National Scholar Updates

Introduction

The serious and very practical question of permitting fertility treatments in general and pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) in particular has been widely debated among Jewish circles in recent years.[i] Naturally, several opinions that surfaced were subsequently presented in a recent issue of a well-reputed halakhic journal.[ii] We feel, however, that there are a number of points pertaining to the discussion of sex selection within Jewish law that require further clarification. In this piece, we intend to facilitate, or at least initiate, the process of better understanding the moral minefield introduced by the advent of reproductive technologies.

Alleviating Initial Suspicions and Doubts

The arguments hitherto suggested were reminiscent of the debate of several decades ago when, in the summer of 1978, Louise Brown became the first child to be born via in vitro fertilization (IVF) technology. The onset and widespread use of IVF that soon ensued called into question a myriad of ethical, moral, and religious concerns. Some religiously affiliated individuals were quick to voice their opposition to IVF, calling attention to the possibility for mistakes to occur behind the closed doors of fertility clinics and laboratories. Those who managed to document high-profile errors only exacerbated the uncertainty involved and contributed to the general unease of rabbinic decisors who were then beginning to grapple with the new and potentially problematic procedures.

As a result of the increasing ambiguity over the permissibility of assisted reproductive technology (ART), the Puah Institute—a leading Jewish fertility organization in Israel—instituted supervision services at fertility clinics and laboratories in Israel and across the globe. Puah arranged for a trained network of mashgihim (professional supervisors) to oversee the entire fertility process and workup. From initial treatments to eventual birth, the mashgihim ensured that all fertility-related procedures were conducted in strict accordance with Jewish law. As expected, rabbinic decisors followed by developing more lenient attitudes and adopting more permissive approaches in tackling the medical, ethical, and religious concerns incurred by ART.

This implementation of halakhic supervision, endorsed by rabbinic authorities and lauded by the Jewish community, is nothing less than a small revolution within medical-religious arena. A rather simple halakhic solution effectively changed both the perceptions and the nature of rabbinic rulings, thus blazing the path for future progress in similar areas involving an interface between technology and halakha. Rabbinic supervision proved reliable and consistent. Most significantly, it demonstrated that previous suspicions can be allayed with prudent precautions and thorough measures. This sort of pragmatic approach could also be part of a resolution in the case at hand.

Fear of the Slippery Slope

Some of the other opponents to ART were not so much concerned with the potential chaos of mistakes committed in the lab; their worry, instead, was of a more general nature—that is, the fear of the slippery slope. While virtually every innovative technology brings with it the potential for a slippery slope, it is unclear exactly what these critics feared. It could be sensed, however, that there was general unease in the air. Instead of laying claim to specific arguments and coherent propositions, this cohort of critics seemed merely troubled by the permissive atmosphere in and of itself.  They obsessed over the lenient positions being formulated in response to ART and worried that the momentum was heading in a ruinous and disastrous direction.

In one particular conversation with such a rabbinic decisor, he related that although  he had attempted to hold back the “tide,” the people had turned the tide and voted with their feet. In today’s society, he continued, there is very little one can do to change the scenario of infertile couples undergoing IVF and ART despite the initial opposition of certain rabbinic authorities.  The “tide” referenced here—and why its resistance to change was problematic—is ambiguous at best. Again, there appears to be general discomfort emanating from some authorities without any real, transparent arguments or rational explanations for dissent.

It is interesting to note that in a personal conversation with Bob Edwards (the British physiologist and pioneer of reproductive medicine who was instrumental in the first successful human IVF birth) I asked whether in the early days of IVF anyone had accurately conceived of the enormity and impact that ART would have in terms of reshaping our future conceptions of reproduction, procreation, and lineage. He replied in the affirmative, recalling that deep philosophical questions regarding fertility procedures were immediately raised, challenged, and analyzed from the very first drafted paper on the subject. We concurred in our approach to facing problems head-on, opening intellectual forums for reasoned and well-seasoned debate, and seeking necessary precuations to prevent sliding down the slippery slope. Preempting problems, experience continuously confirms, is always preferable to damage control.

There is a vital lesson not to be missed here. The fear of the slippery slope is a valid one. Leon Kass, an American bioethicist, once remarked: “Once you put human life in human hands, you have started on a slippery slope that knows no boundaries.” Indeed, unchecked and unpaved territory is frightening, but only at first. With boundaries intact and cautious measures in effect, the fear and mystery that surround the slope begin to fall away. Human beings advance only through experimentation and trial and error. Humanity reaches great heights only by climbing the stairs, forging ahead, and taking the initial plunge. Had the slippery slope deterred scientists in the past century, many more once-infertile couples would still be yearning for children. If anything, the slippery slope helps to remind us of the important role that boundaries and borders play in our lives, but it ought not to limit and restrict the possibilities for great technological innovations. Our ability and success to create and innovate is far too strong to be curtailed by paying much attention to the argument of the slippery slope.

Obligation vs. Permission

In debating the merits of sex selection—that is, the in vitro selection of either a genetically male or female embryo for subsequent implantation into the gestating womb—there seems to be an unfortunate mix-up of two disparate issues, which are neither synonymous ideologically nor halakhically. On one hand, there exists the question as to whether a man who has children of only one sex is obliged to undergo some form of sex selection to ensure the birth of a child of the opposite sex. In other words, is the man who is commanded to “be fruitful and multiply” obligated to employ sex selection technology to guarantee that his offspring consist of, at minimum, one boy and one girl? On the other hand, there is a distinct question as to whether one is allowed to enlist for sex selection as a valid method of family balancing or for any other desired reason. That is to say, barring any sense of obligation, is one halakhically permitted to make use of sex-selection technology? These are two distinct questions that ought not to be intertwined; obligation connotes something entirely different from permissibility.

The Shulhan Arukh, the primary centerpiece of authoritative Jewish law, as well as other codes of normative halakhic behavior, do not sanction the notion of sex selection—but they do not expressly condemn it either. The absence of any imperative mandating the necessity to take any and every possible step to ensure both male and female sexes among one’s children strongly suggests that there is at least no obligation to undergo a process of sex selection. Therefore, a man with children of only one sex type (only males or only females) dutifully fulfils the mitzvah of peru u’revu.[1] While there were certainly no advanced technologies of sex selection during the lifetime of the author of the Shulhan Arukh, failure to make mention of any such obligation, even if only imaginably conceivable, is quite telling. Obligation may not be the case, but the option of permissibility cannot and should not be ruled out. Previous published matter on the subject, we note, demonstrated a weakness in investing far too much time and effort in the obligation aspect while neglecting to report on the equally, if not more significant, aspect of permissibility[iii].

In fact, in our clinical experience with dozens of couples seeking PGD for sex selection, couples rarely cite the biblical injunction of peru u’revu as an impetus to pursue sex selection. More often than not, couples generally elect PGD for sex selection for reasons entirely unrelated to halakha—be it of social, cultural, or personal preference. Some individuals, for example, express the existential need to have a boy or a girl as their sole motivation. Quite interestingly, and not surprisingly, some religious couples who desire a child of a specific sex have the faulty assumption that it is their absolute biblical duty to produce one boy and one girl through whatever means technologically feasible. Ultimately, they tend to forgo treatment upon hearing an enlightened version of the halakha and are pleased to learn that the halakha speaks in no place of a requirement to defer to sex selection as a means of securing both male and female children. 

Thus, the question of obligation is a moot point.  It is essential that these two aspects—obligation and permission—be separated and filtered out before the application of appropriate halakhic principles. The focus of discussion must shift from obligation to permission in analyzing the use of PGD for sex selection. Of course, when extricating this or any other halakhic inquiry, the approach should be one that assumes permissibility unless demonstrated otherwise. The burden of proof then lies on the shoulders of those who utterly dismiss and disallow the procedure of sex selection. So, what are the halakhic prohibitions, if any, against sex selection?

Jewish Medical Ethics vs. Medical Ethics

It is worth mentioning the following brief points of comment. In the series of articles that appeared in the journal Tradition, one of the articles made reference to widely accepted Western ethical considerations and principles. Although Judaism as a whole accepts, welcomes, and identifies with the major ethical principles (autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice) that govern medicine in the West, there certainly come times when normative Jewish thought and law diverge with classical secular ethics. Such dilemmas, for example, arise particularly in the form of life-and-death decisions that conflict with a patient’s autonomy.  Jewish medical ethics most drastically differs from secular medical ethics in its source of validity and working methodology. Jewish ethics, along with its other commandments, laws, and statutes have their source and validity deeply rooted in the divine, as expressed in the biblical and oral law. In addition, Jewish law strongly adheres to precedent as a basis for formulating a stance in each situation. Whereas secular ethics searches primarily to apply the same major recurring ethical principles to any given scenario, Jewish medical ethics places a large emphasis on evaluating each situation independently, and only then applying the most applicable and appropriate principles, as grounded in Jewish literature. 

Is IVF Dangerous?

Some opponents of PGD for sex selection opine that this procedure is dangerous and therefore unquestionably forbidden according to Jewish law. Indeed, the Torah is very concerned that one must distance oneself from harm and even potential danger. Yet, it has been clearly demonstrated that there is almost negligible danger involved with PGD. The small magnitude of risk associated with PGD is most similar to the risks of IVF (and studies actually show that IVF risks are more commonly linked with the underlying causes of infertility rather than with the procedure itself). Dr. Abraham Steinberg, pediatric neurologist and author of Encyclopedia of Jewish Medical Ethics, suggests that crossing a street is statistically more dangerous than any ART procedure and, not shockingly, street crossing has yet to be outlawed.

It should be noted that Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook originally sought to forbid traveling in cars for purely recreational purposes. He considered “joy rides” to be dangerous and buttressed this claim by pointing to the staggering rates of injuries and fatalities caused by automobile accidents. Rabbi Kook only ruled that driving was problematic, however, if it served no teleological reason. His ruling did not extend to instances beyond recreational driving; he outright permitted purposeful driving, even if unintended for fulfillment of a Torah obligation, so long as it was within the framework of normative human behavior.

If the risks of IVF and PGD are indeed comparable to those of pedestrian street crossings, as initially proposed by Steinberg, then we could reasonably assume that ART poses too minimal a danger to ban its meaningful efficacy and success rate. Some may be quick to retort that IVF is unique since it is performed with the intention to fulfill the biblical duty of procreation and, as such, any potential danger may be more immune to warrant prohibition.[2] But it is unclear if one may technically fulfill the commandment of procreation via ART. If IVF is not an acceptable form of carrying out the commandment of procreation, the argument goes, then we might be left with the inclination to forbid both IVF and PGD procedures.

It is widely accepted, however, to permit the use of IVF despite possibility of associated risks. The underlying reason for this allowance brings us to our next point concerning sex selection.

The Definition of Illness

It is fair to say that ART is an elective process. Halakhic technicalities may prevent us from characterizing the outcome as a fulfillment of procreation, and thus the element of risk enters into the equation more potently. There is still ample reason, however, to permit ART despite its elective nature.

The majority of contemporary rabbinic decisors do allow IVF and other methods of reproductive medicine. This touches upon the very notion of how we define illness in the first place. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”[iv] This definition has not been altered since 1948 and has survived accusations that “the perfect definition of health espoused by the WHO is Utopian and removed from reality.”[v] Some posit that the WHO’s version of health is more a definition of happiness than of health.[vi] Understanding the implications of “health” is essential since the manner in which we choose to visit health directly affects our perception of illness.

Is there a unique Jewish or a halakhic vision of illness? Various talmudic sources point to illnesses that come with different degrees of severity and with distinct definitions. The sick person is generally obliged to study the Torah and obey the vast majority of commandments. There are some examples, however, when the ill individual is exempt from religious duties. The sick are exempt from sitting in the sukkah on the holiday of Sukkoth and from the requirement of appearing at the Temple before God on the festivals. Additionally, an ill person is exempt from standing in the presence of a Torah scholar and from donning the ritual tefillin.

Interestingly, the halakha actually differs in its depiction of the ill person from one source to another. The ill person exempted from the sukkah need not be dangerously ill and extends to one “who is in no danger, even if he has a pain in his eye and a headache.” This exemption is derived from the nature of the condition to “dwell in the sukkah as one would dwell in his own house” (“Teshvu k’en taduru”). The ill person who is exempt from trekking out to Jerusalem for the festivals is one who cannot walk.

The ill person who is permitted to remain sitting before a learned scholar is either one who is entrenched in his own pain and unhappiness or one who is lying on his or her deathbed. The ill person who is exempt from tefillin refers to an individual with digestive difficulties (there are other opinions that suggest that general suffering due to any illness exempts one from tefillin due to the impossibility of proper attention and mindset).

Clearly, considerations for defining illness are specifically dependent on the sort of obligation in question. It is also evident that a life-threatening disease or debilitating medical condition is not a necessary condition to exempt an ill person from the abovementioned commandments.

Elsewhere, in a discussion regarding someone who is terminally ill, Maimonides relates: “One who has a headache or a pain in his eyes, leg, or hand is considered to be well for all matters connected to his business dealings. But, the ill person whose entire body is weakened due to his illness or someone who cannot walk outside and is confined to the bed is called a shekhiv me’ra.” Here, Maimonides presents a scenario of an individual who experiences discomfort and mild pain, but whose condition is not sufficiently severe to classify as an illness.

The WHO’s somewhat deficient definition and the above cited halakhic sources indicate that even something as seemingly simple and basic a task as defining illness is more complex than first meets the eye.

In a past article, we explored the opinions of several rabbinic decisors that perceive infertility as an illness. Beyond the physiological incapability of naturally conceiving a child, infertility is often accompanied by serious psychological distress and insecurities. Thus, illness is not merely defined in physiological terms. The halakha sympathizes, empathizes, and acknowledges the internal frustration of the infertile individual and/or couple. Accordingly, psychological distress and discomfort account for a condition to be regarded as an illness within Jewish law.

This mental and emotional pain—indeed, a natural component of coping with the reality of not being capable to conceive naturally—serves as the primary basis to permit this elective surgery and others like it. Though there is no medical necessity, elective surgery in halakha is often grounded in justifications that highlight the relevant psychological factors. Despite lack of medical necessity, there is room to permit virtually any surgery that would alleviate serious psychological suffering (assuming there are no external contraindicating reasons and/or significant possibility of harm in electing the surgery).

Is Sex Selection Permitted in Cases of Psychological Pain?

Sex selection via PGD could likewise be rendered permissible. Most couples that opt to undergo the sex selection process do so because of psychological reasons.   Before outright sanction of sex selection, it might be worthwhile to establish guidelines to determine when and to what degree psychological distress or desire warrants its use. But, then the tricky question obviously becomes: who and how can one adequately determine what amounts to sufficient psychological pain to permit an elective treatment? May parents experiencing an extended period of secondary infertility undergo ART?

Searching for a similar precedent, the Talmud (Shabbat 50b) discusses a man’s removal of a bodily scab. The rabbis debate if this practice is a strictly female activity that would be forbidden for males as a corollary to the general prohibition of men wearing women’s clothing. The Talmud concludes that it is forbidden to remove a scab as a method of beautification (an activity associated with females), but it is within the confines of halakha to remove the scab in order alleviate suffering or pain. The Tosafot commentators question what sort of pain is necessary in order to allow the removal of the scab; does embarrassment of presenting oneself with a scab on the face qualify as “pain”? Tosafot emphatically answer in the affirmative, even going so far as to insist, “there is no greater pain than this” in reference to psychological pain. Emotional pain and psychological stress cannot go unnoticed and unacknowledged. What one experiences as shameful and embarrassing might not register as such with another individual. This fact only tells us that emotions and psychology could be subjective and personal. Indeed, psychological pain may be highly subjective, but is real and valid nonetheless.

This subjective aspect becomes apparent from some clinical cases that Puah has helped mediate. Among the scenarios were the following cases: a kohen who needed a sperm donor and was absolutely unwilling to undergo the procedure unless guaranteed future anonymity (i.e. by selecting for a girl), a woman suffering from depression after having three children of the “wrong” gender, and a couple who had six children of the same gender and were desperate to conceive a child of opposite sex. Invariably, upon presenting these cases, there is always at least one person in the audience who will argue that it is our duty to convince such parties that it is not so terrible not to have a child of the other sex. Skeptics suggest that the kohen must come to terms with revealing the truth of a sperm donation in the case of a male child, the woman must seek psychological help to convince her that having another child of the same gender is not the end of the world, and the couple must accept the reality and plausibility of conceiving a seventh child of the same sex. In a word, critics claim, such individuals must suppress their inner worries, tensions, anxieties, and pressures. Life is fine and elective PGD for sex selection is uncalled for. Seek therapy, work it out, and get over it.

What these critics and naysayers fail to grasp, however, is that our own personal intuitions, or anyone’s individual feelings, are totally irrelevant here. In light of the Talmud’s depiction of shame and embarrassment as a legitimate form of pain, we must recognize that anguish and distress come in all different sizes, shapes, and colors. Where pain—any form of pain, be it physiological or psychological—could be lessened, we must strive to do so through rational and scientifically available means. It is far too easy to quickly dismiss someone’s situation as trivial or petty. It requires a certain degree of fortitude and integrity to see one’s pain for what it is and to acknowledge one’s distress as duly legitimate. Humans do not experience pain equally. Some hurt a little more, others a little less. What makes humanity great, however, is its ability to breed two drastically disparate individuals who nevertheless understand and acknowledge each other’s personal, yet equally genuine, concerns and emotions.

