National Scholar Updates

I am often asked what was it that attracted me, a Dutch Calvinist Protestant, to Judaism.[1] There were many motivations for my eventual conversion to Judaism, such as the desire to experience a spiritual connection (for which many if not all religions could qualify), a belief in one God (limiting my options to the monotheistic faiths), the Torah (narrowing it down to Judaism), and a religiously inspired and committed lifestyle that permeates life in all its different realms (which left me with Orthodoxy). But although I highly appreciated these values, there were and are other things that I value as well, among them: A communal striving for responsible and ethical conduct, a path of challenging and deepening studies, open-mindedness and respect for people with different mindsets and opinions, innovational out-of-the-box thinking, intellectual honesty, creativity, and aesthetics.

When someone first becomes interested in Judaism without knowing it from up close, the first image that often comes to mind is a romanticized Fiddler-on-the-Roof kind of religion. An image of old, kind men and wise rabbis dressed in black hats and long robes, men sporting beards, shuckling [2] while bending over a Talmud page. I believe that this image is so powerful that in the minds of many a seeker the often subconscious conviction has been imprinted that (ultra)Orthodoxy is the only genuine kind of Judaism and anything more moderate, modern, or enlightened is a false spinoff from the real thing. I have seen more than a few converts readjust themselves to this image while donning black outfits and even adopting a pronunciation of Hebrew that reflects the influence of East-European Germanic and Slavic dialects. It is thus of no surprise that in some circles the term Modern Orthodoxy raises eyebrows. It sounds to them like an artificial adaptation of something ancient, like Mozart’s music put to a synthesizer beat.

The issue of Jewish authenticity surely is an important one. To answer the question of which group, denomination, or community is most worthy for fitting the label of authentic Judaism, of course depends on one’s subjective definitions and expectations. In my opinion, authentic Judaism is first and foremost traditional, meaning that it perpetuates ancient rituals and practices with serious dedication. This includes traditional ways to celebrate and sanctify the Sabbath and holidays, as well as prayer. In other words, my definition of authentic would exclude communities that practice these rituals only when it pleases them and give up on them when it becomes convenient. Keeping traditional rituals is perhaps the most powerful way to connect today’s generation with its ancestral lineage throughout the ages, to connect our present with our past. And most likely it is also the most effective way to pass on that rich heritage to the next generation, connecting the past with the future. Being traditional also implies a careful application of the Jewish precepts as formulated by the Sages. This does not mean that Judaism cannot or does not evolve, but in order to remain authentic, it cannot bear too radical changes, purely based on the fashion of the day.

Authentic Judaism is also, in my opinion, cherishing and cultivating a connection with God as our Creator and the Instigator of the Jewish people and religion. This implies a central role for Torah, both in liturgy and lifestyle. This does not mean blindly proceeding in the trodden path of tradition and following our rules and rituals without a critical mind. On the contrary, being authentic means thinking analytically and identifying the possible effects of our conduct on families, society, and the world at large. Assuming that Judaism is meant to be an enriching, liberating, and wholesome influence in the world, then if our lifestyle, or any aspect of our practice would—God forbid— cause pain, suffering, or grief to others, then surely we have misinterpreted the precepts of our religion and should rethink them. For that reason alone, we need to train ourselves and each other in critical, independent thinking. The biggest chance for something to go terribly wrong in a community or in a society is when its members do not notice a detrimental development soon enough. So if we can’t think analytically, how will we ever be able to identify possible harmful or unjust developments before it is too late? Free thinking is therefore part and parcel of being authentic. Looking at it from another angle: God (the same God who gave us the Torah) gave us a brain and an amazing capacity for innovative thought, discovery, and problem-solving. It only makes sense that we have to cherish this human capacity.

Of course there are many more aspects of authenticity besides the ones I mentioned here. No doubt one could compose a long list, but basically what it comes down to is that authentic Judaism should both be loyal to its hallowed history and traditions and also be a force for good in the world at large, encouraging peaceful and wholesome innovations, or at the very least not frustrating them.

Before my eventual Orthodox conversion, I reflected on Reform Judaism,[3] and found that it did not meet my search criteria. Of course there are different levels within Reform Judaism, and I have the utmost appreciation for any level of observance that people feel they are able to apply in their lives. In the end, however, I found that people within the Reform movement are encouraged to observe on the level that they are personally most comfortable with. In essence, nothing becomes completely binding, partially because traditions may be seen as something culturally instead of divinely inspired. Fearing to be ethno-centric and particularistic, Reform Jews often tend to put a relatively high emphasis on universal values, which is in itself a good thing, but if you sacrifice too much of your own unique identity for the sake of universalism, and you end up too close to the general culture, then sooner or later the question comes up: What is the use of being a practicing Jew at all?

In other words, why would anyone sacrifice his or her time and efforts to participate in services and celebrations if people who reject these practices are just as good and meritorious? In my own spiritual journey I wanted to honor and integrate the Torah into my life, as a way to serve my Creator while growing towards a more complete, enriched, and responsible personality. But in my own experiences, what I saw among Reform Jews was often an attitude that halakha is largely archaic, kashruth is outdated, and strict adherence to the rules of Shabbat is for extremists.

Based on the above, the commitment that the Orthodox world shows for Jewish traditions would seem to more align with my beliefs. That was my own first impression as well. Torah-commandments are actually practiced with consistency. But then again, apart from a stricter adherence to Jewish laws, sometimes the spirit behind these laws seemed to be in jeopardy. If a woman sticks out her hand in order to greet an observant man, and he refuses her hand in an unkind manner, he may be keeping with traditional law, but at the same time embarrassing or insulting a fellow human being who is unaware of his religious practice.[4] There is a rule that people should dress modestly and not expose body parts that may arouse the other sex, a practice that I believe enhances the person’s dignity. But is it really dignifying if this is taken to such an extreme that a woman after her wedding is supposed to shave off all her hair so no one will ever see any of it, not even her own husband, and she has to compensate this with a wig? And is it really liberating if the pre-Pessah cleaning becomes so thorough that every single spot in the house has to be cleaned, including places such as behind the radiators or the electrical outlets, with the result that family members (often in this case the women) may enter the holiday in a frazzled state?

Perhaps as a result of the insular character of certain Jewish communities, some followers seem to lack attention or empathy for outsiders. Besides encountering many warm and wonderful people before my conversion, I also have experienced at times when I greeted someone that my outstretched hand was refused or that people looked the other way when I wished them “Shabbat Shalom.” I have personally heard about a rabbi who bluntly sent away a woman who tried to enroll her child into her local Jewish Day School. The reason given was that she had no proof of being Jewish. Even though her entire family was killed in Auschwitz, this rabbi wouldn’t talk to her. Does that jive with the many teachings in Torah and Talmud of dealing with people kindly and respectfully?

Judaism should be a positive force in the world, working toward peace and reconciliation. That implies accepting people even if you disagree with them. Besides, there will always be people who choose different levels of observance. Not everybody will be happy in the one denomination that we may deem the best. So Reform Judaism, even if I may disagree with a number of their teachings, still fulfills a role for a number of people. We can try to boycott and utterly defeat them, but even assuming such an effort would have a chance of success, let’s first stop and think what the alternative would be if there were no Reform or Conservative synagogues where less observant people would feel comfortable. From an Orthodox perspective, at least they congregate on a regular basis to pray to God and celebrate Shabbat and holidays. They recite the Shema, proclaiming the oneness of God. Would we rather have them not go anywhere and not practice anything? Isn’t any level of observance better than none, and valuable in itself? My impression is that a number of Hareidi rabbis are so opposed to non-Orthodox communities that they would prefer people to be 100 percent secular rather than identify with these denominations.

Critical, independent thinking is a problem as well in some circles. Reinterpreting parts of Genesis in metaphoric ways,[5] in light of overwhelming proof for a much older history of our planet than formerly assumed, may place someone in the category of a heretic. Even though it seems that Orthodox Jews, through Talmud study, are trained in critical thinking and asking inquisitive questions, this notion may need to be reevaluated. The questions that are asked (and tolerated) in yeshiva circles are typically only those that fall within the framework of accepted teachings, in other words, not critical, out-of-the-box questions, to which there is no conventional or straight forward answer.

I will give you one personal example of what happened to me shortly after my conversion. It was right before Shabuoth, and I had recently started a part-time job as a religion teacher at a Jewish Day School. The three days before Shabuoth are sometimes called “sheloshet yemei hagbala” (the three days of fencing off). This refers to the story in the Torah: [6] “And the LORD said to Moses, “Go to the people and consecrate them today and tomorrow. Have them wash their clothes and be ready by the third day, because on that day the LORD will come down on Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people.” Many communities have specific traditions connected to these days. I raised the following question to another teacher: “We count the three days before Shabuoth as the sheloshet yemei hagbala. However according to Scripture, the giving of the Torah (which we celebrate on Shavuot) took place not after the three days, but on the third day. So if we would keep that narrative consistently, we would count the sheloshet yemei hagbala from two days before Shabuoth and consider the holiday itself as the third day.” Although I meant to raise this only as an interesting point of discussion, I was accused of rejecting the teachings of our Sages. A few days later I was told that my position had been terminated because I did not fully subscribe to the traditional teachings of Judaism.

After reading about some of my disappointing impressions of the Jewish community, one may ask what in the world made me follow through with an Orthodox-Jewish conversion. The reason is, I always believed in the beautiful ideals that the Torah and Judaism potentially embody. Having grown up in a completely non-Jewish environment, I had started out exploring and gradually practicing a Jewish lifestyle based on studying the Bible and other books that inspired me greatly and showed me a spiritual richness that is preserved and activated through the rituals, celebrations, and life-cycle events as experienced in Judaism. My tantalizing search started before I encountered any Jewish community, and true, the encounter may initially have been a test, rather than an encouragement.

If Judaism had only consisted of Hareidi-style Orthodoxy and Reform, then I might never have pushed through to where I am now; perhaps I would never have eventually converted. I might have continued in the same vein as I lived before: leading a quasi-Jewish lifestyle, more or less on my own. But that would not have been an ideal situation, to say the least. After all, Judaism is not just a religion. What makes it unique and different from other religious entities, is that it is first and foremost a nation; a people with its own religion, its own special way to connect to God. But somewhat uniquely to Judaism, a Jew who abandons his or her faith is still a Jew.[7] And likewise, the Torah as a way of life that includes prayer, Shabbat, holidays, and so forth, can never be fully experienced outside the community. Having said all that, how did I overcome my obstacles and find my place within the Jewish people?

The answer is that I found my way into Judaism through the Sephardic community. Even though people come in all kinds and flavors in every community,[8] here I felt accepted for who I was. Nowadays not all Sephardic communities truly reflect all their principles-of-old anymore, but the classical Sephardic mindset (that can still be found in many places) was exactly what I was looking for: loyalty to Torah and tradition and at the same time open-mindedness toward modernity, sciences, and secular learning.

Being a linguist, an attractive point for me was that Sephardim have traditionally emphasized proper pronunciation of the Hebrew and the study of grammar. And very importantly, true Sephardic Judaism doesn’t have the same compartmentalization as the Ashkenazic world, where the severely observant join Hareidi communities, the moderately Orthodox congregate in less strict synagogues, the less strict go to Conservative synagogues, and the least practicing to Reform temples. Within a compartmentalized Judaism, if you worship within a community of a different level of observance than yours, chances are that you won’t feel at home. Typically in traditional Sephardic houses of worship the hakham and a number of individual members would be observant, while overall the congregants display different levels of adherence. And what is important: people tolerate each other. In other words, Sephardic synagogues are traditionally inclusive and open-minded.

Of course, Sephardic communities are going through their own issues and struggles as well. Firstly, a growing part of the Sephardic communities are falling into the “compartmentalization trap”: Reform Sephardic temples, Hareidi Sephardi synagogues, and so forth. I consider this a very unfortunate trend. On a relevant side note, in my opinion we should ask ourselves if we want Modern Orthodoxy to be yet another segment in this compartmentalization process within Judaism. Does Modern Orthodoxy want to be another sub-denomination that caters to like-minded, kindred souls? Or should Modern Orthodoxy learn from the Sephardic model and create an environment of inclusiveness: traditional style services paired with open-mindedness in thinking, in which a broad range of people feel comfortable?

Another issue, in my opinion, is that throughout the centuries, Sephardim have tried to create and facilitate unity with other Jews, often at the expense of giving up its own special identity. It seems like a natural thing in our days, but does anyone ever think about why Sephardim study the Talmud just like Ashkenazim, with the Ashkenazic commentaries of Rashi and Tosafot instead of their own commentators such as Moses Maimonides or Moses Nahmanides ? [9] Another effort to create unity was the embracing of the Shulhan Arukh as the authoritative guideline, the famous halakhic codex by Joseph Karo that comprises a mixture of Sephardic and Ashkenazic halakhic approaches and interpretations. It seemed like a good idea: Both communities make a number of compromises and end up with something that everybody agrees on. However, these compromises were to no avail for the Sephardim. Soon enough the Ashkenazim went their own sweet way by adding and following the commentaries of the Rama, often based on their own local customs. Sephardim gave up parts of their own traditions and halakhic insights for unity, but unity was not achieved. Since then Sephardim, especially the more religious ones, have moved over even further to the Ashkenazic side. Students in yeshivot follow Ashkenazic methodology, wear European-style suits and black hats, and speak in Ashkenazic lingo—so-called “yeshivish.”

