National Scholar Updates

Whenever I think of the huge demonstration of Hareidi yeshiva students at the beginning of this month, I think of Gateshead Yeshiva in England where I spent many years studying Talmud. It is Europe’s most famous yeshiva and a bastion of Torah study in the Hareidi world. Paradoxically, I also think of Spinoza’s incomparable masterpiece, the Ethics, written in a small room in Voorburg, the Netherlands.

I come from a completely secular background with no Jewish education, but good schooling in secular philosophy where Kant, Hume and Wittgenstein reigned supreme. When I ventured to have a look at Gateshead Yeshiva with the intention of learning Talmud, I did not know what was awaiting me. I expected a Jewish university for talmudic studies where enlightened teachers and students would discuss the latest problems in theology and talmudic historiography. But nothing was further from the truth. This was not even Yeshiva University. It’s not just that there were no secular studies and no talk about Plato’s theory of immortality or Leibniz’s famous theodicy; this was an altogether different planet. There was nothing but one supreme endeavor: learning Talmud, combined with Rabbi Aryeh Leib Heller’s (1) classic Ketzos HaChoshen and Rabbi Yaakov ben Yaakov Moshe Lorberbaum’s (2) Nesivos HaMishpat, two brilliant talmudic works.

There were 300 of us, and we slept in our overcoats in what some people called a bedroom, where the temperature was far below zero. Our neigel vasser (3) was frozen in the morning. There was no lobby in the yeshiva where we could relax, nor was there a cafeteria. We knew that the food we ate was practically taken from the mouths of our roshei yeshiva. Our menahel ruhani (spiritual mentor), Rabbi Hizkiyahu Eliezer Kahan z”l, was as poor as a church mouse but looked like a king in his spotless frock coat and with his long, carefully combed white beard. He was a “Nevardoker” – a student of the famous Nevardok Yeshiva (called after a city in Lithuania) of pre-Holocaust Europe, which was dedicated to strict discipline and unfailing religious devotion. The non-Jews in Gateshead knew that when Rabbi Kahan, who walked as upright as a soldier, passed by in the afternoon, it was exactly 4:00 p.m. – not a minute later and not a minute earlier. They could not help but take their hats off to this remarkable human being who was a great tzaddik.

When you entered the yeshiva, you were no longer sure in which century you were living – the 5th, 12th, 17th or 20th. This was a world unto itself, made up of singularly focused people. There was no walking out to the street for a few minutes to get some fresh air; no option of going to a kosher restaurant to get a cup of coffee or have a falafel; no chance of meeting a religious girl studying at the famous Gateshead Seminary. Although 150 of them were right around the corner, they were light-years away from our yeshiva. Not only was it dangerous to walk in the streets, since so many drunken people wandered around, but no one even had any interest in doing so. It was considered bitul zman (a waste of time). There was one supreme goal: shtaigen in lernen (excelling in learning).

The roshei yeshiva showed incredible integrity, deep religiosity and a total absence of any personal agenda. There was no competition between them, no scandals and no quarrels. Just Torah in all of its splendor. What counted was the service of God through learning the Talmud, a holy text of infinite sublimity. This monumental text took them back to Mount Sinai, and through its pages they relived the greatest moments in all of Jewish history. There was much naiveté, a withdrawal from the world, which made the rabbis seem like human angels while studying the laws of damages and injuries. There were also mussar shmoozen. These were not intellectual discourses like Kant’s sophisticated insights about ethics; they were emotional, often spontaneous, outbursts of love for God and man. Through the singsong chants, they would lift us up to heaven and ask of us to be supreme human beings and Jews. Nothing in this world comes close to those religious experiences.

I spent 12 years in yeshivot, and then completed my Ph.D. Today, when I speak with many people who reject the yeshiva world and criticize it harshly for its faults, I realize that although I agree with many of their critical assessments, they fail to understand the inner music of these institutions.

They do not realize that this introverted but remarkable world somehow lifted the Jews out of their misery throughout history and gave them the strength to survive all their enemies under the most intolerable conditions brought on by anti-Semitism. It was this denial of time that made the Jews eternal. The yeshiva world was no doubt very small compared to what it is now, but until the emancipation it was the pride of the entire Jewish world. The Talmud afforded the Jews wings, enabling them to fly to other worlds; to return to the past that no longer existed; and to look toward worlds that were still to come. It became the Jews’ portable homeland, and their complete immersion in its texts made them indestructible even as they were tortured and killed. The Talmud became their survival kit, which ultimately empowered their offspring to establish the State of Israel, nearly 2000 years after they were exiled from their land. This is unprecedented in all of the history of mankind.

For nearly 2000 years the yeshiva world made Jews view life sub specie aeternitatis, as Spinoza called it – from the perspective of eternity. Indeed, it allowed them to leave behind ordinary history and become a-historical. Jews stepped out of history because it was the only way to survive in history. And so the yeshiva world gave the Jewish people a tool for survival, which no one could match for the last 2000 years. Had the yeshiva world not done so, the Jewish people would never have endured, the State of Israel would not have been created, and no Jews – neither religious nor secular – would have lived in this wonderful country. All Israelis owe their lives to the wondrous yeshiva world, whether they like it or not.

In some way, Spinoza was a yeshiva student. He lived in his small room in Voorburg, and that was his beit midrash. Like the yeshiva students, he nearly never left it. There he built his universe and wrote his magnum opus. Consistent with his own philosophy, he too lived outside of history. His deep thoughts, insights and noble feelings are not of this world.

They too are the product of sub specie aeternitatis and therefore suspect. In the long run they will break down, because one might be able to escape this world, even for a long time, but ultimately one needs to return. Thoughts that are eternal and untouchable are too beautiful and, for most people, unreachable. And so it is with the yeshiva world. Learning Talmud without being able to put much of its teachings into practice is too abstract and too unworldly.
With the establishment of the State of Israel, Jews were forced to re-enter history. But after 2000 years of living as yeshiva students and followers of Spinoza’s saintly teachings, it is a painful transformation. Most of our leaders, our government, and the roshei yeshiva have not yet realized that we are still hanging in suspense. We live with one foot in the world of the yeshiva and Spinoza, and the other foot on the ground with all its challenges and harsh realities. Our political leaders want us to come down and stand with both feet on the ground, while the yeshiva world wants to stay in the beit midrash of Spinoza, in heaven. Both will have to realize that their goals are unrealistic. It is much too early to decide whether we should come down with both feet on the ground, or continue to stay in heaven with at least one foot. We still find ourselves at a crossroads. One is reminded of the story told about a former premier of China who was asked what the impact of the French Revolution was on modern European history. His reply was, “It’s too early to say.”

What our political leaders have to ask themselves is whether it is already possible to fully return to history. Our enemies surrounding us are getting stronger and stronger. Their hate increases daily. Israel now finds itself in an unprecedented and precarious situation, more and more isolated. We are close to becoming, once again, a nation that “dwells alone,” as our biblical arch-enemy Bil’am stated thousands of years ago. (4) Can we really afford to fully enter into history bound by its normative rules, and be defeated by these very rules because we are not yet strong enough? Wouldn’t it be better to stay with one foot in the world of sub specie aeternitatis, outside of history? In fact, isn’t the very existence of the State of Israel a bit too miraculous to fit the norms of history? Perhaps we should make sure that some of our people, our yeshiva students, continue to live outside of history so that they can rescue our nation if history does not accept us as real players and we would otherwise disappear. Isn’t it true that we are treated as a people with no history, as the United Nations, many European countries, and even the American administration use double standards when judging us, not allowing us to be part of conventional history? We are still living through the birth-pangs, as yet unable to say what the baby will look like.

On the other hand, it is our Hareidi roshei yeshiva and those recognized as the gedolei hador who are guilty of not realizing that we Jews must return to history at some point, and if they don’t want to join us they may lose us altogether and they themselves may not survive. They seem to be completely oblivious to the radical change that has taken place in the Jewish world – including their own yeshiva world – after the Holocaust and the establishment of the State of Israel. We have been taught that in the long run it is impossible for all of us to stay outside of history. The Holocaust has taught us that we cannot survive ad infinitum without entering history. We have too much eternity and too little geography. To argue that our yeshiva students are the ones who really defend us against our enemies, and that we do not need soldiers, is an escape from reality and as anti-halakhic as can be. It is a rewriting of Judaism that the Hareidi leadership cannot even accuse the Reform of doing.

Both the secular and the Hareidi utterly lack historical perspective. The secular have to learn that we may need to keep some people outside of history, and the Hareidi leadership will have to realize that now that we have a state of our own, all of us, without exception, must serve in Tzahal because we are trying to get back into history. In fact, every young Jewish male outside of Israel should feel it his absolute moral obligation to serve for a few months in the Israeli army, because by now world Jewry is depending on the State of Israel, if only so that when it really goes wrong in Europe or the United States there will be a haven for them.

It cannot be denied that the Israeli government made a major blunder in the way it handled the need to draft yeshiva students for army service. Some Knesset members believe that they won, but in reality it was a monumental loss and they became the laughing stock of Israeli society by arguing for equal service by all. Everyone knows that there’s no such thing as equality in the army. Some people risk their lives, others do not. If all were equal, the army wouldn’t function. We also know that a Jewish State will never be able to put people in jail because they learn Torah.

Both parties should have learned from the great British Jewish philosopher Isaiah Berlin who states that there are no ideal solutions in this world. There are only tradeoffs. “You cannot combine full liberty with full equality… Justice and mercy, knowledge and happiness can collide,” says Berlin. It is not that such perfect harmony cannot be created because of practical difficulties. It is that “utopian solutions are in principle incoherent and unimaginable… so there have to be choices.” One can only choose how much equality and how much liberty, how much mercy and how much justice. Belief in a perfect world “cannot but lead to suffering, misery, blood, terrible oppression.” (5)

The only thing the government can do is suggest that Hareidi yeshiva students go for basic training and build yeshivot in the army. The students would have to walk around in uniform and learn full time, learn with other soldiers, do community service, or something similar. Fair? Certainly not. But fairness is not a value that can always work in the military.

Only a tradeoff can work; there is no other option. And by allowing these students to study while in the army, we at least remind ourselves that we may still have to be an a-historical people and that we cannot yet afford to live solely within history. It is still too dangerous. If some of us are full-time cooks in the army, others can be full time learners in the army. Much too expensive? Sure! But you cannot have your cake and eat it too.

Still, the greatest mistake was not made by the government but by the Hareidi leadership. When it organized a demonstration in which nearly 600,000 black-hatted yeshiva students participated to show their love for Torah, one could hear a pin drop just before the crowd burst out in an unprecedented cry of Shema Yisrael. That was the perfect opportunity to prove their love for our brave soldiers and all of Israeli society by having all 600,000 men and women recite prayers for the welfare of the soldiers and all Jews in Israel. That would not only have been a great kiddush Hashem; it also would have turned Israeli society around and healed much of the animosity between the Hareidi and non-Hareidi communities. Yeshiva students would have been seen in a different light. Instead of having upset hundreds of thousands of Israelis, among whom many have lost their sons and daughters in combat, it would have created an entirely different atmosphere in the country. There is little doubt that most yeshiva students would have done it with great love. The failure to ask them to do so is not just a missed opportunity. It is completely irresponsible and a terrible tragedy. When the world-renowned, Hareidi halakhic authority Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Aurbach z”l was asked to which graves of tzaddikim one should go to pray, he said to go to the military cemeteries. The fact that the Hareidi leadership did not tell 600,000 of their followers to pray for our soldiers proves beyond doubt how small-minded are those who are recognized as gedolei hador.

To paraphrase Spinoza: All noble men are as great as they are rare.
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1. Rabbi, talmudist and halachist in Galicia, 1745-1812.
2. Rabbi and respected posek in Lissa (today known as Leszno), Poland, 1760-1832.
3. Water put near one’s bed at night for washing hands upon arising.
4. Bamidbar 23:9.
5. Ramin Jahanbegloo, Conversations with Isaiah Berlin (London: Halban Publishers, 2007) pp. 142-3.

The Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals has been co-sponsoring a ten-part series of weekly classes with Lincoln Square Synagogue in the First Book of Samuel (68th Street and Amsterdam Avenue in Manhattan). Wednesdays from 7:15-8:15 pm from January 29-April 2. With this series winding down, we are discussing the possibility of future classes. Stay tuned for further announcements.

As a bonus to all participants in the series at Lincoln Square Synagogue, we distributed copies of my new book published through the Institute, A Synagogue Companion. By now, all Institute members should have received copies of A Synagogue Companion. If you are interested in ordering multiple copies to distribute at your school or synagogue at a significantly reduced rate, please contact Rabbi Marc Angel, at [email protected].

The regular Conversations schedule is on track, with the next issue scheduled for publication in May. You may acquire copies (paperback or kindle) of my recently republished collection of essays on Tanakh, Through an Opaque Lens, at amazon.com. My next publication project through the Institute is a Holiday Companion that will contain insights and explanations of the readings, prayers, and rituals of the holidays. It should be available some time next fall. I'm also working on a new collection of essays on Tanakh, with a focus on learning methodology. We will be publishing that through Kodesh Press.

Some other teaching highlights from February-March include: Shabbat Feb 7-8: I was the scholar-in-residence at Yeshiva University. We explored the interrelationship between traditional and academic methods of Tanakh study.

Shabbat Feb 15: I taught the Shabbat morning class at Congregation Ohav Shalom in New York: Hur and Pharaoh's daughter.

Sunday Feb 23: I gave a class on Megillat Esther at the Kingsway Jewish Center in Brooklyn.

Shabbat Feb 28-March 1: I was the scholar-in-residence at Cornell University.

Monday March 3: I taught a class on the nature of Midrash to 12th graders at the Heschel High School in New York.

In March, I gave a four-part series to rabbinical students at Yeshivat Chovevei Torah in Riverdale, NY on the Book of Jeremiah and underlying learning methodology.

Thursday March 6: I conducted a teacher training session on the Book of Jeremiah for the Tanakh faculty at the Ramaz Upper School in New York.

Shabbat March 7-8: I was the scholar-in-residence at Congregation Shaarei Orah in Teaneck, New Jersey. This Shabbat featured several talks on Sephardic and Ashkenazic liturgy and philosophy and how a study of both deepens our appreciation of tradition.

Thursday March 20: The Institute for Jewish Ideas sponsored a book reception for my two most recent books: Vision from the Prophet and Counsel from the Elders (OU Press, 2013), and A Synagogue Companion (Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals, 2014). It was at the Drisha Institute in Manhattan. Speakers included Rabbi Marc Angel, Rabbi Saul Berman (Yeshiva University), Rachel Friedman (Drisha Institute), and Rabbi Shaul Robinson (Lincoln Square Synagogue).

I welcome your ideas and suggestions. Please feel free to contact me at [email protected].

(A Devar Torah relating to Parashat Shemini - Leviticus 9:1 - 11:47)

There are times when the Torah tells us a story that serves as a metaphor for issues that we face today. This week's Torah Portion - Parashat Shemini - relates the strange story of Aaron's sons Nadav and Avihu. As sons of the first Kohen Gadol (High Priest), Nadav and Avihu were also Kohanim who received instructions from their father on how to conduct the sacrificial services inside the newly inaugurated Mishkan. When they entered the sacred space designated for the Kohanim to offer sacrifices, the Torah relates a peculiar incident:

Aaron's sons, Nadav and Avihu, each took his fire pan, placed fire on it, and then incense on it. They offered it before God, but it was unauthorized fire which God had not instructed them to offer. Fire came forth from before God and it consumed them, so that they died before God.

The Hebrew word for "unauthorized fire" is "esh zara," which, in addition to "unauthorized," is also translated as "foreign." Both of these translations point to the fact that Nadav and Avihu entered the House of God and introduced foreign elements that were strange to Judaism and Jewish tradition. By introducing these foreign practices, they tampered with the traditional flow of the services, and doing so was considered such a grievous offense that they were consumed by fire.

I read Jewish newspapers as much for the advertisements as for the articles. A quick scan of the advertisements by synagogues and Jewish organizations tells you what's really going on in the Jewish community. Synagogues that are desperate to "draw in the big crowd" will resort to anything these days. In recent months, I have seen advertisements for "Buddhist Shabbat Meditation Services" and "Gospel Shabbat Concerts," and a colleague recently told me how shocked he was that a synagogue held a "St. Patrick's Day Purim" event.

What can we say about this growing - and in my opinion disturbing -- phenomenon in the Jewish world? Perhaps we have, in fact, failed to make a compelling case for "old school" Jewish tradition, but are these wild, quick fix alternatives really the answer to our problems? Is the introduction of Buddhism, Gospel choirs, St. Patrick's Day revelries, or any other "esh zara" into our services the only way to infuse new meaning into tradition? Do those who lead or attend such spins on Jewish spirituality actually feel that they are participating in something with Jewish meaning?

Our transmission of a meaningful, compassionate and relevant expression of Jewish tradition certainly leaves a lot to be desired. But there are limits to where we can and should search for answers to our pressing questions. Judaism is a rich, vibrant and fascinating tradition. It is intellectual, spiritual, cultural, communal and personal all at once. We have a vast treasure of Jewish literature, along with 3000-plus years of history. Shall we give all of that away in the name of filling seats one Friday night at a gospel performance in synagogue? True creativity lies in the ability to infuse ancient traditions with modern meaning. Conducting a Shabbat service with a Buddhist twist is hardly creative. It's a cheap imitation.

Nadav and Avihu brought an "unauthorized offering" whose spirit was alien to Jewish tradition. The foreign flames that they introduced in the services came back to burn them. Indeed, a powerful metaphor for many rabbis and congregants today.

Questions of personal status are among the most sensitive issues in Judaism and thus require responsible rabbinic leadership.
That is one reason why there was such an outcry last year when Israel’s Chief Rabbinate refused to allow my teacher, Rabbi Avi Weiss, to vouch for the Jewishness of a couple marrying in Israel. While the Chief Rabbinate ultimately backed down and agreed to accept Rabbi Weiss’ word, there are still unanswered questions regarding this episode.

On Jan. 4, 2014, the Rabbinical Council of America — a leading Orthodox rabbinic association — issued this statement: “Recent assertions that the Rabbinical Council of America advised the Chief Rabbinate of Israel to reject the testimony of RCA member Rabbi Avi Weiss are categorically untrue.”

The problem with this statement is that when I visited the chief rabbi’s office with Weiss’ attorney, we were told directly that the chief rabbinate was acting upon the recommendation of RCA officials.

We may not know who is telling the truth in this case, but we do know that the RCA has not been candid about its recent approach to conversion.
In 2007 the RCA drafted a new centralized policy on conversions. This policy brought conversions under the auspices of a new and more stringent approach. At the time, there were some who warned that this new policy could lead to retroactive annulments of previously accepted conversions.

But the RCA protested loudly that it would never retroactively reject conversions and that to do so would be a blatant Torah violation. In 2008, the RCA’s Rabbi Steven Pruzansky dismissed suggestions that the new policy would lead to the reevaluation of all past conversions by RCA rabbis as “an especially despicable falsehood, as it serves only to make generations of converts in the Jewish community anxious about their status and acceptance in the community at large.”

“The reality is that not one past geirus is being reviewed by the RCA or the Beth Din of America, and such was never contemplated,” he wrote, using a term for conversion. “To even suggest otherwise is to blatantly violate the Torah’s numerous admonitions against tormenting the ger.”

Yet we now know that the RCA is casting aspersions on prior conversions by its own members. We know this thanks to Karen Brunwasser, who last month wrote about her personal ordeal in The Washington Jewish Week.
Brunwasser spelled out how, despite her Orthodox conversion nearly 35 years ago, she was rejected by the Israeli chief rabbi’s office in her initial attempts to establish her Judaism and thereby marry her beloved fiancé. She wrote movingly of the emotional turmoil she went through and how she was concerned that it might affect forever her relationship with the new family she was hoping to join.

The RCA, through its Beth Din of America, played a crucial role in actively hindering Brunwasser’s effort to marry.

Brunwasser converted as an infant with a beit din made up of Orthodox rabbis who were graduates of Yeshiva University’s rabbinical school and RCA members. Rabbi Bernard Rothman, a former RCA vice president, wrote a letter to the chief rabbi’s office vouching for Brunwasser’s conversion. In this letter, Rothman praised the head of the beit din that converted Brunwasser, Rabbi David Wachtfogel, as an Orthodox rabbi of the highest standards.

However, as was the case with many RCA rabbis of that era, he was for a time a rabbi in a synagogue in which men and women sat together. Many of these rabbis took jobs at synagogues with mixed seating after receiving explicit guidance on the matter from Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, mainstream American Orthodoxy’s leading authority.

In the past, conversions by Orthodox rabbis who had served in mixed-seating congregations were routinely accepted in the Jewish community. But now, thanks to the direction of the current leadership of the RCA, such decades-old conversions are being rejected.

Thus, on Aug. 11, 2013, Rabbi Michoel Zylberman of the RCA’s Beth Din of America wrote the following in an email to Israeli chief rabbi’s office regarding Brunwasser’s conversion: “We are unable to approve the conversions done by a rabbi who serves in a synagogue without a mechitza.”

Zylberman continues: “Of course, one can argue with this position and if you want to be lenient here on the basis of other authorities you can do that which is right in your eyes.”

Responding to apparent confusion on the part of the chief rabbi’s office regarding Rothman’s current status with the RCA, Zylberman concludes: “With respect to the letter of Rabbi Rothman in which he is signed as a ‘former Vice-President of the RCA,’ that was twenty years ago and he did not sign in the name of the organization.”

Despite what the RCA promised in 2008, it is retroactively negating and rooting out converts who were for decades fully integrated into the Orthodox Jewish community. In doing so, it has set a dangerous precedent that should make every convert afraid and all of us angry and disappointed in its leadership.

A few years ago, I spoke about domestic violence on Yom Kippur. Afterward, two very sweet members of my synagogue came up to me and said, "Rabbi, you shouldn't speak about such ugly things from the pulpit. That doesn't happen here."

I thought to myself, "Two rows behind you and a little to the left, it does."

Domestic violence happens in Jewish homes. This article is the reopening of the conversation, because we need to confront this issue. I wish we didn't have to. But this isn't only an issue in the Catholic Church. It is much closer to home than we'd like to admit.

Abuse happens within Jewish families. Physical and verbal abuse happen in Jewish families.

We don't like to talk about what is ugly and painful. We feel shame in revealing our less than perfect family lives. We don't want the outside world to know. We don't want each other to know. So we remain silent. But we are hurting. Some of us are suffering, right here, in our midst. Others inflict deep pain upon those they claim to love.

Victims of abuse can be women or men, young or old. It has been suggested that, on average, Jewish women stay in abusive relationships for five to seven years longer than non-Jewish women, primarily because they don't want to believe that Domestic Violence happens to Jewish women.

There are aspects of traditional Judaism, present even in modern congregations, that maintain the weak position of the victim in the face of abuse. Here are two:

1) Some rabbis have invoked the Jewish ideal of "shalom bayyit," of maintaining peace in the home, as justification for sending a woman back to her abuser. Some rabbis continue to counsel this way, and have only served to disempower suffering Jews.

2) A get, or Jewish divorce decree, by Orthodox law, can only be issued by a man, who can torment his partner with the get's legal power and its control over the wife's future. This makes the vulnerable woman an agunah, a chained woman, trapped by Judaism's rules.

These two aspects of traditional Jewish life are problems. They make victimization possible within Jewish families, and they must be changed. We must take the deeply Jewish step forward and, together, condemn abuse of any kind in our community.

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Abuse can be physical, sexual, verbal or emotional. It can come in the form of the ongoing use of demeaning words like "you're stupid," or ugly, or crazy. It can be total access to and control over bank accounts and finances. It can be threats to injure children or pets. It can be monitoring and limiting friendships, going out, talking on the phone.

Domestic violence is not about having a bad temper or being out of control. It is about power and control—one person exerting power and control over another. Domestic violence impacts on the entire family, injuring also the children who witness abuse by hearing it or seeing it.

I offer two anonymous testimonies from Jewish victims of abuse. One is physical, and might help those in verbally abusive relationships say, "Oh, that's not me." But the second is a case of verbal abuse, perhaps even harder to escape.

1) "The Jewish Community sees my husband as a respected professional who is educated, talented, outgoing, friendly, loving, caring, and compassionate. They were not witness to what took place in the privacy of our home. No one saw him hit, kick, and choke me. No one heard him tell our child, 'Mommy's dead.' No one was present when he threatened to commit suicide in the presence of our child, wipe me off the face of the earth, and promised that I would not survive the night."

2) "I have a boyfriend who is charming to everyone, a real mentsch, sharp thinker—and everyone around looks up to him. So you can understand how I feel alone in how I am feeling, since everyone thinks so highly of him. It's difficult to talk to him about anything because everything I say is either "stupid" or "crazy." Sometimes I have to lie because I'm afraid of how he'll react to certain things. I don't mean to ramble—today was just a bad day. He says it's my fault that the relationship is going south. I know I have to distance myself from the relationship but, honestly, I don't think I can."

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We bear witness to these anonymous testimonies, wondering whether or not people sitting near us are in similar situations. We wonder, perhaps, what to do with the inescapable knowledge that there is, most likely, someone reading this article who is hurting.

So how do we do that? We can turn to halakha, Jewish Law, for guidance. The following is a brief summary of a lengthy teshuva, a Jewish ruling, by Rabbi Elliot Dorff, entitled "Family Violence (HM 424.1995)":

1) Beating and other forms of physical abuse, such as sexual abuse, are absolutely forbidden by Jewish law.

2) Verbal abuse is absolutely forbidden by Jewish law.

3) An abuser has the responsibility to acknowledge his behavior and do teshuva by getting help.

4) Parents may never cause a bruise to their children, no matter what decisions they make regarding corrective parenting.

5) Children may not beat their parents, even when parents were formerly abusive themselves.

6) The requirement that one preserve not only one's own life (pikkuah nefesh) but others as well, demanded by the laws of the pursuer (rodef) and of not standing idly by when another is in danger (lo ta'amod al dam ra'ekha), not only permit, but require others who discover spousal or parental abuse to help the victim report the abuse and take steps to prevent repetition of it. Jews who suspect that children are being abused must report such abuse to the civil authorities, no matter what the consequences. Saving a life takes precedence over the presumption that parental custody is best for the child.