Conclusion

Artificial reproductive technologies, and PGD in particular, call into question numerous moral and halakhic issues. As science continues to innovate and discover, it is vital that the Jewish community not veer away from grappling with the challenges, if any, posed by new reproductive techniques. Instead, we ought to embrace the challenges and engage in meaningful dialogue. For some, it is tempting to brush aside modern technology and cast it as antithetical to the letter and spirit of Jewish law. Through serious research and scholarship, however, more often than not it becomes clear that Judaism invites and welcomes technological and scientific advancement. As we have hopefully demonstrated, there is ample room within Jewish law for permitting the practice of sex selection through PGD.

During the spring semester of 2011 I was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of the West Indies at Cave Hill in Barbados lecturing on Brazilian Culture and researching Caribbean film. The opportunity also allowed me to study a subject that has interested me since high school, the outcome of the Sephardim who left Portugal for the New World.  In addition to Barbados, I wanted to visit the communities on two other islands, Curaçao and Jamaica, and see the famed sand floors of their synagogues. As a Portuguese scholar fascinated by the Judeo-Spanish tradition, I sought to find out if these languages were still used in the services or spoken by descendants of the early Sephardic settlers.  Intrigued by the history of colonization, I asked myself which European power allowed the Sephardim the most freedom religiously and economically, and how that may have affected their situation today. Having grown up in the Midwest where intermarriage was common, I also wanted to see how the Caribbean Jewish communities addressed this issue. Ultimately, I wondered if the Sephardic experience on the islands offered a key to the overall survival of Jews in the Diaspora.

Though an Ashkenazi Jew by heritage, my interest in Sephardim stems from being a high school exchange student in São Paulo, Brazil. At the age of sixteen I went to live with a family in South America’s largest city. Their origin, however, was Recife, Pernambuco and I discovered later that they had chosen me because they thought they were descendants of Jews who had lived amongst the Dutch. They were excited to have me in their home and always treated me with respect, asking question about my faith though they had not practiced it for centuries.

After college, where I became fluent in Portuguese, I returned to Brazil and traveled to the Northeast where I visited the area known to have been the first Sephardic community in the Americas. At the time, the synagogue on Rua Bom Jesus (Good Jesus Street) had not been restored, nor its mikvah excavated. Still, I was amazed at how the visit spurred in me the desire to trace the path of the Sephardim both to their source in Iberia and then to the New World.

My formal education intertwined perfectly with my project. As a graduate student doing a dissertation in Portuguese at the University of Wisconsin-Madison I earned my first Fulbright Scholarship to go to Portugal in 1994-95.  Though my official research was on the Lusophone or Portuguese African Diaspora, during my time off I went around the country looking for signs of the Sephardic Diaspora. A regular at Shabbat morning services at the main synagogue in Lisbon, Shaarei-Tikvá, I became friends with a Scottish Jew who took me to Belmonte, one of the only villages that has practiced a form of Secret Judaism for over 500 years. I was amazed by its history, especially the importance of women in maintaining rituals within the home as synagogues were prohibited and men could not openly show their faith. I learned that the community had first been breached in the early twentieth century by a Russian miner who happened to be in the region and discovered that the Belmonte Jews considered themselves to be the only Jews left in the world.  Only when he said the Shema did they believe that he, too, was a member of the faith. I wondered how the Belmonte community survived for so long under the harsh threat of the Inquisition. They lived in a very isolated region of Portugal, the Beira Alta or Upper Beira that was hard to reach. They pretended to eat the foods that non-Jews ate by making recipes using chicken instead of pork. The “alheira” or garlic sausage was one such delicacy eaten in the region. Most of all, they regulated the community through marriage. Sometimes people of the same family would marry—such as first cousins, though there may have been even closer connections such as uncles and nieces. As a result there were birth defects that I actually saw during my visit.

In addition to Belmonte and the synagogue in Lisbon I traveled to the Alentejo, Portugal’s southern breadbasket. There I visited places that no longer had a living presence but rather street signs such as “judaria” where the Jews were once forced to live. Overall, I found that few people in Portugal knew much about Jewish ritual or religion, rather that many who had names linked to flora and fauna may have been descendants of New Christian. After nearly a year living in Iberia I, too felt a little isolated as a Jew and looked forward to leaving.

I did not forget my experience searching for remnants of a Sephardic past in Portugal, and though I eventually earned my doctorate and moved to New York, my interest in learning more about their journeys continued. In the fall of 2010 I presented a paper in London on nineteenth century Sephardim of Great Britain, then two weeks later flew to Singapore to lecture on the Jews of India.

By the time I left Barbados to start my teaching and research, I was exhausted and looking forward to the opportunity of living in the tropics . Before arriving on the island I had learned that there were two synagogues, both Ashkenazi. On my first Friday night I went to a hotel and asked if they had any information on religious services. The concierge immediately put me in touch with Rose Altman, who at 88 was the oldest member of the Jewish community. She had all the information I needed regarding the synagogue and even more about the people who attended it. I learned that during the hot summer months people went to a house that was turned into a synagogue for practical reasons—it had air conditioning. In the winter some of the community, now numbering a few dozen families, and tourists many from cruise liners, go to the newly renovated Sephardic synagogue, Nidhe Israel or “the Scattered of Israel.”

My first Kabbalat Shabbat service was memorable.  I entered a thick gate and walked past two buildings, one I learned was a state-of-the-art museum dedicated to the history of the Sephardim and the importance of sugar cane, a crop brought over by the Jews of Recife. There was also a mikvah that actually has a spring fed well. I noticed two cemeteries, with neatly arranged gravestones lying horizontal on the ground. Looking closely I could see that the headstones had inscriptions in a variety of languages; Portuguese, Spanish, Hebrew and English. Carved cupid figures and hands chopping down trees adorned some of them. When I saw people moving into the synagogue, I went in, too, looking for the women’s section. After seeing men and women sitting together, I sat down on a wooden bench and admired the building. The interior was beautiful, with a grand reader’s desk in the middle of the room with four pineapple shaped carvings symbolizing the tropics. There was a balcony, though it went unoccupied. An Israeli man in his mid-40s led the Conservative-style service and afterwards there was a small Oneg Shabbat in the back.  A couple of women served cake and soda, greeting the members and guests.

Over time I got to know some of the Barbadian Jews, the pride they felt towards the synagogue as well as the difficulty they had maintaining the community.  The structure was refurbished in 1987 on the site of a synagogue originally constructed in 1654 and rebuilt after it was destroyed by an 1831 hurricane. By the second decade of the twentieth century there were no longer Sephardim left on the island and the synagogue was closed, its religious articles sent to England in 1929. In the 1980s the post-colonial government wanted to use the property for a courthouse but Paul Altman, a descendant of the Polish Jews who had arrived on the island in the 1930s, led efforts to preserve and renovate it. Though the ancient artifacts were never returned from London, there are several Torahs in the Ark and the community is relieved that its future on the island is secure. The building has also become a major tourist attraction bolstered by the Barbados National Trust that gives lectures on Sephardic history and leads tours around its grounds. Yet, those who actually attend services know that fewer and fewer members show up. Intermarriage is considered a major problem and over the years it has broken up a few families. As a result, children are often sent overseas to boarding schools, usually in England or Canada, with the hope that they will find a Jewish spouse. But it does not always work because those raised on the islands sometimes feel more of a kinship with non-Jews in the Caribbean Diaspora and end up marrying outside the faith to the dismay of their parents.

The second island I visited was Curaçao in the western Caribbean.  I had just received an extension on my scholarship to attend a Caribbean Studies conference in Williamstad and it offered a wonderful opportunity to see the Sephardic synagogue there. Getting from Barbados to Curaçao in the Lesser Antilles islands was not easy and my “island hopping” by way of Trinidad took hours. But the trip was well worth it. Curaçao was so much different from the former British island I was living on. First of all, the climate was arid and instead of palm trees and green brush, there were cacti everywhere. The architecture of Williamstad, the capital, was colorful, lining an inlet crossed by a moveable pedestrian bridge. 

I went to the Sephardic synagogue, Congregation Mikvé Israel-Emanuel twice during my stay on the island. The first time I visited a museum that was in the courtyard of the synagogue.  It proudly displays religious artifacts that had been used by the community through the centuries. There is also a memorial to George Maduro, a young man who went to Holland to help fight the Nazis in WWII and was killed in Dachau near the end of the war. Molds of gravestones saved from a large cemetery affected by the acid rain from a nearby oil refinery line the outside walls. They feature some of the same carvings as the headstones in Barbados though one had a hand with four fingers split reminiscent of a blessing by a Cohen. In addition to the permanent collection, there was a recent exhibition, “Keys to My Heritage”, featuring keys that were saved by Sephardic Jews who fled the Inquisition.

A few days later I went back to the synagogue to attend Shabbat services. Walking into the stately synagogue, dating back to 1732, I was amazed by its mahogany interior, blue stained glass windows, and sand covered floor. I thought about the reasons given for the sand—to remind us of the years the Israelites spent wandering in the desert or the attempt to muffle the sounds of prayer in fear of the Inquisition. As in Barbados I looked around to see where I should sit and noticed that there were women seated alongside men. Joining them, I took a prayer book and began to follow along. Though the people around me spoke accented English and Dutch, the rabbi sounded as if he came from the United States and at one point during the Torah service read a prayer in broken Portuguese. I was surprised to hear the language that I had studied since high school. After nearly four hundred years the Caribbean Sephardim did not forget the idiom spoken by their ancestors in Iberia. After the services there was a celebration for the children who had just finished another year of Hebrew School. Taking turns, each child, both girls and boys, climbed to the reader’s desk and gave thanks to their teacher for another year of learning. I was impressed by the fact that there was a school catering to the next generation, though small in size.

Once the service was over, the congregation gathered in a community hall across the courtyard. There was a Kiddush and people talked to one another about the upcoming summer. I asked a few people some questions regarding the Mikvé Israel-Emanuel and learned that it was a combined congregation of two synagogues that had split during the mid 1860s when the Reform Movement was sweeping Judaism in Germany and the United States. Decreasing membership led the two to join together in the 1960s using a combination of traditions from both.  The Sephardic community went through another, more extreme change in 2000 when it became egalitarian allowing women to participate in services and sit alongside the men. Not all were in favor of this and some joined the Ashkenazi synagogue on Curaçao, Shaarei Tzedek.

My visit to Curaçao made me think of the difficult choices that Jews everywhere make to continue their traditions. Combining synagogues and deciding which prayers to keep or omit during a service was not easy. Nor was the decision to become egalitarian, a move that divided the community and is still an issue for discussion. Yet people still revere their heritage and invest in the next generation’s education. One of the major concerns they have is intermarriage and a majority of children study abroad in the Netherlands, England or the United States. As in Barbados, this does not ensure that they will marry Jewish, but at least they will have a greater opportunity to do so given that the community numbers around 115 households or 350 members.

Once I returned to Barbados, the last trip I planned in my Sephardic Caribbean sojourn was Jamaica. Having received an invitation to visit the island from Ainsley Henriques, a leader of the Jamaican Jewish Community who I had met at a conference in New York, I decided to go in July. Jamaica, like Curaçao fascinated me because I had heard that it still had a Sephardic “essence” to it as opposed to Barbados that had become completely Ashkenazi aside from its synagogue building. Going to Shabbat services in Kingston, however, showed me how the traditions could evolve with the influence of different colonizers and peoples. For example the synagogue itself, Shaare Shalom, is a large, white colonial style building with sand floors. People of various ethnicities worshiped together in a style that to me was reminiscent of the British Protestants who once ruled the island combined with what Mr. Henriques described as “Sephardic liturgy and music”. After services there was a Kiddush and I noticed that the attendees were somewhat older, though some were accompanied by grandchildren from abroad. As Mr. Henriques gave me a tour of the museum that also serves as a community center, I looked at photos of earlier community presidents from a different era. Now, only 200 Jews are affiliated with the United Congregation of Israelites though it is quite active for its size. There is a Hebrew School, Hillel Academy, as well as a home for the aged, synagogue sisterhood and B’nei B’rith. A new rabbi was hired in September 2011 and international groups help maintain the nearly 23 cemeteries around the island.  The United Congregations of Israelites is also committed to educating both visitors from abroad and local Jamaicans about the Jamaican Jewish heritage. Each year hundreds of school children visit the center to learn about the important contributions made by Jews to the island country.

My time on the islands ended in August and since then I have thought a great deal about my visits to Barbados, Curaçao and Jamaica.  I traced the remnants of the Sephardic communities from Portugal to Brazil to the islands imagining the difficulties they must have faced as they tried to survive. What I found was that there was something in common—something that Jews everywhere could learn from.  First of all, numbers matter. A community will have a difficult time surviving if its members leave en masse or completely assimilate into a host nation. In the case of Barbados, the entire Sephardic population had disappeared by 1929 either through intermarriage or emigration to other countries such as Canada and Great Britain. Curaçao and Jamaica have both seen their young go abroad and not return or marry non-Jews. Secondly, rifts between synagogues need to be put aside in order to stabilize the population. In the case of Curaçao, decreasing numbers forced the communities of Mikvé Israel and Emanuel to join together after a century-long split, though the decision to have egalitarian worship prompted some members to leave the community once again.  Jamaica also formed the United Congregations of Israelites. A third factor is the education of the young. Both Curaçao and Jamaica have Hebrew schools for their children and though they may leave when they reach high school or college age, their children will have a Jewish identity.

In conclusion, for Jewish communities to remain viable in the Diaspora, a minimum population committed to education and cohesiveness is essential, though outside factors such as politics and economics may ultimately affect the conduciveness of some locations.

“But We Are Guilty for Our Daughters”: Lessons Learned from the History of Jewish Girls’ Education in Germany and Eastern Europe in the Nineteenth Century

by Laura Shaw Frank

(Laura Shaw Frank is a doctoral student in Modern Jewish History at the University of Maryland, College Park.  She is also on the Judaics and Jewish History Faculties at the Beth Tfiloh Dahan Community High School in Baltimore, Maryland.  A former corporate litigator, Laura holds degrees from Columbia College and Columbia University School of Law.) 

            The nineteenth century witnessed radical transformation in the area of girls’ education. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, formal education for Jewish girls, whether in Jewish religious studies or secular studies, was virtually non-existent in both Germany and Eastern Europe. Over the following century, the situation saw major changes in both locales. By the mid-nineteenth century, formal education—both secular and religious—for Jewish girls was nearly universal in Germany. By the dawn of the twentieth century, significant numbers of Jewish girls in Eastern Europe were enrolled in modern schools and receiving secular, but not religious, educations. The process of transformation that occurred throughout the nineteenth century with respect to girls’ education was similar in certain ways in Central and Eastern Europe, but in other ways it was profoundly different. Although both German and Eastern European Jews began educating their daughters during this time, the point of time at which they began to do so, their reasons for doing so, the type of education they chose to give the girls, and the Jewish communal reaction to, and involvement with, their schooling differed significantly.  These differences are important, not simply as lessons in Jewish history, but as models that continue to play out in the way the Orthodox Jewish community addresses the changing status of girls and women in their surrounding societies. 

In Germany, where Jews were more accepted into German society and consequently adopted certain values and norms of that society, the Jewish communal attitude toward both reform of Judaism and gender roles in society led to the earlier development of Jewish education for girls. However, in Eastern Europe, where Jews were less integrated into society, and where the external society remained less modernized than that of Germany, Jews largely viewed religious Judaism as an alternative to modernity, not a system that could itself engage in a process of modernization. Due to this societal structure, girls’ education remained an enterprise focused almost entirely on secular studies, leaving Eastern European Jewish women largely lacking in Jewish knowledge. It was not until the era of the First World War that significant numbers of Eastern European Jewish girls began receiving a formal Jewish education.

            In the pre-modern era, the only type of formal education received by Jewish children throughout Europe was Jewish education. As Jews lived in corporate Jewish communities, virtually cut off from the societies that surrounded them, there was no need for secular studies.  Furthermore, the only children who received that education were male children. A prominent opinion in the Talmud stated that teaching a woman Torah was equivalent to teaching her tiflut, licentiousness. Thus, girls’ education consisted of learning at their mothers’ skirts the knowledge they needed to run a Jewish household. Boys, on the other hand, attended heder beginning at age three, and many continued on to study in yeshiva until their teenage years. The beginnings of the lifting of Jewish legal infirmities and the advent of the Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment in Germany, changed this reality.

Girls’ Education in Germany

            In response to the seventeenth-century secular Enlightenment, which brought values of reason, rationalism, and secularization to Western Europe, the Jewish community of Western Europe engaged in its own enlightenment, called the Haskalah.[1] The movement, born in the late seventeenth century, advocated integration with, and acculturation to, the surrounding gentile society, as well as the injection of rationalism and intellectualism to the Jewish religion. The father of the Haskalah, Moses Mendelssohn, believed that Judaism was a faith of reason, containing eternal truths. It should not be coercive and was not monolithic. Mendelssohn strongly identified with German culture and language. At the same time, he remained a loyal Jew who believed in the binding nature of Jewish law. The writings of Mendelssohn and other German maskilim, or proponents of Enlightenment ideas, set the stage in the German Jewish community for the religious reform movements of the nineteenth century by opening the philosophical possibility for change and modernization within the Jewish religion.

