National Scholar Updates

Rabino Alfredo Goldschmidt of Bogota, Colombia, describes his rabbinic work

I can trace the seeds of my abiding interest in the intersection of Jewish/Israeli and Arab culture to two specific events that occurred while I was a high school student on a kibbutz in the eastern Galilee. The first took place when the group of American high school juniors of which I was a part travelled to the nearby Arab town of Daburiyya, at the foot of Mt. Tabor. We met Arab Israeli youth of our age in their classroom, where we bashfully introduced ourselves to each other. From there, our hosts took us to their homes where we were graciously hosted. I also recall our playing soccer on a field of dirt and stones as our Arab peers patiently indulged our feeble footballing skills. Given our total lack of Arabic skills and our fairly basic knowledge of Hebrew, along with the Arab students correspondingly basic level of English, our ability to communicate verbally was minimal, but we felt welcomed and warmed by the exchanges of good will.

Returning to the kibbutz, I was perplexed by the fact that my Israeli peers had no contact and seemingly no interest in the Arab villagers who lived nearby. When I asked my kibbutz family about this, they told me that in the old days things had been different; that they had known and been on good terms with people in the neighboring Arab village of Kafr Misr, and there would be exchanges of visits often around holiday or wedding celebrations, but now the only contact that seemed to exist was that between employer and employed (on kibbutz!), with the Arabs performing the menial or difficult labor that the kibbutzniks preferred to avoid. When we invited the Palestinian youths for a return visit to us on the kibbutz high school, the kibbutz kids all kept their distance and couldn’t understand why we would be interested in making friendships with Arab children.

The second event took place during my senior year, after I had decided to remain in Israel and was invited to join the kibbutz class of my age. As a gift for his parents, my kibbutz brother wanted to construct a rock garden in front of their home. Without receiving much in the way of explanation, I helped hitch up a trailer to a tractor and we rode a couple of kilometers into the kibbutz fields. On the top of a small rise surrounded by gorgeous views of the eastern Galilee, Mt. Tabor, we came upon piles of black stone blocks of basalt; in a few places, parts of walls still stood in place on their foundations, while on some stones there were white markings. Nir explained to me that these were the ruins of the Arab village of Tira, whose inhabitants had fled during the ‘48 War.

Subsequent to their departure, the IDF had razed the buildings to prevent infiltrators from using them, and the white initials I had noticed dated from this destruction. We loaded up the trailer with the hewn blocks, brought them to my kibbutz parents’ home, and built low retaining walls to form flower beds in the front yard.

But the thought of those stones and the homes of which they were built did not leave me: What had the homes looked like? When were they built? Who lived there? Why did they leave? Had they been expelled? Had they fled? How many lost their homes? Where did they go? Why did they never return? Why did the IDF have to destroy the village?

Were there other villages like this? Did the presence of these stones pose any moral quandary for the kibbutzninkim? Was the Jewish presence on this land somehow immoral or illegitimate? These questions troubled me and have continued to do so down to the present, and the images I carry in my mind of the stones both in the fields and transplanted to the kibbutz where they became a decorative garden element retains for me iconic and metaphoric significance.

In what follows, I will provide an example of a pedagogical and scholarly journey by which one person, an American Jew with strong commitments to Jewish tradition and the Jewish state, has searched for small ways to break down walls and build bridges between Arabs and Jews, despite a long and often painful history of disparate and conflicting political and religious identities. My worldview is one indubitably shaped by my own upbringing, my family of origin, my friends, my identity as an American with an abiding sense that “all people are created equal,” and the privileges I have enjoyed from a lifetime in academia that provide me the opportunity and freedom to think, teach and write about these issues in a university setting. I have no illusions that what I have done has had any major tangible impact. I do not actively advocate for rapprochement between Jews and Arabs via institutional involvement or through community organizations but I and others like me attempt through our teaching and research to expose others to examples of the human side of those with whom they may fear or hate, yet whose image is shaped to a large extent by stereotypes and prejudices inculcated by our families, our communities, and the media.

I.
I am a professor at a very large, Midwestern state university, where I serve as core faculty in both the Jewish Studies and Muslim Studies programs, an unusual arrangement in American academia. Among the repertoire of courses I regularly teach is one on Israeli culture and society. This course, enrolling approximately fifty undergraduate students, is one of a limited number through which students may fulfill their humanities breadth requirement. Most faculty at my university assiduously avoid teaching these courses as they have relatively large caps on enrollment, but, more significantly, the students, obliged to take these courses to complete graduation requirements, are mostly unmotivated. Indeed, while some of the students who enroll in my course may have some interest in learning about Israel, many of the students register based primarily on the course’s fit with their schedule. While I am thus compelled to “sell” the students on the topic, I personally enjoy teaching these courses for the opportunity they offer to expose students from a broad spectrum of majors to matters of wide societal import and have them engage with texts in a critical fashion. While among the students signing up for the course is a contingent of Jewish students who have some knowledge of Israel, may have visited on a Birthright trip, or learned a sanitized version of Israeli history from day school or after-school synagogue education, the bulk of the students are of non-Jewish background, and for them, this is the first encounter with Israel beyond that provided by the mainstream communications media. Typically, I am also fortunate to have a small number of American students of Middle Eastern descent, primarily Muslims and Chaldeans, as well as international students, often from the Gulf.

The course is divided into three units: in the first, “An Old-New Nation” (playing off the title of Herzl’s 1902 utopian novel, Altneuland), we establish a theoretical framework through which we structure our investigations: collective memory and (re )constructions of the past. During this part of the course I also provide a basic overview of Jewish history so that students may understand the bonds that connect Jews to each other, to their languages and cultures, and to their land; however, the core of this unit is comprised of the rise of the Zionist movement in its European context and the foundation of the State, and we explore such topics as the Haskalah, emancipation, anti-Semitism, the notion of the New Jew (and its corollary, “the negation of the Diaspora”), the Old Yishuv, waves of aliyah, the revival of Hebrew, etc. In the second unit, “The Dream and the Reality,” we compare the utopian Zionism vision with its actual implementation. Here, we examine the centrifugal tensions within Israel along religious, ethnic, national, and gender lines and why, in spite of these, the society is somehow able to cohere and thrive. In the final unit, ‘Growing Up in Israel/Israel Growing Up,” the students connect their life experiences with those of youth from a variety of Israeli communities and consider what is different about childhood and young adulthood in Israel. We also consider the creative dynamism of its people and economy, the challenges and contributions of recent influxes of immigrants, and the costs of the ongoing violence. We conclude our survey by looking at the ways in which the Zionist revolution is still working itself out, including the revisionist history of its foundations and the shift from a mobilized collectivist society to a more individualistic one.