I personally never understood the idealization of Eastern European culture. I don’t understand why Hungarian folk-style music became Jewish music, and why the Eastern European eighteenth-century dress code got to be considered “Jewish clothing.” Hebrew is considered more religious, more “frum” (to use one of many German terms that are in vogue in the Jewish world) when it is pronounced according to the rules of Eastern European dialects. On a personal note, these ways of pronunciation remind me of the peasant dialects I grew up around in Europe. Not that I don’t find this endearing; in a way I still do. But I never thought it appropriate to use it in prayer or liturgy. In my opinion, when someone stands before a king, would he address him in a cockney accent, or would he make an effort to express himself in grammatically correct, proper English?

When one believes that the sources of Judaism have to be understood in their historical context, then an orientation toward the cultures of the Middle East seems more appropriate, especially in understanding the Scripture and its languages. And if at the same time one holds that Judaism has an important message that can enrich different cultures, then there is no need to imitate exotic cultures in dress or behavior. If there is an affinity, then no harm is done, but dressing up or using foreign terminology doesn’t make anyone more religious.

I am sharing my thoughts on Sephardism for a reason. Authentic Sephardic Judaism, just like Modern Orthodoxy, is highly challenged by the tide of Hareidi influence. And that is not the only commonality. I believe there is much that Modern Orthodoxy can learn from the original attitudes and approaches within Sephardic heritage. Not disregarding the fact that the reality of any movement is generally less desirable than the ideals behind it, I believe that at least the original ideals of Sephardism can help Modern Orthodoxy define its aims and goals: Solid in teaching and at the same time inclusive of the less committed. A traditional definition of life’s guidelines paired with open-mindedness to modernity, participation in intellectual thinking, and willingness to contribute to society at large. When necessary, redefining halakha within the limitations and perimeters of the essential sources.

What these sources are is a point of discussion, the importance of which cannot be underestimated. The term sources can mean many things to many people. Within Rabbinical Judaism there may be some to whom a source is only absolutely binding if it is a Mishnah, Tosefta or Baraita, to others a twentieth-century Responsum may be a binding source. The discussion of this is beyond the scope of this article but if Modern Orthodoxy is to be more than a diluted form of Hareidism, some crucial questions will have to be answered, such as: Within Modern Orthodoxy’s orientation, what exactly is the hierarchy in authority among the writings of Tannaim, Amoraim, Geonim, Rishonim and others? Which practices can be redefined, largely depends on the answers given.

One relevant observation between Sephardic and traditional Ashkenazic attitudes is a somewhat different approach to local customs (minhagim). No doubt, the Talmud gives importance and authority to minhagim, but the scope and definition of this principle, in my perception, is not entirely the same within the two traditions. Of course Sephardim are just as proud as others of their own liturgy, including tunes and piyyutim, [10] their specific way of putting on tefillin, or their special haroset recipes. Nonetheless they have displayed a somewhat different attitude towards the binding character of customs. If changing circumstances, communal needs, or even insights necessitated it, Sephardic hakhamim on occasion have changed even well-established customs in favor of the application of other halakhic interpretations. This seems to reflect an underlying belief that not every custom automatically has the halakhic status of minhag. In contrast, many Ashkenazim consider any established custom a halakhically binding practice. This has far reaching consequences. In Ashkenazic circles there can be in-depth discussions on certain halakhic questions, going over the Mishna, Gemara, Geonim, Rishonim, Aharonim, commentaries on commentaries, looking at it from all directions and perspectives, and a halakhically satisfactory answer to the problem may emerge, but in the end the result can be wiped off the table with the remark: “But our minhag is different.” I would like to illustrate this with an example related to the tzitzith.[11] According to Torah law, a man is obliged to fulfill the requirement of wearing tzitzith if he has a four cornered garment. [12] He does not need to buy such a garment (i.e., a tallith [13] ) in order to attach tzitzith to it and fulfill the commandment. However, from several authoritative halakhic writings it is clear that one should make an effort to own a tallith (with tzitzith), and wear it, especially during prayer. [14] In Eastern Europe, where people used to be poor and could not easily afford to buy a tallith, it became the practice for a groom to be gifted a tallith as a wedding present. Thus in those communities men customarily did not pray with a tallith before marriage. At a certain point this was perceived as an official minhag, endowed with halakhic power, and even though nowadays most descendants of Eastern European Jews can afford to buy a tallith, many unmarried men will not fulfill their halakhic requirement of donning a tallith during prayer because “it is not my minhag.” From here we can see the important role that the concept of minhag plays to the extent that it can override (pure) halakhic considerations. As a side effect, minhag has become such a determining factor in halakha, that it makes any chance for renewal or change impossible. Even if there are good ethical and halakhic reasons to change a practice, if the concept of minhag renders a practice “law,” change will be blocked.

However, within the classic Sephardic approach, this has been quite different. A clear example can be found with Maimonides in his halakhic codex Mishneh Torah. It is clear that Maimonides intended to unite all of Judaism through this codex by deciding once and for all on the most correct interpretations of Jewish law. The concept of minhag played little to no role in his project. Thus it seems that in Maimonides’ view customs can exist and develop around halakha, but they don’t have halakhic power in themselves and thus can never overrule halakhic rules or push them away.[15] I believe a revision of the concept of minhag in congruency with this classical Sephardi approach, is essential for Modern Orthodoxy in defining an authentic model for future reconsideration of halakhic practice, when necessary.

What is Modern Orthodoxy’s position among the other currents of Judaism? Throughout his body of work, Rodney Stark, professor of Sociology and Comparative Religion,[16] distinguishes between—on the one hand—religious movements with relatively intense levels of commitment. Such movements require of their adherents high levels of compliancy and investments in terms of devoted time, lifestyle and dedication, while at the same time offering high spiritual and often social rewards. However, these movements tend to exist in relatively sharp tension with their cultural environment. On the opposite end of the spectrum are low intensity religious movements that require very modest investments and dedication. Such movements exist in relative harmony with their environment, but they also give little in return in terms of community life and spiritual rewards. One of the challenges of high tension ideologies is that, while there is certainly a considerable group of people that find satisfaction in such movements, every next generation of people that grow up in such high-demanding communities tends to gravitate towards lower levels of commitment and towards less tension with the general culture. Therefore, over time, high intensity movements tend to become less intense. However, people are not all the same, and often this process is interrupted when a group of people from within the movement stand up to turn the tide, demanding higher intensity commitments (and rewards). This is how revival movements and sects originate.

In the first place this distinction can help explain why many who look for spirituality and meaning in Judaism, are attracted to Hareidism. I am talking about those non-Jews who turn to Judaism for religious and spiritual reasons, in contrast to those who are moved by social motivations. The mere fact that these people search for meaning and truth beyond their ancestral horizon already puts them in the category of “big investors,” high intensity devotees. Furthermore these movements attract their attention simply because in general, the most outspoken expressions define a religion’s reputation in the world.

It is tempting to look at the different currents of Judaism in the above described manner: Hareidi Orthodoxy as a high intensity community, Conservative and Reform Judaism as relatively low intensity movements, and somewhere in the middle Modern Orthodoxy with a medium intensity level. Professor Stark describes a general phenomenon in religion, and Judaism has the same pulls-and-pushes as other faiths. But Modern Orthodoxy is not just a haven for people who long for a certain, moderate level of commitment, not too extreme, not too liberal. It should be much more…

The future of Modern Orthodoxy depends on how it will define and profile itself. This may prove to be no small challenge. At present one can find communities that define themselves as Modern Orthodox with the only difference from the Hareidi world being that, working for a living alongside Torah study is not considered a second choice. Others who are called Modern Orthodox have made more radical changes towards egalitarian services and women clergy. Modern Orthodoxy needs to find its own position between the worlds of innovation without fixed tradition and fixed tradition without innovation. In order to be successful and offer a credible alternative to either of the extremes, it needs to develop its own religious philosophy and its own halakhic scholarship. In order to offer more than a moderate version of Hareidi orthodoxy, Modern Orthodox scholars need to know halakha at least as good, preferably better than Hareidi scholars, which is a huge task but not impossible. In too many yeshivot much time is spent on detailed studies of marginal topics and on creating artificial reconciliations of contradicting opinions that cannot be genuinely reconciled for the simple reason that they are contradicting opinions. In the process, a real overall understanding of halakha often gets lost in studying minute details. Modern Orthodoxy should not just delve into the study of halakha, but grasp its structures and underlying principles as well.

In the process we need to educate our children in the spirit of Modern Orthodoxy, which is more than just a weakened form of Orthodox Yeshivish schooling. This means exposing our youth to authentic, primary sources that support an approach of Judaism as described above, solid in halakha, innovative in thinking. If we fail, our children will soon pick up on the notion that the more serious you are about Judaism, the more yeshivish you become. And before you know it, Modern Orthodoxy will fall in the same trap as the multitudes of Sephardim who surrendered to a mindset of Lithuanian yeshivot.

Modern Orthodoxy is walking a fine line, on a tightrope between a total surrender to modern, secular thinking on the one side, and on the other side totally immersing in religiosity while giving up participation in the modern world of science, philosophy, etc. The only chance we have in fulfilling the Jewish ideal of impregnating the material world and general society with spirituality, is if we can be exactly where we are: in the middle, where we can integrate both worlds. But it is no easy place to be and there is no easy solution. We cannot design a new, prescribed way of life, no matter how modern or moderate it might be, and follow it blindly. That would be betraying the ideals of Modern Orthodoxy. We always need to look at the way we do things and ask ourselves if we are loyal to our heritage and at the same time what the effects are of our practice on the people and the world around us. What are the possible negative side effects of our conduct? Should we rephrase, reframe and rethink our teaching and practice? In order to answer those questions, we have to know clearly what we stand for and what we have to offer that is so special and that we world is in need of. This implies that we need to know the secular world real well and at the same time excel in our knowledge of Jewish heritage, spirituality and ethics. We need to offer high quality education for young people and enable new, inspiring leadership to emerge. The demands on them will be enormous. But then again, it is hard to be a (Modern Orthodox) Jew.

[1] I wrote about my spiritual quest in Rabbi M.D. Angel’s: Choosing to be Jewish. Hoboken, 2005, pp. 25–35.
[2] Ritual swaying of worshippers during prayer.
[3] While my native country, the Netherlands, has no Conservative Jewish community, the existing Reform congregations there are in my opinion closer to the Conservative than to the American Reform movement, both in philosophy and ritual observance.
[4] Of course if this person would make an alternative gesture, such as a friendly bow, then this would not be rude.
[5] In line with Maimonides’ approach that whatever in the Torah conflicts with science, should be interpreted as metaphorical.
[6] Exodus 19, 10–11.
[7] In contrast, a Christian who rejects his/her Christian creed is not considered a Christian any more.
[8] Of course there are many wonderful Ashkenazim and needless to say, not every Sephardi is a lovable person either.
[9] In fact, Maimonides only wrote a commentary on the Mishnah (be it an extensive one) but not on the Gemara, while Nahmanides is considered by some to be influenced already by Ashkenazic thinking. So in all honestly, classic Sephardic Talmud commentaries just happen to be less available than Ashkenazic ones.
[10] Liturgical poems
[11] Ritual fringes
[12] Numbers 15, 37–41.
[13] Usually translated as “prayer shawl”
[14] Mishneh Torah, Sefer Ahava, Hilkhot Tefilla, Chapter 5, Halakha 5; Hilkhot Tzitzith, Chapter 3, Halakha 11; Shulhan Arukh, Orah Hayyim, Chapter 2, 24:1.
[15] This approach to minhag seems to me more authentic. I have never heard of a Babylonian Amora who travelled to Eretz Yisra’el and kept two days of Yom Tov while there, because it was his custom.
[16] See: e.g. For the Glory of God, pp. 17–20, 25–27.

Torah Is Freedom

By Rabbi Hayyim Angel

National Scholar

And it says, “And the tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, graven upon the tablets” (Exodus 32:16). Read not harut [‘graven’] but herut [‘freedom’]. For there is no free man but one that occupies himself with the study of the Torah (Mishnah Avot 6:2).

This midrashic re-reading of God’s engraved tablets has intrigued me for years. The image of God’s words engraved in stone sounds rather permanent and unchanging. Yet, the Sages find an opening to promote one of their cornerstone values, namely, the Torah brings to its adherents true inner freedom and nobility.

In his classic commentary on the Mishnah, Rabbi Yisrael Lifshitz (1782-1860, Tiferet Yisrael) suggests that the Torah offers freedom from enslavement to one’s bodily desires. Offering a more expansive definition of this freedom, Rabbi Marc D. Angel comments that “God did not impose mitzvot in order to crush freedom and autonomy, but to give divine guidance on how best to live one’s life” (Koren Pirkei Avot, 156).

Anyone who engages meaningfully with the sacred texts of our tradition is immediately transported into a millennia-old dialogue and debate regarding the meaning of God’s word. It is precisely this pursuit of divine truth that brings the Torah to life, and makes its learners active recipients of God’s engraved words.

When Torah instead becomes about control and uniformity, its spirit is eviscerated. Authoritarian interpreters who stifle or willfully ignore valid alternatives within tradition veer from the very idea of Torah, even when such individuals speak in the name of Torah.

