Min haMuvhar

Identification and Dislocation:
the Breakdown of Worshipful Expression

by Michael Haruni

One of the dilemmas we faced during the preparation of the Nehalel siddur was over the instructions, or “rubric”. For on the one hand there is, undoubtably, tremendous value in the detailed instructions appearing in the major contemporary English-language siddurim on how and where to bow in Amidah, where to kiss tzitziyot during and after Keriyat Shema, how to wave the lulav, and so forth. Baaley teshuvah especially have, since the advent of the ArtScroll siddur, found themselves able as never before to participate competently and confidently in shul procedures. The frum-from-birth users have benefited too, it must be said, filling in finer details previously eluding them.

On the other hand, however, we also sensed that detailed performance instructions induce not a heartfelt act of worship but a sort of robotics, leaving out the real mental and spiritual requisites of prayer. The motions we perform when we pray should ideally function, surely, as expressions of the stirrings of our hearts, as elements in our acts of telling God of our love and awe of Him, of our thanks for the good in our lives, and of our needs. Indeed, the performance of mitzvot generally should be driven to the outside from within; whereas I suspect that by synthesizing such motions from detailed choreographic instructions, we create an act that goes no deeper than its outward features. (I confess that, with Nehalel beShabbat, we too rather often fell in with the contemporary standard of providing mind-control instructions.)

This focus on the formal synthesis of practice is symptomatic of the larger malaise compellingly observed by Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: that in mainstream Orthodoxy, shul-going, tefilah, and Halachah generally have, for many of us, ceased to act as instruments of genuine worship—as the language by which we express our love of God in response to His overarching, quite straightforward demand, le’ahava et Adoshem Elokecha.

We have replaced God with prayers, no longer realizing to Whom we are praying. We even use Halachah as an escape from experiencing Him. We are so busy with creating halachic problems, and so completely absorbed by trying to solve them, that we are unaware of our hiding behind this practice so as not to deal with His existence… We must realize that the purpose of Halachah is to have an encounter with Him, not just with the Halachah. Halachah is the channel through which we can reach Him, not just laws to live by. (Present volume, p…..)

The remarks that follow are my attempt to understand this communicative role of Halachah—as well as the apparent breakdown of this role. What really can we expect of Halachah in this respect? Is there really substance to this idea of communicating with God through Halachah? In particular, when we say that Halachah can work as a means of communication, or of expression, are we merely invoking a metaphor—albeit a highly potent one—or can we attribute to this idea some philosophical and even psychological reality?

I’ll begin by mentioning the observations made by Rabbi Haym Soloveitchik concerning the role of mimicry in the acquisition of halachic practice. For I want to suggest that Halachah does have a real expressive force, which is strongly connected to this role of mimicry—much in the way that the expressive force of language is connected to the role of mimicry in the acquisition of language. (Indeed I suspect that the idea of the transmission of meaning from each generation to the next, loaded tacitly in R. Soloveitchik’s concept of a mimetic tradition of Halachah but not made explicit in his discussion, is part of what makes that concept so alluring.) Our lesser regard now for Halachah as an instrument of communication is tied, I shall then suggest, to the shift away from mimicry as the source of halachic practice.

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In his seminal article, “Rupture and reconstruction: the transformation of contemporary Orthodoxy” (Tradition, Vol. 28, no. 4, 1994; my page references are from its reprint in R. Rosenberg & C. I. Waxman, eds., Jews in America: A Contemporary Reader, 1999), R. H. Soloveitchik describes the move that began in the 1950s in Orthodox circles, especially in the US, UK and Israel, towards a religious practice constructed from halachic texts, and away from what had previously functioned to transmit halachic practice through generations, namely, the mimicry of observed practice. Halachic practice had always gained its currency in each generation of orthodox Jews by their seeing and hearing the practice of their parents, teachers and rabbis as well of others in their communities, and emulating this.

Halakhah is a sweepingly comprehensive regula of daily life...it constitutes a way of life. And a way of life is not learned but rather absorbed. Its transmission is mimetic, imbibed from parents and friends, and patterned on conduct regularly observed in home and street, synagogue and school. (p. 321)

But various factors, R. H. Soloveitchik explains, particularly the ruptures created by mass emigration from the Old World and most especially by the Holocaust, led us to seek out the bases for our practices, less in the visible conduct of our model figures, more in halachic texts. The compulsion to faithfully reproduce that halachic life no longer visible to us—the form of life we attribute in our imagination to those vanished worlds—has pressed us to explore incessantly deeper into the texts for minutiae of Halachah lost, we fear, from erstwhile practice. “A tireless quest for absolute accuracy, for ‘perfect fit’—faultless congruence between conception and performance—is the hallmark of contemporary religiosity.” (p. 328) Powered by this clamor for ever greater accuracy, an explosion of Halachic literature and readership has mushroomed, and obscure practices that may never have actually had any significant role in religious life, now newly sourced in texts, have become germane to the new Orthodoxy.

R. H. Soloveitchik is clearly not suggesting that the mass of halachic text now dominating Orthodox life is in any way extraneous to Torah miSinai (and nor, for what it’s worth, am I). Only that (in my fallible understanding), the reality of religious practice—the reality which must act, surely, as the defining paradigm of what religious Judaism eternally is—has never in actuality embodied the multitude of minute requirements that are now being deciphered out of the textual tradition and introduced into mainstream practice. Whereas if we want to get a closer idea of what real Orthodox Judaism is, what really identifies it, we must look back at what our ancestors of a few generations ago and before were actually doing. And to use one of R. H. Soloveitchik’s examples, they did indeed sort bones from the fish they ate on Shabbat, despite the applicability, theoretically, of the issur livror, which has only more recently been brought into focus.

Now what might this imply about the possibility of genuine worship? I fear that the text-based construction of worshipful conduct, characteristic of our time, leaves something vital out of our performance of mitzvot. For as long as what fed our religious practical proficiency was the connective of mimicry, this, as I shall now try to clarify, must have brought a certain crucial kind of response into play. Watching and emulating a person with whom we identify, as they lay tefilin, or wave a lulav, we not only reproduce the practice enriched with those subtleties which a written description—inevitably an abstraction to some degree—leaves out. This identification with our model, I shall argue, also imparts a certain inner element that turns the practice into a means for genuine human worshipful expression—and missing from it when our worshipful conduct is synthesized out of text.

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Think of what happens when we observe and imitate a human being. What was at work when, as a child, I watched my father wearing tefilin and praying—saw a human heart throbbing in powerful devotion to God—and then, identifying with him, began to pray and later lay tefilin in imitation of him?

The most striking accomplishment of the human facility to imitate—and the principal phenomenon with which I shall compare halachic practice—is language. But I’ll first dwell momentarily on mime artists and their artful impersonations of human beings. This illustrative model will, I hope, help us understand certain elements when we look, first at language, and then at the halachic case.

Mime artists do not merely reproduce the external, visible features of their subject. They show us these by way of showing us the attitude of the subject—the joy, despondence, meekness, haughtiness and so on which they see in their subjects. The mimic looks empathically into the mind of the subject, sees this person’s mental state and reproduces it through the mannerisms and gestures which express that mental state. Indeed it is by focusing on that state of mind of the subject and then finding it in themselves—“becoming” the subject internally—that mime artists replicate those external expressions. And though we see directly only those external features shown us by the mime artist, we also see through them to the joy or the haughtiness and so forth—we are looking, that is, at a person in that mental state.

Something like this goes on in the acquisition of language. Infants hear the sounds of words and in due course replicate these. But these sound-productions become speech only insofar as infants match them with the meanings these sounds express. Hearing their parents say “apple” and discovering that their parents use this word when they want to say something about an apple, the infants too become able to use the word to mean apple. They must have, in other words, like the mime artist, seen into the minds of their parents and detected this desire to refer to an apple. Astonishing though this human facility is, it is not something magical: it will have been preceded by a natural process in which their parents, or other models, have some number of times done things like said “apple” as they hold or point to an apple. (According to some contemporary views, this is enabled by an innately endowed conceptual scheme which this process merely fills with content; but for our purposes this makes no difference, as the relevant end result of the process is the same.) The infant becomes able in this way to recognize the meaning the model intends when using the term—aware, that is, of the mental act which a use of the term expresses. And it is this match which the infant then reproduces: finding in her or himself the desire to say something about an apple (such as that she or he is hungry for an apple), the infant is able to express this desire by using the word “apple”.

It is thus by imitation of our parents as well as our siblings, extended family, teachers, community and so on, as they use the terms of the language in appropriate contexts, that we learn to use these terms, paired systematically with the world of meanings, ultimately making up the complex whole of our language.

The infant does not of course pursue this imitative achievement consciously or deliberately (unlike the mime artist). Yet nearly all of us are, quite evidently, innately endowed with the ability involved here (not with the language itself, but with the ability to acquire the language by imitation). It is, moreover, our innate impulse to press ahead with this process: we are innately urged to empathically see what people have in mind and thus learn how, upon discovering those states of mind in ourselves, to give them expression with our own corresponding linguistic behavior.

In just this way we also acquire a panoply of more elementary, non-linguistic gestures and mannerisms, such as head-shaking, shrugging, frowning and ululating. We detect in others a meaning, see that it is matched with a certain kind of physical expression, and so become able to express this meaning, when we find it in ourselves, by reproducing the same physical expressions (though some matchings might also have come to us innately, such as a smile with happiness). Indeed the universal human facility and urge to imitate is, in this way, central to the transmission of gestures and characteristics that are, like language, largely nationally and culturally specific (indeed it is often striking how much of the mimetically acquired characteristics of a child’s facial expressions and mannerisms are family-specific).

Once our language and other terms of expression are acquired, there is nothing artificial or constructed about our use of them. They become, rather, the natural, instinctive instruments for expressing our thoughts about the world and our yearnings. It is with these we give unmediated expression to our most intimate and overwhelming emotions. They are what reveal, in the most powerful and essential way, our very humanity.

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So it is, I suggest, when by emulating our parents, siblings, teachers and rabbis, we learn to pray, to lay tefilin, to create the world of Shabbat, and so on. We acquire in just this way a language for speaking to God. For as we watch them, we are aware not just of the physical aspects of their actions: we also have an urge—I am extrapolating here from what is hugely evident in the case of language and gesture acquisition—to empathically identify the mental states of which these physical aspects are expression; to discover, that is, the mental states motivating their worshipful behavior; and thus we become able, when we find this worshipful mental state within ourselves, to give it expression by exhibiting the same worshipful behavior. What we emulate is, in other words, not just the outward behavior, but the pairing of these inner and outer components of the act of worship. Through these pairings, thus acquired, our halachic practice becomes the means for expressing our own worshipful mental states. In this way, Halachah as a whole becomes our natural idiom for expressing to God our own inner stirrings.

Here, again, I am not imputing to the halachic novice any magical, mind-reading powers. How then do our halachic novices determine what the inner states of their models are? How do they know whether this is their model’s love of God, or awe of God, or perhaps the model’s lasting passion to blindly obey a teacher from childhood, or possibly even—for all the novice can tell—eagerness for money offered to the model in exchange for performing the mitzvah?

It is possible, for all I know, that in some instances at least, the novice is able to distinguish, just from the subtleties of the model’s performance, that it is an expression of love of God, or perhaps that it is an expression of blind obedience to a teacher. That said, I don’t assume every Jew on the way to independent halachic observance has sufficient perceptive powers, even if some do. Different novices will vary in this respect; so will their models vary as to how much their performances show their inner states. But I’d surmise that, more usually, other contextual indications play a role here, too. One novice may know her father as a man gushing with love who, as she knows also from conversation with him, directs much of this love to God; and this will probably tilt her interpretation of her father’s behavior. Likewise if she knows that a Kaddish-sayer in shul is providing someone a service in exchange for payment. Moreover, a novice’s interpretation could be erroneous—nothing assures he sees the model’s soul accurately. Or possibly the novice identifies the mental state less specifically—perhaps as some indeterminate attitude somewhere between love and awe. But whatever attitude or emotion the novice ascribes to her model—truthfully or falsely—this, I suggest, will be part of the mental state-with-expression match which she emulates in her own performance of the mitzvah.

The context influencing the novice’s interpretation could include, for sure, the learning and discussion he or she brings to bare. His having learned about ahavat haShem, for instance, may prejudice—correctly or otherwise—how he now understands the performance he observes. But I doubt this learning can stand on its own in the cultivation of the worshipping self. For it is the process of observing, interpreting and emulating human beings that furnishes the novice with this warm instrument of human expression. The language-like, expressive force of halachic practice—its capacity to reveal our inner stirrings in this immediate, instinctive way—derives from this imitative process, and not, in most of us at least, from theoretical study.

There is also another feature of this imitative process that significantly empowers halachic practice as a means for showing God our souls. Our identification with our parents, family, teachers and community not only invests halachic practice with the capacity to express our worshipful feelings: in addition, much in the way that my first language is itself inseparable from my sense of who I am, the language of religious practice itself becomes part of my identity. It comes with this sense of being intimately mine. When I pray, I am speaking a message to God which draws, in the fullest possible way, from my very being—free of posturing or alien fabrication, essential in both content and form to the person I am.

I must at this point offer a reality check. What is this relation actually like between performance of a mitzvah and the mental state it expresses? Is this something we could really recognize in our lives? I think the answer is yes, but to prevent us looking for the wrong thing, I must mention a few features which an expressive halachic act need not have. Firstly, as I shall clarify, a halachic act can be expressive of love, or of awe, without this being any kind of overwhelming, trance-like state of consciousness; indeed it need not be any kind of conscious episode. Secondly, the idea that love of God impels us to perform a mitzvah does not mean we should expect this love to sometimes impel us to act in any involuntary or unconsidered way (it will not, for instance, sometimes shake us helplessly out of bed at 2 am to lay tefilin). More positively, our love will show through action that is clear-headedly attentive to time and circumstances.

Compare an act of love for another person, such as when, pressed by love, I buy a present for my wife. This is a highly complex action, lasting over a period, comprising an indefinite sequence of sub-actions, each waiting for the right moment. I may first conceive the idea on Sunday, then check when I can shop for it, and only on Tuesday get in the car, turn the ignition, drive down to Emek Refa’im, search for parking, look in at a few stores, wait my turn at one of them and discuss options with the salesperson, finally choose something, take out a credit card, and so on. The deliberate and time-phased nature of the scheme takes nothing away from its being motivated the whole way by love, from it being manifestation of this ongoing condition of my person. I am not transported through it by any trance-like state of consciousness. Conscious episodes of love may occur in me from time to time, though I doubt these are essential to love being the motive. (This is not the space for a theory of love, but I’ll just retell the familiar wisdom that what does testify to its being love is a much larger narrative—years of marriage, shared understanding and lots more.) Nor has this love taken hold of me and forced me to act in any involuntary way: it is, rather, integrated rationally into the matrix of my intentions and understanding regarding the world generally. It is true that some acts of love are less time-bound, more spontaneous, such as a kiss given just on a whim. But these, too, are typically executed not in an involuntary transport but with at least some attention to circumstances, and with ensuing restraint (e.g., not in front of certain witnesses).

It is to this same extent plausible that my performing of a mitzvah is an expression of love, even if it is not produced involuntarily by a spontaneous burst of passion. For so it is with love: it can be my ongoing love of God that presses me to lay tefilin, say Birkat Hamazon, make Kiddush at the Shabbat table, though I do each just when it is appropriately occasioned, at which moment I enact a complex and deliberate scheme (carry my tefilin to shul, go to my seat and so forth). Nor does the possible absence of any conscious episode of loving Him, as I perform the mitzvah, cast doubt on the existence of this love, or on its being at play as my motive. The love may at some moments enter consciousness, but its doing so is not essential to its being my motive. It will be, rather, this ongoing condition of my person which, just in appropriate circumstances—such as it being time for Shacharit, or when I finish a meal, or when we come to the Friday night table—manifests in my considered performance of the mitzvah. (If mitzvot shehazman lo geraman differ at all relevantly in this respect from the more time-bound mitzvot I’ve used as examples, it is in their being potentially more spontaneous; so that, kal vechomer, there can be even less suspicion that they fail to demonstrate love.)

I must stress also that none of what I’ve said comes to deny that halachic texts play a role in the cultivation of expression through halachic practice—of course they do. A practice we have acquired through imitation and then refine further by consulting texts retains its identity as an instrument of personal expression. In contrast, however, a practice constructed in the first place from text alone, and deployed in an attempt to express through it (say) love of God, will lack this immediate and instinctive communicative force. Nor will it truly come from me.

Where, it must be asked, does this place ba’aley teshuvah or for that matter converts? Bereft of a parental model, are they unable to secure the intimate expressiveness of Halachah which I argue is yielded by mimetic transmission? Are they not bound to relying on instructional text? Not at all. Newcomers to Orthodoxy will acquire this identification with practice by attaching themselves to, and identifying with, a community, empathically watching what their fellow shul-goers and perhaps teachers do, and emulating them. In the course of time they, like anyone else there, will have made the language of worship their own. As much as the rest of us, they will acquire the patterns of prayer, tefilin, kashrut, the dos and don’ts making for the glow of Shabbat, and so on, until these shape, for them too, the form of life that is, potentially, our unmediated expression of love of God. They too become participants in this vital, human, forward-moving project of intimately worshipping God, a flux that began at Sinai, has been carried forward from generation to generation, and is now propelled onwards by us.

