National Scholar Updates

Building an Environmentally Sensitive Religious Community

Inspiring a culture change in the Jewish community or even in a single synagogue is never an easy task.  In order for the Orthodox community to assimilate the values of the environmental movement, there will need to be a paradigm shift in the way that people think.  That change in attitude will likely take a generation.

Allow me to first outline three macro challenges that we face in broader Orthodox community.  After that I will talk about the challenges from the perspective of a single Orthodox shul – Kehilat Kesher: The Community Synagogue of Tenafly and Englewood.  Once we have an idea of what we are trying to overcome, I will share a few strategies that can work in a congregational setting.  I will conclude with a vision for a “green” future that must be embraced by every faith community if we want to change the world in which we live.

1. Challenges that the “green” movements faces in the broader Orthodox community:

The first hurdle that we have to overcome is making this an Orthodox issue.  The reality is that the liberal Jewish community started the ball rolling and we are following them.  For the Orthodox community, that is always a scary reality.  We have to be able to get over our fears that bringing in great ideas from other denominations, or faiths, is dangerous.  The Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life (www.COEJL.org), a pioneer in this field, has been articulating a vision of environmental stewardship in the language of the liberal Jewish Community.  Canfei Nesharim (www.CanfeiNesharim.org) has been translating this into traditional language and has shown tremendous leadership within the Orthodox community.  Their website is filled with helpful source material, essays and shiurim.

A second challenge, no doubt related to the first, is that there are no lines in the Shulchan Aruch or teshuvot that we can point to and say, “See, you must do this because of that!”  The Jewish conceptual basis grows from aggadic texts, values and broad concepts.  Many people are working on this and trying to produce a literature grounded in Halakha that can be the basis for future action.  Some of the most obvious halakhik concepts that can be mined are: ba’al tashchit (wanton destruction – see Rambam, Laws of King and War 6:8,10, Sefer Hachinuch #529 and Seforno on Deuteronomy 20:19), tza’ar ba’alei chayyim (causing animals needles pain – see: Exodus 23:5, Shabbat 128b, Bava Metzia 32b, Rambam, Hilkhot Rotzeach 13:1, Shulkhan Arukh, Choshen Mishpat 272:9 and the limitation of Rema Even ha-Ezer 5:14)) and harchakat nezikin (moving certain damaging industries out of the city center – see Bava Batra 22b, Rambam, Hilkhot Shechanim 11:5, Shulkhan Arukh, Chosen Mishpat 155:41).   

Finally, many of the issues that we are dealing with are still emerging from the world of research.  While there are studies that show, for example, that household cleaning products contribute to cancer growth, there are also studies that contradict these findings.  The Orthodox rabbinic community has to cultivate relationships with experts in the field of environmental science so that we can have a more complete picture of the issues at hand.  Just as we seek the counsel of doctors in issues of medical ethics we must find people who are leaders in their field and ‘make for ourselves a teacher.’ 

2. Challenges within the congregational setting

When addressing these issues on the synagogue level there are a few additional hurdles.  First, the question of economics.  The reality of congregational life is that every dollar spent has to be justified.  When spending communal money nothing less should be accepted.  People have to imbibe the notion that spending money, time and volunteers on projects like recycling makes a difference.  Even when it might be the law on the city, people have to be inspired to take the extra step and separate all the different materials.

Second, shuls need strong leadership in this arena.  Since there are very few working models of what a ‘green’ shul should look like, this requires creative people who have an understanding of what is possible within the confines of daily shul life. 

Most shuls operate on a status quo model.  Much of what we do has been and has worked well for several generations.  Therefore, anytime a shul is asked to do something different, justification is necessary.  In order to affect a paradigm shift in the operations of the shul the rabbis and lay leadership must be educated and inspired themselves so they can educate and inspire the broader community.

3. Affecting a culture change - one shul at a time

Allow me to attempt to lay out a systematic approach as to how one can go about greening a shul.

Step 1: Cleaning Materials.  This is an area in which there can be a serious change made and for very little money or effort.  Though above I mentioned that there are conflicting studies on the impact of house hold cleaners, I tend to be strict on matters of potential life and death (pikuach nefesh).  At this point, green cleaning supplies, when bought whole sale are not more expensive than the standard toxic cleaner on the market.  What could be more important than displaying sensitivity to those people who clean the shul?  In addition, the youngest members of the synagogue, who crawl on the floor and breathe in these toxins, are certainly a high priority for most synagogues.

Step 2: Lights.  Changing to high efficiency lighting and CFL bulbs is typically something simple to sell.  Though there are associated up front costs, the payback over the life of the bulb is visible on the energy bill.  This is something that can be done in a very public way, perhaps even associated with Hannukah.

Step 3: Recycling. The reality of most Orthodox shuls is that we just don’t take this seriously, even when it is the law.  The only way for this to work is to make sure that there are recycling bins for paper, metal and glass in as many places as possible.  They have to be prominently displayed with creative signs as well as reminders through out the building.  If there is janitorial staff they must be trained.

This is the first area in which there are potential conflicts with halacha.  If we are going to take recycling seriously, we have to look carefully at what we choose to bury as shemos and what we recycle.  Also, when we make copies or sheets to hand out, there is no reason to print God’s name so that all paper being produced by the shul should be able to be recycled.

Step 4: Energy Conservation.  There are three areas where this can be most effective: water, power usage and power sources.  Water can be managed with low flow faucets and toilets as well as lowering the temperature on the hot water heater to 110.  Grey water can be re-used from within the building for irrigation and toilet flushing. 

In order to maximize power usage a power audit is necessary.  Most audits will save money for the institution very quickly.  Placing thermostats on seven day timers and using timers for lights is good both for Shabbat as well as the environment.  Many power companies will now allow you to purchase power from renewable sources like windmills.  It is generally more cost effective to purchase this power from someone who is producing it on a larger scale than to generate power with on sight generators like solar panels.

Step 5: Construction.  This is the area that can be the most impactful.  The key to constructing an energy efficient building is hiring the right architect and contractors.  Most major architectural firms have the infrastructure to provide LEED (The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design green building rating system was established by the U.S. Green Building Council in 1998) certification at only a minimal cost to the client.  For a synagogue to accomplish this there must be a strong desire on the part of the community, as there are associated costs.  However, the statement that it makes to the wider community is extremely important.  When places of worship of any kind display the courage of their conviction it send a message to members of the wider community of what can be done.

These fives steps – cleaning material, lighting, recycling, energy conservation and construction – are meant to be a model of how to move a community along the path of lowering their environmental footprint.  There may be additional steps to add along the way, but if you are walking this path, then you are moving in the right direction.

4. Looking forward to a “greener” future

We are living in a society that is changing at an alarming rate.  Moore’s law tells us that the processing speed of the computer doubles every eighteen months to two years.  Population growth has been exponential.  The industrial revolution and the age of technology has elevated mankind in some parts of the world to unprecedented heights.  Global climate change is a reality that we are, for the first time in human history, able to impact.  And so we, the religious community, must ask ourselves what that impact should be?

We could choose the path of least resistance and continue the process of displaying our dominion over the earth (Genesis 1:26).  Alternatively, we could seek to embrace the command to work and guard her (Genesis 2:15).  It is my sincere hope and prayer that the Orthodox Jewish Community is able to show leadership in reclaiming the mandate of chapter two of Genesis.  Through our actions we can teach the world what it means to live the ethics of the garden of Eden. 

The title of this article, “The Music of Chance,” comes from a novel by Paul Auster, although that is the article’s only link to the novel. I chose this title because I would like to convey the message that even though life developed on Earth as a result of chance (as well as of necessity), which is one of the major tenets of the modern evolutionary theory, this fact should not scare us, as observant and devoted Jewish people. Randomness is entirely consistent with biblical and rabbinic sources. However, we should rethink our views on creation of life and humankind.

Chance occurs in the evolution of life at different levels. On the cellular level, the sorting of paternal and maternal chromosomes is an instance of randomness. At the molecular level, mutations take place in the genetic material (DNA or RNA) either spontaneously, during its replication, or due to external causes, such as radiation or chemicals. Moreover, genes or entire parts of chromosomes may recombine. These are random events because there is no way to predict them. Only their frequency could be estimated, but not the exact place where the mutation or the fusion between different DNA segments will occur (unless artificially induced). These kinds of events are routinely observed in any laboratory of molecular biology all over the world.

On the macroscopic level, chance (or, as it is often called, historical contingency) occurs in the environment in which living organisms are found. Natural catastrophes such as earthquakes, floods, meteorite impacts, and so on are the most dramatic events. But there are other, less spectacular instances that could be random, such as the migration of a small, particular group of individuals into an isolated place (genetic drift). These contingent events could direct the evolution into one direction instead of another.

An important point should be stressed. All these changes, at a genetic level as well as at a macroscopic one, are not to be considered accidents that it would be preferable to avoid. The opposite is true. If the DNA replication machinery were extremely defective, by inserting many errors in each cycle of replication, then life could not be perpetuated; however, on the other hand, if the same mechanism were absolutely perfect, no evolution would occur. Genetic shuffling and mutations are the engine that promotes evolution. The same could be said regarding environmental changes. A fixed ecosystem would not allow the selection of new variants, and thus would prohibit evolution.

Primo Levi, the renowned Italian-Jewish writer and chemist and survivor of Auschwitz, makes a similar point, though in a different context, adding a very stimulating analogy. In The Periodic Table, he speculates on the resistance of pure zinc to chemical reactivity. Here are his words:

One could draw from this two conflicting philosophical conclusions: the praise of purity, which protects from evil like a coat of mail; the praise of impurity, which gives rise to changes, in other words to life. I discarded the first, disgustingly moralistic, and I lingered to consider the second, which I found to be more congenial. In order for the wheel to turn, for life to be lived, impurities are needed and the impurities of impurities in the soil too, as is known, if it is to be fertile. Dissension, diversity, the grain of salt and mustard are needed: Fascism does not want them, forbids them… it wants everybody to be the same […] I am Jewish…I am the impurity that makes the zinc react, I am the grain of salt or mustard. Impurity, certainly, since just during those months the publication of the magazine Defense of the Race had begun, and there was much talk about purity and I had begun to be proud of being impure. (P. Levi, The Periodic Table, “Zinc,” translated from the Italian by Raymond Rosenthal, Everyman 1995).

What was the Jewish reaction to the theory of evolution, after its appearance in the years 1858 (in a short, joint communication by Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace) and 1859 (with the publication of Darwin’s 400-page book The Origin of Species? The first important Jewish philosopher who dealt with Darwin was probably the Italian Rabbi and kabbalist Eliyahu Benamozegh (1822–1900). He referred repeatedly to Darwin and to natural selection in a long passage in his commentary to the Torah (Em laMikra, Devarim 22:10, Livorno 1863, pp. 87a–88b). R. Benamozegh highly estimated Darwin, quoting him throughout several of his writings. Although R. Benamozegh did not consider Darwin’s theory convincing, he did not see an essential contradiction between Darwin’s view and the Torah (see Jose Faur, “The Hebrew Species Concept and the Origin of Evolution: R. Benamozegh’s Response to Darwin, La Rassegna Mensile di Israel 63, 3, 1997, pp. 42–66, where the entire passage by R. Benamozegh is quoted in its original Hebrew and in English translation).

Among the not-many Jewish thinkers and rabbis who addressed the theory of evolution, Rabbi Shimshon Rephael Hirsch (1808–1888) wrote that although at that time he did not consider it a solid hypothesis, if science ever did prove the factuality of evolution, it would not pose a problem to Judaism's beliefs [at the end of this article I will quote a remarkable passage from R. Hirsch’s writings].

In the twentieth century, Rabbi Avraham Isaac Kook (1865–1935), the first Chief [DEA2] Rabbi of Eretz Israel, treated evolution in many works and letters, pointing to a general agreement between this theory and the Torah. See, for example, the following two extracts (from “Abraham Isaac Kook on Evolution: How evolutionary theory supports a mystical worldview,” by Shai Cherry, Three Twentieth-Century Jewish Responses to Evolutionary Theory, Aleph: Historical Studies in Science and Judaism, 3, 2003 ):

The theory of evolution (hitpattehut) is increasingly conquering the world at this time, and, more so than all other philosophical theories, conforms to the kabbalistic secrets of the world. Evolution, which proceeds on a path of ascendancy, provides an optimistic foundation for the world. How is it possible to despair at a time when we see that everything evolves and ascends? When we penetrate the inner meaning of ascending evolution, we find in it the divine element shining with absolute brilliance. It is precisely the Ein Sof in actu which manages to bring to realization that which is Ein Sof in potentia. (Rav Kook, Orot Hakodesh II:537)

Even if it were clear to us that the order of creation was through the evolution of the species, there would still be no contradiction. We calculate time according to the literal sense of the biblical verses, which is far more relevant to us than is ancient history .... The Torah obviously obscures the account of creation and speaks in allusions and parables. Everyone knows that the account of creation is part of the secrets of the Torah. And if all these statements were taken literally, what secrets would there be? ... The essence [of the Genesis narrative] is the knowledge of God and the truly moral life. (Letters of Rav Kook, Letter 91.)

If we now examine the approach of contemporary Jewish thinkers, it could be seen that among religious physicists, not only Jewish, the theory of evolution is often considered to be unconvincing and incomplete. This viewpoint is well described in an excellent paper by Dr. Baruch Sterman:

The attitude of people who reject Darwin and his theories usually ranges from condescending dismissal to indignant derision. The tacit respect afforded physics or chemistry (often grudgingly) is conspicuously absent with regard to evolutionary biology. Evidence such statements by the Lubavitcher rebbe [ztzl] as, “If you are still troubled by the theory of evolution, I can tell you without fear of contradiction that it has not a shred of evidence to support it” [Challenge: Torah Views on Science and its Problems, A. Carmell and C. Domb, eds. (Jerusalem: Feldheim, 1976), p. 148]. Even the great advocate of harmony between Science and Torah, Prof. Leo Levi, derides the theory in his discussion of evolution: “Looking at this theory [Darwinian evolution] as an attempt at a scientific formulation, it is very unconvincing, to say the least. Despite the beautiful and convincing descriptions in popular science books and high school texts, with their persuasive pictures, not only is the theory of evolution totally unproven, it is practically disproven” [Leo Levi, Torah and Science, (Jerusalem: Feldheim 1983), p. 105].