These policies are halakhically binding. They are not optional. We are commanded by our tradition to protect ourselves and to intervene when necessary for others. There are times when it is necessary to act to protect the vulnerable.

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Opening up darkened spaces is a scary, saddening task, but it is a sacred one as well. We've been taught by our tradition that "anyone who saves one soul, it is said about her that she has saved a whole world” (TB Sanhedrin 37a).

And one person's safety is reason enough for us all to spend the energy talking about abuse.

Perpetrating violence on an intimate partner is an affliction with a spiritual dimension that threatens the welfare of the entire community. We act with commitment to the health of our community when we hold abusers accountable. We act in accordance with halakha's call to pursue justice when we declare that abusers cannot remain in our midst and must dwell outside the camp.

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The fabric of our Jewish homes is tradition's instruction to create spaces of safety. The fabric of our homes is our Jewish ethics, which demand that we pursue justice. The fabric of our homes is our developing liturgies and holy days, which call upon us to heal and create wholeness in our world.

For the welfare of both the individual homes we are blessed to have, as well as the collective one we create together, I pray that we commit ourselves to doing so.

May our homes be safe and healthy.

Development of Formal Jewish Education for Women in the Orthodox Community The issues surrounding the education and status of women have been universal over time and cultures. As late as 1868, the English parliament was debating whether women could own property. One of its statesmen announced the following, which was picked up by The London Times, “giving women the right to own property will destroy marriages and society as we know it” (Munday, 2012). This issue, incidentally, was resolved by the Torah thousands of years ago in the divine decision relayed by Moses to the five daughters of Zelophehad, giving them the right to own land (Num. 27:1–11). But the defining issue today for Orthodox women are the problems caused by their rise to the top of the educational ladder in both secular and religious studies. Their rise in status, by virtue of their professional achievements in the secular world, is well known. What is not as well known are their professional achievements in the religious world. In the last century, formalized Torah education for women began with the Bais Yaakov movement founded by Sarah Schnirer (1883–1935). This pioneer Jewish educator from Krakow, Poland felt the need to establish a structured school system for girls, which opened there in 1918 with 25 students. It later spread throughout Poland with a complete curriculum of Hebrew and secular studies. Of special interest was the formidable religious studies curriculum, which consisted of Tanakh (Bible) with commentaries, explanations of the liturgy, Dinim (laws), Jewish history, Hebrew language, Yiddish, and Jewish ethics and values. A teachers’ seminary sprang up later to train future women educators (M.M. Brayer, 1986, pp. 122–125). In America, the Bais Yaakov movement began in the Williamsburg section of New York City in 1937, when it came under the umbrella of the Agudath Israel movement and has since grown considerably throughout the country. An early supporter of Sarah Schnirer was the world-famous sage, Chofetz Chaim (1838–1932), who gave a pragmatic reason for the need to establish the Bais Yaakov schools: Formerly a woman lived in her father’s home and was ensconced in Jewish tradition and followed the halakhot she observed there. In this home-oriented society there seemed to be no necessity of teaching a woman Torah; but in our mobile society, where women are no longer confined to the home and secular education is open to them, one should teach them Torah to prevent them from leaving Judaism and forgetting their traditional values. (M.M. Brayer, 1986, p. 129) If this was true of the Chofetz Chaim’s generation in Europe, how much more so is it necessary in twenty-first century America, where assimilation and intermarriage are at an all-time high. This legacy of Torah scholarship for women that took root during that era has flowered into the advanced level of scholarship we witness today in America and Israel. Although there have always been exceptional women who had higher education, they were relatively few. Beruriah, wife of R. Meir (second century C.E.), Yalta, wife of R. Nahman bar Yaakov (fourth century C.E.), and the daughters of Rashi (eleventh century C.E .) are noteworthy examples (M.M. Brayer, 1986, pp. 156–160). Each came from prominent rabbinical families and their arranged marriages with leading rabbinical figures of their respective generations helped cement their deserved reputations. The story of Beruriah, in particular, is worthy of special mention. Her vast knowledge, character, and scholarly reputation rivaled that of her husband Rabbi Meir. She took issue with the talmudic statement that women are literally “simple-minded” (Da’atan Kalot) or better said “emotionally fragile.” Her husband insisted that this statement was true. To prove his point, Rabbi Meir resorted to unbefitting actions that ultimately led to her death (Rashi, Avodah Zara18b). Although circumstances today are far more favorable for learned women, there nevertheless remains a deep-seated resistance to granting them a greater voice in religious affairs, as evidenced by the increased efforts to divide and separate the genders. Never in our history have there been so many highly learned Orthodox women in the scholarly text-based realm of Torah, Talmud, and halakha. In Israel we have an abundance of scholarly professional Orthodox women, heretofore unheard of in Jewish tradition: To’anot, professional women (advocates) who help in dealing with halakhic matters of divorce; Dayanot/Yo’atzot (Judges/Advisors) who make halakhic decisions on women’s issues relating to family purity; Menahalot (Directors) of women’s teacher seminaries such as Michlalah, Machon Gold, and so forth; and Women’s yeshivot (academies) such as Matan, Migdal Oz, and so forth. This virtual explosion of higher learning inevitably seeks an outlet in communal leadership in more proactive ways. As a result, we now find Orthodox women serving on community religious councils in Israel, a venue previously reserved only for men. In a recent column published in The Jerusalem Post (June, 2012, pp. 22–28) Rabbi Shlomo Riskin wrote, “Women’s greater involvement in Torah learning and teaching will produce different dimensions to the quality of Torah which is emerging.” Rabbi Riskin also reported, in an interview he had with the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, in which the Rebbe stated that “the greatest challenge facing Orthodox Jewry is the position of women in society and our halakhic response to a newly found acceptance of female equality within Western culture.” The Rebbe’s observation is indicative of one of the prime motivating factors behind this unprecedented growth. It is the rise of the Feminist Movement that began in the 1960s and that has propelled women’s issues to the forefront of Western culture. Under the leadership of Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug, and other outspoken American Jewish feminists, this movement has impacted Modern Orthodox women’s thinking as well. A number of Orthodox women led by Blu Greenberg established the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance (JOFA), which challenges traditional views about women’s participation in Jewish life cycle events and in religious services. In its wake came the emergence of separate Women’s Prayer Groups, which began to appear in larger Jewish communities around the country. These services gave well-educated Orthodox women an opportunity to practice their skills and to assume leadership positions in conducting their own services, hitherto only open to their male counterparts. Subsequently, other Orthodox women’s organizations and adult schools began to emerge. The formation of the American women’s adult school Drisha occurred in 1979, which as its Hebrew name indicates, involves inquiry into fairly advanced Hebrew religious texts. These new female-driven developments both here and in Israel pose a threat to the traditional hegemony of male Orthodox leadership. They are coming at a time when the American Orthodox rabbinate is also undergoing increased growth in numbers and influence. We therefore now turn our attention to tracking this Orthodox rabbinical growth pattern, and how it interfaces with the changes in status experienced by Orthodox women discussed above. The Growing Empowerment of the Orthodox Rabbinate In the pre-Holocaust era, “parish” rabbis served the religious needs of American Jewry, serving in communities large and small scattered throughout the length and breadth of this great country. These local Orthodox rabbis were the posekim (decisors) of Jewish law as it applied primarily to ritual questions relating to prayer services, holiday observances, kashruth, marriage and divorce, and death and burial. Their influence in addressing broader social, economic, and political issues was quite limited. The role of the rabbi was more insular, as he was tied to the religious needs of the local community. This is in stark contrast to the role of the Hassidic rebbe, who is viewed as a personal family mentor in all facets of life both secular and religious. The Hassidim were at that time a small minority within the Orthodox fold. After World War II this picture began to change dramatically. Orthodox communities gravitated to cities with large concentrations of Jews— Chicago, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Los Angeles, and so forth. This movement was in no small measure a response to growing assimilation of American Jewry, especially in smaller far-flung communities. To counter this wave of assimilation, the Orthodox communities began to build Jewish Day Schools, which gained momentum in the 1940s. This centralization of Orthodox Jewry together with improved communication via the media allowed the Orthodox rabbinate to exert a wider sphere of influence on a national scale, especially in kashruth (kosher dietary) matters (for example, the Orthodox Union, and in Day School education—Torah uMesorah). Strong centralized rabbinic leadership represented greater security and safety not only in combating assimilation and intermarriage, but also in developing an intensive expanding educational system that would produce future Orthodox scholars and lay leaders. As a result, rabbinic bodies became stronger, larger, and more powerful in the lives of their constituents. Although numerically much smaller than the Conservative and Reform movements, the Orthodox are now the fastest growing of the four American religious denominations. In a recent population study The New York Times reported that of the 1.1 million Jews living in New York City, over 40 percent are Orthodox, a rise from 33 percent in 2002, a decade earlier, and that 74 percent of all Jewish children in the city are Orthodox (UJA Federation of New York, 2010). Considering that its ally is the powerful Orthodox rabbinic establishment of the State of Israel (which did not exist in the pre-Holocaust era), Orthodoxy has become a formidable presence today in the world Jewry. This population increase is due not only to the increased birth rate among Orthodox Jews, especially among the Hassidim, but also to the growing numbers of ba’alei teshuvah, disaffected young Jews seeking a more intensive expression of their Jewishness. There is a growing number of Orthodox outreach organizations and yeshivot. Internal Issues within Orthodoxy The challenge for expanding Orthodoxy is no longer external, survival in secular America, but internal, containing and bridging the widening divergence of ideology and practice within its ranks. On the left are the more liberal Modern Orthodox, and on the right are the proliferating Hareidi Orthodox. This ideological divide centers on their respective responses to modernity and to their attitudes toward the surrounding secular environment. Within this attitudinal diversity, there is a perceptible “sliding to the right” (S.C. Heilman, 2006) within centrist Orthodox ranks. As for the role of the local centrist rabbi, he is seen more and more assuming the image of a “rebbe.” The Hassidic rebbe, by virtue of his exalted position, enjoys a special personal relationship with his Hassidim. This translates into the centrist rabbi now becoming more involved in many life issues of his congregants that previously were not part of his job description and for which he was not trained. He is now called upon as a consultant on business financial matters, occupational choices, personal family issues, parenting, sexual abuse, and the sundry societal problems afflicting our youth. Since clergy are often viewed unconsciously as parental figures, the new role of the rabbi as “super parent” induces their congregants to become more “childlike” in this relationship, which means less autonomy and more dependence. This slide to the right is not only apparent in the increasing empowerment of the rabbi, but more so in the intense impact Day School and yeshiva rebbes have in relationship to their students. As a result of their more right-wing education, this generation of students has become very visible today in the Orthodox community. One needs but visit a centrist Orthodox synagogue to observe a conformist trend, where the growing number of young men are garbed in their popular wide-brimmed black hats, black suits, and white shirts. This has come about because they attend Day Schools and yeshivot where the rebbes are recruited from the large pool of candidates available among the Hareidi Orthodox. These students comprise the future leadership of their respective congregations, which are moving in the same right wing direction in which their yeshiva rebbes were educated. This direction embodies a more insular approach to Judaism than that which was experienced by their parents. This rebbe-talmid (teacher-student) model is similar to that of the rebbe-Hassid relationship reflecting a more exclusionist outlook toward Jewish and secular life. Into this more insular social and religious milieu, we now find the learned accomplished Orthodox woman seeking greater acceptance and participation in what were previously traditional male roles. The Psychology of Groupthink To understand the underlying tension between these two movements: aspiring highly educated Orthodox women and the right-leaning Orthodox leadership, we need to examine group psychodynamics in their way of thinking as well as in action. In so doing we can better anticipate what lies ahead between these two contending groups. We are taught in Pirke Avot (4:1), “who is wise, one who learns from everyone.” Whereas Sigmund Freud is viewed as hostile to religion, his psychological insights into the workings of groups termed “groupthink” can nevertheless be instructive in analyzing our subject. One of people’s most basic needs is to belong. As a result, people will attach themselves to one or more persons. They receive satisfaction from belonging and being part of the group. The human tendency pushes us to connection with and acceptance by others. One of the difficulties that people anticipate is the fear of loss of love from others in the group. People will, therefore, conform to the group ethos at all costs. As Freud puts it, An individual forming part of a group acquires solely from numeric considerations, a sentiment of invincible power which allows him to yield to instincts, which had he been alone he would perforce had kept under restraint…We know today that by various processes an individual may be brought into such a condition that having entirely lost his conscious personality he obeys the suggestions of the operator (leader) and commits acts in utter contradiction to his character and habits. (Freud. Vol. 18, pp. 67f) Freud argues that there is a contagion of affect in groups. This is best demonstrated at organized sports games, where the enthusiasm and identification with the winner is seen in clothing identifying with the team and other external signs. This enthusiasm and affect help keep the group cohesive. The downside of this is that group thinking predominates and critical thinking is suspended. This allows the leadership to deliver an edict and there is no questioning or critical thinking regarding something that as individuals may not be acceptable. The power of the leader and the group as a whole is strong enough that to experience being excluded from the group is viewed as punishment and inclusion as reward. Freud lists the army and the church as prime examples of this theory. How do these Freudian insights help illuminate the sources of tension building up in the Orthodox community over the changing status of women? They help explain the psychological causes behind this mentality of “groupthink,” and how this in turn fosters greater conformity, dependency, and compliance with the leaders’ views. These traits of conformity, compliance, and dependence may not be discerned at first. Over time, however, in order to feel accepted by the religious community the person eventually “falls in line.” Dissent and individualism place one on the fringe of the group at best, and rejected at worst. In Freudian terminology, the leader’s demands bypass the person’s superego, i.e. conscience, in the interest of group unity. Groupthink has enabled rabbinic bodies to issue various edicts or humrot (restrictions) designed to further separate the sexes not only at religious services and functions, but also at organizational dinners, lectures, and social functions. The separation of the sexes at religious services has always been the Orthodox model. However, these new humrot exceed normative Orthodox practice that existed in pre-Holocaust America. It may be argued that they are even more stringent than what was observed in most Orthodox communities in pre-Holocaust Europe. This groupthink, however, is regressive because it takes well-educated Orthodox adults and puts them into a childlike role of accepting the arbitrary paternalistic authority represented by Orthodox leadership. The success of these efforts in groupthink finds some Orthodox women not only complying with these segregationist measures, but also abetting them by censuring those individualist women who may think and act differently. In a recent gathering (Asifah) of thousands of Orthodox men concerning issues relating to the use of the Internet, an interviewer asked several men why they were there. They answered in kind, “We cannot seem to control ourselves, so we came to get the rabbi’s guidance to help control our behavior.” This is another example of groupthink, where one’s behavior is controlled by the leader, rather than determined by one’s own free will. Noted psychoanalyst, Eric Fromm, in his discussion of humanistic versus authoritarian ethics provides another psychological source bearing on our subject. In analyzing the concept of authority, he distinguishes between rational and irrational authority. In speaking of the empowerment of the Orthodox leadership, to what kind of authority are we referring, rational or irrational? According to Fromm, irrational authority always seeks power over people, which can either be physical or mental. It is built upon fear because criticism of the authority figure is forbidden. Rational authority, on the other hand, is based on equality of both authority and subject, who differ only in the degree of knowledge and skill in a particular field. Authority on rational grounds is not intimidating and does not call for irrational awe. Rational authority not only permits but also requires constant scrutiny of those subjected to it (E. Fromm, 1942). Rational authority in our case, would allow for Orthodox leadership to adjust to the changing status of women rather than distancing and dividing them from the rest of the community. There is no need for a display of power and control by issuing arbitrary edicts such as we see in the following cases. A number of years ago a Lashon haRa (gossip) campaign targeting women swept the Orthodox community. The women were given stickers to affix to their phones reminding them not to use this means for speaking Lashon haRa. Men apparently are not suspected of violating this restriction! Another campaign directed toward women is the importance of observing higher standards of tseniyut (modesty). It is argued that some of the moral failings of Orthodox men are caused by women’s lack of tseniyut observance. A recent event occurred that illustrates the “progress” of this trend of regressive actions toward women. In 2012, in a large Orthodox community a number of unfortunate events occurred, such as severe accidents, premature illnesses, and sudden deaths. In response to these events a community meeting was called for women with the expectation that it would emphasize the reciting of Tehillim. Several inspirational speakers were invited who would offer comfort to a shaken community. The first male speaker declared that these unfortunate events occurred because women had not adhered sufficiently to the Orthodox tseniyut dress code. The solution presented was for women to become more aware of appropriate modesty, which would help prevent further disasters. A female speaker then offered a more “creative” solution. Each woman upon leaving the meeting was advised to go home and search for a garment that is not tseniyut and discard it. Though it may appear comical to believe that the unfortunate events and the solutions offered had any logic, it certainly demonstrates the psychology and power of groupthink. It also betrays an unconscious fear of the perceived power of women. It shows a tendency to concern oneself with externals such as what we wear, rather than to search internally for ethical and moral failings that apply to both men and women. A number of years ago, I attended an international conference for Orthodox mental health professionals. The theme of a major seminar was “What is happening to Orthodox youth once they attend college?” The two main speakers were very experienced Orthodox professionals. One was the Hillel director of an Ivy League College. The other was the female director (PhD) of an accredited Orthodox women’s college. Each related stories of students who had completed 12 years of Day School education prior to their admission to college. The male director bemoaned the fact that a number of Orthodox students had “forgotten” to bring their tefillin with them to college, did not attend the minyan, and were even seen eating at McDonald’s. He also reported questioning students about a hypothetical case involving cheating on a final exam. Of the religious denominations he questioned, the Orthodox students scored lowest in ethical behavior. The female director of the Orthodox women’s college then spoke about her interviews with Day School graduates applying for admission. Many reported negatively about their previous seminary and Day School experiences, specifically citing their frustrations when asking challenging religious questions. Some complained that teachers were more concerned with externals such as the length of their skirts and the color of their shoes than with their inner spiritual growth. At this point many of the women in the audience spontaneously arose and applauded enthusiastically because they felt, for the first time, someone had validated their own personal experiences. Although these reports were difficult to hear, one would have expected that mental health professionals and clergy in attendance would have taken this as a “wake-up call” to look for ways of addressing these issues. Much to my surprise, the following morning the woman speaker received a verbal reprimand by the conference authorities for her views, unlike the male speaker whose observations on Day School education were even more damaging. Ironically, the next day’s speaker, a rabbi of note, reported about his recent trip to Israel, where he had rushed to prevent his daughter’s expulsion from a seminary for asking too many challenging questions relating to faith. It was disturbing to observe the disproportionate anger directed at the female director, instead of addressing the underlying issue, which is the failure of Day School students to internalize Orthodox religious values. The Day Schools are very successful in teaching texts and rituals to those who remain within the protective environment of the system. However, after they graduate and move on to college, it is apparent that many have not mastered the internal religious discipline needed to adjust to a challenging, secular environment. The discriminatory reaction of the establishment in this episode is further evidence of the growing tension of these two parallel movements, that is, the changing status of women and the implied threat to male leadership. The question persists, how is it, at a time when the status of Orthodox women has risen to unprecedented heights in both secular and religious life that we are witnessing these new regressive actions? As in the previous discussion based on group psychodynamics, here too we may profit from viewing the problem from a psychological perspective. Traditionally, Orthodox leadership was male-dominated primarily because men were the most educated. They therefore are experiencing the change of status of Orthodox women today as a narcissistic injury because they experience it as taking away from, or interfering with their identity as religious leaders. This destabilizing effect upon Orthodox leadership is felt on both a personal and communal level. The male experiences the change in women’s status as an attack on his sense of self and identity. To redress this narcissistic injury requires an immediate response in order to reestablish his sense of value, self-esteem, and equilibrium. The way to do this is apparently to return the status of both men and women to an earlier time and space. Given the growing empowerment of the new rebbe-model in Orthodox life sustained by the groupthink mentality of the laity, these newly instituted edicts represent attempts to redress perceived rabbinical power losses caused by the rise of women’s stature in religious life as will be illustrated in the following timeline chart. These restrictions are not merely random symptoms of a “sliding to the right,” but their chronological and psychological pattern betrays a reactionary policy undeserved by our accomplished women. The following is a partial chronological list of Orthodox women’s professional/educational accomplishments since the 1970s. Timeline of the Rise of Orthodox Women’s Stature in Educational/Religious Life 1970s • Earlier graduates of Orthodox women’s colleges and teacher seminaries, such as Stern College in New York and Machon Gold and Michlalah in Israel, assume positions in Jewish life in America and in Israel. 1976 • Midreshet Lindenbaum, women’s Talmud study movement in Israel (originally Michlelet Bruria founded by Rabbi Chaim Brovender) 1979 • Establishment of Drisha Institute in New York • Establishment of Matan women’s yeshiva in Jerusalem 1980s • Increased Bat Mitzah celebrations for Orthodox girls • Introduction of separate women’s Orthodox prayer groups 1986 • Eshel-Sephardic School for Orthodox Women established in Israel • Midreshet Ein Hanatziv, an Orthodox Women’s college, established by Kibbutz Hadati 1988 • Women begin serving on Israeli Religious Councils. 1990s • Rabbi S. Riskin of Ohr Torah Stone spearheads movement to establish a school for To’anot (female rabbinical advocates) dealing with women’s halakhic issues 1997 • Nishmat, Torah study center for women begins to train Yo’atzot (female halakhic advisors) regarding Niddah (laws of Jewish family purity) • Beginning of J.O.F.A. (Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance) in America • Migdal Oz, a women’s Bet Midrash, established in Israel 1998 • Machon L’Parnasah – Orthodox women’s college established by Touro College in New York 2009 • Sara Hurwitz receives ordination from Rabbi Avi Weiss of Hebrew Institute of Riverdale New York as a “Maharat” • Rabbi Weiss opens Yeshivat Maharat in New York The following is a partial list of various edicts/restrictions enacted by some of the male Orthodox leadership targeting women from 1970s to the present. Whereas these may not reflect the views of many centrist Orthodox rabbis, they are included because the general rightward drift of the Orthodox movement. Measures Taken by Orthodox Leadership to Distance/Separate Men and Women • Greater pressure on women to observe more strictly the laws of tseniyut, with less pressure on males to exert self-control • Introduction of separate seating for Orthodox women at non-religious functions, such as congregational banquets, lectures, and social events • More and more congregational/organizational shiurim (classes) designed separately for men and women • Mehitzot increasingly being erected on the dance floor at weddings to separate men and women • Kiddush celebrations following services increasingly being separated for men and women • National Orthodox organizations press for the closing of separate Orthodox women’s prayer groups because “it divides the family.” (See 1980s on women’s list) • After the first graduating class of To’anot, Israeli rabbinate protested that women are entering an exclusive male space. The following year the To’anot exam was made unusually difficult to prevent further women graduates from entering the field. The Israeli Civil High Court of Justice condemned the rabbinate’s exclusionary policy (see 1990s in women’s list) • National Orthodox rabbinic organizations protest granting of Semikha (ordination) to women and censure Rabbi Avi Weiss for his actions (see 2009 in Women’s list). The following extreme measures are characteristic of some Hareidi communities both in America and Israel. • Signs warning women to observe strictly the laws of tseniyut • Separate entrances for men and women entering into Orthodox buildings • Separate entrances for men and women entering private homes hosting a public celebration or religious simha • Separate shopping hours for men and women in certain upstate New York stores • Separate sidewalks for men and women • Women instructed to sit in the back of public buses in certain neighborhoods in New York and Israel • Male relatives, includeing fathers and grandfathers, are not invited to attend graduations, plays, and even Siddur presentations (1st grade) in certain girl’s schools. Conclusion The beauty of halakha is its adaptability to meet the changing needs of the Jewish people. In less than a century since the advent of formal Jewish education for girls via the Bais Yaakov movement in the beginning of the twentieth century, education for Orthodox Jewish girls and women has reached unprecedented heights in quantity and quality. Orthodox women have established a vast network of schools of higher learning and organizations to sustain this movement. They have reached a stage where they are seeking opportunities for greater positions of leadership, within the framework of halakha that befits their newly won status in Orthodox life. Their motivation is generated by a sincere need to express their deep commitment to God and to religious life. There are enough examples to show where halakha, in the past, has been sensitive to the special needs of women and has adapted accordingly (M.M. Brayer, 1986, p. 152). Moreover, as early as the eleventh century, Jewish women in Franco-Germany demanded the privilege to perform mitzvoth (religious commandments) from which they are exempt if they choose to do so on their own, and Rabbi Yitzhak Halevi (one of Rashi’s teachers) permitted them to do so (Siddur Rashi, 1912, p. 127). However, we are currently seeing in Orthodox leadership a regressive divisive tendency via various edicts that further separate women from their families and from normal social interactions. Although one may consider the occurrence of these new restrictions as mere coincidence, their timing precisely during the decades of women’s greatest achievement in attaining professional leadership positions in the religious community, draws one to the inescapable conclusion that a causal relationship exists between women’s actions and establishment’s reactions. This is causing a growing internal division within an otherwise expanding successful movement. This division arises more from human frailty, than from purely religious considerations. They derive from fear of loss of power in religio-political terms or from feelings of narcissistic injury in psychological terms. This perceived loss could be overcome if we but learn to accept and even embrace this rise in women’s stature in a spirit of greater unity. In so doing our Orthodox leadership can find the creative means to do this within the framework of halakha. Bibliography Brayer, Menachem, M, The Jewish Woman in Rabbinic Literature (Hoboken, NJ: KTAV Publishing House, 1986). Freud, Sigmund, “Group Psychology and the analysis of the ego.” The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of S. Freud, vol. 18 (London, England: Hogarth Press, 1955), 67–134. Fromm, Eric, Man for Himself, An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics (New York: Holt, Reinhardt and Winston, 1942). Georgeson, John G., and Monica J. Harris, “The Balance of Power; Interpersonal consequences of differential power and experiences” (University of Kentucky, Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc., 2008) 1239–1257. Granite, Lauren B., and Deborah Weissman, “Bais Yaakov Schools,” Jewish Women’s Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia, March 1, 2009; Jewish Women’s Archives September 5, 2012. Grossman, Avraham, Pious and Rebellious (Waltham, MA: Brandies University Press, 2004). Heilman, Samuel J., Sliding to the Right: The Contest for the Future of American Jewish Orthodoxy (Berkley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2005). Helfbrand, S., From Sara to Sara (New York: Art Scroll Series: Eishis Chayil Books, 1980). Kohut, Heinz, The Analysis of Self (New York: International Universities Press, Inc., 1975) 11–13. Munday, Lisa, “Women, Money and Politics,” Time Magazine, March 20, 2012, pp. 23–24. Ostow, Mortimer “The Nature of Religious Controls,” The American Psychologist, vol. 13. 1958, 571–574. Rashi, On “Bruria,” Avoda Zara 18b. Riskin, Shlomo “The Voice of Women,” The Jerusalem Post, Feb. 2, 2012.

