National Scholar Updates

Preface

This article was inspired by the critical work of Jacobs on the halakhic process, A Tree of
Life (2000). His attention to the influences of social, economic, and political factors in
halakha coincided with my interests in the sociology of pesika, halakhic decision-making, and in the development of Orthodox Judaism in the United States. In an earlier work, Jacobs asserted that “the Torah did not simply drop down from heaven but is the result of the divine-human encounter through the ages” (1995, 3). That is a statement that strongly lends itself to rejection by traditionalists, especially the Orthodox.

In A Tree of Life, Jacobs appears to have modified his earlier assertion in such a way as to be more acceptable to some Orthodox thinkers. He writes that, when he uses the termTorah, he includes the Written Law, Oral Law, and halakha, which “has grown through the tender care and skill of responsible gardeners instead of, as in the view of many fundamentalists, growing of its own accord solely by divine command” (Jacobs 2000, xv).

There are those, typically ultra-Orthodox, or “Hareidi” Jews who insist that both the
Written and Oral Laws as we know them were given at Sinai, and any mention of
halakhic development is heresy. Jacobs goes even further and asserts that
the very notion that the halakha has a history and that it developed is anathema to
the traditional halakhist, who operates on the massive assumption that the Torah,
both in its written form, the Pentateuch, and its oral form, as found in the talmudic
literature, was directly conveyed by God to Moses either at Sinai or during the forty
years of wandering through the wilderness. Furthermore, the traditional halakhists
accept implicitly that the talmudic literature contains the whole of the Oral Torah,
that even those laws and ordinances called rabbinic are eternally binding, and that,
as we have seen, the Talmud is the final authority and can never be countermanded.
(2000, 222)

This article modifies Jacobs’s assertion through an examination of changes in American
Orthodox Judaism from the end of the nineteenth to the beginning of the twenty-first centuries. It first summarizes cultural change within American Orthodoxy (Waxman 2003, 2010, 2012) and then examines change in the halakha-related sphere, that is, what is deemed to be religiously acceptable within the halakha-observant community. The article concludes with a consideration of how the American model offers insight in the discussion of Louis Jacobs and his notorious departure from the British Orthodox rabbinate.

Cultural Change within American Orthodoxy

The denominational designation “Orthodox” did not exist in the United States until the mass immigration of Jews from Eastern Europe. Thus, when we speak of American Orthodox Judaism, we are essentially referring to Orthodox Judaism that was transplanted from Eastern Europe. Some prominent Eastern European Orthodox rabbis, such as Israel Meir Hacohen Kagan (1838–1933), popularly known as the “Chafetz Chaim,” opposed immigration to the Unites States. Some Eastern European Orthodox rabbis who immigrated were highly critical of American society and culture and saw little future for “authentic” Judaism there. Moses Weinberger, for example, wrote a broad and stinging critique of the deplorable condition of traditional Judaism in New York, in which, among many others, he lambasted the Constitutional notion of separation of religion and state. Another, Jacob David Wilowsky (1845–1913), who was the Rabbi of Slutzk (now Belarus) and was commonly known as “the Ridvaz,” is alleged to have condemned anyone who came to America because Judaism was stepped upon there, and anyone who left Europe left not only their home but their Torah, Talmud, yeshivas, and sages.

Less than 50 years later, Moshe Feinstein (1895–1986), Rabbi of Luban (now Belarus) until his emigration to the United States in 1937, headed a yeshiva in New York and became a leading authority of Jewish religious law within Orthodox circles. He gave a sermon in which he lauded America’s separation of religion of state. Contra Weinberger, he asserted that in enforcing separation of religion and state, the government of the Unites States is following the will of God, and that is the reason the country flourished. Consequently, Jews are obligated to pray that the government will succeed in all of its undertakings.

In contrast to the dismal state of Jewish education described by both Weinberger
and Wilowsky, and their pessimism about the future of Judaism in America, a number of high-level yeshiva seminaries, most transplanted from Eastern Europe, were established during the 1930s and 1940s. A movement of primary- and secondary-level yeshiva Day Schools was also formed in the 1940s. These sparked the founding of Day Schools that provide intensive Jewish education along with a quality secular curriculum, and there was a boom in the growth of the Day School movement from the Second World War to the mid-1970s in cities and neighborhoods across the country. These Day Schools often became feeder-schools for higher-level yeshivas and, by the fourth quarter of the twentieth century, the number of Jews learning in post-high school yeshiva seminaries was greater in the United States than it had been during the heyday of Jewish Eastern Europe.

Ironically, this type of Day School, which combined both sacred and secular education,
was anathema to the Orthodox rabbinic leadership in Eastern Europe—and still is to the Hareidi rabbinic leadership in Israel. Many of the same rabbinic leaders who inspired the Day School movement had previously adamantly opposed it. As it turned out, the Day School movement is perhaps the most significant innovation enabling the survival and growth of Orthodox Judaism in America.

The Americanization of Orthodox Judaism stands out in the approach of the rabbinic
leadership to language, especially in sacred learning. Initially, English was deemed “goyish,” a non-Jewish language contributing to an assimilation process. There had been even stronger opposition to English in sacred settings, and calls were issued for the exclusive use of Yiddish in rabbinic sermons and in Jewish education. In contrast, the contemporary generation of even “Hareidi” Jews in the United States not only speaks English, their sacred learning is also in English—more properly, “Yinglish” or “Yeshivish” (Weiser 1995; Benor 2012)—and an increasing number of sacred texts are published in English, mostly but not exclusively by the ultra-Orthodox ArtScroll Publishers. At the celebration of the completion of the Talmud cycle, Siyum HaShas, at the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey in the summer of 2012, which was the world’s largest gathering of Jews, sponsored by Agudath Israel of the United States, most of the speeches, lectures, and salutations were in English.

Ultra-Orthodox Judaism was traditionally opposed to secular higher education, and fiction was alien to it. Today, American ultra-Orthodoxy utilizes cutting-edge psychology and counseling terminology and techniques in its popular literature, and a new genre of ultra-Orthodox fiction has emerged (Finkelman 2011). Likewise, sport was shunned as being part of Greek, that is, pagan culture. Today, American Orthodox Jews of all variations engage in sports both as observers and as consumers of sports salons perceiving the benefits and importance of physical fitness (Gross 2004; Gurock 2005; Fineblum Raub 2012). Finally, whereas popular music was previously viewed as non-Jewish and was avoided, contemporary American Orthodoxy has enthusiastically adapted popular music by giving it a Jewish bent (Kligman 1996, 2001, 2005).

Equally interesting, if not even more so, is the impact that social change has had on
traditional Jewish religious practice. A series of American Orthodox halakhic innovations
will now be briefly indicated. An extensive analysis and discussion of them await book-length treatment.

Decorum in Shul

The first major attempt at reforming Jewish religious services in the United States took place in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1824. Forty-seven members of Congregation Beth Elohim, who were unhappy with synagogue services, organized and attempted to reform the service by abbreviating it, having parts of the service read in both Hebrew and English, eliminating the practice of auctioning synagogue honors, and having a weekly discourse, or sermon, in English. These reforms were radical at that time, and the leadership of Beth Elohim rejected them. This led to the group splitting from the parent congregation and forming their own community, which then introduced more radical reforms (Waxman 1983, 12–13). Ironically, the group’s initial demands are quite compatible with contemporary centrist Orthodox synagogue
services in America.

Talmud for Women

Until the twentieth century, it was axiomatic that females were not to be taught, or engage in, Torah study. This was based on the opinion of Rabbi Eliezer, in the BabylonianTalmud (Sotah 21b) and reiterated by Maimonides (Laws of Talmud Torah 1:17). During the first half of the twentieth century, Rabbi Israel Meir Hacohen Kagan [1] and the Lubavitcher Rebbe asserted that, in these days, women are obligated to study the Written Law and those laws that specifically pertain to them. The Maimonides School, a Day School in Boston founded by Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, was the first Orthodox Day School in America to provide co-education, including Talmud study, through high school (Farber 2003). Soloveitchik was widely revered as an outstanding Talmud scholar and halakhic authority, and in 1977 he gave the inaugural lecture at the opening of the Beit Midrash program at Yeshiva University’s Stern College for Women, thereby indicating his support of educational equality at the highest levels (Helfgot 2005, xxi). Subsequently, Yeshiva University established a Graduate Program for Women in Advanced Talmudic Studies, and several other Orthodox institutions of higher Jewish learning for women have been established.

Bat Mitzvah

In his first responsum dealing with the issue of Bat Mitzvah, written in 1956, Rabbi
Moshe Feinstein—widely known as “Reb Moshe”—asserted that there is no source for celebration and it is in fact simple nonsense (“hevel bèalma”); the meal in honor of the Bat Mitzvah is not a “decreed dinner” (“sèudat mitzvah”) and has no religious significance; and it is a violation of the sanctity of the synagogue to hold the ceremony there (Feinstein 1959a, 170). A quarter century later, he retained his opposition to holding the ceremony in the sanctuary of the synagogue but relented somewhat and permitted, albeit warily, having a kiddush in honor of a Bat Mitzvah in the social hall of the synagogue (Feinstein 1981, 47–48).

A careful reading of his responsa on Bat Mitzvah suggests that his basic opposition was to having the ceremony in the synagogue because of his opposition to changes in synagogue ritual and practice, alongside his steadfast opposition to Conservative and Reform Judaism. If the Bat Mitzvah celebration was to be held within the home, he did not object. Indeed, a number of his elders and colleagues are reported to have held such celebrations even in Lithuania (Baumel Joseph 2002; Pensak 2004). Be that as it may, increasing numbers of Orthodox now celebrate Bat Mitzvah in a communal setting, most typically in a social hall and frequently as a women-only ceremony. Some are also finding ways to hold the ceremony in the sanctuary in ways that are now deemed to be halakhically approved.

Non-Observant Jews

Feinstein’s opposition to non-Orthodox Judaism was steadfast. He considered both Conservative and Reform Judaism heretical. Reform Judaism does not even merit much discussion in his work, and he merely dismissed its rabbis as heretics. For example, in a
responsum on whether it is proper to honor Reform and Conservative rabbis with blessings at Jewish organizational banquets, he asserts that even if they pronounced the blessing properly, since they are (obviously) heretics their blessings are invalid. Their heretical nature was deemed to need no elaboration (Feinstein 1963, 237–238). He addressed Conservative Judaism in greater detail. In a number of responsa, he consistently emphasized its heretical nature. For example, in a responsum on the question of whether one can organize a minyan, a quorum, to pray in a room within a synagogue whose sanctuary does not conform with Orthodox standards, he distinguished between Orthodox and Conservative synagogues. In a Conservative synagogue, he asserted, one should not make a minyan in any room, “because they have announced that they are a group of heretics who reject a number of Torah laws” (Feinstein 1981, 174). One should keep apart from them, “because those who deny even one item from the Torah are considered deniers of the Torah,” and one must distance oneself from heretics. However, in an Orthodox synagogue which is ritually unfit—for example, it has no mehitza, separation between men and women, or uses a microphone—the members “are not heretics, Heaven forbid; they treat the laws lightly but they do not deny them,” and thus there is no obligation to distance oneself from them.

With respect to non-observant Jews, Feinstein adopted a more conciliatory position and ruled in direct opposition to Israel Meir Hacohen Kagan, whose multi-volume halakhic work, Mishna Berura, is widely viewed as authoritative. Whereas the latter cites precedents and suggests that Sabbath violators cannot be counted as one of the minimum10 adult males necessary for a minyan (Kagan 1952, Vol. 1, 174), Feinstein allows them to be counted (1959a, 66–67). In addition, he allows them to be called up to the Torah, unless they are overt heretics (Feinstein 1973a, 311). He also allows suspected Sabbath desecraters to be appointed President of a synagogue; only those who publicly and brazenly do so are barred (Feinstein 1973a, 310–311). Likewise, he ruled that a kohen who is not a Sabbath observer may be permitted to go up and bless the congregation (Feinstein 1959a, 89–90). In each case, Feinstein, the foremost halakhic authority in twentieth-century American Orthodoxy, was apparently influenced by the social and cultural, including religious, patterns of American Orthodox Jewry. He was willing to accommodate nonobservant Jews who did not challenge the authority of Orthodoxy. Those who did challenge the boundaries of Orthodoxy and its authority were deemed to be beyond the pale.