Given the diverse population of students, the course goals vary for each of the groups involved, but writ large, I see my role as complicating their understanding of Israel. For the majority of students, those who have little or no background, I seek to provide some awareness of the causes that led up to the push for a Jewish state and some insight into the complexities of the society as it exists today. For those Jewish students with some knowledge of Israel, I want to challenge their often simplistic and sometimes chauvinistic notions of the contours of the society. For students of Middle Eastern background, I seek to gain their trust and, by my example, get them to think openly about a country and society that for many of them has primarily negative associations. I make it clear from the outset that all questions are encouraged, nothing is out-of-bounds, and I encourage the students to think critically and “outside the box.” All the students are interested in understanding current events and making some sense of the scenes of violence that emanate from the Middle East as a whole and from Israel in particular, and we of course deal with these issues; but I try to provide a nuanced introduction to Israeli society that takes into account the history and modes of identity that underlie these conflicts. The major work for the course consists of the compiling of a response journal in which students are asked to engage a diverse range of texts—written and filmic—in a critical fashion. The approach is one that views the country as a social laboratory and a work in progress, one in which we have the unique opportunity to observe a revolutionary movement that in large part accomplished its goals: reestablishing Jewish sovereignty, gathering in exiles, and creating a vibrant culture. I believe this openness to critical approaches to Israeli history and the injustices and tragedies that necessarily accompanied a revolutionary movement encourages the students to think critically about their own assumptions. I am particularly gratified by the fact that among the students who seem to get the most from the course are the Arab and Muslim students, who appreciate the openness with which I treat the Arab-Israeli conflict and the tragedy of the Palestinian people.

I also teach a course on the Judaism, Christianity, and Islam that focuses on the similarities and contrasts between the three monotheistic traditions that arose in the Near East. Again, this is a humanities breadth requirement course with similar enrollments in terms of number and ethnic background. After introducing the students to the tools of comparative religion, we examine the basic history and central tenets of each of the three faiths, and then proceed over the remainder of the course to examine each in conjunction within the frameworks of sacred text, sacred beings, sacred space, and sacred time. Among the highlights of the course are the site visits the students conduct to a mosque at the Islamic center, a Chabad synagogue, and the Catholic Newman Center. At each site, they meet with students and leaders of these houses of
worship, observe a prayer service, and submit a visitation report written from the standpoint of an ethnological observer. For the majority of students this is the first visit to a house of worship outside of their own tradition, and for nearly all the non-Muslim students, it is their first visit to a mosque.

Finally, I have the great pleasure of regularly leading a university summer study abroad program in Jerusalem at the Rothberg School for International Students at the Hebrew University. Typically, around half to two-thirds of the students are Jewish; the remainder are Christian or non-identified. The program consists of two courses: a lecture course on “The Emergence of the Modern State of Israel” taught by a Rothberg School faculty member, and my field-based course on the cultural and historical geography of Jerusalem. The pedagogical opportunities offered by such an intensive experience in a new culture are manifold.

In the course on Jerusalem, we take full advantage of our presence there by walking the city and delving into the major events in its history, while considering its significance as a source for tremendous cultural innovation and its status as a bitterly contested locus of contention. During our tours we look at attempts by successive settlers and conquerors to destroy or, alternatively, co-opt the symbols and structures of the preceding civilization. Central to our considerations is the construction of narrative and ritual and sacred time and space within competing ideological, political, and religious systems. In our discussions of the contemporary situation, we cover such topics as religious-secular tensions; poverty and municipal budget constraints; various immigrant subcultures; city planning; the status of the “unified” city (i.e., East and West Jerusalem); and the problem of Jerusalem in final status negotiations. Especially meaningful for the students are the meetings we conduct with a variety of individuals in order to develop a multidimensional understanding of the city and its citizens. For example, in our tour of Silwan we meet with a leader of the local Palestinians who see their homes being threatened by the encroachments of Jewish settlers and archaeologists. We also meet with settlers and try to gain an understanding of their motivations in purchasing property and living at some risk in areas such as Silwan and the Mount of Olives. We meet with a prominent Western journalist who describes the tightrope she must walk in covering Jerusalem. We meet with members of the organization Parents Circle-Families Forum, a grassroots organization of bereaved Palestinians and Israelis whose members seek to promote reconciliation as an alternative to hatred and revenge. We meet with representatives of the Haredi community, and religious leaders from the Muslim and Christian communities. Students undertake a final project on some aspect of Jerusalem that reflects their academic and perhaps future professional interests and for which they are expected to conduct original research and consult experts in the field. These projects have included social protest movements, water rights, home destruction by the Israeli authorities of Palestinian homes, the Separation Barrier, graffiti art, the Haredi lifestyle, journalistic coverage of the city, the history of various Jerusalem institutions, and many others.

For many of the students this is a life changing experience and I derive much pleasure and satisfaction from and observing them learn and grow. Here is the report of one, a non-Jewish student:

Israel was not at all what I anticipated it to be. The few expectations that I had coming in were erased on day one, and I am so glad for this. I really felt that I learned so much more about the history and complexity of Jerusalem by being physically present instead of being taught in a classroom. I cannot even begin to explain what it felt like to stand on Temple Mount, touch the Western Wall, and go inside the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Our trip truly encompassed aspects of each of the Abrahamic religions, which I deeply appreciated and found to be extremely interesting. Not only did we see and hear about the background of these religions and how each has had some influence in Jerusalem, but we were able to apply our knowledge to current issues through meetings with local Jerusalemites, including an Arab villager, a Jewish settler, a Sufi sheikh, and two men that have each lost a family member in the conflict—one a Palestinian and the other an Israeli. Being able to go into the city and explore, talk to people, and learn about past and present issues was truly an amazing and invaluable experience. Although I learned so much about the history, life, religions, and the formation of the state of Israel, I think the thing that most impressed me was the true complexity of the land. While we were only there for five short weeks, I know that everything I learned, saw, and experienced will stick with me for a lifetime. I really cannot say enough about this experience—as my friends and family who have been forced to hear about it constantly can tell you. Even pictures aren’t enough to convey the incredible wonder of Israel and particularly Jerusalem. Standing on top of Masada and looking across to the sun rising over the Dead Sea and Jordan, looking up at the Dome of Rock, and even wandering the Old City with friends are irreplaceable memories for me. I met people from all over the globe, saw the holiest places in the world, learned an incredible amount, and made lifelong connections to a place that will always remain close to my heart because of the fantastic experience I had there. It was an amazing trip—the highlight of my college career.

II.
One of my primary interests as a scholar is the history and dynamics of the intersection of Jewish with Muslim and Arabic culture. The history of these contacts is a complicated one, but one that in the popular imagination is often viewed as some sort of utopian symbiosis, or, alternatively, as a story of Muslim repression of the Jewish minority culture. Of course, both of these perceptions are simplistic caricatures. In Stories of Joseph: Narrative Migrations Between Judaism and Islam (Wayne State University Press, 2005), I take as my focus a popular and widespread Judeo-Arabic retelling of the story of Joseph known as “The Story of Our Master Joseph the Righteous.” This tale is widely represented in the Genizah materials and manuscript collections of Jewish communities throughout the Muslim world.

Perhaps no richer theme exists for an analysis of cultural competition over sacred figures and the transfer of cultural artifacts than the Joseph story. Claimed as an illustrious progenitor within Islamic and Jewish tradition, Joseph and his tale have a commanding presence in both scriptures; he is the central focus for the final third of the Book of Genesis, while in the Qur’an, Joseph’s tale, comprising the entire twelfth surah which bears his name, is the only instance in which we are provided a ‘complete’ and sequenced story of a biblical protagonist. Each of these scriptural accounts served as a springboard for rich traditions of exegesis and narrative expansion or retelling of the core tales. Within Jewish tradition, the Joseph cycle has come to stand as the prototype of the people’s experience in Exile, while in Islam, Joseph serves as a precursor for the Prophet Muhammad and the difficulties he faced in gaining acceptance for his mission.

There thus arose two distinct bodies of traditions of the story in post-biblical and post-quranic literature typified by the midrash-based retellings of biblical narratives and “The Stories of the Prophets” collections, respectively.