            Beginning in the early nineteenth century, the German states engaged in various degrees of emancipation of their Jewish populations. This improvement in the legal status of Jews led to their greater integration into surrounding society and a move away from traditional Jewish communal authority. Until this time, the authority of the rabbinate was hegemonic in the Jewish community. In a non-integrated Jewish community, the rabbinate controlled all legal decisions—both religious and secular—for the members of the Jewish community. Jewish religious courts issued rulings that were controlling in their communities. However, once emancipation took place, secular governments wanted secular state-run courts to dictate the law to all citizens of the state. The power of religious courts dropped dramatically and the rabbinate lost its ability to exert its authority over all members of the Jewish community. Rabbinic rulings were no longer binding on all Jews, but only on those Jews who chose to be bound by them. This drop in traditional rabbinic authority opened the door for religious reform.

            Hand-in-hand with emancipation and the weakening of Jewish communal bonds came assimilation and secularization of the Jewish population in Germany. Jews integrated into the surrounding society economically, culturally, and even socially. A drastic move away from traditional observance of Jewish law occurred.

            At the same time, the German states began engaging in varying degrees of oversight of the rabbinic profession. An 1812 Prussian law required rabbis to prove that they finished a three-year course in the study of philosophy. Rabbis were required to undergo examination to prove competency in philosophy. Yeshivot that would not comply with this requirement of secular study were forced to close. This change in rabbinic education, albeit imposed externally by the state, began a process of modernization of the rabbinate that continued throughout the nineteenth century. This oversight went together with a meteoric rise in the importance of university education in Germany. Humanistic liberal education, a result of the secular Enlightenment, had a powerful effect on the Jewish community, and Jews increasingly wanted their rabbinic leadership to have extensive secular education in addition to Jewish knowledge.

            The combination of these societal and political forces with Haskalah philosophy led to efforts toward religious reform in the Jewish community. Initial religious reforms were aesthetic and related to decorum, not ideological in nature. Reformers wanted to make Judaism more appealing to the assimilating masses, so they sought to make Jewish prayer services more dignified and formal to resemble the current fashions in German Protestant churches. The most common reforms included the introduction of sermons given in German on moral rather than legalistic topics, choirs to sing during synagogue services, requirements of formal attire for both clergy and congregants in synagogue, and the advent of confirmation ceremonies either replacing, or in addition to, bar mitzvah ceremonies. These religious reforms had an enormous impact on the development of Jewish girls’ religious education in Germany.

            As noted above, formal education for Jewish girls, whether secular or religious, was virtually non-existent in Germany prior to the late eighteenth century. As Mordechai Eliav describes in his seminal work on Jewish education in Germany in the era of Haskalah and Emancipation,[2] there is a record of a handful of hederim, or traditional Jewish schools, that admitted girls as well as a handful of hederim that were solely for girls, but these were few and far between. Such hederim taught Hebrew reading, how to pray, reading and translating of the Pentateuch into the vernacular and knowledge of key Jewish laws. A greater number of Jewish girls, albeit only those from wealthier backgrounds, received at least a rudimentary secular education beginning in the seventeenth century. Wealthy German Jews hired private tutors to teach their daughters languages, mathematics, and music, recognizing that such subjects would be important for the girls’ future role as mistresses of the home. Such education was even supported by some in the rabbinical establishment. Rabbi Yonah Lendsofer from Prague, for example, wrote that girls should be taught to read in German and that fathers should aim to marry their sons to women who were literate in German. At the same time, rabbis continued to object to the teaching of Torah to girls. Rabbi Y. Watzler, for example, instructed his followers not to teach girls Hebrew and Bible, but only to give them enough Jewish education so that they could read the prayerbook. He gave this ruling although he knew that girls were being taught German and foreign languages such as French.[3]

            Over the course of the eighteenth century, traditional Jewish education for girls, minimal to begin with, continued to diminish. With the advent of the Haskalah, the tendency of wealthy Jews to hire tutors to give their daughters a secular education grew in response to similar practices in the general society. Maskilim were supportive of the practice of giving girls a good secular education. Moses Mendelssohn’s daughters studied French and music. Initially, the maskilim did not recognize the danger of educating girls only in secular subjects. In 1786, certain maskilim even mentioned with special pride that Jewish girls could speak fluent and elegant German but did not know Hebrew. However, within a short number of years, the results of the maskilic emphasis on German and not Jewish education for girls became clear. Girls had little to no Jewish knowledge. They could not read the prayer book and were ignorant of their role in Judaism. As one maskil wrote in the pages of the Haskalah journal haMeasef, “Instead of dedicating their souls on Sabbaths and festivals to the words of a Living God, they read worthless books and salacious love stories in foreign languages which arouse their desires and corrupt their souls.”[4]

It was at this time, during the late eighteenth century, that discussion regarding the need for educational reform in the German Jewish community began. Education reform had been a topic of discussion in general German society since the mid-eighteenth century. The professionalization of teaching and the beginning of a theory of pedagogy influenced the development of a modernized schooling system, which included classes divided by age, standardized school books, and a demand to teach girls like boys. In response to changes in education in the surrounding society as well as dissatisfaction among Jewish youth with their education, maskilim argued that Jewish studies needed to be conveyed differently than they had traditionally been. They felt that, rather than the intensive Bible and Talmudic studies taking place in boys hederim and yeshivot, and rather than the solely secular studies enjoyed by only wealthy Jewish girls, Jewish children needed a modern Jewish education that would address the needs of the times. Such an education would be based upon a catechism-style curriculum, the way Christian children were taught. In addition, they recommended that Jewish education culminate in a confirmation ceremony similar to that used in Protestant churches.

In the last years of the eighteenth century and the first decade of the nineteenth century, schools began to be established by maskilim and reformers for the purpose of giving poor children in the Jewish community both a secular and a Jewish education.[5] One example of such a school was the consistorial school founded in Cassel in 1809. The consistory intended that the school, serving poor Jewish boys, provide a model for other elementary schools to be established throughout Westphalia. The Jewish education received by these boys was meant to transmit the “principles and obligations” of Judaism rather than to concentrate on text-based study.[6]

During this same period, confirmation ceremonies took hold and became accepted in the reform-minded sector of the Jewish community. The first known confirmation ceremony, which was only for boys, took place in 1803 in Dessau. The first confirmation ceremony to include girls took place in 1814 in Berlin.[7] From this point forward, confirmation ceremonies became more and more widespread in the Reform Jewish community of Germany. Such ceremonies more often than not included girls, and the classes in preparation for them thus also had to include girls. Thus, the adoption of the confirmation ceremony led to an increase in girls’ education in the German Jewish community.

Part and parcel of the discussion of the maskilim regarding educational reform was a discussion specifically about education for girls. One Berlin maskil, David Friedlander, described at length the neglect of religious or moral education for girls. He emphasized that in addition to the study of the German language, girls needed to have religious instruction in order to help prepare them for their responsibilities “as the not less important half of the human race.”[8] Maskilim began to establish schools to educate Jewish girls. Initially, as it was with boys, these schools were aimed at poor Jewish girls whose parents could not afford private tutoring in the home. The hope of the maskilim was that ultimately such schools would serve the daughters of the wealthy as well, but in most cases, the schools were unable to shake their reputation of being schools for the poor, so wealthy girls stayed away. The first such school was established in 1797 in Breslau. The girls in the school studied an integrated Jewish and secular curriculum, including catechism-style religious studies, Hebrew and German.

In the next twenty-five years, other similar girls’ schools were established in many German cities, including Hamburg, Dessau, Berlin, Koenigsberg, and Frankfurt. The curriculum of each of these schools varied slightly, but for the most part, they all included religious instruction in the catechism style, reading and writing in German, a small amount of Hebrew, mathematics, literature, and fine handiwork. Some of the schools included additional subjects as part of their curriculum, among which were Yiddish writing, prayer, Jewish history, and Bible. Schools that catered more to poorer girls had more of a focus on vocational training, while those that catered to the wealthy emphasized the arts and foreign languages, knowledge of which would be expected of an upper-class German young woman.

By the 1830s, it was widely accepted throughout the maskilic and Reform Jewish community in Germany that Jewish girls attended school, whether single-sex or coeducational. Girls’ education was not seen as significantly less important than that of boys. By the mid-nineteenth century, education for girls from this sector of the Jewish community was virtually universal in Germany. Most girls were enrolled in Jewish community schools that gave them a basic, if somewhat rudimentary Jewish education in addition to a secular education.[9] However, a significant sector of the German Jewish community still had not grappled with the issue of girls’ education—the Orthodox community.

Orthodox Judaism did not exist as a movement prior to the birth of Reform. Due to the widespread changes brought upon the Jewish community by Reform thinkers, traditional-minded Jews felt that the traditional observance of Judaism was threatened. They reacted to this threat by engaging in several innovations, including leaving the unified Jewish community to create separate Orthodox institutions and adopting the strictest standards with respect to religious commandments and customs. These innovations were meant to create an environment that existed separate and apart from the Reform Jewish community and the surrounding society in order to keep modernity at bay and tradition vibrant. A key innovation embraced by the Orthodox community in terms of impact on girls’ education was its heightened suspicion of modern culture, including secular education and schooling for girls. Orthodox girls did not participate in the Reformers’ Jewish schools that were common in Germany by the mid-nineteenth century. Rather, they continued to be tutored at home, if they received any education at all.

Even Orthodoxy, however, was not monolithic in its beliefs and practices. A reform-minded stream of Orthodoxy later called Neo-Orthodoxy was founded by Rabbi Samson Rafael Hirsch in the mid-nineteenth century. Hirsch, the rabbi of the Orthodox community of Frankfurt am Main, espoused a philosophy of Torah im derekh erets, Torah study together with participation in the modern world.  One of Hirsch’s most significant legacies was his influence on girls’ education within the Orthodox sphere. Indeed, as Mordechai Breuer, a scholar of the Orthodox movement in Germany wrote, “The most significant and far-reaching success of Orthodox education proved to be the complete reorganization of education for girls.”[10]

Girls’ education was a charged topic for Orthodox Jews. As reformers built a system of elementary and secondary schools for girls that taught both Judaic and secular studies, Orthodox Jews were fearful. Reform leaders had made it clear that the reasoning behind such schools was not only the education of women, but also women’s social equality and the eradication of the denial of their rights under Jewish law. These concepts were dangerous to the Orthodox mindset. However, opposing girls’ religious education, Orthodox leaders realized, was potentially even more dangerous. They noticed that the lack of Jewish education led girls to immerse themselves in the secular world and its general education and culture. This led to their resenting Judaism and possibly assimilating out of the Jewish community. Thus, Orthodoxy had to create a rubric for Jewish girls’ education in order to keep their girls Jewishly affiliated. Without being given answers to their existential questions about Judaism, simple adherence to the faith of their parents would fall by the wayside. At the same time, changes in Orthodox synagogue practices in response to Reform also heightened the need for girls’ education. The sermon in the vernacular that became widespread in Neo-Orthodox synagogues at this time led to increased synagogue attendance on the part of women. Once they were able to understand and enjoy what the rabbi spoke about, they wanted the education to fill out their knowledge.

Thus, rather than opposing girls’ education, German Orthodox Jews embraced it, but reshaped it to suit their specific needs. Orthodox thinkers quickly began to portray girls’ education as having “intrinsic religious value,” and as being critical to the transmission of tradition to the next generation.[11] Adopting from the surrounding society’s bourgeois cult of domesticity, Hirsch argued that women were the more moral sex, and had a critical position as mistress of the home, responsible for their children’s loyalty to Jewish tradition.[12] Der Israelit, the Orthodox community’s newspaper, cried out that “Our mothers have to save Judaism as in biblical times.” Even the developing world of Orthodox fiction addressed the issue of girls’ education. Sara Hirsch Guggenheim, the daughter of Samson Rafael Hirsch, published a number of stories in the Orthodox journal Jeschurun, in which a woman’s lack of Jewish education led to her downfall.[13] Such a widespread philosophy led to significant improvement in Orthodox girls’ education.

Hirsch’s first foray into creating a modern school for the education of Orthodox Jewish girls came with the founding of his elementary school in Frankfurt in 1853. Not meant only for poor children, this school was meant to compete with the prestigious Philanthropin School. Hirsch wanted to put the ideology of education and culture into a school that would also have a strong Jewish component. The school admitted girls from the beginning, albeit in separate classes from the boys. Hirsch’s son, Mendel Hirsch went on to create a Hirschian secondary school in Frankfurt. Mendel Hirsch believed that religious instruction should be as similar as possible for boys and girls. He theorized that “doing” was more important than “knowing” with respect to both sexes’ relationship to Judaism. He thus focused the curriculum in his secondary school on education regarding religious duties. This led to greater equality of education between the sexes by lessening the Talmud instruction received by the boys, and increasing the Bible instruction received by the girls.[14] At the founding of this school, there were not sufficient pupils to hold separate sex classes, so boys and girls studied in a coeducational environment, a particularly unusual circumstance for Orthodox society of the time. However, as soon as the student body was sufficiently large, the boys and girls were separated.[15]

Other Orthodox schools for girls were established in Hamburg and Mainz in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Additionally, supplementary educational models were created in certain places to provide both boys and girls with a Jewish education separate and apart from their general schooling. One such school was founded by the Neo-Orthodox rabbi Azriel Hildesheimer in Berlin in 1869. Hildesheimer found that 25 percent of Jewish children in Berlin were not receiving any Jewish education whatsoever. He began a co-ed supplementary school in his synagogue, Congregation Adass-Isroel, with separate classes for boys and girls. Hildesheimer felt very strongly about girls’ education, stating that the prevailing notion that superficial religious knowledge was sufficient for Jewish girls was wrong and unacceptable. Like Hirsch, he also believed that the Jewish woman was the central figure in the Jewish home, and she thus needed a deep knowledge of Judaism in order to fulfill her role. The girls’ curriculum in Hildesheimer’s school took into account differences in women’s and men’s roles and responsibilities in Orthodox Jewish society. Girls had added responsibilities that boys did not, including helping out with chores at home and attending to their music and arts education. Thus, girls only had two-thirds of the weekly study hours of boys. However, even in their more limited curricular time, girls studied Hebrew language, Bible, and Jewish law and customs. Beginning in the 1870–1871 academic year, they also studied Ethics of the Fathers, which was a portion of the Oral Law—an area of Jewish study generally forbidden to women. Like the Hirsches, Hildesheimer’s objectives were to prepare girls for occupying a central position in the Jewish household and for imbuing their homes with a “true religious spirit.”[16]

Orthodox education of girls in Germany had enormous impact on the Orthodox community. Female graduates of Hirschian-style schools were well-educated both secularly and Jewishly, and because of their knowledge of Judaism, were often stricter in religious observance than their own mothers. The German Orthodox community was proud of its accomplishments with respect to girls’ education, especially when those accomplishments were laid side-by-side with the situation of girls’ education in Eastern Europe. “As superior as the average Eastern European Jewish man was to his Western European Jewish acquaintance in the knowledge of Torah, so the Orthodox woman, educated in Germany, often outdid her acquaintance from Eastern Europe.”[17]

Girls’ Education in Eastern Europe

            The structure of the Eastern European Jewish community and the way the community interacted with the surrounding gentile society had a deep impact on the way girls’ education developed there. Unlike Western Europe, Eastern Europe did not emancipate its Jews until the twentieth century. The greater legal and political disabilities suffered by the Jewish community of Eastern Europe led to its being more separate and traditional in nature than its counterpart in Germany. Although individual Jews could, and often did, assimilate into secular society, the community as a whole remained wedded to traditional observance. As historian Paula Hyman points out, “In the Russian Empire of the late nineteenth century, the process of assimilation can best be described as secularization that avoided both denationalization and religious reform.”[18]

The option for religious reform did not exist to any significant degree in the Eastern European context due to a confluence of circumstances. Since the Jewish community was not integrated into the general surrounding society, the external society was unable to significantly influence Jewish religious practices as occurred in Germany. Additionally, since the external society itself did not engage in religious reform, whatever impact it might have had on the Jewish community did not occur. As Hyman argues, whereas Jews in Western Europe assimilated just as Jews in Eastern Europe did, “the importance assigned religious sentiment in the dominant bourgeois cultures of Western societies encouraged the fashioning of modern versions of Judaism that officially submerged Jewish ethnicity.” In Eastern Europe, there was no pressure as there was in Western Europe “to reform their religion and assert an identity based upon it alone.”[19] Thus, when the Haskalah occurred in Eastern Europe, decades later than it did in Germany, it did not initiate a process of religious reform; rather, it encouraged a process of Jewish assimilation.[20]

Without religious reform, the education of Jewish girls ended up in a strange position. The Eastern European Jewish community continued to abide by traditional prohibitions against teaching girls Torah, thus leaving them almost entirely without Jewish education. On the other hand, the influence of secular society on individual Jews led to increased secular education for Jewish girls. The dichotomy of the secularly well-educated and Jewishly ignorant woman proved to be a difficult one for both the women and the Jewish community to integrate.

