National Scholar Updates

Review by Israel Drazin

On the Relationship of Mitzvot between Man and his Neighbor and Man and his Maker
By Daniel Sperber
Urim Publications, 2014, 221 pages

The winner of Israel’s prestigious Israel Prize, Professor Daniel Sperber, a rabbi and Dean of the Faculty of Jewish Studies at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University, published an extremely significant book that should change the thinking of Jews and non-Jews about the purpose of religion. Sperber notes that Jewish law has two categories of commands, called mitzvot in Hebrew, those between people and God and those between one person and another. “The question we wish here to discuss,” he writes, “is which of these two categories is, as it were, more weighty. Or formulated differently: if there were to be a clash between two different mitzvot from these two categories, which one would prevail?” Sperber shows readers many, perhaps over a hundred statements from respected Jewish authorities showing that when a conflict arises, preference must be given to “mitzvot between man and his neighbor,” not “between man and his Maker.” The following is a sample of these statements. The quotes are from Sperber’s book.

There is the classic statement of Hillel emphasizing human relations: “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your friend. That is the whole Torah and, as for the rest, it is commentary.” The “Kabbalist R. Hayyim Vital (is quoted as saying) that when one rises in the morning, even before one goes to prayer, one should remind himself of the mitzvah ‘to love one’s neighbor as oneself’ (Leviticus 19:18).” The famed codifier Rabbenu Asher wrote: “the Holy One blessed be He is more desirous of mitzvot that are done to the satisfaction of human beings, than those which are between man and his Maker.”

The founder of the Musar (Ethics) movement Rabbi Yisrael Salanter said: “Better a failure between man and God, than between man and man.” Rabbi Yosef Engel, known as the Taz, wrote that “God, as it were, would have no complaint or find any fault in one who could not fulfill His commandment (when observing a mitzvah relating to one’s fellow human, such as paying a debt) and need not make it up.” The Ethics of the Fathers states: “He in whom the spirit of mankind find favor, in him the spirit of God finds favor; but he in whom the spirit of mankind finds no favor, in him the spirit of God finds no pleasure.” The Talmud teaches “theft from an individual is more serious than theft from that which has been dedicated to God.” The Netziv wrote that “charity given to the poor is of greater virtue than money given to the temple itself.” In fact, giving charity is even “seen as preferential to building a synagogue or even the Temple.”

This preference is found in Jewish law. The codifier Rema wrote that the biblical mandate to dwell in a Sukkah on the
holiday of Sukkot should be ignored “if a person is engaged in bringing sustenance to their families in straightened circumstances.” Maimonides taught that the biblical command “of bringing the omer (the new barley harvest) before the altar of God cannot push aside those mitzvot directed to helping the poor.” The Code Shulchan Aruch rules that people should not interrupt involvement in communal affairs to pray. Maimonides and Joseph Caro wrote in their codes that as important as study of Torah is, it should be interrupted to give charity. Although the law of the Shabbat is in the Decalogue (the Ten Commandments), the Jewish law is that “even the slightest suspicion of a life-endangering situation overrules the laws of Shabbat.”

After showing these and many more statements and laws that support the view that Judaism considers the behavior of people to one another more important than their behavior towards God, Professor Sperber tells moving tales in close to forty pages showing how famous rabbis exemplified this teaching, people like the Brisker Rav, Rabbi Yisrael Salanter, Rabbi Menahem Mendel of Kosov, Hafetz Hayyim, and others.

He follows this in part three by showing the many ways that Jewish congregations instituted the practice of giving charity prior to beginning one’s morning prayer. This “underscores the moral priority of relationship towards one’s fellow human even before one turns to one’s Creator.”

Thus, it is no surprise that Jewish tradition taught that prayers on Yom Kippur can annul “sins against God,” but “those against fellow humans are not expiated on Yom ha-Kippurim until the sinner appeases him that was sinned against.”

The Film Ida
A review by Roger Mesznik; July 14, 2014

Today, Lynn and I saw (with friends) the film IDA, a Polish film provided with English subtitles.

I was moved and puzzled, induced to think and grieve, and left a bit cold. I am very glad to have seen it, and I recommend it.

The film is set in Poland of the 1960s. A novice in a convent (Ida) is talked by the mother superior into meeting her aunt prior to taking her vows. Talking to her aunt for the first time, Ida discovers that she (Ida) was born to a Jewish family, and that her parents and her baby cousin were assassinated during WWII after being stashed for a while by a neighbor in a hideaway in the forest. She also discovers that she was spared as a Jewish baby by being deposited with the village priest. She was saved because she was too small to recall anything, her skin was not dark enough to betray her, and she would not show evidence of a circumcision. She eventually discovers that the then-assassin is a still-living neighbor whom she manages to see.

While watching the film, my first thoughts were directed to the many victims of the Shoah I knew and know who were damaged for life, often damaged irreparably, even though they were spared the gas chambers, the camps, and the killing fields. The story arc of Ida made me think of the people who ended with no descendants. The arc made me think of the people who were never able to overcome the futility of lives rendered sterile, people whose lives were deprived of meaning and purpose, people whose lives were eviscerated of hope, people whose decisive years were wasted hiding in a coal cellar, or in a forest, or under false identities, or in convents and monasteries, or with false families. These victims were not killed, but many of their lives amounted to little more than seeing their respective survival to its predictable end.

From my family history, from friends and acquaintances, from the literature, and from this film again, I was made to feel once more for the millions of victims whose lives were spared, but whose substance and vitality was drained from them with no recourse. Viewed with hindsight, reincarnation in Israel or in the US (to choose the two overriding such destinations) seems so self-evidently healing, and so often heroic and praiseworthy. But we do not have many auto-biographies of the many victims who never healed. Untold numbers of lives are right now draining into an amorphous insignificance of lost hopes and forgone opportunities. They are departing without a record; they are leaving this world without having left any imprint.

I also knew and know people who spent years fighting the Nazi occupation. Many of them spent those years also hoping to create a world in which such monstrosities will never happen again. These hopes were appropriated by false saviors and by idolatrous characters who promised Eden on earth. These liars eventually delivered nothing but disappointment, more pain, more deaths, and many more broken hearts and disillusioned minds.

Ida is in her early twenties. And yet, at the film’s end, she elects to surrender to her original destiny and live out her life as a nun. But the convent is a sad place. It is lost in a far corner of a small village, devoid of any effective purpose and doomed to eventual abandonment. Its decaying old house is too big, its economic basis is missing, and its superficial religious role is fulfilled by greeting people with “God be with you” and the off-handed dispensation of a blessing to a little baby.

Prior to deciding to return to the convent, Ida clearly foreswears the opportunity to seek justice, or revenge, or even a modicum of compensation for the crimes committed against her and her family.

She could have returned to the convent driven by an urge to escape this sordid past. She did not. She could have done it because she elects to devote her future to some grander vision of her religious calling. She did not. She could have done it because she simply wanted to live it up when finally liberated from her oppressive past and present. She did not.

She seems to return to the convent out of a deep sense of self-abnegation; and nothing more. The misery of being a Jew in this hostile world at this hostile time is transformed into an elective controlled misery of self-denial and empty sacrifice. Is it a possible, half-hearted “religious answer” to the well-known “survivor guilt”, or is it only a convenient regression into familiar contexts? This process saddened me.

It seems that her just-discovered past has so broken her that all she can do is to spend the remainder of her days in meaningless self-denial. To be sure that the denial is indeed as painful as it is supposed to be, she even engages in a discovery of what she will miss when taking her vows. She does it on the advice of her aunt who commits suicide shortly after suggesting this possibility to her. After celebrating the memory of her dead aunt by following her advice, she snuffs the remainder of her own life in quiet obedience to inconsequential, anonymous self-effacement. Is she committing a slow-motion suicide which is formally consistent with Catholic religious precepts, but a suicide nonetheless? And to make sure that the viewer understands the depth of this meaningless sacrifice, she is shown as a beautiful and attractive young woman at the prime of her life, and she is told so more than once in the film.

I felt betrayed by Jean-Marie Lustiger, the Jewish boy who had a successful religious “career”, becoming the Catholic Archbishop of Paris. I was moved by his request to have a Hebrew Kaddish prayer recited at his funeral at the portal of the Cathedral of Notre Dame to abide by the beliefs of his parents who were murdered on account of their Jewishness. I am of two minds about Edith Stein, (aka St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross), a girl of deeply religious Jewish origin who studied medicine, converted to Catholicism, became a nun, and who was apparently either unable or unwilling to save herself when the Nazi came for her in her convent and exterminated her in Auschwitz.

However foreign to me these acts are, they are decided acts of conscious commissions; they are manifestations of a free will which decides to try and leave its imprint on the world to the best of its lights. Ida’s slow suicide is not a commission; it is an omission; it is a denial of responsibility. This is why I was saddened by this Jewish variant of the stereotype of the Catholic martyr.

It evoked in me the loss of so many others, whether or not they had converted. To gauge the impact of the film’s purposeful design, I tried to imagine the same film with an uncircumcised boy and a monastery. It would work mechanically, but not nearly so well. Male saints are usually not so passive. The sympathy for Ida is driven, in part, by the female gender role and the loss of a beautiful girl. This is why the film left me also cold.

Though I am saddened by Stein and Lustiger, their path is consistent with the trajectory of more than 90% of all people who were ever born Jewish. A nation (or a people) which were dominant in the Mediterranean of the Roman world could only be reduced to a rather small few million survivors by continuous shedding of co-religionists, whether forced or voluntary. Lustiger, Stein and untold others tried as best they could to follow their ideas. Ida and untold others like her just gave up. They gave up and they reverted, they yielded to convenience and familiarity.

I do not deplore weakness. I do not deplore accommodation (Think of Primo Levi working inside as a chemist and saving himself in Auschwitz). I do not even deplore instrumental treachery if needed for survival (think of “Sophie’s Choice”). But I am depressed and angered by Ida’s (non-) choice.

The aunt says at one point: “I went to the forest to fight; and for what?” She was clearly a “Court Jew” of the Communist party. She was not a Court Jew because she could lend money; she had none. She was a Court Jew because she could lend unflinching reliability. She and others like her made up the only population segment that the power-seizing communist regime could reliably count on to be steadfastly anti-fascist. As a judge, she became known as “Red Wanda”. She could have been relied on to mete heavy punishment to fascists and collaborators; but also later probably to “Bourgeois

Counterrevolutionaries”. We do not know whether she did also sit in judgment over “Zionist Trotskyists” or “Neo-rightist-deviationists” (speak Jews). She had clearly tried to shed her past. When forced to face it again through the eyes of her niece, she clears what she can, and then she commits suicide in a manner which is statistically decidedly non-female and atypical for women. With her suicide, she grants Ida full liberty to select her own future because the only and just established familial ties are terminally severed. Ida is cleared of all attachments. Ida is now free to choose.

