National Scholar Updates

Misha  Edel concentrated his gaze one last time on the black ,contorted mask that had made him famous.  The snout, or some would say the curved trunk ,would have to be shortened, he decided,   the jaw cover tightened to produce the sound he wanted.  

He looked at himself briefly in the mirror.  The mask made him appear like a hideous cross between a monkey, a pig and an elephant.   He broke into an almost-smile as he recalled the fright he had caused at his first children’s concert.  He had started by imitating the voice of the Wicked Witch of the West – in the Wizard of Oz – but he had so startled the young audience, some of whom began to wail, that he had to calm them by twisting the snout and becoming Bing Crosby singing “White Christmas.”

Tonight, at his final concert, he decided that  he would run through several of his most famous roles – Placido Domingo, Jussi  Bjorling ( sophisticated audiences loved his subtle imitation of the great Swedish singer’s Italian) and more daringly the mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne.   Then, pivoting rather wildly, he would become the tempestuous Celine and belt out“True Love.”

At the end, with what he hoped would be the show stopper, he would imitate  Jackie Evancho – not the established cross-over  singer of sixteen  - but the little  Jackie, who, at only nine, first stunned the TV world with the voice of a young adult.

Ending with Evancho was a concession.  Deep down, he wanted so much to finish where he himself had begun,  as the ten year old child prodigy auditioning at the famed Barbilo Music Academy  -- his voice so tremulous but so pure. It was that voice he wanted to recover in his finale, the unalloyed, limpid sound of little Misha-le.    But, try as he might, he could not manage it.   When he tried to produce it, what emerged was vaguely recognizable to him but it sounded so distant, without sweetness or character, as if coming forth from a tin box.

How could it be – he asked himself -- that he could not find that voice?  After all it was his own. Just a slight adjustment to the snout, a shorter intake of breath - would that not do it?   

 The high pitch could definitely not be the problem. For so many years, he had handled   even female voices quite easily.  He remembered well his first try at Anna Nebreko.   The audience had gasped, even though he could privately recall several flawed phrases.  

And the Maria Callas recital of five years ago, so much more difficult , had been so successful that several in the audience refused to believe it.  

“Give me the mask” a man in the front row of the orchestra had demanded, his cry rising above the tumultuous applause.   “This is a hoax; I want the mask.”

Several in the audience had tried to quiet the man, but he would not be stopped.   Edel  had broken  into a thin smile  and beckoned him to the stage, but his challenger had hesitated, shrinking , perhaps, at Edel’s willing compliance.

Challenges like this had happened several times before – particularly before skeptical audiences in Tel Aviv and in Berlin.  He had had acoustical engineer, sculptors, specialists of many kinds  examine the mask, as they searched for hidden amplifiers, sound modifiers, digital devices of all kinds – to no avail, of course. 

In Berlin, he had even consented, ten minutes before his imitation of the famous countertenor Andreas Schol, to have an otolaryngologist thrust a tube down his throat to investigate for possible mechanical “aids.”  

Edel’s imitations had gained him enormous acclaim, and until a year ago, he had reveled in the adulation.   But now, as he reached 63, uncomfortable questions had  started to nag at him.   Exactly what were his audiences applauding?  His astounding mimicry?  Surely.   Indeed, he had  been told that several “experts” would rush home after his concerts to play audios of the singers he imitated  and , then , triumphantly   claim that “the great   Edel” had distorted a phrase, struck the wrong pitch, or bellowed instead of crooned.

Nevertheless, his consternation mounted.  If he had imitated the voices of ordinary folk, of someone in the audience --- would the appeal have been as great?  Was it only his resurrection of great singers that was so stirring?   Was he appealing, really, to his listeners’ nostalgia?   

As these disturbing reflections deepened, he yearned more and more to recover   his own voice.  If he could not regain the voice of little Misha -le, could he not, at least,  find the voice of the seasoned, sophisticated  Misha? 

He first thought it would be easy . He would simply discard the mask, take a breath and sing.  He tried one of his favorites, Bach’s “Bleibst Du Bei Mir.”  He had performed it countless times, imitating great male and female lieder singers.  But when he tried to find his own voice, his anguish only grew.  He sang with ease, to be sure, but the voice,  although young and pleasant, sounded strange, foreign.   It was like no other, surely, but it did not sound like him at all.     

He tried again and failed again. His hands grew sweaty, and his throat tightened.  He tried to calm himself. “You haven’t heard yourself in such a long time . .  try to take it easy.”  He tried another song, Mozart’s “Das Kinderspiel ( the children’s game) and found himself almost terrified.   He couldn’t recognize the voice at all..  It was coming out of him.  It surely wasn’t someone else’s but it wasn’t his.  He grabbed the mask.   He tried again.  The voice remained soothing and steady, with a slight vibrato, but, again,  he could not recollect it.

“It has become contaminated by the others; I will purify it,” he reasoned.  He dipped his hand into the small bottle of the special coagulant he had often used to thicken the inside of the snout, so that he would exhale less air.  .  

He felt momentarily relieved as he donned the mask, and, indeed, he easily produced a young male sound  -- frail, slight, pristine , but it was yet another imitation, of whom he could not tell – but it was not his.

A kind of panic gripped him.   He tried again and again, tinkering with the mask, adjusting his breathing, at times stretching or bending, contorting his frame, squeezing his midriff – but to no avail.

Exhausted  --  at last, he gave up.

One the afternoon of the final performance, he stared one last time at the mask and then inserted a small razor blade into the lower part of the instrument. A quick touch of his finger and it would be over.   He would do it immediately after finishing Jackie Evancho’s aria.

Rarely apprehensive before performances, he could barely hold down the honey and fruit mixture he customarily drank a half an hour before coming on stage.   As he entered, he had to grip the mask to hide his quivering fingers. 

 The familiar, rising applause calmed him.    He  lifted the mask, pulled it over his face, and , in a moment,  Bjorling’s confident, powerful “Nessum Dorma “ poured forth, then Placido’s Non Puerde Ser.”  It wasn’t Edel’s best, but the audience barely noticed.  He took the mask off, wiped his brow, and, in front of the rapt, silent crowd, began his customary on-stage rapid gluing and his fiddling with the snout.  The mask was back on , and  Marilyn Horne’s  mezzo soprano filled the concert hall.   The applause was appreciative, adoring, but he knew that he had missed more than one phrase and lost more than one of the high notes.  Worse, he noticed that, toward the end,  the voice was not quite accurate.   It was as if Horne had become an alto.

He wished desperately that there would have been no intermission.   It only increased   his anxiety.  He found himself actually chewing on his mask as he waited to return to the stage.  It was not the final moment with the razor that left his heart pounding.   No --   In his super-meticulous manner, he had tested the razor’s sharpness, worked on the mechanism, located the precise point on his throat.   He would feel a fleeting moment of pain, then he would be gone. Rather -- what drove him to near panic was the fear that he was faltering.   He had been acutely aware of the subtle but noticeable errors in his Horne imitation.  . . . and what was to come later , toward the end of the performance,   Celine’s smooth but torrid “ True Love,”  would be far more difficult.

His foreboding was justified.  He hit all the notes correctly, the phrasing was perfect, Celine’s smooth , saucy voice rang out , but the truly  powerful  , sultriness was absent.  The applause came,  but it was milder, more hesitant,, somewhat subdued.   This was Celine, to be sure, but a Celine without strength, without the sly, sexy confidence.

By the time, he reached the finale, he was sweating visibly.  He reached for some water.  Then pulling the mask to his face as tightly as he could, he thrust his trembling hands into his pockets, shut his eyes and began little Jackie’s “ O Mia Bambino Caro.”  The beginning was astoundingly accurate, and as in the original Evancho moment,  the audience, so swept away by the tiny girl’s amazingly mature, adult  voice, burst into applause.  Then came the final phrases “ Babo, pieta, pieta”  and he stumbled badly.  Suddenly, the audience heard neither the adult voice that so characterized Jackie Evancho’s singing nor the  child’s ultra soprano. 
 

What emerged was not  the sweet  voice of Jackie at all.    As he tried to sing on, the voice was quickly changing,  supplanting entirely the song of little Jackie.  It was a boy’s voice, still very young,  a bit tremulous, yet lovely, quiet  –  It could hardly be heard beyond the orchestra seats.

The audience, so excited and adoring a moment ago, was stunned; there was murmuring, shocked whispering, “ What was wrong?  Where was Evancho?” He started to shake noticeably --   then, pulling his hands from his pockets, he completed  the aria with as much strength as a young boy could muster.   Then,  Misha-le  Edel  sobbed with joy.

Much of my life has been a search for meaning and truth. The Great Mystery often hovers over my search as I move from experience to experience, and often I am left with a remnant of faith in my journey toward truth, and this faith sustains me. I often find that it is the journey itself that is most meaningful and that absolute “Truth” may come in hazy, sudden flashes, but is not always sustainable; for the hester panim (eclipse of God) in our contemporary situation is a formidable energy that can implant doubt in me.

This is the devastating curse of the energy of Amalek—radical evil—that truly dims the “Throne of the Lord,” and attacks our faith. For how can evil flourish in the face of the reality of God; the prevalence of evil hampers our lofty faith. As our mystical sages explain, in gematria (numerology) the word Amalek totals 240; the word for doubt (safek) also totals 240; thus, Amalek symbolizes the insertion of doubt into our psyches. This is the radical evil that must be fought against with increased faith in every generation so that God’s Throne can be manifest in clear Light. It is the movement forward even with this doubt, that I will call faith; “faith rather than truth” is the actual legitimate quest in the thought of some of our most traditional sages.

As a prelude to this path, one might ask: What are some of the prevalent suggestions as to how one finds truth in this world? One way is to move broadly to a recognition of all the myriad energies that flow through us, an integration of these “opposites,” the conscious and unconscious, the kabbalistic sephirot that need to be felt and balanced, the middot that we encounter on the path of mussar. This broad perspective keeps us from seeing life through a narrow lens and perceiving things from that narrow space. This way of expanding consciousness and accessing truth is through an inward journey.

Another way is to trust Scripture, and the transmission of ancient knowledge that we believe is divinely revealed through an event, (Sinai). What happens when there is a clash between the outer dictum, and inner experience, (what happens when we encounter biblical criticism)? Whom do we trust then? Can God be experienced from within, or is there a tension of opposites at that point that leads to a deeper perception and integration that we call Truth or getting closer to truth as it is refined as we live through life’s stages?

            Some of our Sages suggest that we should accept that this is actually a world of faith and not of Truth, and it is the “striving” for truth that is essential. A part of life will always be mysterious, and our reasoning minds can only reach doubt when encountering so many variables. One constant challenge is how we distinguish objective facts from our constant projections. We bring ourselves to everything we encounter, so we have to rely upon a myriad of sources, such as feeling, intuition, imagination, experience, senses, reason, and revelation.

And, yes, there are those who are blessed with the absolute belief in our sages and transmission. It is certainly easier if we live in a community of faith where we are influenced by this energy. Hence, na’aseh v’nishma; our experience influences our perception. But much of our community does not live with this certainty and relies on “faith” rather than Absolute Truth. So let us now explain this specific point of view from the parables and teachings of the Sages.

There is a story told about the Rambam that one day he was visiting a beloved student who was on his deathbed. The Rambam asked that when he reaches the True World to please inquire why bad things happen to good people, why justice is not always achieved in this world. He asked his student to visit him in a dream and reveal to him the answer. The pious student promised to do so. Sure enough, a month after he died he appeared to the Rambam in a dream. The Rambam asked him, “Can you now share with me the answer?” The student replied sadly: “When I was in the upper world, everything was clear to me; truth was crystal clear. But when I crossed over—retuning back to the earthly realm, everything became unclear, questionable, filled with limited perception, so I cannot communicate what I learned up there!”

The Sefat Emet at the end of Bereishith, in Parashat Vayehi, shares a similar idea and gives another reason why this is a world of faith, Emuna and not a world of truth, Emet. When Jacob intended to give blessings to his sons at the end of his life, he gathered them together to reveal to them details relating to the secret of the End of the Days. Rashi points out that he was prevented to do so by an angel. The Sefat Emet explains that the reason for this is that the next world is the world of Emet, but this is a world of Emuna. If indeed, the Truth would be revealed in this world there would be no striving for truth, no growth or depth would occur. Absolute clarity and objective truth are withheld so that human beings would strenuously strive for truth, actualize their potential and contribute to the world. It is the journey toward truth in this world that is even more valuable than the actual truth.

The development of faith contains within it some element of doubt, risk taking, and the virtue of courage, but when one lives a life of faith blessings are achieved. Joseph Campbell suggests this idea when he quotes the philosopher who said, “When you are on a journey, and the goal seems further and further away, the journey itself is the goal.”

The Hassidim present a similar idea inherent in the Hebrew letters. The Torah begins with a letter Bet rather than Aleph. This may seem strange, since Aleph is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet and Bet is the second letter. The Hassidim point out that Aleph connotes unity and oneness; however, this is a world of duality, opposites constantly emerging. This is actually a blessing. The letter Aleph begins the word Arur (a curse), for it leads to a naïve unity, imagining that unity can be achieved without striving. The return to the reality of the Garden of Eden, an imagined place of unity, is actually a desire to be free of stress of the dualities of this world, a desire to sleep, a death wish (Thanatos). The letter Bet (two, duality) is the first letter of the word Berakha (a blessing). It is through engaging with duality, striving to move toward greater unity consciously that creates blessing. The shape of the letter Bet also connotes this; it is closed on three sides and open on the fourth side, incomplete. It is up to us in this world of Emuna to fill in the fourth side, through our striving, through our mitzvoth. Truth in this world is not achieved easily, nor is it supposed to be; hence it is only the next world that is called Olam ha-Emet (the world of Truth).

So how do we come closer to Truth in this world? There are two basic traditional historical approaches. One can be found in the view of the Rambam and the other in the view of Yehuda Halevi. The Rambam’s view is the more rational approach. Because of the beauty and logic of the Torah, one can apprehend the Truth of God’s creation and Presence through study and action. The comprehension of the absolutely wise directives of the Torah trains us “To do the right and the good in the eyes of the Lord” (Deut. 6), thus leading us to the truth. To observe the glory of creation, its infinite biological and physical beauty and complexity leads us to the awe and Truth of the Creator as well. It is not just a contemplative path that leads us there, but the doing of the commandments (na’aseh v’nishmah) that leads to a spiritual path that becomes our truth. When done in fellowship in a community of faith, we also find the support and reaffirmation of this Truth.

Yehuda Halevi approaches our imbibing of truth through historical transmission and witnessing, not just individually but as a whole people. It is because a whole nation witnessed at Mount Sinai the revelation and the transmission of the commandments, and passed it generation after generation. For if the Prophets, the greatest truth tellers were to lie, whom can we trust? And if a whole people witnessed the event of revelation, rather than one person, it attains a reliability that cannot be denied. So it is from the faith of the righteous leaders of all earlier generations, their students and the community of Israel through the generations that we imbibe the truth that we must follow.

In our present day, when Torah study is not always the norm, and when there is not always a connection to a community of believers, the search for truth and meaning is challenging. One is faced with the possibility of many truths rather than one Absolute Truth. Some individuals are able to feel the truth, the still small voice from an inner calling, when one is touched by kindness and intuits that as a spark of God; some from the actions of the righteous, the pious, the courageous in the face of darkness; some from the gentle, resilient response in the face of rational incredulity, where the Mystery of something deeper appears. Some as they walk the inner cities and glance at the hundreds of faces and wonder how incredible that each has a unique story, each is a whole world. How can there not be a Creator, a purpose to this magnificent cosmos! Some obtain moments of a sudden flash of insight, perhaps a dream, perhaps the small still voice in the forest of the redwood trees; perhaps in the restfulness of the Shabbat; some through meditation, or sinking the winning basket in front of a large crowd. It is not only in the supernatural miracles, but in the miracle of the everyday when we are open to the glory of the natural creation that works every day. Perhaps from a kabbalistic perspective we may call it the integration of intuition and wonder (hokhma) into the realm of the rational (binah), which transforms it into a deeper knowledge (da’at), a contact with the Infinite.

The elevated behavior of human beings, especially of the genuinely pious, also point to the spark of Truth that alludes to something beyond our limited perceptions. As an example, Gandhi was asked: “Is God Love?” He responded: “I am not sure if God is Love, this Great Mystery is beyond my comprehension, but I know that to love is Godly.”  In other words, even if God seems to be distant, we can feel the spirit and reality of God by the qualities in human beings that we define as God-like.

Other people can feel God by observing God in nature; the magnificent, awesome beauty and grandeur that transcend all our doubts, through beauty, creativity, music, poetry, song.  And yet we are faced by moments of doubt; and that doubt is a concomitant of faith because it indicates the beyond rational Mystery of Mysteries. If God were a simple rational entity that we could control, doubt would not be present; but would we really be thinking of the Mystery of Mysteries? The doubt, of course, is also engendered by perceiving the world through our limited ego, and the radical evil that we face (Amalek).

The Hassidim suggest that we can learn from the word truth (Emet) itself an important path toward moving toward truth. They explain that the word Emet is made of the first letter of the alphabet, the last letter of the alphabet, and the middle letter—a broad perception. The word for falsehood, (Sheker) is made up of one letter after the other, a narrow perception. So how do we achieve this broad perspective?

