National Scholar Updates

Maimonides [Yad Tefillah 8:12, 15:1], as well as several other Sephardic scholars, [declares] to be ‘illegin (=defective of speech) [those] people who cannot distinguish between the sounds of aleph and ayin or between the sounds of heh and heth. These alone they declare ‘illegin. But our Talmudic sages, when they cited these two pairs of easily confounded gutturals, were citing them merely as examples as is shown by their use of the word kegon (=such as)—a word which always implies that what has been mentioned represents a larger group.^[i] Hence I am amazed at their [i.e. Maimonides and the Sephardic scholars] singling out for the epithet ‘illegin just those who fail to distinguish between aleph and ayin, etc. but forget to apply it to themselves and their countrymen who make no difference between the sounds of samekh and tsadi. Moreover, when it comes to the diacritics—which are to the letters like brains and legs [to humans]—they do not respect each diacritic’s phonetic value. Instead, kamets and patah are all one to them as are tsere and segol.… All this happened to them because they fulfilled the verse [Ps. 106:35] “They intermingled with the nations and learnt their ways.” Having resolved to aggrandize themselves above their fellows, they made every effort to gain admission into royal and princely courts. And the better to ingratiate themselves with the princes, they took up the study of these uncircumcised princes’ tongue, script, astronomy [or science], and philosophy…. Furthermore, they sought to bring their own language [Hebrew] into line with the language of the uncircumcised by retaining only those five of our vowel sounds that correspond to the latter language’s vowels while doing away with all the rest. Misguidedly the [Sephardic] multitude followed their lead until in time all but the five vowel sounds were lost to those communities. Another consequence of the philosophical studies was—for our sins—the proliferation of heretics in Israel.[ii]

The above diatribe leveled against what we think of as Sephardic pronunciation came from the pen of Asher Lemlein ben Meir Reutlingen. This all but forgotten visionary—a messiah to some—appeared on the scene on Izola in Istria at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Contemporaries, both Jewish and Christian, recall 1502 as the “year of penance” when masses of Jews divested themselves of their worldly possessions in preparation for what Asher Lemlein had led them to believe was their imminent redemption.

Ephraim Kupfer who published the surviving writings of Asher Reutlingen,[iii] quotes several such reports and assessments of Asher’s impact, by chroniclers both contemporary and slightly later—including Abraham Farissol (d. 1525). In his book Magen Abraham, Farissol writes:

In these regions of Italy, in the Venetian domains[iv] there arose a man of stature[v] from the ranks of Ashkenaz by the name of Asher Lemle.[vi] He put on airs of being a king despite his limited wisdom and deeds. Through the mediation of his disciples he misled the entire region [into believing that] the redeemer is coming. Indeed, to the multitudes he would announce that “he [the redeemer] is already here.” From his place of seclusion he let most of the Diaspora come to believe in him, his teachings, the fasts and flagellations; for they said “the redeemer is here!”—until it all ended in “emptiness and chasing the wind.” These events played out before me in the year 262 [1502] here Ferrara where I reside.[vii] [DEA1] 

 A generation later the historian Joseph haKohen (d. 1577) records in his ‘Emeq haBakhah:

In Istria, which is near Venice, there arose an Ashkenazic Jew by the name of Lemlin—a fool of a prophet a madman in spirit.[viii] Jews flocked to him saying “he is surely a prophet since God has sent him to lead His people Israel and to ingather the scattered of Judah from the four corners of the earth.” Even among the rabbis he had some followers. They called for fasting, wearing of sackcloth, and for everyone to repent of their bad ways; for they said “Our redemption is close at hand[DEA2] .”

The recollections of David Gans (d. 1613) are charming—if second-hand:

Rabbi Lemlin announced the coming of the messiah in the year 260 [1500]. Throughout the dispersions of Israel they believed his words. Even among the gentiles his fame grew and many of them also believed his words. My grandfather Seligman Gans of blessed memory smashed the oven he kept for baking massoth in his total confidence that the following Passover he would be baking massoth in the Holy Land. I myself heard from the venerable Rabbi Eliezer Trevis, head of the Francfort beth din, that it was no trifling matter[ix]—[Asher] having provided signs to prove it. He [R. Trevis] added “perhaps our sins were the cause of its failure[DEA3] .”

Lastly, the remarks that the Christian protagonist addresses to his Jewish counterpart in haVikuah by the famous Hebraist Sebastian Münster (d. 1552):

In the year 262 [1502] Jews did penance wherever they lived in all lands throughout the diaspora in expectation of messiah.[x] It continued for almost a full year; young and old, children and women. Never had such penance been done as was done in those days.[xi][DEA4] 

Asher Lemlein is certainly fascinating in his own right; but our present interest is his conviction that seven diacritic signs must represent an equal number of distinct vowel sounds. Fewer sounds than signs made no sense to Asher. His logic seems perfectly cogent, and was to be echoed by other worthies until the dawn of the modern age. As late as the second half of the eighteenth century, R. Jacob Emden (d. 1776) was faulting the Sephardic vowel system:

[W]ith regard to the pronunciation of the vowels, happy are we [Ashkenazim] and goodly is our portion unlike the Sephardim who do not distinguish between kamets and patah, thus making the holy profane[xii] .… In addition to that, they diminish the number of the vowels which were handed down to us from Sinai…. They do the same with the vowels segol and tsere, making the pronunciation of both alike.[xiii]

Emden’s allusion to the vowels’ Sinaitic origin is cryptic; but almost certainly harks back to a talmudic passage in Nedarim 37b.

What is the interpretation of the verse “They read in the scroll of (var. in)[xiv] the Torah of clearly they made its sense plain and gave instruction[xv] about what was read” [Neh 8:8]? “They read in the scroll of the Torah of God” this refers to Scripture proper; “clearly” refers to Targum [=Aramaic translation]; “they made its sense plain” refers to the division of the text into verses; “and gave instruction about what was read” refers to the cantillation—or, according to others, to the masorot. R. Isaac said: The reading of the Scribes, the embellishments of the Scribes, words read but not written or written but not read are all halakhah le-moshe mi-sinai.[xvi] Examples of “readings of the Scribes” are the two ways of pronouncing the consonantal word spelt aleph resh tsadi [=earth, land]. Also, the consonantal word spelt shin mem yod final-mem [=sky, heaven] and the word spelt mem tsadi resh final-mem [=Egypt].[xvii]

Although R. Isaac obviously attaches the highest importance to giving each vowel its proper phonetic value, he says nothing about seven vowel sounds—let alone any diacritical sigla. Nevertheless, both R. Emden and Asher Lemlein, the former explicitly, assume the seven diacritics along with their respective values to be ancient, if not coeval with the biblical text itself. Nor were these teachers alone in that assumption. Indeed, some Sephardim showed symptoms of an inferiority complex on account of their indifference to the kamets! For example, R. David Ibn Yahia (d. 1528) makes the following confession: “Know that we [Sephardim] have lost the proper way to read written texts…. We do not differentiate between kamets and patah nor between tsere and segol …. Undoubtedly each consonant and each vowel must have its discrete sound….”[xviii] Even today one occasionally hears the argument that neglecting to differentiate between patah and kamets or segol and tsere must surely be a deviation from what was intended by the tradition that instituted these distinct sigla. For the sake of full disclosure, I own up to my own bewilderment regarding this seeming anomaly of having two distinct “squiggles” to represent one and the same sound. When I finally mustered the courage to ask my father, he proceeded to show me a text with supralinear Babylonian vocalization. Today, he said, we know that the Babylonian system of vocalization differed radically from the Tiberian, and certainly did not assign distinct values to tsere and segol—and possibly not even to patah and kamets.[xix] However, the Tiberian system won the day and ousted the Babylonian—at any rate among scribes and writers of vocalized Hebrew. But not in the mouths of entire communities who retained their erstwhile pronunciation, either through inertia or in conscious defiance of the “officially” sanctioned system.

            My father’s answer was no more than a distillation of a century of discovery and scholarship that has identified not merely two but three historical systems of vocalization. Some of the most accessible scholarship in the field can be found in the writings of pioneers such as Benjamin Klar (d. 1948), Paul Kahle (d. 1964), Yehiel F. Gumpertz and in the ongoing research of Israel Yeivin and others. These are some of the primary scholars whose conclusions we shall now summarize, paraphrase and/or cite.

Benjamin Klar

From the very beginning of the enterprise of vocalizing the sacred texts—i.e., from the Gaonic age—there existed three distinct systems.… It is premature to say what the historical relationship between the three systems might have been. But it would not be unreasonable to conjecture that the so-called “Egyptian-Sephardic” pronunciation was the most ancient since it is attested in the transcriptions of the Septuagint as well as Josephus.[xx] If so, the Tiberian and Babylonian systems must be due to later influences. It is worth noting comparable phonetic developments in Persian where the long ‘a’ sound mutated into a Swedish ‘å’.[xxi]

Paul Kahle

When in the course of the ninth century the Masoretes of Tiberias began their work of adding a consistent punctuation to the text of the Hebrew Bible, they were convinced that it was their duty to give the text of the Bible as correct a form as possible.… They secured the abolition or adaptation of all the texts provided with a different kind of punctuation such as the Babylonian.… The text fixed by the Masoretes has been almost the only one considered in the preparation of our Hebrew grammars. Now we know this text was altered by the Masoretes. I have tried to show that the Masoretes of Tiberias introduced a number of new vowels to safeguard the newly-established pronunciation of the gutturals.[xxii]

Yisrael Yeivin

The well known report in Mahzor Vitry regarding the existence of three systems of pronunciation appears to be taken from a compilation by the twelfth century R. Jacob bar Samson. That report, found in the commentary to Pirqe Avoth, reads: ‘Therefore Tiberian punctuation differs from our punctuation, and both differ from the punctuation of the Holy Land.’[xxiii] M. Friedlander thought that ‘our punctuation’ referred to the Babylonian system. To the objection that a 12^th century Frenchman was unlikely to identify his group as Babylonian, Friedlander responded that Vitry’s commentary to Pirqe Avoth was a miscellany of material borrowed from a variety of sources, including Gaonic, which the compiler incorporated as he found it. Nehemiah Aloni rejected Friedlander’s theory, preferring to understand ‘our punctuation’ as referring to the ‘expanded’ Tiberian punctuation…. If so, Vitry cannot be counted as a witness to Babylonian vocalization.[xxiv]

All agree, then, that the system we are most familiar with, originated in Tiberias and comprised seven diacritics. The system that developed in Babylonia probably had no more than six. A third system, often referred to as the vocalization of Erets Yisrael, seems to have had just five. Although the Tiberian system with its seven sigla ultimately prevailed, not all communities renounced their traditional way of pronouncing Hebrew. This can be demonstrated in a number of ways. For instance, a plethora of extant manuscripts can be seen to disregard the quintessentially Tiberian vowel distinctions; interchanging kamets with patah and sere with segol. Many of these old manuscripts would have shocked the messiah of Istria because they hail from the very heartlands of Ashkenaz.

Yes indeed! Careful study by scholars, notably Hanokh Yalon (d. 1970),[xxv] of early French and German manuscripts showed that their writers, too, were pronouncing kamets the same as patah. Take for example the comments of Rashi (d. 1105) to the “Earth, Heaven, Egypt” passage at Ned. 37b (cited above). Since the Talmud is typically written without matres lectionis, Rashi sets out to describe in his own words the sound of nouns such as ERETS (=earth) and their pausal modifications. “It is the “readings of the Scribes” that fixes the two ways of pronouncing the consonantal word spelt aleph resh tsadi. For there is no yod between the aleph and resh nor between resh and tsadi [to fix the pronunciation as ERETS]. Similarly for the pausal form, there is no second aleph or heh between the aleph and resh nor is there a yod between resh and tsadi [to fix the pronunciation as ARETS].” By explaining that the pausal is pronounced as if there were a mater lectionis aleph or heh between the initial consonantal aleph and the resh, Rashi reveals that the kamets was just like patah in his own system of pronunciation.[xxvi]

Another important proof is furnished by transcriptions of Hebrew in European alphabets. In 1273 R. Abraham Ibn Ezra’s astrological treatise Reshit Hokhmah was translated into French.[xxvii] Yehiel F. Gumpertz in his Mivta’e Sefatenu (Jerusalem 1953) analyzed the transliterated Hebrew words in this thirteenth-century Old French text. Gumpertz begins by telling us that the Hebrew (and Arabic) words were dictated to the scribe Obers de Mondidier by Hagin the Jew. The latter could not write French and the former knew no Hebrew (or Arabic). “The first thing to emerge [from my study of this text],” Gumpertz continues,

was a total and unqualified confirmation of Hanoch Yalon’s theory regarding the “Sephardic” pronunciation of the kamets by French Jews. Indeed so “Sephardi” are his transcriptions that I began to suspect Hagin to be an Iberian Jew. However, his non-Sephardic origin was soon revealed in the way he represents shevas and hatafs, no less than in his transcriptions. For instance, the Hebrew word for myrtle he gives as hedas instead of hadas. Hedas is attested exclusively in non-Sephardic MSS of the period. (Gumpertz, ibid.)

A third clue comes from rhymed Hebrew compositions by early French and German versifiers. Very frequently kamets and patah words are used to form the rhymes, strongly suggesting that the rhymsters treated them as homophonous.

But to gain a fuller picture of Ashkenazic pronunciation and its evolution, we turn now to—of all unlikely linguists—Max Weinreich. Weinreich’s Yiddish researches necessitated a thorough understanding of the kinds of Hebrew that fed Yiddish at its various stages. Not only did Weinreich (d. 1969) master the evidence available in his day, but he managed to present it in a manner succinct as it is orderly. Indeed, we cannot do better than quote him in extenso.  

Up to a hundred years ago, not only the reading of the Bible, but all of Hebrew grammar was based on the Tiberian tradition. There are statements of medieval authors that the pronunciation, along with the text of the Torah, were given on Mount Sinai. Aharon Ben Asher [early 10^th century] himself maintained that punctuation derived from the men of the great assembly, namely from the beginning of the second Temple. Still others, more critical, came to the conclusion that Hebrew speakers in the period of unmediatedness needed no punctuation.… The Tiberian punctuation was created with the conscious aim of teaching correct reading at a time when Hebrew had long ceased to be an unmediated language.… Scholars can now declare with sufficient confidence that of the three attempts to elaborate a punctuation, the Tiberian attempt was the most recent. The Babylonian system apparently came into use around the year 600, the southern Palestinian[xxviii] about 700, that is some 50 years before the work of the Tiberian sages had begun….

Behind the north Palestinian punctuation there was an inventory of seven vowels whereas the southern Palestinian punctuation has an inventory of only five vowels. One fact is striking; this vowel system is similar to what was later called the Sephardic pronunciation…. From southern Palestine and Egypt it [the five vowel system] penetrated all of northern Africa and even the Iberian Peninsula. The centre of learning in Kairwan was also a point of supply of Jewishness to Italy…. From there it passed into Loter-Ashkenaz…. It was one exclusive Western sphere, from southern Palestine to the Atlantic, from the edge of the Sahara to the northernmost settlements in central Europe. The southwestern sphere retained the five-vowel reading system [while] the northwest, that is, central Europe, was pervaded by the Tiberian; through conscious efforts of the adherents of this system there grew up here what is known as the Ashkenazic pronunciation… The similarity of the pre-Ashkenazic pronunciation in Ashkenaz to the Sephardic pronunciation was not the result of the influence of Sefarad on Ashkenaz. There was no such influence, but both Sefarad and Ashkenaz drew their spiritual sustenance from one pre--European source. Sefarad clung to the old system; Ashkenaz changed its reading system radically and the break came not because the scholars of Ashkenaz created the Ashkenazic pronunciation ex nihilo… but by virtue of external prestige.

In the writings of the Rosh, born in Ashkenaz about 1250, we find the same as in the case of Rashi's grandsons: the kamets symbol was called a patah. But [soon] there begin to appear in Ashkenaz signs of the northern Palestinian system, and towards the end of the 14th century Ashkenazic Hebrew manuscripts are usually pointed according to the Tiberian style. [Nevertheless] Ashkenazic Bible manuscripts of the 13th, 14th, and a few perhaps even from the 15th centuries have also been preserved that … can be understood only in the light of the southern Palestinian reading. Some of these manuscripts have a patah instead of a kamets and a kamets instead of a patah; similarly a segol instead of a tsere …. A second group of manuscripts have only patah and segol…. Such confusion and such interchange is conceivable only in the case of punctuators whose vocalic value of patah and kamets on the one hand, and segol and tsere on the other, differs from the Ashkenazic pronunciation of today.

Since it is a matter of proving that today's reading in Ashkenaz is not the original one, the question of how far back the Ashkenazic pronunciation was demonstrably the same as it is today has to be raised. The answer is about 1500; that is, since the beginning of the middle Yiddish period the situation has been more or less the same as today. In the last quarter of the 15th century the Ashkenazic value of the kamets is confirmed by both Jewish and non—Jewish testimony.… Up to the 13th century there are no indications of “Ashkenazism”….The oldest known instance of a kamets with the value ‘o’ is in a Cologne Hebrew document dated 1266.[xxix]

If there has to be a moral to this story of phonetic vicissitudes, let it be this: No Jewish community need deem its own tradition for pronouncing Hebrew superior or inferior to any other phonetic tradition. Doubtless those Sephardic authors who expressed misgivings about their neglect to respect kamets or segol would have been relieved to learn that their ‘neglect” was justified all along. Nor should the antiquity of such linguistic heterogeneity surprise us when we ponder the shibboleth–sibboleth dichotomy of Jephtha’s day. “The Gileadites held the fords of the Jordan against the Ephramites. When any fugitive of Ephraim said, “Let me cross” the men of Gilead would ask him, “Are you an Ephramite?”; if he said “No” they would ask him to say “shibboleth” but he would say “sibboleth” being unable to pronounce it correctly” (Jud 12:5–6).

In his commentary to these verses, R. David Kimhi (Radak, d. 1235) actually compares the phonetic differences between Gileadite and Ephramite to a situation in Europe of his day: “Just as they would test the Ephramites with this word shibboleth, they would likewise test them with any word that had the letter shin; shibboleth serving merely as an example.… Perhaps it was the climate that influenced their discrete pronunciations in the same way that the people of sarfat [=France] are unable to make the ‘sh’ sound but rather pronounce it as a soft tav.”

During my first teaching experience (it was the Frisch School in 1983) I was asked by one of the parents at a Parent-Teachers meeting why Biblical Criticism was not included in my curriculum. The parent argued that his son would surely encounter the questions raised when he was in college, and it would be important to discuss the ideas in a traditional Jewish framework. 

I do not recall what I answered at the time, but Biblical Criticism was not part of my teaching repertoire. 

In an article that appeared in the Journal of Jewish Education, Dr. Susan Tanchel argues that teaching the Documentary Hypothesis is an essential part of her school’s curriculum. 
Do you have it in yours? 

I raised this question on the virtual pages of Lookjed, an online discussion aimed at Jewish day school educators. In 1999, when high-speed internet could only be dreamed of and modems that connected to the internet were rarely found in private homes, the Lookstein Center of Bar-Ilan University launched this ongoing conversation. Today more than 3,500 teachers, administrators, lay leaders, and even occasional students weigh in and debate topics of current, and, occasionally, recurrent interest. Threaded archives of those conversations appear at http://lookstein.org/lookjed/.

The subject of academic Bible study has been discussed in Lookjed on a number of occasions. In the course of a conversation about how to teach “the strange malon story” (when Moses stopped at an inn en route to Egypt, see Exodus 4:24–26) a reader suggested that James Kugel’s How to Read the Bible might be used to shed light on the matter. This led to a heated discussion on the place of such works in a Day School library. At some point the conversation turned to whether college-age students in a yeshiva environment should be studying Biblical Criticism, and, indeed, whether the invitation tendered to Professor Kugel by one of student clubs at Yeshiva University should have been rescinded by the administration.

In this brief article I do not intend to discuss theories of Biblical Criticism, which can be found elsewhere. The focus here is on attitudes toward the introduction of modern literary and academic methods to the Tanakh classroom, as expressed by classroom teachers, administrators, and educational leaders. Although much of this information is based on the discussions that took place in Lookjed, I will also devote a few words to the “parallel universe” of Day School education, that is, the mamlakhti dati religious public school system in Israel.

The brief quotations that appear in this article are all taken from the Lookjed discussions. I am sharing them here without attribution, but their sources can be found in the online threaded discussion archives.[1]

The question of teaching Biblical Criticism is one that depends on the outlook and affiliation of a given school, its mission, and its constituency. In most cases the responses that came to the list identified the type of school in which the writer worked. The Lookjed list, reflecting the values of The Lookstein Center, is open to a multiplicity of voices. Although many of the Day School educators who participate in these online discussions come from an Orthodox perspective, in this particular conversation, whose beginnings were rooted in an article about a Community School setting, contributions were received from across the ideological spectrum.

Once of the first replies that I received commented in strong terms on the appropriateness of raising the question in the manner that I did. It read:

I am a little shocked at the rather offhand way you threw out a question about Biblical Criticism: “In an article that appeared in the Journal of Jewish Education, Dr. Susan Tanchel argues that teaching the Documentary Hypothesis is an essential part of her school’s curriculum. Do you have it in yours?” 
 

You could be asking about whether our school uses indirect lighting, or shares a certain math program, rather than striking at the absolute essence of what it means to be a believing Jew. “Do I have it in mine?” . . . Do I relish systematically undermining the faith of my students to pay homage to the modern god of “pluralism?” Um, no. 
 

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that if the authorship of the Torah is undermined, all observance falls like a house of cards. Inoculating college-bound students against Biblical Criticism is responsible if done properly. Destroying their faith so we can pretend we are intellectually honest and enjoy splashing in the shallow waters of heresy is quite another. 

Although this respondent rejects the possibility of systematic study of Bible Criticism in school, he does allow for the possibility that in the context of preparation for the challenges that are found on college campuses, a presentation of the tenets of Biblical Criticism would be appropriate. This response was echoed by a number of educators affiliated with Orthodox Day Schools.