The emptiness of the aunt’s position is also emphasized by a tinny rendition of the anthem “The Internationale” on a poor tape recorder at her funeral. All that is left of the grandiose attempt to “create a new man” and save humanity is this spooky rendition of the hymn of a promised salvation. The aunt’s name, Wanda, is the most common Polish name after Maria. Apparently unwilling, as a Jew, to take on the name Maria, she chose a generic appellation, a really common first name, a name of the people; and probably, in its time, also for the people.

The film put an odd emphasis on the insignificance of this drama in the grand sweep of history. However weighty the situation for Wanda and Ida, it means ultimately nothing for everyone else. When Ida mentions to a new acquaintance that she is of Jewish origin, he replies “I have some Gypsy background in me”. Is this the film maker’s invitation to rise above the biological destiny and the historic determinacy? Are we supposed to become self-defining individuals, unbounded by a common past and our common history?

The filmography is very intriguing. In many passages, the characters are set within the lower part of the picture frame. It makes the viewer feel as if tiptoeing up to an open window to peer through that window into another person’s life. For me, it created another distance to the characters. It provided me more detachment, and it made me feel more disengaged. Did the filmmaker do it to emphasize that the story is ultimately no more than the self-defining defiance of inconsequential individuals?

The setting was very well presented. The ruts and potholes in the road as they drive, the black and white tiles, the recurring spiral staircase, the peeling paint in the hospital, the communist-fashion heavy heels on women’s shoes, the gloomy air, and the all-pervasive suspicion.

Within a three-mile radius of my home, there are about 60 Orthodox synagogue options. Sixty. It’s a staggering number—and even more staggering that despite this number, new synagogues and minyanim are being formed on a fairly regular basis. In fact, not that long ago, I and my husband, along with about 20 other families, created a new synagogue in Baltimore: Netivot Shalom.

Why would we feel the need, in such a strong Orthodox community, to “break away” from other synagogues?

I cannot speak for other minyanim and synagogues that may form for a variety of reasons—from convenience to rallying around a particular rabbi. But for us, not starting a new synagogue would have meant that we probably would have skipped town to find what we now have at Netivot Shalom. Synagogue life has always been central to me—and I simply did not find an Orthodox community where members were heard—and encouraged to speak, learn, and grow. Particularly as a woman in a more right-leaning community, my voice was silenced; literally, I was regularly shushed when praying too loudly, or was told, “not in our synagogue” when I asked about creating more opportunities for women in synagogue life.

Netivot Shalom was founded to fill a void in the community, and create a space where everyone has a voice and an active role.

What is wrong with “mainstream” synagogues? Inherently, nothing. Mainstream synagogues have for generations inspired thousands of Jews to engage religiously, socially, ethically. So what has changed? I want to focus on the three main reasons we started Netivot Shalom, all of which comment to some extent on what may be amiss in many Orthodox synagogues.

1. Size Matters.

Many synagogues have become a little “too successful” in the numbers department. More members means more funds for programming, and more people with whom to pray and connect in meaningful ways. It also means that people can get lost if they are not part of established cliques; they don’t always have opportunities to participate in services and programs; they don’t feel like their presence matters. Whether or not they show up, the show will go on.

Another issue that arises from huge congregations is the divisions into separate services: Within one synagogue, there may be a hashkama (early) minyan, a teen minyan, the “regular” minyan, the beginner’s minyan, the young families’ minyan, the Sephardic minyan, and the Kiddush club. These groups may or may not interact with each other. The multiple-minyanim within one roof leads to two problems:

a. Families and friends are separated for prayer, and the synagogue experience becomes a factionalized, rather than bonding experience.
b. One of the beauties of the synagogue experience is the opportunity to interact and grow with people with varied interests, people of multiple generations, people whose life experiences and perspectives are different than our own. When given the option, people are more likely to gravitate toward minyanim where the social community is more homogeneous in terms of age, stage in life, or interests.

Having only one minyan enforces diversity—diversity of thought, background, and religious ideology. Shiv’im panim la-Torah, the idea that Torah has 70 facets, becomes real in a diverse minyan.

Although our community is still small, drawing about 70 people on any given Shabbat, social and religious heterogeneity is a given. In our services, although our minhag is set, different tunes and voices are heard from people of all backgrounds and ages: In any given week, Spanish and Portuguese, Syrian, and Ashkenazic ta’amim are used for Torah and Haftarah readings; women’s voices are heard for the Prayers for the Government and Army, shiurim, and/or Kiddush; children’s voices are heard for An’im Zemirot and the concluding prayers. Our weekly sermons are delivered by a large rotation of members—men, women, and sometimes children—who represent a wide range of ideologies and backgrounds.

2. Who Runs the Show?

Who is responsible for running the synagogue? The board of directors? The rabbi? The members? I have been a member of synagogues with different political systems. In some, the board controls everything—including some decisions that would be better left to a halakhic authority with a sensitivity to the needs of the community. In these synagogues, it is often a rule of egos; any dissent was quashed, and members were regularly discredited and pushed aside, told “You’re the only one who feels this way.” This is no way to run a community organization.

On the other hand, for a few years, our family was part of a synagogue where the rabbi held all of the power, threatening to quit if the board/membership didn’t vote a certain way on big issues. This authoritarian model didn’t work for us either.
Most successful synagogues have the rabbi-board work as a system of checks and balanaces; this seems to work practically—but can be disenfranchising to members who may want more information about ritual, financial, and other decisions. Where are the voices of the members? And how should they be incorporated into the runnings of the synagogue?

At Netivot Shalom, it’s been rather easy, since to date, we have no rabbi (although we are currently in the throes of a rabbinic search). All board members are elected by the membership, and all members have a voice in ALL issues that affect the community. Halakhic decisions are made by a committee, made up of men and women from different demographic groups, with the advice of an Orthodox rabbi. This rabbi presents the range of acceptable halakhic options, and after studying and deliberating on the different views, the committee makes a recommendation to the board. If it is an issue that affects everyone, such as the height and design of the mehitza, or women saying Kiddush for everyone, the entire community votes—after a series of classes in which everyone can learn the basis of the halakhic options and explore the positions that both permit and forbid the recommendations. Thus, having a voice in synagogue decision-making is not only an opportunity for transparency and empowerment; it’s an opportunity for everyone to learn and grow in our knowledge of Jewish texts.

3. Inertia Rules.

People often find comfort in the familiar, in the status quo. Yes, Netivot Shalom is a comfortable, haimish place. The service is standard nussah Ashkenaz, and the structure of the prayers echoes that of most Orthodox synagogues. But innovation, with sensitivity to all members, is a driving force in our community. We are not driven by inertia, but by intentionality and opportunities for growth. For example, on Purim, we studied the halakhot around women reading Megillat Esther for men and women, and concluded that there are no halakhic barriers to this practice. However, some members were simply uncomfortable with the change; so we opted to have two simultaneous readings—one only read by men, and one read by men and women. Similarly, when the community elected to have women say Kiddush for the community, it was with the caveat that we announce (whether a man or a woman is saying Kiddush), something to the extent of “So-and-so will now make Kiddush. If you would like to be yotzei, listen and answer Amen. If you would like to make your own Kiddush, grape juice is available at the drinks table.” Any change in ritual practice can cause angst, and thus must be approached slowly and deliberately, with sensitivity to the needs—halakhic and extra-halakhic—of the community members.

Regarding mainstream synagogues, Rabbbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo writes, “… God is relocating. He doesn’t want to live in a place where His ongoing creation is unappreciated and even denied.”

I am honored to be a part of a community where God’s ongoing creation is appreciated, studied, and explored. I am honored to be a part of a community where everyone has a voice. I am honored to be a part of a community where our tagline defines us as a community that is “committed to learning and living God’s Torah. Through this engagement we seek to perpetuate the values of respecting the Tselem Elokim in each person, of Ahavat Yisrael, and of Kavod haBeriyot.” For more information, please visit our website at www.netivotshalom.net.

Review by Israel Drazin

Peshat Isn’t so Simple
By Rabbi Hayyim Angel
Kodesh Press, 2014, 311 pages

For over two millennia most Jewish Bible commentators did not explain the Bible’s plain meaning, called “peshat” in Hebrew, but used the biblical verses and events as sources for homiletical lessons. Some exceptions existed, such as the writings of Maimonides, Abraham ibn Ezra, and Rashbam. Unfortunately many people thought that what rabbis told them in sermons was what the Bible actually states. They believed imaginative stories, such as Abraham destroying his father’s idols, are events told in the Torah.

Today, there are some yeshivot that are teaching peshat and new books are appearing with peshat. Hayyim Angel, a clear-thinker and author of six splendid books and over a hundred learned articles, all written in interesting and easy language, is in the forefront of such scholars. People who want to know what the Torah actually says – distinguishing “between text and interpretation” - will learn much from his writings. (All the quotes in this review are from Rabbi Angel’s book.)

Rabbi Angel devotes eleven of his twenty-one chapters to discussing the methods of peshat, and offers many eye-opening fascinating examples in ten chapters. He states that the best peshat “captures the language or the spirit of a passage more fully.” This is not easy. Also, although there are many rabbis and scholars who seek the peshat today, they do not always agree how it should be done or what the peshat is.

Understanding the simple meaning of the biblical text is influenced by the commentator’s worldview. Rabbi Angel mentions Maimonides who “maintained that if logic or scientific knowledge contradicts the literal sense of the biblical text, that text must not be taken literally,” but understood figuratively or allegorically. Maimonides understood “that nature will not be altered fundamentally in the messianic era” and interpreted messianic prophecies such as Isaiah’s view that at that time “the wolf shall dwell with the lamb” as a poetic description indicating that all nations will live together in peace. Maimonides felt that humans are unable to see angels while in a waking state and therefore interpreted Abraham’s meeting with three angels as a vision. He felt that the prophet Hosea “did not actually marry a prostitute, nor did Isaiah walk around naked in public,” nor did Ezekiel “lie on his sides for a total of 430 days” even though the text states that they did. These and many other events, according to Maimonides, should be understood as the prophets’ visions, parables, or allegories.

“Although the divinely revealed Torah is an eternal covenant (Maimonides believed that) it was given to a certain society at a particular time.” Maimonides “attempted to understand how the ancient setting in which the Torah was given influenced the narrative and style of the Torah, and even the mitzvot (the divine commands).” While
God had no need of sacrifices, for example, since “the Israelites had a strong predilection to offer animal sacrifices,” God allowed the practice. The Torah contains many passages concerning sacrifices and Maimonides taught that these passages should be understood as showing that God “prescribed specific boundaries for this form of worship by insisting that animals could be sacrificed only in authorized shrines” and only certain animals could be used, and then only in a restricted manner.

While Maimonides interpreted the Torah with rationalistic eyes, Nachmanides saw the Torah through mystic lenses. Nachmanides attacked Maimonides: “Behold, these words (about sacrifices) are worthless; they make a great breach, raise big question, and pollute the table of God.” Nachmanides maintained that sacrifices “were the ideal means of communing with God, and not concessions to the ancient Israelites’ historical condition.”