When I was in high school, a friend and I decided we needed to know whether God existed. It was a big public high school on Long Island, full of Catholics and Protestants who went to church and enough Jews to support a kosher bakery just around the corner from the football field. Everyone got along pretty well. But apart from bar mitzvahs, first communions, and the Civil Rights Movement—which galvanized much of the town’s clergy—daily life didn’t seem to have much to do with religion. God was mostly for holidays.

Yet I myself sensed God’s presence much more often, from an early age. For whatever reason, I always felt there was more going on than met the eye, that there was a Being up there Who cared about me and cared about right and wrong, and had set a right and a wrong in this world. It wasn’t a popular topic as the Vietnam War raged and college dorms started going co-ed and offering birth control pills. But for a few of us, it was pressing, and endured.

My friend was Presbyterian, and we met in choir at school, where I had some of the most intense and moving experiences of my life singing texts such as “O Magnum Mysterium” and “Surely He Hath Borne Our Griefs.” What was I to make of this? My family didn’t keep kosher, but I went to Hebrew school three times a week. I didn’t believe what I was singing, but I believed what I was feeling. So did my Christian friend. Our discussions were heartfelt and searching. We were hoping God existed, because without God the world seemed random and notions of good and evil too subjective. And if God did exist, it would matter a lot how we behaved—and we’d have to find a path.

In retrospect it’s obvious that we both really did believe, though I don’t think either of us thought there was only one correct path to follow. We knew we weren’t the first to ask these questions, and we didn’t expect to have to invent religion for ourselves. But we thought it mattered a lot to God what we would do. For me, it was going to mean looking at the best evidence there was of what God had said, what had been revealed to humankind in words—I needed a source. Sooner or later, that would mean text.

And so I set about searching, and though the only path to God is one that takes a lifetime and renews itself every day, I do feel that I found what God wanted of me in Modern Orthodoxy. I don’t think I could have landed anywhere else, and I’m always surprised to learn what a small—and to hear some tell it, fragile—outcropping of world Jewry it is. I don’t think my experience of God or life is unusual, or the demands of Modern Orthodoxy philosophically difficult or severe (financially might be another matter), at least not for anyone who believes in God as a Being, Creator, or Consciousness outside of ourselves. Perhaps what’s unique about my journey is just that I kept running into people who could explain things, and as diverse as these people were, all of them believed, and all of them were careful with language—words being so powerful, of course, that God used them to create the world. One by one, these teachers and what I learned from them prepared my steps: Baruch Ata ... haMeichin m’tsadei gaver. The first time I said that blessing after we moved into Los Angeles’ Pico-Robertson neighborhood, I knew that I was home.

So my journey began at the intersection of words and music, cobbled with contradictions and smoothed by these teachers, who seemed to come along at just the right moment. An avid piano student from the age of 7, I first signed up for choir at age 12, just when Hebrew School was ending and Junior Congregation was now for younger kids. I fell completely in love: music plus poetry, each making the other more compelling, sending the other to soar! The next years overflowed with madrigals and motets, oratorios and gem-like modern works—Brahms and Barber, Randall Thompson, Debussy and Distler—in a choir that met first period every day in high school. Beautiful years! All of it gorgeous and emotional, yet separate, mostly, from my Judaism. Would I allow myself to think about God while rehearsing Haydn’s Creation, lost in the exquisite trio section of Psalm 19: The day that is coming speaks it the day, the night that is gone to following night…? In a word, yes. Even so tortuously translated, it sang and it spoke. When the texts turned Christian—“For unto us a child is born”—I found a way. My cousin had a baby boy; Handel’s bursting fountain of sixteenth notes captured the miracle. On Sabbath and holidays in my Conservative synagogue, we prayed, well, differently; Cantor Victor Jacoby’s ringing baritone filled the room, brought down a heaven of its own. It was exotic, and it, too, was mine.

In college I began to feel more self-conscious about all this. Still hooked on choir, I noticed that the other choral majors sang in church groups and planned for church jobs. I also noticed that the occasional Jewish piece we sang was much less affecting than the Christian works. Then in graduate school, where I went to earn a Master of Music degree, I met my first important religious teacher, a secular Israeli: the great maestro Abraham Kaplan, whose father had formed the first choirs in Israel (then Palestine) and who himself spent 16 years teaching at Juilliard, directing New York’s Camarata Singers and preparing choirs for Leonard Bernstein. The first time I visited his study at the University of Washington, I saw on his desk a small stained-glass ornament that said, “The Lord works in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform.” Then, under his baton I sang the great Requiem masses of Mozart and Verdi, transported into a realm of holy inspiration grounded in texts that must have been relevant but that he didn’t believe either. Yet he led, and taught, with complete certainty, his interpretations informed by the text but transcending it; in performance it seemed he dissolved into the mind of the music. It’s a little hard to imagine if you haven’t performed with a great conductor, but perhaps if you’ve watched Dudamel you’ve seen it for yourself.

Of course this was very affirming. Professor Kaplan seemed to have no problem feeling and expressing the power of music as real or holy in a generic sort of way; like him, I could reject the meaning of the words without denying what the music was teaching me in vague spiritual terms. This now seems obvious; words are just humanity’s best attempt to share what people think they know—approximations, tools. No one would confuse the word “love” with the feeling, or say it encompassed it. So I could make a kind of separation in my mind between what the music offered and the words that had carried the composer to its discovery.

But it didn’t answer my religious questions. How was I to relate to God myself? Words are important too. Hadn’t God communicated with humanity that way? Calling Lekh lekha to Abraham, sending Moses off to Pharoah armed with verbal admonitions? Not to mention dictating the entire Torah, exactly general and specific enough to last 3,000 years so far and presumably to eternity? Whatever I’d learned studying music, it wasn’t the Torah. That was still to be found.

Around the same time I met Professor Kaplan, I also met another Presbyterian, though he considered himself “lapsed.” This young man, a medical student, was also very concerned about both religion and words and—first one, then two conversions to Judaism later—he became my husband. He had a strong belief in God, but the religion he’d been raised with, he said, was built on metaphors, and the metaphors no longer made sense to him. This became an insurmountable problem for him as a Christian, but only increased his desire to understand what God really did want. Late into the night when he wasn’t at the hospital, we would wrestle these questions together, until finally he started his residency and said he’d have to revisit religion when he was sleeping more than one night in three. That left me on my own for three years, during which I thought long and hard about whether Judaism might be wrong and Christianity right—I read the New Testament and wondered whether it was possible that God’s kingdom was already here, and that all we had to do was love one another and He would be with us. I didn’t have any Christian teachers outside of the great composers, but in any case I couldn’t accept it, couldn’t believe.

I went on to study journalism in New York while David finished his residency, and when we both returned to the Northwest, I invited him to visit the synagogue I’d joined in Tacoma, Washington. At Temple Beth El there, he found that the words of the Reform siddur Gates of Prayer made more sense to him than what he’d left behind in church. With Beth El’s very thoughtful Rabbi Richard Rosenthal, z”l, he started reading Franz Rozensweig and Rav Kook, and studying them with him on Wednesdays. One day he asked what it would take to convert, and Rabbi Rosenthal said, “Whenever you’re ready.” David had a Reform conversion, and that meant—to my understanding and training at that time—that my best friend and I would be able to marry, and continue a religious journey together. A year and a half later, we did.

We ended up in Los Angeles in the post-denominational congregation of Reform Rabbi Mordecai Finley, whose services plus lunch and bentching lasted until 2 P.M. on Saturdays and who taught us not only the weekly parasha—including stories I’d never learned, like Jacob and Tamar, Pinhas, Bilaam, Nadav and Abihu—but also the concept of spiritual discipline, the idea that the ritual commandments provide opportunities for us to bring God into more of our day-to-day actions and that, moreover, they were in the text. This was something I’d been waiting for: a way to live with God in mind. Although they were presented as voluntary, I loved each new mitzvah and concept I discovered.

The Torah asks us not to eat pork or shellfish. The Torah tells us not to place a stumbling block before the blind, literally or metaphorically. The Torah—God’s instructions!—held all sorts of commandments and stories, and by the way, many of them were very confusing without the interpretation of sages over the generations since. With that ancient elucidation, Rabbi Finley noted, they became both clear and ingenious—separating milk and meat, for example, as a way to delineate life and death in the world hour by hour; separating wool and flax, adjuring us to know when to be strong and forceful versus when to be soft. There were other commandments too, he noted, that we couldn’t understand but could take on faith—faith, something that came easily to me!

Rabbi Finley also encouraged us to hear Orthodox teachers—one year he sent us out to Orthodox synagogues on Shabuoth, and my husband David and I actually went to B'nai David-Judea, which many years later would become our home. But religiously we were still comfortable where we were. I served as one of three lay cantors, singing and arranging prayers, even directing a choir and trying to find some spiritual richness in the music. I did, a little, especially Leonard Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms. Our eldest daughter became bat mitzvah there, and when my beloved father died, there were tools both elevating and comforting with which to mourn him. We studied Hebrew with Rebbetzin Meirav Finley, and the holy language began to speak to us on its own.

It was a time of unfolding light, affirming to me what I’d long suspected: that my ancestors had hung on tight through persecution and pogroms to more than Shabbat candles and Pessah seders, as wonderful as those were. There was more there, enough to fill many lifetimes, and we were beginning to see what it was.

What drew us the rest of the way, once we encountered it, was the beauty of observance and a growing certainty that it was, in fact, commanded—as I’d sensed since high school, God surely cared what we actually did. We attended a three-part-seminar on the Orthodox view of marriage, taught by Rabbi Baruch Gradon of the Los Angeles Kollel, to which we were invited by friends who’d become Orthodox the year before, and after that I joined a series of living room classes sponsored by a Hareidi “outreach” organization called Ashreinu. The leaders of that group, Mrs. Shira Shapiro and Rabbi Moshe and Bracha Zaret, welcomed us into their modest homes for Shabbat dinners, the first we’d experienced in an observant setting, not minding that we drove there.

We were very moved by their example. Everyone at their tables, including the youngest of their children, could discuss the parasha better than most of the adult Jews we’d ever met. They were gracious and intelligent and their conversation was always rich with meaning. They were notably comfortable talking about God—something I’d only been able to do before with my Christian friends in high school, and then with my husband. And they were distinctly un-cranky—about their children, their jobs, whatever they discussed. In these religious homes, everything was seen as a miracle—exactly as I had been experiencing life all along. A high goal, they said, was to see God behind every tree, every lamp, every occurrence—to see far more than met the eye.
In my new class, taught by Mrs. Ivy Kalazan, concept after new concept lit up my world.

The shofar, she taught us, represented the blowing of God’s breath through the shell of our physicality. Our connection to God was un-severable, like the vertebrae of the spine, and could be damaged but never broken. The flame of Shabbat candles represented our yearning and reaching toward heaven, and the beauty of Judaism could bring holiness to a humble leaf of lettuce—by our washing and checking it to ensure it held no bugs. Everything physical has a spiritual correlate, she taught, and since God made men and women different physically, there must be spiritual differences as well.
This politically incorrect observation was something I’d always believed; here I had a religious explanation, grounded in the most basic understanding of creation.

I also read Blu Greenberg’s How to Run a Traditional Jewish Household and started observing the mikvah laws on my own, and then I read Rabbi Ezriel Tauber’s To Become One and studied privately; these laws and the concepts behind them, from the notion of what’s hidden being the most sacred to the idea that water is the closest we have to a physical emanation of God’s presence, were dazzling and answered questions I didn’t know I had. They illuminated, decoded in a way, my relationship with my husband, while protecting it at the same time from any possibility of boredom or routine. These ideas are so basic to Orthodox understanding, growing out of hundreds of generations’ grappling with text (in this case, Bereishith and Vayikra), and yet to David and me they were entirely new, while at the same time not seeming foreign. And it was ancient, proven wisdom: my grandmothers, and their grandmothers, had followed these laws. I was restoring a link in the chain.

For all of these reasons, really from the very first Orthodox lectures we attended, David and I began to walk our lives into this world of beauty and commandment. We loved our synagogue but my leading services on Shabbat mornings now seemed off; shouldn’t I be present for my family, instead of warming up my singing voice in the shower and getting ready to perform? We had long ago stopped shopping on Shabbat, but shouldn’t we also stop driving, and gardening, and turning on the lights? It might mean alienating my non-observant Jewish family, not to mention David’s Protestant one, which had been tested enough by his first conversion; it would also mean a second conversion for him. We loved our mixed neighborhood and we’d have to sell our home. We loved our local public school, but Ivy Kalazan taught in a religious high school—this material was available to children, during the day?—so they would change schools; that was probably the hardest thing of all. But we wanted them to know the beauty of this new way of life, and to understand it, just as we wanted them to take music lessons, study science and learn to read.

When the time came, we asked Shira Shapiro of Ashreinu to recommend a synagogue, and she suggested three: B’nai David, another that was Modern Orthodox and an Aish HaTorah center, all in Pico-Robertson—not the more Hareidi part of town where she lived. Later I asked her why, and she said that because I’d been leading services, she thought I’d be more comfortable in a synagogue where women had a larger role. That surprised me—it hadn’t seemed important to me at the time—but it turned out to be good foresight on her part.

Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky, at B’nai David-Judea, won us right away. Rav Yosef’s derashot were all about the text—how Moshe’s trials inform our own, how commentators understand the characters through back stories gleaned from textual hints, how individual words—individual words!—open windows onto worlds of meaning beneath the surface, and how all of this calls us to high personal responsibility every moment of our lives. On top of that, B’nai David was full of people just like us; by some estimates, fewer than a third of its members (at least at that time) had been raised in Orthodox homes. We were greeted there with lunch and dinner invitations, Purim baskets, and Pessah recipes, shiurim about holidays, lashon haRa, medical ethics, and maintaining the dignity of the dead while preparing them for burial. We also heard, though less frequently, about mixed Arab-Jewish schools in the Negev, and occasionally we heard from Israeli thinkers and journalists, and leaders of projects for Ethiopian emigres or Darfur. We signed up to deliver meals to the poor through a program very careful to protect their anonymity. More recently, we’ve joined a group of about 15 congregants who meet bi-monthly with a similar demographic from the liberal Islamic Center of Southern California. Coming from such a rich and challenging intellectual world before Torah, all of this was absolutely necessary for us to be observant and still feel like ourselves. I think this is true of most of the congregation, and of all of our friends there.

I hadn’t thought the shul’s women’s tefillah group, called Shirat Chana, would matter to me; remember, I’d decided that leading services compromised my observance of Shabbat. But it turned out to be quite helpful in our transition; when my middle daughter was bat mitzvah age, she was able to lain and lead services just as her older sister had, albeit at Minha with only nine men allowed to be present. Other innovations I would appreciate only later: for example, women carrying the Torah through the women’s section, which thrills me every time, especially when I carry it myself. The mehitzah at B’nai David goes right down the middle, and women can get as close to the bima, the Torah and the derasha as any man can, meaning we can see and hear everything and move if we can’t. Women at my shul say Kaddish, and I am able to say Kaddish for my father every fall. Sometimes we have women as scholars-in-residence, a woman is president of the congregation this year, and I myself am a kind of gabbai: for seven years now, I’ve been in charge of arranging which men and boys will lead Shabbat Shaharit, Musaf, and Anim Zemirot. David and I did not join B’nai David-Judea for any of this, but I would have felt much less included—and increasingly so, as time went on—without them. Because our journey has always been a joint one, if I were not fully involved (my husband does go to daily minyan on his own, a pleasure for him), it’s hard to see how it could have endured.

I’m not saying it’s been perfect. We had to step farther out of the world we knew than I had expected. Travel is harder, most restaurants are out. Raising our son and daughters, some things turned out to be impossible because of Shabbat; sadly for me, this included Los Angeles’ excellent children’s choir, along with any high school with a full orchestra or band. Even at Shalhevet High School, which is unusual in its attention to the arts, against the competing demands of four Judaic classes and a full academic program, the choir I direct meets just twice a week after school—far short of what defined my own high school years. This kind of thing has raised questions that Modern Orthodoxy tries to answer but doesn’t quite—for example, does God want us to be a light unto the nations while hiding our children away in schools with only one another, at a time and place in history when children learn together from every place on earth?

Also, I sometimes encounter signs of tribal chauvinism—a sense that Jews are somehow superior, ethnically, culturally, or otherwise, to non-Jews. This is beyond my ken, and strikes me as wholly unworthy of a worldview that celebrates the ultimate value of every human being.

But no culture is perfect, and every choice has its price. David and I still live in the big, diverse city of Los Angeles; we’re still news junkies; and we’re still hopelessly romantic about the flow of history and our small place in it—now we’re tied to a particular strand, one that feels ancient, eternal, and true. The evidence we have for this is partly on paper and partly in our hearts, as close as breathing and a just a bookshelf away.
And Modern Orthodoxy opened to us huge troves of text, all growing from the root of the Torah like the branches of a flowering tree, exquisite separately and together. That is what I set out so many years ago to find: a way to follow God’s instructions, one that works in the world we live in with all its challenges and mystery, and that ties us to God. Whatever our failings, David and I now can try to make our lives the fullest possible expression of those instructions as we are so grateful to finally understand them. This is a gratefulness that goes, and takes us, far beyond words.

This striking finding, which was championed by the Christian right, fascinated the writers of this article. We were well aware of the religious literature promoting taharat haMishpahah as a way of renewing sexual interest.[v] Our basic question became: “How do women who are faithful to the tradition of taharat haMishpahah experience intimate marital life?” On the one hand, we speculated that based on the Laumann et al. study’s findings, married observant Jewish women might be even more sexually satisfied than married women in the general population. On the other hand, our extensive clinical experience made us keenly aware of sexual difficulty in many observant marriages. We considered the possibility that the lack of available information and discussion about sexuality in the observant Jewish community might contribute to reduced marital sexual satisfaction than in the Laumann et al. married sample. As scientists and clinicians we were well aware of the limitations of anecdotal vignettes and of impressions from our personal experiences. Thus, we set out to investigate the sexual experience of observant Jewish women from a sophisticated, methodologically rigorous research perspective.

 Our team constructed a survey, similar to that used by Laumann et al., that included questions specific to observant Jewish practice. These items would allow us to determine whether, and to what extent, education about and adherence to the laws of taharat haMishpahah are associated with sexual satisfaction for women. Using many of the same questions as Laumann et al. allowed us to compare aspects of sexual behavior and dysfunction in observant women with that of the general population.  Although Laumann et al. looked at the experiences of both men and women, we focused our efforts on observant women only. Certainly a comparable study of men would add a great deal to the understanding of observant marriages.

Because our objective in this article is to highlight certain issues for the observant community, we will not give a comprehensive presentation of all of our findings. Rather, we focus on areas that might be particularly relevant to the general community, rabbis, mental health professionals, medical personnel, and educators. This last group, educators, includes school teachers of all levels as well as those serving in the unique institution of hattan and kallah teachers, that is, men and women who instruct soon-to-be grooms and brides in the laws of taharat haMishpahah. An emerging new group of religious advisors/educators is that of the yoatsot halakha, women who are highly learned in taharat haMishpahah as well as well versed in gynecology and marital dynamics. All of these religious, medical, and lay people have potential involvement in the intimate lives of observant Jewish couples. Increased knowledge and sensitivity on the part of rabbis, health workers, and educators is likely to enhance intimacy and strengthen attitudes toward observance, thereby improving marriages in the observant community.

III. STUDY DESIGN

            The study by Laumann et al. obtained data based on face-to-face interviews. Since observant women generally value modesty and privacy, our project was designed as a written questionnaire that was completed anonymously and mailed back to us. We tried to replicate as closely as possible the Laumann et al. scales of marital satisfaction, emotional and sexual happiness, and sexual function and dysfunction for both women and their husbands. Many of the questions asked for the same information—basic demographics, physical and mental health, sexual education, sexual history, and current sexual practices. Women were included in our study if they were currently married, pre-menopausal, and regularly used the mikvah as prescribed by religious law.

            Mindful that the regular observance of mikvah might span across the denominational spectrum of observant religious life, we asked women to rate their religious affiliation and gave them choices of “Modern Orthodox,” “Yeshiva/Agudah,” or “Hassidic.” The latter two categories describe a level of Orthodoxy that is sometimes referred to as “ultra-Orthodox.” This subdivision reflects a debate within the Orthodox Jewish community. Unlike Modern Orthodox Jews, who actively participate in the general culture, Hareidi Jews, or ultra-Orthodox Jews, embrace a theologically conservative outlook that advocates substantial separation from secular culture. (Hareidi literally means “one who trembles before God.”)[vi] We also gave women choices to denote their religious/cultural affiliation as “Sephardic” or “Ashkenazic.”

No assumptions were made about women’s sexual past or present lives. We asked detailed questions about early sexual life, including auto-eroticism and premarital activity. Knowing about the impact of sexual abuse on later sexual life,[vii] we included questions regarding history of molestation as well as current sexual abuse.  At the same time, we added new questions that addressed the unique experience of women who observe taharat haMishpahah. These questions related to respondents’ subjective perceptions about going to the mikvah and adhering to laws of family purity. We also inquired about pre- or post-marital sexual education, such as whether they attended a kallah class and if so, whether useful information about sexual relations was provided. Women were asked how they dealt with questions they may have had concerning the permissibility of specific sexual activities, and to whom they turned when sexual problems arose in their marriages.

Certain questions were deliberately omitted so as to not offend potential study participants. These referred to same-sex activity, abortion, infidelity, and substance abuse. In retrospect, this stance may have been too conservative, as some women did respond on the open-ended questions that they had struggled with these issues.

            Participation in our study was voluntary. Women received no financial or other material reward. Our goal was to sample a cross-section of observant women based on religious affiliation and socio-demographic information. As the chief entry criterion was regular use of the mikvah, the most obvious, impartial venue for data collection would have been mikvaot. Although several rabbis overseeing individual mikvaot were consulted prior to the implementation of the study, none granted explicit permission to distribute questionnaires at any community mikvah. Instead we recruited women via other sampling methods, such as relying on medical professionals whose practices included large numbers of observant Jewish women (e.g., obstetrician/gynecologists, nurses, midwives, and pediatricians) to distribute the surveys. We also spoke at broad-based Jewish women’s organizations where we asked audiences to fill out the survey. In addition, we posted the questionnaire, which had only an English version, on the Internet and directed it to large listservs of observant communities in Israel. To determine the representative nature of the sample, demographic results from respondents of our study were compared to those obtained in the 2000 census sponsored by the United Jewish Communities.[viii]

IV. OUR FINDINGS

1. Demographics

We analyzed 380 returned questionnaires. Our average respondent was 36 years old. More than three-quarters of our respondents were born in the United States, and nearly half were daughters of two American-born parents. Almost two thirds of women and their husbands were brought up in an observant home. The remaining third were ba‘alot teshuva, meaning that they grew up in non-observant homes and chose to become observant on their own, usually around age 20 or 21. Among women who were ba’alot teshuva, only 6 percent of them had become observant after marriage. With respect to affiliation, 55 percent of women identified themselves as Modern Orthodox, 35 percent as Yeshiva/Agudah and 10 percent as Hassidic. Women who responded to the survey were typically well educated; many had graduate-level degrees. Most women held jobs outside the home and had not been married before. Our typical respondent had married at age 23 and had four children.

B.        Sexual Education/History

Respondents reported receiving sexual education from a variety of sources. Most commonly, they learned about sex from friends, written material, and media (movies and television) followed by family members, kallah classes or high school classes, and experimentation. Less than 10 percent cited health professionals as being a source of sex education. It should be mentioned that although Jewish women turned to printed materials for information about sex, the material they read was written by secular or non-Jewish writers and purchased at mass-market bookstores. Until recently, there have been very few works available that specifically discuss sexual matters for observant Jewish consumers.[ix] Only one book dealing with sexuality from the Jewish perspective provides explicit information as to the basics of sexual anatomy or physiology.[x] Bookstores catering to religious clientele do not typically carry such books for fear of violating propriety and alienating their customer base. How do women obtain these materials? Our respondents indicated that they had to make special requests for these books or go to a mass-market bookstore in a different community. One woman wrote of her reaction to the book most commonly cited by respondents to our survey, John Gray’s Mars and Venus in the Bedroom, “Why did I have to learn about sex from an ex-priest?”

Before they were married, two-thirds of participants knew the details involved in sexual intercourse, and a similar number had discussed sexual feelings with their husband. Less than a quarter of respondents reported no physical or sexual contact prior to marrying their current spouse. They did not hold hands, hug, kiss, pet, or engage in any more intimate sexual behavior. This also means that despite the emphasis on premarital chastity, over 75 percent of women who participated in our survey had some degree of intimate contact with their current spouse. There were differences with respect to premarital sexual behavior between those raised religious and those who became observant before marriage. Nearly one-third of women raised observant reported abstaining from any premarital physical contact with their husbands compared with 7 percent of women who became observant on their own. This suggests that while almost all women who become observant do so before marriage, they are more likely to have been involved in physical and sexual relationships with men before marriage than women raised observant. We did not ask women to indicate whether their premarital relationships were with their husbands or other partners.

 Almost all respondents studied laws of niddah with an outside (kallah) teacher before marriage. However, most women did not feel the kallah classes were helpful in preparing them for married sexual life and their wedding night in particular. The prevailing emphasis of kallah classes seemed to be ensuring that women not commit halakhic errors. Few teachers apparently covered other topics such as the permissibility of various sexual acts, and more importantly, how to prepare to engage in sexual acts that culminate in intercourse. Although half of the kallah teachers indicated their availability for follow-up discussion after the wedding, they were rarely consulted.