A Yeshiva University professor wrote to affirm that when teaching Torah “belief in Torah mi-Sinai is fundamental to Orthodoxy. Adopting a neutral position on the subject is equivalent to adopting a neutral position on the divinity of Jesus.” He allows that for a student today to understand the writings of twentieth-century Orthodox thinkers such as Rabbis David Zvi Hoffmann, Mordechai Breuer, or Yoel Bin-Nun, it is necessary to have some familiarity with elements of Biblical Criticism. Nevertheless, he laments

Unfortunately, the vast majority of high school students do not have the basic knowledge of Tanakh to master these thoroughgoing, profound controversies. Very simply—how many know the Torah well? How many know the rest of Tanakh well? Without such knowledge can one follow the back-and-forth debates? Can one easily discuss how different versions of a story or a legal theme appear in different sections of the Torah if the basic material is not yet familiar, if one has no familiarity with the thousands of years of tradition and analysis that precede the modern period? 
 

One Orthodox high school administrator described where modern literary methods fit into his school’s curriculum:

Our Tanakh curriculum is certainly informed by modern scholarship, but does not teach the Documentary Hypothesis.

We began a program where we explore a variety of topics in symposium-style discussions. This is aimed to prepare the students for different challenges of life after high school, and to stimulate intellectual curiosity by making learning exciting without tests. We refer to it as either the Senior Seminar, or the Lishma program. 
It is in this context that we discuss higher and lower criticism, and the insights these methodologies have uncovered. We also, of course, discuss why we can still faithfully maintain our belief in Torah Mi-Shamayim. It has always been a well received unit in the senior seminar. 

In fact, the general approach of Day School educators, even in non-Orthodox settings, was that the introduction of a class on Biblical Criticism as a systematic course of study would not be welcome in their schools.

One long-term administrator from a Solomon Schechter school rejected the suggestion that such a course be introduced for a number of different reasons, among them:

• Educators must focus on the ultimate goals of Tanakh study, which he argued should be “to equip students with the text-access and text-analytical skills they need to be confident, independent, and resourceful students of Tanakh.” The introduction of a year-long course in Biblical Criticism will ultimately raise many serious theological questions that will force a teacher to talk “about the text” rather than focus on the text itself.
• Invoking James Fowler’s Stages of Faith, he argued that introducing the Documentary Hypothesis to adolescents “is likely in many cases to produce an explosive reaction at an age at which non-traditional perspectives should be at most gently and tentatively introduced,” concluding that it is, therefore, both risky and unnecessary.
• Why must students of Tanakh be taught the intricacies of how the Documentary Hypothesis works any more than computer users need to understand the coding of the software that they use or drivers the wiring of their automobiles?

Rather than rejecting “non-traditional” study out of hand, the author makes suggestions of what should be taught in order to prepare students for “more advanced study,” suggestions that he attests are used in the schools where he has worked. These include the following:

1. Training in identifying literary features such as repetition, irregular structures, parallel passages, enigmatic expressions, and non-linear chronology
2. Training in using textual evidence to propose their own explanations of, or commentaries on, problematic literary features
3. Exposure to multiple commentaries that explain literary anomalies differently, ideally including both classical and modern voices
 

All of this is to be introduced in grades 1 through 8. Beginning in high school, two additional features are introduced to students:

4. Aspects of biblical society and culture in the context of surrounding societies and cultures
5. Reference materials, including biblical atlases, encyclopedias, primary and secondary historical sources, and archaeological artifacts, as additional ways—over and above the classical and modern commentaries—to deepen understanding of Tanakh

The author concludes,

It should be noted that, on this model, the aim of introducing modern commentaries and understandings is in service of the text, in order to uncover its rich and layered meaning. The nontraditional beliefs and assumptions underlying these perspectives are never in the spotlight, never the focus of study, but are rather the nearly always unarticulated background and context of student learning.

An individual who teaches Tanakh in the Abraham Joshua Heschel School, a non-denominational Day School in New York City, weighed in on this discussion, stating at the outset that “the Documentary Hypothesis is an exercise in theology, not Bible.” He argued that introducing the Documentary Hypothesis to students in high school—as is done in the Heschel School—requires the students to have not only advanced text skills but also “a meta-textual mindset and background: significant substantive experience grappling with one’s own approach to Tanakh study; exploration of the tenuous and often shifting boundaries between subjective and objective readings; separation between self and text in order to recognize where they meet; and aptitude in distinguishing between facts and conclusions, between weak and strong interpretations.”

He writes that as taught in his school, this is a course

…for students who have already come face to face with their own conception of God, who are accustomed to pushing at theological comfort levels, and who welcome tension, encountering the Documentary Hypothesis creates a climactic moment: How does my conception of Torah, of God, of religious studies, withstand, absorb and react to its stiffest challenge? As such, reacting to the Documentary Hypothesis is not the portal into these questions, an early overt foray into one’s theological and religious identity; it is the capstone.

As such, the Documentary Hypothesis is introduced in his school not as a value in and of itself, but as part of a course whose goal is to explore what it means to learn Torah. To accomplish that, Biblical Criticism is presented in the context of other approaches that offer a variety of possible entrances to its study:

To that end, students engage with four differing approaches: classical commentary highlighting the peshat-derash divide, modern literary analysis, archeology, and biblical scholarship.

In explaining the rationale for this he writes:

[The theory of] multiple authors is not the only answer. It may be the best—it may not—but that’s irrelevant if it is presented on its own, with no alternatives as part of a dialogue. The question is not ‘here is the Documentary Hypothesis, how do you react?’ but ‘here is a problem with a range of approaches, how do they fit with the rest of your complex understanding of the book that is the most important to your religion?”

It is interesting to note that when I shared the Lookjed discussion about How to Read the Bible with James Kugel, he responded by saying that the book was not intended for high school students—for that matter it may not be appropriate for all adults—and that he was unsure whether it had a place in a Day School library. He did share his own thoughts about an appropriate high school curriculum in Tanakh, writing:

I do have my own curricular ideas for high school, mostly based on my own kids’ sometimes disappointed reaction to classes [in Tanakh]. I think it’s fine for very little kids to do Humash and Rashi the way they do in elementary school. But I think I’ve noticed that by the time these kids get to high school, if you keep teaching them the same way they were taught in elementary school, the best of them soon develop a strong interest in chemistry or social studies. Although they don’t often formulate the idea in words, I think what bothers them is the disconnect between what the Hebrew words of the biblical text say—by now their understanding of Hebrew is much stronger, along with their common sense and self-confidence—and what Rashi (and a lot of other commentators) sometimes say those words mean. 

So I think what I would do, at that point in the curriculum, is not go to modern biblical scholars, but try to get students to understand the exegetical problem from Rashi’s point of view, or, for that matter, that of the early rabbinic midrashim on which he relied. To begin with, this would require them to understand that the Torah and Rashi, or even midrash, are not simultaneous, and that the interpreters are confronting a text that has been around for some time and cannot be changed or rejected. Basically: ‘You be Rashi. How are you going to explain this verse in a way that is consistent with the other things you know from the Tanakh and from halakhic practice, everything that we believe and follow?’ ... I admit, this approach might not pass muster in Meah Shearim, but I really think it’s honesty that kids want and need; so do we all. 
 

A few words about the new Tanakh curriculum introduced by the Ministry of Education in Israel. For those of us who grew up in the United States, where Separation of Church and State is an axiom of faith, the fact that the State of Israel offers Jewish education in its public schools is somewhat disconcerting. Nevertheless, the fact that the official Ministry of Education in Israel concerns itself not only with general studies but with religious studies as well, means that for many religious schools in Israel (there are some religious schools that choose to operate outside of the state-sponsored system) there are educational experts who develop formal curricular goals, syllabi, and standardized tests. Diaspora educators appear to be largely unfamiliar with these materials, and I often link to them in response to Lookjed queries asking for support materials on Tanakh or Talmud.

Aside from the religious public school system, the Ministry of Education in Israel also runs an ordinary public school system—mamlakhti—that is not “religious,” although it does include Jewish studies as part of its unit on Jewish culture and Jewish heritage. A wide range of topics are included among the goals of teaching Bible on the high school level. They enumerate, among them, “Biblical criticism, editing changes to the Torah as a means to understanding the text, the authors’ intentions, their world and their views” (My translation. To see a full description of the mamlakhti curriculum and its goals, see http://cms.education.gov.il/EducationCMS/Units/Tochniyot_Limudim/MikraMam/AlYessodi/).

While the mamlakhti system has no problem including Biblical Criticism in its curriculum, the mamlakhti dati system has never attempted to introduce modern literary methods into its classrooms. Until recently, the religious school Bible curriculum followed a time-honored course, whose focus was largely on covering a wide range of material with medieval commentaries (e.g. Rashi, Ramban, Ibn Ezra) and other traditional sources (e.g. Netziv, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch). With a change of leadership, a new curriculum has been developed that is to be introduced in the upcoming academic year (5773).

A description of the goals of the new curriculum reads as follows (my translation):

• Interaction of students with the Word of God

• Developing a connection with the moral values ​​and behaviors required by the Torah

• Strengthening Jewish identity and strengthening students’ ties with the Land of Israel

• Imparting ways to learn Torah and to love Torah in a traditional manner

(A full description of the new curriculum, including links to support materials, appears at http://www.lilmod.cet.ac.il/).

According to a recent article that appeared in the Shabbat broadsheet Olam Katan (available online at http://www.olam-katan.co.il//all_gilyonot/359.pdf), the new curriculum was accompanied by a set of enrichment materials that were available at the abovementioned website, that have since been removed. Four different types of materials were posted:

1. Ordinary articles on biblical themes written from a traditional perspective
2. Articles written by Torah scholars that can be understood as relating to biblical characters in a contemptuous manner (a reference to what is called, pejoratively, Tanakh be-Govah Enayim—“Tanakh at eye-level”; see below)
3. Articles that grapple with questions raised by Biblical Criticism
4. Articles that present Biblical Criticism as a legitimate reading of the Torah

As noted, these enrichment materials were posted as supplementary reading for teachers, and were not an intrinsic part of the new curriculum; they were removed after complaints were received by the Ministry of Education.

The author of the Olam Katan article, who is clearly sympathetic to the more traditional approach to teaching, presents both sides of the argument regarding the introduction of Biblical Criticism—should it be viewed as an evil that questions the very basis of the Torah and Judaism, or must it be taught, given the reality that any student who leaves the four walls of the traditional study hall will be forced to face that challenge at some point in his life. Moreover, there is the idea—one that is accepted by the adherents of the Tanakh be-Govah Enayim school generally and by the students of Rabbi Mordechai Breuer specifically—that although we may disagree with the answers given by Bible critics, their questions are legitimate ones, and we can enhance our understanding of Torah by accepting them and developing our own, traditional responses to them.

Removal of the articles that discussed Biblical Criticism notwithstanding, the heated debate regarding the new curriculum continues.

Part of this is related to the belief is that this new curriculum aims to introduce an approach to Tanakh that is based not so much on the theories of Biblical Criticism, but on modern literary methods, and specifically a method of study that has become known in Israel as Tanakh be-Govah Enayim—“Tanakh at eye-level.” This method, which approaches biblical characters as extraordinary characters with human foibles, albeit from whom we can learn life lessons, has been popularized by the teachers and students at Herzog College, which is affiliated with the Hesder Yeshiva, Yeshivat Har Etzion, in Alon Shvut. It is based on a close reading of the text together with a willingness to explore possibilities that do not appear in traditional commentaries, and has been the source of tension between different factions in the National Religious camp in Israel for a number of years.

This debate promises to become more heated as the new curriculum is introduced in dati-le'umi classrooms in the coming months.

Although neither the contributors to the Lookjed discussion nor the educators who developed the new curriculum for the religious public schools in Israel were interested in developing a systematic course in Biblical Criticism for use on a high school level, it is clear that there is a wide range of attitudes with regard to the introduction of modern literary and academic techniques in the classroom. There appears to be the widespread agreement—even in the liberal camp—that at least some of the theories of modern Biblical Criticism are antithetical to Jewish belief and should be taught only as one approach among many or offered so that students will be prepared for the challenges presented by those theories at some point in the future. At the same time, it is hardly surprising to discover that the more traditional schools have been reluctant to introduce modern literary methods, while less traditional schools view such methods as basic to the understanding of the biblical text in contemporary times.

In closing I would like to share the thoughts of Professor Kugel, who is well aware of the challenges that his research and writings present for many a believing Jew. In answer to a questioner who asked how a religious person can maintain his/her faith and fealty in and to a rabbinic system that is so directly based on the belief of a divinely revealed text, given the conclusions presented in Professor Kugel’s books, he responded, in part, with a parable.

[U]ltimately, any Jew must admit that at some point the divinely-given text leads to the human interpreter and the poseq, indeed, to this specific taqqanah and that specific gezerah shavah. And frankly, we don’t really seem to all that aware of, or even care much about, where the dividing-line falls. This is our “prepared table,” the work of many hands. If someone wants a different table, let him go ahead—but this is the Jewish table, the way Jews serve God.

As one of our sages said: to what may the matter be compared? To a man who wished to see the King. So he went to the royal palace and stood outside and waited for the King to appear. After some hours, the King did come outside, and the man was thrilled. But soon the King went back inside the palace. The man returned the next day, and the next, and sometimes he did catch a glimpse of the King, but always only for a few seconds, and then his view would be blocked by someone, or the King would step behind a pillar or get into his carriage and ride off. What had at first been thrilling now became only frustrating.

Eventually, the king’s close advisor became aware of the presence of the man standing day after day outside the palace, and he approached him and said: “I know what you want, but you are going about it the wrong way. Go up to the palace door and ask to work inside—it doesn’t matter what: janitor, guard, woodcutter or water-drawer! Then you will enter the palace by right and see the King as a matter of course; indeed, He will recognize you and perhaps even call you by name.” And so the man did, and it was just as the King’s advisor had said: he saw the King up close every day, and the King called to him by name.

This is the whole idea of Judaism. If you want to come close to God, the only way is to become His employee. Understanding that avodat Hashem is the true foundation of our halakhah may not de-fang modern biblical scholarship; a lot of what it says will always be disturbing to Jews. But I think that modern scholarship does not, because it cannot, undermine the essence of Judaism or what Jews actually do in their lives; it cannot … cause the system to collapse.

Jewish educators who are successful in teaching their students to aspire to serve God as enthusiastic and passionate Jews can help produce adults whose faith can remain firm even in the face of serious questions.

The Modern Orthodox community today is treading water. It certainly is not dying, but it also is not excelling. Many have noted that the movement today is not only lacking great leadership but also heart and soul. It is recognized for its cognitive prioritizing of intellectual endeavors (Torah and academic study), but the movement is often out of touch emotionally and socially. However, the immense potential for the Modern Orthodox is uniquely distinct from the non-Orthodox and the Hareidi.

There have been few attempts to study Modern Orthodox Jews as a separate demographic group. For example, the National Jewish Population Survey 2000–2001 listed a U.S. Orthodox population of about 567,000, slightly more than 10 percent of the U.S. Jewish population, but it did not distinguish between the Modern Orthodox and the Hareidi populations. Despite being in such a small minority, the Orthodox community has reason to be optimistic about growth, as Orthodox Jews have a higher prevalence than other Jews in many geographic areas, and only about 5 percent of Orthodox Jews intermarry, as opposed to nearly half of all Jews in the United States. Orthodox Jews comprise

• 21 percent of all Jews who belong to a synagogue
• 34 percent of young Jews (age 18–34) who belong to a synagogue
• A 39 percent higher birth rate, compared to other Jewish denominations
• 23 percent of all Jewish children

On the other hand, there are indications that the Orthodox denomination has difficulty retaining its members. Only about 41 percent of those raised as Orthodox Jews remain Orthodox into adulthood. Thus, while it has been estimated that Modern Orthodox families average between three and five children (as opposed to five to 10 children among the Hareidi), the rate of growth is mitigated by the high rate of those who cease to identify as Orthodox.

I would propose that there are a few key adaptive changes that need to be made for the Modern Orthodox community to move from a state of mere survival to a position where it is thriving:

1. Embrace our national and global interconnectivity.
2. Make Torah values relevant for the world.
3. Demonstrate the added value that Torah observance makes to the world.

Embrace Our National and Global Interconnectivity

We must move out of the Modern Orthodox shtetls that have developed around the United States and expand our reach and sense of community. We should be more proactive in forming strong relationships with non-Jews and non-Orthodox Jews and recognize that we are also dependent upon others. When other good people succeed, it can be our success, and when other good people lose, it can be our loss; our identities as Jews, as Americans, and as global citizens make us highly interconnected and interrelated with those around us.

We live in a world in which we cannot escape our co-dependencies. This is reflected well in the following story:

In the kingdom of Solomon there once lived a two-headed man. Upon the death of his father, the man became embroiled in a bitter dispute with his brothers and sisters over the inheritance."Since I have two heads," he claimed, "I deserve twice as much of the money as the rest of you." "Perhaps you have two heads," his siblings responded, "but you have just one body. Therefore, you deserve only one share." The case was brought before King Solomon, the wisest of the wise. His response was characteristically enlightening.

"Pour boiling water over one of the man's two heads," said King Solomon. "If the second head screams in pain, then we will know he is one person. If not, then we have determined that the two-headed person is in fact two separate, independent individuals."

The lesson for us is that when one of us feels pain, we all feel the pain. A loss to one is, of course, a loss to all. That sense of collective responsibility has enabled our people to survive and thrive.

While many prefer the role of giver to that of taker, there comes a time in most every life when the giver must, of necessity, become the taker, most commonly in one’s elder years. This situation is reflected well in a story in the Chofetz Chaim’s Ahavat Chesed:

A young child once observed his father throw his grandfather out of the house because the grandfather was unable to keep himself or his surroundings clean. Shaken as the child was, he could not deny the cruelty he had witnessed. Later, he met his grandfather wandering on the street. The grandfather asked the child to bring him a coat, so that at least he could avoid freezing in his homeless state. The child returned to his father and asked him if he could have a coat for the grandfather.

"Go up to the attic," said the father. "There's an old coat up there that he can have."

When the child returned from the attic, he was holding half of a coat."What happened to the coat?" the father asked. "Why has it been cut?"

"I did it for you," said the child, "so that when you grow old, you can have the other half."

The Jewish tradition teaches that one who neglects others will ultimately come to be neglected, a lesson that has universal application. Martin Niemoller, the German pastor, served as a U-boat commander in World War I, and along with too many others who had supported the Kaiser and German nationalism, valued order over the chaos of Weimar Germany. Although Niemoller quickly grew apprehensive of the Nazis, it took him several years to openly denounce them. By the time he began his imprisonment at the Sachsenhausen (and later Dachau) concentration camp in 1938, millions had already been imprisoned or murdered, and those remaining in Germany were quiescent. Too late, Niemoller grasped the consequences of his inaction, and after the war he powerfully and famously taught this idea thus:

When the Nazis came for the Communists, I remained silent; I was not a Communist.

When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists, I remained silent; I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews, I remained silent; I wasn’t a Jew.

When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.

Others see the positive potential of actively bringing the Torah to life in and for the entire world. Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch is one example:

Judaism is not a religion, the synagogue is not a church, and the Rabbi is not a priest. Judaism is not a mere adjunct to life: it com­prises all of life. To be a Jew is not a mere part, it is the sum total of our task in life. To be a Jew in the synagogue and the kitchen, in the field and the warehouse, in the office and the pulpit, as fa­ther and mother, as servant and master, as man and as citizen, with one's thought, in word and in deed, in enjoyment and privation, with the needle and the graving-tool, with the pen and the chisel—that is what it means to be a Jew. An entire life supported by the Divine idea and lived and brought to fulfillment according to divine will. (Judaism Eternal, 103)

Rabbi Joseph B.Soloveitchik went further, seeing a mandate to create and remake the world (tikkun olam):

The Jewish people see their own fate as bound up with the fate of existence as a whole.... Physical reality and spiritual-historical existence—both have suffered greatly on account of the dominion of the abyss, of chaos and the void, and their fates parallel one an­other.... The Jewish people bring a sacrifice to atone, as it were, for the Holy One, blessed be He, for not having completed the work of creation. The Creator of the world diminished the image and stature of creation in order to leave something for man, the work of His hands, to do, in order to adorn man with the crown of creator and maker. (Halakhic Man, 107, 113)

The Rav acknowledged the quandary of a people who often lived apart from society in the ghetto, at times a refuge from outside persecution but at times a stop on experiencing the full potential of this world and wrote of this ambivalence:

Our approach to the relationship with the outside world has always been an ambivalent character, intrinsically antithetic, bordering at times on the paradoxical.... In a word, we belong to the human society and, at the same time, we feel as strangers and outsiders. We are rooted in the here and now of reality as inhabitants of our globe, and yet we experience a sense of homelessness and loneliness as if we belonged somewhere else. We are both realists and dreamers, prudent and practical on the one hand, and visionaries and idealists on the other. We are indeed involved in the cultural endeavor and yet we are committed to another dimension of experience. (“Confrontation,” 6)

Make Torah Values Relevant for the World

One example of the great contribution we can make is that the Dalai Lama asked to meet with a group of rabbis in 1989 to learn how the Tibetans can survive in the Diaspora as well as the Jews have. The contributions we can make to the rest of the world are not limited to our history of persecution, however; the intellectual life and moral sustenance of the Torah, and Judaism broadly, are gifts we can and ought to share.

The prophets taught us that our people had to move from being transmitters of a parochial, sacrificial religion to practitioners of a universalistic, giving religion (Hoshea 6:6: "For I desire kindness, not a sacrifice."). Much later, the rabbis taught that Rabbi Yehoshua ben Chananyah and Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai were walking past the ruined Temple Mount when Rabbi Yehoshua said, "Woe unto us! The Temple, the source of all forgiveness for our sins, has been destroyed." Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai replied, "My son, don't despair. We have another source of atonement, and it is acts of kindness" (Midrash Yelamdeinu).

To truly re-imagine how the Jewish people can best leverage our gifts to share with the world, we must revisit our educational assumptions. One widely held false assumption is that "the halakha works," that it will transform us if we follow it. But halakha doesn’t “just work,” and this is why so many leave observance. Rather, it needs to be done with certain intentionality to make it work. The mystics embraced certain kavannot (intentions) to try to make halakha a transformational tool, but this approach is not attractive or effective for most of us. We must expand the role of the spiritual imagination, of middah (character) development, and of moral introspection through the performance of mitzvoth. We must help other Jews make halakhic observance relevant and transformative. Bur first, we need to make sure it's working for us. The Rambam, at the end of the Book of Purity, taught that the goal of Jewish observance is to create a pure heart and moral personality. This is the radical approach that Jewish education must now place front and center. In most yeshivot today, the goal is to cram in as much “practical” material as you can without mastering its spirit or meaning. It's about literacy and competency, not relevancy. For halakha to be relevant and transformative, we can't just learn it and live it; we need to play the music of the tradition and then transcend the chords through it.

