National Scholar Updates

“But We Are Guilty for Our Daughters”: Lessons Learned from the History of Jewish Girls’ Education in Germany and Eastern Europe in the Nineteenth Century

by Laura Shaw Frank

(Laura Shaw Frank is a doctoral student in Modern Jewish History at the University of Maryland, College Park.  She is also on the Judaics and Jewish History Faculties at the Beth Tfiloh Dahan Community High School in Baltimore, Maryland.  A former corporate litigator, Laura holds degrees from Columbia College and Columbia University School of Law.) 

            The nineteenth century witnessed radical transformation in the area of girls’ education. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, formal education for Jewish girls, whether in Jewish religious studies or secular studies, was virtually non-existent in both Germany and Eastern Europe. Over the following century, the situation saw major changes in both locales. By the mid-nineteenth century, formal education—both secular and religious—for Jewish girls was nearly universal in Germany. By the dawn of the twentieth century, significant numbers of Jewish girls in Eastern Europe were enrolled in modern schools and receiving secular, but not religious, educations. The process of transformation that occurred throughout the nineteenth century with respect to girls’ education was similar in certain ways in Central and Eastern Europe, but in other ways it was profoundly different. Although both German and Eastern European Jews began educating their daughters during this time, the point of time at which they began to do so, their reasons for doing so, the type of education they chose to give the girls, and the Jewish communal reaction to, and involvement with, their schooling differed significantly.  These differences are important, not simply as lessons in Jewish history, but as models that continue to play out in the way the Orthodox Jewish community addresses the changing status of girls and women in their surrounding societies. 

In Germany, where Jews were more accepted into German society and consequently adopted certain values and norms of that society, the Jewish communal attitude toward both reform of Judaism and gender roles in society led to the earlier development of Jewish education for girls. However, in Eastern Europe, where Jews were less integrated into society, and where the external society remained less modernized than that of Germany, Jews largely viewed religious Judaism as an alternative to modernity, not a system that could itself engage in a process of modernization. Due to this societal structure, girls’ education remained an enterprise focused almost entirely on secular studies, leaving Eastern European Jewish women largely lacking in Jewish knowledge. It was not until the era of the First World War that significant numbers of Eastern European Jewish girls began receiving a formal Jewish education.

            In the pre-modern era, the only type of formal education received by Jewish children throughout Europe was Jewish education. As Jews lived in corporate Jewish communities, virtually cut off from the societies that surrounded them, there was no need for secular studies.  Furthermore, the only children who received that education were male children. A prominent opinion in the Talmud stated that teaching a woman Torah was equivalent to teaching her tiflut, licentiousness. Thus, girls’ education consisted of learning at their mothers’ skirts the knowledge they needed to run a Jewish household. Boys, on the other hand, attended heder beginning at age three, and many continued on to study in yeshiva until their teenage years. The beginnings of the lifting of Jewish legal infirmities and the advent of the Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment in Germany, changed this reality.

Girls’ Education in Germany

            In response to the seventeenth-century secular Enlightenment, which brought values of reason, rationalism, and secularization to Western Europe, the Jewish community of Western Europe engaged in its own enlightenment, called the Haskalah.[1] The movement, born in the late seventeenth century, advocated integration with, and acculturation to, the surrounding gentile society, as well as the injection of rationalism and intellectualism to the Jewish religion. The father of the Haskalah, Moses Mendelssohn, believed that Judaism was a faith of reason, containing eternal truths. It should not be coercive and was not monolithic. Mendelssohn strongly identified with German culture and language. At the same time, he remained a loyal Jew who believed in the binding nature of Jewish law. The writings of Mendelssohn and other German maskilim, or proponents of Enlightenment ideas, set the stage in the German Jewish community for the religious reform movements of the nineteenth century by opening the philosophical possibility for change and modernization within the Jewish religion.

            Beginning in the early nineteenth century, the German states engaged in various degrees of emancipation of their Jewish populations. This improvement in the legal status of Jews led to their greater integration into surrounding society and a move away from traditional Jewish communal authority. Until this time, the authority of the rabbinate was hegemonic in the Jewish community. In a non-integrated Jewish community, the rabbinate controlled all legal decisions—both religious and secular—for the members of the Jewish community. Jewish religious courts issued rulings that were controlling in their communities. However, once emancipation took place, secular governments wanted secular state-run courts to dictate the law to all citizens of the state. The power of religious courts dropped dramatically and the rabbinate lost its ability to exert its authority over all members of the Jewish community. Rabbinic rulings were no longer binding on all Jews, but only on those Jews who chose to be bound by them. This drop in traditional rabbinic authority opened the door for religious reform.

            Hand-in-hand with emancipation and the weakening of Jewish communal bonds came assimilation and secularization of the Jewish population in Germany. Jews integrated into the surrounding society economically, culturally, and even socially. A drastic move away from traditional observance of Jewish law occurred.

            At the same time, the German states began engaging in varying degrees of oversight of the rabbinic profession. An 1812 Prussian law required rabbis to prove that they finished a three-year course in the study of philosophy. Rabbis were required to undergo examination to prove competency in philosophy. Yeshivot that would not comply with this requirement of secular study were forced to close. This change in rabbinic education, albeit imposed externally by the state, began a process of modernization of the rabbinate that continued throughout the nineteenth century. This oversight went together with a meteoric rise in the importance of university education in Germany. Humanistic liberal education, a result of the secular Enlightenment, had a powerful effect on the Jewish community, and Jews increasingly wanted their rabbinic leadership to have extensive secular education in addition to Jewish knowledge.

            The combination of these societal and political forces with Haskalah philosophy led to efforts toward religious reform in the Jewish community. Initial religious reforms were aesthetic and related to decorum, not ideological in nature. Reformers wanted to make Judaism more appealing to the assimilating masses, so they sought to make Jewish prayer services more dignified and formal to resemble the current fashions in German Protestant churches. The most common reforms included the introduction of sermons given in German on moral rather than legalistic topics, choirs to sing during synagogue services, requirements of formal attire for both clergy and congregants in synagogue, and the advent of confirmation ceremonies either replacing, or in addition to, bar mitzvah ceremonies. These religious reforms had an enormous impact on the development of Jewish girls’ religious education in Germany.

            As noted above, formal education for Jewish girls, whether secular or religious, was virtually non-existent in Germany prior to the late eighteenth century. As Mordechai Eliav describes in his seminal work on Jewish education in Germany in the era of Haskalah and Emancipation,[2] there is a record of a handful of hederim, or traditional Jewish schools, that admitted girls as well as a handful of hederim that were solely for girls, but these were few and far between. Such hederim taught Hebrew reading, how to pray, reading and translating of the Pentateuch into the vernacular and knowledge of key Jewish laws. A greater number of Jewish girls, albeit only those from wealthier backgrounds, received at least a rudimentary secular education beginning in the seventeenth century. Wealthy German Jews hired private tutors to teach their daughters languages, mathematics, and music, recognizing that such subjects would be important for the girls’ future role as mistresses of the home. Such education was even supported by some in the rabbinical establishment. Rabbi Yonah Lendsofer from Prague, for example, wrote that girls should be taught to read in German and that fathers should aim to marry their sons to women who were literate in German. At the same time, rabbis continued to object to the teaching of Torah to girls. Rabbi Y. Watzler, for example, instructed his followers not to teach girls Hebrew and Bible, but only to give them enough Jewish education so that they could read the prayerbook. He gave this ruling although he knew that girls were being taught German and foreign languages such as French.[3]

            Over the course of the eighteenth century, traditional Jewish education for girls, minimal to begin with, continued to diminish. With the advent of the Haskalah, the tendency of wealthy Jews to hire tutors to give their daughters a secular education grew in response to similar practices in the general society. Maskilim were supportive of the practice of giving girls a good secular education. Moses Mendelssohn’s daughters studied French and music. Initially, the maskilim did not recognize the danger of educating girls only in secular subjects. In 1786, certain maskilim even mentioned with special pride that Jewish girls could speak fluent and elegant German but did not know Hebrew. However, within a short number of years, the results of the maskilic emphasis on German and not Jewish education for girls became clear. Girls had little to no Jewish knowledge. They could not read the prayer book and were ignorant of their role in Judaism. As one maskil wrote in the pages of the Haskalah journal haMeasef, “Instead of dedicating their souls on Sabbaths and festivals to the words of a Living God, they read worthless books and salacious love stories in foreign languages which arouse their desires and corrupt their souls.”[4]

It was at this time, during the late eighteenth century, that discussion regarding the need for educational reform in the German Jewish community began. Education reform had been a topic of discussion in general German society since the mid-eighteenth century. The professionalization of teaching and the beginning of a theory of pedagogy influenced the development of a modernized schooling system, which included classes divided by age, standardized school books, and a demand to teach girls like boys. In response to changes in education in the surrounding society as well as dissatisfaction among Jewish youth with their education, maskilim argued that Jewish studies needed to be conveyed differently than they had traditionally been. They felt that, rather than the intensive Bible and Talmudic studies taking place in boys hederim and yeshivot, and rather than the solely secular studies enjoyed by only wealthy Jewish girls, Jewish children needed a modern Jewish education that would address the needs of the times. Such an education would be based upon a catechism-style curriculum, the way Christian children were taught. In addition, they recommended that Jewish education culminate in a confirmation ceremony similar to that used in Protestant churches.

In the last years of the eighteenth century and the first decade of the nineteenth century, schools began to be established by maskilim and reformers for the purpose of giving poor children in the Jewish community both a secular and a Jewish education.[5] One example of such a school was the consistorial school founded in Cassel in 1809. The consistory intended that the school, serving poor Jewish boys, provide a model for other elementary schools to be established throughout Westphalia. The Jewish education received by these boys was meant to transmit the “principles and obligations” of Judaism rather than to concentrate on text-based study.[6]

During this same period, confirmation ceremonies took hold and became accepted in the reform-minded sector of the Jewish community. The first known confirmation ceremony, which was only for boys, took place in 1803 in Dessau. The first confirmation ceremony to include girls took place in 1814 in Berlin.[7] From this point forward, confirmation ceremonies became more and more widespread in the Reform Jewish community of Germany. Such ceremonies more often than not included girls, and the classes in preparation for them thus also had to include girls. Thus, the adoption of the confirmation ceremony led to an increase in girls’ education in the German Jewish community.

Part and parcel of the discussion of the maskilim regarding educational reform was a discussion specifically about education for girls. One Berlin maskil, David Friedlander, described at length the neglect of religious or moral education for girls. He emphasized that in addition to the study of the German language, girls needed to have religious instruction in order to help prepare them for their responsibilities “as the not less important half of the human race.”[8] Maskilim began to establish schools to educate Jewish girls. Initially, as it was with boys, these schools were aimed at poor Jewish girls whose parents could not afford private tutoring in the home. The hope of the maskilim was that ultimately such schools would serve the daughters of the wealthy as well, but in most cases, the schools were unable to shake their reputation of being schools for the poor, so wealthy girls stayed away. The first such school was established in 1797 in Breslau. The girls in the school studied an integrated Jewish and secular curriculum, including catechism-style religious studies, Hebrew and German.

In the next twenty-five years, other similar girls’ schools were established in many German cities, including Hamburg, Dessau, Berlin, Koenigsberg, and Frankfurt. The curriculum of each of these schools varied slightly, but for the most part, they all included religious instruction in the catechism style, reading and writing in German, a small amount of Hebrew, mathematics, literature, and fine handiwork. Some of the schools included additional subjects as part of their curriculum, among which were Yiddish writing, prayer, Jewish history, and Bible. Schools that catered more to poorer girls had more of a focus on vocational training, while those that catered to the wealthy emphasized the arts and foreign languages, knowledge of which would be expected of an upper-class German young woman.

By the 1830s, it was widely accepted throughout the maskilic and Reform Jewish community in Germany that Jewish girls attended school, whether single-sex or coeducational. Girls’ education was not seen as significantly less important than that of boys. By the mid-nineteenth century, education for girls from this sector of the Jewish community was virtually universal in Germany. Most girls were enrolled in Jewish community schools that gave them a basic, if somewhat rudimentary Jewish education in addition to a secular education.[9] However, a significant sector of the German Jewish community still had not grappled with the issue of girls’ education—the Orthodox community.

Orthodox Judaism did not exist as a movement prior to the birth of Reform. Due to the widespread changes brought upon the Jewish community by Reform thinkers, traditional-minded Jews felt that the traditional observance of Judaism was threatened. They reacted to this threat by engaging in several innovations, including leaving the unified Jewish community to create separate Orthodox institutions and adopting the strictest standards with respect to religious commandments and customs. These innovations were meant to create an environment that existed separate and apart from the Reform Jewish community and the surrounding society in order to keep modernity at bay and tradition vibrant. A key innovation embraced by the Orthodox community in terms of impact on girls’ education was its heightened suspicion of modern culture, including secular education and schooling for girls. Orthodox girls did not participate in the Reformers’ Jewish schools that were common in Germany by the mid-nineteenth century. Rather, they continued to be tutored at home, if they received any education at all.

Even Orthodoxy, however, was not monolithic in its beliefs and practices. A reform-minded stream of Orthodoxy later called Neo-Orthodoxy was founded by Rabbi Samson Rafael Hirsch in the mid-nineteenth century. Hirsch, the rabbi of the Orthodox community of Frankfurt am Main, espoused a philosophy of Torah im derekh erets, Torah study together with participation in the modern world.  One of Hirsch’s most significant legacies was his influence on girls’ education within the Orthodox sphere. Indeed, as Mordechai Breuer, a scholar of the Orthodox movement in Germany wrote, “The most significant and far-reaching success of Orthodox education proved to be the complete reorganization of education for girls.”[10]

Girls’ education was a charged topic for Orthodox Jews. As reformers built a system of elementary and secondary schools for girls that taught both Judaic and secular studies, Orthodox Jews were fearful. Reform leaders had made it clear that the reasoning behind such schools was not only the education of women, but also women’s social equality and the eradication of the denial of their rights under Jewish law. These concepts were dangerous to the Orthodox mindset. However, opposing girls’ religious education, Orthodox leaders realized, was potentially even more dangerous. They noticed that the lack of Jewish education led girls to immerse themselves in the secular world and its general education and culture. This led to their resenting Judaism and possibly assimilating out of the Jewish community. Thus, Orthodoxy had to create a rubric for Jewish girls’ education in order to keep their girls Jewishly affiliated. Without being given answers to their existential questions about Judaism, simple adherence to the faith of their parents would fall by the wayside. At the same time, changes in Orthodox synagogue practices in response to Reform also heightened the need for girls’ education. The sermon in the vernacular that became widespread in Neo-Orthodox synagogues at this time led to increased synagogue attendance on the part of women. Once they were able to understand and enjoy what the rabbi spoke about, they wanted the education to fill out their knowledge.

Thus, rather than opposing girls’ education, German Orthodox Jews embraced it, but reshaped it to suit their specific needs. Orthodox thinkers quickly began to portray girls’ education as having “intrinsic religious value,” and as being critical to the transmission of tradition to the next generation.[11] Adopting from the surrounding society’s bourgeois cult of domesticity, Hirsch argued that women were the more moral sex, and had a critical position as mistress of the home, responsible for their children’s loyalty to Jewish tradition.[12] Der Israelit, the Orthodox community’s newspaper, cried out that “Our mothers have to save Judaism as in biblical times.” Even the developing world of Orthodox fiction addressed the issue of girls’ education. Sara Hirsch Guggenheim, the daughter of Samson Rafael Hirsch, published a number of stories in the Orthodox journal Jeschurun, in which a woman’s lack of Jewish education led to her downfall.[13] Such a widespread philosophy led to significant improvement in Orthodox girls’ education.

Hirsch’s first foray into creating a modern school for the education of Orthodox Jewish girls came with the founding of his elementary school in Frankfurt in 1853. Not meant only for poor children, this school was meant to compete with the prestigious Philanthropin School. Hirsch wanted to put the ideology of education and culture into a school that would also have a strong Jewish component. The school admitted girls from the beginning, albeit in separate classes from the boys. Hirsch’s son, Mendel Hirsch went on to create a Hirschian secondary school in Frankfurt. Mendel Hirsch believed that religious instruction should be as similar as possible for boys and girls. He theorized that “doing” was more important than “knowing” with respect to both sexes’ relationship to Judaism. He thus focused the curriculum in his secondary school on education regarding religious duties. This led to greater equality of education between the sexes by lessening the Talmud instruction received by the boys, and increasing the Bible instruction received by the girls.[14] At the founding of this school, there were not sufficient pupils to hold separate sex classes, so boys and girls studied in a coeducational environment, a particularly unusual circumstance for Orthodox society of the time. However, as soon as the student body was sufficiently large, the boys and girls were separated.[15]

Other Orthodox schools for girls were established in Hamburg and Mainz in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Additionally, supplementary educational models were created in certain places to provide both boys and girls with a Jewish education separate and apart from their general schooling. One such school was founded by the Neo-Orthodox rabbi Azriel Hildesheimer in Berlin in 1869. Hildesheimer found that 25 percent of Jewish children in Berlin were not receiving any Jewish education whatsoever. He began a co-ed supplementary school in his synagogue, Congregation Adass-Isroel, with separate classes for boys and girls. Hildesheimer felt very strongly about girls’ education, stating that the prevailing notion that superficial religious knowledge was sufficient for Jewish girls was wrong and unacceptable. Like Hirsch, he also believed that the Jewish woman was the central figure in the Jewish home, and she thus needed a deep knowledge of Judaism in order to fulfill her role. The girls’ curriculum in Hildesheimer’s school took into account differences in women’s and men’s roles and responsibilities in Orthodox Jewish society. Girls had added responsibilities that boys did not, including helping out with chores at home and attending to their music and arts education. Thus, girls only had two-thirds of the weekly study hours of boys. However, even in their more limited curricular time, girls studied Hebrew language, Bible, and Jewish law and customs. Beginning in the 1870–1871 academic year, they also studied Ethics of the Fathers, which was a portion of the Oral Law—an area of Jewish study generally forbidden to women. Like the Hirsches, Hildesheimer’s objectives were to prepare girls for occupying a central position in the Jewish household and for imbuing their homes with a “true religious spirit.”[16]

Orthodox education of girls in Germany had enormous impact on the Orthodox community. Female graduates of Hirschian-style schools were well-educated both secularly and Jewishly, and because of their knowledge of Judaism, were often stricter in religious observance than their own mothers. The German Orthodox community was proud of its accomplishments with respect to girls’ education, especially when those accomplishments were laid side-by-side with the situation of girls’ education in Eastern Europe. “As superior as the average Eastern European Jewish man was to his Western European Jewish acquaintance in the knowledge of Torah, so the Orthodox woman, educated in Germany, often outdid her acquaintance from Eastern Europe.”[17]

Girls’ Education in Eastern Europe

            The structure of the Eastern European Jewish community and the way the community interacted with the surrounding gentile society had a deep impact on the way girls’ education developed there. Unlike Western Europe, Eastern Europe did not emancipate its Jews until the twentieth century. The greater legal and political disabilities suffered by the Jewish community of Eastern Europe led to its being more separate and traditional in nature than its counterpart in Germany. Although individual Jews could, and often did, assimilate into secular society, the community as a whole remained wedded to traditional observance. As historian Paula Hyman points out, “In the Russian Empire of the late nineteenth century, the process of assimilation can best be described as secularization that avoided both denationalization and religious reform.”[18]

The option for religious reform did not exist to any significant degree in the Eastern European context due to a confluence of circumstances. Since the Jewish community was not integrated into the general surrounding society, the external society was unable to significantly influence Jewish religious practices as occurred in Germany. Additionally, since the external society itself did not engage in religious reform, whatever impact it might have had on the Jewish community did not occur. As Hyman argues, whereas Jews in Western Europe assimilated just as Jews in Eastern Europe did, “the importance assigned religious sentiment in the dominant bourgeois cultures of Western societies encouraged the fashioning of modern versions of Judaism that officially submerged Jewish ethnicity.” In Eastern Europe, there was no pressure as there was in Western Europe “to reform their religion and assert an identity based upon it alone.”[19] Thus, when the Haskalah occurred in Eastern Europe, decades later than it did in Germany, it did not initiate a process of religious reform; rather, it encouraged a process of Jewish assimilation.[20]

Without religious reform, the education of Jewish girls ended up in a strange position. The Eastern European Jewish community continued to abide by traditional prohibitions against teaching girls Torah, thus leaving them almost entirely without Jewish education. On the other hand, the influence of secular society on individual Jews led to increased secular education for Jewish girls. The dichotomy of the secularly well-educated and Jewishly ignorant woman proved to be a difficult one for both the women and the Jewish community to integrate.