Evolution nevertheless evokes a disposition of derision and contempt in religious thinkers, even among those who are generally favorably disposed to Torah uMadda. It is constantly adorned with pejoratives: the “so-called” or “alleged” theory is unscientific, implausible, disproven…

Professor Nathan Aviezer, a physicist at Bar-Ilan University, recently published a book, In the Beginning, … [in which he] has no problem accepting virtually all the regnant scientific theories including the Big Bang theory and the fifteen billion year age of the universe… Prof. Aviezer's tone is markedly different in his discussion of evolution than in the rest of his book. Whereas throughout his work he tries to reconcile regnant scientific thought with the Torah, here he goes out of his way to show that the theory of evolution, at least in its most popular form, is not valid scientifically. One reason for Aviezer's presentation is that evolution is seen as the scientific theory most at odds with Judaism. Many believing Jews are unwilling to accept the notion that there can be compatibility between the two. (B. Sterman, “Judaism and Darwinian Evolution,” Tradition 29,1, 1994).

Prof. Aviezer’s case is an interesting one, and he has been attacked from two opposite sides. The Hareidi community could not accept that he, as a religious and observant Jew, wrote that the universe was created billions of years ago, that dinosaurs existed in the past, and that life evolved in some manner. From the other side, he has been very sharply criticized by some evolutionary scientists, such as Prof. Raphael Falk from the Department of Genetics of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who wrote that Prof. Aviezer is a “fundamentalist,” writing “pseudo-science,” “manipulating scientific evidence,” “committing scientific rape,” and so forth. (See both authors in Alpayim—A Multidisciplinary Publication for Contemporary Thought and Literature 9, 1994, [in Hebrew]; see also N. Aviezer, “The Anthropic Principle,” B’Or Ha’Torah 17 (5768/2007), pp. 69–84 and especially p. 78.)

The situation is quite different for observant Jewish life-scientists, who are generally much more well-disposed toward the theory of evolution. See for example the following excerpt from a valuable paper by Dr. Carl Feit, Head of Biology Department at Yeshiva University:

The theory of evolution … is not a dead theory as some have claimed, but I believe it to be central to the whole enterprise of biology today…[and] stands as the central pillar of modern biology. It provides a way of explaining and predicting scientific results as any good theory should, with thousands of facts as its empirical base. At the moment, there is no alternative or competing scientific theory to explain the phenomena with which it deals…. The theory of evolution is a firmly rooted one, on the level of the theories of quantum mechanics, relativity, electricity and other well established ways of explaining reality. Indeed, the theory of evolution is the scientific theory of contemporary biology. (C. Feit, “Darwin and Drash: The interplay of Torah and Biology,” The Torah U-Madda Journal, 1990, II, pp. 29–30)

Or, as Dr. Sterman puts it in the above-cited Tradition paper:

Anyone who has ever been instructed to take antibiotics for a full ten days in order to avoid selection of strains that are resistant to the medicine, should be aware of the basic mechanism of Darwinian evolution. That mutations occur and that organisms better suited to an environment are most likely to survive are facts that virtually no one would question or doubt. It is clear that evolution as Darwin described it is currently taking place, continually and consistently.

   This favorable attitude of biologists to the theory of evolution, however, is not always well accepted. Recently, a big scandal has arisen around Rabbi Natan (Nosson) Slifkin, the so-called “Zoo Rabbi.” This young England-born Orthodox rabbi, now living in Israel, has become known for his interests in biology and zoology, on which he wrote several books. His works were quite popular in the Orthodox and even the Hareidi world, until somebody discovered in them several concepts that were considered “heretical.” As a consequence, in 2004, between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Rabbi Slifkin was requested by four important rabbis of the Hareidi camp to retract his books at once. Since Rabbi Slifkin did not agree with the charge and did not retract his books, the rabbis’ public condemnations were posted on synagogue walls a few hours before Kol Nidre. Eventually, about twenty important Hareidi rabbis in Israel and in the United States put a ban concerning all Slifkin’s books. The ban caused a strong debate, mainly on the Internet, in which rabbis and scholars with different positions participated all over the world. (The entire story and a lot of texts and documentation could be found in Rabbi Slifkin’s website, www.zootorah.com.)

After the ban, Rabbi Slifkin wrote The Challenge of Creation, Judaism’s Encounter with Science, Cosmology and Evolution (Yashar Books, New York, 2006, 2008), which is a revised and expanded edition of his previous work The Science of Torah (Targum Press, 2001—this publisher discontinued distribution of Slifkin’s books after the ban). The Challenge of Creation is an extremely and unusual lucid book on the relationship between Torah and Science in general, and on evolution in particular. It is an invaluable resource on these subjects, certainly the best work after the collective volume edited by Rabbi Aryeh Carmell and Prof. Cyril Domb, Challenge: Torah Views on Science and its Problems (Feldheim, 1976). It is worth to quote the beginning paragraph of Rabbi Slifkin’s book (in the following part of this artoc;e. I will quote several other passages):

This book was written for those who are committed to the tenets of Judaism, but also respect the modern scientific enterprise and are aware of its findings, and who are therefore disturbed by the challenges that are raised for their understanding of Torah. It addresses these challenges by following the approach of Rambam (Maimonides) and other similar Torah scholars towards these issues, which, while firmly within the framework of authentic Orthodox Judaism, is not the method of choice in many segments of the ultra-Orthodox community. But many have found that no other approach works as well in solving these difficulties. Other people may not possess as extensive a background in the sciences or may dispute the validity of the modern scientific enterprise. They may therefore simply not be bothered by the questions discussed in this book, or they may have different ways of dealing with such conflicts. Such people are not the intended audience of this book and they are advised not to read it. (N. Slifkin, The Challenge of Creation, p. 11)

That the way of thinking in some Jewish environments is not at all favorable to the theory of evolution is well illustrated by an account reported by Rabbi Marc Angel. A ten-year old boy was told by his Torah teacher that dinosaurs never existed. The boy then said to him that he had visited the Museum of Natural History in New York City and had seen dinosaurs with his own eyes. No problem, the teacher said. They were not dinosaur bones, but dog bones that became swollen during Noah’s flood (Marc D. Angel, “Reflections on Torah Education and Mis-Education,” Tradition 41:2, 2008, pp. 10–23; see also the comments in Tradition 42:1, 2009, pp. 108–110.)

            Why is there such a strong resistance to accept evolution by religious believers, even, or perhaps, especially among the educated individuals?

            In order to illustrate where the problem lies, it is useful to make a comparison with another great case of the past in which science and religion came into conflict—the “Galileo affair.” Today, there is no disagreement about the Copernican theory, which Galileo supported and because of which was consequently taken to court by the Church twice, in 1616 and in 1633, until he was condemned to house arrest. From a theological and doctrinal standpoint, it does not make any difference whether the sun revolves around the Earth or the other way. It is an issue that solely concerns historians of science and of its relation with religion. Today, nobody would ever dream of saying that the statement “the Earth revolves around itself and the sun” is incorrect and heretical. Likewise, nobody is of the opinion that the fact that we are no longer located at the center of the universe, but rather on a small planet that revolves around an average-size star in a peripheral area of one out of billions of existing galaxies, should be conceived as a serious problem from a religious point of view.

            Regarding Darwin’s theory of evolution, however, it’s a different story. The problem is still alive. We are not dealing only with the fact that science provides us with a different description from that of a literal and plain reading of the biblical text. If this were the only problem, then, just like we have read differently the (few) biblical references that talk about the mobility of the sun and the fixity of the Earth and interpreted them not literally, so too we could do the same when reading the first chapters of Bereshith that talk about the creation of the world. There are plenty of classical sources that allow a non-literal interpretation of some passages of the Torah. Rambam deals with the allegorical interpretations in several works: see for example in the Guide of the Perplexed, Introduction, and Part II, chapters 25 and 29; Letter on the resurrection of the dead. (For other classical and modern commentators, see N. Slifkin, The Challenge of Creation, chapter 7; Carmell and Domb (eds.), Challenge; Rabbi Dr. Avraham Steinberg, “Creation and the Theory of Evolution,” in Encyclopedia of Jewish Medical Ethics, translated by Dr. Fred Rosner, Feldheim, Jerusalem-New York, vol. I, pp. 151–166).

Why wouldn’t it be sufficient to explain the biblical text in a non-literal way? The problem is that at the foundation of the theory of evolution lies the notion of chance and contingency. These are not the only components; there is also a remarkable amount of “necessity,” yet the aspect of chance is certainly fundamental. To use Stephen J. Gould’s famous image, if we rewound back the film of the history of life on Earth and then play it forward again, we would not get the same film. And we, all human beings, would most likely not be part of this film. In his own words:

Let the “tape of life” play again from the identical starting point, and the chance is vanishingly small that anything like human intelligence would grace the replay.

It fills us with amazement (because of its improbability) that human beings exist at all. Replay the tape a million times from the same beginning, and I doubt that Homo sapiens would ever appear again. It is, indeed, a wonderful life.

Consciousness would not have appeared on our planet if a cosmic catastrophe had not claimed the dinosaurs as victims. In a literal sense, we owe our existence, as large reasoning mammals, to our lucky stars. (S. J. Gould, Wonderful Life, New York: W.W. Norton, 1989, p. 14, p. 289, p. 318)

On the same line of thought was Jacques Monod, one of the founders of molecular biology, Nobel prize winner in 1965, who stated in his best-seller Le Hasard et la Necessite: “The Universe was not pregnant with life, nor the biosphere with man” (Chance and Necessity, trans. A. Wainhouse, New York: Knopf, 1971, p. 145).

In truth, not everyone agrees with this idea. C. de Duve, a Belgian biochemist, Nobel prize winner in1974, maintains, on the contrary, that the appearance of life and intelligence are ineluctable phenomena, judging by the physical and chemical characteristics of the universe, and that therefore we would have eventually made our appearance on the scenery of the Earth. To Monod, de Duve responded sharply: “You are wrong.”

My reasons for seeing the universe as meaningful lie in what I perceive as its built-in necessities. Monod stressed the improbability of life and mind and the preponderant role of chance in their emergence, hence the lack of design in the universe, hence its absurdity and pointlessness. My reading of the same facts is different. It gives chance the same role, but acting within such a stringent set of constraints as to produce life and mind obligatorily, not once but many times. To Monod's famous sentence "The universe was not pregnant with life, nor the biosphere with man," I reply: "You are wrong. They were." (C. de Duve, Vital Dust: Life as a Cosmic Imperative, Basic Books, New York, 1995, p. 300)

The same divergence of opinions can be traced regarding the probability of finding life (and intelligent beings) on other planets. If we think that the appearance of life is a coincidental event, a fortunate number that came up in the lottery, then it is very likely that the appearance of life on the Earth is a unique case in the whole universe. If, on the contrary, wherever there are conditions that are similar to those of the Earth, it is probable—or rather, inevitable—that life has arisen on other planets as well (on this issue, see Amir D. Aczel, Probability 1, Little Brown, 1998).

There is no doubt that de Duve’s and others’ (like Simon Conway Morris) opinions pose less questions from a theological point of view: The Creator puts the Universe in motion, in the beginning of time, and life (and Man) will eventually appear. The concept of “eternity of God” actually means that it makes no difference, to the Creator, whether life and Man appear after 10 or 20 or 100 billion years after the Big Bang. God is eternal and is, so to speak, patient. Whenever Man comes, he comes.

On the contrary, the other opinion, shared by Gould, Monod and many other scientists, is not as easily acceptable within the religious dimension. It is no longer enough to claim that God is the primum movens. According to this opinion, giving the world “the first push” and letting it follow its course would not necessarily generate life or humanity. Thus, if we are the fruit of mere chance and contingence, what’s the point of speaking about a Creator? This is indeed a “formidable difficulty,” as B. Sterman says in a note of his Tradition paper (but without dealing with this problem and only referring to Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’ article on evolution in Issues in Jewish Thought, United Synagogue Publication, 1982).

            Is it possible to accept randomness within a religious and, specifically, Jewish view? My answer is: Yes, it is.

            One way to reconcile the idea of a living world (a world that includes humanity) born by chance with a religious view and with the concept of God as Creator may be the assertion that whatever appears to our eyes as accidental, it really isn’t and is in fact “directed” by the Creator. It could be imagined that God sometimes “gives a push” to some meteorite, such as the one that hit the Earth 65 million years ago (specifically, in the Yucatan peninsula) and determined the extinction of the dinosaurs, thus allowing the mammals and, ultimately, humans to take over. We are not meant to know the way God can carry out such a thing. Almost 3,000 years ago, the prophet Isaiah said already: “For My thoughts are not as your thoughts, nor are your ways as My ways, says God” (Isaiah 55:8). Another quotation that is particularly appropriate in this context is from Darwin himself:

On the other hand I cannot anyhow be contented to view this wonderful universe and especially the nature of man, and to conclude that everything is the result of brute force…. I feel most deeply that the whole subject [the theological view of evolution] is too profound for the human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton (Ch. Darwin, Letter to Asa Gray, May 22, 1860)

            The idea that what appears as random is in reality guided by a supreme being is followed by a great number of believer and devoted Jewish scientists. They accept evolution as a given, even though they confer a theological explanation to it. A biblical support for this concept is a passage in the Book of Proverbs (16:33): “[When] the lot is cast in the lap, its entire verdict has been decided by God.” On this verse, the Malbim, one of the most important commentators in the XIX century, elaborates:

There are things that appear given to chance but are actually providentially determined by God... “the lot is cast in the lap,” hidden from the eye of man, handed over to chance, but nevertheless the eye of God’s providence is displayed in it, and the verdict that the lot brings up is not chance but is from God; just as with the apportioning of the land [see Bemidbar 26:52–56; Talmud, Baba Batra 122a] and so on, where the lot was under God’s providence. (Malbim, Commentary ad loc., transl. by R. Slifkin in The Challenge of Creation, p. 292)

The story of Purim is another example of how seemingly random events are, in truth, guided by Divine Providence. The same could be said for Jonah and the terrible storm that came upon the ship he was in.