There are many Jewish concepts that could be made relevant for the broader world. For example,

• Teshuvah—models of self-growth and healing
• Shabbat—the value of rest for all people, workers, animals, and the land
• Pikuah Nefesh—the value of saving life (and end-of life issues, such as organ donation)
• Ketubah—the value of marriage (and  system of commitments and obligations)
• Havruta—collaborative education models
• Onesh—compassionate and effective models of criminal justice (eved ivri, ir haMiklat)
• Aveilut—the value of mourning and spiritual practices for communal comforting

Demonstrate the Added Value that Torah Observance Makes to the World

Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Yehuda Berlin brilliantly explained how a religious person must engage with others in the world in a humane spirit:

Besides the fact that they were tzaddikim (righteous) and hassidim (pious) and showed great love towards God, they were also "yesharim," i.e., they [the patri­archs] behaved respectfully toward the most distasteful idolaters; they related to them in a loving way and were concerned about their welfare since this is the foundation of all civilization... This is clearly to be deduced from the degree to which Avraham struggled and pleaded with God to spare the people of Sodom who were thoroughly wicked... and how Yitzchak went out of his way to appease the shepherds of Avimelech who made him great and awful difficulties.... The same is true about Yaakov who showed infinite tolerance towards his father-in-law, Lavan. (Ha’amek Davar, introduction to Bereishith)

We should not live in a self-imposed ghetto, but we must demonstrate righteousness wherever we may go. The Torah teaches that there was ambivalence among the heavenly host about bringing such morally flawed creatures into the world. But our role is to teach the potential of teshuvah, that we can all change and grow and develop to new heights even though we are inevitably hopelessly flawed.

Rabbi Shimon said: "In the hour that God was about to create Adam, the angels of service were divided. Some said: 'Let him not be created.' Others said, 'Let him be created.' Love said, 'Let him be created, for he will do lov­ing deeds.' But, Truth said, ‘Let him not be created, for he will be all falsity.' Righteousness said, ‘Let him be created, for he will do righteous deeds.' Peace said, 'Let him not be created, because he will be full of strife.' What, then, did the Holy One Blessed be He do? He seized hold of the truth and cast it to the earth [where it broke into pieces], as it says, ‘You cast truth to the ground.' (Daniel 8:12)" (Bereishith Rabbah 18.5)

Although we are all flawed, each person also has tremendous gifts to share with the world and was created in order to share them.

Every person is created for his telos and that is his "service." likewise, Israel was created to be an illumination unto the nations and to cause them to achieve knowledge of the Lord of the universe. (Ha’amek Davar, Ex. 12:51)

Various organizations have emerged in the Modern Orthodox community to help further a more relevant and impactful religious Judaism in America.

The innovative and vibrant rabbinical seminary, Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, has led the way in training Orthodox rabbis for the twenty-first century who are deeply religious and profoundly open minded. The IRF (International Rabbinic Fellowship) has become a major force in Jewish life.

Another important development is the rich pursuit of social justice work being undertaken by passionate Modern Orthodox Jews. Uri L’Tzedek, the Orthodox Social Justice movement, has created a revolution engaging tens of thousands of young Modern Orthodox Jews in education, leadership development, and activism in just six years so far.

One positive development within the Modern Orthodox movement today is the increasing involvement of women. This year, Yeshivat Maharat, will be ordaining its first three women as Orthodox authorities of Jewish law and as spiritual guides. The Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance (JOFA) held its First International Conference on Feminism and Orthodoxy in 1997, and in December 2013 it will hold its 8^th Conference. In addition, JOFA sponsors Campus Fellowships at more than a dozen colleges, for women who wish to take leadership positions within their school’s Orthodox community.

The Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals is furthering a high level of intellectual discourse in the community. The TAG Institute for Social Development “promotes interdisciplinary research integrating insights from Jewish texts and practices with the methods and concepts of the social sciences to create interventions that promote the wellbeing of individuals, families, communities, and society.”

The Modern Orthodox community can play a vital role as a bridge between the non-Orthodox community and the Hareidi community. More importantly, it can be the representative for the relevancy of Jewish values for an evolving complex world. Jewish law has sustainability and rootedness while it also has a mechanism for evolution making it a tremendous tool for guiding social change. This is the way Modern Orthodox Jews should see themselves, and this vision should be the guide to retention, growth, and vibrancy in the years and decades ahead.

I saw an old friend the other day whom I hadn't seen in about a year. "You look happy," she said with a hint of surprise in her voice. Through her eyes, I saw the new, more comfortable-in-my-skin self. The old me was tired and anxious. In part, my new relaxed state is due to achieving a milestone in my parenting—my kids are starting to gain just the barest hint of independence. They can fill their own water glasses at the bathroom sink and play out in the back yard with minimal supervision. But the bigger difference in my demeanor is no doubt due to the tremendous weight I crawled out from under this past summer when I finally came up with enough cash to finish paying off the Bet Din for my conversion to Orthodox Judaism. My conversion certificate is, after many long years, sitting comfortably in my filing cabinet at home.

Whether a construct of my own mind, a legitimate social fear, or a bit of both, I long thought that if I dared to deviate from the yeshivish perspective under which I became Orthodox, my conversion would be revoked. My children, all bearing very Jewish names, would be declared no longer Jewish and I would be cast out of my community. It was an awful thought and enough to keep me in long skirts and sleeves with my collarbone and head covered even though, in my heart, I believed that the concept of tseniut encompassed more of the complete person and really had little to do with a dress code.

I didn’t consciously suffer all that time. For the first few years after I decided to become frum/religiously observant, I wholeheartedly believed that the yeshivish way was the most authentic way. After all, when I questioned back then why the Modern Orthodox women I saw in the town where I converted generally wore trousers and didn't wear hats except on Shabbat, I was told that Modern Orthodox people were not as growth-oriented as the yeshivish community. When I asked whom to trust when it came to rabbinic decisions, the answer given was to examine who knew more Torah (the implication being that the yeshivish rabbis knew more).

I knew from a young age that I wanted to be Jewish. When I was 13 years old, I used to spend my lunch hours sitting on the floor of the school library just pulling books off the shelf— often because I liked their covers. One such glossy volume was Rabbi Malka Drucker’s Shabbat, part of her Jewish Holidays series. The idea of Shabbat captivated me. My mainstream Presbyterian upbringing was mostly empty of ritual, and Shabbat was exotic. When my parents left the house one Friday night, I poured red cranberry juice (the closest I could get to grape) into a clear glass and recited the Kiddush blessing in English as it was written in the book. It felt holy even sitting on the worn countertop in our Northern Michigan kitchen. In time, I secretly purchased the only Star of David necklace on sale at our local JC Penney department store, and I wore it tucked into my shirt. I knew I had to become Jewish.

When I went to university, I made a last-ditch attempt to reconcile with Christianity. I tried different churches from the evangelical to the staid and traditional. Eventually, I found myself attending Kabbalat Shabbat services at the campus Hillel. The beautiful songs and the way the students took turns each week giving a devar Torah really impressed me. They were so mature and thoughtful and they possessed a knowledge about themselves, their religion, and the world that I envied. I felt that it was time to summon the courage to speak to a rabbi about conversion.

It took me another few years before I met with a rabbi willing and able to take me on as a conversion candidate, in the Conservative movement. One of the first questions Rabbi Dobrusin asked me was “What is your favorite Jewish holiday?” Easy answer. Shabbat. In the middle of studying for my Conservative conversion, I started dating a nice Jewish boy and he took me to a local kiruv organization’s campus house for Shabbat dinner. I can still remember where I sat at the table that first time. Shalom Aleikhem...Eishet Hayil...the zemirot and devar Torah...the dark wood and deep purple and blue majestic hues in which the restored house was decorated added to the warmth and class of the experience. This was what I wanted. This Shabbat. These books lining the walls. This joyful time-out-of-time rest and enjoyment and relaxation. I became a regular there and it wasn’t long before I was invited for Shabbat to a home in the nearby Orthodox enclave. The openness of the families I met and the simplicity and beauty I perceived in their lifestyle were only enhanced by the strong feeling of community. I felt at first like I belonged in this yeshivish Orthodox Jewish world.

Before I finished my Conservative conversion, I was already thinking about an Orthodox conversion. Two Batei Din were within reasonable driving distance. One was staffed by more Modern Orthodox rabbis and the other was black-hat. I chose the black-hat Bet Din because I feared that my conversion might not be accepted by absolutely everyone if I were to convert with the Modern Orthodox rabbis.

By now, however, some of the luster had come off the closed, yeshivish world for me. Women not singing really bothered me. I found the snoods and sheitels weird and dowdy. The shiurim I attended were interesting but something niggled at my mind about the content. I know now that suspending independent, rational thought was what bothered me most. Even so, I worked hard to squish my doubts into a little box and shut the lid tight—and I filled out the paperwork to begin the Orthodox conversion process. A few times, my doubts popped out but I firmly pushed them back and told them that I would address them after-the-fact, thank you very much. I wanted my future children to be Jewish without question, and this seemed to be the best way to ensure that outcome.

When I finally went to the mikvah for Orthodox conversion nearly three years later, I had moved into the Orthodox community and was immersed in yeshivish culture. I had a social group of dear, down-to-earth friends and I adapted myself to my new way life, believing that I had found Truth in yeshivish Orthodoxy. I learned the Ani Ma’amin by heart and recited it as I stood wrapped in a sheet in the mikvah on my conversion day. The experience was surreal. The sheet would not behave as the rabbis told me it would—“Just lean forward! The sheet will float to the top!”—and I made several attempts at nearly drowning myself before the mikvah lady told them she would witness my final dunk herself without the sheet. When it was over, I felt pure and very much like I had a new neshama.

I threw myself into frum life. The dress code continued to bother me, but Shabbat and kashruth were mostly a pleasure. Many times I snuck out of my house on wear-your-jeans-to-work Friday in my favorite Levis, and I brazenly refused to put up and take down my storm windows in a skirt for fear of falling. My old rebellions and questions were still there hidden away under all the new ideas.

In time, I began to date and was introduced to my future husband via a frum shidduchim website. We married, and I moved across the country to a city with only a small handful of frum Jews. I wore my sheitel on Shabbat and played with hats and scarves during the week. Maintaining the dress code was a way for me to keep ties with my former community, many of whom wondered if I was really still frum. I put my jeans away for good.

The birth of my first son shook my world in many ways. Everything I did and had done for the past several years was focused on being frum. I displayed all the right books in my living room. I wore the right clothes. I tried to read the right books and get inspired at various online learning websites. But when my beautiful blond boy showed up, suddenly the old me, the me I had always really been, was right there. I tried to learn and sing Jewish lullabies to him but would eventually give up and find comfort in my own Irish lullaby. I felt guilty. We bought him Jewish toys and books, but more and more, my child brought out in me instinctual behaviors I learned in my own childhood. The super-frum-24-hours-a-day me just faded away. I sat with those feelings for a while, keeping the mitzvoth but without the ba’alat teshuvah fervor. I got even more distracted by the birth of my second son, a redhead this time who looks like my father. I was beginning to try to reconcile my frumkeit with who I really was at heart when I got pregnant again.

My daughter, my third child, was born on a rainy November night. I had known in advance that she would be a girl and I was scared at what parenting a girl meant. She was a little pink mouse who was content as could be, and because she was a winter baby, I had many nights where we snuggled together on the couch as she nursed and grew. I watched the first season of Glee as she slept and found myself drawn increasingly to strong women and their stories. My job was to create the best world for this little female being whose velvet head I was kissing, and I needed to explore for myself what our options could be.

I realized that I never had the same fear about my boys and their prospects in the world. It's still a man's world in many ways, certainly in Orthodox Judaism, and I hadn’t yet taken the time to reconcile how growing up with yeshivish values would impact all of my children. Until my daughter was born, I only envisioned sweet boys in tzitzith and white Shabbat shirts and girls in fancy Shabbat dresses sweetly saying divrei Torah at the Shabbat table. The implications of the dress codes and how I personally felt hindered by my skirts and headgear began to merge as my girly and I got to know each other and I pondered her future with as few limitations as possible.

It was around this time that I began to take a second look at the Conversations journals, which had been arriving at the house periodically for almost a year. We had been put on the mailing list by an acquaintance we met when we tried to convince the regional yeshivish kiruv kollel not to send another full-time rabbi to our city. Two Orthodox shuls in our town was one too many for the 10 or so frum and becoming-frum families. We had staked our claim with the Chabad shul even though we don’t affiliate as Lubavitch because my husband became religious via the Chabad shaliah here, and the yeshivish shul was simply too far to walk to. This turf war started me looking critically at yeshivish Judaism, and I increasingly found a darker side of politics and cover-up.

I had honestly been afraid to read the articles in Conversations lest they contain opinions that weren't given approbation by the yeshivish rabbis. Instead, I found that they were not only interesting and challenging, but many of the articles were full of good sense and rational thought. Partially through reading Conversations, I regained my ability to question—to hold each idea up to the light and examine it on all sides. The world looks different when you take your head out of the sand. And, as lovely as it is to be immersed in Torah from a yeshivish perspective, I realized that those ideas would not hold water when it came to my children’s education.

I began an email correspondence with the wife of a Modern Orthodox rabbi whom I had known many years before. She helped me figure out exactly what the halakhot of tseniut were and how they applied today. Perhaps it seems strange that a dress code would weigh so heavily on my mind, but I honestly felt encumbered. I was wearing a costume that prevented me from being and expressing who I really am in the world. Although there are only a handful of Jews in my city who identify as Orthodox, the Jewish community as a whole is much larger, and I actually found that my dress code was saying things about me to the broader community that just were not true. To those kind-hearted women and men who do many, many mitzvoth but not those which the Orthodox world holds up as de rigeur, I wanted to tear off my hat and say “See! I’m one of you, too!” The skirts and hats were hampering me physically, mentally, and they maintained a barrier between me and my own community.

I also embraced JOFA and its mission and continue to give thanks for its online articles and resources. I learned that there is halakhic basis for Modern Orthodox praxis, in spite of what I had been told years ago and I discovered that Modern Orthodoxy is really where I feel free to question and pursue intellectual honesty even if that takes me outside the bounds of traditional, rabbi-approved sources.

Shortly after I received my conversion certificate in the mail, I dug out my old pairs of jeans and wore them around the yard. Then I wore them to the grocery store. Now I wear them daily and almost everywhere. I haven’t yet run into anyone who would raise an eyebrow at the switch, but I know that day will come. I feel enough like my true self and I feel grounded enough in my Judaism that I’m not afraid anymore.

A close friend who happens to be more yeshivish and who has known me throughout my move into Modern Orthodoxy said to me the other day as we were discussing the Modern Orthodox view of halakha, “Do you really want to walk that close to the line?” But I know that there are 70 faces of the Torah and that an evolving, intellectually vibrant, honest, and compassionate Orthodoxy is where I’m going to thrive—and where I’m best positioned to pass on the beauty of Judaism to my children.

            In this article I will share my view on the historical role of Western Sephardic thinking. Hence, this article is not devoted entirely to religious leaders. Rather, it encapsulates the story of Jewish devotion, divisiveness, zealotry, and compromise. As far as Western Sephardic tradition is concerned, many people have a rather hazy picture. All they seem to know is that Spinoza was banned from the Amsterdam community for heresy (July 24, 1656). The fame of this particular excommunication’s is due to its being continually cited as an example of religious intolerance and fear of change comparable to the indictment of Galileo (1564–1642) and the excommunication from Islam of Salman Rushdie in our own day. Accused of every crime, denounced from the pulpit of every faith, insulted, ridiculed, and held in contempt, these thinkers and writers created the world we know today. Through their words and deeds they demonstrated the inadequacy of the erstwhile conceptions of religion compared to their views—based on reason rather than superstition—that could withstand the rigors of debate and argument.

To better comprehend the Western Sephardic mind, let us go back to the sixteenth century, the century after the expulsion of the Jews from the Iberian Peninsula. Following the Union of Utrecht in 1571, Jews of Spanish and Portuguese origin became attracted to the Lower Lands where little inquiry was made as to people’s religious beliefs. Many merchants began to settle in Amsterdam in 1590 but did not openly reveal themselves as Jews.

Dr. Ben Vermeulen, of the Catholic University of Nijmegen, in the Netherlands, delivered an interesting address at the International Coalition for Religious Freedom Conference on "Religious Freedom and the New Millennium."
The conference took place in Washington DC, April 17–19, 1998, and the address was entitled “The Historical Development of Religious Freedom.” In this lecture he dealt with the development of religious freedom in Western Europe. According to Vermeulen,

The origin of the legal guarantees of freedom of conscience and religion in Western-Europe are found in the civil wars of the 16th and 17th centuries. Western Europe was torn apart by religious strife caused by the Reformation, which disrupted the medieval religious unity of Catholicism. It should be stressed that the impact of these civil wars, raging in particular in France, England, the Netherlands, and Germany, was enormous…At least a partial solution to help end these horrible civil wars was brought about by treaties that secured religious peace. In these treaties the state declared itself neutral (at least to a certain extent), and guaranteed a certain minimum of religious freedom for every citizen. These peace treaties, such as the Union of Utrecht of 1579 (the Netherlands), the Edict of Nantes of 1598 (France), and the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648 (Germany) may be regarded as the first codifications of freedom of conscience and religion, and even of human rights in general.

These treaties, especially the Union of Utrecht, have influenced the choice of rabbis, chief rabbis, and ministers of the Western Sephardic community for the past 400 years. Indeed, the Union of Utrecht is the very first legal document to provide religious liberties to the Jews, since it called for religious tolerance in accordance with the Pacification of Ghent. In other words, the provinces were free to regulate religious matters, provided that everyone remained free to exercise their own religion. In the words of the Union of Utrecht:

As for the matter of religion, the States of Holland and Zeeland shall act according to their own pleasure, and the other Provinces of this Union shall follow the rules set down in the religious peace drafted by Archduke Matthias, governor and captain-general of these countries, with the advice of the Council of State and the States General, or shall establish such general or special regulations in this matter as they shall find good and most fitting for the repose and welfare of the provinces, cities, and individual Members thereof, and the preservation of the property and rights of each individual, whether churchman or layman, and no other Province shall be permitted to interfere or make difficulties, provided that each person shall remain free in his religion and that no one shall be investigated or persecuted because of his religion, as is provided in the Pacification of Ghent….

With these treaties, the United Provinces of the Netherlands would subsequently play both direct and indirect roles in the development of enlightenment in the seventeenth century. Its proponents would play leading roles in revising the medieval political institutions of Britain, and in preserving the colonial institutions that American colonists took for granted in the eighteenth century. Indeed, once the United States of America declared its independence, and Napoleon introduced new liberties and civil rights for Jews, life could never be the same anymore. 

The religious and intellectual life of the Sephardic community in the Netherlands was marked by tensions between the strict authoritarian orthodoxy of the rabbis and the majority of communal leaders on the one side, and the critical libertarian, individualist views of influential intellectuals on the other. This conflict was all the more acute as it was the consequence of the underground crypto-Jewish existence, which many had formerly led, and their sudden freedom in an open society. A split developed in Amsterdam’s first congregation, Beth Jaäcob, because of a bitter religious controversy led by a free-thinking physician, Abraham Farrar. In 1639 the three existing Jewish groups united under the name Kahal Kadosh Talmud Tora, and ever since then services were conducted in one place of worship. The magnificent synagogue dedicated in 1675 became the model for Sephardic synagogues in many other places as well.

The intellectual life of the community, in both its religious and secular aspects, attained a high level. As a center of Jewish learning throughout the Sephardic Diaspora, Dutch Jewry wielded a powerful influence and became a focus of intellectual ferment. The Talmud Torah and Ets Haim seminary was celebrated for the excellence of its teaching, covering not only talmudic subjects, but also Hebrew grammar and poetry. Indeed, the upper classes spoke only in Hebrew. The seminary flourished during the seventeenth century under the leadership of Haham Saul Levi Mortera, and subsequently under Haham Isaac Aboab de Fonseca. Its pupils officiated as cantors, ministers, rabbis, and chief rabbis in numerous communities in Europe, the Americas, the Near East, and in the Far East as well. It also produced quite a few scholars, writers, and poets.

Messianic hopes seemed to be realized with the arrival of Sabbetai Sebi in the middle of the seventeenth century. Many became followers of this false-messiah, and only a minority vigorously opposed him. The leadership of the community would remain for a long period under the influence of former Sabbateans, including the Hahamim Isaac Aboab de Fonseca, Moses Raphael Aguilar, and Benjamin Mussaphia. Even in the early eighteenth century, when Haham Salomon Aylion was in charge, a controversy arose over the Sabbatean work of Nehemiah Hayon. A prominent Ashkenazic rabbi, Haham Zvi Hirsch Ashkenazi (1656–1780), who had entered the dispute, was excommunicated by the congregation’s trustees in 1713.

            In their early days in the Netherlands, the Jews of Iberian origin were influenced and challenged by their surroundings, having to debate and defend their faith. In communities such as Ferrara, Venice, Antwerp, Amsterdam, Hamburg, London, and Bayonne, these Iberians—most of whom had been raised as Roman Catholics—were largely unaware of Hebrew and formal Judaism. For their benefit, Bibles, prayer books, and a whole range of works on the essentials of Judaism were published in the vernacular. However, Jewish book printing in Amsterdam was not an enterprise committed solely to didactic works, and many books reflect the broad cultural interest and academic background that these people had brought with them from Spain, Portugal, Italy, and the Ottoman Empire. The encounter between Iberian Renaissance culture and the rediscovered Judaism in environments such as the cosmopolitan, tolerant city of Amsterdam turned these Western Sephardim into the first “modern Jews.” This development is exemplified by the life and works of such intellectual pioneers as Haham Saul Levi Mortera, Haham Menasse Ben Israel, Haham Isaac Aboab de Fonseca, and, in his own way, Uriel da Costa. And that was only the beginning, for it would evolve further from the seventeenth century into the twenty-first century. There were also difficult periods, especially in the mid-nineteenth century, when there was no Haham in Amsterdam, and in the twentieth century, when the community suffered from both world wars. Worst of all were the segregation, deportation, and extermination by the Nazis, which nearly resulted in its total destruction.