I am able to demonstrate that while “The Story of Our Master Joseph” was intended for a Jewish audience—recorded as it is Judeo-Arabic and employing the Hebrew script—remarkably, it is actually an adaptation of a Muslim tale. What we have then is a dramatic example of the migration of cultural artifacts across multiple cultural borders: a Jewish text has taken its form from an Islamic prototype, which itself is largely based on midrashic works, which in turn draw from Hellenistic literature, ancient Near Eastern material, and so on and so forth, back all the way into the mists of the earliest human stories of parental favoritism, sibling rivalry, separation from loved ones, sexual mores, and the struggles for continued communal existence outside of the homeland. This Judeo-Arabic text, drawing as it does from a shared reservoir of materials, provides a window into the flow of ideas, motifs, and traditions between Jews and Muslims and my work on materials such as these is a way I am able to directly experience and hopefully share the richness of two rich cultures that have much to teach each other.

Recently, I have turned my attention to a contemporary situation involving Arab-Jewish dynamics, this time of an Arab minority within a Jewish majority culture in the State of Israel. In collaboration with an Israeli colleague, Dr. Rivka Bliboim, I am looking at a work of contemporary popular culture: the Israeli sitcom Arab Labor, created and written by the Israeli Arab journalist and writer, Sayed Kashua. The show, which is entering on its fifth season, is broadcast by Channel Two in prime time. Its popularity continues to rise, and it has won multiple broadcasting awards. The flipping of the power relations Arab and Jew is also mirrored in issues of language, and our research explores the linguistic choices made by the writer. In particular, we focus on the linguistic code-switching engaged in by the Arab characters: When and under what circumstances do the characters use Hebrew and when do they opt for Arabic? What factors, such as gender, generation, and ideology, affect these choices? When the Arab characters do use Hebrew, what register do they employ? The show’s primary language is Arabic, and given the dismal state of knowledge of the language among Israeli Jews, this therefore requires almost all Jewish viewers to read subtitles. The fact that despite this the show is at the top of the ratings in its prime-time slot is revolutionary in and of itself.

Although seemingly conforming to the conventions of the sitcom genre, the events and characters are presented in exaggerated stereotyped manner that serves an ultimately subversive role: to question the gap between the State’s commitment to equality of all and the quotidian reality of its Arab citizens. Beyond the humor, what I believe makes the critique of Israeli society palatable to its largely Jewish audience is the willingness of Kashua to lampoon himself through the somewhat autobiographical main character. Amjad is an obsequious Israeli Arab journalist desperate to fit into the WASP (White, Ashkenazi, Sabra with Protektsia) Israeli culture, but is invariably rebuffed in his attempts to do so. At the same time, Kashua doesn’t hesitate to point out the hypocrisy of ostensiby “enlightened” Jewish Israelis. The show is audacious in its taking on such heavy issues and events as the Separation Fence, the 2008 IDF Cast Lead operation and the identification of the show’s characters with the plight of their Gazan brethren, Independence Day or Day of the Catastrophe (al-Nakba), lack of public services provided to the Arab sector, discrimination in housing and the marketplace, forced removal or excision of the Arab population from the boundaries of Israel, kidnappings, settler violence, etc. The show reveals the underlying fears and stereotypes of its characters—and through them, of ourselves, the viewers.

I see Kashua’s project as a model for the ways in which knowledge and education can be used to change attitudes, knock down walls built on stereotypes and ignorance, and build bridges between peoples separated by different and conflicting identities. Not only is the Arabic language more present in the daily lives of Jewish Israelis, but it is also likely that both the status of the language and those citizens for whom it is the mother tongue has risen perceptibly. Moreover, the show has educated Jewish Israelis on the realities of the lives of their fellow citizens who live among them but are largely invisible. I now return to the story I told at the beginning of this piece, and the metaphorical valence of the stones from the razed homes of Tira. In university life, we have the opportunity to engage our students in inquiry about cultural artifacts—language, texts, implements, and, yes, stones to build houses or walls. Sometimes, when we understand our common humanity and look to the needs of others, these same stones can also serve to build bridges between individuals and communities otherwise divided by prejudice and hatred. My work has been a small effort to build such bridges.

National Scholar Second Year Report June 1, 2014—May 31, 2015

Rabbi Hayyim Angel National Scholar, Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals [email protected] jewishideas.org

To our members and friends, I now have completed my second year of working as the National Scholar of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals. It has been an honor and privilege working to promote our vision nationwide primarily through teaching, and also through writing and creating internet classes. This report summarizes my various projects and activities over the past year. In addition to the wide variety of classes and programs, this past year has witnessed remarkable progress in terms of focusing our classes and programs toward articulating the vision of the Institute, finding a new home and partner at Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun in Manhattan, and addressing the pressing religious issues of the day through partnerships with other rabbis and scholars.

This past fall, I gave an eight-part series entitled “Creating Jewish Unity.” In this course, I outlined some of the most important elements of a traditionally faithful vision of Judaism that simultaneously is as inclusive as possible. You can hear the series on our website, http://www.jewishideas.org//online-learning. Our partnership with Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun has grown beautifully over the past year with my serving as the KJ Rabbinic Scholar, and we held our first two symposia at KJ this past year:

(1) From the Academy to the Religious Community: How We Can Gain Religious Insight from Academic Jewish Studies, and (

2) Extremely Religious Without Religious Extremism. Each symposium featured three speakers from different disciplines, attracted a wonderful crowd, and most of the talks are posted on our website, http://www.jewishideas.org//online-learning. We will also publish most of the talks in article form in upcoming issues of Conversations.

My major areas of focus have been:

• Community Education:

o There is a serious thirst for the kind of learning represented by our Institute, and a sizable number of communities have invited us. Through a combination of scholar-in-residence programs and lectures in different communities, we reached thousands of interested adults directly in the past year.

o In addition to the concentration of programs in the New York tri-state area, it was gratifying to visit the communities in Memphis, TN; Overland Park, KS; and Los Angeles, CA.

• Teacher Training: o One of our central goals is to train other rabbis, community leaders, and educators to spread Torah to schools and communities. In this manner we create bridges with many people in the field to work together. o I taught a course in “How to Teach Bible in Synagogues” to honors rabbinical students at Yeshiva University.

o I participate annually as faculty in Yeshiva University’s graduate program in Experiential Education. o I taught students at Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School, and Yeshivat Maharat. o I gave teacher-training seminars to the Bible faculties at CHAT school in Toronto, Ontario. Given the complexities of Bible and Jewish Studies our graduates are likely to encounter on secular university campuses, our training focuses on how to equip Jewish Studies high school faculties to prepare their students for the University setting.

• Publications:

o I published a new collection of essays on Tanakh, entitled Peshat Isn’t So Simple, Kodesh Press.

o The Institute published my Jewish Holiday Companion this past November. It was distributed to Institute members and interested synagogues, educators, and laypeople across the country. This volume makes accessible comments on the holidays and their ritual readings. Additional copies are available at amazon.com.

o I am in the editing stages of a commentary on the prophetic books of Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi in the context of the Second Temple Period. It will be published by Maggid Press in Jerusalem.

• Internet Learning:

o We have expanded our Online Learning section on our website, jewishideas.org. You can find links to a growing number of classes of mine there. Below is an itemized listing of the various classes and programs over the past year.

• Most frequently, I served in my capacity of Rabbinic Scholar at Kehilath Jeshurun on a monthly basis from September-June. Going forward, I will be there on most Shabbatot when not away in a different community as a scholar-in-residence.

• June 3-5: Shavuot scholar-in-residence, Young Israel of West Hartford, CT.

