Min haMuvhar

   Franz Kafka (1883-1924) was a Prague-born Jew, one of the outstanding figures of modern world literature. His name has become an adjective: Kafkaesque. His writings feature eerie situations, disconnected characters, labyrinthine story lines.

     Kafka was raised in a moderately assimilated, German-speaking family, and was not given much of a Jewish education. Trained as a lawyer, he worked full time for an insurance company.  His great ambition was to be a writer, but during the course of his short lifetime he published very little. When he died, he left numerous manuscripts—diaries, stories, novels-- to his closest friend Max Brod, with the instruction that Brod burn all Kafka’s papers! Fortunately, Brod did not heed Kafka’s last wish. He devoted years to organizing Kafka’s papers and getting them published. Great fame came to Kafka…but only after he had died. During his lifetime, he mostly considered himself to be a failure.

     Kafka sensed that he could be a great writer; but he was a perfectionist who never seemed to be satisfied with his own work. In an entry in his diary, June 21, 1913, he wrote: “The tremendous world I have in my head. But how free myself and free it without being torn to pieces. And a thousand times rather to be torn to pieces than retain it in me or bury it. That, indeed, is why I am here, that is quite clear to me” (The Diaries of Franz Kafka, 1910-1913, p. 288). His day job prevented him from devoting himself to his writing. In his diary (August 21, 1913) he complained: “My job is unbearable to me because it conflicts with my only desire and my only calling, which is literature. Since I am nothing but literature and can and want to be nothing else, my job will never take possession of me, it may, however, shatter me completely, and this is by no means a remote possibility….I am, not only because of my external circumstances but even much more because of my essential nature, a reserved, silent, unsocial, dissatisfied person…” (Ibid., p. 299). His diary entry for November 10, 1919 lamented: “I haven’t yet written down the decisive thing. I am still going in two directions. The work awaiting me is enormous” (Franz Kafka, Diaries 1914-1923, p. 190).

     For Kafka, writing was the essence of who he was; and yet he was unhappy with his writing…and with himself. In a letter (November 5, 1912) to his beloved Felice Bauer, he spelled out his dilemma: “Shouldn’t I stake all I have on the one thing I can do?  What a hopeless fool I should be if I didn’t! My writing may be worthless, in which case, I am definitely and without doubt utterly worthless” (Letters to Felice, p. 38). Kafka’s internal life was linked inextricably to his writing, as he explained to Felice (January 14/15, 1913):  “For writing means revealing oneself to excess; that utmost of self-revelation and surrender, in which a human being, when involved with others, would feel he was losing himself, and from which, therefore, he will always shrink as long as he is in his right mind….Writing that springs from the surface of existence—when there is no other way and the deeper wells have dried up—is nothing, and collapses the moment a truer emotion makes that surface shake. That is why one can never be alone enough when one writes, why there can never be enough silence around one when one writes, why even night is not night enough. This is why there is never enough time at one’s disposal, for the roads are long and it is easy to go astray” (Ibid., p. 156). He confided in Felice (March 4/5, 1913): “The trouble is, I am not at peace with myself; I am not always ‘something,’ and if for once I am ‘something,’ I pay for it by ‘being nothing’ for months on end” (Ibid., p. 213).

   Kafka’s life was peppered with failure. He had a very negative relationship with his father. Although he had several lovers, and was actually engaged to be married, he never did marry. He was unhappy with his office work. He wasn’t satisfied with his writing. He suffered from tuberculosis and died while just forty one years old. If it were not for the devoted efforts of Max Brod, Kafka would have been just another forgotten scribbler who made no perceptible impact on the world of literature. But as it happened, Franz Kafka, the Prague-born Jew who suffered so much and died so young, became a leading light in modern literature.

     Kafka’s works are characterized by unexpected and inexplicable events. In Amerika, an early unfinished novel, the main character is a European young man who has to flee to America; he befriends the ship’s stoker and they decide to work together once they arrive in the new land. But when the young man and the stoker go to the captain’s office, they find the captain speaking with a senator—who happens to be the young man’s uncle! The senator immediately takes responsibility for the young man and treats him very well. But at some point the nephew offends his uncle, who immediately disowns him. Left to his own devices, the young man has various adventures, most of which end badly.

     In his most famous novel, The Trial, the main character is simply identified as Josef  K. He seems to be a perfectly respectable man, but is one day confronted by officials who place him under arrest. K. asks: “But why?’ The men reply: “We weren’t sent to tell you that. Go to your room and wait. Proceedings are under way and you’ll learn everything in due course” (The Trial, p. 5). K. is outraged and wants to defend himself, even though he does not know what charges have been brought against him. K. is advised: “You can’t defend yourself against this court, all you can do is confess. Confess the first chance you get. That’s the only chance you have to escape, the only one. However, even that is impossible without help from others…” (p. 106). K. seeks help from others, to no avail. He thinks about submitting a petition in his defense, but that turns out to be another hopeless approach. The “court” itself is in a nondescript building, with a confusing group of officials and defendants scattered here and there. K.’s situation is a nightmare…but it is not a dream. It is reality, and his life depends on getting acquitted. He is told:  “Our judges, then, lack the higher power to free a person from the charge, but they do have the power to release them from it. When you are acquitted in this sense, it means the charge against you is dropped for the moment but continues to hover over you, and can be reinstated the moment an order comes from above” (p. 158). In other words, the accused is always condemned to live under threat of arrest. He does not know his crime. He does not know who is making charges against him. He does not have the opportunity to defend himself before a responsible panel of judges. He is guilty, and will forever be guilty, without knowing why, and without any defense.  The novel ends with two men coming to K. to execute him. “But the hands of one man were right at K.’s throat, while the other thrust the knife into his heart and turned it there twice. With failing sight K. saw how the men drew near his face, leaning cheek-to-cheek to observe the verdict. ‘Like a dog!’ he said; it seemed as though the shame was to outlive him” (p. 231).

