Rabbi Dr. David de Sola Pool (May 16, 1885-December 1, 1970) was the foremost Sephardic rabbi in the United States during the middle decades of the 20th century. Born and raised in London, he came to New York in 1907 to become assistant rabbi to his relative, Dr. Henry Pereira Mendes, at the historic Congregation Shearith Israel, the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue. Dr. Pool was associated with Shearith Israel for the duration of his life, except for three years that he spent in the land of Israel 1919-1922. In 1917 he married Tamar Hirshenson; they had two children, Ithiel and Naomi. [1]

His childhood spiritual home was the Mildmay Park Synagogue, a branch of the Bevis Marks Synagogue. The de Sola family traced itself back to Sephardim of medieval Spain, and included illustrious rabbis and spiritual leaders over the course of the generations. The Pool family had been active in the Spanish and Portuguese synagogue of London, David’s father having been a leader in the Mildmay Park Synagogue and his grandfather having served as President of the Bevis Marks Synagogue.

David Pool graduated from University College of the University of London with first class honors in classics and humanities. He pursued rabbinic studies at Jews College. He later attended the Rabbinic Seminary in Berlin as well as earning a Ph.D. summa cum laude from Heidelberg University. His doctoral dissertation, The Kaddish, was published in 1908.

Upon his arrival in New York, he not only served his congregation but became active in the wider community. He was an outspoken activist on behalf of the newly arriving Sephardic immigrants from Turkey, the Balkans, Greece and Syria. He was elected President of the New York Board of Rabbis in 1916. He was field organizer and director of army camp work for the Jewish Welfare Board (1917-18). In 1920-21, he was regional director for Palestine and Syria on behalf of the Joint Distribution Committee. During 1938-1940, he was President of the Synagogue Council of America; in 1955 he was elected President of the American Jewish Historical Society. He was a member of the National Youth Administration under President Franklin D. Roosevelt. During World War II, he worked with the Jewish Welfare Board in providing chaplaincy services to Jewish military personnel.

Aside from his communal involvements, Dr. Pool was a prolific author. He translated and edited the Sephardic Prayer Books for the Union of Sephardic Congregations (which he founded in 1928.) He translated and edited the Ashkenazic Prayer Book under the auspices of the Rabbinical Council of America. He published books and articles on various facets of Jewish history, philosophy and religious outlook. If ever the American Jewish community could boast of an extraordinary rabbi who combined the talents of a congregational rabbi, the social activism of a genuine idealist, the eloquent advocacy of a Zionist partisan and the calm, deep writings of a fine scholar—that rabbi was David de Sola Pool. That this rabbi was Orthodox made him more unique. That this rabbi was Sephardic made him absolutely unique for his time and place. When he died in 1970, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency published an obituary (December 3, 1970) appropriately captioned: “Rabbi Dr. David de Sola Pool, World Leader in Judaism, Dies at 85.”

During the course of his lifetime, Dr. Pool was highly respected—but often from a distance, as though he were on a pedestal. He was the epitome of dignity and gravitas, with the air of a nobleman. People looked up to him, admired him, even revered him. He was a master of the bon mot; he had a wry sense of humor; he spoke with a beautifully resonant voice and a distinctive English accent.

Although Dr. Pool was actively engaged in so many communal and scholarly endeavors, he was always something of an “outsider,” a person not fully understood or appreciated by the public. In some profound sense, he was “a lonely man of faith.” To Ashkenazim, he was Sephardic. To Sephardim—most of whom came from Muslim lands—Dr. Pool was a Western Sephardi, not really “one of us.” To the Orthodox, he seemed a bit too refined, acculturated and universal. To the non-Orthodox, he was too Orthodox! To rabbis, Dr. Pool was a scholar and gentleman. To scholars, Rabbi Pool was a rabbi, not an academic. To Zionists, Dr. Pool was surely an enthusiast, but was too genteel, too high-brow, too unwilling to get involved in political battles. To non-Zionists, Dr. Pool was an unapologetic Jewish nationalist. To Talmudists, Dr. Pool was a Bible scholar. To Bible scholars, Rabbi Pool was an Orthodox rabbi with an Orthodox agenda.

Dr. Pool, thus, has remained something of an enigma. While scholars can list his many accomplishments and publications, the distinctive religious worldview that animated Dr. Pool’s life has remained relatively unexplored. This article will examine basic themes in Dr. Pool’s thinking, so that his unique contributions—and failures—might be better understood.

The Western Sephardic Tradition:

In his spiritual autobiography, Dr. Pool recalled the serenity of his youth growing up in the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish community of London. “The environment in which I lived was quiet and simple….No anti-Semitism, no migration, no undue struggle, no harsh change of fortune, no world war, marred the even tenor of the home in which I grew up.”[2] His synagogue experience was warm and meaningful. He participated actively in the services and learned the prayers and melodies with enthusiasm. “My own religious experience was happy, integrated, natural and fulfilling….Except on the New Year and the Day of Atonement, my religion did not stress that I was the victim of sin.” [3]

He was part of a family and a community that valued religious tradition as well as general education. Living in London among educated and prosperous Sephardim, David Pool had a privileged childhood that offered him opportunities not available to many young Jews growing up in Muslim lands or in Eastern Europe.

The Spanish and Portuguese Jewish community of London was a bastion of the Western Sephardic tradition. This culture had emerged among conversos, Jews who had been converted to Catholicism in medieval Iberia but who later returned to Judaism in such places as Amsterdam, London, Paris and other cities in Western Europe. Western Sephardic communities were characterized by a strong sense of personal and family pride, intellectualism, aesthetics, dignity, and social graces. Their synagogues were beautiful and well maintained. Synagogue services were highly decorous and orderly. Western Sephardim were quick to learn the languages, styles and mannerisms of the lands in which they lived.

David Pool imbued the values of the Western Sephardic tradition—a deep commitment to Jewish religious tradition; intellectual openness; involvement in the wellbeing of society. In summarizing Dr. Pool’s worldview, Dr. Nima Adlerblum (Dr. Pool’s sister-in-law) wrote: “His is not an Orthodoxy enclosed within four opaque walls. It is that of our ancient sages, which stretches into the wide horizon and carries its wholeness and holiness into an open world. It encompasses life in its entirety.” [4]

The Bible:

The bedrock of Dr. Pool’s religious worldview was the Hebrew Bible. From his youth, he studied its words, learned its grammar, and memorized many of its passages. As a young rabbi, he published a pamphlet, “How to Tell Bible Stories to Children.” [5] He began with the principle: “All religious teaching must have an underlying spiritual basis…It should never be forgotten that the Bible is the basis of our Jewish religion and life; therefore for us, it is different from all other literatures, classical myths, old legends, or tales from Chaucer and Shakespeare. This difference should be made a fundamental and determining feature of the treatment of the Bible stories.”[6] In telling Bible stories to children, the goal is to make them feel connected to the Biblical characters. Children should learn to take pride in their Biblical ancestors. “The purpose of the Bible story is to train up good Jews, not to train for examinations or to rear Bible experts. Not the ability to pass an examination, but ‘The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.’” [7] When teaching older children the lessons of our Prophets, it must be made clear that the prophets’ words are “inspired religious teaching on the immediate problems of the day. They must realize that the Prophets were real people, with a definite historical message and background. The prophets must be made to live for them, and not remain unattainable, saintly shadows. The burden of their social and religious teaching should be translated into modern terms.” [8]

Throughout his life, Dr. Pool stressed the beauty, the righteousness and the spiritual power of the Bible. Writing late in his career, he noted: “For Moses, religion was the very opposite of an opiate for the masses. It was shot through with revolutionary and far-visioned practical measures looking toward emancipation from miseries born of indigence, crushing toil, slavery, and the eclipse of hope.” He then cited biblical passages that taught morality and righteousness, and concluded that “this social definition of religion, first recorded by Moses, became the world’s primary motive power working for mankind’s life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”[9] Dr. Pool noted that “the summons of the Bible is less a call to believe in dogmas than it is a command to know, understand, and act.”[10]

In a sermon delivered on May 5, 1962, Dr. Pool reminded his congregation that “it is not easy, we know, to attain the high standards of righteous living which the Biblical law and the practices of Judaism aim to inculcate. But in the measure that we invest our conduct with the idea of holiness, we raise life to a spiritual level.”[11]

The theme of social justice, as derived from the Bible, pervaded Dr. Pool’s teachings—and his actions. In 1918, he participated in Food Conservation Day, an event sponsored by the United States Food Administration to promote sensible use of food resources and to discourage wastefulness. Dr. Pool prepared sermonic materials to be utilized by rabbis throughout the country on the first day of Succoth. Characteristically, he began with a reference to the Bible: “The Psalmist proclaims that it is God who in His eternal love gives food to all living.” He went on to stress human responsibility for equitable distribution of food so that all people have access to a proper diet. He lamented “the heartless extortion of exorbitant profits by food gambling, by monopolizing some part of the food supply, or by storing away needed foods until a time of scarcity and rising prices” and praised the government’s U.S. Food Administration for doing “noble work of fine democracy, and one that furthers the purposes of God, who giveth food to all flesh, because His love endureth forever.”[12]

In his address at the closing dinner of the Tercentenary Celebration of Congregation Shearith Israel, April 26, 1955, Dr. Pool reminded his audience: “Our religion, Judaism, seeks salvation for all mankind. The emphasis of our Bible is on social justice for all rather than on the mystic quest of salvation for the individual.” [13]

The Bible, through its ethical teachings and its commandments, was the source of Jewish survival. In a sermon he delivered on September 30, 1916, he spoke of “the unchanging Law.” While non-Jews are puzzled by Jewish continuity over the centuries, Jews themselves know that “our survival is the necessary outcome of our Law. The real miracle is this instrument of our persistence—the Law.” As long as Jews are faithful to the Torah and its commandments, they have the blessing of endurance. But once Jews are lax in their commitment to Torah and its commandments, they invariably disappear from Jewish history. “No fact emerges more clearly from our history than this—that observance of the Torah, and this alone, has preserved us as Jews, while disregard of the Torah has rapidly induced the Jewish ruin of those who neglected it.” [14]

Dr. Pool emphasized the importance of both the ethical and ritual teachings of Torah. In a sermon he delivered on December 1, 1962, he underscored the vital role of ritual observance. “Only loyalty to the Torah can preserve the Jew and his sorely needed message for the world. Where we have forgotten our Hebrew, where we have unbuckled the defensive armor of our Sabbath, where we have disregarded our own festivals and holy days, and neglected the dietary laws and the other distinctive ceremonies and rites which ensure the preservation of Jewish individuality, the giving up of these time-tested and time-hallowed defenses has meant our eventual surrender to the forces of obliteration. Observance of the traditional Jewish Torah has been our life and the length of our days.” [15]

Dr. Pool’s consistent and unflinching stress on ritual observance put him at odds with non-Orthodox Jewish movements. He believed that watering down or eliminating traditional religious practice was destructive of Judaism and the ongoing vitality of the Jewish people. Yet, although he was so clearly devoted to Orthodox religious practice, he maintained cordial and harmonious relationships with non-Orthodox Jews and non-Orthodox leaders. Indeed, he felt it was essential for Orthodox Jews to relate to all other Jews as members of one great family.