            It might be useful to describe the nature of the Sephardic community in the first half of the seventeenth century as something entirely new, rather than as the re-emergence of a suppressed religious identity. Strong arguments for such a view can be made from the conflicts that divided the Sephardic community at that time. Disputes arose between influential laymen and the religious leadership. The clergy itself was divided between a rationalistic faction and those of a more mystical bent. Each of the famous Hahamim of the seventeenth century left his distinct mark on Western Sephardim. It has been remarked that Western Sephardic culture combines the morality of Calvinism, and the spirit of the Italian Renaissance, delightfully combined with a touch of Kabbalah. Renaissance thinkers in both Italy as well as in the Netherlands strongly influenced Sephardic culture. Aristotle and Virgil were not examined as mere “aliens” but as potential contributors to Jewish culture.

            At the same time, it must be noted that the authority of Western Sephardic clergy was limited to advice and consent. Following the Venetian example, the “Mahamad,” a standing committee of seven wardens invested with absolute power, governed the congregation. The Mahamad’s decisions were binding on all, and no verbal or written opposition was brooked. Thus, for example, no member could take another member to court without the Mahamad’s permission, nor could he print a book without its prior approval. Scholars like Juan de Prado, Uriel da Costa, and Baruch de Spinoza were formally excommunicated. Excommunication was a regular tool employed against behavior or speech the Mahamad deemed inappropriate. If a sermon in the synagogue was not to the liking of the wardens, they would excommunicate the preacher.

            Haham Levi Mortera was profoundly committed to rabbinic tradition, while he also followed the Maimonidean method of argumentation in his writings. (See H. P. Salomon, Saul Levi Mortera and his “Traktaat betreffende de Wet van Mozes,” Braga 1988, 31–60.) The Haham struggled against superstition, prejudice, and hypocrisy in order to establish truth and reason as the basis of piety. Thus, Mortera promoted justice, free inquiry, and freedom of expression and thought in support of Judaism. He was of course not the only writer to be critical of superstition. In this he was preceded in his own century by Grotius (1583–1645), Isaac de la Peyrere, and Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679). His thinking also ran parallel, but not identical, to that of Montaigne (1553–1592), Descartes (1596–1650), Uriel da Costa, and Baruch de Spinoza, whose arguments he applied to the study of Jewish religion.

            Most of the religious literature intended for the guidance of the Sephardic communities was composed and printed in Amsterdam. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, many new congregations would be established throughout Europe, the British Empire, and the colonies in the New World. It was an honored and honorable position that the main printer, Haham Menasse ben Israel, held, but it was not a well-paid one. And, like most of the Sephardic ministers and rabbis, he had to supplement his income. Menasse ben Israel set up his own printing press, and, at the request of Efraim Bueno and Abraham Sarphati, on 13 Tebet 5387 (January 1, 1627), he published the first Hebrew prayer book in Amsterdam. Haham Isaac Aboab de Fonseca served as a proofreader. Between 1627 and 1710, Amsterdam printing houses produced a total of 146 liturgical books and booklets. Seven months after his first publication, on July 15 1627, Menasse Ben Israel printed an interesting liturgical manuscript, Imre No’am, by Yosef Shalom Gallego (1614–1628). Gallego was one of the first Hazanim in Amsterdam. The importance of Gallego in the growth of what later became Western Sephardic liturgical music has been well established.

                Imre No’am gives some indication of Gallego’s prominent role as an educator in the community. He relates that the followers of Haham Joseph Pardo were in the habit of gathering in the synagogue on the three Sabbaths preceding the fast of the Ninth of Ab, mourning the destruction of the Temple. Gallego wrote against this custom, urging the members of his congregation to observe the Ninth of Ab with greater strictness, in observance of the Sabbath.

                In Amsterdam as elsewhere, the proclamation of Sabbetai Sebi as a messianic figure in 1665 evoked extraordinary enthusiasm, and the standard liturgy was temporarily changed accordingly. Kabbalah in its various systems and schools had spread and become a central part of Jewish theological discourse, giving Sabbateanism, whose founders and leaders were all Kabbalists, an elevated position. This came in addition to the mythic and folk elements that nourished Sabbateanism. Discussion about the liturgical changes continued for years. The Sabbatean movement refused to accept the reality of Sabbetai’s defection from Judaism to Islam. He had disappointed many, but the sincere hope for redemption continued to encourage many to believe the ideas of the Kabbalah.

            The Sabbatean movement was a thorn in the flesh of Haham Jacob Sasportas (Oran 1610–Amsterdam 1698), who was appointed Haham on April 4, 1693. He was of prestigious decent being the eleventh generation after Nachmanides (1194–1270). The opinion among the members of the Mahamad was mixed, but in the end they supported Haham Sasportas. He was an experienced rabbi, having led the rabbinate in Hamburg from 1659 until 1664, when he became Haham in London. He travelled to Scandinavia, but, returning to Amsterdam in 1672, he was appointed president of Yeshiba de los Pintos. Raphael Meldola published his Responsa in 1737.

    In 1698 Haham Salomon Jessurun d’Oliveira (1675–1700) succeeded Sasportas. Under his leadership new rules of Hebrew grammar were introduced. He was a rationalist, and was replaced two years later by Haham Salomon de Ja’acob Aylion (1700–1728). Aylion was born in Safed in Palestine and grew up in Salonika. He spread mystical teachings all over Europe. In 1689 he arrived in Amsterdam, but a year later he moved on to London to succeed Haham Jacob Abendana, who had died suddenly. The rationalists in London organized against him, and so he returned to Amsterdam in 1700. Haham Aylion’s tenure in the 18th century was characterized by his pre-occupation with superstitious beliefs, which resulted in political problems and a rather unhappy community. Haham Aylion died on 30 Nissan 5488 (April 9, 1728). His responsa are not published, but can be found in the Ets Haim library in Amsterdam. In 1728 the trustees appointed Haham David Israel Athias (1728–1753) and Haham Isaac Abendana de Britto (1728– 1760). They would rotate positions as Haham of the Congregation and President of the seminary until Haham Athias’ death in 1753.

            On a personal note, my great-great-great-grandfather, Haham Samuel A’Cathan (1692–1770), was the son of the Chief Rabbi of Sale near Rabbat in Morocco. He came to Amsterdam, and in 1715 married the daughter of Haham Samuel Ahuby, a Sephardic rabbi in Belgrade, which was part of the Ottoman Empire. Haham A’Cathan succeeded his predecessor, Haham de Mesa, when he died in 1761, and was appointed Ab Beth Din. He was more of a teacher and preacher than a communal leader, and, consequently, sent for Haham Salomon Shalem (1762–1781) from the Ottoman Empire to head congregational affairs.

            It was a controversial time. Haham Shalem chaired the Rabbinate while the above-mentioned Haham Zvi Hirsch Ashkenazi, or, as he was universally known, Haham Zvi; arrived from Altona. In the beginning he was very highly regarded; however, his incorruptible honesty and unselfishness soon made many enemies. One of these was Nehemiah Hiyya Hayyun, who managed to render his position in the congregation untenable. In his outspoken opposition to this unprincipled man, Haham Zvi had drawn upon himself the ill-will of the Mahamad of the Amsterdam Western Sephardic community, and that of the authorities of his own Ashkenazic community. The latter brought the matter before the magistrates, who, in order to obtain full information upon the subject, consulted not only the theological professors of Amsterdam, Utrecht, Leiden, and Harderwijk, but the trustees as well. It was no wonder then that, with this array of counselors, Haham Zvi was relieved of his office (1714). He went by way of London and Emden to Lemberg, where, after officiating as rabbi for a short time, he died in 1718. During the whole of this period the power of the trustees was almost absolute. From time to time however, the Haham was asked for his advice. The trustees modified at will the statutes of the congregation, and procured the approval of the magistrates. For the lay members of the congregation there remained nothing but implicit obedience.

    The year 1795 brought the results of the French Revolution to the Netherlands, including emancipation for the Jews. On September 2, 1796, the National Convention proclaimed the following resolution: "No Jew shall be excluded from rights or advantages which are associated with citizenship in the Batavian Republic, and which he may desire to enjoy." Moses Moresco was appointed member of the municipality at Amsterdam, while Moses Asser became a member of the court of justice there. The old conservatives, at whose head stood the Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi Jacob Moses Löwenstamm, were not desirous of emancipation rights. Indeed, these rights were, for the greater part, of doubtful advantage, since their culture was not so far advanced that they could frequent general society. Besides, this emancipation was offered to them by a party which had expelled their beloved Prince of Orange, to whose house they remained so faithful, that the chief rabbi at The Hague, Saruco, was called the "Orange dominie." The men who supported the old régime were even called "Orange cattle." Nevertheless, the Revolution appreciably ameliorated the condition of the Jews. In 1799 their congregations received, like the Christian congregations, grants from the treasury. In 1798 Jonas Daniel Meijer interceded with the French minister of foreign affairs on behalf of the Jews of Germany, and on August 22, 1802, the Dutch ambassador, Sir Rutger Jan Schimmelpenninck, delivered a note on the same subject to the French minister.[1]

            From 1806 to 1810 the Kingdom of Holland was ruled by Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, whose intention it was to so amend the condition of the Jews that their newly acquired rights would become of real value to them; the shortness of his reign, however, prevented him from carrying out his plans. For example, after having changed the market-day in some cities (Utrecht and Rotterdam) from Saturday to Monday, he also abolished the use of the "Oath More Judaico" in the courts of justice, and administered the same formula to both Christians and Jews. To accustom the latter to military services he formed two battalions of 803 men and 60 officers, all Jews, who had been until then excluded from military service, even from the town guard. The union of Ashkenazim and Sephardim intended by King Louis Napoleon did not come about. He had desired to establish schools for Jewish children, who until then were excluded from the public schools.

Upon the death of Haham Daniel Cohen d’Azevedo (1751–1822), the congregation appointed no Haham, but a Bet Din. This court, consisted of Dayan Jacob Ferares (1772–1852), Dayan Salomon Cohen Paraira (–1828), Dayan Raphael Montezinos (–1866), Dayan Isaac Mendes de Sola (–1849), Dayan Aaron Mendes Chumaceiro (1810–1882) (in 1860 Haham of Congregation Mikveh Israel in Willemstad, Curaçao), Dayan David Lopes Cardozo (1852–1890), Dayan Elazar Aaron Vaz Dias (1813–1885), Dayan Jacob Lopes Cardozo (–1873), and Dayan Jacob Mendes Chumaceiro (1833–1900).

In the nineteenth century the rabbinate spent much time on the correct pronunciation of Hebrew and the perfection of its grammar. New prayer books were printed with Dutch translation. Dayan David Lopes Cardozo was the last rabbi to preach in Portuguese.

On August 12, 1900, the trustees appointed a native-born rabbi as the congregation’s Haham, the legendary Isaac Palache (1858–1927). A few weeks earlier, on July 8, 1900, Palache’s competitor, the Rev. Aaron Rodrigues Pereira (1859–1922) was appointed Haham in The Hague. Pereira’s honesty, his friendly personality, and his prodigious knowledge, made him a famous and beloved personality.

Under the leadership of Haham Palache, new immigrants arrived from the Ottoman Empire. In 1919 the trustees appointed Dr. Haim Benjamin Israel Ricardo (1892–1944) as Rubi (adjunct rabbi). After Palache’s death, Dr. Ricardo was promoted to Dayan. Ricardo was an outspoken Religious Zionist. Most congregants held him in the highest esteem. He was a very social gentleman who would visit congregants and bring hope while they were suffering the consequences of the Great Depression. But Zionism at that time was not politically correct or really popular among Dutch Jewry. Consequently, in 1929, the trustees brought a famous and very learned Ottoman Rabbi to Amsterdam. They appointed rabbi Eliyahu Frances (1928–1944) as Dayan. The Dayanim Ricardo and Frances led the community harmoniously through the depression and World War II.

Rabbi Eliyahu Frances was born in 1875 in Salonika. He studied foreign languages and became the secretary of the Chief Rabbinate in Salonika. The trustees appointed Frances as Ab Beth Din. He became very popular, since he had high intellect combined with great knowledge being strict in the law, he strengthened the tradition, while also being open to the needs of the community. He was pleasant and modest. In 1938 he visited his father, who lived in Jerusalem. He was one of the candidates for Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv. When he did not win that position, he returned to the Netherlands. In due course, he was among the Jews deported and murdered by the Nazis.

Reform Judaism in the Netherlands has never been popular among Western Sephardim. A group of German refugees established a Reform congregation to which the Amsterdam Sephardim donated a Sepher Torah. The relationship remained cordial but distant. While most Western Sephardim lived as secularists, they loved their synagogue, their rabbis, their music, and were very proud of their tradition. In this climate of mutual respect and high tolerance, the majority of the Sephardim felt no need for Reform Judaism.

When Nazi Germany invaded the Dutch Kingdom in May 1940 there were around 140,000 Jews in the country, of whom some 120,000 lived in Amsterdam. About 4,300 of these were Sephardim. Comparatively little has been written about the community’s history during the war years. At the end of World War II, a ravaged community of some 600 survivors returned to where the refugees from the Inquisition had once built up a flourishing Jewish culture.

The Ashkenazic Rabbi, Justus Tal (1881–1954), led the community in Amsterdam between February 1944 and May 1945, while all other Rabbis were deported and murdered. Together with Rabbi Barend Drukarch (1917–1998) and the congregation’s sexton, Salomon Mendes Coutinho, worship services continued until the very end of the war, Shabbath May 5th 1945. Services were conducted, at a private home of the sexton, one week in accordance with Ashkenazic, the other in accordance with Sephardic tradition. In these final days of WWII it was permitted to Dutch Ashkenazim and Sephardim alike to consume rice and beans on Passover.

    As the liberation of the European continent was on its way Major Dr. Salomon Rodrigues Pereira (1887–1969), Haham of The Hague, returned to the Netherlands with the Royal Dutch Princess Irene Brigade, as its chaplain. Soon after the war, the trustees appointed Rodrigues Pereira Haham. He continued to live his life as a freeman in the city of Hilversum, and would visit Amsterdam during the holidays. To mark his fortieth anniversary as Haham of the Sephardic community in The Hague and his work after World War II in Amsterdam, Queen Juliana conferred Knighthood in the Order of the Dutch Lion on him. The Haham did his utmost to rebuild what had existed before the great catastrophe, although he only worked part-time.

            In 1968 Haham Rodrigues Pereira recommended that the trustees appoint Rabbi Barend Drukarch as Dayan. Both the holocaust survivors, as well as the new immigrants arriving from North Africa and the Near East, and from Surinam and the Dutch West Indies, found in Rabbi Drukarch everything they wished for and more. In 1980 the trustees appointed him Haham.  

In 1981 Rabbi Simon Haliwa of Tetuan, Morocco arrived to lead the Congregation. He was well liked, but as a result of differences with Haham Drukarch, he moved on to become a rabbi in Nice, France. At that time Haham Drukarch, assisted by Chaplain Samuel Behar, led the congregation. The congregation opened a second synagogue in Amstelveen. In 2012 Rabbi Dr. Marc D. Angel, Minister Emeritus of Congregation Shearith Israel in New York installed Dayan Dr. Pinehas Toledano as the Haham in Amsterdam.

In conclusion, the extraordinary legacy of the Western Sephardim included its great hidalguismo, its reverence for its past and the dignity of its culture. It traces its origins to the Iberian Peninsula, Italy, North Africa, and the Ottoman Empire. Characteristically, its long-standing tradition of tolerance was directly reflected in the policies of the Chief Rabbinate throughout its early history, and into modern times.

This is the list of Senior Ministers appointed by the Mahamad to Haham of Congregation Talmud Torah, the Portuguese-Israelite Community of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, as traditionally recited annually, preceding ‘Arbit, on the Eve of Kippur:

Haham Joseph Pardo (1602–1619)*

Haham David Pardo (1619–1657)

Haham Saul Levi Mortera (1616–1660)

Haham Abraham Cohen de Hereira (1602–1635)

Haham Isaac Uziel (1610–1622)

Haham Menasseh Ben Israel (1622–1657)

Haham Isaac Aboab de Fonseca (1660–1693)

Haham Jacob Sasportas (1675–1698)

Haham Salomon Jessurun d’Oliveira (1675–1700)

Haham Salomon de Ja’acob Aylion (1700–1728)

Haham David Israel Athias (1728–1753)

Haham Isaac Abendana de Britto (1728–1760)

Haham Salomon Shalem (1762–1781)

Haham David A’Cohen d’Azevedo (1781–1792)

Haham Daniel A’Cohen d’Azevedo (1792–1822)

Dayan David Lopes Cardozo (1852–1890) [not on list]

Dayan El’azar Aaron Vaz Dias (1852–1885) [not on list]

Haham Isaac Palache (1885–1927)

Haham Salomon Rodrigues Pereira (1945–1969)

Haham Barend Drukarch (1968–1998)

*These are the dates the Hahamim were in office.

To our members and friends, 

Our Campus Fellows throughout North America and Canada continue to develop meaningful programming that brings together a wide variety of Jewish students to discuss issues of relevance under the banner of our Institute. Please read about the many and diverse programs they are running and leading!

Rabbi Hayyim Angel

National Scholar, Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals

We hosted a discussion of the blessing, “SheLo Asani Isha” after reading Rabbi Avi Weiss’s piece on it.

Yael Jaffe, Brandeis

The Joy of Text LIVE went extremely well! It was a successful co-sponsorship between the Brandeis Orthodox Organization (BOO) and the Jewish Feminist Association of Brandeis (JFAB), which affirmed BOO's willingness to collaborate on and invest in compelling feminist content. 

In addition, I have continued coordinating Senior Mishmars, which has involved a great deal of helping individual seniors think through and prepare their shiur/speech. It has been extremely rewarding to see these students empowered to speak before an audience of their peers, imparting words of Torah and personal advice in the environment of the beit midrash.

Finally, I worked with the BOO education coordinator, Shira Levie, to organize a shiur from Rabbi Daniel Reifman from Drisha. I have also assisted with the planning of the YCT/Maharat Meorot Fellowship occurring at Brandeis as well. 

Albert Kohn, Columbia University

I am organizing an event with Professors Yonatan Brafman and Suzanne Stone about how we use traditional Jewish texts to discuss modern political questions. In a few weeks, I am hoping to recreate an event I did last year before my Purim Seudah in which we discuss the place of drinking in a religious context. 

Rebecca Jackson, Cornell

I am planning a women’s Purim experience with a women’s tefillah and Megillah reading, divrei Torah from women in the community and a matanot la-evyonim project for the local women’s shelter. Beyond this, I plan to continue to run Shabbat afternoon learning events (philosophy shiur on Levinas) and help facilitate participation in a new JLIC women’s learning and current events weekly event. 

Corey Gold, Harvard

Much of the funding this semester went toward funding an off-campus Shabbaton for Orthodox undergrads we just had this weekend. This was a unique opportunity for just the Orthodox undergraduates to spend quality time together. There were many opportunities for communal reflection and the sharing of divrei Torah, and Rav Dani led a text study on Shabbat afternoon.

We’re planning more programming for the rest of the semester, of course - continuing learning programs that we began last semester like “Lunch with Rav Moshe” (lunch and learns as Rav Dani give shiurim on Rav Moshe Feinstein tshuvot), semi-weekly mishmars, onegs, etc.

Ezra Newman, Harvard Law School

We’re running a similar slate of programming as last semester - 6 “lunch and learn” style learning discussions given by students at the law school. We’ve already had 1 this semester, given by Jesse Lempel, titled “The Ten Commandments and #MeToo”. The next one will be this coming Thursday - topic TBD (though presumably something related to Purim).

Eitan Zecher and Tova Rosenthal, University of Maryland

Our next program this semester is going to be a University of Maryland Sermon Slam. This is an art and slam poetry event with a Judaic theme. We have had this program the last two years and experienced great success with around 120 people showing up each time! We are still working on choosing a theme and date and when we do I will make sure to e-mail that information over to you. 

Zachary Tankel, McGill University

We have continued our Thursday Night Torah program, and this coming Thursday, we'll be holding it in a new community for the first time. Additionally, we're planning a few Shabbatons this semester, the first of which is happening this Shabbat. Atop of all that, we're also planning to start holding some lunch n learns. I'll keep you updated on everything that happens!

Sigal Spitzer, University of Pennsylvania

One program I am planning is with Rav Itamar Rosensweig. Lunch shiurim worked very well last semester so we are planning to cater a lunch and have 10-15 students come and learn. He wants to do it before Pesach so I will keep you posted!
 

Devora Chait, Queens College

We have held our third Pop-Up Mishmar, where we have two students each give a ten-minute mini-shiur followed by a discussion. Usually we discuss an article, but this time our conversation centered around Torah learning at Queens College: what we have now, what more we are looking for, and what we hope to build. In light of that discussion, we are preparing to launch a weekly Thursday Parsha chabura at a different student apartment each week, where students learn the parsha in advance and gather to discuss their questions and thoughts. The idea is to create a Torah-learning community, not necessarily one with polished answers or messages but rather one where students can be invested in their own Torah learning with each other. We are also set to run at least one more Pop-Up Mishmar this semester, but potentially we will run two or three more.

Raffi Levi and Benjamin Nechmad, Rutgers

We ran an event with Rutgers poetry professor Yehoshua November on Tuesday February 13th. Professor November read selections from his two volumes of poetry, God’s Optimism (a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize) and Two Worlds Exist (a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award and the Paterson Poetry Prize). November also shared some of the experiences and teachings that inspired him to choose a life rooted in the unlikely combination of contemporary poetry and Orthodox Judaism.

Asher Naghi, UCLA

We hosted Rabbi Menachem Leibtag for our mishmar program and hope to bring Rabbi Yitzchak Etshalom to speak about the Megillah in the next couple of weeks. We also hope to soon host a number of student taught mishmars in the near future.

Rachel Rolnick, Yale Law School

We have been running a Shabbat dinner & dialogue series, where Professors host students for Shabbat dinner, and we discuss Judaism and Jewish life at the law school. We will be hosting a Lunch & Learn seminar on law and Judaism later in the semester, as well as a lecture on the Bill of Rights and Religious practices. 

