A Message from the Rosh HaYeshiva

A Thought on the Parsha

2012-02-24T11:35:00.003-05:00

Feel free to download and print this week's Parsha Sheet and share it with your friends and family: Click here: Parshat Terumah

Parshat Terumah - We Will Do!

During the events of the Giving of the Torah, the Children of Israel have been pretty passive. It is true that they were asked for their assent to the Torah both before and after it was given, and both times responded, "We will do." It is also true that, after the Ten Commandments and the long list of laws that followed in last week's parsha, they participated in a ceremony of entering into the covenant with God, binding them to all of the mitzvot. But they had yet to have had a chance to do anything. They could verbally express their commitment, but they had not yet been able to show it in practice.

That all changes in this week's parsha, which opens with a focus on the doing:

"Speak to the Children of Israel, and they shall take for me an offering…" (Shemot 25:2)

"And they shall make for Me a sanctuary, and I will dwell in their midst." (25:8)

And this phrasing carries through the rest of the parsha, opening each new section:

"And they shall make an ark…" (25:10)

"And you shall make a table…" (25:23)

"And you shall make a menorah…" (25:31)

"And the tabernacle you shall make…" (26:1)

"And you shall make a curtain…" (26:31)

"And you shall make an altar…" (27:1)

"And you shall make the court of the tabernacle…" (27:9)

This opportunity to do is enthusiastically embraced. Donations poured in from all people, men and women, laity and leaders. When it came to doing the work, everyone brought his or her special talents to the enterprise. Moshe selects Betzalel and Ahaliav, and all those who are blessed with the ability "to do all manner of work, of the engraver, of the craftsman of the embroiderer… and of the weaver…" (35:35). And it was not only the men who got involved, but also the women: "And all the women who were wise-hearted spun [wool] with their hands… and those who were wise-hearted spun the goat's hair." (35:25-26). The people could finally do, and they did so with passion and with zest.

Now the importance of all of this action, all of this doing, is twofold. Firstly, it is the real world translation of the commands and the covenant that preceded it. It is one thing to make a commitment, it is another to act on it. Not only is such action evidence to the sincerity of our commitment, it is its reification and its embodiment. To be in a covenant with God is to act on that covenant, and such action is also transformative. It reinforces and internalizes our convictions, so that they become real to us on the experiential level. We identify with it - the action and the commitment - and we own it.

This translation of commitment to action is nicely reflected in the custom to begin building our succah as soon as Yom Kippur lets out. At this moment, we have just spent an entire day (or ideally a period of ten days, or even forty days) in the process of repentance, of drawing close to God, of committing to be better Jews, better people, in the future. If we do nothing, all of this work, while heartfelt and sincere, will evaporate and be as transitory as the day itself. If we want it to be real, we must act upon it, taking that newfound passion and translating it into how we act in the world.

Let us also not forget that the succah is itself a tabernacle, a type of a mishkan, a place where we remember God's protection and feel God's presence, and that Yom Kippur is the day that Moshe brought down the tablets for the second time. This custom, then, is a reenacting of the building of the tabernacle that followed the second giving of the Torah. The building of the succah, the building of the mishkan, is the taking of our connection to God and finding concrete ways of bringing that into the world. It is about building a structure, creating a space wherein God's presence can be felt and may dwell within the people and within the world. It is the covenant made real.

But there is another way in which this acting is important. For the ability to act is also the ability to bring the wholeness of ourselves, of our talents and of our personality, into the world and into the service of God. We see in this week's parsha and in those that follow an emphasis on people's artistic ability, their craftsmanship, their creativity. And we see it put to religious use, as a way of connecting to God and of serving God.

This may be very different from the Judaism that is familiar to many. The Judaism many of us grew up with taught that one's religious expression, outside of the observance of mitzvot, was to be found in the beit midrash, in the intellectual realm of Torah study. That was where to direct one's passions, where to engage one's personality and creativity. Sometimes - particularly for women - doing acts of chesed is presented as the alternative to Torah study. But that's about it. That's how one brings his or her passion to the service of God. Now, that worked well - and still works well - for me and undoubtedly for many others. But it does not work well for everyone. Many peoples' creativity and talents lie elsewhere. In music, in art, in poetry, in building, in engineering. But it is so rare that such people are given the opportunity to bring their creativity, the fullness of their selves, into the service of God.

It has not always been such. The Middle Ages saw great rabbinic figures writing religious (and even love!) poetry. There has been Jewish art, Jewish illuminate manuscripts, and Jewish music throughout the ages. But it has been rare to have had a society that encouraged these other creative areas as forms of religious expression. How many children, over the last 2000 years, grew up dreaming to be a Jewish artist or a Jewish musician? How many communities have ever seen the flurry of creative activity as we saw when the mishkan was being built? The answer, of course, if not none, is very very few.

Things are improving. For in the last few generations, and even more so in the last decade, we have seen an explosion of Jewish religious creativity taking place in Israel. In a society where religion and Jewish identity is part of the very warp and woof of daily life, where there are so many possible spheres of religious and creative activity, where creative endeavors can be part of a larger community and not just an individual pursuit, in such a society religious creative expression has begun to truly flourish.

Rav Kook, in a moving passage (Adar HaYakar, p. 30-33), critiques the Judaism of the exile, where religious expression had been so limited, so enervated:

If the religious abundance of Israel were to come to the world at a time when the nation was living in the fullness of its natural state that suffused its inner soul, then it never would have accepted upon itself the religious character of those nations that most of our people have lived among, that dark, morose character, that shrivels life and shrinks the soul…

“And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart” – which the Rabbis have interpreted to mean “with your two inclinations (your evil inclination and your good inclination),” (Berakhot 54a) was not able to be fulfilled in its fullest sense…

He concludes by his wish that this can be reversed in the current State of Israel:

If so, this is the obligation of Israel now, at the time when the desire of the nation has bestirred itself to renew its national energies: to inhale once again, anew, the power of the original divine abundance, that until now has only come to the world in a weak and diminished state and in opposition to life – to inhale it with a soul that is strong, courageous and life-affirming …

This is what it means to translate thought in action, commitment into deed, and to build a place for God in this world. But to build such a place, we need to engage all our talents, all our abilities, our entire selves. Perhaps the reason religion does not talk to so many people is because we have so narrowed the scope of what religious action is and can be. If we can remember how many chapters and verses the Torah devotes to the building of the mishkan, then we can hopefully begin to expand our definition of what it means to serve God, what it means to do for God. Let us pray that the creative flourishing that has begun only continues to grow and to spread so that the entirety of each person, and the entirety of our people, can work to create place for God in this world.

Shabbat Shalom!

Happenings at the Yeshiva

2012-02-24T11:34:00.000-05:00

On Tuesday students put together a program after mincha in honor of Presidents' Day. Students looked at a number presidential speeches and letters - including George Washington's famous Letter to the Touro Synagogue - and grappled with the question of how we relate to our dual identity as Jews and as American and how this issue affects our roles as Orthodox rabbis in America.

Having finished their studies in Hilkhot Niddah two weeks ago, third and fourth year students continued their learning of the laws of gerut this week. Shiurim this week addressed the different components of conversion - milah (for men), immersion, and accepting the mitzvot - and analyzed the significance of each component and its relationship to the others. We dealt with questions of order (what if milah comes after immersion) and where a beit din is needed. By the end of the week we were looking deeply into the requirement of acceptance of mitzvot - what does this requirement actually demand? We will continue to look at this and the wealth of contemporary responsa on this topic next week.

Parallel to this, students are hearing case studies from our musmachim, who have come in to present on real life gerut situations that they have dealt with. This week they heard from Rabbi Saul Strosberg, who shared challenging cases he has had in his synagogue in Nashville, TN. Rabbi Jason Herman, executive director of the IRF, presented as well and discussed the current political landscape relating to gerut, both in the States and in Israel.

It was such a treat to have our musmachim presenting in the yeshiva, and on Wednesday we had one more. Rabbi David Wolkenfeld presented - at least virtually, via Skype - to the students in our Campus Rabbi track. Rabbi Wolkenfeld heard students present their responsa on questions that had been asked on campus, and both he and I gave students feedback, both in regards to psak and in regards to proper policy considerations.

A group of Modern Orthodox Israeli leaders was visiting the US this week on a trip sponsored by the NIF. Their trip included YU, Drisha, Maharat, and Yeshivat Chovevei Torah. I had the pleasure of meeting with the group over lunch on Wednesday. Each participant was a head of a major Modern Orthodox (in contrast to Religious Zionist) organization, and we discussed together the major challenges that are facing the Jewish, observant community - from the agunah problem, to cases of rabbinic sexual and physical abuse, to the extremism that has fostered Jewish violence in Israel, to issues of overt and hidden racism and the need to bring our Sephardic and Oriental heritage into our schools and institutions.

After this heady lunch, we were honored to have Chana Kehat, founder and director of Kolech in Israel, address the students. She began with a dvar Torah on two roles of leadership in the Torah - one mostly embodied by men, the other mostly embodied by women - and she discussed the type of leadership that is needed today. She then spoke about her work in Kolech and the challenges that are facing us in Israel and in the States in terms of women's protection and advancement within the Orthodox community.

All in all a quite exciting week for one that was one day shorter than usual!

A Thought on the Parsha

2012-02-10T11:54:00.000-05:00

Feel free to download and print this week's Parsha Sheet and share it with your friends and family: Click here: Parshat Yitro

After crossing the Red Sea, seeing the drowning of the Egyptians, experiencing the first hardships of the desert, and receiving the quail and the manna from God, the Children of Israel have finally arrived at their first destination, Mt. Sinai. While the Land of Israel still awaits, their initial demand to leave Egypt was to worship God, and that worship takes place here, in the desert, at the foot of Har Sinai: "When you take this people out of Egypt, you will serve God on this mountain." (Shemot 3:12).

The Giving of the Torah at Har Sinai was an event of giluy Shekina, of theophany, of a direct revelation of the Divine. God - speaking metaphorically- descended from heaven and came down to earth: "For on the third day, God will descend - in the sight of the entire people - onto Har Sinai" (19:11). Of course, some distance between the Divine and the human, between the transcendent and the physical, remained. As the Gemara in Sukkah puts it: "The Shekina never descended to earth lower than 10 handbreadths" (Sukkah 5a). The gap between the Divine and the human could never be fully bridged, direct encounter was not possible, but this was the closest it would ever get. The revelation of the Divine on Har Sinai was an event never to be repeated. The people would never encounter God again as they had on that day.

This, then, would seem to be the worship that they were heading towards: an intense encounter with the Divine, followed -as we read at the end of Parshat Mishpatim - with the offering of sacrifices. But was this really the point? If it were all about the Divine-human encounter, then why did it take the form of the declaration of the Ten Commandments? In fact, in God's preparing Moshe for this event, the theophany is not the focus, mitzvot are: "Now, if you will listen well to My voice and observe all My commandments, then shall be to Me a treasured nation... And the entire people responded as one, and they said, 'Everything that God has said we will do.'" (19:5, 8). The primary purpose of coming to Har Sinai is not to encounter God, but to receive the Torah. The theophany was necessary so that "the people may listen when I speak to you (Moshe), and so that they will have faith in you forever." (19:9). God revealed Godself so that we would know that it was God who had issued the commandments, that we would feel their binding force, that we would know that we were obligated and act on that knowledge. It was so that we would be and know that we were mitzuveh, commanded.

Perhaps it is something more than that. To just do the mitzvot is not the entire goal. The Ten Commandments starts with a theological declaration: "I am the Lord your God who took you out of Egypt from the house of bondage." (20:2). The mitzvot flow from that first statement, and flow in a particular way. God is not described here as the God who created Heaven and Earth. Such a God can command, and we will be bound, but there will be no intimate connection. To the degree that there would be any relationship, it would be on of monarch and subject. In such a case, our observance of the mitzvot will be framed as obligation and nothing more - we do as we have been told.

Not so regarding the God who took us out of Egypt. Having been redeemed by God, we entered into a special relationship with God, we became God's people. When this God commands us, we are bound not only because we are commanded, but also because of our relationship, and it is the performance of the mitzvot that express and sustain that relationship.

When a husband does the dishes or takes out the garbage, even unasked, he is doing this not because he is obligated or commanded, but because such actions are an expression of his relationship to his wife, and such acts nurture and sustain the relationship.

We observe the mitzvot because we were commanded, but not just because we were commanded. We also observe them because they connect us to God. The mitzvot are empty when there is no connection, but neither are they just means to an end. The goal is not the connection, and we do not keep the mitzvot in order that we may have a relationship with God. Rather, the mitzvot - the way we live every moment of our lives - is the essence of the relationship itself.

There is a problem if we overly focus on the experiential dimension - the emotional, psychological or religious intensity that such connection can bring. If this is our focus, we will always be trying to recapture the same feeling as the "first time," and it will reduce our relationship to that feeling, that experience. And is this truly what the relationship is about? This feeling? Isn't about how we act, how we live our lives? A hyper-focus on the experiential can make us lose sight of the totality of the relationship. It can pervert it, narrowing its meaning; it can turn the emotional or religious experience into a thing of ultimate meaning, into idolatry.

It is thus that immediately after receiving the Torah and experiencing the theophany that the Children of Israel are not commanded to build the Tabernacle. That structure is a structure which will be - as Ramban describes it - a portable Mount Sinai; it is a structure that will allow us to recapture, even if only slightly, the Sinaitic encounter. But the command for that structure will come later. The first response to the Divine-human encounter is not to recreate it, but to avoid its potential pitfalls:

God said to Moshe, so shall you say to the Children of Israel: You have seen that I have spoken to you from the heaven. You shall not make [representations of] Me. Gods of gold and gods of silver you shall not make for yourselves. (20:19-20).

Do not focus on recapturing that encounter, God is saying. Do not try to overly concretize that experience. If you do, it will become an idol. In you attempt to capture this ephemeral thing, you will turn Me into something lesser than who I am. We will continue to have encounters, You and I, says God, but they will not be like the first time. And these encounters will not require a specific place or a specific structure: "... In every place where I will call My name, I will come to you and bless you" (20:22).

Yes, God is saying, our relationship is of critical importance, and it must and will continue, but in ways that transcend this location, this experience. It must be a relationship that is the very warp and woof of your life. And thus, parshat Yitro is not followed by parshat Terumah, the parsha of the Mishkan, but by parshat Mishpatim, the parsha of the laws. This is how our relationship with God is lived.

Tellingly, parshat Mishpatim ends with the Children of Israel entering into a brit, a covenant with God, that is the commitment to these laws. To do the laws with no relationship to God reduces them to hollow observance. One is doing one's obligation, but no more, and the context of brit is completely forgotten. But to pursue the relationship at its experiential level with disregard for the laws is to misunderstand the very nature of the relationship. Our relationship with God means nothing, or at least very little, when it does not translate into action. Only when we follow Yitro with Mishpatim, do we live a life in which our relationship with God becomes real, where our actions are its very expression and its sustenance. And only when we Yitro precedes Mishpatim do we live a life in which our observance is no longer mechanical, but is part of a brit, part of a true, enduring and covenantal relationship.

Shabbat Shalom!

Happenings at the Yeshiva

2012-02-10T11:53:00.000-05:00

This week, third and fourth year students finished studying hilkhot Niddah, focusing on the sensitive and highly important topic of the halakhot that surround the wedding night. They also heard a presentation from Dr. David Ribner, an eminent couples sex therapist in Israel, and co-author with Dr. Jennie Rosenfeld of the new "The Newlywed Guide to Physical Intimacy". Dr. Ribner talked about how a rabbi can help in preparing a bride and groom for their sexual life as a married couple, and also the critical role played by one's family of origin and the messages that one receives growing up. This talk was followed, on the next day, by a presentation by Dr. Batsheva Marcus, director of the Center for Female Sexuality. Dr. Marcus discussed the types of sexual problems that couples - newly married or married for many years - may experience and the role that a rabbi can play in making sure that these issues are surfaced and that the couple gets the help that they need. All in all, a powerful week on a very sensitive topic.

We also had the pleasure of welcoming Rabbi Yair Kahn, a longtime rav in Gush Etzion and a former chavruta of mine, to the yeshiva on Tuesday. Rav Yair gave a shiur on the topic of Birkat HaMazon, and its emphasis on the Land of Israel and the agricultural produce of Israel. The shiur was a wonderful lead-on to Tu BiShvat the following day, when students arrange a special Tu BiShvat seder in the afternoon.

It was a very full week, and it is wonderful to be back.

My Recent Trip to England

2012-02-10T09:11:00.000-05:00

Last week I had the pleasure of spending Shabbat in the Golders Greenneighborhood in London. I had the opportunity to speak in severalplaces and received a very warm reception from the entire community.

A big yasher koach and todah raba to our student Dr. Benjamin Elton, a nativeof Manchester and an active lay leader turned rabbinical student, whocoordinated my trip.

On the day of my arrival, UK's major Jewish newspaper published a wonderful article about YCT and how we are attracting excellent students from England. Here is an excerpt:

Why a Bronx yeshivah is a beacon for Brits

We talk to the head of a yeshivah at the cutting edge of modern Orthodoxy, Rabbi Dov Linzer, who is visiting the UK this week.

It is not uncommon for yeshivah heads to come here in search of potential students. But Rabbi Dov Linzer, who will be speaking at several United Synagogues over the weekend on his first trip to the UK, is different. His yeshivah, Chovevei Torah, is based in New York, not in Israel. And it is not just modern Orthodox, but "open modern Orthodox", modelled on the ideals of its founder, Rabbi Avi Weiss of Riverdale in the Bronx.

To read the entire article, click here.

A brief summary of the trip:

On Thursday afternoon I gave a shiur to the Kinloss CommunityKollel on the topic of shaving on Chol HaMoed. It was a classic lomdusshiur, analyzing the different opinions in the rishonim and poskim through aconceptual lens.

On Friday night, at the Hendon Synagogue, I gave a brief sermon related to the parsha, discussing two different types of belief: philosophicalbelief (belief that) and faith (belief in), and the relationship between faithand commandedness.

I spent Shabbat morning with Rabbi Dr. Harvey Belovski, Rabbi ofthe Golders Green Synagogue. Following davening I spoke on the topic of"Is Foie Gras Kosher: The Dialectic of Ethics andHalakha." The talk was enthusiastically received, and theconversation continued through the Kiddush (no foi gras served!) that followed.

Shabbat ended with a talk between mincha and ma'ariv at the AleiTzion Synagogue on the topic of "Science and Halakha: Sympathies andStrategies."

Motzei Shabbat, England was blanketed with 4-5 inches ofsnow. Although such a snow is a bit of a rarity in England, itdidn't deter a huge turnout to my final shiur, "Mechitza: Marginalizationor Membership", which took place at Cambridge University. I wasimpressed with the knowledge, thoughtfulness, and seriousness of the Cambridgestudents and it is no surprise that YCT has been blessed with so many starstudents who have come from Cambridge!

It was a wonderful few days in England, and I look forward to mynext opportunity to return, to teach Torah, and to connect to all the wonderfulpeople there.

A Thought on the Parsha

2012-02-08T16:02:00.002-05:00

Feel free to download and print this week's Parsha Sheet and share it with your friends and family:

Click here: Parshat Bishalach

Freedom for What?

And they came to Marah, and they could not drink the waters of Marah because they were bitter... And the people murmured against Moshe and Aharon saying, 'What shall we drink?'" (Shemot 15:23-24). Parashat Beshalach is the parasha of the apex of the Exodus, as it relates the Splitting of the Sea, the drowning of the Egyptians, and the Song on the Sea. It is also the parasha of the murmurings: "And the entire congregation of Bnei Yisrael murmured against Moshe and Aharon in the Wilderness. And they said to them: "Who would give that we had died by the hand of God in the land of Egypt when we sat by the fleshpots and ate bread to our fill, that you have taken us to this wilderness to kill this entire congregation in starvation" (Shemot 16:2-3). "And the people fought with Moshe and they said, 'Give us water to drink'..." (Shemot 17:3). "And they called the name of the place Trial and Quarrel, because Bnei Yisrael had fought with and tested God saying, "Is God in our midst, or not?" (Shemot 17:7). How is it that the climax of the Exodus could be followed so precipitously with the grumblings and murmurings that were to accompany them for 40 years throughout the Wilderness?

Much has been said and can be said about this in regards to the outgrowing of a slave mentality and the quality of a faith that comes too easily. There is, however, another factor here as well, one that goes to the very core of the Exodus and of the purpose of freedom. What were they heading towards? What was the purpose ofyitziat Mitzrayim and how had this purpose been framed to the people?

Both God and Moshe had emphasized that the people would be freed from the bondage of Egypt and be able to enter into a land "flowing with milk and honey" as a free people (cf. Shemot 3:8, 3:17). This material promise of freedom was of course thrown back in Moshe's face when it did not immediately materialize: "Even to a land flowing of milk and honey you have not brought us, nor given us an inheritance of a field and vineyard!" (Bamidbar 15:13). The promise for a physically better life was met with immediate disappointment, and when water and food were lacking, murmuring and complaining ensued. Why not go back to the fleshpots of Egypt rather than endure the hardships of the desert?

The true purpose of yitziat Mitzrayim was, of course, quite different. "When you take the People out of Egypt you shall serve God on this mountain" (Shemot 3:12). While to the people this must have sounded like a ruse to win Pharaoh's agreement to let them out, it was, in fact, the ultimate purpose of the Exodus: to stand at Har Sinai and accept and be commanded by the mitzvot, not just to become physically free, but to transform from slaves of Pharaoh to servants of God. "They are my servants, whom I have taken out of the Land of Egypt" (Vayikra 25:42). Thus, as we have seen "and I will be for them as a God" is the climax of "and I will redeem them... and take them for me as a People" (Shemot 6:7). This is distilled in the concise statement of the Hagaddah, "Originally we were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, and now God has drawn us close to God's service."

The question of the purpose of freedom, and the definition of liberty, was clearly articulated by Isaiah Berlin in his article "Two Concepts of Liberty," where he describes two types of liberty: negative liberty and positive liberty. Negative liberty is the freedom from constraint, whereas positive liberty is having the power and resources to act to fulfill one's own potential, and often requires a level of education, self-discipline, and certain underlying values. Negative liberty is leaving Egypt, positive liberty is standing at Har Sinai. Ain likha ben chorin ela mi she'osek baTorah, "No one is as free as the one who devotes himself to the study of Torah."

Bnei Yisrael, as an enslaved people, had to first be motivated by the physical freedom and the promise of a better life, but - once hardship was encountered and murmurings ensued, they had to be trained in the second type of freedom. They had to learn to see beyond material privation to something of greater consequence. "There God gave them rule and law and there God tested them" (Shemot 15:25). There - as the Rabbis said - God began to introduce them to law, discipline, and Torah, and gave them "some of the laws of the Torah that they should begin to practice - Shabbat, the red calf, and civil laws" (Rashi quoting Mekhilta). "And God said to them: If you surely listen to the voice of Hashem your God, and do what is right in God's eyes, and listen to God's commandments, and observe God's edicts, then all of the afflictions that I have placed upon Egypt I will not place upon you, for I am God your healer." While still needing to be motivated by the promise of physical protection, the people are being introduced and trained in the accepting of a life of discipline and meaning, a life of mitzvot and of purpose. And even the giving of the man, the most basic sustenance, was followed by, "that I may test them, if they will walk in My law, or no" (Shemot 16:4).

This idea is nicely stated by Michael Walzer in his book Exodus and Revolution (which is a must-read for these parashot):

For the wilderness wasn't only a world of austerity, it was a world of laws...The Israelites had been Pharaoh's slaves; in the wilderness they became God's servants... and once they agree to God's rule, He and Moses, His deputy, force them to be free. This, according to Rousseau, was Moses' greatest achievement; he transformed a herd of "wretched fugitives" who lacked both virtue and courage, into a "free people." He didn't do this merely by breaking their chains but also by organizing them into a "political society" and giving them laws. He brought them what is currently called "positive freedom," that is, not so much (not at all!) a way of life free from regulation but rather a way of life to whose regulation they could, and did, agree... The Israelite slaves could become free only insofar as they accepted the discipline of freedom, to obligation to live up to a common standard and to take responsibility for their own actions... hence the Sinai covenant" (pp. 52-53).

