National Scholar Updates

The halakhic status of Jews who publicly violate Shabbat and/or publicly deny key elements of the Jewish faith (e.g. Torah mi-Sinai[i]) is well known. Those Jews are not to be counted towards the quorum for public prayer, nor are they to be learned from or with. It is even questionable whether one should perform the public mourning rituals upon their passing[ii]. The question that became pressing for the 19^th century European rabbinate[iii] was how to interpret within a halakhic framework the unprecedented amount of public desecration of Shabbat, coupled with open rejection of key tenets of traditional Judaism. If this new reality were to be treated in a similar way as in previous times, the end result would be that many Jews – actually the vast majority –would be ineligible to be counted for a quorum.

Rabbi Yaakov Ettlinger (1798-1871) was the Chief Rabbi of the German town of Altona, and was considered one of the most prominent German Orthodox rabbis of his era. He also was one of the first rabbis to have received academic training, having studied at the University of Wurzburg in Bavaria. It is worth mentioning that he would become a teacher to both Rabbi Azriel Hildesheimer and Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch. Rabbi Ettlinger was asked the question of how to consider wine that was touched by non-observant Jews[iv]. The standard practice was to consider the wine stam yeinam, that is to say, forbidden to consume. The wine in question was considered to be the same as wine that was touched by idolaters.

Rabbi Ettlinger responded to the inquirer with a revolutionary new way of framing non-Orthodox observance in the modern era. At first he suggested the category offered in several passages in the Talmud of omer mutar[v], one who thinks something is permissible when in actuality it is not. The status of the person who is within the parameters of omer mutar varies from karov le-meizid, ‘close to intentional sin’, to ones, someone ‘compelled’ or ‘forced’ into an action. However, Rabbi Ettlinger settles on the framework of tinok she-nishbah, one who has been captured and raised by idolaters – and thus not to be held responsible for his actions[vi]. By extension, those who had been raised in a household of Reformers were not to be blamed for their incorrect actions, and thus not to be placed within the categories of “public violators of Shabbat,” “heretics” or “deniers.” Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, the first Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi of British Mandatory Palestine, extended this ruling even to those raised within traditional homes[vii]. Rabbi Kook understood general society to be so utterly pervasive that it infiltrated even the most pious family. The end result of these rulings is that one would be hard-pressed in modern society to find any person who would fit the original categories deemed worthy of rejection.

In recent times, Rabbi Dov Linzer, the Rosh HaYeshivah and Dean of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School, has argued that we look to operating with the omer mutar category more, and rely less on the tinok she-nishbah framework[viii]. He reasons that the omer mutar category allows for preserving the internal integrity of those who do not practice Orthodox Judaism while still maintaining our assertion that Orthodox Judaism is the correct and true form of Judaism:

Whether one agrees with Rabbi Linzer’s preference for the omer mutar framework, or prefers to remain with the more common tinok she-nishbah paradigm, the result of either category is that those people who were once excluded from counting towards a quorum and receiving honors in the synagogue are no longer treated in that manner. These people, in effect, are no longer classified as mumar le-khol ha-Torah kulah, ‘deniers of the entire Torah.’ The restrictions and limits that at one time were placed on them and towards them no longer apply[ix].

The Talmud[x] has a fascinating account of a complicated relationship between rabbinic Judaism’s most famous apostate, Elisha ben Abuyah (also known as Aher) and one of the most important Tannaitic figures, Rabbi Meir. The story is recorded of Rabbi Meir running after Elisha ben Abuyah while the latter is riding a horse on the Sabbath. The purpose of Rabbi Meir’s chase after Elisha ben Abuyah is, as the Talmud states, to “learn Torah from his mouth.” The fact that Elisha ben Abuyah was publicly violating the Sabbath did not give Rabbi Meir pause in his desire to gain from the wisdom and insight he had to offer. One can visualize the scenario of the exhausted Tanna, Rabbi Meir, literally chasing the apostate Elisha ben Abuyah to learn Torah from him.

I suggest that beside the obvious point about Rabbi Meir’s enthusiastic willingness to learn from Elisha ben Abuyah there is an important lesson to be learned about the environment necessary in which a Tanna can learn from an avowed heretic. It is when the pursuit seems to have no end that Elisha ben Abuyah turns to Rabbi Meir and states: “Meir, return from running after me; for I have measured the steps of my horse, and at this point is the tehum, the ‘boundary,’ of Shabbat.” The element that made their relationship possible was mutual respect. There was not one person during their generation or today who could assert with even a shred of credence that Rabbi Meir was legitimizing Elisha ben Abuyah’s violation of traditional practice. Similarly, Elisha ben Abuyah was able to find his own sense of self-worth not in attempting to disprove or insult traditional Judaism but rather in his own sense of self. In other words, Elisha ben Abuyah did not need to engage in harsh polemics with Rabbi Meir or need to convince him to follow his ways. Their dynamic relationship existed in a state of respectful interaction and dialogue. The permissibility to learn from a heretic like Elisha ben Abuyah was not just extended to Rabbi Meir but indeed generations of Jews for two millennia have learned from him and generations more will continue to do so[xi].

Rabbi Shlomo Kluger (b. 1783 d. 1869) was the dayan and rabbi of the town of Brody in Galicia (currently in western Ukraine) for more than 50 years.  He was also the teacher of Rabbi Yosef Dov Soloveitchik, the author of the seminal work Beit HaLevi (and great-grandfather of the 20^th century American Modern Orthodox leader who shared his name). Rabbi Kluger was asked about the permissibility to study Moses Mendelssohn’s work Bi’ur[xii], which served as both a translation of Tanakh into High German and a commentary on it. Rabbi Kluger commented that the ability to learn with and from works of heretics all depends on “the circumstances of the time,” and cites the example of Elisha ben Abuyah as proof of his assertion. When, according to Rabbi Kluger, is it appropriate to distance ourselves from the teachings of non-Orthodox Jews? Rabbi Kluger recounted his personal experience with one such person to illustrate the conditions that would mandate a separation from them: “… and we saw that he was very wicked, and he used to make fun of liturgical poetry and penitential prayers, and turned penitential prayers into Purim; and in this way he mocked the Sages, and he turned their words into a laughingstock, and so in these [instances] it is obviously the circumstances of the time which causes one to distance from their writings, a very far distance…”

The circumstances that would warrant, in the opinion of Rabbi Kluger, one to “distance oneself from their writings” is an atmosphere of derision and mockery, where the non-Orthodox Jews attempted to make the words of the Sages “into a laughingstock.” Conversely,  the situation where one could learn from the teachings of non-Orthodox Jews, even those who are confirmed heretics, is similar to the encounter recorded between Elisha ben Abuyah and Rabbi Meir, i.e. a time and place where there exists an environment of respect for all those involved.

How do we Orthodox Jews today deal with current reality? Is this a time that calls for greater understanding and dialogue, or a time for distancing and a circling of the wagons? Rabbi Yehiel Yaakov Weinberg (1884-1966) was the Rosh HaYeshivah and Dean of the Hildesheimer Rabbinical Seminary in Berlin. In his youth he studied at both the Mir and Slobodka yeshivot. He received a PhD from the University of Giessen, having written his dissertation on the Masoretic Text. His students included Rabbi Menahem Mendel Schneerson and Rabbi Eliezer Berkovits. Rabbi Weinberg is considered one of the greatest and most authoritative posekim of the 20^th century.

Rabbi Weinberg maintained a deep friendship with Professor Samuel Atlas, who taught at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. The Hebrew Union College is the flagship rabbinical seminary of Reform Judaism, and Professor Atlas was an active and important figure in the development of Reform Judaism in America. Rabbi Weinberg corresponded with Professor Atlas over the course of many years through the medium of the written letter. These letters were stored for safekeeping in the library of the Jewish Theological Seminary and were recently translated into English by Rabbi Dr. Marc Shapiro of the University of Scranton[xiii]. These letters portray a rabbinic gadol who is deeply troubled by trends occurring in the Orthodox community, particularly in its relationship to both non-Orthodox Jewry and to the larger world. Rabbi Weinberg wrote:

September, 19, 1957

I am very distressed at the great fanaticism which has increased in strength in the Orthodox camp. Read the last issue of Ha-Ma’or [Tamuz, 5717] and see the blindness which is afflicting it. The Satmar rebbe forbids studying Hebrew and others say the formation of the Hebrew state was a sin which cannot be repented for. In She’arim [30 Av, 5717, p. 2] one writer protested that R. Saul Lieberman was given the Rav Kook prize, due to the fact that he works with the Reformers. See the article; you will enjoy it. On the one hand, they proclaim every “rebbe,” whom everyone knows is not outstanding in Torah knowledge, as gaon and rosh kol benei ha-golah. For the members of the Agudah, every unimportant rabbi who joins them is considered a great gaon.

In She’arim, they proclaimed a ban against participation in the Congress for Jewish Studies in Jerusalem. On the other hand, they argued, why didn’t they [the organizers] invite the geonim in Israel and the Diaspora, who know so much more than all the academic scholars of Israel and the Diaspora? They made this argument to Professor [Ben-Zion] Dinur, and he responded that the rabbis are not involved with academic studies of Judaism. They poured ignorant scorn on this answer. I see that in the end there will be a split in the body of the nation. They also invited me to come to the Congress and sent me an airplane ticket, but due to my weak health I was prevented from going. However, in Jerusalem it was publicized that I intended to come, and I was flooded with letters strongly urging me not to come and participate in a gathering of deniers and heretics. I did not pay attention to these warnings and sent a letter of blessing and apology that I could not come. This letter was read in public.      

He also wrote about a particular “Liberal rabbi” whom he had met:

October 16, 1959

I visited this Liberal rabbi in his hotel and was thrilled to see that he is a wonderful man, honest in his heart and mouth. I have already quipped before the men who surround me that this Liberal rabbi causes a “hillul ha-shem,” because in him we see that one can be an upstanding and noble man, full of the spirit of love for Israel, its Torah, and its language, even if one does not belong to the community of zealous Hasidim and is not punctilious about laws and customs. Yet with those fervent zealots we see the opposite.  

These letters need no further comment. They clearly demonstrate a great concern on behalf of Rabbi Weinberg for a “split in the body of the nation,” due to the unwillingness of the “fervent zealots” to engage with the academic, and more broadly, non-Orthodox Jewish communities. He affirms the integrity of non-Orthodox rabbis as people who can be “upstanding… full of the spirit of love for Israel, its Torah, and its language...”