For Dr. Pool, the Bible provided a religious worldview as well as a practical guide to righteous living. In his Baccalaureate Address at Brandeis University, June 8, 1957, he called on students to maintain a vision “inspired primarily by faith in God and in man….Intellectual learning alone cannot be a sufficient guide through life. But in the measure that your knowledge is linked with self-conscious moral and religious aspiration will it gain in meaning and helpful service to your fellow men. Your academic degree must be the symbol of an enlightened purpose in life.” [16]

Dr. Pool spoke and wrote abundantly on Biblical themes and Bible-based religion and spirituality. Yet, he rarely spoke or wrote on Talmudic/halakhic themes, except in a very general way. While he drew on Talmudic stories and parables, he did not engage in serious Talmudic dialectics nor did he see himself as a halakhic luminary. Unlike most other Orthodox rabbis, he did not derive his spiritual worldview or vision from the Talmud.

Prayer and the Synagogue:

On the occasion of his 75th birthday, Dr. Pool addressed the annual dinner of Shearith Israel’s Men’s Club. His talk was entitled, “The Meaning of Prayer.” He articulated ideas that had been with him since his early childhood and throughout his rabbinic career. “Our synagogue services express ecstatic praise of God as the infinite ideal that we should ever hold consciously before us…..Our prayer expresses the searching of our own soul….It inspires and strengthens resolve. It encourages the will and the power to do and achieve….Jewish prayer is not an exercise in self-castigation or apologetics. It is a joyous spiritual exercise. It is marked by an all-pervading and radiant optimism….It maintains an unyielding faith in the basic goodness of our soul. A somber note is seldom heard. This marks the ministry of a rabbi with sustained happiness. We are always looking for a tomorrow that shall be better than today.” [17]

Prayer is a manifestation of intimacy between the worshiper and God and should reflect a spiritual serenity and dignity. “Man must feel that his praying brings him into God’s presence….Devotional warmth, inspiration and ecstasy must not lead to irrationalism and to deviations into nebulous paths of excessive emotion or unrealistic mysticism.” [18] The key to proper prayer is reverence, a sense of holiness.

Dr. Pool’s experience of synagogue prayer, from childhood and through his old age, was primarily in the context of Spanish and Portuguese tradition. This tradition fostered decorum, orderliness, aesthetics and dignity. Spanish and Portuguese synagogue buildings were characterized by a fine aesthetic sense; they were kept neat and clean. Prayer services were intoned with reverence by the Hazan or the Rabbi, with ongoing participation of the congregation. In his sermon on October 25, 1910, the young Dr. Pool reminded congregants of his historic congregation that “the Jews of America look to us to learn how Orthodox Judaism, traditional Judaism, can and should be beautiful and attractive. The beauty of our synagogue building is inspirational. The spiritual beauty of our liturgy is of the loftiest. The devotional beauty of our music is soul stirring, and we must show the example to those around us of the religious beauty of congregational worship.”[19] Dr. Pool believed that the synagogue is a haven from the strident pressures of civilization. It is the place “to which we come for quiet meditation and spiritual contemplation.” [20]

Dr. Pool viewed the synagogue as the primary institution ensuring the continuity of Judaism and the Jewish people. While a relatively small number of Jews have found their spiritual homes in Yeshivot (Talmudic academies), the masses of Jews have turned to the synagogue as their religious domiciles. “The synagogue has been the symbol of the continuity of the Jewish people. It has been the traditional center of the distinctive Jewish culture and learning which are the abundant fruitage of the Bible. It has linked the Jew to his people by a bond stronger than that of blood and nobler than flight from anti-Semitism. The synagogue is the symbol of my Judaism and all that it means to me that I am a Jew.”[21] In a lyric passage, Dr. Pool wrote: “When I enter a synagogue I am deeply moved by the memories enshrined within it. I sense the mystic echoing of four thousand years of prayer. It is to me a living organism, the very body of the Jewish people.” [22]

Dr. Pool’s notion of synagogue prayer differed from widespread patterns within Orthodox congregations—whether Sephardic or Ashkenazic--where services often did not reflect the formality, high aesthetic taste, or quiet dignity that he advocated. In February 1943, he wrote to Dr. Samuel Nirenstein, President of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations, asking that the Union establish a Commission on the Synagogue that would establish appropriate standards for Orthodox synagogues. Among its responsibilities, this commission “should also work out standards for the conduct of services with their specific recommendations, looking towards the elimination of those unaesthetic and irreverent popular practices in Synagogue which distract so sadly from the religious services of so many Orthodox Synagogues.” [23]

In his commitment to traditionalism in prayer, Dr. Pool also differed sharply with non-traditional innovations within non-Orthodox synagogues. Writing late in his career, he took pride in the fact that his congregation “has achieved and exemplified an inspiring union between the free movement of the spirit in personal devotion, and the impressive stateliness which should mark congregational prayer.” [24]

As the most frequented institution in the Jewish community, the synagogue was not only a home of prayer but also the springboard for righteous action. With the waning of attendance at American synagogues, the essential teachings of Judaism were not reaching an important segment of the Jewish community. In his Rosh Hashanah message of September 1924, he addressed the disaffection of a growing number of Jews from synagogue attendance. “The problem of the Synagogues is not one of theology or dogma, nor even of services, ritual and liturgy. While every aspect of Synagogue activity, both religious and administrative, presents its own subsidiary problems, the essential difficulty of the Synagogues of today is found in their aloofness from the world of life.” [25] Synagogues were not to be viewed as isolated havens of religious worship but as catalysts for religiously-inspired action. Without the social justice component, synagogues become stagnant. “The synagogue has been among Jews the primary teacher of the high principles of social justice and human oneness….It has been from the synagogue that there have emanated organizations of loving human brotherhood which have brought help and strength into the lives of the needy and the faltering.” [26]

Working with non-Orthodox Jews:

Dr. Pool was a leading Orthodox rabbi who sought Orthodox participation in all community-wide organizations. He himself served as President of the New York Board of Rabbis, an organization which prided itself on the involvement of rabbis of all the Jewish religious movements. Likewise, he served as President of the Synagogue Council of America, an organization that included Orthodox, Conservative and Reform Jewish leaders who aspired to work together on behalf of the entire Jewish community.

His involvement in these “ecumenical” organizations was not the result of a compromise position, but of a principled commitment to the Jewish people as a whole. He believed that Orthodoxy needed to be heard where ever issues of concern to the community were taking place. In a letter (April 17, 1949) to Mr. William Weiss, executive director of the Orthodox Union, Dr. Pool wrote “that the Orthodox Union should not segregate itself and run away from cooperating with organizations and movements, so long as these movements are not anti-Jewish. The weakest and most futile thing we can do is to step out of movements. The strongest and most effective thing we can do is to remain in them and fight for our principles.” [27] In a letter to Mr. William Herlands (April 28, 1949), President of the Orthodox Union, Dr. Pool reiterated his view that the Orthodox Union should be represented at general communal events such as the then forthcoming annual meeting of the American Association for Jewish Education. “Unfortunately there are among us some who feel that because the A.A.J.E. is comprehensive in its Jewish interest and does not bear the Orthodox label, it should therefore be shunned by the Union. This policy is most harmful to Orthodoxy. It takes away from us the opportunity of expressing our legitimate influence.” [28]

Dr. Pool’s cooperative work with non-Orthodox individuals and organizations was a reflection of his broad communal outlook. In describing his outlook, he pointed to a hurdle that “has always stood between me and a common run of organizational activity. I have never been able to work effectively through the instrumentality of rigid sectarianism or party politics. A regimented partisan alignment, exclusively under group A or under group B or either for this party leader or for that one, has always alienated me by its strabismic falsifying of perspective values, and its frequent setting of secondary interests above the supreme cause.” [29] Dr. Pool sought to rise above sectarian, partisan politics. While this was a grand vision that won him respect, it also was a strategy that distanced him from the sectarian, partisan political leaders who headed various Jewish organizations and causes.

Working with Newly-Arriving Sephardic Immigrants:

During the first decades of the 20th century, many thousands of Sephardic immigrants arrived in New York. They came to America from Turkey, the Balkan countries, Greece and Syria. Like many other immigrants of that period, they came with high hopes of establishing a better life for themselves and their families in this land of opportunity. Most of the immigrants arrived with little money, limited formal education, little or no knowledge of English.

The Sephardic newcomers faced the usual problems of immigrants striving to adapt to a new land and culture. But they also had additional hurdles to overcome. The existing Jewish agencies in New York and elsewhere were focused on assisting the huge number of mainly Yiddish-speaking Jews arriving from Russia and Eastern Europe. The Sephardic immigrants—most of whom spoke Judeo-Spanish, Greek or Arabic—were overlooked by the Jewish immigrant aid societies. Jewish social workers, almost all of whom were Ashkenazic, often did not even recognize Sephardim as fellow Jews; they assumed that these immigrants were non-Jewish Turks, Greeks or Arabs.

Shearith Israel, as the only Sephardic congregation in New York at that time, felt a special responsibility toward the Sephardic newcomers. Yet, there were immense sociological/cultural gaps between the well-established Shearith Israel community and the new Sephardic arrivals. At the beginning of the 20th century, few members of Shearith Israel were actually full-blooded Sephardim. Most were Ashkeanzim, with or without Sephardic ancestry. Few (if any) in Shearith Israel spoke Judeo-Spanish, Greek or Arabic. Whereas Shearith Israel followed a formal Western Sephardic ritual, the Sephardic newcomers were accustomed to their own less formal Middle-Eastern traditions.

Dr. Pool worked tirelessly to energize the Shearith Israel community on behalf of the Sephardic arrivals. The congregation’s Sisterhood formed an “Oriental Committee,” in which Dr. Pool played a vital role. The Sisterhood established a Settlement House on New York’s Lower East Side to serve the Sephardic immigrants. In 1912, it was located at 86 Orchard Street. In 1918, the Sisterhood moved its Settlement House to a larger building at 133 Eldridge Street. The Settlement House included a synagogue, social services, Hebrew school for children, and various programs to help immigrants find employment and adapt to American life. [30]

In his sermon at Shearith Israel on March 9, 1912, Dr. Pool prodded his congregation to revive itself and its Sephardic character by working on behalf of the Sephardic immigrants. “It is the most urgent and imperative duty of our congregation today not to stand passively aloof awaiting their coming to us, but to go out to them offering a friendly, helping hand of welcome. …It is a work that demands the tact born of sympathy, the self-sacrifice born of human love, and the truest feeling of brotherhood born of love of God.”[31]

Dr. Pool was a leading figure in major Sephardic communal organizations that emerged through the mid-20th century, including the Central Sephardic Jewish Community of America, the Union of Sephardic Congregations (which he founded in 1928) and the American Sephardi Federation. He was admired as a distinguished and articulate spokesman of the American Sephardic community. His eloquent voice not only helped shape the Sephardic internal agenda, but also served to represent Sephardim to the much larger Ashkenazic Jewish establishment.