Two hundred years ago the Jewish People experienced another Exodus - they were freed from the ghetto and welcomed into the larger, secular world. For some, this freedom was a negative liberty, and with it came a rejection of all constraints - the physical and economic constraints (not to mention the oppression) of the ghetto, and the constraints of a life of Torah and mitzvot as well. For others, this freedom was only dangerous, because it allowed for such a complete rejection of constraints, and they attempted - and still attempt - to move back into a world that existed before this freedom, a world that is fully constrained. Others, including today's Modern Orthodox Jews, willingly embraced this new freedom, willingly left the Egypt of old, while still holding fast to the positive freedom of a life of Torah and mitzvot, the true freedom that comes from the commands and demands of the Torah.

What has been missing, however, even for this last group, and for today's Modern Orthodox Jews, is a new vision of the Promised Land. For with this new Exodus, a new vision that gives purpose and meaning to this freedom, a vision that shapes for us how we can embrace this freedom to bring us to a place of higher and ultimate meaning, that explains for us our purpose in life in a way that fully incorporates our new reality - such a vision, at least outside of Israel, is sorely lacking. What, we must ask ourselves, is the purpose of this new freedom? Where are we marching towards? What is our Promised Land?

It is because of this lack that we - in the Modern Orthodox camp - often struggle for an animating religious ethos, and a real sense of purpose. We have spent too many years wandering aimlessly in the Wilderness. Our challenge, then, is not just to accept this new freedom, not just to recognize it as something that has value - to affirm that we can learn from the larger world - but to incorporate it into our religious vision, to give it purpose, to make it part of our vision and part of our life, so that we can lead ourselves into the Promised Land.

A Thought on the Parsha

2012-01-27T15:37:00.000-05:00

Feel free to download and print this week's Parsha Sheet and share it with your friends and family:

Click here: Parshat Bo

"And You Shall Know that I am the Lord" - Knowing and Experiencing God

"And in order that you should relate in the ears of your children and your children's children how I have made a mockery of the Egyptians and my signs that I have placed upon them, and you will know that I am the Lord." (Ex. 10:2). This week's parasha opens with the theme that had been emphasized throughout last week's parasha as well - that the Children of Israel should know God. Through the plagues, or more accurately, the signs and wonders, we would come to know God. Not just intellectually, or as theological propositions - that God exists, that God is all powerful - but that through God's actions, and through God's direct providence, we could come to know God directly and intimately.

The experience of yitziat Mitzrayim, of the Exodus, was one of hitgalut haShekinah, of divine revelation, of a direct encounter with the Divine. "At midnight, I will go out into the midst of Egypt." (Ex. 11:4) "And I will pass through the land of Egypt on that night" (Ex. 12:12) - "I, and not a messenger; I, and not an angel" (Pesach Hagaddah). This revelation of the Divine reached a new height at the Splitting of the Sea - "This is my God whom I will adorn" (Ex. 15:2) - "A maidservant at the Splitting of the Sea saw what even Yechezkel never saw in his prophecy of the Divine Chariot - 'This is my God' - as if one could point to God with her finger." (Mekhilta). It was this process of Divine revelation that reached its apogee at the Revelation of Sinai, when God reveled God's self to the entire people, in the one never- to-be-repeated moment in history.

This, then, is the meaning of the verb "v'yi'datem" that interrupts the string of verbs at the beginning of last week's parasha, v'hotzeiti, vi'hitzalti' v'ga'aliti, v'liakachti (Ex. 6:6-7). After all these verbs of redemption, there is then, vi'ydatem, "and you shall know that I am the Lord your God", and then, only afterwards, the final verb, vi'heiveiti, "and I will bring you into the land" (Ex. 6:8). What was that event of knowing God that followed the Exodus and preceded entering the Land of Israel? It was, of course, the Revelation of Sinai. It was this event that was the culmination and, ultimately, the goal of the Exodus, and it was this event that was the prerequisite for entry into the Land. To have a land and become a nation, the people had to forge their national identity through the physical act of redemption and through the spiritual act of the Divine revelation, by directly knowing and encountering God. For it was this - the knowing of God - that was at the bedrock of their identity as a people, as a nation.

Knowing God, thus, is the opening and framing of the Ten Commandments. "Anokhi Hashem E-lokekha" - "I am the Lord your God." This opening proclamation was the moment of v'yi'datem. And this opening proclamation was the framing for all the mitzvot that followed. For the mitzvot are only truly meaningful if they flow out of a recognition that God has commanded them, and they are only truly meaningful if - in our lived lives - they are an expression of and a cultivation of our awareness of the God Who has commanded them.

However, after the event of the Revelation of Sinai has passed into the background, it can be very challenging to sustain this awareness. A life of mitzvot can easily become one of rote observance, or a lifestyle, and we can easily forget the larger framing and the larger goal. The Torah commands us, of course, to keep our awareness of this event alive: "Guard yourself... lest you forget the things that your eyes saw... the day that you stood before Hashem your God at Mt Horeb" (Deut. 16:3). But how are we to sustain this memory? What happens to the reality of "v'yi'datem ki ani Hashem"?

To some degree, Hazal have addressed this by instituting berakhot before the performance of a mitzvah. Far from being redundant, such berakhot remind us that this act is not just some tradition that we are committed to, but that we are rather doing it because of our relationship to God. "That You have sanctified us with Your commandments." The brakha then, is the framing of the mitzvah. It is the "Anokhi Hashem E-lokekha" that precedes the commandments. The problem, however, is that this brakha just becomes another halakha, and its power to frame and to heighten our awareness becomes dulled.

The key, I believe, is found in our parasha. "And it shall be for you a sign on your hand and a remembrance between your eyes, in order that the Torah of God should be in your mouth, for with an outstretched arm the Lord your God has taken you out of Egypt." (Ex. 13:8). How do we keep the memory of the Exodus, and of the Divine revelation which was its culmination, alive? By ensuring that "the Torah of God is in our mouth." This means nothing less than the verse from the Shema, "And these words which I command you today shall be on your heart. And you shall teach them to your children and you shall speak of them, when you sit in your house and when you walk on the way, and when you lie down and when you rise up." We are commanded, plain and simple, to thinking and talking about Torah at every moment. We should be so engaged in it, so caught up with it, that it is always on the lips, always what we are thinking about and always what we are talking about.

Halakhically, the Rabbis understand that our formal obligation to learn Torah can be discharged with much less than constant engagement, but the ethos of the Torah and of this verse remains clear. Our relationship to God is sustained and made manifest by our constant involvement in the study of and reflection on God's Torah. True talmud Torah, broadly defined, engages our thoughts, our emotions, and our passions. It raises our consciousness and frames all of our experiences in a religious context. It is talmud Torah that is the "Anokhi Hashem E-lokekha" to our life of mitzvot. It is through talmud Torah that we can, ultimately, achieve "vi'ydatem ki ani Hashem".

Such is on the personal level. How we take the experience of vi'ydatem and move tovi'heiveiti, how we bring this ethos to bear on our national identity, its foundation and its aspirations, these are questions that we need to grapple with individually and communally in the context of the current State of Israel. Let us all strive to live a life where the Torah of God is constantly on our lips and in our consciousness, and then work together to bring our personal strivings and transformation to the national level, to our identity as a People. "And you shall be for Me as a People."

New York Times Op-Ed

2012-01-20T09:53:00.003-05:00

Dear Friends and Supporters,

The exciting news, as many of you may already know, is that my op-ed on modesty, Beit Shemesh and halakha is out in today's NY Times. Here is the link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/20/opinion/ultra-orthodox-jews-and-the-modesty-fight.html

Please post it and pass it on to anyone who may be interested.

For those who did not have a chance to read my recent blog posting (and email from 3 weeks ago) that dealt with this topic with a more detailed analysis of the sources, you can see it here. Thank you all for your encouraging feedback of my initial piece. It helped inspire me to write this op-ed.

Let us hope that this generates intense debate and discussion, and possibly even some movement, particularly within our own community.

A Thought on the Parsha

2012-01-20T09:52:00.002-05:00

Parshat Va'Eira - A Leader to the People or a Leader of the People?

There are two types of leaders. There is the leader that comes to the people with a vision, who brings a message from on high down to those he would lead. Such a leader’s goal is to gather followers by finding those who are persuaded by his message, his passion, his vision. And then there is the leader who emerges from within the people, who has internalized their deepest concerns and passions, who can crystallize and articulate the inchoate longings of the people. The goal of such a leader is to bring this message – their message – to those in power, to the larger society, in order to bring about true change.

Two types of leaders: a leader from above and a leader from below. Or, as the Gemara in Yoma (19a) phrases it in reference to the Kohanim: messengers of God or messengers of the people. Which one was Moshe? Framed this way, the answer is obvious. Moshe of course is the one who brings God's message down from on high, who brings the tablets from Mt. Sinai. But his type of leadership was already concretized from its very inception.

Moshe's career undoubtedly stemmed from his deep care for his people: "And it came to pass in those days, when Moshe was grown, that he went out to his brothers, and he looked on their burdens..." (Shemot 2:11). What a tremendous act! To leave the security and comfort of Pharaoh’s house, to go out and do something about his suffering people, simply because he cared. He was motivated out of a sense of kinship to directly see, understand, and feel their suffering. But while Moshe was acting forthe people, his motivation was his own, and his actions were also his own. Thus, on the next day, he is rejected by the people: "Who made you a prince and judge over us?" (2:14). He cares for them, he acts on their behalf, but he has not taken the time to talk to them, to understand them. How could it be otherwise? Moshe is an outsider, coming from a position of privilege. He may be the leader for the people, but without investing in them or identifying with them, he will not be a leader from the people, of the people.

We would be hard-pressed to find any instance where Moshe actually has a meaningful discourse with those he is leading. When Moshe first encountered God in the burning bush, he was concerned with how his message would be received. What if they ask what God's name is? What if they say that God has not sent me? What if "they will not believe me?" and what if "they will not listen to my voice?"(4:1). In response, God revealed God’s name to Moshe and gave him signs to show the people. Moshe has imagined an entire conversation taking place when he comes to the people. But then what happened? "Aaron spoke all the words which the Lord had spoken to Moses, and performed the signs in the sight of the people. And the people believed…" (4:30-31). There is no back-and-forth, no asking for God's name, no asking for proof. It is just - here's what God said, here are the signs. And they immediately believe.

It seems that no one was in a position to get a real conversation going. Moshe was not going to engage the people, and they were not going to engage him. When Moshe delivered a message they were eager to hear, they followed him, but they did not embrace him, they did not connect with him. Thus, although the people believed andheard, it was not Moshe in whom they were believing, it was not Moshe to whom they were listening. "And the people believed and they heard that God had remembered his people…" (4:31). Moshe is completely absent from this verse. It was God and the message that they connected to, not Moshe.

Moshe had won the people’s backing without any difficult investment in the people, without truly understanding and addressing their fears and concerns, without creating relationships. And such a backing is easily lost. When Moshe and Aharon come to Pharaoh, the people are nowhere to be seen: "'Afterwards Moshe and Aharon came and said to Pharaoh…' (5:1). And where were the elders? They had dropped off one by one." (Rashi, quoting the Shemot Rabbah). One can just imagine the scene. Moshe says to Pharaoh: "We, together with the leaders of the people…" "Together with whom?" And then Moshe looks behind him, and there is no one there. He had just become a leader without a people. He was truly a "messenger of God," but he was certainly not a "messenger of the people."

And so opens our parasha. The people have just vehemently complained and rejected Moshe, Moshe brings their message to God, and God sends him back to the people. Once again, no success. "And they did not listen to Moshe, because of their anguished spirit and the cruel slavery." (6:9). He never really had their ear, and he certainly does not now. So what is God's response? Forget the people, just worry about Pharaoh: " Go, speak to Pharaoh king of Egypt, that he let the people of Israel go out of his land." (6:11).

From this point on in the narrative, the Children of Israel disappear. The only players in the entire story of the ten plagues leading up to the smiting of the first born and being driven out of Egypt are Moshe, Aharon, the magicians, and the Egyptian people. Moshe represents God, not his people, and thus the people are nowhere to be seen.

Moshe brings a message not from the people, but to the people, and it is one he is imposing on them. It is actually very similar to his message to Pharaoh: This is what God says, this is what will happen, this is what you must do. And the Torah, when it sums up the mission of Moshe and Aharon, implicitly equates their relationship to the people with their relationship to Pharaoh: "And [God] gave them a charge to the people of Israel, and to Pharaoh king of Egypt..." (6:13). Moshe is a messenger of God. A messenger of God to the people and a messenger of God to Pharaoh.

It is thus not surprising to find that when the time of redemption comes, the people must be forcibly dragged out of Egypt. Just as Moshe's mission had to be forced on Pharaoh, it had to be forced on the people. They had to be driven out, and so it was: "For they were driven out of Egypt, and they could not tarry…" (12:39). God took us out with a mighty hand, a mighty hand that was needed not only to compel Pharaoh, but to compel the people as well. "For with a mighty hand he shall let them go and with a mighty hand he shall drive them out." (5:23).

This type of leadership is necessary at times. Sometimes the people do not know what is best for them. Sometimes they are too enslaved in body, too enslaved in soul, to have the vision and strength needed to bring about change, to set themselves free. Perhaps it was only Moshe who could have been their leader at this time. Perhaps it could only be someone who came from a position of privilege, with the freedom of body and spirit, who could have the clear vision, who could understand what true freedom is. And perhaps only someone who had not had ingrained in him the qualities of subservience and submission, could have the courage and the fortitude to withstand setbacks and failures. The people could not have had a leader from their midst. To take the people out of Egypt needed a leadership from above, a leadership of a "mighty hand." They needed Moshe as their leader.

This leadership, however, will not be able to take them into the land. That needs a leader from the people and of the people. After having been freed and having received the Torah, the people would need a leader who, first and foremost, was a messenger of the people. Although Moshe was to be the one to actualize the first four stages of redemption: "vi'hotzeiti… vi'hitzalti… vi'ga'alti… vi'lakachti, and I will take out… and I will save… and I will redeem... and I will take them to me as a people" (6:6-7), he was not to be the one to realize the fifth and final stage of redemption, "vi'heiveiti, and I will bring them into the Land…" (6:8). For this, a leader to the people would not suffice. For this, there would need to be a leader from the people and of the people.

A forcible leadership may be necessary in the short run, but it will not last, and it is not what a free people need. A leadership that respects the people, that invests in each individual, that embodies the people's concerns, fears, passions, and ultimately their vision for themselves is the leadership that which was needed to bring the people into the land. And it is the leadership that is needed today.

Shabbat Shalom!

Torah From Our Beit Midrash-Tzniut

2012-01-19T12:44:00.003-05:00

December 30, 2011

Last week, I mentioned that I had given a shiur at the yeshiva on aspects of tzniut and on how the cultural interpretation of that concept - in theory and practice - was at odds with its halakhic definition, and was damaging to both men's perception of women and to women's perception of themselves and their own sexuality. I was asked by a number of people to elaborate on these issues, and what follows is a summary of the shiur that I gave last week.

Tova Hartman, in her chapter "Modesty and the Religious Male Gaze," from her book Feminism Encounters Traditional Judaism, discusses the topic of the male gaze, and how the culture around tzniut reinforces this - accepts it as a given - and the status of women as sex objects. The only difference between this approach and that of Western culture is whether the response is for women (and men) to leverage it or cover it up, but the "traditional" Jewish approach doesn't critique the male gaze, per se, and demand the non-objectification of women. This is, indeed, the religious Jewish cultural reality, but it is not the halakhic one.

The sources in the Gemara (in particular Berakhot 24a: hair is 'ervah, voice is 'ervah, shok (thigh?) is 'ervah, etc.) are directed to the man and his need/obligation not to look at women sexually (unless in the context of marriage or getting married). Admittedly, the Gemara's directives are, as a rule, focused on men, and its concern here is about sexual thoughts (see also AZ 20a-b and Avot d'Rebbe Natan, version B, chapter 2). - more an issue for men, according to the Gemara, than for women. Nevertheless, the halakhic obligation is how man should and should not look. It is all about the male gaze - "Do not look at women (who are not your wife, and whom you are not considering marrying) so that you do not have illicit sexual thoughts" is not very far from, and can be translated as "Do not look at women as sex objects." Similarly, in Shulkhan Arukh, both in Orah Hayyim (75) and Even HaEzer (21), the obligation is directed at men, and at how they look at women.

There are some Gemarot that talk about women's responsibility in this regard. The Gemara in Shabbat (62b), in particular, is a strong critique against women who would dress and walk in sexually provocative ways. This, it should be noted, is not the specific issue of how much of one's body needs to be covered, what is or is not an ervah, etc. It is about being intentionally sexually provocative, seducing others to sin, and a general concern of tzniut in all ways (not just dress - even how one walks, etc.), that applies equally to men and to women. The other Gemara that talks more about norms of modest behavior/dress for women is the Gemara in Ketuvot (72b) regarding dat Yehudit for married women. What is notable about this Gemara - besides that it is about married, not unmarried women - is that again, it does not quantify body parts, etc., or focus on men's sexual thoughts. It is rather Jewish societal norms of modest behavior. More to the point, if one looks at the mishna and what is included in dat Yehudit, it will become immediately apparent that the issue here is violating the appropriate intimacy and exclusivity between husband and wife, and the types of behavior that is required to protect this intimacy and trust. Truly, tzniut as the general concept of modesty - applies for men and women, and is much more than dress. What we do not have is women's responsibility for men's sexual gaze and sexual thoughts.

The one Gemara that puts the responsibility for men's inability to control their sexual desires, although the women are acting innocently, is the story of the daughter of R. Yossi from Yukrat in Taanit (24a). The Gemara relates that his daughter was very beautiful, and one day he caught a man peering at her from behind some bushes. The man said: "If I can't marry her, at least I can derive pleasure from looking at her." Rather than criticize the man, R. Yossi of Yukrat said to his daughter: "My daughter, you are causing anguish to God's creatures. Return to your dust." Now, when this Gemara is taught, one can easily derive the lesson that - aha! Men can't control their urges, and their sexual thoughts are women's responsibility. What is lost - significantly and profoundly! - is that the sugya opens with R. Yossi bar Avin saying that he used to be a student of R. Yossi from Yukrat, and he left him because he (R. Yossi of Yukrat) didn't even have any compassion on his son and daughter. This story is the evidence to his lack of compassion on his daughter. In other words, it is his actions and perhaps the entire attitude that is being critiqued here, not endorsed.

The cultural shift that moved this from men's obligation to women's had a profound impact. We have abandoned the idea that men can control their sexual thoughts, their lusts or their male gaze. So our (implicit) estimation of men has been diminished. What type of a religious system gives up - or implicitly tells an individual to give up - on the possibility of religious growth, even in areas where there are strong counter desires? And by placing the responsibility on women, we have reinforced their status as sex objects, saddled them with the responsibility and guilt of men's sexual desires and thoughts, and have told them to respond to this by covering themselves up - by de-sexualizing themselves, and as a result, we have problematized and made them highly conflicted about their own sexuality, a problem with significant repercussions in marriage and elsewhere.

This entire problem could be solved by a return to the halakhot and approaches to tzniut in the Gemara and translating this into our culture and education. Such an approach would teach men to not look at women as sex objects, would teach women that they are not responsible for men's sexual thoughts, and unless they are dressing or acting in a particularly provocative manner, there is no lifnei iver (causing others to sin) or such concerns, because it is within men's control whether and how to look at them. It would teach both men and women that tzniut is about more than dress, it is about comportment and behavior, it is about modesty before God and in relationship to all people - men and women - and that it applies equally to both men and women.

A final word about the quantification of tzniut concerns. The Gemara Berakhot talks about shok (thigh) being an 'ervah, and the Gemara in Ketuvot about the problem of a married woman appearing with her zro'ot (upper arms) uncovered. This leads to the "halakha" that women (married or unmarried) must cover the legs to the knee (top of the knee, bottom of the knee, middle of the knee?) and their arms to the elbow. Besides the fact that the Gemara about shok (and the Shulkhan Arukh) is talking to men, not to women, another central critique is in order. The assumption of all discussions around these topics is that these are strict, objective categories. There is only one problem. The Mishna (Ohalot 1:8) and Rishonim (e.g., Tosafot, Menachot 37a, s.v. Kiboret) are clear that shoke shok is not the thigh. It is the calf. So, the conclusion should be that women must wear ankle-length dresses and skirts. But of course, that has rarely been the practice. So the claim is made that these refer to the thigh, a claim completely untenable based on the evidence.

The true solution is that these statements are not absolutes, but change based on historical and societal contexts. Hence, in the time of the Gemara, even the lower leg was usually covered and for a man to gaze at a woman's lower leg would be unacceptable. But when societal norms change, so did the parameters of what is normally covered and what cannot be male-gazed upon. Hence, in Shulkhan Arukh, OH (75) one will not find any mention of the shok. Rather, both regarding body parts (except for the actual genital areas), and regarding women's hair, or (singing) voice, the concern is only with what is normally covered in modest society. [In the case of hair covering, the Gemara in Ketuvot attributes this norm to dat Moshe, a Biblical norm, so it is much more questionable whether it can be societally contingent.]

The upshot of all of this is that a true approach to tzniut, in addition to focusing on modesty in all ways for men and for women, and in addition to directing men to control their male gaze, would also reject the quantification of the concept of tzniut and the objectification of women's body parts towards this end. It would talk to men and women about a general approach of dressing and acting modestly, and to attend to communal norms of modest dress and behavior. Now that would be truly refreshing. It could not only counteract all the negatives that the current approach has engendered, but also put us on the path - finally, and again - of embracing the true value of tzniut and fulfilling the verse in Micha (6:8) of "walking humbly with your God".

A thought on the Parsha

2012-01-13T12:28:00.002-05:00

Feel free to download and print this week's Parsha Sheet and share it with your friends and family:
Click here: Parshat Shemot

Parshat Shemot – I’ve Been Down So Long it Looks Like Up to Me

The beginning of the book of Shemot sees the Children of Israel enslaved, oppressed, and at the risk of decimation. The foundation for their salvation is laid in the birth of Moshe, his being saved by Pharaoh’s daughter, and his venturing out to see the affliction of his brothers. The pivotal moment, however, is when the people cry out and God decides to act: “And it was in those many days, that the king ofEgyptdied, and the Children of Israel groaned in their slavery and cried out and their cry for help from their slavery came up to God.” (Shemot 2:23). It is at this moment, when God remembers the covenant, that God appears to Moshe in the burning bush and gives him his charge to redeem the Children of Israel from bondage.

Why did God have to wait for their outcry? Wasn’t the reality of their suffering bad enough to warrant God’s intervention? And why did the people cry out only when Pharaoh died? What changed at that moment?

The standard explanation as to why they groaned only then is that it was then that their servitude worsened. Perhaps the new Pharaoh had promulgated even harsher edicts and innovated new forms of oppression, or perhaps the mere fact that their oppression was perpetuated from one Pharaoh to the next made it clear that there was no hope for change. The Sfas Emes (R. Yehudah Aryeh Leib Alter, 1847–1905, the Rebbe of Gerer Chasidim) offers a radically different interpretation. Their moaning, he says, quoting his grandfather, was not brought about by the loss of all hope, but rather by its first flickering:

כי קודם שמת היו שרוים כל כך בגלות כי לא הרגישו שהם בגלות. ועתה התתיל קצת גאולה שהבינו הגלות והתאנחו.

Before the king of Egypt died, they were so immersed (lit., dwelling so much) in their state of exile, that they were not even aware that they were in exile. And now, a tiny redemption began, because they understood that they were in exile, and they moaned.

It is possible, says the Sfas Emes, to be so immersed in a terrible state – what he refers to as “exile” – that one believes that what she is living is a normal existence. If one cannot even imagine a different life, then the one’s current existence is seen as normal and therefore acceptable. When Pharaoh died there was suddenly the possibility that things might change, and it was at this moment, when they could step outside of their current reality and envision an alternate life for themselves, that they truly felt the weight of their oppression. It was at this moment that they moaned and cried out to God for salvation.

It was therefore also at this moment that God remembered the covenant. The people certainly needed salvation earlier, but you cannot save people who do not want to be saved. Only when they wanted to be saved would they be prepared to hear Moshe’s declaration in the name of God: “I have surely remembered you… and I will take you out from the affliction ofEgypt.” Only because they were ready to hear that message, did the people immediately embrace it: “And the people believed, and they heard that God had remembered the children ofIsraeland that God saw their affliction…” (4:31).