Since its founding in 2007, the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals has been motivated to fight for these inherent Torah freedoms. We have been animated in particular by two unsettling trends in our community: (1) A right-wing authoritarian voice that tends to stifle and ignore many valid alternatives, proclaiming that it alone has the truth. (2) A widespread tendency within many aspects of Yeshiva education that tends to ignore Sephardic and other non-Ashkenazic voices of the previous 500 years.

Through our writings, website, classes, programs, and teacher trainings, we reach tens of thousands of people annually, including hundreds of rabbis and educators. We promote diversity and inclusion, and the freedom of an authentic encounter with the wholeness of Torah.

One additional threat that requires immediate attention is an equally disturbing trend of tyranny from the left—both in our broader society and especially within the Jewish world. A growing number of voices subscribe to the repugnant idea of “cancel culture,” in which any dissent or questioning can result in people losing their jobs, reputations, and even ability to publicly “exist.”

Over the years, I have attended rabbinic meetings of more “right-wing” and “left-wing” orientations. While each meeting had its own distinct agenda, votes often ended up “unanimous,” at least in the sense of nobody publicly disagreeing. This shocking unanimity over legitimately debatable points is extremely unlikely to occur among large numbers of diverse, thoughtful, and learned people. Nevertheless, a prevailing culture has emerged: dissent, questioning, critical thinking, or challenging would not be tolerated. We live in a world where such intellectual timidity and cowardice grows exponentially and aggressively. We have an extra obligation to provide meaningful discourse so that the entire panoply of Jewish opinion shines forth.

At the Institute, we are proud to present a wide diversity of voices in our journal, Conversations; our website; and all of our programs and writings. These teachings educate and inspire Jews of all backgrounds to find avenues of entry to tradition that resonate most with them. Thank you for promoting and supporting this noble endeavor.

Haham Solomon Gaon passed away on 19 Tevet 5755 (December 22, 1994). During the course of his lifetime, he impacted on many thousands of people. He served for many years as the Haham of the Spanish and Portuguese community in London; and was the founder and director of the Sephardic Studies Program at Yeshiva University in New York.

As one of Haham Gaon’s first students at Yeshiva University in 1963, I want to share a few thoughts about a man who was not merely a teacher, but a mentor and friend. Had I not studied with Haham Gaon, I almost surely would not have become a rabbi; had he not been a constant guide and friend, I almost surely would not have had a rabbinic career spanning five decades.

Solomon Gaon was born in Travnik, Yugoslavia in 1912 and studied at the yeshiva in Sarajevo. Both his parents died in the Holocaust. He received his rabbinic ordination from Jews' College in London. In 1949 he became Haham (Chief Rabbi) of the Sephardic congregations of the British Commonwealth. With Alan Mocatta, he is credited with revivifying a declining community. Beginning in 1963 he became involved (initially on a part-time basis) with Yeshiva University in New York, and was integral in the founding of its Sephardic Studies Program. While in New York, Haham Gaon was closely identified with Congregation Shearith Israel where he attended services regularly.

Haham Gaon had an uncanny understanding of human nature. He seemed to know what was on your mind without your ever having to tell him. He was one of those rare rabbis and teachers who actually cared about others with a fullness of concern. He held impressive titles and received many honors; but he was among the humblest people I have ever known. Whatever he achieved was not directed at self-glory, but was for the glory of God. He spoke to all people with respect and kindness. He was as non-judgmental a rabbi as I have ever met. His motivating emotion was love; his compassion and empathy seemed to know no bounds.

Haham Gaon seemed to have boundless energy. He traveled extensively; he visited many Sephardic communities around the world. He spoke at many conferences and scholarly gatherings. As busy as he was, he always seemed to have time for family, friends, and students. He and Mrs. Gaon were gracious hosts; they enjoyed being with people, sharing happy times.

Haham Gaon had a lively sense of humor. He also had gravitas. He knew how to carry himself with great dignity while still not becoming aloof.

Haham Gaon, like the classic rabbis of Sephardic tradition, placed great emphasis on prayer. He seemed to have a remarkable spiritual intimacy with the Almighty. When Haham Gaon prayed, all of us in his presence felt an extra spiritual energy in the room.

In an article I wrote on Sephardic models of rabbinic leadership, I referred to Haham Gaon: “As a young rabbi, I learned much from my teacher Haham Solomon Gaon, with whom I studied at Yeshiva University, and to whom I turned for guidance for many years thereafter. I once complained to Haham Gaon that I was called upon by various organizations and committees to attend their events and meetings. I felt I should be exempt from these communal responsibilities, so that I could devote more time to my studies. I thought the Haham would support my request. Instead, he gently rebuked me. He said: the people who devote their time and effort on behalf of the community need to know that the rabbi is with them. They need to see the rabbi, to hear the rabbi’s suggestions, to know that the rabbi appreciates and participates in their work. Yes, you need time to study; but you also need to devote time to working with members of the community. Haham Gaon was a Haver ha-Ir, a friend of the community.”

I went on to write that the classic Sephardic rabbinic model personified by Haham Gaon has been on the decline. “For a variety of sociological and psychological reasons, there has been a sea change in Orthodox rabbinic leadership in general—and an even more profound change in Sephardic rabbinic leadership. The upsurge in the influence of extreme Hareidi religious authorities has dragged much of Orthodoxy to the right.”

Haham Gaon represented a balanced religiosity, deeply faithful to tradition while deeply sensitive to the needs and feelings of modern men and women. Haham Gaon was a model of dignity, compassion, and total commitment to the People of Israel and the State of Israel. He did not attempt to validate his religiosity by adopting “Hareidi” style rabbinic garb; on the contrary, as a proud Sephardic rabbi, he refused to compromise his own traditions in order to curry favor among others. He respected Ashkenazic rabbis who were faithful to their traditions, and he expected them to be respectful of his traditions.

As we mark the anniversary of the passing of Haham Gaon, we may well also be marking the end of an era of Sephardic rabbinic leadership. The broadness of vision, tolerance, spirituality and humanism of the Sephardic rabbinic tradition is on the brink of extinction. At the very moment when the Jewish world needs exactly this kind of spiritual leadership, we miss Haham more than ever.

Haham Gaon was an optimist. He believed that the tradition he embodied would be a source of strength to the Jewish People in the generations to come. Those of us who were his students and friends must also be optimists. We must be worthy heirs to the spiritual legacy he has left us.

She’elah: Is there a halakhic obligation of Western Orthodox Jewry to engage in Jewish-Christian dialogue with their fellow citizens?

Teshuvah: This question involves many components, but the short answer is yes. Western Orthodox Jewry is halakhically obligated to engage in dialogue with Western Christians. The necessity of our participation in dialogue with Christians is clear from any objective—even from a secular—perspective. The Western Jewish narrative demonstrates the utility of this dialogue. Our halakhic obligation to the Christians amongst whom we live includes social justice-related behavior that requires dialogue. Further, just as Christians approach their relationship with Jews as individuals who follow the will of God, Jews must approach this dialogue as fulfilling their halakhic obligation. As God’s Providence shapes Jewish History, halakha guides Jewish actions in accordance with the will of God. The Jewish relationship with Christians in the West falls squarely under the rubric of building a better world in the service of God.

From talmudic times it was well established that none of the biblical or talmudic restrictions with regard to dealing with idolaters apply to Christians because Christians are monotheists who believe in the God of the Jewish people. Despite varying talmudic opinions, both pagans and Christians in talmudic days were already treated differently from heathens of previous times. For example, Jews are obligated with respect to both pagans and Christians to visit their sick, bury their dead and help their poor (see Gittin 61a; also see Rambam Hilkhot Melakhim 10:12). It was also explicitly determined that outside of the land of Israel Gentiles are not considered idolaters (see R. Khiya bar Abba in the name of R. Johanan, Hullin 13b).

During the Middle Ages the halakha was established that Christians are not classified as idolaters. Rabbeinu Tam, for example, categorizes Christians as Noahides, not pagans. He accepts their oaths as being given in the name of God (Tosafot Behorot 2b). This is particularly noteworthy because of the period of Jewish history in which Rabbeinu Tam lived. In the twelfth century, he was caught in the anti-Jewish riots that accompanied the Second Crusade. He witnessed the utter destruction of the Jewish community of Blois, France, by a murderous mob. During the massacre, which occurred on Shavuot of 1147, Rabbeinu Tam’s home was plundered, and he was severely wounded. He only narrowly escaped death. Still, he held that when Christians give an oath, they have the Creator in mind.

Rabbi Menahem Meiri, one of the sages of Provence who lived in the thirteenth and into the fourteenth century, further developed the halakha with regard to Jewish dealings with Christians. He states that Christians who live by the discipline of their religion should be treated as we treat our fellow Jews in our social and economic dealings (Bet haBehirah to A. Z. 20a).

Rabbi Joseph Caro, who lived through the expulsion from Spain as a child, accepts the view developed in the Middle Ages. In his Shulhan Arukh (Yoreh Deah 148.12; and more strongly by Mosheh Rifkes in the Beer haGolah to the Shulhan Arukh, Hoshen Mishpat, 425 at the end) he states that Christians are not considered idolaters.

Rambam goes further than just stating that Christians are not idolaters. Rambam adds an important element by stating that Christians assist in the preparation for the Messianic Era (Rambam L’am, Hilkhot Melakhim 11.4, the non-censored version). This was a particularly bold ruling by Rambam due to importance that both Christians and Jews place on the Messiah. However, Rambam does not otherwise view Christians favorably. He is not a Western Jew and his rulings on this topic reflect conditions of Jews in Muslim, not Christian, lands.

Just as Jewish law cannot be decided without a clear understanding of the current facts on the ground, the development of halakha over the centuries cannot be understood without an understanding of the historical narrative surrounding the legal rulings.

Between the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492 and the acceptance of Freedom of Religion enshrined in the American Constitution, there was a slow positive development in the relationship of Jews to their Christian fellow citizens in the West. Jews and Protestants were often grouped together as heretics and burned at the stake, side by side. The 1648 Treaty of Osnabruck, part of the Peace of Westphalia at the end of the Thirty Years' War, expanded religious tolerance by legalizing Jewish religious worship in “clandestine churches”—as long as that worship was discrete.

The first important halakhic development after this turning point was by Rabbi Jacob Emden. He attributes to Christians the possibility of greater participation in fulfilling the commandments of God than just following the seven commandments of Noah: by assisting the Jews in the fulfillment of mitzvoth.

He states that one who helps others to observe is greater than one who observes but does not help others to do so—even though he only observes the seven Noahide Commandments; and the non-Jew who does not observe the 613 commandments, but supports it, is considered among the blessed. R. Emden states that the founders of Christianity correctly demonstrated the Christian view that the Jews are still bound by God’s Torah—and that the children of Israel who remain loyal to God are worthy of Christian love (Seder Olam Rabbah veZuta).

This ruling is of particular importance within the Jewish historical narrative. In R. Emden’s lifetime Western Christendom opened to the possibility of not just tolerating Jews, but offering greater freedoms. The notion of a social contract between citizens and their government, which would include freedom to worship, was new in R. Emden’s time. This new conceptualization of the state would allow the Jewish people living in Western lands to openly serve God—and therefore better follow the tenets of Jewish Law.

R. Emden states, with reference to Christians, that Jews should consider them instruments for the fulfillment of the prophecy that the knowledge of God will one day spread throughout the earth. Whereas the nations before them worshipped idols, denied God's existence, and did not recognize God's power of retribution, the rise of Christianity served to spread among the nations the knowledge that there is One God who rules the world, who rewards and punishes and reveals Himself to humanity (Seder Olam Rabbah veZuta). This is perhaps not as strong as Rambam’s statement that Christians assist in the preparation for the Messianic Era, but it does offer the opportunity that Christians might participate more fully in service to God.

Although not a halakhic source, it is important to continue the Jewish narrative with Moses Mendelssohn. As part of the Haskalah, Mendelssohn confirmed this status of the non-Jew in relation to the Jew—but from a secular point of view (Jerusalem, section 4, Judaism and Christianity).

Mendelssohn contended that respect can only exist in a realm of secular modernity and tolerance based on universal truths. Mendelssohn played an important part in the Jewish narrative. In his lifetime, his views were accepted and implemented in the religious freedoms granted by the Virginia Declaration of Rights which accompanied its State Constitution. Soon thereafter, these religious freedoms and equal protection under the law were granted to all U.S. citizens with the ratification of the U.S. Bill of Rights. Then Napoleon similarly emancipated much of the Jews of Europe.

Moses Mendelssohn was an observant Jew who considered himself a disciple of Jacob Emden, and they had a friendly relationship. However, by disregarding the authority of halakha and secularizing the foundations of Jewish-Christian dialogue and cooperation, the shared project is weakened.

For R. Emden, respect is based on our shared commitment to God, divine commands, and divine providence (Seder Olam Rabbah veZuta). This, for R. Emden, is greater than being co-equal citizens of a secular state.

Perhaps Mendelssohn’s way was the only way, given the situation in his particular time. He did not develop halakha, yet we do not ignore him as part of the Jewish narrative, which, in its own way, impacts Jewish Law. [1] Just as the effect of the Providence of God on Jewish history is real, so too are the Torah's narrative and laws reflections of God's will. Only halakha is binding as precedent, yet we appreciate the role Mendelssohn played in Western Jewish emancipation and history. And as we do not ignore Mendelssohn, we cannot ignore what is going on around us today—in what will become part of Jewish history. The facts on the ground today are critical in determining the halakha with regard to Christian-Jewish dialogue.

