concerning sacrifices and Maimonides taught that these passages should be understood as showing that God “prescribed specific boundaries for this form of worship by insisting that animals could be sacrificed only in authorized shrines” and only certain animals could be used, and then only in a restricted manner.

While Maimonides interpreted the Torah with rationalistic eyes, Nachmanides saw the Torah through mystic lenses. Nachmanides attacked Maimonides: “Behold, these words (about sacrifices) are worthless; they make a great breach, raise big question, and pollute the table of God.” Nachmanides maintained that sacrifices “were the ideal means of communing with God, and not concessions to the ancient Israelites’ historical condition.”

Rabbi Angel describes seekers for peshat who drew the meaning of words and events from a wide variety of sources and were able to explain biblical events based upon what other cultures and nations were doing at the time. Maimonides “believed that were we to have access to more documents from the ancient world, we would be able to determine the reasons behind all of the commandments” (Angel’s emphasis). But others, such as Nehama Leibowitz “avoided ancient Near Eastern sources.”

Rabbi Angel describes the interpretation methodologies of many other famous commentators, such as Saadiah Gaon, Rashi, Abraham ibn Ezra, Abarbanel, and Obadiah Sforno, as well as modern thinkers such as Binyamin Lau, Yoel Bin-Nun, Moshe Shamah, Leon Kass, and many others. He lists a host of these thinkers in his appendix together with their dates and home country.

Many of these peshat interpretations that Rabbi Angel tells us are fascinating and enlightening; others are thought-provoking but unreasonable to modern thinkers. For example Moshe Shamah points out that “Esau in the Bible was nothing like (the derogatory way) he is portrayed in (midrashic) sources.” Abarbanel notes that God instructed Moses to have his brother Aaron perform the first three of the ten plagues because God knew that the Egyptian magicians would duplicate these three plagues and God did not want to embarrass Moses; once the magicians conceded defeat during the plague of lice, God transferred the actions to Moses. Rabbi Shamah “understands the narratives of the Creation, Eden, Cain and Abel. Abraham’s encounters with the angels in Genesis 18, and Balaam’s talking donkey as allegories or parables.” Rabbis Shamah and Sassoon understood the Bible’s large tribal counts as being symbolic. Yehuda Kiel argues that the story of the tower of Babel “need not refer to the people literally to all humanity; it may refer simply to the people living in the region.” Leon Kass suggested that Abraham was arguing that the city of Sodom be spared in Genesis 18 because of objective justice and because he cared for his nephew Lot. While he was concerned for Lot, he made his plea in general terms and stopped at ten because if he “reduced the argument to (will you save the city for) one (person) it would have been too obvious that he was asking God to save Lot.”

In contrast, Sforno argued that the Israelite worship of the golden calf “permanently damaged Israel’s ideal spiritual level. “As a consequence of this sin, later prophets did not prophesy in the waking state attained by Moses. This comment is difficult to support from the text.” It is also contrary to current thinking that descendants are not punished for their forbearer’s misdeeds. Additionally, there were commentators who were willing to criticize the patriarchs for their behavior. Nachmanides, for instance, wrote that Abraham committed a great sin when he tried to save his life by saying that his wife Sarah was his sister. Rabbi Elhanan Samet insisted that Jacob’s decision to remain with his father-in-law Laban for a half dozen years to earn a living rather than returning home to Canaan to do so was a terrible mistake; it “aroused the jealousy of Laban’s family, and led him (Jacob) to unwittingly curse (his wife) Rachel.”

Rabbi Angel includes entire chapters discussing the Towel of Babel; Sarah’s treatment of Abraham’s concubine Hagar; Joseph’s bones; comparing the judge Gideon to the patriarch Abraham; mixing love and politics as seen in the relationships of David with King Saul, his son Jonathan, and his wife Michal; Ezekiel’s prophecy about the war of Gog; and the tale of Solomon determining true justice for child custody with his shocking ruse in suggesting to cut the baby in half. Readers will be surprised, delighted, and enlightened by the information in these chapters.

In summary, this book contains a wealth of intriguing ideas, what the Bible is actually saying rather than imaginary sermons built out of biblical words.

The Torah records the reaction of Aaron when he learned the sad news of the tragic deaths of his sons: “Aaron was silent,” vayidom Aharon. Commentators have offered various explanations of Aaron’s silence. He may have been speechless due to shock; he may have had angry thoughts in his heart, but he controlled himself from uttering them; he may have been silent as a sign of acceptance of God’s judgment.

Within biblical tradition, there are a number of phrases relating to confrontation with tragedy.

“Min haMetsar Karati Y-ah,” I call out to God from distress. When in pain, it is natural to cry out to God, to shed tears, to lament our sufferings and our losses. To cry out when we are in distress is a first step in the grieving process.

“Tefillah leHabakuk haNavi al Shigyonoth.” Dr. David de Sola Pool has translated this passage: “A prayer of Habakuk the prophet, in perplexity.” After crying out at our initial grief, we move to another level of mourning. We are perplexed. We want to know why this tragedy has happened? We want to understand how to reconcile this disaster with our belief in God’s goodness. We are in a state of emotional and spiritual confusion.

“Mima-amakim keratikha Ado-nai.” I call out to God from the depths of my being. This introduces the next stage in confronting tragedy. It is a profound recognition, from the deepest recesses of our being, that we turn to—and depend upon—God. It is a depth of understanding that transcends tears, words, perplexity. It is a depth of understanding and acceptance that places our lives in complete context with the Almighty. We may be heart-broken; we may be perplexed; we may be angry—but at the very root of who we are, we feel the solace of being in God’s presence. When we reach this deepest level of understanding, we find that we don’t have words or sounds that can articulate this inner clarity. We fall silent.

“And Aaron was silent.” Aaron was on a very high spiritual plane. While he surely felt the anguish of “Min haMetsar,” and experienced the perplexity of “Shigyonoth,” he experienced the tragedy “Mima-amakim,” from the very depths of his being. His silence reflected a profound inner wisdom that was too deep for tears and too deep for words.

All the people of Israel, and all good people everywhere, mourn the tragic deaths of three Israeli teenagers who were kidnapped and murdered by Palestinian terrorists. We all experience the anguish and the perplexity. We all have feelings of anger. Yet, we also need to reach out to the Almighty “mima-amakim,” from the depths of who we are. We know that God, in His infinite wisdom, will punish the murderers and their sympathizers. We know that God, in His infinite love, will bring healing to the mourners of these Israeli teenagers. Right now, the deepest response is silence. We need time to let this tragedy sink in, to absorb its impact on our lives, and to find a positive way of moving forward.

“May happiness multiply in Israel, and may sadness be driven away.”