One way is to acknowledge that this is a world of continuing complexity (Bet), or as R. Yisrael Salanter states, “Man is a drop of reason in a sea of irrationality,” and one must accept the change that constantly flows, allow it to be a constant learning experience and not cling to a simple truth that leads to disappointment. Truth is not achieved by repressing something that contradicts our initial perception, it is to be welcomed as an additional element to add to our perception, an attempt at balancing competing truths.

We look at the many dimensions of self, discovering how we are ego driven. Until we gain greater consciousness and clarity of the many dimensions of the self, we only live from a constricted perception. We first have to become aware of how we avoid facing the anxiety of the unknown, and remove the blockage in order to grow toward a broader perception. How we erect defenses to avoid vulnerability, potential pain and anxiety must be faced, and ultimately overcome. We must work to create the ability to accept life as it is, with all its changes rather than follow our proclivity to control everything, which is impossible and thus creates pain, anger and distance from God. The path of “control” is living from the realm of the ego and not from faith. When we reach the state of depression and guilt that results from living an ego based life, we move even further from God until we open again to the process of teshuvah and are gathered back through love, living from the realm of faith and meaning.

The attribute of faith implies our ability to at times rest in anxiety rather than trying to escape our discomfort immediately. The enduring of the pain of uncertainty is challenging but it leads to depth and appreciation. It suggests that this is not a world of absolute Emet but a world that contains Mystery as well, and thus necessitates faith. This way of encountering the world moves us from the realm of dogmatic certainty and promotes creativity, depth and sublime learning. As the Kotzker Rebbe taught: “The assertion that one knows the full truth is the demise of religion, the journey toward truth is the flowering of religion.”

Let us conclude by finding within the Torah several indications that the path of faith—of searching for truth in this world rather than owning the absolute truth—is an authentic path to be considered. We find in the Torah a potential example of the necessity to “search” for truth in the story of the eviction from the Garden of Eden. One might interpret that the exile (eviction) of Adam and Eve from the Garden was actually an act providentially built into our universe; that we must go out into the world to discover consciousness and return to the Garden only as developed human beings as opposed to the naïve unity that the Aleph, implies in the origins of the Garden. We must encounter the Bet (opposites in this world), in order to move to the Gimmel (the integration of the opposites), and find wholeness in the Dalet (the attenuation of the ego—Dal=impoverishment—and thus contact with soul). For ultimately, the naïve desire to return to the Garden is an attempt to escape stress, to avoid the discomfort of this world.

This interpretation teaches that we must go out into this world, actualize our God given talents and achieve our destiny through living and giving. The desire to grow (Eros) is the counterforce to our desire to escape stress (Thanatos). It is a very powerful, redemptive trait.

A second example is found in the story of Abraham, when he is visited by three angels after circumcision. Although in great physical pain, his natural inclination to do hessed overcame his physical pain. He proceeded to feed the angels finding spiritual meaning in moving onward rather than choosing to rest and de-stress. The story teaches that the primary way to spiritual fulfillment is to keep moving forward on the path, moving with faith, doing the mitzvoth, even while enduring physical pain. With meaning that stems from giving and following a soul journey, we actualize our spirituality and discover the truth of the soul through faith, even without Absolute Truth.

Moshe Rabeinu, too, is an example of one who achieves faith through the “heroic journey.” He is abandoned as a child but then lives in the palace of the king, the secure place. But something is missing; the material comfort that surrounds him does not satisfy his soul. Life remains a mystery; so he risks leaving his secure place and takes a journey toward the unknown, open to discovery. He has the courage to “turn aside,” and he is blessed to discover the “burning bush” and God’s Presence, and he knows he must share this knowledge with his people and with the world. Faith emanates from his journey, and truth is discovered as a blessing in his search. But then he must return to the reality of people who challenge his faith, through all the changes of life; yet his faith remains strong, and God dwells with him.

In our world, when God does not speak to us as directly as to Moses, Abraham, and the Prophets, we are challenged. The more the darkness of evil reigns the more our faith is impacted (Amalek); the more we as human beings do not act with faith, the more elusive faith becomes. And we turn to other gods—materialism, hedonism, and secular culture—which ultimately fail to give us the awesome, sustaining faith that we yearn for.

So if life is ever changing, and we are always changing, what can we rely upon? Can we accept that the nature of life is change, and discover God within that change?

Maybe we may never find the Truth, but we can, through our actions create faith, a movement toward truth that connects us to something larger. The word mitzvah comes from the root tzavta, to join; through the deed we join with God. Living in a community of faith helps support and strengthen our soul proclivity.   

May each of our unique journeys lead to meaning (faith). And may we discover truth at the end of our lives when we may we look back and see that the journey itself held all the clues to the meaning of our lives. The acceptance of the journey toward truth, leading a life of faith without expecting absolute truth along the journey will lead to Truth itself at the end. The acceptance, the journey itself will become the Truth. We will do and we will understand.

Da’at Torah, the notion that leading decisors can issue binding opinions on matters outside the scope of halakha, or Jewish law, is a central concept that distinguishes Hareidim from their Modern Orthodox brethren. The former accept da’at Torah as a given; the latter do not. The term as it is currently understood is of relatively recent vintage[1] and has been conflated with the talmudic concept of emunat hahamim, belief in the Sages. This essay will examine whether either of these notions can be applied to matters of national security, whether in Israel, or for that matter, the United States and elsewhere.

Emunat Hahamim: The Haham

Chapter Six of the Talmud’s Tractate Avot, popularly known as Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers) lists emunat hahamim as the twenty-third of the forty-eight characteristics with which one “acquires” Torah. It does not define what it means by emunah (belief). Similarly, the eighth chapter of the small tractate known as Kallah Rabbbati, a collection of uncanonized texts (braitot) that incorporates virtually all of Pirkei Avot's sixth chapter, likewise offers no explanation for what the term connotes.[2] Presumably, the authors assumed that their readers were familiar with the concept and that no further explanation was necessary.

It is noteworthy that the Talmud considers a haham to be superior to a prophet and endowed with a form of prophecy. Thus,

R. Abdimi from Haifa said: Since the day when the Temple was destroyed, prophecy has been taken from the prophets and given to the Sage.... Amemar said: A Sage is even superior to a prophet, as it says, “And a prophet has a heart of wisdom.”^[3]  Who is compared with whom? Is not the smaller [i.e. the prophet] compared with the greater [i.e. the Sage]?

Emunat Hahamim Defined

Perhaps the earliest interpretation of the term emunat hahamim appears in Mahzor Vitry, whose author was the eleventh-century student of Rashi, R. Simcha ben Shmuel of Vitry. R. Simcha explained the term to mean “who believes in their words, unlike the Sadducees and Boethusians.”[4] Since the latter were movements that rejected the Oral Law, the term seemed to connote nothing more than belief in that law.

Maimonides, who flourished a century after R. Simcha, situated emunat hahamim in the context of service to the Almighty out of love, rather than for a reward, much as Antigonus of Soho advises in the first chapter of Avot.[5] As Maimonides writes, “All that you do you should only do from love…for it is the objective of the mitzvoth and the basis of emunat hahamim.”[6] Interestingly, the term does not uniformly appear in all versions of Maimonides’ commentary. In the Vilna Shas, still the standard version of the Talmud, the text reads: “for it is the intent of the Torah and the basis for the intent of our Sages, peace be with them.” In any event, it does not appear that Maimonides was referring to belief in the rabbis themselves, however, nor, given his focus on mitzvoth, did he seem to imply that every rabbinical pronouncement demanded unquestioning belief.

Maimonides’ grandson, Rabbi David ben Avraham (thirteenth century), also addressed the term in his own commentary on Avot. He wrote,

[T]he Torah is also acquired through emunat hahamim, who are so learned that they can explain to us matters, its hidden matter, and the scholar (talmid haham) and his counterparts among all sons of Israel will adhere to their words in faith and will acclaim that they are the truth and their words are the truth.[7]

Unlike his grandfather, R. David seemed to be saying that any pronouncement by the Sages was to be accepted without hesitation. On the other hand, when referring to the Sages, he clearly had those of the Talmud in mind.  Indeed, in asserting that scholars should “adhere to their words,” he must have meant that those “scholars” did not command the same level of total belief in all of their utterances as had their predecessors, the Sages.

R. David’s near contemporary, R. Menachem Meiri, offered a slightly different definition of emunat hahamim. He viewed it as “belief in all the pronouncements of the Sages of the Torah, even if one cannot fully comprehend them.”[8]  While his statement might be taken to imply all Sages at all times, in general, the term “Sages of the Torah” connotes the rabbis of the Talmud and Midrash.

Two centuries later, R. Don Isaac Abrabanel offered two novel perspectives on the concept. First, he observed that emunat hahamim connotes

that if [a decisor] hears of some ruling issued by the remaining decisors of that generation that appears to him to be faulty, he should not jump to dispute them, because he must consider whether their ruling was mandated by special circumstances (tzorekh sh’ah), or for some valid reason they diverged from standard law, and he must [therefore] believe that they had a broader perspective on the matter.

In addition, he noted that while in general, the halakha follows later decisors (halakha k’batra’ei), that only would apply if the earlier decisors were not aware of the logic that drove the opinion of the later ones. But if they were indeed aware of the rationale in question, and elected to ignore it, then “it is appropriate for the Sage to believe [my emphasis] in the earlier Sages,” that is, to accept their ruling.[9] In neither case did Abrabanel indicate that one had to believe in meta-halakhic rabbinical pronouncements.

If anyone should have argued for the application of emunat hahamim to matters outside those of halakha, it should have been Abrabanel, who held official or quasi-official positions in the courts of Alfonso V of Portugal, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, and Ferranto I and Alfonso II of Naples.[10] Yet Abrabanel went no further than to assert that

one who immerses himself in Torah for its own sake becomes a leader in all his ways and his views will be accepted, even if he states that what is right is left and what is left is right, because rulership belongs to the Sages of the generation, who will instruct them as to what they should do.[11]

Abrabanel’s point was that the rabbis’ decrees had to be followed; he did not, however, argue that those decrees could apply to non-halakhic matters, such as those he dealt with throughout his political career. Nor is it evident that when acting in a governmental capacity, he consulted other rabbis, or even earlier halakhic rulings, before making policy recommendations to the sovereign.

Emunat Hahamim and Da’at Torah

It is noteworthy that none of the foregoing medieval commentators employed the term da’at Torah. Moreover, even in the context of emunat hahamim, there was considerable ambiguity as to whether rabbinical dictates applied to non-halakhic matters.[12] The term da’at Torah actually made its first appearance in the Talmud, in a discussion involving a dictum by R. Judah regarding whether the prohibition against eating the sciatic nerve applied to either hip or only the right hip. R. Judah was of the latter view and the Talmud asked whether R. Judah had reached his conclusion on the basis of reasoned interpretation of Torah (i.e., da’at Torah) or the probable meaning of the biblical injunction. Clearly, da’at Torah in this context had nothing whatsoever to do with extra-halakhic issues.

Several rishonim, rabbis of the Middle Ages, including leading halakhic decisors such as R. Meir of Rothenberg (1219–1293), known by his acronym Mahara”m Rotenburg; R. Joseph Colon, known as Mahari”k (1420–1480); and R. Samuel de Medina, known as Maharashd”m (1505–1589) did write of da'at Torah.[13] However, none employed the phrase in the sense of a rabbi drawing upon some form of prophecy that enabled him to pronounce on matters of all kinds. 

In practice, until the nineteenth century, many Torah scholars did not speak of da’at Torah in the context of emunat hahamim either, although they sought to apply the latter principle to rabbis of all generations. For example, R. Yosef Hayyim of Baghdad, the leading halakhic decisor for Iraqi Jewry in the nineteenth century, asserted that although prophecy was in some respects superior to ruah haKodesh, the holy spirit, the latter was a form of divine revelation, that could descend upon a wise man at any time, in any place, without any special preparation such as that required for prophecy.[14] The implication, of course, was that it was not only the rabbis of the talmudic era upon whom the holy spirit might descend. Yet, like his medieval predecessors, R. Yosef Hayyim did not employ the term da’at Torah.

R. Shlomo Rabinowicz (1801–1866) was perhaps one of the earliest scholars explicitly to expand the notion of emunat hahamim to belief in the power of contemporary rabbis to pronounce definitively on matters outside the purview of halakha. He asserted that

the essence of emunat hahamim is to believe in the words of the wise men of that generation who are imbued with the spirit of Hashem and this applies to any matter upon which they pronounce or advise…even in this-worldly matters  and advice to people in current issues such as business and the like.[15]

R. Shlomo was the first Hassidic rebbe of Radomsk. His views reflected what over time became an essential element of Hassidism: belief that the rebbe (or tzaddik, as the rebbe was often termed) was a source of advice on all matters, be they regarding business, family issues, halakha, or anything else. R. Shlomo did not, however, actually employ the term da’at Torah. On the other hand, when Ashkenazic decisors, notably R. Akiva Eiger and R. Moses Sofer, better known as Hatam Sofer, did refer to da’at Torah, it was not at all evident that they viewed it in the same expansive terms that R. Shlomo had applied to emunat hahamim.[16]

Nevertheless, da’at Torah certainly did seem to be the natural corollary of emunat hahahim. After all, if one were to believe that the leading rabbis of one’s own generation were blessed with ruah haKodesh regardless of the issue at hand, then, by definition, their views on any subject reflected the Torah view. And that Torah view, da’at Torah, would demand acceptance even if, in Abrabanel’s words, it mandated “that what is right is left and what is left is right.”

By the end of the nineteenth century, the Hassidic notion of an all-knowing rebbe began to be adapted to, and adopted by, the non-Hassidic yeshiva world. Initially, the idea that rabbinic wise men could pronounce on matter of all sorts was widely promulgated by the Agudas Yisroel party, which variously functioned as a movement and a political party that claimed to receive binding guidance from a body called Mo’etzes Gedolei HaTorah, or the Council of Torah Sages.[17] R. Yizkhak Me’ir HaKohen, known as Hofetz Hayyim (the title of one his many works), who was the Council’s first leader and Aguda’s ultimate authority, is reported to have explained da’at Torah (or, as he would have pronounced it, da’as Torah), in almost identical terms as the Rebbe of Radomsk defined emunat hahamim: “The person whose view is the view of the Torah [Da’as Torah] can solve all worldly problems, both specific and general.”[18] Yet even the Hofetz Hayyim delimited its reach. Only someone who was hermetically sealed off from all externalities was eligible to make binding pronouncements on non-halakhic matters, something virtually impossible in an age of mass communications.[19]

It was only in the course of its revival in the aftermath of the Holocaust, and particularly with the creation of the State of Israel, that the Hareidi world conflated emunat hahamim and da’at Torah, asserting that its leading rabbis, who invariably were rashei yeshiva, deans of yeshivot, were endowed with ruah haKodesh.[20] The leaders of Israel’s Ashkenazic Hareidi community, notably R. Abraham Isaiah Karelitz, known as Hazon Ish, and after him R. Eliezer Shach, as well as other Hareidi expositors both inside and outside the State of Israel, went to great lengths to articulate the view that the Torah perspective was the final arbiter of all matters of Israeli policy, because one was commanded to have faith in the Torah leaders of the day.

The combination of these concepts is now being applied not only to pronouncements by Councils of Sages regarding government policy, which are automatically adopted by Israel’s Agudat Yisrael and Shas parties, but also by both deans and senior instructors of yeshivot to all manner of issues brought to them by their students, acolytes, and followers. The notion that one must turn to a yeshiva rebbe for mandated instruction on everything from which career (if any) to pursue to whom one should marry, has not been without its critics. These generally have emanated from the Modern Orthodox community, including the leaders of its yeshivot.[21]

Personal matters notwithstanding, the logical conclusion that might be drawn from the Hareidi world’s emphasis on da’at Torah and emunat hahamim is that the State of Israel should not make any decisions in the realm of national security, military operations, and even military tactics without the explicit approval of Torah Sages, be they Sephardic or Ashkenazic, or perhaps both. One may well question, however, whether such matters should be decided by men (they are always men) who not only have no experience outside the walls of the yeshiva, but generally avoid having anything to do with the military, whether in Israel, where so many leading figures are bitterly opposed to service in the Israel Defense Forces, or elsewhere in the Free World.

Much of the halakhic literature regarding military issues has been penned by rabbis of the National Religious (dati-leumi) community, whose men have a record of military service stretching back to the founding of the State. Indeed, many of these rabbis themselves have served in the IDF. While National Religious rabbis have devoted most of their attention to the day-to-day religious challenges that young soldiers confront, some have also addressed questions of security, strategy, and operations. However, the dati-leumi community at large, in common with its Modern Orthodox counterparts in the Diaspora, while highly respectful of its rabbinate’s views, has not universally accepted the notion that emunat hahamim calls for blind acceptance of rabbinic pronouncements because those are ipso facto da’at Torah.[22] Indeed, the history of rabbinic interventions in matters of security policy and military strategy appears to validate the dati-leumi/Modern Orthodox perspective on the nature, and limits, of rabbinical authority as it applies to these issues.

The Historical Record

An early example of rabbinic influence upon national security matters was R. Akiva’s disastrous support of Bar Kokhba. R. Akiva was recognized as the leading Sage of his generation; he, more than anyone, might have been presumed to have ruah haKodesh. Yet tragically he was wrong.

R. Akiva was fully convinced that Simon bar Koseva was the Messiah. Indeed, it was he who named him Bar Kokhba, from the passage in Bil’am’s blessing of Israel. His great student, R. Simeon bar Yohai observed that when R. Akiva would see Bar Kokhba, he would say: “This is the King Messiah.”[23] Furthermore, Maimonides records that R. Akiva was so taken by Bar Kokhba that he served as his aide de camp,[24] which would indicate that he may have accompanied his hero into battle.