When I came to Stamford in 1948 I involved myself in interfaith work, among other things. I felt a few areas were important to build my community: Youth work (including a basketball team in the Church league), hospital visits every day, and involvement in the interfaith religious community.

I joined the Stamford Clergy Association, which gave me close contact with the various church leaders in town, including Protestant, Black Baptist, and Methodist ministers. I ultimately became the President of this association toward the end of the 1950s. Of the “out of towners,” that is, the Yeshiva University rabbinical graduates who received posts outside of New York City, many involved themselves in interfaith organizations in their local communities.

This fact was well known. We, as YU graduates, saw no halakhic barrier to prevent our involvements in such organizations. Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik knew of our involvement and gave it tacit approval—mipenei darkei shalom: All the paths of Judaism lead to peace (Gittin 29b). We learned this from the Rav, and I took it to heart. I felt that visiting the sick and having a positive influence on the non-Jews in the community was important for me as a local congregational rabbi. It also had positive results for the Jews in my community.

By 1963 we had outgrown our synagogue building and purchased land to build a new one. One of my colleagues from the Black Baptist congregation expressed an interest in our current building. It was clear that we would receive the highest sale price from a buyer who would build a residential high-rise. But I felt that the non-monetary benefits of selling our building to the Baptist congregation would outweigh the monetary benefits of selling to a developer.

However, as there are halakhic ramifications to selling a synagogue, I felt that it was necessary to seek the advice and approval from the Rav. Rabbi Soloveitchik found no problem with the sale to the Church but said that with the sale of any synagogue building it must be shown that the new building is an improvement over the old. Implicit in the approval of the Rav is that the Christian group we were selling the synagogue to was not practicing idolatry (Avodah Zara, 2a). With the Rav’s approval, the sale of our synagogue building was made to our Baptist neighbors.

Soon after Rabbi Soloveitchik approved the sale of our synagogue to the Baptist congregation, he published the essay “Confrontation” (Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Thought, 1964 volume 6, #2), which addressed head-on the issue of Christian-Jewish dialogue. The Rav added important nuance to our evolving understanding of the halakha. (It is important to note that the “Confrontation” the Rav speaks of in this essay is not a confrontation between Jews and Christians. In fact, Jews and Christians are on the same side of the confrontation the Rav presents.)

Jews, the Rav says in “Confrontation,” stand shoulder to shoulder with Christians as part of Western Civilization. We Jews are halakhically obligated to advance the general welfare and progress of humankind, to alleviating human suffering, to protecting human rights, to helping the needy, et cetera.

The Rav explicitly recognized that Western civilization has absorbed both Judaic and Christian elements—and that we may speak of a Judeo-Hellenistic-Christian tradition within the cultural framework of Western civilization. But the Rav clearly expresses that Jews are an independent Covenantal Community, and must remain so.

The Rav therefore requires one fundamental condition to Jewish-Christian dialogue to safeguard Jewish individuality and religious independence: No Jewish or Christian theological claims may be included in the dialogue. [2] To engage in interfaith theological dialogue would be counter to the reverence we are obligated to show to God. The Rav does not deny the right of the Christian community to address itself to the Jews in Christian eschatological terms.
The Rav’s allowance of including eschatology within the scope of Christian-Jewish dialogue has echoes of Rambam’s earlier ruling. And, like R. Emden, he offers the possibility for Christians to participate more fully in God’s work.

Including the topic of eschatology in the dialogue suggests that the dialogue presents an opportunity to take part in building the World to Come or bring the Messianic Age—that is, to build a better world according to God’s will.

A few months later that same year was the march on Washington in support of the Civil Rights Act, which would benefit both Jews and African Americans. I headed a delegation from Congregation Agudath Sholom to participate in what we knew would be an historic event.

At 3 a.m., the train to Washington D.C. stopped in Stamford. I boarded with many congregants—including young people. I marched in the front row with Martin Luther King, Jr., and then watched him as he delivered his “I have a Dream” speech. It was an important moment not only in Black and U.S. history, but also in Jewish history. The next year, when Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Jews were beneficiaries of newfound rights, along with African Americans.

A few years later, Dr. King was assassinated. Neighborhoods erupted with destructive anger in many cities across the United States. Immediately after the news broke, I was contacted by one of my African American colleagues from the Clergy Association. We organized a peaceful march through Stamford to convey a message of peace and unity. We marched down West Main Street in Stamford, singing songs of peace and ballads of the Civil Rights Movement. We were successful in Stamford. The atmosphere remained calm. As a comparison, Newark, New Jersey, the city in which I grew up as the son of a congregational rabbi, suffered a great loss to people’s property and their livelihoods.

In the years that followed, I was invited to speak often, especially on Martin Luther King Day, at the Baptist congregation that resided in our former Synagogue building—with its big Star of David above the door.

The Rav is correct in his ruling that the scope of the dialogue should be limited; and we as Jews should always be vigilant that Christians with whom we dialogue have no hidden agenda to proselytize to us. However, my experiences have demonstrated that facts on the ground have improved in fundamental ways during my lifetime. Christians who are currently engaged in dialogue with Jews have sincere intentions and engage in the dialogue out of what they see as a shared commitment to follow the will of God.

The year after the Rav published “Confrontation,” the Catholic Church made a major theological change in their relation to the Jews in Vatican II, with their Nostra Aetate. The Catholic Church made clear that there is no ancestral or collective Jewish guilt for the death of Jesus. They made clear that the Jewish religion is not “extrinsic,” but “intrinsic” to the Catholic religion. And, although it claimed that the Church is the new people of God, it also insisted that Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God. In this declaration, the Church affirmed the continued validity of God's covenant with Israel. In the wake of Nostra Aetate Christian-Jewish dialogue flourished. In my dealings with Christians during this time I have found them to be sincere in their motives and beliefs.

In 1990, on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, I received a call from the chairman of the Rabbinical Council of America. He wanted to know if I would go to the Vatican that Sunday for the 25th anniversary of Nostra Aetate. One of the two Orthodox rabbis who were members of IJCIC (the International Jewish Committee for Inter-religious Consultations) had taken ill at the last minute and could not be part of a group that was headed to the Vatican. I was honored to accept this invitation.

Twenty Jews and twenty Catholics met in the Vatican. At the end of the conference, the Jews and the Catholics each wrote a paper and presented it to Pope John Paul II. The Pope read the papers and addressed us as a group. After the address, the Catholics were dismissed and the Pope told us that he wanted to meet each of us Jews personally. I situated myself at the end so my meeting wouldn’t be under time pressure.

When my turn came, I told the Pope we are Landsmen, explaining that Landsman is the Yiddish term for people from the same country or area. The Pope was from Poland where my parents had lived until they arrived in the United States just before my birth. I told him that my father had memories of the Polish people being anti-Semitic—yet it seems that the Jewish people have never had a greater friend in the leadership of the Church than this Polish-born Pope.

Pope John Paul II replied that he would explain with a story. He said that when he was young he attended a small school in Warsaw where he studied drama. He aspired to be an actor and a playwright. When the Nazis came, they gathered the entire student body into the courtyard. They brought down the faculty—many of whom were Jewish—and proceeded to kill them all in front him and the other students. This had a traumatic effect on him. He was not embarrassed to tell me that he was one of the best students in the school and he loved his teachers as they loved him. He said he walked away from that incident knowing that he did not want to live in such a world. He decided that he would enter a seminary and study for the priesthood. Soon thereafter he made a pledge to God. Pope John Paul II paused and said he had never told anyone before—but that he pledged to himself that whenever he is in a position of influence he would do what he can for the Jewish people. He never dreamed of being Pope—he was not yet even a priest—but now he is in exactly such a position of influence.
A bit overwhelmed, I must have shocked him as I breached protocol and leaned over and gave him a hug.

Three years later, as I was transitioning from rabbi of my congregation to rabbi emeritus, I co-founded and then became CEO of the Center for Jewish-Christian Understanding at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield Connecticut—a Catholic institution. I subsequently met with Pope John Paul II seven more times. I found him to be completely sincere in his dealing with the Jews. I also had the opportunity to meet Pope Benedict XVI—several times before he was Pope and twice after. As Cardinal Ratzinger, he was a major theologian and influential confidant of Pope John Paul II before becoming Pope himself.

Although my experience with Catholics has been on a more intense level, I see a similar sincerity from many Protestant groups. I spent ten years teaching a Sunday adult education Torah class at local Protestant churches in New Canaan, from 1995 to 2005, and found them to be warm and sincere. Evangelical leaders I have dealt with, such as Marcus Braybrooke, have made great theological strides in aligning Jews and Christians in their relation to each other and, mutually, to God. The dual covenant theory has even become commonplace in Protestant communities, allowing Jews to be seen as achieving salvation through Torah observance. The commitment extends to more practical realms, as several Protestant communities have recently become major financial contributors to Jewish organizations such as Keren Hayesod.

The Christian leaders who are our partners today have demonstrated that their main goal in dialogue is joint service to God. Building a better world is their focus. Christians involved in Jewish-Christian dialogue by definition have faith in God; it is only appropriate that the Jews involved in Jewish-Christian dialogue be similarly motivated by religious convictions. If Orthodox Jews do not participate in this dialogue, the Jewish side will continue to be represented by secular Jewish organizations whose world view does not match their religious Christian counterparts, and who fundamentally see their actions as universalist and not bound by God’s will.

It is essential for Christian-Jewish dialogue to occur within the framework of Jewish law so it continues to be part of our halakhic understanding and our normative Jewish behavior. It is essentials because it is a part of both Jewish and Christian service to God. Christian-Jewish dialogue must not be left to Jews who do not feel bound by God’s Law.

If Jews build this dialogue with Christians based on secular underpinnings our commitment is subject to change based on utilitarian or political calculations. But if both parties enter into dialogue as people who understand themselves to be in a covenant with God, we have a better chance of building a true and lasting relationship to alleviate suffering, advance social justice and build a brighter world in the service of God.

We, as Jews, do have certain halakhic obligations to the Christians among whom we live. These obligations can be thought of under the heading of social justice, including to bury their dead, to visit their sick, and to help their poor. Christians see the same obligation and are our partners in this, God’s work. The necessary dialogue required for the fulfillment of these mitzvoth is likewise a halakhic requirement. All the more so, we must dialogue with our Christian neighbors to help establish the Messianic Era and create a better world to come.

Community leaders are obligated to ensure that there is proper inter-communal dialogue between Jews and Christians. It is clearly not incumbent upon—nor desirable for—every individual Jew to initiate such dialogue.

To conclude, most Jews currently engaged in Jewish-Christian dialogue still believe that proper interfaith respect and dialogue can only exist in a realm of secular modernity and tolerance based on secular universalism. However, our partners, as faithful Christians, respect our shared commitment to God, God’s Law, and God’s Providence. We do a disservice to the Christian faith Community and to ourselves as Jews, by disregarding this fact.

Further, without the constraint of Jewish Law, any individuals or groups may feel free to dialogue and form alliances for whatever purposes. However, it is exactly God’s Law that is important, and necessary, within Christian-Jewish dialogue.

It is time to re-contextualize our relationship with those Christians with whom we dialogue. It is time to accept that we and our Christian counterparts are engaged in God’s work, mandated by halakha, to bring about a better world.
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[1] Please note that I leave Spinoza out of our narrative.

[2] However, even on this point, Dr. David Berger has stated in his article “Revisiting ‘Confrontation’ After Forty Years: A Response to Rabbi Eugene Korn” that a rabbi close to Rabbi Soloveitchik has stated that the Rav told him he trusted Rabbi Walter Wurzburger to deal with theological issues in conversations with Christians.

Book Review

Dennis Prager, The Rational Bible: Genesis (Regnery Faith, 2019)

Rabbi Hayyim Angel

          Dennis Prager is far better known as a political commentator than a Bible Scholar. Nonetheless, he is animated by his belief in the Torah and its enduring moral messages for humanity. His commentary, as the book’s title suggests, is rooted in a rationalist approach to the Bible.

          Whether or not one agrees with all of his politics or individual interpretations of the verses, Prager’s commentary is strikingly relevant when he emphasizes the moral revolution of the Torah and the vitality of its moral teachings to today’s overly secularized Western world. Rather than serving as bastions of moral teachings and American values, universities are increasingly at the vanguard of attacks against God, the Bible, family values, Israel, and the very notion of an objective morality. Prager pinpoints several of the major differences between the Torah’s morality and the dangerous shortcomings of today’s secular West.

          Throughout his commentary, Prager makes his case for belief in God, providence, the divine origins of the Torah, and the eternal power of the Torah’s morality. He also offers a running commentary on the Torah, bringing insights from a wide variety of scholars and thinkers, as well as from his personal experiences. In this review, we will focus exclusively on the former, as it is here that the commentary makes its greatest contributions.

God’s creation of the world teaches that there is ultimate purpose to human existence. Atheists reject God’s existence. If all existence is random happenstance, however, there is no ultimate purpose. Additionally, the Torah posits that God is completely separate from nature. God gave human beings a special role, and the moral God demands morality from humanity. Science teaches science, but it cannot teach right from wrong, or even if there is a right or a wrong. Science cannot provide ultimate purpose, since it studies only the physical universe (7-8).