Eruv

The phenomenon of the eruv (pl. eruvin), a symbolic enclosure of a neighborhood or community to allow Jews to carry on the Sabbath within its perimeters in cities across the United States, is another example of the impact of social change on traditional Jewish religious practice and halakha. Many who are familiar with Orthodox amenities in American cities today might be very surprised to learn that until 1970, there were only two cities throughout the United States that had an eruv, and both were highly controversial. The first, established in 1894, was in St. Louis, Missouri. New York City had two eruv controversies. The first, on Manhattan’s East side, in 1905, ended with it being widely dismissed as unacceptable. The second stirred up controversy from 1949 to 1962 over the idea of an eruv around the entire island of Manhattan (Mintz 2011). By 2011, there were more than 150 eruvin in communities across the United States. A variety of sociological factors, perhaps most significant among them being the social and geographic mobility of the Orthodox—with many of them moving to the suburbs in the 1970s and 1980s—contributed to the increased halakhic validity and spread of eruvin.

Electric Timers (“Shabbos Clocks”)

When electric timers were first introduced, there was resistance in the Orthodox community, based on several halakhic issues related to their use in controlling electrical
appliances on the Sabbath. In the 1970s, Feinstein wrote two responsa in which he emphatically prohibited the use of timers because they distort the objective and desecrate the sanctity of the Sabbath. He did, however, reluctantly permit their use for setting lights to go on and off on the Sabbath, because there was precedent for it in synagogues, and it contributes to the enjoyment, and thus the sanctity, of the Sabbath. For all other appliances, however, he categorically prohibited them (Feinstein 1981, 61, 91–93). Today, however, it appears that such timers are widely used within the Orthodox community for a variety of other appliances, such as home heating, air conditioning, and warming food, as well as a variety of others that strain the intellect to consider within the category of actions that contribute to the sanctity of the Sabbath.

Halav Yisrael

According to halakha, milk must be under supervision by an observant Jewish adult to
assure that it is indeed cow’s milk, halav yisrael, and not the milk of a non-kosher animal. In a number of responsa during 1954, Feinstein ruled that, in the United States, milk that is under government supervision is surely cow’s milk, because the dairy would be severely penalized for violating the law. Therefore, all milk under the label of a reputable company is kosher (Feinstein 1959b, 82–89). In 1970, Feinstein reiterated his lenient ruling. However, he also added that it is proper for one who is punctiliously observant to be strict and use only halav yisrael. Principals in yeshiva Day Schools, he asserted, should certainly provide only halav yisrael to their students, even if it costs the yeshivot more money, because there is an educational lesson that the students will learn, namely, that Torah Jews should be stringent even if an action entails only a slight chance of involving something prohibited (Feinstein 1973b, 46). This is an example of Feinstein himself taking a lenient position but bowing to growing social pressure for greater stringency, namely, there were already a number of dairies selling halav yisrael, and there was an increasing population of consumers for it.

It is commonplace to assume that the influence of American society and culture is toward greater leniency in religious practice. Indeed, this is often the case, as the above examples indicate. In fact, however, the impact of the American experience cuts both ways, at times towards greater leniency but at times toward greater stringency. The last case cited, halav yisrael, is just such an example of greater stringency. Another interesting one is found in one of the posthumously published volumes of Feinstein’s responsa. When asked if prayer in a place not designated as a synagogue requires a mehitza between men and women, Feinstein relates that in all the generations it was typical that occasionally a poor woman entered the
study hall to receive charity, or a women mourner to say Kaddish, and the actual
halakha in this matter needs consideration and depends on many factors.
(1996, 20)

In most American Orthodox study halls, let alone synagogues, not only would a woman not be permitted to enter, she would also be discouraged, if not prohibited, from saying Kaddish.[2] The phenomenon of “the hareidization of American Orthodox Judaism,” including a number of other examples of such stringencies, has been analyzed elsewhere (Waxman 1998; Heilman 2006). What is now called for is an analysis identifying and explaining the criteria under which stringency emerges and those under which there are moves to leniency.[3]

Halakha and Meta-Halakha

In the Introduction to the second edition of his book, A Tree of Life, Louis Jacobs reiterates his argument of human involvement in halakha. He contrasts two “exemplars of opposite approaches to the halakhic process—respectively, the dynamic and subjective versus the static and objective” (Jacobs 2000, xvii). The latter he portrays as the Orthodox approach and the former as that of Conservative Judaism. In point of fact, there is variety in Orthodox approaches with respect to the relationship between the decisor and his halakhic decision.

Jacobs cites David Bleich as the exemplar of “the static and objective” approach. Indeed, Bleich does portray halakha as a science, in which “there is no room for subjectivity” (1995, xiii). More recently, Bleich has elaborated and clarified his position:

[H]alakhic decision-making is indeed an art as well as a science. Its kunst lies precisely in the ability to make judgment calls in evaluating citations, precedents, arguments, etc. It is not sufficient for a halakhic decisor to have a full command of relevant sources. If so, in theory at least, the decisor par excellence would be a computer rather than a person. The decisor must have a keen understanding of the underlying principles and postulates of Halakha as well as of their applicable ramifications and must be capable of applying them with fidelity to matters placed before him. No amount of book learning can compensate for inadequacy in what may be termed the “artistic” component. The epithet “a donkey carrying books” is the derisive reference employed in rabbinic literature to describe such a person. (2006, 88)

Soloveitchik presented his conception somewhat differently:

[T]he mutual connection between law and event does not take place within the realm of pure halakhic thought, but rather within the depths of the halakhic man’s soul. The event is a psychological impetus, prodding pure thought into its track. However, once pure thought begins to move in its specific track, it performs its movement not in surrender to the event, but rather in obedience to the normative-ideal lawfulness particular to it. … To what is this comparable? To a satellite that was launched into a particular orbit. Although the launching of the satellite into orbit is dependent on the force of the thrust. Once the object arrived at its particular orbit, it begins to move with amazing precision according to the speed unique to that orbit, and the force of the thrust cannot increase or decrease it at all. (1982, 77–78)

Soloveitchik’s approach is reminiscent of Max Weber’s thought with respect to the place of values and emotions in sociological research; that is, that the sociologist’s values clearly influence the areas and topics he or she selects to study. However, once the research actually begins, the rules of scientific research dominate, and all evaluations are made solely on the basis of empirical evidence. The researchers must be value free and ignore their personal thoughts and prejudices (Weber 1949, 49–112).[4] Of course, as anyone who has engaged in social research knows, neutrality of values and emotions is very difficult, if not impossible, to achieve. Humans are influenced in many ways of which we are frequently unaware. Along these lines Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein points to the distinction his father-in-law, Soloveitchik, drew between psychosocial elements and pure thought in the halakhic process, and declares, “It is a nice distinction, and I confess that I am not certain it can be readily sustained in practice” (2003, 173).[5]

Dr. Haym Soloveitchik suggests other influences on halakha. He avers that until the era of the Crusades, there was no known religious permission (heter) to commit suicide in the face of forced conversion to Christianity and, indeed, “[t]he magnitude of this halakhic breach is enormous.” However, with time and events, the notion that such suicide is actually murder became untenable, and the sages of Ashkenaz developed,
in the course of time, a doctrine of the permissibility of voluntary martyrdom, and even one allowing suicide. They did this by scrounging all the canonized and semi-canonized literature for supportive tales and hortatory aggadah, all of dubious legal worth. But by massing them together, Ashkenazic scholars produced, with a few deft twists, a tenable, if not quite persuasive, case for the permissibility of suicide in times of religious persecution. (Soloveitchik 1987, 209–210)

Soloveitchik does not claim that the sages of Ashkenaz completely redefined the halakha. He argues that the experiences, trials and tribulations, and perspectives guided them and influenced them in their studies and explanations of the Talmud in ways that legitimated existing practices, the status quo.[6 ]He does not indicate whether this is what his father, Joseph B. Soloveitchik, meant by “the launching of the satellite into orbit,” or whether it is “once the object arrived at its particular orbit,” but it does appear that Haym Soloveitchik attributes greater halakhic legitimacy to the roles of experience and perspective than did his father. As a student of Jacob Katz, who emphasized the impact of the economy on halakha (e.g., Katz 1989), Soloveitchik’s works on usury and wine are examples of that (1985, 2003, 2008).[7]

There are few today in the fields of philosophy and the social sciences who think that it is possible to draw lines and actually be ethically and value-free. Israel Lipkin of Salant, known as Israel Salanter (1810–1883), who initially headed a yeshiva and subsequently was the father of the Musar Movement,[8] agreed. As he explained,

Man, inasmuch as he is man, even though it is within his capacity and power to strip [le-hafshit] his intellect from the arousal of his soul-forces until these soul-forces are quiescent and resting (unaroused, so that they do not breach the intellectual faculty and pervert it), nonetheless man is human, his soul-forces are in him, it is not within his power to separate them [lehafrisham] from his intellect. Thus it is not within man’s capacity to arrive at True Intellect [sekhel amitti] wholly separated [ha-mufrash] and disembodied [ha-muvdal] from soul-forces, and the Torah is given to man to be adjudicated according to human intellect (it being purified as much as possible; see Bekhorot 17b: “Divine Law said: Do it, and in whatever way you are able to do it, it will be satisfactory”).… (Goldberg 1982, 119)

Indeed, it appears that the sages of the Talmud recognized the inability to separate subjective forces from adjudication and, therefore, the Beraita declared that certain people should not be appointed as judges to the Sanhedrin, or supreme court: “We do not appoint to the Sanhedrin an old man, a eunuch or one who is childless” (Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 36b). Maimonides suggested the reasoning involved: “We should not appoint to any Sanhedrin a very old man or a eunuch, for they possess the trait of cruelty, nor one who is childless, so that the judge should be merciful” (Yad Hahazakah, Judges, Laws of Sanhedrin 2:3).

Between Change in American Orthodoxy and the Rejection of Jacobs

In 1961, Chief Rabbi Israel Brodie caused a storm in British Jewry when he vetoed
Jacobs’s appointment as Principal of Jews’ College and then, in 1963, refused to authorize his (re)appointment as rabbi (“minister”) of London’s New West End Synagogue.[9] Brodie claimed that, although Jacobs had earlier expressed unorthodox ideas, he allowed Jacobs’ appointment as Tutor at Jews College as “an act of faith” (1969, 348). Brodie’s “faith” in Jacobs was probably based, in part, on the fact that, as a youth, he studied in the Gateshead yeshiva, and its head, Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler,[10 ]extolled him as a “genius.”[11] Although Jacobs did not agree with all of Dessler’s hareidism, he had a warm relationship with him and spoke fondly of him throughout his life (1989, 40–59). Nevertheless, Brodie asserted, his subsequent rejection of Jacobs was caused by the latter’s increasingly public expression of ideas that are “incompatible … with the most fundamental principles of Judaism” (1969, 349–350).

Jacobs eventually left the United Synagogue framework as well as Jews College and founded the New London Synagogue, which later developed Britain’s Masorti Movement. He remained an observant Jew throughout his lifetime, and he frequently stressed that his radical ideas concerning revelation and halakhic development should have no impact on halakhic observance. As he put it, “the Jewish rituals are still mitzvot and serve the same purpose as prayer. They link our individual strivings to the strivings of the Jewish people towards the fullest realization of the Jewish spirit” (Jacobs 1990, 6).

However, he admitted that once the “mitzvot” are defined as human products, the probabilities of their being observed are substantially decreased. As he himself wrote, “Psychologically, it is undeniable that a clear recognition of the human development of Jewish practice and observance is bound to produce a somewhat weaker sense of allegiance to the minutiae of Jewish law” (Jacobs 2004, 53). Empirical studies of Jewish ritual observance in the United States indicate that it is not only allegiance to “the minutiae of Jewish law” that is severely weakened when they do not have religious legitimation of being divinely ordained. Sociological theory likewise recognizes the power of religious legitimation (Berger 1967, 33). It should, therefore, have been no surprise that the Chief Rabbi would not allow someone who would undermine religious allegiance to serve as a rabbi in an institution under the auspices of the Orthodox—even if nominally—rabbinate and synagogue organization.

