JA Spring 2021

Spring 5781/2021

Vol. 81, No. 3

REACH FOR MORE Join 8,000 students pursuing exciting careers at our medical, dental, pharmacy and health sciences schools. At Touro’s Lander Colleges, where our values are your values, you’re choosing a quality education with accelerated pathways to our respected programs—and your chosen profession.

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New York Medical College

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Spring 2021/5781 | Vol. 81, No. 3

INSIDE

16 20 76 79 FEATURES

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REVIEW ESSAY Torah of the Mind, Torah of the Heart: Divrei Torah of the Talner Rebbe

By HaRav Yitzhak (Isadore) Twersky Reviewed by Rabbi Moshe Schapiro PROFILE The Rebbe at Harvard

By Rabbi Dr. Hillel Goldberg _____________________________ TRIBUTE In Memory of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks

By Rabbi Dr. Jacob J. Schacter Rabbi Sacks on Contemporary Issues

54 58 64 68

Smart Chesed: Four Ways Anyone Can Make a Difference

By Zevy Wolman Giving in Halachah: What Are Priorities in Tzedakah?

By Rabbi Daniel Feldman Are We Teaching Our Children to Be Givers?

By Rachel Schwartzberg

_________________________ PERSONAL HISTORY Driving the Rav

By Rabbi Lewis Wienerkur As told to Rabbi Dovid Bashevkin

The Words of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks _____________________________

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COVER STORY: THE ART OF GIVING Rabbi Aaron Kotler, Rabbi Shalom Baum, Margy-Ruth Davis, David Greenfield

DEPARTMENTS

ON BEING A COMMUNAL LEADER The Surest Path to Eternity Q&A with Gary Torgow

by Nechama Carmel

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THE JEWISH WORLD Memories of a Covid Seder As told to Steve Lipman; R. Rosenfeld; Naomi Ross

LETTERS PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE Time to Grow Up

By Mark (Moishe) Bane

84 89 97 104 108 110 112

FROM THE DESK OF RABBI MOSHE HAUER A Recipe for Continuity IN FOCUS Rights or Responsibilities?

By Rabbi Ilan Haber JUST BETWEEN US Why Jews Are Optimists

By Dr. Morton Frank THE CHEF’S TABLE A Scalable Seder

By Naomi Ross LEGAL-EASE What’s the Truth about . . . the Jews in Egypt Keeping Their Jewish Names, Language and Dress?

By Rabbi Dr. Ari Z. Zivotofsky INSIDE THE OU Compiled by Sara Goldberg INSIDE PHILANTHROPY Compiled by Marcia P. Neeley BOOKS Defenders of the Faith: Studies in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Orthodoxy and Reform

By Judith Bleich Reviewed by Rabbi Dr. Moshe Y. Miller Tribal Blueprints: Twelve Brothers and the Destiny of Israel

By Nechama Price Reviewed by Michal Horowitz Torah Access Reimagined: Al HaTorah.org Reviewed by Moshe Holender LASTING IMPRESSIONS Hoping to Reconnect

By Ann D. Koffsky

Cover: Aliza Ungar

Jewish Action seeks to provide a forum for a diversity of legitimate opinions within the spectrum of Orthodox Judaism.

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LETTERS THE MAGAZINE OF THE ORTHODOX UNION jewishaction.com

THE MAGAZINEEditor OF THE ORTHODOX UNION in Chief Nechama Carmel jewishaction.com carmeln@ou.org

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Nechama Carmel Sara Goldberg carmeln@ou.org

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ORTHODOX UNION

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Mark (Moishe) Bane

ORTHODOX UNION Chairman of the Board President

Howard Tzvi Friedman Mark (Moishe) Bane Chairman of of thethe Board Vice Chairman Board

Mitchel Aeder Mordecai D. Katz

Vice Chairman Board Chairman, Boardof ofthe Governors

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Arnold Gerson

Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer SeniorJosh Managing Director Rabbi Joseph, Ed.D.

Rabbi Steven Weil

Chief Institutional Advancement Officer ExecutiveArnold Vice President, GersonEmeritus

WHEN A CHILD LEAVES THE FOLD I’m writing with regard to your symposium entitled “Faith and Family: When a Child Leaves the Fold” (spring 2020). While it is true that “there are no pat answers” as to why children leave and that “every individual and every situation is unique,” there are issues that were not discussed in the symposium. Many of the youth as well as adults who leave the Torah way of life do so because the world outside of Torah seems so appealing to them. We do not live in a bubble, especially with today’s technology. All too often young adults ask why they should adhere to mitzvot—putting on tefillin, refraining from using electricity and especially cell phones on Shabbat and holidays—which they view as restrictive.

I listen to what young people say as they slowly drift farther away from religious observance. Parental love or having high regard for one’s child is not necessarily the answer to bringing him back to Torah observance. If you are serious about getting truthful answers, you must go directly to the source.

Honest conversation with those who have left or are pulling away is perhaps the only way to keep the path open for return.

Chaim Leib Allen Edison, New Jersey RECALLING ANGLO-JEWISH CLASSICS I must express my deepest appreciation for your refreshing and delicious article entitled “Great Summer Reads” (summer 2020). Thank you for reminding me of the delights of Sadie Rose Weilerstein’s What The Moon Brought. Ruth and Debby and their “little new angel” sibling initiated my love of reading. Its contents and prose set the bar high for children’s literature. Seeing so many of the books of my formative reading years, This Is My God, The Chosen, All for the Boss and The Little Midrash Says, to list but a few of the titles, had me heading down to my basement bookcases where so many of these wonderful Anglo-Jewish classics had been relegated. Retrieving them for a marathon-reading session reminded me that a “thing of beauty is a good read forever.” Your publication continues to be a bastion of well-written, informative and outstanding journalism.

Ahava Ehrenpreis Brooklyn, New York

Rabbi Dr. Tzvi Hersh Weinreb

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OVERLOOKING YOUNGER STUDENTS I read “Lessons from the Pandemic: Part II” (fall 2020) with great interest.

As the contributors mentioned, the Covid-19 shutdowns of schools have taken a serious toll on our children, parents and families and the menahalim and menahalot in the symposium answered with sincerity and depth.

I would, however, like to point out a crucial oversight: Of the wonderful mechanchim and mechanchot who were interviewed, only one provided a brief insight (about snow days) directed at younger students, those in grades preschool through eighth grade. In my experience, younger students suffered terribly during the lockdown. Virtual learning is far more difficult for a first grader than for a high school junior, and younger children do not necessarily have the tools to express their needs, frustrations and emotions in order to seek solutions.

Considering that the overwhelming majority of school-age children are in grades

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nursery to eighth grade, it would serve us well to reflect and focus on their social, emotional and academic needs during this difficult time.

Rabbi Isaac Entin Head of School, Caskey Torah Academy of Greater Philadelphia Wynnewood, Pennsylvania THE NEED FOR LEADERS In “What Makes a Jewish Leader” (fall 2020), Rabbi Warren Goldstein states that “the Torah seems to have a fundamental discomfort with the very idea of leadership.” It seems to me that on the contrary, Judaism is predicated upon the acceptance of leadership. When the authority of Moshe Rabbeinu, the prototype of the Jewish leader, is challenged by Korach, God’s punishment is swift. A talmid chacham who rules differently than the Sanhedrin after they had decided on a pesak must be put to death (Devarim 17:12).

A nation without a leader is like a ship without a captain.

Before he passes away, Moshe Rabbeinu requests of God, “Let God . . . appoint a man over the congregation . . . [so that] the congregation of God will not be like a flock without a shepherd” (Bamidbar 27:16-17). After the death of Moshe, God promises Yehoshua, “No man shall stand up against you all the days of your life” (Joshua 1:5). The Tribes of Reuven, Gad, and half of Menashe assure the newly appointed Yehoshua, “As we listened to Moshe, so will we listen to you. . . . Any man who opposes your word and will not listen to everything you command shall be put to death” (Ibid. 1:18). The Rambam (Hilchot Melachim, chapter 3) discusses what constitutes a mored b’malchut, one who rebels against the king.

Even after the death of the last king of Yehuda, there were leaders: the nasi and the av beit din. The nasi’s authority was inviolable. There were always leaders—the gedolei hador, the great Chassidic rebbes, et cetera. We were never bereft.

On a simple level, the reason a king is needed is because as Pirkei Avot states: “Pray for the welfare of the government, for were it not for the fear it inspires, every man would swallow his neighbor alive.” But on a deeper level, the king teaches his subjects the idea of subservience to God. The king had to be totally and exclusively subservient to Hashem, as exemplified by the din that when the king recited Shemoneh Esrei, he had to remain bowed the whole time. Through the king, the people learned the meaning of submissiveness to the One Above, of having kabbalat ol Malchut Shamayim, accepting upon themselves the rulership of Heaven.

Rabbi Goldstein’s point that every Jew has to be a leader is well taken (“Bimkom she’ein anashim, hishtadel lihiyot ish—In a place where there are no men, strive to be a man.”), but the premise that Judaism views leaders and leadership skeptically does not seem to be borne out.

Sterna Citron Los Angeles, California

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Rabbi Dr. Warren Goldstein, Chief Rabbi of South Africa, Responds: The points that Ms. Citron raises in her letter are dealt with in my article. In fact, I set up the dichotomy and the paradox that on the one hand, Torah philosophy is uneasy with hierarchical structures, but on the other hand, it actually establishes and supports these structures.

The following is a direct quote from my article: The Torah creates very definite leadership roles. There is the mitzvah to respect Torah scholars, and we turn to our rabbis for leadership and guidance. There are the kohanim and leviim tasked with running the temple services and other responsibilities. There is the judicial leadership of the Sanhedrin, the executive leadership of the king, and the spiritual leadership of the kohen gadol, among many other leadership positions.

The purpose of my article centered on how to resolve this apparent contradiction, and to then learn important lessons from this resolution.

It is apparent that there is some concern about hierarchical structures. Shmuel HaNavi very clearly warns the people about the appointment of a king. And there is much discussion in the midrashim and the Rishonim about how to understand the limits of appointing a king.

I delve into this in great detail in my book, Defending the Human Spirit, in which I examine how the Torah is so concerned with the potential for the abuse of power that it set up many restraints and mitzvot for the king to ensure that an abuse of power would not occur.

We also see that throughout Sefer Melachim, the Book of Kings, some of the deepest concerns of the Torah and Shmuel HaNavi were, in fact, realized, with many disastrous consequences, including the exile and disappearance of the Ten Tribes.

However, these concerns do not detract one iota from the fact that the Torah sets up very strong leadership structures for the Jewish people, and that these structures are vital for us.

The resolution that I suggest to this paradox in my article is the following: Those who have been given official leadership positions merely have a wider circle of influence than others, but there is no categorical difference; our rabbis guide and direct and influence us in the way of Torah and mitzvot. But each of us must also assume responsibility to lead ourselves and influence others.

Whether we have “official” titles or not, each of us has a responsibility to impact the world through our own circle of influence and make the world a better place.

The point that I was making in the article is that a rabbi has a position of leadership within the Jewish people, as does a king, as well as the head of the Sanhedrin and a kohen gadol. Each of these examples has official positions, and they are called on to use their official positions in order to lead and direct. But every Jew, even one without an official position, should do the same.

So, in a sense, we are all leaders, but that does not detract from the fact that there are people with official positions. It simply means that their circle of influence and level of responsibility is

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greater with an official position.

The apparent contradiction between the discomfort with hierarchical structures and the fact that there are such structures within Torah law and philosophy was the main crux of my article, and thus the questions raised by Ms. Citron in her letter were directly addressed there, obviously with more depth and nuance than presented here in this short response.

RE-IMAGINING LIFE AFTER COVID I read the section entitled “Re-Imagining Tefillah” (winter 2020) and I appreciated the views of the various contributors. I would, however, like to share my thoughts on the topic from a layman’s perspective.

I do not envision going back to davening in shul the way it was before the pandemic. Prior to Covid, I had long found davening in shul stressful because, to paraphrase Rabbi Zvi Engel, “shul had become reduced to a sort of religious train station where everything was governed by schedules and the goal was to arrive as expeditiously and painlessly as possible.” I care about standing before the Creator; I want to take my time and not just mumble words. In addition, I recall the casual use of cell phones for non-davening purposes that would cause further distractions to my kavanah. More importantly, what would bother me most was the talking in shul, especially on Shabbos. The full-page ads in Jewish newspapers, the bookmarks, signs, et cetera all saying, “Stop talking in shul,” seemed to have no effect.

After the shuls closed during the first lockdown, as I sat alone davening in my corner of the living room, I felt tremendous joy at being able to daven the entire tefillah service at my own pace and converse with Hakadosh Baruch Hu. On the other hand, I felt our Father in Heaven was saying to his children that if you cannot behave in shul, go home until you can behave and wear a mask until you can refrain from conversing during tefillah.

I am looking forward to returning to tefillah b’tzibbur, bearing the words of both contributors Rabbi Shmuel Silber and Rabbi Engel in mind: “Meaningful prayer requires proper intent, and if one does not have the proper kavanos, the tefillah can be rendered invalid” and “Rather than invoking the language of transportation, tefillah should inspire the language of emunah and bitachon” With God’s help, the vaccines will soon end the Covid-19 pandemic. Are we prepared to take off the masks and resume tefillah b’tzibbur together? I hope so.

Gregg Levitan Baltimore, Maryland This magazine contains divrei Torah, and should therefore be disposed of respectfully by either doublewrapping prior to disposal, or placing in a recycling bin.

KOSHER FOR PASSOVER

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PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE

TIME to GROW UP

By Mark (Moishe) Bane

I

used to wonder whether my strongest connection to spirituality was during my late teens and early twenties while in yeshivah. My Torah study then was most focused and my prayers, for the most part, unhurried and deliberate. Even my joy in examining the deeper meaning of halachic observances was more exuberant. “Relish the precious years in yeshivah,” I was cautioned, “since they will be the pinnacle of your religious experience.” I suspect that others also nostalgically recall the time they spent in yeshivah or seminary, in day school or NCSY, as their most meaningful religious experience.

A decade or two after leaving yeshivah, however, I realized that youthful inspiration and idealism Mark (Moishe) Bane is president of the OU and a senior partner and chairman of the Business Restructuring Department at the international law firm Ropes & Gray LLP.

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are supposed to be one’s opening act, not the main attraction. In fact, every stage of life offers its own unique opportunities for religious advancement, each with successively greater potential. Indeed, one’s formative years, often focused exclusively on religion and Torah study, should merely serve as a springboard for far loftier religious aspirations.

In an article I wrote several years ago (klalperspectives.org/ moishe-bane-3/), I compared one’s personal religious odyssey to marriage: A seasoned couple, enjoying a magnificent marriage, recognizes their courtship period as having been intensely wondrous, but realize that true depth of love and commitment was developed over the subsequent years.

The initial intensity of courtship may have formed a foundation for the long and inevitably topsy-turvy experience of marriage, but that initial intensity can never be understood as having been the peak of their relationship.

The courtship, and its intensity, was primarily a trigger for the true growth that developed thereafter.

Perhaps we confuse holiness with religious exuberance just as young people often mistake infatuation for love. Infatuation, though exhilarating and intense, inevitably fades. Authentic love, by contrast, builds slowly over time. An authentic relationship with our Creator is the same.

But how do we reconcile the understanding that our spirituality most appropriately continues to advance throughout our years with the fact that our most intense religious

exploration and studies, and our most encompassing religious socialization, occurred when we were young? Strange as it may sound, perhaps we can find the explanation in exploring the mitzvah of eating matzah on Pesach.

Baby Food and Matzah The Torah tells us that Jews ate matzah when leaving Egypt because, in their haste, they could not wait for the bread to rise. Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto, popularly known as the Ramchal, also reveals a mystical reason (Derech Hashem 4:8:1).

Chametz (leaven), which causes bread flour to rise, may not be used in baking matzah. Many sources teach that chametz symbolizes the yetzer hara, the evil inclination, which is responsible for inflating our egos and desires. In the absence of chametz, matzah represents the purest and holiest of foods, which was quite appropriate for the Exodus, a uniquely auspicious and sacred juncture in Jewish history. Each Pesach we similarly strive to rid ourselves of our personal chametz, the egocentricity, arrogance and physical desires that obscure our true self; we eat matzah, aspiring to achieve genuine freedom and holiness.

If being cleansed of chametz results in a holy people, why did the Jews not continue the practice after leaving Egypt? Did they not want to retain this lofty state of holiness?

Upon leaving Egypt, the Jewish people was a fledgling nation, with the characteristics of a newborn. An infant is capable of digesting only mother’s

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milk or its equivalent, and only later advances to purées, followed by simple solids, and eventually to a more complex diet. What is digestible and nourishing for an adult would be fatal to a baby, but what is fed to a newborn is wholly inadequate for an adult.

Similarly, during the nation’s spiritual infancy upon leaving Egypt, it needed the purest and simplest state of holiness. Just as a newborn’s digestive system requires the purest of nourishment, the spiritual fragility of the nascent Jewish nation required absolute religious purity to nurture its yet undeveloped spiritual identity.

Hence the absence of chametz.

Matzah is simple, composed of only flour and water, representing pure holiness. But as the nation matured, a far more sophisticated form of spiritual nourishment was needed.

The Jewish people advanced from consuming matzah to eating manna in the desert, eventually progressing to a regular diet of kosher food.

One’s spiritual journey parallels that of his or her physical, emotional and intellectual growth. A child’s religious development is carefully nurtured.

Children must be shielded from negative influences, focus on learning Torah and socialize with others sharing the same Torah values and perspectives. With age, a child matures in many regards, including spiritually.

He becomes increasingly capable of the more sophisticated religious growth that accompanies confrontation with the more difficult and vexing religious questions and challenges, and with the overall complexities of religious life.

Lifelong spiritual development requires effort. But just as our physical, emotional and intellectual capabilities evolve as we age, our spiritual capacity expands as well. We need, however, to be mindful of the spiritual opportunities that emerge as we advance in order to take advantage of them. The opportunities are many, and I will highlight just a few.

Making Choices On a cold winter Friday night six years ago, a group of men gathered for an oneg Shabbos. The evening’s topic of 10

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discussion was fatherhood, and I, a guest, was invited by the rabbi to lead this and other talks over Shabbos.

We discussed whether the roles of father and mother differ, the ever-changing challenges of parenting unruly, defiant children and ways to stimulate our children’s religious ambition. At one point in the discussion, I noted that meaningful religious growth is the product of making choices, and I observed that one primary responsibility that parents have is to empower their children to grow into adults capable of making responsible choices.

This includes instilling confidence, imbuing a sense of responsibility, and providing an education that teaches ethics and wisdom, in addition to skills and knowledge.

Challenging me, one participant asked, “If Judaism is all about choices, why do we enroll our children in Jewish day schools? Perhaps we should enroll them in public school instead, allowing them to grow up exposed to all forms of belief systems and thereby be equipped to choose which religion, if any, to follow.”

I responded, “While making choices is a theme that underlies Torah Judaism, it is an adult function. We allow children only limited choices in accordance with their age, and even then only to train and prepare them to make significant choices as they mature.”

I continued: “Providing a rigorous Torah education and Jewish socialization does not preclude students from making choices as adults. To the contrary, the day school and yeshivah experience is actually essential to ensuring that when students enter society as adults they will be equipped to make responsible choices regarding Judaism despite the powerful countervailing influences, and notwithstanding the pressures and distractions of adulthood.

“This can be compared to God hardening Pharaoh’s heart in the midst of inflicting the Ten Plagues.

The Ramban explains that in doing so, God was not denying Pharaoh’s freedom of choice regarding freeing

the Jews, but was rather empowering Pharaoh to overcome the inevitable emotional paralysis that would have been imposed by the staggering horror of the Plagues. Sometimes freedom of choice is preserved only by introducing fortifying, powerful forces to counter external influences that would otherwise dominate and obscure the choice.”

Our relationship with God is dictated by the choices we make. As children, most choices that affect us are made by others. During childhood, however, we are inculcated with values and teachings that are intended to guide our decision-making as we emerge into adulthood. Even when we confront many of life’s most consequential choices during the earlier stages of adulthood, we remain significantly swayed by our upbringing and the continuing influence of our elders. As we get older, however, the dominance of these influences recedes and we independently decide whether to adopt the lessons we acquired as youngsters or to embrace alternate approaches and values.

Consequently, as we age our choices are increasingly our own, thereby enhancing our capacity for holiness.

Maturation and the Recognition of “Other” My revered rebbi, Rav Yaakov Weinberg, zt”l, often observed that maturation is the process of expanding one’s recognition of value and significance beyond oneself.

An infant perceives himself as the entirety of the universe, then begins to recognize his mother, though only as being necessary to provide for his own needs. Each stage of life should be accompanied by a greater appreciation for the significance of others, first expressed through sharing, then helping, then taking care of others who are unable to care for themselves.

The very grown-up emotions of sympathy and empathy also develop as we mature, as does the recognition that our behavior and priorities must be guided by values, ethics and morality, and not solely by our wants.

Giving charity and performing

FOR EMERGENCY MEDICAL CARE, WHO DO ISRAELIS DEPEND ON? THEY DEPEND ON YOU.

Israel’s paramedic and Red Cross service, Magen David Adom has been on the front lines in the fight against coronavirus while also contending with terrorist attacks, car accidents, and other threats to Israeli lives.

But Magen David Adom is not government-funded. Its 30,000 EMTs and paramedics, most of them volunteers, rely on support from people like you for the supplies and equipment they need to perform their lifesaving work.

There are many ways to support Israel, but none that has a greater impact on its people than a gift to Magen David Adom. Your support isn’t just changing lives — it’s literally saving them.

Support Magen David Adom at afmda.org/donate

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acts of chesed (benevolence) are holy acts as they emulate God and elevate our neshamah (soul). Opportunities for this type of religious growth increase with age, not only because we mature but also because we accumulate more wisdom and resources, financial or otherwise, to share.

A slave, having neither time nor possessions of his own, suffers for being unable to be a giver. Freedom creates the opportunity to give of oneself to others. But generosity is a trait that must be learned. After generations of enslavement, the Jews left Egypt with many possessions, but with no training in generosity. The blooming nation in the desert spent forty years having all their basic needs, including clothing, food and shelter, miraculously taken care of.

As recipients of God’s very conspicuous magnanimity during this initial period of their nationhood, the Jewish people observed and learned the manner of generosity and benevolence, enabling them thereafter to emulate these traits. And indeed they did. Upon entering the Land of Israel, they matured into an exceptionally generous nation, responsible for taking care of themselves, their families and the broader community. Being solely a beneficiary, however, becomes addictive rather than empowering unless it is limited to a finite period and is understood to be preparatory to becoming a benefactor.

As children and students, we are primarily recipients JA 3.75x5 of the care and attention of others. Only with age do

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we achieve gradations of independence, hopefully maturing from being recipients to being givers. This evolution not only transforms us into generous and benevolent human beings, but also trains us to look beyond ourselves in a manner attuned to recognizing our Creator, and God’s ongoing role in our lives. This is yet another opportunity for spiritual growth that continually expands as we advance through the stages of life.

Sparks of Holiness in the Mundane Though as adults we enjoy many opportunities to advance spiritually, we are also increasingly overwhelmed and burdened by life’s basic responsibilities, such as career, marriage, children, and bills. We are distracted, exhausted and stressed. We check off the religious boxes: prayer, Shabbos, Torah learning, kosher food, honesty, faithfulness. But life’s pace is frenetic, and the ambient noise is overbearing, beating constantly in our ears and numbing our minds and souls. Little capacity is left to contemplate holiness. How can we search for God when we do not even have the time and energy to find ourselves?

As a pre-teen, I spent my free time playing hockey, reading novels and listening to my father’s LPs. In addition to Shlomo Carlebach and Harry Belafonte, I must have listened to Zero Mostel starring as Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof at least two hundred times. I will never forget the banter of Golde deflecting Tevye’s question about the emotional nature of their marriage. But, after considering the unsettled life they share and the twenty-five years of monotonous marital chores, Golde finally concedes that, however mundane may have been their years of mutual commitment, “If that’s not love, what is?”

Rather than viewing the ever-increasing burdens and obligations of ordinary adult life as distractions and frustrations, we must recognize them as ever-increasing opportunities to enhance and deepen our relationship with God. It is actually quite remarkable and profound that day in and day out we remain loyal and committed to this relationship.

We may not be philosophers or scholars. We are ordinary Jews, preoccupied with the mundane, with occupation and recreation, celebration and consolation, altercations and conciliations. But we also encounter our often monotonous routine as committed Torah Jews, thereby converting the ordinary into the sacred.

We observe the secular society around us and we see a culture fomenting unstable families and degenerate moral standards, and lonely people celebrating the never-ending pursuit of superficial life goals and priorities. And we begin to realize that by living our ordinary mundane adult lives, guided by halachah, emunah and Torah ethics, we are producing the world’s most exalted sparks of holiness.

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Embrace More

Possibilities

“I was looking for a school with a top-tier education that was centered on Jewish values and also offered a personal connection with faculty. Touro’s Lander College for Women was exactly that. It was a no-brainer to continue on with Touro for dental school. Touro Dental teaches state-of-the-art dentistry with all the cutting-edge technology and techniques. Plus, being a student here makes you feel like you are not just a number in a crowd.”

Lander College undergraduates have a direct path to our top-ranked graduate and professional schools.

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FROM THE DESK of RABBI MOSHE HAUER

A RECIPE for CONTINUITY

W

hat are the ingredients that enhance Jewish continuity?

What has been the secret sauce that has granted contemporary Orthodoxy a relatively high level of continuity as a movement? And, knowing that within Orthodoxy continuity is far from a sure thing, what can each segment of our community, each institution and family, do to make it more likely that our children and students will follow us?

Successful generational transmission of faith depends heavily on the quality of both the practiced faith and the generational relationship. In that light, to probe the generational staying power of our faith, we should aspire to meet the following standards: modeling a robust religious life that is encompassing, consistent, joyous and mission-driven, and building relationships characterized by warmth and trust. These standards can serve as points for meaningful reflection (cheshbon hanefesh), or as aspirational goals for our communal and familial religious life.

Modeling a Robust Religious Life What are the components of a robust religious life?

Encompassing: The Torah’s Rabbi Moshe Hauer is executive vice president of the Orthodox Union.

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commandment to teach our children Torah is expressed in the opening paragraphs of the Shema as the presentation of an encompassing way of life: “Teach these [words of Torah] to your children, speaking of them when you sit at home and when you travel on the way, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand and as an emblem between your eyes. Write them on the doorposts of your house and gates.”1 The clear message is that Torah cannot be effectively taught as a tangential pursuit, but rather as a pervasive presence that informs every aspect of our lives.2 The more completely Torah fills our lives, the more it serves as the essence of the legacy that we share with our children.

Even in the healthiest of families our children are less likely to continue our hobbies than they are to maintain our fundamental way of life. This bodes well for those whose home and family life truly revolve around their Judaism and whose educational and life choices reflect that focus. This is not true of all Jews, Orthodox or otherwise.

Consistent: Nobody is perfect at living up to his or her values, but blatant inconsistency invites rejection.

Pretenders are not effective teachers or transmitters. The Torah3 describes the pretender as “shoresh por’eh rosh v’laanah,” a root from which bitter and poisonous growths will sprout. As the Ramban noted, while it may be possible for an individual to maintain an external religious life while hiding his or her true feelings beneath a veneer of compliance, this will not work for his or her children or students. They will see right through it. And there is nothing as disenfranchising from religion as the real or perceived hypocrisy of its adherents and advocates.

Consistency is not just about avoiding faking. It is also about living up to our true values. Materialism,

arrogance and judgmentalism are inconsistent with our belief system and a significant source of disenfranchisement.4 Simplicity, humility and generosity strengthen the bonds of faith.

Joyous: Happy customers are the best generators of business growth.

Rav Moshe Feinstein5 famously saw this as the cause of the failure of Jewish continuity amongst so many immigrants who heroically maintained their faith and Shabbat observance despite overwhelming adversity. While they may have been strong enough to accept the sacrifices of observant Jewish life—“iz shver tzu zein a Yid”—their children would not be so similarly inclined. We cannot expect our children or students to be heroes. Instead, we—parents and teachers—must convey an attitude that demonstrates trust in God that we will not lose out materially by serving Him, and that we appreciate the profoundly rewarding experience of a Torah life beyond anything the material world could possibly offer.

The Torah6 surprisingly describes its worst curses being visited upon those who failed to serve God with joy and gladness when blessed with so much. One may suggest that it is not the lack of joy in observance per se that is the cause for punishment, but rather that lack of joy will ultimately lead to wholesale abandonment of the faith by future generations. To paraphrase the daily blessing over the Torah, if the Torah is experienced as something sweet in our mouths then indeed our descendants and theirs and the descendants of all the Jewish people will continue to be engaged in Torah. And it is conversely clear that a contributing factor to the massive failure of Orthodox continuity in the nineteenth and earlier twentieth centuries in Europe, Israel and America was the

sadness that resulted from the poverty and suffering that were the lot of so many in our community of faith.

Mission-driven: Another contributing factor to that epic past failure of Orthodox continuity—aside from the poverty and suffering—was the strong attraction of the many movements, the “isms,” that characterized that period of history. Jews were drawn away from an Orthodoxy focused on its own survival to the transformative movements of the time, such as Zionism, which aspired to change the Jewish future, and socialism, which sought to revolutionize the world.

Indeed, the turnaround for Orthodoxy only began when the pioneering and revolutionary spirit moved members of the younger generation to find their way back and reinvigorate Orthodox life. And it is thus a genuine source of concern that our generation of Orthodoxy is more complacent, having “made it.”

Chaim Rabinowitz is a seventh-generation Yerushalmi whose great-grandfather, a follower of the Alter Rebbe, the great Rav Shneur Zalman of Liadi, moved the family to Jerusalem more than 150 years ago. Yet, shortly after Chaim and his wife married and had their first child, they left Israel to be the Chabad emissaries in Brisk, a city with a few hundred Jews located within Belarus, White Russia, an area that had once been home to hundreds of thousands of Jews. And they have not looked back.

I met today’s Rav Chaim Brisker at Ben Gurion Airport, riding a rental car shuttle, and he explained his life to me in minutes: People think this work is mesirus nefesh, an act of self-sacrifice. I really do not think it is. Let me explain.

Many afternoons we have a “kollel” in Brisk. What is our kollel? At 5:00 pm, some of the Jews we’ve established connections with come to our center for a glass of tea and a bit of Jewish learning and prayer. On a good day, ten or eleven Jews come. Who do you think provides them with a warm drink? Who helps them to put on tefillin or shows them the place in the siddur? Our children are our staff. From when they are eight or nine years old, they are there with us, welcoming Jews, taking care of them, even teaching them. Do you know what this has done for our children? Had we stayed here in Yerushalayim, our children would be consumers, sitting around waiting for us and for others to do for them. Now, they are leaders, givers, people who make life better for themselves and for others.

That is a priceless benefit. That is not mesirus nefesh.

The above is one striking example of a sense of mission, but it is far from the only model. We can be similarly driven when we live as people of faith recognizing the inestimable value of living our private lives according to God’s word, of studying and certainly teaching a Torah that sustains the world, living with personal spiritual ambition and with the commitment to be God’s hand to extend His kindness to those who need it most.

We must model lives of faith that are encompassing and consistent, joyous and mission-driven. In a sense, these are communal values that in large measure—though not

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completely—are established as the values and mores of a broad religious community. But continuity cannot be built on communal values alone; it requires the more personal next step of relationship, the ultimate medium of transmission across generations.

That is an equally compelling task that we must accomplish individually.

Building Warm and Trusting Relationships How can a parent best transmit faith to the next generation? What are the ingredients that should characterize their relationship? While we will speak specifically to the familial relationship, these same ingredients are fundamental to the successful educational setting.

Warmth: The Midrash7 provides a striking image of parental communication.

When God first appeared to Moshe at the burning bush, Moshe was new to prophecy. God said to Himself: “If I appear to Him in a loud voice, I will frighten him. If I appear in a low voice, he will disregard the prophecy.” Thus God chose to appear to Moshe using Moshe’s father’s voice, whereupon Moshe responded, “I am ready; what does Father want of me?” God responded, “I am not your father; I am the God of your father. I came to you gently so that you would not be fearful.”

This encounter begins the process of the Exodus that we commemorate on Pesach. It is remarkably fitting that the vehicle for perpetuating this story and for passing our faith across the generations is the Seder, where fathers turn to their children, welcoming their questions and sharing with them the story of our People. On every Seder night, as at the outset of the original redemption, God speaks to the Children of Israel through the voices of their fathers. And as the Midrash teaches, the voice of the father is meant to be the perfect pitch; not too strong to be frightening, but not so soft as to be disregarded.

Trust: Our bedrock of trust is strengthened or weakened by our experience as children. Parents are the visible sources of a child’s existence and 18

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support. If they are there for the child, relationship—was established, we could he will tend to be more secure and welcome converts—virtual children trusting; if not, it will be a challenge for of Avraham—to join that family. him to have trust in both man and God. Family, warmth, trust. A community The Ramban8 wrote that the direct of faith will be strongest when its Jewish experience of prophecy at members view and treat each other Sinai positioned the Jewish people with the love and loyalty of family. to reject any competing claims A family will transmit its faith by other prophets, and when we across generations when its bonds communicate that experience to our of warmth and trust10 are strong, children, they too will know it as the when the home is characterized truth, essentially as if they had seen it themselves. They will be certain by calm, consistency and safety. that we did not testify falsely to them, A Final Word—God’s Role that we would not bequeath to them “‘As for me, this is My covenant with something meaningless and valueless. them,’ says Hashem, ‘My spirit that Our children will have absolute is on you and My words that I have confidence in us, trusting our account placed in your mouth will not depart of Sinai as completely as if they had seen the events with their own eyes. from your mouth and from the mouth Are you confident that your children of your children and from the mouth feel that way about you? I hope so. Do of their descendants from this time on you think everyone feels that way about and forever.’”11 God is eternal. To the their parents? Absolutely not. But if extent that we share Torah as carriers that is the case, why would God build of His spirit and communicators of His the faith of the generations on the word word, we tap into that eternal quality. of our parents, if that is something so And to the extent that we recognize, uncertain, fragile and subjective? acknowledge and seek the role of God Perhaps it is because God recognized every step along the way, to that extent that if we were not able to trust our parents, no verification or proof from we will be blessed with His critical any other source would enable us to assistance to assure our continuity. As grow our trust in Him either. Trust the sainted Chafetz Chaim advised: in God is so deeply intertwined in “The prayers of a father and mother the trust we have for our parents shall be constant that their children that it is fitting for our faith in God should be engaged in Torah, [and to be built upon parental trust. become] righteous people, with good Yes, it is certainly possible for a 12 character.”

Kein yehi ratzon. person to develop faith in God despite the failures of trust at home. Yet that Notes faith will need to be found through 1. Devarim 6:6-9; see, as creative discovery, following a path well, Devarim 11:18-20. such as that of Avraham Avinu. But 2. Vern L. Bengston, Families and Faith: How Religion Is Passed Down across Jews are not expected to discover God. Generations (New York, 2013), 39-40.

Our standard pathway is to develop faith in God built on tradition, which is 3. Devarim 29:17.

4. Faranak Margolese, Off the based in turn on trust in the people in Derech: How to Respond to the our lives, first and foremost our parents.

Challenge (2005), 79-80.

We must always bear in mind that 5. Darash Moshe, Bereishit 31:14; the Jewish people have not survived as Iggerot Moshe, YD 3:71. a community of ideas. The multitudes 6. Devarim 28:47. who were attracted to monotheism 7. Shemot Rabbah 3:1.

by Avraham did not remain as part 8. Devarim 4:9-10. of our community of faith.9 Jewish 9. Pirkei d’Rabbi Eliezer 29. continuity began when Avraham 10. Bengston, 73-74. built a family. Once that core of 11. Yeshayahu 59:21.

12. Mishneh Berurah 47:10. faith and trust—the glue of familial

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IN FOCUS

By Rabbi Ilan Haber

T

he stories we tell, and how we tell them, reveal a great deal about what we value. Within Western civilization, the story of the Exodus, Yetziat Mitzrayim, is one of emancipation from slavery, of freedom from tyranny, and of the achievement of basic rights and dignity as human beings. It is not incidental that Benjamin Franklin chose an image of Moshe leading Bnei Yisrael out of Egypt for his first proposed Great Seal of the United States, or that the bottom of the Liberty Bell is inscribed with a pasuk from Vayikra (25:10), “Proclaim liberty throughout all the Land unto all the inhabitants thereof.” For the Founding Fathers, our basic rights were Divine rights.

As informed in the Declaration of Independence, “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Within the Torah and Jewish tradition, the meaning behind Yetziat Mitzrayim is more nuanced. A Jew may choose to focus on a different Rabbi Ilan Haber is national director of the OU’s Heshe & Harriet Seif Jewish Learning Initiative on Campus (OU-JLIC).

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pasuk in Vayikra’s depiction of the laws of the Yovel (Jubilee) than the one on the Liberty Bell: “Ki li Bnei Yisrael avadim, avadei hem, asher hotzeiti otam Mei’Eretz Mitzrayim—To me the children of Israel are servants, they are My servants, which I have taken them out of the land of Egypt” (25:55). The freedom achieved is not one that is self-serving, but one that is rooted in our identity as servants of God. It is a freedom to act out of responsibility and obligation. Our transition was not from slavery to freedom, but from slavery to service.

This distinction between how Western society and Judaism finds meaning in the Yetziat Mitzrayim experience has practical application.

In an essay entitled, “Obligation: A Jewish Jurisprudence of the Social Order,” legal theorist Robert Cover posits that the liberal democracies of the West are founded on the notion of a social contract between equals, in which government provides the means to protect and enshrine our inalienable rights as human beings. In contrast, he explains, the key word for the Jewish people is not “rights,” but rather “mitzvah,” obligation. For the Jew, the question of “what are my responsibilities?” supersedes the question of “to what I am entitled?”

