National Scholar Updates

It is hard to be a parent in today’s modern world. And it is harder to be a Jewish parent.

It is hard to be a parent because in today’s media-frenzied world it is almost impossible to keep up with the technology around which our children’s lives are centered. We know that our children are consuming all types of images and information from all types of media sources, and that much of the content is of harmful moral value. Yet it is extremely difficult for most adults to successfully supervise the myriad media channels of today’s youth and to stay informed of everything their children are digesting.

It is harder to be a Jewish parent because we feel like our religious lifestyle has failed us. To whatever degree that each family practices observance or tradition, we Jews have always had an unspoken contract with our God that assured us that the problems that happen “out there” don’t happen to us—especially not to our kids. Being part of the semi-insular and practicing Jewish community was supposed to come with a guarantee that everything would turn out all right for our families.

And so, when we suddenly realize that the bubble has burst and the wagons have uncircled, and everything out there is suddenly also happening “in here,” Jewish adults are faced with a profound and painful crisis of faith. Our contract with God and Judaism has been breached.

There are parents and religious institutions that see media as the enemy. They lament the influence that television, Internet, movies, music, and video games have on our children. They lament that media has enormous influential power. And they are correct. It does.

But it is not the media channels themselves that are harmful, but rather the content they carry. The same channels and media tools that can intensely influence our children toward poor choices, can also equally influence our children for good. The influence of these media is established. The question is simply how that influence is put to use.

In this article, derived from a new workshop that my organization, In-Reach (www.In-Reach.com) is offering to Jewish communities across the United States, we will explore the relationship of teens and media companies, the impact of this relationship on the Jewish family, and how parents can successfully adapt their parenting techniques in order to reclaim influence in the lives of their teens.

***

Prior to starting In-Reach, which is a not-for-profit new-media Jewish youth organization, I worked for over ten years on the commercial side of the media industry, helping companies along the lines of AOL and MTV use the Internet to engage teenagers and make lots of money off of them. I also worked in the lifestyle branding business, a unique form of branding that centers around helping brands move beyond being simply popular, to actually becoming an emotional and identifying part of a person’s lifestyle and identity. Brands like this include Radio Flyer, Levis, Osh Kosh B’Gosh, and R. J. Reynolds.

It was my job over those years to understand on a profound level how media and kids relate to each other on an identity level, and to capitalize on that relationship in order to manipulate teens into becoming dollar transactions.

The teen market in the United States represents over 112.5 billion dollars in direct spending. That’s how much teens 14 to18 years old spend a year on the things they love to buy. In addition, teens are seen as primary influencers in adult spending on everything from electronics to computers to cameras, and even cars. This is because more and more parents rely on their teens to do the online research for these big-ticket items. This puts the value of the teen market, both direct and indirect, at well over 400 billion dollars.

Beyond the vast economic incentive, teens are very attractive to consumer companies for four highly unique reasons:

1. Teens are loyal spenders. Teens get into a brand and then they stick with it. Once they love a particular brand, very little innovation has to be invested on a product level for several years and the teen will still keep buying. So its “innovate once, sell repeatedly.” A good example is the many varieties of Nike Air sneakers, nearly all of them the same components rewrapped, and rewrapped again.

Adults, in contrast, will often reevaluate products and brand quality each time they return to make a new purchase.

2. Teens are cult spenders. Teens spend as groups. Get one popular teen into your product, and you could see your product go viral to a school, town, or even national market.

3. Teen cash is liquid. Teens don’t carry the burdens and financial responsibilities of adults. If they have cash, by and large it is there to burn.

4. Teens are on the narrow end of the “upside-down funnel.” Adults tend to filter the noise out of any media engagement. Our tastes are set, and we only seek those things that align with or fulfill our tastes. When an adult goes online, typically we go on for very specific information and then we get off. It could be news, sports scores, a Torah lesson, weather, and so forth. Anything else gets ‘x’ed out. This is also how adults see the world of ads, be those ads on buses or in print.  In advertising, we call this “the upside-down funnel.” Adults take in the commercial end as if they are at the wide end of the funnel, looking down the narrow-end to see what meets their narrow field of interest. Everything else gets filtered out.

Teens, on the other hand, have the funnel wide-end out to the world, with the narrow end in their mouths. Adolescents are just beginning to identify and define what will one day become their adult tastes. And just like a one-year-old must put every physical object in his or her mouth no matter what we tell them, teens must taste every adult experience for themselves. So when teens go online, they surf. Teens will spend hours clicking from link to link, thirstily drinking in endless hours of exposure to new ideas of what might make them hip or cool or simply more socially acceptable.

It is specifically due to the upside-down funnel that teens are being more and more frequently targeted for their parents’ big-ticket purchases, not as a second line of advertising, but as the first line! Parents are sending their kids to do the research, and kids are more susceptible to commercial manipulation. So much of today’s ad dollars for adult products are being redirected from parents to their children.

These five combined factors make teens an extremely attractive target-audience: Teens are worth over 100 billion dollars of direct spending, and hundreds of billions more of secondary spending. Teens are receptive. Teens are loyal. Teens spend en-masse. And teen money is there to spend.

The ultimate dream of any marketer is to be able to create a reflex-response by the consumer. That is, I, the seller, tap your knee; and you, the buyer, act by compulsion and buy my product.

With teens, two such hot-buttons exist: Their angst and their libido. Teen sexuality and issues of identity/acceptance are raw and unprotected. Poke either of those nerves and you can get teens to do most anything to cover up their insecurity.

And so it is these two buttons that industry goes after, and today’s commercial companies go after teens with impunity.

But before we can examine how commercial business is targeting our kids, we must first understand why these companies are so free to do so. Has something changed dramatically since the time when we were kids? If so, what is it, and what does it mean to us as parents?

***

Most parents will tell you that the gap between parents and teens is timeless. We reassure ourselves that our teens will turn out okay, because we did, and so did our parents. “The distancing between parents and their children during the adolescent years is a natural rite of passage,” people say, “and we needn’t give heed to the alarmists that say that today’s kids are more at risk than kids in the past.”

But this is not true.

Although the gap between parents and teens is timeless, the consequence of that gap has become much more serious.

There are three key factors that have changed the playing field dramatically, making the growth-stage of distance between parents and teens of greater concern than ever before. Those three factors are:

1. Push Technology
2. A Back Door for Learning and Questions
3. Standards of Content

[H2] Big Change 1: Push Technology

Push technology means that a company no longer has to wait for you to talk to them or voice interest in their product. They can talk to you whether you are interested or not. They can push their way into your world.

The best example of this is spam email. Today, most of us run the most advanced anti-spam filters available to end-users. It is built in to Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, and nearly all popular email programs. Yet we all get spam offering us opportunities to enlarge various parts of our anatomy, or readily find exotic young women ready to fulfill all of our wildest fantasies.

Like viruses vs. anti-virus software, purveyors of spam are dedicated to finding ways around the software written to block out their emails to us. But unlike viruses, spam is motivated by overt monetary goals.

Most adults pay little heed to spam, deleting these emails with a bored yawn. But teens click on them with thirsty curiosity. These emails tap into the natural curiosity of any adolescent.

Think back twenty years to the then-equivalent of spam. That would be the Val-Pack coupons we used to get to our homes. But now imagine that Val-Packs were specifically addressed to your eleven-year-old child, with products like genital enlargers (along with pictures), and solicitations of nude foreign women available for purchase as mail-order brides. Such mail would not be tolerated for a moment! Legal action would be taken and townships and States would be up in arms!

Not so with Push Technology. Push Technology has placed images, ideas, and illicit values in front of our kids at highly impressionable young ages. It was not this way last generation.

[H2] Big Change 2: Back-Door Learning

When we were kids, if we did not like the values in our home, our school, and our synagogue, where were we going to go? To the library?

Sure, maybe you could get your hands on a dirty magazine, but that was about as radical as you could get until you were 18 years old and on your way to college.

Today, a pre-teen in the sixth, seventh, or eighth grade need only close the door to his or her room and turn on the computer, and he or she can run as far as their imagination and questions take them. And combined with the provocations of Push Technology, that might be pretty far from home.

We are no longer the gatekeepers of our children’s learning.  What we don’t discuss with our children, someone else will.

Once upon a time, when kids brought up certain age-inappropriate topics with parents, parents could lay down the law and tell their children that such subjects would have to keep until the child was older and more mature. Today, when we shut down a topic, we are simply shutting down our role in the discussion. Our children unplug us—and plug in online.

We don’t get to choose what subjects our children will and won’t explore. We only get to choose if we will be part of that exploration, or if we will be left out.

It wasn’t that way when we were kids.

[H2] Big Change 3: Standards of Content

Do you remember what used to earn movies an R rating? Do you remember when erotic attire, partial frontal nudity, full rear nudity, gross use of expletives, and strong sexual language were not allowed in mainstream media? Such was the standard less than twenty years ago. Today, material that was deemed inappropriate for children and teens just one generation prior is now freely syndicated over network television, FM radio, and in public street signage.