In our own time and on our own shores, Rabbi Shmuel Goldin has eloquently addressed the question of pluralism from an Orthodox perspective. Rabbi Goldin is the rabbi of Congregation Ahavath Torah, an Orthodox synagogue of 700 families in Englewood, New Jersey. He is an instructor of Bible and Philosophy at Yeshiva University. He is also the past president of Rabbinic Alumni of Yeshiva University and the past president of the Rabbinical Council of Bergen County[xiv]. Rabbi Goldin addressed members of the academic community at the Jewish Theological Seminary, the flagship rabbinical seminary of the Conservative movement in 2000 on the subject of pluralism from an Orthodox orientation[xv]. A key paragraph in his talk is the following:

At the opposite end of the spectrum, to reach this point of valuing without validating, my own Orthodox community is going to have to make major changes. It is going to have to learn not to be afraid of the non-Orthodox and to stop seeing the Conservative and Reform movements as a threat to its own existence. Sometimes in my own frustration I feel that the Orthodox community is living in the past. Decades ago sociologists were predicting the demise of Orthodoxy in America. The Orthodox community was told that we were not going to last and that we were soon going to be a mere memory, while the Conservative and Reform would inherit the mantle of leadership and existence in America. Because those were the predictions, we within the Orthodox community hunkered down behind the barricades. We said, "We’ve got to defend our turf; we can’t do anything that might appear as legitimizing anyone else. We can’t in any way legitimize the Conservative movement. We can’t legitimize the Reform movement because otherwise we’re going to lose." Well, things have changed. The Orthodox community is strong. It’s not perfect—take my word for it—but it is thriving and self-perpetuating. The Conservative and Reform movements are no longer a threat to our existence. Yet, we are still acting as if we are afraid of you. As far as I’m concerned, we within the Orthodox community have to reach the point where not only are we not afraid, but where we are confident enough in ourselves to admit that we have something to learn from you. Most importantly we must learn that this admission does not entail legitimization of all your religious views. Just as I believe you have much to learn from us. If we can become confident enough to say this without feeling that we are threatening our own existence, we will have moved much closer to the position of valuing without validating.

I believe we are indeed in the era that Rabbi Goldin described. It is quite possible to value some of the opinions and teachings of a person or a movement without validating or legitimizing all the opinions and teachings of that person or movement. Furthermore, the walls of absolute separation that some in the Orthodox community have built to protect themselves from the non-Orthodox and the larger world have bred distrust, misunderstanding and hatred within the Jewish people. I believe that Orthodox Judaism, when represented properly within the marketplace of ideas, will not only survive but thrive and demonstrate its spiritual and intellectual integrity. I argue that learning with non-Orthodox Jews will not cause the masses of Orthodox Judaism to defect. In fact, the opposite is true. The transformation of non-Orthodox forms of Judaism into the unreachable “forbidden fruit” only serves to heighten its seductive power and allure. Furthermore, as Rabbi Goldin suggested, “we have something to learn” from the non-Orthodox just as they can learn from us. When a Jew cannot sit down with another Jew to learn our sacred texts together, the Jewish people, as a whole, is at a profound loss[xvi].

After the Six Day War there was a considerable renewal of interest in Israel throughout the world. At the same time, a Jewish national revival began in the USSR. Jewish identity started to acquire a new shape. Soviet Jews always had a distinct identity, but in many cases it was a "negative" one, caused by discrimination and persecution. Many people started investigating their Jewishness, learning Hebrew and thinking about going to Israel. But still more primary was the total rejection of the Soviet system, its regime, ideology, and values. This resulted in many Jews wanting to leave the USSR.

By 1980 many Jews had applied for emigration from the USSR. The official destination was Israel, but a majority used their exit visas to go to the USA. In the seventies many people were able to emigrate, but some were refused permission to leave, and the Refusenik phenomenon was created. After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 Jewish emigration practically stopped. Refuseniks and people planning eventually to leave the USSR were already far detached from Soviet ideology or had never been adherents of it. Refuseniks' Jewish national consciousness was developed to some extent. But they were trapped in a cold winter of the late days of failing Communism. Some of them became Zionists; others joined the struggle for human rights (the dissident movement), some tried to study Jewish culture, primarily Hebrew.

Studying Jewish culture and traditions led some people to the Jewish religion. The problem they faced was that there were not many people left to learn from. Many had died, others had left. Some elders in synagogues remained, but the cultural gap between them and the newcomers was great. A small isolated group of ba-alei teshuva was born.

By 1980 a special entity inside this small group was formed. Later, only after their main activists' aliya in 1987, this group took the name of Machanaim. Most of its members had a background in math or science. These people tried to stay as far away from Soviet ideology as possible, and thus could not learn history or philosophy that under other circumstances would have certainly attracted many of them. The group soon developed into an underground independent Jewish learning network that taught and disseminated the Jewish tradition in various forms: celebrating of Jewish holidays, study of Jewish texts, including the Talmud, organizing activities for children. Sometimes a small Moscow apartment was packed, with 70-80 people participating in a Pesah seder, or 100-120 watching a Purimspiel. Machanaim members also translated, composed and prepared handmade booklets on Jewish holidays and Torah study. These booklets were typewritten, photographed, and then printed in 50-100 copies on regular photo paper. All these activities were strictly forbidden by the Soviet authorities and had to be thoroughly hidden.

The classes took place in private apartments, which frequently had to be changed because the KGB received information about them. These were usually apartments of Machanaim's main activists: Zeev and Tanya Dashevsky, Pinchas and Nechama Polonsky, Levi and Miriam Kitrossky, Yaakov Belenky, Yehuda Frumkin, Baruch Youssin, Michael Kara-Ivanov and Ira Dashevsky, Nathan and Chana Brusovani. There were others, less visible to the KGB eyes, who occasionally volunteered their apartments.

Machanaim's goal was to disseminate an understanding of Jewish tradition that would be close to the Russian speaking Jewish intelligentsia. This included translations of many Jewish texts. But the real trick was to translate these not just into the Russian language, but also to the modern mentality, specifically, to the mentality of Russian Jewry. This demanded a lot of learning and teaching. It was primarily directed to the group members themselves, but also to a broader circle of friends and acquaintances. Machanaim people first had to learn Judaism themselves, from scratch. At first they learned from the few elderly religious Jews still remaining in Russia who had once learned in the yeshivas and were willing to pass on, against all odds, the knowledge they had to younger generations (Rav Avrum Meller, Chabad community). Michael Shneider and Zeev Shachnovsky were among the first Hebrew teachers, before the Machanaim group began its activity. They were our teachers for a long period of time. Some learned from Eliahu Essas and other Refuseniks. The community hardly existed, with only several dozens of families, scattered all over the gigantic city of Moscow, who were tied by friendship and common learning interests. By the beginning of the 1980 the underground Jewish learning network that included Machanaim had approximately 25 weekly classes and involved around 200 participants and about 15 active teachers. However, the Soviet authorities stopped letting people out, and the Machanaim people became "Refuseniks." This naturally led to the intensification of their underground Jewish activities, which now included not only learning Jewish tradition, but also Zionism and the struggle for the right to emigrate. At the same time the process of returning to religious values and observances involved more and more people.

There was also the more social and spiritual problem of finding one's place in modern society. The process of acquiring faith is described by Kierkegaard as a jump into darkness: one leaves a well illuminated place and comes into the unknown. The person feels threatened, stripped of convictions. Some people felt they must get rid of their "old" cultural baggage altogether. There were some who threw away their poetry or covered books of world classics with a screen. Machanaim members, however, had a different approach: they felt it was both possible and necessary to keep and use the cultural baggage that had been acquired in one's "previous" life.
The group would have been very isolated had there not been Jewish messengers coming from abroad. Jewish activists striving to promote aliya from the Soviet Union and to support the Jewish revival in the USSR started visiting Machanaim people (for example, Rabbi Michael Rozen z"l from London visited our group in Moscow in the end of the seventies). Rabbis, educators, youth activists and other highly motivated people would come from the US, Europe and Israel to help Jewish

Refuseniks, both materially and spiritually. They did what they could to help Jews in the USSR. It was impossible to transfer money to the USSR, but goods were sent for sale or use. They regularly gave lessons and brought books. The content and spirit of these clandestine meetings depended on the personality of the guest. They would bring kosher food or religious items such as Kiddush goblets, candlesticks and the like, but most importantly, they provided a connection with the Jewish world, which felt like a gulp of fresh air, and which served as a real window to the open free world and its vibrant Jewish life. The KGB kept watch on what was happening and used intimidation from time to time against religious activists, although it was much busier against Hebrew teachers and emigration activists.

Among those who sent messengers to Moscow, the England-based group of Earny Hirsh ("Ginger") was especially active; he recently published a book called Refused - The Refusenik Community that refused to give up and the London Community that refused to let them, Technosdar, Tel Aviv 2004.
The foreigners' visits were critically important, although they involved some risk both for the visitors and for those who received them. For example, once a plain clothed KGB officer and a policeman came "to check passports" when a foreign guest was giving a Torah class. The participants pretended that it was a simple tea party where no religious activity was taking place. All those present were put on a list and received visits from a representative of the Committee for Religious Affairs at their work places or were called for questioning. This was a regular occurrence. Some families had their apartments watched permanently. But without these visits from abroad, the process of Jewish revival would hardly have been viable. In the best case, it would have been very outdated and distorted. As it was, when the Machanaim people arrived in Israel they still had many things to learn.

By 1985-86 the Machanaim group had already developed its own characteristic features. One of these was an interest in Jewish philosophy, both modern and ancient. This was absolutely contrary to the assumptions made by some groups in Israel about the needs and priorities of the Russian immigrants interested in Judaism. A story told by Pinchas Polonsky illustrates this lack of understanding. "In 1987, soon after my arrival in Israel," - remembers Pinchas, "I was invited to the steering committee of one of the publishing houses that printed books on Judaism in Russian. They wanted to consult me as a new immigrant active in the field of Jewish education. One of the members of the committee began introducing their publishing house, saying, ‘We have published a lot of important and needed books in Russian for the Jews in the USSR - on Shabbat, Kashrut and the Jewish holidays. One of our publications was, however, a mistake. A lot of work was invested in it, and it is highly questionable whether anybody will read it even in Israel - how can we expect Russian Jews to?' The book he was speaking of was The Lonely Man of Faith by Rabbi Joseph.B.Soloveitchik. I had to stand up and say, ‘Dear friends! To tell you the truth, your books on Shabbat, Kashrut and the Jewish holidays have not been so interesting for us - they are pretty simple, about basic things. And not everybody in the beginning of hazara be-tshuva process is interested in the laws of Shabbat and Kashrut. But the book that we multiplied in hundreds of copies and disseminated all over USSR, the one that was in great demand, was this very book, The Lonely Man of Faith. What you considered your mistake was in reality your greatest success among Russian refuseniks.'"