            It is important to note at the outset, that as historian Shaul Stampfer has argued, there is a widely held misconception that Eastern European Jewish women were entirely lacking in Jewish knowledge. Although widespread formal schooling in Jewish subjects did not exist for girls in Eastern Europe until the twentieth century, Stampfer cogently points out that many girls did receive some Jewish education through a variety of means. First of all, hederim for girls did exist in small numbers. One such heder was located in Tyszowce and the girls were taught by an elderly widow called “Binele the rebetzin.” The girls in the Tyszowce girls’ heder studied the siddur, reading and writing Yiddish, arithmetic, writing addresses in Russian (useful for the girls’ future role as breadwinners for their families), and sewing. Additionally, some girls, usually those from a wealthier background, were taught at home, either by their mothers or by a learned woman tutor. Sometimes, girls would attend a boys’ heder, although once basic reading skills were mastered, boys moved on to higher Jewish education and girls dropped out. Some girls learned to read Yiddish on their own and obtained Jewish knowledge through the reading of Yiddish religious texts such as Tzeina U’Reina, a Yiddish collection of Bible stories and commentary for women.[21]

            Stampfer acknowledges that both men’s method of learning (in a communally sanctioned school setting) and the content of what they learned (Jewish religious texts in Hebrew) were more prestigious in Eastern European Jewish culture than how and what women learned. He argues, however, that this system was actually appropriate for the realities of this society. Eastern European Jewish women typically worked outside the home in addition to having a high birthrate and a correspondingly high amount of housework. If they were expected by societal norms to engage in study of difficult Hebrew texts, the situation would have simply maximized frustration for them. As Stampfer argues, “Lack of ‘school education’ was part of a system that functioned to condition women to accept their role in the family and society with a minimum of conflict—just as the fact that most men were unlearned (and knew it!) was one of the ways that led them to accept communal authority.”[22]

            Historian Iris Parush, in her groundbreaking work “Reading Jewish Women,” is critical of Stampfer’s conclusions. She points out that Stampfer proposes what she calls a “functionalist and harmonicist” account to explain the differences in education of boys and girls in Eastern Europe that allowed women to “identify with their gender roles and reconcile themselves to their marginality.” Parush argues that this argument is problematic because there are many ways that a society could structure itself to keep frustration among its members low. Stampfer’s argument, albeit unintentionally, allows justification of an educational structure that was discriminatory toward and exclusionary of women. Additionally, Parush argues that Stampfer attributes “paternalistic motives” to those who created and upheld the educational system that evidence concern about women’s welfare and frustration levels. “In a roundabout way,” she argues, such an argument “shuts out consideration of other possibilities, less harmonistic or generous, which may have been behind the discrimination of women in the educational system.” Lastly, Parush points out that many women remained illiterate in Eastern European Jewish society. Had societal leaders really wanted to prevent women’s frustration, they would have ensured that all Jewish girls were minimally literate in Yiddish so as to enable them to read Tzeina U’Reina and other such texts. Moreover, even if all women had been literate in Yiddish, this would not have solved the inherent contradiction in their lives—that they were expected to negotiate the public sphere in their work lives, but excluded from the public sphere in their religious lives.[23]

            Although there is significant dissent regarding the degree of Jewish education obtained by girls in Eastern Europe in the nineteenth century, historians do agree that improvement in Eastern European Jewish girls’ education occurred during this period. Daughters of wealthy Jews studied foreign languages in their homes with nannies or private tutors. Girls of lesser means began to attend secular schools such as those founded in Warsaw in 1818 and Wilno in 1826. By the 1860s increasing numbers of girls were studying in modern schools, both public and private, that were founded across Eastern Europe, especially in large cities. Furthermore, rising marriage ages left wealthy girls with idle time in teenage years to devote to education and the surrounding society’s increasing commitment to girls’ education influenced higher numbers of Jewish girls to pursue schooling. By the end of the nineteenth century, the number of girls enrolled in formal modern schools was still small, but it was significant. An 1899 survey of such schools in the Tsarist Empire found 193 girls’ schools, 68 coeducational schools (most of which had separate classes for boys and girls) and 383 boys’ schools. There were a total of 50,773 students enrolled in these schools according to the study, and approximately one-third of those students were female. However, although girls were finally receiving formal education in significant numbers, the education they were receiving was entirely secular. The curriculum in these modern schools was devoid of Jewish content; girls were educated in Russian and French as well as in the arts and music. Indeed, although boys’ modern schools were supervised by the Jewish community and rabbinical establishment and had to allocate hours of classroom time each week to Jewish studies, girls’ schools were totally secular and unsupervised by Jewish communal authorities.[24]

            Parush argues that the absence of Jewish education for girls in Eastern Europe was due to a marginalization of women in a male-dominant society. The rabbinical establishment cared about two things: first, that boys receive a good Torah education, and second, that girls be prevented from receiving any Torah education. Thus, as long as girls were not transgressing the prohibition against their study of Torah, their education was of no interest to the rabbis. They could pursue high levels of secular studies without approbation or even concern. Parush concludes:

Whereas men’s education reflected the manifest efforts of the rabbinical leaders to exercise absolute controls and hermetically seal the society from foreign influences, the education of women transpired through gaps in this system of controls, in the region left abandoned by the oversight apparatus in consequence of women’s inferiority.[25]

This policy of neglect of the content of girls’ education had significant ramifications both for the girls themselves and for Jewish society in Eastern Europe. Certainly, all historians agree that the lack of formal Jewish education placed side-by-side with increasingly intense secular education led to a secularizing of Jewish girls. Historians differ as to how this process of secularization affected the Jewish community. Parush argues that it led to Jewish women bringing enlightened ideas into the Jewish community and thus acting as the conduits for Haskalah and modern ideals in their world.[26] However, others have a different take. Paula Hyman and Rachel Manekin argue that the secularization of Jewish girls led to a fundamental disconnect between them and their communities—a disconnect that often had devastating consequences for the girls, their families, and the Jewish community as a whole. Some Jewish girls assimilated into the surrounding society and were lost to the Jewish community; many others went so far as to convert to Christianity. Even those girls who remained within the boundaries of the Jewish community could not be counted upon to transmit Jewish tradition effectively to the next generation.[27]

In a few different articles, Manekin explores multiple aspects of the phenomenon of Jewish girls’ conversion to Christianity in Galicia in the nineteenth century and shows the Jewish communal debate that arose over this problem. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a significant number of Jewish women in western Galicia converted to Christianity. Indeed, during one fifteen-year period beginning in 1887, over 300 women converted in Krakow alone, representing 68 percent of the Jewish converts during that time period. Interestingly, almost all of these women converted at the convent of the Felician Sisters.[28]

Because the laws of the Habsburg Empire required that converts submit certain personal data to a municipal clerk, a socio-economic profile exists for many of these converts. According to this data, the vast majority of the converts were Jewish young women between the ages of 15 and 20 who came from families of middle-class merchants and shopkeepers. The women’s signatures on the forms they filled out show that they were familiar with Polish writing. Through analysis of this data in conjunction with historical accounts of individual conversions as well as depictions of such conversions in Jewish literature and the Jewish press, Manekin concludes that the lack of Jewish education for girls coupled with their more extensive secular education played a significant role in the conversion phenomenon:

These young women were not provided with the means by which they could preserve their Jewish identity in their confrontation with Polish society. The dissonance between life at home and in the outside world became greater as they grew older, with the conflicts becoming deeper and more pronounced. The climax would come when the parents expected them to marry a young man from the ‘old world,’ with whom they shared no language.[29]

This moment of facing a life with a man with whom such a young woman had nothing in common except that they were both born Jewish and had parents committed to the continuity of the Jewish people was often the breaking point that led the young woman to escape to the convent to convert.[30]

             The Jewish community of Galicia had some limited recognition of the problems caused by the failure to give its daughters a Jewish education. Indeed, the issue came up quite a bit on the Jewish communal radar screen in the early years of the twentieth century. In 1902, the subject was addressed at length in the pages of the religious newspaper Kol Mahzikei HaDat. In an article entitled “But We Are Guilty for Our Daughters,” a writer bemoaned the seduction of Jewish girls by secular society due to their lack of Jewish education. In a play on words of a famous rabbinic quotation, he wrote, “Ten measures of external education descended upon the daughters of Israel in our land; nine of them were taken by the city of Krakow.”[31] The article discussed the failure of the marriages of such girls to yeshiva boys and the fact that some of them ended up leaving the Jewish community entirely. It was not a coincidence, the author pointed out, that girls from strict Hassidic families would leave their families and convert to Christianity. Hassidic fathers would pay a fine rather than send their sons to secular public schools, but they were willing to send their daughters to Catholic schools. He recommended the institution of Jewish girls’ schools in Galicia to solve this terrible problem. In a harsh moment of reflection, the author noted that girls’ Jewish education in Galicia is the equivalent to what had existed in Germany an entire century before.[32]

            The issue of girls’ Jewish education in Galicia also arose at the Congress of Rabbis in Krakow in 1903. One of the attendees, Rabbi Landau, rose to speak and bemoaned the fact that even among the “God fearing,” girls receive the finest Western education and remain woefully ignorant about Judaism. He spoke of the rash of conversions and noted that even those young women who do not leave the community, “their hearts are not among the Jewish people anymore.” Such girls would not be capable of raising the next generation of Jewish children. Rabbi Landau even spoke of the worst casualties of the failure of Jewish girls’ education in Galicia—those girls who turned to a life of prostitution. The rabbis attending the conference requested that he cease speaking of this painful subject in order to prevent the desecration of the name of the Jewish people.[33]

            Rabbi Landau put aside the issue of white slavery in the Jewish community, but returned during the conference to the issue of repairing girls’ education. He argued that the only solution to the fundamental lack of knowledge and failure to observe commandments among even the most Orthodox of girls was to teach them Torah. When one of the lay leaders present at the conference suggested the establishment of a Talmud Torah school to educate girls in prayer and laws of the Jewish home, one rabbi responded, “God forbid we should educate girls in Torah!” Although other suggestions were presented for the improvement of girls’ Jewish education in Galicia, all were tabled for a later date. This, Manekin argues, was the nail in the coffin for bringing change to Jewish girls’ education in Galicia.[34]

            Ultimately, the solution to the dilemma about girls education in Galicia came from a young woman in Krakow. Sarah Schenirer, with the support of the rebbe of the Hassidic sect of Belz, created the first Bais Yaakov school dedicated to the Jewish education of Orthodox girls in 1917. This school became the model for Orthodox girls’ education and was duplicated throughout the world. Until Sarah Schenirer’s efforts to create Bais Yaakov, however, the idea of girls’ Torah education was an innovation that Eastern European Orthodox society simply could not stomach, even when faced with the devastation that the lack of this education caused. This stands in direct contrast to the German Orthodox model of integration of modern and Jewish ideals resulting in the far earlier and more extensive Jewish education for its girls.

            The radically different development of the Jewish communities of Germany and Eastern Europe during the nineteenth century period of modernization had a powerful impact on girls’ education in each society. German Jewish society, due to more successful integration with external German society, adopted some of the ideologies and practices of that society, which enabled the development of formal Jewish education for girls. Eastern European Jewish society, on the other hand, remained excluded from western bourgeois ideas and was therefore unable to integrate modern philosophies of religion and education into their worldview. German Jews adapted and modernized their Judaism while Eastern European Jews reacted to modernization by either “circling the wagons” in defense of tradition or assimilating to the society around them. The inability of Eastern European Jewish society to engage in a process of religious reform ultimately sounded the death knell for the development of girls’ education, a failure which had lasting consequences for their community. The German Jewish community solved the problem of girls’ education by the third quarter of the eighteenth century; the Eastern European community did not solve it until the First World War. In the intervening decades, numerous Jewish girls were lost to Judaism, as they were prevented from having a stake in the future of the Jewish people due to a rabbinic refusal to educate them.

Conclusions for Today

            The story of the development of Jewish girls’ education in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Germany and Eastern Europe has particular resonance for the Modern Orthodox community today. The battle for Jewish education for Orthodox girls is thankfully long over, particularly in the Modern Orthodox community, where women have the opportunity to learn all Jewish texts at the highest of levels. However, unlike their male rabbinic counterparts, up until recently, Orthodox women received no standard and universally accepted title to certify their learning. Such a title is far from mere semantics. For a woman who wishes to devote her life to Jewish communal service, the title of “rabbi” carries along with it communal respect, job opportunities, and significantly higher salaries. Furthermore, in a world in which women are able to access the highest levels of academic and professional credentialing, the absence of a title for Orthodox women leaders was particularly glaring. Despite all of this, when the issue of women’s ordination was raised in Orthodox circles, mainstream rabbinic leadership called it an impossibility and a dangerous break with tradition. Given that women’s achievement at the very highest levels did not yield any professional titles or status, it is unsurprising that many of the brightest and most talented young Orthodox women chose careers outside the Orthodox community.

            But the picture is not all grim. In the past decade, a select few synagogues have appointed women as “congregational interns” or “madrikhot ruhaniot” (spiritual advisors), giving women positions essentially comparable to rabbinical student interns or assistant rabbis in Modern Orthodox synagogues. Such women are able to give sermons, engage in pastoral counseling, and teach Torah in their synagogues. However, no more than a handful of Orthodox synagogues have created such a position. The mainstream centrist Orthodox world continues to view such positions as inappropriate. Furthermore, many critics have pointed out that whereas a “rabbinic intern” is training to become a rabbi, a “congregational intern” is not training for any permanent position at all. Even a madrikha ruhanit could not hope to lead an Orthodox congregation on her own.  

In the Spring of this year, however, a transformation occurred in Modern Orthodoxy, when Rabbi Avi Weiss announced that he planned to establish a school to train Maharats, women leaders in halakhic, spiritual, and Torah issues. Like Rabbi Shimshon Rafael Hirsch in nineteenth century Germany, the rabbinic leadership behind this new initiative understands that we can incorporate certain ideas of modernity without breaking halakha or destroying our traditional values. And, like the German Orthodox leadership of the nineteenth century, this leadership knows that Orthodoxy must make changes in its own way and on its own timetable in order for such changes to take root among both the rabbis and the Orthodox laity. As our history has shown us, the path we now take will have massive consequences both for individual Orthodox Jews and for the very future of Orthodox Judaism.

When exploring certain topics in the Talmud a discussion can be opened by use of a particular verse from which a principle that underlies an entire subject is learned. For example

…
Rabbi Shmuel bar Naḥmani introduced this passage with an introduction from here… (Megillah 10b). 

This approach came immediately to mind while reading Rabbi Hayyim Angel’s new book, Keys To The Palace: Exploring the Reglioius Value of Reading Tanakh from Kodesh Press. This work consists of twenty essays from Rabbi Angel on a variety of topics ranging from academic Bible study, to the afterlife, to perspectives on several of the Psalms. What cuts across and unites the work is Rabbi Angel’s mastery of Tanakh and his courageous pursuit of pshat. 

Perhaps I should back up a bit to provide some context. Having been a product of more right-leaning Yeshivot, for years I had lamented my lack of having a good grasp of nach. Fortunately, I recently stumbled across what I would term a revolution in the teaching and learning of Neviim and Ketuvim in a serious way, for adults. One of the pillars at the center of this movement is Rabbi Angel. 

The current work provides the reader with an entree into this world by offering numerous and variegated keys throughout these essays, which have been culled from a number of other works or scholarly publications, into parts of Nach and matters germane to academic Jewish studies today. Each chapter stands on its own, though several reference common topics, such as David’s taking of Batsheva.   

Each essay serves as a key to the topic at hand. In a few short pages Rabbi Angel poses powerful questions, covers the responses of many of the traditional and non-traditional sources, and provides a helpful summary and concise endnotes. The essays are too brief to be exhaustive of the topic, but instead whet the readers curiosity to learn and explore further.  

In his even-handed presentation of how to approach and incorporate academic and non-Jewish sources into the traditional study of Tanakh, Rabbi Angel exposes the reader to some of the towering and influential work that has been generated in Israel and, outside of the scholarly community, may not be well known to the English speaking audience.  

Perhaps as an inversion of Maimonides aphorism to accept the truth from whatever source it comes, Rabbi Angel rejects unconvincing solutions, no matter who proffers them. The author provides many viewpoints on a question and discusses the relative strengths and weakness so that the reader has a clear understanding of where the truth lies.  In his search for pshat and the most reasonable explanation the author presents Tanakh unvarnished,  and in so doing challenges the reader to think deeply, appreciate nuance, and continue to seek the “keys to encountering God in his Palace”.

(Rabbi Hayyim Angel's book can be purchased through the online store at jewishideas.org)

Are there any Jews in Ghana?' I was asked this question numerous times after my return from Sub-SaharanAfrica in January, 2008. I had participated in a service trip with the AmericanJewish World Service (AJWS) through which 25 rabbinical students from acrossthe denominational spectrum, together with group leaders and ascholar-in-residence (Rabbi Rolando Matalon of Congregation Bnei Jeshurun inNew York,) had visited a village in Ghana to work with the local community andto learn about the challenges facing people there. We mixed cement, carriedwater, learned the local language, visited a herbal doctor, trekked through ajungle, met people of all ages and occupations, spoke to doctors, visited arefugee camp and had discussions for hours on end. But we did not meet anyJews. There are Jews in Ghana, but hundreds of miles from Gbi-Atabu, our host village inthe North Eastern region of Ghana. I would love to meet them one day but the short durationof the trip meant that we did not have time to visit them on this occasion.