A handful of women praised their kallah teacher for providing instruction beyond halakhic issues. For example, one woman wrote

 My kallah teacher covered halakhot (legal rulings), sex positions, and shalom bayit (family harmony). Everything was explained clearly until I felt very comfortable. Barukh HaShem (Thank God), I have a beautiful marriage. I strongly believe that a kallah teacher has a big responsibility to convey physical and emotional matters in a clear and concise manner.

 Women who felt well prepared by their kallah class wrote statements such as, “I knew as much as I could, the rest had to be from experience.”

However, more than a third of respondents were disappointed on their wedding night and only 15 percent stated that their wedding night was better than expected. Almost half of the respondants, stated that they could have been better prepared for married sexual life. Despite the fact that almost 90 percent of the women in our sample studied with a kallah teacher prior to marriage, only 50 percent of them learned about sexual matters from this source. In light of this discrepancy, it was not surprising that many women wrote in suggestions of topics they wished had been discussed with their kallah teachers prior to marriage.

            We present excerpts from the suggestions made by women that they felt would improve preparation for sexual life in marriage. In general, there were three types of responses to our open-ended question: “What should your kallah teacher have covered?” The most common response was about basic sexual education. Women wished they had learned more about “women’s body parts, women’s sensitivities, orgasm, different positions,” “what a man’s body looks like, what to expect” and “how to actually consummate the marriage.” Many women voiced shock at their first sexual intercourse. They wished they had known practical information, such as how awkward the position of sex would feel, how to be satisfied or achieve climax, that sex might be painful the first time, that it would be messy, and so forth. The awkwardness of sudden transition from celibate single life to fully sexual marital experience was echoed by many respondents who wrote in that it was hard to “turn off” their notions of being a “good girl.” As one woman, herself a kallah teacher, wrote, “The difficulty we have in communicating needs verbally I feel is a result of the ’modesty‘ and inhibitions we were shown as examples.” Another woman elaborated extensively on this point:

Orthodox attitudes that affected me negatively are not inherently negative— but they have potential to cause problems depending on the person. I think part of the problem is that a lot of the Orthodox community feels like the laws of taharat haMishpahah and the restrictions on premarital sex or touching are a foolproof system that makes sex more wonderful for everyone. The extreme privacy within the Orthodox community, while promoted as modest, beautiful, and virtuous, also causes/supports feelings of shame regarding sex. The laws of tseni’ut (modesty) on a more subconscious level, supports (not necessarily causes) shameful feelings about one’s body. The constant praise of how wonderful and holy sex is because it’s saved for after marriage and only at certain times of the month sets up unrealistic expectations and avoids entirely the physical aspect of sex. Again… tseni’ut and negiah (no touching before marriage) are promoted as being beneficial for women because otherwise men would only look at you sexually. This view makes men out to be uncontrollable purely sexual beings to whom women are powerless. Then you get married and you are supposed to trust that your husband wants to have sex with you because he truly loves you. It’s hard to change that pattern of thought. For 20 years one is told to do things so men don’t look at you sexually, and then poof! One day you’re supposed to feel totally comfortable letting go completely and you’re suddenly supposed to be a sexual being[YR1]  too[MF2] !

I’m not sure these things are unique to religious Judaism —probably other religions as well. And the attitudes might be more reflection of Orthodox society and not the Torah.

Many women also wished the kallah teacher would have educated them more on the relationship between sex and Jewish life. They suggested the following topics be covered: “The place of sex and pleasure in Torah life;” “sex and emotion…shalom bayit (family harmony) topics;” “[Jewish views on] a woman’s right to pleasure;” “that sex is not only permissible, but essential to your and your husband’s happiness to have a full, exciting sexual life.” Some commented on the impact of religious upbringing on sexual lives, and suggested these topics were important to discuss in the context of premarital education: “Growing up religious, you are taught to feel that girls should not be forward… it’s OK to be more forward and guide my husband to please me. Giving me an orgasm is not a ‘favor’ to me, rather it is my right as a married woman.”

Our respondents raised many issues that had caused them concern and discomfort: “What if you and your husband are too embarrassed to ask the rabbi a question?” “What if your sex life isn’t a beautiful thing? What if it doesn’t enhance your marriage?” Others indicated “I didn’t realize it was so common for a couple to be unable to consummate the marriage right away;” and some wished they had learned “What should you do if sex does not work like the ’textbook‘ case?” Others wondered, “What constitutes abusive behavior and what is not ‘normal’ behavior?” To summarize, in the concise statement of one woman, “I wish someone told me point blank everything instead of assuming I knew it.”

C.        Attitudes about Mikvah

Two-thirds of our respondents indicated that the experience of ritual immersion in a mikvah was religiously enhancing. These women were asked to elaborate on how this experience was enhancing. The following quotations are illustrative. One woman wrote, “I love going. I always pray in the mikvah and feel very pure after. Spiritually, I feel renewed, closer to God and to my husband.” Another commented, “I feel a rebirth. The mikvah is especially helpful to lift me out of depression I feel about my infertility. It always fills me with hope.” Another respondent stated “I feel that going to the mikvah introduced holiness into our marriage… also, it is simply the halakha that has been done by Jewish women for generations.”  Related to this, one woman wrote: “I feel mystically connected to something very primitive and deep.” Comments such as: “The mikvah experience makes sex spiritual and not animal-like” were made by several respondents.

Almost a quarter of respondents indicated that going to the mikvah could be an unpleasant experience. These women described finding the preparation and process of going tedious and annoying. Concerns about modesty dictate that women keep timing of mikvah use private and that visits to the ritual bath be made only after nightfall. Some of our respondents reported disliking having to make excuses to their children for their absence from the home. Some  felt critical of mikvah facilities and personnel. The majority of negative comments relating to the mikvah's physical facilities came from women living in Israel. The following quotations are a sample of negative feelings: “I don’t feel comfortable naked in front of anyone;” “I don’t like all the superstitions that are attached to mikvah;” “I try not to think about how unhygienic the water is after who knows how many women have been in before me.” More extreme responses are exemplified by the following respondents who wrote, “I hate it,” “(I) Find it degrading,” “I hate being examined like a cow,” “Mikvah is such a turn-off that I come back irritated, annoyed, angry and am mean to my husband, subconsciously, of course,” and finally, “I feel it is almost abusive.”

            With respect to whether sexual or emotional life is enhanced by the observance of taharat haMishpahah, we noted that more than three-quarters of our sample believed that their sexual life is improved by following these laws. The following quotations represent women’s experiences. “When you know you only have two weeks each month, you tend to make more of an effort;” and “I really feel that sex would have become too routine and boring without the rest period that the mikvah provides.” Also representative was the following remark: “It certainly helps. Even though our sexual relations are less than satisfying on the whole, having a break because of niddah does help the sexual relations become a little bit more satisfying; it’s ‘fresher.’”

            One of the interesting observations was the contrast between the high percentage of women who believed taharat haMishpahah enhanced their sex lives with the much smaller segment who felt that their emotional life with their husband was enhanced by taharat haMishpahah.  In fact some women who claim sexual benefits of believed that the niddah period impacted negatively on their emotional lives. One woman stated:

I believe that following the laws of niddah and the mikvah does enhance my sexual life. While I love my husband, after some time sex does get boring. The laws of niddah force a break and renewal. Right after going to the mikvah any physical contact is exciting and invigorating. My problem with the whole process is how my husband and I interact during the time of niddah. It seems like we take a complete emotional break from each other, as well as a physical break. I can’t understand why my husband can’t show me his emotions and feelings about me without sex.

This sentiment was expressed repeatedly: “My husband feels he has to become numb and he withdraws from me;” “My husband and I both have a huge problem with the suddenness of the switch between ‘can’ and ‘can’t’ and the accompanying feeling on the mikvah night that we ‘have to’ because the clock has started ticking again. The pressure kind of kills the desire and it ends up feeling very non-spontaneous;” “We fight more when I am in niddah. I feel rejected by not passing objects. It is rude—like I am untouchable. Even though I understand the reason, I still feel rejected.” “I am a very touchy, feely person and suffer terribly not being able to snuggle with my husband. Being a nursing mother now, I do miss the initial excitement of coming home from mikvah, but I would not give up my status of taharah (non-niddah) for that.” “We learned how to have sex properly when I was pregnant [and therefore had nine months of non-niddah time together]. We never found there was enough time to learn and experiment in between niddah sessions.”

            A representative quotation from the much smaller sample of women who wrote that niddah did enhance their emotional life is illustrative: “Sometimes, for example, if a crisis situation arises during niddah, you’re able to resolve it without touching; it brings you emotionally closer.”

Survey questions were designed to assess the number of women who report feeling relief upon becoming a niddah, as well as how many postpone immersion.  Almost two-thirds of our respondents reported that they sometimes felt relief at being in niddah (about a third of these respondents reported feeling relieved nearly every month).  More than a quarter of our respondents reported postponing going to the mikvah, almost all for emotional reasons. Only a tiny fraction reported postponing mikvah as a form of birth control (trying to miss ovulation).

D.        Asking for Rabbinical Counsel

 Traditional Jewish practice encourages people to seek rabbinic advice when faced with challenging questions. As all aspects of life, from the mundane to the lofty, are imbued with religious significance, observant Jews regularly pose questions to rabbis. Queries concerning  pillars of observant life, kashruth, Shabbat, and taharat haMishpahah are routine. Our data, however, revealed a significant skew regarding questions posed to rabbinic counsel—namely, that women in our study were less likely to inquire about matters relating to sexuality.  This is illustrated by the fact that over 90 percent of women indicated that they have asked a rabbi questions about kashruth or about laws pertaining to the Sabbath. Only 76 percent, however, have asked about an aspect of niddah, and most of these questions were directed to technical concerns about menstrual staining. Just over one-third of women had ever asked a question pertaining to permissibility of a particular sexual practice. Mindful that our respondents are highly adherent to the laws of family purity, we assumed that they would naturally have questions about the religious permissibility of various sexual activities in marriage. We knew from their comments about their kallah (bridal preparation) classes that frank issues such as sexual desires and practices were rarely discussed by those teachers. We wondered, therefore, how couples align their sexual desires and their religious sensibilities.

Fully half of all women answering our survey have wondered whether performing certain sexual acts, during the course of their observant, married life, might constitute a violation of Jewish law. Oral sex was the activity of most concern followed by the use of fantasy during relations. Of this 50 percent who acknowledged halakhic concerns, only a small portion (12 percent) asked a rabbi for guidance. Of the remaining 88 percent who did not seek religious consultation, almost half refrained from the religiously questionable sex, while the rest enacted their desire without permission.

A related area is the use of contraception. Observant Jews take the biblical commandment “be fruitful and multiply” seriously and generally give birth to and raise families larger than those of their secular peers. We wondered how observant women access family planning. Our findings revealed that although nearly 90 percent of our sample reported using birth control at some time in their marriage, only half of these women consulted a rabbi about that decision. Once again, our data suggest that many religiously committed Jews do not bring questions about their sexual or reproductive lives to the scrutiny of their rabbis with the same frequency that they bring questions about equally serious but less bodily intimate matters.

Respondents to our survey were strictly compliant with the laws of family purity. Ba‘alot teshuva (women who became observant on their own) were as rigorous in their observance as women raised observant. Women from both backgrounds who were virgins at marriage were more likely to ask a rabbi questions about niddah laws, about sexual life not directly related to laws of niddah, and were also less likely to postpone going to mikvah. This was true regardless of religious affiliation.

E.         Physical and Emotional Health

Although the vast majority of participants in our survey described their health as good, almost half reported that their physical health interfered with sex at least some of the time. Treatment for medical conditions affecting sexual function, such as chronic pelvic pain, endometriosis, and venereal disease were extremely rare, although vaginitis was reported by a quarter of respondents.

Almost a third of respondents reported that infertility had been an issue in their marriages. A quarter reported they had trouble conceiving, but they also reported that they eventually had children. Only 4 percent of the women indicated that they had no children as a result of problems conceiving.

Emotional health seems to have more impact on sexual dysfunction than physical health. The vast majority of respondents indicated experiencing interference with sex due to emotional issues. When asked about whether they had ever been treated by a mental health professional, about half of the sample reported having been in some kind of psychotherapy. The problems they brought to these treatments included marital problems, depression, and anxiety. We were intrigued by the high utilization of mental health services by our respondents. Some critics of this study allege that the large number of women accessing mental health treatment indicates a sample bias toward more distressed women. An alternative interpretation would be that women who allow themselves professional mental health services are more comfortable with themselves and thus willing to participate in a study about intimate life experience.

F.         Sexual Abuse

More complete analyses of our data are also presented elsewhere,[xi] but for the purpose of this discussion it is essential to point out that this is the first anonymous survey of married observant Jewish women in which direct and detailed questions were asked about sexual abuse and where objective data was collected. One quarter of our sample answered “yes” to the question: “When you were a child or teenager, did anyone ever touch you sexually in a way that made you uncomfortable (molest you)?” These figures are comparable to those reported by Laumann et al. in their survey of married American women and are consistent with estimates of sexual abuse in the general population.

Two divergent points, which we discuss in greater depth in the above referenced paper, deserve mention here. On the one hand, women who became observant reported significantly more childhood sexual abuse than those raised religious. On the other hand, more ultra-Orthodox Jewish women reported abuse than their Modern Orthodox peers.[xii] We conjecture that women who experience sexual abuse in their younger years may be motivated to seek out a more structured and sexually restricted adult life. As has been established in previous studies, history of sexual abuse is associated with higher rates of mental health treatment in adult life.

Regarding current abuse, domestic violence was reported by 5 percent of our respondents. Two-and-a-half percent alleged that they had been raped by their husbands.

G.        Sexual Life

            Women were asked to respond to the same set of questions about sexual frequency and satisfaction as appeared in the study of sexual practices in the United States published by Laumann et al. The pattern of sexual frequency among the sample was different from that of monogamous, married women in the Laumann et al. study. In that study, half of the women reported having intercourse one to two times per week, as compared to 40 percent of our sample. Thirty-five percent of the married observant women in our study reported sexual intercourse three to six times per week as compared to half that number (17 percent) of the Laumann married women. We surmise that this is due to observant couples concentrating their physical intimacy into the two weeks available when a woman would not be in niddah. At the same time, a greater number of women reported sexual intercourse once a month or less.

            Observant women in our study had significantly different experiences with respect to orgasm as compared to the Laumann et al. married, monogamous sample. High frequency of orgasm was much lower in our sample, and reports of never experiencing an orgasm during sex were higher (9 percent as compared to 1 percent). Regarding auto-eroticism almost two-thirds of participants in our study reported doing so at frequencies ranging from several times per week to every few months during the past year.

Like Laumann et al., we inquired about various components regarding satisfaction with marital sex. When participants in our survey rated their physical satisfaction, 75 percent of them rated feeling very satisfied. When asked about emotional satisfaction from sex, generally understood as sense of closeness with their husband, 70 percent rated feeling very satisfied. One question on the survey asked how sex made women feel. Feeling loved and wanted ranked highest, followed by feeling excited, doing wifely duty, and being taken care of. Fewer women endorsed feeling more “negative” feelings such as anxiety, sadness, fear, and guilt.

Communication about sex proved to be an important feature in satisfying marital relations. Women with more satisfying sexual lives described better communication and vice versa. Of women who enjoyed orgasm, over three-quarters said that their husband knew how to bring them to satisfaction and that they could tell their husband what gives them pleasure. On the other side of the communication spectrum, women who have problems with sexual life also have difficulty talking directly to their husbands about this.

H.        Sexual Problems

            We asked respondents to our study to rate their experience with six specific areas of sexual dysfunction identified by Laumann et al.: 1) frequent lack of interest in sex, 2) lack of ability to climax, 3) pain during intercourse, 4) not finding sex pleasurable, 5) anxiety about their performance and 6) trouble lubricating during sex. One-third of women in our study indicated experiencing the first difficulty (frequent lack of interest in sex) followed by smaller numbers with the other five categories. Nearly half of our sample cited such difficulties as causing them to avoid sex altogether. It should be noted that the rates of sexual difficulties in our sample were significantly greater than that reported by Laumann et al.

            We also queried women about sexual difficulties experienced by their husbands. According to their wives, a third of husbands experienced premature ejaculation, over 25 percent had difficulty maintaining an erection, and a similar percentage lacked interest in sex. Fewer women reported husbands being anxious about their performance, having difficulty with climax, and not finding sex pleasurable. Some of husbands avoided sex because of these problems.

             Couples experiencing sexual dysfunction had trouble talking about this. Despite the rather high frequency of both male and female dysfunction, as mentioned earlier, few women had talked to their husbands about sexual problems. Additionally, few women sought outside guidance in relation to their sexual problems. Less than 10 percent of the women had asked a rabbi or observant teacher for information, and less than 4 percent asked a kallah teacher for help.

IV.       ASSOCIATIONS AND PREDICTORS

We used sophisticated statistical procedures to analyze the enormous data gleaned from the questionnaires. One goal of this study was to understand more fully the variety of factors that are associated with sexual practice, sexual satisfaction, sexual dysfunction, and the relationship between these variables and religious observances. We will not present here all the associations we discovered but only those that strike us as particularly significant or surprising. We remind our readers that associations do not necessarily imply causation.

A.        Background Information

            Physical satisfaction was found to be associated with higher income, the husband providing the financial support, and more modern religious affiliation. In other words, lower-income women and women who affiliated as either Agudah or Hassidic reported significantly less physical satisfaction than did Modern Orthodox women in dual-income families.

Emotional satisfaction was associated with similar demographic variables, and also with age group. Sex was more frequent in younger respondents, and also in respondents who were younger when they got married. Younger women reported higher emotional satisfaction compared to older women. Women who provided sole financial support were less satisfied than women who had other support. Emotional satisfaction was lowest for Hassidic women. Older age and not completing college were associated with painful sex and avoidance of sex. Women who were raised observant were twice as likely to have difficulty achieving climax than women who reported themselves as ba’alot teshuva; however they were less likely to report painful sex and less likely to avoid sex.

B.        Mikvah and Niddah

            Greater physical satisfaction was significantly more likely in women who demonstrated less conflict about niddah and mikvah. These women never postponed mikvah and also did not report feeling relieved when they became a niddah. A different pattern was observed with respect to the influence of postponing mikvah and emotional satisfaction. Women who never postponed the mikvah for any reason showed significantly lower emotional satisfaction than women who did. But women who were often relieved to be a niddah were also less emotionally satisfied. This was also true for those who did not feel that niddah enhanced their sex lives as well as for women who felt that they could have been better prepared for marital life. Interestingly, adherence to niddah was associated with better emotional (but not physical) satisfaction.

C.        Sexual Education and History

            In general, physical and emotional satisfaction and frequency of sex were not related to sexual education and history. Women who were virgins at marriage reported greater frequency of orgasms and less difficulty achieving orgasm during marital sex as compared to those women who were not virgins when they married. Conversely, women who had experimented with sex short of intercourse premaritally (i.e., they were technically virgins) reported greater physical satisfaction, greater frequency of orgasm, and less difficulty achieving orgasm than virgins who had minimal (holding hands) or no sexual experience at the time they married.

D.        Husbands’ Sexual Dysfunction

            Although physical satisfaction and frequency of orgasm were not significantly related to husbands’ sexual dysfunction, frequency of sex was. Difficulties such as lack of interest, premature ejaculation, performance anxiety, erectile dysfunction, and avoiding sex were associated with less frequent sex. Husbands’ problems achieving orgasm were associated with less emotional satisfaction in the relationship. Furthermore, husbands’ sexual dysfunction correlated with reports of sexual dysfunction by the wife. Greater lack of interest and lack of pleasure as well as anxiety about and avoidance of sex were more often reported by women when similar sexual difficulties were reported for the husband.

E.         Communication Patterns

            Communication patterns about how sex was initiated were significantly related to physical and emotional satisfaction as well as to sexual frequency. A significant predictor of good sex was whether both husband and wife expressed interest in initiating relations. A woman’s participation in initiation of sex, independently or mutually, was associated with greater physical and emotional satisfaction, regardless of how she communicated her interest, such as by physical gesture or in words. Sexual difficulty, particularly lack of interest and lack of pleasure, was associated with less involvement in initiation of sex by the wife and more frequent initiation by the husband. Avoiding sex because of sexual problems was similarly related to initiation patterns.

F.         Sexual Abuse and Mental Health

            Women who reported a history of sexual abuse, regardless of when the abuse took place, were less emotionally satisfied. Type of abuse or perpetrator was not significantly related to any of the other variables we examined related to sexual satisfaction. Sexual abuse history was related to current sexual difficulties. Women who reported a history of sexual abuse were more likely to report no interest or pleasure in sex, anxiety about sex, and consequent avoidance of sex. When the perpetrator was a relative, women reported less interest in sex.

            Mental health was significantly related to physical and emotional satisfaction as well as frequency of sex. Women with a history of depression, but not anxiety, reported lower physical and emotional satisfaction as well as less interest in and lower frequency of sex.

G.        Religious Background

            We were also interested in examining the impact of religious background (i.e., being raised observant vs. being a ba’alat teshuva) on predictors of characteristics of sexual satisfaction. These analyses revealed significant differences between women who were raised in observant homes and those who became observant later in life.  For those women who were raised observant, lower physical satisfaction was associated with feelings they could have been better prepared for sex before marriage, frequently postponing going to mikvah, low emotional satisfaction, not learning about sex by experimentation, not feeling that niddah enhanced emotional life. None of these relationships was observed in women who became observant later in life. It is worthwhile to note that despite having significantly more past sexual abuse than their peers who were raised observant, ba’alot teshuva experienced greater overall sexual satisfaction in marriage.

V.        DISCUSSION

            The research goal of this pioneer study was to better understand how married Jewish women who adhere to taharat haMishpahah experience sexual life. Our project included designing a suitable questionnaire, distributing that questionnaire as broadly as possible, and then analyzing the data obtained. We intended our findings to be helpful for the observant lay community as well as the broad spectrum of rabbinic, educational, and health professionals who serve religious communities. Our findings demonstrate something we intuitively know, that sexual and emotional intimacy are complex and nuanced experiences. We hope that subsequent research carries our beginning explorations further.

      As our questionnaire was modeled on the Laumann et al. study, we report the overall comparison that women who participated in our study reported significantly less physical and emotional satisfaction as compared to married  women from the Laumann et al. study. Our respondents also reported greater sexual dysfunction on many of the comparable variables. We speculate that lack of education about sexuality in the observant community might account for these findings. Discussion about sex rarely occurs in homes and schools and is absent even in many kallah classes. Lack of communication skills between husbands and wives regarding sexual life is also a likely contributor to physical and emotional dissatisfaction among observant women.

A number of factors contribute to the reticence regarding sex in observant Jewish culture. Traditional religious communities are reluctant to openly discuss or develop educational curricula for schools regarding sexuality. Reverence for modesty as a value, coupled with dismay regarding the hypersexualized aspects of contemporary secular society, leads to caution. Although there are several limitations of the current study, including the representativeness of the sample, the findings underscore the importance of education about sex within the context of marital relationships. This might occur in the context of standardization of the curriculum of teachers responsible for the preparation of brides and grooms in the area of taharat haMishpahah. Mikvah attendants are another group deserving in-service education. As the actual gatekeepers to immersion, women who work in the mikvah are in a privileged position to observe obvious distress and to direct women to appropriate resources.

One domain in which observant women and secular American women did not differ was in the prevalence of sexual abuse. It is imperative to not minimize the prevalence of such experiences within the observant community in light of their impact on both mental-health-related issues and married life.

Another important conclusion concerns the relatively few differences that could be attributed to adult religious affiliation. Though this may not be very evident in everyday observant life, the data suggest that Modern Orthodox, Yeshiva/Agudah and Hassidic women were far more similar to each other than not when it comes to sexual life. We conjecture that traditional attitudes expressed during girls’ formative years about modesty and gender role exert powerful influence across observant denominations.

We were impressed with the contrast in marital sexual life between women born religious and those who chose to become religious. As compared to their ba’alot teshuva peers, those raised observant experience more sexual distress. We noted a puzzling contradiction between the higher rates of sexual abuse among ba’alot teshuva and their greater sexual satisfaction once observant and married. We also noted that these women, once married, observe laws of family purity as strictly as their religious from birth peers. However, in their younger pre-religious years, ba’alot teshuva enaged in more premarital sexual experimentation. In addition, they were sexually expressive with their husbands even before marriage. We hypothesize that ba’alot teshuva import early, more positive attitudes toward sexuality into their adult marital lives. Greater awareness of sexual feelings and confidence may even offset such trauma as sexual abuse.

We respect that traditional Jewish life advocates premarital chastity and values modesty throughout all of life. We do not recommend that observant Jews advocate premarital sexual experimentation. Our work, however, highlights the need to encourage healthy sexual attitudes and communication skills in the observant Jewish community. This is a broad educational goal to be shared by parents and institutions such as schools and camps. Whatever their differences, lay and religious leaders across the denominations would serve their communities well by focusing on abuse awareness, prevention, and treatment, as well as positive attitudes toward human sexuality.

Finally, it may be important that observant Jewish women who have serious religious questions about sexual matters currently do not turn to religious personnel (rabbis or kallah teachers) for advice or counsel in this critical area of religious life. At the time of this writing, the advent of yoatsot halakha was too recent to have significantly impacted our respondents. Certainly this cadre of religious teachers/advisors  in taharat haMishpahah  are uniquely placed to serve observant women in the area of marital sexual life. Just as we advise implementing relationship and sexuality education in established school systems and establishing standards for those who prepare brides and grooms, rabbis would benefit from receiving training in sexual and emotional issues. Those who are in a position to counsel and educate couples both before and after marriage should carefully consider the significance of these observations.

There is no prohibition whatsoever of innocent singing; rather, only singing intended for sexual stimulation, or flirtatious singing, is forbidden. Although this distinction is not explicit in the early rabbinic sources, it closely fits the character of the prohibition as described in different contexts in the Talmud and the Rishonim, and it is supported by the language of the Rambam, the Tur, and the Shulchan Arukh.

Q: We have a practice in our school, in ceremonies organized for various events, that a female student sings as part of the ceremony. Is this practice halakhically acceptable?