The Crown of Solomon and Other Stories, is a second work of fiction by Rabbi Marc Angel. His first work of fiction, The Search Committee, is a series of thirteen monologues delivered by eleven people to a search committee seeking a new Rosh Yeshiva for Yeshivat Lita, pictured as a hareidi yeshiva located in Manhattan. In it, Angel creates eleven different voices all arguing their case in favor of one of two candidates for the position, one candidate representing the history of the yeshiva, the other a candidate for change. The novel is a novel of ideas which, though of broad interest, are particularly relevant in the Orthodox community

The Crown of Solomon consists of nineteen very short stories packed into 148 pages. The stories have the tone of parable. They all take place in modern times, yet the language is reminiscent of midrash, S.Y. Agnon, and to some extent Haim Sabato.

We meet a large cast of interesting characters. We meet rabbis, doctors, Anusim, pious poor men, pious rich men, cranky old men, a feisty young girl who stands up to anti-Semites, Wall Street moguls, star-crossed lovers, and more. As in The Search Committee, we see the struggle between traditional society and the desire for halakhic-based change. However, these tales go far beyond that concern.
The book opens with stories that take place in various places in Turkey, Rhodes, and Greece, locales where the Jews are of Sephardic origin. Rabbi Angel, himself of Sephardic origin, recreates Sephardic worlds that barely exist, having been decimated by the Shoah and emptied by emigration to the United States. His stories also take place in Seattle, a city of settlement for Sephardic Jews, New York, and some unnamed locations in America.

This splendid collection of stories is characterized by a continuing use of irony that always enters at the end of the story in the final sentence or paragraph. Indeed, most stories, even the ones drawn from Angel’s life, conclude with turns of events worthy of O. Henry.

In the title story, for example, Hakham Shelomo Yahalomi, sets about to write a work of Halakhah and Kabbalah entitled Keter Shelomo, Solomon’s Crown. He works on this study for in private for years, never sharing any of its contents with his community. Upon his death, it is discovered that the expected work does not exist. Matatya Kerido, Hakham Shelomo’s second in command, opens the box supposedly containing the text, only to find “just one page, a blank page, a tear-stained page without a single word written on it.” (p.8). The reader is left to interpret the meaning of this state of affairs. To be sure, the tension in the story prepares the reader for something unexpected. But this conclusion is both startling and thought provoking. What is the meaning of one tear-stained sheet instead of complete work of law and mysticism?

The second story in the collection is perhaps the best story in the book. “Sacred Music” tells the story of David Baruch, born on the Island of Rhodes on the same day as Mozart, who dies the same day as Mozart. David possesses an incredible talent for music, which he hears continually in his head, but, except for one sad instance, never manifests itself in voice, instrument, or on paper. It only ever resides in his interior. This story moved me. The motif of a child possessed of special knowledge or power is common, especially in young adult fiction. Generally, the conflicts are resolved when the young person’s talent is recognized. Not so in this case. David goes through his life badly misunderstood by his family and community. Rabbi Angel creates in this story a wonderful though immensely sad framework, which is intended, I believe, as a critique of the limits of traditional society to recognize and develop talent. One is reminded of the similar conflict in Chaim Potok’s My Name is Asher Lev. David’s music always remains within, because his world lacks the ability to help him develop his genius.

“Murder”, acknowledged in the Introduction as a true story, tells of a family member, Joseph. He is one of six children who in 1911 immigrates, along with their mother, to America to join their father in Seattle. Joseph is refused entry into America, because of a scalp infection. He returns to Rhodes, where he grows up, marries, has children and for various reasons does not consider immigrating to America. As a result, his family perishes in the Shoah along with the rest of the Jewish community of the Island of Rhodes. Angel’s anger at the end of this story is palpable. He suggests that the immigration official who sent Joseph back never lost any sleep over his deed, not in 1911, nor in 1944. Yet we see what the official never did: the tragic impact of what likely seemed to the official to be a trivial act of simply following orders.

Most of the stories surprise the reader with their unexpected conclusions. Angel creates situations and characters that, for the most part, reflect a Sephardic world unknown, I would imagine, to most Ashkenazi readers. Their names alone force the reader to consider the world about which they are reading.

Angel looks behind the characters and settings he’s creating to surprise, criticize, open up discussion, and, at the same time to memorialize the world of Rhodes, Salonika, and Turkey that are no longer with us. The surprises that greet us at the end of most of the stories, inevitably give us pause to reflect beyond the simplicity one would expect from the style and subject matter.

This week, we are commemorating the horrific murder 50 years ago of three civil rights workers, two Jewish and one African American, in Mississippi.

When I began reading up about the freedom riders, groups of mainly white young men and women from the north who spent the summer of 1964 in Mississippi working for civil rights, voting registration etc., and especially Andrew Goodman and Michael Shwerner, two amongst many Jews who were part of this summer, I had a hope.

I hoped that as I read about their background, and their murder at the hand of local police and officials, I would discover that they were motivated by their Judaism. Even if they were not themselves observant, I hoped that it would nonetheless emerge in their biographies that it was Jewish values – Hebrew school, a grandparent, a rabbi who had inspired them.

But I was wrong. The opposite was the case – they weren’t at all Jewishly observant, had the most marginal Jewish education, did not credit or probably were not even aware of Jewish ethical teachings that led them to ultimately give their lives for the cause of civil rights.

But then I read something that shocked me. Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner may not have been Bible literate, religious people; but there murderers were.

One of the few people ever properly prosecuted for the events, one of the ring leaders, Edgar Ray Killen, was a part time Baptist minister. And almost all of those involved would have been church going, religion school educated.

How could that be?

If you look at Parashat Noah, there is something remarkable. Both the case for civil rights anti-segregation, and the case for slavery and discrimination, can be supported by verses in this week’s Torah reading.

After Noah’s episode of drunken shame, the Torah tells us that he cursed Canaan, condemning him to slavery. This became known among some interpreters as the curse of Ham – Ham was held to be the progenitor of the African race, who were black because of their sin. This was surely not a Jewish interpretation, but many clergymen and Bible-read individuals used this verse to justify the enslavement, deprivation, and sub-human status of Africans.

Yet, the same Torah portion also forbids bloodshed, murder; it teaches that all people are created in the image of God, and all human life, regardless of race or belief, is sacred.

So given that the Bible can bolster both human rights and slavery, how do we know who is right? Does the Bible, religion have no voice in morality, if it can be used to support polar opposite positions?

We know – know for certainty, that Goodman and Shwerner and Chaney were right – that segregation, the horror of the way black people were treated is against morality, is an evil that God must detest. We know this and we are right.