          The world began as chaotic (tohu va-vohu, Genesis 1:2), and God created order through a process of distinctions. According to the Torah, the primary responsibility of humanity is to preserve God’s order and distinctions. The creation narrative in Genesis distinguishes between God and the universe, humans and animals, and sacred and profane. Elsewhere in the Torah, God distinguishes between people and God, good and evil, life and death, and many others. The battle for higher civilization essentially is the struggle between biblical distinctions and the human desire to undo many of those distinctions. Prager concludes with a chilling assertion about the contemporary West: “As Western society abandons the Bible and the God of the Bible, it is also abandoning these distinctions. I fear for its future because Western civilization rests on these distinctions” (14).

          Pagans believed that the gods inhere in nature. This belief led to the need for people to propitiate the gods and offer sacrifices. By stressing that God is outside of nature, the Torah revolutionizes the role of humanity vis a vis the world. People must rule and conquer the earth, meaning that the world was created for human use (1:28). People must not abuse nature or inflict unnecessary suffering on animals, but people rule the world. Among other things, this belief led to the invention of modern medicine to fight diseases. Prager warns of a relapse to the pagan worldview: “Many secular people in our time romanticize nature, perhaps not realizing—or not wanting to realize—that either humans rule over nature or nature will destroy humans” (27).

Without the values of the Bible, people lose their uniqueness as being created in God’s image (1:26), and instead become insignificant parts of nature. British physicist and atheist Stephen Hawking said, “We humans [are] mere collections of fundamental particles of nature.” When God is diminished and nature is elevated, human worth is reduced (104). Finally, without God, people are simply another part of nature. There cannot be any good or evil behavior for humanity, just as we would not call an earthquake evil. “Therefore, as ironic as it may sound to a secular individual, only a God-based understanding of human life allows for free will” (505-506).

          It is not good for man to be alone (2:18). People ideally were meant to marry and to live together in a community. In the secular West, there has been a dramatic decrease in marriage rates, and more people live by themselves than at any time in recorded history. Consequently, loneliness has become a major social pathology. A meta-analysis of 70 studies covering over three million people published in the journal ‘Perspectives on Psychological Science’ concludes that “loneliness is now a major public health issue and represents a greater health risk than obesity and is as destructive to your health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.” Prager also quotes the moral benefits of participating in a religious community. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks summarizes the research of Robert Putnam: “Regular attendees at a place of worship were more likely than others to give money to charity, engage in volunteer work, donate blood, spend time with someone who is depressed, offer a seat to a stranger, help someone find a job…Regular attendance at a house of worship is the most accurate predictor of altruism, more so than any other factor, including gender, education, income, race, region, marital status, ideology and age” (39-41).

          God expressed grave concern over Adam and Eve’s eating from the Tree of Knowledge, lamenting that “man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:22). Prager frames the sin in Eden as the struggle over who determines morality. The Torah teaches that God does, but human sin is when people determine good and evil. When people usurp that right, people become god. “And it is precisely what has happened in the West since the French Enlightenment. Man has displaced God as the source of right and wrong. As Karl Marx wrote, ‘Man is God.’ And as Lenin, the father of modern totalitarianism, said, ‘We repudiate all morality derived from non-human (i.e., God) and non-class concepts’” (59).

Human conscience alone cannot bring about a just society. Conscience can be easily manipulated when serving a cause. Conscience can be dulled when people do more and more bad. Conscience also is not usually as powerful as the natural drives—greed, envy, sex, alcohol and others can overpower the conscience. And finally, conscience does not always guide someone properly to do what is right. We need God to teach objective moral values (108-109). “Even Voltaire (1694-1778), a passionate atheist and the godfather of the aggressively secular French Enlightenment, acknowledged: ‘I want my lawyer, my tailor, my servants, and even my wife to believe in God because it means that I shall be cheated, and robbed, and cuckolded less often. If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him’” (239).

          Those who admire the achievements of successful people likely will strive to emulate them. Those who are jealous and resentful of the success of others become destructive. Rather than improving his offering, Cain instead envied Abel’s successful sacrifice and murdered him. The Philistines envied Abraham and Isaac, and therefore destructively filled up Abraham’s wells and persecuted Isaac (Genesis 26). Economist George Gilder (a non-Jew) wrote about this phenomenon in his book, The Israel Factor. He demonstrates that a society’s reaction to Israel’s successes is a predictor of their success or failure. Those who resent the outsized achievements of Israel are likely to fail morally, economically, and socially. Those who admire Israel and seek to emulate its achievements are likely to create their own free and prosperous societies (65). Prager draws a lesson for contemporary America: “The most notable exception to this unfortunate rule of human nature has been the American people. Until almost the present day, Americans tended to react to people who had attained material success not by resenting them but by wanting to know how they could emulate them. This seems to be changing as more Americans join others in resenting the economic success of other people” (308).

          The Torah describes Noah as “a righteous man, blameless in his age.” The Sages of the Talmud debate whether the Torah’s addition of “in his age” diminishes his objective righteousness, or whether it makes Noah all the more impressive for standing above his wicked society. Although both positions are valid, Prager supports the latter view, observing that few people have the moral courage to reject their environment. Prager adds a more important point: Many are tempted to judge people of the past by our contemporary moral standards, rather than in the context of their time. As a result, we would conclude that virtually nobody who lived before us was a good person. For example, many of the founding fathers of America owned slaves, and America allowed slavery at the time of its founding. Since slavery is indeed evil, we may conclude that America’s founders were bad men and America itself was a bad place. However, it is vital to judge America in 1776 “in its age,” and not by the standards of our time. At that time, virtually every society practiced slavery. It was the values of America’s founders and Western Bible-based civilization that led to the abolition of slavery, and the thriving of freedom-loving and freedom-spreading society (91-93).

          After the flood, God concludes that He never again will destroy humanity, “since the devisings of man’s mind are evil from his youth” (8:21). Prager uses this verse as a springboard to attack a modern Western belief, that people are basically good and corrupted by society. The belief emerges from the West’s abandonment of the Bible, and is associated with philosophers of the French Enlightenment such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). No rational person can believe that people are basically good. All children need moral teachings to learn the most basic decency. The unjust wars, slavery, child abuse, and so many other horrors of world history down to the present should be ample evidence that people must actively build a good society. The wrongful belief that people are basically good also is dangerous. Parents and schools will not invest time and energy teaching goodness if they assume that children are naturally good. God and religion become irrelevant to teaching goodness. Society, not the individual, is blamed for evil. Those who blame society try to change society, rather than teaching individuals to be better. “The Torah teaches that, especially in a free society, the battle for a good world is not between the individual and society but between the individual and his or her nature” (109-115).    

          Making good people is the single most important thing parents can do. Loving children without teaching them moral responsibility turns children into narcissists. Parents must constantly emphasize goodness, integrity, and honesty, and praise these traits as most important. Parents also must morally discipline their children, rather than ignoring that responsibility. Teaching the Bible only can help, both because the Bible is unparalleled in its moral wisdom, and it is valuable for children (and their parents) to recognize God as the source of morality (132-133).

          Through these and so many other religious-moral teachings, the Torah was a revolution in world history, and continues to bring relevant teaching to the modern world.

Angel for Shabbat, Parashat Vayikra

By Rabbi Marc D. Angel

We are witnessing a tragic war in the Ukraine. Hundreds of lives are lost; hundreds of thousands are fleeing the country in search of safety. The human and financial costs are staggering. It all seems so senseless. Even if Russia totally conquers and suppresses Ukrainian forces, how will it be able to govern a nation that hates it passionately? How will it be able to rebuild Ukraine? How will it be able to salvage the damage to its own economy and the suffering of its own people? Whatever little it may gain from this war will be massively offset by the losses it will endure.

But doesn’t the leader of Russia see this? Don’t his advisors realize the futility of this war?

Apparently, once the decision has been made to invade and conquer there is no backing down regardless of consequences.

In her powerful book, “The March of Folly,” Barbara Tuchman studied the destructive behavior of leaders from antiquity to the Vietnam War. She notes: “A phenomenon noticeable throughout history regardless of place or period is the pursuit by government of policies contrary to their own interests.” She points out: “Government remains the paramount area of folly because it is there that men seek power over others—only to lose it over themselves.”

But why should people with political power succumb to policies that are wrong-headed and dangerous? Tuchman suggests that the lust for power is one ingredient in this folly. Another ingredient is an unwillingness to admit that one has made a misjudgment. Leaders keep pursuing bad policies and bad wars because they do not want to admit to the public that they’ve been wrong. So more people are hurt, and more generations are lost—all because the leaders won’t brook dissent, won’t consider other and better options, won’t yield any of their power, won’t admit that they might be wrong. These leaders are able to march into folly because the public at large allows them to get away with it. Until a vocal and fearless opposition arises, the “leaders” trample on the heads of the public. They are more concerned with their own power politics, than the needs and wellbeing of their constituents.

The march of folly is not restricted to political power. It is evident in all types of organizational life. The leader or leaders make a decision; the decision is flawed; it causes dissension; it is based on the wrong factors. Yet, when confronted with their mistake, they will not back down. They have invested their own egos in their decision and will not admit that they were wrong. Damage—sometimes irreparable damage—ensues, causing the organization or institution to diminish or to become unfaithful to its original mission. The leader/s march deeper and deeper into folly; they refuse to see the light.

Parashat Vayikra lists various sacrifices that are offered in the Tabernacle, each relating to specific individuals and sins. The Torah discusses “asher nasi yeheta”, if the leader shall sin! Happy are those whose leaders are able to admit their own sins and errors in judgment. Impressive is that leader who is able to say: I have sinned, I have done wrong, I am bringing an offering to the Lord in admission of my shortcomings. I will do better in the future.

The Torah envisions leadership that avoids the march of folly by recognizing their responsibility to their people and to God. Such leaders are not ashamed to admit their shortcomings. Such leaders have the courage to change direction—to march not to folly but to real greatness.

How do we speak to our children about scandal—whether it is rabbis who have been convicted of sexual impropriety, or our nation’s leaders in the United States or Israel?

Our goal in this article is to keep the tone apolitical. To frame the focus, I will begin with an experience I had in a Modern Orthodox Jewish community after a prominent rabbi was arrested and convicted of sexual impropriety with a number of his congregants. This tragedy was heavily covered by the local and national press and was the subject of extensive discussion on social media.

Shortly after the scandal erupted in the public eye, I was invited to speak in separate meetings with the parents, teachers, and children attending one of the local community yeshivot. I began the meeting with the students by asking “What guidance have you received from your teachers or parents about whatever questions and concerns you had regarding the rabbi’s behavior?” To my dismay, with very little exception, the children were left to cope with the situation on their own. The parents assumed that the school would take care of educating the children about the moral and educational lessons that should inform their approach in responding to the scandal; the educators believed that this was something best dealt with at home. The children were left in a moral vacuum. A teachable moment that presented priceless opportunities for clarifying Jewish values related to sexuality, and how to respond to situations where leadership fails, was squandered.

With that as an introduction, let me relate this to educational and ethical challenges posed to us by the behavior of political leaders in the United States and Canada. I know that we have a debt of gratitude for President Trump’s strong support of Israel and the drastically changed policy his administration has put in place in dealing with Iran and their proxies. I also know, that depending on one’s political perspective, much of what follows can be said about current and former leaders of the Democratic Party. Regardless of where one stands, however, the reality is that our children are being raised in an atmosphere marked by adults who are absolutely certain of their view. Respectful dialogue and healthy perspective-taking has given way to disrespect, stridency, and failure to foster an ability to see the world through the eyes of the other.

Dr. Gene Beresin, a child psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital’s Clay Center for Young Healthy Minds makes a number of important points about how to address concerns raised by troubling behavior on the part of leaders. The guiding principle, Dr. Beresin recommends, is to stay away from discussion about politics and policy and, instead, focus on how the behaviors our children have been exposed to may raise questions in their mind. Examples of troubling behavior exhibited by various leaders include lying, mocking others, making fun of those who aren’t viewed as attractive, externalizing blame, and seeking revenge for perceived slights.

Conversations with children on this range of behaviors from supposed role models must begin with understanding how the child or student is processing the information they may see online, in the papers, or in discussions around the dinner table. Among the initial questions that Dr. Beresin recommends parents or educators use to trigger a productive discussion is to calmly ask these questions:

• What have you seen?
• What have you heard?
• What do you think about this behavior?
• How does it make you feel?

The discussion can then lead to exploring what similar behaviors they might have seen in friends, family, or acquaintances at home or in school. Parents can engage their children in discussion of how, in their dealing with similar challenges in their own life, they can find more effective alternatives in trying to achieve their goals. Parents should keep in mind that such conversations are not a one-shot event, but a process that ideally can become an important tool in shaping our children’s moral development.

            I play a game with my grandchildren called “moral dilemma.” While it might sound like one of the many annoyances that go along with having a grandfather who is a psychologist, my grandchildren love the game and actively push me to play it with them whenever we spend Shabbat together. The game consists of presenting a real-life ethical dilemma that I might have faced during the week, followed by a discussion of how they would respond to a similar dilemma. This approach to clarifying moral values is described by Dr. Mary Gentile, a senior research scholar at the Yale School of Management.[1] Dr. Gentile and her colleagues assume that most people know the right thing to do in a particular morally challenging situation. The challenge is how to translate this knowledge into action. She uses discussions of moral dilemmas as a bridge from knowledge into action by giving people the opportunity to practice and pre-script responses to situations that call for an ethical response.