The core tension between rights and responsibilities has come to the fore with the onset of Covid. There has been a great deal of discussion around whether government could or should curtail our commerce or personal activity (such as with a requirement to wear a mask or space restrictions).

This discourse has had clear resonance within the Orthodox community and is played out in tensions around large weddings, education, the operation of shuls and minyanim, and personal engagement and discourse in daily life.

The impetus to protect our ongoing activities and institutions as our inalienable right is certainly understandable. This is especially the case when the stakes include our core

. . . the key word is not “rights,” but rather. . . obligation. religious and social experiences. And yet, focusing on this notion exclusively risks obscuring the Jewish imperative to determine the obligations of the moment. Preservation of life, or pikuach nefesh, is a fundamental responsibility of every Jew, and we must endeavor to ensure that it remains foremost in our minds, even when limiting Jewish experiences that give our lives joy and meaning.

Similarly, dina d’malchuta dina (following the laws of the land), and kiddush Hashem (sanctification of God) are also sacred responsibilities.

Gemilut chasadim, our responsibility to help and support others in need, is also paramount during this troubled time.

We should never downplay the positive impact of the focus on and inclusion of Jews within the Western system of rights for our own safety, security, growth and prosperity. These rights, such as freedom of expression or religion, have had a profound impact on us as Jews seeking shelter from persecution and bias, and enabling us to act as free and equal citizens while also maintaining our traditions and beliefs. And yet, for the Jew, the more important concept is mitzvah.

The mitzvot have sustained our people through times of tremendous hardship, and have centered our lives around meaning and purpose. We are servants of God committed to creating a better world for ourselves and others. Our question now, when faced with the difficulties of Covid or any personal or national crisis should not be “to what am I entitled?” but “how can I be of service?”

Your Yom Tov table isn’t fully set without

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REVIEW ESSAY

TORAH OF THE MIND, TORAH OF THE HEART:

Divrei Torah of the Talner Rebbe

Photo: Joel Orent

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By HaRav Yitzhak (Isadore) Twersky Edited by David Shapiro Urim Publications Jerusalem, 2019 320 pages

Reviewed by Rabbi Moshe Schapiro

W

hen the book Torah of the Mind, Torah of the Heart,

by Rabbi Dr. Yitzhak Asher (Isadore) Twersky, zt”l, arrived in the mail, I tore open the package and, in my excitement, began to read voraciously. It is a collection of mostly brief divrei Torah on the weekly Torah readings for Sefer Bereishit and Shemot, and I devoured several pages before I realized that I had made a mistake. The Torah of Rav Twersky cannot be gulped down. It must be imbibed slowly. I started over again, reading one piece at a time, then thinking carefully about each one.

Rav Twersky was a complex and multifaceted individual. He was an heir of the great Chassidic dynasty of Chernobyl, serving as the Talner Rebbe of Boston until his death in 1997.

At the same time, he was a Brisker lamdan, a worthy son-in-law of the renowned Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, zt”l. He was also an accomplished academic scholar, who held the Nathan Littauer Chair in Hebrew Literature and Jewish Philosophy at Harvard University. But the reason I was so excited to read this volume was personal. Rav Twersky was one of the first rabbinic figures of my youth, and his image and memory continue to influence my religious consciousness and spiritual life.

I feel similarly about the editor of this volume, Rabbi David Shapiro, who, in addition to being my high school principal and mentor, remains a dear friend and role model. Rabbi Shapiro is a devoted and thoughtful disciple Rabbi Moshe Schapiro is a reference librarian at the Mendel Gottesman Library of Yeshiva University.

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and colleague of the Talner Rebbe, and this book is obviously a labor of love.

Rabbi Shapiro’s intelligent and careful work has resulted in one particularly striking feature of this sefer, namely, that anyone who knew the Talner Rebbe and heard him speak will hear his voice and the cadence of his speech coming through the printed words of this volume. However, even for those who never met Rav Twersky, this sefer offers beautiful insights and fascinating interpretations, and more importantly,

can trace throughout the sefer. The centrality of theology to the conduct and character of a Jew; the idea of sanctity; religious sensitivity; and the dichotomies of spiritual and mundane, emotion and intellect, belief and action, and insularity versus contributing to the greater society are just some of the themes which are explored over the course of the work.

This volume contains three types of divrei Torah. In some pieces, the Rebbe simply highlights an important and often obscure interpretation that sheds light on an issue in the parashah, without extensive comment of his own. A beautiful example is from Parashat Ki Tisa regarding the veil worn by Moshe Rabbeinu to cover the ethereal light that radiated from his face. The Torah (Shemot 34:34) emphasizes that Moshe would only wear the veil when speaking to the Jewish people but would remove it when in God’s presence. To explain the significance of removing the veil before God, Rav Twersky cites a comment of Rabbi Zerachiyah HaLevi from his introduction to the Sefer HaMaor: The heart of every wise-hearted person is filled with the desire to seek and investigate wisdom in order to

consciousness and spiritual life. in the words of the Twersky family’s introduction to this volume, “reflects, and, to a significant degree, articulates a vision of an integrated religious life.” Indeed, it reflects the varied but integrated nature of the Rebbe himself.

While each Torah thought in this volume is meaningful and relevant to the parashah with which it deals, there are certain themes that one 24

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understand and discern . . . between truth and falsehood. . . . sometimes this desire intensifies in his heart to the degree that he seems like one who breaches standards of modesty and ethical propriety by removing the veil of self-effacement from his face in order to probe the truth, as it says (Tehillim 119:46): “I speak about Your laws in the presence of royalty, and

I am not self-effacing.” There is an allusion to this [concept] in the veil which Moshe removed from his face when he came to speak with his Master.

Those who spent time in yeshivah are familiar with the Ba’al HaMaor and have, on occasion, squinted our eyes to read the small letters of his commentary printed in the back of the Gemara, but few have taken the time to read his poetic introduction and fewer still may have noted the above comment and appreciated its exegetical and moral import. “Lo habayshan lamed—the bashful cannot learn” (Avot 2:6). Moshe Rabbeinu was the most humble man to ever live, but he did not allow his humility to compromise his search for the truth of Torah.

In a second type of presentation, Rav Twersky suggests a novel idea or interpretation, or teaches an important lesson. For example, in his comments to Parashat Yitro, the Rebbe puts forth an original interpretation of the Talmudic passage in Kiddushin 31a, which posits that as the nations of the world received the news of Matan Torah, first hearing only about the commandments to acknowledge God and to reject all other gods, they reacted with cynicism, saying, “He is seeking to promote His own honor.” It was only after hearing the commandment to honor one’s parents that “they conceded to the earlier statements.” Rav Twersky explains that the nations accepted the virtues of honoring one’s parents, not committing murder, et cetera, but believed at first that it is possible to sustain a purely secular morality.

However, contends Rav Twersky, they ultimately came to recognize that “the only possible source of such an objective, normative morality is Hakadosh Baruch Hu. Thus, the commandments of kibbud av va’eim, and so on, served as the basis for their acceptance of Anochi and Lo Yihiyeh.” The Rebbe concludes, “Our divinely based Torah values constitute the only compelling response to the atheistic moral relativism of society.”

Finally, in some pieces, Rav Twersky cites disparate ideas or interpretations

without making explicit the relationship between them or the lessons that emerge from them. The reader must develop his own understanding of the meanings and implications of the sources. This is in part due to the fact that some of the pieces were reconstructed from incomplete notes, as Rabbi Shapiro acknowledges in the editor’s introduction. However, often the Rebbe is challenging us. One example is his analysis of Yaakov Avinu’s reaction upon awakening from his dream of the ladder in Parashat Vayeitzei. Rashi writes that after experiencing the prophecy, Yaakov became aware that he was in a holy place and was upset that he had chosen to sleep there. First Rav Twersky cites the Brisker Rav, who asks why Yaakov was upset. After all, Yaakov had achieved prophecy by sleeping there. Clearly, argues the Brisker Rav, Yaakov felt strongly that religious achievement is not a free-for-all. One may not desecrate hallowed ground in order to attain spiritual heights.

Next, the Rebbe cites the Netziv, who understands Yaakov’s distress differently. Yaakov was upset that he had gone to sleep instead of using the opportunity to pray in such a holy place. Here the devar Torah ends, and we, the readers, are challenged to probe the relationship between the comments of the Brisker Rav and the Netziv.

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The Torah of Rav Twersky cannot be gulped down. It There is a fascinating, almost inverse relationship between them. Whereas the Brisker Rav emphasizes that Yaakov was upset for inadvertently taking advantage of a spiritual opportunity, the Netziv underscores Yaakov’s distress at not taking proper advantage of a spiritual opportunity. Of course, these two interpretations are not really in contradiction, and perhaps we can restate the lesson to be learned by incorporating both interpretations. A religiously sensitive person must be constantly on the alert for opportunities for spiritual growth, but he must never allow his spiritual striving to cause him to trample on religious norms.

More than a quarter of a century has passed, and yet I can still vividly recall sitting at the long table in the Talner beit midrash during seudah shelishit, listening to the Rebbe speak. His speech was precise and deliberate, not impulsive. Rav Twersky possessed great personal dignity and profound reverence for every word of Torah, and I felt that I was not just in the presence of a malach (angel), but of a melech (king). With this sefer, Rabbi Shapiro has succeeded in giving us a small taste of that feeling.

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PROFILE

THE REBBE at HARVARD

By Rabbi Dr. Hillel Goldberg

In the classrooms and lecture halls of Harvard, Dr. Twersky was a professor personified, a bearded man whose dark suits, occasional tweeds and dignified manner bespoke his role as a renowned authority on the 12th-century Jewish philosopher Maimonides and other medieval thinkers.

At home in suburban Brookline and in his long black kapote at the Congregation Beth David . . . he was every inch the dynastic Talner rebbe, the spiritual leader of a small Hasidic community his father had led a generation earlier, even as their Twersky ancestors had led congregations in Chernobyl, Ukraine, for centuries.

—Robert McG. Thomas Jr., “Isadore Twersky, of Harvard and the Hasidim, Dies at 67,” the New York Times, Oct. 16, 1997.

He.

Left: Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm and Rabbi Dr. Isadore Twersky at Yeshiva University’s 1993 commencement, where Rabbi Twersky received an honorary doctorate.

Courtesy of Yeshiva University Archives

This is excerpted from Hillel Goldberg, “Silence and Greatness: The Late Professor Isadore Twersky,” Jewish Action 59:2 (winter 1998).

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He had many faces and they were all one face. Professor Isadore Twersky (1930-1997) was the Nathan Littauer Professor of Hebrew Literature and Philosophy at Harvard University. Rabbi Yitzhak Twersky was a leading figure in the Jewish community of Brookline, Massachusetts. The Chassidic Talner Rebbe was the spiritual guide of a small but highly loyal and educated congregation, also in Brookline. The devotee and son-in-law of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, preeminent Talmudist, was one of the Talmudist’s literary representatives and dedicated caretakers at the end of his life, both trusted family heir and awed, humbled disciple. The author of Rabad of Posquierès: A Twelfth-Century Talmudist and of Introduction to the Code of Maimonides was one of the leading figures in academic Jewish studies in his generation.

The author of novellae on the Torah broadly understood—what he called “discontinuous critical investigations”—placed him squarely Rabbi Dr. Hillel Goldberg is editor of the Intermountain Jewish News and a contributing editor of Jewish Action.

rebbe and his pious wife, send their son to Boston Latin School, then to Harvard University, not to yeshivah? in the traditional non-academic world of “The Old Learning.” Of each of these persona individually and all of them in their unity, it may be said, as was said of the late Yisroel Movshovitz, “What was the greatness of Reb Yisroel? That nobody knew who he was. . . .”

Why did East European immigrant parents, a Chassidic rebbe and his pious wife, send their son to Boston Latin School, then to Harvard University, not to yeshivah? How did their son, a scion of a distinguished line of Chassidic rebbes, find favor with the daughter of the scion of the most distinguished line of opponents of the Chassidic movement, the daughter of Rabbi Soloveitchik? How did the earnest religious seeker, the son of the rebbe and the son-in-law of the great Talmudist, find favor with the skeptic of Harvard, the lonely man bereft of faith, Professor Harry Austryn Wolfson—so much favor that the religious young man became the dispassionate senior scholar of Judaica’s successor and trusted literary representative? How did the protegé, an Orthodox Jew,

Siona Margrett Program Coordinator siona@jct.ac.il

secure permission from his philosophically skeptical mentor, “an unobservant Orthodox Jew,” to focus his research on religious conviction and Jewish law?

There are no answers to these questions and never will be, none, at least, that will turn silences into sounds that satisfy, that will reach deeper than generalities and superficialities, that will reveal the core of the man and significantly attenuate the mystery that surrounded him in life, as in death. On one level, however, there is no mystery. On one level, all is pure and clear and simple: Professor Isadore, Rabbi Yitzhak, Rebbe Twersky was an unmistakable presence; with this one word he may be summed up. He. His presence will no sooner recur than the European Jewish civilization, the humanitiescentered academia, or the softly shimmering piety of his parents, from all of which he sprang, yet surely did not embody. What was the greatness of Isadore Yitzhak Twersky? That nobody knew who he was.

Gavriel Novick Program Coordinator gnovick@jct.ac.il

Rabbi Dr. Hillel Goldberg is the editor of the Intermountain

coNtact uS for More iNforMatioN about our virtual opeN houSe: www.jct.ac.il/en | esp@jct.ac.il Jewish News and a contributing editor of Jewish Action.

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TRIBUTE

of

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks

By Rabbi Dr. Jacob J. Schacter

M

uch has been written and said about the extraordinary life accomplishments of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks since his sudden passing in November 2020.

I am still overwhelmed with shock and sadness. I knew that he was ill, but I had no idea that he was deathly ill. I simply still can’t believe that he is no longer with us.

The essays that follow will explore Rabbi Sacks’ views on a number of contemporary issues. Indeed, he addressed many: Jewish identity, anti-Semitism, Israel, the family, Jewish unity, science and religion, hope, faith, responsibility, morality, tradition, leadership, the power of music, the value of argument and debate, the role of religion in contemporary life, the power of community, and, above all, the relevance of Judaism to the world.

In introducing these reflections, I want to offer something different, to extrapolate from the story of his life

Photo: Aaron Clamage Photography @AEI, 2017, Irving Kristol Award and Annual Dinner

Rabbi Dr. Jacob J. Schacter is university professor of Jewish history and Jewish thought and senior scholar at the Center for the Jewish Future, Yeshiva University.

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a series of lessons that are relevant to each of us. Yes, he was a spellbinding orator, a gifted writer, a most effective communicator—able to connect with a multiplicity of audiences, Jewish and non-Jewish, young and old— but what does that have to do with me and you? How does all this affect our lives? We are not necessarily spellbinding orators, gifted writers or effective communicators. We are not philosophers, theologians or public intellectuals with international reputations. We will not write three dozen highly popular books that will address contemporary spiritual and moral issues demonstrating what the intellectual power, beauty and wisdom of Judaism can offer the world. We will not receive highly prestigious awards and honorary doctorates, debate atheists, appear regularly on the BBC, be ambassadors for Judaism and the State of Israel on the world stage, bring intellectual clarity and a moral voice to the issues of the day, and travel tirelessly to convey a message of hope and optimism to a world sorely lacking both. So how is Rabbi Sacks’ life relevant to us?

I would like to suggest a number of lessons that we each can learn.

Number one. Rabbi Sacks’ life teaches us that one person can make a real difference. Everyone can make a difference. One does not need to be Rabbi Sacks to make a difference. He made a difference his way; you and I can make a difference our way.

In one of his celebrated mussar discourses, Rabbi Chaim Shmulevitz highlights the fundamental importance of the rabbinic principle of kavod haberiyot, demonstrating honor and respect to all human beings, even someone like Bilam whom he describes as “the epitome of every lowliness in the world (avi avot kol ha’pechitiyut sheba’olam)” or “the lowest of the low (pachot she’bepechutim).” In addressing why this is the case, he points to the core inherent greatness of every human being, citing the Midrash (Vayikra Rabbah 24:9): “And you shall be only above (vehayita rak lema’alah)” (Devarim 28:13). This might be taken to imply

that you will be like Me (yachol kaMoni), therefore Scripture says “only (rak),” a limiting term [to indicate that] My greatness is higher than your greatness. . . “You shall be holy (kedoshim tihiyu)” (Vayikra 19:2).

This might be taken to imply that you will be like Me (yachol kaMoni), therefore Scripture says “For I am holy (ki kadosh Ani)” [indicating that] My holiness is higher than your holiness.

Rav Chaim asks: why does the Midrash need a special teaching to inform us that we are not equal to God? How can we ever entertain such a possibility? What is the hava amina (supposition)? And he responds with an answer I find powerful, and even shocking. He suggests that we could only ask such a question because we are not aware of the greatness of each human being. But Chazal who knew that each human being is capable of achieving incredible greatness felt that an extra word or phrase was, in fact, needed to indicate that we humans are not on a par with God.1 The first lesson that Rabbi Sacks’ life taught us is the great power of one person, the incredible ability each one of us has to make a meaningful difference in this world. I would hope that that is something that we can internalize very profoundly. Rav Chaim was not talking about a great person. He was talking about us.

Number two, Rabbi Sacks was a mevakesh, a seeker, and he was a mevakesh his entire life. He was born into a traditional home and was not very interested in Jewish matters; he entered Cambridge University with the intention of majoring in philosophy. But he recognized that something was missing and when he was about twenty, he took a trip to the United States to visit two people in particular, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, and Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm. His encounters with them changed his life. They both inspired him to look beyond where—and who—he was and to devote his energies on behalf of the Jewish people. He had little formal Jewish education at that time but he returned to England determined to

seek it, and he continued to seek it— and more—for the rest of his life.

The Torah tells us that after Yitro spent some time with his family in the Israelite camp, he said (Exodus 18:11), “Now I know that the Lord is greater than all the gods.” Rashi (s.v. mikol haelohim) comments that this teaches us that Yitro was familiar with all the idolatry in the entire world; there was not a single idol that he did not worship. He was, indeed, in a unique position to recognize that the Lord was greater than all the other gods because he had a first-hand acquaintance with all of them.

For many years I considered this an indictment of Yitro. How terrible he was—a compulsive idolator, addicted to idol worship! But I recently came to the opposite conclusion, that, in fact, this is written in praise of Yitro.

In truth, all he knew was idolatry; the world in which he lived was totally steeped in idolatry. He could not be expected to engage in anything other than idolatry. But Yitro was a mevakesh. Within that world he was never satisfied with what he found.

He went from one idol to another in search of the meaningful religious experience that he craved. And he was finally convinced that he found it when he encountered the God of Israel.

This was Rabbi Sacks. Whenever he came to our home (whether in New York City, Brookline, Massachusetts or Teaneck, New Jersey), he went straight to the bookcase. He wanted to see if there was a book there that he did not know. He sat and he read. He was very curious and very interested, and always wanted to learn. George Bernard Shaw said that the smartest person he ever met was his tailor because whenever he went to see him, no matter how often, he always measured him. He never assumed that he was the same then as he had been in the past.

This is very important for us. We too should not be complacent and not be satisfied with wherever we may be, whether it be religiously or intellectually, or where we stand in terms of our Jewish or worldly knowledge. We, too, need to be mevakeshim. Where we are now is Spring 5781/2021 JEWISH ACTION

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One does not need to be Rabbi

not necessarily where we want to be or where we should be. We can learn more, know more, do more, in terms of both our bein adam leMakom and our bein adam lechaveiro commitments.

Number three. Rabbi Sacks demonstrated that the larger world in which we live matters. Baruch Hashem, our Orthodox Jewish world in America is thriving. With strong confidence, institutional strength, political influence and extraordinary unselfconsciousness, Orthodoxy has achieved a presence and prominence in America simply unimaginable even just a half century ago. We have day schools, shuls, mikvaot, restaurants. We are blessed with thriving communities.

We can live our entire lives within the confines of our community.

And so, we can conclude that vos gayt un dorten, gayt mir gornisht un (loose translation: whatever is going on there, I couldn’t care less). But Rabbi Sacks taught us that this is short-sighted. He taught us that the world outside does matter. A lot.

Shortly after Rabbi Sacks became chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the British Commonwealth in 1991 he made a very important and conscious decision. He decided that in addition to serving as chief rabbi for the Jews of the Commonwealth, he would also serve as the chief rabbi for the non-Jews. He devoted himself to becoming a spokesman for Jewish values in the public marketplace, to bring the Jewish voice to the world at large. In his words, “To be a Jew is to be true to our faith while being a blessing to others regardless of their faith.” He developed this obligation in a talk he delivered at the Orthodox 30

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Union’s West Coast Convention in December 1997 entitled, “Orthodoxy’s Responsibility to Perfect G-d’s World.”2 I don’t know anyone else in the world who was able to do what Rabbi Sacks did particularly in this area, and who commanded the respect that he commanded across all sectors of the large world in which we live.

We will not appear regularly on the BBC. We will not be invited to speak at the European Parliament in Brussels, the Vatican in Rome and at the House of Lords or 10 Downing Street in London. So, what can we do to affect the world? Do we have non-Jewish neighbors? Do we talk to them? Do we model human decency for them? Do we visit our local policemen and firemen on Thanksgiving Day bearing gifts in appreciation for the work they do? Do we spend time feeding the homeless?

How can we, each in our own way, demonstrate to the world around us that Judaism’s moral and ethical values can contribute to sustaining a virtuous and upright society?

There are more, many more, lessons to learn from Rabbi Sacks’ life (e.g., his discipline, his chesed, his parenting, and more). But I want to conclude with one in particular.

Rabbi Sacks was a man of faith. It is one thing to preach faith; it is often quite something else to be a sincere and genuine person of faith. A number of years ago Rabbi Sacks was asked why he did not reflect on his by then two battles with cancer in any of his many writings. In response, he said: It’s very simple. I saw my late father in his 80s go through four, five major operations . . . . Now, my late father, alav hashalom, didn’t have much Jewish education, but

he had enormous emunah. I used to watch him saying Tehillim in the hospital, and I could see him getting stronger. It seemed to me that his mental attitude was “I’m leaving this to Hashem. If He sees that it’s time for me to go, then it’s time for me to go. And if He still needs me to do things here, He’ll look after me.”

And I adopted exactly that attitude.

So on both occasions I felt, if this is the time Hashem needs me up there, thank you very much indeed for my time down here; I’ve enjoyed every day and feel very blessed. And if He wants me to stay, and there’s still work for me to do, then He is going to be part of the refu’ah, and I put my trust in Him. So there was no test of faith at any point—just these simple moments at which to say, “beyado afkid ruchi.” That was my thought. And since we say that every day in Adon Olam, I didn’t feel the need to write a book about it. It was for me not a theological dilemma at all.

“I had faith,” said Rabbi Sacks. “Full stop.”3 There are many lessons we can learn from the life of the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. Rav Yaakov Yitzchak ben Dovid Aryeh veLiba. Tehei nishmato tzerurah betzeror hachayim.

Notes 1. Rabbi Chaim Shmulevitz, Sichot Mussar (1980), Part 2, p. 135. See also idem., Sichot Mussar: Sha’arei Chaim (2016), 383-84; Rabbi Ya’akov Yitzhak Halevi Ruderman, Sichot Avodat Levi (Baltimore, 2018), 302-05.

My thanks to my brother-in-law, Rabbi Beryl Weisbord, for bringing this source to my attention.

2. https://advocacy.ou.org/rabbi-lord-jonathan-sacks-tikkun-olam-orthodoxys-responsibility-to-perfect-g-ds-world/. My thanks to Nathan Diament for bringing this talk to my attention. See also Jacob J. Schacter, “Tikkun Olam: Defining the Jewish Obligation,” Rav Chesed: Essays in Honor of Rabbi Dr. Haskel Lookstein, vol. 2 (Jersey City, 2009), 183-204; David Shatz, Chaim I. Waxman, and Nathan J. Diament, eds., Tikkun Olam: Social Responsibility in Jewish Law and Thought (Northvale and London, 1997).

3. Yair Rosenberg, “Remembering Rabbi Jonathan Sacks (1948-2020),” Tablet, November 12, 2020.

Never Was a Failure More Prophetic

By Rabbi Dr. Hillel Goldberg

I

t settled over me as an aftershock, following Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’ passing.

Suddenly, thirty years peeled away, and my failure back then took on an entirely different hue.

In 1990, Rabbi Sacks invited me to join him in London. As he was to ascend to the chief rabbinate, I was to edit his journal of Jewish thought, L’eylah, teach at Jews’ College and take over his Shabbat position at Marble Arch Synagogue.

In the end I opted to remain in the United States, but not because of my failure at Marble Arch.

I delivered an emotional sermon very much out of my soul, unaware of the intellectual orientation that the congregants had become accustomed to from Rabbi Sacks.

Some years earlier, while living in Jerusalem, my wife and I had

undergone a health crisis with one of our children. With both medical and spiritual advice, the Amshinover Rebbe helped us through it. It was our only contact with the rebbe, but when he died, I felt a deep sense of loss.

I wondered, who would replace this wise, gentle and holy counselor?

Shortly thereafter, I had the opportunity to pose this question to the Gerrer Rebbe. He answered: “No one will replace the Amshinover Rebbe.” By implication, he was saying that no one replaces anyone, contrary to the popular saying that no one is irreplaceable. “Rather,” continued the Gerrer Rebbe, “someone else, with different but powerful strengths, will arise in his stead.”

This story was the main point of the sermon I delivered at Marble Arch that Shabbat morning.

Wrong tone, wrong place.

But now, thirty years later, I recall how the late Lord Immanuel Jakobovits towered over British Jewry. He was very much the dominant figure—a scholar, an exemplar of dignity, a confidant of the prime minister, and the founder of the field of Jewish medical ethics.

Rabbi Sacks, on the other hand,

was just beginning his career as chief rabbi and, in fact, had asked Rabbi Jakobovits to stay on an additional year because he, Rabbi Sacks, was not quite ready.

Now I realize how right I was at Marble Arch. For the occasion then, my message was flat, but in retrospect it looms eerily as prophetic, albeit unintentionally so.

Someone else, with different but powerful strengths, arose in Rabbi Jakobovits’ stead. Rabbi Sacks arose to etch a different path as the worthy successor of Rabbi Jakobovits, whom Rabbi Sacks greatly admired.

Rabbi Sacks grew into his role, expanded his role, diversified his role, surpassing all expectations, which already were high.

Who might the next Rabbi Jonathan Sacks be? That, said the Gerrer Rebbe, is an impossibility.

Rabbi Sacks was unique. He will not be replaced. Yet, we are consoled not only by his shining memory but by knowing that someone else with powerful but different strengths will arise.

Rabbi Dr. Hillel Goldberg is the editor of the Intermountain Jewish News and a contributing editor of Jewish Action.

Rabbi Sacks grew into his role, role, surpassing all expectations, which already were high.

All photos in this section courtesy of the Office of Rabbi Sacks, unless indicated otherwise.

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Rabbi Sacks on ...

Victimhood

By Rabbi Yehoshua Pfeffer In his reflection on the future of British society and the dangers facing liberal democracies, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, zt”l, commented that while forever tempting, the flight from responsibility into victimhood is negative and destructive: “[I]t robs us of trust in the world, it leads us to see fate as a conspiracy directed against us.”1 In tribute to his great and unique leadership, I would like to elaborate on this position.

The victim mentality so prevalent in Western society fuses together two ills that Rabbi Sacks fought against throughout his life. One is the rejection of personal responsibility; the second is the negation of personal relationship.

Personal responsibility was for Rabbi Sacks not just a defining element of the

good life, but even of the religious life.

“Behind the ethic of responsibility,” he writes, “is the daring idea that more than we have faith in God, God has faith in us.”2 To reject personal responsibility is to reject the Divine calling first heard by Avraham Avinu.

Leaving one’s comfort zone requires courage, but without it we cannot fulfill our mission of “becoming co-authors with God of the world that ought to be.”3 And while taking responsibility takes many forms, it begins with the personal relationships that form the fabric of a good society.

“The world was built upon chesed” (Tehillim 89:3), which is intrinsically personal: “We cannot care for the sick, bring comfort to the distressed or welcome a visitor impersonally.”4 Such activities cannot be achieved any other way. Yet by losing trust in the world, the victim loses faith in personal relationships and claims instead the recourse of universal justice that (in Rabbis Sacks’ words) “demands disengagement.”

For Rabbi Sacks a meaningful life is one that “responds”: “In the theological

courage, but without it we cannot co-authors with God of the world that ought to be.”

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sense it means that God is the question to which our lives are an answer.”5 The world is indeed replete with questions—questions of suffering and tragedy, of evil and discrimination— and Judaism’s answer is the human partnership with God. It is here that victimhood fails, in seeking to efface the question rather than provide an answer, in negating personal choice when the Torah teaches that we can all choose life. “The best way of curing a victim,” he writes, “is to help him cease to think of himself as a victim.” It is a matter of choice.

Rabbi Sacks was a true believer in tikkun olam, “the recognition that the world does need repair, rather than Stoic acceptance of ascetic denial.”6 Yet, he was far from the “social justice” often identified (or conflated) with the term. For him, tikkun olam begins with personal, communal and national responsibility. “Victims,” he writes, “want the world to change, forgetting that it may be they who have to change.”7 Before anything else, we need to change ourselves, translating Divine calling into the language of deed. If enough of us succeed in doing so and inspire others to follow suit—as Rabbi Sacks did for many thousands—then our world will surely become a less fractured place.

Notes 1. The Home We Build Together: (New York, 2007), 62.

2. To Heal a Fractured World: The Ethics of Responsibility (New York, 2007), 12.

3. To Heal, 273.

4. To Heal, 51.

5. The Great Partnership: Science, Religion and the Search for Meaning (New York, 2014), 37.

6. To Heal, 81.

7. Future Tense: Jews, Judaism and Israel in the Twenty-First Century (New York, 2012), 9.

Rabbi Yehoshua Pfeffer is head of the Chareidi Israel division at the Tikvah Fund, running a variety of programs and projects that cater to members of the Chareidi and Religious Zionist communities. He is also rabbi of the Ohr Chadash community in Ramot, Jerusalem.

Cancel Culture and Political Toxicity

By Rabbi Shaul Robinson The loss of Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks in November 2020 robbed the world not only of one of its most cherished religious leaders, but also one of its most profound social commentators.

Confidant and friend of princes and politicians, Rabbi Sacks returned time and time again to the issue of the state of our democracy and political culture.

In what would turn out to be one of his last media interviews, he reflected: “I have written I don’t know how many books about politics. And yet I have never, ever, ever taken a party political stand—and not one member of my family, including Elaine, with whom I’ve just celebrated a golden wedding just a couple of weeks ago—knows how I vote.”

But if Rabbi Sacks was careful to conceal his personal political preferences, he was anything but reticent in commenting on our political system. He was that rarest of religious leaders—the prophet carrying dire warnings of crises and trouble on the horizon—but one people actually wanted to listen to.

Certainly Rabbi Sacks lamented the rise of political extremism on the left and the right and the toxicity of contemporary politics. In one of his most magnificent derashot—his pre-Selichot address the year before he died, he chose to focus on the danger of the “cancel culture.” He warned of the dangers of creating a society that allowed people to be instantly “excommunicated” for statements—often made years ago or misunderstood, deemed to be inappropriate. But what concerned him most about cancel culture was his warning that “in an unforgiving culture, the people who survive and thrive are the people without shame.

He was that rarest of religious leaders—the prophet carrying dire warnings of crises and trouble on wanted to listen to.

Have a look at who is powerful in the world today. It is the people without shame that are the only people who thrive in a world without forgiveness.”

Perhaps the strongest thread that runs through his many books that deal with politics, written over three decades, is his belief that what has led to a breakdown in civility and a terrifying toxicity in public discourse was the loss of a sense of a common purpose. “We need to reinvigorate the sense of the common good. Society is where we come together collectively what none of us can do alone . . . It is the realm in which all of us is more important than any of us.” These words come from his 2007 book The Home We Build Together: Recreating Society, a remarkable book for being written by a serving chief rabbi but addressed to a non-Jewish audience discussing how to create a civil society.

Even more remarkable was the fact that Gordon Brown, who was, at the time, shortly to become the prime minister of the United Kingdom, wrote a foreword for the book.

Rabbi Sacks built his life’s work on demonstrating that the core beliefs and texts of Judaism contained truths that can educate and ennoble all of society.

Prime Minister Tony Blair eulogized Rabbi Sacks for showing him how the narratives of Tanach—involving Moshe Rabbeinu, David HaMelech and many more—were not mere “stories” but profound treatments of leadership, hope, struggle and redemption.

“Through that he taught me how the wretched weakness of society is so clear when absent from God, and when united with God that extraordinary potential for human achievement.”

As a pulpit rabbi, I was almost immensely proud whenever I was able to welcome Rabbi Sacks to my shul—his peerless eloquence and erudition inspired and drew even the cynic and skeptics in the audience closer to Judaism. But watching him being received with similar rapture by non-Jewish audiences made me even prouder. In 2017 Rabbi Sacks was invited to present at the official Ted Talks conference. His talk has been viewed on YouTube over 2 million times. In a masterful presentation, Rabbi Sacks traced the growth of extremism and hyper-partisanship in politics to a culture that encourages us to worship the self over the collective.

I think future anthropologists will take a look at the books we read on self-help, self-realization, self-esteem. They’ll look at the way we talk about morality as being true to oneself, the way we talk about politics as a matter of individual rights. And I think they’ll conclude that what we worship in our time is the self, the me, the “I.” The antidote to this? A reassertion of the “We.” Do you know something? My favorite phrase in all of politics, very American phrase, is: “We the people.” Because it says that we all share collective responsibility for our collective future.

And that’s how things really are and should be. . . . when we move from the politics of me to the politics of all of us together, we rediscover those beautiful, counterintuitive truths: that a nation is strong when it cares for the weak, that it becomes rich when it cares for the poor, it becomes invulnerable when it cares about the vulnerable.

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a prolonged standing ovation, Rabbi Sacks concluded that talk on politics and leadership in a way that only he could—by addressing the spiritual needs of every individual present.

So here is my simple suggestion.

It might just change your life, and it might just help to begin to change the world. Do a search and replace operation on the text of your mind, and wherever you encounter the word “self,” substitute the word “other.” So instead of self-help, other-help; instead of self-esteem, other-esteem. And if you do that, you will begin to feel the power of what for me is one of the most moving sentences in all of religious literature. “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me.” We can face any future without fear so long as we know we will not face it alone.

Rabbi Shaul Robinson is rav of NY’s Lincoln Square Synagogue.

Mutual Responsibility

By Dr. Erica Brown In Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Dividing Times, the book he published only months before he died, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks analyzes the breakdown of large societal and economic structures that support the pursuit of a virtuous life: one’s community, one’s country and one’s religion. These enable individuals to overcome anomie, contribute productively to fighting injustice and live generously. Rabbi Sacks characteristically marshals philosophers, economists and sociologists we recognize from his previous writings— Hobbes, Locke, Smith, MacIntyre, Taylor, Berger and Turkle, among others—and current polls and research that support his central thesis.

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birthrates and the rise of single parenting have broken down the togetherness that is a necessary and the place where obligations to others are nurtured.

He asks his readers in the book’s concluding sentence, “to enhance the structures of our togetherness” that have been “weakened by too much pursuit of self.”1 Technological advances and our indulgence for self-help literature privilege the “I” over the “we.” Identity politics have weakened our capacity to respect and dignify those we other, in the ironic attempt to avoid offense.

These contemporary developments further distance people from the relationships most necessary for life satisfaction, meaning and happiness.

Rabbi Sacks offers a solution that appears in every one of his books: the covenantal relationship. A quick look through the index of any of his books usually reveals several entries under one word: covenant.

“A covenant creates a moral community,” he writes. “It binds people together in a bond of mutual responsibility and care.”2 At the center of covenant making, in Morality, and in others, is marriage and the family unit, the microcosm for society itself. In marriage, two people create a covenant that changes them with regard to the law but, more importantly, with regard to the emotional commitments each have to the other. They make their partnership more durable through the act of giving.

“A covenant is what turns love into law, and law into love.”3 The collapse of marriage, declining birthrates

and the rise of single parenting have broken down the togetherness that is a necessary precondition for moral behavior and the place where obligations to others are nurtured.

Marriage is a “small and personal” expression of covenant.4 While covenants like marriage offer the solace and comfort of company, they also make demands of us. “Covenant is a binding commitment, entered into by two or more parties, to work and care for one another while respecting the freedom, integrity and difference of each.”5 Rabbi Sacks uses this same framework to describe the Israelite experience at Sinai. Contracts were a familiar aspect of ancient Near Eastern politics. “They were secular treaties, usually between a strong nation and a weak one. They set out the terms of a relationship. The strong power would protect the weak, in return for which the weak would pledge its loyalty and fealty to the strong.”6 At Sinai, Rabbi Sacks argues, God revolutionized this notion of contract into a covenant, a partnership richer, more enduring and more humanizing: a freely entered partnership between God and people built on trust and law that honors and cultivates the gifts of each.

Rabbi Sacks repeatedly contrasts the difference between a contract and a covenant in the way relationships function today. In Morality, he describes the fundamental differences: “A contract is a transaction. A

covenant is a relationship. A contract is about interests. A covenant is about identity. That is why contracts benefit, but covenants transform.”7 In his earlier controversial book, Dignity of Difference, Rabbi Sacks puts teeth to these differences; a covenant is not limited to “specific conditions and circumstances. It is open-ended and long-lasting. And it is not based on the idea of two individuals, otherwise unconnected, pursuing personal advantage . . .” He concludes with a familiar drumbeat: “It is about the ‘We’ that gives identity to the ‘I.’”8 In Dignity of Difference, Rabbi Sacks explains that covenants are critical in the healthy evolution of a polity to generate cooperation “without the use of economic, political or military powers.”9 In this model, there is no forcing of one party to do the will of the other, securing one’s freedom or humanity at the cost of another.