And one of the ways we know this is precisely because the freedom riders gave up their lives, did terribly dangerous things for a just cause, and were murdered. In their life, and in their death, we see how correct they were. The story of their lives helps shape our understanding of what values we should hold.

The generation of the flood was condemned because of hamas, violent robbery and crime that destroyed society and was purely evil. There was no Bible, no prophecy then – how were the people supposed to know that hamas was wrong, that they deserved to be destroyed?
The answer is that they should have known! Human beings are meant to be able to tell the difference between right and wrong; and moral blindness is not a defense.

And here I think is why the freedom marchers story is so relevant for us.

The Bible can be read in all sorts of ways. It can be read in a way that is contrary to its meaning, contrary to morality. But heroic deeds, people who live values, live moral lives help us see the difference between right and wrong.

What is important about Michael Shwerner and Andrew Goodman is not that they were motivated by, influenced by Jewish values - what is important about them is that they have helped shape Jewish values. They showed us more clearly, at great cost, what it is that God wants from us.
As we know the worst sin that a Jew can commit is a hilul Hashem, a desecration of God’s name. The best we can aspire to is to be a kidush Hashem, to sanctify God’s name by righteous deeds.

In the words of the rabbis, a hilul Hashem is something that causes people to say: what a terrible person, how shameful for his parents and teachers who taught him Torah. And a kidush Hashem is when people will say: what a wonderful person – how happy are his parents and teachers who taught him Torah.

And the freedom riders were a kidush Hashem. Because even if their parents did not teach them Torah, they showed the possibility of morality. Where before there was segregation, slavery, hatred, passivity – now – there is morality, solidarity, the image of God. Thanks to these men, goodness, morality, heroism, is an option, the power of good has been strengthened.

In a world of such immorality, of such evil, as we see all over the planet, the way we ultimately spread Godliness is not through learning but living, by demonstrating the possibility of good – there is no more compelling lesson than a lesson of a life lived properly,

I started my research hoping to discover that Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman were students of Judaism. I discovered that they were something far more important – they were teachers of Judaism.

Abstract

Most Jews do not appreciate the difficulties a convert faces within the broader Jewish community. Usually, the only stories that see publication are of the “happily ever after” variety. But most converts I have known, as well as myself, have a hard time of it—and nobody ever forewarns us because nobody else is sensitive to what occurs. The commandment to not oppress the ger seems to have been largely ignored, often in the name of preserving the purity of the Jewish people. For those of us who are halakhically Jewish, the situation is unjustifiable; where our situation is known, we are forever under suspicion that we are not “really” Jewish. Because of negative social experiences, many of us have chosen to go underground where at all possible; I predict that most of us will ignore the recent RCA geirus policy that the ger should make his/her status known in a community, which merely invites such experiences. I am writing to make the problem known, and to beg reconsideration on halakhic grounds of some common institutional policies.

********

I am a convert. There can be no question that I am halakhically Jewish, as ruled by two Orthodox rabbinic courts. I am writing to protest the downright shameful treatment of converts by the Orthodox community, which so conveniently forgets the express command to not oppress the ger.

I was raised in the Bible Belt, as a conservative Protestant, to believe that the Bible was the Word of God. Nobody explained to me why “God’s Word” did not include the laws in the first five books, which today are observed only by Jews. Due to severe parental opposition, I could do nothing toward converting until I went away to graduate school in a small college town. This was more than 40 years ago. I took instruction from the only Orthodox rabbi in the state; he could be described as Modern Orthodox. In those days, I knew nothing of modern/black-hat distinctions among Orthodox Jews— and in fact there were no black-hat Jews in my immediate vicinity. The Beth Din consisted of this rabbi; the only Conservative rabbi in that town (he was shomer shabbat), and one other person. As I started meeting other Jews for the first time (I had had no significant social Jewish contact before conversion), I started getting questions about this conversion. I had met the Lubavitchers by this time, and they decided that while they believed this conversion was valid, they would redo it just to remove all question. They even placed a call to New York and got a ruling that I should not say God’s name in the blessing for this re-run. This took place about a year and a half after the first conversion.

I did not meet and marry my husband until nine years later. His entire family is Hareidi, and he is yeshiva-educated. We are shomer shabbat but not “yeshivish,” and live in a small college town with a bare minyan for our Orthodox community. We have one child, a son, who is also shomer shabbat.

The basic problem a convert faces in the Orthodox world stems from the Orthodox mind-set that if you observe one
mitzva more than I do you are a fanatic, and if you observe one mitzva less you are an apikores (heretic). It is hard enough for the ba’al teshuvah to navigate this mind-set and to figure out what is essential halakha and what is less essential minhag (custom). But the erring ba’al teshuvah at least is still considered Jewish. The convert has a more serious problem. If the convert is at all less stringent in observance than the person he or she is speaking to, the convert may be deemed to have not accepted all of the mitzvoth, and therefore the validity of the conversion is in question. I’ve even had an Orthodox rabbi say this to me in those very words. As I recall, on an occasion when I asked why, if there was one law for the convert and the home-born, that converts were automatically classed with prostitutes as people kohanim couldn’t marry. That’s when I learned that for converts, questioning is not permitted. That rabbi told me that any questions should have been addressed before conversion, not after it, and my present questioning indicated that I hadn’t accepted the whole Torah, so I wasn’t really Jewish.

I also encountered this response when I became friendly (no more) with a young man and this was disapproved of by people in the community, who forced him to end the friendship. I obviously hadn’t accepted that the only permissible relationship between a man and a woman was marriage to that person, and therefore I wasn’t Jewish. I even got into trouble when I expressed secular political views that differed from those of the person I was speaking with; I didn’t elevate “what’s good for the Jews” (including the State of Israel) over all other considerations. This showed that I had not really become part of the Jewish people; therefore I wasn’t Jewish.

My point is that the only way for a convert to be “accepted” is to become SuperJew: to be more stringent than thou, and to totally block out the former non-Jewish self. I have known of a few such people, though I have never become close enough to them to tell if this is real or an act they put on for self-preservation. Sorry, folks, I’m not SuperJew, nor are the vast majority of converts I have known, although they and I feel pressure to be so. If you can be “accepted” only by putting on an act, you’re not really accepted.

But in the culture in which I grew up, the cardinal sin is forgetting where you came from. I’ve often had Jews tell me that they assume I wouldn’t want my children to know my parents, and that since my parents are not halakhically my parents I owe them no obligation. I’m afraid that I’ve never bought that, and it has been the source of many problems. Does this mean I’m not really Jewish?