This reaction was by no means a foregone conclusion. Let us not forget that Moshe first resisted God’s mission saying that the people would not believe him. Isn’t that strange? Wouldn’t the people be eager to hear a message of salvation? The answer is not necessarily. Change can be scary; it casts one out of the familiar and into the unknown. If one is not yet ready to be saved, one will seek comfort and protection in the current structure, no matter how oppressive. The desire for security is so powerful that even when the people embraced hope, this desire, this impulse, remained present, lurking just below the surface. At the moment that things begin to get worse, all the people want is to go back to their nice, familiar, and secure life of slavery: “Let God look upon you and judge” – said the foremen to Moshe and Aharon – “that you have caused us to stink in the eyes of Pharaoh and his servants, to put a sword in their hand to kill us” (5:21).

After having had their first flicker of hope, they were even more vulnerable than before. When there hadn’t been hope, there was also no despair. There lot in life was what it was. But once Moshe had planted the seeds of hope, of possible redemption, they could no longer fully be at peace with their situation. If this hope would be shattered, despondency and despair would follow. Now they know that things could be different and yet it seems as though they will never be so. Thus, when the Torah informs us at opening of next week’s parasha that “they did not listen to Moshe because of the shortness of breath (kotzer ruach) and from the hard labor” (6:9), I do not believe that it is merely saying that the ongoing oppression made them deaf to Moshe’s message. It is saying that their ruach, their spirit, was shortened. It was no longer expansive. It could no longer stretch out to embrace hope, to embrace a possible future. They had risked hoping, only to be disappointed. So in an act of self-preservation, they confined their spirit, they again attempted – now, with greater difficulty – to accept the reality of their slavery.

The true path to redemption requires not only being able to see the possibility of a different life and embracing hope. To achieve true redemption one needs to hold on to that hope even when times get rough, even when things are initially worse, rather than better. True redemption requires sustaining the hope through perseverance and inner strength.

The Chasidic Masters teach that the redemption from Egypt is the root of all future redemptions, national and personal. And, indeed, it is often the case that revolutions occur not when things are at their worst, but when the lot of the people begins to improve slightly and they can see a better life for themselves. Of course, if revolutions do not succeed, for internal or external reasons, they can bring a great deal of suffering in their wake.

The same is true on the personal level. Many people find themselves in a state of exile, in oppressive and untenable situations. People with addictions, people in abusive relationships, people with clinical depression. As long as they are deep in this state, they cannot even realize that they are in exile, that they need saving. Then something happens to shock them, to wake them up. Perhaps they were finally hospitalized because of their injuries one time too many. Or perhaps someone – Moshe-like – brought a message to wake them up, staged an intervention to shock them out of their state. Or, perhaps, there was a minor miracle, and the use of psychotropic drugs finally brought about a small lifting of their depression.

Now there is hope. But now they are at their most vulnerable. It is when the depression begins to lift that the suicide risk is the greatest, because it is then that one can see what life can be. And when a woman tries to leave her abusive husband, but does not have the strength to see it through, it is exactly then that she is in the gravest danger.

What is needed now is perseverance, what is needed now is strength. And what is needed is the support and encouragement of families and friends. To stay the course, even in the face of upheaval, in order to reach the redemption at the end. Without God sending Moshe back, again and again, the Children of Israel would have fallen back into their slavery and into despair. Only with the ongoing prodding were they able to hold on to that initial hope, and help God help them bring about their redemption. Let us always find the hope and the strength to help bring about the redemption of others, and our own redemption as well.

Happenings at the Yeshiva

2012-01-13T12:27:00.002-05:00

Learning restarted with a vengeance this week, as students threw themselves into their regular seder of Gemara and Halakha. Students learning Niddah began the topic of ketamim, stains, and continued to work with Rabbi Love to gain practical experience in that field.

This week we began the first two in a series of guest lecturers on Niddah related topics. Sara Mizrachi, a kallah teacher in Brooklyn for the Sephardi community, and one of the participants from the first cohort of Kallah Teachers who were trained by the YCT-JOFA-DrishaKallah Teachers Workshop. Sara spoke about the realities of teaching kallot, the interactions between the kallah teachers and the rabbis, and the difference of attitudes relating to niddah observance between the Sephardi and Ashkenazi communities.

This talk was followed by a visit on Thursday from Dr. Valerie Altmann, noted gynecologist and advisor to our Kallah Teacher's network, on female anatomy and the biology of menstruation and reproduction.

We were honored on Thursday by a visit from Rabbi Marc Angel, founder of the Jewish Institute of Ideas and Ideals. Rabbi Angel addressed the topic of tzniut, and how it is playing out today in Israel and in various Orthodox communities. Rabbi Angel met informally with students over lunch, where they continued to talk about this topic and other burning issues that face the Jewish community today.

Our regular classes were no less exciting. We addressed two major topics this week as part of our Lifecycles curriculum. First, Rivka Haut spoke on the topic of divorce and the Beit Din, and the challenges that women - even those who are not agunot - face when they have to go through the divorce process. Following that, students met with a panel of young, gay Orthodox Jews to discuss and reflect on the challenges and struggles they face and what is right and wrong about the current discourse on this topic.

In our Educators Track, students preparing to be rabbis on campus began a project of answering questions that have been posed over the years to our current Hillel and JLIC rabbis. The first group of questions focused on Shabbat issues - from using an automatic toilet in the dorms to sitting in on a class on Shabbat and Yom Tov. They worked on these questions for a week, and on Wednesday presented their responsa to me, and we discussed both the halakhic specifics and considerations of values and policy. Students will be continuing this project, with a new set of questions every other week, for the next few months.

All in all - quite an exciting week back. We look forward to even more learning and more excitement starting next week.

A Thought on the Parsha

2012-01-06T11:30:00.000-05:00

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Parshat VaYechi - You Call This a Blessing?

As Yaakov's life draws to a close, he calls his children to his bedside and blesses them. In 26 verses of beautiful poetry, he addresses each son in turn, tailoring his words to what is most appropriate for that particular son. These poetic utterances are not initially described as blessings, but as a form of prophecy: "Gather and I will tell you what will occur to you in the End of Days." (Breishit 49:1). Nevertheless, their content makes it clear that they are indeed blessings, and the Torah describes them as such at the conclusion of this section: "... And this is what their father spoke to them, and he blessed them, each person according to his blessing did he bless them." (Breishit 49:28).

So each son was blessed. But is this really true? It seems that at least two sons - Shimon and Levi - were not blessed, but cursed:

Cursed be their wrath, so fierce,
   and their fury, so cruel!
I will scatter them in Jacob
   and disperse them in Israel.
(Breishit 49:7)

What type of blessing is this?   Can it be, somehow, that this curse is actually a blessing?

Yes, it can. When someone points out our faults, or even calls us to task for our sins and misdeeds, this can indeed feel like a curse. But if this is done by someone who loves us, if that someone is doing it for us and not for them, then it can truly be a blessing.   This is indeed what true parenting is about. Loving our children means caring about their moral development, about what type of people they will grow up to be.   If we yell at them because they have made a mess before a big dinner party, then we are venting our own anger, we are not - in this yelling - parenting them. But if our response is tailored not to our concerns, but to theirs, and we call them to task so that they can learn moral and social responsibility, then we have done true parenting, and they will be all the better for it.

The first step is to make sure that this is coming from a place of love, and out of concern for the one who has to hear this criticism. Let us remember that Yaakov's initial response to Shimon and Levi's destruction of Shechem had been an angry outburst, an outburst which focused not on their moral education, nor on even the immorality of their acts, but on how what they had done would endanger him: "And Yaakov said to Shimon and Levi, 'You have accursed me, to make me odious among those who dwell in the land... and they will gather against me and smite me, and I and my household will be annihilated.'" (34:30). Notice the recurrence of the personal pronoun: "me... me... I.. my".   It is all about him, so his yelling falls on deaf ears: "And they said, will our sister be treated like a prostitute?!" (34:31).   Now, however, it is the end of his life. It is no longer about him; his life is over. It is about them, what they need to hear so that they can improve, so that they can be better.

But coming from a place of love and caring is not enough. Criticism can still be devastating, regardless. So what needs to be paired with caring is faith. Faith in the other person, in his or her innate goodness, in their ability to divorce themselves from these actions:

"Even at the moment of rebuke, he did not curse them, but only their wrath."
(Rashi, 49:7, quoting Breishit Rabbah).

"You are better than that" is the message. "This isn't you. You can rise above this."   When our children misbehave, we know not to say "Bad boy!" "Bad girl!"   We know, rather, to say, "That was a bad thing that you did." (Whether we always remember this at a moment of anger is a different question.)

A true friend can tell you things you need to hear, things that no one else will tell you, and he can tell you in a way that you can hear it. When the person on the receiving end knows that the words are coming from a place of love, and when she feels that others believe in her, she will be able to believe in herself and hear what is being said.

But it is not just how the message is delivered, it is also how it is heard. And we are not in control over how someone will hear what we hav said. Some people have the ability to hear the one negative, slightly critical comment in an effusion of praise, and to zero in on that, to find the one thing they can feel bad about, and to beat themselves up over it. Indeed, some studies have shown that it takes 10 positive comments to counter the effect of one negative one. But a person does himself no service by just focusing on the negative. The result will be feeling bad, feeling guilty, with no productive outcome. And it can lead to reinforcing the negative, to defining oneself by past behavior: "I'm no good. I'm always doing the wrong thing. I'm a bad person." This type of thinking can even serve as an excuse for future misconduct - "What else could be expected of me? This is who I am."

A person who, instead, believes that he or she was created in God's image, in our ultimate freedom as human beings, a person who believes in bechira chafshit, will know that his or her past behavior need not define who he or she is and who he or she can be.

Now, this is not to deny that people are made differently. People have different character traits and different personalities. But biology is not destiny, and character, even if it cannot easily be changed, can surely be redirected. As the Gemara in Niddah (16b) states, it may be determined at the moment of conception - genetically, we would say - whether a person will be smart or stupid, strong or weak, but what is not determined is whether the person will be good or bad.   Even destructive character traits can be directed towards a constructive purpose.   A person with bloodlust, says Rav Ashi in Shabbat 157a, may turn out to be a murderer, but he may also turn out to be a shochet or a surgeon.

How we hear loving critique, and what we do with it, is in our hands.  The same character trait that was the source of a curse can now become the source of a blessing. It is all about what message we choose to hear. And so it was with Shimon and Levi. One of them heard only the curse and defined himself by it. And one extrapolated the blessing, and lived up to it and its promise.

Shimon heard the curse. His destructive anger never changed, was never redirected, and so the words of Yaakov became a curse. The tribe of Shimon was scattered in Israel, and they had no inheritance of their own when Joshua divided the land.

And Levi heard the blessing. Levi - his descendants, the tribe of Levi - took their anger, their passion, and directed it to the service of God, to defending God's honor, to zealously protecting the Sanctuary. They brought their zeal to the service of God. They were scattered in Israel, but this was so that they could serve the people, teach Torah and give religious guidance to one and all. And the cities in which they dwelt were cities of refuge - one of which was Shechem itself. These cities provided safety and protection to those who had unintentionally killed someone, so that they would not be murdered by the violent bloodlust of others coming to avenge the death of their brother or sister, to protect someone so that the sin of Shechem would not be repeated. Truly, their curse became their blessing, and the blessing that they shared with the entire Jewish People.

Did Yaakov bless Shimon and Levi, or did he curse them? His words, delivered with love, with concern for their betterment, with belief in their potential to change and rise above, had the potential to truly be words of blessing.   Yaakov did his part, the rest was up to his sons. If they were heard as a curse, then they would be a curse. But if they were heard as they were delivered, if they were heard as a blessing, then they became a blessing indeed. Let us always have the ability to deliver our words as blessings, and to hear the words of others - even the critical words - as blessings as well.

Shabbat Shalom!

A Thought on the Parsha

2011-12-30T10:17:00.001-05:00

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Click here: Parshat VaYigash

Parshat VaYigash - The Sound of Silence

Silence is the last word one would think to use to characterize the climax of the story of Yosef and his brothers. Indeed, our parsha opens with Yehuda's heartfelt and impassioned plea to Yosef to free Binyamin, and the words so powerfully convey Yehuda's unflinching loyalty to Binyamin and the anguish of his father, Yaakov, that Yosef can no longer contain himself. His emotions burst forth, and he reveals himself to his brothers. And if Yehuda's words can stir powerful, positive emotions, Yosef's words have the power to calm turbulent, potentially destructive ones: "Now, do not be anguished, and do not reproach yourselves that you have sold me here, for it is to be a source of life that God has sent me ahead of you." (Breishit 45:4).

Even as the story reaches its dénouement, there is much talking. Talking about how to report back to Yaakov about what has happened, talking about how the land of Egypt is open to Yaakov and his family and how they should arrange their emigration from Canaan, talking to Yaakov about what has happened, Yaakov's exclamation of wonderment at the news, God's talking to Yaakov before he leaves Canaan, Yosef’s talking to his brothers to prepare them for their meeting with Pharaoh, Pharaoh's talking to the brothers, Pharaoh's talking to Yaakov, and finally Yaakov's blessing of Pharaoh. So there is indeed much, much talking in this parsha. But in the midst of all this talking, and the beehive of activity that surrounds it, there is a profound, poignant moment of silence:

And Yisrael said to Yosef, "I can now die, after that I have seen your face, that you are still alive."

And Yosef said to his brothers and to his father's household, "I will go up and report to Pharaoh, and I will tell him, "My brothers and my father's household from the Land of Canaan have come to me."

(46:30-31)

What just happened here? Yaakov and Yosef meet after a 22 year separation, Yaakov having believed Yosef to be dead, but perhaps not so sure, perhaps suspecting that the brothers had something to do with the whole thing. And Yosef wondering - who knows what? Perhaps thinking that his father didn't care that he was gone, perhaps even suspecting that his father was unconcerned the danger that befell him, or even more so believing that his father had conspired by sending him to his brothers when they were shepherding while knowing how much they hated him. Or even if these troubling thoughts were kept at bay, Yosef certainly after hearing Yehuda's passionate speech knew how bereaved his father now felt and how his absence had taken such a serious toll on Yaakov.

And now, after these long 22 years, they finally reconcile, and Yaakov lets forth an exclamation of joy, tinged with his past suffering, but of joy nevertheless. And then what? Silence. Yosef does not respond. He says not one word to his father. Or rather, not silence, but a lot of irrelevant talking. Talking to the wrong people - his brothers and his father's household, but not to his father - and talking about the wrong things - "Oh, let's go tell Pharaoh that you are here." The abrupt transition in these two verses is the conversational equivalent of "Great to see you Dad. Oh, look at the time. Gotta go." A lot of talking, a lot of busy-ness, but a profound silence. No one is talking about what needs to be talked about. Not just, "I missed you so much. I can't believe we are together again." But also, "What really happened that day, 22 years ago?" "Why did you send me to check on my brothers, knowing how much they hated me?" No, we'll talk about that later. There is too much to do now. Too much other talking that needs to take place.

People talking without speaking…

And no one dared
Disturb the sound of silence

"Fools", said I, "You do not know
Silence like a cancer grows…”

("Sound of Silence," Simon and Garfunkel)

The impassioned, heart-wrenching communication at the beginning of parsha, is replaced by a lot of pragmatic, businesslike talking at the end of the parsha. The words that are unspoken continue to hover in the background. The silence grows like a cancer, eating away at Yosef and at Yaakov from the inside, continuing to fester, preventing them from bringing these difficult issues to the surface, so that they can be dealt with, and resolved.

And the silence also grows like a wall to divide Yaakov and Yosef. It prevents them from ever truly connecting again on a deep, personal level. Yosef is too busy to talk to his father when he arrives, and remains too busy to talk to his father throughout the rest of his life. So much so, that when Yaakov finally speaks to Yosef again, it is at the end of Yaakov’s life , on his deathbed, and it is for the very practical purpose of arranging for his own burial. During the exchange, we find out that they have communicated so little that Yaakov does not even know his own grandchildren. He knows about them - the facts he has - but he does not recognize them. "And Yisrael saw the sons of Yosef, and he said, 'Who are these?' And Yosef said to his father, 'They are my sons…'" (48:8-9). Because Yaakov and Yosef are not able to talk about what needs to be talked about, they wind up talking about very little. Or, at least, very little that really matters.

There is, finally, one moment when the silence is broken. But then it is too late. For when Yaakov dies, Yosef's brothers grow very concerned about how Yosef will now treat them. "And the brothers of Yosef saw that their father had died, and they said, 'Perhaps Yosef will now nurse his hatred against us, and return to us all the evil that we have done to him." (50:15). So what did they do? They invented a conversation that never happened:

And they commanded that Yosef be told, "Your father commanded, before his death, saying: 'So shall you say to Yosef: Please forgive the iniquity of your brothers, and their trespass, for they have committed evil against you.' So now, please forgive to sin of the servants of your father's God." And Yosef wept when they spoke to him.

(50:16-17)

Why did Yosef weep? Perhaps because they thought ill of him, or suspected that he could still be harboring resentment and ill will about what had happened oh so many years ago. Or perhaps he wept because he saw that his brothers were so anguished and fearful. But I believe he wept for a different reason. I believe he wept because he realized that his father never said - never could have said - such a thing. His father had never, and would never, break the implicit pact of silence around these matters. He wept because what was said after his father's death - what had needed to be said for so long, was never said in his father's life.

He wept for Yaakov, for Yaakov died having never had a chance to talk about what was eating away at him - his suspicions about Yosef’s brothers and what they might have done - and he went to his grave with this cancer inside him. And he wept for himself, for never having been able to bring himself to talk about his own suspicions, his own doubts to his father. For never having been able to bring up all the messiness, so that it could be expelled, and so that a true relationship could be reestablished.

And he wept for his brothers. For his brothers who could not talk to him about these things before. For his brothers who even now could not talk to him about it directly - having to send someone to present their case in their stead. For his brothers who even now could not talk about these things in their own voice, but who had to attribute them to their father, Yaakov.

And perhaps he wept for his own silencing of his brothers. For the fact that he was so quick to forgive them when he first revealed himself to them, that he did not give them a chance to talk about their guilt, about their remorse. Here was a time when he needed to be silent, so that others could be heard. To be forgiven before asking for forgiveness is a blessing, but it is also a curse. It silences voices that need to be heard. It prevents true healing from taking place.

We know well the power of speech. We know how words can kill and how words can heal. We also must know the power of silence. Silence can kill - kill a relationship, kill a friendship, kill a marriage. But silence can also heal. Silence that is there not to cover up, to avoid, to distract, but a silence that is there to make space, to listen, to open up, to allow another in, to allow another to speak, that is a silence that can give life, that is a silence that is a blessing to the soul. "There is a time to be silent, and a time to talk." (Kohelet 3:7) Let us always know which is which, so that both our talking and our silence bring with them life and healing to ourselves and to others.

Shabbat Shalom!

Torah from Our Beit Midrash

2011-12-30T10:15:00.004-05:00

A Thought on the Parsha

2011-12-23T13:06:00.000-05:00

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Click here: Parshat Miketz

A Thought on the Parsha and on Chanukah

Yosef the Tzaddik, Religious Arrogance and the Miracle of Chanukkah

Yosef is known throughout Rabbinic literature as "Yosef the Tzaddik." This phrase alludes to the verse in Amos (2:6), "their selling the Tzaddik for silver", which is understood to be referring to brother's selling Yosef for the 30 pieces of silver. It is a description, however, that finds deep resonance with the character of Yosef. If we close our eyes and conjure up an image of a tzaddik, what picture comes to mind? Someone who is scrupulous about following mitzvot, for sure. But also someone who is Godly, who sees God in the world, and who sees godliness in others. Because he sees God working through him, he takes no credit for his own good deeds, and because he sees God equally working through others and world events as the unfolding of a divine plan, he is nonjudgmental and forgiving when other people act improperly. Rather he sees in them that which is good, he sees their godliness, and he sees how that which is less than perfect as somehow fitting into God's ultimate plan.

Such was the personality of Yosef. Yosef saw God everywhere. In a particularly exceptional case, his faith in God allowed him to resist Potiphar's wife - "How can I do this terrible thing, and I will have sinned against God?" But more importantly, it shaped his day-to-day reality: "And his master [Potiphar] saw that God was with him" (Breishit 39:3). How did his master see that it was God, and not Yosef, who was the cause of his success? Because that's how Yosef saw it: "the name of Heaven was constantly on his lips." (Rashi, quoting Tanchuma).

The most explicit articulation of this viewing of reality through a Godly lens comes from Yosef directly, and particularly in the case of dreams. Although it is Yosef who gives the interpretations, he takes no credit for this. This is true in the case of the baker and the wine steward: "Behold to God is the interpretations. Please tell me your dream." (40:8), and this is true in this week's parsha, in the case of Pharaoh: "That is beyond me; it is God who will respond with Pharaoh's welfare." (41:16). But it goes beyond dreams as well. When, after having revealed himself to them, the brothers are overcome with guilt for having sold Yosef, he reassures them that it was God who was working through them all along: "And now, do not be anguished and do not be angry with yourselves that you have sold me here, because it was to be a source of life that God has sent me here before you." (45:5).

This is the quality of the tzaddik, the person who always sees God in the world. For such a person to be a tzaddik, however, it is important that this perspective be coupled with humility. For if this faith becomes certainty, when a person not only thinks, but knows, in his own mind, how God is operating; then this righteousness will become religious arrogance and can be very destructive indeed. If a person is certain about God's plan for him and for the rest of humanity, then nothing else matters. Even if people have to suffer, it is justified because it is all in service of God's will.

The ease with which one can slip into this mode of thinking was a danger that perhaps even Yosef did not completely avoid. Ramban asks why Yosef didn't tell his father where he was when he became viceroy of Egypt. He answers, because he wanted the dreams to come true. "And were it not for this reason, Yosef would have sinned gravely, to cause his father so much anguish, and to be bereaved ... for such a long time... but rather all worked out in its proper time, so that the dreams would be fulfilled." (Ramban on 42:9). While we can agree with Ramban that it all worked out according to the divine plan, one wonders if we can fully agree that Yosef acted correctly. For while Yosef did not proactively cause hurt to others, he also did not do anything to alleviate it. Let's wait and see how this might be the unfolding of God's plan, seems to have been his approach, but perhaps this view needs to be bracketed when others might suffer. Regardless, Yosef never allowed his belief to give him license to bring hurt upon others. That would require certainty, which would require arrogance.

We do not need to think hard to consider how such religious arrogance can translate into violent fundamentalism. Present day examples in other religions abound. But we can also find examples of this in our own religion, both present day and in the past. Sometimes the violence takes the form of "merely" destroying someone's reputation or standing in the community. And sometimes it can take the form of actually killing someone in the name of God:

... A Jew came forward in the sight of all to offer sacrifice on the altar in Modiin as the royal edict required. When Matityahu saw this, he was fired with zeal; stirred to the depth of his being, he gave vent to his legitimate anger, threw himself on the man and slaughtered him on the altar. Then Matityahu went through the town, shouting at the top of his voice, 'Let everyone who has any zeal for the Law and takes his stand on the covenant come out and follow me.'

(I Maccabees 2:23-27)

Now, Matityahu's declaration, "Who is for Law, come to me," evokes Moshe's declaration at the foot of Har Sinai, "Who is for God, come to me," which was followed by the tribe of Levi killing all those who had worshipped the Golden Calf. The subtext of this passage from the Book of Maccabees is that just as the Levites were justified in their actions because of their zeal for God, so was Matityahu in his actions. There is only one small difference. The Levites were acting under God's direct command (see Shemot 32:27), whereas Matityahu was acting on his own religious zeal and certitude. While we see God's hand working through the Maccabees, and while were it not for Matityahu's rebellion the miracle of Chanukah never would have happened, we do not have to endorse this initial act of killing another Jew who was violating the Law. We do not have to endorse an approach that turns a tzaddik into a kanai, a zealot.

We must be very careful how we transmit the message of Chanukah. For me, the message has always been one of religious freedom, of the Jews fighting against the Seleucid Greeks for the right to worship freely. But the historical record is more complex, and it is easy to draw out a different message. Consider this, from a column two years ago in the New York Times:

The Maccabees are best understood as moderate fanatics...they were fighting heroically for their traditions and the survival of their faith. If they found uncircumcised Jews, they performed forced circumcisions. They had no interest in religious liberty within the Jewish community and believed religion was a collective regimen, not an individual choice.

They were not the last bunch of angry, bearded religious guys to win an insurgency campaign against a great power in the Middle East, but they may have been among the first...