     What was the shame that was to outlive K.’s execution? Perhaps it was the very shame of being human, of living in an unjust and unforgiving world, of suffering perpetual guilt even when one is innocent. The shame was not just K.’s. The executioners are shameful individuals; they are nameless and faceless bureaucrats who follow orders even when those orders are wicked and cruel. They commit cold-blooded murder under the guise of obeying the prevailing legal system. Did Kafka eerily foresee the Nazi era when Jews, innocent like K., were simply arrested, accused, imprisoned, murdered…all in the name of the Nazi legal system?

     Kafka’s sense of human helplessness is a theme in his novel, The Castle. K. is a land surveyor who receives an order to do some work for “the castle.” When he arrives, he is not at the castle, but in the village. A vast maze separates the castle and the village, and K. has a frustrating time trying to find his way to the castle. He seeks advice; he tries different strategies…all to no avail. As he remains in the village, he is ominously told:  “You are not from the Castle, you are not from the village, you aren’t anything. Or rather, unfortunately, you are something, a stranger, a man who isn’t wanted and is in everybody’s way, a man who’s always causing trouble…” (pp. 63-64). This is a classic Kafka dilemma. K. seems to be an honorable person with a respectable profession, a land surveyor; and yet, he is totally at a loss in the face of a massively complicated system he cannot negotiate. He doesn’t belong, he can’t belong, he will never belong. K. is the eternal misfit, the condemned stranger.

     The signature Kafka feelings of alienation fill his stories. In “Investigations of a Dog,” the dog complains: “But where, then, are my real colleagues? Yes, that is the burden of my complaint; that is the kernel of it. Where are they? Everywhere and nowhere” (The Great Wall, p. 23). In “The Burrow,” the mole digs a maze of holes in which it can feel safe from predators. But it never feels safe. “There have been happy periods in which I could almost assure myself that the enmity of the world towards me had ceased or been assuaged, or that the strength of the burrow had raised me above the destructive struggle of former times” (Ibid, p. 55). In his story, “He,” Kafka poignantly describes his dilemma: “He has the feeling that merely by being alive he is blocking his own way. From this sense of hindrance, in turn, he deduces the proof that he is alive” (Ibid., p. 154). In his most famous story, “Metamorphosis,” the “hero” turns into a despicable cockroach, unable to function within his family, at work, or anywhere else. Ultimately, he dies without ever having fulfilled his role as a human being.

     Some students of Kafka have viewed him primarily as an alienated and estranged Jew. Yet, his characters have no distinctive identifying qualities, and some don’t even have full names. Even if the characters may reflect the classic dilemma of alienated Jews in Western society, they obviously relate to the general human predicament in modern times: the growth of bureaucracies, the insignificance of individuals, the feeling of powerlessness against the “establishment,” the loss of traditional religious and sociological moorings. Kafka is widely read and widely respected because his writing touches moderns in a unique and piercing fashion.

     But Kafka’s Jewishness was an essential part of who he was. Even if he was not devoutly religious in a traditional sense, he identified as a Jew, he studied Hebrew, he attended Yiddish language dramatic presentations, and he felt a connection with the national Jewish aspirations connected with Zionism. In his diary (December 25, 1911) Kafka noted his Jewish roots: “In Hebrew [actually Yiddish] my name is Amschel, like my mother’s maternal grandfather, whom my mother, who was six years old when he died, can remember as a very pious and learned man with a long, white beard” (The Diaries of Franz Kafka, 1910-1913), p. 197).  A few years later (December 17, 2013), he has the following entry in his diary: “The good strong way in which Judaism separates things. There is room there for a person. One sees oneself better, one judges oneself better” (p. 324).

     Kafka was not impressed with the “churchly” qualities of Germanic synagogues that attempted to be modern and dignified. He was drawn more closely to Eastern European Jewish immigrants who seemed to be genuinely religious. On Yom Kippur in 1911, he attended the Altneu Synagogue of Prague, which he described as having the “suppressed murmur of the stock market.” By contrast, though, he noted three pious, apparently Eastern Jews, in socks, bowed over their prayer books. They were praying humbly; two of them were crying (Ibid., p. 72). Kafka saw these Eastern Jews as more sincere religiously, more authentic.

     His sympathetic view of Eastern Jews was evidenced in a letter to Milena Jesenska (September 7, 1920). He described a hall where over one hundred Russian-Jewish emigrants were waiting for American visas, in a crowded, uncomfortable situation. Kafka wrote that “if someone had told me last night I could be whatever I wanted, I would have chosen to be a small Jewish boy from the East, standing there in the corner without a trace of worry, his father talking with the men in the middle of the hall” (Letters to Milena, p. 197).

     In a letter to Felice Bauer (January 10/11, 1913), Kafka reflects on the sad state of Jewish life. “Because the Jewish public in general, here at any rate, have limited the religious ceremonies to weddings and funerals, these two occasions have drawn grimly close to each other, and one can virtually see the reproachful glances of a withering faith” (Letters to Felice, p. 151). The loss of religious vitality was not restricted to Jews, but was a phenomenon of modernity. “Today there is no sin and no longing for God. Everything is completely mundane and utilitarian. God lies outside our existence. And therefore all of us suffer a universal paralysis of conscience” (Conversations with Kafka, p. 51).

     But the Jews faced greater insecurity and self-doubt than others. “Their insecure position, insecure within themselves, insecure among people, would above all explain why Jews believe they possess only whatever they hold in their hands or grip between their teeth, that furthermore only tangible possessions give them a right to live, and that finally they will never again acquire what they once have lost—which swims happily away from them, gone forever. Jews are threatened by dangers from the most improbably sides, or, to be more precise, let’s leave the dangers aside and say: ‘They are threatened by threats’” (Letters to Milena, p. 20).

     Kafka’s first-hand experience with anti-Semitism led him to wonder about the Jewish future. Writing in Prague (November 8, 1920), he made his concerns clear:  “I’ve been spending every afternoon outside on the streets, wallowing in anti-Semitic hate….Isn’t it natural to leave a place where one is so hated?...I just looked out the window: mounted police, gendarmes with fixed bayonets, a screaming mob dispersing, and up here in the window the unsavory shame of living under constant protection” (Ibid., p. 219). Like K. in The Trial, Kafka stood accused by people he did not even know, and who did not know him. He was oppressed, without knowing why, and without any satisfactory recourse to justice.