At a hotel-based Pesah program, one of my grandchildren was playing with friends at the program’s camp, when the girls in her group decided to play a game of pretending that their counselor was invisible. They pretended that the counselor wasn’t there and ignored every attempt that she made to engage the girls in activities. My granddaughter, not comfortable with the game, ran to my daughter and said, “Ima, I have an ethical dilemma!” After my daughter and granddaughter discussed the various approaches to dealing with the girls’ behavior my granddaughter was able to rejoin her friends and act in a manner that assertively gave voice to her values.

The next sections will elaborate on three areas of moral education that inform a response to the challenges just described—the key role of promoting perspective taking in our children, the power of growing from mistakes, and recent research on the importance of quality time with children as a crucial ingredient in the transmission of values.

Indirect Transmission of Values and the Importance of Perspective Taking

In addition to directly transmitting our values to our children, the transmission of proper values is often a subtle process.[2] It is important to be aware of the many indirect forces that shape our children’s values since raising a mensch is so much more complicated than only telling them what to do. Longitudinal studies that identify the core ingredients associated with raising an empathic child identify a subtle process that is typically present in such families. Parents who raise children who are kind and charitable as adults expose them to discussions that show respect for those with whom they disagree. Imagine a family sitting around a Shabbat table discussing an issue about which they feel passionately. Parents who show contempt or disrespect regarding those with whom they disagree are conveying a very powerful message to their children. They are modeling an approach to conflict that includes disdain and contempt for those who view the world differently. Whether the discussion is about family members, friends, or the leadership of the local shul or yeshiva, showing respect for those with whom we disagree is a very potent lesson for children.

A crucial facet of this process is parental promotion of perspective taking in their children. It is common sense that children who are encouraged to see things respectfully—through the eyes of others, even those with whom we disagree—are getting an important lesson in one of the basic building blocks of empathy. Parents whose discussion style is associated with instilling the proper values in their children are also more likely to actively encourage their child’s participation in family discussions. These parents pull their children into discussions with adults and supportively challenge their child’s thinking in an atmosphere that is marked by respect for the views of others, as well as that of their child.

After I gave a lecture that included a discussion about the importance of showing respect to others in conversations we have in front of our children, a rabbi in the audience told me the following story. He had just taken a position as the leader of a shul that had a rocky relationship with the previous rabbi. He was shocked to hear that the son of one of his congregants had just become engaged to a non-Jewish woman. He met with the young man to try to understand how this happened and to try to dissuade him from his decision to intermarry. The young man explained that all of his life, the conversation he heard around the Shabbat table was dominated by his parents’ bitterly complaining about the previous rabbi. When company came over, this too was a major topic of conversation. He asked the rabbi: “How do you expect me to view this religion? I was a young, impressionable boy and my view of Judaism was mainly informed by the bitter anger my parents and their friends felt toward their spiritual leader. I see no reason to continue to belong to a religion that was so devalued by my parents and their friends.”

Who do you want your children to marry one day? Somebody who comes from a family where the views of others are dealt with respect, and where there is an effort to understand the opposite viewpoint? Isn’t that an essential building block of a good marriage? Were your future daughter-in-law or son-in law exposed to a home environment that taught them to live with the grays?

There is a fascinating Rav Nachman story that explains the significance of the Torah being given in the arafel, in the mist. It is in the fog that we acquire wisdom. “The people kept their distance but Moshe approached the fog where God was” (Exodus, 20:17). Rav Nachman explains this passage as having the following implication: “For when they saw the mist, the obstacle, they kept their distance.” But Moshe approached, into the obstacle, which is precisely where God was hidden (Likutei Maharan, 115).

Even the most basic examination of the Talmud is an education in the core value of Jews being comfortable with uncertainty. How often in talmudic discussions do we see a high level of comfort with concluding: “kashya” (that is indeed a question) or “tayku” (we will have to wait for the coming of the messiah to come to a conclusion about this issue). The Talmud tells us that the reason we adopt the opinions of the house of Hillel over the house of Shammai is because the house of Hillel was able to appreciate the perspective of the members of house of Shammai and take that perspective into account in making their decisions.

Antidote to Externalizing Blame: Embracing Mistakes

In an oft-cited study,[3] Dr. Charles Bosk, a sociology professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, analyzed the difference between the most outstanding neurosurgeons who, after years of extensive training and practice, had the best success rates and lost the fewest patients, and those who were at the other end of the spectrum, losing so many patients that their attending privileges at their hospital were terminated. The top surgeons weren’t those with the best manual dexterity, the highest MCAT scores, or graduates of the best training programs. Rather, the best predictor of being in the top tier of this select group of doctors was how they handled their mistakes. If they lost a patient, these top tier neurosurgeons wouldn’t rest until setback was transformed into feedback. They typically wouldn’t allow themselves to go home until they determined how they could do the surgery better in the future. They would go to the medical library to see if they missed a recent study and they would call leading surgeons around the world to discuss what approach might work better the next time. In contrast, the transcripts of the interviews with the worst performing surgeons were chilling. They would blame the lighting in the operating room or the “incompetent” nurses assisting them with the surgery. These doctors externalized all blame and failed to learn from their mistakes. Stanford University professor Robert Sutton quotes similar studies[4] that document how creating an atmosphere marked by emotional safety and the ability to calmly view mistakes as an opportunity to grow and improve is a central ingredient in effective teaching and leading.

In one of the last speeches my late father made, at an event commemorating his 65^th year at the White Shul in Far Rockaway, he shared his belief that the older he gets the more he realizes that one of the most important goals in life is to learn how to “fail better.” He quoted Samuel Beckett, who said: “Ever tried, ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

Quoting this speech, one of my father’s students, shared the following story: He was one of the many baalei tokeah (shofar blowers) who, over the years, blew shofar on Rosh haShana in the White Shul. After years of doing this, he became anxious at the prospect of continuing to bear the immense responsibility of blowing the shofar properly for a packed shul on yom tov. In spite of being a talented baal tokeah, he resigned from that position. My father tried to build up his confidence by regularly meeting with him and reviewing the laws of shofar together. Unfortunately, this approach did not work. Harnessing the power of learning to “fail better,” my father arranged for there to be a class on the laws of blowing the shofar properly for the entire community. The job assigned to the former baal tokeah, in co-teaching the class, was to teach those attending the shiur what mistakes in shofar blowing looked like. Of course, as planned by my father, the baal tokeah performed flawlessly, regained his confidence, and was able to once again resume blowing shofar for the shul.

When sociologist Dr. Sam Oliner was 12 years old, the Nazis came into his small town, in Poland, and murdered his family, neighbors, and friends. During the chaos, he escaped to a farmhouse in the outskirts of town and was taken in by a Polish Gentile family who sheltered him at tremendous risk to the life of their family and friends. As an adult, Oliner dedicated his career to researching what the active ingredients were in the childhoods of these moral giants which resulted in such remarkable courage and moral clarity. Oliner found that a crucial contributor was how their parents handled their children’s mistakes. When they did something that violated the moral code of the family, rather than berating them, their parents patiently explained what was wrong with their behavior, and conveyed a clear belief in their child’s ability to engage in a teshuvah (repentance) process that would repair the mistake by making appropriate apologies and righting the wrong done to the injured party.

In contrast to the prevailing atmosphere our children are exposed to in the media and by many of our leaders, adults should try to teach children how to have broad enough shoulders to accept responsibility for wrongdoing by calmly suggesting corrective action while simultaneously communicating a belief in their ability to grow from their mistakes.[5]

In 1975, in Cologne, Germany, world renowned jazz pianist, Keith Jarrett arrived early to try out the piano he would be using for the sold out concert he would be performing that evening in the Cologne Opera House. He immediately discovered that the piano was not usable. The black keys stuck, the pedals didn’t work, and the upper register of the keyboard produced sound that was harsh and thin because all the felt had worn away. The 17-year-old girl who was in charge of producing the concert, desperately tried to obtain an appropriate replacement piano but was not successful on such short notice. When Jarrett told her that he would have to cancel the concert, she became extremely upset at the prospect of being publicly humiliated in front of the 1,400 people scheduled to attend the concert. Jarrett took pity on her and agreed to perform. The performance that evening, on this ostensibly unusable piano, has become the best-selling piano recording in history, as well as the best-selling jazz piano solo in music history. If you download the recording of “the Köln Concert,” you instantly recognize how the seemingly insurmountable challenge became the source of genius. The adjustments that Jarrett had to make to cope with this broken piano made the music better. Forced to avoid the harsh registers, Jarrett stuck to the middle of the keyboard. You can hear him huffing and puffing as he pounded down on the keys to compensate for the fact that the piano was so quiet. This passion and effort brought out a level of sublime artistry that over 40 years later hasn’t been surpassed.

The Talmud tells us: “A person does not understand statements of Torah unless he stumbles in them” (Gittin, 43a). The lesson of the Cologne concert is that parents and teachers need to educate children on the power of risking failure, and viewing mistakes as a crucial engine of growth.

Perspectives from Cognitive Psychology

Effortful learning changes the brain, building new connections and abilities. Research in cognitive psychology consistently highlights the power of struggle as a pathway to growth.[6] Among the studies that illustrate this is the finding that when text on a page is slightly out of focus or presented in a font that is hard to decipher, people recall the content better. Educational psychology studies have found that when the outline of a lecture mismatches the text in some way, the effort to reconcile the discrepancy promotes learning. After French elementary school students are taught that difficulty is a crucial part of learning, that errors are natural and inevitable, and that practice helps, they do better on a test of anagrams than a comparison group. This finding led to a “Festival of Errors” in Paris and “Failcon,” in the technology industry. Both events actively celebrate mistakes and absorb their lessons as a source of learning and growth. It is of note that recently, this trend has been adopted by the world of Jewish education. The Kohelet Foundation gives an award for risk taking and failure. A cash prize is given to educators who can demonstrate what they learned from educational initiatives that failed when implemented in Jewish schools.

The Power of Time and Connection in Moral Education

            A core predictor of which families produce children who grow up to be described as a “mensch” is the amount and quality of time spent by parents with their children. In a carefully researched national survey of working parents in the United States, the Pew Research Center[7] documented the reality that most children grow up in a household in which both of their parents work. Many parents find it difficult to balance the demands of work and family. Most parents, including at least eight in ten mothers (86%) and fathers (81%), say they feel rushed at least sometimes, while four in ten (40%) full-time working moms say they always feel rushed.

Almost 1,000 years ago, Rabbeinu Bahya introduced a four-word prayer that captures the essence of our objective: “May God save me from fragmentation of the soul.” (Hovot haLevavot, Introduction to the Gateway to Faith). A similar statement was made by the Piacesner Rebbe, who quoted the Baal Shem Tov as saying that another way of understanding the words we say several times a day in the Shema “and you will be swiftly banished” (Devarim 11:17) is that we should strive to get rid of the rush in our life (instead of the literal translation “you will be quickly lost” it can be read out of context to mean “you should lose ‘quickness’”—i.e., don’t rush).[8]

The amount of time parents spend with children is not necessarily correlated with positive child outcomes. Rather, it is the quality of the time. For example, there is evidence that when parents are stressed, irritable, and sleep-deprived, time they spend with their children can actually be harmful. In contrast, quality time spent reading to a child, enjoying a family dinner together, or engaging in calm one-on-one discussion is clearly associated with positive outcomes in children.[9]

In a fascinating series of studies, researchers have found a direct correlation between the number of times a week parents eat dinner with their children and their children’s risk for drug abuse.[10] Families that eat dinner together once a week have children with lower risk for drug abuse than those that never do. With each increasing night that parents and children eat together, drug abuse risk decreases to the point that there is virtually no risk for drug abuse in families in which parents and children eat dinner together every night.[11] The importance of “eating dinner” together is not the eating or the dinner; it’s the uninterrupted, focused interaction that seems to bear such valuable fruit. Children have sensitive radar and can tell whether their parents are really there and paying attention to them, or if their minds are preoccupied with concerns about work or other problems. Making time for your child entails truly being present both in mind and body, and providing the undivided attention that children need to develop and internalize proper values.

In addition to eating meals together, routine family “rituals” such as regularly scheduled family vacations, bedtime rituals, and holiday and birthday celebrations are more important to a child’s healthy development than has been previously appreciated. Research has documented that children appear to benefit in a very powerful manner from partaking in regularly scheduled, structured and predictable activities. For example, studies indicate that families who value these activities and invest time and energy in ensuring that children experience these rituals in a meaningful and predictable manner, raise children who are less anxious, feel more “loveable,” and have more positive self-concepts.[12] Conversely, when these activities are disrupted because of traumatic family events such as divorce or chronic illness, children are at increased risk for a wide range of behavioral, academic, and emotional difficulties.[13]

The central role that Jewish thought puts on having control over how one’s time is spent is illustrated in a comment by the Sforno on the verse: “This month shall be for you” (Shemot 12:2). What does the Torah mean by “this month is yours?” We are talking about the importance of control over one’s time. The language of “lakhem,” to/for you, is to highlight the contrast between a free person and a slave’s experience of time. The Sforno explains: “Henceforth, the months of the year shall be yours, to do with them as you desire. During the bondage, your days, your time, did not belong to you but was used to work for others and fulfill their will.” A slave has no control or mastery over time. He cannot sit down and make his own schedule. What is the essence of freedom? It is the freedom to control one’s priorities, to choose to pursue what one’s heart desires.