Family and community have been the artery within which Torat Moshe has coursed through our history. In just the way each generation of a nation inherits its language, we’ve inherited halachic practice, loaded at each moment with its signifying force—and always with the sense that this is the language our ancestors have used, since Matan Torah, to express their love of God. To be sure, each generation imparts its admixture to this organically developing tradition—partly in the form of evolving minhag, partly through scholarly refinement; just as each generation of a nation imparts colloquialisms and sometimes scholarly correctives to its national language that are soon incorporated into its mainstream. Yet it is with this entire continuous emerging tradition that we identify; it is with the inner dimension of worship running through it that we empathize. In this ongoing human project we’ve found our place, and in so doing have become genuinely able to participate in worship.

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But a breach now in the sequence, with the new shift to the authority of text, places it in danger. For the project of synthesizing halachic practice from text gives us no more than this behavioral facility; it contains no mechanism providing us with a means for expressing our inner stirrings to God, such as is furnished by imitation. The shift from mimicry to the authority of text thus brings with it, I suspect, not just the change of quantity and emphasis in halachic practice accounted for by R. H. Soloveitchik—the move to a Judaism of chumrot—but also a qualitative change: it is failing to cast Halachah in the spiritual and psychological role it has traditionally fulfilled.

I must, however, step back a moment and ask, is this harsh conclusion born out by reality? Is it really true that a halachic practice incorporated into our lives after we discover it in a text, instead of by emulation, is less likely to function as expressive of our love of God? Let me flesh out the situation with an example. Suppose in a shiur on Mishnah Berurah, I learn that Chanukah lights must be in a window less than 10 tephachot (slightly less than one yard) above ground level, if one has such a window (if one doesn’t have one, then higher is okay; cf. 671:27); and suppose that, in ignorance of this, it has been our family practice to place them in a window above 10 tephachot, even though we do have a window below this height. I can imagine ourselves engaging in some family debate, then switching to the lower window, and yes, with the feeling that we are only now fulfilling the mitzvah properly. But I doubt anything about doing this switch, motivated just by our concern to conform with the written ordinance, will make it in any sense an act expressing our love of God. It will feel, rather, like an alien imposition, even a disruption of the particular form of life by which we’ve celebrated the relation God has had with Am Yisrael and through which we’ve shown Him our reciprocal love.

I must also very forcefully stress here that I do not for a moment mean to suggest, God forbid, that a failure of the communicative role of a mitzvah could be reason not to perform it. I am, to start with, most certainly not qualified to suggest to anyone what they are halachically bound to do or not do. And more importantly: even if I am correct in saying that a mitzvah we’ve discovered in a text lacks the expressive force that would have been given it by imitation, some other solid reason may nevertheless exist to perform this mitzvah. What our reasons are for performing mitzvot is a huge question of hashkafah, far beyond the scope of the present discussion; but expressiveness is certainly not an exclusive answer. Suffice it to mention here the plausible view that we must perform the mitzvah simply lishmah—as a self-sufficient, intrinsically valuable act; or the view that we must perform it just because God has told us to; or that it is for the sake of some human utility, known or unknown to us, which God wishes us to introduce into the world; or because by doing it repeatedly we eventually do come to express by it our love of God. Deeply disconcerted though some of us may be if the expressive potential of a mitzvah has fallen into some dereliction, it would be outrageous to suppose this could be reason to stop performing it. My conclusion does not extend beyond pointing to this breakdown of expressiveness.

But even this limited statement may seem overly alarming. For in reality we still mostly identify with parents and a community whose practices of Shabbat, tefilin, kashrut and Chanukah lights, for instance, are our primary encounter with and source of mitzvot. Insofar as we are prompted into our own performing of a given mitzvah by identification and emulation, so too does this action retain its expressive power. There admittedly are contemporary practices of which I doubt this can be said—in some circles, for instance, the gebrokts apron, preventing matzo crumbs from landing on moisture, has become de rigueur accoutrement at the seder table—but these remain the minority of our practices. Surely, then, the tradition is still principally transmitted by imitation.

That may be true, yet I fear the evaluative shift towards a religiosity based on the authority of text nevertheless brings with it a more pervasive erosion. For it devalues in a general way the possibility of communicating through Halachah with God. One way of putting this is that a different motivation for performing mitzvot has begun to captivate us, namely, to cultivate a practice whose formal features match the requirements of texts; so that, correspondingly, we have become less driven by the motive to show God our love. The whole enterprise of performing mitzvot in order to express our inner devotion—always its vital human core—is moving towards obsoleteness.

Actually, though, I think the situation is more complex. It is not that we have ceased to inherit halachic practice through mimicry. Mimetic transmission largely continues: we still observe parents, teachers and others performing mitzvot, and we are still driven to interpret their motives and to emulate the halachic practice that becomes, in ourselves too, expressive of those motives. But we are now gripped by an ideology that focuses just on the formal match between behavior and text. Our new premise, that achieving this match is the true reason for performing mitzvot, now guides our interpretation of halachic practice—is now what guides the novice’s interpretation of her model—so that the novice is much likelier than before to interpret halachic practice as motivated just by the concern to achieve this formal match. She may even be misinterpreting that practice—a real, active love of God might be concealed from her by the new premise—nonetheless, a formal match will in turn become her own motive for performing mitzvot. The motivational turn widely infecting us in this way is what is prompting the novel preoccupation, described by R. H. Soloveitchik, with elevating ever more details from the halachic literature into common practice. Moreover, given the authority of text, even the imitative identification with our forbears could, with time, become superfluous altogether.

Halachah is potentially the language in which we tell God we love Him. We learn it by observing others speaking it, empathizing with their motives and emulating them. But we are losing sight of this communicative purpose of Halachah. It is as if we are becoming obsessed with learning some natural language, not in order to communicate in it with others, but just for the purpose of producing syntactically perfect sentences, without the ability to use these sentences for conveying our thoughts: at first we go about this by observing its native speakers—listening only for the formal properties of their speech, indifferently to the meanings they express through it; then in due course we turn for our authoritative source to an instruction manual of syntax, renowned for its accuracy, which teaches us to produce excellent sentences but leaves out their meanings. We are moving, it may be said, towards a condition of halachic aphasia.

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All is not lost. We can counter the trend with education—as parents by telling our children, as teachers by telling our students and, I humbly submit, as rabbis our congregants, that our reason for performing mitzvot is ahavat haShem. This principle, disseminated widely enough, stands a chance of prejudicing accordingly the next generation’s interpretation of halachic practice. But as their models, we shall need to be sincere: our own examples need to convincingly demonstrate this love. If we are visibly phony, no one will inherit it from us.

We have all heard the famous story of Esav returning from the field and seeing his twin brother, Jacob, sitting with a delicious bowl of soup in front of him. Esav decides that he needs to eat the soup and he is willing to go so far as to sell his birthright for it.
Later on in the story when Esav runs in from the field to receive the blessing from his father; upon realizing that he no longer had this option (as the blessing went to Jacob), he exclaims that this is the second time he has been tricked by Jacob (referring to selling the birthright as the first time). Obviously Esav is still bitter about the entire episode with him selling the birthright. This begs a very basic question: why would Esav sell his birthright for a simple bowl of soup? At first one might say that Esav himself gives us an answer when he states that he is “dying” of hunger but this seems to be the same type of exaggeration we are used to using on a daily basis. I think that the answer here is much deeper and has a connection to why we have come to known Esav as the typical Rasha.

The Talmud speaks about a concept called a “davar shelo bah leolam” or something that doesn’t exist yet. For many things in business some sort of “kinyan” or transaction needs to take place. The Talmud decides that one cannot do business with something that does not yet exist. For example one cannot marry a girl (something that needs a transaction to take place) with next year’s crops which have yet to grow. It seems that when something doesn’t exist yet, even though both people know that it will come, it isn’t considered like is something of value. We can relate this Halacha to human psychology in what is known as the need for instant gratification. People want to see results and benefits immediately or else they will try something else. This seemed to be Esav’s problem; although he may have known that the bechor was technically worth more than a bowl of soup, he wanted the instant gratification. When one is overcome by his desire for instant gratification he is at risk to throw away things worth much more in value. It is no coincidence that our Rabbis state that desire is able to remove a man from this world. This need for instant gratification is such a bad character trait that one who is overcome with it would be denoted by Chazal as the protype of the Rasha.

On the other end of the spectrum we have Jacob. Already from a young age he is described as a simple man, but this story with the soup is really the first time we see him in action. Just as Esav was ready to through away the Bechor for some soup, Jacob was willing to give his soup away. He probably went hungry that night but he had more important things to worry about; he had a vision.

When Jacob has to run away from his parent’s house he finds himself in the house of Lavan. He sees that his daughter, Rachel, is an amazing women and he sets out to marry her. He works 7 years straight just to marry her and in the end he is tricked! The 7 years here isn’t random, the 7 years represents an entire cycle of time or agricultural cycle (as we see with Shmitah). Jacob is able to work the entire first set of 7 years and it seemed very short in his eyes because of the passion and his ability to see the goal at the end of the road. Even after getting tricked he is able to pick himself back up and work another 7 years for his goal. Jacob internalized the fact that to acquire something of value one has to work hard and it doesn’t come instantly.

As current college students, it pains us to see how quickly Jews are becoming assimilated and distant from the Torah. People think that the Torah is an outdated book that holds little value in today’s practical world. We wish to show that Torah is a dynamic and interactive guidebook that provides us with the tools to build this world within the context of Hashem’s word and desires. We strive to show that Torah, in all its depth and beauty, is not something outdated and irrelevant, but clearly pertinent and timeless. Throughout or time here at UCLA, we have learned that being a Jew not only means that we must make these Torah lessons relevant to ourselves, but to wear our Jewish persona ‘on our sleeves’ and make sure to present ourselves as the advocates and representatives of God and his mission statement. We realize that being part of the secular world and studying history, recognizing other nations’ scientific contributions, and reading about other philosophies, does not detract from our mission—rather it augments the understanding that we should be involved in this world in order to make Torah relevant to any and every Jew whom may have a different approach in living his/her life. Thus, our goal is to work one day and one student at a time to try to fix this phenomenon. No one event and no one single conversation will be able to save the current situation in the Jewish community, it is the constant accumulation of such events and conversations that will ultimately help the Jewish future. With events such as a biweekly Mishmar, challah baking and learning, and just being there to talk to people about anything that is on their mind, we hope to change the Jewish people one student on one college campus at a time.

History was made on Sunday, November 30, when for the first time in the annals of the state, official recognition was given to Jewish refugees from Arab lands and Iran.

The event, hosted by President Reuven Rivlin at his official residence, was the continuum of legislation that was passed by the Knesset in June of this year designating November 30 as the national day of commemoration of the plight of Jewish refugees from Arab lands and Iran. The date was significant in that it commemorates the day after the anniversary of the November 29, 1947 United Nations resolution on the partition of Palestine, which led to an immediate flare up of anti-Zionist action and policy among Arab states, resulting in the killing, persecution, humiliation, oppression and expulsion of Jews, the sequestration of Jewish property and a war against the nascent State of Israel.

In 1948 close to a million Jews lived in Arab lands. Some were massacred in pogroms. Most fled or were expelled between 1948 and 1967. In 1948 there were 260,000 Jews in Morocco. Today there are less than 3,000. In the same time frame, the Jewish population of Algeria declined from 135,000 to zero, in Tunisia from 90,000 to a thousand, in Libya from 40,000 to zero, in Egypt from 75,000 to less than one hundred, in Iraq from 125,000 to zero, in Yemen from 45,000 to approximately 200, in Syria from 27,000 to 100, and in Lebanon from 10,000 in the 1950s to less than 100.

Although various attempts were made over the years by leaders of these communities in Israel and academics stemming from these communities to secure the same kind of recognition for the suffering of Jews in Arab lands as is accorded to the Jews of Europe, nothing of major substance was done until the bill proposed by MKs Shimon Ohayon of Yisrael Beiteinu and Nissim Zeev of Shas was placed on the national agenda.

The intention behind the bill said Ohayon on Sunday night, was to ensure that the stories of what happened to Jews in and from Arab lands and Iran should be part of the school curriculum, because most Israeli children are entirely ignorant of these chapters in the diverse aspects of Jewish heritage. Just as they learn about the history and fate of the Jews of Europe, they should also learn the history of the Jews of the region, he said. He placed great significance on national recognition, saying that this would lead to international acknowledgement so that Jews who left everything they owned behind, could be compensated. There were no words to describe his excitement that this day had come said Ohayon, but he was simultaneously pained that the Tel Aviv Cinematheque had chosen at this time to show films of the Arab Nakba (catastrophe) in 1948, while overlooking documentaries and feature films about the suffering of Jews from Arab lands and Iran. He related the story of a woman who had told him that her son, a university student, knows all about Nakba, but not about the travails endured by his grandfather before he came to Israel.

Zeev, the Jerusalem born son of Iraqi parents concurred with Ohayon and emphasized how important it was for the world to know about the tragedy that befell so many hundreds of thousands of people. Of the Jewish refugees from Arab lands and Iran, 650,000 came to Israel, he said, and the rest went mostly to Europe and America.

But before they became refugees, they and their forebears made great contributions to Jewish culture and to the cultures and economies of their host countries, and these must be acknowledged, he said

Meir Kahlon, chairman of the joint Associations of Jews from Arab Lands and Iran, noted that the world has long been talking about Arab refugees, but has ignored Jewish refugees from Arab lands. He also reminded those present that the Holocaust was not solely a European tragedy, but had spread to this part of the world. His mother had been killed in the Holocaust in Libya when he was only five months old.

Rivlin, who is a seventh generation Jerusalemite, does not know what it means to be expelled from one’s homeland, said Kahlon. Like Ohayon and Zeev, he questioned the lacuna in the Israeli curricula. As refugees, the Jews from Arab lands and Iran understand the plight of Palestinian refugees and will not allow their problems to be swept under the carpet said Kahlon, adding that the Palestinians must understand that this land also belongs to the Jews who yearned for it during centuries of exile. In this context, he quoted from Psalm 137: “By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept as we remembered Zion…”

He recommended that the compensation initiative for both sides proposed by former US President Bill Clinton be adopted and that a fund be set up to compensate and rehabilitate all the Palestinians living in refugee camps and all the Jews and their heirs who had been displaced from Arab lands and Iran. “We don’t seek war with anyone. We hold out our hand in peace,” he said.

Moderator Yossi Alfi, who is known for his marathon story telling festivals in which personalities from every immigrant group in Israel have the opportunity to share their stories with live audiences, radio listeners and television viewers, declared: “We are all excited today. It is indeed a holiday for us and others celebrating elsewhere. This day in Jerusalem is an important date in the story of the exodus of Jews from Arab Lands and Iran.”

Alfi, born in Basra Iraq, came to Israel in 1949 as a 3 year old refugee without his parents. Now, at age 69, he said he still feels the weight of what was left behind.

November 30 signifies not only the expulsion he said, but also the right to reparations. “It is also a day of love for Israel and for Zionism.”

Despite all that happened to them, these Jews who were expelled did not allow themselves to become dispirited, he said. “They did not forget where they came from, but they knew where they were going. Hardships not withstanding, they were able to maintain the heritage of a glorious past.”

Admitting that Jews from Arab lands and Iran had been subjected to a great injustice, and whose story had been pushed to the sidelines of the Zionist narrative, Rivlin commented that the designation of November 30 as a national day came too late and on too small a scale to impact on public consciousness, but declared that it was nevertheless important to correct this injustice “which should not be underestimated.”

The healing process, he said, begins with acknowledging the mistakes that were made, and for this reason he was proud as president of the state to host the inaugural November 30 commemoration. When his own ancestors came to the country from Lithuania in 1809, there were already immigrants from Yemen living here as well as Spanish families with ancient traditions. After the creation of the state when the refugees began arriving, their suffering was not taken into account and they were sent far away from the corridors of power to peripheral communities such as Dimona, Afikim, Beit She'an and Hatzor Haglilit where they developed cities out of nothing to be protective buffer zones for Israel’s borders, said Rivlin. It took a long time before these immigrants could give voice to their frustrations. Rivlin cited a list of writers and entertainment artists who paved the way for others to make their stories and their feelings known.

What is the most significant thing that ever happened to you, and what did it teach you?

It doesn't work that way, because there are moments when one thing is significant and moments when something else is significant. For a man to be present at the birth of a child is an overwhelming thing. I've been present at the birth of my children, and it's really amazing. I think that's the greatest, deepest miracle because all other things have their space . . . Yet when I look back, every once in a while I make a list of high moments and start saying, "There were moments of love; there were moments of insight; there were moments of prayer." There were even moments of terror, almost like facing death, which made me say, "Aha! Now I understand what it's all about." But I'm still learning about spiritual and holy eldering. Most people don't know how to live the holy life after retirement. You see, popes have remained in the saddle and rabbis have remained in the saddle until they die. I would like to learn how to withdraw gradually from the active life and to spend the last years furthering my solitude with God. That's what I feel life has to teach me. I'm learning to let go of things that are not in my hands to change, learning to live with what, otherwise, would be increasing frustration when I get older.