R. Akiva was prepared to overlook Bar Koseba’s faults, of which there were several. These included his purportedly saying, “Master of the universe, there is no need for you to assist us [against our enemies], but do not embarrass us either!”[25]—hardly a statement one expected from the Messiah. Bar Kokhba also appears to have insisted that his troops cut off a finger to prove their bravery, a practice that earned him rabbinical rebuke.[26] Finally, the Talmud relates that he killed his maternal uncle, R. Elazar Hamoda’i, after suspecting him of collaborating with the enemy. As a result, he lost the divine protection, which he in any event had not asked for, but which led to his death during the defense of Betar, which the Romans destroyed.[27] 

R. Akiva encountered opposition from his own colleagues, however, and his admiration of Bar Kokhba was rejected by future generations. R. Simeon bar Yohai also related that whenever R. Akiva hailed Bar Kokhba as the Messiah, R. Johanan ben Torta would tell him: “Akiva, grass shall grow from your cheeks, and yet the son of David shall not appear.”[28] R. David Ibn Zimra, known as Radba”z, appears to indicate that R. Johanan was not alone. As he put it, “there is no doubt that there was a dispute between the rabbis. Some believed that he was the messiah and some did not.”[29]

Nine hundred years later, R. Ismail ibn Nagrela, known to Jews as R. Shemuel haNagid, whose great work, Mavo haTalmud (Introduction to the Talmud), is incorporated among the commentaries printed in the Vilna Shas, served as Grand Vizier of Granada in addition to leading the Spanish Jewish community. It was in the former capacity that he commanded the army of Granada on behalf of the king in constant battles during the years 1038–1056. R. Shemuel scored numerous victories; and he credited God for supporting his efforts. Yet nowhere did he assert, or has it been asserted by others, that it was his expertise in Torah, much less ruah haKodesh, that determined the operations and tactics that resulted in his success on the battlefield.[30]

Four hundred years after R. Shemuel flourished in Granada, Don Isaac Abrabanel likewise was both leader of his community and a senior court official. Yet his erudition as a Torah scholar, and, for that matter, his acumen as a financier and court official, nevertheless failed him at a crucial time. He did not recognize the clear indications of the perilous state of Spanish Jewry; that “the days of the Jews of Spain were numbered.”[31]

Abrabanel was not facing a military threat, nor was he a military leader like R. Shemuel. But the challenge that he confronted was no less one of Jewish national security. Even more than in the case of R. Akiva, who had no real experience in matters of governance, Abrabanel’s expertise in Torah, even when combined with such experience, did not prevent his grievous political misjudgment just as it did not determine R. Shemuel’s military triumphs.

Half a millennium later, Ashkenazi Jewry’s pre-war religious leadership faced an even greater national security challenge. Like Abrabanel, they, too, were unable to comprehend the magnitude of the danger that threatened their community. Whether they were Hassidic leaders such as the Belzer Rebbe and his brother (respectively Rabbis Aharon and  Mordehai Rokeach), or recognized scholars like R. Elhanan Wasserman, their Torah knowledge did not extend to their understanding of Europe’s political dynamics. Both urged Jews not to leave Europe (though the Belzer Rebbe did just that). Because many pious Jews felt that emunat hahamim mandated that they follow the da’at Torah of their leaders, they remained in place, and were exterminated by the Nazis and their local supporters.[32] Apologists have offered up metaphysical reasons for the “blindness” of these rabbinic leaders, yet there is no denying that they simply did not have the secular expertise to render authoritative judgments regarding the situation in Europe. And, as the case of Abrabanel demonstrated, even if combined with secular expertise, mastery of Torah was no guarantee of accurate political analysis and forecasting.

The failure to recognize the threat to Jewish survival in Europe was not the only case where those to whom da’at Torah might be attributed were on the wrong side of history. The most vocal proponent of the concept, Agudas Yisroel, opposed the creation of the State of Israel until the eleventh hour before its establishment in 1948. Agudas Yisroel’s American sister, Agudath Israel of America, opposed public demonstrations in support of Soviet Jewry counseling quiet diplomacy instead.[33] They, too, were proved wrong.

The creation of the State of Israel, and of the Israeli Defense Forces, brought forth numerous issues relating to national security that simply had not been considered since the sealing of the Talmud early in the sixth century bce. As a result, dati-leumi rabbis have come to address matters on both a micro-level that all agree fall within the bounds of halakha, for example, how individuals should comport themselves on Shabbat while in the midst of military operations, as well as macro issues that arguably are outside halakha's scope. These include governance issues, as well as national security policy, military strategy to support that policy, and even operational issues that have emerged both during conflicts and peacetime. Over the decades, as the State of Israel has engaged in several wars, as well as confronted terrorism both within and outside its official boundaries, the number of issues, both on a micro-scale and at the macro-level that rabbis have addressed, have continued to increase.

Macro national security concerns have evoked conflicting responses from decisors and laypeople alike. Perhaps the most hotly debated issue facing contemporary Israel has been that of retention of the Occupied Territories/Judea and Samaria. Rabbinic leaders have positioned themselves on all sides of this issue, ranging from numerous dati-leumi rabbis, such as R. Shaul Yisraeli, who have advocated retention if not annexation of the territories, to those who would favor withdrawal from at least some of the West Bank, such as R. Ovadya Yosef, with the latter group dividing over the nature of circumstances that might mandate withdrawal. R. Yisraeli argued that, “In essence, relinquishing Jewish settlements to the enemy endangers life (yesh sakanat nefashot).”[34] On the other hand, employing the same principle of danger to life, R. Ovadya asserted, “If the chiefs of the military and its officers, together with expert officials, determine that there is a risk to life if the territories are not returned, we rely on them and permit the return of the territories.”[35] Of course, military and intelligence officers likewise have been  divided over the issue of returning territories, and those disagreements have not been resolved in the nearly three decades since R. Yisraeli and R. Ovadya published their views.[36] What, therefore, is da’at Torah in this case, even if one were to accept it as a governing principle?

Other security and military related issues have also prompted a variety of responses from leading rabbis, again begging the question of whose da’at Torah should be followed. Rabbis have debated whether IDF soldiers could defy orders to uproot army bases and/or settlements, whether deemed illegal by Israeli courts, or mandated by the government. Thus in mid-1995, a group of rabbis calling themselves the Union of Rabbis for the Land of Israel (Ihud HaRabbanim Lema’an Eretz Yisrael) led by former Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi Avraham Shapira, issued a halakhic ruling (pesak) that soldiers had to refuse orders to relinquish army bases in the West Bank to the PLO. On the other hand, the sitting Chief Rabbi, R. Yisrael Meir Lau, himself a leading halakhic decisor, stated on national television that it was “inconceivable to disobey orders.”[37]

The same issue exploded again when Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ordered the withdrawal from Gaza in 2005. Once again, R. Shapira led the opposition, which included a petition by sixty rabbis, urging soldiers to defy orders to dismantle the settlements.[38] Again, other dati-leumi rabbis, while harboring concerns about the pullout, opposed any effort to discourage soldiers to disobey orders. Some eighty rabbis, including R. Shlomo Riskin, himself a settler, signed an open letter urging soldiers to obey an evacuation order.[39]

Similarly, subsequent to the First Lebanon War, rabbis debated whether the IDF should have permitted PLO fighters and their leaders to have escaped from Beirut, which it had surrounded. R. Yehuda Gershuni compared the PLO to Amalek, and saw no reason to give its fighters an escape route.[40] Similarly, R. Dov Lishanski asserted that it was a positive commandment to besiege the PLO from all sides and to starve it out.[41] On the other hand, Chief Rabbi Shlomo Goren asserted that

There is an obligation (hiyuv) to leave a fourth direction (i.e., a corridor) open in every conflict…the practical halakhic conclusion (ha’maskana halakha lema’aseh) is that in the siege of the terrorists in Beirut they [the IDF] were bound by the power of [Jewish] law to leave open a way for them to withdraw.[42]

R. Shaul Yisraeli, whose hard line on withdrawal from settlements was noted above, occupied the middle ground between the polar positions, arguing that while the law of rodef, killing a pursuer intent upon murder, applies to the terrorists, in practice, “the decision whether or not to permit an avenue of escape for the murderers is left to the sole discretion of military commanders and the government responsible for their actions.”[43] Variants of all of the aforementioned issues continue to be debated by rabbis in books, journals, and in the media.[44] There is no rabbinical consensus on strategic security matters, any more than there is consensus among military leaders, particularly when they retire and are free to voice their opinions.[45]

Unless they have served in the military, rabbis simply are not conversant in the nuances of security policy and military operations despite their wealth of Torah knowledge. A case in point is the question of whether it is permitted to torture a captured terrorist. Several rabbis, among them R. J. David Bleich, permit torture in the case of a “ticking bomb,” that is, when a captured terrorist might have information leading to another terrorist attack, whether the venue for such an attack is Israel, America, or elsewhere.

The matter is not that straightforward, however. R. Bleich asserts that

torture in the case of the ticking bomb…is designed purely and simply to elicit information and circumstances will rapidly demonstrate whether or not the information elicited in such a manner is accurate.[46] 

His view is contradicted by both military and intelligence professionals who have actual wartime experience, however, including former prisoners of war who underwent torture. Among those who take the contrary position are Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, a retired four-star Marine general with considerable combat experience in Iraq; Admiral Mike McConnell, a former Director of National Intelligence; and Senator John McCain. All have questioned the utility of torture under virtually any circumstances.

In any event, also at issue is whether the individual in question is indeed a “ticking bomb” at all. R. Bleich’s casual assertion that “circumstances will rapidly demonstrate” the truth of a tortured terrorist’s confession overlooks the likelihood that a trained, hardened terrorist would deliberately provide false information that actually would undermine efforts to prevent a future catastrophe. In addition, the terrorist may not be aware of changes in his/her organization’s plans that may have been spurred by his or her capture.[47] Thus, while R. Bleich might provide theoretical halakhic guidance regarding torture, assessing whether a terrorist actually is a “ticking bomb” is entirely another matter, one that transcends halakha. Ultimately, R. Bleich’s lack of practical experience, whether in policy or military matters, renders his judgment somewhat beside the point.

There is no doubt that at times what some would term da’at Torah was borne out by events. The Lubavitcher Rebbe confidently predicted that the first Gulf War would end before Purim, and that is exactly what happened.[48] The Rebbe also critiqued the Bar-Lev line, predicting that Israel should concentrate its forces in one place. In a sense he was correct; the onset of the Yom Kippur War demonstrated that the Bar Lev line was not an insurmountable barrier to Egyptian penetration of the Sinai Peninsula.[49] The Egyptian success was due to many other, more critical factors, however, especially the Meir government’s failure to act upon the indications and warning that it had available from Israel’s intelligence community.[50]

It should be noted that another of the Rebbe’s positions, his opposition to the Begin government’s negotiations with Egypt, proved to be misplaced.[51] Those negotiations led to a peace treaty with the Arab world’s most powerful state that has remained in force for nearly four decades, and enabled Israel to fight several wars during that time without having to keep large forces deployed on its southern border. The Rebbe was a remarkable man, but by his own admission, his advice in national security matters was not da’at Torah.[52]

It is beyond the scope of this essay to examine whether emunat hahamim comes into play in all non-halakhic matters, for which its modern corollary, da’at Torah, must be the ultimate adjudicator. Nevertheless, the notion that emunat hahamim and da’at Torah should govern national security decisions collapses on multiple grounds. The record of those to whom it has been attributed, whether in ancient, medieval or modern times, is not one of great success. In addition, contemporary national security issues have prompted conflicting rabbinical responses, with the result that da'at Torah cannot be easily identified. Finally, da’at Torah might be valid in the abstract, but may not be practical as a basis for real-life decision-making. Wise rabbis have much to offer in the way of advice; emunat hahamim confirms that their views are always worthy of consultation, whatever the issue. But their writ should end there; in matters of national security, the final word must always belong to government and military decision-makers.

Racism and Chosenness: What It Means to Be a Light unto the Nations

By Meylekh Viswanath[1]

One Shabbat, more than two years ago, a respected Israeli Rosh Yeshiva and a frequent visitor to our synagogue gave a speech from our shul pulpit in which he made some racist, demonizing remarks about Arabs. I was not entirely surprised because his remarks on previous occasions could not exactly be termed representative of a universalistic approach to Judaism, to say the least. Still, to hear him explicitly mouth racist rhetoric—particularly from our synagogue pulpit—shocked me. But what shocked me even more was that his remarks didn’t seem to bother most of the congregants. To be fair, he had spoken in Hebrew and even though the Hebrew he uses is fairly simple and easy-to-understand, many people in the audience probably were not paying attention. But many were; and they found all sorts of ways of excusing this rabbi’s words or explaining them away. At least one other person actually excoriated me vehemently for daring to criticize the rabbi’s remarks. Of course, close-knit groups often exhibit hostile attitudes toward other groups with whom they are in competition, either for land, material resources, or even simply with respect to ideology. I suppose I thought the group I belonged to was special, that my friends were special; others might exhibit such behavior, but not my group, not my synagogue. I was clearly wrong! And so this whole business got me thinking. In this article, I would like to offer my ideas on why some people exhibit such enmity toward people of other groups, and why I think such a posture is contrary to the very essence of Judaism. I will try to demonstrate that the mission of the Jews is, in fact, to teach the world to be tolerant and accepting of strangers. Other groups, I will argue, have other missions assigned to them by God; but the Jews, because of their history, are uniquely positioned to be a role model for compassion and empathy toward strangers.

A Theory of the Origins of Racist Behavior

Why do people preach hatred against other peoples? Against other nations? I can understand why a person might feel hatred toward another individual who has done something bad to him. Even in such a case, the Torah requires us not to exact revenge.[2] But in any case, one would not find it rational for such a person to feel hatred toward the person’s son or brother or friend. And if this is so, it would certainly not make any sense to hate the entire nation or group of origin of this person. So then why do we have the Ku Klux Klan? Why do we have intertribal mass killings? Why do we have mass violence in Sri Lanka against the Tamils and in Myanmar against Muslims—both nominally Buddhist nations, both purporting to follow the precepts of the Buddha, the one who taught compassion toward all beings, the one who gave up the possibility of nirvana in order to stay and bring his fellow-beings to enlightenment out of compassion?

I think such behavior might originate in an initial act of irrational injury or violence that may be entirely out of the blue; or it may be an excessively extreme reaction to something that the victim might have said or done; or maybe even due to a misunderstanding. The target of an injury cannot understand, cannot accept that such an act might have been intentionally directed toward him or her, because to consider such a possibility is to consider the possibility that s/he herself or himself might have some shortcoming, might have done something bad. The possibility that the violence might have been irrational, i.e., without any understandable cause is even more difficult for people to accept, because that is so close to the notion that there is no order in the universe. As a result, such an offense might be rationalized as being prompted by antipathy against the target’s group, which is then followed by a reactionary antipathy toward the assailant’s group.

As we will see later, there is a rational tendency for groups to form as a way of reducing the free-rider problem. A very important characteristic of a group is group-stability and group-cohesion. This can be achieved in two ways: creating bonds between in-group members and creating distinctions and distance between groups. Such pre-existing between-group distance reinforces this creation of ill-feeling toward the other on the basis of his/her group affiliation. But the point I want to make is that individual experiences have an important part to play in the generation and maintenance of these anti-other group feelings, whether we term them racism or not. And if racism is an understandable result of individual experiences, then it is also easy to understand why the target of an unfortunate incident of violence or injury would want others to share his/her feelings. A feeling that is shared is a feeling that is validated. The unfortunate result of the sharing of such negative feelings toward other groups is that racist ideologies are taught to children and young people who, having learned such negativity at a young age, incorporate it into their world-view. Ideas learned at a young age are essential foundations of the individual’s epistemological system and hence are difficult to remove later on.

If we wish to eliminate racism, it is important to teach tolerance to young people. It is equally important to not allow people who have been hurt to propagate their hostility toward other people. The Jewish community, unfortunately, has been the target of a lot of hate. The Holocaust is still fresh in our group-memory, and most of us know people who have suffered during the Holocaust and after the Holocaust, whether in Eastern Europe, in Germany or in the Middle East. It is completely understandable that such people have negative feelings toward Germans, Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, Arabs, Muslims or any of the other groups to which their assailants might have belonged. Some of

these people have overcome their experiences and have come to teach love and tolerance even toward their assailant-groups.[3] Unfortunately, many other people have been pushed by their experiences into this cycle of the perpetuation of fear, mistrust, doubt, suspicion and violence.  The purveyors of such negative sentiments are not necessarily fringe elements in our society; they are all too often, unfortunately, community leaders and even rabbis and yeshiva-teachers.

