Voices Of Moderation Need To Be Heard

I do not live in the charedi community and I am often asked and question myself as to why the things I blog about bother me so much as I do not appear to be directly affected by them. The other question which is even more frequently asked is what do I hope to accomplish with my blog, I am only one (semi) anonymous person screaming from a soap box online. How can a very limited number of individuals who see the danger and the insanity of what is going on hope to change a system and what kind of changes can we hope for? On shabbos I was reading an article published by The Rav in 1978 entitled "The Community" in it he writes the following:

"Lonely man is free; social man is bound by many rules and ordinances. God willed man to be free. Man is required, from time to time, to defy the world, to replace the old and obsolete with the new and relevant. Only lonely man is capable of casting off the harness of bondage to society. Who was Abraham? Who was Elijah? Who were the prophets? People who dared rebuke society in order to destroy the status quo and replace it with a new social order. The story of Judaism is not only that of community but also of man alone, confronted by the many. (Melachim I 19: 9-10) "What doest though here Elijah? I have been very zealous for the lord, the God of hosts; for the children of Israel have forsaken thy covenant; cast down thine alters and slain thy prophets; and I, even I only am left and they seek my life". In other words: "I am remote from my people, there is complete alienation. I am a lonely individual, I defy the community. I rebel against the nations. The "Levado" awareness is the root of heroic defiance. Heroism is the central category in practical Judaism. The Torah wanted the Jew to live heroically, to rebuke reproach, condemn whenever society is wrong and unfair."

I do not put myself in a category anywhere near Avraham or Eliyahu, however I do believe that unfortunately there are too few people willing to take a stand for what is right and proper and because of the very small number it is very easy for us to be labeled as trouble makers and marginalized. I often wonder if I am the crazy one and I am too negative, perhaps if I were to look for the good that is taking place in the frum community I would see things differently. I have tried this and although there is far more good taking place than negatives, unfortunately the extremism is far outweighing the good that is being done. And even, if as some claim, that these Kanoim and trouble makers are in the minority (although I believe there are far more people following them at this point), the damage these few are doing, and the fact that no one is willing to stand up to them, makes the situation all the worse and legitimizes the extremism.

I am under no illusion that we are, unfortunately, most likely fighting a losing battle, the numbers are simply against us, however those of us willing to stand up against the extremism must continue to fight on for that which we know to be right. I always come back to the pasuk of "l'maan Tzion lo echeshe u l'maan Yerushalayim lo eshkot", we must yell and scream, even if only to the wind, in the face of the tyranny that is taking over Orthodox Judaism. Charedi, Dati, Modern Orthodox, Yeshivish, who cares? We are supposedly all brothers and connected by a common bond and when one person, or group of people defiles any part of the religion or highjacks it in the name of the torah or new found chumras we all suffer. I continue to write about the things I do because it pains me to see the takeover of our religion and the attempt to silence the voices of moderation, or any voice that is not perceived to be towing the line of the right wing extremists. The future of Orthodoxy is hanging in the balance now and we have to decide are we going to go with the flow off the cliff where they are surely headed (I maintain purposefully so) or are we going to hang back and try to bring things back around to some sort of middle ground where we can appreciate and respect each other. I know where I stand and where I want my family to be and for that reason I will do what I need to to keep calling out the injustices and perversions that are being wreaked on our community and religion until such a point where the rest of the community is awoken from its slumber and forced to confront the grim looking future of Orthodox Judaism.

Kiddush Hashem In Time Square

This past Wednesday the campers and staff of Camp Simcha, a camp for kids who are battling cancer and other diseases, made their annual trip to spend the day in NYC. Their final stop in NYC was the take over Time Square and with much assistance from NYC Government and the police they performed a concert by the bleachers. As Yeshiva World reported: "The head counselor started the music, and what followed is something which cannot be described. The entire camp was dancing with such simcha, excitement, and spunk, that the entire Times Square stopped and stared in disbelief – as hundreds of Yarmulka-wearing people made a tremendous Kiddush Hashem!"
Thousands of New Yorkers, and tourists all gathered around and watched these courageous and brave children put on a show with their counselors cheering and encouraging them on."