In an article published in 1914, Dr. Pool urged the American Jewish social service agencies to be sensitive to the needs of the newly arrived Sephardim. “The Levantine Jew is marked by a strong historic consciousness, a pride and self-respect which express themselves in a dignity of deportment, dress and manners, an innate gentlemanliness, a refined sensitiveness, and a mettle which makes these settlers recoil from and reject any crude or patronizing offers of help.”[32] He brought the concerns of the Sephardic immigrants to the attention of Jewish leaders in whatever forums were available to him—whether as a participant in organizational meetings and conferences, as a lecturer or as a writer.

During his tenure as rabbi of Shearith Israel, Dr. Pool succeeded in attracting Sephardic immigrants and their children to the congregation. Although there were bumps along the way, Dr. Pool’s consistent warmth toward the newly arrived Sephardim helped Shearith Israel become a spiritual home for many in the growing Sephardic community.

Zionism:

Dr. Henry Pereira Mendes, Dr. Pool’s senior rabbi at Shearith Israel, was deeply committed to what he called “Bible Zionism.” Theodor Herzl called on Dr. Mendes to help organize the Zionist movement in the United States. Dr. Mendes was elected vice-president of the Federation of American Zionists and a member of the actions committee of the World Zionist Organization. Dr. Mendes wrote: “Peace for the world at last, and the realization of reverence for God by all men. These are the essentials for human happiness. Zionism stands for them.” [33]

Dr. Pool was surely influenced by Dr. Mendes in his devotion to Jewish nationhood as manifested in the Zionist movement. But Dr. Pool’s own Zionist convictions went beyond “Bible Zionism.” For Dr. Pool, Zionism was the key to authentic Jewish expression. In the diaspora, Jews simply mimic the works of others; only in the land of Israel can Jews be themselves. Writing in 1913, Dr. Pool argued: “We in the Diaspora have had no national art: the Zionists in Palestine are developing one for us. We have had no national Jewish music; they are creating it for us. We have had no national Hebraic literature; they are producing it for us. We have had no living national language; they are reviving it for us. We have had no successful system of education for the young; they are forming one for us. We have had no standard of what constitutes a complete Jewish life; they are building one up for us. We have had little sense of the solidarity and oneness of Israel. They are instilling into us that consciousness of Jewish brotherhood and unity.” [34]

In an article in 1914, Dr. Pool described Zionism as an expression of Jewish patriotism. “The Zionistic development of Palestine is giving to the Jewish people Jewish traditions, Jewish institutions and Jewish ideals, all rooted in the Jewish fatherland. In a word, Zionism is giving to the Jewish people not only territorialism of “landism,” it is giving back to Judaism and the Jewish people the sentiment of patriotism of “fatherlandism” in the fullest and finest sense of the word.”[35] Further in this article, Dr. Pool warned that patriotism can become parochial and narrow. He thought that these tendencies in Zionism would gradually give way to a broad and inclusive worldview. Dr. Pool hoped for “a Jewish patriotism that is deeply founded, broad and unselfish, a patriotism without rancor or prejudice, a patriotism born of loyalty to our Jewish tradition…loyalty to our Jewish ideals and devotion to our Jewish patria, Palestine.” [36]

Dr. Pool’s Zionism was not merely theoretical. He was a hard working activist. He and his wife Tamar, were leaders in Hadassah’s Young Judaea youth movement. Tamar went on to become National President of Hadassah, in which capacity both she and her husband worked cooperatively to foster Zionist ideals and support for the Zionist cause. In 1919, Dr. Pool literally risked his position at Shearith Israel when he and his wife decided to leave for Palestine to do relief work under the auspices of the Joint Distribution Committee. They spent several years there, until returning to New York. Fortunately, Dr. Pool was re-engaged by Shearith Israel in 1922; but that was by no means something he could have counted upon.

With the rise of Nazism in Germany in the early 1930s, Dr. Pool increasingly spoke of the need for a Jewish homeland. He called on Jews to strengthen their own identities as Jews, to rally around Zionism. In his Hanukkah message of November 30, 1934, he cited the heroic example of the Maccabees who became “masters of their own soul. In every subsequent generation the Jew who has maintained his spiritual integrity has known the hero’s joy of spiritual freedom, though his body may have been oppressed and enslaved. He has been himself. He has refused to become that weak and pathetic creature, a copy of someone else.”[37]

As European Jewry faced its destruction at the hand of the Germans and their collaborators, Dr. Pool called on American Jews to rise to action on behalf of their endangered coreligionists. “It is our responsibility, and in the whole of Jewry primarily our responsibility, as American Jews to build up here and in the Land of Israel a refuge for the physical Jew and for the Jewish spirit. Once more the world will see a saving remnant of Israel that shall put forth shoots and grow into a mighty tree which will bring forth fruits of beauty and truth in the generations to come, and under which Jewish life shall be lived in peace with none to make us afraid.” [38]

With the horrific murder of millions of European Jews, the importance of a Jewish State was widely recognized as being vital for the future safety of the Jewish people. But for Dr. Pool, Israel was not merely to be a physical safe haven for Jews. It was to become a spiritual, religious and cultural center for world Jewry and all humankind. The Holy City of Jerusalem would symbolize religious idealism at its best. In his Rosh Hashanah message, August 1949, he wrote: “So long as there is a Holy City and there is religious aspiration in the soul of man, we have hope that the world need not be irretrievably gripped by overreaching violence and the cult of force. So long as there is a Holy City and all that it symbolizes, we have the hope, even though it be a slow and laborious hope, that one day man’s spiritual idealism will overcome his animal heritage of struggle.”[39]

In their book, An Old Faith in the New World, David and Tamar de Sola Pool included a chapter entitled “For the Sake of Zion.” They proudly pointed to the many members of Shearith Israel who, throughout the generations demonstrated their love and support of the Holy Land. They noted the philanthropic work of the congregation to the newly established Jewish State, as well as those members who settled in Israel to share directly in the rebirth of Israel.

Not all congregants, especially in the early decades of Dr. Pool’s service to Shearith Israel, were pleased with his Zionistic views. Some important members of Shearith Israel are said to have resigned their synagogue membership because of Dr. Pool’s impassioned support of Zionism. Yet, he continued his Zionistic teaching, preaching and communal work with unflinching fervor. Over the course of his career, he won many hearts and minds to the vital significance of the State of Israel to the Jewish people and to the world.

Universalism:

Dr. Pool’s religious worldview was imbued with a sense of unity: the unity of humanity based on the unity of the One God. The religious insights of Judaism were a treasure of the Jewish people to be shared with the entire world. “While the message of the prophets was directed primarily to their own people, they had the vision of humanity as a whole, and many of their words were addressed to other nations….They were the first true internationalists. They summoned Gentile and Jew alike to infuse both individual and social life with true moral and religious motivation, and so build on earth the Kingdom of God when all mankind shall live at peace.” [40]

The goal of the Jewish religious vision is the messianic era, when all human beings will live in peace and recognize the sovereignty of God. “Oppression, injustice, and warfare must yet give way to Messianic universal peace, universal brotherhood, universal justice, and universal love.” [41]

Dr. Pool envisioned all religions working together for the advancement of the human spirit. “The relationship between the great world religions should be one of mutual respect. Each seeks an approach to the Almighty….It is not a weakening but a strengthening of the loyalty we owe and give to our own faith if we understand, value and respect the faith of our neighbors.” [42]

The Universal God:

Even when Jews offer their particularistic prayers and blessings, they invoke the universal Deity: “our God, King of the universe.” For Dr. Pool, the “fervent and boundless hope running through the whole prayer book is not an expression of an assertive self-righteous nationalism. It is the yearning for mankind’s spiritual healing by divine light.” [43]

In his sermon of November 15, 1930, Dr. Pool spoke of Albert Einstein’s views on religion. For Einstein, there were three levels of religious development among human beings. Primitive religion was dictated by fear and ignorance, akin to superstition. Another stage was social/moral religion, where the emphasis was on trying to create a harmonious society based on ethical conduct. At this level, religion was essentially the guardian of human behavior. The third and highest level was the cosmic religious sense, in which humans are filled with humility as they search for the unity of God in the phenomena of nature. Dr. Pool argued that Judaism, while strongly connected to the social/moral aspects of religion, calls on its adherents to reach for the cosmic religious sense. This is evidenced in the names we ascribe to God: HaMakom, the omnipresent; Yotser/Borei Olam, Creator of the universe; Ribbono shel Olam, Master of the universe; Melekh HaOlam, King of the universe. “For the Jew, the lofty religious outlook which Albert Einstein puts into words is not the religion of individual religious geniuses; it is the religion of the people with a genius for religion….We Jews must still continue to be the Servant of the Lord, bearing through the ages until all mankind shall have learned to attain to it, the supreme conception of a cosmic religious outlook, God a unity in all existence, and order and law throughout His universe.” [44]

A Grand Religious Worldview in an Imperfect World:

Dr. Pool’s religious worldview was essentially optimistic. In spite of the many shortcomings of humanity, he believed that good people working together would ultimately succeed in creating a righteous society. The Jews have a particular mission in the unfolding human adventure; they must serve as a “light unto the nations” and help usher in a Messianic age. Yet, the Jews’ mission is infused with a universalism; it aspires to serve the universal God and to all humankind. In closing his book, Why I am a Jew, he articulates the religious vision that animated his life’s work: “Armed with faith we can fight soulless knowledge and self-destroying technology; fascist aggression and military violence; racial hatreds, class bitterness and annihilating international strife. We know no better way. We know no other way if we are to build a world in which ‘none shall hurt, none destroy….for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea’ (Isaiah 11:9).” [45]

A Lasting Legacy:

Dr. Pool embodied the ideas and ideals of his Western Sephardic tradition and of an enlightened Orthodox Judaism. He deeply appreciated the particularistic teachings and observances of Judaism while constantly maintaining a universalistic outlook. His type of Sephardic/Orthodox rabbi was unusual in his lifetime and is even more of a rarity today. Indeed, the Sephardic and Orthodox communities have been moving further away from Dr. Pool’s vision of religious life.

Dr. Pool devoted many years of labor to edit and translate the Sephardic prayer books. His goal was to create a unified framework for the Sephardic congregations of North America. If all congregations utilized the same prayer book, an American Sephardic minhag would replace the multitude of ethnic variations among Sephardim. He took pride in the fact that one could pray in Sephardic synagogues throughout the continent and almost always pray from the siddurim that he had prepared.

Yet, his dream of a unified Sephardic minhag has largely been repudiated in recent years. There has been a proliferation of Sephardic prayer books, many catering to the specific rites of particular communities e.g. Syrian, Moroccan, Turkish/Rhodes. Israeli prayer books according to the customs of Eidot haMizrah (Middle-Eastern Jews) have become increasingly popular. Whereas Dr. Pool’s prayer books were widely used through the 1970s, they have become less utilized in more recent years. Dr. Pool had hoped for a harmonization of Sephardic synagogue practice; in fact, though, the prevailing tendency has been for each group to insist on its own customs and its own prayer book.

When Dr. Pool edited and translated the Ashkenazic prayer book (1960), his hope was that the many Ashkenazic congregations of America would have a dignified book from which to worship. As in his work on the Sephardic prayer books, he saw to it that the Ashkenazic prayer book was presented in an aesthetic style, without cumbersome notes to distract worshippers. Yet, his Ashkenazic prayer book is hardly used any longer, with most Ashkenazic congregations having switched to other editions that contain many notes and halakhic instructions.