Rabbi Angel describes seekers for peshat who drew the meaning of words and events from a wide variety of sources and were able to explain biblical events based upon what other cultures and nations were doing at the time. Maimonides “believed that were we to have access to more documents from the ancient world, we would be able to determine the reasons behind all of the commandments” (Angel’s emphasis). But others, such as Nehama Leibowitz “avoided ancient Near Eastern sources.”

Rabbi Angel describes the interpretation methodologies of many other famous commentators, such as Saadiah Gaon, Rashi, Abraham ibn Ezra, Abarbanel, and Obadiah Sforno, as well as modern thinkers such as Binyamin Lau, Yoel Bin-Nun, Moshe Shamah, Leon Kass, and many others. He lists a host of these thinkers in his appendix together with their dates and home country.

Many of these peshat interpretations that Rabbi Angel tells us are fascinating and enlightening; others are thought-provoking but unreasonable to modern thinkers. For example Moshe Shamah points out that “Esau in the Bible was nothing like (the derogatory way) he is portrayed in (midrashic) sources.” Abarbanel notes that God instructed Moses to have his brother Aaron perform the first three of the ten plagues because God knew that the Egyptian magicians would duplicate these three plagues and God did not want to embarrass Moses; once the magicians conceded defeat during the plague of lice, God transferred the actions to Moses. Rabbi Shamah “understands the narratives of the Creation, Eden, Cain and Abel. Abraham’s encounters with the angels in Genesis 18, and Balaam’s talking donkey as allegories or parables.” Rabbis Shamah and Sassoon understood the Bible’s large tribal counts as being symbolic. Yehuda Kiel argues that the story of the tower of Babel “need not refer to the people literally to all humanity; it may refer simply to the people living in the region.” Leon Kass suggested that Abraham was arguing that the city of Sodom be spared in Genesis 18 because of objective justice and because he cared for his nephew Lot. While he was concerned for Lot, he made his plea in general terms and stopped at ten because if he “reduced the argument to (will you save the city for) one (person) it would have been too obvious that he was asking God to save Lot.”

In contrast, Sforno argued that the Israelite worship of the golden calf “permanently damaged Israel’s ideal spiritual level. “As a consequence of this sin, later prophets did not prophesy in the waking state attained by Moses. This comment is difficult to support from the text.” It is also contrary to current thinking that descendants are not punished for their forbearer’s misdeeds. Additionally, there were commentators who were willing to criticize the patriarchs for their behavior. Nachmanides, for instance, wrote that Abraham committed a great sin when he tried to save his life by saying that his wife Sarah was his sister. Rabbi Elhanan Samet insisted that Jacob’s decision to remain with his father-in-law Laban for a half dozen years to earn a living rather than returning home to Canaan to do so was a terrible mistake; it “aroused the jealousy of Laban’s family, and led him (Jacob) to unwittingly curse (his wife) Rachel.”

Rabbi Angel includes entire chapters discussing the Towel of Babel; Sarah’s treatment of Abraham’s concubine Hagar; Joseph’s bones; comparing the judge Gideon to the patriarch Abraham; mixing love and politics as seen in the relationships of David with King Saul, his son Jonathan, and his wife Michal; Ezekiel’s prophecy about the war of Gog; and the tale of Solomon determining true justice for child custody with his shocking ruse in suggesting to cut the baby in half. Readers will be surprised, delighted, and enlightened by the information in these chapters.

In summary, this book contains a wealth of intriguing ideas, what the Bible is actually saying rather than imaginary sermons built out of biblical words.

Rabbi Cardozo’s analysis rings true: Most synagogues no longer serve as the hub or heartbeat of Jewish connectivity, especially for young Jews. Many people no longer feel God in the pews, nor do they feel the “big” questions are answered in synagogues. God has left the building.

But correct as Cardozo may be about widespread disenchantment, he makes one overriding assumption that’s seems faulty: He speaks about God as if God is a given—as if every Jew accepts “His” existence. The average American Jew doesn’t talk about God, lacks the vocabulary with which to articulate what or who God is or means, or doubts whether God exists at all. Most Jews I encounter don’t know where God might be found, or even if God is missing.

It’s not that science is the sole culprit, as Cardozo suggests, that we’ve been reasoned out of faith. It’s simply that God is not a self-evident or felt presence in the lives of many Jews. If the concept of God is discussed, it is usually as the exemplar of a moral life, or alternatively, as the object of praise and appreciation on the siddur page. Few Jews in today’s world describe themselves as having a deep relationship with God as counselor, confidante, or spiritual center of gravity.

When Cardozo critiques the “regular synagogue visitors” who “only speak to Him when they need Him,” I would counter that most Jews I know aren’t certain there is a “Him” at all, let alone someone they petition. Cardozo says we never “hear Him when He calls for help in pursuing the purpose of His creation,” but I believe that Cardozo’s three assumptions are just that—assumptions that a) there is a God; b) God needs our help; and c) God calls out to us.

Ask the majority of American Jews if they’re sure there is a God. Ask them if they believe God requires our participation. Ask if they’ve ever heard God or think they might.

Certainly there are Jews who believe in the notion that God, if not the sole author of creation, had a decisive hand in our miraculous universe, but those same Jews don’t necessarily believe that God expects us to help complete (or improve) creation, or that God calls to us in a way that we’re able to actually hear or heed.

So if there is a spiritual drought today, it may not just be the fault of institutional Judaism and lackluster shul life, but of Jews who have a basic resistance to God in the modern age.

Reading Cardozo’s essay made me wish God were indeed part of our daily conversation. Wouldn’t every uncertain Jew benefit from a direct, personal challenge: Why does God remain such a problematic idea? What are we looking for when we talk about “spirituality”? What role has God played, not just in our history, texts, and traditions, but in our most private moments?

How refreshing it would be if our institutional leaders—be they rabbis, cantors, or educators— would actually press us to ask the hardest questions of ourselves: Is it possible to be a Jew without God? Might you have already communed with God without even knowing it? Do you accept the role that God supposedly has played in our collective story? How do you conceptualize the God to whom you pray?

When Cardozo writes that “We have replaced God with prayers, no longer realizing to Whom we are praying,” that’s a blunt criticism, deserving of blunt debate: Is prayer a substitute for a more intimate, honest relationship with God? If Cardozo is correct that we don’t realize to whom we are praying, how would we begin to correct that? Where would the realization ultimately come from?

What I observe in today’s Jewish life is a bifurcation between those who, in essence, already have it, or "get it,” and those who are flailing or have given up the search. There’s a gulf between the self-appointed “insiders” who are wholly confident in their relationship with God, and those who, when it comes to belief or worship, are at sea, lack the comfort or fluency of faith, drop in and out of ritual. Cardozo’s essay seems to be directed at those already in the inner circle. I wish he could also have addressed those Jews who don’t yet have a direct line to the divine.

Certainly, there are new epicenters of engagement, be they as formal as independent minyanim, or as casual as coffee conversations. But what both the new guard and the old share is buy-in: unquestioned faith in a deity and a confident sense of spiritual access, neither of which can be assumed among the wider Jewish population. I’d wager that the largest swath of our community feels little or no meaningful connection to the God whose many names fill every blessing we say and every page of our prayer books.

I belong to a synagogue whose practices richly and consistently contradict Cardozo’s characterization of shuls as “religiously sterile and spiritually empty.” An historic landmark with more than 2,000 families, Central Synagogue, a Reform congregation in Manhattan, has managed to create the “excitement” he says is lacking. More to the point, I find God there in every way. It’s difficult to explain why, without sounding lightweight, imprecise, even saccharine; but I’ll do it anyway. To begin with, I feel God in the synagogue's physical space—the soaring ceilings, honeyed lighting, eternal flame, stenciled wall designs that artisans and congregants reproduced meticulously after a devastating fire. I feel God in the fact that on Friday nights, the full pews are populated by busy New Yorkers who could easily choose to go to the gym or the movies instead.

I feel God in the cantor’s soulful voice and in the clarinet melodies that somehow conjure my old Yiddish-speaking immigrant aunts and uncles, the weeping and wanderings of past generations. I see God in the glowing Shabbat tapers lit on a small wooden table on the bimah. God is in the aisles during the Torah’s procession and resonates in the rabbi’s strong embrace, in each friend’s “Shabbat Shalom,” in the sight of children tearing off pieces of challah.

I have felt God in my private conversations with the clergy and in those decisive moments of struggle where the senior rabbi reached out to my family before we asked and before we knew realized how much we needed him.

I felt God on Mount Scopus overlooking Jerusalem and while chanting Shabbat blessings atop King David’s tower, and while walking the beaches of Tel Aviv.

I felt God when the congregation mobilized instantly to clothe and feed victims of Hurricane Sandy—assembly lines of families filling boxes and garbage bags to cart out to Rockaway.

I feel God every Thursday at dawn when my daughter and I serve breakfast to 100 homeless men and women in the lobby of our religious school.

I feel God when I’m deconstructing a line of Torah with the monthly study group that meets in my living room, led by a teacher from Mechon Hadar. There are lessons that stretch my thinking about how to live a grateful, giving life, how to apply our ancient texts to daily decisions.

I often hear rabbis talk about finding God “in relationships,” and I know exactly what they mean: I’ve experienced friendships that feel as if God orchestrated them—to teach me something, ask more of me, make me feel alert, needed, beholden.

I absolutely feel God in my daughter and son’s faces and in my husband’s hands.

I believe that a Jew needn’t be strictly observant to feel God’s presence, but the message that comes through so often is that God only exists for the devout; you have to do more to even get close. Yet many of us have exactly the appetite that Cardozo describes—we “want to study God and understand why He created the world and what the meaning of life is all about. What is the human condition? What is a religious experience? How do we confront death?” What Cardozo seems to overlook is the fragility of faith; it isn’t—pun intended—God-given. He’s right to ask the question, “Who wants to live a life that passes by unnoticed?” But he’s wrong to assume that most modern Jews see God as the clear answer to living a noticed life.

I would love to meet God in that "mysterious stratosphere" in which fundamental questions linger unanswered. But before any of us wander there, let’s acknowledge that most Jews can’t “move to God’s new habitat” until they are sure God inhabits any place at all, or until they see that God has been beside them all along.

The Torah records the reaction of Aaron when he learned the sad news of the tragic deaths of his sons: “Aaron was silent,” vayidom Aharon. Commentators have offered various explanations of Aaron’s silence. He may have been speechless due to shock; he may have had angry thoughts in his heart, but he controlled himself from uttering them; he may have been silent as a sign of acceptance of God’s judgment.

Within biblical tradition, there are a number of phrases relating to confrontation with tragedy.

“Min haMetsar Karati Y-ah,” I call out to God from distress. When in pain, it is natural to cry out to God, to shed tears, to lament our sufferings and our losses. To cry out when we are in distress is a first step in the grieving process.