Consider the billboards for the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show on the sides of buses. The women depicted in various states of undress are the height of the art and business of eroticism, the sensuous science of the minimum coverings to leave on a person in order to ignite passion to take everything off. Women as undressed as these were once deemed inappropriate for the eyes of children under the age of 18, whether in magazine or movie. Today such images are street signage.

When I was a boy, I remember my brother sneaking me in to a Chevy Chase movie called Modern Problems that was rated R because they showed Chevy’s tush in the movie. Such nudity is now allowed on prime-time network television. So too, graphic language that earned Smokey and the Bandit part III an R rating in the early 1980s is also standard to many of today’s most popular teen (and adult) television programs.

The imagery and language that we were protected from by our society when we were kids is no longer taboo. A much lower moral standard of highly sexualized content is being mainstreamed into the eyes and ears and minds of our children through virtually every media channel.

How blessed were we that we were protected from such material when we were young and impressionable kids.

Put such mainstream content together with Push Technology and a back door for learning, and the timeless generation gap has become a very dangerous chasm.

It is this chasm that media companies exploit—and they exploit it ruthlessly. People accuse the media companies of being immoral because of their approaches to marketing to youth. But this is a confused assessment. Media companies are not immoral, they are amoral.

The driver of a publicly traded company is its quarterly projections and its sales against those projections. As a business with a bottom line that must be met, the question that is being asked is the best way to meet that bottom line and turn potential consumers into dollar transactions. Morality is a question left for the house of worship. In business, it is an amoral question of sales. And if it sells, use it.

As parents and as people of faith, we make a mistake when we begin to expect businesses to protect and limit the content that they share with our children. They won’t.  

It is up to parents to set the moral bar. Companies, like children, will continually test our limits. We can fight companies by lobbying and protesting loudly, and this can help (as it has in the past). But we can also learn to understand the language of media marketing, and in doing so discover how best to conduct our own interactions with our kids. Within the science of these media relationships are deeply understood psychological factors. And many of them are good news for faith-based communities and caring parents.

***

There are four strategies for successful youth marketing that pervade today’s media consumer industry. They are:

1. Cookie-Crumbing
2. Blurring the Moral Barometer
3. The Trojan Horse
4. Delegitimizing Role Models

As would be expected, these strategies are the combined product of our country’s top MBAs and social scientists, and incorporate the unique vulnerabilities of today’s teens, as we have enumerated in the ‘Big Changes’ above.

For the sake of this article, I will summarize them on a cursory level. In our parenting workshop we explore these media strategies at much greater depth.

[H2] Cookie Crumbing

Cookie Crumbing recognizes that there are those media outlets that parents supervise more closely, and those that parents supervise less closely. Although parents may pay attention to what their teens are watching on television or what music their teens are listening to, few parents will follow online to the web-communities and discussion groups that these programs and music artists spawn.

So while operating in the more exposed and parentally supervised media outlets, media companies are more careful in the way they position and feed content to kids. These programs, however, are designed to lead kids down a bread-crumb trail and into an online environment where teens can be more freely and aggressively manipulated.

Another aspect of Cookie Crumbing is creating merchandise trails. Most of today’s teen entertainment icons have apparel lines, cosmetic lines, sporting-goods brands, and more.

Once upon a time a bad-boy band was only as bad as the band’s lyrics. Even if you liked Mick Jagger, the Rolling Stones did not make any money if you chose to dress like him. Today, a great deal of the pop icons are manufactured specifically for their commercial appeal. They are a package meant to create a lifestyle concept in teen minds, and lead teens from the music into stores to make an array of purchases around the given image brand.

[H2] Blurring the Moral Barometer

There is a concept in Jewish spiritual philosophy regarding a person’s evil inclination. We are taught that our evil inclination does not tell us to do bad things, because nobody wants to feel bad about him or herself. Rather, the evil inclination blurs the lines between good and bad, until a bad thing can be rationalized as being acceptable, and then we are free to do it without feeling guilty.

Media companies get this. And it is central to their relationship with today’s youth.

It is hard to get teens to buy into superficial and hedonistic concepts of life and an array of supporting products, especially since most teens are hungry for much deeper forms of validation and connection. By blurring a teen’s innate values, the teen becomes much easier to manipulate.

MTV stands for Music TeleVision. Most adults know this. What most adults do not know is that today music content makes up less than 20 percent of MTV’s broadcast content. The other 80 percent is what is called “Reality Programming.”

Why? Because MTV is not about music. Music is the hook. But defining culture and selling product is the business.

And these programs are not like Survivor on CBS. A good example of an MTV reality program would be Tila Tequila, where sixteen guys and sixteen girls compete for Tila’s passion. Because, you see, Tila is not sure if she is a lesbian or heterosexual, so contestants compete to see which way they can “flip” her.

The Tila program is only aired after hours, when teens are not watching TV (supposedly). But on MTV.com, which over 65 percent of online teens visit, you can see the show twenty-four hours a day.

What does this have to do with music? Nothing. But it has everything to do with dictating values to young people and owning the conversation over what is hip and what is not, and what makes us, as people, worthy or unworthy.

[H2] The Trojan Horse

The Trojan Horse is when the media companies use parents to sell a lifestyle icon to their kids, and then cut the parent out of the conversation. Classic examples of this are Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake (‘N Sync), and Christina Aguilera, who were all marketed as graduates of Disney’s Mickey Mouse Club. These performers were healthy alternatives for parents to steer their children toward, representing family values and chasteness, and providing an alternative to the dark music world around us.

Today, all of these pop-icons are highly sexualized with myriads of consumer products ranging from perfume to tequila. And just in case you think that this is because their audiences grew up, Britney’s new line of apparel, just announced in March 2009 to be carried exclusively at Kohls, is for Juniors. The clothing line includes black lace thongs for eleven-year-olds.

The change-up in the lifestyle-icon’s image is done suddenly and according to specific timing. The icon is allowed to percolate in the home and earn central status and approval by the parents for their youngster. And once the marriage is solidly consummated, typically after a few patient years, bang! An overnight image-change manifests, and it is too late for the parent to undo the sell. Suddenly our child is being led in a very frightening and new direction, as we are helpless to intervene.

[H2] Delegitimizing Role Models

Here comes the good news. This component of media-strategy is actually based upon statistical facts that media companies are very aware of, but most parents are not.

Most parents believe that the primary influence in their teen’s moral decision-making is their teen’s friends. This is false. While the majority of adults believe this to be true, the majority of teens in the United States assign this influence to their parents.

In addition, 71 percent of teens in the United States would like religious leaders to be more active in addressing moral and high-risk issues. Most parents and rabbis do not know this. All media companies do. And so, delegitimizing role models is critical to their success, because an engaged parent or rabbi can undo the whole ball of wax, and all those careful marketing dollars can go down the drain.

This is why shows like Dawson’s Creek, Beverly Hills 90210, and The OC all reverse the roles of parents and teens. All important life-decisions are made by the teens on the shows, while parents are shielded and protected by their kids as being too fragile for many of these hard questions. Kids on these shows are very respectful in the ways they talk to their parents, and so our guard as parents does not go up. But the underlying message is: “You can’t talk to them. They are not capable of understanding. You are old enough and strong enough and wise enough to decide for yourself.”

***

As parents, we are surprised to hear that we are the primary influence in our teens’ moral decision making. It doesn’t seem that way! We know that our teens talk to their friends about so very many intimate topics that they simply do not broach with us. So how can this statistic not be a lie? The answer is that no one said that your kids talk to you the most. The kids are simply saying that your influence as a parent is primary, and that of their friends and others is secondary.

Deep inside, we all know this to be true. Even as adults, we still care deeply about what our parents think (or might think, if they knew) about the decisions we make. The judgment of our parents haunts us, and in some cases charms us. But it is always there. Whether our parents were good or bad, kind or cruel, their judgment and influence looms over us in every important life-decision we make.

“So great,” you say. “We have the influence, but our kids don’t talk to us! What good does that do?”

And here we come to the section on parenting. Because the first step is learning that the power still lies with you. Learning how to use that influence is something we all can achieve.

***

The first step in creating In-Reach was to learn what today’s Jewish teens are thinking, and to find new approaches to supporting them in their moral and ethical decision-making process. Teens in the Jewish community benefit from a strong support structure. Caring parents, private schools with top-notch teachers, guidance staff, and outreach volunteers and professionals surround our teens with love and offer them many caring lifelines for difficult life choices they may be facing.

But today there is a new outlet, the web, which teens turn to when they want to discreetly ask and answer questions. And when we think about the types of private questions teens might choose to ask online, it is obvious how important it is for us to have a Jewish outpost in cyberspace for these kids. As we have learned, if we are not present to answer these questions, someone else will answer them in our place.

