National Scholar Updates

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.

We are confronted daily basis with choices that require us to consult others before making a decision. We may call a lawyer for advice on a legal issue or an accountant for advice on our taxes. We do this because although we may be very good at what we do, no one person knows everything—and it is helpful to be guided by a professional who deals with the issue at hand on a regular basis. If one has a sink that is leaking or an electrical outlet that is malfunctioning, one might ask an electrician or plumber for advice, and will likely follow the advice if it sounds reasonable. When it comes to issues regarding our health—and specifically issues that have significant impact on life-and-death situations—we likely consult with a physician.

 Interestingly, in serious medical situations, many observant Jews will seek a consultation with a rabbi for advice as well, to ensure that the medical decision they are making is in accordance with Jewish law and ethics. Jewish law is based on the will of God as transmitted through the Bible and understood by our sages. Therefore, all decisions a Jew makes must be in accordance with this law. The law, however, can at times be ambiguous or difficult to apply to modern medical issues. We try our best to extrapolate from what was written by our sages, which often leads to differing views on what Jewish law would prescribe in different medical situations. It is surprising however, that even in situations where the vast majority of rabbis are in agreement with what the law should be, the vast majority of laypeople believe otherwise. This is not because they disagree with the rabbinic judgments; rather it is often because they are unaware of them. Rulings on medical issues do not get published in everyday books that are found in the synagogue, and rumor becomes the most efficient medium to spread incorrect concepts.

 In my practice, I have noticed three possible causes as to why a patient may receive improper advice from his or her rabbi regarding medical decision-making. It is important to note that I have had many positive experiences with the interaction between rabbi, doctor, and patient; however the cases below are meant to illustrate the times the system fails. Although the current system often does work, and provides an excellent service to both doctors and patients, there are still too many times when it does not. The purpose here is to evaluate why some situations are not handled properly and how we can learn from our past mistakes for the benefit of the Jewish community in the future.

The first issue is simply not knowing the law. Often, what the general public believes to be the law, is not actually the law. Consider the following scenario: A Jewish man is in a car accident and is brought to the hospital and placed on a respirator because he is not breathing on his own after hitting his head. The remainder of the body is intact, his heart is still beating, blood is flowing through the veins and all organs are functioning well. A neurologist performs an exam and determines the person to be brain dead. The doctor recommends removing the respirator and all intravenous fluids and sustenance, which will inevitably cause the breathing to stop, leading to cardiac arrest and the death of the other organs. If one took a poll of the general community, one would likely find that many people incorrectly believe that according to Jewish law this person is still alive and the machines cannot be turned off. Most rabbis have accepted that brain death is equivalent to death in Jewish law and that in this case the machines should be turned off. The Chief Rabbinate of Israel (both Ashkenazic and Sephardic) has therefore legislated it into Israeli law and once brain death is determined, all medical intervention should cease, despite a continuing heartbeat, and the body should be buried as soon as possible (ASSIA – Jewish Medical Ethics, Vol. I, No. 2, May 1989, pp. 2–10). The only intervention permissible at this point would be to harvest the viable organs. Leaving the brain dead body on a respirator or continuing to manipulate the body with medical intervention is considered disrespectful to the body and is against Jewish Law. (Shulhan Arukh, Yoreh Deah 339:1) It is unclear to me why, although the majority of rabbis have ruled one way, many of lay people believe the other. This often leads to a situation when in an attempt to follow Jewish law, one will actually be transgressing the law by simply not knowing the ruling of the chief rabbinate and going on assumptions based on what popular opinion says the law is.

A second problem that arises is when we seek a rabbinic consultation and are only presented with one view of the law and are advised accordingly. When seeking a consultation, one not only seeks the opinion of the person they are consulting with but often expects to be informed of different opinions on the matter and then advised based on the personal views of the consultant. This holds true in many fields of consultation. However, when seeking a rabbinic consultation, rabbis often present the law based on one view without presenting the other opinions available. At times this advice may be following only one view of the law while differing from the majority view. In medicine, there are times when there is disagreement among the experts regarding the best treatment. A responsible doctor will present both sides to the patient and may even explain why he personally believes one view to be preferable to the other. But it would not be appropriate to present the case as having only one solution that all agree on. The same holds true for rabbis. If there is more than one acceptable opinion on the matter, the person who is coming for a consultation expects to be given all the information available. This is especially true when a rabbi gives advice based on a sole opinion, which disagrees with that of the majority. Even if the rabbi chooses to follow the view of the minority position, he should at least inform the patient that there is a majority view that disagrees.  This situation usually arises when most people know of the minority view and it is therefore easy to accept when told to them by the rabbi as it conforms to what they in any case thought to be the law. An example of this situation is the issue of abortion. Again, if one were to poll the average Orthodox Jew on the acceptability of abortion in Jewish Law, the majority would plainly state that the fetus is a life and it is therefore forbidden to terminate the pregnancy according to Jewish law. Some may go so far as to state that it may even be tantamount to murder. Although this is the correct Catholic view, it does not accord with Jewish law. There is essentially no sage that suggests that the fetus is considered a life and aborting it would be considered murder. This would mean that if that were the case, then someone would deserve the death penalty for performing an abortion, since there would be no difference in status before or after birth. In actuality, none of the early sources of Judaism from the Bible through the Mishna and Talmud make any mention of forbidding abortion. On the contrary, it seems from the Torah that if one caused another women to abort against her will, he simply pays a fine (Exodus 21:22). This is not to say we encourage wholesale abortions at anytime in pregnancy for any purpose, but the majority of rabbis do allow abortions in early pregnancy (some allow within 40 days of conception which is the equivalent of about the eighth week of pregnancy while others allow up to three months from conception which is about the 15^th week of pregnancy) for a host of different reasons including medical or psychological stress and the need to abort after a rape or adulterous union. Again, the chief rabbinate of Israel, both Ashkenazic and Sephardic, follow the majority view and have ruled as such in Israel. Interestingly, Rabbi Eliezer Waldenburg, a highly respected Ashkenazic rabbi has allowed abortions even in the seventh to ninth month since there is no real source within Jewish Law for only allowing it up to 40 days or three months (Tzitz Eliezer 13:102). These are arbitrary numbers that do not have any significant biological basis. With this introduction one can understand how problematic this can become should someone get improper advice from her rabbinic consultant. Imagine the young girl that is raped, or the married woman who was raped or had an affair that becomes pregnant and goes to her rabbi for advice. I have seen cases of rabbis that advise her that she must continue the pregnancy since abortion is a transgression of Jewish law and hence the will of God. Without providing all the information, this young girl will now have to care for this child her whole life and will always be a reminder of the horrible way she conceived. The married woman will give birth to a mamzer who will be forbidden to marry an ordinary Jew. All this could have been avoided if the woman simply had received the proper consultation.