People who knew nothing of Jewish tradition wanted to read Rabbi Soloveitchik. Why? Because he has an incredible ability to relate complex, deep philosophic issues of Jewish law and midrash, written in the arcane language of Jewish tradition, in a simple academic style understandable to educated Russian Jews. We felt that Rabbi Soloveitchik was close to us, and a number of his articles were translated by Machanaim from English into Russian and later published in a collection entitled Catharsis.

Another important author, Rav Kook, was not yet known to us at the time. Unlike Rabbi Soloveitchik, who writes in the academic language familiar to us, Rav Kook writes in a very difficult idiom of Hebrew mystical verse often not understandable by the Israelis. All our attempts to understand his works under the guidance of the students from different yeshivot who visited us in Moscow failed. We only started to grasp his ideas after our arrival in Israel. Later we published a major body of research - the first of its kind in Russian - on Rav Kook's philosophy, part of which was recently translated into English and published in the USA. It seems to be the only case when a modern work on Judaism has been translated from Russian into English, and not vice versa. One chapter of the English book was published in Conversations, the journal of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and ideals, in May 2009.

These two personalities, Rabbi Soloveitchik and Rav Kook, built the foundation of the modern approach to Orthodox Judaism, which works effectively for Russian Jewry. Their philosophy is widely seen as a turning point in the development of Judaism that gives us a new approach to many issues in Jewish life.

The strength of Machanaim is that its members came to Judaism possessing considerable cultural background, albeit not Jewish. The group's encounter with Jewish culture gave birth to a new understanding that might be of benefit to the world Jewish community. While Russian Jewry is usually perceived as an object for education, it may also be a community that can enrich the modern understanding of Jewish culture, tradition, and thought.

Current status of Russian Jews in Israel and the Diaspora

The peculiarity of Russian Jewry is that it combines an almost total lack of Jewish background with a high general intellectual level and corresponding demands. It will not be satisfied with only "basic Judaism" - ethnic information and an introductory level of Jewish tradition. It often demands not "Judaica" and ethnography, but serious philosophical literature.

It was important for us to understand what underlies the Jewish laws and practices that we started to observe. The Pesah seder, for example, is for many an array of odd actions that people don't understand. We thought it was essential to explain to ourselves and then to the participants not just WHAT should be done, but also how it's done and WHY, what meaning it has. We published, while still in Moscow (in our illegal, handmade form) a book on the Passover Haggada with commentaries. One might say it was a Haggada for beginners - yes, for beginners, but it certainly was not a simplified Haggada; rather, it was an expanded, comprehensive Haggada.

The conventional way to address beginners is this: just show them what should be done -- the minimum at first -- and they will do it. When people grow up with traditions, this approach works. But when people start observing traditions later in their lives, their approach is different. They want to understand why they are supposed to do this and the meaning behind it. People who came to the USSR from abroad would ask, "What are the minimal necessities for the Passover seder?" Everybody cried: Pesah, matza, maror. Yes, it's true. But this is far from explaining what the philosophic meanings are of Pesah, matza, maror. A messenger from abroad who does not speak Russian cannot explain it. Even if he has learned some Russian he will not manage it. It had to be somebody brought up in the same culture and mentality. Only this way could the traditional actions acquire a meaning for these people. That is why Machanaim people saw it as their primary aim to compose and publish booklets on the Jewish holidays that would be written using their own approach. These books gave the readers, along with information about the history and customs of the holidays, an insight into their meaning and significance today. They were important guides for Holiday celebrations and gateways to the world of Jewish practice.

The current efforts of Machanaim to enhance the spiritual life of Russian Jews
In 1987 the core of the Machanaim group received their long-awaited exit visas and moved to Israel. Even though our initial intention was just to live a Jewish life in the Jewish State on the Jewish Land, we soon felt that there was a need here for the continuation of the same kind of educational activities we held in Russia. That same year Machanaim was established in Israel as an officially registered non-affiliated non-profit organization. Among the people who helped Machanaim in its initial stage in Israel, the renowned hero and Prisoner of Zion, Yoseph Mendelevich, must be mentioned. Strengthened by new forces, among them Benyamin Ben-Yosef, the organization started its activities in two areas: educational work with new immigrants from the USSR, and those who were still in Russia. (At the same time, with the help of Avital and Natan Sharansky and Israeli political leaders, we continued our struggle for fighting for those who were still refused their exit visas.) The dual character of the work gave birth to the name MACHANAIM, taken from Genesis 32:3, meaning "two camps" - Moscow and Jerusalem. (We were aware, of course, of the classic reference to "the earthly and the heavenly camps," and meant it too, hoping for "siyata de-Shmaya"-heavenly help-- in our endeavors.)

At first, the "Russian" camp was the primary focus, with frequent trips back to the USSR to teach. In 1989, the President of Machanaim, Dr. Zeev Dashevsky was awarded the Jerusalem Prize for Torah Education in the Diaspora and the Henry Moore Award of the British Parliament for Service to the Jewish People.

Soon it became clear that Machanaim needed to utilize all media, technologies and educational forums, not just frontal teaching. We established a regular flow of Russian language material via mail, messenger, telephone and Kol Israel radio broadcasts from our new center in Jerusalem to our colleagues still in Moscow. Later, with the great wave of immigration to Israel, our emphasis shifted to work with newly-arrived Soviet Jews. In 1993, Machanaim was awarded the Yakov Agrest Prize of the Education Ministry. Of course these achievements would not have been possible without the continuous and devoted help of Rabbi Michael Melchior, Avital and Natan Sharansky and others.
We have found that almost all Soviet Jews coming to Israel are as unaware of their Jewish heritage as we were when we began studying in the seventies. At the same time, we saw that after uprooting themselves from their Russian homes and finding themselves in strange surroundings, many feel a desperate need for a sense of identity and belonging. Added to their initial concerns as they settle in the Jewish state -- finding homes, jobs, etc. -- are questions of what it actually means for them to be Jewish.

Few organizations have addressed these issues on a systematic basis. Various government agencies took on parts of the puzzle and their consequences, but no one looked at the whole issue from a cultural and educational perspective. Machanaim stepped into this void with a multi-tiered, multi-faceted open approach to teaching what being Jewish can mean to someone acculturated in the Russian Communist environment. As such, the main directions of Machanaim today include various learning programs: educational tours of Eretz-Israel, book publishing, a multi-faceted Internet site, lectures and other educational activities for new immigrants, radio programs, and educational articles in newspapers. Machanaim has also built a unique Russian-speaking community in the Jerusalem suburb of Maale-Adumim.

The mix of high general education and ignorance in Judaism that characterizes many Russian immigrants demands very specific teaching methods and unusual learning aids. Few existing books and learning systems can meet their needs. Having been educated in the same system and having had the opportunity to learn Jewish texts, we have developed a special approach to bridge the gap between ignorance and knowledge without focusing on observance per se. We have programs designed to fit into a wide range of schedules, levels and learning styles - afternoon and evening programs for men, women and children and special programs for those studying for conversion to Judaism. Everyone learns Bible, Jewish history, Jewish philosophy and Jewish Law. Most activities are in Russian. Our teachers travel all over the country, and we have many more requests for our programs, especially outside of Jerusalem, than we have the budget to handle.

The problems Machanaim faces

The real challenge is, however, to attract youth to these activities. Machanaim has been active in several youth programs: Shir Mizmor le-bnei mitzvah, Young Leadership program, programs in Youth villages and the like. The particular goal of some of these programs has been to break the stigma that exists among Russian-speaking youngsters, who are still more sensitive to anything "smelling" of coercion than the adults. We focus especially on work with youth from underprivileged layers (single-parent and broken families, youth with criminal records, etc.), for whom the problems of integration in the Israeli society are still more acute.

These programs demand a lot of cooperation with formal educational bodies and, of course, their financial input, which is not always easy. Nevertheless, Machanaim continues its efforts to reach the young immigrant population. During Hanukka 2009 there was a gathering for about 70-80 immigrant children as part of Machanaim's Jewish Holidays Project.

There is still a lot of work to be done in this field. The problem is that youth are not usually interested in participating in educational activities. The most successful way to reach youngsters is through informal educational frameworks, which have their own limitations, and through their families at weekend seminars and similar events.

Areas of success

One of Machanaim's undisputed successes is its conversion program initiated in 1990 by Ira Dashevsky. This program resulted in almost 100% of its students successfully undergoing conversion. The program is an unquestionable success with those who take the offered conversion preparation course. Those interested can be referred to Ira Dashevsky and Michael Kara-Ivanov's paper on the social and educational aspects of the conversion, published at "Hidushei Torah NDS. It can be seen http://www.nds.com/z/chidusheitorah/toc_10_hebrew.htm.

Machanaim is offering to create a pre-conversion framework to be implemented in absorption centers, municipalities, boarding schools, and maybe even in the countries that the olim are leaving, as part of an aliyah preparation process. Within these frameworks, every oleh (or a potential oleh) will be offered up to 100 hours of a basic Judaism course in Russian. The course will be taught by the senior lecturers at Machanaim in an engaging, informal manner.

Just as there are no pre-conversion activities, so too there is no organization that assists olim after their conversions. There are multiple challenges awaiting new converts, from the refusal of certain rabbinates to officiate at their weddings (claiming the invalidity of their conversions), to the lack of familiarity with their local community, nearby synagogue, rabbi, community functions, etc, to difficulties in finding their potential spouses.

Another undeniable success is the creation of a unique Russian-Jewish Machanaim community in the Jerusalem suburb of Maale Adumim. After overcoming many hardships, this project resulted in a beautiful neighborhood called Maale Machanaim with its own Russian language synagogue. (The prayers are, of course, in Hebrew, but the sermon is in most cases in Russian, while all the announcements, as well as the synagogue publications are in Russian and Hebrew, and sometimes even in English.) The Rabbi of the Synagogue is one of the Machanaim founders, Rabbi Yaakov Belenky, who started learning basic Judaism illegally in Moscow and has become an ordained Rabbi with a family of nine children. The community numbers about 100 families, and has a vibrant life. The cultural center organizes concerts, exhibitions, and other community events; varied activities for children are provided on a regular basis. It must be noted that the community is open to people of different life styles, and some come to Maale Adumim from other localities to celebrate bar/bat-mitzvas, just because they feel more at home there and know that they are always welcome.
One more area of success is Machanaim's work at Bar-Ilan University. Machanaim runs courses in Judaism for over 500 Bar-Ilan immigrant students. These students are obliged to take courses on Judaism, but when they took regular Bar-Ilan University courses together with Israeli students, the effect was in many cases negative: the difference of backgrounds created a gap between the students, and the immigrant students felt alienated from and even hostile to Judaism. Learning with Machanaim teachers who have a background similar to that of the students and manage to convey Judaism in an open, non-coercive atmosphere, helps to change the students' attitude. Machanaim lecturers also teach at various other University programs in Israel.