   Some Spanish Sepharadeem, refugees, made their way to Aleppo and Damascus early in the 16th century; and many more to Constantinople, Salonika and Izmir. In Damascus, where they had arrived in larger numbers than in Aleppo, they established their own synagogues, houses of study, and burial grounds, alongside colonies of Karaites, Samarians, Iraqis, and the native Jews (the Musta-Arab-een), we are told by Rabbi Moshe Basola of that period. With time, they abandoned the use of the Spanish language and before long became acculturated, an integral part of the native Jewish community. Their more worldly education saw many of them in a prosperous state and in the leadership of Jewish life, positions they maintained for centuries. Aleppo’s Spanish refugee Sepharadeem, fewer in number, had also been received with cordiality and the respect due their scholarliness. A separate section of the Great Synagogue was reserved for them. This too passed away as the ‘Spaniol became embodied in the Jewish life of the city, although they continued to be distinctive. Among them were members of the Kassin (Qaaseen) and Laniado (Langiado) families, who contributed leading rabbis to the city for hundreds of years and to the present day, in Aleppo-in Flatbush and other Syrian colonies. The Dayan family, also distinguished scholars in Aleppo for centuries, had originated in Baghdad and lay detailed claim, generation by generation, descent from King David. It was the Dayans who established the revered House of Study — and prayer — Bet Nasi, “The House of the Prince.” It functioned in Aleppo until the “days of trial” in 1947, a harrowing period which the testimony of refugees now in Flatbush will reveal to us.

   Yet another wave of European Sepharadeem came, a small one, mostly from Italy, who were to be continually distinguished and prestigious in Near East Jewish life. Perhaps among the first of them to come was a maternal forebear of this writer, Signor Isaaco Silvera from Livorno (Leghorn, Italy), earlier from Gibraltar and Spain.

   His presence in Aleppo was uncovered to me by Gershom Scholem in his biography (1973) of Shabbetai Sebbi (Sevi), the false Messiah. Scholem relates that among the foremost advocates of Shabbetai prior to 1666 the date of enunciation of Shabbetai’s ‘Messiahood’, were”. . . Signor Hakham Shelomo Laniado and Signor Isaaco Silvera.” To Hakham Laniado, Shabbetai had awarded the “Kingdom of Aram Soba” (The Hebrew term for Aleppo, Psalms 60:2), and to my ancestor Silvera, the “Kingdom of David.” No doubt Silvera had contributed importantly from his considerable wealth to the Messiah’s mission. With Silvera’s presence in Aleppo, other wealthy Italian Sepharadeem had followed, to form a small but eminent group.

   Soon after the Crusades, Aleppo had become increasingly important in commerce with Europe. Earlier, such trade had been small although continuous for many centuries. Thanks to the sharpened appetite for Oriental spices and silks and the like, brought back with them by the returning Crusaders, and with the advancing decay of the feudal system, the rise and the influence of the Towns, and the revival of a money economy in place of barter, European trade with the Orient began to grow and to become a source of great wealth.

   It was largely to Halab (Aleppo) that the early Venetians, the Dutch, and the French had arrived to establish trading colonies; “Alep”, as the French 15th and 16th century traders had labeled it; the Italians had transposed it to “Alep-po,” the name used by the English. How to negotiate this trade with Aleppo’s merchants, since the English spoke no Arabic and the Aleppoans no English? Through local Aleppoans with a knowledge of Italian, French, or Spanish, largely the Spanish Sepharadeem and the Italian Jews. In addition to the Jews, Armenians and native “Byzantines” (Greek Orthodox Catholics) also participated.

The English Levant Company

  Consul North tells us of the importance of the Aleppo Jews in their relations with the English and others. Said North: “The factoring trade is in the hands of the Jews, dominated by them.” Further, he states that, “When a European began to trade through a Jew, no other would take his ‘commission,’ for by a compact among themselves no other was permitted to accept the client.” The Jewish agents earned the esteem and confidence of their clients, they were highly spoken of and their reputation spread in England for their uprightness and trading skill.

   The privileges of their foreign patrons sometimes rubbed off on to the Jewish agents, who were thus placed in particularly high regard in their community. They became Nafs Firmanli, an Ottoman-Decree (Protected) Individual. In some few instances their patrons bestowed on them full foreign national status, including Extra Territorial Rights, endowing them with greater prestige.

   In addition to the migration into Aleppo of the refugees from Spain as was noted, there were the Italian Jewish merchants. The Italians sent younger sons to serve their needs at first hand. They came on buying ‘visits’, but instead stayed, and soon married the daughters of Spanish and Musta-Arab-een (indigenous) Jews. They become known as “Francos” (French) and “Franj,” enjoying the rights and privileges of Extra- Territoriality. They were always referred to as Signors, (“Sir, in Italian; “Signor-eem” is the Hebrew plural term for this Italian title). Through their wealth and aristocratic status they became the most distinguished of the local Jews. Their piety, scholarliness and generous support of community organizations placed them at the pinnacle of their co-religionists’ esteem. The leading family among them was that of Picciotto; who were to become De Picciotto when they received titles of knighthood from the Austrian Emperor Joseph II, whom they served as consuls. Picciotto, Belilos, Bigio, Farhi, Ancona, Silvera, A1tar and a few others constituted the Franj group in Aleppo. In Damascus it was the families of Angel — (“Shemaya), Pinto, Molcho,  Farhi, Attieh Lisbona and others, who were the elite Franj.

   Late in the .18th century Shalom Ha-Cohen of Aleppo ventured into India and with the assistance of others from Halab, members of the Shaib, Tebele, Duek, Laniado families, two Settons/Suttons, as well as several Baghdadians, served to found the Calcutta Jewish community. It flourished for almost 150 years, until the British left India in 1947.

Everyday Jewish Life

   From the many recent spoken histories of individuals who recounted to me memories of life experience in Aleppo/Halab and in Damascus, we are further able to reconstruct the everyday life of the Jews there from some years before the beginning of the 20th century. In many ways it was typical of Jewish life throughout the Near and Middle East. Arabic was the universal language (except in Turkey, and some European countries under Ottoman rule.) Arabic was the common language from Iraq (Mesopotamia) on the East, to Morocco, facing the Atlantic Ocean. Culturally, too, there was broad commonality characteristic of almost all Fertile Crescent lands.

   At the crest of Aleppo and Damascus population early in this century, each city had perhaps 15,000 to 20,000 Jews. In Aleppo, everyone Jewish lived within the confines of the old and virtually invisible city-wall lines (the inner city), until about 1900-1905, when a small movement began to the-then outskirts of the city, to the Quarter called the Djamil-iyeh (named after Djamil Pasha), with broad streets and fresh air. (In the last three or four decades almost all Jews had moved there, except the direly poor.) The community was firmly ruled by the Bet Deen, the religious Court, supported by the Comite (Fr.), the community committee, formed of leading individuals— ah-kalz-behr, “notables” which administered the Jewish institutions. It was self-ruled, as was previously observed, in accordance with Ottoman and earlier, Roman and Arab regulations, which gave due recognition and respect in most periods, to each of the religious communities. This permitted an orderly and stable life over the centuries, one in which the Aleppo and Damascus Jewish populations led a generally satisfying life — constrained only by personal economic limitations.

   The Hakham Báshi was the Chief Rabbi, an institution established in Istanbul/Constantinople some four hundred years ago, largely a political one. The local Hakham Bashi was appointed by the Chief Hakham Bashi, an influential Ottoman Empire official in the Capital — with the consent of the city’s Jewish elders. He was frequently a non-native of Aleppo or Damascus, hailing from Smyrna, Istanbul, or Salonika. Often he did not match the scholarliness of the cities’ native rabbis or their religious authority, although his Office was held in much awe by the populace. The Bet Deen, the religious court, set the rules and standards for rigid religious and civil observance for the mass of Jews. They ruled in disputes between Jews, and so universally and highly were they regarded, that a Muslim with a civil complaint against a Jew preferred to have it adjudicated by the Bet Deen. He was confident that the ruling would be unbiased and just. Leading rabbis were highly respected by the Muslim leaders and their counsel was often sought.

   Rabbis of the city were also highly esteemed by fellow Jews in Palestine, Mesopotamia (Iraq) and other parts of the Ottoman Empire; respected for their learning and devoutness, from the days of Saadia, Maimonides and earlier. Over the centuries only a few had succeeded in having their scholarly religious works published. Some with valuable texts did not possess the means and know-how to achieve publication in one of the principal Sepharadi centers, in Livorno, Istanbul, Amsterdam. Only now are some of these early works being uncovered and published.

   In Syria, relations with Islamics were amicable, but formal. A state of inward uneasiness always marked the sentiments toward those of the dominant religion. The Muslims were generally friendly, but “no one put complete trust in goyeem” (Hebrew maxim) or in their continuing peacefulness, since not all Muslims were educated, or well-mannered.

The Dhimmis: ‘Protected’ Jews and Christians

    What is the reality of conditions under which the Dhimmi, the so- called ‘Protected’ people, lived? Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians who believe in one God, had special status following the teaching of Muhammad. They were known as Ahhl il Dhimmi [ pronounced “thzimmeh”], People of Faith, Conscience. They were to be protected, allowed to lead a self-ruled life, following their religion, unmolested both in their faith and in their civil rights. However, because they would not accept Islam, they were to have measures of humiliation shown to them, they were to regard themselves as “inferiors.” A special small tax was imposed on them, a jizya (a penalty). In other ways too in some periods, they had to have their inferiority made evident — through dress, restrictions on the height of their houses of worship, the lowly animals (donkeys, etc.) they were permitted to ride, the need to give way before a Muslim, and similar means of indicating their inferiority. In everything else their rights were to be protected. The Covenant could be annulled at will by Muslims when they alleged violations on the part of a minority, to be replaced with still greater severities, sometimes demanding conversion to Islam, on pain of death.

Good Relations with Muslims

   The Muslims of Aleppo were indeed of a more peaceful character than those of Damascus. No uprisings, no massacres of Jews in Aleppo have ever been uncovered by this writer. Jews accepted their role of submissive inferiors, but with dignity. They knew their own worth, and their economic importance in the metropolis, a bustling city of traders.  Aleppo Jews seldom had to submit to more than petty abuse, and only from individual ignorant and fanatic Muslims. Such elements had created riots and massacres in Aleppo in 1659-1860, but directed against Christians, with no major disorders since that time.

   In earlier periods, prior to the advent of surging nationalist Zionism in Palestine, many commercial Jewish partnerships existed with Muslims and Christians, often in enterprises involving agricultural products; Jews were partners with herders, in large-scale operations involving sheep, etc. The Jews had confidence in the integrity of their Muslim partners, their courteous friendliness and their faithfulness to their religion. Sometimes the partners were bedu (bedouins), nomads.  Jewish Murad Faham and members of the Jemal/Djmal families owned huge herds consigned to Muslims, or were partners with them; both were important manufacturers of cheese. Faham is the hero who was later to rescue the ancient and sacred Aleppo Codex: the Codex of ben Asher, spiriting it out of the country to Israel at considerable risk to his safety.

   With educated Muslims a cordiality, somewhat formal, could exist, formed perhaps through commercial transactions. However, intimate friendships with Muslims were not common. Despite cordiality with some, there was little social interaction, Jewish and Muslim families did not exchange visits; men customarily socialized in cafes. Nevertheless, on respective holiday occasions the men would sometimes pay courtesy calls to their friends of the other religion. The Governor, too, the Pasha, would pay such a courtesy call to the Chief Rabbi. In turn, the Hakham Bashi would acknowledge an Islamic or governmental holiday by a visit to the Pasha.

Everyday Life in Twentieth Century Syria

   Everyday activity in the early years of the twentieth century in Aleppo and Damascus continued the traditional and unhurried life in the midst of the countless minarets and the many large and important souks. Earlier, Jews lived — by choice — in their separate Quarters, the Saha, il Illeh, Bah-seeta, and Harrit il Yahood, the Jewish Quarter and other nearby neighborhoods, sometimes neighbors of Muslim families, but never of Christians. They occupied residences with an inner courtyard, with chambers around it, rooms not interconnected in most instances. Outhouses provided the sanitary facilities (which were periodically — sometimes tardily — emptied by the cesspool cleaner). Wealthy families occupied a private residence; others had contained two or three families, each occupying one or two rooms to accommodate their usually large numbers.

   The rooms necessarily served as living quarters by day and as bedrooms at night. They were sparsely furnished. In the poorer homes the furniture consisted of a low table with a mansaf, a large tray, and cushions, dishaks, on which they sat, close to the floor. One or two large armoires, chests, held their clothes and household wares. A deewaan, a sofa, was found in most homes, reserved for visitors. Except for the wealthy where beds were used, bedding consisted of mattresses placed on the floor. These were aired in the morning, then piled in a corner of the room, freeing it for daytime use. For those in modest circumstances and the poor, heating the chamber was by means of braziers in which a few sticks of charcoal were burned. Illumination was provided by one or more wan-a-seh, a pan filled with oil, with lighted wicks, or by kerosene lamps. Some rooms had a small raised alcove, a m’rah-bah which added to the useable space. A small deep cellar, m’gha-ra, usual in every home, provided an area where perishable food was kept somewhat fresh.  A floor covering was a necessity. Those who could afford them had rugs on the floor, from  Ajam, (Persia), or from Turkey. Others laid down a haseereh, a large woven mat of vegetable fibers.

   Housewives whose husbands had means could employ domestic help. For the majority — the poor and the near-poor — the housewife was responsible for restoring the sleeping room into a sitting room, airing the bedclothes and storing them in a corner. She washed the clothes, cooked the meals, drew water from the cistern for the family needs, and sewed or repaired the clothing. In addition, of course, she attended her many young children. She saw to the grinding of her wheat at the local mill and prepared the dough for the bread, a large part of every meal. This was sent out usually twice a week — to a nearby baker, a soo-sahnie.

   Those in the middle and upper classes usually retained a Jewish female domestic worker, who went to her own home at the end of a demanding day. She, too, washed, cooked, kneaded dough, and looked after her other household chores. Servants were often, but not always, married women. The poor provided the wet nurses for those who could not nurse their own children.

   Since clothing factories did not exist, tailors and dressmakers often gave sewing work to be performed in the home — at niggardly prices. Some women were skilled seamstresses; others, makers of wigs and hair-pieces, etc., who spent individual days working in the homes of patrons, Jewish, Muslim, and Christian. (This contradicts the popular belief that wives of Oriental Jews did not work gainfully like Jewish matrons in Eastern Europe; there, it was not uncommon for some women to be actively engaged in commerce.)

   For the poor, breakfast usually consisted of bread and white cheese; some could afford only bread and inexpensive zatar, a combination of tangy herbs. (Bread was dipped into oil and then into the zatar.) A piece of halava served as ‘dessert.’ Lunch and supper often comprised the leftovers of the food of the previous day or else of an omelet, prepared with cheese, potatoes, eggplant or other available vegetables. Laban, yoghurt, was a staple, widely consumed, in addition to cereals and beans of every description; they were cheap.  The principal meal was in the evening. Few meat dishes were available, they were too expensive for most, but were served at the Sabbath meals.

   Most Jews were either lower-middle class or (the greater number) — were poor. They were craftsmen, stall-keepers, cobblers, clerks, peddlers, porters and others without skills.The life of the middle-class Jews and the wealthy permitted comfortable homes and enabled them to live well in all respects, enjoying a wide variety of foodstuffs, meat, fish, seasonal vegetables and delectable fruits.

Marriages

   Jewish marriages in the Orient were almost always arranged by the parents, usually with the aid of a semi-professional, part- time broker, a khat-ahb. He knew most families, and thus could recommend suitable mates; it was important to find spouses of suitable lineage — those of the same social class. A marriage could sometimes be arranged with another, but only one class level above or below.  Among the poor, marriages were more expeditiously arranged, without the need of an intermediary — and negotiations.

Entertainment

   Rich and poor delighted in the Sabbath, a day of complete relaxation. Some relished the occasional Sabt, the festive mid day elaborate celebratory Sabbath breakfasts after synagogue service. These often were accompanied by the singing of traditional pizmoneem, non-ritual religious songs. Aleppoans are very fond of music, outstandingly so.

   Entertainment in earlier years — 70 or 80 years ago was quite limited. Apart from visits to cafes, family and friends, public entertainment was narrowly circumscribed. Once or twice each year there was a gala concert of Arabic music. A little music was available publicly in some cafes, mostly by means of phonograph records. The “Shahh-bandar,”, a large cafe on what was then the outskirts of the city — it has since been absorbed by the exploding city — featured vocalists and a live musical ensemble. Those who could afford it thronged this green oasis in a city denuded of trees (cut down for fuel during World War I, and never replanted). On a pleasant evening, one of the residents, usually among those in humbler circumstances, would produce an ood, a lute, to be joined by neighbors in his courtyard, and often by those of an adjoining courtyard, who would enjoy and contribute to the quiet entertainment.

Community Organizations

   The community had several social institutions in addition to the kteh-teeb, the Hebrew Schools. Mohar  u-Mattan was concerned with facilitating marriages for the poor. A few gold pounds were made available to a poor couple, to permit them to buy the minimum household needs. Without the means to buy these articles, marriages could be delayed indefinitely. Sedaqa u-Marpeh, “Charity and Healing,” looked after the needy sick. It maintained a clinic and a couple of ‘hospital’ beds, the part-time cooperation of a trained doctor, as well as a drug dispensary. Mattan ba Seter was a fund which assisted the genteel poor who would not openly accept charity. A large Fund saw to the needs of the many poor families who were regularly allotted small sums to keep them from starving. A pittance was doled out, too, to dozens of poor rabbis, to allow them adequate Sabbath meals.

   There were many orphan children, numerous offspring of impoverished, undernourished parents who died young; outbreaks of tuberculosis or cholera, plague, typhus or diphtheria, were common in some earlier years. A sizeable orphanage was maintained, whose support was made barely adequate by appeals to Syrians living in New York, Manchester, Egypt and Buenos Aires. “Joe” Duek, a successful businessman, retired early to devote his time and efforts to the needs of “his” orphans.

Jewish Commerce and the Souks

   Aleppo’s merchants, Muslim, Jewish, and Christian, are traditionally serious-minded men, in a city which lacks the heady, irresponsible effervescence of Damascus. Halab had less politics and less fanaticism. While Damascus is the town of the “Arab,” Aleppo is the city of the merchant.

   A large part of trade and commerce was dominated by the Jews of Aleppo. A small number were private bankers, called sir-eh-feen, ‘changers’, money-changers (sar-raf, sing.). In a country and city where its residents had no faith in paper money — their confidence was in dahab-at — gold pieces!. Some of their trade in silver and gold pieces was international in scope. Their activity and that of the many Jewish merchants dealing in textiles and a variety of other important commodities permitted them the acquisition of impressive fortunes, very discreetly held, and most ‘modestly’ spent.

   The merchants of Aleppo carry on their activities in the khans and souks. A khan is a caravanserai (a “palace”  for caravans). A souk is a trading street or lane, in some countries referred to as a “bazaar.” But not all souks are alike. Those who visited Jerusalem and its souk (“shouk,” in Hebrew) can little imagine the size and scope of Aleppo’s souks. The latter are roofed, and constitute a sizeable “town” extending for many miles; souks which are deemed more important than those of Damascus and Cairo. Off the principal souks are found the many khans. In several of them our Jewish merchants carried on their trade, principally in the huge Khan ii Gimrog — “the Customhouse Khan” and the vast Khan il Qassabiyeh — the “Khan of the Gold Threads.” There they maintained their offices, attached to which were their sizeable warehouses.  Each craft, in traditional fashion, is established in its own “street” and thus the visitor progresses from the leather workers to the smiths, to the merchants of silks and cotton cloths, or to the souks which sell spices, with their curious haunting fragrances. Aleppo has more than 150 hammams, ‘Turkish baths’, whose beauty and luxuriousness were highly praised.

Jewish Schools

   In Aleppo as in Damascus, in the unhurried and traditional life of old, few influences of the Age of Enlightenment had penetrated or were available to the people of the cities and to the Jewish population. Exceptions were the relatively small but important number of Jews who were able to attend the schools of the Alliance Israelite Universelle. With the self-esteem and self-satisfaction with which they lived, Jews (and Muslims), lacked the quest and thirst for secular education, which characterized the Jews of Europe. Jewish education, except for Alliance students, was in the ktehteeb (kittab sing.) elementary Hebrew schools, for boys. When boys “graduated” at about age thirteen “they went down to the souk” to seek gainful work. Children of families with some means remained in the Alliance until they achieved ‘senior’ graduation at ages 17 to 20.

   Traditional early Jewish schooling taught the male children prayers, and the Bible — which was taught in Hebrew of course, but with some chapters memory-instilled in formal (archaic- classical) Arabic translation, very likely the translation of Saadia Ha-Goan, achieved almost one thousand years ago. The boys became familiar with AinYaacob, a simple recounting of rabbinic aggadah (parables, legends), and other similar works. Most students, with their bar mizva, went out to seek work; but children of wealthy parents, if not at the Alliance school, continued their studies, going on to instructions in the Talmud and other rabbinic works, in batteh midrash, halls of study. They attended there for a few years, before going on to the serious business of gaining money, in order to permit them to marry and to establish their own families. Newlyweds without much means lived with “his” or “her” parents, depending on their relative means, for a few years. A few wealthy men with large homes maintained several married sons and their families in a patriarchal pattern, as a truly “extended family.”

   In addition to study of religious texts in the kittab, the traditional Hebrew elementary school, an hour or so every other day was devoted to learning to read and write Arabic and write the customary cursive Hebrew Script known as nus’alam (‘half a pen’) somewhat similar to Rashi script. This is a medieval form of the written Hebrew coming down to us in the Cairo Geniza fragments of the 10th to 14th century. The men of ancient Cairo, like present-day Jews in Aleppo and Damascus, used the Hebrew script to write letters whose texts were often in Arabic. The students, particularly those whose learning years were limited by the need to work, left the kittab without much ability to write either Hebrew or Arabic — but, were of course, able to read Hebrew printed texts.

   The overwhelming majority of both Jews and Muslims — particularly the latter, had no mastery of writing, although every Jewish child submitted to some schooling with the consequent ability to read (Hebrew), and perhaps to read and write some Arabic. Limited writing lessons introduced into “senior” classes in the kitttab left the boy little time to master writing before he left school at age thirteen.

The Alliance Israelite Universelle and other Schools

   Alliance Israelite students did acquire the ability to write French, some Arabic and Hebrew. They received a Western style education which included a few hours every week of Hebrew prayers and some Biblical texts. Very religious parents provided private tutors for additional religious studies. Otherwise, most Alliance education was in French. Advanced students who deviated by speaking any Arabic in the school were made to pay a small fine for infractions.