            It is important to note at the outset, that as historian Shaul Stampfer has argued, there is a widely held misconception that Eastern European Jewish women were entirely lacking in Jewish knowledge. Although widespread formal schooling in Jewish subjects did not exist for girls in Eastern Europe until the twentieth century, Stampfer cogently points out that many girls did receive some Jewish education through a variety of means. First of all, hederim for girls did exist in small numbers. One such heder was located in Tyszowce and the girls were taught by an elderly widow called “Binele the rebetzin.” The girls in the Tyszowce girls’ heder studied the siddur, reading and writing Yiddish, arithmetic, writing addresses in Russian (useful for the girls’ future role as breadwinners for their families), and sewing. Additionally, some girls, usually those from a wealthier background, were taught at home, either by their mothers or by a learned woman tutor. Sometimes, girls would attend a boys’ heder, although once basic reading skills were mastered, boys moved on to higher Jewish education and girls dropped out. Some girls learned to read Yiddish on their own and obtained Jewish knowledge through the reading of Yiddish religious texts such as Tzeina U’Reina, a Yiddish collection of Bible stories and commentary for women.[21]

            Stampfer acknowledges that both men’s method of learning (in a communally sanctioned school setting) and the content of what they learned (Jewish religious texts in Hebrew) were more prestigious in Eastern European Jewish culture than how and what women learned. He argues, however, that this system was actually appropriate for the realities of this society. Eastern European Jewish women typically worked outside the home in addition to having a high birthrate and a correspondingly high amount of housework. If they were expected by societal norms to engage in study of difficult Hebrew texts, the situation would have simply maximized frustration for them. As Stampfer argues, “Lack of ‘school education’ was part of a system that functioned to condition women to accept their role in the family and society with a minimum of conflict—just as the fact that most men were unlearned (and knew it!) was one of the ways that led them to accept communal authority.”[22]

            Historian Iris Parush, in her groundbreaking work “Reading Jewish Women,” is critical of Stampfer’s conclusions. She points out that Stampfer proposes what she calls a “functionalist and harmonicist” account to explain the differences in education of boys and girls in Eastern Europe that allowed women to “identify with their gender roles and reconcile themselves to their marginality.” Parush argues that this argument is problematic because there are many ways that a society could structure itself to keep frustration among its members low. Stampfer’s argument, albeit unintentionally, allows justification of an educational structure that was discriminatory toward and exclusionary of women. Additionally, Parush argues that Stampfer attributes “paternalistic motives” to those who created and upheld the educational system that evidence concern about women’s welfare and frustration levels. “In a roundabout way,” she argues, such an argument “shuts out consideration of other possibilities, less harmonistic or generous, which may have been behind the discrimination of women in the educational system.” Lastly, Parush points out that many women remained illiterate in Eastern European Jewish society. Had societal leaders really wanted to prevent women’s frustration, they would have ensured that all Jewish girls were minimally literate in Yiddish so as to enable them to read Tzeina U’Reina and other such texts. Moreover, even if all women had been literate in Yiddish, this would not have solved the inherent contradiction in their lives—that they were expected to negotiate the public sphere in their work lives, but excluded from the public sphere in their religious lives.[23]

            Although there is significant dissent regarding the degree of Jewish education obtained by girls in Eastern Europe in the nineteenth century, historians do agree that improvement in Eastern European Jewish girls’ education occurred during this period. Daughters of wealthy Jews studied foreign languages in their homes with nannies or private tutors. Girls of lesser means began to attend secular schools such as those founded in Warsaw in 1818 and Wilno in 1826. By the 1860s increasing numbers of girls were studying in modern schools, both public and private, that were founded across Eastern Europe, especially in large cities. Furthermore, rising marriage ages left wealthy girls with idle time in teenage years to devote to education and the surrounding society’s increasing commitment to girls’ education influenced higher numbers of Jewish girls to pursue schooling. By the end of the nineteenth century, the number of girls enrolled in formal modern schools was still small, but it was significant. An 1899 survey of such schools in the Tsarist Empire found 193 girls’ schools, 68 coeducational schools (most of which had separate classes for boys and girls) and 383 boys’ schools. There were a total of 50,773 students enrolled in these schools according to the study, and approximately one-third of those students were female. However, although girls were finally receiving formal education in significant numbers, the education they were receiving was entirely secular. The curriculum in these modern schools was devoid of Jewish content; girls were educated in Russian and French as well as in the arts and music. Indeed, although boys’ modern schools were supervised by the Jewish community and rabbinical establishment and had to allocate hours of classroom time each week to Jewish studies, girls’ schools were totally secular and unsupervised by Jewish communal authorities.[24]

            Parush argues that the absence of Jewish education for girls in Eastern Europe was due to a marginalization of women in a male-dominant society. The rabbinical establishment cared about two things: first, that boys receive a good Torah education, and second, that girls be prevented from receiving any Torah education. Thus, as long as girls were not transgressing the prohibition against their study of Torah, their education was of no interest to the rabbis. They could pursue high levels of secular studies without approbation or even concern. Parush concludes:

Whereas men’s education reflected the manifest efforts of the rabbinical leaders to exercise absolute controls and hermetically seal the society from foreign influences, the education of women transpired through gaps in this system of controls, in the region left abandoned by the oversight apparatus in consequence of women’s inferiority.[25]

This policy of neglect of the content of girls’ education had significant ramifications both for the girls themselves and for Jewish society in Eastern Europe. Certainly, all historians agree that the lack of formal Jewish education placed side-by-side with increasingly intense secular education led to a secularizing of Jewish girls. Historians differ as to how this process of secularization affected the Jewish community. Parush argues that it led to Jewish women bringing enlightened ideas into the Jewish community and thus acting as the conduits for Haskalah and modern ideals in their world.[26] However, others have a different take. Paula Hyman and Rachel Manekin argue that the secularization of Jewish girls led to a fundamental disconnect between them and their communities—a disconnect that often had devastating consequences for the girls, their families, and the Jewish community as a whole. Some Jewish girls assimilated into the surrounding society and were lost to the Jewish community; many others went so far as to convert to Christianity. Even those girls who remained within the boundaries of the Jewish community could not be counted upon to transmit Jewish tradition effectively to the next generation.[27]

In a few different articles, Manekin explores multiple aspects of the phenomenon of Jewish girls’ conversion to Christianity in Galicia in the nineteenth century and shows the Jewish communal debate that arose over this problem. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a significant number of Jewish women in western Galicia converted to Christianity. Indeed, during one fifteen-year period beginning in 1887, over 300 women converted in Krakow alone, representing 68 percent of the Jewish converts during that time period. Interestingly, almost all of these women converted at the convent of the Felician Sisters.[28]

Because the laws of the Habsburg Empire required that converts submit certain personal data to a municipal clerk, a socio-economic profile exists for many of these converts. According to this data, the vast majority of the converts were Jewish young women between the ages of 15 and 20 who came from families of middle-class merchants and shopkeepers. The women’s signatures on the forms they filled out show that they were familiar with Polish writing. Through analysis of this data in conjunction with historical accounts of individual conversions as well as depictions of such conversions in Jewish literature and the Jewish press, Manekin concludes that the lack of Jewish education for girls coupled with their more extensive secular education played a significant role in the conversion phenomenon:

These young women were not provided with the means by which they could preserve their Jewish identity in their confrontation with Polish society. The dissonance between life at home and in the outside world became greater as they grew older, with the conflicts becoming deeper and more pronounced. The climax would come when the parents expected them to marry a young man from the ‘old world,’ with whom they shared no language.[29]

This moment of facing a life with a man with whom such a young woman had nothing in common except that they were both born Jewish and had parents committed to the continuity of the Jewish people was often the breaking point that led the young woman to escape to the convent to convert.[30]

             The Jewish community of Galicia had some limited recognition of the problems caused by the failure to give its daughters a Jewish education. Indeed, the issue came up quite a bit on the Jewish communal radar screen in the early years of the twentieth century. In 1902, the subject was addressed at length in the pages of the religious newspaper Kol Mahzikei HaDat. In an article entitled “But We Are Guilty for Our Daughters,” a writer bemoaned the seduction of Jewish girls by secular society due to their lack of Jewish education. In a play on words of a famous rabbinic quotation, he wrote, “Ten measures of external education descended upon the daughters of Israel in our land; nine of them were taken by the city of Krakow.”[31] The article discussed the failure of the marriages of such girls to yeshiva boys and the fact that some of them ended up leaving the Jewish community entirely. It was not a coincidence, the author pointed out, that girls from strict Hassidic families would leave their families and convert to Christianity. Hassidic fathers would pay a fine rather than send their sons to secular public schools, but they were willing to send their daughters to Catholic schools. He recommended the institution of Jewish girls’ schools in Galicia to solve this terrible problem. In a harsh moment of reflection, the author noted that girls’ Jewish education in Galicia is the equivalent to what had existed in Germany an entire century before.[32]

            The issue of girls’ Jewish education in Galicia also arose at the Congress of Rabbis in Krakow in 1903. One of the attendees, Rabbi Landau, rose to speak and bemoaned the fact that even among the “God fearing,” girls receive the finest Western education and remain woefully ignorant about Judaism. He spoke of the rash of conversions and noted that even those young women who do not leave the community, “their hearts are not among the Jewish people anymore.” Such girls would not be capable of raising the next generation of Jewish children. Rabbi Landau even spoke of the worst casualties of the failure of Jewish girls’ education in Galicia—those girls who turned to a life of prostitution. The rabbis attending the conference requested that he cease speaking of this painful subject in order to prevent the desecration of the name of the Jewish people.[33]

            Rabbi Landau put aside the issue of white slavery in the Jewish community, but returned during the conference to the issue of repairing girls’ education. He argued that the only solution to the fundamental lack of knowledge and failure to observe commandments among even the most Orthodox of girls was to teach them Torah. When one of the lay leaders present at the conference suggested the establishment of a Talmud Torah school to educate girls in prayer and laws of the Jewish home, one rabbi responded, “God forbid we should educate girls in Torah!” Although other suggestions were presented for the improvement of girls’ Jewish education in Galicia, all were tabled for a later date. This, Manekin argues, was the nail in the coffin for bringing change to Jewish girls’ education in Galicia.[34]

            Ultimately, the solution to the dilemma about girls education in Galicia came from a young woman in Krakow. Sarah Schenirer, with the support of the rebbe of the Hassidic sect of Belz, created the first Bais Yaakov school dedicated to the Jewish education of Orthodox girls in 1917. This school became the model for Orthodox girls’ education and was duplicated throughout the world. Until Sarah Schenirer’s efforts to create Bais Yaakov, however, the idea of girls’ Torah education was an innovation that Eastern European Orthodox society simply could not stomach, even when faced with the devastation that the lack of this education caused. This stands in direct contrast to the German Orthodox model of integration of modern and Jewish ideals resulting in the far earlier and more extensive Jewish education for its girls.

            The radically different development of the Jewish communities of Germany and Eastern Europe during the nineteenth century period of modernization had a powerful impact on girls’ education in each society. German Jewish society, due to more successful integration with external German society, adopted some of the ideologies and practices of that society, which enabled the development of formal Jewish education for girls. Eastern European Jewish society, on the other hand, remained excluded from western bourgeois ideas and was therefore unable to integrate modern philosophies of religion and education into their worldview. German Jews adapted and modernized their Judaism while Eastern European Jews reacted to modernization by either “circling the wagons” in defense of tradition or assimilating to the society around them. The inability of Eastern European Jewish society to engage in a process of religious reform ultimately sounded the death knell for the development of girls’ education, a failure which had lasting consequences for their community. The German Jewish community solved the problem of girls’ education by the third quarter of the eighteenth century; the Eastern European community did not solve it until the First World War. In the intervening decades, numerous Jewish girls were lost to Judaism, as they were prevented from having a stake in the future of the Jewish people due to a rabbinic refusal to educate them.

Conclusions for Today

            The story of the development of Jewish girls’ education in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Germany and Eastern Europe has particular resonance for the Modern Orthodox community today. The battle for Jewish education for Orthodox girls is thankfully long over, particularly in the Modern Orthodox community, where women have the opportunity to learn all Jewish texts at the highest of levels. However, unlike their male rabbinic counterparts, up until recently, Orthodox women received no standard and universally accepted title to certify their learning. Such a title is far from mere semantics. For a woman who wishes to devote her life to Jewish communal service, the title of “rabbi” carries along with it communal respect, job opportunities, and significantly higher salaries. Furthermore, in a world in which women are able to access the highest levels of academic and professional credentialing, the absence of a title for Orthodox women leaders was particularly glaring. Despite all of this, when the issue of women’s ordination was raised in Orthodox circles, mainstream rabbinic leadership called it an impossibility and a dangerous break with tradition. Given that women’s achievement at the very highest levels did not yield any professional titles or status, it is unsurprising that many of the brightest and most talented young Orthodox women chose careers outside the Orthodox community.

            But the picture is not all grim. In the past decade, a select few synagogues have appointed women as “congregational interns” or “madrikhot ruhaniot” (spiritual advisors), giving women positions essentially comparable to rabbinical student interns or assistant rabbis in Modern Orthodox synagogues. Such women are able to give sermons, engage in pastoral counseling, and teach Torah in their synagogues. However, no more than a handful of Orthodox synagogues have created such a position. The mainstream centrist Orthodox world continues to view such positions as inappropriate. Furthermore, many critics have pointed out that whereas a “rabbinic intern” is training to become a rabbi, a “congregational intern” is not training for any permanent position at all. Even a madrikha ruhanit could not hope to lead an Orthodox congregation on her own.  

In the Spring of this year, however, a transformation occurred in Modern Orthodoxy, when Rabbi Avi Weiss announced that he planned to establish a school to train Maharats, women leaders in halakhic, spiritual, and Torah issues. Like Rabbi Shimshon Rafael Hirsch in nineteenth century Germany, the rabbinic leadership behind this new initiative understands that we can incorporate certain ideas of modernity without breaking halakha or destroying our traditional values. And, like the German Orthodox leadership of the nineteenth century, this leadership knows that Orthodoxy must make changes in its own way and on its own timetable in order for such changes to take root among both the rabbis and the Orthodox laity. As our history has shown us, the path we now take will have massive consequences both for individual Orthodox Jews and for the very future of Orthodox Judaism.

During the spring semester of 2011 I was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of the West Indies at Cave Hill in Barbados lecturing on Brazilian Culture and researching Caribbean film. The opportunity also allowed me to study a subject that has interested me since high school, the outcome of the Sephardim who left Portugal for the New World.  In addition to Barbados, I wanted to visit the communities on two other islands, Curaçao and Jamaica, and see the famed sand floors of their synagogues. As a Portuguese scholar fascinated by the Judeo-Spanish tradition, I sought to find out if these languages were still used in the services or spoken by descendants of the early Sephardic settlers.  Intrigued by the history of colonization, I asked myself which European power allowed the Sephardim the most freedom religiously and economically, and how that may have affected their situation today. Having grown up in the Midwest where intermarriage was common, I also wanted to see how the Caribbean Jewish communities addressed this issue. Ultimately, I wondered if the Sephardic experience on the islands offered a key to the overall survival of Jews in the Diaspora.

Though an Ashkenazi Jew by heritage, my interest in Sephardim stems from being a high school exchange student in São Paulo, Brazil. At the age of sixteen I went to live with a family in South America’s largest city. Their origin, however, was Recife, Pernambuco and I discovered later that they had chosen me because they thought they were descendants of Jews who had lived amongst the Dutch. They were excited to have me in their home and always treated me with respect, asking question about my faith though they had not practiced it for centuries.

After college, where I became fluent in Portuguese, I returned to Brazil and traveled to the Northeast where I visited the area known to have been the first Sephardic community in the Americas. At the time, the synagogue on Rua Bom Jesus (Good Jesus Street) had not been restored, nor its mikvah excavated. Still, I was amazed at how the visit spurred in me the desire to trace the path of the Sephardim both to their source in Iberia and then to the New World.

My formal education intertwined perfectly with my project. As a graduate student doing a dissertation in Portuguese at the University of Wisconsin-Madison I earned my first Fulbright Scholarship to go to Portugal in 1994-95.  Though my official research was on the Lusophone or Portuguese African Diaspora, during my time off I went around the country looking for signs of the Sephardic Diaspora. A regular at Shabbat morning services at the main synagogue in Lisbon, Shaarei-Tikvá, I became friends with a Scottish Jew who took me to Belmonte, one of the only villages that has practiced a form of Secret Judaism for over 500 years. I was amazed by its history, especially the importance of women in maintaining rituals within the home as synagogues were prohibited and men could not openly show their faith. I learned that the community had first been breached in the early twentieth century by a Russian miner who happened to be in the region and discovered that the Belmonte Jews considered themselves to be the only Jews left in the world.  Only when he said the Shema did they believe that he, too, was a member of the faith. I wondered how the Belmonte community survived for so long under the harsh threat of the Inquisition. They lived in a very isolated region of Portugal, the Beira Alta or Upper Beira that was hard to reach. They pretended to eat the foods that non-Jews ate by making recipes using chicken instead of pork. The “alheira” or garlic sausage was one such delicacy eaten in the region. Most of all, they regulated the community through marriage. Sometimes people of the same family would marry—such as first cousins, though there may have been even closer connections such as uncles and nieces. As a result there were birth defects that I actually saw during my visit.

In addition to Belmonte and the synagogue in Lisbon I traveled to the Alentejo, Portugal’s southern breadbasket. There I visited places that no longer had a living presence but rather street signs such as “judaria” where the Jews were once forced to live. Overall, I found that few people in Portugal knew much about Jewish ritual or religion, rather that many who had names linked to flora and fauna may have been descendants of New Christian. After nearly a year living in Iberia I, too felt a little isolated as a Jew and looked forward to leaving.

I did not forget my experience searching for remnants of a Sephardic past in Portugal, and though I eventually earned my doctorate and moved to New York, my interest in learning more about their journeys continued. In the fall of 2010 I presented a paper in London on nineteenth century Sephardim of Great Britain, then two weeks later flew to Singapore to lecture on the Jews of India.

By the time I left Barbados to start my teaching and research, I was exhausted and looking forward to the opportunity of living in the tropics . Before arriving on the island I had learned that there were two synagogues, both Ashkenazi. On my first Friday night I went to a hotel and asked if they had any information on religious services. The concierge immediately put me in touch with Rose Altman, who at 88 was the oldest member of the Jewish community. She had all the information I needed regarding the synagogue and even more about the people who attended it. I learned that during the hot summer months people went to a house that was turned into a synagogue for practical reasons—it had air conditioning. In the winter some of the community, now numbering a few dozen families, and tourists many from cruise liners, go to the newly renovated Sephardic synagogue, Nidhe Israel or “the Scattered of Israel.”

My first Kabbalat Shabbat service was memorable.  I entered a thick gate and walked past two buildings, one I learned was a state-of-the-art museum dedicated to the history of the Sephardim and the importance of sugar cane, a crop brought over by the Jews of Recife. There was also a mikvah that actually has a spring fed well. I noticed two cemeteries, with neatly arranged gravestones lying horizontal on the ground. Looking closely I could see that the headstones had inscriptions in a variety of languages; Portuguese, Spanish, Hebrew and English. Carved cupid figures and hands chopping down trees adorned some of them. When I saw people moving into the synagogue, I went in, too, looking for the women’s section. After seeing men and women sitting together, I sat down on a wooden bench and admired the building. The interior was beautiful, with a grand reader’s desk in the middle of the room with four pineapple shaped carvings symbolizing the tropics. There was a balcony, though it went unoccupied. An Israeli man in his mid-40s led the Conservative-style service and afterwards there was a small Oneg Shabbat in the back.  A couple of women served cake and soda, greeting the members and guests.

Over time I got to know some of the Barbadian Jews, the pride they felt towards the synagogue as well as the difficulty they had maintaining the community.  The structure was refurbished in 1987 on the site of a synagogue originally constructed in 1654 and rebuilt after it was destroyed by an 1831 hurricane. By the second decade of the twentieth century there were no longer Sephardim left on the island and the synagogue was closed, its religious articles sent to England in 1929. In the 1980s the post-colonial government wanted to use the property for a courthouse but Paul Altman, a descendant of the Polish Jews who had arrived on the island in the 1930s, led efforts to preserve and renovate it. Though the ancient artifacts were never returned from London, there are several Torahs in the Ark and the community is relieved that its future on the island is secure. The building has also become a major tourist attraction bolstered by the Barbados National Trust that gives lectures on Sephardic history and leads tours around its grounds. Yet, those who actually attend services know that fewer and fewer members show up. Intermarriage is considered a major problem and over the years it has broken up a few families. As a result, children are often sent overseas to boarding schools, usually in England or Canada, with the hope that they will find a Jewish spouse. But it does not always work because those raised on the islands sometimes feel more of a kinship with non-Jews in the Caribbean Diaspora and end up marrying outside the faith to the dismay of their parents.