"The Hanukkah Story," David Brooks, NY Times, Dec 10, 2009

So, is Chanukah a message of religious freedom, or rather one of religious intolerance, of forced circumcisions and forced conversion, of imposing one's religious beliefs on others? The answer to this is up to us. The question is not what happened, but what we choose to remember, how we shape our collective memory and the message we choose to learn and to live by. Note that the Book of Maccabees is not part of the Tanakh. Rather, the Sages preserved the memory of Chanukah in our liturgy, and in that retelling there is no mention of the slaying of the Jew at the altar. In fact, in that telling there is no memory of the Jewish Hellenists at all. Rather, the message in the liturgy is the fight against the oppressive Greeks. "When the evil Greek kingdom arose... to make Your people forget Your Torah and to transgress Your laws..." is what we remember in the al ha'nissim prayer. We fought against the Greeks so that we could freely worship God.

And thus the emphasis on the miracle of oil, a miracle not even mentioned in the Book of Maccabees. Why is that so central to our memory of Chanukah? Because it takes us away from the possible and dangerous lesson on religious fanaticism, and focuses our attention on the message of God's presence in the world as a source of light. We choose what to remember, and we choose how to see God in the world. If we perceive God and God's plan with arrogance and certitude, then it will become religious zealotry, and it will lead to violence and destruction. We have enough kanayim. What the world needs is a few more tzadikkim. Let us instead perceive God and God's plan with faith and humility, then it can help us become a tzaddik like Yosef, forgiving and accepting, seeing the divine in all and bringing light to the world.

Shabbat Shalom!

Happenings at the Yeshiva

2011-12-23T13:05:00.001-05:00

This was the final week before we go on a two-week break, and the first two years, and the Beit Midrash year, we all doing intensive chazara and taking their final exams. Years 3 and 4, who had taken their finals two weeks ago, continued to learn Niddah, moving on to the topic of stains and colors. They also began doing their shimush, practical apprenticeship, with Rabbi Love on marot, learning how to discern different colors and determine what stains are problematic or not.

On Tuesday afternoon, Years 3 and 4 continued their Lifecycle curriculum, which is now dealing with the high school and college years. At the end of the afternoon, students had a session with Rabbi Yehudah Sarna and Ms. Michelle Greenberg-Kobrin on the important topic of dating and interdating in college. Prior to that, they had first heard a shiur from me on the topic of tzniut and clothing - how these ideas have been drastically changed, in unhelpful ways, from their original articulation in the Gemara and poskim, and how different halakhic and cultural approaches to this topic have a profound impact on women's and girls' self-image regarding their body and sexuality. The goal is to embrace an approach to tzniut which is true to the original approach in the Gemara and poskim and which combines - for men and women - a modesty of dress, on comportment, and of being with a healthy self-image and sense of self.

As it was Chanukah, we had a number of special events. On Tuesday after mincha, Gabe Greenberg (Class of 2012) gave a brief and inspiring talk on the topic of the miracle of Chanukah. On Wednesday, Rabbi Weiss gave a sicha to the entire yeshiva on the connection of Chanukah to the principle of gratitude, and how important expressing gratitude was not for the receiver, but for the one who shares it.

On Tuesday night, we had a wonderful chagiga at the yeshiva, with a latke cook-off (in which I did not participate this year!), Chanukah gelt, dreidel, and menorah making. It was a great evening of connecting for the students, rebbeim, teachers, staff, and their families. A special thank you to Joel Dinin (Class of 2015), David Bookbinder (Class of 2015), Aaron Lerner (Class of 2013), and Brachyahu Schönthal (Class of 2013) and Allison Batalion for all their hard work in making this such a special evening!

Finally, it is with sadness that I share with all of you the passing of Dr. Charles (Chuck) Feldman, longtime board member and supporter of YCT, builder of the Roemer Synagogue and community, and a true leader of the Jewish People. The funeral took place at the Roemer Synagogue yesterday, Thursday afternoon, and shiva will be observed this week at the Feldman home, 1649 Hanover Street, Teaneck, NJ. My his family be comforted among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.

Chuck was someone who I consider to have been a true tzaddik, and I dedicate my Parsha and Chanukkah dvar Torah below in his memory. May his memory be for a blessing.

A Thought on the Parsha

2011-12-16T12:18:00.002-05:00

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Click here: Parshat VaYeishev

Parshat VaYeishev - To See and to Acknowledge

Yosef's brothers, not content with the treachery of throwing him in the pit and then selling him to the Ishmaelites, proceed to engage in a cover-up. Using the very cloak that was the target of their jealousy, they dip it in the blood of a kid goat, and send it to their father: "And they said, 'This we found. Please, examine it (haker na). Is it your son's tunic or not?'" (Breishit 37:32). Their physical absence at this stage is critical. If they had been present, the mere reality of seeing them holding the tunic would have led Yaakov to be suspicious about their involvement in Yosef's fate. In their absence, Yaakov was left contemplating Yosef and the tunic, and imagined a scenario which did not involve the brothers. And the brothers knew that by not feeding Yaakov a story, but rather allowing him to arrive at an explanation on his own, he would own it more, believe it more. It was his story, not their story; thus the deception was complete.

Of course, the key to the whole deception was the cloak, and the finishing touch was Yaakov's recognition of it as Yosef's. The word that this turns on in the text is haker, to recognize. "Please, examine it" (haker na), they said. "And he recognized it (vayakira) and he said, 'It is my son's tunic. Yosef has been devoured!" Now, this word, haker, plays a central role in a number of related stories in the narratives of Yaakov and his sons, and the Torah seems to be encouraging us to consider how these stories may relate to one another.

The midrash already notes the connection between this haker na and the one in the immediately following story of Yehudah and Tamar. Why was the narrative of Yosef interrupted with the story of Yehudah and Tamar? "Said R. Yochanan: to juxtapose haker na (please identify this cloak)with haker na (please identify whose signet, wrap and staff these are)." (Breishit Rabbah 85). R. Yochanan understands that it was Yehudah who sent the cloak to his father, and thus he was paid back with the events of Tamar. "You said to your father, 'haker na', by your life, Tamar will say to you, haker na." While Yehudah does not suffer and is not punished in this story, he is compelled - by his conscience at least - to come clean, to own up to the shame. In his owning up, he also chooses to embrace the honesty and integrity that comes with a true haker na. The brothers used haker na to deceive, using a truth - Yosef's correctly identified cloak - to cover up a bigger lie. Yehudah, in his recognition, not only acknowledged the true owner of these items, but also the bigger truth that they represented, "He said, she is righteous. The child is from me." (38:26).

While the haker na of Yosef's cloak is juxtaposed with the story of Yehuda, it also connects us to a much earlier story in Yaakov's own life. Not only did Yaakov's children deceive him, but Yaakov himself deceived his father as well. Yaakov was able to pull off that deception by tricking his father to misidentify him. "And he did not recognize him - vi'lo hikiro - because his hands were like Esav, his brother, hairy, and he blessed him" (27:23). And how did he impersonate Esav; how were his hands hairy? Because he wore Esav's garments, and because he had placed on his hands the skin of a kid goat. Just as he tricked his father with a brother's garment and with a kid goat, his sons tricked him with their brother's garment and with the blood of a kid goat. He deceived through a wrong identification, and he was in turn deceived by a correct identification with a wrong conclusion.

In the end, deception is deception. Whether the whole thing is a lie or a surface truth hiding a deeper lie, it is all the same. The first lesson is to those would-be deceivers: that "technically telling the truth" is not a defense for lying and deception. The second lesson is to those deceived. It is a lesson about how we must not be misled by surface appearances, how we must strive to go beyond the surface hakarah of Yaakov to achieve the true hakarah of Yehudah. What led Yaakov to be misled? Not his senses, but himself. His fears, his imagination, and - as we explored last week - his unwillingness to confront and challenge his children. What allowed Yehudah to not only recognize, but also to acknowledge, to own up? The strength of his own character. Yehudah refused to fool himself. He had the courage to see the situation for what it was - what the signet, cloak, and staff signified, and where his responsibility lay.

To see correctly and to acknowledge, li'hakir, is actually commanded in one place in the Torah. At the beginning of parshat Ki Teize, we read:

If a man has two wives, one loved and the other unloved, and they both bear him sons - the loved and the unloved - and the firstborn son is the son of the unloved. It shall be, when he bequeaths his property to his sons, he may not make the son of the loved one the firstborn... Rather, the firstborn, the son of the unloved one, he shall acknowledge, yakir,to give him the double portion, for he is the first of his vigor, to him is the birthright due

(Devarim 21:15-17).

Here, a person is commanded to identify and to acknowledge. Do not pretend that the second born is the firstborn. Do not fool others, and do not fool yourself. Rather, you must see things as they actually are, even if you do not like them. You must see, you must acknowledge, who the firstborn truly is.

Now, who is the man who had two wives, one loved and one unloved, and whose firstborn was born to the unloved wife? Of course, it is none other than Yaakov (a point already mentioned in the midrash, Tanchuma, VaYetze). Did Yaakov follow this commandment? On the one hand, he gave Yosef "two portions", designating Yosef's two sons as equal heirs with the other brothers. On the other hand, he did exactly what the Torah commands. He did recognize Reuven as the firstborn, as the first of his strength: "Reuven, you are my first born, my strength, and the first of my vigor..." (49:3).

Yaakov here was not going to fool himself. Although it would have been easy to convince himself that Rachel was his true wife and Yosef his true firstborn, he refused to do so. He had the courage to face the situation, to acknowledge, and then to deal with the consequences. It certainly is easier to say, "The other son is the true firstborn," than "It is true you are the firstborn, but I am still not going to give you a double portion, and here's why." But we are required to do the latter, no matter how difficult.

Acknowledging a difficult situation does not necessarily mean giving up on one's interests. For even after recognizing Reuven as the first born, he still found a way to give Yosef a double portion. It seems he was even able to do this legally, for - as the Talmud understands this law - one is allowed to redistribute his estate, as long as it is not done through misidentifying the heirs or the firstborn.

We often allow ourselves to be fooled. It is hard to do a true hakarah, to look at things as they actually are. It is easier to live in our own imagined reality. But we must have the strength to be makir, to see the facts for what they are, and then to act accordingly. We must take responsibility and suffer the consequences when that is what is called for. And if we are avoiding confrontation with a particular situation or person, we must go out of our way to confront it, confront that person that we are avoiding, that we are lying to ourselves about - a child, a co-worker, a friend, a parent - and to have that difficult, honest conversation. For when we leave our fantasy world and confront the truth, not only will the situation improve, but we will embrace the ultimate truth, being true to ourselves.

Shabbat Shalom!

Torah from our Beit Midrash

2011-12-16T12:17:00.002-05:00

As both Chanukkah and Christmas draw near, it is appropriate to wrap up our discussion of the evolution of halakha's approach to Christianity. Tosafot in Bekhorot, 2b, had said that one does not transgress by having a Christian take an oath in the name of God and a saint. For although this is an act of shituf, of "combining", such an act is not prohibited to non-Jews. Now, the simple meaning of that statement, as we saw, is that non-Jews are not prohibited in taking an oath in the name of both God and something else, for example, the Christian saints. However, the concept of shituf is applied in one Gemara to the prohibition of avoda zara, of worshipping other beings together with God. So, it is possible to read Tosafot's assertion as a broader claim - that Christians are not prohibited in worshipping other beings, as long as this is conjoined to the worship of the Supreme God. It could be argued that this logically derives from the similar assertion regarding oaths. Since the problem of conjoining God with other beings in an oath is that it implicitly equates these other beings with God, and since this is not prohibited to non-Jews, it thus stands to reason (perhaps) that it is also not prohibited to worship other beings together with God.

So does this mean that Christianity would not be avoda zara, at least for Christians. This is certainly the way that many, many poskim understand Tosafot. Let us consider, however, why Christianity was considered to be avoda zara. Although this is not spelled out explicitly by the Rishonim, there are a number of obvious reasons for this definition. It is important at the outset to dispel a common misconception. One will find many contemporary authors who assume that this categorization was due to the understanding that the Trinity was a form of polytheism. This is then often followed by the assertion that Christians firmly maintain that they believe in and worship only one God, and thus - such authors continue - we must conclude that it is not really polytheism and we should no longer deem it to be avoda zara..

Many will disagree with this conclusion, and start by pointing out that the belief in the Trinity is a belief not in three aspects of God, but in three which are one, which is clearly not a pure monotheism. But even putting this aside, the argument is faulty in its very premise. Halakha does not define avoda zara as polytheism. Avoda Zara is either (a) the worship of a god other than the one, true God or (b) the worship of God through the use of images. One does not need to define the Trinity as a type of polytheism to assert that the concept of God that it represents is a "different God" than the one that Jews believe in. Even framing this as "a non-pure monotheism" somewhat misses that point, as the issue is not thenumber per se, but the nature of the God that is believed in and worshipped. The problem with the Trinity is that it - in its concept of God who is three-that-is-one - is a radically "different God" from the one in which we believe.

Which brings us to the second problem. Not number, but physicality. For the Christian God is also an incarnate God. Belief in such a God can be considered avoda zara from both perspectives - it is the worship of God through images, in the extreme form (the merging of God with the physical) and, in conceiving of God in this fashion, it becomes the worship of a "different God." Added to all this is the practice of worshipping through images, statues and icons - practiced by all Christians until the Reformation, and by the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox today. This worship is avoda zara not because of the type of God who is worshipped, but because the form of worship is prohibited. The problem here is no that the God is foreign, but that the worship is.

So now we return to Tosafot's statement about shituf. Let us assume that this means that non-Jews are not prohibited in worshipping other beings alongside God. Which problems does this address? From the perspective of the worship of a "different God" this approach would state - minimally - that if the belief in the Supreme God is pure, than a concomitant worship of other gods is not forbidden. But that doesn't get to the root of the problem here, which is that the Christian concept of God is fundamentally different from ours. The logic to apply it to that case would seem to run as follows. The belief in another god is not prohibited. But certainly the belief in another god compromises the concept of the one, Supreme God. Apparently, then, even when this concept is compromised through the introduction of other gods, it - for non-Jews - is still considered to be a belief in the true God. Thus, if other gods can be believed in, then a non-Jew can also believe in the Trinity, or even the incarnate nature of God. The belief in the Christian God is not, for non-Jews, the belief in a different God. It is close enough to our concept that it remains, for them, the belief in the true God.

But what about the use of images in their worship? Is this not also a form of avoda zara. Apparently, for this reading of Tosafot, the answer is no. If a non-Jew's concept of God does not have to be defined along the narrow parameters of the Jewish concept of God, then the worship as well does not have to be defined in such narrow terms. For what is the problem of the use of images if not that it leads to a misrepresentation of God? But if the concept of God can - for them - allow for the idea of an incarnate God, then why can the object of worship not involve such physicality as well?

Putting all this together, then, we have a very broad definition of what is acceptable belief and worship for non-Jews. Now, it should be noted that this reading of Tosafot is notpshat, and it was vigorously argued against by the son of the Nodah BiYehuda (see Nodah BiYehuda, Tinyana, Yoreh Deah 148). Nevertheless, it is implicitly adopted by no less a figure than Rema, the authority for Ashkenazic Jewry (see Darkhei Moshe, Yoreh Deah 151, and Rema, Yoreh Deah, 151:1). Rema is followed in this by Shach (Yoreh Deah 151, note 7) and by countless later authorities. What then emerges, as almost a taken-for-granted assumption by most poskim, is that Christianity is not avoda zara for non-Jews, although it remains avoda zara for Jews.

Now, let us not fool ourselves into thinking that this is a stance of religious pluralism. The implicit statement is not that we recognize the Christian belief as an alternate legitimate theological position. Rather, the (implicit) claim is that Christians can be a "little off" in their belief and worship, and that's still okay, at least for them. It is a position that evokes the Biblical verse in Devarim 4:19,

And lest you lift up your eyes to the skies, and when you see the sun, and the moon, and the stars, all the host of the skies, should you be driven to worship them, and serve them, which the Lord your God has allotted to all nations under the whole sky.

Let them have their faulty worship, yours must be of the purer sort.

So while this position is not true pluralism, it certainly goes a major step beyond other accommodating approaches towards Christianity in halakha. For until this approach came on the scene, the way halakha dealt with negotiating some of the avoda zara-related restrictions when it came to Christians was by asserting that while Christianity was avoda zara, Christians were not true believers in their own faith, and thus were not, themselves, worshippers of avoda zara (see Tosafot, Avoda Zara, 2a). This approach had the triple disadvantage of being condescending and patronizing to Christians about the sincerity of their own belief, of being factually incorrect, and also being of limited scope in its usefulness. For were a Jew to do something that would advance the worship of a true believer, say, sell a chalice to be used for mass to a priest, there would be no way to permit. So, this was useful, but problematic and limited. Enter the new approach. Christianity is not avoda zara for Christians. We now do not have to make counter-factual assertions, and we now can allow even more cases. Jews can sell religious items to priests and Churches, since for Christians there is no problem in this worship.

The usefulness of this new approach is apparent. I believe, however, that its widespread adoption and use was based on more than just its usefulness. It is my belief - although I cannot prove this - that this approach, while by no means truly pluralistic, was much more accepting and tolerant in its general thrust than previous approaches. Halakha aside, did we really want to say that Christians were worshippers of avoda zara? (It would be interesting to track the spread of this approach. It is my suspicion that after the advent of the Enlightenment its spread accelerated considerably). And perhaps its coming short of true pluralism was its strength. For a general challenge for anyone who is pluralistic is how does one stop his pluralism from becoming relativism? How does one maintain his sense of truth, of belief in his own religion, while respecting the beliefs of others at the same time. This approached offers a solution. For Christians, their belief is not avoda zara, is totally acceptable. But for Jews, for me, it is off-limits, it is taboo, it is avoda zara.

The benefit here is not only religious and philosophical, but practical as well. For too much pluralism can lead to a blurring of boundaries, to an attitude of "we all basically believe in the same thing." Not only can it undermine one's sense of the deep theological importance of the distinctive nature of his beliefs, but it can also lead to an attitude of "well, if it isn'tavoda zara, what would be so bad for me to become a Christian?" At a time when conversion to Christianity - due to duress or the desire for social and economic advancement - was a very real threat, it was critical that Christianity remain - at least for Jews - completely taboo. And hence the wonderful position that it is avoda zara for Jews, but not for non-Jews. We can be totally accepting, totally non-judgmental of the beliefs and worship of non-Jews, while at the same time not compromising one iota on its verbotenstatus for Jews.

Next week we will look at how this approach is used in practical halakhic applications, how far it can be extended and what are its limitations.

Happenings at the Yeshiva

2011-12-16T12:16:00.000-05:00

The events at the beginning of this week at the yeshiva took place in my absence, as I was participating in a retreat for the Avi Chai Fellows at the Pearlstone Retreat Center, in Maryland. The students were well served in my absence, however, as on Monday we were once again privileged to have with us Rabbi David Bigman, Rosh Yeshiva of Ma'ale Gilboa. Rabbi Bigman gave a sicha on the thought of Rav Yitzchak Hutner and then a shiur on the Gemara in Shabbat on Chanukkah, analyzing it through the lens of his historical source-critical methodology. We were also happy to welcome the students of the Maharat Yeshiva, to participate in the sicha and the shiur.

Students continued their regular learning throughout the week. Those students learning Niddah took their Fall final on Monday and on Tuesday began to study harchakot, the separation practices in effect during the Niddah period. In my Modern Orthodoxy class, first year students delivered their semester-end presentations, looking a primary text relevant to a Modern Orthodox theme, and analyzing it through a critical lens. First-year students also spent Tuesday afternoon at the Atria, an assisted living facility, as an in-service clinical day. As the week draws to a close, students can look to an intense week next week devoted to chazara and preparing for their semester-end finals. As Niddah students have already taken their final, they will be beginning the study of, and the apprenticeship in, the inspection of marot - a challenging but critically necessary role for any rabbi who will pasken in Niddah.

On a sadder note, the father-in-law of Allison Batalion, our Academic Coordinator, suffered a massive heart-attack last Friday. He remains in stable but critical condition. Please keep him - Yaakov Mordechai ben Eta - in your tefilot. May the Ribono Shel Olam send him a refuah shleima bi'meheira biyamenu.

A Thought on the Parsha

2011-12-02T11:47:00.000-05:00

Feel free to download and print this week's Parsha Sheet and share it with your friends and family:

Click here: Parshat Vayetze

"Give truth to Yaakov, loving-kindness to Avraham..." (Micah 7:20), the prophet Micha asks of God, and thus, in kabbalistic literature, Avraham comes to represent the attribute of chesed, loving-kindness, while Yaakov represents the attribute of emet, truth. While it is not at all difficult to see how Avraham is associated with loving-kindness - witness his welcoming of the angelic guests - it is quite challenging to see Yaakov as embodying the principle of truth. Whether in his dealings with Esav - exploiting Esav's weariness to purchase the right of the firstborn, and misrepresenting himself as Esav to his father - or in his dealings with Lavan, and his use of striped rods to affect the coloration of the sheep - Yaakov seems to be a person who is, at times blatantly dishonest, and at times a schemer and certainly a less than trustworthy character. How can we come to terms with Yaakov's character? Where is the attribute of truth?

Two approaches are possible. One is to find a way to read the stories so that Yaakov is acting truthfully and faithfully. The other is to see that Yaakov does not start out as a man of truth, but actually transforms into one. The first approach is that of Rashi. The famous Rashi on the verse "I am Esav your firstborn" - "I am the one who is bringing you food, and Esav is your firstborn." - is representative of Rashi's approach throughout these stories. Thus, in the story of the purchase of the birthright, Rashi tells us that Esav was conceived second and not deserving of the firstborn, the truly deceitful one who was constantly duping his father, a murderer, an idolater, and a glutton. Such a person was not deserving of the right of the firstborn, and even realized this himself, and thus made a calm, rational decision that Yaakov was the one who truly deserved it.

The problem with this approach is that while it protects our idealized image of Yaakov, it does violence not only to the pshat of the text, but also to the very principle of emet. If Yaakov acted correctly, then a person in his or her own life can live by Rashi's principle of "I am / Esav [is] your first born." One can misrepresent oneself, as long as the words are (somehow) technically true (remember, "It depends what the meaning of the word 'is' is"?). One can engage in deceitful acts, as long as one is doing it for the right reason, and certainly if the person being deceived is a bad person. And so we find that Rashi tells us that when Yaakov declared that he was Lavan's "brother", he was saying: "If he is a good person, I will be truthful with him, but if he is a deceitful man, I am his brother [and will match him] in deceit." This, I believe, is not the lesson that we want to be learning from Yaakov or these stories.

The alternative is to see Yaakov as initially flawed, and more so as someone who grows in the process. Dr. David Berger has already noted in his wonderful essay, "On the Morality of the Patriarchs in Jewish Polemic and Exegesis," that when the Bible was accepted as God's word, it was Jacob's character - and through him, the character of the Jewish people - that needed to be defended against the Christian critics. However, once the Bible's divine nature was challenged, and its morality brought into question, commentators protected the Torah's moral integrity by reading the stories, and particularly those in our parsha, as critical of Yaakov. For us, we can say that our sensitivity to pshat and our desire to protect the value of the principle of truthfulness, also demands such a reading.

Yaakov starts off as deceitful, but then he grows. How do we see this in our parsha? Perhaps the first thing to note is that after the opening and powerful scene of the ladder and the angels, the first story of Yaakov in Lavan's country is one which shows Yaakov not as a man of deceit, but as a man with a strong work ethic, who understands the seriousness of one's obligation to his employer. "And he said, behold the day is still long, it is not yet time to gather in the sheep, water the sheep and return to your shepherding." (Breishit 29:7). Perhaps, the cynical person will say, Yaakov is good at moralizing to others, but does not himself follow his own teaching. The end of the parsha shows that the opposite is the case. "These twenty years that I am with you, your sheep and your goats did not miscarry, and the rams of your flock I did not eat. A torn animal I never brought to you - I would bear the loss... By day scorching heat consumed me, and bitter cold at night." He says all of this to Lavan, knowing that he will not be contradicted, for he was the most trustworthy employee one could ever hope for, going even beyond his legal obligations (see Shemot 22:12). Yaakov is someone who works hard and faithfully, never taking off time, or helping himself to some office supplies. How many of us - and in particular those of us who are so quick to criticize his other actions - could say the same thing of ourselves? In these stories he unquestionably represents honesty and faithfulness, and it is Lavan who "switches his fee a hundred times".