Areas where much more work needs to be done

There is a lot of work being done - still more is needed. Machanaim is trying as hard as it can to cope with existing problems but suffers from budgetary limitations. Still, we have been overcoming those problems for a long time and hope to continue to do so. A lot of work is accomplished by volunteers, including lectures by renowned Rabbis and University professors.

Another difficulty is a severe lack of teachers who combine real knowledge in Jewish subjects with methodological skills and the open, considerate approach so much needed for newcomers. Machanaim developed teachers' training courses and offered them in the past. This requires significant funds and a lot of time.

A still more ambitious project would be to raise young leadership who would lead young people after them, involving them in Jewish life and building communities around them. We are working on such a project and hope one day to be able to implement it.

One of Machanaim's new projects, guided by Michael Kara-Ivanov and Ira Dashevsky, is the creation of "Beit Midrash Leumi". The aim of this project is to build a tight collaboration between the various sectors of the Jewish people, who currently exist in separate universes. The project discusses ways to bring the ideals of European and Russian culture (Literature, Fine Arts etc.) closer to the world of Jewish traditional values (Talmud, Kabbalah, Midrash etc). Initial motives for this project are described in the following paper: Greatest Creative and Intellectual Masters of Nations on the Ladder of Jacob, http://www.nds.com/z/chidusheitorah/toc_9.htm, pp. 7-29, 2008 (Hebrew).

Machanaim has recently started a major project of translating their publications into English. The book Rav Kook's Religious Zionism by Pinchas Polonsky was published in 2009. The review on it written by Rabbi Israel Drazin is posted on Conversations website, http://www.jewishideas.org/store/religious-zionism-rav-kook.

More details about Machanaim can be found on http://www.machanaim.org/ind_eng.htm

Esther Lapian is a teacher and teacher educator in the field of Bible studies and the teaching of Jewish texts. She works extensively in Israel and abroad as a consultant to Jewish educational organizations from every religious sector. She recently opened a private educational consulting service called Paces, aimed at "walking parents through the paces" of educational challenges presented by the Israeli school system.She made Aliyah from the United States in 1987. This article originally appeared in Hebrew, in De'ot, the magazine of Ne'emanei Torah vaAvodah, no. 42, May 2009, and has been translated into English by Sarah Nadav. This article appears in issue 7 of Conversations, the journal of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals.
During the past several years as an educator in the fields of Tanakh and Jewish studies, I have come across a prevalent and disturbing phenomenon: most of the religiously observant student teachers whom I have met are not at all interested in teaching in the mamlakhti-dati school system (the religious public school system in Israel). When the time comes for them to decide on a professional placement, they apply to secular schools, or to the new model of specialized dati-hiloni schools (religious/secular schools), or to pluralistic religious schools. Several years ago, as the head of the Tanakh department of such an experimental dati-hiloni high school, I found that more than half of the Jewish studies faculty was comprised of incredibly dedicated and talented religious young people. When I asked them to describe the thought process that brought them to an experimental framework, (in our case, a particularly demanding one), the majority of them admitted to never having even considered Mamad (religious public school system) as a professional option, for reasons that will be discussed in this paper. Some had tried to teach in the Mamad system and had given up.

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

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

Observations from the Field: Primary School

A Story about Matisse

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

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

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

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

So why is this person permitted to teach our children?

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

I would like to underscore this point with 3 stories from my recent experience in Mamad teachers colleges.
Observations from the Field of Teacher Training

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

Feminist Research

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

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

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

A Trip to London

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

We have never been to London.

OK, I said, make believe.

We don't want to go to London.

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

We don't want to go to Paris either.

OK. Where do you want to go?

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

Literary Analysis

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

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

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

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

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

On Sukkot 2005, Ne'emanei Torah V'Avodah hosted a joint conference with Edah[1], an American organization associated with religious Zionism and modern Orthodoxy.[2] In a keynote address, Rabbi Saul Berman delineated the major ideological issues on which the hareidi world and the modern Orthodox world differ: pluralism/tolerance, the religious meaning of Medinat Israel, Jew and Gentile, da'at Torah, Torah u'maddah, humrah, women in halakha, outreach, and activism. On the majority of the issues listed, the hareidi- leumi attitude is closer to the hareidi attitude than to the dati leumi attitude.[3] Aside from the approach towards the State, we differ on the central, most significant issues of modern Jewish life.

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

These dati students have been to China and India, some even to London! They believe Jews are special, but they don't believe that everyone else is devoid of values. They go to concerts, they know who Matisse is, and they know a thing or two about wine. The men know how to cook... and most of the women wear slacks.
They are rigorous in their thinking, but not rigid in their outlook. They struggle to find the interface--often through reexamination of religious sources--between the yeshiva/midrasha and the university, between Levinas and dati leumi, shiurim and shira, Carlbach and Kleinstein. Their challenge is to make these worlds overlap, not to compartmentalize them.

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

The Dress Code

A disturbing corollary of hareidi- leumi influence that threatens the caliber of teachers in the dati leumi schools system is the growing obsession with the dress code relating to women. Part of the reason why the teacher in the Matisse story continues to teach in our schools is because she looks the part. She and hundreds like her are teaching in our schools, despite the fact that they may be inferior teachers, because her elbows are covered, her skirts are long, and in the case of married women, her head is covered.
Over the past 10-15 years, the dati-leumi establishment has become obsessed with the dress code of women. Prominent rabbis write outrageous articles measuring centimeters on the neck and on the arms. While the suitability of male teachers is measured in how much they know and the quality of their prayer, in the case of women, the skill of pious dressing can override the skills of good teaching.

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

A case in point: Several years ago a new Dati Leumi academic school opened in our neighborhood to address the needs of our predominantly liberal dati-leumi population. Most of the parents, working people, professionals and academics, were eager for a superior local school for their children that could compete with excellent schools outside the neighborhood. The girls' school, however, was headed in a different direction. From its inception, it insisted that homeroom teachers wear head coverings at all times, that is, outside of school as well as in. All non- homeroom teachers, that is, art, history, math, were requested to wear a head covering in school, even if they didn't do so in their personal lives. Thus, with one swift religious stringency, the eagerly awaited alternative dati-leumi school committed to excellence, disqualified all outstanding religious teachers who didn't "look the look."[4] While the boys' school, instituted at the same time, searched for the "best and the brightest," the girls' school front line concern was attire. Not only did the students have a dress code, so did the teachers.

It is not within the scope of this paper to discuss the halakhic ins and outs of these dress demands. The point of emphasis here is that this stringent dress code does not reflect the norms or the values of the religiously observant parent body. The vast majority of the mothers in this school do not cover their hair and many wear slacks. At the opening ceremony of the school the number of mothers counted with head coverings was 10 out of 150! Thus the unstated message conveyed to girls is that their mothers are not qualified to be their religious role models.[5]

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

A Practical Suggestion for Change

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

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

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

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

[1] Edah was an organization "committed to... Modern Orthodoxy, which maintains a serious devotion to Torah and Halakhah while enjoying a mutually enriching relationship with the modern world."

[2] Closest Hebrew and Israeli equivalent: dati-leumi.

[3] The exceptions being: Medinat Israel, outreach and activism.

[4] The "other" girls' school this school was meant to compete with still retains the educational, and I contend, the religious edge. There is no demand for head coverings from the married teachers, including those who teach religious subjects.

[5] See "Hok ha'Kovah Koveiah," by Esther Lapian, an unpublished paper delivered at the Kolech Conference, 2006.

1.

Hello darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again
 

"Can you point me to rabbis or other leadership figures in the Orthodox Jewish community who have spoken or written about the moral aspects of the financial crash and the economic crisis – and about a specifically Jewish ethical and moral view of what happened, relating also to the prominent role of Jews, including and perhaps especially observant Jews?"

"Do you know of anyone who, in the period of the stock market and property manias in the nineties and the decade just ended, talked or wrote about the trends underway in the financial sector in the US and elsewhere, and/ or in the housing market, as moral and ethical issues that should concern us deeply -- and that Orthodox / observant/ Torah True Jews should have something to say about?

These are the kind of questions I have been posing to (an admittedly unscientific sample of) rabbinic teachers, colleagues and friends in recent months. The responses can be categorized as follows:

a. "No, but why don’t you ask so-and-so, he's 'into' that kind of thing."

b. "Yes, you should see/ look up / speak to so-and-so or this-and-that." However, these references led to material that was either overtly halakhic and very narrowly focused, or that indulged in very general ethical reflections (such as that the crash and crisis highlight the role of Divine providence at the global and individual levels, or the need to adopt and maintain a modest lifestyle).

c. "Yes", followed by a referral to articles or speeches by relevant Jewish personalities – but addressed to non-Jewish audiences.

Taken together, these responses are profoundly discouraging. The answers translate as follows:

1. Even people who have a definite interest in this topic haven't seen or heard of relevant material. They, like me, want to believe that said material exists, but have no hard evidence thereof. They – we – are deliberately indulging in wishful thinking, because the alternative is too awful for us to contemplate.
2. Many people, including – or perhaps especially -- rabbis and educators actually have no clear idea what ethical and moral issues are. More precisely, they have great difficulty distinguishing between legal/ halakhic and moral/ethical treatments of issues, preferring to subsume the latter in theological, or even mystical, conceptual frameworks
3. Those who have addressed the topic from a moral perspective have preferred to direct their remarks to non-Jews. This is much the most depressing response of all.

None of this is meant to suggest that what I am looking for does not exist. Both I and most of my interlocutors continue to assume that such material does exist, that various people at various times did address various aspects of these complex and multi-faceted issues. I would therefore hope that one of the results of this article will be that kind readers will point me to 'relevant material', thereby substantiating our naïve faith.