'Arethere any Jews in Ghana?'What is the assumption behind this question? I was on a trip, to help and tolearn, with rabbinical students. It was led by the American Jewish WorldService. For many, an obvious inference is that our hosts must have beenJewish. At first, this conclusion was baffling to me, or even offensive. Justbecause I am Jewish does not mean that I am only interested in other Jews. AndAJWS, which is dedicated to the goal of alleviating poverty, hunger and diseasein the developing world, is Jewish because it is run, funded and supportedlargely by Jews who believe in the Jewish principle of pursuing justice for allpeople, whatever their religion. The assumption that I could only have been inGhana to visit the Jewish community pushed the same buttons in me as another questionI am also sometimes asked: 'How many people live in your building?', by whichthe (inevitably Orthodox) questioner means 'Are there any Jews in yourbuilding,' but has overlooked the fact that there are people in the world whoare not Jewish.There is,however an argument behind these assumptions that does deserve to be addressed.They represent a serious and challenging set of questions about charity andpublic policy in the Orthodox Jewish community in the United States and elsewhere. What are the concerns of Orthodox Jews? Athome, there is anxiety over the cost of kosher food and Jewish education,supporting the Jewish poor and elderly. Abroad there is the matter of Israel and its relationship with other countries, and the plightof vulnerable Jews the world over. And there is ongoing fear of anti-Semitismand unease over inter-marriage. That is a lot to deal with. So where does Ghana (or El Salvador, Thailand, or any other developing country) fit into this picture?Once it has dealt with its own issues, can the Orthodox Jewish community reallyspare the financial or organizational resources to dedicate to infant mortalityacross the globe? Do we care more about someone dying in Vietnam than someone being shelled in Sderot? And isn't the Jewishcommunity small enough that it has to look after itself first and foremost? Weare limited by our size and besides, there are plenty of non-Jews in the worldwho can deal with the problems of other non-Jews.Gbi-Atabuis a village of a few hundred people. Its inhabitants live in smallsingle-story houses with dirt floors, no running water and intermittentelectricity. Some recent technology has made its way into the village - somevillagers have cell phones, for example - but it has not made any significant differenceto the way of life there. Water has to be drawn daily from the river or a well.Goats and chickens roam freely along the dirt tracks. Trash is burnt, notcollected. People wash themselves outdoors behind partitions made out of cinderblocks. Employment is scarce and the village has been in the process ofconstructing a small community building for several years as it is dependent onforeign aid and the physical labor of the community itself (and visitingrabbinical students.)Despitethese challenging circumstances, people seem happy, at least at first sight.Children, though often shoeless, laugh and play in the fields. Familystructures are very tightly knit which creates a sense of belonging. There arefrequent sessions of drumming, dancing and singing, often in connection withthe local church. Indeed, my initial impression was that despite the physicalhardship of everyday life, the people of Gbi-Atabu are free of the anxietiesand stresses of the typical New Yorker. Perhaps they are even happier than weare.Butthis impression was short lived. A number of factors contribute to placing thetypical life in Gbi-Atabu in perpetual crisis. The public health situation inthe entire region is dismal. The local hospital has three doctors treating 50,000people (that number of people in the USA would on average be served by 275 doctors) and even thesefacilities are difficult to access because transport to the hospital is oftenmore than people can afford. (As a result, the local 'clinic' treats anythingfrom headaches - a symptom of hypertension which is very common there - tobroken bones, often with herbs and a hacksaw on a dirt floor in the proximityof free roaming farm animals.) The water supply carries a number of lethaldiseases that have been eradicated in many other parts of the world such aspolio, meningitis and TB. Most of the population is unable to afford mosquitonets, leaving them vulnerable to yellow fever and malaria. The food supply isseverely deficient in calories and both children and adults are perpetuallymalnourished. Many suffer from respiratory problems resulting from the cloudsof red dust carried by the dry season winds from the Sahara Desert. Women especially suffer from spinal problems as a resultof carrying water in huge containers on their heads, often for miles every day.And then there is HIV-AIDS which has infected 7.5% of the population ofSub-Saharan Africa (compared with 0.6% in the USA). In the absence of easy access to affordable drugs andthe option of caesarian births which help to avoid infants receiving theinfections from their mothers (there is one obstetrician in all of Ghana), HIV-AIDS often passes onto children through childbirth.The average life expectancy in the region is about 57 years (in the US it is about 77). Children die daily from diseases thatcould be cured with cheap, easily administered drugs if only there was theinfrastructure to distribute them.Otherdeficiencies in the local strated and pessimistic about their future. One ofthe villagers that I met, Mamata, has made her way through high school thanksto the recent innovation of free schooling throughout Ghana. She is intelligent and energetic and she wants to be anurse. But here is where the road stops for this 18-year-old woman. She lacksthe funds to buy the textbooks she needs to complete her high school exams. Herextended family depends on her labor to support them. Transportation to the nearestuniversity is also unaffordable. So she remains unemployed, drawing water,cooking and washing for her family. She is frustrated at her lack of options.Another child that I met, Eric, was orphaned at an early age and has come tolive with Mamata's family in the absence of anyone else who could support him.On the day I met him he was upbeat and optimistic and told me of his hopes tobecome a doctor. But one evening he spent hours with another member of ourgroup. He had been drinking - alcoholism is a common side effect of thefrustrations in the community - and cried about his lack of future prospects,his loneliness and his poverty. He literally begged to be taken to America.This isonly a glimpse into the endemic crisis that Ghanaians need to endure. But whatdoes this have to do with us, Orthodox Jews in wealthier countries? There arealso people in crisis in the Bronx, Sderot and elsewhere who are closer to us by virtue ofgeographical proximity or their being Jewish. As I am frequently asked when Iteach or speak about Ghana, surely we need to prioritize? I first need to make clearthat I do not advocate an approach to tzedaka or social action that requires atotal dedication to one cause only. 'One should only study what he or she findsfulfilling' and the same thing goes for tzedaka. It is important that everyindividual identify the goals and causes that speak to him or her. But whatabout the community as a whole? Considering the multiple concerns of the Jewishcommunity that I outlined at the beginning of this article, some feel that theplight of the developing world, however severe, simply is not a cause for Jews.It is this argument that I resist. In today's world, Jews have a moralobligation to concern themselves with vulnerable people who are outside theirreligious community. And beyond the moral obligation, an orientation outward,as well as inward, is ultimately essential for the wellbeing of the Jewishcommunity itself in the long-term.On asimple level, it is a fallacy that because our community has other concerns,the developing world lies outside of our sphere of obligation. Even if we couldidentify the single most important issue, it should not monopolize communityfunds or other energies. That is why governments fund theaters and parks eventhough hospitals and schools are short of money. It is a mistake often made inthe Orthodox community that because we have pressing concerns of our own, thereis no room in our over-anxious minds and no further we can thrust our handsinto over-stretched pockets in the service of other needs. This is a dangerousline of thinking. Notwithstanding the pragmatic necessity to prioritize in theallocation of resources, a moral obligation is a moral obligation irrespectiveof other obligations that may compete with it.I alsowant to go beyond this logical and ethical argument and to point out that evenwithin traditional schemes of hierarchies of charitable priorities, it is notat all obvious that causes outside of the Jewish community come last. One keyTalmudic text that outlines a hierarchy is found in Bava Metzia 71a where RavYosef considers who should be lent money first:

'A Jew and a non-Jew – a Jew has preference; the poor or therich – the poor takes precedence; yourpoor [i.e. your relatives] and the [general] poor of your town — your poor comefirst; the poor of your city and the poor of another town — the poor of yourown town take priority.'

RavYosef's text ostensibly supports the conventional view of the hierarchy ofobligation. Jews come first, gentiles second. Relatives first, strangerssecond, and so on. And yet, his statement also implicitly challenges this samehierarchy, not by what is said but by what is not. Who comes first if you facea choice between a Gentile in your town and a Jew in another town? A rich localJew and a poor foreign Gentile? By maintaining a silence on most of thepermutations of these factors, Rav Yosef invites us to question thecomprehensiveness of his system.Thesame challenge is implicit in the formulation of R Yosef Karo in the section ofhis Shulhan Arukh dedicated to charity:

'Relatives take priority over everyone else...and the poorof one's own household over the poor of one's city, the poor of one's city overthe poor of another city, and the inhabitants of the Land of Israel over thosewho live outside it.' (Yoreh Deah 251:3)

Againwe are invited to explore the gaps in the hierarchy. This challenge is taken upby a number of poskim who explore the ambiguities in the approach of a stricthierarchy of priorities. R Moshe Sofer, for example, maintains that a verygreat need overrides the hierarchy altogether (see Hatam Sofer on Yoreh Deah234). Someone in immediate danger of death demands our help irrespective ofwhether he/she is our relative or not. It could certainly be argued that theplight of many in the developing world is more urgent than any other issue inthe world today. Quantitatively (in terms of the vast number of peopleaffected) and qualitatively (the alternative to intervention is nothing shortof death on a massive scale) the situation in Congo, Sudan, Thailand, ElSalvador and many other places dwarfs the urgency of other demands for aid.Although I am not advocating the priority of one charity over others for everyindividual, I do believe that this question of urgency should at least beseriously considered in our own decisions about charitable priorities.Anothergreat posek, R Yehiel Michel Epstein also questions the hierarchy:

'There is something about this that is very difficult for mebecause if we understand these words literally – that some groups take priorityover others – that implies that there is no requirement to give to groups loweron the hierarchy. And it is well known that every wealthy person has many poor relatives(and all the more so every poor person) so it will happen that a poor personwithout any rich relatives will die of hunger. And how could this possibly be?So it seems clear to me that the correct interpretation is that everyone,whether rich or poor, must also give to poor people who are not relatives, andgive more to those who are relatives. And the same would apply to all the othergroups on the hierarchy.' (Arukh ha-Shulhan Yoreh Deah 151:4)

Ifeveryone takes care only of their own, points out R Epstein, many people willgo without. His insight is evinced by a cursory look at the distribution ofworldwide wealth. Massive disparities in global income mean that 85% of theworld's wealth is held by the wealthiest 10%. Almost all of this 10% (about 90%of it) lives in the US, Europe and in high-income areas of Asia andOceana. If everyone takes care of their own first and foremost, countries like Ghana with very limited resources and a halting nationalinfrastructure, will get very little. And this is what happens today. Mamata'srelatives cannot help her to finish school and neither can her religiouscommunity or her government. If she does not receive attention from outside ofthe conventional charitable hierarchies, she will not receive any attention atall.Theseinsights, then, are challenges to the hierarchy even on its own terms. Anothercomplication in is that in today's world the categories within the hierarchyhave also become very ambiguous. At the time when the R Karo was writing, Jewslived in self-contained autonomous communities within larger Gentile societies.The Jewish community (like Christian and Muslim communities) supported theirown poor who almost always came from nearby. Although there were business andsocial relations with people outside the Jewish community, nobody expected theJews to provide support, charitable or otherwise, to those living outside ofthe community, and the Jews did not expect to be supported either. Besides, itwas unusual for Jews to encounter people outside of their community, andcertainly outside of their own towns, who needed their assistance.Allaspects of this picture have changed today. In the modern world, neither Jewsnor any other group lives in a self-contained community. The state builds roadsand utilities which are used by Jews. It contributes to Jewish charities andhelps to support the Jewish poor through social security and (one would hope)national health insurance. And not only are Jews in a strong mutualrelationship with the countries in which they live; we are also integrallylinked with the social and economic realities in the developing world. Most ofthe clothes that we wear and the toys we buy for our children have been made bysome of the 3 billion people who live on less than $2 a day. The Jewishcommunity (like all people) today is socially and economically enmeshed withthe rest of the world to a far greater degree than in the middle ages. This isnot to say that Jewish communal ties are not important - I of course believe theyare - nor that it is inappropriate for us to feel closer to those in the Jewishcommunity than to others. It is, however, wrongheaded to continue to constructa hierarchy of charitable priorities as if nothing has changed in the past 500years.Andthat is not all. We now know more than ever before about the state ofvulnerable human beings all over the world. We participate in service trips,see live pictures, read statistics and meet immigrants. The fact that from ourown houses we can see live pictures of people all around the globe seriouslychallenges a paradigm that is based on a difference between the local and thedistant needy. Indeed, the philosopher Peter Singer makes a powerful case thatin today's world our obligation to someone dying in Africa is nodifferent from our obligation to someone dying right in front of us, becausewith toady's communications, everyone is essentially right in front of us. Thenearly 30,000 children who die every day because of poverty may have lived inremote villages we have never been to; but they also breathe their last in ourown homes.Furthermore,the status of Jews in today's world is different than at any other period.Notwithstanding anti-Semitism, attacks on Israel and all our other concerns, Jews in America are, on the whole, wealthier, more secure and moreinfluential than ever before. This position brings with it a responsibility touse our wealth and our influence for the good of all. And this is not anexhortation only for the very wealthy. In the democracy we live under, lobbyingand organized campaigns can really make a difference. We have theresponsibility not just to give money to charity but also to volunteer our timeand to contact our representatives to voice our concern for the world's poor.I havetried to argue on halakhic, moral and pragmatic grounds that as a community weneed to take very seriously our responsibility to those outside of ourgeographical and religious communities. But I want to make an even morefundamental argument, which is that doing so is not a diversion from ourcommunal goals, however necessary, but a fulfillment of them. Judaism has avery fine balance between particularism and universalism. Our mission as apeople is, literally, to save the world. God promised Abraham that 'all thefamilies on earth will be blessed through you.' But this promise was also ademand. We are charged to bring about blessing for all other peoples. To dothis, we need to be a strongly constituted people ourselves. And by the sametoken we become a strong people by reasserting our divine mission. We are to bea 'mamlekhet kohanim' - a nation which is a conduit of God's message into theworld. Both sides of this description are vital. To achieve our divine missionwe need to be a people, just as we need to be a people in order to fulfill ourdivine mission.All ofthis means that we treat with the utmost importance our responsibility to thephysical and spiritual wellbeing of our own community. But that is not all; thegoal of our community is to go outside of itself, to improve and perfect theworld. And this goal is not external to the existence of the community, butconstitutive of it. We simply are not the Jewish people properly conceived ifwe cannot see beyond our own noses.

This is true from a very pragmatic point of view. As I learnt serving in Ghana with Jews from many other denominations, worldwide social justice is a cause that can strengthen the bonds within the wider Jewish community. Jews who cannot pray together can still do justice together. Thissolidarity across the Jewish community will help us all, and in turn help us todo more good in the wider world. Furthermore, the formulation a strong visionof the divine Jewish mission in the world that goes beyond self-preservation isan essential step in the strengthening of the Orthodox community itself. 'To continue your tradition', or 'because of the Holocaust' are not compellingarguments to those considering marrying out of the Jewish community. But a very compelling argument can be: 'Because part of being Jewish is to bring blessing to all people in the world'. Our dedication to those outside of our owncommunity as well as those within it will result not in a distraction from ou community but a strengthening of it. 'Are there Jews in Ghana?' There certainly are, and I feel a special bond withthem. But there are also many others who need my attention in Ghana and beyond and I have the obligation to dedicate myself to them. Not despite being, but because I am, a Jew.

One of the enduring themes of my religious life has been the reconciliation of my Jewish and American cultural identities. As the daughter of a Modern Orthodox rabbi who taught me to look critically at the ways in which religion can be variously used and practiced, I became very aware of the pushes and pulls of different religious factions and how they have informed by beliefs. As a student of science, I gained insight into the importance of empirical knowledge and learned to look critically at the claims of universality and objectivity of research theories. My own framework for understanding differences in religious philosophy has developed over time, and centers around my personal struggles with the resolution of the cultural tension between my experience as an American—steeped in pervasive scientific values based on rational knowledge—and my experience as a Jew—with a set of mores and beliefs about the world that are strongly held but grounded within a framework that seems incompatible with the uncertainty that intellectual analysis brings.

The center of the internal struggle to integrate these seemingly incompatible aspects of myself crystallizes around my understanding of the observer effect. In science, the term observer effect refers to changes that the act of observing will make on the phenomenon being observed. Thus, every experiment is necessarily influenced by the presence of the investigator, and no researcher can be factored out of an experimental system. An elaboration of this discovery has led to the idea that as humans we inevitably try to impose order on a fundamentally chaotic universe; thus the way we structure our studies is implicitly biased and colored by human experience. This radical principle revolutionized the way we think about science and has led to a paradigm shift in the way we conceptualize and study other fields as well, comprising a vital component of postmodern scholarship.

Postmodern ideas now permeate almost every scholarly enterprise, from literature and history to psychology and sociology. Serious scholarship in many fields requires an open acknowledgment of the perspectives that provide the lens through which ideas are given meaning. The intellectual ramifications of the observer effect pervade twentieth-century intellectual thought and are an implicit part of a Western cultural sensibility. Despite its importance to our scholarship, this paradigm has not seriously influenced the way large segments of the Modern Orthodox world think about or treat religion and religious study. This disparity, as I see it, is one of the fundamental problems facing Modern Orthodoxy today. Since Judaism is taught in a factual way, while at the same time uncertainty permeates every other faction of our life, religion can become encapsulated or split off as a result.

