Angel for Shabbat, Parashat Vayetsei

By Rabbi Marc D. Angel

This is the only Torah portion where God is referred to as Pahad Yitzhak, Fear of Isaac.  Jacob uses this expression twice as he negotiates his separation from Laban, his father-in-law.

Commentators have suggested various interpretations of Pahad Yitzhak, often connecting it to the Akeida where Yitzhak literally faced death at the hands of his own father. God—who commanded the Akeida—would likely have been a source of fear to Isaac.

Yet, the question remains: why did Jacob only use this term in his dealings with Laban? He generally referred to the God of Abraham and Isaac without referring to God as Pahad Yitzhak.

Jacob’s relationship with Laban had deteriorated so much that Jacob and family fled Laban without even saying goodbye. When Laban learned that Jacob’s entourage had left, he pursued them and confronted Jacob. Why did you leave without even allowing me to kiss my children and grandchildren? Jacob replied: “I was afraid lest you should take your daughters from me by force” (31:31). Jacob complained to Laban: “These twenty years I have been in your household; I served you fourteen years for your two daughters and six years for your flock; and you have changed my wages ten times. If the God of my father, the God of Abraham and the Fear of Isaac, had not been on my side you would have sent me away empty…” (31:41-42).

After a hostile exchange between Jacob and Laban, the two agreed to make a covenant so that neither would hurt the other in the future. Jacob confirmed the covenant in the name of the Fear of Isaac his father (31.53).

Jacob realized that Laban was a unique type of opponent. Laban was deceitful in the extreme. His word could never be trusted.  Even a covenant with him was of dubious value, because Laban would not hesitate to violate it. How could Jacob be sure that Laban would leave him and his family alone in the future?

Jacob concluded: Laban will understand only one thing: fear of harsh retribution if he would renege on this treaty. Jacob invoked the Fear of Isaac, being sure to underscore the element of fear. He was making it clear to Laban that the Fear of Isaac was a mighty and fearsome God.

While Jacob’s other adversaries in life posed threats to him, he at least knew what he was up against. He knew their strengths and intentions and could plan accordingly. But when it came to Laban, he was dealing with a slippery liar who thrived on deceit and deception. Unless Laban felt genuine fear, he would behave ruthlessly.

It is difficult to deal with enemies who are inveterate liars and cheaters, who claim your property as theirs, who have no compunction about committing acts of violence and terror. Such enemies need to be reminded that Pahad Yitzhak—the Fear of Isaac—is a fearsome God who will wreak vengeance on those who seek our harm.

Do you feel that Sephardic and other non-Ashkenazic traditions (halakhot, customs, prayer, history, religious worldview, etc.) should be better represented in Jewish Day Schools and high schools?

I firmly believe that the ideal curriculum in any Jewish Day School or high school is one that reflects the complete picture of Jewish traditions, customs, prayers, history and philosophy—Sephardic and Ashkenazic. It’s not about “representation” or “inclusion,” nor is it about “Sephardic Heritage Week” or “Electives for Sephardic Students.” It’s about every school offering every single student—Sephardic and Ashkenazic together—a daily curriculum that studies both of these beautiful traditions equally, thus exposing the entire student body to the multiplicity of religious books, customs, rabbis, and philosophies that both traditions have to offer. Adopting such an approach would produce better educated and more well-rounded Jewish students who would graduate our schools with a deeper and more complete understanding of the historical experiences, practices, and ideas of the entire Jewish people. Schools are in the business of educating, and as educators, it’s our responsibility to present our students with a complete picture of their collective history and traditions. If we really believe in slogans like “Jewish Unity” and “Am Echad” (One People), then that starts in the classroom. 

Do you have specific suggestions to increase the wholeness and inclusiveness of Jewish education?

Building on my answer to the first question, I will offer a sampling of specific suggestions in select areas that I feel can create the complete curriculum that reflects both Sephardic and Ashkenazic traditions.

Halakha: People often ask me “Rabbi, what’s the best available book that includes both the Sephardic and Ashkenazic halakhic rulings?” My answer: The Shulhan Arukh. On every page of Judaism’s most authoritative halakhic code, you have the rulings of two of Judaism’s greatest masters of halakha: the Sephardic Rav Yosef Karo and the Ashkenazic Rav Moshe Isserles. This should serve as a model for how we teach our students halakha. If we can open the Shulhan Arukh and see both traditions printed before us on every page, then when we study other works of halakha, such as contemporary responsa, we can teach our students Rav Benzion Uziel’s Mishpetei Uziel and Rav Ovadia Yosef’s Yehaveh Da’at—both Sephardic—alongside Rav Eliezer Waldenberg’s Tzitz Eliezer and Rav Moshe Feinstein’s Iggerot Moshe—both Ashkenazic. How wonderful it would be to see all of our students, regardless of their family backgrounds, conversant in the multiplicity of halakhic opinions and traditions.