The second island I visited was Curaçao in the western Caribbean.  I had just received an extension on my scholarship to attend a Caribbean Studies conference in Williamstad and it offered a wonderful opportunity to see the Sephardic synagogue there. Getting from Barbados to Curaçao in the Lesser Antilles islands was not easy and my “island hopping” by way of Trinidad took hours. But the trip was well worth it. Curaçao was so much different from the former British island I was living on. First of all, the climate was arid and instead of palm trees and green brush, there were cacti everywhere. The architecture of Williamstad, the capital, was colorful, lining an inlet crossed by a moveable pedestrian bridge. 

I went to the Sephardic synagogue, Congregation Mikvé Israel-Emanuel twice during my stay on the island. The first time I visited a museum that was in the courtyard of the synagogue.  It proudly displays religious artifacts that had been used by the community through the centuries. There is also a memorial to George Maduro, a young man who went to Holland to help fight the Nazis in WWII and was killed in Dachau near the end of the war. Molds of gravestones saved from a large cemetery affected by the acid rain from a nearby oil refinery line the outside walls. They feature some of the same carvings as the headstones in Barbados though one had a hand with four fingers split reminiscent of a blessing by a Cohen. In addition to the permanent collection, there was a recent exhibition, “Keys to My Heritage”, featuring keys that were saved by Sephardic Jews who fled the Inquisition.

A few days later I went back to the synagogue to attend Shabbat services. Walking into the stately synagogue, dating back to 1732, I was amazed by its mahogany interior, blue stained glass windows, and sand covered floor. I thought about the reasons given for the sand—to remind us of the years the Israelites spent wandering in the desert or the attempt to muffle the sounds of prayer in fear of the Inquisition. As in Barbados I looked around to see where I should sit and noticed that there were women seated alongside men. Joining them, I took a prayer book and began to follow along. Though the people around me spoke accented English and Dutch, the rabbi sounded as if he came from the United States and at one point during the Torah service read a prayer in broken Portuguese. I was surprised to hear the language that I had studied since high school. After nearly four hundred years the Caribbean Sephardim did not forget the idiom spoken by their ancestors in Iberia. After the services there was a celebration for the children who had just finished another year of Hebrew School. Taking turns, each child, both girls and boys, climbed to the reader’s desk and gave thanks to their teacher for another year of learning. I was impressed by the fact that there was a school catering to the next generation, though small in size.

Once the service was over, the congregation gathered in a community hall across the courtyard. There was a Kiddush and people talked to one another about the upcoming summer. I asked a few people some questions regarding the Mikvé Israel-Emanuel and learned that it was a combined congregation of two synagogues that had split during the mid 1860s when the Reform Movement was sweeping Judaism in Germany and the United States. Decreasing membership led the two to join together in the 1960s using a combination of traditions from both.  The Sephardic community went through another, more extreme change in 2000 when it became egalitarian allowing women to participate in services and sit alongside the men. Not all were in favor of this and some joined the Ashkenazi synagogue on Curaçao, Shaarei Tzedek.

My visit to Curaçao made me think of the difficult choices that Jews everywhere make to continue their traditions. Combining synagogues and deciding which prayers to keep or omit during a service was not easy. Nor was the decision to become egalitarian, a move that divided the community and is still an issue for discussion. Yet people still revere their heritage and invest in the next generation’s education. One of the major concerns they have is intermarriage and a majority of children study abroad in the Netherlands, England or the United States. As in Barbados, this does not ensure that they will marry Jewish, but at least they will have a greater opportunity to do so given that the community numbers around 115 households or 350 members.

Once I returned to Barbados, the last trip I planned in my Sephardic Caribbean sojourn was Jamaica. Having received an invitation to visit the island from Ainsley Henriques, a leader of the Jamaican Jewish Community who I had met at a conference in New York, I decided to go in July. Jamaica, like Curaçao fascinated me because I had heard that it still had a Sephardic “essence” to it as opposed to Barbados that had become completely Ashkenazi aside from its synagogue building. Going to Shabbat services in Kingston, however, showed me how the traditions could evolve with the influence of different colonizers and peoples. For example the synagogue itself, Shaare Shalom, is a large, white colonial style building with sand floors. People of various ethnicities worshiped together in a style that to me was reminiscent of the British Protestants who once ruled the island combined with what Mr. Henriques described as “Sephardic liturgy and music”. After services there was a Kiddush and I noticed that the attendees were somewhat older, though some were accompanied by grandchildren from abroad. As Mr. Henriques gave me a tour of the museum that also serves as a community center, I looked at photos of earlier community presidents from a different era. Now, only 200 Jews are affiliated with the United Congregation of Israelites though it is quite active for its size. There is a Hebrew School, Hillel Academy, as well as a home for the aged, synagogue sisterhood and B’nei B’rith. A new rabbi was hired in September 2011 and international groups help maintain the nearly 23 cemeteries around the island.  The United Congregations of Israelites is also committed to educating both visitors from abroad and local Jamaicans about the Jamaican Jewish heritage. Each year hundreds of school children visit the center to learn about the important contributions made by Jews to the island country.

My time on the islands ended in August and since then I have thought a great deal about my visits to Barbados, Curaçao and Jamaica.  I traced the remnants of the Sephardic communities from Portugal to Brazil to the islands imagining the difficulties they must have faced as they tried to survive. What I found was that there was something in common—something that Jews everywhere could learn from.  First of all, numbers matter. A community will have a difficult time surviving if its members leave en masse or completely assimilate into a host nation. In the case of Barbados, the entire Sephardic population had disappeared by 1929 either through intermarriage or emigration to other countries such as Canada and Great Britain. Curaçao and Jamaica have both seen their young go abroad and not return or marry non-Jews. Secondly, rifts between synagogues need to be put aside in order to stabilize the population. In the case of Curaçao, decreasing numbers forced the communities of Mikvé Israel and Emanuel to join together after a century-long split, though the decision to have egalitarian worship prompted some members to leave the community once again.  Jamaica also formed the United Congregations of Israelites. A third factor is the education of the young. Both Curaçao and Jamaica have Hebrew schools for their children and though they may leave when they reach high school or college age, their children will have a Jewish identity.

In conclusion, for Jewish communities to remain viable in the Diaspora, a minimum population committed to education and cohesiveness is essential, though outside factors such as politics and economics may ultimately affect the conduciveness of some locations.

Introduction

The serious and very practical question of permitting fertility treatments in general and pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) in particular has been widely debated among Jewish circles in recent years.[i] Naturally, several opinions that surfaced were subsequently presented in a recent issue of a well-reputed halakhic journal.[ii] We feel, however, that there are a number of points pertaining to the discussion of sex selection within Jewish law that require further clarification. In this piece, we intend to facilitate, or at least initiate, the process of better understanding the moral minefield introduced by the advent of reproductive technologies.

Alleviating Initial Suspicions and Doubts

The arguments hitherto suggested were reminiscent of the debate of several decades ago when, in the summer of 1978, Louise Brown became the first child to be born via in vitro fertilization (IVF) technology. The onset and widespread use of IVF that soon ensued called into question a myriad of ethical, moral, and religious concerns. Some religiously affiliated individuals were quick to voice their opposition to IVF, calling attention to the possibility for mistakes to occur behind the closed doors of fertility clinics and laboratories. Those who managed to document high-profile errors only exacerbated the uncertainty involved and contributed to the general unease of rabbinic decisors who were then beginning to grapple with the new and potentially problematic procedures.

As a result of the increasing ambiguity over the permissibility of assisted reproductive technology (ART), the Puah Institute—a leading Jewish fertility organization in Israel—instituted supervision services at fertility clinics and laboratories in Israel and across the globe. Puah arranged for a trained network of mashgihim (professional supervisors) to oversee the entire fertility process and workup. From initial treatments to eventual birth, the mashgihim ensured that all fertility-related procedures were conducted in strict accordance with Jewish law. As expected, rabbinic decisors followed by developing more lenient attitudes and adopting more permissive approaches in tackling the medical, ethical, and religious concerns incurred by ART.

This implementation of halakhic supervision, endorsed by rabbinic authorities and lauded by the Jewish community, is nothing less than a small revolution within medical-religious arena. A rather simple halakhic solution effectively changed both the perceptions and the nature of rabbinic rulings, thus blazing the path for future progress in similar areas involving an interface between technology and halakha. Rabbinic supervision proved reliable and consistent. Most significantly, it demonstrated that previous suspicions can be allayed with prudent precautions and thorough measures. This sort of pragmatic approach could also be part of a resolution in the case at hand.

Fear of the Slippery Slope

Some of the other opponents to ART were not so much concerned with the potential chaos of mistakes committed in the lab; their worry, instead, was of a more general nature—that is, the fear of the slippery slope. While virtually every innovative technology brings with it the potential for a slippery slope, it is unclear exactly what these critics feared. It could be sensed, however, that there was general unease in the air. Instead of laying claim to specific arguments and coherent propositions, this cohort of critics seemed merely troubled by the permissive atmosphere in and of itself.  They obsessed over the lenient positions being formulated in response to ART and worried that the momentum was heading in a ruinous and disastrous direction.

In one particular conversation with such a rabbinic decisor, he related that although  he had attempted to hold back the “tide,” the people had turned the tide and voted with their feet. In today’s society, he continued, there is very little one can do to change the scenario of infertile couples undergoing IVF and ART despite the initial opposition of certain rabbinic authorities.  The “tide” referenced here—and why its resistance to change was problematic—is ambiguous at best. Again, there appears to be general discomfort emanating from some authorities without any real, transparent arguments or rational explanations for dissent.

It is interesting to note that in a personal conversation with Bob Edwards (the British physiologist and pioneer of reproductive medicine who was instrumental in the first successful human IVF birth) I asked whether in the early days of IVF anyone had accurately conceived of the enormity and impact that ART would have in terms of reshaping our future conceptions of reproduction, procreation, and lineage. He replied in the affirmative, recalling that deep philosophical questions regarding fertility procedures were immediately raised, challenged, and analyzed from the very first drafted paper on the subject. We concurred in our approach to facing problems head-on, opening intellectual forums for reasoned and well-seasoned debate, and seeking necessary precuations to prevent sliding down the slippery slope. Preempting problems, experience continuously confirms, is always preferable to damage control.

There is a vital lesson not to be missed here. The fear of the slippery slope is a valid one. Leon Kass, an American bioethicist, once remarked: “Once you put human life in human hands, you have started on a slippery slope that knows no boundaries.” Indeed, unchecked and unpaved territory is frightening, but only at first. With boundaries intact and cautious measures in effect, the fear and mystery that surround the slope begin to fall away. Human beings advance only through experimentation and trial and error. Humanity reaches great heights only by climbing the stairs, forging ahead, and taking the initial plunge. Had the slippery slope deterred scientists in the past century, many more once-infertile couples would still be yearning for children. If anything, the slippery slope helps to remind us of the important role that boundaries and borders play in our lives, but it ought not to limit and restrict the possibilities for great technological innovations. Our ability and success to create and innovate is far too strong to be curtailed by paying much attention to the argument of the slippery slope.

Obligation vs. Permission

In debating the merits of sex selection—that is, the in vitro selection of either a genetically male or female embryo for subsequent implantation into the gestating womb—there seems to be an unfortunate mix-up of two disparate issues, which are neither synonymous ideologically nor halakhically. On one hand, there exists the question as to whether a man who has children of only one sex is obliged to undergo some form of sex selection to ensure the birth of a child of the opposite sex. In other words, is the man who is commanded to “be fruitful and multiply” obligated to employ sex selection technology to guarantee that his offspring consist of, at minimum, one boy and one girl? On the other hand, there is a distinct question as to whether one is allowed to enlist for sex selection as a valid method of family balancing or for any other desired reason. That is to say, barring any sense of obligation, is one halakhically permitted to make use of sex-selection technology? These are two distinct questions that ought not to be intertwined; obligation connotes something entirely different from permissibility.

The Shulhan Arukh, the primary centerpiece of authoritative Jewish law, as well as other codes of normative halakhic behavior, do not sanction the notion of sex selection—but they do not expressly condemn it either. The absence of any imperative mandating the necessity to take any and every possible step to ensure both male and female sexes among one’s children strongly suggests that there is at least no obligation to undergo a process of sex selection. Therefore, a man with children of only one sex type (only males or only females) dutifully fulfils the mitzvah of peru u’revu.[1] While there were certainly no advanced technologies of sex selection during the lifetime of the author of the Shulhan Arukh, failure to make mention of any such obligation, even if only imaginably conceivable, is quite telling. Obligation may not be the case, but the option of permissibility cannot and should not be ruled out. Previous published matter on the subject, we note, demonstrated a weakness in investing far too much time and effort in the obligation aspect while neglecting to report on the equally, if not more significant, aspect of permissibility[iii].

In fact, in our clinical experience with dozens of couples seeking PGD for sex selection, couples rarely cite the biblical injunction of peru u’revu as an impetus to pursue sex selection. More often than not, couples generally elect PGD for sex selection for reasons entirely unrelated to halakha—be it of social, cultural, or personal preference. Some individuals, for example, express the existential need to have a boy or a girl as their sole motivation. Quite interestingly, and not surprisingly, some religious couples who desire a child of a specific sex have the faulty assumption that it is their absolute biblical duty to produce one boy and one girl through whatever means technologically feasible. Ultimately, they tend to forgo treatment upon hearing an enlightened version of the halakha and are pleased to learn that the halakha speaks in no place of a requirement to defer to sex selection as a means of securing both male and female children. 

Thus, the question of obligation is a moot point.  It is essential that these two aspects—obligation and permission—be separated and filtered out before the application of appropriate halakhic principles. The focus of discussion must shift from obligation to permission in analyzing the use of PGD for sex selection. Of course, when extricating this or any other halakhic inquiry, the approach should be one that assumes permissibility unless demonstrated otherwise. The burden of proof then lies on the shoulders of those who utterly dismiss and disallow the procedure of sex selection. So, what are the halakhic prohibitions, if any, against sex selection?

Jewish Medical Ethics vs. Medical Ethics

It is worth mentioning the following brief points of comment. In the series of articles that appeared in the journal Tradition, one of the articles made reference to widely accepted Western ethical considerations and principles. Although Judaism as a whole accepts, welcomes, and identifies with the major ethical principles (autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice) that govern medicine in the West, there certainly come times when normative Jewish thought and law diverge with classical secular ethics. Such dilemmas, for example, arise particularly in the form of life-and-death decisions that conflict with a patient’s autonomy.  Jewish medical ethics most drastically differs from secular medical ethics in its source of validity and working methodology. Jewish ethics, along with its other commandments, laws, and statutes have their source and validity deeply rooted in the divine, as expressed in the biblical and oral law. In addition, Jewish law strongly adheres to precedent as a basis for formulating a stance in each situation. Whereas secular ethics searches primarily to apply the same major recurring ethical principles to any given scenario, Jewish medical ethics places a large emphasis on evaluating each situation independently, and only then applying the most applicable and appropriate principles, as grounded in Jewish literature. 

Is IVF Dangerous?

Some opponents of PGD for sex selection opine that this procedure is dangerous and therefore unquestionably forbidden according to Jewish law. Indeed, the Torah is very concerned that one must distance oneself from harm and even potential danger. Yet, it has been clearly demonstrated that there is almost negligible danger involved with PGD. The small magnitude of risk associated with PGD is most similar to the risks of IVF (and studies actually show that IVF risks are more commonly linked with the underlying causes of infertility rather than with the procedure itself). Dr. Abraham Steinberg, pediatric neurologist and author of Encyclopedia of Jewish Medical Ethics, suggests that crossing a street is statistically more dangerous than any ART procedure and, not shockingly, street crossing has yet to be outlawed.

It should be noted that Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook originally sought to forbid traveling in cars for purely recreational purposes. He considered “joy rides” to be dangerous and buttressed this claim by pointing to the staggering rates of injuries and fatalities caused by automobile accidents. Rabbi Kook only ruled that driving was problematic, however, if it served no teleological reason. His ruling did not extend to instances beyond recreational driving; he outright permitted purposeful driving, even if unintended for fulfillment of a Torah obligation, so long as it was within the framework of normative human behavior.

If the risks of IVF and PGD are indeed comparable to those of pedestrian street crossings, as initially proposed by Steinberg, then we could reasonably assume that ART poses too minimal a danger to ban its meaningful efficacy and success rate. Some may be quick to retort that IVF is unique since it is performed with the intention to fulfill the biblical duty of procreation and, as such, any potential danger may be more immune to warrant prohibition.[2] But it is unclear if one may technically fulfill the commandment of procreation via ART. If IVF is not an acceptable form of carrying out the commandment of procreation, the argument goes, then we might be left with the inclination to forbid both IVF and PGD procedures.

It is widely accepted, however, to permit the use of IVF despite possibility of associated risks. The underlying reason for this allowance brings us to our next point concerning sex selection.

The Definition of Illness

It is fair to say that ART is an elective process. Halakhic technicalities may prevent us from characterizing the outcome as a fulfillment of procreation, and thus the element of risk enters into the equation more potently. There is still ample reason, however, to permit ART despite its elective nature.

The majority of contemporary rabbinic decisors do allow IVF and other methods of reproductive medicine. This touches upon the very notion of how we define illness in the first place. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”[iv] This definition has not been altered since 1948 and has survived accusations that “the perfect definition of health espoused by the WHO is Utopian and removed from reality.”[v] Some posit that the WHO’s version of health is more a definition of happiness than of health.[vi] Understanding the implications of “health” is essential since the manner in which we choose to visit health directly affects our perception of illness.

Is there a unique Jewish or a halakhic vision of illness? Various talmudic sources point to illnesses that come with different degrees of severity and with distinct definitions. The sick person is generally obliged to study the Torah and obey the vast majority of commandments. There are some examples, however, when the ill individual is exempt from religious duties. The sick are exempt from sitting in the sukkah on the holiday of Sukkoth and from the requirement of appearing at the Temple before God on the festivals. Additionally, an ill person is exempt from standing in the presence of a Torah scholar and from donning the ritual tefillin.

Interestingly, the halakha actually differs in its depiction of the ill person from one source to another. The ill person exempted from the sukkah need not be dangerously ill and extends to one “who is in no danger, even if he has a pain in his eye and a headache.” This exemption is derived from the nature of the condition to “dwell in the sukkah as one would dwell in his own house” (“Teshvu k’en taduru”). The ill person who is exempt from trekking out to Jerusalem for the festivals is one who cannot walk.

The ill person who is permitted to remain sitting before a learned scholar is either one who is entrenched in his own pain and unhappiness or one who is lying on his or her deathbed. The ill person who is exempt from tefillin refers to an individual with digestive difficulties (there are other opinions that suggest that general suffering due to any illness exempts one from tefillin due to the impossibility of proper attention and mindset).

Clearly, considerations for defining illness are specifically dependent on the sort of obligation in question. It is also evident that a life-threatening disease or debilitating medical condition is not a necessary condition to exempt an ill person from the abovementioned commandments.

Elsewhere, in a discussion regarding someone who is terminally ill, Maimonides relates: “One who has a headache or a pain in his eyes, leg, or hand is considered to be well for all matters connected to his business dealings. But, the ill person whose entire body is weakened due to his illness or someone who cannot walk outside and is confined to the bed is called a shekhiv me’ra.” Here, Maimonides presents a scenario of an individual who experiences discomfort and mild pain, but whose condition is not sufficiently severe to classify as an illness.

The WHO’s somewhat deficient definition and the above cited halakhic sources indicate that even something as seemingly simple and basic a task as defining illness is more complex than first meets the eye.

In a past article, we explored the opinions of several rabbinic decisors that perceive infertility as an illness. Beyond the physiological incapability of naturally conceiving a child, infertility is often accompanied by serious psychological distress and insecurities. Thus, illness is not merely defined in physiological terms. The halakha sympathizes, empathizes, and acknowledges the internal frustration of the infertile individual and/or couple. Accordingly, psychological distress and discomfort account for a condition to be regarded as an illness within Jewish law.

This mental and emotional pain—indeed, a natural component of coping with the reality of not being capable to conceive naturally—serves as the primary basis to permit this elective surgery and others like it. Though there is no medical necessity, elective surgery in halakha is often grounded in justifications that highlight the relevant psychological factors. Despite lack of medical necessity, there is room to permit virtually any surgery that would alleviate serious psychological suffering (assuming there are no external contraindicating reasons and/or significant possibility of harm in electing the surgery).

Is Sex Selection Permitted in Cases of Psychological Pain?

Sex selection via PGD could likewise be rendered permissible. Most couples that opt to undergo the sex selection process do so because of psychological reasons.   Before outright sanction of sex selection, it might be worthwhile to establish guidelines to determine when and to what degree psychological distress or desire warrants its use. But, then the tricky question obviously becomes: who and how can one adequately determine what amounts to sufficient psychological pain to permit an elective treatment? May parents experiencing an extended period of secondary infertility undergo ART?