In my various experiences growing up and living in different Jewish communities, I have found that Orthodox Jewish thought is often taught and learned in a categorical way that does not take into account differing viewpoints. As students, we are not taught to think critically about religious material or our religious leadership but must learn to do so on our own, outside of traditional educational systems. Religion is taught unequivocally, in a way that leaves out the doubts and subtleties each teacher necessarily brings to the material he or she teaches.

Under the current mainstream yeshiva system, pertinent information is selected and taught by instructors whose students are expected to grasp and apply it without significant evaluation of its merits. Teachers' formulations and interpretations are often implicitly presented and accepted as objective truths to be assimilated by their students. In this educational system, many learning experiences are characterized by acquiescence to the expertise of the teacher-as-authority. This method of indoctrination makes sense for young children as the stability and structure of an educational institution provide a sense of security, granting refuge from an ambiguous understanding of ideas. Yeshiva schooling constitutes a safe environment that provides a secure, though embryonic foundation for the understanding of religious knowledge.

The problem arises when this culture of indoctrination continues into our experiences as adult members of Orthodox communities. The dominant contemporary explanations of Jewish theology are generally given over in a way that precludes open debate or critical assessment of merit. In my experience, many religious leaders tend to be more concerned with making a point than with openly approaching others as an interpreter with a culturally bound perspective; this reluctance to address uncertainty extends to common religious discourse as well.

For many who do not acknowledge their participation in American culture, this does not pose a problem. They are content in being handed over objective knowledge, secure in the truth of their belief. But for those who choose to engage in Western culture and concomitantly adopt its cultural ethos, the struggle to integrate their American and Jewish sides is more difficult. It is not necessarily the content of the religious teachings that makes this challenging, but the way that knowledge is confused with or presented as objective truth. The prevailing methods for the dissemination of Jewish religious thought within communities are definitive and conclusive, as though the injection of any doubt or uncertainty into the discussion could lead the child or layperson astray. This trend can be alienating to those whose belief is influenced by American culture, as it leaves little space for a personal relationship with religious material. This can make it difficult to assimilate meaningful interpretations of religious information—and in effect widens the cultural divide between religious and secular selves.

The first time this conflict came starkly into my awareness was in my freshman year of college, in a humanities class covering a scholarly reading of the Old Testament. I had never before come into contact with this material—and its effects were gut-wrenching. I responded to what felt like an assault on my beliefs by holding on to my religious understanding of the Bible, defending it at all costs. As I listened to myself debate my classmates on the merits of these theories, I realized that I was approaching the issue from within a cultural perspective that was different from many of my fellow students. My only previous experience with the Bible had occurred within the framework of religious study, with an eye for one objective truth.

In this new, intellectual environment, my religious views seemed undeveloped; my beliefs were fundamental to my way of thinking but had never been challenged by the lens of historical scholarship. My previous yeshiva training had formed a secure basis for my religious beliefs but had not prepared me for impingement by the general prevailing cultural standards for critical thought. Because I could not locate my belief within a context, I was not equipped to effectively engage in intellectual discourse on the topic.

Years have passed since that shock of self-awareness, and yet I still find myself struggling with the same issues.  How is it possible to incorporate a fundamental religious belief system with a world based in critical rationality? I believe that the first step in bridging this divide would start with a growing awareness of the subjective nature of our beliefs. We may posit the existence of a set of objective religious beliefs, but as human beings interpreting these truths, our knowledge is necessarily bounded, even flawed. Even objective truths based in religious faith must be filtered through our subjectivity. The observer effect has taught us that because we are a part of the system we are studying, there is no way of standing apart, separate from our cultural milieu.

Acknowledging the biases with which we enter religious debate is never an easy task. Religion is the scaffolding on which our society is built and has provided a vital function for humanity. It forms the underpinnings for Western civilization and the guidelines by which many of us live our lives. Perhaps the centrality of Judaism’s position in our lives makes this struggle such a poignant one. It feels dangerous to subject our faith to critical examination as it may lead to a cynical deconstruction of our traditional Jewish beliefs. On the other hand, denying that our environment informs our perspective closes us off from seeing reality.

Each person must engage in his or her own quest for navigating meaning in religious tradition and modernity. For me, this has involved the reconciliation of the dueling sensibilities of my American and Jewish identities. The observer effect has helped me to locate my religious beliefs within a context. When viewed through a prism of critical rationality, Judaism becomes more complex, and is cast with ambiguity and nuance. And although it is decidedly more multifaceted and difficult, I am at peace with the uncertainty of my perspective, as it feels more compatible with the overarching environment in which I live. As humans our knowledge is necessarily limited; in our fallibility, we may take comfort in having others join in our struggle with uncertainty.

Give Grateful Credit

Book Review

Spiritual Activism: A Jewish Guide to Leadership and Repairing the World by Rabbi Avraham Weiss.

The spiritual activist is the person whose activism is both inspired by the relationship with God and in turn inspires others to expand their relationship with God. No rabbi or Jew has been a more consistent and greater spiritual activist in the last five decades than Rabbi Avi Weiss. Luckily for us, Rabbi Weiss took a break from his many duties to author a masterpiece, Spiritual Activism: A Jewish Guide to Leadership and Repairing the World (Jewish Lights Publishing, 2008).

Rabbi Weiss writes of the difficulty of being an activist as well as a communal rabbi. The activist is by nature a tenacious fighter, wedded to ideals and horrified at compromise. The activist calls people out when they are wrong and even embarrasses those leaders who are corrupt and shameful. The rabbinate, as practiced by Rabbi Weiss (and I had the opportunity to witness this first hand when serving as the Assistant Rabbi of Rabbi Weiss’s congregation, the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale), loves everyone regardless of their baggage and with great difficulty attempts to judge no one.

This paradox often causes most rabbis to avoid the realm of activism in favor of focusing on their congregational needs. But Rabbi Weiss rejects that approach; not because he craves the excitement of activism or seeks the limelight, but rather because he feels that it is the responsibility of the rabbi to be the voice of moral conscience in the community.

A major tenet of Rabbi Weiss’s activism is to follow an injustice that is not being addressed by the establishment organizations of the Jewish community. He writes that he is not anti-establishment, but non-establishment. Because he is not a full-time professional activist, in the sense that he has two other full-time jobs, Rabbi Weiss focuses his activism on areas where others are not speaking out.

In this sense, Rabbi Weiss has often become the lodestar and conscience for the Jewish community. Rabbi Weiss’s book recounts the many times he spoke out on an issue of great importance to the Jewish community only to be criticized by the Jewish establishment. In retrospect, we can all be grateful for Rabbi Weiss’s prescience.

For example, Rabbi Weiss spoke out on the struggle for Soviet Jewry before the Jewish community organizations recognized this great human struggle. Rabbi Weiss recounts how he fought against leaders of the Jewish community for the passage of the Jackson-Vannik amendment, the critical piece of legislation that was responsible for the freeing of Soviet Jewry.

He tells of confronting the Israeli government about the need to rescue the Ethiopian Jewish community only to be dismissed disrespectfully. Today the world recognizes Israel’s rescue of Ethiopian Jewry as an action by Israel that was a light unto the nations.

When the muckety-mucks of the America Jewish community were giving honor to President Carlos Menem of Argentina, Rabbi Weiss protested and was carried face-first down the steps of the posh, Pierre Hotel. As he was being carried out by police officers, some guests managed to put down their cocktails long enough to shout at Rabbi Weiss, “You are dishonoring the Jewish people.” Ten years later The New York Times ran a story on the front page proving that Menem was involved in the July 1994 bombing of the Jewish Community Center in Argentina.

There are countless stories like these in Rabbi Weiss’s book and countless others that he leaves out. Such is the life of the activist. He speaks out because he feels it is the right thing to do, even though it is very often not the popular thing to do. Indeed, almost by definition, Rabbi Weiss will usually only speak out when it is the unpopular thing to do, since if it is popular, he will feel that others are already making the case.

All this is not to say that Rabbi Weiss does not appreciate the defense organizations of the Jewish community. He recognizes that they play an important role in the symphony of the Jewish community. His goal is parallel to theirs. His goal is to inspire other individuals in the community to assume responsibility and rise up for the Jewish community.

Rabbi Weiss tells the stories of individuals or “students and simple housewives” such as Avital Sharansky, who have become some of the greatest activists in Jewish history. This is the ultimate teaching of Rabbi Weiss: The great activists speak out because they feel a religious need to do so. The great activists do not shirk responsibility but rather embrace it.

But even the greatest activists need a guide, so Rabbi Weiss offers a “street manual” to people who seek to become activists. In this respect, he religiously follows the principles of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He absolutely rejects violence by activists, even when being physically attacked. He demands absolute integrity in dealing with the media and even in dealing with opponents. Furthermore, he reminds us that no matter how pitched the battle, we can never forget that the people we are protesting against are human beings.

Some people think that the life of an activist is glorious. After all, they will often see the activist on television or in the newspaper or meeting with elected officials. I have had the great honor of standing next to Rabbi Weiss on many occasions during his moments of activism. For every successful rally of thousands of people there are literally tens, if not hundreds of rallies, with just a few committed souls. Spiritual activism is not for those who wish to hobnob with the “big shots” of the world. It is a tough, never-ending struggle for the soul of the community. It is often thankless and physically and mentally consuming.

The publication of Rabbi Weiss’s book is an opportunity for all of us to step back and be grateful for what he has given our community. There is, however, one important omission in this book that is necessary to correct.

Rabbi Weiss notes that in March 2002, on short notice and with little advertising, he and a small group of like-minded rabbis organized a rally for Israel in New York City that was attended by more than 12,000 people. At this rally, Rabbi Weiss called for a much larger rally to take place the next week in Washington, D.C. He said that the Jewish establishment should organize such a rally—and if they do not do it, then we will do it ourselves.

Within twenty-four hours, the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations met and decided that it would hold a rally in Washington the very next week. The ensuing rally was attended by well over a hundred thousand people and will forever be remembered as one of the bright spots in American Jewish history.

Unfortunately, the organizers of the Washington rally decided to completely freeze out Rabbi Weiss and his rabbinic partners from the rally. These rabbis attended but were given no credit. Such is to be expected. Such is the role of the activist.

But in this one instance, The New York Jewish Week decided to write an editorial giving credit where credit is due. Here is the passage as it appears on page 122 of Rabbi Weiss’s book:

Kol Hakavod (give grateful credit) … for not only spearheading the highly successful rally outside the United Nations on Sunday, but for no doubt convincing the Jewish establishment—some would say shaming them into acknowledging—that passion and commitment go farther than endless planning when it comes to staging an impressive pro-Israel event.

The rabbis have staged several rallies for Israel since June, but Sunday’s was by far the largest, attracting at least 10,000 people—some say many more—to voice their support for Israel in its time of crisis…. By contrast, the organized Jewish community of federations and national organizations has been slow to respond to the crisis in Israel, now in its 18^th month, at least in terms of public displays of support.

In his great modesty Rabbi Weiss omits four key words from this paragraph. The original editorial in The Jewish Week stated, “Kol Hakavod (give grateful credit) to Rabbi Avi Weiss….” Indeed!

“It’s All Relative: The Contemporary Orthodox Jewish Family in America”

by Chaim I. Waxman

(Chaim I. Waxman is Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Jewish Studies, Rutgers University, and lives in Jerusalem. He specializes in the sociological study of Jews and Judaism, including, America’s Jews, Orthodox Jewry, Jewish identity and identification, Israeli society and culture, and Zionism. He is the author of numerous books and articles.)

I recently received an inquiry for an interview from a journalist who was writing a story about the Orthodox Jewish family. The interviewer assumed that Jews “used to live together in one place for generations in previous generations,” and was interested in “what changed and why.” Although I should be used to it by now, I am regularly struck both by the prevalent assumptions about the idyllic nature of the Jewish family in Eastern Europe and by the assumption that the imagined Eastern European Jewish family is the model of the “authentic” Jewish family.

All too frequently, discussions of “the Jewish family” are based on the assumption that there is one single model of that family and it is typically that of the stereotypical Jewish family in Eastern Europe. Actually, there is no one single model of the Jewish family. From as early as 598 b.c.e., Jews have been and continue to be “a nation spread out and separated among the nations.” In every society that they have dwelled, Jews acculturated to one degree or another and internalized cultural patterns from the larger society. That is a major source of the differences in the traditions of Ashkenazim, Sephardim, Jews from North Africa, Asia, and so forth, and between those of the various groups among all of them. Hence, the Polish Jewish family was different from the German Jewish family, the German was different from the Turkish, the Turkish from the Moroccan, and so forth. (This raises an interesting and important question that cannot be discussed here, as to whether one can speak of “Jewish culture” and even “Jewish identity” as if there are such things when there are actually different Jewish cultures and different Jewish identities.)

            One more point about many discussions of the Jewish family, is the tendency toward nostalgia, to romanticize “good old days” that, in many ways, as the late Prof. Nathan Goldberg would consistently remind his students at Yeshiva College, were actually not so good at all. Nor were most Jewish families there like the stereotypical large, extended family in which people married young, were cared for by parents and in-laws while they had many children, and all of the extended-family members lived near each other and shared warmth and bliss.

            Shaul Stampfer, for example, rejects the notion that the Eastern European family was patriarchal. As he convincingly demonstrates, women had active and independent roles in economic matters; very many if not most wives worked to help support their families; and wives made the most important daily decisions for the family, including what household items should be purchased; disciplining children; and finding spouses for the children (“How Jewish Society Adapted to Change in Male/Female Relationships in 19th / Early 20th Century Eastern Europe,” pp. 65–84 in Rivkah Blau, ed., Gender Relationships in Marriage and Out, Orthodox Forum 17 New York: Yeshiva University Press, 2007). He likewise shows that the age of marriage among Eastern European Jews rose during the nineteenth century, and rose even more significantly during the inter-war years of the twentieth century (“Marital Patterns in Interwar Poland” pp. 173–197 in Yisrael Gutman, ed., The Jews of Poland Between Two World Wars, Hanover, NH: University Press of New England/Brandeis University Press, 1989). If that is not enough, evidence also indicates that there was a high level of divorce in Eastern Europe traditional Jewish society.

That having been said, I turn now to the American Jewish family, in general, and the American Orthodox Jewish family, in particular. (I omit any discussion of the frequency and impact of intermarriage, as that topic is beyond the scope of this article.) Until recently, evidence indicated that, although Jewish men and women in the United States married somewhat later than non-Jews, this was not a reflection of a declining significance of marriage and family for Jews. Jews were more likely than non-Jews to eventually marry, less likely to divorce and remain divorced and, at almost every age, a lower percentage of Jews than non-Jews were either previously married or widowed. The most recent evidence questions whether the Jewish values of marriage and family remain as strong as they were. According to the 2008 Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life/U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, the gaps between Jews and Christian white Americans have narrowed and, in some cases, are non-existent. Thus, on the one hand, the percentage of people who are divorced/separated among Jews (9 percent) is lower than that of Mainline Protestants (12 percent), Evangelical Protestants (13 percent), and Catholics (10 percent). On the other hand, the percentage of married people among Jews is the same as for Mainline Protestants (57 percent), but lower than Catholics (58 percent) and Evangelicals (59 percent), and the rate of never-married among Jews (19 percent) is higher than that Mainline Protestants (15 percent) and Evangelical Protestants (14 percent) as well as Catholics (17 percent).

            At least since the nineteenth century, Jews in the United States have had lower birth rates than those of non-Jews. Jews marry later, want and expect fewer children, have the most favorable attitudes toward contraception, and have been its best practitioners. Data from various studies show that U.S. Jewish families today have fewer children than the minimum necessary to maintain group size, that is, zero population growth.

            That being said, it must be stressed that, primarily because they are such a small percentage of the U.S. population, most surveys of American Jews do not distinguish between the various wings or denominations within American Judaism and the American Jewish population, and there are almost certainly significant differences among them on all of these issues and more. Indeed, the Pew Religious Landscape Survey did indicate differences between Reform and Conservative Jews, and their data indicated a higher rate of marriage for Reform (61 percent) than for Conservative (53 percent) Jews, but higher divorced/separated rates for Reform (11 percent) than for Conservative (7 percent) Jews.

We have very limited data generally for Orthodox Jews in the United States because, among others, their numbers are so small, relatively, and many of them are reluctant to reply to surveys and interviews. The U.S. census is unhelpful in this respect because it has no religion question and, thus, we can’t even get data for American Jews in general from it, let alone for the Orthodox segment. The 2001 National Jewish Population Survey did contain a reasonable sample of Orthodox Jews, and those data indicate a significantly higher marriage rate, a lower divorced/separated rate, as well as a lower single/never married rate than those of Conservative and Reform Jews. Since Orthodox Jews marry at a higher rate and do so at a younger age, it is not surprising that they are more likely that the non-Orthodox to have children age 17 or younger living in the household. Over one-third (34 percent) of Orthodox Jews have a child living in the household, which is more than double the rate of the non-Orthodox. In terms of future denominational trends, it is especially notable that the Orthodox are considerably younger than the total American Jewish population; about 40 percent is comprised of children, as compared to 20 percent for the non-Orthodox. More than half (52 percent) of all American Orthodox Jews are younger than 45 years of age, as compared to 44 percent for the total American Jewish population. All of these figures reflect a continued strong emphasis on marriage and family formation among the Orthodox. Unquestionably, there has been an increase in divorce among the Orthodox. However, the absence of divorce, especially in previous decades, was not necessarily an indication of a stable and healthy marriage. In any event, the Orthodox divorce rate is still significantly lower than that of the non-Orthodox.