• June 16: Book Launch for my book, Peshat Isn’t So Simple. • June 20-21: Scholar-in-residence, Young Israel of Oceanside, NY.

• June 24: Lecture in the Experiential Education program by Yeshiva University.

• May 7-June 25: Seven-part series on the Book of Samuel, Lincoln Square Synagogue, NY.

• June 29-30: Three lectures on Tanakh at the yemei iyyun of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah.

• July 2-30: Five-part series on the Haftarot Lamdeinu Teaneck, NJ.

• October 21:-December 16: Eight-part series on Creating Jewish Unity, Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals, NY.

• October 22-December 17: Eight-part series on the Book of Samuel, Lincoln Square Synagogue, NY.

• October 24-25: Scholar-in-residence, Anshei Sfard, Memphis, TN.

• November 14-15: Scholar-in-residence, Young Israel of Hillcrest, NY.

• November 18-December 20: Four-part series on the Haftarot Lamdeinu Teaneck, NJ.

• November 30: Scholarly panel on the movie, Noah. Yeshiva University Museum.

• December 5-6: Scholar-in-residence, BIAV, Overland Park, KS.

• December 9: Class for Yeshiva University’s women’s group, NY.

• December 15: Seminar on Hanukkah to students and parents of the Frisch School, Paramus, NJ.

• January 2-3: Scholar-in-residence, Young Israel of Woodmere-Cedarhurst, NY.

• January 5: Class at Yeshivat Chovevei Torah-Maharat winter intensive, NY.

• January 23-March 27: Nine-part series on how to teach Bible in synagogues, Yeshiva University Honors Rabbinical Students, NY.

• January 28-March 25: Eight-part series on the Book of Samuel, Lincoln Square Synagogue, NY.

• February 7: Scholar-in-residence, Congregation Ohab Shalom, NY.

• February 12: Book Launch for my book, Jewish Holiday Companion.

• February 27-28: Scholar-in-residence, Congregation Ahavath Torah, Englewood, NJ.

• March 10: Teacher training at CHAT school, Toronto, Ontario.

• April 15-June 3: Eight-part series on the Book of Samuel, Lincoln Square Synagogue, NY.

• April 19-May 3: Three-part series on the Book of Ruth, Young Israel of Jamaica Estates, NY. • May 23-25: Shavuot scholar-in-residence, Young Israel of Century City, CA.

Thank you all for your support and enthusiasm, and I look forward to promoting our Torah vision for many years to come.

Rabbi Hayyim Angel

National Scholar Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals

Israel’s new political reality—with the two main Ultra-Orthodox or Haredi political parties, the Sephardic-based Shas party and the Ashkenazi-based United Torah Judaism, inside the government won’t help the next generation of Haredi young people—in fact, on the contrary, it will perpetuate a broken system. While Shas and United Torah Judaism have negotiated financial windfalls for their constituencies, as well as a pull-back on the demand that Ultra-Orthodox young men serve in the Israeli Defense Force, this old style of conducting business could be harmful to our community’s young people. That’s because the reality is that education—not political power--is the key to the future for the Haredi community in Israel, especially if the government doesn’t put advancing Haredim through education and employment at the core of the agenda.

“Educate each child according to his own path,” the Book of Proverbs teaches us, “and he will not stray from it, even when he is old.” And yet, when it comes to educating Haredi youth in Israel, we still have much to learn. Quite honestly, there is nothing short of an education crisis in our community. Rather than providing real choices, our leaders have traditionally insisted that Haredi students have only one path: a formal, rote curriculum dominated by intensive Talmud study, with no option for students to take general studies or complete an Israeli matriculation certificate. This is the path that is likely to dominate the agenda right now—and it is not the path that our young people need or deserve.

The reality is that in the absence of a meaningful alternative, nearly a third of Haredi teenage boys will continue to become alienated from both mainstream Israeli society and the traditional ways of their community. Many drop out of school, spend their time on the streets, or are lost to the Haredi community altogether. They are unable to build families and successful lives.

Those yeshivas that do offer secular matriculation (and there are only a handful in the entire country) are far too expensive for most Haredi families to afford.

By creating Hachmey Lev Yeshiva High School, my aim is to do nothing short of transforming the Yeshiva model. We offer teens who are under stimulated in classical Yeshiva settings the opportunity to maximize their social, educational, and cognitive potential all while still maintaining a Haredi lifestyle. We are teaching the boys Gemara at the highest standards, in Hebrew and without compromise, and to live a Haredi lifestyle that will also allow them to earn a good living for themselves and their future families.

I was inspired to create Hachmay Lev based on my own family’s experience when our son reached seventh grade and boredom got the better of him. He showed little interest in his traditional yeshiva schooling. As a product of this schooling myself, I know the value of its rigor, but this model simply is outmoded for today’s young people.

Our students combine study of Talmud (32 hours each week) and general studies (20 hours each week), giving them a broader education than any other Haredi institutions in Israel. They study the core curriculum like English, math, history, Bible, civics, computer science, and Hebrew, while also enjoying music and sports. Students sleep in Jerusalem during the week and return home on weekends. Once the model has been fine-tuned, Hachmey Lev will be replicated in other locations across Israel.

I spent ten years putting Haredim into the workforce and that’s why I know that education is the core issue. After spending a lifetime of activism in the Haredi community on a variety of pressing issues, including making sure that our men serve in the IDF, and find gainful employment, I am convinced that unless and until we transform our educational system, there will simply never be the systemic change that we need.

North American and British donors know the necessity of getting the 20% of Israeli society that is Haredi into the workforce—and are supporting efforts to increase employment opportunities in the Haredi community, so that our young people can have new models to emulate. Philanthropists outside of Israel also know that Israel is the global exception, since nowhere else in the world are young people exempt from learning a broad range of studies or from working. But, money for employment without strengthening and expanding serious alternative educational models won’t create the type of workers for a 21st century workforce that Israel needs.

Philanthropists who want to impact the Israeli economy need to invest in educational models that will recast the pattern of poverty in our community. Now, more than ever, those of us who trying to change Haredi society from within need to show that our model can work for a broader segment of our community.

www.kidum-edu.org.il/en/education-campuses/hachmey-lev-yeshiva-high-school

The Kosher Bookworm
Pirkei Avot As An Intellectual Challenge
by Alan Jay Gerber

With Shavuot now behind up, we once again commence our learning of Pirkei Avot starting with the first chapter. Thus, it is most opportune to bring to your attention a new commentary by a former classmate of mine at Yeshiva University and the Director of The Institute For Jewish Ideas and Ideals, Rabbi Marc Angel. This commentary entitled, "The Koren Pirkei Avot" features a translation by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, and a publisher's preface by Matthew Miller. In this preface Miller asks and answers the following question:

"Why is Pirkei Avot so widely studied ? Of all the books of the Mishna, it is the one that directly touches scholars and lay people alike; it requires little background, yet it offers the collected wisdom of our sages in a manner more accessible than any other book."

This brief observation by Miller informs us right at the start of the historical importance of this work.

Rabbi Angel, in his introduction informs us of the following as background to his commentary:

"Pirkei Avot, popularly translated as Ethics of the Fathers, is a collection of rabbinic teachings, mainly from the Tannaitic period. It is included at the end of the Talmudic tractates dealing with business law and torts [Nezikin]. The first chapter presents teachings of the early sages in chronological order; the next four chapters provide assorted teachings; the sixth chapter is a later addition to the original. This final chapter, transferred to Pirkei Avot from the eighth chapter of the tractate Kalla, was added due to the widespread custom of studying one chapter of Pirkei Avot on each of the six Sabbaths between the festivals of Pesach and Shavuot."