     Zionism was a logical answer for Jews who were in search of a safe space of their own, a place where they could shape their own lives and destinies. “The Jews today are no longer satisfied with history, with an heroic home in time. They yearn for a modest ordinary home in space. More and more young Jews are returning to Palestine. That is a return to oneself, to one’s roots, to growth. The national home in Palestine is for the Jews a necessary goal” (Conversations with Kafka, p. 105).

     His beloved Milena Jesenska wrote words of remembrance about Kafka as a posthumous tribute. “He was shy, anxious, meek, and kind, yet the books he wrote are gruesome and painful.  He saw the world as full of invisible demons, tearing apart and destroying defenseless humans. He was too clairvoyant, too intelligent to be capable of living, and too weak to fight….He understood people as only someone of great and nervous sensitivity can, someone who is alone, someone who can recognize others in a flash, almost like a prophet” (Letters to Milena, pp. 273-74).

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           I first read Kafka in our freshman English class at Yeshiva College. We were assigned to read “Metamorphosis,” and I was vaguely intrigued and repelled by the story. I went on a “Kafka binge,” reading one book after the other; and then I stopped reading Kafka for many years.

           For college age students, Kafka has a particular appeal. He is original, surprising; he doesn’t follow conventional patterns. His loneliness and alienation, his frustration with the “establishment,” his desire for personal greatness—these qualities resonate in the minds and souls of young aspiring thinkers and writers.  

           But then I came back to Kafka’s books much later in life, when I was well into “middle age.” Surprisingly, I found that Kafka still spoke to me clearly, powerfully, cogently. When I read his novels, I found myself laughing out loud at some of the absurd scenes; but I also found myself shaking within at the pathos, the dread.

           And now, as a man in my late 70s, I still read Kafka and find him powerful and pertinent. The world hasn’t improved much, if at all, from the time that Kafka was writing his ominous stories. He continues to be a prophetic voice. If only humanity would listen!

References

Amerika, Schocken Books, New York, 2008.

The Castle, Schocken Books, New York, 1974

The Diaries of Franz Kafka, 1910-1913, ed. Max Brod, Schocken Books, New York, 1965.

The Diaries of Franz Kafka, 1914-1923, ed. Max Brod, Schocken Books, New York, 1965.

Franz Kafka, Letters to Felice, ed. Erich Heller and Jurgen, Schocken Books, New York, 2016.

Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena, ed. Philip Boehm, Schocken Books, New York, 1990.

The Great Wall of China, Schocken Books, New York, 1970.

The Trial, Schocken Books, News York, 1998.

Balint, Benjamin, Kafka’s Last Trial, W. W. Norton Company, New York, 2019.

Brod, Max, Franz Kafka, A Biography, Da Capo Press, New York, 1995.

Janouch, Gustav, Conversations with Kafka, New Directions Books, New York, 2012.

My path to Orthodoxy was unorthodox, and that has made all the difference, I think, in what I hope for and expect as part of Orthodox Jewry.

I was the child of an American-born mother from a religious home and an immigrant father whose family had fled the pogroms of the Ukraine in the early 1900s. While my mother’s father was a devout Jew from Poland who took up house painting as a profession when he realized most other jobs in New York would force him to work on the Sabbath, my father’s father was a colonel in the Russian army and a boxing champion. I don’t remember anything remotely religious about our household except for my mother lighting candles Friday night. But when I turned six, our lives underwent a traumatic change when my dear father, z’l, tragically died following a short illness.

Stranded in a low-income housing project in the Rockaways filled with welfare recipients, my widowed mother wanted desperately to get my 12-year-old brother out of the neighborhood’s delinquency-prone junior high school. Taking the bus to affluent Jewish Far Rockaway, she invaded the offices of the director of the Hebrew Institute of Long Island—an expensive Orthodox Jewish Day School housed in former summer mansions by the sea—demanding they take in her eldest.

According to family legend, she was asked to pay a five-dollar fee for an IQ test. Only after she’d paid, did they explain that if admitted, my brother (who didn’t know any Hebrew) would be placed in first grade for religious studies and seventh grade for secular studies. I vaguely remember my brother’s explosive reaction to this offer, which sent my mother scurrying back to request the return of her five dollars. It was non-refundable, they told her, but perhaps you have another child…?

As my younger brother was barely three, I was the only, obvious, candidate.
At the time, I was in first grade, happily enrolled in multi-racial P.S.92, envious of my Catholic classmates who were allowed to leave school once a week with the nuns for religious instruction. It seemed exotic, and most of all, it got them out of class.
To take advantage of the scholarship being offered, my mother switched me.

I wasn’t happy.

Still in the throes of my young life’s transition from peanut butter and jelly into the drama and heartache of longing for my lost father, I struggled with the long school day, the double program, the strange letters of a language written backwards I felt as an American I didn’t, and would never, have any use for. But slowly, I began to see things differently.

Invited to my classmates’ homes for the weekend, I was entranced by the rituals of Shabbat: the lovely set table, the chilled wine in silver cups, the father at the head blessing his children, the mother at ease praised by Eshet Hayyil, in charge of a smoothly-running household, so unlike my own. The songs, the preparation for the holidays began to enchant me. I stopped watching cartoons all day Saturday, taking the long walk to a synagogue in middle-class Arverne, enchanted by the silver Torah chalices, the velvet ark cover embroidered in gold thread, the stained-glass windows, the glowing wooden pews, all of which fired a lonely, dreamy child’s vivid imagination.

But there was no instant decision to become religious. My mother was not pushing me in any direction. The school didn’t demand proof of Sabbath observance (and if they had, I would have been expelled). I took it all in, but at arm’s length and at my own pace.