Dr. Pool’s principled commitment to work on a community-wide basis, together with non-Orthodox Jews, has not been embraced by many of the ensuing generations of Orthodox rabbis. The Orthodox shift to the right has resulted in a far more parochial and sectarian Orthodoxy than Dr. Pool would have liked. The Synagogue Council of America that symbolized cooperation among the Orthodox, Conservative and Reform movements—and of which Dr. Pool had served as President 1938-1940—closed its doors in 1994. While “Hareidi” Orthodoxy is generally hostile toward official cooperation with entities that grant equal status to the non-Orthodox, even Modern Orthodoxy has become less engaged in formal work with non-Orthodox leadership.

Dr. Pool’s ideal of large synagogues with decorous services has also lost adherents among the next generations of Orthodox Jews. For Dr. Pool, Orthodox congregations could and should include traditional-minded Jews of various levels of religious observance. But Orthodoxy in recent years has witnessed a proliferation of smaller “yeshivish” minyanim and “shtiebels,” where the worshipers are almost all of the same level of religious observance. Decorum in the larger Orthodox synagogues is not always to the standard that Dr. Pool would have liked.

Dr. Pool eloquently advocated social justice, universal humanitarian concern, and inter-faith cooperation. These themes today are often seen as being in the province of non-Orthodox Judaism. While there still are some Orthodox rabbis who share Dr. Pool’s commitments, the general tendency seems to be toward a more particularistic conception of Judaism.

Perhaps, somewhat like Don Quixote, Dr. Pool dreamed the impossible dream. He maintained a grand religious worldview that was rooted in tradition but that transcended parochial boundaries. He sought unities where most others were mired in multiplicities.

Although many of his ideas and ideals have not yet prevailed—and may never prevail--Dr. Pool can yet serve as a source of religious light for a world that very much needs spiritual illumination. For those who aspire to a profound, dignified and intelligent spirituality; to a resurgence of righteousness in the spirit of the Hebrew prophets; to an Orthodoxy respectful of tradition and with a universal vision; to a unity among Jews and a harmony among human kind—to all such seekers Rabbi Dr. David de Sola Pool will ever be a steady and wise guide.

Epilogue:

I began my service to Shearith Israel in September 1969, while I was still a 24 year old rabbinical student. That first Rosh Hashana, I sat next to Dr. Pool on the synagogue’s Tebah, reader’s desk, where the congregation’s clergy are seated. Dr. Pool was 83 years old, frail, and in declining health. After services on the first night of Rosh Hashana, Dr. Pool placed his hand on my head and gave me his blessing, wishing me a happy and meaningful ministry.

I well remember my feelings on that sacred moment. When I shook his hand, I was shaking the hand of a great spiritual leader who had begun his service to Shearith Israel in 1907; he had taken over from Dr. Mendes who had begun service to Shearith Israel in 1877. I was one handshake away from 1877! And just a few more handshakes separated me from Rev. Gershom Mendes Seixas who had begun serving Shearith Israel in 1768. I felt the weight of centuries, the incredible continuity of a magnificent tradition.

Even in his elderly years, Dr. Pool maintained a remarkable aura of dignity and serenity. He was venerated by the congregation not only for what he had accomplished in his lifetime, but for who he was—a genuinely pious, humble soul who served God and His people with selfless devotion.

I quickly learned traditions of the Shearith Israel spiritual leadership, traditions going back centuries, traditions upheld and enhanced by Dr. Pool and transmitted to his immediate successor Rabbi Dr. Louis C. Gerstein and then to me. Rabbis of Shearith Israel, as well as the Hazanim, conducted the synagogue prayer services and read the Torah with precision. The synagogue’s pulpit was reserved only for the synagogue’s rabbis. (On rare occasions, guest Orthodox rabbis were invited to preach from the pulpit.) Sermons were to be instructive and inspirational; frivolity was never allowed from the pulpit, nor was the pulpit to be used to advance a political candidate or to criticize anyone by name. The rabbi was to set an example to the congregation of proper devotion in prayer—no engaging in idle chatter or silly gestures, no reading books other than the prayer book during worship. The rabbi was to be at services punctually, not missing unless prevented by illness or a serious scheduling conflict, or unless away from town. The rabbi was to set the tone for orderliness and decorum, for neatness and respectfulness.

Along with the traditions relating to synagogue and prayer, Dr. Pool embodied the congregation’s tradition of communal involvement and social justice activism. The congregation was proud of its history of service to America (Shearith Israel’s members fought in the American Revolution!), and its commitment to the wellbeing of the Jewish community and society at large. Dr. Pool’s universalism was very much in keeping with the Spanish and Portuguese traditions of his forebears.

Dr. Pool died in December 1970, a bit over a year after I began my service to Shearith Israel. Yet, I seemed to feel his guiding hand throughout my rabbinic career. I read all his publications; I went through his sermons; I edited a collection of his sermons, addresses and writings. Throughout my many years of rabbinic service, Dr. Pool has surely been an important influence. Even now, as rabbi emeritus of Shearith Israel, I still seem to feel Dr. Pool’s hand on my head and I still seem to hear his words of blessing and encouragement. They mean as much to me now as when I first heard them at age twenty four. Perhaps even more.

Notes:

[1] For biographical information about David de Sola Pool, see David and Tamar de Sola Pool, An Old Faith in the New World, Columbia University Press, New York, 1955, pp. 202-208; Nima Adlerblum, “Reflections on the Life and Work of Rabbi David de Sola Pool,” Tradition, 30:1, fall 1995, pp. 7-16; and Dr. Pool’s article, “My Spiritual Autobiography,” in Thirteen Americans, Louis Finkelstein ed., Institute for Religious and Social Studies, New York, 1953, pp. 201-217. See also Ben Elton, “New York Orthodoxy Between the Wars,” Conversations, no. 20, autumn 2014, pp. 40-44.
[2] “My Spiritual Autobiography,” p. 202.
[3] Ibid., p. 205.c
[4] Nima Adlerblum, p 16.
[5] “How to Tell Bible Stories to Children,” Bloch Publishing Company, New York, 1913 (reprinted 1920).
[6] Ibid., p. 3.
[7] Ibid., p. 5.
[8] Ibid., p.19.
[9] David de Sola Pool, Why I am a Jew, Beacon Press, Boston, 1957, p. 26.
[10] Ibid., p. 67.
[11] Marc D. Angel, ed., Rabbi David de Sola Pool: Selections from Six Decades of Sermons, Addresses and Writings, Union of Sephardic Congregations, New York, 1980, p. 147.
[12] “Food Conservation Day,” a pamphlet issued in 1918, pp. 8, 10
[13] Rabbi David de Sola Pool: Selections from Six Decades of Sermons, Addresses and Writings, p. 129.
[14] Ibid., pp. 38-9.
[15] Ibid., p. 154.
[16] Ibid., p. 133.
[17] Ibid., pp. 138-139.
[18] Why I am a Jew, p. 98.
[19] Rabbi David de Sola Pool: Selections from Six Decades of Sermons, Addresses and Writings, p. 26.
[20] Ibid., p. 139.
[21] Why I am a Jew, p. 91.
[22] Ibid., p. 81.
[23] This letter, among other of Dr. Pool’s letters in the Shearith Israel archives, was published in Tradition 30:1, fall 1995, p.19-20.
[24] Why I am a Jew, p. 86.
[25] Rabbi David de Sola Pool: Selections from Six Decades of Sermons, Addresses and Writings, p. 182.
[26] Why I am a Jew, p. 146.
[27] Tradition, 30:1, p. 21.
[28] Ibid., p. 22.
[29] Thirteen Americans, p. 212-213.
[30] For a discussion of the relationship between Shearith Israel and the Sephardic immigrants, see Marc D. Angel, La America: The Sephardic Experience in the United States, Jewish Publication Society, Philadelphia, chapter 6.
[31] Rabbi David de Sola Pool: Six Decades of Sermons, Addresses and Writings, pp. 31-32.
[32] David de Sola Pool, “The Immigration of Levantine Jews into the United States,” Jewish Charities, June 1914, p. 15. See also his article “The Levantine Jews in the United States,” American Jewish Yearbook, vol. 15, 1913-14, pp. 207-20.
[33] See my article, “The Religious Vision of Rev. Dr.Henry Pereira Mendes,” in M. D. Angel, ed., From Strength to Strength, Sepher-Hermon Press, New York, 1998, pp. 21-28; and Dr. Pool’s booklet, H. Pereira Mendes: A Biography, New York, 1938; and David and Tamar Pool, An Old Faith in the New World, pp. 192-201.
[34] David de Sola Pool, “Palestine and the Diaspora,” pamphlet published by the Federation of American Zionists, New York, May 1913, p. 13.
[35] David de Sola Pool, “Zionism as an Expression of Jewish Patriotism,” a reprint from The Maccabaean, November-December 1914, p. 5.
[36] Ibid., p. 12.
[37] Rabbi David de Sola Pool: Six Decades of Sermons, Addresses, and Writings, p. 75.
[38] Ibid., p. 99.
[39] Ibid., p. 192.
[40 Why I am a Jew, p. 33.
[41] Ibid., p. 174
[42] David and Tamar de Sola Pool, Is There an Answer?, Thomas Yoseloff, New York, 1966, p. 205.
[43] Why I am a Jew., p. 96.
[44] Rabbi David de Sola Pool: Six Decades of Sermons, Addresses, and Writings, p. 62.
[45] Why I am a Jew,p. 198.. 198.

nd Aharon Lichtenstein.

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Just over sixty years ago, the Association of Orthodox Jewish Scientists was founded to resolve “the apparent points of conflict between scientific theory and Orthodox Judaism.”[1] [DEA1] The claims of paleontology, cosmology, and especially evolutionary biology exposed contradictions with traditional beliefs that were hard to overcome—so hard, indeed, that Alvin Radkowsky (an eminent nuclear physicist and leading member of the association) described the challenge as “a test of faith comparable to that faced by the biblical Abraham.”[2]

Today, evolution is no longer a hot topic amongst Modern Orthodox Jews. Few feel anxiety, let alone an impending Akeidah, at the challenge evolution poses—and even fewer would follow the advice of Rabbi Moshe Feinstein and tear the offending pages out of schoolbooks. Even in the Hareidi community, rejection of evolution is no longer universal. When a ban was issued against the books of the “zoo rabbi” Nosson Slifkin for questioning the scientific judgments of the Talmud, opposition was intense—yet several prominent rabbis rallied to his defense.