And I wish I had a dollar for every remark I’ve heard made by Jews about “the goyim.” I can’t stand such remarks about me (I’m still the same person I was before) and my family and my former co-religionists (whom I do NOT consider to be idolaters!), and it’s no excuse that the speaker didn’t know my background. The Talmud (Sanhedrin 94a) recognizes that this is painful for the convert, and explicitly forbids such comments lest the convert regret the conversion. Me’Am Loez states, in his commentary on Exodus 18:11, that even if a family has a convert as an ancestor ten generations back, it is forbidden to speak badly about non-Jews in front of them, because it hurts a person’s feelings to hear his/her nationality derided and can cause the person to give up Judaism. (This prescription, if taken seriously, would ban virtually all such derogatory comments since there is no way a person can know the ancestry of all those within earshot.) Believe me, I’ve heard much worse about non-Jews from Jews than I’ve ever heard about Jews from non-Jews. I’m afraid that this does not exactly solidify my identification with the Jewish people, whom I encountered only after my conversion to the faith.

The effect of all this on me (and I’ve only related a few examples) was very nearly to drive me away from Judaism. When people do things to you in the name of religion, it becomes hard to separate the people from the religion. In this case, it is also very hard to separate halakha from minhag. When a demand is made on you that you simply can’t fulfill, and you are told that this is an essential part of the package, how do you not then reject the whole package? I very nearly did. If there had been a way to undo my conversion, I might well have done it. But when I give my word, I keep it. I believed I was now obligated to observance and couldn’t get out of it. What really saved me Jewishly was that I was now living in my present small college town, where all Jews are accepted without question (because, for one thing, we can’t afford to be very particular). This tolerance allowed me the space to recover after my experiences with larger and more rigid Orthodox communities.

Most of my problems of the sort I’ve described occurred before I got married. Since then, my husband’s yichus has largely protected me—coupled with the decision made to hide my ancestry where at all possible. This started with my mother-in-law, a Polish immigrant who probably subscribed to the “can the leopard change its spots” view of non-Jews, which I have also heard (primarily from her generation). She was deeply embarrassed about having non-Jewish in-laws, but she wanted her son to be happy. She solved the problem by pretending to everyone (and herself) that my parents were Jewish, and ordering us to say nothing to the contrary. She has been dead many years now, but my husband with his greater knowledge of Orthodoxy convinced me that it would be better for our son if my background still was not known. We have all become very good at giving the misleading impression that I was born Jewish, while at the same time not saying anything that isn’t true. I do not have sufficient Hebrew language skills to pass as a Frum-From-Birth, but we allow the impression to exist that I am a ba’alat teshuvah. Although our son knew my parents (now long-deceased), to outsiders we emphasize my husband’s family and de-emphasize mine. I am not comfortable having to deny who I am, and I hope that someday my son will decide that denying half his heritage is not good, but I’ve acquiesced because it’s best for him. I feared, with reason, that if my status became known, he would be forever under the same cloud that I am. I wouldn’t wish my experience on anyone, especially my own child, who did not choose his situation. (The worst problem for him was shiddukhim, but since he married a Jew-by-birth we believe that now there is little serious adverse consequence that he could face even if identified with me.)

What reawakened all of these memories, of course, was when my son started looking for a shiddukh, a wife, in the Orthodox world. We had a very bad experience. The girl signaled interest on a computer site, knowing of my background. Her mother took over and forbade her to agree to a contact until I was investigated. The result was very unpleasant for me: The matchmaker, in the course of her Inquisition, persisted in thinking that it was for the sake of marriage, that the re-conversion was at my husband’s insistence (never mind that both occurred long before I met him), and even asked whether our son had conversion papers! Their rabbi then called us to explain that it was shul policy to have copies of conversion papers on file, and asked us to send them. (All of this was before my son could even talk with the girl to see if the match was worth pursuing.) I was going to refuse unless the same demand was made of the other parents; before it came to this point, my son refused the shiddukh. He agreed with me that proof of my Jewishness should not be halakhically necessary (especially at this stage) since it was not in question that I had long been observant, and further, it sounded like a bad in-law situation. It still left me very upset. I don’t mind the asking itself as much as I do the unwillingness to accept my answers. (My son decided after that to omit my status from his shiddukh profile, as it proved to be a “date-killer.” However, the wife he finally found turned out to be also “second-generation” in that her father is a convert. Her family raised no questions about my status!)

This brings me to one of my long-standing grudges. Converts are asked to show papers at every instance, from Day School enrollment (either their own or their children’s) to weddings. The same is not asked of people who claim to be born Jewish. I really resent being singled out for this suspicion. I don’t care how politely it is phrased or what reasons are given. (“Standard shul policy” certainly doesn’t cut it.) I find it offensive and discriminatory. To constantly have to prove myself, to know that there will never be a time when I am simply accepted as a Jew without strings attached? How would you feel? Perhaps the larger community is simply unaware of the impact this practice has on a convert’s feelings—but it is past time that this was realized and these policies reexamined.

These actions may actually violate an additional negative commandment, beyond oppressing the ger. Maimonides, when talking of “cheating with words,” gives an example of someone who tells a convert to “remember your origins.” He may have meant that someone who, while in negotiations with a convert, assumes a superior position because of his Jewish birth is cheating, by taking for himself something to which he isn’t entitled (since Jewishness should be equal for all Jews). These demands for proof of conversion in return for shiddukhim and Jewish education may qualify.

I will now refuse to provide papers for any reason unless the same is required of non-converts as well. (I can tell you that my husband has no paperwork to prove he is Jewish.) If you need to be sure I am Jewish, apply the same criteria you have for people who claim to be born Jewish. To me (and my yeshiva-bred husband agrees), this discriminatory treatment is a clear violation of the commandment not to oppress the ger. One convert I know got so fed up with this practice that she tore up her papers. I haven’t dared go that far, but I’m sorely tempted. What ever happened to the halakhic presumption that if you are observant, you are Jewish? I’ve been shomer shabbat for 40 years. Shouldn’t that suffice? (The yeshiva community actually may be better on this point than non-yeshiva people; my Hareidi sister-in-law and her husband immediately and totally accepted me with no questions asked, let alone papers demanded.)

I have been told that I should not feel offended by these procedures because, especially in these days, people need to make sure that both parties to a Jewish marriage are Jewish. First, I don’t think you should tell me how to feel. The commandment not to oppress the ger only makes sense in light of the ger’s own feelings. Second, why are the same requirements not made of the parties who claim to be born Jewish? Ba’alei teshuvah aren’t asked for papers; but even for them, isn’t it forbidden to shame a ba’al teshuvah by reminding him or her of past non-observance? Third, I don’t think you should downgrade the explicit commandment not to oppress the ger.