Banji was also in the area and happened upon it, here is how she described it, "we were walking towards times square and heard singing and chanting...when we got closer, we saw that it was closed off and saw a sea of blue shirts dancing and jumping up and down. being the hip folks that we are, we had to go see what was going on. Camp simcha (which is chai life line's camp for kids with terminal illness') was having New York day for its kids...first they went to a show and now they were putting on a show for all of new york to see....i get chills thinking about it. every kid was smiling and participating to the best of their ability...every counselor was demonstrating such warmth and enthusiasm...it was incredible."

Camps like Camp Simcha and HASC (Hebrew Academy for Special Children)are what make our community great. When push comes to shove we put aside our differences and our community comes together to help each other. Camp HASC is owned and operated by charedim yet the vast majority of the counselors who work there are from Modern Orthodox homes and the same is true for many of the counselors in Camp Simcha, it does not matter what the background the campers come from or what community they live in, when another Jew is in need there is always someone there to help them. It is truly incredible that so many young people in our community spend their time off from college and Yeshiva working and helping those who are less fortunate than them, it is not easy. These great displays of achdus and chesed should make us all proud to be part of such a great broad frum community.

Mi K’ Amcha Yisrael!

A Statement of Principles

Rabbi Nethaniel Helfgot, in conjunction with many other talmidei chachamim, including Rabbi Yitzchok Blau and Rabbi Aryeh Klapper, educators, communal rabbis, mental health professionals and a number of individuals in our community who are homosexual in orientation, a statement of principles on the place of our brothers and sisters in our community who have a homosexual orientation has been released. As was evident when YU held their "event" a few months ago, there is a lot of misunderstanding as well as to the issue within our community and a lot of confusion as to how it should be handled. This statement makes clear that "Halakhic Judaism views all male and female same-sex sexual interactions as prohibited. The question of whether sexual orientation is primarily genetic, or rather environmentally generated, is irrelevant to this prohibition. While halakhah categorizes various homosexual acts with different degrees of severity and opprobrium, including toeivah, this does not in any way imply that lesser acts are permitted. But it is critical to emphasize that halakhah only prohibits homosexual acts; it does not prohibit orientation or feelings of same-sex attraction, and nothing in the Torah devalues the human beings who struggle with them. (We do not here address the issue of hirhurei aveirah, a halakhic category that goes beyond mere feelings and applies to all forms of sexuality and requires precise halakhic definition.)" As Rabbi Yosef Blau said at the YU "event", "It’s not an occasion for debating halakhah, for making halakhic suggestions. The halakhah as expressed explicitly in the Torah and in the Chachamim is clear to everyone...”… “What we WILL be doing is addressing the pain and the conflict that is caused by someone being gay in the Orthodox world”

As was discussed a number of months ago, the question is not about allowing things that are assur or giving a heter where none exists. In fact it must be stated from the outset that acting on certain feelings are assur al pi halakhah and will not be tolerated in the community. However the questions regarding how those people with these feelings should be treated within our community is a real one and one that is slowly being addressed, to quote Rabbi Blau, "I don't believe by denying an issue it goes away". The first thing that is addressed is how to deal with those in the community who are openly gay and they state that

• All human beings are created in the image of God and deserve to be treated with dignity and respect (kevod haberiyot). Every Jew is obligated to fulfill the entire range of mitzvot between person and person in relation to persons who are homosexual or have feelings of same sex attraction. Embarrassing, harassing or demeaning someone with a homosexual orientation or same-sex attraction is a violation of Torah prohibitions that embody the deepest values of Judaism."

There are a number of other important issues discussed within this statement as well including so called "reorientation"

• "Whatever the origin or cause of homosexual orientation, many individuals believe that for most people this orientation cannot be changed. Others believe that for most people it is a matter of free will. Similarly, while some mental health professionals and rabbis in the community strongly believe in the efficacy of “change therapies”, most of the mental health community, many rabbis, and most people with a homosexual orientation feel that some of these therapies are either ineffective or potentially damaging psychologically for many patients. We affirm the religious right of those with a homosexual orientation to reject therapeutic approaches they reasonably see as useless or dangerous."

What role these people should play in the community and the shul is also discussed.

A number of the other statements are:

• Jews struggling to live their lives in accordance with halakhic values need and deserve our support.