In a most perceptive statement sent for publication for this week's essay, Rabbi Angel further extends to us his teaching as to the background and importance of Pirkei Avot to our faith.

"Many thinking people today are searching for authentic wisdom that can deepen their lives, and put their lives into a spiritual perspective. Over the centuries, the Jewish people have been able to draw on the wisdom of Pirkei Avot to contemplate basic ideas in faith and ethics. Each generation of Jews sees and experiences the world with different eyes, and our generation today represents the latest chapter in the Jewish adventure. While earlier commentaries on the Pirkei Avot were -- and continue to be -- highly important, each generation needs to study the ancient texts with contemporary eyes. We need to draw on the insights garnered from the past; but we also need to draw on insights derived from modern perspectives in literature, psychology, and philosophy. My commentary does not attempt to 'reinvent the wheel' by simply reciting what earlier commentaries have already stated. Rather, it attempts to confront the ancient texts with modern eyes, in a manner that will empower modern readers to find new insights and inspiration from the Pirkei Avot."

Throughout this work Rabbi Angel cites numerous citations, teachings and admonitions from "outside" sources that serve to buttress the teachings of our sages. Each citation is not a passing partial one sentence quote, but an extensive citation that will give you the full flavor of the author's intent and justification for its use together with the sacred text.

This work is different from others on Pirkei Avot. You will not be disappointed in the content, and the intellectual challenge will be a joy to experience.

May, 2015

To our members and friends, I hope you are all well.

As summer approaches, we still have several important upcoming Institute programs in store:

On Sunday, June 7, from 10:00am-1:00pm, I will be running our second symposium, co-sponsored by Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun in Manhattan: “Extremely Religious without Religious Extremism: Perspectives within Jewish Tradition.” This symposium will feature three talks:

· “Who Are You Calling a Fundamentalist?: The Taxonomy of Contemporary Orthodoxy,” by Dr. Rivka Press Schwartz, Director of General Studies at the Frisch School.

· “The Binding of Isaac: An Extreme Narrative with the Keys to a Non-Extremist Religious Life,” by Rabbi Hayyim Angel, National Scholar, Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals; Rabbinic Scholar, Kehilath Jeshurun; Bible Faculty, Yeshiva University.

· “Between Piety and Extremism: Talmudic Insights,” by Rabbi Ozer Glickman, Rosh Yeshiva, and Adjunct Professor in the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and the Sy Syms School of Business, Yeshiva University. It will be held at the Ramaz Middle School, 114 East 85th Street (between Park and Lexington Avenue). Light refreshments served, and it is free and open to the public.

Here are some other upcoming Institute programs:

Kehilath Jeshurun (114 East 85th Street, between Park and Lexington Avenue in Manhattan): I am pleased to announce that beginning June 1, I will be participating more robustly as the Rabbinic Scholar of Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun, with a greater Shabbat presence (primarily at the Sephardic minyan). I also am making a New York home for our Institute classes and programs at Kehilath Jeshurun. Stay tuned for future announcements.

May 22-25 (Shavuot): I will be the scholar-in-residence at the Young Israel of Century City, Los Angeles (9317 West Pico Blvd). Free and open to the public. For more information visit their website, http://www.yicc.org/.

April 15-June 3: My eight-part series on The First Book of Kings continues at Lincoln Square Synagogue (68th Street and Amsterdam in Manhattan). Newcomers are always welcome. Classes meet on Wednesday evenings, 7:15-8:15pm.

Remaining dates for the spring semester are: May 20, 27, June 3. Classes are co-sponsored by our Institute and Lincoln Square Synagogue. Registration is required, please go to lss.org/RabbiAngel.

June 28-29: I will present three papers at the annual Bible Study Days of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah. The two-day event will be held at Manhattan Day School, 310 West 75th Street (between West End Avenue and Riverside Drive) in Manhattan. Open to the public, registration is required. For brochure and registration information, http://www.yctorah.org/content/view/957/17/

On April 19, 26, and May 3, I gave a three-part series on the Book of Ruth at the Young Israel of Jamaica Estates. These classes are now available online, along with many other lectures of mine, at http://www.jewishideas.org//online-learning.

As always, I thank our members and friends for their support and for enabling us to spread our Institute’s vision through teaching and publications throughout the country and beyond.

Rabbi Hayyim Angel

National Scholar

My remarks are dedicated to my paternal cousin, Shlomo Guttman and to my wife’s paternal uncle, David Teitlebaum, who both fell in Milchemet HaShichrur. May their memories be for a blessing.

I would also like to thank Dr Jeffrey Gurock, professor of American-Jewish history at YU for his leads and encouragement in my research.

This presentation will focus on two Americans, who each had a significant role in the establishment of the State of Israel. David (Mickey) Marcus served as a military advisor to David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister. He was given the title of aluf, the first Jewish general since Yehoshua ben Nun. Charles (Charlie) Winters, a Protestant, who sold two cargo planes to Palestinians, i.e. Israeli agents and flew one of them from the U.S. to Czechoslovakia, where they were turned into fighter planes before flying on to Palestine. His activities in helping the fledgling state first received wide notoriety when President George W Bush issued a posthumous pardon in his name. Without the assistance of Marcus and Winters, along with many, many other Americans, it is doubtful that Israel would have emerged victorious from its War of Independence

I remember always being interested in the subject of how Americans, both Jewish and others assisted Israel in its War of Independence. As a teenager and in later years, I would see references to gun smuggling operations associated with the gangster, Meyer Lansky and how Paul O’Dwyer, a lawyer, who would become the president of the NYC Council, would defend some of those who had been arrested for such activities. In addition, there was MACHAL (mitnadvei chutz la’aretz or volunteers from abroad), for which approximately 5,000 volunteers from abroad came to help defend the future Jewish state.

However, at the time I never came across any comprehensive account of the activities of the above. It was only when I began to research this area that I found out why. What was being done in the case of sending war material was outright illegal under U.S. Federal law at the time and what American MACHAL volunteers had to consider was the potential loss of U.S. citizenship. This however, did not deter the approximately 1,500 U.S, volunteers, many of whom were WWII vets who did go to fight and played a crucial role in Israel’s winning the war.

David Marcus was born on New York’s Lower East Side in 1902 and was accepted at West Point in 1920, graduating four years later. He left service in 1927, earning a law degree and working in the U.S. Attorney General’s office and later under NY’s Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia in the department of corrections, where he was appointed to Commissioner of Corrections in 1940. However, with the outbreak of WWII, Marcus re-enlisted in the army as a lieutenant colonel, with duties as a division judge advocate. Later he was commandant of the army’s ranger school in Hawaii. Marcus parachuted into Normandy, France on D-Day, June 6, 1944, which was the major allied offensive of the war, and essentially marked the beginning of the end of the Third Reich. In 1947, Marcus left service with the rank of colonel, having been awarded a number of U.S. and British decorations.

Shortly after November 29, 1947, when the United Nations voted to partition Palestine, dividing it into Arab and Jewish states, the Haganah sent Shlomo Shamir to recruit high-ranking U.S military officers and technical experts in order to create a modern army for what would become the State of Israel. Shamir contacted Marcus, who began to look for such individuals. To his chagrin, he found none were willing to go, citing the need for assurances that their military status, citizenship or careers would not suffer as a result. This led Marcus to conclude, ‘I may not be the best man for the job, but I’m the only one willing to go.’