That said, and in the light of the discussion of American Orthodoxy, one factor that may have sparked strong reaction to Jacobs’s work was the terminology he used. Although he repeatedly indicated that he used the term objectively, his constant reference to the more traditional Orthodox approach as “fundamentalism,” and those who disagreed with his conception of the halakhic process as “fundamentalists,” was taken as offensive. Jacobs’s intentions aside, the term “fundamentalist” is now widely viewed as derogatory.[12] Mark Juergensmeyer indicates several reasons for the term’s contemporary inappropriateness, among them,

the term is pejorative. It refers, as one Muslim scholar observed, to those who hold “an intolerant, self-righteous, and narrowly dogmatic religious literalism.” … The term is less descriptive than it is accusatory: it reflects our attitude toward other people more than it describes them. (1993, 2008, 4)

In addition to the specific terminology he used, Jacobs presents perspectives in a black–white/true–false manner. In some of his work he appears to argue that there is only scientific truth or “fundamentalist” falseness, and the possibility of multiple truths does not exist. This exclusivist conception of truth, coupled with his loaded terminology, may well have triggered the strong reaction.[13]

Jacobs rejected the notion that it is “only the application of the halakha which changes under changing conditions,” but “halakha itself is never determined or even influenced by environmental or sociological factors” (2000, xi). It is a notion presented by some Orthodox when confronted with the reality of change.[14 ] What that notion ignores/hides is a vast diversity within halakha. There are varieties of circumstances, varieties of halakhic principles, varieties of halakhic precedents, and varieties of earlier authoritative decisors with which the contemporary decisor can and must reckon. The decision of which to adopt in the contemporary situation is influenced not only by the decisor’s knowledge but by his own values. Had Jacobs framed his argument in a manner that would have remained true to the notion of halakhic development without explicitly rejecting the Heavenly authority of halakha, as did those in the United States who advocated changes but remained securely within the Orthodox orbit, perhaps his own career and the subsequent history of the British rabbinate would have been very different. On the other hand, given the growing tide of hareidization, he nonetheless might have been rejected. The Hareidi sector of Orthodoxy is growing at a higher rate than any other sector of British Jewry (Graham 2011); its leaders are as self-confident as ever and see no reason to budge from their traditional approach. Here there is a confluence between American and British Jewries. All the same, the more moderate elements of American Orthodoxy seem to have been more successful than their British counterparts at establishing rigorous and well-regarded intellectual and institutional frameworks that can sustain their worldviews and lifestyles.

*Acknowledgements

This is an expanded version of my article, “Halakhic Change vs. Demographic Change: American Orthodoxy, British Orthodoxy, and the Plight of Louis Jacobs,” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies, Vol. 14, No. 1, March 2015, pp. 58–71, 2015, the research for which began when I was a Dorset Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, in Yarnton, UK, during January–March 2013, as part of a seminar on “Orthodoxy, Theological Debate, and Contemporary Judaism: Exploring Questions Raised in the Thought of Louis Jacobs,” convened by Prof. Adam Ferziger and Dr. Miri Freud-Kandel. I benefited from discussions with all of the seminar members, especially Adam Ferziger and Dr. Yehuda Galinsky. I also gratefully acknowledge the valuable criticisms and suggestions of Prof. Menachem Kellner on an early draft of this article and to Dr. Roberta Rosenberg Farber for her critical reading of the previous version of it.

Notes

1. Known as “the Chafetz Chaim,” he was highly revered as a model of piety and an outstanding
halakhic authority in Orthodox Ashkenazi circles.

2. In Modern Orthodox synagogues it is now increasingly acceptable for women to recite the Mourner’s Kaddish, but it is still frowned upon in most American Orthodox synagogues.

3. It should be noted that increased stringency itself can lead to a countermove toward leniency. As Yehuda Turetsky and I have indicated, there has been a “sliding toward the left” in American Orthodoxy (Turetsky and Waxman 2001). Whereas in the past, such moves resulted in breaking away from Orthodoxy, for example, the formation of Conservative Judaism in the United States and Louis Jacobs’s formation of Masorti Judaism in England following the “Jacobs Affair,” it is still unclear where such institutions and groups as Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, Yeshivat Maharat, and the International Rabbinical Fellowship, among others, are going. Perhaps contemporary American Orthodoxy is, and will continue to be, considerably broader and more flexible than its established spokespersons wish to admit.

4. Joshua Berman suggested that perhaps the parallel between the two “is not accidental; that something about the climate of German thought at the beginning of the century is what lies behind each one’s statement; the endeavor of converting the humanities into science; the ideal of the mechanical and the efficient.” (Personal communication, Dec. 15, 2013).

5. Interestingly, Soloveitchik himself was apparently aware of this. In a letter to the President of Yeshiva University, in 1951, he wrote,

The halakhic inquiry, like any other cognitive theoretical performance, does not start out from the point of absolute zero as to sentimental attitudes and value judgments. There always exists in the mind of the researcher an ethico-axiological background against which the contours of the subject matter in question stand out more clearly. In all fields of human intellectual endeavor there is always an intuitive approach which determines the course and method of the analysis. Not even in exact sciences (particularly in their interpretive phase) is it possible to divorce the human element from the formal aspect. Hence this investigation was also undertaken in a similar subjective mood. From the very outset I was prejudiced in favor of the project of the Rabbinical Council of America and I could not imagine any halakhic authority rendering a decision against it. My inquiry consisted only in translating a vague intuitive feeling into fixed terms of halakhic discursive thinking. (Helfgot 2005, 24–25).

6. He subsequently said that such instances were the exception and limited to very specific circumstances (Soloveitchik 2013, 258–277).

7. Avraham Grossman (1992), on the other hand, argues that the sages of Ashkenaz relied on midrashic agadot in their halakhic considerations and they found agadot which not only justified but required suicide in similar situations.

8. A nineteenth-century movement among Lithuanian yeshivot that strove for ethical and spiritual self-discipline (Etkes 1993; Mirsky 2008; Brown 2014).

9. There are various and varied accounts of what came to be known as “the Jacobs affair,” and reference will be made to some of them in the analysis that follows.

10. For a hagiographic biography of Dessler, see Rosenblum (2000).

11. Dessler wrote of him,

I would not be exaggerating in the slightest if I were to say that I have never seen a genius with such depth and all the other aptitudes that he possesses, he is a truly a great scholar and it is almost impossible to fathom the depth of his knowledge. (1986, 311)

I thank my son-in-law, Noam Green, who is completing a doctorate on Dessler’s thought, for bringing this reference to my attention.

12. Brodie expressed his indignation at the use of the term when he wrote, “[W]e who hold to the validity of the Torah are called backward, stagnant, mediaeval and fundamentalist” (1969, 344).

13. Terminology and demeanor may also play a significant role within halakhic development. Aviad Hollander (2010) argues that demeanor can be an important variable in the probability of a halakhic decision being accepted within the Orthodox rabbinic community.

14. Jacobs specifically referred to my claim (Waxman 1993, 223–224) that many earlier halakhic authorities would have asserted that notion. A more recent version of that notion is presented by Broyde and Wagner (2000), who argue that although results provided by halakha can change in response to changed social and/or technological conditions, there can never be any changes in the principles used by halakha.

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I began my Orthodox conversion process when I was 21 years old. I was a junior at New York University studying Jewish Studies and History and had just returned to Manhattan after a transformative semester abroad in Tel Aviv. But my journey with Judaism doesn’t begin there; it begins with my parents.

My parents, Mike and Tisha Thornhill, grew up, met, and were married in southern Oklahoma. Having grown up in the Bible belt, it’s no surprise that they were very active in their church, leading the youth group while my father was studying to be a minister and getting his master’s degree. Their church sent them to Israel on a 10-day trip in the late 1980s, during the First Intifada, to learn about Jesus and Christianity’s roots in the Holy Land. They discovered an authentic tradition, something they felt they’d been missing, in the places where the so-called “Old Testament” tales took place. They felt resentment toward the people and the movement that raised them to believe in Jesus, himself a Jew, without attributing any of his practice or their own to its Jewish roots. They were taken by the beauty of the land, fascinated by the people they encountered, and couldn’t wait to learn more.

Upon returning to Oklahoma, they left their church and my dad left his seminary. A year later, I was born. A year after that, my sister, Hannah, joined us, and we moved to Austin, Texas. My parents searched for conversion resources and only found a small Chabad that was not interested in helping them. But that didn’t stop my parents. They did their own learning and connected with like-minded folks in the area, people who felt like they connected more with Judaism than any other religious or spiritual tradition. They raised my siblings and me celebrating Jewish traditions and holidays, and we visited the Reform temple some years on Yom Kippur. I even missed school for haggim.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always felt a strong connection to Israel and begged my dad to take me with him when he took his second trip there in 1995. He didn’t, but he brought me back a painting, which hung on a wall in my bedroom until I moved to New York in 2007. I didn’t connect to Jewish life on campus at NYU for the first couple of years but not for lack of trying. I did attend one event at the Bronfman Center, the Hillel on campus and my current employer, during Welcome Week of my freshmen year but was discouraged and didn’t return for another two years. I looked for a community and found it in the dance team at NYU. Growing up, I was a classically trained dancer, and while I decided not to pursue dance as a career, I missed it a lot, so auditioning for the dance team seemed like a good substitute. I made wonderful friends while pursuing my passion for dance. Yet, I still felt like something was missing. Midway through my sophomore year, I applied to transfer to the University of Texas thinking that being close to my family again would help. But as the Yiddish saying goes, “man plans and God laughs,” and about that time, NYU announced that it was opening its campus in Tel Aviv the following autumn. They were offering travel stipends and scholarships to incentivize applicants. Since I had always wanted to go, I figured now was my chance. After submitting my application, it was as if the choice was made for me. I was supposed to go there.

I arrived in Tel Aviv at the end of August 2009 and instantly bonded with a Syrian Jew from Brooklyn who is still my best friend. In the days that followed, I learned a lot about the complexities of Israeli society, made valuable friendships that I still cherish and enjoy today, and began my love affair with Tel Aviv. I felt at home in a way that I never had in New York, and I couldn’t quite explain why. I knew that my affinity for Am Israel wasn’t a phase or simply a fascination. I belonged in Israel, and I was welcomed as such by every Israeli I came in contact with, no questions asked. I knew I had to convert in order to officially be able to participate fully in Jewish life in America and Israel, and while I didn’t know what that would take, I knew I was ready for it.

When I arrived back in New York, I made the decision to begin a conversion process. I was fortunate that one of my friends from NYU Tel Aviv was in the middle of an Orthodox conversion process through the Rabbinical Council of America. She connected me to Rabbi Dan Smokler, the then Senior Jewish Educator at the Bronfman Center for Jewish Student Life at NYU. He graciously met me for coffee and outlined what the steps of the process would be and what my options were. He then connected me to Rabbi Yehuda Sarna, the then University Chaplain and Orthodox rabbi at the Bronfman Center (now my boss and the Executive Director there) who talked me through it further and suggested I read Rabbi Marc Angel’s book, Choosing to be Jewish: The Orthodox Road to Conversion. I decided to begin a process with the RCA, and shortly after that, I met with Rabbi Romm, the head of the Bet Din of New York. He recommended a couple more books to me, and I began my formal learning at the Bronfman Center.

Because I was a Jewish Studies major, Hebrew language courses were a requirement for my degree. Additionally, my time spent in Israel exposed me to Israeli and Jewish culture in a deep way. I enrolled in a class at the Bronfman Center and began learning one-on-one with an Orthodox Jewish student who not only taught me tefillah and berakhot but also took me with her to countless Shabbat meals and accompanied me to davening. The Orthodox community at NYU welcomed me with open arms. I could understand Hebrew (a little) and read (pretty well), which helped me keep up with services and gave me a lot of confidence. That summer, I returned to Israel to volunteer, intern, and take ulpan at Tel Aviv University. I lived in Tel Aviv with three of my friends from study abroad and journeyed nearly every Shabbat to Har Nof to spend Shabbat with an Orthodox family from America who treated me like one of their own family members.

I returned to campus for my senior year and applied to participate in two more formal classes, one with Chabad and one through the Bronfman Center, in addition to my undergraduate work in Jewish Studies. I also continued my one-on-one learning with an educator and peer of Rabbi Sarna’s who was working at the Bronfman Center at the time. We focused primarily on hilkhot shabbat and kashruth. He not only ensured that I had a firm grasp on halakhic concepts but he checked in with me and made sure that I was doing okay as a human being. Throughout my entire process I felt supported by educators and peers and by Rabbi Romm. I met with him once every four to five months and even spent a Shabbat evening with him and his family.

I engaged in formal Jewish education as well as informal and immersive experiences. Dr. Michelle Sarna welcomed me into her home every week not only as a babysitter but also to help her with weekly Shabbat prep on Fridays. I learned how to take hallah, recite berakhot over food with her then-toddlers, and was able to practice my learned knowledge of bishul b’shabbat and kashruth. Rabbi Dan and Dr. Erin Smokler invited me into their home for Shabbat and holiday celebrations, and I learned the holiness of hospitality and hakhnasat orhim, welcoming guests. I participated in Jewish service trips with the Joint and the American Jewish World Service, traveled to Israel, spent hours learning on the phone with a remote hevruta, kept kosher, kept Shabbat, built up a hevre who are still my good friends today. I graduated, moved to the Upper West Side, and took a job at an Orthodox Day School.

Finally, days before Rosh haShanah in 2011, I dunked in the mikveh. I was told on a Friday that my mikveh would be on the following Sunday. My mom bought a ticket immediately and flew up so that she could be there. My friend and then-roommate had her mikveh the same day and our families and close friends celebrated with us afterward at a kosher restaurant on the Upper West Side. Rabbi Dan was at the mikveh, too, and helped make us feel safe and cared for. While I had hoped for the mikveh to be a meaningful, spiritual experience, I remember thinking how much I couldn’t wait to get out of the water and just be accepted as a Jew already. Shortly thereafter, I began working at the Bronfman Center and am now the assistant director there. I have mentored and learned from hundreds of Jewish college students, nearly completed an MA in Jewish Education, started a young adult Jewish learning circle, and founded the Orthodox Converts Network.