• Accordingly, Jews with homosexual orientations or same sex-attractions should be welcomed as full members of the synagogue and school community...they must accept and fulfill all the responsibilities of such membership, including those generated by communal norms or broad Jewish principles that go beyond formal halakhah.
• Jews who have an exclusively homosexual orientation should, under most circumstances, not be encouraged to marry someone of the other gender, as this can lead to great tragedy, unrequited love, shame, dishonesty and ruined lives. They should be directed to contribute to Jewish and general society in other meaningful ways. Any such person who is planning to marry someone of the opposite gender is halakhically and ethically required to fully inform their potential spouse of their sexual orientation.

At the end of the statement are the signatures of many rabbonim and others from the community, including a number of prominent rabbonim from Bergen County. I am sure that as the days go on more of our rabbonim and leaders will sign on.

A word about the comments: given the sensitivity of this topic, if you have something to add to the conversation please do. If you are simply going to use this as an opportunity to bash YU, Modern Orthodoxy or anything else, your comment will be deleted.

Take a Step Back

When I was younger my father would place an extra cup on the Seder table for those in Russia who were unable to attend the seder. To me this represented two things. The first was that the cup should serve as a seder for those who could not make them, the other thing it taught me was the importance of doing something extra as a zechus for someone or a cause. This past shabbos there was an ad that appeared in the Jewish Press entitled "A light for Sholom" asking woman to light a candle for "pidyom shevuyim" for Rubashkin. At the bottom of the ad were the names of Jonathan Pollard, the 3 boys from Japan, and as if an after thought they threw Gilad Shalit's name on there. It is terribly insulting to the honor of Gilad Shalit to somehow compare the situation he is in to that of these others. He is a hero who was fighting on behalf of our country and was savagely kidnapped and is being held captive by our enemy. These other 5 are people who committed crimes against various countries and were tried and found guilty of such crimes.

I feel very bad for the sentence that Rubashkin got however I think that it was a result of a combination of a number of factors including very poor legal advice, an air of arrogance in court, public acts of tzidkus, including the fabrengen when he was first released and that whole thing with not walking without tzitzis in the jail, on top of that a tough judge and a very poorly run and orchestrated public campaign on his behalf. Besides the fact that anti Semitism was thrown around left and right by those claiming to represent and help him, whether overtly or directly, and that to this day so many people, including those who speak on behalf of the community, still believe that he did nothing wrong and very publicly blame the government for making him a scapegoat shows exactly where the community is on this, and it is not a good place. The Rambam says that one of the first things you have to do when you do tshuva is recognize your chet and regret it. So many including Mr. Rubashkin cannot recognize that a crime was committed that it is no wonder that he came into court with such an air of arrogance. So great was this arrogance that he reportedly told the judge while on trial "all I want in life is to serve my G-d" and wore a kittel to court. Perhaps if he and those advising and supporting him had shown a bit more humility he would not be looking at the jail time that he is.

This so called pidyon shevuyim campaign on his behalf is very sad because it shows that the kehilla can come together on issues, and this is the one they chose to come together on. Is there nothing else we can show achdus for? What has happened to our community that so many of our brethren are committing crimes and we keep sticking up for them, make excuses for and dismiss their wrong doing? After a well known Jewish Music singer was recently convicted someone I know commented that the prison at Otisville is beginning to look like the old shtetle, you have your chazan, your shoichet and your mechaber seforim, you now even have a rebbe. One year after our community beat our chests over the arrests in Deal, I fear that we have not learned a thing. We still come to the defense of and protect criminals in our community, look no further than what happened with the father of the boy who was abused in Lakewood, we launch very public campaigns on behalf of low lives like Martin Grossman, and the entire Rubashkin campaign has been handled so poorly and with such utter arrogance that it is no wonder he got the sentence he did.

I was recently discussing this issue with a friend of mine and they commented that when people look back at our generation they are going to see this episode as a turning point for the community, and not in a good way. They said that the Rubashkin saga for the frum community is the same as the OJ trial was for the African American community and that we are so out of touch with general society that we are publicly siding with someone who is very obviously guilty of criminal behavior.

I believe that everything that can be done to help Rubashkin's situation at this point should be, behind the scenes and quietly not through public demonstrations and declarations of tzidkus. Let us first be maskim that what he did was wrong, that he certainly does not and should not serve as a role model for our children and his actions should be condemned. After that we can quietly see how we can help him.