A: The issue of "Kol B'Isha Erva" (the voice of a woman is nakedness) is discussed extensively in many contexts, mainly in the responsa of the great rabbinic figures of the past generation. Even, so this issue has not been discussed in relation to communities that already have an established practice of leniency and allowance of women to sing publicly. The premises of this responsum will be thus:

A) The tradition of the poskim (halakhic arbiters) of examining existing practices and investigating whether the community has legal ground on which to stand.

B) The assertion of the Maharshal, (accepted as practical halakha) that psychological and spiritual need is considered an important concern that justifies reliance upon a lone or minority halakhic opinion. And according to reliable accounts, there are women in certain communities who are so offended by the ruling forbidding them to sing in public that they turn away from the Torah and commandments due to it.

We will investigate the topic of "Kol B'Isha" according to its principal sources. For clarity's sake, these sources will be investigated topically, without tangential digressions, and not in chronological order.

What is the subject of the original saying "the voice of a woman is erva (nakedness, lewdness, or sexual impropriety)"?

The Talmud in Masekhet Berakhot 24a relates:

Rabbi Yitzhak said: "A handbreadth of a woman is erva." With respect to what [does it constitute erva]? If we should say that it is for looking [at a woman], had not Rav Sheshet said: "Why does the scripture list the outer adornments together with inner adornments? To teach us: anyone who looks at even the little finger of a woman is as if he were looking at her genitalia!" Rather, it refers to his wife, and for the recitation of Shema.

As is often the case with the Oral Torah, there is almost no word in this passage that has not merited much interpretation. For clarity's sake we will deal only with the interpretations that are important to the halakhic issue at hand.

The Talmud presents Rav Sheshet's statement as opposed to that of Rabbi Yitzhak, thus creating a conflict between the two statements. The Talmud resolves this by claiming that the statement "the handbreadth of a woman is erva" was said only in the context of the recitation of the Shema: it is forbidden to recite the Shema in the presence of a women who has a handbreadth of customarily covered flesh exposed, and this ruling applies even to one's own wife. In contrast to this, the words of Rav Sheshet - that one must not look for pleasure[1] at even the little finger of a woman - are meant to apply in general circumstances. Even though it would have been possible to explain Rav Sheshet's statement as a simple moral injunction, the Talmud in Masekhet Avoda Zara defines it as a prohibition of looking at a woman in an inappropriate way.[2] Thus, the statement of Rav Sheshet finds its way to the Rambam, the Tur, and the Shulhan Arukh as practical halakha - there is even a disagreement among the poskim as to whether the prohibition is deoraita (biblical) or derabanan (rabbinic).[3]

The next section of the Talmud leads to differences of opinion among the Rishonim, as it is unclear with regard to what context the following sayings are presented:

Rav Hisda said: "The shin of a woman is erva, as it is said: (Isaiah 47) ‘Bare your shin, wade through the rivers,' and it is written: (ibid.) ‘Your nakedness shall be uncovered' and your shame shall be exposed.'"

Shemuel said: "The voice of a woman is erva, as it is said: (Song of Songs 2) ‘For your voice is sweet and your face is comely'"

Rav Sheshet said: "The hair of a woman is erva, as it is said: (Song of Songs 4) "Your hair is like a flock of goats."

After the Talmud has suggested a different context for each of the two opening, "conflicting," statements of the previous section, it is difficult to ascertain to which context it is appropriate to attribute these following statements. The saying that is relevant to our discussion is that of Shemuel: "The voice of a woman is erva."[4] Does this refer to the specific, narrow prohibition regarding the proper recitation of the Shema, or is it a broader prohibition similar to that of inappropriate glances? A third possibility is that the relegation of the prior statements to their specific contexts was simply due to the Talmud's need to resolve seemingly competing statements, and that Shmuel's statement can therefore be applied to both domains.

All of these interpretive options are raised by the Rishonim and the Aharonim:

HaRav Yitzhak MiVienna, the author of the Or Zarua, holds that "Kol B'Isha" applies, like the prohibition of gazing at women, only in general circumstances, and has no bearing whatsoever on the recitation of Shema.[5] This also seems to be the opinion of the Rashba in his Hidushim,[6] as well as the stance of the Rosh: "Shemuel said: ‘The voice of a woman is erva, as it says "for your voice is sweet and your face is comely"' - to listen to, and not with regard to the recitation of the Shema."[7]

This also seems to be the position of the Rambam in the Mishneh Torah:

"And it is forbidden for a man to ‘wink' using his hands or his feet, or to hint with his eyes at a woman forbidden to him, or to joke with her or to act light-headedly, and even to smell the perfume she is wearing or to look at her beauty is forbidden, and willful violators are to be beaten as upstarts. And he who looks at even the little finger of a woman to take pleasure in it is like one who looks at her genitalia, and even to hear a voice of an erva or to see her hair is forbidden."[8]

From the equation of the prohibitions regarding voice and hair to the general prohibition of looking, we can infer that their presence does not necessarily imply sexual stimulation - rather, what is problematic is the inappropriate interaction with them by the looker or the listener. Therefore, in the laws of the recitation of the Shema, the Rambam does not list the voice of woman as one of those things that detract from the proper recitation of the Shema: "And the whole body of a woman is counted as erva; therefore, he should not look at the body of a woman when he is reciting; even if it were his wife and even if only a handbreadth of her were exposed, he should not recite in her presence."[9]

The Tur as well ruled, in accordance with the Rambam, that "Kol B'Isha" is limited to the topic of general modesty: "and it is forbidden to listen to a voice of erva,"[10] making no mention of a connection to the recitation of the Shema.

In contrast to this, the Raavya rules, in accordance with precedent opinions, that the central prohibition of "Kol B'Isha" specifically regards the recitation of Shema.[11] This is also the opinion of the Ritva in his Hidushim on Masekhet Berakhot. This position can be supported by the stylistic similarity of Shemuel's statement to the first statement "a handbreadth of a woman is erva," which is relegated by the Talmud itself to the topic of the recitation of the Shema. We]find a similar (though somewhat broadened) ruling in the Mordekhai, who states that not just the recitation of the Shema, but even learning Torah is forbidden in the presence of a woman singing:

It is prohibited to recite the Shema in the presence of an unclothed non-Jew, and it also says in the Talmud that a handbreadth of a woman is erva, even his wife, meaning a handbreadth of flesh that is customarily covered, and likewise the shin and voice of a woman are erva. And Rav Hai Gaon explained that this is all with regard to the recitation of Shema. And Rabbi Eliezer from Mitz wrote in Sefer HaYireim: "Therefore it is forbidden to perform the core parts of communal prayer while listening to the voice of a woman singing, but due to our sins we are settled among the nations in a condition of imperfect observance, and therefore we are not careful not to learn Torah in the presence of non-Jewish women singing," and so ruled the author of Halakhot Gedolot, and so ruled Rabbenu Hananel..."[12]

Rabbi Yosef Karo rules in the Shulhan Arukh according to the opinion of the Rambam in the Mishneh Torah that we should understand the Shemuel's statement in the broader sense: "and it is prohibited to listen to a voice of erva"[13] and he even rules to be stringent on the issue of the recitation of Shema as well: "One must be careful not to listen to the voice of a woman singing while reciting the Shema,"[14] and this ruling is in concert with his words in his magnum opus, the Beit Yosef: "And with regard to the halakha, it seems that we side with the Rambam, but it is in any event good to be cautious before the fact not to see hair and hear the voice of a woman singing during the recitation of Shema."[15]

In summary: there is a fundamental dispute among the Rishonim. Important Rishonim held that the main prohibition of listening to a woman's voice is only during the recitation of the Shema and other core parts of the prayer service, in accordance with the intuitive context of Shemuel's statement "the voice of a woman is erva." In contrast to this approach, other Rishonim held that the prohibition is analogous to that of looking at a woman, though it is still appropriate to be stringent with regard to the recitation of the Shema as well.[16]

What manner of a woman's voice is considered erva?

The poskim that hold that it is forbidden to hear the voice of a woman in general, and not just during the recitation of the Shema and the core parts of prayer, are divided as to what type of voice is prohibited - is it forbidden only to hear a singing voice, or is listening to common speech proscribed as well? And what about a singing voice that people are already used to? Is every type of singing voice prohibited? Let us begin this discussion with a disagreement between the Rashba and the Raavad described by the Rashba himself:[17]

And the fact that Rav Yitzhak said that a handbreadth of a woman is erva, and that we hold that this applies to his wife during the recitation of Shema, the Raavad of blessed memory explained that it is possible that this refers to a normally covered part of her body, and Rabbenu Hananel commented on this, saying that the shin of a woman is a normally covered and sexually provocative part of the body, even to her husband, and even though it is not normally covered on men, but her face and hands and feet and the non-singing voice of her speech, and her hair that comes out of her braid that is not covered, one need not worry about these as he is used to them and not disturbed. And with regard to another woman, it is forbidden to look at anything, even her little finger and hair, and it is forbidden even to hear her speak, as we say we say in Masekhet Kiddushin: "'let your honor send a salutation to Yalta [Rabbi Nahman's wife]!' He said to him: ‘thus said Shemuel: "the voice of a woman is erva."'" And nevertheless it seems to me that this refers specifically to the voice of a salutation, because there is intimacy in it.

It is important to pay attention to the fact that even the Rashba did not prohibit hearing all speech of a woman, rather only speech that has "intimacy."

In any event, his position is not ruled as halakha by the Shulhan Arukh: "one must guard against hearing the voice of a woman singing." Even though this is said specifically in reference to the recitation of the Shema, the Magen Avraham applies it to general rules of modesty as well: "'The singing voice of a woman' - Even an unmarried woman, and see the Even HaEzer 21, which states that the singing voice of a married woman[18] is always forbidden to hear, but the voice of her speech is permitted."[19] The Maharshal had already asserted that there is no prohibition of listening to a woman's speech:

And that which it says that the voice of a woman is erva, meaning that it is forbidden to speak with a woman, as Rashi explained, that if I should say hello, she would answer me - this seems to me to be strained, for they only prohibited listening to a singing voice, as the scriptures say (Song of Songs, 2): "For your voice is sweet and your face is comely." Also, we do not find that the original great sages were careful not to converse with women, as we see from several instances in the Talmud and other works not referenced here. Rather one should not ask a woman how she is doing out of a sense of intimacy. And we do not hold according to Rabbi Eliyahu Mizrahi, who forbids talking to women, even to ask her where her husband is, and I have already proved that his position is false, see in the chapter "Hasokher et Hapoalim," Siman 6, and the ruling that one does not use a woman at all, adult or child, we shall write, God willing, ahead in Siman 80, that nowadays we rely on the opinion opposed to Shemuel, that said that everything done for Heaven's sake is permitted."[20]

This explanation of the poskim, that the voice prohibited because it might lead to immodest behavior is that of song, is supported explicitly in the Talmud in Masekhet Sota: "Rav Yosef said: ‘when men sing and women respond - it is immodest; when women sing and men respond - it is like a fire in chaff.' What is the practical difference? That one should abolish the one before the other."[21]

Rashi explains:

"Like a fire in chaff" - because the responder pays special attention to hear the singer, and consequently the men will pay attention to the women's singing, and the voice of a woman is erva, as it is written: "let me here your voice" (Song of Songs, 2), and it will fire his evil inclination like a fire in chaff. But when men sing and women respond, there is a little immodesty, as the voice of a woman is erva but it does not fire his evil inclination to the same extent, because the singers to not pay such close attention to hearing the responders.

From the words of the Marshal and the Magen Avraham, we can understand that there is a prohibition of listening to the voice of a woman singing; given this, the poskim advise several dimensions that allow us to be lenient in various ways:

A) Everything here refers only to a lone voice and not to song in a group, as "two voices are not heard."

This distinction is widely accepted among different groups within the community, and it is therefore the custom to permit women's singing in a choir. This dispensation is extremely strained, alien to the character of the subject, and transferred from an altogether different context - hearing the sound of a shofar on Rosh Hashanah.[22] Rabbi Yehiel Weinberg has already raised a serious difficulty on this avenue: "With regard to what is written that two voices are not heard, is it not explicit in the Talmud that because it is pleasant to listen to, one would pay more attention? And nothing is more pleasant to listen to than what our sages attested to, that the voice of a woman is erva, from the verse "For your voice is sweet and your face is comely," see Berakhot 24."[23]

B) The prohibition applies only to listening in a manner similar to looking at a woman for sexual pleasure.

This distinction can be taken from a simple reading of all the material related to the subject, from the language of the Rishonim and the ruling of the Beit Yosef about them, although it is not stated specifically. According to this approach, my teacher, Rabbi Aaron Soloveitchik, ruled that there was no problem in public song when we, his young male students, were participating in the singing. Rabbi Aaron did not permit listening to women by themselves, even in a group, but at the heart of his position was the equation to the prohibition of looking, and the distinction between staring for sexual pleasure and general, innocent sight - and the difference is clear.

C) There is no prohibition whatsoever of innocent singing; rather, only forbidden is singing intended for sexual stimulation, or flirtatious singing.

Although this distinction is not explicit in the early rabbinic sources, it closely fits the character of the prohibition as described in different contexts in the Talmud and the Rishonim, and it is supported by the language of the Rambam, the Tur, and the Shulhan Arukh: "it is forbidden to hear a voice of erva" as opposed to language forbidding song generally.[24] (Even according to the most correct reading of the text of the Rambam - "to hear the voice of a forbidden woman or to see her hair," the word erva referring to the woman herself - the distinction is still supported by the context and the Rambam's general sense.)

The two latter distinctions are necessary, for they solve a difficulty in the language of the Beit Yosef: "And with regard to the halakha, it seems that we side with the Rambam, but it is, in any event, good to be cautious before the fact not to see hair and hear the voice of a woman singing during the recitation of Shema."[25]

This language is strange. If a general prohibition already exists on hearing a woman singing, the soft language "but it is in any event good to be cautious before the fact" with regard to the recitation of the Shema is inappropriate. However, if we interpret this position in accordance with the Tur (Even HaEzer, Siman 21) that this is with regard to problematic listening and problematic singing, we can understand the language of Rav Karo that during the recitation of the Shema one should "be cautious before the fact not to...hear the voice of a woman singing." It is appropriate to be careful during the recitation of Shema not to hear any singing of a woman, even that which is not problematic from the perspective of modesty.

These two latter distinctions are brought in the Sedei Hemed in the name of the Divrei Hefetz,[26] and were criticized by Rabbi A. D. Horowitz in a letter to Rabbi Yehiel Weinberg:

And as for what the Sedei Hemed said in the name of the Divrei Hefetz - firstly, the Sedei Hemed writes that is correct to act stringently, despite his opinion, and besides this, did not the Sedei Hemed write explicitly: "only one who does not intend to gain pleasure from her voice?" In that case, who can be responsible for monitoring such a thing? And also, what he writes in a letter that in religious singing the young men do not intend to benefit from the voice of the young women - it is a painful joke to say this, and it is easy for his venerable learnedness to say this in his old age (may he live long) (see the Tosafot on Masekhet Sota 19a, s.v. "Vekhohen," referencing the Talmud Yerushalmi, about an old priest). Does it not say in the Talmud, Masekhet Niddah, 13a, to the effect that in fear and trembling there is no suspicion of sinful fantasy - and even there the Beit Yosef wrote in Orah Haim, Siman 3, that the poskim left this out, as they could not be sure, and all depends on one's personal character..."[27]

We should pay attention to the fact that although Rabbi Horowitz's criticism of our latter distinctions (that the only prohibition is that of listening for pleasure, and that we need not worry about religious singing) is quite strong, there is still no claim of a formal prohibition on all song, rather a concern that these distinctions would be difficult to implement in reality: There is no possibility, according to this approach, that we will avoid all "exceptions", and that we will ensure that everyone will be listening innocently, and we must assume that there will always be some of the listening to women that will be problematic.

It seems to me that specifically these distinctions are the most appropriate to our circumstances, and that it is relatively easy to implement them. I have been asked for practical advice many times by students who have long been used to hearing female singers, and only discovered the halakhic problems with this after they had acquired a broader Torah knowledge. I always ask them how they react to the women's singing, and without exception they claim that the song does not arouse them unless it is intended to. Songs with this intention are characterized by their lyrics, melody, musical style, dress and body language. In communities that have the practice of permitting women's singing in serious ceremonies (even if this practice developed unintentionally) even those who wish to change the practice do not claim that the music arouses them, rather they think that there is a formal prohibition on all female singing. We are therefore witnesses to the fact that there is problematic singing, and there is singing that is entirely non-problematic.

It is likely that the stringent approach of Rabbi A. D. Horowitz can be explained by the Raavya, who considers the matter dependent on acclimation, and if so, even if groups within a certain community can be justifiably lenient, this possibility is not open to every community:

It is ruled in Halakhot Gedolot that all that we say here, that a handbreadth of a woman is erva, even if she is his wife, and with regard to another woman, even something smaller than a handbreadth, and likewise the shin of a woman is erva, and likewise the hair of a woman is erva [and likewise the voice of a woman is erva] - for all of these things it is forbidden to recite the Shema in their presence, and so explains Rabbenu Hananel. And I say that the reason for this is that even though the voice is not visible to the eye, there is nevertheless cause sexual fantasies. And all of the things [that we have related above] as erva only refer to things that are not customarily exposed. But we do not worry about an unmarried woman who regularly leaves her hair uncovered, because this does not cause fantasies, and so too with her voice [that he is used to].[28]

In light of the fundamental disagreement among the Rishonim and the interpretations offered of the ruling of the Shulhan Aruch, we can summarize:

· It is permitted to be lenient with regard to listening to the voice of a woman singing when there is a clear sense that the listening is innocent and the singing is innocent.

Such an assessment is dependent on five conditions:

1. Context and appropriate atmosphere

2. The lyrics of the song

3. The musical style

4. Dress

5. Body language

According to this approach, there is no problem with those among our daughters who are modest and upstanding to develop a career in singing, even within the general culture, as long as they do not make concessions of the refined foundations of Torah culture, and do not cooperate with the vulgar, commercialized aspects of the culture surrounding us. In an approach that is not accepted as halakha, the Sefer Hasidim held that there is a parallel prohibition on women to listen to the voices of men.[29] Even though this is not practiced halakha, it is ideal to pay attention to the five conditions I have outlined even in the case of a man singing in the presence of women.

· The dispensation for two or more voices is far-fetched and should not be relied upon alone.

In practice, when we rely upon this dispensation alone, there are many pitfalls. It seems that we have found a simple, easy answer, and we need not worry about the lyrics, or the melody, or the musical style, or the dress or body language, and in reality this sometimes creates a culture unbefitting the spirit of the Torah.

1. The Rishonim write about looking for pleasure or sexually inappropriate looking, and distinguish between this type of gazing and "sight".

2. Avodah Zarah 20a, ulistakulei mi sharei

3. Beit Yosef, E. H. 21

4. Every statement of this passage deserves its own discussion, as they each have unique characteristics and their own parallel passages.

5. Or Zarua, 1, hilkhot taharat keriat shema utefilah, no. 133

6. Hiddushei ha-Rashba, Berakhot 24a

7. Rosh, Berakhot, 3:37

8. Rambam, Hilkhot Issurei Biah, 21:2.

9. Rambam, Hilkhot Keriat Shema 3:16; See also his Responsa, no 224.

10. Tur E.H. 21

11.Raaviyah, Masekhet Berakhot, vol. 1, no 77, quoted at the bottom of p. 7.

12. Mordekhai, Berakhot, chapter Mi sheMeito, 247:80

13. Shulhan Arukh E.H. 21:1

14. Shulhan Arukh E.H. 21:1

15. Shulhan Arukh O.H. 75:3

16. Beit Yosef O.H. 75

17. Rashbah Berakhot 241

18. In the interest of objectivity, it should be pointed out that the Rif overlooks the subject entirely. see the full text of the Talmudic passage: Kiddushin 70a .According to Magen Avraham, it seems that the only prohibition is regarding a married woman, and not a single woman who he may marry. See also Tzitz Eliezer 7:28; and Yabia Omer 1, O.H. 6

19. Magen Avraham, O.H. 75:6

20. Yam Shel Shelomo, Kiddushin, chapter 4, no. 4

21. Sotah 48a

22. Rosh Hashanah 27a

23. From a letter sent to Rabbi Avraham David Horowitz, cited in Seridei Esh, 1:121, p. 394

24 Tur, Even haEzer, no. 21. Rambam, Issurei Biah, 21:2

25. Beit Yosef, O.H. 75..

26. Sedei Hemed, section Kof, kelal 42 (vol. 5, p. 282)

27. The full text of the letter can be found in Seridei Esh, vol. 1, no. 121, p. 394.

28. Raaviyah 1, Berakhot no. 76; Mordekhai on Berakhot 247:80

29. Sefer Hasidim, no. 614

THE PROSELYTE WHO COMES[1]

by Rabbi Dr. Isaac Sassoon

(Rabbi Dr. Isaac Sassoon is a faculty member at the Metivta, the Institute of Traditional Judaism. Among his publications is his commentary on Torah, "Destination Torah.")

“We are gereem before Thee” (1Chr 29:15)

Rome was not surfeited with rulers as educated or as well-disposed towards the Jews as the Emperor Julian. And even though he evidently studied Judaism, Julian’s following remarks show him laboring under a sad misapprehension with respect to at least one element of Torah. For this is what he writes regarding the Torah’s attitude to non-Jews:

Moses says that the creator of the universe chose out the Hebrew nation, that to that nation alone did he pay heed and cared for it, and he gives him charge of it alone. But how and by what sort of gods the other nations are governed he has said not a word - unless indeed one should concede that he did assign to them the sun and moon... It is fair to ask ... Why G-d if he was not G-d of the Jews alone but also of the gentiles, sent the blessed gift of prophecy to the Jews in abundance and gave them Moses and the oil of anointing and the prophets and the law... But unto us no prophet, no oil of anointing, no teacher, no herald to announce his love for mankind ... Nay he looked on for myriads of years while men in extreme ignorance served idols [2]

His reference to the assignment of sun and moon to the nations suggests that he got the idea from Deuteronomy 4:19. That verse reads: “Lest you lift your eyes skywards and seeing the sun, the moon and the stars you are led on to bow down to them and worship them which Hashem your G-d assigned to all the peoples under heaven”. It is not difficult to see how this ‘assigning’ (especially if taken in conjunction with Dt 29:25) could have persuaded Julian that Moses considered idol worship predestined by G-d for all peoples except Israel. Indeed, some modern scholars concur with Julian’s understanding. For example, Jeffrey Tigay writes “The implication that worship of the heavenly bodies by other nations was ordained by G-d struck many traditional commentators as unlikely, since the prophets teach that one day all nations will abandon false religion and recognize the L-rd alone. ... However ... [t]he view that the nations will someday abandon idolatry and worship the L-rd alone is never expressed in the Torah, and Deuteronomy 4:19 is consistent with this.”[3] Too bad Julian did not consult one of those ‘many traditional commentators’! For as Tigay goes on to explain, those commentators include the sages who paraphrased the last clause of Dt 4:19 thus: “which the L-rd your G-d allotted to other peoples to give light to them”.[4]

But for the rabbis Scripture’s sombre depiction was not the worst news. Scripture portrays what is out there, and attributes everything to the Ultimate Cause. No, not depictions but the reality itself disquiets the rabbis, a reality that ostensibly bespeaks indifference to the spiritual welfare of the overwhelming majority of His creatures on the part of ‘G-d of the spirits of all flesh’. And their disquiet drives the rabbis now to ponder, now to agonize. One answer they came up with was that as a kingdom of priests (Ex 19:6) Israel was entrusted with the spiritual advancement of her fellow humans.

G-d gave Torah to Israel in order that they should bring it to the nations (Tanhuma Dt. 2).[5]
Hillel said: ‘[love your fellow humans] and draw them close to Torah’. This teaches that one breaks into people [’s lives] and causes them to enter under the shekhinah’s wings just as our father Abraham would break into people [’s lives] and cause them to enter under the shekhinah’s wings. Nor was Abraham alone; Sarah did the same as it says [Gen 12:5] ‘... also the souls they made in Haran’. Now even the whole world in joint effort cannot create so much as a single gnat. So what does ‘the souls they made’ signify? It signifies that the holy One blessed be He reckoned it unto them as though they had created [those that they caused to enter under the shekhinah’s wings] (Aboth de R. Nathan A, 12 [p.53]; Cf. Gen. Rab. 39:21). [6]
It says ‘If having knowledge he does not tell he shall bear his sin’ [Lev 5:1]. This means unless you preach me as G-d among the nations of the world, you shall have to bear the brunt (Lev. Rab. 6:5).

With these and similar exhortations the rabbis inculcated a sense of noblesse oblige. The fact that Israel alone had been graced with the precious gifts of prophecy and revelation imposed on her the responsibility to share with others.

The extent of that sharing seems to have been in dispute as witnessed by our citations. The first citations, that speak of bringing Torah to the nations and drawing humanity at large to Torah, would appear to go further than the third that requires only the essentials of the faith to be shared. Obviously the latter is a minimalist approach, and like all minimalism in the moral sphere, it should probably be thought of as less than ideal. The Talmud recognizes two types of ger (= convert). The ger toshav renounces idolatry and accepts the principles of Jewish morality that follow from belief in the One.[7] Then there is the ger sedeq who becomes a full-fledged member of the covenantal community of Israel. This is how the groups referred to as wood-choppers and water drawers were integrated: “You all stand here today before Hashem your G-d your tribal chiefs, elders, officers ... the strangers that are in the midst of your camp, from your wood-choppers to your water-drawers ready to enter into the covenant of Hashem ... that He may constitute you this day as His people” (Dt 29:9-11).[8]

Some have questioned whether conversion existed in biblical times. They seem to forget that Covenant with Hashem is always a religious make-over; hence conversion.[9] Later, when the idea of covenant receded, circumcision took over Scripture’s covenantal lexis or, if you like, circumcision replenished the emptying shell of berith (=covenant) discourse.[10] Thus Achan’s breach of covenant (Jos 7:11), conjures up for the aggadah an epispastic Achan (San. 44a). “They, like adam, they broke a covenant” (Hos 6:7) implies that Adam was guilty of the same delinquency as Achan (San. 38b). In Elijah’s day circumcision was neglected - according to a widely attested aggadah - for Elijah complains “the children of Israel have forsaken your covenant” (1Kgs 19:14).[11] “Were it not for circumcision heaven and earth would have had no abidance as it says [Jer 33:26] If not for my covenant [with] the day and the night, [if] the laws of heaven and of earth I did not establish ...” [12] It is not impossible that the ‘entering into the covenant’ of Dt 29 also came to be read (consciously or otherwise) as a reference to circumcision. But of course there was no need to rely on such tenuous allusions when Ex 12: 48 spells it out:

If a ger sojourns with you and would offer the Passover unto Hashem, every male of his must be circumcised and then let him come forward and offer it for he shall be as a resident of the land; but no uncircumcised one shall partake of it.