My story isn’t unique. Many people decide to convert to Judaism and increasingly, young women are choosing to do so through Orthodox Batei Din. In October of last year, I was about to celebrate Sukkot in Florence, Italy when I learned about Barry Freundel’s despicable behavior. I struggled internally with the desire to just be a Jew, not drawing attention to the fact that I converted, and the feeling of responsibility that I had toward people like me, born with a yiddishe neshama but not coming from a Jewish womb. I knew I had to do something. I’m not capable of easing the pain of Freundel’s victims or anyone who has been harmed in this process. But I have an obligation to use my knowledge of what the process should and shouldn’t look like and to help others find their way along this journey.

Lack of clarity and exclusion of female leaders from the process led me to create the Orthodox Converts Network in December 2014. Through the network, we hope to make the process more accessible, transparent, and meaningful by:

1) Providing and publicizing resources
2) Mentoring conversion candidates
3) Working with communal leaders and existing infrastructure to create change and improve the process
4) Meeting regularly to activate a previously unheard but critically important voice
5) Empowering female Orthodox leadership to take on a more significant role in the process

Since our initial meeting in December, we’ve also activated a Facebook page, begun work on a website, and I’ve connected several people who feel stuck in their process to individuals who can help them through it. I’ve created a suggested curriculum using the RCA’s book list and based on my own process and learnings, and I continue to learn with conversion candidates. I work to welcome them into communities that are open to those going through the process and make them feel as comfortable as possible. I hope to take it even further by launching materials and programs that can be utilized in Day Schools and communities to educate young people and community members about conversion and de-stigmatize the process. I spoke on a panel with Rabbi Riskin, the chief rabbi of Efrat, and Rabbi Angel, founder and director of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals, and was so encouraged by their passion for the issue and sense of urgency around improving things for and protecting conversion candidates. That we have leaders like this in our corner is a huge win.

In late October, the RCA formed a GPS Review Committee,[1] which conducted surveys and later convened focus groups to assess their Geirus Policies and Standards (GPS) procedure. Since then, much has happened in the Orthodox world: alternative Batei Din have been formed in Israel,[2] rabbis associated with the International Rabbinic Fellowship (IRF) are performing conversions, Yeshivat Maharat has ordained three classes of women,[3] and the RCA report[4] has been publicized.

The data from the report is fascinating, although not surprising to those of us intimately connected with the process. I want to highlight a few points, all taken from page 7 the report: [5]

? 78% of conversion participants in the RCA-Beth Din of America network are women.
? 45% of the sample entered the conversion process between the ages of 20 and 29 and 27% were 30–39. These two age groups encompass 70% of all conversion candidates.
? Most survey participants (80%) cited “spiritual-intellectual search” as the factor that prompted their interest in conversion.
? 45% of all respondents said they have “Jewish ancestry.”

Seventy-Eight percent of conversion participants in the RCA-Beth Din of America network are women, and most of these women are under 40 when they begin the process. I want us to sit with that for a moment. Conversion in the Orthodox community in America is a women’s issue. Yet we continue to uphold a system that not only prevents women from playing a leadership role but also allows for an unhealthy power dynamic between middle-aged men, seen as the gatekeepers of our tradition, and most often, young women in a state of increased vulnerability. The GPS Review Committee, in their recommendations to the RCA, “encourage[s] Sponsoring Rabbis to facilitate relationships between female conversion candidates and female teachers, mentors, or scholars to assist them in the conversion process in the hope that such relationships will assist the conversion candidate to face the many challenges faced by observant Jewish women.” [6] While it goes on to address the power dynamic by making important recommendations that will help conversion candidates feel affirmed in their experience and perhaps more comfortable, none of these recommendations explicitly call for women to be included beyond certain “rare” conversations around “issues of a personal nature.”[7] I would argue that including learned, observant, female women in the learning process is a wonderful start. I would like us to take it a step further and insist that female conversion candidates need a yoetzet halakha or other pious, female community leader to

? be present for all meetings with the Bet Din,
? be included in all decisions and discussions as they relate to the candidate,
? be the only person (aside from the mikveh attendant) anywhere near the mikveh at the time of immersion, and
? continue as a spiritual guide for the candidate post-immersion.

There are hundreds of knowledgeable women in our communities who must be given the
opportunity to take on a leadership role within this process, both within the RCA and outside of it.

Conversion is also very clearly an issue facing emerging adults. What happens during emerging adulthood? We begin making important life decisions, decisions that will indeed have a huge impact on the direction we take our adult existence: career, higher education, and perhaps most importantly, marriage. Converts have told me that the time it takes to convert (sometimes the unreasonable length and sometimes the uncertainty of the timeline) make forming relationships, romantic or otherwise, nearly impossible. We must enable conversion candidates to go through the process within a reasonable period of time so that they may be fully integrated into our communities and begin making lives and families of their own. There are many challenges Jews by choice face socially; we must educate our communities about conversion so that integration into communities is seamless. And we must do our part by destigmatizing conversion and encouraging our youth to date and marry those who have chosen to join us.

Along these lines, we know that Jews do not live in a bubble and as a result, may end up dating outside of the Jewish community. When this happens, rather than cutting these people out, we should work with them to determine the best method by which their significant other can join the Jewish people. It is important to note, however, that the majority of conversion candidates through the RCA do not cite marriage or relationship with a Jew as their main reason for choosing to convert to Judaism through an Orthodox Bet Din. This is a common misconception in the Orthodox community and one that I want to fight to change. Conversion candidates undergo tremendous scrutiny throughout the process. I can cite from my own experience and from others that we feel our integrity is called into question by many strangers for the most ambiguous reasons. We do not need community members to enforce what they believe are proper ways to treat a convert or conversion candidate by treating us with skepticism, questioning our reasons for converting, and wondering if we will continue to be Jewish or observant beyond our immersion in the mikveh. First, it’s none of their business. Second, after immersion, converts are to be treated like any other Jew with the exception of their ability to marry a kohen. We have a long way to go in educating communities around the halakha of conversion. In the meantime, we should all do our best to welcome people into our communities with kindness and openness as a rule. After all, Pirkei Avot tells us to judge others favorably,[8] which can be interpreted as giving others the benefit of the doubt.

While “conversion for marriage” is not the main reason RCA conversion candidates choose to convert, I think it’s important to celebrate those who do convert to Judaism so that they may enjoy a halakhically Jewish life with their Jewish spouse. It is halakhically acceptable to convert to Judaism if you are in a relationship with a Jew. It is a practice in many communities to discourage this and frown upon it. Knowing many people who deal with this, I feel comfortable saying that they do not “convert for marriage” only. They have found meaning enough in the Jewish tradition that they want to make it a central part of their lives, with their Jewish spouse. It is not black and white. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks reminds us often that Jews are a tiny people by quoting Milton Himmelfarb, “The number of Jews in the world is smaller than a small statistical error in the Chinese census.”[9] It is not in our interest to alienate members of our community. Rather than shunning those who “convert for marriage,” we must guide them through the conversion process and celebrate their desire to join the Jewish people.

The GPS Review Committee’s report highlights several areas that require examination by the RCA and makes suggestions for improvement in these areas. I feel that most of the suggested changes are very much in line with feedback I have heard from Jews by choice and conversion candidates. In my conversations with conversion candidates and based on my own experience, people simply want to be treated with dignity and respect.

They want the expectations to be clearly outlined for them. They want to know about how long the process will take and exactly what they should learn and with what frequency. They want to be able to trust that the leaders who are guiding them through the process and the members of the Bet Din will have their best interest in mind and treat the process with a certain level of seriousness and reverence. I remember feeling so many different things during my process. I remember just starting out and wondering, “Who do I learn with? And what do I learn?” And when I immersed myself in studying Hebrew, tefillah, Jewish history, kashruth, Shabbat, I remember thinking “Okay, so when do I know it’s enough to go to the mikveh?” I remember feeling like I had no control; that the most important decision of my life was in the hands of three men who didn’t know me at all, and all I had was 45 minutes to convince them that I was ready to be a Jew. That I was 21 and like all of my Modern Orthodox friends on the Upper West Side, I really wanted to start dating, hosting meals on Shabbat, putting roots down in a community, and to just be treated like everyone else.

I am encouraged by the GPS Review Committee’s recommendations and hopeful that the RCA will be receptive. I am thrilled that rabbis like Rabbi Angel, Rabbi Riskin, Rabbi David Stav, and Rabbi Nahum Rabinovitch are working hard to improve the Orthodox conversion process; and I am the first to say there are wonderful aspects to the process, too. I also believe that it will only improve if converts and conversion candidates are consulted and helping to lead this charge. I appreciate the allies and friends that I and the OCN have made along the way: We need you. And we need also to know that our testimony is being taken seriously. It is in our interest to make the Orthodox conversion process better and more user-friendly. That does not mean compromising on halakhic observance and standards nor does it mean compromising justice and morality. The Rambam, at the same time that he admits that converts are a challenge for the Jewish people, acknowledges that conversion will happen and so we must both be careful not to be too stringent and to love the convert. Conversion has always been a part of the Jewish communal landscape. We must, as our ancestors did, accept this and celebrate it. After all, we believe that Judaism is a compelling way to live one’s life—why should we be skeptical or discouraging of someone who wants to take that on?

I’ve learned so much not only from my own conversion process but from the women and men I’ve met through the Orthodox Converts Network and in my own learning with conversion candidates. Many are greeted with openness and encouragement and therefore thrive in the process and fit seamlessly into a community once they complete it. Others find it less welcoming and unclear and describe the process as painful and unnecessarily difficult. The way that each person experiences conversion is and should continue to be different. But that does not mean that each process should be different. At the most basic level, each process should be straightforward, accessible, encouraging, affirming, meaningful, and positively life-changing. Every conversion candidate should engage with rabbis, teachers, mentors, and community members who help facilitate that type of experience. And after immersion, all Jews by choice should find a community they genuinely feel they can call home.

[1] http://www.rabbis.org/news/article.cfm?id=105810
[2] http://www.timesofisrael.com/defying-rabbinate-rabbis-set-up-alternative-jewish-conversion-court/
[3] http://www.yeshivatmaharat.org/about-our-scholars/
[4] http://rcarabbis.org/pdf/GPSFINALREPORT_FINAL_June28.pdf
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid., p. 18.
[7] Ibid., p. 18.
[8] Pirkei Avot 1:6.
[9] http://www.rabbisacks.org/emor-5774-afraid-greatness/

Racism is an ugly feature of human life, the source of profound misery to untold millions of people. Racism posits that a particular group is inherently superior to other groups. This kind of thinking leads to discrimination—and often to violence--against the victimized groups.

Hate groups throughout the world thrive on racist ideologies. Whether they are white supremacists or black supremacists; whether they foster racial, religious, ethnic or national hatred—such people are a danger to society. Racist ideology inevitably leads to dehumanizing those who are not part of the “in-group.” Even when no actual violence transpires, the ideology itself fosters mistrust, hatred, fear and societal malaise.

Jews have suffered as victims of bigotry, racism, and dehumanization throughout history and in many lands. We know firsthand about the evils of one group claiming innate superiority over others. We know that the arrogance of the haters poisons minds and hearts; and we know that this poison is destructive.

We have all learned from our earliest youth that the Torah teaches that humanity was created in God’s image. The Mishna reminds us that each human life is of inestimable value and is irreplaceable. It would seem to be a foundational principle of Torah Judaism that all human beings are equally created by and beloved by God. Racist attitudes or discriminatory behavior would seem to be antithetical to the core teachings and values of Judaism.

Yet, even though Jewish experience and Jewish teachings are so clearly opposed to racist ideology, the fact is that there is a stream of Jewish tradition that fosters the notion of innate Jewish superiority to non-Jews. This notion is found in the writings of Rabbi Yehuda Halevy and in Kabbalistic literature; and it has found expression in the writings and teachings of contemporary Orthodox rabbis.

Professor Menachem Kellner, who taught Jewish philosophy at Haifa University for many years and who now teaches at Shalem College in Jerusalem, has recently published a book (in Hebrew, Bar Ilan University Press), Gam Hem Keruyim Adam: haNokhri beEinei haRambam (They too are called human: Maimonides’ views on non-Jews). He makes it amply clear that Maimonides rejected the notion that Jews are ontologically different from and superior to non-Jews. The Rambam maintains the classic Jewish teachings that stress the common humanity of all people. Differences among human beings arise not due to innate metaphysical otherness, but due to cultural and sociological factors. In essence, Jews are the same as all other human beings. Jews differ from others (as others differ from Jews) based on beliefs, religious traditions, communal values etc.