The Torah sometimes does mandate hatred against an entire ethnic group. For example, we are commanded to remember what the Amalekites did to us and to obliterate their name from under the Heavens.[4] But, as the Abarbanel says, Amalek’s actions were directed against the weak and the feeble; they were committed out of baseless hatred and were perpetrated in a cowardly and furtive manner.[5] Such actions and ideologies are what we condemn in remembering Amalek. Similar, we condemn the Nazis, a group whose ideology was racist, eugenic and genocidal, completely lacking in compassion toward the weak and infirm. However, it would be a mistake to declare and to teach hatred and mistrust toward Germans as a group, toward Arabs and Muslims as a group. There may be hate-filled and hateful Germans and Muslims. But Germans and Muslims do not choose to be born into their groups; and, furthermore, these groups are not defined by an ideology of hate.[6] Hence, it would be a denial of the positive traits of the nation of Abraham to declare of Palestinians, as a group, “Yemmakh shemam!” “May their name be blotted out!” Nevertheless, I have heard such racist preaching from pulpits in our own synagogues; I have heard of such declarations by Jewish day-school rebbes in our own communities. This kind of racist behavior is, frankly, perplexing to me, given that not so long ago Jews were on the receiving end of these attacks and diatribes. So even if we can understand the origins of such hate and even if we sympathize with the experiences that gave rise to this hate, we have an obligation to reject it and to speak out against it.

Most recently we heard R. Herschel Schachter, a respected and learned rosh yeshiva at the centrist Orthodox Yeshiva University, referring to African-Americans pejoratively as shvartses.[7] While Yeshiva University did put out a press release stating that “The recent use of a derogatory racial term and negative characterizations of African-Americans and Muslims, by a member of the faculty, are inappropriate, offensive ...,” none of our local Orthodox community rabbis, to my knowledge, used the opportunity to condemn the use of derogatory terms.[8] Neither did R. Schachter, himself, apologize for his remarks.[9] The point is not that R. Schachter is a bad person;[10] rather, given R. Schachter’s prominence and the likelihood of ordinary people learning from him, it is essential that rabbis speak out against the use of such derogatory expressions. When the Israeli rabbi with whom I started this article spoke in our shul, I am happy to report that our rabbi gave a derasha the following Shabbat distancing himself and our shul from such vitriol. On the other hand, this rabbi was once again given an opportunity to speak in our synagogue a couple of years later; worse, shul members were encouraged to contribute to his yeshiva. So from my point of view, we still have a long way to go in recognizing and redressing racist attitudes.

But it’s not only rabbis and rebbes that have such anti-other views. Many ordinary Jews have highly biased views of non-Jews; my feeling is that such views have been inherited from their parents and grandparents who went through the Holocaust. I think it is important to make a distinction between understanding why somebody might have negative views of Eastern European gentiles and allowing that understanding to color one’s own views of gentiles. I personally, though not of Eastern European extraction, have been on both sides of the fence. Many of my relatives in India have/had anti-Semitic stereotypes of Jews, partly inherited from the English/Americans passing through India and partly due to the pro-Arab stance that the Indian government had for a long-time.[11] Many Hindu Indians have negatives attitudes toward Muslims as a group and against lower-caste Hindus; similarly Muslims think of Hindus as kaffirs—“idolators and polytheists,” and educated Muslims are contemptuous of the inequality of the Hindu caste system.”[12]

On the other hand, in the US, I have personally been on the receiving end of some unpleasant experiences both from Jews and from non-Jews, because of my skin color and my geographical origin. For example, many years ago, in Chicago, I sat down next to an elderly white lady on a city bus, whereupon she promptly got up and moved elsewhere—even though there was more than enough room for both of us on the seat. I understood that the lady might have inherited her attitudes from her upbringing and didn’t hold it against her, especially given her advanced age, but I was certainly saddened by her action. Another time, I encountered a rather hostile reception while eating dinner with a white girlfriend at a restaurant in a Lithuanian neighborhood on the south side of Chicago.

I also know personally how easy it is to fall into racist behavior. I remember how at one time, I myself treated a Gideon New Testament with less than complete respect, and my children called me out on my behavior. I realized that I was wrong, that I had violated the very precepts that I had taught my children to follow. The point I want to make is that we have to be on our guard, lest we fall into such behavior. Our children should be taught that speech and behavior disrespectful of ethnic and religious groups is not tolerated, even when it emanates from individuals we teach our children to respect. The Orthodox community has experienced several instances of sexual molestation by rabbis and other people respected in the community; even if we, as a community, have not yet taken sufficiently strong steps to prevent the recurrence of such behavior, we all agree that it is unacceptable. We need to take a similar stance against racist speech and behavior.

It has been suggested that part of the reason that racist attitudes exist in the Jewish community is the doctrine of the chosen people. I don’t know if I agree entirely with this theory, because other communities without such explicit chosenness doctrines also exhibit racist attitudes. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that it is easier for Jews to justify racist attitudes by casting such beliefs in the context of the doctrine of chosenness. I have long been bothered by this doctrine. It seems to go counter to the notion of monotheism.[13] Can God really have created a whole world with so many creatures in it and then decided that He’s really only interested in a small part of this humanity? And not just that He gives preference to this small part of humanity, but that He’s going to do so simply on a whim. Of course, we all know the problems of applying human logic and rationality to God and the question of whether that restricts Him. Nevertheless, we do believe in a just God—as Abraham asks in Genesis 18:25, “Will the Judge of the entire earth not perform justice?” Clearly, this is a human conception of justice, which the Torah accepts. Hence, if God wants us to “walk in His ways,” and to walk with Him,[14] it has to be a walking that makes sense to us. So I think my question is a good question—can God really play favorites in such a whimsical way?[15]

Lo titgodedu: why do we have divisions in humanity?

I will come back to the question of the special nature of one group—the Jewish nation; but before I do that, I want to ask a more fundamental question—why do we have groups at all? Why do we have to divide people into Jews, Christians, Hindus, Muslims, etc.? Or into Americans, Italians, Chinese, Albanians? Why do we need to separate people from each other in such ways? There are people who call themselves Ethical Humanists. Such people focus on the common experience of human beings. The International Humanist and Ethical Union, on its website, describes Ethical Humanism as “acceptance of responsibility for human life in the world” and “affirms the unity of man and a common responsibility of all men for all men.” Judaism, on the other hand, while not denying the unity of man, insists of dividing people as Jews and non-Jews; Muslims, as well, talk about believers and non-believers, about Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb. I believe there is a rational basis for the establishment of such groupings and I think it goes back to the question of the Prisoner’s Dilemma.[16] The Prisoner’s Dilemma can be complicated, but it can be explained very simply with reference to the problem of the commons. Suppose a hundred shepherds own a piece of grassland in common. Overgrazing this plot could be disastrous in terms of the long-term productivity of the plot; on the other hand, in the short-term, each individual shepherd who uses more than his proportional share of the grass benefits individually. Individual self-interest will lead to overgrazing and long-term loss for all of the shepherds; the only way to resolve this problem is cooperation. However, cooperation by itself, while retaining self-interest as the basis of individual actions can be expensive and sometimes infeasible because of the need to monitor everybody’s actions.

This is the situation that mankind faces in many realms; in the case of the environment, of course, but also in almost every organization. Most organizations work on the basis of teamwork and collegiality. Most societies work on this basis, as well. For example, the American political system would collapse if people decided not to vote, a decision which would be rational for many people on a pure self-interest basis. Most of us depend on our neighbors’ help and good intentions—to borrow a cup of sugar, to make sure that nobody breaks into our houses while we’re away, to babysit our children, to keep an extra key handy; social interactions would break down entirely under pure self-interest. The reason that such social systems work is that we have internalized benefits and costs that accrue to our neighbors. And the way in which such internalization is accomplished is manifold—partly it is biological, as for example when a parent is conditioned to worry about his/her children; partly it is social and religious—we internalize certain rules of ethics and religious morality, so that when we do something to hurt our neighbor, we end up hurting ourselves psychically to some extent. As should be obvious, the success of this system depends upon the subjective belief that the other is important to our own well-being. Believing that an all-powerful entity requires this, obviously makes it easier to believe in these ethical rules and thus contributes to the well-being of everybody participating in the system. However, simple belief manipulation of this sort will not, in and of itself, succeed. We also need to see the benefits of the system, now and then. The benefits of such cooperation are obvious, the smaller the group. Most of us would agree that inter-family cooperation is valuable and we act on this basis with very little prompting. Most of us would probably also agree that international cooperation is much more difficult. Why should I donate money to the Indonesian family that suffers in a tsunami, half a world away? Why should it matter to me that Muslim Rohingyas are being killed by their Buddhist compatriots in Myanmar? It is much more difficult to identify with people that are far away and very different from us. Nevertheless, ignoring the fact that our common survival depends on cooperation is foolhardy. The point is that tension between nearby ties and faraway ties, between centripetal tendencies and centrifugal tendencies, is something that we all live with, every day.

Religion is a way to create and strengthen ties between individuals, particularly where the benefits of such ties are not obvious. Thus, when the Qur’an says: “You [Muslims] are the best umma (nation) brought out for Mankind,”[17] it extends social bonds from a familial level, from a neighborhood level to the level of all believers. Islamic theologians extended this to a broader category called “ahl al-kitab” or people of the book, which used to refer to Jews and Christians, as well. Later on, this would be extended to other groups, including Zoroastrians and Hindus, on the basis of their possessing a holy book. Similarly, in Judaism, we have the sequentially expansive notions of family, tribe, Jew, ger-toshav (non-idolatrous resident alien), Noahide, non-idolater, man created in the image of God. Again, in the Babylonian Talmud (Baba Metsia 71a), we learn: “R. Joseph learnt: If you lend money to any of my people that are poor with you: [this teaches, if the choice lies between] a Jew and a non-Jew, a Jew has preference; the poor or the rich, the poor takes precedence; your poor [i.e. your relatives] and the [general] poor of your town, your poor come first; the poor of your city and the poor of another town the poor of your own town have prior rights.”[18] The problem is that sometimes, the establishment and strengthening of the narrower groupings emphasizes the otherness of the broader groupings. Thus, the verse quoted earlier from the Qur’an continues—“and if the followers of the Book had believed it would have been better for them; of them (some) are believers and most of them are transgressors.” Similarly in Judaism, many of the ethical commandments are restricted in their application to Jewish behavior toward other Jews.[19]

In other words, while religion is an effective way to partially resolve the Prisoner’s Dilemma problem, it does not do away with the need for us to work on our ethical obligations toward the distant “other.” Religious systems, therefore, have more expansive principle-based ethical systems that go beyond specific rule-based systems. And for this to work, we have to strive at the individual level.[20]I will have more to say on this score, but at this time, it is appropriate to re-introduce the question of the role that the Jewish people play in humanity.

Chosen People(s)

As we noted above, the notion of chosenness seems to be a violation of this broader universalistic theme. In order to resolve this seeming contradiction, we have to ask what it means for the Jewish nation to be chosen. There are two ways in which this question can be answered. Most people think of it in terms of God’s choosing the Jewish people to the exclusion of all other peoples, God’s having a special relationship with Israel, with Israel being a light to other nations, as it says in Isaiah (42:6) “I am the Lord; I called you with righteousness and I will strengthen your hand; and I formed you, and I made you for a people's covenant, for a light to nations.”

However there is nothing in this that is necessarily exclusive. The Qur’an, in the fifth chapter, in the sura of al-Ma’idah (The Spread Table or ShulkhanArukh, as it were), in verse 7, refers to a covenant of God with Muslims: “And call in remembrance the favor of Allah unto you, and His covenant, which He ratified with you, when ye said: "We hear and we obey": And fear Allah, for Allah knoweth well the secrets of your hearts.”[21] And, at the last Supper, Jesus says to his disciples, in Luke’s wording (22:20), “And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.” So the followers of all the Abrahamic religions, at least, believe that they have a covenant with God. And, in fact, many other ethnic and religious groups also have similar beliefs.

Now, those Jews who believe in the exclusivity of God’s covenant with the nation of Israel can, of course, simply reject these other verses. After all, these are not Biblical verses, and can be dismissed as figments of the imagination. But even if these texts are not divinely inspired, the fact of the matter is that there probably are at least a billion non-Jews who believe that they have a special relationship with God. And, as one of my rabbis use to say “Fifty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong!”[22]At the very least, belief in such a covenant leads these peoples to live moral lives. In the words of the Rambam, “All those words of Jesus of Nazareth and of this Ishmaelite [i.e., Muhammad] who arose after him are only to make straight the path for the messianic king and to prepare the whole world to serve the Lord together. As it is said: 'For then I will change the speech of the peoples to a pure speech so that all of them shall call on the name of the Lord and serve him with one accord' (Zephaniah 3:9).”[23] I find it difficult to believe that God has allowed so many people to be misguided on such an important tenet of their existence.

My answer to this conundrum is to suggest that the chosenness of the Jews is not necessarily exclusive. There is no logical reason why chosenness has to be exclusive. There is nothing in Isaiah that says that if Israel is a light unto the nations, then the other nations cannot be a light unto Israel. Of course, the Talmud does teach that God’s relationship with Israel is special and that He does not have a similar relationship to other peoples.[24] Similarly, Islam and Christianity also claim exclusivity. I think such claims to exclusivity can be dealt with in two ways. One is that, from a functional point of view, it makes sense for each group to think of itself as having a special and unique relationship with God. This makes each group likely to work harder to fulfill God’s commandments; and most religions, if not all, have a lot of commandments/beliefs in common that advance the common weal. Second, God is not limited, as human beings are; the Talmud often contrasts the King of Kings with the more limited “king of flesh-and-blood.”[25] Human beings might be limited; a human being would find it difficult to have a very special relationship with more than one person. Even a mother is likely to find herself playing favorites with one particular child, at least in her own mind. However, God is not limited in this way; God can have very many special relationships. R. AdinSteinsaltz put it like this: “(E)ach of us has a personal relationship with God. My relationship is always personal and private; precisely because He is so infinite and unlimited, He relates personally and specifically to me. It always is a one-to-one relationship, when I am by myself as well as when I am in a crowd; somehow we are always alone together.”[26] So if this is true for every individual, can this not be true of every nation?

While this rings true on a philosophical level, we would also like to make sense of this on a logical level, on a level that we can relate to, more easily, as human beings. Here is the conclusion that I have come to—God has entrusted each nation with a special mission. By nation, I don’t necessarily mean an ethnic group; I mean simply any group that has shared values and beliefs, and whose members believe that they have a closer tie to members of their group than to non-members. And if this is so, each nation has to try and understand what its mission might be. It’s not very easy for an outsider to figure out what a particular clan’s mission might be. But here are some possibilities. Chinese culture exalts filial piety; devotion to one’s parents ranks very high on their system of moral values. God may have chosen the Chinese people to emphasize the importance of love for one’s parents and one’s ancestors. Hindu philosophy teach the unity of all existence; the system of Vedanta that is expounded in the Upanishads is extremely profound and is very helpful in understanding the constant contradictions that we experience in our daily life between finiteness and infinity. God may have chosen the Hindus to help the nations understand how the finiteness of the material world is consistent with His infinity. The Greek nation taught the world the importance of reason. Science in the Western world flowered after the introduction of Greek ideas. These are some suggestions that I have regarding the divine missions of various nations, based on what I know about them. Note that I am not saying that these nations have a monopoly on the knowledge or characteristics that I attribute to them as their specialty. All I am saying is that these nations have cultures where these characteristics have been developed to a much greater degree than in other cultures. But what I am really interested in, is the unique mission that I think God has for the Jews—that mission which makes them a chosen people.

The Jews as a Chosen People

The most remarkable thing about the Jews almost from their beginnings as a people is that they are peripatetic. The family of Jacob went down from Israel to Egypt; then they came back to Israel after a couple of centuries, following forty years of desert peregrinations. Then they stayed put for a while, but then—this time involuntarily—some of them were exiled to Babylonia, and others into an exile so permanent, we still don’t know where they are.[27] Later on they came back to the land, but were once again exiled after the war with the Romans, this time to locations all over the world. And even then, they had to keep moving around. Britain exiled its Jews for several centuries, Spain and Portugal only recently rescinded the expulsion of the Jews, and, while the middle of the 20^th century saw the establishment of the State of Israel, it also saw the expulsion of the Jews from Middle Eastern lands where they had been for centuries. Why would the Jews be condemned to such a wandering existence? Since this wandering pre-dates the death of Jesus, the Christian explanation is not very satisfying. And without that particular religious perspective to come to the rescue,[28] we have no real explanation for why God would have visited such a unique fate on one people. My answer is that this is part of the raison d’etre of the Jewish people.

As we noted above, in order to transcend the centrifugal tendencies of the Prisoner’s Dilemma, people have to live in groups, so that the urge for group members to help each other can be nurtured. However, when a group becomes too large, the feeling of membership in a group is lost because it’s no longer sufficiently close-knit. The bonds are too loose. So, the social solution to the Prisoner’s Dilemma is the generation of many groups of people. At one time, these would have been tribes, more recently, they have been nations (at least in the Western world); at different times, they have been called different names and have taken different forms; let us call them simply clans. These relatively homogenous clans bound together by religion, language, food habits and a myriad of other characteristics create ties between their members. However, an unavoidable side-effect of this is a distancing between the members of one clan and those of another clan. As long as the clans do not intermingle then this emotional distancing doesn’t matter as much. However, for various reasons and sometimes through accidents of history, clans come to live in proximity to each other; small clans live in the middle of other larger clans; and often members of one clan live in the midst of other clans. As a result, we need a way for these disparate groups to realize their interconnectedness; else inter-clan conflict would result in disastrous consequences for all clans. We need a way for people to understand that it is important to keep in mind the needs of individuals that do not belong to their clan.