“Tefillah leHabakuk haNavi al Shigyonoth.” Dr. David de Sola Pool has translated this passage: “A prayer of Habakuk the prophet, in perplexity.” After crying out at our initial grief, we move to another level of mourning. We are perplexed. We want to know why this tragedy has happened? We want to understand how to reconcile this disaster with our belief in God’s goodness. We are in a state of emotional and spiritual confusion.

“Mima-amakim keratikha Ado-nai.” I call out to God from the depths of my being. This introduces the next stage in confronting tragedy. It is a profound recognition, from the deepest recesses of our being, that we turn to—and depend upon—God. It is a depth of understanding that transcends tears, words, perplexity. It is a depth of understanding and acceptance that places our lives in complete context with the Almighty. We may be heart-broken; we may be perplexed; we may be angry—but at the very root of who we are, we feel the solace of being in God’s presence. When we reach this deepest level of understanding, we find that we don’t have words or sounds that can articulate this inner clarity. We fall silent.

“And Aaron was silent.” Aaron was on a very high spiritual plane. While he surely felt the anguish of “Min haMetsar,” and experienced the perplexity of “Shigyonoth,” he experienced the tragedy “Mima-amakim,” from the very depths of his being. His silence reflected a profound inner wisdom that was too deep for tears and too deep for words.

All the people of Israel, and all good people everywhere, mourn the tragic deaths of three Israeli teenagers who were kidnapped and murdered by Palestinian terrorists. We all experience the anguish and the perplexity. We all have feelings of anger. Yet, we also need to reach out to the Almighty “mima-amakim,” from the depths of who we are. We know that God, in His infinite wisdom, will punish the murderers and their sympathizers. We know that God, in His infinite love, will bring healing to the mourners of these Israeli teenagers. Right now, the deepest response is silence. We need time to let this tragedy sink in, to absorb its impact on our lives, and to find a positive way of moving forward.

“May happiness multiply in Israel, and may sadness be driven away.”

The Crown of Solomon and Other Stories, is a second work of fiction by Rabbi Marc Angel. His first work of fiction, The Search Committee, is a series of thirteen monologues delivered by eleven people to a search committee seeking a new Rosh Yeshiva for Yeshivat Lita, pictured as a hareidi yeshiva located in Manhattan. In it, Angel creates eleven different voices all arguing their case in favor of one of two candidates for the position, one candidate representing the history of the yeshiva, the other a candidate for change. The novel is a novel of ideas which, though of broad interest, are particularly relevant in the Orthodox community

The Crown of Solomon consists of nineteen very short stories packed into 148 pages. The stories have the tone of parable. They all take place in modern times, yet the language is reminiscent of midrash, S.Y. Agnon, and to some extent Haim Sabato.

We meet a large cast of interesting characters. We meet rabbis, doctors, Anusim, pious poor men, pious rich men, cranky old men, a feisty young girl who stands up to anti-Semites, Wall Street moguls, star-crossed lovers, and more. As in The Search Committee, we see the struggle between traditional society and the desire for halakhic-based change. However, these tales go far beyond that concern.
The book opens with stories that take place in various places in Turkey, Rhodes, and Greece, locales where the Jews are of Sephardic origin. Rabbi Angel, himself of Sephardic origin, recreates Sephardic worlds that barely exist, having been decimated by the Shoah and emptied by emigration to the United States. His stories also take place in Seattle, a city of settlement for Sephardic Jews, New York, and some unnamed locations in America.

This splendid collection of stories is characterized by a continuing use of irony that always enters at the end of the story in the final sentence or paragraph. Indeed, most stories, even the ones drawn from Angel’s life, conclude with turns of events worthy of O. Henry.

In the title story, for example, Hakham Shelomo Yahalomi, sets about to write a work of Halakhah and Kabbalah entitled Keter Shelomo, Solomon’s Crown. He works on this study for in private for years, never sharing any of its contents with his community. Upon his death, it is discovered that the expected work does not exist. Matatya Kerido, Hakham Shelomo’s second in command, opens the box supposedly containing the text, only to find “just one page, a blank page, a tear-stained page without a single word written on it.” (p.8). The reader is left to interpret the meaning of this state of affairs. To be sure, the tension in the story prepares the reader for something unexpected. But this conclusion is both startling and thought provoking. What is the meaning of one tear-stained sheet instead of complete work of law and mysticism?

The second story in the collection is perhaps the best story in the book. “Sacred Music” tells the story of David Baruch, born on the Island of Rhodes on the same day as Mozart, who dies the same day as Mozart. David possesses an incredible talent for music, which he hears continually in his head, but, except for one sad instance, never manifests itself in voice, instrument, or on paper. It only ever resides in his interior. This story moved me. The motif of a child possessed of special knowledge or power is common, especially in young adult fiction. Generally, the conflicts are resolved when the young person’s talent is recognized. Not so in this case. David goes through his life badly misunderstood by his family and community. Rabbi Angel creates in this story a wonderful though immensely sad framework, which is intended, I believe, as a critique of the limits of traditional society to recognize and develop talent. One is reminded of the similar conflict in Chaim Potok’s My Name is Asher Lev. David’s music always remains within, because his world lacks the ability to help him develop his genius.

“Murder”, acknowledged in the Introduction as a true story, tells of a family member, Joseph. He is one of six children who in 1911 immigrates, along with their mother, to America to join their father in Seattle. Joseph is refused entry into America, because of a scalp infection. He returns to Rhodes, where he grows up, marries, has children and for various reasons does not consider immigrating to America. As a result, his family perishes in the Shoah along with the rest of the Jewish community of the Island of Rhodes. Angel’s anger at the end of this story is palpable. He suggests that the immigration official who sent Joseph back never lost any sleep over his deed, not in 1911, nor in 1944. Yet we see what the official never did: the tragic impact of what likely seemed to the official to be a trivial act of simply following orders.

Most of the stories surprise the reader with their unexpected conclusions. Angel creates situations and characters that, for the most part, reflect a Sephardic world unknown, I would imagine, to most Ashkenazi readers. Their names alone force the reader to consider the world about which they are reading.

Angel looks behind the characters and settings he’s creating to surprise, criticize, open up discussion, and, at the same time to memorialize the world of Rhodes, Salonika, and Turkey that are no longer with us. The surprises that greet us at the end of most of the stories, inevitably give us pause to reflect beyond the simplicity one would expect from the style and subject matter.

The October 2013 Pew Report underscored the fragility of the Jewish future in North America and has led to anguished discussions and debates regarding "continuity", i.e., how to reduce the number of Jews relinquishing Judaism and Jewish identification in favor of other options.

But given the nature of the American religious scene, as I will present below, it is simply impossible to assure Jewish continuity by such a strategy alone. Rather, only if a strategy of easing the path of conversion is joined with current educational efforts and programs do we stand a chance of achieving continuity.

Such a strategy is of course at odds with the notion that conversion should be discouraged and difficult. However, that notion itself was not the primordial position of our tradition but rather historically conditioned. Encouragement of would-be converts and the intentional application of the more lenient positions found in our sources can be fully justified from within the halakhic tradition -- particularly in times of crisis such as ours.

Stating the Problem Honestly

Even if 100 percent of all children born to Jews in the United States were to remain Jewish, the Jewish population would decline significantly over time, because of the simple fact reported by Pew that Jewish adults aged 40-59 have an average of 1.9 children– while 2.1 children in a family represents the minimum fertility replacement level, that is, the level at which births equal deaths in a society with good health services. Although I am Orthodox, the fact that Orthodox Jewish families have an average of 4.1 children is no consolation to me. My concern is for the future of the entire community and not for any particular sub-group alone. Indeed, I believe that religiously and morally, such horizons of concern are befitting all Jews – and especially the Orthodox.

But even if Jewish fertility in the U.S. were to rise and become on par with that of the general public – 2.2 children per family – Jewish continuity would not be ensured. The reason is that many persons born as Jews do not currently regard themselves as such. The Pew report is based on interviews with 3,475 Jews (of whom 20 percent identified themselves as “Jews of no religion”). In order to reach those 3,475 Jews – a total needed for statistically significant findings – the Pew surveyors conducted more than 70,000 screening interviews. By the time they had located 3,475 individuals who said they were Jewish, they had come across 1,190 persons who stated that they had been Jews – but were currently not Jewish in any way.

In other words, of 4,665 persons born Jewish, only 75 percent regarded themselves as Jewish in any way, while 25 percent regarded themselves as totally non-Jewish. Thus, even if the Jewish fertility rate were to reach 2.2, with this outflow of 25 percent, the effective Jewish fertility rate would be 1.65 – well below the fertility replacement level. As it now stands, the effective fertility rate is 1.425 percent. Because younger age cohorts are increasingly less affiliated and more intermarried, it stands to reason that the actual fertility rate is dropping even lower.

But why are 25 percent leaving us? Surely, something must be wrong with our schools, our synagogues, our community, for so many born Jews to choose to totally opt out? Not necessarily. While nothing in this world is perfect, it seems to me, as an Israeli, that the schools, synagogues, and communal activities of American Jewry are admirable and dynamic institutions, staffed by caring professionals sincerely committed to preserving Jewish continuity.

Indeed, the 25 percent attrition rate of born Jews is significantly below that of the American public in general – as emerges from another report of the Pew foundation. In 2008, Pew published its landmark "U.S. Religious Landscape Survey." A key finding relating to our topic was:

More than one-quarter of American adults (28 percent) have left the faith in which they were raised in favor of another religion - or no religion at all. If change in affiliation from one type of Protestantism to another is included, 44 percent of adults have either switched religious affiliation, moved from being unaffiliated with any religion to being affiliated with a particular faith, or dropped any connection to a specific religious tradition altogether.

Note that the 25 percent of born Jews who now say they are not Jewish at all is below the national average of 28 percent of those who have left the faith in which they were raised. Even if we add to those 25 percent the additional 15 percent of born Jews who say that they are Jewish but not at all religious, this is less than the national average of 44 percent cited above.

The fact that Jews have a retention rate better than the national average indicates that there is a significant return on the tremendous efforts of our schools, synagogues and community centers to encourage born Jews to remain within the fold. While this may be comforting on one level, on another level the comparison with general overall trends in the U.S. religious landscape leads us to realize just how serious the challenge to Jewish continuity is. This is because the 2008 Pew survey enables us to realize the tremendous flux of all religions in the contemporary United States.

Indeed, one might ask: if not only Jews but all religions are losing such a high percentage of those raised in the faith, how is it that any religious group continues to exist? The answer to this is found in what I regard to be the most crucial finding of that survey for our current discussion. In a paragraph titled, "A Very Competitive Religious Marketplace," the authors of the 2008 survey wrote:

The survey finds that constant movement characterizes the American religious marketplace, as every major religious group is simultaneously gaining and losing adherents. Those that are growing as a result of religious change are simply gaining new members at a faster rate than they are losing members. Conversely, those that are declining in number because of religious change simply are not attracting enough new members to offset the number of adherents who are leaving those particular faiths.