And so, working with leading Jewish clinical experts including Rabbi Dr. Abraham Twerski and Dr. David Pelcovitz, In-Reach created an online, anonymous social networking system for Jewish teens, a site that actually doubles as a clinically based peer-counseling system. The portal, called TheLockers.net, has served over 10,000 Jewish teens from across the United States and Canada, has hosted nearly 3,000 therapeutically supervised peer-discussions, and has enjoyed more than 27,000 posts from its teen users. Eighty percent of teens who use TheLockers.net come from public schools, most of whom have limited Jewish backgrounds. Twenty percent of our users come from Jewish Day Schools, ranging from Orthodox to Reform.

All activity on TheLockers.net is supervised by specially trained moderators, using a patent-pending online clinical methodology that was developed by In-Reach. And TheLockers community is extremely popular among teens, with over 70 percent of teenagers that hear about the system becoming users of it.

For over five years we have had the privilege of listening to Jewish youth from across North America share the most intimate and private questions of their lives with us. The primary topics are questions of Judaism and morality. Yet issues have ranged from family, to social stress, to school, to peer pressure, to body image, to drugs and drinking, to sex.

As we listened to and supported Jewish teens of all denominations, we began to learn from the teens about how traditional approaches to parenting were and were not working in a digital generation. Parenting workshops were created, and our learning from the teens was synthesized with the feedback, reactions, and real world experiences of hundreds of today’s parents from across the country.

There are seven central principles that were found to be common to all successful relationships between today’s parents and today’s teens. These principles define and clarify the lens through which traditional parenting approaches may be evaluated for success in a modern era. Furthermore, they provide a priceless guide for any parent struggling to understand, heal, or strengthen their relationship with their teen.

These insights are available to the Jewish community via parenting workshops that In-Reach delivers nationally, and will soon be supported by a book that teaches the seven central principles of value-based parenting. In addition, readers of Conversations are invited to be in touch with us via email, at [email protected], if there are specific questions we may answer for you.

There are new truths we must accept as a community and essential questions we must answer as parents and teachers.

It is vital that we come to accept the following new realities:

• Although the gap between parents and teens is timeless, the consequence of that gap has become much more serious.
• We are no longer the gatekeepers of our children’s learning. If we are not able or willing to address the questions of our children in a meaningful fashion, they will discuss their questions with someone else.
• Absolutes will backfire. Strong-arm parenting and absolute religious rules only work on a hostage audience. Today’s youth have alternatives. To succeed, our answers must demonstrate meaning and value.

The questions we must ask ourselves as parents, teachers, and rabbis are as follows:

• If a teen is making a major life decision, would he or she feel comfortable to come to us while contemplating the decision?
• If the decision was already made, and it was the wrong decision, would he or she feel comfortable to turn to us during the fallout?
• Do we know what we believe regarding values and faith—and why we believe it?
• Do we share what we believe with our children, consistently and through meaningful conversation and behavior?
• In a world where all temptations and values are on the table, why would our kids choose Judaism?
• Given the choice again, would we? Why?

The world we grew up in has changed. Our children are faced with choices that we never had to make, and they are assaulted with foreign values that are confusing even to adults. It is essential that we understand how their world has changed, and respect the impact and consequences of those changes.

As a Masoretic tradition—a tradition that is based upon transmission from parent to child and teacher to student—our success as a Jewish community is measured by the ultimate choices our children make. By learning to parent and teach according to values, instead of rules, we can provide our children with a Judaism that is relevant to the questions upon which their modern lives revolve.

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.

Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook wrote, “The wise do not complain of darkness rather they increase the light.” The Orthodox and greater Jewish community seems racked by scandal after scandal where laymen, political leaders and rabbis are demonstrating what can only be termed ”ethicopathy”- the complete disregard for ethical living and consciousness.  While it may be instinctive to invoke the aphorism, ”There is always a bad apple in every bunch” thus placing the onus of responsibility on the individual’s lack of moral scruples, I believe this would not do justice to what I sense is a systemic and communal responsibility in how we are educating are children, adults as well as our rabbis.  As a member of the Orthodox community my focus will be on my own religious community which I am most familiar with and which sadly seems as of late quite efficient in producing rare but nonetheless ethicopaths of the first order.

Allow me to begin with a seemingly ridiculous question, ”Does the Orthodox community care about ethical living?” As an Orthodox rabbi I would immediately reply, “Ofcourse we do- what an absurd question! Look at all the commandments that touch on ethical living, look at all the statements of our Talmudic sages that emphasize the importance of ethics in business and in one’s personal dealings, look at all the stories of the righteous past and present and the behavior they have modeled for generation after generation and look at the contemporary books on Jewish ethics available at Judaica stores.” Clearly, everything in the above statement is true, however, if we refine the question in light of the above rebuttal I believe the point that is seeking to be made will crystallize. I mean to ask, ”Do we ‘emphasize’ and ‘prioritize’ ethical living in the education of our children, adults and rabbis?” Now to this question the rebuttal does not come so simply. When I consider what the Orthodox community “emphasizes” and “prioritizes” in all honesty ethical living does not immediately appear to register as very high on the totem pole of concerns. If you will allow me to free associate the emphasis of our community seems to be: Daf Yomi, Daily Minyan, Shabbat, Kashrut, Berachot, Niddah, Eruv’s, Theology, Holidays, Tzniyut and Women’s Issues, Conversion, Carlebach davening and Israel. Our children spending the vast majority of their sacred studies school time focused on classical text study of Chumash, Nach, Mishna, Talmud and Mishna Berurah with a dose of Hebrew Language and Zionsim within the more Modern contexts and yes we will attend a Darfur rally as well.”

Now, a little voice inside me says, ”I know this may not sound like we emphasize and prioritize ethics but they are laden within all the Torah we are studying and in our communal way of living.” Now, this answer albeit sincere is what I will call the theory of ethical development through “osmosis”. This approach was once marshaled against Rabbi Yisrael Salanter zt’l the founder of the 19^th century Mussar movement who attempted with limited success to instill a particular focus on psychological awareness and ethical cultivation within the traditional Yeshiva system.  His rabbinic opponents then and now argued that Torah alone sufficed for generations and there was no special need for “wasting time” from Torah study for Mussar. His response was that while a spiritual diet of Torah alone may have sufficed for prior generations this was not viable in the historical situation they found themselves in -think late 19^th century! So, if we fast forward to the early 21^st century and we survey our receding moral landscape let us ask some very simple questions: Is there any Orthodox High School from Left to Right that offers its students a 6 month class 1 hr a week in “Ethical Living in the Modern World”? Are any of our rabbinical seminaries from the Left to Right preparing our rabbis to deal with the ethical and psychological challenges they will face in their professional capacities as teachers, counselors, mentors and fundraisers?

I believe the answer to these questions are as follows: There is no such High School program within Orthodoxy focusing on ethical living in a modern context according to Torah. To the extent that any rabbis are being prepared for the ethical and psychological challenges of the rabbinate this is at best limited to Modern Orthodox seminaries like Yeshiva University and Yeshivat Chovevei Torah and this is quite recent and what further questionable how well and thoroughly they are being prepared.

So if we are operating on an ethics by osmosis educational theory than we should not be surprised that some individuals even rabbis have less an ability to develop into ethical human beings via this method. Consequently, they produce the outrageous moral scandals and immoral wonders of the rabbinic world that we get to read about in the paper to our shock, indignation and horror. Alternatively, and what is more often the case these ethical failings are kept under wraps or are simply unknown until at times an all out catastrophe occurs. Then we all lament the gross desecration of God’s name for a week and then go back to “Torah life as usual” until the cycle repeats and the next ethicopath surfaces in the headlines. If we would take the “Salanterian approach” or the,” What would Rav Yisroel do?” We would make the focus on both psychological awareness and ethical cultivation a fundamental part of our schooling of both our children, adults and our rabbis. In my opinion we are not doing this. We are placing our emphasis on learning limited and narrow portions of Tanakh, Mishna, Talmud and Halakha- the halakhic portion of which mostly revolves around the holidays, shabbat, prayer and daily ritual life. In the Modern Orthodox community we also emphasize and prioritize that our children learn Modern Hebrew and get a “College” preparatory education. Make no mistake I would be very happy for my children to go to Harvard, Columbia, Penn, Princeton or Stanford and for them to make aliyah but like you I do not want any of them ending up with the moral profiles of some of the rabbis, political leaders or laymen that have been dis-gracing the newspapers and television networks.