Finding Orthodoxy and accepting it upon myself was a totally independent decision that took many years. I was at least 13 when a new teacher entered my life. He was a Hareidi rabbi from Jerusalem, very thin, with a wispy beard and a thick accent when he spoke English or even Hebrew for that matter. The girls, myself included, thought he was a riot. He was teaching us Humash. One day, though, he began teaching us Parashat Mishpatim. “You shall not mistreat any widow or orphan. If you mistreat them, I will heed their outcry as soon as they cry out to me, and my anger shall blaze forth and I will put you to the sword and your own wives will be widows and your children orphans.”
To a fatherless orphan who daily witnessed her widowed mother’s struggles, the words resonated so deeply that I took another look at religion. Religion then was the practice of goodness toward others, especially the unfortunate, people I knew a great deal about. The poor, the orphaned, the widowed, the stranger, the convert. My path to Orthodoxy started with this. From this small road sign, I followed a path that led me to a sincere love of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of compassion and justice. Eventually, this led me to Orthodoxy, a place which I believed housed a sincere dedication to pleasing this God I loved by doing His bidding as outlined in His Torah, both oral and written.

My moment of truth came when I was invited to the wedding of one of my cousins in far-off Pennsylvania. My aunts—my father’s sisters—offered to take me with them to the celebration. On Saturday, they picked me up in their car and drove. On the way, we stopped at a Howard Johnson for lunch. My aunt ordered lobster. I remember distinctly how she cracked it open and speared the white meat with her fork, dipping it into melted butter. Then she dangled it in front of me. “Try it. It’s delicious,” she cajoled. As I recoiled, she laughed. It was then I realized that I was not, and would never be, like her. Without even realizing it, I had passed over into Orthodoxy.

From then on, I never desecrated the Sabbath again. In fact, I did everything I could to turn our home into the home of my classmates. Taking the shopping cart, I walked to the kosher butcher and bakery every Friday while my mother was at work, getting her instructions over the phone on how to prepare chicken soup. When she arrived home minutes before candle-lighting, the table was set, the meal prepared. But before I allowed the meal to begin, I insisted someone make Kiddush. I am sure my sudden, bossy enthusiasm rubbed my elder brother the wrong way, but I persisted (and he eventually also became Orthodox, sending his kids to the same school he’d refused to go to).

I cleaned for Passover, and readied the house for the New Year. At school, I was more and more serious about my religious studies, and by the time I graduated at 18, I was fully committed to becoming the most religious person I could be: everything the Torah was asking of me, I would happily do, out of love for God, who in many ways had replaced my earthly father, becoming part of everything I did, or thought, or hoped to achieve.

I applied to college, but also looked around for a Jewish studies program so that my knowledge would grow equally in both spheres. I wound up at the Sara Schneirer Hebrew Teachers Seminary in Borough Park run by the esteemed Rabbi Bulman, z”l, who was familiar to me from his lectures as a rabbi of the Young Israel of Far Rockaway along with those of my own beloved Rabbi Chait, z”l,the rabbi of the Young Israel of Wavecrest and Bayswater.

Going to college during the day, I attended Seminary at night. It wasn’t easy. In order to manage, I had to rent a room in Borough Park because there was no way I could travel home to Rockaway so late at night. One of my teachers, a devout Hassidic rav from Mea Shearim, offered me a room in his home at the going rate. I agreed, moving in. But halfway through the year, he suddenly asked me to pay a higher sum. He’d expected to house several students in the room I was using, he explained, but none had appeared. For the pittance I was paying, they preferred to have their room back. I told them that unfortunately I couldn’t afford to pay more.

Soon afterward, the rav’s daughter knocked on my door holding a pile of papers. She told me her father was working on a book and asked me if I could type up these pages. At the time, I was working two challenging academic programs in addition to paying my own expenses, including rent, through a work-study program.

But what could I say? He was my teacher, a respected rav who I saw getting up every morning at 5:00 to study Talmud. I took the papers. In addition to typing, the manuscript needed major, time-consuming editing to turn it into proper English. Finally, I handed over the work. Instead of a thank you, the next day, the daughter returned with another pile, making me feel like that girl in the fairy tale who has to spin an endless supply of straw into gold. Taking a deep breath, I handed the papers back to her, explaining that I just didn’t have time.

The next day I was asked to leave.

It was too late in the term to find another apartment. It meant I would have to leave the Seminary, which I did, going back home. Eventually, to his credit, the rav must have realized this, calling me to apologize and to offer me my room back at the old price. At that point, though, my hurt feelings and disappointment wouldn’t allow me to accept.

This was my first, but certainly not my last, encounter with the harsh reality of the ideals of Orthodoxy clashing with the behavior of people who, at least outwardly, seemed to be living a sincerely Orthodox lifestyle. It was a sad lesson, I thought, but one I didn’t allow to dampen my desire to live a totally committed Jewish life as I had always understood it from the rabbis and teachers who had been my religious mentors for so many years. I chalked it up as a strange anomaly.

Soon after I met my husband, a yeshiva high school graduate. Our decision to make aliya after marrying was a religious one based on “lekh lekha me-artsekha.” Neither of us had ever been to Israel, but we didn’t want to be like the spies sent out by Moshe to scout the land. Whatever we would find there, we told ourselves, we would learn to love.

We did.

At the time I was wearing a wig, and my husband had grown a beard. We wanted very much to be part of the Hareidi world, considering it the most sincere expression of religious devotion. We moved into Jewish Agency housing set aside for religious olim in Sanhedria Hamurhevet in Northern Jerusalem. I became friends with my neighbor, a young Hareidi rebbitzen from Williamsburg—let’s call her Shaindee—with six small children. A few months into the year, Shaindee came to me with a shocking request: She needed help getting a passport. Her husband had taken hers away. He was not working, and he was beating her and the children. She needed to escape.

The concept of domestic abuse among those presenting themselves as the ultimate in God-fearing Jewry sent me reeling with profound shock. How could such a thing be possible?! It went against everything I thought being a religious Jew was about. This, too, I branded an anomaly.

But a few years later, in another Jerusalem neighborhood, another neighbor, a Hareidi rebbetzin, jumped out of a Tel Aviv hotel window from the 23rd floor, clasping her three year- old daughter in her arms, killing them both. She was my neighbor, and the child—a little blonde angel— had attended gan with my son.