            However, the idea that God sometimes pulls some strings here and there is not easily acceptable from both a scientific-philosophic and a theological point of view. After all, this way of thinking would not be so different from the theory that asserts that there exists an Intelligent Designer who designed cellular structures and components of biochemical reactions. Scientifically speaking, the Intelligent Design (ID) theory is rejected since it implies the existence of something real that is not explicable in rational terms. Theologically speaking, it is not easily tenable since it depicts a “God of the gaps,” a Creator who is invoked whenever we don’t have a valid scientific explanation, and then becomes unnecessary when the explanation is finally found. Still, it could be argued that the intervention of the Creator is not believable on a cellular and microscopic level (in order to design the bacterial flagellum or the blood-clotting system—two favorite examples of the ID movement), yet it may be so on a macroscopic level (mass extinctions, and so forth). The latter case would be similar to the miracles that the Torah tells about, such as the crossing of the Red Sea and others. This seems to be the way many believer Jewish scientist see the matter, as Gerald Schroeder in his best-seller Genesis and the Big Bang.

            There is a second way to reconcile the idea of chance with a religious view, which seems preferable. A known Midrash by Rabbi Yehudah bar Shimon, interpreting the verse from the Torah “and it was evening, and it was morning” (Bereshith 1:5), states that before the first day there was a “succession of times” (seder zemanim). In response to the question of what God was doing during this primordial time, Rabbi Abbahu replies: “He created worlds and destroyed them, saying: I like this one (world), I disliked the previous ones.” (Bereshith Rabbah 83; see also in Torah Shelemah by Rabbi Menachem Kasher, I, 423). It is true that the Rambam, in the Guide of the Perplexed (II, 30), regards this Midrash as “incongruous” (Pines’ translation; megunne in the Hebrew translation by Ibn Tibbon), because it seems to point at the concept of an eternal universe; however, we may hypothesize that had the Rambam known, as we know today, that the Earth has indeed undertaken several mass extinctions, he would have probably taken R. Abbahu’s statement with more benevolence, as Rabbi Yehudah Halevi in fact did in the Kuzari, I, 67.

Im lo de-mistaphina, I would dare to say that R. Abbahu may be saying that not even the Creator Himself knew, as He began the creation, how it would have turned out. In other words, there wasn’t a completely pre-arranged scheme of the creation; rather, the creation was a sort of “work in progress,” with a development that was also dependent on chance and contingency. When finally, in the last created world (or, if we may, after the last mass extinction), the Homo sapiens makes his appearance, God reveals Himself to him and begins to interact with mankind. God has at last someone to talk to. After all, the history of the relationship between God and Human is that of God seeking Human, who sometimes answers back, and vice versa.

Rabbi Slifkin comments on this Midrash as follows:

The “loving deity” clearly manifests His love in more subtle ways than by simply letting everything live forever. Some may still ask how the idea of “trial and error” fits with the concept of a God Who knows the consequences of His actions. Still, it is clear from this Midrash that such was part of the Jewish understanding of God many thousands of years before extinctions were discovered by science. If such phenomena were always our understanding of how God works, then the explanation of the physical mechanisms via evolution cannot be said to challenge religion. (N. Slifkin, The Challenge of Creation, p. 315)

            Even the words, which recur several times in the beginning of Bereshith, “and God saw that what He had done was good,” point at this interpretation. This is how the Malbim interprets them:

Everywhere in the creation narrative, it concludes with, “And God saw that it was good.” This was meant to emphasize that notwithstanding the fact that each successive stage of creation was yesh mi-yesh [existing from existing], which means that it came about at the expense of the destruction of what had been before—in the pattern of God creating worlds and then destroying them—and all annihilation is evil from the perspective of that which is annihilated, nevertheless, since its purpose was to effect an improvement, a higher stage in creation, it was seen by God as good. (Malbim, Commentary to Genesis 1:4, in Rabbi Slifkin’s translation, The Challenge of Creation, pp. 315–316)

Randomness has been discussed by several contemporary observant and religious Jewish

thinkers, as David W. Weiss (see “Randomness and determinism in nature: a consideration,” in his book The Wings of the Dove, Jewish Values, Science and Halachah, B’nai B’rith Books, Washington, D.C., 1987; “Judaism and Evolutionary Hypotheses in Biology: Reflections on Judaism by a Jewish Scientist,” Tradition 19(1), 1981, pp. 3–27). [If I can add a personal note, both Prof. Weiss and the above-quoted Prof. Falk, who has been called a “militant secularist,” were my teachers at the Life Science Department of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. I report this fact to emphasize how two opposite approaches can be equally reconciled with the theory of evolution.]

A discussion on the “theology of randomness” can be also found in a valuable paper by Dr. John D. Loike and Rabbi Prof. Moshe D. Tendler, together with many other relevant points and references. Specifically, these authors refer to the Ramban and the Netziv and conclude in this way:

In short, randomness is not a synonym for atheism and need not conflict with a Torah-based outlook. When evidence of randomness is used to deny the existence of a supreme being, we have a non sequitur that rests on a simplistic understanding of theology, the persistence of which may reflect an antecedent personal belief or bias. (J. D. Loike and M. D. Tendler, “Molecular Genetics, Evolution, and Torah Principles,” The Torah u-Madda Journal, 14, 2006–07, pp. 173–192)

The concept of randomness is not at all a new one in philosophy and theology. The Rambam says in his Guide:

As for my own belief with regard to this fundamental principle, I mean divine providence [hashgaha elokit, in Ibn Tibbon’s translation], [… it is] nearer than [the other opinions] to intellectual reasoning. For I for one believe that […] divine providence watches only over the individuals belonging to the human species and that in this species alone all the circumstances of the individuals and the good and the evil that befall them are consequent upon the deserts, just as it says: For all His ways are judgment [Devarim 32:4]. But regarding all the other animals and, all the more, the plants and other things, my opinion is that of Aristotle. For I do not by any means believe that this particular leaf has fallen because of a providence watching over it; nor that this spider has devoured this fly because God has now decreed and willed something concerning individuals; nor that the spittle spat by Zayd [Reuven] has moved till it came down in one particular place upon a gnat and killed it by a divine decree and judgment; nor that when this fish snatched this worm from the face of the water, this happened in virtue of a divine volition concerning individuals. For all this is in my opinion due to pure chance [mikre gamur], just as Aristotle holds. […] If, as he [Aristotle] states, the foundering of a ship and the drowning of those who were in it and the falling down of a roof upon those who were in the house, are due to pure chance, the fact that the people in the ship went on board and that the people in the house were sitting in it is, according to our opinion, not due to chance, but to divine will in accordance with the deserts of those people as determined in His judgments, the rule of which cannot be attained by our intellects. (Rambam, The Guide of the Perplexed, II, 17, transl. by Sh. Pines, The University of Chicago Press, 1963) [This passage should be read in conjunction with chapter 51 of Part III, in particular the passage beginning with: “A most extraordinary speculation has occurred to me just now through which doubts may be dispelled and divine secrets revealed.”]

Rambam’s words, where he says that there is no divine providence when a spider devours a fly or the like, are quite similar to Darwin’s words in the above-quoted letter to Asa Gray about a dog and Newton’s mind:

But I own that I cannot see, as plainly as others do, and I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to be too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae (a wasp with parasitic larvae) with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice. (Ch. Darwin, Letter to Asa Gray, May 22, 1860)         

In conclusion, Rabbi Slifkin’s own final words are appropriate:

Each generation attains new insights into both Torah and the natural world. The revelations of science, which have challenged scientists to account for the extraordinary lawfulness of the universe, have enhanced our appreciation of the wonders of God’s creation. They have enhanced our grasp of the unity of existence. And they have also enhanced our under standing of the “creative wisdom” of God, as Rabbi Hirsch phrased it. There is grandeur in this view of Creation. (N. Slifkin, The Challenge of Creation, p. 345)    

And surely it is no coincidence that his last words refer to Darwin’s conclusive words:

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed [by the Creator] into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved. (Ch. Darwin, On the Origin of Species, 6th edition, 1872; the words in brackets are not present in previous editions)

Two hundred years after Darwin’s birth, this idea should sound reasonable and acceptable to every open-minded person. It certainly was reasonable to Rabbi Shimshon Rephael Hirsch, who wrote the following words in the XIX century:

This will never change, not even if the latest scientific notion that the genesis of all the multitudes of organic forms on earth can be traced back to one single, most primitive, primeval form of life should ever appear to be anything more than what it is today, a vague hypothesis still unsupported by fact. Even if this notion were ever to gain complete acceptance by the scientific world, Jewish thought, unlike the reasoning of the high priest of that notion, would nonetheless never summon us to revere a still extant representative of this primal form as the supposed ancestor of us all. Rather, Judaism in that case would call upon its adherents to give even greater reverence than ever before to the one, sole God Who, in His boundless creative wisdom and eternal omnipotence, needed to bring into existence no more than one single, amorphous nucleus and one single law of "adaptation and heredity" in order to bring forth, from what seemed chaos but was in fact a very definite order, the infinite variety of species we know today, each with its unique characteristics that sets it apart from all other creatures. (R. Hirsch, Collected Writings, vol. 7 pp. 263–264)

                        In the spring of 2003, a handful of young people in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who regularly attended the only Orthodox minyan in town, were looking for a change. I was among them, and like the others  who had attended Darkhei Noam in New York or Shira Hadasha in Jerusalem, I was inspired by the possibility of praying in a minyan that was grounded in a commitment to halakha, but that created a prayer space that  belonged to men and women alike.

Prior to our first prayer together, it was unclear how many people would show up, or how long the minyan might continue to function. Today, six years later, Minyan Tehillah is still around, and has continued to go strong ever since. As testimony to its feeling of permanence, the board conducted its first survey in the spring of 2008 in an effort to gain insight into who Tehillah’s members are, what they like about the minyan, and in what areas they would like to see the minyan grow. The first part of this article draws on the survey results to provide a demographic description of the minyan, while the second part of the article discusses a number of challenges Tehillah faces as a minyan that works to negotiate a delicate line between Orthodoxy and feminism.

Tehilla’s adult members number approximately 100, with slightly more marrieds than singles. Our minyan is relatively young, with the bulk of our members—some 70 percent— being between the ages of 26 and 34. Among the married people, about two-thirds have children, the overwhelming majority of whom are ages three and under. Tehillah holds services two Shabbat mornings a month and one Friday evening a month. We meet in a variety of spaces, which we rent from established Jewish institutions in Cambridge. Our decision not to meet every Shabbat is a pragmatic one as well as an ideological one. On the pragmatic side, it takes tremendous energy to organize a service each time we meet. This is in part due to the fact that we are a lay-led, relatively transient community, and in part due to the fact that we are thinly spread across Cambridge, with very few people living close to the synagogue where we generally meet on Shabbat mornings. In fact, the majority of our members live over a mile-walk away from this locale. Because we do not begin the Shaharit service without the presence of both ten men and ten women, each time we meet we work to get a commitment from twenty people to arrive on time—a difficult task, given the distance combined with the fact that a large portion of our minyan is composed of young families.

But there are also social and ideological reasons for not meeting each week. The Tehillah community overlaps very strongly with several other prayer communities in town. Indeed, almost all of our members regularly attend other minyanim in Cambridge on the weeks that Tehillah does not meet. The strongest overlap is with the Harvard Hillel Orthodox Minyan, and the next strongest overlap is with Cambridge Minyan, which is traditional-egalitarian. One of the reasons people are satisfied with Tehillah meeting only every other week, is because they are loathe to give up their connections with the other prayer communities to which belong.

Although Tehillah was started by a group of people who all identified as Orthodox and were all committed to a feminist mission, it has filled other sorts of religious and social needs as well. First, the spirited and intentional tefilla is one of the attractions of Tehillah. From the minyan’s inception, great effort has been placed on creating a spiritually uplifting service; led by hazzanim who are well-prepared, who engage the kahal with lively tunes, and who lead the service with seriousness of purpose. Secondly, the minyan fills an important demographic niche in Cambridge for people who are no longer students or for those who want to be part a prayer community that is not affiliated with the university, but is their own. More than that, Tehillah is a creative project, run by people with tremendous energy, commitment, and imagination. In this sense, it offers a place for religious expression that is fresh, relevant, and meaningful—an aspect of tefilla that often feels absent in well-established and structured institutional life.

In short, Tehillah fills a number of complex needs for the variety of people who attend. It is a warm, open social space, which provides an environment that bridges the long-standing traditional American religious divide between Orthodox and Conservative. Yet, despite this innovation, Tehillah is also quite conservative (with a lowercase c). We have developed our own set of customs, and are relatively resistant to change. As a community, we are focused primarily on the prayer service itself, with almost no emphasis on social justice programs, or social events not linked to prayer.

With this background, I will turn now to discuss three of the pressing issues and challenges that the minyan currently faces. Perhaps the most complicated issue among them are questions surrounding halakhic authority and religious decision-making. Like other minyanim that are working to negotiate the difficult relationship between halakha and feminism (and which have been classified by the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance as “Partnership Minyanim”), Minyan Tehillah has not been sanctioned by widely recognized religious authorities. There are, of course, rabbis with Orthodox semikha who do support minyanim like ours, but they are on the margins of what is widely considered to be the Orthodox establishment. For this reason, some argue that it is illegitimate for us to call ourselves—or even think of ourselves—as Orthodox. “And why bother?” they may press, “Just join the Conservative movement; women can lead davening there.”

I propose a two-part answer to this challenge. First, it is not un-Orthodox to address the spiritual needs of women—needs that are inherently defined by the cultural and social contingencies of time and place; that is to say—needs that are very different today than they were in the past. Secondly, what we have consciously done at Tehillah is to separate between contemporary Orthodox institutional life—on the one hand—and the Orthodox halakhic process on the other. While we may be marginalized from the first, we understand ourselves to be squarely within the parameters of the second.