We see similar problems when dealing with the issue of abortion for a baby with a genetic malformation. Many rabbis have permitted abortion in these situations; even if it is not assured that the baby will be born with a defect but only has a high probability of that likelihood. Different rabbis have varying opinions about when and under what circumstances an abortion is permissible. The most lenient view is that of Rabbi Shaul Yisraeli (Amud Hayemini 32). He permits abortion to prevent potential psychological stress to the mother or the potential child. He goes so far as to rule that even if the sole problem is a genetic malformation that will only affect his looks, an abortion is permitted as it may cause others to look at him in such a way that would produce psychological stress. He states that there is no greater pain than this and he reminds us that in Jewish law, emotional pain is considered even more serious than physical pain. This is very different from the view held by Rabbi Moshe Feinstein. Although Rabbi Feinstein recognizes the importance and need for premarital testing for Tay Sachs, he unfortunately, did not go one step further. He does write that when one's health is potentially in danger, and a genetic test can avert or alleviate that danger, the test must be taken. He therefore discourages carrier couples from marrying since this will lead to a 25 percent chance at each pregnancy of having a child with Tay Sachs (a debilitating progressive disorder that gradually leads to loss of mental and physical function, and at the peak of the symptoms the child goes blind, has seizures, and suffers in a hospital bed as the parents look on helplessly). This is why he appropriately supports premarital testing and admits the need to avoid giving birth to a child with Tay Sachs. However, situations have arisen where premarital testing was not done, or where testing may have been done but the couple felt a strong desire and commitment to each other that they decided to get married in any case. In these situations, the must make a choice on how to proceed with childbearing. They can risk having children with Tay Sachs, or they can opt to perform prenatal testing while the mother is in early stages of pregnancy, so that if it’s found that the baby has Tay Sachs they can abort the pregnancy, within the appropriate time frame as defined by Jewish law, thus saving the future child and the family from this pain. Rabbi Feinstein ruled that families in this situation must go through with the pregnancy, thereby creating a child that is destined to pain and suffering. This ruling seems to contradict his usual mode of requiring us to use medical technology in order to preserve and improve quality of life. What is most surprising is that according to traditional Judaism there is no law against performing abortions even on a healthy baby found in any of the early sources of Jewish law. Rabbi Feinstein forbade the abortion not on legal grounds, but on philosophical grounds. He felt that we are not in a position to play God, and we can always hope for a miracle that this baby’s genes will somehow miraculously change and he will not have the disease. This is again surprising as it seems to contradict what we know from the Talmud, that in general we do not rely on miracles and specifically in pregnancy we are taught by our sages that a baby’s genes cannot change and therefore it is improper to pray for the gender of the baby once this has already been determined (Berakhot 60a, Shulhan Arukh Orah Hayyim 230:1). Rabbi Feinstein also allows and even requires one, to “play God” when it comes to other areas of medicine and treatment, but mysteriously not in this situation.  

In addition to this philosophical issue, Rabbi Feinstein defends his position based on a mystical tradition. According to one view, a soul cannot achieve complete perfection until it has been placed in a body and has been born. In order to assure that this fetus’s soul (if it has one) is able to enter the world to come, Rabbi Feinstein requires a mother to carry the pregnancy to term. Rabbi Eliezer Waldenberg took issue with Rabbi Feinstein in a heated written debate (Tzitz Eliezer 14:100). He argued that we do not even know if that mystical concept is correct as it is just one opinion, and that even if that were correct, who gave us the obligation to assure that every soul is born and goes to the afterlife, or even the right to purposefully continue a pregnancy that would ultimately lead to the pain and suffering of the future child and the family? It should be noted, that although, Rabbi Waldenberg allowed abortions in situations such as these even into the ninth month of pregnancy, most rabbis have adopted stances allowing abortions only in the first trimester at various time points. There is no rabbi that has forbidden abortion outright in all circumstances. Although the Catholic religion did forbid abortion in all circumstances as they deemed the fetus a full human life, it is clear that Judaism has never held this approach, as the fetus does not have full human status before delivery. Since the fetus is not an independent human life, and is simply a part of the mother, it should be treated as any other body part that is ill and requires surgical intervention. It is common knowledge that finding the best possible mate is a difficult task. With Rabbi Waldenberg’s approach, even if we discourage Tay Sachs carrier couples from marrying, we at least do not have to ban it completely, and in circumstances where the potential marriage is beneficial for the couple, we are able to allow the marriage and still prevent suffering of future offspring. Again, we can now understand the situations that have arisen where a woman was pregnant with a Tay Sachs baby and went to her rabbi for a consultation who only informed her of Rabbi Feinstein’s view without disclosing the other opinion.