“Covenant is the attempt to create partnership without dominance

or submission . . .” Addressing the challenges of multi-culturalism in the United Kingdom in The Home We Build Together, Rabbi Sacks describes what societal covenants achieve: “Those bound by a covenant, voluntarily undertake to share a fate.

They choose to link their destinies together. They accept responsibilities to and for one another. Covenants redeem the solitude of the ‘lonely crowd.’”10 When a contract breaks down, the parties freely disengage. Covenants require a longer view, a greater commitment of time and will to maintain unity, especially during disagreements: “To enter into a covenant, like deciding to marry or have a child, is to take a risk, an act of faith in an unknown, unknowable future.”11 Rabbi Sacks believed the only way to distance ourselves from shallow transactional relationships is to take the risk that covenants demand and sanctify our relationships, binding law with love. In these days of political

WE KOSHER FOR PASSOVER!

rancor, we need these reminders— and his words—more than ever.

Notes 1. Jonathan Sacks, Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Dividing Times (New York, 2020), 328.

2. Ibid, 313.

3. Radical Then, Radical Now (New York, 2004), 57.

4. Morality, 314.

5. The Home We Build Together (New York, 2007), 51.

6. The Home, 104-105.

7. Morality, 313.

8. The Dignity of Difference (New York, 2002), 202.

9. Ibid, 202.

10. The Home, 142.

11. The Home, 118.

Dr. Erica Brown is an associate professor at The George Washington University and director of its Mayberg Center for Jewish Education and Leadership.

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The Jewish Voice in the Public Square

By Dr. Judith Bleich

Beneath the elegant phrases there pulsed a deep seriousness people, a profound love of Torah the devar Hashem.

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The nation of Israel “was created as a covenantal people, a light unto the nations.” Upon departing from Egypt they were destined “le’tachlitam [for their goal and purpose], to become capable of being a light unto the nations, to confirm them in knowledge of the Lord of the universe.” Thus wrote, not a prominent exponent of Reform, but Rabbi Naphtali Zevi Yehudah Berlin, the Netziv, head of the famed yeshivah of Volozhin, in his commentary Ha’amek Davar, introduction to Exodus.

Centuries earlier, Rabbi Yehudah Halevi, in his classic exposition of Jewish thought, Kuzari, Part II, section 36, declared, “As the heart is to the body, so is Israel among the nations.”

Disproportionate to its size is the function of the heart upon the human organism. Disproportionate to its size is the possible moral influence of Israel upon the nations of the world.

But, sadly, the heartbeat of Israel has become muffled and its ethical message stifled. It is as if the detritus of a coarse and violent civilization has caused plaque to accumulate and occlude the throbbing flow of blood from the heart.

It is to the everlasting merit of the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, of blessed memory, and to the benefit of all, that he hearkened to the divine imperative and in no small measure provided entrée to Jewish values and authentic lessons of faith to a society parched for spiritual sustenance.

Not every talented individual is privileged to attain a position suitable for expressing his or her talents; not everyone who rises to a position of prominence succeeds in developing its potential to full advantage. The Jewish community was blessed that Rabbi Sacks was appointed as Chief Rabbi of Great Britain’s United Synagogue and that he occupied that post in a fashion that elevated its influence as a beacon of inspiration for global Jewry and for mankind. Even before

assuming office, Rabbi Sacks brought to England a cadre of prominent intellectuals, rabbinic scholars and provocative thinkers. As incumbent Chief Rabbi, he set as his principal agenda enhancement of the quality of Jewish day school education and its popularization.

Concurrently, he intensified his dedication to transmitting the unadulterated tradition of Sinai.

There rapidly followed what became a cascade of articles and books and a profusion of addresses and lectures, in person and through the media, presented to diverse audiences Jewish and non-Jewish, to British subjects far and wide, to fellow peers in the House of Lords, to communal gatherings throughout the world and, ultimately, to thousands upon thousands of participants online. He was indefatigable. And the words had a powerful impact. It was not simply his marvelous ability to present complex ideas with clarity and directness, his uncanny feel for le mot juste, not only his wit and charm, that captivated readers and listeners.

It was an entirely different quality. Beneath the elegant phrases there pulsed a deep seriousness of purpose, an empathy for people, a profound love of Torah and a passion to communicate the devar Hashem. He did not engage in verbal pyrotechnics, dazzle with crystalline aperçus, or entertain with popular platitudes. His were devarim hayotzim min halev, words that emanate from the heart. Directed to the mind and heart, they struck a responsive chord in audiences who sensed in Rabbi Sacks’ written and spoken words something almost akin to those of the great singer, “For the spirit of the Lord spoke in me and His word was on my tongue.”1 In responding to the challenges of our day Rabbi Sacks was not merely au courant but far ahead of intellectual trends. He was constantly reading, studying, assessing new ideas and investigating innovative approaches. He read broadly with a capacious openness but with an eye that was discerning, critical and, when necessary, censorious. He did not shy away from addressing problematic questions nor did he gloss over communal deficiencies. In thoughtful and measured tones, he demonstrated that timeless religious truths can effectively be applied in resolving contemporary dilemmas.

Long ago, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch chided his congregants not to abdicate their duty: “We have become phlegmatic with regard to the spirit of irresponsibility which . . . entangles spirits and hearts. This attitude of laissez-faire governs us2 . . . . [The Sages] knew that the spirit of the era is the spirit of mankind to which we all contribute.”3 Rabbi Sacks likewise propounded an “ethics of responsibility”4 in urging fellow Jews to embrace their role and rise to their destiny.

Remarkable in these times of social turmoil, political corruption and pervasive secularity was his resoundingly positive message with its emphasis on hope and abiding faith. Well did he know that Leonard Cohen’s “You want it darker, We kill the flame”5 was the fitting poem for our dark and fractious historical moment. Yet,

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characteristically, he pinpointed Cohen’s redemptive Jewish insight, “There is a crack, a crack in everything, That’s how the light gets in.”6 Rabbi Sacks refracted that light. He radiated confidence in the emergence of a loftier society comprised of individuals “with flame of freedom in their souls and light of knowledge in their eyes.”7 His ongoing legacy is the charge to us to fulfill the prophetic vision of a Torah community ever striving to bring about the time “when the earth shall be full of the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea.”8 Notes 1. II Samuel 23:2.

2. The Collected Writings of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch (New York and Jerusalem, 1984), I, 291-292.

3. Ibid., pp. 295-296.

4. His seminal work, To Heal a Fractured World (London and New York, 2005) is subtitled: The Ethics of Responsibility.

5. “You Want It Darker,” Released September 24, 2016.

6. “Anthem,” Released November 24, 1992.

7. John Addington Symonds, “A Vista: These Things Shall Be,” New and Old: A Volume of Verse (London, 1880), 226.

8. Isaiah 11:9.

Dr. Judith Bleich is Professor of Jewish History at the Graduate School of Jewish Studies, Touro College, New York.

philosophy of leads to action is the antidote to society’s 38

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Ethics

By Smadar Rosensweig In the late 1980s, my parents Rabbi David Eliach, shlit”a, and Dr. Yaffa Eliach a”h, visited the United Kingdom, and attended the Marble Arch Synagogue on Shabbat, where Rabbi Jonathan Sacks was rabbi.

After my father’s concluding Torah blessings, Rabbi Sacks clapped on the bimah, and went on to deliver a short speech about my father’s contribution to worldwide Jewish education and my mother’s transformation of Holocaust commemoration and education by redeeming the human dignity of Holocaust martyrs and survivors and focusing the conversation surrounding the Holocaust on Jewish heroism, faith and human responsibility.

Rabbi Sacks explained that he and my mother shared a common vision of teaching universal moral lessons through a unique Jewish prism.

A connective thread throughout Rabbi Sack’s illustrious career as chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth and beyond, is his focus on a very anthropocentric, this worldly, action-oriented approach to ethics.

In his view, as expressed in his book, To Heal a Fractured World: The Ethics of Responsibility, faith is expressed in deeds, and the unique message that Judaism can teach the world is “its ethics of responsibility, the idea that God invites us to become in the rabbinic phrase, His partners in the work of Creation” (p. 3). In the book, Rabbi Sacks characterizes contemporary culture as excessively self-centered.

He suggests that Judaism’s ethical philosophy of compassion that leads to action is the antidote to society’s shortcomings. Throughout all of his vast output, he cites Biblical, midrashic and rabbinic sources while simultaneously interweaving Chassidic tales, personal anecdotes, modern

scholarship, psychological insights and literature to create a meaningful tapestry of relevant lessons for the Jewish and world community.

One of his most powerful themes is his anthropocentric interpretation of the Bible. He credits this approach to his teacher Rabbi Nahum Rabinovitch and exemplifies it by citing one of his mentor’s insights. Moses was apprehensive at the burning bush and hid his face because he was reticent to truly understand God, because “seeing heaven would desensitize him to earth and cause him to lose his humanity” (p.

23). Rabbi Sacks extrapolates a major cornerstone of his ethical philosophy from this idea. In the aggregate, existence is just, because God is just, but in the day-to-day man is charged with the Divine mission to redress inequity and right injustice precisely by means of the fullness of his humanity.

If human beings were endowed with Divine insight, and constantly cognizant of the larger infinite perspective it would impede and preclude their sense of ethical urgency to initiate remedies to society’s ills (p.

27). This insight inspires the core of Rabbi Sack’s Biblical interpretations and ethical lessons. For example, Rabbi Sacks views the early narratives in Genesis as a vehicle to develop humanity’s moral sense (p. 135). God empowers Abraham to challenge Him on the fate of Sodom as a manifestation of His faith in the tikkun olam partnership. Rabbi Sacks exhorts all of humanity to bring God into this world through actions of ethics and morality.

We are God’s messengers and partners to fix His presently imperfect world.

Rabbi Sacks was a talented thinker, a gifted orator and a prolific writer who was a true public intellectual.

He will be sorely missed but we are comforted that he left a treasure trove of writings to inspire us and future generations to action.

Smadar Rosensweig is an international lecturer in Tanach who is clinical associate professor of Bible and Judaic studies at Stern College for Women, Yeshiva University.

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“Elaine and I” Rabbi Lord and Lady Sacks set a unique example of a married couple living and working together very much in the public eye.

By Rabbi Gideon Black

U

pon his retirement from the British Chief Rabbinate in 2013, Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks was courted by a number of prestigious universities keen to have a public intellectual of his caliber join their ranks. His decision to accept a dual role at New York University and Yeshiva University was particularly exciting for me—I was serving as a Torah educator for the Heshe and Harriet Seif Jewish Learning Initiative on Campus (OU-JLIC) at NYU at the time and knew this would mean our community at NYU’s Bronfman Center for Jewish Student Life would become Rabbi Sacks’ base in Lower Manhattan.

Rabbi Sacks’ retirement was anything but—he didn’t slow down at all, nor did he consolidate his focus.

If anything, his teaching, publishing and leadership continued without interruption, and the scale of his impact grew exponentially. Having been a devotee of Rabbi Sacks since my teens, the opportunity to work closely with him on campus was one that I relished.

On a freezing February morning, my phone rang, and Rabbi Sacks’ unmistakable baritone voice met me unprepared on the other end of the line.

“Gideon, I am . . . well, I don’t know quite how to say this, but I am utterly lost. I need your help. I don’t really know who else to call.” On occasion, undergraduate students would seek me out in moments

of existential crisis, but I was still surprised that Judaism’s global ambassador was turning to me for spiritual support. I took a deep breath and tried to center myself.

“I simply can’t find my way . . . ,” Rabbi Sacks continued. “Can you give me directions to NYU’s Global Center for Academic and Spiritual Life?” Suddenly I realized the former chief rabbi was not seeking my pastoral care but was simply unable to find his way to his next speaking engagement.

A lecture hall filled with students awaited, yet the Manhattan grid was a snow-filled jungle of confusion for Rabbi Sacks who was new to the city. In the Seinfeld-esque conversation that ensued, we eventually determined that he had been standing right outside the very address he was looking for all along.

To me, Rabbi Sacks was a transcendent figure. A national treasure. Among his many talents, he had a stage and pulpit presence that was simply electrifying—when he was speaking, I felt I was in the presence of a modern-day Biblical prophet. But during that phone call he crumbled down to size—facing

Rabbi Gideon Black resides in Englewood, New Jersey, with his wife and children. Rabbi Black is OU-JLIC’s director of professional recruitment and leadership development. OU-JLIC provides leadership and support for over 5,000 college students annually on twenty-three campuses in North America and Israel.

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such a mundane problem just like any retiree struggling to navigate the new landscape of their lives.

He swiftly found the lecture hall and managed to capitalize on the sense of anticipation his slightly late arrival caused by mesmerizing the students with his enchanting weave of Torah, literature and Western philosophy, littered with humorous sides and snippets of conversations with world leaders he had met along the way. When chatting later, Rabbi Sacks shared with me that during this stint in New York he was alone— Lady Sacks was back in London attending a family affair. Without her by his side, he was rudderless.

Since Rabbi Sacks’ death one thing has struck me more than any other. And I think it is integral it not get overshadowed as the scope of his legacy is measured.

In so many of the photos shared and stories told, Lady Sacks is there by his side. When I think back to all the times I heard him speak over the years in Israel, America and the United Kingdom, Lady Sacks was always there.

She didn’t have to be. Most political and religious leaders are not usually accompanied by their spouses wherever they go, but there was a quiet act of role modeling that Rabbi and Lady Sacks achieved by their constant companionship. They were a single unit that no amount of

public statesmanship was going to impact. How many sermons did Rabbi Sacks begin with “Elaine and I . . . ” They set a unique example of a married couple living and working together very much in the public eye, but doing so in the most discreet and dignified way imaginable. I can’t think of another couple quite like them. Speech after speech, Shabbaton after Shabbaton, year after year—she was always there.

The contours of communal expectations of the rebbetzin are often unclear, even though those expectations are no less rigorous than those of the rabbi. The role of the rabbi and rebbetzin in the community are divergent, the talents called upon are often vastly distinct, and yet they are meant to be a team, evenly balanced. If this challenge is true for a rabbi and rebbetzin, I would imagine it certainly to be the case for a chief rabbi and chief rebbetzin!

After Rabbi Lord Sacks stepped down as chief rabbi, Lady Sacks, a radiographer by training, would have been forgiven for finally taking advantage of her well-earned retirement. Yet her sense of mission and devotion to the Jewish people were equal to his, and as long as he was working so was she.

One of Rabbi Sacks’ esteemed predecessors, Rabbi Dr. J. H. Hertz, served as British chief rabbi from 1913 to 1946, a period encompassing both world wars and the Holocaust. Rabbi Hertz knew well the trials and tribulations of religious leadership in deeply testing times. Yet in his magisterial commentary on the Torah he explains with such simplicity what Jewish marriage aspires to be. In Bereishit 2:18, when Hashem decided to create a wife for Adam, she is described as an ezer, a helper. Rabbi Hertz explains: A wife is not a man’s shadow or subordinate, but his other self, his “helper,” in a sense which no other creature on earth can be.

Rabbi Lord and Lady Sacks personified this idea gracefully. My sense is that Rabbi and Lady Sacks were not trying to set an example—their partnership was far more organic than that. Lady Sacks was the paradigmatic ezer kenegdo—she was Rabbi Sacks’ “other self.” Without her steadfast support and unrelenting companionship, he wouldn’t have been able to be the leader he was, nor could he achieve a fraction of what he accomplished. Simply put, without her there, he wasn’t fully there.

The communities led, the rabbis mentored, the honorary doctorates received, the books published, the keynote speeches delivered, the lives changed—they were his, and therefore they were equally hers. They were theirs. Rabbi Lord and Lady Sacks have jointly led the Jewish people across the world for more than thirty years, and we are forever in their debt.

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The Words of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks FROM THOSE HE INSPIRED

A resonant timbre, both powerful and subtle, arises from everything Rabbi Jonathan Sacks wrote. Alongside his talent and intellect, it accounts for his influence. It is one single word that he made prismatic and personal, shining and shimmering: faith. —Rabbi Dr. Hillel Goldberg

God is vaster than the universe, but He is closer to us than we are to ourselves.

Where what we want to do meets what needs to be done, that is where God wants us to be.

—Quoted by Rabbi Yehuda Sarna, executive

—Quoted by Rabbi Dr. Meir Y. Soloveichik,

director, Bronfman Center for Jewish Student Life, New York University

director, Zahava and Moshael Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought, Yeshiva University

Few are the days where we cannot make some difference to the lives of others.

Words are the language of the mind.

Music is the language of the soul.

—Quoted by Alana Newhouse, founder

chazzan and musician

—Quoted by Shimon Craimer,

and editor-in-chief, Tablet magazine

The Torah is a commentary on life, and life is a commentary on the Torah.

Making a blessing over life is the best way to turn life into a blessing.

—Quoted by Dr. Daniel Rose, independent Jewish educator and educational consultant

—Quoted by Hayley Gross, headteacher, Sacks

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Morasha Jewish Primary School, London, UK

From the tribute to mark the sheloshim of Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, zt”l,

by The Office of Rabbi Sacks https://youtu.be/uKzbxNhFgmg?t=3567.

The world is a book in which our life is a chapter. The question is whether others reading it will be inspired.

—Quoted by Rabbi Gil Student, book editor and Editorial Committee member, Jewish Action, and editor, TorahMusings. com

The choice humankind faces in every age is between the idea of power, and the power of ideas.

Judaism has always believed in the power of ideas.

—Quoted by Rabbi Dr. Stu Halpern, senior advisor to the provost, YU and senior program officer, Zahava and Moshael Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought, YU

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COVER STORY

Art of Giving H

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Giving - Philanthropy

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T

zedakah is deeply rooted in the Jewish soul. Indeed, the Rambam discusses how tzedakah is considered to be a sign that one is a descendant of Avraham Avinu. But if giving is such a fundamental part of Jewish life—shouldn’t we think and plan more about the charity we give, irrespective of the amount? As Rabbi Aaron Kotler, CEO, Beth Medrash Govoha, contends in his essay, just as every family, hopefully, engages in some form of financial and budget planning, they should invest in some form of “tzedakah planning” as well. In the pages ahead we asked a number of individuals connected to the world of philanthropy to reflect on how we give, why we give, and the ways in which giving is changing.

On Giving and the Pandemic

By Rabbi Aaron Kotler, as told to Binyamin Ehrenkranz Covid has definitely driven need around the world for Jewish institutions and families, some of it unevenly. The Jewish communities in Eastern Europe, for example, are struggling mightily because there was no government funding. In the US, due to the PPPs (Paycheck Protection Program) and stimulus funding provided by the CARES Act, many Jewish institutions received significant governmental help along the way.

Here in America, there are definitely people in our community who are struggling. For every businessperson doing great or even better during the crisis, there are five others doing much worse. Donors who are involved in the retail and travel sectors, among other sectors are having a hard time right now. On the other hand, baruch Hashem, the unemployment numbers are starting to improve. So hopefully we are in a dip that will not be long-lasting.

Rabbi Aaron Kotler is CEO of Beth Medrash Govoha in Lakewood, New Jersey. Binyamin Ehrenkranz is a member of the Jewish Action Editorial Committee.

By Rabbi Shalom Baum Many members of the Orthodox community are currently facing multiple economic challenges, whereas others are still thriving. Although the long-term economic impact of Covid-19 remains unpredictable, this income gulf will likely continue. The Ibn Ezra, who faced many financial

struggles, describes an individual’s financial condition as cyclical (Bereishit 34:25). This should be comforting to those facing economic difficulties, while giving pause to those who are still prospering. It seems to me that the pandemic has given many people the opportunity to reconsider their lifestyle and to possibly expand their charitable giving.

Many families blessed with affluence are now intellectually and morally considering the degree of comfort and opulence that is appropriate for their own spiritual and emotional health, as well as for their children. In the face of crushing illness and death, and with more time spent with family and less time traveling, many people have modified their definitions of “I have enough” (see Alei Shur 2:145) and have sought to be more available for familial and personal growth and development.

A number of individuals have told me that they have also started to consider the degree to which their own standards of expenditure and lifestyle impose pressures and expectations on others within the community.

In an article entitled “On Complexity and Clarity” that appeared in Jewish Action (fall 2015), Rabbi Shalom Carmy recalls that when Rav Aharon Lichtenstein, zt”l, was asked how to balance the tzedakah needs of Israeli institutions with those of local American causes, he stated that “cutting down on luxury vacations might leave ample money for both” (see Rema, YD 551:3). The ethics and ethos of such a lifestyle is a discussion worth having, and is one that I regularly discuss from the pulpit and in private conversations with shul members.

This challenge has become even more pronounced in the five years since Rabbi Carmy’s essay was published.

Until March 2020, our community placed great emphasis on luxury living. This lavishness was no longer restricted to weddings, or Pesach or “Yeshivah Week” vacations in exotic locations, but was apparent in weekly ads in local Jewish newspapers for expensive wines, aged liquor and top cuts of beef. Because last Pesach was generally observed within the confines

of our individual communities, there was less chatter about anticipated vacations, and no social media postings of exotic trips taken. Semachot are now by law, and often by choice, more modest affairs. These reductions in expenditures have not only prompted self-reflection but have made more funds available to already generous people to distribute to individuals and institutions in need. Many have stepped up during this new reality to be even more giving, and I would expect this to become the new normal, even as we look forward to holidays spent together and less scaling down of the number of guests at our semachot.

Rabbi Shalom Baum is rav at Congregation Keter Torah in Teaneck, New Jersey.

On Priorities

By Rabbi Aaron Kotler In deciding philanthropic priorities, there are halachic parameters to ma’aser and tzedakah, as noted in the Shulchan Aruch and Rambam. Getting to know those will help ensure that one fulfills his mitzvah responsibilities.

Within the parameters of halachah, an individual has the freedom to make his own personal choices as to what he considers best for his spiritual and familial goals. I don’t think anybody should decide those goals for anyone else. It is the role of rabbanim and communal leaders to provide hashkafah and background so that we can all make informed choices.

Every family, hopefully, assesses their income and expenses and engages in some form of financial and budget planning; tzedakah planning should really be a part of that. Unfortunately, there aren’t many planning resources that can help. Why not review your tzedakah with an impartial posek, just as you would review your general finances with a financial professional?

In our world, much of tzedakah giving is driven not by a strategic plan but by “daily opportunities” that present themselves as a visible Spring 5781/2021 JEWISH ACTION

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need, such as someone knocking on your door, or your child’s school administrator telling you he needs to make the budget. A person could decide that a certain percentage of his tzedakah will be reactive, but he should have an overall plan, which would make giving much more meaningful.

Whether you make $50,000 or $50 million a year, having a tzedakah plan will be rewarding. Planning can be as simple as saying, “This is the amount of tzedakah I estimate for the coming year, and I’m going to make allocations. I will allocate X amount for people who knock at my door; X amount for emergency causes; X amount for community organizations; and X amount for kollelim and yeshivos around the world.”

There are some philanthropists— and I mean this in a very positive sense—who have professionalized their giving, giving significant thought to this topic, asking themselves, “What are my resources and what are my priorities?” Such donors are aiming to get the most bang for their buck. They want to get the greatest sechar and the greatest satisfaction from giving.

Having a tzedakah plan requires some engagement. Once you invest time and effort into developing a plan, it becomes a labor of love.

By Margy-Ruth Davis How to give?

If we are being honest with ourselves, let’s admit that we often give out of habit, or through peer pressure, or because someone has asked us whom we cannot turn down.

What if we had the luxury of giving based only on priorities?

If the slate were wiped clean, our calculations might be very different.

Classic Jewish sources give us the beginning of an answer. Family comes first, then community and communal institutions. Israel, of course. Torah scholarship. And sages, from the Talmud on to Rabbi 46

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A recent survey by the Jewish Funders Network found that more than 3/4 of respondents had increased their giving in response to the pandemic, and more than half had broadened their giving to include new causes.

Shira Hanau, “Jewish Philanthropists Have Increased Their Giving During the Pandemic,” JTA, Jan 2, 2021.

Yehuda Unterman, remind us to give tzedakah to universal causes.

There are vital reasons for supporting neighborhood institutions, even if we don’t benefit from them personally.

In his comprehensive report for the Avi Chai Foundation, Giving Jewish: How Big Funders Have Transformed American Jewish Philanthropy, Dr. Jack Wertheimer tells us that local donors are the bedrock of Jewish communal life. These contributions keep our shuls open, pay the yeshivah teachers, maintain the mikvah and provide scholarships for summer camp.

If local donors don’t sustain local institutions, no one else will. Building campaigns are a community stress test. In effect, they are a probe of whether we care enough about our kehillah to make a major contribution, a gift drawn from our assets and that stretches our capacity.

Our gifts are vital because there are no national funders who are going to swoop in and save our mikvah or local day school. Without well-functioning local organizations, communities cannot attract and retain young families. Neighborhoods would soon stagnate and eventually wither. We are halachically directed to support and sustain those who live closest to us—but their well-being is also very much in our own self-interest.

Yet we don’t only live in our own, circumscribed pod. Our obligations extend to fellow Jews in the United States, Israel and worldwide. If Knesset Yisrael is one body, we are each of us touched by a danger to the rest.

We see this most clearly in moments of crisis. Abe Pollin, z”l, who owned the Washington Nationals, used to describe the winter evening early in 1947 when his father took him to a gathering of local ba’alei batim. The chairman

opened by saying, “No one leaves this room until we raise the money.”

He locked the doors. By the end of the night, they had raised enough to buy the refugee ship, the Exodus.

But when we’re not faced with such emergencies, we must still respond to the needs we see around us.

Margy-Ruth Davis is a founder and principal of Perry Davis Associates, an international fundraising firm.

By Rabbi Shalom Baum The Tur (YD 256) prescribes that before distributing tzedakah funds, the gabbaim in charge of disbursement should use their intelligence and foresight to evaluate the particular needs of individuals within their community. Our standards should be no less when we, as individuals guided by halachic authorities, attempt to benefit our families and communities with the gifts granted to us by our Creator and Provider.

After finding a balance between living and giving (Shulchan Aruch YD 249), we must determine the individuals and charitable institutions to whom we wish to donate. This has been an ongoing question in halachic literature.

The Sifrei in Devarim (Piska 116) offers guidelines for making these decisions, based on elements such as familial and geographic proximity to the donor. This list has been codified into law (Shulchan Aruch YD 551:3).

For example, we must first donate to family members and then to people living in our immediate area. Residents of Israel and institutions in Israel must also be considered, with the Chatam Sofer (YD 233:44) according those in Jerusalem a special status. continued on page 48

The New Poverty

Met Council recently opened a new warehouse in New York City to meet the growing demand during Covid. Courtesy of Met Council

By David Greenfield As a community, we are used to giving to assist the not used to are We impoverished. giving to a large population of people suddenly plunged into poverty. But this is the crisis Covid has created.

Since the pandemic began, our Covid Relief Hotline has received 14,000 calls—90 percent of the callers have never sought assistance before.

Covid has been a disaster for the frum community economically. The need for emergency food assistance in the greater New York area (we have a network of seventy-five pantries) has tripled since the pandemic. Met Council staff who have been working with the city’s Jewish needy population for decades have told me this is the worst economic crisis they’ve ever seen.

Since the pandemic began, our Covid Relief Hotline has received 14,000 calls— 90 percent of the callers have never sought assistance before.

The frum community has been financially hit much harder than other communities since a significant percentage of individuals in our community are entrepreneurial.

This is a very self-reliant community that runs and supports its own businesses. Prior to Covid, for example, when one made a simchah, he might have called upon the services of a caterer, an event planner, musicians, a photographer, et cetera. All of these small business owners are suffering now. That’s just one “industry”—extrapolate that to other business sectors such as

restaurants, retail, real estate and travel and the list goes on and on.

This pandemic has caused the loss of tens of billions of dollars in the frum community—from the real estate owner whose property values have plummeted to the musician who hasn’t had a job lined up in nine months. And while many of those who are financially stable and secure are giving, they are not giving enough. Now is the time for donors to increase funding. There are plenty of philanthropists who put their money in family foundations.

Now is the time to spend from those foundations. We need to alleviate the poverty. We need to ensure people have what to eat, that they can pay their gas and electric bills and that they can get back on their feet.

David Greenfield is CEO and executive director of Met Council, a Jewish charity dedicated to serving the needy in the greater New York area.

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continued from page 46

Although it provides a general framework, this list is not an absolute codification of how to distribute our funds. According to the Aruch Hashulchan (YD 251:5-6), it is meant to emphasize and prioritize particular needs, but not to the exclusion of other charitable demands, as details of giving cannot be determined using an inflexible rule or formula.

Rather, giving should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, zt”l, has many responsa on this topic, stating (Iggerot Moshe YD 1:144) that individual donors have greater flexibility than communal charitable funds in allocating donations. Rav Moshe (Iggerot Moshe YD 2:115) was once asked to help determine whether a community should prioritize funds to build a new mikvah or to strengthen an already existing yeshivah. Included in his answer is a mandate for the local rabbinate to study the relevant facts on the ground before making a final decision.

Similar types of questions about establishing priorities are discussed throughout rabbinic literature.

Rabbi Joseph ben Solomon Colon in thirteenth-century France (Maharik 128) emphasized the centrality of synagogues as recipients of a fair share of communal funds, even in the face of conflicting requests. This emphasis was codified in the Shulchan Aruch (YD 249:16), although other opinions have been advanced by, for example, the Vilna Gaon (YD 249:16) in the eighteenth century and in later commentaries. While synagogues were physically closed, especially at the outset of the Covid-19 pandemic, the need to support these epicenters of Jewish communal life continues. In addition to funding their ongoing activities, synagogues had to quickly begin to provide for the spiritual, intellectual, social and physical needs of their communities, even from a distance. In many ways, these have always been essential roles of the beit knesset. Historically, these efforts have included providing 48

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kiddushim and food for wayfarers (Pesachim 111b), establishing social outlets for membership (Megillah 28b), and providing for the ritual obligations of less educated members of the community (Sefer Kol Bo 44 and Shulchan Aruch, OC 124:1).

On Donor Rights

By Rabbi Aaron Kotler A donor has a right to say, “I want to support a particular cause.”

Therefore, if an institution initiates a relationship with a donor, it’s a two-way responsibility, because if you take money from someone, you need to represent yourself accurately. The institution needs to articulate its mission clearly—this is what we do and this is what we’re going to do with your money.

What donors want most is disclosure. They want to know what their money is going for, if not in detail then at least in a general way; they want to know that the organization is well run. If the donor appreciates the mission and how the organization is run, then he is the right donor for that organization. After that, he should not be involved in dictating its policies.

Conflict sometimes arises when there is a lack of clarity about the mission of the institution. For example, a donor may say, “I want to support kiruv.” A local yeshivah might have a rabbi on staff who engages in a kiruv but overall it’s not a kiruv institution. It would be appropriate for the yeshivah to say, “Look, we’re a yeshivah, that’s our mission, it’s what we do. Yes, we have a rabbi who does kiruv. We’d like you to fund that program, but don’t expect all our boys to go out every Wednesday night and do kiruv. That’s not what we do.” To avoid conflict, an institution should have a clear mission and convey that mission to potential donors so they understand what they are supporting.

At the end of the day, giving is very personal. It’s emotional; it’s spiritual; it’s where an individual is growing his own spiritual assets.

On Being Well Run

By Rabbi Aaron Kotler Many institutions have strong boards. At Beth Medrash Govoha (BMG) in Lakewood, the chair of our audit committee is CFO of an $10 billion-dollar hedge fund.

Another board member is a leading director at Blackstone, which is a major financial firm. We have the capacity to have a board like that, which has inspired confidence in us.

Smaller institutions or local yeshivos are not expected to have board members with that range of experience.

But a donor can still get a sense of how well an organization is run; it can be by knowing that your local reliable accountant is on the board.

In general, I think that the Jewish nonprofit/tzedakah community in North America has relatively well-run institutions, be it Bikur Cholim, Hatzalah, Tomchei Shabbos, mikvahs or yeshivos. I don’t see Hatzalah ambulances driving around with gold-plated bumpers, metaphorically speaking. Most Jewish nonprofits don’t have massive overheads that really cross the line. Are there inefficiencies? There will always be inefficiencies. Are there places that could do a better job or that need a reboot every now and then? Here in BMG we’re always taking a fresh look and asking, how do we save money, how do we do a better job? I am in touch with many other institutions and I often see the same attitude.

Perhaps a more important question that should be asked when weighing priorities is how necessary the institution is altogether. For example, do we need Jewish museums? I’m not sure. A friend of mine helped build a Jewish museum in an out-of-town community. Those who donated to the museum were not the kind of people who would have donated to the local shul or mikvah. My friend did a great job raising funds among this population. Would that be my own communal priority? No. Personally I think there are greater

priorities. There are poor families, struggling kollel families, rebbeim who are not managing financially and these would be my focus. I still respect the person who makes a different choice—so long as his choice is in accord with halachah.

On Shifts in Giving

By Rabbi Shalom Baum When donating money to the poor, halachah assigns great value to keeping the donor and recipient unaware of each other (Shulchan Aruch YD 249:7).

This anonymity maintains the dignity of the needy individual and reflects the modesty and humility of the donor.

By contrast, there is much precedent in the mesorah for recognition of donors to causes such as schools and shuls. While we are cautioned against seeking glory for making charitable contributions and are taught that gloating about one’s generosity is a bad omen for the contributor, it is certainly permitted—and even appropriate—to memorialize a contribution by placing the name of the donor on the item or on the wall of a building (Rema, YD 249:13). The source for this is a responsum of the Rashba (Teshuvot HaRashba 681), who provides several justifications for the common practice of placing a donor’s name on a donated object. One justification is that expressly recognizing the contributions of donors by name “opens the door” and provides an incentive for other people to contribute.

In November 2015, in preparation for a capital campaign at my shul, I asked Rav Chaim Kanievsky, shlita, if it was ideal to rely on this Rashba to create multiple levels of incentives for communal giving or if it was perhaps only a concession to people’s egoistical desire for recognition.

Rav Kanievsky advised me that the halachah states that recognition is an ideal form of giving to institutions by most individuals. However, he also acknowledged that this is not the only lechatchilah (ideal) way and that persons seeking no recognition should

not be pushed in that direction, as their desire for anonymity is best for them. I have noticed that throughout this pandemic there has been little or no necessity to create incentives, not only for giving to the needy but also when soliciting or receiving funds for communal institutions. Most donors do not seek any recognition and appreciate the urgent and compelling need to maintain these institutions, especially during a time of crisis. Many have come forward even before being approached.

In time, we will likely return to the more traditional way of showering honors on those who truly deserve it. There is broad backing for such an approach (see Teshuvot V’hanhagot 2:481), although this should remain at the discretion of the giver. At times, anonymity is a reflection not only of modesty but of an awareness of the unique period that confronts us.

By Margy-Ruth Davis In how to give—and where to give— there have been societal shifts.

Donors today are less likely to make unrestricted gifts except to organizations that they trust and know well. With a robust society and flourishing economy, Israel is no longer our poor relation. American donors now ask whether Israelis are also contributing to the institutions that they are asked to support.

In the broader Jewish arena, your giving may depend on your interests—on what speaks to you.

For some donors, physical security is paramount. Others care deeply about spiritual security or about national policies that affect all Jews.

We also breathe the same air, use the same hospitals and enjoy the same concert halls and museums as our non-Jewish neighbors. Beyond the Talmudic concept of darchei shalom, walking in peace with those around us, we have a responsibility to the society we live in.

With these many priorities all pressing their claims on us, what percentage of our tzedakah

Local donors are the bedrock of Jewish fund should we allocate to each?

Life-threatening urgencies always take precedence. Still, we can come up with a quick rule of thumb for typical years. Consider allocating one-half of your charity budget to local or regional obligations; 30 to 40 percent to Jewish causes worldwide; and the remainder to address societal issues.

In truth, making small gifts to everyone who asks is unhelpful. It dilutes the impact you can make.

Worse, that $10 check or credit card donation may cost the organization more to handle than the contribution itself. Think about it: each gift must be logged in both bookkeeping and donor data bases. The credit card processor takes a small percentage.

Checks are tallied and walked to the bank. Someone must write, print and send thank you notes and there are further administrative and accounting procedures and reconciliations.

If you do care about impact, fewer larger gifts will accomplish more than many smaller gifts. Of course, this depends on the size and scope of the institution—and on how much you are able to give. A gift of $1,000 may provide twenty families with a Passover Seder meal. Yet, the same $1,000 won’t even pay for a morning’s worth of electric bills at the local hospital.* Giving wisely and well is a difficult task, deeply rewarding but requiring an open heart, a keen eye and a sharp focus. They may be misattributed to Winston Churchill, but still these are words to guide us: “We make a living by what we get.

We make a life by what we give.” * Ed. Note: This applies to those who can choose to make one large or many small gifts. Donors who make many small gifts according to their abilities are adhering to the mishnah in Menachot: “Whether [one gives] a lot or a little, [the key is] that one directs his mind and heart toward Heaven.”

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The Surest Path to Eternity

Giving - Working for the Klal

Interview with Gary Torgow

by Nechama Carmel

ON BEING A COMMUNAL LEADER: Often when we think of giving, we think of it in the most literal sense—tzedakah. But is that really the only way one can give? What about giving of one’s time, one’s energies, one’s skills and one’s talents for the klal?

What about those who serve as the engines behind the kehillah—those who coordinate the local day school’s dinner, organize clothing drives in the shul or open a simchah gemach? There are endless ways to give that have nothing to do with money but has everything to do with time, idealism, commitment and dedication to klal work.

Want advice and ideas on how to be osek b’tzarchei tzibbur? Read on.

Nechama Carmel: You’ve served as president of Yeshiva Beth Yehudah for many years and you are involved in a number of national and local organizations. How did you first get involved in communal work?

Gary Torgow: My maternal grandfather, Manuel Merzon, a”h, emigrated from Russia to the United States in 1918 as a sixteen-year-old orphan. He worked hard, became a lawyer and built up a law practice.