Customs: It’s very tricky for schools to teach customs—minhagim—because customs often reflect what individual families do at home. It’s a myth to talk about “Ashkenazic Customs” vs. “Sephardic Customs,” because within each of these traditions there are multiple customs that reflect different countries of origin or family traditions. Customs are best learned by practicing them at home. Having said that, I recognize that not every student comes from a home where customs and traditions are observed, so what is the best approach to teaching this multicultural aspect of Judaism? By making sure to create a curriculum that exposes all students to the large tapestry of customs of the Jewish people. Again, this is not about “inclusion” or “Sephardic Heritage Week,” nor should this ever be presented as what’s “normative” vs. what’s “different.” Sephardic and Ashkenazic traditions should have an equal seat at the classroom table, all year round.

Prayer: So often in my life, I’ve heard Ashkenazic Jews say they cannot follow a Sephardic service, and the same with Sephardic Jews in an Ashkenazic service. What surprises them is that when you actually compare the text of the Siddur and find that 90–95 percent of the order and words are identical. Students should have a tefillah class where they learn both siddurim and see the actual differences. This would not even take a year to learn. The bigger question and challenge is not in the classroom, but in actual prayer services. Will the daily services be Sephardic or Ashkenazic? I know this sounds bold and definitely out of the box, but the daily service can and should be both. I don’t love the idea of schools that take pride in saying, “We also offer a Sephardic minyan for our Sephardic students.” I believe in what Rabbi Uziel taught, that Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jews should unite as one in prayer. We can easily teach our students a variety of Ashkenazic and Sephardic tunes. How inspirational it would be to see a morning minyan of students that blend the beautiful melodies of both traditions, switches between one tradition and the other with Torah reading te’amim (tropes) every Monday and Thursday, and sings Hallel on Rosh Hodesh with both tunes. Talk about a model of Jewish unity.

History: If we are to teach “Jewish history” in our schools, then it cannot be an exclusively Eurocentric-Ashkenazic narrative, and once a year we invite “an expert in Sephardic history” to teach a few sessions. That practice must go away, as it is intellectually dishonest. The medieval and modern Jewish historical experiences must be taught in their entirety. What about the Holocaust? Again, students must be taught the complete picture, the one that comprises the history and stories of the persecution, discrimination and tragedies that befell the Jews of Europe, the Balkans, and North Africa. The Holocaust is neither Ashkenazic or Sephardic. It was directed at all Jews, and that’s how it should be taught.

Philosophy: I picture a Jewish philosophy class where the guest lecturers are Rambam, the Vilna Gaon, Rav Yehuda Halevy, Rav Kook, Rav Soloveitchik, Rav Uziel, Hassidic Rebbes, and Sephardic Kabbalists.  No tradition has a monopoly on Jewish thinkers, and we will produce better students if they are exposed to the full gamut of Jewish philosophy and thought. All of these imaginary guest speakers, and many others, left us a treasure chest of ideas on how to think about God, science, human nature, prayer, and our deep connection to Israel. These thinkers were not expressing “Sephardic ideas” or “Ashkenazic ideas.” They all equally belong to every single Jew, and therefore every single Jewish student should hear what each one of these thinkers has to say.     

3. What resources would you suggest for rabbis and educators to give them an entry to Sephardic tradition in a way they can incorporate these materials into their synagogues and classrooms?

There are so many new books coming out every year that explain the customs, history, prayers, and traditions of Sephardic Judaism. The challenge is teaching rabbis and educators how to make use of these books in their respective settings. The best “resources” I have seen are the educator’s conferences that have been convened in the past few years, conferences whose purpose is to teach educators and rabbis how to incorporate Sephardic materials in their classrooms.

I was privileged to have my organization, the Sephardic Educational Center, partner with The Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals, in what we called “The Sephardic Initiative.” Our main goal was to convene conferences for Jewish Day School and high school educators, and “teach them how to teach” Sephardic Judaism to their students. We ran several such conferences, both on the East Coast and West Coast, and we succeeded in reaching a large and diverse number of educators, empowering them with books, curricular materials, and methods on how to best bring all of this into their classrooms. I hope we will do many more such programs.

I am also an annual lecturer in the “Journey to the Mizrach” conferences convened by JIMENA (Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa). They are a Sephardic-Mizrahi organization based in Northern California, and their conferences reached many Jewish educators from that region. The goal is the same as the “Sephardic Initiative”—empowering educators with Sephardic knowledge and materials. Speaking of Sephardic materials, JIMENA is undertaking the task to author a full Sephardic-Mizrahi curriculum. They have reached out to a wide range of rabbis, scholars, and educators, and I trust the final product will serve as a tremendous primary Sephardic resource for Jewish schools. 