The Haganah was in no way prepared to fight the type of war it would be confronted with once Israeli statehood was declared. Aside from lacking sufficient arms for its troops, it also did not possess the organizational structure required to be successful in such an endeavor. Most of its leadership was composed of veterans of the Jewish Brigade, who did not have any training in large-scale operations. Therefore, before going to Palestine, Marcus memorized information from U.S. Army training manuals. While this material was not classified, it would not pass the scrutiny of British customs when he arrived at Lod. In addition, to avoid causing a diplomatic flap between the U.S. and its British ally, Marcus travelled incognito, under the alias of Michael Stone.

Unfortunately, David Marcus was killed by ‘friendly fire’, when he did not respond to a sentry, who addressed him in Ivrit, asking for the password. Aluf Marcus’ remains were returned to the United States and interred in the cemetery at West Point. The only American soldier buried at the military academy who died while in defense of another country.

On December 23, 2008, The New York Times ran the following headline: ‘Jailed for Aiding Israel, but Pardoned by Bush’. The article went on to describe the circumstances under which the 43d President of the United States took this step. What made this action unique is that it is only the second time that a presidential pardon has been issued posthumously. The pardon was issued on behalf of Charlie Winters, who was involved with the smuggling of three B-17 bombers to Palestine on behalf of the Haganah. At the time, this was in violation of the United States Neutrality Act along with an embargo on weapons to what was to become the Jewish state.

At this point, I’d like to give some background information that will help you understand what was going on in this country, right after WWII. The United States had been at war for four years and had converted its industrial complex to the making of materials for that purpose. Now with the end of hostilities, all these manufacturing facilities needed to be switched back for peacetime use. In addition, companies had huge inventories of war goods that they had no use for and began selling them at greatly reduced prices to anyone who could show the requisite paperwork and pay for them.
Realizing that, agents from Palestine (remember this is before the State of Israel came into being) came to the U.S. and recruited American Jews to assist them in this endeavor along with a number of other operations in preparation for what everyone knew would be a war, once the Jewish state was declared.

Charles (Charlie) Winters was born in Brookline, MA on February 10, 1923. He was the son of Scotch-Canadian and Irish parents, and at a young age contracted polio, which left him with a limp. This impediment prevented his performing military service and instead he worked for the government as a purchasing agent.

After the war, Winters went into the produce export business, buying two decommissioned B-17 bombers, which were converted to cargo planes and planned to use them in transporting fruits around the Caribbean. At that time he was living in Miami, FL. This plan was not working as he had hoped, so when his friend of his, Al Schwimmer, who was a flight engineer for TWA and also assisting the Haganah in obtaining war planes, asked Winters if he would be willing to sell the planes and ‘consider guiding them to somewhere in Europe’, Winters told Schwimmer that he would think it over.

In the end not only did Winters sell the planes to Schwimmer, he also flew one of them, with another pilot in the second plane Taking off from Miami, with a third B-17 that had been purchased in Oklahoma, the aircraft refueled in Puerto Rico, as if completing a normal shipping route and headed for Palestine by way of the Azores and Czechoslovakia. The Czech government was perfectly willing to provide landing facilities along with armaments for a price. These three planes, which were retrofitted to warplanes, constituted the only heavy bombers that the Israeli Air Force had during the war, but were reportedly essential in turning the tide of the war in Israel’s favor. In his diary on July 16, 1948, David Ben-Gurion, the Israeli Prime Minister noted their arrival in Israel and that they had already been used on several bombing runs in Egypt. They became the 69th Squadron Bombing Group of the Israeli Air Force, known as ‘the hammers’.

For his part in this enterprise, Charlie Winters, along with Al Schwimmer and several others were arrested, tried and convicted in U.S. Federal Court in Miami in January, 1949. While his co-defendants were not given prison sentences, on February 4, 1949, Winters was sentenced to 36 months in a federal penitentiary along with having to pay a $2,500 fine. This was due to his being found in violation on two counts of Title 18, section 88 and Title 22, section 452 of the U.S. Code. These citations deal with ‘conspiracy to export implementations of war’. Winters ended up serving 18 months of his sentence before being released. As a result of his sentence, he became the only American to go to prison for helping Israel!

When I originally began the research for this presentation, I contacted the federal archives in Atlanta, GA to see if they had a transcript of Charlie Winters’ trial. Unfortunately, they did not. However, they were able to supply me with court documents related to the trial, which gave me a sense of what went on in the courtroom. For example, initially Winters pleaded ‘not guilty’ to the charges against him. Then for some reason he changed his plea to ‘guilty’. While I didn’t see anything to explain this change, maybe some kind of deal was in the works. If that was the case, apparently it didn’t work out as subsequently Winters’ tried to change his plea back to not ‘guilty’, but the judge would not allow it.

Another bit of information that I received from these same papers and other sources is that just prior to Winters’ and his co-defendants being put on trial, there was a similar case in California, in which the defendants, although found guilty, did not do any jail time, having to pay a fine of $10,000 each. ‘unnamed friends of Israel’ provided the money for this. Perhaps these individuals also paid Winters’ fine as I was not able to find any information on this. After being released, Winters established a small export business in Miami.

At the time of his death on October 30, 1984,Winters had told his current wife, Joan about this incident. His two children from this marriage, Lisa and James along with Charles Todd and Charles Jr. from a prior one were totally unaware of their father’s activities in support of Israel. However, there were clues. According to his son, James, as a teenager his father refused to let him go hunting with his friends. This was because as a result of his criminal record, the senior Winters was not allowed to purchase weapons or keep them at home. The real tip off came at Winters’ funeral, when James found the setting decorated with blue and white flowers, Israel’s national colors along with Israeli officials in attendance. Afterwards, Israel flew Joan Winters to their country, where some of his ashes were interred at the Templars Cemetery in Jerusalem and the remainder spread over Har Tavor, located in Emek Yazreal, near Haifa.

Bibliography

Encyclopedia Judaica, vol. 11, pgs 722-3 and 945-6, Keter Publishing House, Jerusalem Ltd. 1972.

“Jailed for Aiding Israel in ’48, But Pardoned by Bush in ’08”, New York Times, December 24, 2008, pg. 1.

Medoff, Rafael. Militant Zionism in America: The Rise and Impact of the Jabotinsky Movement in the United States, 1926-1948. The University of Alabama Press, 2002.

Newspaper clippings, undated; MACHAL[Mitnadvei Hutz LaAretz] and Aliyah Bet Records; I-501; 16; 39; American Jewish Historical Society, Boston, MA and New York, NY.

Porath, Zipporah, Col. David (Mickey) Marcus, ‘A Soldier for All Humanity’. American Veterans of Israel Legacy Corp. 2010.

Slater, Leonard, The Pledge. Simon and Schuster: NY, 1970.

Weiss, Jeffrey and Weiss, Craig, I Am My Brother’s Keeper. Schiffer Military History, Atglen, PA, 1998.

Wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Winters

This engaging monograph is a deceptively simple read. Written in a disciplined, clear diction, Rabbi Zvi Grumet writes and teaches like a High School Yeshiva rebbe, unflinchingly focusing on the received Torah’s text and message[s], as lucidly and probingly as he can, so that his student/reader may understand his content and internalize the Torah’s normative message. The superficially scholarly reader will likely be disappointed because Grumet avoids all jargon, esotericisms, and technical terms that might confuse, distract, or otherwise disturb the targeted “non-academic” Orthodox reader. He is not writing to, or for, the secular scholarly community, at least as his first audience. As such, Grumet’s Moses and the Path to Leadership’s literary genre is Talmud Torah, not Academic Bible scholarship.