Searching for a similar precedent, the Talmud (Shabbat 50b) discusses a man’s removal of a bodily scab. The rabbis debate if this practice is a strictly female activity that would be forbidden for males as a corollary to the general prohibition of men wearing women’s clothing. The Talmud concludes that it is forbidden to remove a scab as a method of beautification (an activity associated with females), but it is within the confines of halakha to remove the scab in order alleviate suffering or pain. The Tosafot commentators question what sort of pain is necessary in order to allow the removal of the scab; does embarrassment of presenting oneself with a scab on the face qualify as “pain”? Tosafot emphatically answer in the affirmative, even going so far as to insist, “there is no greater pain than this” in reference to psychological pain. Emotional pain and psychological stress cannot go unnoticed and unacknowledged. What one experiences as shameful and embarrassing might not register as such with another individual. This fact only tells us that emotions and psychology could be subjective and personal. Indeed, psychological pain may be highly subjective, but is real and valid nonetheless.

This subjective aspect becomes apparent from some clinical cases that Puah has helped mediate. Among the scenarios were the following cases: a kohen who needed a sperm donor and was absolutely unwilling to undergo the procedure unless guaranteed future anonymity (i.e. by selecting for a girl), a woman suffering from depression after having three children of the “wrong” gender, and a couple who had six children of the same gender and were desperate to conceive a child of opposite sex. Invariably, upon presenting these cases, there is always at least one person in the audience who will argue that it is our duty to convince such parties that it is not so terrible not to have a child of the other sex. Skeptics suggest that the kohen must come to terms with revealing the truth of a sperm donation in the case of a male child, the woman must seek psychological help to convince her that having another child of the same gender is not the end of the world, and the couple must accept the reality and plausibility of conceiving a seventh child of the same sex. In a word, critics claim, such individuals must suppress their inner worries, tensions, anxieties, and pressures. Life is fine and elective PGD for sex selection is uncalled for. Seek therapy, work it out, and get over it.

What these critics and naysayers fail to grasp, however, is that our own personal intuitions, or anyone’s individual feelings, are totally irrelevant here. In light of the Talmud’s depiction of shame and embarrassment as a legitimate form of pain, we must recognize that anguish and distress come in all different sizes, shapes, and colors. Where pain—any form of pain, be it physiological or psychological—could be lessened, we must strive to do so through rational and scientifically available means. It is far too easy to quickly dismiss someone’s situation as trivial or petty. It requires a certain degree of fortitude and integrity to see one’s pain for what it is and to acknowledge one’s distress as duly legitimate. Humans do not experience pain equally. Some hurt a little more, others a little less. What makes humanity great, however, is its ability to breed two drastically disparate individuals who nevertheless understand and acknowledge each other’s personal, yet equally genuine, concerns and emotions.

Conclusion

Artificial reproductive technologies, and PGD in particular, call into question numerous moral and halakhic issues. As science continues to innovate and discover, it is vital that the Jewish community not veer away from grappling with the challenges, if any, posed by new reproductive techniques. Instead, we ought to embrace the challenges and engage in meaningful dialogue. For some, it is tempting to brush aside modern technology and cast it as antithetical to the letter and spirit of Jewish law. Through serious research and scholarship, however, more often than not it becomes clear that Judaism invites and welcomes technological and scientific advancement. As we have hopefully demonstrated, there is ample room within Jewish law for permitting the practice of sex selection through PGD.

When exploring certain topics in the Talmud a discussion can be opened by use of a particular verse from which a principle that underlies an entire subject is learned. For example

…
Rabbi Shmuel bar Naḥmani introduced this passage with an introduction from here… (Megillah 10b). 

This approach came immediately to mind while reading Rabbi Hayyim Angel’s new book, Keys To The Palace: Exploring the Reglioius Value of Reading Tanakh from Kodesh Press. This work consists of twenty essays from Rabbi Angel on a variety of topics ranging from academic Bible study, to the afterlife, to perspectives on several of the Psalms. What cuts across and unites the work is Rabbi Angel’s mastery of Tanakh and his courageous pursuit of pshat. 

Perhaps I should back up a bit to provide some context. Having been a product of more right-leaning Yeshivot, for years I had lamented my lack of having a good grasp of nach. Fortunately, I recently stumbled across what I would term a revolution in the teaching and learning of Neviim and Ketuvim in a serious way, for adults. One of the pillars at the center of this movement is Rabbi Angel. 

The current work provides the reader with an entree into this world by offering numerous and variegated keys throughout these essays, which have been culled from a number of other works or scholarly publications, into parts of Nach and matters germane to academic Jewish studies today. Each chapter stands on its own, though several reference common topics, such as David’s taking of Batsheva.   

Each essay serves as a key to the topic at hand. In a few short pages Rabbi Angel poses powerful questions, covers the responses of many of the traditional and non-traditional sources, and provides a helpful summary and concise endnotes. The essays are too brief to be exhaustive of the topic, but instead whet the readers curiosity to learn and explore further.  

In his even-handed presentation of how to approach and incorporate academic and non-Jewish sources into the traditional study of Tanakh, Rabbi Angel exposes the reader to some of the towering and influential work that has been generated in Israel and, outside of the scholarly community, may not be well known to the English speaking audience.  

Perhaps as an inversion of Maimonides aphorism to accept the truth from whatever source it comes, Rabbi Angel rejects unconvincing solutions, no matter who proffers them. The author provides many viewpoints on a question and discusses the relative strengths and weakness so that the reader has a clear understanding of where the truth lies.  In his search for pshat and the most reasonable explanation the author presents Tanakh unvarnished,  and in so doing challenges the reader to think deeply, appreciate nuance, and continue to seek the “keys to encountering God in his Palace”.

(Rabbi Hayyim Angel's book can be purchased through the online store at jewishideas.org)

Are there any Jews in Ghana?' I was asked this question numerous times after my return from Sub-SaharanAfrica in January, 2008. I had participated in a service trip with the AmericanJewish World Service (AJWS) through which 25 rabbinical students from acrossthe denominational spectrum, together with group leaders and ascholar-in-residence (Rabbi Rolando Matalon of Congregation Bnei Jeshurun inNew York,) had visited a village in Ghana to work with the local community andto learn about the challenges facing people there. We mixed cement, carriedwater, learned the local language, visited a herbal doctor, trekked through ajungle, met people of all ages and occupations, spoke to doctors, visited arefugee camp and had discussions for hours on end. But we did not meet anyJews. There are Jews in Ghana, but hundreds of miles from Gbi-Atabu, our host village inthe North Eastern region of Ghana. I would love to meet them one day but the short durationof the trip meant that we did not have time to visit them on this occasion.

'Arethere any Jews in Ghana?'What is the assumption behind this question? I was on a trip, to help and tolearn, with rabbinical students. It was led by the American Jewish WorldService. For many, an obvious inference is that our hosts must have beenJewish. At first, this conclusion was baffling to me, or even offensive. Justbecause I am Jewish does not mean that I am only interested in other Jews. AndAJWS, which is dedicated to the goal of alleviating poverty, hunger and diseasein the developing world, is Jewish because it is run, funded and supportedlargely by Jews who believe in the Jewish principle of pursuing justice for allpeople, whatever their religion. The assumption that I could only have been inGhana to visit the Jewish community pushed the same buttons in me as another questionI am also sometimes asked: 'How many people live in your building?', by whichthe (inevitably Orthodox) questioner means 'Are there any Jews in yourbuilding,' but has overlooked the fact that there are people in the world whoare not Jewish.There is,however an argument behind these assumptions that does deserve to be addressed.They represent a serious and challenging set of questions about charity andpublic policy in the Orthodox Jewish community in the United States and elsewhere. What are the concerns of Orthodox Jews? Athome, there is anxiety over the cost of kosher food and Jewish education,supporting the Jewish poor and elderly. Abroad there is the matter of Israel and its relationship with other countries, and the plightof vulnerable Jews the world over. And there is ongoing fear of anti-Semitismand unease over inter-marriage. That is a lot to deal with. So where does Ghana (or El Salvador, Thailand, or any other developing country) fit into this picture?Once it has dealt with its own issues, can the Orthodox Jewish community reallyspare the financial or organizational resources to dedicate to infant mortalityacross the globe? Do we care more about someone dying in Vietnam than someone being shelled in Sderot? And isn't the Jewishcommunity small enough that it has to look after itself first and foremost? Weare limited by our size and besides, there are plenty of non-Jews in the worldwho can deal with the problems of other non-Jews.Gbi-Atabuis a village of a few hundred people. Its inhabitants live in smallsingle-story houses with dirt floors, no running water and intermittentelectricity. Some recent technology has made its way into the village - somevillagers have cell phones, for example - but it has not made any significant differenceto the way of life there. Water has to be drawn daily from the river or a well.Goats and chickens roam freely along the dirt tracks. Trash is burnt, notcollected. People wash themselves outdoors behind partitions made out of cinderblocks. Employment is scarce and the village has been in the process ofconstructing a small community building for several years as it is dependent onforeign aid and the physical labor of the community itself (and visitingrabbinical students.)Despitethese challenging circumstances, people seem happy, at least at first sight.Children, though often shoeless, laugh and play in the fields. Familystructures are very tightly knit which creates a sense of belonging. There arefrequent sessions of drumming, dancing and singing, often in connection withthe local church. Indeed, my initial impression was that despite the physicalhardship of everyday life, the people of Gbi-Atabu are free of the anxietiesand stresses of the typical New Yorker. Perhaps they are even happier than weare.Butthis impression was short lived. A number of factors contribute to placing thetypical life in Gbi-Atabu in perpetual crisis. The public health situation inthe entire region is dismal. The local hospital has three doctors treating 50,000people (that number of people in the USA would on average be served by 275 doctors) and even thesefacilities are difficult to access because transport to the hospital is oftenmore than people can afford. (As a result, the local 'clinic' treats anythingfrom headaches - a symptom of hypertension which is very common there - tobroken bones, often with herbs and a hacksaw on a dirt floor in the proximityof free roaming farm animals.) The water supply carries a number of lethaldiseases that have been eradicated in many other parts of the world such aspolio, meningitis and TB. Most of the population is unable to afford mosquitonets, leaving them vulnerable to yellow fever and malaria. The food supply isseverely deficient in calories and both children and adults are perpetuallymalnourished. Many suffer from respiratory problems resulting from the cloudsof red dust carried by the dry season winds from the Sahara Desert. Women especially suffer from spinal problems as a resultof carrying water in huge containers on their heads, often for miles every day.And then there is HIV-AIDS which has infected 7.5% of the population ofSub-Saharan Africa (compared with 0.6% in the USA). In the absence of easy access to affordable drugs andthe option of caesarian births which help to avoid infants receiving theinfections from their mothers (there is one obstetrician in all of Ghana), HIV-AIDS often passes onto children through childbirth.The average life expectancy in the region is about 57 years (in the US it is about 77). Children die daily from diseases thatcould be cured with cheap, easily administered drugs if only there was theinfrastructure to distribute them.Otherdeficiencies in the local strated and pessimistic about their future. One ofthe villagers that I met, Mamata, has made her way through high school thanksto the recent innovation of free schooling throughout Ghana. She is intelligent and energetic and she wants to be anurse. But here is where the road stops for this 18-year-old woman. She lacksthe funds to buy the textbooks she needs to complete her high school exams. Herextended family depends on her labor to support them. Transportation to the nearestuniversity is also unaffordable. So she remains unemployed, drawing water,cooking and washing for her family. She is frustrated at her lack of options.Another child that I met, Eric, was orphaned at an early age and has come tolive with Mamata's family in the absence of anyone else who could support him.On the day I met him he was upbeat and optimistic and told me of his hopes tobecome a doctor. But one evening he spent hours with another member of ourgroup. He had been drinking - alcoholism is a common side effect of thefrustrations in the community - and cried about his lack of future prospects,his loneliness and his poverty. He literally begged to be taken to America.This isonly a glimpse into the endemic crisis that Ghanaians need to endure. But whatdoes this have to do with us, Orthodox Jews in wealthier countries? There arealso people in crisis in the Bronx, Sderot and elsewhere who are closer to us by virtue ofgeographical proximity or their being Jewish. As I am frequently asked when Iteach or speak about Ghana, surely we need to prioritize? I first need to make clearthat I do not advocate an approach to tzedaka or social action that requires atotal dedication to one cause only. 'One should only study what he or she findsfulfilling' and the same thing goes for tzedaka. It is important that everyindividual identify the goals and causes that speak to him or her. But whatabout the community as a whole? Considering the multiple concerns of the Jewishcommunity that I outlined at the beginning of this article, some feel that theplight of the developing world, however severe, simply is not a cause for Jews.It is this argument that I resist. In today's world, Jews have a moralobligation to concern themselves with vulnerable people who are outside theirreligious community. And beyond the moral obligation, an orientation outward,as well as inward, is ultimately essential for the wellbeing of the Jewishcommunity itself in the long-term.On asimple level, it is a fallacy that because our community has other concerns,the developing world lies outside of our sphere of obligation. Even if we couldidentify the single most important issue, it should not monopolize communityfunds or other energies. That is why governments fund theaters and parks eventhough hospitals and schools are short of money. It is a mistake often made inthe Orthodox community that because we have pressing concerns of our own, thereis no room in our over-anxious minds and no further we can thrust our handsinto over-stretched pockets in the service of other needs. This is a dangerousline of thinking. Notwithstanding the pragmatic necessity to prioritize in theallocation of resources, a moral obligation is a moral obligation irrespectiveof other obligations that may compete with it.I alsowant to go beyond this logical and ethical argument and to point out that evenwithin traditional schemes of hierarchies of charitable priorities, it is notat all obvious that causes outside of the Jewish community come last. One keyTalmudic text that outlines a hierarchy is found in Bava Metzia 71a where RavYosef considers who should be lent money first:

'A Jew and a non-Jew – a Jew has preference; the poor or therich – the poor takes precedence; yourpoor [i.e. your relatives] and the [general] poor of your town — your poor comefirst; the poor of your city and the poor of another town — the poor of yourown town take priority.'

RavYosef's text ostensibly supports the conventional view of the hierarchy ofobligation. Jews come first, gentiles second. Relatives first, strangerssecond, and so on. And yet, his statement also implicitly challenges this samehierarchy, not by what is said but by what is not. Who comes first if you facea choice between a Gentile in your town and a Jew in another town? A rich localJew and a poor foreign Gentile? By maintaining a silence on most of thepermutations of these factors, Rav Yosef invites us to question thecomprehensiveness of his system.Thesame challenge is implicit in the formulation of R Yosef Karo in the section ofhis Shulhan Arukh dedicated to charity:

'Relatives take priority over everyone else...and the poorof one's own household over the poor of one's city, the poor of one's city overthe poor of another city, and the inhabitants of the Land of Israel over thosewho live outside it.' (Yoreh Deah 251:3)

Againwe are invited to explore the gaps in the hierarchy. This challenge is taken upby a number of poskim who explore the ambiguities in the approach of a stricthierarchy of priorities. R Moshe Sofer, for example, maintains that a verygreat need overrides the hierarchy altogether (see Hatam Sofer on Yoreh Deah234). Someone in immediate danger of death demands our help irrespective ofwhether he/she is our relative or not. It could certainly be argued that theplight of many in the developing world is more urgent than any other issue inthe world today. Quantitatively (in terms of the vast number of peopleaffected) and qualitatively (the alternative to intervention is nothing shortof death on a massive scale) the situation in Congo, Sudan, Thailand, ElSalvador and many other places dwarfs the urgency of other demands for aid.Although I am not advocating the priority of one charity over others for everyindividual, I do believe that this question of urgency should at least beseriously considered in our own decisions about charitable priorities.Anothergreat posek, R Yehiel Michel Epstein also questions the hierarchy:

'There is something about this that is very difficult for mebecause if we understand these words literally – that some groups take priorityover others – that implies that there is no requirement to give to groups loweron the hierarchy. And it is well known that every wealthy person has many poor relatives(and all the more so every poor person) so it will happen that a poor personwithout any rich relatives will die of hunger. And how could this possibly be?So it seems clear to me that the correct interpretation is that everyone,whether rich or poor, must also give to poor people who are not relatives, andgive more to those who are relatives. And the same would apply to all the othergroups on the hierarchy.' (Arukh ha-Shulhan Yoreh Deah 151:4)

Ifeveryone takes care only of their own, points out R Epstein, many people willgo without. His insight is evinced by a cursory look at the distribution ofworldwide wealth. Massive disparities in global income mean that 85% of theworld's wealth is held by the wealthiest 10%. Almost all of this 10% (about 90%of it) lives in the US, Europe and in high-income areas of Asia andOceana. If everyone takes care of their own first and foremost, countries like Ghana with very limited resources and a halting nationalinfrastructure, will get very little. And this is what happens today. Mamata'srelatives cannot help her to finish school and neither can her religiouscommunity or her government. If she does not receive attention from outside ofthe conventional charitable hierarchies, she will not receive any attention atall.Theseinsights, then, are challenges to the hierarchy even on its own terms. Anothercomplication in is that in today's world the categories within the hierarchyhave also become very ambiguous. At the time when the R Karo was writing, Jewslived in self-contained autonomous communities within larger Gentile societies.The Jewish community (like Christian and Muslim communities) supported theirown poor who almost always came from nearby. Although there were business andsocial relations with people outside the Jewish community, nobody expected theJews to provide support, charitable or otherwise, to those living outside ofthe community, and the Jews did not expect to be supported either. Besides, itwas unusual for Jews to encounter people outside of their community, andcertainly outside of their own towns, who needed their assistance.Allaspects of this picture have changed today. In the modern world, neither Jewsnor any other group lives in a self-contained community. The state builds roadsand utilities which are used by Jews. It contributes to Jewish charities andhelps to support the Jewish poor through social security and (one would hope)national health insurance. And not only are Jews in a strong mutualrelationship with the countries in which they live; we are also integrallylinked with the social and economic realities in the developing world. Most ofthe clothes that we wear and the toys we buy for our children have been made bysome of the 3 billion people who live on less than $2 a day. The Jewishcommunity (like all people) today is socially and economically enmeshed withthe rest of the world to a far greater degree than in the middle ages. This isnot to say that Jewish communal ties are not important - I of course believe theyare - nor that it is inappropriate for us to feel closer to those in the Jewishcommunity than to others. It is, however, wrongheaded to continue to constructa hierarchy of charitable priorities as if nothing has changed in the past 500years.Andthat is not all. We now know more than ever before about the state ofvulnerable human beings all over the world. We participate in service trips,see live pictures, read statistics and meet immigrants. The fact that from ourown houses we can see live pictures of people all around the globe seriouslychallenges a paradigm that is based on a difference between the local and thedistant needy. Indeed, the philosopher Peter Singer makes a powerful case thatin today's world our obligation to someone dying in Africa is nodifferent from our obligation to someone dying right in front of us, becausewith toady's communications, everyone is essentially right in front of us. Thenearly 30,000 children who die every day because of poverty may have lived inremote villages we have never been to; but they also breathe their last in ourown homes.Furthermore,the status of Jews in today's world is different than at any other period.Notwithstanding anti-Semitism, attacks on Israel and all our other concerns, Jews in America are, on the whole, wealthier, more secure and moreinfluential than ever before. This position brings with it a responsibility touse our wealth and our influence for the good of all. And this is not anexhortation only for the very wealthy. In the democracy we live under, lobbyingand organized campaigns can really make a difference. We have theresponsibility not just to give money to charity but also to volunteer our timeand to contact our representatives to voice our concern for the world's poor.I havetried to argue on halakhic, moral and pragmatic grounds that as a community weneed to take very seriously our responsibility to those outside of ourgeographical and religious communities. But I want to make an even morefundamental argument, which is that doing so is not a diversion from ourcommunal goals, however necessary, but a fulfillment of them. Judaism has avery fine balance between particularism and universalism. Our mission as apeople is, literally, to save the world. God promised Abraham that 'all thefamilies on earth will be blessed through you.' But this promise was also ademand. We are charged to bring about blessing for all other peoples. To dothis, we need to be a strongly constituted people ourselves. And by the sametoken we become a strong people by reasserting our divine mission. We are to bea 'mamlekhet kohanim' - a nation which is a conduit of God's message into theworld. Both sides of this description are vital. To achieve our divine missionwe need to be a people, just as we need to be a people in order to fulfill ourdivine mission.All ofthis means that we treat with the utmost importance our responsibility to thephysical and spiritual wellbeing of our own community. But that is not all; thegoal of our community is to go outside of itself, to improve and perfect theworld. And this goal is not external to the existence of the community, butconstitutive of it. We simply are not the Jewish people properly conceived ifwe cannot see beyond our own noses.

This is true from a very pragmatic point of view. As I learnt serving in Ghana with Jews from many other denominations, worldwide social justice is a cause that can strengthen the bonds within the wider Jewish community. Jews who cannot pray together can still do justice together. Thissolidarity across the Jewish community will help us all, and in turn help us todo more good in the wider world. Furthermore, the formulation a strong visionof the divine Jewish mission in the world that goes beyond self-preservation isan essential step in the strengthening of the Orthodox community itself. 'To continue your tradition', or 'because of the Holocaust' are not compellingarguments to those considering marrying out of the Jewish community. But a very compelling argument can be: 'Because part of being Jewish is to bring blessing to all people in the world'. Our dedication to those outside of our owncommunity as well as those within it will result not in a distraction from ou community but a strengthening of it. 'Are there Jews in Ghana?' There certainly are, and I feel a special bond withthem. But there are also many others who need my attention in Ghana and beyond and I have the obligation to dedicate myself to them. Not despite being, but because I am, a Jew.