One of the main challenges is that many of the writings of Sephardic rabbis from the past 200 years are not accessible to the larger world, either because there are out of print, or because they are written in a Hebrew dialect that is challenging to the modern student. Until we have many works republished in attractively printed editions, and then translated into English (and other languages), I would suggest the “HeHacham Hayomi” (Daily Sage) website built and maintained by Kol Yisrael Haverim (The Israeli branch of the Alliance Israelite Universelle). This website—both in Hebrew and in English—offers a large database of the biographies and teachings of “Sephardic Sages” from all over the Sephardic diaspora. It’s a wonderful resource and an easy way to bring the inspirational teachings of otherwise unknown Sephardic rabbis into the classroom. https://www.hyomi.org.il/eng/default.asp

The Sephardic community must take the responsibility to initiate, support, and fund Sephardic conferences, publications, and curricular materials, making this wisdom available to the entire Jewish world. Such initiatives can help our present tense situation, where most Jewish schools run an “Ashkenormative” curriculum.

As to the “future tense,” I still maintain that the blended and complete curriculum—not the resources for “including” Sephardic materials—is the ultimate ideal and goal.

4. Do you sense that inter-group ethnic discrimination is a growing problem, a diminishing problem, or no problem at all?

Keeping our focus on Jewish schools, I think it is definitely a diminishing problem. While we still have a long way to go in achieving the blended curriculum I laid out above, I think the Jewish Day Schools and high schools my kids attended fostered a much deeper feeling of “Jewish Unity” and “We Are One People” than the Jewish schools I attended. I want to keep things positive here, so I prefer not to cite the many instances of ethnic discrimination I experienced as a Sephardic Jew in my classes, from my rabbis and even at times from the administration. We’ve thankfully come a long way with all of this, and I think that working towards the blended “Sephardic-Ashkenazic” curriculum will help remove any ethnic differences, because the school will be “both,” or rather, it will be “one.”

5. Do you think Jews 100 years from now will identify as Ashkenazim, Sephardim, Teimanim, etc., or will they simply see themselves as Jews with multiple ethnic backgrounds?

I don’t think we need to wait 100 years. My two children, whose father is Sephardic and mother is Ashkenazic, see themselves as “Jews with multiple ethnic backgrounds.” That holds true for many members of the younger generation that I deal with. This does not negate their “ethnic identity” or their desire to celebrate Judaism in a particularly Sephardic or Ashkenazic mode, but I think more and more are identifying as proud Jews who feel privileged to come from this or that—or multiple—backgrounds.

To cap off this question about the future, I will go back to 1911, when Rabbi Benzion Meir Hai Uziel delivered his inaugural address as Haham Bashi—Sephardic Chief Rabbi—of Tel Aviv-Jaffa: 

It is my tremendous desire to unify all of the divisions that the diaspora tore us into, the separate communities of Sephardim, Ashkenazim, Temanim (Yemenites), etc. This should not be a difficult task, for unity is in our nature and our national character as a people. These divisions amongst us are not natural. The particular linguistic and communal divisions that exist amongst us were created due to our dispersion throughout the diaspora. As we now return to our natural homeland, there is absolutely no reason to continue living by these communal and linguistic divisions imported from the diaspora. Instead, we will be one unified community.”

That was Rabbi Uziel—a Sephardic rabbi—delivering his unifying and visionary “I have a dream” speech. 

            One hundred and twelve years later, we have the opportunity to work toward unifying our Jewish communities and celebrating the beauty of both Sephardic and Ashkenazic Judaism.

For me, that challenge starts in the classroom.

Angel for Shabbat, Parashat Toledot

By Rabbi Marc D. Angel

“And Isaac sent away Jacob; and he went to Paddan-aram to Laban, son of Bethuel the Aramean, the brother of Rebeccah, mother of Jacob and Esau” (Bereishith 28:5).

The verse identifies Rebeccah as mother of Jacob and Esau, a fact we already knew. The great commentator, Rashi, is puzzled by the redundancy and writes: “I don’t know what this teaches us.” Many have noted the intellectual honesty and humility of Rashi to publicly record that he didn’t understand a phrase in the Torah. He didn’t have to make any comment at all; after all, he didn’t comment on many passages in the Torah.

It is intriguing to try to come up with an explanation for why the Torah once again reports that Rebeccah is the mother of Jacob and Esau. Rabbi Eliyahu Benamozegh, in his commentary Eim LeMikra, (cited by Nehama Leibowitz in her commentary) suggests that this passage is connected to a previous verse in which Rebeccah expresses fear lest Esau murder Jacob, “why should I be bereaved of both of you in one day?”  Rabbi Benamozegh explains that she feared that the two brothers would fight, one murdering the other.  She then would be bereaved of both: the murdered son is dead, and the murderer son would become hateful in her eyes. The Torah reminds us: she is the mother of both of them, she is concerned about both of them.