Life is my teacher. Artificial intelligence is trying to do what natural intelligence is doing. Natural intelligence means that a naturally intelligent organism continues to learn throughout life. Each situation provides a deeper learning, greater learning, a more profound learning. We're all going through a learning, so if I had to pick out one learning as the most significant, I'd say, "I can't; it's constant. The learning that is happening in life is constant because life is a teaching machine." From whom did I learn about life? I learned from life about life, by living life.

Socialized Meditation

Meditation is usually a solitary task. At times one feels that it may only be a solipsistic preoccupation. Much growth happens when meditation is socialized.

We learn from teachers. Here is an example from the Hassidic master, Reb Moshe Kobriner in a little town in Lithuania. People would come to him from all sides asking all sorts of questions. One day he was having his breakfast and all he has is some kasha (buckwheat cereal), and another man comes in and says, "Master, I have so many troubles."

“Blessed art Thou, O Lord, King of the Universe Who has made everything by Thy Word," said Reb Moshe Kobriner (and this was the proper blessing to make before one eats kasha.)

And the man said, "Master, didn't you hear me? I have so many troubles."
And Reb Moshe said, "You know, your father once came to me with the same situation, and he heard me give this blessing that everything comes by His Word and he stopped complaining. Don't you hear?”

Not only with teachers can one enter into such shared meditation. When Buber taught us of the I- -Thou relationship, he spoke of healing through meeting. From my experiences in “socialized meditation” I am convinced that we need to move beyond transpersonal psychology to transpersonal sociology.

All of our conflict resolution efforts not yet managed to turn a recalcitrant person into a collaborating member of global society. The research in this area is vital to our survival. Look at the extremely sophisticated teamwork in technology that can produce a stealth bomber—and compare this to the primitive state of correcting societal dysfunction.

Cycles and Cycles

Prior to this cycle of world creation, there were other cycles of world creation. Holy sparks from those other cycles of world creation, when they were broken, lodged here. Our task is to find those sparks, gather them and bring them together, and restore the balance in the cosmos—to enthrone God again. The Divine Crown, as it were, has gems missing, and in each physical act, we pick up a spark here, a spark there, and bring them together. When all sparks have been gathered, our tradition speaks about the coming of the Messiah. To me, this means something like global oneness, peace, and harmony.

When we become more conscious of the physical and at the same time aware of the highest spirituality, we'll have what I would call the Resurrection of the Dead. This resurrection happens together on a physical and spiritual level. The physical plane is our plane of observation, though everything that happens on a physical plane is not open to our observing. We don’t see with our eyes what is happening between atoms, but if we were on the atomic level we would say, "Ah, this oxygen atom got married to two hydrogen atoms, and they made a water molecule!" We don't operate on that level of awareness. When I put a pot of water on the stove to cook, a lot of weddings take place between the oxygen from the air and the hydrogen that's in the gas, so water gets created. That's a level of observation, the sub-molecular level,that we don't see.

Now in our personal drama, on another level of observation, higher things are happening. Ultimately it takes a meditative leap into other dimensions to be able to see. There is a Latin phrase sub specie aeternitatis, under the aspect of eternity. It means to look down, to see what is happening in the temporal realm. Then we begin to see what Earth is about, what the planet is about, and what history is about from a much higher level. I believe we are just learning the beginnings of the holy psychotechnology, a spiritual psychotechnology that will allow us to get to such places as observing fine moments-or larger ones. Some people have had the larger experiences. Geniuses have had profound mountaintop experiences. I would say, "If they can see the Infinite, they can see the infinitesimal also, because awareness is up and down the scale." By and large, people haven't bothered to look at the infinitesimal. Now, with nanotechnologies becoming important, people are beginning to concentrate on those things.

Care Packages to Eternity

If you see yourself bound by your skin, then you would ask, "How would something I do help the deceased?" When you recognize that half of your chromosomes are your father's, half are your mother's, and a quarter of them are your grandfather's, you realize that your grandfather is still alive in you, in a quarter of your chromosomes. So if you say a prayer, it is almost as if a portion of him is still available to help that other part of him that is beyond. That's why the disciples of a Master get together at the anniversary of his death to celebrate. There is a feeling that there is so much more of the Master available at that moment.

How does one attain the ideal relationship of body and soul?

First of all, just simply be "you." Feel the earth beneath you; feel the chair; feel how gravity upholds you. Gravity is the way earth loves us and attracts us. We should allow ourselves to be supported by that. Second, do one thing at a time; be totally in that thing you're doing. That's a way to be grounded! The next way to be grounded is to realize that there is stuff above that the groundedness has to support. The point isn't just to be flat on the ground. The point is to be firm enough on the ground so that the rest of you can go up.

What is the greatest obstacle to obtaining new levels?

"The sin that is the hardest to atone for is habit." That is the biggest obstacle to reaching new levels, as one rabbi put it. The more we're in a habitual state, the more unlikely it is that we'll go beyond. We won't be in the moment; we won't be in the here and now. We will hear the routine rather than the challenge that comes at this moment.

Will people eventually reach this ideal?

I believe that all people will reach what they have to reach. I'm a universalist, in that sense. That they will reach the same state is not likely. It is enough for a toe to be the toe of a realized person. If I could be the toe, as it were, of realized humanity, that's fine. Not everybody is going to be the brain cell that fires off a great realization. Still, we'll all be organically connected with that, and the organic connection is what fires, just as an organism has a connection with the toe. So the final enlightenment will have a connection with that concept. It's not likely that there is going to be a final enlightenment. I don't like the word “final”, either, because enlightenment continues to the next level and the next level, and it's infinite in God. We no longer have the Temple in Jerusalem, but when it existed, the holiest person on the holiest day at the holiest time in the holiest place would pronounce the holiest word. There would be a kind of implosion of all the Onenesses. That name is a connection, and each year on Yom Kippur, the old connection goes away and the new connection starts coming in. Sins interfere, spoil, and ruin the old connection.

You can’t attune to what you merely read.

When we learn how to pray, we learn not just how to recite words, but how to open the heart. It's like biofeedback: When we are with a person who is opening the heart, we can feel attuned to it. "Ah, now it feels right in my heart!" But if somebody says, "Open your heart," and you've never had that "thing," how do you know you've done it correctly? If you're in a larger group where all the people are doing this, and there is a liturgy being celebrated, you get to feel at one with the people who are in this elated place. That's how you attune to it.

Total realization can happen anywhere. It can happen spontaneously, and it can happen under direction. Very often, even that which is under direction requires the moment of grace, of spontaneity. But there are people who can achieve attunement in synagogue but not in the marketplace, for instance.

What are the greatest problems in life?

The main problems in life are making a living, making a loving, and making a dying. Making a living is a big problem for many, many people. When that's together, then there's the question of making a loving—how to have good relationships and to receive and to give love. People who don't have that can have all the money in the world, but it's no good! For people who've had a good life and a good loving and a good living, when the time comes to leave that life, the problem is how to do that gently and gratefully.

Why is there suffering in the world?

That's a question that gets us into trouble! One could say that the greatest education we get is through suffering. Consciousness is being raised through deprivation. I will never know what it means to give people food when they're hungry unless I have experienced hunger myself. I will not know how to help somebody who is in pain unless I have experienced pain myself. One could say suffering is the school for empathy. It creates that, but that's only one element of suffering.

Sometimes suffering exists in order to bring us to our senses. Sometimes suffering exists in order to show us that there are tragedies we can't overcome with our childish omnipotence in the world. We begin to see that every choice we make has its consequences. Suffering is the way in which we learn, after the fact, the consequences of our moves.

Then there are some people who suffer and can't identify this reason or that reason. It's just one of those things. "Why do bad things happen to good people?" is the question behind all that, and I haven't yet found a convincing answer. Sometimes no matter what we do, we get clobbered! On a lower level of preparation and understanding we would say, "If we do only the good and the true all the time, we're going to be okay." On a higher level being good doesn't help. The biggest ethical questions are based on just that point.

From Religion to Spirituality

Despite the pessimistic outlook on the whole, there are here and there signs of positive breakthroughs. Meditation is embraced by many people who have no other religious commitment. It has now gone beyond the mere “relaxation response” that meditation can provide. It has led people to greater spiritual growth and awareness. While it seems that religion is “out” for many, spirituality is “in.” People want to learn how to experience the sacred not just talk about it. There is real interest in how adepts do what they do. This interest is not mere curiosity. It is an inquiry into the how that allows for emulation. We have entered into what I have called the dialogue of devoutness. There is a great comparing of notes, of insight and understanding to be shared by those who reverence the name of God and love Him. God listens, hears, and records these things (Mal. 3:16). Such dialogue concerns souls, their journey to God, the difficulties they encounter on the path.

Dialogue of this sort is between the soul and her God. A person who is too busy to live in a state of vulnerability vis-à-vis God has no way to enter into this dialogue. Such a person can say “I believe this” or “I believe that”—and still be spiritually inactive. Religion to such persons is only the things they give verbal assent to, not the things they experience, not the way they face God. They are registered as a Jew or a Protestant or a Catholic like they register as a Republican or Democrat. The function of a creed is to give people a program for life, not just a list of things to be asserted.

What about death and what happens after death?

I do believe that death is only part of the connection between the physical and the inner. It's like pulling the plug. Most people know enough to get their inner out of the way. Let's say you drive in your car and it's rattling; it's in bad shape. Finally, it's all over. You drive it to the junkyard. You get out of the car, and then a crusher comes and crushes it down. You'd be a fool to sit in it after the car is dead. I have the same attitude toward the body. Bodies wear out, and it's a wonderful thing that they wear out. They get recycled, which gives the passenger a chance to get out and pick another car, another vehicle…or to decide not to walk the earth for awhile.

Our tradition teaches that a whole series of things happens after death. A soul has to go through purification because of the contamination of being on this level and the habits that are acquired on this level. After purification come other things that are delightful, ecstatic, and marvelous. Some of them have to do with the realm of feeling. That is one Heaven. Others have to do with the realm of knowing. That's another Heaven. Then there is the Heaven in which we know intuitively and are known by God.

What is most important to you?

I can't say. It varies and changes. If I can't take a breath of air, then the most important thing is to take another breath of air. Imagine: I'm diving underwater and can't get to the surface. How important a breath of air is then! When I have the breath of air, then what's important is how I reach the shore. I don't believe these things are static. There is a dynamic element that's always before us. Right now what I want is to finish the week. Then, to come to a Sabbath rest is the most important thing. It will keep changing all the time.

I do what I do out of concern. My sense is that the more life, the better education, and the more tools that are made available for people to manage their physical and spiritual life, the better off the planet is going to be. And that's what I'm most concerned about.

What is the highest ideal a person can reach?

There is no general statement one can make, because if I say "X or Y is the highest ideal," then we think everybody has to achieve that. But if you achieve what I have to achieve and I achieve what you have to achieve, then I haven't gotten my realization and you haven't gotten your realization. There are individual differences. The Universe is made up of so many individual bits. Each one has to achieve what it is meant to achieve. For someone who is a dancer, the ideal may be the ideal leap. For another person, it may be the ideal meditation. For another, the ideal act of love, kindness, or charity. You have to specialize in your own thing. One Hassidic Master said it very beautifully: "I'm not afraid that God will ask me, 'Zusha, why have you not become an Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob?' But I am afraid that God will ask me, 'Zusha, why have you not become what Zusha was intended to be?'"

What makes you happy? sad? angry?

I'm happy when I have contentment and moments of no conflict. I'm happy when I feel love coming and going from my heart to those who are around me, when I feel integrated with the Universe and at peace with God. The opposite makes me sad. To see people suffering and not to be able to help makes me sad. The child has an earache, and there's nothing at this point that can be done. I can hold a child, but it's not going to make the earache go away. To be powerless over pain that others experience is sad. What makes me angry is willful malicious obstruction of the common good.

If you could meet anyone throughout history, whom would you want to meet and what would you ask that person?

I would like to meet myself at the moment after enlightenment . Then I would like to ask, "How did you do it?" All the other people would just satisfy a kind of curiosity, but it wouldn't help me in my stuff, so I wouldn't want to go into the past so much as into the future. But you want me to name somebody in the past I would want to connect with. There are many Hassidic Masters, but I would like to go to the founder of the Hassidic movement, Ba'al Shem Tov, and just be with him and not ask him any questions. I would want to look at him, to have him look at me, and then to pray in such a way that I could learn something from him. I would want to attune to his spirituality. That's all. It's not words I would want .

This week, we are commemorating the horrific murder 50 years ago of three civil rights workers, two Jewish and one African American, in Mississippi.

When I began reading up about the freedom riders, groups of mainly white young men and women from the north who spent the summer of 1964 in Mississippi working for civil rights, voting registration etc., and especially Andrew Goodman and Michael Shwerner, two amongst many Jews who were part of this summer, I had a hope.

I hoped that as I read about their background, and their murder at the hand of local police and officials, I would discover that they were motivated by their Judaism. Even if they were not themselves observant, I hoped that it would nonetheless emerge in their biographies that it was Jewish values – Hebrew school, a grandparent, a rabbi who had inspired them.

But I was wrong. The opposite was the case – they weren’t at all Jewishly observant, had the most marginal Jewish education, did not credit or probably were not even aware of Jewish ethical teachings that led them to ultimately give their lives for the cause of civil rights.

But then I read something that shocked me. Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner may not have been Bible literate, religious people; but there murderers were.

One of the few people ever properly prosecuted for the events, one of the ring leaders, Edgar Ray Killen, was a part time Baptist minister. And almost all of those involved would have been church going, religion school educated.

How could that be?

If you look at Parashat Noah, there is something remarkable. Both the case for civil rights anti-segregation, and the case for slavery and discrimination, can be supported by verses in this week’s Torah reading.

After Noah’s episode of drunken shame, the Torah tells us that he cursed Canaan, condemning him to slavery. This became known among some interpreters as the curse of Ham – Ham was held to be the progenitor of the African race, who were black because of their sin. This was surely not a Jewish interpretation, but many clergymen and Bible-read individuals used this verse to justify the enslavement, deprivation, and sub-human status of Africans.

Yet, the same Torah portion also forbids bloodshed, murder; it teaches that all people are created in the image of God, and all human life, regardless of race or belief, is sacred.

So given that the Bible can bolster both human rights and slavery, how do we know who is right? Does the Bible, religion have no voice in morality, if it can be used to support polar opposite positions?

We know – know for certainty, that Goodman and Shwerner and Chaney were right – that segregation, the horror of the way black people were treated is against morality, is an evil that God must detest. We know this and we are right.

And one of the ways we know this is precisely because the freedom riders gave up their lives, did terribly dangerous things for a just cause, and were murdered. In their life, and in their death, we see how correct they were. The story of their lives helps shape our understanding of what values we should hold.

The generation of the flood was condemned because of hamas, violent robbery and crime that destroyed society and was purely evil. There was no Bible, no prophecy then – how were the people supposed to know that hamas was wrong, that they deserved to be destroyed?
The answer is that they should have known! Human beings are meant to be able to tell the difference between right and wrong; and moral blindness is not a defense.

And here I think is why the freedom marchers story is so relevant for us.

The Bible can be read in all sorts of ways. It can be read in a way that is contrary to its meaning, contrary to morality. But heroic deeds, people who live values, live moral lives help us see the difference between right and wrong.

What is important about Michael Shwerner and Andrew Goodman is not that they were motivated by, influenced by Jewish values - what is important about them is that they have helped shape Jewish values. They showed us more clearly, at great cost, what it is that God wants from us.
As we know the worst sin that a Jew can commit is a hilul Hashem, a desecration of God’s name. The best we can aspire to is to be a kidush Hashem, to sanctify God’s name by righteous deeds.

In the words of the rabbis, a hilul Hashem is something that causes people to say: what a terrible person, how shameful for his parents and teachers who taught him Torah. And a kidush Hashem is when people will say: what a wonderful person – how happy are his parents and teachers who taught him Torah.

And the freedom riders were a kidush Hashem. Because even if their parents did not teach them Torah, they showed the possibility of morality. Where before there was segregation, slavery, hatred, passivity – now – there is morality, solidarity, the image of God. Thanks to these men, goodness, morality, heroism, is an option, the power of good has been strengthened.

In a world of such immorality, of such evil, as we see all over the planet, the way we ultimately spread Godliness is not through learning but living, by demonstrating the possibility of good – there is no more compelling lesson than a lesson of a life lived properly,

I started my research hoping to discover that Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman were students of Judaism. I discovered that they were something far more important – they were teachers of Judaism.

What makes one a Jew? Being born to a Jewish mother? Converting to Judaism? Not really. It is living by the spiritual order of Judaism that makes one a Jew; living through the Jews of the past and with the Jews of the present and future. We are Jews when we choose to be so; when we have discovered Jewishness on our own, through our search for the sacred; when we fight the never-ending spiritual struggle to find God, realize that the world needs a moral conscience, and carry that exalted burden so as to save the world and provide it with a mission.