   The Paris-based Alliance had its European-trained Sepharadi Jewish teachers. “Sophisticated” and “not very religious,” they were looked at with some suspicion by the ultra Orthodox.  They had little regard for the religious element, although they were careful in Aleppo not to flout the orthodoxy of the community.  Despite some mild disapproval on the part of some unsophisticated Aleppo rabbis, parents continued to send their children to the Alliance. Commercial advancement was impossible without the education the Alliance Israelite was able to provide — in a community of merchants.

   The brightest Alliance graduates were offered tuition-free advanced study in the Alliance schools in and near Paris. These were teacher-training schools, which required graduates to take teaching posts for a period of several years at the discretion of the Alliance in any Near/Middle East country where the Alliance had schools. Not enough can be said, or is acknowledged, of the benefactions that the Alliance Israelite Universelle schools brought to the Jews of the whole of the Near and Middle East, Turkey and Greece, (and some Balkan countries). This blessing is taken for granted, even by many who gained immeasurably by attending. The Aleppo school was established in 1869 for boys, a school for girls was instituted few years later. The lives and careers of Alliance students were affected, to benefit them for many years, in the Near East, and when many went to distant lands and new endeavors.

   In later years some Jewish families eager for more intensive education for their male children enrolled them in the superior school operated by the monks, girls at the convent schools of the the Sisters — the nuns. Jewish and (the fewer) Muslim students there were excused from attendance at Mass and from classes in Christian theology.  In Aleppo, no Jewish children were ever known to have converted to Christianity. A recently-arrived reliable informant stated that in the late 1930’s and early 1940’s, 20 percent of Jewish families had given their children such Catholic school education — families which were regarded as of ‘normal’ Jewish observance.

   With the installation of French Mandatory rule in 1922, the French authorities had established the Mission Lycee, the Laique, the secular school of high caliber. The curriculum began where the Alliance ended. Graduation from the Laique school enabled students to qualify for college or university education in Beirut or in Paris, for such as wished to pursue a career in law, medicine, or other professions. A few Jewish Laique graduates did so, to become lawyers and physicians.  

A-political Jewry

   Jews in Syria and in most other Ottoman countries were entirely a-political. They could not participate in partisan politics because of the delicacy of their situation in a Muslim world. Content to lead their separate community life without molestation, they were grateful for the privilege of being left to live in peace. Thus they did not have the urge of fervent Zionism, like the oppressed Jews in Czarist countries. As I witnessed in a 1933 visit to Aleppo, the Jewish community leaders were required by the Muslim authorities to publicly “disavow any sympathy with Zionism.”  It was only in the mid-to-late 1930’s that Zionism began to grow in Aleppo — although not to flourish. Zionist-influenced sports and cultural activities on a small scale began then, manifested by the “Maccabi Football (soccer) Club” and small Zionist discussion groups. Jewish recruiters from Palestine visited Aleppo in the late 1930’s and early 1940’s; they influenced a small number of young people to move to the Holy Land. The majority, however, were satisfied to continue their accustomed pattern of life, although they became increasingly uneasy. (Some Aleppoans and Damascenes who later located in Egypt and Lebanon tell us in their oral memoirs of bustling but discreet Zionist interest and activity there.

Beginning Migrations

   With the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, some Aleppoan and Damascene Jews migrated to Egypt seeking better economic opportunities. Others, merchants, had gone to Manchester, England to represent their partnerships and family enterprises which had been importing English cotton goods through commission merchants.

   Toward the end of the 19th century, a few intrepid pioneers set out from Syria, seeking the opportunity to earn enough money to provide them with a small capital, and to return to their native cities. The incentives for travel were World Fairs, the Expositions in Paris in 1859 and the Columbian Exposition in 1893. At the end of the Expositions, alas, none had made their fortune. Some returned to their native city; others stayed on waiting for the next Fair — the Pan American Exposition of 1901 in Buffalo, or the St. Louis World’s Exposition of 1903. Except for one individual, none had settled in the United States before 1903, when several Aleppo and Damascus Jews decided to stay and make their home in New York.

The Nucleus of Mass Migration

Dire need in many Jewish families in Syria was aggravated by the several economic crises, worldwide depressions which affected Aleppo’s commerce as well. 1903 saw such slack in trade, to be repeated in 1907. Commercial houses went bankrupt or were compelled to discharge employees — who were left destitute, with no income or the means to secure food. Having heard of the few Jews who had migrated to the Americas, pioneers who wrote back reporting their ability to work and earn in New York, Mexico, and Buenos Aires, an emigration trend, a small tide set in, inducing men with hungry homes to leave their cherished families and friends and the accustomed orderly Jewish life, to seek a livelihood elsewhere. Most of them left with little more than the clothing on their backs to go to distant and strange lands where they arrived like deaf-mutes, unable to speak the new languages, to understand and to be understood. Since an alternative to the helpless misery of their life in Aleppo and Damascus presented itself, they had seized it, those with courage enough to embark on the unknown. Still another factor encouraged emigration.

   The “Young Turks” movement of army officers had forced the abdication in 1908 of the despot Sultan Abd il-Hamid II, who had clung to the politics of an earlier and antiquated era. Turkey was humiliated by defeats in several small wars, because of the archaic and thoroughly corrupt official government structure. With the overthrow of Abd il-Hamid the Army sought greater strength — and large numbers of soldiers. This was a calamity for Jews under Ottoman rule. Under the old regime Jews and other minorities were “not desired” to mingle with the Muslim soldiers; with the payment of a f’kehk, a “release,” a small tax, non-Muslims were considered to have made a substitute contribution. The need for a new and larger army ended this exemption; every able bodied ‘young’ man was made subject to conscription. As soon as conscription appeared imminent, Jewish men quietly disappeared, to make their way to a new and strange land.  

   Encouraged by the reports from New York from the early immigrants who were sending money to their impoverished families, many more made their way to New York’s Lower East Side.  Buenos Aires, Mexico, and New York were equally known in Damascus and Aleppo as the “goal” for those compelled to emigrate. (Some who were denied entry at Ellis Island also turned to Argentina or to Mexico.) The years 1908-1913 saw the nucleus of a Syrian community in Mexico as well as in Buenos Aires and New York.  

When Worlds Collide[1]: Why Observant Student Teachers Refuse to Teach in the Mamlachti Dati School System?

     During the past several years as an educator in the fields of Tanakh and Jewish studies, I have come across a prevalent and disturbing phenomenon: most of the religiously observant student teachers whom I have met  are not at all  interested in teaching in the mamlakhti-dati school system (the religious public school system in Israel). When the time comes for them to decide on a professional placement, they apply to secular schools, or to the new model of specialized dati-hiloni schools (religious/secular schools), or to pluralistic religious schools. Several years ago, as the head of the Tanakh department of such an experimental dati-hiloni high school, I found that more than half of the Jewish studies faculty was comprised of incredibly dedicated and talented religious young people. When I asked them to describe the thought process that brought them to an experimental framework, (in our case, a particularly demanding one), the majority of them admitted to never having even considered Mamad (religious public school system) as a professional option, for reasons that will be discussed in this paper. Some had tried to teach in the Mamad system and had given up.

     Why is this true?  Why are these bright, highly motivated, religiously observant young people, who are extremely knowledgeable in both Jewish and general studies, opting out of the mamlakhti-dati school system?  And if they are opting out, then who is teaching our children?

     In this article I would like to address these questions by relating several stories that reflect the changes that are taking place in the Mamad schools and in the teachers colleges. I want to examine how and why these changes, which are occurring in both the formal and informal frameworks of the Mamad, are alienating many young, committed and engaged religious student teachers out of its educational system. In addition, I would like to suggest conceptual and practical changes to improve an ever worsening situation.

Observations from the Field: Primary School

A Story about Matisse

     When our daughter was in fifth grade at the local Mamad (religious public school), she decided to do her personal project on Matisse. We went to do research at the Israel Museum art library and spent several hours reading his biography and examining books of Matisse’s paintings.  Some weeks later I bumped into the teacher in the school hall, and couldn’t resist asking her what she thought of my daughter’s project. Well, she said hesitating, it was a bit skimpy. Skimpy?!  I cried in disbelief. She’s in fifth grade. She could have chosen “Water” or “Color” or “Why is the Sky Blue?” Instead she picked a difficult topic and handed in work she did herself. What do you mean by skimpy? Well, she said quietly, the truth is… I have never heard of Matisse.

     After recovering from the sad implications of this story, we need to ask ourselves some hard questions: Why is a person with so little intellectual curiosity, or basic professional self-respect, hired to teach school children? Once hired, why are such teachers maintained?

     The status of teacher knowledge in the secular primary schools is, unfortunately, not much better than that of the teachers in the Mamad system. It is unlikely, however, for a teacher in a secular school never to have heard of Matisse, implausible that she would not refer to an encyclopedia while grading her student’s work, and inconceivable that she would look the student’s parent directly in the eye and say: “I have never heard of Matisse."

     Why are so many Mamad teachers like this, particularly--but not exclusively--in the younger grades?  And why does a teacher in the Mamad system feel safe in doing this?  The answers are not pleasant. One: Matisse was not Jewish.  [In the eyes of the narrowly Orthodox] non-Jews don’t count.  Two: Matisse was an artist. Art is irrelevant.  If the fifth grader’s paper had been a biography of a great rabbinic sage, the teacher would certainly have done her homework.  Three: Matisse painted nudes. Nudity is immodest and immodesty is the cardinal sin, greater than ignorance and intolerance (more on this later). In fact, the teacher had asked my daughter to remove one of Matisse’s abstract line drawings of a nude from the paper. The principal insisted that it stay in. Poor Matisse, he never had a chance.                                 

     So why is this person permitted to teach our children?

     The answer lies in the ever changing face of the Mamad teacher. Whereas once the Mamad teacher and principal were observant Jews who prided themselves on their abilty to combine love of Torah with love of all knowledge, today more and more Mamad teachers pride themselves on their insularity, and yes, their ignorance of all things not Jewish.

     I would like to underscore this point with 3 stories from my recent experience in Mamad teachers colleges.

Observations from the Field of Teacher Training

     Recently, I taught at a well-respected college for primary school educators, considered for years a pillar of dati leumi (religious Zionist) Judaism. For administrative reasons, the college hosts students from an influential hareidi –leumi midrasha (hareidi Zionist school) who pursue their B. ED at the college. They are excellent students, and their influence on the school is great—as are their demands.

Feminist Research

     Early on in the semester, in a course on pedagogy, I referred to a research study by feminist scholars on a gender related educational issue. After class, some of the students approached to further discuss my conclusions, but questioned my reference to feminist scholarship. 

     That night, I received a call from a faculty representative from the midrasha.  His official job was liaison between the midrasha and the seminar; his unofficial job was to be a watchdog for religiosity. He asked that I meet him the next day in his office allotted to him by the college.

      I was told the following: academic research is not important to us. Please avoid referring to it. Feminist research is anathema to us. If you happen to teach Tanakh, do not teach comparative parshanut a la Nechama Leibowitz. We don’t evaluate the great parshanim (classic rabbinic Bible commentators) - they are all equally great. We don’t compare and contrast. Who are we, after all?

A Trip to London

     Wanting to prevent further such confrontations, I avoided all areas of controversy--not my natural inclination. During a class exercise demonstrating varying approaches to planning, I asked my students to plan a trip to London. I noticed one pair sitting and not working. I approached to ask if they needed help. The following conversation ensued.

We have never been to London.

OK, I said, make believe.

We don’t want to go to London.

Ok. I said, (thinking perhaps that they were Anglophobic). How about Paris?

We don’t want to go to Paris either.

OK. Where do you want to go?

They thought for a moment and said, To the Golan.

Literary Analysis

     Soon after, I began teaching at another dati leumi College intended for junior high and high school educators, also a prominent institution in dati leumi education.  The school was eager to develop into an Israeli model of Yeshiva University, a degree granting religious university. In this vein, the school held a half day conference on the topic of literary approaches to teaching Tanakh. All the presenters were religiously observant. I delivered a paper on the topic of thematic reading. When I returned to class, I found my normally compliant students up in arms. How could I apply literary tools to the reading of Tanakh? Tanakh is a sacred book, not literature.  It is forbidden to apply literary text analysis to the Torah.

     This was compartmentalization at its best. Literary analysis, a gentler cousin of Biblical criticism, has a way of unnerving some religious people.  The students’ instincts were right; this material is sensitive and troubling. But what struck me most was the fear, a near panic, at what they had heard, and a refusal to have a discussion.  In a house of learning, the response to ideas that challenge our assumptions cannot be flight or fear. That is the hareidi way; it is not meant to be the approach of classical dati leumi education. In addition, these were students preparing for high school teaching. Certainly the day would come when one of their students would question them on this topic. What will their response be?  

     The colleges and students alluded to are not marginal or atypical. They serve as major feeders of teachers to the Mamad school system.  Those students are the teachers of our children today.  

     What the above stories have in common is that they all reflect the growing influence of the hareidi ideologies on Mamad education via hareidi-leumi teachers and attitudes: lack of curiosity bordering on disdain  for all things not Jewish; distrust of academia--even while earning an academic degree; distaste for feminism- even while benefiting from the contribution of feminist activism to the equality of women in the workplace; fear of critical thinking; refusal to recognize and grapple with issues of modernity and post-modernist humanist thought; extensive use of  the advances of modern research in areas of medicine and technology, along with an unwillingness to admit or to acknowledge the central role of the university in bringing about these advances.   

     The hareidi-leumi worldview, while clearly one I do not share, has the right to its input into the religious and political discourse of the State of Israel. But the legitimate place for the dissemination of its values is within its own schools and communities. The dati leumi school system, once the pride and joy of the dati leumi world, is emptying at a frightening rate, because the liberal dati leumi establishment refuses to acknowledge that, despite a shared commitment to the observance of (certain) mitzvoth and to the state of Israel, what divides us is greater than what unites us.

     On Sukkot 2005, Ne’emanei Torah V’Avodah hosted a joint conference with Edah,[2] an American organization associated with religious Zionism and modern Orthodoxy.[3] In a keynote address, Rabbi Saul Berman delineated the major ideological issues on which the hareidi world and the modern Orthodox world differ: pluralism/tolerance, the religious meaning of Medinat Israel, Jew and Gentile, da’at Torah, Torah u’maddah, humrah, women in halakha, outreach, and activism. On the majority of the issues listed, the hareidi- leumi attitude is closer to the hareidi attitude than to the dati leumi attitude. [4] Aside from the approach towards the State, we differ on the central, most significant issues of modern Jewish life.

     These ideological differences weigh heavily upon the young students with whom I have contact. Humanistic in their orientation and pluralist in their outlook, they do not want to teach in the Mamad schools, because they do not want to instill values that are not theirs. They all (women and men) have academic degrees, some in Bible and in Talmud, as well as in literature, history, music, and art. They embrace the world because it is awesome, and they are curious. They cannot teach honestly without alluding to all that they know, nor do they want to.

     These dati students have been to China and India, some even to London! They believe Jews are special, but they don’t believe that everyone else is devoid of values. They go to concerts, they know who Matisse is, and they know a thing or two about wine. The men know how to cook… and most of the women wear slacks.

     They are rigorous in their thinking, but not rigid in their outlook. They struggle to find the interface--often through reexamination of religious sources--between the yeshiva/midrasha and the university, between Levinas and dati leumi, shiurim and shira, Carlbach and Kleinstein. Their challenge is to make these worlds overlap, not to compartmentalize them.

They represent the oft alluded line between dati and leumi, between modern and Orthodox. These are the students who should be teaching our children. Most of them will not.

The Dress Code

     A disturbing corollary of hareidi- leumi influence that threatens the caliber of teachers in the dati leumi schools system is the growing obsession with the dress code relating to women. Part of the reason why the teacher in the Matisse story continues to teach in our schools is because she looks the part.  She and hundreds like her are teaching in our schools, despite the fact that they may be inferior teachers, because her elbows are covered, her skirts are long, and in the case of married women, her head is covered.   

     Over the past 10-15 years, the dati-leumi establishment has become obsessed with the dress code of women. Prominent rabbis write outrageous articles measuring centimeters on the neck and on the arms. While the suitability of male teachers is measured in how much they know and the quality of their prayer, in the case of women, the skill of pious dressing can override the skills of good teaching.

     Modesty is a significant tenet of Jewish life, but we have begun to lose all sense of proportion. When appearance is secondary to talent in a school system, the big losers are the children. 

     A case in point: Several years ago a new Dati Leumi academic school opened in our neighborhood to address the needs of our predominantly liberal dati-leumi population. Most of the parents, working people, professionals and academics, were eager for a superior local school for their children that could compete with excellent schools outside the neighborhood. The girls’ school, however, was headed in a different direction. From its inception, it insisted that homeroom teachers wear head coverings at all times, that is, outside of school as well as in. All non- homeroom teachers, that is, art, history, math, were requested to wear a head covering in school,  even if they didn’t do so in their personal lives. Thus, with one swift religious stringency, the eagerly awaited alternative dati-leumi school committed to excellence, disqualified all outstanding religious teachers who didn’t "look the look.”[5]  While the boys' school, instituted at the same time, searched for the "best and the brightest," the girls’ school front line concern was attire.  Not only did the students have a dress code, so did the teachers.

     It is not within the scope of this paper to discuss the halakhic ins and outs of these dress demands.  The point of emphasis here is that this stringent dress code does not reflect the norms or the values of the religiously observant parent body.  The vast majority of the mothers in this school do not cover their hair and many wear slacks. At the opening ceremony of the school the number of mothers counted with head coverings was 10 out of 150! Thus the unstated message conveyed to girls is that their mothers are not qualified to be their religious role models. [6] 

     The ever increasing insistence on a dress code for teachers is another reasons my religious students avoid teaching in the Mamad system. It is important to note that some of my married dati students do in fact wear head coverings, but some do not. Some wear head coverings and slacks and want to continue to do so, not because they are rebellious, but because slacks are comfortable and efficient. These young women are halakhically committed, and halakhically informed, many are well versed in Talmudic texts. They know that the ban on slacks is a sociological issue, not a halakhic one[7], and that head covering has become the sociological equivalent of a kippah only recently.  Graduates of midrashot and yeshivot, they spend countless hours examining the sources. Thoughtful and honest, they are looking for ways to be true to halakha and true to themselves.

     Thus these young dati-leumi teachers opt for schools that will let them wear what feels comfortable, while retaining their personal sense of modesty;  schools that will focus on their thinking abilities, their pedagogic skills,  and their ability to touch the hearts and minds of their students. They are not going to the Mamad system.

     Yet, aren’t these the very teachers we want teaching in our schools? 

Conclusion

     The Mamad school system has lost its sense of identity; it is no longer responsive to the needs of its community.  The vacuum created is being filled by ideologies that do not reflect the vision and the values of the majority of the pupils’ homes and communities. By allowing vast hareidi leumi influence on our schools, we abrogate our responsibility to our own community. Not only are young teachers leaving the system, so are the children. 

     Talented teachers with a more embracing attitude to the modern world as well as to its challenges will find work elsewhere, in the secular public school system and in other frameworks mentioned in the opening of this paper. But who will teach the thousands of children from liberal dati leumi homes? For now, the majority of dati leumi parents are not looking for alternative frameworks, although with each passing year, more and more are doing so. They are still eager for a neighborhood school that reflects their combined commitment to Torah and general wisdom, in the broadest sense of the word. 

     In the final analysis, it is the teachers who make a school. In order for children to return to the Mamad system, we need to make spiritual room for the many talented young religious teachers who are grappling with the same issues as the families,  teachers whose intricate approach to the world is similar to that of their students.

A Practical Suggestion for Change 

     The past few years has seen the development of several excellent academic programs throughout Israel which support promising young students financially in exchange for a commitment to teach Jewish studies in the religious public school system for a stipulated number of years.  I would like to see the creation of similar programs that would prepare bright and motivated religious university students for teaching in the Mamad system. In exchange for tuition and financial support, perhaps by the religious branch of the Ministry of Education, as well as private donors committed to liberal religious values, they would be asked to commit to several years of teaching in the Mamad.

      In addition to the regular courses in disciplinary knowledge and in pedagogy, there would be classes and workshops devoted to issues such as: the implications of the past 100 years’ of Biblical research; recent Talmud research; issues related to women; national service; conflicts arising between Synagogue and State; democracy and Judaism; attitude toward non-religious Jews, and so much more. As of now, most of these issues are discussed only in informal youth programs like Gesher. Their place is in the schools.

     In order to accomplish this, we need teachers who are not afraid.

     There are many options for such a program of study, worthy of a separate paper. But in order for such a program to be effective, there needs to be more than specialized education for students. Just as the general public school system is reevaluating its attitude toward Jewish studies and therefore training teachers to spearhead that movement, so does the dati leumi school system need to do some serious self- reflection. Only then will they be able to bring back young dati teachers who think out of the box, who are committed to halakha and to academic research, who are rethinking old approaches--not rejecting them--who love children, love knowledge, and embrace the world.  

On the Sunday before Rosh Hashanah in 2009, an audience of 225 individuals attended a Jewish community-wide Healing Service in Baltimore, Maryland. The Healing Service was convened as a gathering for survivors of domestic, sexual, physical, verbal, and all forms of abuse; family members and friends of survivors; mental health and physical health professionals; clergy; educators; and all who wanted to learn how to “break the silence” that surrounds and permeates abuse and trauma in a community. The Healing Service was designed and sponsored by the Shofar Coalition, a program of CHANA and the ASSOCIATED Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore.

Representatives from Shofar, CHANA, the Baltimore Board of Rabbis, and the Baltimore Jewish Times joined with eight courageous survivors who agreed to share their experiences of trauma endured as children, adolescents, or adults. Together, they delivered a message—in words, in chants, in prayer. In doing so, they challenged the audience to cultivate a Healing Community, one that actively listens to the truths spoken by those among us who have been victimized; one that believes and accepts that these traumatic experiences affect not only the victims but all of us; and a community that responds with compassion and action rather than with silence and denial.

Why a Healing Service?