We need a way for people in one clan to empathize with members of another clan. It is for this purpose, that the ideologies of each clan incorporate universalistic elements, in addition to the particularistic elements that they contain. However, stray sentences in law-books and religious texts are not enough, people need living examples. In each civilization, there are living examples of such empathy; sometimes they are called saints, sometimes they are called mahatmas. These exemplars embody compassion for everybody—both within and without the clan. Jesus was one such being, the Buddha another; more recently, Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi have been such examples. These examples work on the individual level and appeal as models to individuals.

What about at the national level? I believe that the Jews are an example of a nation that has been charged with showcasing the ideals of universal tolerance. I am not necessarily claiming that they have always done a good job of this, but their experience has crafted them to be such an example. The Jewish founding document is replete with such reminders. Ki geyrim heyyitem be-erets mitsrayim—“for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” is a phrase that is repeated over and over again. And a stranger shalt thou not oppress; for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt (Exodus 23:9). And a stranger shalt thou not wrong, neither shalt thou oppress him; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt (Exodus 22:20). And if a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not do him wrong. The stranger that sojourneth with you shall be unto you as the home-born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt(Leviticus 19:34). Love ye therefore the stranger; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt Deuteronomy 10:19). And it is not just that there are many such reminders. Rather, Leviticus 19:34 adds immediately afterward, “I am the Lord thy God.” That is, care for strangers is a key element in the system of divine commandments to the Jews. The Jewish religion is an example of compassion, tolerance and empathy toward the stranger. As the Talmud says, the children of Abraham can be recognized because they are modest, merciful and full of loving-kindness.[29] I believe that their mercy and loving-kindness is commanded to be directed not only to Jews, but to all humanity.

The Jewish Bible and the rabbinic literature are vast; as the Mishna says in Pirkei Avot (5:24), hafokh bah ve-hafokh bah d'kulah bah "Turn it over and turn it over, for everything is within it." We can interpret it narrowly in a sectarian and particularistic way, or we can interpret it broadly and in a universalistic way. If we think of what the goal of the Jewish tradition, of the prophets and of the rabbis is, then I believe we will realize that Judaism is not simply a set of unfathomable laws, but that the message of Judaism is meant to bring us into harmony with the Universe and specifically with other living souls,[30] our fellow human beings.

“Who is wise? One who sees the future outcome.”        (Talmud, Tractate Tamid 32a)

This famous statement by the Gemara challenges us to critically examine past and current issues, identify patterns and trends, conduct a thorough analysis, and if wise enough, act to achieve future desired outcomes.  However, this approach demands that we be honest and realistic in our assessments, and not be encumbered or influenced by nostalgia or Golden Age thinking.  Given our highly emotional nature as Sepharadim, this is no easy task.

All Jewish communities are dynamic organisms.  Each community grapples with similar challenges of engagement, outreach, growth, membership retention, leadership and financial stability.  Sephardic communities in North America are faced with these and more complex issues regarding their survival. Members of established Sephardic communities have become integrated into American society in the same manner as other Jewish groups who immigrated at the same time period.  Over the last decade, the emergence of new Sephardic congregations reflects a demographic composed mainly of recent immigrant groups, primarily from Israel.  In today’s globalized world, they do not undergo the same American Jewish experiences as did the immigrant groups who arrived a century ago.  The older second and third generation communities are now in a state of flux as they either undergo existential transitions or are at the point of losing their identity to these new incoming groups.

Seattle’s Sephardic community, which has long enjoyed a reputation as a bastion of the rich cultural heritage, religious customs and liturgy of Levantine Judeo Spanish Jewry, is one such community concerned about its future.  Founded in 1906, the community traces its roots to immigrants from Turkey and the Island of Rhodes.  It is served by two synagogues, each reflecting its country of origin, a jointly run religious school, an independent summer camp and the Seattle Sephardic Brotherhood, whose primary purpose is to serve as the chevra kadisha, the burial society.  Seattle is also the birthplace of many leading rabbis and educators serving other Sephardic communities, including Rabbi Marc Angel, Founder of The Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals.

While no longer spoken as a living tongue save for some favored words and expressions, Ladino is still incorporated into many features of synagogue prayer services and holiday rituals.  Our unique customs and liturgy have been successfully preserved so that were our great grandparents to enter the kehillot during tefila, they would feel most at home.  We are fortunate that our grandparents and other learned community leaders taught us after school and through ritual observances at home.  This informal educational infrastructure ensured the continuity of our traditions for my generation and for some, will continue to the next generation as well. 

While the majority of Seattle’s Sepharadim are not observant, with many having have joined Conservative and Reform congregations, there is still a sense of belonging, friendship, mutual respect, and a shared pride in our heritage, traditions and legacy within the overall community.  

On many levels, the Sephardic experience in Seattle is no different than other American Jewish communities - the search for affluence and acceptance.  Attrition, assimilation and intermarriage have taken their toll.  Many families whose grandparents were traditional two generations ago are now completely assimilated.  There is evidence of disengagement from communal institutions and a lack of interest in both Jewish and Sephardic identity.

Whereas the primary portal of engagement for our parents and grandparents was the synagogue, this is no longer the case.  For the majority, their relationship to the synagogue is extremely tenuous, not meaningful or spiritually fulfilling, and based almost exclusively on their filial devotion.  Synagogue attendance continues to decline, even on the High Holidays, and for most, their only other interactions are annual food bazaars or lifecycle events, mostly sad, where clergy is required to officiate.  As the older generation passes away, there is little doubt that these relationships will suffer even more. 

The Seattle Sephardic community has for the most part not benefited from Hansen’s Law "What the son wishes to forget the grandson wishes to remember" or “the principle of third generation interest” as stated by the historian Marcus Lee Hansen.  Hansen's Law is often used to interpret the immigrant experience.  While the children of immigrants may devote considerable energy to discarding immigrant culture traits such as religion, their children may find them meaningful and identity forming.

Nor has the community received any significant benefit from the American Sephardic renaissance in the 1970-s driven by the formation of the American Sephardi Federation.  This short lived phenomenon was eclipsed by the organized development and empowerment of Sepharadim in Israel.  Our own inability to successfully create and maintain an organizational infrastructure on a national and local level also played a major role in its failure to have a lasting impact on the community.

Those who are committed to an observant lifestyle are faced with the additional challenge of the allure and attractions of the vibrant Jewish lifestyle and multiple resources that larger communities such as New York and Los Angeles have to offer their children.  While some young men and women have returned to Seattle to raise their families, the trend to move away will continue.

More crucial are two issues that confront not just Seattle, but the majority of second and third generation Sepharadim in general-- intramarriage and the lack of articulating what differentiates Sepharadim from other Jews, and ultimately, the relevance of Sephardic Judaism (or Sephardism, to use the term coined by Rabbi Angel) and identity in the future.

Intramarriage with Jews of non Sephardic backgrounds has resulted in blended families with a diluted sense of their Sephardic heritage and customs.  The educational emphasis in these families is placed on fostering, promoting and maintaining a strong Jewish identity.  This priority is shared by many Sepharadim who marry other Sepharadim, with the result being a lesser emphasis on Sephardic heritage.  (Some communities, mainly those of Syrian and Persian origin, do not yet face this problem, and, given their significant numbers and insular nature, may never will).

In essence, this will be the Jew of Sephardic lineage in the post ethnic Jewish world.  Given the fact that Sepharadim are vastly outnumbered, the future is that coming generations will be completely absorbed into mainstream American Jewish life, leaving their Sephardic heritage little more than a fond memory.

Hence the larger questions loom. What will those memories be composed of?  Will they consist only of liturgy, ethnic music, exotic cuisine and joie de vivre?  Are there really unique Sephardic values?  Is there such a thing as a Sephardic ideology or (since no Ladino counterpart exists) Weltanschauung?  Can it be that Sephardism arose in a unique milieu, and since that setting no longer exists, there is little of substance that remains relevant or transmittable?  As one young man, a member of a blended family with a non Sephardic spouse put it:” We know we are different. We just don’t know how.”

If there is something unique about the values that constitute Sephardism, can they be defined, distilled, crystallized, and articulated so they can be transmitted to future generations?

Many claim that what distinguishes Sepharadim is our unique approach to modernity and life.  We possess a set of values and worldview that allows us to navigate and enjoy the best of both worlds, maintaining our Jewish identity, Torah values, and traditions as we straddle past and present.  Our hallmarks are moderation, non judgmental acceptance and tolerance of other’s levels of observance.  But today, many branches of Judaism, most notably Modern Orthodoxy and the Conservative Movement espouse similar ideals and approaches. 

There is much we can be proud of.  We have made invaluable contributions to both the Jewish and non Jewish world.  The writings of our great Sephardic sages in the areas of thought, philosophy, liturgy, piyyut, Torah interpretation, mysticism and Halacha have been recognized and incorporated into the greater general wisdom of Torah.  In particular, past Sephardic rabbis are now being hailed for their bold, innovative and even daring Halachic rulings and approach to dealing with modern concerns and dilemmas, especially in the current stricter religious environment.  Contemporary opinions advocate that a Sephardic approach can resolve many of the current issues plaguing the Jewish world and the State of Israel.  In the secular world, Sepharadim are known for their contributions in the arts, literature, sciences, and philosophy. 

Seattle’s Sephardic communal future is predictable.  We know that through intermarriage, assimilation, attrition and intramarriage the community will continue to decline.  It will lose its unique identity and hallmark of “community“.  Eventually, Ladino will be eliminated as we come to realize that we would rather speak words we understand than words we do not.  There will no longer be Sephardic synagogues, but synagogues in the Sephardi tradition.  This situation is exacerbated by the fact that we have failed to identify and train spiritual leaders from our own ranks and background to guide the community’s future.  

To counter this decline, there are a number of specific things that Seattle’s communal leadership can do.  The creation of a community council would serve as a vehicle to bind the different organizations.  Communal strategic planning would create a master plan to guide future development.  A community wide genealogical project can be implemented to identify those of Sephardic heritage and serve as a means of creating a database for outreach.  Cultural events can be created to provide additional entry points to engage the disinterested and disenfranchised.  If done in context within a vision, there is a chance that the community can be rejuvenated.  

However, if we cannot articulate a set of values and worldview, and devise educational methods to transmit them to future generations, it would appear that we too will suffer the same fate as the majority of Judeo Spanish communities around the world.  We will be remembered solely for our quaint minhagim, soulful liturgy and melodies, and delicious food.

Rabbi Angel, in his excellent book, Foundations of Sephardic Spirituality, makes the following assessment.  “Judeo Spanish civilization has reached its conclusion as a living, dynamic organization.  There are no more communities in the world where Judeo Spanish is the mother tongue of the younger generations and there is no sociological reason for Judeo Spanish communities to emerge in the future….. The Judeo Spanish community has made vast contributions to Jewish life and lore, yet it now enters a new phase in the fulfillment of its distinctive mission.  In this phase, its central teachings and experiences will be translated and incorporated into the general wisdom and culture of the entire Jewish people. “

Through the lens of foresight, we are empowered to become wise and shape the future.  Seattle is the last vibrant Judeo Spanish community in the United States.  Eventually though, it will undergo a complete transformation as its constituency evolves and factors beyond its control take over.  Will we use our insights to ensure that our treasured Sephardic legacy remains relevant and transmittable or will we fade into the twilight as a footnote on the pages of Jewish history?

“I didn’t know they teach biblical archaeology at YU” is one of the most frequent responses I receive upon informing people about my job and its whereabouts. I find this amusing because to me biblical archaeology is such a natural fit for the study of Tanakh that it seems self-evident that these two disciplines should be studied in tandem. I am not alone in this approach as the original mission statement for the creation of Yeshiva College in the 1920s makes clear:

Yeshiva College will offer, with the standard college curricula combined with courses in Bible, Hebrew philology, Jewish history and literature, Jewish philosophy and ethics, the Talmud and Rabbinic literature, Jewish archaeology, Semitic philology and cognate subjects (emphasis mine).[1]

And yet, people are still surprised that biblical archaeology is taught at Yeshiva University—as if it were too radical a subject, or too dangerous, or perhaps not relevant.

This view is even more perplexing in light of the fact that the Land of Israel is among the most intensely excavated regions of the world (only Greece comes close). While Christian Americans and Europeans dominated the field in the early part of the twentieth century, today Israeli archaeologists are at the forefront of research and research projects. With so much active research and much of it done by Israeli scholars, again why the hesitancy to fully embrace the discipline?

The answer is complex, and reveals both external and internal strains. Externally, the discipline of biblical archaeology itself has evolved from one that primarily saw its goal as illuminating the biblical narrative to a more scientific one that has at times relegated biblical narrative to the background. Religious teachers of Tanakh are often uncomfortable with this “secular” approach. On the other hand, while such teachers have been receptive to selecting individual archaeological finds that can shed light on particular biblical passages, they have often shied away from confronting the archaeological record when it seems to present a more nuanced or perhaps contradictory view of traditional readings of the text. The unwillingness to engage the data on its own terms has led to an approach that can be characterized as lacking in academic rigor and integrity.

My goal in this article, therefore, will be to demystify the discipline of biblical archaeology so that religious teachers of Tanakh feel comfortable embracing its discourse and to argue for inclusion of these findings into a richer and more sophisticated understanding of the biblical text. Finally, I will argue that those with a strong understanding and commitment to Tanakh have a perspective that can greatly enrich biblical archaeological studies. In fact, the absence of such a perspective threatens to deprive the discipline of its vitality, accuracy, and raison d’être.

Biblical archaeology as a discipline focuses on the places and time periods that are central to the biblical narrative. In general, this means that the core region is the Land of Israel, with a periphery reaching into parts of present-day Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. This region is customarily referred to as the southern Levant. The core time periods are the period of the Judges, United Monarchy, Divided Monarchy, Babylonian period, and Persian period. The time span is roughly from 1200 bce–333 bce. Archaeologists refer to these periods as Iron I (1200-1000 bce), Iron II (1000 bce–586 bce), Babylonian (586–538 bce), and Persian (538–333 bce). Technically, then, for those operating within a traditional Jewish perspective, the biblical period closes with the final historical context of the biblical canon. The Christian perspective, of course, proffers a later end date, as the Christian Bible extends throughout the Second Temple Period. Thus in the larger and even academic community, biblical archaeology as a discipline extends beyond the Persian period through Hellenistic, Roman, and even into Byzantine times.

The fact that the time frame of biblical archaeology moves beyond the end of the Hebrew Bible, while potentially confusing, does not pose any real complications. Those with a Jewish perspective simply choose to end their biblical period with the Restoration of the Second Temple and the Persian period. The subsequent Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine periods are often lumped under the rubric of the Classical period.

From its inception, biblical archaeology was closely tied to the Bible. The dominant American figure of twentieth-century biblical archaeology, William Foxwell Albright, trained generations of students in his approach that took a positivistic view toward biblical narrative and was oriented toward reconstructing the archaeological, historical, religious, and literary context of the biblical world. This approach was formed in part by his own excavations and expertise in material culture and by his facility with ancient languages that allowed him to read and translate texts in Hebrew, Aramaic, Ugaritic, Egyptian, Akkadian, and Sumerian, among other languages.

While not a biblical literalist, Albright’s interpretations and those of his students generally supported the biblical narrative. In the second half of the twentieth century, cracks began to emerge in this consensus. New archaeological finds seemed to contradict biblical narrative, while at the same time a younger generation of scholars, influenced by current trends in general archaeology, began to argue for a less “biblical” approach and a more “scientific” one. Broad issues of cultural change and the rise of social and political complexity came to the forefront, whereas specific questions of biblical historicity were ignored.

The field of biblical archaeology certainly benefited from more scientific rigor, especially in its methodology, but also in its interpretations. However, the disregard for biblical text emerged as an Achilles heel when a new generation of biblical scholars primarily from northern Europe began to inject a revisionist view into biblical studies and ultimately into biblical archaeology. The biblical archaeology community was slow to respond to these new interpretations, partly because they were seen as so far out that they did not need responding to. When the archaeologists finally did take note, they realized they were confronting a host of scholars who had re-interpreted the Bible and whose views were gaining prominence in both the academic and non-academic community. Most problematic, was that these revisionists were deliberately obfuscating the archaeological record.

The acrimony of this debate between revisionists (minimalists) and the traditionalists (maximalists) has been damaging both to individual scholars and to the reputation of the discipline. Those outside the fray were made to feel powerless as these polarizing forces came to dominate the debate. And what were they debating, anyway? Whether or not King David was a real king? For the traditionalist, of course, this was a non-starter. But even trying to understand the debate has been difficult without concluding that the motives of the minimalist school to discredit the Hebrew Bible were infused with anti-Semitism. If this were the end of it, the situation would be quite discouraging, indeed.

However, mainstream biblical archaeologists were not ready to yield control of the debate to the minimalists and their supporters in the archaeological community (e.g., Israel Finkelstein). The lack of archaeological evidence for David’s kingdom had to be addressed, and this has been precisely the focus of much of the archaeological research in the past two decades. Although 20 years ago, minimalists could mock traditionalists for clinging to a narrative with no archaeological support, that is certainly not the case today. While a full account of the finds pertaining to the United Monarchy under David and Solomon is beyond the scope of this paper, three significant examples will suffice.

The first significant find was a stele (inscribed stone) found at Tel Dan in 1993. Written in Aramaic, this royal, monumental inscription commissioned by a ninth-century bce king (probably Hazael) boasts of Aramean military achievements over the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. The text uses the phrase bytdvd (“House of David”) to refer to the southern kingdom. This is the earliest extra-biblical mention of David and is consistent with ancient Near Eastern practice of referring to a kingdom by its eponymous founder. For traditionalists, this was the first step in reclaiming David as a historical personage. For minimalists, this posed a big problem, which they feebly tried to discredit by first reading bytdvd not as “House of David” but rather as “house of the uncle.” Subsequently, they posited other interpretations—equally unconvincing—citing the absence of a word divider between byt and dvd.