So what if an occasional mistake is made? I’m afraid that with my background I can’t consider this the worst thing that could happen. I can hardly take the position that any non-Jewish ancestry is a blot on the Jewish people. Actually, I believe there is an opinion that if it should transpire that a maternal ancestor wasn’t Jewish, it would not negate the Jewish status of observant mikvah-going descendants. But if that doesn’t suffice, do a conversion to make sure— and I DON’T mean making an already observant person start from scratch. This problem is fixable. Elijah the Prophet is going to have quite a job sorting us all out anyway; what’s a few more, especially when weighed against the commandment not to oppress the ger? Personally, I’d go with this Torah commandment as against concerns with the purity of the Jewish people. Unfortunately, however, the Orthodox community seems to have taken the other position. I think a number of so-called religious Jews will have a few things to answer for on the Day of Judgment.

The situation today is even worse than it was 40 years ago. With the move rightward of Orthodoxy, standards for converts have been raised. It is forbidden to refuse a sincere convert. In the effort to weed out the insincere, has the bar been raised so high as to also exclude many sincere converts? In my day, the Big Three mitzvoth were Shabbat, kashruth, and taharat haMishpaha (family purity); anything more was desirable but not a deal-breaker. It is not required that the convert know all of the halakha. And at least where I did it, anyone who did not have a Jewish fiance(e) was almost automatically accepted. In addition, if a problem was later discovered with the procedure, redoing it was no big deal. Now, to judge by the experience of newer converts in our community, you have to commit to a higher level of observance, you have to live in a large Orthodox community (which as a resident of a small community I strongly disagree with—it is quite possible to learn about Judaism and live halakhically without a lot of large local Jewish institutions), and there is a reluctance to simply redo questionable conversions. Rather, such cases are treated as if the person is definitively non-Jewish.

One shomer-shabbat person in our community was in halakhic limbo for years with his questionable prior conversion, which nobody was willing to redo while he lived here—so he finally had to move. Even then, it took two more years, despite his unquestioned sincerity and existing observance, and despite the clause in the RCA’s Geirus Policies, which says that in such cases it could be done more expeditiously. Although he was told that the prior conversion could have been valid, so he should continue to be observant, it seems that no rabbi would simply regularize his status. Meanwhile, he was not counted in minyanim, and was generally made to feel like a non-Jew. He had remarked that his observance during this time would have been somewhat more meticulous had his original conversion been ruled definitely valid. Why did this process have to take so long?

The point about questionable conversions, which appears to be overlooked, is that while the conversion may be invalid, it also may be valid. The current focus seems to be on the possible invalidity, with the result that these converts are treated as if the conversion never happened. What about the possibility that it may be valid? If it is, aren’t you committing several serious sins, from oppressing the ger to discouraging further observance?

The State of Israel adds to the problem by only accepting certain rabbis’ conversions. Where would that leave me? I doubt such a list even existed 40 years ago, much less whether my rabbi would have been on it. Put it this way—my son knows it would be probably too complicated for him to even consider making aliya.

Even outside the State of Israel, there is a problem with local autonomy: A conversion that is accepted in one community may not be accepted in another. One person in our community converted 50 years ago. No problems arose until now, when her daughter was refused membership in one European synagogue, and her grandchildren were refused a Jewish education in that community because of her conversion; since the (Orthodox) converting rabbi has long been dead, he could not be asked for information. The daughter is accepted as Jewish in some Orthodox communities but not in others. What is a convert to do, especially when it is long enough after the fact that all witnesses have died?
I have read the RCA’s new geirus policies, which are intended to address at least the uniformity problem. Aside from the fact that they are necessarily only prospective, I am afraid that in implementation they will be used to institutionalize a very high bar for converts and justify retroactive rejection of converts such as myself. I fear that the prescription that converts should tell their local rabbi of their status merely invites the sort of social problems I’ve described above, unless said rabbi is both trustworthy and sensitive (which, unfortunately, not all are). We do, after all, know the halakhic implications of our own conversions! I for one (and I suspect others as well) prefer not to emerge from the closet.

It appears that no convert can ever be secure in his or her status as Jewish, no matter how much time has elapsed. Ignorance of the halakha involved, coupled with prejudice against non-Jews, makes it all too easy for a Jew to consider a convert to be insufficiently observant, hence non-Jewish, and to feel no qualms about expressing this. It should be absolutely forbidden for a Jew to raise this issue about a conversion once validly performed, and it also should be forbidden to reexamine decades-old conversions which were done by Orthodox rabbis. Otherwise, there will be literally no end to the suspicion surrounding a convert.

It may not be too far-fetched to draw an analogy with the “purity of blood” concerns of Spanish Christians at the time of the Inquisition. “Old Christians” constantly suspected “New Christians” of being secret Jews, even if generations of the New Christian family had been devout Christians. This entailed serious social and political repercussions against the New Christians, who became a permanent and inferior social class. Only if one could prove “purity of blood”—i.e., unadulterated Old Christian descent—could one rest easy. I am afraid that the present-day Orthodox Jewish social structure may be developing into a similar caste system, with ba’alei teshuvah and converts at the bottom of the yichus ladder and with decreasing possibilities of social integration. (Note that my son’s eventual shiddukh is of the same family condition as his, which is probably best for them but not so good for social integration.) The tales I hear from kiruv organizations about the problems ba’alei teshuvah face in Orthodox communities also indicate this—and, of course, converts have even lower yichus than ba’alei teshuvah. Rambam would be appalled.

When people ask to convert, they are warned about persecution from non-Jews. Nobody ever warns them about persecution from Jews. Perhaps this is simply not on the radar screen of conversion rabbis, very few of whom have ever experienced it themselves. But this has been the experience of nearly every convert I have known. Frankly, if I had known 45 years ago everything I know now, I doubt I would have found becoming Jewish to be worth the struggle, despite my theological convictions. Is this the message we want to give converts—that they will never be fully accepted by the Jewish community? I can never fully belong, and I worry for my son. At least my child is a male (and my daughter-in-law’s convert parent is her father), so my problem should die with him. For myself, there is nothing more that I need from the Jewish community. If they reject me, I can do without them. But it is past time for someone to remind Jews that the commandment not to oppress the ger is still part of the Torah.

The Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals
Invites you to
Two Wednesday Morning Classes

With Rabbi Hayyim Angel

"The Provocative Readings on the High Holy Days"

This two-part mini-series will delve into the most difficult readings
of Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur: the Binding of Isaac and the Book of Jonah. We will consider the text inside and explore ancient and contemporary interpreters in an effort to understand their central messages.

August 13: The Binding of Isaac
August 20: The Book of Jonah

When: 8:40 to 9:40 a.m. (doors open at 8:30 a.m.)