So what about his lying and his deceit in the other stories? I believe that Yaakov's struggle with emet was not when it came to the everyday occurrences, nor even when it came to sacrificing of his time or effort, or even money for the sake of truthfulness. No. His struggle with emet was when there were no alternatives, and the thing had to be done. This was the episode with Yitzchak's blessing, and it is for this that he is punished - and learns his lesson - in the house of Lavan. For after working seven years for Rachel, he wakes in the morning to discover that he has married Leah. "This is not the way we act here," says Lavan, "to give the younger one before the older one." Perhaps, he is saying, that is how you acted back in Canaan, but here we do things right. Yaakov has been punished measure for measure, and learns that deceit begets deceit. If one benefits from deceit, then ultimately one will pay the price. Even if there is no alternative, one must do the right thing and trust in God that all will work out for the best.

And this lesson is repeated with the sheep. Yaakov does not act deceitfully. As we have seen, it is Lavan who constantly changes the agreement, and it is Yaakov who meets the deceit with uncompromised honesty. But, with that, he was still scheming. He tried to rig the results by placing striped rods in front of the sheep when they copulated. Many people are bothered by this story, because it seems to indicate that the Torah believes that this scheme actually changed the physical characteristics of the sheep. I believe that the story is telling us the opposite. For when the angel appears to Yaakov, as we hear in his speech to Rachel and Leah, the angel tells him, "Behold all the he-goats mounting the flocks are ringed, speckled, and checkered, for I have seen all that Lavan is doing to you." (31:12). The angel was effectively saying: "It is not your trick that did it, it was I - the angel - who was ensuring that the right cross-breeding took place. It was I that ensured that the outcome would be to your benefit." And Yaakov learns this lesson, for he tells Lavan at the end, that were it not for God watching over him, he would have been left empty handed. Not only was the striped rod trick ineffectual, but it would not have done any good regardless, since the terms of the agreement were constantly changing.

In the end, the lesson is clear. Honesty is not a situational ethic. If one is a paragon of honesty, then one not only is fully faithful to his employer, is scrupulously honest in day-to-day events, even at the cost of his own time, money, and effort, but one is also honest even when there is much to be lost. If you engage in dishonesty in such cases, you will get your comeuppance, and regardless, it will often prove ineffectual. Deceit breeds deceit, and you are just as likely to be the one who is cheated. One must never compromise his or her honesty, and trust in God that all will turn out for the better. "Give truth to Yaakov and loving kindness to Avraham as you have sworn to our fathers in the days of old." If we live up to the highest standard of honesty, the honesty that was given, was taught, to Yaakov, then we will be deserving of the God's loving-kindness, and of God's protection.

Shabbat Shalom!

Torah from our Beit Midrash

2011-12-02T11:45:00.002-05:00

While a little postponed, I would like to finish up the discussion from two weeks ago on the topic of attitudes towards Christianity, which arose in the daf yomi at the beginning of Bekhorot. The Talmud (Bekhorot 2b) had stated that a person could not enter into a partnership with a non-Jew, lest the non-Jew have to take an oath, and he would then do so in the name of his god. The taking of an oath in the name of another god is something that not only a Jew cannot do, but also cannot be the cause of having been done, even by a non-Jew. The obvious question for the Tosafists then became, how could Jews enter into partnerships with Christians. Tosafot first notes the possibility that we do not rule according to the statement in the Gemara that partnerships per se are forbidden, as there are cases in other Gemarot which accept Jewish-non-Jewish partnerships. Nevertheless, Tosafot finds himself pressed to articulate a better answer, since in his day Jews actually would not only enter into partnerships, but would actually demand and accept oaths from non-Jews, which - when done in the name of another god - is unquestionably forbidden. How, then, was this practice accepted? Here is Tosafot's answer:

Rabbeinu Tam further explains that nowadays they (Christians) all take oaths in the name of their saints and they don't attribute to them any divinity. And although they mention the name of God and their intention is to something else (i.e., Jesus), this is not considered the name of a foreign god because their intention is for the Creator of Heaven and Earth. The And although they "join" (mishtatef) the heavenly name with another thing, there is no prohibition of "before the blind do not place a stumbling block," because Noahides are not prohibited on this issue, and for us (Jews), we have not found that there is a prohibition to bring about such "joining."

(Tosafot, Bekhorot 2b, s.v. Shema).

Let us a dissect this statement. First, Tosafot points out that Christian oaths which are taken in the name of a saint, are not oaths in the name of another god, as saints are not treated as gods. But these oaths are not only in the name of saints, but also in the name of God. (Remember Henry V (Act 3, scene 1): Follow your spirit, and upon this charge / Cry 'God for Harry, England, and Saint George!'). Now, here is the interesting question - when Christians say "God", not Jesus, is this the "name of other gods"? Tosafot says that it is not, for both (a) they use the same name that we do and (b) it refers to the same Being - the Creator of Heaven and Earth. Both the symbol (the word "God") and the referent (the Being referred to) are the same. The exact meaning here - that the referent is not "another god" - is open to interpretation. I believe that Tosafot is saying that when Christians say God, rather than Jesus, they are referring to the Christian concept of God the Father, which is totally consistent with the Jewish concept of God.

Some may argue - although I do not believe this was the intention - that Tosafot is saying that even if they are referring to the Trinity as a whole, or to any part of it, since this concept includes the idea of God who is the Creator of Heaven and Earth, it is not considered the name of another god. This reading would seem to come very close to saying that Christianity is not avoda zara - if it is the same God, how could it be avoda zara? However, Tosafot consistently and unambiguously asserts that Christianity is avoda zara. What, then, about the above statement? There are two possible explanations. Either that Christianity is avoda zara not because their concept of God is different (which it is, but, according to this approach, not sufficiently so) but rather because their worship uses images. If this were the case, then strands of Christianity that developed after Tosafot, in particular Protestantism, which does not use images, would not be avoda zara! An alternative explanation is that while their concept of God is, indeed, "another god" (because of the belief in incarnation and the Trinity), nevertheless, taking an oath in the name "God" while referring to any part of the Trinity, is not "swearing in the name of another God" since the symbol is the same and the referent is close enough. Thus they symbol, the word "God" cannot be said to be the name of another god, although that is, in fact, what the Trinity is.

As previously stated, if Tosafot is specifically referring to the Christian concept of God the Father, then the theological implications of the statement are much narrower. Nevertheless, this first statement in significant in that - in the middle of the Tosafists halakhic world in which Christianity was defined as avoda zara - there is an assertion to the overlap of the Christian idea of God and the Jewish idea of God. However, what has not been stated is that Christianity is not considered avoda zara. For this we must turn to the last statement of Tosafot - what it means and how it has been interpreted.

Tosafot, after addressing the concern with the "name of other gods", turns to the problem ofmishtatef, of joining God with something else. What is this problem to which he refers? Here Tosafot is referring to the statement in Sanhedrin (83a) about the worship of the Golden Calf:

There are those who say, that were it not for the vav (which pluralizes) in '[these are your gods, Israel, who have brought thee up', the people of Israel would have deserved extermination [for the worship of the Calf. But the vav indicated that they were worshipping the Calf together with God]. Thereupon R. Shimon ben Yochai remarked; But whoever combines (mishtatef) the Heavenly Name with anything else is utterly destroyed [lit., 'eradicated from the world'], for it is written, He that sacrifices unto any god, save unto the Lord alone, he shall be utterly destroyed (Shemot 22:19).

Here the issue is worshipping another being together with God, which, according to Rebbe Shimon ben Yochai's statement, does not stop the act from being avoda zara. However, there is another context of this statement, which is not about worship, but about verbal praise:

[When the people, on Hoshana Rabbah, departed from their procession around the altar, they would say, according to R. Eliezer, "To God and to you, oh Altar, (we praise).] But does not one thereby associate (mishtatef) the name of God with something else? And it has been taught, Whosoever associates the name of God with something else is uprooted from the world, as it is said, Save unto the Lord alone? -Rather, what they said was: To God we give thanks, and to you, the Altar, we praise". [Thus praising them separately]

(Sukkah 45b).

Here the concern is much broader - God cannot be joined with any other thing or being, even in an act of praise. Rambam (Laws of Oaths 11:2) thus uses this extended concept to prohibit taking an oath in the name of God combined with any other thing or being, "for there is no being to whom it is appropriate to show the respect of taking an oath in its name, save for the One, blessed be He." The midrash, in fact, uses this application to explain a verse in this week's parsha:

"And Yaakov took an oath in the name of the Fear of his father, Yitzchak" (Breishit 30:53) - so as not to mention any part of what Lavan said (for Lavan had mentioned the name of Avraham's God, which was holy and the name of Nachor's god, which was profane). This was so he would not combine, lishatef, the profane with the holy.

(Psikta Rabbati, 31)

The issue, then, of Tosafot's understanding and use of the scope of the prohibition against "joining",mishtatef, God with other beings, is critical. Read narrowly, it seems that Tosafot is only raising the question of the local problem of taking an oath. Although - Tosafot is saying - we have demonstrated that the oath that Christians take is in the name of God and in the name of saints, neither of which are other gods, is there not a problem that a Jew is causing a Christian to take an oath by combining the name of God with the name of a saint? Isn't this prohibited? To this, Tosafot answers, that this problem of combining, shituf, God and another being in an oath, is only a problem for Jews, not for non-Jews. And there is no prohibition for a Jew to cause a non-Jew to take such an oath. Read this way, Tosafot has only solved the problem of oaths, but has not made a statement with larger implications for the halakhic understanding of Christianity.

However, we have seen that the problem of shituf also extends to worshipping God with other beings. If this is Tosafot's meaning, then his answer - that non-Jews are not prohibited against shituf, has profound implications for the halakhic status of Christianity. While it seems quite clear, from the context and the wording, that Tosafot's meaning was the narrower oath context, his statement was read to refer to the broader, worship context. Next week we will continue to explore this issue, and see how this latter (historically incorrect) reading of Tosafot changed the way that halakha dealt - and deals! - with Christianity.

Happenings at the Yeshiva

2011-12-02T11:45:00.000-05:00

Students continue to shteig away, in their learning of Gemara and Halakha. Those students learninghilkhot Niddah are now completing the first half of the Niddah curriculum, having covered the halakhot of moving from the niddah state to the non-niddah state, culminating in the pre-mikveh preparations,chatzizot (obstructions) and the act of immersion. They will be taking their final test on this material in one week's time. In Modern Orthodoxy, year 1 students explored issues around rabbinic and halakhic authority, and the relationship between halakha and historical and scientific fact. And 3rd and 4th year students continued their work with Professor Judith Katcher in Public Speaking, and in their Lifecycles class finished their study of hilkhot Milah and pidyon ha'ben, along with discussions of baby naming ceremonies and other ritual opportunities for the birth of baby girls.

On the Monday before Thanksgiving we welcomed Rabbi Herzl Hefter to the yeshiva, a dear and old friend and colleague. Rabbi Hefter has just announced the opening of a new yeshiva, Harel, in Israel, for men in their twenties. Rabbi Hefter spoke to students after lunch about the need for a new theology, one that was driven by a need to know and understand God, and at the same time anchored in humility.

On a similar theme, Rabbi Alon Goshen-Gottstein, founder of the interfaith institute Elijah, spoke to students this past Monday about the notion of religious truth in the thought of Rav Nachman of Breslav and his student Rav Natan. According to Rav Nachman, Rav Alon taught, any debate,machloket, is an indication not that one side is right and the other wrong, but rather that there is an absence of truth on both sides. This is a fascinating twist on the concept of elu v'elu, of multiple truths. Rather than multiple truths, we have multiple falsehoods. He challenged students to think what the implications of this would be for our sense of religious truth. Vigorous discussion and debate followed throughout lunch.

And yesterday, Thursday, Rabbi Steven Exler (YCT '09) gave a shiur and led a discussion about how to set policy and priorities in tzedakkah giving, not as an individual, but as a rabbi of a shul who is dealing with communal tzedakkah funds and is approached by a wide range of people and causes. The presentation and discussion were a wonderful example of the challenges of translating halakhic theory into real-world practice, and grappling with the degree of discretion that the halakhot oftzedakkah allow for.

We look forward this coming week to a weeklong visit by Rabbi Chaim Rapoport, who will be teaching at the yeshiva all week, on topics ranging from marital sex, to homosexuality, to challenges on college campuses in kiruv opportunities that may lead to transgressions (e.g., a non-observant student driving to a Shabbat event). We also look forward to a visit by Rabbi David Bigman, Rosh HaYeshiva of Ma'ale Gilboa, who will be speaking on Wednesday on the topic of akarah hilkhatit,women who cannot conceive because their Niddah period overlaps with their fertility period.

And on Wednesday night, December 7, at 7:30 PM, we will be cosponsoring with SAR High School apanel discussion between Rabbi Rapoport and Rabbi Bigman on the topic of Agendas, Values and Halakha: Non-Jews in Contemporary Halakhic Rulings. The event will take place at SAR and it would be wonderful to see you there.

And in the Mazal Tov department - Mazal Tov to David (YCT '08) and Sara Wolkenfeld on the birth of their new baby girl, Tzofia Yasha, Sophie Jane, who was named on the Monday before Thanksgiving, after Sara's aunt and mother. And a Mazal Tov to Elliot (YCT '07) and Toby Kaplowitz on the birth of their new baby girl, Oshra. Shetizku li'gadlan li'Torah li'chuppah u'li'ma'asim tovim!

A Thought on the Parsha

2011-11-18T10:32:00.002-05:00

Feel free to download and print this week's Parsha Sheet and share it with your friends and family:

Click here: Parshat Chaye Sara

Parshat Chaye Sara - When God is Seen and Not Heard

After the climactic event of the akeida, the Torah turns its attention to more quotidian matters, the death and burial of Sarah and the finding of a son for Yitzchak. In this shift, and in this transition to the next generation, a number of the major characters move off the scene. Not just Sarah, who passes away and is buried at the opening of the parsha, and not just Avraham, who quickly moves off center stage at the beginning of the Rivka story, due to his death and burial at the end of the parsha, but also God.   For although God is talked about quite frequently, God never speaks to anyone, nor - outside of prayer - is spoken to at any time during the parsha. It is not until the opening of Toldot, that God again appears as a "character" (as it were) and speaks to Rivka, and then later to Yitzchak.

These events - the transition from Avraham to Yitzchak and the shift of God from One speaking to One being spoken about - are, I believe, intimately connected. The passing of the baton from Avraham to Yitzchak represents a critical stage in the success of Avraham's mission. Avraham is a visionary, a charismatic leader, a person to whom God has spoken, whose passion for God is magnetic, a person to whom followers flock by the hundreds. But not everyone can be an Avraham. For the message, for the belief, for the religion to survive, a Yitzchak is needed. The next leader needs to be someone who can sustain - and teach others to sustain - this Godly approach even without the charisma, even when God has not spoken to him or to them.     If this can be achieved, then the faith can survive and be passed from generation to generation.

Avraham had the blessing of hearing God's voice throughout his life. But at the end of last week's parsha, at the denouement of the akeida, a shift occurs: "And Avraham called the name of that place, God Sees, as it is said to this day, on the mount God will be seen." (Breishit 22:14).   God may not always be heard, but God - even to this day - can be seen.   How one sees is a key theme not only in the stories of Avraham, but going back to the story of creation. God sees that the world is good. Adam and Eve see the tree as good for eating, and not - as God would have it - as wrong and forbidden. The later generations see beautiful women and take them for themselves, and God sees that the world has gone from good to bad. How we see the world, how we judge and interpret what we see, is key. We must learn to see what is good, what is truly desirable. We must learn to see as God. Thus the Avraham story opens with Avraham being told to go to the land which God will show him, that is, will make him see. This story is then bookended by the akeida, where Avraham is told to go to one of the mountains that God will show him, that is, will make him see. To be in a brit with God means to strive to see the world as God would see it. (I thank R. David Silber for first turning my attention to this theme in these two Avraham stories).

Seeing the world as God would see it requires another type of seeing as well. It requires seeing God in the world.   Only if God speaks to us, can we hear God.   Whether we see God in the world, however, is our choice.   How we see, how we interpret, how we judge events, is in our hands.   The culmination of the Avraham story is Avraham's hope that God should be seen. Avraham will have succeeded if he has helped shape a world in which we see God, and thus in which we strive to see as God.

How is this accomplished? First and foremost, by our discourse - how we talk about things, how we describe and interpret the events of our life. Avraham, wherever he would go, would call out in the name of God. He would make it clear to all that God is present in his life, that it is God Who shapes all events. The famous rabbinic story of Avraham drives home this point:

Reish Lakish said, "Read not, 'he called' [in the name of God] but 'and he made to call'." This teaches that our father Abraham caused the name of the Holy One, blessed be He, to be uttered by the mouth of every passer-by. How was this? After [travelers] had eaten and drunk, they stood up to bless him; but, said he to them, 'Did you eat of mine? You ate of that which belongs to the God of the Universe. Thank, praise and bless Him who spoke and the world came into being'.

(Sotah 10b)

It is not the preaching of the message which is key, but the discourse, the talking about God having given us the fruit, and making this a shared discourse, making others talk about this as well. Once this discourse becomes consistent and shared, it shapes one's and other's perception of events. So that when Avimelekh approaches Avraham, he says to him: "God is with you in all that you do." (Breishit 21:22). Avraham's "calling" has shaped Avimelekh's perception, has made Avimelekh see God in the world.   As Rashi, commenting on Avraham's speech to his servant in this week's parsha, so succinctly puts it: "The verse says, 'God, Lord of the Heavens and the Earth.' [While in the past God was only Lord of the Heavens,] now God is also Lord of the Earth, for I have made God's name commonplace in the mouth of all." (Rashi, Breishit 24:7).

The talking about God, which leads to the seeing of God, is the blessing that Avraham passes on to his servant, to Yitzchak, and to the next generation, and it is that which is the theme of this week's parsha.   The God who has taken me from my father's house, says Avraham to his servant, will also be with you to ensure the success of your mission.   This is a matter of faith, but also a matter of perception.   And we find that the servant has learned this lesson well. For he prays to God, and behold the perfect woman appears to him. A skeptic would say that this is luck, but in the servant's eyes it is nothing less than God answering his prayers, and by talking about it as such, it makes it such. "And he said: 'Blessed is God the Lord of my master Avraham... as for me, God has guided me to the house of my master's brother." (24:27).   And in the prolonged narrative where the entire story is retold, perhaps the most important lesson in its retelling is how, through the eyes and in the words of the servant, God is ever-present. "And God blessed my master..", "God[, said my master,] will...make your path successful...", "And I said, 'God...[that woman who passes the test] will be the one that God has chosen for my master's son", "And I blessed God... who led me down the true path to take the daughter of my master's brother for his son."   And it is this discourse that is then consciously or unconsciously adopted by his listeners: "And Lavan and Betuel said, "From God the matter has come, we cannot speak to you bad or good." (24:50).

We live in a world in which God does not speak to us directly. Despite this, we can in fact choose whether or not to see. Avraham's faith is sustained through learning to see, and how we see is first and foremost shaped by how we talk. Indeed, "more beautiful is the conversation of the servants of the fathers, than the Torah of the sons." (Breishit Rabbah 60).   For it is through such conversation, such daily discourse, that our worldview, our very world, is shaped, and that God is seen.

[A final thought: It is quite remarkable how radically different these events could be understood, if seen through different eyes. The Gemara (Hullin 95b) makes a shocking statement: " Rav... said: Any omen (nachash) which is not like that of Eliezer, Abraham's servant... is not considered a divination." This seems to suggest that Eliezer's testing of the girl who offered to water him and his camels, was a forbidden act of nichush, divination. While some Rishonim interpret the Gemara this way, most disagree, but they grapple to articulate why this was not such a prohibition (see Rambam, Avoda Zara 11:4, and Ra'avad and Kesef Mishne ad. loc.; Radak on Shmuel I, ch. 14; Gur Aryeh Breishit 24:14).   The answer, I believe is obvious, and the difference lies not in the test or the sign, but in its framing. To do what Eliezer did not in the form of prayer, not as a way of making a request of God and of then seeing God in all that subsequently happens, but to do it through a belief in spirits, celestial powers, or mystical powers, would turn prayer into an act of nichush. It would be to see the exact same events in a different way, it would be, to quote the Sefer HaChinkuh on this prohibition (mitzvah 249): "that all things that occur... for bad or good are merely chance, and not though God's providence." Eliezer saw in his test, in the sign, not chance, but hashgacha pratit, personal providence. He saw not magic, but God. He turned a random world into a world suffused with God's presence.]

Shabbat Shalom!

Torah From Our Beit Midrash

2011-11-18T10:30:00.003-05:00

This week the daf yomi finished mesekht Hullin (5 months in the making!) and began mesekhet Bekhorot.   On the very first page (2b), the Gemara discusses, on a bit of a tangent, the statement of the father of Shmuel that it is forbidden to go into partnership with a non-Jew, lest non-Jew will be required to take an oath to verify his claim in a dispute, and this oath will be taken in the name of a foreign god. Were that to happen, the Jew will have transgressed the prohibition of "the name of other gods you shall not mention, it shall not be heard on your lips," (Shemot 23:13) which is interpreted to mean that a Jew cannot even be the cause of another person taking an oath in the name of a foreign god.

This statement gives rise to important discussions in the Rishonim and poskim, in particular in reference to halakhic attitudes towards Christianity.   It is well known that, with the exception of the Meiri, all of the Rishonim considered Christianity to be a form of avoda zara, properly defined not as "idolatry" but as "foreign worship" which refers both to a faith that uses images in its worship and representation of God, and to a faith that worships a being which is other than the true God. Would, then, within this categorization, the above prohibitions apply to Christians or not?

Let's first take the prohibition of not uttering the name of another god.   Does this refer to any mention of the name of a god, or only to its use in an oath? The Gemara (Sanhedrin 63b) states that the second half of the verse: "shall not be heard on your lips" prohibits using the name of a foreign god in an oath or vow or affirmation while the first half of the verse: "you shall not mention" prohibits even referring to it in a mundane context. To wit, one may not even say, "wait for me by the idol of Zeus."   Shulkhan Arukh (Yoreh Deah 147:1) rules accordingly: "One who takes a vow in the name of a foreign god receives lashes, and one cannot even mention it by name, with or without a reason."

That being said, this prohibition cannot be as sweeping as it sounds. First of all, the Torah mentions the names of foreign gods: Ba'al, Kimosh, and so on. This is stated by the Gemara as a defined exception, and so ruled by Shulkhan Arukh: "One can say the names of gods which appear in the Torah." (Yoreh Deah 147:4).   But in the Talmud we find the names of other gods mentioned: Aphrodite, Markolus, and so on.   How are these allowed? One explanation is that there is an exception when the names are used to understand and teach Torah and halakha, an exception we find in other areas of halakha (see, for example, Sanhedrin 68a).   Another, more general exception is given by the Haghot Maymoniyot (13th Century, Ashkenaz), in the name of the Yiraim (R. Eliezer of Metz, 12th Century, Germany). He states that:

"There is no prohibition except when the name is given as a divine name, that it suggests divinity, but if it is a secular name, like the normal names of non-Jews, then even if this being is treated as a god, since the name does not suggest lordship or divinity, and it also was not given in that context, then it is permitted. For the Torah says, "the name of other gods you shall not mention" - the verse is only concerned with divine names. And so the mishna states: "These are the holy days of non-Jews: Kalenda, Saturnalia, Kratesis, etc." (Avoda Zara 8a) - and these, [although holy days named after gods,] are all secular names. And in a number of places in the Talmud it refers to Jesus and his disciples [by name].

(Haghot Maymoniyot, on Rambam Avoda Zara, ch. 5, no. 3).

This opinion is paraphrased by Shulkhan Arukh (147:3), although with narrower scope, but quoted in full by the GR"A. While exactly what constitutes a "divine name" is unclear, but certainly to say "Jesus" would not be a problem, as this was his given name, and - as the above quote states - he is referred to by name in the Talmud. To this point, there is a famous story about how a student in Rav Soloveitchik's shiur was saying "Yeshu... you know, oto ha'ish..." and then Rav Soloveitchik interrupted, "What do you mean? Jesus?"   The more important question is to use the second half of that name, a name which - while literally translating as "anointed" or "messiah", is a name which was given to denote his divine status.   This would seem clearly prohibited, and I will not say this name. I have no problem saying "Christmas" or "Christians" however, as this does not refer to the being identified as a part of the Godhead.