The words of the song “Blowin’ in the Wind” went through my head: “How many times can a man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn’t see?”

Through my shock, and horror and tears, I investigated. This, too, was an abused woman married to a sexual deviant guilty of both wife and child abuse presenting himself as a tzadik and an illuy. Years later, I met the aunt of his second wife—an 18-year-old rabbi’s daughter from Lakewood—who would later divorce him, saying: “This time, you’re going to jump, not me.” But at the time of his first wife’s suicide, many of the religious people in our neighborhood expressed sympathy for him, painting the tragedy as the insane actions of a mentally ill girl he’d been saddled with by her devious, wealthy parents.

My decision to turn this story into a novel was truly based on the idea that religious Jews simply didn’t understand that there was a problem with domestic abuse in the religious world. I would enlighten them, thereby winning their gratitude and spurring them on to make vast changes in line with the Torah that would prevent these things from ever happening again….

The personal vilification I suffered (and continue to suffer) following the publication of Jephte’s Daughter and the two books that followed, all novels based on true stories in the Hareidi world, has left me older, wiser, and sadder, but no less committed to Orthodoxy as it was taught to me by the lovely families that invited me into their homes as a child, and the wonderful rabbis and rebbitzins who transferred to me their knowledge of Torah, Prophets, Jewish law, Jewish history, and Jewish custom.

It has not been easy.

In the half-century since I entered the world of Orthodox Jewry, that world has undergone wide-ranging and cataclysmic changes, no less than those imposed on tradition by the Reform and Conservative movements. But unlike Reform and Conservative Jewry, the changes in Orthodoxy have struck at its deepest heart, the core of meaning from Orthodox life as it was taught to me and which I decided to follow so many years ago.

Take “daas Torah,” for example, a brand new concept that gives rabbis license to abrogate every interpersonal law in the actual Torah, including allowing people to pursue venal agendas with backstabbing gossip, destroying the livelihood and reputations of those who disagree them. A very small and recent example is the story of the young girl from Satmar who had the temerity to ask for justice from a religious “counselor” who had sexually abused her from the age of twelve. The Satmar community, with the support of its rabbinic authority, supported the counselor, even after a court convicted him on all counts. After the verdict, the “rebbe” went out of his way to publicly and with great fanfare place a mezuzah on the doorpost of a new business openly competing with that of the victim’s father, thereby attempting to ruin the man’s livelihood.

This disappointment in weak, cowardly rabbinic leadership is unfortunately supported by many such examples, the most extreme, perhaps being the inability (or lack of desire?) of Orthodox rabbinic leadership to solve the problem of the extortion of women by their husbands during divorce.

While rabbinic authorities of the past have had no problem in finding ways around laws specifically written in the Torah including not having bread in the house on Pessah (we sell our hametz to a non-Jew) or taking interest on loans (there is the prosbul), when it comes to annulling a marriage contracted under false terms (the husband turns out to be a homosexual, sexual deviant, wife-beater, and so forth, all information hidden from the woman, who would never have contracted such a marriage) apparently no solution can be found. The extortion of women rightfully seeking divorce in Rabbinic Courts, even when the dayyanim agree with her and demand the husband to comply, continues on a daily basis all over the world.

Attempts by sincere, well-meaning rabbis to circumvent the problem with prenuptial agreements have also been thwarted by the lack of agreement and will among Orthodox rabbis to insist it become a normal part of every marriage ritual, thus shifting the responsibility to the young couple and their families, who are often too embarrassed to bring the matter up. Surely an abused wife or an aguna is as vulnerable as any widow or convert or orphan, and thus coming to her aid is in the deepest spirit of the Torah. That a permanent halakhic solution to these problems continues to elude rabbinic authorities strikes at the heart of the Torah’s message to us. In the same vein, this disregard for human suffering, for justice, for the feelings of others can be seen in the outrageous decisions by Israeli rabbinical courts in cancelling conversions. Can there be any worse way to oppress a convert than declaring their marriages illegal, their children not Jewish?

Unfortunately, the rise of these injustices has been concurrent with the increasing power of Hareidim over Rabbinic Courts in Israel, which have displayed a disregard for women’s rights and the rights of the convert. A small example of the former: The woman, about whom I wrote the play Women’s Minyan was issued a restraining order by the Jerusalem Rabbinic Court after her divorce from a philandering husband which prevented her from seeing her 12 children. No reason was given. No permanent custody decision was ever reached. To this day, 13 years later, the Court, despite repeated requests, has never reached such a decision, nor has it insisted at the very least that the husband allow visitation. The damage can never be undone.

Further damage to the core values of Orthodox values has crept in over the last few decades with the rise of practices that can only be described as magic and superstition. Despite all that is written in the Torah against witchcraft and idolatry, the popularity of red strings, the rituals of throwing candles into fires, written and spoken kabbalistic incantations have become commonplace practices which few Orthodox rabbis have had the courage to strongly and publicly condemn. In line with this, visiting the graves of Jewish saints and asking them to intercede on our behalf with God (or for that matter, visiting a living kabbala master or “saint” and asking him for the same) surely reeks of idolatry in its most basic sense, i.e. the setting up of an intermediary between oneself and God? Yet, those practices, too—once solely the custom of Christians and Muslims—have become ingrained in Orthodoxy despite tepid rabbinic protests voiced over the years. The public disgrace of Chabad declaring their rebbe to be the Messiah who was going to rise again after his death was also swept under the carpet after some raised eyebrows.

But one of the most radical veering from Jewish law and tradition that has created the deepest and most hateful schism within the Jewish state is the demand that yeshiva students be supported by public funds so they will not have to work, despite the fact that such a demand has no basis in Jewish law or tradition.

Au contraire.