Where: Mezzanine of Apple Bank for Savings, Broadway between 73rd and 74th Streets, New York; Please enter the revolving doors, turn left to the stairwell leading up to the Mezzanine level.

Coffee and Danish will be available

REGISTRATION: The classes are free for members of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals. For non-members, the fee is $10 per class or $18 for the series. ADVANCE REGISTRATION IS REQUIRED: please email [email protected] and let us know which lecture/s you will be attending. Non-members should pay their fee by making the appropriate contribution at jewishideas.org

The Film Ida
A review by Roger Mesznik; July 14, 2014

Today, Lynn and I saw (with friends) the film IDA, a Polish film provided with English subtitles.

I was moved and puzzled, induced to think and grieve, and left a bit cold. I am very glad to have seen it, and I recommend it.

The film is set in Poland of the 1960s. A novice in a convent (Ida) is talked by the mother superior into meeting her aunt prior to taking her vows. Talking to her aunt for the first time, Ida discovers that she (Ida) was born to a Jewish family, and that her parents and her baby cousin were assassinated during WWII after being stashed for a while by a neighbor in a hideaway in the forest. She also discovers that she was spared as a Jewish baby by being deposited with the village priest. She was saved because she was too small to recall anything, her skin was not dark enough to betray her, and she would not show evidence of a circumcision. She eventually discovers that the then-assassin is a still-living neighbor whom she manages to see.

While watching the film, my first thoughts were directed to the many victims of the Shoah I knew and know who were damaged for life, often damaged irreparably, even though they were spared the gas chambers, the camps, and the killing fields. The story arc of Ida made me think of the people who ended with no descendants. The arc made me think of the people who were never able to overcome the futility of lives rendered sterile, people whose lives were deprived of meaning and purpose, people whose lives were eviscerated of hope, people whose decisive years were wasted hiding in a coal cellar, or in a forest, or under false identities, or in convents and monasteries, or with false families. These victims were not killed, but many of their lives amounted to little more than seeing their respective survival to its predictable end.

From my family history, from friends and acquaintances, from the literature, and from this film again, I was made to feel once more for the millions of victims whose lives were spared, but whose substance and vitality was drained from them with no recourse. Viewed with hindsight, reincarnation in Israel or in the US (to choose the two overriding such destinations) seems so self-evidently healing, and so often heroic and praiseworthy. But we do not have many auto-biographies of the many victims who never healed. Untold numbers of lives are right now draining into an amorphous insignificance of lost hopes and forgone opportunities. They are departing without a record; they are leaving this world without having left any imprint.

I also knew and know people who spent years fighting the Nazi occupation. Many of them spent those years also hoping to create a world in which such monstrosities will never happen again. These hopes were appropriated by false saviors and by idolatrous characters who promised Eden on earth. These liars eventually delivered nothing but disappointment, more pain, more deaths, and many more broken hearts and disillusioned minds.

Ida is in her early twenties. And yet, at the film’s end, she elects to surrender to her original destiny and live out her life as a nun. But the convent is a sad place. It is lost in a far corner of a small village, devoid of any effective purpose and doomed to eventual abandonment. Its decaying old house is too big, its economic basis is missing, and its superficial religious role is fulfilled by greeting people with “God be with you” and the off-handed dispensation of a blessing to a little baby.

Prior to deciding to return to the convent, Ida clearly foreswears the opportunity to seek justice, or revenge, or even a modicum of compensation for the crimes committed against her and her family.

She could have returned to the convent driven by an urge to escape this sordid past. She did not. She could have done it because she elects to devote her future to some grander vision of her religious calling. She did not. She could have done it because she simply wanted to live it up when finally liberated from her oppressive past and present. She did not.

She seems to return to the convent out of a deep sense of self-abnegation; and nothing more. The misery of being a Jew in this hostile world at this hostile time is transformed into an elective controlled misery of self-denial and empty sacrifice. Is it a possible, half-hearted “religious answer” to the well-known “survivor guilt”, or is it only a convenient regression into familiar contexts? This process saddened me.

It seems that her just-discovered past has so broken her that all she can do is to spend the remainder of her days in meaningless self-denial. To be sure that the denial is indeed as painful as it is supposed to be, she even engages in a discovery of what she will miss when taking her vows. She does it on the advice of her aunt who commits suicide shortly after suggesting this possibility to her. After celebrating the memory of her dead aunt by following her advice, she snuffs the remainder of her own life in quiet obedience to inconsequential, anonymous self-effacement. Is she committing a slow-motion suicide which is formally consistent with Catholic religious precepts, but a suicide nonetheless? And to make sure that the viewer understands the depth of this meaningless sacrifice, she is shown as a beautiful and attractive young woman at the prime of her life, and she is told so more than once in the film.

I felt betrayed by Jean-Marie Lustiger, the Jewish boy who had a successful religious “career”, becoming the Catholic Archbishop of Paris. I was moved by his request to have a Hebrew Kaddish prayer recited at his funeral at the portal of the Cathedral of Notre Dame to abide by the beliefs of his parents who were murdered on account of their Jewishness. I am of two minds about Edith Stein, (aka St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross), a girl of deeply religious Jewish origin who studied medicine, converted to Catholicism, became a nun, and who was apparently either unable or unwilling to save herself when the Nazi came for her in her convent and exterminated her in Auschwitz.

However foreign to me these acts are, they are decided acts of conscious commissions; they are manifestations of a free will which decides to try and leave its imprint on the world to the best of its lights. Ida’s slow suicide is not a commission; it is an omission; it is a denial of responsibility. This is why I was saddened by this Jewish variant of the stereotype of the Catholic martyr.

It evoked in me the loss of so many others, whether or not they had converted. To gauge the impact of the film’s purposeful design, I tried to imagine the same film with an uncircumcised boy and a monastery. It would work mechanically, but not nearly so well. Male saints are usually not so passive. The sympathy for Ida is driven, in part, by the female gender role and the loss of a beautiful girl. This is why the film left me also cold.

Though I am saddened by Stein and Lustiger, their path is consistent with the trajectory of more than 90% of all people who were ever born Jewish. A nation (or a people) which were dominant in the Mediterranean of the Roman world could only be reduced to a rather small few million survivors by continuous shedding of co-religionists, whether forced or voluntary. Lustiger, Stein and untold others tried as best they could to follow their ideas. Ida and untold others like her just gave up. They gave up and they reverted, they yielded to convenience and familiarity.

I do not deplore weakness. I do not deplore accommodation (Think of Primo Levi working inside as a chemist and saving himself in Auschwitz). I do not even deplore instrumental treachery if needed for survival (think of “Sophie’s Choice”). But I am depressed and angered by Ida’s (non-) choice.