            The Kotzker Rebbe has a beautiful interpretation of a verse found at the end of Tehillim:

“Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are the children of youth” (Tehillim 127:4). The obvious question is what is the connection between a warrior holding his bow and arrow and childhood? The Kotzker answers that just like with an archer, the closer he pulls the bow, the further and straighter the arrow will go, so too, with children: The closer we hold them, the further and straighter they go.

The role of strength of parent-child connection is another crucial determinant of internalization of religious values. In a classic longitudinal study,[14] USC Sociology professor, Vernon Bengston, asked a basic question about internalization of religious values: Looking over the span of four generations, what kind of parenting practice best predicts which great-grandchildren would continue to share in the basic religious values and practices of their great-grandparents? Bengston’s basic findings were what common-sense would dictate: a consistent religious message, a lack of hypocrisy demonstrated by practicing what was preached, and marriage to a partner who was committed to carry on in the family religious traditions. Perhaps, most importantly, however, the most powerful predictor of what determined whether a child who left religious practice returned was the level of warmth and closeness between parent and child. As long as at least one parent continued to metaphorically hold their child’s hand, even after they left religious practice, the continued warmth, connection, and love made it more likely that the child would ultimately return to the religious tradition in which he/she was raised.

The challenge of how to respond to the exposure of our children to morally questionable behavior on the part of some religious and political leaders presents an opportunity to clarify our thinking about our responsibility to foster the moral education of our children through direct discussion as well as awareness of some of the more subtle ways that children internalize our values. Awareness of some of the “silent” modes by which children learn moral lessons include prioritizing spending quality time with them in spite of our hectic schedules, helping them see their mistakes as opportunities for growth, and modeling respect and curiosity regarding the perspectives of those we disagree with. It is hoped that some of the ideas shared in this paper can help bridge the gap between moral knowledge and moral action.

Different Responses to New Realities

Beginning in the nineteenth century, cataclysmic changes affected Jewish communal life. Secularization, the separation of Church and State, emancipation, and the institution of civil marriage undermined the authority of Jewish communal leadership and led to a shift from a generally traditional society to one where the majority of Jews no longer observed all of halakhah and many chose social assimilation and (increasingly) intermarriage. The latter phenomenon gave rise to the following question: If a Jew has chosen to marry (or to live with) a non-Jewish partner, and that partner applies to convert, what is the proper rabbinic response? While there is a wide range of opinions among rabbis responding to this question, they can be divided broadly into a more lenient position and a more restrictive position. This chapter will explore the central arguments of each side.

The basic issues on which the two sides disagree are as follows:

1. If the non-Jewish partner of a Jew applies to convert, is her motivation for the sake of marriage (rather than sincere religious motivation)? If so, are we required to reject this application out of hand?
2. If we agree to accept such spouses for conversion, are we not thereby implicitly condoning and even encouraging intermarriage?
3. If a Jew has chosen a non-Jewish spouse, this frequently reflects that he or she herself holds a cavalier attitude toward observance of mitzvot. It stands to reason that we can expect no more from the prospective convert. If so, then:
   
   1. Should we agree to accept a convert who likely will not be religiously observant?
   2. If halakhah regards “acceptance of the commandments” as a crucial part of the conversion ceremony, can such a candidate fulfill that requirement? If not, then even if we want to accept such a person it is a waste of time, for without acceptance of the commandments conversion can never be valid.

Several German rabbis, including Yaakov Ettlinger, Samson Raphael Hirsch, and Azriel Hildesheimer, opposed performing conversions in cases of intermarriage. They maintained that in the era when Rambam permitted such a conversion (see previous chapter), the Jewish community was generally observant. Back then, conversion to Judaism necessarily meant entry into an observant Jewish community. However, one no longer could presume that a convert would join an observant community, since the majority of born Jews no longer fully observe halakhah. These rabbis maintained that it is contrary to Torah to accept a convert who will be non-observant. Therefore, Rambam’s ruling is not relevant as a precedent in the modern era.

Similarly, some rabbis ruled that a mohel should not circumcise a boy born from a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother, since there was little likelihood that the child would grow up in an observant Jewish home. Thus, even if the child were later to complete the conversion process by immersion in a mikvah, he would at most become a non-observant Jew, whom (as noted above) Torah does not want as a convert. In addition to their halakhic analysis, this group of rabbis believed that a strict policy against conversion and circumcision of sons born through intermarriage would deter others from intermarrying.[1]

            Other rabbis disagreed with this analysis. They believed that a Bet Din is obligated to do whatever it can to avoid an intermarriage and that this can be achieved by converting the non-Jewish partner. Moreover, the Bet Din also has a responsibility to ensure a Jewish future for the children of intermarried couples. Rabbis Zvi Hirsch Kalischer and Marcus Horowitz insisted that a mohel should circumcise a boy born from a Jewish father and non-Jewish mother, since he is still of Jewish stock, zera Yisrael. The Bet Din has a responsibility to keep such children closer to Judaism and the observant community, and perhaps one day they would come to accept Judaism more fully. These rabbis maintained that a Bet Din should view a father’s desire to circumcise his son as an act of sincere commitment, since he did not have to request this circumcision at all.

            In this spirit, Rabbi David Zvi Hoffmann ruled that if a couple is civilly married and the non-Jewish spouse comes to a Bet Din to convert, this should not be considered a conversion “for the sake of marriage” since they already live as a married couple and therefore have no ulterior motive for conversion. Aside from the responsibility to do everything it can to prevent intermarriage, the Bet Din also has a responsibility to the children of these couples, and can help in their religious development by giving them two Jewish parents.

Rabbi Hoffmann understood that this situation was not ideal, but considered performing the conversion as the lesser of two problems. Rabbi Hoffmann also wanted prospective converts to avoid going to Reform rabbis, as the converts (and many others) would mistakenly think that they are Jewish even while not having undergone a halakhic conversion. Within his permissive ruling, Rabbi Hoffmann maintained that the non-Jewish partner must commit to three pillars of mitzvah observance: Shabbat, kashrut, and the laws of family purity.[2]

One of the central debates between the two positions revolved around the requirement of conversion “for the sake of Heaven” (Gerim 1:3). The permissive side maintained that any choice made by the prospective convert not for personal gain should be considered “for the sake of Heaven.” A civilly married couple, then, could be considered sincere since they did not need to come to a Bet Din in order to be married. Rabbi Yehiel Yaakov Weinberg agreed with Rabbi David Zvi Hoffmann, that if a couple already lives together, a Bet Din may view their voluntarily coming to the Bet Din to mean that the conversion was not for ulterior motives. Others, including Rabbi Shlomo Kluger and Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef, maintained this view, as well.[3]

Additionally, many who permitted such conversions did so in order to avoid the greater problem of intermarriage. A lenient interpretation of the rules of conversion was the preferable choice. Finally, the permissive side insisted that a Bet Din has a responsibility to work proactively to help people avoid living in sinful relationships.

The restrictive side disagreed. True, such a conversion may not be for the sake of marriage, but it also is not a sincere conversion for the sake of heaven. The Jewish partner, for example, may want his or her non-Jewish spouse to convert for social and communal acceptance. The restrictive side also maintained that it is not the responsibility of a Bet Din to proactively bend the rules of conversion to help sinners. Additionally, they argued, of what benefit would it be to convert a non-Jewish spouse if the couple likely will remain non-observant? Similarly, of what benefit would it be to the child of an intermarriage, who was unlikely to grow up observant? Such individuals are better off as non-Jews, since they will not be culpable for violating the Torah. Better remain a Gentile than become a non-observant Jew![4]

Toward the end of the nineteenth century, some rabbis pushed the restrictive position further and maintained that absent a fully sincere and heartfelt commitment to observing all of the mitzvot at the time of conversion, conversions are not valid even after the fact, even if performed by an Orthodox Bet Din. Professors Avi Sagi and Zvi Zohar maintain that Rabbi Yitzhak Schmelkes was the first to state and defend this position (in 1876).[5] Two leading exponents of this position were Rabbis Mordechai Yaakov Breisch and Moshe Feinstein.[6]

One of the leading exponents of the permissive position in the twentieth century was Rabbi Benzion Uziel, the Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel at the time of the founding of the State. Rabbi Uziel maintained that many mixed couples exist, whether just living together or married under civil law, and the Bet Din has a responsibility to change this situation for the better if it is able to do so. He therefore ruled that if a couple already is civilly married, or they are certainly going to get civilly married, a Bet Din should perform the conversion to create a marriage in which both partners are Jewish.

Rabbi Uziel understood the obligation of a Bet Din to inform a prospective convert of some mitzvot prior to conversion (Yevamot 47a–b) to mean that the convert is required to be informed that a central aspect of Judaism is commitment to Torah and mitzvot, and that Jews are held responsible by God to observe them. However, the halakhah does not demand that a convert commit to observing all of the mitzvot, but rather only to understand that he or she is responsible to observe the mitzvot.

            Rabbi Uziel also invoked Rambam’s responsum (#211, discussed in the previous chapter), where he permitted the less-than-ideal conversion of a Christian maid who had an affair with a Jewish man so that they could get married. Similarly, argued Rabbi Uziel, many circumstances in the modern period fit this less-than-ideal status, where a Bet Din must choose the lesser of the two evils.

            Rabbi Uziel also insisted that the Bet Din has a responsibility to the children of intermarried couples. If the father but not the mother is Jewish then the child is of Jewish stock, zera Yisrael, and should be converted so as to become halakhically Jewish. If the mother is Jewish, then the child is Jewish. If that child’s non-Jewish father wants to convert, the Bet Din should accept him so that the child grows up in a unified Jewish home with two Jewish parents.

Not only is the Bet Din permitted to do such a conversion, but it is obligated to do so in order to progress from a situation of intermarriage to one in which the entire family is Jewish. Rabbi Uziel stressed that the Bet Din first must attempt to break up such an intermarriage, but if it could not dissuade the couple, the conversion should take place.[7]

A prolific contemporary writer on conversion, Rabbi Chaim Amsellem, maintains that there are particular halakhic grounds for leniency where a prospective convert is of Jewish stock, zera Yisrael. He maintains that some actual religious commitment is required of a convert, but that is not tantamount to an acceptance to observe the entire Torah. Rather, commitment to have some semblance of a Shabbat and holidays, as well as a belief in one God and an abandonment of previous religious affiliations, is sufficient.[8]

Current Realities

With the creation of the State of Israel, a new identity was possible as people living in Israel could cast their lot with the fate of the Jewish people, without adopting any meaningful religious lifestyle.[9] Ashkenazic Chief Rabbis Yitzhak Herzog and Isser Zalman Unterman both maintained stringent policies for conversions that occur outside of Israel. However, they believed that if an intermarried couple wanted to convert to make aliyah under the Law of Return, and it was safe to live in the country where they currently resided (so that they did not have the ulterior motive of converting to attain physical safety by moving to Israel), then their adoption of the Zionist dream is to be considered casting their lot with the Jewish people.[10]

With hundreds of thousands of people from the former Soviet Union living in Israel today who are not halakhically Jewish, several religious Zionist rabbis maintain that a lenient policy is required. Rabbi Yoel Bin-Nun has argued that there should be a mass conversion ceremony. Rabbi Yigal Ariel similarly maintains that their living in Israel fulfills the halakhic requirement to accept Jewish peoplehood.[11]

Similarly, the rampant rate of intermarriage throughout the Diaspora has led several rabbis to adopt the lenient ruling on conversion so that they can prevent as many instances of intermarriage as possible. These rabbis also attempt to convert the children of mixed marriages when possible.

In contrast, the restrictive position maintains that every convert must be judged on a case-by-case basis as an individual, and each one must demonstrate a full and sincere personal commitment to halakhah and Jewish belief. Without such commitment at the time of the conversion, the conversion is invalid even post-facto.

Rabbis who espouse the restrictive position maintain that a Bet Din should welcome anyone who fully accepts the Torah’s religious standards, and everyone else is better off remaining non-Jewish. People who sin through intermarriage and assimilation are not the responsibility of a Bet Din, since they brought these problems onto themselves by making sinful choices.

Summary of the Major Issues

            There is a wide range of definitions assigned to “acceptance of mitzvot,” including the following: (1) The convert agrees to fulfill the ritual of conversion, circumcision, and mikvah (Ramban, Tosafot).[12] (2) The convert must give verbal assent to observe the mitzvot (Rabbis Hayyim Ozer Grodzinski, Abraham Isaac Kook). (3) The convert needs to understand that a central aspect of Judaism is commitment to Torah and mitzvot, and Jews are held responsible by God to observe them (Rabbis Raphael Aharon ben Shimon, Benzion Uziel). (4) The convert must commit to observe all mitzvot. If, at the time of the conversion, the convert said untruthfully that he or she was committed, then the conversion is invalid even post-facto (Rabbis Yitzhak Schmelkes, Mordechai Breisch, Moshe Feinstein).[13]

            There also is debate over the meaning of conversion “for the sake of heaven”: (1) As long as there is no tangible benefit for the convert, a conversion can be considered to be for the sake of heaven. Therefore, an intermarried couple that approaches a Bet Din so that the non-Jewish partner can convert is accepted, since they already are living as a married couple. (2) Some concede that such conversions are less than ideal, but it remains good policy for the Bet Din to accept such converts to avoid the greater evils of intermarriage, mixed-religion households, and to keep the children of intermarriages closer to the Torah. (3) Conversion for the sake of Heaven requires a full and sincere commitment to God, the Torah, and mitzvah observance.[14]

            There is a fundamental debate regarding the obligation of a Bet Din toward sinners: If the more lenient positions are a compromise with pure halakhah (which they may not be, as we have seen), is it the obligation of the Bet Din to bend the rules to accept the lesser of two evils, or does the Bet Din have no obligation to compromise?