As Maimonidies wrote hundreds of years ago: Anyone who decides to be engaged in Torah [study] and not to work, and will be supported by Tzedaka—this person desecrates God's name, degrades the Torah, extinguishes the light of our faith, brings evil upon himself and forfeits life in the World to Come; since it is forbidden to derive benefit from the words of Torah in this world. The Rabbis said (Avot 4:5): Anyone who derives benefit from the words of Torah in this world, forfeits his life in Olam haBa. They further commanded and said: (Avot 4:5) Do not make them [the words of Torah] a crown to magnify yourself or an axe with which to chop. They further commanded, saying: (Avot 1:10) Love work and despise positions of power. And: (Avot 2:2) Any Torah which is not accompanied by work will eventually be nullified and will lead to sin. Ultimately, such a person will steal from others.”

The second deepest schism is the demand of the yeshiva world that their students continue to receive an exemption from the draft. This demand, made with an arrogant sense of entitlement, has infuriated both secular and dati-leumi Jews, uniting them politically into a power base that has shut out our Hareidi brothers and sisters from Israel’s government for the first time in many years. The drafting of yeshiva students is going to happen, despite the outraged “religious” objections of the yeshiva world, and its branding of both secular and dati-leumi Jews as “amalek,” for supporting this.

Rightly so.

One has only to look at the simple wording of the Torah itself in Devarim 20: “When you take the field against your enemies…ask…is there any man who has built a new house but has not dedicated it? Let him go back to his home, lest he die in battle and another dedicate it.” Similarly, exemptions are granted “to anyone who has planted a vineyard… is engaged to be married… is afraid and disheartened.”Moreover, even these exemptions are conditional. According to the Mishnah (Sotah, 8:7) in a mandatory war (or as phrased by the Ramban, a Mitzva war) “even a groom in his room, and a bride under her canopy takes part.” Draft exemptions for learning Torah are a very, very new invention.

I have no doubt my learned Hareidi opponents can swiftly debate all these points with chapter and verse from their own rabbinic leadership. But even they must admit there is a strange irony in the introduction of all these, vast unwelcome changes in traditional Orthodoxy accompanied as they are by the rigidity in the interpretation of halakhot supported by these same rabbinical authorities.

Nowhere is this more blatant than in the Orthodox attitude toward women’s role in Jewish ritual. The desire of arguably the most vastly educated and able of Orthodox women in Jewish history for a more active role in Jewish ritual life has often been denied simply on the grounds that a woman called to the Torah “dishonors” the congregation.

Having occasionally attended an egalitarian Orthodox minyan in Modiin, in which men and women, separated by a mehitza, share in conducting the service, women and girls getting aliyot to the Torah, layning, and giving the learned Torah discourse, I can honestly say that while I still prefer the old ways, I see nothing but good in the new ways. Women learning to layn, and involving their daughters, is an excellent way to ensure mothers and wives as active synagogue members, and enthusiastic supporters of religious community life.

While mainstream Orthodox congregations are slowly adopting new rituals to include women including giving women their own Sefer Torah with which to dance on Simhat Torah and the “naming of the daughter” ceremony in which the entire family, including the mother and baby girl, stand before the entire congregation reciting prayers of thanks and haGomel and naming the child, this is not enough.

In my opinion, the ultimate solution to this conflict is to make the synagogue service more meaningful to both men and women so that women won’t feel that the only way for them to deepen their spirituality in prayer is to don a tallit and a kippah. To pray as part of a congregation that is divinely inspired toward the height of spirituality can open up one’s mind and profoundly expand one’s heart with love for the object of our prayers. How many times, however, does the experience do that? And how many times is it a futile attempt to hurry through obligations and get to Kiddush?

There is no one solution to that, but it’s something that must be on the agenda for the coming years if we are to combat the growing allure of alternative prayer services, the Breslaver howling at the moon in the forest. While Breslav doesn’t denigrate the need for a traditional prayer minyan, many of our kids who have been to the forest have found the experience paints in fine relief the emptiness of hollow mouthings to stale tunes among disinterested adults in the average Orthodox congregation.

What I would like to see in the next century for Orthodoxy is innovation whose sole purpose is a return to authenticity; a rededication to the values and spirit of the Torah that convinced me to embrace Orthodoxy in the first place.

A more authentic Orthodoxy would mean a sincere desire to return to “Do not do anything to your neighbor you would find hateful if done unto you.” Surely this would include all domestic abuse, all child abuse, all child molestation, all sexual abuse. Instead of the well- documented desire of many Orthodox rabbis and their communities to hide these offenses and these offenders, to keep them from punishment by secular authorities, there would be a general rabbinic outcry that demanded anyone with knowledge of such crimes bring the criminal to light and to justice in whatever way possible. The law of “moser” often used to excuse the whitewashing of Orthodox pedophiles in the community, would be clearly denounced.

A way must be found for the religious community in Israel to be full participants in the building and defense of the Jewish State, the beginning of our redemption, based on the words of the Torah, the Mishna and the Rambam. Does Moshe not admonish those who refuse to take possession of the land: “Will you sit back and let your brothers risk their lives?”

An authentic Jewish way must be found to recognize the modern miracles of the founding to the Jewish State and the ingathering of the exiles from the four corners of the earth. We say Hallel for Hanukah and Purim. Why not a consensus for saying it on Israel Independence day, surely equal in its miraculous intensity following as it did the most horrific destruction of our people in its long and bloody history, certainly as meaningful as that of the victory of the Maccabees or the Jews of Persia?

In the same vein of authenticity, should not there be a clearly defined halakha that commands the Jews of the Diaspora “leave their homes and their birthplace” and move to Israel? Or at the very least, visit? Should not the Orthodox Jews of Cedarhurst, Lawrence, and the Upper West Side of Manhattan be obliged by such a halakha? Not to mention the Jews of Golders Green, Lakewood, and Monsey?