Now, one could argue that if ethics are so dear to me than I should focus on this at home. However, this suggestion strikes me as prima fascia absurd as I do not believe it is asking very much (for 15-25k a year per pupil) for rabbis who are dedicating their lives to Torah education and in light of the recent and not so recent scandalous events to realize the importance of incorporating a contemporary moral and ethical curriculum into the very fabric of our Torah High Schools. If our Yeshivot were living and breathing an ethical vision and emphasis than those individuals who for whatever reason of nature and nurture are psychologically and morally challenged they will have a more supportive environment within which to grow and will feel more of a responsibility to live up to the standards we all hold dear. Our Torah curriculum cares primarily about mastering basic and intermediate Biblical, Talmudic and Post Talmudic textual skills, covering what are designated as essential Talmudic texts, getting into the routine of twice or thrice daily prayer with as much attention and meaning as possible, learning Modern Hebrew and learning about the holidays, basic Jewish thought and history. Again, there is nothing fundamentally wrong with this curriculum, however please do not imagine that our schools are focused on creating ethically sensitive and educated young adults who are prepared for the ethical challenges of modern living- they are not and do not expect a university education even at Yeshiva University to be of much assistance either.    

Let me be clear, that attention to “Middot” (Character Development) while important, is necessary but not sufficient. Ethical living involves the application of Middot in highly charged real life contexts that transcend being nice to one’s classmates and not speaking Lashon Hara. Additionally, I do not believe that any school really makes even Middot a true focus (unless you consider derech eretz for teachers the summum bonum of ethics and being quiet on a bus or hallway a predictor or ethical refinement). Rather, even Middot are a side dish for the “meat, bread and potatoes” and is typically given tangential emphasis with a little story sent home in the bulletin or a tidbit of a story shared in class. Usually “Middot” only becomes a real focus when a child has real behavioral problems. Just because one’s child is not problematic does not mean that one’s child is being ethically cultivated and groomed.

It would be quite wrong to presume that holiness, devotional piety, Torah knowledge and observance of ritual law are identical with or somehow per force lead to ethical behavior. In reality, holiness, devotional piety, Torah knowledge and observance of ritual law are not only not identical to ethical behavior they sometimes can mislead a person into believing that they are beyond the need for ethical behavior! Additionally, the analytic and highly complex interpretive methodologies one is trained in, the rabbinic legal fictions one is exposed to and the endless divergence of opinions and divergences of opinions built on divergences of opinions can be enlisted to rationalize unethical behavior. Think this is the ramblings of a Modern mind who has studied too much Freud and Kant? The tradition itself points these concerns out, ”Once (Torah) wisdom enters a person cunning enters within them.” (Talmud Bavli Sotah 21b)  The sages warned against becoming a, ”Pervert with permission of the Torah.”(Rambam on Parashat Kedoshim 19:2)  They also shared with us a story of two Kohanim (the embodiments of holiness) racing up the altar (the embodiment of divine service) so that they could be first to perform the initial temple service of the day. What is the result of these holy aspirants eagerness to express their religious devotionalism? One Kohen stabs and kills the other! (The embodiment of a lack of ethics). Then the top concern of the Kohanim becomes preserving the ritual purity of the knife! (embodiment of observance of ritual Law). This is the knife that is still stuck in the heart of the dying Kohen who is withering around in pain and blood. This Aggadah is teaching us explicitly what distorted religious priorities and values look like. The rabbis in the Talmud reflecting on this story say that,”The purity of ritual vessels was greater to them in importance than murder!” (Talmud Bavli Yoma 23a) Just in case you are wondering what the end game was it was called the Destruction of the Second Temple. Of the rare individuals who are listed in the Mishna Sanhedrin (10:2)   as not having a portion in the World to Come a couple of them were among the greatest Torah scholars of their generation, were I imagine quite frum and ofcourse were prominent members of their rabbinic associations and their Yeshiva Alumni. There is a reason our rabbis tell us these stories and teachings- yet do we really collectively take them in? Do we allow them to change how we are educating?     

What would such an ethical preparatory Torah curriculum look like for a Torah High School? I will share a few ideas with the disclaimer that we have many great and creative Torah educators and if they put their minds to it I am sure it will be the finest program in the world. I would say that for High School students the course should include a combination of case study and text study using a multi- media approach incorporating news articles, T.V. clips and where available documentaries. We take a case of a person who violated a Torah ethic and we examine how this played out for them. What was their life like before and after? What were their likely motivations for doing this? How did their unethical behavior impact others and their families? After having gotten this real life exposure to a practical expression of unethical living and the ensuing disaster, now let us examine with classical texts what the Torah says on these ethical and psychological issues. This could then generate class discussion and creative writing assignments with an emphasis on how students potenially may feel at all challenged in similar ways and how they can in the present and future cope with such challenges. I would also dare suggest that the class take a visit to a minimum security prison for white collar criminals and meet with some of the Jewish inmates and have a frank discussion with them about how they view their choices and what was going on with them that led to such choices. We could also bring in various professionals from the community and have them share how they have been challenged ethically in their respective professional lives and how they have navigated these challenges. Lastly, even the core curriculum that we teach can be taught in a way that emphasizes the ethical insights, fundamentals and applications of what is being learned.  I am quite confident that this course if done correctly would be the most interesting and memorable course in Torah our students ever had!   

In regards to preparing rabbis for their many psychological and ethical challenges they will face I would say that two things are utterly necessary and easily doable. Firstly, rabbis who function inevitably as psychological counselors, mentors and confidants should be made to undergo at least two years of individual or group psychotherapy to become simply said, ”more aware of themselves.” It is very unwise to create rabbis who know the rabbinic tradition infinitely more than they know themselves. The depth of one’s Talmudic or Halakhic learning will not directly help a rabbi in certain trials that rabbis face whereas knowing one’s underlying motivations, typical defense mechanisms and character weaknesses will. In addition, rabbinical students should be presented with in crystal clear and graphic terms the ways that other rabbis have morally failed and this should be dissected for them psychologically and halakhically no different than they pour over a Tosafot, Shach or a Bet Yosef. It would be quite helpful for rabbinic seminaries to bring in as possible the moral failures of the rabbinate (the repentant varieties) and have them share how they made the mistakes they made, what they think they should have done different and how in their view these mistakes could have been avoided. I think the shock value of even one of these morbid and heartbreaking lectures would do a lot of good. If its not realistic that it be firsthand then let it be second hand from someone who was close to them and watch it go down. It is only, in my view, through these two methods in tandem that there is any hope that those individuals who may be prone to moral failure will be given a head start at preempting their eventual moral decline and debasement.

Ask yourself of any of the rabbis who have morally collapsed that you are aware of –did any of them have any preparation for the psychological and ethical challenges they were to face? I can tell you from personal experience of knowing more than half a dozen of them throughout my twenty year student/teacher career-the answer is NO. Unless you consider: Parashat Hashuvuah, Nach, Talmud, Rishonim, Tur, Bet Yosef, Kabbalah and Chassidut with a dose of Yirat Shamayim shmoozes and Mesilat Yesharim sufficient preparation. Rabbis who molest children, who are sexually promiscuous with their congregants or students, who embezzle charity funds …. These are highly complex, distorted and struggling souls who to make matters worse are often brilliant, charismatic, articulate and highly motivated to learn, teach, lead and change the world-it’s a morally hazardous combination. True, they are a small minority but it is hard for me to believe that the moral and relatively speaking psychologically healthy majority will be harmed by this curricular enhancement and the consequences of not including it are dire for those who fly beneath the radar of their rabbinic teachers which may not at all be attuned to these matters which can be quite psychologically subtle and beneath the surface.

Consider, if lawyers, medical doctors, psychologists and accountants must study the ethical issues that they will face as part and parcel of their studies should not rabbis? This is in today’s vernacular a “no-brainer.” Yet, tell me one Yeshivah outside of Modern Orthodoxy that does anything sophisticated and thorough to prepare its rabbis for these ethical conflicts and challenges. Let me save you some time there are NONE. While there are no guarantees there are precautions that can be taken and we have enough experience to know by now I would hope that precautionary measures are necessary.    

If we are at all serious of not producing more ethicopaths who: defraud, steal, molest, abuse their power as clergy, show utter disregard for the life of non-Jewish human beings and collectively do not really take in the implications of desecrating the name of God then we must evolve beyond the educational theory of ethics by “osmosis” to the educational theory of ethics by “active prioritization”. We need to initiate an ethical renewal within Orthodoxy, a renewal that will be welcomed by our fellow co-religionist’s in Judaism and can serve as a bridge where we can all meet on level playing ground. If the first question we are asked when we encounter the heavenly tribunal is, ”Did you conduct yourselves honesty and with faith in your business dealings?” (Talmud Bavli Shabbat 31a) Then, I would imagine that there is an esteemed place for a structured curriculum that seeks to actively and directly inculcate contemporary applications for psychological and ethical awareness and moral development in our children, adults and our rabbis.  

Being a light unto the nations and a holy people is quite a challenge but let us at least not be an utter disgrace.  The world village that is rapidly emerging and the mass media technologies that provide instant audio and visual communication make it absolutely imperative to our spiritual mission as a people that we become more ethically focused, refined and developed. Please accept this essay as a modest call to that sacred end.          