Just in case there lingered any doubt about the phrase ‘he shall be as a resident of the land’, one could always fall back on Numbers 15:15-16 - especially Onqelos’ rendering thereof:

O congregation, there shall be one and the same law for you and for the ger that converts; an everlasting law throughout your generations you and the ger shall be alike before Hashem. One Torah and one [system of] justice shall there be for you and for the ger that converts with you.

Thus the rabbis had unassailable authority not only for the acceptance of proselytes, but also for the ritual that sealed a ger sedeq’s transition from gentile to Jew.[13]

Going back to Julian, one gets the feeling that had Julian challenged the rabbis of his day like Tinneius Rufus two centuries earlier, their response might have tempered his bitterness. For Tinneius Rufus put it to R. Aqiba: “‘If your G-d loves the poor why does He not feed them?’ R. Aqiba answered ‘so that the rest of us might come to their aid and thereby escape Gehennah’” (B. B. 10a). As the rabbis see it, then, G-d invites humans to be active partners in bringing nourishment, both physical and spiritual, to those that lack. And in sharing His bounty with others, men and women find favor with G-d who will reward them accordingly. For it was axiomatic to the rabbis that the blessings G-d grants cannot be enjoyed selfishly. Or as Hillel’s apothegm expresses it “If I am for myself what am I?” (Aboth 1:14).

One could fill pages with the rabbis’ acclaim for proselytes and, conversely, their censure of those who were too quick to give up on potential converts. To cite two illustrations of the latter

1) Timna‘ was of royal lineage ... She wished to be converted. So she approached Abraham, Isaac and Jacob but none accepted her. Thereupon she went and became a concubine to Esau’s son Eliphaz, declaring: ‘Better to be a servant in this nation than a mistress in any other’. From her came Amaleq, who was to be Israel’s nemesis. Why so? Because they [the patriarchs] were wrong to turn her away [14] (San. 99b; cited by Tos. at Yeb. 47b s.v. qasheem).[15]

2) R. Yitzhaq said the night that Orpah parted from her mother-in-law she was set upon by hordes [of Philistines] and violated ... Thus it says [of Goliath in 1Sam 17:23] that he came [or was the result] of Philistine profligacy[16] (Ruth Rabbah 2:21; cf. Sot. 42b) [17]

In light of the foregoing, it might seem puzzling when we hear people assert (as they frequently do) that Judaism has reservations about conversion. Indeed many of us have heard conversion spoken of as if it were a concession - akin to divorce or the yefat to’ar law[18] - rather than a recommended or mandatory misvah.[19] And have we not just as often itched to tell our interlocutors that they were mistaken and to show them the adulation heaped by rabbis upon proselytes and the sacred institution of giyyoor? But then a little voice holds us back, admonishing us that it would be devious to show off one half of the picture without the other: the light without the shadows. For cheek by jowl alongside the adulation, the sources preserve traditions that discriminate against proselytes, including bona fide proselytes; and even a few that appear to discount the very premise of outsiders entering the Jewish fold.

Demurral vis-à-vis giyyoor has a long history. One of its earliest manifestations transpires from the polemic of Isaiah 56:3-8: “The foreigner who has attached himself to Hashem must not say Hashem will keep me separate from his people ... As for The foreigners who attach themselves to Hashem to serve Him, to love the name of Hashem, to be His servants, all who keep the sabbath and do not profane it and hold fast to my covenant; them will I bring to my holy mountain... This is the word of Hashem G-d who gathers the dispersed of Israel ‘In addition to its [Israel’s] dispersed I shall gather [others] unto it’”. Evidently, there were people in Isaiah’s society who, while not necessarily spurning conversion outright, saw those who attached themselves[20] to Hashem as not quite on a level with native Israelites. Some converts had apparently bought the myth of their own inferiority, until Isaiah was sent to disabuse them. Whether Isaiah succeeded in his own generation we are not told. What is certain is that qualms about converts and conversion persisted, notably among the Jerusalem priesthood of the Second Commonwealth. Although not all the sources displaying antipathy to gereem/gerooth can be pinned onto priests, nevertheless, the priestly belief that a person’s worth is like a thoroughbred’s, determined by seed and bloodline, fuels the anti-ger ethos.

Ezra chides Jewish men “who have married foreign wives thereby causing the holy seed to become intermixed with the peoples of the land” (Ezra 9:2). His indignation sparks off the zealotry of Shecaniah, spokesman for the chastened exogamists: “We pledge ourselves in covenant to our G-d to send away all these women and those born from them ...” (ibid. 10:3).[21] Had Ezra believed in conversion he might have modified Shecaniah’s plan of indiscriminately bundling off not merely the foreign wives but also their children. For surely not all these women and children living under the roof of a Jewish paterfamilias would have been diehard heathens. The fact that Ezra does not bother to ascertain the individuals’ loyalties, suggests that in his book, once a gentile always a gentile.[22] One scholar to reach the same conclusion as to Ezra’s probable motivation, is Daniel R. Schwartz. In his analysis of a certain Simon, whom Josephus mentions as a critic of King Agrippa,[23] this is what Schwartz has to say.

Examination of his [Simon’s] criticism of Agrippa will lead us further. For it is clear that his position is a priestly one ... it was predicated on a genealogical argument, on the assumption that there is an absolute link between descent and access to holiness... a typically priestly point of view, for priests... are, in Judaism, determined by their descent. He who is not (believed to be) a descendant of Aaron cannot be a priest, no matter how dedicated to piety and sanctity he may be. But if the question “who is a priest?” is answered necessarily and sufficiently by descent ... it is natural to apply it to the question “who is a Jew?” as well, with the result that a gentile cannot become a Jew ... Note, for example, that when Ezra - as priestly as one could possibly be (Ezra 7:1-5!) - heard of the pollution of the “sacred seed” via intermarriage (Ezra 9:2), he apparently gave no thought to the possibility of conversion. but rather moved to destroy all the families involved. [24]

Schwartz hits the nail on the head. The Aaronide priests’ attitude to conversion was hardly fortuitous. Rather does it appear to have been a corollary of their fixation on pedigree and their literal, somatic understanding of ‘holy seed’. Both their preoccupation with lineage as well as their skepticism of conversion are widely attested. We believe these two tendencies to be intimately connected. Moreover, we strongly suspect that besides Ezra, most talmudic discrimination against gereem reflects the priestly legacy that, after the loss of the Temple, entered mainstream rabbinic discourse. This theory is supported by the fact that a predominance of the ‘discriminatory’ material pertains to priestly affairs, as we are about to see.

LINEAGE

Of the priests, the sons of Habaiah, the sons of Hakkoz, the sons of Barzillai ... these searched for their genealogical records[25] but they could not be found, so they were ousted from the priesthood. (Ez 2:61-62; Neh 7:62-63).

[A priest] who wishes to marry a woman of priestly family must check ... her mother, her mother’s mother, her paternal and maternal grandmothers, the mothers and grandmothers of both her paternal and maternal grandmothers. If the woman is of Levitical or [lay] Israelite family he must go back an additional generation (M. Qid. 4:4).

The chamber of Hewn Stone was where Israel’s great Sanhedrin sat and judged the priesthood. A priest whose genealogy failed the test would put on black [robes], wrap himself in black and go hence and depart ... (M. Mid. 5:4).

SKEPTICISM TOWARDS GEREEM/GEROOTH[26]

Tobias the physician as well as his son and his manumitted slave [i.e. a convert] all saw the new moon in Jerusalem. The priests accepted him and his son but rejected his slave (M. Rosh Hashanah 1:7).

[Even] after the Temple was destroyed priests comported themselves with haughtiness and refrained from marrying daughters of proselytes (Qid. 78b).

If the supreme court issued a ruling but one of its members knew his colleagues were in error and told them so; or if the court reached its decision in the absence of the court president; or if one of its members was a proselyte, a bastard, a Gibeonite or an old man who had never fathered a child - in all these cases the court is not liable [to bring the sacrifice prescribed at Lev 4:14]. Because here [Lev 4:13] it says edah and there [Num 35:24] it says edah. Just as that edah’s members must all be eligible to issue rulings so too this edah’s (M. Hor. 1:4).

It was taught in a baraitha A court of three who are as literate as [accredited] judges shall serve for halisah. R. Yehudah requires five ... How do we know that actual accredited judges are not needed? Because it says ‘in Israel’ implying that rank-and-file Israelites suffice [for halisah] ... But R. Samuel bar Yehudah said ‘in Israel’ comes to teach something else namely, that halisah must be performed in a beth din of Israelites not a beth din of gereem ... When R. Yehudah invited R. Samuel bar Yehudah to be one of the five members of a halisah beth din, he declined saying: ‘We have learnt that ‘in Israel’ means a beth din of Israelites and not a beth din of gereem - and I am a ger ... Rava said a proselyte is allowed by the Torah to judge his fellow proselyte as it says [Dt 17:15] ‘You shall appoint over you a king whom Hashem your G-d chooses; from among your brethren shall you appoint over you a king’. Only ‘over you’ do we require that he be ‘from among your brethren’, but there is no objection to a proselyte judging his fellow proselyte ... (Yeb. 101a-102a).

On exiting the Temple, the high priest was escorted by a throng who, on spotting Shema‘iah and Avtalyon, drifted away from him [the high priest] and followed Shema‘iah and Avtalyon.[27] When the latter came to take leave of the high priest he greeted them with ‘May the sons of nations[28] come in peace’... (Yom. 71b).

Aqabyah son of Mahalal’el[29] asserted four things ... that the bitter water ordeal is not administered to a proselytess or to a freed woman. The sages disagreed. They said to him ‘Karkemeet was a freed woman in Jerusalem and she was given to drink the bitter waters by Shema‘iah and Avtalyon’. He replied ‘the likes of her gave her to drink ...’ (M. Edu. 5:6).[30]

It was taught in a baraitha: What is the definition of a zonah [that Lev 21:7 forbids a priest to marry]? R. Eliezer says the epithet zonah is self explanatory.[31] R. Aqiba says a zonah is one who lives promiscuously.[32] ... R.Yehudah says a zonah is a woman incapable of child bearing. But the [other] sages say a zonah is none but a proselytess, a manumitted female slave and a woman who had been in a forbidden relationship[33] (Yeb. 61b).[34]

Undeniably, the first two zonah definitions attributed to the [other] sages rob conversion of its essential transformatory character. Prior to their conversion, proselytes will no doubt have contravened Mosaic and possibly Noahide Torah in all sorts of ways. But no other law, Mosaic or Noahide, that a person may have transgressed prior to conversion trails the convert into Israelitehood. Why the exception for fornication - nay, the mere suspicion of fornication?[35] The answer can be found only in the priestly scheme where body dominates and spirit languishes. In that system a convert’s soul, permeated as it may once have been with idolatry, is capable of living down its idolatrous past. But the body once tainted is irremediable. The approximation of the giyyoreth-zonah equation to priestly concepts is sometimes explained as rabbis having resigned themselves to the priests’ de facto avoidance of proselyte spouses. If that is so, the citation of Lev 21:7 as prooftext will have been a rabbinic flourish.[36] For the priests’ eschewal owed nothing to Lev 21:7, but, as noted above, was another aspect of their entrenchment in genealogy and ethnic ‘holiness of seed’. Alternatively, the anonymous giyyoreth definition of zonah represents an autonomous strand within rabbinic Judaism (perhaps with Shammaite leanings) that, in stark contrast to the (Hillelite) love for converts, tended to misprize them (see infra).

But whatever its history, the superstitious belief in an inherent disparity between a biological and an adoptive Jew, consolidated; thanks largely to the allure such self-congratulatory myths have among the disenfranchised. Still, allure notwithstanding, the Hillelite tradition was never abandoned. Every rabbinic expression of reluctance towards gereem/gerooth, is matched, if not outweighed, by affirmatory pronouncements. Take the giyyoreth-zonah example just surveyed. For starters, neither R. Eliezer nor R. Aqiba subscribed to it.[37] Moreover:

It was taught in a baraitha: R. Shim‘on b. Yohai said a female proselyte who converted below the age of three years and a day may marry into the priesthood as it says [Num 31:18] ‘but every female minor who has not known man carnally spare for yourselves’ - and [the priest] Phineas was with them. But the sages say ‘spare for yourselves’ means take them [not in matrimony] but as slaves. Now all opinions [on marriage of priests to proselytes and to offspring of proselytes] are midrashically derived from a single verse [viz. Ezek.44:22] ‘A widow and a divorcee they [priests] shall not take to themselves as wives; but only virgins of the seed of the house of Israel’.... (Qid. 78a).

As the gemara at Qiddushin 78 proceeds to explain, those who forbid all female proselytes emphasize the phrase ‘Israelite seed’. R. Shim‘on, on the other hand, downplays ‘seed’ (or takes it less than literally). The word R. Shim‘on highlights is ‘virgins’, thereby arriving at the meaning: ‘those who attain their virginity in Israel’.[38] Thus according to this alternative tradition, priests’ avoidance of proselyte spouses has nothing to do with the stigma of zenooth. The presence of these two distinct traditions (Yeb.61 versus Qid. 78) within the Babylonian Talmud has occasioned lively and ultimately irresolvable debate, notably between Rambam and Ra’vad (Issure Bi’ah 18:3) and their respective followers. So much for the Bavli. The Yerushalmi preserves a third tradition: “It says ‘none but a virgin from among his people shall he [the high priest] marry’ [Lev 21:14] which implies that to marry a giyyoreth [not being from among his people] would be to transgress a positive command since a law inferred from one positive command is also positive” (Y. Yeb. 8:2 [9c], Qid. 4:6 [66a]). Another source not to recognize a giyyoreth as a woman forbidden to a priest under the terms of Lev 21 occurs at Sanhedrin 82a. A Hasmonean beth din is said to have decreed that a man cohabiting with a non-Jewess shall be reckoned guilty of violating four prohibitions. Two amora’im, R. Dimi and Rabin, agree as to the identity of the first three prohibitions but dispute the fourth. Rabin claims that the fourth involved a prohibition peculiar to priests viz., a priest who had relations with a gentile would be liable for consorting with a zonah.[39] R. Dimi, however, declares that gentile women cannot be presumed zonot ‘because their women are not so immoral’.[40] R. Dimi obviously rejects the giyyoreth-zonah equation. But as the 12th century Tosafist R. Moses of Pontoise points out,[41] even Rabin did not consider a gentile woman’s presumptive zenooth anything more than a Hasmonean innovation. And if a gentile’s zonah classification was merely Hasmonean and unscriptural, a fortiori a giyyoreth’s.

As for the high priest’s slur on Shema‘iah and Avtalyon, it comes as no surprise. The only question is whether in calling them gentiles he meant quite literally to repudiate gerooth; or, as seems likelier, to convey the ingrained priestly position that gereem were unequal Jews. Today we have confirmation of such condescension towards gereem in circles associated with the sacerdotal clan. To quote once again Daniel Schwartz:

[In] conjunction with the usual rabbinic notion that the Torah “equates the proselyte to the native-born with regard to all laws of the Torah,” it follows that proselytes may enter [the Temple] along with born Israelites. But three pieces of earlier evidence, all from priestly circles, say otherwise. First of all, the inscriptions on the Temple mount which warned Gentiles not to enter referred to them as allogenes (“of foreign birth”) .... Already Clermont-Ganneau, who first published the inscription found intact [in 1872] noted that, if taken literally, it would exclude converts as well. Second, a Qumran text (Q4 Florilegium 1, 3-4) looks forward to the future Temple which ... will not be polluted by the entry of “the Ammonite, nor the Moabite, nor half-breed [sic], nor the foreigner, nor the proselyte (ger) ... our third witness: the Temple Scroll ... makes clear that the status of proselytes, at least with regard to entry into the Temple, is lower than that of born Israelites.[42]

Horayot 1:4 (item b cited above) implies that gereem were disbarred from the higher judiciary. Perhaps this disbarment of gereem went back to the days when the priesthood was in charge of the Temple. Since the Temple was where the supreme court convened, it would have been off-limits to gereem. Not that the Mishnah offers this etiology, or any other for that matter. Indeed, the Mishnah appears to take as given the proselyte’s inadmissibility to the Sanhedrin. But the Mishnah’s reticence is compensated by the gemara, especially the Yerushalmi (Hor. 1:4 [46a]) that offers the following explanation. “It is written [Num 11:16] ‘let them stand there with you’. Just as you [Moses] are neither a ger,[43] a Gibeonite nor a bastard,[44] so also shall they be neither gereem, Gibeonites nor bastards ...”.

Now Torah is quite forthright in itemizing its judiciary’s requisite qualifications. These include fortitude, fear of G-d, trustworthiness, having contempt for lucre (Ex 18:21); experience, being imbued with the spirit (Num 11:16-17); wisdom, discernment and understanding (Dt. 1:13). But absolutely nowhere does Torah so much as hint at DNA tests for judges or their progenitors. Only in the cultic realm does heredity reign (see Num 17:5), or to paraphrase Daniel Schwartz: the question ‘who is a priest?’ is answered necessarily and sufficiently by descent. In light of the scriptural evidence, perhaps we should understand the Yerushalmi’s patently forced derash[45] to be tongue in cheek, as if to say: if you can believe that Moses’ value resided in his pedigree, then believe also that pedigree determined the selection of his deputies. But needless to say, that is not the conventional reading. Instead, Horayot’s disbarring of gereem came to be viewed as normative halakhah, so much so that Shema‘iah and Avtalyon were felt to be an embarrassment. At that point, this pair of sages, described elsewhere in the Mishnah (Hag. 2:2) as president and vice-president of the supreme court, had to be transmogrified from gereem into descendants of gereem - conveniently forgetting that when they want, the sources know how to designate descendants. Moreover, if the ger status of one’s ancestors is the thorn in the side of the world’s Aqabiahs and high priestly purists, where’s their protest at other scions of converts, such as R. Aqiba[46] and those prophets descended from the proselytess Rahab (Meg.14b) who like R. Aqiba presided over bate din.[47]

But even if we grant that Horayot meant to deny the Sanhedrin the benefit of appointees such as an Obadiah[48] or a Yithra,[49] a Shema‘iah or an Avtalyon[50] - its denial was not necessarily the last word. As noted earlier, wellnigh every instance of ger-wariness is offset by its converse. The converse of Horayot 1:4 may be discovered at Sanhedrin 4:2. “Anybody can qualify to try monetary cases, but to try capital cases none qualify except priests, Levites and Israelites whose daughters would be allowed to marry priests.” Now we have seen a range of sources that prohibit matrimony between a priest and a convert - albeit each source invoking its own very distinct authority for the prohibition. The fact that these sources name specifically a giyyoreth, must surely imply that a born Jewess who happened to be parented by a proselyte would be above reproach.

So can a priest marry a ger’s daughter? Well, it depends whom you ask.

The daughter of a male halal[51] is unfit to [marry into] the priesthood for ever ... R. Yehudah says the daughter of a male proselyte is like the daughter of a male halal. R. Eliezer b. Ya‘akov says if a [native] Israelite marries a giyyoreth, their daughter is fit to [marry into] the priesthood; similarly the daughter of a proselyte father and a [native] Israelite mother. But if both parents were proselytes she is unfit to [marry into] the priesthood ... R. Yose says even if both parents were proselytes she is fit to [marry into] the priesthood (M. Qid. 4:6-7).

Thus R. Yehudah would disbar proselytes from the Sanhedrin for capital cases because a proselyte is a Jew whose daughter he deems unfit to marry a priest. R. Eliezer b. Ya‘akov and R. Yose, on the other hand, in declaring the daughter of a proselyte father eligible to marry a priest, ipso facto qualify that father to try capital cases.[52]

Lastly, we must confront the painful teaching of R. Samuel bar Yehudah - which brings us full circle. As if no Isaiah had spoken, this proselyte sage dredges up the old ‘racist’ bias that the prophet had contested all those centuries before. More amazing still, Rava appears to endorse R. Samuel’s prejudice and to broaden it. The only court from which R. Samuel debarred proselytes was a halisah court because of a unique exclusionary phrase Torah employs in connection with halisah. Rava, however, would seem to extend the debarment of proselytes by narrowing the scope of Torah’s ‘you’ (as in “over you”) to exclude adoptive Jews.[53] In other words, Torah’s use of ‘you’ in addressing Israel yields ‘you who were born Israelite’.[54]

Such corporeal definitions of Israel strike most of us as extremely baffling, as well they should. For they drive an ethnic wedge between Jew and Jew, which would seem to run counter to declared fundamentals of rabbinic gerooth:

R. Yose taught A proselyte once converted is like a newborn babe (Yeb. 48b; see also Yeb. 22a, 62a, 97b, Ket. 61b, Bekh. 47a).
Once he has immersed himself and emerged [from the water] behold he is like an Israelite in every respect (hare hu ke-yisrael le-khol debarav Yeb. 47b).

PRO AND CON IN THE AGGADAH

Arguably the most familiar aggadic comment on gerooth is R. Helbo’s quip:

Proselytes are hard[55] for Israel as [the dermatological condition that Lev 13-14 calls] sappahat (var. is on the skin). For it is written [Isa 14:1] ‘The ger shall join them and become attached[56] to the House of Jacob’ (Yeb.47b, cf. 109b).

In his magnum opus The Sages, Ephraim E. Urbach reminds us that R. Helbo’s own disciple R. Berakhyah distanced himself from his master’s interpretation of Isa 14:1.

Job said ‘no ger shall spend the night outdoors’ (Job 31:32). G-d rejects none of His human creatures but accepts them all; the gates are always open so that everyone that wishes may enter. Therefore, ‘no ger shall spend the night outdoors’ can be applied to the Holy One blessed be He ... R. Berakhyah asked: to whom does ‘no ger shall spend the night outdoors’ apply? It applies to gereem who shall one day be priests serving in the temple as it says ‘The ger shall join them and become attached to the House of Jacob’ - and the root SPH connotes priesthood as it says [1Sam 2:36] ‘attach me (= sephaheni), I pray thee, to one of the priestly orders’. [57]
But let us not be unfair to R. Helbo. He was not disavowing (heaven forfend) Isaiah’s prophecy that gereem would be attached to the house of Jacob; he was merely warning that for Israel their absorption would not be without difficulty. Thus R. Helbo makes it perfectly clear that he is speaking from a national standpoint. For Israel’s composure gereem might be a bane (albeit integumentary - no danger to vital organs) and an inconvenience.[58] But then many misvot are at times inconvenient, and the path of avodat hashem is often strewn with trials and tribulations. In any event, whatever R. Helbo’s original purport, later amoraim declared that in acquainting the gerooth-candidate with the lofty responsibilities Judaism lays upon a person, R. Helbo would be satisfied. How so? Because frivolous candidates will be deterred by so burdensome a prospect (see Yeb. 47b). This shows that these later amoraim took R. Helbo’s words as an admonition to bate din to be on their toes. So long as a system was in place for weeding out the irresolute and gormless, R. Helbo asked no more.

Another aggadic passage often understood as cynical of gereem and their motives, occurs at Yebamot 24b: “Proselytes are not accepted in the Messianic era. Likewise, they were not accepted in the days of David and Solomon. R. El‘azar provided scriptural support. It is written [Isa 54:15] ‘the one that sojourns with you will fall upon you’ meaning to say, whoever joins you in your affliction shall abide with you in the days of your tranquility”. To the extent we are able to fathom this cryptic pronouncement, its equilibrator may be located at Tos. Ber. 6:4.[59]

On seeing a place from which idolatry has been uprooted one says: ‘Blessed be He who has uprooted idolatry from our land; just as it has been uprooted from this place so may it be uprooted from all places of Israel and may you turn the hearts of the idolaters to your worship’. This last clause ‘may you turn the hearts of the idolaters to your worship’ need not be recited outside the land [of Israel] because there a majority of the population is gentile. R. Shim‘on [var. R. Shim‘on b. El‘azar] says also outside the land one must say it because they are going to convert as it says [Zeph 3:9] Then will I give the nations pure lips so that all may invoke Hashem’s name and serve Him with one accord.

Thus R. Shim‘on does not look forward to a moratorium on gerooth in the Messianic era, but quite the contrary.[60]

Even more distrustful of gerooth, is an aggadah domesticated by Rashi through his comments to Ex 32 vv. 4 & 7. At verse 4 he writes “The worshippers of the golden calf exclaimed ‘These are your gods o Israel’. They did not say our gods but your gods. From this we learn it was the mixed multitude [mentioned at Ex 12:38] ... who mobbed Aaron; they were also the ones that made it and then led Israel astray”. At verse 7 the words ‘your people has acted corruptly’ elicits the following from Rashi: “G-d does not tell Moses The people has acted corruptly but rather ‘your people’; ‘your’ denoting the mixed multitude that you [Moses] accepted and converted on your own initiative and without consulting me. You said ‘it is good that gereem cleave to the shekhinah [i.e. to G-d]’. Now it is they who have acted corruptly and corrupted [others].”[61]

One can scarcely imagine a damper more crushing to gerooth. If our master Moses is to be faulted for making converts without explicit divine concurrence, how far ought lesser mortals to run from conversion? Rashi, however, cannot be held solely responsible for the influence this aggadah has enjoyed. Maimonides outpaces Rashi by using it as underpinning for one of his more creative gerooth rulings. After codifying the ruling in question, Rambam continues “This is the reason the sages said ‘proselytes are hard for Israel as an affliction of leprosy’ because most of them have ulterior motives and mislead Israel. Yet, it is hard to separate from them once they have converted. Look at what happened in the wilderness in the incident of the golden calf and again at Kibroth-hattaavah. Indeed, the asafsoof[62] were in the vanguard of most of the [ten] ‘testings’[63]" (Issure Bi’ah 13:18).