But finding a few righteous men in Sodom will not change the basic premise of this article, which is that Orthodox Judaism, as currently conceived and practiced, is morally challenged. The ongoing financial and economic crisis is arguably not even the most severe moral challenge facing it and us. Rather, the crisis has exposed the moral bankruptcy of much of Orthodoxy – of all streams, in both the Israel and the Diaspora -- so sharply that henceforth this sorry state of affairs will be difficult, if not impossible, to continue to ignore.

To apply Warren Buffett's famous aphorism, 'you only find out who's been swimming naked, when the tide goes out' – and for the Orthodox, the tide has gone out. In the same way that the crash is already seen as marking the end of an era -- that stretched from the end of the Second World War until 2007 -- in everything from economic theory to household financial behavior; so, I believe, it marks the end of an era in Jewish history – the era of recovery from the Holocaust, which featured demographic and cultural reconstruction which came to be led by the Orthodox, but also a restructuring of Jewish values. In the latter process, some old values were downgraded, marginalized or even dropped, while others – perhaps no less ancient – were upgraded and moved to center stage.

The crisis has exposed the existence of a widespread moral darkness within, indeed at the heart of, Orthodox Judaism. This black hole expresses itself the way all such negative moral phenomena do – via silence.

2.

In restless dreams I walked alone
 

Let's cut to the quick. What I am looking for is moral leadership, which I define as people with the courage to tell at least the members of their flock, if not the world at large, what is wrong with what they are doing and how they can and should do better. In the best case, this leadership should be demonstrated in real time – i.e. with regard to what is currently happening or likely to happen, but if it appears ex post, that is considerably better than nothing.

I expect this leadership to relate to the moral and ethical aspects of that broad swathe of human existence that is currently pigeonholed by the think-only-by, about and inside-the-box society that we live in, as 'macro-economics', 'finance' and 'labour'. My reading of Torah, Nakh, Talmud and Midrash suggests that this whole aspect of human activity is central to the theory and practice of Judaism. If, therefore, it is now enveloped in crisis, it is impossible that Judaism has nothing to say about it, beyond theological platitudes and/or legal formulations. It should, therefore, be impossible for the recognized leadership of Orthodox Judaism, which constantly stresses its credentials as THE ONLY authentic Judaism, to be silent.

What do I expect it to say? What, in other words, am I talking about others talking about? The simplest and best way of illustrating this is to give a concrete example of moral leadership, as defined above. The following is an extract from a speech given to a group of Canadian bankers and other financial sector types, in February 2009 at the very height of the crisis. The speaker is Paul Volcker, the octogenarian former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank who, when appointed by President Carter in 1979 with a mandate to end the inflation that had been eating away at the American economy and society for 15 years, proceeded to raise interest rates to 20% per annum and push the economy into not one, but two, recessions, in order to get the job done. Clearly, he is not someone afraid of a challenge or of making sacrifices to achieve essential goals.  We 'join' the audience in the midst of Volcker's description of what went wrong and how:

You might ask how [the housing/ mortage boom] went on as long as it did. The grading agencies didn't do their job and the banks didn't do their job and the accountants went haywire. I have my own take on this. There were two things that were particularly contributory and very simple. Compensation practices had gotten totally out of hand and spurred financial people to aim for a lot of short-term money without worrying about the eventual consequences. And then there was this obscure financial engineering that none of them understood, but all their mathematical experts were telling them to trust. These two things carried us over the brink.

One of the saddest days of my life was when my grandson – and he's a particularly brilliant grandson – went to college. He was good at mathematics. And after he had been at college for a year or two I asked him what he wanted to do when he grew up. He said, "I want to be a financial engineer." My heart sank. Why was he going to waste his life on this profession?

A year or so ago, my daughter had seen something in the paper, some disparaging remarks I had made about financial engineering. She sent it to my grandson, who normally didn't communicate with me very much. He sent me an email, "Grandpa, don't blame it on us! We were just following the orders we were getting from our bosses." The only thing I could do was send him back an email, "I will not accept the Nuremberg excuse."

Bear with me as I analyse these three paragraphs. This is the former Fed chairman talking to bankers. Does he use jargon – let alone numbers, formulae or Greek symbols? No. In one paragraph, seven sentences, 108 words, he says everything any semi-intelligent Martian would need to know to understand the sources and development of the crisis, through to its denouement.

But these are bankers he is talking to. They already 'know' all this. Precisely for that reason, Volcker lays it out for them in simple words, and then lays it in to them with a series of powerful, accurate blows: Incompetents – BIFF! Liars – POW! Greedy and irresponsible – WHAM! And the coup de grace, conceited fools – CRACK!!

Then the switch from his audience's generalized stupidity to his own intense personal pain: his grandson decides to squander his promise and potential on the alchemy of financial engineering. Volcker is well aware that his smart grandson can and probably will (in the pre-crash world) earn millions in his chosen career, but that does not prevent him from defining this decision – entirely correctly from a moral and a religious perspective – as 'wasting his life'.

Most of us, even if we felt that way, would not allow it to come between us and our beloved grandchild. Volcker did – and does not shrink from telling his (now-adult) grandson that his moral compass is on a par with that of a Nazi war criminal.

That kind of thinking is what I call moral clarity and that kind of talk, in public, is what I call moral leadership. So when I ask readers to point me to written or spoken words from Orthodox Jewish leaders relating to the entire gamut of moral issues thrown up by the boom, mania, crash and bust – from systemic risk to one young man's dilemmas in life – that's the kind of thing I'm looking for.

Do you know a rabbi, of any stripe, from any stream, who stood up before, during or at least after the crash and told his congregation of real-estate/ stock-market speculators that they were scoundrels and probably criminals to boot? Do you know of a rosh yeshiva who told a talmid looking to leave the yeshiva and get a job, not to 'waste his life' in a highly-regarded and very high-paying profession? Or an Admor who told a hassid that adopting the business practices of his bosses or colleagues was morally repugnant? If you do, you have the privilege of being exposed to moral leadership. I'm looking for it, so far unsuccessfully -- and if I can’t find it among rabbis, rashei yeshiva and Admorim, I'll take it where it's available.

Yet there is a concept that "by two witnesses' testimony shall the matter be established". Let me therefore quote another prominent figure in the financial sector, this time someone in the very heart of one of its most morally problematic areas, namely mutual fund management.

John Bogle is the founder of Vanguard, a company that pioneered low-cost fund management. This is hardly the place to examine the pros and cons of Bogle's approach, but it's not irrelevant to note that his concept is based on the premise that investors in regular mutual funds are consistently and systematically ripped-off by their fund managers' panoply of fees. Here he is in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in April 2009:

I recently received a letter from a Vanguard shareholder who described the global financial crisis as "a crisis of ethic proportions." Substituting "ethic" for "epic" is a fine turn of phrase, and it accurately places a heavy responsibility for the meltdown on a broad deterioration in traditional ethical standards.

Commerce, business and finance have hardly been exempt from this trend. Relying on Adam Smith's "invisible hand," through which our self-interest advances the interests of society, we have depended on the marketplace and competition to create prosperity and well-being.

But self-interest got out of hand. It created a bottom-line society in which success is measured in monetary terms. Dollars became the coin of the new realm. Unchecked market forces overwhelmed traditional standards of professional conduct, developed over centuries.

The result is a shift from moral absolutism to moral relativism. We've moved from a society in which "there are some things that one simply does not do" to one in which "if everyone else is doing it, I can too." Business ethics and professional standards were lost in the shuffle.

The driving force of any profession includes not only the special knowledge, skills and standards that it demands, but the duty to serve responsibly, selflessly and wisely, and to establish an inherently ethical relationship between professionals and society. The old notion of trusting and being trusted -- which once was not only the accepted standard of business but the key to success -- came to be seen as a quaint relic of an era long gone.

It's worth citing Bogle just to put that wonderful phrase – alas, of anonymous authorship – 'a crisis of ethic proportions', before a wider audience. But here, too, a few paragraphs suffice for a man with a functioning moral compass to pinpoint the moral rot that led to the systemic disaster that is still unfolding.

3.

And no one dared
Disturb the sound of silence
 

The foregoing examples not only illustrate what moral leadership is, they also provide at least a partial answer as to why it is so rare and why, in particular, virtually no prominent Orthodox leader has given voice to the moral outrage so palpable across America since the crash, and so prevalent within the Jewish community as well – but seething beneath the surface.

Moral leadership demands a larger measure of courage than most people have. This is especially the case when your job is on the line – as it most assuredly would be for most community rabbis, if they dared take a stand that directly challenged the moral mores of their immediate community and the wider stream or branch of Judaism that they and it belonged to. And if losing their livelihood was not enough for most pulpit rabbis, school principals and even rashei yeshiva, there are also the 'knock-on' effects of their audacity on their family, from their wives – who are usually also deeply engaged in community activities, to their children, whose education and, at least in some circles, marriage prospects would be at stake.

In that sense, Paul Volcker was free to speak his mind, because he held no post and his personal and family situation is not at risk. John Bogle, of course, is independently wealthy as a result of Vanguard's success and hence similarly worry-free.

But the 'excuse' of personal/ family vulnerability does not stand up to close examination. What would the average rabbi of an Orthodox community do, if his congregants became regular visitors to gambling joints? Strip clubs? Gay bars? If board members owned such outfits? If the president was a convicted pedophile?

In fact, there is no need to use such lurid examples. Owning shops selling pork, or any business operating on Shabbat, would be quite sufficient. In any of these cases, most rabbis would be forced to take a stand, even if they were weak and sought to avoid confrontations, and whether or not their job was on the line. Nor would most school principals or rashei yeshiva hesitate to act if people engaged in these problematic activities held positions on their boards.

There's the rub. Both public Sabbath transgression and overt trafficking in pork, despite their very different halakhic implications, are clear and obvious casus belli for Orthodox religious functionaries. In such cases, accusing a rabbi of exceeding what is expected of him would strike even irreligious or non-Jewish observers, as ludicrous. Yet taking a stand against persons found guilty of a broad range of 'white-collar crimes' is not considered an obvious casus belli, even for Orthodox Jews who define themselves as observant and/or 'Torah True'. Indeed, it may well be closer to hara kiri on the part of a rabbi who tries it.

This distinction has no basis in Jewish law, let alone in the corpus of rabbinic ethical literature. But it reflects the behavioral norms of many Orthodox Jews and the mores of many Orthodox communities.

Nor is the fear, or practical impossibility, of clashing with communal lay leaders – who are usually the religious leader's employer, whether directly or indirectly – the only factor behind the phenomenon of silence. Often, the claim will be made that speaking or writing in public about these issues will cause, or spur, anti-Semitism. Today, with anti-Jewish feeling and activity on the rise almost everywhere, that is certainly not a concern that can be lightly dismissed. But it can, nonetheless, be dismissed in most cases.