It may well be the case that other countries in the world are not characterized by such “constant movement” among religions. For a variety of reasons, such movement is certainly not characteristic of Israel. In Israel, it is almost universally acknowledged that Jewishness is first and foremost identification with and a sense of belonging to an extended kinship group, with some of the kin being more attached to the group's religion and some less so.

Such a sense of Jewish peoplehood was characteristic of Jews in Eastern Europe, the Ottoman Empire, and many other countries where Jews resided; it was also characteristic of most of the first-generation Jewish immigrants to the United States. However, with the passage of time and the deepening Americanization of the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those immigrants, the “given-ness” of peoplehood has receded.

American Jews have now become a “religious group”– not only in the eyes of the general public and analysts of the Pew foundation, but in the eyes of Jews themselves. This is well reflected in the similarity of “constant movement” characteristic of the affiliates of Judaism and other American religious groups. Comprehension of this constant is crucial to any strategic discussion of Jewish continuity in the United States.

Maimonides (Guide of the Perplexed 1:71, citing Themistius) stated that opinions must be grounded not in wishful thinking but in empirical reality. If Jews are now involved as actors in the field of American religious groups, they must comprehend the reality of that field. Specifically, they must realize that, wishful thinking to the contrary:

1. In the American religious landscape, despite all efforts to the contrary, a significant percentage of born Jews (25 percent at least) will choose to opt out of being Jewish.
2. There is no way in which that loss will be offset by internal fertility.

If Jewish continuity is predicated only upon those born as Jews, then a dramatic and continuous numerical contraction of American Jewry is the clear prognosis.However,for a religious group to predicate its future only upon those born into it is to blithely ignore a central characteristic of the U.S. religious landscape, in which "every major religious group is simultaneously gaining and losing adherents." The future of any specific religious group is contingent upon gaining at least as many adherents as it loses. This is true for all religious groups in America – and therefore also for the Jews. Yet from a comparative perspective, the Jews – such a talented community in many ways – have seemingly been outstandingly inept in this regard. We have lost many more adherents than we have gained.

Of course, as all Jews know, we have not really been inept at gaining converts. We have been intentionally adverse to receiving converts – not from time immemorial but since the ascent of Christianity and Islam. In medieval and early modern times, this policy was adopted in order to ensure our survival: the authorities of the dominant faiths reacted violently to members of their group opting for another religion, taking vengeance both upon the convert and those who accepted him.

Currently, however, the exact opposite is true: Jewish continuity is crucially contingent upon gaining many more adherents. Continuing to maintain the classic aversion toward accepting converts, or even following a more neutral or lukewarm policy toward persons seeking to become Jewish, is – in the current religious reality of the United States – a sure way to undermine and act against Jewish continuity.

Our only hope lies in a combination of two strategies: doing our utmost to maintain (as we have until now) a high retention rate of those born into our religious group, and simultaneously doing our utmost to be extremely warm and encouraging toward those seekers who, unhappy with their current affiliation, indicate interest in joining us.

However, coming as I do from the halakhic tradition, I know that it is not enough to argue on the basis of exigency alone. Rather, one must ask: is it halakhically possible, from within the tradition, to support and justify action that seems to be called for by a sober assessment of reality? Specifically:

Is it possible within traditional halakha to justify a policy under which rabbis will warmly encourage converts and follow the most lenient possible halakhic opinions, in a manner that will be most conducive to widespread giyyur (conversion)?

Answering the Question Honestly

In order to answer in the affirmative, we do not need to seek unanimity – for halakha is characterized by a wide range of legitimate views. Rather, we must see if we can find within halakhic sources strong voices stating that in matters of conversion broad policy considerations must determine the choice of formal halakhic requirements. If such voices exist, then, even if they are numerically in the minority they should be followed in a time of crisis (she'at ha-dehaq). If the reader does not think that the recent Pew report reveals we are in a time of crisis, she can stop reading here.

In fact, ever since the time of the great scholar Hillel in late antiquity, quite a few rabbis have advocated that in matters of conversion, policy should guide which converts to accept and what to require of them. I would like to briefly give voice to three great twentieth century halakhic scholars – each no less learned than Rabbi Moshe Feinstein of blessed memory –who strongly advocated such a policy-guided strategy: Rabbi Ben-Zion Uzziel (1880-1953), Rabbi Joseph Mesas (1892-1974) and Rabbi Hayyim David HaLevi (1924-1998).

Rabbi Ben-Zion Uzziel, the first Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel, received a request in 1951 for halakhic guidance from Rabbi Judah Leon Khalfon, head of the rabbinic court of Tetuan (Spanish Morocco):Is it permissible, he was asked,to convert the children and wives of completely non-observant Jewish men, as they would presumably also be non-observant Jews?

Rabbi Uzziel’s response (published in responsa MishpeteiUzziel7:20)addressed both whether it is possible to convert someone who will subsequently not be religiously observant, and why rabbis should want to convert such persons.

With regard to the first question, Rabbi Uzziel was aware that certain East European rabbis had claimed that the halakhic requirement of “reception and acceptance of commandments” meant that the convert was required to sincerely promise observance of mitzvot; on that view, a person whom we think will not be observant could not be converted. Rabbi Uzziel pointed out that, to the contrary, no classic halakhic text – including the Shulhan Arukh-- specifically required such a promise. Indeed, this was not a chance omission, for if conversion were to be made contingent upon an inherently indeterminate future observance,"then no converts would ever be accepted in Israel. For who can guarantee that this non-Jew will be faithful to all of the Torah's commandments?”After undergoing conversion, all converts – whatever the degree of their religious observance – will be no less Jewish than a born Jew leading a similar lifestyle.

With regard to the second issue,Rabbi Uzziel’s response is of even greater relevance to us today. He points out that classic rabbinic texts teach us that God loves converts. Indeed, the Talmud (BT Pesahim 87b) teaches that God dispersed the Jews throughout the world so that non-Jews would have the opportunity to become acquainted with them and choose to convert! Therefore, it is a positive commandment to warmly accept proselytes, whenever this is possible.

Over and above the general positive attitude cited above, Rabbi Uzziel added that special reasons exist in modern times to accept candidates for conversion in cases linked to intermarriage:

And in our generation we bear special and heavy responsibility, because if we lock the door before converts we are thereby opening wide the gates of exit, pushing Jewish men and women to change their religion and to leave Judaism entirely or to assimilate among the gentiles…. (rabbis have special responsibility to accept such converts so as to promote the Jewishness of their children).Even if they are the children of a non-Jewish mother -- they are Seed of Israel. And they are therefore “lost sheep.” And I fear that if we push them away completely by not accepting their parents for conversion we will be accused (by God) and it will be said of us: "neither have ye brought back the strays, nor have ye sought those which were lost" (Ezekiel 34:4).

Rabbi Uzziel stated that avoidance of such Divine rebuke should clearly outweigh the concern of receiving unworthy proselytes.

In 1965, Rabbi Joseph Mesas, then Chief Rabbi of Haifa, stated that in matters of conversion, the general policy to be followed is that of the rabbis of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia – who accepted all persons seeking to convert (responsa Mayyim Hayyim, vol. 2, #108). Rejection of persons seeking to become Jewish achieves no positive results, and frequently leads to unhappiness, resentment and bitterness, both of the candidate himself and of individual Jews, families and communities affected by that rejection, he said. He noted that if the rejected candidate really wants to become a Jew, s/he would simply turn to another rabbi, and ultimately be accepted. What then has the first court achieved, except to cause anguish and hatred?

Indeed, the notion that the rabbis have control over the consequences generated by rejecting converts is an illusion. To illustrate this, Rabbi Mesas related a case (one of several that he personally knew of) in which rabbis refused to convert a woman who then proceeded to move with her Jewish husband to another location where they “passed” as Jews. Fifty years later, it was discovered that the family's matriarch was not Jewish; ipso facto, neither were her daughters or their children – although all of them had grown up thinking they were Jews. Several members of the family agreed to convert, while others were so upset and distraught that they left Judaism entirely.

Rabbi Mesas did not blame the matriarch. He said that the rabbis who rejected her were responsible for the tragic outcome, because they lacked the foresight or the will to comprehend the cost to present and future generations of their rejectionist policy. Indeed, he said, under contemporary conditions, rejecting candidates for conversion was not a sign of true religious commitment but rather a manifestation of a sanctimonious pseudo-piety.

Because rabbis have a responsibility to further the well-being of the entire Jewish community, they should follow the halakhic policy that leads to the most positive overall results:“When a conversion to Judaism takes place, then a light shines in the darkness and everything is forgotten and joy dwells in their home.”

Rabbi Hayyim David HaLevi (Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv 1973- 1998) cited with great approval the position on conversion policy expressed by the great Rabbi Israel Joshua Trunk (1820-1893) of Kutno. Rabbi Trunk had been told that in the early Middle Ages the King of Kiev negotiated with the leaders of Israel in his generation.He wanted to convert and to convert all of his people with him, but he proposed just one condition – and because of this condition the agreement fell through and did not take place.He wanted them [the rabbis] to waive circumcision of the elderly; that they should convert by immersion only, and die uncircumcised.And the newborns would be circumcised.And this way in the next generation they would all be fully Jewish. The rabbis refused to agree to this condition [and the King and his nation did not convert].

Rabbi Yehoshele(Trunk)criticized them, saying that it was wrong of them to reject a populous great nation and to prevent them from joining the Lord's estate… the Talmud (Nedarim 32b) says:

"Why was our Father Abraham punished and his children doomed to Egyptian servitude for two hundred and ten years? Rabbi Johanan said: Because he prevented people from entering beneath the wings of the Shekhina, as it is written (Genesis 14:21), "Give me the persons, and take the goods to thyself"[…]
Allies are crucial!

Rabbi Trunk regarded the rabbis' refusal as a strategic mistake of the highest degree: the long-term positive implications of the king's proposal for the Jewish future were so momentous that they could (and should) have ruled according to the minority opinion of Rabbi Joshua ben Hananiah, who held that conversion without circumcision is valid (BT Yevamot 46a). The idea that numbers are of no significance for the Jews is absolutely misguided: "Allies are crucial!", declared Rabbi Trunk.

In this context, Rabbi Trunk cited Rabbi Johanan, who held that the reason for Israel's fate in Egypt may be found in a close reading of Genesis 14:21. As related earlier in that chapter, the populace of Sodom had been captured as prisoners of war, and Abraham had overcome their captors. The king of Sodom proposed that Abraham keep the booty, and return the populace to his (the king's) rule. But implicit in that very request was the king's acknowledgement that the people of Sodom were at that point in time legitimately under Abraham's domain. Abraham (notes Rabbi Johanan) could (and should) have retained them and converted them, i.e., brought them into Abraham's covenant with God.Abraham's failure to seize this opportunity to dramatically expand God's flock was a strategic blunder – and the ultimate cause of Israel's servitude in Egypt. So too, declared Rabbi Trunk, with regard to the rabbis who rejected the king of Kiev's proposal: had they accepted it, the Russian people would all have become adherents of Judaism – and how different would have been the fate of Jews in Eastern Europe in medieval and early modern times!