Interestingly, the problematic passage refers to Rebeccah as mother of Jacob and Esau…putting Jacob first even though he was the younger son. If we look at the literary structure of the entire Torah portion, we find a poignant circular pattern. Here is part one, at the beginning of the Parasha:

Rebeccah is childless

She gives birth to twins, Esau is first born

Jacob is second born

But in part two, at the end of the Torah portion, the details are reversed:

Jacob is listed first

Esau is listed second

Rebeccah is “childless” again

Rebeccah’s son Jacob leaves home and she has no clear expectation of when, if ever, she will ever see him again. But she not only has lost Jacob’s presence, she also has totally alienated herself from Esau. He certainly realizes that she conspired to get Isaac’s blessing transferred to Jacob rather than to him. Rebeccah’s relationship with Esau is irreparably damaged, exacerbated by the fact that Esau took wives who caused her (and Isaac) much bitterness.

According to this analysis, the Torah reminds us that Rebeccah is mother of both Jacob and Esau, but that she is now “childless” again. She is a mother isolated from her favored son, Jacob, but also from Esau. She is very much alone. Isaac is an old, blind man who had preferred Esau to Jacob and whose wife deceived him into blessing Jacob instead of Esau. Rebeccah fades away; we hear no more about her after this story.

The Torah presents a sad story of a troubled family…parental favoritism, sibling rivalry, marital discord, deception, lack of communication. These negative examples are vivid reminders to us of problematic behaviors that we should avoid. 

The Torah often teaches by overt prescription and commandment. But it also teaches by presenting problematic individuals and circumstances. In this week's Parasha, the Torah's literary imagery speaks louder than words.

Book changed Dahlia’s view of her mother 

By Doreen Wachman

Originally appeared in The Jewish Telegraph: Friday July 14, 2023

Zina ABRAHAM was born in 1933 in a Soviet Uzbekistan prison. Her pregnant mother DORA had been imprisoned after her diamond merchant husband HASID had escaped to Afghanistan. Possession of diamonds was a crime under the Soviet regime.

Although conditions were harsh in the prison, the female guards supported Dora during the pregnancy and birth.

Mother and daughter were released when Zina was six months old. They were smuggled over the border to Afghanistan to join up with Hasid.

The incredible story of Miami resident Zina, now 90, is told by her daughter, Dahlia Abraham- Klein in Caravan of Hope — A Bukharan Woman’s Journey to Freedom (Shamashi Press).

Dahlia, who has written other books, including Silk Road Vegetarian, Spiritual Kneading through the Jewish Months and Necessary Mourning, explained: “There are very few anecdotal stories of central Asian Jews. 

“Most of them don’t even want to talk about their experiences.

“They don’t even want to fund any projects to memorialize their stories. But my mother always said she wanted her story written. If I didn’t write it, the story is gone.”

And an incredible story of adaptability, perseverance and Jewish contribution it is.

Although Dora was freed from her Uzbekistan prison, Dahlia writes that in Afghanistan “she was in a different prison . . . no woman was supposed to see anything on the outside”.

Not only were women discriminated against in the Muslim country, but Jews were beginning to become the butt of Nazi anti-semitism in the 1930s.

After the birth of Dora’s second daughter in 1935, the family fled from Herat to the Afghani capital Kabul.

But Dora had to mainly bring up her growing family alone as Hasid often travelled abroad on business. She eventually had eight children, of whom Zina was the eldest.

At the age of 12, in order to gain more freedom than women had in Afghanistan, Zina was sent to stay with her aunt Rachel in Peshawar, which was then in India.

Rachel had her eye on Zina as a future bride for her 19-year-old son Yehuda, whom she did eventually marry.

But first Zina had to leave India for Afghanistan because of the pre-independence unrest between India and Pakistan.

With the establishment of the state of Israel and heightened antisemitism in Afghanistan, Zina, her mother and siblings left for the new state, where Zina married Yehuda and returned with him to live in Bombay.

After the wedding Dora, whose husband had been absent from her on business for so long — it was 10 years before Hasid joined his family in Israel — told her daughter: “Wherever your husband goes, you go. Never let him leave you.”

Zina followed her mother’s advice. In 1956 she and her husband emigrated to New York, but in the 1960s Yehuda set up a branch of his jewelery business in Thailand.

As Dahlia was growing up, her mother often left her with nannies and other family members as Zina accompanied Yehuda there.

Dahlia said: “I tremendously resented my mother always being away. As a young child I didn’t understand it.

“Writing the book and as a mother myself, I came to understand that what they were doing was greater.”

Yehuda and Zina were very instrumental in helping many Bukharian Jews leave their Asian countries, to such an extent that on a New York visit, then Israel Sephardi Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef called on them to thank them for their efforts.

Dahlia recalls: “It was in the early 1980s when I was a child. Ovadia Yosef was like a superstar. We had paparazzi outside our house. There was a very big hullabaloo around the visit.”