One becomes a bit Jewish when one realizes that there cannot be nature without spirit and there is no neutrality in matters of moral conscience. But all this is not enough. We have a long way to go before we grow into full-fledged Jews. We must recognize the noble in the commonplace; endow the world with majestic beauty; acknowledge that mankind has not been the same since God overwhelmed us at Sinai; and accept that mankind without Sinai is not viable.

To create in ourselves Jewish vibrations we need to see the world sub specie aeternitatis (from the perspective of eternity). We must be able to step out of the box of our small lives and hold the cosmic view, while at the same time not losing the ground under our feet but dealing with our trivial day-to-day endeavors and sanctifying them. Not by escaping them through denial or declaring them of no importance, but by actually engaging them and using them as great opportunities to grow. As one painstakingly discovers this, one slowly becomes a Jew.

Some of us have to struggle to attain this; others seem to be born with it. They possess a mysterious Jewish soul that nobody can identify, but everyone recognizes it is there. It has something to do with destiny, certain feelings that no one can verbalize. What is at work is the internalization of the covenant between God, Abraham and, later, Sinai. It is in one’s blood even when one is not religious. It murmurs from the waves beyond the shore of our souls and overtakes our very being, expanding our Jewishness wherever we go.

Most Jews “have it,” but so do some non-Jews. They know they have it. It is thoroughly authentic. They are touched by it as every part of one’s body is touched by water when swimming, its molecules penetrating every fiber of one’s being. Nothing can deny it.

These are the authentic Jews, but not all of them belong to the people of Israel. Some are gentiles with gentile parents; others are children of mixed marriages. If they should wish to join the Jewish people they would have to convert in accordance with Halacha, although they have been “soul Jews” since birth.

But why are they not already full-fledged Jews, without a requirement to convert? All the ingredients are present! Why the need for the biological component of a Jewish mother, or the physical act of immersing in a mikveh (ritual bath)?

The reason must be that Halacha is not just about religious authenticity and quality of the soul. It is also about the down-to-earth reality of life. It asks a most important question: How shall we recognize who is Jewish and who is not? Can we read someone’s soul? How can one know for sure whether one is really Jewish? Can one read one’s own soul and perceive it? How do we know that our believed authenticity is genuine?

The world is a complex mixture of the ideal and the practical, where genuineness can easily and unknowingly be confused with pretentiousness. To live one’s life means to live in a manner that the physical constitution and the inner spirit of man interact, but also clash. There is total pandemonium when only the ideal reigns while the realistic and the workable are ignored.

Tension, even contradiction, between the ideal and the workable is the great challenge to Halacha. It therefore needs to make tradeoffs: How much authenticity and how much down-to-earth realism? How much should it function according to the dream and the spirit, and how much in deference to the needs of our physical world?

As much as Halacha would like to grant full dominion to the ideal, it must compromise by deferring to indispensable rules that allow the world to function. Just as it must come to terms with authenticity versus conformity (see Thoughts to Ponder 275), so it must deal with authentic Jewishness and the necessity to set external and even biological parameters for defining Jewish identity. And just as in the case of authenticity and conformity, here too, there will be victims and unpleasant consequences.

Some “soul Jews” will pay the price and be identified as non-Jews, despite the fact that “ideal” Halacha would have liked to include them. However unfortunate, Halacha must sometimes compromise the “Jewish soul” quality of an individual who because of these rules cannot be recognized as Jewish. Were we not to apply these imperatives, chaos would reign.

But there is more to it than that. There needs to be a nation of Israel, a physical entity able to carry the message of Judaism to the world. All members of this nation must have a common historical experience that has affected its spiritual and emotional makeup. There need to be root experiences, as Emil Fackenheim calls them, such as the exodus from Egypt, the crossing of the Red Sea and the revelation at Sinai. The impact of these events crafted this people into a most unusual nation ready to take on the world and transform it. For Jews to send their message to the world they need to have a historical experience – as a family and later on as a nation – in which people inherit a commitment to a specific way of living even when some of its members object to it.

The fact that Judaism allows outsiders to join, though they were not part of this experience, is not only a wondrous thing but is also based on the fact that not all souls need these root experiences to become Jewish. They have other qualities that are as powerful and transforming, and that allow them to convert as long as they are absorbed into a strong core group whose very identity is embedded in these root experiences.

In terms of a pure and uncompromised religious ideal, this means that some Jews should not be Jews and some non-Jews should be Jews. Authenticity, after all, cannot be inherited; it can only be nurtured. Ideally, only those who consciously take on the Jewish mission, and live accordingly, should be considered Jews. If not for the need for a Jewish people, it would have been better to have a Jewish faith community where people can come and go depending on their willingness to commit to the Jewish religious way and its mission – just as other religions conduct themselves.

So, the demands of Halacha create victims when some “soul Jews” are left out of the fold, as is the case with children of mixed marriages who have non-Jewish mothers, or children of Jewish grandparents but non-Jewish parents. Similarly, with gentiles who have Jewish souls but no Jewish forefathers at all. All of these are casualties.

This is the price to be paid for the tension between the ideal and the need for compliance; for the paradox between the spirit and the law. That Halacha even allows any non-Jew to become Jewish through proper conversion is a most powerful expression of its humanity. In fact, it is a miracle.

There are probably billions of people who are full-fledged “soul Jews” but don’t know it, and very likely never will. Perhaps it is these Jews whom God had in mind when He blessed Avraham and told him that he would be the father of all nations and that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky and the grains of sand on the seashore.

If, ten years ago, someone had told me that I would be a member of the board of a religious, rabbinic organization, that I would attend synagogue services every Shabbat, that I would put on tefillin, and that I would even write an article for a religious publication – I would have laughed and explained how severely mistaken that person was: I, the proud member of Hashomer Hatzair, who is secular in every fiber of his body?! Nevertheless, something no less than a revolution took place in my life, and a substantive change in my worldview. Like many revolutions, the change began with something small. But, if I may, I would like to begin at the beginning.

I was raised near Haifa, and I was taught the values of secular socialism, the love of Israel, tolerance, social responsibility – and many other values that can also be found in the Torah – as a member of the Kiryat Haim section of Hashomer Hatzair. In my childhood, there was no connection between the religious and secular residents, and no attempt was made to establish such a connection. The two communities lived side-by-side like oil and water, never mixing.

In the army, I served in a mostly secular unit, whose members came from backgrounds similar to my own. When a religious soldier would arrive, our mission was to see how long it would take for us to get him to watch television on Shabbat, and to remove his kippah. We had quite a few “successes”.

After the army, I met my wife, Irit, who had been raised in a traditional Jewish home, and we had four children. Until about a decade ago, a connection ith God was foreign to me, and was always associated with the corrupt religious establishment, on the one hand, and extremist settlers, on the other. I wrongly assumed that there was a part of the Jewish people that had an exclusive license from God.

In the meantime, my hard work bore fruit, and I managed to purchase the Israeli Building Center. The biggest change in my relationship with religion and Judaism began in that framework, as I came to know several religious people involved in the construction industry. Work-related discussions began to digress to discussions about life, family, children, lifestyle, and we even got together with our wives. Slowly, for the first time in my life, I began to have real friendships with religious people.

One day, our friends, Meir and Revital Noga, invited us to their home for Shabbat dinner. Meir gently suggested that I come early and accompany him to the synagogue. What I did not know at the time was that Meir had consulted with his rabbi, and had received what was then a rather innovative rabbinic decision, allowing him to invite me and my family for Shabbat, even though it meant that we might desecrate Shabbat.

We went to synagogue together – for me, it was the first time in 30 years – and we sat down together for Shabbat dinner with their beautiful family. Back then, we also became very close friends with a family from Givat Shmuel, Michal and Meir Mizrachi, whose children became close friends of our children, and Iris and Dvir Granot from Tzur Yigal. Through those acquaintances with those special people, I learned how beautiful and special Judaism is, and that, wow, some of it suits me.

Who would have imagined that one day the rabbi who allowed us to come for Shabbat, and who opened that door, Rabbi Ronen Neuwirth, would become a friend whom I would join in working together to establish the Beit Hillel organization?!

More than ten years ago, I began putting on tefillin daily, making kiddush and saying birkat hamazon after meals. Two years later, I began attending synagogue services on Friday evenings (in the community center of my moshav, Ramot Hashavim), and a year later, I began attending Saturday morning services, as well, becoming a regular member of the minyan. Due to the small number of worshippers in the synagogue in Ramot Hashavim, Benzi (perhaps the only Orthodox person in the community), began to encourage us to lead services. Slowly, we began to add other “secular” Jews.

But the turning point came during the Second Lebanon War (2006), when one of the women began attending Friday night services on a regular basis, and other women followed. The women began bringing their children, and their husbands soon followed. Today, twenty-five families are members of the Ramot Hashavim congregation. If you had asked people in Ramot Hashavim five years ago if such a thing were possible, they would have said that you were hallucinating.

Every Monday, we study the weekly Torah portion at one of the homes in the community. Because we did not have a kosher Torah scroll, I assumed the responsibility of having one written (when I was told that I was crazy, and that it was very expensive, I replied that, in any case, everything I earn is granted to me from Above, so it really isn’t mine anyway), and two years ago, I brought it to the synagogue in a procession in which hundreds of residents participated, with musical accompaniment that rocked the
whole neighborhood. This year, we held hakafot shniyot for the first time.

We are on the way. We are not (yet) Shabbat observant, and perhaps some of us never will be. But we are now firmly rooted in the world of Torah and tradition, like thousands of other Israelis throughout the country – people with “invisible kippot”.

None of this would have occurred had it not been for the Noga family from Kfar Ganim, the Mizrachi family from Givat Shmuel, and the Granot family from Tzur Yigal, who opened their hearts and their homes, and were it not for the invitation to be their Shabbat guests, and having us as guests in their home. They lit the Jewish spark that exists in every Jew. They showed me the beautiful side of Judaism and Jewish tradition. Thanks to their outstretched hands, my children are growing up together with theirs, and when my son joins the army, he will not be motivated to encourage his observant friends to watch television on Shabbat, but the opposite.

So, what do I ask of the religious community? I ask them to learn from the Noga, Granot and Mizrahi families. Open your hearts and homes to your friends, coworkers and neighbors. Friends, the time is ripe in Heaven and in Israel. You must take advantage of this opportunity to be part of the unification of the Jewish People. That, I believe, is the current mission of Religious Zionism. May we fulfill the statement of the rabbis in the Midrash (Song of Songs, 5:2) - “Open up for me an opening like the eye of a needle and in turn I will enlarge it to be an opening through which wagons can enter.”

Abstract

Most Jews do not appreciate the difficulties a convert faces within the broader Jewish community. Usually, the only stories that see publication are of the “happily ever after” variety. But most converts I have known, as well as myself, have a hard time of it—and nobody ever forewarns us because nobody else is sensitive to what occurs. The commandment to not oppress the ger seems to have been largely ignored, often in the name of preserving the purity of the Jewish people. For those of us who are halakhically Jewish, the situation is unjustifiable; where our situation is known, we are forever under suspicion that we are not “really” Jewish. Because of negative social experiences, many of us have chosen to go underground where at all possible; I predict that most of us will ignore the recent RCA geirus policy that the ger should make his/her status known in a community, which merely invites such experiences. I am writing to make the problem known, and to beg reconsideration on halakhic grounds of some common institutional policies.

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I am a convert. There can be no question that I am halakhically Jewish, as ruled by two Orthodox rabbinic courts. I am writing to protest the downright shameful treatment of converts by the Orthodox community, which so conveniently forgets the express command to not oppress the ger.

I was raised in the Bible Belt, as a conservative Protestant, to believe that the Bible was the Word of God. Nobody explained to me why “God’s Word” did not include the laws in the first five books, which today are observed only by Jews. Due to severe parental opposition, I could do nothing toward converting until I went away to graduate school in a small college town. This was more than 40 years ago. I took instruction from the only Orthodox rabbi in the state; he could be described as Modern Orthodox. In those days, I knew nothing of modern/black-hat distinctions among Orthodox Jews— and in fact there were no black-hat Jews in my immediate vicinity. The Beth Din consisted of this rabbi; the only Conservative rabbi in that town (he was shomer shabbat), and one other person. As I started meeting other Jews for the first time (I had had no significant social Jewish contact before conversion), I started getting questions about this conversion. I had met the Lubavitchers by this time, and they decided that while they believed this conversion was valid, they would redo it just to remove all question. They even placed a call to New York and got a ruling that I should not say God’s name in the blessing for this re-run. This took place about a year and a half after the first conversion.

I did not meet and marry my husband until nine years later. His entire family is Hareidi, and he is yeshiva-educated. We are shomer shabbat but not “yeshivish,” and live in a small college town with a bare minyan for our Orthodox community. We have one child, a son, who is also shomer shabbat.

The basic problem a convert faces in the Orthodox world stems from the Orthodox mind-set that if you observe one
mitzva more than I do you are a fanatic, and if you observe one mitzva less you are an apikores (heretic). It is hard enough for the ba’al teshuvah to navigate this mind-set and to figure out what is essential halakha and what is less essential minhag (custom). But the erring ba’al teshuvah at least is still considered Jewish. The convert has a more serious problem. If the convert is at all less stringent in observance than the person he or she is speaking to, the convert may be deemed to have not accepted all of the mitzvoth, and therefore the validity of the conversion is in question. I’ve even had an Orthodox rabbi say this to me in those very words. As I recall, on an occasion when I asked why, if there was one law for the convert and the home-born, that converts were automatically classed with prostitutes as people kohanim couldn’t marry. That’s when I learned that for converts, questioning is not permitted. That rabbi told me that any questions should have been addressed before conversion, not after it, and my present questioning indicated that I hadn’t accepted the whole Torah, so I wasn’t really Jewish.

I also encountered this response when I became friendly (no more) with a young man and this was disapproved of by people in the community, who forced him to end the friendship. I obviously hadn’t accepted that the only permissible relationship between a man and a woman was marriage to that person, and therefore I wasn’t Jewish. I even got into trouble when I expressed secular political views that differed from those of the person I was speaking with; I didn’t elevate “what’s good for the Jews” (including the State of Israel) over all other considerations. This showed that I had not really become part of the Jewish people; therefore I wasn’t Jewish.

My point is that the only way for a convert to be “accepted” is to become SuperJew: to be more stringent than thou, and to totally block out the former non-Jewish self. I have known of a few such people, though I have never become close enough to them to tell if this is real or an act they put on for self-preservation. Sorry, folks, I’m not SuperJew, nor are the vast majority of converts I have known, although they and I feel pressure to be so. If you can be “accepted” only by putting on an act, you’re not really accepted.

But in the culture in which I grew up, the cardinal sin is forgetting where you came from. I’ve often had Jews tell me that they assume I wouldn’t want my children to know my parents, and that since my parents are not halakhically my parents I owe them no obligation. I’m afraid that I’ve never bought that, and it has been the source of many problems. Does this mean I’m not really Jewish?

And I wish I had a dollar for every remark I’ve heard made by Jews about “the goyim.” I can’t stand such remarks about me (I’m still the same person I was before) and my family and my former co-religionists (whom I do NOT consider to be idolaters!), and it’s no excuse that the speaker didn’t know my background. The Talmud (Sanhedrin 94a) recognizes that this is painful for the convert, and explicitly forbids such comments lest the convert regret the conversion. Me’Am Loez states, in his commentary on Exodus 18:11, that even if a family has a convert as an ancestor ten generations back, it is forbidden to speak badly about non-Jews in front of them, because it hurts a person’s feelings to hear his/her nationality derided and can cause the person to give up Judaism. (This prescription, if taken seriously, would ban virtually all such derogatory comments since there is no way a person can know the ancestry of all those within earshot.) Believe me, I’ve heard much worse about non-Jews from Jews than I’ve ever heard about Jews from non-Jews. I’m afraid that this does not exactly solidify my identification with the Jewish people, whom I encountered only after my conversion to the faith.

The effect of all this on me (and I’ve only related a few examples) was very nearly to drive me away from Judaism. When people do things to you in the name of religion, it becomes hard to separate the people from the religion. In this case, it is also very hard to separate halakha from minhag. When a demand is made on you that you simply can’t fulfill, and you are told that this is an essential part of the package, how do you not then reject the whole package? I very nearly did. If there had been a way to undo my conversion, I might well have done it. But when I give my word, I keep it. I believed I was now obligated to observance and couldn’t get out of it. What really saved me Jewishly was that I was now living in my present small college town, where all Jews are accepted without question (because, for one thing, we can’t afford to be very particular). This tolerance allowed me the space to recover after my experiences with larger and more rigid Orthodox communities.