“I tell you, all the madness of the human race is in the sanctification of that book. Everything going wrong with this country is in the first five books of the Old Testament. Smite the enemy, sacrifice your son, the desert is yours and nobody else’s all the way to the Euphrates. A body count of dead Philistines on every other page—that’s the wisdom of their wonderful Torah.” (Philip Roth, The Counterlife, p. 75)

I

            As a yeshiva boy in Forest Hills, New York in the 1980s (this was at Ohr Torah Institute—otherwise known as “the Institution,” as in house of detention), the closest thing to a Jewish American novel we were ever required to read were the aggadic sections of rabbinic fantasy we occasionally studied in Talmud class. It should be mentioned, however, that the rabbis almost always skipped over these “story” passages as unimportant. We routinely turned the Talmud page when we came upon what my ninth-grade rebbe called “these worthless passages,” and jumped headlong into the text’s pilpul and halakhic discussion of a gored ox or a disputed tallit.

            Growing up in Cedarhurst, Long Island, in the 1970s and 1980s as an “aynekel of the Modzitzer” was a strange and heady experience. Every winter we would get in my father’s beat-up car and drive all the way to Brooklyn, to a shteibel in Flatbush where, as the only non-black-hatted Hassid in the room, I would be rewarded by being seated between my grandfather and the current Modzitzer Rebbe. I would listen with rapt attention as my grandfather’s cousin, Ben Zion Shenker, sang the beautiful and haunting niggunim of my great, great grandfather, Rabbi Yisrael Taub of Modzitz. Each niggun came with a story that my grandfather would whisper into my ear as the hundreds of loyal Hassidim swayed to the mournful strains of Ben Zion’s voice; I heard history, both his and mine, unfold in each note. One niggun, called a “song of the homeless,” was written in response to the thousands of refugees streaming through the Modzitzer’s shtetl in the aftermath of World War I. Another terrifyingly beautiful niggun was penned while the Rebbe (my grandfather’s grandfather) had his right leg amputated. The song, which is sung only twice a year, once at the yarzeit of the Rebbe and again during the Ne’ilah service on Yom Kippur, is a gentle reminder to God pleading with him not to forsake his people during their times of sorrow.  

            Needless to say, our family never davened at a Young Israel; my father managed to find the one shabby shteibel in all of Long Island—and he made fast work to move the family directly across the street from Congregation Beis Medrash—an insider’s joke of an appropriate name for a Long Island synagogue—a shul without a pool (but, with plenty of Vilna shases for consolation). My father must have believed that proximity to a real honest-to-goodness bearded Rebbe, one who strolled down Central Avenue wearing a shtreimel and kapotah no less, would somehow keep me from losing my Modzitzer bearings. As it turns out—he couldn’t have been more right.

            Shabbos in our home not only meant traditional Jewish foods: challah for motzi, thick Malaga wine for kiddush, gefilte fish and chrain, but, as importantly, it also meant a new hands-breadth of Jewish American fiction—my reading for the coming week. Once the last strains of benching were sung, my father would wordlessly rise from the table and quietly descend the steep basement steps and disappear, sometimes for a half an hour or more. When he came back up to us all, his arms would be filled with dusty old paperbacks of Jewish American novels—his old yellowing musty texts from his youth growing up in Kingsbridge in the Bronx, the second son of Holocaust survivors. Other texts he had culled as an English major up in the Harlem hills of City College, that “poor man’s Harvard” of the mid-1960s.

            From my father’s overflowing arms, I first discovered my life as a Jew in Long Island—these books spoke far more powerfully and poignantly to me than the pilpul sections of Gemarah we labored over each morning in yeshiva. From Bernard Malamud’s poor shopkeepers and decrepit grocery stores, I learned deep in my soul what rachmones meant and the difference mercy could make in poor people’s lives; Saul Bellow’s thwarted intellectuals warned me of the perils of only living in one’s own head, Herzog-like, as so many of my genius relatives had done and were still doing in the new world; from Philip Roth’s angry bar-mitzvah boys or quisling army privates and jaded upper-class Jewish WASP wannabes, I saw transcribed in print the vain material strivings that I witnessed from a back-row seat each week at Rabbi Speigel’s Long Island shteibel—where the yearly celebration of the glory of the ancient Torah included the selling of atah hareta to the highest bidder; or where each Shabbos aliyah in the layning was an opportunity to get someone to donate twice hai—every prayer it seemed was an opportunity not to draw closer to God, but an occasion to pander to the wealthy patrons seated comfortably at the shteibel’s front table. Through these many Jewish American writers whom my father bequeathed to me, I discovered the meaning of commitment to a Jewish world of ideas and ideals: tsedakah—charity, gemilut hassadim—acts of lovingkindness; with each new novel devoured by the fading light of my mother’s Shabbos candles, I learned deeply Rabbi Akiva’s message: veAhavta leRaiakha kamokha, love your neighbor as yourself.

            Shalom Aleichem, I. L. Peretz, Mendele Mokher Seforim, Franz Kafka, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Israel Joshua Singer, Chaim Grade, Edward Lewis Wallant, Bernard Malamud, Philip Roth, Cynthia Ozick—each Friday night I would turn to these brilliant writers and learn again what it meant to be a Jew: torn, conflicted, angry, compassionate, loving, argumentative, generous. My weekly reading expanded my understanding not just of what my grandparents had gone through in Europe, but what I might at some time be required to do, think and believe as a Jewish man in the not too distant future—a future that, as I got older, seemed rapidly to be approaching the present.

            Needless to say, during all my time being schooled in yeshiva—thirteen years to be exact, I was never once asked to read or reflect on a single work of Jewish American fiction. I suppose we once read Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman—sneaked into our tenth-grade world drama curriculum by Mr. Joseph Cohen, a lovely man who walked with a distinct limp, his left knee having been shattered when, as a young boy, a horse from a Lower East Side ice truck kicked him as he tried to pilfer something cold to suck on during a particularly sweltering August day on Avenue C.

            So what gives? Why is Jewish American fiction not taught in the yeshiva world? Is it fear of ridicule? Fear of allowing young, impressionable minds to be influenced by secular (read: treyf) thinkers? More importantly should this literature be taught in the yeshiva world or in the hundreds of Jewish Day Schools across America?

            Many of the rabbis I studied under in yeshiva would dismiss such books as shtuss—nonsense that would lead to bitul z’man, a frivolous waste of time. Worse, many would label this glorious literary heritage as apikorsus—heretical teachings, forbidden to read let alone to savor and enjoy. Which begs the question: Why should Jewish American fiction be taught in the yeshiva world?

II

            In her recent biography of the greatest of all Jewish philosophers, Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity, Rebecca Goldstein tells of the ways that she was discouraged in her Bais Yaakov yeshiva to even say Spinoza’s name—let alone be permitted to study his philosophical treatise, The Ethics. This would not only be bitul Torah, but it would be heretical as well, giving the girls illicit ideas not conducive to marrying a good yeshiva bochur.

            Much like Goldstein’s grim Bais Yaakov experience a generation earlier, from the many rebbes I came across in my years of yeshiva in New York, I was told time and again that it would be better to sit in a room and do nothing than to waste my time filling my head with illicit ideas from that self-hating Jew, Philip Roth. One rabbi at OTI, a man who was also the English Studies Principal (I kid you not) at the major Satmar yeshiva in Brooklyn, became so enraged upon seeing me reading Philip Roth’s latest offering, The Counterlife, he knocked the book out of my hand grabbed me by my shirt and, shaking me violently, screamed: “Cappell—you should at least read Shakespeare or the Greek myths—there is true poetry, not this filthy garbage from a self-hating Jew! If you keep reading Roth, what will your children know about Judaism?”

            Not that there wasn’t a library in our modified office building on 108^th Street that served us hundred and twenty Jewish boys as The Cohen Educational Center. There was, in fact, perched high on the top floor in a dark corner of the building a large steel door with the word “LIBRARY” scratched into the industrial paint. During my four years at the school, I cannot recall ever seeing that door open. When we literary-minded talmidim complained to the administration, we were told that in theory they supported the idea of a library hour once or twice a week, but the problem was they had no funding for a librarian—hence the room remained dark and sealed.

            One morning while we were studying a particularly difficult talmudic passage dealing with the numerous issues of shehitah (ritual slaughter), our tenth-grade rebbe, being a top-flight educator, the type of teacher who was up on the very latest pedagogical techniques, filed us into the library, which unbeknownst to most of the boys, contained a TV and a VCR. The idea was for us to watch a rather gory video of a schoichet wrestling with a large animal. I vividly recall a recalcitrant goat being the star of this particular after-school special; I will also never forget my classmate David getting ill and vomiting all over the library floor when the schoichet, after explaining to his video audience the sharpness of his knife, quickly pulled his prized implement across the goat’s throat. Just as a stream of hot, steaming blood shot forth so did David’s lunch fly across the library floor. During all of the excitement with the vomit, my good friend Ari swiped the Rabbi’s keys and quickly ran down the street to Queens Boulevard and bribing the bemused Israeli locksmith who at first (before Ari handed him a folded $20 bill) pretended to be outraged at the request, refusing to copy the official school keys which were clearly marked “DO NOT COPY.” Of course, with the $20 in his pocket he did make copies of all of the yeshiva keys. Now after the shehitah video was over most of the boys were interested in the office keys (grade changing and other assorted mischief). But Cal, Jonathan, Shlomo, and I had other plans: we had our eyes on that shiny brand-new brass library door key.

            And so began our “Rescue a Book” program from the shuttered OTI library. My friends and I would at opportune moments, while one of us acted as the lookout down the hall, sneak into the dank dark corner of the library and with just a dim natural light filtering in from 66^th Street, quickly scan the dusty shelves for books worth reading. At first we made random selections: Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, Thomas Hughes’s Tom Brown’s Schooldays. As we got more bold in the dark library (an old 6 Volt flashlight helped with our courage), more thought went into the process: we systematically went through the Russian masters (a shelf not too far from the door should a quick exit be required): Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, and my favorite from this lot—Nikolai Gogol. We soon worked out a system: the actual book thief (borrower) would get first dibs before passing the book(s) around our small literary club. When we were all done reading the person going in for the next book would return the previous book. We even voted Shlomo as our first underground librarian, tasked with keeping track of who had which rescued book.

            Back from the Riverdale days of “The Institute”—when it had a top-flight educational program founded by Rabbi Shlomo Riskin (before he abandoned the education of New York’s finest young minds in deference to the settler movement in Efrat, Israel), the library had a focus on great works of European literature. There was even a large section with French titles. Of course we, the young men of the 1980s Queens version of OTI were, amazingly, not offered any foreign language instruction: not French, not Spanish, nothing. When it became apparent to the upper administration of OTI that we needed a foreign language exam to obtain a New York State High School Diploma with the Regent’s Seal of Approval, our rather enterprising principal came up with the solution that the entire yeshiva should study Hebrew language one hour a week during the rebbes’ lunch hour. This way we could pass the Regents and help our Talmud and Mishnah study at the same time—thereby avoiding yet one more hour of “wasted time.”

            One afternoon as I was looking through the French section of the library, picking up a copy of Stendhal’s The Red and the Black, I noticed a misshelved book among the French classics. There staring up at me from behind the pale glow of my flashlight was the impish grin of a man. I flipped the book over to discover a beat-up first edition of The Adventures of Augie March (as the dust-jacket proclaimed—by the author of Dangling Man and The Victim). I grabbed the two volumes: Bellow and Stendhal, and quickly made my way back down the hall. It sounded more like a kid’s book (certainly in comparison to Crime and Punishment), but I opened the first page and began to read aloud quietly to myself in the near darkness:

I am an American, Chicago born—Chicago, that somber city—and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent. But a man’s character is his fate, says Heraclitus, and in the end there isn’t any way to disguise the nature of the knocks by acoustical work on the door or gloving the knuckles. (Bellow, The Adventures of Augie March, p. 3)

            And I was hooked.

III

I began this essay with a quotation from The Counterlife, one of Philip Roth’s most important novels. Taken at face value, it seems like a rather angry and one-sided attack on ancient and holy Jewish texts. Why would any yeshiva or Jewish Day School principal want his or her students to study a text that contains such seemingly hateful words and ideas? Well, of course, one could find just as hateful ideas (taken out of context) in that (recently) much-maligned Hebrew Bible itself. After all, “an eye for an eye,” sounds pretty scary and hateful as well—that is without interpretation. Once we understand that the Torah is speaking of the value of labor lost through blindness we can begin to see the wisdom and morality of this ancient biblical passage. No yeshiva principal or rebbe worthy of the title would suggest that his or her students should go study the Torah without commentators such as Rashi or the Rambam. So too one must delve more deeply into Philip Roth’s novel before we may interpret his work. This isolated quotation, while extremely provocative, does no justice to the larger aims and deep moral underpinnings of each of Roth’s novels. Without interpretation of the Torah we could easily end up like Karaites sitting in the dark all Shabbos long, afraid to turn right or left. Similarly, without any critical understanding of Philip Roth, many religious leaders over the years labeled Roth as a self-hating Jew.

The truth about Roth, as well as about the many dozens of brilliant contemporary Jewish American writers, could not be further from this idea of self-hatred. Writers like Roth, those who have been satirizing the exploits of their Jewish American characters for decades, are actually the self-appointed guardians of the morals and values of the very culture they may be skewering in their fictional portrayal. Philip Roth never denigrates Judaism in The Counterlife or in any of the other thirty or so novels he has written in the past fifty years. Instead, he is attempting to push American Judaism (and America for that matter) toward a more perfect union of study and pragmatism, idea, and ideal.

In this quotation from The Counterlife, the speaker is one of Roth’s most amusing characters, an Israeli journalist named Shuki Elchanan, who in this scene is goading his old friend, Philip Roth’s alter-ego Nathan Zuckerman. They are out at dinner, discussing the current difficulties of Israeli politics, when his anger and frustration comes to a boil:

“I tell you, all the madness of the human race is in the sanctification of that book. Everything going wrong with this country is in the first five books of the Old Testament. Smite the enemy, sacrifice your son, the desert is yours and nobody else’s all the way to the Euphrates. A body count of dead Philistines on every other page—that’s the wisdom of their wonderful Torah.” (Philip Roth, The Counterlife, p. 75)

In this scene, Zuckerman and Shuki are discussing the dangerous right-wing leader of the Israeli settler movement, Mordecai Lippman—a man who perverts the Torah to bolster his message of hate and fury. More than likely, Roth modeled Lippman on Rabbi Meir Kahane, whose real-life party “Kach,” was first listed as a terrorist organization back in 1994 (as well as their splinter group, “Kahane Chai,” which is still labeled to this day as a terrorist organization by Israel). A short while after this conversation with Zuckerman, Shuki corrects these distorted ideas in a heartfelt letter to Zuckerman in which he explains that he doesn’t want to be misunderstood—nor does he want Zuckerman to mistake the zealots of the settler movement for the majority of peace-loving Israelis. (Lippman espouses a platform of fear and hatred: “There is nothing the American goy would like better than a Judenrein United States…”[p. 124].) Shuki explains in his letter to Zuckerman that he is on edge because his son, a musical prodigy who has been given an opportunity to study under the tutelage of Daniel Barenboim in New York City, would rather do his military service than continue his studies in New York. The reader of Roth’s novel soon learns that Shuki is really quite a dedicated father who loves the Jewish State and loves being a Jew. We also hear from his father, a Holocaust survivor, now a welder in Israel, who pleads with Zukerman to make aliyah. That drunken rant against Israel and the Hebrew Bible is in fact a manifestation of Shuki’s frustration with the horrors of war and the many hatreds unleashed by the Middle East conflict. Shuki, we discover, is a veteran of the Yom Kippur War, where

he’d lost his hearing in one ear and most of the sight in one eye when an exploding Egyptian shell threw him fifteen feet from his position. His brother, a reserve paratroop officer, who in civilian life had been [an] architect, was taken prisoner when the Golan Heights were overrun. After the Syrian retreat, they found him and the rest of his captured platoon with their hands tied behind them to stakes in the ground; they had been castrated, decapitated, and their penises stuffed in their mouths. Strewn around the abandoned battlefield were necklaces made of their ears. (p. 63)

After all this fighting and horror, Shuki is tired of warfare and tired of people who, like Lippman, believe that they have God on their side and therefore all of the answers. In fact, having witnessed numerous atrocities committed on both sides of the conflict, as these disturbing passages demonstrate, Shuki remains somewhat shell-shocked by his experiences.

What Roth gives his readers in The Counterlife (and in each and every one of his novels) is a complex view of a multi-faceted religion and culture. There are no easy answers in The Counterlife; like the best literature, it offers us difficult questions we must contemplate alone and communally. Do not Jewish schools and yeshivas owe it to their students to present complex thinking on the many complications of Jewish life in America and Israel? Do yeshiva principals think that by barring these discussions from the Beis Medrash and the yeshiva classrooms that their talmidim do not know of the existence of alternate perspectives, varied identities, shifting levels of religious observance to Judaism and a “Torah-true” life? Do these same rebbes and principals not know of the high attrition rate of students who have been denied opportunities to discuss the complexities of individual faith and understanding of our tradition? How many of these students had Roth novels (or, like Rebecca Goldstein in her yeshiva experience being denied Spinoza’s Ethics…) knocked out of their hands? How many of these students who were frustrated in their attempts to gain a deeper more meaningful individualistic understanding of Judaism are no longer affiliated with the faith or no longer consider themselves “practicing” Jews? How many of these thoughtful students are now “off the derekh”?

IV

At the end of one of Saul Bellow’s most important stories titled, “Something to Remember Me By,” the narrator—now an old man preparing for his own death, but barely sixteen years old in the frame of the story—is trying to prepare himself for the imminent death of his mother, a woman who has suffered for many months from cancer and who is in the midst of the very last throes of her disease. After several misadventures in the frigid cold of a Midwestern storm, the narrator has been robbed of his sheepskin overcoat; he knows he must return home, where his furious and often violent father awaits him. These are the boy’s thoughts as he rides on the Chicago streetcar home:

If my father should catch me I could expect hard blows on my shoulders, on the top of my head, on my face. But if my mother had, tonight, just died, he wouldn’t hit me.

    This was when the measured, reassuring, sleep-inducing turntable of days became a whirlpool, a vortex darkening toward the bottom. I had had only the anonymous pages in the pocket of my lost sheepskin to interpret it to me. They told me that the truth of the universe was inscribed into our very bones. That the human skeleton was itself a hieroglyph. That everything we had ever known on earth was shown to us in the first days after death. That our experience of the world was desired by the cosmos, and needed by it for its own renewal. (Bellow, Collected Stories, p. 436)

The boy gets off at the North Avenue stop and that is when Saul Bellow’s pithy drash on Jewish mourning rituals begins:

I got down on the North Avenue stop, avoiding my reflection in the shopwindows. After a death, mirrors were immediately covered. I can’t say what this pious superstition means. Will the soul of your dead be reflected in a looking glass, or is this custom a check to the vanity of the living? (p. 437)

            A cynical reader might say, “Why should yeshiva students have to put up with this angry dismissal of an important shiva ritual?” After all, Bellow’s narrator dismisses this minhag, or custom, as “pious superstition.” Yet the narrator’s next two questions suggest a far more nuanced appraisal of this custom. In fact, Bellow himself is not at all dismissive of these Jewish rituals. “A check on vanity of the living”—this is in fact a brilliant interpretation of this mysterious ritual of uncertain origin. More importantly, Bellow’s entire story is focused on key ideas of Judaism and our relationship with this tradition: how to honor one’s dead parents and what is bequeathed from one generation to the next.

V

            Why study Jewish American literature in the yeshiva classroom? Because without it we have a very limited idea of the varieties of Jewish life in America. We cannot hide from the difficult questions Jewish writers in America ask of our community no more than we can fend off the many barbed critiques that much twentieth century and contemporary Jewish American literature presents to an early twenty-first-century practicing “Torah Jew.” Nor should we. Any serious appraisal of Jewish life in America (the aim of a yeshiva education?) would be incomplete without these varied Jewish American voices weighing in. We as a community need to contend with these key ideas. So whether stolen by its students or willingly given, this body of imaginative work created by Jews in America during the past century of experimentation on these shores desperately needs to be contemplated. I have often thought that it is a yeshiva audience, those readers classically trained in the traditional Jewish texts and culture, who truly have the knowledge to “unpack” all of the hidden meanings contained in Jewish American writing and who constitute the ideal readers for Jewish American fiction writers. How sad that this perfect audience has, with an angry flick of the hand (Shtuss!), so often rejected this body of post-rabbinic literature, work that might be thought of as a complex commentary on traditional Jewish sources: the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud.