In this regard, it is worth noting a responsum of Rav Azriel Hildesheimer (Yoreh Deah 180) where the questioner ,a Rav Shimon Tzvi Deutsch, had allowed a teacher in his school to refer to Jesus - with the second part of the name - explicitly, as long as it only happened rarely, noting that to refrain from doing such was only an act of piety (middat chasidut) and not required by law.   However, because of the pushback he received on this ruling, he turned to Rav Hildesheimer for a ruling. Rav Deutsch had noted that while the Talmud only used the name "Jesus", he argued that the second part of the name should not be considered a divine name, as it only referred to an elevated and important status, and was not an actual appellation of divinity. Rav Hildesheimer strongly disagreed with this ruling, stating that the use of these names in the Gemara could be attributed to the exception for the sake of understanding and teaching Torah. He continued, that even if we grant the position of Haghot Maymoniyot, this would certainly not extend to the second part of the name, which definitely suggests his divine status. He ends by saying that even if the issue were only an act of piety [and here he is perhaps referring to even the name "Jesus" alone], it is nevertheless a piety that is universal Jewish practice and sensibility, and this sensibility must be respected.

What sensibility is Rav Hildesheimer referring to? It is possible that it is a sensibility that reviles all things, or certainly all religions, that are not Jewish.   But I do not believe it has to be understood that way. I believe that he can be talking about a sensibility that is of particular importance for those of us who are tolerant and respectful of other religions.   We live in and, in many ways, embrace the values of a tolerant and pluralistic society. We believe that we should be respectful of other religions and faiths and their adherents. But in so doing, we run the risk of sliding from tolerance to pluralism to relativism. If differences are minimized, if there is no absolute truth, if everything is just a choice or preference, then our own convictions, our own faith, our emunah, is made void and meaningless. With all of our acceptance, we must maintain a sense of taboo about beliefs and theologies that are at odds with our own.   The fact that so many observant Jews have no problem using the name "Jesus" with or without the second part of the name, as an imprecation or for emphasis is a very sad comment on how profoundly we have lost any sense of boundaries in this regard. It is particularly in an open society such as ours that we must work to sustain a sense of taboo in using language that implicitly assigns a divine status to a human being.

Of course, if we cannot say a name, then the taboo can shift from being a setting of boundaries to a giving of power to that name, to that being.    "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named" in the Harry Potter series exerts power over the minds and hearts of others specifically because they cannot bring themselves to say his name. It is only Harry, who has no hesitation in calling him "Voldemort" that can free himself from the hold that Voldemort holds over others. And let us not forget that when it comes to God's name, there is the name that we cannot utter, and even the name that can be said, must not be said for naught. To never say a name is to give it power. Thus, I believe that we should not hesitate to say the name "Jesus." When Rav Soloveitchik said, "What do you mean? Jesus?" he robbed this name of its power. But to say the last name is to give acknowledgement, or at least to remove the taboo, the sense of boundaries, that affirm the depth of our faith commitment.    This is exactly why such names "shall not be heard on your lips."

Next week we will look at the prohibition of entering into partnership, how this was finessed, and the resultant approach that developed for framing our relationship with Christians and Christianity. A similar theme will emerge - how to live in a tolerant and inclusive society and to still maintain a sense of profound faith commitment and boundaries.

Happenings at the Yeshiva

2011-11-18T10:30:00.000-05:00

Learning continued apace at the yeshiva, with the various shiurim progressing in their respective mesekhtot and the Niddah shiur moving from the topic of the counting of the 7 "clean" days to the topic of the timing of the going to the mikveh. In Lifecycles, years 3 and 4 are continuing to learn about infancy and early childhood, and heard from a visiting expert mohel on practical aspects of brit milah, and heard from a panel of teachers and a high school principal on the topic of Girls' adolescence. Year 1's class in Modern Orthodoxy this week covered the topic of "Torah u'Madah - Critiques and Justifications" and their class in Pastoral Counseling focused on the fundamentals of how to conduct a "helping interview".

We had a number of honored guests this week. On Tuesday, Rabbi Shlomo Riskin spoke to the entire yeshiva at the end of the morning seder, and then gave a class on drashot to the students. On Wednesday, we heard from Rabbi Aaron Leibowitz, Rosh HaYeshiva of Sulam Yaakov, who spoke about the religious significance of the "occupy" movements here and in Israel. He said that even without having a coherent agenda or articulation of how they would make things better, the desire for a better society is, at its heart, a messianic yearning, a belief in a world that can be more perfect. The talk was followed with some nice give-and-take around various issues of these movements, and whether they are all good, and in particular the concern of anti-Semitism in the Occupy Wall Street movement. It was wonderful to be discussing these issues through a practical and religious lens, and to have such an open exchange of ideas and opinions.

As if that were not enough, we had two special lunches this week. Dawne Bear Novicoff from Jim Joseph Foundation visited the yeshiva on Monday, and, after meeting with faculty and administration, had lunch with a group of students to hear from them what brought them to YCT, what their course of study was like, and what their vision for the future and professional aspirations were. And them on Tuesday, Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky, Rabbi of Bnei David-Judea in Los Angeles, visited the yeshiva and met with years 3 and 4 to share his thoughts on religious leadership and to hear from students who are to soon be rabbis about their own sense of vision and mission.

Finally, two wonderful Mazel Tovs. A big Mazel Tov to Rabbi David Wolkenfeld (YCT 2008) and Sara Tillinger-Wolkenfeld on the birth of a baby girl this last motzei Shabbat. Baby-girl Wolkenfeld will be spending this Shabbat with her parents and big brothers, Noam, Akiva, and Hillel, and will be given her name at a baby-naming ceremony this coming Monday morning in Princeton. And a huge Mazel Tov to our Vice President of Finance and Operations, Mati Friedman, on becoming a grandmother for the first time! Her son Noam and daughter-in-law Shiffy gave birth to a baby girl Thursday afternoon. To all the parents and grandparents of these beautiful baby girls we say, Mazel Tov v'tizku li'gadlan li'Torah li'chuppah u'li'ma'asim tovim!

A Thought on the Parsha

2011-11-11T13:21:00.004-05:00

Feel free to download and print this week's Parsha Sheet and share it with your friends and family:
Click here: Parshat VaYeira

Parshat Va'Yeira - "Let's not forget Mamre"
by Rabbi Herzl Hefter

In a parasha that contains the stories of the birth and binding of Yitzchak, and the overturning of Sodom, I wish to write about a seemingly trivial point. The pasuk states: "And the LORD appeared unto him in the palace of Mamre" (Breishit 18:1).

Mamre, I believe, is the unsung hero in this week's parasha. The midrash asks what Mamre did to merit having that God's revelation occur in his homestead:

And why was he called Mamre? R. Azariah said in the name of R. Judah: Because he rebuked (Himrah) Abraham. When the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded Abraham to circumcise himself he went and took counsel with his three friends. Aner said to him: 'You are already a hundred years old, yet you would inflict this pain upon yourself?' Eshkol said to him: 'Why should you go and make yourself distinguishable to your enemies? But Mamre said to him: 'When did He not stand by you? --in the fiery furnace, in famine, and in your war with the kings [He was with you]! Will you not obey Him, then, in this matter?' Said the Holy One, blessed be He, to him: 'Thou gave him good advice to circumcise himself: by thy life! I will reveal Myself to him only in your palace.' Hence it is written: 'And the Lord appeared unto him in the palace of Mamre.'

(Breishit Rabba 42:8)

This midrash is baffling. Does Abraham, the model of obedience to God's will, really need Mamre to persuade him to perform the act of circumcision?

Commenting on this the Sefat Emet says:

Mamre understood that through the circumcision a covenant between Abraham and God would be forged, creating an exclusive relationship between Abraham and his offspring and God. This would separate Abraham and his children from the rests of humankind. Aner and Eshkol objected to this new development, but Mamre had faith and understood that this was the way it needed to be, and that he (Mamre) was not worthy enough to be part of this exclusive relationship with the Almighty. He accepted the necessity of an exclusive covenant between Abraham and God even though it meant that he would be excluded and as a consequence be further away from God. Paradoxically it was this very consent to a more distant relationship that brought him closer. This precipitated the Divine revelation in his homestead and he had a closer relationship with God precisely because he was willing to sacrifice it and endure alienation from God.

(Sefat Emet, VaYera, 5634)

Rabbi Yehuda Aryeh Leib, author of the Sefat Emet, offers us a keen insight into the mysteries of the human heart. I believe that the experience of sacrificing closeness to God for God generated a feeling of love and commitment in Mamre's heart that precipitated God's response.

I want to clarify this through the words of the Rabbi Mordechai Yosef Leiner of Izbica, in his classic, the Mei HaShiloach:

Initially, when a person begins to desire to draw near to God, God hides His light from him in order to clarify and purify (levarer) the desire until God actually breaks his heart, and he realizes his imperfections. Through this [heartbreak] the individual merits an even greater revelation...

(Mei HaShiloach, Tazria, Part 1 s.v. Isha)

The Mei HaShiloach is referring, I believe, to the same phenomenon as the Sefat Emet, but from a different perspective. The Sefat Emet is writing from the human perspective, whereas the Mei HaShiloach is writing from the Divine perspective. God desires, or rather, demands, authenticity. What is our real motivation when we desire closeness with God? Perhaps we are seeking a spiritual high, or for meaning in our scattered lives, or self-fulfillment. Such a striving may ultimately bring us to God but it still must be distinguished from an authentic search for God. The Mei HaShiloach is concerned with the question of how we can know that we our search is authentic, our motives pure. At this point God graciously (so to speak) steps in and hides his light. What is our response to the hiding of His Light? If we are seeking self-fulfillment or an amorphous spirituality, perhaps we will shrug our shoulders and turn to tai chi, yoga or meditation. (I do not mean to denigrate yoga or tai chi, only that these activities should not replace a religious quest for closeness to God.) If however, our desire is pure, we will cling tenaciously to our original quest: closeness to God. The broken heart can be nothing but authentic.

Mamre, in his willingness to sacrifice his closeness to God for the sake of God, set a standard for religious authenticity. Living at this level of intensity and self-scrutiny is not easy, but aspiring to live this way places us in the presence of the God of Abraham who revealed Himself in the home of Mamre.

Shabbat Shalom!

Torah From Our Beit Midrash

2011-11-11T13:21:00.002-05:00

This week, the daf yomi dealt with many aspects of the non-sanctified gifts to the kohanim - certain cuts of meat from slaughtered animals, and the first shearing of sheep. A major theme that the meaning and valance of a gift is shaped by the manner in which it is given and which it is received. We may first note the difference between agricultural gifts to the poor and the above-mentioned gifts to the priests. The Gemara (Hullin 134b) states that if there are no poor or no kohanim around, then in the case of the poor one does not have to search after them to find them, whereas in the case of the kohanim, one has to hold onto the gifts and ensure that it reaches the kohen. Why the difference? Because the Torah says regarding the gleanings of the poor from the field, "To the poor and to the stranger you shall leave them," (Vayikra 19:10, 23:22). The gleanings of the field are just left for the poor, the field-owner has no need to find them. Regarding the gifts to the kohanim, in contrast, the Torah says: "You shall give to the kohen" (Devarim 18:3), so it is the owner's responsibility to make sure that the kohen receives it.

Now, this difference works to the disadvantage of the poor, in this case. However, there is a reason that the way of giving differs. In the case of the kohen, the gift must be given in a way that reflects the status and importance of the kohen - it is being given to him not because he has no land and is poor (a theme that sometimes comes up in the case of the Leviim), but rather because "God has chosen him to stand and serve in the name of God" (Devarim 18:4). Thus, there needs to be a face-to-face encounter, and be given in the context of respect for the office and role of the kohen. The reverse is true in the case of the poor person. To give directly is to emphasize the poor person's neediness and dependence. The best way of giving to the poor respects the receiver's dignity, and is a giving that is - ideally - anonymous and, minimally, does not underscore the person's need to ask and to receive. Leaving the gleanings, and letting the poor come and take, not only saves the poor person from the face-to-face encounter, but also allows him or her to feel a certain degree of control and perhaps even quasi-ownership vis-à-vis the grain and the fields in which he or she is gleaning. One gift needs to be given the other needs to be left for the taking.

The difference between these two gifts plays out in another case as well. Does a kohen have to give the gifts - if he has slaughtered a cow or shorn a sheep - to another kohen? Does the poor person - who happens to own a small field - have to leave the gleanings for another poor person? The answer to the first is no, to the second is yes (Hullin 131a-b). What is the difference? The kohen does not need to acknowledge the importance of his office to another kohen. It would seem redundant and, perhaps more to the point, the other kohen does not hold a more elevated office vis-à-vis this kohen. However, in the case of the poor person, giving to another poor person is a very meaningful act. No matter how poor a person is, how bad off, there is always someone else that is worse off and whom he can help. Beyond the benefit to the recipient, there is also the statement that it makes to the giver. A person who is poor and is dependent on others may feel like less than a full member of society. To be able to give, and not only to receive, reinforces for this person their full membership as a functioning member of the community.

The giving to the kohen is a show of respect, but the giving to and by the poor no less so. One shows respect for the office, the other for the dignity of the individual. In a parsha that is so much about welcoming guests and caring for others, we should always remember that it is not just what or how much is given, but very critically how it is given, that can make all the difference.

Happenings at the Yeshiva

2011-11-11T13:20:00.001-05:00

Students continued learning intensely this week, and it was a week packed with learning in the evenings as well.   Tuesday and Thursday night saw the continuation of our successful Kollel program, which is now also drawing participation by various members of the community. On Monday night, we had the privilege and honor of hosting a lecture by Rabbi Dr. Yaakov Elman on "Culpability and Negligence in Rabbinic and Sasanian Law".   The lecture was given as a memorial lecture commemorating the 10th yahrtzeit of Yitzchak (Irwin) Haut, z"l, and sponsored by his wife, Rivka, and children Sheryl and Tamara. There was a wonderful turn out from the larger community who participated in the lecture together with the YCT students.   The lecture is available on audio and video on a special page on our website, and the source materials will be posted soon.

On Thursday we had two guests at the yeshiva. Rabbi Simcha Krauss, a rav in Yeshivat Eretz HaTzvi in Jerusalem, and previous rabbi of Young Israel of Hillcrest and past president of the WZO, spoke to students after mincha about the importance of both serving Klal Yisrael and nurturing one's relationship with God. He also spoke about the need to take stands on important issues, but also not to become a one-issue rabbi. It was a wonderful opportunity for students to hear Torah, inspiration, and wisdom from a rav who has done so much for Klal Yisrael.

Also Thursday afternoon students heard from Steven Roth of Ptil Techelet on some of the history of techelet, its modern-day identification, and some of the halakhic issues involved. This shiur will be posted to the internet in the next few days.

We would also like to thank an anonymous donor who donated a fleishig lunch to the students.   The lunch took place on Tuesday, which turned out to be a perfect Fall day, and students - together with staff from the yeshiva and the shul - enjoyed a beautiful lunch out on the building's balcony. As Tuesday was also election day, and the HIR's lobby was being used as an voting site, we also invited the staff monitoring the voting booths to join us, and we all shared a lovely lunch together.

Our community suffered two losses this week. Last Thursday night, Rose Ruth Livson bat Avraham and Sarah Drisin, dear grandmother of Simon Livson (YCT 2012) passed away. The funeral and shiva were held in her Finland.   And just this Tuesday, the grandfather of Ari Hart (YCT 2011), Sidney Black, Shlomo Nisan ben Tsivya, passed away after a long illness.   We wish the families a nechama for their loss. HaMakom yinachem etchem bi'tokh sha'arei Tzion vi'Yerushalayim.

Finally, we have the pleasure this week of a guest parsha piece by a dear friend and colleague of mine, Rabbi Herzl Hefter. Rabbi Herzl Hefter is the Rosh Yeshiva of the newly founded Har'El Yeshiva (www.har-el.org), for men between the ages of 21 and 30 located in the Old City of Jerusalem, affiliated with Isralight. Har'El combines traditional learning with religious seeking and will bring Hasidut, creative writing, Moreh Nevukhim, and great books into the Beit Midrash and into its pursuit of Torah and Godliness .
Apropos of the parsha, I would encourage you to look at the Shma Journal from this last Rosh HaShana, which focuses on the akeida. In particular, there is a write-up of an exchange which I participated in, on the topics of ethics and halakha seen through the lens of the akeida, which I trust you will find it interesting.

A Thought on the Parsha

2011-11-04T11:34:00.002-04:00

Feel free to download and print this week's Parsha Sheet and share it with your friends and family:

Click here: Parshat Lekh Lekha

After two failed attempts at directing humanity to a life of holiness and goodness, God, in this week's parsha, begins the grand experiment that will be the narrative of the entire Torah and the story of the People of Israel. With the generations of Adam, God stepped back to see if human beings, having chosen to "know good and evil," to think and choose for themselves, could choose for themselves a life of holiness. The answer was a resounding "no": "And God saw that great was the evil of man on the earth, and all the thoughts of his heart were only evil, the entire day." (Breishit 6:5). So God tried again with Noach, introducing two key concepts: commandment and covenant. Now, with greater direction, with commandments about structuring a just society, and with a formalization of the relationship, a covenant, there was hope that human beings could stay within the straight and narrow. But human beings, with their unrestrained ambition, their drive for power and fame, failed God once again: "Come, let us make for ourselves a city, with a tower whose head is in the sky, and make for ourselves a name..." (Breishit 11:4).

How can humankind be redeemed? How can they be directed to a life of doing what is morally right and what is right in the eyes of God? The answer is to start small. God takes God's universalist goals - and shrinks them down, engages in tzimtzum, and begins with one family, one person: Avraham. Through a special relationship with this one person, with his family and his descendants, with an expansion of the commandments and an intensification of the covenant, will God's name and God's path be known to the world. Abraham will lead by his example, his children will become a "light unto the nations," and the world will - in the end of time - turn to God and be redeemed. " All peoples on earth will be blessed through you." (Breishit 12:3).

There is a risk with this strategy, however. For it is possible that this selection, this chosenness, will lead this Chosen People to devalue and dismiss the rest of humankind that is not so chosen. There is a risk that chosenness will lead to sanctimony and self-satisfaction, rather than to obligation and mission. So God doesn't choose just anybody. God chooses someone who has a powerful universalist impulse, someone who is always looking to, and calling out to, the larger world. God chooses Avraham. "... and he proclaimed the name of God" (Breishit 12:8), "... and he proclaimed the name of God" (13:4), "and he planted there an orchard and he proclaimed the name of God, Lord of the Universe" (21:33). Avraham talked about God to anyone and to everyone, spreading the message, and hopefully - bit by bit - transforming the world. This was a man who could be chosen, a man whose chosenness would heighten his sense of mission, who chosenness could transform not just him, but the world.

God's work, however, was not done. For while Abraham had the right universalist streak, he needed to himself learn the importance of tzimtzum. He needed to understand the importance of a particularist focus, so as not to repeat the failed universalist attempt of the generations of Noach. For if the audience is too big, the message gets lost. If the teachings and traditions are not taught in the context of a family, so that they can be preserved, treasured and passed down from generation to generation, then they will not survive. Avraham was a charismatic leader and teacher, a person who attracted hundreds of followers. But one generation later, in the life of Yitzchak, all the followers have fallen away. When the charismatic leader dies, how will his teachings and his message survive? How does the message moved beyond charisma and become lasting? By being institutionalized - in a religion, in a country, or - in this case - in a family and a People. A strong family, with a sense of tradition, values, and cohesion, will keep the path alive from generation to generation: "For I have chosen him, so that he may command his children and his house after him to observe the way of God, to do justice and righteousness." (Breishit 18:19). The way of God is passed down "after him" through "his children and his house." This is why he was chosen, and this is what he must do, focus - at least for the time being - not on saving the world, but on educating his family.

God knows that this will be a learning curve for Avraham, so when God first calls Avraham, he plays to his strengths. "Go from your land... And I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and I will make your name great... and all the nations of the Earth will be blessed on account of you." (Breishit 12:2-3). There is no mention of children, of family, only the promise of greatness, of fame, of becoming (through his followers? through conquest?) a great nation. Avraham's greatness and fame will allow him to spread the name of God, and is perfectly fitting to his strength as a charismatic leader, and this command and this promise, so resonant with Avraham's personality, motivate him to leave his home, to risk all, to serve God and to save humankind. Now he must learn about family.

And so Avraham's own tzimtzum begins. He must first learn to reorder his own family structure. For when he first follows God's command, Lot is an equal member of the household alongside Sara, perhaps even more important than she: "And Avraham went as God had commanded him, and Lot went with him" (12:4). Even when Sara is mentioned in this journey, it is not with any more prominence than Lot: "And Avraham took Sarei his wife and Lot his nephew..." (12:5). It seems that Avraham, childless with a barren wife at the age of 75, had not really imagined that he would have his own children, and that Lot - whose father had died - had become Avraham's intended heir. This will need to be realigned. So it is, after the event with Sara in Egypt, and after being lectured to by Pharaoh about the importance of one's wife, that Sarei has moved to the center, and Lot to the periphery: "And Avraham went up from Egypt, he, and his wife, and all that they had and (then) Lot with him, towards the Negev" (13:2). [This insight is taken from Leon Kass' wonderful book "The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis".] It is thus also soon after this, that he and Lot part ways, and that - after giving up on Lot as an heir - God promises him, unambiguously, a multitude of children (21:22). He - Abraham - is not to spread out everywhere. He is to invest in family and it is his children who will spread out across the world.

This pulling back from the entire world to focus on family, this tzimtzum which comes with chosenness and covenant, is perhaps central to the sign of the covenant - the brit milah. The circumcision of the male organ as a sign of Jewish identity, a sign of a covenantal relationship with God, is often understood as representing a life of holiness, a life of control over one's lusts and desires. Another symbolism, however, may be at play. For the male desire to spread one's seed parallels the desire of a charismatic leader to spread his name and his fame throughout the world, to inseminate people's minds and souls with his teachings. However, such literal spreading of one's seed is destructive to the structure of a family - witness the prior story of Hagar and Yishmael - and such a spreading of one's message is often doomed to failure, for it lacks the structure to ensure its survival. Avraham is thus told that to be in a covenant with God is to pull back, to control one's more universalist or omnivorous desires. Avraham must focus and invest in family, in his wife Sara, and in the son that will be born - as he is now told - from her.

Avraham is to take his passion, his ambition, his desire to spread God's word to the entire world; and limit it, direct it, harness it. In doing so, it will become all the more potent. By keeping the covenant, by treasuring the unique relationship that his children will have with God and that he, then, must have with his family, he will succeed in teaching God's path so that it will be kept, treasured, and passed down, until the time when it - never having lost its original universalist impulse - can finally spread throughout the world. It will be the success of God's third and final attempt to redeem the world, a universalist goal achieved through particularist means: the covenant of Avraham becoming the covenant of all humankind.

Shabbat Shalom!

Torah From Our Beit Midrash

2011-11-04T11:34:00.000-04:00

In the daf yomi this week, the Gemara - in the middle of a discussion about the impurity of animals, and the different components of their bodies - turned to a fascinating conversation about the diversity of the animals of creation, and the phenomenon of animals that are the product of cross-breeding:

When R. Akiva read this verse he used to say: 'How manifold are Thy works, O Lord!' (Tehilim 104:24). Thou hast creatures that live in the sea and Thou hast creatures that live upon the dry land; if those of the sea were to come up upon the dry land they would straightway die, and if those of the dry land were to go down into the sea they would straightway die... How manifold are Thy works, O Lord!'...

Rav Huna ben Torta said: I once went to a gathering (or 'a forest') and saw a snake wrapped round a toad; after some days there came forth an 'arod (a poisonous reptile) from between them. When I came before R. Simeon the pious, [and related this to him,] he said to me: The Holy One, blessed be He, said: They have produced a new creature which I had not created into my world, I too will bring upon them a creature which I had not created in my world [and which causes much damage and suffering].

(Hullin 127a)

R. Akiva's statement is quizzical. Why is God's greatness manifest in the limited capacity of a sea creature to live on the earth and vice-versa? Would it not show greater power of God had God created sea-creatures so they could also live on the land? The point seems to be, that there is a beauty in the diversity. There is a beauty in the fact that not all things are the same. That there are some creatures that are only sea creatures, and some animals that are only land animals. Beyond that, there is a rightness, a fittingness, to the fact that creatures are adapted to their specific environment. There is a beauty to the order of the world - a world in which there is a place for everything and everything is in its place.