Allow me to quote from a statement publically issued several weeks before the event by Rabbi Amy Scheinerman, President of the Baltimore Board of Rabbis:

As Jews, we understand viscerally from our historical experience what it is to be victims of persecution. Time and again, we have demanded that the voices of victims be heard, that their pain be acknowledged, and that justice prevail. Yet in our own midst, many have suffered silently for far too long, as victims of abuse and trauma whose pain and suffering have gone unacknowledged, whose stories have not been believed, and whose perpetrators have been shielded from suffering the appropriate consequences their behavior warrants. Silence and inaction have re-victimized those traumatized by abuse by inflicting fear, shame, and guilt. As a community, we have participated in a conspiracy of silence: denial of the truth of abuse in our midst, the silencing of victims, and our own individual choice of silence when fear or disbelief take precedence over informed response. The silence must end.

The ethical issues and the moral imperatives raised in Rabbi Scheinerman’s statement apply to communities of all faiths, not just Jewish, and in societies across the country and the world. There is no place for denial, silence, or inaction in any community—certainly not in any Jewish community.  In a Healing Community, of any faith, all of its members share a responsibility to acknowledge the pain and to help ease the suffering of victims. Pursuing justice by holding those responsible for abuse accountable, and thus preventing other innocent individuals from being victimized, is also an integral obligation for a faith community. There is no place in a Healing Community for bystanders.

In any discussion of the ethical issues related to abuse, it is important to understand certain facts. The majority of perpetrators are not strangers to the victims. It is difficult to secure an accurate number of abuse victims in general due to the consequences of the shame, fear, and silence that typically paralyze victims and communities. If an individual feels guilt and shame over the abuse, as is often the case, he or she will not admit that the abuse occurred. If a community denies that abuse happens—and worse, blames the victim or anyone who speaks about abuse and accused abusers—then the resulting fear often gives rise to victims being forced into silence. Where there is fear and silence, suspected abuse of children or adults remains unreported to the authorities, thus allowing perpetrators to continue to victimize others, sometimes for many years. Failure to report suspected abuse means a failure to bring the perpetrators of abuse to justice.

I know of a woman in her mid-30s who was molested when she was a teenager by a well-known and greatly revered congregational rabbi in Baltimore. Shortly after the abuse occurred, her mother and two other rabbis whom she turned to for guidance told her to keep quiet so as not to destroy this much-loved rabbi’s reputation. Besides, she was told, no one would believe her anyway. All these years later, this woman continues receiving professional therapy to help her deal with intense guilt over the number of women who were molested by this same rabbi long after she was. She believed that her imposed silence had resulted in the suffering of other women. Similarly, hundreds of men who had been sexually abused when they were young boys by the same rabbi over a period of more than 20 years finally came forward to speak of their suffering only after several of this particular rabbi’s victims broke their silence, thus giving voice to so many who were re-traumatized by remaining silent for so long.

Knowing that the actual number of incidences of abuse is higher than reported, it is shocking to note that studies indicate that one in four women report that they have been victimized by domestic violence as an adult. Likewise, one in four women and one in six men report that they have been sexually abused in their lifetime. In the United States, 4 million children are reported to have been abused every year. There is no indication that these numbers are any different among Jewish individuals, nor is there any known difference in numbers among the various denominations within Judaism. A groundbreaking study published in November, 2007 entitled “History of Past Sexual Abuse in Married Observant Jewish Women” states that “Twenty-six percent of respondents in a study about the sexual lives and attitudes of married Orthodox Jewish women— 55% identifying as Modern Orthodox and about 45% as right-wing Orthodox—indicated that they had at some point suffered sexual abuse.” (American Journal of Psychiatry 164: 1700–06).

The Ethical Imperative in Judaism to Help Trauma Survivors

Rabbi Mark Dratch, Founder and President of JSafe: The Jewish Institute Supporting an Abuse-Free Environment, wrote in a 2007 article entitled “Few Are Guilty, but All Are Responsible: The Obligations to Help Survivors of Abuse”:

The Torah expresses the obligation to help those under assault or subject to abuse through both positive and negative precepts: ‘Thou shalt not stand by the blood of thy neighbor’ (Lev. 19:16) and ‘And you shall restore him to himself’ (Deut. 22:2). The Talmud (Sanhedrin 73a) teaches that while the latter verse teaches that one must intervene personally, the former expands that responsibility; a person may not just stand around idly while someone is being hurt.

All too often, the obligation to help victims of trauma and abuse is trumped by a fear of speaking out and getting involved—and a denial that the abuse even occurred. The resulting silence takes the place of bringing relief to the suffering of the victims and securing the safety of the community by bringing the perpetrators to justice. Both abuse victims and observers of the abuse are scared that no one will believe them if they speak up. They are afraid that exposing the abuse and the abuser will destroy their families or the families of the perpetrators.

By exploring the ways that victims are harmed by silence and inaction, whether self-imposed or imposed by others, we can best understand the importance of the Torah-based obligation stated above. The silence often sentences a victim to years upon years of isolation and feeling alone. Many of the people who come to the Shofar Coalition for help do so after years of telling no one what happened to them. Some come forward for the first time when they are in their 40s, 50s, or even 60s. An individual who attended our Healing Service last September submitted a note that stated: “I have been suffering from mental, emotional, and physical abuse for so many years. Can someone help me? I don’t feel safe.”

The prevailing silence contributes to feelings of intense shame, guilt, and low self-worth on the part of victims of trauma. People may wonder why the victim would feel guilty or ashamed about something that was done to them, not by them. As one survivor of incest explained to me, until the abuser is named, the victim carries and owns the shame and guilt. Once others know about the abuser, the shame is shifted from the victim to the abuser where it belongs. Excerpts from the testimonies of three of the eight survivors who spoke at the Shofar Healing Service gives us a window into the feelings of shame, fear, and isolation born out of silence.

A 45-year-old woman: I was a college graduate. I was a nice, Jewish girl from Pikesville [Baltimore] who married her best friend’s brother, also from Pikesville. So how in the world could I be lying in the hospital emergency room with a broken arm, caused by my own husband? This kind of thing wasn’t supposed to happen to people like me. I was scared and embarrassed, humiliated, and so ashamed. I felt so alone, I just wanted to disappear. The physical pain didn’t even hold a candle to the mental pain I was holding inside. It was easier to keep that secret.

A 32-year-old man: I was first molested at the mikva when I was 4 years old….I was afraid to tell my father, so he never knew about it. It was like I had a Scarlet Letter on my forehead that said “easy target, molest me!” As a child, I was also molested by a female neighbor, my bar-mitzvah teacher, and while I was in yeshiva. Most of the molestations took place in a religious environment. [I was brought up to believe] that you should always have respect for your elders, that the Rabbi/teacher/parent/adult is always right. This led me to believe that I was the problem—It was my fault; I was bad.

A 65- year-old man: I didn't think that I was affected at all by these encounters with the rabbi and his friend, however 52 years later I realize that shame, embarrassment, and fear kept me from revealing the revered rabbi's insidious behavior. In fact, I could not speak out loud the name of the rabbi who molested me until I was 60 years old.

So many trauma survivors have expressed to me that perhaps even more painful than the original abuse that they have endured is the feeling that they were betrayed by the reaction of trusted individuals (parents, friends, rabbis, teachers) who were sought out for comfort, compassion, validation, support and guidance. The denial, silence and inaction on the part of trusted individuals give rise to profound feelings of being “re-victimized.” The emotional scars left by such re-victimization are often long lasting and more difficult to heal. A woman who was molested by her uncle over the course of two years beginning when she was ten, and who came to Shofar for services when she was in her mid 40s says:

For many years, I only told my closest friends about what had happened to me. The first time I told someone in a position of authority in confidence was to my rabbi when I was in my late 20s and already a mother. I went to my rabbi, whom I very much respected as a man of terrific judgment and integrity, and asked for help. He did not ask about me or my mental health, he didn’t pursue a line of questioning that might have led to accountability for my uncle, he didn’t even want me to upset my father by telling him the truth if there were some way that it could be avoided. I went back into the closet of my shame and closed the door.

Rabbi Dratch, in a 2006 article entitled “The Shame of It All: The Real Shonda in Revealing Abuse,” points out yet another way that victims and the entire Jewish community are harmed by silence, inaction, and feelings of betrayal by family and respected members of the community. He states:

Many [Jewish] victims of abuse are exploited first by their Jewish perpetrators and then are betrayed by the reaction of the family and community they thought would help them, nurture them, and find them justice. In many cases, these victims lose faith in themselves, in the community, and in God. Those who do not reject their Judaism find strength in their faith, despite all that has been done to them. But in many cases victims are disillusioned by the institutions and leaders they thought they could trust. Too many of them abandon mitzvah observance and their connections to the Jewish community are weakened. This is a real hilul hashem!

Perceived Barriers, Unique to Jewish Communities, to Revealing Abuse and Acting to Help Abuse Survivors

Concerns of Hilul Hashem

Rabbi Dratch addresses these concerns in “The Shame of It All” when he states: “this concern about protecting the reputation of God and the Jewish people by repressing public discussion of behaviors and actions that may be deemed a ‘shonda,’ scandalous and disreputable, may in fact itself be a hilul hashem. It is the abuser and not the abused that has committed hilul hashem, and it is those who cover up and silence victims, not those who seek justice and the protection of innocent victims that desecrate God’s Name.”

The Shonda Factor

 Individuals are often afraid to discuss abuse or to expose an accused abuser because of the potential harm to the perpetrator’s reputation. They fear that they and their families will be shunned or ostracized by the community. Sadly, this is often the case. Victims, and their advocates who do speak out, have become the target of verbal, written, and physical attacks. They are viewed as having brought shame to the entire community. The shonda factor is further intensified in some Jewish communities by the fear that speaking out about abuse may damage the possibilities of young people in a given family finding suitable marriage partners. All in all, these fears not only give rise to the silencing of victims but to the organized cover-up of dangerous situations and enabling of potentially harmful abusers.

Lashon haRa (Libel or Slander) and Mesirah (Informing Civil Authorities)

Some Jewish people attribute their silence and inaction in the face of abuse to their adherence to and understanding of Jewish laws prohibiting lashon haRa and mesirah. In his “Few Are Guilty” article, Rabbi Mark Dratch states that: “These principles, and others, are valid, essential principles of Jewish life and law and should be carefully observed by committed Jews. But all too often misplaced priorities and misconceived interpretations of Jewish law have trumped equally valid halakhic concerns for the safety and security of Jewish bodies and souls.”

In the same article, Rabbi Dratch eloquently expresses the ethical responsibilities of the Jewish people when those among us are suffering from the horrors of abuse. In expounding on a quotation by Abraham Joshua Heschel having to do with a Jewish response to evil (“Few are guilty, but all are responsible”), Rabbi Dratch states: “So, while a small minority of the Jewish community is actually guilty of perpetrating abuse and violence, the entire community is responsible to come to the aid of victims, to pursue justice, to demand accountability, and to protect the innocents of our community and the integrity of our faith.”

Many years ago, on a visit to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., I saw the following line: “Thou shall not be a perpetrator; thou shall not be a victim; and thou shall never be a bystander.”  The Museum’s website attributes the quotation to Yehuda Bauer, professor of Holocaust studies at the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. I do not in any way mean to equate the evils and horrors of the Holocaust with the evils of child abuse and domestic violence.  I do, however, mean to say that we as Jews cannot and must not stand idly by while some of our fellow Jews are suffering due to no fault of their own, but rather due to the fault of abusive people and silent bystanders. Historically we as Jewish people know all too well the consequences of silence in the face of human suffering. And abuse thrives in silence.

I challenge all Jewish communities to rebuild themselves as Healing Communities. Healing Communities say to those who are hurting among us that they need not suffer in silence alone any longer. We need to replace fear, denial, and silence with compassion and truth, and inaction will be replaced with action. We as Jewish communities will attend to the healing of all those who wish to recover from the long-term effects of abuse. We will commit to bringing the perpetrators of abuse to justice and to preventing them from hurting others. We can do this! We must do this!

For information about Healing Services and other Shofar or CHANA sponsored activities, contact Elaine Witman at [email protected] or 410-843-7582.

I

Neither of the Torahs, Written or Oral, seems to have anything to say about “spirituality” as such. The concept, like the Hebrew word for it, ruhaniut, is evidently much later, perhaps medieval. Yet anyone who has even a passing familiarity with Tanakh, Talmud, Midrash, and the later rabbis, knows that many of these texts and sages (among whom we may wish to count the masters of the Kabbalah) embrace the substance of what we now often call spirituality:

that is, a personal, meditative encounter with the Transcendent or Holy, which is essentially individual and autonomous. They also include moral, ethical, and metaphysical perceptions (as distinct from halakhic mandates) that may seem to come to our mind directly from a transcendent Source, or (in the wonderful expression of the Quakers) as from an “inner voice.” We may think also of the self-generated kavanah of passionate prayer, and the spiritually elevating joy of song and dance, much beloved among Hassidic and “Carlebachian” devotees. Maimonides believed the essential part of our human, and thus of our Jewish, vocation to be something profoundly personal—our “knowledge” and “intellectual apprehension” of a Primary Reality, Matsui Rishon.

Alongside this personal experience that many of us think of as spirituality, there is the elaborate fabric of halakhically prescribed behavior, which is regarded as being divinely mandated. Something like a universal consensus of Torah sages holds, I think, that the two—the experience and the behavior—are inseparably linked, mutually animating, equally necessary, equally obligatory. Though we may distinguish them analytically, we may not dispense with either. 

Though late in coming—to speculate why would be an intriguing temptation— awareness of “spirituality” has, thus, long since arrived in Jewish life, and indeed (as the subject of this issue of Conversations amply testifies) in Orthodox Jewish life (even though in Orthodoxy the halakhot of prescribed Jewish behavior are given particular emphasis, and “observant” is the most usual epithet of approval). But as with the other touchstones of Torah and Jewish culture, including halakhic observance itself, the actuality of Orthodox spirituality never quite catches up with the ideal, and for us to contemplate our tradition’s ruhaniut may be to deplore what can often seem its elusiveness, to bridle at the challenges it encounters from time to time in our individual and communal lives. The problem is substantial and (pending messianic fulfillment) ongoing, and defies easy solution, or even easy description. What I hope to do here is to consider several aspects of the matter from contemporary perspectives, and then to invoke a few potent rabbinical ideas that, I believe, may help us address the specific “perplexities” at issue.                            

Halakha and Moral/Ethical Sensitivity

   Let us proceed, in the conversational spirit of Conversations, by recalling two articles that appeared in the Spring 2010/5770 issue.

   In “Sounds of Silence,” Pinchas Landau deplored that (as he sees it) American Orthodox Jews, and most egregiously their rabbinical leaders, generally failed to express moral indignation at the ongoing financial corruptions and distortions of principle that harmed so many people during the recent, and continuing, economic crisis. In what he perceives as this dereliction, Landau finds evidence of a larger, more sinister problem: “Many people, including—or perhaps especially—rabbis and educators actually have no clear idea what ethical and moral issues are. More precisely, they have great difficulty distinguishing between legal/halakhic and moral/ethical treatments of issues, preferring to subsume the latter in theological, or even mystical, conceptual frameworks.” His conclusion is a severe indictment: “Orthodox Judaism, as currently conceived and practiced, is morally challenged.” Rabbi Eliezer Berkovits had put the matter even more provocatively: “Orthodoxy is, in a sense, halakha in a straitjacket” (Essential Essays on Judaism, p. 101).

Halakha and Autonomous Spiritual Experience

   In the same issue of Conversations, a daring and original article by Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo addressed other dimensions of the problem (“On the Nature and

Future of Halakha in Relation to Autonomous Religiosity”). From his perspective as a

teacher of Jewish philosophy, R. Cardozo has encountered a frustrated craving for “spiritual satisfaction” among “countless young Jews who search for an authentic Jewish religious way of life, but are unable to find spiritual satisfaction in the prevalent halakhic system as practiced today in most Ultra- or Modern Orthodox communities.” These students seek “to experience the presence of God on a day-to-day basis. Beyond ‘observance,’ they look for holiness and meaning.”

   Concluding that “we need to find new paths to Jewish spirituality,” R. Cardozo

affirms provocatively a principle that, by logical necessity, one should expect to be axiomatic in Orthodoxy, but that appears to be often ignored: that “Judaism is an autonomous way of life” that expects us “to respond as an individual to the Torah’s demands.”

 Defectors from Judaism in Search of Spirituality

Contemplating Rabbi Cardozo’s Orthodox Israeli students and their failure to find “spiritual satisfaction” in the Judaism of their experience calls to mind the quite different, yet in a sense parallel, constituency of spiritually dissatisfied young American Jews of whom Professor Rodger Kamenetz had written over 15 years earlier in his notable and well-remembered The Jew in the Lotus (1994). Though few of them seem to have had an Orthodox background comparable to that which had probably nourished (but nevertheless dissatisfied) R. Cardozo’s students, they too—most significantly—used the word “spiritual” to denote what they missed in the Judaism they knew. Less committed to their formal Jewish identities by family and social bonds, they eventually sought “spiritual” satisfaction in the Asian religions of Hinduism and (especially) Buddhism.

   A few Jews are known to have embraced Buddhism more than a century ago, but it was in the 1950s and later—the period of the “beat generation” and its aftermath—that the Asian religions came to exert a strong attractive power on significant numbers of young Americans inclined to religious or cultural experiment, who happened to be, for a variety of reasons, disenchanted with their family’s Christianity or Judaism. In the latter half of the twentieth century, this became one of the conspicuous features of “hippie culture”; and the greatly disproportionate number of young Jews who adopted Buddhism (either in place of, or in addition to, their religion of birth) was widely noted.

It was also, of course, profoundly deplored in traditional Jewish circles, and the “cults,” as Buddhism and Hinduism were often derogatorily called, have been perceived by some as a major menace to the stability and continuity of Jewish life in America. The matter is complex, and has been much studied and discussed.  

    Writing in 1994, Kamenetz reveals (pp. 7–9) how important had been (and we may presume still is) the Jewish presence among recently fledged American Buddhists:

In the past twenty years, [Jewish Buddhists] have played a significant and disproportionate role in the development of this second form of American Buddhism. Various surveys show Jewish participation in such groups ranging from 6 percent to 30 percent. This is up to twelve times the Jewish proportion of the American population, which is 2 ½ percent. In these same twenty years, American Jews have founded Buddhist meditation centers and acted as administrators, publishers, translators, and interpreters. They have been particularly prominent teachers and publicizers. . . Today in American universities there is an impressive roster of Buddhist scholars with Jewish backgrounds, perhaps up to 30 percent of the total faculty in Buddhist Studies.

Kamenetz’s book provides copious examples of the Jewish experiences and perceptions that underlie these figures. He tells, for instance, of a friend of his, Marc, who described his religious position with metaphors Kamenetz found both eloquent and depressing: “I have Jewish roots and Buddhist wings.” He comments: “I knew what Marc meant by wings. Buddhism had gotten him somewhere spiritually in a way Judaism never had” (pp. 12–13). For some of the Buddhist-oriented Jews he met and talked with, their Buddhism complemented but did not wholly replace their Judaism. Others, like the poet Allen Ginsberg, seemed to have discovered, or retained, nothing of spiritual substance in their Jewish experience, which they rejected with scorn.

As a sophisticated, synagogue-bred Jew who, despite his spiritual dissatisfaction, always rejected categorically the notion of tampering with his Jewish identity and commitment, Kamenetz himself seems to embody in an accessible and understandable form the syndrome he discusses in others. Though writing from a quite different perspective with respect to education and commitment, his critical survey of Orthodoxy can be regarded as complementing those of Pinchas Landau (Orthodoxy is “morally challenged”) and Rabbi Cardozo (Orthodox students are “unable to find spiritual satisfaction in the prevalent halakhic system”):

I recall an evening in Jerusalem with a group of baalei teshuvah, Jews who had converted to Orthodoxy. To them it all boiled down to one proposition: either God had given Jews the Torah on Mt. Sinai or had not. And they asked me to choose. I felt like I was being grilled. The emotional undertone of today’s Orthodoxy, at least as I’d encountered it, seemed excessively self-righteous and self-isolating. It came down to little things, customs, such as the refusal of Orthodox men to shake a woman’s hand. I knew there were reasons for it: if she were menstruating they could not touch her, nor could they ask her point blank. But it seemed to symbolize a self-enclosure, another barrier or boundary between men and women, and also between Jews and contemporary life. I had imagined that someone obeying God’s law would feel more joy. I didn’t always feel that joy. There often seemed a neurotic quality to the obedience, a Judaism by the numbers that I couldn’t relate to. (p. 22)  

This two-level manifestation of spiritual dissatisfaction with their Jewish experience—with Orthodox experience, in the case of R. Cardozo’s students, with an experience more diverse (rarely Orthodox, often synagogue-based, sometimes secular), in the case of Professor Kamenetz and the Jewish Buddhists—strongly suggests that the problem is not exclusive to one level or another of Jewish religious life, but may be endemic. Those of us who are most particularly concerned with the challenge to Orthodoxy may be disposed to find R. Cardozo’s dissatisfied students more disturbing than Professor Kamenetz’s Jewish Buddhists. But we would be unwise to dismiss with a cynical shrug the religious frustrations of those other young Jews who, having found their own Jewish experience spiritually impoverished, have turned to Asian religion to try to acquire “wings.”

I think of a line of Chaucer’s that expresses what I should consider an enlightened Orthodox perspective on the matter: “If gold can rust, then what should iron do?” What seems evident is that both the “gold” and the “iron” are suffering today from the same “rust.” But it is precisely because of the unique role that Orthodoxy inevitably plays in the whole of Jewish religious life that the Orthodox problem that R. Cardozo has identified is by no means an exclusively Orthodox problem.

II

We like to hope that problems of this importance have solutions. I pray that this one does, and that such solutions can be speedily discovered and effected. However, I have no intention (nor authority or knowledge) to propose them. What I want to do in the remainder of this article is to touch upon a few of the relevant insights in rabbinic thought, as I understand them—chiefly those of Maimonides—which may help us toward understanding and solution.

 Maimonides and Halakha               

We have noted the broad rabbinical consensus that the Torah is as concerned with our religious experience (our understanding, feelings, perceptions, intentions) as with our behavior (our fulfillment of the mizvoth and halakhot). The discussions and citations above with respect to the perception of frustrated spirituality in contemporary Orthodoxy and in Judaism more generally have all implied that in contemporary Orthodoxy, there has come to be an imbalance (if indeed there was ever an authentic as distinct from a theoretical balance) between these two essential elements of our avodah—that the dominating focus upon behavior or halakha has tended to diminish the role of experience or spirituality (to oversimplify a complex subject).