VI

Many of the new Jewish American writers are former yeshiva students formally schooled in Torah and mitzvoth: Allegra Goodman, Tova Mirvis, Gary Shteyngart, Shalom Auslander. Yet many of these former yeshiva students seem to use their hard-earned knowledge of Judaism as fodder for satire and ridicule. Early on in Gary Shteyngart’s funny and culturally vital 2006 novel Absurdistan, his protagonist Misha Vainberg, a recent immigrant from Russia, is maimed in a botched adult circumcision by a group of Hassidim in Brooklyn. Late in the novel, Misha is traveling on an airplane when he spots a large Hassid sitting in first-class getting into an argument and acting rudely to a flight attendant. He enters into the first-class cabin and begins shouting at the Hassid: “Beware of their mitzvah mobiles, fellow Jews among you. Beware of circumcision late in life. Beware of easy faith…” (p. 109). Similarly, Shalom Auslander puts his knowledge of yeshiva to work in almost each of his stories collected in his 2005 book Beware of God. In “The War of the Bernsteins,” the eponymous character becomes so obsessed with the mathematics and mechanisms of Jewish reward and punishment that he spends most of his waking hours calculating the number of negative commandments versus the positive mitzvoth—missing the spirit of the Torah in the process and completely ignoring and alienating his young wife, who eventually divorces him:

The spiritual mathematics consumed him.

Was obeying a negative prohibition worth the same amount of reward in the World to Come as fulfilling a positive commandment? Would the inaction of negative prohibitions really be as rewarded as the deliberate action of positive commandments? (p. 3)

Of course, all of Bernstein’s anti-social behaviors are actively encouraged by his rabbis who think of his increasing concern with mitzvoth as a positive sign of his becoming a much better Jew—a true “master of repentance.” Perhaps no contemporary Jewish American writer better exemplifies the need to study this literature in the yeshiva than Shalom Auslander. While his writing is uproariously funny—it is also a wry commentary on the importance of not losing track of the true meaning of the Torah as a way of living a life filled with meaning and concern for our fellow human beings. The Torah is not a ledger sheet of virtues and demerits. Auslander’s stories point out the shortcomings of a yeshiva education that does not focus on how all this Torah observance should strive to make better human beings.  

Reading Auslander’s stories brings me back to some of the more unsavory aspects of my own yeshiva background. At Ohr Torah Institute the rabbis would greet us in the morning with a big bear hug combined with a back rub. What was the purpose of this morning ritual? Had the rabbis missed us so much since the previous afternoon? Was this a true emotional exchange between rebbe and talmid—an emotional overflowing of powerful feelings? It was not long before we each realized that this outburst of physical warmth was really a slick rabbinical maneuver to do a quick once over for each boy: I refer to what became known in our yeshiva as the “tsitsith-check.” During this morning ritual hug, if you were discovered to not be wearing your four-cornered, fringed garment under your button-down dress shirt, you would be required to purchase just such a ritual object proffered by the more enterprising rabbis of our school right out of their attaché cases. 

            As in Auslander’s story “The War of the Bernsteins,” these rabbinical machinations did more to alienate the recipients of all this religious attention than they served to draw people closer to God and an increased level of ritual observance. One way to read Auslander’s stories would be as a cynical perspective on the yeshiva world—stories best left out of Jewish Day School and yeshiva high-school curricula. Yet I would argue that the most important audience that Shalom Auslander is writing for is precisely the world of tsitsith-checking rabbis—complete with frozen smiles and false embraces. Perhaps a Jewish educator reading this story, or as importantly, one of the poor unfortunate tsitsith-checkees like myself—just might be brought back to an awareness, a deeper sympathy with the true spirit and beauty of Judaism. At the same time Auslander’s fiction forces his readers to recognize how that beauty has been perverted by numerous unthinking and uncaring religiously-motivated actions. After all, tsitsith are supposed to bring the wearer to an understanding and an appreciation of God’s omnipresence. As it says in Numbers 15:40, you wear tsitsith so “that ye may remember, and do all My commandments, and be holy unto your God.” Ironically, the Torah goes on to explain that tsitsith are supposed to serve as a reminder of God’s granting the Israelites their freedom: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt” (Numbers 15:41)—probably not the first thought on each manhandled boy’s mind during a morning tsitsith check. I can say with certainty that God’s commandments were the furthest thing from my mind during (and long after) those demeaning (and often expensive) exchanges.

            In contrast, my reading of contemporary Jewish American fiction has afforded me a deeper understanding of Jewish ritual, and it has inspired in me an appreciation for the true beauty of Judaism—an aesthetic that was often marred in my yeshiva experience. After all, satirists have always been the self-appointed moral guardians of their culture. Whether it is Philip Roth, who way back in the 1950s had his young character Ozzie Freedman scream down at his rabbi: “Promise me, promise me you’ll never hit anybody about God” (p. 158), or Shalom Auslander’s twenty-first century vision of a sterile Jewish Orthodoxy, these brilliant works of fiction engage young minds both in and out of the yeshiva. What great literature does is force its readers to think and reflect on their lives, their roles in shaping their culture and universe. This is especially true of literature that engages readers on their own native grounds—in this case in an Orthodox or Torah setting. It is most important to allow students within the yeshiva world to be engaged by Jewish American literature to allow their imaginations to run over the possibilities that engagement with the modern world from a traditional perspective and lifestyle entails. We owe it to ourselves and to our students not to stifle the important discussions that would ensue from these readings.

VII

One of those dusty books I rescued years ago from my moldering yeshiva library was a seminal work of literary realism: Stendhal’s The Red and the Black. Late in that book, Stendhal famously defines the novel as: “a mirror that strolls along a highway. Now it reflects the blue of the skies, now the mud puddles underfoot” (p. 479). Morris Dickstein, one of the most important critics of contemporary Jewish culture, in his recent survey of American literature, The Mirror in the Roadway: Literature and the Real World, claims that in this passage

Stendhal only appears to be invoking the mirror as an impersonal mechanism, a carbon copy that displays the world as it actually is. The image itself, as he positions it, belies this simplistic claim. This is not a stationary mirror fixed upon the passing show, observing the parade as from the viewing stand, but a dynamic reflector shifting position as it moves down the road. (p. 8)

            Dickstein goes on to suggest that the mirror “must be held or carried by someone, and the images it provides will be framed, constantly changing, a series of partial views contributing to a larger picture” (p. 8).

            Surely the world of the yeshiva and the young minds it seeks to shape deserves just such a “dynamic reflector” to gauge its progress and its shortcomings. Thankfully this reflector already exists in the body of work Jewish American fiction writers have produced during the last one hundred years of experimentation on American shores.

In this essay, I am proposing that the yeshiva world institute a curriculum of study that not only reflects the beautiful blue sky but also the mud puddles of the contemporary Jewish American community. Our vast literary inheritance does just that—all we need to do is open the books ourselves and make them available to the youth studying in our yeshivas and Jewish Day Schools across the country. We deny our young questioning scholars of the yeshiva a glimpse into this mirror at the peril of the community. The yeshiva world is fearful of allowing young impressionable minds to delve into the dangers of contemporary fiction. But in fearing the “reflected mud and muck” of the Jewish community, the beautiful image of the blue sky is obscured as well.

VIII

Throughout her 1998 novel, Kaaterskill Falls, Allegra Goodman engages numerous Jewish philosophical questions. How restrictive must an Orthodox life be? Does kosher always mean kosher? What are the true ethics of kosher food? (In the midst of the horrors of Postville, Iowa, can the Orthodox Jewish community really afford not to fully engage their students in a meaningful debate about the letter of the law and the true meaning of the spirit of kashruth and holy eating habits?) How can an individual adhere to a stringent code of Orthodox behavior yet concurrently remain a committed individualist? How do twentieth-century feminist ideals jive or conflict with a Torah-true life? Goodman forces her readers to ponder and meditate on these difficult questions. Precisely because of Goodman’s engagement with these tough, thorny issues, she is able, at the novel’s conclusion, to powerfully evoke the Shabbos ritual of havdalah. Many of the main characters of the novel gather around the lit candle to mark the conclusion of the Shabbos and debate the meaning of ancient Hebrew prayer. I could not ask for a better talmudic or midrashic interpretation that would form the basis of a better understanding of this important ritual.

            Goodman’s novel also perfectly “reflects” Stendhal’s metaphor of fiction being a “movable mirror.” Throughout Kaaterskill Falls, Goodman’s characters question their adherence to the strict laws and traditions dictated by their leader Rav Elijah Kirshner and, after his death, by the Rav’s puritanical son Isaiah (who reveals more than a few mud puddles); however, by the conclusion of the novel, Goodman’s protagonist, Elizabeth Shulman, finds her own place within that beautiful “blue sky”—the culture and life of Orthodox Judaism.

            Kaaterskill Falls concludes with numerous characters ending their Shabbos with the traditional havdalah service:

They get up and go inside the house to make havdalah. The Landauers get out the spice box and kiddish cup. Brocha holds the braided candle, and Isaac says the prayer marking the end of the Shabbat. After he says the last words, Hamavdil ben kodesh lihol, Nina asks, “What do you think is the best translation for that?”

            “Blessed be he who separates the holy from the profane,” Isaac says.

            “The sacred from the secular,” puts in Elizabeth.

            “The transcendent moment from the workaday world,” suggests old Rabbi Sobel in his quavering voice.

            “Mm.” They pause around the smoking candle. (p. 324)

Just imagine the debate that would ensue in a yeshiva classroom after reading this scene. What do we make about this separation between the secular and the sacred? Just imagine the conversation a group of students highly educated in traditional Jewish texts, talmudic and midrashic, might have after reading this powerful novel. Let’s debate it—is Jewish literature outside the realm of holy and in the realm of the profane? Through engagement with traditional Jewish sources, I would argue that the literary production of Jews in America should be seen as one more stage of rabbinic commentary on the scriptural inheritance of the Jewish people.

Goodman draws her readers’ attention to the distractions of American popular culture and the importance of continuing to make those distinctions, those vital demarcations between holy and mundane, Holocaust memory and the noise (and comfort) of American popular culture. For pre-Haskalah Jews, this was not a personal concern—Judaism itself made these distinctions. However, much of contemporary postmodern Jewish American fiction seems to ask the all important question of how do we make these distinctions in a post-Holocaust world?

            I, for one, after reading Goodman’s novel back in 1998, would never think of havdalah quite the same way again. These days, when I perform this ritual, it is no longer as mere rote repetition of an ancient text. Goodman’s novel began a personal questioning of just what this separation we celebrate entails. How can we truly sanctify the Sabbath as separate yet a part of our weekly lives? How do we truly sanctify the Sabbath so that the havdalah service can be truly felt as a demarcation of difference? As I argue in my recently published book: American Talmud: The Cultural Work of Jewish American Fiction, I believe that this is precisely the type of work that Jewish American literature performs for its readers. What Jewish American fiction does is open the many ancient Jewish texts and rituals to a contemporary audience so that we become a part of a living breathing tradition—one that may in fact augment our contemporary American lives and not stand in opposition to it.

Instead of requiring its pupils to steal the promethean fire of contemporary Jewish literature, the yeshiva world ought to be celebrating this body of work, willingly incorporating it into its curriculum as a means of conveying ancient tradition to their contemporary Jewish students. In doing so, they will secure the relevance and primacy of ancient Orthodox Judaism for many more generations, ensuring the mesorah or great chain of tradition continues in a contemporary American setting.

In American Talmud I quote an aggadic section from tractate Menahot:

Rabbi Judah said in the name of Rab: When Moses ascended on high (to receive the Torah) he found the Holy One, blessed be He, engaged in affixing taggin (crown-like flourishes) to the letters. Moses said: “Lord of the Universe, who stays Thy hand?” He replied: “There will arise a man at the end of many generations, Akiba ben Joseph by name, who will expound upon each little letter, heaps and heaps of the laws.” “Lord of the Universe,” said Moses, “permit me to see him.” He replied: “Turn thee around.” Moses went (into the academy of Rabbi Akiba) and sat down behind eight rows of Akiba’s disciples. Not being able to follow their arguments he was ill at ease, but when they came to a certain subject and the disciples said to the master “Whence do you know it?” and the latter replied, “It is a law given to Moses at Sinai,” he was comforted. (Menahot 29b).

            This aggadic short story might seem peculiar to those not regularly engaged in the study of the Talmud. Although the Talmud is often perceived as being a rigid book comprised of legal maneuverings designed to codify the intricate Mosaic laws, it might more accurately be thought of as a blueprint for modern and postmodern fictional play.

Far from being a dry legal document, the Babylonian Talmud, particularly its aggadic sections, revels in the fantastical and the ambiguous. Not merely capable of tolerating dissent, the Talmud honors and celebrates a difference of opinion; time and again the Talmud honors radical rethinking, even about its foundational concepts. In the previous passage, for example, the Talmud tells a seemingly heretical story in which Moses, the greatest leader of the Jewish people, cannot follow the basic logic of even a simple talmudic argument.

            This foregoing aggadic passage reveals the storytelling aspects, the cultural work performed by the Babylonian Talmud. Through its literary passages the Talmud reinterprets the Torah anew for its own generation. This open-endedness, this celebration of multiple perspectives, is not only a characteristic of the Babylonian Talmud; it is also a hallmark of twentieth-century and contemporary Jewish American fiction. There are so many analogues between the two that Jewish American fiction writers embracing modern and postmodern life are often mistakenly perceived as radically breaking with their traditional past. Yet they are one more link in the great chain of rabbinic thought conveyed to us through the centuries as a means of interpretation designed to ensure that scripture will remain vital and new for each generation.

IX

            At the end of one of his greatest novels, The Adventures of Augie March, Saul Bellow’s hero reflects on his many-faceted identity, wondering to himself how a poor orphan from the wrong side of Chicago ended up tramping across the frozen postwar fields of Normandy. He begins to laugh, and Bellow writes: “that’s the animal ridens in me, the laughing creature, forever rising up” (p. 536). Bellow refers to Aristotle’s designation that to be human is to be able to laugh. Augie’s associative mind then goes on to reflect on Christopher Columbus, who, five centuries before Augie came on the scene, set all of his personal discoveries in motion: “Columbus too thought he was a flop, probably, when they sent him back in chains. Which didn’t prove there was no America” (p. 536).   

Shutting out contemporary Jewish American voices from the yeshiva syllabus does not prove that these students will grow up without doubts—forgetting that there is an America swirling in all its contemporary glory and horror right outside the beis medrash doors. For me, 108^th Street led directly to Queens Boulevard and Jacey’s Billiards when, at the age of 16, I preferred shooting pool to being denigrated by my rebbes for reading a body of work that even back then I thought of as post-rabbinic literature. Yet, hineni: here I am twenty years later engaging in traditional Jewish texts through the very literature that was branded as shtuss by my supposed spiritual leaders—the well-intentioned but wrong-headed rabbis in my yeshiva.

Much of contemporary Jewish American writing eloquently voices the perils of unfettered assimilation, the withering of roots and the loss of memory that is often attendant with pursuing the dream of America. Jewish American fiction writers’ morally serious work warns of the political misuse American popular culture has often made of Holocaust commemoration and tradition. Their work continues to dramatize the complex lives of their Jewish American characters, while powerfully rendering the conflicts that inevitably arise between tradition and modernity, memory and history.

            That “dynamic reflector” of contemporary Jewish American literature is extremely important. It might reflect some of the less-savory aspects of our culture; writers like Philip Roth have been doing that since their first published works. But they also reflect the sky—the great promise of a life lived by an ancient code of understanding, belief, faith, and compassion. Shutting off discussion does not lead to blind adherence—and it does in fact lead to its opposite. When we stifle that discussion we threaten our viability in a contemporary world of myriad identity choices and, in the process, we destroy our own textual tradition. It didn’t work in the shtetl as the Haskalah blew winds of enlightenment through the dusty shtetl streets with its intoxicating air of freedom—it certainly will not work in the freest society the world has ever known. We ignore Philip Roth’s blue sky and puddles of mud at our own peril.

Works Cited

Auslander, Shalom. Beware of God: Stories. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005.

Bellow, Saul. The Adventures of Augie March. New York: Viking, 1953.

———. Collected Stories. New York: Penguin, 2001.

Ben Isaiah, Rabbi Abraham, and Rabbi Benjamin Sharfman. The Pentateuch

            and Rashi’s Commentary: A Linear Translation into English. New York: S.S.

            & R., 1949.

Cappell, Ezra. American Talmud. Albany: SUNY Press, 2008.

Dickstein, Morris. The Mirror in the Roadway: Literature and the Real World. New

            Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2005. 

Epstein, Rabbi Dr. I., ed. and trans. The Babylonian Talmud in 18 Volumes.

            London: Soncino, 1961.

Goldstein, Rebecca. Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity.

            New York: Shocken, 2006.

Goodman, Allegra. Kaaterskill Falls. New York: Dial, 1998.

Malamud, Bernard. The Assistant. New York: Avon, 1957.

———. The Complete Stories. New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1997.

Roth, Philip. The Counterlife. New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1986.

———. Goodbye, Columbus and Five Short Stories. New York: Vintage, 1987.

Shteyngart, Gary. Absurdistan. New York: Random House, 2006.

Stendhal, Henri Beyle. The Red and the Black. New York: Penguin Classics, 2002.

Stern, David, and Mark J. Mirsky, eds. Rabbinic Fantasies. New Haven: Yale University

            Press, 1998.

Despite the rhetoric emanating from certain camps of Orthodox Judaism, studying secular knowledge lishmah—knowledge for knowledge’s sake—is a widely accepted notion among Jewish thinkers. In fact, virtually none of the great Jewish personalities who discuss the value of secular knowledge—from Rav Saadiah Gaon and Rambam to Rav Kook and Rav Soloveitchik—speak of its utilitarian value. Rambam does not praise Aristotle’s philosophy for its salary-increasing powers, nor does Rav Kook laud university studies because of their utility in getting into a good law school.

            Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch is a classic example of this knowledge-lishmah school of thought. Not only does he extol the spiritual value of secular studies, he explicitly derides those who see knowledge as a tool in advancing one’s career. Two quotations (many more can be adduced) from his essays should suffice to establish this point. In “The Relevance of Secular Studies,” Rav Hirsch writes:

[A]ny supporter of education and culture should deplore the fact that when these secular studies are evaluated in terms of their usefulness to the young, too much stress is often placed on so-called practical utility and necessity. Under such circumstances, the young are in danger of losing the pure joy of acquiring knowledge for its own sake, so that they will no longer take pleasure in the moral and spiritual benefits to be obtained by study.

            And in “The Joy of Learning,” Rav Hirsch has this to say:

[W]e forget that by hurrying to impose the yoke of the materialistic, or, as we like to put it euphemistically, the practical aims of life upon the dawn and springtime of childhood and early youth, we only deprive our children prematurely of the bloom of flowering youth and nip our children’s spiritual yearnings in the bud. Instead of encouraging our children to get wisdom for its own sake, we raise them to become only clever and shrewd, judging everything in the light of self-interest and respecting only those intellectual and spiritual pursuits that are likely to yield the highest dividends in terms of material gain. A generation raised on such a philosophy of life will never be able to experience that true joy of learning, which regards knowledge itself as the supreme reward.

            Rav Hirsch also stresses that educators must not give their students the impression that their secular studies are simply a necessary concession to modern times. Such an impression is both incorrect and harmful, for “[o]nly ideas rooted in genuine conviction will be received with enthusiasm. Products of compromise can expect no more than grudging acceptance forced by considerations of expediency.”

Thus far, Rav Hirsch merely emerges as another proponent—albeit an enthusiastic and vocal one—in the long line of Jewish thinkers who see inherent value in studying secular knowledge.

What distinguishes Rav Hirsch, however, and what makes him a fascinating case study is that more than once in his essays on education, he cites statements of Hazal, our Sages, regarding learning Torah lishmah to bolster his position that one should study secular knowledge lishmah.

For instance, in an essay discussing general—not specifically Torah—education, “Ethical Training in the Classroom,” Rav Hirsch cites Pirkei Avot 2:6, “v’lo am ha’arets hassid” and remarkably translates this aphorism as “[A]n uneducated man will not attain the moral grandeur of selfless devotion to duty.” Traditionally, the term am ha’arets applies to someone ignorant vis-à-vis Torah, not general, knowledge. And yet, Rav Hirsch either ignores or pretends not to know this.

Even if Rav Hirsch understands am ha’arets in a nontraditional sense, he also applies other statements of Hazal to secular knowledge that almost certainly apply exclusively to the study of Torah. For example, he cites Kiddushin 40b, “Limud gadol she-haLimud meivi lidei ma’aseh,” and translates this statement as “Knowledge has priority because only the right kind of knowledge can give rise to the right practice.” Two sentences later he paraphrases Pirkei Avot 4:7 as “[I]t was considered a desecration of knowledge and the striving after knowledge to use learning as a ‘crown of self-glorification’ or a ‘tool for making a living.’” Rav Hirsch applies these quotations to secular studies without even hinting that in their original context they refer specifically to the study of Torah.