Grumet’s monograph presents Moses not as a human superhero, but as a great person, with flaws and limits, struggling to master himself as he is commissioned to lead God’s people, Israel. Moses the prophet evolves into Moses the teacher; over his career Moses struggles with, and eventually overcomes, his propensity to rage. We initially find Moses the moral agent as a young man who leaves the Pharaonic palace to join his enslaved Israelite brethren, and whose first act is to kill, in righteous indignation, an Egyptian who is beating an Israelite. But he also intervenes when an Israelite bully beats/is about to beat a fellow Israelite, and he saves Midianite women from Midianite male shepherds. Moses is the man of morality, courage, and strength. God calls on Moses because of these prior dispositions, as well as the “management” skill that Moses acquires during his years as a Midianite shepherd.

The monograph precisely—and convincingly traces how Moses grows and falters, directs his zeal to and for God as well as to and for Israel, and concludes with showing how Moses negotiates with the two tribes who wish to possess Transjordan land for their heritage. By the end of his career, Moses has developed an emotional as well as intellectual intelligence; he is able to hear the words and peer into the heart of the “other,” and to respond appropriately. In his Deuteronomic valedictory, Moses reviews his own career, but from a human rather than Divine perspective, providing the first instance of a retold Bible, a genre that will become more popular in Second Commonwealth Judaism. By stressing the difference between Moses’ human memory and God’s divine record, Grumet documents and legitimates the propriety of the Midrashic method, that he expertly applies.

Because he is writing to/for an intelligent, informed modern Orthodox lay audience, Grumet assumes zero Academic training on the part of his readers, but he does focus on the religious, existential questions that confront his target population: (a) what does it mean to be a good human being, (b) how do we confront ourselves and our weaknesses, (c) what should we expect from our leaders—and followers, (d) how do we continue to learn, grow, and mature in the course of our adult lives, and (e) how does the modern Orthodox Jewish reader confront the Jewish sacred canon?

Unlike the Academic Biblicist, Grumet starts with a priori assumptions. For Grumet, the Torah is a literary whole, it reveals a literary, and ideological coherence, and has a critically important message, from God, to proclaim. In this regard, Grumet’s Moses and the Path to Leadership is foremost an exemplar of Orthodox Jewish Bible scholarship, called “Talmud Torah.”

But unlike the conventional approach to Bible common to many Orthodox synagogues and schools, where the Bible text is read and revered, but subtly actually rejected because it is too “holy” to be understood or to be applied in everyday life, Grumet believes that the Torah text is readable, approachable, understandable, and applicable to everyday life. He dares to subject Moses to Torah review; in most Orthodox settings, the student is forbidden to dare to assess those who are greater than oneself on the Political-Theological socially accepted Orthodox food chain. Failing to find this restraining norm, that elites are immune to assessment, in Israel’s sacred canon, Grumet the educator subjects each Jew to mutual self-evaluation, with the “hidden curricular” aim to mold and nurture better Torah informed human beings. Like the great medieval Jewish scholars whose words are memorialized in the “Rabbinic Bible,” Grumet asserts the very same intellectual freedom that his medieval forbearers exercised, and refuses to allow the Torah to be reduced to an oracle understandable only to a self-select, theologically correct clique. After all, the Torah was given to all Israel, i.e. the collective “us,” and not to any self-selecting elite. Because Grumet correctly, astutely, and courageously asserts his right to read and offer his own reasoned judgment, a right not forbidden in and therefore implicitly authorized by the Torah, Grumet’s Moses and the Path to Leadership is also a modern as well as Orthodox book.

Moses and the Path to Leadership is however much more than an Orthodox reading of Torah. The untrained lay eye will miss the monograph’s academic depth because it is written in the idiom of Talmud Torah and not Wissenschaft des Judentums. Grumet is nevertheless keenly aware of Academic Bible scholarship, and uses its tools, and cites its findings very well. Like Drs. Yael Ziegler, Meir Weiss, Gavriel Cohen, Ernst Simon, and Nehama Leibowitz, Grumet reads the Torah as a literary critic. In Grumet’s case, the American New Criticism is the “Bible Criticism” he applies adeptly, appropriately, and insightfully. This academic approach assumes that the given text creates a world, and that every word in the document is a datum waiting to be decoded, which then serves as a window into the mind and world of the author. By comparing different Biblical narratives synoptically, one beside the other as opposed to a superficial linear reading, the critic need not and indeed dare not posit different sources, but instead discovers, by dint of juxtaposition, different moods, contending points of view, and conflicting insights into the art and ethic presented by the writer.

By finding literary, and therefore theological coherence in the Torah in general, and from this reviewer’s perspective, the book of Numbers in particular, Zvi Grumet has offered a very important secondary source of Bible exegesis and an even more significantly, a primary source proclaiming what it means to be “modern Orthodox.” An aspiring Bible scholar who never finished his Ph.D., who taught me in Hebrew High School [c.a. 1960], failed to find meaningful coherence in his research on “The Redaction of Numbers.” Another leading contemporary Jewish Bible critic told me that “Numbers is where the stories that have no other place in the Torah were placed.” If one reads Torah (a) with philology and (b) the academic culture’s dogma that inconsistencies and discrepancies testify to a haphazard composition that is by definition bereft of coherency, one is not programmed to entertain the possibility of coherency or literary unity. But Grumet has found coherency in the Torah, with this coherency expressing itself with the moral message of Bildung, that sees education as a life-long enterprise that, if engaged, sanctifies those who partake in and of it. Unlike Nehama Leibowitz, Grumet never criticizes Bible Criticism. He merely avoids discussing its concerns in his Orthodox context because, since he is doing Talmud Torah and not secular research, such conversation is, by dint of genre and audience, epistemologically inappropriate.

Grumet is however suggesting a radical re-consideration of Bible Criticism’s findings. Rather than dismiss the Academic Bible study enterprise as a “heresy,” a concern that entered Judaism in response to the Christian critique of Judaism, he suggests that aspects of Academic Bible study are incompatible with his enterprise, Talmud Torah, because it denies the possibility of textual Torah coherency. Those familiar with Academic Bible study will discover that Grumet is not unaware of their writings and findings, but that he actually employs many of its tools, albeit selectively. Grumet does summon the critical literature on psychology and education in order to explicate Moses’ development as a round and developing character.

Thus, there is much more than meets the untrained lay modern Orthodox eye in this intellectually engaging work. Grumet addresses, with respect and with acuity, the challenge of Academic Bible study. Like R. Joseph Soloveitchik, who in “Confrontation” finds two alternative, inconsistent, and juxtaposed Creation Narratives, and who views these narratives as complimentary literary typologies rather than as two historically verifiable records, Grumet’s Moses is a typological ideal who has become “the” Jewish hero. In “Confrontation,” R. Soloveitchik offers an alternative to the Academic Biblicist consensus that Genesis’ first creation narrative is a late P(riestly) composition that was placed before an earlier JE creation, without raising eyebrows and theological doubts, of his believing, Orthodox target audience. And like R. Soloveitchik, Grumet is religiously responsible to his audience community because Jewish scholarship is not intellectually neutral; one does not study Torah with scholarly disinterest. The Orthodox Jew studies Torah “to hear the word of the Lord,” and not to merely satisfy one’s curiosity.