This approach helps to resolve the angst—at least for some of us—surrounding questions about the legitimacy of our work. But it still leaves us with a very practical set of problems. How should ritual decisions be made, and who should be invested with the power to make such decisions?

Classically, a community brings its religious questions to its rabbi. In our effort to address the spiritual needs of women, however, we are acutely aware of the fact that we are living in a time when women are able to receive the same level of religious education and knowledge as men, in institutions that are sanctioned by the Orthodox establishment. Yet the title Rabbi comes from passing an exam that women are simply not allowed to take.

There is a logical inconsistency here, which I believe has led to some loss of credibility for the office. We cannot help but ask: What does it really mean to be a halakhic authority and a community’s religious leader? And if it need not necessarily be a Rabbi whom we turn to, then who, and based on what criteria? These are serious questions that we face at Tehillah and for which we have not yet come up with a definitive answer.

Along these lines, there is another more subtle and vexing problem: One of the reasons that Tehillah is such a success is because it offers a prayer service that people refer to as meaningful. This is in contrast to a sense that can pervade established religious institutions, where the service may feel stale and impersonal. I think it is not a coincidence that at Tehillah the quest for personal relevance in tefilla is accompanied by a desire to be involved in the process of religious decision-making. Rather than handing over this responsibility to a religious authority who does the work and then provides an answer that must be passively accepted, there is an interest in being actively involved in the process: in the learning, understanding, and questioning that goes on when a halakhic decision is made. This approach calls for a new model or new way of thinking about religious authority.

The second pressing issue that Tehillah faces is that of gender, and its place in the service. Currently, gender plays a strong role in Tehillah. A mehitsa runs down the middle of our sanctuary, and we do not begin the service until both ten men and ten women are present. Women and men alike may receive aliyot and read from the Torah, however, when a woman is slotted to read from the Torah, only a woman may be called up for that aliya, and vice versa. In all of these examples we might say that male and female are separate but equal: The gender category is preserved, while still allowing both men and women to be full participants in the tefilla.

In the critical area of leading the service, however, this is not the case. Women are permitted to lead parts of the service, but not all, whereas men are permitted to lead all. For me, this difference is palpable each time I lead pesukei deZimrah for the congregation. When I get to the last paragraph, I cannot help but grapple with the fact that a man will—and must—take over from me because as a woman I may not lead Shaharit, although this same man may have led pesukei deZimrah in place of me. This transition is a difficult point in the service because it raises questions about what we are ultimately looking for. Are we looking to find a halakhic way in which women, like men,  can be full participants in all parts of the service? That is to say, are we working toward erasing gender as a category? If this is the case than the current form of our service appears to be only one step towards fully egalitarian roles in the synagogue. Or are we looking to keep gender as a salient aspect of our prayer experience. I would suggest that some of us (myself included) do want to recognize our femininity (or masculinity) as an essential aspect of the way in which we address God and come together as a community. In this case, the key question is whether we might occupy the synagogue as women (or men) and pray as women (or men), while simultaneously being fully integrated in the synagogue service, and remaining within the parameters of halakha.

The third pressing issue facing Tehillah is the question of the minyan’s sustainability and the place that it occupies within the wider Jewish world. We currently rent space from established institutions at a very low rate and we have no salaried staff. These factors allow our membership dues to remain nominal—which is critical for our relatively young, transient population.

The result of such low financial stakes is a tremendous amount of freedom and independence in making decisions and running our organization. On the other hand, this leaves us in a childlike position, where we are drawing on the larger local community’s resources without being full contributors. And as long as we remain in this position, our feminist, Orthodox project cannot be fully realized. Right now there are some ten to fifteen Partnership Minyanim across the globe, but they are mostly all in urban centers and college campuses. I ask myself every Shabbat—where is my family going to pray if and when we leave Cambridge? For our project to be taken seriously, and for it to expand beyond the centers that it now occupies, we need institutional backing, educational resources, and professional leadership. As we move forward, the challenge will be to build and maintain communal infrastructure while still remaining fresh, innovative and meaningful.

My name is Jeannie Appleman.  I’m an organizer with the Jewish Funds for Justice.  My family and I  daven at the modern orthodox synagogue near us in Long Island.  I organize and train rabbinical and cantorial students, including from Chovevei Torah, and Rabbis, from all four movements in a particular approach to transforming our synagogues into “covenantal communities.”

What do I mean by covenantal community? I mean a community whose members believe and act on a premise that each of our futures is inextricably intertwined, and that we have a stake in each others’ future.  I mean a community whose members truly partner with and act to improve our city with others across race, class and religious lines based on shared interests and common vision. I mean a community where  congregants are engaged around their talents and dreams, not tasks; where developing people takes precedence over providing programs for every need; where private struggles are voiced, and change is achieved.   Covenantal communities stand up for the collective good as well as our own synagogue’s interests. Shearith Israel’s history is full of this type of covenantal behavior.  

I will begin by posing some questions and then laying out a new opportunity to engage in covenantal community – both within your synagogue and with your Manhattan neighbors, with whom you share a common fate.  

Here are a few questions to consider: What is the current chapter of community engagement that you are writing as a congregation? What legacy, in the spirit of Emma Lazarus, a former congregant, will you leave to your grandchildren?  In addition to this aesthetic structure, and the vibrant tefilla, Torah study, and chesed work, for what courageous community involvement will Shearith Israel be known, in this time and place?  What does it mean to be a covenantal community in Manhattan, in 2008?

         Just as particular events and experiences shaped Shearith Israel’s journey and choices in community involvement, so too my journey as an organizer and as a Jew has been shaped by a series of experiences.  I grew up in a Catholic family in a racially-mixed, working class neighborhood in South Bend, Indiana. When I was 16, and I learned about the prophets, I thought they were talking to me and my family; I felt like WE were the widow and orphan that the prophets spoke of that the Almighty protected, when my father nearly lost his factory job -- the best of the three jobs he worked to put food on our table – because of the unbridled greed of the owner.  That was the beginning of my journey to becoming an organizer.  When I asked my religion teacher about Jews, he told me to go ask a Rabbi.  So I looked in the yellow pages and picked one out – Rabbi Chaim Kuperman, straight out of YU doing kiruv at a traditional synagogue.  I showed up at Sinai Synagogue in my school uniform – plaid skirt and navy jacket and bobbie socks - and he was kind enough to mentor me in my journey towards Judaism.  I have found in modern orthodoxy an authentic and holistic way of life, where every act has meaning and purpose, and every occasion has a bracha.  And I’m proud that our community has written the book on caring for our own.  And yet I struggle with how little impact we have had in the broader community.

         In today’s Parsha, Mishpatim, and later in Devarim, that in order to walk in the ways of Hashem (G-d), You shall love the stranger for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”  Some commentators  broaden the commandment to include not only converts, but also all strangers .   The Ramban contends that WE should learn from our Egyptian experience that the Almighty does not tolerate the mistreatment of strangers.  When I read this passage, I am reminded that we have not yet reached our potential for acting powerfully in the public square on the full range of our community’s interests or the collective good in our cities, including Manhattan.   What are we doing right here in NYC, in 2008 to harness our people power to hold our public officials accountable for their commitments to make our city safer and cleaner, to create more affordable housing and quality education, and affordable health care options for every New Yorker? 

           What do I mean by power?  Many of us believe that the access that our Rabbis and big donors have to decision-makers is power.  But I would call this influence. It’s easy to confuse the two. Power is what happens when we join together with our neighbors to voice our collective concerns to politicians and negotiate face-to-face and publicly, not just through back-room deal.  It is what we need to do if we want public policy to address the needs of our community and the broader society.

       Congregation Shearith Israel has a long and rich history of community involvement, of standing up for yourselves and for others.  It seems to have begun from the very founding of SI!  The pioneers who created this synagogue refused to be bystanders to their own struggle, and that of other Jews and non-Jews alike in their new country, America, particularly in this political powederkeg of an island, called Manhattan!  It all started with 23 Jewish pioneers from Dutch Brazil standing up to the dictatorial Governor of New York in 1654 – Peter Stuyvesant – who ran NY like his personal fiefdom, for the right to settle here.  

          The history includes initiating settlement houses for immigrants and Jewish poor; opening a homeless shelter and partnering with NY institutions to address homelessness; engaging armies of volunteers to mentor and guide troubled young people.   In Rabbi Marc Angel’s Remnant of Israel book he writes “Through one-to-one relationships, the ‘big sisters’ would help guide the ‘little sisters’ to lead constructive and fulfilling lives.”  These SI leaders knew how to build a covenantal community – one relationship at a time.  Shearith Israel’s history of being a “caring” community for its members, the Jewish community, and society at large, is an impressive one; this Congregation has a big heart.  There is also a rich history of engaging in interfaith efforts with Lutherans, Episcopaleans and Catholics starting in the late 1600s.

         I would propose to you, that in 2008, SI has the opportunity to EXPAND how it acts as a covenantal community by joining with other faith communities and communal organizations to create a truly “covenantal community” here in Manhattan.  There is a congregation-based community organization that operates as a covenantal community – Manhattan Together -- that negotiates collectively and directly with the city’s and state’s “powers that be” on the matters that affect many of our lives. They’re waiting for more synagogues who share this vision to join them. 

          There are nearly 100 synagogues nationally, who are employing this particular approach to creating covenantal community, within the context of multi-faith and multi-ethnic organizations, invented  by Saul Alinsky and the Industrial Areas Foundation in the 1940s.  The Jewish Funds for Justice has worked successfully over the last several years to connect synagogues to these organizations. 

          Let me describe one synagogue’s experience, that a fellow organizer, Meir Lakein, is working with in Boston, called Temple Emanuel.  They held 42 small group meetings where over 400 of its congregants met together in each other’s living rooms, to tell stories of their concerns, and hopes and dreams.   They didn’t kvetch, they didn’t argue ideology; they didn’t even discuss a “social justice” issue.  Instead they told stories about their experiences that helped their fellow congregants get a better sense of who they were, stories that surfaced some of their core interests and values.   What emerged were stories of struggle as congregants attempted to navigate the long-term care systems that made it hard to age with dignity, or to care for their aging parents.                                                                                   

     Then they held a synagogue-wide meeting of over 420 congregants at which they launched synagogue-wide chesed initiatives to not only expand chesed, but to make it the instinctive NORM of the community.  They launched an organizing drive to press local and state legislators, to commit new resources and support for the long-term care system that would make it easier for seniors to stay in their homes, if they so chose.  Shortly after, the synagogue joined a multi-ethnic, interfaith community organization, Greater Boston Interfaith Organization (GBIO), affiliated with the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF)  with several synagogue members, so they could build covenantal community across faith and ethnic lines.

 Many of us would find it hard to believe that synagogues and Haitian 7^th Day Adventist churches would have anything in common.  But as members of GBIO, several synagogues discovered that they did.  Both communities needed to change nursing home care.  Leaders at Temple Israel needed better nursing care for their parents and grandparents who were living in unsanitary and inexcusable conditions in the homes. The Haitians who staffed the nursing homes were mistreated, overworked and underpaid. When they heard each others’ stories in small group meetings, these stories led to action. GBIO held a large community meeting and invited the Massachusetts Attorney General to ask him to issue an unprecedented advisory enforced stricter monitoring of both nursing home care, and that would improve conditions for workers.  The Attorney General came to the meeting prepared to decline this request.  But he was so moved by the immigrant stories he heard and was impressed by the united power he saw, that he changed his mind. He was reminded of his own mother’s story of exploitation and mistreatment as an Irish immigrant.  When he committed to issue the advisory, he was nearly drowned out by the cheering.   

          As synagogues, we cannot pretend that our own members are immune from skyrocketing health care and housing costs, from unemployment, from the cost of aging, and the challenge of supporting aging parents while underwriting our children’s escalating education costs.   Unless we’re willing to share our stories of struggle and hope with each other, and with other communities, I don’t believe we will achieve the fullest possible covenantal community in the broader society either.  If we park our own interests and stories at the door and hide our own struggles, we imply, that only people of other ethnicities and faiths struggle, and we’re there just to fix them, instead of partnering with them to create a joint future for all our children.  

My great-grandfather died when my grandmother was very young, leaving my great-grandmother penniless, and with five children to support.   But since she had no means of support, the local authorities threatened to tear her and her siblings away from their mother, and dump them in an orphanage. The young priest at their church stood up to the authorities, and provided my great-grandmother with odd jobs at the Church, rent, and groceries.   

While it saved my family, BY ITSELF, this approach of “meeting individual needs” of congregants, fell short.  My family’s shame about this experience kept them isolated from the rest of their congregation because no one ever spoke about “private” matters. Like many synagogues today, they attended each other’s weddings and funerals, but never spoke to each other of their struggles or dreams.  If this had been a covenantal community that encouraged my great-grandmother to share her story, she would have met others who had also suffered under the crushing weight of abusive power, and they could have joined together and fought for laws that protected families.  But my grandmother didn’t belong to a covenantal community.

         Achieving covenantal community requires taking big risks and trusting our fellow congregants and other community members from diverse backgrounds enough to share our stories. This kind of community calls us to be open to hearing their stories and being changed by them.  It requires the courage to recognize that a shared covenant that ties our destinies is not cemented only with words – it is signed with action.  In the covenant we made with the Holy One, our ancestors committed, “We will do and we will hear.”  Can we really expect any less of ourselves, today? 

Ilana is a good natured, caring, religiously observant high-school student who enjoys reading, baking hallah with her mother, and spending time with her peers at school and in her synagogue. When it became clear in pre-kindergarten that Ilana had a learning disability, her parents made the difficult decision to transfer her from the local Jewish Day School to a private school that specializes in teaching children with learning issues. Although this was a difficult decision, they knew it was necessary for Ilana’s academic growth and development. They reasoned that Ilana would have plenty of time to socialize with her Jewish friends on Shabbat and on playdates. They knew they could count on her continued involvement in their large Modern Orthodox synagogue.