Most of my problems of the sort I’ve described occurred before I got married. Since then, my husband’s yichus has largely protected me—coupled with the decision made to hide my ancestry where at all possible. This started with my mother-in-law, a Polish immigrant who probably subscribed to the “can the leopard change its spots” view of non-Jews, which I have also heard (primarily from her generation). She was deeply embarrassed about having non-Jewish in-laws, but she wanted her son to be happy. She solved the problem by pretending to everyone (and herself) that my parents were Jewish, and ordering us to say nothing to the contrary. She has been dead many years now, but my husband with his greater knowledge of Orthodoxy convinced me that it would be better for our son if my background still was not known. We have all become very good at giving the misleading impression that I was born Jewish, while at the same time not saying anything that isn’t true. I do not have sufficient Hebrew language skills to pass as a Frum-From-Birth, but we allow the impression to exist that I am a ba’alat teshuvah. Although our son knew my parents (now long-deceased), to outsiders we emphasize my husband’s family and de-emphasize mine. I am not comfortable having to deny who I am, and I hope that someday my son will decide that denying half his heritage is not good, but I’ve acquiesced because it’s best for him. I feared, with reason, that if my status became known, he would be forever under the same cloud that I am. I wouldn’t wish my experience on anyone, especially my own child, who did not choose his situation. (The worst problem for him was shiddukhim, but since he married a Jew-by-birth we believe that now there is little serious adverse consequence that he could face even if identified with me.)

What reawakened all of these memories, of course, was when my son started looking for a shiddukh, a wife, in the Orthodox world. We had a very bad experience. The girl signaled interest on a computer site, knowing of my background. Her mother took over and forbade her to agree to a contact until I was investigated. The result was very unpleasant for me: The matchmaker, in the course of her Inquisition, persisted in thinking that it was for the sake of marriage, that the re-conversion was at my husband’s insistence (never mind that both occurred long before I met him), and even asked whether our son had conversion papers! Their rabbi then called us to explain that it was shul policy to have copies of conversion papers on file, and asked us to send them. (All of this was before my son could even talk with the girl to see if the match was worth pursuing.) I was going to refuse unless the same demand was made of the other parents; before it came to this point, my son refused the shiddukh. He agreed with me that proof of my Jewishness should not be halakhically necessary (especially at this stage) since it was not in question that I had long been observant, and further, it sounded like a bad in-law situation. It still left me very upset. I don’t mind the asking itself as much as I do the unwillingness to accept my answers. (My son decided after that to omit my status from his shiddukh profile, as it proved to be a “date-killer.” However, the wife he finally found turned out to be also “second-generation” in that her father is a convert. Her family raised no questions about my status!)

This brings me to one of my long-standing grudges. Converts are asked to show papers at every instance, from Day School enrollment (either their own or their children’s) to weddings. The same is not asked of people who claim to be born Jewish. I really resent being singled out for this suspicion. I don’t care how politely it is phrased or what reasons are given. (“Standard shul policy” certainly doesn’t cut it.) I find it offensive and discriminatory. To constantly have to prove myself, to know that there will never be a time when I am simply accepted as a Jew without strings attached? How would you feel? Perhaps the larger community is simply unaware of the impact this practice has on a convert’s feelings—but it is past time that this was realized and these policies reexamined.

These actions may actually violate an additional negative commandment, beyond oppressing the ger. Maimonides, when talking of “cheating with words,” gives an example of someone who tells a convert to “remember your origins.” He may have meant that someone who, while in negotiations with a convert, assumes a superior position because of his Jewish birth is cheating, by taking for himself something to which he isn’t entitled (since Jewishness should be equal for all Jews). These demands for proof of conversion in return for shiddukhim and Jewish education may qualify.

I will now refuse to provide papers for any reason unless the same is required of non-converts as well. (I can tell you that my husband has no paperwork to prove he is Jewish.) If you need to be sure I am Jewish, apply the same criteria you have for people who claim to be born Jewish. To me (and my yeshiva-bred husband agrees), this discriminatory treatment is a clear violation of the commandment not to oppress the ger. One convert I know got so fed up with this practice that she tore up her papers. I haven’t dared go that far, but I’m sorely tempted. What ever happened to the halakhic presumption that if you are observant, you are Jewish? I’ve been shomer shabbat for 40 years. Shouldn’t that suffice? (The yeshiva community actually may be better on this point than non-yeshiva people; my Hareidi sister-in-law and her husband immediately and totally accepted me with no questions asked, let alone papers demanded.)

I have been told that I should not feel offended by these procedures because, especially in these days, people need to make sure that both parties to a Jewish marriage are Jewish. First, I don’t think you should tell me how to feel. The commandment not to oppress the ger only makes sense in light of the ger’s own feelings. Second, why are the same requirements not made of the parties who claim to be born Jewish? Ba’alei teshuvah aren’t asked for papers; but even for them, isn’t it forbidden to shame a ba’al teshuvah by reminding him or her of past non-observance? Third, I don’t think you should downgrade the explicit commandment not to oppress the ger.

So what if an occasional mistake is made? I’m afraid that with my background I can’t consider this the worst thing that could happen. I can hardly take the position that any non-Jewish ancestry is a blot on the Jewish people. Actually, I believe there is an opinion that if it should transpire that a maternal ancestor wasn’t Jewish, it would not negate the Jewish status of observant mikvah-going descendants. But if that doesn’t suffice, do a conversion to make sure— and I DON’T mean making an already observant person start from scratch. This problem is fixable. Elijah the Prophet is going to have quite a job sorting us all out anyway; what’s a few more, especially when weighed against the commandment not to oppress the ger? Personally, I’d go with this Torah commandment as against concerns with the purity of the Jewish people. Unfortunately, however, the Orthodox community seems to have taken the other position. I think a number of so-called religious Jews will have a few things to answer for on the Day of Judgment.

The situation today is even worse than it was 40 years ago. With the move rightward of Orthodoxy, standards for converts have been raised. It is forbidden to refuse a sincere convert. In the effort to weed out the insincere, has the bar been raised so high as to also exclude many sincere converts? In my day, the Big Three mitzvoth were Shabbat, kashruth, and taharat haMishpaha (family purity); anything more was desirable but not a deal-breaker. It is not required that the convert know all of the halakha. And at least where I did it, anyone who did not have a Jewish fiance(e) was almost automatically accepted. In addition, if a problem was later discovered with the procedure, redoing it was no big deal. Now, to judge by the experience of newer converts in our community, you have to commit to a higher level of observance, you have to live in a large Orthodox community (which as a resident of a small community I strongly disagree with—it is quite possible to learn about Judaism and live halakhically without a lot of large local Jewish institutions), and there is a reluctance to simply redo questionable conversions. Rather, such cases are treated as if the person is definitively non-Jewish.

One shomer-shabbat person in our community was in halakhic limbo for years with his questionable prior conversion, which nobody was willing to redo while he lived here—so he finally had to move. Even then, it took two more years, despite his unquestioned sincerity and existing observance, and despite the clause in the RCA’s Geirus Policies, which says that in such cases it could be done more expeditiously. Although he was told that the prior conversion could have been valid, so he should continue to be observant, it seems that no rabbi would simply regularize his status. Meanwhile, he was not counted in minyanim, and was generally made to feel like a non-Jew. He had remarked that his observance during this time would have been somewhat more meticulous had his original conversion been ruled definitely valid. Why did this process have to take so long?

The point about questionable conversions, which appears to be overlooked, is that while the conversion may be invalid, it also may be valid. The current focus seems to be on the possible invalidity, with the result that these converts are treated as if the conversion never happened. What about the possibility that it may be valid? If it is, aren’t you committing several serious sins, from oppressing the ger to discouraging further observance?

The State of Israel adds to the problem by only accepting certain rabbis’ conversions. Where would that leave me? I doubt such a list even existed 40 years ago, much less whether my rabbi would have been on it. Put it this way—my son knows it would be probably too complicated for him to even consider making aliya.

Even outside the State of Israel, there is a problem with local autonomy: A conversion that is accepted in one community may not be accepted in another. One person in our community converted 50 years ago. No problems arose until now, when her daughter was refused membership in one European synagogue, and her grandchildren were refused a Jewish education in that community because of her conversion; since the (Orthodox) converting rabbi has long been dead, he could not be asked for information. The daughter is accepted as Jewish in some Orthodox communities but not in others. What is a convert to do, especially when it is long enough after the fact that all witnesses have died?
I have read the RCA’s new geirus policies, which are intended to address at least the uniformity problem. Aside from the fact that they are necessarily only prospective, I am afraid that in implementation they will be used to institutionalize a very high bar for converts and justify retroactive rejection of converts such as myself. I fear that the prescription that converts should tell their local rabbi of their status merely invites the sort of social problems I’ve described above, unless said rabbi is both trustworthy and sensitive (which, unfortunately, not all are). We do, after all, know the halakhic implications of our own conversions! I for one (and I suspect others as well) prefer not to emerge from the closet.

It appears that no convert can ever be secure in his or her status as Jewish, no matter how much time has elapsed. Ignorance of the halakha involved, coupled with prejudice against non-Jews, makes it all too easy for a Jew to consider a convert to be insufficiently observant, hence non-Jewish, and to feel no qualms about expressing this. It should be absolutely forbidden for a Jew to raise this issue about a conversion once validly performed, and it also should be forbidden to reexamine decades-old conversions which were done by Orthodox rabbis. Otherwise, there will be literally no end to the suspicion surrounding a convert.

It may not be too far-fetched to draw an analogy with the “purity of blood” concerns of Spanish Christians at the time of the Inquisition. “Old Christians” constantly suspected “New Christians” of being secret Jews, even if generations of the New Christian family had been devout Christians. This entailed serious social and political repercussions against the New Christians, who became a permanent and inferior social class. Only if one could prove “purity of blood”—i.e., unadulterated Old Christian descent—could one rest easy. I am afraid that the present-day Orthodox Jewish social structure may be developing into a similar caste system, with ba’alei teshuvah and converts at the bottom of the yichus ladder and with decreasing possibilities of social integration. (Note that my son’s eventual shiddukh is of the same family condition as his, which is probably best for them but not so good for social integration.) The tales I hear from kiruv organizations about the problems ba’alei teshuvah face in Orthodox communities also indicate this—and, of course, converts have even lower yichus than ba’alei teshuvah. Rambam would be appalled.

When people ask to convert, they are warned about persecution from non-Jews. Nobody ever warns them about persecution from Jews. Perhaps this is simply not on the radar screen of conversion rabbis, very few of whom have ever experienced it themselves. But this has been the experience of nearly every convert I have known. Frankly, if I had known 45 years ago everything I know now, I doubt I would have found becoming Jewish to be worth the struggle, despite my theological convictions. Is this the message we want to give converts—that they will never be fully accepted by the Jewish community? I can never fully belong, and I worry for my son. At least my child is a male (and my daughter-in-law’s convert parent is her father), so my problem should die with him. For myself, there is nothing more that I need from the Jewish community. If they reject me, I can do without them. But it is past time for someone to remind Jews that the commandment not to oppress the ger is still part of the Torah.

Songs, Stories and Scholars:
A New Look at Sephardic Culture,
An Extraordinary One-Day Seminar

Hillel at the University of Washington
Sunday, Oct. 19, 2014, 10am-2pm

The program was attended by about forty people. They were University of Washington undergraduates and grad students, community members, members of the Ladineros and of Sephardic synagogues in Seward Park. Beverages and burekas were set out before 10, a gracious lunch buffet at noon. Hillel Director Rabbi Oren Hayon mc’d, opening with thanks and a description of the important work of the event’s sponsor, the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals, and the planning of the program by its director, Rabbi Marc Angel. Rabbi Hayon introduced the “teacher” at the start of each session, Session 1 at 10:30, “Tales of the Spanish Jews,” Dr. Jane Mushabac; and Session 2 at 1pm, “Sephardic Community Then and Now,” Dr. Devin Naar. The audience was highly attentive to the two presentations, and in the Q & A’s after each, asked many questions that led to meaningful discussions.

Dr. Mushabac spoke of the appeal of ports and seacoasts for Sephardic Jews in the Ottoman Empire and the U.S. Calling up places like Marmara, Tekirdag, Rhodes, Canakkale, New York and Seattle was part of her introduction to a reading of her 2005 short story, “Pasha: Ruminations of David Aroughetti.” She explained how she came to write a story in Ladino; described the Ottoman Empire’s deterioration by the early 1900s and the poverty of many Jews like her fictional character at that time; and defined the Turkish word “Pasha.” At the audience’s request, she read an excerpt of the story in her original Ladino, then performed the whole story in English. Afterward, she read her novella’s brief first episode, “Canakkale, 1911”—published in the Institute’s journal Conversations—about a Turkish Jewish character very different from the one in “Pasha.” The audience needed the full half hour afterwards for questions and reactions. They discussed Turkish Jewish machismo, women’s mix of subservience and boldness, the word pasha in all its ramifications, the draw of assimilation and falling away from religion, Jewish mores (a married Jewish woman in 1917 Harlem having an abortion), and idealized vs. realistic portraits of Jews. The audience was clearly moved by the reading. Several people opened by saying how powerful the story was, how they wanted to read more of the author’s work. A recent email said, “You touched my soul.” Dr. Naar said he found the story’s ending very powerful.

After lunch, Dr. Naar began his lecture with a discussion of what the audience felt “community” meant. Ten people offered their ideas such as common interests, traditions, a feeling of belonging and trust. Then he launched into a historical portrait of “community” in the 19th century Ottoman Empire, for instance in Salonika, and the sharp contrast between it and our communities today in the U.S. In Salonika, the “community” was a quasi-governmental entity sponsored by the Empire; every Jew was required to be a member, pay taxes to it, and follow regulations, at the same time enjoying a vast range of Jewish communal religious, cultural, and health and welfare organizations under its rubric. In the U.S. today, on the other hand, the only indication of being part of Jewish community is the entirely voluntary affiliation with a synagogue, which means, for instance, that in the year 2000 Seattle had 2700 self-identifying Sephardic households, but only 600 of them were affiliated with synagogues and thus, according to the American definition, part of the Jewish community. Dr. Naar’s detailed description of the Salonika Jewish community and the provocative contrast between then and now led to ponderings on what this difference means for the Jewish future and the maintenance of Sephardic and other Jewish traditions.

October 19’s exemplary program underscores the immense value of the Institute sponsoring events of this kind. The seminar provided rich intellectual, social, and emotional interactions that brought people of different Jewish and non-Jewish backgrounds together. It made the hosting Jewish organization a hub for discussion of the values that all great religions share; and for Jewish participants it generated a profound feeling of connection to Jewish experience and continuity. Balancing the provocative tension of fiction with a focused historical analysis made for an unusually effective seminar.

At the end of the program, Rabbi Hayon gave each attendee a gift from the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals, a copy of the journal Conversations, the Autumn 2014/5775 Issue 20, on Bridges Not Walls.

Introduction [1]

The quest to craft a traditional Judaism that is also engaged with modernity and the wholesome elements of non-Jewish civilization is not new and has been given many names. Some sound odd to today’s Orthodox ears: Traditional Judaism, Positive Historical Judaism, Progressive Conservatism, as well as the more familiar Modern Orthodoxy, Centrist Orthodoxy, and, most recently, Open Orthodoxy.[2] A paradigm for this enterprise was developed in Germany, where Rabbis Samson Raphael Hirsch, Esriel Hildesheimer, and others developed Neo-Orthodoxy, which Mordechai Breuer described as an attempt to “appropriate the positive values and acceptable norms of European culture and society.” According to Breuer, Neo-Orthodoxy “was not only concerned with somehow coming to terms with modernity and possibly averting its dangers but also with internalizing modernity and putting it in the service of traditional Judaism when this seemed beneficial.” [3]

In late-nineteenth-century America, Sabato Morais adopted the slogan “Enlightened Orthodoxy” as he searched for support to help found the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS).[4] Arthur Kiron has distilled Morais’ vision of Enlightened Orthodoxy as “a harmonious model that combined openness to general cultural trends— poetry, science, and reason, as well as to universal social justice—with devout adherence to particular revealed religious doctrines and practices.”[5] From the 1940s onward, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik and his students developed a brand known as Modern or Centrist Judaism.[6] The sociologist Samuel Heilman called its advocates “syncretists” and characterised this post-War form as believing that “much in popular culture and contemporary society was not a source of defilement, but rather a fertile environment for bringing ancient Jewish traditions and values into engagement with modernity…all the while maintaining fidelity to Jewish law and observance.” [7]

However, there is a missing link between Enlightened Orthodoxy and Modern Orthodoxy, which if not entirely forgotten is certainly overlooked. In its first phase under Morais, the JTS promoted Enlightened Orthodoxy, but Solomon Schechter’s appointment as President in 1902 began the process that led to the emergence of a distinct Conservative Judaism.[8] The baton of Enlightened Orthodoxy had to be picked up by others. They have been called proponents of “American Orthodoxy,” but the sources and themes of their outlook went beyond American ideas and needs. It might be called “Positive Orthodoxy” because of the central planks of their approach was an outgoing and confident attitude toward the possibilities for Orthodoxy. They made a bold assertion of their faith, adopted an open-minded if not unlimited approach to scholarly endeavour, and were institutional builders. The champions of this Positive Orthodoxy included scholars and educators such as Rabbis Eliezer Berkowitz, Dov Revel, and Samuel Belkin, and their role in raising disciples deserves, and is receiving, attention. I want to concentrate on four Manhattan pulpit rabbis who drove forward their vision as communal spiritual leaders: Rabbis David de Sola Pool, Leo Jung, Joseph H. Lookstein, and Herbert S. Goldstein.