Another common problem is when a rabbi is consulted regarding issues he may not be familiar with and/or may not have full knowledge of. A scenario that has occurred in my practice several times is when a rabbi is consulted and he does not seek out or is not interested in having all the information. As an example, a child has ADHD and has significant difficulty in both his Judaic and secular studies to the point that he is failing and is not progressing academically. This often leads to poor self-esteem and lack of self-confidence. In a situation such as this I have recommended a trial with a stimulant medication that has been found to effectively correct the chemical imbalance, thereby allowing the child to succeed academically. In addition to academic improvement these children typically improve their overall quality of life. This is secondary not only to their improved education but also to improved confidence and self-esteem. These children are sometimes quite impulsive and can often experience physical injury due to their symptoms as well. The decision on whether or not to treat is done only after fully evaluating the child and receiving information from several sources, including the school, on how these symptoms are affecting this particular child. One such patient’s mother subsequent to the medical consultation, called a rebbe in Israel for a religious consultation on whether she can administer the medication to her child. Not willing to discuss the situation with the doctor and without personally knowing the family, the rebbe felt comfortable forbidding the woman from using the medication. This is unfortunate for the child who continues to fail in school and to have a dangerous level of impulsivity, and who has poor social interactions and growth due to these symptoms. Had the rabbi understood better how the disorder is affecting this particular child by getting to know him, through interactions and dialogue with the child’s teachers, family, and physicians, the rebbe may have been able to come to a more comprehensive ruling that takes into account all the factors involved. In another instance, the same rebbe approved a child in a similar situation to take the same medication. The rebbe did not know or meet either child, and yet made medical decisions on their behalf.

One of the most common medical questions asked of rabbis regards circumcision. One such question pertains to possibly delaying the circumcision due to jaundice. The common decision among rabbis and mohalim is to delay the circumcision based even on moderately elevated levels of bilirubin and jaundice. There is no medical reason to delay the circumcision in these cases and one is therefore delaying the circumcision, in these situations, unnecessarily. Medically, circumcisions are done routinely in these situations without adverse events, and there is therefore no justification to delay the circumcision. Within this category, is also the question of metzitzah. In brief, after the circumcision is complete, there is a tradition that the mohel sucks some blood out from the incision site. For convenience this was done with direct suction from the mohel’s mouth without a barrier. This procedure was done for medical reasons that are no longer valid. On the contrary, it is currently medically beneficial not to perform this procedure at all, especially without a barrier, as there is risk of infection from the procedure. This is especially true in situations where the mohel may be infected with the herpes virus and may transmit this to the child. Unfortunately, doctors are rarely consulted prior to the procedure, and rabbis are asked to make the decision on whether this procedure should be performed and how it should be performed. Without the proper precautions, we have seen many cases of children being infected and developing seizures. This is sometimes a permanent condition caused by this procedure. It seems ironic that a procedure that the rabbis instituted to protect our children, is now having the opposite effect; yet rabbis who are not trained in the specialty of infectious diseases can not make a sound decision without consultation with an expert in the field.       

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            In the modern world we are very concerned and are careful regarding who we consult regarding our physical health decisions. When we have a general concern we are comfortable asking our local general practitioner physician for advice. However, when we have a specific concern we would never only consult with a generalist but will make every effort to ask a specialist in the field who deals with those issues often. Even with all that, we will often still seek a third or fourth opinion from other respected specialists in the field who have proven their depth of knowledge in the subject. Unfortunately the vast majority of people do not afford the same importance to their religious and spiritual decisions and well-being. Similar to physicians, we have many generalist rabbis who have made a career around helping the masses. They are available for all general religious needs from attending a circumcision to attending the funeral. These rabbis are much needed and fill an important role in the communities’ lives. Some work from the pulpit, some as teachers in our schools, and some simply offer advice in their free time from whatever other career they are simultaneously pursuing. However, these generalist rabbis cannot be expected to be experts in every single area of Jewish Law and ethics. We expect too much from our rabbis. Even in the time of the Talmud, we find statements of rabbis admitting they are expert in the laws of isur v’heter (forbidden and permitted matters) but not hoshen mishpat (financial law) for example. The semikha system developed at that time even incorporated different examinations for the different categories of Jewish law. There were three general categories at the time: laws for daily living, business law, laws regarding permitting first-born animals (these are known as Yoreh Yoreh, Yadin Yadin, and Yatir Yatir). Rabbis would only advise people in areas of law within which they received their certification. Today, just as the body of knowledge in medicine has made it impossible to master every area in depth, the same holds true for the rabbinate.