Some have argued that the point of the mixed multitude aggadah was to warn against mass conversions; and no doubt, a sudden deluge of newcomers has the potential to saturate, or even disorient, a host community. Others bring up John Hyrcanus’ conversion of the Idumeans[64] to illustrate the mixed blessing of overambitious giyyoor. However, we must not discount the possibility that in John Hyrcanus’ day the atmosphere had already been infected with an aloofness towards gereem that got in the way of the Idumeans’ integration. Why, even King Agrippa was still being impugned on account of his Idumean extraction, at least in certain quarters. Earlier we had occasion to meet the erudite Simon, immortalized by Josephus for his gripe against Agrippa. As we saw, what bugged Simon was the king’s lineage, precisely the issue surrounding Agrippa in the Talmud’s recollection.

The high priest hands the Torah scroll to the king and the king stands to receive it but reads sitting down. King Agrippa, however, both received and read standing and was applauded by the sages. When he reached the verse ‘You shall not appoint over you a man who is a foreigner’ [Dt 17:15] he was seen shedding tears. From the crowd rose thereupon the cry ‘Agrippa do not fear, you are our brother. You are our brother. You are our brother’ (M. Sot. 7:8).
This story pulls back the curtains on a rare scene of the giyyoor polemic in full throttle. First to heave into sight is Agrippa reverencing the Torah and earning, in turn, the sages’ approbation. In the next tableau the king is weeping - whether genuine or crocodile tears or a mixture is left moot. But what brings on the tears is not in doubt. As his Torah reading progresses, Agrippa reaches Dt 17:15, the verse on whose strength his (priestly?) foes would dethrone him as a man who did not satisfy the verse’s miqqereb ahekhah stipulation. At which juncture the hoi polloi voices its (Pharisaic?) understanding of Torah brotherhood whereby the pious, Torah-committed Agrippa is hailed a true brother. So much for the Mishnah and its memory of the conflicting appraisals of Agrippa’s zygotic Jewishness among divers factions.

As noted earlier, priestly notions increasingly seep into rabbinic deliberations. In the process, Agrippa’s endorsement by his contemporaries, both scholar and commoner alike, is cynically written off as humbug. The Bavli records a source that lambastes the crowd as toadies sucking up to an imposter, while the Yerushalmi credits the flattery with deadly consequences. These sources take it for granted that his lineage disqualified Agrippa for an office limited to ‘brothers’ by Dt 17:15. In so doing, they align themselves with the position attributed to Rava (Yeb. 102a) that also treats as axiomatic the inter-fraternity of none but native Jews. Let it be noted, withal, how none of these sources feels the need to cite Holy Writ. Dt 17:15’s kingship law is unambiguous: no nokhri (= foreigner) shall be appointed king but only a man miqqereb ahekhah (= from among your brethren). Thus Deuteronomy sets the dividing line between ineligible foreigner and eligible brother. Being a brother among brethren, the ger must surely find himself, by definition, on this side of the divide. Or does he? Incredibly, for these sources a ger would appear to fall on yonder side, placed there not at Scripture’s behest but ‘because he pullulated from a tippah pesulah (=an unfit droplet)’.[65] But if droplets determine who is and who is not miqqereb ahekhah, then what of prophets?

Sifre (Dt. 157) construes the phrase ‘your brethren’ of Dt 17:15 to exclude gentiles. Gentiles - not gereem.[66] Dt 18:18 stipulates that Israel’s prophets shall arise miqqirbekha me-aheka. Again, the way Sifre (Dt 175) deciphers the phrase, the only people excluded under the miqqirbekha me-ahekha provision are gentiles. Even Yehudah Halevi (d. c. 1140), whose racist theory of Israel's singularity notoriously correlates prophecy with pedigree,[67] never cites Dt 18:18. That is not to preclude the role the ger-versus-brother dichotomy may have played in shaping Yehudah Halevi’s thinking. All the same, he could not invoke Dt 18:18 because neither that verse nor any other Torah verse allows for gere sdeq to be classified as a distinct sub-division of Jews. No, it is not Torah that yields racism, but primeval instincts, primitive and feral, lurking just beneath man’s consciousness. The priests exploited those subliminal proclivities to rationalize an hereditary priesthood. Eventually the rationalization took off and was accepted as self-evident. That explains why those who view the ger as a breed apart never feel constrained to provide scriptural authority. Chickens develop from eggs; butterflies from caterpillars; and the ger from a mysterious, undefined entity called tippah pesulah.

To recapitulate. Many of the texts reviewed so far, grade people according to the putative circumstances of their siring. This kind of scale, that takes embryonic purity more seriously than individual personality, smacks of a priestly provenance. You see, priestly purity-cum-holiness and defilement though firmly rooted in physicality, were possessed of metaphysical potency. Everything was either pure and therefore metaphysically sound or it was neither. Jewish seed Ezra had declared holy; other seed who knows? Consequently, priests had little use for conversion. If outside priestly purlieus converts were welcome, the priests for their part would regard them as second-class Jews. But we have also seen the vitality of a less carnal school that conceives of ‘entering under the shekhinah’s wings’ as a total transformation - the ger retroactively standing upon Sinai and ‘shedding the scum implanted by the serpent’.[68] The school that abnegates priestly taxonomies, declaring “all Israel eligible for kingship” (Hor.13a), and requiring a misbegotten Torah scholar to take precedence over a high-born but churlish priest.[69]

Amidst these cross-currents of the Talmudic ocean, we find post-Talmudic sources struggling to navigate a path. The overall tendency of these sources is to err on the side of caution. Let us consider the following rather typical example. The Talmud rules that pukka giyyoor requires a beth din of three (Yeb. 46b). The requirement is treated as scriptural, and as such the judges would have to be accredited (mumheen). For the number three is derived from the same Scripture that mandates accreditation (San. 2b et al.). Now the Talmud (San. ibid.) registers an exception to the mumheen requirement.

As for the mumheen requirement it is waived in line with R. Haninah’s teaching. For R. Haninah said Torah law requires a single standard of cross-examination in all cases whether capital or civil as it says [Lev 24:22] ‘A single [standard of] justice shall you have’. Why then have they [the rabbis] suspended it for [certain] civil cases? So that the door will not be shut in the face of borrowers (San. 2b-3a).

Thus the scripturally mandated grilling of witnesses was set aside for cases involving loans in order to keep creditors lending; creditors that might otherwise be afraid of losing their money should the testimony break down under rigorous questioning. Likewise, insistence on mumheen posed an obstacle to borrowing. What about mumheen for giyyoor? Tosafot answers that question. “You may wonder how we [not being mumheen] can accept gereem. We would have to say that just as they worried about the door being shut on borrowers so too did they worry about the door being shut on gereem” (Yeb. 46b-47a s.v. mishpat). For Tosafot to extrapolate from the misvah of lending[70] to giyoor proves that in their eyes, giyyoor is a misvah of comparable standing. No doubt, Tosafot also took stock of the words Sifre places in Moses’ mouth. “[Moses] said to him, ‘pray, do not leave us [Num 10:31] ... Perchance you think [by leaving us] to increase the honor of Maqom whereas in reality you will lessen it. Think how many gereem and slaves you can cause to enter under the wings of the shekhinah. Therefore, be our guide [i.e. stay on] so as not to shut the door on gereem who [in the event of your departing] will reason: if Jethro threw in the towel what chance is there for us?’” (Sifre Num. 80 p.76).

A moment ago we referred to erring on the side of caution. In the context of giyoor it would entail giving candidates who are not blatantly bogus the benefit of the doubt. No judge hearing a giyyoor application, or any other business for that matter, is ever sure of a verdict’s repercussions down the road. Prognosticating forms no part of a judiciary’s halakhic warrant which is, instead, meticulously sifting information and critically examining their own integrity. For this is the halakhahic formula for judges: “a judge has nothing but what his eyes discern” (en lo la-dayyan ella ma she-‘enav ro’ot).[71] Provided no stone is left unturned in the pursuit of truth, and no recess of the soul unscoured for extraneous agendas and prejudices, the rest is up to Providence. Hillel will have followed the same course when deciding to receive gereem;[72] even the oddballs that his colleague Shammai had turned down. Although the Talmud avers that Hillel was no clairvoyant nor formally endowed with the holy spirit (San. 11a), he was obviously blessed with deep faith and compassion and the insightfulness that flows from them. Taking that first step of coming in search of conversion seems to have counted with Hillel, because Hillel starts out with the assumption that giyyoor is, in principle, pleasing in the sight of Hashem. Hillel preached “love your fellow humans and draw them close to Torah” (Aboth 1:12). It was also what he practiced. So how about Shammai? you ask. How did Shammai justify the short shrift he gave the gerooth-seekers knocking on his door?

Shammai’s strategy parallels Hillel’s inasmuch as it too plays safe when in doubt. Their major difference is the angle from which they view the world. Hillel, the devoted disciple of Shema‘iah and Avtalyon,[73] was convinced that conversion was G-d’s will as revealed in Torah. Had Shammai viewed giyyoor as a Torah desideratum he would not have sent his visitors packing. No. Shammai evidently had at least one foot in the priestly camp, treating conversion almost as a mirror image of divorce which though recognized by Torah, is restricted for use only in the event of flagrancy.[74] Once gerooth is classified as a misvah in reserve, to be taken out only on state occasions, Shammai’s behavior falls into place. Conversion is all well and good for that paragon of propriety and submissiveness who comes dispirited and devoid of ego, not for smart alecs of the type Shammai dismisses (Shab. 31a). Besides, if there is no great virtue in spreading Hashem’s faith, playing safe would presumably translate into sparing the existing Jewish community the effort of accommodating neophytes. If on top of that the ger is a Jew-not-quite (as some sources imply), then it is Hobson’s choice to reject all but the worthiest, i.e. the least obtrusive.

This ambivalence to gerooth may not be entirely unrelated to the Shammaite belief that Jewish survival was best served by isolationism and by closing ranks. Although the immediate impetus for the so-called Eighteen Decrees is thought to have been political, there is no escaping the Decrees’ xenophobic underpinning.[75] Survival mattered to Hillelites just as much, but their opposition to the Decrees stemmed from their alternative perception of the Torah’s call. By means fair or foul, the Shammaites managed to muster the votes and the Decrees passed into law.[76] But the triumph was short-lived. Perhaps the Shammaites had overplayed their hand. In any case, the Hillelite school rebounded, and the later rabbis came to believe that Hillell’s Halakhah, not Shammai’s, met with divine approval.[77]

That is not to say Shammaite Halakhah ceased overnight. In their personal observance, individual rabbis continued to practice it. R. Tarphon, for instance, adopted the Shammaite recumbent posture when reciting the evening shema‘,[78] while R. Gamliel in his own home followed Beth Shammai in three halakhot pertaining to the festivals.[79] But when it comes to gerooth, which is hardly a question of private piety, there is no recorded lapse to Shammaism. At least not until the 19th century when gerooth can be said to have entered a new phase. Prior to the enlightenment - culminating for many minority communities with Napoleon and his emancipatory initiatives - proseletyzing had been forbidden and was a risky undertaking for both the convert and his/her Jewish sponsors. As freedom of religion began to displace medievalism on the European continent, conversion to Judaism gained momentum. Another feature of the emancipatory stirrings, was the rise of modernist reforms within Judaism. Then, amidst the controversies between the emerging factions of what were to crystallize as orthodox, ultra-orthodox, liberal and arch-liberal strands of European Jewry, there recrudesces a Shammaite defensiveness towards gerooth. Or rather ostensibly Shammaite. For now gerooth itself was not the issue, but had become a mere pawn in a larger denominational struggle. It is understandable that Orthodoxy, which was an ideology in the making at the time, should try to demarcate its boundaries, especially vis-à-vis the progressives who were the irritant that had produced the orthodox pearl, so to speak. As with any demarcation strategy, each faction tended to illegitimate its rivals in the process of forging self-identity. In order to sharpen their respective identities each stressed the misvot the other downplayed. Because the progressives put the ethics of Torah above its ritual, Orthodoxy that came into being as a reaction, reversed its priorities, laying particular emphasis on praxis that suited a separatist agenda. But as noted, the separatism went hand in hand with an aggressive invalidation of all other Jews, not merely the card-holding Reformists, but any that remained outside the ever-narrowing confines of the orthodox fortress.

This is not the forum to rehearse the birth of European Jewish denominationalism. For one thing, the story has been covered in many serious studies.[80] Moreover, our sole interest in the 19th century is to discover how gerooth fared in the face of all the turmoil. To some degree it fell victim to the brawls. If non-Orthodox Judaism was inauthentic, then so were gentiles who adopted that brand of Judaism. Authentic Jews were exclusively the adherents of Orthodoxy, and for converts to reckon as Jews they would have to convert under Orthodox auspices.

From here on the story will be taken up by the manifestos[81] of R. Akiva Joseph Schlesinger (d.1922) a man who set much of the tone for an important branch of segregationist European Orthodoxy, and who later exported it to the Holy Land. When reading the manifestos let us remember that gerooth is not the butt of their animus so much as are rival groups who were admitting gereem on their own terms. The writing is also fueled by a palpable militancy born of fear; that insidious, gut fear of the unfamiliar and the alien. Even as we cringe at the author’s special pleading, it is only meet to try and visualize the unenviable predicament that beset Jewry in his place and time. However, no amount of sympathy for Rabbi Schlesinger can justify reliance upon arguments such as his (for he was not a lone voice merely the most articulate, and some might say, candid). With the benefit of hindsight we may understand his siege mentality and its pretexts - pretexts that afford us no fig-leaf of cover in today’s vastly different circumstances.

1) Selections from the General Introduction to Lev ha-‘Ivri[82]

By divine plan humanity was predestined from the beginning to be divided into four species (or classes) each with its distinct mission. ... The first was given the seven Noahide laws ... and above all the misvah (or duty) to make the earth habitable through diligent study of nature, putting that knowledge to use for the benefit of the world. Never may they shirk this misvah even if they mean to exchange it for another misvah as it was taught [San. 58b] ‘A gentile who observes the Sabbath deserves death’... Later, the holy One blessed be He separated the second species that He chose to be unto Him a kingdom of priests. From them He withdrew the misvah (or duty) of making the earth habitable. G-d’s Torah alone was to be their care; and their life’s purpose to carry out the 613 commandments, the written Torah and the oral ... The third species is the priestly that must be completely removed from all things mundane ... The fourth consists of the high priest of whom it is written [Lev 21:12 ] ‘out of the sanctuary he shall not go’. Furthermore, the Cause of all causes established and fixed each of these [classes] in accordance with their respective souls and the quarry whence each was extracted so that each may attain the goal divinely willed for it. G-d also ordered that they shall endure for ever at their allocated posts and in their appointed positions, never interchanging from one to another and never trespassing or moving outside their boundaries. Thus, the Torah given at Sinai, being an inheritance of the congregation of Jacob, none of the other nations is allowed to delve into Israel’s Torah - especially the oral - because the Torah has decreed that a gentile who occupies himself with Torah deserves death. Conversely, the Torah decrees that Israelites, whose sole enterprise must be Torah, any one of them who gets involved with the learning of the nations, likewise, deserves death. For anyone transgressing the words of the sages is worthy of death (Erub.21b) and is called a renegade (Nid. 12a) ...
And even though the holy One blessed be He granted permission to a Noahide to transfer from his patrimony by converting and entering the Israelite collective, nevertheless it is not a preferential (or glorious) misvah to accept proselytes as indicated in tractate Yebamoth: Proselytes will not be accepted in the time to come when the prophecy ‘The whole earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the L-rd’ is realized. Because even then every nation shall still maintain its immutable position ... May the Merciful One speedily bring to pass [the promise of‘ Zeph 3:9] ‘Then will I give the nations pure lips so that all may invoke Hashem’s name and serve Him with one accord’ - Noahides according to their duty, Israelites according to their statutes, priests on their watch and the high priest in his sacred office ...[83]

2) Remarks on the Acceptance of Proselytes that is on the Rise in our Generation[84]

‘The heart of a king [and of princes] is in the hand of Hashem’ (Prv 21:1) and it is from His hand that this thing has come upon us - this recent movement towards eliminating religious divisions and hatreds. Like wild beasts, they envy the Jew no more. Instead, people go their own ways following their hearts’ promptings ... Ever since the declaration of liberty (also called freedom of religion) for all inhabitants of the land, it is no secret that the number of those attaching themselves to the House of Jacob has been increasing from day to day. But as for you, my brethren, what you need, is to know Hashem’s will in His Torah and to keep His statute.
To be sure, our Rabbis say ‘The holy One blessed be He, exiled Israel only in order that proselytes may join them’ (Pes. 87b). On the other hand, they tell us ‘Proselytes are hard for Israel as sappahat’ (Yeb.47b) which hardship Rashi and Tosafot understand to inhere in the failure of proselytes to observe misvot punctiliously which, in turn, sets a bad example in Israel. These two statements would appear to contradict each other, and one must reconcile the contradiction. As it turns out, there is a third text that does just that. The text occurs at Yebamot 24b: ‘Proselytes are not accepted in the Messianic era. Likewise, they were not accepted in the days of David and Solomon. R. El‘azar provided scriptural support. It is written [Isa 54:15] the one that sojourns with you will fall upon you - meaning to say, whoever joins you in your affliction shall abide with you in the days of your tranquility’. Thus we see that the acceptable proselytes were those that suffered and risked their lives to enter under the Shekhinah’s wings. For that kind of convert was Israel exiled. But those who come on a whim, let alone for their own satisfaction, they are unto Israel hard as sappahat. Of their ilk were the children of converts, or rather children of a mixed multitude, that were accepted in the days of Moses. From among them and their likes have emerged our tormentors: sappahat and [that other dermatological condition called] baheret Sadducees and heretics. But as birds of a feather flock together, so these, whose actions demonstrate that they are not of the children of Israel, exult to make converts in their own likeness. As the Rabbis predicted (ibid.) When many gentiles attach themselves you have sappahat and baheret.
And what is the exultation all about? Far better had they remained in their gentileness! Both for them and for us it would have been expedient because Sadducees and heretics are worse than idolaters as stated in our pure Shulhan Arukh (Hoshen Mishpat 34:22). We do not seek to swell our ranks. O that the nations would take away some of ours; those among us who crave their ways, their tongue and their ideas, in their thousands and tens of thousands. Then Jacob might well rejoice [and] Israel be happy that our dross and dregs have been removed. Hashem has said ‘You are few’ (Dt 7:7). Then shall the redemption come without delay, as the Rabbis teach ‘Proselytes [and those who marry underage wives] delay the Messiah’ (Nid. 13b).
And please do not raise an objection either from the Talmud’s description of Hillel’s lenient acceptance of converts or from the analogous story at Menahot 44a. For as explained in the writings of the ARI [R. Isaac Luria d. 1572] of blessed memory, They [i.e. Hillel etc.] recognized the source of [peoples’] souls. But we need not dabble in the esoteric; a thoroughly exoteric source says virtually the same thing. Tosafot (Yeb. 24; s.v. lo) accounts for [Hillel’s leniency] as follows: ‘Hillel was confident that [the people he converted] would eventually come round to doing it for the sake of Heaven’. Hillel, then, was acting upon ‘Hashem’s secrets revealed to those who fear Him’ [Ps. 25:14, cf. Sot. 4b].[85] Moreover, the Talmud rules that halakhah is not to be inferred from ma‘aseh (B.B. 130b).[86] Thus for us there is nothing outside the words of the Torah that are written in our pure Shulhan Arukh: ‘When a proselyte comes to convert, they must say to him ‘Are you not aware that Israel at the present time are despised and downtrodden?’etc.’ (Yore De‘ah 268:2). The ShaK (R. Shabbetai ha-Kohen) comments on this text that they must also be daunted (or intimidated)[87] perchance (or in the hope) they will withdraw because ‘Proselytes are hard for Israel as sappahat’. Now it is true that Beth Yosef (in his commentary to Tur Yore De‘ah 268) writes that even if the daunting was omitted the conversion is still valid. However, in his [later work] Shulhan Arukh he does not mention this, which suggests that he changed his mind. And in any case [R. Moses Isserles in his] Darke Moshe disagrees with Beth Yosef and states quite explicitly that without intimidation the conversion is invalid (see also Rambam Issure Bi’ah end of Chapter 13, where explanation is called for).[88]
In our present situation, so it appears to me, everybody would agree that the intimidation is indispensable and that, if anything, it ought to be redoubled. For today we are not exactly downtrodden and despised, thank G-d. Therefore one must be even more exacting upon them with regard to the stringencies of the misvot. These are the words of Rambam (Issure Bi’ah 13; also Shulhan Arukh Yore De‘ah 268:12): “When a proselyte comes to convert they check to see lest the motive be money or marriage etc. If no such ulterior motive is found, then the proselyte must be apprised of the heaviness of the yoke of Torah and the effort involved in observing it so that they might withdraw” etc. Rambam continues: ‘Anyone that gives up idolatry for the sake of a worldly vanity, is no righteous proselyte’. Moreover, in Hilkhot Melakhim (8:11) he writes “only if he accepts them as being commanded by the holy One blessed be He, and as being made known to us through our teacher Moses. But if he observes them because his mind dictates it, then he is neither a toshab proselyte nor yet a righteous gentile”. And further on (Melakhim 10:9) he writes: ‘This is the general rule. They must not be allowed to invent a religion or their own man-made misvot. Their only choice is to become a righteous proselyte or else to stick with their own [Noahide] Torah. They shall neither add nor subtract’. Mark these words!
As for those who jump at the chance to multiply converts and apostates, it is upon them that the Rabbis pronounced their malediction ‘Misfortune upon misfortune shall visit those who accept proselytes’ (Yeb. 109b). They also say (Bek. 30b): nokhri habba le-hitgayyer afillu me-qabbel alav kol ha-torah hootz diqdooq ehad middibre sofreem en me-qableem oto (A non-Jew who comes to be converted even if he takes upon himself the entire Torah except for a single nicety of the Scribes’ Words, he shall not be accepted). [89]
Make sure, once the checks, searches and intimidations are done, that they take it upon themselves to be of the number of the downtrodden Jews, recognizable by their distinctive names, speech and attire; and where applicable, by sisith, sidelocks and beard. So beware that you bring them into Judaism rather than into Sadduceanism, heaven forfend. So now you know!
These two texts bristle with Shammaism. First of all they divest Hillel’s example of its ability to serve as precedent by kicking it upstairs. The inference: Shammai must have lacked Hillel’s supernatural discernment or else chose not to avail himself of it when conducting interviews. Either way, because it was allegedly miracle-free, Shammai’s modus operandi need not be marginalized. Above all it should be noted how these texts give pride of place to the Bekhorot 30b prescript that, according to Rashi, actuated Shammai and molded his giyyoor policy.

[Shammai] shooed him away because it is taught in a baraitha ‘A person who comes to accept the things pertaining to haberuth except for one thing and similarly a ger who comes to be converted and accepts upon himself the words [or things] of Torah except for one word [or thing] he is not accepted’ (Rashi at Shab. 31 a s. v. hosi’o binzifah). [90]
Hillel, Rashi goes on to inform us, was also aware of the Bekhorot 30b baraitha but, unlike Shammai, chose to interpret it less rigidly (Rashi ibid.).[91] The editors of the Talmud were not content to simply record the stories reflecting Shammai and Hillel’s contrasting approaches to wayward petitioners - and then sit on the fence. Rather did they see fit to add a postscript vindicating Hillel’s approach and by more than implication decrying Shammai’s. “In the course of time the three proselytes [rebuffed by Shammai but later received by Hillel] met. They said ‘Shammai’s punctiliousness[92] sought to drive us from the world; Hillel’s meekness[93] brought us close under the wings of the Shekhinah” (Shab. ibid.).[94]

[1] “The rabbis speak of ‘The proselyte who comes to convert' even though at the time of coming the person is actually a gentile. The reason for this usage is that it would be offensive to refer to a person who has since converted by the epithet ‘gentile’” (Ritva to Ket. 11a).

[2] Against the Galilaeans translated by Wilmer F. C. Wright, Loeb Classical Library, The Works of the Emperor Julian vol. 3 pp. 341-343.

[3] JPS Commentary to Dt, excursus 7 p.435.

[4] See Meg. 9b; Y. Meg. 1: 8 [71d]; Mekhilta Bo 14 (p. 51); Tanhuma Ex. (Shemot 22); Sofrim 1:8; Sifre Dt 148.

[5] Buber edition Dt p. 2; Midrash Tanhuma Hamfo’ar vol. 2, Jerusalem 5754 p. 250; cf. Testament of Levi 14:4.

[6] The same aggadic understanding of Gen 12:5 is presupposed by the Talmud. “It was taught in the school of Elijah ‘The world has 6,000 years [of which] 2,000 are void, 2,000 Torah and 2,000 the days of the messiah’... When did the 2,000 of Torah begin? ... from ‘the souls they made in Haran’” (A. Z. 9a).

[7] See A. Z. 64b.

[8] See Rashi to Dt 29:10 and his source in Tanhuma. Also Shab. 146a; Yeb. 79a.

[9] Conversion rituals are, of course, quite another matter.

[10] The original idea of covenantal community being the antithesis of ethnic solidarity, it is understandable that where genealogy prevails covenant survives merely as a form, eviscerated of its definitional status. As Mendenhall notes (of an age long before the rabbinic) “...the basis of solidarity was no longer the covenant, but the myth of descent from a common ancestor” (The Tenth Generation pp.16-17). The rabbis made no attempt to revitalize the covenantal idea, but instead invested biblical references to covenant with the force of circumcision, the only berith in their experience. See Shaye J. D. Cohen’s “Your Covenant that You Have Sealed in our Flesh: Women, Covenant and Circumcision” in Studies in Josephus and the Varieties of Ancient Judaism, Louis H. Feldman Jubilee Volume (Leiden 2007, pp. 29-42).

[11] This Elijah aggadah climaxes in Pirqe R. Eliezer chapter 29.

[12] Ned. 32a; cf. M. Ned. 3:11; Shab. 137b.