The aunt says at one point: “I went to the forest to fight; and for what?” She was clearly a “Court Jew” of the Communist party. She was not a Court Jew because she could lend money; she had none. She was a Court Jew because she could lend unflinching reliability. She and others like her made up the only population segment that the power-seizing communist regime could reliably count on to be steadfastly anti-fascist. As a judge, she became known as “Red Wanda”. She could have been relied on to mete heavy punishment to fascists and collaborators; but also later probably to “Bourgeois

Counterrevolutionaries”. We do not know whether she did also sit in judgment over “Zionist Trotskyists” or “Neo-rightist-deviationists” (speak Jews). She had clearly tried to shed her past. When forced to face it again through the eyes of her niece, she clears what she can, and then she commits suicide in a manner which is statistically decidedly non-female and atypical for women. With her suicide, she grants Ida full liberty to select her own future because the only and just established familial ties are terminally severed. Ida is cleared of all attachments. Ida is now free to choose.

The emptiness of the aunt’s position is also emphasized by a tinny rendition of the anthem “The Internationale” on a poor tape recorder at her funeral. All that is left of the grandiose attempt to “create a new man” and save humanity is this spooky rendition of the hymn of a promised salvation. The aunt’s name, Wanda, is the most common Polish name after Maria. Apparently unwilling, as a Jew, to take on the name Maria, she chose a generic appellation, a really common first name, a name of the people; and probably, in its time, also for the people.

The film put an odd emphasis on the insignificance of this drama in the grand sweep of history. However weighty the situation for Wanda and Ida, it means ultimately nothing for everyone else. When Ida mentions to a new acquaintance that she is of Jewish origin, he replies “I have some Gypsy background in me”. Is this the film maker’s invitation to rise above the biological destiny and the historic determinacy? Are we supposed to become self-defining individuals, unbounded by a common past and our common history?

The filmography is very intriguing. In many passages, the characters are set within the lower part of the picture frame. It makes the viewer feel as if tiptoeing up to an open window to peer through that window into another person’s life. For me, it created another distance to the characters. It provided me more detachment, and it made me feel more disengaged. Did the filmmaker do it to emphasize that the story is ultimately no more than the self-defining defiance of inconsequential individuals?

The setting was very well presented. The ruts and potholes in the road as they drive, the black and white tiles, the recurring spiral staircase, the peeling paint in the hospital, the communist-fashion heavy heels on women’s shoes, the gloomy air, and the all-pervasive suspicion.

Review by Israel Drazin

On the Relationship of Mitzvot between Man and his Neighbor and Man and his Maker
By Daniel Sperber
Urim Publications, 2014, 221 pages

The winner of Israel’s prestigious Israel Prize, Professor Daniel Sperber, a rabbi and Dean of the Faculty of Jewish Studies at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University, published an extremely significant book that should change the thinking of Jews and non-Jews about the purpose of religion. Sperber notes that Jewish law has two categories of commands, called mitzvot in Hebrew, those between people and God and those between one person and another. “The question we wish here to discuss,” he writes, “is which of these two categories is, as it were, more weighty. Or formulated differently: if there were to be a clash between two different mitzvot from these two categories, which one would prevail?” Sperber shows readers many, perhaps over a hundred statements from respected Jewish authorities showing that when a conflict arises, preference must be given to “mitzvot between man and his neighbor,” not “between man and his Maker.” The following is a sample of these statements. The quotes are from Sperber’s book.

There is the classic statement of Hillel emphasizing human relations: “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your friend. That is the whole Torah and, as for the rest, it is commentary.” The “Kabbalist R. Hayyim Vital (is quoted as saying) that when one rises in the morning, even before one goes to prayer, one should remind himself of the mitzvah ‘to love one’s neighbor as oneself’ (Leviticus 19:18).” The famed codifier Rabbenu Asher wrote: “the Holy One blessed be He is more desirous of mitzvot that are done to the satisfaction of human beings, than those which are between man and his Maker.”

The founder of the Musar (Ethics) movement Rabbi Yisrael Salanter said: “Better a failure between man and God, than between man and man.” Rabbi Yosef Engel, known as the Taz, wrote that “God, as it were, would have no complaint or find any fault in one who could not fulfill His commandment (when observing a mitzvah relating to one’s fellow human, such as paying a debt) and need not make it up.” The Ethics of the Fathers states: “He in whom the spirit of mankind find favor, in him the spirit of God finds favor; but he in whom the spirit of mankind finds no favor, in him the spirit of God finds no pleasure.” The Talmud teaches “theft from an individual is more serious than theft from that which has been dedicated to God.” The Netziv wrote that “charity given to the poor is of greater virtue than money given to the temple itself.” In fact, giving charity is even “seen as preferential to building a synagogue or even the Temple.”

This preference is found in Jewish law. The codifier Rema wrote that the biblical mandate to dwell in a Sukkah on the
holiday of Sukkot should be ignored “if a person is engaged in bringing sustenance to their families in straightened circumstances.” Maimonides taught that the biblical command “of bringing the omer (the new barley harvest) before the altar of God cannot push aside those mitzvot directed to helping the poor.” The Code Shulchan Aruch rules that people should not interrupt involvement in communal affairs to pray. Maimonides and Joseph Caro wrote in their codes that as important as study of Torah is, it should be interrupted to give charity. Although the law of the Shabbat is in the Decalogue (the Ten Commandments), the Jewish law is that “even the slightest suspicion of a life-endangering situation overrules the laws of Shabbat.”

After showing these and many more statements and laws that support the view that Judaism considers the behavior of people to one another more important than their behavior towards God, Professor Sperber tells moving tales in close to forty pages showing how famous rabbis exemplified this teaching, people like the Brisker Rav, Rabbi Yisrael Salanter, Rabbi Menahem Mendel of Kosov, Hafetz Hayyim, and others.

He follows this in part three by showing the many ways that Jewish congregations instituted the practice of giving charity prior to beginning one’s morning prayer. This “underscores the moral priority of relationship towards one’s fellow human even before one turns to one’s Creator.”

Thus, it is no surprise that Jewish tradition taught that prayers on Yom Kippur can annul “sins against God,” but “those against fellow humans are not expiated on Yom ha-Kippurim until the sinner appeases him that was sinned against.”

Throughout the centuries, historians, philosophers and anthropologists have struggled with the concept called Israel more than with nearly any other idea. While attempting to place Israel within the confines of conventional history, they experienced constant academic and philosophical frustration. Any definitions they suggested eventually broke down due to significant inconsistencies. Was Israel a nation, a religion or an altogether mysterious entity that would forever remain unexplainable? By some, it was seen less as a nation and more as a religion; others believed the reverse to be true. And then there were those who claimed that it does not fall into either of these categories.