Two counter-arguments immediately suggest themselves. One is that most anti-Semitism is irrational and will always find itself a 'cause', or excuse, whether we provide it or not. The other is that it is not the principled stand against moral turpitude that will cause anti-Semitism, but the failure to denounce moral breakdown and thereby facilitate its continued spread. The prominence of Jews in the hated financial elite is, in today's charged atmosphere, causing far more anti-Semitism than would the explicit denunciation of the ills of the financial system by Jewish religious personalities.

But, of course, the real reason why the anti-Semitism argument is so weak is because we cannot agree, in principle and a fortiori, to conduct our communal life on the basis of what the reaction of anti-Semites might be. The content and tone of the intra-communal debate may take account of it, but it surely cannot set the agenda.

The silence of many religious leaders in the face of moral challenges stemming from the areas of business and finance reflects conflicts of interest on their part. In many cases, rabbis have an interest in the financial wellbeing of individuals who are prominent supporters of institutions that operate under their aegis. They are therefore compromised in their ability to address problematic aspects of the business areas in which those persons are engaged – let alone the specific business practices of those persons.

Many rabbis actually seem to believe that the means can and do justify the ends, so that the worthy goal of an educational institution or a charitable endeavor may require ignoring the source of the funds that realized that goal – both the person and the business activity in which he garnered his wealth. From there it is but a short step to the implicit recognition of using wealth obtained illegally or immorally to 'buy salvation'.

Finally, as a spate of cases has shown, leadership can be complicit not by merely ignoring the issues, but by direct involvement. Obviously, in such cases there is no point in discussing moral leadership – nor do moral issues resonate with the followers.

4.

Silence like a cancer grows
 

Was it ever thus? Was there always a huge gulf between the moral heroes and the lofty ethical principles depicted in the sacred literature, and the grubby reality of life as people – rabbis and laymen alike – lived it?

No doubt to some extent it was. But there is evidence that Orthodox Jewish society did not always feature a warped value system in which business ethics and money morality is relegated to second-class status, at best.

One of the few people who has devoted himself to writing and speaking about Jewish business ethics is Dr Meir Tamari. His work and research has generated several books, as well as numerous articles published in general and Orthodox newspapers and magazines.

Tamari is convinced that the phenomenon of religious bifurcation, in which ritualistic and theological/ mystical elements of Judaism have risen to prominence whilst inter-personal and, in particular, pecuniary moral and ethical practices have withered, is neither very recent – meaning post-Holocaust, nor very ancient – meaning pre-modern.

He suggests that it was the demise of the kehilla as the lynchpin of Jewish society that started the rot. This development can be traced back to the impact of the Khmelnitsky massacres in the mid-17^th century, and the subsequent descent of most of East European Jewry into chronic and deep poverty. The political dismemberment of Poland in the late 18^th century and the Napoleonic wars were the coup de grace for the old structure, leaving a society in which a very narrow stratum had wealth whilst the mass of people had nothing – except babies, in the huge population explosion of the 19^th century.

With no fiscal autonomy – because the kehilla's taxation powers were gone – the religious leadership became entirely dependent on the few rich people available for their own financial survival and that of their families and their institutions, whether these last were yeshivot or the courts of the hassidic leaders. That structure was inherently corrupt and served as a further spur to the process already underway, as Enlightenment ideas and values spread through Jewish population centers, of a growing estrangement and eventual mass flight of Jewish youth from their ancestral religion.

This undemocratic and unhealthy social structure has survived into the 21^st century, and indeed thrived, despite the fact that today's Jewish society is completely different from that of pre-Holocaust Europe, with affluence having replaced poverty, especially in the Western Diaspora. Much academic work needs to be done to understand and explain how the structure has proved so robust, but for the purposes of this article, the existence of this social structure and its salient characteristics, including its warped moral value system, must be accepted as fact.

The proof Tamari cites for his hypothesis is telling, because it comes from direct documentary evidence of social, religious and economic conditions and values among Orthodox Jews over the centuries – namely the responsa literature. He notes a sharp decline in the percentage of responsa dealing with 'money matters' – as opposed to ritual (food, Shabbat etc.) and personal status issues --  in the modern period compared to the earlier period of Jewish history in pre-Khmelnitsky Poland and, earlier still, in Spain and Franco-Germany. This is certainly something for scholars to subject to further scrutiny.

In the more recent period – the last century or so -- Tamari notes another change creeping into the responsa literature, a change that resonates to the sounds of silence. A typical pre-modern responsum relating to a monetary dispute would provide a thorough analysis of the legal aspects of the matter under discussion and conclude by presenting a legal ruling. Often, however, it would not stop there, but would append a short addendum that discussed the moral aspects of the dispute and suggest a possible extra-legal resolution which would probably require one or both parties to rise above the letter of the law and take an ethical, rather than a purely legal view of the situation. Tamari finds that this latter approach has fallen into desuetude and is rarely found in the recent and contemporary responsa literature.

This chimes well with what we see and hear all around us: rabbis and other religious functionaries have increasingly become religious technocrats, honed in their specialties and well-versed in the professional literature pertaining to these specialties – e.g. Shabbat or medical halakhot – but increasingly distant from the empathetic approach that might enable them and their questioners/ litigants to rise above the legal sphere of din to the moral sphere of 'lifnim mishurat hadin'.

In fact, the contemporary questioner may not even want that kind of answer. That is what Haym Soloveitchik highlighted in his article, Rupture & Reconstruction, especially in the final sentence: "[Contemporary Orthodox Jews], having lost the touch of His presence …now seek solace in the pressure of His yoke". In those areas of their lives where Orthodox Jews seek rabbinic guidance, they want din, not lifnim mishurat hadin. And in the wider context, people get the leadership and the leadership style that they want and deserve – in religion as in politics.

5

And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made
 

This is what John Bogle clearly understands and expressed so well in the article quoted above. The moral rot that found such dramatic expression in the financial crash of 2007-09 is rooted in the collapse of those basic human values – trust, reliability, mutual confidence – without which commercial and financial activity cannot take place. It requires no great intellectual leap to see that the same values are needed in the domestic sphere, to make marriage and family life work. The moral collapse is taking place across the board, even if the dynamics of breakdown differ between areas of human activity.

It is also essential not to fall into the trap of thinking that this is a recent process, dating back only a few years. Over twenty years ago, an investment banker of a bygone age whose name still has positive connotations for veteran New Yorkers (imagine – an investment banker who did good and was held in high esteem!), wrote a similar article making a similar point. That was Felix Rohatyn and he, too, was bemoaning the rise of a new and corrupt culture on Wall Street – a culture in which the moral concept of "it isn’t done" was replaced by the legal approach that if it isn't against the law, it's OK. Once the lawyers were in control, the next stage of the collapse of ethical behavior was the rise of the compliance culture, which effectively said that no-one can be trusted not to break the rules, so we'll watch everyone all the time.

But the moral decline of Wall Street in the 1980s that Rohatyn mourned, that Tom Wolfe lampooned in Bonfire of the Vanities and that Oliver Stone pilloried in his 1987 movie Wall Street, seems minor and almost childish compared to what we have witnessed this last decade.

Yet in the 1980s there were still relatively few Orthodox Jews in the big Wall Street banks and investment houses. By the time the naughties -- as the outgoing decade is sometimes called – rolled round, there were many, the product of hard work and excellent grades achieved in the top business schools. By this time, the obstacles to Orthodox Jews working in these lucrative and highly-regarded jobs had largely been solved – even the need to sometimes miss two consecutive working days, because of the incidence of Jewish festivals. Orthodox employees in leading firms in the world's two main financial centers of New York and London conducted minha services daily in corporate boardrooms and often managed to cram a daf yomi session, or other limmud Torah, into their long and hectic working days at the office. Their gentile colleagues thought nothing of the need to accommodate aspects of the Orthodox lifestyle. Multi-culturalism was the norm in downtown Manhattan as in London's Canary Wharf, so that trading rooms wherein bearded and skull-capped Moslems, Jews and Sikhs (turbans for them!) worked side by side became an unremarkable sight.

In between the praying, the learning, the kosher sushi and all the rest, the new generation of Orthodox youngsters participated, willingly and even enthusiastically, in the creation, design and sale to unsuspecting suckers across the country and around the world of those 'financial weapons of mass destruction' – in Warren Buffett's telling phrase -- that have inflicted massive damage on the American public and, ironically but fittingly, brought the entire Wall Street culture crashing down around them.

Most of these young people, despite (or is it because of?) their background in the world's leading yeshivot, seminaries and other institutes of advanced Jewish study,   never saw the inconsistency in this behavior. They made sure to raise the point in their job interviews with potential employers of their need to leave early on winter Fridays. Did any mention to their interviewer before taking the job, or to their superiors or peer reviewers in periodic meetings while on the job, that they felt uncomfortable – nay, sickened – by the foul-mouthed patter that was standard style on trading floors, or by the crude sexist banter and 'jokes' that were the norm in most departments of most firms?

Did any of them discuss, among themselves or with their rabbis, rebbes, mekubalim and other religious mentors, the moral chasm between the readings in the Torah and Prophets they heard read in synagogue on Shabbat morning, or the sentiments contained in their kids' divrei torah at the Shabbat table, and what they heard and did when they went back to work on Monday morning (if not on Sunday)? Were they confused? Did they feel disoriented? Or were they able to live totally compartmentalized lives?

It seems that many did and continue to do just that – as a survival mechanism for religious people in a secular and hence culturally hostile world. The multi-cultural ethos of 'live and let live' allows them to fulfill their religious obligations – washing before and reciting grace after meals, praying minha and even learning or reciting Psalms at work or while commuting – and still work in any sector, at any level.

But these achievements in the area of professional and workplace integration have exacted an enormous, terrible moral price. People integrated into companies, industries and professions where moral values have eroded or diluted have, inevitably even if unconsciously, become corrupted. Many of them are today either amoral or immoral, although they delude themselves into believing that their religion, as they understand and practice it, makes them morally superior and provides them with a large measure of immunity to the immoral wider culture in which they move.

Thus it is that there are many Orthodox Jews – from 'modern' to 'hareidi' – whose minds and hearts are already lost to Judaism. They lean emotionally toward Gordon Gekko, the villain of Wall Street, whose motto is simple and direct: "greed is good" – because it gets you what you want. Worse still, they lean intellectually toward Ayn Rand and her hero John Galt in Atlas Shrugged. Most of them, of course, have never heard of Rand, let alone read the ideas she put into John Galt's mouth. Yet the views of many of the younger generation of Orthodox Jews, especially but not only in the US, are aligned with her extreme capitalist ideology, despite its being profoundly anti-Jewish and, in the deepest sense, idolatrous.