Context

Before we turn to these representatives of Positive Orthodoxy, we should look briefly at their context; the state of Orthodox Judaism in America in first half of the twentieth century.[9] Rabbi Leo Jung used to say that in this period “Orthodoxy in America was a bad joke,” and although this may have been an exaggeration, it was not without foundation.[10] Most American Jews who attended a synagogue before the Second World War went to an Orthodox synagogue. However, this did not reflect deeper Orthodox practice. On the eve of the First World War, three quarters of immigrant American Jews worked on the Sabbath and 60 percent of Jewish shops were open. Many of those who did not work still did not observe the Sabbath fully and would attend the theater. In a disturbing sign for the future, younger Jews were less observant than their parents. In 1935 it was found that only 10 percent of young Jewish men had been to a synagogue the week before the survey was taken, and in 1940 72 percent had not been to synagogue for a year.

Although by 1937 the Orthodox Union could claim that Orthodoxy was the largest Jewish religious group in America, not only was synagogue turnout poor, in order to maintain what allegiance they could, the Orthodox leaders were forced to make significant compromises including mixed seating of the sexes and late Friday night services to accommodate those who worked into the Sabbath. Orthodoxy seemed to be in terminal decline, doomed to extinction once the immigrant founders of Yiddish-speaking congregations died out. It was the Judaism of the Old World, not the New. By contrast, the Reform movement was strong, and the Conservative movement was growing rapidly (from 22 congregation in 1913 to 229 by 1929). Existing Orthodox leaders and methods seemed to provide no answer to the crisis facing their denomination.

This was the scene into which the proponents of Positive Orthodoxy stepped. They set themselves the task of stemming the tide. They were the founders of a movement that achieved something remarkable. In their time as leading figures, from the 1920s until the 1970s, Orthodoxy in America was transformed. It remained smaller than Conservative or Reform Judaism, but it ceased to be in danger of disappearing, and it regained confidence in its own principles. Between 1955 and 1965, 30 synagogues in the Orthodox Union installed a mehitsa (barrier between men and women in the sanctuary), returning to a more traditional seating arrangement.[11] In 1928, Yeshiva University was established as an Orthodox liberal arts college for men, alongside an existing rabbinical school. In 1956, it expanded to open Stern College for Women.[12] The sociologist Marshal Sklare said in 1971, “Orthodoxy has transformed its image from that of a dying movement to one whose strength and opinions must be reckoned with in any realistic appraisal of the Jewish community.”[13] Unquestionably, this revival owed a great deal to Soloveitchik and his followers, but as Aaron Rakefett Rothkof has remarked, his heroes, and the heroes of his fellow rabbinical students at Yeshiva University in the 1940s and 1950s were men such as Lookstein and Goldstein. They demonstrated that it was possible to make Orthodoxy attractive and successful in the American arena in the twentieth century.

Relevance
Why turn to these Positive Orthodox figures now? What relevance do they have to the Modern Orthodox community today? At the core of the syncretist project in Orthodoxy is the idea that traditional Judaism must be reconciled with the intellectual and cultural conditions of every period. Hirsch found a way for traditional Judaism to co-exist fruitfully with German Romanticism, Hildesheimer with the then-new academic discipline of history and textual study. Later Soloveitchik created an Orthodoxy that spoke in an age of existentialism and epistemological uncertainty. Each generation needs leaders who can do this work, but there is a shortage of leadership in American Modern Orthodoxy. Soloveitchik retired in the mid-1980s and died in 1993. Many of his leading disciples are retiring or are toward the end of their careers. There are some emerging figures, whether Rabbi Meir Soloveitchik at the traditional end of the spectrum or Rabbi Dov Linzer at the liberal end. However, the syncretist endeavour needs a constant new blood. We can encourage new leaders to emerge by reflecting on the importance of leadership itself. The four figures I will discuss were proponents of a positive, broad minded, unashamed, intellectually vibrant Orthodoxy. The task of this paper is to show what Orthodox leaders can achieve, intellectually and practically, when they adopt these attitudes. [14]

Four Figures

This study will examine four synagogue rabbis whose ideas were molded before the Second World War. Each was immensely active and made contributions in numerous areas of Jewish life; however, each had a specific interest. I will examine their approach to their particular concern as a series of case studies. Our quartet comprises David de Sola Pool (1885–1970), Leo Jung (1892–1987), Joseph Lookstein (1902–1979), and Herbert S. Goldstein (1890–1970), who each concentrated on a particular sphere: faith, study, prayer, and community.

David de Sola Pool was the only Sephardic rabbi in this group. In 1907, he was invited by his cousin, Henry Pereira Mendes, to become his assistant at Shearith Israel. He became Senior Minister in 1921 and served the congregation until his death in 1970. There he preached a warm and nourishing faith. Leo Jung was the best educated of the four, in both Jewish and general terms. Jung studied at traditionalist Hungarian yeshivot and the Orthodox Rabbinical Seminary in Berlin. He pursued secular studies to doctoral level at several universities. He served the Jewish Center in Manhattan from 1922 until his death in 1987. Jung sought to demonstrate that Jewish learning was sensible, intelligent, and relevant.[15] Joseph Lookstein was born in Russia but came to New York as a small child. He attended traditionalist schools on the Lower East Side and then the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, City College, and Columbia University.[16] He went became assistant to Rabbi Moses Zevulun Margolies (Ramaz) at Kehillath Jeshurun and inherited the pulpit in 1929. He was convinced that the key to revival was to create a synagogue service that the most acculturated American Jew could respect without losing without sacrificing loyalty to halakha. Herbert S. Goldstein was the only one of our four to be born in the United States.[17] Like Lookstein, he saw security for the future of Orthodoxy in the role of the synagogue, but his vision went far beyond the sanctuary. He wanted to place the synagogue at the center of a total community serving all its members’ religious, social, and educational needs.

David de Sola Pool—A Fulfilling Faith

David de Sola Pool was born in London in 1885 into an observant Sephardic family with a history of learning and communal service.[18] Pool grew up three miles from Bevis Marks, so his family worshipped at a branch with room for 120 worshippers, run as a labor of love by his father. There was no official clergy, so Pool heard few sermons growing up and was often called upon to lead services. Even when he was not serving as hazzan, he sang in the choir. The Judaism of Pool’s childhood was warm, uncomplicated, happy, and fulfilling. Shabbat was full of “spiritual uplift and religious joy” and “except on the New Year and Day of Atonement, my religion did not stress that I was the victim of sin.”[19]

Pool’s adolescence disrupted this simple and sunny picture. He hints in his spiritual autobiography to “sturm und drang” days, and his “questioning soul;” however, this never developed into outright religious rebellion.[20] Instead, as he matured, Pool’s general studies brought him awareness of the unity of the world and pointed him to an intellectual faith in a single God. Years later he would expand on this theme, writing of the Jewish Deity:

He is not the God of chaos, of tohu vabohu and darkness, but the God of the marvellous order revealed in nature. Is not this the teaching of the whole Bible, from its opening keynote chapter, the first chapter of Genesis with its poetic, symbolic description of an ordered creation, responding to God’s cosmic law? The law and order or nature revealed to the ancient Jews of the Bible, as they reveal to the modern mathematician-astronomer, the cosmic God. [21]

The intellectual aspect of Pool’s faith was supplemented, or sustained, by the spiritual sustenance he received from nature and from music, even music of Christian origin. Pool described how music spoke to him “in universal accents with transcended sectarian theologies.” [22]

As a young adult, Pool came under the influence of Michael Friedlander (1833–1910), the Principal of Jews’ College.[23] Friedlander was both personally pious and a modern critical scholar, who saw no contradiction between that and his faith. Pool supplemented his studies at Jews’ College with additional instruction in Talmud in the traditionalist community in the east end of London, where he was exposed to its vibrant religious life. He moved to Berlin to further his studies, at the university and the Orthodox Rabbinical Seminary, founded by R. Esriel Hildesheimer and led by R. David Tsevi Hoffman. There, Friedlander’s model of faith and scholarship was reinforced. Pool also studied briefly at the Rabbinical College in Florence, Italy, where a similar ideology carried the more Sephardic flavor of tolerance, open-mindedness, and a broad religious humanism.

As a pious, well-educated, English-speaking Western Sephardic Jew, Pool was a rare commodity. After graduating from Berlin, Pool was invited by his cousin, Henry Pereira Mendes, to become his assistant at Shearith Israel, the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue in New York. He arrived in 1907, became Senior Minister in 1921, and served the congregation until his death in 1970, with a break from 1919 to 1921 when he worked on post-War reconstruction in Palestine. He was a leading figure in the Union of Orthodox Congregations but showed his non-sectarian leanings through his involvement with the cross-denominational New York Board of Jewish Ministers and his acceptance of an honorary doctorate from the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1942. He was a prolific author, writing on American Jewish history, Jewish thought, and social problems, and publishing a series of prayer books with English translations.[24] Like Joseph Soloveitchik, Pool should be read as an existentialist religious thinker, who expressed his own experience in the hope that others would recognize it and respond to it. However, Pool’s experience was very different to Soloveitchik’s. It was not a place of angst and loneliness, but warmth and joy.

Pool’s faith was based on the consciousness of the existence and presence of God and accepting the privilege of serving Him. He told Shearith Israel in his inaugural sermon in 1907:

When he looks again in awe to Heaven he is filled with a strengthening faith that every aspiration to God begets and inspiration from God, that every religious thought and word born from the love of the all-merciful Father returns not empty of blessing to the source of infinite love from which it sprang. [25]

Pool thought that the way to achieve this consciousness of God was not theological speculation but human relationships:

We must keep our souls sensitive to the goodness that is in man, and to aspire to that ideal which we recognize as divine. Then when our spirit is moved with the stirring uplift of beauty, with the thrill of gentleness, with the glory of love, with the moving whisper of the still small voice speaking to us through the conscience and through our ideals, then we shall feel ourselves in the very presence of God. [26]

For Pool, faith had to have content. He identified certain non-negotiable creedal elements of traditional Judaism and defined the “quintessence of Judaism” not as good works but in the declaration of faith contained in the Shema: “Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one.” Pool regarded the Thirteen Principles of Faith of Maimonides as just one attempt, which never became universally accepted and did “not constitute an official authoritative canon of Jewish belief,” yet, he recognized that they had become the dominant expression and he spent some effort expounding and explaining them.[27] Yet this creedal element did not overwhelm the human and communal, and Pool denied that a Jew must subscribe to a catechism in order to join a synagogue. It was sufficient for members to accept traditional standards in public and official contexts.

Whatever the private views and lifestyle of some members, Shearith Israel had remained traditional in its ritual. Pool condemned as destructive, attempts to depart from traditional Judaism, and saw in them no future:

Therefore, when the voice of criticism is raised and we are told of the supposititious need of reform, we in this synagogue do not even discuss these theoretical claims…We call attention to…the sterility of congregations which have gone from one reform to another. Liberal Jewish congregations may have a seemingly prosperous present but they have cut themselves off from the past and have cut themselves off from the future.[28]

Pool’s emphasis here, and elsewhere, was that faith could not be free-standing; it had to exist alongside action, indeed it was the engine of action. However, the relationship between the two was complicated. Theoretical belief did not automatically lead to upright behavior. It was Judaism’s special contribution to insist on prescribed action, rather that trusting the religious impulse to lead naturally to right behavior:

It is easier to attain a spiritual mood by carrying out a concrete observance than to achieve action through first attaining an abstract spiritual mood. Lo hamidrash haikkar ella hamaaseh-—not theory but practice is essential. [29]

As we would expect this was most manifest in Jewish religious practice. According to Pool, the strictly ritual laws such as tefillin, tsitsith, and kashruth created a life of discipline, which led ultimately to “moral and religious strength…they infuse the routine of life with a sense of divine consecration and bring him closer to God.”[30]

For Pool, therefore, faith in general and Jewish faith in particular was natural, positive and fruitful. It was the result of a childhood of happy piety, based on role models who integrated their faith with their lives. It was fostered by an intellectual comprehension of the nature of the universe and an emotional appreciation of beauty and goodness. It led Jews to a spiritually fulfilling life and encouraged them to help others and improve the world. It was primarily universalistic and inclusive, although certain stands of principle had to be made. This occasionally made Pool critical of other Jewish movements but never exclusive of other Jews. The life of faith was not without effort, but it was a wholesome and enjoyable life.

Leo Jung and the Breadth of Jewish Study

Of our four figures, Leo Jung was the most accomplished scholar, in traditional and modern Jewish modes, and in general studies. He was born in Ungarish-Brod, in Moravia, in 1892.[31] He was the son of the town’s rabbi, Meir Tsevi Jung, who was a follower of Samson Raphael Hirsch and an adherent of Torah Im Derekh Erets. In 1912 Meir became the Senior Minister of the Federation of Synagogues in London. The Federation had been founded to enable the acculturation of new immigrants without forcing them into the highly Anglicized atmosphere of the United Synagogue. There he organized lecture meetings on Sabbath afternoons and created the Sinai League to promote the Hirschian ideology amongst the young. [32]

Leo worshipped his father and was brought up in his ideological and rabbinic mold. He was sent to study at yeshivot in Slovakia and proceeded to the Orthodox Rabbinical Seminary in Berlin. Eventually, he held four rabbinic ordinations, and in London, he received a further endorsement from Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook. He pursued secular studies at the universities of Vienna, Berlin, Marburg, and London, and received doctorates from the universities of Geissen and Cambridge. In 1920 he went to the United States, which boasted few Orthodox rabbis with advanced Jewish and general education. He took his first pulpit in Cleveland, Ohio, but with his profile and abilities he did not remain there long. The Jewish Center in Manhattan had been founded to promote acculturated Orthodoxy. The first attempt, under Mordecai M. Kaplan, had failed as Kaplan became more openly radical. When Jung was called from Cleveland in 1922, it marked a new beginning. He remained there as either Rabbi or Emeritus Rabbi until his death in 1987, making it one of the leading Modern Orthodox synagogues in America.

Jung was a prolific scholar, writer, and editor. He taught Jewish Ethics at Yeshiva University, translated Tractate Yoma for the Soncino Talmud, and revised his graduate work into a book: Fallen Angles in Jewish, Christian and Mohammedan Literature. In a more popular vein, he published volumes of sermons. However, the bulk of his work to spread Jewish study came through the series he edited for over 50 years, The Jewish Library. The first volume appeared in 1928, the last in 1980, and comprised 18 volumes (some revisions of earlier volumes) in total. Jung was a contributor as well as an editor, and we can infer Jung’s vision for Jewish study from his own writings and those he chose to include in the Library. [33]

In his preface to the first volume of the Library, Jung set out his agenda:

Culture is the unfolding of the divine element in human life, the progressive revelation of God above man through God in man. Judaism essentially is a culture, as rich and as broad as life. Hence, The Jewish Library, devised to bring home the thousand and one life messages of Judaism, will partake of all the shades and contours of that great canvas. The volumes of The Jewish Library, endeavoring to represent Judaism and Jewish life as a whole, will reflect in their content the dreams of the Jew, his urges and ambitions, his romantic march through the ages, the contemplative atmosphere of the Beth ha-Midrash, the rapture of the Kabbalist, the heroic scorn of the prophet—the complete panorama of Israel.[34]

Jung’s definition of “the complete panorama of Israel” was rather narrower than it might sound, and was firmly restricted to expressions of Orthodox Judaism. For Jung this was no contradiction, because he regarded Orthodoxy as the only form of Judaism:

To us Jews the Torah is the book of God, revealed to Israel and through Israel to all me. We believe implicitly in its divine origin, we accept it as the standard of our life. We obey its commandments. The meaning of the overwhelming majority of them is clear to us. Some are beyond our reason, but none strike us as incompatible with sound common sense. We have found also that observance of them has brought unlimited blessings to our people. [35]

This was a sharply polemical statement in the context of the United States, where Orthodoxy was not only in the minority but was widely regarded as outdated and doomed. It was also subtly different from Samson Raphael Hirsch’s approach. Hirsch identified non-Orthodoxy as the enemy. Jung implied that it did not exist. Within the parameters of the legitimate which he set out, Jung had an expansive understanding of valid approaches to Judaism, and he used The Jewish Library to promote this whole range. It is in this regard that his approach to Jewish study becomes significant, because his objective, and achievement, was to place before the Jewish public a wide range of original scholarship that demonstrated the breadth that Jung believed was possible within the boundaries of Orthodoxy.