Even when minimalists were willing to acknowledge the existence of David—and the Tel Dan stele made it hard not to—they still maintained that David was not a true king but rather a simple tribal chieftain. This allowed them to argue that true statehood emerged in ancient Israel much later, and that the biblical narrative of a United Monarchy was a later fabrication. Again, 20 years ago, the minimalists could point to the fact that no monumental architecture had been found in Jerusalem associated with David or Solomon.

Why this is important is that one of the principal archaeological correlates for statehood is the presence of such architecture. The absence of monumental architecture confirmed for them that there was no state. However, one should always be careful of deriving arguments from negative evidence. Indeed, the minimalists’ position suffered a severe blow when in 2005 archaeologist Eilat Mazar announced that she had found in Ir David (City of David) the foundations of a royal monumental building, which she named the “Large Stone Structure.” Whether or not this building was part of Kind David’s actual palace as Mazar posits, does not change the fact that monumental architecture from the time of David (dated by the pottery finds) has finally been found in Jerusalem. Kings, not tribal chieftains, build such structures. Minimalists responded in the only way they could to retain their ideological stance: they rejected outright Mazar’s dating of the Large Stone Structure.

A final irrefutable blow emerged in the last five years, with the excavations of a small, fortified site in the Elah Valley called Khirbet Qeiyafa. This site yielded not only evidence of a central Israelite administration but also was unequivocally dated to the time of King David by radiocarbon analysis of olive pits found in secure archaeological contexts. That the site was Israelite and not Philistine or Canaanite is strongly attested by the style of wall construction (casemate), the pottery, the lack of pig bones and figurines, and an early Hebrew inscription. Only a centralized administration would be capable of organizing the construction de novo of a border fortress. It follows then that David was a true king who took an active role in securing his borders from external threats, particularly the Philistines to the west.

These recent finds have shifted the center of argument away from the minimalists and their ideologically motivated interpretations towards a more central position in which the layers of historicity in Tanakh are refracted against the archaeological record. This middle approach, while certainly “secular” need not pose a threat to a traditional Jewish consideration. For the Jewish approach to Tanakh has never been a strictly literal one but rather an interpretive one. The so-called historical books of the Bible—Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Ezra, Nehemiah, Chronicles—were not written as pure history in the modern sense, and they are certainly not unbiased. On the contrary, they deliberately and unabashedly impart a theological message. For example, the Book of Samuel focuses on the motif of why David is to be chosen over Saul.[2] The theme then dictates the narrative as only those stories that develop it need to be mentioned. Consequently, while the text makes clear that Saul is a gifted military leader waging a successful campaign against the Philistines, the textual emphasis is not on the minutiae of battle, attacks and counter-attacks, but rather on Saul’s reaction to his success. Namely, Saul credits himself with victory rather than God, and this is what makes him unfit as a leader for the Jewish people.

Accepting the primacy of the theological message does not negate the important historical and cultural material that is embedded in Tanakh. Moreover, these nuggets are not gleaned in a vacuum. One of the great achievements of biblical studies over the past century has been the decipherment of ancient Near Eastern texts—cuneiform, hieroglyphic, alphabetic—from Mesopotamia and Persia in the east to Egypt in the south, and Anatolia in the north. Add to this a century of archaeological exploration throughout the region, and scholars have reached a point where specific historical events, intellectual currents, and general lifestyles can all be recreated to one degree another. Thus the biblical material finds itself in conversation with not only the archaeological record from the Land of Israel—which has yielded a small but important corpus of extra-biblical texts—but also with the vast corpus of ancient Near Eastern material.

Gaining access to this material may seem daunting at first, particularly because very few overviews exist and each geographic region is often treated as its own separate discipline. Encyclopedias and cultural atlases provide good starting points, such as The Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia by Michael Roaf, but these usually include material from time periods that are not relevant to the biblical period. Textbooks are comprehensive by nature, their usefulness measured by their accessibility to non-specialists. One of the better introductory textbooks is Hershel Shanks’ edited volume Ancient Israel. More concise presentations can be found among the titles published by Oxford University Press in their series titled “Very Short Introductions.” Two such examples are Ancient Egypt by Ian Shaw and Biblical Archaeology by Eric Cline. While newspaper articles will often feature recent discoveries, more lengthy and explanatory pieces can be found in periodicals, the most popular of which is Biblical Archaeology Review.

Meanwhile, the best resource for ancient texts related to the biblical world is The Context of Scripture, edited by William Hallo and K. Lawson Younger. This three-volume tome contains hundreds of translated texts spanning a range of compositions—canonical, archival, and monumental—that relate directly and indirectly to Tanakh and the biblical world. Although not every known ancient Near Eastern text has been included, the selection is overwhelmingly comprehensive and the translations nicely balance readability with literal accuracy.

There are, of course, limitations to this textual material. The writers of ancient texts generally reflect the views, goals, and ambitions of the (overwhelmingly male) ruling or upper class. Although literacy during the biblical period was not rare in Judah or Israel, it was by no means universal. Evidence such as notations on pottery and ivory suggests that artisans and craftsmen were literate, but it is doubtful that the farmers who comprised the majority of the population could read or write. Another problem with texts is that huge gaps both temporally and geographically exist in their distribution. What this means is that texts are found neither everywhere nor from all time periods. Rather, their presence is concentrated in urban areas and in caches that generally reflect a specific era of time. Thus texts present a window on the elite and male urban population from disparate time periods.

The archaeological record, in contrast, does not suffer from these limitations. It is equally frequent today to find researchers excavating elite zones of cities where temples, palaces, and public buildings congregate as well as outer areas where basic households cluster. When looking at top plans of archaeological sites, these different areas are indicated by different letters. Moreover, one of the stratigraphic goals of the expedition is to unite the separate areas into a single chronological scheme. In addition, many research projects today incorporate not only the entire urban area but also the surrounding countryside. Such projects bring new insight into the relationship between urban cores and their supporting hinterlands.

In terms of temporal continuity, archaeological remains are far superior to texts. Gaps in material reflect real gaps in occupation. Otherwise, the detritus of daily life accumulates layer by layer without interruption. The basics of daily life—mud bricks for building homes and ceramic vessels for storage, food preparation and consumption—were used by all people, rich and poor, male and female. Whereas the textual evidence simply ignores the vast majority of the population, the archaeological record highlights the differences between groups. Thus, wealthy people lived in larger homes, closer to the center of town, possessing fine decorated wares and exotic items. Poorer people lived in smaller homes suited to their agricultural lifestyle, closer to their fields, with basic wares and few, if any, luxury items. Gendered items such as spindle whorls and grinding stones for women and arrowheads and axes for men provide insight into the structure of daily life.

This does not mean, however, that archaeology is without its biases. The archaeological record is partial toward items that preserve well. Thus the most perishable materials such as foodstuffs, textiles, papyrus, and wooden implements are found only in exceptional circumstances. Ceramics are the single most common find due to their widespread use, fragility as complete vessels (i.e., they break easily), and incredible durability as shards. Another bias lies with collection methods. Decades ago, it was not customary to collect animal bones. As a result little information about diet and husbandry emerged. However, archaeologists today are much more careful about trying to safeguard all of the remains and have the non-material culture remains analyzed by specialists from other fields. For example, faunal and floral experts are routinely consulted, as are scientists who sample sediment deposits, extract DNA, or perform carbon 14 dating.

Just as texts can speak toward specific historic events, archaeology can as well. The construction of a new town or a new building can be attested. More impressive is when the texts speak of a city’s demise and the archaeological record preserves a thick, clear layer of destruction filled with charred material, fallen bricks, whole vessels left behind, unfortunate people who did not escape, roof material from collapsed homes, and, in some cases, arrowheads and other ballista that attest to the intensity of the fighting. Lachish is such a site that preserves not one but two clearly identified destruction layers. The first (Stratum III) correlates with the Assyrian conquest in the late 8th century bce under Sennacherib whereas the second (Stratum II) is from the time of the Babylonian conquest under Nebuchadnezzar a century later.

Our understanding of the Assyrian siege at Lachish is further elucidated by a series of reliefs unearthed at Sennacherib’s palace at Nineveh in present-day Iraq. These reliefs attest to the composition of Assyrian military personnel—slingers, archers, lancers, and so forth—the strategy of building ramps to elevate the battering rams, the great loss of life, the ultimate surrender of the people of Lachish, and the bringing of booty and humans back to Assyria. The archaeological record can also attest to things that were previously unknown from textual or pictorial evidence. For example, opposite the Assyrian siege ramp, the people of Lachish had hastily built a counter ramp and raised the height of the wall as a defensive technique. Moreover, while the Assyrian ramp was known from the reliefs, only excavations could reveal that this earthen ramp contained 25,000 tons of material composed of a stone base consolidated by mortar, covered by layers of beaten earth, with logs sprinkled in to support the siege engines and facilitate their transport up the slope.

If validating and expanding on specific biblical events were all that archaeology could achieve, then the discipline would indeed be only a dedicated handmaiden of biblical studies. However, the archaeological record has great potential beyond this primarily in the range of culture and cultural context. For example, when Abraham visits Gerar (Genesis 20), the Bible focuses on the incident of Abraham concealing the true identity of his Sarah (“She is my sister” [verse 2]) and the repercussions thereof. There was of course much more to the visit. What did Abraham and Sarah see when they were wondering the streets of Gerar? What did they eat or smell or hear?

From excavations, we know that if Abraham and Sarah wandered toward the southwestern quadrant of the city—not inconceivable since the city itself was not that big—they would have seen a large, symmetric, fortress-like, Canaanite temple. It is not likely that they would have gone inside for a variety of reasons, including the fact that only religious specialists, i.e., priests, would have been given access. However, the surrounding courtyards would have been easily visible, and in them they would have seen much activity: throngs of people, bringing with them food offerings in either miniature or regular sized vessels, animals being slaughtered, incense being burned, puppies with their necks broken as part of healing rituals, people eating sacred meals, and, on one day only (their timing would have to have been impeccable), the ritual sacrifice of a donkey as part of a non-aggression pact between two potentially warring parties. The food offerings would attest to the produce of the land such as wine, oil, wheat, barley, legumes, and so forth, whereas the animal sacrifices reflected the pastoral component of the economy: sheep and goats mainly, some cattle, and even birds. The archaeological record thus illuminates the biblical world and its context.

Those with a strong background are poised to take particular advantage of all that archaeology has to offer as they have a context in which to absorb it. This is why teaching biblical archaeology at an institution such as Yeshiva University is particularly exciting—the students already possess the building blocks of biblical narrative and thus are able to synthesize the new archaeological material very quickly. They grasp nuances that are lost on novices, ask questions reflecting a vast knowledge, and provide interpretations that reveal deep understanding.

One such example arose during a discussion of the economy of the Land of Israel during the Assyrian period (7th century). There is strong evidence that the area around Ashkelon specialized in wine, that around Ekron in olive oil, and that around Jerusalem in cereals. However, there is also evidence for some wine production around Jerusalem. It has been generally accepted that the reason for this is that the real estate close to the city was expensive and thus a more profitable crop such as wine was grown to cover costs. Upon hearing this explanation, the students at Yeshiva University immediately suggested another explanation: perhaps the reason for producing wine in the Jerusalem area was due to concerns of kashrut, with Judah preferring to produce its own kosher wine rather than trading for the readily available, Philistine wine from Ashkelon.

We do not know the answer yet, but because of their Torah perspective, the students at Yeshiva University are offering new insights that can potentially guide and certainly enrich the direction of future research in biblical archaeology.

Notes

            The release deal in which the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was returned to his home entailed a very serious decision. In this article, I argue that the price for surrendering to terrorism—as the State of Israel did in this release deal—is a heavy price; however, it was necessary and right. This might not be readily understandable. Accepted governmental and military logic cannot agree to a deal of this nature. American soldiers, British citizens, and others are currently being held by kidnappers, captors, and different organizations for longer periods of time—and no negotiation for their release takes place. A deal such as the one made for Gilad Shalit has a specific Israeli component. One Israeli soldier has the value of a thousand enemies. Is there any logic to it? Is it permitted?

This halakhic question has great importance. It must deal with the practical means of implementing classic halakhic sources into complicated and changeable situations. It could be said that this question relates to the essence of the methods of halakhic ruling.

            Some claim that the major responsibility of the adjudicator is to know the earlier sources as well as to have an extensive proficiency in the halakhic literature relating to the specific topic at hand. Yet, in addition to knowing these sources, it is necessary to have the ability of proceeding with cautious and just analysis and implementation.

            Although the various halakhic answers repeat and quote one main source, the contemporary adjudicator must analyze the actual situation today, and clarify the similarities and the differences with past halakhic rulings; only then can one derive proper conclusions. That is the challenge of halakhic decision-making. Otherwise, it seems that whoever is able to read and has obtained an adequate mastery of “Google Search” can be an adjudicator par excellence. The challenge then is to rule as best as we can by careful study of the sources, as well as careful study of new and changing realities.

            Here is a famous halakha dealing with capital offenses: “If a group of [Jewish] men are traveling on a journey and Gentiles encountered them and said to them: Give us one of your men and we will kill him, and if you refuse, we will kill you all, all should be killed and not one soul of Israel should be delivered to them”(Yerushalmi, Trumot, 8).

            Where is the rationality here? Where is the evaluation? A death of one in comparison with the death of many!? The moral-halakhic answer is: There is no evaluation of number of people as opposed to high values. Each life is of infinite value, and we have no ethical right to turn over anyone to be murdered.

            The supreme principle is that it is better to pay a grave price of lives rather than to violate a high ethical value that is higher and more valuable than life itself. The high value is not giving a person away to murderers. The Torah commands that we be killed rather than to transgress this principle.

            The Shalit Deal resembles the well-known talmudic dilemma: “If two are travelling on a journey [far from civilization], and one has a pitcher of water; if both drink, they will [both] die, but if one only drinks, he can reach civilization,—Ben Patura taught: It is better that both should drink and die, rather than that one should behold his companion's death. Until R. Akiva came and taught: ‘that thy brother may live with thee:’ thy life takes precedence over his life” (Baba Metzia, 62a).

            Theoretically, there is no logic to the opinion of Ben Patura: “Better that both should drink and die”? Nevertheless it has a high ethical value: One should not behold his companion's death. But what is the ruling in a case such as this? In general the halakha is in agreement with Rabbi Akiva. A person has the right to save his own life.

            The Israel Defense Forces (IDF), however, in each and every combat, rules according to Ben Patura! In the course of every military operation soldiers risk their lives to rescue an injured IDF combatant, to cover for others, to allow a better position for the front or the back lines. A soldier who will put forth the opinion of Rabbi Akiva and will declare: My life takes precedence over the life of my friend, will find himself removed from the unit. We learn thus that in the actual laws of war, we rule according to Ben Patura. This is a high ethical value, an existential value for both the short and the long terms. The rescue forces and the fire brigade operate likewise in incidents of fire and every other calamity.

            In private matters, the halakha is according to Rabbi Akiva. One who sees someone drowning or entrapped in a burning house is indeed morally obligated to try to save the victim, even by putting himself at a minor risk, as it is written: “You shall not stand idly by the blood of your brother.” But if the rescue involves a risk of death, then one is exempt. One is not bound to an act of self-sacrifice. This is the difference between the public sphere and the private sphere, and in this way the argument is settled. The halakha is according to Rabbi Akiva in matters involving individuals and according to Ben Patura in matters involving the public.

            Israeli society cannot allow the giving up on any of its soldiers who were injured or captured. This is the secret strength of its power and the secret of the unity among all its troops. Soldiers and citizens sacrifice their lives for the life of the public; but they are never to be sacrificed by the public.

            Every time this issue arises, people are quick to cite immediately the famous Mishna: “Captives should not be redeemed for more than their value, to prevent abuses” (Mishna Gittin, 45a). And they offer the simple commentary: Terrorists must not be released to save a captured Israeli soldier. Yet, the people who cite this Mishna do not bother to quote the following sentence in the same Mishna and said in the same breath: “Captives should not be helped to escape, to prevent abuses. Rabban Simeon Ben Gamaliel says [that the reason is] to prevent the ill-treatment of fellow captives.” That is to say: No one is to execute a mission for the purpose of rescuing the captives, since the captors will come to act with increased violence against other captives.

            According to Rabban Simeon Ben Gamaliel’s opinion, Operation Entebbe was wrong, and the attempt to release Nachshon Vaksman was forbidden according to the halakha. But do we follow this ruling? Absolutely not! The operation to rescue Nachshon Vaxman was highly important and positive as is every action or operation which is a part of Israel's military activity to rescue fellow Israelis.

            This Mishna was not ruling about an individual who fell captive as a part of a general war or a soldier who was sent by the state. Rather, this Mishna deals with thieves and pirate merchants who made a living by capturing people and selling them for the highest price. These captives had a specific price. In this context the Maharam of Rotenburg did not permit his own release from captivity, and he remained in captivity where his disciples could come to visit him, learn the Torah from him, and provide him with food and clothing.

            This is a very different scenario from captives of war or the capturing of soldiers or civilians for the purpose of political and terrorist violence aimed at weakening the State of Israel. The Mishna simply is not addressing the responsibilities of a Jewish State toward its soldiers and citizens.