Nor does Rav Hirsch limit himself to select quotations. In the same essay he makes this general statement about Hazal:

[O]ur Sages were enemies of ignorance. They regarded education, intellectual enlightenment, and the acquisition of knowledge as the first of all moral commandments. They viewed the dissemination of intellectual enlightenment among all classes of the population as the prime concern of the nation, and the training of a child’s mind as the first and most sacred duty of fatherhood. They considered it a matter of conscience for every Jewish father to see that his child should not remain a boor and am ha’arets; no Jewish child must be allowed to grow up as an ignorant, uneducated person.

            Frankly, this is staggering. Rav Hirsch talks of Hazal as enemies of ignorance, generally speaking, not as enemies of Torah ignorance—even though most of Hazal’s statements concerning education surely apply to Torah education only. Nor does Rav Hirsch apparently feel the need to explain himself (and an explanation is desperately needed, especially keeping in mind the vast difference between Torah study and other fields of knowledge in the minds of many Orthodox Jews). Rav Hirsch never says something to the effect of, “Although our Sages speak of Torah education, we can apply the principle behind their statements to other fields of study as well.”

            While Rav Hirsch’s employment of Hazal in speaking of secular knowledge is most pronounced in his essay, “Ethical Training in the Classroom,” he blurs the lines between Torah and secular knowledge in other essays as well. For example, in “Education in the Rabbinic Era,” which concerns the educational values of the mishnaic and talmudic sages, Rav Hirsch concludes by asking, “If the pure delight in knowledge for its own sake should, once again, become the common heritage of an entire nation, might it not contribute, in some fashion, to the uplifting, the healing, and the greater happiness of all mankind?” Again, Rav Hirsch speaks of “knowledge”—generically—even though the mishnaic and talmudic sages’ educational values concern Torah knowledge.

            In “Talmudic Judaism and Society,” Rav Hirsch, citing Shabbat 31a, writes that the second question Heaven asks a person after he or she dies is “[D]id you set aside a fixed time each day for continuing your studies?” The actual question, as found in the Talmud, is “Kavata itim laTorah?—Did you set aside fixed times for the study of Torah?” Rav Hirsch somehow morphs “Torah” into “studies.” Further blurring the lines, Rav Hirsch cites this statement of Hazal among a series of other talmudic statements, all of which concern generic knowledge, not Torah knowledge.

Finally, in “The Joy of Learning,” Rav Hirsch attempts to convince parents of the need to instill a love of learning in their children even though he describes his era as “so materialistic, and materialistic concerns are given such prominence…”. He contrasts his age’s attitude to knowledge with “the spirit of true scholarship, which, until very recently, was cherished by the members of the Jewish nation.” Of course, this “true scholarship” cherished by Jews was Torah scholarship. Indeed, in subsequent sentences in this essay Rav Hirsch writes specifically of “Jewish scholarship.” Nonetheless, Rav Hirsch is less than crystal clear in this essay when he employs, without qualification, the words “scholarship” and “knowledge.”

            With this fascinating discovery in hand, what now? How does one explain what appears to be an intriguing misuse of Hazal and Jewish history?

            My short answer to this dilemma is “I don’t know.” One can write this apparent distortion off to Rav Hirsch’s lifelong goal of winning hearts and minds to Orthodox Judaism. However, such an answer is less than satisfactory in that it assumes a certain dishonesty on Rav Hirsch’s part. Therefore, I offer the following possible explanation.

Rav Hirsch obviously knew that he took a logical jump in applying statements of Hazal regarding Torah study to the study of general knowledge. Nonetheless, he considered the step more of a logical “skip” than a logical “leap.” In other words, unlike the vast chasm many Orthodox Jews currently see between Torah and general knowledge, Rav Hirsch views the two fields of study as basically similar to one another. Both concern God’s wisdom. The student of Torah studies the Divine word and the student of nature, history, and the people in it studies the Divine design. Both are divinity students.

            Moreover, in his essays on education, Rav Hirsch repeatedly posits that discovering the laws governing nature should inspire people to search for the laws given to govern their lives—the moral law. In Rav Hirsch’s terminology, the laws of the Creator should lead people to the laws of the Lawgiver. And by “obeying this moral law of his own free choice, man joins the great chorus of creatures that serve God.”

If, then, the proper study of Torah, nature, and history (where one sees God’s guiding hand) are all closely intertwined with the study of God’s moral law, and if “[i]n the view of Judaism, truth is one and indivisible,” Rav Hirsch’s out-of-context utilization of Hazal’s educational statements becomes more understandable. In his mind, secular studies represent another path in one’s Divine service. If so, truly how can one misuse such knowledge as a “crown for self aggrandizement” or as “a tool for making a living”? May Hazal not have had these studies in mind when they argued, “lo am ha’arets hassid”? Jewish learning is, after all, in Rav Hirsch’s opinion, “so broad and universal in character that it happily welcomes any other fields of study that aspire toward an understanding of the realities of nature and history.” And if Hazal did not have such studies in mind, are the two not similar enough to, in good faith, apply a quotation said regarding Torah to general knowledge? Very likely, Rav Hirsch felt the answer to this question was an emphatic yes.  

The current world is one of information-overload and hyper-stimulation. In this increasingly changing and competitive world, the stakes are high. Being creative gives you the competitive advantage. The fastest and best innovators thrive and survive, and creativity is the key factor. In this article, I propose and will provide support for the argument that Jews historically have been highly creative, and that they are currently very creative in many endeavors.

Jews are creative and use their creativity to innovate and improve the world. The title of this journal is “Conversations,” discussions among people. The concept of conversation is an example of Jewish creative dialogue and learning. This article will examine how the practice of Judaism leads to high-order thinking and creativity. I will discuss the roles of prayer, Jewish education, and self-examination, as tools to become a better and more creative person. The final section of this article provides methods the reader can use to enhance creativity. Each person reading this article probably uses these methods to some degree already; but by articulating the strategies, readers can consciously apply them and enhance their work and personal lives.

Jews Beat the Odds in Terms of Achievement

I nostalgically recall the 1960s when I attended University of California at Berkeley. It was the end of my senior year, and I was having coffee with two Jewish friends with whom I had grown up. In fact, we three students were the only Jews in our public school class in Sacramento, California. We lived in the Jewish part of town and went to Hebrew School together. In those days Sacramento was a relatively small town, and the Jewish population was small as well. What are the odds of three students getting into and succeeding at one of the most challenging Universities in the United States? In Berkeley they do that thing with freshmen: “Look to the student on your left, and now look to your student on the right. Only one of you will graduate.” Fifty percent of freshman students flunked out before their junior year, and only about one-third of entering freshman graduated. Jews were only about 3 percent of the population of California, yet they far exceeded that percentage at UC Berkeley.

The 1960s was a time of change, and Berkeley students were leading this change. Jewish students were major players in the student movements. These movements were driven by social concerns such as free speech, antiwar efforts, equal rights, and unionization of farm workers. The leaders of the student movement as well as the student activists had vision and determination. They wanted a better world, and they would work toward changing the status quo to make a world that was as fair and just as possible. They were practicing Tikkun Olam. Many of the leaders of these student groups were Jewish, including Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and Bettina Aptheker.¹

What was true in the 1960s and throughout Jewish history is still true today. Jews are creative and take the lead. Currently Israel, where Jews flourish and prosper, offers so many examples of creativity. Most significantly, Israel is a world leader in the high-tech industry, medicine, and military technology. This little country is in a very dangerous part of the world and has few natural resources. Yet this small Jewish country soars in the marketplace of the world.

The list of Jews and creativity would consume a complete article in itself. Therefore, I am going to choose just a few examples that illustrate Jews and creativity.

Military. In terms of military technology, Israel has developed the Iron Dome and the Eitan. The Iron Dome can intercept short range rockets, and the Eitan is a drone spy plane.

Medical. As for medical technology, my husband and I just benefited from Israel’s innovative and technologically advanced medical services. We were in Hashmona'im, a small Yishuv in the middle of the country. My husband went to the Urgent Care Center in Modiin, which uses the most current technology and Telehealth system.

High Tech. As for the high-tech industry, many of the major international high-tech companies have located in Israel because of the well-educated, highly competent, and intelligent workforce. For overall brain power, just look at the number of Jewish Nobel Prize winners for examples of Jewish outstanding achievement. The Jews have produced many great thinkers and world changers.

Jews can generate creative concepts, and translate them effectively into economic gain and professional achievements. They succeed in the current global market because they are able to produce a high rate of questions and ideas, they have the ability to overcome obstacles, and they have skill set to translate those ideas into marketable products that solve real-world problems. Creativity drives the engine in many areas such as the arts, writing, music as well as business and commerce to mention only a few spheres of interest. Personally, I have found that parenting and family matters benefit from creative thinking.

Jews are economic catalysts not only of the current millennia but throughout the ages. There are many examples where Jews have been invited into countries and usher in an economic Golden Age. When Jews are expelled, the country’s economy goes from boom to bust. Many times the Jews are invited back. Currently, Harbin, China is trying to attract Jews in hopes of regaining economic prosperity for their city. In the early 1900s, Jews were invited to come to Harbin. Jews came and with the Jews came economic prosperity. The Jews were forced to leave in the 1950s, and Harbin has experienced economic decline.²

Why are Jews high achievers and leaders? Lama lo! or in English, why not!

How Practicing Judaism Enhances Creative Thinking

The skill sets and brain power that Jews develop by practicing Judaism can be generalized to achievement in scientific, intellectual, artistic, and business scopes of practice. One of my professors at Teachers College, Columbia, Mel Alexanberg, described the shared cultural underpinnings of Jewish life as Jewish metacognition.³ Jews are exposed to a shared intellectual and value system, which are Torah and Talmud.

Jews have a dialogue with God. It is through speaking to God and debating God’s response that a moral, ethical, and survival system was and continues to be developed. Jews are the “People of the Book.” Books are words and words are symbols. Words have meanings, various meanings. Study Judaism and you are exploring multidimensional symbolic concepts. This includes multiples levels of ideas and information. There is thinking, exploring, and conceptualizing in an ever-evolving interaction of ideas and points of fact. Through this process, Jews developed a highly sophisticated strategy that involves complex reasoning.

Jewish education emphasizes asking questions, learning more, and then refining concepts and ideas. Jewish learning trains techniques in acquiring information, integrating the information, and generating new and innovative thought or concepts. Jews continue to refine their ideas by constructing new interpretations and theories. This is a continual process where existing information and theories inform emerging concepts.⁴

Throughout the centuries, yeshivot and synagogues have been centers where Jews immerse themselves in complicated interactive information systems and challenge the construction of these information systems, accessing their higher-order thinking. Jews are driven with a passion to question and then seek answers through studying the Torah.

Rabbi Marc Angel has often pointed out that “The Torah is an inexhaustible source of wisdom.”⁵ The fundamental basis of talmudic discourse is to question. Each Jew is free to develop his or her own unique multilevel information storage base, skill and mental proficiency to recall symbolic code, and apply and use that information. Each Jew develops innovative conceptual schema, and eventually, new realities. Jews are trained to suspend judgment and live with ambiguity as they think through their ideas and concepts. As time progresses, the examination of text and communicating with God through prayer establishes an ever-evolving value system. In my dissertation, I examined creativity in the Hassidic community in terms of an individual in interactions with mental stimulation, and related this interaction to creative productivity. I was able to document notable creativity in the Hassidic community.⁶

Jewish creative abilities skill sets learned through Judaism can be used in other areas of work. That is why Jewish scholars have soared in many business, academic, and artistic disciplines. Jews are exercising and building their mental capacity through studying Torah. Jews ask questions and wonder why. Jews construct complex mental systems which are reciprocal exchanges between the individual in interaction with environmental stimulation to solve real-world problems.

The next section describes strategies for enhancing creativity. These techniques are taught in traditional Jewish education.

Jewish Techniques for Enhancing Creativity

Immerse yourself . Jews immerse themselves in study. They ask questions. Succeeding in any intellectual frontier requires immersing yourself.

Throw yourself into your  work. Learn as much as possible. Always question. Access the most current information. Acquire as vast a body of facts and opinions that you can. All that you are learning is fascinating. At times you can feel overwhelmed with all the information. Learn to live with ambiguity. The process of generating order out of all the information leads to innovation. You know that you have immersed yourself in the problem when you are engrossed and totally consumed by the question.

Be passionate. Jews historically have been passionate and committed to their religion, to understanding God’s message. The world is fraught with many problems and difficulties. God asks that meaning be sought after through study of Torah and Talmud. Being passionate and intently committed to seeking meaning and truth in life can be applied to any other areas of study.

Take on the study of a topic that is compelling to you. You have strong and intense feelings. The topic cries out to you, and all kinds of question soar in your head as you seek a deeper understanding. There is a problem that can be solved, or just another step can be taken in solving a problem. You know that you are passionate when your mind drifts to the question, concept, problem, uncertainty, or difficulty. You are on a quest and feel a sense of being driven to learn more and more. You are on unconventional ground. You do not know the answers, and there is a thrill to the work. There are more questions than answers.

Attach yourself to a community. Jews build communities, and live and work together. Jews develop support systems and rules and principles which enhance their lives. Jews are always engaged in vibrant groups to learn and reexamine the religious texts. Each person sustains and builds their conceptual understanding by examining multiple and often contradictory concepts from others in the group, from revered wisdom of our sages, and from current thinkers. Jews are life-long learners; and when applied to other disciplines, leads to creativity in those disciplines.

Surround yourself with amazing people. Examine the work of people you admire, and have them review your work. Build your conceptual framework on the shoulders of giants in your area of study. Do not be afraid to hold contradictory theories in your brain at the same time. You know that you are part of a community of amazing people when these people stimulate your thinking. These amazing people have ideas and information that is helping you move your concept forward. When you are with these people in discussions, you feel your creative juices flow. These people do not have to agree with you. If fact, it is far more important that they challenge your thinking than rubber stamp your theory.

Often people are considered successful when they reinforce the status quo in their field. They do not challenge the accepted conceptia. Do not mistake success, such as fame and fortune, for innovation. Most of the time and most people doing creative work have a unique vision. This puts creative people outside the mainstream. Being outside the mainstream can be difficult. Do not measure your work in terms a yardstick from the mainstream. Rather, evaluate your work in terms of the amazing people that you have surrounded yourself with, and measure your success by accomplishing your goals. The best of all possible worlds is to have the support of amazing people, accomplish your goals, and become rich and famous.

Use your mind’s eye. Jews pray as part of their life. When Jews are praying, they are also imagining and envisioning. The Jewish experience is thinking of what I am now and what I can become, as I strive to be a better person in the image of God. Most significantly, Jews are seeking clarification and testing themselves as to the progress that they are making towards becoming a better person according to God’s guidance. Using your “mind’s eye” is necessary for novel ideas and innovative solutions.

You want to envision and imagine; and to do this, you use your mind’s eye. This well-honed skill is transferable to the development of innovative products and marketing. It is a process of taking complex situations and making sense out of them. Essentially, you are using your imagination to see the whole problem and the end resolution to the problem. Once you are able to envision, the abstract problem can be broken down into steps. Each mini-step resonates throughout the complex problem and has an impact. When using your mind’s eye, you can match the impact of the mini-step to the goal of solving the problem. You know that you are using your mind’s eye when each mini-step moves you closer to a solution to your problem. Or on careful examination, the mini-step created obstacles to your solving your problem. Every mistake or misdirection offers you the opportunity to rethink the problem and redesign your next step. It provides you with fuller information, more questions, and guides you on your next step. Each mistake is a gift.

Be aware/be in the moment. Praying is a conscious experience that makes actions intentional. When praying with intention, you are in the moment. Kavanah is praying with intention and being aware. You will be more creative in your work when you are aware, present, and in the moment. You should be consciously aware and use the information that you have to produce a clearer understanding of the concept that you are studying. You should be alert and have your mental faculties at their peak performance. All your actions are deliberate and cognizant. All the information that you have gathered facilitates your knowing as much information as possible. Your mind is aroused. It is a dynamic process. You are interacting with the information and using the feedback to refine your thinking. You are in the moment.

Be resilient. Jewish people have had to struggle to survive. They have had to be better than the average guy. Often they have had obstacles that would overwhelm others. Throughout history Jews have experienced misfortune and have recovered and persisted. Jews do not have a choice whether to be resilient. If they are not resilient, they will be destroyed. For periods of time, Jews have been relatively successful in many countries, which are known as Golden Ages. Then crash, the world comes down around them. Jewish history teaches a series of punishing events. Jews have a long memory of all the calamities, yet they pick themselves up and rebuild their lives. I have heard Jewish holidays described as a narrative: they tried to kill us, we won, and now let’s eat. In the face of overwhelming obstacles and repeated failures, the resilient people go forward and possibly achieve their goals. The choice is be resilient and possibly succeed, or give up and assure failure.

Resiliency is recovering from disappointment and managing frustration. Each failure provides the opportunity to recover and keep going. When treading on new ground, you may come to dead ends. Your strength to bounce back will help you keep going even when you are discouraged. Your will know that you are resilient when you are completely defeated, when you blunder and achieve disaster. Yet each obstacle only makes you more determined. You go back for a deeper understanding of what happened, and what went wrong. Despite the setbacks, you try something different. You are imagining a possible different outcome. If you experience only success, then you are not challenging yourself.

Conclusion

Again, I am brought back to the day I sat with my Jewish childhood friends having coffee in Berkeley 1968. Was it by chance that we all succeeded? No, it was not by chance because the Jewish rate of success challenges the probability it was simply by chance. Was it the Jewish education at Hebrew School, or living in a Jewish community, praying, Jewish family values, or our connection to our synagogue? The answer is all of the above and a resounding yes to the great achievements of the Jewish People. There is a shared metacognition. Jewish metacognition is a shared set of symbols, values, and thinking strategies, that trains creativity.

Take a moment. How has your practice of Judaism enhanced your creativity? In terms of the Jewish concept of always trying to improve yourself, what strategies can you use to be more creative? How does your experience with Jewish thought and creativity help you contribute to improving the world?

Notes

1. Mendes, P., ‘“We are all German Jews”: Exploring the Prominence of Jews in the New Left’,    Melilah 2009/3.

2. Hadassah Magazine February/March 2011, pp. 40-48.

3. Conversations with Mel Alexanberg. He was my dissertation advisor in the late 1970s.

4. Miran, MD, Miran E., & Chen, N., DESIGN OF LIVING SYSTEMS IN THE INFORMATION  AGE: Brain, Creativity and the Environment. Eds. Joseph Seckbach ORIGIN(S) OF DESIGN IN  NATURE: A Fresh, Interdisciplinary Look at How Design Emerges in Complex Systems,  Life [ODIN] volume to be published.

5. Angel, M. Angel for Shabbat, Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals, USA, 2010.

6. Miran, E. The Ecology of Creativity. Dissertation. Teachers College, Columbia,

Few would deny that what differentiates Orthodoxy as a standpoint is largely the boundaries it places. These boundaries are notably stricter and more delineated than those of the non-Orthodox movements. This is not to deny the role of beliefs, ideals, and other emphases in structuring Orthodox life; however, even these rely to some extent on a set of strong borders to preserve them.

            Borders are critical in defining identity. Orthodox Judaism’s relatively clear parameters can appear to good advantage, especially when placed against a background of Western culture, which arguably often fails its adherents, leaving them adrift in a sea of contradictory recommendations from scientific and cultural mavens. When one’s personal borders of behavior and creed are firmly established, one is freed from the need to constantly create and adjust them. One can then focus on creating the content rather than the vessel in which to hold it.

            In an ideal world, Orthodox parameters would serve to minimize confused wandering and searching. Furthermore, while some measure of dynamic dialogue is unavoidable as individuals change and grow, the overall picture would be one of a stable, rich lifestyle in which one’s religious, intellectual, and behavioral impulses are in synch, both within oneself and also vis-à-vis the surrounding community. And indeed, many are drawn to Orthodoxy precisely for this kind of clarity. Yet limits, boundaries, and borders may also be extremely stifling, and may in fact—especially when driven by fear rather than existing organically as part of a secure identity—overly curtail individual autonomy and choke off important spiritual and existential processes necessary to religious life.

            The Orthodox classroom or other study forum reflects the above truths. I’d like to explore briefly some of the boundaries—both of content and form—placed within the Orthodox classroom. Some of the questions to be dealt with include:

• In terms of content, what is studied and embraced as positive, and what is deemed inappropriate or dangerous and is kept out of the classroom, either by omission or by active suppression?
• In terms of form, in what fashion do the students learn? How much control does the teacher appropriate or relinquish, and how much autonomy and self-expression is granted to the students within the learning process?