After establishing a Sephardi congregation in Queens, New York, Yehuda and Zina were responsible for establishing one of Thailand’s first synagogues, Even Chen, which began in Yehuda’s office.

A visit to the Lubavitcher Rebbe in New York, resulted in the couple building a mikva in Bangkok. The present large Chabad facilities in Thailand were built on the original efforts of Yehuda and Zina.

Dahlia said: “My parents always thought outside the box. They did not stay stuck in an insulated box. They were very well known for being movers and shakers.”

After Yehuda died in 2014, Zina moved from New York to Miami, where she began to tell her life story to a Chabad women’s group.

Dahlia said: “My mother never got stuck. She always said, if it’s not working, get up and move, push forward. Nothing’s going to come to you.

“You’ve got to make it happen. Always reinvent yourself. It was part of her character makeup, being the oldest sibling, she always took the responsibility of the family on her shoulders.”

I’ve stopped asking people, “How are you?” Because the usual answers, “Baruch Hashem” or “Beseder Gamur” just don’t roll off the tongue right now. Instead I ask, “How is your family doing?” because, more likely than not, anyone you speak to has one or more sons or daughters, sons-in-law or grandsons, serving in the IDF, and that is what is uppermost on their minds. 

My wife Ceil and I were in Teaneck on October 7, having gone to spend Sukkot there with two of our sons and their families. Our flight home on El Al was packed, with so many people bringing extra duffel bags full of supplies for soldiers. We were warned by our friends here that we would be returning to a different Israel, and clearly the bubble has burst. We were living through one of the most fortunate times for Jews in all of our thousands of years of history—in our own land, strong and prosperous, fully confident of a bright future for our people. It turns out that we were overly confident, and it is going to be a long time until we will feel that way again.

Just about everyone here is a little nervous, but obviously the level of anxiety and how you deal with it depend on your personal circumstances. As instructed, we have stocked our mamad (safe room) with bottles of water and some food, as well as a battery-operated radio, and checked that the heavy metal closure for the window moves smoothly. But B”H, there were only one or two sirens sounded in Jerusalem near the start of the war, and there have been none since we returned.

However, my brother and sister-in-law in Rechovot, which is 20 miles south of Tel Aviv, have had to run to their mamad many times when they hear a siren signifying incoming rocket fire from Hamas. My brother keeps a bottle of scotch in the mamad, and takes a shot whenever he has to go in. We are betting on which will last longer—the war or the bottle.

The daily mincha/ma’ariv minyan in our apartment complex has moved from the courtyard to the lower level of our parking garage (I now call it the Marrano minyan.) After mincha we say tehillim, and tefillot for the IDF, the hostages, and the injured, and then we sing “Acheinu Kol Bet Yisrael.” The sound of the voices of some 50 men and several women reverberating through the garage and up through the stairwells of all the buildings is very moving.

Our son Elisha lives in a yishuv just south of Kiryat Gat. His house is below the flight path of Israel’s F16s on their way to Gaza, just 25 miles away. Moments after they pass overhead he hears the booms in Gaza and his whole house shakes. Today the family came to Jerusalem to celebrate our granddaughter’s eighth birthday with pizza and ice cream on Ben Yehudah. Actually, life in Jerusalem seems very normal. But even though the cafes are busy, there are less people on the buses and, of course, no tourists, so many businesses are suffering. The hotels are filled with families evacuated from towns and villages both in the south and in the north, and Ceil is one of those helping to cook meals for them. 

As for me, I am busy sending off what I hope are reasoned letters of protest to the editors of The New York Times and other such publications whose reports are so clearly one-sided. I have no illusions that my letters will get printed but it’s something that I can do, and they have to be placed on notice, at least, that their prejudice is just not acceptable. 

Israel’s slogan for this war is Beyachad nenatse’ach—Together we will win. We will all play our part and with God’s help, Israel will do what it has to do.

Beyachad nenatse’ach!

Sephardic and other non-Ashkenazic traditions should be better represented in Jewish Day Schools and high schoo

1. Do you sense that Orthodoxy has been moving to the right? To the left? Other?

I think it’s helpful to understand why we often discuss “rightward” and “leftward” movements within American Orthodox Judaism. In 2006, the sociologist Samuel Heilman coined the term, “sliding to the right.” It was the title of his important tome that, as the subtitle indicated, explored the “contest for the future of American Jewish Orthodoxy.” Heilman’s book studied everyday life: for example, college enrollment, yeshiva study in Israel, and attitudes toward culture and technology. His conclusion was that the rising generation of traditional-leaning Jews had moved the boundary lines of what is and what isn’t Orthodox Judaism. In each case, those lines “slid” further to the right, shrinking the acceptability of so-described Modern Orthodox practices and placing greater power in the hands of those who subscribed to the values and beliefs of the “rightward” yeshiva world. 