Needless to say, not all Orthodox Jews have strong marriage and family values, nor do they manifest them in the same way or even positively. We do not have hard data on spouse abuse for either the broader American Jewish community or for the Orthodox community, Modern or Hareidi and, in her study of responses to it in Hareidi communities, Roberta Rosenberg Farber (“The Programmatic Response of the Ultra-Orthodox American Jewish Community to Wife Abuse: Social Change Within a Traditional Religious Community,” Contemporary Jewry 26, 2006, pp. 114–157) reports of professionals who believe that spouse abuse is as common among Jews as it is in the general population. Likewise, with respect to sexual abuse within families, Michelle Friedman reported of her study of over 400 observant Orthodox women in the United States and Israel (“On Intimacy, Love, Kedushah and Sexuality: Reflections on the 5th Annual YCT Rabbinical School/Community Yom Iyyun in Conjunction with Congregation Ohab Zedek,” Milin Havivin 2, 2006, p. 187), “Sadly, we found the same statistics for sexual molestation and abuse of girls and teens as in the secular population.” Neither Farber and Friedman nor any other studies suggest that there has been an increase in either spousal or sexual abuse of minors within families among Orthodox Jews. What is significant here is that there is likewise no evidence of any decrease in either of these horrible sins.

            Be that as it may, there have clearly been American social and cultural changes, including technological changes, that have affected the Orthodox Jewish approach to family and family behavior. To begin with, sex is much more public than it was just several decades ago. Not only are words and scenes that were previously taboo on television now normal prime-time fare; the Internet has broken all barriers. There are no longer any taboos, and it is increasingly difficult not to be bombarded with pornography. Whatever one thinks of the freedoms of the press, the airwaves, and the web, they impact on religious behavior, especially for young adults. Some parents refuse to allow television and some refuse to allow the Internet into the home, while others implement various net filters, but none of these is fool-proof and nobody is immune. Of course, none of us was ever totally immune, and the Orthodox community is struggling to adapt as best as it can. It appears that the only ones who are talking publicly about the problem are those who have decided to completely ban the new technologies, but not too many appear to be following them.

One social pattern that is apparent, especially among the Modern Orthodox, is a growing tendency of later marriage. There has been a noticeable growth of singles communities such as the one in the Katamon neighborhood of Jerusalem (which is the subject of the popular Israeli television series, Serugim) and on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. These communities raise challenges even as they resolve others. Some twenty years ago, Calvin Goldscheider pointed to the rising Orthodox divorce rate and suggested that the primary challenge is the potential religious alienation of the divorced individuals that results from their not being in families. Likewise, he pointed to the growing pattern of later marriage as challenging in that it results in increasing numbers of Jews who are rejected due to their unmarried status and become religiously alienated (Calvin Goldscheider, “Family Changes and the Challenge to American Orthodoxy: The Implications of Recent Social Science Data,” Tradition 23:1 (Summer 1987), pp. 71–81). The new Orthodox singles communities undoubtedly serve as a buffer against the religious alienation upon which Goldscheider focused, but on the other hand they may be making it increasingly acceptable and less inconvenient to remain single longer. The growth of these singles communities potentially challenges the Orthodox growth rate, and, assuming that there has been no significant change in libido patterns—I know of no studies indicating any such change—challenges ritual observance with respect to a number of sexual matters.

Abstinence from all sexual activity prior to marriage has been a Jewish religious norm for at least the past 2,000 years, and presumably, it was always difficult. Anyone who says otherwise has forgotten what it was like to be a teenager. Also, as was indicated, late marriage is not new, nor are some of the religious challenges it presents. What has changed is the frequency and openness of male-female interaction and, perhaps even more significant, the religious, ethnic, and sexual statuses of the males and females in the interaction. Their increased social and cultural equality often removes social-psychological barriers that prevented the development of intimate interaction. Today, those barriers are no longer supported externally and, thus, there appear to have been changes even among the Orthodox.

During the 1960s, Rabbi Irving (“Yitz”) Greenberg was a very popular professor at Yeshiva College, and in an interview that appeared in the college newspaper, The Commentator, on April 28, 1966, he made some remarks that were interpreted by some as his advocating “a new value system and corresponding new halakhot about sex” for non-married as well as married men and women. This caused somewhat of a storm and, in the May 12^th issue, Greenberg wrote a lengthy letter to the editor in which he adamantly disavowed any such notion, clarified his views, and apologized for being insufficiently clear and precise in the interview. Despite his clarification, he was taken to task by Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein in his lengthy letter to The Commentator, in the June 2^nd issue. (I thank Menachem Butler for providing me with copies of those letters. This episode and the much broader Greenberg-Lichtenstein debates are astutely recounted and analyzed in David Singer, “Debating Modern Orthodoxy at Yeshiva College: The Greenberg–Lichtenstein Exchange of 1966,” Modern Judaism 26:2 (May 2006), pp. 113–126.)

In their mid-1980s study of varieties of Orthodox Jews, sociologists Samuel C. Heilman and Steven M. Cohen (Cosmopolitans and Parochials: Modern Orthodox Jews in America, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989, pp. 173–179) found, across the range of Orthodox people they studied, “younger respondents consistently reported more indulgent attitudes toward the practice of premarital sex than their older counterparts”; that almost a quarter of those they labeled as “centrists” (not to be confused with what scholars at Yeshiva University term “centrist”; see David Berger’s highly critical review of the Heilman-Cohen book, Modern Judaism 11:2, (May 1991), pp. 261–272) do not disapprove of sexual relations between couples who are dating seriously, and as many as 40 percent do not disapprove for those who are engaged to be married; and that among younger centrists, only about half disapproved sexual relations for those dating seriously, and less than half disapproved for engaged couples. Although these figures reflect attitudes, it is hard to imagine that there was a highly significant gap between attitudes and behavior. The popularity of the expression “tefilin date” also apparently reflected a reality of otherwise observant Orthodox Jews who spent the night with their dates but prayed wearing tefilin the following morning.

Most recently, Zvi Zohar (“Zugiyut al-pi haHalakha lelo hupa veKidushin,” Akdamot 17 (Shevat 5767), pp. 11–33) argued, based on the opinions of Nahmanides (1194–1270), Rabbi Abraham ben David (Rabad, 1125–1198), and Rabbi Shelomo ben Aderet (Rashba, 1235–1310), as well Rabbi Jacob Emden (1697–1776) that there is no prohibition against sexual relations without marriage so long as the relationship is not illicit, that is, it is consensual and monogamous, and the woman observes the laws of niddah and mikvah. His thesis was strongly rejected (in the same issue of Akdamot) by Rabbi Yehuda Herzl Henkin, Shemuel Ariel, Mikhal Tikochinsky, and Rachel Shprecher Frankel. Despite their rejections of its halakhic legitimacy, sexual relations among the unmarried was apparently perceived to be significant enough of a phenomenon in the Orthodox and traditional communities that the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi, Yonah Metzger, issued a ban on allowing unmarried women to use mikvaot. The effectiveness of that ban is anyone’s guess.

Relatively recent technological developments have had significant impact on Jewish family life in that for the first time in history human beings can conveniently and effectively control reproduction. This has had major impact on attitudes toward sexual behavior, making it less threatening to the unmarried and those married who do not currently want to bear children. It also has fostered new medical techniques that enable previously infertile couples to bear children. With all of these developments, however, come a myriad of halakhic issues. One of the first and most controversial addressing the problem of infertility was that of artificial insemination.

Beginning in the late 1950s, concerning different types of artificial insemination—one in which the donor was Jewish, one in which he was not, and the third in which the husband was the donor—Rabbi Moshe Feinstein issued lenient rulings and was staunchly attacked by numerous opponents, including Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum, the Satmar Rebbe. Since then, a body of literature has emerged not only on matters of fertility and halakha (see, for example, Richard V. Grazi, Overcoming Infertility: A Guide for Jewish Couples. New Milford, CT: Toby Press, 2005, and all of the sources to which he refers), but also on the much broader question of the role of the posek, including the extent to which his own perspectives and sentiments, as well as social and psychological forces, have a place in the process of halakhic determination. With respect to the specific issue at hand, in his Masters thesis analyzing Rabbi Feinstein’s method of ruling in a series questions related to childbearing (“Rabbi Moshe Feinstein’s Rulings Regarding Questions of Fertility, Contraception, and Abortion,” Talmud Department, Bar Ilan University, 5766 [Hebrew]), Baruch Finkelstein argues that R. Moshe’s lenient rulings on artificial insemination “were motivated by his compassion for the infertile woman.” Going further, in an address at a conference at the Ramban Synagogue in the Katamon neighborhood of Jerusalem, on the occasion of a the publication of a Hebrew translation of Richard Grazi’s book (Horut nikhsephet: Etgar haPiryon beMabat rephui veHilkhati. Jerusalem: Magid, 2009), Rabbi Benny Lau emphasized the impact of hashkafa on halakha, and he lauded the declaration by the rabbinic head of a leading fertility institute that, “There is no halakhic infertility,” and “We will go the entire route with this couple in order to resolve the problem,” as a leadership declaration. By contrast, in a review essay of the Grazi volume (“Technology in the Service of the First Mitzvah,” Ḥakirah, the Flatbush Journal of Jewish Law and Thought 6 (Summer 2008), pp. 259–267), Gideon Weitzman rejects the notion that compassion figured in to R. Moshe’s pesak halakha. He asserts that, for R. Moshe “and all other posekim,” it is halakha that influences their approach to ethical problems, rather than vice versa, and the halakhic decision is based on the careful analysis of the sources.

As indicated, the issue is much broader than that of infertility and artificial insemination. As I indicated elsewhere (“Toward a Sociology of Pesak,” in Moshe Z. Sokol, ed., Rabbinic Authority and Personal Autonomy” Orthodox Forum 1, Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1992, pp. 217–238), there are those who argue that “authentic” or “pure” pesika is that which is rendered by a posek in a computer-like manner, solely on the basis of characteristics inherent to the specific case involved and impervious to psychological and/or social forces, while others see a role for those forces in the halakhic decision-making process. Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, “the Rav,” seems to suggest an intermediary position when he wrote,

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

The Rav’s approach has echoes of Max Weber and his approach to the place of values in sociological research, namely, that the sociologists’ values surely influence the choice of subjects whom they study. However, once the research has begun, the rules of scientific research take over, and evaluation is made solely on the basis of the empirical evidence. Value neutrality, in the sense of excluding one’s own preconceived values in the subject of one’s studies, is a cardinal requirement. Of course, anyone who has studied the social sciences knows that the goal of value-neutrality is difficult, if not impossible, to achieve. We are, after all, human, and we are influenced in many ways of which we are unaware. Similarly, Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein cites the Rav’s distinction between the “psychological impetus” and “pure thought” in the halakhic process and suggests, “It is a nice distinction, and I confess that I am not certain it can be readily sustained in practice.” (“The Human and Social Factor in Halakha,” Tradition 36:1 (Spring 2002), p. 12) it might be argued that Hazal recognized it’s unsustainability in practice, and therefore decreed that certain type of people, such as very old people, eunuchs, and the childless, should not be appointed as judges to a Sanhedrin. Maimonides (Hilkhot Sanhedrin 2:3) provides the reasons, namely, that very old people and eunuchs should not be appointed because they have a cruel streak, and the childless should not be appointed because the judge should be merciful. In other words, it was recognized that judges have an impact on “the orbit” of the law.

In an article published a year earlier, Rabbi Lichtenstein had already indicated the human element in the decision of the posek, and he averred that

A sensitive posek recognizes both the gravity of the personal situation and the seriousness of the halakhic factors. In one case, therefore, he may tend to view the points of contention in one way, while in a second case exhibiting slightly different details, he may tilt the decision on these points in the other direction. . . He might stretch the halakhic limits of leniency where serious domestic tragedy looms, or hold firm to the strict interpretation of the law when, as he reads the situation, the pressure for leniency stems from frivolous attitudes and reflects a debased moral compass. This approach is neither evasive nor discriminatory. The flexibility arises from a recognition that halakhic rulings are not, and should not be, the output of human microcomputers, but of thinking human beings; a recognition that these rulings must be applied to concrete situations with a bold effort to achieve the optimal moral and halakhic balance among the various factors. (Aharon Lichtenstein, “Abortion: A Halakhic Perspective,” Tradition 25:4 (Summer 1991, p. 12)

Abortion is another issue where the question of whether the perspectives of the posek have any influence on his halakhic decision-making came to the fore. To support his argument that a halakhic decision is immune to the perspectives of the posek, Gideon Weitzman (referred to above) cites as evidence R. Moshe’s pesak (Iggrot Moshe, Hoshen Mishpat 2 (1976), 69, p. 300), in which he rejects a more lenient pesak by Rabbi Eliezer Waldenberg (Tzitz Eliezer 9 (1967), 51:3, pp. 239–240) and prohibited an abortion for a women carrying a fetus with Tay-Sachs disease. “Can we possibly claim that Rav Feinstein did not have compassion on those unfortunate couples who are both carriers of Tay-Sachs?” Weitzman asks. To him, it is obvious compassion had nothing to do with R. Moshe’s rulings on abortion, artificial insemination, or any other issue. Interestingly, Rabbi Benny Lau cited the same halakhic decisions of R. Moshe as well as that of Rabbi Waldenberg and their respective arguments as proof that the perspective of the posek does influence his halakhic decision. He argued that the reason R. Moshe took such a strict stance on abortion was to counter what he perceived as the larger social and cultural patterns in which abortion was becoming too commonplace. Indeed, in the final paragraph, R. Moshe explicitly states that he wrote the entire responsum in light of “the huge breach in the world that the governments of many countries have allowed the killing of fetuses, including Israeli heads of state, and countless fetuses have already been killed, such that at this time there is a need to make a fence (safeguard) for the Torah . . .”. In other words, under other social conditions, he might have ruled differently.

In line with R. Moshe’s wishes, though more as a result of greatly improved and much more widely used contraception methods, the number of abortions worldwide has decreased during the past decade and more. However, abortion is readily available and used in Israel and, more to the point, it has increased in the religious community there. Over the past decade, awareness of the possibility of abortion has increased in the religious community. According to estimates by several medical professionals, religious women don’t speak of it publicly but at least 70 percent of the religious women do an ultrasound to detect Down syndrome and, if detected, at least 90 percent have an abortion. For more serious defects, where the fetus will not survive, even Hareidi women will abort. Also, not all religious women, Hareidi and not, seek rabbinic advice; some decide on their own, as has always been the case. The difference, according to the head of the ultrasound unit of Hadassah University’s Obstetrics and Gynecology Department, is that there has been a revolution in the medical knowledge of rabbis. They now understand the complexities better, are more sensitive to all of the issues, and are better able to help the pregnant woman decide to abort. Prof. Simcha Yagel claims that religious women cope better with that difficult decision because they have religious authority assisting them with it. (Yifat Ehrlich, “Beten Meleia,” Dyokan Magazine, Makor Rishon, May 8, 2009, pp. 10–14).

The Internet has had impact on the entire area of halakha and Jewish family life with the introduction, especially in Israel, of a relatively new phenomenon: Internet responsa. Indeed, it is an interesting question why the phenomenon is so prominent in Israel and yet is relatively absent elsewhere. Perhaps it has to do with the differences in the nature of the role of rabbi in Israel and elsewhere. Also, Israeli Orthodoxy is more pluralistic because of the much wider ethnic mix there and because of the non-denominational character of Israeli Judaism.

Be that as it may, in Israel the Internet has dramatically altered the role of the rabbi, in a number of vital ways. The anonymity of those engaged in the discussion allows people to ask very intimate and demanding questions that they might not have asked if their identity was known. In addition, the limits of the community that a rabbi serves have been expanded from finite physical boundaries to almost infinite virtual ones. Finally, for our purposes, the Internet provides greater public awareness of a particular rabbi’s decisions, which, on the one hand, makes him more vulnerable to criticism but also, on the other hand, enhances his stature as prominent rabbi.

An examination of topics covered in Internet responsa reveals that family and sexual issues play a major role among the questions raised. Thus, of the three volumes of such responsa by Rabbi Yuval Cherlow, the head of Yeshivat Hesder of Petah Tikva and the most prolific of the Internet rabbis, the largest volume, Reshu”t HaYahid, is wholly addressed to issues concerning modesty, couples and family. In published Internet responsa on the leading Internet site for the dati-leumi/Modern Orthodox communities, www.kipa.co.il, as well as on a range of other Jewish religious Internet sites and blogs, family issues are central. Among the issues discussed there are: early marriage—a concern especially for students in yeshivot hesder; singles; premarital sex; agunot whose spouses refuse to give them a get; gays and lesbians in the Orthodox community; and others.