By virtue of his range and penetration, Maimonides (better known in the Orthodox world as the Rambam) has long enjoyed a unique eminence as both rabbi and philosopher. This notwithstanding, he remains controversial as he was in his own day and after. I would like to recall some of his ideas here not to suggest that they should be regarded as sacrosanct, but rather to propose that they offer valuable points of departure for anyone who wishes to address the issue of spirituality vis-à-vis the contemporary halakhic dominance in Orthodoxy.

Maimonides, as befits an intellect of his stature, seems to embrace both “sides” of the issue—or, better, to acknowledge the danger of a simplistic commitment to either. His Mishneh Torah is, of course, our premier codification of biblical mitzvoth and rabbinical halakhot—and yet, as we shall point out presently, he has harsh words in his other masterpiece, the Guide of the Perplexed (Moreh Nevukhim), for halakhic devotion that is unleavened by spiritual (his term is “intellectual”) “apprehension.”

 Sacrifice, Prayer, and Meditation

            A substantial portion of the Written Torah addresses the system of korbanot, or sacrifices, which is the Torah’s most conspicuous prescription of service (avodah) to God. In the Mishneh Torah, Maimonides organizes and elaborates the sacrificial laws in several extensive sections. In Jerusalem today, some rabbis and other devotees are even now preparing to resume the sacrifices when the Temple will be restored.

However, when Maimonides turns to this matter in the Guide (III.32), he implies unmistakably that the sacrificial system was not in fact God’s first “wish” for Israelite avodah, but rather a concession to human weakness, specifically the human reluctance to give up familiar ways. (Maimonides’ translator, Professor Shlomo Pines, renders the author’s Arabic for this divine accommodation with the arresting expression “wily graciousness.”) After citing examples of God’s accommodating the limitations of the human body, he addresses the subject of sacrifices:

Many things in our Law are due to something similar to this very governance. . . For a sudden transition from one opposite to another is impossible. And therefore man, according to his nature, is not capable of abandoning suddenly all to which he was accustomed. . . . and as at that time the way of life generally accepted and customary in the whole world and the universal service to which we were brought up consisted in offering various species of living beings in the temples in which images were set up. . . His wisdom did not require that he give us a Law prescribing the rejection, abandonment, and abolition of all these kinds of worship. For one could not then conceive the acceptance of [such a Law], considering the nature of man, which always likes that to which it is accustomed.

If this were not sufficiently jarring to conventional assumptions, Maimonides immediately follows it with an observation perhaps more startling:

At that time this would have been similar to the appearance of a prophet in these times [i.e., Maimonides’ own times] who, calling upon the people to worship God, would say, “God has given you a law forbidding you to pray to Him, to fast, to call upon Him for help in misfortune. Your worship should consist solely in meditation. . . .” Therefore He . . .  suffered the abovementioned kinds of worship to remain.

Professor Pines cites the eleventh-century Arab philosopher Avicenna as Maimonides’ probable source or influence with respect to meditation, and believes that Maimonides not only regarded prayer as superior to animal sacrifice, which seems likely enough, but that he indeed agreed with Avicenna that meditation was a superior form of worship to verbal prayer (p. cii). (Cf. Guide, III.51: “the worship peculiar to those who have apprehended the true realities” is “to set their thought to work on God alone, after they have achieved knowledge of Him.”) Maimonides’ text is subtle and is no doubt susceptible to multiple interpretations. What I suggest may be most relevant to us, if we address the matter cautiously, is this: in comparing kinds of avodah, of divine service or worship, Maimonides seems unmistakably to find least attractive—thus least “pleasing” to God— the kind of sacrifice that employs mainly human behavior, by contrast with those that invoke human understanding, intellect, mind, speech, and spirit, “that intellectual worship consisting in nearness to God and being in His presence.”

 Halakhic Observance and “Apprehending” God

We find the same principle, expanded to the scale of a human typology, at the beginning of that quartet of magisterial chapters which form the climax of the Guide. Maimonides calls this now-famous text a parable. It is a parable of man in search of God. In order to understand its relevance to our subject, we must recall all of it.

The ruler is in his palace, and all his subjects are partly within the city and partly outside the city. Of those who are within the city, some have turned their backs upon the ruler’s habitation, their faces being turned another way. Others seek to reach the ruler’s habitation, turn toward it, and desire to enter it and to stand before him, but up to now they have not yet seen the wall of the habitation. Some of those who seek to reach it have come up to the habitation and walk around it searching for its gate. Some of them have entered the gate and walk about in the antechambers. Some of them have entered the inner court of the habitation and have come to be with the king, in one and the same place with him, namely, in the ruler’s habitation. But their having come into the inner part of the habitation does not mean that they see the ruler or speak to him. For after their having come into the inner part of the habitation, it is indispensible that they should make another effort; then, they will be in the presence of the ruler, and see him from afar or nearby, or hear the ruler’s speech or speak to him. (III.51)

Part of this unforgettable parable is quite transparent. Those outside the city are barbarians “without the law,” who neither adhere to a religious tradition nor speculate for themselves. The city of God is not even a rumor to them. Lacking even a suspicion of the transcendent order, they lack authentic human identity—they are “lower than the rank of man but higher than the rank of the apes.” They are, we may suppose, akin in a way to the apikorsim of rabbinic typology. By contrast, all those within the city walls acknowledge and seek God, in one way or another, though some of these are fatally corrupted with error, and cannot even approach, let alone see, his habitation.

The final three classes of seekers are the ones who embody definitively Maimonides’ conceptions of avodah. First are those who are eager to encounter God but can’t even see the walls of his habitation. These are “the multitude of the adherents of the Law, I refer to the ignoramuses who observe the commandments.”

Next are those seekers who can indeed perceive the habitation but cannot find its gate, and so are condemned to walk around it. These are the masters of tradition who know what is considered to be correct but do not think for themselves. As Maimonides puts it: They “believe true opinions on the basis of traditional authority and study the law concerning the practices of divine service, but do not engage in speculation concerning the fundamental principles of religion and make no inquiry whatever regarding the rectification of belief.”

Those who succeed in gaining access to the ruler’s habitation, though they are lodged in rooms of varying nearness to the ruler himself, are Maimonides’ ideal of the autonomous seekers, who alone can approach the ruler though with an intimacy commensurate with the acuteness of their “apprehension.” Maimonides has encapsulated their search at the beginning of this chapter, where he promises that the chapter will explain

the worship as practiced by one who has apprehended the true realities peculiar only to Him after he has obtained an apprehension of what He is; and [this chapter] also guides him toward achieving this worship, which is the end of man, and makes known to him how providence watches over him in this habitation until he is brought over to the bundle of life.

If Maimonides had earlier been relatively circumspect in depreciating sacrifice by comparison with prayer and meditation as expressions of avodah (III.32), here he is startlingly forthright with respect to “observance” without intellectual-spiritual content, and declares categorically that these “ignoramuses who observe the commandments” but will never even glimpse God’s “habitation” constitute the mass of those who adhere to the Law. And the conformists who are content to think the approved thoughts get off only little better.

 “Intellectual Apprehension” of God, and “Knowledge” of His Existence

That which both classes of earnest but defective worshippers lack—the robotic observers of the Law and the merely conforming traditionalists—is what Maimonides often, in many places in the Guide, speaks of as our necessary, unending attempt at “intellectual apprehension” of God. We must not, I think, mistake what he means by “intellectual.” Maimonides is often called a “rationalist,” at times somewhat dismissively. But there is certainly nothing merely ratiocinative about his use of this word and the concept behind it. They appear throughout the Guide, from beginning to end. Thus in the first chapter, we learn that the human capacity for “intellectual apprehension” is nothing less than that “divine image” in which man was created. It is not a faculty simply for reasoning, in a narrow sense, but for perceiving, grasping, or apprehending, in a comprehensive sense. Maimonides’ own intellectual or spiritual “apprehensions” throughout the Guide—certainly not least in these final chapters—are dense, subtle, often mystical (however one understands that term), and they unfold at a very high level of intellectual and spiritual sophistication.

His peerless final chapter (III.54), in which the idea receives its apotheosis, gives us what are perhaps his ripest reflections on “spirituality” as autonomous seeking for apprehension of the Transcendent. The chapter is a kind of peroration, and at its climax is a celebrated text from Jeremiah (9:22–23):

Thus saith the Lord: Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches; but let him that glories glory in this, that he understands and knows Me.

As Maimonides paraphrases this verse, even the wisdom of the moral virtues in which the wise man glories—along, of course, with lesser goods—stands below the highest and only unqualified hokhmah, which is “apprehension of Him.” But the same is true, he contends, of the mizvoth and halakhot themselves—thus ringing a significant variation on what we have found him affirming in his parable of the seekers, regarding the “multitude of the adherents of the Law”:

[A]ll the actions prescribed by the Law—I refer to the various species of worship and also the moral habits that are useful to all people in their mutual dealings—. . . all this is not to be compared with this ultimate end and does not equal it, being but preparations made for sake of this end.

 This Maimonidean bombshell is bound to dismay at least as many as it thrills. But coming from so authentic a “halakhic man” as Rambam, who was also Maimonides the philosopher, it may help to illuminate the link between spirituality and halakha. In the last sentence of his book, Maimonides (alluding to the text from Jeremiah that he has just quoted) points the direction:

It is clear that the perfection of man that may truly be gloried in is the one acquired by him who has achieved, in a measure corresponding to his capacity, apprehension of Him. . . . The way of life of such an individual, after he has achieved this apprehension [italics mine], will always have in view loving-kindness, righteousness, and judgment, through assimilation to His actions, may He be exalted. . . .

But according to Maimonides, I take it, we cannot “apprehend” that of whose existence we are not convinced. If the avodah of “apprehension” of God is the way to our own perfection, and in fact (as he implies elsewhere) to that intersection with the Eternal we call olam haBa, then a prior “knowledge” of the necessity of God’s existence or being is its cognitive sine qua non, the cornerstone of our understanding, the foundation of our hokhmah. (Maimonides, like Rav Abraham Isaac Kook centuries later, is reluctant even to ascribe so abstract but, in his view, mundane an attribute as existence to God.) In his articulation of the 613 mizvoth, Maimonides starts by affirming: “The first of the positive commandments is to know that there is a God.” We must know that there is a God before we can apprehend the God.

The first page of the Mishneh Torah addresses our relation to God with a philosophically austere expression of this same cognitive formula: “The foundation of all foundations and the pillar of wisdom is to know (leida’) that there is a Primary Reality (Matsui Rishon) who brought into being all existence”(Yesodei haTorah I.1).

How to try to fulfill this primary Torah mitzvah to know of God’s being, and then the corollary obligation (in Maimonides’ terms) to apprehend God, is not self-evident. We look to the Torah as God’s revealed Truth; but like our ancestors of the twelfth century, when we do this we cannot be sure of either comprehension or agreement.

 I suggest that Maimonides’ insights into these vitally important matters have not lost their usefulness.

 Maimonides on Man, God, and Torah

Three of these insights in particular seem to me immensely relevant to the challenges, both moral and spiritual, that we have seen imputed to contemporary Orthodoxy. First, there are the individual, autonomous “intellectual” ways we should, according to Maimonides, try to relate to God. The unquestioned importance of observing the formal halakhic requirements of the Law notwithstanding, fulfillment of our lives as humans and Jews requires that we personally know the existence of (not only believe in), and then apprehend (not only obey), God. Without this our devotion to halakha is fatally incomplete. No idea in the Guide of the Perplexed is more central or more pervasive. It is, I think, at the core of what we now mean by spirituality. In this context, Maimonides’ evident preference for prayer and meditation as expressions of avodah is altogether comprehensible.   

            Then, too, there is Maimonides’ very conception (or conceptions) of God. Some of his most provocative and demanding chapters are about the divine nature. For his own reasons, he himself almost invariably uses the Torah’s imagery and language of super-monarchical personification, although he explains at length that God’s nature and attributes are altogether beyond human comprehension. He reminds us many times that the Torah’s personifications of God are instances of its “speaking in the language of men,” for the benefit of those whose thinking cannot rise above this language. He himself quite decisively (and possibly a little ironically) puts aside the conventional imagery in that extraordinarily interesting opening of the Mishneh Torah, which we have already quoted, where he invokes the “Primary Reality (Matsui Rishon) that brought into being all existence.” He thus seems to distance himself at a critical moment from the familiar encrustation of personifications, images, and metaphors, numinous and venerated and usually conceived literally, which in his day, for at least a few, had evidently already become encumbrances (and have certainly, in our own day, become so for many more, as Rav Kook acknowledges in some of his most luminous pages). Perhaps it is not too much to say that Maimonides thus assists—even authorizes—our individual cognitive capability, our “intellectual apprehension,” our meditative faculty, to lead our individual sensibilities toward those personal intimations of Transcendent Reality in which he believes our fullest humanity and our most authentic Torah devotion lies.

Finally, there is Torah itself, the ordained source—more precisely, the register—of God’s mizvoth and halakhot, and thus at the core of historic Judaism, most assuredly of Orthodox Judaism. Maimonides devotes over a third of the Guide to explaining that the Torah’s innumerable ascriptions to God of “corporeality,” of a formal constitution parallel to the human, are not to be understood literally, that they are concessions, in “the language of men,” to the needs of those who cannot otherwise conceive of “Primary Reality.” Although the traditional divine personification remains for many a stumbling block and a perplexity, Maimonides and like-minded thinkers did eventually win their battle against divine corporeality.

       For contemporary seekers of spirituality, however, Torah perplexities are at least as likely to be related to crime and punishment—to the range of approved human behavior and prescribed penalties for infraction. What are we to do when the Written Torah authorizes or forbids behavior in ways that our moral apprehension—our “inner voice”—rejects? Especially when the Written Torah prescribes the punishment of death in contexts which may seem to us morally unacceptable—when, in short, halakha seems at odds with morality?

      We have already encountered Maimonides’ original, if somewhat equivocal, attitude toward animal sacrifice: that its authorization may have been from the start a divine concession to our human weakness for the familiar, and thus in itself “less pleasing” to God than prayer and meditation. But never, I believe, in either the Guide or the Mishneh Torah, does Maimonides hint that he deplores its original institution, whether for reasons of spiritual or aesthetic fitness, cruelty, or any other, nor that he would deplore its eventual restoration. Though the sacrifices may be a concession, they are also a mitzvah, a law. (Nevertheless, most contemporary Jews, including I suspect large numbers of Modern Orthodox, would be unenthusiastic for their return.) But still, Maimonides’ unmistakable preference for prayer and meditation—a preference that he in effect also ascribes to God—seems to me evidence of a critical attitude toward the Written Law, founded, one may surmise, upon his own moral and aesthetic perceptions, his personal “intellectual apprehension.”    

      If there is no unequivocally moral component in Maimonides’ apparent misgivings about korbanot, this may not be the case with respect to his rejection of the Torah’s unqualified command that when they are able, the Israelites must exterminate without exception, and irrespective of age, all the Canaanites (Deut. 7:1-2, 7:16, 20:15–18) and all the Amalekites (Deut. 25:19). Though hedged with a multitude of qualifications, his contrary conclusion is clear enough: if these arch-enemies should accept “a peaceful settlement” (however ungentle), even the Amalekites and Canaanites may live. (Cf. Hilkhot Melakhim 6:4–6.)

In thus nullifying the Written Torah’s demand for total proscription of these peoples, on account of their exceptionally destructive offenses and presumed mortal dangers, Maimonides is following in part a certain few midrashic and talmudic texts. “Sifrei and other halakhic sources reason that since the express purpose of the law is to prevent the Canaanites from influencing the Israelites. . .if they abandoned their paganism and accepted the moral standards of the Noahide laws they were to be spared” (Jeffrey Tigay, JPS Torah Commentary: Deuteronomy, 472). Like Maimonides’ apparent discomfort with animal sacrifice, the Oral Torah’s finding such a way to save Canaanite lives seems to suggest a critique (to which Maimonides adheres) of the Written text’s plain sense. “[I]t is clear. . . that Deuteronomy’s demand for proscription of the Canaanites is indeed unconditional.. The rabbis’ rejection of this view is a reflection of their own sensibilities” (Ibid., 472).

Tigay’s explanation appears to contradict the usual rabbinical principle that the Oral Torah’s role vis-à-vis the Written is to amplify and clarify. What of the Amalekites? I know of no text in the Oral Torah which extends to them the option to save their lives by accepting a “peaceful settlement,” with all that is thus entailed. Among the later rabbis, Maimonides seems unique in so extending it. I suggest that to have done so, to have once again revealed (and this time without a midrashic source) a critical attitude toward the Written Law, Maimonides has given us another reflection of his own moral sensibility.

  Dynamic Halakha and Ethical Insights

When, a number of years ago, I first encountered Rabbi Robert Gordis’ well-known article “A Dynamic Halakhah: Principles and Procedures of Jewish Law” (Judaism, Summer 1979), I was excited by what it suggested about the complex relation between Written Torah and Oral Torah. (“Dynamic” seems to me an excellent epithet.) Some years later, I found Rabbi Eliezer Berkovits equally suggestive, and for the same reason. (In particular, see his article, “The Nature and Function of Jewish Law,” reprinted in his Essential Essays on Judaism.). Other writers in these 30 years have developed the same theme, which is precisely relevant to the imputed confrontation of the Written Law with spirituality. The theme is this: Despite assertions that it is “unchanging,” rabbinical interpretation of Torah Law has always been dynamic and responsive to rabbinical moral sensibilities.

[There is] clear evidence of growth and development in the Halakha because of new ethical insights and attitudes that represent movement beyond earlier positions. In these instances the Halakha did not hesitate to establish new legal norms, not local or temporary in character, but universally and permanently binding. (Gordis, 270; italics in the original)

Rabbi Gordis writes of “the dynamic character of the ethical consciousness of the Sages and . . . their unremitting effort to interpret the Torah in the light of their ethical insights” (Idem.). Rabbis Gordis and Berkovits, as well as others, have presented evidence that the sages of the Oral Torah regularly interpreted the Written Law so as to diminish judicial execution. Everyone knows about their institution of the requirement for witnesses and warnings. The reluctance of Rabbi Akiva to countenance any executions at all is well known. Equally familiar are the halakhic stratagems that in effect nullified the biblical mizvoth to execute the “stubborn and rebellious son” and to exterminate the “city led astray to idol worship.” There was, says Rabbi Berkovits, among the rabbis of the halakha a prevailing “tension between the written law and the living conscience” (73). “Obviously,” notes Rabbi Gordis, “the Law of God could not be inferior to the conscience of men” (272).

      If we accept this reasoning, it would seem to follow, then, that when the rabbis of the Mishna find ways to void (in effect) the unqualified Scriptural proscription of the Canaanites, and when Maimonides does the same with regard to the Amalekites, they are invoking their own consciences, and implying thereby that these “inner voices” too are in their own way miSinai.

 The Semantic Model

       There may seem to be a contradiction between this concept of a progressively unfolding halakha and the axiomatic rabbinical principle, enshrined in the Torah itself, that the Torah is definitive and unchanging. We read in Maimonides’ own Principles of Faith:

The Ninth Fundamental Principle is the authenticity of the Torah, i.e., that this Torah was precisely transcribed from God and no one else. To the Torah, Oral and Written, nothing must be added nor anything taken from it, as it is said, “You must neither add nor detract” (Deut. 13:1).

What role in such a Torah is there for personal sensibilities, consciences, and inner voices? Extrapolating a little, what place is there for “spirituality” in a religion founded upon Law? Fortunately, the rabbinical concept of the Oral Law is wondrously flexible and sensitive to disagreement among qualified disputants. (Cf. Isadore Twersky, A Maimonides Reader, 13–14.) The functions of rabbinical amplification and clarification embrace a wider range of possibilities than we might expect from Maimonides’ categorical Ninth Principle—but for which his own practice, as we have seen, might well have prepared us. And we have observed that among Maimonides’ dominating themes is his insistence that our individual understanding and apprehension of Transcendent Truth takes precedence for us over halakhic observance per se, and indeed over halakha itself, though these remain altogether essential. In this way he may have provided us with tools for helping resolve the conflicts in Modern Orthodox life between Law and spirituality.

And in the same spirit, I suggest a conceptual analogy for helping clarify how we can reconcile our “unchanging” Law with the autonomy and spontaneity of our experiences and apprehensions.

One of the basic principles of semantics is semantic contamination. According to this principle, a “message” sent by A to B is almost always vulnerable to errors of one kind or another between leaving A and arriving at B. There might, for instance, be static in a radio transmission; a paper message might be damaged by the elements; an email message might be distorted by a computer glitch; and so forth. More germane would be a situation in which the recipient failed to understand the message correctly because of intellectual or cultural limitations, and was obliged therefore to guess at some of its content. (We may also imagine a situation, less likely perhaps, where the recipient, for reasons of intellect, culture, or even perceived self-interest, willfully distorted the message.) And if the transmission of the message occurs not only in space but in time, we can easily imagine another range of potential dangers to accuracy of reception and comprehension. These matters are well-known to the historian, and especially to the philologist; such sciences as textual criticism are founded upon them.  

Without being drawn too near the quicksand of divisive theological speculation, let us think of the truths of Torah as messages, in this semantic sense—in the language of Torah itself, messages from God, through Moses, to us. An essential corollary of any such conception is, of course, as Maimonides registers in his Ninth Principle, that “messages” coming from Transcendent Reality are true and definitive. Yet by the time, so to say, that they have reached us (for the reasons I’ve sketched out, and for others that will readily come to mind) many or most of them may have been “contaminated,” or may have reached us incomplete. It may even be that no one’s “hearing,” even that of the most eminent prophets, is ever quite up to comprehending the Transcendent message. Thus the Written Torah required, and requires, to be supplemented by the Oral, and the Oral by the most eminent sages of the generations. Emphasizing one aspect of this requirement, Rabbi Eliezer Berkovits addresses the matter with exceptional eloquence:

Thus, the Oral Torah as halakha redeems the Written Torah from the prison of its generality and “humanizes” it. The written law longs for this, its redemption, by the Oral Torah. That is why God rejoices when he is defeated by his children. Such defeat is his victory. (p. 97)                  

May we imagine, extending Rabbi Berkovits’ celebrated talmudic allusion, that God also rejoices whenever his children use their unique faculties of spirit and perception, of instinct and conviction, to reach beyond halakha, beyond even our only partially understood Torah, to that direct and personal “intellectual apprehension” of Matsui Rishon in which Maimonides finds our human fulfillment?