            Five years later, Yehuda Turetsky and Chaim Waxman authored an article that questioned Heilman’s findings. The pair interviewed 50 women and men who described their religious beliefs as in concert with Modern Orthodox Judaism. The interviewees expressed to Turetsky and Waxman a concern for how Hareidi (Israel) and Yeshivish (U.S.) rabbis had banned books and people; most notably, the “excommunicated” Rabbi Natan Slifkin. Those interviewed also expressed an openness for advanced Torah study for women, as well as some inclusion for women in synagogue rituals. They therefore found, in opposition to Heilman, a competing “slide to the left.” 

            Both approaches are compelling, making it difficult to easily plot the trajectory of Orthodox Judaism in the United States. Simply put, it seems a mistake to suggest that Orthodox practice (and belief) has moved from a “left-leaning” liberal attitude to a “right-pulling” conservatism and rigidness. This narrow view of history is too simple when we account for the variety of forces weighing upon Orthodox observance. The history of “change” is rarely binary. Change, I’d say, does not move two-dimensionally along an x-axis. Change moves in oft-unchartable strides. It does this because change doesn’t occur in a vacuum. It sometimes moves unconsciously, reacting to indigenous extratextual conditions. For Orthodox Judaism, a list of those external forces include culture, politics, technology, as well as legal and economic variables. 

Orthodox Judaism has bargained, to borrow a term from scholars of the American Amish, with modernity in complicated ways. Take, for instance, the gray areas of Jewish jurisprudence, as I have argued, from the rise and fall of peanut oil in Ashkenazic-practicing homes on Passover (it has been labeled “kitniyot”) to the emergence of bat mitzvah ceremonies in Orthodox spaces. Peanut oil was “the Passover oil” in the immediate postwar period, approved by all kosher certification agencies. There were no audible grumblings from more stringent Hungarian Jews until the 1960s. Bat mitzvah, on the other hand, was a decidedly Conservative Jewish practice in the 1950s and rarely done in Orthodox circles. In the case of peanut oil, the Orthodox community banned it and moved to the “right,” while in the latter instance, bat mitzvah rituals, we have moved very far to the “left.” Factor in consumerism (Passover vacations, boutique toys, and other Orthodox products), dating practices, and women in the workforce, and you will further bollix notions of linear movements to one direction or another.

Consider, as well, the uneven reception of Torah study and leadership opportunities for women. It is probably a fair assessment to conclude that most Orthodox communities have not warmed to women clergy but have expanded the scope of learning available to Orthodox women. But the notion of “clergy” is curious; and it is absolutely the case that women have been made leaders in some of the most ardently Orthodox communities, even if it hasn’t taken place on a pulpit. In 2015, two rebbetzins—rabbis’ wives—successfully argued in a courtroom in Portland, Oregon, that they were not required to testify in a divorce trial because they ought to enjoy “clergy privilege” and exempt from sharing conversations held in confidence with members of their community. The representatives of these women, belonging to what might be described as a “rightwing” segment of the Orthodox community, claimed that “it was reasonable to argue that despite Orthodoxy’s position that women cannot be ordained rabbis, the kollel wives were in fact officially hired by the Kollel to ‘minister’ to the community in vital ways that overlapped with the duties of clergy.” In all these instances, it is apparent that modernity has posed challenges and opportunities for Orthodox Jews to grapple with their own red lines and develop creative responses to how this community engages with their American environs. In some cases, change can be interpreted as a movement to the right. In others, it is altogether clear that change shifted things leftward. Upon observing this phenomenon, I argued in my recent book, that all American tradition-bound faiths, Orthodox Judaism included, are in search for “authenticity.” The quest for authenticity, a hard-to-describe sentiment, takes a group in a myriad of directions. 

1. What would you consider the proper “center” and how is that center doing?

First, some history. The “center,” as in “Centrist Orthodoxy,” had a short shelf life. In the 1980s, Modern Orthodox Judaism rebranded itself as “Centrist Orthodoxy.” In 1986, Rabbi Norman Lamm, president of Yeshiva University, authored a visionary essay on Centrist Orthodox Judaism in the pages of Tradition. Two decades earlier, Rabbi Lamm had been one of the key figures to popularize the term, “Modern Orthodoxy.” By the mid-1980s, Rabbi Lamm believed that “modern” somehow connoted religious compromise, which was never his intention. Drawing from Rambam’s (and Aristotle’s) Golden Mean, Rabbi Lamm preached his movement’s belief in moderation and nuance in the areas of higher learning and Western culture. Centrist Orthodoxy, like Modern Orthodoxy before it, valued Religious Zionism. 