6.

And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence
 

The unfolding crisis has exposed the false gods once again as being unable to deliver the goods. Nothing new there – the young Abram tried to explain that to his father Terah in Ur of the Chaldees and it seems that Terah eventually got the point. Ayn Rand's most prominent devotee, Alan Greenspan – the man who followed Volcker as Fed chairman-- at least had the intellectual and moral courage to publicly admit that ideas he had held and nurtured for decades had been destroyed by the financial crash.

If Greenspan can see the light, there must surely be hope for all those others whose minds have been less severely poisoned. Unfortunately, the crash is likely to prove only the first stage of a prolonged crisis which will impose deep and painful changes on the economy and society of America and the entire Western world. But this trauma provides the opportunity for Orthodox Judaism to admit that it took the wrong turn some way back and needs to get onto a road that leads somewhere worth going.

How do we find our way back to where we went wrong, and how do we then go right?

Finding our way back is the definition of  teshuva, repentance. We know that the essential first step of teshuva is to accept and then admit that what we thought and/ or did was wrong. That means ending the fraudulent pretence that current Orthodox theology and lifestyle are good enough, let alone ideal.

From there, it's got to be back to basics – and basics in Judaism means education. But education can no longer mean what it is still widely taken to mean – the maintenance of traditional religious values and practices. As Haym Soloveitchik explained 15 years ago, the assumption that basic values will be effortlessly absorbed by Jewish children growing up in a Jewish culture is not true or workable in today's world.

Basic values that used to be commonly accepted and upheld by all Western societies, can no longer be taken for granted. They are going to have to be taught, imparted, inculcated – consciously and carefully. The values governing that huge part of people's lives encompassing work, income, wealth, spending and investment must be resuscitated and these activities rescued from the clutches of 'professional experts' -- and then re-integrated into an overall moral framework, along with family, health and well-being and all the other central components of our lives.

Jews have always prized learning and scholastic achievement, but they have also always had high regard for wealth and business acumen. Yissachar and Zevulun are both legitimate role models in the Jewish tradition, especially when they work in partnership. But there was always something else, more fundamental than either intellectual or material success. This something was so taken for granted that it actually went without saying -- until it now seems that it has gone completely, without even saying goodbye.

That intangible something is morality – an amorphous catch-all encompassing values such as honesty, integrity, responsibility. In the Ashkenazi-Jewish world it was termed 'mentchlichkeit' and among all Jews it was demanded of everyone, rich or poor, learned or ignorant. Before anything else and above all else, you had to be a mentsch.

One of the many aphorisms attributed to the Kotsker Rebbe relates to the way Megillat Esther introduces Mordechai as 'ish yehudi', 'a Jewish man'. The word ish seems superfluous – but that is not the case at all, said the Rebbe. First you have to be a mentsch, only then can you be a Jew.

That's what we have lost somewhere along the way and that's what we have to get back to.

Question: What is the status of the 'extra' conversion immersion [tevila leHumra] demanded by some Orthodox rabbis?

Answer:

1. The minimum standard required by Jewish law is that the rabbinical court consist of three observant laymen. Once the convert is accepted by the court, the conversion takes effect and without cause, may not be called into question.

2. a. The converting rabbinical court may include Orthodox rabbis who are themselves converts. [Hoshen Mishpat 7:1] Rabbis need not go through hoops to forbid the permitted on the part of parochials who either do not know or do not accept Jewish law.

b. If one of the rabbis serving on the court is [1] strictly Orthodox in observance but [2] serves amixed seating synagogue, said rabbi is not to be disqualifed because if he was placed by RCA placement, which has the status of bet din, or with permission from his authority granting body, Even haEzer 17:58 would apply. Furthermore, mixed synagogue seating, while in violation of historical usage, is not a violation whereby bona fidesis forfeited. [See Hoshen Mishpat 34]

c. If the convert, after theconversion, lives as a Jew, the conversion maynot be questioned.

Questioning a conversion tempts the convert to sin. Those "rabbis,"institutions and communities that require "upgraded" conversions are violating Jewish and should be denied communal support, their rabbis should notbe hired by modern Orthodox institutions, and the request mus tbe denied because Jewish covenantal lawis being wrongly disfigured, reformed, and reconstructed.

3. Once a Halakhic rabbinical court has accepted the candidate and immersion (and when appropriate, circumcision) has taken place

a. the conversion is complete
b. the conversion must be accepted
c. unless impropriety or fraud with regard to the conversion takes place, questioning the validity of the conversion calls the legitimacy of the questioners into question as per kol haPoseil pasul.

Professor Mushabac teaches English at CUNY and was recently a Mellon Fellow. Her book Melville’s Humor won high praise from Irving Howe, Alfred Kazin, and Morris Dickstein. She’s co-author of A Short and Remarkable History of New York City, selected as one of the “Best of the Best” by the American Association of University Presses, and now in its 5th printing. Her radio play, commissioned for National Public Radio broadcast, Mazal Bueno: A Portrait in Song of the Spanish Jews, featured Tovah Feldshuh. This article appears in issue 7 (May 2010) of Conversations, the Journal of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals.
We're addicted to branding. By we, I mean Americans, but it's probably true of most people, and for good reason. Seeking out name brands may be a simple and effective survival tactic. Pick a good brand (olive oil, car, university) and you feel confident you will live and be well, otherwise, who knows? Conversely, we don't just buy brand names, but sell them. For success in business, or in the arts, college graduates were told at a recent convocation, you must brand yourself, figure out and highlight the one key brandable thing you have to offer, and name it in a way that sparks recognition and interest.

I was traveling with a college friend in Mexico many years ago. We were up in the mountains of Chiapas. We saw a woman weaving against a tree in a method that predated Cortes. The area had no roads! Vehicles couldn't get there! We had gone up by horseback, led by an indefatigable seventy-year old Swiss woman named Trudy Blom. Seeing the Mexican weaver-woman there on the high open plateau, her posture holding her body-loom tight out from the trunk of a tree, it was as if time had stopped. It had, in a sense. I could look up at the moon and it looked the same as it had for all time, but the truth was Americans had walked on the moon the previous day (this was the summer of 1969), and all we could see was the people-less moon, because the town where Ms. Blom's lodging-house was located didn't have a single television set, and the moon was as it had been for eons, a serene brightly lit orb in the sky, the very same one from creation that divided night from day.

In Oaxaca, a famous city we visited the following week, my friend and I did the usual things, taking walks, shopping for local crafts in the market. But suddenly there was a drugstore, and we went in. We didn't need anything pharmaceutical or cosmetic-we didn't need anything, really. But we needed a fix, a fix of branding. I needed to see shelves of packaging in sharp American colors. Why? Because in Mexico many things had an earthen cast, an unmarked or unmarketed existence, like breathing, one of those things we can and do take for granted, unheralded, quiet, necessary, but without the intense attention and excitement of a brand name and a marketing, packaging, and distribution campaign behind it. Seeing the shelves of packaged items ridiculously allowed me something I needed in order to feel connected in the world. I didn't expect to need that kind of fix, because I don't love drugstores (or the American mania for packaging). I've steered away from drugstores when I could, and for example, avoided colorfully boxed cough syrup for my children, finding that honey-milk hand-spooned by my mother to her first grandson worked, as they say, like a charm.

Aviva Ben-Ur's recent book, Sephardic Jews in America: A Diasporic History (NYU Press, 2009), by its title seemed to offer a chance to understand precisely the Sephardic contribution to American Jewish history, and suggest a way to a serious recognition of a group that is a central part of my identity and worldview. Reading it was a stop on a journey perhaps not surprising in someone with a name as unusual as Mushabac, a name which I kept after marriage, because it connected me so directly to something I cherished. Being a Turkish Jew on both sides of my family represented a history of Jews who tenaciously stood their ground for thousands of years, despite obstacles and mortal threats, and clung to their community not only with determination, but with pleasure and celebration. Some people have said the exciting thing about being Sephardic is feeling nostalgia for Spain, where Jews thrived for a thousand years, or for the Ottoman Empire, where they lived for five hundred years, keeping up various aspects of Spanish heritage such as the language of Ladino, and appealing traditions of cooking and music. However, nostalgia has a mirage-like quality and ultimately we need something infinitely more solid to pin a future on.

When we study American ethnic or immigrant history, sometimes, even though we know this approach can be as simplistic as indulging in nostalgia, we hazard a definition of a "contribution" of a specific group. For instance, Koreans in 1970s New York can be said to have contributed to our city by opening colorful flower and fruit stands that brought light and activity 24 hours a day to formerly grim neighborhoods: they dramatically changed the face of New York. Perhaps Dr. Ben-Ur's book would name and describe the American Sephardic "contribution" and package it neatly for distribution to Jewish and other channels. Presto, a brand, and the satisfaction of branding.

Her book doesn't do this. Instead it clearly shows a Sephardic American identity that has been toovariegated and fragmented to have a specific impact. The fact is that Sephardic Jews, because they were only a tiny percentage of the million and a half Jewish immigrants that came to New York over the past century, and because the relatively tiny Sephardic group came from many countries and spoke many languages, and thus couldn't communicate with each other, and especially since Sephardic today has come to mean any non-Ashkenazi Jew (Iberian and Mizrahi), as Ben-Ur puts it, there was and is "no critical mass." Instead of finding critical mass, Ben-Ur focuses in good part on the treatment of Sephardim by other Jews, and tensions between Western and Eastern Sephardim.

In one fascinating chapter, nonetheless, Ben-Ur provides what she calls a test-case on Sephardic impact. She tells how the Sephardic pronunciation of Hebrew came to prevail in Palestine beginning in the late 1800s. She suggests that this contribution can be credited in part to the prestige of the Palestinian Sephardic community. To Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, for example, Sephardic men in Palestine who worked on making a living contrasted sharply with the unhealthy-looking Ashkenazi men there who were bent on religious fervor; Sephardim and their Hebrew represented a new future. Reviving Hebrew was, if I may, a form of branding, and adopting Sephardic pronunciation was linguistically appealing and bold. While this story has a charm as Ben-Ur details its developments over decades, it illustrates Ben-Ur's key point, that in the United States, at any rate, as opposed to Palestine and Israel, there was no decided Sephardic "contribution" at this level.