            For the purposes of this discussion, I will borrow two categories applied by Dr. Marla Frankel (who in turn utilizes Professor Michael Rosenak’s educational terminology and theory) in her analysis of the work of Nehama Leibowitz z”l. An examination of Leibowitz’s work will demonstrate for us a model of a lesson that contains both openness and limits; and through it we can arrive at a general discussion of the limits of the Orthodox classroom.

            Frankel suggests that Leibowitz wore at least two teaching “hats,” and that this granted her a large measure of flexibility, a trait critical to good educating. The first “hat,” or role, is that of the facilitator. This kind of teacher steps back from the students, enables discussion, challenges them intellectually, and trains them in problem-solving. It is the process, not the solutions, that is important. The facilitator’s religious focus is on existential, emotional dimensions rather than on enforcing norms and laws. The second “hat” is that of the pedagogue. This type of teacher presents a discourse or lecture, using rhetorical and analytical skills to answer his or her own questions instead of letting the students answer them.

            In the first model, the individual student is important; in the second, it is the community and the content that matter as vehicles for belief and practice. These two broad roles (though obviously other models are possible) will help us organize what otherwise appears a confusing patchwork of contradictory elements in Leibowitz’s pedagogy, and to see that ultimately she implemented what may be termed “pluralism within limits.”

            This was true of both the content of Leibowitz’s classes and also their form. In terms of content, we see both the facilitator and the pedagogue in action. Leibowitz believed in offering a diversity of interpretation, and the method she invented of presenting different commentaries side-by-side was very much a facilitator’s technique. It activated the students—and also taught them that many options existed, and that their questions were not heretical. As Leibowitz states: “It is important to include this opinion too so that the students will not assume that Rashi’s explanation is the only one possible, and anyone who is bothered by it… is, so to speak, an utter heretic who has no part in the Torah of Moses.”

Overall Leibowitz’s method was pluralistic relative to her contemporaries and to the traditional approaches that preceded her. The Tosafists, for example, aimed to reconcile discrepancies, while Leibowitz loudly broadcasted them. When educators expressed to her their concern that students, especially children, could not easily grasp that multiple opinions may co-exist, she retorted: “We are not Catholics! We have no Pope to decide who is right!”

            Furthermore, Leibowitz opened up the limits of her classroom and writings to include non-Orthodox and non-Jewish sources in the study of Torah. These sources were not only used to bolster traditional sources (an agenda palatable to conservative elements, as it served to show “how correct our sources are”) but also to unearth new layers of the Torah. This was far more radical, implying that thinkers outside Orthodoxy can reveal dimensions in the Torah overlooked by traditional commentators. Leibowitz believed she could eat the “fruit” of these thinkers, while throwing away the “peel.”

            However, Leibowitz took the facilitator role only so far before putting on the pedagogue’s hat. The students were allowed to choose, but only from a certain range of sources selected by her. She placed constraints on the use of universal sources—worldly wisdom was not to be equated with Torah, and the non-Orthodox sources referred to always remained a precisely selected minority, approached with caution and never given the pride of place that the traditional commentators claimed.

            In terms of form, Leibowitz encouraged open discussion in her classroom. She paid personal attention to each student as far as she was able, and she was seen as an accessible teacher. She hated the idea of lecturing, believing that when the teacher talks too much it limits the interaction essential to learning. Instead, her lesson consisted largely of group discussion of a topic, with the teacher interspersing her comments and never talking for more than a couple of minutes at a time. Students forgot that they were being educated, as the discussion flowed as naturally as a conversation. Though not lacking in personal charisma, Leibowitz did not rely on it as the driving-force of the lesson. Rather, she chose questions that would open up discussions, and she deferred her own opinion until after the students had had a chance to reflect. In permitting such interactivity, she relinquished control to the students, functioning as a facilitator and anticipating contemporary trends to a certain extent.

            Today’s students are encouraged to express their opinions and to create personal connections to the subject matter, whereas the teacher’s role is to validate the students, not to critique them or guide them too strongly. Leibowitz’s lesson partly conformed to this model, in its encouraging of maximum participation and lively discussion. Ultimately, however, she kept a tight rein on what was considered the correct answer, using a formula of positive and negative reinforcements and not hesitating to announce “Bikhlal lo!” (“Totally incorrect!”) when she disagreed, an experience that could be mortifying for the student. Few educators in tune with today’s trends would read a student’s answers out in front of everyone and then declare, “That’s completely wrong!” She ran a strict classroom, not permitting the lesson to stray off on random tangents and insisting on punctuality and proper preparation. She expelled students who did not have a basic understanding of the material, or who arrived empty-handed, sans Tanakh. When two young yeshiva students admitted they had brought neither Tanakhs nor notebooks, Leibowitz announced to the roomful of students, “It’s the TV generation! They come to sit and watch!” Many found her harangues somewhat intimidating; some even left, never to return. In all this, she acted as the pedagogue; and some might even label Nehama’s style authoritarian, though she herself would be repulsed by such a term.                

            In her approach to the text, Leibowitz also demonstrated such mixed tendencies. While on the one hand she encouraged her students to read the text closely and directly, ultimately the commentators’ lead was to be followed when studying text critically, with the student’s own ideas in second place.

            Students’ responses to Leibowitz’s classroom varied, in line with the diverse elements mentioned above and with the students’ own personalities. For many, her teaching techniques were their first experience of the teacher as facilitator. The fact that her class was founded upon dialogue between commentators of different periods and spirited discussions between participants constituted a breath of fresh air. Unlike old-school lecturers, Leibowitz was open to diverse viewpoints in her lessons, and students were even allowed to contradict her, though not the text. She was interested in the individual student and in nurturing original thought; her aim was active learning.

            Yet she also firmly steered her class, rigorously training her students to approach the text correctly as she saw it. There were limits to her tolerance of critique of faith-based principles in her lesson. Those who studied with her remember occasions when students disagreed with her—and it was obvious to all present that such “insolence” was out of place. Leibowitz was controlling the class, and for a student to introduce some new agenda was completely inappropriate. Students were there to learn from the teacher, not to advance their own theories. She countered opposition with responses such as: “You didn’t understand,” “You need to learn more about this issue,” or “This is off the topic.” One student challenged: “But Nehama, aren’t there seventy facets to the Torah?” She replied, “Yes, but what you said is not one of them!”

            Many students liked the balance Leibowitz struck between her two roles. They enjoyed the discussion, while also appreciating her firm control of the class, which, by preventing too much digression, allowed mastery of a specific topic. She allowed arguments to continue for just so long, knowing exactly when to interrupt and return to the original point that she had made. For these students, what Leibowitz lost in openness of discussion, she gained in sharpening the student’s mind. With a firm hand, she invited them into a new way of looking at a text, beyond their existing opinions, and she restrained overimaginative students with unsupported interpretations. In her class, even highly opinionated and voluble people learned to defer to her in order to gain what she could give. One charismatic educational figure, today the director of several institutions, recalls, “She would tell me what she thought, and I learned to keep quiet.”

            But this policy frustrated those who wished to broaden the field of inquiry, or who thought along different lines than hers. A free-spirited person might feel uncomfortable in her class; individualistic or critical students might experience the classes as rigid, with her constant demand to justify oneself using strict and rational tools serving to cramp a looser, more associative relationship with the text. Leibowitz was also not (barring a couple of isolated statements, not backed up in practice) interested in personal and emotional reactions to the text. On the contrary, she believed that they interfered with correct interpretation: “When analyzing or interpreting a literary work… [there is a risk] that the interpreter will speak about himself… about his own elevation of spirit, about what is going on inside himself… instead of about the text.” She cared greatly about general relevance, but not about the personal relevance for each individual. Class time was reserved for the correct answers, of which Leibowitz had a very clear idea. Personal issues and questions, even those of existential urgency for the student, must be saved for outside the classroom walls.

            One last significant point to be made is the fact that Frankel, along with Erella Yedgar, discovered through careful analysis that the limits of Leibowitz’s classroom changed depending on the students. The more knowledgeable and committed students generally were allowed more leeway.

            The picture that emerges from all of the above is that of a complex approach, enabling Leibowitz to reach many different kinds of people simultaneously. It appears that Leibowitz achieved a good balance of elements in the classroom, creating openness and space and yet firmly setting limits so that various lines would not be crossed. She gave the impression of teaching from within a secure, non-defensive, open Orthodoxy (except perhaps when it came to biblical criticism and the historicizing of the Bible, around which she had extremely strong feelings that might lead to defensiveness); and that the limits she set were simply those of a teacher invested in guiding students to think in a certain way, rather than creating the free-for-all that sometimes passes for pluralism today.

            We must, however, be careful before applying the Leibowitz model as an ideal for contemporary Modern Orthodox education, so many decades after it was developed. In the hands of the wrong (read: insecure, unimaginative, or authoritarian) teachers, or as part of a rigid system—for example, as widely applied through the Israeli matriculation exam—there is a risk of it becoming dry and mechanical, with the more limiting and inflexible aspects dominant. Moreover, today’s educational mindset, in line with changes in general global sentiments, has shifted in the direction of the facilitator. Hence, the elements of the pedagogue in Leibowitz’s style run even more risk today of alienating creative and independent-minded students, who expect and desire to be allowed to express their opinions and have them considered with respect. For this reason, some of her students who continued her method in their own teaching chose to modify it and extend its limits; for example, allowing more direct access to text without mediation by commentaries.

            We can argue, on the other hand, that precisely because the world of education has shifted so far toward interactive discussion and away from making definitive statements, Leibowitz’s model of pluralism within limits has much to offer. Those educators for whom pluralism means never disagreeing with someone’s interpretation—however illogical or textually inconsistent—for fear of offending, would do well to take a leaf out of her book and learn to make firmer statements and guide toward a worldview. These, however, are often the problems of the non-Orthodox, while Orthodoxy by its nature risks the opposite, namely excessive ridigity and over-imposed limits.

            This article has not set the ideal borders for the Orthodox classroom; such an aim would be too ambitious—and also arrogant. This is a multi-faceted, ongoing discussion, and will vary from educator to educator, institution to institution, and sector to sector. My purpose has been to raise the issues and show some of the prices to be paid for moving too far in one direction or another; and to present at least one model that incorporates both poles, so that educators may work out for themselves what proportion of “facilitator” versus “pedagogue” role is worthwhile adopting in their own lessons. I would also challenge the educator to introspect and ascertain how many of the limits he or she imposes upon the classroom derive from personal fears (such as that of relinquishing control), and how many constitute a thought-out a priori model.

            On a final, personal note, as a product of an Ultra-Orthodox high school and some elite Modern Orthodox institutions of higher learning, I personally suffered greatly from the cramped limits of Orthodox classrooms. There was little space available for my questions and self-expression. My opinions were at best tolerated, rather than engaged or valued, and at worst seen as threatening, though they stemmed from an entirely genuine searching place. As for my creativity and imagination, it found no place at all. Many of the lessons strait-jacketed and silenced me rather than allowing me to emerge feeling more engaged, more connected, and more self-appreciating.

            As an educator, I have since tried to rectify this by engaging in open debates where I value my student’s opinions as a genuine source of wisdom for me. I try to engage with them with respect for their insights, while at the same time not abrogating the value due to my own knowledge. I have also adopted creative techniques that encourage self-expression and free the mind to go broader and deeper than is generally accepted in Orthodox circles. One example of the latter is Bibliodrama, a marvellous role-playing technique of “spontaneous midrash” that, when done correctly, with firm steering and with faithfulness to the text, can achieve superb results in terms of deepened identification with the Torah, without straying from what feels comfortable for an Orthodox population. Here, I aim to stretch the limits but not breach them—and I feel it is important to do so. I trust that this question of what the limits are, and when and how to expand them to their maximum, may spark discussion in the right quarters.

            I am a convert. There can be no question that I am halakhically Jewish, at least if you trust the Lubavitchers to know halakha. I am writing to protest the downright shameful treatment of converts by the Orthodox community, which so conveniently forgets the explicit commandment to not oppress the ger.

            First, let me state my background—though I will omit identifying details for reasons that will appear later. I was raised as a Christian in the Bible Belt to believe that the Bible was the word of God. Nobody explained to me why “God’s Word” did not include the laws in the first five books, which today are observed only by Jews. Due to my parents’ severe opposition, I could not do anything toward converting to Judaism until I went away to graduate school in a small college town.

This was more than 35 years ago. At that time, I took instruction from the only Orthodox rabbi in the state, who could be described as Modern Orthodox. In those days, I knew nothing of Modern/Hareidi distinctions among Orthodox Jews; in fact, there were no Hareidi Jews in my immediate vicinity. The Bet Din consisted of my rabbi; the only Conservative rabbi in that town (he was a Sabbath observer), and one other person. As I started meeting other Jews for the first time (I had had no significant social Jewish contact before my conversion), I started getting questions about this conversion. I had met a community of Lubavitchers by this time, and they decided that although they believed my conversion was valid, they would redo it just to remove all question. They even placed a call to New York and got a ruling that I should not say God’s name in the blessing for this re-run. This second conversion took place about a year and a half after my first conversion.

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

            The basic problem a convert faces in the Orthodox world stems from the following mind-set: If you observe one mitzvah more than I do you are a fanatic, and if you observe one mitzvah less you are an apikores, or heretic. This is hard a enough mind-set for a ba’al teshuva to navigate and to figure out what is essential halakha and what is less essential minhag, or custom—and even more so for the convert. If a convert is at all less stringent than the person he or she is speaking to, the logic seems to extend that the convert has not accepted all of the mitzvoth, and therefore the validity of the conversion is in question. I’ve even had an Orthodox rabbi say this to me in those very words!

I recall an occasion when I asked: Why, if there is one law for the convert and one who is born Jewish, that converts are automatically classed with prostitutes as people kohanim may not marry? That’s when I learned that questioning is not permitted. Another “learning experience” I had was when I became friendly with a young man—and our friendship was disapproved of by people in the community, who forced him to end the friendship. I obviously hadn’t accepted that the only permissible relationship between a man and a woman was marriage to that person, so therefore I wasn’t “really Jewish.” I even got into trouble when I expressed secular political views that differed from those of the person I was speaking with. I didn’t elevate “what’s good for the Jews” (including the State of Israel) over all other considerations. This showed that I had not really become part of the Jewish people, and therefore I wasn’t considered to be Jewish.

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

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

            And I wish I had a dollar for every remark I’ve heard made by Jews about “the goyim.” I can’t stand such remarks about me (I’m still the same person I was before) and my family and my former co-religionists (whom I do NOT consider to be idolaters!), and it’s no excuse that the speaker didn’t know my background. The Talmud (Sanhedrin 94a) recognizes that this is painful for the convert and explicitly forbids such comments lest the convert regret the conversion. Believe me, I’ve heard much worse about non-Jews from Jews than I’ve ever heard about Jews from non-Jews. I’m afraid that this does not exactly solidify my identification with the Jewish people, whom I encountered only after my conversion to the faith.

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

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

            My latest problem, which has reawakened all of these memories, is that my son has started looking for a shiddukh, a wife, in the Orthodox world. We recently had a very bad experience. The girl signaled interest on a computer site, knowing of my background. Her mother took over and forbade her to meet my son until I was investigated. The result was very unpleasant for me: the matchmaker, in the course of her Inquisition, persisted in thinking that it was for the sake of marriage, that the re-conversion was at my husband’s insistence (never mind that both conversions took place long before I met him), and even asked whether our son had conversion papers! Their rabbi then called us to explain that it was his synagogue’s policy to have copies of conversion papers on file, and asked us to send them. (All of this was before my son could even talk with the girl to see if the match was worth pursuing.) I was going to refuse unless the same demand was made of the other parents; before it came to this point, my son refused the match. He agreed with me that proof of my Jewishness should not be halakhically necessary (especially at this stage), since it was not in question that I had long been observant, and further, it sounded like a bad in-law situation. It still left me very upset. I don’t mind the asking itself as much as I do the unwillingness to accept my answers. I am hoping that in whatever shiddukh he makes, my background can remain hidden (except to the girl herself) until after the wedding, because I can foresee a repeat of this unpleasant suspicion directed at me and only me. I don’t know whether this will be possible.

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

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

            I will now refuse to provide papers for any reason unless the same is required of non-converts as well. (I can tell you that my husband has no such paperwork to prove he is Jewish.) If one needs to be sure I am Jewish, one should apply the same criteria for people who claim to be born Jewish. To me (and my yeshiva-bred husband agrees), this discriminatory treatment is a clear violation of the commandment not to oppress the ger. One convert I know got so fed up with this practice that she tore up her papers. I haven’t dared go that far, but I’m sorely tempted. Whatever happened to the halakhic presumption that if you are observant of mitzvoth, you are Jewish? I’ve been Shomeret Shabbat for 35 years. Shouldn’t that suffice? (The yeshiva community actually may be better on this point than non-yeshiva people; my Hareidi sister-in-law and her husband immediately and totally accepted me with no questions asked.)

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

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

            The situation today is even worse than it was 35 years ago. With the Orthodoxy’s move toward the right, standards for converts have been raised. It is forbidden to refuse a sincere convert. In the effort to weed out the insincere, has the bar been raised so high as to also exclude many sincere converts? In my day, the “Big Three” mitzvoth were Shabbat, kashruth, and taharat haMishpahah (family purity); anything more was desirable but not a deal-breaker. It was not required that the convert know all of halakha. And at least where I did it, anyone who did not have a Jewish fiancé(e) was automatically accepted. In addition, if a problem was later discovered with the procedure, redoing it was no big deal. Now, to judge by the experience of newer converts in our community, one must have to commit to a higher level of observance and must live in a large Orthodox community (which, as a resident of a small community, I disagree with—it is quite possible to live halakhically without a lot of large local Jewish institutions). Additionally, there is a reluctance to simply redo questionable conversions. One Shomer Shabbat person in my community is in halakhic limbo with his questionable prior conversion, which nobody is willing to redo as long as he lives here. The point about questionable conversions that appears to be overlooked is that although the conversion may be invalid, it also may be valid. The current focus seems to be on the possible invalidity, with the result that these converts are treated as if the conversion never happened. What about the possibility that it may be valid? If it is, aren’t we committing several serious sins, from oppressing the ger to discouraging further observance?

            The religious leadership in the State of Israel adds to the problem by only accepting certain rabbis’ conversions. Where would that leave me? I doubt such a list even existed 35 years ago; if it did, I don’t know whether my rabbi would have been on it. Put it this way: My son knows it would be probably too complicated for him to consider making aliyah.

            Even outside the State of Israel, there is a problem with local autonomy. A conversion that is accepted in one community may not be accepted in another. One person in our community converted 50 years ago. No problems arose until now, when her daughter was refused membership in one European synagogue, and her grandchildren were denied a Jewish education in that community. Since the (Orthodox) converting rabbi has long been dead, he could not be asked for information. The daughter is accepted as Jewish in some Orthodox communities but not in others. What is a convert to do, especially when it is long enough after the fact that all witnesses have died?

I have read the Rabbinical Council of America’s new conversion policies, which are intended to address at least the uniformity problem. Aside from the fact that these policies are only prospective, I am afraid that in implementation they will be used to institutionalize a very high bar for converts and justify retroactive rejection of converts such as myself. I fear that the prescription that converts should tell their local rabbi of their status merely invites the sort of social problems I’ve described above, unless said rabbi is both trustworthy and sensitive (which, unfortunately, not all are).  We do, after all, know the halakhic implications of our own conversions! I for one (and I suspect others as well) prefer not to emerge from the closet now.

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

It may not be too farfetched to draw an analogy with the “purity of blood” concerns of Spanish Christians at the time of the Inquisition. “Old Christians” constantly suspected “New Christians” of being secret Jews, even if generations of the New Christian family had been devout Christians. This entailed serious social and political repercussions against the New Christians, who became a permanent and inferior social class. Only if one could prove “purity of blood,” that is, unadulterated Old Christian descent, could one rest easy. I am afraid that the present-day Orthodox Jewish social structure may be developing into a similar caste system, with converts at the bottom of the ladder and with decreasing possibilities of social integration. The tales I hear from outreach organizations about the problems ba’alei teshuva face in Orthodox communities indicate this—and, of course, converts have even lower status than ba’alei teshuva. Rambam would be appalled.

            When people ask to convert, they are warned about persecution from non-Jews. Nobody ever warns them about persecution from Jews. Perhaps this is simply not on the radar screen of conversion rabbis, very few of whom have ever experienced it themselves. However, this has been the experience of nearly every convert I know. Frankly, if I had known 40 years ago everything I know now, I doubt I would have found becoming Jewish to be worth the struggle, despite my theological convictions. Is this the message we want to give converts—that they will never be fully accepted by the Jewish community? I can never fully belong, nor can my son if the truth about me were made public. At least my child is a male, so the problem should die with him. As for me, there is nothing more that I need from the Jewish community. I only want to protect my son, who did not choose his situation, from having to go through the same experience. It is past time for someone to remind Jews that the commandment not to oppress the ger is still part of the Torah.