Ilana’s mother was shocked and disappointed when one mother at their synagogue stopped inviting Ilana to participate in weekly playdates with her child. Invitations to birthday parties and other social activities began to stop as well. Even a B’nei Akiva dinner, designed for children to socialize with other synagogue members, felt “closed” to children who did not attend Day School. Ilana’s mother feels that no attempt was made to facilitate interactions between the Day School students and those from other schools. She finds it ironic that the same synagogue that graciously and compassionately hosts adults with moderate to severe disabilities at its yearly Yachad Shabbaton is unable to successfully include children, such as her daughter, with milder disabilities. She wants genuine acceptance and inclusion—and not compassion or pity. She wonders why some people act as though Ilana is “contagious” and that others can “catch” a learning disability or other impairment by socializing with children with special needs. She laments, “The social isolation is worse than the academic isolation.”

The Jewish tradition has always been aware of differences among God’s creatures, who are all considered to be created in the “image of God.” The Bible and rabbinic texts detail laws about treating people with special needs. We are taught, “Do not curse the deaf or put a stumbling block before the blind,” (Vayikra 19:14), and there is much discussion in various codes regarding the status of the heresh (deaf person), and the shoteh (possibly a developmentally delayed person). Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah (Hilkhot Berakhot, 10:12, based on Berakhot 58b) has a detailed discussion on which berakha to recite upon seeing people who are “different.”And the Mishna in Sanhedrin 4:5 teaches, “Although a person stamps many coins from a single die, and they are all alike—the King of Kings has stamped every person with the die of Adam, yet not one of them is like his fellow man.” These sensitively crafted sources suggest that each person is unique and worthy of respect and inclusion in the community—regardless of appearance or level of ability to walk, speak, hear, or learn. Additionally, these sources suggest that the Jewish community has a moral and even halakhic obligation to create programs to meet the needs of all people within our communities—regardless of special need or circumstance. How accepting and accommodating are our synagogues, schools, and community institutions? What can we do to better include and support those with special needs?

[H1] Synagogues

The synagogue is central to the daily life of most observant Jews—as a Bet Tefilla (a house of prayer), a Bet Midrash (a house of study), and perhaps most importantly, as a Bet Kenesset (a place of gathering). The synagogue is potentially the most important religious institution in the lives of families of children with special needs. Sadly, many families like Ilana’s feel that their synagogues lack a genuinely accepting attitude toward their children. Shabbat morning children’s services and afternoon Shabbat groups are often unable to meet the needs of children with special needs. Many parents feel that their children would benefit greatly from weekly Shabbat services and social activities, even if they sometimes need redirection and gentle reminders from patient, experienced group leaders. Children and their parents often receive uncomfortable looks, “shushing,” and requests to leave the sanctuary when a child is “making noise.” While parents recognize that fellow congregants have a right to pray and listen to the rabbi’s sermon in peace, they are often struck by the lack of understanding in their synagogue. This reception in their own synagogue stands in sharp contrast to the genuine acceptance they receive outside of their own synagogues.

There are Modern Orthodox synagogues and rabbis who have taken the lead in meeting the needs of congregants with special needs. In my work teaching children with special needs for bar and bat mitzvah, several rabbis have suggested sensitive, creative options for members with special needs. For example, families may choose to have a non-Shabbat bar mitzvah, where fewer members would be in attendance, the length of service is shorter, there is no haftarah, and there are no Shabbat-related issues when it comes to microphones, adaptive technology, or computers.

In one Boston area synagogue, a bat-mitzvah girl gave a devar Torah and “announced pages” using Power Point slides during a Sunday morning service. One Modern Orthodox rabbi suggested that a particular child with learning disabilities celebrate his bar mitzvah on the Sunday of Hanukkah because the Torah reading, from Parshat Naso, is repetitive and predictable and therefore less difficult for this child to learn. Another rabbi found a halakhically acceptable way for a non-verbal boy to celebrate his bar mitzvah on Shabbat morning. The boy had a very large brain tumor removed when he was two years old, and has unfortunately never been able to speak. He uses a Dynavox Dynamo augmented communication device seven days a week. He pulls down screens by topic and depresses buttons to communicate his needs. His very dedicated parents worked with the rabbi, so that their son could be called to the Torah on Shabbat morning. He essentially activated his father’s voice to recite the Torah blessing, lead Adon Olam, and deliver a devar Torah.

Despite these success stories, there remain unmet needs for people with disabilities in Modern Orthodox synagogues. Parents express frustration that they do not feel comfortable taking their children with special needs to Shabbat groups or children’s services. Orthodox parents who have made the painful decision to educate their children outside of the Jewish Day School system feel that such groups and prayer experiences are precisely what their children need to fully experience synagogue and Jewish communal life.

One Modern Orthodox rabbi, a parent of children with special needs, feels uncomfortable bringing his children to his own synagogue; yet, he and his children have been warmly welcomed and embraced “outside” of his community. He feels the neighborhood Hassidishe shtiebel understands and accepts his son—even if he is disruptive during the sermon or the repetition of the amidah. The Conservative Movement’s Ramah camping movement, through its CampYofi Program at Ramah Darom, has been similarly accepting and inclusive. Yofi offers a week-long camp for children with autism and their families. Similarly, Ilana and her family have been warmly embraced by a smaller, more traditional Orthodox synagogue in their neighborhood; each Shabbat afternoon the rabbi and his wife invite Ilana to their home, where she socializes with and even babysits for their children. Modern Orthodox synagogues should similarly embrace differences and work toward accommodating children with special needs.

[H1] Al Pi Darko—According to His or Her Way: Jewish Education for Children with Special Needs

Most parents in the Orthodox community accept as a given that their children will receive a Jewish Day School education. When it comes to providing an appropriate Jewish education for children with special needs, families often find that choices are limited. There are many reasons for this. First, the term “special needs” encompasses diverse impairments, including learning issues, physical disabilities, mental retardation, autism, psychiatric disorders, and other genetic and acquired conditions. Approaches and philosophies toward education, even within the special needs communities, can vary widely—from those advocating full inclusion to those promoting separate classrooms.

A second reason that choices are limited is that schools lack the staffing and expertise to consider implementing special-needs programs. Teachers and therapists with training in special education, speech and language therapy, psychology, physical therapy, and occupational therapy are required to support students with special needs.

Third, schools typically lack the financial resources for starting and running such specialized programs. The costs of providing a Day School education—even for “typical learners”—are never covered by tuition costs alone and can be prohibitive. Dr. Jed Luchow, Director of Special Education/Project SIR for the Board of Jewish Education of Greater New York, notes how complex and expensive providing such services can be. “When public schools need more money for services, they can raise taxes,” remarks Luchow. Yeshivot and Day Schools cannot.

Families specifically seeking a Modern Orthodox approach to educating a child with special needs find that few programs exist. Some turn to Hareidi schools, where there is more general acceptance of all learners who are viewed as created in God’s image. The recent movie, Praying With Lior, portrays the warm acceptance experienced by Lior Liebling, a young man with Down syndrome (and the son of two Reconstructionist rabbis) in a Philadelphia-area Hareidi yeshiva. Modern Orthodox parents of children with special needs have reported similar acceptance by the Hareidi world.

Some families feel that private special-needs schools (and in some cases, even Catholic schools) are better equipped to provide services to children with special needs. In the Northeast, for example, observant families sometimes opt for well-regarded schools such as Churchill and Gateway in Manhattan, Mary McDowell in Brooklyn, Windward in White Plains, New York, Eagle Hill in Greenwich, Connecticut, and the Cardinal Cushing School in Hanover, Massachussetts. This “trade off” means that families need to seek other avenues for providing Jewish education and Jewish socialization environments.

Fortunately, some Jewish community Day School programs do exist for educating children with special needs, and there are some successful initiatives supporting Jewish special education throughout the United States. Although specifically Orthodox-affiliated programs exist, families of children with special needs are more likely to cross denominational lines than they might for their other typically developing children.

Although it is impossible to highlight all such programs, I will mention some programs, mainly in the Northeast, in order to illustrate the various models and approaches currently offered. Many of the descriptions below are provided by the program; ability to live up to their claims are difficult to assess and are beyond the scope of this article.

In 1985, Rabbi Dr. Martin Schloss, currently the director of the Division of Day School Education for the Board of Jewish Education, and Dr. Sara Rubinow Simon founded the Consortium of Special Educators in Central Agencies for Jewish Education. The purpose of this group is to support special education programs in North American Jewish communities as well as to provide resources to Jewish special educators through professional networks. Members meet once a year to share ideas and materials to enhance and expand special education in Jewish educational settings.

Parents for Torah for All Children (PTACH) has supported children with learning differences from elementary school through high school for more than thirty years. PTACH programs exist at such schools as the Yeshiva University School for Girls and Chaim Berlin High School. Strides have also been made to sensitize and train teachers. PTACH’s educational director, Dr. Judah Weller, has created the “Jewish Day Schools Attuned Program,” based on the Schools Attuned Program, a nationally recognized professional development and service program, created by Dr. Mel Levine, Director of the Clinical Center for the Study of Development and Learning at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine at Chapel Hill. The Schools Attuned program covers eight neurodevelopmental constructs that affect learning—including attention, memory, language, motor skills, and social cognition. Several years ago, The Nash Family Foundation of New York City funded a grant to train 125 Jewish Day School educators in New York, Los Angeles, and other cities in the Schools Attuned program.

Kulanu Torah Academy in Long Island, New York, is a program dedicated for Jewish students with special needs, including students with Asperger syndrome, autism, cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, dyslexia, and Tourette’s syndrome, as well as developmental disorders, attention disorders, learning disabilities, and physical challenges. Students receive educational services within the yeshiva environment from middle school through high school. In addition, Kulanu’s Gesher Program is a three-year program initiative for 18- to 21-year-old students with special needs, which serves as a “bridge” from school to the world of work.

The Sinai Program in New Jersey offers schools for children with developmental disabilities and learning disabilities. According to their website, Sinai is sometimes referred to as a “school within a school.” Although Sinai is independently operated and funded and each school has its own administration and staff, all of Sinai’s schools are comprised of self-contained classes set within larger, typical community Jewish Day Schools, including the Joseph Kushner Hebrew Academy and Yavneh Academy. This structure increases opportunities for mainstreaming within the host schools.

Yeshiva Education for Special Students (YESS!) is the only full-service, professional, special-education yeshiva elementary school in Queens, New York, serving children in grades K through 8 with learning disabilities, attention deficit disorder, and language-processing disorders. According to their website, “It is the philosophy of YESS! that all Jewish children, regardless of their cognitive or physical challenges, have a place in the mainstream of the Jewish community." YESS! espouses individualized special education for general and Judaic studies. Mainstreaming and integration with the typically developing Yeshiva of Central Queens (YCQ) community are integral to the YESS! program.

Some Modern Orthodox schools have started programs to support students with a range of learning issues. Manhattan Day School in New York City has been offering support services for students in grades 1 through 8 with learning-based language disabilities since 1984. According to Sharon Miller, Director of Special Education, the program provides self-contained classes for between six and eleven students, who learn with one head teacher and one assistant teacher. Students learn basic skills in both secular and Jewish content areas, including reading, writing, mathematics, social studies, science, computers, organizational skills, Hebrew language, Bible, Talmud, and laws and customs. Students with Individual Education Programs (IEPs) often receive in-school services, such as speech and language therapy, occupational therapy, counseling, and physical therapy. The staff also includes special educators and school psychologists.

SAR Academy in Riverdale, New York, offers a program to support elementary and junior high school students with language-based learning disabilities. According to Rebecca Hirschfield, Director of Educational Support Services, the program was started, in part, to help keep students with learning issues in the Jewish Day School system. The SAR program is an inclusive educational initiative, designed to be able to meet the needs of children whose learning needs differ from their typically achieving peers. Children with special needs are placed in "inclusion" classrooms with typically developing children. The class is staffed by an additional teacher, who is a learning specialist. In the high school, students receive support through the Student Learning Center and may participate in a modified program, consisting of fewer periods per week of Talmud and Tanakh, and/or exemption from a foreign language requirement.

Ramaz School in Manhattan offers a Learning Center to support students. In the Lower School, students in need of remediation work individually or in small groups in the Learning Center. In the Middle School, students receive one-on-one remediation during the time they would otherwise be attending specialty classes such as music, art, or parashat haShavua. Students who have completed a formal external psychoeducational evaluation to document a learning disability are eligible for Learning Center services. Upper School students seeking the services of the Learning Center also must undergo psychoeducational evaluation; students may then be eligible for certain accommodations, including extended time for test-taking and laptops for use during exams. Based on the recommendations of the tester, students may also receive remediation from the Learning Center faculty.

A unique Boston-area program, Gateways: Access to Jewish Education, offers several programs for Jewish students with a wide range of special needs. Gateways provides a Jewish education to children with moderate to severe disabilities who are not able to receive one in a typical classroom setting (for example, children with autism spectrum disorder, hearing and visual impairment, developmental delay, cerebral palsy, and/or genetic disorders). Gateways also works with students in Jewish Day Schools across the denominational spectrum, including the Chabad Day School of Sharon, Maimonides School, JCDS, New England Hebrew Academy, Solomon Schechter Day School of Greater Boston, South Area Solomon Schechter Day School, Striar Hebrew Academy (SHAS), The Rashi School, and Torah Academy. Within each Day School, Gateways staff (comprised of speech-language pathologists, occupational therapists, and reading and learning specialists) provide extra support and assistance. Gateways works with students to help improve their academic and social skills and generalizing strategies in the classroom. In addition, the therapists assist teachers with curriculum modifications and provide teachers with professional development, including weekly coaching. For students who need more intensive instruction to develop reading and writing skills, Gateways provides an intensive alternative language arts curriculum to the classroom. This class focuses on explicit teaching of skills, including reading comprehension and decoding, written language, and word study (phonics, spelling, and vocabulary). Rabbi Mendel Lewitin is pleased with what Gateways has accomplished in his Striar Hebrew Academy. “Gateways has sensitized us to the fact that children have unique needs—from enrichment to remediation—and even helped remove the stigma associated with asking for special-educational services. Now, parents are comfortable seeking support, and all students are developing a deeper understanding of their peers.”