Rabbi HaLevi explained that Rabbi Joshua ben Hananiah, who Rabbi Trunk thought should have been followed in the Kiev case, was himself articulating halakhic policy in response to the conditions prevailing in his own times (the first century C.E.):

An extremely widespread movement of conversion developed towards the end of the Second Temple period.At the time there were about a million Jews in Egypt, about a million and a half in Syria and Asia Minor, about a million in Europe and North Africa, and about a million in Babylonia.These numbers did not stem from emigration, as at the time there were not so many Jews in the land of Israel itself.According to historical experts, these numbers reflect a broad movement of conversion…. This was the era in which idolatry lost its appeal, and Judaism captured the hearts of many… [but most converts were women]; It seems apparent that the obstacle that kept many men from joining the house of Israel was circumcision.

It could be, that we hear in the Talmud a faint echo of this severe problem … the Talmud states: "all [i.e., Rabbi Joshua and Rabbi Eliezer] agree, that immersion without circumcision is effective."(Yevamot 46b) It is simple, that the Halakhah is according to the [other] Sages [who required both rites].But it seems that there were indeed proselytes for whom circumcision was an obstacle - who sought to enter under the wings of the Shekhina by immersion only […].And indeed Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Joshua considered their conversion to be valid.

Who today could imagine the possibility of accepting masses of converts without circumcision?Yet this was possible, at least theoretically [also in post-Talmudic times;after quoting Rabbi Trunk's position cited above, Rabbi HaLevi concludes].

From all of the above we can learn the depth and breadth of the halakhic maxim relating to conversion: "Everything can be in accordance with the judge's view." Note this well.

Rabbi Hayyim David HaLevi argued that a serious discussion of giyyur must comprehend halakhic statements in their real-life context. At the outset it must be realized that the basic position of Jewish tradition is very much in favor of accepting converts. This positive attitude, encouraged by the rabbinic leadership in the centuries before and after the beginning of the Common Era, proved extremely successful. However, women were more prone to actually convert than were men – because conversion of a man required circumcision, to which many men were averse. Having established this general background, Rabbi HaLevi proceeded to a contextual reading of the late first century rabbinic debate. Heproposed that those rabbis who were willing to convert without requiring circumcision were able to advocate such a position because they knew well that the Torah affords rabbis a tremendous amount of latitude in deciding what to require of a proselyte – and they also knew that Torah is very much interested in the acceptance of converts.

Rabbi HaLevi further stated that one should not imagine that such leeway was available only to rabbis of ancient times. He pointed out that Rabbi Trunk obviously thought that post-talmudic rabbis also possess such prerogative – and that they should have employed it to facilitate the conversion of the king of Kiev and his nation.

Returning to this issue in 1989 (responsa 'AsehLekhaRav Vol. 9:30). Rabbi HaLevi wrote:

Judaism is not a missionary religion, and it does not relate at all [in a missionary way] to any other religion, including Christianity.[…] But in a broad historical view, Christianity caused tremendous damage to the spread of Judaism.This is because the entire yearning of the idolatrous world for a new faith (after the ancient world became tired of idolatry which was about to disappear from the world) caused many to flock to Judaism – until Christianity appeared and preached an easy religion devoid of any practical commandments.
[At this point, rabbi HaLevi inserts the following footnote:]

It is possible that we find an echo of these matters in the disagreement among the Tannaim … [citing Yevamot 46ab, HaLevi writes]: And perhaps Rabbi Joshua thought to be lenient by accepting proselytes on the basis of immersion alone, because that would open the door to conversion of masses of people and their entry into Judaism, something that circumcision -- which was so difficult for them -- prevented.It goes without saying that it did not cross Rabbi Joshua's mind to nullify the commandment of circumcision among the proselytes.Rather, his intent was only with regard to the older members of the first generation of proselytes. The children who would be born to them would be circumcised in accordance with the law, with the waiver applying only to those who themselves converted. Had Rabbi Joshua's opinion had been accepted in the Beit Hamidrash – the face of history might have looked very different!

Rabbi Joshua's position was not followed. The tidal wave of conversion to Judaism was diverted, and the great masses of non-Jews seeking religious fulfillment in a relationship with the God of Israel chose to do so via Christianity. Over the course of time, rabbis and other Jews forgot that Judaism had ever been interested in attracting adherents. But Rabbi HaLevi was well aware of the path not taken, and of what might have been had those rabbis responded otherwise to the strategic significance of the early Christian challenge: "Had Rabbi Joshua's opinion had been accepted in the Beit Hamidrash – the face of history might have looked very different!"

The competitive religious marketplace of the 21st century United States is significantly analogous to the religious marketplace of late antiquity: tens of millions of people are dissatisfied with the faith into which they were born, are seeking alternatives – and are changing adherences. The 2013 Pew report reveals that born Jews are also part of this landscape, with 25 percent of them having left. But all faith groups are in a similar situation; because Jews are less than 2 percent of the population, that means that for every Jew who opts out, there are 50 non-Jews seeking fulfillment outside of the group into which they were born.

Judaism possesses a rich and diverse religious-cultural tradition, woven together from ancient times to the present by talented and creative individuals and communities. Furthermore, Jews have developed a strong and vibrant sense of togetherness, kinship and family – a resource increasingly valuable in times such as ours. Is it not reasonable to assume that of all the tens of millions of non-Jews seeking fulfillment, many could find meaning and fulfillment in Judaism?

Whatever the Israeli rabbinate's policy on giyyur in Israel may be, this has no relevance for the reality in which United States Jewry exists. If they are indeed (as they see themselves) the true keepers of the halakhic tradition, Orthodox rabbis are especially called upon to acknowledge all of the above, and to respond to the strategic call of responsibility for the future not only of Orthodox Jews, but of all God's flock.

Does halakhic tradition contain the resources that can enable Orthodox rabbis to rise to that call, to warmly encourage converts and to follow the most lenient possible halakhic opinions that will be most conducive to widespread giyyur? Yes, it does.

The halakhic tradition contains many strands and many voices. That same tradition also teaches that in times of urgency (she'at ha-dhaq), the most lenient options should be followed. The Pew reports prove unequivocally how great that urgency is.

The views of the great halakhic scholars cited above are crucial to the contemporary discussion of Jewish continuity. Relying upon earlier sources and applying them in contemporary reality, they teach that within the heart of the halakhic tradition there is a clear voice calling out: At all times, and in all places, God loves converts. Conversion is a mitzvah. Over and above that general rule, there are times in which conversion is crucial to Jewish continuity, and inclusion of non-Jews into God's flock is a strategic imperative.

Ours is such a time. Will future generations look back in regret and say "Had Rabbi Uzziel's, and Rabbi Mesas' and Rabbi HaLevi's opinions been accepted in the Beit Hamidrash, the face of history might have looked very different.” Or will they say: "How great were the Torah leaders of those times, who chose the halakhic path most appropriate to the American religious landscape, and led the entire American Jewish community from seemingly inevitable numerical decline to numerical and spiritual growth."

The question is whether we move our synagogues to where God is now dwelling. Will we, the religious, live up to the expectations of the young people in cafes and discussions groups who have preceded us? Will we apologize to them and join in their discussions, creating a real religious experience out of our synagogue service? Or will we, as usual, stay put, fight the truth, and then be put to shame?
—Rabbi Nathan Lopez Cordozo

Rabbi Cordozo is correct that unless we, Jewish leaders and institutions, are able to understand and relate to the current culture and weltanschauung of the Jewish people and the society that nurtures them, we will not be able to serve, educate, or engage them in religious community. But we would do well to avoid seeing this situation as one of us and them, the establishment versus the innovators, young versus old. We are one family. It is our job as leaders to know what the Jewish people need as individuals and as a group. This cannot just be a matter of gesturing, or catering to some societal perturbation in order to serve a financial or survival agenda; it must be about how to function as a Jewish community together. It must be genuine and organic.

I believe that no other Jewish institution can serve the role of building strong, encompassing, spiritual community than a shul can. Shuls educate, create community, care for people, guide them on their journey, and can, if navigated with a wide vision, make a difference in our world far beyond their own members. Shuls can be the vehicles that enable us, the Jewish people, to gather in our brethren and be a light unto the nations.

I think I speak for many younger and mid-career rabbis, when I say that although stolidness may seem to be the rule in synagogues, it is by no means ubiquitous or necessary. I will use my own synagogue, Bais Abraham Congregation in St. Louis, Missouri as one example of utilizing creativity and open mindedness in the service of generating a more vibrant community.

Spiritual Tools

It takes a large spiritual tool box to encounter an infinite God, but most of these tools and approaches are not foreign to Judaism; most are not even new to us, but were born within our tradition. For me personally, even innovation itself has its roots in the hareidi yeshivot of my youth where nothing was valued more than hiddush, the truly new idea in Torah. Let me share one example of the ways in which we are utilizing Judaism's plethora of spiritual approaches and tools in invigorating and renewing our community.

When I was a young adult I came across a book on Jewish meditation. This was a foreign concept to me at the time, having grown up Orthodox. I was quite surprised to discover in its pages that the Talmud’s Hassidim haRishonim, Ancient Pious ones, took an hour to prepare for prayer, an hour to pray and an hour to come down from their prayer, and that the Ariza”l and many Hassidic rebbes taught methods of visualization and mantra meditation. I was struck by how none of this sounded like the “chopping of a minha,” that I often witnessed, and was even considered virtuous in some Orthodox circles. Years later I studied Jewish meditation in a more formal capacity. This is one of the many Jewish tools that has fallen by the wayside, and that we are bringing once again to our prayers and religious life. I must stress that it is not difficult to learn meditation but something that anyone with sensitivity and a bit of training can learn well enough in a short time to utilize and teach.

I have actualized this through a weekly meditative service on Shabbat mornings. Many people in shul do not really know what they are saying when they pray and do not really know how to utilize kavvanah, prayerful intent. Each Shabbat morning at the end of the Torah reading, I go to another room in the synagogue to lead a meditative kavvanah-oriented service, really a class about prayer with some guided meditation. About 20 percent of the shul follows me. We take just a few prayers and first read them to understand their meaning, then look at the themes of the prayer, and then I direct a guided meditation to focus us more deeply and personally on those themes. This I think is what we mean by the very traditionally Jewish notion of, “having kavaanah,” deeper intent. Some of these methods might borrow techniques from more Eastern practices but the medium of the meditation and its content is wholly Jewish, indeed it may be indispensable for real traditional tefillah itself.

Creating Community

Many Orthodox shuls are places people come to pray; they need a minyan for daily halakhic reasons or for holidays or a yortzeit. At Bais Abraham, the vast majority of attendees did not grow up Orthodox and so do not always know how to daven; it is rather a desire for community that brings them. And so we put a great deal of effort into community programming. Although davening is very hard for many, most Jews really do want the experience of an embracing community. Shuls today must function a bit like Jewish Community Centers, engaging lay leaders in creating social, intellectual, and educational programming for all ages and demographics.