Gaza 5 Years Later-A Chashbon Hanefesh For The Religious Zionist Community

Five years after the Gaza disengagement the Religious Zionist community is in need of a serious cheshbon hanaefsh, both in America and Eretz Yisrael. We have lost the Medinah to the charedim. In ideology, land, money and power we are in the minority and shrinking fast. I believe that there are a number of different reasons for this, not the least of which is in our zeal to regain every hill top and every inch of the settlements we took our eye off the bigger picture, which is the rest of the country, education and politics. The Charedi community has spent years maneuvering itself into a coalition and a force in Government where they are now needed to win elections and they hold sway and influence over major portfolios. The charedim were successfully putting themselves into a position where they are now able to suck every single possible dollar out of the government for education, housing and other social needs while the Religious Zionist community was worrying about how close to the green line we could build. Where has that left us, what is our influence?

I am of the belief that it is certainly important to try and occupy as much of the land as possible, but in our messianic zeal to be on every inch of the land and make sure we have a presence on every hill top we have left the religious decisions of the country to the charedim. I heard a shiur by Rav Aharon Lichtenstein the other day and he said that, regarding Chevron (the shiur was from about 10 years ago) while it is certainly important that we eventually settle the entire land, even Avraham Avinu left parts of the land to the Canaanim because the time was not yet right to inhabit the whole thing. We sacrifice the lives and well being of soldiers to protect a few families who want to pursue a dream, perhaps pre-maturely. I am a believer that the founding of the Medinah was part of the aschalata d’ geulah but it is all part of a longer process that might take longer than we would like. We have waited over 2000 years to get this great country back and we are very close to losing it again.

We, the American Religious Zionist community, are just as much to blame. Many of our communal leaders have been pushing this same idea of every inch of settlement for years as well. Walk into most major Modern Orthodox shul in America and you will see a plaque for a project or building or playground somewhere in Israel and most of the time these projects are in the settlements. Where are the buildings and shuls in Beit Shemesh or Modiin? Beit Shemesh has one of the largest communities of new Olim yet are having a hard time getting a new shul built because the charedi mayor wants to take the land allocated for a hesder yeshiva and give it to a charedi cheder, where is the outcry from the American community over this, what happened to "Yehudi lo Migaresh Yehudi"?

I hold out hope that one day, hopefully sooner rather than later, I will be able to move my family to Israel, however I fear that the neighborhoods and communities available for the Religious Zionist/Dati Leumi family are limited because the charedim have successfully been able to get all new housing projects and communities. There is even a term for it "Mitchared".

Tisha B'Av and the anniversary of the Disengagement is as good a time as any to take a look back and see what we have sacrificed and take measure if it was worth it? We certainly have accomplished a lot as a community in the last 62 years and we have built yeshivot and seminaries that very closely resemble our ideologies. We have raised generations of children to appreciate the significance of living at a time where they are zocheh to live in a Jewish country and are proud to go out and defend that country. On the other hand, what do we have? What are we left with at this point?

I think that the lesson of Kamtza and Bar Kamtza is that sometimes to save a nation and country you have to look past some of the smaller details and keep your eye on the bigger picture. Sometimes compromise is necessary to achieve the final goal. Like in the times of Kamtza and Bar Kamtza we have let the small details, the individual settlements, the hill top caravan get in the way of the bigger picture, which is the rest of the country, and for that it is appropriate for us to take stock of what we have sacrificed and what we have gotten in return for that sacrifice.

Questions of Emunah and the Orthoprax Rabbi

There is a new website which is garnering a lot of attention from both bloggers and others alike and apparently has hit a nerve with a lot of people in our community. I am referring to the Orthoprax Rabbi blog. If you have not checked out the website, the guy claims to be the Rabbi of an Orthodox shul with Orthodox semicha yet he claims he does not believe in G-d or Torah Misinai. I am very torn about this blog and some of the things he writes. How he chooses to live his life and what he chooses to believe is his business. I do think that it raises a large ethical question whether he should be serving in the position as a Rabbi, though if it does not say in his contract that he needs to believe that which he is teaching (which I suspect might become standard in the future) is he in violation of his contract to hold (or not hold) these beliefs? How many other Rabbonim out there hold these same beliefs yet choose to keep them in and not blog about them? Who knows.