            This is an example of the manner in which we must handle halakhic questions in the State of Israel. How to apply halakha in a modern democratic State is of utmost importance.

            The examination of the relation between halakha and democracy can yield three possible conclusions:

1. Everything is under the halakhic order. Consequently, there is no right to conduct and consider democratic options that are not within the halakhic framework.
2. There is no correlation between the halakha as a private way of living, and general governmental considerations, that is, there is a separation of synagogue and State.
3. The halakha refers to all fields of life and has a say in every aspect of both the private and the public spheres. Nevertheless, even according to the halakha, there are matters in which there is substantial room for moral and social thought to go hand-in-hand with contemporary realities.

            In this article, I am pointing out that the traditional halakhic sources relating to redemption of captives (pidyon shevuyim) simply do not relate to the public dimension of a modern Jewish State. The State has overall defense responsibility for the society and the individual citizens of Israel. The traditional sources on pidyon shevuyim do not apply here. The term “all Jews are responsible for one another” receives a new meaning and applies to the obligation of taking responsibility and actual risk for each of our fellow citizens.

            Already in the context of the Mishna, the Tosafists and other Rishonim ruled that there are situations that are exceptional, and hence that we are allowed to rescue a captive even for an enormous price:

1. A distinguished person, one who excels in wisdom and importance (and for this reason the Maharam's refusal to allow his release for the high price his captors demanded, was an act of piety not demanded by halakha)
2. A situation in which the life of the captive is at risk (Tosafot, Gittin 58, “Kol Mamon”)
3. A wife, as the husband is obliged to free her. Likewise, a person has the obligation to ransom himself, if his able to do so.
4. In times of war

            The topic of the Shalit Deal relates to the ongoing war between Israel and its enemies. All negotiations must be executed according to evaluations and agreements whose main concern is the defense and security of Israel. One who asks for halakhic proof will find that all the rules of pidyon shevuyim were not mentioned by the Rambam (Maimonides) in Laws of Kings and their Wars, but rather in Chapter 8, the Laws of Matanot Aniyim. This latter chapter presents rules of charity and the priorities for using money that was collected by the community for various charity purposes. This is where Rambam discusses the laws of redeeming captives—as a matter relating to individuals and communities. He does not discuss this topic in relation to the responsibilities of a Jewish State.

            Rabbi Shlomo Goren, late Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi of Israel, wrote a Responsum in 5785 (1985) regarding the Jibril Agreement in which Israel released more than 1,000 terrorists. He cites the halakhic and defense arguments against an agreement of this kind. The main source for this prohibition is the Mishna quoted above.

            The late Rabbi Haim David Halevy, Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv during those years, referred to Rabbi Goren's opinion, and rejected it. (Rabbi Halevy's Responsum was published in his book Ase Lekha Rav, Vol. 8, no. 53). He wrote: “Where, in all the halakhic discussion of this subject matter, is there a situation equivalent to the one we are facing today? Therefore, we need halakhic innovation at this point in time, in the spirit of the ancient sources and in accordance with them, that is—a new halakhic ruling.”

            Rabbi Halevy analyzes the ruling of the Tosafists, cited above, and finds in their words innovation and daring. From the power of the Tosafists’ words, he argued that even in our times we must rework the halakha in accordance with our national lives and not be satisfied with the simple reading of classic halakhic sources. Rabbi Halevy noted that when the Israeli government agreed to trade a large number of terrorists, this was not contrary to halakha, but rather a proper application of halakhic principles to an entirely new situation. Since we do not have a Sanhedrin to make these important national decisions, we must take responsibility for applying halakha to the ever-changing situations that confront us.

            A year after Rabbi Goren had passed away in 5756 (1996), his book Torat haMedina was published, and in it is included his Responsum from the year 5745. However, this volume also includes a completely opposite conclusion:

Nonetheless, despite all that [I have written], in the case of prisoners of war, soldiers who fall captive while on duty in the name of the State that sent them to war, there is an obligation to do everything for their release.… Possibly the State bears the undisputed obligation to release them out of any danger, and there are no constrains of Pidyon Shevuyim … And there should not be any consideration of security risk that their release might cause to the public and the State, as each and every one of us is responsible for their captivity … It is not right to use the criterion of “their value” due to the responsibility that the State and the army have, of protecting its soldiers at any price.

            Clearly, after he wrote the answer in the year 5745, Rabbi Goren arrived at an opposite conclusion! Why did Rabbi Goren make such dramatic change in his answer? He was convinced that each IDF soldier is an integral part of IDF as a body. In this matter, there are other rules, Laws of War rather than Laws of Charity. In a sense, all the citizens of Israel are soldiers who are taking part in a rescue operation for the release of one soldier from the family. This is our obligation as well as our uniqueness.

            A similar approach was expressed by the late Rabbi Shaul Israeli:

Since our soldiers went out to war for the State and in its name to protect the people living in Zion, thus an unwritten but self-understood obligation exists that the State must use all its options, without jeopardizing its overall security, for their release in the case of their fall. And just as the obligation stands in the case of their injury, heaven forbid, in war, so too the demand to act in every possible way for their release from captivity is of no less in importance, “because it includes the suffering of public.”

            It is essential to emphasize that in war there is no proper calculation of casualties. Let us remember that The Second Lebanon War broke out due to concern for the fate of two captured Israeli soldiers. In our attempt to teach Hezbollah a lesson and hopefully release our captives, many soldiers fell, and many citizens—approximately 150—were killed. Is there a demand to avoid a military activity when its price is a hundred times higher than the number of the captured? No. This is a governmental and security consideration.

It was not until my third year of observing the mitzvoth that I read Rav Soloveitchik’s seminal essay “The Lonely Man of Faith,” and it was not until I read this essay that I had ever articulated why I had become a religious Jew. The Rav writes, in the first few sentences of his piece:

“I am lonely. Let me emphasize, however, that by stating “I am lonely” I do not intend to convey to you the impression that I am alone. I, thank God, do enjoy the love and friendship of many. I meet people, talk, preach, argue, reason; I am surrounded by comrades and acquaintances. And yet, companionship and friendship do not alleviate the passional experience of loneliness which trails me constantly.”

To these very personal words, I can only say: Rebbi, I relate. I was an only child until I was 15, the golden (I am blond) immigrant daughter of immigrant parents (my parents and I arrived in the United States from the Soviet Union in 1989). I was a child raised on the nutritious stew of the American Dream and the delicacies of daily conversations about philosophy, politics, and the meaning of life. Armed with introspection and the desire to fit into my new country—young enough to be completely American, yet old enough to remember being different—how could I NOT be lonely?

And so this loneliness carried me through my entire life. I was always gregarious, outgoing, and had many friends. I liked to go out to cultural events, attend parties, and play sports. I see now, and probably had some sense of this before, that these were what I now call loneliness—diversions. It is not that my many life-filling activities didn’t have value in and of themselves. I love my friends dearly, and the discipline I learned from being an athlete has helped me immeasurably in my life. However, at the depths of my soul, I perpetually wanted to connect, to remove from myself the feeling of “other,” to meld my existence into another existence so that I could alleviate the constant reminder that I was in some way not “unified.”

As a philosophy major at Stanford, my favorite philosophers were not the modern philosophers of mind, linguistics, and logic, but rather the old-school Continental philosophers such as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and other Existentialists. I sought philosophers with whom I could share my loneliness—and who had figured out ways to alleviate it. In my studies of philosophy, I sought out a prescription for understanding my purpose rather than a precise description of the world.

It was in college that my loneliness grew. My solution: I had to ramp up my loneliness-diversion tactics. I joined a sorority, went out several nights a week (with, of course, ample amounts of distilled liquors), competed as an NCAA athlete, and threw myself into the amazing extracurricular life that Stanford had to offer. Moreover, I turned with more vigor to the great philosophical minds in my academic work and tried to connect with my professors to see if they

could help resolve the loneliness dilemma. But the loneliness persisted, hungry from a lack of nutrition; what I was feeding it with my diversion tactics was merely junk food.

In my senior year of college, I took a wonderful class called “Jewish Philosophy” with the now Dean of Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS), Arnie Eisen. In his class, we read Buber, Rosenzweig, Rav Kook, Mordechai Kaplan, Derrida, and, of course, the Rav. As I read through these thinkers, I began to feel that many of these Jewish thinkers experienced my same loneliness, and their works were written as manifestos of the struggle to understand it. Buber’s I and Thou was a poignant and succinct expression of the human search for connection and relationship. Rosenzweig’s Star of Redemption created an empowered space for the searching Jew in a world where he is outnumbered.

When I graduated, I decided to go to Israel. I wanted to learn more about Judaism because I wanted to know I was not alone in my loneliness, and that the loneliness had a purpose. I did not want to be an Orthodox Jew (having met almost none in my 22 years of life); rather, I wanted to learn Truth; I wanted a Guide. I wanted an end to relativity, which after four years of a liberal arts education, only left me lonelier.

I spent nearly two months in Israel trying to find clarity, first at a Conservative yeshiva in Jerusalem, then at Pardes, and finally at Aish HaTorah.

It was only at Aish HaTorah that I felt some sense of satisfaction. Aish gave me answers. They were simple, entirely not nuanced, and very philosophically biased toward their own view of Judaism. I did not know that then, and taking what they taught as gospel (quite literally), I was able to form a coherent picture of why I was here and what my purpose in life ought to be. I understood my loneliness as a sense of existential purposelessness; somehow I had always known that becoming a lawyer, epicure, intellect, and even wife, mother, and friend, was not enough. No one had ever explained to me that there could be more (see, for example, Sartre, who explained that existence precedes essence, and the essence is what you make of it; but what do I make of it?).

I saw from Aish’s “power hour” lectures that Judaism solved all of my most pressing existential questions. My life’s purpose is to connect to God, and to do so, I must learn His Word and do the deeds He has commanded me to do. Life now centered around connection (with God and with others) and its purpose was perfecting the self. The reframing of life in this manner somewhat alleviated my loneliness. I was not alone; God was there with me. It also gave me a sense of purpose and control, and the knowledge of what my convictions were, so that I may have the joy of standing up for them. (And that these convictions were rooted in something immutable and perfect.)

Very quickly I realized that the one-size-fits-all form of Judaism presented at Aish HaTorah became anathema to both my personality and my essence. Nonetheless, the underlying principles of belief in God and a relationship with him built through deed remained as an anchor when I began to explore my own place in Judaism.

This is when I read the Rav. Amidst the references to “loneliness” (he understands me!) was also a view of a human being as the empowered creator, given gifts to change both one’s self and the surrounding world, and the right to find joy in using those gifts (rather than seeing them as some form of necessary evil in order to get back to the “spiritual” stuff in life). To this I related! I am lonely, yes, in my quest for connection to God and to others and in finding my own role in contributing to this world. But I can rejoice in the relationships I’ve acquired and take pride in my achievements, and take solace in that my loneliness is shared by others and softened by God’s love.

To say I no longer feel lonely would be to say that I drank the Kool-Aid offered by some kiruv organizations. Nonetheless, I now have a relationship with an entity that is always there and is filled with love. And I am busied out of my loneliness by the community I must care for, and the world (and self) that I must change.

Modern/Open Orthodoxy has emerged as the new, bold, and dynamic trend in the United States and Israel. It synthesizes Orthodoxy’s commitment to Jewish law, memory, and tradition with the social reality it happens to inhabit.

R. Mordecai Kaplan once observed that the Conservative Movement in American Judaism is no more than a convenient coalition of “traditional” Reformers and “liberal” Orthodox practitioners. Ironically, Reconstructionism's founder, who himself did not believe in prophecy, was here prophetic. The center of the American Jewish continuum could, would, and did not hold. Conservative Judaism’s signature slogan, “Tradition and Change” describes its living tensions, but it is not a first principle. By its nature, “Tradition” negotiates the creative tension between the unchanging sacred Book and the pushes, pulls, and pains of an irresistible, secular present. By substituting a vague, undefined “Tradition,” which changes slowly, for the eternal religious anchor called “Torah,” Conservative Judaism’s Jewish law was, for Kaplan, reduced to folkways, becoming “sancta,” and the Torah was no longer “from Heaven,” the historical expression of God’s contract with Israel. The Conservative rabbinic community is now reconsidering its ban on intermarriage. The demographic market for this indefinable, and for many, indefensible social/religious communal product seems to be shrinking rapidly.

Orthodoxy, by contrast, is growing demographically and divisively. Orthodox Jews marry at a younger age, creating more stable—and larger—families than do less-observant Jews. In Israel, 25 percent of Modern or Open Orthodox and 10 percent of Hareidi Orthodox do leave the communities into which they were born. But Orthodoxy’s retention rates are relatively high when compared to non-Orthodox Jewry or non-affiliating Jews. Neither the Conservative and Reform laity nor clergy enjoy Orthodoxy’s retention rates among their offspring. Yet Orthodoxy’s two contending streams remain rather impatient, if not unhappy, with each other. While Orthodoxy’s extremes are easy to identify, Orthodoxy’s center interacts with both Hareidi and Modernist Orthodox streams, albeit with an uneasy ambivalence.

Hareidi Orthodoxy proudly proclaims that it alone is Torah compliant; it points to its growing demographic numbers as well as the validating attraction of newly Hareidi “penitents,” who have undergone an ideological, “conversionary” experience. This Orthodoxy regards the Torah to be divine, but is readable and understandable only by its own elite, called the “gedolim,” i.e. the “great ones." Their human words reflect God’s will in and for our time. Hareidi policy proclaims that Jewry requires taller and stouter walls in order to keep troubling ideas from intruding into its sacred precincts. Forbidding owning televisions, discouraging computers for anything but professional use, listening to and being influenced by non-Hareidi media, and limiting secular studies are accepted if not required communal norms. Compliance to these social policies is a condition of Hareidi identity. Mandatory modesty codes, “accepted” social/religious expectations, and the ever-present threat of expulsion for non-compliance all contribute to Hareidi communal cohesiveness. This cohesion demands serious commitment and comes with a heavy social cost. Without a good secular education, supporting its larger families is a daunting task.

Hareidi full-time Torah study is a spiritual and social activity but is not permitted to become a creative intellectual enterprise. Torah’s true content may not be found in the plain, common sense, grammatical understanding of the Torah’s sacred library; it may be found only in the narrative that Hareidi rabbinic leaders read into the Torah canon. Unless one is a “godol,” a Hareidi-approved great rabbi, one does not even have the right to express a reasoned opinion or reaction to what one learns. Sinai's “Tradition” is not limited to the documented Oral Law library; it must be proclaimed by the “godol,” whose word is Torah incarnate. This Orthodoxy is programmatically hyper-strict because its approach to Jewish law is loose-constructionist. Ever new stringencies emerge in order to enable an individual to express one’s piety, validate virtuosity, and to demonstrate exactly how religiously and socially worthy one really is.

Modern, Open, or cosmopolitan Orthodoxy also claims to follow Jewish law, albeit far less rigorously than Hareidi Orthodoxy. For this “Modern” Orthodoxy, strictness beyond the letter of the law is neither commanded nor valorized by the Law, but only serves to render Jewry more distinctly and counter-culturally “other.” Jewish law’s norms only require, forbid, and when silent on a given issue, actually authorize individual autonomy. 

Like its Hareidi counterpart, Modern Orthodoxy’s commitment to Shabbat observance, including acquiring a residence near a synagogue, fosters a sense of belonging that is reinforced by Orthodox educational and social institutions. These institutions foster Jewish behaving, belonging, and generally—but not always—believing. However, Modern, Open, or cosmopolitan Orthodoxy does not erect extra stout walls and fences to keep troublesome modernity out—or to lock insiders in.

In both Israel and in the Diaspora, Modern Orthodox Jewry works for a living and its offspring are expected to master a dual—a Jewishly religious and utilitarian secular—education. In Hareidi Orthodoxy, piety is measured by culture compliance, and social status depends upon wealth, communal standing, perceived erudition, and pedigree; raw talent or work product assessment are secondary considerations. Furthermore, the Modern Orthodox educational work product is assessed quantitatively; though socially valued, piety alone is socially insufficient. 

Some find the dual, i.e., secular modern and religiously Orthodox lifestyle too onerous to endure, the $25,000 tuition per child per year is often beyond parental means, and the high housing cost of Modern Orthodox neighborhoods is problematic. Israeli Modern Orthodoxy also tends to be middle class, ritually observant but not obsessively so, fretting about providing housing for to-be-married children, and worrying that military service will not erode their children's religious identity or render them war casualties.

Hareidi education consciously and constantly reinforces its ideology and social construction of reality. Its approach to Jewish law is oracular, not textual. The Great Sage is self-proclaimed to be everybody's teacher—and as such religiously superior to those who are not Great Rabbis. He alone is the guardian of masorah, the undefined, not codified culture of the Hareidi Jewish street. Hareidi society penalizes and marginalizes those who question “God’s word” as mediated by the Great Sage.

In point of fact, Jewish law’s actual and identifiable prescriptions and Hareidi culture norms are not the same. Talmudic law considers a woman’s shame to be sufficient grounds for allowing an abortion (Arakhin 7b), it requires drafting both men and women in defensive Israeli wars (Sota 44b), yet forbids clapping, dancing (Betsa 31a), and women's wigs on the Shabbat (Shabbat 64b). Latter-day saintly rabbis interpret these rules into disuse while inventing new rules unimagined by the talmudic sages, like not cutting a toddler's hair until age three, discouraging “important” women from their obligatory reclining at the Passover Seder, forbidding women to learn Oral Torah (see, however Tosefta Berakhot 2:12), and disallowing the required pre-Shabbat bathing on the Shabbat eve before the 9^th of Av fast. Calling these inconvenient facts to the public’s attention is correctly seen as being subversive or controversial; these facts show that Hareidi Orthodoxy is a Judaism of ritually rigorous, modernity-denying, social control. The learner may not dare to understand or apply sacred texts. Any and every social act must be filtered, processed, and approved by the Hareidi rabbinic elite.