Judaism’s ability to make peace with and absorb emerging scientific ideas is not new. Nine centuries ago, Maimonides declared the anthropomorphisms of the Torah to be allegorical. Dibrah torah bil’shon benei adam—the Torah speaks in human language—Maimonides tells us, stretching the talmudic saying well beyond its original intent to imply that words need not have their literal meaning. Nahmanides read the creation narrative as a spiritual lesson, and pointed out its non sequiturs if interpreted literally. And although integrating the Torah with science was of paramount importance to some, other exegetes were less enthusiastic and preferred to put the scientific issues aside. Ibn Ezra, in introducing his Torah commentary, excoriates commentators (including Saadiah Gaon) who bring lengthy astronomical explanations to bear on the text. And Rashi, quoting a midrash, famously poses a stunning question on the very first verse of Bereshith, asking why the Torah should start with a discussion of creation at all when it might instead have started with the first mitzvah. This suggests a different strategy: reconciling science and Torah not by bringing them together into a coherent whole, but by recognizing that their concerns are largely disjointed.

Science itself has increasingly moved in this direction, attenuating its conflict with religion. The medievals made no clear distinction between the sciences and humanities, or between scientific and religious knowledge. The development of scientific theories was therefore constrained by religious beliefs. Although Copernicus revolutionized astronomy by rejecting the geocentric view of the universe, he was not prepared to consider an elliptical path for planetary motion, so his theory required “epicycles” to preserve the divine perfection of the circular orbit. Isaac Newton, famously characterized by John Maynard Keynes as a “Judaic monotheist of the school of Maimonides” sought an integration of his religious beliefs and scientific theories, and wrote in an unpublished manuscript that “God is known from his works.”[3] Over time, however, science separated itself from religion, and scientific theories no longer relied on, or made, metaphysical claims. The great theories of modern physics, relativity and quantum mechanics, take this to an extreme: Science is no longer even about what exists, but only about what can be observed.

And thus we arrive today at the widely held view that science and religion have no inherent conflict, each in its pristine form being emptied of any claims about the other. As the biologist Stephen Jay Gould put it, science and religion represent “non-overlapping magisteria.” Science addresses the composition of the universe and how it works; religion examines questions of ultimate meaning and moral value. As Gould puts it cleverly: “These two magisteria do not overlap, nor do they encompass all inquiry. Science gets the age of rocks, and religion the rock of ages; science studies how the heavens go, religion how we go to heaven.” [4] Gould, who described himself as a Jewish agnostic, suspected that the soul did not exist, but hoped he was wrong and saw value in both endeavors: “The attainment of wisdom in a full life requires extensive attention to both domains—for a great book tells us that the truth can make us free and that we will live in optimal harmony with our fellows when we learn to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly.”[4]

Harder Questions

Although the challenges presented by the natural sciences have receded, fresh challenges have taken their place and seem to pose much harder and more far-reaching questions. The field of biblical criticism has unearthed a mass of evidence that the Torah is a composite document that reflects the prevailing ideas of other cultures contemporaneous with ancient Israel. How, in the light of such claims, can one adhere to the belief, required by Maimonides in his eighth principle of faith, that the Torah we have in our hands today is the very same Torah that was handed down by Moses, and that it is all of divine origin? Moses, according to Maimonides, acted like a scribe taking down a dictation; consequently, he insists, there is no difference in holiness or authority between verses such as, “And the sons of Ham were Cush and Mizraim, Phut and Canaan” and verses such as, “I am the Lord thy God” or “Hear, O Israel.” Nahmanides maintained that the very letters of the Torah encode secrets revealed to Moses—hence the reason that omission of even a single letter renders a Torah scroll invalid.

To be sure, not all Orthodox Jews accept these rather extreme formulations of Torah min haShamayim. Evidence of small differences between the Masoretic text and earlier manuscripts makes it hard to sustain confidence in the perfect reliability of the Torah’s transmission. When we raise the Torah in synagogue and declare veZot haTorah asher sam Mosheh—this is the Torah that Moses placed before the children of Israel—few of us feel a need to defend the assertion in its most literal sense. Moreover, the view of Moses as copyist of the entire Torah was challenged long before modern biblical criticism; Ibn Ezra’s cryptic comment about the secret of the final twelve verses of the Torah is usually assumed to be an allusion to his belief that Moses did not record the events of his own death. Many Orthodox Jews have absorbed the sensibilities of source criticism, even while rejecting its broader claims, and are skeptical of theories with origins whose historicity is dubious. They treat traditional attributions of authorship—that David wrote the psalms, or that Solomon wrote Ecclesiastes—as rhetorical, no different from the Gemara’s statement that Moses himself instituted the first paragraph of Birkat haMazon.[5]

But these finer points of criticism, however important they may be for scholars, have little practical impact. Their theological impact is minor too, because few Jews build the foundations of their belief and religious commitment on such fragile assumptions. Moreover, contemporary assertions of the most extreme positions keep company with other intellectual positions of questionable rationality. Thus the advocates of “Bible codes,” for example, in which hidden messages are inferred from the exact placement of letters in the text of the Torah, seem to rely either on the dubious assertion that the Masoretic text was the version given to Moses, or on the strange belief that God should have chosen to reveal his message to the world only following the Masoretic redaction and not before. But the very notion of Bible codes is implausible, since any suitable text of comparable length will furnish “prophecies” that are just as convincing (as Michael Jackson has demonstrated, by writing a computer program that produced similar results when applied to Milton’s Paradise Lost [6]). At least the Bible code enthusiasts have heeded Mark Twain’s advice that “the art of prophecy is very difficult, especially with respect to the future,” and have limited their efforts to prophecies of events that have already occurred.

The larger questions of authorship of the Torah, on the other hand, have enormous consequence. In its literal sense, the Torah conflicts with contemporary morality in many areas: in its acquiescence to slavery, its apparent advocacy of genocide (e.g., in the context of the Canaanite ban), and its prescription of the death penalty for many offences (including witchcraft, breaking Shabbat, and homosexuality). If the Torah is not divine in its entirety, rather than approaching these issues apologetically, contextualizing them, or regarding their plain meaning as superseded by more palatable rabbinic interpretations, we might instead see them as evidence of a human element –  not to be justified, but on the contrary to be deemphasized and maybe even repudiated. On the other hand, if the Torah is entirely divine, we should presumably see our own moral qualms as reflections of our inadequate understanding, and adjust them accordingly (although, as we shall see, such a conclusion is not in fact necessary).

It is the confluence of these nagging moral questions and the doubts seeded by biblical criticism that present such a formidable challenge to many Orthodox Jews today. The rise of feminism has greatly exacerbated the dilemma. As Tamar Ross puts it: “What makes the feminist analysis unique is that the ultimate question it raises does not concern any particular difficulty in the contents of the Torah (be it moral, scientific, or theological). Nor does it concern the accuracy of the historical account of its literary genesis. Highlighting an all-pervasive male bias in the Torah seems to display a more general skepticism regarding divine revelation that is much more profound.” [7]

In response to this dilemma, a reactionary will say that we have here nothing more than a clash of value systems, and that, for a believer, the Torah must prevail. The claims of biblical criticism do not meet scientific standards, its arguments are rife with qualifications and disagreements, and the evidence of multiple authorship is a figment of the critic’s imagination. But however mightily we might struggle, like former Chief Rabbi Hertz in his commentary to the Humash, to undercut the positions of the critics by exposing their mutual inconsistencies, the fact remains that in the scholarly world there is broad consensus on the basic premises of source criticism, and the ongoing accumulation of evidence over the last century has made its findings hard to reject out of hand.

From a scientific perspective, a religious position that rejects the claims of biblical criticism is not irrational because it views those claims as untrue; after all, biblical criticism is not a scientific discipline whose claims can be evaluated in repeatable experiments. Rather, rejecting the claims outright is irrational because it denies even the possibility that they might be true. To be unwilling to even consider that the Torah might be a composite document is no different in principle from holding firm to the belief that the Earth is stationary and that the sun revolves around it. In this sense, attempting to sustain a belief in traditional notions of divine authorship brings science and religion into full conflict. For Richard Feynman, the Nobel laureate physicist, the very essence of the scientific mind is its capacity for doubt: “It is our responsibility as scientist, knowing the great progress and great value of a satisfactory philosophy of ignorance… to proclaim the value of this freedom, to teach how doubt is not to be feared but welcomed and discussed, and to demand this freedom as our duty to all coming generations.” From this perspective, if we ignore the dilemma or compartmentalize our religious lives, we are shirking our scientific responsibilities, attempting to preserve our religious integrity at the cost of our intellectual integrity.

The Tenacity of Unreasonable Beliefs

Richard Feynman was not a philosopher, and despite writing with extraordinary clarity and elegance on many topics, criticizes religion in a way that will strike most religious readers as unsophisticated and unconvincing. (In one of his books, in a chapter entitled Is Electricity Fire?, he reports a conversation with some students at a university Hillel about Shabbat observance, and ridicules the notion of melakhah [9]. At least he admitted the limits of his expertise: “A scientist looking at nonscientific problems,” he said, “is just as dumb as the next guy.”[8])

Likewise, the recent spate of anti-religious books, such as Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion or Christopher Hitchen’s God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, might warm the hearts of atheists—but are unlikely to sway any believers. Their tone is angry and dismissive, and the religious views that they put down are for the most part crude strawmen. And their attitudes to Jews and Judaism are unlikely to win them much sympathy. Dawkins has called for an academic boycott of Israel, and his description of the Jewish lobby (as a model for a possible atheist lobby) was criticized for implying that all supporters of Israel are religious Jews. Hitchens described Hannuka [DJ2] in an article in Slate as “childish stuff” and cast the Hasmoneans as fundamentalist anti-Hellenists, whose success was a triumph of “bloody-minded faith over enlightenment and reason” that retarded “the development of the whole of humanity.”[10] (According to Shaye Cohen, Hitchens has his facts wrong: The goal of the Hasmoneans was to find a way to live with Hellenism. Many of their practices show its influence—such as the election of the high priest, and even the institution of Hanukka itself, as a festival declared by popular acclaim [11]).

A book published last year by Sol Schimmel[12], a professor of education and psychology at Hebrew College in Boston, is harder to dismiss. Schimmel is himself a traditionally observant Jew, grew up in an Orthodox household and was educated in right-wing yeshivot. He has an extensive familiarity with rabbinic literature, confesses “deep religious emotions” when singing songs such as Yedid Nefesh, and asserts that even scriptural fundamentalisms have “many positive ethical, psychological, spiritual, and social consequences.”

Nevertheless, his book, The Tenacity of Unreasonable Beliefs: Fundamentalism and the Fear of Truth is ruthless in its critique of Modern Orthodoxy. The book originated in his attempt to understand why, from a psychological perspective, Modern Orthodox Jews cling to a notion of Torah min haShamayim (TMS, as he abbreviates it) that is so at variance with overwhelming evidence and logical reasoning. His studies took him beyond Judaism to both Christianity and Islam; Jewish readers may take some solace in his descriptions of the fundamentalisms of these other religions, which seem to have had far more demonstrably negative consequences, and are tied to literal readings of the Bible and Koran that are less flexible than the rabbinic reading of the Torah. The chapter on Modern Orthodoxy, however, will make many readers squirm.