Sulam, established in 1998, is the only non-profit Jewish educational organization in the Greater Washington area for children who require specialized services for learning needs. By collaborating with Jewish Day Schools, Sulam educates children with diverse needs alongside their peers in a Jewish Day School setting. Sulam also provides adjunct educational services to high-school students at the Melvin J. Berman Hebrew Academy.

Another non-Day School alternative is MATAN: The Gift of Jewish Learning For Every Child, whose mission is “to give the gift of Jewish learning to every child, regardless of ability.” MATAN provides support to children, teachers, and families through teacher workshops, school consultation, program development, consultation with families, curriculum development and modification, behavior management, community presentations, and neuropsychological assessments. MATAN works with synagogues and provides after-school Talmud Torah-equivalent programs for children with special needs. MATAN also offers teacher training and provides consultation to families and synagogues.

[H1] Youth Groups and Summer Camps

Parents recognize that their child’s Jewish education is comprised of more than the school experience. Opportunities to participate in the richness of Jewish communal and synagogue life are extremely important to a child’s Jewish and social development.

Yachad/National Jewish Council for Disabilities (NJCD) includes individuals with disabilities (ages 8 through senior adult) in Jewish programming across the United States and Canada. Yachad members participate in Shabbatons at various Orthodox synagogues. Yachad Shabbatons are generally staffed by high-school and college-age Orthodox youth, allowing for socialization between typical and disabled peers.

The Jewish Community Center of Manhattan and other Jewish Community Centers across the country offer programs that focus on providing Jewish cultural programming for children and young adults with varying needs. Initiatives include programs for school-age children such as after-school or Sunday programs, summer camps, sibling workshops, assistive technology, lectures and support programs for caregivers, and a Special Needs school fair. The JCC in Manhattan also offers a program for young adults featuring Sunday outings, lounges, drama therapy, technology training, and career development.

The Friendship Circle, founded in 1994 by the Lubavitch Foundation of Michigan—and now existing in many communities nationwide—offers programs to provide assistance and support to the families of children with special needs as well as to individuals and families struggling with addiction, isolation, and other crises. Teen volunteers are an integral part of their program serving individuals with special needs.

According to The Foundation for Jewish Camp, “No experience is more powerful, thrilling, or transformative than Jewish overnight summer camp.” Various Orthodox summer camp programs offer socialization and Jewish immersion experiences for children with special needs. Camp HASC, a summer program of the Hebrew Academy for Special Children, provides a seven-week overnight camping experience to over 300 children with mental and physical handicaps. HASC is specifically dedicated to children with special needs.

Yachad b’Nesher is a Yachad/NJCD program within Camp Nesher, a camp for typically developing children. Yachad b'Nesher specializes in mainstreaming boys and girls who are developmentally disabled. There are accessible bunks on each campus set up for these campers, their special needs, and their specially trained staff. Yachad campers participate daily in all activities with different bunks.

Yachad also offers Yad B’Yad travel programs, where typically developing high school students and members of Yachad together tour the East Coast, the West Coast, or Israel.

The Tikvah Program was founded nearly forty years ago at Camp Ramah in New England and now runs programs at several Ramah camps throughout the United States and Canada. Although Camp Ramah is the camping arm of the Conservative Movement, the Tikvah Program has historically attracted a significant population of its campers from Orthodox homes. In the Tikvah Program, campers are included in all aspects of the rich Jewish summer camping experience and benefit from the richness of “immersion” in Jewish communal life. Prayers are modified for the needs of the campers and generally involve singing, dancing, and repetition. Following spirited weekday morning prayers, campers begin and end breakfast with the appropriate blessings, return to bunks for nikayon (clean up), and participate in daily activities such as Jewish learning, Hebrew instruction, swimming, sports, arts and crafts, and vocational training. Tikvah campers even take a turn leading the camp in Shabbat evening services, and they perform a Jewish-themed play, partially in Hebrew, for the entire camp.

[H1] A Modern Orthodox Action Plan

Clearly, the Modern Orthodox community can do more to help make people with special needs feel more fully included in synagogue and communal life. A move toward full inclusion will require working collaboratively with others in the Jewish community (often across the “denominational divide”), continued education of rabbis, leaders and community members, and ongoing congregation and communal self-assessment.

[H2] Working Collaboratively with Others in the Jewish Community

The Jewish disabilities world has been very successful in breaking down denominational barriers. I heard a story of two Philadelphia-area Jewish parents of children with autism speaking very comfortably and openly—one was a Lubavitch rabbi, and the other was a female Reconstructionist rabbi. The chances of these two interacting in another context are slim. This heartwarming anecdote illustrates the potential for Jews of various backgrounds to work together. Successful collaboration already takes place in many communities across the United States.

In Westchester, New York, Carol Corbin is the chairperson of the Westchester Special Needs Roundtable. She is also the coordinator of Synagogue Inclusion, which is part of the UJA of New York Caring Commission. In the first year of the Roundtable, nearly forty Westchester area rabbis and parents from across the denominations, as well as directors of special-needs programs, JCCs, and various agencies, came together. They determined that the focus of the initial phase of their work should be on teacher training and congregational sensitivity. As their work has continued, the Roundtable has addressed ways to make congregations sensitive to populations with special needs. They have addressed such topics as building access and the social, emotional, and educational needs of those with special needs.

Shelly Christensen, Program Manager for the Jewish Community Inclusion Program for People with Disabilities (a program of Jewish Family and Children’s Service of Minneapolis, Minnesota), is a frequent presenter across the country on the topic of inclusion. Christenson, author of “Jewish Community Guide to Inclusion of People with Disabilities,” has worked with synagogues and agencies to help create awareness and action. Synagogues across the denominations are collaborating in an effort to serve those with special needs, and are taking part in “February 2009 is Jewish Disability Awareness Month.”

Following her presentation several years ago, each synagogue appointed a lay leader to a community liaison committee. Each committee meeting takes place at a different synagogue, and committee members tour different synagogues and discuss issues of accessibility. Christensen reports that members of the Orthodox community have been very involved with the committee, and that synagogues and schools have embraced inclusion. Synagogues of all denominations may wish to consider starting inclusion committees, which function much as social action, Israel action, and ritual committees.

 The Modern Orthodox community also has numerous opportunities to join the larger Jewish community in workshops and conferences. For example, the Partnership for Jewish Life and Learning in the Washington, D.C., area has a Department of Special Needs and Disability committee, which organizes a yearly conference, “Opening the Gates of Torah: Including People with Disabilities in the Jewish Community.” Their most recent conference featured twelve sessions on inclusion and attracted more than 350 people. In addition, this organization provides information, resources, consultation, and professional development to parents, teachers, and administrators in preschools, congregational schools, and Day Schools in community. Their extensive range of services strives to “help ensure that every member of the Jewish community, children and adults alike, has access to the range of social, educational, and religious opportunities that the Washington area has to offer.”

Modern Orthodoxy, with its long, impressive history of collaborating with the larger Jewish community, has an unprecedented opportunity to take the lead in the area of inclusion and accommodation of special needs. This willingness to work collaboratively and diplomatically can be useful in helping the community address sensitive issues such as religious and dietary policy in Jewish group residences.

[H2] Education of Rabbis, Leaders, and Community Members

Pulpit rabbis are often sensitive to the diverse needs of their membership. Yet each rabbi can point to the moment he was “sensitized” to the needs of a congregant he hadn’t previously “noticed.” These needs frequently come up when a family is considering the bar or bat mitzvah of a child with learning disabilities or physical disabilities. One rabbi sheepishly recalls being asked if there were any people in his congregation with visual impairments. He reported that he didn’t think so. When asked if his synagogue offered Braille siddurim or special seating for members with visual impairments, he reported that it did not. He was then asked if he felt there was any connection between the lack of accommodations and the lack of attendance by those with visual impairments. And, as noted earlier, parents of children with autism are often uncomfortable bringing their children into the sanctuary for fear they will be disruptive.

While parents are instrumental in educating rabbis, rabbinical seminaries can offer “disability awareness” as part of the rabbinical school curriculum. Rabbi Dov Linzer, Rosh Yeshiva and Dean of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School in Manhattan, recently brought the entire rabbinical school graduating class to a community-wide inclusion conference, held at the JCC of the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Linzer reports that the education of rabbinical students was encouraged by Shelly and Reuven Cohen, Manhattan residents, who had spent years seeking and developing educational and camp programs for Nathaniel, their son with special needs. When Nathaniel died, the Cohens approached Rabbi Linzer about possibly funding a program in their son’s memory, with the goal of training rabbis about developmental and physical disabilities. This program is now part of every YCT student’s rabbinical education. These rabbis will surely go out to their respective communities more knowledgeable and more sensitive to people with a wide range of special needs.

[H2] Ongoing Congregational and Communal Self-Assessment

Each synagogue has an opportunity and a responsibility to determine whether it is doing enough to meet the needs of people with special needs. This may involve surveying members as to their unique needs and assessing accessibility in their synagogues—from entrances, to the women’s section, to the reader’s desk.

[H1] Conclusion

Meeting the needs of those in our community with special needs involves a sincere belief that all Jews are created beTselem Elokim, and that each person has a right to respect and full inclusion in our communities. The Modern Orthodox community is in a unique position to champion efforts, within our synagogues and within our communities, to expand educational and socialization efforts. It is not our job to complete the task—but neither are we free to desist from it!

Growing up in suburban New York City, I never heard the phrase “secular humanism,” or if I did, I did not find it meaningful enough to remember because I had no concept of religion as a life-encompassing endeavor against which to compare it. Certainly, life offered choices. I could choose to become a doctor or a lawyer, and I might even be so bold as to move to Africa to work for UNICEF, but the mentality of my secular Jewish upbringing would remain underneath any career or geographical choices. In the end, I would be “learning” the New York Times wherever I went. One of the hardest tasks in life is breaking out of one’s Weltanschauung. Few do it, and it is a bona fide miracle that people find their way to Torah observance, which can be a whopper of a life-change in our era.

 A quarter of a century ago when I became frum, the yeshivot for ba’alei teshuvah essentially were Hareidi, or they tried to appear so. My limited experience in the Torah world left me unable to categorize them as such just as my prior life as a secular Jewish middle-class American did not seem to me at age 18 a life choice but rather life itself. I lacked the words to encapsulate it and to contrast it from anything else.

Even though I did not become observant via a kiruv organization, but rather through thinking and reading, I made my way to yeshiva when enough of the people I encountered recommended it. I had expected yeshiva to be a place for further exploration of the religion and of my own thoughts and feelings about it, in part because it was advertised as such, but that’s not what it was at all. Rather, it was a kind of factory for producing Hareidi Jewish men.

I do not say that with outrage. Many of my old classmates function fairly well as Hareidi Jewish men, better than they were functioning as secular Jewish men. They took to yeshiva and found a productive place in life through the lifestyle it promoted. Most importantly, of course, they are Shomer Shabbat.

The problem was for the people who did not precisely fit the mold. If this matter of single-sizing is causing trouble in the schools for the frum-from-birth (FFB), the trouble is magnified for ba’alei teshuvah. Consider, for example, what happens to the academically inclined person who had spent his entire life immersed in secular studies. Whether this happens in public school, which serves largely as preparation for college, or college itself, or graduate school, or a PhD program, or Sunday afternoons with the New York Times, it comprises a life’s work for many people. Suddenly, one hears that it is all narishkite, emptiness, and lies. Try it on yourself; say “My life’s work was a waste of time.” That is a bitter pill to swallow, and it has nasty side effects.

This would not be such a problem if indeed it were all emptiness and lies. Emet serves as an excellent replacement for sheker. Normally, one is happy to unload rocks from his backpack. But what if they are not really rocks?

Consider my coming to Yiddishkite. As I said, I found my way on my own, not through a kiruv group. Ironically, I did it largely through “secular” studies. Despite the claim that the non-Torah observant thinkers and writers of the world are all heathens and enemies of God, there are in fact many who write about morality, monotheism, and spirituality. For example, it was none other than conservative political and social commentator William F. Buckley, whose writings taught me about the concepts of faith, self-restraint, and morality as pursuits to encompass every facet of life. He talked about eschatology, that is, the idea that life on a personal and global level takes place in stages with heaven and hell coming last. He introduced me to the catchphrase “Don’t immanentize the eschaton,” which is an exhortation against utopian secular philosophies such as communism that try to make heaven (the eschaton) on earth. The phrase stems from the writings of Eric Voegelin, a German-born political philosopher who taught at University of Notre Dame and University of Munich.[1]

I am not suggesting that either Buckley or Voeglin were b’nei Torah or that seminary students in Lakewood should read their writings. I am saying merely that the bifurcation of humanity into camps of pure truth or complete lies is not the complete truth. Wonderfully, I have learned after years in the frum world that many great figures from our history would concur with my statement. Take for example what Rabbeinu Bachya wrote in his introduction to Duties of the Heart:

I also quote the pious and wise men of other nations whose words have reached us—such as the words of the philosophers, the discipline of the ascetics, and their admirable codes of conduct—for it is my hope that my readers will incline their hearts to them and listen to their wisdom. Our Masters of blessed memory have already said [in this regard]: One verse says, “But you have acted in accordance with the laws of the nations around you” (Yechezkel 11:12), and another verse says, “Nor have you acted [in accordance with the laws of the nations around you]” (ibid. 5:7). What is the resolution [of the two verses]? You have not acted like the refined among them, but you have acted like the corrupt among them. (Sanhedrin 39b).[2]

Here we learn that not only did Rabbeinu Bachya study the works of gentile thinkers but he incorporated some of their ideas into his masterpiece. Let us remember where Duties of the Heart stands in the cannon of Jewish thought as the Rambam, the Vilna Gaon, and the Hatam Sofer, each one a seminal figure in the Hareidi world, studied and praised it.[3] The grandson of the Hatam Sofer said that “Almost all of his ethical teachings and practices were from the words of this holy book.”[4] In our times, the Steipler Gaon wrote, “Whoever has not seen the lights of the holy words of the Duties of the Heart will be missing very much, he will be wanting inside, in the purity of all that is holy.”[5]

So what do we do with secular studies, much of which obviously is not fit for Jewish eyes or human eyes for that matter? I do not have a simple answer. But I can tell you this, pressuring a person to surrender truths only because of their source or to force them into different terminology that does not feel as true can yield destructive results. As I said, it is a miracle that many people become frum.