Dr. Kellner’s book is a fine and important academic study. But it is also an alarming wake up call to contemporary religious Jews. It points out how deeply the Jewish supremacist views have taken hold among many otherwise pious Jews. It underscores the critical need to reclaim Rambam’s insights not only because they are true to our Torah tradition, but because they can purge contemporary Torah Judaism from highly negative and dangerous attitudes.

Dr. Kellner begins his discussion by citing examples of rabbinic teachers who have articulated supremacist views. Most egregiously, a book was published several years ago entitled Torat haMelekh. Authored by Orthodox rabbis and published by an Orthodox yeshiva, it asserts that non-Jews are not quite human in the same sense that Jews are human. Non-Jews, therefore, are not entitled to the same rights as Jews. This attitude provides justification for discriminatory policies against non-Jews, not excluding acts of violence. Torat haMelekh evoked tremendous negative reaction within Israeli society, and various modern Orthodox and religious Zionist rabbis criticized it soundly. However, other Orthodox rabbis either agreed with the authors of Torat haMelekh, or argued that the authors had the right to express their views even if those views could be construed as incitement to violence.

Dr. Kellner cites the more “moderate” position of a well-known and highly popular religious Zionist rabbi. This rabbi has written: “We are a chosen people not because we have received the Torah; but we received the Torah because we are a chosen people. The Torah is so very appropriate to our inner nature. Our nation has a distinctive nature, character, communal psychology, a unique Godly character….Some argue against us that we are ‘racist.’ Our answer is…if racism is defined in that we are different and more elevated than other nations and therefore we bring blessing to other nations—then, we admit that we are different from all nations, not by color of skin, but by the nature of our souls; and the Torah is the description of our inner content.” According to this view, the Jewish people has a unique spiritual nature, superior to that of other nations. We received the Torah because of our innate spiritual receptivity. Non-Jewish souls are different—and less holy—than Jewish souls.

Dr. Kellner refers to a leading Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshiva University who admits that all humans are created in the image of God, but that Jews are more in the image of God than non-Jews. Although this statement is not at all identical with the views of Torat haMelekh, it shares the underlying notion of Jewish supremacy. Stated simply, Jews are intrinsically holier and closer to God than non-Jews.

Dr. Kellner demonstrates with admirable clarity that the supremacist views of the above-mentioned rabbis are soundly rejected by Rambam. Anyone who recognizes the Oneness of God is considered to be a follower of Abraham our Father. Rambam’s universalism recognized that all people—regardless of ethnic background—could rise to the highest spiritual levels. (p. 57).

Rambam equated the “image of God” with human intellectual capacity. This “image of God” is a latent quality within each person from birth; yet only by actualizing one’s intellect does one achieve the crown of being an “image of God.” Dr. Kellner notes: “According to Rambam, a good non-Jewish philosopher—i.e. a good person who has developed beyond moral perfection to intellectual perfection—is on a higher level than a righteous Talmid Hakham who is ignorant of the sciences. Moreover, the non-Jewish philosopher will merit greater Divine providence than the righteous Torah scholar, and his [the non-Jew’s] portion in the world to come will be greater [than that of a Talmid Hakham unversed in the sciences, and it is questionable] whether such a Talmid Hakham will merit it at all.” (pp. 78-79).

In Rambam’s introduction to his commentary on Pirkei Avot, he writes that he has drawn on the teachings of our rabbinic sages, and also from the words of the non-Jewish philosophers: one must “hear the truth from whoever states it.” The wisdom of our sages and the wisdom of the philosophers aim at ultimate truth, albeit from different vantage points. In the introduction to his commentary on the Mishna, Rambam states that wisdom is present not only in the words of our prophets, but also in the teachings of the non-Jewish philosophers. Our goal is to be wise and good: this goal can be attained by Jews and non-Jews alike. (p. 137) For Rambam, Aristotle was a prime example of a non-Jewish philosopher who attained great wisdom and moral virtue. (141).

In his Hilkhot Shemitah veYovel (13:10) Rambam explicitly states that ultimate knowledge of God is possible for every human being: Each person among all humanity (mikol ba’ei olam), if properly dedicated to wisdom and righteousness, can become the “holy of holies.” While some rabbinic interpreters claim that “kol ba’ei olam” refers only to Torah-observant Jews, this is far from what Rambam in fact has taught. This is an example of how supremacists attempt to re-interpret statements of Rambam that posit a universalist view. (156).

Dr. Kellner reviews various statements of Rambam, drawn from Talmudic and Midrashic sources, in which Jews are described in laudable terms. Jews are said to be modest and compassionate, kind and forgiving. Non-Jews are characterized as having violent and argumentative qualities. We know, though, from personal experience that there are Jews who have negative personal qualities and there are non-Jews who have fine personal qualities. The ancient rabbinic statements in praise of Jews might best be understood as being prescriptive rather than descriptive. In any case, the moral qualities and deficiencies attributed to Jews and non-Jews need not be understood as innate, unchangeable qualities, but rather as the result of environmental and cultural factors. (p. 202).

Rambam’s universalist vision recognizes that although all humanity can achieve great spiritual heights, Jews have a unique blessing in that God gave us the Torah and mitzvoth. The commandments aim at making us finer, wiser, and more virtuous people. But non-Jews of all ethnic backgrounds may convert to Judaism and become part of the Jewish people. There is no intrinsic barrier that would bar a non-Jew from becoming Jewish.

For the supremacists, though, Jewish souls are essentially different from non-Jewish souls. In the words of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook: “The difference between the Jewish soul, its self, its inner desires, aspirations, character and status, and that of all nations, at all their levels, is greater and deeper than the difference between the human soul and the animal soul; between the latter there is merely a quantitative distinction, but between the former an essential qualitative distinction pertains." (Orot, Jerusalem, 5745, p. 156). This attitude makes it highly difficult for a non-Jew to convert to Judaism. Conversion would involve a sort of “soul transplant” through which the non-Jew attains the intrinsically superior Jewish soul.

Why did the supremacist view emerge in the first place, and why has it gained adherents in our own time? Why haven’t the views of Rambam consistently prevailed throughout Jewish history and into the contemporary era? Dr. Kellner reminds us that the supremacist view was popularized by Rabbi Yehuda Halevy’s Kuzari, which was written as a defense of a despised people. (p. 215). The Muslim and Christian communities were vastly larger and more powerful than the Jews. Indeed, Jews suffered humiliation, violence and expulsion at the hands of the Muslims and Christians. The Kuzari was—and is—a phenomenal Jewish morale booster. In head to head competition with a philosopher, Muslim and Christian, the Jewish sage emerges victorious and convinces the King of the Khazars of the superior truth of Judaism. Although the world despises the Jews, God loves us! We are His chosen people. We are the only ones who have the unique spiritual and Godly nature that connects us with God.

This attitude has an obvious appeal to persecuted Jews. Even though we are being oppressed, we are superior to our oppressors! This was true in the days of Rabbi Yehuda Halevy, and it continues to be true today. Jews who feel threatened by the non-Jewish world feel bolstered by their belief in their own superiority to non-Jews. The supremacist view thrives when Jews lack self-confidence, when they are afraid of the outside world, when they allow their emotions to prevail over their reason.

Dr. Kellner recommends “theological humility,” the ability to accept that other people also have truths and spiritual insights from which we can learn. He calls for Jewish self-confidence in the style of Rambam. He asks that we reclaim the universalist impulse that recognizes the essential humanity of all people, that deplores racist and supremacist views that diminish the humanity of others.

It is truly remarkable that Rambam, who lived in the Middle Ages, should provide a religious worldview that is so modern…and even post-modern. How wonderful it would be if our community could overcome supremacist tendencies, and become spiritually self-confident, intellectually vibrant, compassionate and wise.

The Chief Rabbinate has had a monopoly on many aspects of the religious life of the State of Israel. It controls marriages, divorces and conversions to Judaism; it regulates public kashrut as well as offering kosher supervision to private establishments. It operates a network of rabbinic courts. It has a visible, public platform for teaching the ideas and ideals of Judaism to Israeli society, and for serving as a religious beacon of inspiration to world Jewry. One would think that after these many years, then, the Chief Rabbinate would be one of the most beloved and revered institutions in Israeli society. The rabbis have had daily opportunity to interact with all Israelis - religious and otherwise - and to show them the beauty of Judaism, the kindness of Torah, the pleasantness of the Orthodox message.

Yet, amazingly and tragically, the Chief Rabbinate seems to be one of the least beloved and revered institutions in Israeli society. It has little or no authority in the hareidi community; it generates little or no enthusiasm among religious Zionists; it is of little positive significance to the remainder of Israelis. Although the Chief Rabbinate and its many functionaries include some fine, sincere and wonderful people, the overall image - and reality - of the rabbinate appears to be negative.

In the field of kashrut, the supervision of the Chief Rabbinate is disdained by the hareidi community, which has set up its own kosher supervision system (the Badatz). Apparently, the Badatz has achieved - in many circles - a higher level of trust for its supervision than has the Chief Rabbinate. Indeed, in all areas of Jewish law the hareidi community turns to its own authorities, and not to the Chief Rabbinate.

In the area of marriages, stories are legion of couples, especially non-Orthodox ones, who have had unpleasant experiences with rabbinic functionaries. The growing demand for civil marriage in Israel is an indication of dissatisfaction with the rabbinic marriage bureaucracy. In the area of divorce, the Chief Rabbinate has been notoriously unsuccessful in addressing the aguna problem, allowing a situation to fester where husbands refuse to grant a divorce unless they are paid off. I myself have been involved in several cases where Israeli rabbis have actually encouraged the husband to demand payment and various other rights before granting a divorce. The Chief Rabbinate finally felt compelled to convene a conference to deal with the issue, but then cancelled it at the last moment - apparently under pressure from hareidi elements. It seems increasingly clear that a solution to the aguna problem will not emerge from the Chief Rabbinate, but will have to be found in the civil courts.

In the area of conversion, the Chief Rabbinate raises obstacles to prevent non-Jews from entering the Jewish fold. It has adopted a hareidi position that conversion is available only to those agreeing to observe Torah and mitzvot in full. This position is a radical break from the Talmud, Rambam (Maimonides) and the Shulhan Arukh; it is capitulating to an extreme hareidi position that took root only in the 19th century. The Chief Rabbinate not only enforces this position for the State of Israel, but has now disqualified the conversions of Orthodox rabbis in the Diaspora unless those rabbis are clearly under the rabbinate's thumb. The Rabbinical Council of America has essentially bowed to the authority of the Chief Rabbinate, since the latter has the power to decide who is Jewish and who is not Jewish in the State of Israel. If the Chief Rabbinate rejects the validity of a conversion - even if performed entirely according to Halakha - the convert and his/her children will face problems if they decide to move to Israel. The Chief Rabbinate seems intent on demonstrating its "power," and on showing that it can be as extreme as the hareidim.

How far has this institution moved from the wise, compassionate and loving attitude of the late Sephardi chief rabbi Benzion Uziel (who died in 1953)! Rabbi Uziel well understood that the role of the rabbinate was not to drive people away from Judaism, but to find every possible way of bringing them into the fold for the sake of Jewish families and the Jewish nation. When Israel was founded, Orthodox Jews placed much hope in the Chief Rabbinate. They truly hoped that it would enhance the Jewish nature of the state and win the hearts of Israel's citizens to a deeper appreciation of the Torah traditions. Regrettably, these hopes have not been fulfilled.

The Chief Rabbinate functions as though it were leading a cult rather than a world religion with a grand, universal message. It adopts extreme hareidi positions and attitudes because it seems to view the hareidi community as the only constituency that matters. Should the State and people of Israel continue to grant power to this sort of chief rabbinate? Shouldn't there, rather, be a complete review of the rabbinate's role and functions, a top-level government commission to evaluate its successes and failures, to recommend changes in policies and procedures, to overhaul the rabbinic bureaucracy, to clarify the rabbinate's mission - its responsibilities as well as its limitations?

Establishing such a commission will surely engender fierce opposition and political infighting. Yet unless an impartial panel carries out a serious evaluation of the Chief Rabbinate and makes necessary recommendations, the damage to the State of Israel, to Judaism and to the Jewish people will be immense.

All Israelis and all Jews have a stake in an honest, compassionate, competent and courageous Chief Rabbinate, one that serves as a unifying force. The sooner the rabbinate is reconstituted, the sooner will we be able to say with a full heart: "For out of Zion comes forth the Torah, and the word of God from Jerusalem."

A Braver New World?