This then leads to the counter example of Rav Huna ben Torta. Rav Huna witnessed what could happen when someone tries to tamper with the ordered world that God has created. When animals that were not mean to crossbreed are crossbred, disorder and danger will result. We must keep God's world with the order with which it was created.

This theme echoes the first chapter of Breishit that we just read recently. God created plants, trees, and animals, li'minah, "to their kind". The implication of the verse is that the distinctions between the different species of plants and animals should be preserved, that they should remain "to their kind." The later Torah prohibition of kilayim, the cross-breeding animals and plants and the wearing of shatnez - a combination of wool (from the animal world) and linen (from the plant world) - are apparently a concretization of this principle. Such is the opinion of many modern scholars (see, for example, Mary Douglas' book, Purity and Danger) and such, certainly, is the opinion of Ramban:

The reason for [the prohibition of] kilayim is that God has created different species in the world, among all living things - plants, and animals - and has given them the ability to reproduce, so that these species should continue to exist as long as God desires that the world continues to exist. And God decreed that this ability should be "according to their kind" - and that they should never change, as it says regarding all of them, "to their kind."... One who cross-breeds two different species, changes and weakens the forces of Creation, acting as if he things that God had not done a good enough job completing the world, and he - this person! - wants to "help" God in God's creation, to add some new creation...

(Ramban, Commentary to Torah, VaYikra 19:19)

There is a problem with this approach, however. Ramban's words, taken literally, indicate that it is not our job to improve the world. But isn't a major teaching of our tradition that it is exactly our job to do so? It is true that the Torah states that God placed Adam in the garden "to work it and to protect it" - not to change it. But God also commanded the first humans, in the opening chapter of Breishit - to "fill the Earth and subdue it"! In fact, there are those who, in interpreting the verse "For on that (seventh) day God rested from all his work which God had created to make" interpret the last infinitive phrase "to make" to refer to humans - God has created the world, and it is now our responsibility to continue to make it. Indeed, no one has every suggested that Judaism favors anything like a Quietist theology. We are not only commanded to rest on Shabbat, we are also told, or perhaps commanded, that "six days you shall work". The famous debate between Rabbi Akiva and Turnus Rufus regarding the need for Brit Milah makes this point explicitly. God gave us wheat, not bread. God gave us the human, we are to work to make him - ourselves -better. (Tanchuma, Tazria, 8). The real question is - when has the "subduing" gone too far? When must it give way to "protecting"?

These questions have a contemporary relevance when one thinks about new technologies such as genetic engineering and cloning. Is this "subduing" or is this violating the ordering of God's world? Is this continuing creation, or is this saying to God that we need to do God one better? Although genetic engineering is not prohibited in the Torah, those who speak about following Torah values and not just Torah law, should apply those values to this case. Or perhaps not. For - as we mentioned above - there are other values at stake, saving lives and healing disease chief among them. Maybe the potential for such benefit should outweigh.

One way to look at this is through the lens of "saying to God that the creation needs improvement." Certainly some who are involved in the field may be arrogant or feel God-like, being able to manipulate nature to such a degree, but that danger is present in every field. Should we not have surgeons, because some may, in their life-saving roles, feel God-like and arrogant?

The better way to evaluate this is to look at the result. If the result is beneficial, then we are doing our job of working with God's world to make it better. If the result is destructive, then we have gone too far. The problem is that it is often hard to predict what the result will be, or often there will be both positive and negative outcomes. Should we pursue such a path or not?

The passage quoted above from Hullin indicates that, at least when it comes to tampering with the basic categories of nature (more of an issue for genetic engineering than for cloning), we should not pursue such a path. However, there is another Gemara. In Pesachim (54a) we read the following:

It was taught, R. Yossi said: Two things He decided to create on the eve of the Sabbath, but they were not created until the termination of the Sabbath, and at the termination of the Sabbath the Holy One, blessed be He, inspired Adam with knowledge of a kind similar to Divine [knowledge], and he procured two stones and rubbed them on each other, and fire issued from them; he [Adam] also took two [heterogeneous] animals and crossed them, and from them came forth the mule.

Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel said: The mule came into existence in the days of Anah, for it is said, This is the Anah who found the mules in the wilderness. Those who interpret symbolically used to say: Anah was unfit (the child of an incestuous relationship), therefore he brought unfit [animals] into the world.

Here we see the two approaches juxtaposed. Rav Shimon ben Gamliel reflects the approach of Hullin - such cross-breeding was wrong, and the result is a bad thing. Rebbe Yossi, however, sees it as part of God's plan, and a product of human intelligence and creativity. Like fire, which was fundamental in the creating of early human society, the mule was a tremendous boon to humankind as a hearty beast of burden. This is the role of human beings, to partner with God, to create something from nothing. To make fire from stones, and a mule from a horse and a donkey.

So what's the resolution? Is there a way to bring these two approaches together? Maharal in his work Be'er HaGolah (Be'er 2) discusses this possibility. Siding with the approach of R. Yossi, and seeing the mule as a boon to society, asks why the Jews were commanded against cross-breeding. Don't we see the good that can result? He answers: the way of the Torah is distinct from the way of completing (!) the world. What does this mean? Why would the Torah prevent us - at least Jews - from completing the world in this way?

The answer may be, that there are two competing values here. Yes, the world needs completion, but there are dangers when we tamper too much with the basic building blocks of creation. We cannot engage in such behavior completely unrestrained. How do we fulfill both "subdue it" and "protect it" - by recognizing that when manipulate it at such a fundamental level, that there are dangers that we must be cautious of. By Jews keeping the mitzvah of kilayim, this concern is kept alive and this value is - hopefully - attended to. The mitzvah of kilayim doesn't address non-Jews, and it doesn't address genetic engineering. But it reminds us that sometimes tampering can be disruptive and destructive. So as we proceed into this brave new world, we do so with the responsibility that comes with knowing that while we are commanded to subdue the Earth, to improve the world, to save lives and to heal disease, we are also commanded to protect it, to be aware that our creations are not good in themselves - even fire can be destructive! - and that we must create, but we must do so responsibly.

Happenings at the Yeshiva

2011-11-04T11:33:00.000-04:00

Learning continued apace, as year 1-2 students, and the Beit Midrash students, delved deeper into their respective mesekhtot - Pesachim for years 1 and 2, and Kesuvos for Beit Midrash. The year 3 and 4 students who are in the Educators track continued their learning of the first chapter of Baba Metzia, and their reflection - to a smaller extent in shiur with Rabbi Katz and to a much larger extent in a pedagogy class on Wednesday evening with Ruth Fagen - on the pedagogy of teaching Gemara. The integration of the morning learning with the evening pedagogy is unique to Jewish educator training programs, and is already proving to be a highly effective and anchored method of teaching these critical skills.

Students from years 3 and 4 who are learning Hilkhot Niddah moved this week from the sugya of chumrah di'Rebbe Zeira, and the requirement of 7 days post-bleeding, to the other requirements around the period of shiva ni'kiyyim, the seven "clean" or "white" days. All year 3 and 4 students continued learning aspects of Brit Milah - perfectly timed for this week's parsha - in the afternoons, from its halakhot, to aspects of officiating, and to pastoral issues. Students also took classes in more general pastoral aspects around early childhood. Second year students continued their chaplaincy internship on Monday afternoons, and heard another wonderful class on Wednesday given - via Skype - by our musmach Rabbi Jason Weiner (YCT 2006), Senior Rabbi at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, LA on the topic of Jewish Chaplaincy and Bikkur Cholim. Rabbi Weiner's erudition, experience and wisdom were a tremendous gift to the students, and we look forward to hearing another class from him again next week.

A couple of Mazal Tovs are in order. First, Mazal Tov to Rabbi Zev (YCT 2006) and Chani Farber on the birth of a baby girl last week. Geffen Farber was named this week, and we wish Abba and Ima and the whole family much joy and nachas. She'tizku li'gadlah li'Torah li'Chuppah u'li'ma'asim tovim!

And a big Mazal Tov to Gabe Greenberg (class of 2012) and Abby Streusand who were married in Baltimore this last Sunday. The wedding took place on the grounds of a farmhouse near the Pearlstone center, where - as participants and leaders in Pearstone's Kayyam Farm - Gabe and Abby first met. The setting was beautiful and so fitting, and Rabbi Weiss, Rabbi Katz and I, together with a group of YCT students, were thrilled to be there and to be able to dance at the wedding and to rejoice with the couple. It was also true nachas to see Rabbi Aaron Finkelstein (YCT 2010) co-officiate the wedding together with Gabe's Grandfather. Gabe and Abby returned to New York this week, and on Thursday the students of the yeshiva held a beautiful sheva brakhot for them, with words from Aaron Lerner, and with an exquisite presentation arranged by Allison Batalion. We are thrilled to welcome Abby into our family! Shetizku livnot bayit ne'eman bi'Yisrael!

A Thought on the Parsha

2011-10-28T13:16:00.003-04:00

Feel free to download and print this week's Parsha Sheet and share it with your friends and family:

Click here: Parshat Noach

It is just a few hundred years since the world has been created, and everything has gone to pot. When the world was freshly minted and created, we heard the refrain with each act of creation, "And God saw that it was good," and that the world as a whole was "exceedingly good." Now, humans have come and made a mess of everything, and a different refrain is heard: "And God saw that "massive was the evil of man on the earth, and all the thoughts of his heart were only evil the entire day." (Breishit 6:5). How did we get to this stage? How did man bring evil - in his heart and in his actions - to the earth that God had made. Undoubtedly, this is the result of eating of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Man now knows evil, and as a result, evil has entered into the world. So God starts again. God wipes out the entire world and preserves only Noach, hoping that this time humans will choose the good. All of this, because of the tree.

What was the knowledge that the tree imparted and how did it introduce evil into the world? There are those that say that the eating from the tree gave humans free choice, gave them the ability to choose between good and evil. But if this is the case, if they did not have this ability prior, how could they have chosen to eat from the tree, and how could they have been held accountable? A more satisfying explanation is the one offered by Rav Shimshon Raphael Hirsch and, more recently, the philosopher Michael Wyschograd. Rav Hirsch explains that the tree did not give them the ability to choose, it gave them the ability to know, that is, to judge. Until they ate from the tree, they only knew of God's definition of right and wrong. They could violate God's commandment, but with the clear knowledge that they were doing something wrong.

We, of course, all the time make choices that we know are wrong. Cheating on our diet, speaking lashon hara, and the like. These bad choices come from weakness of will what Greek philosophy terms akrasia. This is the source of much wrongdoing. But it is not the only source. For when humans ate from the tree, they began, for themselves, to determine what is good and what is bad. The gained not moral choice, but moral judgment, an ethical sensibility. Now, not only could they choose to disobey, but they might also decide that what God has determined to be bad is, in their eyes, good. They could do the wrong, thinking that it was good.

The Biblical verses bear out this interpretation. We are told, not only by the snake, but by God as well, that the tree will make the humans "like God." What is it that we know about God so far in the narrative? We know that God creates. We also know that God assesses and makes judgments. "And God saw that it was good." And what do we hear as soon as the woman chooses to eat from the tree, "And the woman saw that it was good..." (Breishit 3:6). The tree has made them like God. Man and woman will from this day forward see, for themselves, whether something is good or evil. They will make their own moral decisions.

And what is wrong with that? According to Hirsch, what is wrong is that the moral decisions of humans will, oftentimes, be incorrect. We are not omniscient. We have our own drives, lusts, and self-interest. What about the tree did the woman see that was good? She saw "that it was good for eating, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and desirous for gaining wisdom." It is good from a self-interested perspective, from a perspective of satisfying desires, but not from a moral perspective. For Hirsch, the problem is that we might decide that something is good, when it is, in fact, bad.

Wyschograd goes one step further. He states that even were we to judge correctly, there is a sin in making the judgment ourselves, in being independent moral agents. If we are to be in a truly faithful relationship with God, then only God should define what is good and what is bad. To judge other than God, even if we choose in the end to obey, is to have left the Garden of Eden, to have left a perfect relationship with God.

Read this way, the narrative of the first two parshiyot of the Torah is one of a fallen humankind. How much better would it have been had we never eaten from the tree, had we not known of good and evil, had we never become independent moral agents. But... really? Is this how we think of our own humanness? Don't we feel that in not having the ability to make moral judgments we are giving up a very central part of what it means to be human, of the value of being human?

Rather than seeing the eating from the tree as a "fall", Nechama Leibowitz offers a different explanation of this newfound state. Isn't it odd, she asks, that God has placed such an irresistible temptation in front of Adam and Eve? Imagine a parent saying to a child: "I am leaving some delicious candies right here in the center of the table - you can't miss them - they are really delicious, and they will make you feel like an adult - but don't eat them. I'm only going to be gone 5 minutes. Bye." Is there really any question what the child will do?

The sin of the first man and woman was inevitable. It was a necessary act of becoming independent, of growing up. Adam and Eve had been living like children - everything was provided, all decisions and rules were made for them, all they had to do was obey the rules. But this is not the life of an adult. And to become independent, to leave the home, inevitably some rebellion, rejection, statement of separateness will have to take place. The sin was an act of individuation, it was what allowed Adam and Eve to become adults, but it forced them to leave home, where everything was perfect and taken care of for them. Now they would have to go it on their own.

And when our children leave home, we want them to think for themselves. We want them to make their own judgments, their own decisions. Just one thing. We want those decisions to be the same ones we would have made. This will be the challenge for humans from here on in. As independent moral agents, we can make judgments, decisions, that are not as God would have us choose. But the other side of the coin is that as independent moral agents, we bring something important into our relationship with God. We bring our own thoughts, ideas, and judgments. Many of them may be bad and misguided, but some will be good, worthwhile suggestions and contributions.

The first generations after the sin tell the story of how easy it is for this independence to lead us astray. Left totally to our own devices, we will make one wrong decision after another, we will turn "good" into "bad." We continue to see, to judge, but to see wrongly, and to act wrongly. "The sons of elohim saw the daughters of men that they were beautiful; and they took as wives all those whom they chose." (Breishit 6:2). We have what to contribute, but for this relationship to succeed, we will need more guidance. And thus, when God starts the world all over again, God formalizes our relationship and God gives us the needed guidance. God makes a covenant, a brit, and God gives commandments. With these clear directives, with a relationship built on brit and mitzvot, it is hoped that humans, if they act like responsible adults, will be able to take a world that is good, and to build it.

This is the complicated and complex reality in which we live as humans in a relationship with God. Even with a covenant, even with commandments, we can continue to see, to judge and to choose wrongly: "And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brothers outside." (Breishit 9:22). Of course, because we can now think and make decisions for ourselves, it is also possible that we can introduce something new, something that God has not commanded, but that is nevertheless good: "And Noah built an altar to the Lord ... And the Lord smelled the pleasing odor..." (Breishit 8:20-21).

Consider the greatest religious leader, Moshe. In the last verse of the Torah that we read just last week we are told that no prophet has ever arisen in Israel like Moshe, "for all that mighty hand, and in all the great and awesome deeds which Moses performed in the sight of all Israel." (Devarim 34:12). This verse extols Moshe as the faithful conduit of God's mighty hand and awesome deeds, as the perfect vessel for God's mission. Rashi, however, turns this verse on its head: "In the sight of all Israel - that his heart carried him to break the tablets... and God approved of this decision, as it says, "which you have broken," i.e., strength to you for having broken them!" The last image of Moshe that Rashi leaves us with is that of a leader who used his own judgment to act radically and decisively, not in violation of God's command, but certainly without God's explicit command. Here was a different type of seeing, a good type of seeing: "And Moshe saw the calf and the dancing... and he cast from his hands the tablets." (Shemot 32:19). And it was this act that was exactly what was needed at this moment. "Strength to you for having broken them."

We are adults. We can judge and choose, and we must face the responsibility of doing so wisely, with a commitment to God's covenant and God's mitzvot. And because we are adults, because we are able to think for ourselves, because we are able to innovate and contribute in the moral and religious realm as well, we have the ability not only to preserve the good of the world, but to increase the good within it.

Shabbat Shalom!

Torah From Our Beit Midrash

2011-10-28T13:16:00.000-04:00

Entering into Yom Tov, the fate of Gilad Shalit was on everyone's mind, and we were all overjoyed when his release was announced and took place during Chol HaMoed. However, this joy was tinged with an awareness at the tremendous cost of this release - the freeing of over one thousand terrorists. Many people found themselves asking whether Gilad's release was worth the cost. Many newspaper articles and opinion pieces were written on this topic as well, with the large majority of them coming down in favor of this decision.

This topic - how high of a price to pay for securing the freedom of a captive - is actually a topic that arises in the Gemara, and in the very Gemara that we learned at the end of Elul Zman. The mishna in Gittin presents a ruling that would seem to disallow paying such a high price:

One does not redeem captives more than their worth for the sake of tikkun 'olam (establishing the world). (Gittin 45a)

The Gemara states two reasons for this: one, because it creates an undue burden on the community (here, a financial burden) and two, because it encourages more captive taking in the future. Both of these reasons seem precisely apposite to this situation. The freeing of a thousand terrorists creates an enormous burden on the community in terms of future endangerment, and - as we know from reports from Hamas when this deal took place - may motivate more such captive taking in the future.

And yet... it seems that more is at stake and more factors have to be considered. First, some qualifications to this ruling (see the Hebrew Wikipedia article for a nice summary of some of these points). A number of poskim rule that this limit does not apply when a life is at stake. Under such circumstances, any price needs to be paid. As to the other lives that may be endangered in the future- that is a future, non-defined danger, which does not outweigh the immediate, present danger. Another important qualification is that of family. Basing himself on another Gemara, Tosafot states that when it is one's spouse who is endangered, one can pay any price, just as one can do so for him- or herself. A number of contemporary poskim rule that Israel's relationship to its soldiers is the same as that of husband and wife, all the more so when there is a prior commitment that it will leave no one behind.

I would like to focus on a different factor from those two. The whole issue at stake here in the mishna, embodied in the phrase tikkun 'olam, is the weighing of the community's needs, the betterment of society, against the present needs and rights of, and our obligations to, the individual. Can one do wrong by an individual for the sake of society, for the greater good? Our mishna teaches that sometimes this is justified, sometimes we must make rulings for the sake of tikkun olam. But this is the exception, never the rule. Halakha, in its very focus on the details of each action, their particulars and their rightness, consistently trains us to make sure of the rightness of how we are acting in the present. Some bemoan the fact that there is not more discussion in halakha and the Gemara about values. But too much discussion of values can be dangerous, because it can be a license for doing wrong acts to achieve an abstract value - the ends justify the means. Halakha tells us that the means - our day to day actions, each act that we do - are the ends, and must be right in themselves. If there is a sugya in the Gemara about aveira li'shma, sinning for the sake of higher religious goal (Horiyot 10b), this is never incorporated in halakha and is used more for rhetoric purposes. Halakha teaches us that the means are the ends, and we cannot do wrong for the sake of a greater good.

So the mishna's teaching runs against the grain of the halakhic system. It is thus not surprising that we find throughout history that captives were often redeemed even when the price was high, despite the mishna's teaching. Sometimes justifications were given, ways of qualifying the mishna's ruling, and sometimes not. But it was the present need that created an obligation that could not be ignored.

The freeing of Gilad Shalit occurred on the cusp of Shmini Atzeret. One of the central themes of Shmini Atzeret is moving out of the universalism of Sukkot, and having a chag that allows us to have intimate, face-to-face time, as it were, with God. It is about moving from abstractions to the concrete. It is about valuing the direct connection and seeing the face of the other. According to Levinas, it is in this way that Judaism differs from Greek philosophy. Judaism worries about the details, Greek philosophy worries about the abstractions. Greek philosophy is about the collective, Judaism is about the individual, is about seeing the face of the other, and the moral responsibility that this face-to-face encounter creates.

Much violence has and can be done in the name of the "greater good." Serving the "greater good" can be a license for totalitarianism. The encounter with the other, however, creates obligations and demands behavior that cannot be argued away. It is the face of the other that demands the rightness of the action in the here and now.

And this brings us to our final point. One well accepted exception to the mishna's ruling is the case of a Torah sage. When a Torah sage is taken captive, even a very high price can be paid. What is the reason for this exception? Perhaps it is because of the way the community will benefit from his Torah teaching once he is freed. But if so, this would be limited to cases of a Torah scholar who is also a teacher. It seems, rather, that one redeems a Torah scholar because of what it says of the community and of its values. What would it mean not to redeem a Torah sage? What type of community would that be? Certainly not one that valued Torah, or at least that would be the statement that it would be making. To not redeem such a stage would endanger the health of the community in a profoundly different way - it would endanger its values, and what it stands for. In such a case, the community's needs are served by paying a high price to redeem the captive. It is a statement and reaffirmation of everything the community stands for.

In the case of Gilad Shalit we have a different, contemporary version of the Torah sage. Gilad Shalit represents two profound values, values that are central to Torah and to Israel. First, because of the images and the media, we have all seen the face of Gilad Shalit. Gilad Shalit is everyone's son. To not redeem him, to turn away from his face, would be a rejection of one of the most basic values of Judaism and the Torah - the face of the other, the rightness of the action in front of you, the refusal to justify a shirking of responsibility for the sake of the greater good. And second, because Gilad Shalit is a soldier who was sent by Israel to defend the country, and who put his life on the line to do so. What would it say about the values of the State of Israel if it could turn its back on the people who risk their lives to defend it? To redeem Gilad Shalit is to reaffirm the values that are critical to our survival - not our physical survival, but our survival as the People and the State of Israel.

Happenings at the Yeshiva

2011-10-28T13:15:00.002-04:00

Students began their regular zman this week, with the Beit Midrash students learning Kesuvos, and year 1 and 2 students learning Pesachim. Year 3 and 4 students are learning either Hilkhot Niddah or Baba Mezia. The learning in the Beit Midrash has been intense and inspiring. And this zman, we extended the morning seder to 2:45 PM (with a break in the middle for lunch and mincha), and there is now powerful, intense learning of Gemara and Halakha well into the afternoon.

This zman also sees the beginning of the first year of our full-scale Educators Program. Year 3 and 4 students now select between a focus on Pulpit or on Education (with Hillel-bound students adopting a hybrid of the two). In a Yoreh Deah - Kashrut year, all students learn Yoreh Deah in the morning. This year, when the morning learning is devoted to Hilkhot Niddah, students who are in the Educators track are learning Gemara with Rabbi Katz in the morning, and having classes by Ruth Fagen on Wednesday evenings to teach content-specific pedagogy, here focusing on Gemara, and building off of Rabbi Katz's shiurim in the morning. Those students will do a more bottom-line hilkhot niddah after Pesach.

Educator students are also doing mentored internships at SAR and Heschel, and those focusing on Hillel are doing internships at NYU, Columbia, and Yale. All educator students are taking classes on Wednesday on pedagogy, teaching and classroom skills, campus educator skills, and a practicum seminar based on their internship experience. We are very excited about this new program and look forward to seeing great things!

And in yet another wonderful development here at the yeshiva, this zman we also began a Kollel program. Students who participate in this program commit, on top of all their other learning, studies, and obligations, to continued beit midrash learning here at the yeshiva for two nights a week. We currently have 10 students in the program, and the learning is going strong!

The Kollel program is distinct from Lishma, which we began in Elul and which is continuing this zman. Lishma is a program for community members two mornings a week to learn in our beit midrash and hear shiurim on Gemara, Halakha and Tanakh, and there are currently 6-8 community members who participate each week.

On the more personal level, we have had some simchas and some losses in our community since the last email. First, the good news. Rabbi Yonatan Berman (YCT 2007) is engaged to Rachel Stein!! Mazel Tov - we look forward to dancing at the wedding! And talking about dancing at weddings... we are eagerly anticipating the wedding this Sunday of Gabe Greenberg (class of 2012) to Abby Streusand in Baltimore. Mazal Tov, Mazal Tov.

On the sad side, Nissa Harris, wife of Mordechai Harris (class of 2012), lost her grandfather over yom tov, and the funeral was this last Sunday. And, finally, my aunt, Gertrude Linzer, oldest member of Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun, passed away this week at the age of 103. This week's parsha thought is dedicated to her memory. My aunt Gertie lived every moment of her long life with vigor, passion, steadfast commitment to family and steadfast commitment to family and yahadut, and with honesty a wonderful sense of humor. May her memory be for a blessing.

Our dear beloved Ruthie Simon fell the other day and suffered a serious spraining of her foot. She is in a lot of pain, and we all wish her a very speedy recovery. Refuah Shleima.