I think, however the blog raises other questions. Reading his blog, and many others like his, do lead to questioning and perhaps lead people to grapple with their own feelings about faith and torah misinai (read for instance some of the posts Dov Bear puts up on the chumash) however is that really a bad thing? Is it wrong of us to question our faith periodically and is it not part and parcel of our religion? As Gedeon Slifkin points out in his new blog, Ortho Moderndox, our generation has a major problem in the lack of modern theology. It is not taught in most schools, it is not discussed and if questions are raised, even in our own supposedly more open minded community, they are often shot down or brushed off with simplistic answers. How are we to truly believe in something which we cannot even explore?

The Rambam in hilchos Deios deals with the issue of G-d’s omnipotence and says that there are some things, that as humans and rational thinkers, we are not able to understand. If G-d is all powerful and can create anything can he make a rock that he cannot lift? To me the general answer to these questions is who cares. Seriously, who cares if G-d can or cannot make a rock he cannot lift. Was there matan torah at Sinai, I believe there was. What proof do I have? The same proof I have for many things I do and believe, the people who came before me have taught me that this is the truth and that these things actually happened therefore it is incumbent upon me to believe them and teach them to my children to believe as well, like all of history. While I might have my questions as to how things work, I believe there is a G-d because I see him in my everyday life, from seeing my children wakeup in the morning to looking at animals and trees. Is that simplistic of me? Perhaps, however I don’t need absolute proof of most things, and G-d is the same way. I see the world running in a certain way, I see the Jewish people who have withstood the test of time and I believe that there is someone or something, a force greater that what we can see, that makes sure everything runs as it should.

I believe that questioning the existence of G-d makes my beliefs stronger because it leads me to search for him. To sit and simply believe in it because that is what everyone else is doing, in my opinion leads to a very simple type of emunah. I also, frankly, do not believe that most rational human beings who have thought about anything, from charedim to the atheists, have not questioned the existence of G-d. To be sure, it is a dangerous path to go down, as it can lead some to throw off the yoke of torah umitzvos, however I believe it is just as dangerous to live in a bubble. Is this something that should be taught in elementary or high school? I don’t know. However these are topics which I believe need to be and should be discussed in our communities and those with questions should not be made to feel like they are doing anything wrong by asking those questions.

So back to the Orthoprax rabbi, I don’t know if what he is doing is right or wrong, but I do know that he and others have begun raising questions which many have been thinking for a long time but have been afraid to ask or explore. In my humble opinion the questions of emunah can not only a strengthen our emunah and bitachon, but can also lead to a more sophisticated and meaningful emunah. It is hard to belive that HKBH wants us to approach emunah with the same intellectual rigor of a ten year old.

Baruch Dayan Ha Emet: Harav Yehuda Amital Zatzal

Updated:

It is with a heavy heart that we mourn the loss of one of the giants of the Torah world, Rav Yehuda Amital Zatzal, the founder and Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivat Har Etzion. Rav Amital was a Holocaust survivor, who upon his arrival in Eretz Yisrael received semicha from Rav Isser Zalman Meltzer in the Chevron Yeshiva and joined the Irgun, where he fought in 1948 War of Independence. He, was an innovator together with Rav Chaim Yaakov Goldvicht Zaltal, in founding the Hesder movement. After the 6 Day War, in 1968 he founded Yeshivat Har Etzion. Rav Amital also started the Meimad political party and served in the Knesset.

From Arutz Sheva:

• Rabbi Yehuda Amital was laid to rest Friday in Jerusalem. He was eulogized by Rabbi Yaakov Meidan of the Har Etzion yeshiva.
  
  "This is how eras end. The Jewish people has gone through many upheavals in its 3,000 years, for the good and the bad – the destruction of the Temple, the expulsion from Spain, and more,” Rabbi Meidan began.
  
  "Our task as a people revolved around the question of how to deal with this. How to continue the discourse with G-d, our faith in Him, and how to mold the oral Torah for the generations to come... Only true leaders filled with a powerful faith in G-d and a sense of having a national mission can do this,” he continued.
  
  "The eradication of European Jewry was a 'chassis' collision in the relationship between the Jewish people and G-d,” he said. “There were few technicians and repairmen who stood up... to restore the faith and discourse... One of the greatest among them was our teacher, Rabbi Amital.”
  