Back when I was a principal at the Yeshivah of Flatbush, I had several bookcases that held a set of Talmud, Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, and assorted other titles on one side of my office. Across, on the opposite side, stood a six-foot tall cardboard stand-alone Batman figure that I begged from one of the parents who operated a video store. On my desk, centered between the bookcase and the cardboard Dark Knight, was a mason jar filled with Laffy Taffy. My associate principal, faculty colleagues, and I turned many kids on to Torah and poetry in that little office, and I can honestly laughingly suggest that I'm not sure which had the greater influence at any given time, the Talmud Bavli, Poe’s “Raven,” or Batman (the hashpa’ah, influence, of the banana taffy was indisputable).

Nowadays, however, in addition to such invaluable educational tools of the trade as a sefer, a story, a master teacher, a life-size superhero cutout, and a candy wrapped in a cute riddle, Jewish educators have to manage a burgeoning array of digital resources. Today's technologies—incorporating both traditional texts and hypertexts, computer simulations, virtual-reality time travel, educational game platforms, and multimedia interactivities—promise to provide unique and engaging experiences to our younger generations of Orthodoxy and to impact an audience larger in numbers than that at ma'amad Har Sinai many times over. It’s up to us, as responsible and responsive Jewish educators, through foresight, insight, and intentionality, to balance and blend these newer technologies with more traditional texts and practices, and to inspire our younger generations to navigate this “braver” new world with thoughtfulness, ironic distance, and critical intelligence. Tacking toward the tradigital could conceivably spark untold opportunities to influence the future course of Jewish education in both Torah and General Studies, and, thereby, to influence as well the future course of Orthodox Jewish thought, culture, and continuity.

The question is: How should we be doing this?

Reading Between the Subject Lines

“WHAT WILL EDUCATION LOOK LIKE IN A MORE OPEN FUTURE? … TECHNOLOGY AND RAPIDLY EVOLVING STUDENT NEEDS…THE GLARING PROBLEM OF OUR OUTDATED EDUCATION… GROUNDBREAKING TECHNOLOGY TRENDS FOR THE YEAR AHEAD… TIME TO IMPLEMENT DISRUPTIVE INNOVATION!” This is just a small sampling of the often-melodramatic subject lines that appear daily in my office email. True, once in a while someone throws out a reminder regarding measurement of skills and assessment of knowledge. Still, it’s troublesome that some major educational concerns of broad general import are noticeably absent from the blaring headlines.

With all the emphasis on ever new means and methods, where is there shown a similar level of concern for subject matter itself? Where is the hot-button item asking “What content will encourage our younger generations to build a life extraordinaire (and in our case, a Jewish life), and why we should be teaching it?” What “groundbreaking” moral values are we urging our educators to model and extol in their daily conversations and explorations in our classrooms, and why? What “innovative” (a word to be used cautiously, if not skeptically) opportunities for inventiveness, imagination, creativity, and sheer joy and excitement are we embedding in our course of studies and in our ways of learning in our Jewish educational institutions … and why not?

Do Not Confine Your Children to Your Own Learning

These are not meant to be the wide-eyed queries of a naïf, the rants of a curmudgeon, or the proposed articles of a Luddite convention platform. As should be obvious from sentiments expressed earlier, we ought never turn our backs on new technologies and better methodologies; rather, as educators we must pledge to embrace these advanced and advancing tools, to exploit them, experiment, distinguish among them and, finally, to borrow Chazal’s metaphor of the model student in Pirkei Avot, like a human sieve to judiciously separate the fine flour from the coarse.

“Do not confine your children to your own learning, for they were born in another time.” So goes an ancient Hebrew proverb I’d once come across. Or is it talmudic, or Arabic, or Chinese? The all-knowing internet is uncertain and I’ve yet to find a classical Jewish source that mirrors these exact words. Still, the spirit is certainly recognizable in Jewish tradition, while it clearly reflects a universal sentiment as well. Indeed, who would deny the otherness, the “other-timeness” of each generation? What teacher would not acknowledge that the vernacular of the day, the sefat haRekhov so to speak, is a resource of first resort for meaningful discourse with students? That the cultural signposts of the day offer quick reference points and easy analogy? That the technology tools of the day are indispensible for compatible communication and hooking students’ attention?

Not long ago, a medical surgeon posted this on his blog:

Without acknowledging that new generations learn differently from previous generations, we will never be able to “transform” education so that it is fit for purpose in the future…

If one of my teachers had asked me about the supraspinatus muscle, it would have elicited a cascade of learning…. I would have gone to the library or to one of the standard textbooks... visited the dissection room… sought further knowledge [from] an anatomy demonstrator… . [Instead, while] writing this blog, I have googled “supraspinatus.” In 0.12 seconds… I have access to 858,000 pages of information, 137,000 images and 34,000 videos of this muscle.

And more recently, David Leonhardt of The New York Times described a similar rejiggering in the field of journalism:

One of the main lessons we’ve learned is that journalists have not been fully using all of the tools that are now available to us. For decades, the traditional article … has dominated newspaper and magazine journalism…. But … [i]t’s no accident that many of the most-read New York Times articles of the last few years have been complex takes on serious subjects in a form other than a traditional article: an explainer of the Ebola crisis, a photo essay on aging, a video on ISIS… the rent-vs.-buy calculator, a graphic on nonemployed men, a map on poverty and an interactive on generational politics.

Leonhardt makes an articulate, convincing argument that we might do well to echo in our own field of Jewish education. Still, let’s add the necessary caveat: Tools for their own sake, rather than as the product of mindful, well-analyzed, and well-argued strategies for the future, are of dubious pedagogical effectiveness. To merely toss technology into classwork like so many chickpeas into a salad, to have students click and play and cut and paste, is not the sine qua non for attending school. A live Jewish Day School classroom is a sacred place to inhabit, an environment within which to benefit and grow, a unique and inimitable communal gathering of diverse critical minds and personalities, with its give and take of human discourse rich in ideas and emotions and activities.

But what gives this coming together of participating students and teachers, staff, and administrators, its grand purpose and shape?

It’s the Curriculum, Stupid!

In addressing the topic of Jewish education for our younger generations, it is imperative—even before one student has an iPad in her hand, even before a single teacher powers on his wall-hung Smart Board—to direct the spotlight on the curriculum that underlies it all. I define curriculum in this context as the central nexus of a school, the overarching course of studies that represents the integrity and ethos of Jewish education, the proud purpose of which is to explore the infinite interconnections between all its activities and teachings. While every class lesson in such a curriculum possesses its own integrity by subject and grade, it is situated at the same time responsibly, even inevitably, within the school’s entire course of studies and, it is hoped, ultimately within the whole lifetime of an individual or group’s Jewish and General education.

In such a curriculum, it's not the technology that drives the success of our educational endeavors but the content—the chosen stories, explorations, and shared values and experiences that are delivered via that technology, be they in the form of multimedia blasts across the internet, broadcast to mobile devices, or beamed down to smart wristwatches and eyeglasses. As the politicians (and, unfortunately, many educators) often fail to note, "It's the curriculum, stupid."

What We Talk about When We Talk about Jewish Education

A yeshiva Day School, with its dual-curriculum of Torah Studies and General Studies, has a special responsibility.

A yeshiva Day School is not a Talmud Torah grafted onto a public school with two distinct realms of study meant to compete for the time and attention of teacher and student alike. It is certainly not a language-themed Hebrew charter school, where the emphasis on contemporary Israeli life, language, and culture is both devoid of religious devotion, tradition, and Jewish practice, and constrained within legitimate legal guidelines that mandate a strict separation of church and state.

Rather, the ideal Jewish Day School is an organic unity within whose walls our younger generations learn to live as whole beings whose Jewish identity is evidenced by familiarity with Torah texts that span centuries, by facility in classical biblical, mishnaic, and contemporary Hebrew languages (and, it is hoped, acquaintance with medieval, enlightenment, modernit, and meduberet versions of Hebrew, not to mention awareness of Ladino, Yevanic, Yiddish, and other polyglottal variants in between), and by informed participation in the religious practices of a vibrant Jewish community. Within these walls they learn to live as whole beings whose Jewish identity is at the same time intrinsically bound up with their intellectual, spiritual, and social-emotional growth, with their studies in the liberal arts and sciences, and with their positive participation in society at large.

A modern yeshiva Day School has every obligation to exploit technology but, uniquely, the very spirit of traditional Torah training and the halakhic parameters of Shabbat and the mo’adim that are at the heart of such an education demand that our children develop a comfortable facility in ancient methods of text study and acquire learning skills that are not dependent on access to electronic technology and digital resources. Such “Sabbath skills” are invaluable in the 24/7 hustle bustle of today’s world—they foster conversation, contemplation, introspection, and mindfulness, and they transfer seamlessly to General Studies classes and activities with enormous benefit.

Of course, “Jewish learning,” in this discussion, encompasses Jewish and General education, and it is never imparted in completely separate silos. In their roles as Jewish, American, and global citizens, our younger generations must engage on a daily basis not only with the interconnectedness of Jewish and General texts (some use the term “secular,” which is too often intended and/or perceived pejoratively), but with the world itself as “text.” If we need a model for this approach, let us turn to Heaven, where, as the Gemara in Avodah Zarah describes it, God spends one quarter of every day teaching Torah to schoolchildren and playing with the majestic whale-like creature Livyatan at the same time. A free interpretation: Here we see God both teaching the children Torah text and taking them on an experiential fieldtrip to the aquarium to visit Livyatan; here we confirm the words of Sefer Tehilim, “”Lashem Ha’aretz U’mlo’ah,” the profusion of delights in this world is the Creation of God, and the most magnificent of all is the biological phenomenon of the Livyatan. God teaches the schoolchildren a wonderful lesson in Torah and a wondrous lesson in science interconnected and all wrapped in one.

“All forms of knowledge are interrelated and interdependent, and we are put on earth to know and to make known the correspondences between them all,” affirmed the non-Orthodox art historian Meyer Schapiro, a truth that could have been uttered by any of his Orthodox talmudic scholar forebears. It is a wise axiom to guide our curricular thinking.

In addition, to paraphrase Martin Luther King, Jr., the arc of a modern Jewish curriculum is long and should bend its participants toward lives of character and hessed, critical intelligence and kindness, personal virtue and keen awareness of the world around them. Twenty-first-century Jewish Orthodox education owes our younger generations a curriculum framework that moves beyond facts, factoids, and information. True learning is learning that grows into know-how, knowledge, self-knowledge, understanding, and, ultimately, “the search for self-transcendence, the enterprise of trying to become a different or a better or a nobler or more moral person,” as writer Susan Sontag, a passionate teacher herself, noted. All of this must be built upon an immutable foundation, the dictum of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch (a great gaon and a paragon of pedagogy) that the learning of Torah is the very soul of Judaism.

Nor should we neglect, in creating successful and cutting-edge curriculum in the twenty-first century, to acknowledge that the daily world we immediately inhabit, the aggressively fast-paced world of popular culture and mobile device, is alluringly attractive and all-encompassing. That is why principals and teachers responsible for curriculum experiences should, in designing units of study, find ways to incorporate age-appropriate, grade-appropriate, and Jewish values-appropriate classic films, best-selling children’s books, popular music, internet trends, and a host of elements from pop and academic cultures. Such elements elicit instant recognition, trigger lively discussion, and serve as thematic touchstones in subject areas of all sorts. Comic books and Ben & Jerry’s, Swatch Watches and Radio City Music Hall, Twitter, TV commercials, and Six Flags Great Adventure all have something important to say about our society and our selves. How can we as educators afford not to guide our younger generations in understanding and critiquing the society they inhabit?

Youth, as Rav J. B. Soloveitchik has characterized it, is full of “simple faith and fiery enthusiasm,” and only children, he adds, “can breach the boundaries that segregate the finite from the infinite.” We must, thus, speak to the hearts and minds of our younger generations of learners, and provide them inviolate non-judgmental breathing space for individual wrestling with questions of identity, religious belief and practice, and spiritual growth. We must deliver them both the means and reasons to sustain a continued visceral, religious, and intellectual connection to Jewish learning and observance and the means to be competitive with the best in the world- at- large.

We must impart to our Orthodox younger generations a desire to go on learning, as philosopher John Dewey advocated. We must inspire them to rise from their Torah learning and, as the Ramban writes in his celebrated Iggeret, to immediately translate that learning into action. We must exhort them to act in the spirit of Rabbi Abraham Kook’s exuberant lyric, “Ani ohev et haKol,” “How I love all things!” so that they grow to appreciate and celebrate the varieties of Jewish experience, to practice Torah and mitzvoth meaningfully in their daily lives, to use the liberal arts and sciences as a means to understand the nature of humankind and the world it inhabits, and to recognize their roles and responsibilities as global citizens.