Jung’s fullest statement of his approach to Jewish study is found in his essay “The Rabbis and Freedom of Interpretation,” which appeared in 1958.[36] Jung began by asserting two principles he regarded as untouchable: the revelation at Sinai and the binding authority of halakha. The acceptance of those two commitments, one theological and the other practical, left the rest of the Jewish corpus open to a wide (if not absolute) freedom of interpretation. Jung regarded this effort as “not merely lawful, not merely tolerated as an undeniable privilege…but encouraged and hailed as indications of religious loyalty…and unfailing source of intellectual and spiritual enrichment.” [37]

Jung quoted the well-known idea that there are 70 faces to the Torah and argued that it was this variety of perspectives that gave the Torah its power. Only through successive reinterpretation could the Torah remain lively and compelling:

[J]ust as the Halakhah is never finished but grows vertically and horizontally through the loving devotion of its authoritative scholars, so is the Agadah or the non-preceptive part of the Torah, eternally subject to search, investigative, comparison, elucidation, an on going enterprise—a complimentary progressive revelation of the message from Sinai— through Moses, Isaiah, Hillel, Saadia, Rambam, Ramban, Ralbag, Arama, Hirsch, Rab Kuk, to the dedicated students in all lands and cultures. [38]

Jung was unconcerned that stories in the aggadah might contradict each other or be fantastical because “although stimulating, instructive, often inspiring, they have no authority, they form no part of Jewish religious belief. Nor may they be taken literally: it is always the ideas, the lesson and not the story which is important.”[39] Jung quoted a wide range of examples of differing or contradictory aggadot, which prove that there can be no single authoritative view, whether regarding the behavior of the patriarchs, the nature of the messianic age, or anything else.

Jung was keen to demonstrate the pedigree of his ideas. He cited the early post-talmudic authorities Rav Hai Gaon, Rav Sherira Gaon, Rav Saadia Gaon, R. Shmuel ben Hofni, and R. Shmuel HaNagid as supporting this view. He added R. Abraham ben HaRambam (thirteenth century), who regarded statements on scientific or other general subjects made in the Talmud as non-binding, a view with which the leading halakhist in Jewish history, R. Yosef Caro (sixteenth century), seemed to agree. Jung defended allegorical interpretations of biblical passages, for example, interpreting the story of Balaam’s ass and the angelic visitors to Abraham as having good precedent in the Talmud and in the Midrashim, as well as the writings of the Rambam (twelfth century), R. David Kimche (twelfth and thirteenth centuries), and others. Jung was at pains to distinguish incorrect opinions from heresy. In his view, the fact that a view was incorrect did not, by itself, render it unacceptable.

The essays featured in The Jewish Library put these principles into practice. On the foundation of basic shared commitments Jung assembled thinkers who proposed new ways to understand Judaism and make its meaning and message relevant to moderns. This included the reasons for the mitzvoth, reconciling Torah and science while validating both. Jung sought to demonstrate how Jewish ideas could solve contemporary problems such as marital difficulties, labor relations or international law. The series examined music and the arts, Zionism and the re-establishment of a Jewish state. Jewish sources, if properly and sometimes newly analyzed, were shown to have something important and relevant to say. This was part of Jung’s effort to transform the image of Orthodox Judaism from a backward and obscurantist theology into a movement fitted for the present day, which was not only worthy of survival but had to continue because it could contain all that was valuable in Jewish life and thought.

Jung was believed in the importance of role models, and three of the volumes in The Jewish Library were dedicated to biography. Some of these were of highly traditional eighteenth- and nineteenth-century rabbis, such as R. Akiva Eiger, the Hatam Sofer, and R. Hayyim of Volozhin. However, the range of figures is interesting. Two women featured: Sara Bayla and Sara Schenierer, the founder of the Beis Yaakov schools for girls, in its day a revolutionary development. Also included are Hassidic rebbes, such as R. Menahem Mendel of Kotzk and proto-Zionists and Zionists, including Rabbis Isaac Jacob Reines, Tsevi Hirsch Kalischer, and Moshe Avigdor Amiel. He included both his father’s role model, S. R. Hirsch, who promoted Orthodox separatism, and his opponents, Rabbis Seligman Baer Bamburger and Marcus Horowitz, who remained part of pluralistic communities. Jung was particularly keen to celebrate the Orthodox proponents of Wissenschaft, including his own teacher, David Hoffman, but recording the lives of many others, mostly now forgotten such as Rabbis Joseph Duenner of Amsterdam and Joseph Carelbach of Hamburg. They were exemplars of the type of Jewish study Jung was trying to promote: they were pious, observant, believing Jews who nevertheless engaged in Jewish scholarship which departed from traditional conclusions in interesting ways without touching on fundamentals of the faith.

This became Jung’s distinguishing contribution to the effort to maintain and revive Orthodoxy in America. It was widely welcomed in its time, but the views that he espoused have become rather more controversial in recent years. Even within Modern Orthodoxy, there has been a narrowing. Orthodox Wissenschaft is now out of favor, although it still has exponents in Bar Ilan University in Israel, the Bernard Revel Graduate School at Yeshiva University, and among individual scholars elsewhere. Among Orthodox leaders, there is little embrace of the breadth of approaches so enthusiastically promoted by Jung, and there is often outright hostility. This narrowing excludes and delegitimizes, and if we accept Jung’s approach, it does so without any religious necessity. A richer Judaism, Jung’s Judaism, deserves renewed attention.

Joseph Lookstein—Traditional Prayer in an American Sanctuary

Joseph Lookstein was born in Russia in 1902, and after coming to New York at the age of seven, he attended the Jacob Joseph School, City College, and Columbia University.[40] He received his rabbinic ordination from the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary of Yeshiva University in 1926. While still a student, in 1923, he was recommended by the President of Yeshiva University (YU), Bernard Revel, to Ramaz to be his assistant at Kehilath Jeshurun (KJ). It was then a distinguished but declining congregation in need of revitalization. Some years earlier, modernizing forces had secured the appointment of a JTS graduate, Mordecai M. Kaplan, to run the religion school and deliver an English sermon, as Margolies only spoke Yiddish in public.[41] After Kaplan left, the role of an English preacher was maintained, leading eventually to Lookstein’s appointment. Lookstein excelled in the pulpit and became recognised as a star preacher. In due course, Lookstein married Margolies’ granddaughter. As a member of the family, a graduate of YU rather than the JTS and an experienced member of the KJ clergy, Lookstein duly became Senior Rabbi on Margolies’ death in 1936 and served until his own in 1979. In 1937 he founded the Ramaz School, named after his grandfather-in-law; by the time he died it had a roll of 800 students. However, the center of his rabbinate, indeed his life, remained KJ.

Lookstein possessed an absolute confidence in Orthodoxy. He believed that it had a future and the potential to provide a relevant and attractive religious life to contemporary Americans. He told a meeting organized by Young Israel in 1930:

We are now safe in expecting them [young people] to come back to us, and having come back to find their true happiness and their real self-fulfillment through closer identification and through greater intimacy with Traditional Judaism. [42]

In 1930, this was far from clear, but it was a vision, and it was guided in particular by an attitude toward the practice of prayer. Lookstein fashioned a service that he hoped would make Orthodoxy the denomination of choice. By the end of his career he believed he had achieved it. As he wrote to his son and successor Haskel in 1968:

We made Conservatism or Reform unnecessary and undesirable to a substantial number of families in the neighborhood…Some of them would have joined Conservative or Reform temples in their area but found their way to us and would not go elsewhere…[they] have changed their homes to kosher and their entire home to greater Jewishness. Some of these people sent their children to Ramaz and, because of that, these people and their homes will never be the same…All this we were able to do because…our intention was to conduct the kind of public worship that would be as dignified as the most Reform and as pious as worship in a “shteibbel”…we have never violated in our public worship policy, the Jewish law. [43]

Lookstein’s aim was to create a halakhically conforming service, which combined an Americanized aesthetic with traditional religious feeling. In effect Lookstein sought to create an institutional version of himself: Orthodox, halakhic, but as comfortable in the modern world as the rabbi of any other denomination. Lookstein saw himself and his approach as a way, perhaps in modern America, the way, of drawing as wide a group as possible into an Orthodox setting, with the hope that this would have an impact on their wider religious lives. He wrote in a private note “a well conducted service is in itself the best inducement to attendance.” [44]

Lookstein’s achievement depended on a remarkable attention to detail, meticulous planning, and careful reflection. A record was kept of each person called up to the Torah. The running order of the annual communal Seder for the first night of Passover was set out in advance to the utmost precision. To give a few specific examples: In 1954 he determined that the seating of children during the reading of the Book of Esther on Purim was problematic, and therefore “all children should be made to sit in the section reserved for the children. In no circumstances should children be permitted to sit near their parents; experience has demonstrated that in such cases it is impossible to control them and, therefore, there is noise and commotion in the neighborhood where they sit.” Lookstein was prepared to impose tight control on his staff to achieve the outcome he wanted. In 1953, he pronounced that “the cantor must be made to realize that he is the precentor, the leader of a service not the star of a musical performance indulging in recitatives and cantorial obligatos [who] becomes irritating to those who come to pray and is religiously distracting.”

Every year after the High Holiday services, he would circulate a memorandum that identified what had gone well, what badly, and what ought to be changed. In 1953, he wrote three long notes on changes to the weekday, Sabbath, and High Holiday services in order to increase their appeal. The weekday morning service was not to last more than 45 minutes, if need be by eliminating, shorting, or replacing with English readings some less essential sections, such as the scriptural references to sacrifices in the early part of the service and the supplications (tahanun) after the Amida. The evening service was to be read earlier than nightfall for the convenience of members. The timings of each section of the Sabbath service were set out, so that the entire service lasted no longer than three hours. Responsive and communal reading was introduced to maintain participation. Lookstein ruled that there should never be more than seven men called to the Torah to prevent the reading being extended. He decided that “the opening of the KN [Kol Nidre] service should have a dramatic touch…Perhaps some sort of procession ought to open the service.” Over the course of the High Holiday services there were to be fewer openings of the Ark, to avoid constant standing up and sitting down on the part of the worshippers.[45] Lookstein’s care was minute, extending to the cleanliness of the bathrooms, the shine of the brass fittings, and the condition of the prayer books.

Lookstein’s vision was strikingly similar to the policy of the religious leaders of centrist Orthodoxy in Europe. The presence of figures such as Moses Hyamson from London, serving at the nearby Orach Chayim, and Leo Jung and David de Sola Pool on the other side of Central Park brought these ideas from Britain to New York, and provided a model. Special services, for example, had long played a part in Anglo-Jewish life, to mark coronations, national days of prayer, and the like. KJ instituted services for the Sabbaths before Mothers’ and Fathers’ Day. In common with Shearith Israel, KJ marked Thanksgiving with a special liturgy, delivered by cantor and choir and featuring a guest speaker. This was prayer with a purpose. As a congregational writer explained, “the service on that occasion offers us an opportunity for the integration of Judaism and Americanism and enables us to give to a national holiday a religious flavor and significance.” [46]

Lookstein’s approach worked. When he arrived at KJ, the Upper East Side community was suffering from an exodus to the West Side. The problems were exacerbated by the Great Depression, which reduced membership and other contributions. By the early 1930s, the budget had fallen by two thirds and the congregation was forced to take out a mortgage. Lookstein rebuilt the congregation from this low ebb. From around 1940, the community began to grow again, and by 1946, there were 250 member families and 700 seat-holding families.[47] Lookstein remained obsessed with numbers and kept a weekly tally of attendance.[48] Most remarkably Lookstein was able to attract this strong following even though he refused to bend on the issue of mixed seating, which many Orthodox synagogues introduced because they came to belief it was essential to their survival. Lookstein showed it was not.[49] By the late 1960s, this vision was under attack in the world of New York Orthodox Judaism, which Haym Soloveitchik documented in his important article, “Rupture and Reconstruction.” [50] As Ferziger has noted, Lookstein wrote the 1968 memorandum to his son because he feared that his concept was in danger of being overturned by a growing tendency toward religious extremism, what is now called the “swing to the right.” Toward the end of his career, Lookstein was attempting to defend his achievement from that threat, which he viewed as endangering both a vision of Orthodoxy and a successful strategy for KJ.

Joseph Lookstein’s contribution to the stabilizing and early revival of Orthodoxy in an American setting was to take the central practice of a synagogue, prayer, and find a way to combine the essentials of tradition with an attractive form. This was not Lookstein’s invention. He had Western European models to work from, some in New York, and he had like-minded colleagues, but he was one of the most active and important proponents in America of this approach. Lookstein believed that public worship which engaged with modern tastes and wider society could be a powerful draw for Orthodoxy, and in the case of KJ, he succeeded. Each place and time calls for a different type of engagement, but the underlying principle remains Lookstein’s.

Herbert S. Goldstein—Religious Community

Herbert S. Goldstein was born in New York in 1890. [51] He was raised in an observant household keen to become Americanized, and unlike many others of his generation, he was always more comfortable in English than Yiddish. He attended Etz Chaim Yeshiva and public school before entering Columbia University with a view to becoming a lawyer. However, he was inspired by Joseph Mayer Asher, the Enlightened Orthodox rabbi of Orach Chaim on the Upper East Side of Manhattan to enter the rabbinate. Asher was also the professor of homiletics at the JTS and one of its few remaining ties to Orthodoxy. Goldstein was caught on the cusp of two emerging movements: American Conservative Judaism and American Modern Orthodox Judaism. However, there was still no American alternative to the Seminary for a broadly traditional but Westernized rabbinical training. Goldstein entered the JTS 1910 but was never entirely at home. He clashed with Solomon Schechter and the increasingly radical professor of homiletics, Mordecai M. Kaplan. Goldstein supplemented his studies at the JTS with private tuition and received ordination from both the Seminary and a Lower East Side Orthodox rabbi, Rabbi Shalom Elchanan Jaffe.

Goldstein became the first Orthodox rabbi to be ordained in America and took his first job after graduation as Rabbi Margulies' Assistant Rabbi at Kehilath Jeshurun, but his ambitions were wider. As one of the small number of committed Orthodox Jews from an immigrant background who was also thoroughly Americanized, Goldstein was able to diagnose the problem Orthodoxy faced in America. It was largely Yiddish speaking and based around small synagogues in the Eastern European style. The new, American-born generation rejected such Judaism as foreign. If they were to remain committed to Judaism, they had to be given a way to do so consistent with their American identity. Reform and Conservative Judaism provided that, and Goldstein set himself the task of doing the same for Orthodoxy. Indeed with his JTS background, Goldstein was acutely aware of the challenge from the emergent Conservative Judaism, and was determined to combat it, as he told the Orthodox Union in 1927, “there has crept in a new group, guilty of breaking up the Jewish people into further disunity. They flirt with Reform in practice, and prate about Conservatism on paper…these self-styled Conservatives—these misnomers, the disguised radicals and reformers have not the courage to describe themselves as they are.” [52]

Goldstein believed that had to be a new generation of leaders and a new vision to end the decline of Orthodoxy. As Goldstein told the Orthodox Union in 1933: “Our synagogues and schools are in a woeful condition… the soul of the Jew is being starved. Synagogues have become devoid of their religious leader and whole communities are simply drifting into despair…Our religious and educational plight is a lamentable one.” [53] Goldstein prosecuted his agenda through a variety of means, but his main contribution was establishing a new type of synagogue. Unlike Lookstein who was prepared to work within established institutions, Goldstein wanted to break out of existing structures and found not only a new synagogue but a new type of synagogue.

As early as 1916, Goldstein was agitating for a new synagogue model. It was a type that would emerge in several forms, for example, in the Jewish Center in its first iteration under Mordecai Kaplan. [54] Kaplan wanted to bring the religious, educational, and social together to provide a total Jewish experience in one place, but stated candidly that although they would be under the same roof, he did not propose integration of the religious and the social. Kaplan’s Jewish Center was designed to allow Jews to worship and study, and then to socialize, but without attempting to create a symbiosis between the two.[55] Kaplan was interested in fostering Jewish peoplehood, of which the religious (in the traditional sense) was just one element. By contrast, Goldstein explicitly framed his model as an engine for Orthodoxy, in which young Jews who came for social and cultural purposes would be exposed to a form of Orthodox Judaism that appealed and to which they could commit.

Goldstein envisaged a single institution that would combine the functions of the traditional synagogue, the Hebrew school, and the Young Men’s Hebrew Association (YMHA), which ran the sort of social and cultural events Goldstein wanted to serve as the major attraction for his new synagogue. The inclusion of the YMHA was the most radical move. Such associations were not committed to particular ritual practice and often distanced themselves from Orthodoxy, but Goldstein argued that Jewish continuity depended not only on an attractive synagogue and appealing Hebrew classes but on making the synagogue a “place where men and women can come after plying their daily cares and spend a social hour in an Orthodox environment and in a truly Jewish atmosphere.”[56] Goldstein’s aim was to make this expanded synagogue the center of the social lives of young Jews as a means to religious revival. He claimed that his model would “religionize the whole of social life” and would thereby “bear a generation of knowing Jews and Jewesses, who will be imbued with the ideals and practices of their people, and who will ever strive to make the future of Israel as glorious as its past.” [57] This was a new model, but like other self-conscious advocate of “Orthodoxy” Goldstein presented his approach as a return to the past: “This institution would be a revival of the historic synagogue. The synagogue of old was the center for prayer, study and the social life of the community, all in one. The restoration of this type of synagogue would spell the salvation of Judaism.” [58]

The result was the creation in 1917 of the first establishment of its type, the Institutional Synagogue (IS). Its constitution set out Goldstein’s vision of a comprehensive institution: “The objects and purpose of the corporation shall be to…to maintain a building and equipment for religious, educational, social, civic and physical Jewish activities.”[59] Goldstein left Kehilath Jeshurun to be its rabbi, led membership and fundraising campaigns, and was soon able to spend over $300,000 renovating a building and equipping it with a gymnasium, swimming pool, and locker rooms, as well as the more predicable sanctuary and classrooms. Some of the financial support came from men such as Jacob Schiff, himself a Reform Jew, but one always eager to support initiatives to Americanize immigrants who would never feel comfortable with Reform. He was a major beneficiary of the JTS for just this reason and he gave Goldstein $50,000 for his new building.[60] Although Goldstein wanted to make Americans Orthodox, he was able to exploit Schiff’s desire to make the Orthodox American.