The Underlying Question of Health Reform

The origins of the current acrimonious Health Reform debate of 2009 can be understood in the context of a comparison between two biblical brothers: Kayin and Yosef. As Jews and as human beings, we are expected to work for Tikkun Olam-to heal the world. We are provided with the means to do so: mitzvoth (commandments and acts of kindness) and tsedakah (acts of charity). Modern science has provided many tools to support these efforts, including epidemiology, which is the basic science of public health and health-care planning. Two inter-related issues that have not received adequate attention during the debates around health-care reform relate to public health and preventive medicine, and the underlying assumptions about whether health care is a universal right or a commodity purchasable in proportion to one's financial means.

This essay will explore some of the contributions to this discussion of epidemiology, and will seek insights from examples drawn from Torah and Ketubim. In particular, we will examine the different attitudes of Kayin and Yosef toward their brothers. This contrast can be best seen by examining Kayin's immortalized response, "Am I my brother's keeper?" to God's question, "Where is your brother, Hevel?" I believe that this is the fundamental question underlying the Health Reform debate, and unless we reveal and resolve these competing visions of health care-as a right and responsibility-or as a commodity-we will be unable to resolve this dilemma.

Kayin, who was described as an "oved adama," a servant of the land, refused to take care of his brother, and his actions were directly responsible for Hevel's death. In contrast, Yosef proposed and implemented food, land and crop management, and tax policies that took care of his brothers, their families, his adopted nation and all the nations of the world. Thus, Yosef serves as a model for public-health leadership and an exemplar of universal access to care and responsible environmental management. We need to look more closely at the two narratives [emphasis added]:

Kayin and Yosef: Two Models of Public-Health Leadership?

Kayin:
And God said to Kayin, ‘Why are you angry, and why has your countenance fallen? Is it not so that if you improve, it will be forgiven you? If you do not improve, however, at the entrance, sin is lying, and to you is its longing, but you can rule over it.' (Genesis 4:6-7).
And God said to Kayin: 'Where is your brother, Hevel?' And [Kayin] said: 'I don't know; am I my brother's keeper?' And God said: 'What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood cries unto Me from the ground. (Genesis 4:9-11)

Yosef:
And [Yisrael] said to [Yosef]: Go now, look after your brothers' welfare, and the well-being of the flock; and bring me back word. (Genesis 37:14)
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Let Pharaoh do this, and let him appoint overseers over the land, and take up the fifth part of the land of Egypt in the seven years of plenty. And let them gather all the food of these good years that come, and lay up corn under the hand of Pharaoh for food in the cities, and let them keep it. And the food shall be for a store to the land against the seven years of famine, which shall be in the land of Egypt; that the land perish not through the famine." (Genesis 41:34-36)
And Yosef went out from the presence of Pharaoh, and went throughout all the land of Egypt. And in the seven years of plenty the earth brought forth in heaps. And he gathered up all the food of the seven years which were in the land of Egypt, and laid up the food in the cities; the food of the field, which was round about every city, laid he up in the same. And Yosef laid up corn as the sand of the sea, very much, until they left off numbering; for it was without number. (Genesis 41:46-49)
And the famine was over all the face of the earth; and Yosef opened all the storehouses, and sold unto the Egyptians; and the famine was sore in the land of Egypt. And all countries came into Egypt to Yosef to buy corn; because the famine was sore in all the earth. (Genesis 41:56-57)
And it shall come to pass at the ingatherings, that you shall give a fifth unto Pharaoh, and four parts shall be your own, for seed of the field, and for your food, and for them of your households, and for food for your little ones.' And they said: 'You have saved our lives.' (Genesis 49:24-25)
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And now be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that you sold me; for God did send me [to Egypt] before you to preserve life. For these two years there has been famine in the land; and there are still five years, in which there shall be neither plowing nor harvest. And God sent me before you to give you a remnant on the earth, and to save you alive for a great deliverance. So now it was not you that sent me hither, but God. (Genesis 45:5-8)
And Yosef sustained his father, and his brothers, and all his father's household with bread, according to the want of their little ones. (Genesis 47:12)
And Yosef said unto them: 'Do not be afraid for am I in the place of God? And as for you, you did mean evil against me; but God meant it for good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive. Now therefore do not be afraid; I will sustain you, and your little ones.' And he comforted them, and spoke kindly unto them. (Genesis 50:19-21)

Competing Visions of Health Reform

Perhaps the most heated political debates surround the topic of "Health Reform," where the different sides of the often agitated discussions argue over various visions of improving access to health-care services, controlling costs, improving health-care quality, and eliminating disparities in clinical and public-health (population-health) outcomes. Competing visions of health-care reform range from universal access with a single-payer system, to a hybrid of private insurance companies, either with or without the so-called "public option," which may take the form of a government-run insurance program that competes with private insurers. The inclusion of a public option has been one of the more controversial aspects of the debate. Critics of the public option suggest that government-run health care "will offer the level of service of the Department of Motor Vehicles and the level of quality of the U.S. Post Office," or is a "step on the way to socialized medicine." Supporters of the public option argue that this is a necessary element to provide sufficient competitive pressure for the private insurers to keep premium costs affordable, or alternatively, to provide coverage in markets where no private insurers offer coverage. In a U.S. population of approximately 308 million, it is estimated that at least 50 million people-one in six-are currently uninsured, and a significant multiple of that figure are underinsured or one paycheck away from being uninsured, with over 80 million having been without insurance at some point in the previous year. Nevertheless, a significant proportion of U.S. citizens are already covered by some form of public option. If we consider the combined U.S. populations already served by Medicare (age 65+ or disabled), Medicaid (poor children and adults), Child Health Plus (low-income children), Veterans Administration (former military), TriCare (Department of Defense), Indian Health Service (Native Americans), Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (Congress and Federal Employees), Prison Health Services (incarcerated) and Federally Qualified Health Centers (low-income uninsured/working poor), an estimated 150 million Americans or nearly 50 percent of the U.S. population of over 307 million are currently covered entirely or part by a public
insurance program supported through taxes.

A second area of dissent surrounds the decisions about coverage of specific services, and the fear of "health-care rationing," as if rationing is not already taking place -either by income, ethnicity, age or geography. The emerging scientific discipline of "comparative effectiveness research" has been offered as the basis to be used for identifying which health-care services to cover-and is really a scientific basis for rationing health-care services. The evolving definition of comparative effectiveness research describes this as "... the conduct and synthesis of systematic research comparing different interventions and strategies to prevent, diagnose, treat and monitor health conditions ... to inform patients, providers, and decision-makers... about which interventions are most effective for which patients under specific circumstances" (Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services). The methodological infrastructure of clinical effectiveness research is drawn from the science of epidemiology.

Epidemiology, Clinical Trials, Comparative Effectiveness Research and the Book of Daniel
Epidemiology is variously defined as the study of health and illness in populations, and is both a tool for understanding the etiology (causes) of disease, and a body of methods for evaluating differences in the health-care status of groups of people (referred to as population subgroups), as well as differences in outcomes for people who receive various health-care interventions. Epidemiologic research can be purely descriptive or observational, and it can also be experimental, such as in randomized clinical trials or randomized controlled trials (RCTs). An important aspect of health reform draws upon epidemiologic methods in support of the evolving science of "comparative effective research," whereby experimental studies, in which people are assigned to two (or more) different treatments by the "flip of a coin" (randomization or random assignment), and then they are then followed up over time to one or more pre-determined clinical outcomes (for example, first heart attack, remission from cancer, disease-free survival, death, and so forth).
The key component of clinical trials is that they compare two or more treatments, usually a new, active treatment versus a comparison or control treatment, using structured observations following a formal and uniform schedule of observations and follow-up intervals. The differences in outcomes between the treatment groups are quantified and tested for statistical significance, and are described as the "effect size." The effect size is a comparative probabilistic statement, and is often reported as the "relative risk" (ratio of two risks) or "attributable risk" (difference between two risks). Relative risks that are significantly different from 1.0 and attributable risks that are significantly different from 0, and are clinically meaningful, are taken to be indicative of an association or even causality.

Randomization is necessary to reduce or eliminate the possibility of bias (or an alternative explanation) in selecting (or self-selecting) who receives which treatment, and is considered the "gold-standard" by which new treatments (drugs, devices, procedures, preventive services, bundles of services) are evaluated. RCTs are controlled human experiments based upon accumulated observational studies, and begin from the principle of "equipoise" which asserts that in order to conduct an ethical clinical trial, there must be insufficient existing evidence of either harm or benefit of one treatment over the other. Treatment is allocated purely by chance (randomization), rather than by the selection of either the physician or by patient, who has provided his/her "informed consent" to participate.