What is unusual about Schimmel’s book is that his principal argument is not philosophical. Rather, through a series of narratives and discussions of expressed opinions, he offers a psychological critique. In short, Orthodox Jews adhere to irrational beliefs because of the high emotional cost of giving them up, and they create a series of justifications and selective interpretations to bolster positions that, in their heart of hearts, they know to be false. They also employ “selective attention,” avoiding the conflict that arises from considering hard questions, even professing a lack of interest in the historical and literary analysis of a book for which in other respects they have boundless fascination. Schimmel notes that sometimes believers will even articulate the social, religious and psychological consequences of skepticism as explicit reason for maintaining belief. Concern that not believing in Torah min haShamayim might undermine observance of mitzvot is a strange justification for making empirical claims.

In some of his arguments, Schimmel brings Modern Orthodox thinkers to help argue his case. In his critique of the Artscroll Humash and its expression of a simplistic rejection of modern thought with a professed humility that “masks the arrogance of the fundamentalist who is certain of the truth… and that all who disagree with him are wrong, misguided, or heretics who have no share in the world to come,” Schimmel is joined by scholars such as Barry Levy for whom the Artscroll commentaries “misrepresent the sacred literature of normative Judaism.” Schimmel spares Modern Orthodoxy no criticism, however. Widespread capitulation of synagogues and rabbinical organizations to Artscroll signals a coalescing between Modern Orthodoxy and right-wing Orthodoxy, and many of the more independent-thinking scholars have been left on the periphery of a movement that was once more liberal, and that has largely “abandoned its original commitment to a serious and honest engagement with modernity.”

Schimmel makes no secret of his agenda: to deprogram the Modern Orthodox (among others). Indeed, his last chapter is entitled “On Defundamentalizing Fundamentalists.” His book is valuable for the hard questions that it asks, and for the light it shines on strange beliefs and their contrived justifications. For this reason alone, it deserves a wide readership in the Modern Orthodox community. But while it diagnoses the disease, it offers no cure.

Finding a Path

How can we address this challenge, and create a philosophy of Modern Orthodoxy that respects our tradition, reaffirms our commitments to Torah and deeply held moral convictions, and that at the same time preserves our rationality?

Returning to Radkowsky’s choice of the Akeidah as the metaphor for our contemporary challenge in reconciling science and Torah, we might ask: Is this challenge really a test of faith? If so, is it a test we pass only by sacrificing our intellectual honesty on the altar of religious conviction? I sometimes wonder whether some scientists might not justify to themselves, emotionally if not intellectually, the surrender of part of their critical faculty as a small sacrifice, an act of piety made all the more potent by the value they attach to it

Better then, to view this as a test of intellect rather than a test of faith: to find a way to reconcile the compelling evidence of the late, composite authorship of the Torah with a commitment to halakha[DJ3] ; to navigate a path through this rocky terrain that requires neither leaving one’s rationality behind nor disturbing the foundation of traditional Judaism so greatly that the entire edifice begins to crumble.

Many thinkers have mapped out such a path. Some take more turns away from traditional conceptions than others, and their ending points are often very different. Maybe none offers a journey that suits us personally. To some, a path will seem to veer too far from tradition; to others, a path may seem too apologetic, too ready to contrive a complex and implausible theology in defense of the indefensible. Together, however, these paths at least give us a better sense of the terrain as a whole, and make it easier for us to find out own way through.

The first modern proponents of the critical approach to reading the Bible were Protestants who used their scholarly studies in support of their view that Judaism was morally inferior to Christianity. So it was not unreasonable for Solomon Schechter to describe the Higher Criticism of Julius Wellhausen, who had likened Judaism to a dead tree, as the “Higher Anti-semitism.” But after 130 years of scholarship, the field has changed, and many of its leading exponents are Jewish. Amongst these is a cohort of traditionally observant Jews who have articulated their own theories for reconciling their private observances with their public scholarship—often as introductions or codas to their scholarly books.

Marc Brettler, closes his How to Read the Bible[13] with an afterword entitled “Reading the Bible as a Committed Jew.” The Bible, he explains, is a ‘sourcebook that I—within my community—make into a textbook… by selecting, revaluing, and interpreting the texts I call sacred.” A textbook offers a monolithic perspective and a prescriptive guide; a sourcebook, in contrast, brings together multiple, and often conflicting perspectives. In describing the Bible as a sourcebook, he makes the point often noted by its scholars (but harder for those to appreciate who have read the Bible only through rabbinic eyes), that the Bible itself does not even claim to be a monolithic book—or even a book at all. For Brettler, ‘selection” means choosing one of the Bible’s perspectives over another, in a manner no different, he argues from, for example, how Divrei haYamim chose the cooking method of the korban pesah to be boiling (according to Devarim) rather than roasting (according to Shemoth). Revaluing the text involves recognizing that, as an ancient text, the Torah has not “always aged well,” and finding new meaning that is more consonant with modern sensibilities. Brettler realizes that this is “extremely difficult to do with integrity,” but his willingness to reinterpret the text personally will place him, for many Orthodox Jews, beyond the bounds of the halakhic community.

Mordechai Breuer, like Brettler, acknowledges the problems raised by biblical criticism. He recognizes that the “power of these inferences, based on solid argument and internally consistent premises, will not be denied by intellectually honest persons.” [14] Unlike Brettler, however, Breuer wants to retain the principle of the divinity of the Torah in its entirety, and therefore draws very different conclusions. He sees divine purpose in the structuring of the Torah as a document with multiple, often conflicting strands—providing multiple meanings, and speaking to different generations in different voices. Remarkably, Breuer seems to adhere to Maimonides’ formulation, believing that this multi-stranded Torah was dictated to Moses, going further even than classical rabbinic sources that were willing to recognize contributions to the text of the Torah both later and earlier in origin than the Sinaitic revelation. The ingenuity of this approach is evident, but it will strike some as too contrived. As Schimmel notes, it is reminiscent of the view held by many (including the Lubavitcher Rebbe) that God created fossils ready-formed. Louis Jacobs noted that such a view is logical in the narrow sense, but the logical gain may be outweighed by the theological loss. In his early work, We Have Reason to Believe, Jacobs complained that such arguments lead to a conception of a God who intentionally tricks us, planting false clues to lead us astray. In his later work, Beyond Reasonable Doubt, his critique softened; he concedes that the Lubavitcher Rebbe was too sophisticated a theologian to suggest that God placed fossils there as a test of faith “to see whether men would be sufficiently steadfast in their faith in Genesis to resist the blandishments of science.” But, he notes, such positions still require us to believe that God has given us the power to reason, and the ability to uncover compelling evidence, but nevertheless expects us to resist the obvious conclusions.

If Breuer and Brettler represent ends of the spectrum, James Kugel sits somewhere between the two. Like Brettler, he is prepared to concede that the Torah was not given in any literal sense to Moses on Sinai, and that it is likely a much later document comprised of multiple sources. Like Breuer, however, Kugel sees a divine hand in this process. He confesses ignorance about how or why this process happened. But although Kugel accepts the premises and methods of biblical criticism, he wholeheartedly rejects what he views as its central agenda. From the start, biblical criticism has attempted to wind the clock back, allowing us to view the Bible not through the lens of the rabbis but through the perspective of the civilization that gave birth to it, thus revealing the “real Bible,” in contrast to the very different Bible created by rabbinic readings. Kugel maintains that no such “real Bible” ever existed, that interpretation did not follow canonization, disrupting accepted meanings, but that, on the contrary, the Bible was interpreted from the outset, before it was even complete. A “spindly sapling of texts” was able to grow into a “the great date palm of Scripture” only because of the interpretive soil in which it was planted. “The mission on which modern biblical criticism set out, then, without quite understanding it, was to uproot Scripture from that soil the better to study the whole plant and the plant alone.”[17] Paradoxically, then, Kugel’s view of interpretation is remarkably close to the traditional conception of a Torah SheBe’al Peh that was revealed contemporaneously with the written Torah.

While seeing a divine hand in the development of the Torah, however, Kugel does not see a need to defend the divinity of every word. “How,” he asks, “can you distinguish the word of God from other, ordinary human words in Scripture?”[18] Kugel is not willing to answer this question. “I suppose I have my suspicions about this verse or that one, but I really do not believe it is my business to try to second-guess the text’s divine inspiration.” In the same way, he explains, that he desists from walking on the Temple Mount—traditionally forbidden for fear that one would tread in the area of the Kodesh haKodashim—despite having his own ideas about where it once stood, respecting the sacred integrity of the area as a whole, he is likewise content to recognize the sacred integrity of the Bible. The modesty here is compelling, and it allows Kugel to maintain a traditional reverence for the Torah. Indeed, Kugel has opposed the teaching of biblical criticism in Jewish high schools, and has deep reservations about the value of his field, sometimes talking as if it is a curiosity for specialists alone.

Some, however, will see Kugel’s modesty as disingenuous. After all, to most Jews, where exactly the Bet haMikdash was situated has little contemporary significance. But the question of whether the Torah’s proscription of homosexuality, or its advocacy of the death penalty, or its acquiescence of slavery, are divine in origin is no small matter.

Louis Jacobs, like Kugel, sees divine significance in the development of rabbinic Judaism, but he is more ready to identify human elements in the Torah. As a distinguished British talmudist, Jacobs sought to demonstrate the flexibility of halakha, and the extent to which it has been influenced by external pressures. The Torah is indeed “from Heaven,” according to Jacobs, but the word “from” must be interpreted in a non-fundamentalist way[16]. A committed but non-fundamentalist Jew, for example, will refrain from smoking on Shabbat, accepting the standard halakhic formulation of observance. But he will find it hard to accept the notion that violation of this mitzvah should incur the death penalty, and is relieved that no Sanhedrin any longer exists to enforce it.

Jacobs was a student of the prominent mussar scholar Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler, and served as an Orthodox rabbi in Manchester and then London for many years. In 1961, he was expected to become the principal of Jews’ College, but his appointment was blocked by the then Chief Rabbi, Israel Brodie, on account of the views Jacobs had expressed in his book We Have Reason to Believe. He was subsequently denied his pulpit, and a number of his congregants left to form a new synagogue. Later he founded the Masoreti movement in Britain, and he regarded himself as closer to (but nevertheless distinct from) the Conservative movement in the United States than to Orthodoxy. Not surprisingly, his views have been regarded as heretical within the Orthodox community, eliciting vehement opposition. After he was denied an aliya at an Orthodox synagogue prior to his granddaughter’s wedding, on his 83rd birthday, the Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks and the Av Bet Din Chanoch Ehrentreu justified the decision on the grounds that reciting the blessing ­asher natan lanu torat emet—“who gave us the Torah of truth”—would be a false statement coming from his lips.[19]

I suspect that many Orthodox readers share Jacobs’ relief that the death penalty is no longer applied, even if they are unwilling to state such a position in public. Although they are likely to disagree with his theological views on the divinity of the Torah, they might find even more discomfiting his characterization of the halakhic imperative. For Jacobs, Shabbat observance is “mandatory,” and a Jew recites the Shema in “obedience to a divine command.” But in deciding how strictly to be bound by halakha, he may “choose which Sabbath and other observances awaken a response in him.”[16]

Tamar Ross, a philosopher at Bar Ilan University, takes a more Orthodox attitude. Unlike Jacobs, she is willing to bow to the judgment of posekim even when they seem to be motivated by a worldview at variance with hers. Like Jacobs, however, she is candid in her recognition of the incompatibility of the statements of the Torah with modern sensibilities. As a feminist, she is disturbed by what she sees as a pervasive patriarchal bias in the Torah, and she is not shy to point out the many respects in which the statements of the Torah are in conflict with her own moral convictions. To Ross, however, these concerns need not undermine the divinity of the Torah. By a divine scheme, the Torah delivered a message that was ideal for the time of its initial revelation. Even its patriarchy, she claims, must have had a purpose—for example, in strengthening the tribe or family. The changing meaning of the Torah brought about by its interpreters ensured that, as time passed, its message was attuned to each new generation. Drawing on the philosophy of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, Ross sees revelation as ongoing and cumulative; feminism, itself, she contends is part of God’s message, which God chose to reveal only in our time.