He was the first lawyer to wear a yarmulke in the courts in the ‘40s.

But his real avocation was helping people. He was deeply involved in assisting the community, always with an eye on those less fortunate. During and after the war, he felt it was his responsibility to help the European Jews, and he brought many families over. He also served pro bono as a lawyer for the communal organizations in Detroit, and I grew up watching his kindness. My grandfather had a strong influence on every area of my life, including my communal career.

I started out in communal work as an officer in our local Young Israel because my grandfather was a member of the shul. During those years I Gary Torgow is chairman of TCF Financial Corp, a bank holding company in Michigan. He is a senior vice president of the Orthodox Union and chair of OU Kosher.

Nechama Carmel is editor-in-chief of Jewish Action.

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developed a very close relationship with Rabbi Avrohom Abba Freedman, zt”l, who ultimately became my Rebbi.

Rabbi Freedman came to Detroit in 1944. He was sent by Reb Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz to build a Jewish day school; Rabbi Mendlowitz felt that there is an obligation to establish a day school in any place where there are 5,000 Jews. Rabbi Freedman and his colleagues took a fledgling afternoon school and turned it into a day school that currently has three beautiful campuses with more than 1,100 children. Detroit has other flourishing and wonderful yeshivos and day schools as well. Today, there are thousands of children in day schools in Detroit all because Rabbi Mendlowitz’s foresight and vision to send Rabbi Freedman, along with other outstanding rabbis, to Detroit.

My Rebbi was mission-centric; he was totally focused on the Jewish people. There was no small talk with him. It was all business, and it wasn’t your business, it was the Almighty’s business. He encouraged me, among others, to get involved in the local Jewish day school they built, Yeshiva Beth Yehudah. That is really where my communal career expanded.

NC: Having been a communal leader for decades and having worked with many other talented leaders, what would you say is one of the main lessons you’ve learned about askanus, communal leadership?

GT: We are familiar with the Torah description of how Avraham Avinu had a dream in which God came to him and told him to pack his bags and leave his father’s home. Avraham left, of course, and followed God’s directive, and the whole world changed as a result. He became the leader of monotheism in the world and changed and uplifted millions of lives. The Sefas Emes asks, quoting the Ramban: Who was this man, Avraham Avinu?

We don’t know anything about him before God came to him with this commandment. The Sefas Emes, quoting the Zohar, explains that on the night that Avraham Avinu had the dream in which God told him, “Lech

lecha mei’artzecha umimolad’techa umibeis avicha,” every human being on earth had that same dream. Yet only Avraham Avinu got out of bed the next morning, packed his bags and did what God instructed him to do.

And that seems to be one of the key lessons of communal service. If you’re willing to put yourself out there and get involved in the community, the Almighty will surely assist you.

But you have to hear that frequency.

Rabbi Meir Zlotowitz, zt”l, once said, quoting Rav Moshe Feinstein, zt”l, that a bas kol (heavenly voice) goes out every day. But only a small number of people hear it. But those who do hear it, grab onto it, and have the power of the Ribbono Shel Olam behind them to do good things for the Jewish people.

I learned all of this by watching my Rebbi. Detroit in the ‘40s was a spiritual desert. He told me that on the first Shavuos night after he moved to Detroit, there wasn’t even a minyan of men for the vasikin minyan after learning, not one minyan. Today there are thousands attending minyanim. He, his rabbinic colleagues and the askanim of that time get the credit for that.

NC: Do you view communal work as a religious obligation? Is this something that everyone is supposed to be doing on some level?

GT: Whenever people ask me about askanus, I tell them all the same thing, which is what I tell my own kids: Everyone should get involved in some way, but it has to be at the right time in your life. If you do it at the appropriate time in your life, you’ll be able to give your maximum abilities to the community.

You need to first take care of your spouses and your children; your first obligation is to establish the foundations of your own homes.

Build up your Torah studies, your resume, your profession, your financial condition. Then, as time goes on, you’ll be more capable of contributing significantly to the community. That’s a basic primer for those who want to get involved in askanus: first make your familial foundations and career stable.

NC: What was the best advice you ever got regarding askanus?

GT: Early in my career as president of the day school, I visited Rav Moshe Wolfson, shlita, mashgiach of Torah Vodaath in Brooklyn. He told me something that really stuck with me.

The key to successful askanus, he said, is to make every decision l’shem Shamayim, for the sake of Heaven, and the Ribbono Shel Olam will be with you. How do you know if you’re doing something l’shem Shamayim?

Don’t make decisions based on negios (self-interest). Do what’s right for the klal, without personal interest.

Also to keep in mind when making decisions is that you have to look at the big picture. Take a school, for example.

When running a school, it’s inevitable that you will have a rebbi who is ready to retire. The rebbi may not belong in the classroom anymore, but he has dedicated his life to the children of the community, and he must be taken care of. You need to be generous with those who have devoted themselves to chinuch. The rebbi should be given a proper financial send-off, and the Ribbono Shel Olam will help you find the money if you do the right thing.

Being president of Yeshiva Beth Yehudah has been a great primer in emunah and bitachon. I witnessed the Almighty bring about miracles.

When things were really, really tough, angels came along. I think the Ribbono Shel Olam looks at the way an institution operates and says, “Okay this is a l’shem Shamayim institution of tinokos shel beis rabban (children learning Torah). This is what I’m proud of, and I want to see it supported.”

There is a non-Orthodox amazingly generous couple in our Detroit community. They are wonderful, outstanding people who are givers to all kinds of causes in the community, but the local Orthodox day school wasn’t necessarily their top priority.

The Yeshiva Beth Yehudah had many needs, so we called the husband. We said, “Jimmy, we understand your wife has a big birthday coming up.”

He said, “Yes, she does.” We said: “We have an idea for a fantastic birthday gift for her.” He said, “Really? What?”

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We said, “We think you should buy her the new campus of the girls’ school of Yeshiva Beth Yehudah.” The request was out of left field; the Almighty placed the idea into our minds. “No. I don’t think so,” Jimmy answered.

But a few minutes later, he called back and said, “I forgot to ask you— how much is it?” We gave him the figure, and remarkably, with his great foresight and Hashem’s guidance, he said: “Okay, I’ll be happy to do so.”

Subsequently, his wife, Nancy, told me the rest of the story. She celebrated her birthday with a family party.

When it was her husband’s turn to speak, he said, “Nancy, I bought you a really, really expensive gift.” She said, “Oh, Jimmy, I hope it’s not another house. We have enough houses.” He said, “No, it’s not a house.” She said, “I hope it’s not another piece of jewelry, I have plenty of jewelry.” He said, “It’s not jewelry.” She said, “I hope it’s not another piece of art, we have no room on our walls.” He said, “Nancy, it’s not art, it’s not jewelry and it’s not another house, but it’s a gift you can never return.” With tears in his eyes, Jimmy said, “Nancy, I bought you the campus of Yeshiva Beth Yehudah girls’ school.” She told me that she started to cry. And she said, “Jimmy, that is the nicest gift I have ever received.”

I’ve seen miracles like this happen over and over again. If the Ribbono Shel Olam likes what’s being done, He will certainly help and provide. I’ve become a stronger believer as a result of these communal experiences.

NC: That’s an amazing story. Do you have any other stories to share?

GT: At one point, when our Yeshiva was struggling to get through the weekly payrolls, Rabbi Freedman, aware of the tremendous financial pressure we were feeling, suggested that whenever a donation came in, regardless of its size, we should pen a personal note of thanks and send it off to the contributor. I thought to myself: Rebbi, I already have so little time in my day. When will I ever find the time to write personal notes to every contributor to the Yeshiva? However, I felt compelled to follow his advice, 52

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even if it seemed like a lot of effort. To further encourage me, Rabbi Freedman told me he was confident it was the right thing to do because I would make lots of people feel good and maybe, just maybe, middah keneged middah, the kindness you extend is mirrored by the kindness you receive, Hashem would make us feel good and reduce some of the financial pressure we were feeling, struggling to make the Yeshiva’s payroll.

One of those donors whom I corresponded with was a Holocaust survivor who worked for many years as a supervisor in the General Motors plant in Michigan. Three or four times a year, he would send the Yeshiva a $500 donation, and as my Rebbi had instructed, I wrote him a personal note each time the school received his check. Many times I tried calling and meeting with him, but he was shy and somewhat reclusive, so I only met him a few times. After nearly a decade of communicating with him through personal cards and letters of thanks, both when receiving a donation and before yamim tovim, we learned one morning that he had passed away. He had never had children, and his wife had predeceased him. The funeral was a graveside one with only a minyan of people in attendance. A few months after his passing, the controller of the Yeshiva dropped a large package the Yeshiva had received off at my office. Inside was a copy of every letter I had written to this man for over ten years as well as a note he had written a few months before his passing. The note read: Dear Gary, I cannot tell you how much these thank you letters meant to me. I read each of them over and over and felt so great every time I received one. I know five hundred dollars is not a lot of money, yet you made me feel like a million-dollar giver. It warmed my heart, and I will never forget the love I felt.

I took a moment to reflect and to mentally thank my Rebbi for his wise suggestion. This man’s five-hundred-dollar donations never put much of a dent in the Yeshiva’s cash flow, but much more importantly, I felt

truly wonderful that we had had the opportunity to bring a bit of cheer to a lonely and special neshamah in my community. I still have that man’s letter, and every so often I pull it out to remind myself of my Rebbi and the important need to concentrate not just on the donation but on each individual, notwithstanding his or her financial contributions.

It was a lesson I will never forget.

There is also a small postscript to the story. It turned out that this man had accumulated quite a bit of money, and a month after those letters arrived, his lawyer contacted us and told us that his client had left his entire estate to Yeshiva Beth Yehudah. It was continued proof that doing the right thing for the community had many seen and unseen benefits.

NC: You interface quite a bit with non-Orthodox communal leaders and organizations as well. Can you tell us about your involvement in philanthropic work with non-Orthodox partners?

GT: A really important part of askanus and philanthropy is to give outside of the immediate Orthodox community.

I am involved with the outstanding Detroit Federation, a relationship which was essentially born out of my Yeshiva Beth Yehudah experience.

The Jewish Federation graciously and unconditionally supports all of the day schools of our community, and I am impressed and grateful for its support, I felt a responsibility to join in their efforts. If you want to make a kiddush Hashem in the broad community, you cannot only be a giver to things that are specific to you, your children and your family. You have to be a giver beyond that. Being ecumenical and having the ability to go beyond your four walls can be a kiddush Hashem and is a very important part of askanus. I have learned in my career that if the Orthodox community joins the Federation circles and gives to the Federation, the Federation will feel much more comfortable giving to Orthodox causes. There are also great benefits to giving beyond even the Jewish community. It promotes

brotherly love and warmth from many who need and deserve our attention and generosity. You want to strive to be a giver and help as many people and causes as possible, always in consultation with da’as Torah.

A final story: One night around twenty years ago, Rabbi Freedman called and said he was coming by to see me. That was always a sign of trouble.

Before I had a chance to ask any questions, he was at my doorstep. He told me that he wanted me to go with him to New York in the morning to visit Rav Avrohom Pam, zt”l. I told him it would be very difficult for me to go the following day and asked if it could be postponed. He was very insistent and would not take no for an answer. When I asked what the topic was and why the urgency, he simply said, “We will discuss it when we meet with the rabbi.” We left the next morning and arrived at Rav Pam’s home before noon. As soon as we entered, Rabbi Freedman took out a

crinkled newspaper with a short article about several people that the Michigan Democratic Party was considering as potential candidates for the United States Senate. Unfortunately, and not of my doing, my name appeared at the top of the list. Rabbi Freedman said to Rav Pam, “Please tell Gary that being president of a yeshivah is much more important than a US Senate seat.” I began to explain that the article was incorrect and that I was not considering any run for political office.

Rabbi Freedman would not accept my explanations and insisted Rav Pam tell me in no uncertain terms that volunteering for a yeshivah was the ultimate public service.

Rav Pam concluded with words that I will never forget and that I live with every day. “You should feel tremendously blessed to be one of the handpicked representatives of the Greatest Power in the Universe; don’t ever trade it for a fleeting moment of fame or notoriety. Nothing is more

important than working for the klal; it is the surest path to eternity.”

On the flight home, my Rebbi was as pleased as could be, fully confident that the subject was closed forever. But for good measure and in Rabbi Freedman’s inimitable way, my loving Rebbi turned to me and said, “Okay, so you heard what Rav Pam said, right?” I said, “Yes, Rebbi, I heard it.” To which he added, “I want to tell you something else. You weren’t going to win anyway.”

WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU! To send a letter to Jewish Action, edited for clarity.

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Chesed: Four Ways Anyone Can Make a Difference

By Zevy Wolman

O

ne idea that meaningfully encapsulated the experience of 2020 for me was shared by my friend Rabbi Dovid Bashevkin (@dbashideas) in the week leading up to Parashas Noach. He tweeted: “Opening of Parshas Noah mentions his name 3 times because there were 3 Noahs: (1) Noah before the flood (2) Noah during the flood (3) Noah after the flood. (Midrash Tanchuma 5:1.) Feels like we’re all in a similar moment now. Praying that we will all merit to see our 3rd self.” We are all living through a period now that will necessarily change us. The only question is what we are going to look like on the other side.

As our community and society at large look past a difficult year and begin to focus on the future, we are faced with a new reality. The months and years ahead of us, however, contain hope and promise when it comes to the opportunity to effect change and have a positive impact on everyone around us.

One of the silver linings from the tragic events of this past year has been our redefinition of the word “hero.” The world seems to have, temporarily at least, traded the capes of superheroes and the jerseys of overpaid athletes for the scrubs of doctors and nurses and the everyday heroism of educators teaching from home with their own families to care for, and the heroism of parents trying to work full-time jobs at home while managing their children’s schooling. There were heroes who looked after their neighbors and heroes who looked after their communities. These included sanitation workers who risked their health to keep our cities clean and nameless epidemiologists who worked on vaccines. As we consider what we are going to take with us from this year and what our third “post-Covid selves” will look like, perhaps we can take inspiration from the extraordinary acts of kindness performed by the ordinary people around us.

Zevy (Isaac) Wolman lives with his family in Baltimore. He is involved in various communal organizations and runs a toy company in his spare time.

If you are looking to involve yourself in chesed, there are myriad ways to do so, including engaging in acts of kindness and volunteering for your local day school or communal organizations. I’d like to lay out a few basic ideas to sketch a blueprint for chesed that does not require a significant amount of money and can help anyone make a difference.

Rule No. 1: Don’t recreate the wheel. Leverage existing organizational infrastructure.

Dozens, if not hundreds, of Jewish organizations have come up with effective ways to tackle social issues, from unemployment to mental health issues. Many of these organizations are based in specific areas, however, oftentimes those directing these organizations would be more than happy to help others implement the service or program they offer in their own communities. For example, over the past few years, the Baltimore community has leveraged the incredible work of organizations like EPI (job placement and interest-free loans to business startups), Mesila (personal financial education), Relief Resources (mental health referrals), Bobbie’s Place (clothing distribution), World of Giving (household goods distribution) and others by opening Baltimore-specific branches. These are all organizations that have worked out the kinks in their concepts over the years. By leveraging existing practices and systems and partnering with these and similar organizations, other Jewish communities can stand on the shoulders of their incredible work and save large sums of money.

Rule No. 2: Focus on Sustainability A very meaningful concept in the larger nonprofit world is sustainability, that is, creating organizations that are self-sufficient and do not rely exclusively on raising money to fund their operations (see Building Social Business [New York, 2010] and A World of Three Zeros [New York, 2017], both authored by Muhammad Yunus).

The best way to have an impact that will be long-lasting and far-reaching is if it can be done in a sustainable

Bobbie’s Place, a clothing “store” in Brooklyn, provides trendy Shabbos and yom tov clothing in a dignified way to struggling families. Courtesy of Avi Schick

manner. Nonprofit organizations that rely on raising a dollar to give away a dollar, while sometimes necessary, are limited by how much money they can raise. Conversely, there is literally no limit to the impact that can be achieved by creating or contributing to charities (or “social businesses”) that provide value to the needy and are also self-sustaining.

A good example of a self-sustaining charity is an interest-free loan fund.

An outstanding model of such a fund is EPI (mentioned above), a business

loan fund based in Lakewood, New Jersey that has given interest-free loans of $25,000 to $50,000 to over 600 businesses in the tristate area. A smaller fund was started in Baltimore (in conjunction with EPI) with a $100,000 grant from a local ba’al chesed that has been turned over more than five times and has helped close to twenty local Jewish businesses get off the ground or expand their operations.

The $25,000 loans disbursed in Baltimore helped people like J. expand his K9 bedbug detection

Never Underestimate Your Own Power “Too many people don’t realize how profound their actions are. If I had one message for aspiring communal leaders, it would be this: Never underestimate the power of one. The impact that one human being can make in the world has reverberations and ripple effects that are simply impossible to gauge.”

By Manette Mayberg, as told to Leah Lightman. Manette is a trustee of the Mayberg Foundation, which invests in Jewish education and engagement initiatives. She founded the Jewish Education Innovation Challenge, catalyzing radical improvement in Jewish day schools, and MyZuzah, bringing kosher, fair trade mezuzot to under-affiliated Jews worldwide. She is also a national vice president of the OU. Leah Lightman is a writer who lives with her family in Lawrence, New York.

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therapy practice into a state-of-the-

business. Starting with a single dog and one truck, he now has an employee and four dogs, enabling him to take on customers all over the state. It also helped Shmuel and Malka build a small family therapy practice into a state-of-the-art practice with a 6,000-square-foot facility and employees and contracts in multiple states. When these types of businesses become successful, wealth is created, which circulates back into the community and helps employ local individuals.

Another sustainable enterprise is the New Jersey–based The Jewish Entrepreneur (TJE), an organization created to aggregate successful businesspeople who can mentor those looking to start or grow their businesses. The positive effect of mentoring is evident in Bracha’s

Aim High “We shouldn’t limit ourselves.

God runs the world and can make anything happen. So why shouldn’t one aim high, for the greatest outcome one could possibly imagine? Potential is limitless, and therefore results are limitless. Things go beyond nature all the time; we just have to recognize them. I have learned that nothing is impossible.”

- Manette Mayberg

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story. Bracha started an e-commerce children’s accessories business to help support her family and was seeking mentorship in a number of areas to increase her revenue. TJE provided her with three different mentors: one for sales to big-box stores, one for e-commerce and one for financial management. With her mentors’ help, Bracha’s business grew to an average of $1.5 million in annual revenue. She was so taken by the process that she herself now serves as a mentor in e-commerce and Amazon sales in addition to helping budding entrepreneurs with overseas manufacturing issues. In the five years since its inception, TJE has, on a modest budget, matched over 1,500 early-stage entrepreneurs with 300 successful business people for mentorship. This has facilitated tens of millions of dollars in increased revenue for these businesses, and by extension, this is money that makes its way back into our community.

With creative thinking and the backing of visionary leadership, each community can tilt the balance toward sustainability and thus create far-reaching and long-lasting impact.

Rule No. 3: Get the maximum value out of every dollar.

If an organization cannot be completely self-sustaining, the next best thing is to find innovative ways to get the best return on the tzedakah dollar. One of my favorite organizations in this regard is Bobbie’s Place, a clothing “store” in

Brooklyn, which you would assume, if you didn’t know any better, is just a regular storefront. Started by Michal and Avi Schick of Brooklyn to provide beautiful Shabbos and yom tov clothing in a dignified way to struggling families, the store is open twice a year during the yom tov season. Serving more than 9,500 children and teens each year, with distribution operations in Brooklyn, Monsey, Queens, Passaic and Baltimore, Bobbie’s Place provides 90,000 articles of clothing— including coats, jackets, skirts, shirts, dresses, suits, pants, gloves, pajamas and more to those in need.

By leveraging their relationship with clothing manufacturers, the Schicks purchase first-line, trendy clothing at significantly discounted prices, and in some cases at cost price, from clothing manufacturers. “We have no paid employees and almost no overhead,” says Avi Schick. “That means that more than ninety-seven cents of every dollar contributed is used to purchase clothing. And because we work with manufacturers who appreciate and support our mission, the discounts we receive mean that a family in need gets four dollars’ worth of clothing for every dollar that we spend.”

(Incidentally, Bobbie’s Place is also a perfect example of an organization that can be leveraged by other communities; the Schicks have been working with the Baltimore community for close to ten years to provide tens of thousands of articles of clothing to those in need).

Rule No. 4: Use technology to achieve scale.

As technology advances and becomes more ubiquitous, it is easier to use with minimal expense for the benefit of large groups of people. What is helping to supercharge this phenomenon is that, as part of our new post-Covid reality, people are willing to both work and accept services remotely. This enables individuals and organizations to harness the power of technology to dramatically expand their reach.

In July of this year, a group of dedicated, communal-minded

individuals launched “Klal Ventures,” an organization seeking to assist people with interesting ideas for scalable chesed ventures and to help fund, build and roll out such ventures. The following are a few of the inspirational individuals who applied for assistance: • Leah Solomon, a fourteen-year-old who lives in the Five Towns in New York, conceived of a platform that would match high school girls willing to tutor younger girls in their own school or in schools across the country as a chesed. Leah was inspired to start the program after seeing the difference she was able to make in tutoring an elementary school child in her neighborhood. The tutoring would provide young students with the ability to review schoolwork, study for tests, build meaningful relationships with appropriate older mentor-figures and develop their self-confidence. At the same time, mentors will get the opportunity to develop their skills and create lasting relationships. Klal Ventures is currently helping Leah build the technology, while her venture, called “After the School Bell,” is recruiting pilot schools. There is a lot of excitement about the platform’s potential.

• Ned Schoenfeld and a group of lay leaders in the New York area are creating Parnassah Exchange, an initiative that will use a sophisticated technology to match job seekers and companies across the country looking for talent and gig work. Additionally, Parnassah Exchange will collaborate with the various job assistance organizations around the country.

• A group of women with PhDs in data science are volunteering to train other women in the field (mostly young women whose husbands are learning in kollel in Israel). Led by Dina Yankelewitz, these women have also launched their own agency providing remote data and AI services to major corporations around the world, enabling them to hire their own trainees and offer incredibly well-paying positions.

These are just three examples of entrepreneurial-minded individuals who are creating valuable, scalable technological platforms that will provide significant benefit to their communities with relatively minimal non-recoverable, long-term costs. Hopefully, they represent a new generation of innovative and inspiring chesed leaders. The organizations discussed in this article are just a small sampling of an exceptional chesed infrastructure that exists in our community, and the principles laid out are by no means exhaustive. It goes without saying that while our community has been successful by many metrics in helping ease the burdens and challenges facing individuals and families, there is still a long way to go. Hopefully, this article will help spark discussion and encourage people to consider the things they are passionate about so that they can find ways to innovate and give back, improving life for our friends, our neighbors and our community as a whole.

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Giving in Halachah:

Giving - Halachah

WHAT ARE PRIORITIES IN TZEDAKAH?

Q. Are tzedakah decisions totally discretionary? Are there rules?

A. Even the most devoted practitioners of chesed and charity are human and are restricted by the limitations of reality. Resources are finite; time, money and emotional energy all require careful allocation. Since resources that are bestowed in one place cannot be bestowed elsewhere, the halachah has formulated principles of prioritization to guide the maximal fulfillment of the crucial mitzvah of tzedakah.

In general, the discussion is complicated by the fact that the expression of charity will generally allow for some measure of personal discretion. Discretion, by definition, would seem to be incompatible with regulation. On the one hand, tzedakah is a concrete religious obligation, codified in the Yoreh De’ah section of Shulchan Aruch along with much of what makes up the curriculum of rabbinic training. Nonetheless,

the subjective factors applicable in evaluating charitable priorities are manifold, often obscure, and at times willfully misrepresented. To calculate urgency of need, priority, proportionality, honesty of supplicants and countless other factors, and emerge with clear direction, is a daunting task.

Nonetheless, discretion it remains; when all is said and done, individual judgment will steer the course. A frequent theme in rabbinic responsa is that after carefully analyzing the pertinent halachic aspects, it is up to the donor to assess the application.1 The Vilna Gaon is quoted as having homiletically understood the verse, “. . . V’lo tikpotz et yadcha mei’achicha ha’evyon—. . . You shall not close your hand against your destitute brother” (Deut. 15:7), as an instruction about the evaluative responsibility contained within the tzedakah imperative.2 When the hand is closed in a fist, all the fingers appear to be the same size. However, when

Rabbi Daniel Z. Feldman is a rosh yeshivah at the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary at Yeshiva University, as well as an instructor in the Sy Syms School of Business, and has taught for the Wurzweiler School of Social Work and the Katz School of Continuing Education. He also serves as the executive editor of the RIETS initiative of YU Press.

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the hand is open, it becomes clear that the fingers are all of different length. Similarly, the appearance of objectivity in tzedakah standards is deceptive. In real life, appropriate giving will always require a judgment call based on the subjective elements.

Q. How does one prioritize among the many who need?

A. The first priority incumbent on a donor is the support of his own needy relatives, with the closest relatives to be supported first.3 (As noted previously, however, this principle is inapplicable to the disburser of public funds, who is prohibited from favoring his relatives.4) Perhaps the most famous principle of prioritization is that of “aniyei ircha kodmim,”5 indicating preference to those in closest proximity. The Meiri maintains that this is the overriding priority, and all other factors are evaluated only within this context.6 The Panim Yafot identifies two significant textual clues towards prioritization in the verse “Ki yihyeh vecha evyon…—If there shall be a destitute person among you…” (Deut.

15:7) The words “vecha” and “evyon” are of particular relevance. “Evyon” is a stronger term for a poor person than “ani,” suggesting true indigence.

Etymologically, the word is related to the word “ta’ev,” indicating “need.”

This becomes a guiding principle in prioritization: kol hata’ev, ta’ev kodem—the neediest comes first. This is the dominant rule, according to the Panim Yafot, overriding even the priority of aniyei ircha. All preferences of proximity presume comparable need; if there is a disparity in this area, priority goes to those in greatest need.7 However, even this rule is not absolute; the word “evyon” is preceded by the word “vecha.” When family is concerned, their needs come first, even if others outside the familial group are more urgently lacking.

Thus, two distinct factors compete for priority in charitable giving: severity of need and closeness in relationship.8 The analysis of the

Panim Yafot was adopted by his famous student, the Chatam Sofer, who ruled accordingly that all priorities of proximity are only operative in cases of comparable need, although he dispensed with this standard when the recipient was the father of the donor.9 The parameters of the Chatam Sofer’s definition of family have sparked some analysis among later authorities.10 However, from the perspective of discretion, such delineation would be secondary to the emerging principle, a balancing of the often-competing elements of urgency and proximity.

The next prioritized category in the distribution of charity is aniyei Eretz Yisrael, the poor of the Land of Israel.11 The Chatam Sofer posits that within this category, the poor of Jerusalem take precedence over those of other cities since the sanctity of the city outlasts the destruction of the Temple (kidshah leatid lavo) and Jerusalem is, in any event, the home of the Divine Presence.12 Authorities debated the status of individuals who are rooted in a Diaspora community but are currently residing in the Land of Israel.

According to Rabbi Chaim Halberstam of Sanz, no preference is shown to this group, which is now a part of the

larger population of the needy of the Land of Israel.13 The Muncaczer Rebbe cites Rabbi Chaim Volozhiner, who does recognize a preference in this case.14 He then attempts to reconcile the two approaches, suggesting that the operative element is the question of whether this group is receiving any assistance already. Ultimately, he concludes that there is priority given, upholding the principle as established above: Those with the closest connection to the donor come first.15 In the view of many major authorities, aniyei ircha take precedence over the poor of Israel when there is a question of preferring one over the other.16 The Chatam Sofer explains this position in a manner consistent with that stated above, that aniyei ircha is premised on the significance granted to proximity, a factor not affected by the importance of the Land of Israel.17 The Sefat Emet observes that the Tur omits any reference to the prioritizing of the poor of Israel, perhaps assuming the concept was relevant only in the time of the Temple.18 He further states that the Shulchan Aruch, who does acknowledge the priority, did so only in reference to money that was to be distributed elsewhere in

any event; aniyei ircha, however, would retain their priority.

However, some disagree with this position, positing that the priority of aniyei ircha assumes residence in Israel; since supporting those in Israel is simultaneously charity and a fulfillment of the commandment to settle the land, this duality gives greater priority to the impoverished of the Land of Israel.19 The Chida agrees, emphasizing the dire conditions prevalent in the Land of Israel in his day as tilting the equation.20 Rabbi Shmuel Wosner, on the other hand, rules that aniyei ircha maintain their status; the importance of aniyei ircha is enough to overcome even the combining of charity with other values.21 Among the points that the Chatam Sofer considers self-evident is that all of the principles of preference are meant only for proportional priority but do not eliminate the need to give support to those lower on the list. While the Maharsham, in his Da’at Torah, cites authorities to the contrary, the Chatam Sofer represents a popular view.22 The Steipler Gaon, Rabbi Yaakov Yisrael Kanievsky, suggests that the obligation of tzedakah manifests itself in two forms.23 On the one Spring 5781/2021 JEWISH ACTION

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hand, there is a general, free-floating responsibility on those with means to share that wealth with the needy of the world. No individual can lay claim to this money. Second, there is a specific obligation to support the needy according to the principles listed above. This notion is one that is so tangible, in the Steipler Gaon’s view, as to actually create a legal claim on the part of potential recipients in this area (mamon sheyesh lo tov’im).24 Another possibly relevant principle might be learned from the realm of priestly gifts (matenot kehunah).

While these gifts are obligatory, the donor maintains the right to decide which kohen will be the recipient.

Nonetheless, the Talmud recognizes a circumstance in which a specific potential recipient does possess a claim. This case, known as “makarei kehunah,”25 concerns a donor who enjoys a close relationship with a certain kohen and has developed a pattern of consistent giving that has created an expectation on the part of the kohen.26 Building on this precedent, authorities question whether a similar notion of “makarei aniyim”27 exists, thus providing a consistent recipient with a claim to continued support.

The Shach does seem to recognize such a concept,28 but the Maharshag assumes that, in general, the principle of “makarei” is only relevant to a specific obligatory donation with an unspecified recipient, such as the laws of matenot kehunah; the nature of charity is too subjective to be subject to this category. The Maharshag therefore suggests that the principle would only apply to funds that have already been separated.29 Although Rabbi Moshe Sternbuch doubts that such a responsibility applies to tzedakah, he recommends that, while larger contributions may be diverted from former beneficiaries at the will of the donor, smaller donations may not be casually discontinued.30 Q. Which causes should get first attention?

A. In addition to a system of prioritization among recipients, 60

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there are preferences indicated between different causes once the urgent needs of the poor without food have been seen to.

The Shulchan Aruch maintains that one who has funds to spare could do no better with them than to assist in the marrying off of poor young women.31 This appears to be the result of several factors.

First, this is a particularly effective means of providing support, in that the brides will ideally be cared for throughout their lifetimes. This factor would appear to be less relevant to the support of bridegrooms, who conventionally assume the burden of financial support. Nonetheless, authorities conclude that while brides have the highest priority, grooms are next in line.32 It seems that the primacy attributed to this area emanates from the principle of dei machsaro. The needs of brides are integral for personal happiness; individual sensitivities in this realm are acute and brides may be intensely sensitive to deficiencies.33 Thus, even within the category of wedding and marriage expenses, a hierarchy of needs exist. Of prime urgency is any element whose absence would prevent the wedding from taking place. Next on the list would be the provision of funds necessary for the couple to sustain their married life, adapted to the sliding scale of dei machsaro. Of course, this point will once again leave much to subjectivity and discretion.34 Next, the needs of the ceremony itself are considered; halachic sources authorize whatever is necessary to create appropriate joyousness and whatever is conventional and will cause humiliation if omitted, while at the same time cautioning against excesses.35 Another priority in charitable giving is Torah education. The structure of the local school system is, to some extent, derived from a system put into place by Rabbi Yehoshua ben Gamla, who created a centralized system for children to be educated outside of the home.36 In the opinion of some authorities, as a result of

this enactment, supporting local schools is not only tzedakah but part of the basic obligation of Torah study; others understand that it is still tzedakah that is fulfilled, but of an even more mandatory nature.37 Halachic authorities quote from earlier sources that in a community in which not all parents are able to afford tuition for their children, the obligation falls on the community members as a whole in accordance with their capacity to contribute.38 Regarding the priority of supporting Torah education, there is some discussion as to which of two different arenas to emphasize, the training of children or the furthering of accomplished Torah scholars. On the one hand, the adult scholars are fully obligated in Torah study and are learning at an advanced level; they thus can put forward a claim of priority.39 On the other hand, the Torah study of children is crucial for basic religious foundation and is essential to the continuation of Judaism;40 thus, many authorities give it precedence.41 Rabbi Moshe Feinstein suggests that if those who are responsible for halachic guidance are unable to support themselves, they take precedence; otherwise, the children have priority.42 The Shulchan Aruch states that “there are those who say that mitzvat Beit HaKnesset (the commandment of the synagogue) is greater than tzedakah, and the mitzvah of tzedakah to young boys to learn Torah, or to the poor or the sick, is greater than Beit HaKnesset.”43 Some authorities question this,44 observing that the opposite order is found in Tosafot.45 Rabbi Shmuel Wosner considers the issue of the priority given to “mitzvat Beit HaKnesset,”46 first noting the lack of clarity47 as to whether the situation is that of building a synagogue to begin with or the continual maintenance of an existing one. Rabbi Wosner expresses extreme reservations about neglecting the poor to focus on the synagogue edifice. While mindful of potential enhancement to the spread of talmud Torah through the building of a synagogue,48 Rabbi Wosner nonetheless warns against

any diversion of funds for the poor toward synagogue expenses that are in any way unnecessary or excessive.49 The needs of the larger world population, outside of the Jewish community, also merit a place on the list of causes supported by Jews. While the Talmud mandates assisting the poor of the world “together with the poor of Israel,”50 authorities have ruled, following the Ran, that this language is not meant to exclude situations in which no Jews are involved.51 Notes 1. See, for example, Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, Responsa Iggerot Moshe, Yoreh De’ah II, 115. See also Rabbi Shmuel Wosner, Responsa Shevet HaLevi I, 199; Responsa Givat Pinchas, 64; Rabbi David Shperber, Responsa Afarkasta DeAnya I, 183; and Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, Derech Emunah, Hilchot Matnat Aniyyim 10:49.

2. See Responsa Teshuvot VeHanhagot I, 567.

3. Yoreh De’ah 251:3; see Responsa Givat Pinchas, 64.

4. Yoreh Deah 254:10. See also Rashi to Shabbat 118b and the discussion in Responsa Shevet HaKehati V, 178.

5. Yoreh De’ah 251:3.

6. Meiri, Ketuvot 85b. The works of the Meiri were unavailable for centuries; during that time, this position was associated with the Responsa Shemesh Tzedakah, cited by the Pitchei Teshuvah. See footnotes to the Meiri.

7. It is noteworthy that some authorities factor into the equation the level of embarrassment involved, thus according priority to a potential recipient less needy but at risk of greater embarrassment due to his reluctance to ask for help, while others reject this consideration; see Rabbi Avraham Avidan, Ahavat Tzedakah, ch. 9, 51, and fn. 163.

8. See also the discussion in Responsa Avnei Yoshpe IV, 100.

9. Responsa Chatam Sofer, Yoreh De’ah, 234; chiddushim to Nedarim 80b.

10. See Responsa Shevet HaLevi V, 135:4.

11. Yoreh De’ah 251:3.

12. Responsa, Yoreh Deah, 234. See also Torah Temimah, Deut. 15, #22, who independently suggests the Jerusalem distinction. Responsa Shevet HaLevi V, 135:5 questions the preference for Jerusalem, noting that the factors presented would only apply to the Old City of Jerusalem.

Rabbi Chaim Kanievesky, Derech Emunah I, Hilchot Matnot Aniyyim, #239, assumes the issue is dependent on the sanctity of Jerusalem in contemporary times.

13. Responsa Divrei Chaim II, Choshen Mishpat, 68.

14. Responsa Minchat Elazar IV, 8.

15. The dispute between Rabbi Chaim Sanzer and Rabbi Chaim Volozhiner may also be related to the above question regarding the reasoning for the priority of aniyei Eretz Yisrael; if it stems from an expansion of “ircha,” that notion would be doubly relevant if the recipients share a geographical history. See Rabbi Moshe Nachum Yerushalimski, Responsa Be’er Moshe I, 2, who discusses this question at length.

16. See Bach 251, s.v. aniyei, who considers this “obvious,” and Shach, 251:6. See also Birkei Yosef, Yoreh De’ah 251:1, who cites the Maharash Chiyun as viewing the Bach’s “obvious” point as “possible.” See also the lengthy discussion of many related points in Rabbi Meir Asch, Responsa Imrei Eish, Yoreh De’ah, 101.

17. Responsa Chatam Sofer 6 (Likutei Teshuvot), 27.

Statement of Ownership, Management and Circulation

1. Publication Title: Jewish Action. 2. Publication No. 005-239. 3. Filing Date: January 20, 2021. 4. Issue Frequency: Quarterly and Passover. 5. No. of Issues Published Annually: of Publication: Orthodox Union, 11 Broadway, NY, NY, 10004. Contact Person: Anthony Lugo Telephone: 212.613.8163 8. Complete Mailing Address of Headquarters or General Publisher, Editor and Managing Editor: Publisher: Orthodox Union, 11 Broadway, NY, NY, 10004. Editor: Nechama Carmel, 11 Broadway, NY, NY, 10004. Managing Editor: Craig Goldstein, 11 Broadway, NY, NY, 10004. 10. Owner: Orthodox Union, 11 Broadway, NY, NY, 10004. 11. Known Bondholders, Mortgagees, and Other Security Holders Owning or Holding 1 Percent or More of Total Amount of Bonds: None. 12. Tax Status (For purposes has not changed during the preceding 12 months. 13. Publication Title: Jewish Action. 14. Issue Date for Circulation Data Below: October 2020.