Informed consent is critical to any health-care treatment decision, including participation in a clinical trial, and the consent process (ideally) takes the form of an unpressured conversation, and presumes autonomy (the health-care provider needs to give the respect, time, and the opportunity for a potential participant to make an informed and non-coerced decision), beneficence (the health care provided should ensure the patient's well-being, do no harm, and should simultaneously maximize benefits and minimize risk of harm), and justice (ensure an equitable selection of participants-who is offered the opportunity to participate and who is not offered the opportunity to participate). The key element here requires the full disclosure of all risks and benefits of participation (including the risk of not receiving treatment), and the ability of the patient to make an independent decision to participate.

RCTs are designed to determine the effect(s) of exposure to treatment on the clinical outcome(s) that are being studied, and RCTs provide the strongest, most direct evidence of cause and effect by eliminating potential confounding variables which are other factors which may be the true cause of observed differences in outcomes. The theory behind randomization asserts that the random assignment of treatments evenly distributes all known and unknown "factors" or "causes" to the treatment groups. Many studies have demonstrated that in the absence of randomization, differences in outcomes are often associated with selections of treatments that may reflect more complex lifestyle decisions that result in selecting a given treatment (for example, taking vitamins; going for screening tests, deciding to smoke or to quit smoking) rather than the treatment itself.
Blinding of observers and participants is an important component of many (but not all) clinical trials, where often the participant is unaware as to which treatment he/she is receiving ("single-blinded"), or for an even stronger design, neither the health-care staff nor the patient know which treatment is being received ("double-blinded"). It is also important that the measurements are made by staff who are unaware of which treatment is actually being received by the patient ("blinded"). Blinding strategies are important for minimizing biases and subjective opinions about which treatment is better, and many RCTs compare a new drug either to an inert substance ("placebo-controlled studies") or to a standard, already approved medicine ("comparator"). However, blinding is not always feasible to implement in studies, particularly either where an invasive procedure is involved, or where a drug may have recognizable main effects or side effects (e.g., causing flushing, increased urination, fast or slow heart beat, etc.) that are easily identified by the patient and the staff. The designers of all clinical trials need to balance the need for methodological rigor with real-world considerations of safety and feasibility, and recognize that no perfect clinical trial exists. While experimental evidence is considered the most rigorous, there are ethical and practical situations that often require alternatives to randomization, all of which fall back on careful, well-structured observations and comparisons.

The Origin of Clinical Trials

Most medical historians attribute the first recorded clinical trial to Dr. James Lind of the British Royal Navy in 1753. Dr. Lind observed that scurvy "...killed thousands of people every year and had caused many more deaths in the Royal Navy than conflicts." So he selected twelve men from the ship, all of whom were suffering from scurvy, and divided them into six pairs, giving each group different additions to their basic diet (cider; seawater; garlic; mustard and horseradish; spoonfuls of vinegar; two oranges and lemons). Dr. Lind observed that "[t]hose fed citrus fruits (oranges and lemons) experienced a remarkable recovery" and concluded that, while there was nothing new about his discovery as the benefits of lime juice had been known for centuries, citrus fruits were better than all other "remedies" for the treatment of scurvy (and also for the prevention of Vitamin C deficiency). Although the importance of Lind's findings on scurvy were recognized at the time, it was not until more than 40 years later that the British Admiralty ordered the routine supply of lemon juice to all Naval ships, virtually eliminating scurvy from the Royal Navy (www.JamesLindLibrary.org & BBC History). About a century later, in 1847, the Hungarian-born obstetrician, Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis, tested the effects of physicians' hand-washing after leaving the autopsy room and before entering the labor and delivery room on reducing fatal puerperal fever (also called "childbed fever"-a fatal blood-borne infection) among pregnant women in Vienna. Although the statistical results of this clinical trial were entirely conclusive, there was significant resistance to adopting this innovation (so much that it eventually drove Semmelweis to insanity and a premature death at age 47).

While these eighteenth- and nineteenth-century examples provide a glimpse into the origins of modern clinical trials (and also illustrate the delays associated with translating research into practice), an earlier nutritional clinical trial of following a Kosher diet compared to the local food was recorded in the Book of Daniel (Chapter 1:1-20). This Babylonian clinical trial was conducted and reported some 2,400 years earlier (605-562 BCE), by Daniel, another adept dream-interpreter who, as was the case for Yosef and Pharaoh in Egypt, also won favor from the king who ruled over the Jews then living in exile in Babylonia. Daniel's clinical trial contains many of the elements of modern clinical trials, with many of the associated modern challenges to causal inference. The text follows here with the corresponding clinical trials elements indicated [in brackets]:

Daniel's Nutritional Clinical Trial (1:3-20)

3. Then the king said to Ashpenaz, his chief officer, to bring from the Children of Israel, from the royal seed, and from the nobles [population subgroup; eligibility criteria].
4. Youths in whom there is no blemish, of handsome appearance, who understand all wisdom, erudite in knowledge, who understand how to express their thoughts, and who have strength to stand in the king's palace [inclusion/exclusion criteria], and to teach them the script and the language of the Chaldeans.
5. The king allotted them a daily portion of the king's food and of the wine that he drank, and to train them for three years [trial duration], and at the end thereof, they would stand before the king [follow-up period; outcome evaluation].
8. Daniel resolved not to be defiled by the king's food or by the wine he drank; so he requested of the king's chief officer that he should not be defiled.
9. God granted Daniel kindness and mercy before the chief officer.
10. And the chief officer replied to Daniel, "I fear my lord the king, who allotted your food and your drink, for why should he see your [experimental group] faces troubled [clinical outcome] more than the youths like you [control group]? And you will forfeit my head to the king."
11. And Daniel answered the steward whom the chief officer had appointed for Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah.
12. "Now test [pre-specified comparison] your servants for ten days [trial duration], and let them give us some vegetables that we should eat, and water that we should drink [experimental intervention].
13. And let our [experimental group] appearance [clinical outcome], and the appearance [clinical outcome], of the youths who eat the king's food [control group], be seen [follow-up; outcome evaluation] by you [not blinded] and as you will see, so do with your servants."
14. He heeded them in this matter and tested [experimental intervention] them for ten days [trial duration].
15. And at the end of the ten days [trial duration], they [experimental group] looked handsomer and fatter [clinical outcomes] than all the youths who ate the king's food [control group].
16. And the steward would carry away their food and the wine they were to drink and give them vegetables [experimental intervention].
17. And to these youths, the four of them [sample size], God gave knowledge and understanding in every script and wisdom, and Daniel understood all visions and dreams.
18. And at the end of the days that the king ordered to bring them, the chief officer brought them before Nebuchadnezzar.
19. And the king spoke with them, and of all of them, no one was found to equal Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah [effect size or relative risk]; and they stood before the king.
20. And in every matter of the wisdom of understanding that the king requested of them, he found them ten times better [effect size or relative risk], than all the necromancers and astrologers in all his kingdom.

The Problem of Translating Research into Practice

Thus, Daniel was responsible for the first recorded clinical trial, suggesting that the methodological template for clinical trials is considerably older than usually ascribed. In fact, the reporting of Daniel's (non-randomized) clinical trial conforms to modern standards (the "CONSORT criteria"), and in some ways is even more thorough than many contemporary trials published in rigorously peer-reviewed journals (perhaps because Daniel had to "... answer to a Higher Authority").
What is supposed to happen with the results of clinical trials? Decisions by physicians as to whether to adopt innovations, by insurers as to whether to pay for services, and by patients as to whether to follow their physicians' advice, are increasingly being made based on the results of these clinical trials, and the burgeoning field of "translational research" seeks to understand how scientific discoveries are moved from the laboratory to the patient ("bench to bedside") and beyond to the community. I would argue that the true measure of the effectiveness of translation of research into practice is reflected not only in utilization of services and individual health status outcomes, but also in public health statistics such as disability, disease incidence, and survival/mortality. Both the principles of social justice and Tikkun Olam would require that everybody benefit equally from access to improved health-care services.

The average duration of time it takes for scientific innovations to travel from research to practice is frequently cited to be 17 years, with many examples, such as those above, demonstrating even longer durations-and differential access to research results across groups defined by economic, ethnic, gender, and other parameters. The recent addition of hand-washing reminder signs and widespread placement of antibacterial liquids in health care and other public settings is a stark reminder that the adoption of even a simple innovation such as hand-washing can take decades or centuries. Even today, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) primary recommendation for preventing the transmission of influenza, including the much-feared H1N1 flu (and other communicable infections), is hand-washing.

Epidemiologic methods are often criticized for failing to provide adequate (or any) mechanisms or explanations as to "why" differences are observed. However, effective policy can often be made merely based on the observation of differences, rather than on a true understanding of the underlying reasons (or causes) of those differences. The example most often cited was the removal of the Broad Street water pump handle by nineteenth-century British anesthesiologist/surgeon-turned-epidemiologist, Dr. John Snow, whose statistical analyses led him to conclude in 1854 that water played a significant role in the spread of cholera, and his direct actions resulted in controlling a severe cholera outbreak in London.