A Thought on the Parsha

2011-10-06T18:26:00.002-04:00

Feel free to download and print this week's Parsha Sheet and share it with your friends and family:

Click here: Yom Kippur

I would like to share with you a (slightly emended) piece that I wrote on Yom Kippur and the Temple Service which was published in the Jerusalem Post Magazine, on Sept 28, 2008.

Cleansing the Temple, Cleansing our World

"For on this day he shall atone for you to purify you; that you may be clean from all your sins before the Lord." (Lev. 16:30)

This verse appears at the end of the Torah reading for Yom Kippur, when we leave all of our this-worldly pursuits behind, even food and drink, a day that is totally devoted to God, and a day we are promised atonement for our sins. The reading describes in great detail the service of the High Priest in the Temple on this day - the sacrifices, the ablutions, the burning of the incense, the sending of the scapegoat to the desert. Teshuvah, or repentance, is not mentioned as part of the service of the day. According to the verses, it is the sacrificial rites that cleanse the Temple and achieve atonement for the people.

But what is the significance of Yom Kippur when the Temple and these rituals are absent? The Rabbis of the Talmud, in their affirmation of the timeless relevance of the Torah after the destruction of the Temple, declared that in the absence of sacrifices, the day itself achieves atonement provided that it is accompanied by teshuvah (Bavli, Yoma 85b). The "he" of the verse who atones for us is no longer the High Priest offering the sacrifices, but God Himself, who provides atonement on this day to those who undertake the process of teshuvah. After the Temple, it is teshuvah which takes the place of the sacrificial rites of the day.

For the last two thousand years, the dominant theme of Yom Kippur has thus been teshuvah - the work of improving our behavior and transforming our character. And yet, the Torah reading remains Chapter 16 of Leviticus. Rather than hearing moral or religious exhortation - undeniably the theme of the haftarot of the day - we are treated to the minute details of the rites of the sacrifices. These Temple-based rites, while seemingly irrelevant to our contemporary concerns, can teach serious corrective lessons regarding sin and repentance.

It is widely believed that just as sin affects the spiritual well-being of the soul, so to the teshuvah is a process devoted wholly to the repairing of the soul. This is only partly true. The sacrificial rites of Yom Kippur tell another story. "And he [the High Priest] shall make an atonement for the Holy Sanctuary, and he shall make an atonement for the Tent of Meeting, and for the altar, and he shall make an atonement for the priests, and for all the people of the congregation" (Lev. 16: 33). It is first and foremost the Temple that must be cleansed, and only afterwards is the atonement of the people achieved.

The Torah assumes a basic metaphysical reality - sin pollutes. When the Children of Israel have sinned, the Temple itself becomes impure. This understanding of sin holds for us even today. When we sin, we hurt not only ourselves, we pollute our environment as well. If we have not respected our parents or our spouse, if we have betrayed a trust, or hurt others physically or emotionally, then our sin has damaged others and injured our relationships. If we have not honored Shabbat or the holidays properly, then the sanctity that these times hold for us has been diminished. The process of teshuvah requires that we recognize that improving ourselves is insufficient; we must also cleanse the reality that we have polluted.

An understanding of teshuvah that is limited to the self minimizes the work that needs to be done to set things right. This can have an insidious effect not only on us as individuals, but on our behavior as a community as well. Often, an abusive teacher or someone who has betrayed the public trust states that he has repented and asks for forgiveness and reacceptance. If we understand repentance to be limited to self-improvement and repairing one's relationship with God, then such claims may have traction. But if we understand what the work of teshuvah truly entails, we will rightfully demand that such people first demonstrate how they have worked to restore the lives, the trust, and the relationships that they have broken.

While Yom Kippur is a day that we devote fully to God and leave our this-worldly concerns behind, our process of teshuvah, like the cleansing of the Temple, can only be accomplished through a focus on this-world realities, a cleansing of our relationships and the realities around us that we have created.

Shabbat Shalom and Gmar Chatima Tova!

Torah From Our Beit Midrash

2011-10-06T18:25:00.002-04:00

The Gemara Hullin (101a-b), which we covered in the daf yomi just three days ago, compares the relative severity of the prohibition against a ritually pure (tahor) person who eats the meat of a sacrifice that has become impure (tamei) and the prohibition against a tamei person eating the meat of a tahor sacrifice. The first prohibition - where the sacrificial meat has already been defiled - is a simple negative prohibition, whereas the second one is a negative prohibition that is punishable by divine excision (karet). It would seem obvious, then, that the second prohibition is much more severe. Not necessarily so, says the Gemara. The first prohibition represents a state of affairs that cannot be changed - the meat cannot be made ritually pure. The second one, however, represents a state of affairs that can be changed - the person can become pure by going into a mikveh. Therefore, the second prohibition is less permanent, and therefore can be considered less severe.

This technical discussion hits on a key point of teshuva and Yom Kippur. [Interestingly enough, Yom Kippur is discussed immediately afterwards in the Gemara.] The difference between food - consumable, inanimate objects - and people is that inanimate objects are static and fixed, they cannot be change themselves; their status is permanent. People, on the other hand, are dynamic, with new thoughts, passions, and feelings every day, and with the ability to transform themselves. Their status is never fixed; even if impure they can become pure.

Vessels, while inanimate, represent a certain dynamism due to their use a versatility, and thus represent a middle category. Some vessels - wooden and metal ones - can become pure by immersion in a mikveh. However, what allows this is their partaking in the dynamic world of human activity, and they are thus purified as a result of a human action - being placed in the mikveh. Other vessels - pottery - cannot become pure. Such a vessel is at once both less versatile and more static, and also is made of inferior material. Such a vessel cannot be transformed - it is too rigid, and lacks the inner strength and quality to effect - or to allow for -such transformation.

The key, then, to becoming pure, to ridding oneself of ritual impurity or of sin, is the ability to transform, to free ourselves from past actions and to reassert, or redefine, our inner direction and our true self. A sin, even a light one, can be very weighty if it becomes a permanent part of a person. On the other hand, even a very severe sin need not be seen as so weighty if it does not become part of his or her identity. If the person does not let him or herself be an object, be fixed, rigid, and only impacted by outside forces, but rather insists on his or her personhood, the ability to define his or her own path, to change and to remake oneself, then even a weighty sin can become a light one. Such a person, a person with strong character, can free him or herself of his sin, can immerse in a mikveh, and can undergo a transformation that will allow him or her to become a new person.

What is this mikveh? Rabbi Akiva answers this in the last mishna in the last chapter of Yoma, the tractate devoted to Yom Kippur:

אמר רבי עקיבא אשריכם ישראל לפני מי אתם מיטהרין מי מטהר אתכם אביכם שבשמים שנאמר וזרקתי עליכם מים טהורים וטהרתם ואומר מקוה ישראל ה' מה מקוה מטהר את הטמאים אף הקדוש ברוך הוא מטהר את ישראל

R. Akiva said: Happy are you, Israel! Who is it before whom you become pure? And Who is it that makes you clean? Your Father Who is in Heaven, as it is said: “And I will sprinkle purifying water upon you and ye shall be clean.” (Ezek. 36:25). And it further says: “The hope (mikvei) [read here as “immersion pool” (mikveh)] of Israel, the Lord.” (Jer. 17:13). Just as an immersion pool renders the impure pure, so does the Holy One, Blessed be God, render Israel pure.

(Mishna Yoma 8:9)

We are blessed with the ability to transform ourselves internally through the process of teshuva and then, on one day of the year, bring ourselves in front of God, a become pure through immersing ourselves the mikveh which is the presence of God and the day of Yom Kippur:

כִּי בַיּוֹם הַזֶּה יְכַפֵּר עֲלֵיכֶם לְטַהֵר אֶתְכֶם מִכֹּל חַטֹּאתֵיכֶם לִפְנֵי ה' תִּטְהָרוּ

“For on this day he shall atone for you to purify you; that you may be clean from all your sins before the Lord.” (Lev. 16:30)

Happenings at the Yeshiva

2011-10-06T18:24:00.002-04:00

Sunday - Tzom Gedaliah - began with a Yom Iyyun on the Akeida, taught by YCT rebbeim and teachers, and hosted and co-sponsored by Congregation Rinat Yisrael in Teaneck. There was a large turnout, as people came to hear an all-star lineup of shiurim and speakers. The shiurim, the audio recordings of which are available on the web, were Akeida and Martyrdom in the Middle Ages, by Rabbi Dov Linzer; Akeida and Parent-Child Relationships, by Dr. Michelle Friedman; Akeida, Iyyov and Theological Paralysis by Rabbi Ysoscher Katz; and Akeida Themes in Biblical Literature by Rabbi Nati Helfgot. Rabbi Avi Weiss concluded the morning with inspiring words of machshava for the Yamim Noraim. We want to thank Rinat Yisrael, its esteemed rabbi, Rabbi Yosef Adler, and the co-chair of the adult education program, David Jacobowitz, for their hosting of the program and their hard work that made this program such a success!

As a bookend to that powerful day, tonight, Thursday, we will host an end of zman Leil Iyyun on Teshuva, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot, which is open to the community and will take place in our beit midrash from 7:00 PM - 11:00 PM. Please join us if you are able!

Learning continued full throttle during this last week of Elul Zman. In my shiur, students gave chaburot, seminars,on such diverse topics as the halakhic status of slaves as land or chattel, the mitzvah not to free one's slaves and the religious/theological challenges that that represents, the limits put on redeeming captives out of concerns for the present and future well-being of the community, and those who can and cannot write sifrei Torah, mezuzot, and tefillin.

On Wednesday, all the students, rebbeim and staff participated in an atzeret Tfillah for Gilad Shalit and the missing IDF soldiers. This service was broadcast live from the tent of the Shalit family in Jerusalem, and was co-sponsored by over 80 schools including YCT. For more information, see here.

We want to wish a big Mazel Tov to Rabbi Menashe and Donna East on the birth of a baby boy last Friday night, Shabbat Shuva. The bris will be - G-d willing - this Yom Kippur. She'tizku li'gadlo li'Torah li'chuppah u'li'ma'sim tovim u'lihakniso bivrito shel Avraham Avinu bizmano.

And another big Mazel Tov to Rabbi Andy Kastner and Leslie Cohen-Kastner on the birth of a baby girl this Thursday morning! Mazel Tov to you and your families. She'tizku li'gadlah li'Torah li'chuppah u'li'ma'asim tovim.

A Thought On the Parsha

2011-09-23T12:01:00.000-04:00

Feel free to download and print this week's Parsha Sheet and share it with your friends and family:

Click here: Parshat Nitzavim

Parshat Nitzavim, which this year is combined with Parshat VaYelekh, always falls immediately before Rosh HaShana, and appropriately so. For it is in this parasha that the Torah speaks at great length about the power of teshuva. "And you will return to the Lord your God and obey God's voice... you and your children, with all your heart and with all your soul." (Devarim 30:2). This process of teshuva comes, in the Torah's narrative, after the terrible curses described in last week's parasha, have befallen the nation: "And it will be when all these things befall you, the blessing and the curse..." (verse 1) that you will then repent and return. And your returning - vi'shavta (the root of the word teshuva) - to God will be met with God's return to you: "And God will return your captivity... and God will return." (verse 3).

This parasha of teshuva, then, is actually the closing of last week's parasha of blessings and curses. The Torah there ends its catalogue of curses rather abruptly, "... and you will sell yourselves there to your enemies as slave men and slave women, and no one shall buy you." (Devarim 28:29). That's it. You will be in the land of your enemies, afflicted and with no hope, more worthless than slaves. Where is the hope? Will God abandon us there? To this, our parasha responds - if you repent, God will return you to the Land of Israel, and you will once again prosper. You will no longer be "cursed... in the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your land,"(Devarim 28:17), but rather "... God will bring increase... to the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your cattle, and the fruit of your land," (Devarim 30:9). And in response to the devastating prophecy that: "Just as God has rejoiced over you to do good to you and to increase you, so will God make your enemies rejoice to wipe you out and destroy you," (Devarim 28:63), our parsha echoes back: "For God will once more rejoice over you to do good, just as God has rejoiced over your fathers." (Devarim 30:9).

It is instructive to compare this narrative of Sin-Curse-Teshuva-Return-Blessing to the parallel one that closed the book of Vayikra. There, the Torah also speaks about sinning and being cursed by God. However, the resolution there is not repentance and return, but rather confession and of God's commitment to the covenant. Consider. We are told near the end of those curses, "And they shall confess their sins and the sins of their fathers, in their trespass that they have trespassed against me, and even that they have walked contrary to (or haphazardly with) me." (Vayikra 26:40). It sounds like the people have repented, and all should be well and good. But then we read in the next verse: "Even I will walk with them contrarily, and I will bring them into the land of their enemies. Perhaps then will their uncircumcised hearts be humbled, and they accept the punishment of their sin." The people - although they have confessed - have not really changed their ways, and have not really humbled their hearts to God. And, even at the end, this goal seems elusive. For we are never told that this change takes place, but only: "... I will not cast them away or despise them to utterly destroy them, to annul My covenant with them, for I am the Lord their God." (verse 44). It is not our repentance that saves us, but rather God's commitment to uphold the covenant and to keep the relationship that God has with us as a People.

Why does one narrative include teshuva, and hence a complete return - both of us to God and God to us - whereas in the other narrative this is absent? A couple of possibilities present themselves. On the one hand is merely describing two different scenarios. Sometimes a person - or a nation - will not return fully, and only do a pro forma act of confession, and sometimes a person - or a nation - will do true teshuva, and God will respond in kind to these separate cases - in the first, a maintaining of the structure of the relationship, without its substance, and in the second, a true reestablishing of the relationship, with its full depth.

This answer is fine as far as it goes, but it fails to note another relevant point, and that is the absence of the entire phenomenon of teshuva from the book of Vayikra. For while Vayikra deals at great length with the atonement of sin, it never uses the phrase of shavta or teshuva, nor does it deal with it as a concept. Sins are atoned for through sacrifices and the associated act of confession: " And it shall be, when he shall be guilty in one of these things, that he shall confess that he has sinned in that thing, and he shall bring his guilt offering to the Lord..." (Vayikra 5:5-6). This is also true at the communal level and regarding the Service of Yom Kippur: " And Aaron shall bring the bull of the sin offering, which is for himself, and shall make an atonement for himself....". And again, "And Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the people of Israel..." (Vayikra 16:11 and 21). The emphasis here is more on the rituals and acts that achieve atonement, but not on the inner work of remorse, changing of one's ways, and returning to God. That - the process of teshuva, only explicitly appears in the Torah at the end of Devarim, in this week's parasha. Why is that?

I believe that the answer lies in how the Israel's relationship with God developed over time. Turning for a moment to a halakhic take on our parasha, the Talmud of the Land of Israel expounds on the verse: " And the Lord your God will bring you into the land which your fathers possessed, and you shall possess it; and he will do you good, and multiply you above your fathers" (Devarim 30:5), in the following way:

Your fathers were exempt [from tithes when they entered the Land of Israel] and became obligated [after the land was sanctified through being conquered and settled], so you were exempt [when you returned in the time of Ezra] and became obligated [when you settled the land].

Your fathers did not have the yoke of foreign government on them. You - however - are obligated [and the land has sanctity] even though you are under the yoke of a foreign government.

(Shevi'it 6:1).

That is to say, your return to the land is greater in the Second Commonwealth than the First Commonwealth, since the land is imbued with and retains its sanctity even though you have no political power. This idea is extended by Rambam (Laws of the Chosen House 6:16) to explain why the sanctity of the Land of Israel exists even after the destruction of the Second Temple, which was not the case after the destruction of the first Beit HaMikdash. The difference, says Rambam, is that the first sanctity was connected to our political power, and disappeared when that ended. The second sanctity, however, existed despite the lack of political power, and thus is perseveres even when we are driven from the land.

Rav Soloveitchik further elaborated on this point, and spoke to the nature of Israel's relationship to the land. In the First commonwealth the connection was formed based on real-world and material benefits: political power, and a land filled with blessings - a land of milk and honey. When this stopped being the case, the relationship ended. In the Second Commonwealth, however, life was better outside of the Land of Israel, and many Jews therefore did not return. Those who did return understood that the connection to the Land was much deeper than surface and material benefits. It was a connection that transcended material concerns, and because it transcended such concerns, it persisted throughout all hardship, and could exist even when they were no longer on the land. This relationship, however, could not happen at the beginning. A relationship of this depth had to grow over time. The people had to suffer hardship, and remain steadfast in their commitment to the Land, for the relationship to acquire this depth and this permanence.

What Rav Soloveitchik has said so beautifully in regards to the relationship to the land, can also be said in regards to Israel's relationship to God. This relationship was initially formed on the basis of real-world, material benefit. God had redeemed them from Egypt and provided for them in the desert. And, as we see, when the people suffered privation, they turned away from God and looked to return to Egypt. With such a relationship, when things go wrong, a true returning cannot take place, because a relationship of true depth has yet to be established. The most that can be hoped for is a verbal acknowledgement that one has done wrong, and an act that symbolizes the need to fix what has been broken. This is the verbal confession and the sacrifice. It is like a recently married couple that got married because of they were physically attracted to one another, but has yet to develop a deep, lasting relationship. When one of them does something to hurt the other, it cannot be solved by refocusing on the relationship and what truly matters, for the relationship is not there yet. At this stage, it can only be solved by an admission of wrongdoing, and an act - flowers, a vacation, etc. - that serves to make things better. The real danger here is that one of the parties will get up and walk away from the marriage. For things to get better, they first have to be committed to stay in. Hence, when the relationship with God was at this state, the people were only "walking with God haphazardly" as was God with the people. What kept things going was a commitment to stay in and work on the relationship. God is committed to the convenant.

If the couple, then, keeps in the marriage and keeps on working on the relationship, it can be transformative. The relationship will grow deeper, and after the marriage has hit some bumps and even serious hardships and nonetheless survived, the relationship will become deep and lasting. The entire dynamics will then change. With such a relationship, although statements and symbolic acts are important, the true way one corrects wrong and hurtful acts is by returning to what really matters, returning to the deep connection to other and to the unwavering commitment to one another, not just to the marriage. And when this happen, the relationship will grow even deeper.

And so it is with our relationship with God. If we have kept fast to the relationship even when it has hit bumps, if we are committed not only when things are good, but even - perhaps even more so - when things are bad, if we understand that the relationship is not about surface acts but about deep connection, then our relationship will be deep, substantive, and lasting. If this is - or can be - our relationship with God, then when we sin, and when we return and do teshuva with true depth and sincerity, our relationship, having suffered and persevered, will only grow deeper and stronger.

Shabbat Shalom!

Torah From Our Beit Midrash

2011-09-23T11:59:00.002-04:00

The Talmud (Gittin 37b) quotes a mishna in Shivi'it (10:8) that states that when a person attempts to return a debt during Shmita, the creditor should say to him "I annul it." But if the debtor says, "Nevertheless, I wish to return it," then the creditor should accept the payment. The Gemara goes on to say that the debtor should be encouraged, or perhaps even pressured, to say "nevertheless" and to return the loan.

This ruling is quite startling. One difficulty is that the Gemara and Sifrei are clear that loans are annulled at the end of the Sabbatical year. Hence the phrase: "One who returns his loan during Shmita," has to be reinterpreted to mean "one who returns his loan after Shmita has passed." Beyond that, regarding the actual annulment itself this case raises questions. What is the meaning of this little dance that the debtor and creditor are doing, and how can it be allowed to make payment of a loan after it has been annulled? To understand more clearly what is going on here, one needs to look at what happens when loans are annulled by the Sabbatical year.

The many passages in the Talmud that discuss the annulment of loans suggest very strongly that the annulment occurs automatically at the end of the year. However, this is not full explicit, and our passage points to a possible role that the creditor might have in this annulment through his declaration, "I annul it." Indeed, the Mordechai quotes an opinion that without this declaration the loan is not annulled. Even when Mordechai rejects this, he does so not through a definitive proof, but by saying, "The matter appears that the loan is annulled automatically," and "I have a tradition that this happens without any statement." Clearly, there is room to argue that the statement of annulment is part of the process, but on the other hand there are so many sources that sound like things happen automatically. Is there a way to resolve this?

I believe that the answer lies in understanding two aspects of what might be meant by annulment of the loan. On the one hand, it is possible that the loan gets completely wiped out. This is what we assume. Interestingly, however, the Torah never says this. The Torah rather says, "He may not exact the loan from his fellow or his brother." This suggests that the loan exists, but it may not be demanded or extracted. It is possible that these two approaches are reflected in the debate of Abbaye and Rava (Gittin 36b) how the Rabbis might have instituted a Rabbinic Shmita and annulled loans, if they really should be collectable. Abbaye states: "Sit and don't act." Rava states: "The court has the power to make property ownerless." That is, according to Abbaye, Rabbinic Shmita, at least, does not annul the loan, but rather restricts the creditor from collecting. According to Rava, however, the actual loan is annulled.

It is also possible that both are true. Perhaps what happens automatically is that the creditor is prohibited from collecting the loan. If, however, the creditor states, "I annul it," then the loan actually gets wiped out. That might be what is happening in our mishna. Because the loan still exists, then although the creditor cannot demand it, if the debtor wants to do the right thing, he will return it nonetheless. Hence the statement in the mishna that "The Sages are pleased with whomever returns a loan during the Sabbatical year." The creditor, on his part, has to then take it to the next step and say, "I annul it," perhaps thereby fulfilling the Biblical command, "Every creditor should release his debts." This, then, wipes the debt clean. Nevertheless, because the creditor is still out his money, it would be good for the debtor to repay it as a gift, and this is what we encourage him to do.

Finally, lulei di'mistafina, I would suggest a reading that is not according to the way we rule, but which fits nicely in the text of the mishna. Although we rule that the Sabbatical year annuls loans only at the end, we must admit that it is quite ironic that a creditor can go through the entire Sabbatical year demanding and collecting his debts. Perhaps this is not the case. Perhaps during the Sabbatical year the creditor is foresworn against collecting based on the verse, "He shall not exact." Nevertheless, the actual annulment of the loan only occurs at the end of the year. This is consistent with the sources that state that the annulment occurs at the end of the year, and it also nicely explains the phrase: "One who comes to return his loan on Shmita." When someone is returning it during the Sabbatical year, the loan still exists, but it cannot be demanded. Then, if the creditor states, "I annul," it gets erased, or, if he does not state this, it will be erased at the end of the year. This, then, also explains the sources that state that the annulment occurs automatically and this source which suggests that it is done via the creditor. The latter is true and necessary during the Sabbatical year itself, the former is what happens, regardless, and the end of the year.

Happenings at the Yeshiva

2011-09-23T11:58:00.002-04:00

The learning continues strongly, and the kol Torah is filling the Beit Midrash and the halls.

My shiur had the first round of student-led chaburot given on Monday and Tuesday on the topics of Shmita and annulment of loans nowadays, the way in which Shmita annuls loans, and the strength or Rabbinic enactments and what type of court is need to reverse them. I gave shiur on further details relating to the annulment of loans on Shmita, and on the mechanics of pruzbol. We have now progressed to the topic of slaves in halakha, and will hear today a chaburah on the two aspects of slavery - the ownership of a slave as property, and the personal status of the slave. After Rosh HaShana we will continue this topic, and look at the ways in which a slave is compared to land, and deal with some of the religious/theological aspects and challenges around slavery in the context of the mitzvah - as understood by the Rabbis - not to free one's slaves.

In preparation for Rosh HaShana, we had two special events this week. Lisa Goldstein from the Institute of Jewish Spirituality was in on Tuesday and led an optional meditation session in the afternoon. Then, on Wednesday, Rabbi Blanchard taught a shiur to the whole yeshiva on the aggadata of Yoma, and approaches to teshuva. We are all looking forward to our Spirituality / Hakhana LiYamim Noraim two-day retreat coming up this Monday-Tuesday, which will be taking place at Baker Camp at Lake Sebago, which will be led by Rabbi Moshe Silver, and which will also consist of students and rebbeim sharing their own Torah and approaches towards developing a deeper connection and preparing for the Yamim Noraim.

On a sad note, we mourn the passing of Ida Hilsenrad, mother of our beloved Toby Weiss. Rabbi Weiss, spoke beautifully about his mother-in-law at the funeral on Shomrei Hadas Chapel, in Boro Park. Toby is sitting shiva at her home on Sunday and Monday and will be getting up this coming Tuesday morning. We also mourn the passing of Gertrude Levine, sister of Yitz Greenberg. May God console them amongst the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.