Permit me, finally, to tweak the proverb quoted above, from which this essay derives its title, and give it a decidedly Orthodox Jewish slant, its ambiguous origin notwithstanding. “Do not confine your children to your own learning, for they were born in another time.” The Gemara in Shavuot and the Midrash Tanhuma tell us that all Jews were present at the Revelation of the Torah at Mount Sinai and that the souls of all as yet unborn future generations of Jews joined in attendance with the Israelites of the Exodus at that moment. So, when we speak of our Jewish students as being “born in another time,” we are not only referring to them as the younger generation that succeeds us but as our compeers at Mattan Torah, our fellow standard bearers in tradition.

Dor holekh ve’dor ba, always a next generation, intones the ancient Megillat Kohelet, a conceit that finds a modern counterpart in lines from the poet T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, “For last year’s words belong to last year’s language / And next year’s words await another voice…”. Another voice. Another time. “Another time” in Judaism is always a glance backward more than 5,000 years to our origins and a glance ever forward towards an ideal world to come. That is what a tradigital curriculum is meant to honor, preserve, and anticipate. As Ben Franklin expressed it back in 1786, "We are, I think, in the right road of improvement, for we are making experiments.

Close to a million Israelis live in countries other than Israel. The majority have settled in the United States and Canada for the long run, teaching at universities, running business, and becoming entrepreneurs. Most identify as secular and send their children to public schools. Although they maintain a vague Israeli identity, most of the children call their current country of residence home. Far removed from Israel, which provided them Jewish identity by osmosis, these children’s Jewish life, identity, and culture is tenuous and vulnerable in the Diaspora.

Instead of absorbing Hanukkah in the streets as their parents did in Israel, they are, to their parent’s naive surprise, bombarded by Christmas. Instead of Kiddush on Friday night and a national ambiance of Sabbath on Shabbat, they have soccer practice and the myriad extracurricular activities of the average American child and teen. When the High Holy Days come, whereas in Israel their families might have stepped into a synagogue or community center for prayer, they now must contend with the notion of buying tickets for the first time, something those who had grown up in the Israeli zeitgeist find bizarre, as strange and foreign as paying for synagogue membership.

Diaspora Jews, no matter their denomination, for the most part retain their Jewish identity by forming religious communities around synagogues. Synagogues provide Diaspora Jews with a religious connection, communal identity and association, rudimentary education, and a vital sense of Jewish peoplehood. Most secular Israelis did not attend synagogues in Israel and may never have been in a synagogue. They were acculturated to see religion as dangerous, political, and coercive. They do not easily connect to non-Orthodox synagogues, because, as the cliché goes, for secular Israelis, the synagogue they do not attend is Orthodox. They, and especially their children, are left Jewishly unmoored.

The story of Israelis in America at this moment is foreboding. It tells of a population that is so connected in some ways to its Jewish roots and memories, but whose children are assimilating into American culture more quickly than the children of immigrants a century ago, who at least had their European parents, synagogues, and Jewish institutions to keep them connected. Secular Israelis in the Diaspora retain some of their cultural heritage through social connections with fellow Israelis and by gathering for events such as Israel Independence Day. They hope their children will avoid intermarrying and assimilating, but in reality Israeli culture alone is a thin string with which to maintain the next generation’s Jewish connection, and will not act as a bulwark against assimilation.

In America, it is religious community and institutional connections that help one retain Jewish life. The American Jewish community, with few exceptions, has not begun to address this population’s Jewish needs, and for the most part is not sure how to do so. Several years ago an Israeli came to my synagogue, Bais Abraham Congregation in St. Louis, Missouri, and told us that there was something even secular Israelis wanted from the Jewish community: a school to teach their children to read and write the Hebrew language. Realizing this was an opportunity to engage secular Israelis on their own terms, and perhaps eventually to engage them in the Jewish community and religious life, we opened a synagogue-based religious school specifically for the children of secular Israelis. We staffed the school with experienced Israeli language teachers and used opportunities such as Jewish holidays to teach this population about Jewish life, which, to their parents’ chagrin, they know almost nothing.

Over the first few years, family after family recounted that they had never expected to feel at home in a synagogue with religious people. They expected coercion, derision, and alienation. Instead, they were surprised to feel embraced and at home in a Jewish religious environment. Indeed, Bais Abraham is particularly suited for them, as an Orthodox congregation that has consciously removed as many barriers to entry as possible. It boasts a most diverse congregational makeup of religious from birth, Jews raised secular, converts, intermarrieds, and people on a spiritual journey.

Two years into the school’s existence, the Israeli families began to trust us and to realize the importance of some Jewish education, to the extent that they asked for an extra hour of study each week for their children to learn about Judaism. I saw this as the school’s true raison d’être. The “Shelanu” Hebrew School now acts as a foundation upon which we provide holiday parties, free High Holy Day seats, Shabbat meals, classes, and connection for Israeli families.

Opening up Jewish Community Centers and other culturally Jewish institutions to Israelis will never be enough to retain Israelis abroad as part of the Jewish people. It will take congregations that are open and welcoming in nature, learning about Israeli culture and the subtleties of engaging this population and meeting their needs, and working to retain their children as part of the Jewish people and engage them in Jewish life. It requires Israeli shelihim, who both understand secular Israeli culture and appreciate a synagogue's religious life, to serve as a bridge to local Israelis. Time is running out. We now face not much more than a 20-year window before the children of these Jews assimilate en masse. It happens as they finish high school and go to college in America with almost no Jewish religious knowledge, identity, or practice. There is little except the desire of their parents and a fuzzy connection to a land across the ocean to stop them from marrying the non-Jew they have met on campus. They have less to hold them back than their Reform or Conservative American-born, synagogue-connected counterparts. We can make a big difference in retaining these Jews and their children as part of the Jewish people and Jewish religion.

It is, in some ways, much easier than engaging a secular American Jew in that Israelis all have much stronger Jewish identities and memories. If we do not wake up quickly and put resources toward this challenge, equipping synagogues across the country to engage Israelis and to understand their unique culture and needs, it will soon be too late for the next generation.

What is it like on campus to be Jewish and a lover of Israel, as a student, as a faculty member? When one reads reports in many Jewish media sources it sounds grim. How bad is it? Is it really bad? I here offer reflections as a long-term faculty member at a number of institutions across the country and at a branch of the University of California since 1989.

I came to the philosophy at the University of California, Riverside, in 1989 from the University of Notre Dame. My wife and I live in Los Angeles, as do our adult son and daughter and her family. My daughter lived in Jerusalem for some years, studied at Pardes, and married her chavrutah. My wife and I are members of Bnai David Judea, a Modern Orthodox congregation. For some 20 years, I’ve spent most of June in Jerusalem, learning at the Chafetz Chaim Yeshiva and attending philosophy conferences at the Hartman Institute.

A few years after joining the UCR faculty, I was approached by the then faculty advisor to Hillel and asked if I would take over as advisor. Given my interests and background, I was eager to do so. Around that time, Dr. Raymond Orbach, an eminent UCLA physicist and administrator took the post of Chancellor of UCR. Orbach was Jewish and wanted to build up the Jewish population of UCR. He was successful in many things but not that one. UCR has always had a relatively small Jewish representation among the students; a much larger representation among the faculty. At the time, UCR was a commuter school, recruiting largely from the local inland areas. More recently, the highly diverse population is from across the state. But it’s certainly not Orthodox-friendly in terms of kosher food or a comfortable Shabbat atmosphere. (I once attempted to make inroads in the kosher food problem, but to no avail.)

Dr. Orbach and I did some fundraising in the Palm Springs area, trying to raise money for Hillel. And to encourage this, I taught a few adult education courses in the Palm Springs area. For two years or so, we received enough support to hire a Hillel Director, a rabbi or lay leader. I would interview the candidates and meet with Dr. Orbach who gratefully had a hands-on approach. At one point we hired an Orthodox lay leader who worked extremely well with the students and quickly became my chavrutah.

The support of the Palm Springs Federation was regular but generally (other than a two or three year period) insufficient to hire a Director. I argued for funding to do more serious Jewish education on campus, but the real stimulus to Federation funding was the occasional threat of anti-Semitism. This seemed to me upside down: Creative programming seemed like a much better way to insure solidity of the campus Jewish presence. Nor was there serious anti-Semitism to worry about. There were occasional issues, but the administration--Orbach and those who followed him--were on top of such things.

The other source of personal frustration was student attitudes to the political/security situation in Israel. Some years back, an Israeli organization--strongly leftist in orientation--sent two speakers to campus, a Palestinian Women’s Studies Professor from BirZeit University and a Jewish Professor of Geography from Ben Gurion University. I was asked to be on a response panel of UCR faculty, a woman from Religious Studies, and two Palestinian-American faculty members from Engineering. I was supposed to speak in between the two Palestinian-Americans. The first one said pretty outrageously wrong things about Israeli policy and attitudes. The Protestant minister who was running the program instantly rearranged it so that I could speak last and respond to both Palestinian-Americans. The second spoke in even harsher terms. This gave me the opportunity to say what I believe, that harsh overstatement and wild condemnation accomplishes nothing, that the moral imperative is to listen to the other side, that the two main speakers, Israeli and Palestinian, represent one opinion among others, one that I disagreed with. One can disagree strongly, but we need to hear one another. Talking points are all too easy; they trade on oversimplification; and they accomplish nothing. I sat down feeling grateful for the opportunity to (I hoped) raise the level of the debate.

Next the students--Hillel students and sympathizers with the Palestinian-Americans--got to ask questions and make comments. Without exception, all we heard were talking points. The pro-Israel students rightly saw the pro-Palestinian remarks as self-serving, and vice versa. Talking points are not going to help mutual understanding, nor are they going to move the sides toward any sort of agreement. My frustration with students on both sides of the divide was a product of my inability to share nuance with them.

Nevertheless, I have had considerable success talking about Israel to campus audiences. On one occasion, the UCR Ethnic Studies program put on its website an inappropriate pro-Palestinian announcement. Our administration was upset and asked me to help organize an evening devoted to the issues. Five faculty members spoke, representing a variety of points of view. My own talk began with my connections to and love for Israel, the time I spend there regularly, as well as my misgivings about Israeli policy. People listened; what they were hearing was a faculty member who clearly had allegiances but who spoke openly, in human terms; not talking points. In fact, the Palestinian students approached me afterward about speaking to their group. Not much came of this after I asked them if they were okay with a Zionist speaker. In any case, they were respectful, a far cry from what we have read about.

One of the campuses of the UC that has a terrible reputation in the Jewish community is UC Irvine, also an hour from Los Angeles, halfway to San Diego. UCI is the campus at which the pro-Palestinian students were arrested subsequent to their unruly and rude protest at a talk given by Israeli ambassador, Michael Oren. I was invited by the UCI Religious Studies Program to give the annual guest lecture. My topic was my work in the philosophy of religion, but as with my book on the subject, The Significance of Religious Experience, I told of my religious struggles and commitments, my love for learning Talmud, and the extensive time I spend in Israel. I spoke about the latter at some length, not sure what to expect.

My talk was well-received and a number of people stayed afterward to pursue the discussion. One of them was an Orthodox Muslim woman; like the rest of the audience she was interested in matters of substance. It was a very pleasant occasion. I have a friend and former chavrutah, closely identified with Israel, who is on the UCI faculty. He reports that the atmosphere on the UCI campus is similar to UCR, that the campus is, in his words, “largely apolitical.” However, in the LA Orthodox community as well as in Israel, I continue to hear that UCI is a hotbed of Palestinian activism, an unfriendly place to Jewish concerns.

A word about my teaching: I teach a variety of courses from very large (300+) service courses (for example, “Evil,” “Introduction to Philosophy”) to small seminars, undergraduate and graduate. A great deal of my teaching concerns philosophy of religion. My style in teaching emphasizes discussion, and it’s quite personal, full of stories and examples from life, literature, film. Since Judaism is the religion I know best, many examples come from Jewish sources: Midrash, Tanakh, Talmud. And the experiences I relate include a great deal about Israel. Especially since my students are largely not Jewish and many not religious at all, I encourage them to bring in their own stories, texts, experiences, and perspectives and they are eager to do so. At no point, in all these years of teaching, have I experienced any ill feeling either about my religious perspective or about Israel. On the contrary, the responses are often warm and welcoming; always respectful both to me and to others in the classes.

My experience with the campuses with which I am familiar, in the UC system and across the country, yields the sense that there is a great deal of exaggeration in the frequently heard media reports these campuses are unfriendly to Jewish/Israeli concerns. That is not to deny that there are professors who confuse education with propaganda. Nor is to deny extremely uncomfortable times when SJP students confront Hillel students. I mentioned the UCR Ethnic Studies website above and I could tell other stories. But these are the exceptions, not the rule, and atmosphere on campus is not unfriendly to Jewish concerns.