In addition to the Bible and Mishna, which the rabbis of the talmudic period had to be experts in, we have 2,000 more years of literature that rabbis need to be knowledgeable about when making their rulings.  In addition to this enormous body of religious literature, before rendering a decision, the rabbi needs to fully understand the medical, financial, technological, etc. issues at hand at well. It is almost impossible for one person to be able to master all this in a lifetime, especially with today’s rapid advancements in science and technology. How can a rabbi decide laws regarding Internet transactions on Shabbat without a complete understanding of the intricate details of the network and the way the financial transactions occur, even if he were a full expert in Jewish business law? Today that is simply not enough. How can a rabbi decide if a genetically engineered fruit or animal can be kosher without having both a deep understanding of kosher laws, and of genetic engineering? Similarly, how can a rabbi make a decision regarding euthanasia, brain death, organ transplantation, genetics, abortion, medical Shabbat laws, and so forth, without having a full mastery of biology, physiology, and the physics and technology that comprise the respirator, the heart-lung machine, the electroencephalogram? It is simply not reasonable or appropriate to expect all this from every generalist rabbi.

One option is for a rabbi to have available a group of experts he trusts in certain fields who also have a strong understanding of Jewish law and whom he can consult when needed. An ideal option that has emerged is specialist rabbi. Many rabbis have taken upon themselves to become specialists in a particular field. There are rabbis who are particularly knowledgeable about Jewish law regarding end-of-life issues, transplant issues, medicine on Shabbat issues, bankruptcy law, Jewish law regarding technological issues, and so forth. Unfortunately the majority of community members will approach their generalist rabbi with all these questions, leading to an answer, which at times may produce unintended and unfortunate consequences. People would rarely go to their generalist physician for a consultation regarding their advanced-stage brain tumor. It would be inappropriate to expect a complete answer from the generalist. Rather the generalist should refer the patient to a neurosurgeon and/or neuro-oncologist for the proper advice. We should treat our religious health with at least the same level of importance and expectations, and when dealing with a specialized issue, a specialist rabbi should be consulted.

            One such example that is often encountered is prenatal testing for Duchene Muscular Dystrophy. Duchene is a devastating disorder in boys that begin as healthy children, but by toddler years have difficulty walking, by teenage years require the use of a wheelchair, and by their late teens require use of a ventilator for respiratory support. This condition leads to death in early adulthood. Throughout this period of motor and physical decline, the patients are cognitively intact and have a full understanding of what is in store for them. This disorder is caused by a genetic mutation on the X chromosome. Every father has one X and one Y chromosome, while every mother has two X chromosomes but no Y chromosome. The sons will all inherit the Y chromosome from their father and either of the mother’s two X chromosomes, while daughter with all inherit their father’s X chromosome and either of the mother’s X chromosomes. When a child has a mutated X chromosome in a certain region, this causes Duchene Muscular dystrophy as described above. These boys rarely have children, as they die so young. Girls however have two X chromosomes, so that even if one is defective the other can almost completely compensate for it. Therefore an adult woman may be a carrier of the disorder, yet can still lead a full healthy life (possibly with some mild weakness). When a couple give birth to a child who is found in early childhood to have Duchene Muscular Dystrophy, she will be counseled that half her male children (the ones that inherit the defective X from her) will have the disease, while the other half will be healthy. In addition, half her daughters will be carriers (the ones that inherit the defective X from her) like she is, and will be in the same situation as she is when they get older. The parents at this point have to make a serious decision that affects the remainder of their life. They can either not have any more children (and this decision is very different for a couple where the first child was found to have Duchene compared to when it is their fourth child) or to continue building their family. If they continue to build their family they have a 25 percent chance of giving birth to another son who will have the disease (and suffer and die young) and a 25 percent chance of having a daughter who is a carrier and will have to make these same decisions in adulthood.

One option available to them is to perform genetic testing during the early stages of pregnancy to determine if the fetus is a boy or a girl and if it has the defective chromosome. This affords the parents the option of aborting the fetus in the early stages of pregnancy and then trying again. This will lead to a healthy family that can continue to grow and fulfill their dreams and religious and spiritual goals. Although this last option appears to be the most obvious choice for many, it is highly underutilized in the Orthodox Jewish community. The main reason for this is the issue described in the prior paragraph. When facing this decision, the family will often ask either their local generalist rabbi or in some communities the rebbe of the entire community for advice and guidance. These rabbis are then expected to make these decisions and rulings without a complete understanding of the situation, the medical information and technology available, all the Jewish laws involved and the overall ramifications of their decisions on the family. Some of the worst cases I have witnessed included a family that was aware of the diagnosis, but was advised by their rabbi that they have a religious obligation to procreate no matter what the situation and must simply have faith in God. This unfortunately left the family with three affected sons, two carrier daughters, and two healthy children. To make matters worse, the eldest sister was not informed of the family genetic condition and was married without informing the groom. They had two affected children before she came to a neurologist, where she was finally informed of the genetic situation, and that all the suffering that her two children would go through over the next 20 years could have been easily avoided, had her mother received the appropriate advice from her spiritual leader. Luckily this young woman was more open to help, and I was able to show her that using current technology, she can be tested in such an early stage of pregnancy that would allow her to abort the affected fetuses within her acceptable window for early abortion.