A return to authenticity and the words of the Torah will only become natural when Tanakh is once again taught side by side with Talmud. In our enthusiastic desire to imbue our sons with Talmudic learning, we are forcing our sons into learning Talmud before they are intellectually or emotionally ready to embrace the profound lessons it has to impart, running the very real risk of alienating them forever from this foundation of Jewish life. All of us are witness to the alarming side effect of these educational mistakes, from boys from religious homes bailing out en masse from religious schools and life, as well as the rise of Hareidi hooligans who force women to the back of buses and throw things at little girls on their way to school, having learned none of the simple lessons of respect and humanity, kindness, and compassion for the weak I learned directly as a child so long ago from the simple words of the Tanakh.
In the wonderful book, Hakhamim, Volume One, author Rabbi Benjamin Lau describes the vast changes in Jewish practice instituted by Shimon HaTzadik necessitated by the Babylonian exile. The teaching of Torah was taken out of the hands of the Kohanim and given it to Anshei Kenesset HaGedola, theTorah was translated into Aramaic, Torah readings were instituted every three days, and the laws of muktzah were enacted to combat widespread desecration of Shabbat. If such remarkable changes were made necessary by only 70 years of exile, how many changes does the challenge of a 2,000 year exile necessitate to ensure the strength and continuity of the Jewish religion during the miraculous ingathering of the exiles that has taken place since 1948?

The time has come for a courageous, widely based consensus of truly pious rabbinical scholars to reassert their leadership in instituting halakhic changes to address the needs crying out to be met in Jewish law and custom of our own miraculous age in all walks of Orthodox life, from fairer marriage and divorce laws, to more inspiring synagogue services, to more effective religious education for both girls and boys, including pre-marital counseling which not only teaches the halakhot of taharat haMishpaha, but also how to be a loving and effective partner in building a Jewish home. This must start with moral clarity in rabbinical leadership. Politics and rabbinic leadership need to part ways, swiftly and forever.

Sadly, those modern changes that have taken place have transformed Orthodoxy into a place I must admit I never envisioned inhabiting 50 years ago when I chose to be part of that world. That shining beacon of morality, justice, compassion, and Godliness that had attracted me has been dulled by ineffective leadership, and the rise of religious dogmatists and fanatics who on the one hand have introduced, vast, inauthentic changes to Jewish practice, while on the other resist at all costs all positive, necessary change to adapt Orthodox practice to the true meaning and spirit of the Torah.

What gives me hope for the future is our past. Often in our long history, the lessons of our Torah have been forgotten by the masses, hidden from us as a nation. But they have never been extinguished.

In modern Israel, filled with the children of the miraculous ingathering of the exiles, there are now more believing Jews than almost any other time in our history. Among them, I see a new determination to fan the living embers into a new conflagration, a bright beacon, a hearth, at which every Jew filled with a sincere love of God can warm him or herself; a place in a cold and alien world that every believing Jew can truly call home.

(These excerpts are from Abraham Joshua Heschel: Essential Writings, edited by Susannah Heschel [Orbis Books: Maryknoll, NY, 2017], and are reprinted with permission.)

What Manner of Man is the Prophet?   

The prophet is a man who feels fiercely. God has thrust a burden on his soul, and he is bowed and stunned at man’s fierce greed. Frightful is the agony of man; no human voice can convey its full terror. Prophecy is the voice that God has lent to the silent agony, a voice to the plundered poor, to the profaned riches of the world. It is a form of living, a crossing point of God and man. God is raging in the prophet’s words….

Above all, the prophets remind us of the moral state of a people: Few are guilty, but all are responsible. If we admit that the individual is in some measure conditioned or affected by the spirit of society, an individual’s crime discloses society’s corruption. In a community not indifferent to suffering, uncompromisingly impatient with cruelty and falsehood, continually concerned for God and every man, crime would be infrequent rather than common.

To a person endowed with prophetic sight, everyone else appears blind; to a person whose ear perceives God’s voice, everyone else appears deaf. No one is just; no knowing is strong enough, no trust complete enough. The prophet hates the approximate; he shuns the middle of the road. Man must live on the summit to avoid the abyss. There is nothing to hold to except God. Carried away by the challenge, the demand to straighten out man’s ways, the prophet is strange, one-sided, an unbearable extremist.

Others may suffer from the terror of cosmic aloneness; the prophet is overwhelmed by the grandeur of divine presence. He is incapable of isolating the world. There is an interaction between man and God, which to disregard is an act of insolence. Isolation is a fairy tale.

Where an idea is the father of faith, faith must conform to the ideas of the given system. In the Bible the realness of God came first, and the task was how to live in a way compatible with His presence. Man’s coexistence with God determines the course of history.

The prophet disdains those for whom God’s presence is comfort and security; to him it is a challenge, an incessant demand. God is compassion, not compromise; justice, though not inclemency. The prophet’s predictions can always be proved wrong by a change in man’s conduct, but never the certainty that God is full of compassion.

The prophet’s word is a scream in the night. While the world is at ease and asleep, the prophet feels the blast from heaven.

The prophet faces a coalition of callousness and established authority and undertakes to stop a mighty stream with mere words. Had the purpose been to express great ideas, prophecy would have had to be acclaimed as a triumph. Yet the purpose of prophecy is to conquer callousness, to change the inner man as well as to revolutionize history.

It is embarrassing to be a prophet. There are so many pretenders, predicting peace and prosperity, offering cheerful words, adding strength to self-reliance, while the prophet predicts disaster, pestilence, agony, and destruction. People need exhortations to courage, endurance, confidence, fighting spirit, but Jeremiah proclaims: You are about to die if you do not have a change of heart and cease being callous to the word of God. He sends shudders over the whole city, at a time when the will to fight is most important.

By the standards of ancient religions, the great prophets were rather unimpressive. The paraphernalia of nimbus and evidence, such as miracles, were not at their disposal….

The words the prophet utters are not offered as souvenirs. His speech to the people is not a reminiscence, a report, hearsay. The prophet not only conveys; he reveals. He almost does unto others what God does unto him. In speaking, the prophet reveals God. This is the marvel of a prophet’s work; in his words, the invisible God becomes audible. He does not prove or argue. The thought he has to convey is more than language can contain. Divine power bursts in his words. The authority of the prophet is in the Presence his words reveal.

There are no proofs for the existence of the God of Abraham. There are only witnesses. The greatness of the prophet lies not only in the ideas he expressed, but also in the moments he experienced. The prophet is a witness, and his words a testimony—to His power and judgment, to His justice and mercy.

What Is Sin?