An issue related to the artificial insemination matters that R. Moshe discussed (but not specifically discussed by him) is one that also addresses an aspect of the singles phenomenon, namely, voluntary single motherhood. One of the earliest sociological studies of the phenomenon (Jane D. Bock, “Doing The Right Thing? Single Mothers by Choice and the Struggle for Legitimacy,” Gender & Society 14:1 (February 2000), pp. 62–86) focused only on the Reform branch of Judaism and found it to be basically accepting. Since then, Conservative Judaism has become likewise increasingly accepting. Mainstream Orthodox Judaism opposes voluntary single motherhood on social policy, if not “pure” halakhic grounds, but it is gaining acceptance at least among some Modern Orthodox. Dvora Ross, herself a voluntary single mother, has not dispassionately reviewed the “pure” halakhic and social policy aspects and staunchly defends single motherhood (Dvora Ross, “Artificial Insemination in Single Women,” in Micah D. Halpern and Chana Safrai, eds., Jewish Legal Writings By Women Jerusalem: Urim, 1998, Hebrew Section, pp. 45–72). Most of the Orthodox criticism of Ross’ article is not on grounds of pure halakha but on the basis of the phenomenon’s negative consequences on the Jewish family unit (See for example, Rabbi Aharon Feldman’s scathing review-essay, “Halakhic Feminism or Feminist Halakha?” Tradition 33:2 (Winter 1999), pp. 61–79. The reference to Ross’ article is on p. 74). To many, as Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein points out in his seminal essay on the role of social factors in halakha (cited above), such concerns are within the purview of the halakhist. Others, such as Rabbi David Stav, one of the heads of the Yeshivat Hesder of Petah Tikva, argues that the only halakhic issue is that the father’s identity is unknown and that might, conceivably, present a problem when the child wishes to marry. Other than that, “on the halakhic level, there is no argument between the posekim that there is no prohibition for a woman to become pregnant through artificial insemination…. This is not a halakhic question but one that is in the realm of social policy.” When weighing the anguish of single women who yearn to have children against the fear that women might not want to get married—and include the admittedly remote halakhic complication from not knowing the identity of the father—leaves Stav unable to decide. However, his colleague, Rabbi Yuval Cherlow, is reported to allow artificial insemination for single women who unsuccessfully sought to marry by the age of 37.

This issue is surely one of a group of contemporary issues in which the extent to which the halakha can remain in its own orbit and its unique speed without being the force of the thrust increasing or decreasing it, to use the Rav’s analogy, in cases that involve major cultural clashes, is somewhat dubious. We saw this with the issue of women’s prayer groups and the “pesak” of the “RIETS 5,” which was clearly much more about the role of women in society than about the laws of tefilla. The issue of voluntary single motherhood, likewise, is one that is controversial and emotionally charged in American society, in general. Even at the highest levels of analysis, there are some scholarly works that view it as very harmful to the children involved and, ultimately, society as a whole (See, for example, David Popenoe, Life Without Father: Compelling New Evidence that Fatherhood and Marriage Are Indispensable for the Good of Children and Society. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999). There are other works (see, for example, Rosanna Hertz, Single by Chance, Mothers by Choice. New York, Oxford University Press, 2008) that present evidence indicating that although some women became mothers in a “radical” way, they were motivated by normative family values and aspirations, and their family lifestyles are actually very conventional. In terms of Orthodox voluntary single mothers, although the rabbis and others may debate the halakhic and meta-halakhic issues involved, the meager evidence available suggests that the many of the women involved are making their choices individually, without careful consideration of those issues.

Perhaps the most emotionally charged family and sexual issue of our time is homosexuality. In terms of its prevalence, recognizing the difficulty in determining rates due to the variety of definitions of homosexuality and the unwillingness of many people to offer information about their sexual behavior, the empirical evidence suggests that there has not been any significant increase in homosexuality in the past half-century and more. We have no studies of it prior to the 1940s, so we really do not know if there has been any increase in the behavior. Shaul Stampfer found hardly any references to it among Eastern European Jews during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but it is difficult to believe that the phenomenon was non-existent. In fact, it is reasonable to assume that there actually has not been any significant increase in homosexuality. Rather, the phenomenon is now much more open, primarily because of the rise in identity politics in Western society and culture during the 1960s and 1970s. On the other hand, perhaps it has actually increased because the tolerance of it allows those with surmountable homosexual tendencies to avoid undertaking the effort to change. (I thank Prof. Martin Lockshin for this suggestion.)

Judaism across the spectrum incorporated the biblical condemnation of homosexuality as an abomination (“to’eva”) and had, until recently, not only vehemently censured the act but ostracized the offenders as well. With the growing acceptance of homosexuality in the broader society, Reform Judaism was the first branch of American Judaism to alter its stance, when, on March 29, 2000, the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR) overwhelmingly approved a resolution giving rabbis the option to preside at gay and lesbian commitment ceremonies. Not long afterward, the movement’s temple and synagogue organization, the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (now called the Union of Reform Judaism) called for full legal equality for homosexual couples, including legal recognition of their relationships. 

During that same period, on March 25, 1992, Conservative Judaism’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards (CJLS) voted in favor of a lengthy responsum written by Rabbi Joel Roth that reiterated the traditional stance of homosexuality as an abomination. It also rejected castigations of some social activists who labeled the decisors as callous, and proclaimed, “It is possible for a decisor to be understanding, empathic, sensitive, caring, and without irrational fears, and yet conclude that the halakhic precedents are defensible, warranted, and compelling.” In a postscript, Roth went on to distinguish between halakha and civil law and, in the realm of the latter, saw “no justification for civil legislation proscribing such acts.” Thus, while the Rabbinical Assembly reaffirmed its traditional prescription for heterosexuality, it supported complete civil equality for homosexuals; deplored violence against them; reiterated that they

are welcome as members in their congregations; and called upon the entire movement to

increase “awareness, understanding and concern for our fellow Jews who are gay and lesbian.”

Awareness of homosexuality in the Orthodox community increased by the award-winning documentary, Trembling Before G-d (2001), which portrayed the conflicts experienced by Jewish gays and lesbians between their strong bonds with God and the Orthodox Jewish tradition, on the one hand, and Judaism’s very strong condemnation of homosexuality, on the other. A number of Orthodox rabbis, Hareidi as well as Modern Orthodox, have expressed compassion for individual homosexuals while, at the same time, affirming the condemnation of prohibited homosexual activity, and have urged that those violators not be shunned any more than are other sinners, such as Sabbath desecrators. Among the more Hareidi of those who profess compassion, one senses an outreach approach that aspires to enlist them in programs aimed at reorienting them from their homosexual tendencies (See, for example, Avi Shafran, “Dissembling Before G-d,” Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, Feb. 21, 2002). There is much debate in society at-large as to the feasibility of such reorientation, based on the question as to whether homosexuality is hereditary or learned behavior.

For the Orthodox community in particular, the publication of Steven Greenberg’s Wrestling With God and Men: Homosexuality in the Jewish Tradition. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004) had the potential to create a real stir and perhaps even change some attitudes. Greenberg, after all, has ordination from the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary of Yeshiva University, and considers himself as part of the Orthodox community. However, as Asher Lopatin elucidates in his extensive sympathetic yet forthright critique (“What Makes a Book Orthodox?” Edah Journal 4:2 (Kislev) 5765/2004), the book is not and will not be seen as an Orthodox work because the author is admittedly not fully committed to Orthodoxy; because its methodology and style are not those of Orthodox works; and it is insufficiently creative halakhically. That and the facts that it was published by a university press with limited distribution and, even more, that has an erotically suggestive painting on the cover, have made it a non-event in the public Orthodox community. How widely it was read under wraps in that community is anyone’s guess. Not surprisingly, Greenberg replied to Lopatin’s critique (Edah Journal 5:2 (Sivan) 5766/2006), stating that his intent

was not to settle the thorny halakhic issues, but to set the stage for richer halakhic engagements that in time will follow. It is my view that a full-fledged halakhic “solution” to the problem of homosexual relations is premature. . . .There is still too little understanding, let alone empathy, in the Orthodox community for the gay religious person and too much entrenched fear about the consequences of any partial, let alone full-fledged acceptance, of embarking on such a project.

If one were to assume from this that there has been little change in the Orthodox community, one would be very mistaken. There definitely has been change. There are now several openly gay Orthodox groups in Israel. One, Havruta, held its first anniversary event in Jerusalem recently, where the guest of honor was none other than Rabbi Yaakov Medan, who is one of the heads of Yeshivat Har Etzion. A number of other prominent Orthodox religious personalities participated as well (Yair Ettinger, “Of Pride and Prayer,” Haaretz, Feb. 26, 2009). Also, the second season of the Israeli television series, Serugim, will include homosexuals, and there are even several gay Hareidi web sites (such as Mendy’s Blog and Homo Hareidi).

            Does all of the change documented lend support to Blu Greenberg’s famous assertion that, “Where there's a rabbinic will there's a halakhic way?” As a historical statement it may. Orthodox Judaism is, by definition, conservative, and all conservative religious groups manifest stronger family values that the non-traditionals do. On the other hand, no group is immune to the broader social and cultural patterns, and their families of today are not quite what they were a half-century ago. However, if the assertion is taken to be a political call to action, none of what has been discussed should necessarily be taken as supporting that assertion. All too frequently, such calls backfire and lead to a reactionary impulse, because they are seen as undermining halakhic authority, and serve to make it even more difficult to achieve the very objective intended by the call. As several of the issues discussed above suggest, working with halakhic authorities, rather than attacking them, is much more productive.

            As the world shrinks—and technological innovations assure that it does—broader social and cultural patterns will change even more rapidly, and they will increasingly impinge on the Jewish family, including the Orthodox family. Nor is there anything novel about it. As R. Yehudah Hehִasid (c. 1150–1217), the author of the Sefer haHassidim, recognized centuries ago, “As is the custom of the gentiles, so are the customs of the Jews in most cases.” How Orthodoxy will respond to these new challenges is anyone’s guess. It is increasingly obvious that digging one’s heels in, furthering the “she’erit haPeleta” (“saving remnant”) approach, and trying to ignore the changes does not work, as a look at the rising divorce rates among the Orthodox, including Hareidim, indicate. Perhaps increasing numbers of Orthodox rabbis and other communal leaders will decide to learn more about the broader societal and cultural patterns, to work with experts in society-at-large, as well as with each other in attempts deal with the changes within a halakhic framework. The latter, of course, presents a formidable challenge of agreeing on an appropriate halakhic framework. One might be tempted to say that only Mashiah will be able to bring that about, but unless he arrives shortly, we may not be able to wait.

Amazingly, Jews have flourished for nearly

two thousand years in many different lands without having a

central authoritative institution of halakha. In spite of differences of custom

and emphasis which have arisen among different groups of

Jews, the essential unity of halakha was preserved. To this

day, every Jew who adheres to halakha shares in a truly

remarkable historic, religious, sociological, spiritual and national

enterprise.

Some individuals have called for

the establishment of a new Sanhedrin in our times. They

would like a revival of a central halakhic authority for the

Jewish people. The Sanhedrin would not only provide unity

in halakha, but would re-institute the original methodology

of the oral law--interpreting the Torah itself, applying the

law to life with the freedom to overrule precedents and previous

decisions.

One of those calling for a Sanhedrin was the Sephardic

Chief Rabbi of Israel, Rabbi BenzionUziel (1880-1953). In a

speech delivered on 12 Kislev 5697, he called for an authoritative

rabbinic body along the lines of the Great Court of

Jerusalem.[1]  He viewed this effort as a continuation of the

work of Rabbi Yohanan ben Zaccai, who had been instrumental

in establishing a quasi-Sanhedrin in Yavneh following the

destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans.

Rabbi Uziel believed it was the responsibility of the

rabbinate to work to achieve this goal. Rabbis are delegated

the responsibility of establishing mishpat, justice. This refers

not only to cases between contending individuals, but also to

public issues, questions of taxation and communal needs. By

working for a Sanhedrin, the rabbis will be working for a

unifying force in Jewish life. Rabbi Uziel argued that one who

simply knew how to rule on what is permitted and what is

forbidden ,or on who is guilty and who is innocent is not in the category of being a posek, a decisor

of halakha. This person is known as a talmid or talmid hakham,

 a student or a wise student. To be a posek, however,

involves having the power of the Great Court. Only the Sanhedrin

can serve as a real posek. "The responsibility of the

Sanhedrin was to clarify and distinguish between true interpretations

(which are true to the spirit of the Torah) and

casuistic interpretations (which are erroneous). "[2]

Rabbi Uziel writes that the posek draws conclusions

from the Torah and the words of the prophets, as well as from

the traditional oral law. "The posek in Israel is not bound by

precedents of the posek who precedes him. If he was,

this would lead to great damage, in that an accidental error

would be fixed as a permanent halakha even though it was

erroneous in its foundation. In order to avoid this harmful

eventuality, the authority of the Great Court was restricted

only to the time in which it sits on the chair of judgment. But

the decisions of the Great Court are not established as law and

do not obligate the judges who will come after them to judge

and to teach like them. "[3]

Rabbi Uziel was deeply impressed by the work of Moses

Maimonides and believed that he deserved the title posek.

Maimonides worked to make the laws of the Torah known to

the general public. In his comprehensive code of Jewish law,

Maimonides recorded the halakha anonymously, to signify

that it represents a consensus, not just the opinion of individuals.

He not only gathered his material from all rabbinic

literature, but he also derived benefit from the teachings of

non-Jewish thinkers. "In this matter, by the way, Maimonides

has informed us that in halakhic decisions one must

comprehend all things on the basis of their content and truth,

and not on the authority of their authors alone. Maimonides

taught a great principle: Accept the truth from those who

have stated it. "[4]

In order to restore a central authority for halakha, Rabbi

Uziel urged: "Let us arise and establish the Great Court in

Jerusalem not in order to judge cases of fines, or capital

cases and not in order to permit the firstborn because of its

blemish. Rather, let us do so in order to solve the questions of

life which confront us each day in our settlements and in our

world, and in order to create a beginning for our destined

redemption: 'And I will return your judges as in the beginning

and your advisers as formerly; for out of Zion will the

Torah proceed and the word of God ·from Jerusalem.' ''[5]

Until a Great Court is re-established in Jerusalem, the

halakha is taught by leading rabbinical sages who draw on

the vast rabbinic literature which has developed over the past

several thousand years. There are variations of opinion on

details of halakha; different sages rule differently: yet, the

halakhic process continues to provide the framework for

religious Jewish life. In order for a sage to be recognized as

authoritative, he must not only have great erudition; he must

not only be personally observant of halakha; he must also be

fully faithful to the idea that halakha is the expression of the

will of God to the Jewish people. Halakha, therefore, must

be taken seriously on its own terms.

A Sephardic Approach To Halakhah[6]

Without a Great Court in Jerusalem, it was only natural

that different approaches to halakha developed among various

Jewish communities during the past nearly two thousand

years. Customs and practices varied from place to place and

from time to time. Attitudes towards halakhic study also

differed. Certainly, the basic assumptions of the divinity of

the Torah and the authority of halakha were accepted: but

differences in style definitely did exist among religious Jewish

communities throughout the ages.

Two major streams of Jewish tradition are the Ashkenazic

and the Sepahardic. Ashkenazim (Ashkenaz means Germany

in Hebrew) primarily lived in Europe. In the Middle

Ages they were concentrated in France, Germany and Italy;

gradually, the centers of Ashkenazic Jewry shifted to Poland,

Russia and Eastern Europe in general. The common feature of

these communities is that they existed in Christian countries.

They were included within the orbit of Western civilization.

The Westernization of these communities was intensified

during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when

European Jews were gaining rights of citizenship in the countries

in which they lived. The doors of Western civilization

opened to them as never before. Jews studied in European

universities; and they advanced in professional, cultural and political

life. Their struggles for civil rights were painful and not fully

successful. Anti-Jewish attitudes and actual violence against

Jews ultimately led many Ashkenazim to migrate to Israel,

the United States and other safe havens. The Nazi holocaust

during World War II decimated European Jewry, most of

which was of Ashkenazic background. Yet, Ashkenazic

Jewry today represents a large majority of world Jewry.

Ashkenazic numerical dominance has been matched by

its cultural hegemony as well. Certainly, for the past three

centuries and more, Ashkenazic rabbis have dominated halakha;

Ashkenazic thinkers have dominated Jewish philosophy;

Ashkenazic writers and artists have dominated Jewish

cultural life.

The Sephardic Jews (Sepharad refers to Spain in Hebrew)

enjoyed their period of dominance during the centuries

prior to the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492. The contributions

of Sephardim to all areas of Jewish scholarship and

thought as well as to science, medicine, and mathematics

were impressive, unequalled in the Jewish world. Even during

the century following the expulsion, Sephardic Jewry

maintained a dynamic spiritual and cultural life which influenced

world Jewry.

The considerable majority of Sephardim who left the

Iberian Peninsula settled in Muslim countries. Although Sephardim

also went to Italy, Holland. France and other Western

European locations, the much greater number flourished

in non-Western environments. The Ottoman Empire provided

haven for Sephardic refugees. Sephardic communities

developed throughout Turkey, the Balkan countries, the

Middle East and North Africa. Their experience was different

in many ways from that of the Ashkenazim of Europe. Indeed,

the two groups of Jews--those of Christian Europe and those

of the Muslim domains--lived in relative isolation from one another.

Although it is difficult to generalize about differences in