When I was serving as Rabbi of Congregation Israel in Springfield, New Jersey, I raised a question to the head of a Hareidi yeshiva that had bought a church building for use by the yeshiva. "How do you justify entering the church facility’s sanctuary, as the congregation prays to the Christian hero as if to a 'god'?" I was informed that since the particular Protestant denomination does not use statues, i.e., idols, in its rites, the premises are not considered to be idolatrous. I was also told that an Israeli Hareidi godol said that it was on these grounds that it is permitted to enter the church sanctuary. I suggested, somewhat subversively, that 'Avoda Zara is not only idolatry, it is any artificial, invented religion. After all, making offerings to the “spirit” of the archangel Michael (bHullin 40b), like praying to the Christian hero, are equally forbidden acts. My naïveté led me to "correct" a Great Sage by calling attention to an inadvertent—and embarrassing—error. One does not dare to contradict the Great Sage, because his ruling is canonical, his charismatic right to innovate unquestionable, and his leadership authority not subject to peer review because, to Hareidi ideology, the gadol is without review.

The same R. Moses Sofer who proclaimed that "innovation is forbidden according to Torah law" also claimed, rather inconsistently, that a popular custom may overrule a rabbinic law, like the popular Orthodox usage permitting clapping on the Shabbat (see bBetsa 30a). But according to Jewish law, innovation is permitted. Being Hareidi is not really about being more Orthodox, it is about being counter-culturally “other.” Hareidi Orthodoxy has the right to advocate for its agenda in the free market of ideas. But those who adopt alternative Orthodox narratives, ideologies, or agendas have a right to their positions as well. The Modern Orthodoxy advocated in this article is based upon a plain, common sense reading of the Oral Law canon, which is to be applied in a socially appropriate contemporary fashion.

Like Maimondes, Modern Orthodoxy views halakha as Law. Law is based on norms, or "ought" rules, arranged hierarchically. When Rav Ashi died (428 c.e.), the age of “Hora'ah," apodictic rabbinic legislation, lapsed. There are in Torah law positive, i.e., "to do," and negative, i.e., "not to do" rules. Torah laws have greater valence and may not (generally) be overridden by rabbinic laws, and customary practice, while binding locally, may not override biblical (like popular if anomalous forbidding the intoning of Birkat Kohanim in the Ashkenazi Diaspora) or rabbinic laws (mayim aharonim in our time). The medieval Ashkenazic claim, “The customs of Israel are Torah,” is not consistent with Oral Torah Judaism. After all, Torah is the word of the Lord (Isaiah 2:3), not mere customary convention. When a legitimate custom, a custom that does not contradict higher grade rabbinic or Torah law, is accepted by all Israel (e.g., the daily evening prayers, the man’s kippa for prayer or Torah study, the fast of Esther), these customs then become binding upon all Israel, just like the Talmud of Rav Ashi, which was the last Oral Law document to be accepted by all Israel.

Modern Orthodoxy has been compared to the Conservative Movement by its Hareidi detractors. However superficially similar Modern Orthodoxy and Conservative Judaism may appear to the untrained eye, there are critical differences. Although professing a commitment to “pluralism,” Conservative Judaism is openly hostile to what it takes to be an arcane, sexist, Orthodoxy. Its Melton approach to adult Judaic studies is intellectually critical but ironically like Hareidi Orthodoxy, it does not allow the religion of the living community to be shaped by the official religious Jewish benchmarks memorialized in the sacred library. Non-Orthodox Judaism’s social content is not determined by the canon’s content, but by the demands of its dues-paying client population.

For Conservative Judaism, the tradition’s mandating a practice is insufficient to render that practice mandatory for either its laity or clergy. Ultimate values are determined democratically and by communal consensus. Modern Orthodoxy submits to the claims of the law recorded in the law. In 1934, R. Mordecai Kaplan wrote that the Jewish past gets “a voice, not a veto.”

Simply put, Modern Orthodoxy is prepared to permit what Jewish law does not forbid. As long as the Oral Torah law is not violated, changes in usage, policy, and ritual may be considered. Other Orthodox voices identify and conflate popular usage with Sinai’s law. For Modern Orthodoxy, changes in usage that do not violate Jewish law are legitimate and permitted. Statutory Oral Torah law, not the tradition of nostalgic taste, is the bar of Jewish propriety. Its married Orthodox female clergy usually cover their hair, by hat and not with a wig (see bShabbat 64b), affirm family purity, reject unisex minyanim, or improperly serving on a rabbinical court. In Orthodoxy, rabbinic “ordination” testifies that its holder has been vetted to be halakhically knowledgeable, professionally competent, and religiously committed. In Liberal Judaism, ordination is a professional credential that has market value, but does not necessarily attest to deep Jewish erudition.

The contrasting approaches to the ordination of women illustrate how Conservatism and Modern Orthodoxy differ. Modern Orthodoxy is prepared to change usage, but not to reform, reject, or overturn Torah law. But Conservative Judaism ignores Jewish law when halakha’s norms conflict with the secular, modern, ethos because the pull of secular America’s values is irresistible. Conservative Judaism consciously ignored the Law regarding women counting in minyan, while the women in the rabbinate are all well informed Orthodox leaders who observe Jewish Law seriously, sincerely, and smartly.

Modern/Open Orthodoxy would, however, be wise to take its detractors’ criticism to heart, if only to insure responsible decision making and to avoid agenda driven policies. When secular values conflict with Jewish values, which ethos will Modern/Open Orthodoxy adopt? The secular European/American ethos has accepted homosexuality to be morally acceptable. Every non-Orthodox Jewish stream has accepted homosexuality to be morally normative, as have liberal Protestant denominations. Gezeirat haKatuv, the unambiguous Torah line in the sand, does not condone male homosexual activity (Leviticus 18:22, 20:13). Modern Orthodoxy will rightly relate to homosexuals with respect, welcoming them in their congregations, protest secular anti-LGBTQ legislation, but will not and may not contradict or deny the Torah’s clear mandate. It will live with this tension, as life is often untidy, inconsistent, and conflicted. But being Orthodox, the Open wing of Modern Orthodoxy accepts the “other” along with the “Torah,” and leaves God to be the ultimate judge Avot 2:4).

“Tradition” is understood very differently by Orthodoxy’s contending streams. Hareidi Orthodoxy’s sociology prevents women from being “actors” in the synagogue; its benchmarks are created by inherited culture usage. But the Talmud explicitly permits women to perform acts, like leaning on the sacrificial animal, that are addressed to men (’Eruvin 96a, Hagiga 16b). “Tradition,” what one Hareidi leaning Orthodox rabbi called the “non-codified” Judaism adopted by Hareidi Orthodoxy, invests legislative power in the subjective, non-reviewable hands of the Hareidi elite. Talmudic precedent is now subject to Hareidi veto.

Maimonides maintains that the local rabbi has the jurisdictional right to rule for the community he serves, limited only by talmudic legislation. One renowned Yeshiva University rabbi has coined legal concepts called middas haTseinius, the modesty trait, middas haHistasterus, the interiority trait, and ziyyuf haTorah, falsifying Torah, which may be invoked by him to forbid in communal practice what is not forbidden by formal Oral Torah statute. Because these newly minted legal rules are proclaimed by the Great Sage, who claims to be guided by divine providence (Sotah 4b), they must be accepted as legally binding without question or review. The authority to legislate Jewish law for all Israel by apodictic decree is affirmed by Yeshiva Orthodoxy to be operative in modern times, even though this legislative power (hora’ah) has long since lapsed. In other words, Modern Orthodoxy’s Hareidi detractors change Jewish law so that their culture of the old time religion does not appear to change. If a practice was good enough for our ancestors, it ought to be good enough for us.

These two Orthodox Judaisms offer conflicting sources of religious authority. Hareidi Orthodoxy maintains that the Oral Law library may be reviewed and revered, but it may not be read, understood, or applied by anyone but their elite. This Orthodoxy’s Great Rabbis articulate narratives that empower them to be Orthodoxy’s singular, spiritual anchor. These rabbis own, in their view, the Torah franchise.

By contrast, Modern Orthodoxy’s rabbis openly ask what the law permits, requires, and authorizes. Like their medieval forbearers, these scholars teach, suggest, and persuade; they do not intimidate, bully, or deride. These rabbis are educational resources, not apodictic tyrants. If Orthodoxy postulates that the Torah text reflects God’s word, its advocates take pains not to misstate what the Law really requires. Holy hyperbole is no virtue and being extra strict is not a statement of personal piety or propriety.

Open/Modern Orthodoxy’s rabbis formulate an alternative narrative of Jewish life. But their benchmark is Jewish Law, not Western secularity. Respect for human dignity (kavod haBeriyyot), good feelings (nahat ru’ah), social cohesion (darkei shalom), and doing what is right and good (ve‘Asita haYashar ve-haTov), are all legal factors when considering how halakha ought to be applied when confronting the contemporary Jewish reality. Each Orthodoxy challenges its competitor; may “the zealousness of scribes increase wisdom” (Bava Batra 21a).

This Modern halakhic Orthodox Manifesto maintains that

1. Orthodox Judaism is grounded in the doctrine that God’s will is encoded in the Torah sacred library, idiomatically rendered “Torah from Heaven.”
2. This doctrine, “Torah from Heaven,” is Judaism’s legal “Basic Norm” that affirms that God is the King, Who commands that the Torah laws be obeyed. And because these Laws are no longer in Heaven (Deut. 30:11–14), they are understandable, livable, and doable in everyday life.
3. These Torah laws are subject to review and application on the basis of the hermeneutical rules which determine whether an act, a doctrine, or a policy is in fact a legitimate rule of the halakhic order.
4. “Modernity” is not stigmatized by Jewish law, which does not explicitly endorse or condemn either the political Right (which stresses law and order and the value of Tradition) or Left (as evidenced by the prophetic call for social justice and King Solomon’s higher taxes, which paid for enhanced social services). Modern Orthodoxy is itself neither politically Right or Left, but is based on and biased by Torah values. Israeli Modern Orthodoxy boasts both Naftali Bennett, a religiously tolerant Orthodox political hawk, and Elazar Stern, an Orthodox advocate for Land for Peace negotiations with the Palestinian Authority. Both are Zionists and patriots.
5. Modernity’s scientific method, widened intellectual openness, and technological advances are welcomed; its sexual libertarianism, the dimming of spiritual insight, and the secularity of the public square, are to be bemoaned.
6. Modern Orthodoxy affirms Zionism, the nineteenth-century nationalist movement of the Jewish people.
7. Modern Orthodoxy adopts the mindset, mood, and method of the secular academy. Jewish law does not forbid secular studies. Some very great rabbis have imbibed worldly wisdom, and the spiritual thrill of discovery outweighs the “danger” that non-sacred study might undermine religious faith. An academic reading of the Jewish literary and historical tradition provides the student with the tools for discovery; while this empowerment does undermine the Hareidi narrative, this sensibility and mindset enable Orthodox academic Torah learners to read, understand, and suggest alternative options for Orthodoxy.
8. Modern Orthodoxy enhances the status, standing, and respect for Jewish women in community life. The tradition encoded in the sacred canon trumps the “Tradition” of the popular, remembered past.
9. Hareidi and Modern Orthodox Judaism have different hidden curricula and visions of the ideal Jew. The Hareidi Jew is expected to comply with the apodictic decrees of his or her gedolim, and these reviewers are not subject to review. The Modern Orthodox Jew is expected to comply with the Judaism encoded in classic texts of halakha, to engage in critical thinking, and to draw on the studies of the academic world.

The Modern Orthodox rabbi is a resource, not a ruler. Since the rabbinic mission is to teach Torah, the Modern Orthodox must be steeped in the Classical Tradition while remaining aware of the challenges posed by secular reality. The rabbinic mission is not to reconstruct a replica of a remembered, nostalgic past; it is to apply Torah law appropriately in the contemporary present. In order to be a rabbinic model for the community, the rabbinic person needs to have the courage to negotiate halakhic literature without being intimidated. People who fear people have little energy left to have fear of Heaven.

“Shirts! Shirts!”

The boy was standing in front of the mosque just down the street from his family’s house. Would you call it a street? It was dirt, it was never paved or stone, but as the men came out of the mosque, the boy sang out in a clear, soft voice, “Buy a shirt!”

He had said to his mother, “Zip, zip, you make them so fast, why not make them to sell? One seam here, one seam there, I’ll sell them for you. I’ll go in front of the mosque, and when the men come out I’ll make some money, and bring it home to you.”

It was the Ottoman Empire in 1911, in a port across from Europe—on the Asian side of the Strait of Dardanelles. They were living in a magnificent nowhere-land, with melons in the attic, beehives for honey on the windowsill, his grandfather’s vineyards full of grapes, but with nothing much a man could do. Study the Torah—the Bible—it was the most important thing. The men studied with the boy’s father on Shabbat. But it was not enough. His father had the shop, with kerosene lamps and the dishes and glasses that came in huge wooden crates from Austria, but how many dishes could you sell in Canakkale? His father sat in the shop and read the newspaper. He knew how to read, so he relayed the news to everyone. What was the news? What did it have to do with them? Slowly week by week the newspapers came from Istanbul and raised the same questions day after day. The lid was coming down, you could watch it move slowly, or you could think about it.

The boy’s mother was up at five every morning, sitting at the sewing machine. She sang as she worked, a steady breathing of thought and cloth strategy, her right hand on the wheel. She was like his father standing to pray, but she was seated with a firm hold on the earth, her foot on the treadle. Praying was breathing between here and God, and sewing was breathing between cloth and God, with a voice in Spanish words. The boy sat by her side, the cloth moved into creation while she sang. “Ken me va kerer a mi, ken me va kerer a mi?, Who is going to love me? Knowing that I love you, my love for you is the death of me.” But if cloth could become shirts, sung and sewn into creation, that you could wear on your back, then nowhere could become somewhere and a man could grow up through life like the turning of the events in the Joseph story, until the powerful man wept to see his brothers, and they all wept finally and knew even a boy thrown into a pit could grow up to be a vizier.

A boy could grow to be a man, might grow tall.

First the men took off their shoes, lining them up in pairs. Then with their clay libriks they poured water on their faces and their uplifted forearms, the sky overhead bright as a blue pillow of light, the breezes cool. Inside they prayed on the tiled floors. They did want the shirts, the men as they came out of the mosque. How could you say no, they were cheap. Everyone needed a shirt at this price. Anyone would buy them, and it was the boy’s idea. He had been proven right. Once as a boy you’ve been proven right, thinking for the family, you can keep going, jumping up in the favor of your mother’s eyes, and your own eyes.

***

He was the oldest now. His oldest brother had been sent off to Jaffa to study the new science—agriculture. It was a scholarship from the Alliance Israelite Universelle. The very name of the school was like the bright wild shake of a tambourine to the mother and father, and to the five hundred Jewish families of the town. The boy himself went to the Alliance school in Canakkale. It was different from the ancient Talmud Torah with the children huddled around tables, taught by poor old shrunken men in raggedy beards. At the Alliance, Monsieur Toledano, the director who had studied in Paris, stood up tall and wore a top hat. The boy’s mother had insisted the next brother go along with the eldest to Jaffa, although it tore her heart out to let the two of them go. But the Alliance was right that they had to save themselves from being ground into the earth and had to find the sea of emancipation. The sea was big, the world was wide, although the town was tiny, clustered, and safe like a breeze-blessed paradise at the center of the world. The town was at the Narrows of the Dardanelles, the same straits that were a birth canal for Europe, with the snow cold waters rushing down from the Black Sea through the Bosphorus through the Sea of Marmara to here where the ships of the world went by. His mother’s rich brothers sometimes sat at the tables by the water (she didn’t have the money or, with six children, the time to sit there), drinking tea, watching the ships of the world pass by with their colorful flags. You could see Europe right across the Straits, it was right there.

***

            The boy knew the smell of kashkaval because when he worked at the grocery that year, the owner asked him to carry a whole half wheel of it across town. It was heavy for him, so to brace himself he carried it high on his chest, but his nose could not move away and the cheese was so pungent it stank. That smell he knew well (and eventually he would eat kashkaval years later). What the boy never knew was about Ovid’s Leander, thousands of years before, swimming across the same straits in the terrible rushing current every night from Abydos on the Asian shore, a short walk from Canakkale, to his goddess Hero across the water holding a light up in her tower. And he never knew about a limping rich English poet jokingly trying the same swim in the dark of night about a hundred years before the boy set up his gymnasium of branches and rope in a little garden. The boy did not know either about the nearby city of Troy being attacked by the Achaeans across this same water—the Dardanelles, the Hellespont— and all the tales sung and then written down about those wars, jealousies, wrenching deaths and armor. What the boy knew was that among the Jews of Canakkale, the men sang the Hebrew prayers every day praising the same Ashem the Jews had sung to after Ur, in Egypt, in the desert, in Jerusalem, on the Iberian peninsula, and here where they were welcomed and sent ships for to settle in the Ottoman Empire.