In fact, it was clear to everyone that “Israel” did not fit into any specific framework or known scheme. It resisted all historical concepts and generalities. Its uniqueness thwarted people’s natural desire for a definition, which can be alarming and terribly disturbing. This fact became even more obvious once Titus the Roman forced the Jews out of their country, and specifically after the collapse of the Bar Kochba rebellion. It was then that the Jew was hurled into the abyss of the nations of the world and has since been confronted with a new condition: ongoing insecurity. While mankind has always faced moments of insecurity, it is the Jews who have been denied even the smallest share of the dubious security that others possess. Whether Jews were aware of it or not, they always lived on ground that could, at any moment, give way beneath their feet.

In 1948 Israel once again became a country. But many forgot that it was not only a country. All the other dimensions, such as nationhood, religion, mystery, insecurity and lack of definition continued to exist. The people of Israel today do not find themselves exclusively in the land of Israel, and instead of one Israel the world now has two. But the second, new Israel has until now been seen as responding to the demands of history, geography, politics and journalism. One knows where it is. At least one thinks one knows where it is. But it becomes clearer and clearer that this new and definable Israel has already become as much a puzzling and perplexing entity as the old Israel always was.

Throughout its short history, the State of Israel has experienced the most inexplicable events modern man has ever seen. After an exile of nearly 2,000 years, during which the old Israel was able to survive against all historical odds, it returned to its homeland. There it found itself surrounded by a massive Arab population that was and is incapable of making peace with the idea that this small and peculiar nation lives among them. After having suffered a Holocaust in which it lost six million of its members, it was not permitted to live a life of tranquility on its tiny piece of land. Once again, the Jew was denied the right to feel at home in his own country.

From the outset Israel was forced to battle its enemies on all fronts. It was attacked and then condemned for defending its population and fighting for its very existence. Over the years it had to endure the international community’s policy of double standards. Today, as in the past, when it calls for peace it is condemned for provoking war. When it tries, as no other nation does, to avoid hurting the citizens of the countries that declare war on it, it is accused of being more brutal than nations that committed and still commit atrocities against millions of people. Simultaneously, and against all logic, this nation builds its country as no other has done, while fighting war after war. What took other nations hundreds of years, Israel accomplished in only a few. While bombs and rockets attack its cities, while calls for its total destruction are heard in many parts of the world, it continues to increase its population, generate unprecedented technology and create a stronger and more stable economy. But the more it succeeds, the more its enemies become frustrated and irritated, and the more fragile Israel’s security becomes. The more some nations aspire to destroy it, the more the world is forced to deal with this small country and its miraculous survival. By now, Israeli politics and diplomacy occupy more space in major newspapers than any other political issue or general topic ¬¬– as if Israel is actually at the center of world events.

Jews must ask themselves what this non-classification really signifies. Is it due merely to lack of vision and insight on the part of the nations? Is it that Jews could really fit into a system but the nations have not yet allowed them entry? Is it a negative phenomenon? A temporary one, until it will rectify itself in the future?

We have only one way to comprehend the positive meaning of this otherwise apparently negative phenomenon: faith. From any other viewpoint, the failure of Jews to fit into any category would be intolerable, a meaningless absurdity. We need to understand that the Jews’ inability to conform to any classification is the very foundation and meaning of their living avowal of Israel’s uniqueness. Israel’s very existence is the manifestation of mysterious and heavenly intervention in history to which the Jews must attest. Only in Israel do history and revelation coincide. While other nations exist as nations, the people of Israel exist as a reminder of God’s involvement in world history. Only through Israel is humanity touched by the divine.

The realization of this fact has become modern Israel’s great challenge. Its repeated attempts to overcome its geographic and political insecurity by employing world politics will not work. Driven by its desire to overcome its vulnerability, it wavers between geography and nationhood, appealing to its history and religious culture while unable to find a place that it can call its existential habitat.

Reading about Israel’s prophets, we see how they warned against such false notions of security. They predicted that Israel would perish if it insisted on existing only as a political structure. Yet, it can survive – and this is the paradox of the reality of Israel – as long as it insists on its vocation of uniqueness.

Israel was summoned to remind the world of God’s existence, not only concerning religion but also as a historical reality and above all as a unique moral voice. We must understand that our enemies want to uproot our system of values and principles by drawing us into situations in which we are forced to make moral decisions that are so complex that they become nearly impossible to implement. In that way, they are able to accuse us of war crimes and the worst atrocities. The world has not yet forgiven the Jews for the Holocaust. As long as their direct or indirect participation in the massacre of the Jewish people proves their total moral bankruptcy, these nations cannot live at peace with themselves. They must therefore prove that Israel’s moral standards are worse than theirs. Only in that way can they cleanse themselves of their own moral failure.

We must convince our children that the reason why we are here and why we need to fight war after war is not for our phenomenal high-tech, our military power, or our capability to build a modern state out of barren desert. All those accomplishments are means, not ends. We are here to fulfill an extraordinary mission that is deeply rooted in Jewish religious and moral values.

We don’t fight wars just to survive; we don’t even fight to merely overcome evil. We fight wars because we believe that man must surpass himself so as to become righteous, and that is possible only if the great evil that surrounds us has been eliminated. Israel needs to be a powerhouse of moral audacity, defying the world’s mediocrity and hypocrisy.

We cannot endlessly continue to send our children into the battlefield unless they are convinced that they are fighting for a supreme mission. While they are, at this hour, highly motivated, we have no guarantee that this will continue tomorrow. Only when they know that they fight for the soul of all men and that a highly inspiring Judaism is our invincible weapon will they continue to fight for all of us. After all this is not a war like all other wars, this is a Jewish war with a four thousand long history of spiritual heroism. But this requires a revolution in Jewish education, a drastic reorientation of what Judaism is really all about, and extraordinary boldness on the part of our rabbis.

If the government wants our children to continue fighting, it will have to give primacy to this Jewish mission and ensure that it becomes deeply engraved in their souls. If not, it will one day lose our children and be left without a supreme army. We cannot fight just because we are Israelis. We must fight because we are, first and foremost, Jews. The decision will be between putting band-aids on our wounds or performing a long-overdue surgery and getting things right.

There is no security for Israel unless it is secure in its own destiny. It must assume the burden of its own uniqueness, which is nothing less than taking on its role as God’s witness. And it must draw strength from this position, especially in times such as ours when Israel’s very existence is again at stake. Paradoxically, once it recognizes its uniqueness, it will undoubtedly be victorious and enjoy security.

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