Shuls must also be wider communal institutions. By communal I do not just mean the Orthodox community, but a vital part of our neighborhoods, cities, and country. Shuls must feel a deep sense of obligation not only to their members but to, as a community, turn outward toward the rest of the Jewish community and the general communities in which a shul finds itself. One important way to do this is as a shul to volunteer in the larger community.

Bais Abraham has an ongoing partnership with one of the most economically disadvantaged neighborhoods in St. Louis, which is located less than a mile from our shul. Once a month we spend an evening studying about an aspect of hessed from a Jewish point of view. Later that week we put this into practice as a community painting a house, serving food to the elderly, and so forth.

A Culture of Welcoming

Many shuls see themselves as welcoming, but often this is limited. Many are welcoming on their own terms to those who can fit in. I believe that to be truly welcoming, a shul’s culture must be so embracing that it draws almost no boundaries to entry at all. To be welcoming to Jews that one hopes to influence is a very limited way of welcoming, and usually people see it for what it is. Only a narrow range of seekers will come to such a place. In a truly welcoming culture all are welcomed because there is no other way to be.

Rabbi Abraham Magence, my teacher and the rabbi who preceded me in my shul, made the point that when Avraham welcomed the three men walking in the desert, for all Avraham knew, as Rashi points out, they were idol worshipers. It was three idolatrous nomads that Avraham left God’s presence to run to greet and serve. What if we had a culture within Orthodox shuls like Avraham’s? If a homeless person comes in on Shabbat to our synagogue building he or she is welcomed and included fully in the kiddush or seudah shelishith, and welcome to be in the services with us.

I remember a certain non-Jewish homeless man in an electric wheelchair who would come on Shabbat morning, charge his chair and spend the entire day eating at and interacting with people in the shul. We must not just welcome people into shul, but transform our shuls into places in which the culture of welcoming is deeply ingrained, almost without limits. It is only then that the wide array of Jews who do not imagine themselves in shul will feel comfortable.

Alternative Venues

Alternative venues outside of the synagogue are a good way to engage a population of non-Orthodox, younger people who may find it hard to enter the synagogue space. Although an old standby, barbecues outside of the shul building for various holidays such as Lag B’omer, Tu B’Av and Sukkot are always worth doing. They bring a sense of fun and are good ways to bring together shul families with new people who may not be affiliated. Alternative venues also serve to disrupt a congregation's tendency toward monotony and to inject a sense that Judaism and community can suffuse the surrounding environment outside the shul’s walls; that Jewish community extends outside the bounds of the synagogue space.

Years ago, during the weeks leading up to Rosh Hashanah, I began leading a once-a-year hike in the woods as a way to prepare for the Yamim Noraim, the High Holidays. We typically begin in a circle near the woods, sharing some thoughts about the upcoming work of teshuvah, repentance. I focus the group on the New Year and on teshuvah between us and others and between us and God. Then together we take a silent hike through the woods. No talking is allowed so that though we are together as a community, everyone is at the same time allowed and encouraged to be alone in their thoughts. The hike concludes with another circle in which we reflect upon the time spent in silence, and a sharing of plans for teshuvah.

As a shul, we also use alternative venues for Torah study. We hold a class called “Torah on Tap,” which meets in a bar. It is a discussion that is sometimes a text study, sometimes topical, and sometimes just asking questions. In engaging the wider Jewish people, atmosphere is just as important as content. Many Jews might not know how to pray or might feel they are not “religious enough,” but a bar has very few barriers to entry. This not only brings Judaism to the people who are hesitant to enter the shul, but it brings the community outward, facilitating a strong feeling that we are more than a shul; we are a community within the world. This makes for much stronger communal bonds because people are not living one identity outside of shul and another inside, rather the two sometimes bifurcated worlds begin to merge.

Several years ago, we spent the year creating an emphasis on seeing Judaism through art. Among the many classes, hands-on art explorations, and Orthodox rabbinic scholars-in-residence who were exploring Rav Kook’s and others ideas about art, we spent an interesting day at the local art museum taking a tour that I guided along with one of the docents at the museum who was also an Orthodox Jew. I focused the tour on the many paintings that drew on the Torah for their subject matter. We looked not only at each painting against its biblical background but also at the painting or work as a work of art in itself. What did the colors the artist used, and the emotive quality of the painting in turn, teach us about the biblical story from which it had emerged? This was a good example of opening our eyes to the cultural resources around us outside of our shul that can help to expand what we do to a wider audience and a wider Torah vision.

Flexibility

In this age of online shopping and instant messaging, synagogues must be flexible enough to meet the varied needs of the Jewish people with quality and speed, even if it involves creating services and products to which we are unaccustomed. Several years ago a secular Israeli family approached us with an observation. There were a growing number of secular Israelis in St. Louis whose children attend secular public schools and have no Jewish education. These children speak some Hebrew, which they learned at home but cannot read or write Hebrew. Secular Israelis who move outside of Israel quickly find themselves without the Jewish influence of Israeli society upon which they relied for connection to Jewish holidays, culture, and even religious moments. They find themselves in a larger society that is largely under Christian influence, and feel disoriented and bereft of their Jewish identity. Their children have no knowledge at all of the Jewish people and its land, its religion, its language, or its culture.

With the guidance of one or two Israeli families, we immediately took steps to establish a weekly Hebrew school that would focus on reading and writing Hebrew, thus serving the needs of this population on their own terms. Our goal was ultimately not just to teach Hebrew but primarily to teach Judaism in a way that would be acceptable to these families and ultimately to engage them in the Jewish community. Three years later, 15 families attend this Hebrew school, have a strong connection to the Bais Abraham community, and are even asking for additional religious instruction for their children. Had Bais Abraham been a place of much bureaucratic procedure I doubt it would have been able to be flexible enough, quickly enough, to engage a new population with such specific needs so unexpectedly.

Innovation

If Jews are not fully connecting to the prevalent model of community, then we must be willing, within the bounds of halakha and with its sage guidance, to tweak the model. Tradition and the status quo are important values with great benefits, but they must be weighed against their costs. I am not recommending that we compromise halakha, but I am saying that within halakha we should be willing to perhaps go against parts of prevalent Orthodox culture. As the talmudic statement often quoted by halakhic decisors goes: Lo ra’inu ayno ra’ayah: Just because we have not seen something before, does not mean it is automatically forbidden.

One example that comes to mind today is the increase of female Orthodox religious leadership within Orthodox synagogues. Programs at Yeshiva University, Drisha Institute, Nishmat, and Yeshivat Maharat are training Orthodox women to be guides, teachers, and halakhic decisors within Orthodox communities. This has fallen under some attack of late often with the caveat I have heard over and over: “It is not halakhically forbidden, but we should not do it.”

This fear of change even when something is halakhically permitted and increasingly practiced in centrist Orthodox communities stops us from being flexible enough to speak to the needs of the moment. This does not mean the halakhic answer is always yes, nor does it mean we should not sacrifice for halakha, or keep the halakha even when it flies in the face of current notions of morality. However, there is a limit to unduly sanctifying the status quo and the current Orthodox culture. The color of one’s clothes or hat or the language one uses should not necessarily be seen as holy or required just because they are the Orthodox culture of the moment.

Thus, Bais Abraham has this year hired a soon-to-graduate student of Yeshivat Maharat. We do not call her rabbi since she is not one, nor would it be a good idea to push her into a rabbinic box. I believe that Orthodox women today in positions of leadership will help to define this role as a new one within the long list of Jewish female historical leadership typologies. The shofetet, the neviah, the song leader, all of these roles were held by famous Jewish women in other eras and I think that the Jewish Orthodox women leaders of today are on the verge of helping to define a new and much needed leadership role for the Jewish people which will help Jewish Orthodox life, values, and Torah to speak more clearly to the current Jewish community with a more vibrant and innovative shul makeup.

If we are willing, within the bounds of halakha, to open ourselves and our communities to embrace a wider and more varied range of Jewish ideas, Jewish spiritual tools and Jewish people, our synagogues will quickly become the beverage of choice, once again, for even the younger generation of Jews who are so thirsty for the word of God.

A. Inspiration for Prayer

One of the classic debates in the Talmud concerns the basis for the three daily prayers of Shacharit, Mincha and Arbit. [1] According to Rabbi Yossi the son of Rabbi Chanina, these prayers were instituted by our Patriarchs, whereas according to Rabbi Yehoshua Ben Levi, they were instituted by the Men of the Great Assembly in order to correspond with the daily tamid offerings.

While - taken at face value - Rabbi Yossi and Rabbi Yehoshua are discussing the origin of the three daily prayers; I believe that the fundamental issue being discussed is the inspiration for the three daily prayers. According to Rabbi Yossi, we pray at these times because we wish to emulate our greatest Jewish role models - the Patriarchs; whereas according to Rabbi Yehoshua, we pray at these times because we wish to model our worship on the greatest Jewish institution - the Temple.[2] Thus, for Rabbi Yossi, inspiration comes from holy people, whereas for Rabbi Yeshoshua, inspiration comes from holy places.

Following the destruction of the First Temple, the synagogue was established as ‘a miniature sanctuary’[3] and consequently, in the modern era, this debate concerning the inspiration for prayer can be rephrased as follows: are we to find inspiration for prayer from people who pray, or from places for prayer?

The Talmud concludes its debate by stating that the prayers were instituted by our Patriarchs, but the Rabbis subsequently associated the three daily prayers with the tamid offerings to teach us that these prayers are considered obligatory. This suggests that while synagogues may support us with our prayer obligation, people teach us about prayer inspiration. Without inspiring people of prayer, we cannot have inspiring places of prayer.

B. People make synagogues

This concept of the centrality of people as the inspiration for prayer is supported by a different discussion in the Talmud [4] which addresses the following question: when does a synagogue become a holy place? The answer, which is subsequently cited in the classic halakhic codes,[5] is that a synagogue becomes holy from the moment people pray in the synagogue, because it is the holiness of people that creates the holiness of the synagogue. In fact, an extension of this concept is expressed by the verse ‘in the multitude of people is the king’s glory’, [6] which suggests that not only do people convey holiness onto a synagogue, but in fact, the more people that pray in a synagogue, the more holiness there is in a synagogue. [7]

C. Synagogues as democracies?

In order to maintain a synagogue where everyone is considered to contribute spiritual value, the synagogue must value the principle of democracy. As Rabbi Jeffrey Cohen explains, ‘the Kneset Ha-Gedolah …were committed to making the democratic institution of the synagogue a worthy competitor – and ultimate successor – of the priestly aristocracy which governed the Temple.’ [8] Thus, as Rabbi Joseph Hertz explained, ‘the sacred word, and not any sacramental or ritual act, was now the centre of worship; and that Sacred Word was the seat of religious authority and the source of religious instruction.’ [9] This meant that ‘the synagogue proved of incalculable importance’ because through it, ‘the Torah became the common property of the entire people, ..the synagogue became the “home” of the Jew.’ [10]

However, at some moment in time, it seems that we forgot that it is people that make synagogues holy, and not the other way around. We have incorrectly adopted the position of Rabbi Yehoshua who claims that it is the place of prayer that attracts the people to prayer. The seat of authority, previously held by the Sacred Word, has been replaced by the ‘Sacred President’, and the synagogue is only “home” to those who can afford the fees. How did this transformation occur? What has led to this profound misrepresentation of Jewish values in the places of Jewish worship?