Actually Ben-Ur steers us away from naming any "contribution, " Sephardic or Ashkenazi. She faults the "impact" paradigm of historiography. She says impact paradigms are problematic, based on questionable assumptions. She is really more interested in how groups are treated and seen in the world, especially in how people are marginalized, shoved off the page and out of our consciousness, and how they defend themselves. Her focus, in short, is on an "exclusion" paradigm. Also, she focuses only on the first fifty years of the twentieth century, and mostly on the Sephardic Jews with roots going back to Spain, such as Turkinos (Turkish Jews).

This approach threw me back on my original question. It was surely important to see the difficulties encountered by Sephardim in New York, and satisfying to see how they suffered condescension and worse, yet summoned the will to find their own way, with persistence and creativity, and thoughtful and memorable leadership on the part of many of the antagonists. But following closely this woven history of exclusion and inclusion left me still wanting to know what this group had to offer. What do Sephardim have to offer? I keep wanting to think globally through a thousand years of history to connect all the illustrious dots. In fact anyone can Google "Sephardic Jews" to create his or her own Encyclopedia Sephardica, which would range from Maimonides codifying a rational Judaism to Emma Lazarus announcing the golden door; from Jacob Rodriguez Rivera inventing spermacetti candle-making to Uriah Levy getting the U.S. Navy to prohibit flogging (where would Herman Melville have been without these two men?); from world-class pianist Murray Perahia, singing in the boys' choir in a Grand Concourse Sephardic congregation, to David Amram-maverick musician, composer, conductor, and writer. Shall we leave out Sephardic Jacques Derrida because we've heard too much about him, or Joe Elias, because we've heard too little about him? Elias learned hundreds of songs at his mother's knee, and taught Ladino singing for years at N.Y.C.'s Hebrew Arts School. What about Gracia Mendes Nasi, the grand dame and managerial titan of Early Modern Europe? What about Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Cardozo, or five Sephardic Jews who I've read have won Nobel prizes: we all know Elias Canetti, but do most people even know Baruj Benacerraf, Rita Levi-Montalcini, Claude Cohn-Tannoudji, and Salvador Luria are Jewish? Rabbi Marc Angel, of course must be mentioned with a full description of his works, and especially his 1991 Voices in Exile: A Study in Sephardic Intellectual History, his glimpse of something provocatively simple and natural in his 2006 Foundations of Sephardic Spirituality: The Inner Life of Jews of the Ottoman Empire, his award-winning new book on Maimonides and Spinoza, and his ground-breaking new organization, which sponsors this very publication, and boldly rebuts authoritarianism in the orthodox world. And what about Sacha Baron Cohen! Okay, he's scandalous-and we're going far afield, but doesn't Sacha Baron Cohen break new ground in American and European popular culture -connect with the future, wake up the bored, and put a Sephardic flag on the moon? Do we have a brand here?

Dr. Ben-Ur's book, of course, is simply not about any of this. Nonetheless, after all her eliminations and disputations, after detours that are interesting but incidental, for instance on Columbia University's prestigious, but not very Sephardic, Hispanic-Sephardic initiative in the 1930s, she finishes with a simple statement that is quietly revelatory. She speaks of the corporate Jewish identity, and says if American scholars get bored with it, look here, to the Sephardim. That word corporate should stop us. It's a word that can cut two ways, reflecting stable reliable productivity on one side, and domineering greed and political manipulation on the other. But let's look for a moment at the predictable sameness of corporate production. Corporate means every sip of Pepsi-Cola-owned Tropicana tastes exactly alike, and has nothing to do with the oranges (even though they may be grown by corporations) that we squeeze on the spot, cutting in half five or six of them, getting the juice on the table, straining the pulp and seeds, and handing golden glasses of it off with pride to family members.

What is the corporate brand of Judaism? What is the corporate brand of Orthodox Judaism? Aren't Jews like everyone else allowed to want and enjoy a predictable, normalized, generalized homogenized product? Is there anything wrong with that? And if in many locations, Ashkenazim have given way to their more prominent Sephardic hosts, let's say in Istanbul, why should Sephardim not give way graciously to the vastly bigger numbers of the Ashkenazim in America, and join the corporate model? Famous Sephardic Americans may or may not be swept up into the general Jewish category, but in any event, is there any problem with Sephardim modestly stepping aside and accepting dominance by the sheer, vastly larger Ashkenazi numbers?

One of the problems with corporate identity is its smug assumption that the book has been written and is closed, the book of Judaism, or the book of Jewish identity. It's branded-in the bad sense, like an animal bound for slaughter, and whether it's because I'm Sephardic or simply Jewish, I find I resent a corporate Judaism. It's difficult to express how comforting it is to see the brand broken up. Congregation Shearith Israel hires a woman as an Assistant Congregational Leader-what a breakthrough!- or an African-American who has converted to Judaism, gives a lecture on his life as a practicing, engaged, fascinating Orthodox Jew. It is healing to see all the Iraqi and Turkish Jews out on the dance floor at the "mixed dancing" (men and women) celebrations at a synagogue's annual party. It's healing and comforting to hear Jean Naggar's reminiscences of her Egyptian Jewish childhood, or to hear the accents at a Bible class as people from Israel and Paris, Florida and Tunisia, express their individual responses to a biblical text. It's not just that if the corporate model of Judaism is accepted, some of us feel left out because our names are different-many Sephardic names of course are actually Hebrew-or that we look different (do we?). It's that the corporate model is deadly, not because it's fake, or made from concentrate, but because it has a telltale medicinal aftertaste-it's not freshly squeezed. Jewish authenticity depends on dissent and difference, and without these elements we have lost our center, and our juice.

In the late 1950s my mother and I contemplated writing a Sephardic cookbook, and she queried a well-known Jewish publisher. He wrote back, "No one would be interested in that." Knowing now what we know about the health benefits of Mediterranean cooking and the Mediterranean lifestyle (and what Sephardim with many nonagenarian parents and grandparents have always known) , one can't help wonder at this old-time Ashkenazi insularity, which may still be among us. A friendly letter to Midstream's Winter 2010 issue noted that an occasional article on Yiddish or Ladino topics is interesting, but ultimately the writer asked the magazine please to limit such articles because these topics are not part of "our Weltanschauung." We know of course, why the writer used the German word, and didn't simply say "worldview." Branding. Meanwhile, Midstream has been ground-breaking with its July/August Yiddish-Ladino issues that it started in 2002.

We haven't even touched the terrible story of the disparaging treatment of Mizrahi Jews in Israel, Jews who make up almost half of the population of Israel! Sitting on my desk is Rachel Shabi's new book, We Look Like the Enemy, The Hidden Story of Israel's Jews from Arab Lands. The realities of that story are shameful.
We are addicted to branding. We all want the comfort of sturdily packaged familiar people and ideas. We want the prestige, why else start an article with our credentials? But we don't want to feel shut off, in a corporate can sealed with BPA plastic that like chicken fat and butter (we don't cook with them) may harm our bodies. Let in the air. In the Jewish world, as everywhere else, we desperately need an open system, agreeable to diversity, gracious to innovation, open to new voices.

Is there a Sephardic contribution to America? I've long wondered. Starting in high school I worked on that Sephardic cookbook, and still have the large index cards of my Turkish grandmother's recipes that my Bronx-born mother typed up. I've read books, attended wonderful courses and seminars. I've made lists of words we said at home as I was growing up, Bivas ( Live!) when we sneezed, Kon salu (in good health) when we wore a piece of new clothing, Ijo d'una bova (son of a stupid woman) when someone was acting like a dope, Ya basta! (enough!), Kapara (when a glass broke, that glass was for God), and foods that expressed Sephardic joy, health, and celebration. I'm supposed to know about customs, but all I can think of is telling Joha stories, stories about the wise fool who coming from his day's work in the fields to dinner, and being told he must have a dinner jacket, returns with his jacket and tells the jacket, "It's you they invited, Eat!" There are hundreds of Joha stories which many of us have retold and written about.

In 1992 when I was giving lectures through the Sephardic House lecture bureau to various organizations in the New York area, I decided the answer had to do with the difference between the perfect circle of the wheel and the odd-shaped circle of the olive- or the lemon. Ashkenazim are perfect like the wheel, always ready to go. The rest of us stop to chase an olive around the plate, or the olive chases us, or we see the world up close because we cook with so much exquisite lemon juice and have lived near water, and love to eat fish. Maybe it's an outspokenness, or zaniness-I think of that Hunter High School math teacher who threw chalk at students who fell asleep in her class. Maybe it's a female outspokenness. "Listen to Sarah," said God in Genesis, and perhaps ironically it was only in the patriarchal East in the Sephardic world where patriarchy was so elaborate and unintellectual that it counter-intuitively left the door open to women. Women have been great carriers of Judaism, with their monumental work of child rearing and cooking, but perhaps only Sephardic women had the fun of singing wild centuries-old Spanish ballads that romantically asked about my beloved coming down the stairs, or that raucously attacked a man for not being able to love someone other than himself. I don't know. But diversity represents an open system, and I know I crave it, and it suits my authentically Jewish soul. Without diversity we are rigid and dead. Those beds in Sodom and Gomorrah, we recall, cut off the feet of those who were too tall, and stretched the bodies of those who were too short.
As I sat and listened to that African-American convert to Orthodox Judaism and heard about his funny and interesting upbringing in the Jehovah's Witness religion, and how he gave speeches on Sundays to please his mother, and how his life today is totally Jewishly engaged at Ramath Orah on 110th Street near Broadway, I felt that a sharp sense of difference is what allows us to breathe. The system is open, we are breathing, not shutting out truth and life with refusal to accept difference.

Obviously we need both, a strong connection to the fixed, to the Jewish tradition in its most inalterable values and beliefs, but also a connection to the very unbranded thing of breathing, something natural and eternal, an open system. Diversity allows us to breathe, and without it we are not really here. In one of his novels, Henry James had a character surprisingly say in the midst of his very patriarchal world, "The women will save us." Perhaps the Sephardic contribution is its diversity. Perhaps Sephardim have contributed to the world by virtue of their their interethnic mix, with all its surprises and openness, its outspoken women, its outspoken men. Boredom and insular stultification are terribly contrary to authentic Judaism. Dialectic is the absolute core of Judaism, from Abraham's argument with God about Sodom and Gomorrah to this week's Forward article, "War on Internet Is a Fight the Rabbis Can't Win." No one should say, "The Sephardim will save us." But everyone should say, "Diversity will save us." Jews, like everyone else, need to be saved from ourselves.