The gaon Rav Yaakov Kamenetsky was sensitive to this idea. He advised kiruv professionals that their goal should be simply to help non-observant Jews to become observant, that is, to keep the mitzvoth. One should not try to impose personality change or to destroy the essence of what defines the person. One should not impose conformity.[6] In other words, do not fold, spindle, or mutilate, to borrow a phrase that used to be printed on machine-readable cards for computers. Rav Yaakov said that it is essential that a ba’al teshuvah feel normal in his Torah observance. He said that, for example, the typical ba’al teshuvah will not feel normal if he does not complete his college education so he should not be discouraged from doing so.[7]

For many ba’alei teshuvah, life in a contemporary Hareidi environment will not feel normal, particularly if one’s mentors are not striving to follow the advice of Rav Yaakov. I have been to more than one shiur where the speaker declared how all secular music was prohibited. Each time I thought to myself, “Bridge over Troubled Water” is osur? Seriously?” I combed through the lyrics, “When you’re weary, feeling small, when tears are in your eyes, I’ll dry them all.” What is the problem here? Is this a hok like shatnes? Am I never allowed again to hear this song that has comforted and inspired me throughout my life? In my view, most of the people who I observed entering and leaving the frum world left not because they could not handle mitzvoth observance but because they could not cope with the more extreme approaches to it. That is a tragedy. Hence, there was and is a great need for Modern Orthodox kiruv yeshivot where the answer to incorporating the good of the secular world is not met with a shochet’s knife, but rather, with discussion, with decisions, and with indecision.

Note that I use the term Modern Orthodox in the broad sense to mean not “Torah only” or not contemporary Hareidi. There are different shades of Modern Orthodox. For example, in my view, the litvaks of old Europe and even mid-twentieth-century America would not fit neatly into either camp. However, the Modern Orthodox world tends to allow more room for a person to match the complete litvish approach to Torah life which usually included the pursuit of parnassah at younger ages and often included secular studies and other matters that we associate today with the Modern Orthodox. As the Hareidi world narrows its scope, the Modern Orthodox world absorbs approaches to Torah life that are not characteristically modern.

I cannot speak for the contemporary kiruv world as I have long moved on to the daily focus of earning a living. But the English speaking kiruv world of decades ago I knew pretty well, particularly the yeshivot. There really was only one place for people who all ready had earned college degrees that I could describe as espousing “Modern” Orthodox sensibilities of any significance and the rabbi who I met after knocking on the door spent our interview testing me on the Gemara. What I did not know at the time, what he evidentially did not know either, is that I was seeking to learn more about Torah Im Derekh Erets and Torah u’Maddah. As the expression goes, you don’t know what you don’t know. I did not know these terms so I did not know to inquire about them. I only knew that the outlook I was trying to hoist upon myself was not working as promised.

You might be surprised if you came into my home today to see very little secular material lying around. One reason for this is my fear that young people in this era cannot manage both Torah and maddah successfully, particularly as the academic world and general society have drifted into some really bizarre and indecent territory. I cannot get my mind around what passes for culture and entertainment today. But also, I want to spare my family the painful choices and sacrifices that I had to endure. I often think that some ba’alei teshuvah would be wise to retain a small percentage of their old interests, as long as they are halakhically permissible. At some point, you have to make peace with your past. You can only discard so much. But as Rabbi Avigdor Miller used to say, you can like chocolate cake, but you don’t have to tell the whole world about it. Let the FFBs in my house have some peace; let them enjoy the simplicity that just was not their father’s lot in life.

“Wisdom has built her house on seven hewn pillars.” (Mishlei 9:1)

My first inclination was to decline to respond to this symposium on the grounds that I am not a school leader—or even a practitioner for that matter—and therefore unable to answer such situational questions as you have posed. My next inclination was to formulate alternative, theoretical, questions that are better suited for a broad-based conversation. In the end, I followed neither inclination; my remarks hover intentionally in the ether that separates theory from practice—but, on the other hand, also connects them to one another.

         *         *         *

Is there a coherent and cohesive philosophical preference or prejudice that ought to animate Modern Orthodox Jewish education? Some of our educational policies (notably, those that pertain to limmudei kodesh) resemble the “perennialist” approach associated with traditional education, while others (notably, those of General Studies) tend to look more like the “pragmatic” approach identified with progressive education. Are we philosophically hermaphroditic (possessing the distinctive characteristics of both philosophies), androgynous (having neither philosophy’s idiosyncratic characteristics), or, perhaps, are we agnostics, content to conduct educational business as usual without admitting to any particular philosophy? In an unintended parody of Descartes, do we appear to proclaim: “I think not, therefore I can do whatever I please!”?

         *         *         *

The absence of a clearly articulated educational philosophy does not serve us well. The road of curriculum design, development, and implementation is notable for its many obstacles (insufficient time, inadequate resources, and so forth) that frequently compel detours from the derekh haMelekh of nineteenth-century Eastern Europe, twelfth-century Muslim Spain, fifth-century Sura and Pumbedita, first-century Alexandria, or whatever historical precedent we cite in affirmation of our received educational practice. At these critical junctures, a philosophy is a lodestar whose sighting keeps us securely on our chosen path and acts as surety for our eventual arrival at our proposed destination. Without a clear philosophy, we are only star-gazing—and as inspirational as that may occasionally be, it only thwarts our purpose and obscures our objective.

Schools—not their current (and, regrettably, all too transitory) leaders—should have educational visions that “drive” their missions. A school that is “mission-driven” without the mission itself being motivated by a coherent philosophy is a will-o’-the-wisp. It gives the external appearance of direction and purpose while actually lacking both. A school’s approach to “gender equality,” like its views on “integration,” should similarly be determined by its philosophical predisposition.

How do schools acquire philosophies? Unless a school community is blessed with an informed philosopher, the best way I know is via committee. The “dromedary principle” admonishes us that in its desire to fashion a horse, the committee may produce a camel; still, a camel is superior to no transportation at all. We are not looking for philosophical purity but for contemplative introspection, and a synthetic philosophy is patently acceptable.

         *         *         *

In this light, I should like to offer for your consideration a platform comprising seven philosophical-ideological positions that I would advocate for a school that wishes to be recognized as Modern Orthodox. (These principles are the products of a consultation undertaken several years ago. I am grateful to Dr. Joel Wolowelsky of the Yeshiva of Flatbush for his input, the responsibility for their formulation rests entirely with me.)

Modern Orthodox Day Schools and yeshiva high schools should recognize:

  The preeminence of Torah and the fulfillment of mitzvoth according to halakha

A Modern Orthodox school will give priority in funding, staffing, and scheduling to those classes and activities that promote the study of Torah and the fulfillment of mitzvoth. It will concern itself with students' religious behavior and attitudes both in school and outside. It will, if necessary, engage in parent education (in conjunction with synagogues, if possible) to ensure proper modeling of religious behavior.

  The need for excellence in both General and Jewish Studies

Modern Orthodoxy sees the accomplishments of modern science and culture as expressions of the biblical imperatives to conquer the earth and preserve it. A Modern Orthodox school will provide all its students with an acquaintance with the basic principles of science, disciplines in the behavioral and social sciences, and in the humanities. It will likewise ensure that the pursuit of these disciplines does not become a goal unto itself, divorced from their Jewish identities and responsibilities.

 The primacy of moral virtue and ethical integrity in personal, business, and professional life

A Modern Orthodox school will implement curricula that provide instruction in both mitzvot bein adam laMakom (laws that govern our relationship to God) and mitzvot bein adam leHaveiro (laws that govern interpersonal relationships) and nurture a school culture that values and promotes the ideal of hessed (such as community service or social action). It will not condone unethical behavior on the part of its staff and students and will condemn such behavior on the part of any member of the Jewish community.

 The need to set common educational goals for boys and girls, young men and young women

In a Modern Orthodox school, boys and girls will be given equal opportunities to study Torah and halakha. The equality of opportunity does not necessarily mean identical curricula, but no subject in Jewish studies should be officially declared "off limits" to any student. Modern Orthodoxy neither promotes nor prohibits coeducation; it supports individual schools in the educational decisions that are best for them.

 The centrality of the State of Israel to the religious and national existence of the Jewish people

A Modern Orthodox school will advise all its students to personally experience life in Israel, to be cognizant of its needs and goals, and to have a working knowledge of Modern Hebrew. It may also call upon them to plan for aliyah to Israel, and to become actively involved in promoting Religious Zionist values in both Israel and the Diaspora. A Modern Orthodox school will say Hallel on Yom Ha'Atzma'ut and Yom Yerushalayim.

 The value of all segments of the Jewish community

A Modern Orthodox school will emphasize to its students that the major events of Jewish history, which have shaped our national identity, have involved and affected all Jews. It will admonish its graduates to love all Jews, maintain contact with them, and work with them on communal issues without regard to their denominational affiliation. It will not decline to participate in Jewish communal events due to the participation of non-Orthodox Jews.

  The Torah as the possession of all Jews

A Modern Orthodox Day School will enroll children of non-Orthodox, non-observant homes as students in the belief that the opportunity to study Torah should not be denied to anyone of the Jewish faith.

            More than forty years ago, one of the stirring voices of Jewish conscience was Professor Abraham Joshua Heschel. Although remembered primarily for his calls to activism in the realms of social and racial justice, Heschel was first and foremost a teacher to rabbis and educators. His words were a charge to me, then a neophyte to the field of Jewish education. He said,

One of our errors has been the trivialization of education. The superficial kind of religious education acquired in childhood fades away when exposed to the challenge and splendor of other intellectual powers           in an age of scientific triumphs. What young people need is not religious tranquilizers, religion as diversion, religious entertainment, but spiritual audacity. ¹

            The proliferation of Day Schools and yeshivot can be seen as a response to this view of the needs of students and communities. When Jewish education began to be the subject of research studies in the post-World War II period, only 5 to 7 percent of the population of students in any form of Jewish school attended Day Schools or yeshivot. Haym Soloveitchik observes that sixty year ago, it was generally held that "Jewishness was something almost innate, and no school was needed to inculcate it." But, he continues,

            in contemporary society…Jewish identity is not inevitable. It is not a

            matter of course, but of choice: A concious preference of the enclave

            over the host society. For such a choice to be made, a sense of                                     particularity and belonging must be instilled by the intentional enterprise                           of instruction…identity maintenance and consciousness raising are                                   ideological exigencies, needs that can be met only by education.²

    Thus it is not surprising that today, by various estimates, some 30 percent of Jewish school-age children in the United States—205,000 young people—attend Day Schools or yeshivot. Eighty percent of these students are enrolled in Orthodox schools.³ Further analysis tells us that 47,416 students (23 percent) attend 165 institutions described as "Centrist" or "Modern Orthodox." ⁴ The territory has expanded.

   Despite qualitative and quantitative growth, the educational landscape is littered with doubt among educators, parents, and students. Yaakov Bieler states the challenge as follows:

Questions are increasingly raised about whether these educational institutions really provide a Modern Orthodox education and produce Modern Orthodox young people. To find the reasons for this malaise we must gauge the effectiveness of the Modern Orthodox Day Schools that go beyond such obvious facts as the manner in which the school day is organized, what extracurricular activities are available, and where the graduates continue their education.⁵

            Urgency notwithstanding, most of the meetings, discussions, plenaries, and public documents do not go deeply into the core issues of schooling. The most well-meaning of presentations by policymakers or researchers that do not bring education professionals into the dialogue may result in half-baked ideas, at best. It is, after all, these professionals who are the "first responders" to the students. It is they who articulate, develop, and implement with teachers the curricula, programs, and strategies that drive their schools. It is they who are uniquely poised to be the agents of change and the conservators of tradition in the lives of students and their families.

            And so we hold this conversation. Through this issue of Conversations and follow-up exchanges using the electronic media, we hope to engage educators and others interested in the role of schooling in Modern Orthodoxy in an open and clarifying presentation and discussion of ideas. There are many good things happening in our schools that are not shared with colleagues. There are difficult experiences that we all encounter and these, likewise, remain dark secrets. This is an opportunity to teach and learn from our colleagues.

            We have selected four questions in areas that are commonplace for our schools:

1. How should a school leader express his or her vision of Jewish education? Can there be a clear line from the school’s mission to what happens in the classrooms? Is there a substantive difference between schools that are “mission-driven” and those that are not?
2. How does an educator experience the personnel shortage in our schools? Does this find expression in General and Judaic Studies? What impact, if any, does this shortage have on a school’s ability to meet its mission and goals?
3. How should Modern Orthodox schools address women’s education and gender equality in terms of content, mastery, and Jewish practice? To what extent is this a divisive issue in the community, and how can a school deal with this?
4. How should Modern Orthodox schools address issues in contemporary culture that conflict with traditional norms? What is the impact on a school’s reach for integration of Judaic and General Studies?

We arranged the conversation as follows:

• An essay by Dr. Moshe Sokolow, which frames the issues
• An article by Rabbi Mark Gottlieb, which addresses hashkafa in our schools
• The four questions above and responses by a panel of education professionals

Since it is neither responsible nor useful to ignore the present fiscal realities, we have included a proposal by Mrs. Zippora Schorr and Rabbi Aaron Frank, which may be instructive for other schools and communities.

            We hope that these essays, questions, and replies will initiate further conversation in the Member’s Forum at www.jewishideas.org.

________________

¹Abraham Joshua Heschel, "The Values of Jewish Education,” in Proceedings of the Rabbinical Assembly (New York, 1962): 83.

²Haym Soloveitchik, "Rupture and Reconstruction: The Transformation of Contemporary Orthodoxy," in Tradition (Summer, 1994): 90, 93.

³ Jack Wertheimer, “The Current Moment in Jewish Education: An Historian’s View,” in R. L. Goodman, et al., What We Now Know About Jewish Education (Los Angeles: Torah Aura, 2009): 15.