 This true event is only one of dozens in which I have been personally involved, and there are obviously many more in which I have not been involved. It is unclear to me (as the rabbi refused to discuss the issue despite my sincere effort at a respectful discussion) why this particular rabbi, and others make such unfortunate decisions in these life-changing situations. It may be that they are not experts in the laws of abortions, where the vast majority of rabbinic authorities allow at least early (first trimester or 40 days) abortions in these types of situations; it may be that they misunderstood the situation and its ramifications caused by a lack of communication with the physician; it may also be a lack of familiarity with modern medical breakthroughs that are literally occurring daily, that they were not able to come to a more sympathetic decision. How many people have asked their rabbi for advice but were referred to a specialist rabbi instead? It seems to occur very rarely. It is human nature for the rabbi to feel the pressure of coming up with the solution to the problem himself. Many doctors behave the same way and will try to answer a patient’s questions to the best of their ability, even if they are not experts in the field. This is simply human nature. What is important is not whom to blame, the laypeople for expecting too much of their rabbi, or the rabbis for not referring the laypeople to a specialist rabbi. Rather, the important issue at hand is how to fix a broken system that doesn’t want to be fixed. Rabbi Yosef Caro ruled that someone who is not an expert in a particular field is not permitted to give medical advice or treatment—and if he does he can be considered a murderer (Yoreh Deah 336:1). The Aruh haShulhan adds that according to halakha, one must be licensed in the field of question and approved by the state (in whichever governing body has jurisdiction) to offer such advice. These rules apply to doctors and all the more so to rabbis who may not have such training or certification.

At what point do we decide to stand up to our leadership and demand a better system? How much suffering must continue in vain before we fix this broken system? There is a current concept based on a misunderstood passage in Pirke Avoth that is held in high regard, which is “Ase Lekha Rav,” make for yourself a rabbi (Avoth 1:6). This is commonly understood today as stating that every Jew must pick one rabbi and always follow that rabbi. It is considered inappropriate to ask another rabbi other than your own, a question of Jewish law. This is absurd and has never been the way our ancestors operated. This new rule, of only asking one rabbi every type of question, is not founded in halakha. Even the rabbis of the Talmud understood that some rabbis had expertise in business law, agricultural law, marital law, etc. and specific rabbis had differing authority based on their area of expertise. Why is it that we expect a rabbi who may have not even studied basic biology to understand the intricacies of complex genetics? The majority of doctors, who went through rigorous medical training, still do not comprehend cutting-edge medical genetics. It wasn’t until 1953 that Watson and Crick famously described the structure of DNA and it wasn’t until many years later and even until very recently that we are beginning to understand how to test and manipulate genes. My grandfather, Dr. Albert Moghrabi, for example, a first-class physician, studied in medical school in the 1940s, prior to the discoveries of Watson and Crick. Although he is an expert in general medicine and has kept current in his knowledge of genetics, he admits not to be an expert in genetics and would refer to a specialist for genetic counseling.

It is important to realize that there is no one that is “at fault” here. Both the rabbis and the community want what is best for our physical and spiritual health. However, it is the current system that is failing, as it is not structured to keep up with developments of modern life. I believe the best way to address these issues is to have the rabbis, laypeople, and doctors sit down together to openly discuss ways to fix the system. It can’t be stressed enough that the problem does not stem from the rabbis, the laypeople, or the doctors. Rather, it stems from the defective interaction between these three groups that leads to the problems mentioned above. As a start, one possible solution may be to publish a book listing both generalist and specialist rabbis in different fields so that one can easily be referred to the appropriate authority who can handle the question for which they are seeking guidance. This is a simple and effective way to help both the community, and the rabbis that are being asked questions that are outside their expertise. Doctors can also use this resource to direct their patients to appropriate authorities, and rabbis would also have a resource open to themselves to assure what they are doing is in accord with Jewish law. Many doctors already have a specialist rabbi that they consult; this would provide a list of rabbis in different specialties as well. This may also lead to training programs where rabbis are specifically trained in different fields of medicine so that they can have a better understanding of the situations they are being asked to advise. It would be helpful to have some rabbis attend a neurology clinic, or a cancer clinic, or an intensive care unit once per week or for a six-month training period. We need the appropriate leaders to organize this with our local hospitals and yeshivot. For every case mentioned above where there was inappropriate advice, I can name ten cases where the interaction between the rabbi, the patient, and myself was invaluable. In many of these high-stress situations, open dialogue with rabbis complements the medical treatment by encouraging and supporting the patient from a religious standpoint. This engenders more confidence in the doctor and the treatment leading to better outcomes for the patient. Without a rabbi’s involvement, a religious patient may be scared and untrusting of the modern treatments. A rabbi who has the medical knowledge and spiritual leadership can support the treatment and the patient in ways the doctor never could. It is time that we demand the same level of treatment of our religious and spiritual well being that we demand for our physical and medical well-being. In this time of health care reform, it is appropriate to look into rabbinic care refinements as well.

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.

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.

Mediation, Jewish Marriage, Jewish Divorce, and Agunah

                                           By Rabbi Martin Rosenfeld

The late Rabbi Harry Wohlberg Z’L taught Medrash at Yeshiva University to generations of Semicha students.  He asked his students on one occasion to explain why the Talmud states that the Mizbaeach itself cries for the couple going through a divorce proceeding.  Why was this metaphor of a “crying altar” used?  Rabbi Wohlberg explained that the altar was the scene of bloody activity on a daily basis, it had become de-sensitized to blood and gore, but yet it could not tolerate the scene of a couple seeking to end their marital relationship.

Divorce takes its toll on many individuals, in a ripple effect.  It is no wonder that divorce is frequently listed among the 5 biggest traumas in the adult experience.  Unfortunately, its negative impact affects multiple generations, with children often the greatest victims of all.