Although Goldstein’s principal insight was the need to create a vibrant communal center, connected to but outside the sanctuary, like others he understood that religious services had to change in order to attract the young. He struck a much less formal note than Jung and Lookstein. The service was decorous but not stuffy; it was run by young men; the cantor was tuneful but not operatic; and sermons were reduced to ten minutes with regular guest speakers to interest the crowd. [61] Social groups were at the core of Goldstein’s vision. In addition to the usual Sisterhood, a Brotherhood was formed. It met for dinner every Monday night to create a real feeling of camaraderie. There were popular Bible classes, visits to the gym, and baseball games in which Goldstein would take part, developing his image as “one of the boys” rather than a distant source of authority. [62]

Goldstein was an executive rabbi. He was not a member of the Board of the synagogue, but he attended and participated in most meetings. The congregation’s cantor described him as “the power on the throne and the power behind the throne.”[63] However Goldstein managed to make members feel actively involved in the life of the synagogue by encouraging congregants to form clubs under the IS umbrella. Any 15 members could form a club and at their height, there were 67 such clubs. The clubs developed leadership and organization skills among the youth and adults, and Goldstein himself modeled the role by leading some clubs, hosting others in his home, and visiting each one from time to time. The clubs reinforced the values of the synagogue through the requirement that each meeting open with a Bible study.[64] As with many other acculturated synagogues at the time, the IS hosted dances. They raised funds, encouraged marriage within the faith and within the synagogue, and attracted new members. Whatever qualms Goldstein may have had about the strict religious propriety of mixed dances he understood their practical value. Mrs. Goldstein was clear that her objective was “to keep Jewish boys dancing with Jewish girls.”[65]

After only a decade in existence, the IS found its Harlem neighborhood emptying out of Jews. In 1926, a branch was established on the West Side and 400 people attended its first High Holiday services. It became clear that the future for the IS lay further south, and by 1929, members of the branch were contributing four times as much financial support as the Harlem members. For a while Goldstein divided his time before transferring his work to the West Side Institutional Synagogue full time. He was uninterested in sentiment. He set out what he wanted to achieve and was determined to accomplish it, even if this upset some members of the Harlem synagogue.[66] He demonstrated that Orthodoxy could be innovative, encourage a broad range of interests, provide an attractive social setting, while still promoting traditional Jewish life. It was bold to turn the synagogue into a complete social, cultural, and health center, and bold, too, to try to infuse religious values into each of those activities.

Conclusions

Pool, Jung, Lookstein, and Goldstein came from different backgrounds, and they had different personal styles and interests. However, they all made a choice to serve Orthodox Judaism in a time and a place in which Orthodoxy seemed doomed. They each believed they could reverse the trend. By the end of their careers in the 1970s, Orthodoxy was recovering in confidence, and its numbers were holding steady. They were not solely responsible for this change, but their careers marked a turning point. Religious leaders need a full range of tools to address whatever problems come before them, and the inter-War figures we have examined developed approaches that could be of use. They advocated an Orthodoxy without fear, but one of wide vision and confidence. They shared an attitude, a persuasion, and they found success.
David de Sola Pool demonstrated the power of a warm and positive faith. Intellectual sophistication has sometimes been equated with angst and suffering. Pool rejected that approach. He saw wholesomeness in the committed Jewish life. By no means was his Judaism empty of content, however his religious message did not depend on sophisticated analysis; it spoke about the inner religious life of the personal experience of the love of God. In an age when Chabad and other Hareidi outreach organizations attract followers through the simplicity of their message, an over-analyzed and anxious Modern Orthodoxy will struggle. A return to the immediacy and joy of Pool’s message may help address that deficiency.
Leo Jung began as an original scholar and although he continued to write essays and articles, he soon found his calling as an editor, presenting the work of others to a wide audience. The Jewish Library was a demonstration that Orthodoxy could be as sophisticated in thought as any other denomination. By recruiting leading scholars and scientists of the Orthodox present and by drawing attention to the brilliant minds of the Orthodox past, Jung impressed the men and women who would comprise the Orthodox future. For those who seek a subtle and nuanced approach to Judaism, Jung’s approach is still a model. There were those who search now as they sought in Jung’s time, and if Modern Orthodoxy is to fulfill its purpose and reach its natural constituency it might do well to emulate Jung.
Joseph Lookstein was known for his brilliance as a speaker, and although he took tremendous pains over his sermons, his greatest efforts were spent in turning Kehilath Jeshurun into a sanctuary that attracted Americanized Jews. Through judicious changes to the service that were consistent with halakha, he turned a declining community into a flagship synagogue. His achievement was based on the belief that Orthodoxy could be made attractive, and once it was modern Jews would find their natural home. His confidence in his vision of a halakhic but sophisticated prayer service was vindicated by his finding a following even without introducing mixed seating. Few Jews today are attracted to a service like the highly formal one Lookstein developed at KJ, although it still has a constituency. But contemporary Jews they can be engaged by the same spirit that animated Lookstein—a willingness to be creative within halakhic parameters for the sake of a larger goal, the success and continuity of Orthodoxy.
The most iconoclastic of the four figures is the last, Herbert Goldstein. He was the first to establish a synagogue on a new model, where every aspect of a Jew’s religious, educational, and social life could be addressed. This is not because he regarded athletics and drama as ends in themselves, but because they provided a way to reach the many young Jews who had dismissed Orthodoxy as an outdated relic of their parents’ generation. By making the synagogue the place where they wanted to go, at first for social and recreational activities but then for study and prayer, Goldstein eventually reached 3,000 people per week. He showed that Orthodoxy thrived on innovation and that it is possible to harness modern techniques for traditionalist purposes. There is currently an impatience with inherited structures. To give just one example, the success of the independent minyan movement has to be reckoned with. These are generally not Orthodox, but Orthodox leaders with Goldstein’s boldness could adapt their form, or develop an equaling compelling one of their own and seek to replicate not only Goldstein’s technique but also his success.
This study is neither an exercise in counterfactuals nor in hagiography. It is not intended to show that our quartet, or any other figure from the past could have negotiated successfully the challenges of today, or that they were uniquely able and effective. What I hope I have demonstrated is that they were significant figures whom contemporary Modern Orthodox leaders should take seriously. They operated in particularly difficult circumstances and their achievements were substantial. They also show the powerful potential of visionary leadership and the crucial role leaders can play. The challenges of Modern Orthodoxy today are different but in some ways equally grave. Other figures, from both before and after their have much to contribute. However, it is also right to make space at the table for Pool, Jung, Lookstein, and Goldstein, and more importantly for new leaders in their mold.

[1] I am grateful to the Tikvah Fund for supporting the research, writing, and publication of this article, and to the Fellows and staff, in particular Neal Kozodoy, for their comments on earlier versions.
[2] See my discussion of the problems of denominational labels in Benjamin J. Elton, Britain’s Chief Rabbis and the Religious Character of Anglo-Jewry 1880–1970 (Manchester 2009), 17.
[3] M. Breuer, Modernity Within Tradition, (New York, 1992) 22.
[4] American Hebrew, December 19, 1884, 84.
[5] Arthur Kiron, “Varieties of Haskalah: Sabato Morais’s Program of Sephardi Rabbinic Humanism in Victorian America” in Ross Brann and Adam Sutcliffe (eds.), Renewing the Past, Reconfiguring Jewish Culture: From Al-Andalus to the Haskalah (Philadelphia 2004), 136.
[6] There has been a volume of important work on this issue, see for example Samuel Heilman, “Constructing Orthodoxy” in T. Robbins and D. Anthony (eds.) In Gods We Trust (New Brunswick, 1981) 150–151; “The Many Faces of Orthodoxy, Part 1” Modern Judaism (2:1 February 1982), 23–52; and “The Many Faces of Orthodoxy, Part 2” Modern Judaism (2:2 May 1982), 171–198.
[7] Samuel Heilman, “How did fundamentalism manage to infiltrate contemporary orthodoxy,” Contemporary Jewry (2005, 25), 261–262.
[8] On the evolution of the JTS, see Jack Wertheimer (ed.) Tradition Renewed (New York, 1997), volume 1, chapters 2–5, 28–30.
[9] For the late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century context, see Jeffrey S. Gurock, American Jewish Orthodoxy in Historical Perspective (Hoboken, NJ, 1996); “Resisters and Accommodators: Varieties of Orthodox Rabbis in America, 1886–1983,” in The American Rabbinate: A Century of Continuity and Change, 1883–1983 (New York, 1985), 10–97; “Twentieth-Century American Orthodoxy’s Era of Non-Observance, 1900–1960,” The Torah u-Madda Journal IX (2000), 87–107; “American Judaism between the Two World Wars;” Columbia History of Jews and Judaism in America, Marc Lee Raphael, ed. (New York 2008), 93–113; and his Orthodox Jews in America (Bloomington 2009), especially chapters 4 and 5; Jenna Weissman Joselit, New York’s Jewish Jews (Bloomington 1990).
[10] Jacob J. Schacter, “Words of Tribute” in Jacob J. Schacter (ed.), Reverence, Righteousness and Rahamanut, (Northvale NJ 1992), 2.
[11] Jeffrey S. Gurock, Orthodox Jews in America (Bloomington, 2009) 208.
[12] Ibid., 211.
[13] Marshal Sklare, America’s Jews (New York, 1971), 4.
[14] I am grateful to Jonathan Silver for referring me to Irving Kristol’s The Neoconservative Persuasion (Gertrude Himmelfarb ed.) (Philadelphia, 2011), which models the role of a persuasion (as distinct from a specific manifesto or doctrine) in approaching issues and problems.
[15] In addition to the sixteen volumes (some revisions of earlier volumes) published in the two series of the Jewish Library between 1928 and 1980, see his collections of sermons, which include Living Judaism (New York, 1927); Toward Sinai (1929); Crumbs and Character (New York 1942).
[16] See Adam S. Ferziger, “The Lookstein Legacy: An American Orthodox Rabbinical Dynasty?,” Jewish History, 13:1 (Spring, 1999), 127–14,; Norman Lamm, “Eulogy for Rabi Joseph H. Lookstein” in Leo Landman (ed.) Joseph H.Lookstein Memorial Memorial Volume (Hoboken, NJ, 1980), 7–14.
[17] See Aaron I. Reichel, The Maverick Rabbi—Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein and the Institutional Synagogue, (New York, 1984).
[18] See David de Sola Pool, “David de Sola Pool” in Thirteen Americans: Their Spiritual Autobiographies Louis Finklestein (ed.) (New York, 1953), 201–217; An Old Faith in the New World (New York, 1955), 202–208 ; Nima Adlerblum, “Reflections on the Life and Work of Rabbi David de Sola Pool” Tradition 30:1 (Fall 1995), 7–16.
[19] David de Sola Pool, “David de Sola Pool” in Thirteen Americans: Their Spiritual Autobiographies Louis Finklestein (ed.) (New York 1953), 204–205.
[20] David de Sola Pool, “David de Sola Pool” in Thirteen Americans: Their Spiritual Autobiographies Louis Finklestein (ed.) (New York 1953), 206.
[21] Rabbi David de Sola Pool: Selections from Six Decades of Sermons, Addresses and Writings, Marc D. Angel (ed.) (New York, 1980), 59.
[22] David de Sola Pool, “David de Sola Pool” in Thirteen Americans: Their Spiritual Autobiographies Louis Finklestein (ed.) (New York, 1953), 207–208.
[23] David de Sola Pool, “David de Sola Pool” in Thirteen Americans: Their Spiritual Autobiographies Louis Finklestein (ed.) (New York, 1953), 207.
[24] Major works by Pool include “The Place of God in Modern Life” Columbia University Quarterly (24, June 1932), 194–205; Why I Am A Jew (New York, 1957); Is There An Answer? (New York, 1966); Rabbi David de Sola Pool: Selections from Six Decades of Sermons, Addresses and Writings, Marc D. Angel (ed.) (New York, 1980).
[25] Rabbi David de Sola Pool: Selections from Six Decades of Sermons, Addresses and Writings, Marc D. Angel (ed.) (New York, 1980), 18.
[26] Ibid., 82.
[27] See David de Sola Pool, Why I Am A Jew (New York, 1957), 75–80.
[28] Ibid., 41.
[29] Ibid., 83–84.
[30] Ibid., 89.
[31] See Nima H. Adlerblum, “Loe Jung” in The Leo Jung Jubilee Volume Menahem M. Kasher, Norman Lamm, Leonard Rosenfeld (eds.), (New York, 1962), 1–40; Marc Lee Raphael, “Rabbi Leo Jung and the Americanization of Orthodox Judaism” in Schacter (ed.), Reverence, Righteousness and Rahamanut, 21–91; Maxine Jacobson, Trends in Modern Orthodoxy as Reflected in the Career of Rabbi Dr. Leo Jung, Unpublished doctoral dissertation (Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, 2004); Leo Jung, Path of a Pioneer (New York, 1980), although the reader should be aware that it is not always reliable.
[32] On Meir Tsevi Jung see Gershon Bader and Moses Jung, “Meir Tsevi Jung” in Leo Jung (ed.) Jewish Leaders (Jerusalem, 1953), 297–316.
[33] Fallen Angles in Jewish, Christian and Mohammedan Literature (Philadelphia 1926); Yoma in Isidore Epstein (ed.) The Babylonian Talmud (London 1938). Jung’s collections of sermons include Living Judaism (New York, 1927); Toward Sinai (1929); Crumbs and Character (New York, 1942). See the bibliography in Raphael, “Rabbi Leo Jung,” especially 79–80 and 88–91.
[34] L. Jung (ed.) The Jewish Library First Series ( New York, second edition revised 1943), vii.
[35] Ibid., 7–8.
[36] Leo Jung , “The Rabbis and Freedom of Interpretation” in Guardians of our Heritage, Leo Jung (ed), New York 1958, 5–30.
[37] Ibid., 6.
[38] Ibid., 8–9.
[39] Ibid., 12.
[40] See Adam S. Ferziger, “The Lookstein Legacy: An American Orthodox Rabbinical Dynasty?,” Jewish History, 13:1 (Spring, 1999), 127–214,; Norman Lamm, “Eulogy for Rabi Joseph H. Lookstein” in Leo Landman (ed.) Joseph H. Lookstein Memorial Memorial Volume (Hoboken, NJ 1980), 7–14.
[41] Jenna Weissman Joselit, “The Middle-Class American Jewish Woman” in Jack Wetheimer (ed.) The American Synagogue, a Sanctuary Transformed (Cambridge, 1987), 219–220.
[42] Joseph H. Lookstein papers, Yeshiva University Library, box 45.
[43] Quoted in Ferziger, “The Lookstein Legacy,” 130–131.
[44] Joselit, “The Middle-Class American Jewish Woman,” 220.
[45] Joseph H. Lookstein papers, Yeshiva University Library, box 41.
[46] Schlang (ed.), Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun, 93–94.
[47] Joseph H. Lookstein, “Seventy Five Yesteryears,” in Schlang (ed.), Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun, 31–32.
[48] Ferziger, “The Lookstein Legacy,” 135.
[49] See Jonathan Sarna, “The Debate over Mixed Seating in the American Synagogue” in Jack Werthiemer (ed.), The American Synagogue: A Sanctuary Transformed (New York 1987), 363–394.
[50] Haym Soloveitchik, “Rupture and Reconstruction: The Transformation of Contemporary Orthodoxy” Tradition 28:4 (Summer 1994), 64–130.
[51] See Aaron I. Reichel, The Maverick Rabbi—Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein and the Institutional Synagogue, (New York 1984).
[52] Herbert S. Goldstein papers, Yeshiva University Library, box 8.
[53] Herbert S. Goldstein papers, Yeshiva University Library, box 8.
[54] For more on the idea of a Jewish center see David Kaufman, Shul with a Pool (Hanover, NH, 1999).
[55] Aaron I. Reichel, The Maverick Rabbi—Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein and the Institutional Synagogue, (New York, 1984), 96.
[56] Aaron I. Reichel, The Maverick Rabbi—Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein and the Institutional Synagogue, (New York, 1984), 92.
[57] Ibid., 94.
[58] Ibid., 92.
[59] Herbert S. Goldstein papers, Yeshiva University Library, box 1.
[60] Aaron I. Reichel, The Maverick Rabbi—Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein and the Institutional Synagogue, (New York, 1984), 173–174.
[61] Ibid., 186–191.
[62] Ibid., 224–240.
[63] Ibid., 236.
[64] Ibid., 255–270.
[65] Ibid., 249–254.
[66] Ibid., 305–322.