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100

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nominal price.

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18. Chiddushim to Yoreh De’ah.

19. See Pe’at HaShulchan, Hilchot Eretz Yisrael 2:22 in Beit Yisrael, 29.

20. Yosef Ometz, 19.

21. See similarly Rabbi Shraga Feivel Schnelbag, Responsa Shraga HaMeir IV, 64:3. See also Rabbi Betzalel Stern, Responsa BeTzeil HaChochmah IV, 162, who cites many opinions on both sides of the debate.

22. See also Responsa Shvut Yaakov III, 84; Responsa Givat Pinchas, 64; Rabbi Yisrael Y. Kanievsky, Karyana DeIgrisa I, 172; Responsa Shraga HaMeir IV, 64:2.

23. Kehilot Ya’akov, Bava Batra, 8.

24. Compare, however, Responsa Maharshag II, 201, who asserts that if one neglects the poor of his town and gives his tzedakah funds to poor of elsewhere, “what’s done is done” and no obligation of restitution is due to the poor of his town.

25. Concerning this pronunciation, see hagahot of Rabbi Ya’akov Emden, Bava Batra 123b.

26. See Gittin 30a. Rishonim differ as to the explanation of this concept: see Rashi to Gittin; Tosafot, Bava Batra 123b, s.v. hacha, Hagahot Asheri, Gittin 3:11 and the Mordechai, Gittin 363; and Rashbam, Bava Batra 123b. See Binah BaSefarim, vol. II, p. 204-216.

27. See Talmud Yerushalmi, Gittin 3:7.

28. Yoreh De’ah 257:13.

29. Responsa Maharshag II, 202.

30. This conclusion is based on the assumption of Tosafot that

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the operative factor is a passage in Bava Metzia 49a, which commands commitment to a “small gift.” See also Responsa Rabbi Yehudah Miller, 16; Rabbi Shlomo Drimmer, Responsa Beit Shelomoh, Yoreh De’ah II, 99; Responsa Minchat Elazar IV, 8 and V, 22; Rabbi Shlomo Leib Taback, Responsa Teshurat Shai I, 302; and Rabbi Avraham Yehudah Schwartz, Responsa Kol Aryeh, Choshen Mishpat, 125; and Rabbi Chaim Pinchas Scheinberg, Taba’at HaChoshen, 243, and see also Responsa Be’er Mosheh, ibid., who argues strongly that “makarei” is applicable.

31. The question of how exactly to relate to this priority when it conflicts with serving the needs of the severely destitute is addressed by Rabbi Ya’akov Meir Stern in the journal MiBeit Levi 16, p. 101-108.

32. See, for example, Responsa BeTzeil HaChochmah VI, 161.

33. See also Ahavat Tzedakah 9:3, n.91, citing Rabbi Yehoshua Leib Diskin, who notes two theories as to the priority of this cause: the magnitude of the personal need and the obligation of a father to marry off his daughter, which is then transferred to the community.

34. See, for example, Responsa Shevet HaLevi IV, 130 and IX, 202, who struggles with the task of establishing standards for housing assistance.

35. See, for example, Aruch HaShulchan, Even HaEzer 65:2; Responsa Shevet HaLevi, IV, 130; and Responsa Chukkei Chaim III, Yoreh De’ah 58, who discusses purchasing a shtreimel for the groom.

36. Bava Batra 21a.

37. See Responsa Teshuvot VeHanhagot III, 283, and Responsa Shraga HaMeir IV, 64.

38. See Darchei Moshe, Choshen Mishpat 163, citing Rabbeinu Yerucham, and Rema, Choshen Mishpat 163:3, and Biur HaGra, 80.

39. This position is emphatically taken by Responsa Mahari Assad (Yehudah Ya’aleh), Yoreh De’ah 315.

40. Concerning the particular obligation one has to support institutions in which one has children enrolled, see Responsa Shraga HaMeir, ibid.

41. See Responsa Maharshdam, Yoreh De’ah 167. Tzedakah UMishpat, ch. 3 n. 77, considers this to be the majority view.

See also Responsa Minchat Yitzchak II, 39 and Rabbi Moshe Natan Nota Lemberger, Responsa Ateret Moshe, 191.

42. In the journal Tzohar II, p. 32; see Responsa Iggerot Moshe III, 94. See also the discussion of Rabbi Elyakim Devorkes in Tzohar II, p. 98-101, and Responsa Shevet HaLevi V, 144:2.

43. Yoreh De’ah 249: 16.

44. See Biur HaGra, Da’at Torah, and Aruch HaShulchan to Yoreh Deah ibid.

45. Bava Batra 9a, s.v. sheene’emar.

46. Responsa Shevet HaLevi I, 199. See also Responsa Shevet HaKehati III, 255.

47. Tracing back to the responsum of the Maharik on which the ruling of the Shulchan Aruch is based.

48. “Beit HaKnesset” may be a reference to structures that are used both for prayer and for Torah study.

49. An extensive analysis of this subject can be found in Rabbi Yehudah Zerachiah Segal, Tzemach Yehudah I, Yoreh De’ah 80:1.

50. Gittin 61a.

51. Shach, Yoreh De’ah 251:2, and Biur HaGra. See also Responsa Avnei Yosehfeh I, 193, and Emet LeYa’akov, Yoreh De’ah 251, fn. 137.

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Giving - Teaching Values

ARE WE TEACHING OUR CHILDREN TO BE GIVERS?

From left: Ruth Nahmad of Vancouver, Canada and Zahava Chefitz of Silver Spring, Maryland, package food to feed poor and hungry families throughout Israel as part of NCSY’s GIVE summer program. Photo taken in the summer of 2019. Photo: Josh Weinberg 64

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ne of Ilana Prager’s earliest memories is helping her parents stuff envelopes to assist Soviet Jewry. Although her parents were very active in their local Jewish community in St. Paul, Minnesota, their commitment to the needs of the Jewish community—locally and globally— didn’t necessarily stand out to her at the time. She explains that, as in most smaller Jewish communities, “people were very invested and contributed however they could.” Now, Ilana and her husband David are raising their family on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, a far cry from her small-town Midwestern roots, but they are working hard to pass on to their children that same willingness to give of themselves for their fellow Jews.

The media often harps on the fact that today’s young people—known as “Gen Z”—are part of the “I” generation, raised on iPhones and accustomed to immediate gratification. At the same time, studies have shown that young people care deeply about social issues and want to make a difference. These complexities have many parents and educators in the Orthodox world grappling with the question of whether we can successfully raise this generation of children to be givers, in every sense of the word.

Prager often discusses with her children, who range in age from seven to thirteen, the “three T’s of philanthropy”: giving of your time, talent and treasure. “We tell our kids that all ways of giving are necessary, appreciated and encouraged,” she says.

Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Pragers’ home was open to guests of all stripes. Both Ilana and David are active lay leaders: she is involved in JInspire Manhattan, which connects Jewish moms to Israel and their Jewish heritage, and co-chairs the Upper West Side Mikvah; he is treasurer of the Board of Directors of Manhattan Day School. “I love the work,” Ilana says, “and I love that I am simultaneously Rachel Schwartzberg works as a writer and editor and lives with her family in Memphis, Tennessee.

giving my kids a powerful message through my involvement.”

In fact, being generous with time or resources is the best way to inspire children to be givers, according to Rebbetzin Karen Hochberg. She and her husband, Rabbi Shlomo Hochberg, run the Lakewood, New Jersey, branch of Olam Chesed, an organization that sources surplus goods from manufacturers and distributes them to people in need. “Giving isn’t taught, it’s caught,” says Rebbetzin Hochberg, who served as rebbetzin of the Young Israel of Jamaica Estates in Queens, New York, for thirty years.

“What you see becomes your normal.”

Until their retirement in 2019, the Hochbergs worked to create in their shul what Rebbetzin Hochberg calls “a culture of giving.” The shul ran numerous projects for worthwile causes, such as a yearly clothing sale that donated thousands of articles of clothing to poor communities in Israel and a 5K walk/run for Israel that raised approximately $75,000 annually for the past eighteen years. Rebbetzin Hochberg especially enjoyed the shul’s monthly “Mitzvah Mornings.”

Children would come with parents or grandparents to work together on a project for a particular cause—which ranged from making jewelry for Jewish children in Uganda to preparing lunch for a local group home. “To me, this was one of the highlights of our thirty years in Jamaica Estates,” she says. “At first, the kids wanted to take home what they made. But after a few times, they got it. They would come in and ask, ‘Who are we helping today?’ I was so proud of them! But more importantly, the children were so proud of themselves.

They were learning the joy of making something to help someone else.”

Indeed, nothing seems to have more of an impact on children than engaging in hands-on chesed or seeing their parents do just that. Adina, a philanthropist from the New York area, recalls that when a meshulach (collector of charity) would come to her home when her kids were young, she would make sure they would come greet the individual (even if they were in pajamas!). “We wanted

our children to see how we gave proudly. “They’re leading minyanim or our visitor a check but also that we serving on boards of student groups.” served him some food and a drink.”

Although all his children participated Additionally, she adds, that whenever in a local teen philanthropy her children would receive a monetary program, Cooper’s focus is clearly gift, she and her husband would on encouraging them to roll up discuss with them how to allocate their sleeves and work on behalf of 10 percent of their gift to a cause, institutions they care about. “Giving is fulfilling their ma’aser obligation. nice,” he says. “Giving and nurturing Adina also believes it’s important to is even nicer. Giving money without give children a sense of the familial having a hands-on relationship connection to chesed. She would loses a lot of the meaningfulness.” tell her children about the role her Similarly, Prager stresses to her parents played in being pillars of their children the “doing” more than the community and having a hand in “giving,” and she tries to highlight the establishing many of the local shuls. “My balance between the two. “We talk mother used to send her cleaning help about how crucial financial support is to vacuum the shul,” she says. These and, practically, how money is used stories helped connect her children by an organization,” she says. “For to the ideal of working for the klal. example, they understand that Hatzalah cannot answer calls if there’s no gas Modeling the Way in the ambulance. During the month Pace and Aileen Cooper are another of Elul in particular, we talk with the couple who feel privileged to work on kids about local agencies and what they behalf of the community. And they do, and then decide together where to feel their children are well prepared give.

But right now we’re talking more to follow in the footsteps of their to our kids about giving our time and parents and grandparents. “We’re not energy and less about our checkbook.” necessarily talking to our children Cooper points out that while about why it’s important to give, we’re parents can raise children with the passing along the modeling we received,” know-how and willingness to give explains Pace. “Aileen and I both saw of their resources, their efforts still our parents leading causes they were may not provide the Orthodox passionate about and building up their community with the next generation respective Orthodox communities.” of philanthropists. “We’re definitely Pace Cooper is a member of the raising children who have Torah values OU Board of Governors. Among and leadership skills, ” he says.

“These other causes, he and Aileen are strong are impressive and capable young supporters of their shul and day school people. However, I worry that the in Memphis, Tennessee. Memphis’s pressures of raising large families and Cooper Yeshiva High School for Boys ‘doing it all’ is much harder today than bears their family name. The Coopers’ it was thirty to forty years ago. The four sons are in their twenties (two opportunity to hit it out of the park in are married), and their twin daughters business is more limited. The cost of are in high school. All of them took Orthodox living is higher, and there’s on various leadership roles as teens. almost a cap on earning potential. It “We have to train kids to be lifelong makes it harder for people to have the givers,” Cooper says. “If we don’t start breathing room to give their time to when children are young, they won’t important causes and to have adequate have an entry point that feels natural means to contribute financially. ” as adults with their own families.”

Cooper is gratified to see that each of his children has taken on communal responsibility as they’ve left home. “Our boys are in college and are involved in the Orthodox communities on campus,” he says

Beyond the Home Schools and youth programs often provide opportunities for children to learn the values of chesed and tzedakah, in addition to what they see at home. “Kids can be taught to be givers,” Spring 5781/2021 JEWISH ACTION

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says Erin Stiebel, director of NCSY GIVE, a five-week summer program based in Israel for high school–age girls, “but it’s not going to happen within the four walls of a classroom. It’s hands-on learning.” Participants on GIVE—Girls Israel Volunteer Experience—spend the summer doing chesed projects throughout the country, including serving food in soup kitchens, running camps for children with disabilities and volunteering as medical clowns.

Stiebel, who lives in Detroit and has been the director of GIVE since 2009, says girls from a variety of backgrounds join the program. Some are passionate

about social action prior to the trip.

Many, she says, “come from families heavily involved in chesed in their communities. But there are also girls who have experienced chesed in their own lives.” No matter where they come from, “by the end of the program, they understand that they are part of an amazing community where everyone takes care of each other,” says Stiebel.

“We tell them that Hashem gives us each a unique toolbox we can use to be a valued, important member of Klal Yisrael,” says Stiebel. She emphasizes the advantage of this message for teens who spend most of the year in

How to Raise Children to Be Givers • Model giving behavior. “When parents make community responsibility a priority, kids see this is a value of their family,” says Erin Stiebel, director of NCSY GIVE. Rebbetzin Karen Hochberg adds, “Values are what seeps in, not what kids are told.”

• Engage in acts of kindness and tzedakah with simchah. “It’s the same with all of the mitzvot,” says Adina, a philanthropist who lives in the New York area. “If they see and hear their parents being involved with the kehillah with simchah, this will stay with them.

Kids learn by seeing the joy their parents take in helping others and being taught . . . that our lives are so much more meaningful if we think beyond ourselves and help our fellow Jews.”

• Talk about your values. “People do tons of chesed,” says Daniel Rothner, director of Areyvut, which develops innovative programs for teens. “They’re involved in bikkur cholim, they’re leaving the house to do a taharah, to go to board meetings. But do they explain to their children why they choose to spend their time this way?”

Articulate why these activities are important to you.

• “Be the best version of yourself,” says Stiebel. “That’s the root of chesed.” Psychologist Dr. Oshra Cohen adds that parents should realize that teens are always watching your interactions with others. “When adults are not being kind to each other,” she says, “adolescents will notice and model the behavior.”

• Highlight to your children positive behavior you see others doing.

“If you see something, say something,” says Rothner. “That’s a powerful way to show what you care about.”

• Start when your kids are young. “You can show little kids they have ‘skin in the game’ when it comes to tzedakah, and it’s not just something to sing songs about,” says Rothner. “For example, when children receive money, teach them to divide it up and give 10 percent to tzedakah. When they grow up and get a bar mitzvah gift, or their first job, they’ll have a paradigm to follow.” But, he says, if you haven’t yet started discussing these topics with your kids, it’s never too late to start.

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the academic environment of school.

“Not everyone is cut out for classroom learning. Here we have opportunities for every girl to find her place and shine.”

Instilling in children the desire to do more for others is the key to helping them become givers. “Most people do not maximize what they could do for others,” says Daniel Rothner, founder of Areyvut, an organization dedicated to inspiring young people to become thoughtful, giving members of the Jewish community. While some people may be limited by funds, “they can always increase the amount of chesed they perform,” he says. “Chesed and tzedakah overlap—the terms are often used interchangeably—but they are different.

Kids need to be trained in both.”

Areyvut collaborates with educators and organizations to offer programs that teach children the values of chesed, tzedakah and social action. Rothner, who lives in New Jersey with his family, offers curricula and workshops to both formal and informal educators as well as acts as a “matchmaker,” helping individuals or groups find meaningful volunteer opportunities.

For example, Areyvut often helps connect bar or bat mitzvah celebrants with a project that resonates with each family. These projects can range from fixing up the house of a family that is struggling financially to hosting the celebration in a nursing home (prior to the pandemic) and having guests visit with the residents. More commonly, guests at the celebration work on a craft or baking project that is then donated to local or Israel-based agencies. The “mitzvah project” has become a standard component of children’s celebrations in many Jewish communities across the country.

“We see a range of projects kids are doing for bar or bat mitzvahs,” says Prager, who notes that a hands-on mitzvah project for her son’s bar mitzvah this year is one of the things he missed out on due to precautions during the pandemic. “Though it can sometimes feel obligatory, I think institutionalizing the idea sends an important message to kids. They learn that no simchah is complete without

thinking of other Jews, and it leaves the door open to kids becoming involved in this way as they grow up.”

Rothner does, however, note that mitzvah projects and one-off volunteer sessions may not be able to accomplish the intended goal. “A yearly ‘chesed day’ won’t teach a child to be kind. Acts of chesed should be deliberate and daily.”

Unfortunately, daily efforts to be kind don’t come with the fanfare that teens get when they organize a successful fundraiser or when they travel to help rebuild locales struck by natural disasters. “Big things get press,” says Dr. Oshra Cohen, a guidance counselor at a girls’ high school in the New York area and a psychologist in private practice. “Big projects are written up in the papers. But the kid who gave her notes to an unpopular classmate isn’t making it into any newspaper, though that act of kindness is so fundamental.

That child is truly becoming a giver.”

School chesed programs are wonderful, says Cohen, but they may not be enough when it comes to teaching kids to be generous with their time and resources. “The question boils down to intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation,” she explains. “Making a child volunteer won’t make the child kind. That’s why we see children who are involved in beautiful chesed projects but unfortunately treat a classmate poorly.”

Of course, there is value to the efforts, Cohen stresses. “We believe in the model of ‘mitoch shelo lishmah ba lishmah’ [roughly translated as ‘although not acting for proper reasons, they would eventually act properly for the right reasons’].” However, we should also spend time teaching kindness skills and practicing them. “We often don’t teach empathy in schools,” Cohen adds. “In fact, we generally don’t focus enough on social-emotional skills. We may want to teach kindness skills; we may even think we teach them. But we’re not there yet.” For example, she says, “Kids are told ‘don’t be mean,’ but we often aren’t explicit enough about what it looks like to be kind. Teachers have many academic and behavioral responsibilities and may not sit down with their students and say, ‘In this

A contingent of Areyvut’s “mitzvah clowns” at the 2019 Israel Day Parade in Manhattan.

Areyvut has trained more than 600 mitzvah clowns who visit the ill and the elderly, among others. Courtesy of Daniel Rothner

class, if we see someone being bullied, this is what we do . . .” Cohen also suggests that curricula can be adjusted to teach teens empathy. “Chumash is full of opportunities to have meaningful discussions,” she says. “Let’s talk about how hard it was for Avraham at the akeidah. How must it have felt to be in those circumstances?”

Rothner says many of his programs at Areyvut start with teaching empathy.

For example, kids could run a drive for a local food bank, “but when they participate in a workshop about hunger, they’ll have a completely different response,” he explains. “They start to see a bigger picture—they understand the needs of the recipients.”

Rothner also points out that schools and youth groups can use their chesed programs as a way of leveling the playing field for teens. “Often, it’s the

natural leaders who are leading the chesed projects,” he says. “The other kids aren’t being tapped or asked. But here’s one area where it’s not about the money you have or the ‘cool factor.’

Chesed projects can use everyone’s strengths, talents and interests.”

This final point is key for Prager.

“We stress that you can give in lots of different ways and all of them are important,” she says. “It’s fun for the kids to see David and me use our very different skills to contribute to organizations we’re each passionate about.

“I don’t know what the future holds for my children in terms of their financial realities,” she adds, “but the message we are trying to convey is that community involvement and taking responsibility for fellow Jews is critical, no matter which way it’s done.”

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PERSONAL HISTORY

By Rabbi Lewis S. Wienerkur As told to Rabbi Dovid Bashevkin

DRIVING the RAV How did a kid from Queens end up serving as the driver and eventually the meshareis of Rav Joseph Ber Soloveitchik?

J

ust shy of twenty years old in September 1979, I showed up at Yeshiva University with my own car for my first college semester. A friend of mine, David Holzer, had gotten married that year and gave over the “shamash” or ““meshareis” job (a term used to describe the young men who helped the Rav) to his younger brother Barry. Noticing that I had a car, Barry asked if he could borrow it on Thursday afternoons to drive the Rav to LaGuardia Airport. The Rav taught in Yeshiva University beginning in 1941, but since he had been living in Boston since 1932, he didn’t want to leave the Boston Jewish community, and so he commuted to YU each week. By the time I arrived in YU, the Rav was flying in on Tuesday mornings, giving shiur numerous times and then flying back to Boston on Thursday afternoons. Barry would borrow my car on Thursday afternoons and take the Rav back to the airport. Truthfully, the arrangement was a bit inconvenient since I sometimes needed my car on Thursday afternoons.

And on one occasion, before I had actually met the Rav, I needed to use my car and realized that Barry had not returned the keys. I went to his dorm room. No luck. I had no choice. I knocked on the Rav’s apartment door. Picture the scene.

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Random bachur knocks on the door of the gadol hador. Apparently, there was no meshareis there at the time since the Rav himself answered the door.

Knees knocking, I mumbled, “Umm, is Barry here?” The Rav responded that Barry wasn’t in the apartment. I said, “Okay, please tell him that Lewis came by and was looking for his car keys.” What an awkward moment!

Eventually, Barry handed the keys back to me, and I began driving the Rav on Thursday afternoons myself.

I was actually enrolled in a class on Thursday afternoons, but I knew that had I told the Rav I was supposed to be in class, he would have never let me drive him. So I never told him!

Most of the time, it was just the two of us in the car. At the airport, I would escort the Rav, walking with him onto the tarmac, even climbing the steps and getting onto the plane. (This was before the world changed on September 11, 2001). I would then help the Rav into his seat, and only once he was settled would I get off the plane. Once, the plane engine started rumbling with me still on board—I should have stayed and gone to Boston! More than once, a flight attendant would ask me,

“Does the rabbi understand English?” I would laugh and say, “Pick a language.

He knows many languages—or you can discuss physics or philosophy.”

Riding in the car with the Rav was a wonderful way to spend time with him. Admittedly, I am a pushover, so anyone insistent enough would manage to come along for the ride. A YU talmid who was not in the Rav’s shiur once asked if he could accompany us as I drove the Rav. I didn’t know how to refuse. No sooner had we pulled out of Washington Heights when out came the notepad and the questions.

Was all cheese kosher? No. What about all ice cream? No, again. The Rav continued to answer the questions patiently like the gentleman he was.

Finally, the talmid asked, “Rebbi, what should a ben chutz la’Aretz [resident of the Diaspora] do if he is in Eretz Yisrael for a chag?” (This was 1980 or 1981 when this question mostly applied to young men and women who spent a year studying in Israel.) The Rav answered, “He should perform mitzvot aseh like a ben Eretz Yisrael on the second day of yom tov but he should refrain from doing melachah.”

The young man replied, “Oh, a day and a half,” using a popular expression referring to this halachic position. The Rav said, “I don’t understand what you’re saying.” The talmid repeated, “The Rav is saying that he should keep a day and a half.” The Rav said again, “I don’t understand what you said. Allow me to repeat myself. He should do mitzvot aseh like a ben Eretz Yisrael but he should refrain from doing melachah.”

Ironically, everyone describes the Rav’s halachic position as “a day and a half ”—everyone that is but the Rav! Honestly, I viewed myself as “the driver.” I didn’t prepare a list of questions to ask. I kept the conversation light and specifically did not ask questions. Other mesharsim did the same. And I knew the Rav appreciated our company because of that. Of course, in retrospect, I could kick myself for not asking more and for not learning more from the Rav. What questions would I ask the Rav today? Most likely every single life question that’s come up since 1984 when I spoke to him last.

Rabbi Emanuel Holzer (left) and the author escorting the Rav from the brit of Rabbi Holzer’s grandson Zecharia. The brit was held at the Holzers’ home in Kew Gardens Hills, November 1982. Photos courtesy of Rabbi Lewis Wienerkur

On one occasion, Seth Peyser, a Bostonian, asked if he could come along for the ride. When we got to the airport, Seth escorted the Rav to the plane.

He returned to the car fairly quickly, chuckling, and said, “We were on line for the shuttle, and a man approached me. He whispered in my ear, ‘Is this Rabbi Soloveitchik?’ After I confirmed that he was, he said, ‘My name is Alan Dershowitz. I’m friends with his son Haym. I am going to Boston and am happy to escort Rabbi Soloveitchik to the plane.’ That’s why I’m back so soon.” *******

Eventually, I began serving as the Rav’s meshareis as well. I had actually been eagerly awaiting my chance to get the job but was passed over once or twice before they gave me the enviable position.

One afternoon when I arrived at the Rav’s apartment, he said, “Please put on a tie and jacket. We are going to my talmid’s wedding.” George Karasick, brother of Mark, one of the Rav’s more well-known mesharsim, was getting married in midtown Manhattan. I went to my room, quickly changed my clothes and rushed back. Off we

Rabbi Lewis Wienerkur is a rebbi/director of Israel guidance at HAFTR High School, rabbi at the Woodsburgh Minyan, educational director at Camp Morasha and a CPA at his family’s firm.

Rabbi Dovid Bashevkin is the director of education for NCSY. His new book, Top 5: Lists of Jewish Character and Characters, was published by Israel Bookshop in February 2021.

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It later dawned on Rav had ever asked

on us. went. Right before the chuppah, which was held outside on a cold winter evening, someone approached the Rav and said, “You will need an overcoat to perform the wedding.” The Rav responded, “Rabbi Dovid Lifshitz is here. He should perform the wedding.”

Of course, within minutes, Rav Lifshitz walked over and offered the overcoat to the Rav. I wish I had recorded the two Torah giants insisting that the other take the kibbud. It was an awesome sight. Eventually, the Rav “won,” and Reb Dovid, as he was called at Yeshiva, served as the mesader kiddushin. (Rav Mosheh Lichtenstein told me recently that the Rav had a “longstanding policy that the zekan harabbanim [senior rabbi] at a wedding should be mesader kiddushin,” which is most likely why he deferred to Reb Dovid.)

When I think back to those days forty years ago, one thing is apparent: the remarkable humility of the Rav. While I didn’t realize it at the time, we boys were constantly traipsing through the Rav’s apartment, eating vanilla ice cream and generally making his apartment our hangout.

One afternoon, I came into the apartment and the Rav called me over and asked me to drive Rabbi Julius Berman to his office downtown. It later dawned on me that this was the only time the Rav had ever asked me to do anything for him. He never made any demands on us.

When the Rav entered a room, everyone would stand up for him.

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The Rav at the author’s wedding, Nov 29, 1982, held at the Manhattan Beach Jewish Center in Brooklyn. (The author is shaking the Rav’s hand.) Also pictured are Rabbi Fabian Schonfeld (on left, back to the camera), Rabbi Emanuel Holzer (partly obscured behind Rabbi Schonfeld) and Rabbi Dr. Barry Holzer (between the author and the Rav).

Everywhere he went, people would flock to him, eager to listen to his wise words. Even when he would make the short walk from his apartment to deliver shiur, there would be people following him, trying to get close to him, thrilled to be walking near the Rav. Yet he was always kind and gracious.

The Rav was also a courageous figure.

Once he was no longer physically well, he could have retired. But he persisted in maintaining a grueling schedule, flying in every week from Boston. The daunting obstacles might have stopped someone else, but they didn’t stop the Rav. One year, one of the mesharsim convinced the Rav that it was important that he attend the Yeshiva’s Chanukah chagigah. “Who else is going?” asked the Rav. He was not a suburban teen worrying about his image and with

whom he would be seen. “Rebbi,” I asked, puzzled, “what do you mean?”

The Rav responded, “Who else from our group—you, Kenny [Brander], Michael [Fredman] and Dovid [Gorelick].” Oh, our group! He meant the mesharsim!

When the Rav passed away in 1993, I went to the shivah house but sat in the back, preferring to remain unnoticed. Haym, the Rav’s son, saw me and called out, “Lewis just came in and sat in the back. Please come sit up front. Rabbosai, I want to tell you something. Throughout my father’s career, there were people who tried to make themselves important through my father. However, during my father’s last years in Yeshiva, there was a cadre of young boys who took care of him, and it had nothing to do with them. It was all l’shem Shamayim.”

I will always remember that moment.

More photos of the author and the Rav are available on the Jewish Action web site at https://jewishaction.com/the-rav/driving-the-rav/.

Teach Coalition helped deliver $250 million in government funds to Jewish schools this year.

Join the movement. www.teachcoalition.org/#join information@teachcoalition.org

California · Florida · Maryland · New Jersey · New York · Pennsylvania Teach Coalition, a project of the Orthodox Union, advocates for equitable government funding for nonpublic schools.

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of a Covid Seder

Artwork, entitled Passover, by artist Karin Foreman. Karin explains: "Passover is a mixed media piece made from acrylic, interference acrylic, and metallic paints; super heavy gesso, sand, fibers, and fabric on heavy-weight, acid-free watercolor paper." karinforeman.com.

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JEWISH WORLD

Most of us experienced a very different kind of Pesach last year. Due to the pandemic, no one went away. Pesach programs the world over were shut down. Compelled to stay home—some with their children and spouses, others with their spouses, still others entirely alone, people found sources of strength and comfort in different ways. Some even discovered a few hidden blessings in the experience, and a lesson or two they hope to carry with them for future Sedarim. Below are their stories.

No Crowds

By Rabbi Benzion Klatzko, as told to Steve Lipman As a senior manager at North American Olami, a college-based training program, and founder of Shabbat.com, a Jewish social network, I have led communal Sedarim with my wife Shani for almost thirty years, mostly on college campuses, at hotels and other large settings. Thirty to a hundred people generally attend each Seder; a total of approximately 2,000 people have participated over the years.

Last year we realized early on that we would not be able to conduct the kind of Seder we were accustomed to. We had two Sedarim at home, just for our own family and one out-of-town guest who could not go home, a total of nine people. Our dining room table, which can seat sixty-two people, seemed empty.

I didn’t want to lose the magic we had had at our communal Sedarim.

At that time, I was also still ill with Covid. It was a tough go.

On the other hand, without the usual big crowd at our table, (often with many who don’t know a lot about Jewish tradition), we had the opportunity to enjoy a longer Seder. We could take our time without feeling rushed.

We encouraged the children to ask questions—beyond the Four Questions, which could be read in a perfunctory fashion. And we really lived the Seder.

Everything was for the children.

“Now we have Daddy’s undivided attention!” they exclaimed. We were able to concentrate on maggid.

Our children had time to share all the divrei Torah they had prepared.

The Sedarim were a success— because the kids knew it was theirs.

Rabbi Benzion Klatzko is a senior manager of Olami and the founder of Shabbat.com. He and his wife Shani and their children currently live in Monsey, New York, where (before Covid) they would host eighty or more people for Shabbos. He has been at the frontier of improving Jewish communal life in the United States for over two decades.

Steve Lipman is a frequent contributor to Jewish Action.

“You Can Do It”

By Rabbi Michael Schudrich, as told to Steve Lipman During the reign of Communism in Poland, Polish Jews gradually lost their traditions. They had no experience in conducting a Seder.

After Communism fell thirty years ago, the Jewish communities around the country began offering communal Sedarim. In recent years, 200 to 250 people attended the main communal Seder in Warsaw, conducted in the Marriott Hotel.

Last year, after the Covid-19 outbreak, we felt that it wouldn’t be safe to have a communal Seder. We decided to use Pesach as a learning opportunity; we

would empower people to make their own Seder at home, many for the first time. Our message was, “You can do it.”

We distributed a “Seder in a Box”— complete with shmurah matzah, grape juice, wine, a Seder plate, a Haggadah and directions for conducting a Seder.

We recruited volunteers from the Jewish community to bring the “Seder in a Box” to people who could not leave their homes. For some of the volunteers, this in itself was an expression of their Jewishness. Over 200 boxes were distributed in Warsaw. Other communities did something similar.

More Polish Jews ran their own Seder at home last year than in any previous year.

This year, if things open up and we are able to hold a communal Seder, we expect to have fewer people than two years ago. Many people may opt to make their own Seder at home; they learned how to do it last year.

That would be a wonderful thing.

Rabbi Schudrich is a Long Island native who has served as chief rabbi of Poland since 2004.

On a Matzah Mission

By Alexander Rapaport, as told to Steve Lipman I was raised in a Vizhnitz Chassidic family in Boro Park. We followed the custom of using matzah baked Spring 5781/2021 JEWISH ACTION

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The Rapaport family harvests wheat at Yiddish Farm in Goshen, New York in 2019. Courtesy of Alexander Rapaport

on erev Pesach for our Sedarim. After burning their chametz, people would come to the synagogue to participate in the communal matzah baking.

It was always a challenge. There was a crush of people, and it was very competitive. Who gets to bake their own matzah? Who gets to keep the matzah after the baking is done?

Everyone wanted a piece of the action.

My grandfather couldn’t take the tension; he said the time leading up to the Seder is supposed to be a happy time. Eventually, he decided to get his own oven, and, with much effort, he would set it up in his backyard before Pesach. We baked our matzah that way for many years. When my grandfather died a few years ago, we stopped baking matzah in his backyard.

For a few years, I did not have a set place to bake my own matzah. I found various ovens around town, mainly in other people’s backyards after they finished baking matzah for their own family, which I rented out for a few eighteen-minute shifts.

A year before the pandemic, I went with my sons to Yiddish Farm in Goshen, New York, which is owned by a Chassidic family. We harvested and threshed our own wheat and milled our own shmurah flour. Before Pesach, we rented an oven and baked 74

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our matzah using our very own flour.

Last year I decided we would start our own tradition and bake matzah in our own backyard. I heard of a business upstate that sells specialty restaurant equipment, including wood-fired pizza ovens. I purchased a stainless-steel oven with a stone floor, with some custom modifications to suit our needs. It was relatively small but weighed a few tons.

I knew it takes a while for custom-made equipment to be delivered. But then the pandemic broke, and all deliveries were delayed.

The kids were home from school, and we kept them busy gearing up for this big family project. We had harvested about fifty pounds of wheat in the summer and stored the stalks.

The children had plenty of activities to do, threshing the wheat kernels by hand the ancient, traditional way.

We waited for the oven to arrive.

When the governor announced an impending lockdown two weeks before Pesach, we figured we would not have the oven in time.

But to our good fortune, the oven arrived on Friday, two days before the lockdown began. We set it up in our driveway. There were many halachic and practical logistics to deal with, including building a hut to enclose the oven. My sons did most of the work. I was busy

at Masbia, a kosher soup kitchen I run; because of the pandemic, it was the busiest Masbia had ever been.

When baking matzos on erev Pesach, we would always recite Hallel as the Jewish people did while offering the Pesach sacrifice in the Beis Hamikdash, along with other Pesach songs. This year, while baking our matzos, we added songs and prayers from Rosh Hashanah.

We were on a spiritual high. We baked matzah for our own Sedarim as well as for several friends and relatives.

At the first bite of matzah at our Seder that night, I cried.

Alexander Rapaport is co-founder and director of the Masbia, a soup kitchen network and food pantry serving over 2 million meals a year in Brooklyn and Queens in New York.

Solo Seder

By R. Rosenfeld Last year, until a few weeks before Pesach, I believed the virus was a short-term threat and that I’d be spending yom tov with my family.

Slowly it became clear that “Solo Seder” would become part of my new Covid lexicon. Would I be able to manage that?

I had been home for chol hamoed in the past, so I had accumulated Pesach dishes over time and knew how to kasher my kitchen. It dawned on me that families or couples who are accustomed to going away to relatives or hotels for the entire week had never truly cleaned or kashered on their own. I thought about recent widows or widowers who would be their spouse yet could not be with their children either. All these people faced more hardships than I did.

Still, I was apprehensive, as I had never prepared for a Seder on my own.

When I glanced at the calendar and saw a three-day yom tov, the challenge seemed all the more daunting.

I tackled the Seder first. Breaking it down into manageable tasks, I realized there was no need to panic. I wasn’t hosting a table full of guests. Cooking wouldn’t be more difficult than usual.

As for what I didn’t have, I improvised.

No grater? I bought applesauce for the charoses. My ke’arah was crafted out of decorated small paper bowls.

Aluminum foil served in place plastic replica of a stemmed kos.

I have been home alone for three-day yamim tovim in the past, but this time there would be no shul, no meals with friends—no social connection whatsoever. I was accustomed to solitude, but would loneliness intrude?

Then I spotted an online lecture on navigating solo Seders from the OU Women’s Initiative’s Pre-Pesach series.

The speaker, Dr. Rachel Levine, offered some really good tips, from planning and sticking to a schedule of activities to asking people to send letters before yom tov that could be read on the holiday. I did so and received my last batch of letters shortly before candle lighting on erev Pesach. I quickly slit them open to savor later on. It was uplifting just knowing they were in my possession.

I did whatever I could to reframe this experience and feel empowered.

I dressed up for the Seder, did my hair and makeup and set the table.

I would start on time. It would be neither rushed nor drawn out

interminably. I would have just the right mix of Haggadah commentaries, songs and food—since I would be running the Seder. And how many others would have the privilege of greeting Eliyahu HaNavi on their own?

For the first time in many years, there would be no packing, no traveling, no chaos, no sleeping in someone else’s bed. There would be peace.

And there would be gratitude for my blessings.

R. Rosenfeld is a writer who lives in New York.

Creating a New Pesach Rhythm

By Naomi Ross I unpack the holiday bins and dust off the special matzah covers and Haggadahs. I see my shopping lists, cleaning lists and preparation lists. Year in and year out, the rhythm of my Pesach preparations echoes previous years, a comforting familiarity that draws me into the hectic but well-oiled machine of anticipated traditions (laced with a bit of stress for good measure!). With many guests expected and possibly some last-minute surprise guests as well, I shift into quantity cooking and shopping mode.

Sleep-in guests and multiple large holiday meals mean lots of food . . . my kitchen is an open tea room.

But not this past year.

“The new normal” descended upon us, and even the most seasoned hostesses felt a bit off kilter. Covid-19 disrupted Pesach 2020 planning . . . for everyone.