It is estimated that more than half of the marriages in the U.S. will end up in divorce.  I have not seen comparable statistics for Jewish marriages but we know intuitively that this rate of divorce is growing significantly.  In my post-rabbinic career, I have chosen to work in the field of divorce as a Divorce Mediator.  I find this work to be both satisfying and greatly needed.  I can think no situation, with the possible exception of custody disputes, where mediation is not infinitely more beneficial and therapeutic that that which can be found in the traditional adversarial system of battling attorneys.

Mediation, unlike litigation, fully involves the couple in an open discussion and negotiation concerning the conditions of the divorce settlement.  This discussion is facilitated by a mediator who serves as a neutral party, assisting the couple in reaching an agreement.  Mediation is an optimistic profession in that it believes that adults, even when they possess variant interest and needs, can reach an accord that will be fair and balanced.  Mediation utilizes skills that the couple will need to use even after the divorce if they share e.g. children.  Mediation allows the couple to close the door on their marriage, but not slam it.  It is an example of what constructive communication can yield.

There is a Chassidic “vort” that defines Pesach as the combination of two words: Peh Sach.  “The mouth began to speak”.  We show our most basic humanity when we become free enough to state opinions, wants and needs.  Through the medium of speech we can define problems and we can then begin to seek solutions.  The ability of a couple, even in the midst of divorce, to seek solutions rather than blame, lies at the heart of mediation.  More importantly, mediation trains the couple in the power of working collaboratively towards a shard goal.  The need for such positive and focused conversation can serve us on the communal level as well.

A question that occurs to me often is why our society expects a couple to marry as Bnai Torah and yet allows them (frequently) to divorce as battle-hardened mercenaries.  Judaic values are often observed only in their breach when many couples negotiate their divorce settlement.  This situation is aggravated exponentially when the rancor becomes so great that the Get becomes a bargaining chip. It is, at times, to our chagrin, withheld (or not accepted) by the recalcitrant spouse.   I would like to propose in an outline form below some suggestions that deal with Jewish divorce and the painful status of the Jewish Agunah. (Additional thoughts may be found at my website, www.glattyashar.com).  Many of these thoughts derive from the model of mediation where finger-pointing is rejected in favor of constructive searches for solutions and frank discussion.  However, one caveat is in order.  In order to discuss Jewish divorce, we first need to discuss Jewish marriage.  In like manner, in order to discuss Agunah concerns, we must communally first address Jewish marriage as it currently exists.

                                                            II

Social critics have often commented on how society tests for driving competence before it issues a motor vehicle license, but does not do so before it issues a marriage license.  How do we prepare our future generation for married life in a society which becomes accepts “disposable” relationships as a cardinal principle of romantic faith?  I believe we need to apply our education paradigms towards martial preparation and counseling.  Many communities have begun projects, often called Chupah Project” “Shalom Project” etc.  In some communities, such programs involve an interface between e.g. Jewish Family Services and the rabbinic community. The purpose of these programs is to offer sessions with the newly-engaged couples in order to teach communication skills, introduce halachic norms, and offer guidance on issues that will need to be negotiated in marital life.  For many couples, this will represent their first opportunity to meet community professionals in the religious sphere as well as that of the mental health arena.  The group setting offers the couple a chance to listen and also a chance to dialogue.  They are introduced to potential challenges and also strategies for a successful resolution of the same.  The couple learns to listen, to talk, and to problem-solve these are qualities that serve us all well in our daily exchanges.

I have seen in recent years a dramatic growth of mental health professionals who are well-versed in both Jewish law and social theory and practice.  It is no longer unusual to see a young man/woman go through many years of Yeshiva education and then choose to serve her/his community by electing to serve as a mental health practitioner.  The rabbinate and the mental health professionals need to work hand-in-hand and cross-refer when appropriate in this area.  It would be a worthy project to have a national roster of such professionals whose expertise in the areas of marital life and Shalom Bayit make them a natural resource for married couples.  I know of no organization that is limited to those who specialize in issues affecting married life but I think the need for such a group is self-evident.

The role of Roshei Yeshiva has been discussed and debated in multiple journal entries.  I will only offer the observation that the influence of these leaders among our young adults is undeniably great.  I do believe that their role in stressing the need to learn proper communication skills would be most valuable.  These rabbinic leaders should encourage students to seek professional intervention when this is called for.  Their lectures should stress the need for positive communication and the need to seek solutions in a spirit of collaboration. Finally, these leaders, and others, when confronting the reality of the dissolution of a marriage, should encourage the positive method of mediation rather than the divisive alternative of lengthy confrontation and litigation. (As an aside, mediated divorces have been projected as representing 20% of the cost of a litigated divorce.  The money savings is however far from being the real benefit of such an approach.).  We need, in short, to teach the skills needed for a positive home life, reinforce them, give Chizuk where needed and set a tone for an integration of Jewish values couples with insights from contemporary social thought.  We also need to remember the advice that “Values are not taught, they are caught”.

Preparation for married life needs to be a prime focus of our educational and communal curricula.  We must ask how are we to train our students for the life skills they will need for successful married life.  Yemei Iyun on such topics as communication skills, pre-nuptial agreements, Jewish sexuality need to be more widespread.  More importantly, we need to ask what objectives we seek, and how to we plan to get there.  It might be appropriate to recall the thought that “If you don’t know where you are going, all roads will take you there”.  I daresay that we know where we are going.  My question is directed at the query as to whether we know how to get there.