This of course raises the question of how we are to distinguish between latter-day revelations that should be absorbed into our concept of Torah and those that should be rejected as alien. Here, Ross turns to the theories of textual interpretation of Hans Gadamer and Stanley Fish. Roughly speaking, they treat texts, in postmodern fashion, as lacking any fixed meaning. The interpretation of a text is subjective, arising from the reader’s beliefs and opinions. These are indeed biases, but they are biases that are borne not of anarchy and the whim of the individual, but are nurtured by the community in which the reader belongs. This is how Ross saves herself from lapsing into relativism, by situating herself and her personal interpretations in the community of the halakhically committed.

How then does change come about? It cannot, Ross contends, always be “bloodless”; it will be necessary for those committed to change to act “disruptively” in “unruly moments” that will result in a slow evolution of Jewish practice [7]. As a feminist, Ross is sympathetic to Rabbi Mendel Shapiro’s halakhic analysis [20] that minyanim such as Shirah Hadashah (and now a host of others) have relied upon to justify allowing women to read from the Torah and receive aliyot in the company of men. But at the same time she is respectful of the response of Rabbi Yehuda Henkin [21], who was able to find no fault in Shapiro’s case, but argued nevertheless that the practice was unacceptable because it lay beyond the bounds of community consensus. Ross notes with approval that Henkin leaves room for the practice in private settings, and she is willing to go ahead on this basis: not advocating a change for the entire community, but nevertheless hoping that, from a small start, the larger change will ultimately come about.

Conclusion

Perhaps one day the challenge of biblical criticism will seem as unremarkable to contemporary Jews as the historical controversy over anthropomorphism seems to us today. In the meantime, in our struggle to find a notion of Torah min haShamayim consistent with both our commitment to rationality and to our deeply held religious convictions, we might do well to bear in mind that problems of this complexity rarely have neat solutions. A pristine philosophical theory that resolves all contradictions is unlikely to be convincing; rather, we must learn to live with doubt—not merely to tolerate it, but to embrace it as an expression of our seriousness in our quest for truth.

We tend to think of our religious commitments as built on a foundation of belief, as the rooms of a house are built on a concrete foundation beneath. Every perceived crack in the foundation raises a fear that the entire edifice might collapse. Perhaps it would be better to view our religious commitments as a boat, held aloft by the surging waters of a river that are continually rising and falling, made up of currents that are fluid and complex, sometimes flowing together, and sometimes against each other, but always, in aggregate, carrying the boat forward, downstream toward the sea.

References

[1]      Association of Orthodox Jewish Scientists. Mission statement. Available at: http://www.aojs.org.

[2]      Ira Robinson. “’Practically, I Am a Fundamentalist’: Twentieth-Century Orthodox Jews Contend with Evolution and Its Implications.” In: Jewish Tradition and the Challenge of Darwinism, edited by Geoffrey Cantor and Marc Swetlitz. University of Chicago Press, 2006.

[3]      Stephen David Snobelen. ”Isaac Newton.” In Encyclopedia of Science and Religion, MacMillan, 2003.

[4]      Stephen Jay Gould. ”Nonoverlapping Magisteria.” Natural History 106 (March 1997): pp.16–22.

[5]      Talmud Bavli, Berakhot 48b.

[6]      Michael Jackson. ”Aish and the Torah Codes.” The Sephardi Bulletin of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews’ Congregation of London, 25 September 2008.

[7]      Tamar Ross. Expanding the Palace of Torah: Orthodoxy and Feminism. Brandeis University Press, 2004.

[8]      Richard Feynman. ”The Value of Science.” In The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard Feynman. Basic Books, 2000, pp. 141–149.

[9]      Richard Feynman, Ralph Leighton (contributor), Edward Hutchings (editor). Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! Adventures of a Curious Character. W.W. Norton, 1985.

[10]    Christopher Hitchens. ”Bah, Hanukkah: The holiday celebrates the triumph of tribal Jewish backwardness.” Slate, December 3, 2007.

[11]    Shaye J. D. Cohen. ”Hasmoneans, Hellenism and Us.” Forward, December 11, 2008.

[12]    Solomon Schimmel. The Tenacity of Unreasonable Beliefs: Fundamentalism and the Fear of Truth. Oxford University Press, 2008.

[13]    Marc Zvi Brettler. How to Read the Bible. Jewish Publication Society of America, 2005.

[14]    Mordechai Breuer. ‘The Study of Bible and the Primacy of the Fear of Heaven: Compatibility or Contradiction?’ In: Modern Scholarship in the Study of the Torah, p.161. (quoted in [7])

[15]    Louis Jacobs. We Have Reason to Believe. Vallentine, Mitchell; first edition 1957.

[16]    Louis Jacobs. Beyond Reasonable Doubt. Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2004.

[17]    James Kugel. The Bible As It Was. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999.

[18]    James Kugel. How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now. Free Press, 2007.

[19]    Obituary, Rabbi Louis Jacobs. Daily Telegraph, July 7, 2006.

[20]    Mendel Shapiro. ‘Qeri’at ha-Torah by Women: A Halakhic Analysis’. Edah Journal, 1:2, Sivan 5761.

[21]    Yehuda Herzl Henkin. ‘Qeri’at ha-Torah by Women: Where We Stand Today’. Edah Journal, 1:2, Sivan 5761.

The Cambridge dictionary defines integrity as “the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles that you refuse to change.” Integrity and courage go together, since the most stressful test of integrity occurs when the cost of adherence to principle is exceedingly high and demands unusual courage. When joined together, therefore, integrity and courage yield a stellar reputation worth more than its weight in gold. It is perhaps because the combination of these two traits is far from common, that King Solomon tells us, Tov shem miShemen tov—a good name is better than good oil.[1]

Integrity Begins with the Beginning

Over the course of millennia, some of the greatest Jewish leaders behaved not only with the greatest integrity, but did so courageously despite the cost of doing so. Mordechai and Esther are often viewed as Scriptural paragons of integrity and courage. And rightly so. Nevertheless, the Torah itself offers models of both of these admirable character traits.

In the course of two consecutive chapters in Bereishith, the Torah recounts acts of courage and integrity on the part of the two great progenitors of Israel’s royal families. Chapter 38 tells the story of Judah mistaking his daughter-in-law Tamar for a harlot, who then conceived a child from their intercourse. Tamar had disguised herself in this manner because Judah had failed to marry her to his third son Shelah, after she had been widowed from his first two sons.

Judah’s first reaction reflected the male domination of women that prevailed until only the past several decades and still prevails in some traditional societies: He ordered that she be burned as an adulteress. When she proved that he was the father, Judah nevertheless could have acted in the manner of many contemporary politicians. He could have covered up what clearly was damning information and, given the norms of his day, had her burned anyway, since she clearly was a source of sufficient embarrassment to harm his reputation as a tribal leader.

Instead, Judah demonstrated both integrity and courage. He publicly acknowledged the rightness of Tamar’s case,[2] even though it exposed him as a reckless philanderer. In so doing, he not only salvaged his reputation, but merited that his progeny would become the royal house of Israel.[3]

The following chapter of Bereishith offers a similar story with at least in the short term, an unfortunate outcome. Joseph had been sold as a slave to an Egyptian senior official (the sale had been instigated by none other than Judah). Despite his youth, Joseph was immensely talented and having earned his master’s absolute trust, became his senior administrator. His talent and good looks rendered him exceedingly attractive to the official’s lascivious wife who tried to seduce him. Many men might have simply gone along with the woman’s wishes. The husband was unlikely to discover his wife’s adultery. As for the woman, she was not acting in an especially unusual manner; license was common in Egypt, as it remained common among ruling classes for centuries afterward and is not exactly a rarity today.

Joseph surely recognized the cost of denying the woman’s overtures. He was, after all, still a slave and she could ruin his reputation, which indeed she did. Moreover, he was not immune to a woman’s blandishments; the Talmud relates that it was only his mental image of his father that restrained him.[4] In any event, Joseph rejected the woman and paid a high price for doing so—he was slung into a dungeon that no doubt was as vermin infested as any medieval cell.[5] Ultimately, like Judah, his integrity and fearlessness in the face of certain adversity saw him through and he became the ancestor of Joshua bin Nun, as well as of a line of kings of Israel, and, indeed according to tradition, the Messiah who will initiate the redemption prior to the arrival of the Davidic redeemer.[6]

Judah and Joseph are of course only two of the many models of courage and integrity that permeate Tanakh and Midrash. The Bar Kokhba rebellion in particular was the backdrop for the martyrdom of many of Judaism’s greatest rabbis. Rabbi Akiva, perhaps the greatest of all martyrs, brought on his fate by resisting the Roman ban on teaching Torah publicly. So did nine of his leading colleagues. The tradition of the Ten Martyrs, which many Jews recite on both Yom Kippur and Tisha B’Av, indicates the impact that their principled defiance of Rome’s injunction had on the later generations of Jews who suffered from persecution but clung to their beliefs.

Two Heroes of the Middle Ages

Many great leaders followed the example of these great men throughout the course of Jewish history. The Middle Ages, notably the era of the Crusades, were witness to the courage of countless Jews, both famous and anonymous, who, like R. Akiva and his colleagues, made the supreme sacrifice rather than sacrifice their integrity. Still others, who did not submit to martyrdom, nevertheless refused to compromise their values regardless of the cost to their personal well-being. One prominent example was Rabbi Meir of Rothenberg, the great Tosafist and “supreme arbiter in ritual, legal and community matters in Germany.”[7] When leading an exodus of thousands of Jews from Germany in response to an increase in their already crushing tax burden, R. Meir was arrested and delivered to Emperor Rudolf I. When the Emperor demanded a huge ransom, R. Meir, refused to permit his great disciple, Rabbi Asher ben Yehiel (known by his acronym Rosh) to pay. He argued that the Talmud had ruled against paying excessive ransoms for Jewish prisoners. He died in prison, refusing to compromise his principles.

Two centuries after R. Meir’s passing, another Jewish leader had the courage to uphold his values in the face of adversity. Don Isaac Abravanel, the wealthy and powerful financier, who had lost a fortune when driven out of Portugal in 1483, had become the financial advisor to Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile and once again amassed considerable wealth. In 1492, however, faced with deportation if he clung to his Jewish heritage or conversion if he remained in Spain, Abravanel chose deportation despite considerable pressure from the two monarchs that he convert as other Jewish leaders had done. Instead he emigrated to Naples, leaving behind another vast fortune.[8] Once again, however, he found himself forced to flee in the face of a French invasion; once again he left his possessions behind, including, by his own account, his “enormous wealth” as well as “much of his precious library.”[9] He lived briefly in several Italian towns until, as he recounts in his commentaries to Tanakh, he finally found peace in Venice where once again he became an invaluable advisor to the city’s rulers.