D. The decline of Jewish fellowship

Rabbi Jeffrey Cohen has noted that ‘the Orthodox synagogue has truly preserved the spirit of the ancient Temple, from which it developed. The Temple was a bustling centre’[11] and ‘a noisy place, with people chattering excitedly, priests called ritual instructions to each other as animals were being dispatched and prepared for the altar, with oxen lowing, sheep bleating, children crying, Levites singing, vendors advertising their souvenirs, beggars importuning, and witnesses and litigants arguing loudly as they made their way to the Chamber of Hewn Stones to present their case to the Sanhedrin.’[12] He continues to observe that ‘it is that informal, and mildly irreverent, spirit which has determined and moulded the ethos of the traditional synagogue to this day.’[13] In the synagogue, ‘we have to feel “at home”. We have to be relaxed, natural, without inhibition. In synagogue, the dignity and decorum – even the dialogue – are of secondary consequence. It is the experience of Jewish fellowship underlying the concept of minyan, and the keen awareness of the Being before whom we are “appearing” and “assembling” …that are the primary considerations and preconditions of Jewish prayer.’[14]

This concept of ‘Jewish fellowship’ as the key factor in the synagogue atmosphere is explored further by Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik in his essay on ‘The Community’. He writes:

Quite often a man finds himself in a crowd among strangers. He feels lonely. No one knows him, no one cares for him, no one is concerned for him… He begins to doubt his ontological worth. This leads to alienation from the crowd surrounding him. Suddenly someone taps him on the shoulder and says: “Aren’t you Mr. So-and-so? I have heard so much about you.” In a fraction of a second his awareness changes. An alien being turns into a fellow member of an existential community (the crowd). What brought about the change? The recognition by somebody, the word![15]

This is a beautiful description of what is means to reach out to another and a perfect illustration of what Rabbi Cohen refers to as ‘Jewish fellowship’. However, as the small synagogues of the towns and villages have transferred to being large synagogues of the cities, there has been a measured decrease in such interactions in which a stranger is identified both physically and existentially, and consequently, coupled with a significant increase in alienation amongst Jews who visit synagogues but who subsequently leave as much a stranger as they were when they arrived. Many Jews no longer feel at home in the synagogue. Why?

E. The rigid structure of the synagogue

Running parallel to the decline in Jewish fellowship has been the trend towards the institutionalization and rigidity of the synagogue as a response to the Reform movement. Judith Bleich has observed that, ‘the earliest stirrings of Reform centred on improvement of the worship service’[16] and ‘in keeping with the desire to present an appealing religious service, new emphasis was also placed upon beautifying the synagogue building.’[17]

In Germany, synagogue reform was expressed by the desire to play organs as part of the service; in England, it was expressed by the desire to establish mixed choirs, and in America, synagogue reform concerned itself with mixed seating. However, in Hungary, it was the location of the bimah which was ‘elevated to a question of ideology that became symbolic of the entire struggle for and against Reform,’ [18] and ‘it was in connection with his unequivocal ruling on the impermissibility of shifting the bimah from its central position that Hatam Sofer applied his oft-quoted aphorism, “Hadash asur min ha-Torah – innovation, ie. departure from accepted practice, is forbidden by the Torah.”’ [19]

In explaining the rationale for maintaining the place of the bimah in the centre of the synagogue, Lord Jakobovits [20] lists three reasons, each of which are found in the rulings of Rambam:
a) We place the bimah in the centre of the synagogue so that all those in the synagogue can hear the reader of the Torah. [21]
b) At the national convocation in Jerusalem every seven years [22] - known as Hakhel - a bimah was placed in the centre of the women’s part of the Temple court. The king would sit upon it and the men, women and children heard his reading whose purpose was to encourage them to perform mitzvot and strengthen them in the true faith. [23]
c) Each day during the festival of Sukkot, people made a circuit around the altar, and nowadays, we make a circuit around the bimah where a Sefer Torah is held, in memory of the Temple. [24]

Yet, while not all poskim viewed the removal of the bimah from its central position as a fundamental issue ,[25] this controversy demonstrated how ‘a comparatively minor halakhic matter assumed exaggerated significance,’ [26] and it led many Jews to conclude that it was the holiness of the synagogue that created the holiness of the people (which was why the synagogue could not undergo any change without it having an adverse effect on the community). Moreso, it was from this controversy that the synagogue’s halakhic integrity became associated with its halakhic inflexibility. Yet, while many synagogues still maintain a bimah in the centre of the sanctuary, many Jews no longer feel a part of the synagogue community.

In my humble opinion, while the three reasons cited above may infer that a synagogue may not move its bimah, they also infer that a synagogue must provide a wide range of services to maintain and engage its community, and while numerous communities ‘won the battle’ for the bimah, they are currently ‘losing the war’ against alienation from the synagogue.

F. The duties of a synagogue

I have previously noted that one reason offered for maintaining the bimah in the centre of the synagogue is so that all those in the synagogue can hear the reader of the Torah. While Rabbi Cohen speaks of the ‘informal, and mildly irreverent, spirit which has determined and moulded the ethos of the traditional synagogue to this day,’ [27] this should never come at the cost of being able to hear the Torah reading, and therefore, it is incumbent on a synagogue to maintain a respectful amount of decorum. Moreso, while a bimah may be placed in the centre of the synagogue, if a ladies gallery is placed in the rear of the synagogue it is highly unlikely that the women will be able to hear the Torah reading at all. Therefore, a synagogue should ensure that the Torah is read in the middle of where the community is, rather than in the middle of the men’s section.

A second reason offered the central position of the bimah was so that the men, women and children could listen to the Hakhel reading whose function was to encourage them to perform mitzvot and strengthen them in the true faith. This teaches us that every synagogue should establish education programmes that speak to both the hearts and minds of all men, women and children, and not just the most knowledgeable.

The third reason provided for keeping the bimah at the centre of the synagogue refers to the hakafot which are recited on Sukkot when we walk in a circular movement around the bimah on which there is a Sefer Torah. This ritual, which is a ‘homage to Torah,’ [28] is understood by Rabbi Soloveitchik [29] to teach us that since ‘all marchers are equidistant from the centre,’ all Jews have equal access to Torah. Therefore, all communities should ensure that they are wheelchair accessible to allow ‘all marchers’ to be equidistant from the centre,[30] and in communities where women would wish for a greater involvement with Torah, the Sefer Torah should be passed to the women prior to its reading and made available to women who wish to dance with a Sefer Torah on Simchat Torah. [31]

G. Concluding thoughts

Rabbi Soloveitchik writes that ‘to recognise a person means to affirm that he is irreplaceable. To hurt a person means to tell him that he is expendable, that there is no need for him,’ and the fact that many young Jews are no longer found in our synagogues is a clear message that they think that we do not need them. We claim that the synagogue is the home of the Jew, but we ask people to move when they are sitting in our seat. We talk about Jewish fellowship, but do not welcome strangers; and whereas the synagogue was previously guided by the sacred word, we often do not even say a word to those who are visiting.

Synagogues should do more too. The Torah should be able to be heard and accessed by all, and family education should be a priority, but most importantly, a synagogue should regard every Jew as irreplaceable, because without people of prayer, we cannot have places of prayer.

[1] see BT Berachot 26b
[2] In fact, it may be possible to find further support for such a thesis from other teachings of Rabbi Yossi and Rabbi Yehoshua throughout the Talmud. Rabbi Yossi’s philosophy of prayer is person-centric and he emphasises that the power of prayer comes from the moment when people pray together rather than the place where people pray together (see BT Berachot 8a, see also BT Berachot 10b where many of the teachings he cites from his mentor, Rabbi Eliezer Ben Yaakov, also reflect this attitude. However, Rabbi Yehoshua’s philosophy of prayer is synagogue-centric and he often emphasised the importance of attending and praying in a synagogue (see BT Berachot 8a, 8b) and arriving early when attending synagogue (se BT Berachot 47b).
[3] Ezekiel 11:16
[4] JT Megillah 3:1
[5] see Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chaim 153
[6] Mishlei 14:28
[7] See BT Berachot 53a, Pesachim 64b, Rosh Hashanah 32b, Yoma 26a, Yoma 70a, Sukkah 52b, Megillah 27b, Menachot 62a
[8] Jeffrey M. Cohen Horizons of Jewish Prayer (London: The United Synagogue, 1986) p. 41
[9] Joseph H. Hertz The Authorized Daily Prayer Book (London: Soncino Press, 1976) p. xvi
[10] Ibid. p. xvii
[11] Jeffrey M. Cohen Horizons of Jewish Prayer pp. 143-144
[12] Ibid. pp. 144-145
[13] Ibid. p. 145
[14] Ibid. p. 146
[15] Joseph B. Soloveitchik, ‘The Community’ Tradition 17:2 (Spring, 1978) p. 16
[16] Judith Bleich, ‘Liturgical Innovation and Spirituality: Trends and Trendiness’ in A. Mintz & L. Schiffman (ed.) Jewish Spirituality and Divine Law (New Jersey: Yeshiva University Press/KTAV, 2005) p. 319
[17] Judith Bleich, ‘Liturgical Innovation and Spirituality: Trends and Trendiness’ p. 362
[18] Ibid. p. 364
[19] Ibid. pp. 364-5
[20] Immanuel Jakobovits Jewish Law Faces Modern Problems (New York: Balshon Printing, 1965) p. 43
[21] See MT Hilkhot Tefillah 1:3
[22] See Devarim 31:10-12
[23] See MT Hilkhot Hagigah 3:1-4
[24] See MT Hilkhot Lulav 7:23
[25] See for example Iggerot Mosheh, Orach Chayim Vol. 2 (New York: 1963) no.’s 41& 42
[26] Judith Bleich, ‘Liturgical Innovation and Spirituality: Trends and Trendiness’ p. 366
[27] Jeffrey M. Cohen Horizons of Jewish Prayer p. 145
[28] Abraham R. Besdin Man of Faith in the Modern World: Reflections of the Rav Volume Two – adapted from the lectures of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik (New Jersey: Ktav, 1989) p. 154
[29] While Rabbi Soloveitchik is talking about Shmini Atzeret & Simchat Torah where the Sifrei Torah circle the bimah, I have adapted these insights to the Hakafot of Sukkot
[30] Abraham R. Besdin Man of Faith in the Modern World: Reflections of the Rav Volume Two – adapted from the lectures of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik pp. 155-156
[31] See Nachum Rabinovitch Responsa Siach Nachum (Maaleh Adumim, 2008) No. 40
[32] Joseph B. Soloveitchik, ‘The Community’ p. 16