                                                            III

There is an oft-quoted story about the young child who saw some starfish awash on the seashore.  She took them one at a time and hurled them back into the sea.  She was asked “There are so many starfish here, do you think you can possibly help them all?” She answered: “I don’t know but I just made a difference in the life of the the one I sent back to the ocean”.  I do not have a solution which will remedy the “Agunah problem”. I do believe however, that like the girl in the story, we need to focus attention on the micro as much as the macro, i.e. why do we have an Agunah problem, and can we make a difference?”

A few years ago, Attorney Joseph Rackman, wrote an article about a registry that would contain the names of recalcitrant spouses.  Their respective communities would put the appropriate pressure on such individuals to hopefully bring about the desired effect of effecting the granting of Gittin.  I met with Attorney Rackman to discuss his proposal and made a suggestion.  Should we not first meet with each spouse who was acting in such a defiant fashion and explore what was sparking their unacceptable behavior?  It is easy to accuse all recalcitrant spouses of being “money-hungry” and manipulative. However, this may not have been the original trigger.  There may have been a call for “someone to listen” that was never heeded. There may have been a negative experience with a Bait Din. There may have been pre-existing threats from the opposing spouse. Idle legal threats may have caused a violent reaction. We will never know unless we try to reach out and communicate. Our system is not fool-proof and neither are our appointed representatives.  In our zeal to help one spouse (as sacred as that work is) we dare not demonize the other without first trying to hear from them.  Communal pressure ultimately is quite important and a desideratum.  But let us not forget the need to first enter into conversation with those who flaunt our halachic norms.

One of the organizations working with this issue, ORA, has offered couples pro bono mediation when there is a hope that communication can still be productive.  Even if we fail in our attempts to reach out to these individuals, we will gain a wealth of insight into how our community structure has “broken done” and why we have failed to impress some community members with the thought that “Her ways are ways of peace”.

We have much to gain by offering mediation assistance to couples who are unable to find the proper manner to dissolve their marriage and its attendant issues.

I do not believe we have made the institution of marriage a communal priority in terms of education ,outreach and financial support. To cite one example, the Catholic groups have Family institutions, seminars, lecture bureaus, etc. Prominent Church leaders head such efforts and have even become national figures.  What have we done in our community to try to emulate such work?  (On a personal note, I have communicated with 5 major Jewish organizations, in order to volunteer to try to initiate some of the proposals outlined herein. Only 1 of the 5 actually responded.)  Marital life is probably the most vital Jewish institution to ensure continuity of our value system.  What have we invested in such an undertaking? Where are our communal structures?

If we felt the pressing need, we could convene a meeting on Agunah and divorce. Papers could be presented, issues debated, and dialogue begun.  With every year that we fail to do something of this nature, we miss an opportunity that is desperately needed.  Indeed our national conferences always have the occasional session on issues of Jewish marriage.  But don’t we need and deserve more?  We have organizations for Agunah.  Do we have similar organizations that deal with Jewish marriage, Jewish divorce, and the halachic norms that surround them?

To the above, I would add the need for blogs so that community members with specific needs have a place to go for direction and inspiration. I maintain such a website for those who seek a Get but do not know where to turn.  A great Kiruv opportunity exists if we make the effort to explain to the non-Orthodox what a Get entails, help them find a proper Bait Din, and organize volunteers to help them through their Get process.  We shout about the tragedy of Agunah but yet we allow the non-Orthodox to be unaware of the Get process, thus dooming future generations to our community’s ultimate rejection; i.e. mamzerut.  Surely there is more work that can engage us in this area.

The Maggid , according to Rabbi Krohn, was stymied by a lack of success in a project he had undertaken.  He visited the Brisker Rav, who explained to him why he failed.  The bracha for Torah is “La’Asok” “Esek” means business. To succed as Torah Jews, the Brisker Rav stated, we need to be business-like. We need to have a mission statement, objectives, and resources, in addition to moral commitment.  This is the regimen we would undertake for our business and this must be our charge as Torah leaders. There is work to be done in the area of Ishut, and all that the term entails. We all have ideas and strategies.  Perhaps the time for “Peh Sach” has arrived.  We need to dialogue, talk, and listen. We need to work collaboratively.  If we apply such an approach, the challenges presented in the areas of Jewish Marriage, Jewish Divorce, and Agunah, we will be worthy of Bilaam’s coerced admission: “How goodly are your tents Jacob”. I can think of no greater praise, or goal, than that.

Give Grateful Credit

Book Review

Spiritual Activism: A Jewish Guide to Leadership and Repairing the World by Rabbi Avraham Weiss.

The spiritual activist is the person whose activism is both inspired by the relationship with God and in turn inspires others to expand their relationship with God. No rabbi or Jew has been a more consistent and greater spiritual activist in the last five decades than Rabbi Avi Weiss. Luckily for us, Rabbi Weiss took a break from his many duties to author a masterpiece, Spiritual Activism: A Jewish Guide to Leadership and Repairing the World (Jewish Lights Publishing, 2008).

Rabbi Weiss writes of the difficulty of being an activist as well as a communal rabbi. The activist is by nature a tenacious fighter, wedded to ideals and horrified at compromise. The activist calls people out when they are wrong and even embarrasses those leaders who are corrupt and shameful. The rabbinate, as practiced by Rabbi Weiss (and I had the opportunity to witness this first hand when serving as the Assistant Rabbi of Rabbi Weiss’s congregation, the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale), loves everyone regardless of their baggage and with great difficulty attempts to judge no one.