Others added to Rabbi Lamm’s list. For example, Rabbi Gilbert Klaperman, president of the Rabbinical Council of America, confessed to his colleagues at the rabbinical group’s Midwinter Conference in Upstate New York that he and other “Centrists” were “being drawn to the right by the adamant inflexibility of those who are at the right.” In time, by the end of the 1990s, Rabbi Lamm and others reclassified themselves as Modern Orthodox Jews. Since then, some have preserved “Centrist Orthodox Judaism” as a moniker that represents something a bit more religiously conservative while others have used the term interchangeably with Modern Orthodoxy. Sociologist Sylvia Fishman provided an interesting taxonomy in her Ways into the Varieties of Jewishness.

How is this subgroup of Orthodox Judaism faring? In terms of numbers, it’s clear that it is no longer the dominant community. In 2013, the Pew Research Center published “A Portrait of Jewish Americans.” The report was a landmark population study of Jews in the United States. Among its findings, Pew tabulated about 5 million Jews, about 10 percent of whom belong to the Orthodox group. Within that smaller group, 30 percent self-identify as “Modern Orthodox.” According to my math, this suggests that the Modern Orthodox number just 150,000 women and men. The more recent Pew survey completed in 2020 does not drill down on these figures but the dataset available online confirms that the Modern (or Centrist) Orthodox are no longer the mainstream of Orthodox Jewish life in the United States. 

            Why not? I’d offer that it’s because the tenets of Modern Orthodoxy are no longer all that distinguishable from the yeshiva world. The latter has softened its stance on Israel; the erstwhile anti-Zionists (save for Satmar) are by and large non-Zionists. The yeshiva world visits Israel, champions it, and votes for American politicians who they believe best serve Israel’s interests. In addition, the Modern Orthodox and Orthodox Right are much closer aligned in terms of higher education. The yeshiva world has developed partnerships with universities to help their children earn degrees in “practical” fields such as accounting and the health sciences. Their children enroll in top medical schools and elite law schools. With great ingenuity, the Orthodox Right produces manuals to help young people navigate the higher education system to obtain degrees through online programs. One of the most comprehensive is Reuven Frankel’s The Bochur’s Guide to College.

            Meanwhile, the Modern Orthodox have cooled to the liberal arts and the traditional undergraduate experience. Some (understandably) worry about how their children will do on a secular college campus, amid BDS and rising antisemitism. Even before this, though, about 20 years ago, two Ivy League graduate students, Gil Perl and Yaakov Weinstein, wrote a pamphlet titled, “A Parents’ Guide to Orthodox Assimilation on University Campuses.” The short tract with a Modern Orthodox audience in mind warned about the perils of the campus quad. It received significant attention; it was passed around in yeshivot and seminaries in Israel and discussed at many Hillels throughout the United States. 

It's not just the social and cultural aspects of college life. The Modern Orthodox—like so many Americans—have counseled their youngsters to forsake “impractical” degrees in the humanities in favor of business programs, computer science, and other professional-minded tracks. Consider the case of Yeshiva University. In 1987, YU opened the Sy Syms School of Business in response to student requests for “new areas of interest.” President Norman Lamm anticipated the criticism. Even as a minority of students pleaded for business programs, he was adamant that YU remain a liberal arts school. YU’s business school, therefore, trumpeted Rabbi Lamm, “insists on a liberal dose of the liberal arts.” He remained resolutely opposed to total vocationalism and intended for the business school to retain a small portion of the university’s total undergraduate offerings. Today, Sy Syms’ male student body is larger than (the all-male) Yeshiva College’s (Stern College for Women is still much larger than the women’s cohort at Sy Syms). Withal, and due to a lower birthrate than families belonging to the yeshiva world, it is little wonder that the Modern Orthodox community is not growing, at least not at the same rapid pace of the Orthodox Right.

1. What are the three greatest challenges facing Modern Orthodoxy today?

First, politicization. By this, I do not mean that Modern Orthodox Jews have en bloc taken up a particular political party’s cause or voted in a monolithic way. Modern Orthodox Jews probably vote somewhere in between the GOP-leaning Orthodox Right and the majority of American Jews who have, since FDR, voted for Democrats. By politicization, I have in mind the recent discourse about Modern Orthodox Judaism that has centered on politics rather than faith. This is not new in the history of American religion. For instance, in the decades leading up to the Civil War, politics (slavery) split Baptists and Methodists into “northern” and “southern” sections. The United States’ democratic processes are contentious and deeply meaningful; as a result, they tend to absorb considerable discussion and secrete into other areas of life—education, sports, and popular culture, to list a few. Perhaps, then, it was inevitable that matters such as LGBTQ+ and First Amendment issues would eventually dominate the conversations of Modern Orthodox Jews in the media and around the Shabbat table. Yet, it has come at the expense of Modern Orthodoxy spending time on pressing religious concerns: These include refining its approach to Torah study, revitalizing its synagogues, and forming new agencies and ideas to better support its constituencies. 