Heroes of the Holocaust

Courage and integrity in support of Jewish values certainly did not disappear with the Middle Ages. Among those who exemplified these values in the twentieth century was R. Yisroel Meir Kagan, better known by the title of his great work, Chofetz Chaim. “The Chofetz Chaim”—as he was universally referred to—was a model of integrity, even if that meant significant financial loss to his exceedingly modest means. Indeed, his moral probity was so great, and so widely recognized, that not only did the New York Times publish his obituary, but it also related an example of his exalted character. As the Times recorded: “Despite his fame as ‘the uncrowned spiritual king of Israel,’ the Chofetz Chaim was a modest and humble man. His career as a merchant was of short duration. Because of his popularity all the Jews of the town [Radin] flocked to his store. The Chofetz Chaim thereupon closed the store on the ground that he was depriving other Jewish merchants of a living.”[10]

The Holocaust represented perhaps the greatest challenge Jewish leaders had ever faced. Yet some rose to that challenge. One of these truly great men was Rabbi Yekusiel Yehuda Halberstam, founding rebbe of the Sanz-Klausenberg dynasty. Having been arrested and released, he returned to Klausenberg, where in spite of the risks of capture, he refused to leave his Hassidim and made no effort to save himself from further searches for Jews.  On the contrary, he devoted his efforts both to assisting those Jews who had managed to escape to Hungary as well as to supporting his Hassidim. When the Nazis occupied Hungary in 1944, R. Halberstam was arrested and deported to Auschwitz. While in the camp he not only personally adhered to rigorous standards of kashruth despite the horrible environment—often going hungry—but also fostered and strengthened the religious faith of his fellow inmates.

R. Halberstam was then dragooned into a forced march to the camp at Dachau and then moved again to a forced labor camp at Muldorf. There as well he was a source of spiritual leadership for fellow laborers, adhering to the norms of kashruth, living for nine months on a diet of bread and water. Indeed, he would not eat the bread until he had completed netilat yadayim (ritual washing of the hands), and since water was scarce, he would often wait days before he collected sufficient drops that dripped from a water tank in order to carry out the ritual.[11]

At the other end of the Jewish religious spectrum stood Rabbi Leo Baeck, no less a man of integrity and courage. Leader of Germany’s Reform Jewish community, he refused to leave Germany when the opportunity was afforded him. Instead, he “was fearless in the face of the Nazi menace, emotionally steady, and a source of strength, courage, and inspiration for Germany’s Jews. He refused to abandon what remained of his people as anti-Semitic persecution intensified in Germany before the war. As a moral actor he followed his people into the concentration camps, though his daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter escaped to the United Kingdom.”[12]

And Then There Were Others

There were many other rabbis who likewise served their flocks with integrity during the Holocaust and the years that led up to it. And then there were others. These men, many of them Hassidic rebbes, looked after themselves and left their followers to their deadly fates. Perhaps the most prominent among these individuals were two Hassidic leaders, the Rebbeim of Satmar and Belz.

The story of the Satmar Rebbe is a complicated one. On the one hand, he actively raised funds to rescue both ordinary Jews and leading rabbis from deportation and incarceration; on the other hand, beginning in 1939 he attempted to escape from Europe on multiple occasions. Moreover, during his time as an inmate of the Cluj ghetto, or his subsequent stay in Bergen-Belsen, where he “was given preferential treatment,”[13]  or when he reached in Budapest, he chose to remain aloof from his fellow Jews and even refused to interact with leading rabbis.  Moreover, despite his vehement and seemingly uncompromising anti-Zionism, the rebbe chose to join the group of Hungarian Jews that Zionist Rudolf Kastner had ransomed from Adolf Eichmann. The Rebbe did have misgivings about Kastner’s plan and “the fact that the [Kastner] train would be under the supervision of Zionists.” Nevertheless, “Rabbi Yoel decided to embark on the journey …with the knowledge that no other rabbis…would be considered for the [Kastner] list, nor would the rest of the Satmar entourage” that had joined him in Budapest.[14]

Once the Rebbe escaped on the Kastner train, he moved to Switzerland (where his efforts to rescue Jewish children from Christian homes came to little), in contrast to many other rabbis who returned to their hometowns or Displaced Person camps to assist their surviving followers.  During his brief stay in Palestine, he failed to acknowledge those who had sought to assist him such as Rabbi Moshe Porush of Agudat Yisrael and Chief Rabbi Isaac Herzog, both of whose institutions he instead attacked. Indeed, he attacked the American Agudath Israel as well as the Union of Orthodox Rabbis, “whose leaders had headed the Rescue Committee that endeavored to rescue Hungarian Jews.”[15] The Satmar Rebbe may have been a great scholar, but he was also what the Talmud criticizes as kfui tov, one who is ungrateful for the good that others do for him.

The behavior of Rabbi Aharon Rokeach, the Belzer Rebbe, was perhaps even more disturbing than that of the Satmar Rebbe. He too was fully aware of the danger that his community faced. Yet on January 17, 1944, a mere two months before the Jews of Hungary began to be deported to Auschwitz, Rokeach and his half-brother Mordechai fled from Budapest to Palestine with the help of Zionists, although like the Satmar Rebbe, they too were bitterly anti-Zionist. The day before they escaped, however, Mordechai publicly read a farewell sermon that his half-brother had approved to an audience of thousands in the great hall of Budapest’s Kahal Yereim synagogue.

Mordechai denied allegations that the Rebbe was leaving his flock to their fate. He asserted that the Belzer Rebbe had always dreamed of moving to Palestine and now had the opportunity to do so. Moreover, Mordechai assured his audience that “the Tzaddik [the Rebbe] sees that rest and tranquility will descend upon the inhabitants of this land [Hungary] …the Tzaddik sees that good, and all good, and only good and grace will befall our Jewish brethren the inhabitants of this land.”[16] As was the case with respect to the Satmar Rebbe, it could hardly be said that either the Belzer or his brother displayed anything in the way of courage or integrity.

Power Corrupts

Even as the power of Orthodox political parties has grown over the past several decades, integrity on the part of some of their most prominent leaders has remained in short supply. If anything, they have repeatedly borne out Lord Acton’s aphorism that “power corrupts.” Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger was arrested in 2013 on charges of bribery, tax fraud, and interfering in the trial process. He was jailed four years later.[17]

R. Aryeh Deri, leader of the Shas Party, who had served in a variety of ministerial posts beginning in 1988, was convicted in 2000 for taking $155,000 in bribes and sentenced to three years in jail. Remarkably, he returned to politics just over a decade after he was released from jail on good behavior in 2002. He was elected to the Knesset in 2013 but resigned after an Israeli television station released footage of the great Sephardic leader Rav Ovadia Yosef “calling him a wicked man and a thief.”[18] Remarkably, the Moetzet Chachmei HaTorah, the ultimate rabbinical authority for the Shas Party, refused to accept his resignation and it was only accepted by Yuli Edelstein, speaker of the Knesset.

Deri’s resignation hardly meant the end of his career, however. Once again he headed the Shas list in 2015. Once again he was elected to the Knesset. Once again he held the first of several ministerial offices during the Prime Ministership of Benyamin Netanyahu, who himself has been charged with corruption. Deri was again charged, this time with tax evasion, while serving as Netanyahu’s Interior Minister. He only left the position when the Netanyahu government fell, but then acknowledged his guilt in a plea bargain, resigned from the Knesset and was fined 180,000 shekels (about $50,000) and received a year's suspended sentence.[19] He may yet return to politics and yet another ministerial post in a new right-wing government.

Then there is Yaakov Litzman, long time Knesset member and former Minister of Construction and of Health. The leader of the Agudat Yisrael party and a leading figure in the Ger Hassidic community, Litzman was convicted for criminally assisting alleged pedophile Malka Leifer's attempt to evade extradition to Australia. She eventually was extradited.  Like Deri and Metzger, Litzman agreed to a plea deal; he paid a relatively small fine and resigned from the Knesset.[20] He too could return to politics.

Whatever their degree of piety, and Torah knowledge, all of these men violated a fundamental talmudic principle: The lack of integrity results in hilul Hashem, the desecration of the Creator’s name. Hilul Hashem offsets Torah knowledge. The Talmud speaks of a scholar who sullied his reputation for which R. Judah placed him under a ban (Shammeta). R. Judah’s basis for imposing such a harsh penalty was the verse: “For the priest's lips should keep knowledge and they should seek the law at his mouth; for he is the messenger of the Lord of Hosts,” which was interpreted as “if the Master is like unto a messenger of the Lord of Hosts…seek the law at his mouth; but if not, do not seek the law at his mouth.”[21] It is indeed regrettable that instead of serving as positive role models for their communities, they did quite the opposite.

Men and Women of Integrity

Happily, there are still leading figures in the Orthodox community both in the United States and in Israel, who are unafraid to take risks in the name of what is right. Deborah Lipstadt, currently the United States Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Anti-Semitism, has long been an outspoken critic of Holocaust denial. She famously defeated a libel suit in Britain against the denier David Irving, despite the fact that English law places on the defendant the burden of proof of innocence. She has spoken out against racial hatred in all its forms, regardless of the consequences to her own career. Indeed, she did not back down when Senator Ron Johnson blocked her confirmation for months because she tweeted that he “advocated white supremacy/nationalism."[22] Ultimately she was confirmed by voice vote.

To cite another example, the Vishnitzer Rebbe, R. Yisroel Hager, is no moderate; he opposes the use of smart phones. Nevertheless, in the face of violent attacks perpetrated by supporters of the Gerer Rebbe, Rabbi Yaakov Alter, against those who support his cousin, Rabbi Shaul Alter,[23] R. Hager issued a public statement condemning the violence.[24] Moreover, he made it clear that he was not only speaking to his own followers, but to Orthodox Jews of every stripe. Such condemnations can enflame radicals, who have no compunction about verbally abusing and physically attacking their critics. It took both integrity and courage for R. Hager to speak out as he did.

Conclusion   

Integrity is not risk-free. Integrity in one’s personal life requires courage. Integrity in the public sphere, where personal loss can be significant and permanent, requires an extra dose of courage. That, however, has long been the Jewish standard for true leadership. Perhaps Yitro put it best when he outlined for Moshe those qualifications that he deemed necessary for all who would assume leadership positions under the greatest leader of them all: “men of substance, God fearers, men of truth, who hate monetary gain, and you shall appoint over them [Israel] leaders over thousands, leaders over hundreds, leaders over fifties, and leaders over tens.”[25]

Such persons could be found in every generation. They can be found in our own time as well. They can be men, or women, Hareidi, Modern Orthodox, or non-Orthodox. What these individuals, like their many illustrious predecessors, have in common is commitment to the truth, abhorrence of corruption, and the fearlessness that enables them to speak out in support of what is right and just. And in so doing they not only meet Yitro’s demanding standards for leadership, but serve as role models for the Jewish people wherever they may reside.