This paradox often causes most rabbis to avoid the realm of activism in favor of focusing on their congregational needs. But Rabbi Weiss rejects that approach; not because he craves the excitement of activism or seeks the limelight, but rather because he feels that it is the responsibility of the rabbi to be the voice of moral conscience in the community.

A major tenet of Rabbi Weiss’s activism is to follow an injustice that is not being addressed by the establishment organizations of the Jewish community. He writes that he is not anti-establishment, but non-establishment. Because he is not a full-time professional activist, in the sense that he has two other full-time jobs, Rabbi Weiss focuses his activism on areas where others are not speaking out.

In this sense, Rabbi Weiss has often become the lodestar and conscience for the Jewish community. Rabbi Weiss’s book recounts the many times he spoke out on an issue of great importance to the Jewish community only to be criticized by the Jewish establishment. In retrospect, we can all be grateful for Rabbi Weiss’s prescience.

For example, Rabbi Weiss spoke out on the struggle for Soviet Jewry before the Jewish community organizations recognized this great human struggle. Rabbi Weiss recounts how he fought against leaders of the Jewish community for the passage of the Jackson-Vannik amendment, the critical piece of legislation that was responsible for the freeing of Soviet Jewry.

He tells of confronting the Israeli government about the need to rescue the Ethiopian Jewish community only to be dismissed disrespectfully. Today the world recognizes Israel’s rescue of Ethiopian Jewry as an action by Israel that was a light unto the nations.

When the muckety-mucks of the America Jewish community were giving honor to President Carlos Menem of Argentina, Rabbi Weiss protested and was carried face-first down the steps of the posh, Pierre Hotel. As he was being carried out by police officers, some guests managed to put down their cocktails long enough to shout at Rabbi Weiss, “You are dishonoring the Jewish people.” Ten years later The New York Times ran a story on the front page proving that Menem was involved in the July 1994 bombing of the Jewish Community Center in Argentina.

There are countless stories like these in Rabbi Weiss’s book and countless others that he leaves out. Such is the life of the activist. He speaks out because he feels it is the right thing to do, even though it is very often not the popular thing to do. Indeed, almost by definition, Rabbi Weiss will usually only speak out when it is the unpopular thing to do, since if it is popular, he will feel that others are already making the case.

All this is not to say that Rabbi Weiss does not appreciate the defense organizations of the Jewish community. He recognizes that they play an important role in the symphony of the Jewish community. His goal is parallel to theirs. His goal is to inspire other individuals in the community to assume responsibility and rise up for the Jewish community.

Rabbi Weiss tells the stories of individuals or “students and simple housewives” such as Avital Sharansky, who have become some of the greatest activists in Jewish history. This is the ultimate teaching of Rabbi Weiss: The great activists speak out because they feel a religious need to do so. The great activists do not shirk responsibility but rather embrace it.

But even the greatest activists need a guide, so Rabbi Weiss offers a “street manual” to people who seek to become activists. In this respect, he religiously follows the principles of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He absolutely rejects violence by activists, even when being physically attacked. He demands absolute integrity in dealing with the media and even in dealing with opponents. Furthermore, he reminds us that no matter how pitched the battle, we can never forget that the people we are protesting against are human beings.

Some people think that the life of an activist is glorious. After all, they will often see the activist on television or in the newspaper or meeting with elected officials. I have had the great honor of standing next to Rabbi Weiss on many occasions during his moments of activism. For every successful rally of thousands of people there are literally tens, if not hundreds of rallies, with just a few committed souls. Spiritual activism is not for those who wish to hobnob with the “big shots” of the world. It is a tough, never-ending struggle for the soul of the community. It is often thankless and physically and mentally consuming.

The publication of Rabbi Weiss’s book is an opportunity for all of us to step back and be grateful for what he has given our community. There is, however, one important omission in this book that is necessary to correct.

Rabbi Weiss notes that in March 2002, on short notice and with little advertising, he and a small group of like-minded rabbis organized a rally for Israel in New York City that was attended by more than 12,000 people. At this rally, Rabbi Weiss called for a much larger rally to take place the next week in Washington, D.C. He said that the Jewish establishment should organize such a rally—and if they do not do it, then we will do it ourselves.

Within twenty-four hours, the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations met and decided that it would hold a rally in Washington the very next week. The ensuing rally was attended by well over a hundred thousand people and will forever be remembered as one of the bright spots in American Jewish history.

Unfortunately, the organizers of the Washington rally decided to completely freeze out Rabbi Weiss and his rabbinic partners from the rally. These rabbis attended but were given no credit. Such is to be expected. Such is the role of the activist.

But in this one instance, The New York Jewish Week decided to write an editorial giving credit where credit is due. Here is the passage as it appears on page 122 of Rabbi Weiss’s book:

Kol Hakavod (give grateful credit) … for not only spearheading the highly successful rally outside the United Nations on Sunday, but for no doubt convincing the Jewish establishment—some would say shaming them into acknowledging—that passion and commitment go farther than endless planning when it comes to staging an impressive pro-Israel event.

The rabbis have staged several rallies for Israel since June, but Sunday’s was by far the largest, attracting at least 10,000 people—some say many more—to voice their support for Israel in its time of crisis…. By contrast, the organized Jewish community of federations and national organizations has been slow to respond to the crisis in Israel, now in its 18^th month, at least in terms of public displays of support.

In his great modesty Rabbi Weiss omits four key words from this paragraph. The original editorial in The Jewish Week stated, “Kol Hakavod (give grateful credit) to Rabbi Avi Weiss….” Indeed!

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.  

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.