I missed the energy and dynamic that guests bring. My kids missed their grandparents and the bonding that happens on a yom tov. The chinuch of Pesach in our home had solidly revolved around the beautiful mitzvos of hachnasas orchim (inviting guests) and the concept of “kol ditzrich” (“Whoever is hungry, let him come eat . . .”). What

we did not expect, however, was how the focus would shift in different yet equally important ways. With only my children around the table, we were able to fully concentrate on the mitzvah of v’higadita l’vincha—to educate each of our children about Pesach. With no guests’ needs or attention spans to cater to, there was time to discuss and time to listen, without rushing and without the kids feeling too self-conscious to speak their minds.

We were able to give to our kids in the way each of them needed and desired.

With less food to cook and fewer dishes to wash, I was also less tired and worn out. Since it was “just us” at the Sedarim, I set up Shulchan Orech (the festive Pesach meal) buffet style in the kitchen. While less formal, this cut down on serving time and further allowed us to keep the focus on the Seder itself. (Even though I love the elegant regalia of formal serving, this is something I might consider keeping even when the guests return!)

The holidays are my “busy season.”

For many years, I reserved the weeks leading up to the holidays for personal chef work for private clients and teaching a schedule of holiday cooking classes as well. This past year, instead of holiday classes to inspire creative menus, I was teaching Zoom classes on how to actually cook and make Pesach for the first time. So many women were overwhelmed and at a loss as to which equipment and essential ingredients they needed to buy, and how to convert certain year-round recipes for Pesach use.

What are the lessons of Pesach 2020? For me, a return to the basics of what Pesach is really about, the centrality of the mitzvah of telling (and listening!) to the story of Yetziat Mitzrayim and the ability all of us have to make Pesach special in our own ways and in our own homes.

Naomi Ross is a cooking instructor and food writer, and the culinary director at Apron Masters Kitchen in Woodmere, New York. Naomi teaches classes throughout the tristate area and writes articles connecting good cooking and Jewish inspiration.

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JUST BETWEEN US

Readers are invited to use this forum to express personal views and address issues of concern to fellow Jews. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the policy or opinion of the Orthodox Union.

WHY JEWS ARE OPTIMISTS

By Dr. Morton Frank

P

sychological resilience is similar to the body’s immune system, which protects an individual from harmful substances.

Occasionally, however, we are faced with an enemy, such as the current coronavirus, that overwhelms our ability to cope. The sudden deaths of loved ones, the lack of freedom to do what we want when we want, and our inability to interact with friends and loved ones have been some of the challenges that resulted from the pandemic. All of this is in addition to the bombardment of daily news about random acts of anti-Semitism, violent protests in our cities, possible terror attacks, global warming and other future doomsday scenarios.

In the past, bad news was delivered over time, which allowed us to mobilize our defenses against fear.

Today we have 24/7 instant access to what is happening anywhere in the world, with no time to recover.

As if all of the above is not enough, along comes psychologist Roy Baumeister in his recent book, The Power of Bad: How the Negativity Effect Rules Us and How We Can Rule It, who Dr. Morton Frank is a psychologist who maintains a private practice and is an adjunct assistant professor at Queens College.

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has uncovered what he calls people’s innate “negativity bias.” Apparently, the human brain is hardwired to notice, remember and even magnify negative experiences. He observes, among the many examples of this phenomenon, that insults have a far greater impact upon a person than compliments; that emotional problems,

recognize the role that a Torah outlook plays in helping us be resilient in the face of adversity. A fascinating recently published book entitled Positivity Bias presents the late Lubavitcher Rebbe’s view on life and his advice to others. Whenever a person shared a negative experience with the Rebbe, he would, without

While the nihilists of today tell us that

instead of positive variables such as resilience, have for years been the main focus of research in the field of psychology; and that people keep tuning into the “gloom and doom” being endlessly reported in the news.

We Orthodox Jews are not immune to this bias, as evidenced by the amount of negative (and sometimes sensational) news reported in Jewish publications. Interestingly, Baumeister recommends countering the effects of negativity by consciously thinking three positive thoughts for every negative one. Is that not what we do when we say berachos each day?

As Orthodox Jews, we need to

invalidating the complaint, focus the person’s attention on the positive.

One example is when the late Elie Wiesel visited the Rebbe. Wiesel, like many victims who were traumatized by the Holocaust, never cried. He asked the Rebbe to teach him how to cry about the loss of his family in the Holocaust. The Rebbe replied that he would teach him how to cry, but first he had to teach him how to live.

Resilience requires that a person believe in a positive future. Inspired by kabbalah, Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak HaCohen Kook wrote poetry and essays that contain unbounded optimism for the future.

Unfortunately. . . Orthodox Jews

reported in Jewish publications.

His writings galvanized an entire Jewish population to become resilient in the face of overwhelming odds.

Rav Tzadok HaKohen, one of the great Chassidic masters, writes that the essence of being Jewish is that we never give up hope no matter the circumstances. Indeed, our continuous desire to leave Egypt, our becoming an exclusive nation at Har Sinai, our wandering through the desert and surviving for forty years, our yearning to go back to Eretz Yisrael after the destruction of two Temples, and our belief in the coming of Mashiach are all indications of our resilience and the fact that Jews are diehard optimists. In contrast, the Torah calls our attention to those who were not resilient, such as the spies (meraglim) who were too fearful to continue going forward and others who wanted to return to Egypt at the first sign of trouble.

Another attribute of resilient people, according to research findings, is that they do not hesitate to seek out support and comfort in times of adversity, trusting that others will be there for them. When we consider the Torah’s directives, such as “ve’ahavta l’rei’acha kamocha—love your neighbor as yourself,” and “kol Yisrael areivim zeh lazeh—all Jews are responsible for one another,” we know and trust that there will always be someone to call in time of trouble. These mandates have resulted in numerous organizations such as Hatzalah, Chaverim, Misaskim and other charitable organizations.

The knowledge that there is someone to call in a time of trouble helps us get through the crisis. Furthermore, the foundation of our emunah is the belief that Hashem wants to

bestow good upon us and wants us to be worthy of His blessings. Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch points out that unlike pagan gods who are always angry at man (the word for non-Jewish gods, elilim, derives from the Hebrew root al, negation), our God is on man’s side. In addition to our belief in God, it is also God’s belief in us that gives us the courage to not only survive but to thrive.

Research has also found that resilient people believe in their ability to effect outcomes (self-efficacy). Fifty years ago, no one would have believed that Orthodox Judaism would be dominant and that Conservative Judaism would be on the wane. Visionaries such as Rabbi Aharon Kotler and Rabbi Dr. Samuel Belkin revived Orthodox Jewry by establishing institutions such as Beth Medrash Govoha in Lakewood and Yeshiva University in New York, educating a large number of the Jewish population and creating the leaders of tomorrow. In addition to the role of our leaders, we, the Jewish people, are a nation of resilient individuals. Perhaps that is why the Torah emphasizes that every single person who came out of Egypt and was traveling through the desert donated his own personal possessions to the building of the mishkan, and that the donations continued until Moshe Rabbeinu told them there was enough.

Through the centuries, our people never stopped building communities in the many countries in which we lived. Today, we are witness to the building of Israel and its contributions in multiple fields of endeavor.

Chassidic philosophy teaches the concept of “yeridah l’tzorech aliyah”

(descending for the purpose of ascending), i.e., not to despair about a downturn because it is a signal that you have no place to go but up. Jewish history itself is a testimony to our ability to not give in to despair and to recover quickly. On a daily basis, we recite in Shemoneh Esrei that Hashem is “matzmiach yeshuah”—He makes salvation blossom. Commenting on this phrase, the Nesivos Shalom explains that just as a seed germinates only after it begins to decay, so is adversity a prelude to growth. The ability to reframe is a protective factor for resilience. People who suffer adversity recover much faster if they are able to accept what happened and move on. Alternatively, they learn from their experiences and redouble their efforts to succeed.

A non-Jewish psychologist colleague of mine once quipped that mentally healthy people think that reality is better than it is. This statement implies that reality is, in fact, depressing and that we have to convince ourselves that it is not. We Jews are constantly reminding ourselves throughout our lives that, in fact, reality is good.

Through our daily berachos and daily prayers, we reiterate to ourselves that there is a God Who created this world and His creations are all good. We see life as meaningful and bring Torah and mitzvos into all facets of our lives, including relationships and work. I believe the Ari Hakadosh addressed this issue when he taught that our job as Jews is to uncover the sparks of kedushah in everything that Hashem created.

The rise of the victimhood culture is an illustration of what happens when people lack resilience and succumb to despair. Some people choose to view themselves as victims of oppression; they view others as oppressors who are therefore worthy of being attacked; and they view the future as bleak.

The Torah teaches us the opposite, that man is made in Hashem’s image (tzelem Elokim) and that he is to be treated with dignity. While the nihilists of today tell us that the world is hopelessly doomed, the Torah keeps us hopeful and optimistic.

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The OU Women’s Initiative is Proud to Present

TORAT IMECHA

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A

A SCALABLE SEDER

smaller Seder, a quieter table than in years past. For some, they had a Seder for one with their Haggadah as their only company. This was the reality for many last Pesach. As I write this and dream of the large Sedarim of my childhood for thirty or more, with folding tables set up as far as the eye could see, the nagging question persists: what will this year’s Pesach will look like? (And, of course, what is on the menu?)

The recipes herein are for a scalable menu—make one roast, divide and freeze for a smaller crowd. Fish cakes can be doubled or halved. Sponge cake yields three cakes that can be split and layered for larger cakes or kept single for a more modest dessert.

Preparing for Pesach can be redemptive, much like crossing the Yam Suf: anxiously nerve-racking while at the same time incredibly hopeful. To come out of darkness with faith that something good is waiting for us on the other side is something we can all feel, especially this year. Here’s to preparing with hopefulness and joy, and a berachah to appreciate those at your holiday table—big or small!

Naomi Ross is a cooking instructor and food writer, and the culinary director at Apron Masters Kitchen in Woodmere, New York. She teaches classes throughout the tri-state area and writes articles connecting good cooking and Jewish inspiration.

Toasted Almond and Chocolate Ganache Layer Cake Photos: Baila Gluck

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Herbed Fish Cakes with Lemon-Horseradish Sauce

Yields 15 fish cakes or 22 mini fish cakes A nice alternative to gefilte fish, these fish cakes are fresh and flavorful. The raw patties can be prepared a day ahead and refrigerated. To refresh and reheat cooked cakes, warm in a single layer on a baking sheet until hot and re-crisped.

Fish Cakes 1 small or ½ large onion, quartered 1¼ pounds skinless cod fillets, cut into chunks ⅓ cup packed fresh Italian parsley ⅓ cup packed fresh dill 1¼ teaspoons coarse kosher salt ½ teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper 1 egg ⅓ cup matzah meal or 1 riced potato ¾ cup vegetable oil or more as needed Lemon-Horseradish Sauce ½ cup mayonnaise 3 scallions, thinly sliced ½ teaspoon grated lemon peel (from ½ lemon) Juice of 1 lemon 2-3 teaspoons prepared white horseradish Kosher salt, to taste Freshly ground black pepper, to taste Line a baking sheet with waxed paper or parchment; set aside.

Place quartered onion in a food processor fitted with an “S” blade.

Using/on off turns, pulse processor until coarsely chopped. Add fish, parsley, dill, salt and pepper and repeat until finely chopped—do not puree to paste. Transfer to a medium bowl. Add egg and matzah meal, mixing until well blended. Using wet hands, form mixture into round cakes. Arrange on prepared baking sheet. (Can be made one day ahead. Cover and chill.)

To make the sauce, whisk together all ingredients in a small bowl until smooth.

Heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Working in batches, fry cakes until nicely browned on each side and opaque in center, about 4 minutes per side (less time for mini cakes). Transfer to platter.

Serve warm or at room temperature 80

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with Lemon-Horseradish Sauce over a bed of mixed greens.

Spiced French Roast with Dried Fruits Yields 6-8 servings

This braised meat is perfect for Seder night, and is packed with flavor after marinating in an aromatic spice rub overnight. This recipe can be used interchangeably with brisket. Amounts double easily for a larger cut of meat.

2 teaspoons coarse kosher salt 1 teaspoon ground coriander ¾ teaspoon ground cumin ½ teaspoon ground black pepper 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon ¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg ½ teaspoon ground allspice 1 (3-pound) French roast 2-3 tablespoons canola or vegetable oil 2 medium onions, sliced (about 3 cups) 4 garlic cloves, peeled and chopped 1 cup dry red wine 2 small or 1 large parsnip, peeled and cut into 1-inch pieces 2 small or 1 large carrot, peeled and cut into 1-inch pieces ½ cup whole pitted prunes ½ cup dried apricots 2 tablespoons water 1½ tablespoons honey 1 tablespoon tomato paste Chopped parsley for garnish Combine salt, coriander, cumin, black pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice together in small bowl.

Arrange roast in large roasting pan; rub spice mixture evenly over both sides. Cover and refrigerate overnight.

Preheat oven temperature to 325°F. Heat 2 tablespoons of canola oil in a very large skillet over high heat.

Carefully place roast in the skillet, and brown for 1-2 minutes per side, turning once. Remove roast from pan and transfer to a plate; set aside.

Lower heat to medium and add another tablespoon of oil to the pan if pan looks dry. Add onions and garlic to the pan and sauté, stirring often and scraping up the browned bits at the bottom of the pan. Sauté for about 5-6 minutes, or until translucent.

Pour wine into the pan and deglaze, scraping up the browned bits at the

bottom of the pan. Bring to a boil and simmer for 1-2 minutes. Place mixture in the bottom of the roasting pan, then place roast on top, fat side up. Surround roast with parsnips, carrots, prunes and apricots.

In a separate small bowl, mix together water, honey and tomato paste. Stir to blend and then pour over the top of the roast, spreading to cover. Cover pan tightly with foil and bake until tender, about 2½ hours. Allow meat to rest and cool, about 30 minutes.

Transfer roast to a cutting board or work surface. Using a very sharp carving knife, thinly slice roast across the grain on a slight diagonal; replace slices back in the roasting pan. Place vegetables around meat and cover with pan juices. Cover and reheat before serving time.

Transfer to a serving platter, garnish with chopped parsley and serve.

Do Ahead: This can be made 2 days ahead. Slice cold; re-warm covered in 350°F oven for 20-30 minutes.

Serving Options: For a thicker sauce, transfer cooking liquid into a small saucepan and bring to a simmer over medium heat for about 15-20 minutes, reducing until thickened to desired consistency.

Celeriac & Potato Puree Yields 6 servings

Purees are wonderful as a background accompaniment or side dish, allowing the full flavor of the pureed vegetables to come through. You can also make this with kohlrabi instead of celeriac for a nice variation.

1 large celeriac (a.k.a. celery root), peeled, and cut into chunks 4 large or 6 small potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks 1-2 tablespoons butter or olive oil Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste fresh minced herbs, e.g. dill, parsley (optional) Fill a large pot with salted water.

Place over medium-high heat and

Celeriac and Potato Puree

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bring to a rolling boil. Add celeriac and potatoes. Bring back to a boil and simmer for about 20-25 minutes, or until celeriac is tender and easily pierced with a fork. Remove from heat. Using a slotted spoon, remove celeriac and potatoes (reserve some of the cooking water), transferring to the bowl of a food mill fitted with a medium blade (alternatively, you can use a food processor fitted with an “S” blade. Process until pureed).

Rotate the food mill until all of the celeriac and potatoes are pureed.

Transfer to a mixing bowl. Add butter or olive oil and stir to dissolve and blend. Add a little of the reserved cooking water back only as needed to thin consistency if too thick.

Season to taste with plenty of salt and pepper and herbs if desired.

Roasted Garlic Variation: For a stronger flavor, add 2 roasted garlic cloves (peel removed) to the food mill prior to pureeing.

Basic Passover Almond Sponge Cake

1 basic sponge cake, 3 amazing variations. This recipe yields 3 (9-inch) round cakes, so you can make an assortment of cakes for Pesach in one shot.

12 eggs, separated 1¾ cups sugar ½ teaspoon grated lemon rind (optional) ½ cup orange juice 1¼ cup almond meal (ground almonds) or 1 cup matzah cake meal ¾ cup potato starch Pinch of salt Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease 3 (9-inch) round cake pans. Cut 3 (9-inch) circles of parchment paper and line bottoms of pans; set aside.

Place egg yolks and sugar in a large mixing bowl. Using standing mixer or electric beaters, beat on medium-high speed until the mixture becomes thick and pale yellow in color. Add the lemon rind and orange juice, mixing until well blended. Add the almond meal and potato starch to the egg yolk 82

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mixture, beating until well blended and mixture is smooth. Set aside.

In a separate large, dry mixing bowl, beat the egg whites and salt until stiff peaks form. Gently fold half of the egg whites into the yolk mixture. When the egg whites are incorporated, repeat with the remaining egg whites.* Pour batter into prepared baking pans. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean when testing. *If using Apple Cake variation, continue with variation directions below.

Toasted Almond & Chocolate Ganache Layer Cake

2 (9-inch) Almond Sponge Cakes (recipe above) 20 oz. bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped 1½ cups strong, brewed hot coffee 3 egg yolks 1½ teaspoon vanilla extract (optional) 6 oz. sliced almonds Place hot coffee and chopped chocolate in a medium mixing bowl and set over a saucepan filled halfway with simmering water over medium-low heat. Whisk together until chocolate is melted and mixture is smooth.

Remove bowl from saucepan.

Remove 1-2 tablespoons of chocolate mixture and gently mix with yolks in a small bowl to temper; then pour tempered eggs into the chocolate mixture. Add vanilla and use electric beaters to beat until ganache is thick and cool, about 5 minutes.

Preheat oven to 325°F. Spread almonds in a single layer on a baking sheet and bake for 10-12 minutes or until just turning golden color.

Use a plastic knife to loosen edges of sponge cakes. Carefully remove cakes by inverting over a dinner plate; then gently peel off parchment paper. Using a long serrated knife (like a bread knife) with a sawing motion, carefully start cutting each cake horizontally into two even cake

layers. The easiest way to do this is evenly is by sawing a little, then rotating the cake, then sawing a little more, continuing until the knife has gone the whole way around and cut through to form two layers.

Repeat with the second cake.

Place first layer on a cake platter or round. Pour about ¼ cup ganache over cake layer, using a spatula to spread evenly if needed. Sprinkle with a handful of toasted almonds.

Cover with second cake layer. Repeat with ganache and almonds and remaining cake layers. To finish, pour ganache over top and sides of cake (do not frost—let chocolate drip down sides). Sprinkle remaining toasted almonds over top of cake. Refrigerate and chill until serving time.

Apple Cake Variation

For each (9-inch) round cake, prepare 2 apples—cored, peeled and sliced.

Place half of the cake batter in the cake pan, place a layer of sliced apples over the batter, then cover with remaining batter. Bake for 40-50 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean

Strawberry Shortcake Variation Can be made with 1 or 2 round cakes (depending on how tall you want it) For each round cake: 1 cup heavy cream 1 tablespoon sugar 1 pint strawberries, hulled and sliced

Whip heavy cream and sugar in a mixing bowl with electric beaters until stiff peaks form. Set aside.

With a long, serrated knife, carefully slice the cake into two equal layers (as per the Toasted Almond & Chocolate Ganache Layer cake variation directions above). Spread half of the whipped cream over the top of one of the layers. Place half of the sliced strawberries in an even layer on top of the whipped cream, and cover with the second cake layer.

Repeat with remaining whipped cream (and remaining cake layers, if using). Arrange remaining sliced strawberries on top decoratively.

Refrigerate until serving time.

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LEGAL-EASE

WHAT’S THE TRUTH ABOUT...

THE JEWS IN EGYPT KEEPING THEIR JEWISH NAMES, LANGUAGE AND DRESS?

By Rabbi Dr. Ari Z. Zivotofsky

Misconception: The Midrash states that after centuries of servitude, God redeemed the Jews from Egypt in the merit of the rigorous preservation of their own names, language and mode of dress.

Fact: While these three factors certainly would have contributed to the Jews maintaining an independent identity, and some of them are mentioned in various midrashim, there is no known classical midrash that presents a list of exclusively these three points of merit.

Background: The question of why the Jews merited a miraculous redemption from Egypt was addressed explicitly in the Book of Yechezkel (20:5-10). There God explains that He had desired to redeem the Jews from Egypt and bring them into “a Land of Milk and Honey, the most beautiful of all lands”; but wanting them to “deserve it,” He requested that they remove the Egyptian idols from their midst. However, God tells Yechezkel, the Jews refused, and ultimately they were redeemed not based on any merit of their own but solely for the sake of God’s Name, so that there not be a chillul Hashem.

There are later sources that similarly Rabbi Ari Z. Zivotofsky is a professor of neuroscience at Bar-Ilan University in Israel.

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them2 (as it seems from the simple portray a meritless people. The Mechilta reading of the text [Shemot 2:24; (to Shemot 14:29 [Beshalach:6]) and 6:53]); or 3) based on future merit Shemot Rabbah (21:7) portray angels (as in the midrashim just quoted). complaining to God that the Jews were Alternatively, although they were idolaters and unworthy of the miracle of unworthy, God gave the Jews in Egypt the splitting of the Red Sea.1 The Zohar the ability to “earn merit” immediately Chadash (Yitro 31a) describes the Jews before the Exodus. Rashi (to Shemot in Egypt as having descended to the 12:6) quotes the midrash (Mechilta forty-ninth (lowest) level of impurity.

D’Rabbi Yishmael, Bo, Masechta The Midrash (Shemot Rabbah 3:4, D’Pischa, parashah 5; Pirkei D’Rabbi quoted by Rashi to Shemot 3:11) finds Eliezer [Heger], Chorev: 28; Ruth Rabbah the question of the Jews’ worthiness in the initial conversation between God and 6:1) that based on Yechezkel 16:7, the Jews were naked of mitzvot and thus Moshe, reading into Moshe’s question to God (Shemot 3:11): “What merit do they God gave them the mitzvot of korban possess that I should be able to take them Pesach and brit milah, which they out?” The Midrash continues (on Shemot faithfully performed. Furthermore, they were asked to reject idolatry (by 3:12) that God responded that indeed taking a paschal sacrifice). Through at that time they lacked merit, but they were being redeemed on the future merit these mitzvot, they earned the right to be redeemed, and this enabled God that they would accept the Torah at the to fulfill His promise to Avraham. very place where God and Moshe were speaking, Har Sinai. The Mechilta (to Merits of the Jewish People Shemot 14:29) similarly suggests future There is also the school of thought merit, either Torah and prayer or the that the Jews did indeed have merits.4 merit of mezuzah and tefillin. Midrash A well-known statement of Rav Avira Tehillim (114) says the anticipated (Sotah 11b; also found in the name merit was the Torah they would receive of Rabbi Akiva in Shemot Rabbah or the mishkan they would build.

1:12) states that in the merit of the In this scenario in which the Jews “righteous women of that generation,” lacked merit at the time of the Exodus, Israel was redeemed from Egypt.5 they were redeemed either: 1) for The Rashbam (Pesachim 108b, she’af; God’s Name (as stated in Yechezkel); cf. Tosafot, s.v. ha’yu) understands 2) in the merit of the forefathers and Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi’s explanation the covenant God had made with that women are obligated in Megillah,

Chanukah lighting and the four cups of wine because “af hen hayu be’oto haneis—they too were in the miracle” to mean that the women were instrumental in the miracle. Regarding the four cups, he quotes the gemara in Sotah that the Exodus was in the merit of the righteous women.

The Mechilta (Mechilta D’Rabbi Yishmael, Bo, Masechta D’Pischa 14 [Shemot 14:31]), based on Shemot 4:31 (“The people believed…”) says that the Jews were redeemed as a reward for their emunah (faith).

There are indeed midrashim that list some of the traits that are included in the famous list mentioned in the beginning of this article. Among the earliest sources are the Mechilta (Bo [12:6], Masechta D’Pischa, parashah 5, s.v. v’hayah) and Vayikra Rabbah (Emor 32:5), which state: “Rav Huna said in the name of Bar Kappara, ‘On account of four things Israel was redeemed from Egypt: they did not change their names, they did not change their language, they did not speak lashon hara [slander; reveal their secrets], and not even one of them was found to be promiscuous.’”6 Variants of this popular midrash that list these same four items are found in many other places.7 Midrash Lekach Tov (also known as Pesikta Zutrata [eleventh century], Shemot 6:6 [Solomon Buber, 1880], p.

16a) has a slightly different list of four merits: they retained their language, did not change their clothing, did not reveal secrets, and did not neglect brit milah.8 Etz Yosef (Vayikra Rabbah 32:5, s.v. bishvil) points out that some midrashim list only three or fewer of these merits. Midrashim that list three include Bamidbar Rabbah 13:20, which omits not speaking lashon hara and can thus almost be interpreted as a precursor to the famous teaching (quoted in “Misconception” above) if one understands the final merit (avoiding promiscuity) to mean that the Jews of Egypt maintained the practice of wearing modest clothing. Pirkei D’Rabbi Eliezer (end of ch. 48) says that in the merit of three things the Jews left Egypt: they preserved their language, did not speak lashon hara, and, as per Radal’s (Rabbi David Luria, d. 1855)

emendation, did not change their names.9 Tanna D’vei Eliyahu (Eliyahu Rabbah 24:1 [parashah 21 and 22 in Ish Shalom ed. of Eliyahu Rabbah]) mentions that the Jews who left Egypt made a pact to do chesed with one another, to perform brit milah, and not to abandon their ancestral language.

The Triad of Merits The earliest mention of the triad of merits practiced by the Jews in Egypt (preserving their names, language, and mode of dress) appears to have been made en passant by Eliyahu Levita, also known as Eliah Bachur (1469-1549).10 In the first page of his introduction to his Sefer Meturgeman, in the course of discussing the history of language (and not in the context of discussing by what merit the Jews were redeemed from Egypt), he wrote that Chazal said there were three things the Jews in Egypt did not change: their names, dress and language. The source for his statement is unknown, and the scholar Solomon Buber (d. 1906) asserted (commentary to Pesikta D’Rav Kahana [1868], Beshalach, 83b, note 66) that the common saying that the Jews did not change their clothing is not found anywhere and that Bachur erred in his quote.11 The triad is not referred to again until the early nineteenth century,12 when it re-emerged with renewed significance during that century’s battle against the Reform movement.

Perhaps the most important purveyor of this “new” midrash was Rabbi Moshe Sofer (Chatam Sofer; d. 1839), who, in a derashah on 7 Tevet 5574 [1813] (Chatam Sofer, Derashot, vol.

1, 5689, p. 82a), said that it was in the merit of these three traits that the Jews were redeemed from Egypt; he then expounded on how not adhering to them leads to assimilation. He returned to this theme in several later instances and famously included in his ethical will that his descendants should be careful in these three areas. He referred to the triad of shem (name), lashon (language) and malbush (dress) by the acronym shalem (whole), referring to Yaakov who survived “shalem” from his encounter with the foreign

culture of Lavan (Bereishit 33:18).

The significance of the triad was further popularized by Rabbi Akiva Yosef Schlesinger (1837-1922), a firebrand follower of the Chatam Sofer, in his Lev Ha’ivri, a lengthy commentary on the Chatam Sofer’s ethical will. Following his explication of these three points, he concluded (p. 76, 1990 ed.) that being strict about them will preserve the Jewish people until Mashiach comes.

Let us see the significance these three traits have in halachah.13 The Significance of a Jewish Name Regarding the Midrash’s mention of Jewish names, Kli Yakar (Shemot 1:2) understands it to refer specifically to the names of the Twelve Tribes, names that each referenced the redemption, and thus not as a general mandate for future generations to use specifically “Jewish” names. In the halachic literature, there is a diversity of opinion about using non-Jewish names.14 On one extreme, the Maharam Schick (Rabbi Moshe Schick,15 1807-1879; a teacher of Rabbi Schlesinger) has a long responsum on the importance of Jewish names and regards using non-Jewish names as a Biblical prohibition (Shu”t Maharam Schick, YD:169).

On the opposite pole, Rabbi Moshe Feinstein (Iggerot Moshe, OC:4:66, OC 5:9:10 and EH 3:35) writes it is distasteful to use non-Jewish names,16 but there is no prohibition. He suggests that in Egypt before Matan Torah, name, language and dress were all that distinguished the Jews from the surrounding nations. Because of their belief that they would be redeemed, they maintained their distinctiveness. But now it is the Torah that sets us apart.17 In a recent teshuvah, Rabbi Asher Weiss (Minchat Asher, Shemot, p. 2), demonstrates (based on Gittin 11b) that in the time of Chazal, most Jews outside of the Land of Israel had non-Jewish names; this Talmudic source was also used by Maharashdam (Rabbi Shmuel de Medina, 1505-1589; shu”t Maharashdam, YD 199) in permitting anusim (Jews forcibly converted to Christianity) who returned to the fold to maintain their non-Jewish Portuguese names. Rabbi Weiss agrees that there is Spring 5781/2021 JEWISH ACTION

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a problem when one wants to blend into the surrounding culture by abandoning Jewish names, dress and language, but maintains that using a non-Jewish name in business is permissible.

Maintaining Distinct Jewish Clothing The prophet Tzephaniah (1:8) implies that there is a concept of distinctive Jewish garb. The eleventh-century Pesikta Zutrata (Lekach Tov, Devarim, Ki Tavo [26:5], 41a) says that the Jews in Egypt were distinct in that their clothing, food and language were different from the Egyptians.18 Note that it does not say it was a “merit” earning them redemption, just that it made them separate. And it also includes the concept of Jewish cuisine.

There is an explicit halachah (Smag, negative, 50;19 Rambam, Hilchot Avodah Zarah 11:1; Shulchan Aruch, YD 178:1) that in general Jews should be identifiable by their distinct dress.

The Rema (YD 178:1) is much more lenient and follows the Maharik who rules that only garments worn by non-Jews without reason or meaning or that contain an idolatrous or immoral element are prohibited. The Shach (YD 178:4 and 157:17) and Gra (YD 178:7) disagree with the Maharik’s ruling. Rabbi Avraham Danzig (d. 1820), in both his halachic work (Chochmat Adam, 89:1) and an entire paragraph in his ethical will (Beit Avraham, 31), stresses the importance of Jewish clothing and says that it is one of the reasons the Jews were redeemed. Rabbi Menashe Klein has a long teshuvah on the importance of maintaining Jewish-style clothing (Mishneh Halachot 10:115).

The Importance of Jewish Language In censuring the Jews in Israel for intermarrying, Nechemiah (13:24) is critical of the fact that their children no longer speak Hebrew. Learning to speak the Jewish language—“lashon hakodesh”20 (Hebrew)—is a mitzvah according to the Rambam. In explaining Rebbi’s statement (Avot 2:1) that one should be careful with “minor” mitzvot as with “major” ones, the Rambam (Peirush HaMishnayot) gives two examples of mitzvot that people perceive as minor: simchat yom tov and the study 86

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of Hebrew. Sources for the Rambam’s assertion seem to be the Sifrei, which is cited by Rashi (to Devarim 11:19, the first parashah of the Shema), that when a child begins speaking the father should speak to him in Hebrew and teach him Torah, and the Tosefta (Chagigah, ch.1) that a father should teach his son Shema, Torah and Hebrew.21 The Yerushalmi (Shekalim 3:3) says that one who lives in Israel, speaks Hebrew, eats fruits in purity and recites Shema every morning and evening is guaranteed Olam Haba.

The Torah Temimah (Devarim 11:19:52) expresses surprise that the legal codifiers, including the Rambam himself, omitted this from their legal works. He references the reader to an entire article he had previously written devoted to the obligation and importance of Hebrew. My esteemed rebbe, Rabbi Shlomo Wahrman (d.

2013; Shearith Yosef, vol. III, ch. 6 [pp.

62-66]), discusses the background and parameters of this mitzvah.

The simple fact that Hebrew is holy led the Rema (OC 307:16) to rule that certain types of literature that may not be read on Shabbat in the vernacular may be read in Hebrew. Rabbi Yaakov Emden (Siddur Beit Yaakov, second section, musar na’eh, p. 38, 1920 ed.; p. 314, 1904 ed.) bemoans the lack of knowledge of Hebrew among the Jews of his time (eighteenth-century Germany) and stresses the importance of studying the language. Rabbi Menashe Klein (Mishneh Halachot 9:204) explains in clear terms that it is imperative to learn Hebrew; he brings interesting sources and concludes that there is no excuse for late-twentieth-century American yeshivot to be teaching in English rather than Hebrew.

In a strange twist, Rabbi Yekutiel Yehudah Halberstam (the Sanz-Klausenburg Rebbe, 1905-1994; Divrei Yatziv, YD:52), writing in New Jersey in 1977 and quoting the Chatam Sofer, uses our opening midrash to emphatically insist that one speak only Yiddish and not the local language or Hebrew. He argues that the unique Jewish languages that the Jews created in the various exiles, which were a deliberate corruption of the local language

[e.g., Yiddish, Ladino, Judeo-Arabic, Judeo-Malayalam, Judeo-Tat, et cetera], are the true Jewish languages that should be preserved. Minhag Yisrael Torah (OC:1, p. 202) quotes a curious suggestion that even in Egypt, the language they did not change was the Jewish-corrupted form of Egyptian!

Whether or not Chazal portray the Israelites in Egypt as remaining distinct because of these three characteristics, it is certainly accurate to suggest that if in today’s various exiles Jews would speak Hebrew, use Jewish names and dress in a distinctive manner, they would stand out as a distinctive people, preventing assimilation. Indeed, the Meshech Chochmah (Shemot 12:22) attaches great significance to the distinguishing characteristics that preserve the Jewish national identity while in exile.

Although Yechezkel 36:20-28 predicts that the first step of the final redemption will be when the Jews are undeserving, and they will be gathered to Israel only because continued exile would result in chillul Hashem, the Chatam’s Sofer’s description of the merits in Egypt can be a recipe for us to prepare for the future redemption, may it arrive speedily.

Notes 1. See also Vayikra Rabbah 23:2. Many later sources introduced/used the well-known phrase in which the angels complained that “these [the Jews] and these [the Egyptians] are idolaters,” so why should the Jews be saved? (Zohar, Terumah 170b; variant in Yalkut Shimoni, Va’etchanan 828). It is also used in a future context (Midrash Tehillim [Shochar Tov], 1:20 and 15:5).

2. Similarly, Shemot Rabbah (21:8) attributes the splitting of the Red Sea to the merit of Avraham or Yaakov. Based on Shir Hashirim 2:8, Shemot Rabbah (Bo 15:4) has God saying: “If I look at Israel’s deeds, they will never be redeemed!” and thus He redeems them in the merit of the Patriarchs. The continuation of that verse is applied by the Gemara (Rosh Hashanah 11a) to the Matriarchs, and thus the Maharal (Gevurot Hashem, ch. 60), when quoting this derashah, mentions that the redemption was also in the merit of the Matriarchs. Bamidbar Rabbah (3:6) says the redemption was in the merit of Yaakov or the Matriarchs, or the Tribe of Levi (who, unlike the other Israelites, did not worship idols). Similarly, Shemot Rabbah

(Bo 15:3) says that God was searching for something to warrant redeeming the Jews; not finding anything, He redeemed them due to the merit of Moshe and Aharon.

A similar statement is found in Shemot Rabbah 1:34, s.v. va’yizkor (Israel was not worthy of being saved as they were wicked; rather, it was in the merit of the Patriarchs that they were redeemed) and Shemot Rabbah 1:35 (God saw that the Israelites did not possess good deeds in whose merit they could be redeemed).

3. A few verses later (Shemot 3:7-10), it seems as if God has decided to rescue the Jews because of the sincerity of their cries and the brutality of the Egyptians. Nehama Leibowitz (Studies in Shemot, Va’era 1), in hewing to the plain meaning of the text, utterly rejects the suggestion by Ibn Ezra (Shemot 6:5) that the text alludes to the fact that the crying out by the Jews to God was a result of repentance. Note that unrelated to the verses in Shemot, Shir Hashirim Rabbah 2:1:13 does posit that the Jews in Egypt did teshuvah, as does Yerushalmi Ta’anit 1:1. Devarim Rabbah (Va’etchanan 2:23) mentions merit of the forefathers, Divine mercy and also repentance as components of the redemption.

4. In this category can possibly be included the Targum Yerushalmi to Shemot 13:18.

The verse says that the Jews left Egypt chamushim, literally “armed.” The Mechilta (quoted by Rashi after he explains the literal meaning) gives it a negative twist.

The Jews were so unworthy that only a fifth left Egypt; the rest perished during the plague of darkness (Rashi, Shemot 10:22). Targum Yerushalmi says the exact opposite—they left “armed” with good deeds. For a brilliant, creative explanation of what good deeds they may have suddenly acquired, see Rabbi Yosef Zvi Salant, Be’er Yosef, 5769, pp. 234-235.

5. The righteousness of the Jewish women in Egypt as described by the Gemara was in their deep belief in and working toward building the future of the Jewish nation.

6. Some midrashim, including some that list all four, include an opinion that this last item alone was a sufficient merit (Vayikra Rabbah, Emor 32:5; Bamidbar Rabbah, Naso 9:14; Shir Hashirim Rabbah 4:1:12).

7. For example: Shemot Rabbah 1:28; Bamidbar Rabbah, Balak 20:22; Shir Hashirim Rabbah 4:1:12; Yalkut Shimoni (Beshalach:226; Emor [24:20]:657, Pinchas: 773 and Shir Hashirim: 985); Pesikta D’Rav Kahana [1868], Beshalach, 83b; Tanchuma (Buber), Balak:25=Tanchuma (Warsaw), Balak:16; Midrash Tehillim

(Shochar Tov, Buber) 114:4; 8. This midrash implies that they were circumcising all along, as opposed to the midrash cited above that they were given the mitzvah (anew) to “earn” redemption. Shemot Rabbah (1:28 and 5:18) implies that the Jews kept Shabbat, and the Ba’al HaTurim (Shemot 1:1) says that they were redeemed in the merit of Shabbat and milah.

9. The current text reads “yichud Hashem,” the unity of God. But in light of the many sources indicating they were not innocent of idolatry, Radal suggests reading it as “yichus ha’shem,” the purity of their names.