Epidemiology has been particularly effective in studies of lifestyle and behavior, and numerous long-term community-based observational and experimental studies have demonstrated the significant contributions of a variety of behaviors, including diet composition (for example, calories; fat content; types of fat; salt/sodium content), physical activity, smoking, alcohol consumption, and even attendance at weekly religious services and prayer, to health and well-being. Although levels of biological evidence as to mechanisms are often lacking, and not all of these behaviors can be adequately studied in RCTs, these studies can still form the basis of informed government and health-care policies oriented toward improving public health.

Recent examples of such health and environmental policies in New York City include regulations to limit occupational and environmental exposures. These include increased tobacco taxes and bans on smoking in the workplace and other public settings. Other examples of current environmental public health legislation based on epidemiology include food labeling, which requires disclosure of food composition (calories, fat, salt/sodium content) at the point of sale in certain restaurants and for prepared foods, bans on trans-fats in food, and measures to reduce or eliminate the sale of soft drinks in public schools through bans and increased taxes.

One cannot help but be struck by these modern scientific analogues to the food labels of Kosher certification agencies or hekhsherim, and their designations of "meat" or "dairy (D)" or "pareve" and the parallels between the institutions of the mashgihim (Kosher food supervisors) and Food Inspectors of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Department of Agriculture (USDA), as well as local municipal Health Department restaurant inspectors. Both sets of institutions are intended to ensure high levels of food purity and accurate disclosure of food contents, handling and preparation. Many other similar examples exist. While the health benefits of the primary covenantal sign of Jews, the berit milah or (male) circumcision, have been debated in Europe and the United States for over a century, two recent large randomized clinical trials conducted in Africa have demonstrated the effectiveness of male circumcision on reduction of HIV transmission to such a degree that thousands of African men have undergone voluntary adult circumcision (and mohelim, or ritual circumcisers, from Israel and elsewhere are in great demand now both to provide circumcisions and to train local community circumcisers in Africa).

Reason Beyond Reason

So how we can draw upon two sets of behavioral recommendations, one faith-based and one evidence-based, from the foregoing discussion, and bring together evidence-based medicine and ethical behavior? An important parallel exists between epidemiology and Torah in behavioral recommendations that take the form of behaviors to engage in and behaviors to avoid. In a sense, behavioral risk factors (and protective factors) can be seen to correspond to mitzvoth aseh ("positive commandments" to perform specific acts) and mitzvoth lo ta'aseh ("negative commandments" to abstain from certain acts), and reduced further to mishpatim ("judgments"), which have a rational (and potentially an epidemiologic) explanation and hukim ("decrees"), which transcend apparent reason, and include commandments about justice toward others and to the environment.

We have a mandate to "heal the world." Whether it is for reasons of enlightened self-interest, or for truly eleemosynary purposes, Kayin should have answered God's question differently: vayomer Kayin ‘keyn' (and Kayin said "yes"), as did Yosef. So our vision for effective public health and environmental leadership must combine the responsibility of Kayin to be an oved adama (a servant of the land), with the wisdom and compassion of Yosef, through whose command all people were nourished. Daniel demonstrated the health benefits of food and beverage, and provides epidemiologic methods as a valid tool to combine evidence and faith. However, it was Yosef who is the model public-health leader, who set aside his own self-interest, and took care of his brothers, their families, his (adopted) country and the whole world, also serving as an oved adama, perhaps in a more generalized sense, as a servant of man and a servant of the land. So in the face of this current debate over the transformation of the U.S. health-care system, we must answer God's question as Yosef did and as Kayin should have. Health care and a clean environment must be a right for all people in order for us to heal the world. We do have the means and resources to provide both a high standard of health care and a clean environment for all. But do we have the will do so?

I'm smart, successful at my career, and fun to be with. I've worked out many of my "issues" in therapy. Here I am, eminently eligible and ready for a relationship, but somehow all of the guys I meet just aren't there yet. I feel like prescribing them a course of therapy, life-skills, and relationship-skills, and telling them to return in a few years, though hopefully I'll have found someone by then...
Sarah, age 27

I really want to get married and build a "bayit ne'eman b'yisrael" and all that other good stuff, but sometimes life gets in the way. I'm struggling really deeply with my conflicting sexual and religious needs, while trying to move forward in my career, and still make it to minyan-all this under the watchful and critical eye of my parents and community. Spending Shabbat with my parents is the opposite of relaxing. I wonder whether they would have gotten married as young and as happily as they did had they had the same challenges to contend with when single as I do.
Avi, age 31

I hesitate to take up my pen and write about the broad topic of Orthodox singles. It's a topic on which much ink has been spilt and to little effect. I generally confine myself to the topic of singles and sexuality/religious conflict, which has been much less explored and where there are perhaps more constructive things to be written. However, I want to write briefly about some of the broader challenges faced by singles and by the Orthodox community. The issues are manifold and complex-spanning the religious, psychological, phenomenological, existential, physiological, and halakhic realms, among others-and my goals are limited. If I can succeed in making you question your assumptions about singles, or in breaking some of the myths that you hold dear, and shaking your sense of certainty about anything relating to singles and their place in the community, then I will have done enough. Deconstruction is easy compared to reconstruction, but it often needs to come first-I leave the rebuilding to the future.

We often hear mention of the "Shiddukh Crisis" or "Singles Problem" that currently plagues the Orthodox Jewish community. Various groups, organizations, synagogues, and individuals have given much thought to finding the "solution" or a range of "solutions" to this "problem." I don't want to enter into the fray of searching for solutions, partly because some of the "solutions" I've seen have been worse than the problem itself and have augmented the problem rather than solving it, and partly because I disagree with the entire construct of problem-solving that has been set up around Orthodox singles.

Let's start with some definitions: Many today would define the "Shiddukh Crisis" as the fact that today, more than ever before, large numbers of Jews are remaining single for longer, marrying later, or not marrying at all. This definition assumes that the mere status of married or unmarried is how we define success, and the quality of a person's married or single life doesn't matter to us. For many people, the "Singles Problem" is something that needs to be solved simply by getting everyone married as quickly as possible.

I want to suggest a different definition of the "Singles Problem": the crux of the crisis is, on the one hand, deeply personal, surrounding the individual issues that prevent people from either desiring or achieving a meaningful and committed relationship. And on the other hand, there is a wider communal dynamic in which the Orthodox community simply doesn't know how to include the unmarried individuals in its midst and often alienates singles, forcing them to either form their own singles communities or to leave Orthodoxy.

In this article, I want to focus on the intersection between the single and the community and on some of the myths that prevent mutual understanding.

Beginning the Myth-Breaking

The line between straining at truths that prove to be imbecilically self-evident, on the one hand, and on the other hand tossing off commonplaces that turn out to retain their power to galvanize and divide, is weirdly unpredictable. In dealing with an open-secret structure, it's only by being shameless about risking the obvious that we happen into the vicinity of the transformative....
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet, p. 22

Before we can move toward a productive conversation about singles and their place in the community, I need to clear the ground from some of the many and often contradictory myths that currently prevail regarding singles. The very act of generalizing-of making statements that are relevant to "all singles" or "everyone"-does violence to the individual and his or her experience. Individuals come in different shapes and sizes; physically, emotionally, intellectually-and they relate differently to this period in their lives. We simply can't make any general assumptions about people. 
I have chosen five common myths that I want to break systematically, though there are many more. I begin with the sexual realm because I think that it is the proverbial elephant in the room, which often hovers in people's consciousnesses but is not mentioned in polite conversation. Since halakha does not permit pre-marital sex or any physical contact with the opposite sex ("negiah"), singles either are not sexually active, or their sexual activity is illegitimate. Therefore, they are either grappling with sexual denial or repression, or they are violating the halakha. Either way, their situation is one that the wider community cannot easily identify with. The prevalence of assumptions and dearth of real information about people's sexual beliefs and practices-the confusion between myth and fact-may contribute to suspicion mixed with awkwardness in interactions between singles and members of the wider community. In this vein the myths can be especially damaging.

Myth #1: Everyone is "shomer negiah" /No one is "shomer negiah."