            Second, expertise. A dozen years ago, researchers Randall Stephens and Karl Giberson authored a brilliant monograph on expertise in the American evangelical community. Their work, The Anointed, demonstrated how the Christian Right elevated self-taught and self-described experts to champion “Evangelical Truth in a Secular Age.” These men (few of these experts were women) published books, wrote articles and took to other forms of modern media to weigh in on science, politics, and history. Their goal was to provide an alternative and “safer” form of truth that could, in their minds, better jibe with their communities’ religious and social sensibilities. Very often, these evangelical exponents deployed rhetorical apologetics and made statements without the sufficient scholarly scaffolding to make cogent and compelling arguments—at least not the kind that would satisfy the most learned. While some within this group such as the historian Mark Noll, described this phenomenon as the “scandal of the Evangelical Mind,” many pious Protestants have felt more comfortable with internal experts, no matter how these individuals compare to scholars and researchers who had trained and received credentials from American universities.

            In the 1960s, the same was the case for the yeshiva world. Their magazines described “newfangled” research in psychology and education. They also worried about the research produced by women and men who were part of the nascent field of Jewish Studies. They often positioned these flawed disciplines against the flawlessness of Daas Torah, a term that denotes a belief in an unimpeachable form of rabbinic wisdom. 

More subtly and more recently, the Modern Orthodox have revealed the same concerns about elevating experts, even within their own community, who possess top credentials. More often than not, congregational rabbis and yeshiva heads are asked to opine on mental health, dating advice, and lecture in the areas of science, history, and philosophy. In some instances, these rabbis and religious leaders possess relevant credentials. Rarely, however, do they conduct research, write, or, I suspect, generally keep up with their peers in the field. Modern Orthodox communities have become much better about inviting a small (but growing) cluster of women leaders to speak on a myriad of issues. But, like their male counterparts, these women are often asked to speak about areas far beyond their specializations. 

            Confounding this further is social media and the relatively low cost of publication. On the one hand, social media has democratized discourse, permitting many people to obtain a voice on various platforms and podcasts. On the other hand, the phenomenon has short-circuited the vetting process. While it is hardly the case that all articles and books published decades ago were the finest works of scholarship, there are, at present, no controls on material produced for wide consumption and consideration. The result of this and the decline of expertise in the Modern Orthodox fold is that there is no very trustworthy forum for intelligent conversation about Modern Orthodox Judaism.

            Third, economics. It is very expensive to live a Modern Orthodox lifestyle. The cost of education is particularly painful. Day School and college are very expensive. Tuition for families, say, with four children enrolled in Day School and summer camp can run, easily, about $120,000 (and that’s after taxes). Rising mortgage rates and housing costs just add to the high cost of Modern Orthodox living. To be sure, it’s not cheap to live in the yeshiva world. Yet, the Orthodox Right, it is my sense, finds philanthropic and government resources (troubling exposés in the media, notwithstanding), to help subvent some costs. 

1. What positive developments do you sense for contemporary Modern Orthodoxy?

It is too soon to speculate about our post-pandemic Modern Orthodox communities. No doubt, synagogues and their leaders have had to reconsider the needs of their congregants. Likewise, Day Schools, forced to pivot and improvise during the “shutdown” Covid period, have learned a lot about their capacities and their ongoing needs for professional development. As for economics, especially amid rising interest rates and inflation, it is far too soon to prognosticate remedies. However, it is heartening to observe the efforts of the Orthodox Union and other agencies who have worked closely with state-level lawmakers to find funding to support Jewish education. In short, the crisis wrought by the Covid-19 pandemic has forced all types of people to think differently about their communities and organizations. This has, no doubt, extended to the Modern Orthodox.

            There’s another reason for optimism. Even before the coronavirus pandemic, Modern Orthodox Judaism in the United States was the beneficiary of an exciting jolt of energy from their dati-le’umi counterparts in Israel. Israelis have inspired new and more advanced forms of learning for America’s Modern Orthodox women, introduced new thinkers and ideas, thanks in large part to Koren Publishers. Still, there are cultural differences between the Modern Orthodox in the United States and Israel’s dati-le’umi leaders. America’s Modern Orthodox community was fashioned by a Lithuanian rabbinic folkway. 

For this reason, traditional Talmud study (“yeshiva learning”) was the coin of the realm for leadership. Unlike in Israel, non-Eastern European exponents such as Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, did not gain a sturdy foothold in American environs. It’s also the reason that Tanakh scholarship is better appreciated among the dati-le’umi constellation Israel than it has been within the Modern Orthodox communities in the United States. This also may suggest why women’s leadership has developed differently in the two communities. If these realms are changing in the United States, it is probably because of Israel’s influence. Not everything from Israel will “take,” of course. The indigenous Modern Orthodox community will continue to privilege traditional Talmud learning, even as other areas of Torah scholarship gain increased reception. We’ll figure out what works best and redevelop the infrastructure to reimagine and fortify our Modern Orthodox communities in the United States.