10. At about the same time, the Abarbanel describes (Zevach Pesach, p. 32a in ed.

1557 and 18a in 1872 ed.) how nations often assimilate into a host nation, yet in all the years in Egypt the Jews maintained an independent identity because they did not change their names, language, religion (da’at) or clothing. He does not quote this in the name of Chazal, nor does he say this was the merit by which they were redeemed, but rather as a sociological explanation of how they remained a separate nation.

11. It is interesting that Buber says it is found nowhere because in his own edition of Lekach Tov (cited above), clothing is mentioned. Rabbi M. M. Kasher (Torah Sheleimah vol. 9, Va’era, p. 116, miluim 2) says that many of the manuscripts have “shemotam” (their names) instead of “simlotam” (their clothing) and that simlotam is a simple printer’s error in which a lamed was added after the mem. Rabbi Kasher does note (Torah Sheleimah, vol. 8, Shemot, p. 239, miluim 3) that there must have been some source for the idea that the Jews did not change their clothing, as it is mentioned in the thirteenth-century Ritva [and the twelfth-century Judah ben Yakar, teacher of the Ramban] on the Haggadah in the section “va’yehi sham l’goy.”

12. See Elli Fischer, “‘They did not Change their Names, their Language, or their Dress’: The Life-cycle of a Peculiar Midrashic Variant.” https:// www.academia.edu/28574595/_They_ did_not_Change_their_Names_their_ Language_or_their_Dress_The_Life_ cycle_of_a_Peculiar_Midrashic_Variant.

13. It is interesting to note that the first Jew in Egypt, Yosef, does not seem to have been particularly careful about this triad.

After being appointed to his position of viceroy, he wore the clothing he was given in Egypt (Bereishit 41:14 and 41:42), accepted a new name (41:45), and spoke

to his brothers via a translator (42:23).

Rabbi Schlesinger (p. 71, note 55, 1990 ed.) suggests that the reason Yaakov cried upon seeing Yosef (Bereishit 46:29) was because he was dressed like an Egyptian.

14. For a summary of this topic, see: Rabbi Matis Blum, Torah Lodaas (1997) Ki Tavo, and Steven Oppenheimer, “Secular Names,” Journal of Halacha and Contemporary Society, 34 (Succot 5758/Fall 1997): 66-76.

15. Legend has it that when the government ordered all people to take a family name, his grandfather chose “Schick” because it was roshei teivot (an acronym) of “sheim Yisrael kodesh.”

16. Defining what makes a name “Jewish” is not easy. Rabbi Moshe Feinstein (Iggerot Moshe, OC:5:10:5) suggests it may not simply be dependent on it being Hebrew (as opposed to Spanish, English, Yiddish, et cetera) but rather on the origin of the name. In the late First Temple period, a typical Jewish name often ended in yud-heh-vav.

17. This idea was suggested and rejected

by Rabbi David Sperber (d. 1962; Shu”t Afarkasta D’anya 2:140, p. 352).

18. Accepting as a given that the Jews and Egyptians had different style clothing led the Siftei Chachamim (to Shemot 12:35, note 40) to explain that Egyptian clothes promised by God (Shemot 3:22) and then “borrowed” by the Jews (Shemot 12:35) were altered before being worn.

19. The Smag says that the Jews should be distinct from non-Jews in their clothing, practices and speech, although dibbur (speech) likely does not mean language but rather manner of speech, similar to how Rashi (Bereishit 27:22) explains that “hakol kol Yaakov” refers to the style of his speech rather than the voice.

20. On why Hebrew is called “lashon hakodesh” (e.g., Sotah 7:2), the holy language, see Rambam (Moreh Nevuchim 3:8), Ramban (Shemot 30:13), and Maharal (Gur Aryeh to Devarim 1:22, comment 51).

21. The Yerushalmi (Shabbat 1:4, as explained by Korban HaEidah) says that one of the “eighteen decrees” enacted

by Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai was to not accustom oneself or one’s children to speak in the vernacular.

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INSIDEthe PROGRAMS OF THE ORTHODOX UNION

OU

Compiled by Sara Goldberg

If You Want to Build a Team, Create a Team That Builds

By Rabbi Dr. Josh Joseph

J

evening was not meant to be eaten oining the OU this past alone but in groups as an individual September, I aimed during the requirement tied to a communal first few months to meet as ideal. Thus, lehavdil, Jackson’s many OU professionals as possible. second line: the strength of each But during these remote working, member is only in the team. social distancing times, this proved more complex than I had hoped.

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, Nevertheless, in videoconference zt”l, whose recent loss we still session after session, each feel, related a similar point in individual professional impressed Parashas Vayakhel 5774: me with his or her accomplishments, "If you seek to create a community skills and passion for the overall achieve when we work together and out of strongly individualistic people, and program-specific missions. collaborate for the greater good. you have to turn them into builders As Coach Phil Jackson put it, “The . . . . Team building, even after a Beginning a year ago, as the reality strength of the team is each disaster like the golden calf, is of the pandemic and its potential individual member. The strength neither a mystery nor a miracle. It staying power sunk in, lay leadership of each member is the team.” It is done by setting the group a task, met with program heads to was easy to note that the strength one that speaks to their passions develop a team that yielded Project of our team is each individual and one no subsection of the group Community 2020. After collaborating member. But over time, it became so intentionally in that vein, we can achieve alone. It must be clear that although somewhat have recently witnessed a number constructive. Every member of the new to the organization, the seifa group must be able to make a unique of examples of interdepartmental (final clause) rang just as true. collaboration within the OU, contribution and then feel that it has It seems we have been in erev “previously unheard of” as one been valued. Each must be able to Pesach mode since the end of program leader suggested: say, with pride: I helped make this.

November for those of us learning That is what Moses understood and Our HR team partnered with Pesachim daf yomi—especially with did. He knew that if you want to build program-based professional our innovative All Daf app! Now, as a team, create a team that builds." development to launch management we begin the Passover season in training through Nomadic Academy, These words embody the second earnest, we are reminded that one coupled with an innovative small great lesson I learned early in may only eat of the korban Pesach group curriculum, designed as part of a team, chavurah. This my career at the OU: our true in-house by our own team, to fundamental part of the Passover strength lies in what we can Continued on page 90

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HAPPENINGS

AROUND THE OU

OU Kosher Helps First Hotel in Bahrain Offer Kosher Food

I

n November, the luxurious Ritz Carlton Hotel in Manama, Bahrain became the first hotel in the kingdom to offer kosher-certified food through the help of OU Kosher, the world’s largest kosher certification agency.

Following the signing of the Abraham Accords, there has been a surge in interest from Jewish business and leisure travelers from Israel, North America and Europe in visiting the Kingdom.

OU Kosher is consulting with the hotel on establishing a new kosher kitchen, which will be under OU auspices. Additionally, OU Kosher is working with the hotel identify a kosher culinary team member who will serve as a mashgiach, or kosher

supervisor, when kosher meals are prepared on the premises.

“Since the recent normalization of relations, we are seeing a greater interest from Jewish and Israeli travelers. We want to be able to provide kosher food for those who prefer this option,” said Ritz Carlton, Bahrain General Manager Bernard de Villèle.

“The Abraham Accords has opened new destinations for kosher travelers in the Gulf that have never existed before. We are honored to have been chosen by the Ritz Carlton to assist them in providing kosher cuisine for their guests,” said OU Kosher CEO Rabbi Menachem Genack.

Courtesy of Ritz-Carlton Manama

Continued from page 89

prepare our managers to adapt and thrive in times of crisis.

individual members as well as the teams deserve kudos and our thanks.

Our recently developed Torah Programming team connects all programmatic departments, including the Women’s Initiative and Torah Initiatives, to offer Torah learning opportunities at all levels, for all communities.

The team recently launched a holiday initiative and joint site for Chanukah resources.

In his 2020 bestseller, Humankind: A Hopeful History, Rutger Bregman reminds us to embrace our optimistic perspectives, especially when thinking about each other.

He cites the following popular story of unknown origin:

Yachad, NCSY and OU-JLIC also launched a new siddur initiative to improve our connection to tefillah.

These and many more examples abound of internal collaborations for the sake of our sacred work together. Even more impressive has been the drive to come together at a time when we have been apart. Our 90

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An old man says to his grandson: “There’s a fight going on inside me.

It’s a terrible fight between two wolves. One is evil–angry, greedy, jealous, arrogant, and cowardly.

The other is good–peaceful, loving, modest, generous, honest, and trustworthy. These two wolves are also fighting within you, and inside every other person too.”

After a moment, the boy asks, “Which wolf will win?” The old man smiles. “The one you feed.”

More than being reminded to embrace our inner positivity for the future, the descriptors are other-person-focused, suggesting that beyond aspiring to an optimistic outlook, we benefit most when we act and think generously about each other, about our shared goals, our joint community. This is the esprit with which the OU will continue to thrive as we jointly face the future.

“Al tikri banayich, ela bonayich.”

We are not just team members who belong to the same family.

We are builders. And together we make an inspirational team with an aspirational dream.

Rabbi Dr. Josh Joseph is Executive Vice President/Chief Operating Officer at the OU.

Celebrating Every Holiday with the OU With large gatherings still on hold for the foreseeable future, in December the OU’s Torah Initiatives launched “8 Days of Inspiration”—an online hub of Torah inspiration, activities and videos to guide community members in celebrating at home throughout Chanukah. Highlights included an eight-part video series on the history of Chanukah with the well-known historian Dr. Henry Abramson, virtual tours of places that pertain to Chanukah, and fun and engaging children’s videos on the holiday. This model will be replicated for each holiday, keeping the OU and Jews the world over virtually connected.

“With this initiative, we’re releasing the full spectrum of the OU’s programming to everyone around the world, not just local constituents,” said Rabbi David Pardo, Director of Torah Initiatives.

Yachad Launches Virtual Sibling Support Group This past fall, Yachad, the leading organization for individuals with disabilities in the Orthodox community, launched a support network for adult siblings of individuals with special needs. The first monthly meeting drew participants from around the country, including New York, Ohio and Massachusetts.

“The pandemic’s restructuring of the day-to-day care for individuals with special needs has compounded the stress and experience for many of their siblings,” said Yachad Associate Director Chani Herrmann.

“The goal of our program is to make sure that siblings of those with special needs don’t feel alone and are able to discuss their feelings and challenges with others who understand their unique position.”

For more information or to register, please visit yachad.org/sibsupport.

When many daytime and residential programs locked down due to Covid-19, families with individuals with special needs once again became responsible for full-time support, resulting in increased stress for parents and siblings. Yachad’s sibling support network aims to alleviate some of that stress.

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Newly Elected Board Broadens OU Reach From left: Newly appointed Chairman of the Board and Chair of the Youth Commission Mitchel Aeder, Director-at-Large David Gerstley, and OU President Mark (Moishe) Bane at the socially-distanced, outdoor OU Biennial Convention in December. Twelve new members were elected to the OU Board, including eight men and four women, representing communities around the country and broadening the OU’s reach. OU President Mark Bane was unanimously re-elected as president by convention delegates.

To see the complete board listing, visit ou.org/ou-layleadership-national-officers/.

Photo: Kruter Photography

All Daf Soars with Pesachim Launch More than 2,000 Daf Yomi learners have committed to completing Masechet Pesachim with All Daf, the OU’s revolutionary Daf Yomi learning platform, inspired by All Daf’s "Pesachim for Pesach" Initiative. Those who committed to learning Pesachim were entered into grand giveaway—a trip for two to California to tour the Herzog Winery—as well as additional smaller prizes. The day Masechet Pesachim began in November, All Daf saw over 8,000 new users on its platform. All new "Pesachim for Pesach" content is available on the app homepage and at alldaf.org.

NSGP Doubled to $180 Million

In December, Congressional appropriators doubled funding for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program (NSGP) to $180 million for fiscal year 2021. Founded in 2005 as a result of advocacy by the OU Advocacy Center and its coalition partners, NSGP funding enables synagogues, Jewish day schools and other houses of worship and nonprofits at risk of terror attacks to make their facilities more secure.

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WOMEN IN ACTION This past November, the OU Women’s Initiative (WI) celebrated its third anniversary. Since its launch, WI has been identifying and addressing the spiritual, educational, and emotional needs of women in Orthodox communities worldwide. Through a range of Torah learning opportunities, as well as leadership training for women in communal positions, WI supports women in their myriad roles and in all ages and stages of life.

launch

of the Women’s Initiative Department (Nov. 2017)

monthly rosh chodesh

Lunch 'n Learn program is initiated (Aug. 2018)

challenge grant

awards $10,000 to 16 programs for innovative programming addressing the needs of women in their respective communities (Jun. 2018)

TWO NEW PROGRAMS COVID CHIZUK PROGRAM LAUNCHED is held as part of the Mikvah

Inaugural Lay Leadership Attendant Professional Summit, attended by 100 Development Initiative (first women; and Counting Toward launched in 2018), reaching over 200 women (May 2020) Sinai Shavuot Scholar in Residence program (May 2019)

Elul weekend of inspiration,

the first of the "Ideas and Inspiration" program is launched (Sep. 2018)

torat imecha,

a two-year Nach Yomi learning program is launched (Jan. 2020)

torat imecha parsha

is launched (Oct. 2020)

ALIT VIRTUAL BEIT MIDRASH

Summer intensive learning program is established (Jul. 2020)

6,000+

Women in 38 states across 27 countries participate in Torat Imecha Nach Yomi

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NEW POSITIONS & PROMOTIONS Welcome to . . . . . . Dr. Guila Benchimol, Principal Researcher at the OU Center for Communal

Research (CCR). Guila will conduct qualitative research for the CCR on the Orthodox Jewish community and will use existing research to inform the work of various OU departments. As a researcher and public educator on sexual violence, Guila has crafted standards and policies for Jewish workplaces, institutions and communal spaces. She holds a master’s in criminology and criminal justice policy and a PhD in sociological criminology from the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada.

. . . Dr. Adina Bankier-Karp, Senior Fellow at the CCR. Adina will be working with CCR Assistant Director Michelle Shain on studying the effects of Covid-19 on the American Orthodox community. Adina’s research background is in the interconnected effects of Jewish education, family upbringing and critical Jewish experiences in shaping Jewish connectedness. She is also a research associate at the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation, Monash University. She holds a master’s in Jewish studies and a PhD in Jewish education from Monash University, Australia.

Congratulations to . . . . . . Jeff Korbman, on his appointment to Director of Foundation and Strategic

Partnerships in the OU’s Department of Institutional Advancement. Jeff joined NCSY four and a half years ago as its first National Director of Development. During his tenure, NCSY grew consistently in its fundraising achievement, year after year. Of note is Jeff’s work on a pair of multi-million-dollar grants, NCSY's first national Day of Giving and multiple published articles about philanthropy that raised NCSY's national profile. Jeff holds a master’s in social work from Columbia University.

. . . Tiffany Yankovich, who has assumed the title of NCSY’s Interim National Director of Development. Tiffany will work with NCSY leadership to optimize the department’s structure and plan for NCSY's continued growth. Tiffany joined NCSY New York four years ago, and in 2019 became the Associate National Director of Development, where she masterfully trained and supported the NCSY fundraising staff. She holds a master’s in public administration from NYU. . . . Racheli Schwartz, who has joined the Office of the EVPs as Deputy to the Chief of Staff. Racheli will work closely with both EVPs and the Chief of Staff on project advancement, as well as handling all day-to-day administrative tasks and communicating with all OU departments on the EVPs’ behalf. For the past three-anda-half years Racheli has been part of the NCSY Summer team and involved with the department’s finances and donor relations. She holds a master’s in Jewish education from Yeshiva University.

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NEW FROM OU PRESS Yiddish Discourses on the Return to Zion and Jewish Destiny

By Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, edited by David E. Fishman OU Press and KTAV

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his is the second volume of Yiddish discourses by Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, transcribed from his own handwritten Yiddish manuscripts.

The description that follows is based on the introduction by the volume’s editor, David Fishman.

This volume consists of nine discourses delivered at conferences and conventions of the Mizrachi Organization of America, and joint conferences of Mizrachi with its smaller sister organization Hapoel Hamizrachi, beginning in 1944 and concluding in 1958. In addition to these nine discourses, which have never before been published, this volume reprints as well five Yiddish

Shalom Rav: Insights on the Weekly Parasha—Vayikra, Bemidbar, Devarim

By Rabbi Shalom Rosner, edited and compiled by Marc Lesnick OU Press and Maggid Books

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n this new volume, like its predecessor, Rabbi Shalom Rosner collects a vast array of sources on the parashah and presents them in a highly accessible format for those seeking insights and divrei Torah. To give one example, Rabbi Rosner asks why the Torah concludes with an allusion to Moshe’s shattering of the luchot—was this the greatest achievement of Moshe’s career?

discourses that Rabbi Soloveitchik delivered to Mizrachi conferences between the years 1962 and 1967, which were previously published in Yiddish, as well as in Hebrew as Chamesh Derashot and in English as The Rav Speaks: Five Addresses on Israel, History, and the Jewish People.

The discourses are a fascinating synthesis of homiletics, religious thought, and commentary on current events. While they deal with the mission, politics, and state of the Mizrachi movement, both in America and in Eretz Yisrael, the discourses go far beyond the confines of political speeches.

They address profound questions of Jewish destiny and the Jewish return to the Land of Israel.

The first six texts, which constitute the book’s core, were delivered between 1944 and 1948, in the fateful years that bridged between the Holocaust and the establishment of the State of Israel. In these

texts, Rav Soloveitchik confronts the great historical events of his time: the destruction of East European Jewry, the difficulties and prospects of building a center for Orthodox Judaism in America, and the renewal of Jewish life and sovereignty in the Land of Israel.

These discourses reveal a previously unknown stage of Rav Soloveitchik’s Religious Zionist thinking. One can detect in them the embryos of ideas developed more fully in his later works Kol Dodi Dofek—Listen, My Beloved Knocks—and the previously mentioned Chamesh Derashot.

This volume is a fascinating window onto a period of catastrophe and rebuilding, from the perspective of one of the great Jewish thinkers of the time. Non-Yiddish speakers will welcome the news that OU Press is currently also preparing an English translation of this important work.

The Gemara tells us that Shimon HaAmsuni was able to interpret every instance of the word “et” in the Torah to include something.

But when he reached the words “et Hashem Elokekha tira—The Lord, your God, you shall revere,” he discarded his entire enterprise.

What can possibly be included alongside reverence for God? His student, Rabbi Akiva, suggested that the “et” of this pasuk includes Torah scholars. Rav Mordechai Gifter asked: Why was Rabbi Akiva able to derive something from this “et” when Shimon HaAmsuni could not? The answer is that Rabbi Akiva had a rebbe like Shimon HaAmsuni, who was ready to throw away his life’s work in the pursuit of truth. Shimon HaAmsuni is what allowed Rabbi Akiva to

understand that a Torah scholar can be revered alongside God. Moshe had spent forty days and nights atop Mount Sinai in order to bring the luchot to the people. But when he reached the bottom of the mountain, he recognized that the people were not ready to receive this gift. The Torah concludes with Moshe’s destruction of the luchot to teach us that a teacher must be willing to sacrifice his entire life’s mission for the sake of truth.

In Shalom Rav, readers will find much material to enable them to pursue truth in Torah.

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Learn More at: yu.edu/MSW BUILDING TOMORROW, TODAY YESHIVA UNIVERSITY 96

JEWISH ACTION Spring 5781/2021

Inside

PHILANTHROPY Portrait of Philanthropy

EVE GORDONRAMEK

By Merri Ukraincik

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ve Gordon-Ramek was born and raised in Oakland, California, one of five children in an active Jewish household. She fondly remembers her father, an immigrant from Ukraine, going to shul and giving tzedakah, anchoring their home life in Jewish tradition.

“What I recall most was his fervent hope that we never assimilate,” says Eve, a challenge given local demographics in those days. There were no Jewish day schools, and the Gordon siblings attended public school with just a few other Jewish students.

Eve was a member of B’nai Brith before attending the University of California, Berkeley and then Hadassah after she married at the age of nineteen. Yet once she divorced, she focused on raising her three sons and supporting them through a career in real estate investment. She also began buying commercial properties, building her own portfolio.

It was when she married Henry Ramek, whom she had known her entire life—he was the founder and owner of Oakland Kosher Foods—that she returned to the observant world of her father. Henry was well-respected, beloved and passionate about his Judaism. The couple’s world revolved around their Orthodox shul, Beth Jacob Congregation, where Henry frequently led davening. They were married sixteen years before Henry passed away in 2014.

An Auschwitz survivor, Henry often spoke to groups throughout the East Bay area, and Eve was always by his side. She learned a great deal from him and took to heart his belief that children are the key to the future of the Jewish people.

“The more I heard him tell his story, the more it influenced me once I was in a position to be philanthropic,” reflects Eve, who has been a devoted supporter of the two local Jewish schools— Oakland Hebrew Day School and Contra Costa Jewish Day School. “After losing so

Compiled by Marcia P. Neeley

many of our people during the Holocaust, I knew we could not afford to lose any more to assimilation.”

Eve treasured the way children were drawn to Henry’s warmth and charisma, and how he would encourage them to learn as much as possible about their Jewish heritage. Rabbi Akiva Naiman, NCSY’s Northern California East Bay Chapter Director, reminds Eve of her husband in that way. “He brings Judaism to life and makes it fun. It takes a special personality to do that well.”

So when Rabbi Naiman approached her about sponsoring the chapter’s 2019 Ski-Baton in Henry’s memory, Eve jumped at the opportunity.

Eve, who calls NCSY “the most wonderful program you can imagine,” was thrilled to see off a group of sixty teens departing by coach bus for Lake Tahoe months later, their ski gear and Shabbat attire in tow. They were riveted as she described Henry’s story of survival and his efforts to hunt down Nazis after the war. It was a meaningful start to what proved to be a lifechanging weekend.

Eve launched an era of growth and change for our chapter and really for the entire East Bay area.

She sponsored the Ski-Baton again in January 2020. But when she arrived to address the enthusiastic crowd, she was amazed to find it had more than doubled in size. “The visual alone— we now had three buses and a van! —was powerful,” Rabbi Naiman says, “an increase that was 100 percent a credit to Eve’s investment in these kids.”

With her signature warmth, Eve describes looking in their eyes and seeing the teens’ happiness—to be with other Jewish kids in a Jewish environment, maybe for the first time. “I knew then that I’d done the right thing,” she notes.

Rabbi Naiman is quick to add that the impact of Eve’s generosity goes far beyond the Ski-Baton. “She Eve Gordon-Ramek at NCSY West’s Ski-Baton launched an era of growth in 2019. and change for our chapter and really for the entire East Bay area.”

“This is why I give,” Eve says. “This memory of a fun and impactful weekend, this good feeling about being Jewish, will stick with these kids for a lifetime.”

We invite you to join us and make a difference.

Contact Arnold Gerson at agerson@ou.org or visit ou.org/giving.

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MULTI-MILLION DOLLAR GRANT ENABLES NCSY TO BRING THOUSANDS OF TEENS TO ISRAEL

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hanks to an extraordinarily generous multi-million dollar grant from The Marcus Foundation, thousands of teens will be able to visit Israel this upcoming summer with NCSY. This past September, NCSY excitedly announced its inclusion in RootOne, a brand new initiative that looks to transform a generation of young Jews though immersive Israel experiences. Seeded by a $20 million gift from The Marcus Foundation and powered by The Jewish Education Project (TJEP), RootOne provides major subsidies for trip participants while also investing in trip curricula and experiences, aiming to strengthen participants’ Jewish identities and connections to Israel before they begin college. Marcus Foundation founder Bernard (Bernie) Marcus sees the survival of the Jewish people and Israel as paramount, focusing much of his philanthropic work on ensuring the younger generation is knowledgeable and passionate about Israel.

RootOne Vouchers will lower the cost of NCSY’s JSU and The Anne Samson Jerusalem Journey (TJJ) summer Israel experiences by $3,000 for public school teens, while day school teens can receive vouchers of $1,000 toward NCSY summer Israel programs.

“The Israel experience for a teen is transformational,” said Rabbi Micah Greenland, International Director of NCSY. “Teens who come back from an NCSY Israel experience are more mature in their Jewish outlook and more empowered to make decisions for their lives Jewishly. That is why NCSY has invested so much for so

“Of the more than fifteen youth-serving organizations participating in year one of the RootOne initiative, NCSY is the largest trip provider, bringing over 1,600 teens annually to Israel.” long in these experiences, particularly TJJ, which has been a focal point of our efforts for nearly two decades.”

Of the more than fifteen youth-serving organizations participating in year one of the RootOne initiative, NCSY is the largest trip provider, bringing over 1,600 teens annually to Israel. In recognition of its leadership in strengthening Jewish teens’ connection with Judaism and the Land of Israel, NCSY has received the largest allocation of vouchers for its programs.

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TJJ participants from summer 2019. Photos: Josh Weinberg

Inside PHILANTHROPY

“We are greatly appreciative to both TJEP and the The Marcus Foundation for their vision, and to all of NCSY’s donors to our Israel experiences over the past twenty years,” continued Rabbi Greenland.

“Their foresight has helped thousands of teens and has positioned NCSY as the leader in this educational realm.”

Vouchers are available on a first-come, first-serve basis. Interested families can learn more at summer. ncsy.org.

Teens who come back from an NCSY Israel experience are more mature in their Jewish outlook and more empowered to make decisions for their lives Jewishly.”

—Rabbi Micah Greenland, International Director, NCSY

Participants on a TJJ trip in 2018.

ADVOCATING FOR ISRAEL ON CAMPUS

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his past November, Yavneh received a grant of $95,000 from Jewish National Fund-USA’s Boruchin Center to expand its programming.

A project of the OU’s Heshe and Harriet Seif Jewish Learning Initiative on Campus (OU-JLIC), in partnership with Mizrachi, Yavneh recruits, trains and mentors a network of talented student leaders to engage in Israel activism and build Jewish life on college campuses across North America.

“I can’t think of a better partner than Jewish National Fund-USA,” said Rabbi Jonathan Shulman, Director of Yavneh and of OU-JLIC in Israel. “We aim to develop college students into the next generation of Jewish leaders capable of inspiring the rich diversity of the Jewish world.”

The grant will enable Yavneh to expand its programs in the US and Israel, engage close to double the current number of Jewish student leaders, and create a new alumni network.

Elie Codron (left), a member of the Yavneh Fellowship who is studying at Northeastern University in Boston, spoke about Israel activism on college campuses to students during AIPAC’s policy conference in 2019. Now in its third year, Yavneh has 200 fellows on forty-five campuses.

We invite you to join us and make a difference.

Contact Arnold Gerson at agerson@ou.org or visit ou.org/giving.

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YEAR-END ROUNDUP LIGHTING THE NIGHT

SINGING FOR THE FUTURE

In December, over 4,000 NCSYers across all regions received the gift of a menorah and candles for Chanukah, thanks to a generous donation from Assembly Health-Preferred Podiatry in Chicago, Illinois. This gift enabled thousands of teens—many of whom would not be lighting Chanukah candles otherwise—to fulfill this mitzvah.

Hundreds attended NCSY Atlantic Seaboard’s annual Isaac H. Taylor Jewish Music Festival, held virtually this past December, raising crucial funding for the region’s programming. Also in December, NCSY Canada held a virtual concert honoring local supporters of NCSY, which raised critical funds for scholarships for NCSY’s summer programs in Israel. Pictured: Performers Yoni Z., Benny Friedman and Joey Newcomb sing stirring melodies at the Isaac H. Taylor Virtual Jewish Music Festival in December.

GIVING DAYS RAISE OVER $2 MILLION! In November and December, departments across the OU raised significant funds in support of their programming for the coming year.

IVDU: $41,496

OU-JLIC $126K

JUF: $48,016

OU-JLIC Herzliya: $34,662 OU-JLIC at NYU: $93,827

Israel: $62,210

Yachad $1.6M

Los Angeles: $65,830 National: $80,220 Toronto: $110,396* New England: $233,282 New York: $309,134 Chicago: $317,852 New Jersey: $345,802

National: $21,719

Teach $755K

NCSY Alumni Judah Fellows: $33,953

Pennsylvania: $35,682 New Jersey: $110,722 New York State: $287,068 Florida: $300,700

NCSY $406K

NCSY Vancouver: $121,895* NCSY Southwest: $250,170

* Converted to USD

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OU Benefactor Circle members form the cornerstone of the Orthodox Union.

Their partnership and deep commitment to our mission allow us to accomplish so much on behalf of our community.

We applaud and thank all those who lead through their philanthropy and whose names appear here, as well as those choosing to remain anonymous.

If you are not yet a member, we invite you to join us in making a difference.

To learn more, please call Arnold Gerson, Chief Institutional Advancement Officer, at 212-613-8313 or email agerson@ou.org

AMBASSADOR $1,000,000 + DAN AND EWA ABRAHAM DRS. FELIX AND MIRIAM GLAUBACH DR. SHMUEL AND EVELYN KATZ THE MARCUS FOUNDATION INC. IN MEMORY OF ANNE SAMSON A"H

GUARDIAN $100,000 - $999,999 MARK (MOISHE) AND JOANNE BANE ROBERT AND MICHELLE DIENER ARIELA AND BENITO ESQUENAZI IN HONOR OF THE MENDEL BALK YACHAD COMMUNITY CENTER MR. AND MRS. JACK FEINTUCH

ELLIOT P. AND DEBORAH GIBBER ALAN AND BARBARA GINDI THE GUSTAVE AND CAROL JACOBS CENTER FOR KASHRUT EDUCATION THE JEWISH FEDERATION OF GREATER LOS ANGELES BECKY AND AVI KATZ MORDECAI AND MONIQUE KATZ THE KOHELET FOUNDATION MICHAEL AND ANDREA LEVEN FAMILY FOUNDATION DAVID AND DEBRA MAGERMAN MAYBERG FOUNDATION THE JEWISH FEDERATION OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO RAPHAEL AND RIVKA NISSEL RALLA KLEPAK FOUNDATION FOR EDUCATION IN THE PERFORMING ARTS ERIC AND GALE ROTHNER RUDERMAN FAMILY FOUNDATION MORIS AND LILLIAN TABACINIC UJA-FEDERATION OF NEW YORK JOYCE AND JEREMY WERTHEIMER

FOUNDER $50,000 - $99,999 MR. RAANAN AND DR. NICOLE AGUS ALLEN AND DEANNA ALEVY HOWARD AND CHAYA BALTER DANIEL AND RAZIE BENEDICT JUDI AND JASON BERMAN THE CAYRE FAMILY CRAIN-MALING FOUNDATION: WWW.CRAINMALING.ORG GRANT AND JENNIFER DINNER GERSHON AND AVIVA DISTENFELD FOUNDATION FOR JEWISH DAY SCHOOLS, GREATER PHILADELPHIA RABBI MANFRED Z"L AND LISELOTTE Z"L GANS CHESSED FUND DR. EPHRAIM AND RITA GREENFIELD KLEIN, JAFFA, AND HALPERN FAMILIES RICHARD HIRSCH continued next page Spring 5781/2021 JEWISH ACTION on 101

FOUNDER CONTINUED JEWISH COMMUNITY FEDERATION AND ENDOWMENT FUND JEWISH FEDERATION OF NORTHERN NEW JERSEY JEWISH FUTURE PLEDGE DR. EZRA AND LAUREN KEST ETTA BRANDMAN KLARISTENFELD AND HARRY KLARISTENFELD ESTATE OF ETHELYN LIEBLICH CHUCK AND ALLEGRA MAMIYE EITAN AND DEBRA MILGRAM SAMIS FOUNDATION THE SHAMAH FAMILY GARY AND MALKA TORGOW THE WEISS FAMILY, CLEVELAND, OHIO JOSH AND ALLISON ZEGEN

BUILDER

VISIONARY

$25,000 - $49,999

$18,000 - $24,999

LIOR AND DRORA ARUSSY SUE AND BILL AUERBACH LEWIS AND LAURI BARBANEL SABY AND ROSI BEHAR HARRY H. BEREN Z"L MAX AND ELANA BERLIN BRIAN AND DAFNA BERMAN VIVIAN AND DANIEL CHILL DR. BENJAMIN AND ESTHER CHOUAKE COMBINED JEWISH PHILANTHROPIES THE CONDUIT FOUNDATION SHIMON AND CHAYA ECKSTEIN JUDITH AND ALLEN I. FAGIN FALIC FAMILY FOUNDATION GREATER MIAMI JEWISH FEDERATION HOWARD TZVI AND CHAYA FRIEDMAN RALPH S. GINDI FOUNDATION EVE GORDON-RAMEK ARI AND ALISON GROSS JAMES AND AMY A"H HABER DR. ELLIOT Z"L AND LILLIAN HAHN ROBERT AND DEBRA HARTMAN J. SAMUEL HARWIT AND MANYA HARWIT-AVIV CHARITABLE TRUST ALISSA AND SHIMMIE HORN DR. ALLAN AND SANDY JACOB PAUL AND CHAVI JACOBS JEWISH FEDERATION OF S. PALM BEACH COUNTY NATALIE AND DAVIDI JONAS MICHAEL AND JUDY KAISER BENYAMIN AND ESTI KAMINETZKY RABBI MARK AND LINDA KARASICK MICHAEL AND ELISSA KATZ KARMELA A"H AND JERRY KLASNER ALBERT LABOZ JEFF AND MARCI LEFKOVITS M.B. GLASSMAN FOUNDATION IRIS AND SHALOM MAIDENBAUM AZI AND RACHEL MANDEL DR. RALPH AND JUDITH MARCUS

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MARTHA AND GEORGE RICH FOUNDATION MRS. FEGI MAUER MARTIN AND ELIZABETH NACHIMSON HENRY AND MINDY ORLINSKY MALKI AND J. PHILIP ROSEN JAMES AND LOREN ROSENZWEIG ROBBIE AND HELENE ROTHENBERG STEPHEN AND JESSICA SAMUEL GENIE AND STEVE SAVITSKY MENACHEM AND RENA SCHNAIDMAN NATHAN & LOUISE SCHWARTZ TZEDAKA FUND SHANA GLASSMAN FOUNDATION BARRY AND JOY SKLAR DAVID AND AMY STRACHMAN MICHAEL AND ARIANNE WEINBERGER THE WEININGER FOUNDATION INC. DAVID AND GILA WEINSTEIN ESTHER AND JERRY WILLIAMS MR. JERRY AND MRS. SARA WOLASKY

JEWISH ACTION Spring 5781/2021

AARON AND MARIE BLACKMAN FOUNDATION EMANUEL AND HELEN ADLER DENNIS AND DEBRA BERMAN MARCUS Z"L AND DORIS BLUMKIN HILLEL AND CHARLOTTE BRACHFELD THE CHARLES CRANE FAMILY FOUNDATION PETER AND LORI DEUTSCH LINDA AND MICHAEL ELMAN EMT ACTION FUND MARK AND CHERYL FRIEDMAN ROBYN AND SHUKIE GROSSMAN LANCE AND RIVKIE HIRT JOAN AND PETER HOFFMAN ED AND ROBYN HOFFMAN/HOFFMAN CATERING JACK ALBERT KASSIN DANA AND JEFFREY KORBMAN CHAIM AND BARA LOEWENTHAL LYNN AND JOEL MAEL DR. LOUIS AND CHANIE MALCMACHER STEPHEN AND EVE MILSTEIN CAL AND JANINE NATHAN YEHUDA AND ANNE NEUBERGER ISABELLE AND DAVID NOVAK MARC PENN ALLEN AND MIRIAM PFEIFFER THE REFUGE - A HEALING PLACE HENRY AND GOLDA REENA ROTHMAN GEORGE AND IRINA SCHAEFFER TOBY MACY SCHAFFER JEREMY AND DAHLIA SIMONS BARUCH AND SUSIE SINGER MORRIS AND RACHEL TABUSH TRAVEL INSURANCE ISRAEL

PARTNER $10,000 - $17,999 ALISA ABECASSIS DANIEL AND LIORA ADLER RABBI SHLOMO AND MIRIAM APPEL

ART HARRIS FOUNDATION AARON AND TAMMY ATTIAS IRA AND SHERI BALSAM YALE AND ANN BARON MR. AND MRS. ISAAC BERMAN YEHUDA AND FAIGE BIENSTOCK ANDREA BIER HARVEY AND JUDY BLITZ DAVID AND CHEDVA BREAU DR. MOSHE AND BRYNDIE BENARROCH VANESSA AND RAYMOND CHALME TZIPPY AND DANIEL COHEN MR. SHELDON J. DAVID A"H MICHAEL AND ALIZA DAVIS FRED AND SUZAN EHRMAN DRS. GILAT AND YOSSI ENGLANOFF FIRST HORIZON BANK EZRA AND RACHELI FRIEDBERG ILANA AND JEFF GDANSKI ARNOLD AND ESTHER GERSON MARY JO ROBINSON AND GORDON GLASER MURRAY AND BATSHEVA GOLDBERG AMIR AND STACEY GOLDMAN JOSEPH AND LAURA GOLDMAN RABBI BEN AND AVIVA GONSHER PHILIP AND AVIVA GREENLAND RABBI MICAH AND RIVKIE GREENLAND ABE AND RONIT GUTNICKI MR. AND MRS. DAVID HARTMAN RABBI MOSHE AND MINDI HAUER THE HERBERT SMILOWITZ FOUNDATION IRA WALDBAUM FAMILY FOUNDATION ISAAC H. TAYLOR ENDOWMENT FUND THE JACOBY FAMILY JEWISH FEDERATION IN THE HEART OF NEW JERSEY DR. JULIE AND RABBI DR. JOSH JOSEPH DR. AND MRS. BERNARD KAMINETSKY MORRIS AND SONDRA KAPLAN RABBI JOSEPH KARASICK Z"L RABBI ETHAN AND DEBORAH KATZ ALICE AND JACOB KLEIN MARTIN AND SARAH KORNBLUM LAWRENCE AND EVELYN KRAUT SCOTT AND AVIVA KRIEGER JONAH AND FRAN KUPIETZKY KIM AND JONATHAN KUSHNER MARC AND RENA KWESTEL DANIEL AND AMANDA NUSSBAUM LAIFER ANDY AND ISA LEFKOWITZ MRS. SHIRLEY LEVY VIVIAN AND DAVID LUCHINS JEFFREY AND ADRIA MANDEL DAVID AND MICHELLE MARGULES MASA ISRAEL JOURNEY MR. AND MRS. SHALOM MENORA MR. AND MRS. ASHER DAVID AND MICHELLE MILSTEIN GILA AND ADAM MILSTEIN DANIEL AND JESSICA MINKOFF ETAN AND VALERIE MIRWIS AND FAMILY ALEXANDER AND YOCHEVED MITCHELL JAY & JOYCE MOSKOWITZ JACK A"H AND GITTA NAGEL AARON AND AHUVA ORLOFSKY AVI AND ALISSA OSSIP THE OVED FAMILY

THANK YOU DREW AND CAREENA PARKER IN MEMORY OF RABBI RAPHAEL PELCOVITZ Z"L, FROM THE PELCOVITZ FAMILY DAVID AND ELANA POLLACK ISRAEL AND NECHAMA POLAK THE RABBI NATHANIAL AND SHIRLEY POLLACK MEMORIAL FOUNDATION MOSHE AND YAFFA POPACK DANIEL AND LEYLA POSNER PROSKAUER ROSE LLP RALPHS GROCERY COMPANY IAN AND CAROL RATNER DR. AZRIEL AND ILANA RAUZMAN YARON AND LISA REICH LAWRENCE REIN ALEXANDER AND RACHEL RINDNER KAREN AND SHAWN ROSENTHAL YECHIEL AND NOMI ROTBLAT RALPH RUBENSTEIN KENNETH AND MINDY SAIBEL ETHEL AND STAN SCHER TIBERIO AND ELLYSE SCHWARTZ JOSEPH SHAMIE LOUIS SHAMIE MR. AND MRS. DAVID SOKOL DR. AND MRS. ETHAN SPIEGLER RONALD AND BETH STERN MARVIN AND DEBRA STERNBERG TALK N SAVE DR. AND MRS. SHIMMY TENNENBAUM DR. CHARLES AND SHARON TRAURING STANLEY AND ELLEN WASSERMAN THE WEIL FAMILY JESSICA AND LENNY WEISS TOVA AND HOWARD WEISER MOSHE AND DR. ILANA WERTENTEIL GEORGE AND JONI WHITE SUSANNE AND MICHAEL WIMPFHEIMER SHIMON AND HENNIE WOLF MEREDITH AND KENNY YAGER DRS. YECHIEL AND SURI ZAGELBAUM MR. AND MRS. ALAN ZEKELMAN

PATRON $5,000 - $9,999 ADM/ROI ARIEL TOURS, INC. ASHFORD HOSPITALITY JAIMIE AND GERSHON BALLON SAMUEL AND RACHEL BARATZ MICHAEL AND SUSAN BAUM MR. HARVEY BELL DR. AND MRS. YITZHAK AND ELLEN BERGER RABBI JULIUS AND DOROTHY BERMAN RABBI GLENN AND HENNI BLACK YEHUDA AND RONI BLINDER LOIS BLUMENFELD ENID AND HAROLD H. BOXER ENDOWMENT LEE AND ALIZA BRAVERMAN DRS. DAVID & NANCY BRENT CCS FUNDRAISING HIMAN BROWN CHARITABLE TRUST ADAM AND ILANA CHILL SARI AND JASON CIMENT

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BOOKS

Defenders of the Faith: Studies in Nineteenthand Twentieth-Century Orthodoxy and Reform

By Judith Bleich Touro University Press New York, 2020 442 pages

Reviewed by Rabbi Dr. Moshe Y. Miller

“E

ither to be a rabbinic Jew and live outside the times or live within the times and cease to be a rabbinic Jew . . . . ” So wrote Samuel Holdheim, ideologue of radical Reform Judaism in nineteenth-century Germany.