These myths, though they contradict each other, are both quite prevalent within the Orthodox community. Each comes from a totalizing perspective that seeks to reduce all singles to the same experience so that we don't need to give the matter further thought. If all singles are shomer negiah, then the system works-everything is fine, there is no conflict to be reckoned with, and we need not concern ourselves with the personal toll that this halakhic observance may be having upon the individual. On the other hand, if no singles are shomer negiah, then there is also no conflict-singles simply don't care about the halakha and thus they aren't part of the community. Each of these totalizing perspectives is detrimental and each ignores the uniqueness of the individual and the fact that people are different and that they cope with singlehood in different ways. 
Although sex and sexuality are universal phenomena, they are experienced differently by different individuals and even by the same individual in different stages of life. For some, sexuality is a major challenge during the single years. For others, sexuality is a non-issue, or a minor issue. Some observe negiah with ease, others with difficulty, others not at all. Some are shomer negiah in some relationships and not in others or with some people and not with others. For others, the status changes with time. The endless permutations make stereotypes worthless. There are people who don't look the part who are completely shomer negiah, and people learning in yeshiva who visit prostitutes. A friend of mine recently asked two male friends of hers, of similar age and profession, what they were looking for in a wife in terms of her sexual experience-the answers they gave were diametrically opposed. One would only date women who had never touched men, because "If I waited, why couldn't she?" and the other would only date women who had had some physical contact with men, because, "I don't want someone who's not having sex just so that her ketubah [marriage contract] can say betulah [virgin] (which it can either way)." Leave the stereotypes behind and look at the person who is facing you.

Myth #2: Anyone who engages in premarital sexual activity is totally fine with it.

This myth is particularly damaging because it allows us to ignore the pain and conflict that many Orthodox singles are experiencing. Although there are certainly singles who are not conflicted about their premarital sexual activity, all of the singles with whom I have spoken have struggled very deeply with these issues-either overtly or beneath the surface-and while some eventually made their peace with the choices they made, others continue to struggle.

An extension of this myth is that those who engage in premarital sexual activity simply don't care about the halakha. Most of the singles that I have spoken with cared deeply about the halakha, and it was precisely because they cared so much about the halakha that they were thrown into such a deep existential conflict in its violation. However, the guilt surrounding premarital sexual activity is not purely due to halakhic violation. For many people feelings of guilt are a complex combination of many factors, the halakha being one, and communal or familial expectations and social pressures being another. For women especially, society's double standard of sexual behavior adds onto the halakhic layer the feelings of being "damaged goods" once one engages in premarital sexual activity, and raises questions about one's larger identity as a good girl, a good person, and a good Jew. Even those singles I spoke with who chose to leave the halakhic lifestyle retained a lingering sense of guilt and discomfort about their decisions in the sexual realm.

Myth #3: Singles are happy the way they are-they don't want to be part of the "broader Orthodox community."

"Community" means different things to different people. Here I am using this term in an intentionally ambiguous way, though on a basic level I am referring to the community that forms around a synagogue or a neighborhood. In either case, families are generally the building block of the community. Depending on the specific community, singles may have formed their own minyan, or in places with fewer singles, singles may be either invisible within the communal framework or may be full members of the community.

If we take this myth in the specific context of the community that forms around a synagogue, then the exact opposite is often true as well: Many singles feel so alone and isolated that they are often thirsting to be a part of the larger community, if only the community would let them. Especially in the absence of a spouse-who, among other things, provides a regular companion for Shabbat meals-singles often appreciate the sense of belonging or of being part of something larger than oneself.

However, not all singles want to be involved in the community to the same extent, and the community should be sensitive to the range of needs that individuals might have. Some singles might appreciate an invitation to a Shabbat meal, others might appreciate being set up, others might just want a smile and greeting after prayer services, and others might want a more active role on the synagogue board or on various committees. And beyond these concrete actions, there is the ineffable; the sense you get when the person in front of you is being perfunctory in conversation, scanning the room for someone else to talk to, the sense you get when "How are you" is a statement rather than a question. Married people: Be open to singles the same way you would be open to a new family that joins your community, and allow the situation and the person standing in front of you to guide your actions.

 Myth #4: Any attempt on the part of the Orthodox community to grapple openly and deal seriously with the challenges and conflicts that singles face will help to legitimize perpetual singlehood and make singles even less likely to marry.

In 2009, when the numbers of unmarried Orthodox Jews in their twenties, thirties, and forties have reached an unprecedented high, and when the percentage of Jews who end up never marrying is increasing, failure to confront the issue constitutes an act of burying our heads in the sand, and further alienating those singles who remain part of the Orthodox community. At this point, the question of legitimization of singlehood is almost moot, as the numbers speak for themselves, with the message that people are remaining single, with or without such legitimization. We as a community need to get over the fear of raising questions, and singles are just the tip of the iceberg here.

Several years ago, when single, I was part of a committee of both married and single individuals (which included rabbis and communal leaders) that was dedicated to thinking through the "singles problem" and trying to offer "solutions." Even after a couple of years of conversations, and countless suggestions, this committee was not able to take any definitive steps. We had finally realized the complexity of the issues involved and realized that the proposed "solutions" were merely band-aids that didn't get to the heart of the problem. At one point this myth surfaced and the committee began to question its existence-was the very fact of our open conversation going to somehow legitimize singlehood? Aside from the fact that none of this committee's deliberations were public, I felt impelled to point out in an email that, "To assume that communal pressure [for marriage] will help the matter is misguided.... Please trust me when I say that no amount of communal acceptance and welcome will ever make any of us forget that we are not your ideal and never will be until we are married with children" (1/2/05).

Sylvia Barack Fishman puts the issue in more extreme terms, which are perhaps reflective (or perhaps not) of the threat that the community construes in its singles: 
The question facing Orthodox communities today has some similarities to Jewish communal questions about how to treat intermarried families: Outreach activists urge inclusiveness-"why not accept the singles community as it is"-while others counter that total inclusiveness would be tantamount to legitimating singleness as an alternative lifestyle for Orthodox Jews. Thinking about the treatment of Orthodox singles thus demands coming to terms with deep philosophical, sociological, and communitarian issues. (Gender Relationships in Marriage and Out, p. 111) 
Perhaps the extremity of the comparison is illustrative of how deeply threatened the community feels by the existence of singles.

 Myth #5: The sexual restrictions of yihud and negiah have the teleological purpose of ensuring that people have only one sexual partner in life (namely, their spouse); these halakhot are rooted in an awareness of the psychological and spiritual damage that even casual premarital physical contact can cause.

This myth is perhaps the most detrimental myth of all, in that it breaks out of the communal sphere and speaks to each and every single who has ever had even accidental physical contact with a member of the opposite sex, and tells them that they will suffer for this act and it will impact their ability to form a happy marriage; how much more so the individual who has had intentional sexual contact. This idea comes from those popular Jewish authors who, in their quest to convince teenagers to become shomer negiah have-without any use of Jewish texts and sources-read their own pop-psychology into this law.

Although I cannot fully break this myth in the context of the present article, suffice it to say now that the existence of biblical polygamy, concubines, and prostitutes-categories that are all difficult to reconcile with Judaism as we currently live it-and, on a more normative plane, the encouraging of remarriage for those who have been widowed or divorced, serve to dispel the notion that lifelong monogamy is the root of these prohibitions. There is no authoritative source that I am aware of that discusses the psychological or spiritual damage that will ensue upon violating these restrictions, any more than the spiritual damage that results from any sin that can be healed through repentance. In fact, a cursory reading of Maimonides (Hilkhot Issurei Bi'ah, chapter 21) and the Shulhan Arukh (Even haEzer 25, Orakh Hayyim 240) reveals a very different root to these prohibitions, which is perhaps more disturbing to our modern sensibilities; namely, a striving for asceticism, even within marriage!

To promulgate myths of this nature under the banner of "Judaism," "Torah," and "halakha" has a detrimental effect because it compounds the guilt and anxiety of many singles who are committed to Judaism but for psychological, emotional, or physiological reasons are not observing all of the sexual restrictions mandated by halakha. Although there is certainly value in encouraging abstinence among teenagers, we cannot achieve this at the price of being dishonest about Judaism and halakha.

A corollary of this myth is the assumption that there is no difference between teenagers, and those in their twenties, thirties, and forties who are single. Not distinguishing between adolescent sexuality and adult sexuality reflects a failure to see singles as adults who, among other characteristics, are also fully developed sexual beings, with needs and desires that are substantively similar to those of their married counterparts. There is nothing natural about being a "40-year-old-virgin"-and the halakha itself recognized this and therefore encouraged early marriage. Even if halakha today constrains us from endorsing premarital sexual activity, we as a community need to adopt a more empathetic and understanding stance to those who engage in it; the thirty-year-old woman who is physical with her serious boyfriend is different from the adolescent whose hormones have overtaken him. It is time we stop infantilizing singles under the banner of halakha.
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The topic of singles in the Orthodox community is complex and is comprised of many different issues and questions, which are often lumped together into the same category. There are the personal crises that individuals are forced to navigate, the interpersonal issues involved in the process of seeking out and building intimate relationships, the family dynamics that arise during singlehood and the wider communal issues, as well as the religious and sexual issues, to name but a few. We are still a long way from fully understanding any of these issues, let alone knowing how to address them. However, I hope that this exercise in myth-breaking will have helped clear the way toward increasing understanding between singles and the broader community and toward opening the conversation.