The UCR Humanities Center seeks topics of academic concern and holds sessions on these issues. This past fall, a session was held on the proposed academic and cultural boycott of Israeli institutions. Three of us were on the panel: Professor Muhammad Ali, a Muslim from the Religious Studies Department; Professor Brownwyn Lebow, a Jewish (unaffiliated) Professor of Political Science, and me. A few years ago, Professor Ali and I taught a course together on Israel-Palestine; more on that below. All three of us thought that this proposal did not make sense. The audience, some 35 faculty and graduate students, agreed. There were only two advocates for the proposal, the people (I assumed) who brought the proposal to the Humanities Center.

Professor Ali and I taught a course in which we watched films, read history, and talked through issues about Israel and the Palestinians. The atmosphere was again entirely congenial. It was an Honors seminar, with only about a dozen students. One student was a radical leftist, the others just people interested in learning about the region and its history. At one point I assigned a Ha’aretz piece that spoke of injustices to which a group of Palestinians had been subjected. The leftist student came prepared; she argued that this sort of thing is typical, the sort of injustice about which she had been speaking all term. I pointed out that our knowledge of this was a product of an Israeli newspaper, illustrating the sort of freedom of the press and self-criticism characteristic of democracies at their best. The point was not lost on the students.

Anti-semitism, especially in Europe and the Arab world, has resurfaced as a genuine threat. And even where it’s not as much noted, things are not as one would like. I have friends who spent time in Berlin, very enjoyably. But further discussion revealed that one dare not wear a kippah on the streets. And the support for Israel among fundamentalist Christians in the United States always seems to me very thin; I fear that it would not take that much for it to turn. In light of our history and these and other current issues, vigilance makes sense.

At the same time, it’s easy to confuse genuine criticism of Israeli policy for anti-Semitism. We are blessed that the State of Israel is a world power. Such international actors are regularly criticized. Indeed, such criticism helps to keep the world from falling into a worse place than it is. Some are focused on what they see as the unfair standards by which Israel is judged. There is surely something to this. But the same can be said of criticism the United States. While anti-Semitism may get into the mix, there is surely more here than simple prejudice.

When one turns to the situation on campus, one similarly wants to be alert to anti-Semitism without confusing it with legitimate differences of perspective. Part of what we--I--feel about Israel is something like family-feeling. And others belong to other families. As mentioned, there are from time to time campus incidents that cry out for our attention. At the same time we need to question the reports we read, especially when authored by those with strong commitments on the issue in question.

Comments of Rabbi Marc D. Angel
A symposium on contemporary Orthodoxy, Tradition Magazine, vol. 32, no. 4, Summer 1998

The Status of Women in Orthodoxy

The past sixty years have witnessed a remarkable transformation in the status of women in general society, and this has obviously had an impact on Orthodoxy.
While some segments of the community do their best to deny or ignore the changed reality, others attempt to find ways of expanding women’s role in Orthodox life within the parameters of halakha. While in some Orthodox communities it is forbidden for women to study Talmud, in others it is allowed and encouraged. While some Orthodox communities have made no efforts to expand ritual opportunities for women in synagogues, others have instituted women’s prayer groups, Megilla readings, hakafot. Women serve on the boards of a number of Orthodox synagogues, and also are involved in education and hesed work.

We are living in a transitional period vis-à-vis the role of women in religious life. Different approaches are being tried; but it will probably be several generations before we reach a real consensus as to what will be deemed “normative.”

The wisest approach is to keep our options open. We need to explore halakhically acceptable ways of meaningfully involving women in as many aspects of religious life as possible. No one today should state with certainty what the “truth” is on this topic because no one really can know for sure how things will develop. One hundred years ago, it would have been deemed sinful to teach Talmud to women; today, some of our best and brightest Orthodox women study Talmud. Again, let me emphasize: the role of women—as of men—must always be within halakhic boundaries.

The Need for Diversity within Orthodoxy

Anything that moves Jews away from traditional faith and observance is a threat to Orthodoxy. This includes the non-Orthodox movements as well as secularism.

One general response has been to strengthen ourselves so that we and our families are not swept away from Torah and mitzvoth; we have built synagogues, day schools and yeshivot, communal institutions; we have published books and magazines; we have utilized modern technology to spread Torah study through tapes, videos, the Internet.
We have also sought to reach the non-Orthodox in various ways. Some have chosen the road of dialogue and friendship; others have emphasized outreach programs; some have separated themselves from direct contact with the non-Orthodox.

Our strategies have had some success, yet all of them have failed. The evidence of this failure is that the vast majority of Jews do not share our commitment to Torah and mitzvoth. In spite of all the heroic and inspired work of generations of Orthodox Jews, the overwhelming number of Jews are not Orthodox—and many are anti-Orthodox. The assimilation rates among the non-Orthodox are frightening.

Creative, dynamic Orthodoxy should be providing non-Orthodox Jews with vibrant, alternative models. We need to foster a healthy diversity within Orthodoxy, giving as many options as possible for non-Orthodox Jews to find a suitable entry point for a life of Torah and mitzvoth. Whether right wing or left wing or centrist, whether Sephardi or Ashkenazi, whether rationalistic or kabbalistic—the more diversity within Orthodoxy, the more the possibility of reaching those who are not presently within our camp.

Yet, precisely now, when we vitally need legitimate diversity, we are witnessing a shrinking of options within Orthodoxy. The growing narrowness in Orthodoxy is reflected by the growing narrowness in clothing styles deemed appropriate for Torah-true Jews.

Worse, the range of legitimate intellectual and halakhic options is contracting. The forces for conformity are powerful; and one who dares not to conform will be intimidated or isolated. We have Moroccan and Yemenite rabbis in Israel who dress like Eastern European rabbis because they feel they will not be accepted as rabbis if they do not conform. We have people afraid to make controversial statements in public because they fear communal reprisals. One rabbi has referred to the contemporary situation as the “Artscrolling of Judaism,” i.e., only a certain range of interpretation is allowed, and only certain sages are given recognition.

If Orthodoxy is to meet the critical challenge of this generation, then it must reject the tendency toward narrowness and unthinking authoritarianism. It must be open, fresh, imaginative; it must give sway to the human mind and soul; it must foster diversity of thought and diversity of style—all within the boundaries of Torah and halakha.

The Orthodox community must be governed by the principle of derakheha darkehei no’am. We must represent Torah as a sweet, pleasant and meaningful way of life. To do otherwise is to discredit Torah and to generate hatred toward Orthodoxy.

Right Wing, Left Wing, Centrist

Tendencies in religious life vary from period to period. Sometimes the mood is more to the right, sometimes more to the left; but most of the time it hovers near the center. People, by and large, are not extremists and will not live indefinitely with extreme positions. They, or their children or grandchildren, will seek a more balanced outlook.

Musar

A religious Jew must be heroic; must have a deep sense of inner calm and confidence; must not be afraid to be different. It is valuable to draw on the ethical and moral guidance of our great Musar writers. I personally have found much strength in the Pele Yoets of Rabbi Eliezer Papo.

Rabbi Marc D. Angel is Founder and Director of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals; Rabbi Emeritus of Congregation Shearith Israel; author and editor of many books. Here are his thoughts on turning 70.
Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah said: Here I am as a man of 70 years old, yet I was not privileged to know the source of the commandment to recite the story of the exodus from Egypt at night, until Ben Zoma interpreted the verse. The Torah states (Devarim 16:3) “so that you will remember the day you went out from the land of Egypt ALL the days of your life.” If the verse had stated “the days of your life” I would understand the commandment to refer to days. Since it adds the word ALL, this comes to include nights. The sages have interpreted the verse as follows: The days of your life refers to this world; ALL the days of your life comes to include the days of the Messiah.

The above Talmudic passage, well known due to its inclusion in the text of the Passover Haggada, relates to Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah. The sages of Yavneh, during the period following the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, wanted to appoint Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah as head of the Academy. He was a brilliant scholar, respected and beloved by his colleagues. But he had one shortcoming: he was too young! It was considered inappropriate to have such a young man as head of the venerable rabbinic sages of Yavneh.

The Talmud relates that a miracle happened. The young Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah woke up one morning and found that his hair and his beard had turned gray! He now looked like an elder. When his colleagues viewed his new appearance, they then felt comfortable asking him to become head of the Academy of Yavneh.

So Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah had the best of both worlds: he was chronologically a young man, full of the strength and energy of youth; but he was also (at least in appearance) an old man, filled with the experience and sagacity of age.
What a great combination! What a wonderful blessing to be young and old at the same time!

Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah, once he was “as a man of 70 years old,” realized something very important, something he had learned from Ben Zoma. One is obligated to recite the story of the Exodus from Egypt at night. This lesson, I believe, goes beyond the technical issue of when to recite the Haggada. It reflects a religious worldview.

Night symbolizes the time of darkness, the crises and sadnesses of life. At night, things seem bleak, even frightening. Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah came to understand that even at the “nights” of life, one must recite the story of redemption. One must look forward to the coming dawn. One must see beyond the darkness and envision the brightness and glory yet to come.

The secret of being young and old simultaneously is: maintaining hope, looking ahead, overcoming gloom and failure by focusing on the brightness on the horizon.

A wit once said: You don’t stop laughing when you get old; you get old when you stop laughing. This can be rephrased: You don’t stop dreaming and growing when you get old; you get old when you stop dreaming and growing.

It is a great blessing to reach age 70. One can look back on a long span of life’s joys and achievements. But one, inevitably, also looks back on a long span of life’s sad moments and failings.

I thank the Almighty for having brought me to this special time of my life. I don’t have adequate words to express my joy and gratitude to my wife Gilda, to our children and grandchildren, to our relatives and friends who have made life so worthwhile and so satisfying. I thank all those who have been steadfast and loyal in their friendship over these many years. I am grateful for the special people and the special moments of my life. My cup overflows.

But one cannot reach age 70 without having experienced sadness and loss. I remember with profound love my late parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts; my parents-in-law and so many relatives and friends who have passed on to their eternal reward. I sometimes quip that I have more friends in the next world than I do in this world; although this is just a quip, it has a lot of truth in it. So many loved ones and real friends have died, but their memories continue to inspire.

One of the common features of aging is a sense of “contraction.” One’s physical strength isn’t what it used to be. One’s circle of relatives and friends changes—and often contracts—as the mysteries of life and death play out. One’s professional life changes—and often contracts—as one grows older and less “productive.”

So I find great satisfaction in thinking about Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah’s ability to be young and old at the same time. I find great meaning in his lesson to overcome darkness by envisioning the coming redemption.

In a sense, I feel that I have a reverse situation to that of Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah. I AM a man of 70 years old; and yet, I thank the Almighty that I have the enthusiasm, optimism and energy of someone much younger in years. Instead of letting life “contract,” I have been very fortunate to keep “expanding” the scope of life, through our growing family, through my work for the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals, and through my ongoing writing, teaching and lecturing. I pray that the Almighty will bless me with additional years of learning, growing and sharing.

The Messianic era has not yet arrived. There is much work to do, many challenges ahead. I am grateful for the many wonderful yesterdays of life. I pray to be worthy of many wonderful tomorrows, together with Gilda and our family, our loved ones, and our true and trusted friends.

May the Almighty Who brings harmony in the spheres above, bring peace to us, to all Israel, to all good people everywhere.

Rabbi Hayyim Angel is a wonderfully creative teacher of Tanach who has attempted something very daring in his latest book. The multiple books he has published in the past explore complex themes across the Bible. He utilizes commentaries throughout the ages but pays particular attention to recent studies, including critical academic works. He will take any perceptive insight that fits into the Orthodox view of the text, regardless of its source. Those books are Biblical analyses for advanced students by a master teacher. In A Synagogue Companion, Rabbi Angel attempts something completely different. Rather than addressing the advanced student, Rabbi Angel reaches out to the average synagogue attendee with deep literary insights into the holy text. This is a challenging task. He must balance the needs of his intended audience with the sophisticated methodologies and sources he uses. Yet he succeeds marvelously in this astonishingly simple yet profound book. On each parashah, Rabbi Angel writes a few short essays using primarily modern techniques of commentary to explain key themes and passages. With his exceptional clarity, he offers popular adaptations of critical and literary studies that are appropriate for synagogue reading (presumably in between aliyot). Because he is so meticulous at listing his sources, the reader sees the breadth of his reading and the humility of his writing, quoting web sites and scholarly journals that are insightful, even if outside mainstream scholarship. The result is stunning—thoughtful insights and ethical lessons that are relevant because they reflect timely concerns yet textually sound because they emerge from rigorous analyses. The book concludes with similar studies of haftarot and, remarkably, prayer. Rabbi Angel applies these same methods of textual study to the prayerbook, enlightening and inspiring toward more meaningful tefillah. A Synagogue Companion is the rare commentary that offers profound insights for everyone, regardless of background, as long as they are interested in the synagogue texts.