While written with footnotes and academic rigor, Moses and the Path to Leadership remains an Orthodox exercise in Talmud Torah. And by daring to probe, explore, question, and search, working within the epistemological constrains of historically accepted Jewish definitions, Grumet’s modesty, simplicity, and pedagogically sensitive narrative commentary is a masked polemic couched in strategic, unmistakable understatement. Following his teacher R. Soloveitchik, he filters information, academically processed, so that it is presented in a pedagogic and pastoral format that his audience community is conditioned to accept. But following his own conscience, professional skills, academic proclivities, and intellectual curiosity, Grumet affirms his God-given right to learn Torah on his own, to make up his mind, and to arrive at his own reasoned conclusions. For Grumet, Torah is not merely a political franchise of institutionally endorsed great rabbis; it is, after all, the “possession of the Congregation of Jacob.” He, and his reader, share the right to an informed opinion, and their own finite portion in that infinite enterprise called Torah.

It is this mindset that marks Rabbi Zvi Grumet as a worthy link in the Mosaic chain, who not only carries the courage to be both modern and Orthodox, but who shares and teaches this mindset to others.

March, 2015 To our members and friends, Our ongoing programs for the Institute continue full throttle, including several great recent highlights.

On Sunday, February 22, I organized a symposium, “From the Academy to the Religious Community: How we can gain religious insight from academic Jewish Studies.” Over seventy people attended at Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun in Manhattan.

We enjoyed three talks: • Dr. Chaviva Levin: “What Medieval Jewish Apostates Can Teach Us about the Mitzvah of Ahavat HaGer” (loving the convert) • Rabbi Hayyim Angel: “Afterlife in Jewish Thought: The Evolution of an Idea and Implications for Religious Life Today” • Rabbi Dr. Jeremy Wieder: “Berlin in Volozhin? The Relevance of Academic Talmud to the Denizens of the Beit Midrash” Rabbi Wieder’s and my talks are available online at our website, http://www.jewishideas.org//online-learning. This is an exciting new development in the growth of our programming, and look forward to organizing future symposia with leading rabbis and scholars on relevant issues so that we can learn and build bridges in our broader community. Stay tuned!

Here are some upcoming programs for March and April: Kehilath Jeshurun (114 East 85th Street, between Park and Lexington Avenue in Manhattan): My next two Shabbatot as part of a monthly Rabbinic Scholar program will be a sermon on the morning of Shabbat March 7 at the Sephardic minyan (services begin at 9:00am), the afternoon class (4:25 pm) on “The Golden Calf: Terrible Sin, Great Learning Methodology,” and a se’udah shelishit talk after minhah on “Orthodoxy and Archaeology: Friends or Foes?”

On Shabbat April 18, I will give the sermon at the Sephardic minyan, (services begin at 9:00am). Classes are free and open to the public.

On April 19, 26, May 3 (Sunday evenings, 7:00-8:00 pm): I will give a three-part series on the Book of Ruth at the Young Israel of Jamaica Estates, 83-10 188th Street, Jamaica, NY. Classes are free and open to the public. Second Samuel: In-Depth Bible Study: I am continuing our in-depth Tanakh learning at Lincoln Square Synagogue (68th Street and Amsterdam in Manhattan). This semester we are studying the Second Book of Samuel. Newcomers are always welcome. Classes meet on Wednesday evenings, 7:15-8:15pm.

Remaining dates for the spring semester are: March 11, 18, 25 (not March 4, Purim) Classes are co-sponsored by our Institute and Lincoln Square Synagogue. Registration is required, please go to lss.org/RabbiAngel. Yeshiva University: Honors Rabbinical Program Continuing with our teacher training program, I am currently giving a nine-part series to Honors Rabbinical Students at Yeshiva University on how to teach Bible in synagogues. This course is open to Honors Rabbinical Students at Yeshiva University.

Here are some of the highlights from the past two months: • Shabbat January 2-3: scholar-in-residence program, Young Israel of Lawrence-Cedarhurst. • Monday January 5: Lecture at the Yeshivat Chovevei Torah-Maharat Winter Intensive. • Shabbat February 7, scholar-in-residence, Congregation Ohab Shalom in Manhattan. • Thursday February 12, Book Launch of my newest book, Jewish Holiday Companion, published this past November by the Institute. • Shabbat February 27-28, scholar-in-residence at Congregation Ahavath Torah, Englewood, New Jersey. As always, I thank our members and friends for their support and for enabling us to spread our Institute’s vision through teaching and publications throughout the country and beyond. Rabbi Hayyim Angel National Scholar

Israeli films receive large audiences worldwide. Many of them show the realities of life in the holy land, some with humor and some with sadness. Almost all of them demonstrate that Israel is a democratic country which is not afraid to show even its darkest aspects.

Currently one can watch such a dark story at the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas in Manhattan “Gett- the Trial of Viviane Amsalem”. Gett is Hebrew for divorce. This is a sad story of the difficulties, and one should say, impossibilities for a Jewish woman to obtain a divorce when the husband does not want it. Indeed the husband has to agree to GRANT a divorce. I purposely emphasize the word “GRANT” as the husband is all powerful in that procedure.

There are no civil weddings in Israel and each couple is married by clergy. If a divorce is needed, it will have to be sanctified by that clergy. The religious clergy is the unique ruling instance in the determination of the validity of the nuptial vows or their annulment. That clergy has all the keys. For Israeli Jews, the instance is the Israeli Chief Rabbinate.

The movie Gett is a theatrical representation of that problem. A woman, after 30 years of what she feels to be an unhappy marriage, seeks a divorce. Although she left their home years earlier, her husband does not want it. Seeking redress from the Court, she is facing a cold and entirely male tribunal. She has to endure repetitive sessions in court, continuing legal expenses, offensive language and insinuations from the judges and from the witnesses. All of this is with no recourse but to wait “at the pleasure of her husband”. This court is unable and/or unwilling to force the husband to grant the wife freedom. In this movie, it is only resolved after 5 years of struggle and persistent humiliation for the wife. In addition the “blackmailing” husband extracts from her a degrading compromise.

Unfortunately this is not a unique situation. When the movie was shown in Israel, many, many women came forward. They describe their own similar path of tears and suffering facing a legal system wholly biased and prejudiced. For some it took 15 years and more to solve their situation. The movie producers suggest that learned rabbis have over the centuries found ways to free women from this predicament using different interpretations of rabbinic laws. It further suggests that the current Israeli Jewish clergy is particularly unwilling to adapt to the realities of life and continues to promote this macho attitude.

This predicament is even more absurd when a husband makes himself unavailable for years or just disappears. The abandoned wife is just that, abandoned, without recourse and without a possibility to rebuild a Jewish family life.

It seems that this issue has become a power play by some religious political parties holding steadfast to their anachronistic position. Those same narrow minded individuals relish their power and are opposed to any change which might affect their status with its privileges. As a result of this obstructing stand, many Israeli Jews forgo an Israeli marriage for one out of the country. As the Rabbinate refuses to find a solution, the Government should assume that responsibility.

I ask myself: Why should a man have more rights than a woman when facing a divorce?
Why should it take years to solve a divorce?

Why cannot judges use their own wisdom to declare a divorce?

Is it appropriate to have a whole male bench when gender has such an important place in the proceedings?

These are obviously my personal views and apprehensions. One may feel differently but go to see “Gett” and make your own opinion and scream if you feel so.