⁴ Marvin Schick, "A Census of Jewish Day Schools in the United States, 2003–2004" (New York: Avi Chai Foundation, 2005).

⁵ Jack Bieler, "Preserving Modern Orthodoxy in Our Day Schools,” Edah Monograph Series 2: 1.

Orthodox Singles: Breaking Myths (or: The "Shiddukh Crisis" Revisited) [i]

I'm smart, successful at my career, and fun to be with. I've worked out many of my "issues" in therapy. Here I am, eminently eligible and ready for a relationship, but somehow all of the guys I meet just aren't there yet. I feel like prescribing them a course of therapy, life-skills, and relationship-skills, and telling them to return in a few years, though hopefully I'll have found someone by then…

Sarah, age 27

I really want to get married and build a "bayit ne'eman b'yisrael" and all that other good stuff, but sometimes life gets in the way. I'm struggling really deeply with my conflicting sexual and religious needs, while trying to move forward in my career, and still make it to minyan—all this under the watchful and critical eye of my parents and community. Spending Shabbat with my parents is the opposite of relaxing. I wonder whether they would have gotten married as young and as happily as they did had they had the same challenges to contend with when single as I do.

Avi, age 31  

I hesitate to take up my pen and write about the broad topic of Orthodox singles. It's a topic on which much ink has been spilt and to little effect. I generally confine myself to the topic of singles and sexuality/religious conflict, which has been much less explored and where there are perhaps more constructive things to be written. However, I want to write briefly about some of the broader challenges faced by singles and by the Orthodox community. The issues are manifold and complex—spanning the religious, psychological, phenomenological, existential, physiological, and halakhic realms, among others—and my goals are limited. If I can succeed in making you question your assumptions about singles, or in breaking some of the myths that you hold dear, and shaking your sense of certainty about anything relating to singles and their place in the community, then I will have done enough. Deconstruction is easy compared to reconstruction, but it often needs to come first—I leave the rebuilding to the future.

We often hear mention of the "Shiddukh Crisis" or "Singles Problem" that currently plagues the Orthodox Jewish community. Various groups, organizations, synagogues, and individuals have given much thought to finding the "solution" or a range of "solutions" to this "problem." I don't want to enter into the fray of searching for solutions, partly because some of the "solutions" I've seen have been worse than the problem itself and have augmented the problem rather than solving it, and partly because I disagree with the entire construct of problem-solving that has been set up around Orthodox singles.

Let's start with some definitions: Many today would define the "Shiddukh Crisis" as the fact that today, more than ever before, large numbers of Jews are remaining single for longer, marrying later, or not marrying at all. This definition assumes that the mere status of married or unmarried is how we define success, and the quality of a person's married or single life doesn't matter to us. For many people, the "Singles Problem" is something that needs to be solved simply by getting everyone married as quickly as possible.

I want to suggest a different definition of the "Singles Problem": the crux of the crisis is, on the one hand, deeply personal, surrounding the individual issues that prevent people from either desiring or achieving a meaningful and committed relationship. And on the other hand, there is a wider communal dynamic in which the Orthodox community simply doesn't know how to include the unmarried individuals in its midst and often alienates singles, forcing them to either form their own singles communities or to leave Orthodoxy.

In this article, I want to focus on the intersection between the single and the community and on some of the myths that prevent mutual understanding.

Beginning the Myth-Breaking

The line between straining at truths that prove to be imbecilically self-evident, on the one hand, and on the other hand tossing off commonplaces that turn out to retain their power to galvanize and divide, is weirdly unpredictable. In dealing with an open-secret structure, it's only by being shameless about risking the obvious that we happen into the vicinity of the transformative….

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet, p. 22

Before we can move toward a productive conversation about singles and their place in the community, I need to clear the ground from some of the many and often contradictory myths that currently prevail regarding singles. The very act of generalizing—of making statements that are relevant to "all singles" or "everyone"—does violence to the individual and his or her experience. Individuals come in different shapes and sizes; physically, emotionally, intellectually—and they relate differently to this period in their lives. We simply can't make any general assumptions about people.

I have chosen five common myths that I want to break systematically, though there are many more. I begin with the sexual realm because I think that it is the proverbial  elephant in the room, which often hovers in people's consciousnesses but is not mentioned in polite conversation. Since halakha does not permit pre-marital sex or any physical contact with the opposite sex (“negiah”), singles either are not sexually active, or their sexual activity is illegitimate. Therefore, they are either grappling with sexual denial or repression, or they are violating the halakha. Either way, their situation is one that the wider community cannot easily identify with. The prevalence of assumptions and dearth of real information about people's sexual beliefs and practices—the confusion between myth and fact—may contribute to suspicion mixed with awkwardness in interactions between singles and members of the wider community. In this vein the myths can be especially damaging.

Myth #1: Everyone is "shomer negiah" /No one is "shomer negiah."

These myths, though they contradict each other, are both quite prevalent within the Orthodox community. Each comes from a totalizing perspective that seeks to reduce all singles to the same experience so that we don't need to give the matter further thought. If all singles are shomer negiah, then the system works—everything is fine, there is no conflict to be reckoned with, and we need not concern ourselves with the personal toll that this halakhic observance may be having upon the individual. On the other hand, if no singles are shomer negiah, then there is also no conflict—singles simply don't care about the halakha and thus they aren't part of the community. Each of these totalizing perspectives is detrimental and each ignores the uniqueness of the individual and the fact that people are different and that they cope with singlehood in different ways.

Although sex and sexuality are universal phenomena, they are experienced differently by different individuals and even by the same individual in different stages of life. For some, sexuality is a major challenge during the single years. For others, sexuality is a non-issue, or a minor issue. Some observe negiah with ease, others with difficulty, others not at all. Some are shomer negiah in some relationships and not in others or with some people and not with others. For others, the status changes with time. The endless permutations make stereotypes worthless. There are people who don't look the part who are completely shomer negiah, and people learning in yeshiva who visit prostitutes. A friend of mine recently asked two male friends of hers, of similar age and profession, what they were looking for in a wife in terms of her sexual experience—the answers they gave were diametrically opposed. One would only date women who had never touched men, because "If I waited, why couldn't she?" and the other would only date women who had had some physical contact with men, because, "I don't want someone who's not having sex just so that her ketubah [marriage contract] can say betulah [virgin] (which it can either way)." Leave the stereotypes behind and look at the person who is facing you.

Myth #2: Anyone who engages in premarital sexual activity is totally fine with it.

This myth is particularly damaging because it allows us to ignore the pain and conflict that many Orthodox singles are experiencing. Although there are certainly singles who are not conflicted about their premarital sexual activity, all of the singles with whom I have spoken have struggled very deeply with these issues—either overtly or beneath the surface—and while some eventually made their peace with the choices they made, others continue to struggle.

An extension of this myth is that those who engage in premarital sexual activity simply don't care about the halakha. Most of the singles that I have spoken with cared deeply about the halakha, and it was precisely because they cared so much about the halakha that they were thrown into such a deep existential conflict in its violation. However, the guilt surrounding premarital sexual activity is not purely due to halakhic violation. For many people feelings of guilt are a complex combination of many factors, the halakha being one, and communal or familial expectations and social pressures being another. For women especially, society’s double standard of sexual behavior adds onto the halakhic layer the feelings of being “damaged goods” once one engages in premarital sexual activity, and raises questions about one’s larger identity as a good girl, a good person, and a good Jew. Even those singles I spoke with who chose to leave the halakhic lifestyle retained a lingering sense of guilt and discomfort about their decisions in the sexual realm.

Myth #3: Singles are happy the way they are—they don't want to be part of the "broader Orthodox community."

“Community” means different things to different people. Here I am using this term in an intentionally ambiguous way, though on a basic level I am referring to the community that forms around a synagogue or a neighborhood. In either case, families are generally the building block of the community. Depending on the specific community, singles may have formed their own minyan, or in places with fewer singles, singles may be either invisible within the communal framework or may be full members of the community.

If we take this myth in the specific context of the community that forms around a synagogue, then the exact opposite is often true as well: Many singles feel so alone and isolated that they are often thirsting to be a part of the larger community, if only the community would let them. Especially in the absence of a spouse—who, among other things, provides a regular companion for Shabbat meals—singles often appreciate the sense of belonging or of being part of something larger than oneself.

However, not all singles want to be involved in the community to the same extent, and the community should be sensitive to the range of needs that individuals might have. Some singles might appreciate an invitation to a Shabbat meal, others might appreciate being set up, others might just want a smile and greeting after prayer services, and others might want a more active role on the synagogue board or on various committees. And beyond these concrete actions, there is the ineffable; the sense you get when the person in front of you is being perfunctory in conversation, scanning the room for someone else to talk to, the sense you get when "How are you" is a statement rather than a question. Married people: Be open to singles the same way you would be open to a new family that joins your community, and allow the situation and the person standing in front of you to guide your actions.

Myth #4: Any attempt on the part of the Orthodox community to grapple openly and deal seriously with the challenges and conflicts that singles face will help to legitimize perpetual singlehood and make singles even less likely to marry.

In 2009, when the numbers of unmarried Orthodox Jews in their twenties, thirties and forties have reached an unprecedented high, and when the percentage of Jews who end up never marrying is increasing, failure to confront the issue constitutes an act of burying our heads in the sand, and further alienating those singles who remain part of the Orthodox community. At this point, the question of legitimization of singlehood is almost moot, as the numbers speak for themselves, with the message that people are remaining single, with or without such legitimization. We as a community need to get over the fear of raising questions, and singles are just the tip of the iceberg here.

Several years ago, when single, I was part of a committee of both married and single individuals (which included rabbis and communal leaders) that was dedicated to thinking through the "singles problem" and trying to offer "solutions." Even after a couple of years of conversations, and countless suggestions, this committee was not able to take any definitive steps. We had finally realized the complexity of the issues involved and realized that the proposed “solutions” were merely band-aids that didn’t get to the heart of the problem. At one point this myth surfaced and the committee began to question its existence—was the very fact of our open conversation going to somehow legitimize singlehood? Aside from the fact that none of this committee's deliberations were public, I felt impelled to point out in an email that, "To assume that communal pressure [for marriage] will help the matter is misguided…. Please trust me when I say that no amount of communal acceptance and welcome will ever make any of us forget that we are not your ideal and never will be until we are married with children" (1/2/05).[ii]

Sylvia Barack Fishman puts the issue in more extreme terms, which are perhaps reflective (or perhaps not) of the threat that the community construes in its singles:

The question facing Orthodox communities today has some similarities to Jewish communal questions about how to treat intermarried families: Outreach activists urge inclusiveness—"why not accept the singles community as it is"—while others counter that total inclusiveness would be tantamount to legitimating singleness as an alternative lifestyle for Orthodox Jews. Thinking about the treatment of Orthodox singles thus demands coming to terms with deep philosophical, sociological, and communitarian issues. (Gender Relationships In Marriage and Out, p. 111)

Perhaps the extremity of the comparison is illustrative of how deeply threatened the community feels by the existence of singles.

Myth #5: The sexual restrictions of yihud and negiah have the teleological purpose of ensuring that people have only one sexual partner in life (namely, their spouse); these halakhot are rooted in an awareness of the psychological and spiritual damage that even casual premarital physical contact can cause.

This myth is perhaps the most detrimental myth of all, in that it breaks out of the communal sphere and speaks to each and every single who has ever had even accidental physical contact with a member of the opposite sex, and tells them that they will suffer for this act and it will impact their ability to form a happy marriage; how much more so the individual who has had intentional sexual contact. This idea comes from those popular Jewish authors who, in their quest to convince teenagers to become shomer negiah have—without any use of Jewish texts and sources—read their own pop-psychology into this law.

Although I cannot fully break this myth in the context of the present article, suffice it to say now that the existence of biblical polygamy, concubines, and prostitutes— categories that are all difficult to reconcile with Judaism as we currently live it—and, on a more normative plane, the encouraging of remarriage for those who have been widowed or divorced, serve to dispel the notion that lifelong monogamy is the root of these prohibitions. There is no authoritative source that I am aware of that discusses the psychological or spiritual damage that will ensue upon violating these restrictions, any more than the spiritual damage that results from any sin, and that can be healed through repentance. In fact, a cursory reading of Maimonides (Hilkhot Issurei Bi'ah, chapter 21) and the Shulhan Arukh (Even haEzer 25, Orakh Hayim 240) reveals a very different root to these prohibitions, which is perhaps more disturbing to our modern sensibilities; namely, a striving for asceticism, even within marriage![iii]

To promulgate myths of this nature under the banner of "Judaism," "Torah," and "halakha" has a detrimental effect because it compounds the guilt and anxiety of many singles who are committed to Judaism but for psychological, emotional, or physiological reasons are not observing all of the sexual restrictions mandated by halakha. Although there is certainly value in encouraging abstinence among teenagers, we cannot achieve this at the price of being dishonest about Judaism and halakha.

A corollary of this myth is the assumption that there is no difference between teenagers, and those in their twenties, thirties, and forties who are single. Not distinguishing between adolescent sexuality and adult sexuality reflects a failure to see singles as adults who, among other characteristics, are also fully developed sexual beings, with needs and desires that are substantively similar to those of their married counterparts. There is nothing natural about being a “40-year-old-virgin”—and the halakha itself recognized this and therefore encouraged early marriage. Even if halakha today constrains us from endorsing premarital sexual activity, we as a community need to adopt a more empathetic and understanding stance to those who engage in it; the thirty-year-old woman who is physical with her serious boyfriend is different from the adolescent whose hormones have overtaken him. It is time we stop infantilizing singles under the banner of halakha.

***

   The topic of singles in the Orthodox community is complex and is comprised of many different issues and questions, which are often lumped together into the same category. There are the personal crises that individuals are forced to navigate, the interpersonal issues involved in the process of seeking out and building intimate relationships, the family dynamics that arise during singlehood and the wider communal issues, as well as the religious and sexual issues, to name but a few. We are still a long way from fully understanding any of these issues, let alone knowing how to address them. However, I hope that this exercise in myth-breaking will have helped clear the way toward increasing understanding between singles and the broader community and toward opening the conversation.