What is a sin? The abuse of freedom. A failure in depth, failure to respond to God’s challenge.

The root of sin is callousness, hardness of heart, lack of understanding what is at stake in being alive.

Not ultimate, irreducible condition, but disturbance in relationship between God and man.

There is an evil which most of us condone and are even guilty of: indifference to evil.

We remain neutral, impartial, and not easily moved by the wrongs done unto other people.

Indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself; it is more universal, more contagious, more dangerous.

A silent justification, it makes possible an evil erupting as an exception becoming the rule and being in turn accepted.

The knowledge of evil is something which the first man acquired; it was not something that the prophets had to discover. Their great contribution to humanity was the discovery of the evil of indifference. One may be decent and sinister, pious and sinful. I am my brother’s keeper.

The prophet is a person who suffers the harm done to others.

Wherever a crime is committed, it is as if the prophet were the victim and the prey. The prophet’s angry words cry. The wrath of God is a lamentation.

All prophecy is one great exclamation: God is not indifferent to evil!

God is always concerned, He is personally affected by what man does to man. He is a God of pathos. This is one of the meanings of the anger of God: the end of indifference!

The message of wrath is frightful, indeed. But for those who have been driven to the brink of despair by the sight of what malice and ruthlessness can do, comfort will be found in the thought that evil is not the end, that evil is never the climax of history. This is the most vexing question in a world where the righteous suffer and the wicked prosper: Does God condone? Does God care for right and wrong? If the agony of man were a form of serenity, a mild assertion – a word of divine commiseration, a word of reprobation – would have been adequate. To a generation afflicted by the fury of cruel men, by the outrage of abandoning God, no condemnation is too harrowing.

Man’s sense of injustice is a poor analogy to God’s sense of injustice. The exploitation of the poor is to us a misdemeanor; to God, it is a disaster. Our reaction is disapproval, God’s reaction is something no language can convey.

Man is what he thinks. Man dwells where his mind dwells. Intellectually irrelevant is imprisoned in Temples, has no access to the minds.

We repeat clichés; we remember platitudes.

God is presented to us as a comfort, not a challenge, a rumor, as if it is nice to have Him around. But God means defiance, rejection, as well as affirmation.

We have relinquished our role as educators. We surrender, we abandon, we desert, and we forget.

Although Jews have faced anti-Semitism from time immemorial, it always comes upon us as something new. It surprises us. We don’t understand it.

We strive to be good people, good citizens; we are kind hearted and generous. We devote ourselves to the education of our children, to the betterment of society, to justice and compassion. We have our share of faults along with all other human beings; but by and large, we are a good, responsible, hard-working community.

And yet, no matter what we do, people hate us! They don’t see us as individual human beings but as a vast stereotype. They don’t care if we are religious or not religious; if we are liberals or conservatives. If we are Jewish, they are against us and want to hurt us.

It was once thought that the establishment of the State of Israel would bring anti-Semitism to an end. After all, Jews would then have a feeling of security in the world, a safe haven where no one would bother us.

But the Jewish State has simply become a new target for the anti-Semites. They now couch Jew-hatred for hatred of “the Zionists.” Anti-Semites don’t have a problem with Hamas firing thousands of missiles at civilian centers in Israel; but when Israel responds by bombing the enemy, Israel is immediately condemned and vilified by the haters. For the anti-Semites, Israel is always wrong regardless of what it does or doesn't do.

Happily, there are many millions of people who feel warmly toward Jews and the Jewish State. Happily, many millions of people admire the accomplishments of the State of Israel in the face of so many obstacles; they respect Israel’s right—and obligation—to defend its citizens.

But when we see outbreaks of blatant anti-Jewish violence, anti-Jewish rhetoric, anti-Israel demonization—it surprises and pains us!  In spite of thousands of years dealing with anti-Jewish hatred and persecution, we still are not used to it. We somehow think that humanity will improve, will judge us fairly. We grow optimistic at any sign of peace and understanding, mutual cooperation and solidarity.

We keep telling ourselves that most people are good and that reason will ultimately prevail. The haters will eventually overcome malice and violence; they will realize the value of peaceful and respectful cooperation. In a world of over seven billion human beings, surely there must be room for the infinitesimal presence of 15 million Jews. In a world with so many countries, surely there must be room for one tiny Jewish State that wants nothing more than to be able to live in peace and security.

But the anti-Semites and anti-Zionists don’t really care. They don’t want to be reasoned with; they don’t want to listen. They have their agenda of hate.

Saul Bellow, the American novelist who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1976, wrote in his book To Jerusalem and Back: A Personal Account: “…There is one fact of Jewish life unchanged by the creation of a Jewish state: you cannot take your right to live for granted. Others can; you cannot. This is not to say that everyone else is living pleasantly and well under a decent regime. No, it means only that the Jews, because they are Jews, have never been able to take the right to live as a natural right….This right is still clearly not granted them, not even in the liberal West.”

Bellow’s complaint is not new. Jews throughout the generations have had to face the same stark reality: Jews, because they are Jews, cannot take the right to live as a natural right.

That’s the sad part of the story.

But that’s not the end of the story. Even if there has long been hatred and violence directed against Jews…we are still here! We continue to live, to thrive, to hope.

The late Jewish thinker, Simon Rawidowicz, wrote an essay about “Israel: the Ever-Dying People.” He noted that Jews have often felt that theirs was the last Jewish generation. Jewish survival seemed hopeless. But although we were “ever-dying,” we were in fact ever-living! We often felt despair; but hope and persistence prevailed. Jews found ways to overcome all who would decimate us.

Although current manifestations of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism are ugly and painful, we must take the long view of things. This isn’t the first period of Jewish history where Jews faced viciousness and violence. It likely won’t be the last period either. But long experience has taught us to stay strong, stay confident, stay positive. The challenge to our generation is to stand tall as Jews, to stand strong on behalf of Israel.

And we do look forward to a time when humanity will overcome the disease of anti-Semitism.  Meanwhile, we recall the words of Rav Nahman of Bratslav: All the world is a narrow bridge; the essential thing is not to be afraid, not to be afraid at all.