Dr. Judith Bleich’s 2020 book Defenders of the Faith: Studies in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Orthodoxy and Reform tells many stories, but they each have a common theme: how rabbinic authorities who regarded themselves as guardians of the mesorah responded to the challenges of modernity and thereby demonstrated the fatuousness of Holdheim’s prognosis.

Dr. Bleich is this writer’s academic mentor, and it is a privilege to write about a book that reflects the breadth of her scholarly research.

As her student, I was fortunate to hear the Torah sheba’al peh of her analysis of many of these topics.

The book makes for an engrossing Rabbi Dr. Moshe Y. Miller is assistant professor of Judaic studies at Lander College for Women and assistant professor of Jewish history at Lander College for Men and the Graduate School of Jewish Studies.

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read from beginning to end. The essay on rabbinic responses to nonobservance in the modern era is an indispensable study of the topic. The early struggle between the nascent Reform movement and its traditionalist critics was waged in the language of rabbinic literature: responsa-style essays were written to justify the reforms, and the Orthodox responses were in the form of halachic teshuvot. Dr. Bleich chronicles this struggle from the perspective of the Orthodox more sympathetically than any previous writer; many of the earlier accounts were written by scholars associated with the Reform movement.

Particularly interesting are the various comments of Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Chajes (“the Maharatz Chajes”—1805-1856). Like Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch,1 Rabbi Chajes boldly places some of the blame for the success of the early Reform movement at the feet of the Orthodox.

The failure of the Orthodox leadership to grapple with the challenges of modernity led to disaffection for traditionalism among the youth.

In one incisive passage, Rabbi Chajes writes sarcastically of the low qualifications for rabbinic positions in Galicia. Students study a few select portions of Shulchan Aruch’s Orach Chaim and Yoreh Deah, and “this constitutes their entire course of study. If one of them has a smattering of proficiency in these areas, even if he does not know that David reigned after Saul, he will be recommended by the Rabbis as the most qualified

candidate for even the most prestigious cities” (46). Rabbi Chajes berated those of his contemporaries who, in Dr. Bleich’s words, completely failed “to understand the spirit that animates contemporary society and the very real social, ideological, and intellectual problems with which their coreligionists were confronted,” and their failure to establish appropriate educational institutions (47). Although the twenty-first century has largely improved in rabbinical training programs, many men’s yeshivot continue to provide no instruction in Tanach outside of Chumash.2 Rabbi Chajes’s devastating critique of the Orthodox leadership served as a harbinger of the agenda of what Dr. Bleich terms “the movement for counter-Reform,” that is, the Torah im Derech Eretz approach that became the hallmark of German Orthodoxy in the second half of the nineteenth century. This ideology did not emerge from a vacuum but from a real need to grapple with contemporary society in a way that previous Orthodox leaders had failed to do. Dr. Bleich’s essay presents both the Orthodox polemic against Reform and the internal soul-searching of the Orthodox.

Another essay chronicles the creation of an Orthodox press in mid-nineteenth century Germany.

While we are today all accustomed

to various Orthodox journalistic publications (you are reading one now!), prior to Rabbi Yaakov Ettlinger’s Der treue Zionswächter and its Hebrew supplement, Shomer Zion haNe’eman (both roughly translate to “faithful guardian of Zion”), it was only the non-Orthodox who had ventured into this territory. Sensing the void, Rabbi Ettlinger pioneered the Orthodox journal, while his disciples, Rabbis Hirsch and Hildesheimer, did the same in Frankfurt and Berlin (along with Rabbi Marcus Lehmann in Mainz).

Dr. Bleich utilizes Rabbi Ettlinger’s journalistic endeavors as a portal into the world of nineteenth-century German Orthodoxy, much as later writers will use these pages to understand twenty-first-century American Orthodoxy.

Dr. Bleich masterfully portrays the underlying issues of the circumcision controversy that erupted in Frankfurt in the 1840s. Dr. Bleich breaks down the objections on the part of both Jewish and non-Jewish critics of circumcision into conceptual categories. The critique of circumcision on the part of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century liberal thinkers— Jews and non-Jews—was that it was an archaic remnant of barbaric times.

Abraham Geiger, German Reform rabbi and ideologue, described milah as “a barbaric, gory rite . . . ” His more radical Reform colleague Samuel Holdheim declared that he is opposed in principle to circumcision, which he regarded as an expression of Jewish chauvinism, and declared all like-minded Jews absolved of the obligation on his religious authority (!). Eighteenth-century French Enlighteners such as Voltaire had attacked circumcision along the same lines. Dr. Bleich demonstrates that despite the pressures to abandon this rite, even assimilated German Jews— for the most part—continued the practice. This may be due, argues Dr. Bleich, to the emotional attachment to brit milah as a mark of Jewish identity.

This is corroborated by comments of the novelist Philip Roth. Having asked his secular Jewish friends if they could imagine not circumcising their

sons, “they all said no . . . sometimes after the nice long pause that any rationalist takes before opting for the irrational” (cited on 106, n. 70).

The longest essay in this volume is about Rabbi Yechiel Yaakov Weinberg (1884-1966), author of Seridei Eish. Dr. Bleich’s analysis of Rabbi Weinberg focuses on his published writings, with reference to those of his letters that were previously published. This does result in a somewhat different portrayal of Rabbi Weinberg than that of Dr. Marc Shapiro, whose meticulously researched study3 utilizes previously unpublished personal correspondence, particularly that with Samuel Atlas (a professor at the Reform HUC seminary who was raised Orthodox and was Rabbi Weinberg’s childhood friend).4 Ultimately, both works are indispensable for a proper understanding of Rabbi Weinberg’s biography5 and worldview, and readers will decide for themselves which portrayal captures the Seridei Eish more convincingly.

In Dr. Bleich’s words, Rabbi Weinberg “stands out as a singular personality venerated by, and exercising a profound influence upon,

the same time, the Modern Orthodox community has developed a keen interest in Rabbi Weinberg’s writings and ideas.7 His defense of the Torah im Derech Eretz approach—and of the legitimacy of secular studies, more generally—from its right-wing critics, his use of Wissenschaft methodology in some of his Talmudic essays, combined with his enthusiastic reaction to the creation of the State of Israel (alongside a sympathetic view of the non-Orthodox Zionist pioneers), and his broadminded approach to challenges facing the Jewish community, have made Rabbi Weinberg a figure who can be revered by the halachah-centric Modern Orthodox community.

Rabbi Weinberg uniquely harmonized different intellectual orientations in modern Judaism in ways that precious few of his peers—to the present day—have done. (Dr. Bleich refers to “the unusual intellectual synthesis achieved by Rabbi Weinberg” [294].) Known as one of the world’s supreme halachists in the two decades following WWII, Rabbi Weinberg’s chief literary contribution is his responsa collection Seridei

The failure of the Orthodox leadership to grapple with the challenges of

both traditionalist and acculturated sectors of the Orthodox community” (243). Indeed, Rabbi Weinberg’s training in the premier Lithuanian yeshivot, his close relationships with the preeminent Chareidi gedolim of both pre- and post-War Europe, and his writings—which are studied throughout the yeshivah world and evidence both profound Talmudic erudition as well as great enthusiasm for Torah and mussar study—have rendered Rabbi Weinberg a gadol who is revered in the Chareidi world.6 At

Eish. Though a reference to surviving the fire of the Holocaust, “the title is . . . appropriate in more ways than one. There is a poetic, lyrical strain in Rabbi Weinberg’s prose, a passion and enthusiasm that leaps from the page.

The embers are aglow with fire” (246).

In Dr. Bleich’s account, Rabbi Weinberg’s congenial personality comes to life. His boundless love of the Jewish people and tireless devotion to not only preserving the mesorah but making it relevant to those outside his immediate sphere of influence, is Spring 5781/2021 JEWISH ACTION

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illustrated in the following quote: Tolerance—a modern invention! I can love my brother or hate him; but under no circumstances am I, or can I be, tolerant of him. From my brother I demand—and have the privilege to demand—that he not deny me the opportunity to love him properly, as one loves a brother . . . Not tolerance and indifference but love and brotherhood we ask and demand of you! (258).

Rabbi Weinberg teaches us that making demands of our brethren is okay so long as it is clear that this is engendered by our love and concern for them. Not zealous denunciation of alleged “heretics” nor religious apathy toward those we regard as lesser than us, but insistence on unity of purpose to serve God as devotedly as we can, even if this is achieved by myriad ways by the myriad of Jews across the spectrum of Orthodoxy.8 Space constraints do not allow for elaboration upon all of the essays in this book, but mention should be made of Dr. Bleich’s analysis of the curious phenomenon, so prevalent among German Orthodox rabbis of the nineteenth century, of wearing clerical robes which resembled—in varying degrees—Christian vestments. Not only Rabbi Hirsch and his younger colleagues but even Rabbi Ettlinger— esteemed in yeshivot as the author of the Talmudic novellae Aruch LaNer— wore these. Dr. Bleich examines the halachic9 and ideological components to this practice and, while taking due note of its opponents and the eventual abandonment of the practice, argues that rabbis such as Rabbi Hirsch believed that it was important to “demonstrate an understanding and acceptance of the cultural trends of the time,” and that adapting to modern sensibilities in the realm of aesthetics projected an image of a “forward-looking Orthodoxy” (134).

Other essays treat intermarriage in the early modern period, an overview of reforms to the siddur and Orthodox responses, and varying attitudes toward military service among halachists. Patriotism was a ubiquitous feature of nineteenth-century Jews of all stripes, 106

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including the Hungarian architects of ultra-Orthodoxy. The question of whether observant Jews should enlist in the military of a non-Jewish state is an halachically weighty one, but it is also inextricably linked to attitudes toward one’s country.10 Dr. Bleich draws the reader’s attention to “what in rabbinic writing is a rare approach”—the view of Rabbi Ze’ev Wolf Leiter, rav of Pittsburgh (1891-1974) who, concerned about the loss of life that war inevitably entails, called upon every God-fearing Jew to engage in activism to bring about world peace and the cessation of all warfare (188).

Let us pray that we merit to see the era in which this view will be realized.

Dr. Bleich’s contribution to our understanding of modern Jewish history, and particularly how Orthodoxy has responded to the challenges of modernity and the emergence of non-Orthodox movements, is enormous. As a student, I have benefited from hearing many of these topics masterfully taught in graduate seminars. Additionally, I have enjoyed illuminating conversations with Dr. Bleich over the years regarding these topics. For those who are unable to experience the Torah sheba’al peh of Dr. Bleich, this engaging and erudite book provides access to the Torah shebichtav of her scholarship and wisdom.

Notes 1. See Rabbi Hirsch’s Nineteen Letters, especially Letters 1, 15, 18 and 19.

2. This is striking in light of the unambiguous championing of Tanach study on the part of the greatest rabbinic luminaries of the last few centuries.

See, for example, the letter of Rabbi Yosef Te’omim, printed as part of the preface to his Pri Megadim on Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chaim. Although the Haskalah’s focus on Bible is often cited in this context, this does not suffice to undercut the authoritative words of luminaries like Pri Megadim.

Besides, there is no Haskalah in 2021.

3. Marc B. Shapiro, Between the Yeshiva World and Modern Orthodoxy: The Life and Works of Rabbi Jehiel Jacob Weinberg 1884-1966 (Liverpool, 1999).

4. As those letters were not intended

for publication, they sometimes present tentative expressions of Rabbi Weinberg’s feelings at the time of their composition. Since Rabbi Weinberg had no wife or children with whom he could confide, he did so with Atlas, and thus utilization of those letters presents Rabbi Weinberg in a more “liberal” light than Dr. Bleich’s analysis of his published works does.

5. Dr. Bleich’s essay is a study of Rabbi Weinberg’s thought. Dr. Shapiro’s book, based upon his Harvard University doctoral dissertation, chronicles his life in painstaking detail.

6. New editions of his sefarim have been graced with letters of blessing by leading Chareidi gedolim such as Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach, Rabbi Moshe Sternbuch, and Rabbi Yitzchok Scheiner, among others.

7. Dr. Shapiro asserts that Rabbi Weinberg “stands out as an icon of Modern Orthodoxy and shows that this brand of Orthodoxy has its own authority figures whose renown must be acknowledged in all circles” (Between the Yeshiva World, p. 222).

8. In a personal communication from 2005, Rabbi Avraham Abba Weingort of Jerusalem, the closest living disciple of Rabbi Weinberg, told me that his rebbe told him that one of the greatest shortcomings of his generation (most likely, the early 1960s) was the tendency to denigrate other Jews with different ideologies even though they are all united in the goal of le’taken olam be’Malchut Shakkai.

9. This writer would add that a most pertinent source, not noted in this book, for the halachic justification of rabbis donning robes widely in vogue among gentile clergy is Rabbi Yisrael Moshe Hazzan, Shu”t Krach shel Romi (Livorno, 1876), no. 1.

10. Dr. Bleich argues that the majority of halachists opposed military service when it could be avoided, and that only a minority took a contrary position. Rabbi Hirsch and Rabbi Glasner, author of Dor Revi’i, comprise this minority. In referring to Rabbi Hirsch’s patriotic sentiments in Horeb, Dr. Bleich wonders “to what extent Rabbi Hirsch was carried away by the rhetoric of the time and to what extent he internalized these sentiments” (187).

This writer argues in a forthcoming book that Rabbi Hirsch’s patriotic sentiments can be explained differently, which resolves Dr. Bleich’s query.

CLASSICS

BY AND ABOUT

THE RAV RABBI JOSEPH B. SOLOVEITCHIK

THE LONELY MAN OF FAITH

The Rav’s timeless philosophical essay probes the inner experience of those who seek both redemptive closeness with God and creative engagement with the world.

FESTIVAL OF FREEDOM

A series of ten essays which explain the resonances of the Seder far beyond the confines of one night.

DAROSH DARASH YOSEF

By Rabbi Avishai C. David. This book is comprised of shiurim the Rav delivered on all five books of the Torah, skillfully summarized by Rabbi David.

Available at OUPress.org

MAJESTY & HUMILITY: THE THOUGHT OF RABBI JOSEPH B. SOLOVEITCHIK

By Rabbi Reuven Ziegler.A seamless framework for understanding the extensive corpus of the Rav’s works and philosophy, for both the experienced student of the Rav and those seeking an introduction to his approach.

SOCIETY & SELF: ON THE WRITINGS OF RABBI JOSEPH B. SOLOVEITCHIK

By Prof.Ya’akov Blidstein. A series of thoughtprovoking and nuanced essays shedding new light on the Rav’s thought.

Books of Jewish thought and prayer that educate, inspire, enrich and enlighten Spring 5781/2021 JEWISH ACTION

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Tribal Blueprints: Twelve Brothers and the Destiny of Israel

By Nechama Price Maggid Jerusalem, 2020 308 pages

Reviewed by Michal Horowitz

As

a teacher of Tanach to adults, with a strong focus on text-based Chumash classes, when I first saw Professor Nechama Price’s Tribal Blueprints: Twelve Brothers and the Destiny of Israel, my interest and curiosity were piqued.

Since the shelves in our libraries and Judaica stores are well stocked with books on Chumash and the parashah, it is prudent to ask: What does this (or any) new book offer the reader (and teacher), that has not already been discussed?

As one reads Professor Price’s book, the answer becomes abundantly clear.

In this unique anthology, the author devotes two chapters to each tribe, or grouping of tribes. We learn about the firstborn Reuven (the individual) in Genesis, and then Reuven (descendants of the tribe) in Tanach. We read about Binyamin (dubbed “The Baby of the Family”) in Genesis, and then about Binyamin in Tanach. Between Reuven and Binyamin, Professor Price gives us a clear biography of the tribes and of their mothers.

Who were the twelve brothers that birthed our nation and shaped

our destiny? How were their actions influenced by the environment and home in which they were born and bred? What do their names, which were given to them at birth, tell us about their personalities? Why did some, like Yehudah and Yosef, become great leaders, and others, like Reuven and Gad, seemed doomed to rejection, loneliness and even failure? In what way did their father’s relationship with their mothers affect their futures?

In this fascinating, thoroughly researched exploration of the sons of Yaakov, Price addresses these questions and more. Her exceptionally clear style of writing is easily read by both the scholar and layperson.

Almost every page has numerous explanatory footnotes quoting both earlier and later commentators, bringing support and proofs for her teachings. Additionally, Price offers insights of her own, culled from her years of teaching Tanach. An example of one such insight, which I found particularly astute and compelling, is in regard to the famous story of Reuven and his duda’im (mandrakes).

Reuven went in the days of the wheat harvest, and found mandrakes1 in the field, and brought them to his mother, Leah. Then Rahel said to Leah, “Please give me some of your son’s mandrakes.” She said to her: “Is it a small matter that you have taken away my husband? Would you take away my son’s mandrakes also?” Rahel

Michal Horowitz is a guest lecturer and scholar in residence in schools and communities around the country. She has hundreds of shiurim online, which can be found on OUTorah.org, YUTorah.org and TorahAnyTime.com. She lives in Woodmere, New York, with her husband and children.

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said, “Therefore he will lie with you tonight for your son’s mandrakes.”

Yaakov came from the field in the evening, and Leah went out to meet him, and said, “You must come with me; for I have surely traded for you with my son’s mandrakes.” And he slept with her that night (Genesis 30:14-16).

Price points out that at this point in the Torah narrative, Leah has birthed Reuven, Shimon, Levi and Yehudah. Bilhah, Rachel’s maidservant, has borne Dan and Naftali. Zilpah, Leah’s maidservant, has borne Gad and Asher. Only Rachel, the beloved wife, remains childless!

One day, Young Reuven goes to the field to pick flowers and proudly presents them to his mother, Leah.

Rahel desires the flowers and requests them from her sister. Leah agrees to transfer them to Rahel only in return for one of Rahel’s nights with Yaakov.

What a bizarre story! So many details are difficult to comprehend.

Why did Rahel want the flowers?

What could be so special about these flowers that they are worth trading a night with Yaakov? And finally, what makes this story important enough to be included in the text of the Torah? (Tribal Blueprints, p. 14).

Price offers various reasons based on the commentators’ teachings on this passage. However, she begins

Who were the twelve brothers that birthed our nation and shaped our destiny? with a unique and novel explanation of her own, reflective of the insight a female teacher of Tanach would intuitively offer to her students and readers. Under the heading “Token of Love,” Price writes: This story could be the pure and innocent depiction of a sensitive young boy who recognizes his mother’s sadness and tries to cheer her up with a bouquet of flowers. These flowers are a token of his love to make up for the lack of love and gestures of affection that she should receive from her husband.

Moreover, Reuven may be aware of his parents’ strained relationship . . .

He watches Yaakov’s treatment of her during the day and sees her crying at night . . . So too, he may know the significance behind his own name,2 his mother’s desperate plea for love, and he wants to help her fill that void.

According to this line of thinking, Rahel trades a night with Yaakov for these flowers because they embody a child’s love for his mother. She is desperate to feel the tangible love of a child. Rahel’s anguish is passionately expressed only a few verses earlier, when she lashes out at Yaakov, saying, “Give me children or else I will die” (Genesis 30:1). Clearly, to Rahel, these flowers embody what she covets most in the world—the love of a child for his mother; she believes that acquiring them is worth relinquishing a night with Yaakov. The significance of this story is to display the level of extreme desperation that both Rahel and Leah feel, and what they are willing to sacrifice (p. 15).

As a Bible scholar, Price reminds

us that what the Torah text omits is as significant as what it includes. In regard to the youngest sons of Leah, Price writes: There are no stories about Yissakhar and Zevulun in all of Genesis. However, we know that they are present during numerous key episodes . . . We have every reason to believe they are present at the sale of Yosef. They were clearly included among the ten brothers who were sent down to Egypt twice. However, in spite of their physical presence, they are absent in the sense that they are the youngest sons of Leah . . . Yissakhar and Zevulun are followers who listen and do as they are told . . . One might suggest that the absence of details about Yissakhar and Zevulun means that there is no way to know anything about them. However, from their silence and apparent ambivalence, they might actually be revealing their personalities. Every family or clan has leaders and followers.

Yissakhar and Zevulun, as presented in Genesis, are followers (p. 148).

Having read and thoroughly enjoyed the many insights and lessons in Tribal Blueprints, I am reminded of a foundational teaching of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, which is entirely relevant to Price’s work. On Genesis 12:10, Rabbi Hirsch writes: The Torah does not seek to portray our great men as perfectly ideal figures; it deifies no man. It says of no one: “Here you have the ideal; in this man the Divine assumes human form!” It does not set before us the life of any one person as the model from which we might learn what is good and right, what we must do and what we must refrain from doing. When the Torah wishes to put before us a model to emulate, it does not present a man, who is born of dust. Rather, G-d presents Himself as the model, saying: “Look upon me!

Emulate Me! Walk in My ways!”3 We are never to say: “This must be good and right, because so and so did it.”

The Torah is not an “anthology of good deeds.” It relates events not because they are necessarily worthy of emulation, but because they took place. The Torah does not hide from us the faults, errors, and weaknesses

of our great men, and this is precisely what gives its stories credibility. The knowledge given us of their faults and weaknesses does not detract from the stature of our great men; on the contrary, it adds to their stature and makes their life stories even more instructive. Had they been portrayed to us as shining models of perfection, flawless and unblemished, we would have assumed that they had been endowed with a higher nature, not given to us to attain. Had they been portrayed free of passions and inner conflicts, their virtues would have seemed to us merely the consequence of their loftier nature, not acquired by personal merit, and certainly no model we could ever hope to emulate.

Ultimately, Tribal Blueprints teaches us that more than ancient Biblical personalities, the twelve sons of Yaakov and his wives were real people, with struggles, triumphs, failures and successes. The birthing of our nation was born of complex situations, reflecting the diversity, grandeur and beauty of Am Yisrael.

In conclusion, Price notes: The message of the twelve tribes is relevant in every family, community, or nation.

Variety is necessary and provides life with its color, balance and beauty.

Each tribe is essential to create the Jewish nation. Each one adds an inimitable and special quality to the whole. Similarly, we must each find our role, the colors that we can add, and the contributions we have to offer to the world around us (p. 288).

Tribal Blueprints is an exploration of the family of Yaakov, as well as a compelling and impactful journey through Tanach. This work provides insights into the individual lives of the tribes, as well as family and communal interactions. It is, indeed, a most worthy addition to any library.

Notes 1. Rashi on Genesis 30:14 identifies these flowers as jasmine.

2. “And Leah conceived, and bore a son, and she called his name Reuven; for she said: ‘Because the Lord has looked upon my affliction; for now my husband will love me’ (Genesis 29:32).”

3. See Sotah 14a and Shabbat 133b.

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WEB SITE REVIEW

Torah Access Reimagined: Al HaTorah.org Reviewed by Moshe Holender

O

ne of the most exciting developments in Jewish publishing in the last decade is the explosion of electronic Torah resources. Free resources include countless shiurim on any topic imaginable, scanned images of tens of thousands of printed sefarim, and reliable halachic articles and guides available from the OU and elsewhere.

The amount of information available online is truly overwhelming.

But have you ever found yourself wanting to look up a source when the sefer is not at hand and then trying to scroll through a 250-page PDF on your phone? And even when you’ve found the desired passage, you struggle to make out the tiny words on the screen? I certainly have. Or perhaps you have an app that makes things more readable but you keep fumbling with the user interface?

While a variety of web sites provide the ability to research a particular sefer, the format in which the texts are presented has always challenged me.

Sefarim in PDF format do not usually have a helpful table of contents, and the optical character recognition (OCR) applied to sefarim is useful but Moshe Holender is a writer, editor and educator who lives in Airmont, New York.

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far from perfect for the purpose of searching within a particular sefer.

Enter AlHaTorah.org, which has successfully reimagined the experience of online and mobile learning of a text with commentaries.

I don’t recall how I first stumbled across it, but I did capture a record of the date—November 2018— because I was so excited I had to start telling people about it. “This,” I wrote, “is a game-changer.”

AlHaTorah.org is an ambitious project. It aims to provide a comprehensive Torah library in native, usable digital format. While its corpus and features seem to be growing constantly, so far its crown jewel is the Mikraot Gedolot, available at mg.alhatorah.org. While exploring verses and commentaries, which are displayed in a pleasing Hebrew font, I truly get the feeling that AlHaTorah.org has achieved the usability and aesthetics of the original, faithfully translated into the medium of a web app.

When beginning to use any new web site or app, you have to learn its navigation and settings options.

I will briefly describe how to use AlHatorah.org with the caveat that it might seem complicated in writing but will quickly become second nature once you begin using it.

At the entrance to the site, you begin

by selecting a text, either a chapter or verse from anywhere in Tanach.

For Chumash, an option to select by parashah is also available. (Controls can be switched from Hebrew to English with the click of a button for ease of navigation.) Once you make your selection, each verse, along with its classic commentators, is displayed in a rectangular section demarcated with a light gray background. The standard selection of commentaries ranges from Rashi and Ibn Ezra to Chizkuni and the Kli Yakar, and each commentary is housed in its own, scrollable sub-section. Besides the classics, available commentaries include multiple Targumim, parallel midrashim, less famous Rishonim like the Bechor Shor and Rabbi Avraham ben HaRambam, super-commentaries on Rashi, and more recent works like Meshech Chochmah and the Netziv.

So much about the AlHaTorah.org experience is customizable. Click on the gear icon at the top, and you can choose which of the more than forty commentaries you would like to have displayed by default. If you want to see a broader range of commentators on one particular verse, you simply need to click “Show Additional Commentaries” at the bottom of the section. Other helpful options include English translations where available and displaying Rashi in Rashi script.

The display is also highly customizable, with views available for verse-by-verse or an entire chapter at a time. Easily switch from the Mikraot Gedolot view to the “one parshan at a time” view. A “Rashi view” puts Rashi more prominently on the page in large type under each verse, under which the relevant midrashim and mefarshim are presented. Change the text size with the zoom button at the top right.

If the vertical list of verses on the side interferes, you can click to hide it.

It would be difficult to list every feature of AlHaTorah.org’s Mikraot Gedolot. It seems like every time I visit, I discover another one. The

Yonatan (the original web designer), Aviva, Ariella and Yehuda. It is clear that AlHaTorah.org is a labor of love and idealism, and one that has taken thousands of man-hours to bring to fruition. The founders brought together an advisory board of distinguished rabbis, talmidei chachamim, communal leaders and academic scholars, both men and women, who work together on the site on an ongoing basis, making this truly a worldwide collaborative effort.

There is a question in the Rishonim as to what constitutes the main idea of the mitzvah of writing a sefer Torah— is it for each person to write a sefer in the prescribed way so that it becomes kadosh, or is it to enable every Jew to learn from the Torah? The Rosh opines that the latter is correct. Therefore, in our days when almost no one actually learns directly from a sefer Torah, the mitzvah can be fulfilled by purchasing Torah books from which to learn. One could argue that by making the totality of the Written and Oral Torah available to the entire world, the creators and supporters of AlHaTorah.org are enabling everyone in Klal Yisrael to fulfill this mitzvah.

As Chazal tell us, the world at large benefits as well. “Al sheloshah devarim ha’olam omed,” the world was created for the sake of three things—“Al haTorah, v’al ha‘avodah, v’al gemilut chasadim,” for Torah learning, for the sacrificial service, and for acts of kindness” (Avot 1:2).

from

latest was during the course of writing this review, when I realized that certain verses have a small camera icon on which you can click to reveal beautiful illustrations provided

by Machon HaMikdash (the Temple Institute) in Israel!

If you highlight text with your cursor, a menu pops up allowing a whole host of practical features. You can copy the text in Word format; copy the text together with an automatic identifying title; highlight on-screen in color; search the Biblical corpus for matching text anywhere in Tanach; and even send in a correction if you find a mistake. Clicking on any word in any verse brings up a comprehensive concordance showing where that word and any related words appear anywhere in Tanach. There is also an extensive dictionary with a wealth of hyperlinked references to other verses, which even includes cognate words in other Semitic languages, such as Arabic, Aramaic and Ethiopic. For those interested in finding novel ways to think about the text, there is a “Tanakh Lab” feature that provides tools for the statistical analysis of the occurrence of words and phrases within chosen sections of Tanach.

Every primary text is precisely sourced, and links to digitally imaged manuscripts are provided where available. (I found this useful in fact-checking a supposed printing error in Rashi; it turned out the very early Leipzig 1 manuscript had the same text we have today.)

AlHaTorah.org’s goal is to create a “one-stop Tanakh study resource.” To that end, an array of interactive study modules for guided learning are currently in progress, with a couple of dozen topics already available.

Another section contains detailed study topics for each parashah, along with “Shabbat Table Topics” to engage your family with the parashah each week.

While the wealth of features that AlHaTorah.org offers certainly seems daunting at first, the web site includes clear user guides describing how to navigate each section.

AlHaTorah.org is mobile-responsive and works beautifully in a mobile browser. While a native app (which doesn’t exist) would be ideal, the site functions in the browser just like an app, allowing you to easily look up or learn mefarshim on the go. Other sections of AlHaTorah.org include: • Mishnayot with essential commentaries like the Rash MiShantz, Rambam, Bartenura and Tosefot Yom Tov; • Shas with Rashi, Tosafot and other classical Rishonim and Acharonim; • Mishneh Torah, Tur and Shulchan Aruch with their associated commentaries; • Haggadah shel Pesach; • Advanced tools like the historical “Commentators Timeline,” “Commentators Map,” “Mitzvot Database” and more; • A library of Jewish works not covered elsewhere on the site, including various midrashim, works of Jewish philosophy, sifrei mitzvot, and works of more academic interest such as the Apocrypha, the Septuagint and Josephus.

I have great admiration for the founders of this project, Rabbi Hillel and Neima Novetsky, and their children,

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LASTING IMPRESSIONS

Hoping to Reconnect

By Ann D. Koffsky

As

a people, we Jews often like to do things differently.

One result of the pandemic is something called “pandemic guilt.” (Google it; you’ll get lots of hits.) It’s the feeling of unworthiness that some people are experiencing for being blessed with good health while others suffer during the pandemic.

But we Jews get to add our own twist.

We don’t just feel guilty for what’s happening in the here and now. We add the scope of history to our guilt.

Our guilt sounds something like this: Our grandparents suffered so much. They survived the Holocaust.

Or they survived coming to America in steerage, with just one potato to share between them. Or they survived poverty on Manhattan’s Lower East Side—again, with just one potato. Now that was real suffering.

Yes, yes, of course, of course, I have so much to be grateful for. My health and my family’s. Financial security. I am blessed, I am lucky. Thank you, Hashem. Yet I still feel rotten sometimes.

So my inner voice wonders: Why do I feel so terrible? What’s wrong with me? Compared to my saintly grandparents, I have so many potatoes! I’m blessed with health, my children are healthy; I have a job.

I am a wimp.

I have Jewish pandemic guilt.

Just because our grandparents were saintly and survived great suffering doesn’t mean everything in my life is hunky-dory. I’m not even talking about the deeply serious issues like the loss of loved ones, mental health issues, financial crisis . . . everyone acknowledges these challenges. I’m talking about a subtle, more invisible 112

JEWISH ACTION Spring 5781/2021

Actually, lest this be the first piece type of suffering that each of us has in Jewish Action that advocates endured even while we also enjoy talking in shul, let me clarify: I many blessings. This pandemic has mean during the kiddush after shul taken something valuable from us: the and not during davening. Talking threads that bind us one to another. outside shul, shall we say.

I miss having my parents-in-law We feel like we are suffering not visit from Georgia, I miss having my because we are wimps but because we own parents inside my house, I miss are indeed suffering. The threads that Shabbat company, I miss my in-person bind our community have frayed, and learning group, I miss meeting new the hum and buzz have been muted. people and forming new friendships.

The opportunities for chesed have been I miss all of those connections. And muted!

No wonder we are distressed. those connections are not minor.

Indeed, they are what make our people We are mourning the loss of all this.

Yet the threads are not torn into a people and not just a large asunder and the hum is still there. set of ethnically similar families.

It was there when people put stuffed It reminds me of this legendary animals in their windows so kids could story: A Chassidic rebbe hears “spy” something when going for a walk. about a town that is famous for its It was there in all the drive-by extraordinary chesed, and he decides birthday parties and semachot. he must see it for himself. He travels to It is there in the backyards with the town and is welcomed warmly into huge tents set up for davening. the shul. As the rebbe sits in shul, he And it’s there when we walk becomes deeply upset. There is so much down the street and wave to one talking during davening! A constant another on a Shabbat afternoon. hum and buzz fill the place. When he Like flowers in winter, the hum and is asked to give a sermon, he blasts the buzz of our community connections crowd: What are you doing? Davening still live, though they have gone is the time to talk to Hashem! And you underground.

But the frozen ground are chit-chatting with one another? of December always yields to spring, The town is deeply moved by the and the crocuses emerge to remind rebbe’s speech, and they commit to us that new days are ahead. work on this terrible problem. They We did it. We socially distanced. institute rules. There is lots of shushing.

We cut the threads that bound us They make sure to be socially distant to one another and severed our ties. in shul. And when the rebbe comes And those cuts opened real wounds. back to visit a year later, the davening As the ground warms (and the is pin-drop quiet. It worked. vaccines are distributed), let us take But . . . the town is no longer up our knitting and work to stitch the famous for its chesed. Because if you chesed and connections back into our opened your ears at that first visit community, mending the rips. May and listened carefully to the buzz, the hum and buzz be restored to vivid this is what you might have heard: life as we remove our masks and once “Did you hear? Chana Rochel had again greet each and every person twins! Oh, let’s set up meals for her.” we meet with a sever panim yafot.

“My goodness, Mr. Cohen is in I can’t wait to start talking with you the hospital. Let’s visit him.” in—I mean, outside—shul again.

“Someone needs to make sure Mrs. Schwartz gets to the Ann D. Koffsky is the author/ doctor—can you take her?” illustrator of more than thirty Within the hum was the social fabric books for children, including Kayla of the community. The connections. and Kugel’s Almost Perfect Passover Inside the buzz was the chesed.

(New Jersey, 2016).

We all miss talking in shul.

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