[13] At any rate, a male proselyte’s. The female proselyte’s ritual was to be tevilah (=immersion) - adduced from Ex 19:10 that mandates ablutions preparatory to the Sinaitic covenant. Since the rabbis saw every conversion as a continuation of Sinai, they modelled conversion rites on Sinai. Accordingly: “Ribbi (R. Judah the Patriarch fl. c. 220) says ‘...your ancestors’ entry into the covenant was [solemnized] with circumcision [for the men], immersion [for all] ... So too shall they [future proselytes] enter the covenant in the same manner’” (Ker. 9a). Of course, this still leaves a discrepancy between the single rite for one gender and two for the other. Which leads to the hoary question: Why would a rite of passage be chosen that pertains exclusively to men? This conundrum has piqued writers from as far back as Philo (see Philo Supplement 1, Questions and Answers on Genesis, translated from the ancient Armenian version of the original Greek by Ralph Marcus, London 1953 pp. 241-242). To situate Philo among other ancients who considered circumcision’s gender implications, see “Why Aren’t Women Circumcised?” by Shaye D. J. Cohen (in Gender and the Body in the Ancient Mediterranean, Maria Wyke ed., Oxford 1998 pp.136-154).

[14] Rashi adds: “[They were wrong to] turn her away from entering under the wings of the Shekhinah; they should have converted her”.

[15] Tosafot juxtapose the Timna‘ aggadah to qasheem for the express purpose of mitigating the qasheem stricture (to be encountered anon) and cutting it down to size.

[16] Although the Keri is mi-ma‘arkhot pelishteem (= the Philistine ranks), the derash exploits the Ketib: mi-ma‘arot pelishteem.

[17] This example was brought to my attention by Rabbi Benjamin Z. Schmeltz, z.l.

[18] Dt 21:10-14; Qid. 21b et al.

[19] To which category accepting gereem belongs as demonstrated by - among others - R. Shim‘on ben Semah Duran (d. 1444). “... accepting gereem is a misvah that devolves upon the religious courts to receive and not to turn them away. It is clearly implied by the statement in tractate Yebamot (47b) ‘[once his wholehearted commitment has been ascertained the male convert] shall be circumcised immediately because we have a rule that a misvah may not be postponed without good reason’. The same rule is invoked by the Talmud with regard to levirate marriage. In the event that the oldest surviving brother is abroad but a younger brother is to hand, although the senior brother normally takes precedence, so as not to postpone the misvah, the junior shall perform the levirate duty. Thus we see that accepting gereem is a misvah on a par [with yibboom] ... Moreover, in tractate Ketuboth it says that when the applicant for gerooth is a minor, the underage ger is immersed [i.e. undergoes the attendant rites of giyyoor] with the consent of the religious court. Why so? Because of the misvah that obligates us to accept gereem” (Sefer Zohar Ha-raqiy‘a, p.37).

[20] The Hebrew is ha-nilvah; most likely a quasi-technical term for conversion (cf. “ve-nilvah ha-ger” at Isa 14:1).

[21] Cf. Neh 13:23-28.

[22] Proselytes are listed in M. Qid. 4:1 among the ten ranks (or rather castes) that removed from Babylon. Presumably this refers to the first wave of returnees under Zerubbabel, although the name of Ezra is associated with the ten castes in the course of the gemara (Qid. 69b). However, Ezra’s mention may be due to the Talmud’s telescoping of the two waves.

[23] Ant. XIX 7:4.

[24] Agrippa I, King of Judaea, Tübingen 1990 pp. 126-127.

[25] The Hebrew original translated ‘genealogical’ is ha-mithyahaseem - hithyahes deriving from the root YHS. All 20 biblical attestations of this word (mostly in the hithpa‘l as here) are confined to the post-Exilic books of Ezra, Nehemiah and Chronicles. It is highly telling that neither the word nor the idea (by any other name) occurs in demonstrably pre-Exilic books (but see Onqelos and other targums to Num 1:18).

[26] Schwartz lists the most egregious examples (op. cit. p. 129 n. 89).

[27] Named in the chain of Torah transmitters as teachers of Hillel and Shammai (Aboth 1: 10-12).

[28] This is a literal rendering of the Aramaic original ‘bene amameen’. However, there is no doubt that bene amameen (sing. mostly bar amameen) denotes gentile[s], and in Targum it is more or less the standard equivalent of biblical bene nekhar or nokhri (e.g. Lev 22:25; Dt 14:21, 29:21 et al.).

[29] Aqabyah is never identified as a priest. Yet the laws he champions at Eduyot 5:6 - leprosy, ritual purity, shearings of the firstborn of the flock and the water ordeal - all belong to the priestly domain. At Neg. 1:4 Aqabyah figures as one of three tannaim who dispute the consensus regarding another aspect of leprosy law. One of the two tannaim is definitely a priest namely R. Hananiah Segan Ha-kohaneem. Is expertise in leprosy law a priestly trait? Be that as it may, in his scorn for Shema‘iah and Avtalyon qua proselytes, Aqabyah showed himself to be a chip off the block of the high priest we met at Yoma 71b. Finally, in Aqabyah’s anthropology man has his beginning neither in the dust as per Gen 2:7, nor in the womb or the bowels of the earth (Ps 139:13-15) nor in a mould (Job 10:10) nor in any biblically located site. Aqabyah’s focus is tippah seruhah (Aboth 3:1). Without putting too fine a point on it, in whose mind but a priest’s (and a laboratory biologist’s) would the thought of human incipiency conjure up tippah (= a droplet)?

[30] Like Karkemeet, Shema‘iah and Avtalyon were not Jews-from-birth. They were proselytes (Ber. 19a, Rashi and Tosafot ibid.; Tosafot Hashalem: Commentary on the Bible, Jacob Gellis edition vol. 8 p.143; Y. Mo‘ed Qatan 2:1; Rambam, introduction to Mishneh Torah and comment on Edu. 1:3; Bertinoro on Edu. 5:6 & Aboth 1:10). However, in the 17th century there was a move to deprive Shema‘iah and Avtalyon of their proselyte status for the sake of harmonizing, as we shall see.

[31] I.e. it is to be understood in its commonly attested sense of a wife who is unfaithful to her husband (Rashi).

[32] Even though she is single (Rashi).

[33] E. g. she had been in an incestuous relationship; alternatively, an Israelite woman who had been married to [or in a relationship with] a Gibeonite or a bastard (Rashi ).

[34] The Mishnah’s parallel reads: “R.Yehudah says even if he [a rank and file priest] has a wife and children he may not marry a woman incapable of child bearing for she is the zonah spoken of in the Torah. But the [other] sages say zonah refers to none but a proselytess, a manumitted female slave and a woman who had been in a forbidden relationship” (Yeb. 6:5).

[35] “A proselytess [is reckoned a zonah] because she was surely married (or was in a relationship) when still a gentile ... and since gentiles do not have qiddusheen, her marriage (or relationship) renders her unfit” (Rashi Yeb. 61b s.v. ella giyyoreth). The idea of presumption is even more clearly articulated by Rashi at Yeb. 60b s.v. kesherah likh-hunnah & Qid. 74b top, s.v. hakhee qa-amar.

[36] Some appeal to the Yerushalmi’s ke-zonah formulation (giyyoret ke-zonah hee esel ha-kehunnah - Y. Qid. 4:1 [65b]) to show that priests’ avoidance of giyyoret spouses was never understood to have scriptural warrant. But we must beware of forced harmonizations, especially as the convert definition in Yebamot nestles amidst a list of alternatives (as we have seen) that all appear to be serious attempts at defining zonah of Lev 21.

[37] Nor, as far we can tell, did the amoraim who held that Torah forbids a zonah not merely to priests but to all Israel (Yeb. 56b). To be sure, under the relaxation deduced from Num 5:13 the only zonah lay Israelites must avoid is a zonah by choice (whereas for priests even a coerced zonah is unlawful). In any case, the entire discussion presupposes that zonah of Lev 21: 7 (see Rashi Yeb. ibid. s. v. ba‘lah loqeh) denotes a woman involved in some degree of infidelity and totally precludes the zonah=proselytess definition.

[38] Obviously two traditions are being conflated. According to the first R. Shim‘on’s source was Num 31:18, while here it is given as Ezek 44:22.

[39] See Rashi ibid.

[40] Cf. zo haita bikhlal shimmoor attributed to R. Ele‘azar b. Zadok (Hor. 13a).

[41] Quoted in Tosafot San. 82a s.v. ve-iddakh and A. Z. 36b s.v. mi-shoom.

[42] King Agrippa, pp. 127-128.

[43] This statement appears to conflict with Ribbi. “Ribbi says ‘...your ancestors’ entry into the covenant was [solemnized] with circumcision [for men], immersion and [a] blood [sacrifice offered] for acceptance. So too shall they [future proselytes] enter the covenant in the same manner’” (Ker. 9a; see n. 13 above). Cf. Rashi San. 82a “It was prior to Sinai that Moses had married Jethro’s daughter, all at that time having the status of Noahides. When the Torah was given they all, she [Jethro’s daughter] as well as proselytes of the mixed multitude included, entered into full misvah-hood”.

[44] One cannot help sense the irony: “Amram married his father’s sister Jochebed and she bore him Aaron and Moses” (Ex 6:20). At least according to some tannaim, such incest was forbidden even to Noahides (San.58b but see Rambam, Melakhim 9:5).

[45] Significantly, the Bavli rejects the Yerushalmi’s derivation. Firstly, it informs us that Numbers 11’s ‘let them stand there with you’ teaches that Moses presided in person over the 70 elders bringing their total to 71. R. Yehudah disputes Moses’ participation in his court’s proceedings - which leads him to the conclusion that a Sanhedrin’s quorum is exactly 70 - not 71 (San. 16b-17a). Secondly, at San. 36b (in a discussion cognate, though not identical, with Horayot) Num 11:16 is declared inadequate authority for disbarring gereem and other ‘genealogically impaired’ Jews from the Sanhedrin. Instead, the Bavli proposes Ex 18:22’s ‘let them bear with you’. (Again, how ironic that these words are spoken by Jethro, a man who served for the rabbis as the paradigmatic ger-sedeq!)

[46] In the introduction to his Mishneh Torah, Rambam identifies as a ger R. Aqiba’s father Joseph.

[47] R. Aqiba headed the Bene Beraq beth din (San. 32b). For R. Aqiba’s calendrical activity see Ber. 63a; M. Yeb. 16:7; for the prophets’: Y. San. 1:3 [19a] et al.

[48] The prophet Obadiah was a ger according to the Talmud (San. 39b).

[49] Yithra (also Yether) is portrayed as a ger who formed an important link in the transmission-chain of Oral Torah and played a major role in establishing halakhah (Yerushalmi Yeb. 8:3 [9c]).

[50] Bene Bathyra appear to have shunned Shema‘iah and Avtalyon. When Hillel arrives on the scene, he upbraids the old Bathyra guard for spiting their own faces in failing to take advantage of the two sages. As for the ‘sloth’ to which the Bavli (but not the Yerushalmi) attributes Bathyra’s ‘underutilization’ of Shema‘iah and Avtalyon, it is in all likelihood a euphemism for something far more deliberate (Pes. 66a).

[51] Literally ‘a profaned person’. Dealing with ordinary priests, Lev 21:7 says: “a woman who is a zonah and profaned they shall not marry and a woman divorced from her husband they shall not marry ... ”. Further on, at Lev 21:14 it says of the high priest: “A widow and a divorcee and a profaned zonah none of these shall he marry ...”. Even though the phrase ‘a zonah and profaned’ of verse 7 cannot be mistaken for anything but hendiadys (not to mention adjectival ‘profaned’ of verse 14) nevertheless, rabbinic midrash coaxed out of these adjectives an additional category of unfit wife that they called halalah. A halal was a son born from the disapproved union between a priest and a halalah.

[52] At Sifre Numbers 78 we meet tannaim in apparent agreement with R. Eliezer b. Ya‘akov and R. Yose. “What was the reward of Yonadav’s kin [who were Kenite converts]? ... [they were assured that] their progeny would continue to stand before Hashem. R. Yehoshua (var. lect. R. Yonathan) expostulated ‘[How could they stand before Hashem which connotes ministering within the sacred precincts] - surely gereem do not enter the hekhal [= the temple adytum] for no lay Israelite enters the hekhal! Rather did they sit on the Sanhedrin and deliver Torah rulings. According to an alternative opinion, their daughters married priests and consequently grandsons of theirs offered sacrifices upon the altar.”

[53] At least from the Sanhedrin, including the lesser Sanhedrin of 23 (Rashi Qid. 76b s. v. kol mesimot). Rambam, on the other hand, stretches Rava’s disbarment of gereem and applies it even to courts of three that try monetary cases. Rava thus appears at odds with all those talmudic statements that explicitly qualify a ger for monetary cases (San. 36b; Nid. 49b et al.). Evidently Rambam did not relish the idea of his Rava (as distinct from Rashi’s Rava) in disagreement with an array of sources. So he set about to diffuse the situation by positing that the ger qualified for monetary cases refers only to the ger who has a Jewish mother (Yad, Hilkhot Sanhedrin 11:11).

[54] The difficulty comprehending Rava’s derash (also cited in the name of ‘a master’ at Yeb. 45b and by R. Yoseph at Qid. 76b) is only amplified when we consult Sifre. There (Sifre Dt. 157) the phrase ‘your brethren’ of Dt 17:15 is said to exclude gentiles - not gereem; and then only from kingship, not judgeship. Even B.Q (88a) that does elicit a disqualification of gereem from Dt 17:15, it is still the crown alone that is denied a ger, not the bench. The same is true of the ger’s disqualification acknowledged in tractate B.B. (3b, end). Moreover, if the purpose of Rava’s derash is to disbar gereem, would it not create a glut of such derashot? As we have seen, Yerushalmi derives the ger’s disbarment from Num 11:16 and Bavli from Ex 18:22. Harmonizations that manage to improvise discrete uses for each derashah, cannot disguise their strain. If all that were not enough, the leap of faith Rava invites us to make seems beyond our capabilities, insofar as his derash (Yeb. 102a cited above) would have us extrapolate from monarchy to judicature. Yet in the Torah’s legislation, king and judge are distinct all round, including the lexis denoting their respective appointings. The king’s is designated SUM ‘AL, a term never uttered by Moses apropos judges. To be sure, at Ex 18:21 Jethro counsels Moses “ve-samta ‘alehem”. But significantly (in the midrashic world crucially so), verse 23 that reports the actualization of Jethro’s plan, substitutes va-yitten ... ‘al (from the root NTN) for Jethro’s SUM ‘AL. Even in Dt 1:13,15 Moses refers to his appointment of judges by the verbal phrases va-’asimem be- and va-etten ‘alekhem - as if studiously avoiding SUM ‘AL.

[55] Hebrew: ‘qasheen’ - plural of qashe whose primary meaning is hard. As long as sappahat remains an unknown quantity (does it cause itching? soreness? unsightliness? all of these? or some other disagreeable sensation?) we have no choice but to render it by non-committal ‘hard’.

[56] In Hebrew: ve-nispehu - hence sappahat.

[57] Ex. Rab. 19:4 cited in The Sages (Heb.) Jerusalem 1978 p. 491. It is also worth noting that Rashi in his commentary to Isa 14:1 chose to side with R. Berakhyah inasmuch as he classifies ve-nispehu with sephaheni (1Sam 2:36) and me-histapeah (1Sam 26:19) while altogether omitting sappahat.

[58] Wherein the hardship inheres is a matter of debate. Rashi and Tosafot between them come up with no fewer than seven proposals (See Tos. Yeb 47b s.v.qasheem; Qid. 70b s.v. qasheem). Some modern scholars have speculated that the ‘hardship’ R. Helbo feared was not from the gereem themselves but from the Roman authorities who, from the Antonines on, all but outlawed conversion to Judaism. Representative of this understanding is the following comment of Alfredo Mordechai Rabello: “We cannot exclude the possibility that many of these discussions took place in reaction to the Roman legislation regarding circumcision and proselytism" (“The Attitude of Rome towards Conversions to Judaism" part XIV in The Jews in the Roman Empire: Legal Problems from Herod to Justinian, Aldershot, Hampshire 2000, p.43).

[59] Also Ber. 57b.

[60] Recognizing the tension between these Messianic visions, the Talmud (A. Z. 3b) attempts to harmonize by positing two types of conversion. The type that will cease is conversion effected by bate din. However, so-called gereem gerureem i.e. converts who adopt Judaism outside the official channels (see Rashi A. Z. 24a s.v. gerureem; and cf. the case of the convert - albeit, not dubbed garoor - who converted ‘among the gentiles’ [Shab. 68a-b]) will flourish in the future just as they did in the days of David and Solomon (when Jesse preached and Yithra responded Y. Yeb. 8:3 [9c] and when bate din were allegedly being unreceptive but 150,000 converted nonetheless Yeb. 79a). In a different context, the Talmud limits the Davidic-Messianic-age ban on beth din sponsored giyyoor. Even in good times, such as the Davidic and Messianic, it is only gereem whose motives for conversion are suspect that are turned away by the beth din. Pharaoh’s daughter, for example, would have been accepted, since someone of her station is unlikely to be lured by Israel’s material prosperity (see Yeb. 76a-b). Finally, it should be noted that neither ger garoor nor giyyoreth gerurah is attested; it is invariably in the plural gereem gerureem and refers to group conversions. Is it conceivable that for such groups a special giyyoor process had once obtained?

[61] For fuller versions of this aggadah see Ex. Rab. 42:6; Lev. Rab. 27:8.

[62] The word asafsoof is a hapax legomenon occurring at Num 11:4. Tannaim disputed its meaning. “The asafsoof in their midst were gereem gathered out of many places (Sifre Zuta ascribes this view to R. Shim‘on b. Menasia). R. Shim‘on b. Menasia says they were the elders of whom it is written [Num 11:16] ‘gather for me (esfa lee) seventy elders’ (Sifre Zuta ascribes this view to R. Shim‘on).” (Sifre Num. 86 Horovitz ed. 1917 pp. 86 & 268). Rambam obviously opts for Sifre’s anonymous definition (= R. Shim‘on b. Menasia’s of Sifre Zuta) and furthermore, lumps the mixed multitude together with the asafsoof - as does Rashi at Num 11:4. However, at Ps 78:31 Rashi defines asafsoof as “the elders of whom it is written ‘gather for me’”.

[63] An allusion to Num 14:22 “Ten times they have tested me and not listened to my voice” and to Aboth 5:4.

[64] Josephus Ant. XIII 9:1.

[65] San. 36b, Nid. 49b et al; see n. 29 supra.

[66] See n. 54 supra.

[67] Kuzari 1:95, 115.

[68] See Shab. 146a, Yeb. 103b, A.Z. 22b.

[69] Hor. ibid.

[70] Lending to the indigent is an obligation (see Mekh. to Ex 22:24 and its reliance on Dt 15:8). It was this same conviction of the duty to lend and the sinfulness of withholding loans from the needy that prompted Hillel to institute that other famous ‘reform’ - perozbol. “Hillel the elder saw that [from fear of forfeiting their loans to shemittah] the people were holding back from lending and thereby transgressing that which is written in the Torah [Dt 15:9] ‘Beware lest your heart wickedly whisper to you ‘the seventh year, the year of release is approaching’ and you then begrudge your needy brother and lend him not’ etc. So Hillel rose up and instituted perozbol” Git.36a).

[71] San. 6b end (and Rashi ibid.), B.B. 131a, Nid. 20b.

[72] As confirmed by R. Joseph Karo. “Regarding the man who came to Hillel and said ‘convert me so that I may aspire to the high-priesthood’, Tosafot explain that Hillel, like Ribbi in the case recorded in Hatekhelet [Men. 44a], was confident he [the convert] would eventually come round to doing it for the sake of Heaven. From here we learn that it is all up to the beth din’s discernment (de-hakkol lefee re’ot ‘ene beth din)” (Beth Yosef, Yore De‘ah 268 near end).

[73] A devotion so touchingly epitomized at Edu. 1:3.

[74] For the Shammaite position on divorce see M. Git. 9:10.

[75] The precise makeup of the 18 remains hazy, and varies from list to list even within sources (i.e. Tosefta, Bavli, Yerushalmi). Common to all lists, however, is the disproportionate number of separatist measures. See “Les Dix-huites mesures” by Solomon Zeitlin, REJ 68 (1914) pp. 22-36; Kovets Shneur Zalman Zeitlin [Heb.] Bitzaron 25:3 NY 1964 esp. p.6.

[76] See Shab. 17a-b; Y. Shab. 1:4 [3c].

[77] See M. Ber. 1:3; Erub. 13b; Yeb. 14a et al.

[78] M. Ber. 1:3.

[79] M. Bez. 2:6.

[80] E.g. Jacob Katz’s Masoret u-Mashber [Heb.] 1958; Tradition and Crisis 1993 and elsewhere in his oeuvre; Emanuel Etkes’s introduction to Ha-hadash Asur min Ha-torah by Moshe Samet (Heb.) Jerusalem 2005.

[81] Manifestos rather than halakhic directives - which they do not purport to be (whatever influence they may arguably have exerted on certain halakhic decisors).

[82] Vol. 1, Ungvar 1864. “Lev ha-‘Ivri. .. which appeared in two parts in 1864 and 1868, became an instant bestseller, quickly running through five editions. And it achieved considerable fame not only in Hungary but throughout central and eastern Europe. A few years later the Russian maskil Eliezer Sevi Zweifel could write from far-off Zhitomir, ‘I have never seen any book published in our time which has been greeted by the Jewish public with such great honor and tremendous jubilation as the book Lev ha-‘Ivri’.” Michael K. Silber “The Emergence of Ultra-Orthodoxy: The Invention of a Tradition” in The Uses of Tradition: Jewish Continuity in the Modern Era, Jack Wertheimer ed. NY 1999 p.38.

[83] In this our author contradicts the Talmud’s asseveration that Noahaism has no future in the Messianic age when ‘all will worship Him in one accord’ (A.Z. 24a, Rashi s.v. shekhem ehad).

[84] Lev ha-Ivri, from Kithbe R. Akiva Yosef Schlesinger, Jerusalem 1989 vol. 2 pp. 291-292.

[85] And accordingly his leniency cannot serve as precedent for those not divinely briefed. So what does our author propose in the absence of supernal input? Presumably, the uninitiated must willy nilly convert all lest genuine applicants be lost. For surely it is preferable to take on board a rotten apple, nay a hundred rotten apples, than risk shutting out a single righteous soul. Or is it?

[86] The noun ma‘aseh denotes ‘an event’, ‘a tale’ or ‘a precedent’. The Talmud ubiquitously invokes tales from the lives of its heroes for establishing halakhic precedent. R. Schlesinger seems to be suggesting that such use of precedent is proscribed at B. B. 130b.

[87] Le-ayyem which is Schlesinger’s term, not his source’s.

[88] One that would presumably have to neutralize Rambam’s ruling: “A ger who was not checked out or not apprised of the misvot and their penalties, but underwent circumcision and/or immersion in the presence of three lay judges, such a person is a ger”.

[89] When we open our gemara at Bekh. 30b we search in vain for Schlesinger’s quote. Instead we find “A non-Jew that comes to receive words of Torah except for one thing he shall not be accepted. R. Yose son of R. Yehudah says even a single nicety of the Scribes’ Words”. This reading is corroborated by numerous witnesses. However, Rashi’s gemara may have approximated Mekhilta of R. Shim‘on b. Yohai “A ger who takes upon himself” etc. (see Mekh. of RaSBY to Ex 12:49; Rashi Suk. 28a s.v. diqduqe sofreem; but cf. Rashi Shab. 31a “A ger who comes to convert”; also next note). T. Demai 2:5 in standard printed editions has: “A ger that takes upon himself all the words of the Torah except for one thing he shall not be accepted. R. Yose son of R. Yehudah says even a small detail of the Scribes’ niceties” (for T. variants see Lieberman’s Tosephta Ki-fshuta Zera‘im Jerusalem 1992, vol. 1 p. 212). Common to all variants, then, is the attribution of the view - that rejection of diqduqe sofreem impedes giyyoor - to a solitary tanna, namely R. Yose son of R. Yehudah. Schlesinger allows for the impression that R. Yose’s stringency belongs to the stam (= the anonymous plurality).

[90] Thus according to Rashi, (who reads: “A ger who comes to convert” at Bekh. 30b) it was Shammai’s blind obedience to a literal understanding of that baraitha that locked him into his all-or-nothing position. On the other hand, those who read “A non-Jew that comes to receive words of Torah” would not necessarily connect the Bekh. 30b passage with gerooth. As noted above (f. n. 1), the stereotypical formula for referring to the seeker after conversion is ‘a ger who comes’ not a ‘non-Jew’. Hence, unless one has Rashi’s variant, one is going to be extremely circumspect about applying a ‘non-Jew’ or ‘gentile’ text to a ger. Commentators have suggested that this may be why Rambam codifies the all-or-nothing dictum of Bekh. 30b only in respect of ger toshav (Issure Bi’ah 14:8) but not in respect of a ger sedeq. Tur and Shulhan Arukh, that omit ger toshav laws, also omit all reference to Bekh. 30b. Incidentally, it is quite curious that a self-declared devotee of Shulhan Arukh such as our author should brandish a text Shulhan Arukh evidently considered extraneous to gerooth.

[91] If not for Rashi, one might have surmized that Hillel disagreed with the ger proviso of Bekh. 30b or considered it analogous to its companion provisos that deal with the priest, haber etc. Haberuth - whose central praxis was treating quotidian meals as if they were consecrated - owed nothing to Torah, written or oral. Of non-sacrificial meals Sifre has this to say: “‘The clean [person] shall eat it together with the unclean’ [Dt 12:22] Scripture is telling you that both eat of the same dish.” As for priests being catechized, this too has no support elsewhere. The oath that was administered to the high priest on the eve of Kippoor (M. Yom. 1:5) assured conformity to right practice. However, as far as commitment was concerned, the Sadducean priests, even while desisting from acting upon their errors, persisted in them as the gemara apprises us (Yom. 19b). Moreover, even priests that had worshipped at idolatrous shrines, once they repented of their apostacy were not denied their sacred emoluments (M. Men. 13:10). In short, it is far from self-evident that the Bekh. 30b baraitha represents the concensus.

[92] Or: ‘Shammai the stickler’.

[93] Or: ‘Hillel the meek’.

[94] Another version has one of Shammai’s rejects confiding to Hillel after the latter had converted him: ‘If you Hillel were like Shammai I would never have entered the congregation of Israel’ (Aboth de R. Nathan A, 15).