  The establishment of the state of Israel “was a tremendous – positive! - upheaval in the relationship and the discourse between the people of Israel and G-d,” said Rabbi Meidan. “Our teacher Rabbi Amital was among the greatest architects in shaping the oral Torah and faith in G-d following this upheaval.
  
  “The bridge between true Torah, which is completely faithful to Halacha [Jewish law], and morality, human emotion, science, culture, state, army, and secularism is clear today. It was not clear one generation ago. Our teacher Rabbi Amital was one of the architects who built this bridge. His Torah will be learned for generations,” he said.

Rav Amital was a talmid chacham a tzadik and a leader of Klal Yisrael. His life serves as an example for our community with his love of Torah and Eretz Yisrael at the forefront. He spent his life teaching and spreading torah and building and bettering the State of Israel.

Below is a biography of Rav Amital that was written by Dr. Alan Brill a number of years ago in his review of Rav Amital’s book “Worlds Destroyed Worlds Rebuilt: The Religious Thought of R. Yehudah Amital” (the essay originally appeared in the 2006 Edah Journal) :

• Rabbi Amital is a profound visionary driven by his memory of the past with a unique natural sense of Judaism.1 Yehudah Klein (later changed to Amital) was born in 1925 in Transylvania. As a boy he studied in heder and yeshiva and had only four years of elementary secular education; his teacher in Hungary was the Lithuanian R. Hayyim Yehudah Halevi, a student of R. Hayyim Ozer and of Reb Barukh Baer Leibowitz. R. Amital recounts a story of his youth in which he imagined a ball of fire in the sky. His vivid and active imagination took it as a messianic sign, and he persuaded his classmates to dance around a tree in celebration. R. Amital didn’t himself experience this envisioned messianic redemption, for in 1943 the Nazis deported him to a labor camp, and the rest of his family perished in Auschwitz. Upon his release, he came to Israel in December of 1944 and resumed his yeshiva studies, receiving ordination from R. Isser Zalman Meltzer and then married the latter’s granddaughter. R. Amital joined the Haganah and fought in the battles of Latrun and the Western Galilee. After the war, R. Amital became a rabbinic secretary in the Rabbinical Court in Rehovot, and two years later, he started giving a Talmud shiur in Yeshivat Ha-Darom together with his colleague Rabbi Elazar Mann Shakh.
  
  While at Yeshivat Ha-Darom, R. Amital formulated the idea of the yeshivat hesder, which combines yeshiva study and military service. The exemption from army service granted to yeshiva students increased the friction between the religious and secular communities, so R. Amital created the yeshivat hesder to unite these two communities, as well as to illustrate the religious significance of the accomplishments of the new state. This decisive move shifted R. Amital from his haredi background to a religious Zionist affiliation and distinguished his teachings from those of his colleague Rav Shakh, who came to lead the anti-Zionist yeshiva ideology at the Ponovitch Yeshiva in Benei Beraq. For R. Amital, there was no turning back: the secular state was a reality. The hesder form of Religious Zionism became a distinct variety of Modern Orthodoxy, one that consisted of helping to build the state under labor Zionism, and combining Torah study with army service. (One should note the difference between this form of religious Zionism and Hirsch’s diaspora keeping of mitsvot, Hildesheimer’s academic study of Talmud, or American suburbanization).
  
  Propelled by Holocaust memories, R. Amital became a force in the building of the modern state of Israel, and, after the liberation of the Gush Etzion in the Six-Day War of 1967, Rabbi Amital founded the yeshiva in Kefar Etzion. (In 1971, R. Amital invited R. Aharon Lichtenstein to join him as Rosh Yeshiva.) R. Amital later led the politically liberal religious party Meimad and served as a cabinet minister. He publicly displayed his pain over the 1973 and 1982 wars, especially the loss of some of his earliest students, and raised three generations of primarily Israeli students, teaching them to think independently, sensitively and subtly about the complex issues of morality, piety and politics that the modern Israeli faces. His combination of simple interpersonal directness and complex inner theology makes him, to quote a recent Ha’aretz article, “a simple Jew… a rare breed” and one from whom American Jews can learn much.

Yehi Zichro Baruch