            Intertwined with the purely halakhic debates is a disagreement over the best public policy. Granting that there are strong halakhic opinions on both sides of this debate, what policy best serves the Jewish people? Do hundreds of thousands of people of Jewish stock from the former Soviet Union living in Israel who fight in the Israeli armed forces and marry other born Jews; or the countless couples who either are intermarried or will intermarry, and the children of intermarriages, require the Bet Din to be proactive and as inclusive as possible? Or is it preferable for a Bet Din to be as restrictive as possible toward those who do not fully adopt the ideal beliefs and observant lifestyle of the Torah?

            To summarize, the permissive side has two dimensions: (1) The classical halakhic sources support the permissive side. (2) The classical halakhic sources may not fully support the permissive side at the level of ideal halakhah, but we live in an age where halakhic compromise is preferable to the greater problems that arise by not performing the conversions. The restrictive side, in contrast, insists that the classical halakhic sources do not support the permissive side, and that a Bet Din should not bend any rules to help sinners.

Tragic Recent Development: The Possibility of Annulling a Conversion

Toward the end of the twentieth century, a radical new development took place, as several rabbis began to insist that a conversion can be revoked at any time if the convert demonstrates a lack of halakhic observance.[15] This innovative ruling led to a series of truly dreadful events. In 2006, then Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel Shlomo Amar declared that he rejected most Orthodox conversions from abroad. In 2008, Rabbi Avraham Sherman of Israel’s Rabbinical High Court cast doubt on thousands of conversions performed by Rabbi Haim Drukman, who had been the head of the State Conversion Authority in Israel. He also declared Rabbi Drukman to be invalid to serve as a rabbinical judge since Rabbi Drukman disagreed with what Rabbi Sherman maintained was the accepted position in halakhah. In 2009, then Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi of Israel Yona Metzger supported Rabbi Sherman, and insisted that Israel’s Chief Rabbinate has the power to annul any conversion.[16]

The besmirching of the good names of righteous judges who performed the conversions, and the horrific anguish brought upon halakhic converts and their children who are fully and irrevocably Jewish, are absolutely unacceptable. The Talmud debates whether one who oppresses the convert violates 3, 36, or 46 Torah laws (Bava Metzia 59b). Rabbi Yosef Zvi Rimon condemns Rabbi Sherman’s sinful conduct of disqualifying Rabbi Drukman and his court:

Rabbi Haim Drukman is a God-fearing and righteous man. Disagreeing with his judgment is one thing; disqualifying him from being a judge—or even a good Jew, since conversion overseen by three observant Jews is valid—is intolerable. Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein…intimated that Rabbi Sherman’s comments about Rabbi Drukman is a transgression of Torah prohibitions relating to bein adam l’haveiro [interpersonal relationships], which disqualifies him from testifying or serving as a dayan [rabbinical judge].[17]

Returning to the genuine principled debate, rabbis who insist on the restrictive position recognize that many leading halakhists maintain positions against their own.[18] Therefore, they should grant legitimacy post-facto to conversions performed by Orthodox Batei Din who follow the permissive opinions. All converts need to know that once they convert through an Orthodox Bet Din, they are irreversibly Jewish and nobody ever can take that Jewishness away from them or from their children.[19]

The religious establishment is obligated to address cases of intermarriage, children of intermarriages, and people of Jewish ancestry. While halakhists must determine the proper halakhic ruling and policy, it is clear that both sides have great halakhic decisors and strong arguments to support them. The key to Jewish unity, then, is for Batei Din to recognize the rulings of others who follow different halakhic opinions, even when they vigorously disagree with their positions.

            There are fewer people more courageous and beloved than adult converts, who enter under the wings of the Shekhinah, transforming their identity, and identifying with the Jewish people.[20]

            One Midrash states this point beautifully:

God greatly loves the proselytes. To what may this be compared? To a king who had a flock [of sheep and goats].... Once, a deer came in with the flock. He associated with the goats and grazed with them…. The king was told: “A certain deer has joined the flock, and is grazing with them every day.” The king loved him. When he went out into the field, the king gave orders: “Let him have good pasture as he likes; no man shall beat him; take care of him!”… They said to him: “Master! You have so many rams, so many sheep, so many kids—and you say nothing to us about them; but with regard to this deer you instruct us every day!” The king said to them: “The sheep, whether they want to or not, such is their way: to graze in the field all day…. The deer sleep in the desert, and it is not their way to enter into human settlements. Should we not be grateful to this one, who abandoned all the great wide desert where all the animals live, and came to be in our yard?” Similarly, should we not be grateful to the proselyte, who abandoned his family and father’s home and left his people and all peoples of the world, and came to be with us? (Numbers Rabbah 8:2)

In Washington’s days, religious liberty as we now know it was not a well understood, conventional policy. It was a daring revolutionary departure from the universally accepted order. In all Europe, and throughout the New World also, there were established state churches. In this land, too, notwithstanding the pioneer efforts of Roger Williams, Jefferson, Madison and Washington, many of the clergy belonging to the faith of the majority were zealous in endeavoring to see their Church constitutionally recognized as that of the established official religion of the new United States. To their sincere piety, the state should naturally be, as it was everywhere else, the ally of the universal claims and missionary spirit of the Church. Had not that tradition been set up in this land by the Pilgrim Fathers when they established here not so much a state as a church polity expressing itself through the forms of a state?

The results of that union of Church and State are all too well known. Those very Pilgrim Fathers who had sought these shores as a refuge from the intolerant discriminations exercised by a dominant majority Church in the Old World, in their turn here exercised the same discriminations against those whom they regarded as dissenters.

Against this danger, George Washington took a firm, determined and consistent stand. Churchman though he was, he could not understand a concept of national liberty which gave physical freedom without spiritual freedom. He declared: “The cause of American liberty is the cause of every virtuous American citizen, whatever be his religion or descent.” In the eyes of George Washington, this complete spiritual as well as civic liberty had to be not a grudged or a gracious concession, but a right. It was not to be toleration exercised by a privileged majority, it was to be religious equality.

Again and again he expressed himself in this vein, as when he wrote to the United Baptist Churches: “Every man conducting himself as a good citizen and being accountable to God alone for his religious opinion ought to be protected in worshiping the Deity according to the dictates of his own conscience.” To the New Baptist Church in Baltimore, he wrote: “In this enlightened age and in this land of equal liberty, it is our boast that a man’s religious tenets will not forfeit the protection of the laws nor deprive him of the right of attaining and holding the highest offices that are known in the United States.”

In Washington’s letter to the Jewish Congregation in Newport, he wrote: “All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were by the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for happily the government of the United States which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens.”

Washington himself took more than one occasion to give public and eloquent demonstration of his own utter freedom from religious prejudice, and his convictions that in this new America all religions must stand on a footing of equality, as when at his inauguration as first President of the United States the whole clergy of this city, including Gershom Mendes Seixas, the Minister of Shearith Israel at the time, took official part in the parade and epoch making ceremonies. In his letter to the Jewish community of Savannah, Georgia, he expressed his rejoicing that “a spirit of liberality and philanthropy is much more prevalent than it formerly was among the enlightened nations of the earth, and that your brethren will benefit thereby in proportion as it shall become still more extensive.”

Alas that his roseat belief has been so bitterly belied, and that a century and a half after he wrote these noble words the great majority of our brethren of Israel in other lands are cowering or crushed under social segregation, political discrimination, economic boycott, calculated persecution or bloody violence. This great principle of religious liberty for which George Washington stood so strongly, bravely and unflinchingly is not yet fully granted by lesser men with narrower hearts. Eternal vigilance is the price of religious liberty. We must still be on our guard against those who, without daring openly to advocate an overthrow of the constitution, would yet undermine it by a thousand insinuating ways of giving to our government, our public schools and all our institutions a sectarian character in the pattern of a dominant Church. We must still exercise unwearying vigilance against the hydra-headed monster of bigotry.

Truly, America’s enemies today are within her own borders. We do not need a George Washington to lead us against a foe from other lands. Today we need a George Washington to preserve our America from disrupting intolerance within our own borders, whether it be the intolerance of religion or the intolerance of irreligion. Among America’s enemies today are those who flaunt that constitutional civic liberty and liberty of conscience which we recall today as among the most precious gifts bequeathed to this country by George Washington.

Let us pray in the very words of Washington: “May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants, while everyone shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.”

The Unsung Heroes of the Exodus

Rabbi Hayyim Angel

Our Sages codified most of the holiday Haftarot (the prophetic passages read after Torah reading in synagogue), but left it to individual communities to decide which prophetic readings to select for regular Shabbatot. Communities often chose similar passages, but they occasionally focused on different themes in the Torah reading that required different readings.

Parashat Shemot is one such example. Ashkenazim read from Isaiah chapters 27-28, a prophecy of redemption. They highlight how the people of Israel become enslaved and now required divine redemption. In contrast, Sephardic communities selected Jeremiah chapter 1. This passage features God’s choosing Jeremiah, the prophet’s reluctance, and God’s compelling him to go on his mission. This Haftarah parallels Moses’s selection, as he also expressed unwillingness until God forced him to accept his mission.

While worthy and central themes in their own right, they do not account for another vital element in Parashat Shemot, namely, a series of brief narratives pertaining to five heroic women: Shiphrah, Puah, Yocheved, Moses’s sister (likely Miriam), and Pharaoh’s daughter.

Shiphrah and Puah

The king of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah, saying, “When you deliver the Hebrew women, look at the birthstool: if it is a boy, kill him; if it is a girl, let her live.” The midwives, fearing God, did not do as the king of Egypt had told them; they let the boys live. So the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and said to them, “Why have you done this thing, letting the boys live?” The midwives said to Pharaoh, “Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women: they are vigorous. Before the midwife can come to them, they have given birth.” And God dealt well with the midwives; and the people multiplied and increased greatly. And because the midwives feared God, He established households for them. (Exodus 1:15-21)

The Hebrew meyalledot ha-Ivriyyot, Hebrew midwives, could mean that they themselves were Israelites (Sotah 11b; Rashi, Rashbam, Ibn Ezra, Ramban), or that they were midwives who served the Israelite population (Josephus, Philo, Abarbanel, Malbim). We cannot determine their ethnicity from the text.

What we can see is that they fear God, namely, they have a powerful moral sense and defy the decrees of the wicked Pharaoh (see, for example, Genesis 20:11; 42:18; Deuteronomy 25:17-19, for illustrations of fear of God=moral).

We do not know what gave these two midwives such moral courage in an evil society that threatened to destroy them if they were caught. We do not even know if they were Israelites! Yet, they are immortalized by the Torah. Strikingly, this narrative is longer than the Torah’s description of Israelite slavery! The Torah celebrates the moral heroism and defiance of a wicked society of two otherwise unknown figures.

Yocheved and Moses’s Sister

A certain man of the house of Levi went and married a Levite woman. The woman conceived and bore a son; and when she saw how beautiful he was, she hid him for three months. When she could hide him no longer, she got a wicker basket for him and caulked it with bitumen and pitch. She put the child into it and placed it among the reeds by the bank of the Nile. And his sister stationed herself at a distance, to learn what would befall him. (Exodus 2:1-4)

Despite Pharaoh’s subsequent decree of drowning boys, Israelites still chose to have children. Ramban observes the heroism of Moses’s parents to bring a child into the world in the face of Pharaoh’s decree. Midrashic traditions also praise Miriam’s inspiring Moses’s parents to bear more children (e.g., Sotah 12a).

Pharaoh’s Daughter

The daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe in the Nile, while her maidens walked along the Nile. She spied the basket among the reeds and sent her slave girl to fetch it. When she opened it, she saw that it was a child, a boy crying. She took pity on it and said, “This must be a Hebrew child.” Then his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and get you a Hebrew nurse to suckle the child for you?” And Pharaoh’s daughter answered, “Yes.” So the girl went and called the child’s mother. And Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this child and nurse it for me, and I will pay your wages.” So the woman took the child and nursed it. When the child grew up, she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, who made him her son. She named him Moses, explaining, “I drew him out of the water.” (Exodus 2:5-10)

Pharaoh’s daughter recognized that Moses was an Israelite, perhaps because he was abandoned (Shadal, Hakham), or circumcised (Exodus Rabbah 1:24; Rashbam). This is the only place in Tanakh where a baby is said to be crying (since compassion is relevant to the plot). The Torah highlights Pharaoh’s daughter’s compassion with a crying baby, even though she knew of her father’s decree to drown Israelite baby boys!

The Torah jumps from Moses’s infancy to his emerging from the palace as a grown man, filled with a deep moral sense of protest against Pharaoh and his wicked nation. Even though slavery was the law of the land, Moses was scandalized at the state-sponsored abuses.

Shiphrah-Puah, Yocheved-Moses’ sister, and Pharaoh’s daughter form the background of how Moses emerged as a paragon of morality. Moses came from them.

People often quietly impact on others. The Torah’s emphasis on these brave individuals teaches that this sort of quiet impact can transform individuals and change the world.